COMMUNAL MEALS AND NATIONAL INCORPORATION But unto the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come: And thither ye shall bring your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, and your tithes, and heave offerings of your hand, and your vows, and your freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herds and of your flocks: And there ye shall eat before the LORD your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hand unto, ye and your households, wherein the LORD thy God hath blessed thee. Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes. But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land which the LORD your God giveth you to inherit, and when he giveth you rest from all your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety; . . .(Deut. 12:5-10).
God's name was to be placed publicly on Israelite society. Here is the theocentric focus of this law: God as the owner of Israel. God was to become central to the life of the nation. This shared confession would unify the nation. The unity of Israel was grounded in the unity of God (Deut. 6:4). At the same time, the plurality of Israel was grounded in the plural nature of God (Gen. 1:26; 11:7). This plurality was to serve as the basis of Israel's system of tribal localism and political decentralization. Israel, like God, was to be both one and many.
An Anti-Polytheistic Land Law Canaan was a polytheistic culture. Israel was monotheistic, though not unitarian. God is plural in His unity. "Let us make man in our image" (Gen. 1:26a). "Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language" (Gen. 11:7a). This language is dismissed by unitarians as a so-called "plural of majesty," meaning unitarian majesty. On the contrary, such language announced early and emphatically that God is plural, which is why He is majestic. The persons of the Trinity operate as the ultimate team.
The equal ultimacy of unity and plurality in the Godhead is the ontological foundation of man's incorporation: the coming together of many in a display of unity. Cannanitic culture was pluralistic because it was polytheistic. There was no single place of sacrifice and celebration in Canaan. The cities worshipped different gods. Canaan was not incorporated as a unitary social order. City by city, society by society, Israel captured the land. Altar by altar, the gods of Canaan fell. Canaanite society possessed no sacrificial unity. Divided, it fell.
Moses warned Israel that a new order would soon incorporated in Canaan: unified nation, unified confession, unified celebrations. Israelites would henceforth be required to journey to a central location to eat their sacrificial meals. These common meals would mark the end of Israel's pilgrimage. The feasts would be celebrated familistically and nationally, not tribally. The dozen tribes had no covenantal function during the national feasts. The Levites would officiate at the celebrations; the other tribes would have no role. The tribes could not become what the cities of Canaan were: separate centers of formal worship, each with its own god. This pointed clearly to the centrality of worship rather than the centrality of politics as the basis of national incorporation.
The great sin of Jeroboam was not his political secession from national Israel, which God imposed as a punishment on King Rehoboam for his ruthless increase in taxation (I Ki. 12:14-15). Jeroboam's great sin was his creation of a new priesthood and new places of worship, which constituted idolatry (vv. 15-33). Jeroboam's motive was political. He interpreted Israel's unity in terms of politics. "If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah" (v. 27). This was a politician's assessment of covenantal unity. He reimposed the multiple worship centers that had prevailed in pre-Mosaic Canaan: "Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan" (vv. 28-29). It was this which God had expressly prohibited: "Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest: But in the place which the LORD shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings, and there thou shalt do all that I command thee" (Deut. 12:13-14). Jeroboam abolished central worship because he regarded politics as above worship, whether in Jerusalem or in his newly established Northern Kingdom. His idolatry was political. This is covenant-breaking man's perpetual temptation: to elevate politics over worship, the kingdom of man over the kingdom of God.
God withered Jeroboam's hand when the new king attempted to bring sanctions against a prophet who condemned the new worship (I Ki. 13:4). The king then begged the prophet to restore his hand, which he did. Then the king invited him to share a meal with him. "And the man of God said unto the king, If thou wilt give me half thine house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place: For so was it charged me by the word of the LORD, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou camest" (vv. 8-9). Jeroboam fully understood the covenantal function of shared meals. So did the prophet, who refused to eat what was obviously a political meal in the presence of the king. He refused to sanctify Jeroboam's political idolatry.(1)
Lawful Administrators There would be blessings in the Promised Land, Moses said. The main blessing would be land; the secondary blessing would be peace; the tertiary blessing would be wealth. These positive sanctions were to be accompanied by sacrifice. "But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land which the LORD your God giveth you to inherit, and when he giveth you rest from all your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety; Then there shall be a place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there; thither shall ye bring all that I command you; your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the heave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which ye vow unto the LORD" (Deut. 12:10-11).
