The Theology of a Picket Fence: Text: Deuteronomy 19:14
Introduction: The War on Reality
We live in an age that has declared war on all boundaries. Our generation is characterized by a frantic, almost religious, zeal to blur, dismantle, and erase every line that God and nature have drawn. The boundary between man and woman? Erase it. The boundary between good and evil? Relativize it. The boundary between nations? Open it. The boundary between the sacred and the profane? Desecrate it. At the root of this revolutionary fervor is a deep-seated hatred for the created order, which is simply another way of saying it is a hatred for the Creator Himself. To deny the legitimacy of boundaries is to deny the God who creates by separating, by distinguishing, by saying, "This is this, and that is that."
And so, when we come to a seemingly archaic and dusty law in Deuteronomy about not moving a neighbor's boundary marker, our first temptation is to dismiss it as irrelevant. What does an ancient property law have to do with our sophisticated, globalized, and digitized world? The answer is: everything. This law is not merely about real estate. It is about reality. It is a foundational principle for a stable, just, and prosperous society. It is the eighth commandment, "You shall not steal," applied with surveyor's tools. It is a concrete application of loving your neighbor as yourself. The little pile of stones marking the edge of a barley field in ancient Israel is a microcosm of God's entire created order. To move that stone is to lie, to steal, and to rebel against the God who allots to every man his inheritance.
The modern progressive project, in all its forms, is a project of landmark-moving. It is a systematic attempt to steal an inheritance that does not belong to it. Whether it is the socialists who wish to erase the boundaries of private property, or the sexual revolutionaries who wish to erase the boundaries of nature, the spirit is the same. It is the spirit of the thief. And the curse pronounced in Deuteronomy 27 still stands: "Cursed is he who moves his neighbor's boundary mark." Our society is laboring under this curse because we have made landmark-moving our central sacrament.
Therefore, we must understand this verse not just as a historical curiosity, but as a living word from God that speaks directly into our chaotic and boundary-dissolving age. It teaches us about the sanctity of property, the importance of history, the nature of inheritance, and the sovereignty of God. It teaches us the theology of a picket fence.
The Text
“You shall not move your neighbor’s boundary mark, which the ancestors have set, in your inheritance which you will inherit in the land that Yahweh your God gives you to possess.”
(Deuteronomy 19:14 LSB)
The Crime: Theft by Inches (v. 14a)
The commandment begins with a direct prohibition:
"You shall not move your neighbor’s boundary mark..."
A boundary mark, or landmark, was typically a stone or a pile of stones that marked the legal edge of a family's property. This was not a grand theft like rustling a whole flock of sheep. This was a sneaky, insidious kind of theft. It was theft by inches, done under the cover of darkness. You move the stone a few feet one night. A few months later, you move it again. Over time, you have effectively stolen a significant portion of your neighbor's field, his livelihood, his family's future. It is a lie embodied in geography. It is a silent, creeping covetousness that eats away at the foundations of social trust.
This is a direct application of the eighth commandment. But it is a particularly heinous form of theft because it attacks the poor and the vulnerable. A wealthy landowner with vast fields might not notice a few feet missing. But for a small family, that stolen strip of land could be the difference between having enough to eat and going hungry. This is why the prophets and Proverbs repeatedly condemn this sin, often in the context of oppressing the fatherless and the widow (Prov. 23:10). It is a cowardly crime.
But the principle extends far beyond property lines. When a society begins to move its moral and definitional landmarks, it is engaging in the same kind of theft. When we redefine marriage, we are stealing the inheritance of future generations. When we redefine what it means to be human to include the unborn in one moment and exclude them in the next, we are moving a landmark with lethal consequences. When we inflate our currency, we are moving the landmark of value and stealing the savings of the diligent. The principle is this: God establishes realities with clear demarcations, and to shift those demarcations for our own advantage is to steal from our neighbor and rebel against God.
The Authority: The Wisdom of the Fathers (v. 14b)
The text then gives the basis for the landmark's authority:
"...which the ancestors have set..."
This is a profound statement about the biblical view of tradition and history. The boundary is not to be respected simply because it is a boundary, but because it was established by those who came before. The "ancestors" here refers to the original generation that entered the land under Joshua and received their allotment directly from God. Their work of surveying and marking the land was a sacred task. To move their markers was to second-guess a settled and divinely superintended history.
This cuts directly against the grain of our modern arrogance, what C.S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery." We believe that new is always better, that the past is a repository of ignorance and oppression, and that every generation has the right to reinvent the world from scratch. The Bible teaches the opposite. It teaches a principle of covenantal succession. We are to receive the wisdom, the institutions, and yes, the boundaries, of our fathers with gratitude and humility. We stand on their shoulders. We inherit what they built. We are stewards, not demolition experts.
