05.24. Chapter First
Chapter First.—The Divine Truths Embodied In The Historical Transactions Connected With The Redemption From Egypt, Viewed As Preliminary To The Symbolical Institutions Brought In By Moses.
Section I.—The Bondage. THE history of what is called the Patriarchal religion may be said to terminate with the descent of the children of Israel into Egypt, or at least with the prosperous circumstances which attended the earlier period of their sojourn there; for the things which afterwards befell them in that land, rather belong to the dispensation of Moses. They tended, in various respects, to prepare the way for this new dispensation, more especially by furnishing the facts in which its fundamental ideas were to be embodied, and on which its institutions were to be based. The true religion, as formerly noticed, has ever distinguished itself from impostures, by being founded on great facts, which, by bringing prominently out the character of God’s purposes and government, provide the essential elements of the religion He prescribes to His people. This characteristic of the true religion, like every other, received its highest manifestation in the Gospel of Christ, where every distinctive element of truth and duty is made to grow out of the facts of His eventful history. The same characteristic, however, belongs, though in a less perfect form, to the Patriarchal religion, which was based upon the transactions connected with man’s fall, his expulsion from the garden of Eden, and the promise then given of a future Deliverer;—these formed, in a manner, the ground-floor of the symbolical and typical religion under which the earlier inhabitants of the world were placed. Nor was it otherwise with the religious dispensation which stood midway between the Patriarchal and the Christian—the dispensation of Moses. For here also the groundwork was laid in the facts of Israel’s history, which were so arranged by the controlling hand of God, as clearly to disclose the leading truths and principles that were to pervade the entire dispensation, arid that gave to its religious institutions their peculiar form and character. When we speak of fundamental truths and principles in reference to the Mosaic religion, it will be readily understood that these necessarily required to be somewhat more full and comprehensive than those which constitute the foundation of the first and simplest form of religion. The Mosaic religion did not start into being as something original and independent; it grew out of the Patriarchal, and was just, indeed, the Patriarchal religion in a farther state of progress and development. So much was this the case, that the mission of Moses avowedly begins where the communications of God to the patriarchs end; and, resuming what had been for a time suspended, takes for its immediate object the fulfilment of the purpose which the Lord had, ages before, pledged His word to accomplish.[167] Its real starting-point is the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with an especial reference to that part of it which concerned the occupation of the land of Canaan. And as the one dispensation thus commenced with the express design of carrying out and completing what the other had left unfinished, the latter of the two must be understood to have recognised and adopted as its own all the truths and principles of the first. What might now be regarded as fundamental, and required as such to be interwoven with the historical transactions by which the dispensation of Moses was brought in, must have been, to a considerable extent, super-additional,—including those, indeed, which belonged to the Patriarchal religion, but coupling with them such others as were fitted to constitute the elements of a more advanced state of religious knowledge and attainment.
We are not to imagine, however, that the additional religious truths and principles which were to be historically brought out at the commencement of the Mosaic dispensation, must have appeared there by themselves, distinct and apart from those which descended from Patriarchal times. We might rather expect, from the common ground on which the true religion always erects itself, and the common end it aims at, that the New would be intermingled with the Old; and that the ideas on which the first religion was based, must reappear and stand prominently forth in the next, and indeed in every religious dispensation. The Patriarchal religion began with the loss of man’s original inheritance, and pointed, in all its institutions of worship and providential dealings, to the recovery of what was lost. It was the merciful provision of Heaven to light the way and direct the steps of Adam’s fallen family to a paradise restored. The religion brought in by the ministry of Moses began with an inheritance, not lost, indeed, but standing at an apparently hopeless distance, though conferred in free grant, and secured by covenant promise for a settled possession. As an expression of the good-will of God to men, and the object of hope to His people, the place originally held by the garden of Eden, with the way barred to the tree of life, but ready to be opened whenever the righteousness should be brought in for which the Church was taught to wait and strive, was now substantially occupied by that land flowing with milk and honey, which had become the destined inheritance of the heirs of promise. It was the immediate design and object of the mission of Moses to conduct the Church, as called to cherish this new form of hope, into the actual possession of its promised blessings; and to do this, not simply with the view of having the hope turned into reality, but so as at the same time, and in accordance with God’s general plan, to unfold the great principles of His character and government, and raise His people to a higher position in all religious knowledge and experience. In a word, God’s object, then, was, as it has ever been, not merely to bring His Church to the possession of a promised good, but to furnish by His method of doing it the elements of a religion corresponding in its nature and effects to the inheritance possessed or hoped for, and thus to render the whole subservient to the highest purposes of His moral government. When we speak, however, of the inheritance of Canaan being in the time of Moses the great object of hope to Israel, and the boon which his mission was specially designed to realize, we must take into account what, we trust, was satisfactorily established concerning it, in the earlier part of our investigations.[168] 1. The earthly Canaan was never designed by God, nor could it from the first have been understood by His people, to be the ultimate and proper inheritance which they were to occupy; things having been spoken and hoped for concerning it, which plainly could not be realized within the bounds of Canaan, nor on the earth at all, as at present constituted. 2. The inheritance, in its full and proper sense, was one which could be enjoyed only by those who had become children of the resurrection, themselves fully redeemed in soul and body from the effects and consequences of sin. 3. The occupation of the earthly Canaan by the natural seed of Abraham, in its grand and ultimate design, was a type of the occupation by a redeemed Church of her destined inheritance of glory. Hence everything concerning the entrance of Israel on that temporary possession had necessarily to be ordered, so as fitly to represent and fore shadow the things which belong to the Church’s establishment in her final and permanent possession. The matter may thus be briefly stated: God selected a portion—for the special ends in view, the fairest portion—of the earth,[169] which He challenged as His own in a peculiar sense, that He might convert it into a suitable habitation and inheritance for the people whom He had already chosen to be peculiarly His own. On this people, settled in this possession, He purposed to bestow the highest earthly tokens of His gracious presence and blessing. But what He was going to do for them in temporal and earthly things, was only a representation and a pledge of what, from before the birth of time, He had purposed to do in heavenly things, when the period should come for gathering into one His universal Church, and planting her in His everlasting inheritance of life and glory. There is, therefore, a twofold object to be kept in view, while we investigate this part of the Divine procedure and arrangements, as in these also there was a twofold design. The whole that took place between the giving of the hope to the patriarchs, and its realization in their posterity, we must, in the first instance, view as demonstrating on what principles God could, consistently with His character and government, bestow upon them such an inheritance, or keep them in possession of its blessings. But we must, at the same time, in another point of view, regard the whole as the shadow of higher and better things to come. We must take it as a glass, in which to see mirrored the form and pattern of God’s everlasting kingdom, and that with an especial reference to the grand principles on which the heirs of salvation were to be brought to the enjoyment of its future and imperishable glories.
[168] Vol. i., see section on the hope of the inheritance.
[169] Ezekiel 20 : “A land that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands.”
We are furnished at the very outset with no doubtful indication of the propriety of keeping in view this twofold bearing, in the condition of the heirs of promise. These, when the promise was first given, and for two generations afterwards, were kept in the region of the inheritance; and if the purposes of God respecting them had simply been directed to their occupation of it as a temporal and earthly good, the natural, and in every respect the easiest plan, would manifestly have been, to give them a settled place in it at the first, and gradually to have opened the way to their complete possession of the promised territory. But instead of this, they were absolutely prohibited from having then any fixed habitation within its borders; and by God’s special direction and overruling providence, were carried altogether away from the land, and planted in Egypt. There they found a settled home and dwelling-place, which they were not only permitted, but obliged, to keep for generations, before they were allowed to possess any interest in the promised inheritance. And it was precisely their long-continued sojourn in that foreign country, the relations into which it brought them, the feelings and associations which there grew upon them, and the interests with which they became connected, that so greatly embarrassed the mission of Moses, and rendered the work given him to do so peculiarly difficult and complicated. Had nothing more been contemplated by their settlement in Canaan than their simply being brought to the possession of a pleasant and desirable inheritance, after the manner of this world, nothing could have been more unfortunate and adverse than such a deep and protracted entanglement with the affairs of Egypt. Considered merely in that point of view, there is much in the Divine procedure, which could neither be vindicated as wise, nor approved as good; and the whole plan would manifestly lie open to the most serious objections. But matters present themselves in a different light, when we understand that everything connected with the earthly and temporal inheritance was ordered so as to develop the principles on which alone God could righteously confer upon men even that inferior token of His regard; and this, again, as the type or pattern according to which He should afterwards proceed in regulating the concerns of His everlasting kingdom. Viewed thus, as the whole ought to be, it will be found in every part consistent with the highest reason, and, indeed, could not have been materially different, without begetting erroneous impressions of the mind and character of God. So that, in proceeding to read what belongs to the work and handwriting of Moses, we must never lose sight of the fact, that we are tracing the footsteps of One whose ways on earth have ever been mainly designed to disclose the path to heaven, and whose procedure in the past was carefully planned to prepare the way for the events and issues of “the world to come.” The first point to which our attention is naturally turned, is the one already alluded to, respecting the condition of the Israelites, the heirs of promise, when this new stage of God’s proceedings began to take its course. We find them not only in a distant country, but labouring there under the most grievous hardship and oppression. When this adverse position of affairs took its commencement, or how, we are not further told, than in the statement that “a new king arose up over Egypt, who knew not Joseph,”—a statement which has not unfrequently been thought to indicate a change of dynasty in the reigning family of Egypt. This ignorance, it would seem, soon grew into estrangement, and that again into jealousy and hatred; for, afraid lest the Israelites, who were increasing with great rapidity in numbers and influence, should become too powerful, and should usurp dominion over the country, or, at least, in time of war prove a formidable enemy within the camp, the then reigning Pharaoh took counsel to afflict them with heavy burdens, and to keep them down by means of oppression.
It is quite possible there may have been peculiar circumstances connected with the civil affairs of Egypt, which tended to foster and strengthen this rising enmity, and seemed to justify the harsh and oppressive policy in which it showed itself. But we have quite enough to account for it, in the character which belonged to the family of Jacob, when they entered Egypt, coupled with the extraordinary increase and prosperity which attended them there. It was as a company of shepherds they were presented before Pharaoh, and the land of Goshen was assigned them for a dwelling-place, expressly on account of its rich pasturage.[170] But “every shepherd,” it is said, “was an abomination to the Egyptians;” and with such a strong feeling against them in the national mind, nothing but an overpowering sense of the obligation under which the Egyptians lay to the Israelites, could have induced them to grant to this shepherd race such a settlement within their borders. Nor can it be wondered at, that when the remembrance of the obligation ceased to be felt, another kind of treatment should have been experienced by the family of Jacob than what they at first received, and that the native, deep-seated repugnance to those who followed their mode of life should begin to break forth. That there was such a repugnance, is a well-ascertained fact, apart altogether from the testimony of Scripture. The monuments of Egypt furnish ample evidence of it, as they constantly present shepherds in an inferior or despicable aspect, sometimes even as the extreme of coarseness and barbarity, and the objects of unmingled contempt.[171] We cannot suppose this hatred towards shepherds to have arisen simply from their possessing flocks and herds; for we have the clearest evidence in the Pentateuch that Pharaoh possessed these, and that they existed in considerable numbers throughout the land.[172] It seems rather to have been occasioned by the general character and habits of the nomade or shepherd tribes,[173] who have ever been averse to the arts of cultivation and civilised life, and most unscrupulous in seizing, when they had the opportunity, the fruits that have been raised by the industry and toil of others. From the earliest times the rich and fertile country of Egypt has suffered much from these marauding hordes of the desert, to whose incursions it lies open both on the east and on the west. And as the land of Goshen skirted the deserts of Arabia, where especially the Bedouin or wandering tribes, from time immemorial, have been accustomed to dwell, we can easily conceive how the native Egyptians would watch with jealousy and dread the rising power and importance of the Israelites. By descent they were themselves allied with those shepherd tribes; and, by the advantage of their position, they held the key on an exposed side to the heart of the kingdom; so that, if they became strong enough, and chose to act in concert with their Arab neighbours, they might have over-spread the land with desolation. Indeed, it is a historical fact, that “the Bedouin Arabs settled in Egypt have always made common cause with the Arabs (of the Desert) against the communities that possessed the land. They fought against the Saracen dynasty in Egypt; against the Turkomans, as soon as they had acquired the ascendancy; against the Mamlook sultans, who were the successors of the Turkomans; and they have been at war with the Osmanlis without intermission, since they first set foot upon Egypt more than 300 years ago.”[174]
[170] Genesis 47:11
[171] Rossellini, vol. i., p. 178; Wilkinson, vol. ii., p. 16; also Heeren’s Africa, ii., p. 146, Trans.
[173] See Heeren’s Africa, ii., p. 157; Rossellini, Mon. dell’ Eg., i., p. 177, etc.; Hengstenberg, Beitr., ii., p. 437.
[174] Prokesch, Errinnerungen aus Eg., as quoted by Hengstenberg in his Eg. and the books of Moses, p. 78. If Egypt had previously been overrun, and for some generations held in bondage, by one of these nomade tribes of Asia, there would have been a still stronger ground for exercising toward the family of Jacob the jealous antipathy in question. Of the fact of such an invasion and possession of Egypt by a shepherd race, later investigations into the antiquities of Egypt have left little room to doubt; but the period of its occurrence, as connected with the history of the Israelites, is still a matter of uncertainty. A full review of the opinions and probabilities connected with the subject, may be seen in Kurtz, Geschichte des Alten Bund, ii., p. 178, sq.
