Deuteronomy

The Law of Kindness

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 78-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 078

Dictation Name: RR187AQ78

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. The hour cometh and now is when the true worshipper shall worship the father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God unto whom all flesh shall come. We thank Thee that Thy judgments are true and righteous all together. We thank Thee that we come before Thee da y by day, that all things are naked and open to Thy sight. Thou knowest our sins and our shortcomings, our needs, our hopes better than we are ourselves do. Minister unto us in Thy wisdom, give us those things which are needful and take away from us those things which are contrary to our calling in Christ. And now Lord, enlighten our minds that we may understand and behold wondrous things out of Thy law. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is from Deuteronomy 23:24-25. The Law of Kindness. Deuteronomy 23:24-25. The Law of Kindness.

“When thou comest into thy neighbour's vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel.

25 When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbour, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbour's standing corn.”

The word corn there meaning grain. There are many who would maintain that this is an obsolete law. It has reference they say to a tie in history when the distances between towns or cities was considerable and there were no way stations or places in between where a man could eat.

A traveler going some distance might be hungry, well before reaching his destination. This law gave him legally the freedom to pluck some grapes, fruit or grain from a nearby field and thereby lessen his hunger. Where the grain was concerned they would take in and roll it in their hands until all but the grain itself was there and then would eat it. This law did not allow the traveler to carry away anything from the field. We have a reference to this text in Matthew 12:1 and of course twice other in the gospels. The Pharisees did not object to the disciples eating from a field as they passed but only to their doing so on the Sabbath. They deliberately misinterpreted what the disciples did by calling it reaping instead of plucking because they wanted to criticize the disciples and their Lord. The use of this kind of law prevailed in Palestine and Syria at least into this century. It also prevailed in other parts of the world. The occasion for such use of another man’s food had to be genuine hunger. This law governed where Christians lived. We had now a series of laws calling for love of one’s neighbor. In Deuteronomy 22:24 the law concerns lost properties. In 23:14-20 interest-free loans to covenant brothers in need is the law. In 22:8 the law requires a protective railing around the flat roof tops where people gathered and ate and even slept in hot weather. Refugee slaves according to 23:15-16 were to be given sanctuary and so on and on. In Deuteronomy 24 we shall see more such laws. This law gives no man a right to take from his neighbor’s field, only hungry travelers passing through could use a limited amount of a man’s produce.

Nothing could be carried away. The owner of the field could not be robbed. I recall also as a child in horse and buggy days that the memory of this law and its use still lingered. A passerby who took food violated the privilege if he pulled down and broke a peach tree in the process of getting a peach. Peach tree boughs break readily. Respect for the farmer’s trees and vines was mandatory. There had to be a concern for the neighbor’s property. To eat something was legitimate; to carry anything away was stealing, it had to be a genuine need. Well, now we don’t walk by foot, now we don’t have the problem of being hungry between places, if anything the opposite extreme being too well fed is our problem. But let’s look at this law. To eat from another man’s field was a privilege; it could not be treated as a right. In Armenia whenever possible permission was asked let it be assumed that a thieving [unknown] was in the orchard ready to strip it. The harvest was a gift from God and it was therefor to be used according to His law word. This and other laws of Exodus through Deuteronomy have been called laws of kindness and rightfully so. Those who insist on seeing God’s law as harsh and unbending are simply ignorant of it. From start to finish the law of God includes many commandments requiring that various persons covenant members and foreigners be treated with grace and helpfulness. It is simply false and ignorant to see God’s law as harsh and brutal. Such views tell us more about the viewer then they do about God’s law. God’s law deals with not only our external actions but our heart. Men’s law cannot do that. Whenever man’s law does anything other than deal with actions it becomes tyrannical. It cannot speak to the heart of man, it cannot change man, it cannot redirect the course of his life and so when a humanistic law seeks to govern more than actions it becomes tyranny.

Whereas when God speaks to more than actions He is speaking to the heart of man in a way that He alone can do so because He alone can change man. This law makes clear that God’s bounty must be shared. At the same time there is no penalty by man for the violation of this law. God gives no man the right to enforce many of the Bible’s laws. That preogrotive God reserves unto Himself. One of the serious evils in both church and state over the centuries has been the attempt to carry law beyond its God-ordained limits. To do so however for an ostensibly noble cause is to play God and this is the ultimate sin. A rabbinic targum to Deuteronomy translates in 1:24-25: “When thou comest as if you become a hired laborer.” Thereby limiting the permission to use the field’s produce to those only who are hired workmen unto the land owner’s authority, but there is no biblical warrant for this limitation. It very, very definitely warps and limits God’s law. Unhappily the Geneva Bible marginal notes retained this rabbinical view which not even all rabbis held but within a generation that rabbinic view had disappeared from Protestantism. This law makes clear that we have no unlimited rights to our possessions or we have to add to our lives. We are the Lord’s property and what He gives us must be used according to His law word. This is the meaning of the law here given. We are stewards of all that we have under God. No man has a right to our property but neither do we! We have received of the Lord that which we have. It is to be used first to prosper our covenant family in Christ. Second it must be used to further His kingdom and third we must help in Christ’s name those who are in need.

