RAIN AND INHERITANCE For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: A land which the LORD thy God careth for: the eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year. And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil (Deut. 11:10-14).
This prophecy was not universal. It was tied to the land of Canaan. Its theocentric focus is God's sovereignty over the weather. While this control is still a feature of God's sovereignty, the prophecy was specific: specific boundaries, specific topography, and specific weather. As we shall see, the New Covenant established a different principle for weather. It is no longer predictable in terms of national ethics. It would be in the Promised Land: "Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the LORD'S wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you" (Deut. 11:16-17).
Egypt vs. Canaan Canaan, Moses promised, would be very different from Egypt. One visible difference would be the source of water. The comparison was between watering with one's foot and watering from on high. What did it mean, "waterest with thy foot"? This probably referred to Egyptian irrigation. The Nile was the only source of water in Egypt. A series of man-made canals directed the water to various regions. Farmers tapped into the water supplied by these canals. A farm's irrigation system may have employed a series of small, foot-activated water wheels to direct the flow. This was W. M. Thompson's suggestion in 1880. He had seen nineteenth-century Egyptian peasants use such devices. Or the verse may have referred to the farmer's moving of dirt with his foot to plug one furrow in order to direct the water into another furrow.(1) In either case, irrigating by foot was a time-consuming, labor-intensive process. Much of the farmer's labor would have been devoted to directing the precious water into the seeded soil.
This would not be a farmer's main burden in the Promised Land. In Canaan, God would bring water from the sky. From the beginning of the year to the end, God's eyes would be upon this land (v. 12). This was a clear benefit compared with Egypt, where the survival of the nation depended on the brief period each year in which the Nile flooded. This was the only source of Egypt's water and therefore its prosperity. Not so in Canaan. Under God's direct authority, the rain and the sun would nourish the land to enable it to produce its wealth.
Bureaucracy and Waterworks There was another important aspect of this blessing: the reduction of administrative bureaucracy. We know that whenever ancient societies depended heavily on national irrigation systems and sophisticated technologies of flood control, they became centralized bureaucracies that were controlled by those with the astronomical and technical information necessary to plan agriculture.(2) Wittfogel calls these centralized civilizations hydraulic economies. "Time keeping and calendar making are essential for the success of all hydraulic economies. . . ."(3) He classifies Egypt as a hydraulic economy.
We know that ancient Egypt possessed a sophisticated astronomical calendar that charted the stars.(4) One specialist in the ancient world's systems of measurement has reported that the Egyptians as early as the first dynasty had measured the geography of the Nile down to minutes of both longitude and latitude, from the equator to the Mediterranean Sea. This could not have been done, he argues, without highly advanced astronomical knowledge.(5) Egypt was the classic model of an imperial bureaucracy.(6) It is not far-fetched to connect Egypt's bureaucracy to Egypt's dependence on a single source of water.
The land of Canaan was a very different environment from Egypt. Its source of water was the heavens. There could be no centralized control of the water supply. There was no way to gain a special advantage through knowledge of the calendar combined with knowledge of the rise and fall of a single river. The knowledge of the seasons was available to any observant farmer. Knowledge of the timing of the rain would not become the monopoly of any priestly caste. This necessarily decentralized power in Israel.
As for the calendar, the priests had to share this knowledge with the people. The three annual journeys to Jerusalem had to be timed perfectly (Ex. 23:14-17). So did the day of atonement (Lev. 16:29-30). The nation had to be told in advance when these times were so that people could plan their journeys. The times of the year were to remain common knowledge in Israel. The firstfruits offering had to be made at Pentecost, fifty days after Passover (Ex. 34:22; Lev. 23:15-17). The feast of Booths or Tabernacles was linked to the harvest (Lev. 23:39-43). The Israelites understood the agricultural calendar.
The sabbatical year of release (Deut. 15), in which the reading of the law to the assembled nation would occur (Deut. 31:10-13), had to be known to all men in Israel, including strangers. This would in turn provide knowledge of the timing of the jubilee year (Lev. 25). None of this was secret information. Knowledge of God's law and knowledge of the calendar were linked.
The tribes had possession of information regarding their boundaries. This decentralized another form of knowledge in Israel: geography. The four types of specialized knowledge by which Egyptian bureaucrats controlled the nation -- astronomy, the calendar, flood cycles, and geography -- were either possessed by all Israelites or were irrelevant to agriculture in Israel.
God controlled the water supply, Moses said. For as long as Israelites believed this, the priesthood could not plausibly assert power over the affairs of the nation based on their special meteorological relationship with God. In fact, the opposite was true: the false religion of the priests of Ahab's reign was the cause of God's withholding of rain (I Ki. 17:1). A prophet who opposed the official priesthood to the point of commanding their collective execution (I Ki. 18:40) was the mediatorial source of water in Israel: an anti-bureaucratic figure if there ever was one.
