THE EXPOSITOR’S BIBLE.
EDITED BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
Editor of “The Expositor.”
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
BY THE VERY REV.
G. A. CHADWICK, D.D.,
Dean of Armagh
London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCXC.
THE
BOOK OF EXODUS.
BY THE VERY REV.
G. A. CHADWICK, D.D.,
Dean of Armagh,
AUTHOR OF “CHRIST BEARING WITNESS TO HIMSELF,” “AS HE THAT SERVETH,” “THE GOSPEL OF ST. MARK,” ETC.
London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCXC.
Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
Much is now denied or doubted, within the Church itself, concerning the Book of Exodus, which was formerly accepted with confidence by all Christians.
But one thing can neither be doubted nor denied. Jesus Christ did certainly treat this book, taking it as He found it, as possessed of spiritual authority, a sacred scripture. He taught His disciples to regard it thus, and they did so.
Therefore, however widely His followers may differ about its date and origin, they must admit the right of a Christian teacher to treat this book, taking it as he finds it, as a sacred scripture and invested with spiritual authority. It is the legitimate subject of exposition in the Church.
Such work this volume strives, however imperfectly, to perform. Its object is to edify in the first place, and also, but in the second place, to inform. Nor has the author consciously shrunk from saying what seemed to him proper to be said because the utterance would be unwelcome, either to the latest critical theory, or to the last sensational gospel of an hour.
But since controversy has not been sought, although exposition has not been suppressed when it carried weapons, by far the greater part of the volume appeals to all who accept their Bible as, in any true sense, a gift from God.
No task is more difficult than to exhibit the Old Testament in the light of the New, discovering the permanent in the evanescent, and the spiritual in the form and type which it inhabited and illuminated. This book is at least the result of a firm belief that such a connection between the two Testaments does exist, and of a patient endeavour to receive the edification offered by each Scripture, rather than to force into it, and then extort from it, what the expositor desires to find. Nor has it been supposed that by allowing the imagination to assume, in sacred things, that rank as a guide which reason holds in all other practical affairs, any honour would be done to Him Who is called the Spirit of knowledge and wisdom, but not of fancy and quaint conceits.
If such an attempt does, in any degree, prove successful and bear fruit, this fact will be of the nature of a scientific demonstration.
If this ancient Book of Exodus yields solid results to a sober devotional exposition in the nineteenth Christian century, if it is not an idle fancy that its teaching harmonises with the principles and theology of the New Testament, and even demands the New Testament as the true commentary upon the Old, what follows? How comes it that the oak is potentially in the acorn, and the living creature in the egg? No germ is a manufactured article: it is a part of the system of the universe.
Books linked by conjunction “And:” Scripture history a connected whole, 1.—So is secular history organic: “Philosophy of history.” The Pentateuch being a still closer unity, Exodus rehearses the descent into Egypt, 2.—Heredity: the family of Jacob, 3.—Death of Joseph. Influence of Egypt on the shepherd race, 4.—A healthy stock: good breeding. Goethe’s aphorism, 5.—Ourselves and our descendants, 6.
In Exodus, national history replaces biography, 6.—Contrasted narratives of Jacob and Moses. Spiritual progress from Genesis to Exodus, 7.—St. Paul’s view: Law prepares for Gospel, especially by our failures, 8.—This explains other phenomena: failures in various circumstances, of innocence in Eden; of an elect family; now of a race, a nation, 9.—Israel, failing with all advantages, needs a Messiah. Faith justifies, in Old Testament as in New, 10.—Scripture history reveals God in this life, in all things, 11.—True spirituality owns God in the secular: this is a gospel for our days, 12—13.
Early prosperity: its dangers: political supports vain, 13.—Joseph
forgotten. National responsibilities: despotism, 14.—Nations and their
chiefs. Our subject races, 15.—The Church and her King: imputation.
Pharaoh precipitates what he fears, 16.—Egypt and her aliens: modern
parallels, 17.—Tyranny is tyrannous even when cultured, 18.—Our undue
estrangement from the fallen: Jesus a brother. Toil crushes the spirit,
19.—Israel idolatrous. Religious dependence, 20. —Direct interposition
required. Bitter oppression, 21.—Pharaoh
Importance of the individual, 26.—A man versus “the Time-spirit,” 27.—The parents of Moses, 28.—Their family: their goodly child, 29.—Emotion helps faith, 30.—The ark in the bulrushes, 31.—Pharaoh’s daughter and Miriam, 32.—Guidance for good emotions: the Church for humanity, 33.
God employs means, 34.—Value of endowment. Moses and his family. “The reproach of Christ,” 35.—An impulsive act, 36.—Impulses not accidents. The hopes of Moses, 37.—Moses and his brethren. His flight, 38.
Energy in disaster, 39.—Disinterested bravery. Parallels with a variation, 40.—The Unseen a refuge. Duty of resisting small wrongs. His wife, 41.—A lonely heart, 42.
Death of Raamses. Misery continues, 43.—The cry of the oppressed, 44.—Discipline of Moses, 45.—How a crisis comes, 46.—God hitherto unmentioned. The Angel of the Lord, 47.—An unconsuming fire, 48.—Inquiry: reverence. God finds, not man, 49.—“Take off thy shoe.” “The God of thy father,” 50.—Immortality. “My people,” not saints only, 51.—The good land. The commission, 52.—God with him. A strange token, 53.
Why Moses asked the name of God: idolatry: pantheism, 54.—A progressive
revelation, 55.—Jehovah. The sound corrupted. Similar superstitions
yet, 56.—What it told the Jews. Reality of being, 57.—Jews not saved
by ideas. Streams of tendency. The Self-contained. We live in our past,
58.—And in our future, 59.—Yet Jehovah not the impassive God of
Lucretius,
God comes where He sends, 65.—The Providential man. Prudence, 66.—Sincerity of demand for a brief respite, 67.—God has already visited them. By trouble He transplants, 68.—The “borrowing” of jewels, 69.
Scripture is impartial: Josephus, 70.—Hindrance from his own people. The rod, 71.—The serpent: the leprosy, 72.—“I am not eloquent,” 73.—God with us. Aaron the Levite, 74.—Responsibility of not working. The errors of Moses, 75.—Power of fellowship. Vague fears, 76.—With his brother, Moses will go. The Church, 77.—This craving met by Christ, 78.—Family affection. Examples, 79.
Fidelity to his employer. Reticence, 80.—Resemblance to story of Jesus. He is the Antitype of all experiences, 81.—Counterpoint in history. “Israel is My son,” 82.—A neglected duty Zipporah. Was she a helpmeet? 83.—Domestic unhappiness. History v. myth, 84.—The failures of the good, 85.—Men of destiny are not irresponsible, 86.—His first followers: a joyful reception, 87.—Spiritual joy and reaction, 88.
Moses at court again. Formidable, 89.—Power of convictions but also of tyranny and pride. Menephtah: his story, 90.—Was the Pharaoh drowned? The demand of Jehovah, 91.—The refusal, 92.—Is religion idleness? Hebrews were taskmasters, 93.—Demoralised by slavery. They are beaten, 94.—Murmurs against Moses. He returns to God. His remonstrance, 95.—His disappointment. Not really irreverent, 96.—Use of this abortive attempt, 97—8.
The word Jehovah known before: its consolations now, 99.—The new truth is often implicit in the old, 100.—Discernment more needed than revelation. “Judgments,” 101.—My people: your God, 102.—The tie is of God’s binding, 103,—Fatherhood and sonship, 104.—Faith becomes knowledge. The body hinders the soul, 105.—We are responsible for bodies. Israel weighs Moses down, 106.—We may hold back the saints, 107.—The pedigree, 107—8.—Indications of genuine history, 108—9.—“As a god to Pharaoh,” 110.—We also, 111.
The assertion offends many, 112.—Was he a free agent? When hardened. A.V. incorrect, 113.—He resists five plagues spontaneously. The last five are penal, 114.—Not “hardened” in wickedness, but in nerve. A.V. confuses three words: His heart is (a) “hardened,” 115.—(b) it is made “strong” (c) “heavy,” 116.—Other examples of these words, 117.—The warning implied, 117—19.—Moses returns with the signs, 119.—The functions of miracle, 120.
Their vast range, 121.—Their relation to Pantheism, Idolatry, Philosophy, 122.—And to the gods of Egypt. Their retributive fitness, 123.—Their arrangement, 124.—Like our Lord’s, not creative, 125.—God in common things, 126.—Some we inflict upon ourselves. Yet rationalistic analogies fail, 127.—Duration of the conflict, 128.
The probable scene, 129.—Extent of the plague. The magicians. Its duration, 131.—Was Israel exempt? Contrast with first miracle of Jesus, 132.
Submission demanded. Severity of plague, 133.—Pharaoh humbles himself, 134.—“Glory over me.” Pharaoh breaks faith, 135.
Various theories. A surprise. Magicians baffled, 136.—What they confess, 137.
“Rising up early,” 137.—Bodily pain. Beetles or flies? “A mixture,” 138—Goshen exempt. Pharaoh suffers. He surrenders, 139.—Respite and treachery. Would Moses have returned? 140.
First attack on life. Animals share our fortunes, 141. The new summons. Murrain, 142.—Pharaoh’s curiosity, 143.
No warning, yet Author manifest. Ashes of the furnace, 144.—-Suffering in the flesh. The magicians again. Pharaoh’s heart “made strong,” 145.—Dares not retaliate, 146.
Expostulation not mockery, 146—7.—God is wronged by slavery, 147.—Civil liberty is indebted to religion. “Plagues upon thine heart,” 148.—A mis-rendering: why he was not crushed, 149.—An opportunity of escape. The storm, 150.—Ruskin upon terrors of thunderstorm, 151.—Pharaoh confesses sin, 152.—Moses intercedes. The weather in history. Job’s assertion, 153.
Moses encouraged, 154.—Deliverances should be remembered. A sterner rebuke. Locusts in Egypt, 155.—Their effect. The court interferes. Yet “their hearts hardened” also, 156—Infatuation of Pharaoh. Parallel of Napoleon, 157.—Women and little ones did share in festivals, 158.—A gentle wind. Locusts. Another surrender, 159.—Relief. Our broken vows, 160.
Menephtah’s sun-worship, 161.—Suddenness of the plague. Concentrated
narrative, 162.—Darkness represents death, 163.—The
This chapter supplements the last. The blow is known to be impending. Uses of its delay, 167.—Israel shall claim wages. The menace, 168.—Parallel with St. John, 169—70.
Birthday of a nation. The calendar, 171.—“The congregation.” The feast is social, 172.—The nation is based upon the family. No Egyptian house escapes, 173.—National interdependence. The Passover a sacrifice, 174.—What does the blood mean? Rationalistic theories. Harvest festivals, 175.—The unbelieving point of view: what theories of sacrifice were then current? “A sacrifice was a meal,” 176.—Human sacrifices. The Passover “unhistorical.” Kuenen rejects this view, 177.—Phenomena irreconcilable with it, 178—9. What is really expressed? Danger even to Jews, 179.—Salvation by grace. Not unbought, 180.—The lamb a ransom. All firstborn are forfeited. Tribe of Levi, 181.—Cash payment. Effect on Hebrew literature, 182.—Its prophetic import, 183.—The Jew must co-operate with God: must also become His guest, 184.—Sacred festivals. Lamb or kid. Four days reserved, 185.—Men are sheep. Heads of houses originally sacrifice. Transition to Levites in progress under Hezekiah, complete under Josiah, 186.—Unleavened bread. The lamb. Roast, not sodden, 187.—Complete consumption. Judgment upon gods of Egypt, 188.—The blood a token unto themselves. On their lintels, 189.—The word “pass-over,” 190.—Domestic teaching, 191.—Many who ate the feast perished. Aliens might share, 192.
The blow falls. Pharaoh was not “firstborn”: his son “sat upon his throne,” 193.—The scene, 194.—The demands of Israel. St. Augustine’s inference, 195.
The route, 195.—Their cattle, a suggested explanation, 196.—“Four hundred and thirty years,” 197—8.
The consecration of the firstborn, 199.—The Levite. “They are Mine,” 200.—Joy is hopeful. Tradition? 201.—Phylacteries. The ass, 202.—The Philistines. No spiritual miracle, 203.—Education, 204.
Joseph influenced Moses, 204.—His faith, 205.—Circumstances overcome by soul. God in the cloud, 206.—Hebrew poetry and modern, 207.
Stopped on the march, 208.—Pharaoh presumes, 209.—The panic, 210.—Moses. Prayer and action. “Self-assertion”? 211.—The midnight march, 212.—The lost army, 213.
Impressions deepened. “They believed in Jehovah.” So the faith of the apostles grew, 214.
A song remembered in heaven. Its structure, 216—17.—The women join. Instruments. Dances, 218. God the Deliverer, not Moses. “My salvation,” 219.—Gratitude. Anthropomorphism. “Ye are gods.” “Jehovah is a Man—of war,” 220—2.—The overthrow, 222.—First mention of Divine holiness, 223.—An inverted holiness, 224.—“Thou shalt bring them in,” 225.
Disillusion. Marah, 226.—A universal danger, 227.—Prayer, and the use of means, 228.—“A statute and an ordinance.” Such compacts often repeated. The offered privilege, 229.—It is still enjoyed, 230.—“The Lord for the body.” Elim, 231.
We too fear, although Divinely guarded, 232.—They would fain die satiated, 233.—Relief tries them as want does, 234.—The Sabbath. A rebuke, 235.—Moses is zealous. His “meekness,” 236.—The glory appears, 237.—Quails and manna, 238.
Their course of life is changed, 238.—A drug resembles manna, 239.—The supernatural follows nature, 240.—They must gather, prepare, be moderate, 241.—Nothing over and no lack. Socialistic perversion, 242.—Socialism. Christ in politics, 243—4.
Manna is a type. When given, 244.—An unearthly sustenance, 245. What is spirituality? Christ the true Manna, 246.—Universal, daily, abundant, 247.—The Sabbath. The pot of manna, 248.
A greater strain. What if Israel had stood it? 249.—They murmured against Moses. The position of Aaron. An exaggerated outcry, 250.—Witnesses to the miracle. The rock in Horeb, 251.—The rod. Privilege is not acceptance, 252.
A water-raid, 252.—God’s sheep must become His warriors. War, 253—4.—Joshua. The rod of God, 255.—A silent prayer. Aaron and Hur must join in it, 256.—So now. But the army must fight, 257.—“The Lord my banner.” Unlike a myth, 258.
Gentiles in new aspect. Church may learn from secular wisdom, 259.—Little is said of Zipporah: Jethro’s pleasure, 260.—A Gentile priest recognised. Religious festivity, 261.—Jethro’s advice: its importance, 262.—Divine help does not supersede human gift, 263.
Narrative is also allegory. Danger of arbitrary fancies. Example from Bunyan. Scriptural teaching, 264.—Some resemblances are planned: others are reappearances of same principle, 265.—So that these are evidential analogies, like Butler’s, 266.—Others appear forced. “I called My Son out of Egypt” refers to Israel, 267.—But the condescending phrase promised more, and the subsequent coincidence is significant, 268. Truths cannot all be proved like Euclid’s, 269.
Sinai and Pentecost. The place. Ras Sufsâfeh. God speaks in nature, 270.—Moses is stopped; the people must pledge themselves. Dedication services, 271.—An appeal to gratitude, and a promise, 272.—“A peculiar treasure.” “A kingdom and priests,” 273.—The individual, and Church order. “On eagles’ wings,” 274.—Israel consents. The Lord in the cloud. Manifestations are transient, 275.—Precautions. The trumpet, 276. “The priests.” A plébiscite. Contrast between Law and Gospel: Methodius, 277.—Theophanies, 278.—None like this, 279.
What the law did. It could not justify. It reveals obligation, 280.—It convicts, not enables. It is an organic whole. And a challenge, 281.—The Spirit enables: love is fulfilment of law. Luther’s paradox, 283.—Law and Gospel contrasted. Its spiritual beauty: two noble failures, 283.—The Jewish arrangement of the Commandments. St. Augustine’s. The Anglican. An equal division, 284—6.
Their experience of God, 286.—God and the first table. The true object of adoration: men must adore. Agnosticism, 287.—God and the second table, 288.—Law appeals to noble motives, 289.
Monotheism and a real God, 289.—False creeds attractive. Spiritualism. Science indebted to Monotheism, 290.—Unity of nature a religious truth. Strength of our experimental argument. 291.—Informal apostacy. Luther’s position. Scripture. The Chaldeans, 292.—Animal pleasure, 293.—The remedy: “Thou shalt have ... Me,” 294.
Imagery not all idolatry. The subtler paganisms, 295. Spiritual worship, like a Gothic building, aspires: images lack expansiveness, 296.—God is jealous, 297.—The shadow of love, 298. Visiting sins on children, 299, 300.—Part of vast beneficent law, 300—2.—Gospel in law, 302.
Meaning of “in vain,” 302.—Jewish superstition. Where swearing is wholly forbidden, 303.—Fruitful and free use of God’s name, 304—5.
Law of Sabbath unique. Confession of Augsburg. Of Westminster, 305.—Anglican position. St. Paul, 306.—The first positive precept. Love not the abolition of the law, 307.—Property of our friends. The word “remember.” The story of creation, 305.—The manna. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 309.—Christ’s freedom was that of a Jew. “Sabbath for man,” 310.—Our help, not our fetter. “My Father worketh,” 311.
Bridge between duty to God and to neighbour, 312.—Father and child, 313.—“Whosoever hateth not.” Christ and His mother. Its sanction, 314.
Who is neighbour? Ethics and religion, 315—16.—Science and morals, 317.—A Divine creature. Capital punishment, 318.
Justice forbids act: Christ forbids desire. Sacredness of body, 319.—Human body connects material and spiritual worlds. Modifies, while serves, 320.—Marriage a type, 321.
Assailed by communism, by Rome. Various specious pleas, 322.—Laws of community binding, 323.—None may judge his own case, St. Paul enlarges the precept, 324.
Importance of words. Various transgressions, 325.—Slander against nations, against the race. Love, 326—7.
The list of properties, 328.—The heart. The law searches, 329.
A remarkable code. The circumstances, 331.—Moses fears: yet bids them fear not, 332—3.—Presumption v. awe. He receives an expanded decalogue, an abridged code, 334.—Laws should educate a people; should not outrun their capabilities, 335—6.—Five subdivisions, 337.
Images again forbidden, 337.—Splendour and simplicity. An objection, 338.—Modesty, 339.
The Hebrew slave. The seventh year. Year of jubilee. His family, 340.—The ear pierced. St. Paul’s “marks of the Lord.” Assaults, 341.—The Gentile slave, 342. The female slave, 342—3.—Murder and blood-fiends, 343.—Parents. Kidnappers, 344.—Eye for eye. Mitigations of lex talionis, 344—5.—Vicious cattle, 346.
Negligence: indirect responsibility: various examples, 346—8.—Theft, 348.
Disconnected precepts. No trace of systematic revision. Certain capital crimes, 348—9.
Abuses have recoiled against religion, 349.—Sorcerers are impostors, but they existed, and do still, 350.—Moses could not leave them to enlightened opinion. Propagated apostacy, 351.—Traitors in a theocracy, 352.—When shall witchcraft die? 353.
“Ye were strangers,” 353.—A fruitful principle. Morality not expediency, 354.—Cruelty often ignorance: Moses educates, 355.—The widow. The borrower, 356.—Other precepts, 357.
An enemy’s cattle. A false report, 358.—Influence of multitude: the world and the Church, 359—60.—Favour not the poor, 360—1.—Other precepts. “A kid in his mother’s milk,” 361.
A bold transition: the Angel in Whom is “My Name,” 362.—Not a mere messenger, 363.—Nor the substitute of chap. xxxiii. 2, 3, 364—5.—Parallel verses, 365—6.
The code is accepted, written, ratified with blood, 367.—Exclusion and admittance. The elders see God: Moses goes farther. Theophanies of other creeds, 368.—How could they see God? 369.—Moses feels not satisfaction, but desire, 370.—His progress is from vision to shadow and a Voice, 371.—We see not each other, 372.—St. Augustine, 372—3.—The vision suits the period: not post-Exilian, 373—4.—Contrast with revelation in Christ, 374.
The God of Sinai will inhabit a tent. His other tabernacles, 375—6.—The furniture is typical. Altar of incense postponed, 376.—The ark enshrines His law and its sanctions, 376—7.—The mercy-seat covers it, 377—80.—Man’s homage. The table of shewbread, 381—2.—The golden candlestick (lamp-stand), 382—5.
Use in Hebrews. Plato, 385.—Not a model, but an idea. Art, 386.—Provisional institutions, 386—7.—-The ideal in creation, 387.—In life, 388.
“Temple” an ambiguous word, 389.—“Curtains of the Tabernacle,” 390.—Other coverings, 391.—The boards and sockets, 391—2.—The bars. The tent, 392.—Position of veil, 393, and of the front, 394.
The altar, 395.—The quadrangle, 396.—General effect, 397—399.
Their import, 400.—The drawers. “Coat.” Head-tires. Robe of the ephod. Ephod. Jewels, 401.—Breastplate. Urim and Thummim. Mitre. Symbolism, 402.
Universal desire and dread of God, 403.—Delegates, 404. Scripture. First Moses, 405.—His family passed over. The double consciousness expressed, 406—8.—Messianic priesthood, 408.
Why consecrate at all? 409.—Moses officiates. The offerings, 410.—Ablution, robing, anointing, 411—12.—The sin-offering, 412—13. “Without the camp,” 413. The burnt-offering, 414.—The peace-offering (“ram of consecration”), 414.—The wave-offerings, 414—15.—The result, 415—16.
The impalpable in nature, 417.—“The golden altar,” 418.—Represents prayer. Needs cleansing, 419.
A census not sinful. David’s transgression. The half-shekel. Equality of man, 420.—Christ paid it, 421.—Its employment, 422.
Behind the altar. Purity of priests, 422.—Made of the mirrors, 423.
Their ingredients. All the vessels anointed, 423.—Forbidden to secular uses, 424.—Modern analogies, 425—6.
Secular gifts are sacred, 427—29.—The Sabbath. The tables and “the finger of God,” 430.
Sin of the people; of Aaron. God rejects them, 431.—Intercession. The Christian antitype, 432—3.
The first concession. The angel, 434.—“The Tent of the Meeting,” 435.
To know is to desire to know. A fit season. The greater Name, 437.—The covenant renewed. The tables. The skin of his face shone, 438.—Lessons, 439.
The people obey, 440.—The forming of the nation: review, 440—2.
THE PROLOGUE.
Exodus i. 1—6.
Many books of the Old Testament begin with the conjunction And. This fact, it has been often pointed out, is a silent indication of truth, that each author was not recording certain isolated incidents, but parts of one great drama, events which joined hands with the past and future, looking before and after.
Thus the Book of the Kings took up the tale from Samuel, Samuel from
Judges, and Judges from Joshua, and all carried the sacred movement
forward towards a goal as yet unreached. Indeed, it was impossible,
remembering the first promise that the seed of the woman should bruise
the head of the serpent, and the later assurance that in the seed of
Abraham should be the universal blessing, for a faithful Jew to forget
that all the history of his race was the evolution of some grand hope, a
pilgrimage towards some goal unseen. Bearing in mind that there is now
revealed to us a world-wide tendency toward the supreme consummation,
the bringing all things under the headship of Christ, it is not to be
denied that this hope of the
The Books of the Pentateuch are held together in a yet stronger unity
than the rest, being sections of one and the same narrative, and having
been accredited with a common authorship from the earliest mention of
them. Accordingly, the Book of Exodus not only begins with this
conjunction (which assumes the previous narrative), but also rehearses
the descent into Egypt. “And these are the names of the sons of Israel
which came into Egypt,”—names blotted with many a crime, rarely
suggesting any lovable or great association, yet the names of men with a
marvellous heritage, as being “the sons of Israel,” the Prince who
prevailed with God. Moreover they are consecrated: their father’s dying
words had conveyed to every one of them some expectation, some
mysterious import which the future should disclose. In the issue would
be revealed the awful influence of the past upon
We read that with the twelve came their posterity, seventy souls in direct descent from Jacob; but in this number he is himself included, according to that well-known Orientalism which Milton strove to force upon our language in the phrase—
Joseph is also reckoned, although he “was in Egypt already.” Now, it
must be observed that of these seventy, sixty-eight were males, and
therefore the people of the Exodus must not be reckoned to have sprung
in the interval from seventy, but (remembering polygamy) from more than
twice that number, even if we refuse to make any account of the
household which is mentioned as coming with every man. These households
were probably smaller in each case than that of Abraham, and the famine
in its early stages may have reduced the number of retainers; yet they
account for much of what is pronounced incredible in the rapid expansion
of the clan into a nation. Professor Curtiss quotes a volume of family memoirs which
shows that 5,564 persons are known to be descended from Lieutenant John
Hollister, who emigrated to America in the year 1642 (Expositor, Nov.
1887, p. 329). This is probably equal in ratio to the increase of Israel
in Egypt.
“And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.” Thus the connection with Canaan became a mere tradition, and the powerful courtier who had nursed their interests disappeared. When they remembered him, in the bitter time which lay before them, it was only to reflect that all mortal help must perish. It is thus in the spiritual world also. Paul reminds the Philippians that they can obey in his absence and not in his presence only, working out their own salvation, as no apostle can work it out on their behalf. And the reason is that the one real support is ever present. Work out your own salvation, for it is God (not any teacher) Who worketh in you. The Hebrew race was to learn its need of Him, and in Him to recover its freedom. Moreover, the influences which mould all men’s characters, their surroundings and mental atmosphere, were completely changed. These wanderers for pasture were now in the presence of a compact and impressive social system, vast cities, gorgeous temples, an imposing ritual. They were infected as well as educated there, and we find the men of the Exodus not only murmuring for Egyptian comforts, but demanding visible gods to go before them.
Yet, with all its drawbacks, the change was a necessary part of their
development. They should return from Egypt relying upon no courtly
patron, no mortal might or wisdom, aware of a name of God more profound
Perhaps there is another reason why Scripture has reminded us of the vigorous and healthy stock whence came the race that multiplied exceedingly. For no book attaches more weight to the truth, so miserably perverted that it is discredited by multitudes, but amply vindicated by modern science, that good breeding, in the strictest sense of the word, is a powerful factor in the lives of men and nations. To be well born does not of necessity require aristocratic parentage, nor does such parentage involve it: but it implies a virtuous, temperate and pious stock. In extreme cases the doctrine of race is palpable; for who can doubt that the sins of dissolute parents are visited upon their puny and short-lived children, and that the posterity of the just inherit not only honour and a welcome in the world, “an open door,” but also immunity from many a physical blemish and many a perilous craving? If the Hebrew race, after eighteen centuries of calamity, retains an unrivalled vigour and tenacity, be it remembered how its iron sinew has been twisted, from what a sire it sprang, through what ages of more than “natural selection” the dross was throughly purged out, and (as Isaiah loves to reiterate) a chosen remnant left. Already, in Egypt, in the vigorous multiplication of the race, was visible the germ of that amazing vitality which makes it, even in its overthrow, so powerful an element in the best modern thought and action.
It is a well-known saying of Goethe that the quality for which God chose
Israel was probably toughness.
Now, this principle is in full operation still, and ought to be solemnly pondered by the young. Self-indulgence, the sowing of wild oats, the seeing of life while one is young, the taking one’s fling before one settles down, the having one’s day (like “every dog,” for it is to be observed that no person says, “every Christian”), these things seem natural enough. And their unsuspected issues in the next generation, dire and subtle and far-reaching, these also are more natural still, being the operation of the laws of God.
On the other hand, there is no youth living in obedience alike to the higher and humbler laws of our complex nature, in purity and gentleness and healthful occupation, who may not contribute to the stock of happiness in other lives beyond his own, to the future well-being of his native land, and to the day when the sadly polluted stream of human existence shall again flow clear and glad, a pure river of water of life.
GOD IN HISTORY.
i. 7.
And we are at once conscious of this vital difference between Exodus and
Genesis,—that we have passed from the story of men and families to the
history of a nation. In the first book the Canaanites and Egyptians
concern us only as they affect Abraham or Joseph. In
For Jacob it was a discovery that God was in Bethel as well as in his father’s house. But now the Hebrew nation was to learn that He could plague the gods of Egypt in their stronghold, that His way was in the sea, that Horeb in Arabia was the Mount of God, that He could lead them like a horse through the wilderness.
When Jacob in Peniel wrestles with God and prevails, he wins for himself a new name, expressive of the higher moral elevation which he has attained. But when Moses meets God in the bush, it is to receive a commission for the public benefit; and there is no new name for Moses, but a fresh revelation of God for the nation to learn. And in all their later history we feel that the national life which it unfolds was nourished and sustained by these glorious early experiences, the most unique as well as the most inspiriting on record.
Here, then, a question of great moment is suggested. Beyond the fact
that Abraham was the father of the Jewish race, can we discover any
closer connection between the lives of the patriarchs and the history of
Israel? Is there a truly spiritual coherence between them, or merely a
genealogical sequence? For if the Bible can make good its claim to be
vitalised throughout by the eternal Spirit of God, and leading forward
steadily to His final revelation in Christ, then its parts will be
symmetrical, proportionate and well designed.
Now, it is to St. Paul that we turn for light upon the connection between the Old Testament and the New. And he distinctly lays down two great principles. The first is that the Old Testament is meant to educate men for the New; and especially that the sense of failure, impressed upon men’s consciences by the stern demands of the Law, was necessary to make them accept the Gospel.
The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ: it entered that sin
might abound. And it is worth notice that this effect was actually
wrought, not only upon the gross transgressor by the menace of its
broken precepts, but even more perhaps upon the high-minded and pure, by
the creation in their breasts of an ideal, inaccessible in its
loftiness. He who says, All these things have I kept from my youth up,
is the same who feels the torturing misgiving, What good thing must I do
to attain life?... What lack I yet?
Now, this principle need by no means be restricted to the Mosaic institutions. If this were the object of the law, it would probably explain much more. And when we return to the Old Testament with this clue, we find every condition in life examined, every social and political experiment exhausted, a series of demonstrations made with scientific precision, to refute the arch-heresy which underlies all others—that in favourable circumstances man might save himself, that for the evil of our lives our evil surroundings are more to be blamed than we.
Innocence in prosperous circumstances, unwarped by evil habit, untainted by corruption in the blood, uncompelled by harsh surroundings, simple innocence had its day in Paradise, a brief day with a shameful close. God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions, until the flood swept away the descendants of him who was made after the image of God.
Next we have a chosen family, called out from all the perilous
associations of its home beyond the river, to begin a new career in a
new land, in special covenant with the Most High, and with every
endowment for the present and every hope for the future which could help
to retain its loyalty. Yet the third generation reveals the thirst of
Esau for his brother’s blood, the treachery of Jacob, and the
distraction and guilt of his fierce and sensual family. It is when
individual and family life have thus proved ineffectual amid the
happiest circumstances, that the tribe and the nation essay the task.
Led up from the furnace of affliction,
Such is the connection between this narrative and what went before. And the continuation of the same experiment, and the same failure, can be traced through all the subsequent history. Whether in so loose an organisation that every man does what is right in his own eyes, or under the sceptre of a hero or a sage,—whether so hard pressed that self-preservation ought to have driven them to their God, or so marvellously delivered that gratitude should have brought them to their knees,—whether engulfed a second time in a more hopeless captivity, or restored and ruled by a hierarchy whose authority is entirely spiritual,—in every variety of circumstances the same melancholy process repeats itself; and lawlessness, luxury, idolatry and self-righteousness combine to stop every mouth, to make every man guilty before God, to prove that a greater salvation is still needed, and thus to pave the way for the Messiah.
The second great principle of St. Paul is that faith in a divine help,
in pardon, blessing and support, was the true spirit of the Old
Testament as well as of the New. The challenge of the law was meant to
produce self-despair, only that men might trust in God. Appeal was made
especially to the cases of Abraham and David, the founder of the race
and of the dynasty, clearly
As the history of Israel opens before us, a third principle claims attention—one which the apostle quietly assumes, but which is forced on our consideration by the unhappy state of religious thought in these degenerate days.
“They are not to be heard,” says the Seventh Article rightly, “which
feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises.” But
certainly they also would be unworthy of a hearing who would feign that
the early Scriptures do not give a vast, a preponderating weight, to the
concerns of our life on earth. Only very slowly, and as the result of
long training, does the future begin to reveal its supremacy over the
present. It would startle many a devout reader out of his propriety to
discover the small proportion of Old Testament scriptures in which
eternity and its prospects are discussed, to reckon the passages,
habitually applied to spiritual thraldom and emancipation, which were
spoken at first of earthly tyranny and earthly deliverance,
Moreover, He treats us as the men of other ages. Instead of dealing with Moses upon exceptional and strange lines, He made known His ways unto Moses, His characteristic and habitual ways. And it is on this account that whatsoever things were written aforetime are true admonition for us also, being not violent interruptions but impressive revelations of the steady silent methods of the judgment and the grace of God.
THE OPPRESSION.
i. 7—22.
Is it merely by chance again that we find in this first of histories
examples of the folly of relying upon political connections? As the
chief butler remembered not Joseph, nor did he succeed in escaping from
prison by securing influence at court, so is the influence of
Such is the value of the highest and purest earthly fame, and such the gratitude of the world to its benefactors. The nation which Joseph rescued from starvation is passive in Pharaoh’s hands, and persecutes Israel at his bidding.
And when the actual deliverer arose, his rank and influence were only entanglements through which he had to break.
Meanwhile, except among a few women, obedient to the woman’s heart, we find no trace of independent action, no revolt of conscience against the absolute behest of the sovereign, until selfishness replaces virtue, and despair wrings the cry from his servants, Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?
Now, in Genesis we saw the fate of families, blessed in their father
Abraham, or cursed for the offence of Ham. For a family is a real
entity, and its members, like those of one body, rejoice and suffer
together. But the same is true of nations, and here we have reached the
national stage in the education of the world. Here is exhibited to us,
therefore, a nation suffering with its monarch to the uttermost, until
the cry of the maidservant behind the mill is as wild and bitter as the
cry of Pharaoh upon his throne. It is indeed the eternal curse of
despotism that unlimited calamity may be drawn down upon millions by the
caprice of one
If we assume, what seems pretty well established, that the Pharaoh from whom Moses fled was Rameses the Great, his spirit was of the nobler kind, and he exhibits a terrible example of the unfitness even of conquering genius for unbridled and irresponsible power. That lesson has had to be repeated, even down to the days of the Great Napoleon.
Now, if the justice of plaguing a nation for the offence of its head be questioned, let us ask first whether the nation accepts his despotism, honours him, and is content to regard him as its chief and captain. According to the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, whoever thinks a tyrant enviable, has already himself tyrannised with him in his heart. Do we ourselves, then, never sympathise with political audacity, bold and unscrupulous “resource,” success that is bought at the price of strange compliances, and compromises, and wrongs to other men?
The great national lesson is now to be taught to Israel that the most
splendid imperial force will be brought to an account for its treatment
of the humblest—that there is a God Who judges in the earth. And they
were bidden to apply in their own land this experience of their own,
dealing kindly with the stranger in the midst of them, “for thou wast a
stranger in the land of Egypt.” That lesson we have partly learned, who
have broken the chain of our slaves. But how much have we left undone!
The subject races were never given into our hands to supplant them, as
we have
We attain a principle which reaches far into the spiritual world, when we reflect that if evil deeds of a ruler can justly draw down vengeance upon his people, the converse also must hold good. Reverse the case before us. Let the kingdom be that of the noblest and purest virtue. Let no subject ever be coerced to enter it, nor to remain one hour longer than while his adoring loyalty consents. And shall not these subjects be the better for the virtues of the Monarch whom they love? Is it mere caprice to say that in choosing such a King they do, in a very real sense, appropriate the goodness they crown? If it be natural that Egypt be scourged for the sins of Pharaoh, is it palpably incredible that Christ is made of God unto His people wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption? The doctrine of imputation can easily be so stated as to become absurd. But the imputation of which St. Paul speaks much can only be denied when we are prepared to assail the principle on which all bodies of men are treated, families and nations as well as the Church of God.
It was the jealous cruelty of Pharaoh which drew down upon his country
the very perils he laboured to turn away. There was no ground for his
fear of any league with foreigners against him. Prosperous and
unambitious, the people would have
There is independent reason for believing that at this period one-third
at least of the population of Egypt was of alien blood (Brugsch,
History, ii. 100). A politician might fairly be alarmed, especially if
this were the time when the Hittites were threatening the eastern
frontier, and had reduced Egypt to stand on the defensive, and erect
barrier fortresses. And the circumstances of the country made it very
easy to enslave the Hebrews. If any stain of Oriental indifference to
the rights of the masses had mingled with the God-given insight of
Joseph, when he made his benefactor the owner of all the soil, the
Egyptian people were fully avenged upon him now. For this arrangement
laid his pastoral race helpless at their
Now, it is instructive to observe these reappearances of wholesale crime. They warn us that the utmost achievements of human wickedness are human still; not wild and grotesque importations by a fiend, originated in the abyss, foreign to the world we live in. Satan finds the material for his master-strokes in the estrangement of class from class, in the drying up of the fountains of reciprocal human feeling, in the failure of real, fresh, natural affection in our bosom for those who differ widely from us in rank or circumstances. All cruelties are possible when a man does not seem to us really a man, nor his woes really woeful. For when the man has sunk into an animal it is only a step to his vivisection.
Nor does anything tend to deepen such perilous estrangement, more than
the very education, culture and refinement, in which men seek a
substitute for religion and the sense of brotherhood in Christ. It is
quite conceivable that the tyrant who drowned the Hebrew infants was an
affectionate father, and pitied his nobles when their children died. But
his sympathies
Many great works of ancient architecture, the pyramids among the rest,
were due to the desire of crushing, by abject toil, the spirit of a
subject people. We cannot ascribe to Hebrew labour any of the more
splendid piles of Egyptian masonry, but the store cities or arsenals
which they built can be identified. They are composed of such crude
brick as the narrative describes; and the absence of straw in the later
portion of them can still be verified. Rameses was evidently named after
their oppressor, and this strengthens the conviction that we are reading
of events in the nineteenth dynasty, when the shepherd kings had
recently been driven out, leaving the eastern frontier so weak as to
demand additional fortresses, and so far depopulated as to give colour
to the exaggerated assertion of Pharaoh, “the people are more and
mightier than we.” It is by
How came it to pass that the fierce Hebrew blood, which was yet to boil in the veins of the Maccabees, and to give battle, not unworthily, to the Roman conquerors of the world, failed to resent the cruelties of Pharaoh?
Partly, of course, because the Jewish people was only now becoming aware of its national existence; but also because it had forsaken God. Its religion, if not supplanted, was at least adulterated by the influence of the mystic pantheism and the stately ritual which surrounded them.
Joshua bade his victorious followers to “put away the gods whom your
fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord”
(
Now, there is nothing which enfeebles the spirit and breaks the courage
like religious dependence. A strong priesthood always means a feeble
people, most of all when they are of different blood. And Israel was now
dependent on Egypt alike for the highest and lowest needs—grass for the
cattle and religion for the soul. And when they had sunk so low, it is
evident
Standing still, they saw the salvation of God, and it was not possible to give His glory to another.
For this cause also, judgment had, first of all, to be wrought upon the gods of Egypt.
In the meantime, without spirit enough to resist, they saw complete destruction drawing nearer to them by successive strides. At first Pharaoh “dealt wisely with them,” and they found themselves entrapped into a hard bondage almost unawares. But a strange power upheld them, and the more they were afflicted the more they multiplied and spread abroad. In this they ought to have discerned a divine support, and remembered the promise to Abraham that God would multiply his seed as the stars of heaven. It may have helped them presently to “cry unto the Lord.” And the Egyptians were not merely “grieved” because of them: they felt as the Israelites afterwards felt towards that monotonous diet of which they used the same word, and said, “our soul loatheth this light bread.” Here it expresses that fierce and contemptuous attitude which the Californian and Australian are now assuming toward the swarms of Chinamen whose labour is so indispensable, yet the infusion of whose blood into the population is so hateful. Then the Egyptians make their service rigorous, and their lives bitter.
And at last that happens which is a part of every downward course: the
veil is dropped; what men have done by stealth, and as if they would
deceive themselves,
Among the agents of God for the shipwreck of all full-grown wrongs, the chief is the revolt of human nature, since, fallen though we know ourselves to be, the image of God is not yet effaced in us. The better instincts of humanity are irrepressible—most so perhaps among the poor. It is by refusing to trust its intuitions that men grow vile; and to the very last that refusal is never absolute, so that no villainy can reckon upon its agents, and its agents cannot always reckon upon themselves. Above all, the heart of every woman is in a plot against the wrong; and as Pharaoh was afterwards defeated by the ingenuity of a mother and the sympathy of his own daughter, so his first scheme was spoiled by the disobedience of the midwives, themselves Hebrews, upon whom he reckoned.
Let us not fear to avow that these women, whom God rewarded, lied to the
king when he reproached them, since their answer, even if it were not
unfounded, was palpably a misrepresentation of the facts. The reward was
not for their falsehood, but for their humanity. They lived when the
notion of martyrdom for an avowal so easy to evade was utterly unknown.
In the meantime, God acknowledges, and Holy Scripture celebrates, the
service of these obscure and lowly heroines. Nothing done for Him goes
unrewarded. To slaves it was written that “From the Lord ye shall
receive the reward of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ” (
The king is now driven to avow himself in a public command to drown all the male infants of the Hebrews; and the people become his accomplices by obeying him. For this they were yet to experience a terrible retribution, when there was not a house in Egypt that had not one dead.
The features of the king to whom these atrocities are pretty certainly
brought home are still to be seen
There is no greater mistake than to suppose that artistic refinement can either inspire morality or replace it. Have we quite forgotten Nero, and Lucretia Borgia, and Catherine de Medici?
Many civilisations have thought little of infant life. Ancient Rome would have regarded this atrocity as lightly as modern China, as we may see by the absolute silence of its literature concerning the murder of the innocents—an event strangely parallel with this in its nature and political motives, and in the escape of one mighty Infant.
Is it conceivable that the same indifference should return, if the
sanctions of religion lose their power? Every one remembers the
callousness of Rousseau. Strange things are being written by pessimistic
unbelief about the bringing of more sufferers into the world. And a
living writer in France has advocated the legalising of infanticide, and
denounced St. Vincent
J. K. Huysmans—quoted in Nineteenth Century, May 1888,
p. 673.
It is to the faith of Jesus, not only revealing by the light of eternity the value of every soul, but also replenishing the fountains of human tenderness that had well-nigh become exhausted, that we owe our modern love of children. In the very helplessness which the ancient masters of the world exposed to destruction without a pang, we see the type of what we must ourselves become, if we would enter heaven. But we cannot afford to forget either the source or the sanctions of the lesson.
THE RESCUE OF MOSES.
ii. 1—10.
Such a lesson is the importance of the individual in the history of nations. History, as read in Scripture, is indeed a long relation of heroic resistance or of base compliance in the presence of influences which are at work to debase modern peoples as well as those of old. The holiness of Samuel, the gallant faith of David, the splendour and wisdom of Solomon, the fervid zeal of Elijah, the self-respecting righteousness of Nehemiah,—ignore these, and the whole course of affairs becomes vague and unintelligible. Most of all this is true of Moses, whose appearance is now related.
In profane history it is the same. Alexander, Mahomet, Luther, William the Silent, Napoleon,—will any one pretend that Europe uninfluenced by these personalities would have become the Europe that we know?
And this truth is not at all a speculative, unpractical theory: it is vital. For now there is a fashion of speaking about the tendency of the age, the time-spirit, as an irresistible force which moulds men like potters’ clay, crowning those who discern and help it, but grinding to powder all who resist its course. In reality there are always a hundred time-spirits and tendencies competing for the mastery—some of them violent, selfish, atheistic, or luxurious (as we see with our own eyes to-day)—and the shrewdest judges are continually at fault as to which of them is to be victorious, and recognised hereafter as the spirit of the age.
This modern pretence that men are nothing, and streams of tendency are all, is plainly a gospel of capitulations, of falsehood to one’s private convictions, and of servile obedience to the majority and the popular cry. For, if individual men are nothing, what am I? If we are all bubbles floating down a stream, it is folly to strive to breast the current. Much practical baseness and servility is due to this base and servile creed. And the cure for it is belief in another spirit than that of the present age, trust in an inspiring God, who rescued a herd of slaves and their fading convictions from the greatest nation upon earth by matching one man, shrinking and reluctant yet obedient to his mission, against Pharaoh and all the tendencies of the age.
And it is always so. God turns the scale of events by the vast weight of
a man, faithful and true, and sufficiently aware of Him to refuse, to
universal clamour, the surrender of his liberty or his religion. In
small matters, as in great, there is no man, faithful to a lonely duty
or conviction, understanding that to have discerned it is a gift and a
vocation, but makes the world
We have seen already that the religion of the Hebrews in Egypt was corrupted and in danger of being lost. To this process, however, there must have been bright exceptions; and the mother of Moses bore witness, by her very name, to her fathers’ God. The first syllable of Jochebed is proof that the name of God, which became the keynote of the new revelation, was not entirely new.
As yet the parents of Moses are not named; nor is there any allusion to the close relationship which would have forbidden their union at a later period (chap. vi. 20). And throughout all the story of his youth and early manhood there is no mention whatever of God or of religion. Elsewhere it is not so. The Epistle to the Hebrews declares that through faith the babe was hidden, and through faith the man refused Egyptian rank. Stephen tells us that he expected his brethren to know that God by his hand was giving them deliverance. But the narrative in Exodus is wholly untheological. If Moses were the author, we can see why he avoided reflections which directly tended to glorify himself. But if the story were a subsequent invention, why is the tone so cold, the light so colourless?
Now, it is well that we are invited to look at all these things from
their human side, observing the play of human affection, innocent
subtlety, and pity. God commonly works through the heart and brain which
He has given us, and we do not glorify Him at all by ignoring these. If
in this case there were visible a desire to suppress the human agents,
in favour of the Divine Preserver, we might suppose that a different
historian would have given a less wonderful account
Let us, however, put together the various narratives and their lessons. At the outset we read of a marriage celebrated between kinsfolk, when the storm of persecution was rising. And hence we infer that courage or strong affection made the parents worthy of him through whom God should show mercy unto thousands. The first child was a girl, and therefore safe; but we may suppose, although silence in Scripture proves little, that Aaron, three years before the birth of Moses, had not come into equal peril with him. Moses was therefore born just when the last atrocity was devised, when trouble was at its height.
“At this time Moses was born,” said Stephen. Edifying inferences have been drawn from the statement in Exodus that “the woman ... hid him.” Perhaps the stronger man quailed, but the maternal instinct was not at fault, and it was rewarded abundantly. From which we only learn, in reality, not to overstrain the words of Scripture; since the Epistle to the Hebrews distinctly says that he “was hid three months by his parents”—both of them, while naturally the mother is the active agent.
All the accounts agree that he was thus hidden, “because they saw that
he was a goodly child” (
Such, if we desire a real and actual salvation, is always the faith
which saves. Postpone salvation to an indefinite future; make it no more
than the escape from vaguely realised penalties for sins which do not
When the mother could no longer hide the child, she devised the plan
which has made her for ever famous. She placed him in a covered ark, or
casket, The same word is used for Noah’s ark, but not
elsewhere; not, for example, of the ark in the Temple, the name
of which occurs elsewhere in Scripture only of the “coffin” of
Joseph, and the “chest” for the Temple
revenues (
The heart of every woman was in a plot against the cruelty of Pharaoh.
Once already the midwives had defeated him; and now, when his own
daughter Or his sister, the daughter of a former Pharaoh.
