Law as Warfare Law as Warfare

6. Law as Warfare

The biblical laws deal at length with the details of worship as it was ordained for Israel. With these details we are not concerned, except where they involve and set forth concepts and principles of law.

Turning to such instances, first , the ephod and the breastplate of the high priest is of significance. In Exodus 28:6-14, the ephod, a priestly garment, is described, and in Exodus 28:15-30, the breastplate. Both articles had a common characteristic: the ephod had two stones on the shoulder

on which the names of the tribes of Israel were engraved, to be borne before the Lord by the high priest (Ex. 28:12), and the breastplate had twelve stones, one for each tribe (Ex. 28:21, 29). Both

religiously and legally, these stones are important. As the high priest approached the altar and the throne, he represented the covenant people before God. His prayers thus were basically for the people of God. Legally, the stones, representing the covenant people, indicated that God’s

government is essentially for God’s purposes, which plainly includes God’s covenant people. At God’s orders, the high priest’s primary function, God-ward, is to intercede for the covenant

people. He does not pray promiscuously: his essential calling is to pray for God’s own. The throne functions to protect the people of the throne. The priority of God’s people, as set forth in the ephod and breastplate, is of God’s ordering.

There is thus both a partiality and an impartiality to God’s law. In a general sense, God’s law functions impartially to cause the sun to shine on the good and evil alike, and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45). Moreover, with respect to the nation, the equal protection and government of the law applied to all, to the “homeborn” and the “stranger” or alien (Ex. 12:49; Lev. 24:22; Num. 9:14; 15:15-16, 29). The principle of “one law” for all is basic to biblical law.

On the other hand, there is a definite partiality to the biblical law. In instances too numerous to cite, God “intervenes” in history to overthrow the enemies of His covenant people; the weather is used; plague is used, and a variety of means, from the plagues against Egypt on. Moreover, the law as given to Israel is partial in that it protects an order, God’s law order, and the people of that order. Idolatry is forbidden; violations of the law order are punished, and, at every point, God’s law is the protection of God’s order and the people of God’s law order. The modern concept of total toleration is not a valid legal principle but an advocacy of anarchism. Shall all religions be tolerated? But, as we have seen, every religion is a concept of law order. Total toleration means total permissiveness for every kind of practice: idolatry, adultery, cannibalism, human sacrifice, perversion, and all things else. Such total toleration is neither possible nor desirable. The stones of the ephod and breastplate set forth the principle of partiality. For men, by prayer and by law, to move in terms of this partiality is neither evil nor selfish, but simply godly. To pray for others is certainly godly, but to be unmindful of all of our household and our own needs is not godly; it makes a man worse than an unbeliever or infidel (1 Tim. 5:8). And for a law order to forsake its self-protection is both wicked and suicidal. To tolerate subversion is itself a subversive activity. A second principle appears in another case law, Deuteronomy 23:18, “Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God”; the previous verse, 23:17, states, “There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor sodomite of the sons of Israel” (cf. Lev. 19: 29). The word “whore” in Deuteronomy 23:17 is given in the marginal reading as “sodomitess”; the prohibition of prostitution was previously made in Leviticus 19:29. The reference here is to lesbians, apparently. The law against homosexuality appears in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. The reference in Deuteronomy 23:17-18 is to sacred prostitution as a part of fertility cult worship.

This practice appeared later in the nation (1 Kings 14:24; 15:12; 2 Kings 23:7; Amos 2:7; it is used to describe Israel’s apostasy in Jer. 3:2, 6; 8:9, 13). It is of note that the Bible uses a term of contempt, “dog,” for the male homosexual. The point, however, of the law is this: the very religious impulse of the whore and the homosexual are especially contemptible in the sight of God; their wages can never be an acceptable gift to God. It is not sinners who are barred from giving, but rather it is the profits of sin which cannot be accepted. The point is a significant one. We are accustomed to thinking ecclesiastically of such gifts . But the “vow” sets forth a case, a religious case law. The terms of a vow have an especial sanctity. But when the vow and its pledge represent an alien law order, then that pledge is not admissible and is an “abomination.” The person making the vow has no place before the law, no standing before the throne. The whore and the sodomite who brought their pledges were not simply sinners before the law, but, more than that, outlaws, outside the law. There is a marked difference between a sinner before the law and an enemy of the law. Notax or offering from an enemy of the law was thus acceptable. The sinner wascommanded to bring an offering; the outlaw was forbidden to offer it. Because there was “one law” for all, the outlaw was entitled to justice under that law, as witness the appeal to Solomon’s court of the two harlots (1 Kings 3:16-28). The outlaw received justice, but not citizenship. To tax crime is to give it legitimacy and a legal standing before the law as a financial supporter of the law: the next step, then, is equal rights to the protection of the law, which means immunity from prosecution. Under the biblical influence, most countries have ruled that criminals lose their citizenship, and condemned men have no legal existence. The pressure today is against such legislation, and taxation is applied to all, with increasing representation for all. Deuteronomy 23:17-18 is the legal foundation for an exclusive citizenship in terms of the law order. It is significant that the common term for prostitute in Scripture is a “stranger” or “strange woman,” that is, a foreigner. Not only was prostitution in essence a foreign practice to the covenant people, but an Israelite girl was “profane” (Lev. 21:7, 9), i.e., outside the temple, outside the principle of citizenship, a foreigner, if she became a prostitute. The homosexual was also outside the law; at least the prostitute, while called a “strange woman” (Prov. 2:16; 5:3, 20; 6:24; 7:5; 23:27, 33; 27:13), was still included in mankind by the term, but the homose xual, as a “dog” (Deut. 23:18; Rev. 22:15), is regarded as outside the race of man; he is, as the Greek text of Romans 1:27 makes clear, theburned out end product of rebellion.

