17 THE PRESERVATION OF THE SEED Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed; neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon thee (Lev. 19:19).
Vern S. Poythress, a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, has stated that this passage is exegetically "the test case" or case law for theonomists.(1) He wishes to know what theonomic principles of interpretation govern the New Testament's understanding of this Mosaic case law. As I shall argue, the primary hermeneutical principle that applies to this case law is the principle of the seed. This case law applied only in Mosaic Israel. It was an aspect of Jacob's messianic prophecy regarding Judah (Gen. 49:9-10). This law is indeed a test case for theonomy -- and also for every other system of biblical interpretation.
The theocentric meaning of this passage is the meaning of the entire Book of Leviticus: God's boundaries must be respected. This case law establishes three boundaries, each referring to a specific economic activity: animal husbandry, agriculture, and textiles. animal husbandry, agriculture, and textiles. Except for the products of mining and metalworking, these were the primary categories of economic goods in the ancient world. Leviticus 19:19 established rules for all three areas. That world is long gone. Beginning no later than the fifteenth century, A.D., and accelerating rapidly in the late eighteenth century, a series of improvements in all three areas transformed the traditional economy of Europe. The modern capitalist system -- with its emphasis on private ownership, the specialization of production, and the division of labor -- steadily replaced the older medieval world of the common fields. This comprehensive economic transformation was accompanied by the violation of at least the first two, and seemingly all three, of the statutes of Leviticus 19:19.
This raises an important covenantal issue: the predictability of the external corporate blessings of God in history. A civilization-wide violation of these Levitical laws has produced (or at least has been accompanied by) an historically unprecedented increase in wealth: the West's agricultural revolution. We must therefore conclude one of three things: 1) the laws of Leviticus 19:19 are no longer binding because of a change in covenantal administration (my view); 2) these laws are still morally binding, but the covenantal link between corporate obedience and corporate blessings no longer holds in New Testament times (Kline's view);(2) or 3) these laws and God's corporate sanctions are still judicially binding (Rushdoony's view).(3) If Rushdoony's view is correct, then the modern world must be headed for a horrendous covenantal judgment of God because of systematic violations of this three-part Mosaic law.
The Industrial Revolution It was the industrial revolution of the late eighteenth century that visibly began to transform the traditional European economy. This is not to say that industrialism appeared overnight. It did not.(4) But to characterize England as the first industrial society would not have been accurate much before 1760. After 1800, it was an appropriate designation, widely acknowledged. European observers recognized that something fundamentally new was taking place in England.
The industrial revolution in England was not initially industrial. It was initiated by a series of transformations in the traditional sectors of agriculture,(5) animal husbandry,(6) textiles,(7) and metallurgy.(8) Improvements in metallurgy were made possible by improved coal mining.(9) Commerce and industry accelerated as economic output increased.(10) The revolution in steam power that was a characteristic feature of the industrial revolution was made possible by the improvements in metallurgy and coal, and the steam engine in turn made mining less expensive by pumping water out of the mines.(11) Machines were also applied to textile production.(12) But the reality was this: the industrial revolution took place after 1760 in England and after 1800 elsewhere because of prior transformations in agriculture, animal husbandry, textiles, and to a lesser extent, metallurgy and mining.(13)
The changes that first became visible in Britain were not confined to that island empire. The fundamental change -- a change in property rights -- had taken place throughout Western Europe for several centuries preceding the industrial revolution. The growth of towns, the growth of markets, and the growth of commerce had begun in Western Europe at least by the eleventh century, and this growth continued. After the fifteenth century, the gunpowder revolution made defense, and therfore civil government, progressively the responsibility of the king and the nation rather than the local lord of the manor. Loyalties shifted accordingly, especially in the cities. Lampard writes: "The result was a new social division of labor in which property rights played a more decisive role than personal obligations in determining the division of the social product. Property rights as a claim on the material means of existence provided the institutional foundation, if not the psychological mainspring, for a commercial, acquisitive society."(14) This institutional transformation was not confined to Great Britain. Because of this long-term judicial extension of the concept of private ownership, once England had shown the way, the industrial revolution spread within two generations throughout Northern and Western Europe, and also to North America. By 1830, it was a common Northern European and North American phenomenon.
Population Growth
The most statistically relevant aspect of the era of the industrial revolution in England was the growth of population. In the year 1700, there were about five and a half million people in England and Wales. By 1750, it was six and a half million. By 1801, it was about nine million, an unprecedented increase of over 38 percent in half a century. By 1831, population had reached fourteen million. This was not due to an increase in the birth rate.(15) It was also not due to immigration. On the contrary, during the eighteenth century, as many as a million people left Great Britain for the colonies.(16) The cause of the increase in population, 1750-1800, was an unprecedented reduction in the death rate.(17)
The question is: Was it the industrial revolution that produced this increase? This seems not to have been the case. A growth of population was also taking place in other European nations and in North America -- nations that had not yet experienced an industrial revolution.(18) This points to the possibility that the slow but steady increase in agricultural productivity outside of England had been more important in increasing Europe's population than England's industrial revolution was. Agricultural productivity did not rise in England after 1750. England became an importer of food, selling its industrial products abroad to pay for these imports.(19) This means that other areas in Europe and the colonies were producing agricultural surpluses.(20) Successful agricultural techniques discovered in one region were imitated throughout Western Europe. This leads us back to the problem of Leviticus 19:19 and the corporate blessings of God.
Innovation
The fundamental change in the West's traditional economy was the appearance of widespread innovation. As never before in man's history, innovation began to reshape economic production. Entrepreneurs gained access to capital, and this capital allowed them to test their visions of the future in the competitive marketplace. Either they met consumer demand more efficiently than their competitors, thereby gaining short-term profits until other producers imitated their techniques, or else they failed. The winners were the consumers, whose economic decisions steadily became sovereign in the economy. Rosenberg and Birdzell have described the process as well as anyone has: "The immediate sources of Western growth were innovations in trade, technology, and organization, in combination with accumulation of more and more capital, labor, and applied natural resources. Innovation emerged as a significant factor in Western growth as early as the mid-fifteenth century, and, from the mid-eighteenth century on, has been pervasive and dominant. Innovation occurred in trading, production, products, services, institutions, and organizations. The main characteristics of innovation -- uncertainty, search, exploration, financial risk, experiment, and discovery -- have so permeated the West's expansion of trade and the West's development of natural resources as to make it virtually an additional factor of production."(21)
Entrepreneurship was the key to the West's economic growth. Entrepreneurship is defined as the act of forecasting an inherently uncertain economic future, and then purchasing the services of men and capital over time in order to meet future consumer demand with the least expenditure of money or resources. Profits are an economic residual: whatever remains after all factors of production have been paid for. Profit stems from an entrepreneur's ability to forecast the future and meet its demands with less expenditure than his competitors. He can "buy low" today only because his competitors have not accurately forecasted future consumer demand; hence, they fail to bid up the price of today's scarce resources. The lure of profit is the motivating factor in the capitalist's decision to bear the uncertainty of producing future consumer goods.(22)
Innovation was the key to Europe's economic growth and social change, yet Leviticus 19:19 seems opposed to innovation, especially with respect to animal husbandry. There is to be no scientific interbreeding of animals, the law declares. The same restriction appears to hold true for the seeds of the field. If the key to Western prosperity has been economic and scientific innovation, then why did God establish laws for agriculture that restrict innovation in two major areas of modern agricultural output?(23) Are any of God's laws opposed to economic development? If so, which ones? And why?
Leviticus 19:19 and Economic Development The transformation of the first three sectors of the European economy involved what appear to be explicit violations of Leviticus 19:19. Men developed new strains of plants, new breeds within species, and new combinations of textiles.(24) Agricultural productivity as a whole went through something like a revolution, 1600-1750. It accelerated vastly after 1800. By 1900, modern agriculture had become capital intensive and scientific. Hybrid seeds would soon become the foundation of this revolution in agricultural output. Gregor Mendel, a monk living in what became Czechoslovakia after World War I, discovered the laws of genetics in 1865 and published his findings in 1866, "Experiments With Plant Hybrids," in an obscure local journal. This article attracted no attention. It was rediscovered in 1900, and his discovery began to reshape the modern world -- a transformation that is now accelerating through genetic engineering.
