Numbers 1

Notes. Division 1. (Numbers 1:1-54; Numbers 2:1-34; Numbers 3:1-51; Numbers 4:1-49; Numbers 5:1-31; Numbers 6:1-27; Numbers 7:1-89; Numbers 8:1-26; Numbers 9:1-23; Numbers 10:1-10.)The Ordering of the Camp. In the first division, then, we find the ordering of the camp. The people are to face the perils of the way, and the first requisite for this is to be in subjection to their Leader, not Moses, but rather the Lord Himself. Hence, first of all, this mustering and marshaling of what is to be the host of God. For a soldier to keep rank is an absolute necessity and here a wisdom that cannot fail ordains for every one his place and his association. Thus divine foresight is able to manifest itself for them, and they are secured from uncertainty and anxiety. They have but to be obedient, and by obedience to cast all the responsibility of the future upon Him who has identified His glory with the fulfillment of His promises to them.

These of course were as to Israel nationally only: they did not pledge the security of individuals, and in fact the generation that came as men out of Egypt perished, except two persons, in the wilderness. For us who are Christians, thank God, grace reigns, and we are individually “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” But on that very account it is said to us, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”

Numbers 1:1-2

Subdivision 1. (Numbers 1:1-54; Numbers 2:1-34.)The organization and muster. The first two chapters are the first subdivision, the mustering of the people as a whole, even the place of the Levites being indicated in the second chapter, though these are separated from the body of the nation for a prescribed service in connection with the sanctuary. Apart from them, the number of the tribes is maintained by the incorporation of Joseph’s two sons as tribal heads according to Genesis 48:1-22. In this muster the organization carried out is the natural one, by families or “fathers’ houses:” two terms which appear to be co-extensive, contrary as this is to the usual thought.* The difference between them is, that the word for “family” implies subjection to authority,** while the father’s house shows that this authority has its grounds in the natural relation. Such is God’s relationship to His people, of which the father is the image. Here rule should be as easy as obedience delightful. In family groups they were thus linked together in God’s host, brother fighting alongside of brother, an army so compacted as to be, one might suppose, invincible.

And what a means of encouragement, and of the impartation of energy, has God provided for us as Christians, who are members of one family, owning a common. Father, and embarked together in a common cause! Alas! how much feebleness has come in through God’s order having been departed from: so many among us who cannot show their names upon the register, and so few together of those undoubtedly akin! And yet, with all this, we are still able to realize in measure the blessedness of the divine thought for us, and the comfort and power that result from this family organization, such as we find it in Israel. \

1. The first chapter gives this enrolling, “the sum of all the assembly of the children of Israel,” but only their effective force, those fit for warfare, not women or babes, but grown men. In Christ of course there is neither male nor female, and women do not escape from spiritual warfare: but the thought conveyed to us here is none the less plain and significant. It is not the simple fact of being Christians that makes us practically fit to be warriors. Any that are Christ’s may of course have to fight, but to be properly a warrior is a different thing. For this we must have two things which indeed come near together, and are both covered by the number which marks the section.

