DEVARIM

Words [of Moses]

Yahweh's covenant - The Ten Commandments

It is customary to speak of these ten commandments as "the moral law". This is an objectionable description on two grounds: it takes for granted a false theory of "morality ", and it ignores the divine estimate and description of the ten commandments. The false assumption of human philosophy is that" the moral law" is as natural and spontaneous a thing as the physical laws of the universe. It is assumed that the ten commandments are as natural as the law that you must have air to breathe and food to eat before you can live, and that their obligation arises from the constitution of things, and not from their having been enjoined by divine authority.

The "moral law" is thus thought of as a part of nature, and not as the appointment of God. This view will upon study be found a fallacy, and like all fallacies, it works confusion in the applications of knowledge. If the so-called moral law were an element in the nature of things, it would be found asserting itself like the law of gravitation or the law of eating and drinking. Instead of that, man left to himself is an ignorant savage, who kills and steals with as little scruple as a lion or a tiger. He has no idea of wrong in these acts. He never exhibits the conception of moral restraint till the idea has been introduced to him by some process of instruction.

Even Paul (in Rom. :2:12-15), where he is supposed to sanction the idea of an instinctive sense of right and wrong among "the Gentiles which have not the law ", recognizes that men are only "a law unto themselves ", and "do by nature the things contained in the law ", when "the work of the law" has been "written in their hearts" (see verse 15). It is very few Gentiles who have been the subject of this operation.

His testimony of the world in general harmonizes with experience to this day, that "the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God" (Rom. 8: 7), and that the Gentiles unilluminated "walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened," and are without God and have no hope (Eph. 4: 18; 2: 12).

Those who had had "the work of the law written in their hearts" had had it so written by the pen ministration of the Spirit of God by the instrumentality of the apostles, as Paul says: "Written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (2 Cor. 3:3). These were "the Gentiles" of whom Paul writes in Rom. 2. The rest he speaks of as "other Gentiles who walk in the vanity of their mind" (Eph. 4: 17).

If the ten commandments were the moral law, and the moral law were "a law of nature", killing could never be right, whereas the killing of the Canaanites became Israel's duty (Deut. 20: 15-17), and the killing of the Amalekites, Saul's duty, for failure in which Saul was ejected from the kingship (1 Sam. 15:3, 23). It is the wrong view of the subject that creates what are called "the moral difficulties of the Old Testament". People holding it read of the slaughter of the Canaanites and many other things with a shock for which there is no ground at all.

Duty is obedience to the commandments of God, and not the following of a supposed natural bias. Natural bias may be whim and darkness. The keeping of the commandments of God is the following of the light, whatever the commandments are. He makes alive, and has a right to kill, and when he says "Kill ", it is wickedness to refrain. The slaughter of the wicked Canaanites was by the order of God, and became an act of righteousness. So with all the other so-called "difficulties" They are difficulties that vanish with a right understanding.

The ten commandments are only to be rightly estimated by God's own description of them. He calls them (Exod. 19: 5) "My covenant". Moses says: "He wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments" (Exod. 34: 28). Also in his rehearsal to Israel on the plains of Moab, at the end of the forty years, he said:

"Yahweh spake unto you out of the midst of the fire And he declared unto you his covenant... even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone".

The rest of the law is treated as an appendix to these:

"And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it" (Deut. 4: 12-14).

The "sanctuary" and "ordinances of divine service", prescribed in what is called the ritual and ceremonial law, in its detail, are scripturally treated as mere appurtenances and amplifications of "the first covenant" promulgated from Sinai in the ten commandments (Heb. 9: 1). Of the allegorical significances contained in these, it will be our duty to enquire by and by.

The Mosaic view of the ten commandments as God's covenant with Israel, agrees with the historical allusions they contain, and with the fact that they were addressed exclusively to Israel. A "moral law", in the sense of modern parlance, would be as much the concern of the Chinese and the Babylonians as of the Jews: it would be of universal application--and it would not start off with a circumstance so local and historical as the Exodus, which is the substance of the first commandment and the basis of the other nine:

"I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt".

