Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers

Deuteronomy completes book five of the Pentateuch, which in turn follows the five-point structure of the biblical covenant model.(2) When I began writing this economic commentary on the Bible, I was unaware of this structure's all-pervasive importance for understanding the Pentateuch. I had read Meredith G. Kline's Treaty of the Great King (1963) years earlier, but I had forgotten its thesis regarding the precise number of points in the covenant. I did not recognize its implications for this project until late 1985, when Ray Sutton first presented his version of the model, based on the earlier research by Kline. Sutton's version was more precise - exactly five points, not five or six - and it was more explicitly judicial. Most important, he brought the covenant model into the New Testament era, unlike Kline, who had relegated it to the Mosaic economy only. Kline's goal was to seal off the Mosaic law from the New Testament era. Sutton's goal was to demonstrate the continuity of the covenant's structure in both testaments.