Hence, when the Israelites appeared so remarkably to flourish and multiply in their new abode, it was no unnatural policy for the Egyptians to subject them to hard labour and vexatious bur dens. They would thus expect to repress their increase, and break their spirit; and, by destroying what remained of their pastoral habits, and training them to the arts and institutions of civilised life, as these existed in Egypt, to lessen at once their desire and their opportunities of leaguing for any hostile purpose with the tribes of the desert. At the same time, while such reasons might sufficiently account for the commencement of a hard and oppressive policy, there were evidently other reasons connected at least with the severer form, which it ultimately reached, and such as argued some acquaintance with the peculiar prospects of Israel. It was only one ground of Pharaoh’s anxiety respecting them, that they might possibly join hands with an enemy and fight against Egypt; another fear was, that they “might get them up out of the land.”[175] This seems to bespeak a knowledge of the fact, that some other region than Goshen belonged to the Israelites as their proper home, for which they were disposed, at a fitting time, to leave their habitations in Egypt. Nor, indeed, would it be difficult for the king of Egypt to obtain such knowledge, as, in the earlier period of their sojourn, the Israelites had no motive to hold it in concealment. Then, the announcement of Jacob’s dying command to carry up his remains to the land of Canaan, of which the whole court of Pharaoh was apprized, and afterwards the formal withdrawal of Joseph and his family from the court of Pharaoh, to identify themselves with the state and prospects of their kindred, were more than sufficient to excite the suspicion of a jealous and unfriendly government, that they did not expect to remain always connected with the land and fortunes of Egypt. “It is clear that Pharaoh knew of a home for these stranger-Israelites, while he could on no account bear to think of it; and also that though his forefather had treated them to a possession in the land of Egypt, he now considered them as his servants, whom he was determined not to lose. It is precisely because he would know nothing of freedom and a home for Israel, that the increase of Israel was so great an annoyance to him. The seed of Abraham were, according to the promise, to be a blessing to all nations, and should, therefore, have been greeted with joy by the king of Egypt. But, since the reverse was the case, we can easily see, at this first aspect of Israel’s affairs, that the further fulfilment of the promise could not develop itself by the straightest and most direct road, but would have to force its way through impediments of great strength and difficulty.”[176] [175] Exodus 1:10
[176] Baumgarten, Theol. Com., i., p. 393. The kinds of service which were imposed with so much rigour upon the Israelites, though they would doubtless comprehend the various trades and employments which were exercised in the land, consisted chiefly, as might be expected in such a country, in the several departments of field labour. It was especially “in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, that their lives were made bitter with hard bondage.”[177] The making of bricks formed of clay and straw appears, during the later period of the bondage, to have been the only servile occupation in which they were largely engaged, and, of course, along with that, the erection of the buildings for which the bricks were made. As the hard and rigorous service to which they were subjected in this department of labour did not seem to answer the end intended, but the more they were afflicted the more they multiplied and grew, the gloom and distress that hung around their condition were fearfully deepened by the issuing of a cruel edict, commanding that their male children should be killed as soon as they were born. This was too atrocious an edict even for the despot of a heathen land to enforce, and he could not find instruments at his command wicked enough to carry it into execution. In all probability it was soon recalled, or allowed gradually to fall into abeyance; for though it was in force at the birth of Moses, we hear nothing of it afterwards; and its only marked effect, so far as we are informed, was to furnish the occasion of opening a way for that future deliverer into the temples and palaces of Egypt. So marvellously did God, by His overruling providence, baffle the design of the enemy, and compel “the eater to give forth meat!” The only evil in their condition which seems to have become general and permanent, was the hard service in brick-making and collateral kinds of servile labour, and which, so far from suffering relaxation by length of time, was rather, on slight pretexts, increased and aggravated. It became at last so excessive, that one universal cry of misery and distress arose from the once happy land of Goshen,—a cry which entered into the ear of the God of Abraham, and which would no longer permit Him to remain an inactive spectator of a controversy which, if continued, must have made void His covenant with the father of the faithful.[178] [177] Exodus 1:4
[178] A modern rationalist (Von Bohlen, Einleitung zur Genesis) has attempted to throw discredit on the above account of the hard service of the Israelites, by alleging that the making of bricks at that early period belonged only to the region of Babylonia, and that the early Egyptians were accustomed to build with hewn stone. “We can scarcely trust our own eyes,” says Hengstenberg, “when we read such things,” and justly, as all well-informed writers concerning ancient Egypt, whether of earlier or of later times, have concurred in testifying that building with brick was very common there so common, indeed, that private edifices were generally of that material. Herodotus mentions a pyramid of brick, which is thought to be one of those still standing (ii. 136). Modern inquirers, such as Champollion, Rossellini, and Wilkinson, speak of tombs, ruins of great buildings, lofty walls, and pyramids, being formed of bricks, and found in all parts of Egypt. (See the quotations in Hengstenberg’s Eg. and books of Moses, p. 2, 80) Wilkinson says (Ancient Egyptians, ii., p. 96), “The use of crude brick, baked in the sun, was universal in Upper and Lower Egypt, both for public and private buildings; and the brick-field gave abundant occupation to numerous labourers throughout the country.…. Inclosures of gardens, or granaries, sacred circuits encompassing the courts of temples, walls of fortifications and towns, dwelling-houses, and tombs,—in short, all but the temples themselves, were of crude brick; and so great was the demand, that the Egyptian government, observing the profit which would accrue from a monopoly of them, undertook to supply the public at a moderate price,—thus preventing all unauthorized persons from engaging in the manufacture. And in order the more effectually to obtain this end, the seal of the king, or of some privileged person, was stamped upon the bricks at the time they were made.” He says, farther, “It is worthy of remark, that more bricks bearing the name of Thothmes II. (whom I suppose to have been king of Egypt at the time of the Exodus) have been discovered than of any other period.” And not only have multitudes of bricks been thus identified with the period of Israel’s bondage, and these sometimes made of clay mingled with chopped straw, but a picture has been discovered in a tomb at Thebes, which so exactly corresponds with the delineation given by Moses of the hard service of the Israelites,—some digging and mixing the clay, others fetching water for it; others, again, adjusting the clay to the moulds, or placing the bricks in rows; the labourers, too, being of Asiatic, not Egyptian aspect, but amongst them four Egyptians, two of whom carry sticks in their hands, taskmasters,—that Rossellini did not hesitate to call it, whether correctly or not, “a picture representing the Hebrews as they were engaged in making brick.” So much for the condition itself of hard bondage and oppressive labour to which the heirs of the inheritance were reduced, before the time came for their being actually put in possession of its blessings. And situated as they were within the bounds of a foreign kingdom, at first naturally jealous, and then openly hostile towards them, it is not difficult to account for the kind of treatment inflicted on them, viewing the position they occupied merely in its worldly relations and interests. But what account can we give of it in its religious aspect—as an arrangement settled and ordained on the part of God? Why should He have ordered such a state of matters concerning His chosen seed? For the Egyptians “though their hearts thought not so”—were but instruments in His hands, to bring to pass what the Lord had long before announced to Abraham as certainly to take place, viz., “that his seed should be strangers in a land that was not theirs, and should serve them, and be afflicted by them four hundred years.” (Genesis 15:13)
1. Considered in this higher point of view, the first light in which it naturally presents itself is that of a doom or punishment, from which, as interested in the mercy of God, they needed redemption. For the aspect of intense suffering, which it latterly assumed, could only be regarded as an act of retribution for their past unfaithfulness and sins. We should be perfectly warranted to infer this, even without any express information on the subject, from the general connection in the Divine government between sin and suffering. And when placed by the special appointment of Heaven in circumstances so peculiarly marked by what was painful and afflicting to nature, the Israelites should then, no doubt, have read in their marred condition, what their posterity were, in like circumstances, taught to read by the prophet—“that it was their own wickedness which corrected them, and their blackslidings which reproved them.” But we are not simply warranted to draw this as an inference. It is matter of historical certainty, brought out in the course of the Mosaic narrative by many and painful indications, that the Israelites were not long in Egypt till they became partakers in Egypt’s sins; and that the longer their stay was protracted there, they only sunk the deeper into the mire of Egyptian idolatry and corruption, and became the more thoroughly alienated from the true knowledge and worship of God. Not only had they, as a people, completely lost sight of the great temporal promise of the covenant, the inheritance of the land of Canaan, but God himself had become to them as a strange God; so that Moses had to inquire for the name by which he should reveal Him to their now dark and besotted minds.[179] The very same language is used concerning their connection with the abominations of Egyptian idolatry, while they sojourned among them, as is afterwards used of their connection with those of Canaan: “they served other gods,” “went a whoring after them;” and even long after they had left the region, would not “forsake the idols of Egypt,” but still carried its abominations with them, and in their hearts turned back to it.[180] Of the truth of these charges they gave too many affecting proofs in the wilderness; and especially by their setting up, so recently after the awful demonstrations of God’s presence and glory on Sinai, and their own covenant engagements, the worship of the golden calf, with its bacchanalian accompaniments. Their conduct on that occasion was plainly a return to the idolatrous practices of Egypt in their most common form.[181] And, indeed, if their bondage and oppression in its earlier stages did not, as a timely chastisement from the hand of God, check their tendency to imitate the manners and corruptions of Egypt, as it does not appear to have done, it could scarcely fail to be productive of a growing conformity to the evil. For it destroyed that freedom and elevation of spirit, without which genuine religion can never prosper. It robbed them of the leisure they required for the worship of God and the cultivation of their minds (their Sabbaths seem altogether to have perished), and it brought them into such close contact with the proper possessors of Egypt, as was naturally calculated to infect them with the grovelling and licentious spirit of Egyptian idolatry. So that probably true religion was never at a lower ebb, in the family of Abraham, than toward the close of their sojourn in Egypt; and the swelling waves of affliction, which at last overwhelmed them, only marked the excessive strength and prevalence of that deep under-current of corruption which had carried them away. Now this condition of the heirs of promise, viewed in reference to its highest bearing, its connection with the inheritance, was made subservient to the manifestation of certain great principles, necessarily involved in this part of the Divine procedure, in respect to which it could not properly have been dispensed with. (1.) It first of all clearly demonstrated, that, apart from the covenant of God, the state and prospects of those heirs of promise were in no respect better than those of other men—in some respects it seemed to be worse with them. They were equally far off from the inheritance, being in a state of hopeless alienation from it; they had drunk into the foul and abominable pollutions of the land of their present sojourn, which were utterly at variance with an interest in the promised blessing; and they bore upon them the yoke of a galling bondage, at once the consequence and the sign of their spiritual degradation. They differed for the better only in having a part in the covenant of God. (2.) Therefore, secondly, whatever this covenant secured for them of promised good, they must have owed entirely to Divine grace. In their own condition and behaviour, they could see no ground of preference; they saw, indeed, the very reverse of any title to the blessing, which must hence descend upon them as Heaven’s free and undeserved gift. This they were after wards admonished by Moses to keep carefully in remembrance: “Speak not thou in thy heart, saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land. Not for thy righteousness or for the uprightness of thine heart dost thou go to possess the land, but that the Lord may perform the word which He sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”[182] (3.) Hence, finally, the promise of the inheritance could be made good in their experience only by the special kindness and interposition of God, vindicating the truth of His own faithful word, and in order to this, executing in their behalf a work of redemption. While the inheritance was sure, because the title to it stood in the mercy and faithfulness of God, they had of necessity to be redeemed before they could actually possess it. Having become the victims of corruption, they were also the children of wrath; sin had brought them into bondage; and before they could escape to the land of freedom and rest, the snare must be broken. But the hand of Omnipotence alone could do it. If nature had been left to itself, the progress would only have been to a fouler corruption and a deeper ruin. It was simply as the Lord’s chosen people that they held the promise of the inheritance, and they could enter on its possession no otherwise than as a people ransomed by His power and goodness. So that the great principles of their degenerate and lost condition, of their absolutely free election and calling to the promised good, of redemption by the grace and power of God in order to obtain it, were interwoven as essential elements with this portion of their history, and imprinted as indelible lines upon the very foundations of their national existence.
2. We have as yet, however, mentioned only one ultimate reason for the oppressed and suffering condition of the Israelites in Egypt, though in that one were involved various principles bearing upon their relation to the inheritance. But there was another also of great importance it formed an essential part of the preparation which they needed for occupying the inheritance. This preparation, in its full and proper sense, must, of course, have included qualities of a religious and moral kind; and of these we shall have occasion to speak at large afterwards. But apart from these, there was needed what might be called a natural preparation; and that especially consisting of two parts,—a sufficient desire after the inheritance, and a fitness in temper and habit for the position which, in connection with it, they were destined to occupy.
(1.) It was necessary by some means to have a desire awakened in their bosoms towards Canaan, for the pleasantness of their habitation had become a snare to them. The fulness of its natural delights by degrees took off their thoughts from their high calling and destiny as the chosen of God; and the more they became assimilated to the corrupt and sensual manners of Egypt, the more would they naturally be disposed to content themselves with their present comforts. To such an extent had this feeling grown upon them, that they could scarcely be kept afterwards from returning back, notwithstanding the hard service and cruel inflictions with which they had latterly been made to groan in anguish of spirit. What must have been their state if no such troubles had been experienced, and all had continued to go well with them in Egypt? How vain would have been the attempt to inspire them with the love of Canaan, and especially to make good their way to it through formidable difficulties and appalling dangers! The affliction of Israel in Egypt is a testimony to the truth, common to all times, that the kingdom of God must be entered through tribulation. The tribulation may be ever so varied in its character and circumstances; but in some form it must be experienced, in order to prevent the mind from becoming wedded to temporal enjoyments, and to kindle in it a sincere desire for the better part, which is reserved in heaven for the heirs of salvation. Hence it is so peculiarly hard for those who are living in the midst of fulness and prosperity to enter into the kingdom of God. And hence, also, must so many trying dispensations be sent even to those who have entered the kingdom, to wean them from earthly things, and constrain them to seek for their home and portion in heaven.
(2.) But if we look once more to the Israelites, we shall see that something besides longing desire for Canaan was needed to prepare them for what was in prospect. For that land, though presented to their hopes as a land flowing with milk and honey, was not to be by any means a region of inactive repose, where everything was to be done for them, and they had only to take their rest, and feast themselves with the abundance of peace. The natural imagination delights to riot in the thought of such an untaxed existence, and such a luxurious home. But He who made man, and knows what is best suited to the powers and capacities of his nature, never destined him for such a state of being. Even the garden of Eden, replenished as it was with the tokens of Divine beneficence, was to some extent a field of active exertion: the blissful region had to be kept and dressed by its possessor as the condition of his partaking of its fruitfulness. And now, when Canaan took for a time the place of Eden, and the covenant people were directed to look thither for their present home and inheritance, while they were warranted to expect there the largest amount of earthly blessing, they were by no means entitled to look for a state of lazy inaction and uninterrupted rest. There was much to be done, as well as much to be enjoyed; and they could neither have fulfilled, in regard to other nations, the elevated destiny to which they were appointed, as the lamp and witness of heaven, nor reaped in their own experience the large measure of good which was laid up in store for themselves, unless they had been prepared by a peculiar training of vigorous action, and even compulsive labour, to make the proper use of all their advantages. Now, in this point of view, the period of Israel’s childhood as a nation in Egypt might be regarded as, to some extent, a season of preparation for their future manhood. It would not have done for them to go and take possession of Canaan as a horde of ignorant barbarians, or as a company of undisciplined and roving shepherds. It was fit and proper that they should carry with them a taste for the arts and manners of civilised life, and habits of active labour, suited to the scenes of usefulness and glory which awaited them in the land of their proper inheritance. But how were such tastes and habits to become theirs? They did not naturally possess them, nor, if suffered to live at ease, would they probably ever have attained to any personal acquaintance with them. They must be brought, in the first instance, under the bands of a strong necessity; so that it might be no doubtful contingence, but a sure and determinate result, that they left Egypt with all the learning, the knowledge of art and manufacture, the capacity for active business and useful employment, which it was possible for them there to acquire. And thus they went forth abundantly furnished with the natural gifts, which were necessary to render them, not only an independent nation, but also fit instruments of God for His work and service in the new and not less honourable than arduous position they were destined to occupy.[186]
[186]
He proceeds to show that the notices we have of the heavenly world imply the existence there of intelligent and vigorous agents:—
“But if there be a real and necessary, not merely a shadowy, agency in heaven as well as on earth; and if human nature is destined to act its part in such an economy, then its constitution, and the severe training it undergoes, are at once explained; and then also the removal of individuals in the very prime of their fitness for useful labour, ceases to be impenetrably mysterious. This excellent mechanism of matter and mind, which, beyond any other of His works, declares the wisdom of the Creator, and which, under His guidance, is now passing the season of its first preparation, shall stand up anew from the dust of dissolution, and then, with freshened powers, and with a store of hard-earned and practical wisdom for its guidance, shall essay new labours in the service of God, who by such instruments chooses to accomplish His designs of beneficence. That so prodigious a waste of the highest qualities should take place, as is implied in the notions which many Christians entertain of the future state, is indeed hard to imagine. The mind of man, formed as it is to be more tenacious of its active habits than even of its moral dispositions, is, in the present state, trained, often at an immense cost of suffering, to the exercise of skill, of forethought, of courage, of patience; and ought it not to be inferred, unless positive evidence contradicts the supposition, that this system of education bears some relation of fitness to the state for which it is an initiation? Shall not the very same qualities which here are so sedulously fashioned and finished, be actually needed and used in that future world of perfection? Surely the idea is inadmissible, that an instrument wrought up at so much expense to a polished fitness for service, is destined to be suspended for ever on the palace-walls of heaven, as a glittering bauble, no more to make proof of its temper?
