Deuteronomy

God’s Order

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 70-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 070

Dictation Name: RR187AL70

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Give unto the Lord all ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name, bring an offering and come into His courts. Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, fear before Him all the earth. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we give thanks unto Thee as we come into Thy presence that Thy mercies are indeed new every morning. Thou art good unto us who so often cannot be good unto ourselves. We thank Thee, we pray for Thy mercies upon us and Thy children’s childrens so that to the end of time we may be thine and may stand firm in terms of Thy calling, Thy word and serve to Thy kingdom. Bless us now by Thy word and by Thy spirit, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy2 2:5-12 God’s order. Deuteronomy 22:5-12.

“The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.

6 If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young:

7 But thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.

8 When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.

9 Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds: lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard, be defiled.

10 Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together.

11 Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together.

12 Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture, wherewith thou coverest thyself.”

There are seven laws in these eight verses and there is an inner unity to them. The first law is in verse five, it prohibits cross dressing at the very least and this is declared an abomination unto the Lord. Where the word abomination is used we know we are on serious grounds. This law can mean a number of things, it can mean that transvestite dressing is barred, whatever the reason for it. It can mean some pagan cults celebrating chaos, required, as they did, cross dressing and perverse sexual acts as a part of worship. It can also mean that not only is cross dressing forbidden but engaging in work not properly belonging to one’s sex is forbidden. It was long ago seen as barring combat war roles for women. Or it can mean all these things and more and certainly that is the case. God has created us male and female and we are required to honor the God ordained distinction. This was an anti-Canaanites law among other things because Canaanite practice was hostile to the distinctive places of men and women. Again and again in times of degeneracy throughout world history men have tried to obliterate the distinction between the sexes. This view marked Rome in its degeneracy and more than one emperor tried to obliterate the sexual distinctions in his own life. One paraded his effeminate character publicly and nakedly. Ritual emasculations were one way among many of denying the clear cut sexual distinctiveness of male and female. The expression in verse five ‘that which pertaineth’ or anything that pertains to a man or a woman means clothing, weapons, utensils and tools or vocations. Then and now tranvestism is associated with homosexuality and it has always had anti-biblical religious connotations. From the time that western society became Christian every rebellion against Christianity has been marked by a systematic and deliberate violation of this commandment.

Verses one through four set forth the God-ordained fact of property as God’s ordination. Now in verse five we see that our sexuality is a property that we must not attempt to divest ourselves of for to do so is an abomination in God’s sight. It is filthy behavior and an abomination. The second law, verses six and seven, concerns birds. In antiquity and in many areas to this day birds have been an important part of life. For two decades after World War Two in some parts of Western Europe even sparrows were routinely trapped for food by the poor according to one’s soldiers wife who was stationed in several countries. We have here a law governing such hunting and any use of birds. The assumption of the law is that these are clean birds; the destruction of the species is in affect forbidden. The mother bird must be allowed to live to serve the species. There is a promise for obedience to this law, that thou mayest prolong thy days. This is of course the same promise attached to the fifth commandment, honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. We honor God the creator of all life when we honor the immediate sources of life. This is a God-required duty; parents who make it difficult for their children to honor them therefore bear an especial guilt as do children who will not honor their parents. In Deuteronomy 20:19-20 fruit trees are protected from war time destruction. Here, mother birds are protected. A curious fact is that these laws and others like them are used to give Deuteronomy a date almost a thousand years after Moses by modernist critics. Their reasoning is that these laws are very advanced, like we are. Very enlightened, and therefore they had to come after mankind had outgrown out of its superstitions. They had to be as wise as we are before they could have thought up such a law, of course, their presupposition is that God did not give it.

