04.05. Lecture 4
Lecture 4 The Law In Its Form And Substance—Its More Essential Characteristics—And The Relation Of One Part Of Its Contents To Another. IN this particular part of our inquiry, there is much that might be taken for granted as familiarly known and generally admitted, were it not that much also is often ignored, or grievously misrepresented; and that, for a correct view of the whole, not a little depends on a proper understanding of the spirit as well as formal contents of the law, of its historical setting, and the right adjustment of its several parts. If, in these respects, we can here present little more than an outline, it must still be such as shall embrace the more distinctive features of the subject, and clear the ground for future statements and discussions.
I. We naturally look first to the DECALOGUE—the ten words, as they are usually termed in the Pentateuch, which stand most prominently out in the Mosaic legislation, as being not only the first in order, and in themselves a regularly constructed whole, but the part which is represented as having been spoken directly from Heaven in the audience of all the people, amid the most striking indications of the Divine presence and glory—the part, moreover, which was engraven by God on the mount, on two tablets of stone the only part so engraven—and, in this enduring form, the sole contents of that sacred chest or ark which became the centre of the whole of the religious institutions of Judaism—the symbolical basis of God’s throne in Israel. Such varied marks of distinction, there can be no reasonable doubt, were intended to secure for this portion of the Sinaitic revelation the place of pre-eminent importance, to render it emphatically THE LAW, to which subsequent enactments stood in a dependent or auxiliary relation.
1. And in considering it, there is first to be noted the aspect in which the great Lawgiver here presents Himself to His people: ‘I am Jehovah thy God, who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’ The words are merely a resumption of what had been shortly before, and somewhat more fully, declared in the first message delivered from Sinai; they give, in a compendious form, the Gospel of the covenant of promise. Jehovah, the unchangeable and eternal, the great I AM; this alone, had it been all, was a lofty idea for men who had been so long enveloped in the murky atmosphere of idolatry; and if deeply impressed upon their hearts, and made a pervading element in their religion and polity, would have nobly elevated the seed of Israel above all the nations then existing on the earth.
But there is more a great deal than this in the personal announcement which introduces the ten fundamental precepts; it is that same glorious and unchangeable Being coming near to Israel in the character of their redeeming God, and by the very title, with the incontestable fact on which it rested, pledging His faithful love and sufficiency for all future time, to protect them from evil or bring them salvation.
The people who had heard with solemn awe the voice which spake to them from Sinai, and undertook to observe and do what was commanded, soon shewed how far they were from having imbibed the spirit of the revelation made to them, how far especially from having attained to right thoughts of God, by turning back in their hearts to Egypt, and during the temporary absence of Moses on the mount, prevailing upon Aaron to make a golden calf as the object of their worship. The sensual orgies of this false worship were suddenly arrested by the re-appearance of Moses upon the scene; while Moses himself, in the grief and indignation of the moment, cast from him the two tables of the law, and broke them at the foot of the mount
Even Moses betrayed his need of some additional insight in this respect, by requesting that God would shew him His glory; though, as may seem from the response made to it, he appears to have had too much in his eye some external form of manifestation. Waiving, however, what may have been partial or defective in the request at least, no farther meeting it than by presenting to the view of Moses what, perhaps, we may call a glimpse of the incarnation in a cleft of the rock—the Lord did reveal His more essential glory—revealed it by such a proclamation of His name as disclosed all His goodness.
It intimates, indeed, that justice could not forego its claims, that obstinate transgressors should meet their desert, but gives this only the subordinate and secondary place, while grace occupies the foreground. Was this, we ask, to act like One, who was more anxious to inspire terror, than win affection from men? Did it seem as if He would have His revelation of law associated in their minds with the demands of a rigid service, such as only an imperious sense of duty, or a dread of consequences, might constrain them to render?
Assuredly not; and we know that the words of the memorial-name, which He so closely linked with the restored tables of the law, did take an abiding hold of the more earnest and thoughtful spirits of the nation, and ever and anon, amid the seasons of greatest darkness and despondency, came up with a joyous and re-assuring effect into their hearts.
2. Yet—and here is a second point to be noted—it did not the less on that account assume—being a revelation of law in form as well as substance, it could not but assume a predominantly stringent and imperative character. The humane and loving spirit in which it opens, is not, indeed, absent from the body of its enactments, though, for the most part, formally disguised; but even in form it reappears more than once—especially in the assurance of mercy to the thousands who should love God and keep His commandments, and the promise of long continuance on the land of rest and blessing, associated respectively with the second and the fifth precepts of the law.
But these are only, as it were, the relieving clauses of the code—reminiscences of the grace and loving-kindness which had been pledged by the Lawgiver, and might be surely counted on by those who were willing to yield themselves to His service: the law itself, in every one of the obligations it imposes, takes (as we have said) the imperative form—‘Thou shalt do this,’ ‘Thou shalt not do that;’ and this just because it is law, and must leave no doubt that the course it prescribes is the one that ought to be taken, and must be taken, by every one who is in a sound moral condition. This is the case equally whether the precepts run in the positive or the negative form. For, as justly stated by a moralist formerly quoted,
The moral law is hence always double-sided; it is at once command and prohibition; nor can it make any essential difference, whether the law comes forth in the one or the other form; and as the moral life of man is a continuous one, he must every moment be fulfilling a Divine law; a mere abstaining would be a disowning of the moral.’ No peculiar learning or profound reach of thought is required to understand this; it must commend itself to every intelligent and serious mind; for if, in respect to those precepts which take the negative form of prohibitions, the mere omitting to do the thing forbidden were all that is enjoined, there would be nothing properly moral in the matter—the command might be fulfilled by the simple absence of moral action, by mere inactivity, which in the moral sphere is but another name for death. Hence it has ever been the maxim of all judicious and thoughtful commentators on the law of the two tables, that when evil is forbidden, the opposite good is to be understood as enjoined; just as, on the other side, when a duty is commanded, everything contrary to it is virtually forbidden. Thus Calvin, after substantially affirming the principle now stated, referring to the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ repudiates the idea that it is to be regarded merely as an injunction to abstain from all injury, or wish to inflict it.
Hence, as if to make this unmistakeably plain, no sooner had Moses given a rehearsal of the Decalogue in the book of Deuteronomy, than he proclaimed aloud the memorable words: ‘Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might:’
They assume throughout the known existence of a positive; and that, primarily, in the moral nature of man, as the image (though marred) of the Divine—without which, latent but living in the bosom, they had been incapable of awakening any response, or creating the slightest sense of obligation. Yet not in that alone does the law assume the existence of a positive, but also in the revealed character of God, as recognised and exhibited in the law itself. There Israel, as the redeemed of Jehovah, had ever before them the perfection of excellence, which they were bound to aim at, and for the sake of which—lest they should lose sight of it, or think little of the obligation—they had their path fenced and guarded by those prohibitions of law, on the right hand and the left.
Still, the negative is doubtless in itself the lower form of command; and when so largely employed as it is in the Decalogue, it must be regarded as contemplating and striving to meet the strong current of evil that runs in the human heart. This may not improperly be deemed the main reason—only not the exclusive one, since even in paradise a negative form was given to the command which served as the peculiar test of love.
3. Viewing the law thus, as essentially the law of love, which it seeks to guard and protect, as well as to evoke and direct, let us glance briefly at the details, that we may see how entirely these accord, alike in their nature and their orderly arrangement, with the general idea, and provide for its proper exemplification. As love has unspeakably its grandest object in God, so precedence is justly given to what directly concerns Him—implying also that religion is the basis of morality, that the right adjustment of men’s relation to God tends to ensure the proper maintenance of their relations one to another.
