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THE GREATER
MEN AND WOMEN
OF THE BIBLE

EDITED BY THE REV.

JAMES HASTINGS, D.D.
EDITOR OF "THE EXPOSITORY TIMES" "THE DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE'
"THE DICTIONARY OF CHRIST AND THE GOSPELS" AND
"THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION AND ETHICS"

MOSES— SAMSON

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
EDINBURGH : T. & T. CLARK
1914

Printed by
Morrison & Gieb Limited,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

3i3

INDEX TO CONTENTS.

NAMES AND SUBJECTS.

Aaron.

Achan.

Balaam.

Caleb.

Deborah.

Gideon.

The Prophet
The Priest

The Sin .
The Confession .
The Punishment .

In the Hand of the Lord
The Wages of Unrighteousness

The Witness
The Reward

Deborah the Judge
Deborah the Deliverer
Deborah the Poet

The Call of Gideon
Gideon's Campaign
Latter Days

Jephthah and his Daughter.
Jephthah .
Juphthah's Daughter

PAOB 315 321

129
433 437

347
355

413 419

444 446451

462468 476

483 488

VI

INDEX TO CONTENTS

Joshua. I. The Faithful Seevant —
AmalekMount Sinai
The Seventy Elders
The Report of the Spies
Leader of Israel
II. The Victokious Soldier —
Jordan
Jericho
Ai .
The Gibeonites
Lake Merom
III. The Eesolute Reformer —
Distribution of the Land
Joshua's Farewell and Death
Joshua's Character

Miriam.

Moses.

By the Nile
At the Red Sea .
In the Wilderness

364367
368
370
372

380
384
389392395

401
403407

332
333 335

I. The Israelites in Egypt —
The Sources for the History of Moses
Their Historical Value
The Bondage
Deliverance
The Uses of the Bondage in Egypt .
II. Birth and Education —
The Birth of Moses
His Education .
His Choice
III. In Midian —
The Desert
The Bush .
The Call

3
8
15
2022

30
36 41

52
5662

INDEX TO CONTENTS

vu

M oses — continued.
IV. The God of Israel and His Messenger-
The Commission .
The Diffidence of Moses
The Presence of God .
The God of Israel
The Name
V. Before Pharaoh —
The Beginning of the Struggle
The Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart
The Plagues ....
The Passover ....
VI. The Red Sea—
The Pursuit ....
The Passage ....
The Song .....
VII. From the Red Sea to Sinai —
Mar ah and Elim
The Manna ....
Rephidim .....
VIII. The Ten Words—
Their Antiquity ....
Their Form ....
Their Uniqueness
Their Permanence
IX. The Covenant and the Tabernacle —
- The Covenant
The Tabernacle
X. The Great Intercession —
The Golden Calf
The Intercession
The Presence and the Glory .
Unconscious Transfiguration .
XI. From Sinai to Kadesh—
The Blessing
Hobab Eldad and Medad
Miriam's Mistake
The Spies .

PAGE 757882
8590

103106110 119

132 135141

148
154
159

176
178181 183

189195

203209217 222

230 235241 245248

viii INDEX TO CONTENTS
Moses — continued.
XII. From Kadesh to Moab — paob
Korah, Dathan and Abiram . • • • 259
Edom's Churlishness . • 2^3
The Death of Aaron . . • 265
The Fiery Serpents . . • 26?
The Song of the Well .... 271
XIII. Mount Nebo —
The Fault ...... 280
The Punishment. . . . • 284
Pisgah  287
The Worker and the Work .... 292
XIV. My Servant Moses —
The Leader ...... 300
The Lawgiver ...... 305
The Prophet ...... 309
Samson. I. The Glory of Strength —
The Nazirite ...... 501
The Gift of Strength ..... 504
The Riddle ...... 506
II. The Profanation of Strength —
Delilah ....... 514
Revenge ....... 518

INDEX TO CONTENTS

IX

TEXTS.
Exodus.

II.II.II.
III. III.III. III.III.III. III. III.III. IV. IV.
VII.
XV.XV. XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XXVIII. XXXII.
XXXIII.XXXIII.XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXIV.

2 4 22 1
2,3 48 1011 1214 1514 161
20 22 24 1515 1
31, 32
1115
18
27 29

X. 35, 36
XII. 7
XIII. 30
XIV. 24
XXI. 4
XXIII. 10
XXXI. 8

XXIV. 9
XXXI. 23
XXXII. 48-52
XXXIV. 10

Numbers.

Deuteronomy.

29
332 52515662 75 757882
75,90 85
315 315315 333 147 148
154 159
321 209 167
217217 189
222

297413413257347355

335379 279
309

MOSES. I.
The Israelites in Egypt.

MOSES-SAMSON — I

Literature.
Addis, W. E., Hebrew Religion (1906), 53.
Bennett, W. H, Exodus (Century Bible).
Budde, K., Religion of Israel to the Exile (1899), 3.
Cheyne, T. K., The Two Religions of Israel (1911), 71.
Driver, S. R., Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (9th ed.
1913).
„ „ The Booh of Exodus (Cambridge Bible) (1911).
„ „ in Authority and Archeology (ed. D. G. Hogarth, 1899), 67.
Foakes-Jaokson, F. J., The Biblical History ofthe Hebrews (1903), 57.
Hall, H. R., The Ancient History of the Near East (1913), 398.
Handcook, P. S. P., The Latest Light on Bible Lands (1913), 49.
Kennedy, A. R. S., Leviticus and Numbers (Century Bible).
Kittel, R., A History of the Hebrews, i. (1895) 192.
„ „ The Scientific Study ofthe Old Testament (1910), 164.
McCurdy, J. F., History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, i. (1896) 92.
McFadyen, J. E., The Messages of the Bible, iv. (1901) 52.
McNeile, A. H., The Booh of Exodus (Westminster Commentaries) (1908).
„ „ The Booh of Numbers (Cambridge Bible) (1911).
Maurice, F. D., The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament (1892),
154.
Montefiore, C. G., The Bible for Home Reading, i. (1896) 58.
Ottley, R. L., The Religion qfthe Old Testament (1905), 25.
Petrie, W. M. F., Egypt and Israel (1911), 28.
Pinches, T. G, The Old Testament in the Light ofthe Historical Records of
Assyria and Babylonia (3rd ed. 1912), 268.
Sayce, A. H, The Egypt of the Hebrews (1895), 52.
Smith, W. R, The Prophets of Israel (new ed. 1895), 47.
Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, i. (1889) 91.
Wade, G. W., Old Testament History (1901), 98.
Biblical World, xxix. (1907) 361 (G. S. Goodspeed).
Dictionary of the Bible, iii. (1900) 438 (W. H. Bennett).
Dictionary of the Bible (Single-volume, 1909), 632 (A. H. McNeile).
Encyclopcsdia Biblica, iii. (1902), col. 3203 (T. K. Cheyne).
Expositor, 3rd Ser., v. (1887) 38 (A. B. Davidson) ; 5th Ser., x. (1899) 233
(A. A. Burd).
Expository Times, xi. (1900) 390 (J. T. Marshall); xviii. (1907) 451
(J. S. Banks).
Irish Church Quarterly, i. (1908) 123 (L. E. Steele).

The Israelites in Egypt.
As the time of the promise drew nigh, which God vouchsafed unto
Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, till there arose another
king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. The same dealt subtilly with
our race, and evil entreated our fathers. — Acts vii. 17-19.
Between the latest scene in Genesis and the opening scene in
Exodus lies a great silence, broken only by the sighing and the
groans of the people whose ancestors had, generations before, been
welcomed for Joseph's sake to the land of Egypt. Crushed and
in a foreign land, they are learning the vicissitudes of life that
they may learn the grace and power of their God. In the back
ground of their sorrow lies the Promised Land — a dear memory
and a forlorn hope. Yet back to that land they must be brought ;
for it is there, after the discipline of Egypt, that they will do the
work for the world which God has given them to do. So, in His
own wondrous way, God raises up Moses, a truly gigantic figure ;
next to our Lord perhaps the most important personality in the
history of religion.
It is our purpose to study the history of this man Moses.
Where do we find it ? What are the sources for his life and his
work ? Let us seek a short answer to that question first of all.

I.
The Sources for the History of Moses.
1. The principal source is the Pentateuch. The last four
books of the Pentateuch are occupied either with the history of
Moses or with the laws and instructions which are associated with
his name. Now the legislation of the Pentateuch is consistently
represented as given for a special purpose ; its aim, stated in

4 MOSES
general terms, is to raise up a holy people for Jehovah, the
covenant God of Israel, and to keep this people distinct from the
nations around them. The history, into which the legislation is
now fitted as a jewel in its setting, tells of Jehovah's choice of
Israel to be His own special and " peculiar " people. Thus history
and legislation are found to blend into a harmonious whole, giving
to the books of the Pentateuch an unmistakable unity of thought
and purpose.
But unity after all is a relative term. A general unity of
plan and purpose may be, and often is, found in a work made up
of contributions by several authors agreeing in their general
attitude to the subject under discussion, while differing from each
other in their way of presenting it, and in the emphasis which
they lay on its different parts. The Pentateuch, it is now main
tained, is neither the work of a single author, nor even the product
of a single age, but a compilation from a number of older and
originally independent works, separated from each other in date
by several centuries.
Let us set down, as briefly as possible, the several documents
which modern literary criticism claims to have discovered in the
Pentateuch. The two oldest sources are those now commonly
known as " J " and " E " — the former, called " J " on account of
its author's almost exclusive use of the sacred name Jehovah,
written probably in Judah in the ninth century B.C., and the latter,
called " E " on account of the preference for Elohim (" God "),
written probably a little later in the Northern Kingdom. The
principal materials out of which the two narratives were con
structed were partly oral tradition, and partly vjritten laws.
Excerpts from these two sources were combined together, so as to
form a single continuous narrative (JE), by a compiler, or
redactor (PJE), who sometimes at the same time made slight
additions of his own, usually of a hortatory or didactic character,
and who lived probably in the early part of the seventh century
B.C. The parts derived from J and E are in tone and point of
view akin to the writings of the great prophets: the additions
which seem to be due to the compiler approximate in both style
and character to Deuteronomy (seventh century B.C.). Another
source is the one which, from the priestly interests conspicuous in
it, is commonly denoted by " P " : this is evidently the work of a

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT 5
priestly school, whose chief interest it was to trace to their origin,
and embrace in a framework of history, the ceremonial institu
tions of the people. The fourth document is the Book of
Deuteronomy. The kernel of this book, to which the symbol
" D " strictly belongs, and as to the extent of which there is some
difference of opinion, is identified with the Book of the Law
discovered in the Temple in the eighteenth year . of Josiah
(622 B.c). It formed the basis of the religious reform undertaken
by him as recorded in 2 Kings xxii.-xxiii.
Tf Those who desire to view the Pentateuch in its historical
perspective, should think of it as a series of strata : the oldest and
lowest stratum consisting of JE — for J and E, as they are very
similar in character and tone, may, for many practical purposes,
be grouped together as a single stratum — expanded here and
there by additions made by BJE ; the second stratum consisting
of the discourses of Deuteronomy, written in the seventh century
B.C., and combined with JE not long afterwards ; and the third
and latest stratum consisting of P.1
Tf Of these sources J is obviously the oldest, and most nearly
represents the ancient popular tradition concerning the events of
the Exodus ; but it must be borne in mind that both J and E are
parted by a gulf of some centuries from the incidents which they
record, and in point of fact embody the ideas of a late age
respecting Moses and his work.2
2. Are there any other sources for the life of Moses ? What
about the Egyptian monuments ? Not much can be said of the
testimony of the inscriptions to the Oppression and the Exodus.
Of course, those who accept these facts as narrated in the Book of
Exodus will find in the inscriptions interesting antiquarian and
topographical illustrations of them; but those who seek corro
boration of the facts from the monuments will be disappointed.
There is certainly no sufficient reason for questioning that the
Israelites were long resident in Egypt, that they built there the
two cities Pithom and Kaamses, and that afterwards, under the
leadership of Moses, they successfully escaped from the land of
bondage: but none of these facts are vouched for by the in
scriptions at present known. The discovery of the site of Pithom,
1 S. R. Driver, The Book of Exodus, xii.
• E. L. Ottley, Th* ReUgion of Israel, 27.

6 MOSES
for instance, valuable as it is archeeologically, is not evidence that
the Israelites built tbe town. The mention in inscriptions of
other persons passing to and fro by Succoth and Etham is not
evidence that the Israelites left Egypt by that route — or indeed
that they left Egypt at all. What we know about " Goshen " is
consistent with the residence there of a comparatively small band
of foreign settlers, but not (as Professor Sayce has pointed out)
with the numbers which, according to the Pentateuch, resided in
it at the time of the Exodus. The utmost that can be said is that,
from the fact of the topography of the first two or three stations
of the Exodus being in agreement with what the monuments
attest for the age of the nineteenth dynasty, a presumption arises
that the tradition was a well-founded one which brought the
Israelites by that route.
Tf There is nothing, perhaps, more disappointing, alike to the
Biblical student and to the Egyptologist, than the fact that
neither in the almost Semitic region of Goshen, nor in the whole
land of Egypt, has, so far, any reference whatever been traced on
any single monument to the sojourn of the Israelites or their
escape from bondage. We are not unnaturally surprised, when
the incidents loom so large in the life-history of the Jewish nation,
and indeed in the history of the world. The Egyptians, who have
left several notices of the movements of tribes in this very region
of Goshen, are absolutely silent as to the coming and departure of
the Israelites.1
3. Josephus (c. Apion) gives certain traditions as to the Exodus
preserved by Manetho, an Egyptian priest and historian of Helio
polis, during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 285-246.
Manetho is quoted as stating that a priest of Heliopolis, named
Osarsoph, afterwards Moses, raised a revolt of persons afflicted by
leprosy and other foul diseases, who had been settled on the
borders to deliver Egypt from the pollution of their presence.
They were defeated and driven out of Egypt into Syria by
Amenophis king of Egypt. In chap, xxxii. a similar story is quoted
from Choeremon, the leaders of the Jews being Mouses Tisithen
and Joseph Peteseph. In chap, xxxiv. a third version of the
story is quoted from Lysimachus. According to Josephus
Manetho stated that Jerusalem was built by the followers of
1 L. E. Steele, in The Irish Church Quarterly, i. 126.

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT 7
shepherd kings, Hyksos, when they were expelled from Egypt by
Tethmosis. He apparently regarded these Hyksos as the ancestors
of the Israelites. It has sometimes been maintained that the
story of the expulsion of the lepers is a truer version of the
Exodus than that given in the Old Testament ; and some who reject
Manetho's main story quote his names of persons and places. It
is safer to regard his and other narratives as mere perversions of
the Biblical account.
TI ^n many wild, distorted forms, the rise of this great name,
the apparition of this strange people, was conceived. Let us take
the brief account — the best that has been handed down to us —
by the careful and truth-loving Strabo. "Moses, an Egyptian
priest, who possessed a considerable tract of Lower Egypt, unable
longer to bear with what existed there, departed thence to Syria,
and with him went out many who honoured the Divine Being.
For Moses maintained and taught that the Egyptians were not
right in likening the nature of God to beasts and cattle, nor yet
the Africans, nor even the Greeks, in fashioning their gods in the
form of men. He held that this only was God,— that which
encompasses all of us, earth and sea, that which we call Heaven,
and the Order of the world, and the Nature of things. Of this
who that had any sense would venture to invent an image like to
anything which exists amongst ourselves ? Far better to abandon
all statuary and sculpture, all setting apart of sacred precincts and
shrines, and to pay reverence, without any image whatever. The
course prescribed was, that those who have the gift of good
divinations, for themselves or for others, should compose them
selves to sleep within the Temple ; and those who live temperately
and justly may expect to receive some good gift from God, these
always, and none besides." These words, unconsciously introduced
in the work of the Cappadocian geographer, occupying but a single
section of a single chapter in the seventeenth book of his volumin
ous treatise, awaken in us something of the same feeling as that
with which we read the short epistle of Pliny, describing with
equal unconsciousness, yet with equal truth, the first appearance
of the new Christian society which was to change the face of
mankind. With but a few trifling exceptions, Strabo's account is,
from this point of view, a faithful summary of the mission of
Moses. What a curiosity it would have roused in our minds, had
this been all that remained to us concerning him ! That curiosity
we are enabled to gratify from books which lay within Strabo's
reach, though he cared not to read them.1
1 A. P. Stanley, History qf the Jewish Church, i. 91.

8 MOSES
4. An immense mass of traditions gathered round Moses.
Many of these are collected in Josephus, Ant. ii.-iv., c. Apion;
Philo, Vita Moysis ; Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 9 ; in the Targums and
rabbinical commentaries; and in the pseudepigraphal works
ascribed to Moses. Traditions are also found in the Koran, and
in other Arabian works. It is possible that there may be in this
wilderness of chaff some grain of fact not otherwise known ; but,
speaking generally, the student of Old Testament history may set
the whole on one side.
5. There remain the references to Moses in the New Testa
ment. The New Testament makes frequent reference to the
history of Moses. For the most part, however, it adds nothing
to the Old Testament narrative. In some instances it follows
a text differing from the Massoretic Text, or a tradition varying
from the Pentateuch, but these differences do not affect the
general history of Moses.
Tf The New Testament constantly refers to the law of Moses,
and to Moses as the founder of Old Testament religion, and refers to
the Pentateuch as " Moses " (Luke xvi. 29). His prophetical status
is recognized by the quotation in Acts iii. 22. At the Transfigura
tion, Moses and Elijah appear as the representatives of the Old
Testament dispensation, and Christ and they speak of His
approaching death as an " exodus " (Luke ix. 31 ; cf. 2 Pet. i. 15).
While the New Testament contrasts the law with the gospel, and
Moses with Christ (John i. 17, etc.), yet it appeals to the Pentateuch
as bearing witness to Christ (Deut. xviii. 15-19, in Acts vii. 37) in
a way which implies that what Moses was to the old, Christ is to
the new, dispensation. Similarly, the comparison between Moses
and Christ in Heb. iii. 5, 6 implies that, though Christ was greater
than Moses, He was, in a sense, a greater Moses, and that Moses
was a forerunner and prototype of Christ.1
II.
Their Historical Value.
1. There are a few scholars who deny that Israel was ever in
Egypt, but the majority recognize the strength of the tradition
which is found in all the sources, and which was so confidently
1 W. H. Bennett, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, iii. 447.

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT 9
believed in the later Hebrew times. Besides, nothing would be
more natural than that wandering clans of southern Palestine
should look with eager eyes to the rich lands of Egypt, and should
seek opportunity in time of some famine stress to make a settle
ment across the Egyptian frontier. It is highly probable, therefore,
that some of those peoples that later formed the Hebrew nation
were permitted thus to settle in north-eastern Egypt. It would
then be natural enough that the Palestinian warB of Eameses 11.
and his treaty with the Hittites would cause him to be somewhat
distrustful of a considerable band of Asiatics on his border. His
gigantic building operations called for large levies of workmen ;
so he may well have enslaved the people whose independence was
a source of danger. Naville's identification of Pithom as a city
built in Goshen in the reign of Eameses 11. lends historical prob
ability also to the story.
Tf What are our grounds for believing that any Israelitic tribes
were at one time settled in Egypt ? I shall mention two principal
reasons : — Firstly, the tradition is not confined to any one part or
time, but represents a continuous, abiding Israelitish belief. It is
mentioned by all the chief chroniclers of the Book of Exodus and
by all the prophets from Amos down. Such a confident and
uniform tradition deserves every attention, and should not be
ignored unless we have excellent reasons for doing so. Secondly,
it would be difficult to find a nation which is so self-reliant as the
Jewish. If, then, the Jewish tradition introduces their history by
referring to so great a humiliation as the subjugation of the nation
by the Egyptians, the sojourn in the " house of bondage," as it is
often called, it would be very strange if the Jews merely invented
this story. If they only desired to make a beginning to their
history, they would certainly have adopted different means. How
easy it would have been for the fictitious legend to spare Israel
this black blot in their past ! This is a strong proof that the
sojourn of Israelitic tribes in Egypt is a historical fact.1
2. May we further believe that Moses is historical ? In
general, modern Old Testament scholars are agreed to regard
Moses as a historical personality ; but there are some who oppose
this view.
(1) Cheyne may be taken as a representative of those who
deny the historical existence of Moses. His latest and clearest
1 R. Kittel, The Scientific Study ofthe Old Testament, 169.

io MOSES
statement is as follows: "If we are to be really strict in our
criticism, the historicity of Moses must be abandoned. The
force of personality in the religious as well as in the political
sphere I heartily admit, but the wielders of this great weapon are
not always easily discovered except by romancers. Prof. Volz
remarks that ' we cannot help placing a person at the beginning
of the moral religion of Israel, and as such we accept the Moses
whom popular tradition offers to us.' There may not, he admits,
be strong literary-critical grounds for the historicity of Moses,
but to neutralize this fact he appeals to the analogy of Christi
anity. It is not, he says, the so-called 'salvation-facts' of the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on which the Christian
religion is really based, but His personality. Just so, it was
not the Exodus on which the new Yahweh religion was really
based, but the personality of Moses — a personality shaped and
moulded by inner experiences. Of these experiences of Moses
there are no strictly historical records, but who cannot sym
pathize with those narrators of Israel's religion who, wanting a
founder, involuntarily thought of that great and almost super
human hero whose lineaments were still present to the imagina
tion?"1 (2) That Moses is a historical person, says Kittel, is proved
by the description — assumed to be historical — of the state of
affairs at the time of the Exodus. The tribes which were dwell
ing in Egypt were a disorganized crowd, a conglomeration of
isolated families, each taking its own course, without any idea
of patriotism or of unity. These were first inspired into the
people by Moses, who in this way accomplished a deed of in
calculable importance to the race. He instilled into them
strength, courage, and enthusiasm, and inspired them to oppose
the Egyptians. Whenever a whole nation begins to be formed
from a group of tribes and clans, it is not the work of the tribes
themselves, but that of an individual, who imparts his own
enthusiasm to the crowd. Italy did not combine of its own
accord, but Cavour created the united Italy; it was not the
German tribes who effected the German Empire, but Bismarck
inspired them to bring it about. If tradition said nothing of
such a person as Moses, we would have to assume his existence ;
1 T. K. Cheyne, The Two Religions of Israel, 71.

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT n
since the tradition is definite and positive on this point, we are
compelled to accept it as historical.1
We need not insist upon the symmetrical exactitude of the
thrice forty years into which his career is distributed. We need
not analyse, or rationalize, the details of the warning plagues.
We may associate all the minuter prescriptions of the Law, which
fill the " Books of Moses," with the Exile or the Eeturn rather
than with the Wanderings in the Wilderness ; but behind them
all we discern the imperishable figure of the man who, as leader,
prophet, lawgiver, led his people forth from the land of bondage
to the confines of the Promised Land, who transformed a
multitude of slaves into a commonwealth of freedmen, and who
established them for ever in a law, a worship, and a faith, through
which has been wrought out the redemption of mankind. " Thou
leddest thy people like sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron." 2
Tf In the Old Testament there are presented to us the varying
fortunes of a Semitic people who found their way into Palestine,
and were strong enough to settle in the country in defiance of
the native population. Although the invaders were greatly in
the minority as regards numbers, they were knit together by an
esprit de corps which made them formidable. And this was the
outcome of a strong religious belief which was common to all the
branches of the tribe — the belief that every member of the tribe
was under the protection of the same God, Jehovah. And when
it is asked from what source they gained this united belief, the
analogy of other religions suggests that it probably resulted from
the influence of some strong personality. The existence and
character of the Hebrew race require such a person as Moses to
account for them.8
Tf Moses is, beyond all doubt, a historical character, and it is
impossible to understand the rise of nation or worship apart from
him. Had his name perished and his very existence been blotted
out from the memory of his countrymen, we should have been
obliged to postulate a personality such as his. The character of
Hebrew revelation demands no less. The definite transition from
some form of animism to the service of a personal God, who
chooses the tribes of Israel, making them one with each other
because they were one in loyalty to Him, and revealing to them
His character in the way by which He led them, cannot have
1 R. Eittel, The Scientific Study of the Old Testament, 170.
2 G. H. Rendall, Charterhouse Sermons, 24.
3 A. H. McNeile, in Hastings' Dictionary ofthe Bible (Single-volume), 633.

12 MOSES
been effected save by a great religious genius. We have a
parallel case in the Persian religion, which is so different from
nature worship that we cannot, without quite undue scepticism,
fail to acknowledge the influence exercised by the creative mind
of Zoroaster, though our information about him is meagre in the
extreme. A fortiori does this reasoning apply to Israel, which
was dominated throughout the long course of its religious
development by great teachers and reformers.1
Tf Every one to-day at all acquainted with matters of historical
religion knows that historical and ethical religions — such as the
Israelitish religion undoubtedly was— always go back to a his
torical personality in their Founder. On the other hand, nature
religions and astral religions never go back to a Founder, for
they were not founded but grew.2
(3) But while the denial that Moses was a real person is
scarcely within the bounds of sober criticism, it does not follow
that all the details related of him are literally true to history.
What is the value for history or biography of these sources ?
The answer is not so simple as it might at first sight appear. It
is not enough to say that a book is historically valuable in pro
portion as it relates with accuracy a series of facts or events.
Such an answer is misleading because it confuses history with
chronicle. The value, for example, of Grote's History of Greece
would be seriously diminished if not destroyed, if there were
substituted for it an accurate table of all the events related in it
in their correct order with dates. A bare record of past events
is of little use for the present. What the reader of history needs
above everything is to learn the meaning of the events — their
effect on the life of nations, on the life of individuals, on the
relations of one country or race with another. He wants to
know the place which actions held with regard to development,
social progress, religious advance; how they influenced the
character of the actors ; the motives which led the actors to do
what they did— and so forth. Thus true history is written not
for mere information but for instruction, that the readers may
learn what to imitate and what to avoid, how to act under given
circumstances and how not to act. For this purpose a list of
events is useless. The writers select their material, and arrange
1 W. E. Addis, Hebrew Religion, 61.
2 J. S. Banks, in The Expository Times, xviii. 452.

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT 13
and comment. They present history as it appeals to them in its
character of a guide for the future. This is true of all history ;
and Israelite history is not an exception. The writers of the
Book of Numbers selected such material as seemed to them
important, and presented it in such a way as to afford instruction
to their readers. As has been said already, the earliest of them
probably had access to an older body of traditions. And these
traditions were of very varying degrees of accuracy. But whether
they were accurate or not, and whether the writers repeated
them accurately or not, the lessons which they embodied could
be utilized. Thus it is that great caution must be exercised in
the attempt to decide how much of the narrative in the Book of
Numbers actually took place in the lifetime of Moses. The
tendency in all ages has been to allow full play to folklore, legend,
and imagination, when dealing with a great hero of far-off days.
The impression produced by past traditions leads to the laying
on of fresh colouring which heightens the impression. And
writers who compiled their narratives with a purpose that was
primarily religious would be likely to select just those details
which contributed the most striking touches to the great portrait.
This is true both of the facts of Moses' life and of the legislation
which was ascribed to him. The decisions on social and religious
matters which he must have given during the years of his leader
ship appear to have been of so striking and elevated a character
that his fame as a lawgiver was never forgotten ; and it became
customary, throughout the whole history of the nation, to assign
to his initiative all law — moral, social, and religious. It is
impossible, therefore, to decide with certainty whether any given
command can be traceable to him. The writer knew of it as a
regulation or custom in force when he wrote; but how much
older it may be can only be conjectured from the nature of the
command itself, or from a comparison of it with other parts of
the legislation, or with the customs of other nations at a similar
stage of development.1
Tf We cannot press details ; but it is hypercritical to doubt
that the outline of the narratives which have thus come down to
us by two channels is historical. The narratives of J and E
cannot be mere fictions : those wonderful pictures of life, and
1 A. H. McNeile, The Book of Numbers, xix.

14 MOSES
character, and ever- varying incident, though, as we know them,
they may owe something of their charm to their painters skill,
cannot but embody substantial elements of fact.1
Tf Whether everything that we read happened exactly as it
is written, or whether the representation is more or less due
to the narrators, the narrative, as a whole, possesses profound
religious value, and conveys, directly or indirectly, supremely
important teaching. And if Exodus is in parts a parable rather
than a history, we must remember that we have no right to limit
the power of God, and to say that He cannot teach by parable as
well as by history, by ideals as well as by actual facts. The
symbolical, and also the ideal, [character of some of the Old
Testament narratives must not be forgotten. Whether, in a
particular case, a narrative relates actual facts or not is a
question for historical criticism to decide : whatever its decision
may be, the religious value of the narrative remains the same.
Israel really was God's people, really did receive the blessings
and privileges which, under the older dispensation, this position
implied, was really led from Egypt to Canaan by a leader who
was taught of God not only how to do all this, but also how to
conclude a covenant with them on His behalf, and to give them
laws and some knowledge of Himself, and who moreover was the
first of a succession of teachers, who, with increasing clearness
and power, communicated to His people further Divine truths,
and held up before it high ideals of moral and spiritual life : but,
if as much as this is granted, — and it lies upon the very surface
of the Old Testament, — does it materially signify whether, in the
Pentateuch, it is Moses who is speaking or writing, or whether it
is some later prophet or priest who describes the events of the
Exodus and of the journey through the wilderness as they were
told, some centuries afterwards, by tradition, and who besides
this traces the way in which the hand of God was visible in them,
brings out the spiritual lessons implicit in them, and puts into
Moses' mouth thoughts and feelings and truths about God and
His relation to His people, in more explicit and articulate words
than perhaps he himself would have used ? There are cases,
especially in the earlier books of the Old Testament, in which we
cannot get behind the narratives, in which, that is, we cannot
say how far the narratives correspond exactly to what was said
or done by the actors in them ; in these cases, however, the
narrative itself is that which has the religious value, and from
which spiritual and moral teaching is to be deduced. The
narratives are the work of God-inspired men : and in the actions
1 S. R. Driver, The Book of Exodus, xliv.

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT 15
which they describe, and in the thoughts and truths expressed
in them, are " profitable," sometimes by way of warning, more
often by way of example and precept, and always according
to the stage of spiritual illumination which each narrative re
presents, " for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction
which is in righteousness." Naturally, every part of the Book
is not equally " profitable " for these purposes ; but the narratives,
especially those in which Jehovah and Moses are exhibited in
converse together, abound in great and noble thoughts, and are
rich in spiritual and devotional suggestiveness.1

III.
The Bondage.
1. The length of the sojourn of Israel in Egypt cannot be
determined with certainty. It is fixed in Exod. xii. 40 at 430
years, with which Gen. xv. 13 approximately agrees. In the LXX,
however, this period is made to include the time spent by the
patriarchs in Canaan; and if value can be placed upon the
genealogies given in Exod. vi. 16-20, Num. xxvi. 5-9, xxvii. 1, the
number of generations from Jacob to Moses and his contemporaries
amounted only to four or five (cf. Gen. xv. 16). Nor can help be
obtained from Egyptian sources, as the monuments furnish little
or no information respecting the Hebrews. It is probable that
the migration into Egypt took place during the domination of the
Asiatic Hyksos, to whom the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
dynasties are assigned. During their occupation of Lower Egypt
(which, according to Manetho, lasted 511 years), they were
constantly at war with the native Egyptian princes who had
established themselves at Thebes ; and the latter, in the time of
Aames (Amosis), about 1600 b.c, succeeded in expelling them.
The accession to power of a native line of rulers would naturally
produce a change in the circumstances of those settlers who had
been attached to, or protected by, the Hyksos ; and the alteration
in the attitude of the Egyptians to the Israelites, described in
Exod. i., may not improbably be connected with this dynastic
revolution. The Pharaoh of " the oppression," who is unnamed,
1 S. R. Driver, The Book of Exodus, lxx.

16 MOSES
was probably Eameses u., of the nineteenth dynasty. The
monuments discovered at Tell el-Mashkuta, eleven or twelve
miles from Ismailia, amongst the ruins of the city of Pithom,
one of the two store-cities named in Exod. i. 11, show that it was
for that monarch that the place was built ; whilst the other city
mentioned together with Pithom actually bears the name of
Eaamses. It was not, however, in the reign of Eameses II., but
probably in that of his successor Meneptah, that Israel effected its
escape. This is implied in Exod. ii. 23, and the only tradition out
side the Bible which seems to relate to the departure of the
Israelites assigns it to the reign of Meneptah. The dates of
Eameses n. and the kings who succeeded him are variously
stated ; but the Exodus may be fixed approximately to 1250 or
1200 B.C.
2. Of the condition of the Israelites in Egypt, practically
nothing is known beyond what can be inferred by conjecture
from analogy. We must picture them as a body of settlers
numbering some 5-6000 souls, settled in "Goshen," i.e. the
fertile district at the west end of Wady Tumilat within "the
triangle lying between Saft, Belbeis, and Tell el-Kebir," covering
an area of about 70 square miles. These settlers will have had
the same simple habits of life, with elementary institutions for
the maintenance of justice and order — tribal leaders, sheikhs acting
as judges, councils of elders, simple rules for the punishment of
offenders, rudimentary religious observances — which are still in
operation among nomad Arab tribes. In all probability they
were of little importance in the eyes of the Egyptians. " In the
eyes of their Egyptian contemporaries," writes Professor Sayce,
"the Israelites were but one of many Shasu or Bedawin tribes
who had settled in the pasture lands of the Eastern Delta. Their
numbers were comparatively insignificant, their social standing
obscure. They were doubtless as much despised and avoided by
the Egyptians of their day as similar Bedawin tribes are by the
Egyptians of the present day. They lived apart from the natives
of the country, and the occupation they pursued was regarded as fit
only for the outcasts of mankind." Their growing numbers made
them dangerous, because, " in case of invasion, they might assist
the enemy and expose Egypt to another Asiatic conquest.

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT 17
Hence came the determination to transform them into public
serfs, and even to destroy them altogether. The free Bedawin-
like settlers in Goshen, who had kept apart from their Egyptian
neighbours, and had been unwilling to perform even agricultural
work, were made the slaves of the State. They were taken from
their herds and sheep, from their independent life on the out
skirts of the Delta, and compelled " to do field-labour, to make
bricks, and build for the Pharaoh his store-cities of Pithom and
Eaamses. Tf " Behold the people of the children of Israel are more and
mightier than we. Come, let us deal with them wisely, lest they
multiply, and it come to pass that, when there falleth out any
war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against
us : and get them out of the land." Such are the words which
the new king who knew not Joseph, when he came to the
throne, spoke to his people with regard to the alien population
which had been allowed during a former reign to settle in the
land of Goshen, a fruitful district on the north-east of Egypt,
east of Bubastis (Zakazik). It is the speech of one who feared
that, if nothing were done to prevent them from becoming too
powerful, they would be a source of danger to the State, as they
might join, with every chance of success, in any attack which
might be made on the kingdom over which he ruled. It was, in
all probability, the presence of a similar foreign (Semitic) popu
lation in or near this district, about 2100 years B.C., which had
contributed to — or perhaps even made — the success of the Hyksos
invaders, through which Egypt had been ruled by an alien
dynasty for five hundred years. The repetition of such a catas
trophe was at all hazards to be prevented. It would seem, there
fore, that the persecution of the Hebrews was not undertaken
altogether wantonly, but with the object of turning aside a
possible misfortune.1
3. The Israelites dwelt " in the land of Goshen." The site of
Goshen has been fixed by recent discoveries. Ancient hieroglyphic
lists of the " nomes " of Egypt mention Kesem as the twentieth
nome of Lower Egypt, and state that its religious capital was
P-sapt, i.e. the modern " Saft el-Henneh," a village about forty miles
N.E. of Cairo, the ancient name of which Naville ascertained
in 1885, from inscriptions found on the spot, to be Kes. " Goshen "
1 T. G. Pinches, The Old Testament in the Light of ihe Historical Records of
Assyria and Babylonia, 268.
MOSES-SAMSON — 2

18 MOSES
must thus have been the fertile district around Saft, where
the Wady Tumilat opens out at its west end towards Bubastis,
"within the triangle lying between the villages of Saft,
Belbeis, and Tell el-Kebir" (Naville), embracing an area of
60-80 square miles (Petrie, Sinai, 208), about 40-50 miles
N.E. of Cairo.
Tf The modern tourist in Egypt who lands at Port Said instead
of at Alexandria, and travels to Cairo by the eastern route, is well
repaid for the little extra expense and time involved in the journey ;
for he passes through districts, towns, and villages incomparably
more interesting than those through which the more direct rail
way runs. From Port Said to Ismailia the line skirts the
great waterway of Lesseps, and from the latter town, turning
sharply to the right, strikes west into the narrow valley richly
nourished by the Sweetwater Canal, which from the fourteenth
century before the Christian era, carried the fertilizing Nile flood
into this district. It was the course of this canal which, after
centuries of neglect, the great French engineer followed and re
opened in many places, when he constructed the present conduit
for traffic, and for the supply of fresh water to Ismailia and
Suez. The appearance, therefore, of this region — a thin line of
brilliant green, flanked, on either side, by an arid and tawny
stretch of desert sand, above which rise the low plateaux of ancient
river cliffs — is exactly such as was familiar to many an ancient
Egyptian as well as to the Israelite of the bondage. Known now
as the Wady Tumilat this valley runs due west for about forty
miles, before it opens wide upon the rich fields of the Eastern Delta.
The fascination of the district is great ; for here within its narrow
confines the conies of Israelites endured the galling experience
of forced labour, when building the two " treasure-cities " of Pithom
and Eaamses, and down its weary length they streamed to the
great muster at Succoth, prior to their final departure for the
desert. After leaving Ismailia and before we reach the little
station of Mahsame — the Arab variant of Eaamses — which sweeps
us back in memory to the times of ancient Israel, although it is
not the site of the "treasure-city" of that name, we pass the
mounds of Tell-el-Mashkuta to the south of the railway and on
the far side of the canal, where Naville in the year 1883 identified,
beyond all question, the site of Pithom. Further on, and still to
the south, is Tell-er-Retabeh, which Petrie, as the result of explora
tions carried out in 1905-6, claims to have determined to be the site
of the long-sought second treasure-city of Eaamses ; and then our
memories are brought back to England's share in Egypt's prosperity,

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT 19
when further on we pass Kassassin and Tell-el-Kebir, the latter
with its little well-kept cemetery by the rail side, where the
English who died in the battle rest beneath some shady trees. Here
the valley opens wide to embrace the broad plains of Goshen, and
here, too, an exquisite scene of Eastern pastoral life begins. The
green fields of beans and bersim are dotted with the industrious
fellaheen ; the shaduf and sakkieh creak and hum their not un-
melodious song ; strings of camels, herds of goats, black and grey
water-buffaloes, graceful lebbek trees, feathery tamarisks and
waving palms, complete a picture of pastoral charm. Some miles
from Tell-el-Kebir, we reach the little station of Saft-el-Henneh,
again a scene of Naville's labours, the mounds of which he has
identified as the site of the city of Pa-Sopt, the ancient capital of
the surrounding district of Kesem, Geshem, or more familiarly
Goshen; and if on our map we join Tell-el-Kebir and Saft el-
Henneh, and then form a triangle by linking up Belbeis to
the south with both, we cannot be far wrong in identifying
the space so enclosed with the area of the historic Land of
Goshen.1

4. Of the religion of the Israelites in Egypt we have no in
formation. "In the land of Goshen," says Eobertson Smith,
"the Hebrews had not even a vestige of national organization.
The tribes into which they were divided acknowledged a common
ancestry, but had no institutions expressive of the unity of race ;
and, when Moses called them to a united effort for liberty, the
only practical starting-point for his work was an appeal to the
name of Jehovah, the God of their fathers. It is not easy to say
how far the remembrance of this God was a living power among
the Hebrews. The Semitic nomads have many superstitions,
but little religion. The sublime solitudes of the desert are well
fitted to nourish lofty thoughts about God, but the actual life of
a wandering shepherd people is not favourable to the formation of
such fixed habits of worship as are indispensable to make religion
a prominent factor in everyday life. It would seem that the
memory of the God of the Hebrew fathers was little more than
a dormant tradition when Moses began his work ; and among the
Israelites, as among the Arabs of the desert, whatever there was
of habitual religious practice was probably connected with tribal
or family superstitions, such as the use of teraphim, a kind of
1 L. E. Steele, in The Irish Church Quarterly, i. 123.

20 MOSES
household idols which long continued to keep their place in Hebrew
homes. The very name of Jehovah (or Iahwe, as the word should
rather be pronounced) became known as a name of power only
through Moses and the great deliverance." 1
IV.
Deliverance.
1. The primary element of the nation's consci6usness was
always the sense of having been redeemed and delivered at the
Exodus. This was the operation of Jehovah that " created " the
people. If He who calls Himself " Jehovah " declares His identity
with the God of Abraham and Isaac, it was under the name
Jehovah that He performed His great act of salvation, and this
act both gave the people existence, and stamped indelibly on their
consciousness that Jehovah was their God and made them in
thankfulness avow themselves His people. The conceptions
"God" and "people" are correlative — Jehovah is Israel's God
from the land of Egypt (Hos. xii. 9, xiii. 4). The two principles
just referred to and the fact are entirely practical.
Tf No one doubts that the history in the Book of Exodus is
the history of a deliverance. The most superficial reader would
say that the subject of it is the redemption of a people out of
slavery. The Church has adopted this view of it so completely
that we do not break the ordinary course of our reading on Palm
Sunday and Easter Day. The chapters respecting the plagues
which were sent to Pharaoh, respecting the Passover and the
passage of the Eed Sea, are our lessons on the Passion and the
Eesurrection. The Law of Eedemption (so the Church teaches)
is asserted in the Old Testament facts ; is evolved and fulfilled
in the facts of the New. We are not taught to look upon one
as belonging to an earthly, the other to a spiritual economy, the
one as merely a figure of the other. The Jewish Eedemption is
nothing except as it has a spiritual foundation. The Christian
Eedemption is nothing if its results do not affect the earth.
Neither is figurative ; both are substantial.2
2. Three vital facts sum up the real meaning of this thrilling
experience. These were that the people were free, that Jehovah
1 "W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, 32.
2 F. D. Maurice, The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, 154.

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT 21
had freed them, and that this freedom was gained under the
leadership of Moses. The first of these facts affected the later
history of Israel. It gave them a sense of independence and a
hatred of tyranny, which flamed out again and again in opposition
to foreign rule and the exercise of arbitrary power at home. It
raised up leaders who, inspired by the backward look at this
stirring event, revived the people and called them to battle
for their ancient liberty. The second fact made Jehovah the
national God in a peculiar sense, and rooted their liberties in the
sacred soil of religion. Henceforth the champions of Israel's
freedom were men of God. The third fact put Moses at the head
of affairs, gave him the complete confidence of the freed people,
and thus granted him the opportunity of creating a nation
inspired with his own lofty ideals.
Tf Fundamental to the whole history of Israel is the idea of
redemption. The words of Moses to his baffled people at the Eed
Sea would be a fit motto for the whole Bible : " Stand still and see
the salvation of Jehovah " (Exod. xiv. 13). The world is sunk in
sin, and needs salvation. That is the great and ever-present fact
of human life which the early chapters of Genesis resolutely face
and with which they boldly grapple. The sin is sometimes
hideous, as in Sodom; but, hideous or not, it is always there,
provoking God not only to anger but also to redemptive thoughts.
For were there no redemption, the Divine purpose in creating
man would be wholly frustrated, and that must not be. Out
of all mankind, a special people is elected to be the object of His
special care. This is the fact ; but it is not till the Exile that the
reason of it is clearly felt — that Israel's privilege is meant to
benefit and bless the world. It is not felt by the prophetic
writers of the Hexateuch. The wider destiny of Israel's religion
is indeed suggested more than once, and is implicit in its very
nature, but it is not a burning fact — at once an inspiration and a
consolation — as it was to Deutero-Isaiah. It is the privilege rather
than the duties of election that interest the prophetic writers of
the Hexateuch. They are proud of Israel's uniqueness and
isolation, so obvious in the immunity she enjoyed during the
plagues of Egypt, so startling as to appeal to the eyes of an
unprejudiced stranger. But within the elect nation stand elect
men, through whom the Divine work is to be begun and continued.
The religious genius of Israel as a people must be acknowledged
when we look at the heroes whom she admires, for they are men
after God's own heart : men of deep and ready faith like Abraham,

22 MOSES
whose faith God counted for righteousness ; men of purity like
Joseph, who could not " do this great wickedness and sin against
God " ; men of stern justice like Moses ; men who could plead
with God in prayer and prevail ; men who would give up their
dearest at God's command ; men of sensitive conscience, who felt
that of the least of God's mercies they were unworthy ; men who
could endure as seeing the Unseen.1

V.
The Uses of the Bondage in Egypt.
There can be no doubt that the Egyptian experience had much
to do with the making of the Hebrew people. The union in a
common misery and in a common deliverance bound them
together and prepared them for their destiny. Had the Egyptian
experience been more kindly, the Hebrews might have been
absorbed in the complex population of the Nile valley and never
have contributed their part to the world's life. The sacred
writers believed that the numbers of the people increased in
accordance with the promises to the fathers, and the bitterness of
the bondage was the occasion for their departure to their destiny
in Canaan. 1. The sense of destiny is strong in this history. It is a
thought that is writ large in the Bible. The Hebrews cannot be
exterminated, for God has destined them to a glorious future. So
the prophets preached, believing in a Golden Age when Israel
should be God's people indeed. And the New Testament has the
same conception : " All things work together for good to them
that love God." Jesus declares in Gethsemane with marvellous
equanimity that twelve legions of angels could save Him from His
enemies. It is a great faith a thousand times justified. We must
not be fatalists, but in our measuring of causes and calculating of
effects we must not leave out God. He is greater than Pharaoh.
Tf The distinction between the outer and the inner view of
destiny is, as regards its practical effects, one of the most
important points in ethical controversy. It was the latter aspect
that braced the life of Stevenson. Destiny was constantly present
1 J. E. MeFadyen, The Messages qf the Bible, iv. 77.

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT 23
to his imagination, yet its effect was always quickening and tonic.
The man's mind and will sprang to the great alliance with the
mind and will of the universe, and wrought out actions and
character as in a veritable sense inspired and chosen of heaven.
No soul is ever great without the sense of this alliance. To
explain even the most commonplace experience wholly in terms
of one poor little human life, is to show that one has never
realized the meaning of life at all. There is always the surd, the
unexplained and inexplicable element beyond all that. The
recognition of this is the first requisite of true manliness, and a
belief in predestination of some sort is the necessary basis for any
healthy view of life. Thus does the thought of destiny perform
at all times a double function in the world : the bad it commits
to badness, slackening all their powers of resistance, and thrusting
them ever deeper into the evil of their choice ; the good it braces
for action, until, claiming it for their own, they are competent to
face and conquer anything that life may set before them. The
latter was Stevenson's course, summed up with even more than
his usual appositeness in the phrase, " to waylay destiny and bid
him stand and deliver." The result in character was one of the
most brilliant records of human courage which are to be found
anywhere in the biographies of British men.1
2. And so we learn the meaning of hardship. How much
pleasanter it would have seemed to Israel to enjoy the fertility of
Goshen, and to increase and multiply without hindrance in the
goodly land of Egypt ! A kindly Providence would have given
them favour in the sight of their neighbours. Yes, and Israel
would have been a nonentity in Egypt, with no place to display
her strength. Satisfied with flesh-pots she could have produced
no prophet. But we always murmur at the hardships that are
pushing us out. We chafe at our troubles. And so should we
miss our destiny. Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain !
Strive, and hold cheap the strain ;
Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe !
Tf Life itself — life dreadful, severe, monotonous, as well as life
exciting, adorable, delicious, is what we need. It is the experience
1 John Kelman, The Faith of Robert Louis Stevenson, 217.

24 MOSES
which we fear and yet have to conquer which helps us, not the
experience which we clasp to our heart. We have to do the
duties which bore us, to adjust ourselves to peevish and froward
people, that we may realize that we are capable of boredom, and
that we may learn that we are ourselves prejudiced and unreason
able. The strife, the censure, the annoyance which takes the
heart out of one, the necessity of yielding and compromising, the
fear of pain and sorrow, the failure, the blunder, the loss — these
are the things which purify and strengthen, and not the pleasant
loitering in the meadow beside the stream. It is the power of
recollecting, combining, imagining, the power of knowing exactly
what we dislike, and of reconstructing the design of life without
it, which brings us suffering. But the wonder and the largeness
of life all consist in the fact that it is so different from anything
whieh we could have designed and executed. So much more
unexpected, so much more imaginative, so much stronger, bigger,
freer, more vehement — more real, in fact. We think of ourselves
when we are young and hopeful, as we think perhaps of Odysseus,
moving on through Ufe patient, inventive, gleeful; we subtract
the horror and the danger, the nakedness and the hunger, because
we anticipate throughout the triumph and the victorious home
coming, ultimate triumph and the consciousness of it — that is
what we demand.
And instead, what do we find ? — a complex labyrinthine place,
full of blind alleys and high- walled glooms ; tracts of it pleasant
enough, no doubt, where the road is level and grassy, and the
trees dangle their fruit over the wall ; but then we come to be
aware of death girdling the horizon whichever way we look, like
an encircling sea ; and there are ugly things lying in wait, giants
and pitfalls, and padding fiends with hollow voices, "great
stenches," as in the Pilgrim's Progress, that lie across the road.
The error is, not if we feel heroic — it is all the better if we
can do that — but if we feel romantic, anticipate ultimate triumph,"
believe that we shall find life at last golden and serene, all its
victories won. Instead of that we must face disaster and failure,
and last of all we know not what, by which we shall be shattered
once and for all ; we need not dwell in these thoughts, nor bemoan
our hard fate ; all that is a weakening and a wasteful thing ; and
the more we practise to be serene and undismayed, the less will
all calamity hurt us. But we need not believe calamity and stress
and pain to be wholly horrible things; we must observe them,
fearlessly, feel them deeply, bear them patiently, and then they
will yield their sweetness and their strength.1
1 A. C. Benson, Thy Rod and Thy Staff, 223.

THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT 25
3. As we enter into the lesson of faith, we feel the great truth
of God's care for the oppressed. We think of ourselves on the side
of Israel trusting Jehovah in spite of difficulties. Let us be
careful that we are not on the side of Pharaoh. Dr. C. E. Brown
has strikingly used Exodus narratives to point the lesson of
modern industrial oppression. It is unhappily true of our own
day that task-masters are over the poor, even the women and
children, to make " their lives bitter with hard service." The
modern Pharaohs shall not escape the day of reckoning.
"Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then,
On the bodies and souls of living men ?
And think ye that building shall endure,
Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?
With gates of silver and bars of gold
Ye have fenced My sheep from their Father's fold;
I have heard the dropping of their tears
In heaven, these eighteen hundred years."
" 0 Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,
We build but as our fathers built ;
Behold Thine images, how they stand,
Sovereign and sole, through all our land.
Our task is hard, — with sword and flame
To hold Thine earth forever the same,
And with sharp crooks of steel to keep
Still, as Thou leftest them, Thy sheep."
Then Christ sought out an artisan,
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin
Pushed from her faintly want and sin.
These set He in the midst of them,
And as they drew back their garment hem,
For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said He,
" The images ye have made of Me ! " 1
1 Lowell, A Parable (Poetical Works, 108).

MOSES. II.
Birth and Education.

Literature.
Bell, C. D., The Roll-Call of Faith (1886), 179, 195.
Blaikie, W. G., Heroes of Israel (1894), 288.
Brown, James, Sermons (1892), 159.
Chadwick, G. A., The Booh of Exodus (Expositor's Bible) (1890), 26.
Driver, S. R., The Booh of Exodus (Cambridge Bible) (1911).
Gray, W. H., Our Divine Shepherd (1903), 93.
Hitchcock, F. R. Montgomery, Hebrew Types (1913), 55.
Kittel, R., The Scientific Study ofthe Old Testament (1910), 164.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Exodus, etc. (1906), 12.
McNeile, A. H., The Booh of Exodus (Westminster Commentaries) (1908).
Oosterzee, J. J. van, Moses ; A Biblical Study (1876), 1, 30.
Parker, J., The City Temple, ii. (1872) 2.
Pearse, M. G., Moses : His Life and its Lessons (1894), 21.
Pentecost, G. E., Bible Studies : Pentateuch and Life of Christ (1894), 156,
Robertson, F. W., Sermons, iv. (1874) 250.
„ „ The Human Race (1886), 51.
Selby, T. G., The God qfthe Patriarchs (1904), 163.
Biblical World, xxix. (1907) 376 (T. G. Soares).
Christian World Pulpit, lix. (1901) 198 (J. S. Maver).
Dictionary of the Bible (Single-volume, 1909), 632 (A. H. McNeile).
Expository Times, xiv. (1903) 141 (0. H. "W. Johns).

28

Birth and Education of Moses.
She saw him that he was a goodly child.— Exod. ii. 2.
In passing from Genesis to Exodus we pass from the story
of men and families to the history of a nation. In Genesis the
Canaanites and Egyptians concern us only as they affect Abraham
or Joseph. In Exodus, even Moses himself concerns us only for
the sake of Israel. He is in some respects a more imposing and
august character than any who preceded him ; but what we are
told is no longer the story of a soul, nor are we pointed so much
to the development of his spiritual life as to the work he did — the
tyrant overthrown, the nation moulded, the law and the ritual
imposed on it. When Jacob at Peniel wrestles with God and
prevails, he wins for himself a new name, expressive of the higher
moral elevation which he has attained. But when Moses meets
God in the bush, it is to receive a commission for the public
benefit ; and there is no new name for Moses, but a fresh revela
tion of God for the nation to learn. And in all their later history
we feel that the national life which it unfolds was nourished and
sustained by these glorious early experiences, the most wonderful
as well as the most inspiriting on record.
Yet we may well call this new age the Age of Moses. For,
in that new stage which is now to be entered upon, the nation
is coming under the influence of that majestic personality,
that super-eminent genius, that "man of God," with whom
but few of the sons of men have vied in intellectual and moral
grandeur. Tf The intermediate stages between the " patriarchal " period
and the departure of the tribes from Egypt it is impossible to
trace. What is certain is that at the period when the Hebrews
invaded Palestine and drove out or subdued its Canaanitish
inhabitants the tribes were united, not only by the ties of kinship,
but by their common belief in a Deity called Jahveh, and that
39

30 MOSES
this religion possessed elements of strength which welded the
loosely-organized clans into a compact nation, and ultimately gave
them a decided superiority over the Canaanites who opposed their
advance. We find moreover that this type of religion held its
ground after the settlement of the Hebrews in the conquered
territory, and that it was tenacious and vigorous enough to
withstand the disintegrating influences of heathenism to which it
was exposed. To what is this striking development to be
attributed ? The uniform tradition of the Hebrews points to
certain important historical events as the occasion, and to one
commanding personality as the instrument, whereby the change
was brought about. According to the narratives of the Pentateuch,
the tribes migrated into Egypt and were for some centuries settled
in that country. Though at first they found favour with the
Egyptian monarchs, yet in process of time they sank into a
condition of serfdom, which lasted until they were goaded by
their sufferings to rise against their oppressors and to claim their
liberty. Under the leadership of Moses, of the tribe of Levi, they
made their escape from Egypt, and for more than a generation
wandered as nomads in the Sinaitic Peninsula. Tradition also
relates that the tribes were taught by Moses the elements of a
higher religion than that which they had inherited from their
ancestors, and that he was the founder of a rudimentary system
of law and polity. According to the earliest account, Moses was
specially commissioned by God to be the liberator and lawgiver of
his fellow-tribesmen ; he spoke with the authority of a prophet,
and acted as mediator between the Hebrews and their God in the
character of a priest.1

I.
The Birth of Moses.
By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his
parents, because they saw he was a goodly child ; and they were not afraid
of the king's commandment. — Heb. xi. 23.
1. The cruel and oppressive measures taken by Pharaoh to
break the spirit of the Israelites and reduce them to a condition
of utter bondage, perhaps destroying them altogether, had
signally failed, in that the more they were oppressed the more
they increased. The king next decided on what he hoped and
1 R. L. Ottley, The Religion of Israel, 25.

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF MOSES 31
confidently expected would be a master-stroke. The brutality of
it exceeded that of Herod, who ordered all the male children
from two years old and under found in Bethlehem to be
slaughtered. Herod was inspired by his fear of the Christ, and
the cruelty was limited to a small community; but Pharaoh
decreed the death of all the male infants of the Hebrews and,
moreover, ordered them to be strangled by the midwives at the
time of their birth. These women, fearing God, refused to obey
the king's commandment. Enraged at this frustration of his
plan, the king next ordered the parents themselves to destroy
their male offspring. This was the height of cruelty, and could
have been carried out only by setting watchmen and spies, house-
searchers and examiners, to work. So rigidly was this brutal
decree forced on them that it was almost impossible to escape
its execution. 2. Now, " there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to
wife a daughter of Levi, and the woman conceived and bare a
son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she
hid him three months." Already two children — Miriam, a
daughter, and Aaron, a son — had been given to Amram and his
kinswoman, Jochebed. Something in the babe's lovely counten
ance appeared to the mother's eye as the halo of special
Divine affection. A voice whispered to her heart that her child
was specially dear to God. Was not its smile the result of the
Divine embrace ? And did not those limpid eyes look into the face
of the Angel of the Covenant ? She was therefore encouraged
to brave the royal edicts, and screen the little taper from the
gale of destruction that was sweeping through the land. She
probably hid him for three months in the apartments reserved for
the women.
Tf It was the beauty of this child : his exceeding fairness,— his
fairness to God, or his being "fair to God," for that is the
signification of the expression, — which more especially stimulated
his parents' faith. Some suppose the beauty of the child to have
been supernatural, as an indication of what was in reserve for
him. Josephus describes him as " Divine in form " : and the
Eoman historian Justin also speaks of his extraordinary beauty.
There were promises too, which might have encouraged the
parents to risk their own lives in the attempt to secure the life

32 MOSES
of their child, and to rise above the fear of the king's
commandment.1 3. For three months these God-fearing parents had succeeded
in concealing their child. The searchers for hidden children
were on their rounds again. Perhaps their secret had leaked out,
and they knew well what would befall the babe if the searcher
for male children should find him. Therefore a heroic device was
speedily executed. A little basket cradle-boat was prepared,
carefully made water-tight with bitumen or pitch. How tenderly
and carefully the mother lined it ! Then, with shrewd mother-
wit, and, let us add, guided by the Spirit of God, she directed it
to be placed among the rushes near to the place where the royal
daughter of Pharaoh was in the habit of going daily to bathe.
Little Miriam was placed near to watch events, and we may be
sure the mother was not far off. A more romantic, pathetic, and
thrilling situation could not well be conceived. Of course the
mother could not know certainly what the daughter of Pharaoh
would do ; but she acted in faith, doing what seemed best as in
the sight of God, making every earthly provision that human love
and foresight could suggest.
Blow gently, wind ! beneath the moon,
Across the river wavelets bright:
Make music like a cradle tune
Into the mother's ear to-night!
Flow, Father Nile ! unvexed by storm,
And softly rock the bulrush ark,
Nor whelm the bttle dainty form,
A lily on thy waters dark.2
Tf The Basket of the Canephore was woven of rushes or reeds.
In such primal ark (" scirpeus " — of rushes, not bulrushes), or Ark
of Covenant, the first shepherd of the Jewish people is saved; and
thus as the weed of the wide sea is the type of the lawless idle
ness which in heaven shall root itself no more on the wharf of
Lethe, the flag of the river — usefullest, as humblest of all the
green things given to the service of man — becomes the type of
1 0. D. Bell, The Roll-Call of Faith, 182.
- C. F. Alexander.

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF MOSES 33
the obedient shepherd sceptre, which, by the still waters of
comfort, redeems the lost, aud satisfies the afflicted, soul.1
Tf How much of the world's history that tiny coffer among the
reeds held ! How different that history would have been if, as
might easily have happened, it had floated away, or if the feeble
life within it had wailed itself dead unheard ! The solemn
possibilities folded and slumbering in an infant are always awful
to a thoughtful mind. But, except the manger at Bethlehem, did
ever cradle hold the seed of so much as did that papyrus chest ?
The set of opinion at present minimises the importance of the
individual, and exalts the spirit of the period, as a factor in
history. Standing beside Miriam, we may learn a truer view, and
see that great epochs require great men, and that, without such
for leaders, no solid advance in the world's progress is achieved.
Think of the strange cradle floating on the Nile ; then think of
the strange grave among the mountains of Moab, and of all
between, and ponder the same lesson as is taught in yet higher
fashion by Bethlehem and Calvary — that God's way of blessing
the world is to fill men with His message, and let others draw
from them. Whether it be " law," or " grace and truth," a man
is needed through whom it may fructify to all.2
She left her babe, and went away to weep,
And listen'd oft to hear if he did cry;
But the great river sung his lullaby,
And unseen angels fann'd his balmy sleep,
And yet his innocence itself might keep.
The sacred silence of his slumb'rous smile
Makes peace in all the monster-breeding Nile;
For God e'en now is moving in the sweep
Of mighty waters. Little dreams the maid,
The royal maid, that comes to woo the wave
With her smooth limbs beneath the trembling shade
Of silver-chaliced lotus, what a child
Her freak of pity is ordain'd to save !
How terrible the thing that looks so mild ! s
4. The providence of God, ever working through means,
brought the princess to the river-brink at the critical moment,
accompanied by the high-born maidens who constituted her per
sonal attendants. It was His hand that guided her eye to the
1 Ruskin, Proserpina, bk i. ch. v. ( Works, xxv. 280).
2 A. Maclaren. * Hartley Coleridge.
MOSES-SAMSON — 3

34 MOSES
ark half concealed by the rushes ; and it was at His prompting
that her maid was sent to fetch it. All this came forth from the
Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in
effectual working. With her own hands the princess opened the
lid of the little basket. It is not impossible that she guessed
what its contents were. In any case, she was not surprised when
she saw the babe. Was it the Hebrew physiognomy, as marked
then as now, or a swift intuition, that made her exclaim, " This
is one of the Hebrews' children " ? Whatever it was, she was
more than willing to fall in with the shrewd suggestion of Miriam
that a nurse of the Hebrew race would be the more fitting to
rear it. So it befell that Moses' life was saved, that he was
nourished from the breasts of his own mother, and received as
his earliest impressions those sacred teachings which had come
down as a rich heritage from the tents of Abraham. Till he had
grown probably to the age of three years, he remained under the
protection of the princess, though in his parents' home, and
Jochebed's wages were duly paid until he was brought to the
palace and became her son. " And she called his name Moses."
The great lesson of this incident, as of so much before, is the
presence of God's wonderful providence, working out its designs
by all the play of human motives. In accordance with a law,
often seen in His dealings, it was needful that the deliverer
should come from the heart of the system from which he was to
set his brethren free. The same principle that sent Saul of
Tarsus to be trained at the feet of Gamaliel, and made Luther a
monk in the Augustinian convent at Erfurt, planted Moses in
Pharaoh's palace and taught him the wisdom of Egypt, against
which he was to contend.
Tf I saw, the other day, two well-known pictures side by side
in a shop window. The one represented Lord Eoberts, with the
inn-keeper's child on his knee at Pretoria, saying, to a member of
his staff who approaches him with some message, " Don't you see
I'm busy ? " The other was that one in which a little child is
pictured as crossing a crowded street and the policeman is hold
ing up his hand to stop the traffic until it gets safely over. It
is entitled "His Majesty the Baby." A difference might have
been observed on the faces of most of the passers-by as they
took a glance at the window for a few moments. They may have
approached with a look of abstraction, or even a frown in their

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF MOSES 35
business absorbment, but as they went away their faces were lit
up by a kindly smile, and one was even seen to smile upon the
somewhat troublesome importunity of several newsboys who
assailed him with their cries immediately after, and reached over
each other towards him with their papers. Both pictures seem
to be very popular, and no wonder. They touch a tender chord
in most hearts. It has been the same in all time, and all the
world over. The baby always reigns. The little Moses in his
bulrush cradle captivated the royal heart. There was a mightier
majesty in the babe than in Pharaoh's daughter. It is said that
some men are born booted and spurred to ride, and some are born
saddled and bridled to be ridden. These distinctions may come
out in later years, but the truth is we are all born with the boots
and spurs.
Moses came by and by to rule from a nobler than his cradle
throne. He made a noble decision when he was grown, a
decision that involved great sacrifice ; and though his brethren
spurned his rule at first, they came later to prize the sacrifice he
made, and the beautiful service he rendered. "He that is
greatest among you shall be your servant," said Jesus. In that
sense Moses came to be great indeed, and in heaven they sing the
song of Moses and of the Lamb.1
5. " She called his name Moses, and said, Because I drew him
out of the water." This is a case of popular etymology, examples
of which we find everywhere. We are all of us familiar with the
popular local derivations of the names of persons, villages, hills,
and rivers. Generally they are artless attempts to interpret the
names and then connect them with definite events. The events
themselves may have occurred, but their connexion with the
names is a figment of the imagination. The name " Moses," inter
preted as a Hebrew word, would mean really "the one who
draws out," i.e., the deliverer, redeemer. But this is a case of the
assimilation of a foreign word to the Hebrew language, influenced
by the thought of Moses' life-work. The word, however, is
really Egyptian, and means "son." It is the same word that
we find in Egyptian compound names, e.g., Dhutmoses. The fact
that the leading figure in the Israelite history of this period bears
not a native but a foreign name is strong proof that he is historical,
and also that the Israelites did sojourn in Egypt.2
1 J. S. Maver.
* R. Kittel, The Scientific Study qfthe Old Testament, 171.

36 MOSES
Tf Josephus and Philo derive the name from the Coptic mo,
"water," and ushe, "saved"; this is implied in their spelling
Mouses, also found in LXX and New Testament. It is more
plausible to connect the name with the Egyptian mes, mesu, " son."
Perhaps it was originally coupled with the name of an Egyptian
deity — cf. Ba-mesu, Thoth-mes, and others — which was omitted
under the influence of Israelite monotheism.1

II.
His Education.
Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians ; and he was
mighty in his words and works. — Acts vii. 22.
1. In the history of the leader of the Exodus, the first noteworthy
qualification for the work of hirf bfe is that he was representative
of the two classes between whom he was to mediate. He was
by birth of the kindred of the oppressed, while by upbringing
and education he was connected with their oppressors. This gave
him a breadth of view and of sympathy which he could not other
wise have had. His connexion with Israel, the law of whose
life was the law of sacrifice, gave him depth of character and a
native sympathy with things unseen ; while his position in the
palace of the Pharaohs gave him all that the highest civiliza
tion of the time could bestow. In him already the Israelites
spoiled the Egyptians. The learning and wisdom, the might in
words and in deeds, which Moses acquired in the royal household
were infinitely more valuable for the enrichment of the emanci
pated nation than all the jewels of gold which they carried with
t^hem in their exodus.
Tf The history of every human life is profitable alike for
doctrine and for reproof. When we mark the steps by which a
man has been led, and the manner in which he has made or
marred himself, we learn much concerning Him who shapes our
ends, and much also which can be turned to practical account for
our guidance or our warning. The records of even the humblest
life, which has had no apparent influence beyond its own
immediate circle, are thus replete with instruction. In every
such life we can recognize something of the Divine Hand which
1 A. H. McNeile, in Hastings' Dictionary ofthe Bible (Single- volume), 632.

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF MOSES 37
fashions us, and something also which may help us in fashioning
ourselves.1 2. But in the training of Moses He who shapes our ends was
careful that the first place should be given to that which lays the
deep and enduring foundations of character. Depth must be
secured before breadth or height. Unless the roots are struck far
into the soil the tree cannot afford to shoot up high or spread its
branches wide to catch the influences of the sunlight and the rain.
It was by arrangement of infinite wisdom that he who was to be
called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and to be learned in all the
wisdom of the Egyptians, should be first nursed by his own
Hebrew mother.
Tf No one can calculate the value and enduring influence of the
training which begins even before children have attained to the
years of consciousness. We do not use a mere figure when we
speak, as we so often do, of men having drunk in certain principles
with their mother's milk. The mind receives impressions which
often prove permanent long before it is conscious that they are
being made. It could not but powerfully influence his future
that in his infancy Moses looked habitually into a face in which
sorrow and hope were blended. For in his mother's face there
must have been that depth of sorrow which is seen only in those
who have come to a heritage of wrong endured from generation to
generation ; and there was the hope which, rooted in the ancient
promise that God would surely visit His people, had, at the birth
of this goodly child, been quickened into the expectation that the
hour of deliverance was at hand. When in his later life Moses
saw the bush that burned and was not consumed, he but saw in
symbol what he had seen in reality in his mother's face, in which
hope had lived and refused to be consumed by the sorrow of the
long captivity. From the reflection of that face, in which the
glory of the Divine Inspirer of hope was seen, Moses' face would
shine while yet he wist not of it. Let us give God thanks for our
godly mothers ; let us cherish them if they are with us ; let us
reverence their memory if they are gone; and let us recognize
the unspeakable power of family life to mould the future of a
nation. 3. Depth of character having been thus secured for the future
lawgiver, breadth of culture and wider views of men and things
1 James Brown, Sermons, 159.