There are, broadly, three possible ways for the law to regard the outlaw and the dissenter, and the difference between the three is a great one, although both are against the law. First, there is the attitude that can be summarized as that of the “medieval” church, that heretics have forfeited their

rights before the law. Thus, John Hus was given safe conduct to the Council of Constance, and then the safe conduct was revoked on the ground that he was a heretic. Sigismund was pressured to break his pledge of safe conduct, on the grounds of his own safety, “for he who protected heretics was himself a heretic.”143 Such an attitude made difficult any protection from the established order by means of the law. The law supposedly guarded society against heresy, but in actuality the establishment, itself free to practice heresy, could destroy any critic simply by accusation. Suspicion destroyed rights; a person was guilty by implication before proven guilty.

A second possible way for the law to regard the outlaw and the dissenter is to be found in the modern liberal state, as in the United States. Attempts have been made directly to strike at the law denying citizenship to guilty criminals. Indirectly, their rights have been more than restored. The U. S. Supreme Court has virtually destroyed laws with respect to libel and slander; the “criminal” thus is favored over his victims. Self-confessed rapists and murderers have been freed on imaginary technicalities, in clear partiality to the criminal as against the victim. Gardner has observed, of the courts and “law” today, “The rights of the individual are being protected, provided the individual has committed a crime.”144 _{Although the laws of many states admit and in}

some casesrequire capital punishment for certain offenses, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that “[t]he death sentence cannot be imposed by a jury from which persons with conscientious or religious scruples against capital punishment were automatically excluded.”145 In other words, the court demanded that people whodeny the validity of the law be asked to “enforce” the law! This is, of course, a clear-cut attack on capital punishment and in effect an abolition of it. No question was raised by the court as to the possible innocence of the condemned man; his guilt was implicitly admitted. But the court again ruled in favor of the superior rights of the criminal and the dissenter as against the law and the law-abiding.

A third possible way for the law to regard the outlaw and the dissenter is the biblical way: “One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you” (Ex. 12:49). The law must afford equal justice to all. A person is innocent until proven guilty, and two witnesses are required (Num. 35:30; Deut. 17:6). The two prostitutes in Solomon’s day were able to appeal their case all the way to Solomon (1 Kings 3:16-28). But their right of appeal did not make them citizens: whether the two women were of Israelite blood or of foreign extraction, they were by law foreigners, with no rights of citizenship. Their gifts were excluded from the temple. Since the Holy of Holies was the throne room of God, the prohibition of any vow to the throne

was a denial of citizenship; it was an exemption from taxation, since the person had no legal existence as a member of the state.

In analyzing Leviticus 4, we saw that levels or grades of sacrifice stressed the principle that, the greater the responsibility, the greater the culpability, the greater the sin. It is also apparent now that criminal irresponsibility means a loss of rights.A man who is not within the law is an outlaw; the rights conferred by the law order belong to those who live within the law order. The right have the rights. There is thus a signal difference between due process of law and the privileges of citizenship.

