14. The Laws of Quarantine (Remastered)

The Laws of Quarantine

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Numbers 5:1-4 and our subject, ‘The Quarantine or Segregation Laws.’

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead: Both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell. And the children of Israel did so, and put them out without the camp: as the Lord spake unto Moses, so did the children of Israel.”

Numbers 5:1-4.

The Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” has as its implication the preservation and furthering of life within the framework of God’s Law. Basic to this task of preservation are the laws of quarantine. These laws take up a great many chapters of the Mosaic law. And the passage we just read is just a brief summary of one aspect of these laws. Leviticus 13, 14, and 15, three very long chapters, give many specific details of these laws as do passages in Exodus and a couple chapters as well in Deuteronomy. It is important to understand the significance of these chapters. The details of these quarantine or segregation laws are not now applicable because they referred to conditions that have changed, but the principles are still valid.

Before we analyze these laws, it is important to call attention to the fact that words sometimes have varying meanings, and the word ‘leprosy’ appears repeatedly in these chapters. It means one thing to us, when we think of the word ‘leprosy’ we think of Hansen’s disease. The Bible, however, as Dr. A. Randall Short, a British surgeon, has pointed out in a study of these laws, uses the term ‘leprosy’ as a general term for a variety of contagious and highly infectious diseases so that very often in the chapters, the word ‘plague’ is also used, another general term, as equivalent to the term ‘leprosy.’ Thus, the word has a broader application than what we think of as being leprosy or Hansen’s disease. These laws, incidentally, helped eradicate leprosy or Hansen’s disease to a great extent in Europe, because as they were applied in the Middle Ages, they worked together with other measures to reduce it to the vanishing point, virtually. 

Now, the laws in Leviticus 13, 14, and 15, in particular are of two varieties; those dealing with a variety of plagues and infectious diseases in Leviticus 13:1 - 15:15, and those dealing with sex in chapter 15:16-33. Incidentally, the number of laws dealing with sex as we will deal with relation to the seventh commandment do prohibit among other things the association of sex with worship. Now, for us this is perhaps a remote problem, but this was in those days a very, very lively problem because in antiquity the fertility cult which prevailed throughout the world made acts of sex basic to worship, so that attendance at the temple involved ritual prostitution for both male and female, and a variety of acts of perversion. 

About twenty years ago, a little more in fact, I called attention at a church meeting to the fact that this association was due to rise again, that everything pointed to the revival of sex as central to religious worship. I did so when I read the work of a prominent theologian, Robert Harold Bonthius, who wrote:

“…the act of intercourse is itself to serve as an outward and visible symbol of communion, not merely between man and wife but with God.” ⁱ

This from a book Christian Paths to Self-Acceptance, published in 1948 and clearly this element has become prominent in the life of the churches today. Sex is closely linked with revolution. 

To return to the laws of quarantine. These laws covered diseases, the handling of the dead, epidemics, plagues, and the like. But the laws have implications beyond the realm of physical diseases. And a variety of statements embedded in these quarantine laws make it clear that even as physical contagion must be avoided and steps taken to that end, so likewise, moral contagion and contamination must be avoided. Leviticus 18:1-5 and 24-30, and Leviticus 20:22-24, these statements are made, and God in the latter passage, Leviticus 20:22-24, identifies Himself as the God who separates His people from other people as a part of their salvation. So that God calls his people apart, He segregates them in order that He might further their preservation and their salvation. 

Separation or segregation, quarantine, is thus a basic principle of Biblical Law; not only with respect to plagues and contagious diseases, but with respect to religion and morality. Every attempt to destroy this principle is an effort to reduce society to the lowest common denominator. 

The word ‘toleration,’ of course, is greatly used in our day as an excuse. The concept of ‘toleration’ usually conceals a radical intolerance. As Christians we believe in grace and in charity towards all people, but ‘toleration’ embodies another principle, that of relativism. What the doctrine of toleration, as it is commonly taught, involves is a relativism that says we must not make any difference between the criminal and the law-abiding Christian, between the pervert and the morally sound man, between the believer and the unbeliever, that all must be put on the same level. In actuality, however, that doctrine of toleration conceals a radical intolerance. In the name of tolerance, the believer is apt to tolerate everything because the unbeliever tolerates nothing; it means life on the enemy’s terms. Biblical Law is in effect denied the right to exist because all things in terms of this modern doctrine of toleration must be leveled downward, and we can have no standards, we must be totally tolerant. 