38 MOSES
than would have been attainable to one of the children of the
enslaved Hebrews were added. The Jewish tradition tells that
he was at once instructed in all the knowledge of the time and
trained to a practical acquaintance with affairs of state — learned
in wisdom, and mighty in words and in deeds. According to that
tradition, he was admitted to the priestly caste, served in the
temple at Heliopolis, and there became versed in the mysteries
of the Egyptian religion. Such a training was unspeakably
important for one who was to be called to formulate the doctrine
and prescribe the ritual of a purer religion.
Tf In times of reformation those whom God raises up to lead
men to juster conception of His character and purpose, and to
simpler and more spiritual worship, have always been trained,
and have often been peculiarly zealous, in the faith against which
their later teaching was a protest. The greatest of Christian
apostles, who did more than all the rest to emancipate the Church
from the bondage of the letter of Judaism, had been an Hebrew of
the Hebrews, and as touching the law a Pharisee; and Martin
Luther, by agoni zings in his cell, by pilgrimages to Eome, and by
climbings of holy stairways, had sought to attain the best that the
old religion could do for him, before he led a liberated Church into
the simpler truth, that " the just shall live by faith." 1
4. Thus was Moses trained and fitted for the high position to
which God had called him : he was learned in all the learning of
the Egyptians. Later in his life, and when he had finished with
the schools, there came another training, which completed his
fitness as leader of Israel. Stephen speaks of Moses as " mighty
in words and in deeds " — that he occupied a foremost position in
the land both as a statesman and as a warrior, foremost in in
fluencing the course of events both at home and abroad. To the
high spirits and courage of this young prince, when as yet peace
principles had not begun to be advocated, it is easy to believe
that the soldier's life would have a peculiar charm. Every
Egyptian monarch led out his army in person and himself fought
at its head. And it seemed a fitting place for the son of Pharaoh's
daughter. The military glory of Egypt had lately been in
creased by the great victories in Asia ; and now in the war with
Ethiopia, Moses found scope for his skill and courage. Tradition
1 James Brown.

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF MOSES 39
has handed down to us what is merely fanciful as to his military
career, but at the same time there is certainly much that con
firms the words of Stephen. Moses' skill in marshalling the hosts
of Israel, and in leading them through the Eed Sea and the desert,
in choosing the places of their encampment and in directing it —
all this was doubtless largely the result of his life in the battle
field, from his twentieth to his fortieth year.
Tf Josephus gives us a romantic story that probably has some
foundation, though it may be difficult to say what. " The
Ethiopians, neighbours of the Egyptians upon the south, were in
the habit of making inroads into their territory, and ravaging it
from time to time. After a while they provoked the Egyptians
to retaliate, and the latter marched an army into the land of
the Ethiopians, to punish them for their insolence. But the
Ethiopians gathered their forces together, and engaging the
Egyptians in the open field completely defeated them, slaughter
ing a vast number, and forcing the rest to make a hasty and
disgraceful retreat into their own country. It was now the turn
of the Ethiopians to take the offensive. Following up the flying
foe they crossed the border, and, not content with ravaging, pro
ceeded to seize and occupy large portions of southern Egypt.
The inhabitants did not venture on resistance; and little by
little the invaders crept on towards the north, till they reached
Memphis, and even the Mediterranean coast, without a single
city having held out against their attack. Eeduced to the depths
of despair, the Egyptians had recourse to the oracular shrines, and
inquired of them what it would be best to do. The reply given
by the oracles — i.e., by the priests who had the control of them—
was : ' Use the Hebrew as your helper.' No one doubted that
by ' the Hebrew ' was meant Moses, or that the ' help ' to be
required of him was that he should take the conduct of the war.
Moses accordingly was invested with the sole command, and at
the head of the Egyptian troops he marched into the enemy's
country, by an importation of ibises got rid of the serpents that
infested it, and defeated in a decisive battle the army that was
sent against him. He then went on and took city by city, every
where overcoming the resistance that was offered to him, and
slaying large numbers of the enemy. His troops, whom their
reverses had disheartened, took courage so soon as they found
that their new general could lead them to victory, and showed
themselves excellent soldiers, ready to endure alike toil and
danger." 1 1 Mark Guy Pearse.

40 MOSES
5. But the training of Moses for the great work of his life
could not be complete as long as he remained in the high places
of Pharaoh's court. As " it became him, for whom are all things,
and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to
make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings,"
so it was necessary that the captain who was to lead the children
of Israel to the glory of freedom and of a purer faith, should
attain his qualification for the work through the discipline of
sacrifice. The exodus he was to lead was a part of that long
procession down the ages, which, beginning when Abraham left
his country and his kindred and his father's house and went out
not knowing whither he went, reached its goal at last when He
who alone rendered the perfect sacrifice went forth without the
gate bearing the cross to Calvary. It was necessary that the
leader of that exodus should have as his crowning qualification
the spirit of the cross ; that he should be trained and called to
deny himself and should make sacrifice to follow the path of duty.
He had his choice to make, and he made it.
Tf My father often longed greatly for certain things, and when
they were given, if we said that they were delightful, would im
mediately offer them to us. Some of his greatest sacrifices were
relative to seemingly small things. He went through life both
denying himself and lightly holding all things material, letting
life's treasures, so thought the worldly man, slip past him. Thus
he dealt with honours, praise, and the trinkets of Vanity Fair ;
and thus, losing all, he found all, and we knew at the end that
he had plucked the secret out of life's mystery, that he had the
Blue Bird caged and singing within his heart, that he had found
a perfect peace.1
1 Love cmd Life : The Story of J. Denholm Brash (1913), 157.

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF MOSES 41

III.
His Choice.
By Saith Moees, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of
Pharaoh's daughter ; choosing rather to be evil entreated with the people
of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season ; accounting the
reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt : for he looked
unto the recompense of reward. — Heb. xi. 24-26.
It was when Moses was grown that the great trial came which
determined what was to be the spirit of his life, and what manner
of man he was to be. His education had been completed. A
wealth of experience and a wealth of culture had been gathered.
Enriched by the influences which had surrounded his unconscious
childhood, and by the learning and wisdom of Egypt which had
laid their treasures at his feet, it had still to be determined
whether all this rich capability was to be kindled by the Holy
Spirit into a sacrifice and a service to the glory of God and for the
good of his brethren ; or whether it was to deaden and harden into
a mere selfish possession. In the crisis which came to him, he
had to decide whether he would identify himself with the suffer
ing race who were his kindred, and whose cause was the cause of
righteousness and mercy; or whether he would choose to rank
on the side of their oppressors, with whom, in upbringing and
position, he was already associated.
1. While the intellect of Moses was developing, it is plain that
his connexion with his family was not entirely broken. Such
a tie as often binds a foster-child to its nurse may have been
permitted to associate him with his real parents. Some means
were evidently found to instruct him in the history and Messianic
hopes of Israel, for he knew that their reproach was that of " the
Christ," greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, and fraught
with a reward for which he looked in faith (Heb. xi. 26). But
what is meant by naming as part of his burden their " reproach,"
as distinguished from their sufferings ? We shall understand, if
we reflect, that his open rupture with Egypt was unlikely to be
the work of a moment. Like all the best workers, he was led
forward gradually, at first unconscious of his vocation. Many

42 MOSES
a protest he must have made against the cruel and unjust policy
that steeped the land in innocent blood. Many a jealous
councillor must have known how to weaken his dangerous
influence by some cautious taunt, some insinuated " reproach " of
his own Hebrew origin. The warnings put by Josephus into the
lips of the priests in his childhood were likely enough to have
been spoken by some one before he was forty years old. At last,
when driven to make his choice, he " refused to be called the son
of Pharaoh's daughter," a phrase, especially in its reference to the
rejected title as distinguished from " the pleasures of sin," which
seems to imply a more formal rupture than Exodus records.
There was true heroism in the act, when Moses stepped down
from Pharaoh's throne to share the lot of his brethren. He
might have contented himself with sending them money from the
treasures of Egypt ; but it was a greater and nobler thing to give
himself. And the true religious instinct of his soul gleamed out
as he did so. There was a revelation of the faith which had been
kindled within him when he knelt at his mother's side in the
slave-hut, and had survived all the adverse influences of the
Egyptian court, like a spark of fire living in the heart of black
coals. Tf The light that flashed from Moses' eyes was of more than
mortal brilliancy, it was the sacred fire of enthusiasm, the glory
that might illumine his face alone who knew himself to be in
direct communication with the Deity. And well and wisely has
that kindred soul, Italy's greatest sculptor, portrayed him thus,
with the aureole of genius and titanic strength encircling his
brow. Across the centuries these two, mystically allied by their
superhuman energies and achievements, have met and understood
one another, and the real Moses stands forever revealed to us in
the form and features lent him here. It is strength in its highest
manifestation which Michelangelo has symbolized, and we feel
ourselves in presence of something that transcends our puny
human faculties, that springs from Faith, unswerving and
unshaken.1 2. Pondering the great question of his life which was pressing
for decision, he went out to see how it fared with his kindred.
He soon became witness of an act of oppression and cruelty,
1 From Memory's Shrine : Reminiscences of Carmen Sylva, 74.

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF MOSES 43
" He saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren."
He had the fiery vindictive blood of Levi in his veins, and he
smote the oppressor. Having satisfied his conscience by this act
of vengeance on the wrong-doer, he returned to his place in the
court, fondly believing that the deed he had done was hid, and that
it was still open to him to decide whether he would finally espouse
the Hebrew cause. There was much to be said against his doing
so, from the apparent hopelessness of making anything of so
depraved a race. His next experience among them seemed to
illustrate that hopelessness. He found a Hebrew doing as foul
a wrong to one of his own people as he had seen done by the
Egyptian. When he interfered on behalf of the wronged he was
assailed with scornful words. The deed, in doing which he had
risked so much, was cast in his teeth, and he had the sickening
experience which is almost sure to come to everyone who seeks to
elevate the degraded — of the hopelessness of the task to which he
has set himself, and of the ingratitude with which it is likely to
be repaid. He might possibly have turned aside from that to
which the better instincts of his heart inclined him, and sunk
back into a contented worldling ; but God had shut him in. The
intimation, which the sneer of the Israelite conveyed, that the
slaying of the Egyptian was known, was immediately followed by
signs of Pharaoh's wrath ; and so now the die was cast, and by
faith he "refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter;
choosing rather to be evil entreated with the people of God, than
to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."
Tf The most remarkable instance of second sight in the Bible
is given by Moses' choice where he "had respect unto the
recompense of the reward." Three times we are told he took
a look past the material and the visible over the shoulder of things
to the real values, imperishable, eternal, to the face of God.
Doubtless there were many to call him short-sighted ; and so it
would seem at first sight, but second sight showed better powers
of vision. The invisible came into ken, and a reward incorruptible,
and that fadeth not away, was his.1
Tf To bring thought and action into harmony, to make the
presence of the Unseen a guide through the path of this present
world : that is the problem of the practically religious life. To
Florence Nightingale, communion with the Unseen meant some-
1 M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every -Day Living, 14.

44 MOSES
thing deeper, richer, fuller, more positive than the fear of God.
The fear of God is the beginning, but not the end, of wisdom, for
perfect love casteth out fear. It was for the love of God as an
active principle in her mind, constraining all her deeds, that she
strove.1 (1) In seeking to understand this attempt of Moses to relieve
the hard lot of his brethren we notice, first, that it sprang largely
''from sympathy. — At first it must have seemed very strange to
him to realize that he was bound in bonds of such close kinship
to these toiling, suffering, dying Hebrews. " He went out unto
his brethren." But this feeling must soon have given place to an
intense commiseration, as he heard the nation sighing by reason
of its bondage ; and, groaning under its accumulated sorrows, his
soul would be filled with tender pity. And within a little, that
pity for his people turned to indignation against their oppressors.
But the mere impulse of pity would never havejbeen^ strong
enough to bear him through the weary years of the. desert march.
Beneath the repeated provocations of the people it must have
given way. He could never have carried them as a nursing-
father, or asked that he might be blotted out of the book of life
for them, or pleaded with them for God. Nothing short of a
reception of the Divine patience, let into hislsouFas the ocean
waves find an inlet into some deeply-indented coast, could suffice
for the demands which would be made on him in those coming
terrible years.
(2) It was premature. — God's time for the deliverance of His
people was not due for forty years. The iniquity of the Amorites
had not reached its full, though it was nearing the brim of the
cup. His own education, moreover, was very incomplete; it
would take at least forty years to drain him of his self-will and
self-reliance, and make him a vessel meet for the Master's use.
The Hebrew people had not as yet come to the pitch of anguish,
which is so touchingly referred to, when the death of their
principal oppressor seems to have brought matters to a crisis, and
they forsook the false gods to which they had given their allegi
ance in order to return to the God of their fathers.
(3) It was done in the pride of his own strength. — It was
but natural that Moses should suppose that he could do some-
1 Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 60.

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF MOSES 45
thing for tlie amelioration of his people's lot. He had always
been accustomed to have his way. Crowds of obsequious servants
and courtiers had yielded to his slightest whim. By his strong
right hand he had hewn out a great career. He was conscious of
vast stores of youthful energy and natural force, untapped by
sufficient calls, and undiminished by physical excess; surely
these would count for something. He would make that nation of
oppressors reel before his blows, and of course he would be hailed
by his brethren as their God-sent deliverer. We have been
disposed to attribute too much of the success of the Exodus to
the natural qualities of the great leader ; but we must always
remember that, like Gideon's host, he was at first top strong for
Go<i^-— God cannot give His glory to another. He dare not entrust
His power to men till they are humbled and emptied and conscious
of their helplessness. Even the Son learned obedience by the
things that He suffered, before He could say, " All power is given
unto me in heaven and in earth."
Tf Let us view Moses' sacrifice in the light of that of the great
Master Himself. Between Jesus coming to earth to redeem men
and Moses leaving the court of Egypt out of sympathy for his
oppressed nation there was no doubt an infinite difference in one
view, but a near resemblance in another. Like Jesus, he could
not rest satisfied with an honourable and comfortable position,
while his brethren appealed so powerfully to his compassion.
Like Jesus, he threw in his lot with his afflicted people, and
became for them a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He
was of that noble type of men who are ever ready to sacrifice
themselves for others, and count no labour and no pain too great
on their behalf. In the Divine Son of Mary this type is at its
highest. But in all ages, and notably in our own, we find not a
few who have devoted themselves heart and soul to the cause of
the oppressed, and found their noblest satisfaction in relieving
their burdens and breaking their fetters. Nothing can ever rob
Christianity of this glorious distinction so long as the example of
Him retains its power, who, " though he was rich, yet for our
sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich." 1
3. When the news of Moses' first attempt came to the ears of
Pharaoh, he sought to slay Moses. Moses feared, and fled from
the face of Pharaoh. In after years, under similar circumstances,
1 "W. G. Blaikie, Heroes of Israel, 307.

46 MOSES
it is said that " he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king "
(Heb. xi. 27). And when we ask the reason of his fearlessness,
we learn that it was by faith he did so ; for " he endured, as seeing
him who is invisible." But if such were the case afterwards, why
was it not so at the time with which we are dealing ? The reason
is obvious. Faith is possible only when we are on God's plan,
and stand on God's promise. It is useless to pray for increased
faith until we have fulfilled the conditions of faith. And amongst
those conditions this is the first — ascertain your plade in God's
plan, and get on to it ; and this is the second — feed on God's
promises. And when each of these is realized, faith comes of
itself, and there is absolutely nothing that is impossible. The
believing soul can " do all things " with God, because it has got on
to God's lines ; it is, indeed, itself as the metal track along which
God travels to men in love, grace, and truth. But Moses was out
of touch with God. So he fled and crossed the desert that lay
between him and the eastern frontier; threaded the mountain
passes of the Sinaitic Peninsula, through which in after years he
was to lead his people ; and at last sat wearily down by a well in
the land of Midian.
Tf A fugitive from Egyptian justice, starting from Memphis,
would almost necessarily set his face towards the east. He could
not escape by travelling northward, for in that direction the
dominion of the Egyptian monarch reached to the shores of the
sea ; it was hopeless to proceed southward, for the frontier on that
side was 700 miles away ; to the west was nothing but uninhabited
sandy desert, without food, or water, or shade. The eastern
desert was, on the contrary, to some extent peopled ; it had trees
and wells in places, and thus was traversable ; though reckoned
to Egypt, it was scarcely under the Egyptian rule, and the writ of
Pharaoh scarcely ran in its recesses. Moses, having provided
himself with a bag of meal and a water-bottle, would enter on the
desert within a few hours of quitting Memphis, and would gradu
ally thread its valleys, always making towards the east, until he
passed the head of the Gulf of Suez, and found himself in Arabia.
Even there, however, he was not wholly safe. The Egyptians in
the time of Eameses il. had permanent settlements in the Wady
Magharah and at Sarabit-el-Khadim in the Sinaitic Peninsula,
where they worked the mines of copper and turquoise which then
abounded in those districts. To communicate with these settle
ments they must have had a line of fortified posts, extending

BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF MOSES 47
from their frontier at or near Suez to the valleys in which the
mines were situated. It was the aim of Moses to place himself
beyond the sphere of Egyptian influence altogether ; and to do
this he had to reach the more eastern portion of the peninsula, a
region at that time inhabited by the Midianites, and known as
"the land of Midian " (Exod. ii. 15). The route which he took
was probably very much the same as that by which he afterwards
led the Israelites to Mount Sinai. It ran nearly parallel with the
eastern coast of the Gulf of Suez, but did not skirt the shore
excepting for a short distance. It avoided the Egyptian posts and
settlements, and brought the traveller, after the lapse of some
weeks, to the vicinity of the Elanitic Gulf, or eastern arm of the
Eed Sea, which seems in early times to have been the proper
country of the southern Midianites.1
1 G. Rawlinson, Moses : His Life and Times, 59.

MOSES. III.
In Midian.

MOSES-SAMSON — 4

Literature.
Brown, Charles, The Birth of a Nation (1908), 107.
Brown, James, Sermons with Memoir (1892), 159.
Campbell, R. J., Sermons addressed to Individuals (1904), 205.
Carpenter, W. B., The Burning Bush (1893), 1.
Cumming, J. E., Scripture Photographs, 131.
Davies, D., Talks with Men, Women and Children, iv. (1892) 31.
Hull, E. L., Sermons, iii. (1874) 81.
Maclaren, A., Leaves from the Tree of Life (1899), 84.
Matheson, G., The Representative Men of the Bible, i. (1902) 206.
Maurice, F. D., The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament (1892),
154.
Morgan, E., The Calls of God (1899), 61.
Parkhurst, C. H., A Little Lower than the Angels (1908), 230.
Pattison, T. H., The South Wind (1905), 23.
Pearse, M. G., Moses : His Life and its Lessons (1894), 33.
Selby, T. G., The God ofthe Patriarchs (1904), 163.
Simpson, J. G., Great Ideals of Religion (1912), 243.
Smith, John, The Permanent Message ofthe Exodus (1895), 46.
Westphal, A., The Law and the Prophets (1910), 157.
Young, D. T., The Unveiled Evangel (1912), 205.
British Congregationalist, July 30, 1908 (J. H. Jowett).
Christian World Pulpit, lviii. (1900) 246 (P. M'Adam Muir) ; lxxxii.
(1912) 237 (G. K. Grice).

In Midian.
Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest
of Midian. — Exod. iii. I.
When we eome to consider the sojourn of Moses in Midian the
impression we receive is one of disappointment. The youth has
become a middle-aged man ; the courtier of Egypt has become a
shepherd in Midian. The ardour of his choice has not been
supplemented by ardour of deed. Its only result has been
asceticism. He has fled from the scene where his people were
oppressed, but he has done nothing to relieve the oppression. He
has seemingly been wasting his time.
But it is not so. He has been preparing for the call of God
and the work which God has prepared for him to do.
Tf I am struck by the fact that between the age of moral
choice and the period of outward action the Bible loves to inter
pose a time of rest. The child-Jesus sees His mission at the age
of twelve, but enters upon it only at the age of thirty. The man
of Tarsus beholds a light from heaven and is eager at once to
follow it ; but he is sent for three years to ponder in the solitudes
of Arabia. There is a time in moral history when a voice says
to every one, " Come up into this desert place, and rest a while ! "
It would seem as if the morning were not the test of a man, as if
the hour of excitement were not the hour of surest promise. The
Divine Voice says : " Go, and think over it. Do not yield at once
to the impulse of the morning. Try how long it will survive.
Test it by the circling of the hours. See if it will outlast the
season of excitement. You can march to battle at the sound of
trumpet and the beat of drum ; can you be resolute for the struggle
when there are no accompaniments of glory ? Only then can you
say that you have received your call." 1
' G. Matheson, The Representative Men qf the Bible, i. 208.

W

52 MOSES I.
The Desert.
I have been a stranger in a strange land. — Exod. ii. 22.
For more than a generation Moses has disappeared into the
desert, and, whilst he enlarged his religious ideas by contact with
the priest of Midian himself, the change produced in the tempera
ment of the future deliverer was mainly owing to the chastening
severities and the appalling solitudes of his new environment.
He needed these hard and inhospitable tracts of Midian, not only
as a sanctuary from the wrath of Pharaoh, but also as a school to
prepare him for his coming work as emancipator and nation-
builder. Strange change this from the painted halls of Egypt, perfumed
with spices and cooled with plashing fountains, to the coarse black
tent of the shepherd that scarcely keeps out the heats of noon
or the winds of night ! To pass, within a few short weeks, from
the emerald fields and shaded orchards and sumptuous banquets
of the Nile to the precarious wells, the sand storms, the scrub-
patches, and the dates and coarse bread of the desert was a trans
formation few would welcome. The man who had known from
childhood the touch of fine linen upon his limbs must now wear
the coarse hair-cloth of the mountain herdsman. A few months
ago he might have allied himself by marriage with the royal or
priestly families of Egypt, but now he is glad to take for his bride
a sun-burnt maiden from the sheep-folds, whose talk ranges chiefly
over the commonplace topics of wool, dairy work, querns, and
primitive ovens for bread-baking. To a man trained in the best
arts of the day, and moved by large ambitions in religious state
craft, such a life must have been insufferably narrow and irksome ;
but at length he resigns himself to its duties and finds therein
quiet contentment of spirit. He once expected to be the founder
and first prophet of a religious commonwealth, but his old ideals
have vanished. Little by little he breaks himself into his new
life. As he wanders through the round of successive seasons over
the blistering sands and up the grim wadies, whose silence is
unbroken for weeks, save by the bleating of the flocks and the

IN MIDIAN 53
screaming of vultures, the passion, self-will and presunlptuous
recklessness of the first phase of character in which he has been
presented to us die down to the roots, and this change in the man
has changed the history of the world.
Tf Some years ago I was struck with the vivid yet delicate
sensitiveness to the life and power of nature shown in the follow
ing story which is told by Mr. Owen Bhoscomyl in the Christ
mas number of the Idler. The scene is laid in the Western
Prairies of America : — " Two days ago he was riding back, alone,
in the afternoon, from an unsuccessful search after strayed horses,
and suddenly, all in the lifting of a hoof, the weird prairie had
gleamed into eerie life, had dropped the veil and spoken to him ;
while the breeze stopped, and the sun stood still for a flash in
waiting for his answer. And he, his heart in a grip of ice, the
frozen flesh a-crawl with terror upon his loosened bones, white-
lipped and wide-eyed with frantic fear, uttered a yell of horror as
he dashed the spurs into his panic-stricken horse, in a mad
endeavour to escape from the Awful Presence that filled all earth
and sky from edge to edge of vision. Then, almost in the same
flash, the unearthly light died out of the dim prairie, the veil
swept across into place again ; and he managed to check his wild
flight and look about him. ... It was as if his spirit stood apart
from him, putting questions which he could not answer, and
demanding judgment upon problems which he dare not reason
out. Then he remembered what this thing was which had
happened. The prairie had spoken to him, as sooner or later it
spoke to most men that rode it. It was a something well known
amongst them, but known without words, and as by a subtle
instinct, for no man who had experienced it ever spoke willingly
about it afterwards. Only the man would be changed; some
began to be more reckless, as if a dumb blasphemy rankled hidden
in their breasts. Others, coming with greater strength perhaps
to the ordeal, became quieter, looking squarely at any danger as
they faced it, but continuing ahead as though quietly confident
that nothing happened save as the gods ordained." 1
0 all wide places, far from feverous towns ;
Great shining seas ; pine forests ; mountains wild ;
Eock-bosomed shores; rough heaths, and sheep-cropt downs;
Vast pallid clouds ; blue spaces undefiled —
Eoom ! give me room ! give loneliness and air —
Free things and plenteous in your regions fair!
1 ~W. M. Ramsay, The Education of Christ, 7.

54 MOSES
0 God of mountains, stars, and boundless spaces,
0 God of freedom and of joyous hearts,
When Thy face looketh forth from all men's faces,
There will be room enough in crowded marts !
Brood Thou around me, and the noise is o'er,
Thy universe my closet with shut door.
Heart, heart, awake ! The love that loveth all
Maketh a deeper calm than Horeb's cave.
God in thee, can His children's folly gall ?
Love may be hurt, but shall not love be brave ? —
Thy holy silence sinks in dews of balm ;
Thou art my solitude, my mountain-calm ! 1
1. What a contrast there is between the man who goes into
the desert and the man who comes out of it. We saw him step
forth from the palace, the judge and the ruler — the man born to
command; and if he is not obeyed there is a sharp and ready
method of dealing with the offender. Smite him, kill him if need
be. A young hero this who will not stand any nonsense; and
when his heart is on fire take care of yourself — he can shoot
lightnings, forked and well-aimed. But his heart is saddened;
this fighting and smiting does not succeed. Then come the days
of loneliness and disappointment softening him. This man must
fail that he may succeed. Failure alone can fit such men for
success. The life of the shepherd is gradually toning down the
lordly ruler and making him more simple and brotherly. This
communion with God in the solitudes has loosened him from him
self. The very calling of the shepherd day after day has developed
gentleness and kindly forethought and patience. He learns to
walk slowly that the tired sheep may keep up with him. He
stoops, he who was the fierce warrior, to lift the little lamb and
carry it in his bosom. Day after day he thinks only of the
panting flock, searching out the shade for them, and leading them
where they can lie down in the green pasture. So does this
Moses come to be diffident, pitiful as a father, forbearing. And
when God conies to him with the great commission, he has room
for God, much room ; he who was " mighty in deeds and in words "
is afraid of himself. He is " not eloquent," — who will heed him ?
1 George MacDonald, Organ Songs (Poetical Works, i. 288). "

IN MIDIAN 55
Pharaoh will not hear him or Israel receive him. So Moses
becomes the meekest of men. How? He has been to school.
Where ? Iu the wilderness. For what ? That he may learn to
lead the flock of God like a shepherd; that he may bear with
them, and pity them, and be not only brave, but patient and
gentle. So was he fitted for the great work that God had for him
to do. 2. It was not only essential that the leader of the Exodus and
the lawgiver of Israel should be intellectually able, learned in,
all the wisdom of the Egyptians, mighty in words and deeds ; not
only morally noble, one who could choose " rather to be evil entreated
with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for
a season." It was essential that he should have the deep spiritual
experience and the solitary fellowship of soul with the Highest
which constitute those who have them in some sense poets. The
promulgator of the new religion, which in the end was to develop
into a universal faith, must learn to see every bush in the wilder
ness ablaze with the Divine glory, burning but not consumed;
and to hear God's eternal law proclaimed as with the sound of
a trumpet by every thunderstorm which rolls its echoes among
the mountains.
Tf In the training of every man who would attain to the
highest type of human life, and to the greatest possible power to
influence other lives for good, there is something more needed
than the culture of the intellectual, something more even than
the development of the moral, nature, before it reaches the power
to render any sacrifice required by God and duty. If we would
attain the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ all this
must be crowned by the spiritual. We must learn to see the
vision and to dream the dream. We must rise into fellowship
with the unseen, and behold the world transfigured in the light
that never was on sea or land. Our eyes must be open to the
glory of the Lord, which shines refulgent on every bush, and our
ears must be quick to hear His voice, which whispers in every
passing breeze and waxes louder and louder in every storm. We
must attain that reverence without which the highest gifts are
vain, and be willing to bow as children before the unfathomable
mystery of God, taking our shoes from off our feet because we
stand on holy ground. All this can be reached only through
habitual retirement from the babble of the world, through patient

56 MOSES
waiting for God's promised revelation to faithful hearts and God's
appointed time for opening to us the path of duty.1

II.
The Bush.
And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the
midst of a bush : and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and
the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside now, and
see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. — Exod. iii. 2, 3.
The Burning Bush is one of the most striking incidents in the
story of the Bible. It held, as we know, a prominent place in
the thought and study of the Hebrew people. The passage in
which the episode is recorded was commonly cited as " the Bush."
It occupies a leading position in the development of the inter
rupted speech which forms the defence of Stephen before the
Sanhedrin. And the celebrated argument by which our Lord
unexpectedly silenced the Sadducees in the controversy concern
ing resurrection was drawn from this experience of Moses, the
great lawgiver. Had they never read " in the Bush " how Moses
speaks of the God of his fathers ? Abraham was indeed de
parted, but dead he could not be, for God " is not the God of the
dead, but of the living."
Nor is it wonderful that the incident should have impressed
the imagination of succeeding ages. It is the critical, personal
experience in the life of a great leader, which, as happens again
and again with the world's men of action, was to find its interpre
tation in the sphere of public history. The refined and cultured
personality within which smouldered the fire of a generous en
thusiasm; the rolling uplands of the lonely Sinaitic desert for
which he had exchanged the pavements and palaces of the crowded
city; the black mountains of Horeb against which the clump
of wind-swept acacia glowed with steady flame; the revelation
of the nature and name of the Eternal which became the im
pulse at the back of those wonders in Egypt that brought the
house of Jacob from among a strange people — these have all
combined to make the burning bush one of the most inspiring
1 James Brown, Sermons with Memoir, 172.

IN MIDIAN 57
symbols with which the history of religion has enriched the
race. Tf A little stunted bush, low-placed and desert-bound, a trivial
thing giving no rest from glare, no shade from sun, a thing out
side the common use of life, child of a day, creature of circum
stance : raising no thought above the commonplace, devoid of
mission, message, comfort, anything that makes life happier to
men around.
Then a breath of inspiration, flash of light, a wave of holy
influence, touch of miracle : God daring the unusual. Everything
defined, enthused under the wonder-change, the desert-prophet
drawn to see the sight, the stunted Bush the centre of attrac
tion. A message echoing down the centuries, words of encourage
ment and comfort, hope for the hopeless, freedom for the slave,
Moses for leader: he who yesterday was desert-ranger now the
Friend of God, recipient of His Law, Vision and Glory.
Desert transfigured, commonplace relieved, the Bush no
longer common but glorified, inspired, type of the Incarnation —
God in the passing phase, the casual thoughts of men: God in
the desert drear, the common things of life : God in human life.
God of the burning hearts and cleansed lips, God of the busy
hands and thoughtful brow, God of the Altar-fire. God of our
highest hopes, our motives pure : God of our strongest and our
weakest hours : God of our manhood's will, our woman's love, our
children's innocence and merry play. God of the hills and valleys,
stormy sea and desert wild: God of surprises, God revealed in
fire.1 1. The bush. — The burning bush has traditionally been sup
posed to be a kind of bramble (Bubus), of which Palestine has
several varieties; but one of the thorny shrubs of Sinai of the
acacia family would seem more probable. Sacred bushes and
trees are common in Palestine and Arabia.
Tf Transfiguration is for Thompson the most familiar of
mysteries. Good faith needs no Burning Bush. Or, rather, for
the faithful every bush is alight. For this faithful poet the
seasons were full of the promise of Eesurrection. In spring he
calls Hark to the Jubilate of the bird
For them that found the dying way to life!
1 A. Daintree, Studies in Hope, 21.

58 MOSES
The rebirth of the earth after winter is the figure of the future
life: Thou wak'st, 0 Earth,
And work'st from change to change and birth to birth
Creation old as hope, and new as sight.
And— All the springs are flash-lights of one Spring.
In the same poem he is seen at his daily business, the routine
work of co-ordinating and synthesizing. Light — the light of the
sun — is also
Light to the sentient closeness of the breast,
Light to the secret chambers of the brain !
Arguments that go from heaven downwards are the common
places of his poetry.1
2. The bush burned with fire. — Throughout Scripture, fire is a
symbol of the Divine nature, as in the smoking lamp and the
blazing fire that Abraham saw, or the pillar that lighted the
darkness over the sleeping camp, or as in the prophet's word,
" The light of Israel shall be a flaming fire," or as in the Baptist's
prophecy of a baptism in the Holy Ghost and in fire, or as at
Pentecost with its fiery tongues, or as in the great saying, " Our
God is a consuming fire."
Tf In almost every religion on earth a sacred significance
attached to fire. That significance is not primarily destruction,
as we sometimes suppose — an error which has led to ghastly
misunderstandings of some Scriptures, and of the God whom they
reveal. When, for instance, Isaiah asks, " Who among us shall
dwell with everlasting burnings?" he has been supposed to be
asking what soul can endure the terrors of God's consuming and
unending wrath. But a little attention to the words would have
shown that the " devouring fire " and the " everlasting burnings "
mean God and not hell, and that the Divine nature is by them
represented not as too fierce to be approached but as the true
dwelling place of men, which indeed only the holy can inhabit,
but to inhabit which is life. Precisely parallel is the Psalmist's
question, " Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, and who
shall stand in his holy place ? " Fire is the source of warmth,
and so, in a sense, of life. It is full of quick energy ; it trans
mutes dead matter into its own ruddy likeness, and changes gross
1 E. Meynell, The Life of Franc's Thompson (1913), 203.

IN MIDIAN 59
earthly dulness into flame aspiring towards the skies. Therefore
it is fit symbol of creative and cleansing power. God is the fiery
Spirit of the universe, a spark from whom irradiates and vitalizes
every living thing. But the felicity of the symbol is that, along
with blessed thoughts of life-giving and purifying, it suggests
potentiality of destructive energy. The same God is the fire to
quicken, sanctify and bless, and, if rejected, to consume. " What
maketh heaven, that maketh hell." 1
Tf " I think," said Dinah Morris, " when God makes His presence
felt through us, we are like the burning bush : Moses never took
any heed what sort of bush it was — he only saw the brightness
of the Lord."2
3. The bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. —
That undying flame teaches the same great truth as the ac
companying words, " I am that I am." It burns and does not
burn out, it has no exhaustion waiting on its energy, and thus is
a symbol of the One Being whose being is its own law and its
own source. He gives and is none the poorer; He works and
never wearies ; He '' operates unspent " ; He loves and loves for
ever. We are that which we become ; He is that which He is.
We die because we live, but He lives by His own life. That fire
burns, and needs no replenishing, and knows no extinction.
Surely that great sight, which startled and strengthened the
shepherd for his tremendous task, may well evoke our faith.
Surely, in our fleeting days, the one means of securing for ourselves
blessedness, rest, strength, and a life that, like His, can never die
into cold ashes, is to grasp this great truth, and to knit ourselves
to Him who lives for ever, and whose love is as lasting as His
bfe, " Tfee everlasting God, the Lord, fainteth not, neither is weary.
He giveth power to the faint ; and to them that have no might
he increaseth strength."
Tf Oh ! if one had to depend upon the state of one's feelings,
changes of one's temperament ! If God left us to these ? But
He is, and therefore may we trust at all times, and in all places,
and in all moods of minds. It does not signify much whether the
body is weak or the mind weak; God can take care of both.
Christ poured forth His soul to death, as well as gave up His
body, and trusted under the sense of being lost. It is that trust
1 A. Maclaren, Leaves from the Tree of Life, 85.
2 George Eliot, Adam Bede.

60 MOSES
which stands us in stead, trust when there is nothing in past,
present, or future, in anything one can see, hear, remember in
others or oneself to lean upon. Then we know God. The bush
is burning and not consumed. He is in it.1
4. The burning bush is an emblem of indestructibility.
(1) To the children of Israel it has always been an emblem of
the indestructibility of the " People of God." " God shewed unto
Moses " — such was an ancient interpretation — " a fire that burned
and caused no destruction, and said, Behold, as the bush is burned
with fire and is not consumed, so Israel cannot be destroyed by
his enemies." " Time," so says a modern Jewish rabbi, " the
great destroyer of all earthly things, has passed over Israel and
his religion, and has not affected them. That people is not
numerous, it is weak ; rather than the cedar of Lebanon, it
resembles the frail bush of the mountain which nothing can
defend from the storm. Yet Israel exists. But there is Fire in
the bush: a devouring flame envelops it. The earth has often
been reddened with the blood of thousands of victims ; it has been
a battle-field on which the fire consumed everything it met. The
kings of the world conspired against that people ; they invented
calumny, employed persecution, and attempted to efface it from
the number of the living ; and yet Israel exists : the bush was not
consumed." (2) What Israel has said, so also may the Church of Christ
say regarding her sufferings, her inheritance, and her destiny.
She also has appeared to be enveloped in flame, to be involved in
inevitable destruction; but she has been preserved through all,
and in the midst of seeming ruin, the voice of God is heard, and
the presence of God is discerned.
Tf It was apparently in the year 1583 that the Synod of the
Eeformed Church of France resolved that a seal should be made
for its use, wherewith all letters of importance written in its name
might be sealed; and nothing better fitted to symbolize the
"renowned and once flourishing, though now desolate, Church
could be devised than Moses' vision when he fed his flocks under
the mount of God, viz. a Bramble Bush in a flaming fire, having
that essential incommunicable name of God — Jehovah — engraved
in its centre, and this motto, ' I burn, but am not consumed,' in its
1 The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, i. 515.

IN MIDIAN 61
circumference." The adoption of the seal is said to have caused
much commotion among the enemies of the Church, and all
documents which could be found bearing the emblem were seized
and destroyed. From France, the device passed to Scotland,
appearing first on the title page of a book, then on Acts of
Assembly ; and now, not only the Scottish Church, but most of
her offshoots, both in this land and in other lands, have assumed
the Burning Bush as their emblem, and the words Nee tamen
consumebatur (" it was not consumed") as their motto.1
(3) And so it is also with the life of the individual. For this
is the very truth which Christ, with a depth of interpretation that
put to shame the cavilling listeners, found in the words that
accompanied this vision : " I am the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." He said to the sneering
Sadducees, who, like all other sneerers, saw only the surface of
what they were sarcastic about, " Did not Moses teach you in "
(the section about) " the Bush, that the dead rise, when he said :
I am the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob ? " A. man
of whom it can once be said that God is his God cannot die.
Such a bond can never be broken. The communion of earth,
imperfect as it is, is the prophecy of heaven and the pledge of
immortality. And so from that relationship which subsisted
between the fathers and God, Christ infers the certainty of their
resurrection. It seems a great leap, but there are intervening
steps, not stated by our Lord, which securely bridge the distance
between the premisses and the conclusion. Such communion is,
in its very nature, unaffected by the accident of death. Therefore
Abraham,' Isaac, and Jacob are still living, " for all " — those whom
we call dead, as well as those whom we call living — " live unto
him," and though so many centuries have passed, God still is, not
was, their God. The relation between them is eternal, and
guarantees their immortal life. But immortality without cor
poreity is not conceivable as the perfect state, and if the dead
live still, there must come a time when the whole man shall
partake of redemption ; and in body, soul, and spirit, the glorified
and risen saints shall be for ever with the Lord.
1 P. M'Adam Muir.

62 MOSES III.
The Call.
And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him
out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here
am I. — Exod. iii. 4.
" The call of Moses," says Professor Westphal, " is the central
event of Hebrew Jehovism, just as the vision of St. Paul on the
road to Damascus is the central event of the Apostolic Church.
There is no more reason to question the reality of the burning
bush — -flagror non consumor — than to throw doubt upon the great
light which struck down the Apostle of the Gentiles. And, as the
vision of Saul was accompanied by a revelation which the Apostle
afterwards called his gospel, so Moses also received, in this
spiritual meeting with God, the gospel which was to be the key-note
of all the preaching of the prophets."
1. It is a call. It is a call from God. God is first. And He
is first in this call because of His sympathy. Before the call of
Moses we have the statement of God's sympathy with the children
of Israel in the sufferings in Egypt. Four statements are made —
God heard ; God remembered ; God saw ; God knew.
(1) God heard. — " Their cry came up unto God." Probably it
did not articulate itself in petition. It was just a cry of misery,
in which the deeper voice of manhood blended with the anguish
of the bereaved mother and the wail of the babe. But God
understood it, and was able to trace each formative element to its
source. In the graphic language of the chroniclers, it " came up
unto God."
(2) God remembered. — "God remembered his covenant with
Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob." We are carried back to
that solemn watch of two nights and a day that Abraham kept,
when, conforming to the wont of the sons of the desert, God
gave visible confirmation of the validity of His covenant : " And
he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a
stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them ; and
they shall afflict them four hundred years ; and also that nation,
whom they serve, will I judge : and afterward shall they come out

IN MIDIAN 63
with great substance." That covenant was afterwards solemnly
ratified with additions, and is described as an everlasting or
eternal covenant. In some respects it still lies at the basis of all
God's dealings with those who, by faith, are the children of
faithful Abraham. Though four long centuries had passed, that
covenant was as fresh as at its inauguration in the heart of
Jehovah ; and, not because of the worthiness of the people, but
because of the two immutable things that made it impossible for
Him to lie, when the time of the promise drew nigh, He began to
carry its provisions into execution.
(3) God saw. — " And God saw the chddren of Israel." " And
the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which
are in Egypt." To realize that He sees and knows, that nothing
which concerns us is hidden from Him, that the darkness shines
as the day, and the lowest part of the earth conceals nothing from
His omniscience — this carries with it all the rest ; for He cannot
see without coming down in pitying help. When in after days
the children of Israel were assured that Jehovah had seen their
affliction, " then they bowed their heads and worshipped," as
though they had nothing more to ask; and the result justified
their act.
(4) God knew. — "And God took knowledge of them." He
notes all things in His book, puts every tear into His bottle,
counts the hairs as they fall from the head or turn white with
anguish. " I have surely seen the affliction of my people. . . .
I know their sorrows." God knows with a personal knowledge.
It has been truly said that the word " masses " does not occur in
God's vocabulary. We are not masses, but units ; not a forest,
but trees ; not a race, but individuals. It is as though there were
but one child in the Father's house, and each of us that child.
He also knows with a sympathetic knowledge. He is touched with
the feeling of our infirmities, and whatever is done to us is
accepted as done to Him. " I was in prison, and ye visited me
not." " He that rejecteth you rejecteth me ; and he that rejecteth
me rejecteth him that sent me." Just as the head suffers with
eaeh throb of pain in any of its members, so does Christ suffer
through the centuries each slight or wrong meted out to one of
His own. God knows with a knowledge lathed in love}
1 !. B. Meyer.

64 MOSES
Tf In the groaning and travailing of creation she bore her part,
but never alone ; always God was there bearing His part and the
part of every one. Across the whole world there lay for her the
light of the glory of Divine sacrifice. Not for her was any
picture of a serene and far-away God without " parts or passions,"
looking on at the world's pain ; it was the glory of her God to
share all pain. There was nothing, no weariness of hers or any
man's, no suffering, even of the beasts, that was not His. And
faith in God gave her also faith in suffering, in the value of a
sacrifice to be accomplished, of a travail that should bring forth
fruit to all eternity, of groaning that was the utterance of slaves
working towards their manumission and the freedom of Divine
sons. " Lo, how I loved thee ! " All men shall hear this when
their own sacrifice is indeed accomplished, and their " sin-glazed
eyes " open to see who it is that has sacrificed Himself in them.
This was her strength.1
Tf " I know their sorrows." The saintly and scholarly M'Cheyne
described this as "a sweet word." Such it assuredly is. Of all
the sweet words of the Bible surely none is sweeter than this.
As the captive Israelites sweated and groaned under their relent
less taskmasters, the sympathizing Jehovah said, " I know their
sorrows." And as He beholds us in all the tragedy of our inner
life and of our outer life, He still exclaims, " I know their sorrows."2
2. And now the time is come for the deliverance of Israel, and
the first step is to call the leader. " God called unto him out of
the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses."
God cannot do without Moses. We are ready enough to
assert that Moses can do nothing without God. He has, perhaps,
tried and failed ; and we had better hold by that principle. But
we must be equally ready to assert that God will do nothing
without Moses. He is the man, and no other will do. In mind
and heart, by the education of the palace and the desert, he has
been trained and fitted for this stupendous business, and no one
else can do it. Most impressive is the dialogue in this chapter
between a commanding and persuading God and a shrinking,
fearful man. The Most High, who can lay Pharaoh's pride in
the dust with a touch of His hand, waits and pleads and reasons
with, assures and reassures, and almost drives this reluctant
shepherd ; and apparently will not move for the relief of Israel
1 Michael Fairless : Her Life and Writings, 67.
a Dinsdale T. Young, The Unveiled Evangel, 205.

IN MIDIAN 65
without him. It illustrates a universal principle. The lesson of
history, the greatest lesson of the Incarnation, is that it is by
humanity that humanity will be redeemed.
Tf Thomas Carlyle complains concerning human sorrow that
" God does nothing." Perhaps He is waiting for Thomas Carlyle,
who does nothing. For nothing is more certain than the fact that
every movement for the emancipation and uplifting of the human
race has had a man at the heart of it, and that God does nothing
without the co-operation of man. John Wesley's saying has been
often quoted, that " God buries His workmen but carries on His
work." It is true ; only let it be realized that He carries it on by
the hands of other workmen.1
3. Why Moses ? There must have been some preparation in
this man's life before this vision came. We cannot suppose that
it would so suddenly have enabled him to believe in a calling so
overwhelming in its difficulties, if God had not by the discipline
of his former life awakened thoughts and feelings in his soul
which this vision kindled into power. God never reveals to the
thoughtless a great work like that. The prophets and messengers
of the old time were constantly prepared by long hours of
thought and doubt over the evils of the world, before they were
summoned to action. The Lord Himself went for forty days of
lonely conflict into the wilderness ; Paul was sent for three years
into the wild regions of Arabia ; and Moses was trained by more
than forty years of thought and sorrow, before God showed him
his destiny. And so we may believe that all these years of Moses'
life were a needful and gradual education for the wonderful hour
when the bush burned with the presence of Jehovah and the work '
of his life became clear.
Tf " Thy lot or portion in life," said the Caliph Ali, " is seeking
after thee ; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." So Miss
Nightingale may have read in Emerson ; and in homelier phrase
her good Aunt Mai had said to her, " If you will but be ready for
it, something is getting ready for you, and will be sure to turn up
in time." Which things Florence, I doubt not, laid up in her
heart. When news began to arrive from the East, did she recall
a prophecy which had been made about her by a friend long before
the Crimean War was dreamt of ? Lady Lovelace, the daughter
of Lord Byron, the " Ada, sole daughter of my home and heart,"
1 Charles Brown, The Birth ofa Nation, 120.
MOSES-SAMSON — 5

66 MOSES
had, before her death in 1852, written a poem in honour of her
friend, Florence Nightingale. The piece ends with a presage : —
In future years, in distant climes,
Should war's dread strife its victims claim,
Should pestilence, unchecked betimes,
Strike more than sword, than cannon maim,
He who then reads these truthful rhymes
Will trace her progress to undying fame.1
(1) Perhaps we may see signs of Moses' fitness in the exercise
of curiosity : " And Moses said, I will turn aside now, and see this
great sight, why the bush is not burnt." It is an outward sign,
something appealing to curiosity and wonder, that first seizes the
attention of a man, whether he be a shepherd on a lonely plain or
a dweller in a city, and that compels him to ask himself, " What
is this ? whence comes it ? " He may turn aside to see the great
sight merely as a sight. The impression it makes may be upon
his senses, or, through his senses, upon his imagination. But if
his mind has been much exercised with inward conflicts before, —
if he has been seeking for something not to gratify his eyes, but
to be a rest and home for his own being ; if his thoughts concern
ing himself have been connected with thoughts of other men ; if
he has been labouring under a weight which is resting upon
himself and upon them — then the visible object will not be that
which takes possession of him or holds him captive. It will be
but the sign to him of something behind and beneath. He will
ask for that which is signified by the burning bush. Its terror,
and its wonder, will be not in itself but in that.
Tf We have all known men who have never in their lives been
struck by a grand surprise; they are always so omniscient. If
you tell them anything, they knew it before. If you could take
them to the falls of Niagara, they would reply complacently and
superciliously, " Ah, well, I thought they were better worth look
ing at than this." They have never been moved to wonder, much
less to admiration, in their lives. Whenever you meet with such
a man, who has no more capacity for emotion in him, in the
direction of wonder and admiration, than cast-iron, you meet with
a man who has done nothing worth doing in God's world. One
of the first conditions of noble manhood is that a man should be
capable of wonder, earnest inquiry and intense admiration when
1 Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 141.

IN MIDIAN 67
there is a worthy object for wonder, inquiry and admiration.
And thus, " hero-worship " (a word capable of misuse and some
times representing what is sinful by its extravagance) is a
condition of greatness. Teach your boy to admire some character
in history, teach your daughter to fall in love with some grand
heroine, not in a novel but in the story of the ages. One of the
steps towards becoming a hero is to admire a hero.1
(2) Another element in the fitness of Moses for his task was
the capacity for reverence. There are many who have the spirit
of inquiry without devotion. Moses said, " I will turn aside now,
and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt." Every man
who has given his Ufe to solve problems would have applauded
this resolve on the part of Moses. But the next test of character
is, " How is inquiry to be carried on ? " Moses had probably now
to learn this secret for the first time. Never had a mystery so
startled him as at this moment. He would have plenty of
mysteries by and by. The fire that set the acacia bush aflame
would set the summit of Sinai ablaze very soon, and the man who
was to be the leader of God's people must not stand in mere
wonderment, but must know something about it. Thus God
teaches him how to draw nigh to it.
Tf There is a sentence in Mrs. Sellar's Becollections and
Impressions conveying an aspiration which I think may be placed
side by side with the experience of the burning bush. It was a
sentence written by Susan Ferrier in one of those birthday books
in which friends were asked to record their wishes : " That life
may never lose its halo." She desired that the mysterious,
mystic light might always cling about everything, that every
thing might have a plus, that even the commonest thing might
be the beginning of a lane leading to the infinite. It was a
prayer that all her experiences might issue in wonder; that
nothing might ever be completely analysable and measured and
weighed, that always there should be a mystic something to make
one hold the breath ! It was a yearning that the bush might 4/
always be the home of a mysterious flame, and that the most
lowly thing might be seen in relationship with the Eternal God.2
Tread softly! all the earth is holy ground.
It may be, could we look with seeing eyes,
This spot we stand on is a Paradise
Where dead have come to life and lost been found,
1 D. Davies, Talks with Men, Women and Children, iv. 33. 2 J. H. Jowett.

68 MOSES
Where Faith has triumphed, Martyrdom been crowned,
Where fools have foiled the wisdom of the wise;
From this same spot the dust of saints may rise,
And the King's prisoners come to light unbound.1
(3) But Moses was especially capable of sympathy. For Moses
was not a shepherd. A fugitive in the wilderness, he had returned
under stress of necessity to the ancestral occupations of his race.
But he was "the son of Pharaoh's daughter," educated in a
civilized court, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He
was a man of affairs and a philosopher, and more than this. If,
like St. Paul in later times, he was " a citizen of no mean city,"
bke him also he was "a Hebrew of the Hebrews." His contact
with the court had not dulled his patriotism into cosmopolitan in
difference. His heart was with his own folk, and their God was
his God. His presence at the mount of God was due to the fact
that he, the future lawgiver, had put himself outside the law in
defence of his people.
Tf When David saw the coward hosts of Israel terrified by the
boastful giant, and the sore need of a champion to fight the
battles of the Lord, there came home to his heart and conscience
this clear personal call, " This is thy business ; thou must do it ;
thou must thyself be the champion.''" The same thing came to
Carey, brooding over the midnight darkness of heathenism, and
the miraculous apathy of the Church of God. He was driven to
answer his own prayers, and to lay himself an offering on the
altar of service. It is ever the way of God's working with men.
The need which you see resolves itself into a call for personal
service.2 4. In what form did the call come to Moses ? God has a way
of His own into the spirit which He has made. Standing over
against all that is in the man, He lays His will upon him. The
man wakens to realize that he stands summoned to specific sub
mission and definite service by that Being in whom he bves and
moves and has his being. Such a consciousness had Abraham,
and Jeremiah, and Paul ; and in the high places of the field, on
Indian plains and Pacific isles, amid the most sunken of our cities,
and among the throngs of men, are many who have been thrust
out by the pressure of such a Divine call, and who are bearing
1 Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 413.
a Charles Brown, The Birth ofa Nation, 119.

IN MIDIAN 69
the burden and heat of the day because of the overpowering con
viction that they have been divinely chosen for, and are being
divinely helped in, the work in which they are engaged.
Tf We know that God does not speak to us as though He had
vocai organs, and in speech modelled after ours, obeying the rules
of our grammar books. We know that God does not talk English
to an Englishman, and French to a Frenchman. We know He
does not converse with Germans in gutturals, and with Hottentots
in clicks, though these elements are essential in the respective
languages. Yet we are equally certain that He does speak to us ;
and history certifies that men in all ages have believed they heard
the voice of God, and many a noble work has originated in such
conviction. How does He speak, then ? He speaks in terms of
human consciousness, the laws of which are the same in all ages
and in all races.1
Tf An old theologian says, " There are no Divine words except
those that faith hears in the inmost sanctuary of the soul " ; and
the fact that the man who said that lived in an age that knew
very little psychology makes the statement all the weightier. It
is by the workings of a man's own mind that God speaks to him.
It was so in the call of Moses : it is so in our own.2
TI I never so saw God, never had Him come so broadly, clearly
out. He has not spoken to me, but He has done what is more.
There has been nothing debatable to speak for, but an infinite
easiness and universal presentation to thought, as it were by
revelation. Nothing ever seemed so wholly inviting and so pro
foundly supreme to the mind. Had there been a strain for it,
then it could not be. 0 my God ! what a fact to possess and
know that He is ! I have not seemed to compare Him with any
thing, and set Him in a higher value ; but He has been the all,
and the altogether, everywhere, lovely. There is nothing else to
compete ; there is nothing else, in fact. It has been as if all the
revelations, through good men, nature, Christ, had been now through,
and their cargo unloaded, the capital meaning produced and the
God set forth in His own proper day, — the good, the true, the
perfect, the all-holy and benignant. The question has not been
whether I could somehow get nearer, but as if He had come out
Himself just near enough, and left me nothing but to stand still
and see the salvation ; no excitement, no stress, but an amazing
beatific tranquilUty. I never thought I could possess God so
completely.3 1 G. K. Grice. 2 G. K. Grice.
8 Horace Bushnell, in Life, by T. T. Munger, 338.

70 MOSES
TI The discovery of her true vocation belongs to a later period
of our story ; and it was not the result of childish fancy, or the
accomplishment of early incident; it was the fruit of long and
earnest study. What did come to Florence Nightingale early in
Ufe — perhaps, as one entry in her autobiographical notes suggests,
as early as her sixth year — was the sense of a " call " ; of some
appointed mission in life ; of self -dedication to the service of God.
"I remember her," wrote Fanny Allen, in 1857, to her niece
Elizabeth Wedgwood, " as a little girl of three or four, then the
girl of sixteen of high promise. When I look back on every
time I saw her after her sixteenth year, I see that she was ripen
ing constantly for her work, and that her mind was dwelling on
the painful differences of man and man in this life, and on the
traps that a luxurious life laid for the affluent. A conversation
on this subject between the father and daughter made me laugh
at the time, the contrast was so striking ; but now, as I remember
it, it was the Divine Spirit breathing in her." In an autobio
graphical fragment written in 1867, Florence mentions as one
of the crises of her inner life that " God called her to His service "
on February 7, 1837, at Embley ; and there are later notes which
still fix that day as the dawn of her true life. But as yet she
knew not whither the Spirit was to lead.1
5. How did the vision affect Moses in regard to the work of
his life ? The narrative implies two facts.
(1) The vision of God prepared him for the work of his life.
We are told that, after forty years of waiting in the wilderness,
the shepherd saw a bush burning and unconsumed, and turned
aside to see that great sight. Something told him that the
answer to the question of his life was at hand. A voice broke the
stillness, and, while listening to its awful utterance, the wonder
of the unconsuming fire would be forgotten in reverence before
a grandeur the eye could not see. The voice said, " I am the God
of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob." An awful thought for the lonely shepherd ! For these
words, above all others, would make him feel the sublime eternity
of God. The thought of One who had remained unchanged amid
the changes of the human world — unchanged, while the genera
tions of men passed like a morning dream away — unchanged amid
the shifting and decay of races, and who would still be when Moses
had passed and his work was done ! Thus, he must have felt the
1 Sir Edward Cook, The Ufe of Florence Nightingale, i. 15.

IN MIDIAN 71
everlastingness of God. Then came the sense of unworthiness.
What was he — a poor vanishing creature, whose years were but
as a hurried dream between life and death — to do His work?
What had been his small effort to free the people, while He lived
on, who had sworn that freedom to Abraham, in the old days
before him ? Then the last shadow of self-trust vanished from his
soul, " and Moses hid his face ; for he was afraid to look upon
God." But then came the other voice that upheld him amid the
overwhelming sense of his nothingness, and made him feel his
vocation : " I have surely seen the affliction of my people which
are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their task
masters ; for I know their sorrows ; and I am come down to deliver
them out of the hand of the Egyptians." Not unheard had been
the wail of the oppressed — not unseen had been the cruelty of
the king. The Everlasting Sympathy was with them, and that
thought, upholding his sinking weakness, became a clear, strong
call to action, and summoned him with the voice of the Eternal
to his calling : " Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto
Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of
Israel out of Egypt."
(2) The vision of God gave endurance in fulfilling that work.
Moses " endured, as seeing him who is invisible." Let us see how
that endurance came. At first, Moses was unwilling to go to
Pharaoh. He had learned enough, during those strange years, to
feel the difficulty of that task. Who was he that he should face
the king and his armies ? Then came that grand revelation of
the name of God, which was to abide with him until his work was
done — "I am that I am." There is an awful power in these words
to bring us face to face with God, conveying as they do the Eeality
of all realities, the Mystery of mysteries. And observe, this reve
lation of the name of God made him feel the glory of the vision as
an ever-present power. The bush might burn no more ; but the
unchanging Presence would still be with him. Under that con
sciousness, the sense of his insignificance faded. His terror of
Pharaoh passed away. What were human obstacles to him before
whose eye were ever present the glories he had seen in the desert,
and to whom had come that revelation of the Lord ? Should the
people sneer at, and reject him ; should he have to stand alone ;
should he seem to fail ; and should he die with his work undone

72 MOSES
— still, that mighty vision had given him a grasp on eternity
which would keep him strong and true !
TI I quite agree with you that such things as these — God's
goodness and grace in the hearts He has made — are the true stars
we have to look to in our night, and if some of them have set
sooner, they did shine for us, and are shining still. Our small
horizon is not His universe. I think this is a conviction that
grows on us the more we dwell on it, and how thankful we should
be when God has given us in our history realities of life to
help us to rise to the realities of faith. It is a way in which
sight helps faith; for surely something akin to this lies in the
words of Christ, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father " —
not merely that Christ is the image of God, but that a Divine
life witnessed by us on earth is the evidence of a God. So that
one may say, we can be as sure of God as if we had seen Him, and
if we are sure of Him we are sure of everything.1
What bard,
At the height of his vision, can deem
Of God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,
As flashing as Moses felt,
When he lay in the night by his flock
On the starlit Arabian waste?
Can rise and obey
The beck of the Spirit like him?2
1 Letters qf John Ker, 84. * Matthew Arnold, The Future.

MOSES. IV.
The God of Israel and His Messenger.

73

Literature.
Addis, W. E., Hebrew Religion (1906), 53.
Berry, C. A., Vision and Duty (1893), 3.
Bright, W., Morality in Doctrine (1892), 260.
Budde, K., Religion of Israel to the Exile (1899), 3.
Chadwick, G. A., The Booh of Exodus (Expositor's Bible) (1890), 54.
Driver, S. R., The Booh of Exodus (Cambridge Bible) (1911).
Kittel, R., A History of the Hebrews, i. (1895) 192.
„ „ The Scientific Study of the Old Testament (1910), 174.
Leckie, J., Sermons (1885), 35.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Exodus, etc. (1906), 26.
Meyer, F. B., Moses, 31.
„ „ Exodus, i. (1911) 71.
Montefiore, C. G., The Origin and Growth of Religion (1892), 50.
Ottley, R. L., The Religion of Israel (1905), 29.
Pierce, C. C, The Hunger ofthe Heart for Faith (1908), 71.
Rogers, R. W., The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (1908), 89.
Selby, T. G., The God ofthe Patriarchs (1904), 161.
Smith, John, The Permanent Message ofthe Exodus (1895), 62.
Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History ofthe Jewish Church, i. (1889) 96.
Westphal, A., The Law and the Prophets (1910), 157.
Christian World Pulpit, lviii. (1900) 246 (P. M'Adam Muir) ; lxxiii.
(1908) 267 (W. R. Shepherd).
Dictionary ofthe Bible (Single-volume, 1909), 106 (E. W. G. Masterman).
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vi. (1913) (W. T. Davison).
Homiletic Review, xxxviii. (1899) 138 (R. J. McBride).
Record, March 29, 1912 (J. G. Simpson).

74

The God of Israel and His Messenger.
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM : and he said, Thus
shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.—
Exod. iii. 14.
Out of the bush came the voice of God, blending past, present,
and future in one marvellous sentence : the past, " I am the God
of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob " ; the present, " I have surely seen the affliction of my
people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason
of their taskmasters ; for I know their sorrows ; and I am come
down to deliver them " ; the future, " Come now therefore, and I
will send thee unto Pharaoh."
Here are also these three : the people who have to be delivered,
the God who is to deliver them, and the instrument of their
deliverance. We have been with the people already. We have
also seen how Moses has been prepared for his task. Let us now
look at the way in which he receives his commission, and then
let us try to understand something of the God who sends him.
I.
The Commission.
I am come down to deliver them. — Exod. iii. 8.
Come now therefore, and I will send thee. — Exod. iii. 10.
Is there a discrepancy between these two announcements?
If God has Himself come down to do the work of redemption,
what need of Moses ? Would not a word from God's Almighty
lips be enough ? Why summon a shepherd, a lonely and unbe-
friended man, a man who has already failed once, and from whom
the passing years have stolen his manhood's prime, to work out
with painful elaboration, and through a series of bewildering
75

76 MOSES
disappointments, the purposed emancipation? But this is not
an isolated case. Throughout the entire scheme of Divine
government we meet with the principle of mediation. God ever
speaks to men, and works for them, through the instrumentality
of men. Chosen agents are called into the inner circle to catch
the Divine thought and mirror the Divine character, and then
sent back to their fellows to cause them to partake. God never
works from the many to the individual, but from the individual
to the many. " He made known his ways unto Moses," but only
" his acts unto the children of Israel."
Tf When God has something great to accomplish, He begins
to work through one man, and afterwards gives other helps ; as
with Moses and Aaron.1
TI The great revelation came to Moses, the great commission
was entrusted to him in the desert, as he tended his flock ; as he
followed his ordinary vocation. Not in the midst of great public
labours, in battle, in victory, or in a moment of utmost peril, was
he first penetrated by the truth. It first seized on him in the
calm and stillness of life, and then followed action in accordance
with it. No condition of life is too lowly, no place too humble,
when the pure, bright, transforming fire desires to manifest itself
at the right moment to the true Divine instrument. The bush in
the desolate waste suddenly becomes to the simple shepherd a
burning shrine, out of whose brightness the angel of God speaks
to him. The Quaker poet, Whittier, saw as sure a token of the
Divine presence in the glow of a maple wood as in the burning
bush: And when the miracle of autumn came,
so he wrote of one who knew within himself what was meant by
" the soul's communion with the Eternal Mind, the Spirit's Law,
the Inward Eule and Guide " :
And all the woods with many-coloured flame
Of splendour, making summer's greenness tame,
Burned, unconsumed, a voice without a sound
Spake to him from each kindled bush around,
And made the strange, new landscape holy ground.
But to him who has no secret witness of that sublime Faith, who
knows nothing of communion with the Eternal Mind, such
thoughts are baseless and unreal. 1 Luther.

GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS MESSENGER j7
Earth's crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God ; '
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.
That we be ready to see and ready to hear, this is the all-
important thing. The Divine manifestations are not lacking, but
we do not take the trouble of turning aside to look at the great
sight. The Divine glory beams upon us and we do not rejoice
with trembling ; we are filled with no sense of reverence and awe ;
we do not know that we are on holy ground. The Divine word
proclaims our duty with unmistakable clearness, and we consider
how most easily we can evade it and explain it away.1
1. Moses, with the new name of God to reveal, and with the
assurance that He is about to rescue Israel, is bidden to go to
work advisedly and wisely. He is not to appeal to the mob, nor
yet to confront Pharaoh without authority from his people to
speak for them, nor is he to make the great demand for emancipa
tion abruptly and at once. The mistake of forty years ago must
not be repeated now. He is to appeal to the elders of Israel ; and
with them, and therefore clearly representing the nation, he is
respectfully to crave permission for a three days' journey to
sacrifice to Jehovah in the wilderness.
It is often assumed that this demand for a furlough of three
days was insincere. But it would have been so only if consent
was expected, and if the intention was thereupon to abuse the
respite and refuse to return. There is not the slightest hint of
any duplicity of the kind. The real motives for the demand are
very plain. The excursion which they proposed would have
taught the people to move and act together, reviving their
national spirit, and filling them with a desire for the liberty which
they tasted. In the very words which they should speak — " The
Lord, the God of the Hebrews, hath met with us" — there is a
distinct proclamation of nationality, and of its surest and strongest
bulwark, a national religion. From such an excursion, therefore,
the people would have returned already well-nigh emancipated,
and with recognized leaders. Certainly Pharaoh could not listen
to any such proposal, unless he were prepared to reverse the whole
policy of his dynasty toward Israel.
~-~?. M'Adam Muir.

78 MOSES
2. In the message which Moses should convey to the elders
there are two significant phrases.
(1) He was to announce in the name of God, " I have surely
visited you, and seen that which is done unto you in Egypt." The
silent observation of God before' He interposes is very solemn and
instructive. So in the Eevelation, He walks among the golden
candlesticks, and knows the work, the patience, or the unfaithful
ness of each. So He is not far from any one of us. When a
heavy blow falls we speak of it as " a visitation of Providence,"
but in reality the visitation has been long before. Neither Israel
nor Egypt was conscious of the solemn Presence. Who knows
what soul of man, or what nation, is thus visited to-day, for
future deliverance or rebuke ?
(2) Again it is said, " I will bring you up out of the affliction
of Egypt unto a land flowing with milk and honey." Their afflic
tion was the Divine method of uprooting them. And so is our
affliction the method by which our hearts are released from love
of earth and life, that in due time He may " surely bring us in "
to a better and an enduring country.
Tf She was led for the first time to see, under the intimations
of the Holy Spirit, that all things were just the reverse of what
she had supposed, — that affliction is mercy in disguise, that we
possess by first being deprived, that death precedes bfe, that
destruction in the spiritual experience turns to renovation, that
out of the sorrows and silence of inward crucifixion, and from no
other source, must grow the jubilees of everlasting bbss. God
was given back ; and all things with Him.1

II.
The Diffidence of Moses.
And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and
that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt ? — Exod. iii. xx.
1. The discipline through which Moses has passed has been
almost too effectual, for, through extreme diffidence, the prophet
of God wants to decline his providential life-task and has to be
thrust forth into the path of public service. The reaction from
1 T. C. Upham, Life qf Madame Ouyon, 125.

GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS MESSENGER 79
the error and miscalculation of youth verges upon a desire for
seclusion and retirement scarcely distinguishable from selfishness.
Moses now shows a shyness of temper not altogether admirable,
which makes him unwilling to touch the problem of the enslave
ment at all ; and he might seem to have a show of reason on his
side. In his own view he is less fitted now than he was forty
years ago for the work of freeing God's people from their evil
conditions. He feels as an English nobleman might conceivably
feel who has spent half his life in the bush, and who is told that,
within six weeks, he must be presented at Court and move an
address to the Throne from his place in the House of Peers.
Moses had forgotten the language and etiquette of courts. He
may have been eloquent in his youth, but if so the adventures of
the wilderness have cooled his temperament and robbed his speech
of not a little of its force and readiness. The missionary philan
thropist who has passed half a century in jungle, or in Kaffir
kraal, may have been a Demosthenes when he embarked for his
field of service, but. he comes back a man of slow speech and
stripped, by the grim realities through which he has lived, of the
last shred of rhetorical art.
Tf The call of Moses is the prototype of all calls in the
Biblical history of Eevelation. All other calls are like it. They
all tell us that, contrary to what took place in other religions, the
men who led Israel in the search for God did not owe to their
own initiative or their own genius the internal light which im
pelled them. See rather how they struggle in the grasp of God,
who steps into their life, turns them back and sends them forth
shuddering to face humanity. Not one of them offers himself;
they are all taken by force. Not one pursues the normal tenor of
his destiny; the revolution they herald begins with their own
lives. All have something to leave. Abraham must give up his
home. The rest must deny themselves. " Do not send me ! "
entreats Moses. " Go ! " says Jehovah. " Take away my bfe,"
cries Elijah in the desert. " Go ! " says Jehovah. " I am neither
a prophet nor the son of a prophet," exclaims Amos following his
flock. " Go ! " says Jehovah. " I am but a little child ; let me
go ! " implores Jeremiah. " Go ! " says Jehovah. " Save me from
my infirmity ! " prays St. Paul. " Go ! " says Jehovah. And that
one imperious word " Go ! " occurring from end to end of the
Bible epic, shatters all resistance, overcomes every obstacle,
stimulates every heroism, and explains every miracle. It pre-

80 MOSES
sents to a bewildered world the spectacle of heroes vanquished
but victorious, bending under the weight of their Divine mission,
from Moses and his righteous indignation to John the Baptist in
the anguish of tbe dungeon : to St. Paul in his tribulations : to, if
I dare say it, Jesus Himself crying out in His agony : " Father,
save me from this hour," but " not my will but thine be done."
Such is the procession of victims through whom God conquered
the world. But in their martyrdom they gave the supreme proof
that human nature, left to its own unaided strength, unaided
inspiration, could never by its own initiative have given to the
world " the salvation that cometh of the Jews." x
Tf The prospect of so weighty a work, and of being so distin
guished from many whom I esteem before myself, brought me
very low, and such were the conflicts of my soul that I had a
near sympathy with the Prophet, in the time of his weakness,
when he said : " If thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee,
if I have found favour in thy sight " (Num. xi. 15). But I soon
saw that this proceeded from the want of a full resignation to the
Divine will. Many were the afflictions which attended me, and
in great abasement, with many tears, my cries were to the
Almighty for His gracious and fatherly assistance, and after a
time of deep trial I was favoured to understand the state
mentioned by the Psalmist more clearly than ever I had done
before ; to wit : " My soul is even as a weaned child " (Ps.
cxxxi. 2). Being thus helped to sink down into resignation, I
felt a deliverance from that tempest in which I had been sorely
exercised, and in calmness of mind went forward, trusting that
the Lord Jesus Christ, as I faithfully attended to Him, would be
a counsellor to me in all difficulties.2
2. From the midst of the bush there came a voice of rebuke,
and the message was followed by the miraculous sign of the rod
changed to a serpent, and of the serpent becoming a rod again as
Moses seized it; and also of the healing of the leprous hand.
Perhaps the serpent symbolized the Egyptian power which, at
God's word, should become helpless against the life of Moses and
the chosen people he was appointed to lead. Confronting once
more this virulent tyranny in God's way and at God's express
word, he should have no further need to flee from before it in
sudden terror. The leprous hand, cleansed at the Divine bid-
1 A. Westphal, The Law and the Prophets, 164.
1 The Journal of John Woolman.

GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS MESSENGER 81
ding, seemed to suggest the healing and purifying change which
would yet be wrought upon a corrupt and unholy Israel, con
taminated and debauched by its sojourn in the land that was
morally unclean. The wonder-working God would be with Moses
in the second mission upon whieh he was sent, and henceforth he
should no longer have to deal in the strength of nature alone with
Pharaoh's taskmasters and their oft-sinning and unhappy victims.
3. In spite of these signs and the Almighty's own assevera
tion of the fact that He was the Maker of man's mouth, Moses
still shrinks from his predestined work and shirks its burdens.
The Eedeemer of Israel has to take away part of the responsi
bility belonging to Moses and to put it upon Aaron ; and Aaron
did not always discharge his trust as well as the man would have
acquitted himself for whom the undivided burden was meant. It
might have been better for Moses, for Aaron, and for the ignorant
and peevish people themselves, if the shepherd in Midian had
accepted God's terms without compromise. Let us see to it that
God does not have to put upon others the work and the honour
prepared for us. In these last days He has many servants, who,
if unbkely to achieve things memorable in this world's history,
may yet make brilliant chapters for the chronicles of the world to
come. This excessive diffidence, this extreme reaction from the
mistakes of youth, this ill-disguised sullenness because of past
failure, this sore offence caused by the slowness of others to
appreciate our aptitudes and our vocations, may defer the pur
poses of God among men and rob us of our appointed honour.
The former failure is a part of our spiritual education for the
later victory.
In the end Moses forgot the shyness bred by his wilderness
career, and the discouragements of bygone years, and consented to
God's word. He was accepted for the mission to which he
dedicated the remnant of his days, and, after many vicissitudes,
fulfilled his work. Eejected at first, and welcomed by the
families of Israel in the end of his days, he was regarded by
Stephen as a type of Christ in everything but his infirmities, who
also in tbe end of the years would find acceptance at the hands
of those who once clamoured for His blood. The faith of Moses
was made perfect in the wilderness for its coming triumphs, and
MOSES-SAMSON — 6

82 MOSES
he failed at the outset through the meagreness of his trust in the
invisible. " By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of
the king." " Send whom Thou wilt ! All choice is Thine,
Thou canst fulfil Thy set decree
Through other hands more meet to be
Upborne in Thy so vast design;
Lord, I beseech Thee — send not me ! "
Had Moses failed to go, had God
Granted his prayer, there would have been
For him no leadership to win —
No pillared fire, no magic rod,
No wonders in the land of Zin;
No smiting of the sea — no tears
Ecstatic shed on Sinai's steep —
No Nebo, with a God to keep
His burial! only forty years
Of desert- watching with his sheep ! x

III.
The Peesence of God.
Certainly I will be with thee. — Exod. iii. 12.
God deals very gently with conscious weakness. " Certainly
I will be with thee." Moses' estimate of himself is quite correct,
and it is the condition of his obtaining God's help. If he had
been self-confident, he would have had no longing for, and no
promise of, God's presence.
1. God is no longer a voice that calls, a hand that points, an
eye that guides. Or rather He is all this, but He is more, very
much more. He is the living, burning Presence that destroys not
but sustains. He is a consuming fire, but He does not consume.
He knows the sorrows of His people because He shares them.
In all their afflictions He is afflicted, and the angel of His Presence
saves them. Now, we cannot say that, until Moses turned aside
1 Margaret J. Preston.

GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS MESSENGER 83
to see the burning bush, there was no knowledge of this wonderful
immanence in history. No man can be brought into relation with
the Living One without gaining some knowledge of His nearness.
But it is one thing to have confidence that God will meet us in
the way ; it is another to awaken to the great conviction that He
is the force at the back of our life. It is one thing to wrestle as
with a man until the breaking of the day ; it is another to stand
upon holy ground and listen to the proclamation from out the fire
of the ineffable Name. It is one thing to arise and follow God ;
it is another to find God even in present perplexities.
Tf " To some," says Patmore, " there is revealed a sacrament
greater than that of the Eeal Presence, a sacrament of the Mani
fest Presence, which is, and is more than, the sum of all the
sacraments." x
2. So God's promise, "I will be with thee," is not to the
man who enters church thoughtlessly and recklessly, but to
the man who has an intelligent conception of what God expects
and requires at his hands, and who feels in himself utterly in
sufficient for the step to be taken. It is better to be overwhelmed
than over-confident, for only then will our weakness become
strength, only then shall we abandon our righteousness and
welcome the grace and power and spirit of Jesus Christ, which
blot out, renew, vitalize, sustain, and transform, till the believer
becomes " complete in him," and knows all things are possible to
him that believes in Jesus.
Tf His prayers were, more than any other man's, marked by
a sense of the majesty of the Holy Lord God, and a perception
of the Divine glory, especially in the earlier part of his course.
In his later years Christ was more the centre of all his thoughts,
as seems to be often the case with eminent saints ; Eutherford's
wondrous letters have almost nothing of the Father or of the great
God, except as seen in Je3us Christ. In the earlier period of
Dr. Duncan's course, his view of the Divine glory was often the
same as Isaiah's, " Woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips,
for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts " ; and as
Job's, " I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now
mine 'eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself." Latterly this holy
fear was modified, but it continued to the end ; and the enviable
1 E. Meynell, The Life of Francis Thompson (1913), 209.

84 MOSES
epitaph found on some of our old gravestones might most fittingly
have been written on his, " Deceased in the fear of God." 1
3. But the Christian life is not all ; the Christian service is as
sweeping in its demands. Our destiny is not only to be " con
formed to the image of the Son of God," but to carry forward the
work given Him to do. It has fallen to the lot of His people to
save the world; and Christians either shut their eyes to their
mission, or, seeing it clearly, shrink from it. No wonder they do
so. The very unwillingness of every sinner to be approached on
the subject of his soul's salvation, his manifest disincbnation to
have a loving word said to him about his spiritual duties and
privileges, the chilling reception that makes one unable to utter
the message that the Spirit of God is moving him to speak, has
made us say : " Who am I that I should try to win such souls to
Christ ? Let them alone." But dare we, when God says, " I will
be with thee " ?
Let us catch the idea, and live and act by the truth that, like
Moses, we are at best only "a poor thorn-bush in a dry and
desert world," but with God in us and God with us we are that
bush on fire, and the fire in the bush is infinite strength dwelling
in utter weakness. Omnipotence in impotence, then we may
forget our past, defy our foes, go forward confidently to our duties,
and rise to our privileges, because our extremity is His oppor
tunity. Then we shall cease to make objections when God makes
known His will concerning us ; and some day we shall sing after
we have seen our foes, like Pharaoh, sink as lead in the depths of
the sea, and our enemies lie dead upon the shore — we shall sing
praises unto our God for all His keeping and using, His sufficient
grace and transforming fellowship, and shall rejoice in the blessed
experience : " Thy right hand, 0 Lord, is glorious in power, thy
right hand, 0 Lord, dasheth in pieces the enemy. Who is bke
unto thee, 0 Lord, among the gods ? Who is like thee, glorious
in hobness, fearful in praises, doing wonders ? "
1 A. Moody Stuart, Recollections of John Duncan, 40.

GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS MESSENGER 85

IV.
The God of Israel.
And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the
children of Israel, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you : this is my
name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.— Exod. iii. 15.
1. The rebgion of Israel was not in the first instance made ;
it arose and grew in prehistoric periods ; it had no founder ; no
man reduced it to system. Suddenly a new and higher religion
appeared upon the scene. Instead of a vague belief in spirits,
the tribes which afterwards coalesced into the Hebrew nation
adopted the sole worship of a God who revealed Himself as
Jehovah, and they made allegiance to Him the bond of union
among themselves. This momentous revolution, which has
affected the whole subsequent history of religion, took place at a
time when the civilizations of Egypt and Babylon were already
old. Now while it is true that the documents which relate the
history of the change were written centuries after the event,
three facts rest on sufficient evidence to be accepted at the out
set with confidence.
(1) The worship of Jehovah as Israel's only God preceded the
settlement in Canaan and the political unity of the tribes. On
the latter point we have proof positive in Deborah's song, a
very ancient — perhaps the most ancient — relic of Hebrew literature.
The poem presupposes that the tribes are still independent.
Judah stood quite apart: it is not even mentioned, though the
song enumerates in honorific terms the tribes which fought
against Sisera, and reviles with hatred and scorn those who held
aloof. Barak and Deborah summoned and led the Israelite clans,
but there is no hint of any common ruler, any judge in the later
sense, whose affair it was to levy troops and constrain obedience.
Yet the tribes, though politically separate, were expected to be
one in common zeal for Jehovah their God. It was Jehovah who
made the people " offer themselves willingly," Jehovah who went
down to fight for His people against the Canaanites. The wrath
of Heaven falls on Israelites who fail in the supreme duty of

86 MOSES
fighting with Jehovah's army. " Curse ye Meroz, said the angel
of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because
they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord
against the mighty." We may then confidently affirm that it
was the worship of Jehovah that made the Hebrew tribes one
in time of war, till slowly, and long after Deborah's time, they
were moulded into a single commonwealth.
(2) Jehovah, then, was the God of the Hebrews when they
first came to Canaan : but can we go further back ? The earliest
authorities which we have tell us that we may. Jehovah, says
Amos (iii. 1), " brought up " all Israel " out of the land of Egypt,"
and we need not multiply references when all the Biblical writers
are at one. Their spirit was being crushed out of them, when
God sent them a deliverer in the person of Moses. Moses rallied
their fainting courage in the name of Jehovah, who was hence
forth to be the sole object of their public worship.
(3) The religion of Jehovah as the God of Israel began with
Moses. He is, beyond all reasonable doubt, a historical charac
ter, and it is impossible to understand the rise of nation or
worship apart from him. Moses in some way which no man
can fathom felt the Divine call ; he became the priest of Israel,
sprinkling the blood of the sacrifice (Exod. xxiv. 6) and giving the
priestly oracles (Exod. xviii., xxxiii. 7-11). The old priesthoods of
Dan (Judg. xviii. 30) and of Shiloh (1 Sam. ii. 27) traced their
descent to him. Hosea (xii. 13) calls him a prophet, while in
Deuteronomy (xviii. 18) he is the greatest of the prophets; and,
though the use of the word may be an anachronism, the sense con
veyed is altogether true and right. Because he was the leader in
rebgion he also commanded the tribes in war (Num. x. 35 f.),
for war was a religious function, and the battle-cry was in
Jehovah's name. A great deliverance had been wrought : Moses
was the prophet who interpreted it and taught the people the
hidden sense of their common experience, and led them on to
further victory. Under these conditions the new religion arose.
From the time of Moses the religion of Israel was unique.
Jehovah, and He alone, was to be adored. He was no mere
tribal God, but, on the contrary, a God who gathered the tribes
into a national confederation. Other nations claimed the pro
tection of their god by virtue of a natural bond : Jehovah became

GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS MESSENGER 87
the God of Israel by His own free choice. Other gods arose in
dim prehistoric times, none knew how : the recollection of the
crisis which made Jehovah Israel's God was never lost. Lastly,
He had revealed Himself from the first, under a moral aspect, as
one who punished the oppressor and let the captive go free.
2. Was Jehovah known at all to Israel before the time of
Moses ? There are two main hypotheses.
(1) The first is that the name and worship of Jehovah were
utterly unknown to the Israelites before their introduction by
Moses. In that case, as it is unlikely that Moses invented the
name himself, we must suppose that he borrowed it from an out
side source. Jehovah would be the God of some alien nation.
That the name is Egyptian is a theory now almost universally
abandoned. But some scholars have sought Jehovah's original
home, not in Egypt, but in Midian. Upon the basis of various
superstitious observances, still prevalent in Israel even in historic
times, Stade essays to prove the existence of a very low religious
level in the pre-Mosaic age, and more particularly of a system of
ancestor and spirit worship, which, in other nations usually pre
ceding polytheism, in Israel preceded monolatry. The Old
Testament itself alludes in a few passages to a pre-Mosaic period
of idolatry. Now tradition ascribes to Moses before his assump
tion of leadership a prolonged residence in the wilderness of
Sinai ; he married there a daughter of Jethro, a priest of Midian.
In an old chapter of the Book of Judges, the relatives and
descendants of Moses' father-in-law are called, not Midianites, but
Kenites, and are in close alliance with Judah. In the rebellion
of Jehu, the usurper receives assistance from Jonadab the son of
Eechab, who shows himself an adherent of Jehovah. We learn
from Jeremiah that the Eechabites were a family who had pre
served the simple customs of nomads as a kind of family tradition,
and from the Book of Chronicles we gather that the Eechabites
were originally Kenites. It has, therefore, been conjectured that
Jehovah was originally a God of the Kenites, and was borrowed
by Moses from his Kenite (or Midianite) hosts.
Tf Moses, says Budde, is tending the sheep of his father-in-law
Jethro, priest of Midian, when he finds God. He cannot have
tended tne flocks elsewhere than in the pasture-land of the tribe

88 MOSES
to which his father-in-law belonged and whose chief he probably
was. For the steppe is by no means ownerless. Every nomad
tribe knows its own district very well, and woe to the tribe which
encroaches on the territory of another ! Yahweh, therefore, is the
God of the tribe to which Moses, on his flight from Egypt, joined
himself by marriage ; the mountain-God of Horeb, who appears to
him and promises him to lead his brethren out of Egypt. The
tribe with which Moses found refuge and into which he married
bears elsewhere the name "Kenite." This would seem to be a
narrower term, the more comprehensive name being " Midianite " ;
i.e., the Kenites were a tribe of the Midianites.1
Tf Yahweh is closely associated with Sinai : Sinai is called a
" mountain of God " before Moses visited it ; thither Moses led
his people after the Exodus ; there Jehovah manifested Himself
in the storm-clouds that gathered, and in the lightnings which
played about its mountain summit; there He revealed His will
to Moses and gave His covenant to Israel (Exod. xix.-xxiv.); thence
He marched forth, in thunderstorm and cloud, to lead Israel into
Canaan (Deut. xxxiii. 2) —
Jehovah came from Sinai,
And beamed forth from Seir (Edom) unto them ;
He shined forth from Mount Paran,
And came from holy myriads [read probably, with a very
slight change in the Heb., from Meribath-Kadesh] ;
and thither also Elijah repaired (1 Kings xix. 8 ff.), to find Divine
encouragement in his despair. Yahweh must thus have been a
God who, in some very special sense, had His home on Sinai, and
whose worship, in some fuller and more formal sense than had
previously been the case, was there accepted by the Israelites.
From the connexion of Moses with the Kenite (Judg. iv. 11)
Jethro (Exod. n., xviii.) and the friendliness which subsisted after
wards between Israel and the Kenites (Judg. i. 16 ; 1 Sam. xv. 6),
it has been supposed that Yahweh was the God of the Kenites,
and that Israel at Sinai adopted His worship from them. But
this view would imply that there was no connexion between
Yahweh and Israel before Moses became the son-in-law of Jethro,
which is not probable: a new and foreign deity would hardly
have been so rapidly accepted by the Israelites.2
(2) The second hypothesis assumes that Jehovah was already
known to the Israelites as one God out of many, or even as the
1 Karl Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, 19.
3 S. R. Driver, The Book qf Exodus, xlix.

GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS MESSENGER 89
chief and common Deity of all their clans. To this hypothesis, in
its turn, the Old Testament gives the support that Moses is repre
sented as charged by Jehovah to accredit himself to the children of
Israel as the emissary of their fathers' God. There is also this
further argument, that it is difficult to imagine the Israelites rally
ing round the leadership of one who spoke to them in the name, and
urged them to adopt the worship, of a foreign and hitherto un
known Divinity. Moreover, as Dillmann urges, the higher re
ligion of Moses must surely have had its points of connexion with
pre-existing beliefs within his people or tribe. By force of the
Mosaic teaching, and by the great event which proved the power
and favour of Jehovah, the combined Israelite tribes accepted the
God of Moses as their own. Religion welded them together. In
the name of Jehovah they achieved their earliest victories, and
their common patriotism became identified with their common
religion. Tf If Jehovah had been a Kenite god, then in our opinion the
Kenites would have become the leading nation and Israel would
have been absorbed into it. For it was religion, the character
istic belief in God, which to a large extent determined the national
pecubarity of the ancient nations and tribes. That Israel became
the leading nation is due to its religion. So the Kenites were
absorbed into the Israebtes.1
3. The question has been raised whether Israel's religion owed
any of its distinctive features to Egypt or to Midian. At present
little or no evidence is forthcoming in favour of either alternative.
The available facts, indeed, tend to confirm the truth of the account
given in the Old- Testament itself — that the religion taught by
Moses was imparted to him by Divine revelation. Doubtless he
found in the ancestral beliefs of the Hebrews the necessary basis
for his teaching ; but the simplest explanation of his commanding
influence is to be found in the fact that he was a prophet, divinely
chosen, inspired, and prepared for his task, and sent to the
Hebrews with an authoritative message from the God of their
fathers. The work of Moses was, indeed, in the strict sense
"prophetic." He proclaimed the sovereignty of God and
declared His purpose of grace. From the first there was an
ethical tendency in his teaching and an element of expansiveness.
1 R. Kittel, The Scientific Study of the Old Testament, 175.

90 MOSES
The religion of a family or of a clan became under his guidance
the faith of an entire people ; and the key-notes of the system were
practically two : first, the exaltation of Jehovah, the Deliverer of
the Hebrews from bondage, as the one Deity of their allegiance ;
second, the insistence upon social righteousness as His one
essential requirement.
Tf Society is made up of individuals, and "social righteous
ness " is the righteousness of individuals in the mass. But
righteousness of character springs from Tightness of heart, and
apart from the atonement and Spirit of Christ the human heart is
wrong. The wail of Cotter Morison was that " there is no cure
for a bad heart," and that multitudes of men and women around
us have got bad hearts. But, thank God ! if " there is no cure
for a bad heart," the Spirit of God can give " a new heart," from
which springs righteousness. We cannot have a social and ethical
revival that will purify the springs of our social and national bfe,
except as the result of a spiritual revival. We cannot have a
widespread "social righteousness," apart from a widespread
spiritual awakening in which men's hearts are made right by the
operation of the Spirit of God.1

V.
The Name.
I AM THAT I AM.— Exod. iii. 14.
1. It is strange that for some reason this name of God is
obscured to the English reader. For the most part it is rendered
by the word "Lord." And though the printers have tried to
remedy the mistake by printing Lord in capitals whenever it
stands for the sacred name, yet the English Version misses its
majestic repetition. In this the American Eevised Version is to
be preferred to our own; for there the Name is printed as
" Jehovah," whenever these four consonants occur in the original.
Whilst admitting that Jehovah is probably not the original pro
nunciation of the word, it has so many hallowed associations, that,
in face of the difficulty of knowing what the original pronunciation
of the word was, use and wont may justify one in retaining it.
1 T. Waugh, Twenty -three Years a Missioner, 151.

GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS MESSENGER 91
Tf " Jehovah " is a modern and hybrid form, dating only from
A.D. 1518. The name "Jahweh " was so sacred that it was not,
in later Jewish times, pronounced at all, perhaps owing to an
over-literal interpretation of the Third Commandment. In reading,
" Adonai " was substituted for it ; hence the vowels of that name
were in MSS. attached to the consonants of " Jahweh " for a guide
to the reader, and the result when the MSS. are read as written
(as they were never meant by Jewish scribes to be read), is
" Jehovah." Thus this modern form has the consonants of one
word and the vowels of another. The Hellenistic Jews, in Greek,
substituted " Kyrios " (Lord) for the sacred name, and it is thus
rendered in LXX and N.T. This explains why in E.V. " the Lord "
is the usual rendering of " Jahweh." x

Jo

2. The words " I am that I am " are evidently intended
as an interpretation of the name Jahweh, the name — which
in form is the third person imperfect of a verb (just like Isaac,
Jacob, Jephthah), meaning He is wont to be or He will be,
— being interpreted, as Jehovah is Himself the speaker, in the
first person. This rendering appears to S. E. Driver, as it
appeared to W. E. Smith and A. B. Davidson, to give the true
meaning of the Heb. 'Ehyeh asher 'ehyeh: Jehovah promises
that He will be (to Moses and His people) what He will be —
something which is undefined, but which, as His full nature is
more and more completely unfolded by the lessons of history and
the teaching of the prophets, will prove to be more than words
can express. The explanation is thus of a character to reassure
Moses. (1) As regards its form, the word "Yahweh" might mean
either "He who creates," "causes to be," or possibly "brings
things to pass " ; or (much more probably) " He who will be,"
i.e., the " eternal " or " constant " Being who will progressively
manifest Himself in future history as Israel's Creator and
Eedeemer. This is evidently the traditional explanation implied
in Exod. iii. 14. The name was intended to express not what God
is in Himself, but rather what He was in relation to Israel : a
personal Being willing to enter into covenant with man and to
reveal Himself progressively as occasion might demand ; a Being
self-consistent and faithful in fulfilling His threatenings and
promises ; able, moreover, to control the course of history in
1 A. J. Maclean, in Hastings' Dictionary qf the Bible (Single-volume), 300.

92 MOSES
fulfilment of His purpose of grace. The name by its very vague
ness implies that " no words can sum up all that Jehovah will be
to His people."
Tf There are three moments in this revealing name — like
a crystal or diamond, it flashes its glory from three sides.
First, we have continuity with the past. Stretching back
across four centuries of silence, He who is speaking identi
fies Himself with the God who had appeared to their fathers :
"The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of
Isaac, of Jacob hath sent me unto you." Nothing more
profoundly impresses the soul than the vivid realization of vast
periods of time, and the thought that He who had kept silent for
four centuries, that the very God who had environed the life of
Abraham, was encompassing him, must have been unutterably
sublime. What a concourse of ideas would rush to his mind,
what haUowed memories would take shape in that august
presence ! The lessons of his childhood, the visions of his spirit in
hours of secret meditation, his hopes and fears, his questionings
and aspirations, through all his great trial and since, would crowd
in one conflux of memories into his soul. But the stir and move
ment of individual reflection are hushed as the great saying goes
on. That past is not past. All present, all possible revelations,
are expansions of that first unveiling of God. Even all worships
of God yet to come, in the gathering light of the growing Divine
purpose, will go back to what has been unveiled there. " This is
my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations." 1
(2) The source from which either this or any other Divine
name was ultimately derived by the Hebrews matters little or
nothing : the question which is of importance is, What did the
name come to mean to them ? What, to them, was its theological
content? What are the character and attributes of the Being
whom it is actually used in the Old Testament to denote ? The
name, it may be, — we cannot at present say more — came to Israel
from the outside. " But into that vessel a long line of prophets,
from Moses onward, poured such a flood of attributes as never a
priest in all Western Asia, from Babylonia to the sea, even
dreamed of in his highest moments of spiritual insight. In this
name, and through Israel's history, God chose to reveal Himself
to the world. Therein lies the supreme and lonesome superiority
of Israel over Babylonia.
1 John Smith, The Permament Message qf the Exodus, 67.

GOD OF ISRAEL AND HIS MESSENGER 93
Whatever the name may have been in its origin, it came to be
the name of the One and only God ; and hence we can await in
perfect calmness whatever the future may have to disclose to us
with regard to its ultimate origin, or its pre-Israelite use.
Tf In the power of this revelation Moses was able to carry out
God's purposes for His people. Distrustful of his own powers, he
is strengthened and emboldened to stand before Pharaoh, " and by
faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king " ; for
he " endured, as seeing him who is invisible."
Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name ?
Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from Thee who art ever the same ?
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power
expands ?
This is the key to all that Moses accomplished, leadership,
legislation, worship, through faith and close communion with
God.1 Tf The main factor in the development of the religion of Israel
was the impression upon the people, through the events of their
history and the consciousness of their greatest men, of the charac
ter of God. This it was which separated the people from the
heathen around them, quickened within them a new moral sense,
sifted and qualified the mass of custom and unwritten law which
they had inherited as children of the great Semitic family, and
finally produced both prophecy and the legal codes, in which the
principles of prophecy and the hereditary practice of the nation
were together precipitated. But we must not suppose that this
revelation of the character of God was confined to His righteous
ness, or was even predominantly that of His righteousness. That
is one of the most widespread fallacies about the Old Testament.
Nothing is more certain about the object of Israel's faith than,
first, that it was a Person ; and second, that the character of this
Person was by no means only or predominantly righteousness.
Jahweh is as effectively a God of grace as He is a God of justice ;
and although our meagre information requires us to speak with
caution of the earliest period of Israel's religion, it is sufficiently
well-established that during that period His grace was (to say the
least) as manifest to His people's hearts, and as operative in their
lives, as His justice : for the full expression of which we have to
wait till the prophets.2
1 W. E. Shepherd.
2 G. A. Smith, Modem Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament, 148.

94 MOSES
What power shall mantle God's ambassador
And trouble Pharaoh in his idol feasts,
Lead Israel forth to Canaan's promised shore,
And make of slaves a royalty of priests?
One only name, the God of Abraham,
I am hath sent thee : I am that I am.
Long ages passed, a darker cloud o'erhangs
From pole to pole the universal earth;
And Zion wrestling in her weary pangs
Bewails with tears and groans the hour of birth;
And yet a bitterer cry ascends to God,
" Woe for the chosen people : Ichabod ! "
Say who is this in man's extremest hour,
Who comes to ransom man from sin and grave ?
This veiled glory, travelling in power
And mighty in humility to save ?
The Light of lights, foreseen by Abraham.
Or ever Abraham was born, I am.
Ages once more have passed away like dreams,
And now creation waits the end of things;
But far and near o'er all the world what seems
Darkens what is with vain imaginings ;
And men are chasing shadows from their youth
And grasping unsubstantial mists for truth.
What is that only name of power to drive
The phantoms of deceitful night away,
That dying man may save his soul alive
And stand God's freeman in the light of day?
Hark, on the throne of God, and of the Lamb
The name from everlasting is I am.1
1 E. H. Bickersteth.

MOSES. V.
Before Pharaoh.

Literature.
Brown, B. H., The Land of Goshen (1912), 42.
Curtiss, S. I., Primitive Semitic Religion To-day (1902), 69.
Driver, S. B., The Booh of Exodus (Cambridge Bible) (1911) li., 55, 405.
Foakes- Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History of the Hebrews (1903), 50.
Hull, E. L., Sermons, iii. 94.
Hyamson, M., The Oral Law (1910), 65.
McFadyen, J. E., The Messages ofthe Bible, iv. (1901) 52.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Exodus, etc. (1906), 33.
McNeile, A. H., The Book of Exodus (Westminster Commentaries) (1908),
42.
Maspero, G., New Light on Ancient Egypt (1908), 221.
Montefiore, C. G., The Bible for Home Reading, i. (1896) 63.
Ottley, R. L., A Short History of the Hebrews (1901), 60.
Pearse, M. G., Moses : His Life and its Lessons (1894), 45.
Petrie, W. M. F., Researches in Sinai (1906), 35.
Smith, John, The Permanent Message of the Exodus (1895), 77.
Whitham, A. B., Old Testament History (1912), 77.
Biblical World, xxix. (1907) 383 (T. G. Soares).
Bibliotheca Sacra, lxv. (1908) 401, 611 (E. M. Merrins).

Before Pharaoh.
He sent signs and wonders into the midst of thee, O Egypt,
Upon Pharaoh, and upon all his servants.— Ps. cxxxv. 9.
1. The picture of the departure of Moses from Midian is graphic.
Moses takes his wife and his children — " his wife, whom he had
won by his chivalrous attack on the Bedouin shepherds," and the
children born to him in his exile, and named in two opposite
moods of sorrow and rejoicing — and he sets his wife upon his ass
— " the ass," the only beast of burden that he possesses — and
places her infant son, or perhaps both her sons, in her arms, while,
leaning on his staff, he manfully trudges by their side. It is no
large cavalcade that goes forth, no company of camels with gay
tassels and jingling bells, no troop of prancing horses, no pomp of
chariots — one ass bears all the treasures of the man who will
shortly beard the Pharaoh, and " spoil the Egyptians," and come
out of Egypt with much substance ; and his treasure consists not
in silver, or gold, or jewels, or rich raiment, but in the wife and
little ones, which are all that Midian has given him.
Tf As we contemplate the picture, our thoughts go forward to
that other narrow household, which went from Palestine into Egypt
in the days of Herod the Great (Matt. ii. 14), whose " flight " has
been so often represented by painters ; to Joseph trudging along
the sandy path, supported by his staff, and Mary seated on the
ass by his side, and pressing the young child to her bosom. Here
the interest is concentrated on the aged man, there on the infant
child; here danger is being fronted, there it is being escaped;
but in both cases the journey is being undertaken at the express
command of God, its outward circumstances are similar, and it is
necessary for the accomplishment of God's purposes with respect
to man. If Moses does not go into Egypt, there will be no
deliverance of the fleshly Israel from their oppressors ; if the
"young child" be not carried out of the reach of Herod, there
will be no deliverance of the spiritual Israel from sin and Satan.1
1 G. Rawlinson, Moses : His Life and Times, 81.
MOSES-SAMSON — 7

98 MOSES
2. Somewhere "in the mountain of God," that is, in the
higher hill country, Aaron and Moses met. " And the Lord said
to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. And he went
and met him in the mountain of God, and kissed him. And
Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord wherewith he had
sent him, and all the signs wherewith he had charged him. And
Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of
the children of Israel " (Exod. iv. 27-29).
Tbe interchange of thought between the two brothers during
their long journey from " the mountain of God " to Egypt led to a
conviction, in which both shared, that, before any application
could, with reasonable prospect of success, be made to Pharaoh, it
was necessary that their mission should be fully acknowledged
and accepted by the people of Israel. Of what avail would it be
to contend with that mighty ruler, and gradually subdue his
spirit, and overcome the proud resistance which he was sure to
offer to their message, if at last, when the time came for action,
the people should repudiate their leadership, and decline to move
at their command? Practically, therefore, the first step to be
taken was to secure the adhesion of the mass of the Israelites.
For this purpose application was made, as God had Himself
suggested (Exod. iii. 16), to "the elders of Israel" — that is,
to those native officials who in different locabties, exercised, and
were allowed to exercise, a certain authority over the rest of their
countrymen. In Oriental countries, an alien race dwelling among
the ruling nation is almost always permitted to have its chiefs or
head-men, who control it, act on its behalf, and are the means of
communication between it and the government. Among the
Israelites these persons would probably be "the chiefs of the
fathers," i.e., the hereditary heads of families. Moses and Aaron,
though destitute of any legal right to convene a meeting of such
persons, regarded it as morally within their competence to do so,
and issued a summons, which was obeyed, to " all the elders of the
children of Israel."
3. " Afterwards," as it is written, — with what interval we do
not know — Moses and Aaron went on their solemn and important
mission before Pharaoh. It was a daring thing for these two men
to present themselves at all in the presence of Pharaoh, and

BEFORE PHARAOH 99
much more so on such an errand. A man weak and capricious,
arrogant, passionate, and cruel, he set himself on a level with tlie
divinities of Egypt, and took their titles to himself. He was the
living One — the Giver of Life — the Gracious Lord — the Good God.
And here before this haughty monarch in the midst of his courtiers
oame the representatives of these slaves with their demand.
Brief and direct was the message they uttered, peremptory almost,
and little in keeping with such language as Pharaoh alike de
manded and received : " Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel,
Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the
wilderness." Tf Who are these whom God calls My People ? Are not all
people His, to hear Him and to obey ? Must not all men render
their account to Him ? My people ! We can think that haughty
Egypt heard it and laughed aloud— "What, these wretched
creatures that dare not call their lives their own ! These slaves
the chosen favourites of Heaven ! No, no ! If the gods care for
any it is for kings, and for mighty men of valour, for the learned
and the great. The mighty Pharaoh with his pomp and his
palaces, and this proud nation — we are they in whom the gods
delight." My people ! We can think the Israelites heard it and
sighed — " Ah, if I were only one of them — alas, it is not for me to
think of such a boast and blessedness." We see the poor slave
stand for a moment, lifting the lean and bruised body in the
fierce heat of the sun ; the fetter chafes his wrist ; and now the
taskmaster's whip falls upon his shoulders with a curse, " Ye are
idle — ye are idle." One of His people indeed ! And sighing
bitterly the Israelite turns to his burden. Blessed be God — He
is not ashamed of His poor children. Ashamed ! It is almost
blasphemy to put it so far from the truth. No indeed, He
stoopeth lowest for those that are lowest down. He cometh most
gloriously for those that are the neediest. Never in the whole
history of the world did He reveal Himself with such pomp and
majesty as for these poor slaves. Of these it is that the word is
spoken — " Let my people go, that they may serve me." 1
Tf The poet Whittier, in the introduction he wrote to the
Journal of John Woolman, says that the appalling magnitude of
the evil of slavery, against which he felt himself especially called
to contend, was painfully manifest to John Woolman. At the
outset, all about him, in every department of life and human
activity, in the state and the church, he saw evidences of its strength,
1 M. G. Pearse, Moses : His Life and its Lessons, 67.

100 MOSES
and of the depth and extent to which its roots had wound their
way among the foundations of society. Yet he seems never to
have doubted for a moment the power of simple truth to eradicate
it, nor to have hesitated as to his own duty in regard to it.
There was no groping like Samson in the gloom : no feeling in
blind wrath and impatience for the pillars of tbe temple of Dagon.
" The candle of the Lord shone about him," and his path lay clear
and unmistakable before him. He believed in the goodness of
God that leadeth to repentance; and that love could reach the
witness for itself in the hearts of all men, through all entangle
ments of custom and every barrier of pride and selfishness. No
one could have a more humble estimate of himself ; but as he
went forth on his errand of mercy he felt the Infinite Power
behind him, and the consciousness that he had known a prepara
tion from that Power " to stand as a trumpet through which the
Lord speaks." The event justified his confidence; wherever he
went hard hearts were softened, avarice and love of power and
pride of opinion gave way before his testimony of love.
When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's
aching breast
Euns a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him
climb
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of
Time.
Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous
throe,
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and
fro;
At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,
And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the
Future's heart.
We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of
fate,
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within, —
"They enslave their children's children who make compromise
with sin."

BEFORE PHARAOH 101
Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood,
Sons of brutish Force and Darkuess, who have drenched tho
earth with blood,
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey; —
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children
play ? J
4. It was probably in an audience-room of some splendid
palace where the lordly Pharaoh received deputations and
embassies that they met him. How mixed must Moses' feelings
have been, entering as a suppliant tbe precincts in which he had
played no inconspicuous part in those buried years !
Tf An Egyptian palace was explored for the first time in the
winter of 1888-9 by Gr^baut, then from 1900 the methodical
clearing out was undertaken by an Englishman, Mr. Newbury, at
the expense of E. de P. Tytus, an American. Now, after three
years, many of the buildings of which it consisted have been dug
out and its plan can be clearly distinguished. The few tourists
whom curiosity takes there can study at their ease the favourite
residence of Amenothes in., one of the most illustrious sovereigns
of the eighteenth dynasty, and they can freely walk through
the most private apartments, even those in which the queen shut
herself up with the ladies of her suite. The buildings rose from
alluvial earth covered by sand, but which was then well watered,
and allowed the laying out of beautiful gardens on the edge of
the desert. Towards the east could be seen the steep slopes and
the peaked mountains of Libya, towards the west and south the
fields and groves of the Theban plain; towards the north
Amenothes in. saw the masonry of the funerary temple he was
building, and above the line of the cornices the heads of the two
colossi erected by his minister, Amenothes, son of Hapoui, to his
glory. The chapels of his predecessors retreated one behind the
other to the entrance of the valley which leads to the tombs of
the kings, and beyond the Nile, its feet bathed in the eddies of
the stream, the Thebes of the living extended as far as the eye
could reach; Luxor and its sanctuary faintly outlined. Ashiru
with its high grey ramparts, Karnak with its silhouette indented
with obelisks, closed the horizon.
Nothing in the aspect of the place authorizes us to conjecture
exactly how the family and their servants distributed themselves
through the palace, but we can distinguish the grand apartments
1 J. R. Lowell, Thc Present Crisis.

102 MOSES
from those used in everyday bfe. Two oblong, rectangular walls,
supported by two parallel lines of columns, were evidently used
as guard-rooms ; there the crowd of courtiers and officers of the
crown assembled, and on audience or festival days hierarchically
took up their positions, each according to his rank. Foreign
ambassadors waited there until the moment of offering the gifts
or tributes of their masters ; generals, on their return from a
successful expedition, received there the reward of their victory.
Important persons of Thebes and of the whole of Egypt paid
homage there to Pharaoh with due eloquence and genuflexion.
The semi-barbarous pomp of the Egyptian court pervaded the
place with its contrasts of extreme refinement and African
barbarity. It was displayed in garments of almost transparent
lawn, and in skins of animals, in paint, in tattooing, in flowers in
profusion, in strong perfumes on heads and bodies; perhaps
solemn banquets were given there, and bestial feasting succeeded
the interminable palavers in which sovereign and subjects ex
changed the most extravagant compliments, like the negro or
Malgache chiefs of our day.
An antechamber of modest dimensions led to the private
cabinet of Amenothes in. Persons admitted to the honour of the
royal presence suddenly saw before them, framed by two columns
of painted wood, the dais on which the Majesty of the Living
Horus deigned to reveal himself to them, and, set off against the
semi-darkness, the luminous figure of Pharaoh. It appeared to
them like a sacred image, in the stiff attitude of sovereignty,
immovable, the eyes fixed, symbobcal diadems on the forehead,
the sceptre and anserated cross in the hands, all shining with
gold and enamel. They bad to cover their eyes as if unable to
endure the brightness of the divine countenance, then to throw
themselves flat on the ground and, smelling at the earth, to wait
until the idol spoke to them. The postures varied according to
their rank, and according to the degree of favour desirable to
show them. Some were left prostrated, nose against the ground;
others remained kneebng, others again stood, but bent in two ;
some enjoyed the privilege of standing up straight with only the
head slightly bent. Like the rehgious services, the royal recep
tions were a sort of ballet accompanied with words, each act of
which was regulated with an attention to detail enough to have
plunged a Byzantine master of the ceremonies into despair.
Persons entered amidst shiging, and left amidst shouts accompanied
by the sound of timbrels, and the conversation which occurred at
the interview had to be spoken in rhythm and with carefully
studied intonations. A voice in perfect tune was required for

BEFORE PHARAOH 103
addressing the lords of the earth, just as for addressing the lords
of heaven.1 I.
The Beginning of the Struggle.
1. In order to appreciate the audacity of the demand made by
Moses and Aaron, we must remember the unbridled power and
authority which were claimed by the Egyptian monarchs. Each
Pharaoh was the child of the sun. He is depicted as fondled by
the greatest gods, and sitting with them in the recesses of their
temples to receive worship equal to their own. " By the life of
Pharaoh " was the supreme oath. Without Pharaoh could no
man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. For him
great Egypt existed. For him all other men lived, suffered, and
died. For him the mighty Nile flowed from its unexplored
fountains to fructify the soil. For him vast armies of priests,
and magicians and courtiers, wrought and ministered. From his
superb throne he looked down on the wretched crowds of subject
peoples, careless of their miseries. What were their tears and
groans, and the wail of their bondage, but a fitting sacrifice to be
offered to his exalted majesty. In addition, the present monarch
had recently, through his generals, achieved certain great victories ;
and these successes had greatly enhanced his arrogant pride, so
that it was in a paroxysm of supercilious scorn that he answered
the Divine demand : " Who is the Lord that I should obey his
voice, to let Israel go ? I know not the Lord, neither will I let
Israel go."
2. Then Moses and Aaron demanded more precisely (and
almost in the words spoken by God in Midian) that Pharaoh
would allow the Hebrews to go " three days' journey " into the
wilderness. Here two questions have to be asked.
(1) What is meant by " three days' journey " ? It is probably
a current expression for a considerable distance (Gen. xxx. 36) :
they ask to be allowed to worship their national God, with such
rites as He may enjoin (Exod. viii. 27), at some distant spot in the
wilderness where they could give no offence to the Egyptians
1 G. Maspero, New Light on Ancient Egypt, 221.

104 MOSES
(Exod. viii. 26). The " wilderness " would be the broad and arid
limestone plateau, now called et-Tih, extending from the E.
border of Egypt to tbe S. of Palestine, and bounded on the S.
by the mountains of the Sinaitic Peninsula.
Tf The repeated request to be allowed to go three days' journey
into the wilderness in order to sacrifice is apparently unmeaning
to one who does not know Sinai (Exod. iii. 18, viii. 27). But the
waterless journey of three days to Wady Gharandel impresses
itself on any one who has to arrange for travelling. It is so
essential a feature of the road that this may well have been
known as the " three days in the wilderness," in contrast to the
road to 'Aqabah, which is six or seven days in the wilderness.
To desire to go the " three days' journey in the wilderness " was
probably really an expression for going down to Sinai.1
(2) In what sense is the request meant ? If, says Driver, as
has been supposed, it was intended merely as an excuse for
getting a good start for their subsequent flight, then it was clearly
a case of deception : the Israelites would in this case have sought
to obtain from Pharaoh by a ruse what, if he had known their
entire purpose, he would not have granted. It is not however said
that, if tbe request had been acceded to, they would not have
returned when the three days' festival was over ; so it may have
been intended merely to test the feeling of Pharaoh towards
the Israelites ; to serve their God in their own way was in itself
"the smallest request that subjects could make of their ruler";
and if this request had been viewed favourably by Pharaoh,
the door might have been opened for further negotiations, and the
people might eventually have been allowed to depart altogether ;
the request was not granted, and so it resolved itself in the end
into a demand for the unconditional release of the people and
their actual departure.
3. Turning sharply on the two brethren, Pharaoh accused
them of hindering their people's toils, and bade them begone to
their own share in the clay-pit, or the brick-kiln : " Wherefore do
ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works ? Get you
unto your burdens." What a bitter taunt there was in that last
sentence ! How the royal lip curled as it was uttered ! Already
the heart had begun to harden ! And so the audience ended, and
1 W. M. F. Petrie, Researches in Sinai, 203.

BEFORE PHARAOH 105
the brothers came down the crowded corridors amid the titter of
the court. A very different scene was to be enacted a few months
later, as the news came there of the overthrow of the Egyptians
in the Red Sea — the last stage of the conflict between Pharaoh
and the God of the Hebrews, whose name he heard that day for
the first time.
That same day a new order was issued from the palace,
emanating from Pharaoh himself, to the taskmasters of the people.
And probably, ere the evening fell, the ominous words had passed
from the taskmasters to the head-men who were set over their
fellow-Hebrews, and were, therefore, responsible for the daily
delivery of a certain tale of bricks, that they must expect no more
straw, though the daily returns must be maintained. " Thus saith
Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go ye, get you straw where
ye can find it : yet not ought of your work shall be diminished."
Our God's not like to Pharaoh ; to require
His tale of bricke, and give no straw for fire:
His workmen wanted straw, and yet were lasht
For not performance : We have straw untbrasht,
Yet we are idle, and we winch, and kicke :
Against our burthens, and returne no bricke ;
We spend our straw, for litter in the stable,
And then we cry ; Alas, we are not able ;
Think not on Israel's suff'rings, in that day,
When Thy offended Justice shall repay
Our labours; Lord, when Thou upheav'st Thy rod,
Think, Pharaoh was a tyrant ; Thou, a God.1
Tf Force settles nothing. When Pharaoh said, " I know not
Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go " ; and when again, in answer
to the plea of conscience, he smote the earth with ' the hoof of
power, saying, " Get to your burdens, let heavier work be laid on
the men, and let them not regard lying words. Go, get yourselves
straw, and none of your work shall be diminished," he was trying
to solve a question of right with the mace of power. And though
that brute force was imperial, so constituted is this universe that
it was compelled to bow before the right championed by a herd
of slaves. Force settles nothing. And this is as true when
the force is in the hands of an enormous multitude, paralysing
industry in a strike, as when it is lodged in a monarch playing his
1 Francis Quarles, Divine Fancies, i. 81.

106 MOSES
dynastic schemes, with a million men, on the chessboard of war.
There may be a plea for force at times, as being necessary to
arouse attention to wrong, though even within that limited sphere
the incidental evils are so great as to justify it only as a last
resource. But worth or use beyond, force has absolutely none.1
Tf They might be driven to march on to London, Cromwell told
his officers, but an understanding was the most desirable way, and
the other a way of necessity, and not to be done but in a way of
necessity. What was obtained by an understanding would be
firm and durable. " Things obtained by force, though never so
good in themselves, would be both less to their honour and less
likely to last." " Eeally, really, have what you will have ; that
you have by force, I look upon as nothing." " I could wish," he
said earlier, " that we might remember this always, that what we
gain in a free way, it is better than twice as much in a forced,
and will be more truly ours and our posterity's." It is one of the
harshest ironies of history that the name of this famous man, who
started on the severest stage of his journey with this broad and
far-reaching principle, should have become the favourite symbol
of the shallow faith that force is the only remedy.2
II.
The Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart.
Probably no statement of Scripture has excited fiercer criticism,
more exultation of enemies and perplexity of friends, than this,
that the Lord said, " I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he shall
not let the people go," and that in consequence of this Divine
act Pharaoh sinned and suffered. Just because the words are
startling, it is unjust to quote them without careful examination
of the context, both in the prediction and in the fulfilment. When
all is weighed, compared, and harmonized, it will at last be
possible to draw a just conclusion.
1. There are three possible methods of explaining this
hardening of Pharaoh's heart. First, it may be attributed entirely
to the Divine Sovereignty. It may be said that God, by His own
power, directly hardened the heart of the king. But this
explanation is opposed to the letter of Scripture. Interpret the
1 John Smith, The Permanent Message of the Exodus, 95.
2 John Morley, Oliver Cromwell, bk. iii. , chap. 3.

BEFORE PHARAOH loy
frequent statements that God hardened Pharaoh's heart as literally
as you please, but do not forget that it is also said more than
once that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. "And Pharaoh
hardened his heart at this time also, neither would he let the
people go." And again, " When Pharaoh saw that the rain and
hail and thunders were ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened
his heart." Do not say, therefore, that the Bible gives us only
the one idea. But this explanation is still more opposed to the
spirit of Scripture. It overturns the great fact that Moses
designed to move the king. He had believed that the Israelites
were a race given into his hands by his God to be his slaves. His
priests said so. But Moses said, " The righteous Lord is the God
of those men, and of you, and of all men." He was protesting
strongly against the doctrine of favouritism. But the theory
which ascribes this hardening of Pharaoh to the Divine
Sovereignty makes Jehovah like the god of Pharaoh. Secondly,
we may attribute it wholly to Pharaoh himself. But the Bible
says again and again, " The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart." Or,
thirdly, we may combine the two statements of Scripture, and we
shall thus get at the truth. The way in which the facts are
recorded by the writer of this Book is the only way by which the
double fact could be expressed, viz., that the messages sent by
God to Pharaoh, and resisted, rendered him harder. The messages
came to Pharaoh, "Let my people go," and he refused. They
irritated him and made him more stubborn, — thus they hardened
him, because he thereby hardened himself. How otherwise could
the fact be expressed in the Bible ? If I tell an intemperate man
that he is ruining himself both in body and in soul, and he grows
angry at the truth and resists it, does he not become more
hardened in his intemperance ? And in expressing the whole
facts, would it not be true to say that I hardened him, and that
he hardened himself ? So when again and again the word of the
Lord came by Moses to the king, and he refused to listen to it, it
is true that the Lord hardened Pharaoh, and that, because Pharaoh
hardened himself.
Tf I expected every wave would have swallowed us up, and
that every time the ship fell down, as I thought in the trough or
hollow of the sea, we should never rise more ; and in this agony
of mind I made many vows and resolutions, that if it would please

108 MOSES
God and spare my life here this one voyage, if ever I got once my
foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father,
and never set it into a ship again while I lived. These wise and
sober thoughts continued all the while the storm continued, and
indeed some time after ; but the next day the wind was abated
aud the sea calmer, and I began to be a little inured to it. . . . In
a word, as the sea was returned to its smoothness of surface and
settled calmness by the abatement of that storm, so, the fury of
my thoughts being over, my fears and apprehensions of being
swallowed up by the sea being forgotten, and the current of my
former desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises
that I made in my distress.1
2. But do not these words, " the Lord hardened Pharaoh's
heart," distinctly describe God as the author of something in man
which is pronounced to be utterly wrong ? Is He not said to
have foreseen Pharaoh's sin, and not only to have foreseen but to
have produced it ? After pleading for the literal interpretation of
Scripture, must we not take refuge in some figurative, unnatural
sense of this language, in order to avoid the worse alternative of
finding in it a positive denial of God's goodness ? Let us reflect
upon the previous statements of the historian. The Lord, he
said, had seen the affliction of His people, and heard their cry,
and knew their sorrows. He determined to deliver them. He
commanded Pharaoh, their oppressor, to let them go. What is
the effect of that command upon Pharaoh ? It irritates and
provokes him. And He who sent the command produced the
irritation and provocation. But " hardening the heart " ! That
is so much stronger a phrase than merely " irritating and
provoking." Assuredly it is. The one may point merely to a
temporary excitement ; the other indicates a continual process.
But if you have admitted the possibility and even the propriety of
one form of language, let us see whether it does not naturaUy,
inevitably pass into the other. Moses says that God not only
sent the command to Pharaoh, but He sent one punishment after
another to him for resisting that command. It does not surprise
us to be told that some of these punishments shook the heart of
the king for a moment, but that presently he relapsed into his
previous determination, and that after each new act of remorse
1 Robinson Crusoe.

BEFORE PHARAOH 109
and each new effort to throw it off, he became harder and more
obstinate. We know enough of ourselves and of our fellow-men
to feel that such a statement is reasonable, that it has even a
great air of probability. Must we not say then that the punish
ment itself hardens the heart ? And if we have the same strong
conviction as Moses had, that the punishment was the deliberate
act of a Person, can we help saying that lie hardened the heart ?
Tf The words are strong, but we shall, I believe, find that these
words of Scripture are most necessary to us — for the very purpose
of making us understand tbe awful contradiction which there may
be between the will of a man and the will of bis Creator ; how
that contradiction may be aggravated by what seemed to be means
for its cure ; how it may be effectually cured. The subject is a
very profound and awful one. But it is one which we must face
in the actual work of life, and which we therefore should not
refuse to face when it presents itself to us on the page of Scripture.
I find the startling words respecting Pharaoh justifiable, because
I do not find that I can describe facts of everyday occurrence in
ourselves, if I may not have recourse to them.1
Tf The hardening effects of sin, which save from pain, are
worse judgments than the sharpest suffering. Anguish is, I am
more and more sure, corrective ; hardness has in it no hope.
Which would you choose if you were compelled to make a
choice ? — the torture of a dividing limb granulating again, and by
the very torture giving indications of life, or the painlessness of
mortification; the worst throb from the surgeon's knife, or
ossification of the heart ? In the spiritual world the pangs of
the most exquisite sensitiveness cut to the quick by the sense of
fault and aching almost hopelessly, but leaving conscience still
alive and aspiration still uncrushed, or the death of every
remnant of what is good, the ossification of the soul, the painless
extinction of the moral being, its very self ? 2
Tf Suleiman, a teacher in a school of the Irish Presbyterian
Church in Nebk, who made most careful investigations for me
during more than two months, interviewing Moslems and
Christians, Fellahin and Bedouin, at the suggestion of Eev. J.
Stewart Crawford, said, as the result of many interviews with
many kinds of people : " Their view is that God is the creator of
heaven and earth, the maker of all men, the giver of good to all.
He may also lead astray. The ignorant know up to this point."
1 F. D. Maurice, The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, 180.
8 Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson, 239.

no MOSES
This is evidently a survival of an ancient Semitic conception,
which we find gives colouring to certain Old Testament passages,
as for example when the Lord is represented as saying of
Pharaoh, "I will harden his heart," and Isaiah represents God
as bidding him, " Make the heart of this people fat, and make
their ears heavy, and smear their eyes, lest they should see with
their eyes, and hear with their ears, and perceive with their
heart, and should convert and be healed." I do not, of course,
believe that these passages teach that God leads man astray, but
they are certainly coloured by this idea. Another passage, read
literally, expresses the view that God makes the enemies of His
people guilty — I refer to Ps. v. 10, where the Psalmist prays,
according to the Hebrew idiom, "Make them guilty, 0 God,"
which the Revisers well translate, " Hold them guilty, 0 God," or
perhaps better, " Declare them guilty, 0 God " ; that is, " Let them
suffer the consequences of their guilt." We have an illustration
of this meaning in passages parallel to God's hardening Pharaoh's
heart, where it is said : " Pharaoh hardened his heart." But the
thought that God leads man astray is original in the Semitic
mind. So ingrained is the ancient idea, through millenniums of
oppression, that anyone in power is responsible for the failure of
an inferior, that it sometimes appears to-day in a very amusing
way. The following incident, which illustrates this point, came
under my notice when I was spending five weeks at a Syrian
Protestant College in Beirut. A student failed to pass his
examination in French. He therefore wrote a very indignant
letter to the French professor, in which he asked the question, in
Arab-English : " Why did you fail me ? " By this he did not
mean, " Why did you declare that my examination was a failure ? "
but " Why did you cause me to fail ? " This was evidently his
meaning from the tenor of his letter, in which he claimed that
he had done excellent work in French.1

III.
The Plagues.
The plagues were signs. Their purpose was to reveal, in a
flash of pain and distress, that self-will and pride are contrary to
the Divine order of the world, and destructive of all human well-
being. It would seem as though the Almighty withdrew the
restraints which, in the present time of discipline and probation,
1 S. I. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day, 69.

BEFORE PHARAOH in
are holding back the immediate consequences of wrong-doing, so
that men might be able to see what an evil thing sin is, and how
terribly it injures their own best interests. For the most part,
the processes of retribution are so gradual that we fail to connect
them with their causes. For instance, in a vague way, we
believe that luxury and debauchery ultimately destroy noble
families, but, in our hurrying and migratory days, we do not stay
long enough to be impressed with the certainty and terror of the
Divine judgments. Given some overwhelming act of retribution,
like the fate of Belshazzar on the night that Cyrus took Babylon,
the heart of humanity instantly recognizes that there is One who
judges in the earth.
Tf As our bodies are affected by indulgence in sin, so probably
the natural world, and even the brute creation, are powerfully
influenced by the indulgence of human passion. Creation, says
the Apostle, groans and travails together with man ; the revelation
of the sons of God is to inaugurate her emancipation from the
bondage of corruption. The rending rocks and veiled heavens of
the Crucifixion were the natural expression, in the earth-plane, of
the love and hate which met in dread collision at Calvary. The
prophet Jeremiah tells us that the land mourns and the herbs of
a whole country wither for the wickedness of them that dwell in
it, and that even the beasts and birds are consumed. It has never
seemed remarkable that when the Puritan Commonwealth expired
with Cromwell, so vast a revolution was accompanied by one of
the most terrific storms that ever devastated Britain ; or that on
that momentous afternoon when the assembled conclave at the
Vatican pronounced the dogma of Papal Infallibility, the reading
of the decree was rendered almost inaudible by peals of rever
berating thunder that shook the city.1
1. What judgment, however, are we to form with regard to
the historical character of the plagues ? The narratives, there are
strong reasons for believing, were written long after the time of
Moses, and do not do more than acquaint us with the traditions
current among the Hebrews at the time when they were written ;
we consequently have no guarantee that they preserve exact
recollections of the actual facts. That there is no basis of fact for
the traditions which the narratives incorporate is in the highest
degree improbable : we may feel very sure of this, and yet not feel
1 F. B. Meyer, Exodus (i.-xx.), 165.

ii2 MOSES
sure that they describe the events exactly as they happened.
"As the original nucleus of fact," writes Dillmann, "we may
suppose that at the time of Israel's deliverance Egypt was visited
by various adverse natural occurrences, which the Israelites
ascribed to the operation of their God, and by which their leaders,
Moses and Aaron, sought to prove to the Egyptian court the
superiority of their God over the king and gods of Egypt; it
must, however, be admitted that in the Israelitish story these
occurrences had for long been invested with a purely miraculous
character. And if all had once been lifted up into the sphere of
God's unlimited power, the compiler could feel no scruple in
combining the different plagues mentioned in his sources into a
series of ten, in such a manner as to depict, in a picture drawn
with unfading colours, not only the abundance of resources which
God has at His disposal for helping His own people, and humiliat
ing those who resist His will, but also the slow and patient yet
sure steps with which He proceeds against His foes, and the
growth of evil in men till it becomes at last obstinate and con
firmed." The real value of the narratives, according to Dillmann,
is thus not historical, but moral and religious. And from these
points of view their typical and didactic significance cannot be
overrated. The traditional story of the contest between Moses
and Pharaoh is applied so as to depict, to use Dillmann's ex
pression, "in unfading colours," the impotence of man's strongest
determination when it essays to contend with God, and the fruit-
lessness of all human efforts to frustrate His purposes.
Tf Dr. Sanday — whose historical bias, if he has one, always
leads him to conservative conclusions — has expressed himself
recently on the subject, in an essay on the Symbolism of the
Bible, in words which are well worth quoting : " The early
chapters of Genesis are not the only portion of the Pentateuchal
history to which I think that we may rightly apply the epithet
' symbolical.' Indeed I suspect that the greater part of the
Pentateuch would be rightly so described in greater or less degree.
The narrative of the Pentateuch culminates in two great events,
the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Law from Mount
Sinai. What are we to say to any of these ? Are they historical
in the sense in which the Second Book of Samuel is historical ? I
think we may say that they are not. If we accept — as I at least
feel constrained to accept, at least in broad outline — the critical

BEFORE PHARAOH 113
theory now so widely held as to the composition of the Pentateuch,
then there is a long interval, an interval of some four centuries or
more, between the events and the main portions of the record as
we now have it. In such a case we should expect to happen just
what we find has happened. There is an element of folklore, of
oral tradition insufficiently checked by writing. The imagination
has been at work. If we compare, for instance, the narrative of
the Ten Plagues with the narrative of the Eevolt of Absalom, we
shall feel the difference. The one is nature itself, with all the
flexibility and easy sequence that we associate with nature. The
other is constructed upon a scheme which is so symmetrical that
we cannot help seeing that it is really artificial. I do not mean
artificial in the sense that the writer, with no materials before
him, sat down consciously and deliberately to invent them in the
form they now have ; but I mean that, as the story passed from
mouth to mouth, it gradually and almost imperceptibly assumed
its present shape."
2. The question need no longer be pressed : Are the plagues
to be regarded as miracles or are they not ? The changed attitude
of science to religion has changed the whole conception of the
miraculous. Few of the recent forms of development in religious
thought are more significant than that by which an approach has
been made towards a truer perception of the relation in which
religion stands to science. Time was when thinkers of the highest
intellect and education allocated one portion of human thought to
religion as its exclusive domain, and another to science. They
were as rivals in adjacent kingdoms, neither of which might
transgress each other's boundaries. And this mutual opposition
was helped by the tendency to make religion equivalent at all
points to " faith in the impossible," while " science " was " know
ledge of ascertained facts." On each side were exponents who
gloried in these respective definitions. The results produced upon
the study of the Bible were disastrous. The plagues of Egypt, for
example, were either miracles, portents, superhuman acts of God
which faith must accept without reasoning, or they were purely
natural phenomena. Eeligious people held the conclusion to
which the Egyptian magicians came, that they were the working
of the " Finger of God " ; scientific people held that such a con
clusion was as primitive as the magicians themselves. But this
hostility is now rapidly passing away, as it is being more clearly
MOSES-SAMSON — 8

n4 MOSES
recognized that rebgion embraces science as the greater includes
the less ; that nothing can lie outside the activity of the Infinite
God ; and therefore that to point out a connexion between some
of the miracles of Scripture and natural phenomena does not
eliminate from them the Divine element; it rather transfigures
an unreasoning "faith in the impossible" into a faith which
recognizes the Finger of God in everything, the providence of 'God
in every event of national and individual life.
Tf Great confusion of thought has resulted from the use of two
words, miracle and supernatural ; and the meanings of these words
have been so twisted that false standards of thought have arisen.
We must remember that a miracle is a thing wondered at, without
any reference necessarily to non-natural action; everything we
admire is literally a miracle. In the good old words, anything
unusual was taken to be " a sign and wonder," a thing which was
viewed as a token of interposition in human affairs, and therefore
a matter of astonishment. But the notion of such a phrase im
plying non-natural action has only grown up with the modern
view of natural law. To most ages of mankind there was no
dividing line between natural and non-natural; so much is in
explicable to the untrained mind that no trouble was taken to
define whether an event would happen in the natural course or
not. And events which were well known to be purely in the
natural course were viewed as occurring at a special time in order
to influence human affairs. As a Rumanian Jew said to me, " I
come from a land where miracles happen every day ; there is no
difficulty about miracles." His countrymen have still the antique
mind, which views events as wonders fitted to their daily life. To
transfer the statements and views of people in that frame of mind
into the precise phraseology of the present age — when the infini
tesimal variations of natural laws are the passion of men's lives — is
completely hopeless and absurd. To take a parallel case, unless
we renounce volition and proclaim ourselves helpless automata, we
must recognize the forces of our wills which control nature. Yet
these are beyond the grasp of modern phraseology, and we can no
more translate all our mental processes into automatic formulae
than we can translate the records of the Old Testament into
purely modern views. The other word which has done so much
harm is supernatural, because it is used for two ideas which we
have learned in modern times to carefully keep apart. When the
extent of natural law was but little understood, the difference
between co-natural action and non-natural action was dimly seen
and little regarded. To those who have learned to see in so much

BEFORE PHARAOH 115
of nature the systems of definite cause and effect, this difference
is vital; and to continue to use one word with two entirely
different meanings is an incessant obstacle to thought. The larger
question of non-natural action is outside the scope of these
inquiries ; all of the events in the records which we touch on here
are expressly referred by their writers to co-natural action. A
strong east wind drives the Eed Sea back ; another wind blows up
a flock of quails ; cutting a rock brings a water supply to view ;
and the writers of these accounts record such matters as wondrous
benefits of the timely action of natural causes.1
Tf At different times Signor and Lord Tennyson had confided to
each their conclusions upon rehgious beliefs, and Signor told me
he had found that their ideas were identical. The world cannot
get on without a personal God. One whose law is stronger than
himself is conceivable — He may know that this is best. The
Greeks perceived this truth and called the law " the Fates." The
Hebrew conception of a god who can break his own laws to
exhibit his power is not so convincing of greatness as is the
Power that works within a self-imposed order for higher purposes
than the human mind can comprehend. "The Divine Essence
is the law Himself; He can no more break a law than He
can do away with Himself. This has been perceived in part,
for in the earliest miracles, such as the feeding of Elijah in
the desert, God does not enable him to do without food, as
Omnipotence certainly could have done, but uses means to give
him that food."2
3. It is important to notice that the plagues all stand in close
connexion with the natural conditions of Egypt, and, as represented
in the narrative, are in fact just miraculously intensified forms of
the diseases or other natural occurrences to which the country is
still more or less hable. Every June, when the annual inundation
begins, the Nile assumes a reddish colour, due to the red marl
brought down from the Abyssinian mountains. Frogs, gnats, flies,
and locusts are common pests of the country. Destructive
murrains or cattle plagues have occurred in Egypt during the
last century. Cutaneous eruptions (" boils ") are common there.
Hailstones, accompanied by lightning, though unusual, are not
unknown. The darkness was probably the result of the hot wind
called the Hamsin, which blows at intervals for nearly two months
1 W. M. F. Petrie, Researches m Sinai, 201.
1 George Frederic Watts, ii. 165.

