17. Amalek (Remastered)

Amalek

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Exodus 17:8-16, and Deuteronomy 25:17-19. Our subject is Amalek.

“Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men, and go out, fight with Amalek: to morrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in mine hand. So Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with Amalek: and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi: For he said, Because the Lord hath sworn thatthe Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”

Exodus 17:8-16,

And Deuteronomy 25:17-19:

“Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God. Therefore it shall be, when the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it.^”

For a number of centuries, in recent times, scholars refused to believe that there was a great empire, Assyria, that had existed in the ancient world. The Bible, of course, spoke extensively of Assyria and made it clear what a tremendous empire it was. But the radical and sceptical historians refused to believe this until, of course, the excavations uncovered Nineveh, and thoroughly confirmed Scripture at this point.

A similar ignorance still prevails with regard to Amalek. According to Numbers 24:20, Amalek, at the time of Moses and earlier, was described as, “the first of the nations,” a tremendous power, greater than Egypt and greater than any of the existing powers, a very ancient power. Some Biblical scholars very wrongfully ascribe the origin of Amalek to the house of Esau; although one of Esau’s grandsons was named Amalek, long before the birth of this young man, the nation Amalek existed, as Genesis 14: 7 makes clear. But it is, today, a forgotten power, once the first of the nations.

In recent years, Velikovsky has identified Amalek with the Hyksos kings and thinking at this point has been quite convincing.ⁱ The Hyksos kings who, according to him, invaded Egypt at the time of Egypt’s destruction by the ten plagues against Egypt by God, so that Israel left Egypt, and the hosts of Pharaoh were destroyed in the Red Sea. And at this point Amalek rushed in, took over Egypt, and ruled for a long time. Our concern is not with the history, primarily, but with Biblical Law.

At this point Amalek is important, because a judgement is pronounced against Amalek by God, and a decree of judgement is an aspect of law, especially when that decree is included in the law of code. And thus we have, in the Law of God, two legal decisions, concerning Amalek, a judgement pronounced against them which makes it a part of the legal code. Therefore, it is important for us to understand the significance of Amalek. 

Now, several things are apparent in the scriptural references to Amalek. 

First, in some sense Amalek was clearly at war with God. According to Psalm 83:5-7 we read:

For they have consulted together with one consent:

They are confederate against thee:

In other words, Amalek headed an anti-God conspiracy. 

God therefore declared that, second, he was also at war with Amalek. And so Samuel declared to Saul:

“Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” 

Again, the book of Samuel refers to God’s fierce wrath upon Amalek. So, we have the facts; first, that Amalek was at war with God, and second, God was at war with Amalek.

Third, we have the fact that Israel had been attacked by Amalek and been savagely treated.

And fourth, God required Israel to wage war unto death against Amalek. 

Fifth, this war was to continue from generation to generation, and the remembrance of Amalek was to be blotted out. 

Now let’s examine these points in detail. To understand what the problem was. First of all, what was the offense of Amalek against God? As we read the Scripture, Exodus 17:16 reads in the King James: 

“Because the Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”

However, the marginal note makes clear that this can be read in another way: 

“‘Because the hand of Amalek is upon (or against) the throne of heaven, therefore the Lord will have war,’ &c.” ⁱⁱ

In other words, Amalek was, in some sense, at war with God, had made it a matter of policy to be anti-God with all its being. Therefore, there was a war to death. What was the nature of Amalek’s actual offense in this case? The Scripture makes it abundantly clear that Amalek hated God with a passion. Now, the seriousness of Amalek’s offense is reflected in the Scripture. In the Talmud, rabbi Joseph or Jose taught:

“Three commandments were given to Israel when they entered the land; (i) to appoint a king; (ii) to cut off the seed of Amalek; (iii) and to build themselves the chosen house (i.e., the Temple) and I do not know which of them had priority.” ⁱⁱⁱ

An old Talmudic story, which goes back to pre-Talmudic tradition, declares that Amalek, as it attacks Israel at this point, attacked the stragglers, and everyone it captured or killed, they castrated immediately and threw the male organs of generation up towards Heaven saying, 

“This is what you like so take what you have chosen.” ^iv

Now, it is possible that this is the correct reading of Scripture when Scripture reads: 

“How he met thee by the way and smote the hindmost of thee…” ^v

It could mean, in fact, the verse there “smote the hindmost” could be translated, “castrated thee.” It is given in the King James a military interpretation as though it were used to describe military tactics. But the basic, the root meaning, there is clearly one that speaks of castration. In other words, Amalek’s offense at this point was quite clearly one of perverse violence because of its hatred of God and therefore of God’s people. Their hatred of God was the primary reason for this, if the old law, which goes back centuries, ages before the Talmud, if this be true, and everything indicates that it is, it would indicate their savage hatred of God. 