This was the chance for his sister, who had been set in ambush, not prepared with the exquisite device which follows, but simply “to know what would be done to him.” Clearly the mother had reckoned upon his being found, and neglected nothing, although unable herself to endure the agony of watching, or less easily hidden in that guarded spot. And her prudence had a rich reward. Hitherto Miriam’s duty had been to remain passive—that hard task so often imposed upon the affection, especially of women, by sick-beds, and also in many a more stirring hazard, and many a spiritual crisis, where none can fight his brother’s battle. It is a trying time, when love can only hold its breath, and pray. But let not love suppose that to watch is to do nothing. Often there comes a moment when its word, made wise by the teaching of the heart, is the all-important consideration in deciding mighty issues.
This girl sees the princess at once pitiful and embarrassed, for how can
she dispose of her strange charge? Let the moment pass, and the movement
of her heart subside, and all may be lost; but Miriam is prompt and
bold, and asks “Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women,
that she may nurse the child for thee?” It is a daring stroke, for the
This incident teaches us that good is never to be despaired of, since this kindly woman grew up in the family of the persecutor.
And the promptitude and success of Miriam suggest a reflection. Men do
pity, when it is brought home to them, the privation, suffering, and
wrong, which lie around. Magnificent sums are contributed yearly for
their relief by the generous instincts of the world. The misfortune is
that sentiment is evoked only by visible and pathetic griefs, and that
it will not labour as readily as it will subscribe. It is a harder task
to investigate, to devise appeals, to invent and work the machinery by
which misery may be relieved. Mere compassion will accomplish little,
unless painstaking affection supplement it. Who supplies that? Who
enables common humanity to relieve itself by simply paying “wages,” and
confiding the wretched to a painstaking, laborious, loving guardian? The
streets would never have known Hospital Saturday, but for Hospital
Sunday in the churches. The orphanage is wholly a Christian institution.
And so is the lady nurse. The old-fashioned phrase has almost sunk into
a party cry, but in a large and noble sense it will continue to be
Thus did God fulfil His mysterious plans. And according to a sad but noble law, which operates widely, what was best in Egypt worked with Him for the punishment of its own evil race. The daughter of Pharaoh adopted the perilous foundling, and educated him in the wisdom of Egypt.
THE CHOICE OF MOSES.
ii. 11—15.
The point is that among a nation originally pastoral, and now sinking
fast into the degraded animalism of slaves, which afterwards betrayed
itself in their complaining greed, their sighs for the generous Egyptian
dietary, and their impure carouse under the mountain, one man should
possess the culture and mental grasp
The painful contrast between his own refined tastes and habits, and the coarser manners of his nation, was no doubt one difficulty of the choice of Moses, and a lifelong trial to him afterwards. He is an example not only to those whom wealth and power would entangle, but to any who are too fastidious and sensitive for the humble company of the people of God.
While the intellect of Moses was developing, it is plain that his
connection with his family was not entirely broken. Such a tie as often
binds a foster-child to its nurse may have been permitted to associate
him with his real parents. Some means were evidently found to instruct
him in the history and messianic hopes of Israel, for he knew that their
reproach was that of “the Christ,” greater riches than all the treasure
of Egypt, and fraught with a reward for which he looked in faith (
We shall understand, if we reflect, that his open rupture with Egypt was
unlikely to be the work of a
We saw that the piety of his parents was not unhelped by their emotions: they hid him by faith when they saw that he was a goodly child. Such was also the faith by which Moses broke with rank and fortune. He went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. Twice the word of kinship is repeated; and Stephen tells us that Moses himself used it in rebuking the dissensions of his fellow-countrymen. Filled with yearning and pity for his trampled brethren, and with the shame of generous natures who are at ease while others suffer, he saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew. With that blended caution and vehemence which belong to his nation still, he looked and saw that there was no man, and slew the Egyptian. Like most acts of passion, this was at once an impulse of the moment, and an outcome of long gathering forces—just as the lightning flash, sudden though it seem, has been prepared by the accumulated electricity of weeks.
And this is the reason why God allows the issues of a lifetime, perhaps of an eternity, to be decided by a sudden word, a hasty blow. Men plead that if time had been given, they would have stifled the impulse which ruined them. But what gave the impulse such violent and dreadful force that it overwhelmed them before they could reflect? The explosion in the coal-mine is not caused by the sudden spark, without the accumulation of dangerous gases, and the absence of such wholesome ventilation as would carry them away. It is so in the breast where evil desires or tempers are harboured, unsubdued by grace, until any accident puts them beyond control. Thank God that such sudden movements do not belong to evil only! A high soul is surprised into heroism, as often perhaps as a mean one into theft or falsehood. In the case of Moses there was nothing unworthy, but much that was unwarranted and presumptuous. The decision it involved was on the right side, but the act was self-willed and unwarranted, and it carried heavy penalties. “The trespass originated not in inveterate cruelty,” says St. Augustine, “but in a hasty zeal which admitted of correction ... resentment against injury was accompanied by love for a brother.... Here was evil to be rooted out, but the heart with such capabilities, like good soil, needed only cultivation to make it fruitful in virtue.”
Stephen tells us, what is very natural, that Moses expected the people
to accept him as their heaven-born deliverer. From which it appears that
he cherished high expectations for himself, from Israel if not from
Egypt. When he interfered next day between two Hebrews, his question as
given in Exodus is somewhat magisterial: “Wherefore smitest thou thy
fellow?” In
And yet his was a noble patriotism. There is a false love of country, born of pride, which blinds one to her faults; and there is a loftier passion which will brave estrangement and denunciation to correct them. Such was the patriotism of Moses, and of all whom God has ever truly called to lead their fellows. Nevertheless he had to suffer for his error.
His first act had been a kind of manifesto, a claim to lead, which he supposed that they would have understood; and yet, when he found his deed was known, he feared and fled. His false step told against him. One cannot but infer also that he was conscious of having already forfeited court favour—that he had before this not only made his choice, but announced it, and knew that the blow was ready to fall on him at any provocation. We read that he dwelt in the land of Midian, a name which was applied to various tracts according to the nomadic wanderings of the tribe, but which plainly included, at this time, some part of the peninsula formed by the tongues of the Red Sea. For, as he fed his flocks, he came to the Mount of God.
MOSES IN MIDIAN.
ii. 16—22
1. For it expresses great energy of character. He might well have been in a state of collapse. He had smitten the Egyptian for Israel’s sake: he had appealed to his own people to make common cause, like brethren, against the common foe; and he had offered himself to them as their destined leader in the struggle. But they had refused him the command, and he was rudely awakened to the consciousness that his life was in danger through the garrulous ingratitude of the man he rescued. Now he was a ruined man and an exile, marked for destruction by the greatest of earthly monarchs, with the habits and tastes of a great noble, but homeless among wild races.
It was no common nature which was alert and energetic at such a time.
The greatest men have known a period of prostration in calamity: it was
enough for honour that they should rally and re-collect their forces.
Thinking of Frederick, after Kunersdorf, resigning the command (“I have
no resources more, and will not survive the destruction of my country”),
and of his subsequent despatch, “I am now recovered from my illness”;
and of Napoleon, trembling and weeping on the road to Elba, one turns
with fresh admiration to the fallen prince, the baffled liberator,
sitting exhausted by the well, but as keen on behalf
2. Moreover there is disinterested bravery in the act, since he hazards
the opposition of the men of the land, among whom he seeks refuge, on
behalf of a group from which he can have expected nothing. And here it
is worth while to notice the characteristic variations in three stories
which have certain points of contact. The servant of Abraham,
servant-like, was well content that Rebekah should draw for all his
camels, while he stood still. The prudent Jacob, anxious to introduce
himself to his cousin, rolled away the stone and watered her camels.
Moses sat by the well, but did not interfere while the troughs were
being filled: it was only the overt wrong which kindled him. But as in
great things, so it is in small: our actions never stand alone; having
once befriended them, he will do it thoroughly, “and moreover he drew
water for us, and watered the flock.” Such details could hardly have
been thought out by a fabricator; a legend would not have allowed Moses
to be slower in courtesy than Jacob; Nor would it have made the women call their deliverer “an
Egyptian,” for the Hebrew cast of features is very dissimilar. But Moses
wore Egyptian dress, and the Egyptians worked mines in the peninsula, so
that he was naturally taken for one of them.
And why was Moses thus energetic, fearless, and chivalrous? Because he was sustained by the presence of the Unseen: he endured as seeing Him who is invisible; and having, despite of panic, by faith forsaken Egypt, he was free from the absorbing anxieties which prevent men from caring for their fellows, free also from the cynical misgivings which suspect that violence is more than justice, that to be righteous over-much is to destroy oneself, and that perhaps, after all, one may see a good deal of wrong without being called upon to interfere. It would be a different world to-day, if all who claim to be “the salt of the earth” were as eager to repress injustice in its smaller and meaner forms as to make money or influential friends. If all petty and cowardly oppression were sternly trodden down, we should soon have a state of public opinion in which gross and large tyranny would be almost impossible. And it is very doubtful whether the flagrant wrongs, which must be comparatively rare, cause as much real mental suffering as the frequent small ones. Does mankind suffer more from wild beasts than from insects? But how few that aspire to emancipate oppressed nations would be content, in the hour of their overthrow, to assert the rights of a handful of women against a trifling fraud, to which indeed they were so well accustomed that its omission surprised their father!
Is it only because we are reading a history, and not a biography, that we find no touch of tenderness, like the love of Jacob for Rachel, in the domestic relations of Moses?
Joseph also married in a strange land, yet he called the name of his
first son Manasseh, because God had made him to forget his sorrows: but
Moses remembered
His children are of no account, and his grandson is the founder of a
dangerous and enduring schism (
There is much reason to see here the earliest example of the sad rule that a prophet is not without honour save in his own house; that the law of compensations reaches farther into life than men suppose; and high position and great powers are too often counterbalanced by the isolation of the heart.
THE BURNING BUSH.
ii. 23—iii.
“The children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they
cried.” Another monarch had come at last, a change after sixty-seven
years, and yet no change for them! It filled up the measure of their
patience, and also of the iniquity of Egypt. We are not told that their
cry was addressed to the Lord; what we read is that it reached Him, Who
still overhears and pities many a sob, many a lament, which
These were not the cries of religious individuals, but of oppressed
masses. It is therefore a solemn question to ask How many such appeals
ascend from Christian England? Behold, the hire of labourers ... held
back by fraud crieth out. The half-paid slaves of our haste to be rich,
and the victims of our drinking institutions, and of hideous vices which
entangle and destroy the innocent and unconscious, what cries to heaven
are theirs! As surely as those which St. James records, these have
entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Of these sufferers every
one is His own by purchase, most of them by a covenant and sacrament
more solemn than bound Him to His ancient Israel. Surely He hears their
groaning. And all whose hearts are touched with compassion, yet who
hesitate whether to bestir themselves or to remain inert while evil is
masterful and cruel, should remember the anger of God when Moses said,
“Send, I pray Thee, by whom Thou wilt send.” The Lord is not
indifferent. Much less than other sufferers should those who know God be
terrified by their afflictions. Cyprian encouraged the Church of his
time to endure even unto martyrdom, by the words recorded of ancient
Israel, that the more they afflicted them, so much the more they became
greater and waxed stronger. And he was right. For all these things
It is further to be observed that the people were quite unconscious, until Moses announced it afterwards, that they were heard by God. Yet their deliverer had now been prepared by a long process for his work. We are not to despair because relief does not immediately appear: though He tarry, we are to wait for Him.
While this anguish was being endured in Egypt, Moses was maturing for his destiny. Self-reliance, pride of place, hot and impulsive aggressiveness, were dying in his bosom. To the education of the courtier and scholar was now added that of the shepherd in the wilds, amid the most solemn and awful scenes of nature, in solitude, humiliation, disappointment, and, as we learn from the Epistle to the Hebrews, in enduring faith. Wordsworth has a remarkable description of the effect of a similar discipline upon the good Lord Clifford. He tells—
There was also the education of advancing age, which teaches many
lessons, and among them two which are essential to leadership,—the
folly of a hasty blow, and of impulsive reliance upon the support of
mobs.
It is an important truth that in very few lives the decisive moment
comes just when it is expected. Men allow themselves to be
self-indulgent, extravagant and even wicked, often upon the calculation
that their present attitude matters little, and they will do very
differently when the crisis arrives, the turning-point in their career
to nerve them. And they waken up with a start to find their career
already decided, their character moulded. As a snare shall the day of
the Lord come upon all flesh; and as a snare come all His great
visitations meanwhile. When Herod was drinking among bad companions,
admiring a shameless dancer, and boasting loudly of his generosity, he
was sobered and saddened to discover that he had laughed away the life
of his only honest adviser. Moses, like David, was “following the ewes
great with young,” when summoned by God to rule His people Israel.
Neither did the call arrive when he was plunged in moody reverie and
abstraction, sighing over his lost fortunes and his defeated
aspirations, rebelling against his lowly duties. The humblest labour is
a preparation for the brightest revelations, whereas discontent, however
lofty, is a preparation for nothing. Thus, too, the birth of Jesus was
first announced to shepherds keeping watch over their flock. Yet
hundreds of third-rate young persons in every city in this land to-day
neglect their work, and unfit themselves for any insight, or any
leadership
Who does not perceive that the career of Moses hitherto was divinely directed? The fact that we feel this, although, until now, God has not once been mentioned in his personal story, is surely a fine lesson for those who have only one notion of what edifies—the dragging of the most sacred names and phrases into even the most unsuitable connections. In truth, such a phraseology is much less attractive than a certain tone, a recognition of the unseen, which may at times be more consistent with reverential silence than with obtrusive utterance. It is enough to be ready and fearless when the fitting time comes, which is sure to arrive, for the religious heart as for this narrative—the time for the natural utterance of the great word, God.
We read that the angel of the Lord appeared to him—a remarkable phrase,
which was already used in connection with the sacrifice of Isaac (
Man is the true image of God, and His perfect revelation was in flesh. But now that expression of Himself was perilous, and perhaps unsuitable besides; for He was to be known as the Avenger, and presently as the Giver of Law, with its inflexible conditions and its menaces. Therefore He appeared as fire, which is intense and terrible, even when “the flame of the grace of God does not consume, but illuminates.”
There is a notion that religion is languid, repressive, and unmanly. But such is not the scriptural idea. In His presence is the fulness of joy. Christ has come that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly. They who are shut out from His blessedness are said to be asleep and dead. And so Origen quotes this passage among others, with the comment that “As God is a fire, and His angels a flame of fire, and all the saints fervent in spirit, so they who have fallen away from God are said to have cooled, or to have become cold” (De Princip., ii. 8). A revelation by fire involves intensity.
There is indeed another explanation of the burning bush, which makes the flame express only the afflictions that did not consume the people. But this would be a strange adjunct to a divine appearance for their deliverance, speaking rather of the continuance of suffering than of its termination, for which the extinction of such fire would be a more appropriate symbol.
Yet there is an element of truth even in this view, since fire is
connected with affliction. In His holiness God is light (with which, in
the Hebrew, the very word for holiness seems to be connected); in His
judgments He is fire. “The Light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his
Holy One for a flame, and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his
briers in one day” (
To Moses at first there was visible only an extraordinary phenomenon; He turned to see a great sight. It is therefore out of the question to find here the truth, so easy to discover elsewhere, that God rewards the religious inquirer—that they who seek after Him shall find Him. Rather we learn the folly of deeming that the intellect and its inquiries are at war with religion and its mysteries, that revelation is at strife with mental insight, that he who most stupidly refuses to “see the great sights” of nature is best entitled to interpret the voice of God. When the man of science gives ear to voices not of earth, and the man of God has eyes and interest for the divine wonders which surround us, many a discord will be harmonised. With the revival of classical learning came the Reformation.
But it often happens that the curiosity of the intellect is in danger of becoming irreverent, and obtrusive into mysteries not of the brain, and thus the voice of God must speak in solemn warning: “Moses, Moses, ... Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”
After as prolonged a silence as from the time of Malachi to the Baptist,
it is God Who reveals Himself once more—not Moses who by searching
finds Him out. And this is the established rule. Tidings of the
Incarnation came from heaven, or man would not have discovered the
Divine Babe. Jesus asked His two first disciples “What seek ye?” and
told Simon “Thou shalt be called Cephas,” and pronounced the listening
The first words of Jehovah teach something more than ceremonial
reverence. If the dust of common earth on the shoe of Moses may not
mingle with that sacred soil, how dare we carry into the presence of our
God mean passions and selfish cravings? Observe, too, that while Jacob,
when he awoke from his vision, said, “How dreadful is this place!” (
Meantime the Divine Person has announced Himself: “I am the God of thy father” (father is apparently singular with a collective force), “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” It is a blessing which every Christian parent should bequeath to his child, to be strengthened and invigorated by thinking of God as his father’s God.
It was with this memorable announcement that Jesus refuted the Sadducees
and established His doctrine of the resurrection. So, then, the bygone
ages are not forgotten: Moses may be sure that a kindly relation exists
between God and himself, because the kindly relation still exists in all
its vital force which once bound Him to those who long since appeared to
die. It was impossible, therefore, our Lord inferred, that they had
really died at all. The argument is a forerunner of that by which St.
Paul concludes, from the resurrection
And now for the first time God calls Israel My people, adopting a phrase
already twice employed by earthly rulers (
It is used of the nation at large, all of whom were brought into the
covenant, although with many of them God was not well pleased. And since
it does not belong only to saints, but speaks of a grace which
Next after the promise of this good land, the commission of Moses is
announced. He is to act, because God is already active: “I am come
down to deliver them ... come now, therefore, and I will send thee
unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth My people.” And let this
truth encourage all who are truly sent of God, to the end of time, that
He does not send us to deliver man, until He is Himself prepared to do
so,
And as this ancient revelation of God was to give rest to a weary and
heavy-laden people, so Christ bound together the assertion of a more
perfect revelation, made in Him, with the promise of a grander
emancipation. No man knoweth the Father save by revelation of the Son is
the doctrine which introduces the great offer “Come unto Me, all ye that
labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (
A NEW NAME.
iii. 14. vi. 2, 3.
We cannot certainly tell why Moses asked for a new name by which to announce to his brethren the appearance of God. He may have felt that the memory of their fathers, and of the dealings of God with them, had faded so far out of mind that merely to indicate their ancestral God would not sufficiently distinguish Him from the idols of Egypt, whose worship had infected them.
If so, he was fully answered by a name which made this God the one reality, in a world where all is a phantasm except what derives stability from Him.
He may have desired to know, for himself, whether there was any truth in the dreamy and fascinating pantheism which inspired so much of the Egyptian superstition.
In that case, the answer met his question by declaring that God existed, not as the sum of things or soul of the universe, but in Himself, the only independent Being.
Or he may simply have desired some name to
So natural an expectation was fulfilled not only then, but afterwards. When Moses prayed “Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory,” the answer was “I will make all My goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord.” The proclamation was again Jehovah, but not this alone. It was “The Lord, the Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth” (xxxiii. 18, 19, xxxiv. 6, R.V.) Thus the life of Moses, like the agelong progress of the Church, advanced towards an ever-deepening knowledge that God is not only the Independent but the Good. All sets toward the final knowledge that His highest name is Love.
Meanwhile, in the development of events, the exact period was come for epithets, which were shared with gods many and lords many, to be supplemented by the formal announcement and authoritative adoption of His proper name Jehovah. The infant nation was to learn to think of Him, not only as endowed with attributes of terror and power, by which enemies would be crushed, but as possessing a certain well-defined personality, upon which the trust of man could repose. Soon their experience would enable them to receive the formal announcement that He was merciful and gracious. But first they were required to trust His promise amid all discouragements; and to this end, stability was the attribute first to be insisted upon.
It is true that the derivation of the word Jehovah is
Nay, the corruption of the very sound is so notorious, that it is only worth mention as illustrating a phase of superstition.
We smile at the Jews, removing the correct vowels lest so holy a word should be irreverently spoken, placing the sanctity in the cadence, hoping that light and flippant allusions may offend God less, so long as they spare at least the vowels of His name, and thus preserve some vestige undesecrated, while profaning at once the conception of His majesty and the consonants of the mystic word.
A more abject superstition could scarcely have made void the spirit, while grovelling before the letter of the commandment.
But this very superstition is alive in other forms to-day. Whenever one recoils from the sin of coarse blasphemy, yet allows himself the enjoyment of a polished literature which profanes holy conceptions,—whenever men feel bound to behave with external propriety in the house of God, yet bring thither wandering thoughts, vile appetites, sensuous imaginations, and all the chamber of imagery which is within the unregenerate heart,—there is the same despicable superstition which strove to escape at least the extreme of blasphemy by prudently veiling the Holy Name before profaning it.
But our present concern is with the practical message conveyed to Israel
when Moses declared that Jehovah, I am, the God of their fathers, had
appeared unto him.
Some significance must have been in that Name, not too abstract for a servile and degenerate race to apprehend. Nor was it soon to pass away and be replaced; it was His memorial throughout all generations; and therefore it has a message for us to-day, to admonish and humble, to invigorate and uphold.
That God would be the same to them as to their fathers was much. But that it was of the essence of His character to be evermore the same, immutable in heart and mind and reality of being, however their conduct might modify His bearing towards them, this indeed would be a steadying and reclaiming consciousness.
Accordingly Moses receives the answer for himself, “I am that I am”; and he is bidden to tell his people “I am hath sent me unto you,” and yet again “Jehovah the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you.” The spirit and tenor of these three names may be said to be virtually comprehended in the first; and they all speak of the essential and self-existent Being, unchanging and unchangeable.
I am expresses an intense reality of being. No image in the dark
recesses of Egyptian or Syrian temples, grotesque and motionless, can
win the adoration of him who has had communion with such a veritable
existence, or has heard His authentic message. No dreamful pantheism, on
its knees to the beneficent principle expressed in one deity, to the
destructive in another, or to the reproductive in a third, but all of
This profound sense of a living Person within reach, to be offended, to pardon, and to bless, was the one force which kept the Hebrew nation itself alive, with a vitality unprecedented since the world began. They could crave His pardon, whatever natural retributions they had brought down upon themselves, whatever tendencies of nature they had provoked, because He was not a dead law without ears or a heart, but their merciful and gracious God.
Not the most exquisite subtleties of innuendo and irony could make good for a day the monstrous paradox that the Hebrew religion, the worship of I am, was really nothing but the adoration of that stream of tendencies which makes for righteousness.
Israel did not challenge Pharaoh through having suddenly discovered that goodness ultimately prevails over evil, nor is it any cold calculation of the sort which ever inspires a nation or a man with heroic fortitude. But they were nerved by the announcement that they had been remembered by a God Who is neither an ideal nor a fancy, but the Reality of realities, beside Whom Pharaoh and his host were but as phantoms.
I am that I am is the style not only of permanence, but of permanence self-contained, and being a distinctive title, it denies such self-contained permanence to others.
Man is as the past has moulded him, a compound of attainments and
failures, discoveries and disillusions, his eyes dim with forgotten
tears, his hair grey with surmounted anxieties, his brow furrowed with
bygone
Yet in another sense, and quite as deep a one, man is not the coarse
tissue which past circumstances have woven: he is the seed of the
future, as truly as the fruit of the past. Strange compound that he is
of memory and hope, while half of the present depends on what is over,
the other half is projected into the future; and like a bridge,
sustained on these two banks, life throws its quivering shadow on each
moment that fleets by. It is not attainment, but degradation to live
upon the level of one’s mere attainment, no longer uplifted by any
aspiration, fired by any emulation, goaded by any but carnal fears. If
we have been shaped by circumstances, yet we are saved by hope.
I am not merely what I am: I am very truly that which I long to be. And thus, man may plead, I am what I move towards and strive after, my aspiration is myself. But God says, I am what I am. The stream hurries forward: the rock abides. And this is the Rock of Ages.
Now, such a conception is at first sight not far removed from that apathetic and impassive kind of deity which the practical atheism of ancient materialists could well afford to grant;—“ever in itself enjoying immortality together with supreme repose, far removed and withdrawn from our concerns, since it, exempt from every pain, exempt from all danger, strong in its own resources and wanting nought from us, is neither gained by favour nor moved by wrath.”
Thus Lucretius conceived of the absolute Being as by the necessity of its nature entirely outside our system.
But Moses was taught to trust in Jehovah as intervening, pitying sorrow and wrong, coming down to assist His creatures in distress.
How could this be possible? Clearly the movement
There is no such motive, working in such magnificent regularity for good, save one. The ultimate doctrine of the New Testament, that God is Love, is already involved in this early assertion, that being wholly independent of us and our concerns, He is yet not indifferent to them, so that Moses could say unto the children of Israel “I am hath sent me unto you.”
It is this unchangeable consistency of Divine action which gives the narrative its intense interest to us. To Moses, and therefore to all who receive any commission from the skies, this title said, Frail creature, sport of circumstances and of tyrants, He who commissions thee sits above the waterfloods, and their rage can as little modify or change His purpose, now committed to thy charge, as the spray can quench the stars. Perplexed creature, whose best self lives only in aspiration and desire, now thou art an instrument in the hand of Him with Whom desire and attainment, will and fruition, are eternally the same. None truly fails in fighting for Jehovah, for who hath resisted His will?
To Israel, and to all the oppressed whose minds are open to receive the
tidings and their faith strong to embrace it, He said, Your life is
blighted, and your
And to the proud and godless world which knows Him not, He says, Resistance to My will can only show forth all its power, which is not at the mercy of opinion or interest or change: I sit upon the throne, not only supreme but independent, not only victorious but unassailable; self-contained, self-poised and self-sufficing, I am that I am.
Have we now escaped the inert and self-absorbed deity of Lucretius, only to fall into the palsying grasp of the tyrannous deity of Calvin? Does our own human will shrivel up and become powerless under the compulsion of that immutability with which we are strangely brought into contact?
Evidently this is not the teaching of the Book of Exodus. For it is
here, in this revelation of the Supreme, that we first hear of a nation
as being His: “I have seen the affliction of My people which is in Egypt
... and I have come down to bring them into a good land.” They were all
baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. Yet their carcases fell
in the wilderness. And these things were written for our learning. The
immutability, which suffers no shock when we enter into the covenant,
remains unshaken also if we depart from the living God. The sun shines
alike when we raise the curtain and when we drop it, when our chamber is
illumined and when it is dark. The immutability of God is not in His
operations, for
Such is the Pauline doctrine of His immutability. “If we endure we shall
also reign with Him: if we shall deny Him, He also will deny us,”—and
such is the necessity of His being, for we cannot sway Him with our
changes: “if we are faithless, He abideth faithful, for He cannot deny
Himself.” And therefore it is presently added that “the firm foundation
of the Lord standeth sure, having” not only “this seal, that the Lord
knoweth those that are His,”—but also this, “Let every one that nameth
the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness” (
The Lord knew that Israel was His, yet for their unrighteousness He sware in His wrath that they should not enter into His rest.
It follows from all this that the new name of God was no academic subtlety, no metaphysical refinement of the schools, unfitly revealed to slaves, but a most practical and inspiring truth, a conviction to warm their blood, to rouse their courage, to convert their despair into confidence and their alarms into defiance.
They had the support of a God worthy of trust. And thenceforth every
answer in righteousness, every new disclosure of fidelity, tenderness,
love, was not an abnormal phenomenon, the uncertain grace of
In future troubles they could appeal to Him to awake as in the ancient days, as being He who “cut Rahab and wounded the Dragon.” “I am the Lord, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.”
And as the sublime and beautiful conception of a loving spiritual God was built up slowly, age by age, tier upon tier, this was the foundation which insured the the stability of all, until the Head Stone of the Corner gave completeness to the vast design, until men saw and could believe in the very Incarnation of all Love, unshaken amid anguish and distress and seeming failure, immovable, victorious, while they heard from human lips the awful words, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Then they learned to identify all this ancient lesson of trustworthiness with new and more pathetic revelations of affection: and the martyr at the stake grew strong as he remembered that the Man of Sorrows was the same yesterday and to-day and for ever; and the great apostle, prostrate before the glory of his Master, was restored by the touch of a human hand, and by the voice of Him upon Whose bosom he had leaned, saying, Fear not, I am the First and the Last and the Living One.
And if men are once more fain to rend from humanity that great
assurance, which for ages, amid all shocks, has made the frail creature
of the dust to grow strong and firm and fearless, partaker of the Divine
Nature, what will they give us in its stead? Or do they think us too
strong of will, too firm of purpose? Looking around us, we see nations
heaving with internal agitations, armed to the teeth against each
other,
THE COMMISSION.
iii. 10, 16—22.
All the best gifts of heaven come to us by the agency of inventor and sage, hero and explorer, organiser and philanthropist, patriot, reformer and saint. And the hope which inspires their grandest effort is never that of selfish gain, nor even of fame, though fame is a keen spur, which perhaps God set before Moses in the noble hope that “thou shalt bring forth the people” (ver. 12). But the truly impelling force is always the great deed itself, the haunting thought, the importunate inspiration, the inward fire; and so God promises Moses neither a sceptre, nor share in the good land: He simply proposes to him the work, the rescue of the people; and Moses, for his part, simply objects that he is unable, not that he is solicitous about his reward. Whatever is done for payment can be valued by its cost: all the priceless services done for us by our greatest were, in very deed, unpriced.
Moses, with the new name of God to reveal, and with the assurance that
He is about to rescue Israel, is bidden to go to work advisedly and
wisely. He is not to appeal to the mob, nor yet to confront Pharaoh
without authority from his people to speak for them, nor is he to make
the great demand for emancipation abruptly and at once. The mistake of
forty years ago must not be repeated now. He is to appeal to the elders
of Israel; and with them, and therefore clearly representing the nation,
he is respectfully to crave permission for a three days’ journey, to
sacrifice to Jehovah in the wilderness. The blustering assurance with
which certain fanatics of our own time first assume that they possess a
direct commission from the skies, and thereupon that they
Strangely enough, it is often assumed that this demand for a furlough of three days was insincere. But it would only have been so, if consent were expected, and if the intention were thereupon to abuse the respite and refuse to return. There is not the slightest hint of any duplicity of the kind. The real motives for the demand are very plain. The excursion which they proposed would have taught the people to move and act together, reviving their national spirit, and filling them with a desire for the liberty which they tasted. In the very words which they should speak, “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, hath met with us,” there is a distinct proclamation of nationality, and of its surest and strongest bulwark, a national religion. From such an excursion, therefore, the people would have returned, already well-nigh emancipated, and with recognised leaders. Certainly Pharaoh could not listen to any such proposal, unless he were prepared to reverse the whole policy of his dynasty toward Israel.
But the refusal answered two good ends. In the first place it joined
issue on the best conceivable ground, for Israel was exhibited making
the least possible demand with the greatest possible courtesy—
In the message which Moses should convey to the elders there are two significant phrases. He was to announce in the name of God, “I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done unto you in Egypt.” The silent observation of God before He interposes is very solemn and instructive. So in the Revelation, He walks among the golden candlesticks, and knows the work, the patience, or the unfaithfulness of each. So He is not far from any one of us. When a heavy blow falls we speak of it as “a Visitation of Providence,” but in reality the visitation has been long before. Neither Israel nor Egypt was conscious of the solemn presence. Who knows what soul of man, or what nation, is thus visited to-day, for future deliverance or rebuke?
Again it is said, “I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt
into ... a land flowing with milk and honey.” Their affliction was the
divine method of uprooting them. And so is our affliction the method by
which our hearts are released from love of earth and life, that in due
time He may “surely bring us in” to a better and an enduring country.
Now, we wonder that the Israelites clung so fondly to the place of their
captivity. But what of our own hearts? Have they
The hesitating nation is not plainly told that their affliction will be
intensified and their lives made burdensome with labour. That is perhaps
implied in the certainty that Pharaoh “will not let you go, no, not by a
mighty hand.” But it is with Israel as with us: a general knowledge that
in the world we shall have tribulation is enough; the catalogue of our
trials is not spread out before us in advance. They were assured for
their encouragement that all their long captivity should at last receive
its wages, for they should not borrow
So much ignorant capital has been made by sceptics out of
this unfortunate mistranslation, that it is worth while to inquire
whether the word “borrow” would suit the context in other passages. “He
borrowed water and she gave him milk” (
MOSES HESITATES.
iv. 1—17.
In Josephus, the refusal of Moses is softened down. Even the modest
words, “Lord, I am still in doubt how I, a private man and of no
abilities, should persuade my countrymen or Pharaoh,” are not spoken
after the sign is given. Nor is there any mention of the transfer to
Aaron of a part of his commission, nor of their joint offence at
Meribah, nor of its penalty, which in Scripture is bewailed so often.
And Josephus is equally tender about the misdeeds of the nation. We hear
nothing of their murmurs against Moses and Aaron when their burdens are
increased, or of their making the golden calf. Whereas it is remarkable
and natural that the fear of Moses is less anxious about his reception
by the tyrant than by his own people: “Behold, they will not believe me,
nor hearken unto my voice; for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared
unto thee.” This is very unlike the invention of a
Yet who shall say that the want of them is not our own fault? The critical apathy and incredulity, not of the world but of the Church, is what freezes the fountains of Christian daring and the warmth of Christian zeal.
For the help of the faith of his people, Moses is commissioned to work two miracles; and he is caused to rehearse them, for his own.
Strange tales were told among the later Jews about his wonder-working
rod. It was cut by Adam before leaving Paradise, was brought by Noah
into the ark, passed into Egypt with Joseph, and was recovered by Moses
while he enjoyed the favour of the court. These legends arose from
downright moral inability to receive the true lesson of the incident,
which is the confronting of the sceptre of Egypt with the simple staff
of the shepherd, the choosing of the weak things of earth to confound
the strong, the power of God to work His miracles by the most puny and
inadequate means.
Both miracles were of a menacing kind. First the rod became a serpent, to declare that at God’s bidding enemies would rise up against the oppressor, even where all seemed innocuous, as in truth the waters of the river and the dust of the furnace and the winds of heaven conspired against him. Then, in the grasp of Moses, the serpent from which he fled became a rod again, to intimate that these avenging forces were subject to the servant of Jehovah.
Again, his hand became leprous in his bosom, and was presently restored
to health again—a declaration that he carried with him the power of
death, in its most dreadful form; and perhaps a still more solemn
admonition to those who remember what leprosy betokens, and how every
approach of God to man brings first the knowledge of sin, to be followed
by the assurance that He has cleansed it. Tertullian appealed to the second of these miracles to
illustrate the possibility of the resurrection. “The hand of Moses is
changed and becomes like that of the dead, bloodless, colourless, and
stiff with cold. But on the recovery of heat and restoration of its
natural colour, it is the same flesh and blood.... So will changes,
conversions and reformation be needed to bring about the resurrection,
yet the substance will be preserved safe.” (De Res., lv.) It is far
wiser to be content with the declaration of St. Paul that the identity
of the body does not depend on that of its corporeal atoms. “Thou sowest
not that body that shall be, but a naked grain.... But God giveth ... to
every seed his own body” (
If the people would not hearken to the voice of the first sign, they
should believe the second; but at the
But let it be observed that the self-consciousness which wears the mask of humility while refusing to submit its judgment to that of God, is a form of selfishness—self-absorption blinding one to other considerations beyond himself—as real, though not as hateful, as greed and avarice and lust.
How can Moses call himself slow of speech and of a slow tongue, when
Stephen distinctly declares that he was mighty in word as well as deed?
(
To his scruple the answer was returned, “Who hath made man’s mouth?...
Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and
teach thee what thou shalt say.” The same encouragement belongs to every
one who truly executes a mandate
And this is the true test which divides faith from presumption, and unbelief from prudence: do we go because God is with us in Christ, or because we ourselves are strong and wise? Do we hold back because we are not sure of His commission, or only because we distrust ourselves? “Humility without faith is too timorous; faith without humility is too hasty.” The phrase explains the conduct of Moses both now and forty years before.
Moses, however, still entreats that any one may be chosen rather than himself: “Send, I pray Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send.”
And thereupon the anger of the Lord was kindled against him, although at
the moment his only visible punishment was the partial granting of his
prayer—the association with him in his commission of Aaron, who could
speak well, the forfeiting of a certain part of his vocation, and with
it of a certain part of its reward. The words, “Is not Aaron thy brother
the Levite?” have been used to insinuate that the tribal arrangement was
not perfected when they were written, and so to discredit the narrative.
But when so interpreted they yield no adequate sense, they do not
reinforce the argument; while they are perfectly intelligible as
implying that Aaron is already the leader of his tribe, and therefore
sure to obtain the hearing of which Moses despaired. But the arrangement
involved grave consequences sure to be developed in
Now, it is the duty of every man, to whom a special vocation presents itself, to set opposite each other two considerations. Dare I undertake this task? is a solemn question, but so is this: Dare I let this task go past me? Am I prepared for the responsibility of allowing it to drift into weaker hands? These are days when the Church of Christ is calling for the help of every one capable of aiding her, and we ought to hear it said more often that one is afraid not to teach in Sunday School, and another dares not refuse a proffered district, and a third fears to leave charitable tasks undone. To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin; and we hear too much about the terrible responsibility of working for God, but too little about the still graver responsibility of refusing to work for Him when called.
Moses indeed attained so much that we are scarcely conscious that he
might have been greater still. He had once presumed to go unsent, and
brought upon himself the exile of half a lifetime. Again he presumed
almost to say, I go not, and well-nigh to incur the guilt of Jonah when
sent to Nineveh, and in so doing he forfeited the fulness of his
vocation. But who reaches the level of his possibilities? Who is not
haunted by
A more cheerful reflection suggested by this narrative is the strange
power of human fellowship. Moses knew and was persuaded that God, Whose
presence was even then miraculously apparent in the bush, and Who had
invested him with superhuman powers, would go with him. There is no
trace of incredulity in his behaviour, but only of failure to rely, to
cast his shrinking and reluctant will upon the truth he recognised and
the God Whose presence he confessed. He held back, as many a one does,
who is honest when he repeats the Creed in church, yet fails to submit
his life to the easy yoke of Jesus. Nor is it from physical peril that
he recoils: at the bidding of God he has just grasped the serpent from
which he fled; and in confronting a tyrant with armies at his back, he
could hope for small assistance from his brother. But highly strung
spirits, in every great crisis, are aware of vague indefinite
apprehensions that are not cowardly but imaginative. Thus Cæsar, when
defying the hosts of Pompey, is said to have been disturbed by an
apparition. It is vain to put these apprehensions into logical form, and
argue them down: the slowness of speech of
This is the principle which underlies the institution of the Church of Christ, and the conception that Christians are brothers, among whom the strong must help the weak. Such help from their fellow-mortals would perhaps decide the choice of many hesitating souls, upon the verge of the divine life, recoiling from its unknown and dread experiences, but longing for a sympathising comrade. Alas for the unkindly and unsympathetic religion of men whose faith has never warmed a human heart, and of congregations in which emotion is a misdemeanour!
There is no stronger force, among all that make for the abuses of
priestcraft, than this same yearning for human help becomes when robbed
of its proper nourishment, which is the communion of saints, and the
There is a homelier lesson to be learned. Moses was not only solaced by human fellowship, but nerved and animated by the thought of his brother, and the mention of his tribe. “Is not Aaron thy brother the Levite?” They had not met for forty years. Vague rumours of deadly persecution were doubtless all that had reached the fugitive, whose heart had burned, in solitary communion with Nature in her sternest forms, as he brooded over the wrongs of his family, of Aaron, and perhaps of Miriam.
And now his brother lived. The call which Moses would have put from him
was for the emancipation of his own flesh and blood, and for their
greatness. In that great hour, domestic affection did much to turn the
scale wherein the destinies of humanity were trembling. And his was
affection well returned. It might easily have been otherwise, for Aaron
had seen his younger brother called to a dazzling elevation, living in
enviable magnificence, and earning fame by “word and deed”; and then,
after a momentary fusion
Let no man dream of attaining real greatness by stifling his affections. The heart is more important than the intellect; and the brief story of the Exodus has room for the yearning of Jochebed over her infant “when she saw him that he was a goodly child,” for the bold inspiration of the young poetess, who “stood afar off to know what should be done to him,” and now for the love of Aaron. So the Virgin, in the dread hour of her reproach, went in haste to her cousin Elizabeth. So Andrew “findeth first his own brother Simon.” And so the Divine Sufferer, forsaken of God, did not forsake His mother.
The Bible is full of domestic life. It is the theme of the greater part of Genesis, which makes the family the seed-plot of the Church. It is wisely recognised again at the moment when the larger pulse of the nation begins to beat. For the life-blood in the heart of a nation must be the blood in the hearts of men.
MOSES OBEYS.
iv. 18—31.
There are duties which no family resistance can possibly cancel, and the direct command of God made it plain that this was one of them. But there are two ways of performing even the most imperative obligation, and religious people have done irreparable mischief before now, by rudeness, disregard to natural feeling and the rights of their fellow-men, under the impression that they showed their allegiance to God by outraging other ties. It is a theory for which no sanction can be found either in Holy Scripture or in common sense.
When he asks permission to visit “his brethren” we cannot say whether he ever had brothers besides Aaron, or uses the word in the same larger national sense as when we read that, forty years before, he went out unto his brethren and saw their burdens. What is to be observed is that he is reticent with respect to his vast expectations and designs.
He does not argue that, because a Divine promise must needs be fulfilled, he need not be discreet, wary and taciturn, any more than St. Paul supposed, because the lives of his shipmates were promised to him, that it mattered nothing whether the sailors remained on board.
The decrees of God have sometimes been used to justify the recklessness of man, but never by His chosen followers. They have worked out their own salvation the more earnestly because God worked in them. And every good cause calls aloud for human energy and wisdom, all the more because its consummation is the will of God, and sooner or later is assured. Moses has unlearned his rashness.
When the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, “Go, return unto Egypt, for all the men are dead which sought thy life,” there is an almost verbal resemblance to the words in which the infant Jesus is recalled from exile. We shall have to consider the typical aspect of the whole narrative, when a convenient stage is reached for pausing to survey it in its completeness. But resemblances like this have been treated with so much scorn, they have been so freely perverted into evidence of the mythical nature of the later story, that some passing allusion appears desirable. We must beware equally of both extremes. The Old Testament is tortured, and genuine prophecies are made no better than coincidences, when coincidences are exalted to all the dignity of express predictions. One can scarcely venture to speak of the death of Herod when Jesus was to return from Egypt, as being deliberately typified in the death of those who sought the life of Moses. But it is quite clear that the words in St. Matthew do intentionally point the reader back to this narrative. For, indeed, under both, there are to be recognised the same principles: that God does not thrust His servants into needless or excessive peril; and that when the life of a tyrant has really become not only a trial but a barrier, it will be removed by the King of kings. God is prudent for His heroes.
Moreover, we must recognise the lofty fitness of what is very visible in
the Gospels—the coming to a head in Christ of the various experiences
of the people of God; and at the recurrence, in His story, of events
already known elsewhere, we need not be disquieted, as if the suspicion
of a myth were now become difficult to refute; rather should we
recognise the fulness of the supreme life, and its points of contact
with all
A much deeper meaning underlies the profound expression which God now commands Moses to employ; and although it must await consideration at a future time, the progressive education of Moses himself is meantime to be observed. At first he is taught that the Lord is the God of their fathers, in whose descendants He is therefore interested. Then the present Israel is His people, and valued for its own sake. Now he hears, and is bidden to repeat to Pharaoh, the amazing phrase, “Israel is My son, even My firstborn: 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.” Thus it is that infant faith is led from height to height. And assuredly there never was an utterance better fitted than this to prepare human minds, in the fulness of time, for a still clearer revelation of the nearness of God to man, and for the possibility of an absolute union between the Creator and His creature.
It was on his way into Egypt, with his wife and children, that a mysterious interposition forced Zipporah reluctantly and tardily to circumcise her son.
The meaning of this strange episode lies perhaps below the surface, but
very near it. Danger in some form, probably that of sickness, pressed
Moses hard, and
If so, he discerned his transgression when trouble awoke his conscience; and so did his wife Zipporah. Yet her resistance to the circumcision of their younger son was so tenacious, with such difficulty was it overcome by her husband’s peril or by his command, that her tardy performance of the rite was accompanied by an insulting action and a bitter taunt. As she submitted, the Lord “let him go”; but we may perhaps conclude that the grievance continued to rankle, from the repetition of her gibe, “So she said, A bridegroom of blood art thou because of the circumcision.” The words mean, “We are betrothed again in blood,” and might of themselves admit a gentler, and even a tender significance; as if, in the sacrifice of a strong prejudice for her husband’s sake, she felt a revival of “the kindness of her youth, the love of her espousals.” For nothing removes the film from the surface of a true affection, and makes the heart aware how bright it is, so well as a great sacrifice, frankly offered for the sake of love.
But such a rendering is excluded by the action which went with her words, and they must be explained as meaning, This is the kind of husband I have wedded: these are our espousals. With such an utterance she fades almost entirely out of the story: it does not even tell how she drew back to her father; and thenceforth all we know of her is that she rejoined Moses only when the fame of his victory over Amalek had gone abroad.
Their union seems to have been an ill-assorted or at
Domestic unhappiness is a palliation, but not a justification, for an unserviceable life. It is a great advantage to come into action with the dew and freshness of affection upon the soul. Yet it is not once nor twice that men have carried the message of God back from the barren desert and the lonely ways of their unhappiness to the not too happy race of man.
Now, who can fail to discern real history in all this? Is it in such a
way that myth or legend would have dealt with the wife of the great
deliverer? Still less conceivable is it that these should have treated
Moses himself as the narrative hitherto has consistently done.
But in truth the failures of the good and great are written for our
admonition, teaching us how inconsistent are even the best of mortals,
and how weak the most resolute. Rather than forfeit his own place among
the chosen people, Moses had forsaken a palace and become a proscribed
fugitive; yet he had neglected to claim for his child its rightful share
in the covenant, its recognition among the sons of Abraham. Perhaps
procrastination, perhaps domestic opposition, more potent than a king’s
wrath to shake his purpose, perhaps the insidious notion that one who
had sacrificed so much might be at ease about slight negligences,—some
such influence had left the commandment unobserved.
Moses was not only religious, but “a man of destiny,” one upon whom vast
interests depended. Now, such men have often reckoned themselves exempt
from the ordinary laws of conduct. “I am not an ordinary man,” Napoleon used to say, “and the
laws of morals and of custom were never made for me.”—Memoirs of
Madame de Rémusat, i. 91.
It is not a light thing, therefore, to find God’s indignant protest against the faintest shadow of a doctrine so insidious and so deadly, set in the forefront of sacred history, at the very point where national concerns and those of religion begin to touch. If our politics are to be kept pure and clean, we must learn to exact a higher fidelity, and not a relaxed morality, from those who propose to sway the destinies of nations.
And now the brothers meet, embrace, and exchange confidences. As Andrew, the first disciple who brought another to Jesus, found first his own brother Simon, so was Aaron the earliest convert to the mission of Moses. And that happened which so often puts our faithlessness to shame. It had seemed very hard to break his strange tidings to the people: it was in fact very easy to address one whose love had not grown cold during their severance, who probably retained faith in the Divine purpose for which the beautiful child of the family had been so strangely preserved, and who had passed through trial and discipline unknown to us in the stern intervening years.
And when they told their marvellous story to the elders of the people, and displayed the signs, they believed; and when they heard that God had visited them in their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped.
This was their preparation for the wonders that should follow: it resembled Christ’s appeal, “Believest thou that I am able to do this?” or Peter’s word to the impotent man, “Look on us.”
For the moment the announcement had the desired effect, although too
soon the early promise was succeeded by faithlessness and discontent. In
this, again, the teaching of the earliest political movement on record
is as fresh as if it were a tale of yesterday. The offer of emancipation
stirs all hearts; the romance of liberty is beautiful beside the Nile as
in the streets of Paris; but the cost has to be gradually learned; the
losses displace the gains in the popular attention; the labour, the
self-denial and the self-control grow wearisome, and Israel murmurs for
the flesh-pots of Egypt, much as the modern revolution reverts to a
PHARAOH REFUSES.
v. 1—23.
