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THE DOMINION COVENANT:
GENESIS
Other books by Gary North
Marxk
Religion of Revolution, 1968
An Introduction to Christian Economics, 1973
Unconditional Surrender,
1981
Successjiul
Investing in an Age of Envy, 1981
Government by
Em~gency,
1983
The Last Train Out, 1983
Backward, Christian Soldiers?, 1984
75 Bible Questions
RUT
Instructors Pray
lbu
Won’t Ask, 1984
Coined Freedom: Gold in the Age of the Bureaucrats, 1984
Moses and Pharaoh,
1985
Negatrends,
1985
The Sinai Strategy, 1986
Unho~
Spirits: Occultism and New Age Humanism, 1986
Conspiracy: A Biblical View, 1986
Honest Money, 1986
Fighting Chance, 1986 [with Arthur Robinson]
Dominion and Common Grace, 1987
Inherit the Earth, 1987
Is the World Running Down?, 1987
The Pirate Economy, 1987
Lib~ating
Planet Earth, 1987
(Spanish) La
Liberacibn
de la
Tierra,
1987
The Scourge: AIDS and the Coming
Bankrupky,
1987
Tools of Dominion, 1988
Books edited by Gary North
Foundations of Christian Scholarship, 1976
Tactics of Christian Resistance, 1983
The Theology of Christian Resistance, 1983
Editor, Journal of Christian Reconstruction (1974-1981)
THE DOMINION COVENANT:
GENESIS
An Economic Commentary on the Bible
Volume 1
Gary North
Institute for Christian Economics
Tyler, Texas
Copyright 01982, 1987
by Gary North
Second Printing, Revised, 1987
All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from
the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book,
except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.
Published in Tyler, Texas
by Institute for Christian Economics
Distributed by Dominion Press
7112 Burns Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76118
Typesetting by Thoburn Press, Tyler, Texas
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-930464-03-6
This book is dedicated to
Henry M. Morris
John C.
Whitcomb
two scholars who, as outsiders to the “guild,” were willing
to challenge the evolutionary presuppositions and conclu-
sions of another academic discipline, geology. Without
their pioneering work, I could not have written this book.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
General Introduction to The Dominion Covenant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..xxix
l. Cosmic Personalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2. Purpose, Order, and Sovereignty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3. The Dominion Covenant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4. Economic Value: Objective and Subjective . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5. God’s Week and Man’s Week. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
6. The Value of Gold. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
7. Subordination and Fulfillment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
8. The God-Designed Harmony of Interests . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
9. Costs, Choices, and Tests.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...100
10. Scarcity: Curse and Blessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 111
11. The Burden of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118
12. Primitive Nomads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...132
13. To Keep a Brother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...139
14. The Ecological Covenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145
15. The World Trade Incentive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...150
16. Investment and Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
17. The Growth of Human Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...162
18. Competitive Bargaining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..177
19. The Uses of Deception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..184
20. Contingency Planning.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .198
21. The Law of Diminishing Returns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...204
22. The Blessing of Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...213
23. The Entrepreneurial Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...219
24. The Misapplication of Intrinsic Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
25. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .238
APPENDIX A – From Cosmic Purposelessness to
Humanistic Sovereignty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...245
vii
v
THE DOMINION COVENANT: GENESIS
APPENDIX B – The Evolutionists’ Defense of the Market . ...323
APPENDIX C – Cosmologies in Conflict:
Creation vs. Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...357
APPENDIX D – Basic Implications of the Six-Day Creation .. 425
APPENDIX E – Witnesses and Judges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...471
SCRIPTURE INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...477
GENERAL INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...485
WHAT IS THE ICE? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...507
x
THE DOMINION COVENANT: GENESIS
covenant model. Those who reject Sutton’s thesis need to present an
alternative model, one which fits the Pentateuch better, and one
which also fits the Ten Commandments better, since they are also
structured in terms of the five-point model: 1-5 and
6-10.2
Critics
need to understand that old political aphorism: ‘You can’t beat
something with nothing.” It is not enough to mumble that “Sutton’s
book tries to prove too much” or “There are lots of different models
in the Bible .“ There are indeed lots of biblical models, and
all
of
them
are
to be understood either in terms of the
Trinip
or the covenant model.
