27
FOOD MIRACLES AND COVENANTAL PREDICTABILITY Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety. And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety. And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store (Lev. 25:18-22).
The theocentric meaning of this passage is that God sustains His people, and more than sustains them. He offers them plenty. They are required to acknowledge this fact by trusting His promises. They display this trust through their obedience to His law.
This passage begins with a re-statement of the familiar cause-and-effect relationship between corporate external obedience to God's covenant law and corporate external blessings. We know that the frame of reference is corporate blessings because of the use of the first person plural: "What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase." In this case, the text focuses on two blessings: peace and food. "Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety. And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety." This is a repeated theme in the Bible. "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it" (Micah 4:4).
Universal Benefits: Peace and Food If this dual promise of peace and food were found only in Leviticus 25, it could be discussed as an aspect of the jubilee laws and therefore no longer in force. But the list of God's positive sanctions in Leviticus 26:3-15 indicates that this pair of positive sanctions was not uniquely tied to the jubilee. The promise of peace and food is more general than the jubilee law, since it refers to "my statutes" and "my judgments." God refers Israel back to His revealed law-order. It is their covenantal faithfulness to the stipulations of this law-order which alone serves the basis of their external prosperity. Without obedience, they can have no legitimate confidence in their earthly future in the land. This law has a broad application. It undergirds the observation by David: "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread" (Ps. 37:25). The link between obedience to God's statutes and eating is reflected in David's observation: righteousness and the absence of begging.
Why is this passage found in the jubilee statutes? Because of the unique place of both the land and the harvest in the jubilee laws. Preceding this section are laws that deal with the transfer of a family's land to the heirs: the return -- legally, though not necessarily physically -- of each man to his father's land (v. 13). This was a testament of liberation. Because of this law, there could be no permanent legal enslavement of Israelites inside the land.(1) The jubilee law also established an obligation for all leasehold contracts to be based on the jubilee year's requirement of rural land's reversion to the original family (vv. 14-17). Following the announcement of the dual blessing of peace and food is another promise: a triple crop in the sixth year of the seventh cycle of sabbatical weeks of years (vv. 20-22).
The promise of peace and food points the reader's attention to the author of the law. God is sovereign. He promises to bring them national prosperity in response to their adherence to His laws. This promise is conditional: no obedience, no prosperity. This fact of covenantal life becomes clear in the next chapter of Leviticus. In order to demonstrate the reliability of His promises on a year-to-year basis, He promised a manifestation of His supernatural sovereignty: a miracle year.
The Miracle Year To the jubilee year was attached a miracle. God promised to deliver a triple crop in the sixth year of the seventh sabbatical cycle of years. "And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store" (vv. 20-22). This triple portion was God's way of announcing His presence with His people. They would be given sufficient crops to sustain them through the sabbath year and the jubilee year. Then, at the end of the jubilee (eighth) year, they were to plant for the next year.
The Miraculous Manna
In the wilderness period, they had been given the almost daily miracle of the manna. The exception to this miracle was itself an even greater miracle. On the day before the sabbath, they could gather a double portion. The manna in jars would not rot on the sabbath (Ex. 16:22). On every other day of the week, any manna that was left in a jar overnight would rot (Ex. 16:20).
As I have written in my commentary on Exodus, the manna had a function beyond the mere provisioning of the people with their daily bread. It was given to them in order that they might develop confidence in God as a sovereign provider. His provision of manna was miraculous. It was also regular. They had to trust God to bring the manna the next day, for it could not be stored overnight. Then, once a week, the regularity of the miracle was manifested in a different way: the miraculous rotting of the manna miraculously ceased. They could store it overnight, so that they would not have to labor to harvest it on the sabbath. So, the miracle was to teach them about the regularity of God's provisioning, as well as their total dependence on His grace.(2)
When they came into the land, the manna ceased forever: "And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year" (Josh. 5:12). The fruit of the land would henceforth sustain them. But this did not mean that they were any less dependent on God for their food. Now, however, their food would come predictably in terms of their corporate covenantal conformity to His law: the greater their obedience, the more predictable their food.
The Miraculous Triple Crop
In order to remind them of their continuing need to obey Him, as the sovereign provider of food, God did not totally remove His miracles from the land. Twice per century, God promised to provide them with bread in a miraculous way: the triple crop of the sixth year in the seventh cycle of the sabbatical week of years. This would be the equivalent of manna.