God, therefore, must hold the supreme place in their regard, must receive the homage of their love and obedience:—and this in regard to His being, His worship, His name, and His day. He is the one living God—therefore no others must be set up in His presence; He alone must have the place of Deity (the first). Spiritual in His own nature, His worship also must be spiritual—therefore no idol-forms are to appear in His service, for none such can adequately represent Him; they would but degrade men’s notions concerning Him, virtually change His truth into a lie (second).
His name is the expression of whatever is pure, holy, and good—therefore it must be lifted up to nothing that is vain, associated with nothing false, corrupt, wicked, or profane, but only with words and deeds which breathe its spirit and reflect its glory (third). The day, too, which He has specially consecrated for Himself, being the signature of His holiness on time and labour—the check He lays upon human activity as naturally tending to work only for self, His ever-recurring call in providence on men to work so as to be again perpetually entering into His rest—this day, therefore, must be kept apart from servile labour, withdrawn from the interests of the flesh, and hallowed to God (fourth). The next command may also be taken in the same connection a step further in the same line, since earthly parents are in a peculiar sense God’s representatives among men, those whom He invests with a measure of His own authority, as standing for a time in His stead to those whom instrumentally they have brought into being, and whom they should train for His service and glory—these, therefore, must be honoured with all dutiful and ready obedience, that the hearts of the fathers may in turn become the hearts of the children.
This, however, touches on the second division of moral duty, that which concerns men’s relation to each other; and according to the particular aspect in which it is contemplated, the fifth command may be assigned to the first or to the second table of the law. Scripture itself makes no formal division. Though it speaks frequently enough of two tables, it nowhere indicates where the one terminates and the other begins—purposely, perhaps, to teach us that the distinction is not to be very sharply drawn, and that the contents of the one gradually approximate and at last pass over into the other.
Already, in the fourth commandment, distinct reference is made to persons in the humbler ranks of life, and a kind consideration is required to be had of them—though still the primary aim and aspect of the command bore upon interests in which all were alike concerned. In like manner with the fifth: what it directly enjoins is certainly such love and regard as is due from one human being to another; and yet the relation involved is not that exactly of neighbour to neighbour, but rather of wards under persons bearing Heaven’s delegated trust and authority; so that in the honouring of these God Himself receives somewhat of the homage due to Him, and they who render it, as the apostle says, ‘shew piety at home.’
In respect to one and all of these, the imperative obligation imposed is, that we do our neighbour no harm by the false testimony of our tongues, or the violence of our hands, or any course of procedure that is fitted to tell injuriously upon what he has and loves. And, finally, to shew that neither tongue, nor hands, nor any other member of our body, or any means and opportunities at our command—that not these alone are laid under contribution to this principle of love, but the seat also and fountain of all desire, all purpose and action—the Decalogue closes with the precept which forbids us to lust after or covet wife, house, possessions, anything whatever that is our neighbour’s—a precept which reaches to the inmost thoughts and intents of the heart, and requires that all even there should be under the control of a love which thinketh no evil, which abhors the very thought of adding to one’s own heritage of good by wrongfully infringing on what is another’s.
Viewed thus as enshrining the great principle of love, and in a series of commands chalking out the courses of righteous action it was to follow, of unrighteous action it was to shun, the law of the two tables may justly be pronounced unique—so compact in form, so orderly in arrangement, so comprehensive in range, so free from everything narrow and punctilious—altogether the fitting reflex of the character of the Supremely Pure and Good in His relation to the members of His earthly kingdom. It is emphatically a revelation of God—of God generally, indeed, as the moral Governor of the world, but more peculiarly as the Redeemer of Israel; and to lower it to the position of a kind of semi-political and religious code, were to deprive it of all that is most distinctive in its spirit and bearing, and render utterly inexplicable the singular prominence assigned it, not alone in the legislation of the old covenant, but in the Scriptures generally alike of the Old and the New.
Though moral duties are specially enjoined in many places of the Law, yet the Decalogue most assuredly does not contain all moral duties, even by remote implication, and on the widest construction. It totally omits many such, as, e.g., beneficence, truth, justice, temperance, control of temper, and others; and some moral precepts omitted here are introduced in other places. But many moral duties are hardly recognised, e.g., it is difficult to find any positive prohibition of drunkenness in the Law.
In one passage only an indirect censure seems to be implied (Deuteronomy 29:19
And this is what the Decalogue really contains. That any one who sincerely opens his heart to the reception of its great principles of truth and duty, and lives in the loving connection it implies with God and his fellow-men, should deem himself otherwise than bound to practise justice, temperance, beneficence, and truth, it is impossible to conceive. And the same substantially may be said of another alleged omission—the moral obligation of missions.
For, how could any one entering into the spirit of the revelation of law, and believing the practical acknowledgment of its great principles of truth and righteousness to be the essential condition of all true peace and well-being, fail to recognise it as his duty to do what he could to bring others acquainted with them? The very position and calling of Israel partook of a missionary character: it had for its grand aim the communication of the peculiar blessing of the covenant to all nations; and the missionary spirit breathed in such passages as Psalms 67:1-7
II. Subordinate to this grand revelation of moral law, yet closely related to it, is what has usually been called the judicial law of the Theocracy though this is too limited a term for what must be comprised under it. A more fitting designation would be, Statutory directions and enactments for the practical ordering of affairs amid the complicated relations and often untoward events of life. The law, strictly so called, being the absolute expression of the Divine will toward a people redeemed for the Divine service and glory, was necessarily oblivious of difficulties and defects; it peremptorily required conformity with its own perfect ideal of rectitude, and made no account of any deviation from this, except to warn against and condemn it. But in the circumstances in which mankind generally, and the Israelites in particular, actually stood, such conformity could never be more than partially realized; transactions, interests, would be sure to come up, which might render it doubtful even to sincere men how to apply, or how far to carry out, the precepts of the Decalogue; and, what was likely to be of much more frequent occurrence, wayward and selfish men would take occasion to traverse the pure and comely order, which it was the design of those precepts to establish among the covenant people.
In the event of such things arising, how was the external polity to be regulated and maintained? What modes of procedure in definite circumstances should be held in accordance with its spirit? What, as between one member of the community and another, might be tolerated, though falling somewhat below the Divine code of requirements?
What, again, calling for excision, as too flagrantly opposed to it to consist with the very being of the commonwealth?
It was to provide some sort of answer to these questions that the statutory directions and enactments now under consideration were introduced. They are called, in the first mention that is made of them, the mishpatim,
Indeed, the range which is allowed through the whole class of provisions now in question, for the exercise of individual liberty in official and even social arrangements, is one of the most noticeable points connected with them. In civil and economical respects, the people were left in great measure to shape their domestic institutions, and model their administrative polity as they thought fit. There were to be judges to determine in matters of dispute between man and man, and to maintain the fundamental laws of the kingdom; but how these judges were to be appointed, or what their relative places and spheres of jurisdiction, nothing is prescribed.
A regular gradation of officers was introduced by Moses shortly before the giving of the law;
Here, too, unless violence were to be done to the natural course of development, and a mechanical order made to supersede the free action of mind, the principle of progression must have had scope given it to work, and consequently, in the actual administration of the affairs of the kingdom, not always what was absolutely the best, but only the best practicable in the circumstances, was to be authoritatively enjoined. If only contemplated thus from a right point of view, the things sometimes excepted against in this part of the Mosaic legislation would be seen to admit of a just defence or reasonable explanation.
1. But to take the points connected with it in order. A considerable portion of the statutes and judgments are, as we have said, a simple application of the great principles of the Decalogue to particular cases, intended at once to explain and confirm them.