Animal breeding was the least important factor in this agricultural transformation.(25) Writes economic historian Peter Mathias: "The first main innovations were mainly in improving rotations and crops, seed-yields and strains in plants. Advances in animal breeding and the widespread substitution of the horse for the ox on the farm followed mainly in the wake of these improvements. This also was not accidental. The new animals demanded more efficient, better feeding. The old styles of unimproved stock remained a natural and appropriate response to poor pasture, waterlogged fields in the winter and scanty winter feed. Neither sheep nor draught-animals could serve a specialized function: the ox was eaten when it could no longer draw."(26)
The question must be asked: If the modern world had remained faithful to Leviticus 19:19, would we have escaped the narrow economic boundaries of the pre-modern world? Would we still be facing famines, starvation, poverty, high infant mortality rates, and all the other curses of poverty in the world prior to 1800? The answer is obvious: yes. So, the question arises: Was Leviticus 19:19 itself an economic curse? Second, is it still in force? If it is, then isn't our high per capita wealth today -- seemingly a great blessing from God -- judicially illegitimate?
More specifically, is the defender of free market capitalism forced into an untenable ideological position if he also defends the continuing authority of biblical law? Is the modern world's wealth an example of God's perverse blessing on antinomian Christianity and humanism, generation after generation? Or is the modern world's abandonment of Leviticus 19:19 legitimate because this case law was annulled by the New Covenant? If abandoning Leviticus 19:19 is legitimate, then is this fact itself a theological justification for announcing the annulment of all of the Old Testament's case laws?
The Enclosure Movement
Before we seek answers to these questions, another historical factor must be considered: the enclosure movement. There is no doubt that the genetic specialization of herds and crops was made possible economically by the steady enclosure of the medieval common fields, i.e., commonly tilled soil. When an owner could identify and legally defend his crops and herds on his land, he could better afford to experiment. He would be allowed to claim as his property any increased output. Common fields restricted such innovation. Only mutually agreed-upon innovations were permitted in common fields. Risks had to be low; any increased output had to be shared. Radical innovations were unlikely.
The enclosure movement began early in England, certainly by the thirteenth century.(27) It accelerated in the sixteenth century.(28) After 1760, Parliament authorized specific enclosure by private acts.(29) It was the steady partitioning of the common fields into private plots that made possible the so-called agricultural revolution in England. (A revolution that takes well over a century is evolutionary by modern standards, though not by pre-modern standards.) Professor Ashton writes: "Progress in agriculture was bound up with the creation of new units of administration in which the individual had more scope for experiment; and this meant the parceling out and enclosure of the common fields, or the breaking up of the rough pasture and waste which had previously contributed little to the output of the village."(30) What was required, in short, was the establishment of new boundaries.
These legal boundaries established the private ownership of, and therefore personal responsibility over, the crucial means of production in an agricultural society: specific units of land. Because of these judicial boundaries, the fruits of one's capital and labor inputs could be more easily identified and claimed. This created economic incentives to improve the land and to introduce new crops, including the bleating crop known as sheep. Specialization of agricultural production and the resulting increase in output per unit of resource input increased both wealth and population in early modern England. This in turn led to the industrial revolution. My point is that the increasing precision of the legal claims of private owners of land, enforceable in civil courts, was the crucial change that made possible the agricultural revolution. The development of new crops and new breeds was the result, not the cause, of a social and legal revolution. In short, the new boundaries -- geographical but especially legal -- led to greater dominion.
Poythress' Challenge As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Poythress has challenged the defenders of theonomy to deal with the hermeneutical (interpretational) problems associated with Leviticus 19:19. He knows that theonomists are defenders of free market economics and modern capitalism. How, then, can theonomists escape the dilemma of Leviticus 19:19? He begins his analysis-criticism of theonomy with a consideration of this verse. He regards the exegetical problem of Leviticus 19:19 as exemplary of the theonomists' larger hermeneutical problem of distinguishing judicial continuity from discontinuity in the two testaments. This is why he calls it "the test case."
Poythress' challenge is legitimate. He does raise important issues regarding the principles of biblical interpretation as they apply to the case laws of the Old Covenant. The command not to mix seeds is an expression of God's will, he correctly observes. It is therefore relevant to us as expositors. Does this particular case law express a universal standard, or is it uniquely a law of a distinct kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:6)? Was it part of Israel's laws of unclean foods? If it was part of Israel's priestly laws, how does it apply to the church as a royal priesthood (I Pet. 2:9)? The Mosaic food laws are abolished, he correctly observes. Yet we are still not to mix good and evil. "How do we decide how Leviticus 19:19 applies to us?"(31) This is indeed the question.
Poythress says that Greg Bahnsen thinks this law no longer needs to be observed literally.(32) Bahnsen is correct on this point, but Poythress is not persuaded by Bahnsen's general explanation. He cites Bahnsen: "We should presume that Old Testament standing laws continue to be morally binding in the New Testament, unless they are rescinded or modified by further revelation."(33) Poythress adds: "Strict, wooden application of this principle would appear to imply the continuation of Leviticus 19:19 in force."(34) He notes in a footnote that Rushdoony argues that Leviticus 19:19 still applies, making all hybrids immoral.(35) Therefore, Poythress implies (correctly), those theonomists who reject Rushdoony's interpretation of Leviticus 19:19 need to produce specific evidence of a judicial discontinuity between the testaments that has annulled the literal application of this law. Poythress says that this law can be regarded as part of the Mosaic food laws and hence abolished.
The Mosaic laws of separation no longer apply, Bahnsen says.(36) Poythress asks: "But how do we tell in practice what counts as a `separation' principle? How do we tell what elements in Mosaic statutes are shadows and in what way are they shadows? How do we tell what is ceremonial and what is moral?"(37) We know that all the laws in Leviticus 19 are moral, he says. They functioned in some way to separate Israel from the nations around her. Second, he says, it is easy to argue that "keeping the types of seed distinct is a principle of separation based on creation and therefore of permanent validity. Third, the immediate context of Leviticus does not provide decisive information about the permanence of this statute."(38)
The more that Poythress looks at the specifics of this case law, the more its New Testament meaning seems to get lost in the Mosaic law's shadows. This is true of almost every civil law in the Mosaic Covenant that he examines in detail, as he repeatedly demonstrates in his book, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (1991).
How can we faithfully solve these exegetical problems? He offers this exegetical imperative: "We are supposed to determine the classification of any statute by first understanding its primary function. Understanding its function reveals whether it primarily defines sin in a universally binding way or whether it primarily articulates the way of salvation in a way conditioned by the redemptive-historical context. We therefore determine in what respects it is permanently relevant to our redemptive-historical situation. The primary remaining difficulty is that it is not always easy to determine the primary function, particularly because several functions may sometimes be interwoven."(39)
I agree with this statement regarding the requirements of exegesis. It is therefore mandatory on me or on another defender of theonomy's hermeneutic to do what Poythress says must be done: 1) identify the primary function of an Old Covenant law; 2) discover whether it is universal in a redemptive (healing) sense, or whether 3) it was conditioned by its redemptive-historical context (i.e., annulled by the New Covenant). In short: What did the law mean, how did it apply inside and outside Mosaic Israel, and how should it apply today? This exegetical task is not always easy, but it is mandatory. It is a task that has been ignored or denied by the vast majority of Christian theologians for almost two millennia.
The question Poythress raises is the hermeneutical problem of identifying covenantal continuity and covenantal discontinuity. First, in questions of covenantal continuity, we need to ask: What is the underlying ethical principle? God does not change ethically. The moral law is still binding, but its application may not be. Second, this raises the question of covenantal discontinuity. What has changed as a result of the New Testament era's fulfillment of Old Covenant prophecy and the inauguration of the New Covenant? A continuity -- prophetic-judicial fulfillment -- has in some cases produced a judicial discontinuity: the annulment of a case law's application. A very good example of this is Leviticus 19:19.
Hermeneutical Questions
I begin any investigation of any suspected judicial discontinuity with the following questions. First, is the case law related to the priesthood, which has changed (Heb. 7:11-12)? Second, is it related to the sacraments, which have changed? Third, is it related to the jubilee land laws (e.g., inheritance), which Christ fulfilled (Luke 4:18-21)? Fourth, is it related to the tribes (e.g., the seed laws), which Christ fulfilled in His office as Shiloh, the promised Seed (Gal. 3:16)? Fifth, is it related to the "middle wall of partition" between Jew and gentile, which Jesus Christ's gospel has broken down (Gal. 3:28; Eph. 2:14-20)?(40) These five principles prove fruitful in analyzing Leviticus 19:19.(41)
Let us ask another question: Is a change in the priesthood also accompanied by a change in the laws governing the family covenant? Yes. Jesus tightened the laws of divorce by removing the Mosaic law's exception, the bill of divorcement (Matt. 5:31-32).(42) Similarly, the church from the beginning has denied the legality of polygamy even though there is no explicit rejection of polygamy in the New Testament except for church officers: husbands of one wife (I Tim. 3:2, 12). Polygamy is rejected by the church on the same basis that Jesus rejected the Mosaic law's system of easy divorce: "from the beginning it was not so" (Matt. 19:18). Did other changes in the family accompany the New Covenant's change in the priesthood? Specifically, have changes in inheritance taken place? Have these changes resulted in the annulment of the jubilee land laws of the Mosaic economy? Finally, has an annulment of the jubilee land laws annulled the laws of tribal administration?
