The Laws of Yahweh
The laws of Yahweh are very important for our well being, while we are resident on this planet. Unfortunately, Christians have ignored these laws for many centuries and we have been paying the price for this.
Most Judeo-Christian churches teach that the Ten Commandments are all the laws we have to obey. If this were true, why did Yahweh go to all the trouble of recording all the other laws that are in the Bible?
The Bible records four kinds of divine law, the commandments, judgments, statutes and the ordinances. Today's ministers, with rare exception, have no idea there is any difference between these laws at all.
The commandments are the major rules of conduct for the responsibility of man to Yahweh. The Ten Commandments, in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, are the outstanding example of this. Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, and so forth. Contrary to what a good many churches teach, these commandments are still in full effect.
The use of the word judgments is a little misleading. Today we understand judgment to mean the decision of a court after it has heard a case. However, as used in the Bible, it is the rules by which a court is to decide a case. Following the rules, recorded in what the King James Bible calls judgments, a court will know how to decide a case. This is sometimes used in the Bible in the modern sense also. From the point of view of Bible law, consider it as the rules by which a court decides a case, but not all cases.
The commandments need no rules of this sort, they are clear enough. What the Bible classifies as judgments, are the cases between man and his fellow man. It includes the laws in regard to property rights, master and servant, and this sort of thing.
Here is an example in Exodus chapters 21‑22.
"Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them. If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him."
Here is another example.
"And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death," (Exodus 21:16) for kidnapping!
No threat of a slap on the wrist and probation, for kidnapping it was always the death sentence, even if the victim is rescued.
The laws continue with excellent controls.
"If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it or sell it; he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep...If the theft be certainly found in his hand alive, whether it be ox, or ass, or sheep; he shall restore double." (Exodus 21:1)
That certainly takes all the fun and profit out of theft. Why do people steal? They steal to make a profit.
If the result of stealing is not only having to return the stolen article, if the thief still has it in his possession, he has to return double. If the thief has disposed of the property, he has to return four to five times the amount of the original theft. When these Bible laws were in effect, there wasn't much thievery, I wonder why!
How do you enforce these laws? Suppose the thief just laughs in your face and says, "I'm broke, what are you going to do about it?" The law took care of this situation also. The thief was simply sold into slavery or servitude, for enough to make the required restitution.
Suppose the thief had to pay back $500.00. He would be put on the auction block and the auctioneer would ask, "Who will bid $500.00 for a month of this man's services, as a slave?" If the thief were the sort that nobody could rely on him, the auctioneer would offer him for the same amount of money but for three or more months labor.
This demonstrates how scientific the laws of Yahweh are. The man's own attitude determined his punishment. If the thief was really sorry and anxious to make good, maybe he would be a willing worker and you would get a bid of $500.00 for a month's work. However, if the thief was sullen and uncooperative, who knows how long he would have to pledge to work to pay off his debt. He determined his own punishment.
With these just laws, the victim of the crime got his reimbursement. At the present time, the best thing we know how to do, if we catch the criminal, is to put him in prison.
This way the victim isn't reimbursed and the public has to support him and all the people it takes to run a prison. This way nobody wins and usually the criminal just gets worse. If he doesn't go to prison and is given probation instead, he is right back on the streets to continue his crimes. Under Yahweh's laws, there was the perfect solution to the situation. The professional sob sisters were not drawing up Yahweh's laws, so they were perfect.
The third class of these laws was the statutes. These were general rules of conduct for the government of the nation as a whole, for general good order and prosperity. They were of less importance than the commandments, but they were the rules for the civilization that separated the people of Israel from all the other nations.
Living according to these statutes, the nation of Israel was to give a demonstration of what prosperity, peace and good order can come from living under the statutes of Yahweh. These laws covered the dietary, agricultural, social and financial life of the society.
For example Leviticus 3:17 states,
"It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood."
It took us 3,500 years, plus many doctor's bills, to find out that animal fats are the heaviest in cholesterol. This fat builds up in our arteries, leading to hardening of the arteries, heart attacks and strokes. If you cut out the animal fats you can get the necessary fats and oils from vegetable sources, the best of which is olive oil.
As for the eating of blood, dietitians know there are a number of very unfavorable factors present. Certain diseases are transmitted through the eating of blood, besides other unwholesome chemical factors in blood as a food. As you can see, this wasn't intended for your salvation or for your benefit in heaven. If we didn't eat animal fats, it wasn't in heaven that you had a good heart; it was here in this life.