Linear Time, Eschatological Time Time for Israel was not cyclical; it was linear. It was linear because it was eschatological. Dozens of prophecies were tied to Israel's future. Jacob-Israel's prophecy regarding the coming of Shiloh was the main one: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be" (Gen. 49:10).
Astronomy in the ancient world produced a cyclical worldview. The priests' knowledge of the specific positioning of the heavens throughout the year was extremely sophisticated -- far beyond that possessed by most educated people in modern times. The ancients knew about the wobbling of the earth's axis, although they explained this in terms of the wobbling of the heavens.(7) They knew about the 26,000-year cycle of the pole stars. This "great year" led to a cyclical view of history.(8)
They did not know about the hydrologic cycle: bodies of water-evaporation-condensation-rain. They had a more direct view of rainfall: the intervention of some deity. Moses called it "the rain of heaven." God views the land from heaven. He cares for it. He sends the rain. The absence of rain should be seen as a covenantal curse: "Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the LORD'S wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you" (Deut. 11:16-17). This warning was fulfilled under Ahab (I Ki. 17).
Thus, the cycle of rain was not to be understood as a cycle in the sense of providing a model for time. Israel's agricultural cycle would be cyclical: rain, sun, harvest, planting, but always within the framework of the three annual feasts and festivals. These festivals were eschatological, always looking ahead toward the coming of the messiah and His kingdom. The rain cycle was therefore covenantal. It would be governed by the nation's obedience or disobedience to God's law.
Here was a crucial distinction between Israel and all other ancient nations: nature was not seen as normative. Its processes were seen as dependent on the nation's covenantal faithfulness. The operations of nature in Israel were different from its operations outside the borders of the land. The Mosaic Covenant's land laws and seed laws were unique to Israel, for they were tied to the messianic prophecies, especially the prophecy regarding Shiloh.(9) Inside Israel's borders, nature was an aspect of the special grace of the Mosaic Covenant: "And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full" (Deut. 11:13-15). Outside these borders, the common grace of the Adamic covenant applied: ". . . for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matt. 5:45b).(10)
Jacob had gone down into Egypt because the common curse of nature had impoverished him. God's special grace had been shown to Egypt through Joseph's ability to interpret Pharaoh's dream. Egypt had grain for sale during the famine; Palestine did not. God did not spare Egypt from nature's curse by interfering with nature's processes. He spared Egypt by a special revelation in advance. God had a plan for the sons of Jacob. This plan was larger than the plans of the decision-makers. As Joseph said to his brothers, "But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive" (Gen. 50:20).
Egypt's salvation in a time of famine had been based on the Pharaoh's power to tax one-fifth of the crops of Egypt (Gen. 41:34). He had the power to place Joseph in charge of the entire operation: "And he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had; and they cried before him, Bow the knee: and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt" (Gen. 41:43). This power was derived from two sources: Egypt's faith in the Pharaoh as a god and the priesthood's knowledge of the cycles of the Nile. Joseph exempted the priesthood from his famine-driven purchase of the land of Egypt in the name of Pharaoh (Gen. 47:22). This indicates that the priests had been the allies of Pharaoh in maintaining Pharaoh's power over the nation. The Mosaic law prohibited the exercise of such power by any king in Israel (Deut. 17:16-17). Israel's covenant-governed hydrologic cycle reinforced this prohibition.
The Biblical Doctrine of Economic Growth Because the Mosaic Covenant was eschatological, Israelites could legitimately expect long-term per capita economic growth in response to their faithfulness. The cyclical pattern of rain-sun-harvest would not become a restriction on Israel's development. On the contrary, the covenantal basis of this cycle guaranteed compound growth in response to national covenantal faithfulness. The agricultural cycle was not dominant inside Israel's borders; covenant law, its sanctions, and linear time were.
The Mosaic Covenant's positive sanction of growth -- population and productivity -- meant that the Israelites were not prisoners of nature. Nature is subordinate to God, and God ruled Israel by a covenant. The Israelites could gain control over nature through national obedience. In Egypt, the priests and perhaps other initiated specialists controlled the output of agriculture through their guild's knowledge of the calendar and the Nile's flood pattern. Salvation was by knowledge and power, not national obedience. In Israel, none of this was the case. The wealth of national Israel would be the product of ethics: the special grace of the Mosaic Covenant. Its positive economic sanctions were population growth and increased wealth per capita. The biblical model for economic growth was based on the existence of visible economic blessings as the means of covenantal confirmation. "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. 8:18).