The Westminster Confession's Three-fold Division The Westminster Confession offers a tripartite division of biblical law: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. The moral law is said to be permanently binding (XIX:2). The ceremonial law is said to have been abrogated by the New Covenant (XIX:3). The judicial law is said to have applied only to national Israel and not to the New Covenant era, except insofar as a law was (is) part of something called the "general equity" (XIX:4). This formulation assumes that the judicial law applied only to Israel's "body politic."
This assumption raises a fundamental question: What about the family? The family is a separate covenantal administration, bound by a lawful oath under God. Which civil laws in Israel protected the family? To what extent have these laws been annulled or modified (perhaps tightened) by the New Covenant? And why?
I am here suggesting the need for the addition of another tripartite division: civil, ecclesiastical, and familial. James Jordan believes that the Confession's three-fold division applies across the boards to the three covenantal institutions. The moral law applies to all three: civil law, canon law, and family law. The ceremonial law applies to all three: oaths, sacraments, and marriage. The judicial law applies to all three: execution and restitution, excommunication, and divorce-disinheritance. He also notes that the Confession's tripartite division conforms to the five points of the biblical covenant model.(43) The ceremonial category is derived from points one and two: transcendence and hierarchy. The moral category is derived from point three: law. The judicial category is derived from points four and five: sanctions and succession.(44)
In short, the Westminster Confession's divisions can and should be applied to the Bible's tripartite covenantal-institutional divisions. There are continuities (fixed principles) and discontinuities (redemptive-historical applications) in all three covenantal law-orders. It is the task of the interpreter to make clear these distinctions and interrelationships. The church has been avoiding this crucial task (exegetical and applicational) since A.D. 70. The result has been the dominance of ethical dualism in Christian social theory: natural law theory coupled with pietism and/or mysticism.
Case Laws and Underlying Principles It must be borne in mind that Leviticus is the Bible's book of holiness. Boundaries are basic to biblical holiness. So, it is wise to approach passages that make little sense to the modern reader in expectation that in many of them, the issues can be clarified by discovering the underlying principle of holiness, which is a principle of separation.
A law governing agriculture, animal husbandry, and textile production had to be taken very seriously under the Mosaic Covenant. The expositor's initial presumption should be that these three laws constitute a judicial unit. If they are a unit, there has to be some underlying judicial principle common to all three. All three prohibitions deal with mixing. The first question we need to ask is the crucial one: What was the covenantal meaning of these laws? The second question is: What was their economic effect?
I argue here that the fundamental judicial principle undergirding the passage is the requirement of separation. Two kinds of separation were involved: tribal and covenantal. The first two clauses were agricultural applications of the mandatory segregation of the tribes inside Israel until a unique prophesied Seed would appear in history: the Messiah. We know who the Seed is: Jesus Christ. Paul wrote: "Now unto Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ" (Gal. 3:16). The context of Paul's discussion is inheritance. Inheritance is by promise, he said (Gal. 3:18). The Mosaic law was given, Paul said, "till the seed should come to whom the promise was made" (Gal. 3:18). Two-thirds of Leviticus 19:19 relates to the inheritance laws of national Israel, as we shall see. When the Levitical land inheritance laws (Lev. 25) ended with the establishment of a new priesthood, so did the authority of Leviticus 19:19.
What was Paul attempting to prove? This: eternal life (the ultimate inheritance) is obtained by God's promise, not by God's law. God's law cannot impart life.(45) That is to say, the means of eternal life is not obedience to God's revealed law. Paul was not, contrary to the argument of the Judaizers, attempting to set biblical law in opposition to the principle of inheritance by promise.(46) He was arguing that there is only one pathway to eternal life: by God's promise. It is this promise of new life, which is a new inheritance, that is central to Leviticus 19:19.
The second form of separation is more familiar: covenantal separation. The final clause of Leviticus 19:19 deals with prohibited clothing. This prohibition related not to separation among the tribes of Israel -- separation within a covenant -- but rather the separation of national Israel from other nations.
Because their frame of reference is not intuitively recognized, the first two clauses must occupy our initial attention.
Boundary of Blood: Seed and Land The preservation of Israel's unique covenantal status was required by biblical law. The physical manifestation of this separation was circumcision. A boundary of blood was imposed on the male organ of reproduction. It was a sign that covenantal life is not obtained by either physical birth or through one's male heirs. Rushdoony has written: "Circumcision witnesses to the fact that man's hope is not in generation but in regeneration. . . ."(47) Unlike the ancient Greeks, who believed that a decent life after death could be obtained only through an unbroken series of rites performed by one's heirs,(48) the Israelites knew that physical generation within the family unit has nothing to do with one's life after physical death. They had a doctrine of creation; the Greeks did not. This made a tremendous difference, as Fustel remarked so long ago: "[I]f we reflect that the ancients had no idea of creation, we shall see that the mystery of generation was for them what the mystery of creation is for us. The generator appeared to them to be a divine being; and they adored their ancestor."(49) Ancestor worship is not the message of the Old Covenant. The theology of the Old Covenant is creationist: the Creator-creature distinction. The Creator placed the generator, Adam, under a covenant. Adam served as the judicial representative of all his heirs. The generator then broke the terms of the covenant. Mankind is therefore under a curse, both in history and eternity. Ancestor worship has never been a temptation in Christian cultures. To escape Adam's legal status as a covenant-breaker, a man must re-covenant with God, a human response made possible by God's absolutely sovereign act of regeneration. The mark of this covenant in ancient Israel was circumcision. Ultimately, this separation was confessional. It involved an affirmation of the sovereignty of Israel's God.
Tribal and Family Boundaries
The nation of Israel was separated from non-covenanted nations by geographical and covenantal boundaries. Furthermore, tribal and family units separated the covenant people within Israel. This separation was always to be geographical, usually familial,(50) but never confessional. Every tribe confessed the same confession: "Hear, O 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" (Deut. 6:4-5). Israelites were not divided tribally because they had different ancestors, which was the case in ancient Greece. They were divided tribally because they would have different heirs. Only one tribe would bring forth the promised Seed. Tribal separation was based on differences in inheritance.
Here I need to make something very clear. Unless stated otherwise, when I speak of seed laws and seed sanctions, I have in mind those laws and sanctions that applied exclusively to Mosaic Israel because of Jacob's prophecy of a tribal boundary around the coming Seed, the Messiah. There are broader aspects of God's covenantal seed laws: applications of God's covenantal promises to Abraham, such as population growth for faithfulness. These broad covenantal promises apply to the New Covenant sons of Abraham: the church, the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16). Because they apply across the two covenants, they were not exclusive to Mosaic Israel.
Israel's tribal divisions had political implications. They guaranteed localism. This localism of tribal inheritance was the judicial complement of the unity of national covenantal confession. Speaking of the case laws (Ex. 21-23) that follow God's delivery of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20), political scientist Aaron Wildavsky remarks: "The social legislation that follows -- laws protecting property, strangers, widows, the poor, on and on -- is also predicated on acceptance of an authority that cannot be disobeyed. These boundaries, which emphasize keeping relationships whole, each partaking only of what properly belongs to its class, are of special social significance in a tribal society. Each tribe is to be kept whole. No tribe is to transgress against another. What better guarantee that tribal borders (so carefully demarcated before entry to Israel) will be sacrosanct is there than a system of classification -- from food to clothing to marriage -- that stresses wholeness and separation from top to bottom?"(51) Tribal boundaries were part of an overall structure of covenantal unity.
Family membership and rural land ownership in Israel were tied together by the laws of inheritance. A rural Israelite -- and most Israelites were rural(52) -- was the heir of a specific plot of ground because of his family membership. There was no rural landed inheritance apart from family membership. Unlike the laws of ancient Greece, Mosaic law allowed a daughter to inherit the family's land if there was no son. But there was a condition: she had to marry within the tribal unit (Num. 36:8). The landed inheritance could not lawfully move from one tribe to another (Num. 36:9).(53) A man's primary inheritance in Israel was his legal status (freemanship).
Family Land and Family Name
Land was tied to name. The land of Israel was God's; His name was on it. The family's land was tied to the family's name. So important was this principle of inheritance that a brother who lived on the family's land with a married brother who died without children had to obey the levirate marriage law and procreate children through the brother's widow (Deut. 25:5-10). Their children would inherit the family's name (Deut. 25:6). To refuse to perform this requirement was to be disgraced publicly. The wife could challenge the brother publicly, announcing before the elders, "My husband's brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel. . ." (Deut. 25:7).