First of all, maturity, which in the Greek stands as “perfectness,” “wholeness,” (teleiotes,) the full harmony of all the faculties. For this as saints we need to be nourished up by the Word of God. And secondly, what the apostle gives as necessary for a good soldier of Christ," devotedness, not to be entangled with the affairs of this life, which from another side brings us again to the thought of entireness, oneness. Thus to the Corinthians he complains that their carnality kept them still “babes in Christ.” Here then is our title to enrollment among those “fit for war” in the spiritual Israel. (1) The persons able to do the work of numbering are, first of all, Moses and Aaron, the double type of Christ as King and Priest. He is indeed the One who knoweth them that are His, and under whose eye His servants are: the Lord who rules, and He who intercedes for and sustains them. Good it is to be under an eye like this! Under Moses and Aaron there are certain princes of the people, each identified with his own tribe, and in due time coming to be head over it. Of these we have nothing noted but their own and their fathers’ names, but just for that reason, if there could otherwise be doubt, we may be sure that their names are intended to speak to us. All these Bible names should speak and their connection with the several tribes which they represent must be of importance: there must be a reason why Elizur, rather than Shelumiel or Nahshon, should be prince of Reuben; and it is in exploring Reuben’s history that we should find it. That history of Reuben, as of the other tribes, we shall find in a prophetic summary in Jacob’s dying words, where divine wisdom has given the moral of it, the character of Reuben as therein shown, and the lessons we are to derive from it. We may turn then with confidence to the words of this grand prophecy, with which we are already familiar, to gather aid in the understanding of what is now before us. Reuben stands first then here as in Genesis, and Reuben’s prince is Elizur the son of Shedeur. The first of these names is unquestionable in its meaning, as it is beautiful, -“God is a Rock.” And this seems at once plain when connected with the character which Jacob gives to his first-born, “unstable, -boiling over -as water, thou shalt not excel.” How grandly in opposition to the instability of Reuben is the rock-like stability of God! And it is the learning of this, and how to build upon it, that imparts stability to the unstable. In ourselves there is never strength, and the way of strength for us is to know this: “when I am weak, then am I strong.” An Abraham with whom the body is now dead, needs -and finds because he needs -the Almighty God. Thus it is plain why Elizur is Reuben’s prince and leader. He is one of God’s royal family of overcomers, and he overcomes the evil, native in the tribe he represents. Faith with him has found refuge from himself, and found it in God. He is then the suited captain for the men fit for war in the tribe of the first-born. But this is not the whole: for Reuben’s instability is more than weakness. Too many excuse as that what is in fact willfulness, the lust of the flesh; and though there is weakness necessarily in such a case, nevertheless that word does not describe the case. So we have seen it to be in what is before us: lust and will characterize the first-born of Jacob, as they do the first outcome of man in general; and so, before one can find one’s strength in God, the holiness of God must be known, and our wills must be brought into conformity with His holiness. And this is accomplished more or less for us all in the fire of purification, the fire at which He sits as a Refiner of silver, purifying to Himself His people from their dross. No marvel then is it that the Reubenite Elizur is “the son of Shedeur:” that is, “the Almighty is fire.” Yes, “our God is a consuming fire;” and He truly is the Almighty who is this, so that there is no escape out of His hands, when in love He takes up with us this His gracious work. Thus is the lesson learned, and how good when one has learned it! yea, “the knowledge of the Holy is” indeed “understanding.” The next tribe, in birth order, perhaps in character, is Simeon; and the prince of Simeon is Shelumiel, “at peace with God.” Again, how significant if we turn back to Jacob’s prophecy, and hear him denounce on God’s part Simeon’s cruel wrath! His paths had not been peace, nor with Him who is “the God of peace:” hence peace with God, the deep, sweet rest of a mind conformed to His mind, Simeon could not know. Now with the Simeonite prince all this is changed; as to Simeon’s special evil he too is an overcomer, and his also is the victory of faith: there is no evil which faith cannot overcome, because He with whom it links itself is the Almighty. And so in the process indicated here, Shelumiel is the son of Zurishaddai, -that is, “My rock is the Almighty.” We have had much this thought already in Elizur, for the very simplest truths that faith embraces are of the widest reach and deepest import. Here, though the thought is much the same, the connection is different, just as Simeon is different from Reuben in his character. While Reuben is, as Jacob says, “the topmost of my strength,” Simeon’s very alliance with his brother is the confession of weakness, but a weakness which he would remedy by a recourse to that to which at present so many are betaking themselves -confederacy. And here he does find it indeed, but only to make cruel use of it, and to walk in separation from God. On his part therefore it brings in the end division and scattering. This is a necessity for him, if he is to be saved from himself; that, having found what the strength of nature betrays one to, he may turn to Him in whom there is all-sufficiency and with whom is holiness.

This is now the Simeonite prince’s alliance, and such an one needs never to be broken up again. Out of such have all great movements come; and here in such an alliance, as nowhere else, that individuality which is essential to the integrity and perfection of all true manhood is maintained; heart, conscience, the moral nature, are exercised and developed. Thus Shelumiel, that true peace with God which is the result of communion, springs from Zurishaddai, the known and enjoyed strength of the Almighty. In the third place we have Judah, and here a condition very different from that of the two preceding tribes. In Judah we find the worshiper, and the strength implied in the spirit of praise. For the lesson of the two former histories is learnt in this: the heart that rejoices in God Himself has ceased from its own will and found communion in the path of obedience. Thus there is strength: but here we may seem to have no room for the overcomer. Is it so in fact? and does the prince of Judah no more exemplify what we have found to be in the former ones? We may as well ask, what room is there for the overcomer in the church of Philadelphia, where (as in the other churches) there is a distinct promise to one?