That in its general spirit and tenor the Decalogue is an embodiment of love —in its second part of brotherly love, extending through the entire circle of one’s thoughts, words, and deeds—might be conceded. But must it be exercised in every case? even toward one from whom injury has been received? If we think he has. acted to us unjustly, may not we in turn take our revenge?
No; the judicial reply is a neighbour, though an enemy, in trouble, as when his ass or his ox strays, or his ass has fallen helplessly under a burden, ought to receive our help.
2. It thus appears that the class of enactments referred to have an abiding value, as they serve materially to throw light on the import and bearing of the Decalogue, confirming the views already given of its spiritual and comprehensive character. Another class, which, like the preceding, involve no difficulty of interpretation, also reflect, in a somewhat different way, a measure of light on the Decalogue, viz., by the judicial treatment they award to the more flagrant violation of its precepts.
The deeds which were of this description had all the penalty of death attached to them—shewing that the precepts they violated were of a fundamental character, and entered as essential principles into the constitution of the Theocracy. Such was the doom suspended over the introduction of false gods, in violation of the first command,
How completely would the great end of such an institution have been frustrated, if the holiness to which the people were called had been outraged, and the sins which ran counter to it openly practised? To act thus had been to traverse the fundamental laws of the kingdom, nay, to manifest an unmistakeable hatred to its Divine Head, and could no more be tolerated there than overt treason in an earthly government. The law, therefore, righteously laid the sin of deliberate transgression on the head of the sinner as guilt, which could only be taken away by the punishment of him who committed it.
Hegel, for instance, taught that ‘punishment is certainly to be regarded as the necessary abolition of crime which would otherwise predominate, and as the re-establishment of right.’ More fully and distinctly Stahl, ‘To man is given, along with the power, the authority also of performing a deed, but this he can only have with God, not against Him. If, therefore, he acts amiss, he comes to have a glory in the world antagonistic to God. Not, however, to undo the deed itself, and its consequence, can be demanded by the Divine righteousness, but only to destroy this glory of the deed; and if this can be destroyed, the antagonism is brought to an end.’—(See in Baumgarten’s Comm. on Pent., II., pp. 29, 30.)
But the relation of capital punishment to moral transgressions of the first table, and to some extent also of the second, which was proper to a Theocracy, cannot be justly transferred to an ordinary civil commonwealth; and, in this respect, Christian states have often grievously erred in assimilating their penal statutes too closely to those of the Mosaic legislation.) Besides, it was not they alone who were to be considered; for in planting them in Canaan, ‘in the midst of the nations,’ and furnishing them with such a polity, God’s design was to use them as a great teaching institute—a light placed aloft on the moral heights of the world amid surrounding darkness. What incalculable blessings might have accrued to ancient heathendom had that high calling been fulfilled! But to this end the stern proscription of open ungodliness and flagrant immoralities was indispensable.
3. Another class of the statutes and judgments under consideration is one which more directly bore on the imperfect state of order and civilization then everywhere existing, and which has often been misunderstood and objected to. The law of compensation—frequently, though improperly, termed the law of retaliation—does not strictly belong to the class, but may be included in it, on account of the assaults to which it has been subjected.
It is, indeed, so far of the class in question, as it comes first directly into view in connection with a very rude and barbarous state of manners. The supposition is made of two men striving together, and a woman with child (whether by chance or from well-meant interference on her part) happening to receive some corporeal injury in the fray; and it was ordained, that her husband was entitled to claim compensation from the offender, according to the extent of the injury; proceeding further, the statute provides generally for all like cases, that there should be ‘life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’
‘In fact,’ to use the words of Kalisch in his commentary on the passage, ‘our own Christian legislation could not dispense with similar principles: life is punished with life, and intentional injuries are visited with more than equivalent penalties. Not even the most sentimental and romantic legislator has ever had the fancy to pardon all criminals out of Christian love. For, in reality, every simple law in our criminal code is based on the jus talionis (the law of compensation), with the limitation that bodily mutilation is converted into an adequate pecuniary fine, or incarceration; but the same modification (he adds) has been universally adopted by traditional Judaism.’ Such a limitation was in perfect accordance with the general spirit of the Mosaic code, and must have been from the first intended.
The literal application of the rule, as in the case of burning for burning, or wound for wound, would often have been impracticable, for who could have undertaken to make a second that should always be precisely equivalent to the first? or unjust, for the severity of a bodily infliction may, in particular circumstances, be a widely different thing to one person from what it is to another. To insist on the exact counterpart of such corporeal injuries, even when it could have been secured, in preference to a reasonable compensation, would plainly have been to gratify a spirit of revenge; and this, as already stated, was expressly disallowed. There was one thing, and only one, in regard to which compensation was formally interdicted: the life of a deliberate murderer must be given for the life of the murdered, without satisfaction, without pity;
The real bearing of this law, then, when rightly understood and applied as it was meant, in judicial decisions, was in perfect accordance with the principles of equity; it was merely a practical embodiment of these; and the reference made to it by our Lord in His sermon on the mount, where it forms a kind of contrast to the injunction laid on His followers not to resist evil, but when smitten on the one cheek to turn the other also, and so on,
But the law of brotherly love, when requiring the suppression of revenge, and the exercise of forbearance and kindness even to an enemy, in reality did the same, as was perfectly understood by the better spirits of the old covenant.
Talmud; and Maimonides. For the compensations by which the Arabs and Egyptians carry out the principle, see Kitto’s ‘Pictorial Bible,’ on Exodus 21:1-36
4. More distinctly than the statutes just noticed may some of those connected with the punishment of murder be ranked in the class now under consideration. In this branch of the Mosaic legislation there is generally apparent a spirit of humanity and moderation.
First of all, murder in the proper sense is carefully discriminated from death brought about in some casual manner. In every case of real murder it was necessary to prove preceding malice or hatred, a lying in wait or taking deliberate measures to compass the death of its victim, and an assault with some violent weapon accomplishing the end in view.
There must usually have been, in such cases, at least a culpable degree of heedlessness, which would always call for careful investigation, and might justly subject the individual to a limited amount of trouble, or even of punishment. It does so still in the civilized communities of modern times, with their regulated forms of judicial procedure and vigilant police: the man-slayer, however unwittingly he may have been the occasion of taking another’s life, must lay his account to the solemn inquest, often also the personal arrest, and it may be, ultimately, the severe reprimand, pecuniary fine, or temporary imprisonment, which may be thought due as a correction to his improper heedlessness or haste. But at the period of Israel’s settlement in Canaan there were not the opportunities for calm inquiry, and patient, satisfactory adjustment of such cases as exist now; and there were, besides, feelings deeply rooted in Asiatic society, and usages growing out of them, which tended very considerably to embarrass the matter, and yet could not be arbitrarily set aside.
These arose out of the relation of Goel, according to which the nearest of kin had the wrongs, in particular circumstances, as well as the rights of the deceased, devolved upon him; especially the obligation to avenge his blood in the event of its having been unrighteously shed. On this account the term Goel is very commonly reckoned synonymous with ‘avenger’ (Goel haddam, avenger of blood), and in the passages bearing on this subject they are invariably so rendered in our English Bible.