An example of this kind of intolerance in the name of tolerance appeared in the papers recently and of course you can find one almost every week. This from the Ann Landers column: 

“Dear Ann Landers: Why do you pin orchids on the virgins without knowing the facts? If you could see some of those white flower girls you’d know they couldn’t give it away. Why not use your valuable newspaper space to praise the sought-after, sexy girl who is constantly chased by men and is sometimes caught?

I’m a woman in my middle forties who has worked ten years with young girls in a steno pool. I see the goody-goody types in their little white shirt-waist blouses and oxfords, so smug and proud of their chastity, as if they had a choice. They make me sick.

Only last Friday a darling little redhead, just 21, sobbed out her story in the ladies’ room. Lucy had been jilted by an executive after six months of steady courtship. They had been intimate and she was counting on marriage. It was the fourth time she’d had this terrible thing happen to her. Girls like Lucy need Ann Landers to tell them they aren’t all bad. Give them encouragement, not a put-down. I’ve been reading your silly column for 12 years and I think you are a perfect fool.—Mama Leone.

Dear Mama: Thanks for the compliment, but nobody’s perfect.

I don’t happen to have any good conduct medals lying around for girls who think the bedroom is a shortcut to the altar. Moreover, a girl who makes the same mistake four times is what I call (in polite language) a non-learner.” ⁱⁱ

Now this letter clearly reveals a bitter hatred of virtue together with a strong sympathy for the promiscuous girl, who was seen as the finer person, emphatically so. There is no tolerance in this letter, only a savage intolerance. And this is the order of the day; those who demand tolerance are really among the most intolerant of people. We do not, as Christians, believe in tolerating evil, we do not believe in tolerating assaults on decency, we do believe in Christian grace and charity which recognizes that there differences and then moves with the grace of God as well as the Law of God in terms of the situation. 

The basic premise of the modern doctrine of toleration is that all religious and moral positions are equally true and equally false, it is a radical relativism and humanism. We are asked to treat the Moslem as though Islam were as true as Biblical faith, to treat the cannibal as though his practices are as valid morally as ours. This is not only the implicit claim, but it has been explicitly stated by a number of writers. The premise of their argument is, “Since there is no proof, how dare anyone place his truth above the others?!” So that the cannibal is morally as fine a person in his standards as the Christian is in his. In other words, there is no particular truth or moral value to any religion.

Now, these people, of course, when they are trying to make you destroy your doctrine of truth, your absolutes, have always a hidden absolute, and their absolute is man. Since man is his own ultimate, man is his own God, there can be no law, no standard over man whereby men are to be judged. And this, of course, is precisely the purpose of the modern revolutionary activity. One of the leaders of the yippies, who was most active in Chicago and is presently under indictment, stated that the outsider fails to understand the significance of the use of narcotics, of LSD and other narcotics in the present revolution. Their purpose, he said, is to destroy all sense of discrimination, of distinction, of moral values, and the purpose of dirt on their part is the same. And they just realized that we cannot use standards to evaluate people because man is the only value and therefore all men are of equal value. They do, thus, have a standard, an absolute; man. And in terms of this man they are savagely intolerant of our doctrine of truth. For them, thus, the true value of being man himself, man must be granted total acceptance; irrespective of his character. 

This, of course, is not a new doctrine, it has been developing since the beginning of the Enlightenment. It gained particularly vocal attentions expression in this country and Walt Whitman, who has dedicated himself to proclaiming this doctrine. In his poem, To a Common Prostitute, of course, he made this point emphatically, declaring:

Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you;

In fact, in a number of other forums, he made it clear that such a person; the pervert, the prostitute, and others, were superior because they did not have religious and moral standards. Total acceptance, total integration is demanded by relativistic humanism, and this is clearly radically anti-Christian; it places man in God’s stead, and in the name of toleration and equality, relegates Christianity to the dump heap. 

This doctrine, unfortunately, is preached all too often in the churches. In the past week, one document that came across my desk was the Fuller Seminary Theology News and Notes with an article in it, “The Suffering Body” by Lewis B. Smedes, who teaches at Calvin College seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And the whole point of his thesis, of course, is quite close to the ‘death of God’ school of thinking. He identifies God wholly with man, and as he interprets the incarnation, he says, “Let us say God ‘enghettoed’ himself.” Now, this is the meaning of the incarnation, the ‘enghettoizing’ of God. So that if we want to look for the incarnation, we must look the ghetto. If we want to find Christ, we want to find him in man in the ghetto.