This savage hatred of God on the part of Amalek persisted. The last reference we have in Scripture to any of the house of Amalek is to Haman the Agagite who was a prime minister to Ahasuerus, king of Persia. Now, the fact that he was described as ‘the Agagite’ means that he was of the royal line of Amalek, and it was Haman who issued the decree calling for the total murder on a particular day of all Jews within the Persian empire.

Second, God was clearly at war with Amalek, and this war was to be continued from generation to generation. Now, there’s a subtle difference here in the Scriptures; Israel was told they are to war against Amalek, a particular people, until it is destroyed and its remembrance is blotted out. And this, we can say, has been accomplished. After all, how many of you ever studied Amalek in your history books? A great empire, far back in history described as, “the first of the nations,” and yet, Egypt, which was not equal to Amalek, is in our history books, and Amalek has disappeared. I believe the only study of Amalek ever made is a forgotten book about a hundred and fifty years ago in French, and apart from that, nothing. Many, many, books on ancient history do not even refer to it. 

Amalek clearly has been blotted out, Israel’s work has been done. And yet God says from generation to generation continually in all of history He will be at war with Amalek! So, we are confronted with a double-usage. Israel attacked to blot out Amalek, which has been accomplished. But God says in every generation He is at war with Amalek. Now, obviously, one passage refers to an actual people who are finished, the other referred to Amalek as a continuing element in history; men of perverse violence, so that, in every generation, God will be at war with those who spiritually, who by nature, are Amalekites.

Now, we do have perverse violence in every generation; man is a fallen creature. And yet it is one of the sad facts that man does not face up to this fact, he will not acknowledge what he is. In a very recently published book, which does deal in its entirety with violence, there is a passage which reads as follows. Not a pleasant passage to read, but it is important to read because it indicates something of a modern attitude. I quote:

“In Africa, war captives are often tortured, killed, or allowed to starve to death. Among the Tshi-speaking peoples ‘prisoners of war are treated with shocking barbarity.’ Men, women and children—mothers with infants on their backs and little children scarcely able to walk—are stripped and secured together with cords round the neck in gangs of ten or fifteen; each prisoner being additionally secured by having the hands fixed to a heavy block of wood, which has to be carried on the head.” 

I might add, this is describing things in the last century before the area was brought into the empire. 

“Thus hampered, and so insufficiently fed that they are reduced to mere skeletons, they are driven after the victorious army for month after month, their brutal guards treating them with the greatest cruelty; while, should their captors suffer a reverse, they are at once indiscriminately slaughtered to prevent recapture. Ramseyer and Kuhne mention the case of a prisoner, a native of Accra, who was ‘kept in log,’ that is, secured to the felled trunk of a tree by an iron staple driven over the wrist, with insufficient food for four months, and who died under this ill-treatment. Another time they saw amongst some prisoners a poor, weak child, who, when angrily ordered to stand upright, ‘painfully drew himself upright showing the sunken frame in which every bone was visible.’ Most of the prisoners seen on this occasion were mere living skeletons. One boy was so reduced by starvation, that his neck was unable to support the weight of his head, which, if he sat, drooped almost to his knees. Another equally emaciated, coughed as if at the last gasp; while a young child was so weak from want of food as to be unable to stand. The Ashantis were much surprised that the missionaries should exhibit any emotion at such spectacles; and, on one occasion when they went to give food to some starving children, the guards angrily drove them back.” Both the regular army and the levies in Dahomey show an equal callousness to human suffering. ‘Wounded prisoners are denied all assistance, and all prisoners who are not destined to slavery are kept in a condition of semi-starvation that speedily reduces them to mere skeletons.… The lower jaw bone is much prized as a trophy … and it is very frequently torn from the wounded and living foe.…’ The scenes that followed the sack of a fortress in Fiji [going to another area - RJR] “are too horrible to be described in detail.” That neither age nor sex were spared was the least atrocious feature. Nameless mutilations inflicted sometimes on living victims, deeds of mingled cruelty and lust, made self-destruction preferable to capture. With the fatalism that underlies the Melanesian character many would not attempt to run away, but would bow their heads passively to the club stroke. If any were miserable enough to be taken alive their fate was awful indeed. Carried back bound to the main village, they were given up to young boys of rank to practice their ingenuity in torture, or stunned by a blow they were laid in heated ovens; and when the heat brought them back to consciousness of pain, their frantic struggles would convulse the spectators with laughter.^” vi

