72 LAW AND LIBERTY And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and unto all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, When all Israel is come to appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law: And that their children, which have not known any thing, may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it (Deut. 31:9-13).
The theocentric focus of this law is God as the giver of the kingdom grant. To maintain the grant, Israel's priests would have to read the Mosaic law to the entire nation at the feast of Tabernacles (Booths). This was the annual week-long feast in Jerusalem that followed by five days the day of local celebration: the day of atonement (Lev. 23:27, 34). The priests were responsible for the reading of the Mosaic law to the people, presumably Exodus 20-23. They may also have read the case laws of the other four books. This case law does not say.
We might have expected that the law would have been read at Passover. Instead, it was read at Booths. Why? Because Booths was closely associated with the day of atonement. The day of atonement was the day of liberation for Israel. This law illustrates a fundamental principle of theology: grace precedes law. The day of atonement and day of release preceded the reading of the law. This was a land law.
The Year of Release The year of release was the sabbatical year (Deut. 15). In this year, sometime during the feast of Booths, all zero-interest charity loans to fellow Israelites and to resident aliens [geyr] were to be cancelled (Deut. 15:2). Any Israelite or resident alien who had been required to serve as a bondservant because he had defaulted on a charitable loan had to be released. He was to be given capital -- food, wine, and herd animals -- when he left (vv. 13-14).(1)
Consider the timing of the reading of the Mosaic law. Once every seven years, the entire nation was to assemble at Jerusalem. Five days earlier, the poor who still owned rural land had been released from charitable debts or any related debt bondage. As debt-free men, they came to Jerusalem to celebrate. There, they heard the law.
For a newly released bondservant, the reading of the law would have reminded him of the importance of obedience. He had fallen into debt through no moral fault of his own, at least in the opinion of his creditor. The way to avoid future debt bondage was to remain obedient to God's law, for the law promised external blessings for obedience. The law was read to a nation of free men. It provided the guidelines for remaining free.
This year of release was associated with the jubilee year. In the year following the seventh sabbatical year -- the sabbatical year of sabbatical years -- the jubilee year was to take place. All rural land reverted to the heirs of the conquest generation. This took place on the day of atonement (Lev. 25:9). Israel's other class of debtors regained their freedom on that day. Those who had defaulted on commercial loans had those debts cancelled and had their share of the ancestral land returned to them. Except for criminals sold into slavery to pay off debts to their victims, and except for foreign slaves (Lev. 25:44-46), the year of jubilee was to be Israel's universal year of release. Charitable debts had been cancelled the previous year. The nation had heard the reading of the law. Then came the jubilee.
One Nation Under God Israel was truly one nation under God. This law made it clear that the entire nation was to hear the priests read the law. These laws were civil laws, yet priests read them. More than any other passage in the Bible, this one makes it clear: there can be no absolute separation of church and State. The two institutions can be differentiated, analogous to the ways in which the three persons of the Trinity are differentiated, but there can be no absolute separation. When it came to God's law, the priests were to read it publicly. Everybody residing inside the land, including strangers [geyr], was required to come to hear the law. God was the source of justice in Israel. The priests were the agents delegated by God to interpret His law. This right of interpretation was not a monopoly, but it was a legally protected service.
This law makes it clear: symbolically, the institutional church was above both the family and the State in Mosaic Israel. Families were required to subordinate themselves to the reading of the law. So were civil magistrates. Fathers and magistrates may have read the law to those under their authority, but the two consummate manifestations of the law in Israel were under the jurisdiction of the priests: one public, the other private. The Ark of the Covenant, in which the two tablets of the law were kept, was in the holy of holies. This area was closed to all but the high priest, and he had legal access only once a year. The public reading of the law to the assembled nation was the other manifestation of priestly judicial superiority.
The nation was under God. One proof of this was the fact that all permanent residents were under God's revealed law. This included strangers. They were required to hear the law read in public once every seven years, and not merely listen, but also pay for a journey to the central city. They were all to participate in a national celebration of covenant renewal. This was not limited to ecclesiastical covenant renewal, for strangers were required to attend. It was a ritual of national covenant renewal in which the priests officiated.
Tribal civil leaders played no mandatory official role in this ritual. A single tribe dominated: Levi. To Levi, Moses handed the care of the Ark and this assignment. This was the nation's common tribe, the representative tribe. The Levites represented all of the tribes before God in their capacity as priests. They offered sacrifices for the nation. In this respect, Levi was a mediatorial tribe.
It was at Booths that the 70 bulls were offered annually as sacrifices (Num. 29:13-32), presumably for the 70 nations that represented the gentiles, and one additional bull (Num. 29:36), presumably for Israel. The day of atonement, celebrated locally, was immediately followed by Booths, which was celebrated nationally. Localism was followed by nationalism. The Levites were the tribe that represented the nation. They were a source of unity.
The Rule of Specially Revealed Law Moses commanded the priests to gather the people together. By what authority did he tell them this? Not as high priest, but as the nation's prophet. He was God's delegated intermediary between God and Israel. As such, he laid down the law.