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It is in fact, unsuitable and unjust to the subject to regard the ten commandments in any other light than that in which the Mosaic record exhibits them: namely, as a speech from God to Israel, defining the leading maxims on the basis of their consent to which He would choose them as His people:

"Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven". "Now therefore if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth in mine" (Exod. 19: 5-6).

This view is also in accord with the undoubted and otherwise extraordinary declaration of the New Testament that this covenant, "written and engraved on stones ", has been done away. Paul calls it "the ministration of death, written and engraven on stones", because a curse was pronounced on everyone that should infringe any of its enactments (Deut. 27:26). James's application of this curse is so stringent as to make a man who transgressed one of the commandments an offender against all.

His argument is : "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all: for he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law" (James 2: 10).

Because, therefore, the Mosaic law condemned to death those who should disobey any of the ten commandments, or their engrafted corollaries, and because no man was capable of a spotless obedience (save Christ), they were in their totality a "ministration of death, written and engraven in stones"; and had they continued in force against men, their condemnation would have been inevitable and their salvation impossible.

Consequently, it was necessary that they should be "done away", as Paul three times expresses it in 2 Cor. 3:7-14; or "taken out of the way", as he has it in Col. 2:14--not taken out of the way, in the sense of being abandoned as a rule of acceptable behaviour before God, but taken out of the way in the sense of Christ discharging their whole claims in every sense and then dying under the curse of the law of which they formed the kernel or foundation--a law which in another clause enacted "Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree", and therefore cursed Jesus who so hung as Paul declares, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree" (Gal. 3:13).

Law of Moses Ch 3

12 Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as Yahweh thy Elohim hath commanded thee.

The Typical Sabbath

—In the seventh day Sabbath, which God hallowed and blessed, and set apart for rest, we have the type of the seventh millenary of the world's history, and the sabbatic rest and blessedness that all the world will then enjoy, under the peaceful and worshipful reign of Israel's Messiah, and the immortal hierarchy of kings and priests, by which he will be surrounded in the day of his power."

This is called the "rest (Sabbath-keeping) which remains for the people of God" (Heb. 4:4–11), because they will take precedence of all others with regard to their entry upon the conditions of life and blessedness, from which all the rest is to spring, and in which they and their royal head will always enjoy the pre-eminence.

For the rest will come first to the house of Christ, next to Israel, and finally to the whole groaning creation, which, at last, delivered from every curse, will be resplendent with the glory of God, and reverberate for evermore with his loud-sounding praise.

This will be creations's sabbath—at once the sabbatic age, and the sabbatic world destined in due time to crown the work of God upon earth with eternal glory and peace in the realisation of which the din of war and the strife of tongues, which makes the present world a babel, will be for ever hushed, and henceforward substituted by the results of judgment-fire, which will give us an altogether new order of affairs comparable (apocalyptically speaking) to a "sea of glass"—at once clear as crystal, and beautiful for ever.

Bro Shuttleworth

The Christadelphian, Jan 1889

AIONS

Αιων is not time, long or short, bounded or endless. It is not the opposite of time. It is stability and fixity, as opposed to what is temporary. It is a fixed and settled course of things related to a common centre.

...This is the word, then, adopted by the Septuagint, and by the writers of the New Testament, as the best in the Greek language, by which to designate the Abrahamo-Mosaic and the Abrahamo-Messianic cycles, and the cycles beyond. While adopting the word, however, the Spirit does not also adopt the heathen ideas connected with it; these it rejects in exhibiting a doctrine of aiôns that never entered into their minds to conceive.

In the above figure, the parallelogram a b c d represents a period of 7000 years, which contains three Divine Aions and four intervals. The aions are indicated by circles, and the intervals of time elapsing from the end of one aion to the beginning of another, by parallel lines. The line a c indicates the Era of the Creation. The parallel lines between it and the first circle, the time that elapsed to The Fall.

The First Circle represents the Antediluvian Olahm, or Aion, which terminated 1656 years after the Creation.

The Second Interval extends from the Flood to the typical Confirmation of the Covenant of the Land with Abraham, and occupied 377 years.