116 MOSES
every year, frequently fills the air with thick clouds of dust and
sand, and obliges people, while it lasts, to remain indoors. Malig
nant epidemics, accompanied sometimes by great mortality, are
frequently mentioned by historians and travellers.
Tf There was nothing in the plagues themselves that was either
supernatural or contra-natural. They were all characteristic of
Egypt and of Egypt alone. They were signs and wonders, not because
they introduced new and unknown forces into the life of the Egyp
tians, but because the diseases and plagues already known to the
country were intensified in action and crowded into a short space
of time.1 T] If Professor Sayce knew India as well as he knows Egypt,
he would not say that these plagues were characteristic of Egypt
alone. India's present representatives of the plagues leave Egypt
nowhere in the competition. Snakes, frogs, lice, flies, cattle-
plague, boils, hail, sand-storms and cholera are at home in India.
Eivers that turn red in flood are on a larger scale and sand-storms
are more dense in India than in Egypt. But it is difficult to
understand how cholera, looked on as a purely natural cause, could
account for the death of the firstborn in one night. What, how
ever, cannot be accepted in any wise is the suggestion that the
annual phenomenon of the Nile flood could be looked upon as a
plague. The " red water " (as it is called by the natives, though
the colour would be more correctly described as deep chocolate)
arrives in Egypt annually in August and September, and is highly
valued for its fertilizing properties by all landowners. A traveller
in Egypt gives an account of a festival in honour of the rise of the
flood in a.d. 1047, and describes how crowds bathed in the turbid
waters of the flood in the belief that the water of their sacred
river had, at the time of the full rise, virtue to cure the sick, to
strengthen the young and weak, and to make the barren woman a
joyful mother of children. If a thousand years ago the red flood
water was looked upon as a blessing, it is a thing inconceivable
that three thousand years ago the Egyptians, after experience of
seven years' famine and seven years' plenty, if they had had no
other experience, should have been so unobservant as not to reckon
the red water of the flood a blessing too. This suggestion, then,
must be rejected as the explanation of the plague of water being
turned into blood so that the fish died and the people could not
drink of it. " Eed " Nile water has no harmful effect on fish, or
on those that drink it.2
1 A. H. Sayce, Early History of the Hebrews, 169.
2 R. H. Brown, The Land of Goshen, 65.

BEFORE PHARAOH 117
4. When we examine the plagues in detail, we discover that it
is no arbitrary fancy which divides them into three triplets,
leading up to the appalling tenth. Thus the first, fourth, and
seventh, each of which begins a triplet, are introduced by a
command to Moses to warn Pharaoh "in the morning" (Exod. vii. 15),
or " early in the morning " (viii. 20, ix. 13). The third, sixth, and
ninth, on the contrary, are inflicted without any warning whatever.
The story of the third plague closes with the defeat of the
magicians, the sixth with their inability to stand before the king,
and the ninth with the final rupture, when Moses declares, "I
will see thy face again no more" (viii. 19, ix. 11, x. 29). The
first three are plagues of loathsomeness — bloodstained waters,
frogs, and lice ; the next three bring actual pain and loss with
them — stinging flies, murrain which afflicts the beasts, and boils
upon all the Egyptians ; and the third triplet are " nature-plagues "
— hail, locusts, and darkness. It is only after the first three
plagues that the immunity of Israel is mentioned ; and after the
next three, when the hail is threatened, instructions are first given
by which those Egyptians who fear Jehovah may also obtain
protection. Thus, in orderly and solemn procession, marched the
avengers of God upon the guilty land.
5. The tenth plague stands by itself. It is tbe death of the
firstborn. The death of the firstborn was the great climax,
reached gradually and in growing severity. From the first this
was set forth as the penalty of Pharaoh's refusal to let Israel go.
Before Moses had set out for Egypt this was given to him as the
message from God : " Thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith
the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn ; and I say unto
thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me ; and if thou refuse to
let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn." Nine
plagues had already come upon the land : but hitherto the power
of God had been shown by punishing rather than by destroying.
More and more severe became these plagues until the cattle and
the persons of the Egyptians began to be stricken, and in the
plague of the hail those that refused to heed the voice of Moses
and to seek shelter were slain. Then came the plague of darkness.
Nothing produced so deep an impression upon the king and people
as did this, and certainly none was so terrible.

118 MOSES
(1) The first thing to be observed in the passage which contains
the account of the tenth plague (Exod. xi. 1-10) is that it interposes
a solemn pause between the preceding ineffectual plagues and the
last effectual one. There is an awful lull in the storm before
the last crashing hurricane which lays every obstacle flat. " There
is silence in heaven " before the final peal of thunder.
(2) One cannot but note in Moses' prediction of the last plague
the solemn enlargement on the details of the widespread calamity,
which is not unfeeling gloating over an oppressor's misery, but a
yearning to save from hideous misery by timely and plain depicting
of it. There is a flash of national triumph in the further contrast
between the universal wailing in Egypt and the untouched security
of the children of Israel, but that feeling merges at once into the
higher one of the Lord's gracious action in establishing the differ
ence between them and their oppressors.
Tf I grant you that the destruction of the Egyptian firstborn
and that of Pharaoh's host in the Eed Sea are startling and awful
events, as the perishing of any number of human beings by any
hurricane, pestilence, shipwreck, must be. Why do you think
these more so than others? Is it because you have arrived at
some knowledge of the future condition of these particular
sufferers, which you have not in the other case ? How did you
arrive at it ? The Bible tells you nothing about it. We merely
hear that the firstborn died, that the hosts of the Egyptians
went down into the sea. I know nothing more of them, except
that they are not gone out of God's sight because they are gone
out of mine, and that the judge of all the earth will do right.
The Bible gives me that assurance. I find it a very soothing and
comforting one. I could not bear to look upon the facts which
are passing every day before our eyes if I had not this assurance.
The behef that the Egyptians were drowned as much as the
Israelites were saved, because " the mercy of the Lord endureth
for ever," can help me to look upon problems which I have no
skill to solve, without horror, nay, with confidence and hope.
Take away that bebef, — give us no hint, no example to guide us
in considering the ways of God to His creatures, — and we should
sink back into the conclusions which we all feel to be so natural
to us, which all men without help have sunk into. The predomin
ance of evil would lead us to think that it is the everlasting law
of the world instead of the transgression and violation of its
law.1 1 F. D. Maurice, The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of fhe Old Testament, 195.

BEFORE PHARAOH 119
In vain we judgments feel, and wonders see;
In vain did God to descend hither deign,
He was His own ambassador in vain,
Our Moses and our guide Himself to be.
We will not let ourselves to go,
And with worse harden'd hearts, do our own Pharaohs grow;
Ah ! lest at last we perish so.
Think, stubborn Man ! think of th' Egyptian prince,
(Hard of belief and will, but not so hard as thou)
Think with what dreadful proofs God did convince
The feeble arguments that human pow'r could shew;
Think what plagues attend on thee,
Who Moses' God dost now refuse more oft than Moses he.1

IV.
The Passover.
The great deliverance from Egypt now close at hand was both
the birthday of the nation, looked back to as such in all future
generations, and a great landmark in the history of redemption.
Israel, before this time little more than a collection of families of
one race, with common traditions and religion, was now to have
a unified national life ; and it was also to be conscious of a
definite Divine call, and a religious separation from all the other
nations of the earth. The new nation was to be also a church, a
"theocracy," under the direct rule of Jehovah. This great
turning point was marked as tbe beginning of a new era, with
new religious institutions. The calendar was to begin afresh
from the day of deliverance ; the month of Nisan or Abib (March
21-April 20, the month of green corn) was to be counted for the
first month of the year. The Passover, the feast of unleavened
bread, and the consecration of the firstborn, were instituted as
perpetual memorials.
Tf It was to God above all James Taylor sought to be faithful,
and he was possessed by a profound conviction of His infinite
faithfulness. He took the Bible very simply, believing it was of
all books the most practical if put to the test of experience. In
this too he met with fullest sympathy from the young wife who
was herself so loyal to the Lord. On a day they could never
1 A. Cowley, Pindaric Odes.

120 MOSES
forget, in their first winter together, he sought her, Bible in hand,
to talk over a passage that had impressed him. It was part of
the thirteenth chapter of Exodus, with the corresponding verses
in Numbers : "Sanctify unto me all the firstborn
All the firstborn are mine . . .
Mine shall they be . . .
Set apart unto the Lord."
Long and earnest was the talk that followed in view of the
happiness to which they were looking forward. Their hearts
held back nothing from the Lord. With them it was not a
question of how little could be given but how much. Did the
Lord claim the best gift of His own giving ? Their child was
more their own for being His. To such parents what could be
more welcome than the invitation, nay, command, to set apart
their dearest thus to Him ? And how precious the Divine
assurance, " It is Mine," not for time only but for eternity.
Together they knelt in the silence to fulfil as literally as possible
an obligation they could not relegate to Hebrew parents of old.
It was no ceremony to be gone through merely, but a definite
transaction, the handing over of their best to God, recalling which
the mother wrote long after: "This act of consecration they
solemnly performed upon their knees, asking for the rich influence
of the Holy Spirit," that their firstborn might be "set apart"
indeed from that hour. And just as definitely the Lord re
sponded, giving them faith to realize that He had accepted the
gift ; that henceforth the life so dear to them was their own no
longer, but must be held at the disposal of a higher claim, a
deeper love than theirs.
Thus spring-time came again touching with tender loveliness
those Yorkshire hills and valleys, and on May 21, 1832, this
child of many prayers was born, and named after both parents,
James Hudson Taylor.1
1. The religious historians of the Hebrews connected the
Passover with the Exodus. But there are indications that its
origin lay behind the Exodus in a far-off past. And though we
here enter upon a region of inference and deduction, a truer and
larger view will be gained of God's methods in dealing with His
people when it is seen that the Passover was a primitive
institution, engrained in the earlier life of Israel, and that their
1 Hudson Taylor in Early Years, 33.

BEFORE PHARAOH 121
religious genius, by Divine inspiration, took it up and transformed
it into something greater and deeper. It is noticeable that in
Exod. xii. 21 " the Passover " is abruptly introduced as something
already well known; and that the Israelites had repeatedly
asked permission from Pharaoh to separate themselves three
days' journey, for the purpose of holding a pilgrimage and of
offering sacrifice (iii. 18, v. 1, vii. 16, viii. 27, x. 9). It would seem,
therefore, that they made an annual festival which had come
down to them from their fathers the reason — or the ostensible
reason — for leaving Egypt. Moreover Pharaoh does not appear
to have seen anything strange in the request ; he merely refused
to grant it. If, then, the Passover was a very early nomad institu
tion, the original meaning of it must be sought partly from the ritual
details, and partly from the customs of Arabian nomads of the
present day, who are very tenacious of ancient traditions and
habits. 2. Thus the Jews regard the Passover, first, as the festival of
the public foundation of their religion, when it passed from its
family stage to the national stage, just as it was destined to pass
from its national stage to one broader and more universal. For
the Jews are no longer a nation, but only a religious brotherhood,
and their faith knows no difference of race or nation any more.
But the Passover may be regarded, secondly, as the great festival
of freedom. Liberty or freedom has been abused, as other good
things have been abused and put to ignoble uses, but it is none
the less a good thing in itself. Whenever and wherever there is
oppression of the weak by the strong, of the poor by the rich, or
of one race by another, they who are knit together by the common
celebration of the Passover ought to feel righteous indignation,
and do all that lies in their power to remedy the wrong.
Tf The only recorded celebrations of the Passover in the Old
Testament, like the Egyptian Festival, inaugurate some new step
in the nation's history.
(1) In the days of Joshua the manna ceased, when the
Passover had been kept, and the people began to eat
the corn of Canaan (Josh. v. 10-11 P).
(2) When Hezekiah kept the Passover, he had purified
the land for the true worship of Jehovah (2 Chron.
xxx.).

122 MOSES
(3) Josiah began his reformation, in accordance with the
newly discovered Law, by a solemn Passover (2 Kings
xxiii. 21-23).
(4) When the second temple was dedicated a paschal cele
bration is recorded (Ezra vi. 22). In the preceding
verse it is said that the children of the captivity had
separated themselves from " filthiness of the heathen of
the land." i
3. The Passover ritual, as appointed here, divides itself into
two main parts — the sprinkling of the sacrificial blood on the
door-posts and lintels, and the feast on the sacrifice.
(1) The ritual ofthe protecting blood. — Whether readers accept
the doctrines of substitution and expiation or not, it ought to be
impossible for an honest reader of this passage to deny that these
doctrines or thoughts are there. They may be only the barbarous
notions of a half -savage age and people. But, whatever they are,
there they are. The lamb without blemish, carefully chosen and
kept for four days, till it had become as it were part of the house
hold, and then solemnly slain by the head of the family, was their
representative. When they sprinkled its blood on the posts, they
confessed that they stood in peril of the destroying angel by reason
of their impurity, and they presented the blood as their expiation.
In so far, their act was an act of confession, deprecation, and faith.
It accepted the divinely-appointed means of safety. The con
sequence was exemption from the fatal stroke, which fell on all
homes, from the palace to the slave's hovel, where that red streak
was not found. If any son of Abraham had despised the provision
for safety, he would have been partaker of the plague.
(2) The festal meal on the sacrifice. — After the sprinkling of
the blood came the feast. Only when the house was secure from
the destruction which walked in the darkness of that fateful night
could a delivered household gather round the board. That which
had become their safety now became their food. Other sacrifices
were, at a later period, modelled on the same type ; and in all cases
the symbolism is the same, namely, joyful participation in the
sacrifice, and communion with God based upon expiation. In the
Passover, this second stage received for future ages the further
meaning of a memorial. But on that first night it was only such by
1 F. J. Foakes-Jackson, The Biblical History of the Hebrews, 67.

BEFORE PHARAOH 123
anticipation, seeing that it preceded the deliverance which it was
afterwards to commemorate.
4. No study of the Passover would be complete which did not
take account of St. Paul's words in 1 Cor. v. 7, " our paschal Victim
also hath been slain, even Christ." It is one of the fundamental
factors in the growth of Christianity out of the Hebrew germ that
in the highest act of Christian worship all the main features in
the Passover are taken up and receive their full and eternal signifi
cance. The Firstborn, the chosen "Lamb of God," without
blemish, slain once for all, is continually offered ; the feast is con
tinually spread through which the faithful partaker enters anew
into vital union with God ; and the atoning virtue of " the Blood
of the Lamb " is continually effectual for the salvation of every
heart upon which it is sprinkled.
Tf As the angel of death passed by the Israelites when he saw
the blood on the lintel, so shall the angel of retribution spare
those who have found refuge in the Cross. Flippant men suppose
that nothing is easier than the forgiveness of sin. They cannot
believe that it presents any difficulty to God. But it has justly
been said, " A fault is not effaced because we reproach ourselves
with it." No, it strikes infinitely deeper than that ; it loudly calls
for atonement or punishment, and all revelation teaches that the
supreme act of Divine wisdom and power was tbe provision of
redemption for a world of sinners. That redemption is in the
blood of Christ, shed for me. " Being now justified by his blood,
we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him." I do
not understand the mystery of redemption, as I do not understand
many other mysteries : but if I am not forgiven, healed, perfected
through the Crucified, I see no other way of escape from the law
of retribution. It is either the red cross or the red sword.1
Slain for man, slain for me, 0 Lamb of God, look down;
Loving to the end look down, behold and see:
Turn Thine Eyes of pity, turn not on us Thy frown,
0 Lamb of God, slain for man, slain for me.
Mark the wrestling, mark the race for indeed a crown;
Mark our chariots how we drive them heavily;
Mark the foe upon our track blasting thundering down,
0 Lamb of God, slain for man, slain for me.
1 W. L. Watkinson, The Oates of Dawn, 284.

124 MOSES
Set as a Cloudy Pillar against them Thy frown,
Thy Face of Light toward us gracious utterly;
Help granting, hope granting, until Thou grant a crown,
0 Lamb of God, slain for man, slain for me.1
1 Christina G. Rossetti, Verses, 31.

MOSES. VI.
The Red Sea.

«S

Literature.
Barton, G. A., The Roots of Christian Teaching as found in the Old Testa
ment (1902), 130.
Bell, C. D., The Roll-Call of Faith (1886), 245.
Brown, R. H., The Land of Goshen (1912), 59.
Chadwick, Q. A., The Booh of Exodus (Expositor's Bible) (1890), 195.
Driver, S. R., The Book of Exodus (Cambridge Bible) (1911), 111.
Drysdale, A. H., Early Bible Songs (1890), 103.
Duncan, J. G., The Exploration of Egypt and the Old Testament (1908), 80.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History ofthe Hebrews (1903), 69.
Gibson, J. M., The Mosaic Era (1881), 61.
Knight, G. H., In the Cloudy and Dark Day (1910), 113.
Maclaren, A, Expositions : Exodus, etc. (1906), 52.
Matheson, G., Leaves for Quiet Hours (1904), 108.
Meyer, F. B., Moses the Servant of God, 75.
„ „ Exodus, i. (1911) 216.
Montefiore, C. G., The Bible for Home Reading, i. (1896) 66.
Ottley, R. L., Aspects of the Old Testament (1897), 137.
Pearse, M. G., Moses: His Life and its Lessons (1894), 117.
Petrie, W. M. F., Researches in Sinai (1906), 203.
„ „ Egypt and Israel (1911), 37.
Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, i. (1889) 119.
Strong, A. H., One Hundred Chapel-Talks to Theological Students (1913),
104.
Talbot, E., Sermons Preached in the Leeds Parish Church (1896), 117.
Wright, G. F., Scientific Confirmations of Old Testament History (1907), 83.
Biblical World, xxix. (1907) 541 (K. Fullerton).
Hotmletic Review, liv. (1907) 58 (Emperor William H.).

m6

The Red Sea.
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of
Egypt.— Hos. xi. i.
1. Never probably in the history of the world was there a scene
more tragic and more wonderful than this of Israel's deliverance.
What a night it is when in every little hut and hovel of the
Hebrews each family waits expectant for the coming of the God
of Israel — their souls stirred by the strange ceremony in which
they have taken part ; the blood sprinkled on the door-posts, and
themselves standing ready for a journey, waiting for the moment
of their freedom. A nation is to be born in a day. Night has
settled upon Egypt, upon its palaces, upon the stately houses of
its nobles, upon the lowly homes of its toilers in all the land. Now
comes the dread moment when the Angel of the Lord goes forth
on his errand, whose shadow is the shadow of death. Swift is bis
flight, and as he passes, lo ! the firstborn is dead in every house.
Then bursts upon the still night from every side a cry, the bke of
which had never been heard — " The firstborn is dead ! dead ! "
And all the nation spring forth, as if delay meant further death,
and thrust upon the Israelites their jewels of silver and their
jewels of gold, and urge them to be gone. And forth marches
Israel, a people for whom their God has wrought such great
wonders — they and their little ones, their flocks and their herds.
Not a disorderly mob is it, but like the host of God, marshalled
and "harnessed," or, as it is rendered in the margin, by five in a
rank, step by step, each tribe under the leadership of the head-man.
And over them rise the wondrous tokens of God's presence — the
pillar of cloud casting upon them its kindly shade, and by night
the pillar of fire to give them light.
Tf A marvellous parallel this story presents to the experience
of the individual soul in passing from darkness to light and from
the power of Satan to God. When God comes to deal with a
"7

T28 MOSES
man in order to effect bis salvation He finds him dead in tres
passes and sins. He finds that he has forgotten his origin as one
made in the image of God, his destiny as one meant to live in the
favour of God. He finds him serving and content to serve the
devil. So God's first work with a man is to awaken him to the
shame and misery of his position as a sinner. And this is done
just as the awakening of Israel was done. The path of sin is
made bitter; the service that once seemed pleasant is made in
tolerable; and, as the desire for deliverance awakens, in the
preaching of the gospel it is offered to the soul. So the soul
awakens, and, like Israel, often finds the moment of awaking a
moment of agony, in which it is tempted to curse those by whom
the bitter sense of sin has been aroused. But after awakening
comes the time of struggle. The soul at first seeks to free itself.
By fast and prayer, by reading of the Bible and scrupulous care
fulness of life, the man strives to plague the Pharaoh within him
and escape from his hand. But he is not delivered until he
comes, as Israel came, to the place of blood-shedding ; it is at the
foot of the Cross that the grip of sin loosens. It is there that its
power is broken. Until a man comes to the Cross the hope of
deliverance is vain. But when the blood is sprinkled on the
soul the old master is forsaken. We become dead to sin by the
Body of Christ, and enter on the new life, and then we lust for
this new life. " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature ;
old things are passed away ; behold, all things are become new."
New ambitions are ours, we no longer live to ourselves but to
Christ; new motives are ours, the love of Christ constrains us,
the spirit of Christ empowers us, and for this new life there are
the new laws. We pass under the perfect law of liberty, the law
of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus.1
2. An essential question in any consideration of the Exodus
is that of the numbers of the people. A very serious difficulty
has been felt by every one who has considered the statements of
numbers; and the solutions have been either to declare the
numbers wholly fictitious, or to make some purely arbitrary re
duction. Before desperately cutting the knot in either of these
ways, it is our business to try to untie it, by tracing any possible
source for the statements, or any likely corruption which they
may have undergone.
The number of men is stated at 600,000, besides children and a
mixed multitude (Exod. xii. 37), or 603,550 besides Levi (Num. ii.
1 6. H. C. Macgregor, Messages of the Old Testament, 25.

THE RED SEA 129
32). It has always been a difficult matter to understand how so
vast a multitude could have been supported either in the land of
Goshen or in the Sinaitic Peninsula ; or could have been brought
out of Egypt in the time and manner related. But Professor
Petrie has propounded a solution which is possibly right. The
solution depends on the fact that aldfi which means " thousands,"
has also a second meaning, namely, " groups " or " families." And
Professor Petrie shows, in his Besearches in Sinai, good reasons
for believing that the aldf of the census of Num. i. and xxvi.
has been wrongly given the meaning of " thousands " instead of
" families." For instance, the statement in words — " thirty aldf,
two hundred people," has been taken to mean " thirty thousand
two hundred people " instead of " 30 families, 200 people " — the
200 people being the number of individuals in the 30 families.
Professor Sayce states that this view is supported by Assyrian,
in which he believes the originals of the Hebrew text of the
Pentateuch were written. Interpreted in this way, the first census
of Num. i. gives a population of 5550, and the second census
— that of Num. xxvi. — 5730, figures which appear from several
lines of reasoning to be very probable ones. If these conclu
sions are accepted, the difficulty of imagining the Exodus and
the wanderings in the desert of so vast a multitude is, if not
removed, at any rate lessened. The numbers, even so modified,
are sufficient to leave the Exodus and desert wanderings a marvel.
3. The exodus of a whole race with all its belongings is, one
might say, nothing unusual in the history of Egypt. The Israelites
themselves in the early days of their sojourn there must have
witnessed the exodus of the Hyksos people from Avaris, very
likely by the same route as they themselves followed, through
the Wady Tumilat to the Sinaitic Peninsula and thence into
Canaan, where tradition credits the Hyksos with having founded
the city of Jerusalem. The question has been raised why they
did not join the Hyksos and leave Egypt at that time ; but the
period of their oppression had not then begun, and favourable
conditions were still granted them by the conquerors of the
Hyksos. Tf Dr. Sayce relates an exodus of quite recent date from the
Wady Tumilat itself. Mohammed Ali had it planted with mul-
MOSES-SAMSON — 9

130 MOSES
berry trees, and induced many interested in the manufacture of
silk to come from Syria and elsewhere and settle there. As
long as he lived they enjoyed immunity from taxation and mibtary
service ; but when he died and his successor determined to impose
these burdens upon them in spite of their protest, they packed up
their belongings and departed suddenly in a night, leaving their
houses open and the valley deserted, and returned to their former
homes.1 Tf One of these slave-races in Egypt rose at last in revolt.
Noticeably it did not rise against oppression as such, or directly
in consequence of oppression. We hear of no massacre of
slave-drivers, no burning of towns or villages, none of the
usual accompaniments of peasant insurrections. If Egypt was
plagued, it was not by mutinous mobs or incendiaries. Half a
million men simply rose up and declared that they could endure
no longer the mendacity, the hypocrisy, the vile and incredible
rubbish which was offered to them in the sacred name of religion.
" Let us go," they said, " into the wilderness, go out of these soft
water-meadows and corn-fields, forsake our leeks and our flesh-
pots, and take in exchange a life of hardship and wandering,
" that we may worship the God of our fathers." Their leader had
been trained in the wisdom of the Egyptians, and among the
rocks of Sinai had learnt that it was wind and vanity. The half-
obscured traditions of his ancestors awoke to life again, and were re
kindled by him in his people. They would bear with lies no longer.
They shook the dust of Egypt from their feet, and the prate and
falsehood of it from their souls, and they withdrew, with all
belonging to them, into the Arabian desert, that they might no
longer serve cats and dogs and bulls and beetles, but the Eternal
Spirit who had been pleased to make His existence known to
them. They sung no pasans of liberty. They were delivered
from the house of bondage, but it was the bondage of mendacity,
and they left it only to assume another service. The Eternal had
taken pity on them. In revealing His true nature to them, He
had taken them for His children.2
4. Eegarding the route of the Exodus there have been three
views : (a) the northern line by Qantara, proposed by Brugsch,
and now abandoned ; (5) the line via Suez, and across the Sinai
Peninsula to Aqabah, — this was supposed to be needful to reach
the Midianites, but there is no proof that Midianites may not
1 J. G. Duncan, The Exploration of Egypt and the Old Testament, 81.
2 J. A. Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, ii. 24.

THE RED SEA 131
have been in Sinai at the time ; (c) the traditional route by the
Gulf of Suez, which in the judgment of Flinders Petrie agrees
with all the indications, and which he describes in this way :
" The Israelites are represented as having concentrated at
Eameses, and immediately after the Passover marched to Succoth.
This was a general name for the district of Bedawy booths in the
Wady Tumilat, the Thuku of the Egyptians. Thence they went
to Etham in the edge of the wilderness, which would be about the
modern Nefisheh. Thence they are said to turn and encamp
before Pi-hahiroth, that is in Egyptian Pa-qaheret, where there
was a shrine of Osiris, the Serapeum of later times ; they turned
from the eastern direction southward to this. There was a
Migdol tower behind them, and Baal-zephon opposite to them.
Here they were ' entangled in the land, the wilderness had shut
them in,' as they had not rounded the north of the lakes.
Formerly the Gulf of Suez extended up through the lakes past
Ismailiyeh to Ero, otherwise Pithom. They were thus, ' encamp
ing by the sea, beside Pi-hahiroth.' This is the highest ground
between Ismailiyeh and Suez at present, and must have been the
shallowest part of the former gulf. Here ' a strong east wind all
that night made the sea dry, and the waters were divided,' so
that it was possible to cross the gulf and reach Baal-zephon on
the eastern shore.
" After crossing they ' went three days' journey in the wilder
ness of Etham, and pitched in Marah ' (Num. xxxiii. 8). This is
the road of three days' journey, which is defined as such by the
absence of any water, and which was the avowed objective named
to the Egyptians (Exod. v. 3). It is the marked feature of the
Sinai road, and differs entirely from the seven days' journey with
out water to Aqabah. At Marah the bitter water identifies it
with the present bitter spring of the Wady Hawara. Two hours
further on is the Wady Gharandel, where there is an excellent
running stream and palm trees, agreeing to tbe well-watered
Elim. From thence they encamped by the Eed Sea, again agree
ing to this route. Thence they went into the Wilderness of Sin
between Elim and Sinai; they passed Dophkah and Alush, not
now identified, and came to Eephidim, where the main battle took
place with the Amalekites for possession of the only fertile strip
in the peninsula, the present Wady Feiran. It is obvious that

132 MOSES
this route was well known to the writers of the itineraries in
Exodus and Numbers, and there is no discrepancy or question
left in the matter." :
Tf We must dismiss from our minds, when we use the words
" desert " or " wilderness," the idea of desolate wastes of sand.
The Pentateuch has very few references to sand. The fact is that
sand is the exception in the desert or wilderness which Israel tra
versed for forty years. It will be remembered that the Psalmist
sings of " the pastures of the wilderness." We must, therefore,
imagine a tract of country in which, though there are no corn
fields or vineyards, yet there would be abundance of pasture for
nomad tribes wandering with their flocks, and sometimes the
broad open wastes, like our downs or commons, widen out into
scenes of splendid luxuriance and beauty.2

The Puksuit.
1. No sooner had Israel gone than Pharaoh was sorry. The
public works stood still for lack of labour. Vast territories were
suddenly unoccupied. The labour of this enslaved people was
missed on every side, in city and field ; there was a sudden loss of
revenue and service which he could ill dispense with. And his
pride forbade that he should quietly acquiesce in their unhindered
exodus. Besides, in their mad haste to be rid of this people, the
Egyptians had laden them with jewels of silver, and jewels of
gold, and raiment; so much so that it is distinctly said, "they
spoiled the Egyptians." It is suggested by the contributions
afterwards made to tbe building of the tabernacle that Israel
was carrying off a large amount of treasure and valuables. " And
the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the
people, and they said, Why have we done this, that we have let
Israel go from serving us ? "
So Pharaoh pursued with his horses and chariots, and, making
a forced march, overtook the fugitives at their encampment by
the Eed Sea. As the afternoon closed in, of perhaps the fifth day
of the Exodus, the outposts of the fugitive host beheld the dreaded
1 W. M. F. Petrie, Egypt and Israel, 39.
1 F. B. Meyer, Exodus, i. 217.

THE RED SEA 133
forms of the Egyptian warriors coming over the ridges of the
desert hills ; and as the night fell they were aware that the whole
Egyptian host was encamped in the near vicinity, only waiting
for the morning light to swoop down on them, involving them
either in a general massacre, or in what was perhaps more dread
ful, a return to slavery.
The one man who seemed unmoved amid the panic of the
people was their heroic leader, whose faith was the organ of their
deliverance. And therefore it is that in all after -allusions to this
great event his hand is always referred to as the instrument
through which the might of Jehovah wrought. " Thou leddest,"
says the Psalmist, " thy people like a flock, by the hand of Moses
and Aaron" (Ps. lxxvii. 20). "He caused," says Isaiah, "bis
glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses " (Isa. lxiii. 12, E.V.).
The people, therefore, had good reason to remember the ancient
days of Moses; for they were made famous by Moses' mighty
faith. By his faith they passed through the Eed Sea as by dry
land. 2. Several records of the overthrow of the hosts of Pharaoh
are preserved in the Book of Exodus.
(1) The earbest of these is the so-called Song of Moses, a
poem uttered by the debverer when the Eed Sea was passed,
"and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore." The
refrain of the triumphant ode was sung by Miriam, " the prophet
ess, the sister of Aaron," who went forth, timbrel in hand, at the
head of the Hebrew women and cried, " Sing ye to the Lord, for
he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he
thrown into the sea" (Exod. xv. 21). The song celebrates Jehovah
as a warrior, who has cast Pharaoh's hosts into the sea. " The
deeps cover them," " they went down into the depths like a stone."
At the blast of Jehovah's nostrils, "the waters were piled up,"
" the floods stood upright as an heap," " the deeps were congealed
in the heart of the sea." When the enemy said, " I will overtake,"
Jehovah " blew with his wind, and the sea covered them : they
sank as lead in the mighty waters." The imagery of the poem is
bold, its similes vivid and daring ; it recalls Deborah's description
of the overthrow of the Canaanites, when "the stars in their
courses fought against Sisera." Were this the only record of the

134 MOSES
occurrence, a possible inference would be that a great battle
between Israel and the Egyptians was fought, and that by Jehovah's
aid His people triumphed, their enemies being driven into the sea
and overwhelmed by the waters in a violent storm.
(2) The most ancient prose version of the occurrence says
that, when Pharaoh and his army drew near, Jehovah rebuked
Moses saying, " Wherefore criest thou unto me ? speak unto the
children of Israel that they go forward. And lift thou up thy
rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it." In
the night the pillar of cloud moved to the rear of Israel, giving
darkness to the Egyptians and light to the people, so that " the
one came not near the other all the night." A strong east wind
caused the sea to go back all that night, the waters were divided,
and the sea was made dry land. In the morning "Jehovah
looked forth upon the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of
fire and of cloud and discomfited the host of the Egyptians."
In their discomfiture they cried, "Let us flee from the face of
Israel; for the Lord fighteth for them." For Jehovah had
"bound their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily."
Then "the sea returned in his strength, and Jehovah shook off
the Egyptians in the midst of the sea " (Exod. xiv. 10 6-12, 15-20,
24-25, 27, 30-31 J).
(3) The latest account, found in the Priestly Narrative,
appears to be the work of a writer who knew Egypt well and
had a definite idea as to the locality of every event connected
with the Exodus. In this it is said that the Israelites had been
commanded to turn back from Etham, and to encamp before Pi-
hahiroth between Migdol and the sea. This placed them ap
parently at the mercy of Pharaoh, who triumphantly exclaimed,
" They are entangled in the land : the wilderness hath shut them
in." Pharaoh found the people encamped by the sea beside Pi-
hahiroth and Baal-zephon. Moses had to bear the bitter re
proaches of the terrified fugitives. " Because," asked they, " there
were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the
wilderness ? " The deliverer, however, exhorted the people ;
" Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord." Moses then
stretched out his hand over the sea, and the waters were divided,
and appeared as a wall to the Israelites upon their right hand,
and upon their left, so that they went over on dry land. The

THE RED SEA 135
Egyptians pursued after them, and when they were in the midst
of the sea, Moses again stretched forth his hand and the waters
overwhelmed them (Exod. xiv. 1-4, 8-9, 10a, 13, 14, 21-23, 26,
28-29 P).1
Tf Euskin declares that the prayer with which George Chapman,
the translator of Homer, ends his life's work, and which is to
be found on the last page of his Batrachomyomachia, is "the
perfectest and deepest expression of natural religion given us in
literature." One petition in the prayer runs " that Thou wouldst
be always on our right hand and on our left, in the motion of our
own Wills." On this Euskin observes, "The command to the
children of Israel ' that they go forward ' is to their own wills.
They obeying, the sea retreats, but not before they dare to advance
into it. Then, the waters are a wall unto them, on their right
hand and their left." 2

II.
The Passage.
1. The fact of the passage of the Eed Sea can be questioned
only by an extreme and baseless scepticism. On the principal
facts involved — the successful passage of the Israelites, the
destruction of the pursuing Egyptians in the returning waters,
the principal narratives, and also the Song — all agree ; they differ
only in details. Dillmann remarks that these details are described
most simply if only we do not understand as prose what is
intended to be poetry in the Song: a strong wind drives back
the waters in such a way as to permit the Israelites to pass
through (xv. 8) ; another wind, suddenly rising in an opposite
direction (ver. 10), causes the water to return and close upon the
pursuing foe. That natural causes were in operation is taken for
granted : Jehovah is glorified for setting them in action, and
achieving by such simple means the salvation of His own people,
and the destruction of their foes. The marvel lay in the deliver
ance of the people, whom its leader had ever taught to trust in its
God, in the extremity of danger, without its own co-operation
1 F. J. Foakes- Jackson, The Biblical History of the Hebrews, 55.
2 Ruskin, The Bible of Amiens, iv. § 21 ( Works, xxxiii. 137).

136 MOSES

(cf. xiv. 13 f., 31 J) ; this was also the reason why the event had
such immense significance in the subsequent history of the people.
Tf It may appear to some that the miracle of the passage of
the Eed Sea is after all due to an attempt to express in sober
prose the language of an ode of triumph, but it is by no means
impossible that the path for the Israelites was made by the wind
which drove back the shallow water of tbe lakes, to the north of
the Gulf of Suez. Similar occurrences have been recorded, and
are accepted as historically true, and it is noticeable that the
early account attributes the safety of Israel, and the destruction
of the Egyptian army, to Jehovah's use of the violence of the wind
for His own purposes. It seems probable that the Israelites turned
upon their pursuers, when their chariot wheels were clogged in
the moistening sand, and drove them back to meet the returning
waters. In this case the passage of the Eed Sea would rank
among the so-called decisive battles of the world. Never did a
greater issue hang upon the strife of armies than when Israel
drove Pharaoh's army into the waves. The future of the human
race depended on whether the fugitive Hebrews could escape on
that day from the house of bondage or not. Well may Psalmist
and Prophet celebrate the victory of Jehovah's people, when " God
brought them forth out of Egypt." Well may the Christian
teacher compare the passage of the Eed Sea to the Sacrament of
Baptism, whereby men are brought out of the bondage of cor
ruption into the glorious bberty of the children of God
(1 Cor. x. 1-2).1
Tf We can see here a frequent characteristic of the miraculous
element in Scripture, namely, its reaching its end not by a leap,
but by a process. Once admit miracle, and it appears as if
adaptation of means to ends was unnecessary. It would have
been as easy to have transported the Israelites bodily and in
stantaneously to the other side of the sea, as to have taken these
precautions and then cleft the ocean and made them march
through it. Legendary miracle would have preferred the former
way. The Bible miracle usually adapts methods to aims, and is
content to travel to its goal step by step.2
Tf The actual point at which the passage of the Eed Sea took
place can be fixed only by conjecture ; for the site suggested for
Pi-hahiroth is too conjectural, and that suggested for Migdol is
too uncertain, to be used for the purpose of determining it, and
the site of Baal-zephon depends entirely upon those adopted for
1 F. J. Foakes-Jackson, The Biblical Histiry ofthe Hebrews, 56.
2 A. Maclaren.

THE RED SEA 137
these two places. Formerly, indeed, it used to be supposed, on
the strength of the expressions in Exod. xiv. 22, xv. 8, that the
passage took place in the deep water, some miles south of Suez,
that the sea there literally parted asunder, and that through the
chasm thus formed the Israelites passed, with a sheer wall of
water on each side of them. But, if only for the reason that it
is impossible to understand how any "wind" could have pro
duced a chasm of this kind, or, even if it could have done so, now
any man or body of men could have stood against it, this view
has now been for long entirely abandoned. The following are the
two views that have been more recently advocated : —
(1) That the passage took place near the modern Suez, either
in the narrow arm of the gulf, some three-quarter mile broad,
which extends now about two miles north of Suez, but, — to judge
from the character of the soil, consisting of sand blown in from
the desert on the east, — in ancient times probably extended
further, or a little south of Suez : above Suez the water is shallow,
and there are parts which can be crossed at low tide ; immediately
below Suez also there is a shoal, one mile, broad, dry at low water.
The Gulf of Suez is at this part enclosed by a range of hills on
each side — the Jebel Ataka on the west coming close down to the
sea, and the ridge of er-Eahah, twelve to fifteen miles off on the
east ; and partly on account of these hills the ebb and flow of the
tide is here unusually dependent on the direction of the wind.
" As is well known to observant men accustomed to navigate the
Eed Sea, a north-easterly gale, on reaching Suez, would then be
drawn down between the high ranges which bound the gulf on
either hand in such a manner as to change its direction from north
east to north, or even a little west of north. It would gather
strength as it advanced, and by its action on an ebb tide would make
it abnormally low, and prevent, while it lasted, at least for a time,
the return of the usual flood-tide. In this way a good passage
across the channel might soon be laid bare, and remain so for
several hours. In the morning, a shift of wind to the south,
probably of a cyclonic nature, takes place : tbe pent-up flood-tide,
now freed from restraint, and urged on by tbe south gale ' returns
to its wonted flow,' and sweeps suddenly up the gulf, probably
in a ' bore ' or tidal wave, and so overwhelms the pursuing
Egyptians." (2) The other view takes the Israelites across a presumed
ancient northern extension of the Gulf of Suez, which is con
sidered highly probable by many modern authorities. The isthmus
of Suez, at its narrowest part, is seventy miles across. Near the
north end of the Gulf of Suez there extends for some ten miles a

138 MOSES
sort of marshy lagoon ; then comes the Shaluf , a plateau twenty
to twenty-five feet above the sea-level, and six miles long;
after this, stretching in a north-westerly direction, the two
"Bitter Lakes," altogether about twenty-five miles long by two
to six broad, connected by a shallow marshy channel a mile long,
which, until an immense volume of water was let into them at the
opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 from the Mediterranean Sea,
were nothing more than two great salt marshes, though twenty to
forty feet deep in many parts ; at the north end of these lakes
there is again for eight miles a stretch of sand, rising in parts into
dunes, with a stele of Darius in the middle, which, from the ruins
found there being supposed by the French engineers to have been a
temple of Osiris, is now known as the Serapeum ; then comes Lake
Timsah (the " Crocodile Lake "), at the east end of Wady Tumilat,
five miles long by one-half to two miles broad, which, like the Bitter
Lakes, till it was flooded for the Suez Canal, was another salt marsh,
filled with reeds : three miles north of Lake Timsah, the land rises
to about fifty feet above the sea, and the highest point between
the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Suez is reached, called el-
Gisr (" the Embankment "), the cutting through of which for the
Suez Canal was a work of immense labour : two or three miles
north of el-Gisr is Lake Ballah ; and north of this, between Lake
Ballah and Lake Menzaleh, was the isthmus called el-Kantara,
or the " Bridge," over which went the old caravan route between
Egypt and Palestine. There is no doubt that in remote pre
historic times (before the Pleistocene period) the Gulf of Suez and
the Mediterranean Sea were connected with each other ; and it
has been supposed that in ancient historic times the Gulf of Suez
extended as far north as Lake Timsah, on the south of the ridge
of el-Gisr, just referred to ; Sir J. W. Dawson, for instance, writing
as a geologist, points out that tbe ground south of Lake Timsah
is for the most part lower than the Eed Sea, and is composed of
recent deposits holding many Eed Sea shells {Egypt and Syria,
pp. 67—69). And so it has been held that the passage of the
Israelites was made at some part of this northern extension of the
Eed Sea.1
2. This is the most dramatic incident in the history of the
children of Israel. It is the one event which they never forgot.
It is written deep in the nation's mind.
(1) They had passed in that night from Africa to Asia; they
had crossed one of the great boundaries which divide the quarters
of the world ; a thought always thrilling, how much more so when
1 S. R. Driver.

THE RED SEA

139

we reflect on what a transition it involved to them. Behind the
African hills, which rose beyond the Eed Sea, lay the strange land
of their exile and bondage — the land of Egypt with its mighty
river, its immense buildings, its monster-worship, its grinding
tyranny, its overgrown civilization. This they had left to revisit
no more : the Eed Sea flowed between them ; the Egyptians
whom they saw yesterday they will now see " no more again for
ever." And before them stretched the level plains of the Arabian
desert, the desert where their fathers and their kindred had
wandered in former times, where their great leader had fed the
flocks of Jethro, through which they must advance onwards till
they reach the Land of Promise.
(2) Further, this change of local situation was at once a change
of moral condition. — From slaves they had become free ; from an
oppressed tribe they had become an independent nation. It is
their deliverance from slavery. It is the earliest recorded instance
of a great national emancipation. In later times religion has been
so often and so exclusively associated with ideas of order, of obedi
ence, of submission to authority, that it is well to be occasionally
reminded that it has had other aspects also. This, the first epoch
of Old Testament history, is, in its original significance, the sancti
fication, the glorification of national independence and freedom.
Whatever else was to succeed to it, this was the first stage of the
progress of the chosen people. And when in the Christian
Scriptures and in the Christian Church we find the passage of the
Eed Sea taken as the likeness of the moral deliverance from sin
and death, — when we read in the Apocalypse of the vision of those
who stand victorious on the shores of " the glassy sea mingled with
fire, having the harps of God, and singing the song of Moses the
servant of God, and the song of the Lamb," — these are so many
sacred testimonies to the importance and the sanctity of freedom,
to the wrong and the misery of injustice, oppression and tyranny.
The word "redemption," which has now a sense far holier and
higher, first entered into the circle of religious ideas at the time
when God " redeemed his people from the house of bondage."
(3) And this deliverance — the first and greatest in their
history — was effected, not by their own power, but by the power of
God. There are moments in the life both of men and of nations,
both of the world and of the Church, when vast blessings are

140 MOSES
gained, vast dangers averted, through our own exertions — by the
sword of the conqueror, by the genius of the statesman, by the
holiness of the saint. Such, in Jewish history, was the conquest
of Palestine by Joshua, the deliverances wrought by Gideon, by
Samson, and by David. Such, in Christian history, were the
revolutions effected by Clovis, by Charlemagne, by Alfred, by
Joan of Arc, and by Luther. But there are moments of still
higher interest, of still more solemn feeling, when deliverance is
brought about not by any human energy, but by causes beyond
our own control. Such, in Christian history, are the raising of
the siege of Leyden, and the overthrow of the Armada ; and such,
above all, was the passage of the Eed Sea.
Tf Whatever were tbe means employed by the Almighty —
whatever the path which He made for Himself in the great waters
— it was to Him, and not to themselves, that the Israelites were
compelled to look as the source of their escape. " Stand still, and
see the salvation of Jehovah," was their only duty. "Jehovah
hath triumphed gloriously," was their only song of victory. It was
a victory into which no feeling of pride or self-exaltation could
enter. It was a fit opening of a history and of a character which
was to be specially distinguished from that of other races by its
constant and direct dependence on the Supreme Judge and Euler
of the world. Greece and Eome could look back with triumph to
the glorious days when they had repulsed their invaders, and
risen on their tyrants, or driven out their kings. But the birthday
of Israel — the birthday of the religion, of the bberty, of the
nation, of Israel — was the passage of the Eed Sea ; — the likeness
in this, as in so many other respects, of the yet greater events
in the beginnings of the Christian Church, of which it has been
long considered the anticipation and the emblem. It was the
commemoration, not of what man has wrought for God, but of
what God has wrought for man. No baser thoughts, no disturbing
influences, could mar the overwhelming sense of thankfulness
with which, as if after a hard-won battle, the nation found its voice
in the first Hebrew melody, in the first burst of national poetry,
which still lives on through Handel's music, to keep before the
mind of all Western Christendom the day " when Israel came out
of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from a strange land." 1
Tf The chief object of tbe whole Mosaic narrative seems to be
that of emphasizing the significance of the Divine self-revelation
implied in Israel's deliverance from Egypt. The marvels of the
1 A. P. Stanley, History ofthe Jewish Church, i. 116.

THE RED SEA 141
Exodus, like some of our Lord's miracles, appear to have been
intended to arrest attention, and to rivet Israel's gaze^as it were,
upon its Divine teacher. " Jehovah alone did lead him, and
there was no strange god with him." x
Tf Mr. Harold Begbie in In the Hand of the Potter tells of a
man who seeing himself as morally diseased " became the doctor
of his own soul, felt the pulse of his moral nature, and kept a
chart of his soul's temperature." He kept a register of sins
actually committed with a view to their reduction, and betook him
self to prayer. Then some tracts came into his hand for printing.
In reading the proof this text, " Stand still, and see the salvation
of the Lord," caught him by the soul, and held the beatings of the
brain. These words were like an injunction particular to himself !
..." Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord." In vain did
he try to shake off their impression. The thought had fastened
upon his consciousness. It clung to him like an embrace. He
was obliged to stand still. It seemed to him quite clear what he
was to do. He was to abandon anxiety, to give up his chart, to
discontinue self-examination, to relinquish all striving, wrestling
and effort. He was to do nothing. He was to be not
active but passive. It was not for him to climb to God, but for
God to descend to him. If there was something outside the
atmosphere of the planet, it would be given, it would not be
captured. The soul receives, it does not discover. Let him stand
still and await the will of God. The mystery happened in a night,
or rather early morning, in the grey dawn before the man had
risen. He came out of sleep with the thought of Jesus Christ.
" Under the grey dawn there stood and breathed the Son of Man.
Eye could see nothing, ear could hear nothing, hand could touch
nothing. And yet he was not alone. More real to him than roof,
or sky or trees, was the sense of this invisible presence. Its
influence was closer to him than the air he breathed ; and its
blessing, as real and unmistakable as the scent of violets, was a
peace of soul passing all understanding. His mind was at rest." 2

III.
The Song.
1. On the Arabian shore of the Eed Sea, Moses and the sons
of Israel, we are told, met Miriam the prophetess, the sister of
1 R. L. Ottley, Aspects of the Old Testament, 139.
2 Harold Begbie, In the Hand of the Potter, 220.

142 MOSES
Aaron, at the head of the long train of Israelite women, with the
sounding timbrels and the religious dances which they had learned
in Egypt, coming forth, as was the wont of Hebrew women after
some great victory, to greet the triumphant host. She, the third
member, the eldest born, of that noble family, whose name now
first appears in the history of the Church, afterwards to become
so renowned through its Grecian and European forms of Maria
and Mary, she, who- had watched her infant brother by the river
side, now hailed him as the deliverer of her people, or rather, if
we may with reverence say so, hailed the Divine Deliverer, by
the new and awful Name, now first clearly proclaimed to her
family and her nation.
Tf The going forth of the women of Israel after Miriam with
timbrels and with dances was their expression of passionate
triumph and thankfulness, after the full accomplishment of their
deliverance from the Egyptians. That deliverance had been by
the utter death of their enemies, and accompanied by a stupend
ous miracle ; no human creatures could in an hour of triumph be
surrounded by circumstances more solemn. I am not going to
try to excite your feelings about them. Consider only for your
self what that seeing of the Egyptians " dead upon the sea-shore "
meant to every soul that saw it. And then reflect that these
intense emotions of mingled horror, triumph, and gratitude were
expressed, in the visible presence of the Deity, by music and
dancing. If you answer that you do not believe the Egyptians so
perished, or that God ever appeared in a pillar of cloud, I reply,
" Be it so — bebeve or disbelieve, as you choose : — This is yet
assuredly the fact, that the author of the poem or fable of the
Exodus supposed that, under such circumstances of Divine inter
position as he had invented, the triumph of the Israelitish women
would have been, and ought to have been, under the direction of
a prophetess, expressed by music and dancing." Nor was it
possible that he should think otherwise, at whatever period he
wrote ; both music and dancing being, among all great nations, an
appointed and very principal part of the worship of the gods.1
2. Unwonted interest attaches to this song — the earliest on
record of all the sacred odes, and the very foremost in the annals
of the Hebrew race. To the Jewish people themselves, it is
what they have long called it, "The Song" — a designation to
1 Ruskin, Time and Tide, §41.

THE RED SEA 143
which it is entitled, alike from its inherent pre-eminence and its
unrivalled associations. It is Israel's natal song. For in crossing
the Eed Sea they passed through the birth-throes of their
national existence, and from this epoch dates a new chronology in
Israel's calendar. The oppressed tribes have become a common
wealth ; and a commonwealth of the free. It is Israel's emancipa
tion song, or song of liberty. It signalizes a triple deliverance,
marking the supreme moment of rescue from the threefold evils of
domestic slavery, political bondage, and religious thraldom. It is
Israel's Te Deum, or song of thanks and praise to God. An over
whelming sense of the Divine interposition is the predominant
sentiment in the song from first to last. It is no mere secular
ode ; no mere war-song or outburst of patriotic triumph ; no
exultant shriek of insult over a fallen foe ; it was an anthem of
blessing and gratitude for a great deliverance, a devout and solemn
Psalm before God, to whom, of whom, and for whom it is sung.
It is Israel's Church-song ; the type of all songs of redemption and
salvation. The very words " redemption " and " salvation " are
first introduced in connexion with this great deliverance. "I
will redeem you with a stretched out arm " ; and again, " Fear ye
not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord." The people
has become unified into a worshipping assembly. The nation has
become a Church; the theocracy has begun. It is Israel's
triumph-song of deliverance. The note is that of joy and victory,
and is prophetic of the success of every battle and struggle for the
Lord's cause and Kingdom, fought in the Lord's name and in His
strength. Tf We can understand the stern joy which throbs so vehe
mently in every pulse of that great song, the first blossom of
Hebrew poetry, which the ransomed people sang that day. We
can sympathize with the many echoes in psalm and prophecy,
which repeated the lessons of faith and gratitude. But some will
be ready to ask, Was that triumphant song anything more than
narrow national feebng, and has Christianity not taught us another
and tenderer thought of God than that which this lesson carries ?
We may ask in return, Was it Divine Providence that swept the
Spanish Armada from the sea, fulfilling, as the medal struck to
commemorate it bore, the very words of Moses' song, " Thou didst
blow with Thy wind, the sea covered them " ? Was it God who
overwhelmed Napoleon's army in the Eussian snows ? Were

144 MOSES
these, and many like acts in the world's history, causes for thank
fulness to God ? Is it not true that, as has been well said, " The
history of the world is the judgment of the world " ? And does
Christianity forbid us to rejoice when some mighty and ancient
system of wrong and oppression, with its tools and accomplices, is
cleared from off the face of the earth ? " When the wicked
perish, there is shouting." Let us not forget that the love and
gentleness of the Gospel are accompanied by the revelation of
Divine judgment and righteous retribution.1
Tf In the Book of Eevelation, when the saints of God stand on
the heavenly shore, they sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb.
The victory which they have gained is not due to their own
righteousness, but to the preventing and overcoming grace of God.
So, they connect their own life-history with the early history of
God's people. It is the song of Moses, as well as the song of the
Lamb. Even the first victory over sin, as well as all victories
since then, have been due to the Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world. And at last, when we have been redeemed,
when we have been completely rescued from the jaws of destruc
tion, when we see how our evil impulses have been curbed and
overcome, then we too will say tbat not to ourselves, but to
the Lamb, are the honour and glory, and we shall place the crown
upon the head of our great Eedeemer.2
1 A. Maclaren.
2 A. H. Strong, One Hundred Chapel-Talks to Theological Students, 105.

MOSES. VII.
From the Red Sea to Sinai.

MOSES-SAMSON — IO

Literature.
Austin, G. B., The Beauty of Goodness (1904), 1.
Barton, G. A., The Roots of Christian Teaching as found in the Old Testa
ment (1902), 130.
Chadwick, G. A., The Book qf Exodus (Expositor's Bible) (1890), 195.
Driver, S. R., The Booh of Exodus (Cambridge Bible) (1911), 111.
Foakes- Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History of the Hebrews (1903), 69.
Gibson, J. M., The Mosaic Era (1881), 61.
Ingram, A. F. W., Under the Dome (1902), 75.
Jones, J. D., Elvms of Life (1904), 171.
„ „ The Unfettered Word (1912), 19.
Lockyer, T. F., Seeking a Country (1904), 82.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Exodus, etc. (1906), 52.
Matheson, G., Leaves for Quiet Hours (1904), 108.
Meyer, F. B., Moses the Servant of God, 75.
Ottley, R. L., Aspects of the Old Testament (1897), 137.
Pearse, M. G., Moses : His Life and its Lessons (1894), 117.
Trumbull, H. C, Studies in Oriental Social Life (1894), 288.

M6

From the Red Sea to Sinai.
And Moses led Israel onward from the Red Sea, and they went out into
the wilderness of Shur ; and they went three days in the wilderness, and
found no water. — Exod. xv. 22.
After the haste and agitation of their marvellous deliverance the
children of Israel seem to have halted for awhile at the only
spot in the neighbourhood where there is water, known as the
Ayoun Musa, or springs of Moses, to this day. There they doubt
less brought into some permanent shape their rudimentary organ
ization. There, too, their impressions were given time to deepen.
They " saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore," and realized
that their oppression was at an end, their chains were broken, and
themselves introduced into a new life — "baptized unto Moses."
They reflected upon the difference between all other deities and
the God of their fathers, who, in that deadly crisis, had looked
upon them and their tyrants out of the fiery pillar. They " feared
Jehovah : and they believed in Jehovah, and in his servant
Moses." " They bebeved in Jehovah." This expression is noteworthy,
because they had all bebeved in Him already. " By faith they
forsook Egypt. By faith they kept the passover and the sprinkling
of blood. By faith they passed through the Eed Sea." But their
former trust was poor and wavering compared with that which
filled their bosoms now. So the disciples followed Jesus because
they believed on Him; yet, when His first miracle manifested
forth His glory, " his disciples believed on him there." And again
they said, " By this we believe that thou earnest forth from God."
And after the resurrection He said, " Because thou hast seen me,
thou hast believed " (John ii. 11, xvi. 30, xx. 29). Faith needs to
be edified by successive experiences, as the enthusiasm of a recruit
is converted into the disciplined valour of the veteran. From
each new crisis of the spiritual life the soul should obtain new

148 MOSES
powers. And that is a shallow and unstable religion which is
content with the level of its initial act of faith (however genuine
and however important), and seeks not to go from strength to
strength. I.
Marah and Elim.
And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink ?—
Exod. xv. 24.
1. Nothing is so hard to bear as disappointed hope. Bitter
ness in the fountain to which we ran eagerly for rebef crushes us
more terribly than the absence of any fountain would have done.
To find the alluring vision of a gleaming lake to be only a mirage,
the reflection of a burning sky upon burning sand, or to find that
what is really water is so bitter that it is like poison in the
mouth — there is no experience more depressing than that. We
can endure almost anything if we have long been looking it
steadily in the face ; but disappointment ! that is a different thing
altogether, and crushes the very life out of us the moment it is
met. A very suggestive picture of this is given us in the story of
Israel's experience at Marah's bitter pool. After the marvellous
debverance, and jubilant songs on the shore of the Eed Sea, they
had set out on pilgrimage with highest hopes, expecting that
every onward step would only bring them into fuller peace. And
yet three days had not passed when they found themselves almost
dying of thirst in a sun-scorched desert where no smallest brook
crossed their path. At last, a long bne of distant palms showed
that water was near; but what an agony of disappointment to
find only a bitter, poisonous pool of which none could drink !
" Moses led Israel onward from the Eed Sea, and they went
out into the wilderness of Shur ; and they went three days in the
wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah,
they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter :
therefore the name of it was called Marah." Such was their first
experience of disappointment after the emancipation from Egypt.
And this life of ours, with all its gratifications and fulfilment, yet
sometimes yields disappointment in large measure and very

FROM THE RED SEA TO SINAI 149
grievously. In this matter we begin, like the Hebrews, at the
very beginning of our pilgrimage. For our childhood's days are
plentifully darkened with the lesser disappointments incident to
child-bfe. We may smile, looking back from the experience of
our maturer years, as we remember the trifles that made our
hearts heavy. But though trifles to us now, in remembrance,
they were not trifles then, in childhood's actual experience. They
constituted a very real discipline for our young days. It is as
though God were putting us through a rehearsal, so early, of the
disappointments that will surely come in later years.
(1) The first thing we notice in this passage is that it is an
illustration of the vicissitudes of life. Life has been compared
again and again to a journey. It is very much like the journey
of these Israelites in that it is full of sudden and startling changes.
We triumph one day, and are in despair the next. We bask in
the sunshine one day, and are plunged in deep night the next.
We sing and dance at the Eed Sea one day, and we are ready to
die by the bitter waters of Marah the next.
Tf We have our Eed Sea days. Obver Cromwell used to speak
of the third of September as the day of his " crowning mercies,"
for it was on that day he fought and won the battles of Worcester
and Dunbar, and it was on that same day in 1658 that he fought
and won his last great fight and passed to his Lord to receive his
crown of life. And in much the same way we have our days of
crowning mercies, wedding days, birthdays, recovery days, days
when some prize for which we had striven fell to our lot, days
when the world to us is full of music and of song. But Marah,
too — the place of bitter waters — is a station on our journey, and
sooner or later we all of us come to it. When sickness comes,
when business fails, when husband or wife or child dies — then we
are at Marah, and we cannot drink, for the waters of Marah are
bitter. Eobert Louis Stevenson says much in his writings about " the
duty of being happy." " A happy man or woman," he says, " is
a better thing to find than a five pound note. He or she is a
radiating focus of good will." And the doctrine he preached he
bravely tried to carry out. Threatened as he was with con
sumption, doomed from youth to physical failure, he yet tried to
turn to the world a smiling face. But in his Vailima letters to
Colvin, in spite of himself, he cannot help now and again a sigh
and a groan. When sickness assailed his home, when he felt the

150 MOSES
shadows of the prison house closing in upon him, even Stevenson
found it hard to keep up his smile. I, too, believe in the duty of
being happy. We are not to go muling and puling through life.
At the same time it is no use to pretend that life is all sunshine
and blue sky. And it is an ill business trying to carry to the
world a sunny face when we carry in our bosom a broken heart.
Moralists may preach as they please about the duty of being
happy, but there come days to us in the course of life when we
cannot laugh, when we cannot even smile, but when our hearts
are filled with desolation and sorrow. "When we come to
Marah — we cannot drink — for the waters of Marah are very
bitter."1 (2) But when the hour of disappointment comes, then is the
very hour for God to sweeten the bitterness by showing us a Tree
of Life which takes the poison away, and turns despondency into
joy. The tree He showed to Moses was not one created then and
there by miracle. It was already growing at the side of the pool ;
and the Lord does not need to create some new consolations for
' our suffering hearts, a new Bible, or a new mercy-seat, or a new
Christ, or a new atonement, or new promises, or new grace. They
are all there, close beside us, waiting for our time of need. He
has simply to open our eyes to see them, and give us power to
use them, and they will turn any sorrow into thanksgiving and
praise. Hagar did not see the well in the desert of Beersheba till
" the Lord opened her eyes " that were blinded by tears, but the
well had been there, and close beside her all the time. Our help
is always far nearer than we think ; alas ! that we have not
always either the opened eye or the trustful, taking hand !
Tf How wisely God has apportioned our cup ! He does not
give us all sweetness, lest we should rest satisfied with earth ; nor
aU bitterness, lest we grow weary and disgusted with our lot.
But He wisely mixes the two, so tbat if we drink the one, we must
also taste the other. And perhaps a time is coming when we shall
see that the proportions of this cup of human joy and sorrow are
more equally adjusted than we now imagine — that souls capable
of enjoyments above the vulgar crowd can also feel sorrow in
comparison with which theirs is but like the passing April cloud
in contrast with the long Egyptian night. How wise an ordina
tion this is we cannot now discover. It will require the light
which streams from the Eternal Throne to reveal to us the blessed
1 J. D. Jones, The Unfettered Word, 23.

FROM THE RED SEA TO SINAI 151
effects of having the sentence of death written on all our earthly
enjoyments.1 Tf " When he had cast a tree into the waters, the waters were
made sweet." It was a strange remedy. One would have
thought it was a case for extraction, not addition. The burden of
bitterness is a very heavy one. When it comes to us our first cry
is, " Empty out the waters ! " " No," says the Divine voice,
" instead of emptying them, put something more in them ! " And
truly the Divine voice is right. What we need for our bitterness
is not the removal of things, but the seeing of them in a new
relation. The Psalmist speaks of a tree planted by rivers of water.
A tree makes a great difference to our view of the water ; it may
change it from monotony into beauty ; it adds a new fact to the
old thing. So is it with my calamities ; one added point of know
ledge will chase them away. When the child is first going to
school, it often sheds the waters of Marah. How will you cure
these waters ? By keeping him from school ? God forbid !
Show him the developed tree ! Show him the fruit of knowledge !
Show him that without school he will be a solitary man — mindless
in a thinking world ! The sight of the tree in the waters will
make the waters sweet.2
I saw a cup sent down and come to her
Brimful of loathing and of bitterness;
She drank with livid lips that seemed to stir
The depth, not make it less:
But as she drank I spied a Hand distil
New wine and virgin honey; making it
First bitter-sweet, then sweet indeed, until
She tasted only sweet.3
Tf It was when he had become blind to the sights of this world
that Milton saw, and sang, the splendours of God's Kingdom. And
it was in the gloom of the prison that Bunyan beheld the wondrous
meaning of the Christian pilgrimage, and caught glimpses of the
Celestial City. One of our most successful medical missionaries
in China resorted to the device of affixing texts of Scripture to
the walls of the hospital wards, prepared with luminous paint, so
that, when the darkness drew on, these sayings of God shone out
in view of the wakeful sufferers, making vivid in the night-time
1 The Life of Catherine Booth, i. 68.
2 G. Matheson, Leaves for Quiet Hours, 108.
* Christina G. Rossetti.

152 MOSES
what might have been overlooked by day. And so does God still
inspire songs in the night season of our grief.1
2. But God does more than merely heal the bitter waters.
He leads His pilgrims beyond them to other wells that are always
sweet. When Marah is behind us, Elim is in front. The nearness"
of Elim to Marah is suggestive : only six miles separated the one
from the other. Do not the sweetnesses and the bitternesses of
life lie very near each other after all ? Marahs are not the only
experiences of the pilgrimage, though many a weary sufferer would
have us believe that they are. Life has many Ebms too ; and it
is often only a short day's journey from the misery to the joy.
Jacob found this true. He was one of the saddest-hearted of
men, alone with his fears ; but as he " went on his way, the angels
of God met him." David found it true : " 0 my God, my soul is
cast down within me," "my tears have been my meat day and
night " — there he is at Marah, a weary desponding man — but very
soon he comes to Elim : " Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul ?
And why art thou disquieted within me ? Hope thou in God ;
for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance,
and my God." Hezekiah found it true: "Mine eyes fail with
looking upward: 0 Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me."
Life is all Marah to him there. But as he goes on a little way,
he can say, " Behold, for peace I had great bitterness ; but thou
hast in love to my soul . . . cast all my sins behind thy back."
" 0 Lord, by these (sorrowful) things men live, and in all these
things is the life of my spirit." He has reached Ebm now. Paul
too had his Marah, when his thrice-repeated prayer for a removal
of the " thorn " brought no alleviation of his pain ; but he soon
came to an Ebm where he could say, " Most gladly will I glory
in my infirmities ; for when I am weak, then am I strong." And
is it not written for all the pilgrims of God, " When the poor and
needy seek water and there is none, and their tongue faileth them
for thirst " — sitting at a Marah bitter as death — " I the Lord will
open the fountains in the midst of the valleys ; I will make the
dry land springs of water " ? So they shall have their Ebms too.
Tf I wonder if you were ever thirsty ? Probably not. I never
had been till I came to the Sudan. If you have been really
1 T. F. Lockyer, Seeking a Country, 89.

FROM THE RED SEA TO SINAI 153
thirsty, and often, you will be able to distinguish many varieties
of the phenomenon. The sandstorm thirst I hardly count. It is
caused by light soil forming in the gullet : wash the soil away and
the thirst goes with it : this can be done with water, which you
do not even need to swallow. The desert thirst is more legiti
mately so called : it arises from the grilling sun on the sand :
this is not an unpleasant thirst: the sweat evaporates on your
face in the wind of your own galloping, and thereby produces a
grateful coolness without, while the throat and gullet are white-
hot within. The desert thirst consists in this contrast : it can be
satisfied by a gulp or two of really cool water which has also been
evaporating through a canvas bottle slung on your saddle. But in
so far as it can be satisfied it is no true Sudan thirst. The true
Sudan thirst is insatiable. The true Sudan thirst which, to be
sure, may be found in combination with either or both of the
others, is born of sheer heat and sheer sweat. Till you have felt
it, you have not thirsted. Every drop of liquid is wrung out of
your body ; you could swim in your clothes : but inside, your
muscle shrinks to dry sponge, your bones to dry pith. All your
strength, your substance, your self is draining out of you : you are
conscious of a perpetual liquefaction and evaporation of good
sobd you. You must be wetted till you soften and swell to life
again.1 Tf " And they came to Elim " ; and I verily believe if they had
not that day come to this pleasant and restful spot, with its
twelve springs of water, and threescore and ten palm trees, the
Israelites would never have reached Canaan at all, but would have
ended their days as slaves in Egypt. If they had not come to
Elim that day, there would have been an end to their journeyings ;
the Book of Exodus would have stopped short just here ; there
would have been no nation of Israel, and consequently no history
of Israel to be written. For another experience like Marah,
where they well-nigh died of thirst, another experience of burning
sand and bitter water, would have taken the heart out of them —
would have broken their spirit within them, and they would have
abandoned their dream of Canaan in despair, and returned to the
flesh-pots and thraldom of Egypt. Just in the nick of time, shall
I say ? — just in time to save them from surrender, apostasy, and
despair — they came to Elim, where were twelve springs of water,
and three score and ten palm trees. And by the springs and
palm trees of Elim they not only refreshed their tired bodies, but
they revived also their drooping courage and fainting souls.2
1 G. W. Steevens, With Kitchener lo Khartoum, ehap. xxv.
2 J. D. Jones, Elims of Life, 171.

154 MOSES
Elim, Elim! Through the sand and heat
I toil with heart uplifted, I toil with bleeding feet!
For Elim, Elim! at the last, I know
That I shall see the palm-trees, and hear the waters flow.
Ebm, Ebm! Grows not here a tree,
And all the springs are Marah, and bitter thirst to me;
But Elim, Elim! in thy shady glen
Are twelve sweet wells of water, and palms three-score and
ten.
Elim, Elim! Though the way be long
Unmurmuring I shall journey, and lift my heart in song;
And Elim, Elim ! all my song shall tell
Of rest beneath the palm-tree, and joy beside the welL1

II.
The Manna.
It is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat.— Exod. xvi. 15.
1. The Israelites were now led farther away from all the
associations of tbeir accustomed bfe. From the waters and the
palms of Elim they marched deeper into the recesses of the desert,
haunted by fierce and hostile tribes such as presently hung upon
their rear-guard and cut off their stragglers. Nor bad they quite
emerged from the shadow of their old oppressions, since Egyptian
garrisons were scattered, though sparsely, through this district, in
which gems and copper were obtained. Here, cut off from all
natural modes of sustenance, the hearts of the people failed them.
Most people, we may fear, would choose to live enslaved rather
than to die free men. But there is a special meanness in their
regret, since die they must, that they had not died satiated, like
the firstborn whom God had slain: "Would that we had died
by the hand of Jehovah in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the
flesh pots, when we did eat bread to the full ; for ye have brought
us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with
hunger." 1 William Canton.