Civil law is common to all men who reside in a geographical area. The Bible teaches this. Those inside the boundaries of Israel were required to obey God's law. The Mosaic Covenant mandated that God's law must apply to all men equally, thereby upholding the principle that the rule of law is to be upheld (Ex. 12:49).(2) Civil law in Mosaic Israel was revelational. Civil law in Israel was not the autonomous discovery of rational men searching the logic of their minds and the raw material of the creation. It was not recited publicly to the people at Booths by the king or any representative of Judah. It was recited by the sons of Levi.
Was attendance required by civil law? That is, were civil sanctions applied to those who refused to attend? No negative sanction is listed in the text. There would have been an ecclesiastical sanction: excommunication. This would have threatened a stranger who participated in Passover (Ex. 12:48). It would not have threatened a resident alien who did not attend Passover. It would have threatened an Israelite, for citizenship was based on membership in God's holy army. This was a priestly office, which is why they paid atonement money to the priests (Ex. 30:12-16).(3)
Access to the office of judge was based on participation in the priests' national reading of the Mosaic law. What does this fact reveal about the authority of natural law in Israel? This: what was judicially common to residents of Israel was not confession of faith but God's specially revealed law. Those who were not eligible to serve as judges had to obey the law anyway. They were invited to attend Booths once every seven years in order to participate in a priestly ritual that served as national covenant renewal. Yet the stranger had not necessarily affirmed the national covenant by consenting to circumcision. He was supposed to attend, although no civil sanction threatened him for refusing to attend. His voice had no covenantal authority in renewing the covenant, for he did not possess the legal authority to impose civil sanctions. Yet he was supposed to attend.
Why should he have attended? First, to learn what the law expected of him. Second, to learn what the State was authorized to do to him if he broke the law. This national day of legal education was a means of placing restrictions on both the church and the State. The public reading of the Mosaic law gave to the listeners the means of defending themselves from evil-doers, including officers of church and State. Residents were to be protected from each other by the law. They were strongly encouraged to attend the festival to hear the formal reading of the law. In a society in which there was no printing and literacy was not common, this was an important way to place the authorities on a chain. Men would understand their rights -- their legal immunities from the State -- because they had heard the law read by priests. The State could not lawfully prohibit the public reading of the law. It was the church that had been given the authority to read the law. The priests would have a part in making access to the law easier in Israel.
This limitation on civil power meant that an independent legal hierarchy was present in Israel that would serve as a check on the State. Any attempt by the State to restrict the priests from exercising their God-given authority to read the law before the nation would incur the resistance of the priests and the wrath of God.
Natural Law vs. Theocracy Natural law theory rests on the assumption that there is a source of common ethics and common wisdom irrespective of theological confession. This common system of ethics is said to serve as the basis of a common judicial system. This common legal order is supposedly accessible to all rational men, however men define rational.(4) This presumed commonality is the basis of the civil law's legitimacy. Natural law is said to be grounded in the nature of man as a rational being, whether or not he was created by God. Because natural law has authority irrespective of theological confession, it is to be the basis of civil government, for civil government has authority over all men who reside in a geographical area irrespective of their confession of faith. So runs the familiar intellectual defense of natural law theory.
The Christian version of natural law theory adds that it is man in his office as God's image-bearer that establishes the possibility of natural law. It is God in His office as universal Father (Acts 17:26) rather than as the redemptive, adopting Father, who establishes civil government. The natural law theorist distinguishes between God the Creator and God the Redeemer in discussing natural law. God as Creator is universal; God as Redeemer is particular. It is God as universal who lays down the civil laws that all men must obey.
The Christian defender of natural law theory argues that God placed Israel under the rule of a civil order that was particular. In God's redemptive-historical plan, Israel's narrow parochialism -- grounded in God as redeeming Father -- the particular which temporarily superseded the universal. Why, we are not told. It just did. The New Covenant, we are told, is the triumph of the universal. The New Covenant delivers us into the hands of civil rulers whose authority does not rest on their confession of God as Father, either universal or particular. Their confession of faith need be implicit only: a confession of self-professed autonomous man as the universal. Man is the law-giver because humanity is common to man.
The humanism of natural law theory is obvious. Prior to Darwin's implicit destruction of all natural law theory, natural law theory was Western humanism's primary judicial alternative to Christian law. Darwin destroyed men's faith in a common legal order that is grounded in man's reason because men are individuals caught in a purposeless evolutionary process that has no fixed ethical standards.(5) Nevertheless, a few Christian social theorists still cling to a doctrine of humanistic law that has to be defended today by an appeal to biblical revelation: the doctrine of special creation. Only by invoking special creation can they save natural law theory from Darwinism. But the rationality of unredeemed mankind opposes the Bible's doctrine of special creation. So, they wind up in the peculiar position of having to affirm the authority of biblical revelation in order to defend a theory of civil law that denies any independent civil authority of biblical revelation. They affirm that which common reason rejects as irrational or irrelevant in order to defend a system of humanistic civil law which rests on the assumption of the authority of common reason and common ethics. God as redeemer is replaced by God as creator. God as creator is then said to legitimize the civil order of autonomous man. In this way the city of man replaces the city of God in the political theory of fundamentalists who hate biblical theocracy far more than they hate humanist theocracy.