But the answer is, there is in Philadelphia, as elsewhere, still a tendency to slip away, -not to hold fast that which they have; and here then at least there is a need for overcoming. Just so with that which characterizes Judah. The spirit of praise may all too easily be lost, and Nahshon may teach us how to retain it. He may be in this sense an overcomer. Nahshon then means “a diviner,” not necessarily in a bad sense. It is a word used for diligent observation (1 Kings 20:33); and divining, apart from the heathenism so much associated with it, is but the discernment in the present of the future: and so may the child of God divine. In that which makes him a worshiper he may find what will give him prophetic insight into the future. Nahshon is therefore the son of Amminadab, or, as the last word means, of “the people of the Liberal Giver.” Here faith gets then its foresight, in the knowledge of His free grace to whom we belong. How beautiful is this genealogy of a prophet! and how this spirit breathes throughout the psalms, so largely Judah’s! Still more should we be able to take as the ground of a happy confidence, “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Thus the spirit of praise is nursed within us. Issachar’s prince comes fourth in the list, Nathaniel, the “gift of God:” again exactly suited to him whose name speaks of hire, and whose tendency is to stoop his shoulder to foreign yokes, and to pay his tribute from the love of ease. The spirit of legality takes up readily with such strange service, as it is self which it really serves, and a bribe will turn it from its true Master. Yet, though God may hire a Nebuchadnezzar (Ezekiel 29:18), the bread in our Father’s house is not for hirelings, though in the far-off country one might think so. As we have seen, at His redemption-feast no hireling sits (Exodus 12:45). Yet the hireling spirit in the people of God themselves would turn His grace into legal compensation, and a true overcomer is this Nathaniel who has learnt that the “gift of God” cannot be purchased. Here, too, the genealogy speaks very simply of how grace is apprehended: he is the son of Zuar, -that is “Little.” For he who thinks of hire values himself necessarily at too high a rate, and he who estimates himself as really “little” is ready to appreciate the gift of God. Yet there is a right thought of recompense -a reward, of “mercy” (2 Timothy 1:18) which love will not be denied in giving, -which is really but the gift of God. This can never become to the soul as hire, the motive to service, and for this reason, that it is the reward of true devotedness alone, and not self-seeking: to work for the reward is to lose it. Issachar’s captain must in this way also be Nathaniel. In the fifth place here we find Zebulon; and in Zebulon we have seen Israel forgetting her separation to God, and stretching out toward the Gentiles. How sadly has this tendency to departure shown itself in the Church with regard to her more vital and wider separation from the world! and who can sufficiently estimate the evil resulting? When Balaam afterward sees the people in the “vision of the Almighty,” the first thing that he sees is a people that dwell “alone, and are not reckoned among the nations.” When with satanic craft he is laboring to injure whom he cannot destroy, he seeks to seduce them from this position by Midianitish women. In the Church the “unequal yoke” was very early brought in, and the apostle’s words show the magnitude of the evil resulting. “For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an unbeliever? . . . . Where: fore come out from among them, and be separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:14-18.) God is the Father of His believing people; but if they mix themselves with the world in forgetfulness of whose they are, they force Him, as it were, to forget their special relation to Himself. He cannot be to them. a Father as He would. How terrible is this loss, then, little as many regard it! And how powerfully does Zebulon’s captain witness to us in this way -Eliab, “God is a Father!” May it speak with all its solemnity, and with all its precious encouragement, to His people’s hearts! Thus Zebulon, “dwelling,” gets its right significance.*
Leah’s children end with this, save Levi, whose place is elsewhere. We have now Rachel’s, Joseph first claiming his double portion in his two sons. Of these, Ephraim comes first according to Jacob’s prophetic destination to this place of the younger born. Ephraim’s prince is Elishama, “God hath heard;” for the very “fruitfulness” of which Ephraim speaks may be a snare to us if we have not learnt reverently to ascribe it to One who heareth His people’s prayer. The second name, Ammihud, “the people of Majesty,” may intimate that conscious relationship to the infinite Greatness which is the warrant and stimulus of successful prayer. All these names breath a spirit of dependence and of nearness, -of lowliness, yet of intimacy, -things that go necessarily together.