Another excellent law is recorded in Leviticus 10:8‑11.
"And Yahweh spake unto Aaron (the high priest that was the brother of Moses), saying, Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations: And that ye may put differences between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; And that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which Yahweh hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses."
There were to be no drunken priests on duty. The Bible didn't forbid the priests to drink wine or beer, it was simply that when they were performing their priestly functions, they were to be clear headed and sober. The duties of the priests included not only the service in the temple, the offering and sacrifices, but also the instruction of the people in the laws of Yahweh. There was to be no thickheaded, drunken stumblebum doing the instructing.
The fourth class of laws was the ordinances. These were the laws, which governed the religious rituals, ceremonies, religious holidays, etc. Note that this is a distinctly separate class of laws. The ordinances had nothing to do with the general conduct of the people or the nation these are strictly religious laws.
For example, in speaking about the Passover, Exodus 12:42‑45 instructs us,
"It is a night to be much observed unto Yahweh for bringing them out of the land of Egypt: this is the night of Yahweh to be observed of all the children of Israel in their generations. And Yahweh said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the Passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof."
The Passover was something between Yahweh and His people Israel. While transients from other races could come in as merchants and travelers, they were not to be part of Israel and entitled to all of Yahweh's special blessings and protection.
"But every man's servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. A foreigner and a hired servant shall not eat thereof."
Definitely this was between the Israelite and Yahweh.
The following is a quote from Exodus 13:5‑10 with rules about the feast of unleavened bread.
"And it shall be when Yahweh shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which He sware unto thy fathers to give thee, a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt keep this service in this month. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall be a feast to Yahweh. Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven bread seen with thee in all thy quarters. And thou shalt show thy son in that day saying, this is done because of that which Yahweh did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt. And it shall be so a sign unto thee upon thy hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that Yahweh's law may be in thy mouth: for with a strong hand hath Yahweh brought thee out of Egypt. Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in his season from year to year."
Do most of you know how most of our American laws originated? We started with the common law of England; this wasn't in the form of statutes passed by parliament. It was the fact that the recognized customs of the people had been recognized as having the force of law by the courts. Since records were kept of all the major cases that were decided, therefore the British courts were set up based on these records and it became known as the common law.
Gradually, even in England, this common law was modified and added to by statutes adopted by parliament. Here in America, while we started with the basis of the English common law, the bulk of our laws are now statutory.
A number of the states, California among them, have tried to organize the law so that all statutes, pertaining to a particular subject, are found grouped together. For example, there is the motor vehicle code, then there is the civil code of general regulations. There is the code of civil procedures, to govern the courts and there is a separate evidence code, the rules of evidence to be received in court etc.
When Moses was given the law upon mount Sinai, it wasn't the origin of divine law. It was what you might call a codifying of the law, reducing it to a systematic statement. The Bible recognizes that Yahweh's laws were known, to some extent, earlier than this.
Genesis 2:16‑17 records the first commandment.
"And Yahweh God commanded the man saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
In Genesis 26:3‑5 Yahweh says this to Isaac.
"Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws."
This shows there was a good deal of divine law known before the time of Moses, although obviously not as well organized.
The modern day Judeo-Christian preachers teach that we aren't under divine law anymore, we are under grace and that all the Biblical laws are done away with. It is interesting to ask these preachers if they really believe we aren't under divine law anymore. If this were true then we would be free to murder, steal; commit adultery and many other crimes.
In the seminaries, these future Judeo-Christian ministers and priests are not taught the Bible systematically, because church doctrine takes first place and the Bible comes in a poor second place. If verses are taken out of context, just about anything can be taught.
One of the popular verses this is done with is, "judge not that ye be not judged" In this context we couldn't have courts and we couldn't judge moral behavior etc.. However, if you continue to read it says if you judge somebody for exactly the same thing you are doing wrong yourself, you will be twice judged.
What the churches are basing the teaching that the laws are done away with is where Paul said, in two places, that Yahshua had done away with the ordinances, nailing them to His cross. Here are the two verses; they don't say the law is done away with, only the portion of the law contained in the ordinances and rituals, in other words the ceremonies.
Ephesians 2:14‑15 tells us,
"For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us. Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace."
Only those commandments that were in the ordinances were abolished.