Nor had he reason to repent of it. The pomp of an obsequious court was a poor thing in the eyes of an ambassador of God, who entered the palace to speak such lofty words as never passed the lips of any son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He was presently to become a god unto Pharaoh, with Aaron for his prophet.
In itself, his presence there was formidable. The Hebrews had been feared when he was an infant. Now their cause was espoused by a man of culture, who had allied himself with their natural leaders, and was returned, with the deep and steady fire of a zeal which forty years of silence could not quench, to assert the rights of Israel as an independent people.
There is a terrible power in strong convictions, especially when supported by the sanctions of religion. Luther on one side, Loyola on the other, were mightier than kings when armed with this tremendous weapon. Yet there are forces upon which patriotism and fanaticism together break in vain. Tyranny and pride of race have also strong impelling ardours, and carry men far. Pharaoh is in earnest as well as Moses, and can act with perilous energy. And this great narrative begins the story of a nation’s emancipation with a human demand, boldly made, but defeated by the pride and vigour of a startled tyrant and the tameness of a downtrodden people. The limitations of human energy are clearly exhibited before the direct interference of God begins. All that a brave man can do, when nerved by lifelong aspiration and by a sudden conviction that the hour of destiny has struck, all therefore upon which rationalism can draw, to explain the uprising of Israel, is exhibited in this preliminary attempt, this first demand of Moses.
Menephtah was no doubt the new Pharaoh whom the brothers accosted so
boldly. What we glean of him elsewhere is highly suggestive of some
grave event left unrecorded, exhibiting to us a man of uncontrollable
temper yet of broken courage, a ruthless, godless, daunted man. There is
a legend that he once hurled his spear at the Nile when its floods rose
too high, and was punished with ten years of blindness. In the Libyan
war, after fixing a time when he should join his vanguard, with the main
army, a celestial vision forbade him to keep his word in person, and the
victory was gained by his lieutenants. In another war, he boasts of
having slaughtered the people and set fire to them, and netted the
entire country as men
Robinson, “The Pharaohs of the Bondage.”
But it will be understood that this identification, concerning which
there is now a very general consent of competent authorities, implies
that the Pharaoh was not himself engulfed with his army. Nothing is on
the other side except a poetic assertion in
To this king, then, whose audacious family had usurped the symbols of deity for its head-dress, and whose father boasted that in battle “he became like the god Mentu” and “was as Baal,” the brothers came as yet without miracle, with no credentials except from slaves, and said, “Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness.” The issue was distinctly raised: did Israel belong to Jehovah or to the king? And Pharaoh answered, with equal decision, “Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice? I know not Jehovah, and what is more, I will not let Israel go.”
Now, the ignorance of the king concerning Jehovah was almost or quite
blameless: the fault was in his practical refusal to inquire. Jehovah
was no concern of his: without waiting for information, he at once
decided
For it was against religion also that he was unyielding. In his ample Pantheon there was room at least for the possibility of the entrance of the Hebrew God, and in refusing to the subject people, without investigation, leisure for any worship, the king outraged not only humanity, but Heaven.
The brothers proceed to declare that they have themselves met with the deity, and there must have been many in the court who could attest at least the sincerity of Moses; they ask for liberty to spend a day in journeying outward and another in returning, with a day between for their worship, and warn the king of the much greater loss to himself which may be involved in vengeance upon refusal, either by war or pestilence. But the contemptuous answer utterly ignores religion: “Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their work? Get ye unto your burdens.”
And his counter-measures are taken without loss of time: “that same day”
the order goes out to exact the regular quantity of brick, but supply no
straw for binding
“They be idle, therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God.” And still there are men who hold the same opinion, that time spent in devotion is wasted, as regards the duties of real life. In truth, religion means freshness, elasticity and hope: a man will be not slothful in business, but fervent in spirit, if he serves the Lord. But perhaps immortal hope, and the knowledge that there is One Who shall break all prison bars and let the oppressed go free, are not the best narcotics to drug down the soul of a man into the monotonous tameness of a slave.
In the tenth verse we read that the Egyptian taskmasters and the officers combined to urge the people to their aggravated labours. And by the fourteenth verse we find that the latter officials were Hebrew officers whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them.
So that we have here one of the surest and worst
One advantage of the last sharp agony of persecution was that it finally detached this official class from the Egyptian interest, and welded Israel into a homogeneous people, with officers already provided. For, when the supply of bricks came short, these officials were beaten, and, as if no cause of the failure were palpable, they were asked, with a malicious chuckle, “Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task both yesterday and to-day, as heretofore?” And when they explain to Pharaoh, in words already expressive of their alienation, that the fault is with “thine own people,” they are repulsed with insult, and made to feel themselves in evil case. For indeed they needed to be chastised for their forgetfulness of God. How soon would their hearts have turned back, how much more bitter yet would have been their complaints in the desert, if it were not for this last experience! But if judgment began with them, what should presently be the fate of their oppressors?
Their broken spirit shows itself by murmuring, not
It is written that Moses, hearing their reproaches, “returned unto the Lord,” although no visible shrine, no consecrated place of worship, can be thought of.
What is involved is the consecration which the heart bestows upon any place of privacy and prayer, where, in shutting out the world, the soul is aware of the special nearness of its King. In one sense we never leave Him, never return to Him. In another sense, by direct address of the attention and the will, we enter into His presence; we find Him in the midst of us, Who is everywhere. And all ceremonial consecrations do their office by helping us to realise and act upon the presence of Him in Whom, even when He is forgotten, we live and move and have our being. Therefore in the deepest sense each man consecrates or desecrates for himself his own place of prayer. There is a city where the Divine presence saturates every consciousness with rapture. And the seer beheld no temple therein, for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple of it.
Startling to our notions of reverence are the words in which Moses
addresses God. “Lord, why hast Thou evil entreated this people? Why is
it that Thou hast sent me? for since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Thy
name, he hath evil entreated this people; neither hast Thou delivered
Thy people at all.” It is almost as if his faith had utterly given way,
like that of the Psalmist when he saw the wicked in great prosperity,
while waters of a full cup were
His words would have been profane and irreverent indeed but for one redeeming quality. They were addressed to God Himself. Whenever the people murmured, Moses turned for help to Him Who reckons the most unconventional and daring appeal to Him far better than the most ceremonious phrases in which men cover their unbelief: “Lord, wherefore hast Thou evil entreated this people?” is in reality a much more pious utterance than “I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord.” Wherefore Moses receives large encouragement, although no formal answer is vouchsafed to his daring question.
Even so, in our dangers, our torturing illnesses, and many a crisis
which breaks through all the crust of forms and conventionalities, God
may perhaps recognise a true appeal to Him, in words which only
scandalise the orthodoxy of the formal and precise. In the bold
Moses had again failed, even though Divinely commissioned, in the work of emancipating Israel, and thereupon he had cried to the Lord Himself to undertake the work. This abortive attempt, however, was far from useless: it taught humility and patience to the leader, and it pressed the nation together, as in a vice, by the weight of a common burden, now become intolerable. At the same moment, the iniquity of the tyrant was filled up.
But the Lord did not explain this, in answer to the remonstrance of Moses. Many things happen, for which no distinct verbal explanation is possible, many things of which the deep spiritual fitness cannot be expressed in words. Experience is the true commentator upon Providence, if only because the slow building of character is more to God than either the hasting forward of deliverance or the clearing away of intellectual mists. And it is only as we take His yoke upon us that we truly learn of Him. Yet much is implied, if not spoken out, in the words, “Now (because the time is ripe) shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh (I, because others have failed); for by a strong hand shall he let them go, and by a strong hand shall he drive them out of the land.” It is under the weight of the “strong hand” of God Himself that the tyrant must either bend or break.
Similar to this is the explanation of many delays in answering our
prayer, of the strange raising up of tyrants and demagogues, and of much
else that perplexes Christians in history and in their own experience.
These events develop human character,
Fresh air, a balmy wind, a bright blue sky—which of us feels a thrill of conscious exultation for these cheap delights? The released prisoner, the restored invalid, feels it:
Even so should Israel be taught to value deliverance. And now the process could begin.
THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES.
vi. 1—30.
And the true explanation is that this Name was now, for the first time,
to be realised as a sustaining power. The patriarchs had known the name;
how its fitness
It has been the same, in turn, with every new revelation of the Divine.
The new was implicit in the old, but when enforced, unfolded, reapplied,
men found it charged with unsuspected meaning and power, and as full of
vitality and development as a handful of dry seeds when thrown into
congenial soil. So it was pre-eminently with the doctrine of the
Messiah. It will be the same hereafter with the doctrine of the kingdom
of peace and the reign of the saints on earth. Some day men will smile
at our crude theories and ignorant controversies about the Millennium.
We, meantime, possess the saving knowledge of Christ amid many
perplexities and obscurities. And so the patriarchs, who knew God
Almighty, but not by His name Jehovah, were not lost for want of the
knowledge of His name, but saved by faith in Him, in the living Being
to
Again is Moses bidden to appeal to the faith of his countrymen, by a
solemn repetition of the Divine promise. If the tyranny is great, they
shall be redeemed with a stretched out arm, that is to say, with a
palpable interposition of the power of God, “and with great judgments.”
It is the first appearance in Scripture of this phrase, afterwards so
common. Not mere vengeance upon enemies or vindication of subjects is in
question: the thought is that of a deliberate weighing
It is added, “I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you for a God.” This is the language, not of a mere purpose, a will that has resolved to vindicate the right, but of affection. God is about to adopt Israel to Himself, and the same favour which belonged to rare individuals in the old time is now offered to a whole nation. Just as the heart of each man is gradually educated, learning first to love a parent and a family, and so led on to national patriotism, and at last to a world-wide philanthropy, so was the religious conscience of mankind awakened to believe that Abraham might be the friend of God, and then that His oath might be confirmed unto the children, and then that He could take Israel to Himself for a people, and at last that God loved the world.
It is not religion to think that God condescends merely to save us. He cares for us. He takes us to Himself, He gives Himself away to us, in return, to be our God.
Such a revelation ought to have been more to Israel than any pledge of certain specified advantages. It was meant to be a silken tie, a golden clasp, to draw together the almighty Heart and the hearts of these downtrodden slaves. Something within Him desires their little human love; they shall be to Him for a people. So He said again, “My son, give Me thine heart.” And so, when He carried to the uttermost these unsought, unhoped for, and, alas! unwelcomed overtures of condescension, and came among us, He would have gathered, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, those who would not. It is not man who conceives, from definite services received, the wild hope of some spark of real affection in the bosom of the Eternal and Mysterious One. It is not man, amid the lavish joys and splendours of creation, who conceives the notion of a supreme Heart, as the explanation of the universe. It is God Himself Who says, “I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God.”
Nor is it human conversion that begins the process, but a Divine covenant and pledge, by which God would fain convert us to Himself; even as the first disciples did not accost Jesus, but He turned and spoke to them the first question and the first invitation; “What seek ye?... Come, and ye shall see.”
To-day, the choice of the civilised world has to be made between a mechanical universe and a revealed love, for no third possibility survives.
This promise establishes a relationship, which God never afterwards cancelled. Human unbelief rejected its benefits, and chilled the mutual sympathies which it involved; but the fact always remained, and in their darkest hour they could appeal to God to remember His covenant and the oath which He sware.
And this same assurance belongs to us. We are not to become good, or desirous of goodness, in order that God may requite with affection our virtues or our wistfulness. Rather we are to arise and come to our Father, and to call Him Father, although we are not worthy to be called His sons. We are to remember how Jesus said, “If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him!” and to learn that He is the Father of those who are evil, and even of those who are still unpardoned, as He said again, “If ye forgive not ... neither will your heavenly Father forgive you.”
Much controversy about the universal Fatherhood of God would be assuaged
if men reflected upon the significant distinction which our Saviour drew
between His Fatherhood and our sonship, the one always a reality of the
Divine affection, the other only a possibility, for human enjoyment or
rejection: “Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you,
that ye may be sons of your Father Which is in heaven” (
It is added that faith shall develop into knowledge. Moses is to assure
them now that they
In this respect, as in so many more, religion is analogous with nature. The squalor of the savage could be civilised, and the distorted and absurd conceptions of mediæval science could be corrected, only by experiment, persistently and wisely carried out.
And it is so in religion: its true evidence is unknown to these who never bore its yoke; it is open to just such raillery and rejection as they who will not love can pour upon domestic affection and the sacred ties of family life; but, like these, it vindicates itself, in the rest of their souls, to those who will take the yoke and learn. And its best wisdom is not of the cunning brain but of the open heart, that wisdom from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated.
And thus, while God leads Israel, they shall know that He is Jehovah, and true to His highest revelations of Himself.
All this they heard, and also, to define their hope and brighten it, the
promise of Palestine was repeated; but they hearkened not unto Moses for
anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage. Thus the body often holds the
spirit down, and kindly allowance is made by Him Who knoweth our frame
and remembereth that we are dust, and Who, in the hour of His own agony,
found the excuse for His unsympathising followers that the spirit was
willing although the flesh was weak. So
But if the anguish of the body excuses much weakness of the spirit, it follows, on the other hand, that men are responsible to God for that heavy weight which is laid upon the spirit by pampered and luxurious bodies, incapable of self-sacrifice, rebellious against the lightest of His demands. It is suggestive, that Moses, when sent again to Pharaoh, objected, as at first: “Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips?”
Every new hope, every great inspiration which calls the heroes of God to a fresh attack upon the powers of Satan, is checked and hindered more by the coldness of the Church than by the hostility of the world. That hostility is expected, and can be defied. But the infidelity of the faithful is appalling indeed.
We read with wonder the great things which Christ has promised to
believing prayer, and, at the same time, although we know painfully that
we have never claimed and dare not claim these promises, we wonder
equally at the foreboding question, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall
He find the faith (faith in its fulness) on the earth?” (
The vast mountains raise their heads above mountain ranges which encompass them; and it is not when the level of the whole Church is low, that giants of faith and of attainment may be hoped for. Nay, Christ stipulates for the agreement of two or three, to kindle and make effectual the prayers which shall avail.
For the purification of our cities, for the shaming of our legislation until it fears God as much as a vested interest, for the reunion of those who worship the same Lord, for the conversion of the world, and first of all for the conversion of the Church, heroic forces are demanded. But all the tendency of our half-hearted, abject, semi-Christianity is to repress everything that is unconventional, abnormal, likely to embroil us with our natural enemy, the world; and who can doubt that, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, we shall know of many an aspiring soul, in which the sacred fire had begun to burn, which sank back into lethargy and the commonplace, murmuring in its despair, “Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me?”
It was the last fear which ever shook the great heart of the emancipator Moses.
At the beginning of the grand historical work, of which all this has
been the prelude, there is set the pedigree of Moses and Aaron,
according to “the heads of their fathers’ houses,”—- an epithet which
indicates a subdivision of the “family,” as the family is a subdivision
of the tribe. Of the sons of Jacob, Reuben
Neither, in that case, would the birth of the great emancipator be
ascribed to the union of Amram with his father’s sister, for such
marriages were distinctly forbidden by the law (
Nor would the names of the children of the founder of the nation be
omitted, while those of Aaron are recorded, unless we were dealing with
genuine history, which knows that the sons of Aaron inherited the lawful
priesthood, while the descendants of Moses were the jealous founders of
a mischievous schism (
Nor again, if this were a religious romance, designed to animate the
nation in its later struggles, should we read of the hesitation and the
fears of a leader
Nor does the broken-spirited meanness of Israel at all resemble the conception, popular in every nation, of a virtuous and heroic antiquity, a golden age. It is indeed impossible to reconcile the motives and the date to which this narrative is ascribed by some, with the plain phenomena, with the narrative itself.
Nor is it easy to understand why the Lord, Who speaks of bringing out “My hosts, My people, the children of Israel” (vii. 4, etc.), should never in the Pentateuch be called the Lord of Hosts, if that title were in common use when it was written; for no epithet would better suit the song of Miriam or the poetry of the Fifth Book.
When Moses complained that he was of uncircumcised lips, the Lord announced that He had already made His servant as a god unto Pharaoh, having armed him, even then, with the terrors which are soon to shake the tyrant’s soul.
It is suggestive and natural that his very education in a court should render him fastidious, less willing than a rougher man might have been to appear before the king after forty years of retirement, and feeling almost physically incapable of speaking what he felt so deeply, in words that would satisfy his own judgment. Yet God had endowed him, even then, with a supernatural power far greater than any facility of expression. In his weakness he would thus be made strong; and the less fit he was to assert for himself any ascendency over Pharaoh, the more signal would be the victory of his Lord, when he became “very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people” (xi. 3).
As a proof of this mastery he was from the first to speak to the haughty king through his brother, as a god through some prophet, being too great to reveal himself directly. It is a memorable phrase; and so lofty an assertion could never, in the myth of a later period, have been ascribed to an origin so lowly as the reluctance of Moses to expose his deficiency in elocution.
Therefore he should henceforth be emboldened by the assurance of qualification bestowed already: not only by the hope of help and achievement yet to come, but by the certainty of present endowment. And so should each of us, in his degree, be bold, who have gifts differing according to the grace given unto us.
It is certain that every living soul has at least one talent, and is bound to improve it. But how many of us remember that this loan implies a commission from God, as real as that of prophet and deliverer, and that nothing but our own default can prevent it from being, at the last, received again with usury?
The same bravery, the same confidence when standing where his Captain
has planted him, should inspire the prophet, and him that giveth alms,
and him that showeth mercy; for all are members in one body, and
therefore animated by one invincible Spirit from above (
The endowment thus given to Moses made him “as a god” to Pharaoh.
We must not take this to mean only that he had a prophet or spokesman,
or that he was made formidable, but that the peculiar nature of his
prowess would be felt. It was not his own strength. The supernatural
would become visible in him. He who boasted “I know not Jehovah” would
come to crouch before Him
Now, every consecrated power may bear witness to the Lord: it is possible to do all to the glory of God. Not that every separate action will be ascribed to a preternatural source, but the sum total of the effect produced by a holy life will be sacred. He who said, “I have made thee a god unto Pharaoh,” says of all believers, “I in them, and Thou, Father, in Me, that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me.”
THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH’S HEART.
vii. 3—13.
Let us in the first place find out how soon this dreadful process began;
when was it that God fulfilled His threat, and hardened, in any sense
whatever, the heart of Pharaoh? Did He step in at the beginning,
The exact period is marked when the hand of doom closed upon the tyrant. It is not where the Authorised Version places it. When the magicians imitated the earlier signs of Moses, “his heart was strong,” but the original does not bear out the assertion that at this time the Lord made it so by any judicial act of His (vii. 13). That only comes with the sixth plague; and the course of events may be traced, fairly well, by the help of the margin of the Revised Version.
After the plague of blood “Pharaoh’s heart was strong” (“hardened”), and this is distinctly ascribed to his own action, because “he set his heart even to this” (vii. 22, 23).
After the second plague, it was still he himself who “made his heart heavy” (viii. 15).
After the third plague the magicians warned him that the very finger of some god was upon him indeed: their rivalry, which hitherto might have been somewhat of a palliation for his obstinacy, was now ended; but yet “his heart was strong” (viii. 19).
Again, after the fourth plague he “made his heart heavy”; and it “was heavy” after the fifth plague, (viii. 32, ix. 7).
Only thenceforward comes the judicial infatuation upon him who has resolutely infatuated himself hitherto.
But when five warnings and penalties have spent their force in vain, when personal agony is inflicted in the plague of boils, and the magicians in particular cannot stand before him through their pain, would it have been proof of virtuous contrition if he had yielded then? If he had needed evidence, it was given to him long before. Submission now would have meant prudence, not penitence; and it was against prudence, not penitence, that he was hardened. Because he had resisted evidence, experience, and even the testimony of his own magicians, he was therefore stiffened against the grudging and unworthy concessions which must otherwise have been wrested from him, as a wild beast will turn and fly from fire. He was henceforth himself to become an evidence and a portent; and so “The Lord made strong the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them” (ix. 12). It was an awful doom, but it is not open to the attacks so often made upon it. It only means that for him the last five plagues were not disciplinary, but wholly penal.
Nay, it stops short of asserting even this: they might still have
appealed to his reason; they were only
This explanation implies that to harden Pharaoh’s heart was to inspire him, not with wickedness, but with nerve.
And as far as the original language helps us at all, it decidedly supports this view. Three different expressions have been unhappily rendered by the same English word, to harden; but they may be discriminated throughout the narrative in Exodus, by the margin of the Revised Version.
One word, which commonly appears without any marginal explanation, is
the same which is employed elsewhere about “the cause which is too
hard for” minor judges (
The second word is explained in the margin as meaning to make strong. Already God had employed it when He said “I will make strong his heart” (iv. 21), and this is the term used of the first fulfilment of the menace, after the sixth plague (ix. 12). God is not said to interfere again after the seventh, which had few special terrors for Pharaoh himself; but from henceforth the expression “to make strong” alternates with the phrase “to make heavy.” “Go in unto Pharaoh, for I have made heavy his heart and the heart of his servants, that I might show these My signs in the midst of them” (x. 1).
It may be safely assumed that these two expressions cover between them
all that is asserted of the judicial action of God in preventing a
recoil of Pharaoh from his calamities. Now, the strengthening of a
heart, however punitive and disastrous when a man’s will is evil (just
as the strengthening of his arm is disastrous then), has in itself no
immorality inherent. It is a thing as often good as bad,—as when Israel
and Joshua are exhorted to “Be strong and of a good courage” (
The other expression is to make heavy or dull. Thus “the eyes of Israel
were heavy with age” (
It is also a curious and significant coincidence that the same word was used of the burdens that were made heavy when first they claimed their freedom, which is now used of the treatment of the heart of their oppressor (v. 9).
It appears, then, that the Lord is never said to debauch Pharaoh’s heart, but only to strengthen it against prudence and to make it dull; that the words used do not express the infusion of evil passion, but the animation of a resolute courage, and the overclouding of a natural discernment; and, above all, that every one of the three words, to make hard, to make strong, and to make heavy, is employed to express Pharaoh’s own treatment of himself, before it is applied to any work of God, as actually taking place already.
Nevertheless, there is a solemn warning for all time, in the assertion
that what he at first chose, the vengeance of God afterward chose for
him. For indeed the same process, working more slowly but on identical
Let no man assume that prudence will always save him from ruinous excess, if respect for righteousness cannot withhold him from those first compliances which sap the will, destroy the restraint of self-respect, wear away the horror of great wickedness by familiarity with the same guilt in its lesser phases, and, above all, forfeit the enlightenment and calmness of judgment which come from the Holy Spirit of God, Who is the Spirit of wisdom and of counsel, and makes men to be of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord.
Let no man think that the fear of damnation will bring him to the
mercy-seat at last, if the burden and gloom of being “condemned already”
cannot now bend his will. “Even as they refused to have God in their
knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind” (
This is the inevitable law, the law of a confused and darkened judgment,
a heart made heavy and ears shut, a conscience seared, an infatuated
will kicking against the pricks, and heaping to itself wrath against the
day of wrath. Wilful sin is always a challenge to God, and it is avenged
by the obscuring of the lamp of God
In this sense men are, at last, impelled blindly to their fate (and this is a judicial act of God, although it comes in the course of nature), but first they launch themselves upon the slope which grows steeper at every downward step, until arrest is impossible.
On the other hand, every act of obedience helps to release the will from its entanglement, and to clear the judgment which has grown dull, anointing the eyes with eye-salve that they may see. Not in vain is the assertion of the bondage of the sinner and the glorious liberty of the children of God.
A second time, then, Moses presented himself before Pharaoh with his demands; and, as he had been forewarned, he was now challenged to give a sign in proof of his commission from a god.
And the demand was treated as reasonable; a sign was given, and a
menacing one. The peaceable rod of the shepherd, a fit symbol of the
meek man who bore it, became a serpent
It is true that the word means any large reptile, as when
“God created great whales”; but doubtless our English version is
correct. It was certainly a serpent which he had recently fled from, and
then taken by the tail (iv. 4). And unless we suppose the magicians to
have wrought a genuine miracle, no other creature can be suggested,
equally convenient for their sleight of hand.
What are we to think of the authentification of a religion by a sign?
Beyond doubt, Jesus recognised this aspect of His own miracles, when He
said, “If I had not done among them the works that none other man did,
they had not had sin” (
No miracle can prove that immoral teaching is sacred. But it can prove
that it is supernatural. And this is precisely what Scripture always
proclaims. In the New Testament, we are bidden to take heed, because a
day will come, when false prophets shall work great signs and wonders,
to deceive, if possible, even the elect (
Now, this is the true function of the miraculous. At the most, it cannot coerce the conscience, but only challenge it to consider and to judge.
A teacher of the purest morality may be only a human teacher still; nor is the Christian bound to follow into the desert every clamorous innovator, or to seek in the secret chamber every one who whispers a private doctrine to a few. We are entitled to expect that one who is commissioned directly from above will bear special credentials with him; but when these are exhibited, we must still judge whether the document they attest is forged. And this may explain to us why the magicians were allowed for awhile to perplex the judgment of Pharaoh whether by fraud, as we may well suppose, or by infernal help. It was enough that Moses should set his claims upon a level with those which Pharaoh reverenced: the king was then bound to weigh their relative merits in other and wholly different scales.
THE PLAGUES.
vii. 14.
We may think of them as ranging through all nature, and asserting the mastery of the Lord alike over the river on which depended the prosperity of the realm, over the minute pests which can make life more wretched than larger and more conspicuous ills (the frogs of the water, the reptiles that disgrace humanity, and the insects that infest the air), over the bodies of animals stricken with murrain, and those of man tortured with boils, over hail in the cloud and blight in the crop, over the breeze that bears the locust and the sun that grows dark at noon, and at last over the secret springs of human life itself.
No pantheistic creed (and the Egyptian religion struck its roots deep into pantheistic speculation) could thus completely exalt God above nature, as a superior and controlling Power, not one with the mighty wheels of the universe, of which the height is terrible, but, as Ezekiel saw Him, enthroned above them in the likeness of fire, and yet in the likeness of humanity.
No idolatrous creed, however powerful be its conception of one god of the hills and another of the valleys, could thus represent a single deity as wielding all the arrows of adverse fortune, able to assail us from earth and sky and water, formidable alike in the least things and in the greatest. And presently the demonstration is completed, when at His bidding the tempest heaps up the sea, and at His frown the waters return to their strength again.
And no philosophic theory condescends to bring the Ideal, the Absolute, and the Unconditioned, into such close and intimate connection with the frog-spawn of the ditch and the blain upon the tortured skin.
We may, with ample warrant from Scripture, make the controversial application still more simple and direct, and think of the plagues as wreaking vengeance, for the worship they had usurped and the cruelties they had sanctioned, upon all the gods of Egypt, which are conceived of for the moment as realities, and as humbled, if not in fact, yet in the sympathies of priest and worshipper (xii. 12).
Then we shall see the domain of each impostor invaded, and every vaunted
power to inflict evil or to remove it triumphantly wielded by Him Who
proves His equal mastery over all, and thus we shall find here the
justification of that still bolder personification which says, “Worship
Him, all ye gods” (
The Nile had a sacred name, and was adored as “Hapee, or Hapee Mu, the Abyss, or the Abyss of Waters, or the Hidden,” and the king was frequently portrayed standing between two images of this god, his throne wreathed with water-lilies. The second plague struck at the goddess Hekt, whose head was that of a frog. The uncleanness of the third plague deranged the whole system of Egyptian worship, with its punctilious and elaborate purifications. In every one there is either a presiding divinity attacked, or a blow dealt upon the priesthood or the sacrifice, or a sphere invaded which some deity should have protected, until the sun himself is darkened, the great god Ra, to whom their sacred city was dedicated, and whose name is incorporated in the title of his earthly representative, the Pharaoh or Ph-ra. Then at last, after all these premonitions, the deadly blow struck home.
Or we may think of the plagues as retributive, and then we shall
discover a wonderful suitability in them all. It was a direful omen that
the first should afflict the nation through the river, into which,
eighty years before, the Hebrew babes had been cast to die, which now
rolled bloody, and seemed to disclose its dead. It was fit that the
luxurious homes of the oppressors should become squalid as the huts of
the slaves they trampled; that their flesh should suffer torture worse
than that of the whips they used so unmercifully; that the loss of crops
and cattle should bring home to them the hardships of the poor who
toiled for their magnificence; that physical darkness should appal them
with vague terrors and undefined apprehensions, such as ever haunt the
bosom of the oppressed, whose life is the sport of a caprice; and at
last that the aged should learn by the deathbed of the prop and pride of
their
And since the fear of disadvantage in war had prompted the murder of the Hebrew children, it was right that the retributive blow should destroy first their children and then their men of war.
When we come to examine the plagues in detail, we discover that it is no arbitrary fancy which divides them into three triplets, leading up to the appalling tenth. Thus the first, fourth, and seventh, each of which begins a triplet, are introduced by a command to Moses to warn Pharaoh “in the morning” (vii. 15), or “early in the morning” (viii. 20, ix. 13). The third, sixth and ninth, on the contrary, are inflicted without any warning whatever. The story of the third plague closes with the defeat of the magicians, the sixth with their inability to stand before the king, and the ninth with the final rupture, when Moses declares, “Thou shalt see my face no more” (viii. 19, ix. 11, x. 29).
The first three are plagues of loathsomeness—blood-stained waters, frogs and lice; the next three bring actual pain and loss with them—stinging flies, murrain which afflicts the beasts, and boils upon all the Egyptians; and the third triplet are “nature-plagues”—hail, locusts and darkness. It is only after the first three plagues that the immunity of Israel is mentioned; and after the next three, when the hail is threatened, instructions are first given by which those Egyptians who fear Jehovah may also obtain protection. Thus, in orderly and solemn procession, marched the avengers of God upon the guilty land.
It has been observed, concerning the miracles of
And it is easily seen that such miracles were a more natural expression of His errand, which was to repair and purify the existing system of things, and to remove our moral disease and dearth, than any exercise of creative power would have been, however it might have dazzled the spectators.
Now, the same remark applies to the miracles of Moses, to the coming of
God in judgment, as to His revelation of Himself in grace; and therefore
we need not be surprised to hear that natural phenomena are not unknown
which offer a sort of dim hint or foreshadowing of the terrible ten
plagues. Either cryptogamic vegetation or the earth borne down from
upper Africa is still seen to redden the river, usually dark, but not so
as to destroy the fish. Frogs and vermin and stinging insects are the
pest of modern travellers. Cattle plagues make ravage there, and hideous
diseases of the skin are still as common as when the Lord promised to
reward the obedience of Israel to sanitary law by putting upon them none
of “the evil diseases of Egypt” which they knew ( To this day, amid squalid surroundings for which nominal
Christians are responsible, the immunity of the Jewish race from such
suffering is conspicuous, and at least a remarkable coincidence.
Now, this accords exactly with the moral effect which was to be produced. The rescued people were not to think of God as one who strikes down into nature from outside, with strange and unwonted powers, superseding utterly its familiar forces. They were to think of Him as the Author of all; and of the common troubles of mortality as being indeed the effects of sin, yet ever controlled and governed by Him, let loose at His will, and capable of mounting to unimagined heights if His restraints be removed from them. By the east wind He brought the locusts, and removed them by the south-west wind. By a storm He divided the sea. The common things of life are in His hands, often for tremendous results. And this is one of the chief lessons of the narrative for us. Let the mind range over the list of the nine which stop short of absolute destruction, and reflect upon the vital importance of immunities for which we are scarcely grateful.
The purity of water is now felt to be among the foremost necessities of
life. It is one which asks nothing from us except to refrain from
polluting what comes from heaven so limpid. And yet we are half
satisfied to go on habitually inflicting on ourselves a plague more foul
and noxious than any occasional turning of our rivers into blood. The
two plagues which dealt with minute forms of life may well remind us of
the vast part which we are now aware that the smallest organisms play in
the economy of life, as the
But we are insensible to the every-day teaching of this narrative: we turn our rivers into fluid poison; we spread all around us deleterious influences, which breed by minute forms of parasitical life the germs of cruel disease; we load the atmosphere with fumes which slay our cattle with periodical distempers, and are deadlier to vegetation than the hail-storm or the locust; we charge it with carbon so dense that multitudes have forgotten that the sky is blue, and on our Metropolis comes down at frequent intervals the darkness of the ninth plague, and all the time we fail to see that God, Who enacts and enforces every law of nature, does really plague us whenever these outraged laws avenge themselves. The miraculous use of nature in special emergencies is such as to show the Hand which regularly wields its powers.
At the same time there is no more excuse for the rationalism which would
reduce the calamities of Egypt to a coincidence, than for explaining
away the manna which fed a nation during its wanderings by the drug
which is gathered, in scanty morsels, upon the acacia tree. The awful
severity of the judgments, the series which they formed, their advent
and removal at the menace and the prayer of Moses, are considerations
which make such a theory absurd. The older scepticism, which supposed
Moses to have taken advantage of some epidemic, to have learned in the
wilderness the fords of the Red Sea, But indeed this notion is not yet dead. “A high wind left
the shallow sea so low that it became possible to ford it. Moses eagerly
accepted the suggestion, and made the venture with success,”
etc.—Wellhausen, “Israel,” in Encyc. Brit.
There is a common notion that the ten plagues followed each other with
breathless speed, and were completed within a few weeks. But nothing in
the narrative asserts or even hints this, and what we do know is in the
opposite direction. The seventh plague was wrought in February, for the
barley was in the ear and the flax in blossom (ix. 31); and the feast of
passover was kept on the fourteenth day of the month Abib, so that the
destruction of the firstborn was in the middle of April, and there was
an interval of about two months between the last four plagues. Now, the
same interval throughout would bring back the first plague to September
or October. But the natural discoloration of the river, mentioned above,
is in the middle of the year, when the river begins to rise; and this,
it may possibly be inferred, is the natural period at which to fix the
first plague. They would then range over a period of about nine months.
During the interval between them, the promises and treacheries of the
king excited alternate hope and rage in Israel; the scribes of their own
race (once the vassals of their tyrants, but already estranged by their
own oppression) began to take rank as officers among the Jews, and to
exhibit the rudimentary promise of national order and government; and
the growing fears of their enemies fostered that triumphant sense of
mastery, out of which
THE FIRST PLAGUE.
vii. 14—25.
And might he, at the last, be hardened to pursue the people because, by their own showing, the keenest arrow in their quiver was now sped? Whatever his feelings were, it is certain that the brothers come and go, and inflict their plagues unrestrained; that no insult or violence is attempted, and we can see the truth of the words “I have made thee as a god unto Pharaoh.”
It is in clear allusion to his vaunt, “I know not Jehovah,” that Moses and Aaron now repeat the demand for release, and say, “Hitherto thou hast not hearkened: behold, in this thou shalt know that I am Jehovah.” What follows, when attentively read, makes it plain that the blow falls upon “the waters that are in the river,” and those that have been drawn from it into canals for artificial irrigation, into reservoirs like the lakes Mœris and Mareotis, and even into vessels for immediate use.
But we are expressly told that it was possible to obtain water by
digging wells. Therefore there is no
Two details remain to be observed. The seven days which were fulfilled
do not measure the interval between this plague and the next, but the
period of its infliction. And this information is not given us
concerning any other, until we come to the three days of darkness. x. 22. The accurate Kalisch is therefore wrong in speaking
of “The duration of the first plague, a statement not made with regard
to any of the subsequent inflictions.”—Commentary in loco.
Again, it is contended that only with the fourth plague did Israel begin
to enjoy exemption, because then only is their immunity recorded.
Speaker’s Commentary, i., p. 242; Kalisch on viii. 18;
Kiel, i. 484.
And now let us contrast this miracle with the first of the New Testament. One spoiled the happiness of the guilty; the other rescued the overclouded joy of the friends of Jesus, not turning water into blood but into wine; declaring at one stroke all the difference between the law which worketh wrath, and the gospel of the grace of God. The first was impressive and public, as the revelation upon Sinai; the other appealed far more to the heart than to the imagination, and befitted well the kingdom that was not with observation, the King who grew up like a tender plant, and did not strive nor cry, the redeeming influence which was at first unobtrusive as the least of all seeds, but became a tree, and the shelter of the fowls of heaven.
THE SECOND PLAGUE.
viii. 1—15.
The plague of frogs was far greater than our experience helps us to imagine. At least two cases are on record of a people being driven to abandon their settlements because they had become intolerable; “as even the vessels were full of them, the water infested and the food uneatable, as they could scarcely set their feet on the ground without treading on heaps of them, and as they were vexed by the smell of the great multitude that died, they fled from that region.”
The Egyptian species known to science as the Rana Mosaica, and still
called by the uncommon epithet here employed, is peculiarly repulsive,
and peculiarly noisy too. The superstition which adored a frog as the
Thus Pharaoh himself had to share, far more than in the first plague, the misery of his humblest subjects; and, although again his magicians imitated Aaron upon some small prepared plot, and amid circumstances which made it easier to exhibit frogs than to exclude them, yet there was no comfort in such puerile emulation, and they offered no hope of relieving him. From the gods that were only vanities, he turned to Jehovah, and abased himself to ask the intercession of Moses: “Intreat Jehovah that He take away the frogs from me and from my people; and I will let the people go.”
The assurance would have been a hopeful one, if only the sense of
inconvenience were the same as the sense of sin. But when we wonder at
the relapses of men who were penitent upon sick-beds or in adversity, as
soon as their trouble is at an end, we are blind to this distinction.
Pain is sometimes obviously due to ourselves, and it is natural to blame
the conduct which led to it. But if we blame it only for being
disastrous, we cannot hope that the fruits of the Spirit will result
It is sometimes explained as an expression of courtesy—“I obey thee as a superior”; which does not occur elsewhere, because it is not Hebrew but Egyptian. But this suavity is quite alien to the spirit of the narrative, in which Moses, however courteous, represents an offended God. It is more natural to take it as an open declaration that he was being imposed upon, yet would grant to the king whatever advantage the fraud implied. And to make the coming relief more clearly the action of the Lord, to shut out every possibility that magician or priest should claim the honour, he bade the king name an hour at which the plague should cease.
If the frogs passed away at once, the relief might chance to be a natural one; and Pharaoh doubtless conceived that elaborate and long protracted intercessions were necessary for his deliverance. Accordingly he fixed a future period, yet as near as he perhaps thought possible; and Moses, without any express authority, promised him that it should be so. Therefore he “cried unto the Lord,” and the frogs did not retreat into the river, but suddenly died where they were, and filled the unhappy land with a new horror in their decay.
But “when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he made his heart heavy and hearkened not unto them.” It is a graphic sentence: it implies rather than affirms their indignant remonstrances, and the sullen, dull, spiritless obstinacy with which he held his base and unkingly purpose.
THE THIRD PLAGUE.
viii. 16—19.
Two features in this plague deserve attention. It came without any warning whatever. The faithless king who gave his word and broke it found himself involved in fresh miseries without an opportunity of humbling himself again. He was flung back into deep waters, because he refused to fulfil the terms upon which he had been extricated.
It must be understood that the act of Aaron was a public one, performed in the sight of Pharaoh, and instantly followed by the plague. There was no doubt about the origin of the pest, and the new and alarming prospect was opened up of calamities yet to come, without a chance to avert them by submission.
Again, it will be observed that the magicians are utterly baffled just when there is no warning given, and therefore no opportunity for pre-arranged sleight of hand. And this surely favours the opinion that they had not hitherto succeeded by supernatural assistance, for there is no such evident reason why infernal aid should cease at this exact point.
It is a mistake to suppose that thereupon they confessed the mission of the brothers. In their agitation they admitted that, on their part at least, no divinity had been at work before. But they rather ascribed what they saw to the action of some vaguely indicated deity, than confessed it to be the work of Jehovah. Again it has to be asked whether this resembles more the vainglorious structure of a myth, or the course of a truthful history.
Nevertheless, their grudging and insufficient avowal was meant to induce a surrender. But “Pharaoh’s heart was strong, and he hearkened not unto them.” To this statement it is not added, “because the Lord had hardened him,” for this had not even yet taken place; but only, “as the Lord had spoken.”
THE FOURTH PLAGUE.
viii. 20—32.
We have now come to the group of plagues which inflict actual bodily damage, and not inconvenience and humiliation only: the dogfly (or beetle); the murrain among beasts, which was a precursor of the crowning evil that struck at human life; and the boils. Of the fourth plague the precise nature is uncertain. There is a beetle which gnaws both man and beast, destroys clothes, furniture, and plants, and even now they “are often seen in millions” (Munk, Palestine, p. 120). “In a few minutes they filled the whole house.... Only after the most laborious exertions, and covering the floor of the house with hot coals, they succeeded in mastering them. If they make such attacks during the night, the inmates are compelled to give up the houses, and little children or sick persons, who are unable to rise alone, are then exposed to the greatest danger of life” (Pratte, Abyssinia, p. 143, in Kalisch).
Now, this explanation has one advantage over that of dogflies—that
special mention is made of their afflicting “the ground whereon they
are” (ver. 21), which is less suitable to a plague of flies. But it may
be that no one creature is meant. The Hebrew word means “a mixture.”
Jewish interpreters have gone so far as to make it mean “all kinds of
noxious animals and serpents and scorpions mixed together,” and although
it is palpably absurd to believe that Pharaoh should have survived if
these had been upon him and upon his servants, yet the expression “a
mixture,” following after one kind of vermin had tormented the land,
need not be narrowed too exactly. With deliberate particularity
The Revised Version has “swarms of flies,” which is
clearly an attempt to meet the case. But it is worth notice that in the
Psalms the expression was twice rendered “divers kinds of flies”
(lxxviii. 45, cv. 31, A.V.) The word occurs only of this plague.
It has been supposed, from the special mention of the exemption of the land of Goshen, that this was a new thing. We have seen reason, however, to think otherwise, and the emphatic assertion now made is easy to understand. The plague was especially to be expected in low flat ground: the king may not even have been aware of the previous freedom of Israel; and in any case its importance as an evidence had not been pressed upon him. The spirit of the seventy-eighth Psalm, though not perhaps any one specific phrase, contrasts the earlier as well as the later plagues with the protection of His own people, whom He led like sheep (vers. 42—52).
After the appointed interval (the same which Pharaoh had indicated for
the removal of the frogs) the plague came. We are told that the land was
corrupted, but it is significant that more stress is laid upon the
suffering of Pharaoh and his court in the event than in the menace. It
came home to himself more cruelly than any former plague, and he at once
attempted to make terms: “Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land.” It
is a natural speech, at first not asking to be trusted as before by
getting relief before the Hebrews actually enjoy their liberty; and yet
conceding as little as possible, and in hot haste to have that little
done and
It is necessary to repeat that we have not a shred of evidence that Moses would have violated his compact and failed to return: it would have sufficed as a first step to have asserted the nationality of his people and their right to worship their own God: all the rest would speedily have followed. But the terms which were rejected again and again did not continue for ever to bind the victorious party: the story of their actual departure makes it plain that both sides understood it to be a final exodus; and thence came the murderous pursuit of Pharaoh (cf. xv. 9), which in itself would have cancelled any compact which had existed until then.
THE FIFTH PLAGUE.
ix. 1—7.
We have already seen the whole life of Egypt stricken, but now the lower creatures are to perish, unless Pharaoh will repent. He is once more summoned in the name of “Jehovah, God of the Hebrews,” and warned that the hand of Jehovah, even a very grievous murrain (for so the verse appears to say), is “upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the herds and upon the flocks.” Here some particulars need observation. Herds and flocks were everywhere; but horses were a comparatively late introduction into Egypt, where they were as yet chiefly employed for war. Asses, still so familiar to the traveller, were the usual beasts of burden, and were owned in great numbers by the rich, although rash controversialists have pretended that, as being unclean, they were not tolerated in the land.
Camels, it is said, are not to be found on the monuments, but yet they were certainly known and possessed by Egypt, though there were many reasons why they should be held chiefly on the frontiers, and perhaps in connection with the Arabian mines and settlements. Upon all these “in the field” the plague should come.
The murrain still works havoc in the Delta, chiefly at the period,
beginning with December, when the floods are down and the cattle are
turned out into the pastures, which would this year have been signally
unwholesome. It was not, then, the fact of a cattle plague which was
miraculous, but its severity, its coming at an appointed time, its
assailing beasts of every kind, and its exempting those of Israel. We
are told that “all the cattle of Egypt died,” and yet that afterwards
“the hail ... smote both man and beast” (ix. 6, 25). It is an
inconsistency very
Much of Pharaoh’s own property perished, but he was the last man in the country who would feel personal inconvenience by the loss, and therefore nothing was more natural than that his selfish “heart was heavy, and he did not let the people go.” Not even such an effort was needed as in the previous plague, when we read that he made his heart heavy, by a deliberate act.
There was nothing to indicate that he had now reached a crisis—that God Himself in His judgment would henceforth make bold and resolute against crushing adversities the heart which had been obdurate against humanity, against evidence, against honour and plighted faith. Nothing is easier than to step over the frontier between great nations. And in the moral world also the Rubicon is passed, the destiny of a soul is fixed, sometimes without a struggle, unawares.
Instead of spiritual conflict, there was intellectual curiosity.
“Pharaoh sent, and behold there was not so much as one of the cattle of
the Israelites dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was heavy, and he did not
let the people go.” This inquiry into a phenomenon which was surprising
indeed, but yet quite unable to affect his action, recalls the spiritual
condition of Herod, who was conscience-stricken when first he heard of
Christ, and said, “It is John whom I beheaded” (
THE SIXTH PLAGUE.
ix. 8—12.
To the Jews Egypt was a furnace in which they were being
consumed—whether literally in human sacrifice, or metaphorically in the
hard labour which wasted them ( The passage in Deuteronomy had not this event specially in
mind, or it would have used the same term for a furnace. The word for
ashes implies what can be blown upon the wind.
But, apart from any such reference to their cruel idolatry, it was right
that they should suffer in the
And we may perhaps detect especial suffering, certainly an especial
triumph to be commemorated, in the failure of the magicians even to
stand before the king. It is implied that they had done so until now,
and this confirms the belief that after the third plague they had not
acknowledged Jehovah, but merely said in their defeat, “This is the
finger of a god.” Until now Jannes and Jambres (two, to rival the two
brothers) had withstood Moses, but now the contrast between the prophet
and his victims writhing in their pain was too sharp for prejudice
itself to overlook: their folly was “evident unto all men” (
But even this strength of heart did not reach the height of attempting any reprisals upon the torturers. The sense of the supernatural was their defence: Moses was as a god unto Pharaoh, and Aaron was his prophet.
In the narrative of this plague there is an expression which deserves attention for another reason. The ashes, it says, “shall become dust.” Is there no controversy, turning upon the too rigid and prosaic straining of a New Testament construction, which might be simplified by considering the Hebrew use of language, exemplified in such an assertion as “It shall become dust,” and soon after, “It is the Lord’s passover”? Do these announce transubstantiations? Did two handfuls of ashes literally become the blains upon the bodies of all the Egyptians?
THE SEVENTH PLAGUE.
ix. 13—35.
The seventh plague, then, is ushered in by an expostulation more
earnest, resolute and minatory than attended any of the previous ones.
And this is the more necessary because human life is now for the first
time at stake. First the king is solemnly reminded that Jehovah, Whom he
no longer can refuse to know, is the God of the Hebrews, has a claim
upon their services, and demands them. In oppressing the nation,
therefore, Pharaoh usurped what belonged to the Lord. Now, this is the
eternal charter of the rights of all humanity. Whoever encroaches on the
just sphere of the free action of his neighbour deprives him, to exactly
the same extent, of the power to glorify God by a free obedience. The
heart glorifies God by submission to so hard a lot, but the co-operation
of the “whole body and soul and spirit” does not visibly bear testimony
to the regulating power of grace. The oppressor may contend (like some
slave-owners) that he guides his human property better than it would
guide itself. But one assertion he cannot make: namely, that God is
receiving the loyal homage of a life spontaneously devoted; that a man
and not a machine is glorifying God in this body and spirit which are
God’s. For the body is but a chattel. This is why the Christian doctrine
of the religious equality of all men in Christ carries with it the
political assertion of the equal secular rights of the whole human race.