The Self-Discipline of Thrift In a normal cycle of seven years, the Israelites had to save enough grain over six years to get through the seventh (sabbatical) year and half way through the eighth year, until the eighth-year crop could be harvested.(3) But this was not the case in jubilee year periods. In the sixth year would come a triple crop. That crop would feed them in the second half of year six, all of year seven (sabbatical), all of year eight (jubilee), and half way through year nine.
This means that in the six years prior to a jubilee year, farmers did not have to store up crops in order to carry themselves through the sabbatical year, the jubilee year, and half way through the ninth year until the crop came in. This triple crop was Old Covenant Israel's equivalent of the manna of the wilderness: a miraculous gift from God. It was the bread of life.
In escaping the production restraints of a normal sabbatical cycle, they acknowledged their dependence on the grace of God. The thrift that was agriculturally necessary during normal sabbatical periods was not required during the jubilee's week of years. Each farm could safely consume or sell one-sixth of each year's crop during the final sabbatical cycle. This income would otherwise have had to be stored or sold for cash and retained in that form in preparation for the sabbatical year. This pre-jubilee miracle would have made it possible for thrifty farmers to increase their purchase of farming tools, or make investments in urban industries, or make foreign investments. This extra marketable output of food would have tended to lower the price of food in Israel during jubilee periods, thereby stimulating the export of food to nations where food prices were higher.(4) Meanwhile, not-so-thrifty Israelites could have enjoyed more food, or else they could have sold the agricultural surplus in order to buy urban-produced consumer goods or imported consumer goods. To both the thrifty and the less thrifty, God promised six consecutive years of relief from the pressure to save for the normal sabbatical year.
To take advantage of this miraculous gift from God, the Israelites had to trust God to deliver on His promise to the nation. If they refused to save for six years in preparation for the arrival of a sabbath year of rest and the jubilee year, back to back, a refusal of God to deliver the triple crop would have created near-famine conditions by the ninth year. Many people would have been forced to sell their family lands or even sell themselves into slavery -- in the very period that God set aside for the recovery of family lands and the release of bondservants. Thus, they had to exercise faith that the triple crop would arrive on schedule.
On the other hand, if God delivered on His promise, but the people then refused to honor the sabbatical year and/or the jubilee year, planting and harvesting instead, this would have constituted a misuse of the jubilee miracle. It would have constituted theft from God through the economic oppression of hired harvesters, strangers, and gleaners. It is clear from the message of Jeremiah that the nation did not honor the sabbatical years for 70 sabbatical cycles, or 490 years. This is why they were sent into captivity. "To fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years" (II Chron. 36:21).
There is no unambiguous biblical record that the jubilee law was ever honored in Israel. We know that the sabbath year of release was not honored for 490 years prior to the exile. Since they did not honor the sabbath year of release, it is highly doubtful that God ever gave them the promised triple crop in the seventh sabbatical cycle. Without the triple crop, perhaps they chose to ignore the jubilee law. The Bible does not say.
Miracles, Sanctions, and Mysticism When Jesus announced His fulfillment of the jubilee year (Luke 4:18-21), He was announcing the end of the miraculous jubilee year. Under the New Covenant, there is no triple crop in the sixth year of the seventh "week of years." The faith of New Covenant-keepers has been stripped of a national miracle that demonstrated the reliability of God's providential and law-bounded covenantal order, just as a similar faith during the wilderness era was stripped of a daily miracle when the manna ceased upon the nation's entry into Canaan. As the spiritual maturity of covenant-keepers advances, miracles steadily cease.(5)
The question arises: What about the covenantal cause-and-effect connection between corporate external obedience and corporate blessings? Are covenant-bound societies still promised peace and agricultural prosperity if they adhere to the external requirements God's revealed law? Was this annulled by Jesus in His fulfillment of the jubilee year? No. In Leviticus 26, which appears after the close of the jubilee laws, we read: "And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land" (Lev. 26:6). This recapitulation of the promise of Leviticus 25:18-19 indicates that this aspect of the jubilee law was broader than an aspect of the jubilee law. But was it a cross-boundary law? Did it apply outside the Promised Land? The recapitulation in Leviticus 26 is paralleled in Deuteronomy 28, and is mentioned as a testimony to the nations:
The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways. And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee (Deut. 28:7-10; emphasis added).