There is abundant access for the humble-hearted; “the proud He beholdeth afar off.” The nearest intimacy with God cannot minister to pride or go with it: the assumption of nearness, where the will is not subdued, and the spirit is unchastened, is but a false assumption. Who that has fairly measured himself in the presence of God but must carry with him the crippling of his human strength, as Jacob carried from Peniel his halting thigh? And now we come to Manasseh: “Manasseh” means, as we know, “forgetting.” “God has made me to forget,” says Joseph, “all my kindred, and my father’s house.” It is translated into Christian experience, the spirit of the racer, who sees no more what is once behind him, as he presses on toward the prize before. And this last thought Manasseh’s prince supplies. His name is Gamaliel, -“God is a rewarder.” As it is said of Moses, He had respect to the recompense of the reward." Here the interlacing of divine truth brings us back to Issachar; yet, as approaching it from another side, the truth itself is different. The danger is not now of legality: rather, as the future is faced thus, there is need of what shall give competency to meet with assurance of heart the thought of recompense. That competency is here in the second name, Pedahzur, “the Rock hath redeemed.” Only from the conviction of the strength of our salvation can we start for the goal of divine recompense, -forgetting the things behind in the consciousness of what Eye rests upon us, and of a heart that forgets never: may we so press on! Then follows Benjamin, who wherever we find him is the warrior, type of Christ Himself in the power that will put down evil in the earth in a day to come. For ourselves also in the meantime, -for us who are to be among the white-robed hosts that follow Him, when He comes forth as the white-horsed warrior to the judgment of that day, -a conflict with evil is appointed, not with carnal weapons, but so real and well-contested that we need all the panoply of God. From this no one that is Christ’s can escape, save only by desertion of his post. How can he fittingly be with Christ in that day, who has never contended in the strife of this? It will be said, perhaps, that all the tribes here are warriors, and just because the warfare is appointed to all, it would seem as if there could be no special warrior type among them; but Benjamin’s presence here is sufficient proof that this is a mistake. Not only, as has been already said, may those be in the conflict who are not warriors, but there are also different kinds of warfare, -defensive as well as offensive, in the fort and in the field. Benjamin is the type of the aggressive soldier, not the shield-bearer, but the swordsman or the slinger, such as there were in Benjamin at another day, -“seven hundred chosen men, . . . . every one could sling stones at a hair’s breadth, and not miss” (Judges 20:16). This God would have in His people also, not the mere holding of the fort, but the going out to war, as when the land is to be won, or brethren are to be delivered. This, then, is the Benjamite, and the prince of Benjamin is Abidan, “My father is judge.” Not according to men’s judgment merely, least of all our own, but according to God’s judgment, must every thing be conducted here; but not merely that even: the Father’s judgment is what we who are His children are ourselves under, as the apostle admonishes us: “If ye call on the Father who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here with fear.” (1 Peter 1:17.) What more needful admonition in the controversy with evil than this, to re member that we ourselves are under our Father’s holy eye! How can we contend elsewhere with that whose power we are ignoring over our own hearts and ways? In the dark days which so quickly followed Israel’s possession of the land, the judge was the deliverer: “and when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; . . . and it came to pass when the judge was dead, that they returned and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, . . . and the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel.” This then was the twofold office of the judge: as it was said of Othniel, “He judged Israel, and went out to war.” Benjamin’s prince then is Abidan. But Abidan also is the son of Gideoni, -“the cutter down.” For that from which proceeds all true after-judgment is the acceptance of that first judgment at the cross in which the tree of humanity had to be felled in order to construct the ark of salvation. Christ crucified is our deliverance, but Christ crucified is also the judgment of the flesh: “our old man was crucified with Him.” Thus it is because Christ died to sin we are to reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin; and to be so reckoning is power over it. If there be shoots from the stump, the knife and the axe have still their place; but for intelligent faith Gideoni has well done his woodman’s work. We have not to die to sin; we are dead: not in experience, but “with Christ,” therefore for faith. All self-judgment afterward proceeds upon this judgment of God upon us, -a judgment which when accepted by us is ability for all the rest. Gideoni is the father of Abidan. The children of the two wives are now told out, and we come to the children of the bondmaids. The first of these is Dan, “judgment,” the spirit of rule, which, as Dan’s origin points out, is really service. Yet in man’s hand how readily it is turned from this! “Man being in honor abideth not.” Instead of using his place for the blessing of those entrusted to his care, he uses it for himself, feeds with it his ambition or his greed in some form, and becomes a rebel to the One from whom he derives authority. Thus in Dan, as we have seen in Jacob’s prophecy, is found the apostate. But for this, as for all else, there is a remedy with God, and Dan is here in his place with his captain Ahiezer, -“brother of help,” the son of Ammishaddai, -“the people of the Almighty.” Let them be realized in this relation, and the ruler becomes according to God’s design, the “helping brother” of those over whom he is appointed. Thus do the hills after their nature minister to the valleys, and God in His love serves all: for this is true greatness ever: “without contradiction the less is blessed of the better,” and “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Hebrews 7:7; Acts 20:35.) Asher follows Dan: his prince is Pagiel, -“event of God,” the son of Ocran, -“afflicted.” Strange names these in connection with Asher, -the “happy,” and whose portion in Jacob’s prophecy answers to his name. Yet “He maketh all things work together for good to them that love Him,” and sorrow in His hands is turned into joy. To true happiness here, as well as. for a guard against the dangers of it, some strain of sorrow seems of necessity to mingle with it, something wherein the soul has to submit itself to God, -to say it is the Lord, “the event is of God.” The apostle’s thorn in the flesh after his ecstasy in the third heaven may tell us this as to the most spiritual joys. Asher’s prince is often a Pagiel, as Pagiel is truly Ocran’s child: “tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.” And now we have Gad, whose prince is Eliasaph, -“God hath added;” he is the son of Deuel, -“known of God.” How good a thing it is to be known of God! For this does not of course mean merely such knowledge as God has of every thing, but the knowledge we have of one with whom we are intimate, and which implies approval. And this is truly the secret of spiritual increase such as Eliasaph speaks of, the last part of whose name is the same word as “Joseph.” Leah’s exclamation when Gad is born shows that this is the thought also in his name. Need we be told that increase is to be looked for in a child of God? Or how sad a proof it is of the lack of divine intimacy when there is not this? And yet there are those whose stagnant condition would imply that they have no thought of this: if they are safe, it is enough; they do not “grow in grace,” they remain babes, a condition which the apostle traces in the Corinthians to their carnality. We have but one tribe more, that of Naphtali. His prince is Ahira, “brother of evil,” the son of Enan, which means apparently “eyed,” or “having eyes.” This is the most difficult name perhaps to interpret of all that we have had; the words also being susceptible of other meanings, though these are the simplest ones. May it be that in Ahira we find one whose eyes have affected his heart, like another Jeremiah (Lamentations 3:51), and made him a man of sorrows in sympathy with the sorrow around? Such a spirit one would suppose to need expression among these leaders of Israel, and thus the “brother of evil” would come to be the “brother born for adversity,” of which Proverbs speaks (Proverbs 17:17). And this would not suit ill with the character of that Naphtali, whose own name is a memorial of “struggling,” and whose “pleasant words” are noted in that prophecy of Jacob to which there seems constant reference all through. These, then, are Israel’s princes, able to muster and lead to victory the hosts of the redeemed, as being personally overcomers in regard to their surroundings or the tendencies to failure amid which they are. In the constant battle-field which this world is for us, we must indeed be overcomers or overcome. All the men fit for war must be ranged under these leaders, as in the addresses to the seven churches of Revelation, the promises are all for overcomers. Here is the test for us, and we cannot excuse ourselves from it: blessed be God, if we have the spirit of the overcomer, the evil round can never master us, any more than the darkness of night can keep the stars from shining. The darkness is their opportunity to shine! (2) As to the number of the tribes which is now given to us, we must learn better the symbolism of numbers and the meaning of these tribal divisions themselves, before we can expect to find what is hid in it. Yet we may be well assured that there is here, as elsewhere, such deeper meaning, which should en courage attempt to seek it. God has forbidden idle words: can there be such in His own book? Assuredly not; it is impossible; and the first condition of successful search is the faith that accredits Him with a wisdom and love which has every where hidden in it the treasures which are to reward this. (3) The separation of the Levites to God for the work of the tabernacle is now declared. They are to be the body-guard of the divine King, and as the priests go in to God to perform their intercessory service in behalf of the people, so the Levites keep them from the wrath that would follow the intrusion of the stranger into the tabernacle of God, the holy things of which they bear through the desert in all their journeyings. They are thus the distinct types of ministry which addresses itself from God to man, as priesthood does from man to God. These things will, however, come fully before us in a little while, and we shall till then defer the discussion of them. 2. The people, being numbered, are next ranged round the sanctuary, the Levites, as we have seen, being in the innermost circle, and the rest of the tribes arranged in four large camps, three tribes in each camp, under the standard of one of them as chief. Here, as so commonly then, the twelve divide into 4 x 3, not with less significance here than elsewhere: the number of manifest sovereignty -for the Lord is in the midst of His people -may show how God transforms the place of trial into the means of the display of Himself in power over it. The four camps lie to the four quarters, east, south, west, and north, from which come the outside influences, which, in a world like this may be any of them adverse, and which the people of God must meet in the power of Him who is among them. They must be independent of circumstances, carrying their resources, in this sense, within themselves. The whole order has reference to these outside influences, as we may see more shortly, the entire wilderness journey being a warfare, and the people’s dwelling-place a camp. The divisions and associations of the tribes can only be understood aright as we study them in detail. (1) The first division is that of Judah, with whom, under his standard, are Issachar and Zebulon. The position of his camp is doubly indicated as “eastward, toward the sunrising,” two expressions which we may be sure are not mere tautology, for there is nothing of this kind in the Word of God; and inquiry here, as elsewhere, will not be without result. In fact the two expressions are in a sense in contrast. They both speak of the east, where of course the sun rises; but while the sunrise always conveys the idea of joy and blessing as connected with the returning day, the other word implies rather the opposite of this. This word is qedem, what faces," or “confronts you,” and thus as nearly as may be resembles our word adversity from the Latin, “what is toward” you, only in a hostile manner. The qadim, the “east wind,” is the dry and parching wind from the desert, as the west wind is literally the sea-wind, bringing moisture and rain. Judah’s position, then, contemplates two opposite things, the world as the place of malign influence, and the uprising of the Sun of Righteousness, which for us is the end of this. These two contrary thoughts to us as Christians so suggest one another that there is no difficulty in their connection.