Now, I cite this long passage, which is given in a book, very recently published, as an illustration of the total error of the modern position which treats this kind of thing, and then because its perspective is evolutionary says, “This is the survival of our primitive past, and man is evolving and is in process of evolution to better things.” 

And yet the reality is that these things described are modesty personified when compared to Communist torture. That in our modern world in the streets of our major cities there are acts of depravity which put to shame very often these cannibals. We are spared these details in the press deliberately.

But the modern world is progressively seeing atrocities and horrors that put these people to shame; and with the Communists, the use of terror has been refined into an art. And of course, the early Communist theorists like Trotsky and Lenin wrote systematic treatises on the use of terror. They proclaim the universal hatred of man in the name of love.

Why? Why this growing rise of violence? Man’s basic sin is to be as God, but man is unable to become God, he is always a creature. And when he tries to become God, he finds he cannot create. He may boast of his power to create, and through the centuries we have had in every society the attempt through magic, through alchemy, through science, to say, “We can create life” or, “We can create gold” or, “We can manufacture synthetic life.” But man has never been able to deliver on his attempts to be a creator like God. And so, he plays in the other direction at being God, by destroying. And in his power to destroy he finds a pseudo-omnipotence in destruction. 

This, of course, is the whole point of Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell, a socialist, who never left his socialism, he had no other faith to go to, when he saw what his faith added up to, died in despair at what he saw.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, his O’Brien, his socialist leader says: 

“We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” ^vii

And O’Brien went on further, and his statement is theologically important, because Orwell saw the meaning of the growing violence in the modern world. Make no mistake about it, violence is on the increase. Next week we shall go into the reason for it, but to quote O’Brien, this leader of the totalitarian socialist state: 

“’Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer.

But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.’” ^viii

If this, written in 1948, which is 1984 reversed, sounds impossible, remember that the most popular tune of the last decade was one song by Nancy Sinatra with a very full voice, because of its theme. Wearing high boots, she sang over and over again: “I am going to stomp all over you.” It was the idea of the song that made it so popular. It meets, as one commentator after another points out, the basic impulse of our modern age; self-realization by means of total and perverse violence. This is how man is playing God; he cannot create, therefore he will destroy. And he will find in this his satisfaction, the pseudo-omnipotence of violence. And for this reason God says that He is at war, from generation to generation, in every generation, against Amalek, against the Amalekites of every generation.

Therefore, God’s enmity to every Amalekite remains. As surely as the first Amalek was blotted out, and in Haman the last of the known Amalekites, so the Amaleks and Amalekites of today are under judgement and are to be obliterated.

Remember the destiny of Amalek in Haman. Haman purposed to eliminate Mordecai, and to enjoy the spectacle of his destruction, had the gallows built in his own courtyard so that he and his wives could rejoice in it. And according to Esther 7:9-10,

“And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon. So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king’s wrath pacified.” 

Third, Israel was attacked by Amalek. Amalek feared not God. Now, men cannot strike at God if they be at war with Him, but they can strike at the people of God. And so in age after age, when we have an anti-God movement, it is the innocent people of God who are the target of the hostility of these people. Tertullian and other Church Fathers called attention to the perversity of the Romans. And they told the Romans,“We are the best citizens you have. We are the ones who are the most law-abiding, who pay the taxes honestly. We are the ones who, when recruited into the army, serve and serve most faithfully. You are destroying your best citizens.” And the Romans knew it. But they hated God, and so they destroyed the Christians systematically for generations, and ultimately destroyed themselves.

