Miscellaneous Matters

Deuteronomy 22: 1-4, 6-12 & 23: 16-17, 20-26

The Great Covenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Max A Forsythe

Introduction:  Today we will look over eleven varied topics which Dr Brown outlines in these words:  “Although the topics are diverse, the unifying themes is clear – the covenant community must consist of good neighbours.  God is generous and loving; nobody who believes in him is allowed to live selfishly and carelessly within society.  Every believer has a responsibility towards his neighbour.”  Dr Wright allows that after chapter twenty-two “the laws become more miscellaneous in this final section, but the eighth and tenth commandments (against theft and covetousness) may be here translated into a community ethos of care and compassion, especially for the weak and poor.”

Some of the modernistic liberals would call this a social gospel and emphasize the “Love your neighbor” aspect, as if that was all there is to living and loving in God’s wide world.  Mr Rogers would be right at home here!  And if you ever enjoyed the homey aspects of Mr Roger’s neighborhood – you could do much worse.  Time was, when I was very young – the farming neighborhood in which I lived was very close indeed.  Part of that closeness revolved around the threshing season, but there was also a monthly get together in a rented hall in town.  A potluck supper would be the highlight of the evening, but games were played and conversation was well informed in every corner.  Lifelong friendships were made and people from half a dozen churches or not – mingled and learned to tolerate various idiosyncrasies.

Sometimes social pressure was brought to keep families together and individuals on the straight and narrow.  When the bonds of neighborliness began to break apart because of television and the movement of work from the fields to factories – things began to change.  The lazy neighbor who had been persuaded to drive a school bus, fell back into his drinking habit and the a who tended bar at a social club, left her husband for greener pastures than the thin soil of his hillside farm could provide.

So let me personally testify that whenever the members of a neighborhood take their faith seriously and go out of their way to engage the interests of their neighbors, they can have a profound biblical influence upon society in their own little corner of the world.  Dr Cragie observes: “The law … not only contains prohibitions, but also requires positive action on the part of the Israelites in particular circumstances.  Here, it is prescribed that an Israelite offer assistance to his fellow Israelite; such assistance would require personal effort and initiative.  The law counters a natural human tendency not to get involved or not to go out of one’s way to help another.”

Old Covenant Milieu:  The first four verses of our text are clearly in this mold. 

1.  A few years ago, the boys had had a run of escaped livestock due to the ancient nature of their fences.  It didn’t matter which of three farms the animals were moved to, the fences were all inadequate once the lead cattle had learned that running free was fun and that growing crops were tasty indeed.  On one memorable occasion a neighborly pilot took to the air to locate four fugitive beeves.  Found they were, and the posse of neighbors closed in for the capture.  One of the animals was injured and it had to be butchered – fair prices were allowed for all who had helped with the roundup.

On another occasion some wandering beeves were seen in the area and telephone calls were made in an ever widening circle – three days later part time farmers from fifteen miles away arrived to pickup the captured animals.

2.  The second accord of friendly neighborliness encourages a healthy respect for wild birds, which provide so much in the way of insect control, beauty and song.  Of course, it is permissible to put human hunger ahead of such concerns as we understand in verse seven.  But, the people are encouraged to allow not only capture and possible domestication and consumption, but also for part of the nesting family to remain free for future breeding.  It is said that during World War Two, many more people in Europe would have starved were it not for the millions of pigeons who inhabit the cities.  It took ten years or more for those pigeon populations to recover from the war.

3.  Urban planning and a hint of zoning laws come through in the requirements of verse eight.  Dr Cragie notes:  “Without a parapet ... the householder could be held liable for manslaughter or damages, since failure to provide the required safety precaution amounted in law to criminal neglect.”  And you wondered why the insurance companies insist upon a fence around pools and large trampolines!  Don’t blame them, talk to Moses when you have a chance!  The Law of God encourages us to take safety precautions in order to protect life.  Having said that – I certainly believe our legislative zealots have become extremely Pharisaic in their devotion to ever more restrictive zoning ordinances in our fair land.

4.  Verses nine through eleven contain three minor regulations that on the surface seem ridiculous to modern minds.  However, the first restriction on vineyard seeding may reflect a minimal understanding of the laws of genetics.  Especially, if you don’t know what you are doing, you can more easily limit your crops than improve them by hybridization.  In our era, while hybridization has dramatically improved yields, the reduced number of usable crop cultivars has serious implications on the genetic pool of the selected species!  And European farmers are severely limited in what seeds they can plant because of collusion between the seed companies and the European Union governments.  Time was, when the local farmer’s seed stock was finely tuned to a particular hillside or wetland and the cultivars of seed were multiplied by the hundred as handfuls of precious seed were shared between friends.