This text however has been used to promote a rather monastic view of property. Nothing could be more alien to the text. No other culture has done more to tie property to the family than biblical faith. The monastic perspective used property lightly because it sees the eternal order as more important or as only important. Without implying that monasticism was not only a great power for good we still must insist that the biblical faith gives priority to the family in a very firm and material manner. Because property is so important we must use it to help those in need. Many ways have been sought toward this goal, gleaning as now used with good will industries, emergency aid as with the Salvation Army, rescue missions and the like, and many other means of helping the immediate need of peoples have been developed. The material side of life is regarded as God’s blessing upon us in many, many texts. In Proverbs 10:22 we are told: “The blessing of the Lord it maketh rich and He addeth no sorrow to it.” The word rich translates a Hebrew word meaning material accumulation so it cannot be spiritualized away. We cannot say ‘the blessing of the Lord makes us spiritually rich’, well that is indicated in other texts. Here is very clear the blessing of the Lord makes for material accumulation and he addeth no sorrow to it where we are godly. Precisely because material wealth is a blessing from God where it is Godly gain and prosperity its use is important. Charity is expected of us, it reveals a love of God and of our neighbor. Material things are a part of the good life and we therefore are summoned by God to bless those who are in need with our gifts.

Now God blesses some materially and some He blesses in other ways. It is the Lord who gives, it is our duty to be grateful for what He gives. With respect to this law it means simply that a simple need is met. By being part of a system of covenantal help one to another whatever it may be we manifest our love of God and our love of our neighbor. We are told in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 a command repeated very often in the bible. Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might, with the totality of our being. Of course I recall one pastor who once said he wished God had spelled it out and said with all thy pocketbook, we are to love God. Well God does not give His law as something alien to His love but as a part of it. Because He loves us He gives us His law. By obeying God’s law we abide in a covenant of grace, law and love with Him and with one another. It is anti-God, anti-Christian to pit love and law and grace one against another instead of rightfully dividing the word of truth it is wrongfully dividing it. It is an attempt to put one aspect of God’s revelation against another. God’s law is this law of kindness to us. Well the world wants some kind of law of kindness but it cannot attain to it. The more a culture becomes de-Christianized the more giving dries up. We have seen with affluence in recent years a decline in charitable giving. There is a correlation. Humanistic law attempts to supply what cannot be supplied without the grace of God and for the people of grace the law of kindness is a fundamental law. Let us pray.

Our Father, Thy word is truth and we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast commanded to love one another. Thou hast ordained that we should be mindful of the needs around us and freely having received, freely give. Make us joyful in Thy service, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Very good, charity has been prevented, if you didn’t hear that, increasingly by statist action until finally as in Marxism it is forbidden. It’s an anti-statist activity, it is reinstated a form of government apart from the state. And then second, our properties are not our own, increasingly, until the goal of socialism is reached in which the state is either by law or in practice the owner of all property. And this is a definite factor in what we are seeing all around us, it is contributing to the de-Christianization of society. Historically the Christian charitable activity, the law of kindness, has been a powerful force in society. The turnaround came when the state became the solution, beginning with President Andrew Jackson and culminating then in what began with the new deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Over the years I have read a number of studies in this field and in recent years I think, in the past year, an outstanding work by Olasky, The Law Of Compassion In America, that was roughly the title. It shows how this which was a major and earlier dominant force in American life, Christians helping one another, which took care of most of government, has been replaced by the state. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

There is an interesting fact which is relevant to this, I believe his first name is Martin, Gross, has written a book recently, do you recall the title? It’s something about revolution. In which he calls attention to the fact that we have a large number of poverty programs. No one knows how many people are on these welfare programs or anything being done to correlate the names on one program or another. So someone can be on all these programs. As a congressman’s father told Mark and myself shortly after Christmas he knew of someone in his town who got five turkeys for Thanksgiving. Now, at the same time, what Gross demonstrates is is that at least half of the money that is expended on welfare goes to a bureaucracy. And that’s on the basis of his preliminary overview which tells us why when God’s law of kindness is replaced with statist welfarism it is bad for the recipients and bad for us who are milked of the billions of dollars that Gross catalogues to make all of this possible. So we do see destruction both of the charitable activity and of property. Any further comments or questions? If not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank Thee that Thou art at work among the nations. That Thy hand in judgment is upon the world. That it is Thy purpose to make the nations and men to know that they are but men, not gods. We thank Thee that Thy shaking will establish those things which alone cannot be shaken. Make us unshakable in Christ. Bless us in Thy service and make us effectual unto the ends of the earth. 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.