The required national sacrifice included a shared meal or series of shared meals. "And ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God, ye, and your sons, and your daughters, and your menservants, and your maidservants, and the Levite that is within your gates; forasmuch as he hath no part nor inheritance with you" (v. 12). The focus of the national celebration was familial, but the Levite, as a member of the ecclesiastical tribe, was to be invited into these family festivals. His tribe was in charge of the covenantal sacrifices; he was therefore entitled to share in the familial celebration.
We see here three blessings: land, peace, and bread. The land was administered by families; peace was administered by civil government; bread was administered ecclesiastically. I use the word "administered" here covenantally: an oath-bound minister of God who allocates the assets under his lawful jurisdiction. He acts as God's steward or trustee. What is significant here is this: bread is covenantally ecclesiastical, not familial. Families owned the land that produced the grain that made bread-making possible, but the priestly tribe had primary claim on the bread. They were lawfully entitled to a tenth of the land's net output (Num. 18:21). This is because they administered the sacrifices. So, the Levites were the administrators -- the representative agents -- over the bread of the nation.(2) Their God-given legal claim on a token payment marked them as the source of bread in the land. They represented God when they collected the families' tithes. They acted in God's name and on His behalf. "And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD'S: it is holy unto the LORD" (Lev. 27:30). The land was administered by families, but the church had the fundamental legal claim over the output of the land: bread. The Levites therefore had to be invited in by families to share in the familial meals during the communal sacrifices. The Levites had first claim on these meals.
It is imperative that we understand that the Levites' legal claim to a tenth of every family's bread was not based on the social services which they provided.(3) It was based on their lawful administration of the sacrifices. As evidence, consider the fact that they did not have to be invited in to share a family meal back home. Their lawful claim to participation in the families' meals existed only during the national festivals, which centered around the sacrificial flame of the altar.
Local and National Incorporation The Levites were spread across the nation. They lived in cities inside every tribe's jurisdiction. Israel's families were told to share their meals with "the Levite that is within your gates" (v. 12). This indicates that a local Levite journeyed to the central location alongside residents of his region. The local Levite joined with local families to share meals in a distant city. The tribal bond no longer functioned in the place of sacrifice. The national geographical bond did.
The tribes maintained a separate legal existence. They had influence over families through the laws of landed inheritance (Lev. 25). They had influence over geography because of the same laws of inheritance. They defended their own land. This meant that civil jurisdiction -- bearing the sword -- was in the hands of tribal captains. In this sense, Israelite tribal law mirrored the Canaanite system. What distinguished Israel from Canaan institutionally was its common theological confession, including the mark of circumcision, and common national celebrations. First, confession: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD" (Deut. 6:4). Second, common national celebrations, which are the focus of this passage. Common theological confession bound Israel to one God by oath. Common celebrations bound Israel to one God by eating. The celebrations imposed an economic loss: costs of making the journey and any offerings. They also involved economic gains to those who were normally not included in family celebrations: the local Levites.
The overwhelming majority of the costs associated with national incorporation were ecclesiastically imposed. The costs of the journey, the sacrificial offerings, and the shared meals were all imposed by laws regulating ecclesiastical sacrifices. Families were bound to the nation by means of theological confession and common sacrifice, which involved a journey to a common location. At the center of Israel covenantally were an implied ecclesiastical oath (circumcision), an altar, and the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the tables of the law (Deut. 31:26). None of these centralizing features of Israelite society was uniquely tribal.
The incorporation of the one and the many in Israel was both confessional and ecclesiastical. Mosaic civil law was enforced primarily by tribal units of government, but neither the civil law nor its required negative sanctions had its origin in tribal civil governments. Because civil law enforcement was administered primarily by tribal governments in Mosaic Israel, this means that the unifying forces of Mosaic Israel were not primarily civil. The tribes were subordinate to the nation, but the nation was constituted by theological confession and maintained by ecclesiastical sacrifice. The authority of these two foundations of incorporation was affirmed economically: losses imposed by the costs of centralized worship. The tithe was paid locally to local agents of the cross-boundary national tribe: Levi. The mandated national celebrations required the participation of local Levites as guests at the family meals.
This law applied to all other holy offerings and sacrifices, which could not be lawfully offered in the local community (Deut. 12:17-18). The Levites would always possess legal access to the family's communion meals in the city of sacrifice. "Take heed to thyself that thou forsake not the Levite as long as thou livest upon the earth" (v. 19). To refuse the Levite was to invite excommunication, and with it, the loss of citizenship.