He who faces in earnest the evil of the world will have proportionately before him that appearing of Christ which will bring its long disorder to an end forever. The night is fir spent, and the day is at hand; blessed be God, we who believe in Him are children of the day; therefore," says the apostle, “let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.” (Romans 13:12.) Here we are in Judah’s camp toward the sunrise. But why Judah foremost, the leader of all. Israel in this way? His name and what we have seen of his history account for this. We have seen the light of the prophet in his eyes, and are all familiar with the fulfillment of the prophecy in his name in the psalms of his descendant David. We have read too his motto in the words of Jacob, “The spirit of praise is the spirit of power.” Judah is foremost here for the same reason that Jehoshaphat in a later day put his singers and trumpeters in the forefront of the battle against the enemy; and when they began to sing and praise, the Lord went out against the foe and smote them. (2 Chronicles 20:1-37.) So then it is here. For the spirit of praise is the spirit also of obedience, and thus Judah is qualified to be the law-giver (Psalms 60:7). Wherever the heart is filled with God His throne will be in the heart, and what an irresistible power is in this spirit of obedience to the all-wise “Captain of salvation”! Who or what can defeat the King’s army, so long as it obeys orders? And what a triumphant enthusiasm, the presage of victory, swells in these loyal songs in the face of the battle! This is what characterizes Judah, the spirit of obedience rising into the joyous spirit of praise, as with him who says, Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." (Psalms 119:54.) This is the “shout of a King” which Balaam heard at a somewhat later day than this, and before which Moab quailed. How beautiful is this position of Judah, meeting the edge of the east wind with the song of loyal devotedness, his camp thrown forward into the darkness to meet the first rays of the coming day; his captain he with the prophet’s eyes, and of the race of those who know the Liberal Giver as their God! The last thought connects with Issachar, who, with Zebulon, fights under Judah’s banner, with his captain Nathaniel, “the gift of God.” They are both under the best of leadership evidently. The one will not seek his own, nor the other stray off to the world, while Judah leads. Taken as a whole, then, the camp of Judah is the expression of the spirit of righteousness, the standard under which he gathers is that of righteousness, a spirit to which statutes are songs, free therefore from legality, and which maintains the enjoyment of relationship to God as Father, where Issachar and Zebulon give the complementary thoughts. How full and sweet an expression is it; and how clearly the New Testament shines out here in the Old! (2) The next camp is that of Reuben, in which the rejected first-born takes humbly the second place. The subjugated will of man shows itself now, as we have seen in him, in the dependent cleaving to God, which is indeed “strength” and stability. “God is a rock” -(Elizur) is the principle which now victoriously leads him on. His place is on the south, which literally is “the right hand,” the place of power and dignity, though in dependence: how completely does this mark the position of Reuben, again the child’s place (Reuben, “see, a son!”) But he needs this place, for the influences of the south are relaxing ones. How good that he has to lean only upon Another! that the place of his strength is inaccessible to any possible attack! It is indeed in resisting the relaxing influences of what men count prosperity that the power of faith is most distinctly shown. How beautiful an example is that of Moses, who, “when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt”! This was the resolute will of faith, the spirit of the prince of Reuben, in the face of the world. And in truth, though the influences of the south are pleasant for a season, they end in fierce and furnace heat before which the fruits of the earth are dried up and perish.