“Perhaps a pious but needless jealousy, lest the honour due to Him, ‘who worketh all in all,’ should be in any degree compromised, has had influence in concealing from the eyes of Christians the importance attributed in the Scriptures to subordinate agency; and thus, by a natural consequence, has impoverished and enfeebled our ideas of the heavenly state. But, assuredly, it is only while encompassed by the dimness and errors of the present life, that there can be any danger of attributing to the creature the glory due to the Creator. When once with open eye that excellent glory has been contemplated, then shall it be understood that the Divine wisdom is incomparably more honoured by the skilful and faithful performances, and by the cheerful toils of agents who have been fashioned and fitted for service, than it could be by the bare exertions of irresistible power; and then, when the absolute dependence of creatures is thoroughly felt, may the beautiful orders of the heavenly hierarchy, rising and still rising toward perfection, be seen and admired, without hazard of forgetting Him who alone is absolutely perfect, and who is the only fountain and first cause of whatever is excellent.”[187] [187]
Section Second.—The Deliverer And His Commission. THE condition to which the heirs of promise were reduced in the land of Egypt, we have seen, called for a deliverance, and this again for a deliverer. Both were to be pre-eminently of God the work itself, and the main instrument of accomplishing it. In the execution of the one here was not more need for the display of Divine power, than for the exercise of Divine wisdom in the selection and preparation of the other. It is peculiar to God’s instruments, that, though however to man’s view they may appear unsuited for the service, they are found on trial to possess the highest qualifications. “Wisdom is justified of all her children,” and especially of those who are appointed to the most arduous and important undertakings. But in the extremity of Israel’s distress, where was a deliverer to be found with the requisite qualifications? From a family of bondsmen, crushed and broken in spirit by their miserable servitude, who was to have the boldness to undertake their deliverance, or the wisdom, if he should succeed in delivering them, to make suitable arrangements for their future guidance and discipline? If such a person was anywhere to be found, he must evidently have been one who had enjoyed advantages very superior to those which entered into the common lot of his brethren—one who had found time and opportunity for the meditation of high thoughts, and the acquirement of such varied gifts as would fit him to transact, in behalf of his oppressed countrymen, with the court of the proud and the learned Pharaohs, and amidst the greatest difficulties and discouragements to lay the foundation of a system which should nurture and develop through coming ages the religious life of God’s covenant people. Such a deliverer was needed for this peculiar emergency in the affairs of God’s kingdom; and the very troubles which seemed, from their long continuance and crushing severity, to preclude the possibility of obtaining what was needed, were made to work toward its accomplishment.
It is not the least interesting and instructive point in the history of Moses, the future hope of the Church, that his first appearance on the stage of this troubled scene was in the darkest hour of affliction, when the adversary was driving things to the uttermost. His first breath was drawn under a doom of death, and the very preservation of his life was a miracle of Divine mercy. But God here also “made the wrath of man to praise Him;” and the bloody decree which, by destroying the male children as they were born, was designed by Pharaoh to inflict the death-blow on Israel’s hopes of honour and enlargement, was rendered subservient, in the case of Moses, to prepare and fashion the living instrument through whom these hopes were soon to be carried forth into victory and fruition. Forced by the very urgency of the danger on the notice of Pharaoh’s daughter, and thereafter received, under her care and patronage, into Pharaoh’s house, the child Moses possessed, in the highest degree, the opportunity of becoming “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” and grew up to manhood in the familiar use of every advantage which it was possible for the world at that time to confer. Bat with such extraordinary means of advancement for the natural life, with what an atmosphere of danger was he there encompassed for the spiritual! He was exposed to the seductive and pernicious influence of a palace, where not only the world was met with in its greatest pomp and splendour, but where also superstition reigned, and a policy was pursued directly opposed to the interests of God’s kingdom. How he was enabled to with stand such dangerous influences, and escape the contamination of so unwholesome a region, we are not informed; nor even how he first became acquainted with the fact of his Hebrew origin, and the better prospects which still remained to cheer and animate the hearts of his countrymen. But the result shows, that somehow he was preserved from the one, and brought to the knowledge of the other; for when about forty years of age, we are told, he went forth to visit his brethren, and that with a faith already so fully formed, that he was not only prepared to sympathize with them in their distress, but to hazard all for their deliverance.Exodus 2:11-15; Acts 7:23; Hebrews 11:24. [188]And, indeed, when he once understood and believed that his brethren were the covenant people of God, who held in promise the inheritance of the land of Canaan, and whose period of oppression he might also have learned was drawing near its termination, it would hardly require any special revelation, besides what might be gathered from the singular providences attending his earlier history, to conclude that he was destined by God to be the chosen instrument for effecting the deliverance.
[188] Natural History of Enthusiasm, p. 150-154. But it is often less difficult to get the principle of faith, than to exercise the patience necessary in waiting God’s time for its proper and seasonable exercise. Moses showed he possessed the one, but seems yet to have wanted the other, when he slew the Egyptian whom he found smiting the Hebrew. For though the motive was good, being intended to express his brotherly sympathy with the suffering Israelites, and to serve as a kind of signal for a general rising against their oppressors, yet the action itself appears to have been wrong. He had no warrant to take the execution of vengeance into his own hand; and that it was with this view, rather than for any purpose of defence, that Moses went so far as to slay the Egyptian, seems not obscurely implied in the original narrative, and is more distinctly indicated in the assertion of Stephen, who assigns this as the reason of the deed, “for he supposed they would have understood, how that God by his hand would deliver them.” The consequence was, that by anticipating the purpose of God, and attempting to accomplish it in an improper manner, he only involved himself in danger and difficulty; his own brethren misunderstood his conduct, and Pharaoh threatened to take away his life. On this occasion, therefore, we cannot but regard him as acting unadvisedly with his hand, as on a memorable one in the future he spake unadvisedly with his lips. It was the hasty and irregular impulse of the flesh, not the enlightened and heavenly guidance of the Spirit, which prompted him to take the course he did; and without contributing in the least to improve the condition of his countrymen, he was himself made to reap the fruit of his misconduct in a long and dreary exile.[189]
[189]
We cannot, therefore, justify Moses in the deed he committed, far less say of him with Buddeus (Hist. Eccles. Vet. Test., i., p. 492), Patrick, and others, that he was stirred up to it by a Divine impulse, nor regard the impulse of any other kind than that which prompted David’s men to counsel him to slay Saul, when an occasion for doing so presented itself (1 Samuel 24),—an impulse of the flesh presuming upon and misapplying a word of God. The time for deliverance was not yet come. The Israelites, as a whole, were not sufficiently prepared for it; and Moses himself also was far from being ready for his peculiar task. Before he was qualified to take the government of such a people, and be a fit instrument for executing the manifold and arduous part he had to discharge in connection with them, he needed to have trial of a kind of life altogether different from what he had been accustomed to in the palaces of Egypt,—to feel himself at home amid the desolation and solitudes of the desert, and there to become habituated to solemn converse with his God, and formed to the requisite gravity, meekness, patience, and subduedness of spirit. Thus God overruled his too rash and hasty interference with the affairs of his kindred, to the proper completion of his own preparatory training, and provided for him the advantage of as long a sojourn in the wilderness to learn Divine wisdom, as he had already spent in learning human wisdom in Egypt. We have no direct information of the manner in which his spirit was exercised during this period of exile, yet the names he gave to his children show that it did not pass unimproved. The first he called Gershom, “because he was a stranger in a strange land,”—implying that he felt in the in most depths of his soul the sadness of being cut off from the society of his kindred, and perhaps also at being disappointed of his hope in regard to the promised inheritance. The second he named Eliezer, saying, “The God of my father is my help,—betokening his clear, realizing faith in the invisible Jehovah, the God of his fathers, to whom his soul had now learnt more thoroughly and confidingly to turn itself, since he had been compelled so painfully to look away from the world. And now having passed through the school of God in its two grand departments, and in both extremes of life obtained ample opportunities for acquiring the wisdom which was peculiarly needed for Israel’s deliverer and lawgiver, the set time for God was come, and He appeared to Moses at the bush for the special purpose of investing him with a Divine commission for the task. But here a new and unlooked-for difficulty presented itself, in his own reluctance to accept the commission. We know how apt, in great enterprises, which concern the welfare of many, while one has to take the lead, a rash and unsuccessful attempt to accomplish the desired end, is to beget a spirit of excessive caution and timidity—a sort of shyness and chagrin—especially if the failure has seemed in any measure attributable to a want of sympathy and support on the part of those whose co-operation was most confidently relied on. Something not unlike this appears to have grown upon Moses in the desert. Remembering how his precipitate attempt to avenge the wrongs of his kindred, and rouse them to a combined effort to regain their freedom, had not only provoked the displeasure of Pharaoh, but was met by insult and reproach from his kindred themselves, he could not but feel that the work of their deliverance was likely to prove both a heartless and a perilous task,—a work that would need to be wrought out, not only against the determined opposition of the mightiest kingdom in the world, but also under the most trying discouragements, arising from the now degraded and dastardly spirit of the people. This feeling, of which Moses could scarcely fail to be conscious even at the time of his flight from Egypt, may easily be conceived to have increased in no ordinary degree amid the deep solitudes and quiet occupations of a shepherd’s life, in which he was permitted to live till he had the weight of fourscore years upon his head. So that we cannot wonder at the disposition he manifested to start objections to the proposal made to him to undertake the work of deliverance; we are only surprised at the unreasonable and daring length to which, in spite of every consideration and remonstrance on the part of God, he persisted in urging them. The symbol in which the Lord then appeared to Moses, the bush burning but not consumed, was well fitted on reflection to inspire him with encouragement and hope. It pointed, Moses could not fail to remember, when he came to meditate on what he had seen and heard, to “the smoking furnace and the burning lamp,” which had passed in vision before the eye of Abraham, when he was told of the future sufferings of his posterity in the land that was not theirs.—(Genesis 15:17) Such a furnace now again visibly presented itself; but the little thorn-bush, emblem of the covenant people, the tree of God’s planting, stood uninjured in the midst of the flame, because the covenant God Himself was there. Why, then, should Moses despond on account of the afflictions of his people, or shrink from the arduous task now committed to him?—especially when the distinct assurance was given to him of all needful powers and gifts to furnish him aright for the undertaking, and the word of God was solemnly pledged to conduct it to a successful issue.
It is clear from the whole interview at which Moses received his commission, that the difficulties and discouragements which pressed most upon his mind were those connected with the sunk and degenerate condition of the covenant people themselves, who appeared to have lost heart in regard to the promise of the covenant, and even to have become deeply estranged from the God of the covenant. His concern on the latter point led him to ask what he should say to them when they inquired for the name of the God of their fathers, under whose authority he should go to them? His question was met with the sublime reply, “I AM THAT I AM: thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, JEHOVAH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is My name for ever, and this is My memorial unto all generations.” In this striking revelation we have to look, not merely to the name assumed by God, but to the historical setting that on each side is given to it, whereby it is linked equally to the past and the future, and becomes in a great measure self-explanatory. He who describes Himself as the “I AM THAT I AM,” and turns the description into the distinctive name of JEHOVAH, does so for the express purpose of enabling Israel to recognise Him as the God of their fathers—the God who, in the past, had covenanted with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and who now, in the immediate future, was going to make good for their posterity what He had promised to them. Obviously, therefore, we have here to do, not with the metaphysical and the abstract, not with being simply in the sense of pure absolute existence,—an idea unsuitable alike to the circumstances and the connection; nor can we think of a manifestation of the attributes of being with respect alone to the future—as if God would represent Himself in relation only to what was to come—the God pre-eminently and emphatically of the coming age (“I will be what I will be”). For this were to narrow men’s ideas of the Godhead, and limit the distinctive name to but one sphere of the Divine agency—making it properly expressive of what was to be, in God’s manifestations, not as connected with, but as contradistinguished from, what had been—therefore separating, in some sense, the God of the offspring from the God of the fathers. If, looking to the derivation of the word Jehovah (from the substantive verb to be), we must hold fast to simple being as the root of the idea; yet, seeing how this is imbedded in the historical relations of the past and the future, we must understand it of being in the practical sense: independent and unalterable existence in respect to principles of character and consistency of working. As the Jehovah, He would show that He is the God who changeth not (Malachi 3:6),—the God who, having made with the patriarchs an everlasting covenant, continued to abide in the relations it established, and who could no more resile from its engagements than He could cease to be what He was. Nothing, therefore, could be better suited to the urgencies of the occasion, as well as to the stage generally that had been reached in the Divine dispensations, than the revelation here made to Israel through Moses, summed up and ratified by the signature of the peculiar covenant name of God. The people were thus assured, that however matters might have changed to the worse with them, and temporary darkness have come over their prospects, the God of their fathers remained without variableness or shadow of turning—the God of the present and the future, as well as of the past. And so, in the development now to be given to what already existed in germ and promise, they might justly expect a higher manifestation than had yet appeared of Divine faithfulness and love, and a deeper insight into the manifold perfections of the Divine nature.[190]
[190]
2. The Deliverer, when II came, must arise within the Church itself. He must be, in the strictest sense, the brother of those whom He came to redeem; bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh; partaker not merely of their nature, but also of their infirmities, their dangers, and their sufferings. Though He had to come from the highest heavens to accomplish the work, still it was not as clad with the armoury and sparkling with the glory of the upper sanctuary that He must enter on it, but as the seed of the vanquished woman, the child of promise in the family of God, and Himself having experience of the lowest depths of sorrow and abasement which sin had brought upon them. He must, however, make His appearance in the bosom of that family; for the Church, though ever so depressed and afflicted in her condition, cannot be indebted to the world for a deliverer; the world must be indebted to her. With her is the covenant of God; and she alone is the mother of the victorious seed, that destroys the destroyer.
3. Yet the deliverance, even in its earlier stages, when existing only in the personal history of the deliverer, is not altogether independent of the world. The blessing of Israel was interwoven with acts of kindness derived from the heathen; and the child Moses, with whom their very existence as a nation and all its coming glory was bound up, owed his preservation to a member of Pharaoh’s house, and in that house found a fit asylum and nursing-place. Thus the earth “helped the woman,” as it has often done since. The Captain of our salvation had in like manner to be helped; for, though born of the tribe of Judah, He had to seek elsewhere the safety and protection which “His own” denied Him, and partly—not because absolutely necessary to verify the type, but to render its fulfilment more striking and palpable—was indebted for his preservation to that very Egypt which had sheltered the infancy of Moses. So that in the case even of the Author and Finisher of our faith, the history of redemption links itself closely to the history of the world.