Colossians 2:13‑14 continues,
"And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross."
When you limit Paul to what he actually said, and not to the large amount of territory some of the Judeo-Christian ministers want to take this verse to, Paul is right. All these ordinances were symbolic of Yahshua, what He was going to accomplish for us. The ordinances were to keep alive the memory, understanding and hope until Yahshua came. After He had come and fulfilled the promises of Yahweh, then we are supposed to put our attention to the reality and not the mere symbols.
The ordinance of the Passover was that by the death of the Passover lamb's blood being shed and put on our front door, by a public proclamation of our faith, we would be spared from death. Obviously this is symbolic of Yahshua and this is explained in the book of Hebrews. Since Yahshua has come and fulfilled this Passover ritual, we no longer observe Passover.
When giving the ordinance of the Passover in the Old Testament, it states this was to an ordinance for eternity. We no longer kill a lamb and put its blood on the outside of the front door, as we did in the past. This is not because we are neglecting it but because we have a different form of it.
With the old Passover we proclaimed our faith that sometime in the future, the Messiah who had not yet come, would come and make the real sacrifice for us. By the shedding of His blood, our sins would be forgiven and the death penalty, which our sins had earned, would not have to be paid by us. Yahshua would pay the price to redeem us from our sins.
After Yahshua had come and offered His life on the cross, we can't go through the old ritual looking forward to His coming. The form of the ritual has been changed so we have communion, with the bread substituted for the flesh of the lamb and the wine substituted for the blood. Yet, we still have the essential meaning of the Passover. If we still celebrated the Passover, this would be like saying that our Savior Yahshua hadn't come yet.
It didn't take long for the symbolic meaning of all these ordinances to be completely lost. It is the sort of thing you would naturally expect when you set up a professional priesthood, with rituals to go through. The tendency is to give them an air of a certain amount of hocus‑pocus. When the congregation can't understand what is going on, then they have to depend on the clergy to perform the rituals to receive the benefits. This way the churches were and are able to extort money out of the people to get the clergy to perform these magic ceremonies for them, supposedly to gain the benefits.
When you want to put this scam over on the people, when you want to increase your influence and importance, the only way you can do this is to cause the general laity to forget what the meanings of the rituals are. To make a mystery of it and the priests speedily did. The history of organized religion has never been anything but the history of organized corruption.
Look over the books of the Bible, aside from the merely historical ones of Ezra, Nehemiah, Kings and Chronicles. You will find, with the two exceptions of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, when Yahweh needed a man to go out and say, thus saith Yahweh, He had to go outside the priesthood to find him. So today you find the professional clergy teaching their congregations that the law was all done away with.
Go to a church social supper, what is almost invariably served? Baked ham, which is an abomination to Yahweh. You are supposed to violate the laws of Yahweh in order to show you are under grace. Yahshua had some rather critical comments to make about this.
Leviticus 18:3‑5 tells us,
"After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doing of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances. Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am Yahweh your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them."
The great bulk of the laws, ninety‑eight percent of them, had nothing to do with these moral phases. The dietary laws pointed out which foods were wholesome and good for you. These laws also pointed out which foods were unwholesome and thus bad for your health. If you ate unwholesome food, you weren't going to have a stomachache in heaven after you died; you would have your ill health here in this life.
If you violated the agricultural laws, you weren't going to have poor crops later on in heaven, you would have the poor crops here and now on earth. These laws are every bit as valid today as they ever were. The violation of these laws is one of the reason we have so much sickness today. The soil has been depleted of important and necessary nutrients that are essential for good health. For example, there are enzymes in the soil that help the plants absorb nutrients. These enzymes get used up after a few years. However, if we follow the law to let the land rest every seven years, these enzymes renew themselves and can carry on for another six years.
We aren't forfeiting our chance of salvation, if we are foolish enough to violate the dietary laws; this wasn't the purpose of them. Here is what Yahshua said in Matthew 5:17‑18,
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled."
When do heaven and earth pass away? Revelation 21:1 is the first time where we find the statement that the first heaven and the first earth are passed away.
Matthew 5:19 continues,
"Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."
The laws of Yahweh are still in effect. Nobody has ever succeeded in fully living up to them. In Old Testament times, when you realized you had broken one of these laws, you took your animal sacrifice to the temple and were assured of Yahweh's forgiveness. Today we don't offer an animal sacrifice; we pray to be forgiven, because Yahshua has made the real sacrifice for you.