I must not
And these words were also a lifelong admonition to every Israelite. He held his liberties from God. He was not free to be violent and wanton, and to say “I am delivered to commit all these abominations.” The dignities of life were bound up with its responsibilities.
Well, it is not otherwise to-day. As truly as Moses, the champions of our British liberties were earnest and God-fearing men. Not for leave to revel, to accumulate enormous fortunes, and to excite by their luxuries the envy and rage of neglected brothers, while possessing more enormous powers to bless them than ever were entrusted to a class,—not for this our heroes bled on the field and on the scaffold. Tyrants rarely deny to rich men leave to be self-indulgent. And self-indulgence rarely nerves men to heroic effort. It is for the freedom of the soul that men dare all things. And liberty is doomed wherever men forget that the true freeman is the servant of Jehovah. On these terms the first demand for a national emancipation was enforced.
And next, Pharaoh is warned that God, who at first threatened to destroy his firstborn, but had hitherto come short of such a deadly stroke, had not, as he might flatter himself, exhausted His power to avenge. Pharaoh should yet experience “all My plagues.” And there is a dreadful significance in the phrase which threatens to put these plagues, with regard to others “upon thy servants and upon thy people,” but with regard to Pharaoh himself “upon thine heart.”
There it was that the true scourge smote. Thence came ruin and defeat.
His infatuation was more dreadful than hail in the cloud and locusts on
the
The next assertion is not what the Authorised Version made it, and what never was fulfilled. It is not, “Now I will stretch out My hand to smite thee and thy people with pestilence, and thou shalt be cut off from the earth.” It says, “Now I had done this, as far as any restraint for thy sake is concerned, but in very deed for this cause have I made thee to stand” (unsmitten), “for to show thee My power, and that My name may be declared throughout all the earth” (vers. 15, 16). The course actually taken was more for the glory of God, and a better warning to others, than a sudden stroke, however crushing.
And so we find, many years after all this generation has passed away,
that a strangely distorted version of these events is current among the
Philistines in Palestine. In the days of Eli, when the ark was brought
into the camp, they said, “Woe unto us! who shall deliver us out of the
hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods that smote the Egyptians
with all manner of plagues in the wilderness” (
And perhaps it may save us from the unconscious egoism which always deems that I myself shall not be treated quite as severely as I deserve, to mark how the punishment of one affects the interests of all.
Added to all this is a kind of half-ironical clemency,
To make the connection between Jehovah and the impending storm more obvious still, Moses stretched his rod toward heaven, and there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, such as slew man and beast, and smote the trees, and destroyed all the vegetation which had yet grown up. The heavens, the atmosphere, were now enrolled in the conspiracy against Pharaoh: they too served Jehovah.
In such a storm, the terror was even greater than
“Nothing appears to me more remarkable than the array of scenic magnificence by which the imagination is appalled, in myriads of instances when the actual danger is comparatively small; so that the utmost possible impression of awe shall be produced upon the minds of all, though direct suffering is inflicted upon few. Consider, for instance, the moral effect of a single thunderstorm. Perhaps two or three persons may be struck dead within a space of a hundred square miles; and their death, unaccompanied by the scenery of the storm, would produce little more than a momentary sadness in the busy hearts of living men. But the preparation for the judgment, by all that mighty gathering of the clouds; by the questioning of the forest leaves, in their terrified stillness, which way the winds shall go forth; by the murmuring to each other, deep in the distance, of the destroying angels before they draw their swords of fire; by the march of the funeral darkness in the midst of the noonday, and the rattling of the dome of heaven beneath the chariot wheels of death;—on how many minds do not these produce an impression almost as great as the actual witnessing of the fatal issue! and how strangely are the expressions of the threatening elements fitted to the apprehensions of the human soul! The lurid colour, the long, irregular, convulsive sound, the ghastly shapes of flaming and heaving cloud, are all true and faithful in their appeal to our instinct of danger.”—Ruskin, Stones of Venice, III. 197—8.
Such a tempest, dreadful anywhere, would be most appalling of all in the serene atmosphere of Egypt, to unaccustomed spectators, and minds troubled by their guilt. Accordingly we find that Pharaoh was less terrified by the absolute mischief done than by the “voices of God,” when, unnerved for the moment, he confessed at least that he had sinned “this time” (a singularly weak repentance for his long and daring resistance, even if we explain it, “this time I confess that I have sinned”), and went on in his terror to pour out orthodox phrases and professions with suspicious fluency. The main point was the bargain which he proposed: “Intreat the Lord, for there hath been enough of mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go, and ye shall stay no longer.”
Looking attentively at all this, we discern in it a sad resemblance to some confessions of these latter days. Men are driven by affliction to acknowledge God: they confess the offence which is palpable, and even add that God is righteous and that they are not. If possible, they shelter themselves from lonely condemnation by general phrases, such as that all are wicked; just as Pharaoh, although he would have scoffed at the notion of any national volition except his own, said, “I and my people are sinners.” Above all, they are much more anxious for the removal of the rod than for the cleansing of the guilt; and if this can be accomplished through the mediation of another, they have as little desire as Pharaoh had for any personal approach to God, Whom they fear, and if possible repel.
And by these signs, every experienced observer expects that if they are delivered out of trouble they will forget their vows.
Moses was exceedingly meek. And therefore, or else because the message
of God implied that other plagues were to succeed this, he consented to
intercede, yet adding the simple and dignified protest, “As for thee and
thy people, I know that ye will not yet fear Jehovah God.” Except in one passage (
Looking back upon this miracle, we are reminded of the mighty part which
atmospheric changes have played in the history of the world. Snowstorms
saved Europe from the Turk and from Napoleon: the wind played almost as
important a part in our liberation from James, and again in the defeat
of the plans of the French Revolution to invade us, as in the
destruction of the Armada. And so we read, “Hast thou entered the
treasuries of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasuries of the hail,
which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of
battle and war?” (
THE EIGHTH PLAGUE.
x. 1—20.
It is possible that even the merciful mitigations of the last plague were used by infatuated hearts to justify their wilfulness: the most valuable crops of all had escaped; so that these judgments, however dire, were not quite beyond endurance. Just such a course of reasoning deludes all who forget that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance.
Besides the reasons already given for lengthening out the train of
judgments, it is added that Israel should teach the story to posterity,
and both fathers and children should
Accordingly it became a favourite title—“The Lord which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” Even the apostates under Sinai would not reject so illustrious a memory: their feast was nominally to Jehovah; and their idol was an image of “the gods which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (xxxii. 4, 5).
Has our land no deliverances for which to be thankful? Instead of boastful self-assertion, should we not say, “We have heard with our ears, O God, and our fathers have declared unto us, the noble works that Thou didst in their days and in the old time before them?” Have we forgotten that national mercies call aloud for national thanksgiving? And in the family, and in the secret life of each, are there no rescues, no emancipations, no enemies overcome by a hand not our own, which call for reverent acknowledgment? “These things were our examples, and are written for our admonition.”
The reproof now spoken to Pharaoh is sterner than any previous one.
There is no reasoning in it. The demand is peremptory: “How long wilt
thou refuse to humble thyself?” With it is a sharp and short command:
“Let My people go, that they may serve Me.” And with this is a detailed
and tremendous threat. It is strange, in the face of the knowledge
accumulated since the objection called for it, to remember that once
this narrative was challenged, because locusts, it was said, are unknown
in Egypt. They are mentioned in the inscriptions. Great misery was
caused by them in 1463, and just three hundred years later Niebuhr was
himself at Cairo during a plague of them. Equally arbitrary is the
objection that Joel predicted locusts
But it is true that locusts are comparatively rare in Egypt; so that while the meaning of the threat would be appreciated, familiarity would not have steeled them against it. The ravages of the locust are terrible indeed, and coming just in time to ruin the crops which had escaped the hail, would complete the misery of the land.
One speaks of the sudden change of colour by the disappearance of
verdure where they alight as being like the rolling up of a carpet; and
here we read “they shall cover the eye of the earth,”—a phrase peculiar
to the Pentateuch (ver. 15;
After uttering the appointed warning, Moses abruptly left, awaiting no negociations, plainly regarding them as vain.
But now, for the first time, the servants of Pharaoh interfered,
declared the country to be ruined, and pressed him to surrender. And yet
it was now first that we read (ver. 1) that their hearts were hardened
as well as his. For that is a hard heart that does not remonstrate
against wrong, however plainly God reveals His displeasure, until new
troubles are at hand, and
Pharaoh’s behaviour is that of a spoiled child, who is indeed the tyrant most familiar to us. He feels that he must yield, or else why should the brothers be recalled? And yet, when it comes to the point, he tries to play the master still, by dictating the terms for his own surrender; and breaks off the negociation rather than do frankly what he must feel that it is necessary to do. Moses laid his finger accurately upon the disease when he reproached him for refusing to humble himself. And if his behaviour seem unnatural, it is worth observation that Napoleon, the greatest modern example of proud, intellectual, godless infatuation, allowed himself to be crushed at Leipsic through just the same reluctance to do thoroughly and without self-deception what he found it necessary to consent to do. “Napoleon,” says his apologist, Thiers, “at length determined to retreat—a resolution humbling to his pride. Unfortunately, instead of a retreat frankly admitted ... he determined on one which from its imposing character should not be a real retreat at all, and should be accomplished in open day.” And this perversity, which ruined him, is traced back to “the illusions of pride.”
Well, it was quite as hard for the Pharaoh to surrender at discretion,
as for the Corsican to stoop to a nocturnal retreat. Accordingly, he
asks, “Who are ye that shall go?” and when Moses very explicitly and
resolutely declares that they will all go, with all their property, his
passion overcomes him, he feels that to consent is to lose them for
ever, and he exclaims,
But he and they have long been in a state of war: menaces, submissions,
and treacheries have followed each other fast, and he has no reason to
complain if their demands are raised. Moreover, his own nation
celebrated religious festivals in company with their wives and children,
so that his rejoinder is an empty outburst of rage. And of a Jewish
feast it was said, a little later, “Thou shalt rejoice before the Lord
thy God, thou and thy son and thy daughter, and thy manservant and thy
maidservant ... and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow”
(
And now, at a second command as explicit as that which bade him utter
the warning, Moses, anxiously watched by many, stretched out his hand
over the devoted realm. At the gesture, the spectators felt that a fiat
had gone forth. But the result was strangely different from that which
followed his invocation, both
The completeness of the ruin brought a swift surrender, but it has been
well said that folly is the wisdom which is only wise too late, and, let
us add, too fitfully. If Pharaoh had only submitted before the plague
instead of after it! Oddly enough, the same historian already quoted, relating
the story of the same day at Leipsic, says of Napoleon’s dialogue with
M. de Merfeld, that he “used an expression which, if uttered at the
Congress of Prague, would have changed his lot and ours. Unfortunately,
it was now too late.”
It is an interesting coincidence that, since he had this time defied the
remonstrances of his advisers, his confession of sin is entirely
personal: it is no longer, “I and my people are sinners,” but “I have
sinned against the Lord your God, and against you.” This last clause was
bitter to his lips, but the need for their
Therefore he went on to entreat volubly, “Forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and intreat Jehovah your God that He may take away from me this death only.”
And at the prayer of Moses, the Lord caused the breeze to veer and rise into a hurricane: “The Lord turned an exceeding strong west wind.” Now, the locust can float very well upon an easy breeze, and so it had been wafted over the Red Sea; but it is at once beaten down by a storm, and when it touches the water it is destroyed. Thus simply was the plague removed.
“But the Lord made strong Pharaoh’s heart,” and so, his fears being conquered, his own rebellious will went on upon its evil way. He would not let Israel go.
This narrative throws light upon a thousand vows made upon sick beds, but broken when the sufferer recovers; and a thousand prayers for amendment, breathed in all the sincerity of panic, and forgotten with all the levity of security. It shows also, in the hesitating and abortive half-submission of the tyrant, the greater folly of many professing Christians, who will, for Christ’s sake, surrender all their sins except one or two, and make any confession except that which really brings low their pride.
Thoroughness, decision, depth, and self-surrender, needed by Pharaoh, are needed by every soul of man.
THE NINTH PLAGUE.
x. 21—29.
In the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes there is to be seen, fresh and lifelike, the admirably sculptured effigy of this king—a weak and cruel face, with the receding forehead of his race, but also their nose like a beak, and their sharp chin. Over his head is the inscription—
This formidable personage is delineated by the court sculptor with his hand stretched out in worship, and under it is written “He adores the Sun: he worships Hor of the solar horizons.”
The worship, thus chosen as the most characteristic of this king, either by himself or by some consummate artist, was to be tested now.
Could the sun help him? or was it, like so many minor forces of earth and air, at the mercy of the God of Israel?
There is a terrible abruptness about the coming of
But not only is there no announcement: the narrative is so concentrated and brief as to give a graphic rendering of the surprise and terror of the time. Not a word is wasted:—
“The Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that
there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness that may be
felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a
thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: they saw not one
another, neither rose any from his place three days; but all the
children of Israel had light in their dwellings” (vers. 21—3). We are
not told anything of the emotions of the king, as the prophet strides
into his presence, and before the cowering court, silently raises his
hand and quenches the day. We may infer his temper, if we please, from
the frantic outbreak of menace and rage in which he presently warns the
man whose coming is the same thing as calamity to see his face no more.
Nothing is said, again, about the evil angels by which, according
Such is probably not the meaning in
As the people lay cowering in their fear, there was plenty to occupy their minds. They would remember the first dreadful threat, not yet accomplished, to slay their firstborn; and the later assertion that if pestilence had not destroyed them, it was because God would plague them with all His plagues. They would reflect upon all their defeated duties, and how the sun himself was now withdrawn at the waving of the prophet’s hand. And then a ghastly foreboding would complete their dread. What was it that darkness typified, in every Oriental nation—nay, in all the world? Death! Job speaks of
With us, a mortal sentence is given in a black cap; in the East, far
more expressively, the head of the culprit was covered, and the darkness
which thus came upon him expressed his doom. Thus “they covered Haman’s
face” (
In other respects there had been far worse calamities, but through its effect upon the imagination this dreadful plague was a fit prelude to the tenth, which it hinted and premonished.
In the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom there is a remarkable study of this
plague, regarded as retribution in kind. It avenges the oppression of
Israel. “For when unrighteous men thought to oppress the holy nation,
they being shut up in their houses, the prisoners of darkness, and
fettered with the bonds of a long night, lay exiled from the eternal
Providence” (xvii. 2). It expresses in the physical realm their
spiritual misery: “For while they supposed to lie hid in their secret
sins, they were scattered under a thick veil of forgetfulness” (ver. 3).
It retorted on them the illusions of their sorcerers: “as for the
illusions of art magick, they were put down.... For they, that promised
to drive away terrors and troubles from a sick soul, were sick
themselves of fear, worthy to be laughed at” (vers. 7, 8). In another
place the Egyptians are declared to be worse than the men of Sodom,
because they brought into bondage friends and not strangers, and
grievously afflicted those whom they had received with feasting;
“therefore even with blindness were these stricken, as those were at the
doors of the righteous man.” (xix. 14—17). And we may well believe that
the long night was haunted with special terrors, if we add this wise
explanation: “For wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very
timorous, and being pressed by conscience, always forecasteth grievous
things. For”—and
Isaiah, too, who is full of allusions to the early history of his people, finds in this plague of darkness an image of all mental distress and spiritual gloom. “We look for light, but behold darkness; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity: we grope for the wall like the blind, yea, we grope as those that have no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the twilight” (lix. 10). Here the sinful nation is reduced to the misery of Egypt. But if she were obedient she would enjoy all the immunities of her forefathers amid Egyptian gloom: “Then shall thy light rise in darkness and thy obscurity as the noonday” (lviii. 10); “Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people, but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee” (lx. 2).
And, indeed, in the spiritual light which is sown for the righteous, and the obscuration of the judgment of the impure, this miracle is ever reproduced.
The history of Menephtah is that of a mean and cowardly prince. Dreams
forbade him to share the perils of his army; a prophecy induced him to
submit to exile, until his firstborn was of age to recover his dominions
for him; and all we know of him is admirably
In the conduct of the prophet, all through these stormy scenes, we see the difference between a meek spirit and a craven one. He was always ready to intercede; he never “reviles the ruler,” nor transgresses the limits of courtesy toward his superior in rank; and yet he never falters, nor compromises, nor fails to represent worthily the awful Power he represents.
In the series of sharp contrasts, all the true dignity is with the servant of God, all the meanness and the shame with the proud king, who begins by insulting him, goes on to impose on him, and ends by the most ignominious of surrenders, crowned with the most abortive of treacheries and the most abject of defeats.
xi. 1—10.
The command given already to the women (iii. 22) is now extended to them
all—that they should ask of the terror-stricken people such portable
things as, however precious, poorly requited their generations of unpaid
and cruel toil. (It has been already shown that the word
By these demands expectation and faith were intensified; while the tidings of such confidence on one side, and such tame submission on the other, goes far to explain the suspicions and the rage of Pharaoh.
With this the narrative is resumed. Moses had said, “Thou shalt see my
face no more.” Now he adds, “Thus saith Jehovah, About midnight” (but
not on that same night, since four days of preparation for the passover
were yet to come) “I will go out into the midst of Egypt.” This, then,
was the meaning of his ready consent to be seen no more: Jehovah
Himself, Who had dealt so dreadfully with them through other hands, was
now Himself to come. “And all the firstborn of Egypt shall die,” from
the firstborn and viceroy of the king to the firstborn of the meanest of
women, and even of the cattle in their stalls. (It is surely a
remarkable
The ninth and tenth verses are a kind of summary: the appeals to Pharaoh are all over, and henceforth we shall find Moses preparing his own followers for their exodus. “And the Lord (had) said unto Moses, Pharaoh will not hearken unto you, that My wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh; and the Lord made strong Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go out of his land.”
In the Gospel of St. John there comes just such a period. The record of
miracle and controversy is at an end, and Jesus withdraws into the bosom
of His intimate circle. It is scarcely possible that the evangelist was
unconscious of the influence of this passage when he wrote:
This is the tragedy of Egypt repeated in Israel; and the fact that the chosen seed is now the reprobate suffices, if any doubt remain, to prove that reprobation itself was not caprice, but retribution.
THE PASSOVER.
xii. 1—28.
The Jews had by this time learned to feel that they were a nation, if it were only through the struggle between their champion and the head of the greatest nation in the world. And the first aspect in which the feast of passover presents itself is that of a national commemoration.
This day was to be unto them the beginning of months; and in the change
of their calendar to celebrate their emancipation, the device was
anticipated by which France endeavoured to glorify the Revolution. All
their reckoning was to look back to this signal event. “And this day
shall be unto you for a memorial, and ye shall keep it for a feast unto
the Lord; throughout your generations ye shall keep it a feast by an
ordinance for ever” (xii. 14).
Now for the first time we read of “the congregation of Israel” (xii. 3, 6), which was an assembly of the people represented by their elders (as may be seen by comparing the third verse with the twenty-first); and thus we discover that the “heads of houses” have been drawn into a larger unity. The clans are knit together into a nation.
Accordingly, the feast might not be celebrated by any solitary man. Companionship was vital to it. At every table one animal, complete and undissevered, should give to the feast a unity of sentiment; and as many should gather around as were likely to leave none of it uneaten. Neither might any of it be reserved to supply a hasty ration amid the confusion of the predicted march. The feast was to be one complete event, whole and perfect as the unity which it expressed. The very notion of a people is that of “community” in responsibilities, joys, and labours; and the solemn law by virtue of which, at this same hour, one blow will fall upon all Egypt, must now be accepted by Israel. Therefore loneliness at the feast of Passover is by the law, as well as in idea, impossible to any Jew. Every one can see the connection between this festival of unity and another, of which it is written, “We, being many, are one body, one loaf, for we are all partakers of that one loaf.”
Now, the sentiment of nationality may so assert itself, like all
exaggerated sentiments, as to assail others equally precious. In this
century we have seen a revival of the Spartan theories which sacrificed
the family to the state. Socialism and the phalanstère
The first ordinance of the Jewish religion was a domestic service. And this arrangement is divinely wise. Never was a nation truly prosperous or permanently strong which did not cherish the sanctities of home. Ancient Rome failed to resist the barbarians, not because her discipline had degenerated, but because evil habits in the home had ruined her population. The same is notoriously true of at least one great nation to-day. History is the sieve of God, in which He continually severs the chaff from the grain of nations, preserving what is temperate and pure and calm, and therefore valorous and wise.
In studying the institution of the Passover, with its profound typical analogies, we must not overlook the simple and obvious fact that God built His nation upon families, and bade their great national institution draw the members of each home together.
The national character of the feast is shown further because no Egyptian
family escaped the blow. Opportunities had been given to them to evade
some of the previous plagues. When the hail was announced,
And if there is hideous vice in our own land to-day, or if the contrasts of poverty and wealth are so extreme that humanity is shocked by so much luxury insulting so much squalor,—if in any respect we feel that our own land, considering its supreme advantages, merits the wrath of God for its unworthiness,—then we have to fear and strive, not through public spirit alone, but as knowing that the chastisement of nations falls upon the corporate whole, upon us and upon our children.
But if the feast of the Passover was a commemoration, it also claims to be a sacrifice, and the first sacrifice which was Divinely founded and directed.
This brings us face to face with the great question, What is the doctrine which lies at the heart of the great institution of sacrifice?
We are not free to confine its meaning altogether to that which was
visible at the time. This would contradict the whole doctrine of
development, the intention of God that Christianity should blossom from
the bud of Judaism, and the explicit assertion that the prophets were
made aware that the full meaning and the date of what they uttered was
reserved for the instruction of a later period (
But neither may we overlook the first palpable significance of any institution. Sacrifices never could have been devised to be a blind and empty pantomime to whole generations, for the benefit of their successors. Still less can one who believes in a genuine revelation to Moses suppose that their primary meaning was a false one, given in order that some truth might afterwards develop out of it.
What, then, might a pious and well-instructed Israelite discern beneath the surface of this institution?
To this question there have been many discordant answers, and the
variance is by no means confined to unbelieving critics. Thus, a
distinguished living expositor says in connection with the Paschal
institution, “We speak not of blood as it is commonly understood, but of
blood as the life, the love, the heart,—the whole quality of Deity.”
But it must be answered that Deity is the last suggestion which blood
would convey to a Jewish mind: distinctly it is creature-life that it
expresses; and the New Testament commentators make it plain that no
other notion had even then evolved itself: they think of the offering of
the Body of Jesus Christ, not of His Deity. Though of course the Person Whose Body was thus offered is
Divine (
But when we approach the theories of rationalistic thinkers, we find a perfect chaos of rival speculations.
We are told that the Hebrew feasts were really agricultural—“Harvest
festivals,” and that the epithet Passover had its origin in the passage
of the sun into Aries. But this great festival had a very secondary
In dealing with unbelief we must look at things from the unbelieving angle of vision. No sceptical theory has any right to invoke for its help a special and differentiating quality in Hebrew thought. Reject the supernatural, and the Jewish religion is only one among a number of similar creations of the mind of man “moving about in worlds unrecognised.” And therefore we must ask, What notions of sacrifice were entertained, all around, when the Hebrew creed was forming itself?
Now, we read that “in the early days ... a sacrifice was a meal.... Year after year, the return of vintage, corn-harvest, and sheep-shearing brought together the members of the household to eat and drink in the presence of Jehovah.... When an honoured guest arrives there is slaughtered for him a calf, not without an offering of the blood and fat to the Deity” (Wellhausen, Israel, p. 76). Of the sense of sin and propitiation “the ancient sacrifices present few traces.... An underlying reference of sacrifice to sin, speaking generally, was entirely absent. The ancient sacrifices were wholly of a joyous nature—a merry-making before Jehovah with music” (ibid., p. 81).
We are at once confronted by the question, Where did the Jewish nation
come by such a friendly conception of their deity? They had come out of
Egypt, where human sacrifices were not rare. They had
It is quite plain that no such theory can be reconciled with the story
of the first passover. And accordingly this is declared to be
non-historical, and to have originated in the time of the later kings.
The offering of the firstborn is only “the expression of thankfulness to
the Deity for fruitful flocks and herds. If claim is also laid to the
human firstborn, this is merely a later generalisation” (Wellhausen, p.
88). Here the sceptical theorists are widely divided among
themselves. Kuenen has discussed this whole theory, and rejected it as
“irreconcilable with what the Old Testament itself asserts in
justification of this sacrifice.” And he is driven to connect it with
the notion of atonement. “Jahveh appears as a severe being who must be
propitiated with sacrifices.” He has therefore to introduce the notion
of human sacrifice, in order to get rid of the connection with the penal
death of the Egyptians, and of the miraculous, which this example would
establish. (Religion of Israel, Eng. Trans., i., 239, 240.)
But this claim is by no means the only stumbling-block in the way of the
theory, serious a stumbling-block
Stranger still, why was the original command invented, that the lamb
should be chosen and separated four days before the feast? There is no
trace of any intention that this precept should apply to the first
passover alone. It is somewhat unexpected there, interrupting the hurry
and movement of the narrative with an interval of quiet expectation, not
otherwise hinted at, which we comprehend and value when discovered,
rather than anticipate in advance. It is
Taking, then, the narrative as it stands, we place ourselves by an effort of the historical imagination among those to whom Moses gave his instructions, and ask what emotions are excited as we listen.
Certainly no light and joyous feeling that we are going to celebrate a
feast, and share our good things with our deity. Nay, but an alarmed
surprise. Hitherto, among the admonitory and preliminary plagues of
Egypt, Israel had enjoyed a painless and unbought exemption. The murrain
had not slain their cattle, nor the locusts devoured their land, nor the
darkness obscured their dwellings. Such admonitions they needed not. But
now the judgment itself is impending,
And this would set him thinking that even a gracious God, Who had “come down” to save him from his tyrants, discerned in him grave reasons for displeasure, since his acceptance, while others died, was not of course. His own conscience would then quickly tell him what some at least of those reasons were.
But he would also learn that the exemption which he did not possess by right (although a son of Abraham) he might obtain through grace. The goodness of God did not pronounce him safe, but it pointed out to him a way of salvation. He would scarcely observe, so entirely was it a matter of course, that this way must be of God’s appointment and not of his own invention—that if he devised much more costly, elaborate and imposing ceremonies to replace those which Moses taught him, he would perish like any Egyptian who devised nothing, but simply cowered under the shadow of the impending doom.
Nor was the salvation without price. It was not a prayer nor a fast which bought it, but a life. The conviction that a redemption was necessary if God should be at once just and a justifier of the ungodly sprang neither from a later hairsplitting logic, nor from a methodising theological science; it really lay upon the very surface of this and every offering for sin, as distinguished from those offerings which expressed the gratitude of the accepted.
We have not far to search for evidence that the lamb was really regarded as a substitute and ransom. The assertion is part and parcel of the narrative itself. For, in commemoration of this deliverance, every firstborn of Israel, whether of man or beast, was set apart unto the Lord. The words are, “Thou shall cause to pass over unto the Lord all that openeth the womb, and every firstling which thou hast that cometh of a beast; the males shall be the Lord’s” (xiii. 12). What, then, should be done with the firstborn of a creature unfit for sacrifice? It should be replaced by a clean offering, and then it was said to be redeemed. Substitution or death was the inexorable rule. “Every firstborn of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb, and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck.” The meaning of this injunction is unmistakable. But it applies also to man: “All thy firstborn of man among thy sons thou shalt redeem.” And when their sons should ask “What meaneth this?” they were to explain that when Pharaoh hardened himself against letting them go from Egypt, “the Lord slew all the firstborn in the land; ... therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the womb being males; but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem” (xiii. 12—15).
Words could not more plainly assert that the lives of the firstborn of
Israel were forfeited, that they were bought back by the substitution of
another creature, which died instead, and that the transaction answered
to the Passover (“thou shalt cause to pass over unto the Lord”).
Presently the tribe of Levi was taken “instead of all the firstborn of
the children of Israel.” But since there were two hundred and
seventy-three of such firstborn children over and above the number of
the Levites, it became necessary
The question at present is not whether modern taste approves of all this, or resents it: we are simply inquiring whether an ancient Jew was taught to think of the lamb as offered in his stead.
And now let it be observed that this idea has sunk deep into all the
literature of Palestine. The Jews are not so much the beloved of Jehovah
as His redeemed—“Thy people whom Thou hast redeemed” (
It is not too much to say that if modern theology were not affected by this ancient problem, if we regarded the creed of the Hebrews simply as we look at the mythologies of other peoples, there would be no more doubt that the early Jews believed in propitiatory sacrifice than that Phœnicians did. We should simply admire the purity, the absence of cruel and degrading accessories, with which this most perilous and yet humbling and admonitory doctrine was held in Israel.
The Christian applications of this doctrine must be considered along
with the whole question of the typical character of the history. But it
is not now premature to add, that even in the Old Testament there is
abundant evidence that the types were semi-transparent, and behind them
something greater was discerned, so that after it was written “Bring no
more vain oblations,” Isaiah could exclaim, “The Lord hath laid on Him
the iniquity of us all. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. When Thou
shalt make His soul a trespass-offering He shall see His seed” ( The astonishing significance of this declaration would
only be deepened if we accepted the theories now so fashionable, and
believed that the later passage in Isaiah was the fruit of a period when
the full-blown Priestly Code was in process of development out of “the
small body of legislation contained in
It is still more impressive to remember that a Servant of Jehovah has actually arisen in Whom this doctrine has assumed a form acceptable to the best and holiest intellects and consciences of ages and civilisations widely remote from that in which it was conceived.
Another doctrine preached by the passover to every Jew was that he must be a worker together with God, must himself use what the Lord pointed out, and his own lintels and doorposts must openly exhibit the fact that he laid claim to the benefit of the institution of the Lord Jehovah’s passover. With what strange feelings, upon the morrow, did the orphaned people of Egypt discover the stain of blood on the forsaken houses of all their emancipated slaves!
The lamb having been offered up to God, a new stage in the symbolism is entered upon. The body of the sacrifice, as well as the blood, is His: “Ye shall eat it in haste, it is the Lord’s passover” (ver. 11). Instead of being a feast of theirs, which they share with Him, it is an offering of which, when the blood has been sprinkled on the doors, He permits His people, now accepted and favoured, to partake. They are His guests; and therefore He prescribes all the manner of their eating, the attitude so expressive of haste, and the unleavened “bread of affliction” and bitter herbs, which told that the object of this feast was not the indulgence of the flesh but the edification of the spirit, “a feast unto the Lord.”
And in the strength of this meat they are launched upon their new career, freemen, pilgrims of God, from Egyptian bondage to a Promised Land.
It is now time to examine the chapter in more detail, and gather up such points as the preceding discussion has not reached.
(Ver. 1.) The opening words, “Jehovah spake unto Moses and Aaron in the
land of Egypt,” have all the appearance of opening a separate document,
and suggest, with certain other evidence, the notion of a
(Ver. 2.) The commandment to link their emancipation with a festival, and with the calendar, is the earliest example and the sufficient vindication of sacred festivals, which, even yet, some persons consider to be superstitious and judaical. But it is a strange doctrine that the Passover deserved honour better than Easter does, or that there is anything more servile and unchristian in celebrating the birth of all the hopes of all mankind than in commemorating one’s own birth.
(Ver. 5.) The selection of a lamb for a sacrifice so quickly became universal, that there is no trace anywhere of the use of a kid in place of it. The alternative is therefore an indication of antiquity, while the qualities required—innocent youth and the absence of blemish, were sure to suggest a typical significance. For, if they were merely to enhance its value, why not choose a costlier animal?
Various meanings have been discovered in the four days during which it
was reserved; but perhaps the true object was to give time for
deliberation, for the solemnity and import of the institution to fill
the minds of the people; time also for preparation, since the night
itself was one of extreme haste, and prompt action can only be obtained
by leisurely anticipation. We have Scriptural authority for applying it
to the Antitype, Who also was foredoomed, “the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world” (
But now it has to be observed that throughout the poetic literature the
people is taught to think of itself
(Ver. 3, 6.) Very instructive it is that this first sacrifice of Judaism
could be offered by all the heads of houses. We have seen that the
Levites were presently put into the place of the eldest son, but also
that this function was exercised down to the time of Hezekiah by all who
were ceremonially clean, whereas the opposite holds good, immediately
afterwards, in the great passover of Josiah (
It is impossible that this incongruity could be devised, for the sake of plausibility, in a narrative which rested on no solid basis. It goes far to establish what has been so anxiously denied—the reality of the centralised worship in the time of Hezekiah. And it also establishes the great doctrine that priesthood was held not by a superior caste, but on behalf of the whole nation, in whom it was theoretically vested, and for whom the priest acted, so that they were “a nation of priests.”
(Ver. 8.) The use of unleavened bread is distinctly said to be in
commemoration of their haste—
We may therefore seek for some further explanation, and this we find in the same verse in Deuteronomy, in the expression “bread of affliction.” They were to receive the meat of passover with a reproachful sense of their unworthiness: humbly, with bread of affliction and with bitter herbs.
Moreover, we learn from St. Paul that unleavened bread represents
simplicity and truth; and our Lord spoke of the leaven of the Pharisees
and of Herod (
The paschal feast did not express any such luxurious and sentimental religionism as finds in the story of the cross an easy joy, or even a delicate and pleasing stimulus for the softer emotions, “a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and playeth well on an instrument.” No, it has vigour and nourishment for those who truly hunger, but its bread is unfermented, and it must be eaten with bitter herbs.
(Ver. 9.) Many Jewish sacrifices were “sodden,” but this had to be roast
with fire. It may have been to represent suffering that this was
enjoined. But it comes to us along with a command to consume all the
flesh,
(Ver. 10.) Nor should any of it be left until the morning. At the first celebration, with a hasty exodus impending, this would have involved exposure to profanation. In later times it might have involved superstitious abuses. And therefore the same rule is laid down which the Church of England has carried on for the same reasons into the Communion feast—that all must be consumed. Nor can we fail to see an ideal fitness in the precept. Of the gift of God we may not select what gratifies our taste or commends itself to our desires; all is good; all must be accepted; a partial reception of His grace is no valid reception at all.
(Ver. 12.) In describing the coming wrath, we understand the inclusion
equally of innocent and guilty men, because it is thus that all national
vengeance operates; and we receive the benefits of corporate life at the
cost, often heavy, of its penalties. The animal world also has to suffer
with us; the whole creation groaneth together now, and all expects
together the benefit of our adoption hereafter. But what were the
judgments against the idols of Egypt, which this verse predicts, and
another (
(Ver. 13.) “And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are.” That it was a token to the destroying angel we see plainly; but why to them? Is it enough to explain the assertion, with some, as meaning, upon their behalf? Rather let us say that the publicity, the exhibition upon their doorposts of the sacrifice offered within, was not to inform and guide the angel, but to edify the people. They should perform an open act of faith. Their houses should be visibly set apart. “With the mouth confession” (of faith) “is made unto salvation,” unto that deliverance from a hundred evasions and equivocations, and as many inward doubts and hesitations, which comes when any decisive act is done, when the die is cast and the Rubicon crossed. A similar effect upon the mind, calming and steadying it, was produced when the Israelite carried out the blood of the lamb, and by sprinkling it upon the doorpost formally claimed his exemption, and returned with the consciousness that between him and the imminent death a visible barrier interposed itself.
Will any one deny that a similar help is offered to
But this is only half the doctrine of this action. What he should thus openly avow was his trust (as we have shown) in atoning blood.
And in the day of our peril what shall be our reliance? That our doors are trodden by orthodox visitants only? that the lintels are clean, and the inhabitants temperate and pure? or that the Blood of Christ has cleansed our conscience?
Therefore (ver. 22) the blood was sprinkled with hyssop, of which the
light and elastic sprays were admirably suited for such use, but which
was reserved in the Law for those sacrifices which expiated sin (
And (ver. 23) upon the condition of this marking of their doorposts the
Lord should pass over their houses. The phrase is noteworthy, because
it recurs throughout the narrative, being employed nine times in this
chapter; and because the same word is found in Isaiah, again in contrast
with the ruin of others, and with an interesting
So that it is used equally of the slow action of the lame,
and of the lingering movements of the false prophets when there was none
to answer (
Repeated commandments are given to parents to teach the meaning of this institution to their children, (xii. 26, xiii. 8). And there is something almost cynical in the notion of a later mythologist devising this appeal to a tradition which had no existence at all; enrolling, in support of his new institutions, the testimony (which had never been borne) of fathers who had never taught any story of the kind.
On the other hand, there is something idyllic and beautiful in the minute instruction given to the heads of families to teach their children, and in the simple words put into their mouths, “It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt.” It carries us forward to these weary days when children scarcely see the face of one who goes out to labour before they are awake, and returns exhausted when their day is over, and who himself too often needs the most elementary instruction, these heartless days when the teaching of religion devolves, in thousands of families, upon the stranger who instructs, for one hour in the week, a class in Sunday-school. The contrast is not reassuring.
When all these instructions were given to Israel, the people bowed their
heads and worshipped. The bones of most of them were doomed to whiten in
the wilderness. They perished by serpents and by
On these terms, they cannot be Christ’s disciples.
It is apparently the mention of a mixed multitude, who came with Israel out of Egypt, which suggests the insertion, in a separate and dislocated paragraph, of the law of the passover concerning strangers (vers. 38, 43—49).
An alien was not to eat thereof: it belonged especially to the covenant people. But who was a stranger? A slave should be circumcised and eat thereof; for it was one of the benignant provisions of the law that there should not be added, to the many severities of his condition, any religious disabilities. The time would come when all nations should be blessed in the seed of Abraham. In that day the poor would receive a special beatitude; and in the meantime, as the first indication of catholicity beneath the surface of an exclusive ritual, it was announced, foremost among those who should be welcomed within the fold, that a slave should be circumcised and eat the passover.
And if a sojourner desired to eat thereof, he should
THE TENTH PLAGUE.
xii. 29—36.
Pharaoh Menephtah had only reached the throne by the death of two elder brethren, and therefore history confirms the assertion that he “rose up,” when the firstborn were dead; but it also justifies the statement that his firstborn died, for the gallant and promising youth who had reconquered for him his lost territories, and who actually shared his rule and “sat upon the throne,” Menephtah Seti, is now shown to have died early, and never to have held an independent sceptre.
We can imagine the scene. Suspense and terror must have been wide spread; for the former plagues had given authority to the more dreadful threat, the fulfilment of which was now to be expected, since all negotiations between Moses and Pharaoh had been formally broken off.
Strange and confident movements and doubtless
Thus the cup which they had made their slaves to drink was put in larger measure to their own lips at last, and not infants only were snatched away, but sons around whom years of tenderness had woven stronger ties; and the loss of their bondsmen, from which they feared so much national weakness, had to be endured along with a far deadlier drain of their own life-blood. The universal wail was bitter, and hopeless, and full of terror even more than woe; for they said, “We be all dead men.” Without the consolation of ministering by sick beds, or the romance and gallant excitement of war, “there was not a house where there was not one dead,” and this is said to give sharpness to the statement that there was a great cry in Egypt.
Then came such a moment as the Hebrew temperament keenly enjoyed, when
“the sons of them that oppressed them came bending unto them, and all
they that despised them bowed themselves down at the soles of their
feet.” Pharaoh sent at midnight to surrender everything that could
possibly be demanded, and in
By this analogy St. Augustine defended the use of heathen learning in defence of Christian truth. Clogged by superstitions, he said, it contained also liberal instruction, and truths even concerning God—“gold and silver which they did not themselves create, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence, and misapplied. These we should reclaim, and apply to Christian use” (De Doct. Chr., 60, 61).
And the main lesson of the story lies so plainly upon the surface that one scarcely needs to state it. What God requires must ultimately be done; and human resistance, however stubborn and protracted, will only make the result more painful and more signal at the last.
Now, every concern of our obscure daily lives comes under this law as surely as the actions of a Pharaoh.
THE EXODUS.
xii. 37—42.
How came these trampled slaves, who could not call their lives their own, to possess the cattle which we read of as having escaped the murrain, and the number of which is here said to have been very great?
Just before Moses returned, and when the Pharaoh of the Exodus appears upon the scene, we are told that “their cry came up unto God, ... and God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant ... and God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them” (ii. 23).
May not this verse point to something unrecorded, some event before their final deliverance? The conjecture is a happy one that it refers to their share in the revolt of subject races which drove Menephtah for twelve years out of his northern territories. If so, there was time for a considerable return of prosperity; and the retention or forfeiture of their chattels when they were reconquered would depend very greatly upon circumstances unknown to us. At all events, this revolt is evidence, which is amply corroborated by history and the inscriptions, of the existence of just such a discontented and servile element in the population as the “mixed multitude” which came out with them repeatedly proved itself to be.
But here we come upon a problem of another kind. How long was Israel in
the house of bondage? Can we rely upon the present Hebrew text, which
says that
Certain ancient versions have departed from this text. The Septuagint reads, “The sojourning of the children of Israel which they sojourned in Egypt and in the land of Canaan, was four hundred and thirty years”; and the Samaritan agrees with this, except that it has “the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers.” The question is, which reading is correct? Must we date the four hundred and thirty years from Abraham’s arrival in Canaan, or from Jacob’s descent into Egypt?
For the shorter period there are two strong arguments. The genealogies
in the Pentateuch range from four persons to six between Jacob and the
Exodus, which number is quite unable to reach over four centuries. And
St. Paul says of the covenant with Abraham that “the law which came four
hundred and thirty years after” (i.e. after the time of Abraham)
“could not disannul it” (
This reference by St. Paul is not so decisive as it may appear, because
he habitually quotes the Septuagint, even where he must have known that
it deviates from the Hebrew, provided that the deviation does not
compromise the matter in hand. Here, he was in nowise concerned with the
chronology, and had no reason to perplex a Gentile church by correcting
it. But it was a different matter with St. Stephen, arguing his case
before the Hebrew council. And he quotes plainly and confidently the
prediction that the seed of Abraham should be four hundred years in
bondage, and that one nation should entreat them evil four
THE LAW OF THE FIRSTBORN.
xiii. 1.
But now this charge is given as a fit prologue for the remarkable institution which follows—the consecration to God of all unblemished males who are the firstborn of their mothers—for such is the full statement of what is claimed.
In speaking to Moses the Lord says, “Sanctify unto Me all the firstborn
... it is Mine.” But Moses addressing the people advances gradually, and
almost diplomatically. First he reminds them of their deliverance, and
in so doing he employs a phrase which could only have been used at the
exact stage when they were emancipated and yet upon Egyptian soil: “By
strength of hand the Lord brought you out from this place” (ver. 3).
Then he charges them not to forget their rescue, in the dangerous time
of their prosperity, when the Lord
God, Who gave all and pardons all, demands a return, not as a tax which is levied for its own sake, but as a confession of dependence, and like the silk flag presented to the sovereign, on the anniversaries of the two greatest of English victories, by the descendants of the conquerors, who hold their estates upon that tenure. The firstborn, thus dedicated, should have formed a sacred class, a powerful element in Hebrew life enlisted on the side of God.
For these, as we have already seen, the Levites were afterwards
substituted (
“They are Mine,” said Jehovah, Who needed not, that night, to remind them what He had wrought the night before. It is for precisely the same reason, that St. Paul claims all souls for God: “Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God with your bodies and with your spirits, which are God’s.”
And besides the general claim upon us all, each of us should feel, like
the firstborn, that every special
There is a tone of exultant confidence in the words of Moses, very interesting and curious. He and his nation are breathing the free air at last. The deliverance that has been given makes all the promise that remains secure. As one who feels his pardon will surely not despair of heaven, so Moses twice over instructs the people what to do when God shall have kept the oath which He swore, and brought them into Canaan, into the land flowing with milk and honey. Then they must observe His passover. Then they must consecrate their firstborn.
And twice over this emancipator and lawgiver, in the first flush of his success, impresses upon them the homely duty of teaching their households what God had done for them (vers. 8, 14; cf. xii. 26).
This, accordingly, the Psalmist learned, and in his turn transmitted. He
heard with his ears and his fathers told him what God did in their days,
in the days of old. And he told the generation to come the praises of
Jehovah, and His strength, and His wondrous works (
But it is absurd to treat these verses, as Kuenen does, as evidence that the story is mere legend: “transmitted from mouth to mouth, it gradually lost its accuracy and precision, and adopted all sorts of foreign elements.” To prove which, we are gravely referred to passages like this. (Religion of Israel, i. 22, Eng. Vers.) The duty of oral instruction is still acknowledged, but this does not prove that the narrative is still unwritten.
From the emphatic language in which Moses urged this double duty, too
much forgotten still, of remembering and showing forth the goodness of
God, sprang the curious custom of the wearing of phylacteries. But the
Jews were not bidden to wear signs and frontlets: they were bidden to
let hallowed memories be unto them in the place of such charms as they
had seen the Egyptians wear, “for a sign unto thee, upon thine hand, and
for a frontlet between thine eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in
thy mouth” (ver. 9). Such language is frequent in the Old Testament,
where mercy and truth should be bound around their necks; their fathers’
commandments should be tied around their necks, bound on their fingers,
written on their hearts; and Sion should clothe herself with her
converts as an ornament, and gird them upon her as a bride doth (
But human nature still finds the letter of many a commandment easier than the spirit, a ceremony than an obedient heart, penance than penitence, ashes on the forehead than a contrite spirit, and a phylactery than the gratitude and acknowledgment which ought to be unto us for a sign on the hand and a frontlet between the eyes.
We have already observed the connection between the thirteenth verse and
the events of the previous night. But there is an interesting touch of
nature in the words “the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a
lamb.” It was afterwards rightly perceived that all unclean animals
should follow the same rule; but why was only the ass mentioned? Plainly
because those humble journeyers had no other beast of burden. Horses
pursued them presently, but even the Egyptians of that period used them
only in war. The trampled
Some time before this, a new and fierce race, whose name declared them
to be “emigrants,” had thrust itself in among the tribes of Canaan—a
race which was long to wage equal war with Israel, and not seldom to see
his back turned in battle. They now held all the south of Palestine,
from the brook of Egypt to Ekron (
From this we learn two lessons. Why did not He, Who presently made
strong the hearts of the Egyptians to plunge into the bed of the sea,
make the hearts of His own people strong to defy the Philistines? The
answer is a striking and solemn one. Neither God in the Old Testament,
nor God manifested in the flesh, is ever recorded to have wrought any
miracle of spiritual advancement or overthrow. Thus the Egyptians were
but confirmed in their own choice: their decision was carried further.
And even Saul of Tarsus was illuminated, not coerced: he might have
disobeyed the heavenly vision. He was not an insincere man
A free life, the desert air, the rejection of the unfit by many visitations, and the growth of a new generation amid thrilling events, in a soul-stirring region, and under the pure influences of the law,—these were necessary before Israel could cross steel with the warlike children of the Philistines; and even then, it was not with them that he should begin.
The other lesson we learn is the tender fidelity of God, Who will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able to bear. He led them aside into the desert, whither He still in mercy leads very many who think it a heavy judgment to be there.
THE BONES OF JOSEPH.
xiii. 19.
Many a Christian might well envy a confidence so practical, so thoroughly realised, entering so naturally into the tissue of his thoughts and calculations. And their actual remembrance of him goes to show that the tradition of his faith had never completely died out, but was among the influences which kept alive the nation’s hope.