Some have seen this law as protective of fertility. However the fertility protected is of clean birds! The third law, verse eight, refers to the flat roofed houses of the time. In warm weather a great deal of evening activity, dining, entertaining and even sleeping took place on the rooftop which was so constructed that it was a place in hot countries for evening activities. The law requires a railing around the roof to prevent anyone from falling off and injuring themselves or being killed. There is a similar law in Exodus 21:33-34. If a man made an excavation according to that law in the process of some kind of construction and the excavation was where a neighbor’s livestock could fall in he was liable for damages. The excavation had to be covered or fenced in. This law is still widely used especially in urban construction of large commercial buildings and it comes from biblical law. Failure here to build a valestrate [sp?] left one open to blood guiltiness in case of an accident. The nature of this law is that it put the burden upon the person building a house, the owner, and the builder. In our time we have substituted a variety of codes and regulations for this law, building restrictions and licenses. God’s law eliminates all such regulations because it makes clear the serious liabilities for failure to comply, criminal liabilities; therefore everyone took care of the matters themselves. At least a manslaughter, if not a murder charge, depending on the circumstances was incentive enough for a sound building practice. God’s law does not create a bureaucracy; it establishes a liability which gives men the incentive to comply. Now until virtually our time this was the common law of western nations because it was God’s law. But: the impenitence to change to a bureaucratic regime has come from the fact that it greatly empowers the state. It puts enforcement in to the hands of the state where previously it was the hands of the man who commissioned the construction or did it, or the builder. And therefore to avoid criminal charges in a criminal court he naturally complied with this law. We have not improved matters by creating a bureaucracy.

The fourth law forbids sowing one’s vineyard with diverse seeds. Such mixed sowing will defile the field. This can occur by bringing together plants that will crossbreed to the detriment of both. Gardeners learn in time to keep certain plants apart and certain fruit trees and vines find their strength sapped by certain kinds of planting. The temptation to do this comes when an orchard or vineyard is newly planted. This means there will be no harvest for a few years. In order to have some income from the farm the owner may plant between the rows certain vegetable crops. Some of these can and do harm or devitalize the trees or vines. I recall in my youth when someone rented out their field and about the same time had some nectarine trees planted, the renter planted vegetable crops in between in that part of the farm and the trees were devitalized and in time had to be pulled out. The first law bans cross dressing, this law bans cross planting, both require us to see the integrity of God’s purposes. Their relationship is obvious. The laws concerning birds and battlements or balustrades protect life. We must recognize the integrity of what God ordains. These are therefore not miscellaneous laws but related ones. The fifth and sixth laws again stress the integrity and separateness of God’s creative designs. The fifth law in verse ten forbids plowing an ox and an ass together. There are differences of strength and kind between the two. Moreover the ox is a clean animal and the ass is not. There is an obvious injustice to both animals in trying to work them together. Verses nine through eleven give us three laws against unjust or unnatural combinations. The world is not what we want it to be but what God ordained concerning it. We must work under God not against Him. The unequal strength of the ox and the donkey mean that the combination of the two is harmful to both and therefore to the owner. And yet it is an amazing fact how perverse people are. To this day Palestinians insist on yoking an ox and a donkey together in spite of centuries of experience that it is unwise to do so.

People do not learn from experience if they are perverse. The sixth law prohibits wearing garments of contrary materials such as wool and linen. They cannot be mingled or sewn or woven together. Most of our modern synthetics violate this law although some scientists, not Christian, have seen the combination as bad for one’s health. Leviticus 19:19 forbids crossbreeding as a horse with a donkeys, sowing a field with mingled seed and using garments of mixed wool and linen. The three prohibitions go together. Hosea 2:5-9 associate such mixed yarns with Baal worship. It was a rebellion against God’s order; it was a way of saying the world is going to be what we want it to be. In every case with the laws of verses five through eleven this is the case. Which order shall prevail, Gods or mans. The seventh law, verse twelve requires the fringes on the garments, a practice common amongst orthodox Jews. As H. Wheeler Robinson, by no means anything but a modernist, observed early in the twentieth century these are memorial tassels. According to Numbers 15:37-41 these were a reminder to keep God’s law. The Christian version of this very early was the cross, as a reminder. It appears in or over the church or both, in one’s home or on one’s clothing. We live in a physical world and physical signs to remind us of who God is and what we are are surely needed. It has become increasingly difficult to use such signs. It is interesting also that one of the signs very early used to remind everyone of their faith, a visible sign, was the ringing of the church bells at certain hours. Steadily in the Western world the church bells are being silenced because they are a reminder that God is the Lord, they are a reminder that we should, if only for a few seconds, pause to pray. The physical reminder s of the faith which are in terms of this law are being steadily abolished.