These ministers who teach that the law is all done away with, and has no power today, you can see where they are going to wind up, even if they do get their salvation and redemption. Proverbs 28:9 states,
"He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination."
So much for the general four categories of the law. Now let's take a little look at what these laws are, in some of these groups. There is the law of military training and military service as there is no pacifism whatsoever in the Bible. Yahweh not only authorized war, He expressly commanded it in certain instances. For example, Yahweh commanded the literal extermination of the Amalekites. Read Exodus 17:14‑16 and also Deuteronomy 25:17‑19.
"And Yahweh 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 Yahweh‑nissi (Yahweh is my banner): For he said, Because Yahweh hath sworn that Yahweh will have war with Amalek from generation to generation."
The Canaanites who lived in the land the people of Israel were to occupy Israel was commanded to exterminate. They weren't to do, as we have done in Vietnam, and say they didn't want to win the war, we just want to convince them to be reasonable.
Read what Deuteronomy 7:1‑4 records.
"When Yahweh thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when Yahweh thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of Yahweh be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly."
Wars of liberation, to drive out oppressive tyrants, were favored. Numbers 10:9 promises us,
"And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before Yahweh your God and ye shall be saved from your enemies."
These aggressors who made war against our people, were not to be left in condition to keep on repeating this aggression over and over again.
The people had been warned, they were not to be
aggressors themselves, attacking others who were peacefully inclined toward them. However, if any other nation made aggressive war on them, here was the rule stated in Deuteronomy 20:10‑13.
"When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee an answer of peace, and open its gates unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that are found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war with thee, then thou shall besiege it: And when Yahweh thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword."
A little of this action in Vietnam would restore peace in a hurry.
Exodus 15:3 tells us,
"Yahweh is a man of war."
Psalms 144:1 continues,
"Blessed by Yahweh my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight."
Remember Yahweh said that David was a man after His own heart.
The law was for universal military training, which is recorded in Numbers 26:1‑2.
"And it came to pass after the plague, that Yahweh spake unto Moses and unto Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest, saying, Take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, from twenty years old and upward, throughout their father's house, all that are able to go to war in Israel."
They were all registered for the draft, from the age of twenty.
Has Christianity done away with all of this? Has it revealed that everything Yahweh said before Yahshua came to redeem Israel was a mistake and has to be thrown out? No, of course not, Yahshua confirmed the need for conscription laws in Luke 12:51.
"Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division."
If we would only heed what Yahshua said, there was going to be division and with division comes battles.
Mix us up with our enemies in the United Nations in one great, happy, satanic family? No, division and separation. 2 Corinthians 6:17 commands us to,
"Come out from among them, and be ye separate..."
It is a command from the beginning.
In Luke 22:36 Yahshua was speaking to His disciples and gave them important instructions.
"Then He said unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his script: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one."
Matthew 10:34 continues,
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."
You cannot have real Christianity, uncompromising resistance to satanic evil, without war. The satanic organizations of the earth aren't going to let you get away with opposition, without war. We would have to do one of two things, we would either have to desert Yahweh and join Satan's forces or stand by Yahweh and have war with Satan, there is no intermediate ground.
The Bible makes it very clear that Yahweh is not a pacifist, in the meaning of today's pacifists. Does this mean that Yahweh doesn't like peace? Not at all, He wants a true peace, which can only be had under His own rules. The kind of peace that the communist controlled countries are having is not peace in the eyes of Yahweh. In Leviticus chapter 26 Yahweh states this,
"If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them,...I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. And five of you shall chase an hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword."
Instead of obeying Yahweh's laws, our politicians turn their back on Him in order to get the votes of the minorities. We have over 40,000 dead Americans in South Vietnam, against an enemy that isn't even fifth rate.
It is hard to find anything in which we haven't perverted the laws of Yahweh. Take for example the laws of citizenship and eligibility for public office. Anybody from a country whose people are not of our race, whose civilization is not compatible with ours, whose ideals are not like ours at all, can immigrate here and after a relatively short period of time can be naturalized as a citizen. They are given full citizenship equal to someone born here. This is completely contrary to Yahweh's laws.