Integration and equality are myths. They disguise simply a new segregation and a new inequality. Mamma Leone’s letter, which I read, makes clear that promiscuity is, for her, superior to virginity and chastity. And with her, there is clearly a new segregation; virtue is subjected to hostility and scorn, and it is separated in the effect for destruction. Social order inescapably institutes its own program for separation and segregation. A particular faith and morality is given privileged status, and all else is separated for a progressive elimination. Every law-order, which every society has, shows that certain things are good and certain things are bad so that it involves a fundamental segregation. Every law-order says there is a criminal class, and a good class. The criminal class may be the murderer, the thief, and the pervert, or it may be the capitalist, it may be the man who believes in free enterprise, or unsocialized medicine and unsocialized industry, but every law-order institutes a form of segregation. It uses equality and integration as a pretext to subvert the older or existing form of social order.

For example, the communists, in the name of ending all segregation and all inequality, worked for the revolution, promised the peasants that the palaces would be theirs, that they would all live in palaces, all men would have the same income. And then, when the revolution was over, of course, promptly instituted the most radical inequality and segregation that Russia had ever seen. 

One observer in the twenties, during the days of the famine, in talking to the people of Russia during the Hoover relief, was told by some of them that they deserved what they were getting because they had listened to this talk about equality and had been ready to plunder and to kill, figuring that when they drove off the inhabitants of the palaces and the good homes, they would become the possessors of them and they would have the equivalent, but they ended up in greater poverty. Every society has its laws of separation, segregation, in terms of what constitutes for it good, and what constitutes for evil. 

Education, of course, is a form of segregation and a basic instrument thereof. Certain aspects of life, of experience, are given priority as truth, and others are relegated to a position of unimportance or classed as wrong. Education, because it passes or fails, is inescapably given to inequality and segregation, it classifies all creation in terms of certain standards. When the state takes over control of education, it then begins to reorder in terms of its standards. It denies to people the right to maintain their schools, their own private schools; this happens in countries that turn socialist so that only the state’s principle, of segregation, of separation, can exist. The state then excludes from the curriculum everything that points to the truth of Biblical faith, and establishes a new doctrine of truth. In the name of objective reason, it insists its highly subjective hostility to all its enemies be regarded as the new law of being. 

But the fact of quality of course, is what we are saying segregates. The fact of the ability to work segregates. The existence of a home, of a house, segregates, the fact of family life segregates. Every family is a segregated institution; this is not my statement, this is the statement of James Bryant Conant, former president of Harvard, former High Commissioner of Germany, prominent chemist, who said that as long as we are dedicated to the proposition that democracy and equality are desirable, the family is a roadblock to a realization of our institution.

In Education in a Divided World, published in ’48 by Harvard University of France, he stated that the family was dedicated to the principle of aristocracy. Because every family sought to do the best for his children, it was thus an aristocratic institution, alien to our democracy and therefore there was, he said, an inescapable conflict between the two. It doesn’t take much guessing to find out which he feels must lose.

The word ‘segregation’ is a good word, it has been much abused. It has been abused by people who want to make color or race the only principle of segregation rather than a principle of truth, a principle of achievement. It has been abused by those who were trying to destroy our present law-order and create a revolutionary society. It is being used also by the United Nations, which says there can no discrimination with respect to a variety of things such as race, color, or creed so that all religions are in effect abolished because they discriminate, they declare their position to be the truth. But the U.N. Charter, when it makes the statement, is informed by a radical humanism. So it replaces the old religion with the new religion; humanism. 

All religions segregate, and humanism is no exception. Its order of truth becomes the principle of division, of classification and of segregation, and it becomes most hostile and most discriminatory, it segregates most radically, because it insists on total control of all institutions, and denies the liberty of other orders of truth, of other doctrines who establish their own community, their own way of life. 

The Biblical Law, then, is a principle of segregation. It is the only valid principle because it strikes both against the humanistic totalitarian principles, it strikes against the racists who want to strike against an older humanistic and non-religious premise. It strikes against every order that places man above truth, or makes one segment of mankind the order of truth. 

The commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” means, therefore, that we must segregate between truth and error, between the murderer and the godly man because, if we do not institute a principle of segregation between the two, we destroy society. If the murderer is not dealt with, the murderer will then take over society. If the thief is not prosecuted, if he is not segregated, if his way of life not declared to be socially undesirable and legislated against, then we will have a society of thieves. 

St. Paul, as he summarized the Old Testament laws of quarantine and of separation, declares in 2 Corinthians 6:17 that it could be summed up in a sentence. 