FROM THE RED SEA TO SINAI 155
2. The manna which miraculously supplied the wants of Israel
was to them an utterly strange food, the use of which they had to
learn. Thus it was another means of severing their habitual
course of bfe and association of ideas from their degraded past.
And while we may not press too far the assertion that it was the
"corn of heaven" and "angels' food" (i.e., "the bread of the
mighty" — Ps. lxxviii. 24-25, E.V.), yet the narrative shows,
even without help from later scriptures, that it was calculated to
sustain their energies and yet to leave their appetites unstimulated
and unpampered. For they were now called to purer joys than
those of the senses — to liberty, a Divine vocation, the presence
of God, the revelation of His law and the unfolding of His
purposes. TJ The manna of the Peninsula of Sinai is the sweet juice of
the tarfa, a species of tamarisk. It exudes in summer by night
from the trunk and branches, and forms small round white grains,
which partly adhere to the twigs of the trees and partly drop
to the ground ; in the early morning it is of the consistency of
wax, but the sun's rays soon melt it, and later in the day it
disappears, being absorbed in the earth. A fresh supply appears
each night during its season (June and July). The Arabs gather
it in the early morning, boil it down, strain it through coarse stuff,
and keep it in leather skins : they pour it like honey over tbeir
unleavened bread : its taste is agreeable, somewhat aromatic, and
as sweet as honey. In a cool place it keeps for long : the monks
of the Sinai monastery store samples of it, which they sell or give
to travellers and pilgrims, as tbeir predecessors did, thirteen
centuries ago, to Antoninus. According to Ehrenberg it is
produced by the puncture of an insect (now called Gossyparia
mannifera). It softens in the heat of the hand, and consists
almost entirely of sugar ; so it cannot be " ground," or made into
"cakes" (Num. xi. 8). It is not found in all parts of the
Peninsula. It is found only after a rainy spring, and hence
frequently fails altogether. The quantity yielded by the Peninsula
in modern times is small — according to Burckhardt (in 1816),
500-600 pounds annually.1
Smooth and green are the pastures,
Eich is the meadow, and fab' —
But oh! my Shepherd, my Shepherd,
Thou art not there.
1 S. R. Driver.

156 MOSES
Art Thou, then, in the desert
Where there are stones — not bread ?
Is it there — not here — that with manna
Thy flock is fed ?
There that, famishing, fainting,
Perishing for Thy Word
The sheep shall meet with their Shepherd,
And not on the pleasant sward ? x
3. The great lesson taught by the gift of manna was that
of dependence — "your heavenly Father careth for you." This
message was to be spoken to them every day by the voice of the
manna for forty years. There is always enough for gratitude, but
never enough for greed. A daily supply for daily need. To
morrow must wait till it comes. God was teaching them to live
a day at a time. He who rushed forth and began to scrape and
pile, saying within himself, " I make hay before the sun shines,
there is no telling what may happen to-morrow," found on the
morrow that " it bred worms and stank." Every day's event was
to lead them afresh to look up for the day's supply. So He taught
them to pray — " Our Father who art in Heaven, give us this day
our daily bread."
Tf So long as men live by bread, the far away valleys must
laugh as they are covered with the gold of God, and the shouts of
His happy multitude ring round the winepress and the well. No
scene is continually and untiringly loved, but one rich by joyful
human labour ; smooth in field ; fair in garden ; full in orchard ;
trim, sweet, and frequent in homestead; ringing with voices of
vivid existence. No air is sweet that is silent ; it is only sweet
when full of low currents of under sound — triplets of birds, and
murmur and chirp of insects, and deep-toned words of men, and
wayward trebles of childhood. As the art of life is learned, it
will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary ; —
the wild flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn : and
the wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended
cattle ; because man doth not live by bread only, but also by the
desert manna; by every wondrous word and unknowable work
of God.2 4. But in this lesson lay further disclosures of truth.
1 Margaret Blaikie, Songs by the Way, 41.
2 Ruskin, " Unto this Last," §§ 81, 82 ( Works, xvii. 10).

FROM THE RED SEA TO SINAI 157
(1) There is a tragic power in physical discomforts to destroy
spiritual aspiration — or the danger of penury (Exod. xvi. 1-3). The
people had set out from Egypt in a mighty enthusiasm to meet
Jehovah and to learn His will, but within a few weeks the
hardships of the wilderness had driven from their minds all
longings but those for "a square meal." It is the old warfare
between the senses and the soul — the old temptation to magnify
the things seen at the expense of the things unseen, to imagine
that the tangible has more real substance and is more satisfying
than the spiritual. Bound for the mount of God, men long for
the flesh-pots of Egypt. Perhaps the pathos of it all is even
greater than the folly of it.
(2) Sufficiency is better than satiety — or the danger of riches
(Exod. xvi. 4, 5). "A day's portion every day," and on the
sixth day — i.e., at a crisis — a double amount ! A needed lesson in
every land. It is hard for some men to avoid excess in their
habits of life and exaggeration in their modes of thinking, and to
accustom themselves to the idea of adequacy, of proportion, which
means harmony, which means serene, abiding joy.
(3) As against the wear of penury and the waste of riches,
the manna-gift teaches us the lesson of the helpful discipline of
daily needs. As a wilderness product and emblem of its scanty
fare, the manna stands for the hardship of the wilderness (Num.
xi. 4ff., xxi. 5). As such it may properly symbolize the bread
which is eaten in the sweat of the brow in life's pilgrimage, the
bread that stands for the struggle of life. Shall we hate this fare
as the Israelites did, and let the struggle embitter us ; or shall we
look for a higher meaning in this struggle ? For manna is also
the symbol of God's chastening love, given to prove Israel and to
do them good (Exod. xvi. 4 ; Deut. vin. 3, 16). And so the bread
which stands for the struggle of life may also stand for its
perfecting discipline. The sting of the struggle is then drawn;
its bitterness is changed to blessing. But the manna is also
"bread of heaven" (Neh. ix. 15) and as such a symbol of God's
loving providence; so the bread of daily life may symbolize,
not only a struggle to be endured, a discipline to be patiently
acquiesced in, but a providence to be gratefully accepted and
enjoyed. But, finally, the manna is transmuted into angels'
food (Ps. lxxvni. 25); so the bread of daily life, symbol of

158 MOSES
bitter struggle, of loving discipline, of kindly providence, is at
length refined into an earnest of still higher gifts, and the
manna, originally a symbol of the desert, becomes in the
end a type of Christ Himself (John vi. 30 f.) and of the
heavenly joys (Eev. ii. 17). Shall we not find Christ Him
self and spiritual joy in the discipline of our daily life? In
the thought of the manna-gift the grace at table should become
one of the most beautiful of spiritual exercises, instead of, as it
often is, one of the most, meaningless of forms, and the petition,
" Give us this day our daily bread," expands into an all-inclusive
prayer. Tf I hope, friend, you and I are not too proud to ask for our
daily bread, and to be grateful for getting it ? Mr. Philip had
to work for his, in care and trouble, like other children of men : —
to work for it, and I hope to pray for it too. It is a thought to
me awful and beautiful, that of the daily prayer, and of the
myriads of fellow-men uttering it, in care and in sickness, in doubt
and in poverty, in health and in wealth. " Panem nostrum da
nobis hodie." Phibp whispers it by the bedside where wife and
child lie sleeping, and goes to bis early labour with a stouter
heart : as he creeps to his rest when the day's labour is over, and
the quotidian bread is earned, and breathes his hushed thanks to
the bountiful Giver of tbe meal. All over this world what an
endless chorus is singing of love, and thanks, and prayer. Day
tells to day the wondrous story, and night recounts it unto
night. How do I come to think of a sunrise which I saw near
twenty years ago on the Nile, when the river and sky, flushed
with the dawning light and, as the luminary appeared, the
boatman knelt on the rosy deck and adored Allah ? So, as thy
sun rises, friend, over the humble housetops round about your
home, shall you wake many and many a day to duty and labour.
May the task have been honestly done when the night comes;
and the steward deal kindly with the labourer.1
1 Thackeray, Adventures qf Philip.

FROM THE RED SEA TO SINAI 159

III.
Eephidim.
And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi.— Exod.
xvii. 15.
On leaving the seashore the march had turned eastwards
towards the great mass of mountains known generally as Sinai.
The route is described as inexpressibly grand. On each side of
the narrow pass rise peaks and precipices of every form and
colour. Grey, red, brown, green, chalk-white, and raven-black
are the hues of those entrance-gates of the most august temple of
the world. Here, even before Abraham left Haran, the Egyptian
Government had worked mines of copper and turquoise by
convict labour.
Up to tbis point the sufferings of the pilgrim-host, though
trying, had not been insupportable ; but on leaving Dophkah and
entering the Wady Feiran, the whole camp, man and beast,
became severely pressed. The oases which had varied the
monotony of the desert failed them ; the granite walls on either
hand reflected an intolerable glare and heat, and the failure of the
supply of water threatened to drive the whole camp to frenzy.
At Marah the water had been unpalatable; here there was no
water at all. The brook which at times waters the valley was
dry, as it often becomes still ; and perhaps the presence of
vegetation along the empty watercourse made the disappointment
more tantalizing. Tbe word Eephidim signifies " resting-places,"
and every one had been buoyed up during the stiff experiences of
the last two days with the happy expectations which that name
suggested. Obviously, therefore, the contrast between hope and
reality was the more exasperating.
Tf If you essay to lead men, you will sooner or later come to a
Eephidim. We are distinctly told that it was according to the
commandment of the Lord that the children of Israel journeyed
" by stages " (Exod. xvii. 1, E.V., marg.) from the wilderness of Sin,
and pitched in Eephidim. The character of the worker is as dear
to God as the work he is doing ; and no pains must be spared by
the Divine Artificer to complete the design to which He has set

160 MOSES
His hand. Do not be surprised then, Christian worker, if you
find yourself in Eephidim.1
1. Angrily the people turned upon Moses, not murmuring
only, but even threatening his life. In answer to his prayer
Moses is directed to take the elders of Israel, and go before the
people : " Behold," said the Lord, " I will stand before thee upon
the rock in Horeb." Here, as in the case of the manna, there
was a special manifestation of the glory of God. All the people
were gathered to see this great sight ; nearer stood the elders of
Israel. In front of these was the rock, high and massive — its
rugged sides stretching up until its fretted heights stood out
against the sky. Over all, dazzling and awful, was the glory of
the Lord. Then Moses drew near and lifting the rod he smote
the rock, and from it leapt the stream. As the Psalmist sings,
" the waters ran down bke rivers " — cool, delicious, abundant, it
fell with happy music. And eagerly rushed the fevered children,
and tbe thirsty men and women, and found new Ufe in it ; and
from every side the flocks and herds gathered to share in the
gracious supply.
Tf Looking back upon that scene St. Paul cries — " that Bock
was Christ." Good tidings for us pilgrims, going homeward. We
are sometimes where Israel was — in the desert, parched, wearied,
with faith weak, and ready to murmur, longing for a draught of
the river of life, as David longed to drink of the crystal spring by
Bethlehem. For us " there is a river, the streams whereof make
glad the city of God." The scene seems to rise before John the
seer as if this was but the pattern of that which in its fullest
glory and complete significance must be seen in the mount.
" And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal,
proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." 2
2. Israel had hitherto been the sheep of God: now they
must become His warriors. At the Eed Sea it was said to them,
" Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord . . . the Lord
shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace " (Exod. xiv. 13).
But it is not so now. Just as the function of every true miracle
is to lead to a state of faith in which miracles are not required ;
just as a mother reaches her hand to a tottering infant, that
presently tbe boy may go alone ; so the Lord fought for Israel,
1 F. B. Meyer, « M. G. Pearse.

FROM THE RED SEA TO SINAI 161
tnat Israel might learn to fight for the Lord. The herd of slaves
who came out of Egypt could not be trusted to stand fast in
battle ; and what a defeat would have done with them we may
judge by their outcries at the very sight of Pharaoh. But now
they had experience of Divine succour, and had drawn the
inspiring breath of freedom. And so it was reasonable to expect
that some chosen men of them at least would be able to endure
the shock of battle. And if so, it was a matter of the last
importance to develop and render conscious the national spirit, a
spirit so noble in its unselfish readiness to die, and in its scorn of
such material ills as anguish and mutilation compared with
baseness and dishonour, that the re-kindling of it in seasons of
peril and conflict was more than half a compensation for the
horrors of a battle-field.
3. The Amalekites were what we should call a nomad Bedouin
tribe, who are spoken of as having their home in the desert
south of Palestine : in the " Negeb," or " South," of Judah (Num.
xiii. 29, xiv. 25, 43, 45), about Kadesh (Gen. xiv. 7), and in the
same neighbourhood (1 Sam. xv. 7, xxvii. 8, xxx. 1). They
correspond in fact very much to the Azazimeh tribe who now
inhabit a large part of the elevated limestone plateau, called the
Tih, between the mountains of the Sinaitic Peninsula and the
Mediterranean Sea. Their appearance here in the Sinaitic
Peninsula is not a substantial difficulty: as Dillmann remarks,
" a branch of them may have been settled in or about the oasis in
Wady Feiran ; or they may in May or June have led their flocks
up into tbe cooler and fresher pastures in the mountains, or they
may even have made a raid against Israel from their homes on
the Tih." Whichever supposition is the correct one, it was
natural enough that the nomads, who lived on the scanty products
of this region, should do their utmost to expel the intruders.
4. Few methods of winning a battle can have seemed more
useless at first sight than the method adopted by Moses. Every
thing depended on the result of this first engagement. The
undisciplined multitude had already begun to murmur because of
the hardships of the way ; a defeat would be certain to discourage
them ; therefore it might well have been expected that, however
MOSES-SAMSON — 1 1

162 MOSES
much he might have entrusted the actual fighting to the younger
Joshua, Moses would stand in the thick of his men to cheer them
on by his presence and example to a victory on which depended,
under God, all their hopes and all their great mission to the world.
And yet it was in this supreme moment that Moses chose to retire,
with two other leaders, to the top of the hill high above the battle,
waiting with the rod of God in his hand. It might have been
argued that this was not only inconsistent with his position as
leader but absolutely useless, since, whatever he might do on the
top of the mountain, the battle would be decided by force of arms
in the plain below ; and it might with some plausibility have been
added that, since the Amalekites were on their own ground, in
their own country, the prayers for success which they were doubt
less offering had at least a good right to be heard. Neverthe
less, the fact remains — " And it came to pass, when Moses held up
his hand, that Israel prevailed : and when he let down his hand,
Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands were heavy ; and they took
a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon ; and Aaron and
Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other
on the other side ; and his hands were steady until the going down
of the sun."
5. When the conflict is over, Moses builds a memorial of
thanksgiving to God, and piles together great stones — which,
perhaps, still stand in some of the unexplored valleys of that
weird desert land — to teach Israel the laws of conflict and the
conditions of victory. These laws and conditions are implied in
the name which he gave to the altar that he built — Jehovah-nissi,
" the Lord is my Banner." Now, then, what do these stones, with
their significant name, teach us, as they taught the ancient
Israelites ?
(1) Let us realize for whose cause we fight. — The banner
was the symbol of the cause for which an army fought, or the
cognizance of the king or commander whom it followed. So
Moses, by that name given to the altar, would impress upon the
minds of the cowardly mob that he had brought out of Egypt —
and who now had looked into an enemy's eyes for the first time —
the elevating and bracing thought that they were God's soldiers,
and that tbe warfare which they waged was not for themselves, nor

FROM THE RED SEA TO SINAI 163
for the conquest of the country for their own sake, nor for mere
outward liberty, but that they were fighting that the will of God
might prevail, and that He might be the King now of one land —
a mere corner of the earth — and thereby might come to be the
King of all the earth. That rude altar said to Israel : " Bemember,
when you go into the battle, that the battle is the Lord's, and
that the standard under which you war is the God for whose cause
you contend — none else and none less than Jehovah Himself.
You are consecrated soldiers, set apart to fight for God."
(2) Let us remember whose commands we follow. — The banner
in ancient warfare, even more than in modern, waved in front of
the host, and determined the movements of the army. And so, by
the stones that he piled and the name that he gave them, Moses
taught Israel and us that they and we are under the command of
God, and that it is the movements of His staff that are to be
followed. Absolute obedience is the first duty of the Christian
soldier, and absolute obedience means the entire suppression of
one's own will, the holding of the equilibrium until He puts His
finger on the side that He desires to dip and lets the other rise.
They alone understand their place as Christ's servants and soldiers
who have learned to hush their own will until they know their
Captain's. In order to be blessed, to be strong, to be victorious,
the indispensable condition is that our inmost desire shall be,
" Not my will, but thine be done."
(3) Let us recognize by whose power we conquer. — The banner
suggests to English people a false idea. It suggests the notion of
a flag, or some bit of flexible drapery which fluttered and flapped
in the wind ; but the banner of old-world armies was a rigid pole,
with some solid ornament of bright metal on the top, so as to
catch the light. The banner-staff spoken of in the text links
itself with the preceding incident. Moses stood on the mountain
top with the rod in his hand. Now that rod was exactly a
miniature banner, and when he lifted it victory came to Israel,
and when it fell victory deserted their arms. So by the altar's
name he would say, Do not suppose that it was Moses that won
the battle, or that it was the rod that Moses carried in his hand
that brought you strength. The true Victor was Jehovah, and
it was He who was Moses' Banner. It was by Him that the
lifted rod brought victory ; as for Moses, he had nothing to do

1 64 MOSES
with it ; and the people had to look higher than the hill-top where
he sat. Tf " The Lord is my Banner " — no Moses, no outward symbol,
no man or thing, but only He Himself. Therefore in all our
duties, and in all our difficulties, and in all our conflicts, and for
all our conquests, we are to look away from creatures, self,
externals, and to look only to God. We are all too apt to trust in
rods instead of in Him, in Moses instead of in Moses' Lord.1
God, who in Israel's bondage and bewailing
Heard them and granted them their heart's desire,
Clave them the deep with power and with prevaibng,
Gloomed in the cloud and glowed into the fire,
Fed them with manna, furnished with a fountain,
Followed with waves the rising of the rod,
Drew them and drave, till Moses on the mountain
Died of the kisses of the lips of God.2
1 A. Maclaren. 2 F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.

MOSES. VIII.
The Ten Words.

Literature.
Aitken, J., The Abiding Law (1899), 1.
Driver, S. R., The Booh of Exodus (Cambridge Bible) (1911), 176, 426.
Farrar, F. W., The Ten Commandments (1907), 35.
Foakes- Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History ofthe Hebrews (1903), 73.
Gibson, E. C. S., The Old Testament in the New (1907), 35.
Gibson, J. M., The Mosaic Era (1881), 77.
Harper, A., The Booh of Deuteronomy (Expositor's Bible) (1875), 73.
Hort, F. J. A., Sermons on the Boohs ofthe Bible (1900), 35.
Jackson, G., The Ten Commandments (1898), 1.
Kalisch, M., Exodus (1855), 339.
Kittel, R., A History of the Hebrews, i. (1895) 244.
Matheson, G., The Representative Men of the Bible, i. (1902) 196.
Meyer, F. B., Moses the Servant of God, 115.
„ „ Exodus, i. (1911) 313 ; ii. (1913) 9.
Montefiore, C. G, The Bible for Home Reading, i. (1896) 77.
Ottley, R. L., Aspects ofthe Old Testament (1897), 161.
„ „ A Short History of the Hebrews (1901), 64.
Pearse, M. G., Moses: His Life and its Lessons (1894), 173.
Stanley, A. P., Sinai and Palestine (1877), 39.
Trumbull, H. C, Studies in Oriental Social Life (1894), 395.
Wade, G. W., Old Testament History (1901), 111.
Westphal, A., The Law and the Prophets (1910), 169.
Whitham, A. R., Old Testament History (1912), 89.
Biblical World, xxix. (1907) 454 (K. Fullerton) ; xxx. (1907) 60 (K.
Fullerton).
Christian World Pulpit, Ixi. (1902) 214 (G. S. Barrett).
Expository Times, xxv. (1913) 90 (S. H. Wainright).

166

The Ten Words.
And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his
friend. — Exod. xxxiii. ii.
We have now reached the record of the greatest event in the
life of Moses. It was much indeed that he should rise up from
the midst of the splendours of Pharaoh's court, and step forth
from that high position to become one with these poor enslaved
and spirit-broken Israelites. It was much, very much, that he
should be called of God, and commissioned to demand the release
of Israel, and to bring them out from the house of their bondage.
It was much that he should have stood and spoken to the waters
of the Eed Sea in the name of Jehovah, and have , taken so great
a part in Israel's deliverance and the overthrow of Egypt's hosts,
It was much that he should have led so vast a multitude in the
trackless wilderness. But, of all honours ever put upon man, this
surely was the greatest — the law was given by Moses. If the
supreme advantage of the Jew was that to him were committed
the oracles of God, how great was his honour to whom it was
given to climb the mount of God, to enter into the majesty of the
Divine presence, and to receive from the Almighty those tables
of the law which were to inspire and shape the religious bfe of
the world.
1. Leaving Eephidim, the pilgrim-host, led by the cloud,
travelled slowly along the Wady-es-Sheykh, which still forms the
great highway of the desert, running due east and west, from the
Eed Sea to the Gulf of Suez, until they came on the plain Er
Bdheh, which means " the palm of the hand." It lies outspread
from north to south two miles long and half a mile wide, nearly
flat, and dotted over with tiny shrubs. On either side are
mountains far higher than the loftiest mountain in Britain,
composed of black and yellow granite, and at the end, blocking
167

168 MOSES
the southern extremity of the plain, rises the sheer precipice of
Sinai, 1200 to 1500 feet in height — the mount of God.
2. Every aspect of the scene demands our earnest and careful
consideration. (1) All the previous dealings of God with Israel have been
a preparation for this. God did not begin with the command
ments. He first made men free, and then He gave them the Law.
The whole history is a striking illustration of St. Paul's words,
" Being made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness."
It is impossible for us to think of Israel beginning to keep these
great commandments in Egypt. We need only recall their
ignorance of God, and their utter misery. It is impossible to get
faith when hope is dead. Workers in missions tell us that to
create hope is the first and hardest thing — to stir men out of the
awful apathy of a dulled and stupefied despair. Then we have to
remember that their surroundings were full of heathenism, with
its vice and degradation. The cruelty of the taskmasters would
have found a new strength and bitterness if they had been
provoked by the insult done to the gods of Egypt. The religion
of Jehovah might live in such a condition, but it is very difficult
to conceive of the Jewish religion commencing under such
conditions. (2) God desired to assure them of their unique relationship to
Himself. They had already seen what He bad done for them.
He had given Ethiopia and Egypt for them, had borne them on
eagles' wings, had fed them with manna, had smitten the flinty
rocks for them, had delivered them from Amalek, and now He
desired to assure them that, as the children of Abraham His
Friend, they were peculiarly dear to Him. They were to be a
peculiar treasure among all peoples, a kingdom of priests, and an
holy nation.
(3) God desired to enter into covenant with them, and to give
them laws. Does it seem incredible that God, whom the Heaven
of Heavens cannot contain, should condescend to enter into a
compact with sinful man ? It may seem so, if we degrade
humanity and account men as worms or atoms. But if we realize,
apart from sin, the greatness of man — his moral worth, his like
ness to God, his creative powers, his patience, his hope, his love —

THE TEN WORDS 169
then it will seem less wonderful that God should subordinate all
else to the education of a being who is capable of eternal fellow
ship with Himself, and who is doubly bound to Him, first by
original creation and then by the blood of the cross. How shall
He not with Christ freely give us all things ?
Tf God has rescued the people and brought them to Himself.
Let them but obey His voice and keep His covenant, and three
things are promised to them: (1) They shall be God's peculiar
treasure; (2) they shall be a kingdom of priests; and (3) they
shall be an holy nation. These three titles are all full of the
future, prophetic types of what shall come after ; and as such we
find that they are constantly appealed to by later writers, as
embodying the fundamental ideas of Israel's relation to God and
position among the nations of the world. So, in an early discourse
of Deuteronomy, a strong caution against the perils of idolatry is
made to rest upon this thought : " Thou art an holy people unto
the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar
people unto himself, above all peoples that are upon the face of
the earth."
Here I ask you to notice the appearance of another term —
" chosen," or " elected " ; for tbe two words are the same. The
term has played a large part in the history of Christian thought,
and profoundly influenced the destinies and fortunes of men in
after ages. But it is here that we meet with it for the first time
as a theological term, and used, be it noted, in what we may call
a corporate sense, of the nation collectively in its historic aspect,
and not of individuals. The idea that God had "chosen" or
" elected " Israel is necessarily involved in the thought of Israel
as God's own " peculiar people," or " peculiar treasure " ; and so,
adding the passage of Deuteronomy to the primary passage in
Exodus, we get a group of four special phrases used of Israel in
their new relation to God. They are — (1) God's peculiar treasure ;
(2) His chosen or elected ones ; (3) a kingdom of priests ; and
(4) an holy nation. It is in these titles that the true conception
of Israel's mission lies wrapped up, and we can never understand
God's purpose as revealed in Scripture unless we study them
carefully.1 3. How fitting was the place for so momentous an event.
" They were departed from Eephidim, and were come to the desert
of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness ; and there Israel en-
1 E. C. S. Gibson, The Old Testament im, the New, 35.

170 MOSES
camped before the mount." The "mount" before which Israel
encamped (Exod. xix. 2) was in all probability the northern peak
(some 6900 feet above the sea) of the mass of granite mountains
called Mount Sinai, or Musa Sufsafeh. This peak, Eas Sufsafeh,
answers exactly to the requirements of the narrative, and has
immediately to its north a plain of a square mile in extent, which
commands a full view of the cliff. That such a plain should exist at
all in front of such a cliff is so remarkable a coincidence with the
sacred narrative that it furnishes a strong internal argument, not
merely of its identity with the scene, but of the scene itself
having been described by an eye-witness. The awful and
lengthened approach, as to some natural sanctuary, would have
been the fittest preparation for the coming scene. The plain
itself is not broken and uneven and narrowly shut in, like
almost all others in the range, but presents a long retiring
sweep, against which the people could "remove and stand
afar off." Tbe cliff rising bke a huge altar in front of the
whole congregation, and visible against the sky in lonely
grandeur from end to end of the whole plain, is the very image
of " the mount that might be touched," and from which the
" voice " of God might be heard far and wide over the stillness of
the plain below, widened at that point to its utmost extent by the
confluence of all the contiguous valleys.
Tf The very silence in those mountain stillnesses is oppress
ively eloquent —
A silence as if God in heaven were still,
And meditating some new wonder;
any breaking of that silence is not less eloquent, to remind man
of his littleness before God. The loneliness of the region, the
nakedness of the sheer granite walls, and a peculiar atmospheric
condition, combine to give a prominence to the human voice
which makes its very use a reverberating rebuke to the intruder
who has ventured it. It is as though one were speaking in a vast
glass bell, his voice ringing back to him from every side.1
Tf There wa3 an idea of sanctity attached to rocky wilderness,
because it had always been among hills that the Deity had mani
fested Himself most intimately to men, and to the hills that His
saints had nearly always retired for meditation, for especial com-
1 H. C. Trumbull, Studies m Oriental Social Life, 397.

THE TEN WORDS 171.
munion with Him, and to prepare for death. Men acquainted
with the history of Moses, alone at Horeb, or with Israel at Sinai,
— of Ebjah by the brook Cherith, and in the Horeb cave ; of the
deaths of Moses and Aaron on Hor and Nebo ; of the preparation
of Jephthah's daughter for her death among the Judaea mountains ;
of the continual retirement of Christ Himself to the mountains
for prayer, His temptation in the desert of the Dead Sea, His
sermon on the hills of Capernaum, His transfiguration on Mount
Hermon, and His evening and morning walks over Olivet for the
four or five days preceding His crucifixion, — were not likely to
look with irreverent or unloving eyes upon the blue hills that
girded their golden horizon, or drew down upon them the
mysterious clouds out of the height of the darker heaven. But
with this impression of their greater sanctity was involved also
that of a peculiar terror. In all this — their haunting by the
memories of prophets, the presences of angels, and the everlasting
thoughts and words of the Eedeemer — the mountain ranges seem
separated from the active world, and only to be fitly approached
by hearts which were condemnatory of it. Just in so much as
it appeared necessary for the noblest men to retire to the hill-
recesses before their missions could be accomplished, or their
spirits perfected, in so far did the daily world seem by comparison
to be pronounced profane and dangerous ; and to those who loved
that world, and its work, the mountains were thus voiceful with
perpetual rebuke, and necessarily contemplated with a kind of
pain and fear.1
4. In addition to the impressiveness of nature, solemn warn
ings and religious exercises helped to prepare the mind of
Israel for the supreme crisis which was close at hand. The
Divine voice, speaking through Moses, first impressed upon the
elders of Israel the greatness of the national calling, its unique
and supreme character. Israel had been chosen by the God of
the whole earth to be His covenant people, His Church. " Thus
shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of
Israel ; ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I
bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself. Now
therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant,
then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people:
for all the earth is mine : and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of
priests, and an holy nation " (Exod. xix. 3-6). A solemn purifica-
1 Ruskin, Modern Painters, iii. chap. xiv. § 10 ( Works, v. 254).

172 MOSES
tion with washing of the body and the clothing for two days,
according to the customs of primitive religion, was ordered ; and
" bounds " were set round the mountain (which its steep and
isolated character rendered feasible); man or beast, on pain of
death, was forbidden to pass beyond them. On the morning of
the third day a terrible thunderstorm raged on the mountain,
which was hidden in a thick black cloud. A trumpet-call
summoned all the people to the base of the mount : " And mount
Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon
it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a
furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the
voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder,
Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord
came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount ; and the
Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount : and Moses went
up " (Exod. xix. 18-20). Moses with Aaron ascended the moun
tain of terrors and mystery, and returning delivered to the people
the great Ten Words, the charter of true religion, inculcating for
ever true conceptions of God's character and His claims upon
man. Tf The scenic character of the description of Jehovah's descent
upon Sinai and His converse with Moses finds a parallel in many
rhetorical passages of the Psalms and Prophets, and is doubtless
to be explained similarly. In these any signal event in which
the hand of God is discerned is depicted as accompanied by dis
turbances in the elements and by convulsions of nature. In the
light of such, it seems reasonable to regard the narratives re
counting the delivery of the Law at Sinai as a dramatic picture,
the details of which are not to be pressed. The Divine communi
cations made to Moses were presumably internal rather than
external; and were imparted through the avenues of reflexion
and conscience rather than by the outward hearing. Yet it is not
impossible that in the locality where the events are placed there
may really have occurred natural phenomena which are reflected
in the narrative. To the race and in the age to which Moses
belonged, all that was startling or exceptional in nature unmis
takably manifested Divine power; and lightning and tempest,
in particular, were associated by the Hebrews with Jehovah's
presence. Consequently the storms that occasionally burst round
the top of Sinai may easily have impressed the spirit of the
Israelite leader with a sense of God's nearness ; whilst tbe thunder

THE TEN WORDS 173
may have been to him something more than a mere symbol of
the Divine voice.1
Tf On August 12th, I left Tokyo by train and arrived in the
evening at Karuizawa, where I had duties in connexion with a
summer school which was being held for missionaries. On the
night of my arrival, I lay down to sleep with my face near a window
from which there was a good view of Mount Asama, an active
volcano, eight thousand feet in height, and about ten miles away.
Warning had been given by specialists that there were signs in the
mountain of impending activity.
It can be easily imagined bow startled the people were when,
near midnight, tbere was a sharp earthquake and a terrible
explosion. I was suddenly wakened, and on looking from my
window witnessed a sublime spectacle, made all the more
mysterious and awe-inspiring by having as its setting the back
ground of night.
Like a mighty giant in struggle the great mountain was in
agitation. A great black column of smoke, shot straight up into
heaven, was unfolding and spreading at the top. The glow of fires
could be seen at the mouth of the crater. At times, blue and
fitful flames appeared and vanished at different points against the
blackness and smoke. There was a thunderous noise in the crater,
continuous for more than an hour, the sound of which was un
canny and terrible, far more so indeed than the roar of a hurricane
at sea. Presently a storm-cloud formed and stood by the side of
the column of volcanic smoke. Supposedly, it was produced by
dynamic cooling of the air undergoing expansion in ascending
from lower to higher levels in the atmosphere. At any rate, the
storm cloud was there, and lightnings began to play on the face
of the cloud and thunderings were heard from within. The roar
of the volcano and the noise of thunder answered each other as
deep calls unto deep. The grandeur of the scene was such as to
defy description.
The spectacle called to mind certain words of Scripture. The
next morning, I opened the Bible at Exodus (xix.) and was
astonished to find there, as well as in Deuteronomy (iv., v.) and in
Hebrews (xii.), language used descriptive of phenomena closely re
sembling those which I had witnessed. I read of " thunders and
bghtnings," of a " thick cloud upon the mount," of Mount Sinai
" altogether on a smoke," of the " Lord descending upon it in fire,"
of the " smoke thereof ascending as the smoke of a furnace," and
of the whole mount "quaking greatly" (Exod.). The account
in Deuteronomy I found to be not less exact and particular.
1 G. W. Wade, Old Testament History, 115.

174 MOSES
" The mountain burned with fire unto the heart of heaven, with
darkness, cloud, and thick darkness. And the Lord spake unto
you out of the midst of the fire ; but ye saw no form ; only
ye heard a voice" (iv. 11, E.V.). "These words the Lord
spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst
of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with
a great voice " (v. 22). The language of Hebrews is certainly
based on these accounts. " For ye are not come unto a mount
that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and unto black
ness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and
the voice of words." And also, " So fearful was the appearance
that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake " (xii. 18-21). In
fact the correspondence was so close as to include even the
official regulations at Karuizawa, for I was told the next morning
that the governor of the province had set bounds about the mount,
in view of the increased activity of the volcano, though some
had broken through and gazed upon the sight at their own
peril. Now two or three things were riveted upon my mind, when
I read afresh the account of the giving of the Law. First, I was
convinced that the language described volcanic as well as storm
phenomena ; secondly, I felt not less certain that the writer had
witnessed the phenomena which he described; and thirdly, I
was deeply impressed with the fitness of such a scene as the
background of Divine legislation. All law is inseparable from the
idea of force. The manifestation of God in the awful display of
His power in earthquake, volcanic eruption, and storm would
certainly give impressive emphasis to ordinances promulgated for
the people.1
5. It was fitting that the proclamation of the Ten Words
should be accompanied by such sanctions of outward solemnity
as those which the religious history of Israel associated with Mount
Sinai. The grandeur of the Moral Law was not yet a thing before
which in itself the people could be expected to bow. The senti
ment of reverence for the truths on which the moral order of the
universe is constructed was, at least for the great bulk of them, a
sentiment yet to be created. To them thunder and lightning, a
mount whose red granite seemed on fire, and a voice speaking to
them from out of the darkness, were grander and more awe-
inspiring than the great unaccompanied imperative of duty.
Before this imperative we may stand in awe, as before a fact
1 S. H. Wainright, in The Expository Times, xxv. 90.

THE TEN WORDS 175
which all the thinking of men has never been able to explain
away, a fact whose ultimate authority we all recognize when we
say " I ought." But not yet they. We are not, therefore, to say
that these things never happened so in their experience, simply
because we would not require them to happen so in ours. We shall
rather be thankful that to-day we confront the old words with a
reverence which goes out to them immediately, and which dis
covers more grandeur in the simple word " duty " than in all the
rolling of the thunder. And it will behove us to be. careful that
the edge be not again taken off this moral reverence, which has
been so slowly and painfully acquired, by the false and lowered
standards of materialism which in our time threaten both thought
and life.
Tf Who can estimate what the world owes to these portents of
Sinai, in the time when Israel was a child (Hos. xi. 1), and
heaven lay about him in his infancy ? We are so much
occupied with that majestic law, " the rugged grandeur of which
towers above the greatest monuments of Egypt, bke Sinai itself
above the pyramids," that we forget the intrinsic value of those
awful manifestations which preceded its promulgation. But if
we have the foundation of all ethics in the Decalogue, we have
also, in the portents which preceded, the foundation of that rev
erence which is the soul of all true ethics, of those
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised !
Our reverence for nature, and our reverence for the God of nature,
are both of Hebrew origin; and Sinai is their birthplace. Alas!
that there should be so much in these times so utterly at
enmity with human joy as to encourage the attempt to abolish
and destroy these, by cutting away their roots in that supernatural
which is their only basis. But the God of Sinai still lives ; and
so long as He is acknowledged, reverence will still abide among
men, in which, as Euskin truly says, " is the chief joy and power
of life."1 Tf Mount Sinai, for all these thousands of years, has been
the commanding metaphor for conscience and the law of God.
Geographically, the mountain stands like an iron peak, shot up by
the desert from its masses of hard and pitiless red rock. Histori
cally, it has been the platform from which the world has received
its laws. Disraeli introduces it into his Tancred as the mount of
1 J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era, 83.

176 MOSES
moral vision for the dreamer who is his hero. Bunyan's Pilgrim
has it thrust upon his path, precipitous and overhanging, threaten
ing him with its crushing rocks and its deadly flashes of fire. His
burden, too, becomes heavier as he goes, but tbe reason for that
seems to be that he is out of the way. Here Evangelist again
appears upon the scene. He comes to meet him, drawing nearer
and nearer. His coming is deliberate, for he has been watching
the man growing worldly in his own pitiful fashion. The question
is asked, " What doest thou here ? " — the very question which
Elijah heard on the road to the same mountain. But here, in a
later edition [of the Pilgrim's Progress], the word " Christian " is
added, evidently for emphasis. A Christian should never be
cowering under Mount Sinai.1
Tf The Maker's Laws, whether they are promulgated in Sinai
Thunder, to the ear or imagination, or quite otherwise promulgated,
are the laws of God; transcendent, everlasting, imperatively
demanding obedience from all men. This, without any thunder,
or with never so much thunder, thou, if there be any soul left in
thee, canst know of a truth. The Universe, I say, is made by
Law ; the great Soul of the World is just and not unjust. Look
thou, if thou have eyes or soul left, into this great shoreless
Incomprehensible : in the heart of its tumultuous Appearances,
Embroilments, and mad Time-vortexes, is there not, silent, eternal,
an All-just, an All-beautiful ; sole Eeality and ultimate controlling
Power of the whole? This is not a figure of speech: this is a
fact.2

Theik Antiquity.
1. We may confidently believe that in the Decalogue we
have an original monument of Mosaism. It is indisputable that
the Ten Words are an index to the character of Moses' work in
so far as they place morality in the forefront of Israel's religion,
and form a commentary on the meaning of the " holiness " ascribed
to the God of redemption. We seem to be justified in adhering
to the traditional view of the Decalogue chiefly on the ground
that it is intrinsically credible. It is consistent with all that we
know of Israel's subsequent history, and it would be impossible to
1 John Kelman, The Road, i. 33.
' Carlyle, Past dnd Present.

THE TEN WORDS 177
explain satisfactorily the vitality and vigour displayed in the
conquest of Canaan without the supposition that the long
observance of some primary laws of moral conduct had moulded
the character of the nation and consolidated its strength.
Tf Much as critics have denied, there have been found very few
who deny that in the main some such law as this must have been
given to Israel in Moses' day. Even Kuenen admits as much as
that in his History of the Beligion of Israel. The only command
ment of the ten he has difficulty in accepting is the second, which
forbids the making of any graven image for worship. That, he
thinks, cannot have been in the original Decalogue, not because of
any peculiarity of language, or because of any incoherency in
composition, but simply because he cannot believe that at that
early date the rebgion of Yahweh could have been so spiritual as
to demand the prohibition of images.1
2. It is scarcely conceivable that the prophets were the first
ethical teachers of Israel. It has been justly pointed out that
" the more tbe pre-prophetic religion is depreciated, the more
difficult it will be to account for its sudden rise to the level in
which we find it in the earliest writing prophets." The prophets
never claim the position of pioneers in religion; they regard
themselves as restorers of a moral and religious ideal which had
been set before the nation at the very outset of its history. Their
language implies that Mosaism was pre-eminently an ethical
religion ; that, in fact, it had laid the foundations of Israel's polity
in a lofty conception of God, and in the exaltation of righteous
ness as the essential element in true and acceptable worship.
Certainly this view harmonizes with the fact that the Old Testa
ment uniformly ascribes to Moses a prophetic character.
Tf On any reading of the commandments only the third and
fourth (two out of ten) refer to matters of mere worship; and
even these may more correctly be taken to refer primarily to the
moral aspects of the cultus. All the rest deal with fundamental
relations to God and man. Consequently the prophets who, after
the manner of Amos and Hosea, denounce the prevailing belief
that Yahweh's help could be secured for Israel, whatever its moral
state, by offerings and sacrifices, were not teaching a new doctrine,
first discovered by themselves. They were simply reasserting the
fundamental principles of the Mosaic rebgion. Eeverence and
1 A. Harper, The Book of Deuteronomy, 61.
MOSES-S AMSON — 1 2

178 MOSES
righteousness — these from/ the first were the twin pillars upon
which it rested.1
Tf The Decalogue is a mirror and brief summary of all virtues,
and teaches how we should conduct ourselves towards God and
towards man. And no more beautiful, perfect, and shorter book
of virtues was ever written. . . .
The law is a light which enlightens us, not to see God's grace
or righteousness, through which we attain to eternal life ; but to
see sin, our infirmities, death, God's anger, and judgment. The
gospel is a far different light. It lights up the troubled heart,
makes it live again, comforts and helps. For it shows how God
forgives unwortby, condemned sinners for Christ's sake, when they
believe that they are redeemed by His death ; and that through
His victory are given to them all blessings, grace, forgiveness of
sins, righteousness, and eternal life.2

II.
Their Form.
1. It is generally thought that the Commandments were
originally received and written down in a much shorter form .than
that in which (with some variation) they appear in Exod. xx. and
Deut. v. — perhaps something as follows : —
1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me (or besides) me.
2. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in
vain.
4. Eemember that thou keep holy the Sabbath-day.
5. Honour thy father and thy mother.
6. Thou shalt do no murder.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness.
10. Thou shalt not covet.
The first word enforces the unity of God, as against the ethnic
ideas of merely local, limited, or competing divinities {Elohim).
The second teaches the spirituality of God, and so condemns
idolatry. God is not to be localized or materialized in man's
1 Andrew Harper, The Book of Deuteronomy, 75.
s Luther, Table-Talk (ed. Fbrstemann), ii. 94.

THE TEN WORDS 179
thought. The third asserts the holiness of God, and the supreme
claim which His revelation of Himself has upon man's reverence.
The fourth, re-emphasizing a primeval institution, proclaims God's
right to the consecration of man's time, his labour, and his rest.
The remaining six deal more directly with man, with the consecra
tion of the national and individual life to Jehovah. The fifth
and seventh enjoin the sacredness of family life and its relation
ships ; the sixth, the sanctity of the individual life ; the eighth, of
property ; the ninth, of reputation ; while the tenth deal- not only
with acts of oppression and injustice, but also with the motive
that might prompt them. ) Throughout the series the great
principle is seen that morality is founded on truth respecting
God ; and the fundamental error of the heathen world is refuted,
which divorced rebgion from morals, and thought the former was
to be satisfied by the due performance of rites and sacrifices. The
law of Sinai is rightly summed up both in the Old and in the New
Testament by the two great commandments : " Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God " ; " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself "
(Deut. vi. 5 ; Lev. xix. 18).
Tf " Thou shalt have none other gods but me." If man had
been able to keep this one commandment perfectly the other nine
would never have been written ; instead he has comprehensively
disregarded it, and perhaps never more than now in the twentieth
century. Ah, well ! this world, in spite of all its sinning, is still
the Garden of Eden where the Lord walked with man, not in the
cool of evening, but in the heat and stress of the immediate
working day. There is no angel now with flaming sword to keep
the way of the Tree of Life, but tapers alight morning by
morning in the Hostel of God to point us to it ; and we, who are
as gods knowing good and evil, partake of that fruit "whereof
whoso eateth shall never die " ; the greatest gift or the most awful
penalty — Eternal Life.1
2. It has been thought by some that, since there were two
stone tables of the Divine inscription, the ten commandments
were equally divided between them, five on each. If this were so,
the law about our honouring our parents would be on the same
level with the four that refer to God, and this might be justified
by the reflection that in honouring them we really honour Him,
1 Michael Fairless, The Roadmender, 52.

180 MOSES
in whom every family in heaven and earth is named. But on the
whole the old division into four and six is better, the first
regarding our duty to God, and the second our duty to man.
Tf The Ten Words can be counted up in more ways than one.
What the Jews have for many years regarded as the First Word,
" I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of bondage," is unlike all the other Words
in being an assertion, not a prohibition or a command. It is true
that the Ten Commandments are not called in the Bible Mitzvot,
commands; but Debarim, words. Still, our First Word sounds
very like an introduction to what follows. Many people therefore
suppose that what we call the Second Commandment includes two
commands in one, and comprises really both the First and Second
Commandments. In that case the First Commandment would
forbid the worship of any other god except the one and only true
God ; the Second Commandment would forbid the making of any
material emblem or symbol of the one true God, or the making of
any idol or image of any created thing for the purpose of worship.
We have no clue from the Bible as to which way of counting the
Words is the right way. The earliest authorities we have (who
are two Jews, called Philo and Josephus) reckon the Words the
second way, and they are counted so to the present day.1
3. Duty to God stands first, and lays the needful foundation
for the right discharge of our duties to man. The love of God is
the foundation of all love to our fellows. Neglect the duties of
piety, and you will soon neglect your duties to your neighbour.
The Scripture does not ignore the distinction between religion,
i.e., the duties we owe to God, and morality, i.e., the duties
implicated through earthly relationships, but it unites the two in
the deeper idea that all duty must be done to God, who is above
all, through all, and in all. The precepts of the first table enjoin
that God be honoured in His being, worship, name, and day. The
precepts of the second follow naturally, requiring that he who
loves God should love his brother also, who is made in the image
of God ; and surely that love implies that he will refrain from
injuring him in deed, in word, and in thought — in his person, his
wife, his property, or his reputation.
Tf Mr. Herbert Spencer maintains that the ghost theory,
originally suggested by dreams of the dead, is the origin of aU
1 0. G. Montefiore, The Bible for Home Reading, i. 92.

THE TEN WORDS 181
belief in God. If so, how extraordinary it is, that in the most
coherent and strictly developed of all ancient religions there is
hardly a vestige of this ghost theory, — Saul's vision of Samuel in
the witch of Endor's house is the only one I can at present
recollect, — while nevertheless the enunciation of an authoritative
moral law, far in advance of the intellectual stage of culture
which would appear to correspond to it, takes place in the very
nursery of the race, and in the very centre of its first great scene
of trial ! Is it conceivable to any one that the ghost of a great
ancestor could have originated the Decalogue ? Whence did
these severe restraining precepts come, if they did not come from
a real power above man ? To one who assumes the view of the
purely physical origin of man, how should so early an outbreak of
what would, on that hypothesis, be the pure superstition of a
spiritual and rigidly restraining power, be accounted for ? ... It
seems to me perfectly certain that the early incorporation of such
a law as the Decalogue in human history is an incontrovertible
proof, first, that physical law is not the root of human character,
but moral law ; and next, that the moral law was revealed to us,
and in us, long before the intellect had begun to stride forward
with anything like its full power ; in other words, that, instead of
being the mere fruit borne by that power, it was the ultimate
guide and ruler and director of that advancing intelligence which
now claims to be its master.1

III.
Their Uniqueness.
1. The Decalogue is a concise but comprehensive summary of
the fundamental duties of an Israelite towards God and his
neighbour. Jehovah is to be the only God recognized by Israel ;
He is to be worshipped under no material form ; His name is to
be reverenced ; and the " Sabbath " is weekly to be kept holy in
His honour. Eespect is to be paid to parents ; murder, adultery,
theft, and false witness — the commonest, perhaps, of the graver
offences, especially in a society in which the hand of the law is
not strong — are forbidden ; the Israelite is not even to entertain
the desire to possess anything of a neighbour's. Within a brief
compass, the Decalogue thus lays down the fundamental articles
of religion (sovereignty and spirituality of God), and asserts the
1 R. H. Hutton, Aspects of Religious and Scientific Thought, 108.

182 MOSES
claims of morality in the chief spheres of human relationship
(home, calling, society). By a few salient and far-reaching
precepts, pointedly expressed and easily remembered, it covers
the whole religious and moral life ; and provides a summary of
human duty, capable of ready expansion and adjustment even to
the highest Christian standards, and unsurpassable as a practical
rule of life. The Decalogue, moreover, brings morality into
intimate connexion with religion ; and, in an age when popular
religion was only too readily satisfied with a formal ceremonialism,
it emphasized, not ritual, but spirituality, reverence, and respect
for tbe rights of other men (cf. Eom. xih. 9), as what was pleasing
in God's sight, and demanded by Him.
2. Tbe potential value of tbe two tables is in their union.
Herein lies the absolute uniqueness of the Decalogue. It accom
plished what no other code of antiquity accomplished — the indis
soluble union of religion and morals. Eeligion without morals
disintegrates into the rottenness of superstition, full of maggots
and all uncleanness. Morals without religion lack the power of
life and petrify into legality. A worm-eaten log or a petrified
stump is a sad contrast to the living, fruitful tree.
Tf Moral rules, apprehended as ideas first, and then rigorously
followed as laws, are, and must be, for tbe sage only. The mass
of mankind have neither force of intellect enough to apprehend
them clearly as ideas, nor force of character enough to follow them
strictly as laws. The mass of mankind can be carried along a
course full of hardship for the natural man, can be borne over the
thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the tide of a
joyful and bounding emotion. The noblest souls of whatever
creed, the pagan Empedocles as well as the Christian Paul, have
insisted on the necessity of an inspiration, a joyful emotion, to
make moral action perfect. An obscure indication of this necessity
is the one drop of truth in the ocean of verbiage with which the
controversy on justification by faith has flooded the world. But,
for the ordinary man, this sense of labour and sorrow constitutes
an absolute disqualification ; it paralyses him ; under the weight
of it, he cannot make way towards the goal at all. The paramount
virtue of religion is, that it has lighted up morality ; that it has
supplied the emotion and inspiration needful for carrying the sage
along the narrow way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man
along it at all. Even the religions with most dross in them have

THE TEN WORDS 183
had something of this virtue ; but the Christian religion manifests
it with unexampled splendour.1

IV.
Their Permanence.
1. The Ten Commandments form but a very small part of the
Law ; but they are the part which concerns us far the most. The
other precepts are rules for the guidance of a particular people at
a particular time. After a while many of them seem to have
dropped into disuse : the people, in fact, outgrew them ; they lost
their original use, and became a mere burden too heavy to bear.
But at first they were needed. When a people is in a young, un
formed state, above all when it is so disorderly and wilful as the
children of Israel were in those days, nothing could serve but
stiff rules to be obeyed, going even into the lesser matters of life.
The laws given by Moses were chiefly intended to enforce just
and merciful dealings among themselves, to keep them separate,
as a people set apart to God, from the idol-worshipping and foully
immoral nations around them, and in a great many different ways
to lay down rules for the outward service of God. The people
were not to invent for themselves ways of doing Him homage
which they should be apt to regard as bribes to His majesty.
They had simply to do as they were bid, to offer to Him just
what He commanded to be offered. But it was in offerings that
their worship was chiefly to consist. Public prayer, such as
makes up the greater part of our worship, was as yet unknown.
They approached God through sacrifice. To yield up to Him a
portion of the good things He had given them, to acknowledge in
this practical way that they owed all to Him — this was the
natural religious service of men who as yet had far more to do
with acts than with words ; and the spirit of that service remains
the very Christian spirit. When we never tire of calling upon
God to give, while we grudge every self-denial on our part for
His sake, we are making no advance on the rebgion of those
ancient Jews, we are but moving away from all true religion of
any kind. 1 Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism.

184 MOSES
Tf Has the first voice of Sinai ever lost its cosmopolitan ring ?
Have its commands ever become merely national ? " Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God " — is that national ; is it not the voice to
humanity ? " Thou shalt not make any graven image " — is that
national ; is it not the ignoring of all physical limits ? " Honour
thy father and thy mother " — is that national ; are not the ties of
family universal ? " Thou shalt not kill " — is that national ; is not
life everywhere dear ? " Thou shalt not steal " — is that national ;
are not possessions everywhere precious ? " Thou shalt not bear
false witness " — is that national ; have not all lands sought the
secret of truth ? Even the command to keep a day of rest, seem
ingly the most local of all the Decalogue precepts, is based upon
no national observance — no Jewish holiday, no patriotic anni
versary, no commemoration of a people's triumph. It is based
upon the fact of creation, on the constitution of Nature itself, on
that design of the world which makes all things one, " Eemember
the Sabbath Day to keep it holy, for in six days the Lord made
heaven and earth." Such universalism is grand — in the old
world it is unique. It can belong only to a race which has in it
the consciousness and the conscience of humanity — a race which
feels within its veins not merely its native blood, but the blood of
all ages and the heart of all climes. Such a race had a right to
its Messianic aspirations.1
2. The Mosaic laws have become the starting-point of all
religious systems and of all true civilization, and only from their
promulgation dates the diffusion of a genuine monotheism, a
purely internal morality and a sound enlightenment. They form
a decisive epoch in the history of the human race, and are, there
fore, perhaps the greatest and most important event in universal
history. In a simple and condensed, yet extremely emphatic,
form, equally impressive for every degree and manner of in
tellectual culture, a complete system of duties is comprised,
which man owes to his Creator and his fellow-men ; and so com
prehensive is the purport of these words that already from the
earliest times the whole sum of the Divine precepts has
been considered to be included in them as in an embryo,
so that all the other laws are to be regarded only as the
development or detailed elaboration of these words, wherefore
they are by Hebrew tradition justly called the "fundamentals
of faith." 1 G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the Bible, i. 214.

THE TEN WORDS 185
While the law on stone is written,
Stone-like is the mighty word;
We with chilling awe are smitten,
Though the word is Thine, 0 Lord.
Firm it is as mountains old,
As their snowy summits cold.
Stone-like, too, on each offender
Broken laws may heavy fall,
And with crushing vengeance render
One a terror unto all:
Struck themselves, in enmity,
Ireful sparks may from them fly.
Lord, Thou hast the law re-written,
Where we may untrembling read;
We with tender awe are smitten,
As we see the Saviour bleed, —
Bleed in His obedient love,
Hope and zeal in us to move.
From His heart the law is shining,
Heart-like is its every word;
We who in the cold were pining,
Of the sunny warmth have heard:
From the rocks we feared would crush
At His touch sweet waters gush.
Honoured be the name of Jesus,
Who for us obedient stood;
Faith in Him from fear will ease us,
Love to Him will make us good:
When the law in love is shown,
Hearts we have instead of stone.1
1 T. T. Lynch, The Rivulet.

MOSES. IX.
The Covenant and the Tabernacle.

i87

Literature.
Driver, S. R., The Booh of Exodus (Cambridge Bible) (1911), 176, 426.
Foakes- Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History ofthe Hebrews (1903), 73.
Gibson, E. C. S., The Old Testament in the New (1907), 33.
Gibson, J. M., The Mosaic Era (1881), 77.
Harper, A, The Book of Deuteronomy (Expositor's Bible) (1875), 73.
Battel, R., A History of the Hebrews, i. (1895) 244.
Maelaren, A., Expositions : Exodus, etc. (1906), 97.
Meyer, F. B., Moses the Servant of God, 115.
Ottley, E. L., Aspects ofthe Old Testament (1897), 161.
„ „ The Rule of Life and Love (1913), 25.
Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, i. (1889) 134.
Wade, G. W., Old Testament History (1901), 111.
Westphal, A., The Law and the Prophets (1910), 169.
Whitham, A. R., Old Testament History (1912), 89.
Biblical World, xxix. (1907) 454 (K. Fullerton); xxx. (1907) 60
(K. Fullerton).
Expository Times, xvii. (1906) 282 (S. R. Driver).

188

The Covenant and the Tabernacle.
Remember me, O Lord, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people.
— Ps. cvi. 4.
Closely associated with the Ten Words, there follows immediately
in Exod. xx., xxii.-xxiii. a series of enactments and injunctions
described as " the Book of the Covenant."

The Covenant.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words : for after the
tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel. —
Exod. xxxiv. 27.
1. The Book of the Covenant seems to be in a sense the foun
dation of the polity of Israel, the laws in it dealing with (1)
religious worship, (2) persons, (3) property.
(1) Sacrifices are assumed to be so natural a part of the
religion of the Hebrews that it is not necessary to enjoin the
practice of offering them. They are divided into two classes,
burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. The Israelites are instructed
to make their altars of earth or of unhewn stones, and without
steps (Exod. xx. 24-26). No special place is set apart for sacri
fices, but a promise is given by Jehovah : " In every place where I
record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee "
(xx. 24). Jehovah claims as His right the firstborn son, the
firstborn of all cattle (xxii. 29, 30), the seventh day (xxiii. 12),
and the seventh year (xxiii. 11). The Sabbath is to be kept as
a day of rest, " that thine ox and thine ass may have rest, and
the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger may be refreshed"
(xxiii. 12). Only three feasts are mentioned, at which all males
are ordered to appear before Jehovah : that of Unleavened Bread,

190 MOSES
in memory of Israel's coming forth from Egypt in the month of
Abib ; the feast of Harvest, " the firstfruits of thy labours " ;
and the feast of Ingathering (xxiii. 14-17). Three precepts
are added : (1) No leavened bread may be used in sacrifices
(xxiii. 18); (2) firstfruits are to be brought to the house of
Jehovah (xxiii. 19); (3) "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its
mother's milk " (xxiii. 19). The Israelites are warned : " Ye
shall be holy men unto me " ; and in token of this they must
scrupulously abstain from animals killed by wild beasts (xxii. 31).
Such are the simple directions for religious observance in the
earliest code of ancient Israel's " Sermon on the Mount." They
are conspicuous alike for plainness and simpbcity and for a
complete absence of insistence on any elaboration of ceremonial.
(2) The laws affecting persons recognize as necessary insti
tutions both slavery and polygamy, as well as the duty of exact
ing personal vengeance for injuries, but precautions are taken to
modify any undue severity in their operation. The slave is
acknowledged to be his owner's " money," yet he is by no means
without rights. He may be beaten ; but, if during chastisement
he loses an eye or even a tooth, he is to be set free (xxi. 26, 27).
If a master kills a slave he is liable to punishment, though the
loss of a man's services is deemed a sufficient penalty, if the death
should take place some days after the blow that caused it (xxi.
20, 21). No Hebrew might be kept as a slave for more than six
years, except of his own free will. If, however, his master had
given him a wife during the period of servitude, he could retain
her only by consenting to continue in bondage for life. In this
case the master had to place the slave against the door or door
post of his house, and, in the presence of the judges, bore his ear
through with an awl (xxi. 1-6). The honour of female slaves was
scrupulously guarded; under no circumstances might a Hebrew
woman be sold to a foreigner (xxi. 7—11).
(3) The laws of property suppose the people to be settled in
their own land, and relate mainly to injuries done to cattle, or to
crops (xxi. 28-xxh. 15). Thieves were to be punished by a fine
of double the value of the stolen goods (xxii. 4). It is not certain
whether disputes concerning property were to be submitted to
the judges or to be decided by an appeal to God, as the word
Elohim is used in both senses (xxii. 8). It was forbidden to lend

COVENANT AND THE TABERNACLE 191
money to the poor on interest, and the garment taken as a pledge
had to be restored at nightfall.
Tf The most instructive feature of the code is its insistence on
mercy and humanity towards the stranger and tbe helpless ; and
the meting out of even justice to rich and poor alike: — "Thou
shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him : for ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow,
or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise, and they
cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry." 1
2. All these words were first delivered orally by Moses to
the people, and accepted by them, and then written down. The
next day a remarkable ceremony followed — the ratification of
this "covenant" between God and His people by the blood of
sacrifice and by a sacrificial banquet in God's immediate presence.
An altar was erected at the base of the mountain, and twelve
pillars to represent the twelve tribes. Burnt-offerings and peace-
offerings (evidently existing institutions of the earlier worship)
were offered at Moses' command by chosen young men.
Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron, and
seventy of the elders of Israel, were now summoned to ascend the
mount of terrors. A vision of God Himself was vouchsafed to
them ; no similitude is described ; but the framework of what
they saw was the beauty of an unclouded heaven, a vivid contrast
to the darkness and the fire which had gone before : " there was
under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as
it were the body of heaven in his clearness." They ate and drank
on the mount, evidently of the sacrificial banquet which con
cluded the peace-offering, according to ancient custom, and God
"laid not his hand upon them." Instead of the fear and peril
which had overawed them at the giving of the Covenant, they
recognized the mercy and forbearance of God. God and man
were reconciled. Moses and his servant Joshua were a second
time summoned away from the rest, Aaron and Hur being left in
charge of the people. The cloud again covered the mountain, and
for forty days the lawgiver was alone on the height, shrouded in
mystery, and receiving further revelations from the God of Israel.
3. By the conditions of the Covenant which Jehovah purposed
to make between Himself and the ransomed people, and which
1 A. R. Whitham, Old Testament History, 92.

192 MOSES
were communicated to them by Moses, they were taught the real
meaning and object of their deliverance from Egypt ; at the same
time there dawned upon them a new and worthier conception of
the God of their fathers. The experience of the Exodus had
taught them that Jehovah was an incomparable Being, unique
among gods (Exod. xv. 11). The redemption of an enslaved race
from the bondage of Egypt had manifested both His grace and
His holiness ; His pity for the oppressed, and His unapproach
able majesty. But at Sinai Israel learned the further lesson that
this God of grace and power was also a Being who delighted in
justice and humanity, a defender of the cause of the poor and
helpless, the chastiser of falsity, cruelty, and oppression. There
were doubtless many elements of imperfection in Israel's idea of
Jehovah. He was popularly conceived as Israel's tribal Deity,
marching with His people to battle against their enemies, more
powerful indeed than the deities of the heathen, but having stern
attributes akin in some respects to theirs. But the arm of
Jehovah had, as it were, been laid bare in the marvels of the
Exodus, and the legislation of Sinai formed the foundation of
higher and purer moral ideas, which the great prophets of later
ages expanded and developed. Thus the revelation of God's
essential character and requirement was progressive, and it is the
teaching of the gospel that finally crowns and completes the
gradual disclosure of the Old Testament.
(1) The natural thought of God is precisely that which first
met Israel at Sinai. The symbols that set Him forth are light
nings, thunders, fire. The very thought of God is a terror ; His
presence is a torment. But lo, God speaks. They who come
nearest and listen discern in the words of His law an order, a
lightness ; he that hath ears to hear perceives running through
the commandments the presence of One who comes down to gird
life with security, and to crown it with blessedness. There is a
care which bends over the man and his family and all belonging
to him, making them sacred. The Almighty sets Himself for the
protection of the weak, and for the maintenance of the right
against the wrong-doer everywhere. That is the beginning of the
vision of God. He is no arbitrary Sovereign sitting on the throne
of the universe, demanding obedience to His own will under
threat of pains and penalties, He saith, " Come now, and let us

COVENANT AND THE TABERNACLE 193
reason together." He deals with us as those whose confidence
must be won. The law cannot show us God, but the law can and
does show us the righteousness and beneficence and wisdom of
God. The law cannot show us God, but without the law we can
not know God. " God spake unto the people " : that was the begin
ning of the vision. It always is. God reveals Himself to us first
of all in His Word. We must hear His voice, or we cannot so
much as lift up our eyes unto heaven. He must speak to us that
we may learn to speak to Him. He who does not hear God can
not see Him : to hear aright is to begin to see.
(2) The next step was the surrender of themselves to the will
of God. " And Moses took the book of the covenant and read in
the audience of the people : and they said, All that the Lord hath
said will we do, and be obedient." There must be a deep earnest
purpose of obedience ; the will must be set on God's side before
the vision can be ours.
Tf The ideal of a covenanted nation was the heart of the
Hebrew religion and tbe life-blood of Hebrew history. The
Hebrews had the unalterable conviction that God had entered
into a covenant with their race, and that they had solemnly
bound themselves to be His people and to serve Him. The
covenant ideal was at once the consecration and the inspiration
of the people. There was the spirit of duty and service and self-
surrender in it ; there was the spirit of power and freedom and
invincibility in it.1
Tf Later on, when the way of perfection was opened out be
fore me, I realized that in order to become a Saint one must suffer
much, always seek the most perfect path, and forget oneself. I
also understood that there are many degrees of holiness, that
each soul is free to respond to the calls of Our Lord, to do much
or little for His love — in a word, to choose amongst the sacrifices
He asks. And then also, as in the days of my childhood, I cried
out: "My God, I choose everything, I will not be a Saint by
halves, I am not afraid of suffering for Thee, I only fear one thing,
and that is to do my own will. Accept the offering of my will,
for I choose all that Thou wiliest." 2
(3) And this is not all. There is the building of the altar.
Around it are set twelve stones, representing the twelve tribes of
Israel. Then the sacrifices are brought to the altar and slain
1 J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 103.
2 Sceur Thirise of Lisieux, 25.
MOSES-SAMSON — 1 3

194 MOSES
upon it, and half the blood is sprinkled on the altar, and half
the blood is sprinkled on the people. That is the next step.
There is need for us to consider it carefully. We can scarcely
fail to hear the word of God; we all have something of that
gracious prompting of the Holy Spirit which shapes itself in a
purpose of obedience. But we may stop short of the altar and
the sacrifice.
Tf The law of cost runs through the universe. It is true alike
of tbe activities of God and of the processes of inanimate nature,
that the price of fruitfulness is sacrifice. Arthur Jackson paid
the price, and when his work seemed over it was, in reality, but
beginning. " Things can never be the same as if Arthur Jackson
had not so freely laid down his life. His time of work in
Moukden was long enough to impress many with his nobility of
character and his great professional ability, but it is by his death
that he will be remembered. His death, for the Chinese people,
has made a most profound impression." So wrote the man under
whom he served at Moukden.1
The wealth of earth, of sky, of sea,
The gold, the silver, sparkling gem,
The waving corn, the bending tree,
Are Thine ; to us Thou lendest them.
To Thee, as early morning's dew,
Our incense, alms, and prayer shall rise;
As rose, when joyous earth was new,
Faith's patriarchal sacrifice.
And when Thine Israel, travel-sore,
With offerings to Thy courts would come,
With free and willing hearts they bore
Gifts, even from their desert home.
We, Lord, would lay at Thy behest
The costliest offerings on Thy shrine;
But when we give, and give our best,
We only give Thee what is Thine.2
1 Life of Dr. Arthwr Jackson qf Manchuria, 144.
2 E. A. Dayman.

