The Horns of the Altar

And thou shalt make the horns of it upon. the four corners thereof: his horns shall be of the same: and thou shalt overlay it with brass, ver. 2.) The horn in Scripture is the emblem of power.
“Bind the sacrifice with cords,” says the psalmist, “even unto the horns of the altar.” (Psalms 118:27.)
In the garden of Gethsemane we see this thought strikingly exemplified. There we see Jesus, the beloved Son of the Father, whose dwelling place eternally was the Father’s bosom; that holy One, who knew no sin, and that blessed One, “God over all blessed forever,” drawing back from, and deprecating the enduring of, God’s wrath, the imputation of sin, and the infliction of the curse.
Yet the cords of love and of obedience bound him—love and obedience to the Father, love and compassion to us. So that, in the end, we see the willing victim passing through the three long hours of darkness, made sin for us, and nailed to the accursed tree.
This as to the victim; then as to the sinner or the worshipper.
In 1 Kings 1:50, we read, “And Adonijah feared because of Solomon, and arose, and went, and caught hold on the horns of the altar.”
And again, chapter 2: 28, “And Joab fled unto the tabernacle of the Lord, and caught hold on the horns of the altar.”
What strong consolation is provided for the poor sinner who flies for refuge, to lay hold on the hope set before him in the Gospel, founded on the perfect and accepted sacrifice of the sinner’s Savior and the sinner’s friend!
And the believer, toe, finds here a refuge and a rest. And the shittim wood and the brass-emblems of the tender human sympathy, and the Divine Almighty power of the Savior of the lost, and the sustainer of the saved, give faith its firm holdfast.
The sinner and the saint find in Jesus, who is here set forth, one able to sympathize, and mighty to save.
By laying hold on the horns of the altar, ‘faith identifies itself with the altar and the sacrifice. The sinner or the believer appropriating to their own necessities the provisions of God: drawing nigh to him in the way of his own selecting, and through the sacrifice of his own providing.
The wood and the brass—the sympathy and—the power of ‘him who is thus set forth, giving, faith its grasp of undying tenacity.
But what a solemn lesson is read out to us from these horns of the brazen altar! In Exodus 21:14 God says, “But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor to slay him with guile, thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die.”
For the presumptuous sinner, and the hypocritical deceiver, the atonement of Jesus itself provides no shelter, while he continues it is of no avail for a person to, say, I am trusting in the blood of Jesus, while presumptuously continuing in sin, or hypocritically professing repentance. “Thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die,” is the stern command of Divine inflexible justice. Solemn, solemn thought! How many, a soul has gone on for years, clinging with vain hope to a mere profession of faith in—Jesus, lulled into a false peace, with a spirit unsanctified and a soul unsaved; to perish at last. Thus was it in type with Adonijah.
“And Solomon said, if he will skew himself a worthy man, there shall not a hair of him fall to the earth; but if wickedness be found in him, he shall die.” (1 Kings 1:52.) And so it turned out. “And King Solomon sent by the hand of Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and he fell upon him that he died.”
(1 Kings 2:25.)
More solemn still, when in this false hope and unfounded peace the soul passes into the unseen world, to be taken from that altar and plunged into eternal death. Falling asleep in the presumptuous—security of a mere profession, to awake in everlasting torments. “I will die here,” says Joab, and he died there; but he fell by the hand of justice. (1 Kings 2:29-32.)
Still, while we thus speak because Scripture so teaches, Jesus is able and ready to save unto the uttermost all that come unto God by him. And as the horns were at the four corners of the altar, so there is a refuge provided in Jesus for those who come from every quarter. Here is provided a harbor, a shelter of rest “From every stormy wind that blows, From every swelling tide of woes.”
And upon these horns of the altar the blood of the sacrifice was put—faith’s warrant to lay hold.