We
begin and end all biblical studies with God and with the God-man
relationship: Trinity and covenant. This is why Sutton’s book is the
most important single theological breakthrough since the early
Christian creeds that formulated the orthodox doctrine of the Trin-
ity. It will be regarded as a major turning point in the history of
Christian doctrine. And the realization that an obscure pastor in
East Texas made this historic breakthrough has sent his critics into a
dither. They much prefer to deny its importance. After all, if it were
really that important, each of them devoutly believes, he would have
discovered it!
The Pentateuch’s Five-Point Covenant Structures
Genesis clearly is a book dealing with God’s transcendence.
Transcendence is point one of the biblical covenant model. Its open-
ing words affirm God as Creator, testifying to God’s absolute tran-
scendence, the foundation of the Creator-creature distinction: “In
the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). But
true transcendence also involves immanence, the presence of God
with His people. He speaks with Adam, and judges Adam and Eve
when He returns to the garden. He speaks to Cain, Noah, and
Abraham. He establishes a covenant with Abraham and promises to
be with Abraham and Abraham’s heirs forever (Gen. 17:7).
Exodus is clearly the book of the covenant itself. God establishes
2. Gary North,
The Sinai Strategy Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), Preface.
3. There are continuing rumors that certain faculty members of a particular Cal-
vinist seminary have been discussing the five-point covenant structure of the
Pen-
tateuch
for manv
vears.
But which five
points?
That is
the
auestion.
Discussions in
./
.
A
private are one thing; having the courage to go into print
to
defend a highly contro-
versial, career-jeopardizing thesis is something else. Faint heart
ne’er
produced fair
paradigm shift.
General Introduction to The Dominion Covenant
. xi
His authority over them by delivering them out of
Egypt.
He also
establishes the hierarchical principle of representation. Hierarchy is
point two of the biblical covenant model. The principle of represen-
tation is manifested with God’s call to Moses out of the burning
bush, telling him to go before Pharaoh as His representative. God
delivers the Israelites from Egypt, and then He meets with Moses,
their representative,
at Sinai. In Exodus 18, Moses establishes a
hierarchical appeals court system, whereupon God meets with
Moses as Israel’s representative and delivers His covenant law. The
Book of Exodus is a book about rival kings and rival kingdoms, God
vs. Pharaoh. Men must subordinate themselves either to God or
Satan through their covenantal representatives.
The Book of Exodus is easily divided into five sections: the inter-
vention of God into history to deliver His people; the establishment
of Israel’s judicial hierarchy; the giving of the law; the judgment of
Israel after the golden calf incident; and the building of the taber-
nacle, which they would carry with them into Canaan.
Leviticus is the book that records the establishing of Israel’s ritual
and moral boundaries. It is therefore about dominion, for boundaries
in the Bible are always associated with dominion. The third point of
the biblical covenant deals with boundaries. The third command-
ment deals with the prohibition of obscenit y, false oaths, and incan-
tations (magical power), thereby affirming dominion through
ethics,4
and the eighth commandment parallels the third. “Thou shalt not
steal” is a command regarding ownership boundaries.
s
The eighth
commandment indicates that the concept of boundaries is basic to
economic ethics, the third point of the
covenant.
b
Gordon Wenham comments on Leviticus’ place in the Old Testa-
ment’s covenant-treaty structure: “(3) The centerpiece of every treaty
was the stipulations section. In collections of law, such as Ham-
murabi’s, the laws formed the central section. The same holds for the
Biblical collections of law. In the treaties a basic stipulation of total
fidelity to the suzerain maybe distinguished from the more detailed
stipulations covering specific problems. In this terminology ‘Be holy’
could be described as the basic stipulation of Leviticus. The other
4. Ibid.,
Ctl.
3.
5. Ibid.,
&.
8.
6.
Gary North,
Inherit the
Earth:
Biblical
BlzIEprints
for Economics
(Ft. Worth, Texas:
Dominion Press, 1987), ch. 3.