COVENANT AND THE TABERNACLE 195
II.
The Tabernacle.
See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern that was
shewed thee in the mount. — Heb. viii. 5.
1. In the course of the forty days' seclusion on the mountain,
Moses is said to have received from God exact instructions for
making a tabernacle, or portable sanctuary, with its various
furniture for sacred purposes, and for the consecration of a
permanent priesthood in Aaron and his family. This account,
contained in Exod. xxv.-xxxi., is derived from another source than
that of the previous events at Sinai, from a narrative embodying
the ancient traditions of the priests of Israel. An ordered and
pure and beautiful worship is certainly not unworthy to be one of
the matters directly revealed by God, and the record of it would
naturally be preserved by those who were most closely associated
with it. There are traces in it of correspondences with the
worships of other ancient nations, e.g., the Egyptians. This again
is not unnatural, for it seems to be the method of Divine revela
tion to use and build upon pre-existing customs and ideas, while
purifying and giving new meanings to them.
2. The plan of the tabernacle is stated to be in accordance
with a Divine " pattern " shown to Moses in the mount (Exod.
xxv. 9). It was to be the material embodiment of an idea or
purpose in the mind of God. And this is confirmed by the extra
ordinary way in which the tabernacle and the various arrange
ments for worship were seen in later times to be symbolical of the
Incarnation and the Church. This correspondence is especially
drawn out in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Just as the Covenant
of Sinai was preparatory to the New Covenant ratified in the
blood of the Eedeemer, so the tabernacle was to be an anticipation
of a permanent union of God with man. Its purpose is definitely
stated in Exod. xxv. 8 : " Let them make me a sanctuary ; that I
may dwell among them."
3. The tabernacle was designed on the model of a temple, that
is to say, there was a large outer enclosure, in the midst of which

196 MOSES
was the shrine with the altar of burnt sacrifice standing before it.
The shrine was constructed of boards of acacia covered by tent-
curtains and carpets, and was divided into two parts called the
Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. In the inner sanctuary was
the Ark of the Covenant, the most sacred possession of the nation,
containing the Tables of the Testimony. Above the Ark was the
Mercy-Seat, on each side of which were two winged figures or
cherubim. The inner sanctuary was separated from the outer by
a veil. Before the veil, in the Holy Place, stood the Altar of
Incense, and the Table, on which was placed " bread of the faces "
or shewbread, while the seven-branched candlestick stood on the
south side of the Holy Place, facing the table of shewbread. The
arrangements were such that the whole sanctuary could be trans
ported without any difficulty, and at the same time it was well
suited to a simple but orderly worship.
4. Many students of the Old Testament have come to the
conclusion that the description of the tabernacle in tbe Book of
Exodus is very highly idealized. There is no sufficient ground
for questioning the existence of a simple tent in the earliest
Mosaic period, which formed a shelter for the ark, and stood
without the camp in accordance with ordinary Semitic usage.
But what is called in question by criticism is the existence in the
wilderness, among tribes living under nomad conditions, of a
splendid, costly and elaborate structure, "wrought in the most
advanced style of oriental art." Apart from the character of the
building there is the serious difficulty that Hebrew tradition
appears to know practically nothing of such a shrine in pre-exilic
days. It knows something of the ark and of a central sanctuary
at Shiloh, but of the sumptuous tabernacle described in the Book
of Exodus it makes no mention. A Christian apologist can afford
to admit that the elaborate description of the tabernacle is to be
regarded as a product of religious idealism, working upon a
historical basis, and that the sketch as a whole is largely coloured
by reminiscences or traditions of the splendid temple of Solomon.
But there is no reason for questioning the fact that, in a rudi
mentary form suited to the conditions of wilderness life, a simple
tent of meeting was constructed by Moses as the place of
Jehovah's abode. We might infer this not only from considera-

COVENANT AND THE TABERNACLE 197
tions of a priori probability and from the express testimony of
tradition, but also from the very structure of the more elaborate
sanctuary, which in its arrangements appears to be modelled on
the ancient shepherd's tent, with its open court, its large outer
apartments, and its private sanctum.
5. The real sanctuary under Moses was called the "tent of
meeting." It was a tabernacle of perfectly simple design, an open
tent pitched outside the camp. There was no ceremonial in the
service and no Levite attached. Moses' servant Joshua had sole
charge of it. But if this tabernacle was free from all ritual, the
religion of which it was the centre was alive and intensely
spiritual. In it was continued the intercourse which began on
Mount Sinai; in it Moses spoke to Jehovah as a friend to his
friend ; in it the patriot-prophet in glowing entreaties pleaded
for his rebelbous people against the wrath of Jehovah ; and there,
lastly, in his solitary meditations he learned to discern the plan of
God and His intentions towards Israel.
Tf The Prophetic Tradition, speaking of this sanctuary where
God, day by day, was perfecting the education of His messenger,
has preserved, in a naive but suggestive form, the memory of all
the anxieties which perpetually carried back the fervent soul of
Moses towards God. For instance, the episode of Moses beseech
ing his God to accompany him in his stern mission and asking
Jehovah for a material proof of His presence : " Shew me, I pray
thee, thy glory." Jehovah's reply teaches us that whoever wishes
to know Him must seek Him, not in any dazzling and impressive
vision, nor in any bewildering external prodigy, but in the secret
depths of the heart : " I will make all my goodness pass before
thee," and in an attentive observation of the way in which
Providence asserts itself and reveals the presence and intentions
of God : " Thou shalt see my back." The religion inaugurated by
Moses was very slow in winning the soul of his people. Among
the Israelites who during the long wanderings in the desert came
daily before the Tent of Meeting to know Jehovah's will and
receive Moses' instruction, who knows how many grasped the
true meaning of the teaching of their God ? Their coarse miscon
ceptions and perpetual backsbdings are sufficient proof that at no
period of their history were the true worshippers very numerous.
But the fact remains that, from the very outset, the proper course
of the worship in spirit was admirably mapped out. The Tent of
Meeting and the altar of unhewn stones are marvellously suited

198 MOSES
to the demands of the religion of the Decalogue and the law of
love. The worship and the law combine to evoke in the Israelite's
still dark and carnal soul the piety due to the God who " looketh
on the heart." x
6. What are the lessons to be taught by the tabernacle thus
understood as an idealization ?
(1) The supreme idea of the Priests' Code is the reabzation of
the presence of God in the midst of His people (Exod. xxv. 8, xxix.
42). Other ideas, closely associated with this, are the unity of
God, which required the unity and centralization of His worship;
and the holiness of God, which required as its correlative the
holiness of His people (Exod. xix. 6 ; Deut. xiv. 2 ; Lev. xix. 2, and
elsewhere). In the tabernacle, and the ceremonial system of
which it is the centre, these ideas find a concrete, symbolical
expression. The tabernacle is a carefully planned and splendid
structure, designed to honour worthily the God who is to make it
His abode. By its position in the very centre of the camp, it is a
significant visible symbol of the presence of Jehovah in the midst
of His people. Its holiness is at the same time guarded by its
being encircled by a cordon formed by the camps of the Levitical
families and the priests, the other tribes being encamped outside
these, three on eaeh side. By the details of its structure, and by
the significant gradations in the costliness and splendour of the
materials of which it is made, it at once gives expression to, and
guards, the supreme holiness of Jehovah. The imageless, inmost
shrine is an acknowledgment of His spirituality, as its splendour
does homage to His sovereignty; while the bmitations on even
the high priest's access to it are an indication of the conditions
on which God is accessible to man. The unity of God is marked
by the fact that the sanctuary is one, and the worship one. The
ceremonial of purification and sacrifice which centres in the taber
nacle is the means by which the ideal relation of hobness and
good-will subsisting between Jehovah and His people is
maintained. Tf Cosin preached, at the close of 1626, at the consecration of
Francis White as Bishop of Carlisle. In his sermon, which was
based on John xx. 21, 22, he remarked: "No doubt but Christ
(an it had pleased Him) might have given His Apostles the Spirit
1 A. Westphal, The Law and the Prophets, 203.

COVENANT AND THE TABERNACLE 199
without any breathing upon them at all ; the substance without
the ceremony. And had He so done He had got some men's
hearts by it for ever, which now He is like to lose ; theirs that
condemn all ceremonies in religion for vanity and superstition.
Now much pity it was that these ceremony-haters of our day
had not then been living and standing by, to advise and to put
Christ in mind what a foundation He would lay here for supersti
tion and Popery, and how much better it had been to have made
no more ado but to have come, as they used to do, with the Spirit
only, and so be gone. Yet thus it was not . . . the truth is, He
did seldom or never any great act without a ceremony." 1
(2) But the lessons which the historical interpretation may
draw from the tabernacle are chiefly, as in Heb. viii.-x.,
lessons of contrast. In the New Testament the self-revelation of
God is seen, not in a building, however perfect, but in a Person,
Jesus Christ, who tabernacled among us (John i. 14), ate with
publicans and sinners, and denied that unwashen hands or unclean
meats defile a man. In Him revelation became unrestricted,
access to God universal, the thought of God's holiness subordin
ated to the thought of His Fatherhood, the necessity of man's
ceremonial cleanness abrogated, and the ancient, timorous, ethical
purity, which scrupulously sought to protect itself against defile
ment, transformed into a courageous, hopeful, all-conquering love ;
while the tent of the ancient national sanctuary has become in
the world-religion conterminous with the arch of heaven, under
which the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and
in truth. And so through all, the veil of form and type
Kept men from gazing on the perfect truth,
Sense-bound they waited, as the heir, in youth,
Waits for the time of will and judgment ripe.
But now the veil is drawn aside, and we
The words of prophets, kings, and psalmists scan,
Find in the Christ the one true Son of Man,
In Him the one true Lord and Saviour see.
No fear lest we behold the glory fade :
The more we gaze, intenser grows the light,
Till we too mirror back the radiance bright,
And heaven's own sunshine lightens earth's cold shade.
1 P. H. Osmond, A Life of John Cosin (1913), 41.

200 MOSES
So pass we on through Christ-like youth and age,
Till God's full image shines on us imprest,
And we, in being like Him fully blest,
Eeach the high bliss of God's own heritage.1
1 E. H. Plumptre.

MOSES. X.
The Great Intercession.

Literature.
Brooks, P., Sermons in English Churches (1883), 43.
Davidson, A B., The Called of God (1902), 129.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History of the Hebrews (1903), 77.
Gibson, J. M., The Mosaic Era (1881), 119.
Hull, E. L., Sermons, iii. (1874) 106.
Hutton, J. A., At Close Quarters (1913), 101.
Ker, John, Sermons, i. (1885) 170.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Exodus, etc. (1906), 171.
Meyer, F. B., Moses the Servant of God, 122.
„ „ The Book of Exodus, ii. (1913)95.
Oosterzee, J. J. van, Moses : A Biblical Study (1876), 116.
Ottley, R. L., A Short History of the Hebrews (1901), 68.
Pearse, M. G., Moses : His Life and its Lessons (1894), 197.
Selby, T. G, The God ofthe Patriarchs (1904), 185.
Whitham, A. R., Old Testament History (1912), 103.
Biblical World, xxix. (1907) 462 (K. Fullerton).
Dictionary of the Bible (Single- volume, 1909), 109 (A. R. S. Kennedy).

The Great Intercession.
Therefore he said that he would destroy them,
Had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach,
To turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them. — Ps. cvi. 23.
Moses with his minister Joshua remained for forty days and
nights in the mount. It was believed that during this time the
Divine pattern of the future tabernacle and its furniture was
delivered to him. Meanwhile, however, the first signal act of
apostasy on tbe part of the newly-enfranchised nation took place.
The episode is one of the most vivid and dramatic in the Old
Testament. It illustrates in a remarkable manner the actual
religious condition of the bulk of the Israelites, the character of
Moses himself, and the nature of the revelation given to him.

The Golden Calf.
They made a calf in Horeb,
And worshipped a molten image.
Thus they changed their glory
For the likeness of an ox that eateth grass. — Ps. cvi. 19, 20.
The Israebtes had, no doubt, been deeply impressed both by
their deliverance and by the extraordinary manifestation of Mount
Sinai; but they were far from being ready to receive the pure
and exalted teaching respecting God which Moses had delivered.
Ancestral traditions, stretching back into the dim past — of Jehovah
a tribal God, like the Elohim of other nations, worshipped under
the form of an image, and in a free and joyful manner with
sacrificial feasts and revels — soon reasserted themselves. The
mighty personality of Moses was removed for the time ; and fears
for the future, as well, perhaps, as superstitious dread of the cloud-

204 MOSES
capped mountain looming above them, combined to raise the out
cry to Aaron : " Up, make us gods {Elohim), which shall go before
us ; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we know not wbat is become of him " (Exod. xxxii. 1).
Aaron yielded to their clamour, and from their golden earrings
(perhaps chosen because they were worn as amulets by women and
children, and had religious associations) he fashioned a calf (possibly
a winged bull, like the cherubim, or like the ox-idols of Egypt). It
was welcomed with the shout, "These be thy gods {Elohim), 0
Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt " ; an altar
was erected, and a solemn feast was proclaimed by Aaron in its
honour, as if it were actually the God it represented : " To-morrow
is a feast to the Lord." The feast-day was celebrated with the
usual burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, feasting, drinking, and
riotous revelbngs ; — but it was a day destined to be stamped deeply
on the conscience and memory of Israel.
1. The revolt was universal : " The people gathered themselves
together." It was a national rebellion, a flood which swept away
even some faithful, timid hearts. No voices ventured to protest.
What were the elders, who shortly before " saw the God of Israel,"
doing to be passive at such a crisis ? Was there no one to bid
the fickle multitude look up to the summit overhead, where the
red flames glowed, or to remind them of the hosts of Egypt lying
stark and dead on the shore ?
We need not cast stones at these people ; for we also have
short memories for either the terrible or the gracious revelations
of God in our own lives. But we may learn the lesson that God's
lovers have to set themselves sometimes dead against the rush of
popular feeling, and that there are times when silence or compli
ance is sin.
Tf The host, where Dr. MacGregor was guest, indulged in some
remarks of a jocular nature, which implied a scoffing at rebgion as
something not worth consideration. The sting of his remark lay
in the fact that, as our host, he implied our concurrence in his
remarks, which were made apparently in all good nature and
genial outspokenness. It was an awkward moment, and I re
member feeling the perplexing distress of the situation. Dr.
MacGregor, with a courage I shall never forget, reproved, and that
effectually, the spirit in which the remarks were made, and his

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 205
words produced an apologetic silence. In that there might have
been nothing out of the way, but few men could have done it as he
did. He made no scene, did not fortify himself with a fit of indig
nation, but solely by the firmness and moral force of the rebuke
shamed the speaker into a sense of bis mistake. There was no
breach of friendship, or interruption of courtesy, only perhaps a
minute's silence, and thereafter the evening passed pleasantly
enough. I am sure no one rose from the table without having a
deep sense of Dr. MacGregor's moral courage in a very trying and
debcate occasion.1
2. Still sadder than their sense-bound wish is Aaron's com
pliance. He knew as well as we do what he should have said,
but, bke many another man in influential position, when beset by
popular cries, he was frightened, and yielded when he should have
" set his face like a flint." His compliance has in essentials been
often repeated, especially by priests and ministers of religion who
have lent their superior abilities or opportunities to carry out the
wishes of the ignorant populace, and debased religion or watered
down its prohibitions to please and retain hold of them. The
Church has incorporated much from heathenism. Eoman Catholic
missionaries have permitted " converts " to keep their old usages.
Protestant teachers have acquiesced in, and been content to find
the brains to carry out, compromises between sense and soul, God's
commands and men's inclinations.
Tf At the end of a note to Mr. Drummond on Tithes that
evening, I expressed myself plainly about the House-tax and
the shopkeepers, avowing my dread that Lord Althorp might
yield to the clamour. Mr. Drummond called next day with tbe
promised tithe document ; and he told me that he had handed my
note to Lord Althorp, who had said, "Tell her that I may be
altogether of her mind ; but that if she was here, in my place,
with hundreds of shopkeepers yelling about the doors, she would
yield, as I must do." " Never," was my message back, " so long as
the House-tax is admitted to be the best on the list." And I
fairly told him that the Whig government was perilling the public
safety by yielding everything to clamour, and nothing without it.2
3. There is nothing improbable in the story that the Israelites
in the desert fell into this sin. The prohibition of metal images
1 Dr. MacGregor of St. Cuthherts, 527.
2 Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, i. 263.

206 MOSES
as symbols of deity was one of the fundamental principles of
Moses' teaching, while the temptation to symbolize their deity
under the form of a young bull — for such is the meaning of " calf "
here — was one that might have presented itself very easily to the
Israelites even in the desert, not because of their knowledge of
the Egyptian animal-worship (which was of a very different type),
but simply because of the widespread use of the bull as a symbol
of deity throughout the Semitic world.
Two or three centuries later, bull images again emerge in
the history of Israel. Among the measures taken by Jeroboam I.
for tbe consolidation of his new kingdom was one which was
primarily designed to secure its independence of the rival
kingdom of the South in the all-important matter of public
worship. With this end in view, perhaps also with the subsidiary
purpose of reconciling the priesthood of the local sanctuaries to
the new order of things, Jeroboam set up two golden " calves," one
at Bethel and the other at Dan, the two most important sanc
tuaries, geographically and historically, in his realm.
It is now admitted on all hands that the bulls are to be
recognized as symbols of Jehovah. He, and He alone, was
worshipped, both in the wilderness and at Bethel and Dan, under
the symbol of the golden bull. For the source of this symbolism
we must look not to Egypt, as did the scholars of former days,
but to the primitive religious conceptions of the Semitic stock
to which the Hebrews belonged. Evidence, both literary and
monumental, has accumulated in recent years, showing that
among their Semitic kin the bull was associated with various
deities as the symbol of vital energy and strength. Jeroboam,
therefore, may be regarded as having merely given official sanction
to a symbolism with which the Hebrews had been familiar, if not
from time immemorial, at least since their association with the
Canaanites. Tf From the time of Philo onwards it has commonly been sup
posed that the symbolism was derived from Egypt, where the bull
Apis was revered in the temple at Heliopolis as the incarnation
of Osiris, and the bull Mnevis in the temple of Ptah at Memphis,
as the incarnation of the sun-god. There are, however, objections
to this view. (1) The Egyptians worshipped only the living
animals, not images of them; (2) it is unlikely that an image

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 207
reflecting an Egyptian deity would have been chosen as the
symbol of the national God, Jehovah, or have been represented as
the deity who had delivered Israel from Egypt ; (3) it is equally
unlikely that Jeroboam should have sought to secure his throne
by inviting his people to adopt the symbolism of a foreign cult.
For these reasons most recent writers (including Dillmann) prefer
to seek the origin of the bull-symbolism in the native beliefs
either of tbe Israelites themselves, or of the Semitic nations allied
to them.1 4. The great lesson of the incident is thus the danger of a
false worship of the true God. In the present case this was
through an inappropriate use of symbolism. Symbolism has its
uses. The inability to realize the unseen and abstract justifies it.
Men must depend on the tangible and illustrative. Speech is
symbolic, the sign of thought. Poetry, music, art are symbolic.
They suggest more than they actually express. When the tend
ency of symbolism is to suggest something beyond and above
itself, it is legitimate and wholesome. But the dangers of
symbolism are obvious.
Tf The spirit of prayer like that of imagination is awakened in
different persons by different objects. Some need such traditional
symbols as the Madonna and the Crucifix to inspire it, others
again find such symbols, from tbe very fact of their long familiar
izing usage, void of appeal. Their virtue has gone out of them.
Unfortunately it is in the nature of symbols either to wear out,
or to become mere idols. A change of symbols is one of those
needs of humanity that the Christian Church has not recognized.2
(1) There is danger in the direction of elaboration. — The more
difficult and spiritual the thing to be symbolized, the more
elaborate the symbolism is apt to become. Instead of being an
open window to the sky, it becomes a veil whose elaborate design
attracts and holds the eye to itself. This is the danger of cere
monialism in worship.
(2) In the direction of materialization. — Instead of assisting
the mind to rise through the material to the spiritual, it panders
to the weakness of the mind by conforming the spiritual to the
material. Instead of kindling the imagination, it quenches it.
This is the danger of idolatry. The history of Israel, with its
1 S. R. Driver, The Book of Exodus, 348.
2 Richard Le Gallienna, The Religion of a Literary Man, 79.

208 MOSES
calf- worship, shows the effects of the latter tendency. The history
of Judah, with its imageless worship, but elaborate ceremonial,
shows tbe evils of the former tendency. The meaning of the
prophetic movement is found in its opposition to both tendencies.
In the Eoman Cathobc form of Christianity the same dangers are
manifested in a crass and obvious form. Eome, bke ancient
Israel, expresses its instincts in material symbols of ceremonial
and image-worship, and often with just as fatal consequences.
But is not Protestantism exposed to parallel or analogous dangers,
though in a more refined and more subtle form ? Protestantism
expresses its instincts in intellectual symbols — as the creeds have
often been called— as signs of Christian faith. These also have
their place and uses. They seek to clarify our ideas of God.
But most of our creeds have been born in sectarian controversy.
They often superficially clarify only because they limit the idea
of God. The God of these creeds, while in form the God of the
whole earth, is in essence an intellectual idol; for in them
definition becomes bmitation, and limitation is of the essence of
idolatry. The present demand for simplification in theology and
creedal statement is in line with the prophetic movement in its
desire to pass beyond both the material form and the purely
intellectual formula to a more spiritual religion.
Tf Idol is Eidolon, a thing seen, a symbol. It is not God, but
a Symbol of God; and perhaps one may question whether any
the most benighted mortal ever took it for more than a Symbol.
I fancy, he did not think that the poor image his own hands had
made was God ; but that God was emblemed by it, that God was
in it some way or other. And now in this sense, one may ask,
Is not all worship whatsoever a worship by Symbols, by eidola,
or things seen ? Whether seen, rendered visible as an image or
picture to the bodily eye ; or visible only to the inward eye, to
the imagination, to the intellect : this makes a superficial, but no
substantial difference. It is still a Thing Seen, significant of
Godhead ; an Idol. The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession
of Faith, and intellectual Eepresentation of Divine things, and
worships thereby ; thereby is worship first made possible for him.
All creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that fitly invest
religious feelings, are in this sense eidola, things seen. All
worship whatsoever must proceed by symbols, by Idols : — we may
say, all Idolatry is comparative, and tbe worst Idolatry is only
more idolatrous.

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 209
Where, then, lies the evil of it ? Some fatal evil must lie in
it, or earnest prophetic men would not on all hands so reprobate it.
Why is Idolatry so hateful to Prophets ? . . . But here enters the
fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, in the era of the Prophets,
no man's mind is any longer honestly filled with his Idol or
Symbol. Before the Prophet can arise who, seeing through it,
knows it to be mere wood, many men must have begun dimly to
doubt that it was little more. Condemnable Idolatry is insincere
Idolatry. Doubt has eaten-out the heart of it : a human soul is
seen clinging spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenant, which it
half-feels now to have become a Phantasm. This is one of the
balefulest sights. Souls are no longer filled with their Fetish ;
but only pretend to be filled, and would fain make themselves feel
that they are filled. " You do not believe," said Coleridge ; " you
only believe that you believe." It is the final scene in all kinds
of Worship and Symbolism ; the sure symptom that death is now
nigh. It is equivalent to what we call Formulism, and Worship
of Formulas, in these days of ours. ... It is the property of
every Hero, in every time, in every place and situation, that he
come back to reality ; that he stand upon things, and not shows
of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articulately or
with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will
the hollow shows of things, however regular, decorous, accredited
by Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him.
Protestantism too is the work of a Prophet : the prophet-work of
that sixteenth century. The first stroke of honest demolition to
an ancient thing grown false and idolatrous ; preparatory afar off
to a new thing, which shall be true, and authentically divine ! 1

II.
The Intercession.
And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned
a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive
their sin — ; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast
written. — Exod. xxxii. 31, 32.
1. Jehovah Himself informed Moses of the apostasy of Israel,
and the dialogue between the lawgiver and his God shows how
partially even Moses had apprehended the Divine Nature.
Jehovah's words were, "I have seen this people, and behold it is
1 Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero- Worship.
MOSES-SAMSON — 1 4

210 MOSES
a stiffnecked people : now therefore let me alone, that my wrath
may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them : and
I will make of thee a great nation." But Moses, singularly
destitute of personal ambition, showed no desire to be exalted at
the expense of the people whom he had delivered. He prayed
Jehovah to remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and how He
had delivered Israel out of Egypt, adding in remonstrance,
" Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, saying, For evil did he
bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume
them from the face of the earth ? "
(1) As we read the narrative, it would almost appear as
though Moses were pressing God to retreat step by step, and
yield to his importunity; but, in point of fact, God was only
drawing him on to comprehend the love and grace of His
character. It is as though the mother, when teaching her
nursling to walk, were to retire backward, as if pushed by his
tiny hands, whereas, in point of fact, she is teaching him, un
consciously to himself, to walk. Our Father is so intent on
leading us to advance that He appears to yield to our impor
tunity. (2) In his first prayer for backsliding Israel, Moses did
not reach that note of supreme sacrifice which gives him a
pre-eminent position among the saints of the Old Testament
Scriptures. He looks at the threatened extinction of the chosen
from the standpoint of the Divine honour, and declares his
jealousy for God's glory among the heathen. But when he visits
the mount a second time, his soul is possessed by compassion for
the ignorant, infatuated crowd. In pleading with the Most High,
before leaving His presence to descend to the plain, he uses as
his chief argument the Divine Name, whose spotless renown must
be upheld. Tf " The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent
take it by force." There are other two instances of this in
Scripture. The one, where the God of Abraham appeared to
retreat before His servant's fervour for Sodom ; the other, where
Jesus appeared to yield to the woman of Syrophenicia. In each
case the suppliant was led to assume a position of appropriating
faith that had never before been reached, like the furthest wave
of an advancing tide, flung far forward up the shore. This is the
secret of delayed prayer. Prayer is educative. A man who prays

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 211
grows ; and the muscles of the soul swell from thin whipcord to
iron bands.1
Tf An outspoken critic, who had absorbed into his blood the
genial, humanitarian theology of George MacDonald's novels,
after hearing a sermon upon the intercession of Moses, said,
"The preacher has succeeded in making me think much more
highly of Moses than of God." For the caustic comment upon
the preacher's feat there was perhaps a reason, and yet, at the
same time, the preacher's exposition might not have been far
astray from the letter of the incident as recorded in the Book of
Exodus. At one point in the narrative, God does seem to be on
the side of retributive vengeance, and Moses the advocate of
gentleness and forgiving compassion. Such narratives, however,
must be looked upon in the ultimate truths which emerge from
them, and not in the ideas which arise as we tarry in some half
way house of interpretation into which we turn before tbe end
comes.2 2. Notice Moses' blaze of wrath. In the mount he acted as v
intercessor. When God told him all that was transpiring in the
plain below and showed the glittering sword of justice suspended
over the guilty nation by a thread, he pleaded for the people
whom he loved. But as he descended the mountain his anger
burst forth. Before leaving the Divine presence, he had received
the two tables of the testimony, written with the finger of God,
and as he descended the mountain with his minister Joshua, they
heard the shouts of the people. Joshua said, " There is a noise
of war in the camp," but Moses answered, " It is not the voice of
them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that
cry for being overcome: but tbe noise of them that sing do I
hear." When they came nearer, and saw the people dancing
round the calf, Moses in his anger " cast the tables out of his
hands, and brake them beneath the mount." Directly he came
to the people Moses had the calf burnt and "ground to powder,
which he mixed in water, and forced its worshippers to drink.
When Moses inquired of his brother " What did this people unto
thee, that thou hast brought a great sin upon them ? " Aaron
tried to excuse himself by saying that the people had begged him
to make a god for them, and had given him their golden jewels
to cast into the furnace, adding, " and there came out this calf."
1 F. B. Meyer. 2 T. G. Selby, The God of the Patriarchs, 190.

212 MOSES
For so great a sin against Jehovah, vengeance had to be taken ;
and Moses, when he " saw that the people were broken loose ; for
Aaron had let them loose for a derision among their enemies,"
cried, " Who is on the Lord's side ? " His own tribe rallied to
his call. Levi, it is recorded in the " Song of Moses," " said of his
father, and of his mother, I have not seen him ; neither did he
acknowledge his brethren " (Deut. xxxih. 9), and attacked the
people, slaying no less than three thousand of them.
Tf Only he who loves much knows what it is to feel that anger
which is ennobling and Godlike.1
Tf Tbe daily affairs of politics and diplomacy were for him the
active scene on which good or evil worked out their immemorial
war ; and he watched on at the conflict with the solemn zeal of a
prophet, in whose eyes God's honour was engaged. It was this
which explains the heat of his words at a time like that of the
Bulgarian massacres. The decision to be taken at that hour by
England was felt by him to be charged with all the momentous
significance that would belong to a personal choice between right
and wrong. At such a public crisis, as in many a private one, a
fire of moral indignation would suddenly reveal itself in him which
startled tbe ordinary man. We are used to such passion over
personal wrongs ; there it gives us no surprise. But a flame of
righteous anger that has no trace of personal injury in it, and
that leaps up at the sight of public wrong because it is wrong,
and for no other reason — this is rare indeed. And it was all the
more startling, as it sprang from one so associated with courteous
gentleness as the Dean. Yet there it was. No one could mistake
it. It was the pure, white anger of an outraged conscience.
When once you had caught sight of it, you never forgot it. It
was recognized as the typical expression of his personabty. I
have known people who have said that it was the only human
experience which gave them a clue to what was meant by the
paradox of St. John, " the wrath of the Lamb." Certainly, I can
imagine no one whose rebuke would be more terrible to undergo.
One or two occasions on which I saw him deal with a committed
offence remain imprinted on my imagination with unparalleled
vividness. His condemnation was a punishment in itself, at which
one trembled.2
3. Then came the great act of intercession. Next day Moses
returned to the Lord and interceded for the people, even offering
1 The Life and Letters of Alfred Ainger, 347.
2 Life and Letters of Dean Church, 244.

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 213
himself as an atonement. To understand his feeling we must
remember how close his connexion with this people had
been. (1) They had been the burden of his thoughts during those
years in the desert. He had battled for them with Pharaoh. To
lead them forth into freedom had been the great purpose of his
bfe. He was one with them in all things ; and if in all ages there
have been patriotic men, ready to die, if need be, for their people
or their land, can we not conceive something of the sublime self-
sacrifice of this mighty patriot of old ? Moreover, observe how
that great sin would affect him. If we ever had a friend or a
brother fall into evil, did we not feel as though the sin weighed
down our own spirits — not merely the shame of it, but the sin
itself ? And if so, can we not form some idea of the effect of that
people's crime in the great and tender heart of this holy man of
God ? Would not his revulsion from their sin mingle with his
own love for the people ? The holiest men ever feel most deeply
the sin of their fellows — they see its seeds in themselves, they
find its shadow falling across their heaven. A great modern
writer has said that he saw in his own heart the germ of every
sin. And can we tell the sense of self-abasement which such a
man as Moses must have felt in that supreme moment, when, in
the presence of the Infinite purity, he was interceding for his
sinful people ?
(2) Moses must have felt the promise of that people's future.
In them might lie the germ of the world's history ; through them
might be unfolded the glory of Jehovah before the face of all
nations. Gathering these together — intense sympathy with the
people, intense grief for, and shrinking from, their sin, and belief
in their future for the manifestation of the glory of God — may we
not in part comprehend the depth of his words, " Yet now, if thou
wilt forgive their sin — ; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of
the book which thou hast written"? He was willing to die,
willing for heaven's lightning to fall on himself, if only the people
might be spared ! Is there not in the sublime self-devotion of
this great servant of God in the early time a foreshadowing of
that stupendous love which, in the ages to come, was to be shown
by the Man Christ Jesus, in the deliverance of the whole Israel of
God from a deeper and darker bondage than that of Egypt,

214 MOSES
who was " made to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him " ?
Tf The idea of a suffering God was foolishness to the Greeks,
who considered a God as a tyrant gloating over the sufferings of
men. But the seeming contradiction is solved if one supposes
that a Holy Being deposits itself, so to speak, in humanity, and
that humanity then becomes defiled. That is a boundless grief
like his who has deposited the best part of his soul and his
emotions with a woman. If she then goes and defiles herself, she
defiles her husband. Or a father's nature has passed over to his
children, and he wishes to see bis best impulses continued and
multiplied by them, and his likeness ennobled. If the children
dishonour themselves, the father suffers ; the stem withers when
the roots are injured.
Such I imagine to be the feelings of God the Father when the
sinfulness of humanity grows noisome and dishonours Him, and
perhaps threatens to affect His own holiness. He will be wroth
and lament — perhaps even feel Himself defiled — rather than cut
off the cancerous limb of humanity. Christ is no more repre
sented as beautiful, but with features distorted by the sins of
others ; these He has taken on Himself or drawn to Himself, for
he who approaches pitch is defiled. In order to be free from the
impure element He must die by tbe destruction of the body.
Incarnation involved the greatest suffering of all.1
4. To such imploring devotion the Almighty love which hears
prayer cannot accord a grudging or ungracious response. Moses
comes to find that God is more merciful than his earlier
apprehension of Him impbed, and towards these children of
Abraham a longsuffering is extended which enfolds the hope of
corporate salvation. But such a salvation cannot bar out
punishment due to individual offenders. Many who belong to
the nation which God consents to spare must yet look for their
own dark reckoning-day. Tbe mercy which comes forth from
God's presence with its manifold riches, in response to the cry of
intercession, cannot repeal personal responsibility. In the
Divine government of men there must be no such thing as an
indulgence which takes little account of righteousness and
glosses over all past outrage and offence. The guiding presence,
crowning pledge and expression of the Divine good-will, is not
1 A. Strindberg, Zones ofthe Spirit, 155.

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 215
withdrawn, and the children of these transgressors, in due time,
are to be brought into the Land of Promise. Intercession, even
when it glows with such self-forgetting ardour as that which
kindled in the soul of Moses, cannot move the firm foundations of
the judgment-throne or arrest the retribution which must, one
day, come to the renegade who goes back from God's service;
but it can bear aloft the man who pleads into new apprehensions
of the Divine goodness, and bring near to a nation the mercy
which spares in the midst of grievous misdoing.
This principle is to be upheld. "Whosoever hath sinned
against me, him will I blot out of my book," sounds like a
reservation in the answer to this unselfish prayer, but is really a
part of the goodness which God caused to light upon Moses,
and those with whom he had identified himself. In the ancient
world the ruler of the State made the family the unit with which
he reckoned, and entered upon no discrimination between the
different members, whilst Heaven itself was supposed to count a
nation the unit of its reckoning, and to recognize no right of
sacrifice and approach other than that possessed by the king as
the federal head of the nation. A family was punished for the
crime of any one of its separate members, and the King of
Heaven was supposed to punish an entire nation for the mis
demeanour of a handful of its citizens. It is not difficult to see
how harsh were such ideas in their outworking. A new principle
is affirmed, that in God's government of His people, neither
nation nor family shall be the unit of reckoning, but the
individual — a principle pregnant with all the benign changes and
ameliorations which have appeared throughout the long Christian
centuries. " I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and
will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy."
5. In these days of clearer light and larger privilege, how
seldom do our prayers deserve the remotest kind of comparison
with this memorable overwhelming prayer offered by the founder of
the Jewish commonwealth ! Perhaps we do not pray at all, or
our prayers are dwarfed by the more prominent and absorbing
interests which make up the staple of our lives. Among some
people, it is to be feared, the habit has died out with the rising
belief in the supremacy of natural law, although it is difficult to

216 MOSES
see how intercessory prayer is prejudiced by scientific interpreta
tions of the order of a physical universe. We study people, and
perhaps criticize and despise them, but have not the passionate
sympathy Moses felt for the multitude entrusted to his care. We
do not feel called to bear the burdens which lie outside our
family circles, least of all the burdens of the vicious hordes who
haste to a fate they deserve. If we do pray, it is easy to detect a
strain of selfish egotism in the petitions. Perhaps we pray with
a half belief in the efficacy of the exercise, for causes with which
we have cast in our lot, and in the prosperity of which we expect
to reach our little meed of honour. If God's glory and our fair
fame advance by parallel lines so much the better, but we do not
care so deeply for anything which concerns the common good
that we should be glad to see it brought about at the cost of our
own obbvion. Alas! that such insidious, ignoble, unconfessed
egoisms should colour our thoughts when we profess to come
before God's mercy-seat. The temper of self-renunciation must
not only enter into our lives, but suffuse and energize our prayers,
if, in the spirit and by the inspiration of Him who was made a
curse for us, we are to mediate between God and man, and
through our prayers, in some degree, direct those influences which
achieve the true redemption of the race.
Tf Intercessory prayer is in its essence a witness for the holy
sovereignty of God in providence and in grace. It is a deeply
practical acknowledgment that to Him all hearts are open ; that
He holds the key of all wills and bves ; that He can indeed make
"all things work together" for His glory and our blessing in
Christ Jesus. And intercessory prayer is of course a tender
living testimony to two great and precious facts, which run up
into one. It witnesses to the Christian believer's living spiritual
union with his brethren in Christ, and indeed with all men as
potentially such. And it witnesses to his wonderful and blessed
spiritual union with his Lord in new birth and new life, that
immediate conjunction with the Head through which he has
union with the members.1 1 H. C. G. Moule, All in Christ, 101.

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 217

III.
The Presence and the Glory.
If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.— Exod. xxxiii. 15.
And he said, shew me, I pray thee, thy glory.— Exod. xxxiii. 18.
"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth
much." Among other things it makes him bolder in his approach
to God. Moses now dares to ask God for two great gifts — the
presence of Jehovah all the way, and the vision of His glory now.
i. The Presence.
1. The hosts were soon to leave the mountain region of Sinai,
with which Moses had been familiar during his shepherd life, in
order to take the onward road through unknown deserts, infested
by daring and experienced foes. What though the pillar and
cloud led them slowly along those solemn desert pathways, and at
night shed a broad flood of light on the clustered tents of the
desert encampment ; yet the prospect of that journey through the
great and terrible wilderness was sufficient to appal the stoutest
heart. Tf Such a summons to arise and depart is often sounding with
its bugle-call in our ears. We are not like those who travel by
the metal track of the railroad, on which they have been to and
fro every day for years, and are able to tell exactly the names
and order of the stations ; we are like an exploring expedition in
an absolutely unknown district, when even the leader, as he leaves
his hammock in the morning, does not know where it will be
slung at night. What seems a monotonous life, always the same,
does not revolve around a beaten circle, as the horse or ass
winding up buckets from a well, but is ever striking out over
tracts of territory which we have not traversed before.1
2. Still further difficulties had lately arisen in connexion with
the people's transgression. From a careful study of the passage
it would seem that a change was proposed by their Almighty
Friend. Hitherto He had gone in the midst of them. Now He
avowed His intention of substituting an angel for Himself, lest he
1 F. B. Meyer.

218 MOSES
should suddenly consume the people because of their stiff-necked-
ness. Already the people had been bidden to strip themselves of
their ornaments; and the tent, which was recognized as the
temporary pavilion for God, must be pitched without the camp,
afar off from the camp, so that those who sought the Lord were
compelled to take a considerable journey to reach His visible
shrine. But now it seemed likely that some sensible diminution
of the evidence of the Divine presence and favour was about to
take place; and the fear of this stirred the soul of the great
leader to its depths. Like Jacob at the ford of the Jabbok,
Moses felt that he could not let God go, and he told Him so : " If
thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence."
Tf One recalls the story of Eobert Bruce, the Covenanter, the
man whose prayers were short, but each of them " a strong bolt
shot up to heaven " : how, one Sabbath afternoon, in his church
at Larbert, the people were surprised that he did not appear to
begin the service, and sent the officer to look for him in the little
room which was his oratory between sermons, and the officer
halted on the threshold of the room because he overheard an
interview proceeding within, and then returned to the congrega
tion to report that there was Some One with the minister, and
that Master Bruce was protesting earnestly and many times over
that he could not and would not go alone into the church, but
that This Other must accompany him. So McCheyne, when he
had ended his own preparations for the pulpit, felt that he was
still unprepared until he had importuned the same mysterious
and ineffable Companion to be with him and to fulfil through him
His Own good pleasure.1
3. The Divine answer is a promise to go with Moses. It seals
to the man and to the leader the assurance that for himself he
shall have the continual presence of God in his soul and in his
work, and that, in all the weary march, he will have rest, and
will come to a fuller rest at its end. Thus God ever answers the
true hearts that seek to know Him, and to be fitted for their
tasks. Whether the precise form of desire be fulfilled or not, the
issue of such bold and trustful pleading is always the inward
certainty of God's face shining on us, and the experience of re
pose, deep and untroubled in the midst of toil, so that we may be
at once pilgrims towards, and dwellers in, " the house of the Lord."
1 A. Smellie, Robert Murray McCheyne, 160.

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 219
When our Lord spoke of yielding to the importunity of
our friends, He said that, if a man asked for a coat, we were to
give him our cloak also ; and that, if we were compelled to go
one mile, we were to travel two. Would the Master lay down
that law, and not fulfil its obligations ? If, then, we ask Him to
go with us on our journey to Heaven, carrying our burdens and
providing for our needs, will He do this, and only this ? He will
assuredly see us home, but He will do exceeding abundantly.
Listen. He added to His answer to Moses' request a clause
which met his unuttered desire — " I will give you rest." Moses
only asked God to go with him, but He said, " I will do exceeding
abundantly, I will secure you from all wearing anxiety, I will
take the lines from your forehead, I will give you rest."
Lord, by what inconceivable dim road
Thou leadest man on footsore pilgrimage!
Weariness is his rest from stage to stage,
Brief halting-places are his sole abode.
Onward he fares thro' rivers over-flowed,
Thro' deserts where all doleful creatures rage;
Onward from year to year, from age to age,
He groans and totters onward with his load.
Behold how inconceivable his way;
How tenfold inconceivable the goal,
His goal of hope deferred, his promised peace;
Yea, but behold him sitting down at ease,
Eefreshed in body and refreshed in soul,
At rest from labour on the Sabbath Day.1

ii. The Glory.
Each request granted brings on a greater. " The gift doth
stretch itself as 'tis received." Enjoyment increases capacity, and
increase of capacity is increase of desire. God being infinite and
man capable of indefinite growth, neither the widening capacity
nor tbe infinite supply can have limits. This is not the least of
the blessings of a devout life, that the appetite grows with what
it feeds upon, and that, while there is always satisfaction, there
is never satiety. 1 Christina G. Rossetti, Poetical Works, 208.

220 MOSES
1. Moses' prayer, " Shew me thy glory," sounds presumptuous,
but it was beard unblamed, and granted in so far as it was possible.
It was a venial error — if error it may be called — that a soul, touched
with the flame of Divine love, should aspire beyond the possi
bilities of mortality. At all events, it was a fault in which he
has had few imitators. Our desires keep but too well within the
bmits of the possible. The precise meaning of the petition must
be left undetermined. Only this is clear, that it was something
far beyond even that face-to-face intercourse which he had had, as
well as beyond that vision granted to the elders.
2. Who shall determine what it was that Moses understood
and felt and wished when he employed these words ? We know,
of course, that before tbis time he had seen much more of God's
glory than all other men — the bush that burned, and yet was not
consumed; the Eed Sea moved out from its bed; the manna
rained down from above ; the arid rock changed to a source of
living streams ! Alone, upon the top of Sinai, and amidst most
dreadful signs, he had received the law of God ; moreover, with
the elders of the Israebtes, he had beheld the pavement which the
King of Israel laid for the palace where He sits enthroned — what
seemed transparent sapphire-stone. What more is it that this
insatiable, this high-minded servant of the Lord desires? The
Lord Himself gives answer to the question, when He in so many
words declares, " My face cannot be seen." That is to say, Moses
has hitherto but heard the voice of Him that spake out of the
cloud ; now, he beseeches that the veil of mystery may be
removed, and that he may be shown the face of God, beaming
with heavenly light.
Tf If we are to take " glory " in its usual sense, it would
mean the material symbol of God's presence, which shone at the
heart of the pillar, and dwelt afterwards between the cherubim ;
but probably we must attach a loftier meaning to it here.
Eather we should hear in Moses' cry the voice of a soul thrilled
through and through with the astounding consciousness of God's
favour, blessed with love-gifts in answered prayers, and yearning
for more of that light which it feels to be life.1
Tf Lafcadio Hearn, in a letter to Krehbeil, the musician, shows
a deeply rooted likeness to Thompson when he says : " I think
A. Maclaren.

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 221
that, could I create something I felt to be sublime, I should feel
also that the Unknowable had selected me for a mouthpiece, for a
medium of utterance ,in the holy cycling of its eternal purpose,
and I should know the pride of the prophet that has seen the
face of God."1
3. If the petition be dark, the answer is yet more obscure
" with excess of light." Mark how it begins — with granting, not
with refusing. It tells how much the loving desire has power to
bring, before it speaks of what in it must be denied. There is
infinite tenderness in that order of response. It speaks of a heart
that does not love to say " No," but grants our wishes up to the
very edge o£ the possible, and wraps the bitterness of any refusal
in the sweet envelope of granted requests. A broad distinction is
drawn between that in God which can be revealed and that which
cannot. The one is " glory," the other " goodness," corresponding,
we might almost say, to the distinction between the " moral " and
the "natural" attributes of God. But, whatever mysterious
revelation under the guise of vision may be concealed in these
words, and in the fulfilment of them in the next chapter, they
belong to the " things which it is impossible for a man to utter."
4. We are on more intelligible ground in the next clause of
the promise, the proclamation of the " Name." That expression
is, in Scripture, always used as meaning the manifested character
of God. It is a revelation addressed to the spirit, not to the
sense. It is the translation, so far as it is capable of translation,
of the vision which it accompanied; it is the treasure which
Moses bore away from Sinai, and has shared among us all. For
the "Name" contains these two elements — pardoning love and
retributive justice. Now in Jesus the two elements wondrously
meet, and the mystery of the possibility of their harmonious co
operation in the Divine government is solved, and becomes the
occasion for the rapturous gratitude of man and the wondering
adoration of principalities and powers in heavenly places. Jesus
has manifested the Divine mercifulness; Jesus has borne the
burden of sin and the weight of the Divine justice. The lips that
said "Be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee," also cried,
" Why hast thou forsaken me ? " The tenderest manifestation of
1 E. Meynell, The Life of Francis Thompson (1913), 23.

222 MOSES
the God "plenteous in mercy . . . forgiving iniquity" and the
most awe-kindling manifestation of the God that " will by no
means clear the guilty," are fused into one, when we " behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."
Tf It is a common saying that anything may happen behind
our backs : transcendentally considered, the thing has an eerie
truth about it. Eden may be behind our backs, or Fairyland,
But this mystery of the human back has, again, its other side in
the strange impression produced on those behind : to walk behind
anyone along a lane is a thing that, properly speaking, touches
the oldest nerve of awe. Watts has realized this as no one in
art or letters has realized it in the whole history of the world ; it
has made him great. There is one possible exception to his
monopoly of this magnificent craze. Two thousand years before,
in the dark scriptures of a nomad people, it had been said that
their prophet saw tbe immense Creator of all things, but only saw
Him from behind.1
" I do beseech thee, God, show me Thy face."
" Come up to me in Sinai on the morn !
Thou shalt behold as much as may be borne."
And on a rock stood Moses, lone in space.
From Sinai's top, the vaporous, thunderous place,
God passed in cloud, an earthy garment worn
To hide, and thus reveal. In love, not scorn,
He put him in a clift of the rock's base,
Covered him with His hand, his eyes to screen —
Passed — lifted it : His back alone appears !
Ah, Moses, had He turned, and hadst thou seen
The pale face crowned with thorns, baptized with tears,
The eyes of the true Man, by men belied,
Thou hadst beheld God's face, and straightway died!2

IV.
Unconscious Transfiguration.
Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone. — Exod. xxxiv. 29.
When Moses came down among the people, they perceived that
his face shone. Being with God, he had in a sense become trans-
1 G. K. Chesterton, G. F. Watts.
2 George MacDonald, A Book of Sonnets (Poetical Works, i. 251).

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 223
figured. It was in similar circumstances that our Lord also
underwent transfiguration. "As he prayed, the fashion of his
countenance was altered." In both cases, perhaps, it was not
some external light that fell on their faces, but something within —
an elevation of nature, due to the fellowship of God — that revealed
itself without, in the face and form. In Christ's case it was
perhaps what He was, revealing itself; in the case of Moses it
was something which he had become. The words of Scripture
sometimes appear paradoxical. Yet perhaps they are always true.
Moses was made partaker of the Divine nature. He went up
burdened with the needs of the people, his heart filled with
thoughts almost too great to be contained. He came back with
a certain God-likeness impressed upon him.
1. The people perceived the glory upon Moses, though he wist
not that his face shone. There is in men, if one might say so, an
instinct for God. They perceive His marks ; they are sensitive to
godliness. Perhaps it was this that Christ referred to when He
uttered some of the most serious words that ever fell from His
lips, about speaking against the Holy Ghost — " Whosoever
speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him."
He meant wilfully contradicting that instinct which could not but
recognize, in Himself and in His works, the good Spirit of God.
This instinct is the hope of all who come from God to men. And
we all do this. The words of Christ, " As my Father hath sent
me, even so send I you," were not meant to be confined to the
Apostles. One of these Apostles says to his converts, " Ye are an
epistle of Christ."
Tf If, when the mother went into the nursery, the children felt
that she was a letter to them from Christ ; or if, when the father
joined the household in the evening or the master went among his
workmen, household and workmen felt as if a message from Christ
had come to them, how changed things would be ! For children,
households, and workmen — all men everywhere — have this instinct
for God, that recognizes God. The capabilities of this instinct
cannot be measured, nor the opportunities it offers. For it is not
a thing that belongs to one part of man's nature ; it is rather a
network of sensibilities overspreading the whole nature; and it
can be touched, and played upon, and the heart can be awakened
through it in a thousand fashions. And it is most readily affected

224 MOSES
indirectly and informally, when it, so to speak, itself discovers
and feels, without having anything obtruded upon it, as the
sleeping eye is awakened just by the presence of the day-dawn.
That which it is alive to is something just as broad as itself —
what we call character. If in the infinite forms in which a
character reveals or betrays itself, in words or tones or gestures
or actions, in all that constitutes a life — if, I say, in all this
infinite variety there breathe out godliness, it will touch some
sensibility, something in other minds, and be recognized.1
2. The people felt what Moses himself was not conscious of ;
he wist not that his face shone. He was the last to be conscious
of anything in himself above the common. He was averse to
assume the great place he had to take. The man was very meek.
He had learned in the school of adversity. A later writer
ventures to say of him, that he had ere now borne the reproach
of Christ. He was unconscious of the power he possessed, and of
the fragrance of God which every movement of his bfe breathed
out upon the people.
In all regions of life, the consummate apex and crowning
charm of excellence is unconsciousness of excellence. Whenever
a man begins to imagine that he is good, he begins to be bad ; and
every virtue and beauty of character is robbed of some portion of
its attractive fairness when the man who bears it knows, or fancies,
that he possesses it. The charm of childhood is its perfect un
consciousness, and the man has to win back the child's heritage,
and become " as a little child," if he would enter into and dwell in
the " Kingdom of Heaven." And so in the loftiest region of all,
that of the religious life, we may be sure that the more a man is
like Christ, the less he knows it ; and tbe better he is, the less he
suspects it.
Tf This unconscious transfiguration has been remarked in many
notable saints — McCheyne for instance. When death had called
him away, a note was opened which the post had brought to the
door during his illness. It was written by one who was a total
stranger, to thank him for the hour of worship at Broughty Ferry.
" I heard you preach last Sabbath evening, and it pleased God to
bless that sermon to my soul. It was not so much what you said,
as your manner of speaking, that struck me. I saw in you a
beauty in holiness that I never saw before." Everything about
1 A. B. Davidson, The Called of God, 136.

THE GREAT INTERCESSION 225
McCheyne drew men Christward. More than most, he was the
living epistle, signed with the King's autograph and sealed by His
Spirit. It was with him as with young Sir Pelleas : they who
met him wondered after him, because his face
Shone like the countenance of a priest of old
Against the flame about a sacrifice
Kindled by fire from heaven.1
I saw thee once, and nought discern'd
For stranger to admire;
A serious aspect, but it burn'd
With no unearthly fire.
Again I saw, and I confessed
Thy speech was rare and high ;
And yet it vex'd my burden'd breast,
And scared, I knew not why.
I saw once more, and awe-struck gazed
On face, and form, and air;
God's living glory round thee blazed —
A Saint — a Saint was there ! 2
1 A. Smellie, Robert Murray McCheyne, 203.
2 J. H. Newman, Verses on Various Occasions.

MOSES-SAMSON— 1 5

MOSES. XI.
From Sinai to Kadesh.

Literature.
Alexander, W., Verbum Crucis (1893), 165.
Binnie, W., Sermons (1887), 58.
Blaikie, W. G., Heroes of Israel (1894), 426.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History of the Hebrews (1903), 81.
Gollancz, H., Sermons and Addresses (1909), 517.
Harris, J. Rendel, Aaron's Breastplate (1908), 183.
Kennedy, A. R. S., Leviticus and Numbers (Century Bible), 243.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Exodus, etc. (1906), 305.
McNeile, A. H., The Book of Numbers (Cambridge Bible) (1911).
Milligan, G., in Great Texts ofthe Old Testament (1907), 71.
Montefiore, C. G., The Bible for Home Reading, i. (1896) 101.
„ „ Truth in Religion (1906), 147.
Peck, G. G, Old Sins in New Clothes (1904), 121, 275.
Rowland, A., in Men ofthe Bible, iii. (1904) 17.
Selby, T. G., The Holy Spirit and Christian Privilege (1894), 215.
„ „ The God of the Patriarchs (1904), 163.
Talbot, E., Sermons Preached in the Leeds Parish Church (1896), 136.
Trumbull, H. C, Kadesh-Barnea (1884), 15.
Watson, R. A., The Booh of Numbers (Expositor's Bible) (1894), 89.
Biblical World, xxx. (1907) 123 (K. Fullerton).
Dictionary of the Bible (Single-volume, 1909), 109 (A. R. S. Kennedy) ;
511 (W. Ewing).

22B

From Sinai to Kadesh.
And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up,
O Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered ; and let them that hate thee flee
before thee. And when it rested, he said, Return, O Lord, unto the ten
thousands of the thousands of Israel. — Num. x. 35, 36.
The picture suggested by this text is a very striking and vivid
one. We see the bustle of the morning's breaking up of the
encampment of Israel. The pillar of cloud, which had lain
diffused and motionless over the tabernacle, gathers itself together
into an upright shaft, and moves, a dark blot against the glittering
blue sky, the sunshine masking its central fire, to the front of the
encampment. Then the priests take up the ark, the symbol of
the Divine Presence, and fall into place behind the guiding pillar.
Then come the stir of the ordering of the ranks, and a moment's
pause, during which the leader lifts his voice — " Eise up, 0 Lord,
and let thine enemies be scattered ; and let them that hate thee
flee before thee." Then, with braced resolve and confident hearts,
the tribes set forward on the day's march.
Tf Long after those desert days a psalmist laid hold of the old
prayer and offered it, as not antiquated yet by the thousand years
that had intervened. "Let God arise, and let his enemies be
scattered," prayed one of the later psalmists ; " let them that hate
him flee before him." We, too, in circumstances so different, may
take up the immortal though ancient words, on which no dimming
rust of antiquity has encrusted itself, and may, at the beginnings
and the endings of all our efforts and of each of our days, and at
the beginning and ending of life itself, offer this old prayer — the
prayer which asked for a Divine Presence in the incipiency of our
efforts, and the prayer which asked for a Divine Presence in the
completion of our work and in the rest that remaineth.1
The chief incidents of the journey from Mount Sinai to
Kadesh are the visit of Hobab to the camp, the prophesying of
Eldad and Medad, the jealousy of Aaron and Miriam, and the
1 A. Maclaren.

230 MOSES
sending out of the spies. We shall touch these in order. But
first of ab let us hear tbe blessing.

The Blessing.
The Scriptures are rich, characteristically rich, uniquely rich,
in the matter of doxologies and of benedictions ; if only these two
forms of worship, the exercise of the soul towards God and
man respectively, were to be collected, what a lovely little book
would be made by the process of selection ! what mountain tops
of dogma would be reached, what Pisgah sights of Christian ex
perience would be rolled out before our eyes and before our feet—
that is to say, before our faith — so that we might acknowledge
the grace and possess the land, the good land which the Lord our
God giveth us ! All that has ever been said of the Divine Nature
would be in the book, for the doxologies and the benedictions use
the same theological language. If one says " Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord God Almighty," the other responds with " The grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the
Holy Ghost be with thy spirit," so that the benediction is itself
a creed, and a creed which is a life, and a life which is love. No
stronger statements, no deeper insight into the full meaning of
salvation, can ever be obtained than those which fall upon our
ears when the Lord or His messengers are set to bless the people.
And this is not only true of the New Testament, it occurs and
prevails throughout the Old ; if the degree varies, the benediction
is the same in kind : the same grace and the same glory from the
same Lord, who is rich unto all that call upon Him in truth,
especially when they call upon Him for others.
One of the most deeply significant passages of the Old Testa
ment (Num. vi. 24^26) states the form of the priestly blessing
to be given by " Aaron and his sons " to Israel : —
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee :
The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious
unto thee :
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee
peace.

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 231
1. The benediction will be found located in the midst of
matter of all degrees of spiritual value ; so that, if we were read
ing continuously, we should stumble upon it unexpectedly, and
pass away from it, when we had read it, much as we would pass
from an oasis into a desert. For it is preceded, in the Biblical
narration, by the rules for the manufacture and the administration
of " cursing water," of which the spiritual value is not very evident.
In the same connexion we have the law by which the Nazi-
rite separates himself from wine and strong drink; and while
perhaps, we shall have to admit that the Nazirite went into the
region of ethical extravagance in refusing to touch even the seeds
of the grape, we can hardly say that Nazirite vows are out of date
or that they have lost their spiritual value. So the benediction
is preceded by matter that cannot be uniformly classified when
we are estimating spiritual truth or utility. But, doubt as we
may about the setting of the benediction and the relative value
in morals or in history of that in the midst of which it is found,
we can have no doubt about the benediction itself. That, at all
events, is pure gold.
2. The benediction falls into three parts, corresponding to the
three verses into which, in our English Version, it has been
divided. Each, too, of the three parts is symmetrical, consisting
of a Divine attitude and its consequent result. Thus, in the first
verse, we have the Lord blessing His people in the most general
sense of the word, followed by His keeping them, or by the sense
of security which His blessing ought to impart. In the second,
we have the Lord making His face to shine, with the consequent
assurance of the Divine grace and favour resting on those who
sun themselves in His light. And in the third, we have the
Lord lifting up His countenance, as a token of the Divine approval,
and so imparting a sense of inward and abiding peace in the hearts
of all true worshippers.
(1) The benediction is not a mere general expression of kindly
good wishes, not a mere utterance of prayerful goodwill, such as
might be spoken to a company of pagans or of unbelievers. The
direction appended makes this plain, " They shall put my name
upon the children of Israel." The Lord's name is not a vain
word. It is a strong refuge into which the righteous run and are

232 MOSES
saved. The Lord, present in His Church, blesses His people
there. "The Lord bless thee." More particularly it is added,
" The Lord keep thee." The Lord is the Keeper of Israel. His
people are His vineyard, of which He says, " I the Lord do keep
it; lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day." Jehovah
Sbomer — the Lord the Keeper — is the title under which the Lord
is praised in the 121st Psalm, a favourite psalm with old and
young, which may be looked upon as being the Church's re
sponse to her Lord's words of blessing. Tbe benefit intended is
a very comprehensive one. If we were asked to specify the par
ticulars embraced in it, we could make use of the specification
given more than once in the Psalms, and say that the Lord,
having delivered the souls of His people from death, keeps their
eyes from tears, and their feet from falling.
Tf It would be difficult in the splendid record of nineteenth-
century missions to find a more courageous and self-denying
action than the consent of Mrs. Chalmers to remain alone amid a
horde of cannibals for the sake of Christ's work among them, and
for the benefit of her Earotongan fellow-workers. When her
husband left her there was no possibility of receiving any tidings
of him until he himself brought back the tale of his wanderings.
She knew him well enough to realize that places of danger
attracted rather than repelled him, and that the worse the reputa
tion possessed by any tribe or place the more likely he was to
visit it. They bad only a few weeks before passed through
experiences which might well have unnerved the strongest.
Chalmers came to know afterwards, from one of the chiefs, that
again and again the murder of the whole missionary party had
been determined, and that those appointed to do the deed had
come once and again to the low fence which surrounded the
rough mission home. They had only to step over it and rush in
upon and murder the unarmed man and his wife. Had they
done this they would have been hailed as heroes by local Suau
opinion. But the same chief told Chalmers that at the low fence
they were restrained by some mysterious thing which held them
back. What was it ? To the devout mind there can be no doubt.
It was the restraining Hand of that God and Father in whom both
His servants so firmly trusted, at whose call they had come to Suau,
and for whose sake they were willing to lay down their lives.1
(2) From the benediction we learn next that God makes His
face to shine upon us, and it is easy to infer that He does this
1 R. Lovett, James Chalmers, 167.

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 233
either directly or by reflection. Nor will it be easy to decide in
which of these two ways the illumination may come, whether from
the immediate life and light of God or from the dwelling of God
in some neighbour soul. For it is constantly happening in each
of the two ways. To use the similitudes of the Holy Grail, we
have first the case of Percival's sister, who sees the vision, after
long prayer and fasting and patience, in her own cell, upon whose
white walls the Heavenly Vision descends, and the sweet Grail is
seen — Eose-red with beatings in it, as if alive.
That is the first form of the vision, according to which " God has
a few of us " (and one is tempted to ask, " Why not many ? ")
"whom He whispers in the ear." Or to get back to Biblical
language, " In all ages Wisdom enters into holy souls, and makes
them friends of God and prophets." That is direct vision and
immediate audition — the seeing for oneself of which Job talked.
But then, still on the line of the Holy Grail and its lessons,
there are those who see through the eyes of the one that has seen,
such as Percival and Galahad when the message comes to them
that " the holy thing is here again among us, brother."
She sent the deathless passion in her eyes
Thro' him, and made him hers, and laid her mind
On him, and he believed in her belief.
That is the indirect vision ; it leads on to direct vision later, but
it begins, as Galahad confesses, with what " thy sister taught me
first to see." This is a Scriptural method; it is in the Old
Testament, in the form, " 0 taste and see how gracious the Lord
is," and in the New Testament in form, "That which our eyes
have looked upon declare we unto you."
Tf I have a conviction that it often pleases God to humble us
by the means which He chooses to illuminate us. It is related of
Jacob Behmen, the great German mystic, that the immediate
cause of the revelation which changed his whole life was the
reflection of a sunbeam upon him from a bit of glass or tin that
was lying in the road. From that bit of tin he became illuminated
and illuminating. William Law sat at his feet, and so, they say,
did Hegel and ever so many more noble souls. All that, shall we
say, from one little bit of tin ? Well, that will serve for allegory.
Suppose the bit of tin to be a human soul, the humblest of souls,

234 MOSES
humbler for its very vision, less because it has become more; how
often does the Lord send us to school to such, that they may tell
us the secrets of the Kingdom, and instruct us how we may more
effectively lose ourselves and find Him ! It pleases Him to
perfect praise in a choir of babes and so to still the enemy and
the avenger ; He sets the old to learn of the young, the rich of
the poor, the scribe of tbe illiterate. It makes for solidarity, too,
when maid-servants prophesy, and when old men and young men
are able to exchange their dreams.1
(3) Of the varied gifts and graces which we ask God to grant
us, or to aid us to obtain, none figures more frequently in
Scripture than peace. Now, in the more external sense of the
word, the reason for this frequent prayer is painfully obvious.
That God in this sense may grant peace to our land, and to all
those who dwell within it, must be our fervent prayer. And yet,
even in the external sense, there may be some limitation. For we
do not desire the peace of mere repression, the peace of death.
In other words, we distinguish, even here, between a right peace
and a wrong peace, like the prophets of old who denounced those
who cried Peace, when there was no peace.
But there is also peace and strife in the bves of individuals.
The excellences of contentment have been often sung. We are
to be satisfied with our lot ; we are not to repine ; we must not
desire the impossible, and so on. Nothing is more familiar than
all this, and nothing more commonplace. Yet, at the same time,
we are only a little less familiar with the very opposite, or
apparently the very opposite, teaching. We have often heard of
a noble discontent. If there were too much satisfaction and
content, would civilization, as we know it, have come into being ?
Why should a man be contented with his lot if be can improve
it ? Should we rest content with evil, with imperfection ? And
may not different people take different views of imperfection ?
We want, to some extent, at every period of manhood and
womanhood, to strive and attain together ; we want both struggle
and rest. If peace is the end, it must not be merely an end
deferred till the close of existence or enjoyed beyond the grave.
So too, on the other hand, we feel that movement, progress and
development, though not necessarily strife and struggle, can hardly
be dissociated from any human or desired existence, whether in
1 J. Rfindel Harris, Aaron's Breastplate, 191.

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 235
this life or in another. When we think of God Himself, we can
conceive Him as enjoying, or as being, either perfect and continuous
rest or perfect and continuous activity. That rest upon the
Sabbath day which is ascribed to Him may be regarded as a figure
of His permanent condition ; and, on the other hand, His joyous
activity, as elsewhere depicted in human terms, may be also
regarded as a figure for what He continually is.
Tf I think this higher peace, which at once reconciles and
strengthens, which calms us and clears our vision, which gives a
certain stabibty and fixity to our souls, which, while preventing
our falling into sloth or conceit, frees us from restlessness and
from the bondage of unsatisfied desire, which gives us the con
sciousness of attainment, the consciousness of permanence even
amid the transitoriness of ourselves and of outward things — I
believe that this higher peace can only fitly be described as tbe
Peace of God.1
Tf " Do not answer this," wrote a Minister to Miss Nightingale,
" for I am sure you must have more on your hands now than a
Secretary of State." But what struck those about her was her
perfect calm. " No one is so well fitted as she to do such work,"
wrote Lady Canning to Lady Stuart de Eothesay ; " she has such
nerve and skill, and is so wise and quiet. Even now she is in
no bustle and hurry, though so much is on her hands, and such
numbers of people volunteer services." She was quiet because,
like Wordsworth's Happy Warrior, in the heat of excitement, she
"kept the law in calmness made, and saw what she foresaw."
Like the character drawn by another master -hand, " in the tumult
she was tranquil," because she had pondered when at rest.2
II.
HOBAB.
1. When the Israelites were about to leave Sinai, Moses
invited Hobab, the son of Eeuel, the Midianite, to become
their guide : " As thou knowest how we are to encamp in the
wilderness, and thou shalt be to us instead of eyes. And it shall
be, if thou go with us, yea, it shall be, that what good soever
the Lord shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee." In
1 C. G. Montefiore, Truth in Religion, 157.
2 Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 160.

236 MOSES
this way the permanent alliance between Israel and the Kenites
was made.
2. The Kenites, an Arab tribe belonging to the region of
Midian, and sometimes called Midianites, sometimes Amalekites,
were already in close and friendly relation with Israel. Moses,
when he went first to Midian, had married a daughter of their chief,
Jethro ; and, as we learn from Exod. xviii., this patriarch, with his
daughter Zipporah, and the two sons she had borne to Moses,
came to the camp of Israel at the mount of God. The meeting
was an occasion of great rejoicing ; and Jethro, as priest of his
tribe, having congratulated the Hebrews on the deliverance
Jehovah had wrought for them, " took a burnt offering and sacri
fices for God," and was joined by Moses, Aaron, and all the elders
of Israel in the sacrificial feast. A union was thus established
between Kenites and Israelites of the most solemn and binding
kind. The peoples were sworn to continual friendship. While
Jethro remained in the camp his counsel was given in regard to
the manner of administering justice. In accordance with it, rulers
of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens were chosen, " able men,
such as feared God, men of truth, hating covetousness " ; and to
them matters of minor importance were referred for judgment,
only the hard causes being brought before Moses. The sagacity
of one long experienced in the details of government came in to
supplement the intellectual power and the inspiration of the
Hebrew leader. It does not appear that any attempt was made
to attach Jethro and the whole of his tribe to the fortunes of
Israel. The small company of the Kenites could travel far more
swiftly than a great host, and, if they desired, could easily over
take the march. Moses, we are told, let his father-in-law depart,
and he went to his own place. But now that the long stay of
the Israelites at Sinai is over, and they are about to advance to
Canaan, the visit of a portion of the Kenite tribe is made the
occasion of an appeal to their leader to cast in his lot with the
people of God.
3. There is some confusion in regard to the relationship of
Hobab. The word translated " father in law " (Num. x. 29) means
a relative by marriage. Whatever was the tie between Hobab

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 237
and Moses, it was at all events so close, and the Kenite had so
much sympathy with Israel, that it was natural to make the
appeal to him : " Come thou with us, and we will do thee good."
Himself assured of the result of the enterprise, anticipating with
enthusiasm the high destiny of the tribes of Israel, Moses
endeavours to persuade these children of the desert to take the
way to Canaan.
Tf In E (Exod. iii. 1, iv. 18, xviii. 1, 2ff.) the father-in-law of
Moses is uniformly named Jethro. But Num. x. 29 (J) speaks of
" Hobab, the son of Eeuel the Midianite, Moses' father in law "
Qwtheri). It is uncertain how this should be punctuated, and
whether Hobab or Eeuel was Moses' father-in-law. The former
view is found in Judg. iv. 11 (cf. i. 16), the latter in Exod. ii. 18.
The E.V. in Judg. i. 16, iv. 11 attempts to harmonize the two
by rendering hothen " brother-in-law." But this harmonization
is doubtful, for (1) though it is true that in Aramaic and Arabic the
cognate word can be used rather loosely to describe a wife's
relations, there is no evidence that it is ever so used in Hebrew ;
and it would be strange to find the father and the brother of the
same man's wife described by the same term; (2) Exod. n. 16
appears to imply that the priest of Midian had no sons. It is
probable that the name Eeuel was added in v. 18 by one who
misunderstood Num. x. 29. The suggestion that " Hobab the son
of " has accidentally dropped out before Eeuel is very improbable.
Thus Jethro (E) and Hobab (J) are the names of Moses' father-in-
law, and Eeuel is Hobab's father. A Mohammedan tradition
identifies Sho'aib (perhaps a corruption of Hobab), a prophet sent
to the Midianites, with Moses' father-in-law.1
4. The narrative of the incident is only fragmentary, for the
account of Hobab's arrival at Sinai is omitted, and also the answer
which he made to Moses' entreaty. It may be gathered, however,
from Judg. i. 16, iv. 11, that he yielded and went with them.
For there we find traces of the presence of Hobab's descendants
as incorporated among the people of Israel. One of them came to
be somebody — the Jael who struck the tent-peg through the
temples of the sleeping Sisera, for she is called " the wife of Heber
the Kenite." Probably, then, in some sense Hobab must have
become a worshipper of Jehovah, and have cast in his lot with
his son-in-law and his people.
1 A. H, McNeile, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (Single-volume), 355.