Tamar became a childless widow when Er, her evil husband, was killed by God (Gen. 38:7). Judah sent Onan, now his oldest son, to become her levir husband. Onan refused to procreate a child with her. He deliberately spilled his seed (zerah) on the ground, "lest that he should give his seed to his brother." This was not just an act of defiance against Tamar; it was a ritual act of defiance against God. God killed him for this ritual act (v. 10).
When Tamar bore twins to Judah, she named the second-born son Zarah. He was the child who had the scarlet thread around his wrist, who had almost been the firstborn (v. 30). He disappears after Genesis 46:12. He was not Judah's seed of the promise. His brother Pharez became the line of Judah into which Ruth the Moabite married (Ruth 4:12). So, the covenant line of Judah led to the kingly line of David through Ruth, for Boaz performed the office of the levir when Naomi's nearest of kin refused for fear of losing his inheritance (Ruth 4:6). David is listed as the tenth generation after Pharez (Ruth 4:18-22), making David's generation the first generation of Judah's line that could become citizens (Deut. 23:2) and lawfully become judges, for Pharez had been a bastard born illegally of Judah.(54)
The name Pharez comes from the Hebrew word for breach. God placed him as the head of the family line. Pharez was born abnormally, but he nevertheless inherited: sovereign grace.
Till Shiloh Come
Jacob had promised Judah that his blood line would rule until the promised heir (Shiloh) should come (Gen. 49:10). Thus, the integrity of each of the seed lines in Israel -- family by family, tribe by tribe -- was maintained by the Mosaic law until this promise was fulfilled. The mandatory separation among the tribes was symbolized by the prohibition against mixing seeds. The prohibition applied to the mixing of seeds in one field. The field did not represent the whole world under the Mosaic Covenant; the field represented the Promised Land. The husbandman or farmer had to create boundaries between his specialized breeds and between his crops.
The boundaries separating animals had to be there because of the normal sexual bonding that takes place among pairs within a species. So, too, was it normal for members of the same covenantal confession to marry. But Mosaic law established an artificial barrier between the tribes. This artificial barrier was both legal and economic: landed inheritance. Tribal separation decentralized Israel's economy and politics. The Levites were scattered across the land, living in walled cities or in Levitical cities in which the jubilee land laws did not apply (Lev. 25:29-30, 32-34). Levites provided religious leadership, including judicial advice, for every tribe. But the Levites had no inheritance in the land, so they could not buy up rural landed property or gain it through intermarriage, thereby centralizing the economy. Neither could the king, as the conflict between Ahab and Naboth indicates (I Kings 21). There was to be continuity of theological and judicial principles, one tribe to another. Plots of land could not be merged beyond the jubilee. Kings and Levites -- the national enforcers of God's law -- could not pursue judicial centralization through either land purchase or intermarriage. This prevented what Pharaoh and the priests had done under Joseph (Gen. 47:20-22) -- a curse on Egypt consistent with Egypt's theology of the divine Pharaoh.
Thus, the prohibition against the interbreeding of animals and the mixing of seeds had to do with keeping separate artificially what is normally mixed. Fenced family fields inside Israel reflected the nation's tribal boundaries. Such tribal separation was abnormal, not normal. What is abnormal is the separation of breeds within a species and the separation of crops within a single fenced field. What is also abnormal is the separation of a biblically covenanted people. It was this abnormality that was essential to the maintenance of the tribal structure in Israel. Inheritance in the land was by tribal separation, but only until Shiloh at last arrived. The internal boundaries would disappear once Shiloh came.(55)
Inheritance: Generation vs. Adoption
Another application of the seed laws was the prohibition of a foreign eunuch's access to citizenship (Deut. 23:1). If a man was cut off in the stones, he was genetically cut off from the possibility of lawful inheritance in the land. He had no genetic future; he could therefore not become a citizen of Israel. Not even the laws of adoption could overcome this ecclesiastical and civil law.
Under the New Covenant, the laws of adoption have annulled this Mosaic law. The obvious New Testament example of its annulment is the encounter of Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch. As soon as the eunuch professed faith in Jesus Christ, Philip baptized him (Acts 8:37-38). Covenantal inheritance in the New Testament is by public profession of faith, public baptism, and public obedience; it is not by genetics. Inheritance is by adoption, not by biological reproduction. This is a testimony to the fact that covenantal faithfulness is more fundamental in history than biology. It always has been, as God's adoption of Israel as a nation testified (Ezek. 16). But because of the historic importance of the prophesied Seed of Israel, the seed laws predominated over the adoption laws in the Mosaic economy.
The advent of Jesus Christ restored adoption to visible primacy. "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become sons of God, even to them that believe on his name" (John 1:12). With the death of Jesus Christ and the annulment of the Old Covenant, the Levitical seed laws ceased. They were not resurrected with Christ. There was no further need to separate seeds within Israel; the prophecy had been covenantally and historically fulfilled. So had the Levitical land laws (Lev. 25). The mandatory judicial link between physical seed and land ceased for all time. Those family and tribal boundaries within the land, like the boundaries establishing the judicial holiness (separateness) of national Israel from the world, were covenantally annulled by the New Covenant. The new wine of the gospel broke the old wineskins of Israel's seed laws.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the letter to the Hebrews. It begins with an affirmation of Christ's inheritance: God the Father "Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds" (Heb. 1:2). Christ's inheritance is expressly tied to His name: "Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they" (Heb. 1:4). Jesus is the high priest of an unchangeable priesthood (Heb. 7:24). His priesthood, because it is after the order of Melchizedek, is superior to the Levitical priesthood (Heb. 7:9-11). This has changed the Levitical laws: "For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law" (Heb. 7:12). This includes the laws of tribal separation. Jesus, as high priest, has transcended the Mosaic Covenant's laws separating the tribes of Israel: "For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood" (Heb. 7:14). Because He transcended the tribal boundary laws, He also transcended the land laws and seed laws. A new priesthood now inherits the earth.
Sacrifice: Seed vs. Land The connection between land and seed in the ancient world was very close, not only judicially but also ritually. When the Israelites came into the land of Canaan, they were told by God that they must not sacrifice their children to the gods of the land. They were not permitted to pass their children through any ritual fire. "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through [the fire] to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I [am] the LORD" (Lev. 18:21). Molech was the god of the Ammonites; it was identified as an abomination (I Kings 11:7). Notice that God called such a practice a profanation of His name (Lev. 20:3). The nation's name, the family's name, and God's name were all interlinked ritually.
Why would anyone have done such a thing? In a civilization such as the West's, which was originally built on judicial theology rather than magic, such a ritual act seems irrational. But sacrifices must be made in this life. Men understand this principle, which is why they speak of sacrificing the present for the future. The ancient Canaanites sent their children through the ritual fires in order to identify the survivors as the heirs. Also, by placating Molech, they hoped to gain external blessings, which meant primarily agricultural blessings. By literally sacrificing their children, they hoped for increased agricultural fertility. This is why we refer to Canaanitic religions as fertility cults.
Only specialists in ancient religion and mythology are aware of origins of the this theology of child sacrifice. Children were regarded as innocent and therefore suitable to placate Molech, identified as Kronos,(56) and therefore Saturn, the god of the original golden age and regenerative chaos, cannibal of his own children and father of Jupiter/Zeus.(57) The Phoenicians carried this fiery worship throughout the Mediterranean coasts. It became institutionalized in Carthage.(58) Acton wrote that such worship flourished where astrology was supreme, "and where the sun was worshipped as the life-giver and the life-destroyer -- the god who renewed the earth in spring, burnt it up in summer, and himself suffered in winter, to be restored and to restore the world in spring. These two powers of production and destruction were gathered up in Astarte, the goddess of fertility, and Kronos, the devourer of his own offspring."(59)
What was the origin of this theology of human sacrifice? Acton knew what only a handful of academic specialists today have ever heard of: the magical link between bloody ritual and cosmic regeneration. Acton wrote: "The union of bloodshed and licentiousness had one of its roots in the physical philosophy of the old world, which considered generation and destruction, like night and day, to be necessary and mutually-produced successions of being, caused by the eccentric motion of the primum mobile in the ecliptic."(60) The slow "wobble" of the axis of the rotating earth is the reason why the pole stars change every few thousand years during the what the ancients called the Great Year: about 26,000 solar years. This wobbling axis is the source of the legend of Hamlet's cosmic mill: the wobbling universe of stars and constellations, i.e., the precession of the equinoxes.(61) This cosmology explained the fall of man and the loss of Eden as the result of the disruption of the heavens. It made personal and social regeneration the effects of ritual rather than ethical transformation. Fertility, sexual license, and human sacrifice were linked together cosmically. The religious practices of classical and Hellenic Greece, as well as Rome's Republic and Empire, relied on human sacrifice.(62) The origin of Rome's gladiatorial battles to the death lay in this theology of sacrifice.(63)
The religion of Israel was in open conflict with all fertility cult religion. God warned Israelites against putting their hope in the land or the gods of the land. The seed laws of Leviticus 19:19 were an aspect of this prohibition. These laws restricted genetic experimentation in Israel. There would be no specialized animal breeding; there would be no mixing of seeds in any field. Why not? For the sake of the inheritance, i.e., for the promise. This promise was more important than any hoped-for productivity gained through genetic experiments. Families were required to forfeit some degree of potential wealth for the sake of faithfulness to the promise. The preservation of each family's seed (i.e., name) was more important than increased agricultural output. The religion of Israel was thus in complete opposition to the fertility cults of Canaan. This opposition imposed economic costs on the Israelites.