5.  The unequal yoking of ox and donkey seems to be a small thing, but we have to remember that one animal is strong and the other weak.  The two species were created with muscles to serve special chores necessary to assist mankind in his labors.  If you have ever moved heavy furniture and been unfortunate to have been paired with a weakling, you know well the temporary strain.  When my father farmed with Belgian Draft Horses, he would always tinker with the hitching chains, so that the personalities of the horses would not grate one on the other.  Molly always had to be in front of her teammate or she would stress herself, and her work mate by always trying to get ahead.  Thus, she would be given a longer chain so as to be in front.  Good old Tony and Barney were the perfect match, yet Barney was younger and stronger so some adjustments that I no longer understand were made in angling the hitch to compensate.  Given this thorough understanding of like sized animals of the same species – may we comprehend the biblical wisdom of unequal yoking between animals of separate species?

6.  I do not have such a detailed observation to make on the mixing of wool and linen.  Dr Brown records that “they probably relate to magical customs and pagan ceremonial practices which are no longer easy to trace or recover … We know that some cloth-weaves in Egypt were likely to have had magical associations and that may well lie behind the prohibition about mixed fabrics.”

Clothing today is almost entirely commercialized.  Traditional aspects serve only to limit the market value unless the style is ethnically rare and culturally driven.  You quickly notice that aspect in the price!  I was told that one year the elders here looked into the price of a woolen tartan kilt to surprise me with on Christmas!  Everything about the project was Scottish except for the bonny price of five to seven hundred dollars.  Thus economic wisdom prevailed – just as it should have!  Marketing forces continue to drive the availability of fabrics, styles and adornment.  I would have hoped that President Bush would have started a fashion trend that would make red ties more easily found, but I have been disappointed.  My last one wore out more than fifteen years ago!  At least my collection of wide and narrow ties is large enough to cover the stylistic fads without having to replace them too often.

7. Verse twelve is interesting in that a specific adornment is encouraged.  Dr Craigie tells us “the reason is not stated in this verse, but it is given in a fuller legislation on the topic in Numbers 15: 37-41.  The tassels served to remind the people of all the commandments of the Lord, and thus, in remembering, they were to obey them and not go their own ways.  By attaching the tassels to the garment that was used the most frequently, the people would be reminded of the law of God continually.”

8. Chapter Twenty-three, verses sixteen and seventeen have an historic implication for our American history.  However, in the immediate Israelite context – the legitimacy of temporary economic slavery is not in question.  The implication in verse seventeen (Dr Craigie again)  “deals with a situation in which a slave escapes from his master in a foreign country and seeks refuge in Israelite territory … In such a situation, the escaped slave was to be given sanctuary in Israel and was not to be returned to his master.”

In an era where all economic servitude to anyone but the government is unpopular, we have to remember the once proper “poor house” which was provided in civilized English speaking countries.  There, people down on their luck or habits of work could find food and shelter in return for meaningful labor not of their choosing.  This public procedure replaced a once private biblical arrangement whereby those in need could sell themselves into temporary servitude to keep food and shelter on their table.  There were limits as well as obligations in these contractual arrangements as we have noted earlier in our study of the Great Covenant.

For American history, these verses were once understood to justify the “Underground Railway” whereby slaves from the south could escape through the Northern states to the Canadian colonies of the British Empire where permanent slavery was against the law.  In addition, whenever and wherever those who provided refuge were caught and taken to Federal Court for prosecution – in a majority of the cases the common sense Northern jurors would acquit the defenders with a decision of innocence.

9. Usury is in our world today an unknown quantity.  Thanks to former Senator Howard Metzenbaum – Ohio’s Usury laws were done away with in the sixties of the last century.  I certainly noticed a profound difference between my first car loan and my second.  Here we see that interest may be earned from any foreigner, but banned amongst the brethren of Israel.  Of course there would probably be foreigners residing in Israel who would loan money for hire.  Abraham apparently once owed a large sum to a banker in Damascus.