“…come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord…”

This, then, is the basic principle of progress; to draw a line of separation between good and evil, between a learned man and a ignorant man, between a thief and an honest man, between a quack and a good practitioner, between every kind of falsity and every form of truth. 

“…come out from among them, and be ye separate…”

Let us pray.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thou hast called us by thy grace to be a people unto thee. And we pray, our Father, that by thy grace we may reorder society in terms of thy Law-Word, that evil may be suppressed and dealt with firmly, that truth and righteousness may prosper and abound, that by thy grace we may deal with the sick and the ailing, the broken-hearted and the needy, that ours may become a society where truth and righteousness prosper. Bless us to this purpose, our Father, and grant that we may contend unto victory the powers of darkness in this generation. In Jesus' name. Amen. 

* * *

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson.

Yes? 

[Audience member] What should be the rights of the criminal, then, Dr. Rushdoony? ⁱⁱⁱ

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now, the doctrine that a man is innocent until proven guilty is an unusual doctrine in history, and it comes only out of Biblical Law. We shall deal with this when we come to the Eighth Commandment. It is unique in history, in every other law system you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent, and the burden of proof is on you. Unfortunately, this pagan doctrine of justice, in the modern era, has progressively been instituted in various countries. It is now the law, for example, in France. There, when you are arrested, you are guilty, and the entire burden and the expense is on you to prove yourself innocent, so that you carry the burden of expense. 

Unfortunately, this European, Napoleonic system, basically a humanistic form of justice, has come into this country in two areas; in military law, in military law you are guilty and you prove yourself innocent, and in administrative law, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Now, what is happening is that this is creeping over into our civil and criminal law. In our criminal law, the criminal or the man who is arrested is innocent until he is proven guilty. So the burden is on the courts, on the community, the District Attorney, to prove him guilty.

However, increasingly, because restitution is denied, and because there is a progressive handcuffing of the prosecution, everything is stacked in favor of the criminal. So that he is not merely brought to court as innocent, but in a sense, the people, and the prosecution in the name of the people, are the guilty ones. It is as though they are the ones who have committed some kind of offense in arresting the man so that he is given every kind of privilege. 

Last week for example, one man who was under indictment for nine cases of rape plus one of kidnapping and one for armed robbery, and was out on bail on all of these, and very light bail, was again picked up, this time for an assault on a small child, a sexual assault. Now of course, this is more than protecting his rights, this is, in a sense, saying that prosecution is invalid. 

Now, what will happen in this case, as in most such cases, is because the difficulty of prosecution is so great, as a result of recent court decisions, even though this man is obviously guilty, there will be a settlement out of court, an agreement between his attorney, who may well be provided at State expense, your expense and mine, that if he will plead guilty on one or two counts, the others will be dismissed so that he will get a light sentence for a light term. Otherwise the court will be rocked endlessly by various maneuvers. So today, the Biblical principle of legal procedure is being subverted, but we must say that a man is innocent until proven guilty. This is for the protection of all of us. That protection is being progressively destroyed as the cards are stacked in favor of the obviously criminal.

Yes?

[Audience member] Is the right to appeal unjust? ^iv

[Rushdoony] Well, no, the right of appeal is a part of Biblical Law. The appeal went up to the supreme judge, that is the governor of Israel, and later to the king. There is a right of review. But today the right of review is only since we’ve gone from common law to statute law, in terms of the technical aspects of the law. In other words, the man may be innocent in view of new evidence, but that new evidence cannot be heard. The appeal is only on the grounds of the technical conduct of the trial.

Yes?

[Audience member] Isn’t masonry and one-world religion? Wasn’t George Washington a mason? ^v

[Rushdoony] Yes. And Pike, Moral and Dogma, very emphatically affirms the radical one-world religion, politically-ordered humanism. And the question then is, why was George Washington a Mason? Well, first of all, at that time Masonry was fairly new, and second, Washington accepted all kinds of honorary memberships in a variety of organizations out of courtesy. He accepted such a membership when a minister wrote to him in his retirement or in the last days of his presidency, it was well along in the 1790’s, asking him about his membership. He said, well he couldn’t very well call himself much of a member, he must have attended one meeting for sure when he was given the honorary membership. He may have attended a second some time along the line when, as an honor to him at someplace, but he didn’t think so.  So he said, “At the most I have been at two Masonic functions, but I have never thought of myself as such.” 

But later on, when Jedidiah Morse, Rev. Jedidiah Morse and others called attention to some of these aspects of Masonry, Washington agreed with them heartily and dropped it. A great deal has been made by the Masons of this membership, and most people have the impression that he was a lifelong practicing Mason, which was not the truth. 