Why should they be afraid of Israel if they did not interpret the visible predictable sanctions in Israel as proof of God's unique presence with Israel? Did this fear apply only to the risks of invading Israel? Were the nations not also to fear a counter-invasion by Israel?(6) Deuteronomy 20:10-20 lists the laws of siege. These laws did not apply to Israel's invasion of Canaan, for they established legitimate terms of surrender, which were not options during the conquest. Therefore, these military laws had to apply to warfare outside the land. They were cross-boundary laws. Since Israel was to be feared by foreign nations, the corporate covenantal sanctions visible to foreigners inside the land had to be presumed by them to apply outside the land, too (Deut. 4:4-8).
Without the miracle of manna or the miracle of the triple crop, New Covenant Christians are thrown back on their faith in God's revealed word. The compelling evidence of God is supposed to be God's word. This always was the case, but the miracles were added to overcome the Israelites' weakness of faith. Old Covenant believers in the wilderness had daily edible reminders of God's presence. In the Promised Land, these reminders were reduced numerically to twice per century. In the New Covenant, the miracle of food is restricted to the Lord's Supper. This miracle -- co-participation in heavenly worship by the earthly church and the heavenly church -- must be accepted on faith.(7)
Covenantal Predictability
Has God reduced His covenantal predictability in history along with His reduction of miracles? For instance, does it take longer today than it did in Mosaic Israel for God to bring his negative sanctions in history? No evidence that I am aware of suggests this. Sometimes, the negative sanctions came soon. God was angry with Israel, so He moved David to take an illegal holy census (I Sam. 24:1).(8) David's sin in numbering the nation brought an immediate plague on 70,000 people (II Sam. 24:15). Rapid judgment was the threat that Nineveh faced; the nation therefore repented. Covenant-breakers outside the land understood the cause-and-effect connection between corporate sin and God's wrath in history. In other cases, judgment was delayed for centuries. In Mosaic Israel, the nation violated the sabbatical year laws for centuries. Not until Jeremiah's day were they told that God would soon bring His corporate wrath against the nation for this long-term act of rebellion by sending them into captivity (I Chron. 36:21).
While miracles steadily disappear, the covenantal promise of God's predictable corporate sanctions remain in place. If this were not the case, the sanctions aspect of the Lord's Supper (I Cor. 11:30) would be transferred completely out of history. While a man's verbal oath and the physical sacraments are part of history, the oath is taken under God, who is in eternity. Some of the personal sanctions are both predictable and eternal, but corporate negative sanctions are exclusively historical (no sin beyond the resurrection). On what exegetical basis can the sacrament's sanctions be said to be predictable only outside of history and apply only to individuals?
This raises the question of civil oaths. Nations take oaths (Ex. 19). Are these oaths enforced exclusively by men rather than God? Political pluralists are logically compelled to answer yes: no God enforces corporate civil oaths with covenantally predictable historical sanctions invoked by the oaths. If pluralists were to answer no, thereby affirming God's predictable, corporate, covenantal, historical sanctions, they would have to abandon their pluralism. Their religion forbids them to answer otherwise: no supernatural frame of reference for civil oaths.
If God's predictable, corporate, covenantal sanctions in history were to disappear, just as predictable corporate miracles such as manna and the triple crop have disappeared, Christianity would necessarily be progressively absorbed into the larger covenant-breaking culture. Whatever regularity in corporate sanctions that might be said to exist in history would be based on shared, universal categories of social and political ethics, e.g., natural law theory. There would be no way for the kingdom of God to manifest its presence among men except through the verbal testimony of individuals regarding totally invisible, subjectively discerned patterns of predictability, e.g., "I feel all tingly when I pray." For those people who have no desire to feel tingly, or who are content to take niacinamide whenever they want to feel tingly, such verbal testimony carries no weight. Christian culture could be differentiated from pagan culture only through the personal mysticism of its members. But mysticism is inherently without theological and judicial content -- beyond the realm of creeds and intellectual categories. So-called Christian mysticism cannot be distinguished judicially from pagan mysticism. In short, if neither revelational ethics and its attached sanctions nor miracles identify the historical presence of the kingdom of God, the institutional church ceases to have a role to play in history visibly different from any other charitable or salvationist organization. This lack of distinction has overtaken most evangelical churches in the twentieth century. Christianity is regarded by covenant-breakers as just one more ameliorative-mystical tradition among thousands.