And as the people bore his honoured ashes through the desert, these
being dead spoke of bygone times, they linked the present and the past
together, they deepened the national consciousness that Israel was
If Israel had been wise, they would have thought of him, the Israelite in heart, though glittering in the splendours of Egypt; and would have considered well that as little as men detected his secret life from his appearance, so little could theirs be judged. To the eye, they were free from the foreign trammels in which he was seemingly entangled, yet many of them in heart turned back to all which strove in vain to bind his affections down. The lesson holds good to-day. Many a modern religionist looks askance at the “worldliness” of high office and rank and state; little dreaming that the “world” he censures is strong in his own ambitious and self-asserting spirit, and is overcome by the gentle and tranquil spirit of hundreds of those whom he condemns.
Bearing this hallowed burden, which might easily have become an object
of superstitious regard, the nation moved from Succoth to Etham on the
edge of the wilderness. And with them a Presence moved which rebuked all
others, however venerable. The Lord went before them. It has already
been pointed out that throughout the early history of this nation, just
come out of an idolatrous land, and too ready to lapse back into
superstition, God never reveals Himself except in fire. To Abraham and
to Jacob He appeared in human form, and again to Joshua; but in the
interval, never. So now they see Him by day in a pillar of cloud to
guide them on the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them
light. The glory of the nation was that manifested Presence, lacking
which, Moses besought Him to carry them up no farther.
But it has been well observed that, amid the various allusions to it in Hebrew poetry, not one treats it as modern literature has done, with an eye to its marvellous sublimity and picturesque effects:
The Hebrew poetry is vivid and passionate, but all its concerns are
human or divine—God, and the life of man. It is not artistic, but
inspired. “The modern poet is delighting in the scenic effect; the
ancient chronicler was wholly occupied with the overshadowing power of
God.” Hutton’s Essays, Vol. ii., Literary: The Poetry of the
Old Test.
THE RED SEA.
xiv. 1—31.
The Sea of Zuph, or reeds, the word being used of the
reeds in which Moses was laid by his mother and found by Pharaoh’s
daughter (ii. 3, 5), rendered “flags” in the Revised Version.
Checked, without loss or with it, they were bidden to “turn back,” and
encamp at Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. And since Migdol is
simply a watch-tower (there were several in the Holy Land, including
that which gave her name to Mary Magdal-ene), we are to infer that from
thence their inexplicable
Therefore, when his enemies recoiled from his fortresses and wandered
away into the wilderness of Egypt, entangling themselves hopelessly
between the sea, the mountains, and his own strongholds, it might well
appear to Pharaoh that Jehovah was not a warlike deity, that he himself
had now found out the weak point of his enemies, and could pursue and
overtake and satisfy his lust upon them. There is a significant emphasis
in the song of Miriam’s triumph—“Jehovah is a man of war.” At all
events, it was through an imperfect sense of the universal and practical
importance of Jehovah as a factor not to be neglected in his
calculations, through exactly the same error which misleads every man
who postpones religion, or limits the range of its influence in his
daily life,—it was thus, and not through any rarer infatuation, that
Pharaoh made ready six hundred chosen chariots and all the chariots
These words are hard to reconcile with the strange notion that until now a return after three days was expected, despite the torrent of blood which rolled between them, and the demands by which the Israelitish women had spoiled the Egyptians. Upon this theory it is not their own error, but the bad faith of their servants, which they should have cried out against.
At the sight of the army, a panic seized the servile hearts of the fugitives. First they cried out unto the Lord. But how possible it is, without any real faith, to address to Heaven the mere clamours of our alarm, and to mistake natural agitation for earnestness in prayer, we learn by the reproaches with which, after thus crying to the Lord, they assailed His servant. Were there no graves in that land of superb sepulchres—that land, now, of universal mourning? Would God that they had perished with the firstborn! Why had they been treated thus? Had they not urged Moses to let them alone, that they might serve the Egyptians?
And yet these men had lately, for the very promise of so much
emancipation as they now enjoyed, bowed their heads in adoring
thankfulness. As it was their fear which now took the form of
supplication, so then it was their hope which took the form of praise.
And we, how shall we know whether that in us which seems to be religious
gladness and religious grief, is mere emotion, or is truly sacred? By
watching whether worship and love continue, when emotion has
How did Moses feel when this outcry told him of the unworthiness and cowardice of the nation of his heart? Much as we feel, perhaps, when we see the frailties and failures of converts in the mission-field, and the lapse of the intemperate who have seemed to be reclaimed for ever. We thought that perfection was to be reached at a bound. Now we think that the whole work was unreal. Both extremes are wrong: we have much to learn from the failures of that ancient church, in which was the germ of hero, psalmist, and prophet, which was indeed the church in the wilderness, and whose many relapses were so tenderly borne with by God and His messenger.
The settled faith of Moses, and the assurances which he could give the
agitated people, But his assurance is, “The Lord shall fight for you, and
ye shall hold your peace.” When Wellhausen would summarise the work of
Moses, he tells us that “he taught them to regard self-assertion against
the Egyptians as an article of religion” (History, p. 430). It would
be impossible, within the compass of so many words, more completely to
miss the remarkable characteristic which differentiates this whole
narrative from all other revolutionary movements. Expectancy and
dependence here take the place of “self-assertion.”
The words are remarkable on two accounts. Can prayer ever be out of
place? Not if we mean a prayerful dependent mental attitude toward God.
But certainly, yes, if God has already revealed that for which we still
importune Him, and we are secretly
And again the forces of nature are on the side of God: the strong wind
makes the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over. History
has no scene more picturesque than this wild night march, in the roar of
tempest, amid the flying foam which “baptized” them unto Moses,
Not the adults only; nor yet by immersion, whether in the
rain-cloud or the surf.
But when the blind fury of Pharaoh,
But, as the story repeats twice over, with a very natural and glad reiteration, “the children of Israel walked on dry land in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left” (ver. 29, cf. 22).
ON THE SHORE.
xiv. 30, 31.
“They believed in Jehovah.” This expression is noteworthy, because they
had all believed in Him already. “By faith ‘they’ forsook Egypt. By
faith ‘they’ kept the passover and the sprinkling of blood. By faith
‘they’ passed through the Red Sea.” But their former trust was poor and
wavering compared with that which filled their bosoms now. So the
disciples followed Jesus because they believed on Him; yet when His
first miracle manifested forth His glory, “His disciples believed on Him
there.” And again they said, “By this we believe that Thou camest forth
from God.” And after the resurrection He said, “Because thou hast seen
Me thou hast believed” (
THE SONG OF MOSES.
xv. 1—22.
Like all great poetry, this song is best enjoyed when it is neither
commented upon nor paraphrased, but carefully read and warmly felt.
There are circumstances and lines of thought which it is desirable to
point out, but only as a preparation, not a substitute, for the
submission of a docile mind to the influence of the inspired poem
itself. It is unquestionably archaic. The parallelism of Hebrew verse is
already here, but the structure is more free and unartificial than that
of later poetry; and many ancient words, and words of
It is also noteworthy that Philistia is mentioned first among the foes
who shall be terrified (ver. 14, R.V.), because Moses still expected the
invasion to break first on them. But the unbelieving fears of Israel
changed the route, so that no later poet would have set them in the
forefront of his song. Thus also the terror of the Edomites is
anticipated, although in fact they sturdily refused a passage to Israel
through their land (
The song is divided into two parts. Up to the end of the twelfth verse it is historical: the remainder expresses the high hopes inspired by this great experience. Nothing now seems impossible: the fiercest tribes of Palestine and the desert may be despised, for their own terror will suffice to “melt” them; and Israel may already reckon itself to be guided into the holy habitation (ver. 13).
The former part is again subdivided, by a noble and instinctive art,
into two very unequal sections. With amplitude of triumphant adoration,
the first ten verses tell the same story which the eleventh and twelfth
Each of these three divisions closes in praise, and as in the “Israel in Egypt,” it was probably at these points that the voices of Miriam and the women broke in, repeating the first verse of the ode as a refrain (vers. 1 and 21). It is the earliest recognition of the place of women in public worship. And it leads us to remark that the whole service was responsive. Moses and the men are answered by Miriam and the women, bearing timbrels in their hands; for although instrumental music had been sorely misused in Egypt, that was no reason why it should be excluded now. Those who condemn the use of instruments in Christian worship virtually contend that Jesus has, in this respect, narrowed the liberty of the Church, and that a potent method of expression, known to man, must not be consecrated to the honour of God. And they make the present time unlike the past, and also unlike what is revealed of the future state.
Moreover there was movement, as in very many ancient religious services,
within and without the pale of revelation. There is no warrant in the use of Scripture for Stanley’s
assertion that the word translated “dances” should be rendered
“guitars.” (Smith’s Dict. of Bible, Article Miriam.)
The poem is steeped in a sense of gratitude. In the great deliverance man has borne no part. It is Jehovah Who has triumphed gloriously, and cast the horse and charioteer—there was no “rider”—into the sea. And this is repeated again and again by the women as their response, in the deepening passion of the ode. “With the breath of His nostrils the waters were piled up.... He blew with His wind and the sea covered them.” And such is indeed the only possible explanation of the Exodus, so that whoever rejects the miracle is beset with countless difficulties. One of these is the fact that Moses, their immortal leader, has no martial renown whatever. Hebrew poetry is well able to combine gratitude to God with honour to the men of Zebulun who jeopardised their lives unto the death, to Jael who put her hand to the nail, to Saul and Jonathan who were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions. Joshua and David can win fame without dishonour to God. Why is it that here alone no mention is made of human agency, except that, in fact, at the outset of their national existence, they were shown, once for all, the direct interposition of their God?
From gratitude springs trust: the great lesson is learned that man has
an interest in the Divine power. “My strength and song is Jah,” says the
second verse, using that abbreviated form of the covenant name Jehovah,
which David also frequently associated with his victories. “And He is
become my salvation.” It is the same word as when, a little while ago,
the trembling people were bidden to stand still and see the salvation of
God. They have seen it now. Now they give the word Salvation for the
first time to the Lord as an appellation, and as such it is destined to
And the same title is known also to Isaiah, who says, “Behold God is my
salvation,” and “Be Thou their arm every morning, our salvation also in
the time of trouble” (
The progress is natural from experience of goodness to appropriation: He has helped me: He gives Himself to me; and from that again to love and trust, for He has always been the same: “my father,” not my ancestors in general, but he whom I knew best and remember most tenderly, found Him the same Helper. And then love prompts to some return. My goodness extendeth not to Him, yet my voice can honour Him; I will praise Him, I will exalt His name. Now, this is the very spirit of evangelical obedience, the life-blood of the new dispensation racing in the veins of the old.
Where praise and exaltation are a spontaneous instinct, there is loyal service and every good work, not rendered by a hireling but a child. Had He not said, “Israel is My son”?
From exultant gratitude and trust, what is next to spring? That which is reproachfully called anthropomorphism, something which indeed easily degenerates into unworthy notions of a God limited by such restraints or warped by such passions as our own, yet which is after all a great advance towards true and holy thoughts of Him Who made man after His image and in His likeness.
Human affection cannot go forth to God without
If ever any religion was sternly jealous of the Divine prerogatives,
profoundly conscious of the incommunicable dignity of the Lord our God
Who is one Lord, it was the Jewish religion. Yet when Jesus was charged
with making Himself God, He could appeal to the doctrine of their own
Scripture—that the judges of the people exercised so divine a function,
and could claim such divine support, that God Himself spoke through
them, and found representatives in them. “Is it not written in your law,
I said Ye are gods?” (
The phrase is more striking when we remember that remarkable peculiarity
of the Exodus and its revelations which has been already pointed out.
Elsewhere God appears in human likeness. To Abraham it was so, just
before, and to Manoah soon afterwards. Ezekiel saw upon the likeness of
the throne the likeness of the appearance of a man (
The poem next describes the overthrow of the enemy: the heavy plunge of men in armour into the deeps, the arm of the Lord dashing them in pieces, His “fire” consuming them, while the blast of His nostrils is the storm which “piles up” the waters, solid as a wall of ice, “congealed in the heart of the sea.” Then the singers exultantly rehearse the short panting eager phrases, full of greedy expectation, of the enemy breathless in pursuit—a passage well remembered by Deborah, when her triumphant song closed by an insulting repetition of the vain calculations of the mother of Sisera and “her wise ladies.”
The eleventh verse is remarkable as being the first announcement of the
holiness of God.
And when holiness is attributed to man, it never means innocence, nor
even virtue, merely as such. It is always a derived attribute: it is
reflected upon us, like light upon our planet; and like consecration, it
speaks not of man in himself, but in his relation to God. It expresses a
kind of separation to God, and thus it can reach to lifeless things
which bear a true relation to the Divine. The seventh day is thus
“hallowed.” It is the very name of the “Holy Place,” the “Sanctuary.”
And the ground where Moses was to stand unshod beside the burning bush
was pronounced “holy,” not by any concession to human weakness, but by
the direct teaching of God. Very inseparable from all true holiness is
separation from what is common and unclean. Holy men may be involved in
the duties of active life; but only on condition that in
It is a solemn truth that a kind of inverted holiness is known to
Scripture. Men “sanctify themselves” (it is this very word), “and purify
themselves to go into the gardens, ... eating swine’s flesh and the
abomination and the mouse” (
Just so, the Greek word “anathema” means both “consecrated” and “marked
out for wrath” (
The remainder of the song is remarkable chiefly for the confidence with
which the future is inferred from the past. And the same argument runs
through all Scripture. As Moses sang, “Thou shalt bring them in and
plant them in the mountain of Thine inheritance,” because “Thou
stretchedst out Thy right hand, the earth This is to be taken literally; it does not mean the waves,
but the quicksands in which they “drave heavily,” and which, when
steeped in the returning waters, engulfed them.
So should pardon and Scripture and the means of grace reassure every
doubting heart; for “if the Lord were pleased to kill us, He would not
have ... showed us all these things” (
SHUR.
xv. 22—7.
It was a period of disillusion. Fond dreams of ease and triumphant progress, with every trouble miraculously smoothed away, had naturally been excited by their late adventure. Their song had exulted in the prospect that their enemies should melt away, and be as still as a stone. But their difficulties did not melt away. The road was weary. They found no water. They were still too much impressed by the miracle at the Red Sea, and by the mysterious Presence overhead, for open complaining to be heard along the route; but we may be sure that reaction had set in, and there was many a sinking heart, as the dreary route stretched on and on, and they realised that, however romantic the main plan of their journey, the details might still be prosaic and exacting. They sang praises unto Him. They soon forgat His works. Aching with such disappointments, at last they reached the waters of Marah, and they could not drink, for they were bitter.
And if Marah be indeed Huwara, as seems to be agreed, the waters are
still the worst in all the district. It was when the relief, so
confidently expected, failed, and the term of their sufferings appeared
to be indefinitely prolonged, that their self-control gave way, and they
“murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?” And we may be
sure that wherever discontent and unbelief are working secret mischief
to the soul, some event, some disappointment or temptation, will find
the weak point, and the favourable moment of
Now, all this is profoundly instructive, because it is true to the universal facts of human nature. When a man is promoted to unexpected rank, or suddenly becomes rich, or reaches any other unlooked-for elevation, he is apt to forget that life cannot, in any position, be a romance throughout, a long thrill, a whole song at the top note of the voice. Affection itself has a dangerous moment, when two united lives begin to realise that even their union cannot banish aches and anxieties, weariness and business cares. Well for them if they are content with the power of love to sweeten what it cannot remove, as loyal soldiers gladly sacrifice all things for the cause, and as Israel should have been proud to endure forced marches under the cloudy banner of its emancipating God.
As neither rank nor affection exempts men from the dust and tedium of
life, or from its disappointments, so neither does religion. When one is
“made happy” he expects life to be only a triumphal procession towards
Paradise, and he is startled when “now for a season, if need be, he is
in heaviness through manifold temptations.” Yet Christ prayed not that
we should be taken out of the world. We are bidden to endure hardness as
good soldiers, and to run with patience the race which is set before us;
and these phrases indicate our need of the very qualities wherein Israel
failed. As yet the people murmured not ostensibly against God, but only
against Moses. But the estrangement of their hearts is plain, since they
made no appeal to God for relief, but assailed His agent and
representative. Yet they had not because they asked not, and relief was
found when Moses cried unto the Lord. Their leader was
We read that the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet. In this we discern the same union of Divine grace with human energy and use of means, as in all medicine, and indeed all uses of the divinely enlightened intellect of man. It would have been easy to argue that the waters could only be healed by miracle, and if God wrought a miracle what need was there of human labour? There was need of obedience, and of the co-operation of the human will with the divine. We shall see, in the case of the artificers of the tabernacle, that God inspires even handicraftsmen as well as theologians—being indeed the universal Light, the Giver of all good, not only of Bibles, but of rain and fruitful seasons. But the artisan must labour, and the farmer improve the soil.
Shall we say with the fathers that the tree cast into the waters represents the cross of Christ? At least it is a type of the sweetening and assuaging influences of religion—a new element, entering life, and as well fitted to combine with it as medicinal bark with water, making all wholesome and refreshing to the disappointed wayfarer, who found it so bitter hitherto.
The Lord was not content with removing the grievance of the hour; He
drew closer the bonds between His people and Himself, to guard them
against another transgression of the kind:
Wellhausen, Israel, p. 439.
But certainly the promised protection takes an unexpected shape. What in
their circumstances leads to this specific offer of exemption from
certain foul diseases—“the boil of Egypt, and the emerods, and the
scurvy, and the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed” (
If Israel would follow His guidance, and accept a somewhat austere
destiny, then the desert air and exercise, and even its privations,
would become the efficacious means for their exemption from the scourges
of indulgence. A time arrived when they looked back with remorse upon
crimes which forfeited their immunity, when the Lord said, “I have sent
among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt; your young men have
I slain with the sword” (
But it is a significant fact that at this day, after eighteen hundred years of oppression, hardship, and persecution, of the ghetto and the old-clothes trade, the Hebrew race is proverbially exempt from repulsive and contagious disease. They also “certainly do enjoy immunity from the ravages of cholera, fever and smallpox in a remarkable degree. Their blood seems to be in a different condition from that of other people.... They seem less receptive of disease caused by blood poisoning than others” (Journal of Victoria Institute, xxi. 307). Imperfect as was their obedience, this covenant at least has been literally fulfilled to them.
It is by such means that God is wont to reward His children. Most
commonly the seal of blessing from the skies is not rich fare, but bread
and fish by the lake side with the blessing of Christ upon them; not
From Marah and its agitations there was a journey of but a few hours to Elim, with its twelve fountains and seventy palm trees—a fair oasis, by which they encamped and rested, while their flocks spread far and wide over a grassy and luxuriant valley.
The picture is still true to the Christian life, with the Palace Beautiful just beyond the lions, and the Delectable Mountains next after Doubting Castle.
MURMURING FOR FOOD.
xvi. 1—14.
Tertullian draws a striking contrast between Israel, just now baptized into Moses, but caring more for appetite than for God, and Christ, after His baptism, also in the desert, fasting forty days. “The Lord figuratively retorted upon Israel His reproach” (Baptism, xx.)
We are not to suppose that but for their complaining God would have
suffered them to hunger, although Moses declared that the reason why
flesh should be given to them in the evening, and in the morning bread
At this point we learn that what is called prosperity may indeed be a
result of spiritual failure; that God may sometimes abstain from strong
measures with a soul because what ought to mould would only crush; and
may grant them their hearts’ lust, yet send leanness
And we also learn, when prosperous, to remember that plenty, equally with want, has its moral aspect. The Lord tries fortunate men, whether they will be grateful and obedient, trusting in Him and not in uncertain riches, or whether they will forget Him who has done so great things for them, and so perish in calm weather—
There is an experiment being tried upon the soul, curious, slow, little-suspected, but incessant, in the giving of daily bread.
In promising relief, God required of them obedience and self-control. They were to respect the Sabbath, and make provision in advance for its requirements. And this direction, given before the Mount of the Lord was reached, has an important bearing upon the question whether the Fourth Commandment was the first institution of a holy day—whether, except as a Church ordinance, the duty of sabbath-keeping has no support beyond the ceremonial law. “For that the Lord hath (already) given you the Sabbath, therefore He giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days” (ver. 29).
While conveying the promise of relief, Moses and Aaron rebuked the
people, whose murmurs against them were in reality murmurs against God,
since they were but His agents, and He had been visibly their Leader.
And the same rebuke applies, for exactly the same reason, to many a
modern complaint against the weather, against what people call their
“luck,” against a thousand provoking things in which the only possible
Such dulness is not to be removed by sounder views of doctrine, but by a more vivid realisation of God. The Israelites knew by what hand they should have fallen if they had died in Egypt; yet in fact they forgot their true Captain, and upbraided their mortal leaders. So do we confess that afflictions arise not out of the ground, yet lose the impress of divinity upon our daily lives, while we ought, like Moses, to “endure as seeing Him who is invisible.”
As our Lord was in the habit of asking for some confession, or demanding
some small co-operation from those He was about to bless, so the smoking
flax of Hebrew faith is tended: it is a promise, and not the actual
relief, which calms them. There is a curious difference in the manner of
the communications now made to the people. First of all the two brothers
unite their energies to hush their outcries: “At evening ye shall know
that Jehovah is your leader from Egypt, and in the morning ye shall
behold His glory; and what are we, that ye murmur against us?” Then
Moses affirms, with all the energy of his chieftainship, that in the
evening they shall eat flesh, and in the morning bread to the full.
Again he asks them “What are we?” and more sternly and directly charges
them with murmuring against Jehovah. And this is a good example of the
true meaning of his “meekness.” He is fiery enough, but not for his own
greatness; rather because he feels his littleness, and that the offence
is entirely against God, does he resent their conduct; absence of
Were they not then intended to “come near”? and was it as they turned
their faces to draw nigh that the Vision revealed itself and stopped
them? And what was the untold sight which they beheld? The narrative
belongs to a primitive age; it is quite unlike the elaborate symbolisms
of Ezekiel and Daniel, or even of Isaiah, but yet this undescribed,
mystic and solitary glory is not less sublime than the train which
covered the Temple-floor, while, hovering above it, reverent seraphim
veiled their faces and their feet, or the terrible crystal and the
wheels of dreadful height, or the throne of flame whence issued a fiery
stream, and before which thousands of thousands and myriads of myriads
stood (
No later inventor would have known how to say so little, much less to make that little harmonise so exactly with the lessons meant to be suggested by the wild and solemn solitudes into which they were now plunged.
And now the Lord Himself repeats the promise of relief, but first solemnly announces that He is not heedless of their ill-behaviour while He tolerates it. The question is suggested, although not asked, How long will His forbearance last?
Well for them if they learn the lesson, and “know that I am Jehovah your God,” mindful of their needs, entitled to their fealty. In the evening, therefore, came a flight of quails; and in the morning they found a small round thing, small as the hoar-frost, upon the ground.
MANNA.
xvi. 15—36.
Their calling was thus, though under very different forms, that which the apostles found so hard, yet did not quite refuse: it was to mind the things of God and not the things of men.
It is well known that the manna of the Israelites bore some resemblance to a natural product of the wilderness, still exuded by certain plants during the coolness of the night, and formerly more plentiful than now, when all vegetation has been ruthlessly swept away by the Bedouin. But the differences are much greater than the resemblance. The natural product is a drug, and not a food; it is gathered only during some weeks of summer; it is not liable to speedy corruption, nor could there be any reason for preserving a specimen of this common product in the ark; it could not have sufficed, however aided by their herds and flocks, to feed one in a hundred of the Hebrew multitudes, even during the season of its production; nor could it have ceased on the same day when they ate the first ripe corn of Canaan.
And yet the resemblance is suggestive. Unbelievers find, in the links
which connect most of our Scripture miracles with nature, in the
undefined and gradual transition from one to the other, as from a
temperate
It could not be thus with Him by whom the system of the world was framed. He will not wantonly interfere with His own plan. He will regard nature as an elastic band to stretch, rather than as a chain to break. If He will multiply food, in the New Testament, that is no reason why His disciples should fare more delicately than Providence intended for them: they shall still eat barley loaves and fish. And so the winds help to overthrow Pharaoh and to bring the quails; and when a new thing has to be created, it approaches in its general idea to one of the few natural products of that inhospitable region.
Now let it be supposed for a moment that the supply of manna had never
ceased, so that until this day men could every morning gather a day’s
ration off the ground. Such continuance of the provision would not make
it any the less a gift; but only a more lavish boon. And yet it would
clearly cease to be regarded as miraculous, an exception to the course
of nature, miscalled her “laws,” since men do strive to subvert the
miracle by representing that such manna, however scantily, may still be
found. And this may expose the folly of a wish, probably sometimes felt
by all men, that some miracle had actually been perpetuated, so that we
could strengthen our faith at pleasure by looking upon an exhibition of
divine power. In truth, no marvel could excel that which annually
multiplies the
It is also to be observed that the manna was not given to teach the people sloth. They were obliged to gather it early, before the sun was hot. They had still to endure weary marches, and the care of their flocks and herds.
And, in curious harmony with the manner of all the gifts of nature, the manna sent from heaven had yet to be prepared by man: “bake that which ye will bake, and seethe that which ye will seethe.” Thus God, by natural means and by the sweat of our brow, gives us our daily bread; and all knowledge, art and culture are His gifts, although elaborated by the brain and heart of generations whom He taught.
Moreover, there was a protest against the grasping, unbelieving temper
which cannot trust God with to-morrow, but longs to have much goods laid
up. That is the temper which forfeits the smile of God, and grinds the
faces of the poor, to make an ignoble “provision” for the future. How
often, since the time of Moses, has the unblessed accumulation become
hateful! How often, since the time of St. James, the rust of such
possession has eaten the flesh like fire! Men would be far more
generous, the difference between wealth and poverty would be less
portentous, and the resources of religion and charity less crippled, if
we lived in the spirit of the Lord’s prayer, desirous of the advance of
the kingdom, but not asking to be given
Among the strange properties of their supernatural food not the least
curious was this: that when they came to measure what they had
collected, and compare it with what Moses had bidden,
The “omer” of this passage is not mentioned elsewhere in
Scripture: it is known to have been the one-hundredth part of the homer
with which careless readers sometimes confuse it, and its capacity is
variously estimated, from somewhat under half a gallon to somewhat above
three-quarters.
It is quite in vain to appeal to this passage in favour of socialistic
theories. In the first place it applies only to the necessities of
existence; and even granting that
In the second place, this arrangement was only temporary; and while the soil of Canaan was distinctly claimed for the Lord, the enjoyment of it by individuals was secured, and perpetuated in their families, by stringent legislation. Now, land is the kind of property which socialists most vehemently assail; but persons who appeal to Exodus must submit to the authority of Judges.
Socialism, therefore, and its coercive measures, find no more real sanction here than in the Church of Jerusalem, where the property of Ananias was his own, and the price of it in his own power. But yet it is highly significant that in both Testaments, as the Church of God starts upon its career, an example should be given of the effacing of inequalities, in the one case by miracle, in the other by such a voluntary movement as best becomes the gospel. Is not such a movement, large and free, the true remedy for our modern social distractions and calamities? Would it not be wise and Christ-like for the rich to give, as St. Paul taught the Corinthians to give, what the law could never wisely exact from them? Would not self-denial, on a scale to imply real sacrifice, and fulfilling in spirit rather than letter the apostle’s aspiration for “equality,” secure in return the enthusiastic adhesion to the rights of property of all that is best and noblest among the poor?
When will the world, or even the Church, awaken to the great truth that our politics also need to be steeped in Christian feeling—that humanity requires not a revolution but a pentecost—that a millennium cannot be enacted, but will dawn whenever human bosoms are emptied of selfishness and lust, and filled with brotherly kindness and compassion? Such, and no more, was the socialism which St. Paul deduced from the equality in the supply of manna.
SPIRITUAL MEAT.
xvi. 15—36.
We note the time of its bestowal. The soul has come forth out of its
bondage. Perhaps it imagines that emancipation is enough: all is won
when its chains are broken: there is to be no interval between the Egypt
of sin and the Promised Land of milk and honey and repose. Instead of
this serene attainment, it finds that the soul requires to be fed, and
no food is to be seen, but only a wilderness of scorching
There is a noteworthy distinction between the gift of manna and every other recorded miracle of sustenance. In Eden the fruit of immortality was ripening upon an earthly tree. The widow of Zarephath was fed from her own stores. The ravens bore to Elijah ordinary bread and flesh; and if an angel fed him, it was with a cake baken upon coals. Christ Himself was content to multiply common bread and fish, and even after His resurrection gave His apostles the fare to which they were accustomed. Thus they learned that the divine life must be led amid the ordinary conditions of mortality. Even the incarnation of Deity was wrought in the likeness of sinful flesh. But yet the incarnation was the bringing of a new life, a strange and unknown energy, to man.
And here, almost at the beginning of revelation, is typified, not the
homely conditions of the inner life, but its unearthly nature and
essence. Here is no multiplication of their own stores, no gift, like
the quails, of such meat as they were wont to gather. They asked “What
is it?” And this teaches the Christian that his sustenance is not of
this world. They were fed “with manna which they knew not ... to make
them know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live” (
There is no mistaking the doctrine of the New Testament as to what this
bread may be. By prayer and faith, by ordinances and sacraments rightly
used, the manna may be gathered; but Jesus Himself is the Bread of life,
His Flesh is meat indeed and His Blood is drink indeed, and He gives His
Flesh for the life of the world. Christ is the Vine, and we are the
branches, fruitful only by the sap which flows from Him. As there are
diseases which cannot be overcome by powerful drugs, but by a generous
and wholesome dietary, so is it with the diseases of the soul—pride,
anger, selfishness, falsehood, lust. As the curse of sin is removed by
the faith which appropriates pardon, so its power is broken by the
steady personal acceptance of Christ; and our Bread and Wine are His new
humanity, given to us, until He becomes the second Father of the race,
which is begotten again in Him. An easy temper is
And this food is universally given, and universally suitable. The strong and the weak, the aged chieftain and little children, ate and were nourished. No stern decree excluded any member of the visible Church in the wilderness from sharing the bread from heaven: they did eat the same spiritual meat, provided only that they gathered it. Their part was to be in earnest in accepting, and so is ours; but if we fail, whom shall we blame except ourselves? In the mystery of its origin, in the silent and secret mode of its descent from above, in the constancy of its bestowal, and in its suitability for all the camp, for Moses and the youngest child, the manna prefigured Christ.
Every day a fresh supply had to be laid up, and nothing could be held over from the largest hoard. So it is with us: we must give ourselves to Christ for ever, but we must ask Him daily to give Himself to us. The richest experience, the purest aspiration, the humblest self-abandonment that was ever felt, could not reach forward to supply the morrow. Past graces will become loathsome if used instead of present supplies from heaven. And the secret of many a scandalous fall is that the unhappy soul grew self-confident: unlike St. Paul, he reckoned that he had already attained; and thereupon the graces in which he trusted became corrupt and vile.
The constant supply was not more needful than it was abundant. The manna
lay all around the camp: the Bread of Life is He who stands at our door
and
The Lord of the Sabbath already taught His people to respect His day. Upon it no manna fell; and we shall hereafter see the bearing of this incident upon the question whether the Sabbath is only an ordinance of Judaism. Meanwhile they who went out to gather had a sharp lesson in the difference between faith, which expects what God has promised, and presumption, which hopes not to lose much by disobeying Him.
Lastly, an omer of manna was to be kept throughout all generations, before the Testimony. Grateful remembrance of past mercies, temporal as well as spiritual, was to connect itself with the deepest and most awful mysteries of religion. So let it be with us. The bitter proverb that eaten bread is soon forgotten must never be true of the Christian. He is to remember all the way that the Lord his God hath led him. He is bidden to “forget not all His benefits, Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, Who healeth all thy diseases ... Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things.” So foolish is the slander that religion is too transcendental for the common life of man.
MERIBAH.
xvii. 1—7.
One finds himself conjecturing, very often, what nobler history, what grander analogies between type and antitype, what more gracious and lavish interpositions might have instructed us, if only the type had been less woefully imperfect—if Israel had been trustful as Moses was, and the crude material had not marred the design.
It would be more practical and edifying to reflect how often we ourselves, like Israel, might have learned and exemplified deep things of the grace of God, when all we really exhibited was the well-worn lesson of human frailty and divine forbearance.
In the story of our Lord, it has been observed that before the Pharisees directly assailed Himself, they found fault with His disciples who fasted not, or accosted them concerning Him Who ate with sinners. And so here the people really tempted God, but openly “strove with Moses,” and with Aaron too, for the verb is a plural one: “Give ye water” (ver. 2).
But as Aaron is merely an agent and spokesman, the chief value of this tacit allusion to him, besides proving his fidelity, is to refute the notion that he sinks into comparative obscurity only after the sin of the golden calf. Already his position is one to be indicated rather than expressed; and Moses said, “Why do ye quarrel with me? wherefore do ye try the Lord?”
But the frenzy rose higher: it was he, and not a higher One, who had brought them out of Egypt; the upshot of it would only be “to kill us, and our children, and our cattle, with thirst.”
Look closely at this expression, and a curious significance discloses
itself. Was it mere covetousness, the spirit of the Jew Shylock
lamenting in one breath his daughter and his ducats, which introduced
the cattle along with the children into this complaint of dying men?
Shylock himself, when death actually looked him in the face, readily
sacrificed his fortune. Nor is it credible that a large number of
people, really believing that a horrible death was imminent, would have
spent any complaints upon their property. The language is exactly that
of angry exaggeration. They have come through straits quite as
desperate, and they know it well. It is not the fear of death, but the
painful delay of rescue, the discomfort and misery of their condition in
the meanwhile, the contrast between their sufferings and their own
conception of the rights of the
Because God is not a Judge, but a Father, the murmurs of Israel do not prevent Him from showing mercy. Accordingly, when Moses prays, he is bidden to go on before the people, bringing certain of their elders along with him for witnesses of the marvel that was to follow. Such is the Divine method. As soon as unbelief and discontent estranged the Jews of the New Testament from Christ, He would not vulgarise His miracles, nor do many mighty works among the unbelieving. After His resurrection He appeared not unto all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before. And as the Jews were chosen to bear witness to Him among the nations, so were these elders now to bear witness among the Jews, who might without their testimony have fallen into some such rationalising theory as that of Tacitus, who says that Moses discovered a fountain by examining a spot where wild asses lay.
With these witnesses, he is bidden to go to a rock in Horeb (so nearly had these murmurers approached the scene of the most awful of all manifestations of Him whose presence they debated), and there God was to stand before them upon the rock, making His universal presence a localised consciousness in their experience.
A true religion is progressive: every stage of it leans
Reserving the symbolic meaning of this event for a future study, we have to remember meanwhile the warning which the apostle here discovered. All the people drank of the rock, yet with many of them God was not pleased. Privilege is one thing—acceptance is quite another; and it shall be more tolerable at last for Sodom and Gomorrah than for nations, churches and men, who were content to resemble soil that drinketh in the rain that cometh upon it oft, and yet to remain unfruitful. Already the conduct of Israel was such that the place was named from human worthlessness rather than Divine beneficence. Too often, it is the more conspicuous part of the story of the relations of God and man.
AMALEK.
xvii. 8—16.
They had hitherto been the sheep of God: now they must become His warriors. At the Red Sea it was said to them, “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord ... the Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace” (xiv. 13). But it is not so now. Just as the function of every true miracle is to lead to a state of faith in which miracles are not required; just as a mother reaches her hand to a tottering infant, that presently the boy may go alone, so the Lord fought for Israel, that Israel might learn to fight for the Lord. The herd of slaves who came out of Egypt could not be trusted to stand fast in battle; and what a defeat would have done with them we may judge by their outcries at the very sight of Pharaoh. But now they had experience of Divine succour, and had drawn the inspiring breath of freedom. And so it was reasonable to expect that some chosen men of them at least will be able to endure the shock of battle. And if so, it was a matter of the last importance to develop and render conscious the national spirit, a spirit so noble in its unselfish readiness to die, and in its scorn of such material ills as anguish and mutilation compared with baseness and dishonour, that the re-kindling of it in seasons of peril and conflict is more than half a compensation for the horrors of a battle-field.
We do not now inquire what causes avail to justify the infliction and
endurance of those horrors. Probably they will vary from age to age; and
as the ties grow strong which bind mankind together, the rupture of them
will be regarded with an ever-deepening shudder,—just
And yet war, though permissible, and in certain circumstances necessary,
is only necessary as the lesser of two evils; it is not in itself good.
Solomon, not David, could build the temple of the Lord; and Isaiah
sharply contrasts the Messiah with even that providentially appointed
conqueror, the only pagan who is called by God “My anointed,” in that
the one comes upon rulers as upon mortar, and as the potter treadeth
clay, but the Other breaks not a bruised reed, nor quenches the smoking
flax (
Another necessity of national development is the advancement of capable
men. The empire of Napoleon would assuredly have withered, if only
because its chief was as jealous of commanding genius as he was ready to
advance and patronise capacity of the second order. It is a maxim that
true greatness finds worthy colleagues and successors, and rejoices in
them. And while the guidance of Jehovah is to be assumed throughout, it
is significant that the first mention of the splendid commander and
godly judge, during all whose days and the days of his contemporaries
Israel served Jehovah, comes not in any express revelation or
commandment of God; but the narrative relates that Moses said unto
Joshua, “Choose out men for us and go out, fight with Amalek: to-morrow
I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.”
They are the words of one who had noted him already as “a man in whom is
the Spirit” (
Once it was his own rod: with it the exiled shepherd controlled the
sheep of his master; that it should be the medium of the miraculous had
appeared to be an additional miracle, but now it was the very rod of
God, nor was any cry to heaven more eloquent and better grounded than
simply the reaching toward the skies, in long, steady, mute appeal, of
that symbol of all His dealings with them—the plaguing of Egypt, the
recession of the tide and its wild return, the bringing of
Now, the lesson from all this does not concern the High-priestly intercession of our Lord, for the office of Moses is consistently distinguished from the priesthood. Nor can the notion be tolerated that if our Lord requires mortal co-operation before asking and being given the heathen for His heritage, which is obviously the case, the reason can be at all expressed by that weakness which needed support.
No, the Lord our Priest is also Himself the dispenser of victory. To Him
all power is given on earth, and to Him it is our duty to appeal for
the
Observe, however, that as the active exertion of the host does not displace the silence of intercession, neither is it displaced itself: Joshua really bore his part in the discomfiture of Amalek and his host. And so it is always. The development of human energy to the uttermost is a part of the design of Him Who gave a task even to unfallen man. Let none suppose that to labour is (sufficiently and by itself) to pray; but also let none idly persuade himself that while energies and responsibilities are his, to pray is sufficiently to labour.
Thus it came to pass that Israel won its first victory in battle. Another step was taken toward the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham to make of him a great nation; and also toward the gradual transference of the national faith from a passive reliance in Divine interposition to an abiding confidence in Divine help. Let it be clearly understood that this latter is the nobler and the more mature faith.
With martial ardour, God took care to inculcate the sense of national
responsibility, without which warriors become no more than brigands. So
it was with
Moses now built an altar, to imprint on the mind of the people this new lesson. And he called it, “The Lord is my Banner,” a title which called the nation at once to valour and to obedience, which asserted that they were an army, but a consecrated one.
Now let us ask whether this simple story is at all the kind of thing which legend or myth would have created, for the first martial exploit of Israel. The obscure part played by Moses is not what we would expect; nor, even as a mediator, is the position of one whose arms must be held up a very romantic conception. If the object is to inspire the Jews for later struggles with more formidable foes, the story is ill-contrived, for we read of no surprising force of Amalek, and no inspiriting exploit of Joshua. Everything is as prosaic as the real course of events in this poor world is wont to be. And on that account it is all the more useful to us who live prosaic lives, and need the help of God among prosaic circumstances.
JETHRO.
xviii. 1—27.
Moses was under the special guidance of God, as really as any modern enthusiast can claim to be. When he turned for aid or direction to heaven, he was always answered. And yet he did not think scorn of the counsel of his kinsman. And although eighty years had not dimmed the fire of his eyes, nor wasted his strength, he neglected not the warning which taught him to economise his force; not to waste on every paltry dispute the attention and wisdom which could govern the new-born state.
Jethro is the kinsman, and probably the brother-in-law of Moses; for if
he were the father-in-law, and the same as Reuel in the second chapter,
why should a new name be introduced without any mark of identification?
When he hears of the emancipation of Israel
But the relations between Moses and Jethro are charming, whether we look at the obeisance rendered to the official minister of God by him whom God had honoured so specially, by the prosperous man to the friend of his adversity, or at the interest felt by the priest of Midian in all the details of the great deliverance of which he had heard already, or his joy in a Divine manifestation, probably not in all respects according to the prejudices of his race, or his praise of Jehovah as “greater than all gods, yea, in the thing wherein they dealt proudly against them” (ver. 11, R.V.). The meaning of this phrase is either that the gods were plagued in their own domains, or that Jehovah had finally vanquished the Egyptians by the very element in which they were most oppressive, as when Moses himself had been exposed to drown.
There is another expression, in the first verse, which deserves to be
remarked. How do the friends of a successful man think of the scenes in
which he has borne a memorable part? They chiefly think of them
We are told, with marked emphasis, that this Midianite, a priest, and accustomed to act as such with Moses in his family, “took a burnt-offering and sacrifices for God; and Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God.” Nor can we doubt that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who laid such stress upon the subordination of Abraham to Melchizedek, would have discerned in the relative position of Jethro and Aaron another evidence that the ascendency of the Aaronic priesthood was only temporary. We shall hereafter see that priesthood is a function of redeemed humanity, and that all limitations upon it were for a season, and due to human shortcoming. But for this very reason (if there were no other) the chief priest could only be He Who represents and embodies all humanity, in Whom is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, because He is all and in all.
In the meantime, here is recognised, in the history of Israel, a Gentile priesthood.
And, as at the passover, so now, the sacrifice to God is partaken of by
His people, who are conscious of acceptance by Him. Happy was the union
of innocent festivity with a sacramental recognition of God. It is the
same sentiment which was aimed at by the primitive Christian Church in
her feasts of love, genuine meals in the house of God, until licence and
appetite spoiled them, and the apostle asked
On the morrow, Jethro saw Moses, all day long, deciding the small matters and great which needed already to be adjudicated for the nation. He who had striven, without a commission, himself to smite the Egyptian and lead out Israel, is the same self-reliant, heroic, not too discreet person still.
But the true statesman and administrator is he who employs to the utmost all the capabilities and energies of his subordinates. And Jethro made a deep mark in history when he taught Moses the distinction between the lawgiver and the judge, between him who sought from God and proclaimed to the people the principles of justice and their form, and him who applied the law to each problem as it arose.
“It is supposed, and with probability,” writes Kalisch (in loco),
“that Alfred the Great, who was well versed in the Bible, based his own
Saxon constitution of sheriffs in counties, etc., on the example of the
Mosaic division (comp. Bacon on English Government, i. 70).” And thus
it may be that our own nation owes its free institutions almost directly
to the generous interest in the well-being of his relative, felt by an
Arabian priest, who cherished, amid the growth of idolatries all around
him, the primitive belief in God, and who rightly held that the first
qualifications of a capable judge were
We learn from Deuteronomy (i. 9—15), that Moses allowed the people themselves to elect these officials, who became not only their judges but their captains.
From the whole of this narrative we see clearly that the intervention of God for Israel is no more to be regarded as superseding the exercise of human prudence and common-sense, than as dispensing with valour in the repulse of Amalek, and with patience in journeying through the wilderness.
We are now about to pass from history to legislation. And this is a
convenient stage at which to pause, and ask how it comes to pass that
all this narrative is also, in some sense, an allegory. It is a
discussion full of pitfalls. Countless volumes of arbitrary and fanciful
interpretation have done their worst to discredit every attempt, however
cautious and sober, at finding more than the primary signification in
any narrative. Take as an example the assertion of Bunyan that the sea in
the Revelation is a sea of glass, because the laver in the tabernacle
was made of the brazen looking-glasses of the women. (Solomon’s
Temple, xxxvi. 1.)
But the New Testament does not warrant such a surrender. It tells us that leaven answers to malice, and unleavened bread to sincerity; that at the Red Sea the people were baptized; that the tabernacle and the altar, the sacrifice and the priest, the mercy-seat and the manna, were all types and shadows of abiding Christian realities.
It is more surprising to find the return of the infant Jesus connected
with the words
How are such passages to be explained? Surely not by finding a superficial resemblance between two things, and thereupon transferring to one of them whatever is true of the other. No thought can attain accuracy except by taking care not to confuse in this way things which superficially resemble each other.
But no thought can be fertilising and suggestive which neglects real and deep resemblances, resemblances of principle as well as incident, resemblances which are due to the mind of God or the character of man.
In the structure and furniture of the tabernacle, and the order of its services, there are analogies deliberately planned, and such as every one would expect, between religious truth shadowed forth in Judaism, and the same truth spoken in these latter days unto us in the Son.
But in the emancipation, the progress, and alas! the sins and
chastisements of Israel, there are analogies of another kind, since here
it is history which resembles theology, and chiefly secular things which
are compared with spiritual. But the analogies are not capricious; they
are based upon the obvious fact that the same God Who pitied Israel in
bondage sees, with the same tender heart, a worse tyranny. For it is not
a figure of speech to say that sin is slavery. Sin does outrage the
will, and degrade and spoil the life. The sinner does obey a hard and
merciless master. If his true
And if He marks, by a solemn institution, the period when we enter into covenant relations with Himself, and renounce the kingdom and tyranny of His foe, is it marvellous that the apostle found an analogy for this in the great event by which God punctuated the emancipation of Israel, leading them out of Egypt through the sea depths and beneath the protecting cloud?
If privilege, and adoption, and the Divine good-will, did not shelter them from the consequences of ingratitude and rebellion, if He spared not the natural branches, we should take heed lest He spare not us.
Such analogies are really arguments, as solid as those of Bishop Butler.
But the same cannot be maintained so easily of some others. When that is
quoted of our Lord upon the cross which was written of the paschal lamb,
“a bone shall not be broken” (
And so it is with the calling of the Son out of Egypt. Unquestionably
Hosea spoke of Israel. But unquestionably too the phrase “My Son, My
Firstborn” is a startling one. Here is already a suggestive difference
between the monotheism of the Old Testament and the austere jealous
logical orthodoxy of the Koran, which protests “It is not meet for God
to have any Son, God forbid” (Sura xix. 36). Jesus argued that such a
rigid and lifeless orthodoxy as that of later Judaism, ought to have
been scandalised, long before it came to consider His claims, by the
ancient and recognised inspiration which gave the name of gods to men
who sat in judgment as the representatives of Heaven. He claimed the
right to carry still further the same principle—namely, that deity is
not selfish and
But if this argument of Jesus were a valid one (and the more it is examined the more profound it will be seen to be), how significant will then appear the term “My Son,” as applied to Israel!
In condescending so far, God almost pledged Himself to the Incarnation, being no dealer in half measures, nor likely to assume rhetorically a relation to mankind to which in fact He would not stoop.
Every Christian feels, moreover, that it is by virtue of the grand and
final condescension that all the preliminary steps are possible. Because
Abraham’s seed was one, that is Christ, therefore ye (all) if ye are
Christ’s, are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise (
But when this great harmony comes to be devoutly recognised, a hundred minor and incidental points of contact are invested with a sacred interest.
No doctrinal injury would have resulted, if the Child Jesus had never left the Holy Land. No infidel could have served his cause by quoting the words of Hosea. Nor can we now cite them against infidels as a prophecy fulfilled. But when He does return from Egypt our devotions, not our polemics, hail and rejoice in the coincidence. It reminds us, although it does not demonstrate, that He who is thus called out of Egypt is indeed the Son.
The sober historian cannot prove anything, logically and to
demonstration, by the reiterated interventions in history of atmospheric
phenomena. And yet no
In short, it is absurd and hopeless to bid us limit our contemplation, in a divine narrative, to what can be demonstrated like the propositions of Euclid. We laugh at the French for trying to make colonies and constitutions according to abstract principles, and proposing, as they once did, to reform Europe “after the Chinese manner.” Well, religion also is not a theory: it is the true history of the past of humanity, and it is the formative principle in the history of the present and the future.