The Second Circle, with the crescentic prefix, represents the Abrahamo-Mosaic Aion which enclosed αιωνες και γενεαι, aions and generatious (Col. 1:26) peculiar to itself; and continued 2125 years, and then, having waxed old, it vanished away (Heb. 8:13) in "blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke."—(Acts 2:19.)

The Third Interval indicates the series of years that have already elapsed since the destruction of Jerusalem, and may yet elapse to the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ in power and great glory, to restore the kingdom again to Israel, which event marks the commencement of the regeneration. We have defined this interval by 1796 years from the destruction of the Holy City in the V. Era, 70. By the end of this period, "the kingdoms of this world" will be about to become "the kingdoms of Yahweh and his anointed"—(Rev. 11:15.)

The Third Circle represents the Abrahamo-Messianic Aion, commonly styled the Millennium, because it is to continue 1,000 years. This Aion is "the Day of Christ," and the period when he and Abraham possess the Land. It is the aion of the kingdom in its Melchizedec constitution. It is the aion also of the Tree of Life, and of the New Jerusalem. The gospel treats of this aion, which, because it is future, is styled the Aion to Come. No one has ever heard the gospel who is ignorant of the doctrine concerning this aion; for it is the aion of the aions—the hope of all the faithful of the antediluvian and Mosaic times.

The Messianic aion has its "days," as the Mosaic had. "Remember," said Moses, "the days of Olahm; consider the years of a generation and a generation." As we have remarked before, these days and years were the time occupied in organizing the aion—the days of sojourning and conquest. The days of Messiah's aion are also organic years—years in which the aion is being formed. This is a period of 40 years, in which the Apocalytic Sickles are doing their bloody work. (See Rev. 14:14–20.) This "hour of judgment" is indicated by a crescented prefix to the third circle, which with it encloses a period of 1,040 years.

The Fourth Interval represents the "little season" which intervenes between the end of Messiah's Priestly Aion, and the terminus of the 7,000 years. It is a period referred to in Rev. 20:3, 7, 8, in which the Dragon-Power revives and contends once more for the dominion of the world. How long after the end of the Anno Mundi 7,000 the conflict may continue, we are not informed. It will terminate, however, in the suppression of the rebellion, and the restoration of Yahweh's sovereignty throughout the earth.

The perpendicular line b d indicates the end of the 7,000 years from the Creation.

The Fourth Circle‮ ‬represents‮ ‭ ‬ad,‭ ‬or the aion‭ ‬beyond the priestly Aion of Christ.‭ ‬Of the direction of this,‭ ‬the Bible reveals nothing.‭ ‬It is an aion which belongs to Messiah as much as the preceding,‭ ‬only his relation to it is not sacerdotal.‭

‭"‬Behold,‭" ‬says he,‭ "‬I am living for the Aions‭ ‬of the‭ ‬aions‭; ‬and I have the keys of the invisible and of death.‭"—(‬Rev.‭ ‬1:18.‭)

These aions are the third and fourth circles,‭ ‬both of which are introduced by the opening of the grave,‭ ‬and the releasing of prisoners from the power of death.‭ (‬See Rev.‭ ‬11:10‭; ‬20:4‭–‬6.‭) ‬They take root in the Antediluvian Abrahamo-Mosaic aions.‭ ‬They are,‭ ‬therefore,‭ "‬of the‭ ‬aions‭"—‬των αιωνών:‭ ‬for the sentence upon the serpent‭ (‬Gen.‭ ‬3:15‭)‬,‭ ‬and the promises to Abraham,‭ ‬are developed and accomplished in them.

In the English version of the New Testament, the aion represented by the second circle, and styled in these pages Abrahamo-Mosaic, is in many places termed "the world," and "this world." This is calculated to mislead the reader, since by these terms is generally understood the whole mundane system, consisting of the earth and its inhabitants. This is not the sense of the original, where it is so rendered. aion is, indeed, in a certain sense, "a world," but not the world in the usual signification of the phrase. The Abrahamo-Mosaic aion was a world of itself—the great collective circle of all things pertaining to the Commonwealth of Israel under the Mosaic law.

A Bible Dictionary - Bro Thomas Dr. Thomas

The Christadelphian, Aug 1872

16 Honour thy father and thy mother [av and thy em], as Yahweh thy Elohim hath commanded thee; that thy days [yamim] may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land [ ha'adamah] which Yahweh thy Elohim giveth thee.