Intermediating Authorities One of the fundamental themes in Western political theory and also social theory has been the debate over the legitimacy of intermediary institutions. Conservative political theory ever since Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) has appealed to local units of civil government as possessing lawful authority. At least in theory, local units of civil government are supposed to be the most important except during a war. Radical political theory has affirmed the opposite ever since Jean Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract (1762): the bond that unites men is their political participation in a unitary national State, which incorporates the General Will of the people. In between the national State and the individual there is no legitimate realm of independent civil authority.(4)
This debate over political theory has been parallelled in social theory. A consistent follower of Rousseau denies the legitimacy of any claim to independent authority made by non-civil, intermediary institutions generally, not just local or regional civil governments. In contrast, a consistent follower of Burke affirms superior authority of local non-civil institutions -- family, church, voluntary association -- over the claims of the State, especially the national State, outside of narrowly circumscribed areas of civil authority. Independent, decentralized social institutions are viewed as a necessary restraint on illegitimate State power.(5)
With the unexpected, overnight, non-violent collapse of the Soviet Union in August of 1991, the victors in the West's two-century debate have been the secular conservatives and secular nineteenth-century liberals, whose economic theories of decentralized private ownership have always paralleled Burke's defense of political and social decentralization.(6) It took over two centuries for the debate between Burke and Rousseau to be concluded in the West. The manifest failure of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic's central economic planning at long last persuaded the West's intellectuals of the worthlessness of Communism, both as an economic system and a political system. Nevertheless, seven decades of Communist terrorism had not persuaded most of them of the utter illegitimacy of Communism as an ideology. As long as Western intellectuals believed that Communism was making sufficient economic progress to maintain its machinery of terrorism, most of them refused to voice more than occasional token objections to Soviet Communism's barbarism.(7) Many of them respected the power that such barbarism conferred on Communism's rulers. Western intellectuals believe in State power as the primary means of transforming society. This is why they abandoned respect for Communism without a blink after 1991. Stripped of their power, the Communists were stripped of their legitimacy in the humanistic West. The Western intellectuals' much-beloved Premier Gorbachev disappeared overnight, only to surface two years later as the head of a heavily endowed non-profit foundation promoting world government for the sake of ecology. This Red had turned into a Green.(8) He had become a Western intellectual, devoid of personal power. So, nobody in authority pays much attention to him.(9)
There was a reason for the intellectuals' overnight dismissal of Communism. For two centuries, all but a few of them have worshipped at the altar of pragmatic economic growth. Communism was "the god that failed" for only a handful of Western intellectuals.(10) It was never a god for most of them. Economic pragmatism remains their god. This god is now seen as having brought negative corporate sanctions against the god of Communism. Western intellectuals today blandly dismiss Communism as merely a failed scientific experiment that happened to cost well over 100 million lives -- a noble experiment, a few of them might say in private,(11) but now passé. Their pragmatic god is still on his throne in their hearts, dispensing blessings and cursings.
Mosaic law had elements of both Burke and Rousseau. There is no question that intermediary institutions played a major role in Mosaic civil law, for the tribal civil governments were the primary agencies of law enforcement. This was Burkean. So was the Mosaic law's devaluation of civil government compared to family and ecclesiastical governments. The Mosaic law's system of national sacrifices and festivals was a unique mixture of familism and centralized representation. This representation was ecclesiastical rather than civil. Intermediary civil institutions (tribes) had no covenantal role to play in the Mosaic law's reconciliation of the one and the many through national incorporation. People participated at the national festivals either as family members or as priests. The priests had a lawful claim on the families' culinary rites of celebration: meals. Indeed, the common meal was the rite of reconciliation: between man and God, family and priesthood. The State had no covenantal role to play here; neither did the tribe.
Conclusion The reconciliation of the one and the many is the Trinity. This reconciliation was reflected in the communal rites of Mosaic Israel. The meals were mandated national celebrations that involved economic sacrifice. Families journeyed to a common location marked off from the rest of Israel by the presence of the altar and the Ark. Participation in the rites of celebration was secured by theological confession, which in turn was marked by circumcision. A common theological confession unified the nation under the Mosaic law's covenantal sanctions: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD" (Deut. 6:4). Common meals in a common place also unified the nation under the Mosaic law's covenantal sanctions.
The nation secured its incorporation through confession and eating. The church does the same. The centrality of confession and communion in Mosaic Israel should be obvious. It was not only a civil oath that bound the nation (Ex. 19), but also an ecclesiastical oath. The Mosaic law mandated national festivals, once Israel inherited the land of Canaan. The inheritance was secured by means of military sanctions, but it was to be maintained by non-military sanctions. It was secured by civil action, but was to be maintained by ecclesiastical action. Israel fought as tribal units but celebrated nationally as family units made holy by two things: a journey to the place of the altar and the presence of Levites at family meals. The national celebration imposed economic losses on families.