And hence it follows that we may dwell with interest and edification upon analogies, as every great thinker confesses the existence of truths, “which never can be proved.”
In the meantime it is easy to recognise the much simpler fact, that these things happened unto them by way of example, and they were written for our admonition.
AT SINAI.
xix. 1—25.
There is among the solemn solitudes of Sinai a wide amphitheatre, reached by two converging valleys, and confronted by an enormous perpendicular cliff, the Ras Sufsâfeh—a “natural altar,” before which the nation had room to congregate, awed by the stern magnificence of the approach, and by the intense loneliness and desolation of the surrounding scene, and thus prepared for the unparalleled revelation which awaited them.
It is the manner of God to speak through nature and the senses to the
soul. We cannot imagine the youth of the Baptist spent in Nazareth, nor
of Jesus in the desert. Elijah, too, was led into the wilderness to
What happens next is a protest against this latter extreme. Awe is one
thing: the submission of the will is another. And therefore Moses was
stopped when about to ascend the mountain, there to keep the solemn
appointment that was made when God said, “This shall be the token unto
thee that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out
of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain” (iii. 12). His own
sense of the greatness of the crisis perhaps needed to be deepened.
Certainly the nation had to be pledged, induced to make a deliberate
choice, now first, as often again, under Joshua and Samuel, and when
Elijah invoked Jehovah upon Carmel. (
It is easy to speak of pledges and formal declarations lightly, but they have their warrant in many such Scriptural analogies, nor should we easily find a church, careful to deal with souls, which has not employed them in some form, whether after the Anglican and Lutheran fashion, by confirmation, or in the less formal methods of other Protestant communions, or even by delaying baptism itself until it becomes, for the adult in Christian lands, what it is to the convert from false creeds.
Therefore the Lord called to Moses as he climbed
“Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob,
This phrase is not found elsewhere in the Pentateuch. Is
it fancy which detects in it a desire to remind them of their connection
with the least worthy rather than the noblest of the Patriarchs? One
would not expect, for instance, to read, Fear not, thou worm Abraham, or
even Israel; but the name of Jacob at once calls up humble
associations.
The appeal is to their personal experience and their gratitude: will this be enough? will they accept His yoke, as every convert must, not knowing what it may involve, not yet having His demands specified and His commandments before their eyes, content to believe that whatever is required of them will be good, because the requirement is from God? Thus did Abraham, who went forth, not knowing whither, but knowing that he was divinely guided. “Now, therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me from among all peoples; for all the earth is Mine, and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Thus God conveys to them, more explicitly than hitherto, the fact that
He is the universal Lord, not ruling one land or nation only, nor, as
the Pentateuch is charged with teaching, their tutelary deity among many
others. Thus also the seeds are sown in them of a wholesome and rational
self-respect, such as the Psalmist felt, who asked “What is man, that
Thou art mindful of him?” yet realised that such mindfulness
Abolish religion, and mankind will divide into two classes,—one in
which vanity, unchecked by any spiritual superior, will obey no
restraints of law, and another of which the conscious pettiness will
aspire to no dignity of holiness, and shrink from no dishonour of sin.
It is only the presence of a loving God which can unite in us the sense
of humility and greatness, as having nothing and yet possessing all
things, and valued by God as His “peculiar treasure.”
This word is the same which occurs in the verse so
beautifully but erroneously rendered “They shall be Mine, saith the Lord
of hosts, in the day when I make up My jewels” (
And with a reasonable self-respect should come a noble and yet sober dignity—“Ye shall be a kingdom of priests,” a dynasty (for such is the meaning) of persons invested with royal and also with priestly rank. This was spoken just before the law gave the priesthood into the hands of one tribe; and thus we learn that Levi and Aaron were not to supplant the nation, but to represent it.
Now, this double rank is the property of redeemed humanity: we are “a
kingdom and priests unto God.” Yet the laity of the Corinthian Church
were rebuked for a self-asserting and mutinous enjoyment of their rank:
“Ye have reigned as kings without us”; and others there were in this
Christian dispensation who “perished in the gainsaying of Korah” (
If the words
But while the individual may not assert himself to the unsettling of
church order, the privilege is still common property. All believers have
boldness to enter into the holiest place of all. All are called upon to
rule for God “over a few things,” to establish a kingdom of God within,
and thus to receive a crown of life, and to sit with Jesus upon His
throne. The very honours by which Israel was drawn to God are offered to
us all, as it is written, “We are the circumcision,” “We are Abraham’s
seed and heirs according to the promise” (
To this appeal the nation responded gladly. They could feel that indeed
they had been sustained by God as the eagle bears her young—not
grasping them in her claws, like other birds, but as if enthroned
between her wings, and sheltered by her body, which interposed between
the young and any arrow of the hunter. Thus, say the Rabbinical
interpreters, did the pillar of cloud intervene between Israel and the
Egyptians. If the image were to be pressed so far, we could now find a
much closer analogy for the eagle “preferring itself to be pierced
rather than to witness the death of its young” (Kalisch). But far more
tender, and very touching in its domestic homeliness,
With the adhesion of Israel to the covenant, Moses returned to God. And the Lord said, “Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and may also believe thee for ever.”
The design was to deepen their reverence for the Lawgiver Whose law they
should now receive; to express by lessons, not more dreadful than the
plagues of Egypt, but more vivid and sublime, the tremendous grandeur of
Him Who was making a covenant with them, Who had borne them on His wings
and called them His firstborn Son, Whom therefore they might be tempted
to approach with undue familiarity, were it not for the mountain that
burned up to heaven, the voice of the trumpet waxing louder and louder,
and the Appearance so fearful that Moses said, “I exceedingly fear and
quake” (τὸ φανταζόμενον—
When thus the Deity became terrible, the envoy would be honoured also.
But it is important to observe that these terrible manifestations were to cease. Like the impressions produced by sickness, by sudden deaths, by our own imminent danger, the emotion would subside, but the conviction should remain: they should believe Moses for ever. Emotions are like the swellings of the Nile: they subside again; but they ought to leave a fertilising deposit behind.
That the impression might not be altogether passive, and therefore
ephemeral, the people were bidden to “sanctify themselves”; all that is
common and secular must be suspended for awhile; and it is worth
Moreover, the mountain was to be fenced from the risk of profanation by any sudden impulsive movement of the crowd, and even a beast that touched it should be slain by such weapons as men could hurl without themselves pursuing it. Only when the trumpet blew a long summons might the appointed ones come up to the mount (ver. 13).
On the third day, after a soul-searching interval, there were thunders and lightnings, and a cloud, and the trumpet blast; and while all the people trembled, Moses led them forth to meet with God. Again the narrative reverts to the terrible phenomena—the fire like the smoke of a furnace (called by an Egyptian name which only occurs in the Pentateuch), and the whole mountain quaking. Then, since his commission was now to be established, Moses spake, and the Lord answered him with a voice. And when he again climbed the mountain, it became necessary to send him back with yet another warning, whether his example was in danger of emboldening others to exercise their newly given priesthood, or the very excess of terror exercised its well-known fascinating power, as men in a burning ship have been seen to leap into the flames.
And the priests also, who come near to God, should sanctify themselves. It has been asked who these were, since the Levitical institutions were still non-existent (ver. 22, cf. 24). But it is certain that the heads of houses exercised priestly functions; and it is not impossible that the elders of Israel who came to eat before God with Jethro (xviii. 12) had begun to perform religious functions for the people. Is it supposed that the nation had gone without religious services for three months?
It has been remarked by many that the law of Moses appealed for acceptance to popular and even democratic sanctions. The covenant was ratified by a plébiscite. The tremendous evidence was offered equally to all. For, said St. Augustine, “as it was fit that the law which was given, not to one man or a few enlightened people, but to the whole of a populous nation, should be accompanied by awe-inspiring signs, great marvels were wrought ... before the people” (De Civ. Dei, x. 13).
We have also to observe the contrast between the appearance of God on Sinai and His manifestation in Jesus. And this also was strongly wrought out by an ancient father, who represented the Virgin Mary, in the act of giving Jesus into the hands of Simeon, as saying, “The blast of the trumpet does not now terrify those who approach, nor a second time does the mountain, all on fire, cause terror to those who come nigh, nor does the law punish relentlessly those who would boldly touch. What is present here speaks of love to man; what is apparent, of the Divine compassion.” (Methodius De Sym. et Anna, vii.)
But we must remember that the Epistle to the Hebrews regards the second
manifestation as the more
There is a question, lying far behind all these, which demands attention.
It is said that legends of wonderful appearances of the gods are common to all religions; that there is no reason for giving credit to this one and rejecting all the rest; and, more than this, that God absolutely could not reveal Himself by sensuous appearances, being Himself a Spirit. In what sense and to what extent God can be said to have really revealed Himself, we shall examine hereafter. At present it is enough to ask whether human love and hatred, joy and sorrow, homage and scorn can manifest themselves by looks and tones, by the open palm and the clenched fist, by laughter and tears, by a bent neck and by a curled lip. For if what is most immaterial in our own soul can find sensuous expression, it is somewhat bold to deny that a majesty and power beyond anything human may at least be conceived as finding utterance, through a mountain burning to the summit and reeling to the base, and the blast of a trumpet which the people could not hear and live.
But when it is argued that wondrous theophanies are common to all
faiths, two replies present themselves. If all the races of mankind
agree in believing that there is a God, and that He manifests Himself
wonderfully, does that really prove that there is no
We have also to ask for the production of those other narratives, sublime in their conception and in the vast audience which they challenged, sublimely pure alike from taint of idolatrous superstition and of moral evil, profound and far-reaching in their practical effect upon humanity, which deserve to be so closely associated with the giving of the Mosaic law that in their collapse it also must be destroyed, as the fall of one tree sometimes breaks the next. But this narrative stands out so far in the open, and lifts its head so high, that no other even touches a bough of it when overturned.
Is it seriously meant to compare the alleged disappearance of Romulus, or the secret interviews of Numa with his Egeria, to a history like this? Surely one similar story should be produced, before it is asserted that such stories are everywhere.
THE LAW.
xx. 1—17.
1. St. Paul tells us plainly what they did not effect. By the works of
the law could no flesh be justified: to the father of the Hebrew race
faith was reckoned instead of righteousness; the first of their royal
line coveted the blessedness not of the obedient but of the pardoned;
and Habakkuk declared that the just should live by his faith, while the
law is not of faith, and offers life only to the man that doeth these
things (
2. But he never meant to teach that a Christian is free from the
obligation of the moral law. If it is not true that we can keep it and
so earn heaven, it is equally false that we may break it without penalty
or
3. The law being an authorised statement of what innocence means, and
therefore of the only terms upon which a man might hope to live by
works, is an organic whole, and we either keep it as a whole or break
it. Such is the meaning of the words, he that offendeth in one point is
guilty of all; because He who gave the seventh commandment gave also the
sixth—so that if one commit no adultery, yet kill, he has become a
transgressor of the law in its integrity (
4. But this failure of man does not involve any failure, in the law, to
accomplish its intended work. It is, as has been said, a challenge. The
sense of our inability to meet it is the best introduction to Him Who
came not to call the righteous but sinners to
5. Finally, however, the teaching of Scripture is not that Christians are condemned to live always in a condition of baffled striving, hopeless longing, conscious transgression of a code which testifies against them. The old and carnal nature gravitates downward, to selfishness and sin, as surely as by a law of the physical universe. But the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus emancipates us from that law of sin and death—the higher nature doing, by the very quality of its life, what the lower nature cannot be driven to do, by dread of hell or by desire of heaven. The creature of earth becomes a creature of air, and is at home in a new sphere, poised on its wings upon the breeze. Love is the fulfilling of the law. And the Christian is free from its dictation, as affectionate men are free from any control of the laws which command the maintenance of wife and child, not because they may defy the statutes, but because their volition and the statutes coincide. Liberty is not lawlessness—it is the reciprocal harmony of law and the will.
And thus the grand paradox of Luther is entirely true: “Unless faith be without any, even the smallest works, it does not justify, nay, it is not faith. And yet it is impossible for faith to be without works—earnest, many and great.” We are justified by faith without the works of the law, and yet we do not make void the law by faith—nay, we establish the law.
All this agrees exactly with the contrast, so often urged, between the giving of the Law and the utterance of the Sermon on the Mount. The former echoes across wild heights, and through savage ravines; the latter is heard on the grassy slopes of the hillside which overlooks the smiling Lake of Galilee. The one is spoken in thunder and graven upon stone: the other comes from the lips, into which grace is poured, of Him Who was fairer than the children of men. The former repeats again and again the stern warning, “Thou shalt not!” The latter crowns a sevenfold description of a blessedness, which is deeper than joy, though pensive and even weeping, by adding to these abstract descriptions an eighth, which applies them, and assumes them to be realised in His hearers—“Blessed are ye.” If so much as a beast touched the mountain it should be stoned. But Simeon took the Divine Infant in his arms.
And this is not because God has become gentler, or man worthier: it is because God the Lawgiver upon His throne has come down to be God the Helper. But the beatitudes could never have been spoken, if the law had not been imposed: the blessedness of a hunger and thirst for righteousness was created by the majestic and spiritual beauty of the unattained commandment.
Yes, it had a spiritual beauty. For, however formal, external, and even
shallow, the commandments may appear to flippant modern babblers, St.
Paul bewailed the contrast between the law, which was spiritual, and his
own carnal heart. And he, who had kept all the letter from his youth,
was only the more vexed and haunted by the fleeting consciousness of a
higher “good thing” unattained. Did not one table say
This leads us to consider the structure and arrangement of the Decalogue. Scripture itself tells us that there were “ten words” or precepts, written upon both sides of two tables. But various answers have been given at different times, to the question, How shall we divide the ten?
The Jews of a later period made a first commandment of the words, “I am
the Lord thy God,” which is not a commandment at all. And they restored
the proper number, thus exceeded, by uniting in one the prohibition of
other gods and of idolatry; although the worship of the golden calf,
almost immediately after the law was given, suffices to establish the
distinction. For then, as well as under Gideon, Micah and Jeroboam, the
sin of idolatry fell short of apostasy to a wholly different god (
Another curious arrangement was devised, apparently by St. Augustine;
and the weight of his authority imposed it upon Western Christianity
until the Reformation, and upon the Latin and Lutheran churches unto
this day. Like the former, it adds the second commandment to the first,
but it divides the tenth. And it gives to the first table three
commandments, “since the number of commandments which concern God seem
to hint at the Trinity to careful students,” while the seven
commandments of the second table suggest the Sabbath. Such mystical
references are no longer weighty arguments. And the proposed
The ordinary English arrangement assigns to the tables four commandments and six respectively. And the noble catechism of the Church of England appears to sanction this arrangement by including among “my duties to my neighbour” that of loving, honouring and succouring my father and mother. There are several objections to this arrangement. It is unsymmetrical. There seems to be something more sacred and divine about my relationship with my father and mother than those which connect me with my neighbour. The first table begins with the gravest offence, and steadily declines to the lowest; sin against the unique personality of God being followed by sin against His spirituality of nature, His name, and His holy day. If now the sin against His earthly representative, the very fountain and sanction of all law to childhood, be added to the first table, the same order will pervade those of the second—namely, sin against my neighbour’s life, his family, his property, his reputation, and lastly, his interest in my inner self, in the wishes that are unspoken, the thoughts and feelings which
“I wad nae tell to nae man.”
Finally, the comprehensiveness and spirituality of the law may be observed in this; that the first table forbids sin against God in thought, word and deed; and the second table forbids sin against man in deed, word and thought.
THE PROLOGUE.
xx. 2.
Here, and in the previous chapter, is already a great advance upon the
time when it was said to them “The God of thy fathers, the God of
Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, hath appeared.” Now they are expected
to remember what He has done for themselves. For, although religion must
begin with testimony, it ought always to grow up into an experience.
Thus it was that many of the Samaritans believed on Jesus because of the
word of the woman; but presently they said, “Now we believe, not because
of thy speaking, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know.” And thus
the disciples who heard John the Baptist speak, and so followed Jesus,
having come and seen where He abode, could say,
This prologue is vitally connected with both tables of the law. In
relation to the first, it recognises the instinct of worship in the
human heart. In vain shall we say Do not worship idols, until the true
object of adoration is supplied, for the heart must and will prostrate
itself at some shrine. A leader of modern science confesses “the
immovable basis of the religious sentiment in the nature of man,” adding
that “to yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of
problems at the present hour.” Prof. Tyndall, Belfast Address, p. 60. What progress has
scientific unbelief made since 1874 in solving this “question of
questions for the present hour”? It has perfected the phonograph, but it
has not devised a creed.
Moreover, it declares that this God is knowable, which flatly
contradicts the brave assertion of modern agnostics that the notion of a
God is not even “thinkable.” That assertion is a bald and barren
platitude in the only sense in which it is not contrary to the
experience of all mankind. As we cannot form a complete and perfect, nor
even an adequate notion of God, so no man ever yet conceived a complete
and adequate notion of his neighbour, nor indeed of himself. But as we
can form a notion of one another, dim and
In relation to the second table, the prologue was both an argument and an appeal. Why should a man hope to prosper by estranging his best Friend, his Emancipator and Guide? And even if disobedience could obtain some paltry advantage, how base would he be who snatched at it, when forbidden by the God Who broke his chains, and brought him out of the house of bondage—a Benefactor not ungenial and remote, but One Who enters into closest relations with him, calling Himself “Thy God”!
Now, a greater emancipation and a closer personal relationship belong to the Church of Christ. When a Christian hears that God is unthinkable, he ought to be able to answer, ‘God is my God, and He has brought my soul out of its house of bondage.’
Moreover, his emancipation by Christ from many sins and inner slaveries ought to be a fact plain enough to constitute the sorest of problems to the observing world.
It must be observed, besides, that the Law, which was the centre of
Judaism, does not appeal chiefly to
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT.
“Thou shalt have none other gods before Me.”—xx. 3.
“Or beside Me” (R.V.) The preposition is so vague that
either of our English words may suggest quite too definite a meaning, as
when “before Me” is made to mean “in My angry eyes,” or “beside Me” is
taken to hint at resentment for intrusion upon the same throne.
Now, it is hard for us to realise the charm which the worship of false gods possessed for ancient Israel. To comprehend it we must reflect upon the universal ignorance which made every phenomenon of nature a portentous manifestation of mysterious and varied power, which they could by no means trace back to a common origin, while the crash and discord of the results appeared to indicate opposing wills behind. We must reflect how closely akin is awe to worship, and how blind and unintelligent was the awe which storm and earthquake and pestilence then excited. We must remember the pressure upon them of surrounding superstitions armed with all the civilisation and art of their world. Above all, we must consider that the gods which seduced them were not of necessity supreme: homage to them was very fairly consistent with a reservation of the highest place for another; so that false worship in its early stages need not have been much more startling than belief in witchcraft, or in the paltry and unimaginative “spirits” which, in our own day, are reputed to play the banjo in a dark room, and to untie knots in a cabinet. Is it for us to deride them?
To oppose all such tendencies, the Lord appealed not to philosophy and sound reason. These are not the parents of monotheism: they are the fruit of it. And so is our modern science. Its fundamental principle is faith in the unity of nature, and in the extent to which the same laws which govern our little world reach through the vast universe. And that faith is directly traceable to the conviction that all the universe is the work of the same Hand.
“One God, one law, one element;”—the preaching of the first was sure to suggest the other two. Nor could any race which believed in a multitude of gods labour earnestly to reduce various phenomena to one cause. Monotheism is therefore the parent of correct thinking, and could not draw its sanctions thence. No: the law appeals to the historical experience of Israel; it is content to stand and fall by that; if they acknowledged the claim of God upon their loyalty, all the rest followed. Their own story made good this claim. And so does the whole story of the Church, and the whole inner life of every man who knows anything of himself, bear witness to the religion of Jesus.
Never let us weary of repeating that while we have ample controversial resource, while no missile can pierce the chain-armour of the Christian evidences, connected and interwoven into a great whole, and while the infidelity which is called scientific is really infidel only so far as it begs its case (which is an unscientific thing to do), nevertheless the strength of our position is experimental. If the experience which testifies to Jesus were historical alone, I might refuse to give it credit: if it were only personal, I might ascribe it to enthusiasm. But as long as a great cloud of living witnesses, and all the history of the Church, declare the reality of His salvation, while I myself feel the sufficiency of what He offers (or else the bitter need of it), so long the question is not between conflicting theories, but between theories and facts. To have another god is to place him beside One Whom we already have, and Who has wrought for us the great emancipation. It is not an error in theological science: it is ingratitude and treason.
But it very soon became evident that men could apostatise from God otherwise than in formal worship, chant and sacrifice and prostration: “This people honoureth me with their mouths, but their hearts are far from Me.” God asks for love and trust, and our litanies should express and cultivate these. Whatever steals away these from the Lord is really His rival, and another god. “What is it to have a God? or what is God?” Luther asks. And he answers, “He is God, and is so called, from Whose goodness and power thou dost confidently promise all good things to thyself, and to Whom thou dost fly from all adverse affairs and pressing perils. So that to have a God is nothing else than to trust Him and believe in Him with all the heart, even as I have often alleged that the reliance of the heart constitutes alike one’s God and one’s idol.... In what thing soever thou hast thy mind’s reliance and thine heart fixed, that is beyond doubt thy God” (Larger Catechism).
And again: “What sort of religion is this, to bow not the knees to riches and honour, but to offer them the noblest part of you, the heart and mind? It is to worship the true God outwardly and in the flesh, but the creature inwardly and in spirit” (X. Præcepta Witt. Prædicata).
It was on this ground that he included charms and spells among the sins against this commandment, because, though “they seem foolish rather than wicked, yet do they lead to this too grave result, that men learn to rely upon the creature in trifles, and so fail in great things to rely upon God” (Ibid.)
This view of false worship is frequent in Scripture itself. The
Chaldeans were idolaters of an elaborate and imposing ritual, but their
true deities were not to
Others had no thought of a higher blessedness than animal enjoyment.
Their god was their belly. They set the excitement of wine in the place
of the fulness of the Spirit, or preferred some depraved union upon
earth to the honour of being one spirit with the Lord (
Now, these departures from the true Centre of all love and Source of all
light were really a homage to His great rival, “the god of this world.”
Whenever
What is the remedy, then, for all such formal or virtual apostasies? It is to “have” the true God—which means, not only to know and confess, but to be in real relationship with Him.
Despite His so-called self-sufficiency, man is not very self-sufficing,
after all. The vast endowments of Julius Cæsar did not prevent him from
chafing because, at the age when he was still obscure, Alexander had
conquered the world. To be Julius Cæsar was not enough for him. Nor is
any man able to stand alone. In the Old Testament Joshua said, “If it
seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will
serve,”—implying that they must obey some one and will do better to
choose a service than to drift into one (
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, ... thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them.”—xx. 4—6.
It is therefore plain that the precept never forbade imagery, but idolatry, which is the making of images to satisfy the craving of men’s hearts for a sensuous worship—the making of them “unto thee.” The second clause qualifies and elucidates the first. And what the commandment prohibits is any attempt to help our worship by representing the object of adoration to the senses.
The higher and more subtle idolatries do not conceive that wood or gold is actually transformed into their deities; but only that the deities are locally present in the images, which express their attributes—power in a hundred hands, beneficence in a hundred breasts. But in thus expressing, they degrade and cramp the conception.
They may perhaps evade the reproach of Isaiah that they warm themselves
with a portion of timber, and
A truly spiritual worship is intellectually as well as morally the most elevating exercise of the soul, which it leads onward and upward, making of all that it knows and thinks a vestibule, beyond which lie higher knowledge and deeper feeling as yet unattained.
Why is Gothic architecture better adapted for religious buildings than any Grecian or Oriental style? Because its long aisles, vaulted roofs and pointed arches, leading the vision up to the unseen, tell of mystery, and draw the mind away beyond the visible and concrete to something greater which it hints; while rounded arches and definite proportions shut in at once the vision and the mind. The difference is the same as between poetry and logic.
And so it is with worship. We fetter and cramp our thoughts of deity when we bind them to even the loftiest conceptions which have ever been shut up in marble or upon canvas. The best image that ever took shape is inferior to the poorest spiritual conception of God, in this respect if in no other—that it has no expansiveness, it cannot grow. And in connecting our prayers with it, we virtually say, ‘This satisfies my conception of God.’
It is not to be condemned merely as inadequate, for so are all our
highest thoughts of deity; nor only because average humanity (which is
supposed to stand
Nor will it long continue to be merely inadequate. Experience proves that ideas, like air and water, cannot be confined without stagnating. Idolatries not only fail to develop, they degenerate; and systems, however orthodox they may appear at starting, which connect worship with palpable imagery, are doomed to sink into superstition.
To this precept there is added a startling and painful caution—“For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” That a man should be jealous is no passport to our friendship: we think of unreasonable estrangements, exaggerated demands, implacable and cruel resentments. It would not enter the average mind to doubt that one is highly praised when another says of him, ‘I never traced in his words or actions the slightest stain of jealousy.’ And yet we are to think of God Himself as the jealous God.
Upon reflection, however, we must admit that a man is not condemned as
jealous-minded because he is capable of jealousy, but because he has an
unjust and unreasonable tendency towards it. It is a narrowing and
suspicious quality when it operates without due cause, a vindictive and
cruel one when it operates in excessive measure. But what should we
think of a parent who felt no jealousy if the heart of his child
And therefore, when God tells us that He is jealous, He implies that He condescends to love us, to look for a return, to desire more from us than outward service. We cannot be jealous concerning things which are indifferent to us. Even the jealousy of rival competitors for business or for place may be measured by the desire of each for that which the other would engross. The politician is not jealous of the millionaire, nor the capitalist of the prime minister.
Now, if God is jealous when the enemies of our soul would steal away our loyalty, it surely follows that we shall not be left to contend with those enemies alone: He values us; He is upon our side; He will help us to overcome them.
And now we begin to see why this attribute is connected with the second
commandment and not the first. The apostate who betakes himself to
another god is almost beyond the reach of this tender and intimate
emotion: he is still loved, for God loves all
When a man who confesses God begins to weary of spiritual intercourse with the Lord of spirits, when he can no longer worship One whose actual presence is realised because His voice is heard within, when the likeness of man or brute, or brightness of morning, or marvel of life or its reproductiveness, contents him as a representation of God the invisible, then his heart is beginning to go after the creature, to content itself with artistic loveliness or majesty, to let go the grasp as upon a living hand, by which alone the soul may be sustained when it stumbles, or guided when it would err.
To those who are within His covenant—to us, therefore, as to His ancient Israel—He says, “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” Because I am “thy God.”
The assertion of a Divine jealousy is but one difficulty of this
remarkable verse. The Lord goes on to describe Himself as “visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate Me, and showing mercy unto thousands of
them that love Me and keep My commandments.” And is this reasonable? To
punish the child, to be avenged upon the children’s children, for sins
which are not their own? We know how often the sceptic has made gain out
of this representation—which is but his own unauthorised gloss, since
in reality God has said nothing about punishing the righteous with the
wicked. It is not true that all sad and disastrous consequences are
penal; many are disciplinary, and even to the people of God some are
surgical, cutting away what would lead to disease
At all events, the assertion so early made in Scripture is confirmed in all the experience of the race. Insanity, idiocy, scrofula, consumption, are too often, though not always, the hereditary results of guilt. Sins of the flesh are visited upon the bodily system. Sins of the temper, such as pride, cynicism and frivolity, are felt in the mental structure of the race. And the sins which offend directly against God, do they bring no results with them? Ask of the investigators of the new science of heredity and transmitted peculiarities, whether it stops short of the highest and holiest parts of human nature. Or consider the ravages which victory and consequent wealth have made, again and again, in the character of whole nations.
There is no doctrine impugned in Scripture, which men have less prospect of shaking off, even if they close their Bibles for ever, than this. If it were not there, we should be perplexed at a want of conformity between the ways of God in nature and what is asserted of Him in His Book.
But it is either slander or blindness to represent this law, viewed in
its entirety, as other than benevolent. The transmission of the result
of evil is only a part of the vast law which has bound men together in
nations and families, as partners and members with each other. It is
clear that distinctive advantages cannot be bestowed upon the children
of the good, as
There is no choice, therefore, except either to carry out this law, or else to bid every man in the world begin life, not as “the heir of all the ages,” but absolutely destitute of all that has been acquired by his fellow-men.
Sometimes a hint is given us of what this would be. There is brought occasionally into civilised communities, from the depths of forests, a creature without language or decency or intellect, with low forehead and brutal appetites, who in his early childhood had wandered away and been lost,—brought up, men say, by the strange compassion of some lower creature, and now sunken well-nigh to its level. To this degradation we should all come, if it were not for the transmitted inheritance of our fathers. And so vast is the upward force of this grand law, that it is steadily though slowly upheaving the whole mass; and the lowest of to-day, visited for ancestral failings by sinking to the bottom, is higher than if he had been left absolutely alone.
This over-weight of good is clearly seen by comparing the clauses, for
the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and
fourth generation, but mercy is shown in them that love God upon a
wholly different scale. Even “unto thousands” would enormously
counterbalance three generations. But
Lastly, it is to be observed that in all this passage the gospel is shining through the law. It is not a question of just dealing, but of emotion. God is not a master exacting taskwork, but a Father, jealous if we refuse our hearts. He visits sin upon the posterity “of them that hate,” not only of them that disobey Him. And when our hearts sink, we who are responsible for generations yet to be, as we reflect upon our frailty, our ignorance and our sins, upon the awful consequences which may result from one heedless act—nay, from a gesture or a look—He reminds us that He does not requite those who serve Him only with a measured wage, but shows “mercy” upon those who love Him unto a thousand generations.
THE THIRD COMMANDMENT.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”—xx. 7.
In favour of the rendering “falsely” it is urged that our Lord quotes it
as “said to them of old time ‘Thou shalt not forswear thyself’” (
The Authorised rendering seems the more natural when we remember that civic duty had not yet come upon the stage. When we have learned to honour only one God, and not to degrade nor materialise our conception of Him, the next step is to inculcate, not yet veracity toward men when God has been invoked, but reverence, in treating the sacred name.
We have already seen the miserable superstitions by which the Jews
endeavoured to satisfy the letter while outraging the spirit of this
precept. In modern times some have conceived that all invocation of the
Divine Name is unlawful, although St. Paul called God for a witness upon
his soul, and the strong angel shall yet swear “by Him Who liveth for
ever and ever” (
As it is not a temple but a desert which no foot ever treads, so the sacred name is not honoured by being unspoken, but by being spoken aright.
Swearing is indeed forbidden, where it has actually disappeared, namely,
in the mutual intercourse of Christian people, whose affirmation should
suffice their brethren, while the need of stronger sanctions “cometh of
evil,” even of the consciousness of a tendency to untruthfulness, which
requires the stronger barrier of an oath. But our Lord Himself, when
adjured by the
The name of God is not taken in vain when men who are conscious of His nearness, and act with habitual reference to His will, mention Him more frequently and familiarly than formalists approve. It is abused when the insincere and hollow professor joins in the most solemn act of worship, honours Him with the lips while the heart is far from Him—nay, when one strives to curb Satan, and reclaim his fellow-sinner, by the use of good and holy phrases, in which his own belief is merely theoretical; and fares like the sons of Sceva, who repeated an orthodox adjuration, but fled away overpowered and wounded. Or if the truth unworthily spoken assert its inherent power, that will not justify the hollowness of his profession, and in vain will he plead at last, “Lord, Lord, have we not in Thy name cast out devils, and in Thy name done many marvellous acts?”
The only safe rule is to be sure that our conception of God is high and real and intimate; to be habitually humble and trustful in our attitude toward Him; and then to speak sincerely and frankly, as then we shall not fail to do. The words which rise naturally to the lips of men who think thus cannot fail to do Him honour, for out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh.
And the prevalent notion that God should be mentioned seldom and with
bated breath is rather an evidence of men’s failure habitually to think
of Him aright, than of filial and loving reverence. There is a large and
powerful school of religion in our own day, whose disciples talk much
more of their own emotions and their own souls than St. Paul did, and
much less
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT.
xx. 8—11.
The great Continental reformers, Lutheran and Calvinistic alike, who
subscribed the Confession of Augsburg, there affirmed that “Scripture
hath abolished the Sabbath by teaching that all Mosaic ceremonies may be
omitted since the gospel has been revealed” (II. vii. 28). The Scotch
reformers, on the other hand, declared that God “in His Word, by a
positive moral and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages,
hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath, to be kept
holy unto Him” (Westminster Confess., XXI. vii.). They are even so
bold as to declare that this day “from the beginning of the world to the
resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week, and from the
resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week”; but
this
Amid these conflicting opinions the doctrinal formularies of the Church of England are characteristically guarded and prudent; but her worshippers are bidden to seek mercy from the Lord for past violations of this law, and an inclination of heart to keep it in the future; and when the Ten have been recited, they pray that “all these Thy laws” may be written upon their hearts. There is no doubt, therefore, about the opinion of our own Reformers concerning the divine obligation of the commandment.
In examining the problem thus presented to us, our chief light must be that of Scripture itself. Is the Sabbath what the Lutheran confession called it, a mere “Mosaic ceremony,” or does it rest upon sanctions which began earlier and lasted longer than the precept to abstain from shell-fish, or to sanctify the firstborn of cattle?
Does its presence in the Decalogue disfigure that great code, as the
intrusion of these other precepts would do? When we find a Gentile
church reminded that the next precept to this “is the first commandment
with promise” (
The position of the commandment among a number of moral and universal
duties cannot but weigh heavily in its favour. It prompts us to ask
whether our duty to God is purely negative, to be fulfilled by a policy
of non-intervention, not worshipping idols, nor blaspheming. Something
more was already intimated in the promise of mercy to them “that love
Me.” For love is chiefly the source of active obedience: while fear is
satisfied by the absence of provocation, love wants not only to abstain
from evil but to do good. And how may it satisfy this instinct when its
object is the eternal God, Who, if He were hungry, would not tell us? It
finds the necessary outlet in worship, in adoring communion, in the
exclusion for awhile of worldly cares, in the devotion of time and
thought to Him. Now, the foundation upon which all the institutions of
religion may be securely built, is the day of rest. Call it external,
formal, unspiritual if you will; say that it is a carnal ordinance, and
that he who keeps it in spirit is free from the obligation of the
letter. But then, what about the eighth commandment? Are we absolved
also from the precept “Thou shalt not steal,” because it too is
concerned with external actions, because “this ... thou shalt not steal
... and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in
this one saying, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”? Do we say,
the spirit has abolished the letter: love is the rescinding of the law?
St. Paul said the very opposite: love is the fulfilling of the law, not
its destruction; and thus
All men know that the formal regulations which defend property are relaxed as the ties of love and mutual understanding are made strong; that to enter unannounced is not a trespass, that the same action which will be prosecuted as a theft by a stranger, and resented as a liberty by an acquaintance, is welcomed as a graceful freedom, almost as an endearment, by a friend. And yet the commandment and the rights of property hold good: they are not compromised, but glorified, by being spiritualised. As it is between man and his brother, so should it be between us and our Divine Father. We have learned to know Him very differently from those who shuddered under Sinai: the whole law is not now written upon tables of stone, but upon fleshly tables of the heart. But among the precepts which are thus etherialised and yet established, why should not the fourth commandment retain its place? Why should it be supposed that it must vanish from the Decalogue, unless the gathering of sticks deserves stoning? The institution, and the ceremonial application of it to Jewish life, are entirely different things; just as respect for property is a fixed obligation, while the laws of succession vary.
Bearing this distinction in mind, we come to the question, Was the
Sabbath an ordinance born of Mosaism, or not? Grant that the word
“Remember,” if it stood alone, might conceivably express the emphasis of
a new precept, and not the recapitulation of an existing one. Grant also
that the mention in Genesis of the Divine rest might be made by
anticipation, to be read with an eye to the institution which would be
mentioned later. But what is to be made of the
How is the Sabbath spoken of in those prophecies which set least value upon the merely ceremonial law?
Isaiah speaks of mere ritual as slightly as St. Paul. To fast and
afflict one’s soul is nothing, if in the day of fasting one smites with
the fist and oppresses his labourers. To loose the bonds of wickedness,
to free the oppressed, to share one’s bread with the hungry, this is the
fast which God has chosen, and for him who fasts after this fashion the
light shall break forth like sunrise, and his bones shall be strong, and
he himself like an unfailing water-spring. Now, it is the same chapter
which thus waives aside mere ceremonial in contempt, which lavishes the
most ample promises on him who turns away his foot from the Sabbath, and
calls the Sabbath a delight, and the holy of the Lord, honourable, and
honours it (
There is no such promise in Jeremiah, for the observance of any merely
ceremonial law, as that which bids the people to honour the Sabbath day,
that there may enter into their gates kings and princes riding in
chariots and upon horses, and that the city may remain for ever (
And Ezekiel declares that in the day when God made Himself known to His
people in the land of Egypt, He gave them statutes and judgments and His
sabbaths (
It is objected that our Lord Himself treated the Sabbath lightly, as a
worn-out ordinance. But He was “a minister of the circumcision,” and
always discussed the lawfulness of His Sabbath miracles as a Jew with
Jews. Thus He argued that men, admittedly under the law, baked the
shewbread, circumcised children, and even rescued cattle from jeopardy
upon the seventh day. He appealed to the example of David, who met a
sufficiently urgent necessity by eating the consecrated bread, “which
was not lawful for him to eat” (
He did not hint that the law of the sabbath had disappeared, but
insisted that it was meant to serve man and not to oppress him: that
“the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (
Now, there is not in the life of Christ an assertion, so broad and strong as that the Sabbath was made for the human race, which can be narrowed down to a discussion of any merely local and temporary institution. He Who stood highest, and saw the widest horizons, declared that the Sabbath was intended for humanity, and not for a section or a sect of it. Not because He was the King of the Jews, but because He was the Son of Man, the ripe fruit and the leader of the world-wide race which it was given to bless, therefore He was also its Lord.
And in Him, so are we. Like all things present and things to come, it is our help, we are not its slaves.
There is something abject in the notion of a Christian freeman, who has been for a long week imprisoned in some gloomy and ill-ventilated workshop, whose lungs would be purified, and therefore his spirits uplifted, and therefore his reason and his affections invigorated, and therefore his worship rendered more fresh, warm and reasonable, by the breathing of a purer air, yet whose conception of a day of rest is so slavish that he dares not “rest” from the pollution of an infected atmosphere, and from the closeness of a London court, because he conceives it imperative to “rest” only from that bodily exercise, to enjoy which would be to him the most real and the most delightful repose of all.
But there are other things more abject still; and one of them is the miserable insincerity of the affluent and luxurious, using the exceptional case of him whose week-days are thus oppressed, to excuse their own wanton neglect of religious ordinances, accepting at the hands of Christianity the sacred holiday, but ignoring utterly the fact that the Lord sanctified and hallowed it, that it is to be called the holy of the Lord, and to be honoured, and that we are free from the letter of the precept only in so far as we rise to the spirit of it, in loving and true communion with the Father of spirits.
Another utterance of Jesus throws a strong light upon the nature and the
limits of our obligation. “My Father worketh even until now, and I work”
(
They need not plead that the commandment is abrogated, but that Jesus of Nazareth, of the seed of David, found nothing in such liberties inconsistent with the duties of a devout Hebrew.
THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT.
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”—xx. 12.
It is clear that parental authority cannot be undermined, nor filial disobedience and irreverence gain ground, without shaking the foundations of our religious life, even more perhaps than of our social conduct.
Accordingly this commandment stands before the
The human infant is dependent and helpless for a longer period, and more
utterly, than the young of any other animal. Its growth, which is to
reach so much higher, is slower, and it is feebler during the process.
And the reason of this is plain to every thoughtful observer. God has
willed that the race of man should be bound together in the closest
relationships, both spiritual and secular; and family affection prepares
the heart for membership alike of the nation and the Church. With this
inner circle the wider ones are concentric. The pathetic dependence of
the child nourishes equally the strong love which protects, and the
grateful love which clings. And from our early knowledge of human
generosity, human care and goodness, there is born the capacity for
belief in the heart of the great Father, from Whom every family in
heaven and earth derived its Greek name of Fatherhood (
Woe to the father whose cruelty, selfishness, or evil passions make it hard for his child to understand the Archetype, because the type is spoiled! or whose tyranny and self-will suggest rather the stern God of reprobation, or of servile, slavish subjection, than the tender Father of freeborn sons, who are no more under tutors and governors, but are called unto freedom.
But how much sorer woe to the son who dishonours his earthly parent, and in so doing slays within himself the very principle of obedience to the Father of spirits!
No earthly tie is perfect, and therefore no earthly obedience can be
absolute. Some crisis comes in every life when the most innocent and
praiseworthy affection
So Jesus, when Mary would interrupt His teaching, said “Who is My mother?” But imminent death could not prevent Him from pitying her sorrow, and committing her to His beloved disciple as to a son.
From the letter of this commandment streams out a loving influence to sanctify all the rest of our relationships. As the love of God implies that of our brother also, so does the honour of parents involve the recognition of all our domestic ties.
And even unassisted nature will tend to make long the days of the loving and obedient child; for life and health depend far less upon affluence and luxury than upon a well-regulated disposition, a loving heart, a temper which can obey without chafing, and a conscience which respects law. All these are being learned in disciplined and dutiful households, which are therefore the nurseries of happy and righteous children, and so of long-lived families in the next generation also. Exceptions there must be. But the rule is clear, that violent and curbless lives will spend themselves faster than the lives of the gentle, the loving, the law-abiding and the innocent.
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT.
“Thou shalt do no murder.”—xx. 13.
And the influence of the teaching of our Lord is felt in the very name which we all give to the second table of the law. We call it “our duty to our neighbour.” But we do not mean to imply that there lives on the surface of the globe one whom we are free to assault or to pillage. The obligation is universal, and the name we give it echoes the teaching of Him who said that no man can enter the sphere of our possible influence, even as a wounded creature in a swoon whom we may help, but he should thereupon become our neighbour. Or rather, we should become his; for while the question asked of Him was “Who is my neighbour?” (whom should I love?) Jesus reversed the problem when He asked in turn not To whom was the wounded man a neighbour? but Who was a neighbour unto him? (who loved him?)
Social ethics, then, have a religious sanction. It is the constant duty and effort of the Church of God to saturate the whole life of man, all his conduct and his thought, with a sense of sacredness; and as the world is for ever desecrating what is holy, so is religion for ever consecrating what is secular.
In these latter days men have thought it a proof of grace to separate
religion from daily life. The Antinomian, who maintains that his
orthodox beliefs
It is scarcely wonderful, when some men thus refuse to morality the sanctions of religion, that others propose to teach morality how she may go without them. In spite of the experience of ages, which proves that human passions are only too ready to defy at once the penalties of both worlds, it is imagined that the microscope and the scalpel may supersede the Gospel as teachers of virtue; that the self-interest of a creature doomed to perish in a few years may prove more effectual to restrain than eternal hopes and fears; and that a scientific prudence may supply the place of holiness. It has never been so in the past. Not only Judæa, but Egypt, Greece, and Rome, were strong as long as they were righteous, and righteous as long as their morality was bound up in their religion. When they ceased to worship they ceased to be self-controlled, nor could the most urgent and manifest self-interest, nor all the resources of lofty philosophy, withhold them from the ruin which always accompanies or follows vice.
Is it certain that modern science will fare any better? So far from deepening our respect for human nature and for law, she is discovering vile origins for our most sacred institutions and our deepest instincts, and whispering strange means by which crime may work without detection and vice without penalty. Never was there a time when educated thought was more suggestive of contempt for one’s self and for one’s fellow-man, and of a prudent, sturdy, remorseless pursuit of self-interest, which may be very far indeed from virtuous. The next generation will eat the fruit of this teaching, as we reap what our fathers sowed. The theorist may be as pure as Epicurus. But the disciples will be as the Epicureans.
Is there anything in the modern conception of a man which bids me spare him, if his existence dooms me to poverty and I can quietly push him over a precipice? It is quite conceivable that I can prove, and very likely indeed that I can persuade myself, that the shortening of the life of one hard and grasping man may brighten the lives of hundreds. And my passions will simply laugh at the attempt to restrain me by arguing that great advantages result from the respect for human life upon the whole. Appetites, greeds, resentments do not regard their objects in this broad and colourless way; they grant the general proposition, but add that every rule has its exceptions. Something more is needed: something which can never be obtained except from a universal law, from the sanctity of all human lives as bearing eternal issues in their bosom, and from the certainty that He who gave the mandate will enforce it.
It is when we see in our fellow-man a divine creature
Is it asked, how can all this be reconciled with the lawfulness of capital punishment? The death penalty is frequent in the Mosaic code. But Scripture regards the judge as the minister and agent of God. The stern monotheism of the Old Testament “said, Ye are Gods,” to those who thus pronounced the behest of Heaven; and private vengeance becomes only more culpable when we reflect upon the high sanction and authority by which alone public justice presumes to act.
Now, all these considerations vanish together, when religion ceases to
consecrate morality. The judgment of law differs from my own merely as I
like it better, and as I am a party (perhaps unwillingly) to the general
consent which creates it; he whom I would
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”—xx. 14.
And therefore nothing need here be said about the open sin by which one man wrongs another. Wild and evil theories may be abroad, new schemes of social order may be recklessly invented and discussed; yet, when the institution of the permanent family is assailed, every thoughtful man knows full well that all our interests are at stake in its defence, and the nation could no more survive its overthrow than the Church.
But when our Lord declared that to excite desire through the eyes is actually this sin, already ripe, He appealed to some deeper and more spiritual consideration than that of social order. What He pointed to is the sacredness of the human body—so holy a thing that impurity, and even the silent excitement of passion, is a wrong done to our nature, and a dishonour to the temple of the Holy Ghost.
Now, this is a subject upon which it is all the more necessary to write, because it is hard to speak about.
What is the human body, in the view of the Christian? It is the one bond, as far as we know in all the universe, between the material and the spiritual worlds, one of which slopes thence down to inert molecules, and the other upward to the throne of God.
Our brain is the engine-room and laboratory whereby thought, aspiration, worship express themselves and become potent, and even communicate themselves to others.
But it is a solemn truth that the body not only interprets passively,
but also influences and modifies the higher nature. The mind is helped
by proper diet and exercise, and hindered by impure air and by excess or
lack of food. The influence of music upon the soul has been observed at
least since the time of Saul. And hereafter the Christian body, redeemed
from the contagion of the fall, and promoted to a spiritual
impressibility and receptiveness which it has never yet known, is meant
to share in the heavenly joys of the immortal spirit before God. This is
the meaning of the assertion that it is sown a natural (= soulish)
body, but shall be raised a spiritual body. In the meantime it must
learn its true function. Whatever stimulates and excites the animal at
the cost of the immortal within, will in the same degree cloud and
obscure the perception that a man’s life consisteth not in his
pleasures, and will keep up the illusion that the senses are the true
ministers of bliss. The soul is attacked through the appetites at a
point far short of their physical indulgence. And when lawless wishes
are deliberately toyed with, it is clear that lawless acts are not
hated, but only avoided through fear of consequences. The reins which
govern the life are no longer in the hands of the spirit, nor is
Moreover, the Christian life is not one of mere submission to authority; its true law is that of ceaseless upward aspiration. And since the union of husband and wife is consecrated to be the truest and deepest and most far-reaching of all types of the mystical union between Christ and His Church, it demands an ever closer approach to that perfect ideal of mutual love and service.
And whatever impairs the sacred, mysterious, all-pervading unity of a perfect wedlock is either the greatest of misfortunes or of crimes.
If it be frailty of temper, failure of common sympathies, an irretrievable error recognised too late, it is a calamity which may yet strengthen the character by evoking such pity and helpfulness as Christ the Bridegroom showed for the Church when lost. But if estrangement, even of heart, come through the secret indulgence of lawless reverie and desire, it is treason, and criminal although the traitor has not struck a blow, but only whispered sedition under his breath in a darkened room.
THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT.
“Thou shalt not steal.”—xx. 15.
Gury, Compend., i., secs. 607, 623.
Nothing is easier than to confuse one’s conscience about the ethics of
property. For the arrangements of various nations differ: it is a
geographical line which defines the right of the elder son against his
brothers, of sons against daughters, and of children against a wife; and
the demand is still more capricious which the state asserts against them
all, under the name of succession duty, and which it makes upon other
property in the form of a multitude of imposts and taxes. Can all these
different arrangements be alike binding? Add to this variability the
immense national revenues, which are apparently so little affected by
individual contributions, and it is no wonder if men fail to see that
honesty to the public is a duty as immutable and stern as any other duty
to their neighbour. Unfortunately the evil spreads. The
It is forgotten that a nation has at least the same authority as a club to regulate its own affairs, to fix the relative position and the subscription of its members. Common honesty teaches me that I must conform to these rules or leave the club; and this duty is not at all affected by the fact that other associations have different rules. In three such societies God Himself has placed us all—the family, the Church, and the nation; and therefore I am directly responsible to God for due respect to their laws. It is not true that the statute-book is inspired, any more than that the regulations of a household are divinely given. Yet a Divine sanction, such as rests upon the parental rule of fallible human creatures, hallows also national law. I may advocate a change in laws of which I disapprove, but I am bound in the meantime to obey the conditions upon which I receive protection from foreign foes and domestic fraud, and which cannot be subjected to the judgment of every individual, except at the cost of a dissolution of society, and a state of anarchy compared with which the worst of laws would be desirable.
This revolt of the individual is especially tempting when selfishness
deems itself wronged, as by the laws of property. And the eighth
commandment is necessary to protect society not merely against the
violence of the burglar and the craft of the impostor, but also against
the deceitfulness of our own hearts, asking What harm is in the evasion
of an impost? What
There is always the simple answer, Who made me a judge in my own case?
But when we regard the matter thus, it becomes clear that honesty is not mere abstinence from pillage. The community has larger claims than this upon us, and is wronged if we fail to discharge them.
The rich man robs the poor if he does not play his part in the great organisation by which he is served so well: every one robs the community who takes its benefits and returns none; and in this sense the bold saying is true, that every man lives by one of two methods—by labour or by theft.
St. Paul does not exhort men to refrain from theft merely in order to be
harmless, but to do good. That is the alternative contemplated when he
says, “Let the thief steal no more, but rather let him labour, working
with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have whereof to give
to him that hath need” (
THE NINTH COMMANDMENT.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”—xx. 16.
Jesus Christ regarded verbal professions as a very poor thing, and
asked, “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I command
you?” He
But a thought, once expressed, is transformed and energetic as a bullet when the charge is fired; it modifies other minds, and the word which we took to be far less potent than a deed becomes the mover of the fateful deeds of many men. And thus, being at once powerful and unsuspected, it is the most treacherous and subtle of all the forces which we wield.
And the ninth commandment does not undertake to bridle it by merely forbidding us in a court of justice to wrong our fellow-man by perjury.
We transgress it whenever we conceive a strong suspicion and repeat it
as a thing we know; when we allow the temptation of a biting epigram to
betray us into an unkind expression not quite warranted by the facts;
when we vindicate ourselves against a charge by throwing blame where it
probably but not certainly ought to lie; or when we are not content to
vindicate ourselves without bringing a countercharge which it would
perplex us to be asked to prove; when we give way to that most shallow
and meanest of all attempts at cleverness which claims credit for
There are very gifted persons who have never found out that a kindly and winning phrase may have as much literary merit as a stinging one, and it is quite as fine a thing to be like the dew on Hermon on as to shoot out arrows, even bitter words.
It is a pity that our harsh judgments always speak more loudly and confidently than our kindly ones, but the reason is plain: angry passion prompts the former, and its voice is loud; while the calm reflection which tones down and sweetens the judgment softens also the expression of it.
It has to be remembered, also, that false witness can reach to nations, organisations, political movements as well as individuals. The habit of putting the worst construction upon the intentions of foreign powers is what feeds the mutual jealousies that ultimately blaze out in war. The habit of thinking of rival politicians as deliberately false and treasonable is what lowers the standard of the noblest of secular pursuits, until each party, not to be undone, protests too much, raises its voice to a falsetto to scream its rival down, and relaxes its standard of righteousness lest it should be outdone by the unscrupulousness of its rival.
And there is yet another neighbour, against whom
Cynicism is false witness; and if it does not greatly wrong any one of our fellow-men, it injures both society and the cynic. If he is of a coarse fibre, it excuses him to himself in becoming the hard and unloving creature which he fancies that all men are. If he is too proud or too self-respecting to yield to this temptation, it isolates him, it chills and withers his sympathies for people quite as good as himself, whom he thinks of as the herd.
As for the more flagrant sins, so for this, the remedy
THE TENTH COMMANDMENT.
“Thou shalt not covet ... anything that is his.”—xx. 17.
But this the order in Exodus forbids, by placing the house first, and then the various living possessions which the householder gathers around him. What is thought of is the gradual process of acquisition, and the right of him who wins first a house, then a wife, servants, and cattle, to be secure in the possession of them all. Now, between foes, we saw that the evil temper is what leads to the evil deed, and the man who nurses hatred is a murderer at heart. Just so the householder is not rendered safe, and certainly not happy in the enjoyment of his rights, by the seventh commandment and the eighth, unless care be taken to prevent the accumulation of those forces which will some day break through them both. To secure cities against explosion, we forbid the storage of gunpowder and dynamite, and not only the firing of magazines.
But the moral law is not given to any man for his neighbour’s sake
chiefly. It is for me: statutes whereby I myself may live. And as the
Psalmist pondered on them, they expanded strangely for his
Here, then, we perceive with the utmost clearness what St. Paul so
clearly discerned—the true meaning of the Law, its convicting power,
its design to work not righteousness, but self-despair as the prelude of
self-surrender. For who can, by resolving, govern his desires? Who can
abstain not only from the usurping deed, but from the aggressive
emotion? Who will not despair when he learns that God desireth truth in
the inward parts? But this despair is the way to that better hope which
adds,
And as a strong interest or affection has power to destroy in the soul many weaker ones, so the love of God and our neighbour is the appointed way to overcome the desire of taking from our neighbour what God has given to him, refusing it to us.
xx. 18—xxiii. 33.
This is evidently the book of the Covenant to which the nation gave its formal assent (xxiv. 7), and is therefore the germ and the centre of the system afterwards so much expanded.
And since the adhesion of the people was required, and the final covenant was ratified as soon as it was given, before any of the more formal details were elaborated, and before the tabernacle and the priesthood were established, it may fairly claim the highest and most unique position among the component parts of the Pentateuch, excepting only the Ten Commandments.
Before examining it in detail, the impressive circumstances of its utterance have to be observed.
It is written that when the law was given, the voice of the trumpet
waxed louder and louder still. And as the multitude became aware that in
this tempestuous
Now, the New Testament quotes a confession of Moses himself, well-nigh
overwhelmed, “I do exceedingly fear and quake” (
Like every paradox, which is not a mere contradiction, this is instructive.
There is an abject fear, the dread of cowards and of the guilty, which masters and destroys the will—the fear which shrank away from the mount and cried out to Moses for relief. Such fear has torment, and none ought to admit it who understands that God wishes him well and is merciful.
There is also a natural agitation, at times inevitable though not
unconquerable, and often strongest in the highest natures because they
are the most finely strung. We are sometimes taught that there is sin in
that
And so Moses, while he himself quaked, was entitled to encourage his people, because he could encourage them, because he saw and announced the kindly meaning of that tremendous scene, because he dared presently to draw near unto the thick darkness where God was.
And therefore the day would come when, with his noble heart aflame for a yet more splendid vision, he would cry, “O Lord, I beseech Thee show me Thy glory”—some purer and clearer irradiation, which would neither baffle the moral sense, nor conceal itself in cloud.
Meanwhile, there was a fear which should endure, and which God desires: not panic, but awe; not the terror which stood afar off, but the reverence which dares not to transgress. “Fear not, for God is come to prove you” (to see whether the nobler emotion or the baser will survive), “and that His fear may be before your faces” (so as to guide you, instead of pressing upon you to crush), “that ye sin not.”
How needful was the lesson, may be seen by what followed when they were
taken at their word, and the pressure of physical dread was lifted off
them.
Of the nobler fear, which is a safeguard of the soul and not a danger, it is a serious question whether enough is alive among us.
Much sensational teaching, many popular books and hymns, suggest rather
an irreverent use of the Holy Name, which is profanation, than a filial
approach to a Father equally revered and loved. It is true that we are
bidden to come with boldness to the throne of Grace. Yet the same
Epistle teaches us again that our approach is even more solemn and awful
than to the Mount which might be touched, and the profaning of which was
death; and it exhorts us to have grace whereby we may offer service
well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe, “for our God is a consuming
fire” (
When the people recoiled, and Moses, trusting in God, was brave and entered the cloud, they ceased to have direct communion, and he was brought nearer to Jehovah than before.
What is now conveyed to Israel through him is an expansion and application of the Decalogue, and in turn it becomes the nucleus of the developed law. Its great antiquity is admitted by the severest critics; and it is a wonderful example of spirituality and searching depth, and also of such germinal and fruitful principles as cannot rest in themselves, literally applied, but must lead the obedient student on to still better things.
It is not the function of law to inspire men to obey
This subtle characteristic of all noble law will be very apparent in studying the kernel of the law, the code within the code, which now lies before us.
Men sometimes judge the Hebrew legislation harshly, thinking that they are testing it, as a Divine institution, by the light of this century. They are really doing nothing of the sort. If there are two principles of legislation dearer than all others to modern Englishmen, they are the two which these flippant judgments most ignore, and by which they are most perfectly refuted.
One is that institutions educate communities. It is not too much to say that we have staked the future of our nation, and therefore the hopes of humanity, upon our conviction that men can be elevated by ennobling institutions,—that the franchise, for example, is an education as well as a trust.
The other, which seems to contradict the first, and does actually modify
it, is that legislation must not
Now, these principles are the ample justification of all that startles us in the Pentateuch.
Slavery and polygamy, for instance, are not abolished. To forbid them utterly would have substituted far worse evils, as the Jews then were. But laws were introduced which vastly ameliorated the condition of the slave, and elevated the status of woman—laws which were far in advance of the best Gentile culture, and which so educated and softened the Jewish character, that men soon came to feel the letter of these very laws too harsh.
That is a nobler vindication of the Mosaic legislation than if this
century agreed with every letter of it. To be vital and progressive is a
better thing than to be correct. The law waged a far more effectual war
upon certain evils than by formal prohibition, sound in theory but
premature by centuries. Other good things besides liberty are not for
the nursery or the school. And “we also, when we were children, were
held in bondage” (
It is pretty well agreed that this code may be divided into five parts.
To the end of the twentieth chapter it deals directly with the worship
of God. Then follow
xx. 22—26.
Impressed with such views of God, their service of Him would be moulded
accordingly (24, 25). It is
“If thou lift up a tool upon it thou hast polluted it:” it has lost its virginal simplicity; it no longer suits a spontaneous offering of the heart, it has become artificial, sophisticated, self-conscious, polluted.
It is vehemently urged that these verses sanction a plurality of altars (so that one might be of earth and another of stone), and recognise the lawfulness of worship in other places than at a central appointed shrine. And it is concluded that early Judaism knew nothing of the exclusive sanctity of the tabernacle and the temple.
This argument forgets the circumstances. The Jews had been led to Horeb,
the mount of God. They were soon to wander away thence through the
wilderness. Altars had to be set up in many places, and might be of
different materials. It was an important
The last direction given with regard to worship is a homely one. It commands that the altar must not be approached with steps, lest the clothes of the priest should be disturbed and his limbs uncovered. Already we feel that we have to reckon with the temper as well as the letter of the precept. It is divinely unlike the frantic indecencies of many pagan rituals. It protests against all infractions of propriety, even the slightest, such as even now discredit many a zealous movement, and bear fruit in many a scandal. It rebukes all misdemeanour, all forgetfulness in look and gesture of the Sacred Presence, in every worshipper, at every shrine.
THE LESSER LAW (continued).
xxi. 1—32.
As regards the Hebrew slave, the effect was to reduce his utmost bondage
to a comparatively mild apprenticeship. At the worst he should go free
in the seventh year; and if the year of jubilee intervened, it brought a
still speedier emancipation. If his debt or misconduct had involved a
family in his disgrace, they should also share his emancipation, but if
while in bondage his master had provided for his marriage with a slave,
then his family must await their own appointed period of release. It
followed that if he had contracted a degrading alliance with a foreign
slave, his freedom would inflict upon him the pang
When the law came to deal with assaults it was impossible to place the
slave upon quite the same level as the freeman. But Moses excelled the
legislators of Greece and Rome, by making an assault or chastisement
which killed him upon the spot as worthy of death as if a freeman had
been slain. It was only the victim who lingered that died comparatively
unavenged (20, 21). After all, chastisement was a natural right of the
master, because he owned him (“he is his money”); and it would be hard
to treat an excess of what was permissible, inflicted perhaps under
It was not quite plain that these enactments extended to the Gentile slave. But in accordance with the assertion that the whole spirit of the statutes was elevating, the conclusion arrived at by the later authorities was the generous one.
When it is added that man-stealing (upon which all our modern systems of slavery were founded) was a capital offence, without power of commutation for a fine (xxi. 16), it becomes clear that the advocates of slavery appeal to Moses against the outraged conscience of humanity without any shadow of warrant either from the letter or the spirit of the code.
There remains to be considered a remarkable and melancholy sub-section of the law of slavery.
In every age degraded beings have made gain of the attractions of their daughters. With them, the law attempted nothing of moral influence. But it protected their children, and brought pressure to bear upon the tempter, by a series of firm provisions, as bold as the age could bear, and much in advance of the conscience of too many among ourselves to-day.
The seduction of any unbetrothed maiden involved marriage, or the payment of a dowry. And thus one door to evil was firmly closed (xxii. 16).
But when a man purchased a female slave, with the intention of making
her an inferior wife, whether for himself or for his son (such only are
the purchases
And if there was any failure to observe these honourable terms, she could return with unblemished reputation to her father’s home, without forfeiture of the money which had been paid for her (xxi. 7—11).
Does any one seriously believe that a system like the African slave trade could have existed in such a humane and genial atmosphere as these enactments breathed? Does any one who knows the plague spot and disgrace of our modern civilisation suppose for a moment that more could have been attempted, in that age, for the great cause of purity? Would to God that the spirit of these enactments were even now respected! They would make of us, as they have made of the Hebrew nation unto this day, models of domestic tenderness, and of the blessings in health and physical vigour which an untainted life bestows upon communities.
By such checks upon the degradation of slavery, the Jew began to learn
the great lesson of the sanctity of manhood. The next step was to teach
him the value of life, not only in the avenging of murder, but also in
the mitigation of such revenge. The blood-feud was too
A premeditated murder was inexpiable, not to be ransomed; the murderer must surely die. Even if he fled to the altar of God, intending to escape thence to a city of refuge when the avenger ceased to watch, he should be torn from that holy place: to shelter him would not be an honour, but a desecration to the shrine (xxi. 12, 14). According to this provision Joab and Adonijah suffered. For the slayer by accident or in hasty quarrel, “a place whither he shall flee” would be provided, and the vague phrase indicates the antiquity of the edict (ver. 13). This arrangement at once respected his life, which did not merit forfeiture, and provided a penalty for his rashness or his passion.
It is because the question in hand is the sanctity of man, that the capital punishment of a son who strikes or curses a parent, the vicegerent of God, and of a kidnapper, is interposed between these provisions and minor offences against the person (15—17).
Of these latter, the first is when lingering illness results from a blow received in a quarrel. This was not a case for the stern rule, eye for eye and tooth for tooth,—for how could that rule be applied to it?—but the violent man should pay for his victim’s loss of time, and for medical treatment until he was thoroughly recovered (18, 19).
But what is to be said to the general law of retribution in kind? Our
Lord has forbidden a Christian, in his own case, to exact it. But it
does not follow that it was unjust, since Christ plainly means to
instruct private persons not to exact their rights, whereas the
magistrate continues to be
It is also to be observed that by no other precept were the Jews more
clearly led to a morality still higher than it prescribed. Their
attention was first drawn to the fact that a compensation in money was
nowhere forbidden, as in the case of murder (
Lastly, there is the question of injury to the person, wrought by cattle.
It is clearly to deepen the sense of reverence for human life, that not
only must the ox which kills a man be slain, but his flesh may not be
eaten; thus carrying further the early aphorism “at the hand of every
beast will I require ... your blood” (
But if its evil temper has been previously observed, and he has been
warned, then his recklessness amounts to blood-guiltiness, and he must
die, or else pay whatever ransom is laid upon him. This last clause
recognises the distinction between his guilt and that of a deliberate
man-slayer, for whose crime the law distinctly prohibited a composition
(
And it is expressly provided, according to the honourable position of woman in the Hebrew state, that the penalty for a daughter’s life shall be the same as for that of a son.
As a slave was exposed to especial risk, and his position was an ignoble
one, a fixed composition was appointed, and the amount was memorable.
The ransom of a common slave, killed by the horns of the wild oxen, was
thirty pieces of silver, the goodly price that Messiah was prized at of
them (
xxi. 33—xxii. 15.
It is quite in the same spirit that I am accountable for what I borrow
or hire, and even for its accidental death (since for the time being it
was mine, and so should the loss be); but if I hired the owner with his
beast, it clearly continued to be in his charge (14, 15). But again, my
responsibility may not be pressed too far. If I have not borrowed
property, but consented to keep it for the owner, the risk is fairly
his, and if it be stolen, the presumption is not against my
But I must not be plunged into litigation without a compensating hazard on the other side: he whom God shall condemn shall pay double unto his neighbour (9).
It only remains to be observed, with regard to theft, that when cattle was recovered yet alive, the thief restored double, but when his act was consummated by slaughtering what he had taken, then he restored a sheep fourfold, and for an ox five oxen, because his villainy was more high-handed. And we still retain the law which allows the blood of a robber at night to be shed, but forbids it in the day, when help can more easily be had.
All this is reasonable and enlightened law; founded, like all good legislation, upon clear and satisfactory principles, and well calculated to elevate the tone of the public feeling, to be not only so many specific enactments, but also the germinant seeds of good.
THE LESSER LAW (continued).
xxii. 16—xxiii. 19.
It is enacted that a seducer must marry the woman he has betrayed, and if her father refuse to give her to him, then he must pay the same dower as a bridegroom would have done (xxii. 16, 17). And presently the sentence of death is launched against a blacker sensual crime (19). But between the two is interposed the celebrated mandate which doomed the sorceress to death, remarkable as the first mention of witchcraft in Scripture, and the only passage in all the Bible where the word is in the feminine form—a witch, or sorceress; remarkable also for a far graver reason, which makes it necessary to linger over the subject at some length.
“Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live.”—xxii. 18.
What are we to say to this?
In the first place it must be observed that the existence of a sorcerer is one thing, and the reality of his powers is quite another. What was most sad and shameful in the mediæval frenzy was the burning to ashes of multitudes who made no pretensions to traffic with the invisible world, who frequently held fast their innocence while enduring the agonies of torture, who were only aged and ugly and alone. Upon any theory, the prohibition of sorcery by the Pentateuch was no more answerable for these iniquities than its other prohibitions for the lynch law of the backwoods.
On the other hand, there were real professors of the black art: men did
pretend to hold intercourse with
Again, from the point of view which Moses occupied, it is plain that such professors should be punished. They are virtually punished still, whenever they obtain money under pretence of granting interviews with the departed. If we now rely chiefly upon educated public opinion to stamp out such impositions, that is because we have decided that a struggle between truth and falsehood upon equal terms will be advantageous to the former. It is a subdivision of the debate between intolerance and free thought. Our theory works well, but not universally well, even under modern conditions and in Christian lands. And assuredly Moses could not proclaim freedom of opinion, among uneducated slaves, amid the pressure of splendid and of seductive idolatries, and before the Holy Ghost was given. To complain of Moses for proscribing false religions would be to denounce the use of glass for seedlings because the full-grown plant flourishes in the open air.
Now, it would have been preposterous to proscribe
The holy people was meant to grow up under the most elevating of all influences, reliance upon a protecting God, Who had bidden His children to subdue the world as well as to replenish it, and of Whom one of their own poets sang that He had put all things under the feet of man. Their true heritage was not bounded by the strip of land which Joshua and his followers slowly conquered; to them belonged all the resources of nature which science, ever since, has wrested from the Philistine hands of barbarism and ignorance. And this nobler conquest depended upon the depth and sincerity of man’s feeling that the world is well-ordered and stable and the heritage of man, not a chaos of various and capricious powers, where Pallas inspires Diomed to hunt Venus bleeding off the field, or where the incantations of Canidia may disturb the orderly movements of the skies. Who could hope to discover by inductive science the secrets of such a world as this?
The devices of magic cut the links between cause and effect, between studious labour and the fruits which sorcery bade men to steal rather than to cultivate. What gambling was to commerce, that was witchcraft to philosophy, and the mischief no more depended on the validity of its methods than upon the soundness of the last device for breaking the bank at Monte Carlo.
If one could actually extort their secrets from the
And when we consider the fascination wielded by such pretensions, even in ages when the stability of nature is an axiom, the dread which false religions all around and their terrible rituals must have inspired, the superstitious tendencies of the people and their readiness to be misled, we shall see ample reasons for treading out the first sparks of so dangerous a fire.
Beyond this it is vain to pretend that the law of Moses goes. It was
right in declaring the sorcerer and the sorceress to be real and
dangerous phenomena. It never declared their pretensions to be valid
though illegitimate. And in one noteworthy passage it proclaims that a
real sign or a wonder could only proceed from God, and when it
accompanied false teaching was still a sign, though an ominous one,
implying that the Lord would prove them (
Sorcery in all its forms will die when men realise indeed that the world
is His, that there is no short or crooked way to the prizes which He
offers to wisdom and to labour, that these rewards are infinitely richer
and more splendid than the wildest dreams of magic, and that it is
literally true that all power, in earth as
The denunciation of witchcraft is quite naturally followed, as we now perceive, by the reiteration of the command that no sacrifice may be offered to any god except Jehovah (20). Strange and hateful offerings were an integral part of witchcraft, long before the hags of Macbeth brewed their charm, or the child in Horace famished to yield a spell.
xxii. 21, xxiii. 9.
We read an exhortation rather than a statute, which is repeated almost literally in the next chapter, and in both is supported by a beautiful and touching reason. “A stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shall ye oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” “A stranger shall ye not oppress, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (xxii. 21, xxiii. 9).
The “stranger” of these verses is probably the settler among them, as
distinguished from the traveller passing through the land. His want of
friends and ignorance of their social order would place him at a
disadvantage, of which they are forbidden to avail themselves, either by
legal process (for the first passage is connected with jurisprudence),
or in the affairs of common life. But the spirit of the commandment
Yet we find a precept reiterated in this Jewish code which involves, in its inevitable though slow development, the abolition of negro slavery, the respect by powerful and civilised nations of the rights of indigenous tribes, the most boundless advance of philanthropy, through the most generous recognition of the fraternity of man.
However sternly the sword of Joshua might fall, it struck not at the foreigner, as such, but at those tribes, guilty and therefore accursed of God, the cup of whose iniquity was full. And yet there was enough of carnage to prove that so gracious a commandment as this could not have risen spontaneously in the heart of early Judaism. Does it seem to be made more natural, by any proposed shifting of the date?
The reason of the precept is beautifully human. It rests upon no abstract basis of common rights, nor prudential consideration of mutual advantage.
In our time it is sometimes proposed to build all morality upon such
foundations; and strange consequences have already been deduced in cases
where the proposed sanction has not seemed to apply. But, in fact, no
advance in virtue has ever been traced to
The point is not that they may again be carried into captivity: it is that they have felt its bitterness, and ought to recoil from inflicting what they writhed under.
Now, this appeal is a master-stroke of wisdom. Much cruelty, and almost all the cruelty of the young, springs from ignorance, and that slowness of the imagination which cannot realise that the pains of others are like our own. Feeling them to be so, the charities of the poor toward one another frequently rise almost to sublimity. And thus, when suffering does not ulcerate the heart and make it savage, it is the most softening of all influences. In one of the most threadbare lines in the classics, the queen of Carthage boasts that
And the boldest assertion in Scripture of the natural development of our
Saviour’s human powers, is that which declares that “In that He Himself
hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succour them that are
tempted” (
To this principle, then, Moses appeals, and by the appeal he educates
the heart. He bids the people reflect on their own cruel hardships, on
the hateful character of their tyrants, on their own greater hatefulness
if they follow the vile example, after such bitter experience of its
character. He does not yet
Now, if the Jew should be merciful because he had himself known calamity, what implicit confidence may we repose upon the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief?
In the same spirit they are warned against afflicting the widow or the orphan. And the threat which is added joins hand with the exhortation which preceded. They should not oppress the stranger, because they had been strangers and oppressed. Now the argument advances. The same God Who then heard their cry will hear the cry of the forlorn, and avenge them, according to the judicial fate which He had just announced, in kind, by bringing their own wives to widowhood and their children to orphanage (xxii. 22—4).
To their brethren they should not lend money upon usury; but loans are
no more recommended than afterwards by Solomon: the words are “if thou
lend” (ver. 25). And if the raiment of the borrower were taken for a
pledge, it must be returned for him to use at night, or else God will
hear his cry, because, it is added
Again is to be observed the influence reaching beyond the prescription—the motive which cannot be felt without many other and larger consequences than the restoration of pledges at sunset.
How comes this precept to be followed by the words, “Thou shalt not curse God nor blaspheme a ruler” (ver. 28)? and is not this again somewhat strangely followed by the order not to delay to offer the firstfruits of the soil, to consecrate the firstborn son, and to devote the firstborn of cattle at the same age when a son ought to be circumcised? (vers. 29, 30).
If any link can be discovered, it is in the sense of communion with God, suggested by the recent appeal to His character as a motive that should weigh with man. Therefore they must not blaspheme Him, either directly or through His agents, nor tardily yield Him what He claims. Therefore it is added, “Ye shall be holy men unto Me,” and from the sense of dignity which religion thus inspires, a homely corollary is deduced—“Ye shall not eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field” (ver. 31). The bondmen of Egypt must learn a high-minded self-respect.
THE LESSER LAW (continued).
xxiii. 1—19.
“Thou shalt not take up a false report” (ver. 1) is a precept which reaches far. How many heedless whispers, conjectures lightly spoken because they were amusing, yet influencing the course of lives, and inferences uncharitably drawn, would have been still-born if this had been remembered!
But when the scandal is already abroad, the temptation
This is one reason for the institution of public worship. Men neglect
the house of God because they can pray as well at home, and encourage
wanton subdivisions of the Church because they think there is no very
palpable difference between competing denominations, or even because
competition may be as useful in religion as in trade, as if our
competition with the world and the devil for souls would not
sufficiently animate us, without competing with one another. But in
acting thus they weaken the effect for good of one of the mightiest
influences which work
Against this dangerous influence of the world, Christ has set the contagion of godliness within His Church, and every avoidable subdivision enfeebles this salutary counter-influence.
Moses warns us, therefore, of the danger of being drawn away by a multitude to do evil; but he is thinking especially of the peril of being tempted to “speak” amiss. Who does not know it? From the statesman who outruns his convictions rather than break with his party, and who cannot, amid deafening cheers, any longer hear his conscience speak, down to the humblest who fails to confess Christ before hostile men, and therefore by-and-by denies Him, there is not one whose speech and silence have never been in danger of being set to the sympathies of his own little public like a song to music.
That Moses was really thinking of this tendency to court popularity, is plain from the next clause—“Neither shalt thou favour a poor man in his cause” (ver. 3).
It is an admirable caution. Men there are who would scorn the opposite
injustice, and from whom no rich man could buy a wrongful decision with
gold
As in law so in literature. There once was a tendency to describe magnanimous persons of quality, and repulsive clodhoppers and villagers. Times have changed, and now we think it much more ingenious and high-toned to be quite as partial and disingenuous, reversing the cases. Neither is true, and therefore neither is artistic. No class in society is deficient in noble qualities, or in base ones. Nor is the man of letters at all more independent, who flatters the democracy in a democratic age, than he who flattered the aristocracy when they had all the prizes to bestow.
Other precepts forbid bribery, command that the soil shall rest in the
seventh year, when its spontaneous produce shall be for the poor, and
further recognise and consecrate relaxation, by instituting (or more
probably adopting into the code) the three feasts of Passover,
Pentecost, and Tabernacles. The section closes with the words “Thou
shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk” (ver. 19). Upon this clause
much ingenuity has been expended. It makes occult reference to some
superstitious rite. It is the name for some unduly stimulating compound.
But when we remember that, just before, the sabbatical fruit which the
poor left ungleaned was expressly reserved for the beasts of the field,
that men were bidden to help the overladen ass of their enemies, and
that care
It remained, to stamp upon the human conscience a deep sense of responsibility.
xxiii. 20—33.
We have now to ask how much this mysterious phrase involves; who was the Angel of whom it speaks?
The question is not, How much did Israel at that moment comprehend? For
we are distinctly told that prophets were conscious of speaking more
than they understood, and searched diligently but in vain what the
spirit that was in them did signify (
It would, in fact, be absurd to seek the New Testament
It is scarcely necessary to refute the position that a mere “messenger” is intended, because angels have not yet “appeared as personal agents separate from God.” Kalisch himself has amply refuted his own theory. For, he says, “we are compelled ... to refer it to Moses and his successor Joshua” (in loco). So then He Who will not forgive their transgressions is he who prayed that if God would not pardon them, his own name might be blotted from the book of life. He, to whom afterwards God said “I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee” (xxxiii. 19), is the same of Whom God said “My name is in Him.” This position needs no examination; but the perplexities of those who reject the deeper interpretation is a strong confirmation of its soundness. We have still to choose between the promise of a created angel, and some manifestation and interposition of God, distinguished from Jehovah and yet one with Him. This latter view is an evident preparation for clearer knowledge yet to come. It is enough to stamp the dispensation which puts it forth as but provisional, and therefore bears witness to that other dispensation which has the key to it. And it is exactly what a Christian would expect to find somewhere in this summary of the law.
What, then, do we read elsewhere about the Angel
A difficulty has to be met at the very outset. The issue would be
decided offhand, if it could be shown that the Angel of this verse is
the same who is offered, as a poor substitute for their Divine
protector, in the thirty-third chapter. But no contrast can be clearer
than between the encouraging promise before us, and the sharp menace
which then plunged Israel into mourning. Here is an Angel who must not
be provoked, who will not pardon you, because “My Name is in Him.” There
is an angel who will be sent because God will not go up, ... lest He
consume them (vers. 2, 3). He is not the Angel of God’s presence, but of
His absence. When the intercession of Moses won from God a reversal of
the sentence, He then said “My Presence (My Face) shall go with thee,
and I will give thee rest,” Even if the rendering were accepted, “Must My Presence (My
Face) go with thee?” (Can I not be trusted without a direct Presence?)
the argument would not be affected, because Moses presses for the favour
and obtains it.
Moreover, Isaiah, speaking of this time, says that “In all their
affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence (His Face)
saved them” (
Thus we find that some angel is to be sent because God will not go up:
that thereupon the nation mourns,
This difficulty being now converted into an evidence, we turn back to examine other passages.
When the Angel of the Lord spoke to Hagar, “she called the name of
Jehovah that spake unto her El Roi” (
In
By the comparison of these and many later passages (which is nothing but the scientific process of induction, leaning not on the weight of any single verse, but on the drift and tendency of all the phenomena) we learn that God was already revealing Himself through a Medium, a distinct personality whom He could send, yet not so distinct but that His name was in Him, and He Himself was the Author of what He did.
If Israel obeyed Him, He would bring them into the promised land (ver.
23); and if there they continued unseduced by false worships, He would
bless their provisions, their bodily frame, their children; He would
bring terror and a hornet against their foes; He would clear the land
before them as fast as their population could enjoy it; He would extend
their boundaries yet farther, from the Red Sea, where Solomon held Ezion
Geber (
THE COVENANT RATIFIED. THE VISION OF GOD.
xxiv.
This code they unanimously accepted, and he wrote it down. It is a
memorable statement, recording the origin of the first portion of Holy
Scripture that ever existed as such, whatever earlier writings may now
or afterwards have been incorporated in the Pentateuch. He then built an
altar for God, and twelve pillars for the tribes, and sacrificed
burnt-offerings and peace-offerings unto the Lord. Sin-offerings, it
will be observed, were not yet instituted; and neither was the
priesthood, so that young men slew the offerings. Half of the blood was
poured upon the altar, because God had perfected His share in the
covenant. The remainder was not used until the law had been read aloud,
and the people had answered with one voice, “All that the Lord hath
commanded will we do, and will be obedient.” Thereupon they too were
sprinkled with the blood, and the solemn words were spoken, “Behold the
blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all
these words.” The
And now the principle began to work which was afterwards embodied in the priesthood. That principle, stated broadly, was exclusion from the presence of God, relieved and made hopeful by the admission of representatives. The people were still forbidden to approach, under pain of death. But Moses and Aaron were no longer the only ones to cross the appointed boundaries. With them came the two sons of Aaron, (afterwards, despite their privilege, to meet a dreadful doom,) and also seventy representatives of all the newly covenanted people. Joshua, too, as the servant of Moses, was free to come, although unspecified in the summons (vers. 1, 13).
“They saw the God of Israel,” and under His feet the blueness of the sky like intense sapphire. And they were secure: they beheld God, and ate and drank.
But in privilege itself there are degrees: Moses was called up still higher, and left Aaron and Hur to govern the people while he communed with his God. For six days the nation saw the flanks of the mountain swathed in cloud, and its summit crowned with the glory of Jehovah like devouring fire. Then Moses entered the cloud, and during forty days they knew not what had become of him. Was it time lost? Say rather that all time is wasted except what is spent in communion, direct or indirect, with the Eternal.
The narrative is at once simple and sublime. We are sometimes told that
other religions besides our own rely for sanction upon their
supernatural origin.
But what are we to think of the assertion that God was seen to stand upon a burning mountain?
He it is Whom no man hath seen or can see, and in His presence the seraphim veil their faces.
It will not suffice to answer that Moses “endured as seeing Him that is
invisible” (
With this clue before us, we ask what notion did the narrative really convey to its ancient readers? If our defence is to be thoroughly satisfactory, it must show an escape from heretical and carnal notions of deity, not only for ourselves, but also for careful readers from the very first.
Now it is certain that no such reader could for one moment think of a
manifestation thorough, exhaustive, such as the eye receives of colour
and of form. Because the effect produced is not satisfaction, but
desire. Each new vision deepens the sense of the unseen. Thus we read
first that Moses and Aaron,
So, then, it is not our modern theology, but this noble book of Exodus itself, which tells us that Moses did not and could not adequately see God, however great and sacred the vision which he beheld. From this book we learn that, side by side with the most intimate communion and the clearest possible unveiling of God, grew up the profound consciousness that only some attributes and not the essence of deity had been displayed.
It is very instructive also to observe the steps by which Moses is led
upward. From the burning bush
What can cloud and fire avail, toward the manifesting of a God Whose essence is His love? It is from the Old Testament narrative that the New Testament inferred that Moses endured as seeing indeed, yet as seeing Him Who is inevitably and for ever invisible to eyes of flesh: he learned most, not when he beheld some form of awe, standing on a paved work of sapphire stone and as it were the very heaven for clearness, but when hidden in a cleft of the rock and covered by the hand of God while He passed by.
On one hand the people saw the glory of God: on the other hand it was the best lesson taught by a far closer access, still to pray and yearn to see that glory. The seventy beheld the God of Israel: for their leader was reserved the more exalting knowledge, that beyond all vision is the mystic overshadowing of the Divine, and a voice which says “No man shall see Me and live.” The difference in heart is well typified in this difference in their conduct, that they saw God and ate and drank, but he, for forty days, ate not. Satisfaction and assurance are a poor ideal compared with rapt aspiration and desire.
Thus we see that no conflict exists between this declaration and our belief in the spirituality of God.
We have still to ask what is the real force of the
What do we mean even by saying that we see each other?—that, observing keenly, we see upon one face cunning, upon another sorrow, upon a third the peace of God? Are not these emotions immaterial and invisible as the essence of God Himself? Nay, so invisible is the reality within each bosom, that some day all that eye hath seen shall fall away from us, and yet the true man shall remain intact.
Man has never seen more than a hint, an outcome, a partial self-revelation or self-betrayal of his fellow-man.
And yet, incredible as the paradox would seem, if it were not too common to be strange, the play of muscles and rush of blood, visible through the skin, do reveal the most spiritual and immaterial changes. Even so the heavens declare that very glory of God which baffled the undimmed eyes of Moses. So it was, also, that when rended rocks and burning skies revealed a more immanent action of Him Who moves through all nature always, when convulsions hitherto undreamed of by those dwellers in Egyptian plains overwhelmed them with a new sense of their own smallness and a supreme Presence, God was manifested there.
Not unlike this is the explanation of St. Augustine,
It has still to be added that His manifestation is exactly suited to the
stage now reached in the education of Israel. Their fathers had already
“seen God” in the likeness of man: Abraham had entertained Him; Jacob
had wrestled with Him. And so Joshua before Ai, and Manoah by the rock
at Zorah, and Ezekiel by the river Chebar, should see the likeness of a
man. We who believe the doctrine of a real Incarnation can well perceive
that in these passing and mysterious glimpses God was not only revealing
Himself in the way which would best prepare humanity for His future
coming in actual manhood, but also in the way by which, meanwhile, the
truest and deepest light could be thrown upon His nature, a nature which
could hereafter perfectly manifest itself in flesh. Why, then, do not
the records of the Exodus hint at a human likeness? Why did they “behold
no similitude”? Clearly because the masses of Israel were utterly
unprepared to receive rightly such a vision. To them
But it is hard to see why the human likeness of God should exist in Genesis and Joshua, but not in the history of the Exodus, if that story be a post-Exilian forgery.
This is not all. The revelations of God in the desert were connected with threats and prohibitions: the law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And with the different tone of the message a different aspect of the speaker was to be expected. From the blazing crags of Sinai, fenced around, the voice of a trumpet waxing louder and louder, said “Thou shalt not!” On the green hill by the Galilæan lake Jesus sat down, and His disciples came unto Him, and He opened His mouth and said “Blessed.”
Now, the conscience of every sinner knows that the God of the
commandments is dreadful. It is of Him, not of hell, that Isaiah said
“The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling hath surprised the godless
ones. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us
shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” (
For him who rejects the light yoke of the Lord of Love, the fires of Sinai are still the truest revelation of deity; and we must not deny Sinai because we know Bethlehem. We must choose between the two.
THE SHRINE AND ITS FURNITURE.
xxv. 1—40.
Strange indeed is the contrast between the mountain burning up to heaven, and the lowly structure of the wood of the desert, which was now to be erected by subscription.
And yet the change marks not a lower conception of deity, but an advance, just as the quiet and serene communion of a saint with God is loftier than the most agitating experience of the convert.
This is the first announcement of a fixed abiding presence of God in the
midst of men, and it is therefore the precursor of much. St. John
certainly alluded to this earliest dwelling of God on earth when he
wrote, “The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us” (
It may seem strange that after the commandment “Let them make Me a sanctuary” the whole chapter is devoted to instructions, not for the tabernacle but for its furniture. But indeed the four articles enumerated in this chapter present a wonderfully graphic picture of the nature and terms of the intercourse of God with man. On one side is His revelation of righteousness, but righteousness propitiated and become gracious, and this is symbolised by the ark of the testimony and the mercy-seat. On the other side the consecration both of secular and sacred life is typified by the table with bread and wine, and by the golden candlestick. Except thus, no tabernacle could have been the dwelling of the Lord, nor ever shall be.
And this is the true reason why the altar of incense is not even mentioned until a later chapter (xxx.). We do homage to God because He is present: it is rather the consequence than the condition of His abode with us.
The first step towards the preparation of a shrine for God on earth is
the enshrining of His will: Moses should therefore make first of all an
ark, wherein to treasure up “the testimony which I shall give thee,” the
two tables of the law (xxv. 16). In it were also
Thus the ark was to treasure up the expression of the will of God, and the relics which told by what mercies and deliverances He claimed obedience. It was a precious thing, but not the most precious, as we shall presently learn; and therefore it was not made of pure gold, but overlaid with it. That it might be reverently carried, four rings were cast and fastened to it at the lower corners, and in these four staves, also overlaid with gold, were permanently inserted.
The next article mentioned is the most important of all.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that the mercy-seat was a mere
lid, an ordinary portion of the ark itself. It was made of a different
and more costly material, of pure gold, with which the ark was only
overlaid. There is separate mention that Bezaleel “made the ark, ... and
he made the mercy-seat” (xxxvii. 1, 6), and the special presence of God
in the Most Holy Place is connected much more intimately with the
mercy-seat than with the remainder of the structure. Thus He promises to
“appear in the cloud above the mercy-seat” (
Let us, then, put ourselves into the place of an ancient worshipper. Excluded though he is from the Holy Place, and conscious that even the priests are shut out from the inner shrine, yet the high priest who enters is his brother: he goes on his behalf: the barrier is a curtain, not a wall.
But while the Israelite mused upon what was beyond, the ark, as we have seen, suggests the depth of his obligation; for there is the rod of his deliverance and the bread from heaven which fed him; and there also are the commandments which he ought to have kept. And his conscience tells him of ingratitude, and a broken covenant; by the law is the knowledge of sin.
It is therefore a sinister and menacing thought that immediately above this ark of the violated covenant burns the visible manifestation of God, his injured Benefactor.
And hence arises the golden value of that which interposes, beneath which the accusing law is buried, by means of which God “hides His face from our sins.”
The worshipper knows this cover to be provided by a separate ordinance
of God, after the ark and its contents had been arranged for, and finds
in it a vivid concrete representation of the idea “Thou hast cast all my
sins behind Thy back” (
The word “seat” has no part in the original; and we are not to think of
God as reposing on it, but as
The Greek word is found twice in the New Testament: once when the
cherubim of glory overshadow the mercy-seat, and again when God hath
set forth Christ to be a propitiation (
We know mysteries which the Israelite could not guess of the means by
which this was brought to pass. But as he watched the high priest
disappearing into that awful solitude, with God, as he listened to the
chime of bells, swung by his movements, and announcing that still he
lived, two conditions stood out broadly before his mind. One was the
bringing in of incense: “Thou shalt bring a censer full of burning coals
of fire from before the altar, that the cloud of the incense may cover
the mercy-seat” (
Thus the crowning height of the Jewish ritual was attained when the blood of the great national sacrifice was offered not only before God, but, with special reference to the covering up of the broken and accusing law, before the mercy-seat.
No wonder that on either side of it, and moulded of the same mass of metal, were the cherubim in an attitude of adoration, their outspread wings covering it, their faces bent, not only as bowing in reverence before the Divine presence, but, as we expressly read, “toward the mercy-seat shall the faces of the cherubim be.” For the meaning of this great symbol was among the things which “the angels desire to look into.”
We now understand how much was gained when God said “There will I meet
thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat” (ver. 22).
It was an assurance, not only of the love which desires obedience, but
of the mercy which passes over failure. This investigation offers a fine example of the folly of
that kind of interpretation which looks about for some sort of external
and arbitrary resemblance, and fastens upon that as the true meaning.
Nothing is more common among these expounders than to declare that the
wood and gold of the ark are types of the human and Divine natures of
our Lord. If either ark or mercy-seat should be compared to Him, it is
obviously the latter, which speaks of mercy. But this was of pure gold.
Thus far, there has been symbolised the mind of God, His righteousness and His grace.
The next articles have to do with man, his homage to God and his witness for Him.
There is first the table of the shewbread (vers. 23—30), overlaid with
pure gold, surrounded, like the ark, with “a crown” or moulding of gold,
for ornament and the greater security of the loaves, and strengthened by
a border of pure gold carried around the base, which was also ornamented
with a crown, or moulding. Close to this border were rings for staves,
like those by which the ark was borne. The table was furnished with
dishes upon which, every Sabbath day, new shewbread might be conveyed
into the tabernacle, and the old might be removed for the priests to
eat. There were spoons also, by which to place frankincense upon each
pile of bread; and “flagons and bowls to pour out withal.” What was thus
to be poured we do not read, but there is no doubt that it was wine,
second only to bread as a requisite of Jewish life, and forming, like
the frankincense, a link between this weekly presentation and the
meal-offerings. But all these were subordinate to the twelve loaves, one
for each tribe, which were laid in two piles upon the table. It is clear
that their presentation was the essence of the rite, and not their
consumption by the priests, which was possibly little more than a
safeguard against irreverent treatment. For the word shewbread is
literally bread of the face or presence, which word is used of the
presence of God, in the famous prayer “If Thy presence go not with me,
carry us not up hence” (xxxiii. 15). And of whom, other than God, can it
here be reasonably understood? Now Jacob, long before, had vowed
Nor is it overstrained to add, that when this bread was given to their
priestly representatives to eat, with all reverence and in a holy place,
God responded, and gave back to His people that which represented the
necessary maintenance of the tribes. Thus it was, “on the behalf of the
children of Israel, an everlasting covenant” (
The form has perished. But as long as we confess in the Lord’s Prayer that the wealthiest does not possess one day’s bread ungiven—as long, also, as Christian families connect every meal with a due acknowledgment of dependence and of gratitude—so long will the Church of Christ continue to make the same confession and appeal which were offered in the shewbread upon the table.
The next article of furniture was the golden candlestick (vers. 31—40).
And this presents the curious phenomenon that it is extremely clear in
its typical import, and in its material outline; but the details of the
description are most obscure, and impossible to be gathered from the
Authorised Version. Strictly speaking, it was not a lamp, but only a
gorgeous lamp-stand, with one perpendicular shaft, and six branches,
three springing, one above another, from each side of the shaft, and all
curving up to the same height. Upon these were laid the seven lamps,
which
As we are told that when the Lord called the child Samuel, “the lamp of
God was not yet gone out” (
We have now to ascertain the spiritual meaning of this stately symbol.
There are two other passages in Scripture which take up the figure and
carry it forward. In Zechariah (iv. 2—12) we are taught that the
separation of the lamps is a mere incident; they are to be conceived of
as organically one, and moreover as fed by secret ducts with oil from no
limited supply, but from living olive trees, vital, rooted in the system
of the universe. Whatever obscurity may veil those “two sons of oil”
(and this is not the place to discuss the subject), we are distinctly
told that the main lesson is that of lustre derived from supernatural,
invisible sources. Zerubbabel is confronted by a great mountain of
hindrance, but it shall become a plain before him, because the lesson of
the vision of the candlestick is this—
Again, in the Revelation, we find the New Testament Churches described
as lamps, among which their Lord habitually walks. And no sooner have
the seven churches on earth been warned and cheered, than we are shown
before the throne of God seven torches (burning by their own
incandescence—vide Trench, N. T. Synonyms, p. 162), which are the
seven spirits of God, answering to His seven light-bearers upon the
earth (
Lastly, the perfect and mystic number, seven, declares that the light of the Church, shining in a dark place, ought to be full and clear, no imperfect presentation of the truth: “they shall light the lamps, to give light over against it.”
Because this lamp shines with the light of the Church, exhibiting the
graces of her Lord, therefore a special command is addressed to the
people, besides the call for contributions to the work in general, that
they shall bring pure olive oil, not obtained by heat
It is to burn, as the Church ought to shine in all darkness of the conscience or the heart of man, from evening to morning for ever. And the care of the ministers of God is to be the continual tending of this blessed and sacred flame.
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT.
xxv. 9, 40.