Our enemies know their meaning better too often then we do. So the physical signs to remind us of who God is and what we are are surely needed. Also, the relationship between property and persons as we saw recently is an important one known to Marxist interrogators in prisons. As I pointed out, the times a man would be stripped of all clothing and questioned in a cold room because it would depersonalize him and weaken him. The interrogator as someone told me once would be warmly dressed drinking his coffee and holding his hands around it to keep them warm, smoking, while a naked person shivered and his resistance to tyranny would be lowered by the indignity to his person. Our clothing, signs and symbols are an important part of our life. In our time we have been steadily stripped of one after another of these and we see the world around us surrounded by symbols of paganism which the enemy freely wears and flaunts in order to say the world is what we will make it to be. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee for this Thy word and for the certainty that even though we live now in a world in defiance of Thee seeking to declare that Thy creation is to become their creation and Thy law to be replaced by their law. We thank thee still that Thy law prevails and Thy truth shall govern all things. Bless us as we serve Thee, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well we’ve done nothing really to prevent its spread so it is going to spread among the general population because it’s the first time we’ve had a protected disease and felt that laws of quarantine were somehow morally wrong. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question] Can verse nine be considered an admonishment to interracial marriage?

[Rushdoony] There are laws against marrying unbelievers but where interracial marriage is concerned instead of a law there is as it were a kind of counsel. We are not to be yoked unequally, believer with unbeliever. On the other hand, culturally, we are to marry those who as the account of creation makes clear taken from Adam’s side, it really means flank more than rib. So that there is to be some kind of relationship, a common life, a common cultural background, of faith and of heritage. Now at times that can be that people of diverse races can marry because they are closer together in many ways than they are with their own peoples. But normally where there is too great a cultural difference problems do set in. So it’s not a law, the law is that you don’t marry a non-Christian. The council is that those who share with you a common cultural heritage and tastes and interests are the ones that you will be most congenial with. Any other questions or comments?

I’d like to share something very briefly with you, one of our very fine supporters, the Reverend Ray Joseph of Southfield, Michigan, sent me some things yesterday. Some time ago we had an article by him in the report about the Ravenswood project of which he is one of the top officers, and I believe one of the two white men in a black effort at rehabilitation, caring for the unemployed, finding work for them, alleviating distress when, say, a house has burnt down and taking care of delinquents of a very remarkable totally Christian work. With it he sent me the text of an address he gave on the steps of the state house at Lansing to a considerable audience and also a letter in which he analyzed the meaning of the word truth. And I’m going to publish both his address and also the key part of the letter. Because one of the things that in our time has been the target of a great deal of hostility is that Rahab should not have lied to the officers, she should have turned the two Hebrew spies over to them even though the bible makes very clear she was blessed for that. And again that the midwives in Egypt should not have lied to Pharaoh, they should have told the truth with the result that the Hebrew babies who were male would have been killed and so on. Well as Ray said he’s done some studying in that and the word truth and troth, I pledge thee my troth, in the older forms of the wedding ceremony alike have a common meaning, in fact, the two words come from the same root. They both have a reference to a covenant. And that’s a remarkable fact. It says the truth is a covenant fact! We owe the truth to God, we owe the truth to all those who were a member of godly society but we don’t owe it to those who are enemies to it. So that the truth is a covenant fact. It was, I thought, a beautiful piece of research and I’m very grateful to Ray Joseph for it.

If there are no further, or are there any questions? If not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee that Thy word is truth. Thy covenant gift to us and we rejoice in it. Give us grace day by day to grow in our knowledge of Thee, to grow in our service of Thee and to grow in our gratitude to Thee. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.