The occult is the hidden, the veiled, the underground, and the word occult comes from the Latin occultus, past participle of occulo, hide. In an occultist society, if such a thing were possible, all assets, power, and activity would be hidden. To the degree that occultism flourishes in any society, to that degree, through fear of envy, confiscation, and assault, wealth is hidden and signs of prosperity carefully concealed. Leadership is avoided, because it invites hidden malice and attack, and no one wants to appear more active and industrious than others, for fear of ostracism and veiled retaliation. Occultism is closely tied to envy and hatred, and to levelling and equalitarian demands. Occultism uproots the open, stable orders of society by its insistence on the priority and fulfilment of hidden demands and impulses.
As a result, occultism and equalitarianism have a common hostility to freedom of inheritance, to successions, because such succession establishes a continuing, orderly, and stable basis to society. If the hidden order is to succeed, the visible order must be dismantled. By arresting succession, the future is decapitalized, equalitarianism promoted, and the hidden, underground forces given a great advantage. An open, inherited order needs freedom and visibility to develop; an occultist order must destroy such freedom in favor of underground forces and hostilities which will paralyze capitalization and growth.
It is important, therefore, to understand the biblical law of inheritance and its function. The order of succession is summarized as follows:
And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, if a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter. And if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren. And if he have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his father’s brethren. And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family, and he shall possess it: and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of judgment, as the LORD commanded Moses. (Num. 27:8-11)
It is a parental duty to provide an inheritance to godly children as far as one’s means will allow (2 Cor. 12:14). A godly child could not be set aside for reasons of a personal sort, i.e., a dislike for the mother and a preference for a second wife (Deut. 21:15-17). Unless set aside for moral reasons, as in the case of Reuben and others, the firstborn sons gained a double portion (Deut. 21:16-17), which meant the responsibility for the care of the parents, and a double portion of responsibility for their debts. Although the inheritance of one tribe of Israel could not be transferred to another (Num. 36:1-12), meaning that land could not pass into outside control, a slave could inherit (Gen. 15:1-4), since he was a member of the family. Confiscation or seizure of property by the state is prohibited in biblical law (Ezek. 46:18).207
The biblical law of inheritance is religious and theological. Its basis is in the doctrine of the fatherhood of God over His chosen or elect people. God redeemed Israel as a Father, according to Exodus 4:22-23:
And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my firstborn: And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.
First, it is clear that God declares Himself to be the Father of Israel by grace, and, as Father, He will redeem His captive son. The fatherhood God speaks of is not simply hyperbole or imagery: it is a legal fact. Israel as God’s son by grace has a legal relationship which means heirship, and God has no intention of allowing His heir to be destroyed. Second, God declares, “Let my son go, that he may serve me.” The realm to be inherited by the son requires work and development. The father builds up an estate so that his son may continue therein, and he requires service of the son towards the holy purposes of the family, subduing the earth and exercising dominion over it. Inheritance means successions and service in a common task. Heirship means responsibility and service. Thus, heirship is not only a legal fact, but it is also a question of work and succession. The element of necessary succession makes clear why a slave could inherit but not a relative in another tribe; the slave, while not a blood relative, would be in the succession of faith and purpose, an important fact. Third, God takes His fatherhood so seriously that He declares, “if thou refuse to let him (My son) go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.” The death of the firstborn of Egypt was the result. In every age, God strikes at the power and the firstborn of the world to deliver His chosen sons into His service. We have every reason to expect the same today, and we must also serve God as He requires us to do.
God not only declares Himself to be His people’s creator (as of all men), and their friend (Isa. 43:1; Jer. 30:10-11), but also the more faithful Father than their fathers after the flesh.
Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O LORD, art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting. (Isa. 63:16)
As Daube has pointed out, for Scripture, “God was the owner and relative of the whole people.”208
As the redeeming Father, God requires absolute obedience to His law (Ex. 20:2; Lev. 25:38, etc.). His right to command obedience and to establish all is thus based not only on His role as creator of all things, but also on His role as the redeemer, the next of kin who is in fact the Father. As lawgiver, God establishes laws for every area of life, including land and inheritance. Of the land laws and inheritance thereof, Leggett writes:
Basic to the laws of land tenure in the Old Testament is the conviction that Yahweh is the true owner of the land. “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity,
for the land is mine, for you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev. 25:23). Because the land was conceived of as belonging to Yahweh, religious and moral considerations were involved in questions of land ownership and transfer. One of the outworkings of this idea of God’s ownership of the land was that no Israelite could lose his property permanently.209
Important though Leggett’s study is, it misses the point to a degree, because the emphasis in the land laws and inheritance is God-centered, not man-centered. Israelites did lose their land, and it was God who dispossessed them by His judgment. To understand God’s meaning in Leviticus 25:23, let us examine it closely: “The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” The land cannot be sold “for ever” or “beyond recovery,” and, in Leviticus 25:24, it is added, “And in all the land of your possession, ye shall grant a redemption for the land,” or “a right of redemption shall ye give to the land” (Rotherham). First, it is clear that the emphasis is not on man’s tenure but on God’s ownership. In fact, verse 24, in speaking of redemption emphasizes the right of the land to be redeemed, not man’s tenure. Because the earth is the Lord’s, the land is reserved to God for His purposes, not man’s, nor the state’s. The redemption of the land is to the Lord, “for the land is mine.” Second, God says to the Israelite possessors, “for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” C. D. Ginsburg made clear the meaning of this in his comment:
