Deuteronomy

Holiness

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 45-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 45

Dictation Name: RR187Y45

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Oh give thanks unto the Lord, call upon His name. Make His deeds known among the people. Sing unto Him, sing songs unto Him, talk ye of all His wondrous works. Glory ye in His holy name, let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father who of Thy grace and mercy has made us Thy people and has given us an eternal destiny in Christ Jesus. We come into Thy presence grateful for all Thy ways. We thank Thee our Father that Thy victory is assured, that the gates of hell cannot hold out against Thee. Therefore Lord we praise Thee, we rejoice in Thy mercy and in Thy blessings. Grant that this day and always we open ourselves unto Thee to be filled with Thy grace, Thy holy confidence and Thy victory. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture lesson is from Deuteronomy 14:1-20. Our subject: Holiness. Deuteronomy 14:1-20.

“Ye are the children of the Lord your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.

2 For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.

3 Thou shalt not eat any abominable thing.

4 These are the beasts which ye shall eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat,

5 The hart, and the roebuck, and the fallow deer, and the wild goat, and the pygarg, and the wild ox, and the chamois.

6 And every beast that parteth the hoof, and cleaveth the cleft into two claws, and cheweth the cud among the beasts, that ye shall eat.

7 Nevertheless these ye shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the cloven hoof; as the camel, and the hare, and the coney: for they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof; therefore they are unclean unto you.

8 And the swine, because it divideth the hoof, yet cheweth not the cud, it is unclean unto you: ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their dead carcase.

9 These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat:

10 And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.

11 Of all clean birds ye shall eat.

12 But these are they of which ye shall not eat: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray,

13 And the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after his kind,

14 And every raven after his kind,

15 And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind,

16 The little owl, and the great owl, and the swan,

17 And the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the cormorant,

18 And the stork, and the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.

19 And every creeping thing that flieth is unclean unto you: they shall not be eaten.

20 But of all clean fowls ye may eat.”

These are dietary laws but they are also laws of holiness. The reason they are is plainly stated. For Thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God and the Lord has chosen you to be a peculiar or unique people unto Himself above all the nations that are on the earth. The emphasis is on holiness. Scripture speaks again and again of the holiness of God. In the song of Moses we read ‘who is like to Thee oh Lord among all the gods, who is like Thee, gloryness in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders’. Among other things scripture calls attention to the reality of God, He is the living God, Psalm 96: 4-5 declares ‘for the Lord is great and greatly to be praised, He is to be feared above all Gods for all the Gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens’. In other words the God of scripture is the Living God whereas all false gods are fictions. They are moreover fictions which reflect the fallen nature of man. The best known examples of this are the Greek and Roman gods, immoral and often contemptible in their behavior. There were moral rules in paganism but their essential source was the state. The gods of paganism were on the whole not moral beings. Their concern was power, not morality, to be a god was to be beyond morality and this is why the Roman emperors were often flagrant in their contempt of all morality, Caligula in particular comes to mind, because he felt he was becoming a god therefore he was beyond all good and evil. Well, in all of this the pagans reflected fallen men. Fallen man’s quest is for power not morality. In this perspective the pagan one, power is the great virtue and morality is for subjects and slaves, not for rulers. Even the Latin word vir which we have in virility reflects this. Our Latin meaning is usually man but vir also meant soldier because it implies power so the man of power was the one with the sword.

God as the holy one is beyond all men’s virtues, He is in fact the only source of morality and holiness. In Isaiah 40:25 we read: “To whom then will ye liken me or will I be equal, says the Holy One.” God declares sanctify yourselves together, let therefore and be ye holy for I am the Lord your God. You shall be holy for as the Lord your God am holy. God’s holiness in the Bible mandates man’s holiness. For God created man in His image which means among other things holiness. Man must therefore actively cultivate those things which lead to holiness. Dominion means holiness, righteousness and justice and knowledge. Moral attributes, whereas in paganism amoral domination is commonly the goal. This is the premise of the laws given in this text. Holiness. God’s laws of holiness in these twenty verses all have to do with the body, especially eating. The body like all things else is God’s creation and the bible is the great owner’s manual for the proper care of his handiwork. Since we tell our children how to eat, why should God not instruct us also? His first requirement in this text refers to tattoos, scarification for tribal or clan purposes and ways of showing mourning by shaving off part of the eyebrows or like markings. In Amos 8:10 God threatens Israel with a baldness upon every head as part of His judgment. What they do in violation of his law he will make a total judgment on all men and women. A like judgment is cited in Isaiah 22:12 yet in spite of God’s law Jeremiah 16:6 coming later tells us that such mourning practices were common. Ezekiel 7:18 has a like reference. Wearing black for mourning is a Christian substitute for self-mutilation or markings which were common place in paganism around the world. In verse three the general statement of dietary holiness is made, thou shalt not eat any abominable thing.