Leviticus 19:19's prohibition of genetic experimentation was an aspect of the preservation of the national covenant, which included the tribal boundaries. In the economic trade-off between the land's seed (increased wealth from genetic experimentation) and the promised Seed (which required the maintenance of tribal boundaries), the promised Seed had priority. Jacob's prophecy was more important than agricultural production. We must interpret the seed laws as ritual laws. Israel had to sacrifice some degree of wealth in order to honor ritually the principle of the promised Seed. Far better this sacrifice than passing one's children through the fire: ritually honoring the family's land more than the family's seed.(64)
In one particular, there was still the sacrifice of a son. Levi served as the firstborn son in Israel (Num. 3:12). This means that Israelite families were not required to set apart (sanctify) their firstborn sons for service to God at that first numbering of the nation, as would otherwise have been required (Ex. 13:2). The other tribes did not have to make a payment to the priests except for money in place of the 273 firstborn in excess of the Levites' 22,000 members (Num. 3:39, 46-47). The tribe of Levi became a lawful substitute. God claimed the Levites as His special possession (Num. 3:45). They could not usually inherit rural land in the Promised Land. They were disinherited because they were like dead men (sacrifices). They were judicially holy (set apart). A boundary was placed around them in the Levitical cities, where the jubilee laws did not apply (Lev. 25:32-34). Levi was separated until Shiloh came.
Leviticus 19:19 is part of the Mosaic Covenant's laws governing the preservation of the family's seed (name) during a particular period of history. It was an aspect of the necessary preservation of genetic Israel. The preservation of the separate seeds of Israel's families was basic to the preservation of the nation's legal status as a set-apart, separated, holy covenantal entity. This principle of separation applied to domesticated animals, crops, and clothing.
Animals Let us begin with the law prohibiting the mixing of cattle. Did this refer to bovines only? The Hebrew word is transliterated behemah, the same word that we find transliterated as behemoth in Job 40:15. In every reference to cattle in Leviticus, this Hebrew word is used. Did this law apply only to cattle? What about other domesticated species? A case can be made both ways. Nevertheless, I believe that cattle in this case refers to all domesticated animals. The parallel prohibition against mixing crops was genetic. Also, the Hebrew word behemah is used generically for all domesticated animals in the laws against bestiality (Lev. 18:23; 20:15). This prohibited activity was less likely to be performed with bovines than other, smaller beasts.
Another reason for translating behemah broadly as domestic animals in general is found in the law identifying the Levites as a special tribe, God's firstborn. In setting aside the Levites as a separate, holy tribe in the midst of a holy nation of priests, God also designated their animals as representatives of all the animals in Israel. At that first census of Israel, the people did not have to make a payment for the firstborn animals as part of the required sacrifice of the firstborn males (Num. 3:41, 45). The Hebrew root word for cattle in this verse is behemah. The payment to the temple in Numbers 3:49-51 does not mention a payment for the animals. This absence of payment indicates that the "cattle" of the Levites represented all the domesticated animals, not just bovines, so no payment was owed.(65)
The case law governing the interbreeding of animals is analogous to the case law prohibiting owners from muzzling oxen as they worked the fields (Deut. 25:4). The prohibition against muzzling an ox while it treads out the corn applies in principle to paying appropriate wages to people (I Cor. 9:9-12) and honoring church officers (I Tim. 5:17-18). In these case laws, animals are representative of human beings. In short, the animals of Leviticus 19:19 were representatives of the nation of Israel as a holy people. Identifiable breeds were to be kept separate from each other, just as Israel's tribes were.
The plain teaching of the passage indicates that the breeds of animals that were common in the Promised Land at the time of the conquest were to be allowed to reproduce. The breeds had to be kept separate, however. There was to be no active breeding of new specialized breeds in order to produce animals that had different characteristics from the land's original breeds. There was to be no man-directed genetic manipulation of animals in Mosaic Israel.
The Mosaic law prohibiting the interbreeding of animals was never part of the creation mandate. It was a temporary law that illustrated an eschatological principle: the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham regarding the world's deliverance through the Seed. This event had not yet come to pass in Mosaic Israel. The Mosaic seed laws did not in any way reduce the authority of the promise to Abraham; they merely governed the administration of rural families' landed inheritance until that promised Seed should come. The authority of God's promise established the authority of the promised Seed. The Seed was the promise in Old Covenant Israel. Jesus Christ fulfilled that promise. In doing so, He annulled the Levitical seed laws. These laws no longer had any eschatological purpose. Their only purpose in Mosaic Israel was eschatological.
Separation of the Breeds
The technical possibility of mixing breeds always exists. Mixing will happen without active interference from man. If members of a species are not deliberately kept separate, they will breed together. Thus, to preserve an existing breed genetically, a husbandman must take active steps to keep the breeds separated. He must either build fences or hire drovers to keep them apart.
A law prohibiting random intermixing of breeds really was superfluous. No profit-seeking owner would allow a pair of specialized breeds to intermix randomly. Such progeny would rarely command the same price or produce the same level of output as the progeny of the separate breeds. Even if a more productive offspring would occasionally be produced, this would do the owner no long-term economic good, for he was prohibited from interbreeding the resulting pairs. So, this law was really a prohibition against scientific breeding aimed at producing a new breed with unique characteristics. It meant that whatever common animals existed when they entered the land -- "mongrels" -- could mix freely with other similarly undistinguished animals.
What if the free market began to register demand for a particular kind of animal? This demand would have applied to: 1) a breed that they had brought with them into the Promised Land, 2) a breed already within the land when they invaded, or 3) an imported breed from outside the land after they conquered it. These breeds would have been the modern equivalent of registered animals.
The husbandman would have kept these animals separate from other existing breeds. Obviously, he would have an economic incentive to do this. To sell into a specialized market, his animals would have to be kept away from others not of the same type. So, this law commanded what the economy would have required anyway: separation. It would have applied only to owners who had begun programs of experimental breeding to produce a separate breed.
The seed of each breed had to be separated. To obey this law as it applied to "non-mongrels," an Israelite would have had to construct a holding area or pen for each specialized breed. This means that a specific seed or line was associated with a specific place at any point in time. Owners could lawfully move animals to new locations, but there was always to be a geographical boundary associated with each breed (seed). This boundary established a connection between land and seed. This connection was mandatory for both man and beast.
Crops The law stipulated, "thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed." This means that a specific field had to be devoted to a specific crop at any given point in the growing season. Like the pens for animals, the seeds of the crop had to reside in a particular place. Seed and land had to be linked.
Policing this law would have been easy. The person who planted two crops in an organized way within the confines of a specific field (boundary) would soon face the visible evidence of his violation: rows of mixed crops. a priest or a Levite could easily identify a violation.
Modern grain farming tends to be mono-crop agriculture: one crop in a field at a time. This specialization of agriculture has been economically efficient in terms of reducing the cost of harvesting the crop and also by maximizing output per unit of land. Still, there are unique costs associated with monocrop agriculture. These crops are more vulnerable to blight and insects. We have learned through experience that the mixing of seeds in a field can be beneficial, especially in terms of resistance to pests and disease.(66) It takes less insecticide to produce a large crop by relying on a mixture of plants to defend a particular field. So, it may be that for less specialized economies, mixed-crop agriculture is more productive. Yet this practice was prohibited in Mosaic Israel.
What about genetic experimentation? The same prohibition applied. There could be no lawful, systematic mixing of seeds. An Israelite was not to apply his ingenuity to the creation of new species of plants. Hybrid animals and seeds were illegal to develop. They could be purchased from abroad, but since most hybrids are either sterile (e.g., mules) or else they produce weak offspring, there was little economic incentive to import hybrids except as a one-generation consumer good. Such imports were legal: with no "inheritance" possible, there was no symbolic threat from hybrids. A hybrid was not prohibited because of its status as a hybrid. It was illegal to produce them deliberately because of the prohibition against mixing seeds, which was fundamental. The practice of seed-mixing was illegal, not hybrids as such.