Yahweh's laws on immigration are explained in detail in Deuteronomy 23:3‑8. Remember there were descendants of Abraham by a number white women, only one of whom, named Isaac, was selected to be the father of Yahweh's chosen people later to be called Israel. These people who were racially the same, although not of the Israel nations, were not permitted citizenship until the third generation born in the land. By this time, these people would have well absorbed our way of life. As to those who are racially not the same, they could not be admitted to citizenship even to the tenth generation.
Aliens were not permitted to hold any public office. Deuteronomy 17:15 warns us,
"Thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother."
This word stranger doesn't mean somebody to whom you haven't been formally introduced. It is the Hebrew word nokriy, which means a person of a different race. When any non‑Israelite is able to gain public office, this is plainly stated in the Bible as a curse upon us and a punishment for our wickedness.
Deuteronomy 28:15 warns us,
"But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of Yahweh thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and statutes, which I command thee this day; that these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee."
Then Deuteronomy 15:43‑45 continues,
"The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail... because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of Yahweh thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee."
The very fact that we can have this Negro Bradley
running for mayor of Los Angeles shows to what an extent we have sunk in the eyes of Yahweh. You notice that this is something that is always promoted by those that like to call themselves liberal; this is also addressed in the Bible. Isaiah 32:5 tells us what it is going to be like in the kingdom of Yahweh, when all our present troubles are done away with and we are living under the reign of Yahweh.
"The vile person shall be no longer called liberal."
Foreign policy was also addressed. There are always stupid, uninformed people trying to show they are Bible studying Christians. These pseudo Christians love to say, "If you are a good Christian you will love your enemies." Remember, the Bible is very careful to record that we are to love our enemies not Yahweh's enemies.
If your fellow Israelite is your enemy, he is your enemy for one of two reasons. Either you have done something wrong to him, in which case you should make amends, or he mistakenly thinks you have done something wrong to him, in which case you should try to get him to understand that you didn't do it. Yahweh's enemies are a different story.
On the breakup of Israel, upon the death of Solomon, the northern kingdom went into idolatry immediately. The consequences of this were that Yahweh took away His favor from the northern kingdom of Israel for this reason. A little while after this, one of the kings of Judah, who was making a halfhearted attempt to be good, sent military aid to help the king of Israel in a battle he was fighting. 2 Chronicles 19:2 records Yahweh's rebuke.
"Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate Yahweh? Therefore is wrath upon thee from before Yahweh."
When you help Yahweh's enemies, when you arrange yourself on their side, you yourself become the enemy of Yahweh and can expect to pay the penalty accordingly. Saying love your enemy, isn't going to change the facts a bit. You can't fool Yahweh with catch phrases.
Psalms chapter 139 records King David saying the
following.
"Do not I hate them, O Yahweh, that hate thee? And am I not grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with a perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies."
Did Yahweh look down His nose and tell David he was one of those terrible hate mongers? In two places in the Bible, I Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22, Yahweh had this to say about David.
"I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart..."
If any one of us could get that much approval, it would really be something!
Now let's address the economic laws governing business. The strictest honesty was so required, no false measures or false weights. These laws are recorded in Deuteronomy 25:13‑16 and Leviticus 19:35‑36.
The labor laws have their foundation in the Bible. There must be no oppression of the workmen who work for you. In the Bible they are called servants, but most people employed today wouldn't take kindly to the use of that word. However, as used in the English language of three and a half centuries ago, one who was hired to do work for another could be classified as a servant.
Leviticus 25:39‑42, 47‑55 records there must be no oppression and wages must be paid when due. In those days, wages were paid daily. The average working man didn't have enough money so he could go along for a week or a month without pay. Consequently wages had to be paid not later than sunset of every day.
On loans, no interest whatever could be charged, except from aliens. To your fellow Israelite, you could not charge interest. Today we say that usury is anything above 42% a year. As usury is used in the King James Bible, usury is anything above one trillionth of one percent a year, or anything above it. Anything whatsoever, anything that is paid for the use of money or thing of value is usury. In other words, the borrower must pay back the principal of what he borrowed, but not interest.
We weren't under any obligation to try to make the people of other races as prosperous as Israel. If they wanted to borrow from us to get some of our prosperity, it was fair enough that they pay us something for it, so we could charge interest to any non Israelite. Read Deuteronomy 23:19‑20 and Leviticus 25:35‑38.