4. Still the deliverer, as to his person, his preparation, his gifts and calling, is peculiarly of God. That such a person as Moses was provided for the Church in the hour of her extremity, was entirely the result of God’s covenant with Abraham: and the whole circumstances connected with his preparation for the work, as well as the commission given him to undertake it, and the supernatural endowments fitting him for its execution, manifestly bespoke the special and gracious interposition of Heaven. But the same holds true in each particular, and is still more illustriously displayed in Christ. In His person, mysteriously knitting together heaven and earth; in His office as Mediator, called and appointed by the Father; prepared also for entering on it, first by familiar converse with the world, and then by a season of wilderness-seclusion and trial; replenished directly from above with gifts adequate to the work, even to His being filled with the whole fulness of the Godhead;—everything, in short, to beget the impression, that while the Church is honoured as the channel through which the Deliverer comes, yet the Deliverer Himself is in all respects the peculiar gift of God, and that here especially it may be said, “Of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things.”
Section Third.—The Deliverance.
WE have now come to the actual accomplishment of Israel’s deliverance from the house of bondage. One can easily imagine that various methods might have been devised to bring it about. And had the Israelites been an ordinary race of men, and had the question simply been, how to get them most easily and quickly released from their state of oppression, a method would probably have been adopted very different from the one that was actually pursued. It is by viewing the matter thus, that shallow and superficial minds so often form an erroneous judgment concerning it. They see nothing peculiar in the case, and form their estimate of the whole transactions as if only common relations were concerned, and nothing more than worldly ends were in view. Hence, because the plan from the first savoured so much of judgment, because, instead of seeking to have the work accomplished in the most peaceful and conciliatory manner, the Lord rather selected a course that was likely to produce bloodshed,—nay, is even represented as hardening the heart of Pharaoh, that an occasion might be found for pouring a long series of troubles and desolations on the land, because the plan actually chosen was of such a kind, many have not scrupled to denounce it as unworthy of God, and more befitting a cruel and malignant than a wise and beneficent being.
Now, in rising above this merely secular view, and the erroneous conclusions that naturally spring from it, it is first of all to be borne in mind that higher relations were here concerned, and more important objects at stake, than those of this world. The Israelites were the chosen people of God, standing in a covenant relation to Him. However far most of them had been living beneath their obligations and their calling, they still occupied a position which was held by no other family on earth. With them was identified, in a peculiar sense, the honour of God and the cause of heaven; and the power that oppressed and afflicted them, was trampling at every step on rights which God had conferred, and provoking the execution of a curse which He had solemnly denounced. If the cause and blessing of Heaven were bound up with the Israelites, then Pharaoh, in acting toward them as an enemy and oppressor, must of necessity have espoused the interest and become liable to the doom of Satan.
Besides, it must be carefully borne in mind, that here especially, where God had immediately to work, His dealings and dispensations were of a preparatory nature. They were planned and executed in anticipation of the grand work of redemption, which was afterwards to be accomplished by Christ, and were consequently directed in such a manner as to embody on the comparatively small scale of their earthly transactions and interests, the truths and principles which were afterwards to be developed in the affairs of a divine and everlasting kingdom.[191] This being the case, the deliverance of Israel from the land of Egypt must have been distinguished at least by the following features:—1. It must, in the first instance, have appeared to be a work of peculiar difficulty, requiring to be accomplished in the face of very great and powerful obstacles, rescuing the people from the strong grasp of an enemy, who, though a cruel tyrant and usurper, yet, on account of their sin, had acquired over them a lordly dominion, and by means of terror kept them subject to bondage. 2. Then, from this being the case, the deliverance must necessarily have been effected by the execution of judgment upon the adversary; so that, as the work of judgment proceeded on the one hand, the work of deliverance would proceed on the other, and the freedom of the covenant people be completely achieved only when the principalities and powers which held them in bondage were utterly spoiled and vanquished. 3. Finally, this twofold process of salvation with destruction, must have been of a kind fitted to call forth the peculiar powers and perfections of Godhead; so that all who witnessed it, or to whom the knowledge of it should come, might be constrained to own and admire the wonder-working hand of God, and instinctively, as it wore, exclaim, “Behold what God hath wrought! It is His doing, and marvellous in our eyes.”—We say, all this must have been on the supposition of the scriptural account of the work being taken; and, excepting on that supposition, we cannot be in a fit position to judge of the things which concerned it.
[191] Vol. i., Book I., c. 3. On this scriptural ground we take our stand, when proceeding to examine the affairs connected with this method of deliverance; and we assert them not only to be capable of a satisfactory vindication, but to have been incapable of serving the purposes which they were designed to accomplish, if they had not been ordered substantially as they were. It is manifestly impossible that here, any more than in what afterwards befell Christ, the order of events should have been left to any law less power, working as it pleased, but that all must have been arranged “by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,” and arranged precisely as they occurred. The outstretching of the Divine arm to inflict the most desolating judgments on the land of Egypt, the slaying of the first-born, and the overthrow of Pharaoh and his host, were essential parts of the Divine plan. But since these appear as the result of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, this also must have formed an essential element in the plan; and was therefore announced to Moses from the first as an event that might certainly be expected, and which would give a peculiar direction to the whole series of transactions.[192] For this hardening of the heart of Pharaoh was the very hinge, in a sense, on which the Divine plan turned, and could least of all be left to chance or uncertainty. It presents itself not simply as an obstacle to be removed, but as a circumstance to be employed for securing a more illustrious display of the glorious attributes of God, and effecting the redemption of His people in the way most consistent with His righteous purposes. It could not, therefore, be allowed to hang merely upon the will of Pharaoh; somehow the hand of God must have been in the matter, as it belongs to Him to settle and arrange all that concerns the redemption of His people and the manifestation of His own glory. Nor, otherwise, could there have been any security for the Divine plan proceeding to its accomplishment, or for its possessing such features as might render it a fitting preparation for the greater redemption that was to come.
It seems to us impossible to look at the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in the connection which it thus holds with the entire plan of God, or to consider the marked and distinct manner in which it is ascribed to His agency, and yet to speak of Pharaoh being simply allowed to harden his own heart, as presenting a sufficient explanation of the case. It is true, he is often affirmed also to have himself hardened his heart; and in the very first announcement of it ch. (Exodus 3:19, “I am sure, or rather, I know, that the king of Egypt will not let you go”), as acutely remarked by Baumgarten, “the Lord characterizes the resistance of Pharaoh as an act of freedom, existing apart from the Lord Himself; for I know that which objectively stands out and apart from me.”[193] At the same time, it is justly noticed by Hengstenberg, that as the hardening is ascribed to God, both in the announcement of it beforehand, and in the subsequent recapitulation (Exodus 4:21; Exodus 7:3; Exodus 11:10), “Pharaoh’s hardening appears to be enclosed within that of God’s, and to be dependent on it. It seems also to be intentional, that the hardening is chiefly ascribed to Pharaoh at the beginning of the plagues, and to God toward the end. The higher the plagues rise, the more does Pharaoh’s hardening assume a supernatural character, and the reference was the more likely to be made to its supernatural cause.”[194] [193]
[194] Authentie, ii., p. 462. Some stress is laid by Hengstenberg on the hardening being ascribed seven times to Pharaoh, and the same number of times to God, as indicating that it has respect to the covenant of God, of which seven is the sign. Baumgarten also lays some stress on the numbers, but finds each to be ten times repeated, the sign of completeness. Both have to deal arbitrarily with the sacred text to make out their respective numbers (for example, Hengstenberg leaves out the three hardenings of God in ch. 14; and Baumgarten treats ch. 7:13 and 14, as if they spoke of two distinct hardenings). It is also against the simplicity of the Scripture narrative to draw from the incidental form of its historical statements such hidden meanings. The conclusion, indeed, is inevitable. It is impossible, by any fair interpretation of Scripture, or on any profound view of the transactions referred to, to get rid of the Divine agency in the matter. Even Tholuck says, “That the hardening of the Egyptian was, on one side, ordained by God, no disciple of Christian theology can deny. It is an essential doctrine of the Bible, that God would not permit evil, unless He were Lord over it: and that He permits it, because it cannot act as a check upon His plan of the world, but must be equally subservient to Him as good— the only difference being, that the former is so compulsorily, the latter optionally.”[195] That God had no hand in the sin, which mingles itself with evil, is clearly implied in the general doctrine of Scripture; since He everywhere appears there as the avenger of sin, and hence cannot possibly be in any sense its author. In so far, therefore, as the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart partook of sin, it must have been altogether his own; his conduct, considered as a course of heady and high-minded opposition to the Divine will, was pursued in the free though unrighteous exercise of His own judgment. This, however, is noway inconsistent with the idea of there being a positive agency of God in the matter, to the effect of limiting both the manner and extent of the opposition. “It is in the power of the wicked to sin,” says Augustine, “but that in sinning they do this or that by their wickedness, is not in their own power, but in God’s, who divides and arranges the darkness.”[196] A later authority justly discriminates thus: “God’s providence extendeth itself to all sins of angels and men, and that not by a bare permission, but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering and governing them, in a manifold dispensation, unto His own holy ends; yet so as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God.”[197] It is wholly chargeable on man himself, if there is a sinful disposition at work in his bosom; but that disposition existing there, and resisting the means which God employs to subdue it, the man has no longer any control over the course and issue of events. This is entirely in the hands of God, to be directed by Him in the way, and turned into the form and channel, which is best adapted to promote the ends of His righteous government. “He places the sinner in such situations, that precisely this or that temptation shall assail him—links the thoughts to certain determinate objects of sinful desire, and secures their remaining attached to these, and not starting off to others. The hatred in the heart belonged to Shimei himself; but it was God’s work that this hatred should settle so peculiarly upon David, and should show itself in exactly the manner it did. It was David’s own fault that he became elated with pride; the course of action which this pride was to take was accidental, so far as he was concerned; it belonged to God, who turns the hearts of kings like the rivers of waters. Hence it is said, 2 Samuel 24:1, ‘The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.’ Yet was he not thereby in the least justified, and therefore, 2 Samuel 24:10, he confesses that he had greatly sinned, and prays the Lord to take away his iniquity.”[198]
[195]
[197] Westminster Confession, ch. v.
[198] Authentie, ii., p. 466. See also Calvin’s Institutes, B. I., c. 18, and B. II., c. 4, for the proof, rather than the explanation, of the fact, that “bare permission is too weak to stand, and that it is the merest trifling to substitute a bare permission for the providence of God, as if He sat in a watch-tower, waiting for fortuitous events, His judgments meanwhile depending on the will of man.”
Now, applying these views to the case of Pharaoh, it was certainly his own proud and wicked heart which prompted him to refuse the command of God to let Israel go. But he might have retained that disposition in all its force, and yet have acted differently from what he did. Mere selfishness, or considerations of policy, might have induced him to restrain it, as from like motives, not from any proper change of heart, his magicians first, and afterwards his counsellors, appear to have wished.—(Exodus 8:19; Exodus 10:7) But the hand of God exerted such control over him, so bounded and hedged him in, that while he clung to the evil principle, he must pursue his infatuated and foolhardy course: this one path lay open to him. And for his doing so, two things were necessary, and in these the action of Omnipotence was displayed:—1. First, the strong and courageous disposition capable of standing fast under formidable dangers and grappling with gigantic difficulties—a natural endowment which could only have been derived from God. That such a disposition should have been possessed in so eminent a degree by the Pharaoh who then occupied the throne of Egypt, was the result of God’s agency, though Pharaoh alone was responsible for its abuse. 2. But, besides, there was needed such a disposal of circumstances as might tend to prompt and stimulate to the utmost this disposition of Pharaoh; for otherwise it might have lain comparatively dormant, or, at least, might have been far from running such a singularly perverse and infatuated course. Here also the hand of God manifested its working. It was He who, in the language of Tholuck, “brought about those circumstances which made the heart disposed to evil still harder.” Many writers, who substantially admit this, limit the circumstances tending to produce the result in question to the lenity and forbearance of God, in so readily and frequently releasing Pharaoh from the execution of judgment. There can be no doubt that this was one of the circumstances which, on such a mind as his, would be fitted to produce a hardening effect; but it was not the only nor the chief one: there were others, which must have had a still more powerful tendency in the same direction, and which were also more properly judicial in their character. Such, in the first instance, and most evidently, was the particular kind of miracles which Moses was instructed to work at the commencement of his operations—the transforming of his rod into a serpent, and back again to a rod; for this was precisely the field on which Pharaoh might be tempted to think he could successfully compete with Moses, and might rival at least, if not outdo, the pretended messengers of Heaven. However inexplicable the fact may be, of the fact itself there can be no question, that from time immemorial the art of working extraordinary, and to all appearance supernatural, effects on serpents, has been practised by a particular class of persons in Egypt—the Psylli. Many of the ancients have written of the wonderful exploits of those persons, and celebrated their magical power, both to charm serpents at their will, and to resist unharmed the bites of the most venomous species. And it would seem, by the accounts of some of the most recent inquirers, that descendants of the ancient brotherhood still exist in Egypt, forming an association by themselves, and able to handle without fear or injury the most noxious serpents, to walk abroad with numbers of them coiling around their necks and arms, and to make certainly one species of them rigid like a rod, and feign themselves dead.[199] It is also certain, that when they do these wonders, they are in a sort of phrenzied or ecstatical condition, and are believed by the multitude to be under divine influence. That this charming influence was, at least in its origin and earlier stages, the offspring to some extent of demoniacal power, is not inconsistent with what Scripture testifies concerning the workings of that power generally, and is most naturally implied in the particular statements made respecting the magicians when contending with Moses. For although we might, without much violence to the interpretation of the text, suppose it to represent that as being done which to all appearance was done, without being understood positively to affirm that the effect was actually produced; yet the language used of their changing the rods into serpents, and on a small scale also turning water into blood, and producing frogs, does in its proper import indicate something supernatural—corresponding, as we conceive, to the wonders of the demoniacal possessions of our Lord’s time, and still more closely perhaps to “the working of Satan with all power, and signs, and lying wonders,” which is made to characterize the coming of Antichrist.—(Matthew 24:24; 2 Thessalonians 2:9; Revelation 13:13) But even without pressing this, the mere fact of there being then a class of persons in the service of Pharaoh, who themselves pretended, and were generally believed, to be possessed of a divine power to work the wonders in question, must evidently have acted as a temptation with Pharaoh to resist the demands of Moses, being confident of his ability to contend with him on this peculiar field of prodigies. And having fairly ventured on the arena of conflict, we can easily understand how, with a proud and heaven-defying temper like his, he would scorn to own himself vanquished; even though the miraculous working of Moses clearly established its superiority to any act or power possessed by the magicians, and they themselves were at last compelled to retire from the field, owning the victory to be Jehovah’s.
[199] See the quotations from the ancients in Bochart, Hieroz., ii., p. 393 and 4; and for the account of the moderns, Hengstenberg’s Egypt and Books of Moses, p. 98-103. See also Mr Lane’s account of the modern serpent-charmers (Modern Eg., c. 20), who represents them as certainly doing extraordinary feats, but states it as an ascertained fact, that they do not carry serpents of a venomous nature about their persons till they have extracted the poisonous teeth. It is to be inferred that the ancient Psylli did the same, though they professed differently.