Enlightenment political theory has substituted civil confession for theological confession as the basis of establishing national incorporation. It has substituted voting for eating as the basis of maintaining national incorporation. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, from Locke to Madison, the message was the same: national incorporation is by civil oath alone. What is astounding is that this Enlightenment confession is regarded by Protestants and most Catholics as a statement of Christian principles. The enemies of Christianity have triumphed over Christianity in the civil realm because they have persuaded Christians of the illegitimacy of Trinitarian confession as the basis of national incorporation. The result has been the substitution of massive taxation for the tithe, bread and circuses for bread and wine. This is the empire's familiar pattern of development, from the Roman Empire to all the other evil empires that seek to revive it. They will all perish, to be replaced in history by a common kingdom that is established by Trinitarian confession and maintained by communion meals eaten in the presence of ecclesiastical authorities. This thought is, of course, distressing news for Enlightenment political theorists and their spokesmen inside the churches and Christian college classrooms.
Footnotes:
1. In the United States, politicians occasionally meet with religious leaders of all faiths at "prayer breakfasts." These events are held mainly for the benefit of the politicians, who thereby deflect public criticism by those religious leaders in attendance and also by others who naively interpret these events as in some way holy. These are common grace events that solidify support for political polytheism.
2. Joseph served as Egypt's priest when he allocated grain and bread in Egypt. He was Egypt's administrator over bread. Joseph in effect had replaced Egypt's chief baker, who had been executed two years earlier, as Joseph had prophesied in prison (Gen. 40:22).
3. On this point, Rushdoony is dangerously wrong. He sees their claim as based on their role as providers of social services. He insists that families administered the tithe by allocating it to the representatives they deemed God's best servants. He wrote in 1979, "What we must do is, first, to tithe, and, second, to allocate our tithe to godly agencies. Godly agencies means far more than the church." R. J. Rushdoony and Edward A. Powell, Tithing and Dominion (Vallecito, California: Ross House, 1979), p. 9. For a detailed critique of Rushdoony's ecclesiology, which centers on his view of the allocation of the tithe, see Gary North, Tithing and the Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), Part 2.
4. Robert A. Nisbet, "Rousseau and the Political Community," in Nisbet, Tradition and Revolt: Historical and Sociological Essays (New York: Random House, 1968), ch. 1.
5. Robert A. Nisbet, Conservatism: Dream and Reality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), pp. 34-46.
6. Adam Smith and Edmund Burke respected each other's opinions. Burke had read and adopted Smith's economics, while Smith is said to have commented: "Burke is the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do without any previous communication having passed between us." Cited in Isaac Kramnick (ed.), Edmund Burke (Englewood-Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 100. The same quotation appears in Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Santayana (rev. ed.; Chicago: Regnery, 1954), p. 19.
7. Jean-Francois Revel, The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information (New York: Random House, [1988] 1991).
8. He was the political leader who had long ignored warnings from Russian engineers regarding the unsafe status of Chernobyl-type nuclear reactors, and who was in charge when the 1986 Chernobyl disaster took place. This has all been politely ignored by the Western intellectuals.
9. When he ran for president in Russia in 1996, he received so few votes that his candidacy was not statistically visible. Boris Yeltsin, his old antagonist, was elected over a Communist who no longer called himself a Communist. The ex-Communists had no further use for a loser like Gorbachev in 1996, just five years after his removal from office.
10. The phrase comes from a 1949 collection of essays by ex-Communist liberals and socialists: The God That Failed, edited by Richard H. Crossman. This was the only variety of anti-Communism that was taught on college campuses until the 1980's.
11. Felix Somary records in his autobiography a discussion he had with the economist Joseph Schumpeter and the sociologist Max Weber in 1918. Schumpeter expressed happiness regarding the Russian Revolution. The USSR would be a test case for socialism. Weber warned that this would cause untold misery. Schumpeter replied: "That may well be, but it would be a good laboratory." Weber responded: "A laboratory heaped with human corpses!" Schumpeter retorted: "Every anatomy classroom is the same thing." Felix Somary, The Raven of Zurich (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), p. 121. I am indebted to Mark Skousen for this reference.
The USSR became what Schumpeter predicted, an anatomy classroom filled with corpses, but with this variation: unlike medical classrooms, the USSR killed people to gain its huge supply of corpses. So did Red China. So did Marxist Cambodia.
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