There were mortgages in ancient times. If a person
became hard pressed and had to mortgage the family homestead or farm and had to sell it, he had the right of redemption. You couldn't lose the farm that was the source of the family's living, permanently. A house within a walled city was a little different classification. If you sold a house within a walled city, you had one year in which to redeem it. If you didn't redeem it within a year, it was gone permanently.
But the people within the walled city weren't depending on that house primarily for their living. If you were a saddle maker, silversmith, or whatever, living in town doing your work, you could move to another house and do your work just as well.
As to the farm, which was the source of the family's living, every fiftieth year, the jubilee year, whatever property had been sold or taken on mortgage foreclosure, if it hadn't been redeemed before the jubilee year, it reverted back to the original owner without the payment of anything. This doesn't mean fifty years from the time you sold the property, it was every fiftieth year on the calendar.
If last year was the jubilee year, you could mortgage or sell your property this year for fifty years. If next year was the jubilee year, you could only mortgage the property or sell it for the remainder of the year. When the jubilee year arrived, the property came back without any payment.
Do you remember what happened to the Roman Empire? When they were a nation of sturdy, independent farmers, they became a powerful empire that ruled most of the then known world. Then the inevitable happened. Farmers are subject to the vagaries of bad weather, insect plagues and other disasters.
When a farmer has a bad year and doesn't get a crop, the average farmer doesn't have enough saved up to see him through another year. Then the farm gets mortgaged, trying to buy time, and then when the mortgage can't be paid, the farm is lost through foreclosure or it has to be sold. These farmers then drift into town to become a landless city rabble. This is what happened to Rome, so there you have the beginning of the fall of the Roman Empire. You can find the documentation of this in great detail in Gibbon's "Decline and fall of the Roman Empire".
This was not to happen to Yahweh's people Israel. Every seventh year, the year of release, the Israelites were freed from the burden of unpayable debts. However, it was the obligation of every man, who was in debt, to make every honest effort to pay off his debt. But it was bound to happen to many, that with all honesty and good faith, they just couldn't make the payments.
You know how it is today when a man owes some money. The creditors won't wait, he gets a judgment, then he levies an attachment on the man's wages. Because of this garnishment the debtor gets fired from his job, adding insult to injury. Whenever the debtor gets a new job, the creditor again levies a garnishment on the wages, and gets the debtor fired from that job also.
This sort of thing couldn't happen under the rules of the kingdom of Yahweh. Whatever remained unpaid, after all fair and honest efforts were made to pay the debt, when the seventh year came around, the debt was canceled. Then the debtor got a fresh start.
Yahweh promised that if the nation would live up to this, if the creditors would recognize the release of debts in the seventh year, Yahweh would send prosperity. The creditors would not suffer any loss from not continuing to extract every penny from their debtors. It would be very difficult for an individual to do this. We are more or less the prisoner of the social system or economic system we live under. If the nation would adopt these economic laws, we were promised prosperity, and we would have it.
After seven of these seven year periods, came the jubilee year. Where you had sold your farm property, or lost it in foreclosure, no further proceedings could be taken to try to collect a deficiency judgment when the jubilee year arrived. The property didn't go back to you in the seventh year, it was returned to you in the jubilee year.
In the agricultural laws, there were the rules, which we violate constantly and we pay the penalty. One of these rules was that when you plant fruit trees, you cannot eagerly grab the first apple or orange or whatever the tree produces. For the first three years no fruit is to be allowed to form on the tree. All the buds are to be nipped off so no fruit is formed. The fourth year fruit may be allowed to form on the tree, but this fruit isn't for the owner. Every bit of fruit has to be taken to the temple as an offering. The fifth year and thereafter, belongs to the grower.
An interesting experience watching the effects of this law in action. A friend of mine bought some land in Escondido, some twenty miles north of San Diego, and planted an orange grove there. The very same year there was a neighbor that also planted an orange grove. Both these groves were planted with exactly the same conditions; the only thing that separated them was a wire fence.
My friend had obeyed the agricultural laws of Yahweh and hadn't allowed any fruit to form on the orange trees for four years. The neighbor had allowed fruit to form with the first blossoming. When I saw the neighbor's trees they were not particularly big or high and the branches were thin and spindly. There were some oranges on these trees but not very many. Under everyone of these little thin branches was a wooden prop, so the branches wouldn't be broken by the weight of the oranges.