Then, the clean animals which can be eaten are cited. The pygarg is not known to us specifically but from other references the common opinion is it was either the antelope or the bison, there’s no clear assurance which it was. The chamois here was probably the mountain goat or mountain sheep. These are all herbivorous animals not scavengers or meat eaters. In verses seven and eight the unclean animals are cited. Some of them, the camel, the hare, the rock badger and the pig are cited because of their superficial characteristics that seem to make them clean. Among the unclean animals the most commonly used is the pig and the evidence against it continues to increase in our time. Professor and Doctor Hans [unknown] has related pork in his research to numerous diseases, most notably cancer and he has seen it as destructive of the immune system. In his report he cited evidence that when pork during World War Two became unattainable cancer disappeared. The only places it was found was among a handful of farmers who kept pigs for their own use. He also related pork to destruction of the immune system and he cites it as a primary factor contributing to disease. These failures to observe God’s law of holiness he found destructive of the physical being of man and the bible says the spiritual being as well. God’s laws have implication for all of life in every realm of our being. In verses nine and ten aquatic foods are discussed. The test here of clean food is fins and scales. This again excludes scavengers, bottom feeders and the like. This rules out for example eels, lampreys, catfish, shellfish and the like. Some commentators are so determined to see all excluded foods in terms of superstitious practices that the forbidden foods in their eyes must have been banned because they were supposedly sacred foods. But this bypasses the plain classification of them as abominable or as abominations.

In verses eleven through twenty the unclean birds are named and in verse nineteen flying insects are included briefly. In Leviticus 11:21-22 accepts from this law the leaping as distinguished from the running locusts and verse twenty refers to this exception. All these laws require a separation from paganism. First paganism sees death not only as a grief but also as a loss. In some cases as in New Guinea a woman mourner in particular cut off the finger joint to show mourning. It meant if you had a number of deaths in the family you wound up with no joints! In some other areas other mutilations were practiced and some parts of the world still are. Death is a mutilation in pagan eyes and so too is mourning. The forbidden foods when eaten are also forms of mutilation; in fact, every violation of God’s law is a form of self-mutilation. But for us death is not a permanent loss nor a mutilation but it is the beginning of eternal life. J. A. Thompson wisely noted and I quote:

“Finally it was not the observance of food laws that distinguished Israel as holy but a total attitude of willing allegiance to Yahweh in love and obedience. Jesus annunciated the principle but it is not what goes into a man that defiles him but what comes out of him.” Unquote.

We can add that what comes out of the heart of a man is that which will determine what goes into him. In a very real sense all of these laws of holiness are their own reward. They equip us for life, health, strength and more. When scholars, protestant and Roman Catholic, go far afield in trying to explain why these dietary laws came into being they are unable to say that God gave them. One Roman Catholic scholar who is dubious about the source of these laws still could write and I quote:

“Gradually these dietary laws as they were developed and enlarged in early Judaism became so ingrained in the Jewish religious identity that the first Christians had a difficult time conceiving of the possibility of genuine religion without them.” Unquote.

Well of course the good father is wrong that they developed in Judaism, they developed or were given by God to Moses. He is right that the early church could not conceive of the possibility of genuine Christian faith without them. The curious fact is that evidence research exists which confirms the validity of the dietary laws. A Scottish commentator, P.C. Craigy did report on the research of one man in these words:

“An American doctor conducted a series of experiments to determine the level of toxicity in the meats of the animals, aquatic creatures, and birds mentioned in Deuteronomy 14. He discovered that the various types of prohibited meats contained a higher percentage of toxic substances than those which were permitted.” Unquote.