The way to restore the church to its position as society's central institution is to preach a separate biblical worldview based on biblical law and biblical sanctions. The other avenue for distinguishing the church from the world -- the quest for miracles or continuing revelation -- in the twentieth century has been the differentiating mark of pentecostals and charismatics.(9) The third path is mysticism.
Covenantal corporate predictability in history is mandatory if Christians are to reconstruct social theory. If such regularity did not exist in New Covenant history, then society could not be reformed on a uniquely Christian basis. The church would then seek to avoid social transformation. It would retreat from the world (discontinuity) or conform itself to the world (continuity). It would go fundamentalist-mystical or liberal. This is generally what happened in the United States, 1900-1975. As Rushdoony says, the fundamentalists believe in God but not in history, while the liberals believe in history but not in God. In either case, the world is abandoned to the covenantal representatives of Satan. There is no neutrality.
Miracles of Feeding The law of God is given to all men so that they will learn to obey the God of the Bible. If they live in societies that are marked by widespread obedience to the external laws of God, they will experience widespread external blessings, among which are peace and food.
To prove that this promise can be trusted, God on occasion has established miracles of feeding. The first time was in the wilderness period: the manna. When they entered the Promised Land, they initially lived off the crops of their defeated enemies. Then, as they began to plant and reap, they were to become thrifty: saving, not for a rainy day, but for the sabbatical year. But in the seventh cycle of sabbatical years, God promised to give them a miracle: the triple crop of the sixth year. This was to allow them to save for six years and not be forced to consume their savings in the seventh and eighth, or consume what would normally have been saved for six years and not be penalized for their consumption.(10)
The triple crop was also to remind them that God's blessings are predictable in history. It would remind them that the source of their prosperity was not thrift as such, but thrift within the framework of God's covenant. They were warned not to draw a false conclusion, one based on the humanist presupposition of the autonomy of man: "And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day" (Deut. 8:17-18). Covenantal blessings are given to confirm the covenant.
Conclusion The miracle of the triple crop was promised to Israel in order to confirm visibly: 1) the sovereignty of God over nature; 2) the predictability of God's covenant-based blessings in history. The Israelites were not to capitulate to the temptation of worshipping another god, either a god of nature or a god of history -- the only two kinds of idols available to covenant-breaking man.(11)
Modern covenant-breaking man denies the miracles. He wishes to divinize either nature or history or both (Darwinism). To do this, he must deny all traces of God's authority over nature and history. Modern man has chosen evolution as his god, meaning his source of law. Evolution is said to govern both nature and historical process. Evolution is regarded as impersonal except when man, meaning elite men, learn the secrets of evolution and then direct both nature and history.(12) A major appeal of evolution is power.
Modern Christians reject evolution in its humanist form. They insist that God is still sovereign over history, although Augustinians and Calvinists alone insist that God predestines everything that comes to pass in history. There are virtually no visible traces of Catholic Augustinianism and very few traces of Calvinism. Furthermore, most Calvinists in the late twentieth century have explicitly or implicitly denied the existence of covenantal predictability in New Covenant times. They openly reject the idea of a national civil covenant under God. They are political pluralists.(13) They do not believe that God brings predictable corporate sanctions, positive or negative, in terms of a nation's obedience to God's Bible-revealed law.(14)
This belief leaves them without any miracles with which to challenge humanists and other covenant-breakers. This belief also provides them with a theological explanation for the seeming helplessness of Christianity to transform culture by establishing the civilization of God in history: God's kingdom. This in turn creates a deep psychological need to find personal solace in the midst of inevitable cultural defeat: pietistic ecclesiastical ghettos. Finally, their widespread acceptance of life in these ghettos has led to the development of ghetto eschatologies.(15)
Without a concept of God's covenant in history, Christians have not been able to develop an explicitly Christian social theory. They have relied on imported pagan natural law concepts to develop what few social ideas they possess. All of this has been the product of the widespread acceptance of the original theological assumption, namely, that God in the New Covenant era has annulled the covenantal predictability of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. With neither widespread faith in the miracle of covenantal predictability nor the presence of earlier covenantal miracles of food and healing, modern Christians have become almost totally defensive in their thinking. Ideas have consequences.
Summary The promises of peace and food were corporate.