How many have found the hot breath of worldly prosperity to be the destruction of spiritual fruit! The camp of Reuben if it be well maintained, is indeed here a place of honor, and the subjugated will of a Reubenite the first necessity to face the south. Here, then, Reuben is foremost, and under him are Simeon and Gad. Simeon too has learned dependence upon the prayer-hearing God, and has the peace of conformity of his mind to God’s. If Reuben’s prince is Elizur (“God is a rock”), the father of the prince of Simeon is Zurishaddai, -“my rock is the Almighty.” Thus they are suited companions. But the communion which Simeon represents must be under the lead of Reuben’s will of adherence and subjection to God, that it may abide the desert warfare, and thus he fills exactly his place here. Gad also is in the same line of dependence with his captain Eliasaph, -God hath added," -growth through faith, that is, by virtue of what faith embraces. Thus Reuben’s camp is finished and furnished. Upon his standard we may read “faith.” (3) In the centre of the camp we have next the tent of meeting, with its Levite guard. As with Jerusalem at an after-day, “God is in the midst of her: she shall not be moved.” (Psalms 46:5.) The Levites, devoted to the sanctuary and surrounding it, present the thought of consecration: and this is at the heart of all successful warfare. There is little said about Levi here: it is his glory to be overshadowed by the glory of God. And this is morally the character of all true consecration: that which vaunts itself is none. Westward was the camp of Ephraim: “westward” being, in Hebrew, “toward the sea.” And the sea is pre-eminently in Scripture, as in nature, the type of trouble and unrest, which the word itself implies in the original. We have seen it in the six day’s work the type of the evil within us, and which remains in us though regenerate, limited, however, by divine grace. It is the evil, moreover, in its negative rather than its positive aspect, and the west wind, as the sea-wind, differs from the east wind, the wind of the desert in this way. It comes not to wither, but rather loaded with the moisture which revives and refreshes the earth. This is the answer of heaven to the appeal of man’s misery, even though that misery be in a sense identified with his sin. As the heaven draws from the bosom of the sea itself the vapors which it pours out again upon the land, so grace is that with which God in sovereign goodness has answered our sin, and the occasion of which has been the very sin itself; for only in a world of sinners could He show grace. How full and exact are these natural types, when we come to analyze them! Ephraim’s camp, then, lies toward the sea,* and his name reads easily in this connection; for “fruitfulness” is dependent on the showers of heaven, spiritually as much as naturally. Nor only this, but plainly also the result of that which the heaving and stormy sea suggests -still under divine control -is what the apostle has affirmed for us, that “tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.” (Romans 5:3-4.) Here is the key-word, I doubt not, to Ephraim’s position among Israel’s hosts. His camp is the fourth camp, and the standard under which it marches is that of experience.
In a warfare such as this, experience must needs have an important place: in deed such an one as that which we have just heard from inspired lips itself implies the wilderness warfare and the victory of grace. The “fruitfulness” of which Ephraim’s name tells is also an experience of which another apostle makes use in his conflict with those who were seeking to seduce those to whom he writes (1 John 2:26). The consciousness of what the gospel works, arms us against those who would deprive us of it. The consciousness of our love to the brethren reassures us as to our having passed from death unto life (1 John 3:14). “Hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments” (1 John 2:3). And “hereby do we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:13). These of course are not the things that give us peace at first, nor the foundation on which we build at any time.