And Fourth, God declares that His covenant-people must wage war against the enemies of God because this is a war unto death, no quarter is possible. And therefore this warfare must continue until the Amalekites of the world are blotted out, and the justice of God prevails.

Because God's omnipotence is total, this pseudo-omnipotence of man as he tries to be God is also total in its vain imaginations. This violence of the Amalekites does not mellow, its goal is the manifestation of sheer violence, of sheer power, in total destruction. And therefore, even as Israel was commanded to wage war against Amalek, it was also given the typology of Moses’ upraised hands in prayer to God. Amalek is to be destroyed by full-scale battle, a total offensive, with a full reliance on the Lord who is the only ground of victory. 

Amalek is all around us today, and only by full reliance upon God, and full-scale battle can we have victory.

Let us pray.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee as we face Amalek this day, we face him not alone. For thou, O Lord, from generation to generation are at war with Amalek. Thou hast destroyed the Amalekites of old, and by thy sovereign purpose Haman was hung on the gallows he prepared for thy servant Mordecai. And we pray, our Father, that in this generation we may see the Amalekites hung from their own gallows, falling into their own net, and thy people delivered and vindicated. Make us strong, our Father, in the war against Amalek, and grant unto us thy victory. In Jesus' name. Amen.

* * *

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

Yes.

[Audience Member] I’m a little confused. Are we, today, to engage the enemies of God in full-scale battle as they Israelites did in their conquest of Canaan? ^ix

[Rushdoony] No, because first of all, the land of Canaan was given. At that point they were to take the offensive in going into the land, and this was with Canaanites who were, in a sense, Amalekites. After that, only as the occasion presented itself when Amalek attacked, they were to carry the war to the limit.

[Audience Member] Could you comment on the law of warfare that were given to the Children of Israel? ^x

[Rushdoony] Normally in battle the Biblical laws of warfare were for mercy to the enemies and very sound and thoughtful. They were not to destroy the fruit trees even of the enemy. But with these particular peoples who were specified, there was to be total destruction. 

Now, at this point many people quibble with regard to the Scripture, and they say, “Oh, this is so mean and so brutal, those poor innocent babies and young people and all, how terrible to have destroyed them!” This is with regard to the Canaanites and the Amalekites.

Well, first of all, most people are ignorant as to the meaning of these cultures. These cultures were so incredibly depraved that what was a religious practice among them would be very difficult to describe, and even many of the archeological remains that have been uncovered are not reproduced in books even in this day and age when we are pretty far gone. Not only was prostitution a ritual part of temple worship, but also homosexuality, also relations with animals, it was a totally depraved culture. And the children, from the earliest ages, were indoctrinated to these practices, and they represented a highly-bred-up depravity. In other words, after untold generations, these particular peoples who had any other kind of standard had been bred out. So that these peoples represented a refined, inbred you might say, depravity of staggering proportions. And God, at the time of Abraham, said that already their depravity was extensive, but He was giving them several centuries, four centuries still, in His patience before sentencing them to death.

So, you would say God's mercy exceeded that which we would be capable of, and then His judgement was far more total than we would have ourselves exercised.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Is euthanasia ever justified, Biblically speaking? Is this punishment of the Amalekites not a kind of euthanasia? ^xi

[Rushdoony] No, euthanasia is cutting out the weak or the infirm in terms of physical characteristics, old age and the like, this is strictly forbidden. But in this case, they were commanded to eliminate these people totally. This was not set for any other people, this was said for these particular; the Canaanites. We are not given any grounds for taking life apart from God's Word, ever! But, we are also told in Scripture that incorrigible criminals are not to be spared. And at this point, you see, we would not have today the Amalekites all around us if we were not in a sense subsidizing these people.

Yes?

[Audience Member] How can you reconcile the ban against the Amalekites with the injunction to love one’s enemies? ^xii

[Rushdoony] This has reference to personal relations and personal feelings. Here you have the enemies of God. You see, there is one thing in the way of personal conduct, in terms of personal matters, another where you deal with basic and absolute moral issues in the relationship of people to God.We are to love our personal enemies, but we are to hate the enemies of God, the distinction is very carefully made in Scripture.