This law did not apply to the familiar practice of grafting the branches of one species of fruit tree into the trunk of another.(67) Leviticus 19:19 was specific: it dealt with seeds planted in a field, not with branches grafted into an adult tree. The tree's trunk is the primary agent, symbolic of the covenant itself. The branch would become part of the older tree. It was not a competing seed. The removed branch was "adopted" by the older tree. This was always a legal option in Israel, as the marriages of Rahab and Ruth indicate. The technique of grafting was symbolic of conversion, which was why Paul used this imagery as the archetype in discussing the fate of the old branch of Israel and the grafting in of the gentiles (Rom. 11:17-21). So, tree grafting symbolized covenantal inclusion - adoption by conversion and confession - not tribal mixing.
Some crops do better when mixed, such as fodder. In the modern-day State of Israel, Jewish farmers deal with this problem in a Rabbinically approved way. One man makes a pile of seeds in a public place and covers it with a board. A second person piles up a second seed crop on top of the board. Then a third person comes along and announces in front of witnesses, "I need this board." He removes it. Finally, a fourth man comes along and is instructed to sow the field with the now-mixed crop.(68)
Clothing Mixed clothing made of linen and wool was under a different kind of prohibition. It was illegal to wear clothing produced by mixing these two fibers. There was no law against producing mixed cloth for export, however. Why was wearing it wrong but exporting it allowed?(69)
No other form of mixed-fiber clothing was prohibited by the Mosaic law. Did this case law by implication or extension prohibit all mixed fibers? This seems doubtful. It would have been easy to specify the more general prohibition rather than single out these two fibers. Deuteronomy's parallel passage also specifies this type of mixed fabric (Deut. 22:11) Then what was the nature of the offense? Answer: to wear clothing of this mixture was to proclaim symbolically the equality of Israel with all other nations. This could not be done lawfully inside Israel. But, as we shall see, it could be done by non-Israelites outside Israel.
Linen was the priestly cloth. The priests were required to wear linen on the day of atonement (Lev. 16:30-34). Linen was to be worn by the priest in the sacrifice of the burnt offering (Lev. 6:10). During and after the Babylonian captivity, because of their rebellion in Israel, the Levites and priests were placed under a new requirement that kept them separate from the people: they had to wear linen whenever they served before the table of the Lord. They had to put on linen garments when they entered God's presence in the inner court, and remove them when they returned to the outer court. No wool was to come upon them (Ezek. 44:15-19). The text says, "they shall not sanctify the people with their garments" (Ezek. 44:19). Priestly holiness was associated with linen.(70)
Additionally, the laws of leprosy were associated with linen and wool. The test to see whether leprosy was present was to examine wool or linen garments (Lev. 13:47-48, 52, 59). The question arises: Why linen and wool? Why were they singled out?
No Sweat
Wool is produced by sheep, while linen is a product of the field: flax. Linen was used by the high priest in the sacrifice of the burnt offering (Lev. 6:10). Why? It probably had something to do with sweat as man's curse (Gen. 3:19). Linen absorbs moisture. The priest was required to wear a garment of pure linen. He was therefore to wear a garment that absorbed sweat. His judicial covering was to reduce the amount of sweat on his body. Wool, in contrast, is produced by the same follicle that produces sweat in a sheep.(71) Wool tends to retain human sweat on the wearer's body.
Clothing covers a person. This is symbolic of God's judicial covering of Adam and Eve. They wanted a covering of the field (fig leaves); God required a covering from a slain animal. This means that to mix wool and linen was to mix ritual opposites. The wearing of such a mixture was symbolic of the mixing of priests and non-priests. It was all right for a nation of non-priests to wear such a mixture; it was prohibited to a nation of priests. This is why the export of this cloth was not prohibited. The recipient nations had no priestly status in God's covenant, and hence the mixture would have had no ritual meaning.(72) God did not threaten non-priestly nations with negative sanctions if they violated some ritual requirement for priests in Israel. Their sacraments had no power to invoke God's sanctions, positive or negative. Had some group or nation been circumcised under God, then these clothing restrictions would have applied.
Inside a priestly nation, such a mixture was a threat to the holiness of the priests when they brought sacrifices before God. As between a priestly nation and a non-priestly nation, this section of Leviticus 19:19 symbolized the national separation of believers from unbelievers. Deuteronomy 22:11 is the parallel passage: "Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts: [as] of wool and linen together." Its immediate context is another case law, one which we know from Paul's epistle to the Corinthians refers to people, not just animals: "Thou shalt not plow an ox and an ass together" (Deut. 22:10). Paul wrote: "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?" (II Cor. 6:14). It is legitimate to apply the principle of "unequal covenantal yoking" to Leviticus 19:19c, but only insofar as it applied to national separation.
Inside the boundaries of Israel, however, the law symbolized sacrificial separation: the tribe of Levi was set apart as a legal representative before God. In this intra-national sense, this law did have a role to play in the separation of the tribes. This is why it was connected to the two seed laws in Leviticus 19:19.
A Change in the Priesthood
It is still prohibited to mix covenantal opposites in a single covenant: in church, State, and family. Is the wearing of this mixture of these two fabrics still prohibited? No. Why not? Because of the change in the priesthood. We must return to Galatians 3.
Our new covering is Jesus Christ. Paul wrote: "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal. 3:27-29). Here it is again: inheritance is by God's promise to Abraham. The sign of this inheritance is no longer circumcision; it is baptism. This is our new clothing. The old prohibition against wearing a mixed cloth of wool and linen is annulled. The new priesthood is under a new covering: Jesus Christ.
Because of Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension, the curse of the ground no longer threatens us ritually, only economically. Thus, man's sweat is no longer a matter of ritual purity. The prohibition against wearing a mixed cloth of wool and linen is no longer nationally relevant: priestly vs. non-priestly nations. There are no longer any negative sanctions attached to this unique mixture of fabrics.
The ritual curse of the ground was finally removed at Jesus Christ's resurrection. The land is no longer under ritual sanctions, nor does it act as an agent of God, vomiting out covenant-breaking inhabitants, as the Promised Land did with the Canaanites (Lev. 18:28). The vomiting land no longer threatens us as it threatened the Israelites (Lev. 20:22). Jesus Christ vomits out lukewarm churches (Rev. 3:16).(73)
The physical and economic curse is being progressively removed in history, including the curse of sweat. Men increasingly do not work by the sweat of their brows. The air conditioner is one of the wonders of modern life, enabling men to escape from the oppression of heat and humidity. This enables them to work more efficiently. Workers who work indoors -- the primary place of work in modern economies -- in tropical climates can now compete with workers in temperate climates.
The Question of Jurisdiction Was this a civil law or an ecclesiastical law? To identify it as a civil law, we should be able to specify appropriate civil sanctions. The text mentions none. The civil magistrate might have confiscated the progeny of the interbreeding activities, but then what? Sell the animals? Export them? Kill them and sell the meat? These were possible sanctions, but the text is silent. What about mingled seed? Was the entire crop to be confiscated by the State? Could it lawfully be sold? Was it unclean? The text is silent. This silence establishes a prima facie case for the law as ecclesiastical.
The mixed clothing law refers to a fact of covenantal separation: a nation of priests. The Israelites were not to wear clothing made of linen and wool. This symbolic mixing testified to the legitimacy of mixing a nation of priests and a common nation. This is why wearing such mixed cloth was prohibited. This aspect of the case law's meaning was primarily priestly. Again, the prima facie case is that this was an ecclesiastical law and therefore enforced by the priesthood.
The maximum ecclesiastical sanction was excommunication. This would have marked the law-breaker as being outside the civil covenant. He faced the loss of his citizenship as well as the disinheritance of his sons unless they broke with him publicly. Instead of a mere economic loss, he faced a far greater penalty. This penalty was consistent with the status of this law as a seed law. The prohibition of mixed seeds was an affirmation of tribal separation until Shiloh came. An attack on tribal separation was an attack on Jacob's messianic prophecy. The appropriate penalty was ecclesiastical: removal from both inheritance and citizenship within the tribe.
Conclusion In this chapter I have attempted to answer three questions: What did Leviticus 19:19 mean? How was it applied? How should it be applied today? This is the three-part challenge of biblical hermeneutics.
What Did the Verse Mean?