It is this very clannishness, which supposedly aggravated the European pogroms against the Jewish families who took good care of their own centuries later.  In the same spirit, bankers in this country once calculated the interest of a loan on the reputation of the family seeking credit.  My father once paid four per cent less than a neighbor when he purchased his first farm.  On one occasion, I was pointedly asked which of three families in the county with my last name, did I belong to!  That essential question appeared to affect the alacrity of the decision.  Of course, all of this is now illegal in this country when it comes to publicly known loans – and yet the freedom and ability of bankers is curtailed when they cannot carefully discern the risks that their money may be put to – and so we all end up paying the price for legislation demanding full and total equality of opportunity.

10. The provisions in verses twenty-two to twenty-four are serious stuff in the context of a court of law.  And, the topic here proposed is also an honored part of our own Presbyterian heritage.  The Covenanters of Scotland died by the hundreds rather than surrender their precious Presbyterian form of church government to the authority of the Crown, all of this because of a Solemn League and Covenant, which the leaders of the Kirk did sign and honor even unto death.  My own military styled moustache is a little more than a left over service habit of thirty-some years.  In the controversy of my ordination struggles in the old liberal church, it became symbolic that there was at least one thing that I could do as a male that most of the feminists and their liberal sympathizers who drove me out, couldn’t or wouldn’t do!  I have only shaved it off twice since then, and both times it was because of sloppy painting.

11. In our final example for the day, we seen an agricultural regulation that provided for the traveler or laborer when crops were in season.  I remember when I worked in an Apple orchard; the owner encouraged me to eat what I wanted from the tree and to pick up from the ground anything that I wanted to take home.  Of course he was viewing things from a long tradition in this country, but we see here the biblical basis for it.  He also did not mind if a passing motorist would stop and eat an apple, but when they got greedy he could be aggressive in stating his property rights.

I remember once hearing of a family that kept a horse in town; to feed it they would cruise the country lanes and harvest corn from farmer’s fields to take home.  They were upset when a Sheriff’s deputy arrested them for stealing.  The local community was not.  Had they been camping out and taken a few ears to roast immediately – I doubt that any of us in the neighborhood would have been upset.

New Covenant Continuum:  Once these and countless other regulative encouragements became ingrained into the Hebrew psyche, the expected habits became a traditional part of their culture.  Certainly, the Pharisees played around with these aspects of the law, and they increased the spiritual burdens carried by the common people.  However, these least aspects of the law have remained common in many of the civilized cultures, which have or had a biblical foundation.  They were simply carried on as a part of the Covenant lifestyle copied by the new converts to Christianity because they were good common sense as well as biblical admonishments.

Contemporary Application:  Of course, as our modern culture drifts more and more from any biblical moorings, we can expect all of these little neighborly regulations to be despised and even legislated against.  Even as machinery replaced draft animals – the once common knowledge of how to manage and care for livestock has been lost.  In that common sense being lost, animal righteous groups have popped up to decry the industrial and ignorant management tactics that are all too evident in many places.

When I was raising rabbits and chickens there were rumors within the fellowship of those who maintained that stock to be very careful in advertising our ownership, since there were fur-huggers in a neighboring county who had let loose several hundred rabbits – even though by our standards, the animals were well cared for.  Personally I had always added two or three extra square feet to the recommended cage size and my chickens were raised in the same free-range manner that my father had taught me.  Even so, I still remain convinced that animal products from healthy animals are better for you in the long run than those produced by contemporary corporate farms which have driven out almost all of the old methodology.  I had to give up raising rabbits, chickens and selling eggs because there was no longer any profit in the traditional methods of caring carefully for your animals that would either thump or cackle whenever you entered the barn.  Mostly, that welcome noise was because they expected a feeding.  However, there were always a few pet bunnies, perhaps even a rooster or hen that simply liked being around humans.

Do I sound sentimental?  I suppose, but you have to remember that when I was growing up in a local Christian theonomy, the neighborhood included not only the humans who lived nearby, but also special animals, which were not only pampered pets, but also a means for livelihood.  I still remember when we had a wood stove on the back porch.  Dad would put a large metal bucket of cracked corn on the coolest part of the stove during the winter.  It was always for the chickens that had to heat themselves from their own metabolism.  That is well within the spirit of neighborliness encouraged in these passages.  May we in our day and age learn from these biblical resolutions and at the very least apply them to those who live near us.  Amen.

Resources Used:   

Copyright (C) 2002                       Christ Covenant Reformed (Presbyterian Church in America)                                      

          10 February  2002                Box 13926 - Columbus, Ohio 43213-8049

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

http://www.tulip.org/trf/tgc/tgc27.htm    To Subscribe or Unsubscribe go to:  http://www.tulip.org/trf-list/

Permission granted to redistribute unedited versions with this notice.