By obeying the laws of Yahweh, the trees my friend had planted were nearly double the size of his neighbor's, with thick, strong branches. His crop of oranges was more than double and the branches didn't need any props, not even one. At the end of the fifth year, my friend would have more profit, a more salable crop, than his neighbor had for the entire five years. These trees, raised by the laws of Yahweh, would always produce more and better fruit than the neighbor's.
Yahweh doesn't bother arguing with you, as to why you should obey these laws. He tells you this is the best way to do it and that's it. If you are curious enough to look into it, you will find there is always a good reason.
From the time this neighbor's trees were very little bigger than weeds, he was trying to coax every little orange off of them. The strength of the growing plants was being too much diverted in the production of fruit and too little left for growing big, strong, sound wood. My friend followed Yahweh's laws. Not a bit of the strength of the growing trees was wasted on inferior fruit, it all went into growing sturdy, big, strong, healthy trees. Then when its proper growth period was completed, then fruit may be allowed to grow and you will have an abundant crop.
Another of these agricultural laws is that your land must get its Sabbath of rest, the same as you do. One year in seven the land must be allowed to lie fallow. You plant and harvest your crops for six years and the next year the land is to get its rest, but we have gotten too greedy to do this.
Do you remember the dust bowl stories of around 1932 and 1933? The farmers followed the customary greed; they were constantly planting and replanting the land. The Bible warned us but we paid no heed. Yahweh warned us,
Deuteronomy 28:23‑24: “And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.”
As night follows day, cause and effect will happen and it sure did. The land had to be left alone or it would have blown away completely.
Why the one year of rest in seven? A plant has to get out of the soil two things. It has to get the humus, the nitrogen bearing remains of former plant life and minerals. There is much being written today about hidden hunger. Plants grown on worn out soil are lacking in vitamins and especially in minerals. Plants can't get out of the soil what isn't in the soil to start with.
A grain of sand is all mineral, and it isn't of any use to the plant. The mineral is mainly quartz and quartz is completely insoluble in water. The plants can only absorb what is soluble in water. There are bacteria that grow in the soil in great numbers. As a by‑product of their existence, they produce certain acids. These acids corrode away the surface of the sand grains, breaking them down into water‑soluble salts, which dissolve in the water.
The roots of the plant draw this water out of the ground and they get the minerals for a healthy plant. Ammonium sulfate fertilizers can be poured onto the land, in any amount you want, and it is like a shot in the arm to the plants. This makes the plant green the same way green paint would, but it doesn't make it healthy to eat. It is absolutely essential to have those soluble minerals.
For thousands of years we bred our food plants for producing a heavy yield, meaning they feed heavily on the soil. At the end of six years you have, as you might say, overdrawn your bank account of soluble minerals in the soil. Whatever reserve was there, has been used up and you are now taking the minerals out faster than the bacteria can replace it.
If the land is allowed to lie fallow the seventh year, not growing anything, the bacteria continue working and you have a whole year's production of soluble mineral salts there, ready to start out with. Your bank account of minerals has been replenished with a new deposit. The eighth year, when you plant your crops, they have one whole year's production, in addition to the current year's production. The crops draw a little bit on the reserve that is there, and this will carry the farmer through the next six years. Then the farmer should start out with another year of rest.
A few years ago I read some figures put out by someone who unquestionably knew nothing about the divine laws regarding agriculture. He was just recording what the statistics showed. The Agriculture Department knew exactly what the yield had been per acre on these dust bowl areas, when they were planted to wheat, before the dust storms finally compelled giving the land its rest. The land was to lie fallow for several years when finally the farmers began to cautiously start to plant some areas. The report said that, "The first year's crop that was harvested, after the land had rested several years, the yield was as high as 400 percent of what it had been before the dust storm period started."
Now let's see what happens when we violate the laws of Yahweh. For most of the prairie states of the Midwest, there are pretty exact statistics on what the yield per acre was for wheat and corn from the time they were first put under cultivation. The production is not as high per acre now as it was 75 to 100 years ago, it has gone down. Let's assume there was a steady level of production. Let's count one year's crop as a unit. There is one unit for each of eight years, so this is 8 units.
Now suppose the laws of Yahweh are followed. There is one unit for each of the first six years, then the seventh year is skipped, getting nothing. Then in the eighth year the production is 4 units. Six and four are ten, as compared with eight, if the land wasn't given its rest. People think they are too smart when they are merely too greedy to follow Yahweh's laws. But, if these laws are followed, they really pay off in the long run. There is always a good and logical reason for all of Yahweh's laws.