xii
THE DOMINION COVENANT: GENESIS
laws explain what this means in different
situations.”r
God sets apart His people and their worship. He makes them holy
— set apart. He places ritual boundaries around them. “Leviticus
centers around the concept of the holiness of God, and how an un-
holy people can acceptably approach Him and then remain in con-
tinued fellowship. The way to God is only through blood sacrifice,
and the walk with God is only through obedience to His
laws.”a
The
issue is sanctification, and this requires boundaries: “The Israelites
serve a holy God who requires them to be holy as well. To be holy
means to be ‘set apart’ or ‘separated.’ They are to be separated from
other nations
unto
God. In Leviticus the idea of holiness appears
eighty-seven times, sometimes indicating ceremonial holiness (ritual
requirements), and at other times moral holiness (purity of life)
.“9
As
R. K. Harrison says, the first fifteen chapters deal with sacrificial
principles and procedures relating to the removal of sin. “The last
eleven chapters emphasize ethics, morality and holiness. The unify-
ing theme of the book is the insistent emphasis upon God’s holiness,
coupled with the demand that the Israelites shall exemplify this spiri-
tual attribute in their own lives .“
10
Holiness means separation from the
heathen.
11
It means
boundaries.
Numbers is the book of God’s judgment against Israel in the wil-
derness. Judgment is point four of the biblical covenant model. God
judged them when they refused to accept the testimony of Joshua
and Caleb regarding the vulnerability y of Canaan to invasion
(Num.
14). They rebelled against Him, and He punished them all by delay-
ing their entry into Canaan until they were all dead, except Joshua
and Caleb. “Numbers records the failure of Israel to believe in the
promise of God and the resulting judgment of wandering in the wil-
derness for forty
years.”lz
Israel as a nation is in its infancy at the outset of this book, only thirteen
months after the exodus from Egypt. In Numbers,
the book of divine disci-
7.
Gordon J. Wenham,
The Book of Leviticus
(Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Eerd-
mans, 1979), p. 30.
8.
Tiu
Open Bible: Expanded Edition
(Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson,
1983), p. 95.
9. Ibid., p. 96.
10. R. K. Harrison,
Leuih’czu:
An
Zntrodzution
and
Cornrruntaty
(Downers Grove,
Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1980), p. 14.
11. Jacob
Milgrom,
“The Biblical Diet Laws As an Ethical System: Food and
Faith;
Interpretation,
XVII (1963), p. 295.
12. Open
Bible,
p. 127.
General Introduction to The Dominion Covenant
. . .
Xlll
pline, it becomes necessary for the nation to go through the painful process
of testing and maturation. God must teach His people the consequences of
irresponsible decisions. The forty years of wilderness experience transforms
them from a rabble of ex-slaves into a nation ready to take the Promised
Land. Numbers begins with the old generation
(1:1-10:10),
moves through a
tragic transitional period (10
:11-25
:18),
and ends with the new generation
(26-36) at the doorway to the land of
Canaan.~
Deuteronomy is the book of the inheritance, point five of the bib-
lical covenant model. “It is addressed to the new generation destined
to possess the land of promise — those who survived the forty years of
wilderness
wandering.”lq
The children of the generation of the ex-
odus renew their covenant with God and inherit Canaan on this
basis. Moses blesses the tribes (Deut. 33), a traditional sign of inher-
itance in the Old Testament (Gen. 27; 49). Moses dies outside the
land, but before he dies, God allows him to look from Mt. Nebo into
the promised land (Deut. 34:4). He sees the inheritance. The book
closes with the elevation of Joshua to leadership, the transitional
event (Deut.
34:9-12).
Thus, the Pentateuch is itself revelatory of the structure of God’s
covenant. This economic commentary on the
Pentateuch
is there-
fore a commentary on a covenant. I call it the dominion covenant,
for it is the God-given, God-required assignment to mankind to ex-
ercise dominion and subdue the earth that defines mankind’s task as
the only creature who images God the Creator.
Covenant theology is inescapably dominion theology. God has
placed on His people the moral requirement of transforming the
world through the preaching of the gospel. He has also given man-
kind the tools of dominion, His laws.
15
This thought upsets all those
Calvinist amillennialists who reject as impossible and utopian the
postmillennial vision of the progressive manifestation of the king-
dom of God on earth. Dominion theology is inescapably covenant
theology. This thought upsets all those Arminian “positive confes-
sion” preachers who reject covenant theology and its call to compre-
hensive social transformation,
16
and who prefer to limit the trans-
13.
Ibid.,
p. 128.
14.
Ibid.,
p. 171.
15. Gary North,
Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus
(Tyler, Texas: Institute
for Christian Reconstruction, 1987).
16. Gary North,
1s
the
World
Running Down?