[Audience member] I have certainly read that he was a devoted Mason. ^vi

[Rushdoony] Well, there’s a great many things you read that are not to be trusted. But we have his own letters from his collected works on the subject and in his latter years saying that in the thirty years since he had been taken in as a kind of an honorary thing, he knew he’d attended once and maybe a second time; he’d been present at something with a masonic dinner function, but he wasn’t sure. So we can’t take some of this propaganda too literally. It’s been said that Washington was at most a Unitarian, obviously not a Christian, and a book was written recently by a Methodist minister to prove this. 

When Washington, we would say, was far more extreme in his religious practices in his days than most because he fasted every Sunday and went to his room for meditation, Bible reading and prayer, refused to receive company except family members on Sunday. He also, and I mentioned this before, from the French and Indian War on through The War of Independence, had a standing order that there was to be no taking of the Lord’s name in vain by any soldiers, and if they did, they were to receive twenty lashes because in a cause where they sought the Lord’s guidance and deliverance, to take the Lord’s name in vain would be a fearful offence. Now, you can see how long he would last in the army today with that kind of a standing order, taking the Lord’s name in vain. Washington would be very unpopular in this day and age because he was so old-fashioned and strict even for his day and age, but the myths about Washington are legion.

Yes?

[Audience member] How can I witness to people who won’t hear anything contrary to their own opinions? ^vii

[Rushdoony] Yes. First of all, you can never convince a man that his way is wrong unless you establish a standard. And a standard is necessary, it constitutes an example. To cite an example, I worked for some years as a missionary among the American Indians on an isolated Indian reservation. Now, there far more than here everything I did had to be done with circumspection because first of all, everything I did in a sense was a witness, it was a missionary act, it was a way of making clear to them that there is a higher standard of living. So that it was extremely important to be careful of every act, and to draw the line much more sharply than I would, say, here. But at the same time, when you combine this with Christian grace and charity, it had a tremendous effect.

Now the difference, for example, between the average government employee on that reservation, which was a hundred miles from any town or bus or train line, was only a slight level above that of the Indian. Most of the government employees looked down on the Indians, refused to associate with them, did not have them in their homes, discriminated against them very savagely. But most of the government employees, like most of the Indians, were alcoholics, and their sexual immorality was not on a much higher level then that of the Indians.

But my home had to be open always, and I enjoyed having them in. I genuinely liked them. I enjoyed listening to their stories. I never at any point relaxed my standards, but because I approached them with grace, and with a liking for them, with charity, you see, there was a communication of standards.

Of course, the basic aspect is always conversion, but you can never be an instrument in the conversion of people if you lack that grace, that desire to communicate. But you never communicate to them if you destroy your own standards. And those of the whites there who would come and try to get on the level of the Indians by acting that way were despised because they knew there was a difference, they knew they were not on a standard they should be, they knew their obvious inferiority in their way of life, in their standards, and all. They were never going to cotton to somebody who was condescending at this point, but they did respond to friendliness.

Yes, one last question. 

[Audience member] Indistinct question.

[Rushdoony] You see, we either have to have a standard, or we destroy all societies, we either segregate very clearly; and we’re doing this all the time! Everyone who is in any vocation segregates continually. It’s a good word, although it has been put to very ugly use. Without it there is no standard of life, no standard of cleanliness, no standard of health and sickness. The very term ‘sickness’ is a segregating term; it separates the particular condition from all other conditions. And it’s only as you denominate it as a sickness that you can treat it, until then, you cannot. And you so denominate it that you may be able to treat it.

Now this is Christian segregation, you don’t call something false in order to say well, “Off with their heads!” But the society may be able to deal with it, with a murderer, yes, he must die. But with the others you try, where possible, to bring them to a conformity, which they never can have until they know their condition is wrong. This is the process of education. In education you continually tell the child, “This is misspelled,” “This is wrong,” you segregate good spelling from bad. We only learn as we do this progressively. 

Well, our time is up now and we are adjourned. 

i. Robert H. Bonthius, Christian Paths to Self-Acceptance (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1948, 1952), p. 213 f. See also Derek Sherwin Bailey,The Mystery of Love and Marriage, A Study in the Theology of Sexual Relations (New York: Harper), p. 24, as reviewed by Otto A. Piper in Monday Morning (September 15, 1952).

ii. Ann Landers, “Four Falls a Bad Decision,” in Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (Tuesday, March 25, 1969), p. B–3.

iii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

iv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

v.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.