Let's go on to the dietary laws, reading from Deuteronomy 12:23‑25, we weren't to eat fat or blood from meat. Leviticus 7:19,23‑24 also discusses this law. Another law is you aren't supposed to eat any kind of contaminated meat. This is meat that has been in contact with things that might put some bacterial infection into it, or any other poisonous thing.
The law as to what meats are fit to eat is, you could eat the meat from any animal that chewed its cud and had a cloven hoof. A rabbit chews its cud but it has paws, not cloven hooves. A pig has cloven hooves but it doesn't chew a cud. Pork and rabbit are therefore forbidden. Cattle, sheep, and deer, all have cloven hooves and chew their cud so are acceptable foods.
Why shouldn't we eat any of these forbidden meats, aren't the rules arbitrary? You can disregard Yahweh's laws, eat pork and get trichinosis. There are thousands of cases of this every year in the United States much of it isn't diagnosed. Trichinosis is tiny little worms that are microscopically small. They work themselves all though the muscles of the host they have gotten into. Each one settles down, chews out a little hollow for itself, then the body sort of walls it in with a membrane around the worm, and there they settle in for a long stay.
These worms then thrive on the nourishment carried to them by the blood. When we eat the meat of an infected pig that isn't extremely well cooked, to kill the worms, the following happens. The meat is digested in our stomach; this means that the little sacks around these worms are also digested, setting them free. The worms then burrow through the walls of the intestines into the blood vessels there. Then they drift with the blood throughout the body to wherever the idea occurs to them that they have gone far enough. Then they burrow through the wall of the blood vessel, into the muscles and set up housekeeping.
If some of these worms burrow into the liver, you can be diagnosed as having jaundice or perhaps cirrhosis of the liver. However, without an autopsy cutting up the liver to see, the doctors can't be sure whether it is trichinosis or not. If these worms get into the heart muscle, you are really in trouble. This explains why so many cases of trichinosis aren't discovered until it is too late. There isn't much than can be done about it anyway
Even if pork was cooked well enough to kill all the trichinosis worms, this doesn't make it a wholesome food, there is too much else wrong with it. There are a number of other diseases we can get from pork. Even if the bacteria and worms themselves are killed, just think of what it has done to the flesh of that diseased animal. There is a chemical condition that is set up, which is causing the sickness in the animal; this is what we would be taking into our bodies. Rabbits are subject to a good many diseases such as tularemia. This is often fatal.
Any kind of fish with fins and scales is permissible as food. A lot of people like to eat catfish. Catfish has fins but it has no scales, it just has skin. The catfish is a carrion eater; it eats dead and rotting things it finds in the water.
With birds, there is a long list of forbidden birds. The vulture and buzzard are forbidden, as they are carrion eaters. In general the carnivorous birds, such as the eagles and hawks, are also forbidden. Any animals or birds that eat meat are forbidden. Some people will even eat the forbidden bear meat. Snails, mice, and lizards are forbidden but believe it or not, some people will eat these things. All these forbidden creatures are unwholesome and should never be consumed.
East no flesh of any animal that has died of disease. If you go out in the field and find the carcass of a cow that has died of hoof and mouth disease and you take it home and eat it, you are not going to lose your redemption and salvation. In fact, you may wind up in heaven a lot quicker. You are going to lose your health immediately and quite probably your life; it won't be an easy death either.
All of the laws, which make up the practical group, do not deal with your spiritual salvation and redemption. They deal with our physical life here and now. Why then did Yahweh do more than just make suggestions? Yahweh basically said, "I want a healthy nation to serve Me. I don't want you debilitated with these filthy diseases. Don't defile yourselves with these things when you are going to be My special people, My demonstration of what a nation should be. I have promised that if you obey My laws you will have good health, long life, peace and prosperity. Now don't spoil this demonstration by making yourselves sick, by violating the very laws that I have given you for your guidance."
So these laws were enforced. In fact, in Old Testament days, they were enforced by the death penalty, because Yahweh wanted this nation to show the world what obedience to His laws would accomplish.
Anytime we are ready to get back on the ball and live up to the laws of Yahweh, we can get all the benefits of doing this. (Taken, in part, from an article entitled “The Laws of Yahweh,” by Bertrand L. Comparet”