VI. Its union of Church and State.
By this modern phrase is currently meant the subordination of the church to the civil or state authorities. Such a union in the Hebrew nation was a natural consequent upon a theocratic government. The civil code coming from God himself, the religious code must come from him by obvious fitness, not to say necessity. In his entire policy with Israel, God sought the most effective moral culture. We find this purpose underlying the entire civil government with its code of civil laws; it must of course underlie their religious institutions. Hence the church and the state were worked not only by the same hand but for the same general purpose.
In practice certain crimes against the religious law were enforced by the state. Idolatry was a state offense, punishable as other state crimes. So of perjury and blasphemy. (Deut. 19: 16–19.)——It was due to the common relations of church and state that to a great extent the religious orders were civil judges. In the absence of a king or other chief executive, the High Priest seems to have held that function. (See Deut. 17: 12 and 2 Chron. 19: 8–11). The subordinate judges were largely taken from the priests and Levites (Deut. 21: 5, and 33: 10).
Since the system provided for an ultimate appeal to God, extreme cases were taken up for the sake of such appeal to the one place which was for the time the seatof God’s special manifestations to his people (Deut. 17: 8–13, and 19: 17).
The wisdom of this joint action of the civil law with the religious admits in their case of no question. It may suffice to refer in proof to the omnipresent power of idolatry through all the ages from Moses to the captivity, to show the vital need of the civil arm to sustain the true worship of God and save the nation. On the other hand the state was the stronger for her religious institutions. The great religious festivals, bringing the masses of the male population from every tribe three times a year for a sacred week of communion must have been of priceless value in sustaining the national unity and a national patriotism. Jeroboam was sharp enough to see that the calves at Bethel and Dan must take the place of the festivals at Jerusalem, or his kingdom would melt away from under him, and his people give their civil fealty as well as their religious homage at the old center. Hezekiah would have brought the ten tribes back if he could have drawn their people in a body to the great Passover, as he sought to do.——Hence it is quite safe to say that the state was the stronger for the national religion, and their religion the stronger for the aid of the state.——Yet let none rush to the inference that such mutual relations of church and state are therefore wise and useful in the Christian age of the world. The providences of God shut off from the primitive church the possibility of such union and shut up Christianity to make her first great conquests under the sturdy opposition of the greatest civil power of the age. Experience has long since disproved the inference above referred to. The cases are too dissimilar to admit of any logical reasoning from that age to this.
In the Hebrew economy we are struck with the fact that both the religious and the civil code were enforced chiefly by considerations and influences, rewards and punishments, coming in from the present world—not from the future. Let it be supposed that religious duties were in our age enforced by such motives chiefly—and we should see at a glance the change that has passed over the world since Moses uttered the concluding chapters of Deuteronomy. Idolatry, then the head sin of the ages, was fitly resisted, not only by thecivil arm, but by the most fearful array of civil pains and penalties. The capital sins of Christendom are now of quite other sort; and the motives to repentance come appropriately from the other worlds yet before us and not from this. It may be difficult for us to realize how stern the necessity was that God should in the earlier ages govern the world, and not least his own people, by motives from the visible and not from the invisible world—from earth and time and the present life, and not from the eternal, the future and yet unseen state.
[This subject will receive further attention near the close of this volume.]
VII. The principles and usages of the Hebrew code in respect to war; with some notice of the war-edict for the extirpation of the Canaanites.
By their constitution the war-power was with God. The power and the right to declare war rested in him alone. He forbade them to make war on Edom; he commanded them to exterminate Amalek and the devoted nations of Canaan, and to “vex the Midianites and smite them”. (As to Edom, see Deut. 2: 5; as to Amalek, Ex. 17: 8, 14, 16 and Deut. 25: 17–19; as to the Midianites, Num. 25: 17, 18, and 31:).——Their rulers were expected to bring the question before the Lord—Shall I in this case go up to battle, or shall I forbear? (Judg. 1: 1, and 20: 18, 23, 28).——Any one tribe might go out to war alone, or might call in the aid of another or of all:—a fact which shows that the tribes were confederated rather than united and consolidated. On great occasions, of common danger, all the tribes associated together, and, with certain specified exceptions, every man able for war was required to go. The exceptions are given (Deut. 20: 5–8); viz. the man who had built a house, but had not dedicated it; he who had planted a vineyard but had not eaten of its fruits; he who had betrothed a wife, yet had not taken her; and finally, every fearful and faint-hearted man;—i. e. all who had special attractions homeward which might tempt them to desert the ranks, and they whose timid hearts made them worthless and might be contagious:—in the words of the statute, “Lest his brother’sheart faint as well as his heart.” Personal heroism was of prime account—a heroism inspired by faith in Israel’s God. The history every-where shows that such armies, fired with religious enthusiasm, strong by faith in the mighty God, were terrible in battle, and for the most part certain of victory. Often as we read these annals of the wars of Israel, we can not resist the conviction that they were means of grace as well as of manhood—an illustration of which may be seen in David before Goliath the Philistine (1 Sam. 17).——When only a small number of men were needed, they were chosen, picked men, naturally the brave, skilled, and renowned. See Joshua’s first battle (Ex. 17: 9); his assault upon Ai (Josh. 7: 7), and the sifting of Gideon’s army (Judg. 7: 1–8).