Deuteronomy
Remember
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Pentateuch
Lesson: 95-110
Genre: Talk
Track: 95
Dictation Name: RR187AZ95
Location/Venue:
Year: 1993
Let us worship God. I will come into thy house in the multitude of Thy mercies and in Thy fear will I worship towards Thy holy temple. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight oh Lord my strength and my redeemer. Let us pray.
Almighty God our Heavenly Father, unto whom all things shall come, and all things shall stand at Thy tribunal. We come to Thee confident in Thy government, rejoicing in Thy mercies and made strong by Thy grace. Give us always a thankful heart, make us ever joyful in all Thy ways so that we may praise Thee as we ought and serve Thee with gladness of heart. In Christ’s name, Amen.
Our scripture today is Deuteronomy 25:17-19. Our subject: Remember. Remember, Deuteronomy 25:17-19.
“ Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt;
18 How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God.
19 Therefore it shall be, when the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it.”
The word remember appears repeatedly in the Old Testament and over twenty times in Exodus, Leviticus and especially Deuteronomy. The Hebrew word means to mark and to recognize and it has a positive masculine note. It means to remember and therefore command and exercise dominion. We are to remember so that we might act. What we are to remember is Amalek, a historical example of evil and a type of pleasure in depravity. Amalekites hatred of God was manifested in their hatred of the covenant people. It was not simply that they warred against Israel but they began by attacking the stragglers in the wilderness march.
These were the weak and the feeble, the faint and the weary. Now to do this they first had to pass some distance but not too far from the main body of the Hebrews. After they passed they turned and struck at the weak, the feeble, the faint and the weary. This encounter had been at [unknown] near Sinai. The attack by Amalek had been an unprovoked one. If as Belkovsky held, Amalek used the occasion of God’s devastation of Egypt as an opportunity to conquer Egypt that nation should have been grateful to Israel rather than hostile. It gave them an opportunity to overwhelm Egypt and to reign there for a while as the shepherd kings. The attack was an act of contempt for God and Israel. The nations had reacted to God’s judgment on Egypt with terror. Some forty years later Rahab spoke of the continuing terror felt by the Canaanites because of God’s acts and they were afraid of His covenant people. The animosity of Israel to Amalek was a religious one. This 1st Samuel 15:2-3 makes clear. It was a duty to oppose Amalek. This text is not comprehensible apart from that fact. There are religious boundaries to pity and friendship and we are not allowed to transgress these spheres. This is an aspect of the bible which is too seldom noted. In the New Testament we see limits placed on our fellowship or friendship. Romans 16:17-18:
“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.
18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.”
Again, in Titus 3:10-11:
“ A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject;
11 Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.”
Then 2nd John, verses 9-11:
“Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.
10 If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.”
Now some will argue that there is a difference between these New Testament texts and others like them and the law concerning Amalek in the Old Testament in that one requires simply a separation while the other orders death. But this is not an honest interpretation because no unprovoked attack on Amalek is ordered. Attention is called to the unremitting hostility of Amalek. The law then requires no mercy in time of war, there is no instance in the bible of lawless violence against Amalek, however, when Amalek invaded and gained a portion of Canaan Samuel ordered war against them and their destruction.
Saul’s sin was that he sought a treaty with them after defeating them. What is forbidden, thus, is any compromise between causes which cannot be reconciled. No compromise between causes which cannot be reconciled. That’s the meaning of the text then and now and its meaning for us is applicable in every area. Those who believe in the reconciliation of all differences either want the surrender of one side or else they believe that nothing exists which cannot be compromised. False doctrines of reconciliation are basic to many of the most bitter conflicts of the twentieth century. Because some men believe that truth and justice can be compromised does not make it so. Since God is the author of all truth and justice we can have neither except on His terms. But in every area of life today we see a demand for compromise. For example, in a very practical area, divorce, no fault divorce. In other words, you cannot say they have done something which calls for a break. There have to be in almost every state, perhaps all of them now, meetings with someone who will seek reconciliation no matter what the problem is, even if the one has attempted murder. Reconciliation is today demanded because no moral conflict is recognized. In verse nineteen we see that God ties Israel’s inheritance of the covenant land to the destruction of Amalek. When God gives Canaan to Israel thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek. Remembrance is in Hebrew a word of course related to remember. The bible sees history as in part a memory war. Jeremiah sees his enemy as men seeking to obliterate the very memory of him he tells us in Jeremiah 11:19 because their cause in history was anti-God. As against this, God seeks another goal, the triumph, not the compromise of righteousness. In Isaiah 2:4 describes it:
“And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
Now this peace of God comes not by compromise but by conversion and victory by a rejection of every attempt to reject the antithesis between good and evil, right and wrong. When the moral fact of all human action is ignored than change between one force and another is a matter of compromise. Issues then being not moral they are thus amenable to reorients designed to obscure differences. For the moral antithesis in history Algerians have substituted a dialectical one so that thesis and antithesis lead to synthesis, that is, right and wrong come together in a new formulation. But this is a formula for perpetual conflict because when you come to a synthesis it becomes a new thesis against which an antithesis is formed for a new synthesis and the whole thing continues forever because nothing by definition can be called true. This has been described as perpetual war for perpetual peace and sides are switched very casually. It took us three days to decide that instead of being ally Iraq was an enemy. Iraq had done nothing that we had not approved of and we have made a friend of Red China and an enemy now of North Korea but there’s not a nickels worth of difference between the two. We have not objected to nuclear weapons in Red China! So we are not saying there’s a right and wrong, we are Hegelians in this.
