2. Promise of Life (Remastered)

The Promise of Life

R.J. Rushdoony

Deuteronomy 5:16 and Deuteronomy 22:6, 7, ‘The Promise of Life.’ 

First of all, Deuteronomy 5:16:

“Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

And Deuteronomy 22:6, 7:

“If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they beyoung ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young: But thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.”

The Fifth Commandment, “Honour thy father and thy mother,” carries a very significant pledge to all the obedient; the promise of life. This commandment is a central one, as we have seen previously, and yet today one of the least regarded of all commandment. Certainly, when we go to the modern church, we find no help with respect to this commandment. Perhaps the most important modern commentary on the law says concerning the meaning of honoring one’s father and mother that:

“They are not to be sent abroad to be eaten of beasts or to die of exposure, as was the case in some societies.” ⁱ

Fantastic as it may seem, this is the cream of the interpretation in modernist commentaries. You are honoring your father and your mother if you don’t send them out to die, if you don’t expose them to the wild beasts.

Now first of all, this is a degenerate bit of commentary, not only morally, but academically. There was no such exposure of parents in Middle Eastern society. You have to go up to the Eskimos, a particularly decadent culture, to find anything comparable to it. So they were really reaching for something fantastic in the way of interpretation to so render the word ‘honor.’

The requirement here in the Fifth Commandment is, first of all, a religious honoring of one’s parents. Second, the general respect for one’s elders, for example, Leviticus 19:32 says:

“Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head [the white-haired - RJR], and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the Lord.”

Proverbs 16:31 reads:

The hoary head is a crown of glory,

If it be found in the way of righteousness.

Respect is due to one’s elders in any case, but righteous adds a crown of glory. Age commanded religious respect in Biblical society. Paul could appeal to the fact of his age, for example, to sway Philemon, when he wrote:

“…yet for love’s sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.”

Philemon 9.

In writing to Titus in Titus 2:2,3 Paul counseled:

“That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things…”

Paul emphasized this because he stressed the fact of authority of age, and therefore it was doubly incumbent upon those who are older to establish the highest kind of example of discipline, of self-restraint, as well as of wisdom.

There are certain general principles inherent in this law. First of all, to honor parents, and to honor all those who are older than ourselves, is a necessary aspect of the basic law of inheritance. Next week we shall deal at greater length with the laws in inheritance as they relate to the Fifth Commandment: “Honour thy father and they mother.” But for the present, we must state that honor to our parents and to all who are older than ourselves is a necessary aspect of the basic law of inheritance. What we inherit from our parents is life itself, and beyond life, the wisdom, the faith and the experience which they transmit to us. The continuity, the progress of history, rests in this honor of those who are our parents and older than ourselves and in the inheritance they give to us.

A revolutionary age always begins by attacking this commandment. A revolutionary generation turns on its parents with venom and animosity, it disinherits itself deliberately. It says, in effect, “We want nothing from you,” and it proceeds thereby to despise everything that the older generation has, unless, perchance, it be their money. But it constitutes an act of disinheritance. To respect our elders then is to respect all that is good in our cultural and personal inheritance. 

The world, of course, is not perfect, nor is it even entirely or nearly law-abiding. But although each of us comes into this world naked, we do not enter an empty world. We enter a world in which there are trees planted and bearing fruit, in which there are paved roads and homes and stores and a wealth of manufactured goods. These things we did not create, we inherited them when we were born; born naked, but not into an empty world. And we are required to honor the older generation always, all those who are older than ourselves, because we have inherited a rich earth from them. We have inherited a past which they have transmitted to us, and therefore we must honor them, and honor that which they have transmitted.

Our parents especially, who provide for us and nurture us are to be honored above all others and if we do not so honor them, we sin against both God and ourselves and we disinherit ourselves in the sight of God. There is a very close connection, as you can see, between honoring one’s parents and the laws of inheritance. We shall deal with that next week. The tragic fact, however today, is that many parents refuse to recognize that their children have disinherited themselves deliberately, and have denied everything that their parents are, except the money. 

A second general principle inherent in the Fifth Commandment is that progress is always rooted in the past, and that inheritance, in this broad sense, is the foundation for progress. The truest and the central inheritance is this broader inheritance of life, of the world around us with all the progress that the previous generations have made possible, of the culture, of the faith, of the standards the discipline which the older generation transmits to us. True progress, therefore, is always rooted in this cultural inheritance. In speaking to adults, the commandment calls for honor, not obedience. But for children under age, the requirement is obedience, as St. Paul said in Ephesians 6:1:

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.” 