Any other questions?

Yes.

[Audience Member] Do we hate the sin or hate the sinner? ^xiii

[Rushdoony] Both. If a man’s deeds are faithful, he is too. It is schizophrenic to say that intent and act are separate.

[Audience Member] But my brothers in Christ often disobey God deliberately. Am I to hate them, my brothers whom I am commanded to love, too? ^xiv

[Rushdoony] Well, this is different, in other words, you and I, every one of us, often do things that are wrong, we are not perfectly sanctified. But, when a person’s total direction is wrong, we cannot make a distinction between the person and the act, you have to take the totality of the person. So that a man whose total life represents evil must be treated as one whose inner being is evil; you cannot make a distinction between his actions and his nature.

Yes?

[Audience Member] But surely they can be converted and come to Christ?! ^xv

[Rushdoony] Yes, they can. But we will come to that next week because we are going to continue this subject of Amalek and violence, perverse violence. But this doesn’t mean that you are going to say: “Well, maybe this rapist and that murderer and that thief are going to be converted, and therefore we are not going to enforce the law against them,” you see. You can’t do that. We will go into that at greater length next week.

Yes?

[Audience Member] I’ve seen articles about how they are going to control the number of births and adjust the death rate for a more optimal society. ^xvi

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, you have increasingly this kind of talk of exercising omnipotence by controlling totally the birthrate, the death rate, the life of man from start to finish. And the purpose behind it is to play God. Now, I have a book coming out very shortly, as most of you know, entitled The Myth of Overpopulation. And in The Myth of Overpopulation,I point out that the idea of controlling birth and controlling population has been with us since pre-Christian times, it has never had reference to the fact of a real over-population, we have never had that problem, it has had reference to the desire of man to control totally his society and his fellow men, this is the real purpose.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Are these hoodlums who riot and destroy a kind of Amalekite? ^xvii

[Rushdoony] We are to look on Negros and whites who give themselves over to violence as Amalekites.

Their background [viz. black people] was for centuries in Africa one of a dedication to violence. Then in this country as a result, of their slavery and their conversion in those conditions, they were for generations, several generations, a good people. Now, the older generation many of them are very fine, but they are moving today; black and white, into the tents of Canaan as Noah’s prophecy declared, and into the Amalekite category. All around us we are surrounded by Amalekites who have a delight in perverse violence. We will go into that more next week.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Why is violence an imitation of God, I’m a bit lost? ^xviii

[Rushdoony] If you deny God, ultimately, you want to play God. And if you want to play God, you cannot play God by creating, so you play God by destroying. Because to be God is to be omnipotent, to have total power. And so, you have this lust for power, and you cannot exercise it positively, so you exercise it negatively with this pseudo-omnipotence of destruction. And this is the point that Orwell saw that man today in his desire to be his own God was going to exercise progressively more and more power in destruction. So, he said, “The picture of the future is a boot stamping itself into a human face endlessly.” Total power.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Is Freud’s will-to-life idea related to this total violence we see today? ^xix

[Rushdoony] Yes, your analysis is correct. The Freudian perspective, which is very general, is that the superego or the conscience represents the accumulated teaching of church and society, and this can be dispensed with. But that the id and the ego represent the will-to-life and the will-to-death. The will-to-life involves three basic impulses as I point out in my book on Freud; the will to cannibalism, to patricide, that is, to kill the father, and the will to incest. The will-to-death is the denial of these. And for them, the will-to-death is basically the more powerful one, but they must affirm the will-to-life, and this is what sensitivity training tries to do, to make you more sensitive to the will-to-life. If you define, as they do, [the will-to-life] as cannibalism, incest, and patricide, it involves killing the fathers and killing the past, the old generation, waging war against them. And the affirmation of a will-to-live in terms of sensitivity training is pretty ugly business. It does encourage, you see, total violence.

Our time is just about up, one point. There was a question raised with regard to the verses that define the image of God. These verses are Colossians 3:10, Ephesians 4:24, Romans 2:14-15, which speak of the knowledge of righteousness and holiness of God as being the image of God in man. Colossians 3:10, Ephesians 4:24, Romans 2:14-15. And in the Larger Catechism of the Westminster standards, question seventeen and answer seventeen deal with this at length.