Specialized breeds of animals could be imported and used by the Israelites. These breeds could not be lawfully produced by design or neglect (unrepaired fences) in Israel. Their use was legal; their production was not. In contrast, the mixed fiber cloth could be produced in Israel but not worn within Israel's boundaries. It could lawfully be exported or used for purposes other than clothing. The language of the clothing law was specific: "neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon thee."
These differences in the laws point to different symbolic meanings. Leviticus 19:19 is a case law that illustrated a single principle: the necessity of separation. First, the separation of the tribes of Israel: the prohibition against 1) genetic mixing of animals and 2) the simultaneous planting (mixing) of more than one crop in a single field. Second, section three illustrated the holy (separated) condition of Israel as a nation of priests: mandating the separation of wool and linen in an Israelite's garment. These two fibers are at cross purposes with respect to man's curse: sweat. They were at cross purposes ritually with respect to priestly sacrifices. Therefore, they could not be cross-woven into clothing intended for use by residents of Israel. The cloth could be exported to members of non-priestly nations. It did not matter what they did with it. No lawful sacrifices could be offered in their lands.
The first two laws governed what was done in a man's fields. The fields were under his control. Thus, whatever separation the breeding laws required had to be achieved by establishing boundaries within a man's property. If there was a functional distinction within a species, these breeds had to be physically separated from each other, presumably by fences. Similarly, the seeds of several crops had to be kept separated. Each crop needed its own field at any point in time. This is why the first two laws symbolized the situation inside the national boundaries of Israel. Whatever was outside a family's landed property -- its inheritance -- was not under its authority. These laws applied inside the boundaries of the inheritance.
This is evidence that the seed laws did not symbolize the covenantal separation between Israel and the world. Israelites had no covenantal authority over the world outside of Israel. They did have authority inside Israel's boundaries, just as they had control over their own fields. So, the separation of their fields symbolized the separation among the tribes. This tribal separation was not covenantal but rather prophetic. It had to do with inheritance and the promised seed. The tribes had the same confession (unity maintained); except by forfeiting their landed inheritance, they could not mix maritally (diversity maintained). To keep their names in the land, families had to be separated tribally.
In contrast to the mixed-seed prohibition, the prohibition of mixed-fiber clothing did symbolize the separation between Israel and its neighbors. The judicial issue here was what was lawful for priests to wear. In relation to the world, Israel was a nation of priests. This law was an aspect of Israel's unique covenantal status. This law did not apply to non-priestly nations. Thus, the cloth could be exported. It was not its production that was prohibited, merely its use as clothing within Israel.
This three-fold law was temporary. It ended with the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, or, at the latest, at Pentecost. Spiritual adoption has overcome tribalism as the basis of inheritance in the kingdom of God. The gift of the Spirit is the basis of Christians' inheritance, not physical reproduction. National Israel was disinherited in A.D. 70.(74) The kingdom of God was taken from national Israel and given to a new nation, the church (Matt. 21:43). The jubilee land laws (Lev. 25) have ended forever. So have the prohibitions against genetic mixing and mixed crops. When people are baptized into Christ through the Spirit, this new priesthood puts on Christ. The older requirements or prohibitions regarding certain types of garments have ended forever. What remains is the judicial boundary between covenant-breakers and covenant-keepers. This separation is eternal (Rev. 20:14-15).
How Were These Laws Applied?
Earlier, I asked the question: Was Leviticus 19:19 itself an economic curse? In some respects, yes. It restricted the development of newer, specialized herds and crops. But these could have been imported. The law did reduce innovations in animal breeding inside national Israel. On the other hand, this law may have encouraged crop rotation. Since one crop had to be planted in one field, it was likely that after the harvest, a different crop would have been planted in that field. Crop rotation benefits agricultural productivity by replenishing the soil. As for wool-linen clothing, it has never gained popularity. Fustian was a mixture of wool and cotton. This was not prohibited. In any case, linen in the summer and wool in the winter would have been the choice fibers for those who could afford both of them.
This law imposed few costs, although it imposed some costs. That was the whole point: there was a trade-off between the seed of the land and the seed of the name, between landed wealth and tribal promise. Bearing these minor costs was an easy test of Israel's obedience. It symbolized the separation of the tribes in the land until the promised Seed arrived, transferring His inheritance to His people, a new nation of priests.
How Should These Laws Be Applied Today?
The biblical principle of not mixing seeds, whether of animals or crops in a single field, applies to us only indirectly. The basic judicial application is that we must be faithful to Jesus Christ, the promised Seed, who has come in history. In Him alone is true inheritance. But there is no application with respect to tribal boundaries. The tribes of Israel are gone forever. Thus, there is no application of this verse genetically. We are allowed to breed animals and plant various crops in the same field at the same time.
The other application of the principle of separation in this verse prohibited the wearing of mixed fiber garments. This applies to us today through baptism, for by baptism we have received our new clothing in Christ. This principle of separation still holds nationally, for it is covenantal, not tribal. It refers to the distinctions between priests and non-priests, between priestly nations and non-priestly nations. It refers to the distinction between Christendom and every other world system. But it has nothing to do with fabrics any longer.
Summary The West's agricultural revolution violated the terms of Leviticus 19:19.
The Industrial Revolution after 1760 rested on the agricultural revolution.
The fundamental change in European life leading to the Industrial Revolution was a change in property rights: the enclosure movement.
The result was innovation: entrepreneurship.
Leviticus 19:19 forbids one type of agricultural innovation.
Why has the world experienced economic blessings as a result of violating Leviticus 19:19?
The enclosure movement created legal boundaries that encouraged innovation and investment: dominion.
This case law was annulled because of its fulfillment by Jesus Christ.
Eight hermeneutical principles govern legal changes in the New Covenant: changes in priesthood, sacraments, jubilee land laws, seed laws, laws of separation (Jews vs. gentiles; males vs. females), overcoming Israel's weakness, new structure of the week, and laws of pollution.
The Westminster Confession divides the law into moral, ceremonial, and judicial.
We need another tripartite division: civil, ecclesiastical, and familial.
In Leviticus, we should search for a law of holiness: separation (boundary).
Leviticus 19:19 is governed by two separations: tribal (seed, inheritance: land) and covenantal (national-confessional).
Circumcision was a boundary of blood: a visible confession denying salvation through generation.
Tribal divisions were not confessional.
The divisions were based on separation of inheritance: different heirs.
The inheritance was legal condition (freemanship); this was tied to title to rural land.
The whole land was marked by God's name; specific units of land were marked by family names.
Tribal separation was to be secured by the seed laws until Shiloh came.
This separation was artificial: separation despite common confession.
The barrier (boundary) was legal and economic: landed inheritance.
Tribal separation decentralized Israel's politics.
Levites were a unifying force across tribal boundaries, but they had no landed inheritance outside of cities.
Inter-tribal continuity was confessional, not marital.
Prohibiting the interbreeding of animals testified to Israel's requirement to keep the tribes separate: abnormal.
The New Covenant substitutes adoption for biological reproduction: inheritance through confession and faithfulness.
The Mosaic seed laws ceased with the death of Jesus Christ: the abolition of the tribes.
Jesus transcended the tribal boundary laws (Heb. 7).
Israelites were warned not to sacrifice their seed to Molech's ritual fires.
They were not to sacrifice children for agricultural production.
Their hope was not to be in land.
God placed restrictions on developing the land's productivity.
The promised Seed (tribal separation) was more important than the land's seed (genetic experimentation).
Jacob's promise was more important than agricultural output.
Levi, Israel's "sacrificial son," was separated from landed inheritance until Shiloh came.
All domesticated animals in Israel were under this separation law.
Like the laws against mixing agricultural seeds, this prohibition pointed to tribal separation.
No new cross-bred breeds were to be deliberately produced inside Israel's boundaries.
A holding pen or other means of separation had to be built.
The same principle governed crops: no hybrid seeds produced inside Israel's boundaries.
Imported hybrid seeds could rarely generate productive heirs.
One form of mixed clothing -- linen and wool -- could be manufactured and exported, but not worn.
Linen was a priestly cloth: holy.
Wearing a wool and linen mixed fiber symbolized the mixing of priests and non-priests.
This did not matter outside Israel's boundaries: no valid priests.
This separated the nation of Israel from all others.
Separating Levi was part of the tribal seed separation laws.
Inheritance is by promise.
In the New Covenant, baptism is the mark of inheritance.
The land is no longer governed by ritual sanctions or laws of cleanliness: no more special function (agency) of Israel's ground.
This verse meant that specialized breeds could be imported but not created in Israel.
Separation was mandatory inside Israel (tribes: seeds and priestly clothing).
This was not covenantal separation; it was prophetic (inheritance).
The law was ecclesiastical; the penalty was excommunication.
Adoption overcomes tribal separation in the New Covenant.