Crtsis
in the Christian
Worldview
(Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), Appendix C: “Comprehensive
Redemption: A Theology for Social Action.”
xiv
THE DO
M1N1ON
COVENANT: GENESIS
forming power of the gospel to the individual soul and personal bank
account. We cannot have Christian dominion without the biblical
covenant, and we cannot have the biblical covenant without the re-
quirement of Christian dominion. We also cannot have Christian
economics without the dominion covenant.
Background to This Commentary
I was converted to Christ in the summer of 1959 at the age
of
seventeen. By the end of my freshman year in college a year later, I
had decided that the academic field of economics should be studied
in terms of the Bible. I was becoming aware of the fact that there was
no explicitly Bible-based body of material available on the topic of
Christian economics. I did not imagine then that I would have to
write the intellectual foundations of this required body of material. I
kept looking. By the age of twenty, I knew that I would have to write
it.
I
did not know that I would also have to raise the funds to publish
most of it. My adult life has been devoted to this task.
My first published book was
Marx3
Religion of Resolution (1968), a
critical analysis of Marx’s thought, including his economics. I under-
stood early that the war for the minds of men in the twentieth cen-
tury was primarily between Communism and Christianity, and that
this war involves every area of life. It is a war now in progress. The
book appeared four years before I finished my doctorate. My second
book, An
Introdudion
to Christian Economics, was published in the
spring of 1973. It was a collection of essays, many of which were
rewritten versions of essays that had appeared in The Freeman from
1967 onward. Both of these books are presently out of print.
At almost the precise time that Introduction appeared in print,
I
decided to begin a detailed commentary of the economic teachings of
the Bible. It seemed foolish to attempt a textbook in biblical econom-
ics, let alone a treatise along the lines of Adam Smith’s
Wea/th
of
Nation~,
without first laying the exegetical foundations that clearly
establish exactly what the Bible says about economics. Christian
scholars first need to know what the Bible says about all aspects of
economics before anyone attempts to write a comprehensive schol-
arly treatise on Christian economics. The world does not need
another half-baked defense of capitalism that is supported by a
handful of disconnected Bible verses. Such books are too easy for
Christian political liberals to dismiss. The standard rhetorical
response of humanist-educated Christian political liberals to any
General Introduction to The Dominion Covenant
xv
suggestion that capitalism necessarily is produced when the whole
counsel of God is preached, believed, and obeyed by any society is
this one: “Proof-texting! Proof-texting!” This is their code word for
“this
is getting too close for comfort ethically and politically.” I there-
fore realized by age thirty-one that writing an economic commentary
on the Bible would become my lifetime project, and that I would prob-
ably never write the Christian version of
Walth
of Nations. I did not re-
alize that it would take me fifteen years to reach the Book of Leviticus.
I completed the preliminary outline of my economic commentary
on the Pentateuch in 1980, when I finished the last of my monthly
columns on the Pentateuch in the Chalcedon Foundation’s
Chalcedon
Report. I did not realize even then that the final version of Exodus
would require the publication of three fat volumes. I did not realize
that the necessary appendixes would become as long and as involved
as they have become. (I regard Appendix A in The Dominion
Coue-
nant:
Genesi~
as the most important single piece of academic scholar-
ship of my career. It took me over a year — 500 + hours — to research
and write it, 1978 -79.) These include the visible appendixes at the
end of each volume, and also Is the World Running Down? (1987), a
study of the physical science concept of entropy and its supposed im-
portance in social theory, and Dominion and Common Grace (1987), a
study of the relationship between biblical law and historical prog-
ress. Essay versions of both these books started out as appendixes to
Tools of Dominion, my commentary on Exodus 21-23.
I decided in 1977 to devote ten hours per week, fifty weeks per
year, until I reach age seventy, to writing and publishing this com-
mentary. For ten years, I have stuck to this schedule. God willing, I
will stick to it until I reach age seventy. Maybe I will even work for
an additional decade, if mind, body, and economic resources permit.
I do not expect to complete the commentary, however. The Bible has
too much economic material to allow me to accomplish it in one life-
time of ten-hour work weeks. The Bible is filled with material that
relates to economics in the broad sense, meaning political economy,
as it was called in the nineteenth century, or moral philosophy, as it
was called in the eighteenth century. Contrary to theological pietists
and political liberals who deny that the Bible has much to say about
economic theory and practice, it has so much material that I do not
expect to discuss more than a fraction of it.
What I intend to do with this multi-volume commentary is to lay
the intellectual foundations for a restructuring of social science.