238 MOSES
5. Maclaren finds three things taught by this " long-forgotten
and unimportant life."
(1) It was a venture of faith. Hobab had nothing in the
world to trust to except Moses' word and Moses' report of God's
word. " We will do you good : God has said that He will do good
to us, and you shall have your share in it." It was a grave thing,
and, in many circumstances, would have been a supremely foolish
thing, credulous to the verge of insanity, to risk all upon the mere
promise of one in Moses' position, who had so little in his own
power with which to fulfil the promise, and who referred him to
an unseen Divinity, somewhere or other, and so drew bills upon
heaven and futurity, and did not feel himself at all bound to pay
them when they fell due, unless God should give him the cash to
do it with. But Hobab took the plunge, he ventured all upon
these two promises — Moses' word, and God's word that under
lay it.
Tf Be content good Neighbours, and go along with me.
What ! said Obstinate, and leave our Friends and our comforts
behind us !
Yes, said Christian (for that was his name), because, that all,
which you shall forsake, is not worthy to be compared with a
little of that that I am seeking to enjoy ; and if you will go along
with me, and hold it, you shall fare as I my self; for there
where I go, is enough and to spare ; come away, and prove my
words. Obs. What are the things you seek, since you leave all the
world to find them ?
Chr. I seek an " inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that
fadeth not away " ; and it is laid up in Heaven, and safe there, to
be bestowed, at the time appointed, on them that diligently
seek it.1
(2) Because he was stirred by the impulse of reliance on
Moses and his promise, and perhaps by some germ of reliance on
Moses' God, Hobab finally said, " The die is cast. I choose my side.
I will break with the past. I turn my back on kindred and home.
Here I draw a broad line across the page, and begin over again in
an altogether new kind of life. I identify myself with these
wanderers; sharing tbeir fortunes, hoping to share their
prosperity, and taking their God for my God." He had perhaps
1 Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress (Cambridge edition, 145).

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 239
not been a nomad before, for there are still permanent settle
ments as well as nomad encampments in Arabia, as there were in
those days, and he and his relatives, from the few facts that we
know of them, seem to have had a fixed home, with a very narrow
zone of wandering round it. So Hobab makes up his mind to
begin a new career.
Tf " I remember well," says Mrs. Booth, " when the General
decided finally to give up the evangelistic life and to devote him
self to the salvation of the East-Enders. He had come home
from the meeting one night, tired out as usual. It was between
eleven and twelve o'clock. Flinging himself into an easy-chair,
he said to me, ' Oh ! Kate, as I passed by the doors of the flaming
gin-palaces to-night, I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my
ears, Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and
where is there so great a need for your labours ? And I felt as
though I ought at every cost to stop and preach to these East
End multitudes.'
" I remember the emotion that this produced in my soul. I
sat gazing into the fire, and the devil whispered to me, 'This
means another new departure — another start in life.'
" The question of our support constituted a serious difficulty.
Hitherto we had been able to meet our expenses by the collections
which we had made from our more respectable audiences. But it
was impossible to suppose that we could do so among the poverty-
stricken East-Enders. We had not then the measure of light
upon this subject which subsequent events afforded, and we were
afraid even to ask for a collection in such a locality.
"Nevertheless, I did not answer discouragingly. After a
momentary pause for thought and prayer, I replied, ' Well, if you
feel you ought to stay, stay. We have trusted the Lord once for
our support, and we can trust Him again ! ' There was not in our
minds, at the time we came to this decision, the remotest idea of
the marvellous work which has since sprung into existence." x
(3) " Come with us," says Moses ; " we are journeying unto
the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you : come thou
with us, and we will do thee good. . . . What goodness the Lord
shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee." He went ; and
neither he nor Moses ever saw the land, or at least ever set their
feet on it. Moses saw it from Pisgah, but probably Hobab did
not get even so much as that. So he had all his tramping through
the wilderness, and all his work for nothing, had he ? Had he
1 Life of Catherine Booth, i. 400.

240 MOSES
not better have gone back to Midian, and made use of the present
reality, than followed a will-o'-the-wisp that led him into a bog,
if he got none of tbe good that he set out expecting to get?
Did he make a mistake, then ? Would he have been a wiser man
if be had stuck to his first refusal ? Surely not. The very fact
of this great promise being given to this old — dare I call Hobab a
" saint " ? — to this old saint, and never being fulfilled at all in this
world, compels us to believe that there was some gleam of hope,
and of certainty, of a future life, even in these earliest days of
dim and partial revelation.1
Tf Life is a very compbcated engagement, and among the many
motives to noble deeds, that of reward plays no mean part. Since
good conduct, and still more good character, is so very difficult to
achieve, we cannot afford to discard any of its incentives ; and it
were wiser to take our stand on the simple human ground of
Shakespeare's Cymbeline :
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
Yet those who are least inclined to agree with Stevenson in his
view of reward may still appreciate and admire the spirit of
which it is the outcome. It can do none of us any harm to have
our attention recalled at times from the future to the present, and
to be told emphatically that energetic living is good enough in
itself without a bribe. As for immortabty, while there are
passages in which his objection to serving for hire leads him to
discount it, there are many other passages in which it is pre
supposed and accepted as that to which life leads on its traveUers.
His general attitude to the whole question is summed up in one
memorable sentence of his Memories and Portraits, " To bebeve in
immortabty is one thing, but it is first needful to believe in bfe." 2
Lord of the howling wastes of bfe,
Where evils watch for prey,
And many a sacred gleam of good
In shadow dies away,
Borne on by Thee in paths unknown,
Well may we trust Thy hand alone,
And suffer angels of Thy own
To shield us as they may.
1 A. Maclaren. 2 John Kelman, The Faith qf Robert Louis Stevenson, 163.

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 241
Eevealer of a heaven encamped
Where'er Thy servants go,
By ministries of love to each,
That none beside may know, —
By wings at many a pass outspread,
By winning joy and warning dread,
We learn the word which Thou hast said.
The truth which Thou wilt show.1

III.
Eldad and Medad.
1. The Israelites had been once more displaying suspicion
and ingratitude. Turning with loathing from the manna, they
whimpered, like spoilt children, for the fish and flesh they had
enjoyed in Egypt, and murmured against God and against Moses.
The patience of their leader completely broke down under this
new provocation, so that he went so far as to accuse God Himself
of being a hard taskmaster, who had laid too much upon him.
With infinite forbearance allowance was made for the manner in
whieh Divine counsel was graciously fulfilled : " Cast thy burden
upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee : he shall never suffer the
righteous to be moved." God dealt with His servant as a father
at his best will deal with his child who runs to him, hurt and
bruised, in a passion of tears. Instead of beginning with an
angry rebuke, help and relief are first given, and then in a few
calm words the needed counsel is proffered. It was in a spirit of
patient love that God appointed seventy-two elders from among
the people to help His over-wrought servant and share his heavy
burden. 2. Seventy of the men thus appointed came together promptly,
and were ranged in a semicircle before the tabernacle. Then, in
the sight of all the people, the cloud descended, wrapped them all
in impenetrable mist, as a sign that the chosen men were being
mysteriously baptized with the Spirit, and when again they
emerged they began to prophesy. It was the ancient counterpart
of the day of Pentecost, when the disciples met, and the Spirit
1 A. L. Waring.
MOSES-SAMSON — I 6

242 MOSES
came upon them as a mighty, rushing wind, and they began to
speak with other tongues, as men chosen and inspired by God.
Tf In the 25th verse of the eleventh chapter of Numbers, it is
said that " the Lord took of the spirit that was upon Moses, and
gave it unto the seventy elders." Some conclude from this state
ment that, as a punishment for his intemperate prayer, the wisdom
of Moses was thus lessened, while others were enriched at his
expense. But wisdom, and all gifts similar to it, are not
diminished by distribution. If we impart information, we do not
lessen our own store of knowledge. If we give of our love lavishly,
yet affection is not lessened by such outpouring. The spread of
fire over what is inflammable increases its intensity. Though we
light a thousand candles from one which burned alone at first, it
still burns brightly as before. So is it with the Spirit of whose
fulness we all receive. No Christian man is poorer because his
brother is enriched with grace, nor was Moses. " There is that
scattereth, and yet increaseth." 1
3. Two men, Eldad and Medad, although summoned with their
brethren, did not come to the assembly at the tabernacle. For
some reason unknown to us, they failed to put in an appearance
at the critical time, when others of the elect were receiving the
mysterious but efficient grace of the Spirit. Yet, at one and the
same moment, they also were inspired while walking together, as
they probably were doing, in some far-off part of the camp. To
the amazement of the people, and doubtless to their own amaze
ment too, they suddenly began to prophesy. Joshua exhibited
some jealousy and suspicion, and would have silenced them,
because the blessing had not come through Moses; but the great
lawgiver, with characteristic insight and generosity, would not
heed the request — " My lord Moses, forbid them." Calmly, yet
decisively, the answer rang out, " Enviest thou for my sake ?
Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the
Lord would put his spirit upon them."
Three things are contained in these words.
(1) By his reply to Joshua, Moses showed his true greatness
of soul. He loves his people better than himself. The cause he
has really at heart is the cause of Israel, not his own honour and
dignity. In the " kingdom of priests " the more kings the better.
What Moses was— a man filled with God's Holy Spirit — that
1 A. Rowland.

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 243
he desired all his people might be. The less he was separated
from them by greater wisdom and goodness, the better he was
pleased. The man of little mind works for his own advancement :
he helps forward a cause, but it is partly that he may be known to
have helped it, that he may become famous. He is envious of
rivals, and wants to put a distance between himself and others.
Not so Moses. He wants to draw up others to his own level.
He would prefer to be one of many, rather than one above many.
He is indifferent to his own renown, and anxious only for the
well-being of his own people. He is willing to efface himself in
his work. Hence his words contain a lesson to us all — a lesson to
think of others more than of ourselves, to sink self in a common
work, to strive for the success of the work rather than for personal
fame. Tf Dr. M°Laren frequently referred to John the Baptist's answer
to the question " Who art thou ? " "I am a voice," as being the
model for all time. Most truly he took to himself the advice he
gave : " We must efface ourselves if we would proclaim Christ." x
Tf Tbe most touching thing that has ever befallen me is the
conduct of the Cambridge man who hoped to have been made
Professor, when I was taken. He had for five years been pre
paring himself for it, and had written a book for the purpose.
He is a simple student whose one aim in life it was, and who has
no other prospect. All this I did not know at the time ; but he
wrote to me immediately on my appointment, and I asked him to
come and see me. He took to me, and has now formed a strong
friendship for me. So far from bearing me a grudge, he says that
my coming to Cambridge will be a greater boon to him than the
Professorship. Where else are people so good and so unselfish ?
Still more wonderful, his wife agrees with him, and we are all fast
friends.2 (2) The man who is jealous of any infringement of his office
when uncertified allies come into the field is convicted at once of
thinking more of the distinction which office confers than of tbe
work for the promotion of whose interests all office is constituted.
Office is just the little circle of space made round a man, so that
he may have elbow-room for the exercise of his gift. Office
1 Dr. McLaren of Manchester, 211.
2 Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, i. 274.— The reference is to H. M.
Gwatkiti, who was elected to the chair afterwards, when Creighton became Bishop
of Peterborough.

244 MOSES
presupposes a gift, and a gift presupposes a work for the further
ance of which it has been bestowed. In God's plan, office exists
for the sake of the gift, and the gift exists for the sake of the
work; so that office is the least important thing of the three.
The living organism always comes before the mere shell it inhabits.
It is not the office that precedes and begets the gift, but the gift
that creates the office ; and both abke exist for the far-reaching
ends that wait to be achieved. To discover, encourage, and attest
a gift where it exists comes within the legitimate authority of the
Church and its leaders ; and perhaps in nine cases out of ten that
is done. But in the tenth case the Church withholds its warranty
and approval where the genuine gift exists, and in the next tenth
case it certifies where there is no gift at all, and then claims that
the mere empty shell of office must be respected for its own sake.
Tf A sixth hindrance is what I may call officialism, that is, a
dependence for our work not on our subjective fitness, but upon
official powers. It is certain that, as the objective is over-valued,
the subjective is under-valued. It is curious that in the Anglican
body, High Churchmen are dry, and Low Churchmen exalt their
own persons. In the Catholic Church all priests are High
Churchmen. And there is a danger of official assumption. But
for this we should not have had the hatred and contempt of
sacerdotalism. I am sorry to say that even good priests some
times swagger ; they think to magnify then- office, but they be
little themselves. This has been the cause of endless troubles in
hospitals and workhouses. Unfortunately even good priests are
not always refined, and they resent any hindrances in the way of
their sacred office with want of self-control, which gains nothing,
and often loses everything. The main contention is lost in a
personal dispute. I bave often said that our priests are always
booted and spurred like cavalry officers in time of war. But they
will not fight worse for being chivalrous and courteous.1
(3) But the words are also notable in themselves, especially
the second half of them : " Would that the Lord would put his
spirit upon them." In the gift of this Spirit Moses perceives the
highest well-being. When may we say that a man has received
the Spirit of God ? When he seems to us in all humility, and at
however infinite a distance, to be like God ; that is, when he is
good and loving and wise. They who have the Divine Spirit
are according to the highest Biblical teaching righteous and faith-
1 Life of Cardinal Manning, ii. 782.

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 245
ad unders
prayer fo
his spirit upon them."

ful, pious and understanding. Therefore the prayer of Moses
may be the prayer for us all : " Would that the Lord would put

IV.
Miriam's Mistake.
1. The whole story of Miriam, as recorded in the Bible, is not
a long one. It may be written in a few terse phrases. Our first
glimpse of her is during the days of the oppression, by the side of
an ark of rushes. She was appointed her brother's guardian, to
watch the issue of a last desperate expedient to save his life.
How well she watched and how prudently she discharged her
mission is known of all. We catch another glimpse of her just
after the crossing of the sea, when Pharaoh's horsemen lay stiffen
ing on the shore. It was Miriam who took up the theme of
Moses' Jubilate and led the women's song : " Sing ye to the Lord,
for he hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his rider hath he
thrown into the sea." Save for the incident which led to the
tragedy of the leprosy we could pass nothing but compliments on
Miriam. But, alas for human ideals ! This is an integral part of
the story. The Miriam of the bondage and of prophetic gift
became Miriam the leper.
2. At Hazeroth (Ain Haderah, thirty miles from Sinai), a
rebellion arose against Moses, from within his own family. The
jealousy of Aaron and Miriam was roused by Moses taking a
second wife, an Ethiopian woman. They challenged the exclusive
right of Moses to be the mouthpiece of revelation. " Hath the
Lord indeed spoken only by Moses ? hath he not spoken also by
us ? " Moses apparently made no reply. The writer parenthetic
ally calls him " very meek, above all the men which were upon
the face of the earth," a meekness which was certainly not his
natural character, but the result of self-discipline and grace.
The Divine vindication of Moses is couched in remarkable words.
Moses was proclaimed to be more than a mere prophet : his com
munications with God were more direct than the visions and
dreams which were the ordinary channels of prophecy : " And the

246 MOSES
Lord came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door
of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam : and they both
came forth. And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a
prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him
in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant
Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will
1 speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark
speeches ; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold : where
fore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?"
The Divine anger was shown by Miriam being struck with
leprosy, " white as snow," from which she was delivered only after
Aaron had confessed their sin and by the earnest prayer of Moses
himself. Miriam was shut out from the camp seven days, during
which the camp remained at Hazeroth, and was then restored.
3. How did Moses act — he who, years before, had felled an
Egyptian with one blow of his fist ? Did he pour out a torrent of
indignation, assuring himself that he had just cause to be angry ?
Did he show them the door of the tent, and bid them mind their
own affairs ? Did he in his anger call on God to strike them
down ? Nothing of the sort. He answered not a word. In his
bearing he reminds us of Christ in the judgment-hall, who, " when
he was reviled, reviled not again."
It may be well to give some rules for the attainment of this
meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price.
(1) Let us claim the meekness of Christ. — This, of course, was
not possible for Moses in the direct way in which it is for us.
And yet, doubtless, in his case also there was a constant appeal
for heavenly grace. The humility of Jesus did not forbid His
proposing Himself as our model for meekness. " Learn of me,"
He said, " for I am meek and lowly in heart." The likeness of the
dove that rested on His head, and the lamb to which He was
compared, were the sweet emblems of His heart. And in moments
of provocation there is nothing better than to turn to Him and
claim His calm, sweet silence, His patience and meekness, saying,
" I claim all these, my Lord, for the bitter need of my spirit."
(2) Let us leave God to vindicate our cause. — Moses trusted
God to vindicate him; and the Almighty God "rode upon a
cherub and did fly ; yea, he was seen upon the wings of the wind. '

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 247
The Lord heard all that was said, and spake suddenly to the three,
and told them that whilst He would speak to others in visions
and dreams, it was to Moses only that He would speak face to
face, so that he might behold Jehovah's form. " Wherefore then,"
said He, " were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses ? "
(Num. xii. 8). This is the secret of rest— to cultivate the habit of
handing all over to God, as Hezekiah did when he spread out
Sennacherib's letter in the house of the Lord.
(3) Let us give ourselves to intercessory prayer. — "Moses cried
unto the Lord, saying, Heal her now, 0 God, I beseech thee."
When we pray for those who have despitefully used and perse
cuted us, it is marvellous how soon the soul grows calm and tender.
We may begin to do it as a duty, in obedience to the command ;
we soon discover it to be as snow on a fevered forehead, cooling
and soothing the soul. Do not wait to feel an inspiration — act on
the sense of what your Lord requires ; and as you pray, in the
calm and holy presence of God, in tbe secret where your Father
is found, you will find that unworthy thoughts will sink, as silt
is precipitated to the river-bed, leaving the stream pellucid and
clear. Tf It was a cold bitter day in December, 1900. We two
missionaries sat in a large comfortless room, with two Chinese
officials, in the city of Yung P'ing Fu, North China, handing out
orders for money and deeds of land which, before our arrival, had
been arranged as compensation between Christians who had
suffered and Boxers who had persecuted, in the terrible rising of
the previous summer. It was a soul-wearying business, for the
whole district had been in turmoil for months, and, not to mention
smaller losses, thirty-three men, women and children associated
with the English Methodist Mission, had died as martyrs for the
faith of Jesus.
It had come as a shock to us missionaries on our arrival to
learn that a certain sum of money had been already agreed upon
as compensation for every life that had been taken, but when it
is remembered that in many cases the head of the family had been
murdered, and children left unprovided for, the arrangement can,
in some measure, be understood. The officials had also expressed
their willingness to arrest and punish, according to law, any
person who could be proved to have actually committed murder,
or actively incited to it. But in not a single case was the extreme
penalty demanded, though in two instances, one, where seven

248 MOSES
members of one family had perished, and the other, where four
had died, the decision was not reached without a severe struggle
between the old heathen notions and the new faith.
The finest episode in all the ghastly business was reached when
our old Bible-seller, Ho Ju Ching, a tall, noble-looking man wearing
on to sixty years of age, stood up before the officials, the missionaries,
and the eager crowd of onlookers to receive his share of the com
pensation. His crops had been destroyed, his home burnt down,
he and his family had been fugitives beyond the Great Wall for
over three months. Worst of all, his daughter, a bright and
bonnie lassie of seventeen, had been cruelly done to death in their
own village, by men who were neighbours to them. When asked
whether he wished the murderers of his child to be arrested, the
old man simply and quietly replied, " No, I do not wish that. I
know them every one. They know that I know them, but I shall
never seek to have them punished. For what they have done I
forgive them as I hope to be forgiven, and I prefer now to leave
them to the mercy of God, and pray that they may yet be led to
forgiveness and salvation."
Do you wonder that my colleague, who had spent over twenty-
five years of his life preaching Christ to tbe Chinese, should spring
from his seat, and cry out triumphantly to the two wondering
officials, " That is what Christianity is doing for your people, and
for which they have suffered such tortures "I1

The Spies.
The Israelites now entered the wilderness of Paran and arrived
at Kadesh. From this place the first attempt to enter the
Promised Land was to be made. Apparently also Kadesh was the
centre of the Israelite occupation during the period of wandering,
and it was the starting-point for the final march into Canaan.
Kadesh, or Kadesh-barnea, lay on the south boundary of the
Amorite highlands (Deut. i. 19), "in the uttermost border" of
Edom (Num. xx. 6). The conquest of Joshua reached thus far ;
it was therefore on the line, running from the Ascent of Akrabbim
to the Brook of Egypt, which marked the southern frontier of
Canaan (Num. xxxiv. 4 ; Josh. xv. 3). In Gen. xx. 1 it is placed
1 J. Hedlen (English Methodist Mission, Tientsin).

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 249
east of Gerar ; and in Ezek. xlvii. 19, xlviii. 28 between Tamar
and the Brook of Egypt. All this points definitely to the place
discovered by the Eev. J. Eowlands in 1842. The ancient name
persists in the modern 'Ain Qadis, " holy spring." An abundant
stream rises at the foot of a limestone cliff. Caught by the wells
and pools made for its reception, it creates in its brief course, ere
it is absorbed by the desert, a stretch of greenery and beauty amid
the waste. From the high grazing grounds far and near, the flocks
and herds come hither for the watering. The place was visited
again by Dr. H. Clay Trumbull, whose book, Kadesh- Barnea (1884),
contains a full account of the spring and its surroundings. It lies
in the territory of the Azazine Arabs, about fifty miles south of
Beersheba. 1. Before taking action, Moses chose a representative of each
of the twelve tribes, and sent them to spy out the land. As the
native inhabitants were certainly well aware of the Israelites'
intention to attack them, the spies were ordered to go up into the
mountain, where they would be less likely to be observed, and to
bring back a full report. " See the land, what it is ; and the
people that dwelleth therein, whether they be strong or weak,
whether they be few or many ; and what the land is that they
dwell in, whether it be good or bad ; and what cities they be that
they dwell in, whether in camps, or in strong holds ; and what the
land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein,
or not" (Num. xiii. 18-20).
Tf A comparison with Deut. i. shows that the project of sending
the spies originated in the people's terror at the near prospect of
the fighting which they had known to be impending ever since
they left Egypt. Faitb finds that nearness diminishes dangers,
but sense sees them grow as they approach. The people answered
Moses' brave words summoning them to the struggle with this
feeble petition for an investigation. They did not honestly say
that they were alarmed, but defined the scope of the exploring
party's mission as simply to " bring us word again of the way by
which we must go up, and the cities unto which we shall come."
Had they not the pillar blazing there above them to tell them
that ? The request was not fathomed in its true faithlessness by
Moses, who thought it reasonable and yielded. So far Deuter
onomy goes ; but this narrative puts another colour on the mission,
representing it as the consequence of God's command. The most

250 MOSES
eager discoverer of discrepancies in the component parts of the
Pentateuch need not press this one into his service, for both sides
may be true : the one representing the human feebleness which
originated the wish ; the other, the Divine compliance with the
desire, in order to disclose the unbelief which unfitted the people
for the impending struggle, and to educate them by letting them
have their foolish way, and taste its bitter results. Putting the
two accounts together, we get, not a contradiction, but a complete
view, which teaches a large truth as to God's dealings; namely,
that He often lovingly lets us have our own way to show us by
the issues that His is better, and that daring, whieh is obedience,
is the true prudence.1
2. The spies went and returned ; they brought great news of
the richness of the land, and in sign of this an immense bunch of
grapes borne between two on a staff. But there was another side
to their tale. It was a land which any one might well be afraid
to attack. They had seen cities great and walled up to heaven,
their walls towering, as we say, to the sky; the men they had
seen were all of a bigger sort than themselves, men of stature; and
in particular there were among them some beside whose height and
strength the spies looked and felt like pigmies. " There we saw
the giants, the sons of Anak, and we were in our own sight
as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." The land was
one hard to conquer. But, besides this, it is " a land that eateth
up the inhabitants thereof." It has been, says a modern writer,
a land of ruins from the dawn of history, the theatre of successive
conquests and destructions. Because good, it had been fought for.
It was for many ages the thoroughfare and the prize of the world.
It would take fighting to keep.
Tf This temper asserts itself in every department of activity.
The prophet of evil insinuates himself into the sphere of commerce,
politics, literature, and religion, moaning that things are not well
with us, that hope, on our present lines, is untimely and misplaced,
and that our best policy is to go back to Egypt, or at least to sit
still in the wilderness. Wherever this temper appears, it is an
offence to the great God of Hope who has not yet cast off His
people, for it is a note of the poltroon and not of the true penitent.
Scope for a chastisement which shall humble us there may be,
but not for cowardice and despair. This noxious and unbelieving
1 A. Maclaren.

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 251
mood of mind did not die out with the ten spies in the wilderness,
but is still endemic in our midst.1
3. Only two out of the twelve— Caleb of the tribe of Judah,
and Joshua of Ephraim — showed themselves men of faith, and
advised an immediate attack on the land. They had apparently
taken a truer measure of the state of the Canaanites, who were
(as subsequent events proved) not nearly as strong as they looked,
being not only divided but much weakened by the continual
incursions of the Egyptians. The exhortations of these two were
overborne, however, by the voices of the majority.
Tf It is bracing to turn from tbe creeping prudence which
leaves God out of the account to the cheery ring of Caleb's sturdy
confidence. His was " a minority report," signed by only two of
the "Commission." These two bad seen all that the others had,
but everything depends on the eyes which look. The others had
measured themselves against the trained soldiers and giants, and
were in despair. These two measured Amalekites and Anaks
against God, and were jubilant. They do not dispute the facts,
but they reverse the implied conclusion, because they add the
governing fact of God's help. How differently the same facts
strike a man who lives by faith and one who lives by calculation ! 2
Tf The fact that the ten should set themselves against the two
did not arise from intellectual disparity. There is a striking
unanimity in the report they brought back, and dissensions begin
to appear only when they try to settle upon the policy they will
recommend. They were agreed in the survey they had made of
the land and in the judgment they passed upon the productiveness
of the soil. There was no dispute whatever about the elementary
facts which they had noted and brought together. What eye had
seen and what ear had heard they related with admirable straight
forwardness and accuracy. But the difference was in their inter
pretation of the facts and the programme it might be wise to
follow in the near future. An optimist may lie, especially when
he is entering upon the perilous task of special pleading, and a
pessimist may also be, although perhaps not quite so often ; but
this was not the sin of either the two or the ten. As a body
they were quite honest. Caleb and Joshua were not dreamers, nor
was their report vitiated by hallucinations. It was a question of
religion that separated them from their colleagues and brought
them into violent collision. They looked at the problem from the
T. G. Selby, The God ofthe Patriarchs, 238. s A. Maclaren.

252 MOSES
view-point of God's Covenant, and thought of themselves as links
in a firmly welded chain of providential decrees.1
4. It is not much wonder that the news daunted the people.
They were thoroughly frightened. They were a young people,
only a year or two out of bondage. They had had the great
deliverance of the Eed Sea to encourage them ; but their fears might
tell them that that had been a stroke of good fortune on which
they could not reckon again. And now, in their deep depression,
there rose again that thought — Egypt ; as before their hunger had
said, Egypt with its flesh-pots rather than this light bread, so now
their fears said, Egypt, where at least we were safe, where we
could live, though it was in bondage, rather than this hopeless
fight against the castles and the giants, with certain death. Better,
indeed, to have died before they began this hopeless journey.
" Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt ! or would
God we had died in this wilderness ! And wherefore hath the
Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword ? And they
said one to another, Let us make us a captain, and let us return
into Egypt."
(1) Note the faithless cowards. — The gravity of the revolt here
is partly in its universality, which is emphasized in the narrative
at every turn : " all the congregation " (ver. 1), " all the children of
Israel," " the whole congregation " (ver. 2), " all the assembly of the
congregation " (which implies a solemn formal convocation), " all
the company " (ver. 7), " all the congregation," " all the children of
Israel" (ver. 10). It was no sectional discontent, but full-blown
and universal rebellion. The narrative draws a distinction
between the language addressed to Moses and the whisperings
to one another. Publicly, the unanimous voice suggested the
return to Egypt as an alternative for discussion, and put it before
Moses ; to one another they muttered the proposal, which no man
had yet courage to speak out, of choosing a new leader, and going
back, whatever became of Moses. That could only mean murder
as well as mutiny. The whispers would soon be loud enough.
(2) Note the short memory and churlish unthankfulness of
unbelief. — It has been often objected to the story of the Exodus,
that such extremity of folly as is ascribed to the Israelites is
1 T. G. Selby, The God of the Patriarchs, 240.

FROM SINAI TO KADESH 253
inconceivable in such circumstances. How could men, with all
these miracles in mind, and manna falling daily, and the pillar
blazing every night, and the roll of Sinai's thunders scarcely out
of their ears, behave thus ? But any one who has honestly
studied his own heart, and known its capacity for neglecting the
plainest indications of God's presence, and forgetting the gifts
of His love, will believe the story, and see brethren in these
Israelites. (3) Note the credulity of unbelief. — The word of Jehovah had
told them that the land " flowed with milk and honey," and that
they were sure to conquer it. They would not believe Him
unless they had verification of His promises. And when they got
their own fears reflected in the multiplying mirror of the spies'
report, they took men's words for gospel, and gave to them,
without examination or qualification, a credence which they had
never given to God.
(4) Note the bad bargain which unbelief is ready to make. —
They contemplated a risky alternative to the brave dash against
Cauaan. There would be quite as much peril in going back as
forward. The march from Egypt had not been so easy ; but what
would it be when there were no Moses, no Jethro, no manna,
no pillar? And what sort of reception would await them in
Egypt and what fate befall them there ? In front, there were
perils ; but God would be with them. They would have to fight
their way, but with the joyous feeling that victory was sure,
and that every blow struck, and every step marched, brought
them nearer triumphant peace. If they turned, every step would
carry them farther from their hopes, and nearer the dreary
putting on of the old yoke, which " neither they nor their fathers
were able to bear." They would buy slavery at as dear a price as
they would have to pay for freedom and wealth.
5. This climax of faithlessness and rebellion was followed
immediately by a Divine judgment. "The glory of the Lord
appeared " ; again, as at Sinai, the total destruction of Israel was
threatened, and again also Moses stood forth in the power of
intercession, rejecting the offer to make a great nation of his
family alone, and pleading the former revelations of God's mercy
and forgiveness from Egypt onwards. The prayer was effectual —

254 MOSES
" I have pardoned according to thy word " ; but this time the
punishment must be endured. None of the existing generation
of warriors, from twenty years old and upwards, except Caleb and
Joshua, should see the Land of Promise. Their carcases should
fall in the wilderness, and only their children, after forty years'
wandering, should enter in, and know the land whieh their fathers
had despised.
Tf The temper of tbe spies deserves the punishment afterwards
meted out to it, because it despises the Divine power and forgets
the signs and wonders of the past. The God of the called and
chosen people was looked upon as though He counted for no
more iD the government of the world than the dumb idols of
effete and condemned races. These ten reactionaries lost heart as
they stood upon the threshold of a new history, and treated the
Kedeemer of the high hand and the outstretched arm as though
He were a mere cypher in the world He had made.1
Oh thou of dark forebodings drear,
Ob thou of such a faithless heart,
Hast thou forgotten what thou art,
That thou hast ventured so to fear ?
No weed on ocean's bosom cast,
Borne by its never-resting foam
Tbis way and that, without a home,
Till flung on some bleak shore at last :
But thou the lotus, which above
Swayed here and there by wind and tide,
Yet still below doth fixed abide,
Fast rooted in the eternal Love.2
1 T. G. Selby, The God ofthe Patriarchs, 243.
2 R. C. Trench, Poems, 222.

MOSES. XII.
From Kadesh to Moab.

Literature.
Adler, H., Anglo-Jewish Memories (1909), 279.
Burns, D., Tlie Song of the Well (1913), 9.
Burrell, D. J., The Gospel of Gladness (1892), 120.
Chapman, H. B., Sermons in Symbols (1888), 44.
Cuyler, T. L., Wayside Springs (1910), 1.
Drysdale, A. H., Early Bible Songs (1890), 163.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History ofthe Hebrews (1903), 85.
Henson, H. H., The Creed in the Pulpit (1913), 219.
Jones, J. C, Studies in the Gospel according to St. John (1891), 206.
Jones, J. S., The Invisible Things (1909), 204.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Exodus, etc. (1906), 353.
Mucmillan, H., The Garden and the City (1872), 103, 128.
Matheson, G., Times qf Retirement (1901), 71.
Ottley, R. L., A Short History ofthe Hebrews (1901), 73.
Rawnsley, H. D. B., Village Sermons, iii. (1883) 100.
Singer, S., Sermons and Memoir (1908), 195.
Smellie, A., Service and Inspiration (1904), 33.
Smith, G. A., The Forgiveness of Sins (1904), 218.
Talbot, E., Sermons Preached in the Leeds Parish Church (1896), 147.
Trench, R. C, Sermons Preached for the Most Part in Ireland (1873), '.
Wade, G. W., Old Testament History (1901), 121.
Williams, T. R., The Evangel of the New Theology (1905), 231.
Young, D. T., The Unveiled Evangel (1912), 90.

•s«

From Kadesh to Moab.
The soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.— Num.
xxi. 4.
1. Of the period which followed the abortive attempt to enter
Canaan, the history is obscure in the extreme. The length of
time that elapsed between the Exodus and the final invasion of
Canaan is conventionally represented as forty years (Num. xiv.
34 ; cf. xxxiii. 38), which is presumably regarded as the equivalent
of a generation. In the narrative which has been preserved two or
more records appear to be fused together, and a consistent account
is practically impossible. It seems probable, on the whole, that
Kadesh was the centre round which the movements of the Israelites
turned. Tbe place was, as its name indicates, a sanctuary, and
possessed a supply of water ; and though doubtless the people left
it from time to time in search of pasture for their flocks, they
remained in its neighbourhood.
The duration of the sojourn in Kadesh is nowhere definitely
stated, and the various passages relating to it point to different
conclusions. After the discontent which followed upon the
report of the spies, the people were bidden to turn to the wilder
ness by the way of the Eed Sea, i.e., to the Gulf of Akabah (Num.
xiv. 25) ; and in Deut. i. 46 it is said that after " many days " had
been spent at Kadesh they wandered for thirty-eight years around
the border of Edom (ii. 1, 14). On the other hand, it is affirmed
in Num. xx. 1, 14, 22, that Kadesh, at the close of the forty years'
wanderings, was the starting-point for the final march into
Canaan; and this appears the most plausible of the conflicting
representations. Tf The next thirty-eight years are a mysterious and unrecorded
period in the history of Israel, a period of waiting and Divine
discipline. A number of obscure halting-places are recorded in
Num. xxxiii. 18-36. The mass of the people must have pursued
MOSES-SAMSON— :TJ

258 MOSES
their ordinary pastoral occupation, perhaps assembling at times
before the sanctuary. The later prophets speak of the neglect of
the Sabbath and of sacrifice, and allude to idolatrous practices
(Ezek. xx. and Amos v. 25, 26). Circumcision was not practised
(Josh. v.). Nevertheless, on the whole, it must have been a time
of education, during which some of the lessons of Moses' revela
tion were assimilated ; analogous to the Captivity in Babylon at a
later time. Jewish tradition ascribed Ps. xc. to the authorship of
Moses during this period (see title).
The transitoriness and vanity of human life, God's judgments,
and the steadfastness of His purpose ; the hope that generations
to come will profit by the labours and sufferings of their father's
faith — these thoughts may well have been in the mind of the great
lawgiver in this last sad period of bis bfe, whether the splendid
words of the Psalm are his or not.1
2. By a re-arrangement of the text, however, Wiener believes
that the narratives may be brought into harmony. He under
stands that the thirty-eight years of which so little is recorded
were spent, not in or near Kadesh, but in the journey round the
borders of Edom towards Moab and the Promised Land. "After
leaving Sinai," he says, "the Israelites proceeded by leisurely
stages to Kadesh-barnea. We have no information as to the
reason for their consuming many months on the journey, but it
may have been partly for purposes of discipbne and organization.
In the early spring of the third year they reached Kadesh-barnea,
south of the Negeb. Erom this base of operations they could
pursue either of two lines of invasion. They could traverse the
land of Edom laterally, and operate from the east, or they could
invade the Negeb by marching due north from their base. The
first alternative required tbe consent of the Edomites. This was
sought and refused. The second alternative was then attempted.
Either before or during or after the negotiations with Edom, a
campaign was actually waged in the Negeb, resulting in the
defeat of the king of Arad, and spies were sent out to explore
the country. But, on hearing their report, the people lost heart,
and it became clear that success could not be expected until a
new generation had grown up. The order was therefore given to
evacuate Kadesh and compass the land of Edom. But the people
suddenly veered round and refused to obey. In defiance of the
1 A. R. Whitham, Old Testament History, 130.

FROM KADESH TO MOAB 259
Divine command they embarked on a campaign of conquest. The
result was disastrous. They were utterly routed and chased to
Hormah, the scene of their former triumph.
" The defeat at Hormah must have put an end once for all to
the hopes of invading Canaan successfully from the south, and may
have entailed casualties that involved delaying the departure from
Kadesh. It appears to have had immediate results within the
Israelitish camp, for dissatisfaction at the failure to conquer
Canaan seems to have been partly responsible for the conduct
of Dathan and Abiram : ' Moreover thou hast not brought us
into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance
of fields and vineyards.' Then came the failure of the water and
the incident of striking the rock.
"At the end of a stay that lasted some months in all, the
Israelites left Kadesh by the way to the Eed Sea, and never
returned to it during the period of the wanderings. Then
followed the long weary circling of the land of Edom, and at the
end of this period, on the journey northwards from Ezion-geber,
Aaron died at some point near the eastern or south-eastern
frontier of Edom in the fortieth year." 1
3. The chief events that now remain to be recorded are (1)
the rebellions of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Num. xvi., xviii.),
and the death of Miriam (Num. xx. i.) ; (2) Edom's refusal of a
passage (Num. xx. 14-21); (3) the death of Aaron (Num. xx.
22-29); (4) the visitation of fiery serpents (Num. xxi. 4-9); (5)
the song of the well (Num. xxi. 16-18), and the victory over
Sihon (Num. xxi. 21-30) ; (6) the story of Balaam (Num. xxii-
xxiv.). All these incidents may be touched upon except the last,
which is dealt with under Balaam's own name.

i. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.
The account in the Book of Numbers implies that with a civil
rebellion against the authority of the lawgiver was combined a
religious revolt against the influence of the Aaronic priesthood.
The revolt against Moses was led by Dathan and Abiram, of the tribe
of Eeuben. As members of the oldest tribe they resented his
1 H. M. Wiener, Essays in Pentateuchal Criticism, 133.

260 MOSES
supremacy, and rudely reproached him with his unfitness for the
leadership. Tbeir rebelbon was fearfully punished. The earth
" clave asunder " under them and " swallowed them up " with their
wives and children. Korah, on the other hand, demanded on behalf
of the whole tribe of Levi, to which Moses and Aaron belonged,
the right to exercise priestly functions. His adherents, however,
who had presumed to offer incense upon the sacred altar, brought
upon themselves speedy retribution.
Tf The account of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram seems to contain
three narratives : —
(1) Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eeuben, rebel against the civil
authority of Moses, who wishes (as they allege) to make
himself a prince. For this they and their households
are swallowed up (JE).
(2) Korah and two hundred and fifty princes rebel against
Moses and Aaron in the interests of the people at large
as opposed to the monopoly of the tribe of Levi (P).
(3) An independent Priestly account relates how two bundred
and fifty Levites rebelled against Aaron's priestly
authority.
In Num. xxvi. 11, alluding to the death of Dathan and Abiram
in company with Korah, there is the statement " Notwithstanding
the sons of Korah died not." They became in fact an influential
guild of musicians in the second Temple.1
1. The revolt against the secular authority of Moses was
organized" by three Eeubenites, Dathan, Abiram, and On, who
contended that Moses had brought the people out of a bountiful
land into the wilderness under false pretences, and was endeavour
ing to make himself a king over them. Moses vehemently
protested his innocence of any act of oppression, and bade the
people separate themselves from the mutineers, appealing to the
doom that he asserted would befall them to vindicate his claims
and his position. The narrative relates that his anticipations
were verified, and that Dathan and Abiram, with their families,
were swallowed up by an earthquake as they stood at the door
of their tents.
Tf A widespread rebellion, an organized rebellion, not homo
geneous, but with many elements in it tending to utter confusion,
is what we see. Suppose it to have succeeded, the unity of
1 F. J. Foakes-Jackeon, The Biblical History qf the Hebrews, 380.

FROM KADESH TO MOAB 261
worship would have been destroyed completely. Each tribe with
its own cultut would have gone its own way so far as religion was
concerned. In a very short time there would have been as many
debased cults as there were wandering companies. Futile
attempts at conquest, strife or alliance with neighbouring peoples,
internal dissension, would have worn the tribes piecemeal away.
The dictatorship of Moses, the Aaronic priesthood, and the unity
of worship stood or fell together. One of the three removed, the
others would have given way. But the revolutionary spirit,
springing out of ambition and a disaffection for which there
was no excuse, was blind to consequences. And the stern sup
pression of this revolt, at whatever cost, was absolutely needful
if there was to be any future for Israel.1
2. Korah's rebellion was directed against the superior religious
authority enjoyed by Moses and Aaron together over other
Levites. He and his partisans (250 men) were challenged by
Moses to approach the tabernacle and offer incense, it being left
to Jehovah to decide whether they or Aaron should be His
chosen ministers. They did so, and were destroyed by fire. The
censers which they used were made into plates for covering the
altar, to serve as a reminder that none but members of the house
of Aaron might burn incense before Jehovah (Num. xvi. 40). On
the morrow, however, the people charged Moses and Aaron with
causing the death of their fellow-countrymen ; whereupon a plague
broke out in which 14,700 persons perished, and which was stayed
only by Aaron standing with a censer of incense between the
dead and the living to make atonement (Num. xvi. 41-50). After
this, to still such complaints for the future, Moses was bidden
to lay up in the tent of meeting twelve rods, each inscribed with
the name of one of the tribes, Aaron's name being written on the
rod of Levi. The next morning Aaron's rod was found to have
borne almonds ; and as a token of Jehovah's choice, his rod was
preserved before the Testimony.
In this sacred position, the miraculous rod was a most
significant symbol to all generations of the danger of worshipping
God wilfully and presumptuously in any other way than that
which He Himself had appointed, and of the blessedness of the
service rendered in accordance with His will. It also declared
in that holy place the great truth, everywhere and at all times
1 R. A. Watson, The Book of Numbers, 202.

262 MOSES
true — that the whole significance and worth of religious worship
depend upon the fact that it is of Divine appointment ; that it is
an expression not of man's yearning after God, but of God's
yearning after man — an expression of God's own gracious will,
that the creature who had rebelled against Him should have
access to the Divine presence. " No man taketh this honour unto
himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. So also
Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest ; but he that
said unto him, Thou art my Son ; today have I begotten thee."
Tf The rod that blossomed, we infer from the narrative, was a
branch of an almond-tree. This was an appropriate feature of the
symbol. By the Jews this tree has always been regarded with
reverence, the English Jews, even at the present day, carrying on
their great festivals a bough of flowering almond to the synagogue
— just as of old their ancestors presented palm branches in the
temple. Its Hebrew name of shaked, or " the waker," was applied
to it because in Palestine it is the first tree that awakes from
the sleep of winter. Hence the beautiful poetic allusion of
Jeremiah — "The word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
Jeremiah, what seest thou ? And I said, I see a rod of an almond-
tree. Then said the Lord unto me, Thou hast well seen : for I
will hasten my word to perform it." Its snowy blossoms appear
on the bare branches before the leaves — bke the common sloe of
this country — as early as January, and are regarded by the
people as welcome harbingers of the spring.1
TI As representing the princes of Israel, the almond-rod seems
to have implied that, as this tree precedes all other trees in
forming its blossoms and fruit, and thus hastening to accomplish
the ends of its existence, so these princes stood out conspicuous
as examples of all the national virtues. They took precedence of
the people in rank and excellence, and therefore each of them
might be deemed worthy of ministering before the Lord in behalf
of Israel. And yet the almond-rod of Aaron alone fulfilled
miraculously the natural characteristics of the tree, and attained
its true ideal ; while all the other rods, though placed in precisely
the same circumstances, remained dormant. The Divine priest
hood of Aaron and Levi was the only " waker " out of the ever
lasting winter sleep that had overtaken the false, presumptuous
human priesthood of the other princes and tribes, for it alone had
the' true abiding life in it.2
1 H. Macmillan, The Garden and the City, 109.
2 H. Macmillan, Ibid., 110.

FROM KADESH TO MOAB 263
Say, was it the sigh of the southern gale
That flushed the almond bough? —
Ever brightest and first spring-time to hail,
It needs soft winds, I trow.
Say, was it the sunshine that woke its flowers
With a kindling look of love ?
For, far and deep within, through coldest bowers,
Can gleam smiles from above.
Not so, nor so — away from breeze and light
Was shut the sapless rod;
But in stillness it felt a secret might —
Thrilled to the breath of God.1
3. Sorrow and chastisement marked the march from its outset.
Before the armies moved from Kadesh, Miriam, the elder sister of
Moses, died, and was buried. " Miriam died there and was buried
there," in one of the rock-hewn tombs which perforate the whole
range of the hills surrounding Petra ; it may be, in that secluded
spot still known by the sacred name of the " Convent," still scaled
by the long ascent cut out of the rock for the approach of
pilgrims in ages beyond the reach of history. The mourning for
her death, according to Josephus, lasted for thirty days, and was
terminated by the ceremony which remained to the last days of
the commonwealth, the sacrifice of the red heifer, as if in special
allusion to the departed prophetess.
ii. Edom's Churlishness.
The shortest way to reach the fords of Jordan would have
been to pass through the mountain defiles of the country of Edom.
This would, however, be impossible if the inhabitants offered
resistance, and a request was sent to the king of Edom, on the
grounds of ancient brotherhood, and of the Divine call to proceed
to Canaan. Moses proposed to go by "the king's way" (probably
the Wady Ghuweir) without trespassing, and paying even for the
water which the host might requke.
1. The country occupied by Edom extended from the Eed Sea
to the Gulf of Akabab and comprised what is now known as
1 Felicia D. Hemans.

264 MOSES
the Wady El-Arabah. Edom, at this time a beautiful and
extremely fertile district, was held by a warlike race well able to
protect the country from invasion. The Israelites evidently
wanted to enter Edom at Petra, and to make their way across the
Arabah and by one of its eastern valleys leading to the present
pilgrim route from Damascus. An embassy was accordingly sent
to the king of Edom " informing him how God had debvered his
brother Israel" from Egypt, and asking him for permission to
pass through his land. " We will not," so ran the request of the
Israelites, " pass through field or through vineyard, neither will
we drink of the water of the wells ; we will go along the king's
highway, we will not turn aside to the right hand nor to the left,
until we have passed thy border."
TI The King's highway was the public road constructed at
the cost of the State for the King and his armies to use, and is
said to be the same as the old broad military roads still found
here and there in the East, and known as the "Sultan" or
" Emperor road." x
2. The request was refused. Not only so, but the king of
Edom assembled so formidable an army to resist any attempt to
cross his territory that the only way open to Israel was to turn
southward to the Gulf of Akabah, and from thence to reach their
destination by the eastern border of Edom.
TI The world has all along been refusing to let Christ through.
It has never had room for Him within the inn ; it has relegated
Him to tbe manger. It wants Him to be kept apart. It is
willing to visit Him occasionally in the manger — even, at times,
to bring a little gold and frankincense. But it does not wish
Him to become a force in its own affairs. Why so ; what is it
afraid of ? The same thing which Edom feared. Edom was afraid
that the hordes of Israel would tear up her cultivated fields and
destroy her national produce. The world fears that Christ will
tear up human instincts and make men unnatural. The world
is wrong; we are never so natural as when we are Christians.
What kills naturalness is self-consciousness; it makes us either
too confident or too shy. When I am too confident I am thinking
about myself ; when I am too shy I am equally thinking about
myself. In both cases the mirror of myself is the prominent
thing. What will break the mirror ? A larger environment.
1 S. Sinprer.

FROM KADESH TO MOAB 265
Why are travelled people so nice? It is because they are so
natural. And why are they so natural ? It is because their
eyes have rested on a wider sphere. They have forgot their
own greatness ; they have forgot their own humility ; they have
forgot to think about themselves at all — they have smashed their
mirror.

iii. The Death of Aaron.
1. After the message was dispatched to Edom, the people
advanced as far as the frontier, and halted near Mount Hor, in
the neighbourhood of the great fortress of Petra, to await the
reply of the Edomites. Here Moses, by Jehovah's command, took
Aaron and his son Eleazar up the mountain, and after Eleazar
had been invested with the insignia of the priesthood, Aaron " died
there in the top of the mount," and was mourned by Israel for
thirty days.
TJ " And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them
upon Eleazar his son; and Aaron died there in the top of the
mount: and Moses and Eleazar came down from the mount"
(Num. xx. 28). In these calm, almost cold, words is told all that
man is to know of an event full of interest, full of mystery, full
of awe. That old man who has gone up into Mount Hor, under
Divine direction, to die, is God's High Priest; the first of a
long line, the only line that God ever consecrated, to stand
between Himself and His chosen people, in the things of religion
and of the soul, until He should at last come, who is the End of
all Eevelation and the Antitype of all Priesthood.2
Tf Severe simplicity characterizes the authors of the Bible;
they rarely add any observations of their own, and narrate the
most pathetic and weighty events without stating their private
impressions. Their conciseness often disappoints our natural
curiosity. The historical facts are recited without high
rhetorical finish, and usually without betraying the bias of the
writer. The account of the death of Aaron is a case in point.
It was a scene of impressive solemnity, yet it is given in a cool,
unimpassioned manner, and shows no effort to rouse feeling or
make a dramatic exhibition.8
1 G. Matheson, Times of Retirement, 71.
3 C. J. Vaughan, The Presence of God in His Temple, 127.
8 J. S. Jones, The Invisible Things, 204.

266 MOSES
2. What are the lessons for us in the death of Aaron ?
(1) The nearness of God. — The record attributes Aaron's death
to the error of Moses in smiting the rock at Meribah for the
thirsty Israelites, instead of simply speaking, as the order ran.
True, Aaron was only accessory to that transaction, and not the
chief actor. It was Moses who evinced some quite natural Mi-
temper at the peevish discontent of the people ; but Aaron was
present and doubtless sympathized with his brother's impatience
and disgust over the situation ; at any rate, this is the reason
assigned for his exclusion from Canaan. Everywhere the Old
Testament insists upon the idea of a presiding God, and now and
then the curtain is lifted and His voice is heard; He thunders
out of heaven upon the chosen people, He discloses Himself in
some act or occurrence of a miraculous kind, He becomes the
author of a sudden calamity or of a universal blessing. Here in
this narrative touching Aaron, God is brought actively and
audibly upon the scene; He says to Moses, "Aaron shall be
gathered unto his people : for he shall not enter the land which
I have given unto the children of Israel."
(2) The solidarity of men. — There is a unity or community of
interests and suffering among men, so that often they stand or fall
together. Human beings are like tourists climbing the Alps,
roped one to the other. If one falls, he imperils others ; if one
slips and goes down the abyss, he may drag the rest with him.
So in life at large ; whatever we may think of the equities of the
case, it is unquestionably true that, owing to proximity, contact,
kinship, we bear one another's burdens and inherit either
advantage or trouble. As the world is arranged, the innocent
often suffer with the guilty, and the mere accident of relationship
sometimes leads to inconvenient consequences. Conversely, a
person is often advantaged by wbat looks like blind luck or the
force of favouring circumstances without active co-operation on
his part, or any special virtue or merit in him. This is among
the standing paradoxes— no new thing, but old as human society.
The Hebrews murmured at Meribah, and Aaron was numbered
among them and lost the Promised Land.
(3) The survival of service. — What each human generation
holds is only a life trust. As when Moses stripped Aaron of his
garments and put them upon Eleazar his son — taking the pure

FROM KADESH TO MOAB 267
linen, his official dress, and enfolding Eleazar with it, decking his
brow with the mitre, transferring to him all the insignia of the
high priesthood — so is it in the larger history of mankind. Life
is not a stagnant pool ; it is a running river, into which new men,
new measures, new methods, new manners, new hopes and
energies, evermore flow. It is an overwhelming thought, that of
the future and its developments. Who would not like to see the
map of the world and know its opinions and customs one hundred
years hence ? How will it handle the perennial problems that
have vexed all centuries ? We cannot guess. This only is
certain, that Aaron will make way for Eleazar. Your son will
take your place. It would not answer that men should live
for ever under the present order, they would grow obstinate,
obstructive; and hence when habit becomes fixed and character
formed, and opinion matured, the individual lingers a little longer
to do his work and add his mite to the world's sum, and then is
retired. His influence lives and widens like a ripple ; it is not
utterly effaced, but tells upon the future in unsuspected ways,
and so the total impression made by one's character is silently
propagated. There is such a thing undoubtedly as the trans
mission of influence and of the fruits of a great example. Thus
Moses' Decalogue lies at the base of subsequent legislation — he
has not perished ; and the Levitical priesthood has furnished the
type for elaborate, hierarchical churches. Aaron dies, but not his
work. The past with its populations is asleep, but the truths it
held and its relation to the larger life of the world still survive.
iv. The Fiery Serpents.
1. The journey southwards towards the sea was very difficult
and trying ; it lay through the southern part of the Arabah, a
barren district of loose sand and stones, subject to sand-storms
and infested with serpents. Murmuring again arose about the
absence of food and water, and the unsatisfying character of the
manna — " our soul loatheth this bght bread."
The mutinous discontent of the Israelites had some excuse
when they had to wheel round once more and go southwards in
consequence of the refusal of passage through Edom. The valley
which stretches from the Dead Sea to the head of the eastern arm

268 MOSES
of the Eed Sea, down which they had to plod in order to turn the
southern end of the mountains on its east side, and then resume
their northern march outside the territory of Edom, is described
as a "horrible desert." Certainly it yielded neither bread nor
water. So the faithless pilgrims broke into their only too
familiar murmurings, utterly ignoring their thirty-eight years of
preservation. Murmuring brought punishment, which was meant for amend
ment. " The Lord sent fiery serpents." That statement does not
necessarily imply a miracle. Scripture traces natural phenomena
directly to God's will, and often overleaps intervening material
links between the cause which is God and the effect which is a
physical fact. The neighbourhood of Elath at the head of the
gulf is still infested with venomous serpents, " marked with fiery
red spots," from which, or possibly from the inflammation caused
by their poison, they are here called " fiery."
Tf The snakes against which the brazen serpent was originally
raised as a protection were peculiar to the eastern portion of the
Sinaitic desert. There and nowhere else, and in no other moment
of their history, could this symbol have originated.1
2. The swift stroke had fallen without warning or voice to
interpret it, but the people knew in their hearts whence and why
it had come. Their quick recognition of its source and purpose,
and their swift repentance, are to be put to their credit. " There
fore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we
have spoken against tbe Lord, and against thee ; pray unto the
Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed
for tbe people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery
serpent, and set it upon a pole : and it shall come to pass, that
every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and
it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he
beheld the serpent of brass, he lived " (Num. xxi. 7-9).
The notion that such a plague could be removed by making
and offering an image of serpents fell in easily with the primitive
notions of the people. There is a story in the First Book of
Samuel which points in this direction. When the ark brought
1 A. P. Stanley, History ofthe Jewish Church, i. 162.

FROM KADESH TO MOAB 269
plagues of mice upon the Philistines who had detained it, and
they were anxious to propitiate the offended Deity of Israel, they
were told to make and offer five golden mice, one for each of the
Philistine cities, and thus to secure relief from their distress. By
a similar collocation of ideas a brazen serpent would be an effective
propitiation to the Deity which had sent a visitation of serpents.
We have to remember that the mind of primitive worshippers is
not to be interpreted by modern parallels. What seems grotesque
to us, seemed reasonable to our religious ancestors. The popular
worship of the brazen serpent clothed itself in orthodox theory,
just as the popular worship of the pagan deities in Christendom
successfully disguised itself under the cultus of the saints. This
story in the Book of Numbers is the official justification for the
image in the Temple.
The serpent of brass that Moses had " made " was long
cherished as a sacred image in the sanctuaries of Judah and
Jerusalem. Incense was offered to it, and a name conferred on it,
and even after its destruction by Hezekiah the recoUection of it
was still so endeared to tbe nation that from it was drawn one
of the most sacred similitudes of the New Testament; and the
Christian Church itself claimed for centuries to have preserved
its very form intact in the Church of St. Ambrose, at Milan.
Tf The singularity of the remedy provided for the plague of
serpents under which the Israelites were suffering consisted in this,
that it resembled the disease. Serpents were destroying them,
and from this destruction they were saved by a serpent. Tbis
special mode of cure was obviously not chosen without a reason.
To those among them who were instructed in the symbolic
learning of Egypt there might be in this image a significance
which is lost to us. From the earliest times the serpent had been
regarded as man's most dangerous enemy — more subtle than any
beast of the field, more sudden and stealthy in its attack, and more
certainly fatal. The natural revulsion which men feel in its
presence, and their inability to cope with it, seemed to fit it to be
the natural representative of the powers of spiritual evil. And
yet, strangely enough, in the very countries in whieh it was
recognized as the symbol of all that is deadly, it was also
recognized as the symbol of life. Having none of the ordinary
members or weapons of the wilder lower creatures, it was yet
more agile and formidable than any of them ; and, casting its skin
annually, it seemed to renew itself with eternal youth. And as it

270 MOSES
was early discovered that the most valuable medicines are poisons,
the serpent, as the very " personification of poison," was looked
upon as not only the symbol of all that is deadly, but also of all
that is health-giving. And so it has continued to be, even to our
own days, the recognized symbol of the healing art, and, wreathed
round a staff, as Moses had it, it may still be seen sculptured on
our own hospitals and schools of medicine.1
3. Jesus Christ has bidden us find in this strange story a
luminous teaching about Himself, and we are rebeved from all
embarrassments of tbe old literal interpretation by His high
authority. What, then, does the symbolism of the brazen serpent
teach us about Christ? Two lessons lie on the surface. First,
Christ was to be conspicuously set before men as the Divine
Saviour from sin. Next, having been thus presented, He was
to prove Himself to all who looked to Him in faith the power of
deliverance. The "lifting up" of tbe Son of man figured the
Crucifixion ; and the healing of the serpent-bitten Israelites who
looked in faith to the " token of salvation " which Moses had set
up in their midst was a picture of the moral release which believers
in the Crucified would surely experience.
And this healing power of Christ has been verified in human
experience. We know whose voice whispered Divine forgiveness,
if only we would not cease from the fight with sin ; whose love
was upon us as a Divine coercion compelling us to strive afresh.
From this vantage ground of our own experience we look out on
the scenes of moral conflict, and we see that in all directions this
Divine Person who has been in contact with us has been doing
as much for our brethren. The accordant testimonies of our
fellow-believers justify and confirm the halting verdict of our own
hearts. We were not mistaken ; we read the riddle of our hearts
aright ; it was Christ who worked in us and with us throughout :
we know Him whom we have believed : —
I know Thee, who hast kept my path, and made
Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow
So that it reached me like a solemn joy:
It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love.
Tf That which Moses lifted up for the healing of the Israelites
was a likeness, not of those who were suffering, but of that from
1 Marcus Dods, The Gospel of St. John, 122.

FROM KADESH TO MOAB 271
which they were suffering. It was an image, not of the swollen
limbs and discoloured face of the serpent-bitten, but of the serpents
that poisoned them. It was this image, representing as slain and
harmless the creature which was destroying them, which became
the remedy for the pains it inflicted. Similarly, our Lord instructs
us to see in the cross not so much our own nature suffering the
extreme agony and then hanging lifeless as sin suspended harmless
and dead there. All the virus seemed to be extracted from the
fiery, burning fangs of the snakes, and hung up innocuous in that
brazen serpent ; so all the virulence and venom of sin, all that is
dangerous and deadly in it, our Lord bids us believe is absorbed in
His person and rendered harmless on the cross. With this repre
sentation the language of Paul perfectly agrees. God, he tells us,
"made Christ to be sin for us." It is strong language; yet, no
language that fell short of this would satisfy tlie symbol.1
v. The Song of the Well.
When the weary travellers reached the border of Moab, the
following halting-places are recorded in the Book of Numbers.
(1) Oboth and Iye-abarim, "in the wilderness which is before
Moab, toward the sunrising," (2) the valley of Zered, (3) the river
Arnon, " the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites."
" Wherefore it is said in the book of the Wars of the Lord : —
Vaheb in Suphah
And the valleys of Arnon,
And the slope of the valleys
That inclineth toward the dwelling of Ar,
And leaneth upon the border of Moab" (Num. xxi. 15).
(4) Beer (a well), so called because here water was obtained by
the labour of tbe people, in which their chiefs heartily joined. A
short poem commemorates the event.
Spring up, 0 well; sing ye unto it:
The well, which the princes digged,
Which the nobles of the people delved,
With the sceptre, and with their staves.
1. In Eastern life there is no drudgery worse than that of
drawing water. " Hewers of wood and drawers of water " is the
Bible's description of slaves of the lowest class. You read the
1 Marcus Dods, The Gospel of St. John, 123.

272 MOSES
proof on the lips of the well itself, where the soft ropes dragged
daily through the centuries have cut deep into the stone; and
again on the lined faces of the daughters of the people, as they
gather to their task. Eliezer of Damascus found a bride at the
well, but that was in the morning of the world. She whom
Christ encountered was a drudge, whose first prayer to Him was :
" Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come all the
way hither to draw." The tramp to the well, the frequent
quarrel for one's turn, the strain to lift the bucket from the deep
pool, the climb home again with the high, full jar on the head —
it is all a constant weariness and almost unrelieved. For in the
East, women while at work seldom or never sing.
Where men address themselves to the task, as shepherds have
to do, they often sing ; and their singing is sometimes of the kind
which glorifies their labour with memory and with hope. Such
an effort we find in the song before us. It is one of the most
ancient pieces of Scripture ; but long before it became Scripture
it had descended, perhaps through many generations, on the lips
of labour, in the open air and sunshine, where the gravel rattles
under the feet of the shepherds, in the places of drawing water.
Wherever the well may have been at whose starting this song
was first sung, the verses were probably banded down through the
daily routine of many wells. In Palestine there are watering-
places which are at once fountains and cisterns. A deep shaft
has been sunk near some dry torrent bed to release the under
ground waters: and though the water lives and leaps below, a
long pull is required to bring it to the surface. The drawers who
sang this song knew that their well was alive. They called to
each other to sing back to it : the verb means to sing in antiphon,
to answer the music of the waters with their own. That spirit in
tbe dark hollow was not the only well-spring ; the men's hearts
gushed back to it, fountain called to fountain,
Spring up, 0 well! Sing ye back to it.
And the human music is worthy of the other. It recalls that
condition of life which is ideal, to which nations look back as
their golden age, to which a living Church looks forward as part
of the coming Kingdom of the Father, men of all ranks as brothers,
and sharing the work which is indispensable to the common weal.

FROM KADESH TO MOAB 273
2. One day, ten or twelve years ago, Professor Budde of
Strassburg was bending over his Hebrew Bible ; and he made a
discovery. He was reading the " Song of the Well " in the Book
of Numbers, a song which is among the oldest in the world.
Suddenly God showed him that He had more truth and light yet
to break forth out of His Holy Word for those who come to it
with teachable and eager hearts.
" From the wilderness they went to Mattanah " — these were
the words over which Professor Budde halted. This term which
is translated "the wilderness," he said to himself, might with
equal accuracy be regarded as a proper name — " Midbar " : From
Midbar to Mattanah. But, he argued, if, instead of inserting in
the narrative tbe geographical name Midbar, you prefer the
phrase which gives you the name's significance, why should you
not deal in the same manner with the next geographical name —
" Mattanah " ? Mattanah, too, has its meaning. It means " a
gift." Let these words displace the topographical title, and you
will read, " From the wilderness a gift." But that is rippling and
musical poetry instead of tbe bald and work-a-day prose which
describes the route chosen by the caravan of wayfarers. So our
scholar comes to the conclusion that here we have really the last
line of the " Song of the Well." To complete the parallelism the
Song ought to have six lines instead of five. As it stands at
present, the first two and the second two run well together, but
the fifth swings in the air alone. Let a sixth be added, and all
will go happily :
Spring up, 0 Well!
Sing ye to it,
Thou Well dug by princes,
Sunk by the nobles of the people,
With the sceptre, with their staves:
Out of the desert a gift.
" Out of the desert a gift " : it is a beautiful ending to the little
psalm ; it is sweeter, nobler, more memorable than '' From Midbar
to Mattanah." And it is a message to us even to-day — a message
from the Arabian sand-plains to our Western civilization, and
from that old pre-Christian age to our modern time. It is a
remembrancer of cool waters and leaping fountains which will
assuage our need.
MOSES-S AMSON — 1 8

274 MOSES
3. The Israelites were now at length in a territory compara
tively well-watered and fertile ; but their advance was threatened
by the hostility of the Amorite chief Sihon, who had apparently
made an incursion into the territories of Moab and Ammon, and
established a powerful kingdom with Heshbon as its centre. At
this point therefore the Israelites were once more engaged in fierce
warfare. Sihon not only refused them a passage through his
territory, but resisted their further advance by force of arms. A
decisive campaign ensued. Sihon was slain in battle, and his land
from Arnon unto Jabbok fell into the hands of the Israelites.
The capture of Heshbon, Sibon's stronghold, was celebrated in
another ancient war-song, of which we perhaps possess a fragment
in Num. xxi. 27 ff. This success was followed by the overthrow
of Og, the king of Bashan, an Amorite chief who had seized on a
tract of territory north of the Jabbok, and had fixed his capital at
Edrei. By this conquest the Israebtes gained possession of the
greater part of Gilead. The tribes of Eeuben and Gad, and the
half-tribe of Manasseh, were allowed to occupy the conquered
district (which was luxuriantly fertile, and well-suited for the
grazing of cattle), on condition of their duly assisting the other
tribes to subdue the territory west of Jordan. A firm footing
had now been secured by the invaders on the eastern side of the
Jordan valley. In the plains of Moab opposite to the city of
Jericho the main body of the Israelites was securely encamped
Their rapid and decisive conquests had naturally struck terror
into the Moabites, who apparently abstained from any hostile
action, and allowed the invaders a free right of passage through
their territory. In his alarm and perplexity Balak, the king of
Moab, sent an embassy to Balaam, a famous eastern soothsayer
who dwelt at Pethor on the Euphrates, imploring him to come
and pronounce a curse {i.e. cast some malignant spell) upon the
Israebtes. The account of this episode is very remarkable though
somewhat obscure and contradictory in minor details. The
mention of the elders of Midian seems to imply that Moab was
at this time partially occupied, as in later times, by hordes of
Midianites. We are told that the Israelites were seduced from
their aUegiance to Jehovah not only by the attractions of the
licentious worship offered to the Moabitish deity Baal-peor, but
by the wiles of the Midianites (Num. xxv. 18). The wrath of

FROM KADESH TO MOAB 275
Jehovah fell heavily on the camp of the Israelites, and it was only
the righteous zeal of Phinehas the priest that saved them from
utter destruction. A speedy and overwhelming vengeance over
took the Midianites. Twelve thousand men of Israel led by
Phinehas, and accompanied by the vessels of the sanctuary {i.e.
the ark), fell upon the host of Midian ; the five chieftains were
slain, and Balaam himself, who had counselled tbe Midianites to
ensnare Israel into idolatry, perished in battle. The encampments
and villages of the tribe were destroyed and the remnant which
escaped the sword driven back into the desert.
Tf Phinehas was one of the most prominent of those typical
personages whose character and mission presented features of
resemblance to the expected Messiah. He did the work of his
own day faithfully, and without any ulterior purpose ; but he was
at the same time unconsciously representing, in his own degree,
Him who was to come in the fulness of time and the fulness of
blessing. Faint and weak, indeed, in him are the lineaments
which in the Messiah shine forth in surpassing glory ; but they
are as faithful a likeness as a type can ever bear to its archetype.
His functions and offices distinctly anticipated those of the
Saviour. As the high-priest of Israel, he silently testified of the
great High-priest of mankind. As the warrior, conquering the
enemies and preserving tbe unity of bis people, he witnessed for
that Warrior who was to gird His sword upon His thigh, and to
ride prosperously because of meekness and truth and righteous
ness, and who, moreover, was to gather the dispersed of Israel into
one, and to bring Jew and Gentile, bond and free, to one Lord,
one faith, one baptism. Nor was the personal character of
Phinehas unlike that of Him whom he typified. The warrior-
priest of Israel had that warmth and tenderness of heart which,
like the summer- cloud hiding in its woolly folds the fierce
destructive lightning, is often combined with an unsparing hatred
of what is evil. All the recorded incidents of his life show
touches of pitying gentleness gilding the wild gloom of their
vengeance. And in this respect he represented Him who wept
with the sorrowing sisters of Bethany, and launched the most
withering invectives against the vile hypocrisies of the Scribes
and Pharisees; who reconciled the extremes of universal
excellence, and whose pity for the miserable never mitigated His
abhorrence of sin.11 H. Macruillan, The Garden and the City, 131.