This, however, was only one class of the circumstances which were arranged by God, and fitted to harden the heart of Pharaoh. To the same account we must also place the progressive nature of the demands made upon him, in beginning first with a request for leave of three days absence to worship God; then, when this was granted for all who were properly capable of taking part in the service, insisting on the same liberty being extended to the wives and children; and again, when even this was conceded, claiming to take with them also their flocks and herds: so that it became evident an entire escape from the land was meditated. There was no deceit, as the adversaries of revelation have sometimes alleged, in this gradual opening of the Divine plan; nor, when the last and largest demand was made, was more asked than Pharaoh should from the first have voluntarily granted. But so little was sought at the beginning to make the unreasonableness of his conduct more distinctly apparent, and the gradual and successive enlargement of the demand was intended to act as a temptation, to prove him, and bring out the real temper of his heart.
Finally, of the same character also was the last movement of Heaven in this marvellous chain of providences—the leading of the children of Israel, as into a net, between the Red Sea and the mountains of the wilderness, fitted, as it so manifestly was, to suggest the thought to Pharaoh, when he had recovered a little from his consternation, and felt the humiliation of his defeat, that now an opportunity presented itself of retrieving his lost honour, and with one stroke avenging himself on his enemies. He was thus tempted, in the confident hope of victory, to renew the conflict, and, when apparently sure of his prey, was led, by the opening of the sea for the escape of the Israelites, and the removal of the Divine cloud to the rear, so as to cover their flight, into the fatal snare which involved him in destruction. In the whole, we see the directing and controlling agency of God, not in the least interfering with the liberty of Pharaoh, or obliging him to sin, but still, in judgment for his sinful oppression of the Church of God, and unjust resistance to the claims of Heaven, placing him in situations which, though fitted to influence aright a well-constituted mind, were also fitted, when working on such a temperament as his, to draw him into the extraordinary course he took, and to render the series of transactions, as they actually occurred, a matter of moral certainty. But to return to the wonders which Moses was commissioned to perform: it is to be borne in mind, that the humiliation of Pharaoh was not their only design, nor even the redemption of Israel their sole end. The manifestation of God’s own glory was here, as in all His works, the highest object in view; and this required that the powers of Egyptian idolatry, with which the interest of Satan was at that time peculiarly identified, should be brought into the conflict, and manifestly confounded. For this reason, also, it was that the first wonders wrought had such distinct reference to the exploits of the magicians or serpent-charmers, who were the wonder-workers connected with that gigantic system of idolatry, and the main instruments of its support and credit in the world. They were thus naturally drawn, as well as Pharaoh, into the contest, and became, along with him, the visible heads and representatives of the “spiritual wickednesses” of Egypt. And since they refused to own the supremacy and accede to the demands of Jehovah, on witnessing that first and, as it may be called, harmless triumph of His power over theirs; since they resolved, as the adversaries of God’s and the instruments of Satan’s interest in the world, to prolong the contest, there remained no alternative but to visit the hind with a series of judgments, such as might clearly prove the utter impotence of its fancied deities to protect their votaries from the might and vengeance of the living God. It is when considered in this point of view, that we see the agreement in principle between the wonders proceeding from the instrumentality of Moses, and those wrought by the hand of Christ. They seem at first sight to be entirely opposite in their character—the one being severe and desolating plagues; the other, miracles of mercy and healing. This seeming contrariety arises from their having been wrought on entirely different fields—those of Moses on an avowedly hostile territory, those of Christ on a land and among a people that were peculiarly His own. But as in both cases alike there was a mighty adversary, whose power and dominion were to be brought clown, so the display given in each of miraculous working, told with the same effect on his interest, though somewhat less conspicuously in the one case than in the other. While Christ’s works were, in the highest sense, miracles of mercy, supernatural acts of beneficence towards “His own,” they were, at the same time, triumphant displays of Divine over satanic agency. “The Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of the devil.” As often as His hand was stretched out to heal, it dealt a blow to the cause of the adversary; and the crowning part of the Redeemer’s work on earth, His dying the accursed death of the cross, was that which at once perfected the plan of mercy for the faithful, and judged and spoiled the prince of darkness. In like manner we see mercy and judgment going hand in hand in the wonders that were done by the instrumentality of Moses on the “field of Zoan;” only, from that being the field of the adversary, and the wonders being done directly upon him, the judgment comes more prominently into view. It was essentially a religious contest between the God of heaven on the one side, and the powers of Egyptian idolatry on the other, as represented by Pharaoh and his host; and as one stroke after another was inflicted by the arm of Omnipotence, there was discovered the nothingness of the divinities whose cause Pharaoh maintained, and in whose power he trusted, while “the God of Israel triumphed gloriously, and in mercy led forth the people whom He had redeemed, to His holy habitation.”
It is not necessary that we should show, by a minute examination of each of the plagues, how thoroughly they were fitted to expose the futility of Egyptian idolatry, and to show how completely everything there was at the disposal of the God of Israel, whether for good or evil. The total number of the plagues was ten, indicating their completeness for the purposes intended by their infliction. The first nine were but preparatory, like the miraculous works which Christ performed during His active ministry; the last was the great act of judgment, which was to carry with it the complete prostration of the adversary, and the deliverance of the covenant people. It was therefore, from the first, announced as the grand means to be employed for the accomplishment of Israel’s redemption.—(Exodus 4:22-23) But the preceding miracles were by no means unnecessary, as they tended to disclose the absolute sovereignty of Jehovah over the whole province of nature, as well as over the lives of men (which came out in the last plague), and His power to turn whatever was known of natural good in Egypt into an instrument of evil, and to aggravate the evil into tenfold severity. This was manifestly the general design; and it is not necessary to prove, either that these plagues were quite different in their nature from anything commonly known in Egypt, or that each one of them struck upon some precise feature of the existing idolatry. In reference to the first of these points, we by no means think, with Hengstenberg, that in the natural phenomena of Egypt there was a corresponding evil to each one of the plagues, and that the plague only consisted in the super natural degree to which the common evil was carried; nor can any proof be adduced in support of this at all satisfactory. But as the evil principle (Typhon) was worshipped in Egypt not less than the good, and worshipped, doubtless, because of his supposed power over the hurtful influences of nature,[200] we might certainly expect that some at least of the plagues would appear to be only an aggravation of the natural evils to which that land was peculiarly exposed: so that these, as well as its genial and beneficent properties, might be seen to be under the control of Jehovah. Of this kind unquestionably was the third plague (that of lice, or, as is now generally agreed, of the gnats, with which Egypt peculiarly abounds, and which all travellers, from Herodotus to those of the present day, concur in representing as a source of great trouble and annoyance in that country).[201] Of the same kind, also, was the plague of flies, which swarm in Egypt, and that also of the locusts;[202] to which we may add the plague of boils, which Scripture itself mentions as possessing a peculiarly Egyptian character.—(Deuteronomy 28:27) But while we can easily account for the production, on a gigantic scale, of these natural evils, the same object viz., the executing of judgment upon the gods of Egypt—would also lead us to expect other plagues of an entirely different kind, in which the natural good was restrained, and even converted into a source of evil. For in this way alone could confusion be poured upon the worship of the good principle, and which, there as elsewhere, took the form of a deification of the genial and productive powers of nature. Some of these belonged to Egypt in a quite extraordinary degree, and were regarded as constituting its peculiar glory. Such especially was the Nile, which was looked upon as identical with Osiris, the highest god, and to which Pharaoh himself is evidently represented as paying divine honours, in Exodus 7:15; Exodus 8:20.[203] Such, also, are its almost cloudless sky and ever-brilliant sun, rendering the climate so singularly clear and settled, that a shade is seldom to be seen; and not only the more violent tempests, but even the gentlest showers of rain, are a rarity. Hence of the earlier plagues, the two first those of the turning of the water into blood, and the frogs—took the form of a judgment upon the Nile, converting it from being the most beneficial and delightful, into the most noxious and loathsome, of terrestrial objects; while in the two later plagues of the tempest and the thick darkness, the Egyptians saw their crystal atmosphere and resplendent heavens suddenly compelled to wear an aspect of indescribable terror and appalling gloom. So that whether nature were worshipped there in respect to her benignant or her hurtful influences, the plagues actually inflicted were equally adapted to confound the gods of Egypt in the one case by changing the natural good into its opposite evil, and in the other by imparting to the natural evil a supernatural force and intensity.[204]
[200]
[202] Ibid.
[203] Hengstenberg, p. 109, where the authorities are given. Also Vossius, de Origine et Prog. Idolatriae, L. ii., c. 74, 75.
Taking this general and comprehensive view of the preliminary plagues, it will easily be seen that there is no need for our seeking to find in each of them a special reference to some individual feature of Egyptian idolatry. If they struck at the root of that system in what might be called its leading principles, there was obviously no necessity for dealing a separate and successive blow against its manifold shades and peculiarities of false worship. For this an immensely greater number than nine or ten would have been required. And as it is, in attempting to connect even these ten with the minutiae of Egyptian idolatry, much that is fanciful and arbitrary must be resorted to. So long as we keep to the general features and design, the bearing of the wonders wrought can be made plain enough; but those who would lead us more into detail, take for granted what is not certain, and sometimes even affirm what is manifestly absurd. To say, for example, that the plague of flies had any peculiar reference to the worship of Baal-zebub, the Fly-god, assumes a god to have been worshipped there who is not known for certain to have had a place in the mythology of Egypt. It is equally arbitrary to connect the plague of locusts with the worship of Serapis. And it is surely to draw pretty largely on one’s credulity, to speak of the miracle on the serpents as intended to destroy these, on account of their being the objects of worship; or to set forth the plague on cattle as aimed at the destruction of the entire system of brute worship, as if no cattle were killed in Egypt, because the Deity was there worshipped under that symbol![205] The general argument is weakened by being coupled with such puerilities; and the solemn impression also, which the wonders were designed to produce, would have been frittered down and impaired, rather than deepened, by so many allusions to the mere details of the system.
[205] The contrary needs no proof, as every one knows who is in the least acquainted with ancient Egypt, that “oxen generally were used both for food and sacrifice” (Heeren, Af., ii., p. 147); and evidence has even been found among the ancient documents, of a company of curriers, or leather-dressers.—(Ib.. p. 137) Bryant, in his book on the plagues, led the way to those weak and frivolous opinions, and he has been followed by many without examination. See, for example, the Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation, chapter iii. But now, when God had by the first nine plagues vindicated His power over all that was naturally good or evil in Egypt, and had thus smitten with judgment their nature-worship in both of its leading characteristics, the adversary being still determined to maintain his opposition, it was time to inflict that last and greatest judgment, the execution of which was from the first designed to be the death-blow of the adversary, and the signal of Israel’s deliverance. This was the slaying of the first-born, in which the Lord manifested His dominion over the highest region of life. Indeed, in this respect, there is clearly discernible, as was already noticed by Abenezra and other Jewish writers,[206] a gradual ascent in the plagues from the lower to the higher provinces of nature, which also tends to confirm the view we have presented of their character and design. The first two come from beneath—from the waters, which may be said to be under the earth (the Nile-blood and the frogs); the next two from the ground or surface of the earth (the lice and the flies); the murrain of beasts and the boils on men belong to the lower atmosphere, as the tempest, the showers of locusts, and the darkness, to the higher; so that one only remains, that which is occupied by the life of man, and which stands in immediate connection with the Divine power and glory. And as in the earlier plagues God separated between the land of Goshen and the rest of Egypt, to show that He was not only the Supreme Jehovah, but also the covenant God of Israel, so in this last and crowning act of judgment it was especially necessary, that while the stroke of death fell upon every dwelling of Egypt, the habitations of Israel should be preserved in perfect peace and safety. But two questions naturally arise here: Why in this judgment upon the life of man should precisely the first-born have been slain? and if the judgment was for the overthrow of the adversary and the redemption of Israel, why should a special provision have been required to save Israel also from the plague?
[206] See in Baumgarten’s Commentary, i., p. 459.
1. In regard to the first of these points, there can be no doubt that the slaying of the first-born of Egypt had respect to the relation of Israel to Jehovah: “Israel,” said God, “is My son, My first-born: if thou refuse to let him go, I will slay thy son, thy first-born.”—(Exodus 4:22-23) But in what sense could Israel be called God’s first-born son? Something more is plainly indicated by the expression, though no more is very commonly found in it, than that Israel was peculiarly dear to God, had a sort of first-born’s interest in His regard. It implies this, no doubt, but it also goes deeper, and points to the divine origin of Israel as the seed of promise; in their birth the off spring of grace, as contradistinguished from nature. Such pre-eminently was Isaac, the first-born of the family, the type of all that was to follow; and such now were the whole family, when grown into a people, as contradistinguished from the other nations of the earth. They were not the whole that were to occupy this high and distinctive relation; they were but the beginning of the holy seed, the first-born of Jehovah, the first-fruits of a redeemed world, which in the fulness was to comprehend “all kindreds, peoples, and tongues.” Hence the promise to Abraham was, that he should be the father, not of one, but “of many nations.” But these first-fruits represent the whole, and, themselves alone existing as yet, might now be said to comprehend the whole. If they were to be destroyed, the rest cannot come into existence, for a redeemed Israel was the only seed-corn of a redeemed world; while if they should be saved, their salvation would be the pledge and type of the salvation of all. And, therefore, to make it clearly manifest that God was here acting upon the principle which connects the first-fruits with the whole lump, acting not for that one family merely, and that moment of time then present, but for His people of every kindred and of every age, He takes that principle for the very ground of His great judgment on the enemy, and the redemption thence accruing to His people. As the first-born in God’s elect family is to be spared and rescued, so the first-born in the house of the enemy, the beginning of his increase, and the heir of his substance, must be destroyed: the one a proof that the whole family were appointed to life and blessing; the other, in like manner, a proof that all who were aliens from God’s covenant of grace, equally deserved, and should certainly in due time inherit, the evils of perdition.
2. In regard to the other question which concerns Israel’s liability to the judgment which fell upon Egypt, this arose from Israel’s natural relation to the world, just as their redemption was secured by their spiritual relation to God. For, whether viewed in their individual or in their collective capacity, they were in themselves of Egypt: collectively, a part of the nation, without any separate and independent existence of their own, vassals of the enemy, and inhabitants of his doomed territory; individually, also, partakers of the guilt and corruption of Egypt. It is the mercy and grace alone of God’s covenant which makes them to differ from those around them; and, therefore, to show that while, as children of the covenant, the plague should not come nigh them, not a hair of their head should perish, they still were in themselves no better than others, and had nothing whereof to boast, it was, at the same time, provided that their exemption from judgment should be secured only by the blood of atonement. This blood of the lamb, slain and sprinkled upon their door-posts, was a sign between them and God: the sign on His part, that, according to the purport of His covenant, He accepted a ransom in their behalf, in respect to which He would spare them, “as a man spareth his son;” and the sign on their part, that they owned the God of Abraham as their God, and claimed a share in the privileges which He so freely vouchsafed to them. Thus, in their case, “mercy rejoiced against judgment;” yet so as clearly to manifest, that had they been dealt with according to their desert, and with respect merely to what they were in themselves, they too must have perished under the rebuke of Heaven.