That is plainly not what the Epistle to the Hebrews understands (
We are not, then, to think of a heavenly tabernacle, exhibited to the material senses of Moses, with which all the details of his own work must be identical.
Rather we are to conceive of an inspiration, an ideal, a vision of
spiritual truths, to which all this work in gold and acacia-wood should
correspond. It was thus that Socrates told Glaucon, incredulous of his
republic, that in heaven there is laid up a pattern, for him that wishes
to behold it. Nothing short of this
Without this pervading sentiment, the most elaborate specifications of weight and measurement, of cup and pomegranate and flower, could never have produced the required effect. An ideal there was, a divinely designed suggestiveness, which must be always present to his superintending vigilance, as once it shone upon his soul in sacred vision or trance; a suggestiveness which might possibly be lost amid correct elaborations, like the soul of a poem or a song, evaporating through a rendering which is correct enough, yet in which the spirit, even if that alone, has been forgotten.
It is surely a striking thing to find this need of a pervading sentiment impressed upon the author of the first piece of religious art that ever was recognised by heaven.
For it is the mysterious all-pervading charm of such a dominant sentiment which marks the impassable difference between the lowliest work of art, and the highest piece of art-manufacture which is only a manufactured article.
And assuredly the recognition of this principle among a people whose ancient history shows but little interest in art, calls for some attention from those who regard the tabernacle itself as a fiction, and its details as elaborated in Babylonia, in the priestly interest. (Kuenen, Relig. of Israel, ii. 148).
The problem of problems for all who deny the divinity of the Old
Testament is to explain the curious position which its institutions are
consistent in accepting.
This very presence of the ideal is what will for ever make the highest natures quite certain that the visible universe is no mere resultant of clashing forces without a soul, but the genuine work of a Creator. The universe is charged throughout with the most powerful appeals to all that is artistic and vital within us; so that a cataract is more than water falling noisily, and the silence of midnight more than the absence of disturbance, and a snow mountain more than a storehouse to feed the torrents in summer, being also poems, appeals, revelations, whispers from a spirit, heard in the depth of ours.
Does any one, listening to Beethoven’s funeral march, doubt the
utterance of a soul, as distinct from clanging metal and vibrating
chords? And the world has in it this mysterious witness to something
more than heat and cold, moisture and drought: something which makes the
difference between a well-filled granary and a field of grain rippling
golden in the breeze. This is not a coercive argument for the hostile
logic-monger:
To fill the tabernacle of Moses with spiritual meaning, the ideal tabernacle was revealed to him in the Mount of God.
Let us apply the same principle to human life. There also harmony and unity, a pervading sense of beauty and of soul, are not to be won by mere obedience to a mandate here and a prohibition there. Like Moses, it is not by labour according to specification that we may erect a shrine for deity. Those parables which tell of obedient toil would be sadly defective, therefore, without those which speak of love and joy, a supper, a Shepherd bearing home His sheep, a prodigal whose dull expectation of hired service is changed for investiture with the best robe and the gold ring, and welcome of dance and music.
How shall our lives be made thus harmonious, a spiritual poem and not a task, a chord vibrating under the musician’s hand? How shall thought and word, desire and deed, become like the blended voices of river and wind and wood, a witness for the divine? Not by mere elaboration of detail (though correctness is a condition of all true art), but by a vision before us of the divine life, the Ideal, the pattern shown to all, and equally to be imitated (strange though it may seem) by peasant and prince, by woman and sage and child.
THE TABERNACLE
xxvi.
Some confusion of thought exists, even among educated laymen, with
regard to the arrangements of the temple; and this has led to similar
confusion (to a less extent) concerning the corresponding parts of the
tabernacle. “The temple” in which the Child Jesus was found, and into
which Peter and John went up to pray, ought not to be confounded with
that inner shrine, “the temple,” in which it was the lot of the priest
Zacharias to burn incense, and into which Judas, forgetful of all its
sacredness in his anguish, hurled his money to the priests (
“The curtains of the tabernacle” were ten, made of linen, of which every thread consisted of fine strands twisted together, “and blue and purple and scarlet,” with cherubim not embroidered but woven into the fabric (1).
These curtains were sewn together, five and five, so as to make two great curtains, each slightly larger than forty-two feet by thirty, being twenty-eight cubits long by five times four cubits broad (2, 3). Finally these two were linked together, each having fifty loops for that purpose at corresponding places at the edge, which loops were bound together by fifty golden clasps (4—6). Thus, when the nation was about to march, they could easily be divided in the middle and then folded in the seams.
This costly fabric was regarded as part of the true tabernacle: why, then, do we find the outer curtains mentioned before the rest of the tabernacle proper is described?
Certainly because these rich curtains lie immediately underneath the coarser ones, and are to be considered along with “the tent” which covered all (7). This consisted of curtains of goats’ hair, of the same size, and arranged in all respects like the others, except that their clasps were only bronze, and that the curtains were eleven in number, instead of ten, so that half a curtain was available to hang down over the back, and half was to be doubled back upon itself at the front of “the tabernacle,” that is to say, the richer curtains underneath. The object of this is obvious: it was to bring the centre of the goatskin curtains over the edge of the linen ones, as tiles overlap each other, to shut out the rain at the joints. But this implies, what has been said already, that the curtains of the tabernacle should lie close to the curtains of the tent.
Over these again was an outer covering of rams’ skins dyed red, and a covering of sealskins above all (14). This last, it is generally agreed, ran only along the top, like a ridge tile, to protect the vulnerable part of the roof. And now it has to be remembered that we are speaking of a real tent with sloping sides, not a flat cover laid upon the flat inner structure of boards, and certain to admit the rain. By calling attention to this fact, Mr. Fergusson succeeded in solving all the problems connected with the measurements of the tabernacle, and bringing order into what was little more than chaos before (Smith’s Bible Dict., “Temple”).
The inner tabernacle was of acacia wood, which was the only timber of
the sanctuary. Each board stood ten cubits high, and was fitted by
tenons into two silver sockets, which probably formed a continuous base.
Each of these contained a talent of silver, and was therefore more than
eighty pounds weight; and they
The posts were held in their places by wooden bars, which were overlaid with gold (as the boards also were, ver. 29) and fitted into golden rings. Four such bars, or bolts, ran along a portion of each side, and there was a fifth great bar which stretched along the whole forty-five feet from end to end. Thus the edifice was firmly held together; and the wealth of the material makes it likely that they were fixed on the inside, and formed a part of the ornament of the edifice (26—9).
When the two curtains were fastened together with clasps, they gave a
length of sixty feet. But we have seen that the length of the boards
when jointed together was only forty-five feet. This gives a projection
of seven feet and a half (five cubits) for the front and rear of the
tent beyond the tabernacle of boards; and when the great curtains were
drawn tight, sloping from the ridge-pole fourteen cubits on each side,
it has been shown (assuming a right-angle at the top) that they reached
within five cubits of the ground, and extended five cubits beyond the
sides, the same distance as at
But here a difficult question arises. There is no specific measurement of the point at which this subdividing veil was to stretch across the tent. The analogy of the Temple inclines us to believe that the Most Holy Place was a perfect cube, and the Holy Place twice as long as it was broad and high. There is evident allusion to this final shape of the Most Holy Place in the description of the New Jerusalem, of which the length and breadth and height were equal. And yet there is strong reason to suspect that this arrangement was not the primitive one. For Moses was ordered to stretch the veil underneath the golden clasps which bound together the two great curtains of the tabernacle (ver. 33). But these were certainly in the middle. How, then, could the veil make an unequal division below? Possibly fifteen feet square would have been too mean a space for the dimensions of the Most Holy Place, although the perfect cube became desirable, when the size was doubled.
A screen of the same rich material, but apparently not embroidered with cherubim, was to stretch across the door of the tent; but this was supported on five pillars instead of four, clearly that the central one might support the ridge-bar of the roof. And their sockets were of brass (vers. 36, 37).
The tabernacle, like the Temple, had its entrance on the east (ver. 22); and in the case of the Temple this was the more remarkable, because the city lay at the other side, and the worshippers had to pass round the shrine before they reached the front of it. The object was apparently to catch the warmth of the sun. For a somewhat similar reason, every pagan temple in the ancient world, with a few well-defined exceptions which are easily explained, also faced the east; and the worshippers, with their backs to the dawn, saw the first beams of the sun kindling their idol’s face. The orientation of Christian churches is due to the custom which made the neophyte, standing at first in his familiar position westward, renounce the devil and all his works, and then, turning his back upon his idols, recite the creed with his face eastward.
What ideas would be suggested by this edifice to the worshipper will better be examined when we have examined also the external court.
THE OUTER COURT.
xxvii.
It will be noticed that the laver in this court, like the altar of incense within, is reserved for mention in a later chapter (xxx. 18) as being a subordinate feature in the arrangements.
The enclosure was a quadrangle of one hundred cubits by fifty; it was five cubits high, and each cubit may be taken as a foot and a half. The linen which enclosed it was upheld by pillars with sockets of brass; and one of the few additional facts to be gleaned from the detailed statement that all these directions were accurately carried out is that the heads of all the pillars were overlaid with silver (xxxviii. 17). The pillars were connected by rods (fillets) of silver, and a hanging of fine-twined linen was stretched by means of silver hooks (9—13). The entrance was twenty cubits wide, corresponding accurately to the width, not of the tabernacle, but of “the tent” as it has been described (reaching out five cubits farther on each side than the tabernacle), and it was closed by an embroidered curtain (14—17). This fence was drawn firmly into position and held there by brazen tent-pins; and we here incidentally learn that so was the tent itself (19).
[For verses 20, 21, see page 423.]
We are now in a position to ask what sentiment all
Approaching it from outside, the linen enclosure (being seven feet and a half high) would conceal everything but the great roof of the tent, one uniform red, except for the sealskin covering along the summit. A gloomy and menacing prospect, broken possibly by some gleams, if the curtain of the gable were drawn back, from the gold with which every portion of the shrine within was plated.
So does the world outside look askance upon the Church, discerning a mysterious suggestion everywhere of sternness and awe, yet with flashes of strange splendour and affluence underneath the gloom.
In this place God is known to be: it is a tent, not really “of the
congregation,” but “of meeting” between Jehovah and His people: “the
tent of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you, ... and
there I will meet with the children of Israel” (xxix. 42—3). And so the
Israelite, though troubled by sin and fear, is attracted to the gate,
and enters. Right in front stands the altar: this obtrudes itself before
all else upon his attention: he must learn its lesson first of all.
Especially will he feel that this is so if a sacrifice is now to be
offered, since the official must go farther into the court to wash at
the laver, and then return; so that a loss of graduated arrangement has
been accepted in order to force the altar to the front. And he will soon
learn that not only must every approach to the sacred things within be
heralded by sacrifice upon this altar, but the blood of the victim must
be carried as a passport into the shrine. Surely he remembers how the
blood of the lamb saved his own life when the firstborn of Egypt died:
he knows that it is
No Hebrew could watch his fellow-sinner lay his hand on a victim’s head, and confess his sin before the blow fell on it, without feeling that sin was being, in some mysterious sense, “borne” for him. The intricacies of our modern theology would not disturb him, but this is the sentiment by which the institutions of the tabernacle assuredly ministered comfort and hope to him. Strong would be his hope as he remembered that the service and its solace were not of human devising, that God had “given it to him upon the altar to make atonement for his soul.”
Taking courage, therefore, the worshipper dares to lift up his eyes. And beyond the altar he sees a vision of dazzling magnificence. The inner roof, most unlike the sullen red of the exterior, is blazing with various colours, and embroidered with emblems of the mysterious creatures of the sky, winged, yet not utterly afar from human in their suggestiveness. Encompassed and looked down into by these is the tabernacle, all of gold. If the curtain is raised he sees a chamber which tells what the earth should be—a place of consecrated energies and resources, and of sacred illumination, the oil of God burning in the sevenfold vessel of the Church. Is this blessed place for him, and may he enter? Ah, no! and surely his heart would grow heavy with consciousness that reconciliation was not yet made perfect, when he learned that he must never approach the place where God had promised to meet with him.
Much less might he penetrate the awful chamber
Thus every worshipper carries away a profound consciousness that he is utterly unworthy, and yet that his unworthiness has been expiated; that he is excluded, and yet that his priest, his representative, has been admitted, and therefore that he may hope. The Holy Ghost did not declare by sign that no way into the Holiest existed, but only that it was not yet made manifest. Not yet.
This leads us to think of the priest.
“THE HOLY GARMENTS.”
xxviii.
The holiness of the raiment implies that separation to office can be expressed by official robes in the Church as well as in the state; and their glory and beauty show that God, Who has clothed His creation with splendour and with loveliness, does not dissever religious feeling from artistic expression.
All that are wise-hearted in such work, being inspired by God as really, though not as profoundly, as if their task were to foretell the advent of Messiah, are to unite their labours upon these garments.
The order in the twenty-eighth chapter is perhaps that of their visible importance. But it will be clearer to describe them in the order in which they were put on.
Next the flesh all the priests were clad from the loins to the thighs in close-fitting linen: the indecency of many pagan rituals must be far from them, and this was a perpetual ordinance, “that they bear not iniquity and die” (xxviii. 42—3).
Over this was a tight-fitting “coat” (a shirt rather) of fine linen, white, but woven in a chequered pattern, without seam, like the robe of Jesus, and bound together with a girdle (39—43).
These garments were common to all the priests; but their “head-tires” differed from the impressive mitre of the high priest. The rest of the vestments in this chapter belong to him alone.
Over the “coat” he wore the flowing “robe of the ephod,” all blue, little seen from the waist up, but uncovered thence to the feet, and surrounded at the hem with golden pomegranates, the emblem of fruitfulness, and with bells to enable the worshippers outside to follow the movements of their representative. He should die if this expression of his vicarious function were neglected (31—35).
Above this robe was the ephod itself—a kind of gorgeous jacket, made in two pieces which were joined at the shoulders, and bound together at the waist by a cunningly woven band, which was of the same piece. This ephod, like the curtains of the tabernacle, was of blue and purple and scarlet and fine-twined linen; but added to these were threads of gold, and we read, as if this were a novelty which needed to be explained, that they beat the gold into thin plates and then cut it into threads (xxxix. 3, xxviii. 6—8).
Upon the shoulders were two stones, rightly perhaps called onyx, and set
in “ouches”—of filagree work, as the word seems to say. Upon them were
engraven
Upon the ephod was the breastplate, fastened to it by rings and chains of twisted gold, made to fold over into a square, a span in measurement, and blazing with twelve gems, upon which were engraved, as upon the onyxes on the shoulders, the names of the twelve tribes. All attempts to derive edification from the nature of these jewels must be governed by the commonplace reflection that we cannot identify them; and many of the present names are incorrect. It is almost certain that neither topaz, sapphire nor diamond could have been engraved, as these stones were, with the name of one of the twelve tribes (13—30).
“In the breastplate” (that is, evidently, between the folds as it was doubled), were placed those mysterious means of ascertaining the will of God, the Urim and the Thummim, the Lights and the Perfections; but of their nature, or of the manner in which they became significant, nothing can be said that is not pure conjecture (30).
Lastly, there was a mitre of white linen, and upon it was laced with blue cords a gold plate bearing the inscription “Holy to Jehovah” (36, 37).
No mention is made of shoes or sandals; and both from the commandment to Moses at the burning bush, and from history, it is certain that the priests officiated with their feet bare.
The picture thus completed has the clearest ethical significance. There
is modesty, reverence, purity, innocence typified by whiteness, the
grandeur of the office of intercession displayed in the rich colours and
precious jewels by which that whiteness was relieved,
Such was the import of the raiment of the high priest: let us see how it agrees with the nature of his office.
THE PRIESTHOOD.
What, then, are the central ideas connected with the institution of a priesthood?
Regarding it in the broadest way, and as a purely human institution, we may trace it back to the eternal conflict in the breast of man between two mighty tendencies—the thirst for God and the dread of Him, a strong instinct of approach and a repelling sense of unworthiness.
In every age and climate, man prays. If any curious inquirer into savage habits can point to the doubtful exception of a tribe seemingly without a ritual, he will not really show that religion is one with superstition; for they who are said to have escaped its grasp are never the most advanced and civilised among their fellows upon that account,—they are the most savage and debased, they are to humanity what the only people which has formally renounced God is fast becoming among the European races.
Certainly history cannot exhibit one community, progressive, energetic
and civilised, which did not feel that more was needful and might be had
than its own
And yet, side by side with this spiritual gravitation, there has always been recoil and dread, such as was expressed when Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look upon God.
Now, it is not this apprehension, taken alone, which proves man to be a fallen creature: it is the combination of the dread of God with the desire of Him. Why should we shrink from our supreme Good, except as a sick man turns away from his natural food? He is in an unnatural and morbid state of body, and we of soul.
Thus divided between fear and attraction, man has fallen upon the device of commissioning some one to represent him before God. The priest on earth has come by the same road with so many other mediators—angel and demigod, saint and virgin.
At first it has been the secular chief of the family, tribe or nation,
who has seemed least unworthy to negotiate as well with heaven as with
centres of interest upon earth. But by degrees the duty has everywhere
been transferred into professional hands, patriarch and king recoiling,
feeling the inconsistency of his earthly duties with these sacred ones,
finding his hands to be too soiled and his heart too heavily weighted
with sin for the tremendous Presence into which the family or
Now, this is the very process which is recognised in Scripture; for these two conflicting forces were altogether sound and right. Man ought to desire God, for Whom he was created, and Whose voice in the garden was once so welcome: but also he ought to shrink back from Him, afraid now, because he is conscious of his own nakedness, because he has eaten of the forbidden fruit.
Accordingly, as the nation is led out from Egypt, we find that its intercourse with heaven is at once real and indirect. The leader is virtually the priest as well, at whose intercession Amalek is vanquished and the sin of the golden calf is pardoned, who entered the presence of God and received the law upon their behalf, when they feared to hear His voice lest they should die, and by whose hand the blood of the covenant was sprinkled upon the people, when they had sworn to obey all that the Lord had said (xvii. 11, xxxii. 30, xx. 19, xxiv. 8).
Soon, however, the express command of God provided for an orthodox and
edifying transfer of the priestly function from Moses to his brother
Aaron. Some such division of duties between the secular chief and the
religious priest would no doubt have come, in Israel as elsewhere, as
soon as Moses disappeared; but it might have come after a very different
fashion, associated with heresy and schism.
And why should not this illustrious family have been chosen?
Perhaps because it was so illustrious. A priesthood of that great line
might seem to have earned its office, and to claim special access to
God, like the heathen priests, by virtue of some special desert.
Therefore the honour was transferred to the far less eminent line of
Aaron, and that in the very hour when he was lending his help to the
first great apostacy, the type of the many idolatries into which Israel
was yet to fall. So, too, the whole tribe of Levi was in some sense
consecrated, not for its merit, but because, through the sin of its
founder, it lacked a place and share among its brethren, being divided
in Jacob and scattered in Israel by reason of the massacre of Shechem
(
Thus the nation, conscious of its failure to enjoy intercourse with
heaven, found an authorised expression for its various and conflicting
emotions. It was not worthy to commune with God, and yet it could not
rest without Him. Therefore a spokesman, a representative, an
ambassador, was given to it. But he was chosen after such a fashion as
to
And perhaps this is the distinguishing peculiarity of the Jewish priest among others: that he was chosen from among his brethren, and simply as one of them; so that while his office was a proof of their exclusion, it was also a kind of sacrament of their future admission, because he was their brother and their envoy, and entered not as outshining but as representing them, their forerunner for them entering. The almond rod of Aaron was dry and barren as the rest, until the miraculous power of God invested it with blossoms and fruit.
Throughout the ritual, the utmost care was taken to inculcate this
double lesson of the ministry. Into the Holy Place, whence the people
were excluded, a whole family could enter. But there was an inner
shrine, whither only the high priest might penetrate, thus reducing the
family to a level with the nation; “the Holy Ghost this signifying, that
the way into the Holy Place hath not yet been made manifest, while as
the first tabernacle (the outer shrine—ver. 6) was yet standing” (
Thus the people felt a deeper awe, a broader separation. And yet, when
the sole and only representative who was left to them entered that
“shrine, remote, occult, untrod,” they saw that the way was not wholly
barred against human footsteps: the lesson suggested was far from being
that of absolute despair,—it was, as the Epistle to the Hebrews said,
It is important to observe that the only book of the New Testament in
which the priesthood is discussed dwells quite as largely upon the
difference as upon the likeness between the Aaronic and the Messianic
priest. The latter offered but one Sacrifice for sins, the former
offered for himself before doing so for the people (
In one sense this priesthood belongs to Christ alone. In another sense it belongs to all who are made one with Him, and therefore a kingly priesthood unto God. But nowhere in the New Testament is the name by which He is designated bestowed upon any earthly minister by virtue of his office. The presbyter is never called sacerdos. And perhaps the heaviest blow ever dealt to popular theology was the misapplying of the New Testament epithet (elder, presbyter or priest) to designate the sacerdotal functions of the Old Testament, and those of Christ which they foreshadowed. It is not the word “priest” that is at fault, but some other word for the Old Testament official which is lacking, and cannot now be supplied.
THE CONSECRATION SERVICES.
xxix.
In our day there is a disposition to make light of the formal setting
apart of men and things for sacred uses. If God, we are asked, has
called one to special service, is not that enough? What more can earth
do to commission the chosen of the sky? But the plain answer which we
ought to have the courage to return is that this is not at all enough.
For God Himself had already called Paul and Barnabas when He said to
such folk as Simeon Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and Manaen, “Separate Me
Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them” (
The example of the Old Testament will no doubt be brushed aside as if the religion which Jesus learned and honoured were a mere human superstition. Or else it would be natural to ask, Is it because the offices and functions of Judaism were more formal, more perfunctory than ours, that a greater spiritual grace went with their appointments than with the laying on of hands in the Christian Church, a rite so clearly sanctioned in the New Testament?
It is written of Joshua that Moses was to lay his hands upon him,
because already the Spirit was in him; and of Timothy that he had
unfeigned faith, and that prophecies went before concerning him (
Accordingly there is great stress laid upon the orderly institution of the priest. And yet, to make it plain that his authority is only “for his brethren,” Moses, the chief of the nation, is to officiate throughout the ceremony of consecration. He it is who shall offer the sacrifices upon the altar, and sprinkle the blood, not upon the first day only, but throughout the ceremonies of the week.
In the first place certain victims must be held in readiness—a bullock
and two rams; and with these must be brought in one basket unleavened
bread, and unleavened cakes made with oil, and unleavened wafers
But such details as the assuming of the existence of a laver, for which no directions have yet been given (and presently also of the anointing oil, the composition of which is still untold), deserve notice. They are much more in the manner of one who is working out a plan, seen already by his mental vision, but of which only the salient and essential parts have been as yet stated, than of any priest of the latter days, who would first have completed his catalogue of the furniture, and only then have described the ceremonies in which he was accustomed to see all this apparatus take its appointed place.
What we actually find is quite natural to a creative imagination, striking out the broad design of the work and its uses first, and then filling in the outlines. It is not natural at a time when freshness and inspiration have departed, and squared timber, as we are told, has taken the place of the living tree.
The priest, when cleansed, was next to be clad in his robes of office, with the mitre on his head, and upon the mitre the golden plate, with its inscription, which is here called, as the culminating object in all his rich array, “the holy crown” (ver. 6).
And then he was to be anointed. Now, the use of oil, in the ceremony of
investiture to office, is peculiar to revealed religion. And whether we
suppose it to refer to the oil in a lamp, invisible, yet the secret
source of all its illuminating power, or to that refreshment and
renovated strength bestowed
With these three ceremonies—ablution, robing and anointing—the first
and most personal section of the ritual ended. And now began a course of
sacrifices to God, advancing from the humblest expression of sin, and
appeal to heaven to overlook the unworthiness of its servant, to that
which best exhibited conscious acceptance, enjoyment of privilege,
admission to a feast with God. The bullock was a sin-offering: the word
is literally sin, and occurs more than once in the double sense: “let
him offer for his sin which he hath sinned a young bullock ... for a
sin(-offering)” (
The bullock was immediately slain at the door of “the tent of meeting”;
and to show that the shedding of his blood was an essential part of the
rite, part of it was put with the finger on the horns of the altar, and
the remainder was poured out at the base. Only then might the fat and
the kidney be burned upon the altar; but it is never said of any
sin-offering, as presently of the burnt-offering and the
peace-offerings, that it is “a sweet savour before Jehovah” (vers. 18,
25)—a phrase which is only once extended to a trespass-offering for a
purely unconscious lapse ( Neither, it must be added, were the bodies of certain
sin-offerings of the lower grade, and in which the priest was not
personally concerned (
Thus, by sacrifice for sin, the priest is rendered fit to
The third animal was a “peace-offering” (ver. 28). This is wrongly
explained to mean an offering by which peace is made, for then there
could be no meaning in what went before. It is the offering of one who
is now in a state of peace with God, and who is therefore himself, in
many cases, allowed to partake of what he brings. But on this occasion
some quite peculiar ceremonies were introduced, and the ram is called by
a strange name—“the ram of consecration.” When Aaron and his sons have
again declared their connection with the animal by laying their hands
upon it, it is slain. And then the blood is applied to the tip of their
right ear, the thumb of their right hand, and the great toe of their
right foot, that the ear may hearken, and the best energies obey, and
their life become as that of the consecrated animal, their bodies being
presented, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. Then the same
blood, with the oil which spoke of heavenly anointing, was sprinkled
upon them and upon their official robes, and all were hallowed. Then the
fattest and richest parts of the animal were taken, with a loaf, a cake,
and a wafer from the basket, and placed in the
For seven days this rite of consecration was repeated; and every day the altar also was cleansed, rendering it most holy, so that whatever touched it was holy.
Thus the people saw their representative and chief purified, accepted and devoted. Thenceforward, when they too brought their offerings, and beheld them presented (in person or through his subordinates) by the high priest with holiness emblazoned upon his brow, they gained hope, and even assurance, since one so consecrated was bidden to present their intercession; and sometimes they saw him pass into secret places of mysterious sanctity, bearing their tribal name on his shoulder and his bosom, while the chime of golden bells announced his movements, ministering there for them.
But the nation as a whole, with which this historical book is chiefly
interested, saw in the high priest the means of continually rendering to
God the service of
And where this offering was made, the Omnipresent would meet with them. There He would convey His mind to His priest. There also He would meet with all the people—not occasionally, as amid the more impressive but less tolerable splendours of Sinai, but to dwell among them and be their God. And they should know that all this was true, and also that for this He led them out of Egypt: “I am Jehovah their God.”
INCENSE.
xxx. 1—10.
And therefore an altar, smaller than that of burnt-offering, but much more precious, being plated all around and on the top with gold (a “golden altar”) (xxxix. 38), is now to be prepared, on which incense of sweet spices should be burned whenever a burnt-offering spoke of human devotion, and especially when the daily lamb was offered, every morning and every night.
This altar occupied a significant position. Of necessity, it was without
the Most Holy Place, or else it would have been practically
inaccessible; and yet it was spiritually in the closest connection with
the presence of God within. The Epistle to the Hebrews reckons it among
the furniture of the inner shrine For it is incredible that, in a catalogue of furniture
which included Aaron’s rod and the pot of manna, this altar should be
omitted, and “a golden censer,” elsewhere unheard of, substituted. The
gloss is too evidently an endeavour to get rid of a difficulty. But in
idea and suggestion this altar belonged to the Most Holy. That shrine
“had” it, though it actually stood outside.
It can never have been difficult to see the meaning of the rite for
which this altar was provided. When Zacharias burned incense the
multitude stood without,
Such being the import of the type, we need not wonder that it was a perpetual ordinance in their generations, nor yet that no strange perfume might be offered, but only what was prescribed by God. The admixture with prayer of any human, self-asserting, intrusive element, is this unlawful fragrance. It is rhetoric in the leader of extempore prayer; studied inflexions in the conductor of liturgical service; animal excitement, or sentimental pensiveness, or assent which is merely vocal, among the worshippers. It is whatever professes to be prayer, and is not that but a substitute. And formalism is an empty censer.
But, however earnest and pure may seem to be the breathing of the soul to God, something unworthy mingles with what is best in man. The very altar of incense needs to have an atonement made for it once in the year throughout their generations with the blood of the sin-offering of atonement. The prayer of every heart which knows its own secret will be this:
THE CENSUS.
xxx. 11—16.
But the honour of being numbered among the people of God should awaken a sense of unworthiness. Men had reason to fear lest the enrolment of such as they were in the host of God should produce a pestilence to sweep out the unclean from among the righteous. At least they must make some practical admission of their demerit. And therefore every man of twenty years who passed over unto them that were numbered (it is a picturesque glimpse that is here given into the method of enrolment) should offer for his soul a ransom of half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary. And because it was a ransom, the tribute was the same for all; the poor might not bring less, nor the rich more. Here was a grand assertion of the equality of all souls in the eyes of God—a seed which long ages might overlook, but which was sure to fructify in its appointed time.
For indeed the madness of modern levelling systems is only their attempt to level down instead of up, their dream that absolute equality can be obtained, or being obtained can be made a blessing, by the envious demolition of all that is lofty, and not by all together claiming the supreme elevation, the measure of the stature of manhood in Jesus Christ.
It is not in any phalanstère of Fourier or Harmony
And so this first assertion of the equality of man was given to those who all ate the same spiritual meat and drank the same spiritual drink.
This half-shekel gradually became an annual impost, levied for the great
expenses of the Temple. “Thus Joash made a proclamation throughout Judah
and Jerusalem, to bring in for the Lord the tax that Moses, the servant
of God, laid upon Israel in the wilderness” (
And it was the claim for this impost, too rashly conceded by Peter with regard to his Master, which led Jesus to distinguish clearly between His own relation to God and that of others, even of the chosen race.
He paid no ransom for His soul. He was a Son, in a sense in which no other, even of the Jews, could claim to be so. Now, the kings of the earth did not levy tribute from their sons; so that, if Christ paid, it was not to fulfil a duty, but to avoid being an offence. And God Himself would provide, directly and miraculously, what He did not demand from Jesus. Therefore it was that, on this one occasion and no other, Christ Who sought figs when hungry, and when athirst asked water at alien hands, met His own personal requirement by a miracle, as if to protest in deed, as in word, against any burden from such an obligation as Peter’s rashness had conceded.
And yet, with that marvellous condescension which shone most brightly
when He most asserted His prerogative, He admitted Peter also to a share
in this miraculous redemption-money, as He admits us all to a share in
His glory in the skies. Is it not He only
It is the silver thus levied which was used in the construction of the sanctuary. All the other materials were free-will offerings; but even as the entire tabernacle was based upon the ponderous sockets into which the boards were fitted, made of the silver of this tax, so do all our glad and willing services depend upon this fundamental truth, that we are unworthy even to be reckoned His, that we owe before we can bestow, that we are only allowed to offer any gift because He is so merciful in His demand. Israel gladly brought much more than was needed of all things precious. But first, as an absolutely imperative ransom, God demanded from each soul the half of three shillings and sevenpence.
THE LAVER.
xxx. 17—21.
We have seen already that although its actual use preceded that of the
altar, yet the other stood in front of it, as if to assert, to the very
eyes of all men, that sacrifice precedes purification. But the use of
the laver was not by the man as man, but by the priest as mediator. In
his office he represented the absolute purity of Christ. And therefore
it was a capital offence to enter the tabernacle or to burn a sacrifice
without first having washed the hands and feet. At his inauguration, the
whole person of the priest was bathed,
When the laver was actually made, an interesting fact was recorded about its materials: “He made the laver of brass, and the base of it of brass, of the mirrors of the serving-women which served at the door of the tent of meeting” (xxxviii. 8). Thus their instruments of personal adornment were applied to further a personal preparation of a more solemn kind, like the ointment with which a penitent woman anointed the feet of Jesus. There is a fitness which ought to be considered in the direction of our gifts, not as a matter of duty, but of good taste and charm. And thus also they continually saw the monument of their self-sacrifice. There is an innocent satisfaction, far indeed from vanity, when one looks at his own work for God.
THE ANOINTING OIL AND THE INCENSE.
xxx. 22—38.
But we have further to remark that their ingredients were accurately prescribed, that they were to be the best and rarest of their kind, and that special skill was demanded in their preparation.
Such was the natural dictate of reverence in preparing the symbols of God’s grace to man, and of man’s appeal to God.
With the type of grace should be anointed the tent and the ark, and the
table of shewbread and the candlestick, with all their implements, and
the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt sacrifice and
It was added that this should be a holy anointing oil, not to be made, much less used, for common purposes, on pain of death. The same was enacted of the incense which should burn before Jehovah: “according to the composition thereof ye shall not make for yourselves; it shall be unto thee holy for the Lord: whosoever shall make like unto that, to smell thereto, he shall be cut off from his people.”
And this was meant to teach reverence. One might urge that the spices and frankincense and salt were not in themselves sacred: there was no consecrating efficacy in their combination, no charm or spell in the union of these, more than of any other drugs. Why, then, should they be denied to culture? Why should her resources be thus restricted? Does any one suppose that such arguments belong peculiarly to the New Testament spirit, or that the saints of the older dispensation had any superstitious views about these ingredients? If it was through such notions that they abstained from vulgarising its use, then they were on the way to paganism, through a materialised worship.
But in truth they knew as well as we that gums were only gums, just as
they knew that the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.
And yet they were bidden to reverence both the shrine and the apparatus
of His worship, for their own sakes, for the solemnity and sobriety of
their feelings, not because God would be a loser if they did otherwise.
And we may well ask ourselves, in these latter days, whether the
constant proposal to secularise
And we may be sure that a light treatment of sacred subjects and sacred words is a very dangerous symptom: it is not the words and subjects alone that are being secularised, but also our own souls.
There is in our time a curious tendency among men of letters to use holy things for a mere perfume, that literature may “smell thereto.”
A novelist has chosen for the title of a story “Just as I am.” An innocent and graceful poet has seen a smile,—
Another is bolder, and sings of the war of love,—
Another thinks of Mazzini as the
and again as he who
And Victor Hugo did not shrink from describing, and that with a strange and scandalous ignorance of the original incidents, the crucifixion by Louis Napoleon of the Christ of nations.
Now, Scripture is literature, besides being a great deal more; and, as
such, it is absurd to object to all
There is another development of the same tendency, by no means modern, noted by the prophet when he complains that the message of God has become as the “very lovely song of one who hath a pleasant voice and playeth well on an instrument.” Wherever divine service is only appreciated in so far as it is “well rendered,” as rich music or stately enunciation charm the ear, and the surroundings are æsthetic,—wherever the gospel is heard with enjoyment only of the eloquence or controversial skill of its rendering, wherever religion is reduced by the cultivated to a thrill or to a solace, or by the Salvationist to a riot or a romp, wherever Isaiah and the Psalms are only admired as poetry, and heaven is only thought of as a languid and sentimental solace amid wearying cares,—there again is a making of the sacred balms to smell thereto.
And as often as a minister of God finds in his holy office a mere outlet for his natural gifts of rhetoric or of administration, he also is tempted to commit this crime.
BEZALEEL AND AHOLIAB.
xxxi. 1—18.
The Lord announces that He has called by name Bezaleel, the son of Uri, and has filled him with the Spirit of God. To what sacred office, then, is he called? Simply to be a supreme craftsman, the rarest of artisans. This also is a divine gift. “I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom and in understanding and in knowledge and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold and in silver and in brass and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of wood, to work in all manner of workmanship,”—that is to say, of manual dexterity. With him God had appointed Aholiab; “and in the hearts of all the wise-hearted I have put wisdom.” Thus should be fitly made the tabernacle and its furniture, and the finely wrought garments, and the anointing oil and the incense.
So then it appears that the Holy Spirit of God is to be recognised in the work of the carpenter and the jeweller, the apothecary and the tailor. Probably we object to such a statement, so baldly put. But inspiration does not object. Moses told the children of Israel that Jehovah had filled Bezaleel with the Spirit of God, and also Aholiab, for the work “of the engraver ... and of the embroiderer ... and of the weaver” (xxxv. 31, 35).
It is quite clear that we must cease to think of the Divine Spirit as inspiring only prayers and hymns and sermons. All that is good and beautiful and wise in human art is the gift of God. We feel that the supreme Artist is audible in the wind among the pines; but is man left to himself when he marshals into more sublime significance the voices of the wind among the organ tubes? At sunrise and sunset we feel that
but is there no revelation of glory and of freshness in other pictures? Once the assertion that a great masterpiece was “inspired” was a clear recognition of the central fire at which all genius lights its lamp: now, alas! it has become little more than a sceptical assumption that Isaiah and Milton are much upon a level. But the doctrine of this passage is the divinity of all endowment; it is quite another thing to claim Divine authority for a given product sprung from the free human being who is so richly crowned and gifted.
Thus far we have smoothed our way by speaking only of poetry, painting, music—things which really compete with nature in their spiritual suggestiveness. But Moses spoke of the robe-maker, the embroiderer, the weaver, and the perfumer.
Nevertheless, the one is carried with the other. Where shall we draw the line, for example, in architecture or in ironwork? And there is another consideration which must not be overlooked. God is assuredly in the growth of humanity, in the progress of true civilisation—in all, the recognition of which makes history philosophical. It is not only the saints who feel themselves to be the instruments of a Greater than they. Cromwell and Bismarck, Columbus, Raleigh and Drake, William the Silent and William the Third, felt it. Mr. Stanley has told us how the consciousness that he was being used grew up in him, not through fanaticism but by slow experience, groping his way through the gloom of Central Africa.
But none will deny that one of the greatest factors in modern history is its industrial development. Is there, then, no sacredness here?
The doctrine of Scripture is not that man is a tool, but that he is responsible for vast gifts, which come directly from heaven—that every good gift is from above, that it was God Himself Who planted in Paradise the tree of knowledge.
Nor would anything do more to restrain the passions, to calm the impulses and to elevate the self-respect of modern life, to call back its energies from the base competition for gold, and make our industries what dreamers persuade themselves that the mediæval industries were, than a quick and general perception of what is meant when faculty goes by such names as talent, endowment, gift—of the glory of its use, the tragedy of its defilement. Many persons, indeed, reject this doctrine because they cannot believe that man has power to abase so high a thing so sadly. But what, then, do they think of the human body?
What connection is there between all this and the reiteration of the law of the Sabbath? Not merely that the moral law is now made a civic statute as well, for this had been done already (xxiii. 12). But, as our Lord has taught us that a Jew on the Sabbath was free to perform works of mercy, it might easily be supposed lawful, and even meritorious, to hasten forward the construction of the place where God would meet His people. But He who said “I will have mercy and not sacrifice” said also that to obey was better than sacrifice. Accordingly this caution closes the long story of plans and preparations. And when Moses called the people to the work, his first words were to repeat it (xxxv. 2).
Finally, there was given to Moses the deposit for which so noble a shrine was planned—the two tables of the law, miraculously produced.
If any one, without supposing that they were literally written with a
literal finger, conceives that this was the meaning conveyed to a Hebrew
by the expression “written with the finger of God,” he entirely misses
the Hebrew mode of thought, which habitually connects the Lord with an
arm, with a chariot, with a bow made naked, with a tent and curtains,
without the slightest taint of materialism in its conception. Did not
the magicians, failing to imitate the third plague, say “This is the
finger of a God”? Did not Jesus Himself “cast out devils by the finger
of God”? (
THE GOLDEN CALF.
xxxii.
God now rejects them because the covenant is violated. As Jesus spoke no longer of “My Father’s house,” but “your house, left unto you desolate,” so the Lord said to Moses, “thy people which thou broughtest up.”
But what are we to think of the proposal to destroy them, and to make of Moses a great nation?
We are to learn from it the solemn reality of intercession, the power of man with God, Who says not that He will destroy them, but that He will destroy them if left alone. Who can tell, at any moment, what calamities the intercession of the Church is averting from the world or from the nation?
The first prayer of Moses is brief and intense; there is passionate appeal, care for the Divine honour, remembrance of the saintly dead for whose sake the living might yet be spared, and absolute forgetfulness of self. Already the family of Aaron had been preferred to his, but the prospect of monopolising the Divine predestination has no charm for this faithful and patriotic heart. No sooner has the immediate destruction been arrested than he hastens to check the apostates, makes them exhibit the madness of their idolatry by drinking the water in which the dust of their pulverised god was strewn; receives the abject apology of Aaron, thoroughly spirit-broken and demoralised; and finding the sons of Levi faithful, sends them to the slaughter of three thousand men. Yet this is he who said “O Lord, why is Thy wrath hot against Thy people?” He himself felt it needful to cut deep, in mercy, and doubtless in wrath as well, for true affection is not limp and nerveless: it is like the ocean in its depth, and also in its tempests. And the stern action of the Levites appeared to him almost an omen; it was their “consecration,” the beginning of their priestly service.
Again he returns to intercede; and if his prayer must fail, then his own
part in life is over: let him too perish among the rest. For this is
evidently what he means and says: he has not quite anticipated the
spirit of Christ in Paul willing to be anathema for his
How nobly he foreshadows, not indeed the Christian doctrine, but the love of Christ Who died for man, Who from the Mount of Transfiguration, as Moses from Sinai, came down (while Peter would have lingered) to bear the sins of His brethren! How superior He is to the Christian hymn which pronounces nothing worth a thought, except how to make my own election sure.
PREVAILING INTERCESSION.
xxxiii.
We have seen that the original promise of a great Angel in whom was the Divine Presence was full of encouragement and privilege (xxiii. 20). No unbiassed reader can suppose that it is the sending of this same Angel of the Presence which now expresses the absence of God, or that He Who then would not pardon their transgression “because My Name is in Him” is now sent because God, if He were in the midst of them for a moment, would consume them. Nor, when Moses passionately pleads against this degradation, and is heard in this thing also, can the answer “My Presence shall go with thee” be merely the repetition of those evil tidings. Yet it was the Angel of His Presence Who saved them. All this has been already treated, and what we are now to learn is that the faithful and sublime urgency of Moses did really save Israel from degradation and a lower covenant.
It was during the progress of this mediation that Moses distracted by a
double anxiety—afraid to
It would seem that the anxious vigilance of Moses caused him to pass to and fro between the tent and the camp, “but his minister, Joshua the son of Nun, departed not out of the tent.”
The dread crisis in the history of the nation was now almost over. God had said, “My Presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest,”—a phrase which the lowly Jesus thought it no presumption to appropriate, saying, “I will give you rest,” as He also appropriated the office of the Shepherd, the benevolence of the Physician, the tenderness of the Bridegroom, and the glory of the King and the Judge, all of which belonged to God.
But Moses is not content merely to be secure, for it is natural that he
who best loves man should also best love God. Therefore he pleads
against the least withdrawal of the Presence: he cannot rest until
repeatedly assured that God will indeed go with him; he speaks as if
there were no “grace” but that. There are
THE VISION OF GOD.
xxxiv.
We have seen how nobly this petition and the answer condemn all anthropomorphic misunderstandings of what had already been revealed; and also how it exemplifies the great law, that they who see most of God, know best how much is still unrevealed. The elders saw the God of Israel and did eat and drink: Moses was led from the bush to the flaming top of Sinai, and thence to the tent where the pillar of cloud was as a sentinel; but the secret remained unseen, the longing unsatisfied, and the nearest approach to the Beatific Vision reached by him with whom God spake face to face as with a friend, was to be hidden in a cleft of the rock, to be aware of an awful Shadow, and to hear the Voice of the Unseen.
It was a fit time for the proclamation which was then made. When the
people had been righteously punished and yet graciously forgiven, the
name of the Self-Existent expanded and grew clearer,—
Thereupon the covenant is given, as if newly, but without requiring its actual re-enactment; and certain of the former precepts are rehearsed, chiefly such as would guard against a relapse into idolatry when they entered the good land where God would bestow on them prosperity and conquest.
As Moses had broken the former tablets, the task was imposed on him of hewing out the slabs on which God renewed His awful sanction of the Decalogue, the fundamental statutes of the nation. And they who had failed to endure his former absence, were required to be patient while he tarried again upon the mountain, forty days and nights.
With his return a strange incident is connected. Unknown by himself, the
“skin of his face shone by reason of His speaking with him,” and Aaron
and the people recoiled until he called to them. And thenceforth he
lived a strange and isolated life. At each new interview the glory of
his countenance was renewed, and when he conveyed his revelation to the
people, they beheld the lofty sanction, the light of God upon his face.
Then he veiled his face until next he
His revelation, the apostle argues, was like this occasional and fading
gleam, while the moral glory of the Christian system has no
concealments: it uses great frankness; there is nothing withdrawn, no
veil upon the face. Nor is it given to one alone to behold as in a
mirror the glory of the Lord, and to share its lustre. We all, with face
unveiled, share this experience of the deliverer (
But the incident itself is most instructive. Since he had already spent an equal time with God, yet no such results had followed, it seems that we receive what we are adapted to receive, not straitened in Him but in our own capabilities; and as Moses, after his vehemence of intercession, his sublimity of self-negation, and his knowledge of the greater name of God, received new lustre from the unchangeable Fountain of light, so does all true service and earnest aspiration, while it approaches God, elevate and glorify humanity.
We learn also something of the exaltation of which matter is capable. We who have seen coarse bulb and soil and rain transmuted by the sunshine into radiance of bloom and subtlety of perfume, who have seen plain faces illuminated from within until they were almost angelic,—may we not hope for something great and rare for ourselves, and the beloved who are gone, as we muse upon the profound word, “It is raised a spiritual body”?
And again we learn that the best religious attainment is the least self-conscious: Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.
THE CONCLUSION.
Thenceforth the cloud was the guide of their halting and their march. Many a time they grieved their God in the wilderness, yet the cloud was on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire therein by night, throughout all their journeyings.
That cloud is seen no longer; but One has said, “Lo, I am with you all the days.” If the presence is less material, it is because we ought to be more spiritual.
Looking back upon the story, we can discern more clearly what was asserted when we began—the forming and training of a nation.
They are called from shameful servitude by the devotion of a patriot and
a hero, who has learned in
The especial sanctity of a sacred calling is balanced
A tragic and shameful failure teaches them, more painfully than any symbolic system of curtains and secret chambers, how little fitted they are for the immediate intercourse of heaven. And yet the ever-present cloud, and the shrine in the heart of their encampment, assure them that God is with them of a truth.
Could any better system be imagined by which to convert a slavish and superstitious multitude into a nation at once humble and pure and gallant—a nation of brothers and of worshippers, chastened by a genuine sense of ill desert and of responsibility, and yet braced and fired by the conviction of an exalted destiny?
To do this, and also to lead mankind to liberty, to rescue them from sensuous worship, and prepare them for a system yet more spiritual, to teach the human race that life is not repose but warfare, pilgrimage and aspiration, and to sow the seeds of beliefs and expectations which only an atoning Mediator and an Incarnate God could satisfy, this was the meaning of the Exodus.
Exodus
1:1-6 1:7 1:7-22 2:1-10 2:11-15 2:16-22 2:23-25 3 3:10 3:14 3:16-22 4:1-17 4:18-31 5:1-23 6:1-30 6:2-3 7:3-13 7:14 7:14-25 8:1-15 8:16-19 8:20-32 9:1-7 9:8-12 9:13-35 10:1-20 10:21-29 11:1-10 12:1-28 12:29-36 12:37-42 13:1 13:19 14:1-31 14:30-31 15:1-22 15:22-27 16:1-14 16:15-36 16:15-36 17:1-7 17:8-16 18:1-27 19:1-25 20:1-17 20:2 20:3 20:4-6 20:7 20:8-11 20:12 20:13 20:14 20:15 20:16 20:17 20:18-26 20:22-26 21:1-32 21:33-36 22:1-15 22:16-31 22:18 22:21 23:1-19 23:1-19 23:9 23:20-33 23:33 24 25:1-40 25:9 25:40 26 27 28 29 30:1-10 30:11-16 30:17-21 30:22-38 31:1-18 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xx 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442