Again, in Colossians 3:20:

“Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.” 

Now the Biblical commandment is not to be confused with ancestor-worship. Ancestor-worship, as in China, is a culture and a faith in which the past controls the future totally, in which no progress is possible. The stagnation of China for countless centuries was due to two things; on the one hand, its total relativism, its pragmatism so there was no concept of absolute truth, there was nothing to progress to because the present, the relative was all the truth man had, and second, to the fact of ancestor-worship whereby the past totally controlled the future.

But in Biblical faith, the family inherits from the past in order to grow more firmly into the future. The man and the wife become one flesh and they break with the old family while still honoring it to create a new one. Hence it is that Genesis declares:

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife….” ⁱⁱ

That while there is an honor of the parents, there is a leaving of them, a departure, so that there is progress with honor. The new family remains tied to the old family in that both the man and wife represent a cultural inheritance from two specific families, two sets of parents whom they are religiously bound to honor. The growth is real, therefore,  in that a separate family is established, and the dependence is real, and it is godly. The new clearly and plainly grows out of and realizes the potentialities of the old. 

Now the second half of this commandment, the first half: “Honor thy father and thy mother,” and the second half gives the promise of life, “that thy days may be long.” To despise one’s parents, to hate them, to dishonor them, is to despise the immediate source of one’s life. It is a form of self-hate, and it is a willful contempt for the basic inheritance of life.

Very often over the years, I have counseled with people who have expressed hatred for their parents. And a remark I have encountered over and over again is this, “I didn’t ask to be born.” I very quickly realized that what they were saying when they made that statement was, “I’m not asking to live,” because there was a suicidal will to death in every such person and a very, very high mortality rate, for to despise one’s parents is to despise the source of one’s life, and ultimately life. It is a form of self-hate, and of the will to death.

Repeatedly, the Scripture emphasizes respect for parents, not only in the world of man, but in the world of animal life itself as a basic condition of life. For example, in Leviticus 22:28 we read: 

“And whether it be cow or ewe, ye shall not kill it and her young both in one day.” 

A strict prohibition in the law of killing a cow and its calf, a ewe and the lamb, in the same day. Then the Scripture we read in Deuteronomy 22:6,7:

“If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they beyoung ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young: But thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.”

Notice that this commandment concludes with the same words as the Fifth Commandment. In other words, when one is working in the fields or perhaps picking fruit or pruning the trees and finds a bird on a nest, they are not permitted to kill the mother with the young. If they wish to take the eggs for eating purposes, or if they wish to take the young and kill them, fine, but they cannot kill the mother and the young. Then too, Exodus 23:19:

“Thou shalt not seethe [boil] a kid in his mother’s milk.”

Humane feelings are not the object here. This is case law; the minimal cases of respect for the immediate source of life. One must revere and respect the source of life, the parents, for to do otherwise is to despise God. Indeed, honoring parents is placed on the same level with sabbath-keeping by the law. For example, in Leviticus 19:2, 3:

“Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy. Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and keep my sabbaths: I am the Lord your God.” 

Now, in one sentence, sabbath-keeping and honoring and fearing parents is cited, which means that a true rest in God is not only a matter of keeping the Sabbath, but of honoring one’s parents, because we cannot truly rest in the Lord when we despise the immediate source of life.

God and parents are associated repeatedly in the law. Both, we are told, are to be revered; God absolutely, and parents under God. The Sabbath means rest and the honoring of parents is rest and security for the child. Hence, this is true even with respect to animal life. There can be no progress, no security, no rest without a respect for the past, even where it deals with the humblest animal life.

Then, as has already been indicated, a third general principle inherent in this law is the promise of life for obedience and this promise is an earthly promise. There are those who refer it to eternity, but the law is clear:

“… that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” 

The promise is plainly material, this worldly. It is a promise not only to covenant man but it has respect to his cattle, his field and his trees. When we go through all the passages in the law that deal with this promise, some of them are Exodus 15:26, Exodus 23:24-26, Deuteronomy 4:40, Deuteronomy 5:29,33, Deuteronomy 7:12-16, 28:58-63 and 32:46,47, we find that the law is also a promise of death, of disease, of sterility and plague to those who are disobedient, and at the same time of fertility, health and long life to those who are obedient. 