It was in consideration of the perfectly gratuitous nature of this salvation, and to give due prominence and perpetuity to the principle on which the judgment and the mercy alike proceeded that the Lord now claimed the first-born of Israel as peculiarly His own.—(Exodus 13) The Israelites in their collective capacity were His first-born, and as such were saved from death, the just desert and doom of sin which others inherited; but within that election there was henceforth to be another election,—a first-born among these first-born, who, as having been the immediate subjects of the Divine deliverance, were to be peculiarly devoted to Him. They were to be set apart, or literally, “to be made to pass over to God” (Exodus 13:12),—leaving what might be called the more common ground of duty and service, and connecting themselves with that which belonged exclusively to Himself. It implied that they had in a sense derived a new life from God lived, in a sense, out of death, and consequently were bound to show that they did so, by living after a new manner, in a course of holy consecration to the Lord. This was strikingly taught in the ordinance regarding the first-born of cattle and beasts, afterwards introduced, of which the clean were to be presented as an offering to the Lord, that is, wholly given up to Him by death (Exodus 22:29-30; Exodus 34:19-20); while in the case of the unclean, such as the ass, a lamb was to be sacrificed in its stead. The meaning evidently was, that the kind of consecration to Himself which the Lord sought from the first-born, as it sprung from an act of redemption, saving them from guilt and death, so it was to be made good by a separation, on the one hand, from what was morally unclean, and, on the other, by a self-dedication to all holy and spiritual services. But then, as the redemption in which they had primarily participated was accorded to them in their character as the first-fruits, the representatives of their respective households, and all the households equally shared with them in the deliverance achieved, so it was manifestly the mind of God that their state and calling should be regarded as substantially belonging to all, and that in them were only to be seen the more eminent and distinguished examples of what should characterize the people as a whole. Hence they were in one mass presently addressed as “a kingdom of priests and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:6); they were called to be generally what the first-born were called to be pre-eminently and peculiarly. In short, as these first-born had been as to their redemption the proxies, in a manner, of the whole, so were they in their subsequent consecration to be the symbolical lights and patterns of the whole. Nor was any change in this respect made by the substitution of the tribe of Levi in their room.—(Numbers 3:12) For this, as will appear in its proper place, was only the supplanting of a less by a more perfect arrangement, which was also done in such a way as to render most distinctly manifest the representative character of the tribe, which entered into the place of the first-born;—so that we see here, at the very outset, what was God’s aim in the redemption of His people, and how it involved not simply their release from the thraldom and the oppression of Egypt, but also their standing in a peculiar relation to Himself, and their call to show forth His glory. We perceive in this act of redemption the kernel of all that was afterwards developed, as to duty and privilege, by the revelations of law and the institutions of worship. And we see also what a depth of meaning there is in the expression used in Hebrews 12:23, where it is represented as the ennobling distinction of Christians, that they have “come to the Church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven.” To designate the Church as that of the first-born, is to present it to our view in its highest character as being in a state of most blessed nearness to God, having a peculiar interest in His favour, and a singular destination to promote the ends of His righteous government; it is the calling and destination of those who have been ransomed from the yoke of servitude, to live henceforth to His glory, and minister and serve before Him.[207]
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Now, that this giving on the part of the Egyptians, and receiving on the part of the Israelites, was intimately connected with God’s great work of judgment on the one, and mercy to the other, is manifest from the place it holds in the Divine record. It was already foretold to Abraham, that his posterity should come forth from the land of their oppression with much substance. That the prediction should be fulfilled in this particular way, was declared to Moses in God’s first interview with him.—(Exodus 3:21-22) And both then, and immediately before it took place, and still again when it did take place, the Lord constantly spoke of it as His own doing a result accomplished by the might of His outstretched arm upon the Egyptians. We can never imagine that so much account would have been made of it, if the whole end to be served had simply been to provide the Israelites with a certain supply of goods and apparel. A much higher object was unquestionably aimed at. As regards the Egyptians, it was a part of the judgment which God was now visiting upon them for their past misdeeds, and which here, as not infrequently happened, was made to take a form analogous to the sin it was designed to chastise. Thus, in another age, when the Israelites themselves became the objects of chastisement, they said, “We will flee upon horses; therefore (said God) ye shall flee, and they that pursue you shall be swift.”—(Isaiah 30:16) And again, in Jeremiah, “Like as ye have forsaken Me, and served strange gods in your land, so shall ye serve strangers in a land that is not yours.”—(Jeremiah 5:19) In like manner here, the Egyptians had been long acting the part of oppressors of God’s people, seeking by the most harsh and tyrannical measures to weaken and impoverish them. And now, when God comes down to avenge their cause, He constrains Egypt to furnish them with a rich supply of her treasures and goods. No art or violence was needed on their part to accomplish this; the thing was in a manner done to their hand. The enemies themselves became at last so awed and moved by the strong hand of God upon them, that they would do anything to hasten forward His purpose. Their proud and stubborn hearts bow beneath His arm, like tender willows before the blast; and they feel impelled by an irresistible power to send forth, with honour and great substance, the very people they had so long been unjustly trampling under foot. What a triumphant display of the sovereign might and dominion of God over the adversaries of His cause! What a striking manifestation of the truth, that He can not only turn their counsels into foolishness, but also render them unconscious instruments of promoting His glory in the world! And what a convincing proof of the folly of those who would enrich themselves at the expense of God’s interest, or would enviously prevent His people from obtaining what they absolutely need of worldly means to accomplish the service He expects at their hands!
Yet, palpable as these lessons were, and affectingly brought home to the bosoms of the Egyptians, they proved insufficient to disarm their hostility. The pride of their monarch was only for the moment quelled, not thoroughly subdued; and as soon as he had recovered from the recoil of feeling which the stroke of God’s judgment had produced, he summoned all his might to avenge on Israel the defeat he had sustained; but only with the effect of leaving, in his example, a more memorable type of the final destruction that is certain to overtake the adversaries of God. In a few days more the shores of the Red Sea resounded with the triumphant song of Moses: “I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea….The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is His name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath He cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power: Thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of Thine excellency Thou hast overthrown them that rose up against Thee: Thou sentest forth Thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble. And with the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were gathered together,” etc. Of this song, “composed on the instant of deliverance, and chanted to the music of the timbrel,” Milman justly says: “What is the Roman arch of triumph, or the pillar crowded with sculpture, compared, as a memorial, to the Hebrew song of victory; which, having survived so many ages, is still fresh and vivid as ever, and excites the same emotions of awe and piety in every human breast susceptible of such feelings, which it did so many ages past in those of the triumphant children of Israel?”[209] How closely also the act of victorious judgment this ode celebrates stands related to future acts of a like kind,—how, especially, it was intended to foreshadow the final putting down of all power and authority that exalts itself against the kingdom of Christ, is manifest from Revelation 15:3, where the glorious company above are represented as singing at once the song of Moses and of the Lamb, in the immediate prospect of the last judgments of God, and of all nations being thereby led to come and worship before Him. It is also in language entirely similar, and indeed manifestly borrowed from that song of Moses, that the Apostle, in 2 Thessalonians 2:8, describes the sure destruction of Antichrist, “whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit (or breath) of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.” Overlooking the scriptural connection between the earlier and the later here in God’s dealings, between the type and the antitype,—overlooking, too, the rise that has taken place in the position of the Church, and its relations to the world, by the introduction of Christianity, not a few writers have sought to fasten upon those prophetic passages of the New Testament an interpretation which is too grossly literal even for the original passage in the Old, as if nothing would fulfil their import but a corporeally present Saviour, inflicting corporeal and overwhelming judgments on adversaries in the flesh. The work of judgment celebrated in the song of Moses is ascribed entirely to the Lord: it is He who throws the host of Pharaoh into the sea, and by the strength of His arm lays the enemy low. But did He do so by being corporeally present? or did He work without any inferior instrumentality? Was there literally a stretching out of his own arm? or did He actually send forth a blast from His nostrils? But if no one would affirm such things in regard to the over throw of Pharaoh, how much less should it be affirmed in regard to the destruction of Antichrist, with his ungodly retainers! Here the Church has to do, not with a single individual, an actual king and his warlike host, as in the case of Pharaoh, but with an antichristian system and its wide-spread adherents; and the real victory must be won, not by acts of violence and bloodshed, but by the spiritual weapons which shall undermine the strong holds of error and diffuse the light of Divine truth. Whenever the Lord gives power to those weapons to overcome, He substantially repeats anew the judgments of the Red Sea; and when all that exalteth itself against the knowledge of Christ shall be put down by the victorious energy of the truth, then shall be the time to sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb.
[209] History of the Jews, third ed., vol. i., p. 95.
Section Fourth.—The March Through The Wilderness—Manna—Water From The Rock—The Pillar Of Cloud And Fire. THE children of Israel are now in the condition of a ransomed people, delivered from the yoke of the oppressor, and personally in a state of freedom and enlargement. They have been redeemed for the inheritance, but still the inheritance is not theirs; they are separated from it by a great and terrible wilderness, where many trials and difficulties must certainly be encountered, and nature, if left to itself, will inevitably perish. They were not long in feeling this. To the outward eye, the prospect which lay immediately before them, when they marched from the shores of the Red Sea, was peculiarly dark and disheartening. The country they had left behind, with all the hardships and oppressions it had latterly contained for them, was still a rich and cultivated region. It presented to the eye luxuriant fields, and teemed with the best of nature’s productions; they had there the most delicious water to drink, and were fed with flesh and bread to the full. But now, even after the most extraordinary wonders had been wrought in their behalf, and the power that oppressed them had been laid low, everything assumes the most dismal and discouraging aspect: little to be seen but a boundless waste of burning sand and lifeless stones; and a tedious march before them, through trackless and inhospitable deserts, where it seemed impossible to find for such an immense host even the commonest necessaries of life. What advantage was it to them in such a case, to have been brought out with a high hand from the house of bondage? They had escaped, indeed, from the yoke of the oppressor, but only to be placed in more appalling circumstances, and exposed to calamities less easy to be borne. And as death seemed inevitable anyhow, it might have been as well, at least, to have let them meet it amid the comparative comforts they enjoyed in Egypt, as to have it now coining upon them through scenes of desolation and the lingering horrors of want.
Such were the feelings expressed by the Israelites shortly after their entrance on the wilderness, and more than once expressed again as they became sensible of the troubles and perils of their new position.[210] If they had rightly interpreted the Lord’s doings, and reposed due confidence in His declared purposes concerning them, they would have felt differently. They would have understood, that it was in the nature of things impossible for God to have redeemed them for the inheritance, and yet to suffer any inferior difficulties by the way to prevent them from coming to the possession of it. That redemption carried in its bosom a pledge of other needful manifestations of Divine love and faithfulness. For, being in itself the greatest, it implied that the less should not be withheld; and being also the manifestation of a God who, in character as in being, is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, it bespoke His readiness to give, in the future, similar manifestations of Himself, in so far as such might be required.
I. This appeared, first of all, in the supply of food provided for them, and especially in the giving of manna, which the Lord sent them in the place of bread. It is true that the manna might not necessarily form, nor can scarcely be supposed to have actually formed, their only means of subsistence during the latter and longer period of their sojourn in the wilderness; for, to say nothing of the quails, of which at first in kindness, and again in anger, a temporary supply was furnished them (Exodus 16; Numbers 11), there were within reach of the Israelites not a few resources of a common kind. The regions which they traversed, though commonly designated by the name of desert, are by no means uniform in their character, and contain in many places pasturage for sheep and cattle. Hence considerable tribes have found it possible, from the most distant times, to subsist in them such as the Ishmaelites, Midianites, Amalekites. That the Israelites afterwards availed themselves of the means of support which the wilderness afforded them, in common with these tribes of the desert, is clear from what is mentioned of their flocks and herds. They are expressly said to have left Egypt with large property in these (Exodus 12:38); and that they were enabled to preserve, and even perhaps to increase, these possessions, we may gather from the notices subsequently given concerning them, especially from the mention made of the cattle, when they sought liberty to pass through the territory of Edom (Numbers 20:19); and from the very large accumulation of flocks and herds by Gad and Reuben, which led to their obtaining a portion beyond the bounds of what was properly the promised land.—(Numbers 32) The Israelites thus had within themselves considerable resources as to the supply of food; and the sale of the skins and wool, and what they could spare from the yearly increase of their possessions, would enable them to purchase again from others. Besides, the treasure which they brought with them from Egypt, and the traffic which they might carry on in the fruit, spices, and other native productions of the desert, would furnish them with the means of obtaining provisions in the way of commerce. Nor have we any reason to think that the Israelites neglected these natural opportunities, but rather the reverse; for Moses retained his father-in-law with them, that, from his greater experience of the wilderness-life, he might be serviceable to them in their journeyings and abodes (Numbers 10:31); and it would seem that during the thirty-eight years of their sojourn, appointed in punishment for their unbelief, their encampment was in the neighbourhood of Mount Seir, where they had considerable advantages, both for trade and pasturage. So that the period of their sojourn in the wilderness may have been, and most probably was, far from being characterized by the inactivity and destitution which is commonly supposed; for Moses not only speaks of their buying provisions, but also of the Lord having “blessed them in all the works of their hands, and suffered them to lack nothing.” (Deuteronomy 2:6-7)[212]
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It is clear, however, that these natural resources could not well become available to the Israelites till they had lived for some time in the desert, and had come to be in a manner naturalized to it. To whatever extent they may have been indebted to such means of subsistence, it must have been chiefly during those thirty-eight years that they were doomed by the judgment of God to make the wilderness their home. And as that period formed an arrest in their progress, a sort of moral blank in their history, during which, as we shall see at the close of this chapter, the covenant and its more distinctive ordinances were suspended, we need not wonder if the things properly typical in their condition should also have suffered a measure of derangement. It is to these things, as they happened to them during their march through the wilderness and encampment around Sinai, that we are to look for the types (in their stricter sense) of Gospel realities. And there can be no doubt that, with reference to this period, the entire people were dependent upon manna for the chief part of their daily support. With a considerable proportion of the people, those who were in humbler circumstances, it must, indeed, have been so to the last. Therefore the nocturnal supply could not cease, though it may have varied in amount, till the people actually entered the territory of Canaan. It was the peculiar provision of Heaven for the necessities of the wilderness.[213]
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It is obvious that this miraculous supply of food for the desert was in itself a provision for the bodily, and not for the spiritual nature of the Israelites. Hence it is called by our Lord, “not the true bread that cometh down from heaven,” because the life it was given to support was the fleshly one, which terminates in death: “Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.” (John 6:32, John 6:49-50) And even in this point of view the things connected with it have a use for us, apart altogether from any higher, typical, or prospective reference they might also bear to Gospel things. Lessons may be drawn from the givingand receiving of manna in regard to the interests and transactions of our present temporal life— properly and justly drawn; only we must not confound these, as is too commonly done, with the lessons of another and higher kind, which it was intended, as part of a preparatory dispensation, to teach regarding the food and nourishment of the soul. For example, the use made of it by the Apostle in the second Epistle to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 8:15), to enforce on the rich a charitable distribution of their means to the needy, so that there might be provided for all a sufficiency of these temporal goods, such as was found by the children of Israel on gathering the manna: this has no respect to any typical bearing in the transaction, as in both cases alike it is the bodily and temporal life alone that is contemplated. In like manner, we should regard it, not in a typical, but only in a common or historical point of view, if we should apply the fact of their being obliged to rise betimes and gather it with their own hands, to teach the duty of a diligent industry in our worldly callings; or the other fact of its breeding worms when unnecessarily hoarded and kept beyond the appointed time, to show the folly of men labouring to heap up possessions which they cannot profitably use, and which must be found only a source of trouble and annoyance. Such applications of the historical details regarding the manna, are in themselves perfectly legitimate and proper, but are quite out of place when put, as they often are, among its typical bearings; as may be seen even by those who do so, when they come to certain of the details to the double portion, for example, on the last day of the week, that there might be an unbroken day of rest on the Sabbath; for, if considered, as in the examples given above, with reference merely to what is to be done or enjoyed on earth, the instruction would be false—the day of rest being the season above all others on which, in a spiritual point of view, men should gather and lay up for their souls. They are here, therefore, under the necessity of mixing up the present with the future, making the six days represent time, during which salvation is to be sought, and the seventh eternity, during which it is to be enjoyed. Yet there is an important use of this part also of the arrangement regarding the manna, in reference to the present life, apart altogether from the typical bearing. For when the Lord sent that double portion on the last day of the week, and none on the next, it was as much as to say, that in His providential arrangements for this world, He had given only six days out of the seven for worldly labour, and that if men readily concurred in this plan they should find it to their advantage: they should find, that in the long run they got as much by their six days labour as they either needed or could profitably use, and should have, besides, their weekly day of rest of spiritual refreshment and bodily repose. Nor can we regard this lesson of small moment in the eye of Heaven, when we see no fewer than three miracles wrought every week for forty years to enforce it, viz., a double portion of manna on the sixth day, none on the seventh, and the preservation of the portion for the seventh from corrupting when kept beyond the usual time. When we come, however, to consider the Divine gift of manna in its typical aspect, as representative of the higher and better things of the Gospel, we must remember that there are two distinct classes of relations—corresponding, indeed, yet still distinct, since the one has immediate respect only to the seen and the temporal, and the other to the unseen and the eternal. In both cases alike there is a redeemed people, travelling through a wilderness to the inheritance promised to them, and prepared for them, and receiving as they proceed the peculiar provision they require for the support of life, from the immediate hand of God. But in the one case it is the descendants of Abraham according to the flesh, redeemed from the outward bondage and oppression of Egypt, at the most from bodily death; in the other, the spiritual members of an elect Church redeemed from the curse and condemnation of sin: in the one, the literal wilderness of Arabia, lying between Egypt and Palestine; in the other, the figurative wilderness of a present world: in the one, manna; in the other, Christ. That we are warranted to connect the two together in this manner, and to see the one, as it were, in the other, is not simply to be inferred from some occasional passages of Scripture, but is rather to be grounded on the general nature of the Old Testament dispensation, as intended to prepare the way, by means of its visible and earthly relations, for the spiritual and Divine realities of the Gospel. Whatever is implied in this general connection, however, is in the case of the manna not obscurely intimated by our Lord in the sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel, where He represents Himself, with evident reference to it, as “the bread which cometh down from heaven;” and is clearly taken for granted by the Apostle Paul, when he calls it “the spiritual meat “of which the Israelites did all eat.—(1 Corinthians 10:3) Not as if, in eating that, they of necessity found nourishment to their souls; but such meat being God’s special provision for a redeemed people, had an ordained connection with the mysteries of God’s kingdom, and, as such, contained a pledge that He who consulted so graciously for the life of the body, would prove Himself equally ready to administer to the necessities of the soul, as He did in a measure even then, and does now more fully in Christ. The following may be presented as the chief points of instruction which in this respect are conveyed by the history of the manna:—
(1.) It was given in consideration of a great and urgent necessity. A like necessity lies at the foundation of God’s gift of His Son to the world; it was not possible in the nature of things for any other resource to be found; and the actual bestowment of the gift was delayed, till the fullest demonstration had been given in the history of the Church and the world that such a provision was indispensable.