God has not only helped the Israelites to conquer the land of Canaan, but has selected it as His own dwelling-place, and erected His sanctuary in the midst of it (Ex. xv. 13; Num. xxxv. 34). He therefore is enthroned in it as Lord of the soil, and the Israelites are simply His tenants at will (chapts. xiv. 34, xx. 24, xxiii. 10; Num. xiii. L xv. 2), and as such will have to quit it if they disobey His commandments (chapts. xviii. 28, xx. 22, xxvi. 33; Deut. xxviii 63). For this reason they are accounted as strangers and sojourners, and hence have no right absolutely to sell that which is not theirs.210
God remains, and the land remains. The people are tenants whose tenure depends on God’s mercy and on their obedience. They are accounted as aliens and pilgrims, even though they are God’s people, because they perish, but the land remains. The people’s perspective thus cannot be in terms of their own life span, or that of their blood heirs, but only in terms of God the Father and His creation purpose. The more they are aware of their transient nature, the more permanent their roots in God and His land become, because they then align themselves with God rather than their brief span. The psalm of Moses, Psalm 90, sets forth the godly attitude, whereas our Lord’s parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:16-21) gives us that attitude which leads to dispossession. Third, because the earth is the Lord’s, man’s possession thereof must be in terms of godly heirship in the Lord and in terms of His purpose. The point of the law of land tenure and inheritance was not to establish an Israelite bloodline in possession but an Israelite faith line. Anything other, God declared (Deut. 28), He would dispossess. The temple land of the Lord had to be surrounded by the people of the Lord who would pass on a succession of faith and land in
209
Donald A. Leggett, The Levirate and Goel Institutions in the Old Testament, with Special Attention to the Book of
Ruth (Cherry Hill, NJ: Mack Publishing Company, 1974), 84.
terms of God’s law and creation mandate. To fix land tenure in the hands of the ungodly is not God’s purpose: He works to dispossess all such men. It is His purpose that “the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace” (Ps. 37:11). This is emphatically restated by our Lord: “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5). Again, in both cases, the word inherit is used in its literal, legal sense: as heirs of the Father, the blessed meek, the redeemed, the tamed of God, shall inherit the earth and shall serve the Father. The godly tenure of productive land is thus a necessary and biblical requirement, but the inheritance thereof must be essentially a theological rather than a genealogical fact.
Leggett is very right in seeing the biblical relationship between property and person. Property is an essential instrument of dominion; the creation mandate requires, among other things, the development of property and power in and through property as an instrument of dominion. The purpose of the levirate was to perpetuate a godly inheritance and to develop its particular function in God’s kingdom.
Thus, instead of a hidden, occult strand, we have an emphatic requirement in Scripture of an open, godly succession. According to Proverbs 13:22, “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.” God’s purpose in history works towards the dispossession of the false sons, who seized the earth after the Fall, and its repossession and succession in the hands of His sons of grace. Moses in his song on the Red Sea shore declared of Israel, “Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O LORD, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O LORD, which thy hands have established,” because it is so ordained in the counsel of God. The “planting” of God’s elect people is in relationship to God’s sanctuary, in relation to God’s being and purpose.
The psalmist declares, “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot” (Ps. 16:5). The reference here is to the tribe of Levi, whose inheritance is the Lord Himself rather than a specific place (Deut. 10:9; 18:1-2). As the Lord’s kingdom prospers, so through tithes and offerings Levi prospers. This is ultimately true of all God’s people: like the Levites, they depend on the prosperity of God’s kingdom.
Every attempt to undermine God’s kingdom and God’s laws of inheritance is an attempt also to destroy the foundations of orderly life and is suicidal. There is indeed an apparent correlation beween occultism and suicide, a will to death.
A psalm of David deals with the problems of those whose life and inheritance is threatened by those who are destroying the foundations of society. David’s answer to their doubts and fears is to call attention to the certainty of God’s inheritance for His people, and the inheritance of judgment for the wicked. According to Psalm 11:
In the LORD put I my trust: how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain? For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart. If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’S throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.
The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth. Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup. For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.
Fearful men raise the question: when the foundations of society are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? David’s answer is that God’s inheritance is justice, and therefore the position of His people must not be flight but confidence in His redeeming power and their possession of a goodly inheritance in it, whereas the portion of the wicked is radical judgment.
Because the inheritance God gives His people is both temporal and eternal, His law governs the earth and eternity; it governs the inheritance of property and the gift of salvation. Property is not a secular or a humanistic concern for those who believe God’s word: it is a theological trust, and a God-centered fact. Property cannot replace God in our lives, but neither can it be regarded as irrelevant to God and to matters of faith.
Children, like property, are an inheritance from the Lord (Ps. 127:3), and both are alike means of exercising and extending dominion over the earth. Children, like property, are weapons in the hands of godly men, and a means of subduing the enemy (Ps. 127:4-5). The people of God, “the flock,” are “God’s heritage” (1 Pet. 5:3), and their properties and children are aspects of God’s heritage. Psalm 61:5 speaks of “the heritage of those that fear thy name,” meaning thereby, “the honours and privileges of the chosen people. ”211
Inheritance is a theological fact in Scripture, and a legal fact. To bypass the laws of inheritance as somehow “worldly,” “purely civil,” and irrelevant is to miss the point of biblical faith and to diminish our understanding of the heritage of those who fear His name.