In him the blood of the dead, as it were, rose to life again and claimed its due. In other cases, it fell to the Goel to redeem the property of his relative, which had become alienated and lost by debt;
In ordinary cases, all its demands might have been satisfied by the Goel appearing before the judges as the prosecutor of the man-slayer, and calling upon them to examine the case and give judgment in behalf of the deceased. But there can be no doubt that it might also quite readily run to evil, that it might degenerate—if not very carefully guarded and checked into what, from time immemorial, it has been among the Arab races—a kind of wild and vengeful spirit of justice, which would take the law into its own hands, and, in defiance alike of personal danger and of the forms of legal procedure, would pursue the shedder of blood till his blood in turn had been shed. This was the vicious extreme of the system; yet one, it ought to be remembered, which operated as a powerful check—perhaps, in the circumstances of the place and times, the only valid check that could be devised against another and still more pernicious extreme, for which peculiar facilities were afforded by the vast deserts of Arabia and the regions lying around Palestine.
How easy might it have been for the daring and successful murderer, by making his escape into these, to get beyond the reach of the regular tribunals and officers of justice! Only the dread of being tracked out and having his own measure summarily meted back to him, by one on whom the charge to avenge the wrong lay as a primary and life-long obligation, might be sufficient to deter him from trusting in such a refuge from evil. We have it on the testimony of those who have been most thoroughly conversant with the regions in question, and the races inhabiting them, that nothing has contributed so much as this institution (even in its most objectionable Arab form) to prevent the warlike tribes of the East from exterminating one another.
Were not these conditions, however, somewhat arbitrary? If not really guilty of blood in the proper sense, why should he not have been placed at once under the protection of the law, and restored to his property and home? And why should the period of his release have been made to hang on the uncertain and variable moment of the high-priest’s death?
Perhaps there may have been grounds for these limitations at the time they were imposed, which cannot now be ascertained; but a little consideration is sufficient to shew that they could not be deemed unreasonable. In the great majority of cases, the death of the person slain must have been owing to the want of due circumspection, fore thought, or restraint on the part of him who had occasioned it; and it could not, to thoughtful minds, appear otherwise than a salutary discipline, that he should be adjudged to a temporary abridgment of his liberty. Arbitrarily to break through this restraint after it had been judicially imposed, would clearly have argued a self-willed, impetuous, and troublesome humour, which refused correction, and might readily enough repeat in the future the rashness or misdeed of the past; so that it was but dealing with him according to his folly to leave him in such a case at the mercy of the Goel.
The older evangelical divines (some also still, as Keil) think that in the death of the high-priest there was a shadow of the death of Christ; consequently something that might be regarded as having a sort of atoning value for the sins of the people. This I cannot but consider arbitrary in interpretation, and involving a dangerous element in respect to the work of atonement. For if the death of a sinful man, because he was anointed with oil, the symbol of the Spirit’s grace, had such a value then, why should not the death of martyrs and other saints, richly endowed with the Spirit, have something of the same now?) It was made very clear, however, by other statutes on this subject, that when actual murder had been committed, no advantage was to accrue to the perpetrator from the cities of refuge; though he might have fled thither, he was, on the proof of his guilt, to be delivered up to the Goel for summary execution.
So great was the horror entertained of this unnatural crime, and so anxious was the Lawgiver to impress men with the feeling of its contrariety to the whole spirit and object of the law, that, even in the case of an uncertain murder, there was a cry of blood which could not be disregarded; and when every effort had failed to discover the author of the deed, the elders of the city which lay nearest to the corpse were to regard themselves as in a manner implicated; they had to come publicly forward, and not only protest their innocence of the crime, and their ignorance of the manner in which it had been committed, but also to go through a process of purification by blood and water, that the charge of blood-guiltiness might not rest upon them and their land.
5. We pass on now to the statutes on slavery and the treatment of those subject to it, which have in various respects been deemed inconsistent with the spirit of the Decalogue, as embodying the law of brotherly love. Here, again, it is especially necessary to bear in mind the state of the world at the time the law was given, and the relation in which it stood to manners and usages, which bespoke a very imperfect development both of economical science and of civil rights.
It was necessary that the law should take things as it found them, and, while setting before the covenant people the correct ideal of all that was morally right and good, should still regulate what pertained to the enforcement of discipline with a due regard to circumstances more or less anomalous and perplexing. By constitutional right, all the members of the covenant were free; they were the Lord’s redeemed ones, whom He vindicated to Himself from the house of bondage, that they might be in a condition to serve and honour Him;
But much must still depend on the individual character of the people, and the current of events in their history. If, through adverse circumstances, desolation fell on any portion of the territory—or if, from slothful neglect, particular inheritances were not duly cultivated, or the resources they furnished were again improvidently squandered—above all, if the people in whole or in part should become involved in the reverses or triumphs of war—such in equalities might readily spring up as, in the existing state of civic life and political arrangements, would most naturally lead to the introduction of a certain kind of slavery. It is even possible that, as matters then stood, the humanest, if not the only practicable thing, that could be done by legislative enactment, was to bound and regulate, rather than absolutely interdict, some modified form of this in itself unhappy relationship.
Such, at least, appears to have been the view countenanced by the Divine Head of the Theocracy; for the statutes bearing on the subject of slavery are entirely of the kind just indicated, and, when temperately considered, will be found to involve a wise adaptation to the circumstances of the time. Even a brief outline may be enough to establish this.
(1.) The language alone is of importance here, as indicative of the spirit of the Hebrew Theocracy: it had no term to designate one class as slaves (in the stricter sense) and another who did hired service. The term for both alike is Ebed (òÆáÆã), properly, a labourer or worker, and hence very naturally one whose calling in life is emphatically of this description, a servant.
And, as justly noted by Saalschütz,
(2.) As a check upon this, at the outset a brand was set upon man-stealing; he who should be found to have kidnapped a soul (meaning thereby man or woman) of the children of Israel, for the purpose of using or selling that soul as a slave, incurred the penalty of death, as a violator of the fundamental laws of the kingdom.
(3.) But a man might, under the constraint of circumstances, to save himself and his family from the extremities of want, become fain to part with his freedom, and bind himself in servitude to another. In such cases, which should never have been but of an exceptional kind, a whole series of prescriptions were given to set bounds to the evil, and secure, during its continuance, the essentials of a brotherly relationship.
The service required was in no case to be that of an absolute bondman—or, as the expression literally is, service of a servant (òÇáÉøÇú òÈáÆã)—rigorous service, such as might be expected of one into whose condition no higher element entered.
The natural explanation, therefore, as given by many of our recent writers, is, that in ordinary circumstances the servitude terminated with the commencement of the seventh year, but when a Jubilee intervened, the bond of servitude, like all other bonds, ceased as a matter of course. This simple explanation renders quite unnecessary Ewald’s resort to his theory of earlier and later documents. The seventh year, however, was not the Sabbatical year, but the seventh from the entrance of the servitude—the principle of the arrangement being, that, as after seven days work there came the day of rest, and after seven years husbandry a year of repose, so after seven years servitude a return to freedom.) So that the relation of a Hebrew bondman to his master did not materially differ from that of one now, who sells his labour to a particular person, or engages to work to him on definite terms, for a stated period.
A certain exception, no doubt, has to be made in respect to the provision concerning his wife and children: if the wife belonged to him when he entered into the bond-service, then both wife and children went out with him; but if the wife had been given him by the master, wife and children could be claimed by the master. In the latter case, of course, the servant would be at perfect liberty to refuse what was offered; and as it must have been a person of heathen birth that in the case supposed was offered him for wife (for Hebrew maid-servants were, equally with the men, entitled to release in the seventh year),
A man might, however, choose to remain in the position of a bondman, rather than avail himself of his right to become free; the supposition of such a case is distinctly made, and it was ordered that he should go through what could not but be regarded as a degrading ceremony. On declaring that he loved his master, his wife and children, and that he would not go out free, his master was to place him before the judges, and in their presence bore his ear through with an awl into the door or door-post.