What evidences for the validity of the dietary laws from medical point of view are very old. Add to that the fact that it is God who first of all requires it and then an interesting fact emerges. Over the centuries men have had the best of reasons for keeping the dietary laws but they have chosen to set them aside. The Pharisees had their own ways of making the commandments of God of no affect and churchmen have theirs. As a result among other things the dietary laws have been set aside by the superior wisdom of churchmen who believed that they can correct God or bring Him up to date. The grim reminder of such men is that God Himself calls these the laws of holiness, thus both holiness and life are associated with these dietary laws. What we see is a process whereby men have with the generation’s surrendered one aspect of scripture after another. The dietary laws went, then others until finally the whole law was gone and in one area an association of about a hundred churches that claim to be bible believers were unwilling to stand for anything in the Bible except John 3:16. Because after all we have to save souls and if anything in the Bible including the virgin birth gets in the way of soul saving than we must put it to one side as we deal with the sinful. It’s hard to imagine anything more sinful than such trifling with God. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank Thee that Thou has opened up so plainly about all things. Give us grace to hear and to rejoice in Thy word, knowing that it is given not to make life more meager for us but richer and better. Guide us in the way of righteousness and peace all the days of our life and make us effectual for Thy kingdom. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] Well food is still, diet is still, a very heady topic, there’s more diets now than I guess ever. They encompass everything.

[Rushdoony] [laughs] Yes, I was in a book store in recent months and there was a whole section devoted to diet and it tells us how important diet is for humanistic reasons pure and simple. Not for religious reasons, so that we have a strange situation now where only one thing matters, your health. But what God says is good for your health doesn’t matter. Yes?

[Question] Well fasting besides being numerous other things is also because it gives your body rest, it gives your organs time to get stronger.

[Rushdoony] Fasting is analogous to allowing the land to lie fallow. When every seventh year the land was allowed to lie fallow it gave the microorganisms in the soil an opportunity to increase and to break down things that had been put into the soil and very often the season before would be ended with cultivating the soil so that everything was turned under. Well fasting allows the body to discharge the impurities. The liver is one organ of the body that is almost impossible for doctors to deal with when it reaches a certain point of degeneration. But fasting enables the liver to cast off the accumulated impurities that it takes out of the body. So fasting does have an important place. Are there any other questions or comments?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, there is such a statement but it does not apply to all foods. It doesn’t legitimate poisonous things; a lot of plants are poisonous. But it speaks of all the legitimate permitted foods because the problem was seeping in from the Greco-Roman culture that meats, for example, should not be eaten. The ironic fact is the Greco-Roman world was very extensibly subjected to vegetarian propaganda so that you had thousands of people regularly killed, captives, in the arena fighting with each other or fighting with animals and the demand for blood on the part of the Roman mobs was incredible but they were hostile to any damage being done to animals and a gladiator who was successful in killing any was not likely to get thumbs up if his life was at stake. At the same time, the animal rights people were very active throughout the Roman Empire, very, very active and meat eating was regarded as monstrous. There were demonstrations against it and yet with all of this around them the Christians, some of them being converts, were finding it difficult to stand up to even though now they were supposedly a different people. So it was necessary on a couple of occasions for this to be addressed. A condemnation by Paul of those forbidding the eating of meats and then again saying that all foods, if eaten according to scripture you would have to say because Paul never went against that, if eaten with prayer and thanksgiving, meat could be eaten that was the point of the text. Yes?

[Question] I’ll never forget that Hitler did not drink coffee or eat meat. He was a vegetarian.

[Rushdoony] Well, we are faced today with militant vegetarianism which is causing more loss to cattle men than the papers will tell us. Farm magazines will carry accounts of the losses cattle men are suffering because of the militancy of vegetarians. But it’s a fanaticism that’s really startling. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Very few pagans have ever been given to eating all things. Those that have been are at the bottom culturally, very primitive, so they scavenge for everything because they don’t farm and their hunting abilities are so primitive. Well if there are no further comments or questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee for Thy word and for its concern for our well-being. Make us ever mindful that Thy word is our handbook for health and for life. Guide us in the way that we should go. 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.