The Antinomians read the law only as a promise of death. And this is wrong, because the two sides of the law are life to the obedient, death to the disobedient. We are sentenced to death by the law, we are made righteous before God by the law through Christ’s work, and we receive this fact by faith. Faith does not eliminate the legal transaction involved, nor does it eliminate the requirement that we now show forth the fruits of salvation, godly works. The promise of life is not merely the removal of the conditions of death, but the institution of the conditions of life. Our Lord said in John 10:10:

“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

Earlier I pointed out that to dishonor one’s parents is to dishonor oneself and to invite death. The Scripture makes it very clear in the law that this is the case. For example, we read in Leviticus 21:9:

“And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father…” 

And the sentence was death. 

Now note what the law says, it doesn’t merely say that she has been guilty of prostitution, but that her act has an offensive characteristic, that she is out to profane her father. Thus, we have to read the conduct of children in this respect, according to the law, that they are honoring their parents when they are law-abiding, that when they turn to criminal activity, it involves not only their own taste for this, but also a deliberate offense against their parents.

“…she profaneth her father…” 

And every son and every daughter who is guilty of criminal activity in any form is guilty of profaning father and mother, of committing acts of offense against them, so that they are in large measure aggressive activity.

Now at this point, we could say that, in part, modern psychiatric studies have confirmed this but with an ugly twist in that in saying it is the child’s fault and moral responsibility, that this has been a deliberately offensive act, they compound evil upon evil by saying the parents are guilty because, had they dealt differently with the child, this act would not have taken place. So that they compound the dishonoring by taking away the guilt and the moral responsibility. But the law is plainspoken, it makes it clear that whatever the parents may be, whatever their shortcomings and sins, the child has an obligation.

“Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

Let us pray.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou hast given us so rich an inheritance through our parents and through the generation before us. We thank thee, our Father, that thou has called us by thy grace to be members of thy Kingdom and given us grace to honor our parents, to rejoice in our inheritance and to do honor unto it. We pray, our Father, that we may, by thy grace, pass on a goodly inheritance to those who come after us. We beseech thee, our Father, that in the difficult days, in the trying days ahead of us, thou wouldst speedily disinherit an ungodly generation, and cast them out of their inheritance and cut short their days unto the end that the meek may inherit the earth and delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Bless us to this purpose. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

* * *

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

Yes…

[Audience member] Should the person who inherits carry on the family name? ⁱⁱⁱ

[Rushdoony] Yes, well we shall be coming to the fact of inheritance and the laws of inheritance next time so I’ll postpone all of the answer except one brief part.

Very, very commonly in our history, the male heirs have been disinherited because they have not been ready to carry on the real inheritance. They have despised father and mother. Sometimes in such cases what has been done, this has been true especially among the nobility in England and the gentry in Scotland, a hyphenated name has been adopted. In other words, the new family adds the new name to theirs. For example, you have seen such hyphenated names very often in books about English people; Smith-Johnson or the name of a professor my father had, Pringle-Pattison, hyphenated. This was one way of doing it, but this wasn’t mandatory, very often the son-in-law’s name was retained. But we’ll deal with these laws of inheritance in greater detail next time so I would prefer to postpone the balance of the question until then.

Yes…

[Audience member] What about the son or daughter who comes to know the Lord and finds their parents are Antinomians, are anti-law, haters of the Lord, who have destroyed the soil, destroyed the very things in the law to be their inheritance and the law itself?  ^iv

[Rushdoony] First of all, the grown son, the mature son who is on his own is not under an obligation of obedience, but he is under an obligation to honor parents, and in such a choice, let us say that the son and the father are farmers together, or ranchers, and the father is laying waste to the soil and despising the earth and God’s requirements concerning the use of it. His prior obligation is to honor his father. So that, while he can witness to that which he believes with respect to, say, soil conservation, yet it is more important for him to honor his parent and to bide his time because the basic inheritance of the past which he must cultivate is the parental, and that has priority over the ground beneath his feet, of course.

Yes…

[Audience member] Is the death penalty still binding?  ^v

[Rushdoony] Physical death, capital punishment here in this life is required by the law in a number of cases.

Yes.

[Audience member] Did Christ still preach that when He came? 

[Rushdoony] Yes, we shall see when we come to the laws of inheritance next time how Christ, from the Cross, abided by the Old Testament laws of inheritance, He had it in mind.