By the door, therefore, is most naturally understood the door of the master’s house, in which the man and his family now became a kind of fixtures; but whether the ‘for ever’ connected with his obligation of servitude indicated a strictly life-long continuance, or an unbroken service only till the year of Jubilee, is differently understood, and cannot be quite definitely determined—though the natural impression is in favour of the former view. The whole object and bearing of the ceremony were obviously to fix a sort of stigma on any one who voluntarily assumed the condition of such prolonged servitude. His claim, however, to lenient treatment, and the usual Israelitish privileges, remained as before.
(4.) A still further supposition is made, that, namely, of the daughter of an Israelite—not going into ordinary servitude for the legal term of years, as in Deuteronomy 15:12, in which case the regulations laid down for male servants were in substance applicable here—but being sold (according to a prevailing custom in the East) with the double view of service and betrothal.
If he was satisfied with her, and either himself took her to wife, or gave her to his son in that capacity, then she, of course, became a member of the family and had the rights of a spouse; but if the connexion, after being formed, was again broken off, then (besides all the moral blame that might be incurred in the matter, of which this branch of the law does not treat) the master was obliged to forfeit the money he had paid the maid could not be re-sold, but was instantly to regain her liberty; though it may be doubtful if she had the right to sue for a regular divorce. This part of the question, however, belongs rather to the subject of marriage than to that of servitude.
(5.) Servitude, in a stricter sense than that which the preceding regulations contemplate, might be exacted of foreigners. Of the heathen that were round about them, the Israelites might buy persons for bondmen and bond maids, also of the strangers who might be sojourning among them.
The circumstances of the covenant-people presented no temptation to it; beyond very moderate limits, the presence of such a population must have been a source of trouble and annoyance, rather than of comfort or strength; and hence, in the historical records, no indication exists of any regular commerce being carried on in this line, or even of any considerable numbers being held in the condition of bondmen. The Phoenician slave trade is noticed only in connection with what Israel suffered by it, not for anything they gained;
Of that class certainly were the Gibeonites, only with a special destination as to the form of service they were taken bound to render.
As a rule, the persons belonging to the house as bondmen or bondmaids were to be treated as members of the family; they were to enjoy the Sabbath rest, and partake of the sacrificial meals;
Sklaverei, and many others. The smiting to death, in the verse referred to, was only with a rod—not with a heavy or deadly weapon; and the death, though immediate, was not intentional. The phrase, he shall be avenged or punished, must therefore refer to something less than capital punishment.) The penalty was apparently left to the discretion of the judges, and would doubtless vary according to the circumstances.
But if death did not immediately follow, if the servant lingered a day or two, no additional penalty was to be imposed; the delay was to be taken as proof that no fatal result was contemplated by the master, and, in a pecuniary respect, the death of the victim had itself inflicted a heavy mulct.
Taken as a whole, the statutes upon the subject of slavery, it is impossible to deny, are largely pervaded by a spirit of mildness and equity, tolerating rather than properly countenancing and approving of it, and giving to it a very different character, both as to extent and manner of working, from what belonged to it in the nations of heathen antiquity. If brought into comparison, indeed, with the arrangements of modern civilization, one can readily point to features in it which, considered by themselves, were not in accordance with the ideal of a well-ordered commonwealth. But such a comparison would be essentially unfair.
For, however high the standard of moral rectitude set up in the Hebrew commonwealth, and in its entireness laid upon the consciences of the people, the commonwealth in its political administration could not move in total isolation from the state of things around it. At various points it necessarily took a certain impress from the age and time; and from the universal prevalence of slavery among their heathen neighbours, it must often have been impracticable for the people, when seeking the service they needed, to obtain it otherwise than in the form of bond service. But as the persons acquired for the purpose must usually have been brought from heathen districts, they could not possibly be placed on a footing with the proper subjects of the Theocracy.
Even, however, as strangers in a depressed condition, they were to be treated in a kind and considerate manner, as by those who, in their own persons or through their ancestors, had known the heart and experience of a stranger;
6. The only remaining class of statutes and judgments calling for consideration here are those relating to the subject of marriage. The fundamental law on the subject merely declared, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery;’ but, as in all the other precepts of the Decalogue, so here, what should constitute a breach of the command was left to the moral instincts of mankind; no specific description was given of adultery, nor was a right marriage relationship more nearly denned.
But that marriage, according to its proper ideal, consisted of the life-union of one man and one woman, and that the violation of this union by sexual commerce with another party constituted adultery, was well enough understood in the earlier ages of the world, and especially among the covenant-people. ‘The notion of matrimony has in the Old Testament, from the very commencement, been conceived in admirable purity and perfection. Already the wife of Adam is called “a help at his side,” that is, a companion through life, with whom he coalesces into one being’ (Genesis 2:18-24).
But in the glimpses afforded us of family life in Israel, the women have much freedom and consideration accorded to them;
In the later descriptions also of rightly constituted and happy families, the wife is always spoken of as the one spouse and mother of offspring; and severe denunciations are occasionally uttered against un fair dealing toward her.
Holding this view of the marriage union, the greater part of the statutes bearing on it in the books of Moses present no difficulty; their obvious design was to guard its sanctity, and punish with unsparing rigour its de liberate violation. Sexual commerce with another man’s wife rendered both parties liable to the penalty of death;
The nearest thing to it, perhaps, is in Exodus 21:8, where we have the case formerly referred to of a man purchasing a maid-servant, under a pledge or betrothal to take her to wife, or to give her in that capacity to his son. As a maid-servant she was so far in his power, that he could, if he so pleased, break his connexion with her, and cease to keep her as a wife. Yet this is spoken of as a moral wrong; it was ‘dealing deceitfully with her;’ and, as already noticed under the statutes about slavery, he lost his purchase-money—the maid regained her freedom—a penalty so far being thus imposed on such capricious behaviour.
If, however, he should retain the person so acquired for his wife, and at the same time take another, the first was to be continued in her rights—‘her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage’
Nay, that while the man was bound by the nature of the marriage tie to be as one flesh with her, he should become the same with another person?
Undoubtedly, a certain ground existed for such questions; and the spiritual guides of the community should have made it clear, that men had no constitutional right to act after such a fashion; that in doing so they violated great moral principles; and that the guilt and the responsibility of such procedure were all their own—the judicial statutes of the commonwealth only not interposing against it by specific enactments and penalties. In its moral bearings, the case was very nearly parallel with another, which has been even more generally excepted against, and by our Lord Himself was allowed to be justly liable to exception; that, namely, of a divorce executed against a wife for some cause less than actual infidelity.
Exactly rendered, the passage stands thus:—‘When a man has taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she does not find favour in his sight, because he has found something of shame (or nakedness) in her, and he writes for her a bill of divorcement, and gives it into her hand, and sends her out of his house: and she has departed from his house, and gone and become another man’s: and the latter husband hates her, and writes for her a bill of divorcement, and gives it into her hand, and sends her forth out of his house, or the latter husband has died that took her to wife:—The first husband that sent her away cannot return to take her for his wife after she has been defiled; for that were abomination before Jehovah; and thou shalt not pollute the land which Jehovah thy God gives thee as an inheritance.’
Thus read, it will be seen that the thing directly forbidden in the passage is simply the return of the divorced woman to be again the wife of the man who had first divorced her; this would indicate a total looseness in regard to the marriage relationship, and was to be interdicted as an abomination which would utterly pollute the land. There is marked, indeed, a double or progressive defilement: the woman was defiled by her commerce with another man after being divorced from her first husband; and to re-marry her, when so defiled, was to aggravate the pollution. All, however, that goes before this prohibitory part is simple narration: when a man marries a woman, and is displeased with her, and gives her a bill of divorce, and sends her from him, and another man does after the same manner—not as our translators, after Luther and some others, ‘then let him write her a bill of divorce,’ and so on.
