Deuteronomy

Life and Pity

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 93-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 093

Dictation Name: RR187AY93

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Oh come let us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with songs. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we come again to Thy presence knowing that Thou art our hope, our shelter, our shield and our defender. That though we live in a world alien to everything we believe in Thou art our defender and that ours is the victory in the face of all things. Make us therefore confident, joyful, ever prompt in Thy service to the end that the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. In His name we pray, Amen.

Our scripture is again Deuteronomy 25:11-12. Our subject: Life and Pity. Deuteronomy 25:11-12.

“When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets:

12 Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.”

This is not a favorite text of the feminists. However, it applies in all circumstances where ungodly and lawless means are used in combat. Moreover, this is often misunderstood, for example, one able scholar has said and I quote:

“Immodest assault on another person was prohibited but probably more for the religious overtones of sexuality then for immodesty.”

We shall return to those religious overtones later.

Biblical law is almost routinely against mutilation which historically has been one of the most common forms of punishment in history. Yet in this case, and in this instance alone, it is required. We do have laws regarding fighting between one man. We do have laws regarding fighting between men in Exodus 21:12 and 15, 18-26, but the penalty of this law is unique. Certainly the fact that a woman in such a case could destroy a man’s ability to have children is important but more is involved even though this is an important factor. The law in Exodus stipulates compensation between men. It has no such injury in mind, so this situation is different. The Code of Hammurabi routinely required mutilation for various crimes. In this century in the United States although not of late but some offenses have been punished by forms of castrations, emphatically against God’s law. I cited a sentence last week from Moorcroft’s comments and I would like to quote his whole passage.

“This law refutes pragmatism. The end does not justify the means however good and proper to the end. A wife is under God to be a helpmeet to her husband but always and only under God’s law. Faith requires staying within the law of God and a person may never help his spouse lawlessly. This principle applies throughout human activity. A lawless love anywhere is forbidden for law is the eye of love and without law love is blind, reckless and cruel.” Unquote.

Moorcraft is right. The premise here is valid in all human activity, faith requires staying within the law of God. No man nor woman can justify lawless activity in terms of good goals. We are required always to honor and obey God’s law. Unbelief and lawlessness reduce the options to man’s act and thereby disregard God’s law and government. Rabbi Hirsch has written that the Rabbis of old commuted this penalty to a monetary fine. This was a step taken in mercy but man’s work of mercy cannot be wiser than the justice of God. In Deuteronomy 23:1 we are told that no eunuch, no man genitally maimed or injured could be a member of the covenant community. He could be a devout believe but he could not function as a covenant member as a man able to exercise authority. For a woman to strip a man of his manhood under God and of his privilege of exercising authority was a very serious offense and with a grim penalty. God created man to exercise authority and dominion.

And to separate a man from this privilege was an offense against God. The fact that a man might fail to exert such a responsibility did not absolve any woman or any other person from the guilt such an act incurred. Similarly, no man had a right to strip another man from his manhood under any circumstances but in many cultures outside of Christendom such an act is common place. It is interesting that as a matter of sportsmanship hitting below the belt has been regarded as a foul partly because of this law and like laws in scripture. Man may fight with one another, they may hate each other, but they cannot strip another of his manhood. This law thus applies to both men and to women, it is a case law, it protects both men and women. Notice that in Deuteronomy 25:5-10 that the relative who fails to perform his Levirate duty towards the woman can be shamed legally but no male can be unmanned. The law protects man and their maleness even as it protects women and children. So it should be clear that this law is concerned with much more than immodesty and it trivializes the text to interpret it as an immodest act. If it be said that perhaps her husband’s life was at stake it can be answered that many things could have been done besides emasculation to aid her husband. Such a step was less easy and more malevolent. To reduce this law to one dealing with immodest acts as some commentators do therefore is absurd and the punishment is thus disproportionate for immodesty. The law of the Levirate protects the family by requiring that on the death of a childless man the widow becomes the responsibility of the next of kin male to raise up progeny and to continue the family name and existence.

This law immediately follows and it safeguards the procreative abilities of men. The religious context therefore is one of covenantal family life. In any context the woman must not transgress by trying to emasculate a man. In any context it is wrong and lawless. In the case of a covenant man this is especially intolerable. It is perhaps necessary to comment on the fact of two grown men fighting. This was more common once then it is now and not too many years ago very few people appreciate what a dramatic change the culture has taken since World War Two. Religious meaning of this law is that it is a very serious offense to wage war against human fertility. Perhaps one reason for the failure of many since the enlightenment as before to understand this has been the failure to respect reproductive abilities and abortion is clearly an example of this. Waging war against civilians is another example. Some Marxist regimes has used torture to emasculate men. All over the world there are practices in violation of this law that are becoming more and more commonplace and less and less acknowledged and all such policies of course are clearly illegal in terms of God’s law. The phrase in verse twelve, thy eye shall not pity her, is as we saw last time, very important.