(2.) The manna was peculiarly the gift of God, coming freely and directly from His hand. It fell by night with the dew (Numbers 11:9), which is itself the gift of heaven, sent to fertilize the earth, and enable it to yield increase for the food of man and beast. But in the wilderness, where, as there is no sowing, there can be no increase, if bread still comes with the dew, it must be, in a sense quite peculiar, the produce of heaven hence called “the corn,” or “bread of heaven.”—(Psalms 78:24; Psalms 105:40) How striking a representation in this respect of Christ, who, both as to His person and to the purchased blessings of His redemption, is always presented to our view as the free gift and offer of Divine love!
(3.) But plentiful as well as free; the whole fulness of the Godhead is in Jesus, so that all may receive as their necessities require; no one needs to grudge his neighbour’s portion, but all rather may rejoice together in the ample beneficence of Heaven. So was it also with the manna; for when distribution was made, there was enough for all, and even he who had gathered least had no lack.
(4.) Then, falling as it did round about the camp, it was near enough to be within the reach of all; if any should perish for want, it could be from no outward necessity or hardship, for the means of supply were brought almost to their very hand. Nor is it otherwise in regard to Christ, who, in the Gospel of His grace, is laid, in a manner, at the door of every sinner: the word is nigh him; and if he should still perish, he must be without excuse—he perishes in sight of the bread of life.
(5.) The supply of manna came daily, and faith had to be exercised on the providence of God, that each day would bring its appointed provision; if they attempted to hoard for the morrow, their store became a mass of corruption. In like manner must the child of God pray for his soul every morning as it dawns, “Give me this day my daily bread.” He can lay up no stock of grace which is to save him from the necessity of constantly repairing to the treasury of Christ; and if he begins to live upon former experiences, or to feel as if he already stood so high in the life of God, that, like Peter, he can of himself confidently reckon on his superiority to temptation, his very mercies become fraught with trouble, and he is the worse rather than the better for the fulness imparted to him. His soul can be in health and prosperity only while he is every day “living by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him, and gave Himself for him.”
(6.) Finally, as the manna had to be gathered in the morning of each day, and a double portion provided on the sixth day, that the seventh might be hallowed as a day of sacred rest; so Christ and the things of His salvation must be sought with diligence and regularity, but only in the appointed way, and through the divinely-provided channels. There must be no neglect of seasonable opportunities on the one hand, nor, on the other, any over valuing of one ordinance to the neglect of another. We cannot prosper in our course, unless it is pursued as God Himself authorizes and appoints.
There is nothing uncertain or fanciful in such analogies; for they have not only the correspondence between Israel’s temporal and the Church’s spiritual condition to rest upon, but the character also of an unchangeable God. His principles of dealing with His Church are the same for all ages. When transacting with His people now directly for the support of the spiritual life, He must substantially re-enact what He did of old, when transacting with them directly for the support of their bodily life. And as even then there was an under current of spiritual meaning and instruction running through all that was done, so the faith of the Christian now has a most legitimate and profitable exercise, when it learns from that memorable transaction in the desert the fulness of its privilege, and the extent of its obligations in regard to the higher provision presented to it in the Gospel.
II. But Israel in the wilderness required something more than manna to preserve them in safety and vigour for the inheritance; they needed refreshment as well as support “a stay of water,” not less than “a staff of bread.” And the account given respecting this is contained in the chapter immediately following that which records the appointment of God respecting the manna.—(Exodus 17) Here also the gift was preceded by a murmuring and discontent on the part of the Israelites. So little had they yet learned from the past manifestations of Divine power and faithfulness, and so much had sight the ascendancy over faith in their character, that they even spoke as if certain destruction were before them, and caused Moses to tremble for his life. But however improperly they demeaned themselves, as there was a real necessity in their condition, which nothing but an immediate and extraordinary exertion of Divine power could relieve, Moses received the command from God, after supplicating His interposition, to go with the elders of Israel and smite the rock in Horeb with his rod, under the assurance, which was speedily verified, that water in abundance would stream forth.[215]
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[218] The exact route pursued by the Israelites from Sinai to Canaan is still a matter of uncertainty. At some of the places where they are supposed to have rested, there are considerable supplies of water.—(See Bib. Cyclop., Art. Wandering) It is, however, certain that the region of Sinai is very elevated, and that not only are the mountain ridges immensely higher than the south of Palestine, but the ground slopes from the base to a considerable distance all round, so that the water would naturally flow so far with the Israelites; but how far can never be ascertained.
Understanding this, however, to be the sense in which the rock followed the Israelites, what does the Apostle farther mean by saying, that “that rock was Christ?” Does he wish us to understand that the rock typically represented Christ? and so represented Him, that in drinking of the water which flowed from it, they at the same time received Christ? Was the drink furnished to the Israelites in such a sense spiritual, that it conveyed Christ to them? In that case the flowing forth and drinking of the water must have had in it the nature of a sacrament, and answered to our spiritually eating and drinking of Christ in the Supper. This, unquestionably, is the view adopted by the ablest and soundest divines; although there are certain limitations which must be understood. The Apostle is evidently drawing a parallel between the case of the Church in the wilderness and that of the Church under the Gospel, with an especial reference to the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Sapper. The passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, under the guidance and direction of Moses, he represents as a sort of baptism to him; because in the same manner in which Christian baptism seals spiritually the believer’s death to sin, his separation from the world, and his calling of God to sit in heavenly places with Christ, in the very same, outwardly, did the passage through the Red Sea seal the death of Israel to the bondage of Pharaoh, their separation from Egypt, and their expectation of the inheritance promised them by Moses. In what he says regarding the manna and the rock, he does not expressly name the ordinance of the Supper; but there can be no doubt that he has its sacred symbols in view, when he calls the manna the spiritual food of which the Israelites ate, and the water from the rock the spiritual drink of which they drank, and even gives to the rock the name of Christ. Such language, however, cannot have been meant to imply that the manna and the water directly and properly symbolized Christ, in the same sense that this is done by the bread and wine of the Supper; for the gift of the manna and the water had immediate respect to the supply of the people’s bodily necessities. For this alone they were directly and ostensibly given; and hence our Lord, speaking of what the manna was in itself, depreciates its value in respect to men’s higher natures, and declares to the Jews it was not the true bread of heaven, as was evident alone from the fact that the life it was sent more immediately to nourish, actually perished in the wilderness. Not, therefore, directly and palpably, but only in a remote, concealed, typical sense, could the Apostle intend his expressions of spiritual food and drink to be understood. Still less could he mean, that all who partook of these, did consciously and believingly receive Christ through them to salvation. The facts he presently mentions regarding so many of them being smitten down in the wilderness by the judgments of God for their sins, too clearly proved the reverse of that. The very purpose, indeed, for which he there introduces their case to the notice of the Corinthian Church, is to warn the disciples to beware lest they should fall after the same example of unbelief; lest, after enjoying the privileges of the Christian Church, they should, by carnal indulgence, lose their interest in the heavenly inheritance, as so many had done in regard to the earthly inheritance, notwithstanding that they had partaken of the corresponding privileges of the ancient economy. But as the bread and wine in the Supper might still be called spiritual food and drink, might even be called by the name of Christ, who is both the living bread and the living water, which they represent, although many partake of them unworthily, and perish in their sins; so manifestly might the manna and the water of the desert be so called, since Christ was typically represented in them, though thousands were altogether ignorant of any reference they might have to Him, and lived and died as far estranged from salvation as the wretched idolaters of Egypt. In perceiving the higher things typically represented by the water flowing from the rock, the Israelites stood at an immense disadvantage compared with believers under the Gospel; and how far any did perceive them, it is impossible for us to determine. In regard to the great mass, who both now and on so many other occasions showed themselves incapable of putting forth even the lowest exercises of faith, it is but too evident that they did not descry there the faintest glimpse of Christ. But, for such as really were children of faith, we may easily understand how they might go a certain way at least, in rising through the provisions then administered, to the expectation of better things to come. They must, then, have discerned in the inheritance which they were travelling to inherit, not the ultimate good itself which God had destined for His chosen, but only its terrestrial type and pledge—something which would be for the present life, what, in the resurrection, the other would be for the spiritual and immortal life. But, discerning this, it could not be difficult for them to proceed one step farther, and apprehend, that what God was now doing to them on their way to the temporal inheritance, by those outward, material provisions for the bodily life, He did not for that alone, but also as a sign and pledge, that such provision as He had made for the lower necessities of their nature, He must assuredly have made, and would in His own time fully disclose, for the higher. And thus, while receiving from the hand of their redeeming God the food and refreshment required for those bodily natures which were to enjoy the pleasant mountains and valleys of Canaan, they might at the same time be growing in clearness of view and strength of assurance, as regarded their interest in the imperishable treasures which belonged to the future kingdom of God, and their relation to Him who was to be pre-eminently the seed of blessing, and the author of eternal life to a dying world.
But, whether or not those for whom the rock poured out its refreshing streams may have attained to any such discernment of the better things to come, for us who can look back upon the past from the high vantage-ground of Gospel light, there may certainly be derived not a little of clear and definite instruction. In seeking for this, however, we must be careful to look to the real and essential lines of agreement, and pay no regard to such as are merely incidental. It is not the rock properly that we have to do with, or to any of its distinctive qualities, as is commonly imagined, but the supply of water issuing from it, to supply the thirst and refresh the natures of the famishing Israelites. No doubt, the Apostle, when referring to the transaction, speaks of the rock itself, and of its following them, but plainly meaning by this, as we have stated, the water that flowed from it. No doubt, also, Christ is often in Scripture represented as a rock; but when He is so, it is always with respect to the qualities properly belonging to a rock—its strength, its durability, or the protection it is capable of affording from the heat of a scorching sun. These natural qualities of the rock, however, do not come into consideration here; they did not render it in the least degree fitted for administering the good actually derived from it, but rather the reverse. There was not only no seeming, but also no real aptitude in the rock to yield the water; while in Christ, though He appeared to have no form or comeliness, there still was everything that was required to constitute Him a fountain-head of life and blessing. Then, the smiting of the rock by Moses with the rod, could not suggest the idea of anything like violence done to it; nor was the action itself done by Moses as the lawgiver, but as the mediator between God and the people; while the smiting of Christ, which is commonly held to correspond with this, consisted in the bruising of His soul with the suffering of death, and that not inflicted, but borne by Him as Mediator. There is no real correspondence in these respects between the type and the antitype; and the manner in which it is commonly made out, is nothing more than a specious accommodation of the language of the transaction, to ideas which the transaction itself could never have suggested.[219]
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(1.) Christ ministers to His people abundance of spiritual refreshment, while they are on their way to the heavenly inheritance. They need this to carry them onward through the trials and difficulties that lie in their way; and He is ever ready to impart it. “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.” What He then did in the sphere of the bodily life, He cannot but be disposed to do over again in the higher sphere of the spiritual life; for there the necessity is equally great, and the interests involved are unspeakably greater. Let the believer, when parched in spirit, and feeling in heaviness through manifold temptations, throw himself back upon this portion of Israel’s history, and he will see written, as with a sunbeam, the assurance that the Saviour of Israel, who fainteth not, nor is weary, will satisfy the longing soul, and pour living water upon him that is thirsty.