Nothing is more natural than to kill when anger is roused, or self-interest is obstructed by another. That murder is not common we owe to the modifying effect of this commandment operating in many generations, and to the restraints of human law arising out of it.

Everybody allows that killing fellow-creatures is wrong; but there is nothing in the abstract to make it so. It is divine law alone that has created the moral aspect of the act. A man kills vermin without any sense of wrong-doing; so also he freely takes the life of the lower animals when they are required for food.

There is nothing physically different in the act of killing a man. It is only God's interdict that has made the difference.

"Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."

Law is powerful when its authority is recognized. It builds a stronger wall than stone around human life. Such a law was necessary. Human cleverness and human resentment combined would have destroyed the human race long ago if individual men had been at liberty to kill their neighbour when inclined to do so. The beasts do so, but they are not only incapable of receiving a law, they do not require such a law. They are not intelligent enough to be dangerous to each other except on the limited scale that is needful to check over-propagation.

But there is a higher protection to life than law, and that is love.

"Love worketh no ill to his neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law"

(Rom. 13:10).

Law of Moses Ch 9

17 [Lo tirtzah (thou shalt not murder)].

Nothing is more natural than to kill when anger is roused, or self-interest is obstructed by another. That murder is not common we owe to the modifying effect of this commandment operating in many generations, and to the restraints of human law arising out of it.

Everybody allows that killing fellow-creatures is wrong; but there is nothing in the abstract to make it so. It is divine law alone that has created the moral aspect of the act. A man kills vermin without any sense of wrong-doing; so also he freely takes the life of the lower animals when they are required for food.

There is nothing physically different in the act of killing a man. It is only God's interdict that has made the difference.

"Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."

Law is powerful when its authority is recognized. It builds a stronger wall than stone around human life. Such a law was necessary. Human cleverness and human resentment combined would have destroyed the human race long ago if individual men had been at liberty to kill their neighbour when inclined to do so. The beasts do so, but they are not only incapable of receiving a law, they do not require such a law. They are not intelligent enough to be dangerous to each other except on the limited scale that is needful to check over-propagation.

But there is a higher protection to life than law, and that is love.

"Love worketh no ill to his neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law"

(Rom. 13:10).

Law of Moses Ch 9

19 [V'lo tignov (neither shalt thou steal)].

The commandment is a recognition of personal possession as the basis of society. No other basis can be conceived as a practical one. If the sum total belonged to all, as in the schemes of socialism, there would be no scope for individual character and responsibility, and human character would dwarf to a workhouse level. If nothing were allowed to belong to any, each would take and keep by force what he could get, and the conflict of individual graspings would reduce life to a chaos and the world to a desert.

The simple but wise and powerful law that each man shall have the right to possess what he can lawfully acquire, modified by those other laws that require him to consider his neighbour and to contribute to the well-being of the whole, is the sure basis of social order and civilized human life. It only requires to be regulated by infallible and just authority to make the earth an abode of joyful life. This will be realized in the Kingdom of God and not before.

Law of Moses Ch 7.

22 These words [devarim] Yahweh spake unto all your assembly [Kahal] in the mount out of the midst of the fire [eish], of the cloud [anan], and of the thick darkness, with a great voice [kol gadol]: and He added no more. And He wrote them in two tables [luchot] of stone, and delivered them unto me.

It means, then, that the voice that proclaimed the ten commandments stopped abruptly at the prohibition of covetousness. Nothing was added to the oral delivery from the mount--no tapering off--no peroration--no gradual and ornamental finish, as there had been no exordium or oppropriate introduction--no rounded periods--none of the mere arts of rhetoric: nothing beyond solemn substance and meaning.

There must have been something very impressive in this sudden cessation of "the great voice ", as there was in its sudden commencement in the pause after the terrific overture. The whole method of their communication seems to mark off the ten" words "or commandments with a special emphasis, as possessing a peculiar and leading importance: for not only were they rehearsed in the hearing of the whole assembly, but immediately afterwards, as Moses records, "the Lord wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto him" for special preservation.

Law of Moses - Ch3