Of course, this does not mean that all traditions are good. The Pharisees were condemned for elevating their man-made traditions above the Word of God. The standard is always Scripture. But the Bible's default position is one of respect for what has been handed down. "Do not move the ancient landmark which your fathers have set" (Proverbs 22:28). This is conservatism, not as a political affiliation, but as a theological posture. It is a humble recognition that we are part of a story that began long before we arrived. To erase the work of the ancestors is to tear pages out of that story, leaving our children with a disconnected and meaningless fragment.
The Context: A God-Given Inheritance (v. 14c)
The law is situated within a specific covenantal context:
"...in your inheritance which you will inherit..."
The land was not a commodity to be bought and sold on an open market like it is today. The land was an inheritance. It was a gift from God to a specific family within a specific tribe, to be passed down from generation to generation. To sell the land permanently was considered a betrayal of the covenant, as Naboth understood when he refused to sell his vineyard to King Ahab (1 Kings 21). The Year of Jubilee was instituted precisely to ensure that even when land was leased out due to poverty, it would return to the original family, preventing the creation of a permanent landed aristocracy and a permanent underclass.
This establishes the principle of stewardship. The land belongs ultimately to God; the family is His tenant. "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me" (Leviticus 25:23). Therefore, moving a boundary stone was not just an offense against your neighbor; it was an offense against the Lord of the land. It was tampering with His divine arrangement.
This has massive implications for how we view our own possessions and responsibilities. We are not autonomous owners of our lives, our property, or our children. We are stewards of an inheritance. We have received the gospel, the Scriptures, the church, and the created world as a trust. Our task is not to reinvent it, but to guard it, cultivate it, and pass it on faithfully to the next generation. To squander that inheritance through theological liberalism, moral compromise, or simple neglect is to move the ancient landmarks.
The Source: The Sovereign Giver (v. 14d)
Finally, the verse grounds the entire law in the ultimate reality of God's sovereignty:
"...in the land that Yahweh your God gives you to possess."
Your neighbor's property is his because God gave it to him. Your property is yours because God gave it to you. All property rights are ultimately derived from the Giver of all things. This is the ultimate foundation for private property. Property is not a social construct or a creation of the state. It is a creation of God. He is the one who sets the boundaries of the nations (Acts 17:26), and He is the one who allots to each family their portion.
This is why all forms of collectivism and socialism are fundamentally anti-Christian. They seek to usurp God's role as the ultimate owner and distributor of property. They erase the individual and familial stewardship that God ordained and replace it with the centralized, impersonal, and inevitably tyrannical power of the state. When the state claims the right to move landmarks at will, through confiscatory taxation, eminent domain abuse, or regulatory overreach, it is claiming a prerogative that belongs to God alone. It is Hosea's condemnation come to life: "The princes of Judah are like those who move a boundary" (Hosea 5:10).
Our right to own and steward property is a reflection of our dignity as image-bearers of God. It is essential for human flourishing, for providing for our families, for exercising hospitality, and for building a civilization. To defend the sanctity of your neighbor's boundary mark is to defend a cornerstone of freedom and justice against all forms of tyranny.
Conclusion: Christ, Our Landmark and Inheritance
Like every law in the Old Testament, this one finds its ultimate fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Sin, at its core, is the ultimate act of landmark-moving. Adam and Eve were given a clear boundary in the garden: "You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Their sin was to move that landmark, to cross that line, to steal what was not theirs. In doing so, they forfeited their inheritance and brought a curse upon all their descendants.
We are all born on the wrong side of the boundary, as trespassers and thieves, under the curse of the law. But God, in His mercy, sent His Son to be our true and final landmark. Jesus Christ is the boundary between heaven and earth, the ladder joining the two. He is the line between sin and righteousness, and by His blood, He moves us from the realm of condemnation to the realm of grace. He did not move the landmark of God's justice; He satisfied it. He absorbed the full curse that was due to us as landmark-movers.
And in doing so, He has secured for us an inheritance that cannot be stolen, an inheritance that is "imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1:4). The parcel of land in Canaan was always a type and a shadow of this greater reality. Our inheritance is not a plot of dirt; it is Christ Himself and all the blessings of salvation in Him. The boundary lines have fallen for us in pleasant places (Psalm 16:6).
Therefore, our obedience to this command flows from our new identity in Christ. We respect our neighbor's property because we are grateful for the eternal inheritance God has given us. We defend the boundaries of truth, morality, and nature because Christ is the Truth, and His Word has set the boundaries of reality. We do not steal by inches because our Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and He has promised to provide all our needs. We honor the work of our ancestors in the faith because we are part of that great cloud of witnesses. In short, we live as people who know where the lines are, because we know the One who is the line, the great I AM, our eternal and unmovable Landmark.