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The Modernist Assault on the Concept of Treason
Liberal seminary scholars have long insisted that the Pentateuch is a patchwork quilt of four main sources and countless minor strands stitched together centuries after Moses. Their guiding assumption is purely humanistic… since God is, at best, an idea, an infallible word is impossible.
This means any prophecy passage that seems to predict the future must therefore be after the fact. Employing this logic, critics dissect single verses into multiple “authors,” a feat they have never managed with Shakespeare or any other historic writer. Their surgical skepticism, is applied nowhere else in literature or history, highlights the flimsy basis of their approach.
When Worship Becomes an Abomination
Deuteronomy condemns offering blemished animals on God’s altar, calling such sacrifices an “abomination.” In Hebrew, the term abomination denotes something both disgusting and idolatrous. Presenting a defective gift says, in effect, that the Lord deserves only our leftovers.
The worshiper elevates self-interest above covenant loyalty, turning inward devotion into a private idol. What appears on the surface to be a small lapse in reverence is actually the seed of open rebellion.
From Insult to Insurrection
Verses that follow the ban on blemished offerings shift to treason against God’s covenant. The link is deliberate. Formal, half-hearted worship prepares the ground for outright apostasy. This legislation targets actual professing members of the covenant community. Unbelievers stand outside its jurisdiction.
Just as every nation must guard its constitutional order or invite anarchy, Israel had to guard the foundations of its life with God. Laws of treason served as a kind of societal self-defense. When a culture relaxes those safeguards, tyranny soon fills the vacuum. At root, tyranny means government without God, no matter how benevolent its rhetoric.
Apostasy: The Ultimate Revolution
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Scripture treats apostasy and treason as synonyms. The Greek word apostasia means defection or revolt. An unbelieving apostate doesn’t merely dissent from church doctrine. Nope, he lives by another god and another law, usually his own will.
That stance makes him a radical revolutionary because covenant life is fundamentally theocratic. In Deuteronomy 16 the use of sacred trees and standing stones… fertility-cult stuff…was also branded an abomination. Such symbolism, like blemished offerings, erodes true worship and ends in open revolt. The law, therefore, orders the evil to be purged, banished from the community, or everyone perishes in descending anarchy.
Due Process and the Death Penalty
Because human testimony can err and humans are far from perfect, biblical justice demands corroboration by at least two witnesses. However clear the accused’s guilt may appear, conviction without validating evidence is forbidden. It’s not surprising, then, that Jesus asked the woman caught in adultery where the witnesses against her were.
In ancient Israel, witnesses had cast the first stone, underscoring personal accountability for truthful testimony, and the community carried out the sentence as an act of covenant solidarity.
Paul echoes this principle when he instructs the Corinthian church to expel the unrepentant sinner, and the Lord’s Prayer may allude to it in the plea, “Deliver us from the evil one.”
Administrative Tyranny Versus Judicial Justice
Tyrannies, ancient or modern, typically bypass the requirement for corroborating evidence. Administrative edicts replace courtroom verdicts, leaving citizens subject to unchallengeable decrees.
The United States increasingly governs through administrative law, a silent shift that erodes freedom by ignoring God’s checks on power. Where courts deteriorate, unchecked agencies thrive, and treason against divine law is no longer punished… instead, the state quietly assumes ultimate sovereignty.
Equal Culpability of Men and Women for Treason
Deuteronomy’s treason statute pointedly addresses “that man or that woman,” refuting claims that secondary status or limited knowledge lessens guilt.
Divine law is taught to all, and so all are equally responsible for obeying it. Pleas of ignorance, coercion, being downtrodden, or having a subordinate position cannot annul covenant obligations. The standard is universal because the covenant God is universally sovereign.
The Vanishing Concept of Treason
In American culture today, treason has vanished from legal consciousness. Only the most flagrant spies are prosecuted, and even those cases often face calls for pardon. Heck, my dad taught me that burning a flag is treason.
At almost all Attorney General’s offices today, clear treasonous betrayals are moved to the back burner and soon forgotten. As Rushdoony observed, when the sense of treason fades, loyalty to any transcendent law dissolves, and personal or political party allegiance replaces obedience to principles. The result is creeping despotism… and that’s precisely what we see today… the rule of men in place of the rule of law.
Watching Over the Judges
It’s not surprising that scripture brands corrupt judges as the first potential treasonous traitors, this because they wield the power of judgment that properly belongs to God. Modern nations rarely discipline judicial corruption, yet a society cannot survive long when arbiters of justice sell their verdicts to the highest bidder.
Where courts are compromised, the entire legal edifice totters. Covenant Israel understood this, and the early church echoed it: members must discern and, when necessary, separate from unfaithful leaders.
Renewing Covenant Loyalty Today
The ancient law of treason in the Bible should remind us that worship, law, and social order stand or fall together. Half-hearted offerings lead to apostasy… apostasy breeds tyranny… tyranny then swallows justice whole.
True freedom depends on acknowledging a higher sovereignty than the state and on enforcing due process that honors both truth and mercy. In every age, and especially today, believers must guard against the subtle drift from reverence to revolt.
Covenant loyalty begins with wholehearted worship, continues through faithful adherence to God’s statutes, and culminates in a society where justice is neither bought nor ignored in the name of ideological idols, but upheld as the very expression of divine lordship over all.