If men can govern themselves as covenant-keepers by a civil law order that is in no way grounded on God's Bible-revealed law, then why did God require the Israelites to hear the reading of the Mosaic law? Why was national covenant renewal grounded in a public reading of the Mosaic law? If covenant-keepers today may not legitimately invoke the authority of biblical law as the basis of God-honoring civil government, why was this insight not given to God's covenant people prior to the advent of Roman Stoicism? Why did God's people have to wait for Roman Stoics to discover the theory of natural law, by which they explained why Rome had the authority to create an empire out of the ruins of the Greek city-states? The Stoics provided a philosophical justification for empire that could not be provided by the polytheism of classical religion. Yet Christians are expected to believe that God waited until the advent of the tyrannical Roman Empire in order to inform His covenant people of the sole authority of man's universal reason in establishing civil law. He raised up Stoic philosophers rather than prophets to bring this message to the church. Furthermore, it was not until Roger Williams in the early 1640's discovered pluralism's principle of religiously neutral civil commonwealth that God's church was presented with this theory in the name of Christianity.(6) This implicit theory of the origins of civil freedom seems an odd one for Christian intellectuals to hold, but they do. They refuse to state it this baldly, but they do believe it. Their theory of natural law demands it.
This text forces us to consider the obvious fact that in order to preserve liberty in Mosaic Israel, the nation had to hear the law once every seven years. The basis of judicial liberty was not the interior speculations of everyman. The basis of judicial liberty was obedience to God's revealed law. What the modern Christian pluralist must maintain is that judicial liberty comes from the common-ground logic and/or experience of covenant-breaking man. It is not the Bible that presents the basis of liberty; rather, God's enemies do. There has to be some common-ground moral vision which unites covenant-breakers and covenant-keepers, and this vision must serve all mankind as the basis of liberty. Adam's Fall has therefore not seriously blinded men to moral truth. Covenant-keeping rational man holds back or suppresses the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18), yet somehow this process of self-imposed blindness does not undermine the outcome of his moral reason, a moral reason shared by all rational men. Covenant-breaking man's moral and judicial speculations possess greater authority than the Mosaic law does, or than the Bible as a whole does, or so we are assured by modern defenders of natural law theory, whether Christian or pagan.
Biblical Economics Biblical economics must take a stand against the rationalist's claim that only what is common to all men's reason is epistemologically valid. This is the modern economist's defense of wertfrei: value-neutral logic. He defends this nineteenth-century epistemological doctrine with greater enthusiasm and confidence than representatives of the other social sciences do.
Biblical economics does not have faith in any theory of epistemological neutrality. It recognizes that any claim of epistemological neutrality shatters on the shore line of a key doctrine of modern economics: the scientific impossibility of making interpersonal comparisons of subjective utility.(7) There is no common scale of values; there is no measuring device. Thus, there can be no such thing as applied economics. Between the theoretical speculations of the economist and the world of economic advice and policy-making there can be no connection without destroying the doctrine of subjective value. This, no non-Marxist economist wants to admit.
The solution to this epistemological dilemma is an appeal to the Bible, especially the Mosaic law. It is in the doctrine of monotheism that we can discover ways of reconciling subjective value and objective value. It is in the doctrine of the Trinity that we can discover ways of reconciling the personal imputation of subjective value with the corporate imputation of objective value.
Conclusion The nation was called by God to assemble at a central city once every seven years, in order to hear the public reading of God's revealed law. God did not call them into university classrooms to cogitate on the wisdom of the common man. He did not call them to devise systems of law that would be acceptable to covenant-breaking strangers in the land. Instead, He called them to corporate covenant renewal through hearing the priests read the Mosaic law. No passage in the Bible more clearly reveals the illegitimacy of political pluralism and its corollary, natural law theory.
By undermining natural law theory, this passage also undermines the biblical case for value-free economics. A correct understanding of the law of God rests on a theory of Bible-revealed law. So does a correct understanding of the laws of economics.
Law and liberty are linked by the revealed law of God. This includes political liberty and economic liberty. While natural man can, through common grace, understand a great deal, his presupposition of the availability of true knowledge apart from the written revelation of the God of the Bible is incorrect. Liberty begins with God's grace, which includes the grace of Bible-revealed law.
Footnotes:
1. Chapter 35.
2. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), ch. 14.
3. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 32.
4. Usually, at some point in the argument, the defender of natural law theory invokes "right reason," which is the system of reason he recommends.
5. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), Appendix A.
6. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), pp. 249-50.
7. This was the discovery of Lionel Robbins in 1932.
If this book helps you gain a new understanding of the Bible, please consider sending a small donation to the Institute for Christian Economics, P.O. Box 8000, Tyler, TX 75711. You may also want to buy a printed version of this book, if it is still in print. Contact ICE to find out. icetylertx@aol.com