The words do not properly admit of this rendering; and on that very point may be said to turn the diversity of view exhibited in the Gospel narrative,
The practice, it is implied, was not unknown; in all probability it prevailed extensively among the corrupt nations among whom Israel was to dwell (since things greatly worse were of everyday occurrence among them); and in so far as any might adopt it, the judicial authorities were not empowered to prevent it—that is all; but whatever rashness, or contravention of the proper spirit and design of the marriage relation might be involved in it, this lay still with the conscience of the individual; he was answerable for it.
Viewed in respect to the grounds of his supposed procedure, there is a certain vagueness in the form of expression, which gave rise even in ancient times to very different modes of interpretation. The two chief words in the original (òÆøÀåÇú ãÌáÈø) certainly form a somewhat peculiar combination—strictly, nakedness of a matter, and as the term for nakedness is very commonly used for what is unbecoming or indecent, it may most naturally be regarded as indicating something distasteful or offensive in that direction. The two great Jewish schools, those of Hillel and Shammai, were divided in their opinions on the subject; the school of Hillel included in the expression everything that might cause dissatisfaction in the husband, even the bad cooking of his victuals,
That something different, however, something less than this, must have been intended, is evident alone from a comparison of other parts of the Mosaic legislation, which ordained that a woman guilty of adultery should be, not divorced, but put to death. It is also evident from the explanation of our Lord, which ascribed this liberty of divorce to the hardness of the people’s hearts, and declared its inconsistence with the fundamental principle of the marriage union, which admitted of a justifiable dissolution only by the death or the adulterous behaviour of one of the parties. The truth appears to have lain between the two extremes of the Jewish schools referred to; and something short of actual impurity, yet tending in that direction something unbecoming, and fitted to create dislike in the mind of the husband, or take off his affections from her—was understood to form, in the case supposed, an occasion for dismissing a wife.
It is also supposed, that if such a step were taken, it would be done in an orderly manner—not by a mere oral renouncement, as among some Eastern nations, but by a formal writing, which would usually require the employment of a neutral person, and perhaps also the signature of witnesses; that this writing should be deliberately put into the woman’s hand, and that she should thereafter leave the house and go to another place of abode. These things, requiring some degree of deliberation and time, and so far tending to serve as a check on the hasty impulses of passion, are not directly enjoined (as already said), but presupposed as customary and indispensable parts of the process in question; and the liberty thereby granted to the woman to ally herself to another man, coupled with the strict prohibition against a return to her first husband, were evidently intended as additional checks—reasons calling for very serious consideration before the consummation of an act which carried such consequences along with it. Still, the act could be done; no positive statute, capable of legal enforcement, was issued to prevent it; and was not the licence thus granted, however arising, a sign of imperfection?
Beyond doubt it was; our Lord admits as much, when He accounts for it by the hardness of the people’s hearts. But the person who should avail himself of the licence was not thereby justified—no more than in Christian times a wife, or a husband, who, by wilful abandonment or criminal behaviour, turns the marriage bond into a nullity. The apostle distinctly states, that a believing woman is not bound by the law of her husband, when he, remaining in unbelief and displeased with her procedure, has forced her into separation;
There is here, at least, an approach to the Old Testament state of things, arising from the same cause, the hardness of the people’s hearts; and for the greater measure of licence, and consequently of practical imperfection adhering to the old, the question, in its moral bearings, resolves itself into a wider one—it touches the principle of progression in the Divine government; for if, in progress of time the light and privileges granted to men became much increased, should not the practical administration or discipline in God’s house receive a corresponding elevation? It stands to reason that it should; and hence certain things might be tolerated, in the sense of not being actively condemned, at an earlier stage of the Divine dispensations, which should no longer be borne with now; while still the standard of moral duty, absolutely considered, does not change, but is the same for men of every age. There is the same relative difference, and the same essential agreement, between the church in its present and in its ultimate stage on earth—the period of millennial glory: things tolerated now, will not be then.
It is further to be borne in mind, that this, above all other points in the social system, was the one in respect to which Orientals stood at a relative disadvantage, and that feelings and practices were widely prevalent, which would render stringent regulations of a disciplinary kind worse than inoperative with a certain class of persons. There was comparatively little freedom of intercourse, prior to marriage, between the sexes, especially among those who were of age. In many cases espousals were made for the young, rather than by them; multitudes found themselves joined in wedlock who had scarcely ever seen each other—never, at least, mingled in familiar converse; and often, too, they came from such different classes of society and spheres of life, especially when the wife was purchased as a bond-maid, or taken as a captive in war, that it would have been a marvel if estrangements, jealousies, tempers that repelled each other rather than coalesced into a proper unity of heart and life, did not at times appear as the result.
Still, doubtless, the moral obligation remained, growing out of the essential nature of the marriage relation, and no way invalidated but enforced by the tenor of the Mosaic revelation, that the parties should cleave one to another, and abstain from all that might tarnish the sanctity of their union, or mar the ends for which it was formed. But in such a state of things to exclude by positive and rigid enactment any possibility of relief, even for such as did not in their hearts realize that obligation, could only have tended to produce a recoil in the opposite direction; it would have led them probably to resort to violent measures to rid themselves of the hated object, or to employ such treatment as would have made death rather to be desired than life. The general regulations of the judicial code in respect to marriage, as well as to other points of moment, thus appear to admit of justification, when they are considered with reference to the actual condition of the world.
But when particular cases are looked at, as they arose in the subsequent history of the people, things are certainly sometimes met with of which it is difficult to find any adequate explanation:—the case, for example, of Elimelech, a Levite, and apparently a man of probity, not only married to two wives without any specific reason assigned, but one of these (Hannah) a person of distinguished piety, and the subject of special direction and blessing from Heaven; much more the case of David, and that of his highly gifted and honoured son Solomon, adding wife to wife, and concubines to wives, without any apparent consciousness of wrong in the matter—yet all the while possessing the more peculiar endowments of God’s Spirit; and though receiving counsels, revelations, sometimes also rebukesfrom above, still never directly reproved for departing on this point from the right ways of the Lord. It is true, on the other hand, they had no proper warrant for what they did; they sinned against law—judicial as well as moral law; and it is also true, that painful results attended their course, such as might well be deemed practical reproofs. Such considerations do help us a certain way to the solution—we can say no more; perplexing difficulties still hang around the subject, which cannot mean while be cleared satisfactorily away, only they are difficulties which relate to the practical administration of affairs, rather than to the Divine constitution of the kingdom.
There are certain things in other departments of which the same might be affirmed. But for all in the Old Economy that bears on it the explicit sanction of Heaven, though formally differing from what is now established, the principle so finely exhibited by Augustine in his contendings with the Manichees is perfectly applicable. Having compared the kingdom of God to a well-regulated house, in which for wise reasons certain things are permitted or enjoined at one time, which are prohibited at another, he adds: So is it with these persons who are indignant when they hear that something was allowed to good men in a former age, which is not allowed in this; and because God commanded one thing to the former, another thing to the latter, for reasons pertaining to the particular time, while each were alike obedient to the same righteousness:—And yet in a single man, and in a single day, and in a single dwelling, they may see one thing suiting one member, another a different one; one thing permitted just now, and again after a time prohibited; something allowed or ordered in a certain corner, which elsewhere is fitly forbidden or punished.