In this case, you see… I’ll deal with this just briefly now. One of the basic laws of inheritance stipulated that, whether there was any wealth in the family or not, one of the responsibilities and privileges was the care of the parents. And if the heir, who in this case was our Lord, did not feel that any of the other children were worthy of that responsibility, because, you see, this was important, it was not just a chore to be passed on, but there had to be a caliber there, then the responsibility could be given to someone else. Now, our Lord had several brothers and sisters. We do know that some of them became believers after, but at this time, from the cross, our Lord passed over every one of them, and, since any statement from the Cross had a testamental effect in Roman law and in Palestinian law, he called John, his cousin, and said to Mary, “Woman, behold thy son,” and to John, “Behold, thy mother.” In other words, she was, from that point on, John’s mother, and he had the responsibility for her support. So there was a total affirmation of all the Biblical Laws of inheritance. And you see, with it went also… Well, I’ll go into that next time, but the blessings…

[Audience member] But my point was that when He died, but he didn’t advocate death for his brothers, although he didn’t feel that they were to take care of his mother…

[Rushdoony] Well, they hadn’t committed any crimes worthy of death, but in certain cases of radical dishonoring of parents, the penalty was death. 

Yes.

[Audience member] I thought this was supposed to be a release from ancestor-worship.

[Rushdoony] It is. 

[Audience member] Jesus said that if you were to follow Him you had to hate father and mother.  ^vi

[Rushdoony] Yes, He made it clear that when there was a choice between following one’s parents and following God, you had to follow God. That was very clear-cut. When His mother and brothers and sisters were outside, they were concerned about his ministry. He was challenging the whole of the Pharisaic religious hierarchy, and they were afraid for his life, and they wanted Him to cease and desist and He refused to because He had to be obedient to God, and He made it clear that the basic relationship for Him was in terms of faith, so that His real mother, brothers, sisters, were those in the faith. But this did not involve on any, on His part, any dishonoring of His mother. He was honoring her, He was simply refusing to obey because He was now mature and He provided for her care from the Cross. 

So there’s nothing explosive about it or controversial. He was moving at all points in terms of the law. They had no right to try to command Him. He, in fact, was the one who was responsible for her support. So, He was in the commanding position.

Yes…

[Audience member] What does ‘honor' mean in this connection? What about ‘obedience?’  ^vii

[Rushdoony] Yes. ‘Honor’ means a religious respect and reverence for someone. ‘Obey,’ of course, means to place oneself under their authority. Now, the commandment here is to honor; for children it is to obey, but for adults it is to honor. You can, as a mature person, disobey, while still honoring one’s parents.

Yes…

[Audience member] Is a child considered illegitimate if they are conceived out of wedlock, but then the parents subsequently marry? ^viii

[Rushdoony] Let’s leave that question until we come to aspects of the child and the parents and the relationship because we will be going into this. It’s an important and a necessary question. But, well… briefly we can touch on it.

The child is legitimate if it is born in wedlock or if the parents marry even after birth, the child is then legitimate, that briefly is it. But we’ll go into the aspects of the family and the nature of the family and of the child within the family at a later date, why this is so. But briefly, that is the case.

[Audience member] What did the cursing of the fig tree have to do with?

[Rushdoony] The cursing of the fig tree had reference to Israel. The fig tree was a symbol of the nation, just as the eagle is a symbol of the United States, or when you speak of the ‘Stars and Stripes,’ you’re speaking of the United States, or the poppy is a symbol of California. So, when He cursed the fig tree and it perished overnight, of course the reaction was one of shock among His disciples because what He was saying was that Israel was now cursed for its unbelief and would perish because it refused to bear fruit unto Him, this was the meaning of that.

Our time is virtually up, but there is one little item that I’d like to share with you. It is a letter from Bakersfield, California, to a publication from Jose Mendoza, General Secretary, Agricultural Workers Freedom to Work Association. And it is written to a newspaper in answer to a statement by a nun.

“I would like to inform Sister Mary Dowling of the Convent of the Sacred Heart of St. Charles that we, the grape pickers, are not unjustly treated. We are not starving. We have good homes, clothing and automobiles. Our children go to the public and parochial schools. Our income is better than that of farm workers in any other state. The California state minimum wage is $1.63/hr. Many of us make form $2.50/hr. up to $ 5.00/hr. because we get paid incentives on production. We enjoy more employee-protecting laws than workers of any other State. It is most humiliating to us to be made he objects of charity and uncalled-for sympathy. We could join the UFWOC if we wanted to any time, but we have refused to join because they lie about us, all they want is our dues money. Since they have not been able to get us to join after three years of using all kinds of threats and harassment, now they use this imaginary strike and an illegal boycott, trying to force our employers to sign contracts forcing us to join the union. The boycott has hurt us, the workers; no one else. Many who were working full time before the boycott are now down to three or four days a week.”

Well with that, our time is up and we are adjourned.

i. J.C. Rylaarsdam, “Exodus,” in Interpreter’s Bible, I, 985.

ii. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ge 2:24.

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.

viii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.