Deuteronomy

The Stable Society

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 89-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 89

Dictation Name: RR187AW89

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto Thy name oh most high, to show forth Thy loving kindness in the morning and Thy faithfulness every night. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we come into Thy presence mindful of the rebellion of our time, of our world. Of the need of Thy people, of their distress of their sorrows. In Thy mercy and grace oh Lord minister unto them. We thank Thee that there is healing in Thy word and by Thy spirit and we beseech Thee oh Lord to minister to those in distress, to those who are enduring serious heartbreaks and to all that Thy grace may be manifest in adversity. Bless us now as we give ourselves to Thy word and grant that by Thy spirit we may be strengthened for Thy kingdom. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 25:1-3. Our subject: The Stable Society. Deuteronomy 25:1-3.

“If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.

2 And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number.

3 Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee.”

Corporal punishment does not loom large in biblical law but it is all the same an aspect of it although very much a minor one. On the world scene then and later corporal punishment could be very brutal, in fact, even fatal. This was not the case with this penalty. In practice, first, the beating was limited to thirty nine stripes because it was possible that a mistake in counting might be made and they preferred to err on the side of being lighter on their count. Second it was not permissible to degrade the man lest thy brother should seem vile unto thee. The punishment was for a minor wrong doing. It established the fact of a transgression but its purpose was correction and restoration, not humiliation and degradation. The words ‘lest thy brother seem vile unto me’ have been rendered by some as ‘lest thy brother be dishonored publicly or to thine eyes’. In other words, these punishments, beatings, were meted out where restoration could not be made or where it was a minor matter but one that needed correction. The beating had to be in the presence of judges to insure the proper execution without malice or undue violence. It could not be with any kind of whip or cane that would do undue damage. The offense was a minor one and care was taken to prevent it from turning into a serious beating. God’s law not only names the crime but also the punishment and man’s wrath cannot go beyond God’s word. According to C.H. Weller and I quote:

“The punishment was not considered to be any degradation after it had been inflicted. It was inflicted in the synagogue and the law was read meanwhile from Deuteronomy 28:58-59 with one or two other passages.”

The text cited in Deuteronomy reads:

“ If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, The Lord Thy God;

59 Then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance.”

Now this is interesting.

Now this is interesting. What God is saying is if the little things in everyday life are allowed to go unpunished, if you take no account of them, then there are going to be big punishments that will accumulate to you, the whole of society will suffer in a dramatic way. Sicknesses, epidemics and plagues have their immediate medical causes but their ultimate cause is God. Thus all including the person punished must see the execution of justice in cases great and small as a means of preventing God’s judgment on the whole people. The punishment of individuals protects both them and all society from God’s judgment. When you have a departure from this premise the society becomes warped. I recall when the new math was introduced some years ago that the premise was the correct answer did not count, so that in addition you could get the wrong answer but if you followed the proper procedure of the new math you were right and you could pass the test. Now this is the kind of thing that ensues when the little things are set aside, the whole of society deteriorates. In Deuteronomy 22:18 we see that a man who falsely impugned his wife chastity was similarly to be beaten as well as fined heavily. In such cases there was a double penalty, a heavy fine and also a public beating. The purpose of the beating was both punishment and restoration. All wrong doing is a violation of God’s order and the restoration of that order requires the punishment of the wrong doer and the restoration of community.

This aspect of the law, corporal punishment, survived in practice at least until World War Two, not in all states but in some states this law was still in effect, the Supreme Court outlawed in a case, I believe from Delaware, in the early seventies. This was not all. If two men in a small community were in conflict the community and the pastor required a public restoration. This was the rule well into this century and to World War Two. When I was in school if two boys began a fight on a school ground a teacher came out to insist when the fight was over that the boys shake hands before they went their way. We often forget how the law of God has reached into every day events in our past. In verse two we are told that the judges shall sentence the guilty man according to his fault by a certain number, that is, a certain number of strokes. The punishment could thus be a very light one, only a stroke or two, just to indicate that the offense was a violation against community. Historically if the convicted person was an alien, orphan or a widow and, while guilty, they acted under provocation this mitigated the penalty so it very often was hardly more than a formality to indicate publicly that there was an offense. Now this is important to know because elsewhere in the world corporal punishment has very commonly been savage. Some peoples historically have intensified the humiliation of punishment as much as possible, thus for example, among the Turks who used corporal punishment very extensively. The man who was lashed when it was over even if he could barely stand up had to go over to the judge, kiss his hand, and thank him and then pay the officer who whipped him.

When the Turks treated fellow Turks so harshly we can begin to understand their depravity towards Christians. Severe beatings often led to the loss of bodily functions and the public humiliation of the victim. This was and is very often the goal of excessive judgment. God’s purpose is the punishment of the wicked not their degradation and public shame. The judge or judges therefore had to witness the beating, they could stop it at any time if the person being beaten clearly showed an inability to take the punishment the judge stopped it at once. So the presence of a judge was more than a formality he was there as a judge and a protector, his presence meant that he was responsible. According to an English scholar, John [unknown], the punishment was inflicted on the soles of the feet and this rule restricted its severity. The purpose was justice with mercy. Unhappily too many western nations developed in time harsh alternatives to this, or better, they had them to begin with and they did not abandon them. Thomas Scott tells us that English law saw the extreme severity of several hundred lashes for a small offense. Men seek for better results by trying to be wiser than God with hellish consequences. We find reference to this law in Matthew 10:17 and Acts 26:11. In these instances offenders against the faith were beaten in the synagogues. According to [unknown], in addition to Deuteronomy 28:58-59, Psalm 78:38 was read at the beating. This text stresses mercy and reads ‘that he being full of compassion forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not, ye many a time turned he his anger away and did not stir up all his wrath’. Verse two refers to the guilty party as one worthy to be beaten.