Righteousness is not therefore various and mutable, is it? But the times over which it presides do not proceed in a uniform manner, just because they are times. But men, whose life on earth is short, because they are not able intelligently to harmonize the causes of earlier times and of other nations, of which they have not had cognizance, with those wherewith they are familiar—though in one body, or day, or house, they can easily see what would suit a particular member, particular times, particular offices or persons—take offence at the one, but fall in with the other.’
L. III. c. 7. Sic sunt isti qui indignantur, cum audierint illo sæculo licuisse justis aliquid, quod isto non licet justis; et quia illis aliud prsecipit Deus, istis aliud pro temporalibus causis, cum eidem justitiæ utrique serviunt; cum in imo homine, et in urio die, et in unis ædibus videant aliud alii membro congruere, et aliud jamdudum licuisse, post horam non licere; quiddam in illo ingulo permitti aut juberi, quod in isto juste vetetur et vindecitur, etc.)
III. There yet remains to be noticed the third great division of the Law namely, the rites and ceremonies which more directly pertained to religion; or, as it is very commonly designated, the Levitical code of worship and observance. In what are called the statutes and judgments, which immediately succeeded the delivery of the ten commandments, there is scarcely any reference made to ordinances of this description. A few words were spoken to the people respecting the kind of altar they should erect,
From its very place in the history, therefore, it is to be regarded, not as of primary, but only of secondary moment in the constitution of the Divine kingdom in Israel; not itself the foundation, but a building raised on the foundation, and designed, by a wise accommodation to the state of things then present, and by the skilful use of material elements and earthly relations, to secure the proper working of what really was fundamental, and render it more certainly productive of the wished for results. The general connexion is this: God had already redeemed Israel for His peculiar people, called them to occupy a near relation to Himself, and proclaimed to them the great principles of truth and duty which were to regulate their procedure, so that they might be the true witnesses of His glory, and the inheritors of His blessing. And for the purpose of enabling them more readily to apprehend the nature of this relation, and more distinctly realize the things belonging to it, the Lord instituted a visible bond of fellowship, by planting in the midst of their dwellings a dwelling for Himself, and ordering everything in the structure of the dwelling, the services to be performed at it, and the access of the people to its courts, after such a manner as to keep up right impressions in their mind of the character of their Divine Head, and of what became them as sojourners with Him in the land that was to be emphatically His own.
In such a case, it was indispensable that all should be done under the express direction of God’s hand; for it was as truly a revelation of His will to the members of the covenant as the direct utterances of His mouth; it must be made and ordered throughout according to the pattern of things presented to the view of Moses; while the people, on their part, were to shew their disposition to fall in with the design, by contributing the materials requisite for the purpose, and fulfilling the offices assigned them.
To break this link of connexion between the ceremonial and the moral, or to invert their relative order as thus impressed from the first on the very framework of the Tabernacle, had been virtually to reject the plan of God, and frustrate the design contemplated in this part of His covenant arrangements. For those who practically ignored the revelation of truth and duty in the Decalogue, there was properly no house of God in Israel, no local throne, in connexion with which they could hold communion with the living Head of the Theocracy, and present acceptable worship before Him. And for such as did acknowledge and own that revelation, there could be only this one.
The fundamental truth, that Jehovah the God of Israel is one Lord, before whom no other God can stand, nor even any form of worship be allowed which might countenance the idea of a diversity of nature or will in the supreme object of worship—this must have its expression in the absolute oneness of the place where Jehovah should put His name, and where, in the more peculiar acts of worship, He should be approached by the members of the covenant. The place itself might be different at one time from what it was at another; it was left, indeed, altogether undetermined at what particular point in the chosen territory, or even within what tribe, the sacred dwelling should have its location. This might change from one period to another; the dwelling itself also might, as the event proved, change its exterior form—pass from the humble tent to a gorgeous temple; but its unity must ever remain intact, so as to exclude the entrance of different theocratical centres, and thereby prevent what would, in those times, have been its inevitable sequence, the idea of a plurality of gods to be acknowledged and served.
When we proceed from the sacred dwelling itself to the institutions and services associated with it, we find only further proofs of the close connexion between the Levitical code and the Decalogue, and of the dependence of the one upon the other. ‘The Levitical prescriptions,’ says Weber excellently,
After Jehovah, in consequence of His covenant, had taken up His abode in Israel, and Israel must now dwell before Him, it was necessary to appoint the ordinances by which this intercourse should be carried on. Since Israel in itself is impure, and is constantly defiling itself, because its natural life stands under the power of sin, it cannot quite directly enter into fellowship with Jehovah; but what took place at Sinai must be ever repeating itself—it must first, in order to meet with Jehovah, undergo a purification. Hence, one department of the ordinances of purification in the Levitical part of the Law.
But even when it has become pure, it still cannot approach Jehovah in any manner it may please, but only as He orders and appoints. It will not, in spite of all purifications, be so pure, as that it could venture to approach immediately to the Lord. The glory of the Lord enthroned above the cherubim would consume the impure.
Therefore must Israel come near to the Lord through priests whom He has Himself chosen; and still not personally, but by means of the gifts which ascend in the fire and rise into Jehovah’s presence, nor even so without the offerer having been first covered from the fiery glance of the Holy One through the blood of His victim. This is the second part of the Levitical law.’
And this (as justly remarked by Ewald, Vol. II. p. 185) ‘is the finest characteristic of the Old Testament, that even when its original elevated truths suffer through the violence of the times, it still always gives us to recognise the original necessary thought, just because in this community itself the consciousness of it could never be wholly lost. At the last, there still stands prominently out, here and alone, the great gospel of Exodus 19:5
It would be impossible here, and, besides, is not required for the purpose we have more immediately in view, to go into all the details which belong to a complete and exhaustive treatment of the subject. It will be enough to indicate the leading points relating to it. There is, then, first of all, in the Levitical code, a teaching element, which leans upon and confirms that of the Decalogue.
The grand lesson which it proclaimed through a multitude of rites and ordinances was, the pure, the good have access to God’s fellowship and blessing; the unholy, the wicked are excluded. But who constitute the one class, and who the other? Here the Levitical code may be said to be silent excepting in so far as certain natural and outward things were ingrafted into it as symbols of what, in the spiritual sphere, is good or evil.
But for the things themselves which properly are such, it was necessary to look to the character of God, the Head of the Theocracy, and as such the type of all who belonged to it—to His character especially as revealed in that law of moral duty, which He took for the foundation of His throne and the centre of His government in Israel. There the great land marks of right and wrong, of holy and unholy in God’s sight, were set up; and in the Levitical code they are presupposed, and men’s attention called to them, by its manifold prescriptions concerning clean and unclean, defilement and purification. Thus, its divers washings and ever-recurring atonements by blood bespoke existing impurities, which were such because they were at variance with the law of righteousness imposed in the Decalogue.
The Decalogue had pointed, by the predominantly negative form of its precepts, to the prevailing tendency in human nature to sin; and in like manner the Levitical code, by making everything that directly bore on generation and birth a source of uncleanness, perpetually reiterated in men’s ears the lesson, that corruption cleaved to them, that they were conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity. The very institution of a separate order for immediate approach to God, and performing, in behalf of the community, the more sacred offices of religion, was, as already noticed, a visible sign of actual short comings and transgressions among the people: it was a standing testimony, that they were not holy after the lofty pattern of holiness exhibited in the law of Jehovah’s throne. The distinction, also, between clean and unclean in food, while it deprived them of nothing that was required either to gratify the taste or minister nourishment to the bodily life—granted them, indeed, what was best adapted for both—yet served as a daily monitor in respect to the spiritual dangers that encompassed them, and of the necessity of exercising themselves to a careful choosing between one class of things and another, re minded them of a good that was to be followed, and of an evil to be shunned.