The stipulations of Leviticus 19:19 no longer apply.
Footnotes:
1. Vern Sheridan Poythress, "Effects of Interpretive Frameworks on the Application of Old Testament Law," Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, edited by William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Academie, 1990), p. 110.
2. Meredith G. Kline, "Comments on an Old-New Error," Westminster Theological Journal, XLI (Fall 1978), p. 184.
3. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), p. 255.
4. John U. Nef, The Conquest of the Material World: Essays on the Coming of Industrialism (New York: Meridian, 1964).
5. Herbert Heaton, Economic History of Europe (rev. ed.; New York: Harper & Row, 1948), pp. 310-14, 407-13.
6. Ibid., pp. 404-7, 413-16.
7. Ibid., pp. 314-16.
8. Ibid., pp. 316-17.
9. Ibid., pp. 317-19. In England, the wood supply began to shrink in the second half of the eighteenth century. The English had to rely more and more on coal, which it had in abundance. Brinley Thomas, "Toward an Energy Interpretation of the Industrial Revolution," Atlantic Economic Journal, VIII (March 1980).
10. Ibid., pp. 319-28.
11. Ibid., pp. 494-97.
12. Ibid., pp. 489-93.
13. After 1750 in England, coal mining became significant.
14. Eric E. Lampard, The Industrial Revolution: Interpretations and Perspectives (Washington, D.C.: Service Center for Teachers of History, American Historical Association, 1957), p. 12.
15. T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), p. 4.
16. Ibid., p. 5.
17. Peter Razzell, Essays in English Population History (London: Caliban, 1993).
18. Ibid., p. 6. Cf. Shepard B. Clough, The Economic Development of Western Civilization (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), pp. 241-42.
19. Brinley Thomas, "Food Supply in the United Kingdom During the Industrial Revolution," in Joel Mokyr (ed.), The Economics of the Industrial Revolution (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. 142.
20. A surplus does not necessarily mean abundance, and surely did not mean this in the eighteenth century. A surplus is merely an asset that its producer regards as less valuable to him than the item he receives in exchange.
21. Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell, Jr., How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World (New York: Basic Books, 1986), p. 20.
22. Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (New York: Harper Torchbooks, [1921] 1965), Pt. 3; Israel M. Kirzner, Competition and Entrepreneurship (University of Chicago Press, 1973).
23. The third law, prohibiting the wearing of mixed cloth, was a restriction on domestic use, not on output as such.
24. As early as the fifteenth century, Europe was benefiting from fustian: various cloths that were a combination of linen and cotton. Heaton, Economic History, pp. 215, 232-33.
25. Peter Mathias, The First Industrial Nation: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1914 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969), pp. 78-80.
26. Ibid., pp. 77-78.
27. W. E. Tate, The Enclosure Movement (New York: Walker, 1967), pp. 60-61.
28. Ibid., ch. 6.
29. Ibid., p. 48.
30. Ashton, Industrial Revolution, p. 18.
31. Poythress, "Interpretive Frameworks," Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, p. 104.
32. Poythress does not cite a source for this assertion: ibid., p. 106.
33. Greg L. Bahnsen, By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), pp. 345-46.
34. Poythress, p. 106.
35. Ibid., p. 106n. He cites Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 255. For a detailed critique of Rushdoony's argument, see Appendix H, below: "Rushdoony on `Hybridization': From Genetic Separation to Racial Separation."
36. Bahnsen, By This Standard, p. 346.
37. Poythress, p. 106.
38. Ibid., pp. 106-7.
39. Ibid., pp. 108-9.
40. This application is especially important in dealing with Rushdoony's theory of "hybridization." See Appendix H, below.
41. There are several other hermeneutical questions that we can ask that relate to covenantal discontinuity. Sixth, is it an aspect of the weakness of the Israelites, which Christ's ministry has overcome, thereby intensifying the rigors of an Old Covenant law (Matt. 5:21-48)? Seventh, is it an aspect of the Old Covenant's cursed six day-one day work week rather than the one day-six day pattern of the New Covenant's now-redeemed week (Heb. 4:1-11)? Eighth, is it part of legal order of the once ritually polluted earth, which has now been cleansed by Christ (Acts 10; I Cor. 8)?
42. Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (2nd ed.; Phillipsberg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, [1977] 1984), p. 99.
43. On the five points, see Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992).
44. Jordan's comments to author: Sept. 1992.
45. Moises Silva, "Is the Law Against the Promises? The Significance of Galatians 3:21 for Covenant Continuity," Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, p. 158.
46. Meredith G. Kline argues that this was Paul's contention: By Oath Consigned: A Reinterpretation of the Covenant Signs of Circumcision and Baptism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1968), p. 23. Moises Silva says that Kline is incorrect on this point. Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, p. 160. In fact, Silva says, Kline's interpretation -- the radical contrast between law and promise -- is the same as the Judaizers' argument. Ibid., p. 163.
47. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 43.
48. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1864] 1955), Book I.
49. Ibid., p. 36.
50. There could be inter-tribal marriages. Daughters received dowries rather than landed inheritance. Dowries could cross tribal boundaries; land could not.
51. Aaron Wildavsky, The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political Leader (University, Alabama: University of Alabama, 1984), p. 97.
52. This is not to say that God intended them to remain rural. On the contrary, the covenantal blessing of God in the form of population growth was to move most Israelites into the cities as time went on. See below, Chapter 25, section on "The Demographics of the Jubilee Inheritance Law."
53. The exception was when rural land that had been pledged to a priest went to him in the jubilee year if the pledge was violated (Lev. 27:20-21). See Chapter 37, below: "The Redemption Price System."
54. On the incomplete genealogy of the Davidic line, see Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 147-51.
55. The absence of tribal membership in Judaism indicates that this prophecy was fulfilled prior to A.D. 70.
56. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, "Human Sacrifice" (1863), Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality, in Selected Writings of Lord Acton, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, Indiana: LibertyClassics, 1988), III, p. 405.
57. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time (Boston: Gambit, 1969), pp. 146-48.
58. Acton, "Human Sacrifice," p. 407.
59. Ibid., pp. 407-8.
60. Ibid., p. 408.
61. Santillana, Hamlet's Mill, pp. 58-59.
62. Acton, "Human Sacrifice," pp. 412-18.
63. Ibid., p. 417.
64. Chapter 20, below.
65. This argument is an argument from silence: the absence of any reference to a payment for the firstborn animals. The text specifically mentions payment for 273 firstborn sons. It does not mention another payment.
66. Roger B. Yepsen, Jr. (ed.), Organic Plant Protection (Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale, 1976), ch. 5: "Protecting Plants with Other Plants."
67. Rabbinic opinion on this verse forbade grafting. See Nachmanides (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, the Ramban), Commentary on the Torah: Leviticus (New York: Shiloh, [1267?] 1974), p. 295. He cites the Talmud: Kiddushin 39a.
68. Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (Boulder, Colorado: Pluto Press, 1994), p. 45.
69. In biblical law, if something is not prohibited, it is allowed.
70. On this point I disagree with James Jordan and all of the authorities he cites, both gentiles and Jews. Their argument is that because the high priest's clothing was colored, it had to be a mixture of wool and linen because linen is difficult to dye. Jordan cites Exodus 28:5-6. But this passage says that even the thread had to be linen (v. 6). I can find no passage that indicates that the priests wore anything but linen when they brought sacrifices before God. This includes Exodus 39:29, which Jordan also cites. This is unquestionably the case in the post-exilic period. I think it is safer to go with the language of the texts than with a theory of ancient dyeing techniques. Jordan and several of the authorities he cites claim that the mixture of fabrics was itself holy, so non-priests could not lawfully wear such mixed clothing. I argue the opposite: pure linen was holy, so the wool-linen mixture was forbidden. See James Jordan, "The Law of Forbidden Mixtures," Biblical Horizons Occasional Paper No. 6, pp. 3, 6. In any case, the issue was holiness. It had to do with the separation of priests from non-priests: within the land of Israel and between the priestly nation of Israel and the non-priestly nations.
71. "Wool," Software Toolworks Illustrated Encyclopedia (Grolier Encyclopedia) (1990).
72. That is to say, the sacramental sanctions were absent.
73. For this reason, I believe that the predictable relationship between covenantal cursings and blessings is no longer applicable to floods and earthquakes. God's covenantal blessings and cursings are imposed by men as God's covenantal agents in New Covenant history. Men now exercise dominion over a creation that no longer acts as a covenantal agent. This is another reason why I am a preterist: the earthquakes described in the Book of Revelation completed God's judgment against national Israel. These land-applied, covenantally predictable curses are no longer an aspect of the New Testament judicial order. They ceased being covenantally predictable in A.D. 70.
74. David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
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