This text concludes with the words: Thou shalt not forget it. With some things there can be no peace. Thou shalt not forget it, again invokes as does the first word, remember, memory. Without memory we are miserable creatures, we do not know ourselves because we then have no past. True amnesia is rare and disastrous. Our text warns us against religious and historical amnesia. We have today as a result of our humanistic faith a prevalence of abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia and other evils. We are oblivious to a variety of evil forces around us because of our moral and historical amnesia. We are as a result moving blindly into disasters. In Isaiah 59:7-10 we have a vivid description of such moral blindness.
“Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.
8 The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.
9 Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.
10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noon day as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.”
Moral blindness means historical death. The biblical emphasis on memory is an important aspect of its moral demands. Memory is not normally seen as a theological concern nor is history but any intelligent reading of the bible makes clear how important both are and how there can be no theology apart from memory in history. There is an old American proverb now forgotten which says: memory is the guardian of the mind. We can also add that is very important to our future. We are now existentialists; existentialism has now destroyed our sense of history, our memory of the past. We have replaced history in the schools with social studies. Bill Richardson, one state senator, once told me that neither legislatures nor the public except in very rare circumstances ever had a memory of things more than ninety days old. There can be no progress without a sense of history, without memory, and the modern world has jettisoned both memory and history. One of the most highly promoted books of recent years was concerned with declaring the end of history, no wonder we are in trouble. Let us pray.
Our Father, we thank Thee for Thy warnings. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us into Thy covenant and into the memory of Thy ways from the beginning of the world to the present and has given us a vision of things to come. Grant oh Lord that there be a restoration of memory and history to the minds of men that believing in the Lord Jesus Christ we know that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end and to know him we must know the whole of Thy ways from the beginning to the end of time. Grant us this in Christ’s name, Amen.
Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?
[Question] That was one of the reasons why Saul was [unknown] because he didn’t destroy the Amalek.
[Rushdoony] He wanted to compromise with them. Not being a man of faith, there was nothing as far as he was concerned that could not be compromised. Yes?
[Question] Well reconciliation with the Soviet Union in World War Two amounted to a forgiveness of their massacre of Christians and there hasn’t been a single reproach leveled since.
[Rushdoony] Yes. And one of the men who spent I think almost two decades or more, perhaps three, in the prison camps spent this years after his release studying and documenting the deaths just under Stalin and he came to a figure of over a hundred million who had been put to death. There are some who hold that it became worse under [unknown], the only thing is that [unknown] years were not as long. Well, no one as you’ve pointed out often has ever been brought to trial in the Soviet Union for any of those crimes nor have we demanded that justice be done. Where it is convenient for us we have a radical loss of memory and the only sins that are remembered are those of Christians, people have been sending me clippings of columns attacking Christians by local columnists in the south east, all over the country. We are the terrible people because the religious right is seeking to affect changes in the country, we want to force our way upon others, nothing about their ways being forced on the rest of us. So the only sins that they remember are pseudo-sins of Christians. We are in an anti-historical era. Any other questions or comments?
The past, let me say, is amazing, I don’t know how prevalent it is across the country but I have run in to English majors who had never had Chaucer or Milton, whose studies were entirely in twentieth century literature. Now perhaps that’s not universal across the country but I do encounter it, the same is true of majors in history have nothing about ancient history or medieval history, they’re ignorant. The world began with the enlightenment. Now this kind of existentialist thinking is so prevalent now that we have a radical ignorance of the past. John Mark [unknown] when he was here told us how far gone this destruction of history, the antipathy towards dates is in the French speaking world. Well it’s no less true of other countries the world over. Any other questions or comments? If not let us conclude with prayer.
Our Father, teach us to remember Thy ways, Thy word, Thy purpose in history. That we might in all things be joyful and more than conquerors, knowing that He that is with us and in us is greater than He that is in the world. Bless us our Father for the joyful remembrance of Thy ways. 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.