Christ alone is the foundation. And yet in the day of conflict we may find “Ephraim the strength of the head” (Psalms 60:7): the experience of the fruitfulness of grace is like a helmet to resist the blows of skeptical argument, and preserve the mind quiet and undizzy amid the assaults of error. Quite suited to this is the name of Ephraim’s prince. “God hath heard” may be the conviction of faith, but it is also the realization of experience; just as Manasseh’s prince, “God is a rewarder,” may speak the confidence of hope, but may speak as well what is present realization. Indeed, it will be almost necessarily both, since God thus is continually meeting us with pledges and anticipations of the final recompense. Benjamin’s Abidan, “my father is judge,” implies also a practical experience. Manasseh comes naturally under Ephraim’s headship, according to Jacob’s prophecy. Manasseh -“forgetfulness,” is but negative when alone: as a means to an end it must be connected with and governed by the end, in order to have its proper character. The spouse of the psalms is bidden, like another Joseph, to forget all her people and her father’s house, but it is in the absorption of her heart with her divine King and Bridegroom (Psalms 45:10). So that to me to live is Christ," of him who proclaimed himself a Manassite, “forgetting that which is behind” (Philippians 1:21; Philippians 3:13). It was not asceticism; it was absorption: a “counting all things but dung, that” he “might win Christ” (Philippians 3:8). Benjamin also would lack the true spirit if not found under Ephraim. The spirit of controversy, apart from the eager desire of fruit for God, would be but that of Ishmael -warfare for its own sake, -a spirit to be abhorred. How different when it is a burning zeal for Christ and for His glory that animates one, and, as we have seen, Abidan is the captain of the host! But Ephraim leads Benjamin also, because the experience of the fruit of grace as realized in the soul is necessary for the conflict in its behalf. This we have seen in the apostle’s appeal to its testimony as against seducers. And all truth that is to be maintained in the face of an evil world must have like witness in the hearts and lives of its professors. The Benjamite warriors must be found in the camp of Ephraim under the standard of experience. (5) And now we come to the last camp, fifth in order here -that of Dan. It lies to the north, and as we have found the other quarters of the heaven with significant names, so it is also here. The north (tsaphon) means “what is hidden,” and the reason why the north is called so is because to those living in the northern hemisphere the sun travels through the southern heavens, and the north side of any thing is the dark side. Naturally the north itself would be contemplated as the seat of darkness, the abode of gloom and mystery. Striking it is, then, that the camp of Dan falls into the fifth place, the number five speaking, as we have so often seen, of exercise in connection with God’s governmental ways. In this respect Scripture itself recognizes, and the heart of every man bears witness to, the mystery with which they are encompassed.