And then there is a whole series of defilements springing from contact with what is emphatically the wages of sin—death, or death’s livid image, the leprosy, which, wherever it alighted, struck a fatal blight into the organism of nature, and rendered it a certain prey to corruption:—things, the very sight and touch of which formed a call to humiliation, because carrying with them the mournful evidence, that, while sojourners with God, men still found themselves in the region of corruption and death, not in that brighter and purer region, where life, the life that is incorruptible and full of glory, for ever dwells.
Though some of the ordinances may now seem, in their didactic aspect, to be somewhat arbitrary, it would l>e quite otherwise for those who were accustomed to symbolical institutions; if sincere and earnest, they would readily pass from the natural to the spiritual, and would find in them all the lesson expressed in regard to the class first mentioned (Leviticus 11:44
Viewed in this light, the law of fleshly ordinances was a great teaching institute—not by itself, but when taken (according to its true intent) as an auxiliary to the law of the two tables. Isolated from these, and placed in an independent position, as having an end of its own to reach, its teaching would have been at variance with the truth of things; for it would have led men to make account of mere outward distinctions, and rest in corporeal observances. In such a case it would have been the antithesis rather than the complement of the law from Sinai, which gave to the moral element the supreme place, alike in God’s character, and in the homage and obedience He requires of His people.
But, kept in its proper relation to that law, the Levitical code was for the members of the old covenant an important means of instruction; it plied them with warnings and admonitions respecting sin, as bringing defilement in the sight of God, and thereby excluding from His fellowship. That such, however, was the real design of this class of Levitical ordinances—that they had merely a subsidiary aim, and derived all their importance and value from the connexion in which they stood with the moral precepts of the Decalogue is evident from other considerations than those furnished by their own nature and their place in the Mosaic legislation. It is evident, first, from this, that whenever the special judgments of Heaven were denounced against the covenant people, it never was for neglect of those ceremonial observances, but always for palpable breaches of the precepts of the Decalogue;
Beside the teaching element, however, which belonged to the Levitical institutions, there was another and still more important one, which we may call their mediating design. Here also they stood in a kind of supplementary relation to the law of the ten commandments, but a relation which implied something more than a simple re-echoing of their testimony respecting holiness and sin—something, indeed, essentially different. For that law, in revealing the righteous demands of God, from its very nature could make no allowance or provision for the sins and shortcomings by which those demands were dishonoured; it could but threaten condemnation, and, with its cry of guilt under the throne of God, terrify from His presence those who might venture to approach.
But the Levitical code, with its mediating priesthood, its rites of expiation, and ordinances of cleansing, had for its very object the effecting of a restored communion with God for those who through sin had forfeited their right to it. While it by no means ignored the reality or the guilt of sin nay, assumed this as the very ground on which it rested, and so far coincided with the Decalogue—it, at the same time, secured for those who acknowledged their sin and humbled themselves on account of it, a way of reconciliation and peace with God. The more special means for effecting this was through sacrifice—the blood of slain Victims—the life-blood of an irrational creature, itself un conscious of sin, being accepted by God in His character of Redeemer for the life of the sinner.
A mode of satisfaction no doubt in itself unsatisfactory, since there was no just correspondence between the merely sensuous life of an unthinking animal and the higher life of a rational and responsible being; in the strict reckoning of justice the one could form no adequate compensation for the other. But in this respect it was not singular; it was part of a scheme of things which bore throughout the marks of relative imperfection. The sanctuary itself, which was of narrow dimensions and composed of earthly and perishable materials, how poor a representation was it of the dwelling-place of Him who fills heaven and earth with His presence!
And the occasional access of a few ministering priests into the courts of that worldly sanctuary—an access into its inmost receptacle by one person only, and by him only once a year—how imperfect an image of the believer’s freedom of intercourse with God, and habitual consciousness of His favour and blessing! Such things might be said to lie upon the surface, and could not fail, as we shall see, to give a specific direction to the minds of the more thoughtful and spiritual worshippers. But there still was, in the structure of the tabernacle, and the regulated services of its worship, a provisional arrangement of Divine ordination by which transgressors, otherwise excluded, might obtain the forgiveness of their sins, and enjoy the blessings of communion with Heaven.
Through this appointed channel God did in very deed dwell with men on earth; and men, who would have been repelled with terror by His fiery law, could come nigh to His seat, and in spirit dwell as in the secret of His presence.
One can easily see, however, that the very imperfections attendant on this state of things required that its working be very carefully guarded. Definite checks and limits must be set to the possibility of obtaining the blessings of forgiveness. For, had an indefinite liberty been given to make propitiation for sin, and to wash away the stains of its defilement, how certainly would it have degenerated into a corrupt and dangerous license!
The Levitical code would have become the foster-mother of iniquity. The ready access it gave to the means of purification would have encouraged men to proceed on their evil courses, assured that if they should add sin to sin they might also bring victim after victim to expiate their guilt. Therefore, the right and privilege of expiation were limited to sins of infirmity, or such as spring from the weakness and imperfection of nature in a world abounding with temptation; while sins committed with a high hand, that is, in open and deliberate violation of the great precepts of the Decalogue, were appointed only to judgment, as subversive of the very ends of the Theocracy.
One thing further requires to be noted respecting the Levitical institutions, which is, that while under one aspect they constituted the rights and privileges of the Israelite, under another they added to his obligations of duty. They took the form of law, as well as the Decalogue, and, wilful violators of its prescriptions, were not less amenable to justice than those who were guilty of gross immorality.
Yet, practically, the difficulty and the danger did not lie much in this particular direction. Though guilt was no doubt frequently incurred by neglecting the provisions and requirements of the Levitical code, yet this was sure to be preceded and accompanied by the far greater guilt of violating the fundamental precepts of the Decalogue. And, hence, it was always guilt of this latter description which drew down the heaviest judgments.
If anything, indeed, has more clearly discovered itself than another, from the whole of this investigation, it is the fundamental character of the Decalogue—its pre-eminent and singular place in the Revelation of Law. This was itself emphatically THE LAW; and all, besides, which bore that name was but of secondary rank, and derived its proper value and significance from the relation in which it stood to the other. Hence, the prominent regard, as in due time will appear, which, in the use of the term Law by our Lord and His apostles, was had to the moral precepts of the Decalogue.
Hence, also, the groundlessness of the statement, which has been often made by modern writers, that the distinction, with which we are so familiar, between t moral and ceremonial, was not so sharply drawn in the Books of Moses, and that precepts of both kinds are there often thrown together, as if, in Jewish apprehension, no very material difference existed between them. It is easy to pick out a few quotations which give a plausible support to such a view. But a careful examination of the subject as a whole, and of the relation in which one part stands to another, yields a quite different result.
And Mr Maurice does not put it too strongly when he says, ‘The distinction between these commandments and the mere statutes of the Jewish people has strongly commended itself to the conscience of modern nations, not because they have denied the latter to have a divine origin, but because they have felt that the same wisdom which adapted a certain class of commands to the peculiarities of one locality and age, must intend a different one for another. The ten commandments have no such limitation. .
. . All the sub sequent legislation, though referred to the same authority, is separated from these. All the subsequent history was a witness to the Jew, that in the setting up of any god besides the Unseen Deliverer; in the fancy that there could be any likeness of Him in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth; in the loss of awe for His name; in the loss of the distinction between work and rest as the ground of man’s life, and as having its archetype in the Divine Being, and as worked by Him into the tissue of the existence of His own people; in the loss of reverence for parents, for life, for marriage, for property, for character; and in the covetous feeling which is at the root of hese evls, lay the sources of political disunion, and the loss of all personal dignity and manliness.’