A cyclical worldview denies the long-run possibility of such positive economic sanctions. So does the modern world's zero economic growth model.(11) The ancients believed that a cycle of growth would always be undermined by a cycle of decay. The cosmic age of gold was followed by ages of debased metals.(12) This pattern of decay was dominant in the thinking of cyclical cosmologists. The great year would repeat its cycle, and social cycles must reflect this cosmic cycle.(13)
Moses denied the existence of any cosmic cycle when he told the people that rain would come in terms of the covenant. The Mosaic Covenant was eschatological. Its sanctions had to be interpreted in terms of linear eschatology, not the great year. There would be only one messiah, not an endless series of them.
The Bible's primary theme is the transition from wrath to grace. There would not be another Adam to repeat the transgression of the first Adam. On the contrary, the messiah would be a superior Adam, a second Adam whose fulfillment of the terms of the covenant would forever replace the Adamic covenant and its tests and sanctions. The New Heavens and the New Earth would replace the present cosmic order. Yet there must be eschatological continuity between history's New Heavens and the New Earth and eternity's:
For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed (Isa. 65:17-20).
This prophesied era cannot refer to eternity, for sinners will still be dwelling among the righteous. Death will still be present. The prophesied millennial blessing of extended life expectancy is earth-bound. No verse in Scripture more clearly refutes the amillennial system of interpretation.(14) This is why amillennialist Archibald Hughes, in his book, A New Heaven and New Earth (1958),(15) refuses comment on this passage. He writes as though this passage did not exist, despite the fact that his book invokes its language. He comments exclusively on the New Testament's passages where this phrase occurs. He knows exactly what he is doing. He refuses to discuss the historical aspects of kingdom inheritance in a book devoted to the eternal inheritance. This is the heart of amillennialism: it asserts a radical discontinuity between New Covenant history and eternity.(16)
The Mosaic Covenant's optimistic eschatological worldview made possible the hope of sustained positive sanctions: a permanent inheritance. The Bible affirms that this covenantal inheritance cannot be dispersed or destroyed in eternity. It will begin to manifest itself in history. Over and over, the Old Testament affirms this fact:
His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth (Ps. 25:13).
For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth (Ps. 37:9).
But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace (Ps. 37:11).
This inheritance is the kingdom of God. It is a kingdom visibly manifested by its dominion in history. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar:
Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth (Dan. 2:34-35).
And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure (Dan. 2:44-45).
Sustained economic growth is not only possible; it is normative. It remains an ethical obligation for every covenant-keeping society. This economic implication of the eschatology of the Mosaic Covenant was not annulled by the New Covenant. The fact that Shiloh came to fulfill the terms of the Mosaic Covenant did not annul its eschatology. On the contrary, Jesus Christ announced that His definitive fulfillment of the Mosaic Covenant in history must be progressively implemented in history by His followers (Matt. 28:18-20). We call this the Great Commission.(17) Commission is the correct word: this world-transforming task has been commissioned to us, and we are paid a very high commission: 90 percent. God contents Himself with a mere 10 percent: the tithe.(18) As any salesman will tell you, a 90 percent commission structure is a very great commission.
Conclusion Moses told the Israelites that their inheritance in the Promised Land would be something unique: an agricultural cycle marked by covenantal sanctions, positive and negative. Their covenantal faithfulness would determine which category of sanctions they would experience. This framework would apply to agriculture. The covenant, not miracles of nature, would soon become normative inside Israel's national boundaries.
The Mosaic Covenant's eschatological foundation would therefore govern the Mosaic economy in the broadest sense, Moses told them. Negative corporate sanctions would not become permanent; positive corporate sanctions could become permanent. Paganism's cyclical pessimism has no covenantal foundation, Moses implicitly was telling them. Covenant-keepers will inevitably inherit the earth in history. The kingdom of God is the universal kingdom in history because it is the universal kingdom in eternity. While the Old Covenant did not speak of eternity, it spoke very clearly about history. It taught that history is covenantal, not cyclical. Moses said that this fact would be seen by all Israel in the rain of heaven.
Footnotes:
1. W. M. Thompson, The Land and the Book, 3 vols. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1880), I, p. 22.
2. Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1957).
3. Ibid., p. 29.
4. Henri Frankfort, et al., The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East (University of Chicago Press, [1946] 1977), p. 81.
5. Livio C. Stecchini, "Astronomical Theory and Historical Data," in The Velikovsky Affair: The Warfare of Science and Scientism, edited by Alfred de Grazia (New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1966), p. 167.
6. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), ch. 2.
7. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the future of time (Boston: Godine, [1969] 1977).
8. See Chapter 21, above: section on "The Idea of Progress and Inheritance."
9. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), ch. 33.
10. Ibid., pp. 549-54.
11. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 29.
12. Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 105-200.
13. Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959).
14. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 98-106, 213-14.
15. Archibald Hughes, A New Heaven and a New Earth: An Introductory Study of the Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Eternal Inheritance (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1958).
16. North, Millennialism and Social Theory, p. 123.
17. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
18. Gary North, Tithing and the Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994).
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