Here still, as with Moses upon the mount, it is impossible to see God’s face. Only after He has passed by can we see the glory of His back parts. And this mystery, how it assaults us! From the north came the most frequent attacks upon the land, and from it will come the final attack. (Ezekiel 38:1-23; Ezekiel 39:1-29.) In the sides of the north the Babylonian apostate makes his seat and utters his defiance of the Almighty. (Isaiah 14:1-32.) We must not imagine this to be without significance. Nothing in Scripture is; and it is by putting things together that we perceive a meaning which taken by themselves such things might seem to lack. Certainly in the place of mystery it is that apostasy and infidelity entrench themselves most securely; while upon the forehead of Babylon the great there is also written, “Mystery.” Dan, who fills the fifth position here, was also the fifth son of Jacob. Child of the handmaid as he is, he represents the spirit of rule or judgment. Strangely enough, in Jacob’s prophecy he shows, as we may say, the northern character; and unites in his serpent symbol the two ideas of assailant and apostate. Is this when the influences of his position, which is by and by in the extreme north of Israel, have overcome and carried him away? Here, however, all is different: he is in his place every way, and his prince is Ahiezer, “brother of help.” Dan is here, therefore, nearly connected with Abidan, prince of the tribe before him, Benjamin, and speaks similarly of that judgment of one’s self according to God which is indeed the only spirit in which to meet without damage the mysteries which confront us. Where intellect merely is only perplexed and baffled, and speculation betrays us into error, or into that pride which is the most fatal error, there the spirit of self-judgment escapes without an effort, finding safe footing where the other falls.

This is easily understood. An exercised conscience is the true remedy for over-exercise of mind, just as the apostle tells us of those on the other hand who, not “holding faith and a good conscience,” “concerning faith have made shipwreck.” (1 Timothy 1:19.) Here, too, Ahiezer finds his place: those in practical lowly service to others are not easily mastered by the subtleties which carry away the theorist. Dan, who fills the fifth position here, was also the fifth son of Jacob. Child of the handmaid as he is, he represents the spirit of rule or judgment. Strangely enough, in Jacob’s prophecy he shows, as we may say, the northern character; and unites in his serpent symbol the two ideas of assailant and apostate. Is this when the influences of his position, which is by and by in the extreme north of Israel, have overcome and carried him away? Here, however, all is different: he is in his place every way, and his prince is Ahiezer, “brother of help.” Dan is here, therefore, nearly connected with Abidan, prince of the tribe before him, Benjamin, and speaks similarly of that judgment of one’s self according to God which is indeed the only spirit in which to meet without damage the mysteries which confront us. Where intellect merely is only perplexed and baffled, and speculation betrays us into error, or into that pride which is the most fatal error, there the spirit of self-judgment escapes without an effort, finding safe footing where the other falls.

This is easily understood. An exercised conscience is the true remedy for over-exercise of mind, just as the apostle tells us of those on the other hand who, not “holding faith and a good conscience,” “concerning faith have made shipwreck.” (1 Timothy 1:19.) Here, too, Ahiezer finds his place: those in practical lowly service to others are not easily mastered by the subtleties which carry away the theorist. Dan’s standard, then, is truly that of exercise, and under and next to him comes Asher, the “happy:” for happiness clearly depends upon this awakened conscience, and is found in the way of such brotherly helpfulness as Ahiezer speaks of: “if ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” (John 13:17.) We have seen that Asher’s captain indicates how God maintains us in happiness by the ministry of a chastening sorrow, which sufficiently accounts for Asher being under the standard of “exercise.” All is simple here for those that have proved it even in a small measure, and what child of God has not? Only may we heed the admonition of it! Finally, Naphtali comes under the same banner, his captain also, Ahira, manifestly near akin to Ahiezer. And here every thing tells of exercise, so that there is scarcely need to enlarge upon it. Thus the order of the camps is complete.