The Hebrew text reads literally ‘a son of beating’, someone who needs it, whose nature requires it. Some people require such punishment to keep them in line. We have referred to the savage beatings once a part of British law and in fact all over the world. Under Turkish and Chinese law of old death was a common outcome of such punishment. Very often after the Turkish beating which was stopped short of death the man had only the ability to pay the man who provided the beating and to thank the judge and kiss his hand before he passed out and often died. In biblical law the presence of the judge and the strict limitation on the number of strokes makes God’s law a human and merciful one. The beating was not administered with any lethal whip or similarly ugly weapon. God’s law requires death for incorrigible criminals and for a number of very serious crimes, restitution prevails in all other cases except some, very minor ones, where only corporal punishment is required. In Deuteronomy 22:18 a heavy payment in restitution and beating is required. Thus the purpose of God’s law is to eliminate the incorrigible and to restore the other offenders to their rightful place in society. Together with restitution this serves to keep society when the law is kept in the hands of the godly. Wherever God’s law is set aside the control of society shifts into the hands of the ungodly. God’s law is thus basic to a stable and virtuous order. Law protects one group and punishes another and when there is a shift in the direction of punishment society begins to crumble. What we have seen in our time, whether it’s on the personal level or institutional or corporate level with industry or business, punishment has now shifted from the ungodly to the law abiding and this is the death knell of a society.

Let us pray. Our Father we thank thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that Thy justice deals with all matters great and small and that any departure from Thy word is a walk towards death and destruction. Oh Lord our God recall our people unto Thy word, unto Thy grace and unto Thy justice. We pray that the workers of iniquity in high places and low may speedily face Thy judgment and that our land may be cleansed of its iniquity. Grant us this we beseech Thee in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now on our lesson?

[Question] unintelligible

[Rushdoony] Oh no, it was to be something that could not inflict deep cuts so it was usually something that was not going to be brutal in its consequences.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] The Singapore case, the whip or canning is a very severe one because it is quite a number, I think fifteen or twenty, bamboo slivers tied together so it does inflict quite a bit of pain. It can scar. So we can say while it may be borderline it can be on the severe side.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] However in most cases it’s only a few strokes, in the present case, it’s in the papers, its six. Yes?

[Question] The definition of cruel and unusual seems to have become diluted in our society to the point that withholding of color television privileges or like in a way, they want to take away the weight lifting status that the tax payers have put in the prisons.

[Rushdoony] Yesterday I had a call about such a situation, this father paddled his young girl, I believe six or seven years old, because she stole something and then lied about it. And when she mentioned it at school he was immediately arrested. He may do two years’ time. Now this is the kind of thing that prevails. And all this is not only being done but this man’s attorney was not allowed to offer a defense! The statute actually permitted what he had done in this particular state. He was not allowed to cite the statute so it’s quite a serious case and the likelihood of overturning it on appeal is not that good because the higher you go the worse the courts go on such matters. Yes?

[Question] I understand the new crime bill allows for appeals from execution on the basis of racial quotas.

[Rushdoony] We are disintegrating very rapidly, there are not many days that I don’t hear about something like this that indicates how the law is deteriorating rapidly. There’s a partiality in the law to the wrong doer and against the Christian, against the law abiding man, yes?

[Question] Well there are a great number of capital crimes in the new crime bill but almost all of them are designed to protect officials.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well the courts on their own are already rewriting laws and then you have all the administrative courts of the many, many agencies so that we have a world of law out there that is militantly anti-Christian. And meanwhile society is deteriorating. I was told yesterday of an old church, not too far from a city and a small town with an old burial ground around the church that goes back generations and they’re going to sell the church because since its secluded and practically out of town in this small town it’s become a hangout for young hoodlums to drink, they break the doors which have been repaired and replaced again and again, they break the windows out, they deface and turn over the gravestone and it’s become impossible to cope with the situation. So the property is going to be sold. So this is the growing anarchy we face and nothing is done about it but a little girl who lies after stealing when she’s caught with the thing she stole, the father goes to jail apparently. So we are in a flood tide of evil the world over. Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] In other words execution has no relationship to the offense, only to race.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] It was, I think in every area now there is a breakdown of discipline and of punishment. Yes?

[Question] Well the question is are these curses going to wake us up or going to destroy us?

[Rushdoony] I think that will depend on Christians when they begin to take the faith seriously. I know that one minister called me yesterday, he’d been at a meeting of pastors, these were all professedly bible believing pastors, he was probably the only Reformed man there. And one of the pastors got up and said that Christians needed to mend their ways, they needed to be more loving to homosexuals. So this Reformed pastor, a Reconstructionist, got on his feet and he said ‘I want to tell you I hate them and I don’t see anything wrong with my position, I think it is biblical’. So another man got up to rebuke him and tell him he should be loving in his attitude so Reformed pastor got on his feet again and said ‘alright I will love them the same way that God loves Sodom and Gomorrah’ [laughs]. Now you see we’re not going to change the situation until Christians change, churches change. I’m glad to report I do see signs of that change but there’s got to be more.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] That’ll be the big change.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes love is putting the law into force that’s literally what it means in the bible. Well our time is about up let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we rejoice that in the face of all the evils of this world Thou on Thy throne will accomplish Thy sovereign purposes and even the wrath of men shall praise Thee. All the evil that men do will work together for good for Thy kingdom and for us in Thee. Teach us therefore to walk by faith, in confidence in Thy government and in Thy holy world 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.