False pity, misapplied pity, is very prevalent in our time. It is thus important to understand what pity means in our culture. The word comes from the Latin [unknown], meaning dutiful conduct, sense of duty, religiousness, devotion, piety, family loyalty and even patriotism. In English its basic meanings are mercy, clemency, sympathy or regret. We extend pity in terms of a loyalty to certain standards. Modern pity is too often given to criminals and transgressors so it is essentially lawless. Pity for a murderer facing the death penalty may call itself humanitarian but it has allied itself with the killer rather than the victim’s family. Pity is not in and of itself a virtue if it lines us up with evil. None of the people who picket outside of prisons when an execution is due and will talk eloquently to the television and news reporters about their love of life has ever been ready to make a stand against abortion and none have ever taken up a collection for the victim’s family. Pity is not a virtue when it lines us up with evil. This law thus not only forbids a certain type of sin but it also forbids false pity. Thine eye shall not pity. The statement is imperative and mandatory. Too much of what is today called sensitivity and virtue is in reality an evil pity. This law protects life, false pity is anti-life because its sympathies are with the enemies of life.

The expression ‘thy eye shall not pity’ appears elsewhere in Deuteronomy in 7:16, for example, where God forbids pity towards the Canaanites and their evil. In Deuteronomy 13:8 pity is forbidden towards all who being within the covenant work secretly to subvert it. In Deuteronomy 19:11-13 pity towards a murderer is forbidden. We thus have attempts to emasculate a man placed on a level with murder, treason and pity for an evil people at war with God and given to ritual prostitution, homosexuality and bestiality. This gives us a perspective on how important this law is. We are also warned in these texts of the evil of false pity. God in His pity can reach out to the most depraved because he is capable of regenerating them. We are not Gods. We cannot be redeemer’s only servants of the Redeemer. False pity assumes that man can play God and by his pity and mercy change the evildoer. There is thus a great arrogance about misplaced pity. It is important for us to understand these things because there is a war today against all who take the bible seriously. We are ostensibly a cruel and pitiless people. We are a threat to civilization. On a more muted level, there is also a similar hostility to Orthodox Judaism for taking this law seriously. An aspect of the seriousness with which the orthodox do take the rejection of false pity is the performance of a service for the dead over a child who departs from the faith or in one way or another breaks the covenant and brings shame to the faith and the family.

As against this we have the kind of thing that is so common in many circles, the bleeding heart attitude towards a wayward and propagate child. One of the hymns often used at the beginning of this century, not a hymn but a popular one in many church circles, Oh Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight. A tear jerker. This kind of thing, this text tells us, is evil. The endless pity for those who show nothing but contempt for the faith and for their family is evil. And therefore thy eye shall not pity. You separate yourself from them as the Orthodox Jewish family does. Our world is bathed today in sentimental and false pity. It is very clearly one of the great evils of our time and this is why this particular law is so important and why it is so much abused and neglected. Let us pray.

Our Father, Thy word is truth and Thy word forbids us from false pity. Oh Lord our God give us grace to be mature men and women, to know what we ought to do and what we ought not to do and not to be such a confused and foolish people. Grant us this in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Question unknown]

[Rushdoony] At the moment I cannot give you a clear cut answer but it has, I recall having read, it has been applied.

[Question unknown]

[Rushdoony] Western civilization. It’s not a popular penalty and its one of those laws that tends to be self-enforcing because if it is a valid and enforced statute then people are very careful not to offend. But if you go outside of Christendom the frequency with which this is done is startling but its unreported, its only by word of mouth. Bernard [unknown] for example was a highly regarded writer and wrote a couple of books about the opening up of the West. In one of them he recorded an episode wherein a drunken brawl this man was emasculated and it’s that kind of thing that he recounted that led his books to disappear. Yes?

[Question unknown]

[Rushdoony] If you have, you’re right, if you have misplaced pity, you are going to have a lack of pity in the right direction, it’s like these protestors against the death penalty, none have ever shown any pity for the victim or the victim’s family. We live in a world where there is a great deal of misplaced pity and it is destroying the various countries in a dramatic way.

The amount of misplaced pity that feminism is creating is incredible. Some of the statements are so insulting to the intelligence when they demand pity for every woman because apparently because she is a woman, and because she ostensibly has umpteen centuries of oppression on her back. Now most of these women who are spouting this kind of nonsense are very much free independent and well to do but they are determined to present a picture of oppression. And the saddest part is that now there is a growing Christian feminist movement. Women who claim to be orthodox in their Protestantism or their Catholicism or who feel that the bible has been totally misinterpreted. Well that’s not a new argument, the homosexuals have used that but it seems that everyone who wants to justify their position is determined to say that the plain words of the bible have been misunderstood until now. Are there any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we have indeed become a wayward generation. We have despised Thy son, Thy law word and all things good, righteous and holy. Cleanse our people of false misplaced pity. Give us again godly hearts that we might serve Thee as we ought. 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.