Alright, just one quick question.

[Audience Member] What are we to make of the current economic situation? ^xx

[Rushdoony] Oh. Well, just one brief comment on the monetary situation. Everything points to the fact that we are trying to prevent devaluation, and have been dumping gold and have been in a sense compelling the cooperation of the Germans in this policy of avoiding devaluation, and it look as though they may do so successfully.

Now Schultz feels that, if this is our policy, it will not last past October. A very significant step was taken just a week ago by the Treasury, which indicates their feeling that demonetization may be the way out, that is abandoning gold entirely, which, of course, is absurd, it won’t work. But the Federal Register had a regulation introduced which would drop the old regulations on the importation of gold coins, so that any U.S. gold coin in Switzerland can now be imported, supposedly, by any person legally with no problem. The first shipment has been ordered as a test case to see if there is a gimmick in this, and whether customs will stop it or block it, because heretofore only a handful of treasury licensed dealers could import gold coins, and it was difficult to get them in the country.

Now, if this test case works out, the Double Eagles, which are $78.50, could drop from $3-5 in price because the middle man, these treasury-licensed importers will be out of the picture. So this is possible within a week or two weeks or three, depending on how long it takes to work out this test case, there could be that drop.

On the other hand, there is likely to be a rapid increase, because now it will be easier for American buyers to be competitive in the buying of these coins. In the long run it will raise the price very radically, but temporarily there could be a drop for a few weeks or days, hard to determine which, if this new regulation is valid.

Now, in the long perspective of course, the present attitude will only raise the price radically. This one coin dealer called me Tuesday, and in the course of discussing the situation, and the utter heedlessness of people and governments to the crisis, he said: “Last night I saw some captured German World War II films, which were the first showing of these films. They were taken by Germans in Berlin four days before Berlin fell.” And he said, “The Russian troops were fifteen miles to the East, the American troops thirty miles to the West. The streets were full of rubble and dead bodies. But,” he said, “the film, taken four days before the Fall of Berlin, showed people going to the Philharmonic concert, and to the zoo, believing absolutely the propaganda that was published and issued by their radio and their government that the Germans would stop the Soviet Army and the American army, that they were on the verge of turning the tide and would have the victory, and everybody believed it.” So they were going about business as usual, to the Philharmonic and to the zoo with their picnic lunches.

And what Mr. Blumert said at this point; he said: “The situation here with respect to monetary prices is the same. Change the four days to four years give or take a few years. And,” he said, “we are doing the same thing that they did then, we believe the propaganda that is given to us that they are going to avert the crisis that the monetary situation is going to be in hand, that gold is not going to be a problem, that all will go on as usual indefinitely. But,” he said, “in those captured films you could hear, in the distance, the rumbling of the Russian guns.” 

And he said: “Even now you can hear the rumblings, and they appear in the papers, of the gold crisis. But they pay no attention, and they will be caught, just as they were then.” And he said the consequence was in the documentary that when Berlin actually fell four days later, because the people were psychologically unprepared they became like animals in their reaction. And he said: “It will be the same here; they have been unprepared by and large, and when catastrophe hits them they will become like animals in their panic.”

Well, with that pleasant word we are adjourned.

i. Immanual Velikovsky, Ages in Chaos (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1952), pp. 55–101.

ii. George Bush, Notes, Critical and Practical, on the Book of Exodus, vol. 1 (Boston: Henry A. Young & Co., 1841), 222.

iii. Sanhedren 20 b, Seder Nezikin, III, 109

iv. Allen Edwardes, Erotica Judaica, A Sexual History of the Jews (New York: Julian Press, 1967), p. 56.

v. Deuteronomy 25:18.

vi. M. R. Davies, The Evolution of War (Yale University Press, 1929), p. 298 f., cited in Georges Bataille, Death and Sensuality (New York: Ballantine, 1969 [1962]), p. 72 f.

vii. Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bungay, Suffolk: Penguin Books, 1983, 220.

viii. Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bungay, Suffolk: Penguin Books, 1983, 230.

ix.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

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xx.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.