The promises of peace and food were covenantal, not jubilee-related.
These promises appear in the jubilee passage because of the unique place of both land and harvest in the jubilee.
God promised a miraculous triple crop in the year before the sabbatical year prior to the jubilee.
This was analogous to the manna of the wilderness.
In normal sabbatical cycles, they had to save for six years to prepare for the seventh.
The triple crop allowed them to escape the normal burden of scarcity in the sabbatical year.
They had to rely on a miracle to take advantage of it during years one through six.
They announced their dependence on God and their faith in God by not laying up food for six years.
But to fail to honor the sabbath year and the jubilee by planting and harvesting would have constituted rebellion.
Jesus fulfilled the jubilee year.
This marked the end of the triple crop, as surely as crossing into Canaan marked the end of the manna.
Over time, God's miracles steadily are removed.
Christians are to rest their faith in the Bible, not miracles.
The miracle of the Lord's Supper must be taken on faith: not transubstantiation or consubstantiation but rather co-participation in heavenly worship.
Miracles of feeding were to persuade Israel of God's sovereignty over nature.
They were given to remind Israel of God's predictability in history.
This was to keep Israel from both kinds of idols: idols of nature and idols of history.
Modern man denies the miracle of covenantal predictability.
Modern man chooses to believe in the twin idol of nature and history: evolution.
Modern Christians deny God's sovereignty (predestination) and His covenantal predictability (historical sanctions).
They deny covenant theology.
The church is no longer able to be distinguished from any other charitable organization.
This keeps them from developing a uniquely Christian social theory.
Footnotes:
1. The law applied to all Israelites. Aliens could become heirs of this promise through adoption, either into a family (rural) or tribe (walled city). Excommunication removed an heir from his landed inheritance. Excommunication also removed him from citizenship. This is why a excommunicant's adult sons had to break publicly with him and his rebellion in order to preserve their own inheritance. Although there is no law governing this, I presume that minor sons of an excommunicated father could inherit upon their majority at age 20 if they broke with their father publicly when they turned 20. The goal of biblical law is restoration.adult sons had to break publicly with him and his rebellion in order to preserve their own inheritance. Although there is no law governing this, I presume that minor sons of an excommunicated father could inherit upon their majority at age 20 if they broke with their father publicly when they turned 20. At age 20, they became eligible for military numbering (Ex. 30:12): citizenship. The Mosaic law always had covenantal resoration as its goal.
2. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), ch. 18: "Manna, Predictability, and Dominion."
3. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 816-17.
4. Because of the high cost of ground transportation, these exported crops would normally have gone by boat.
5. This has been the case in the history of Christianity. In the early church, the miracles of healing and exorcism were important in evangelism. Today, both of these gifts are far less evident in advanced industrial nations, although both still are used by some fundamentalist missionaries working in primitive societies or in societies deeply in bondage to a rival supernatural religion.
6. Israel was not to initiate foreign wars. The Mosaic festival laws made empire impossible. There was no permanent payoff in launching foreign wars.
7. New Covenant Christians have gone in three directions to explain this miracle. Roman Catholics have turned to philosophical realism: the literal, bodily presence of Christ in the sacrament. The Lutherans also are realists, defending the body and blood of Christ as being substantially present: Formula of Concord (1576), Art. VII, Sections 1, 2. Anabaptists have adopted nominalism: the Lord's Supper as a mere memorial. The biblical view is neither realism nor nominalism but covenantalism: God's special judicial presence in the eating of the meal. It is a meal eaten on the Lord's Day, or Day of the Lord, or judgment day.
8. The census was to be taken prior to holy war (Deut. 20).
9. Katherine Kulhman, I Believe in Miracles (New York: Pyramid Books, [1962] 1964).
10. The prophets used the miracle of feeding on numerous occasions. The pagan widow of Zerephath had two containers that filled daily, one with oil and the other with meal, when Elijah lived in her home (I Ki. 17:14-15). In the New Testament, Jesus used the miracle of feeding on at least two occasions.
11. Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with American Society (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway, [1983] 1993), p. 11.
12. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), Appendix A: "From Cosmic Purposelessness to Humanistic Sovereignty."
13. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), chaps. 3-5.
14. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 7.
15. Gary North, "Ghetto Eschatologies," Biblical Economics Today, XIV (April/May 1992).
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