(2.) In providing and ministering this refreshment, He will break through the greatest hindrances and impediments. If His people but thirst, nothing can prevent them from being partakers of the blessing. “He makes for them rivers in the desert;” the very rock turns into a flowing stream; and the valley of Baca (weeping) is found to contain its pools of refreshment, at which the travellers to Zion revive their flagging spirits, and go from strength to strength. How often have the darkest providences, events that seemed beforehand pregnant only with evil, become, through the gracious presence of the Mediator, the source of deepest joy and consolation!
(3.) “The rock by its water accompanied the Israelites—so Christ by His Spirit goes with His disciples even to the end of the world.” (Grotius) The refreshments of His grace are confined to no region, and last through all ages. Wherever the genuine believer is, there they also are. And more highly favoured than even Israel in the wilderness, he has them in his own bosom—he has there “a well of water springing up unto life everlasting,” so that “out of his belly can flow rivers of living water.”
III. The only other point apart from the giving of the law, occurring in the march through the wilderness, and calling for notice here, was the pillar of fire and cloud, in which from the first the Lord accompanied and led the people. The appearance of this symbol of the Divine Presence was various, but it is uniformly spoken of as itself one—a lofty column rising toward heaven. By day it would seem to have expanded as it rose, and formed itself into a kind of shade or curtain between the Israelites and the sun, as the Lord is said by means of it to have “spread a cloud for a covering” (Psalms 105:39), while by night it exchanged the cloudy for the illuminated form, and diffused throughout the camp a pleasant light. At first it went before the army, pointing the way; but after the tabernacle was made, it became more immediately connected with this, though sometimes appearing to rest more closely on it, and sometimes to rise higher aloft.[220] The lucid or fiery form seems to have been the prevailing one, or rather, to have always essentially belonged to it (hence called, not only “pillar of fire,” but “light of fire,”
(1.) Now, as the Lord chose this for the visible symbol, in which He would appear as the Head and Leader of His people when conducting them through the wilderness, there must have been, first of all, in the symbol itself, something fitted to display His character and glory. There must have been a propriety and significance in selecting this, rather than something else, as the seat in which Jehovah, or the angel of His presence, appeared, and the form in which He manifested His glory. But fire, or a shining flame enveloped by a cloud, is one of the fittest and most natural symbols of the true God, as dwelling, not simply in light, but “in light that is inaccessible and full of glory,”—light and glory within the cloud. The fire, however, was itself not uniform in its appearance, but, according to the threefold distinction of Isaiah (Isaiah 4:5), sometimes appeared as light, sometimes as a radiant splendour or glory, and sometimes again as flaming or burning fire. In each of these respects it pointed to a corresponding feature in the Divine character. As light, it represented God as the fountain of all truth and purity.—(Isaiah 40:1; Isaiah 40:19; 1 John 1:5; Revelation 21:23; Revelation 22:5) As splendour, it indicated the glory of His character, which consists in the manifestation of His infinite perfections, and especially in the display of His surpassing goodness as connected with the redemption of His people; on which account the “showing of His glory” is explained by “making His goodness pass before Moses.”—(Exodus 33:18-19; comp. also Isaiah 40:5) For as nothing appears to the natural eye more brilliant than the shining brightness of fire, so nothing to the spiritual eye can be compared with these manifestations of the gracious attributes of God. And as nothing in nature is so awfully commanding and intensely powerful in consuming as the burning flame of fire, so in this respect again it imaged forth the terrible power and majesty of His holiness, which makes Him jealous of His own glory, and a consuming fire to the workers of iniquity. Hence the cloud assumed this aspect pre-eminently on Mount Sinai, when the Lord came down to give that fundamental revelation of His holiness, the law of the ten commandments.—(Exodus 24:17; Deuteronomy 4:24; Isaiah 33:14-15; Hebrews 12:29) Still, whatever the Lord discovered of Himself in these respects to His ancient people, it was with much reserve and imperfection: they saw Him, indeed, but only through a veil; and therefore the glory shone forth through a cloud of thick darkness.
This, it is true, is the case to a great extent still. God even yet has His dwelling in unapproachable light; and with all the discoveries of the Gospel, He is only seen “as through a glass darkly.” This feature, however, of the Divine manifestations falls more into the background in the Gospel; since God has now in very deed dwelt with men mi the earth, and given such revelations of Himself by Christ, that “he who hath seen Him,” may be said to “have seen the Father.” It seems now, comparing the revelations of God in the New with those of the Old Testament, as if the pillar of cloud were in a measure removed, and the pillar of light and fire alone remained. And in each of the aspects which this pillar assumed, we find the corresponding feature most fully verified in Christ. He is the light of men. The glory of the Father shines forth in Him as full of grace and truth. He alone has revealed the Father, and can give the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. Therefore He is the Word or revelation of God, and the effulgence of His glory. And while merciful and compassionate in the last degree to sinners—the very personification of love—He yet has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet as of burning brass; and He walks amid the golden candlesticks, as He did in the camp of Israel, to bring to light the hidden works of darkness, and cause His indignation to smoke against the hypocrites.[221]
[221] John 1:4-5
(2.) But besides being a symbol of the Lord’s revealed character, the pillar of fire and cloud had certain offices to perform to the Israelites. These were for guidance and protection. It was by this that the Lord directed their course through the dreary and trackless waste which lay between Egypt and Canaan, showing them when to set forth, in what direction to proceed, where to abide, and also affording light to their steps when the journey was by night. For this purpose, when the course was doubtful, the ark of the covenant with its attendant symbol went foremost (Numbers 10:33); but when there was no doubt regarding the direction that was to be taken, it appears rather to have occupied the centre (Numbers 10:17; Numbers 10:21),—in either case alike appearing in the place that was most suitable, as connected with the symbol of the Lord’s presence. In addition to these important benefits, the pillar also served as a shade from the heat of a scorching sun; and on one occasion at least, when the Israelites were closely pursued by the Egyptians, it stood as a wall of defence between them and their enemies. That in all this the pillar of fire and cloud performed externally and visibly the part which is now discharged by Christ toward His people in the spiritual and divine life, is too evident to require any illustration. He reveals Himself to them as the Captain of salvation, by whom they are conducted through the wilderness of life, and brings them in safety to His Father’s house. He leaves them not alone, but is ever present with His word and Spirit, to lead them into all the truth, to refresh their souls in the time of trouble, and minister support to them in the midst of manifold temptations. He presents Himself to their view as having gone before them in the way, and appoints them to no field of trial or conflict with evil, through which He has not already passed as their forerunner. Whatever wisdom is needed to direct, whatever grace to overcome, He encourages them to expect it from His hand; and “when the blast of the terrible ones comes as a storm against the wall,” they have in Him a “refuge from the storm, and a shadow from the heat.” Does it seem too much to expect so great things from Him? Or does faith, struggling with the infirmities of the flesh and the temptations of the world, find it hard at times to lay hold of the spiritual reality? It will do well in such a case to revive its fainting spirit by recurring to the visible manifestations of God in the wilderness. Let it mark there the goings of the Divine Shepherd with His people; and rest in the assurance, that as He cannot change or deny Himself, but is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, so what He then did amid the visible realities of sense and time, He cannot but be ready to perform anew in the spiritual experience of His believing people to the end of time. The record of what was done in the one case, stands now, and for all time, as a ground for faith and hope in respect to the other. The whole of what has been said regarding the sojourn in the wilderness, has reference more immediately to the comparatively brief period during which properly the Israelites should have been there. The frequent outbreakings of a rebellious spirit, and especially the dreadful revolt which arose on the return of the spies from searching the land of Canaan, so manifestly proved them to be unfit for the proper occupation of the promised land, that the Lord determined to retain them in the wilderness till the older portion—those who were above twenty years when they left Egypt—had all perished. It was some time in the second year after their departure, that this decree of judgment was passed; and the period fixed in the decree being, in round numbers, forty years,—a year for every day the spies had been employed in searching the land, including, however, what had been already spent,—there remained the long term of upwards of thirty-eight years, during which the promise of God was suffered to fall into abeyance. Of what passed during the greater part of this unfortunate period scarcely anything is recorded. The only circumstances noticed respecting it, till near the close, are those connected with the case of the Sabbath-breaker, and the rebellion of Korah and his company. How far the miraculous provision for the desert was affected by the change in question, we are not told, though we may naturally infer it to have been to some extent—to such an extent as might render it proper, if not necessary, to bring into play all the available resources naturally belonging to the region. It was a time of judgment, and the very silence of Scripture regarding it is ominous. That their state during its continuance was to be viewed as alike sad and anomalous, may be inferred alone from what is recorded at the close of the period in Joshua 5:2-9, where we are told, that from the period of their coming under the judgment of the Lord up till that time, they had not been circumcised; the reason of which, though not very explicitly stated, is yet distinctly connected with the people’s detention in the wilderness, as a punishment for their having “not obeyed the voice of the Lord.” And now, when the circumcision was renewed, and the whole company became a circumcised people, “the Lord said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you.”
What is meant here by the reproach of Egypt, is not the reproach or shame of the sin they had contracted in Egypt, as if now at length that impure state had come to an end, and had been publicly purged away: this were too remote an allusion to have been connected with such an occasion. The thing meant is the reproach which the people of Egypt were all this time casting upon them for the unhappy circumstances in which they were placed; the genitive in such cases always denoting the party from whom the reproach comes.—(Isaiah 51:7; Ezekiel 16:57; Zephaniah 2:8) It was that reproach which Moses so much dreaded on a former occasion, when he prayed the Lord not to pour out His indignation on the people to consume them: “For wherefore (says he) should the Egyptians say, For mischief did He bring them out to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth?”—(Exodus 32:12) And this reproach was again the first thought that presented itself to the mind of Moses, when, on the occasion of the return of the spies, the Lord threatened to consume the mass of the people, and raise a new seed from Moses himself: “Then the Egyptians shall hear it (for Thou broughtest up this people in Thy might from among them), and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land,” etc.—(Numbers 14:13-16) The ground and occasion of the reproach was, that the Lord had not fulfilled in their behalf the great promise of the covenant, for the realization of which they had left Egypt with such high hopes and such a halo of glory. So far from having obtained what was promised, they had been made to wander like forlorn outcasts through the wilds and wildernesses of Arabia, where their car cases were continually falling into a dishonoured grave. The covenant, in short, was for a time suspended—the people were lying under the ban of Heaven; and it was fitting that the ordinance of circumcision, the sacrament of the covenant, should be suspended too. But now that they were again received through circumcision into the full standing and privileges of a covenant condition, it was a proof that the judgment of God had expired—that their proper relation to Him was again restored—that He was ready to carry into execution the promise on which He had caused them to hope; and that, consequently, the ground of Egypt’s reproach, as would presently be seen, was entirely rolled away.[222]
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It would seem, as might also have naturally been expected, on the supposition of this view of the case being correct, that the celebration of what might now be called the other sacrament of the covenant, the Passover, was suspended during the same period. We read of its having been celebrated at the beginning of the second year after their departure from Egypt (Numbers 9), but never again till the renewal of circumcision on the borders of Canaan.—(Joshua 5:10) The same cause which brought a suspension of the one ordinance, naturally led to a disuse of the other, since the circumcised alone could partake of it. The more so, indeed, as it was the children who were more directly concerned in the ceasing of circumcision, while the non-celebration of the passover directly touched the parents themselves. Even in regard to the ordinance of circumcision, the parents could not but conclude, that as that rite had ceased to be performed, which was the peculiar sign of the covenant, their circumcision had become in a manner uncircumcision. On their account, the flow of the Divine goodness toward the congregation had meanwhile received a check as to its outward manifestation; and even what was promised and in reserve for their children, must for the present lie over, till the revival of a better spirit opened the way for the possession of a more privileged condition. But the question will naturally occur, Did the whole of that generation, which came out of Egypt as full-grown men, actually perish without an interest in the mercy of God? Did they really live and die under the solemn ban of Heaven, aliens from His commonwealth, and strangers to His covenant of promise? Was not Aaron, was not Moses himself, among those who bore in this respect the punishment of iniquity, and died while the covenant was without its sacraments? Undoubtedly, and this alone may suffice to show that there was mercy mingled with the judgment. The Lord did not cease to be the gracious God, long-suffering, and plenteous in goodness to those who truly sought Him. His grace was still there, as it is in every judgment He executes on those who have come near to him in privilege; but it was grace in a disguise—grace as breaking through an impending cloud, rather than as shining forth from a clear and serene sky. Hence, while the two greatest ordinances of the covenant were suspended, others were still left to encourage their hope in the Lord’s mercy: there was the pillar of fire and cloud, the tabernacle of testimony, the altar of sacrifice, not to mention others of inferior note. So that, to use the words of Calvin, who had a far better discernment of the anomalous state of things which then existed than the great majority of commentators since: “In one part only were the people excommunicated; there still were means of support to bear them up, that (the truly penitent) might not sink into despair. As if a father should lift up his hand to drive from him a disobedient son, and yet with the other should hold him back—at once terrifying him with frowns and chastisements, and still unwilling that he should go into exile.” The feelings to which this very peculiar state of Israel gave rise are beautifully expressed in the (Psalms 90) Psalm,—whether actually written by Moses or not,—which breathes throughout the mournful language of a people suffering under the judgment of God, and yet exercising hope in His mercy. We need have no doubt, therefore, that subjects of grace died in the wilderness, just as afterwards, when the covenant with most of its ordinances was again suspended, subjects of grace, even pre-eminent grace, were carried to Babylon and died in exile. Yet there is much reason to fear, in regard to the Israelites in the wilderness, that the number of such was comparatively small, both on account of the nature of the judgment itself, and also from the testimonies of the prophets (especially Exodus 20 and Amos 5:25-26), concerning the extent to which the leaven of Egypt still wrought in the midst of them. This remarkable portion of God’s dealings brings strikingly out a few important truths, which are of equal moment for all times. 1. The tendency of sin to root itself in the soul: seeing that, when once fairly dominant within, it can resist all that is wonderful in mercy and terrible in judgment. For what astonishing sights had not those men witnessed! what awful displays of God’s justice! what glorious exhibitions of His goodness! Yet, with the vast majority, all proved to be in vain.
2. The honour God puts upon His ordinances, especially the sacraments of His covenant. These are for the true children of the covenant; and when those who profess to belong to it have flagrantly departed from its obligations and aims, they thereby cease to be the proper subjects of its more peculiar ordinances.
3. The inseparable connection between the promise of God’s covenant and the holiness of His people. The inheritance cannot be entered into and possessed but by a believing, spiritual, and holy seed. God must have such a people, and will rather let His inheritance lie waste than have persons of another stamp to possess it, who could only abuse it to their sinful ends. Hence He waits so long now, as of old He waited for the fit occupants of Canaan. The kingdom is for those who are of clean hands and a pure heart; and till the destined number of such is prepared and ready, it must be known only as an “inheritance reserved in heaven.” 4. Finally, how heavy a guilt attaches to a backsliding and unfaithful community! It stays the fountain of God’s mercy; it brings reproach on His name and cause, and compels Him, in a manner, to visit evil upon those whom He would rather—how much rather!—encompass with his favour, and with the blessings of His well-ordered covenant.