We have seen, thus far, first , with respect to the breastplate and ephod, the partiality as well as the impartiality of the law; second , we have seen, moreover, that criminal irresponsibility means a loss of rights. Now,third , we come to the crux of the issue, namely, that law is a form of warfare, and, indeed, the major and continuing form of warfare.The second commandment prohibits graven images in worship; it requires the destruction of all such forms of worship: “Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images” (Ex. 23:24). In Deuteronomy 12:1 -14, the contrast is drawn clearly: obedience means on the one hand destroying all places of idolatrous worship, and, on the other hand, bringing offerings to God in the prescribed manner and to the prescribed place. The commandment to destroy idolatrous places and images is restated in Deuteronomy 7:5; 16:21-22; Numbers 33:52; and Exodus 34:13-14. But, in certain instances, the destruction of graven images required also the destruction of the people of the images (Deut. 7:1- 5); not only are covenants with the Canaanites forbidden, but intermarriage also. The Canaanites were “devoted” or set apart, “sanctified” unto death by God’s order. This is an important point and needs careful attention. The law specifically forbad reprisals against Egyptians or any other foreigner; instead of vengeance, they should remember their oppression in Egypt as a means of greater dedication to justice for all under God’s law (Lev. 19:33-37). Having suffered injustice at foreign hands, they should themselves be careful to avoid being like the Egyptians, themselves the instruments of injustice. Egypt sought to exterminate all Hebrews (Ex. 1:15-22), but Israel was required to render justice to all Egyptians in terms of their individual obedience or disobedience to the law. But all Canaanites were devoted to death. The criterion was not enmity to Israel but the law of God. Egypt was an enemy of God as was Canaan, but the iniquity of the Canaanites was “full” or total in God’s sight (Gen. 15:16; Lev. 18:24-28, etc.). Prostitution and homosexuality had become religious practices to the point where the people were entrenched in

depravity and proud of it. Their iniquity was “full” or total. Accordingly, God sentenced them to death and made Israel the executioner. Now, this fact has been repeatedly cited as “evidence” that the Bible represents an immoral God and an ugly morality; such a charge represents hatred, not intelligence. If individuals and nations have repeatedly disappeared abruptly from history, this clearly indicates some kind of “judgment” by history, or dialectical materialism, or evolution, or whatever other gods one holds to, on these persons and nations. Such judgments are repeatedly cited and concurred in by historians. The point of offense with respect to the Canaanite judgment is the criterion of judgment used by God. Had God declared the Canaanites to be cruel, capitalistic oppressors, and hence under judgment, His verdict would gain hearty praise from many intellectuals. But God is God, not the intellectuals, and, as a result, God’s criterion prevails, not man’s. The Canaanites as a whole were deserving of death; God’s patience allowed them a few centuries from Abraham’s day to Joshua’s, and then His judgment was ordered executed. The failure of Israel to execute it fully became finally their own judgment.

The sentence of death against Canaan is simply a realistic fact of warfare. Warfare is sometimes waged with limited objectives; at other times, war is unto death, because the nature of the struggle requires it.

When, in earlier centuries, warfare did not involve deeply rooted principles but merely local issues, warfare was limited in scope and in deadliness. When revolution became a fact on the Western scene with the French Revolution, total warfare became a reality, war unto death in terms of mutually exclusive principles. Where warfare against heaven is waged, the consequences are death, not the death of God but the death of the contending peoples.

In brief, every law order is a state of war against the enemies of that order, and all law is a form of warfare. Every law declares that certain offenders are enemies of the law order and must be arrested. For limited offenses, there are limited penalties; for capital offences, capital punishment. Law is a state of war ; it is the organization of the powers of civil government to bring the enemies of the law order to justice. The officers of the law are properly armed; in a godly state, they should be armed by the justice of the law as well as weapons of warfare, in order to defend society against its enemies.

Friends of the law will therefore seek at all times to improve, strengthen, and confirm a godly law order. Enemies of the law will accordingly be in continuing warfare against the law. The enmity to the law will be direct and indirect, it will resort to internal subversion through the legislatures

and the courts, and to external assault by disobedience, contempt, and intellectual attack. Every law order will be subject to attacks, because, short of heaven, every law order will have its enemies within. The critical question, therefore, is not, “Will the law be attacked?” but rather, “Will the law order resist attack?” Is there health in the body politic to resist the disease? When Israel was commanded to destroy the Canaanites (Deut. 7:1-11), it was also told that obedience would result in health: fertility for man and beast, and immunity from the evil diseases of Egypt (7:12-26). Note the juxtaposition of the promise and the command:

Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the LORD thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers; And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee; he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee. Thou shalt be blessed above all people; there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle. And the LORD will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil disease of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all that hate thee. And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee. (Deut. 7:12-16)

Clearly, a predicate and condition of social health is the destruction of social evil.

Since law is a form of warfare, it follows that there is a required continual barrier to peace with evil. Man cannot seek coexistence with evil without thereby declaring war against God. The law declares, speaking of Ammorites and Moabites, apparently in this case in their continued life in terms of their law-culture, “Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days forever” (Deut. 23:6, R V). A law order cannot escape warfare: if it makes peace in one area, it thereby declares war against another. A law system is a form of warfare. The fact of warfare remains constant: theobject of warfare can change. Marxist states claim to be for “world peace,” but this is only in terms of total conquestand total warfare against God and against all men. The more total the peace desired, the more total the warfare required.The new creation of Jesus