MOSES. XIII.
Mount Nebo.

Literature.
Allon, H., The Vision of God (1877), 165.
Beaumont, J. A., Walking Circumspectly (1905), 131.
Bersier, E., in The Foreign Protestant Pulpit, ii. (1870) 70.
Brooke, S. A., The Old Testament and Modern Life (1896), 157.
Cox, S., Expositions, iii. (1887) 181.
Davies, J., The Kingdom without Observation (1895), 187.
Hamilton, J., Works, v. (1871) 313.
Ker, John, Sermons, i. (1885) 153.
Lockyer, T. ¥., The Inspirations of the Christian Life (1894), 158.
Macmillan, H., The Daisies of Nazareth (1894), 204.
Matheson, G., Messages qf Hope (1908), 50.
Parkhurst, C. H., A Little Lower than the Angels (1908), 174.
Trench, R. C, Sermons Preached for the Most Part in Ireland (1873), 238.
Wright, D., The Power of an Endless Life (1897), 40.

578

Mount Nebo.
And the Lord spake unto Moses that selfsame day, saying, Get thee up
into this mountain of Abarim, unto mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab,
that is over against Jericho ; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give
unto the children of Israel for a possession : and die in the mount whither
thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people ; as Aaron thy brother died
in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people : because ye trespassed
against me in the midst of the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah of
Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin ; because ye sanctified me not in the midst
ofthe children of Israel. For thou shalt see the land before thee ; but thou
shalt not go thither into the land which I give the children of Israel.— Deut.
xxxii. 48-52.
The great parable of the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites
has one of its profoundest applications in the death of the two
great leaders of the people, Moses and Aaron. Life is more
dramatic and tragic than we know; and when we read of the
fate of these two illustrious brothers (the men who, above all
others, seemed entitled to enter the Land of Promise) — neither
of them falling in battle but both of them doomed to die by
the sentence of Jehovah, whom they served and under whom
they were leading the people — we are startled into a recogni
tion of the true tragedy of life that there is in this. The indubit
able impress of reality is upon it. How differently fable would
have constructed the story ! How different the apotheosis of
mythical heroes ! Moses and Aaron would have led the people
into the Land of Promise, and ruled them there in triumph and
honour; their sepulchres would have been proudly built in
Jerusalem, and would have been among the shrines of the world.
The destinies of real life are different ; men do not so complete
the cycle of their thought, the purpose of their work.
Aaron was the high priest of God, and, some infirmities
notwithstanding, he was a noble arid saintly man ; in character
and service second only to his brother Moses. But Aaron must
die in Mount Hor, because, with Moses, he " waxed wroth with
the people, and disobeyed the Lord at Meribah." Arrayed in bis
priestly robes, like a garlanded victim, he is led by Moses his
279

280 MOSES
brother and Eleazar his son out of the midst of the wondering,
weeping people, to the lonely summit of the mountain in Edom,
where he dies. Imagination fails us when we try to reabze the
mystic solemnity of the position ; the farewell glances upon the
tented host in the Arabah valley below; the last words of
affection and regret, of penitence and faith ; tbe solemn awe of
brother and son, as suddenly they looked upon the dead,
unconscious body; the stern fortitude which dug his grave and
buried him there, amid the weird limestone crags of that storm-
worn summit. And then the submissive piety, the calm, tender
heroism of faith, with which they descended to tell the people of
the issue, and to mourn for Aaron forty days.
In like manner, Moses must die upon Nebo. Only, Moses
must die alone. Neither son nor brother may close his dying
eyes, or receive his last words. He, moreover, looks down, not
only upon the host which for forty years he has led through the
wilderness, but also upon the Land of Promise which they were
just about to possess ; and he, their deliverer from Egypt, their
guide and legislator, their captain and ruler, is forbidden to enter
it with them. I.
The Fault.
1. The story of the sin of Moses is found in Num. xx. The tribes
had come, after thirty-eight years' wandering, into the wilderness
of Zin ; and, finding no water, they gathered themselves together
against Moses and Aaron. Once more the old murmurs were
heard, "Wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to
bring us unto this evil place ? " God's fidelity and the sin and
punishment of their fathers were forgotten; they "chode with
Moses, and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when our
brethren died before the Lord!" Moses and Aaron went from
the people to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation ; and
while they were on their faces before the Lord the glory of the
Lord appeared again to them: Moses was commanded to take
the rod, the symbol of God's presence, with him, and speak to the
rock, which should give forth its water for the congregation.
But the patience of Moses was worn out: standing before the

MOUNT NEBO 281
people, he addressed them thus : " Hear now, ye rebels ; must we
fetch you water out of this rock ? " Then " Moses lifted up his
hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice ; and the water
came out abundantly."
The spirit of Moses appears clearly in the narrative. He is
angry with the people, resentful ; he treats tbeir murmuring as
an offence against himself. He parades his power before them :
his twice smiting the rock reveals his heat. And God immedi
ately rebukes him. He charges Moses with not sanctifying Him
in the eyes of the people, and tells him that He shall not bring
the congregation into the land which the Lord has given them.
TI Perhaps we may take it that the outbreak of petulance
when Moses smote the rock was only one instance of some general
decay of character on that side, or perhaps one should rather say,
of some general falling away from the self-restraint which had
distinguished him. It seems strange that this one failure should
have been punished in him, by exclusion from the land he had so
steadfastly believed in, the land which most of those who actually
entered it would never have seen but for him. And it is pathetic
to find him among that great company of martyrs for the public
good — those who in order to serve their people have neglected
their own characters. Under the stress of public work and the
pressure of the stupidity and greed of those whom they have
sought to guide, many leaders of men have been tempted, and
have yielded to the temptation, to forget the demands of their
better nature. But whatever their services to the world, such
unfaithfulness does not pass unpunished. They have to bear the
penalty, whosoever they be ; and Moses was no more an excep
tion than Cromwell or Savonarola was, to mention only some of
the nobler examples.1
Herein consists the awfulness of human life,
That no man knows the confines of a sin,
The generations of a virtuous deed;
And hence the obligation to entreat
All men with tender charity, since all
Are victims if offenders too; and oft
The fractures of the wicked are derived
From flaws of saints. And since one perfect Life
Can leaven all, perhaps one sinning soul
Can stay the bliss of all the Church of God.2
1 A. Harper, The Book qf Deuteronomy, 485.
2 A. Bunston, The Porch of Paradise, 33.

282 MOSES
2. In a call to service, such as the call of Moses, there are
perils. (1) There are perils in its graces. We see in the narrative
what we so often see, in tbe Bible and in life — that godly men will
transgress just where they seem most secure, will yield to the
temptations against which, either naturally or by past discipline,
they seem to be best armed. " The man Moses was very meek,
above all the men which were upon the face of the earth." God
called him to a place requiring great meekness, and He endowed
him with it. Naturally, he was perhaps rash and impulsive ; but
the failure of his first efforts to put himself at the head of the
people, and his long sojourn as a shepherd in Midian, had sobered
him. What strikes us most in his history is his quiet endurance,
his self-devotion. When Aaron and Miriam speak against him, it
is God who vindicates Moses, not Moses who vindicates himself.
He pleads with God that they may be forgiven, and Miriam's curse
removed. When the people " sin their great sin," making them
gods of gold while he was with the Lord on Sinai, Moses prays :
" Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin — ; and if not, blot me, I
pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written." For eight-
and-thirty years he " endured the contradiction of sinners against
himself " ; and it seemed as if the old hasty temper were quite
subdued. But here at length, in an unguarded moment, the
former passion blazes out, and the meekest of men is hot, resent
ful, self-assertive.
(2) There are perils belonging to the gifts of a high calling.
If any one might have seemed secure against these perils, it was
Moses, whose humility during his forty years' leadership was as
conspicuous as his patience. He was the predestined leader of
his people ; marked out as such by the regal beauty which led his
mother to save him, by the romantic story of his debverance, by
the accomplishments he acquired and the favour he enjoyed at
the court of Pharaoh. Some consciousness of these advantages
appears in his first presentation of himself to his brethren, and
his supposing that they would bave understood that God by his
hand would deliver them. A court is not a good school in which
to train men for the exercise of distinguished gifts. Far better
the lonely desert, exile, and the humble work of tending flocks.
Moses did seem to have learned his lesson. "Who am I?" he

MOUNT NEBO 283
asks, in unaffected self-distrust, when God tells him he is to lead
Israel out of Egypt. "Who am I?" he questions again and
again. He goes to God with all his difficulties, asks God to show
him what to do ; God gives him all his power ; he exalts before
the people, not himself, but God. All the more instructive is the
arrogance of this humble man. Is this Moses who so proudly
asks : " Must we fetch you water out of this rock ? " Moses, just
returned from the tabernacle, where he had prostrated himself on
his face before the Lord !
(3) There are perils incident to the fulfilment of a high calling.
A high calling means a calling to high and noble work, and the
work brings its strain and weariness with it. God intends those
whom He signally endows to be more to men than others are ;
more trusted, more lavish of themselves ; and this implies a more
than ordinary exposure to temptation, greater responsibilities,
peculiar dangers. Those whom men look to as their leaders will
be the first objects of their distrust ; men demand more from them
than from others, and will resent disappointment as a personal
wrong. The people whom Moses led out of Egypt, who saw the
wonders he had wrought for them, and knew the favour he en
joyed from God, were they of whom he said: "They be almost
ready to stone me." Do anything for the people, they will expect
you to do everything for them ; do them good, they will demand
that you do their pleasure ; arouse high hopes in them, quicken
in them spiritual aspiration, they will murmur at you should
their meanest expectations fail, and at every disappointment will
treat you as one who trifles with them.
A leader of men, moreover, must always be one of clearer
insight, quicker emotion, stronger moral convictions, than others.
He will be more aware than they are of their sin and weakness ;
he will judge their conduct by bis conscience, and not by theirs.
It was thus with Moses. The people murmured — poor, blind,
ignorant people, they knew not how heinous was their ingratitude.
Want of water was their great distress : they were like perverse
children, not reflecting on their want of faith. All this Moses,
however, did see; and, failing in lowliness and compassion, he
failed in patience and self-control, and scorned them in their sin.
A man so led away by passion perverts even his spiritual per
ceptions. Instead of thinking how patient God was with them,

284 MOSES
Moses dwelt simply on their rebelbon. He was wounded, pro
voked; he was angry; it was with personal bitterness that he
said : " Hear now, ye rebels ! " and smote the rock.
Moses, the patriot fierce, became
The meekest man on earth,
To show us how love's quick'ning flame
Can give our souls new birth.
Moses, the man of meekest heart,
Lost Canaan by self-will,
To show, where Grace has done its part,
How sin defiles us still.
Thou, who hast taught me in Thy fear,
Yet seest me frail at best,
0 grant me loss with Moses here,
To gain his future rest ! 1

II.
The Punishment.
1. It seems a trifling discrepancy of conduct — to strike instead
of speaking. Moses was exasperated almost beyond endurance.
We marvel, indeed, that he did not smite some of the inglorious
faces raised towards his own. Modern criminal courts often
refuse to find a verdict against a prisoner whose provocation has
been less great than was Moses' that day. Under the circum
stances we could excuse him for almost anything. " No soul is
saved for a single excellence or damned for a single sin." Yet
because of the particular faults of which Moses was guilty that
day — his disobedience and temper — he was shut out of Canaan.
The only glimpse he ever got of the land of milk and honey, to
lead towards which had been the vast achievement of his bfe, was
from the heights of Pisgah.
Tf As a bird stayed with a little string, or a strong man in
swimming held back by a small twig, so a little sin stayeth this
great captain (Moses) that he cannot come within the land of
Canaan.2 1 J. H. Newman, Verses on Various Occasions. - Henry Smith.

MOUNT NEBO 285
2. But there are no trifles in God's thought. Long tales may
ordinarily be compressed into nutshells.
The massive gates of circumstance
Are turned about the smallest hinge.
So a trifling deviation from the right course of human life may
make all the difference between ultimate safe harbour and disaster
on the rocks. With such delicate balance is the universe con
structed. Some one says that if one of the stars were deflected a
quarter of an inch from its orbit the whole system of worlds would
rush to chaos. There are no trifles. When Moses departed from
God's rule at Meribah he was guilty of a blunder which the years
could not rectify.
Tf Some few years ago a certain merchant vessel drove on the
rocks. There was no adequate excuse, apparently. The night
was neither dark nor stormy. The commander was the most
experienced and trusted on the line. For a time the mystery
went unexplained. Then, in the binnacle, they found a bit of
steel, broken, obviously, from the knife of the man who had
cleaned the binnacle. The cleaner himself had scarcely missed
the fragment. Lying unobserved beneath the needle, that bit of
steel had as surely defeated the purpose of the compass as if it
had weighed a thousand pounds. It was not a quarter of an inch
in length, yet long enough to wreck a ship of more than three
hundred feet. The whole knife from which the fragment was
broken cost perhaps a half dollar, yet that tiny fragment caused
a loss of half a million.1
Tf Indifference to moral trifles is a source of danger. A little
matter may be fatal, if the strain of some terrible temptation
should come upon the weak spot. When the famous fight took
place between the Merrimac and the Monitor, and the Federal
forces in the American Civil War gained supremacy at sea, it
might easily have been a reverse instead of a victory. There
were some critical moments. Time was lost and risk invited by
a very small defect, not found out until the season of trial.
During the passage from New York, the engineer of the Monitor
had omitted to clean and oil properly the working gear of the
revolving turret. The plan was all right. Failure was in the
drudgery behind — in inattention to details. Salt water had
touched portions of the machinery, with the result that rust
appeared. As the action opened, the turret refused to move.
1 G. C. Peck, Old Sim im, New Clothes, 169.

286 MOSES
It was anxious work to repair the mischief. It is thus with
moral or intellectual negligence. The rust will come, and the
defect, and the peril. There are no trifles in morals. The grains
make the mountains of honour or reproach.1
3. It is but a single blot in the career of the prophet, and it
is but slightly touched by the sacred narrative. Still it was
thought sufficiently important for Josephus, after his manner, to
suppress all mention of it; and it just reveals that shade of
weakness in the character of Moses which adds so much to our
impression of its general strength.
TI Three of the principal rivers of Scotland rise from the same
hill-side. Only a very small space of ground separates the sources
of the Annan, tbe Tweed, and the Clyde from each other. At a
place called Wolf Clyde not far from the spot where the Clyde
begins to flow, a very strange thing may sometimes be seen. The
valley through which the stream of the Biggar runs, at this point
stretches between the Clyde and the Tweed ; and, as its level is
only a little higher than the bed of the Clyde, during a high flood
part of the water of the Clyde overflows its channel and runs
into the Biggar stream, and is carried by it into the Tweed.
This happens once, perhaps, in three or four years. And you can
understand how very easy it would be to send the Clyde to
Berwick instead of to Glasgow, to the German Ocean instead of
to the Atlantic, and so alter the whole character and history both
of the east and of the west of Scotland.
Now this is an apt illustration of what sometimes happens
in human life. You will have noticed that it is during a high
flood that some of the water of the Clyde overflows into the
channel of a stream that carries it away in a direction altogether
different from that of the river of which it had previously formed
a part. And so it is often during a high flood of passion that the
stream of human life is turned from its usual course, and made to
flow in an entirely opposite direction. A moment of anger, of
pride or unbelief, of strong temptation, may so swell the current
of life as to cause it to overflow its banks, and completely change
its whole future destiny.2
1 W. .T. Lacey, Masters of To-morrow, 86.
2 H. Macmillan, The Daisies of Nazareth, 204.

MOUNT NEBO 287
III.
Pisgah.
1. The end was at last come. It might still have seemed that
a triumphant close was in store for the aged prophet. " His eye
was not dim, nor his natural force abated." He had led his
people to victory against the Amorite kings; he might still be
expected to lead them over into the land of Canaan. But so it was
not to be. From the desert plains of Moab he went up to the
same lofty range whence Balaam had looked over the same
prospect. The same, but seen with eyes how different ! The view
of Balaam has long been forgotten ; but tbe view of Moses has
become the proverbial view of all time. It was the peak dedi
cated to Nebo on which he stood. " He lifted up his eyes west
ward, and northward, and southward, and eastward." Beneath
him lay the tents of Israel ready for the march ; and " over
against" them, distinctly visible in its grove of palm-trees, the
stately Jericho, key of the Land of Promise. Beyond was spread
out the whole range of the mountains of Palestine, in its fourfold
masses : " all Gilead," with Hermon and Lebanon in the east and
north ; the hills of Galilee, overhanging the Lake of Gennesareth ;
the wide opening where lay the plain of Esdraelon, the future
battle-field of the nations ; the rounded summits of Ebal and
Gerizim; and beyond them the dim haze of the distant sea;
immediately in front of him the hills of Judaea and, amidst them,
seen distinctly through the rents in their rocky walls, Bethlehem
on its narrow ridge, and the invincible fortress of Jebus.
A glorious spectacle, a magnificent prospect for any eyes, as
the very few — travellers and pilgrims — who have had the oppor
tunity of beholding it have with one consent declared. But what
a spectacle for him ! He saw the land, not merely in its natural
beauty, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of mountains
and brooks, a land which was the glory of all lands ; but he saw
it as the land which the Lord had given to Abraham, and Isaac,
and Jacob, and to their seed, to the end that, in spite of all the
sin and opposition of men, even of those who were the bearers of
His promises, He might there work out the eternal purposes of
His love ; that He might found there a fortress of true religion,

288 MOSES
where His worship should be maintained during the long and
weary ages in which all the rest of the world should be wholly
given to idolatry ; and from which, in due time, should go forth
the ambassadors of His grace, who should everywhere declare His
name, and plant the banners of the faith in every land.
And as he saw it, and understood, if not all, yet much of the
significance of that land for all the after-history of mankind, how
it should be indeed a Holy Land, for it should be once trodden by
the feet of One, a prophet like unto him, and greater than he,
for He should be Moses and Joshua in one, and far more than
either, far more than both ; as he saw this good land, may we not
believe that he was comforted for all, felt that it was glory enough
for a sinful man to have been used by God to bring His people
thus far, even to the verge and border of this land of inheritance ?
May we not be sure that with him was not merely a perfect
acquiescence in the will of God, so that he accepted that will
without murmuring or repining, but that he felt goodness and
mercy to have followed him from the first to the last, and that
no good thing had been withholden from him? Thus, looking
in that supreme hour before and after, looking back to all the
way by which the Lord had led him, to those three mysterious
forties into which his life had been divided, the forty years at the
court of Pharaoh, the forty years in the land of Midian, and
now the forty years in the wilderness ; and looking forward
to a land of inheritance, fairer, richer, brighter than even that
which he now saw but must never tread, the weary, much-
enduring man yielded his spirit to his God. God, as the Jewish
rabbis assure us, drew out that spirit with a kiss — they mean
ing by this to express their sense of the serene composure, the
painless peace of his departure.
And the Lord came, invisible as a thought,
Three angels gleaming on his secret track,
Prince Michael, Zagael, Gabriel, charged to guard
The soul-forsaken body as it fell
And bear it to the hidden sepulchre
Denied for ever to the search of man.
And the Voice said to Moses : " Close thine eyes."
He closed them. "Lay thine hand upon thine heart,
And draw thy feet together." He obeyed.

MOUNT NEBO 289
And the Lord said, " 0 spirit ! child of mine !
A hundred years and twenty thou hast dwelt
Within this tabernacle wrought of clay.
This is the end : Come forth and flee to heaven."
But the grieved soul with plaintive pleading cried,
" I love this body with a clinging love :
The courage fails me, Lord, to part from it."
" 0 child, come forth ! for thou shalt dwell with Me
About the immortal throne where seraphs joy
In growing vision and in growing love."
Yet hesitating, fluttering, like the bird
With young wing weak and dubious, the soul
Stayed. But behold ! upon the death-dewed lips
A kiss descended, pure, unspeakable —
The bodiless Love without embracing Love
That lingered in the body, drew it forth
With heavenly strength and carried it to heaven.1
2. One final honour was in store for Moses still. No human
hands bore the dead lawgiver and prophet to his grave, or com
posed him there. " He," that is, God, as we are told, " buried him
in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor : but no
man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day " ; he whom God
buried, according to all likelihood not seeing corruption, and his
grave unknown because probably he was raised from it as soon
as laid there; only just tasting the penalty of death and then
that penalty removed — as would all seem to be indicated and
implied by the apparition of Moses, with Elijah, in a glorified
body upon the Mount of Transfiguration. The same also seems
pointed at in an obscure passage in the Epistle of St. Jude,
where mention is made of the Archangel Michael on the one
side, and of Satan on the other, disputing about the body of
Moses; Satan contending that he, as a sinner, should pay to
the uttermost all the penalties of sin, death, and the return to
dust which goes along with death ; the Archangel Michael, the
great Prince who standeth for the children of his people, de
claring that for him one part of the penalty, not indeed the
essence of it, but this adjunct to it, was remitted.
1 George Eliot.
MOSES-S AMSON — 1 9

290 MOSES
We would fain know something of the details of that strange
and lonely death. But the narrative is silent. Where Scripture
is silent, however, tradition has, as usual, been busy in supply
ing the information that we crave. "Jewish, Muslim, and
Christian traditions crowd in to fill up the blank. ' Amidst the
tears of the people, the women beating their breasts, and the
children giving way to uncontrolled wailing, he withdrew. At a
certain point in his ascent he made a sign to the weeping multi
tude to advance no farther, taking with him only the elders, the
high priest Eleazar, and the general Joshua. At the top of the
mountain he dismissed the elders, and then, as he was embracing
Eleazer and Joshua, and still speaking to them, a cloud suddenly
stood over him, and he vanished in a deep valley.' So spoke the
tradition, as preserved in the language, here unusually pathetic,
of Josephus. Other stories told of the 'Ascension of Moses'
amidst the contention of good and evil spirits oyer his body."
But do we not feel that, after all, the simplicity and silence of
Scripture best befit the dignity, the awfulness of the event ? He
saw — he died — he was buried; and "no man knoweth of his
sepulchre unto this day."
" And no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." That
is the fitting crown to such a life ; for it leaves it of one piece.
There are people on whom the recognitions and distinctions do
not alight. There was no vainglory in his bfe, no shadow of
vainglory in his death. He led his people to the borders of the
Promised Land, " his eye not dim, nor his natural force abated " ;
he beheld it stretched before them for their occupation. He
made no claim, not even on remembrance, beyond the life-power
he had instilled into their hearts. Is it too trivial to cite in such
a context the epitaph which in gentler accents expresses at
least the mood in which he passed from earthly leadership ? —
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me,
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree.
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet,
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

MOUNT NEBO 291
Just for the greatest, that is the fitting end. Their life is
only in the hearts of men. For Aaron there was mourning
thirty days, and his tomb is to this day a place of pilgrimage.
But Socrates, Moses, Christ — they left behind them no written
word. Was not that a part of their spiritual greatness ? Was it
not a part, too, or an emblem, of their immortality, that they lay
down in no remembered grave ?
Tf There are consecrated graves where priest never stood,
where mourner never knelt, where tear never fell. There are
spots hallowed by your Father which to you are barren ground.
God's acre is larger than the churchyard. Out on yon bleak
hillside He wrapped your friend to rest in a mantle of spotless
snow. Is not that bleak hillside God's acre evermore ? Is it not
as holy to you as if you had brought sweet spices to the tomb ?
It has no chant but the winds, no book but the solemn silence,
no bell but some wild bird's note, no wreath but the wreath of
snow; yet there is no more sacred spot in all the diocese of
God.1 Tf There are a number of Scotsmen in the Hawaiian Islands,
many of them being managers of sugar plantations, engineers,
mechanics, or engaged in mercantile pursuits. The Scottish
Thistle Club of Honolulu sent a deputation to ask Stevenson if he
would favour the Club with a short talk or lecture on any
subject. He cordially consented to give a lecture, and it took
place in the hall of the Club. Stevenson, who gave a brilliant
and humorous talk on Scottish history, wound up by saying, " I
received a book the other day called The Stickit Minister, with a
dedication to myself, which affected me strangely, so that I
cannot read it without a gulp. It was addressed to me in the
third person, and bade me remember those places ' where, about
the graves of the Martyrs, the whaups are crying — his heart
remembers how.' Now when I think on my latter end, as I do
sometimes — especially of late years when it seems less imminent
— I feel that when I shall come to die out here among these
beautiful islands, I shall have lost something that had been my
due, my predestinate but forfeited grave among honest Scots sods ;
and I feel that I shall never quite attain to what Patrick Walker
calls, in one of those pathetic touches of which I have already
spoken, my 'resting grave,' unless it were to be in one of our
purple hillsides, under one of our old, quaint, and half-obliterated
table-tombstones slanting down the brae, and ' where, about the
1G. Matheson, Messages qf Hope, 51.

292 MOSES
graves of the Martyrs, the whaups are crying, my heart
remembers how.' " 1

rv.
The Worker and the Work.
1. "I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou
shalt not go over thither " — these words were, indeed, especially
and mysteriously applicable to him to whom they were thus
spoken. Nevertheless, the case of Moses, however striking, was
not exceptional. Eather it is true that to labour and not to see
the end of our labours, to sow and not to reap, to be removed
from this earthly scene before our work has been appreciated,
and when it will be carried on not by ourselves, but by others —
this is a law so common in the highest characters of history that
none can be said to be altogether exempt from its operation.
Tf Among those who may be called, by distinction, the
leaders of the world's secular history, we have an illustrious
example in the case of Columbus, the intrepid explorer who had
found the New World of the West, but who died almost broken
hearted, and with the chains of his shameful imprisonment still
hanging on the wall of his room, reminding how the jealousies of
king and courtiers, the base intrigues of covetous enemies, and
the calumnies of his own mutinous followers, had frustrated all
his plans and ruined all his hopes. For, not only to discover, but
to help to settle, and above all to bring the good tidings of Christ
to, those far-off lands — this had been his hope, his ambition.
And, indeed, an empire mightier and richer than he dreamt of,
and a Christianity ampler, purer, and more free — all this should
result, in the years to follow, from the achievement of his tireless
patience and undaunted bravery. But it was for him only to
open the way, not to enter in. He saw with his eyes, but might
not go over thither. So was it also with that intrepid English
man, one of the chief leaders of this world's spiritual history,
William Tyndale. Not long after the death of Columbus, dining
one day at tbe table of Sir John Walsh in Gloucestershire, and
rebuking the priests who were present because they neither knew
the Scriptures themselves nor were wilbng that others should
learn, he declared that, if God gave him life and strength, there
should come a time when every ploughboy in England should
1 J. A. Hammerton, Stevensoniana, 98.

MOUNT NEBO 293
know more of the Bible than they did. And right nobly he
fulfilled his vow ; for our English Bible of to-day, so familiar in
every home, is practically Tyndale's work. But he himself, when
his work was done, was strangled and burnt before the dream of
his life began to fulfil itself. He beheld, from afar, the Promised
Land, but he might not enter there.1
2. To speak of the lot of those who do not see the end of their
labours in terms which imply or suggest it to be the most tragic
and pathetic that can befall the sons of men is to forget the
dignity of all true and noble toil, and to sin at once against reason
and against faith.
(1) Against reason : for who does not feel that their fate is a
most happy one as compared with that of those who either have
no great work to do, or are incapable of doing it ; who have no fair
and large opportunity of serving their fellows, or who cannot rise
to it when it comes ? Who does not feel that, die when they will,
their life mounts to a triumphant close as compared with that of
reformers or statesmen, whose work is done, or is snatched away
from them, long before their life comes to a close, who outstay
their welcome, perhaps outlive their reputation, lag superfluous on
the stage, and at last sink into an unhonoured grave ?
(2) And if it be true — as surely it is true — that
The sun, the moon, the stars
Send no such light upon the ways of men
As one great deed;
if it be true of those who do such deeds that
Their examples reach a hand
Far thro' all years, and everywhere they meet
And kindle generous purpose, and the strength
To mould it into action pure as theirs,
it is plain that the great men taken from us, prematurely, as we
think, so far from having ceased from their labours, even in tbis
world, as we thoughtlessly assume, may be doing far more in and
for the world now that they have passed out of it than they did
while still in it. As, indeed, is demonstrably true of Moses. For
large and heroic as was the service he rendered to Israel, and
through Israel to the world, while he wore flesh about him, it was
1 T. F. Lockyer, The Inspirations of the Christian Life, 162.

294 MOSES
as nothing compared with the influence he is exerting on the
present generation. It is many centuries since he was buried in
the grave of which no man knew or knows ; and yet he is alive,
active, at work in and upon the world, to this day ; doing more
for men than ever, not only by the inspiration of his historic life
and example, but also by the direct and incalculable effects of his
legislation and teaching. His ten commandments are inscribed
in our very statute - books as well as on the walls of our
churches ; and his great words and deeds " shed light on the ways
of men " in all Muhammadan as well as in all Christian lands.
Tf At the time of the Eeformation there was a preacher at
Cambridge named Chaderton. One of his converts, Culverwell
by name, became a preacher in turn, and was the means of the
conversion of one John Winthrop, who afterwards became famous
as Governor Winthrop. Another of Chaderton's converts was
William Perkins, who also became a preacher. Two of his converts
were John Cotton, of Boston, and John Eobinson, the Pilgrim
Father. Now, Governor Winthrop, John Cotton, of Boston, and
John Eobinson, the Pilgrim Father, were among the chief of those
who laid the splendid Puritan foundations of the United States,
so that the great Christian commonwealth across the Atlantic is
largely the indirect fruit of the work of the Cambridge preacher
named Chaderton.1 1 B. J. Gibbon, The True Ritual, 29.

MOSES. XIV.
My Servant Moses.

Literature.
Budde, K., Religion of Israel to the Exile (1899), 1.
Danks, W., The Church on the Moor (1890), 86.
Driver, S. R, The Booh of Exodus (Cambridge Bible) (1911), xlix., lxix.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History of the Hebrews (1903), 70.
Harper, A., The Booh of Deuteronomy (Expositor's Bible) (1895), 474.
Harrison, W., Clovelly Sermons (1898), 49.
Jacob, L., in Jewish Addresses (1904), 203.
Kittel, R., The Scientific Study ofthe Old Testament (1910), 221.
McCurdy, J. F., History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, ii. (1896) 94.
Maurice, F. D., The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament (1892),
274.
Montefiore, C. Q., The Bible for Home Reading, i. (1896) 134.
Mozley, J. B., Sermons Parochial and Occasional (1879), 182.
Orelli, C. von, The Old Testament Prophecy (1885), 125.
Ottley, B. L., Aspects ofthe Old Testament (1897), 446.
„ „ The Religion of Israel (1905), 33.
Kendall, G. H., Charterhouse Sermons (1911), 24.
Vaughan, D. J., The Present Trial of Faith (1878), 209.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters : Adam to Achan (1896), 228.
Dictionary of the Bible, v. (1904) 584 (C. H. W. Johns).
Expositor, 3rd Ser., v. (1887) 38 (A. B. Davidson).
Expository Times, xix. (1908) 252 (W. J. Moulton).
Journal of Biblical Literature, xx. (1901) 101 (J. P. Peters).

29b

My Servant Moses.
My servant Moses ... is faithful in all mine house. — Num. xii. 7.
1. The general impression left on our minds by the life and char
acter of Moses, regarded as a whole, is unquestionably one of
extraordinary, almost solitary, grandeur, dignity and elevation.
Wordsworth's line describes it best: —
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.
There is not a single character in the Old Testament that will bear
comparison with it — for purity, for elevation, for power, for pathos.
There is only one character in the whole range of history that
overtops it ; and that is more than human — the character of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
TI The character of Moses is sketched, particularly in the
earlier narratives of J and E, with peculiar vividness and force.
He is represented not only as a man of deeply religious spirit, but
also as endowed, in a pre-eminent degree, with singleness of
aim, with nobility of mind, with dignity of demeanour, with un
wearied and self-sacrificing devotion for the welfare of his people,
and with that modesty of both word and demeanour which is
observable in all the best characters of Old Testament history,
and which was no doubt impressed upon them by the mellowing
influences of the religion of Yahweh.1
Tf Moses is incontestably the chief personage of the whole
history of the Exodus. In the narrative, the phrase is constantly
recurring : " The Lord spake unto Moses," " Moses spake unto the
children of Israel." In the traditions of the desert, whether late
or early, his name predominates over that of every one else : " The
Wells of Moses" (Ayun Musa) on the shores of the Eed Sea,
" The Mountain of Moses " (Jebel Musa) near the convent of
St. Catherine, " The Eavine of Moses " (Skuk Musa) at Mount St.
Catherine, " The Valley of Moses " (Wady Musa) at Petra. " The
Books of Moses " are so called (as afterwards the Books of Samuel),
1 S. R. Driver, The Book of Exodus, lxix.
"97

298 MOSES
in all probability from its being the chief subject of them. The
very word " Mosaic " has been in later times applied, in a sense
not used of any other saint of the Old Testament, to the whole
religion of which he was the expounder.1
Tf The debt owed to Moses by his fellow-countrymen can
hardly be over-estimated. Lawgiver and judge, physician and
priest, their leader in war and peace, where has there ever
been the monarch who could compare with this marvellously
gifted individual, founder of a religion, of a code, of a nation that
has victoriously withstood all perils, and outlived the mighty
empires by which it was overthrown and oppressed ? Caesar,
Charlemagne, and Haroun-al-Eashid, wise and powerful as they
may have been, must each yield the palm to Moses, for their work
has left no trace, the ideals to which they devoted their bves are
but an empty name, whilst the Hebrew, born in servitude, has left
his mark on the thought, the action, and the religion of the whole
Gentile world, and made of the wretched tribes, whom he led
forth out of bondage, a nation increasing daily in number and
in strength, wealthy beyond all others, and rapidly spreading over
the face of the earth.2
2. An epithet is applied to Moses in tbe Bible hardly con
sistent with the view that he was a great leader of men. He is
called " very meek " (Num. xii. 3), the word used being generally
applied in the Psalms to the poor and afflicted ones of the nation.
Yet this characteristic seems to have been one pf the secrets of
his success. Moses was able to endure the difficulties of his
position in silence, and the unreasonable and childish conduct of
the people never provoked him to abandon his task. He went on
steadily day by day attending to their interests, hearing their
disputes, doing justice between man and man, waiting patiently
for signs of improvement which seldom, if ever, manifested them
selves. Educated amid all the splendours of an Egyptian palace,
he devoted his life to the government of a half-civilized and un
disciplined horde, bearing with waywardness, folly, and ingrati
tude with unshaken constancy, and by his sublime endurance
winning from posterity the fame of having been the "most en
during of men."
By all accounts Moses did not begin by being a meek man.
1 A. P. Stanley, History ofthe Jewish Church, i. 119.
2 From Memory's Shrine : Reminiscences of Carmen Sylva, 70.

MY SERVANT MOSES 299
The truth is, no truly meek man ever does so begin. It is not
true meekness if it is found in any man at the beginning of his
life. It may be sloth, it may be softness, it may be easiness, it
may be indifference, it may be policy and calculation, it may be
insensibility of heart, it may be sluggishness of blood, but true
meekness it is not. True meekness it is not till it has been
planted and watered and pruned and purified and beaten upon
by every wind of God, and cut to pieces by every knife of God,
and all the time engrafted and seated deep in the meekness
and in the gentleness and in the humility of the Spirit of God
and the Son of God. It would be far nearer the truth to say that
Moses, to begin with, was the hastiest and the hottest and the
least meek and the least longsuffering of men. It was but a word
and a blow with young Moses. Thus it was that he had to pay
with forty years' banishment for his sudden spring upon that
Egyptian taskmaster, and for the life-long thanks of that delivered
slave. Tf Every one will admit that the record of the life of Moses
manifests a patience, meekness, and constancy, which is perhaps
the most wonderful ever displayed by a man. We are told,
indeed, of occasional outbursts of wrath that bore down all meek
ness ; and men have pointed to them as proofs that Moses was
not so wonderfully patient; but those very outbursts of anger
seem to be the strongest proofs of his patience. For there is a
kind of gentleness which belongs to men whose feelings are too
placid to be stirred by injustice, and who maintain a mild calm
ness even in the presence of flagrant wrong, — that gentleness was
not his, who, in his youth, fired at the sight of the oppression of
his people, struck down tbe oppressor at the peril of his own life.
There is an amiability of character which springs from the absence
of powerful feelings, and which is seldom disturbed — that was not
characteristic of him who, roused into fury at the people's mur-
murings, smote the rock in disobedience to his Lord. The nobler
meekness is that which comes forth victorious from the struggle
with strong emotion, and wins a glory from the passion it has
subdued. And thus, that very indication of an impetuous, fiery
nature in Moses only reveals the beauty of the meek patience
which marked his life. If you can conceive a man who had
hoped for forty years for the deliverance of his people, discovering
that they had been careless, faithless, and sensual, and yet silently
bearing their reproaches — a man with a passionate, impetuous
spirit, enduring their daily murmurings, and after giving way to

300 MOSES
anger, praying for their success, till, worn with emotion, his
strength gave way — a man enduring constant, ignorant, perverse
unthankfulness, in the hope of leading the people into their own
land, and then calmly surrendering that hope, and dying with it
unfulfilled, you can form some idea of the sublime meekness that
characterized the leadership of Moses.1
In seeking to estimate the character of Moses as the
historical narratives have made him bve before us, we may
consider him as (1) Leader, (2) Lawgiver, and (3) Prophet.

The Leader.
Thou leddest thy people like a flock,
By the hand of Moses and Aaron. — Ps. lxxvii. 20.
That the ancestors — or some of the ancestors — of the later
Israelites were for long settled in Egypt, and in the end subjected
there to hard bondage; that Moses was the leader who, after
much opposition on the part of the Pharaoh, rescued them from
their thraldom at a time when Egypt was paralysed by an
unprecedented succession of national calamities, and led them
through a part of the Eed Sea usually covered with water, beyond
reach of their recent oppressors ; that he brought them afterwards
to a mountain where Israel received through him a revelation which
was a new departure in the national religion, and became the
foundation both of the later religion of Israel and of Christianity ;
that he originated, or more probably adapted, customs and
institutions from which the later civil and religious organization
of the nation was developed ; and that thus Israel owed to Moses
both its national existence and, ultimately, its religious character
— these, and other facts such as these, cannot be called in question
by a reasonable criticism.
1. Had Moses the gifts of leadership ? We are certainly
impressed more by his silence and backwardness than by his
speech. But the truth is that for leadership, in any disinterested
1 E. L. Hull, Sermons, iii. 107.

MY SERVANT MOSES 301
cause, the outward gifts count for little compared with inward
strength. So far as your true motive is personal ambition and
display, take prudently the measure of your powers, and do not
overstep your actual capacities. " Nature sets its just premium
on reality." No eloquence or emphasis avails, if to those that
hear you the expression seems somehow rather larger than the
man. If you are called by the inner voice to some unselfish
enterprise and service, the scale of it, the risk, the weight of the
responsibility, the felt deficiency of gifts, need not hold you back,
if only you will bring to it the veracity, the generosity of spirit,
the trust in God, which gave to Moses power and place of leader
ship. " I am that Iam"; cling fast to the eternal and the true,
and you need fear no exposure of human weaknesses : they will
not bring you to discredit or to shame. And grudge not their gifts
to any. If others should outshine you in charm or brilliance or
power of inspiration, think not that they usurp your place, but
say with Moses, " Enviest thou for my sake ? would God that all
the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his
spirit upon them ! " You cannot covet influence too much. It is
among God's choicest gifts. To every young man who is face
to face with choice of his profession I would say, See that that
finds its place in your scales of choice. As you choose between the
law, medicine, the civil service, the army, the desk, the ministry,
the school, bethink you well which offers you the field of influence
most germane to your personal type. It is the thing most
precious, most praiseworthy, the thing which most abides before
the judgment-seat of God. But the longer you live and the more
experience ripens, the more you will reabze that it proceeds not
from gifts, but from sincerity of life, unselfishness of aim, and
fidelity to God. It is the least self-conscious of all powers. No
sense of shortcoming impairs it. Moses, as history proves,
possessed it in pre-eminent degree ; but Moses, I doubt not, was
to the last more conscious of failure than of success. " Meekest
of men " became his epithet, and therefore the most staunch, the
most enduring, the most impervious to defeat.1
Tf In reading the early letters of men of genius I can recall my
former self, full of an aspiration which had not learned how hard
the hills of life are to cbmb, but thought rather to alight down
1 G. H. Rendall, Charterhouse Sermons, 29.

302 MOSES
upon them from its winged vantage-ground. Whose fulfilment
has ever come nigh the glorious greatness of his yet never-balked
youth ? As we grow older, art becomes to us a definite faculty,
instead of a boundless sense of power. Then we felt the wings
burst from our shoulders ; they were a gift and a triumph, and a
bare flutter from twig to twig seemed aquiline to us; but now
our vans, though broader grown and stronger, are matters of every
day. We may reach our Promised Land ; but it is far behind us
in the Wilderness, in the early time of struggle, that we have our
Sinais and our personal talk with God in the bush.1
2. Notice other signs of leadership in Moses.
(1) He had a keen sense of wrong when witnessing the ill-
usage of others, an indignation against injustice, a warm
sympathy with the weak under the oppression of the strong. All
people profess this sympathy, but in some it is a feeling whieh
leads to action. It was such a feeling in Moses, as the very first
act of his which we read of shows — when he saw one of the
Israelites suffering wrong from an Egyptian, and avenged him
that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian. The Israelites
were a poor despised race in Egypt, and the Egyptians ill-treated
them. Moses saw one of these cases of ill-usage, and it roused
in him immediately this sympathy for the oppressed, and this
indignation against oppression. So again in Midian, when he fled
there, his first act was to stand up for the seven daughters of the
priest of Midian who came to water their flocks at the well, and
whom the violent and unmannerly shepherds drove away. They
went home and told their father : " An Egyptian delivered us out
of the hands of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us,
and watered the flock." This was the disposition of Moses, and
therefore God chose him to be the deliverer of the children of
Israel out of Egypt.
(2) At first rash and impulsive, Moses submitted to the Divine
chastisement and discipline so thoroughly that a real change was
produced in his character. This is a fact which arrests our
attention. A real change in the temper of any man is a
wonderful thing. We rarely see it, so rarely that we are some
times tempted to doubt whether there is such a thing.
People change particular habits ; they learn to control particular
1 Letters of Jwmes Russell Lowell, i. 154.

MY SERVANT MOSES 303
bodily appetites and passions; they may give up drinking or
gaming, or swearing; they may force themselves to do things
which they once neglected to do ; even if there is a deep fault at
the root of a man, such as pride, jealousy, meanness, we may often
see that fault disguised, moderated in its outward expression, and
made to look more plausible ; yet how seldom do we see a really
converted heart, a new-born man in the deepest and most vital
parts of the character ! The change in the disposition of Moses is
revealed in such genuine acts that it ranks with the other great
changes of heart in Scripture — the change in him who once would
have called down fire from heaven to consume those who opposed
themselves to the truth, and who afterwards became the preacher
of love; the change in him who was once Saul and afterwards
Paul. (3) His sympathy for the people is deeper, keener than
before. But now it is used to bear with them, plead for them,
and when necessary denounce and resist them. He is thus the
pattern of the good ruler, and stands in special contrast to the
selfish ruler of the world's type. The successful ruler of the
world's type is one who uses the weaknesses and the vices of
mankind for his own personal advantage and exaltation. He main
tains his own influence and position, not by curbing and restraining
the follies and humours of the people, but by skilfully yielding and
giving way to them ; he quotes and misappbes the proverb of the
oak and the sapling, one of which was uprooted by the storm
because in its strength it withstood it; the other survived the
storm because in its weakness it yielded to it. Thus by making
himself convenient to man's corrupt wishes, he keeps up his
place in the world ; he does not really care for the people's good,
but uses compliance with others only to secure the exaltation
of himself. Power is a selfish prize in his eyes. A good ruler,
on the other hand, cares for the good of the people, and for that
good will run the risk even of losing his own power. Moses, in
resisting the vices of his people, has set the pattern of such a
ruler. He did not maintain his power by giving way to them.
He resisted their sins, he rebuked them, he punished them,
while he loved them, and because he loved them.
TI It so happens that Moses has been interpreted to us by one
of deeper insight than any critic or commentator, by a spirit as

304 MOSES
great and lofty as his own; and, above all, by one whose life,
like that of Moses, was made bitter by the treachery, stupidity,
and sensuality of a generation among whom he towered up, a soul
too great not to be misunderstood. Four hundred years ago there
lived a man, sculptor, painter, poet, to whom God gave a mighty
genius for art. His name we know as Michelangelo ; and Michel
angelo, in his divinest inspiration, sculptured the face and figure
of Moses. '' If among all the masterpieces of ancient and modern
statuary there is one that stands forth without a parallel, the
most impressive figure ever sculptured in stone or bronze, it is
the statue of Moses by Michelangelo." And how does Michelangelo
interpret the meekest of all the men that were upon the face of
the earth ? To say that the face of the sculptured Moses is
strong, wise, majestic, is to fall short of the truth. It is almost
terrible in its greatness and loftiness. The lines of care, and
sorrow, and disappointment are deep in it ; and yet they are lost
and forgotten in the unconquerable power and wisdom of it. It
is the face of a man who might move among his fellows as a kind
of god. But according to the old Latin proverb, "The gods
themselves are vanquished by stupidity " ; and so the artist has
left on the face of the Lawgiver, the shadow of that life-long
struggle with the perverseness, the ignorance, and the degradation
of the race of slaves whom he made into a nation.1
When I do think on thee, sweet Hope, and how
Thou followest on our steps, a coaxing child
Oft chidden hence, yet quickly reconciled,
Still turning on us a glad, beaming brow,
And red, ripe lips for Kisses; even now
Thou mindest me of him, the Euler mild,
Who led God's chosen people through the wild,
And bore with wayward murmurers, meek as thou
That bringest waters from the Eock, with bread
Of angels strewing Earth for us ! like him
Thy force abates not, nor thine eye grows dim ;
But still with milk and honey-droppings fed,
Thou leadest to the Promised Country fair,
Though thou, like Moses, may'st not enter there ! 2
1 W. Danks, The Church on the Moor, 87. a Dora Greenwell.

MY SERVANT MOSES 305
II.
The Lawgiver.
The law was given by Moses. — John i. 17.
1. That "the law was given by Moses" is the universal
tradition of the Jewish Church. To what extent does modern
scholarship confirm the truth of the tradition ?
(1) It may fairly be questioned, says Ottley, whether the
Decalogue in its present form can be ascribed to Moses. In the
first place, what appears to be an older and widely different
version of the "ten words" is found in the Book of Exodus
(xxxiv. 14-26) ; secondly, the Decalogue in its present form
seems to be influenced by the teaching of the eighth-century
prophets. It is also urged that an exclusively moral code is not
consistent with the predominantly ritualistic character of early
religions. Other arguments have been adduced which it is
needless to consider in detail. The facts as they stand are
perplexing, and justify a suspension of judgment. It is reasonable
to suppose that the Decalogue in its present form bears traces of
expansion in prophetic times ; at the same time it lays down
principles of morality which are so elementary as to be strictly
consistent with what we know of the condition of Israel in
Mosaic times. It is difficult to see what other precepts could
have been better adapted to lift the Hebrews above the degraded
nature-religion of their heathen neighbours, to teach them the
true character of their Divine Deliverer, and to educate them in
the rudiments of social justice and humanity. In short, the " ten
words " as we have them in the Pentateuch may be a later
prophetic summary of the great moral ideas contained in the
religion of Moses ; but there is every reason to suppose that in a
brief and easily remembered form the primary moral precepts
of the Decalogue constituted from the first the foundation of
Israel's national development. It is indeed impossible otherwise
to account for the vitality and vigour which gave to the Hebrews
their physical and moral superiority over the inhabitants of
Canaan. The Decalogue has in fact intrinsic credibility as a
Mosaic utterance, and we may reasonably accept it as an
MOSES-SAMSON — 2 0

306 MOSES
authentic monument — at least in its main substance — of the
period to which Hebrew tradition assigns it.
Tj While many of the enactments of the Book of the Covenant
served but a temporary purpose, and passed away with the
religion of Judaism, the Decalogue has been retained unchanged
in the Christian Church. The Divinity of its origin and the
excellency of its contents still give it a foremost place in the
theology of every Christian community. There is nothing in it
that is not valid for mankind. It is a universal code of morals.
No compend of morality among ethnic rebgions can be compared
with it. The ethical systems of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of
Buddha, of the Greek morabsts, are far behind it as a summary
of human duty. All will admit that the Decalogue is cast in an
archaic mould ; and the negative form in which its commandments
are addressed is in keeping with its primitive character. In the
infantile bfe of a nation, as in child life, the early part of its
moral training must always consist of concrete precepts, expressed
in a prohibitory form. In the first portion of a child's life it has
to be kept from harm by continual prohibitions ; and the formation
at that early stage of the habit of obedience to these simple
prohibitory commands is essential to moral well-being. Thus it
is thoroughly consistent with the youthful stage of the Beni- Israel,
a horde of slaves newly enfranchised and little better than
children, that this fundamental code of moral and religious duty
should be one not of principles but of plain precepts. Children
do not understand principles : they must at first receive simple,
concrete directions as to what they shall do and not do. Truth
must be accommodated to the measure of their mind ; and while
they cannot comprehend the principles that be at the basis of
property, they understand the command " Do not steal." The first
stage of moral education will be full of restrictions. And the
form of the Decalogue is in keeping with the stage of Israel's
progress in morality.1
(2) Again, some forms of worship were doubtless observed
in the wilderness, though it is impossible to point to any details
of cultus prescribed by Moses himself. Some traditional usages
seem to have been retained or regulated by the lawgiver. There
certainly existed a primitive sanctuary, or "tent of meeting,"
designed to serve as the seat of the sacred oracle and as a shelter
for the ark. In form this structure would resemble the ordinary
shepherd's tent, having its outer and inner compartment, and
1 W. S. Bruce, The Ethics qfthe Old Testament, 85.

MY SERVANT MOSES 307
standing in an enclosed court. The tent of meeting seems in
Mosaic times to have been pitched outside the camp (Exod. xxxiii.
7 ; Num. xi. 26, xii. 4), and not, as was assumed in post-exilic
times, at its centre. Sacrifices of some kind must have been offered
during the wanderings, but we can only conjecture what their
exact significance may have been. According to the primitive
Semitic idea, sacrifice was the means of renewing or maintaining
the bond which united the people to their god ; and a ceremony
like that described in connexion with the ratification of the
covenant (Exod. xxiv.) would probably be repeated on special
occasions, e.g., before the tribes engaged in battle with their
enemies. If Moses instituted a regular priesthood, possibly
recruited from members of his own tribe (Levi), it is unlikely that
its main function was that of sacrifice. The " holy '' persons of
Semitic antiquity were attached to the sanctuary and were its
recognized guardians, but they were employed chiefly in consulting
the oracle touching matters of difficulty. To the priesthood
would naturally fall the task of continuing the work of Moses, i.e.,
imparting torah to those who asked for guidance, and giving
judicial sentences {toroth) in matters of dispute. Thus a traditional
and authoritative torah would gradually be formed, and there
would be a tendency for the priesthood to become hereditary in
certain families. The means by which Jehovah's will was ascertained
was usually the casting of the sacred lot, and it is easy to under
stand how rapidly the priesthood would acquire a powerful influence
over the mass of the people. The original torah given by Moses,
and after his time by the priesthood, was oral; and the name
"En-mishpat" ("well of judgment") at Kadesh, which was for
a long period the religious centre of the tribes, indicates that the
sanctuary was invariably the seat of justice, as well as the place
of worship. TI Even on Wellhausen's own admissions, it may be urged
that the Levitical Law, as we have it now, is but the codified
form of the Torahs given by Moses. For that critic makes the
Jews go from Egypt to Kadesh, as " the original object of their
wanderings," and there spend " the forty years of their wanderings
in the wilderness." " The legislation at the seat of judgment at
Kadesh," he proceeds to say, " goes on for forty years, and consists
in tbe dispensation of justice at the sanctuary, which he begins,

J

08 MOSES

and the priests and judges carry on after him according to the
pattern he set. And in this way the Torah has its place in the
historical narrative, not in virtue of its matter as the contents of
a code, but from its form as constituting the professional activity
of Moses. It is in history not as a result, as the sum of the laws
and usages binding on Israel, but as a process." From this point
of view Moses was the author of the Customary Law of Israel,
which assumes a codified form in the Pentateuch, and the Law
thus codified may not improperly be called the Law of Moses, as
tradition has taught us to call it.1
2. If we seek to know to what extent the Mosaic legislation
is original, we need go no further than the Code of Hammurabi.
Dr. C. H. W. Johns, in a very full examination of the Code of
Hammurabi and its relation to the Mosaic legislation, in Hastings'
Dictionary of the Bible, v. 611, sums up in these words: "We
may say that the Israelite legislation shows strong traces of
Babylonian influence, and yet not destroy the independence of its
origin. We cannot suppose that the author of any code set to
work to draw up a comprehensive scheme of law. Each built
upon the already prevailing custom. His attention would be
directed chiefly to what was not matter of uniform treatment.
The most characteristically Babylonian things in the current
custom of the day in Israel may be just those which are not
legislated for. The new legislation did not require to touch what
was so firmly established. Other things of Babylonian origin
may have been abrogated by the new laws — it would not be
necessary to say what they had been, but merely by stating the
new law to say they should be no longer. That any Israelite
code shows marked differences from the Code of Hammurabi is
enough to show an independent origin. The absence of any
difference would show complete dependence. The co- existing
likenesses and differences argue for an independent recension of
ancient custom deeply influenced by Babylonian law. The actual
Code of Hammurabi is a witness to what influence might
accomplish. It cannot be held to be a creative source. The Code
may only be itself a proof of the same influences. These may be
called Semitic in preference to Babylonian. But that view calls
for overwhelming proof that there was any source of civilization
1 W. F. Cohb, Origines Judaicas, 268.

MY SERVANT MOSES 309
powerful enough to have this influence on both Israel and
Babylonia. The presumption that Babylonia had a prominent
influence on Palestine long before Israelite codes were drawn up
is one that grows stronger as time goes on."

III.
The Prophet.
And there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom
the Lord knew face to face. — Deut. xxxiv. io.
1. To say that the history of Israel is a history of her prophets
is to say that it is a history in which the moving and significant
agent is Jehovah, whose mouthpiece and repiesentative the
prophets were : " Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but ho
revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets: the Lord
God hath spoken, who can but prophesy ? " (Amos iii. 7) ; in other
words, it is a history of revelation, for revelation implies that to
certain individuals, and not immediately to the people at large,
God makes Himself and His will known. The prophet is a man
who, for clearness of insight, and purity of purpose, and know
ledge of God, stands above the mass of his compatriots : and so,
if Moses was a prophet, this is what we should expect him to be.
And in the representations which we have of him, these are the
qualities which we find. The writers to whom we owe his
biography pictured him as a prophet, and described him
accordingly. He speaks in Jehovah's name to Pharaoh ; he uses
the prophetic expressions, "Thus saith Jehovah," etc.; he leads
Israel out of Egypt under a sense of God's directing band ; he
hears inwardly God's words, and sees on Sinai manifestations of
His presence; specifically prophetic teaching is communicated
through him, or put into his mouth (Exod. iv. 22, vi. 7 (P), xv.
26, xix. 5-6, xxxiii. 19, xxxiv. 6-7, and elsewhere : Deut. passim) ;
Jehovah is even represented as holding converse with him not by
a vision or a dream, as with an ordinary prophet, but with some
special and distinctive clearness (Num. xii. 6, 8), " as a man
speaketh unto his friend" (Exod. xxxiii. 11 ; cf. Deut. xxxiv. 10).
Hosea, writing c. 740 B.C., expressly styles him a prophet (xii. 13).

310 MOSES
2. In word and deed Moses showed himself an instrument of
the Lord, unapproached by any other. He was the prophet
without rival in respect of his intercourse with God and of what
the Lord did and revealed by him. Of Moses it is said more
frequently than of all other prophets together : " God talked with
him," or " God spake to him." He is not only called " Servant of
the Lord " — and, indeed, most frequently of all the men of God in
the Old Testament, — " Servant of God," a designation used of him
exclusively ; but he is also called the greatest among the prophets
on account of the intimacy and familiarity of the intercourse he
enjoyed with God, and on account of the clear directness which in
consequence distinguished the revelation given to him. Moreover,
his mission consisted, not merely in being a channel of the Divine
word, but in a unique, creative work — it was Moses who, through
the Divine word, introduced the Divine rule in Israel.
Tf Popularly, Moses is known as the lawgiver. But, though
be is called so by the Jews themselves, they never mean to imply
that he was the fons et origo of the legislation to which his name
is attached. There is no doubt that his Egyptian education
specially prepared him for being the inspired medium of the
Divine revelation. But it was not out of the resources of bis own
mind that the legislative code sprang. He was but a irpo^rm,
a spokesman for God. And it was not as a legislator like Solon
or Justinian that he was said to have given the Law to Israel.
Moses himself originated nothing. He was but the pen in the
hand of the Almighty, communicating what he had already
received.1 3. Although, as already stated, it may not be possible to point
to any special details of the cultus which can be certainly ascribed
to Moses, there is no doubt that in two important points he laid
the foundations of Israel's religious development.
(1) In the first place he grasped for himself, and taught his
fellow-tribesmen, tbe true significance of the events connected
with the departure of the tribes from Egypt. He understood the
bearing of these events on the character of Jehovah: His
"holiness" or separateness from nature, His power, His willingness
to redeem. In tbe great deliverance was involved a revelation
which was necessarily the starting-point of a higher religion.
Accordingly the central principle of his system was devotion to
1 W. S. Bruce, The Ethics of the Old Testament, li.

MY SERVANT MOSES 311
Jehovah as a gracious Being who had mercifully intervened to
deliver an enslaved people from bondage; who had manifested
His lordship over nature and His superiority to the deities of the
heathen; who had adopted Israel and brought it into a filial
relation to Himself. The loosely organized tribes were in fact
welded into a nation by their common relationship to their
Deliverer ; and it has been justly remarked that this adhesion of
a group of tribes to a single deity marked a step in advance from
mere "henotheism" or "monolatry" towards monotheism. But
it is even more important to notice that in the Mosaic conception
of Jehovah lay "the promise and potency," not of mere
monotheism, but of the ethical monotheism of the great prophets
of the eighth century. For Jehovah revealed Himself in the
events of the Exodus as the God, not of a particular territory, but
of a people. Throughout the wanderings He walked with them
in a tent and in a tabernacle. He led them onwards through the
toils of their pilgrimage and brought them into the Land of
Promise. He manifested in deeds His hatred of oppression and
injustice, His longsuffering, His compassion, His readiness to
forgive, His sustaining power and grace. Thus by kindling and
keeping abve Israel's faith in its deliverer, Moses gave the tribes
a rallying-point and a bond of union which could never be
altogether lost to view.
(2) In the second place Moses taught the supreme importance
in religion of righteous conduct. The deliverance from Egypt
formed the basis of a covenant between Jehovah and the ransomed
people. The Hebrews became servants of Jehovah. Eedeemed by
Him they were henceforth bound to His service. At the very
outset they were subjected to an elementary moral code, and were
reminded that a special character was the condition of covenant-
fellowship with Jehovah. The Moral Law was seen to be the
supreme tie between God and man ; the foundation was securely
laid upon which future legislation could be built up, and the great
ethical principles were enunciated which the prophets afterwards
developed. In this ethical basis of Mosaism lies its claim to be
an important factor in the development of a universal religion.
What was of permanent significance in Mosaism was the
paramount place of the Moral Law. By placing the ten
commandments in its forefront it made good its claim to be

312 MOSES
an everlasting covenant; it taught and laid down the moral
conditions of religious character, not only for its own time, but
for all time. It was a step in religious history of which we can
even now but imperfectly measure the greatness.
Tf Hebraism has its faults and dangers ; still, the intense and
convinced energy with which the Hebrew, both of the Old and of
the New Testament, threw himself upon his ideal of righteousness,
and which inspired the incomparable definition of the great
Christian virtue, faith, — the substantiation of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen, — this energy of devotion to its ideal
has belonged to Hebraism alone. As our idea of perfection
widens beyond the narrow limits to which the over-rigour of
Hebraising has tended to confine it, we shall yet come again to
Hebraism for that devout energy in embracing our ideal which
alone can give to man the happiness of doing what he knows.
" If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." — The last
word for infirm humanity will always be that. For this word,
reiterated with a power now sublime, now affecting, but always
admirable, our race will, as long as the world lasts, return to
Hebraism ; and the Bible, which preaches this word, will for ever
remain, as Goethe called it, not only a national book, but the
Book of the Nations.1
4. Let us sum up the character and life of Moses in the words
of another grand and ardent soul, subdued, like his own, by the
marvellous dealings with him of the Highest : — " This Moses,
humble in refusing so great a service ; resigned in undertaking,
faithful in discharging, unwearied in fulfilling it; vigilant in
governing his people ; resolute in correcting them, ardent in loving
them, and patient in bearing with them ; the intercessor for them
with the God whom they provoked — this Moses — such and so
great a man — we love, we admire, and, so far as may be, imitate.2
1 Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy.
2 Augustine, Contra Faustum, viii. 162.

AARON.

Literature.
Addis, W. E., in Encyclopaedia Biblica, i. (1899) 1.
Barry, A., in Smith's Dictionary ofthe Bible, i. (1863, 1893) 1.
Biggs, C. K. D., in Murray's Illustrated Bible Dictionary (1908), 1.
Brooke, H., Studies in Leviticus (1901), 33.
Brooks, P., Sermons Preached in English Churches (1883), 43.
Carrier, A. S., in A Standard Bible Dictionary (1909), 1.
Fairbairn, P., in The Imperial Bible-Dictionary, i. (1888) 6.
Gray, Q. B., Numbers (International Critical Commentary) (1903), 214,
270.
Lewis, H. E., in Men ofthe Old Testament : Cain to David (1904), 145.
Liddon, H. P., Sermons on the Old Testament (1891), 51.
Matheson, G., The Representative Men of the Bible, ii. (1903) 85.
Paget, E. C, Silence (1896), 22.
Pierce, C. C, The Hunger ofthe Heart for Faith (1908), 193.
Rainsford, M., The Tabernacle in the Wilderness (1897), 63.
Souvay, C. L., in The Catholic Encyclopaedia, i. (1907) 3.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters : Adam to Achan (1896), 205.
Williams, I., The Characters ofthe Old Testament (1870), 90.
Dictionary of the Bible, i. (1898) 2 (H. A. White).
Dictionary of the Bible (Single-volume, 1909), 1 (A. H. McNeile).
Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (1906), 1 (W. T. Davison).
Expository Times, xvi. (1905) 140 (A. H. Sayce).
Jewish Quarterly Review, i. (1902) 2 (J. F. McCurdy), 3 (K. Kohler).

AARON.
Is there not Aaron thy brother the Levite ? I know that he can speak
well.— Exod. iv. 14.
Theki can be no doubt as to the prominence of Aaron's career.
In the great work of leading the children of Israel out of Egypt
to the confines of the Promised Land, Aaron is second only to
Moses. Although the younger man, Moses, in virtue of Divine
appointment as well as of personal character, was the leader.
He was even, as St. Paul tells the Galatians, a mediator between
God and His people ; he approached God on their behalf, and he
conveyed to them God's revealed mind. But Aaron was the
elder brother ; and if in this case, as in that of tbe first Napoleon,
the personal endowments and achievements of a younger man
entirely reversed, even in the eye of mankind, the prestige
attaching to earlier birth, there were still certain respects in which
Aaron took the lead.
The two outward signs of his leadership were his power of
oratory and his priesthood, and we may conveniently study his
life under these two headings : —
I. Aaron the Prophet.
II. Aaron the Priest.

The Peophet.
I know that he can speak well.— Exod. iv. 14.
And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people : and it shall come to
pass, that he shall be to thee a mouth, and thou shalt be to him as God.
— Exod. iv. 16.
And Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.— Exod. vii. I.
1. In ancient times the office of a priest and that of a
preacher were known to be entirely distinct. The firstborn in

316 AARON
every family was of course the priest in that family, by virtue of
his primogeniture. But that gave him no right to be a preacher,
or (in Scriptural language) a prophet. This office not infrequently
belonged to the youngest branch of the family. For in this respect
God always asserted His right to send by whom He would send.
The eldest of the family was the priest, but any other might be
the prophet. In the time of Moses, we are told, a very consider
able change was made with regard to the priesthood. God then
appointed that, instead of the firstborn in every house, a whole
tribe should be dedicated to Him ; and that all who afterwards
ministered unto Him as priests should be of that tribe. Thus
Aaron was of the tribe of Levi. Not many of the Levites were
prophets, and if any were, it was a mere accidental thing. They
were not such as being of that tribe.
2. God's own witnessing begins the history of Aaron : " I
know that he can speak well." The words are not only Aaron's
credentials ; they argue also the place of eloquence in the Divine
economy. Aaron, we are told, could speak well, while Moses was
slow of speech. Thus Aaron was providentially appointed to be
a spokesman for his brother — his prophet, his interpreter ; literally,
his mouthpiece. If Moses furnished the ideas and plans of action,
Aaron clothed them in the language which would explain and re
commend them. If Moses was the receiver of God's revelations, he
made them known to others through his more eloquent brother. It
was Aaron who spoke during the interviews with Pharaoh ; it was
Aaron who generally addressed the Israelites ; Aaron was, indeed,
the immediate worker of many of the miracles which preceded
the Exodus. A striking illustration of Aaron's relation to Moses
occurs during the critical battle with the Amalekites, when Aaron
and Hur supported the weary hands of Moses as they were lifted
up to procure the victory of Israel. It may happen that those
who cannot themselves lead may be strictly indispensable to
those who can. If Aaron could never have taken the place of
Moses, Moses could not have been what he was without the
sympathy and support of Aaron. If Moses ranks before Aaron,
Aaron can never be dissociated from Moses : Aaron shares with
Moses, though as a subordinate, the glory of having ruled and
shaped the course and conduct of his countrymen at a time of un-

AARON 317
exampled difficulty, pregnant with the highest consequences to
the religious future of the world. Samuel, when solemnly re
viewing the history of his people, places them thus side by side.
" It is the Lord," he says, " that advanced Moses and Aaron."
" Thou leddest thy people," sings a later Psalmist, " like a flock
by the hand of Moses and Aaron."
Tf We are not all the men of Moses-bke genius and originality
we might like to be. We are not all epoch-making, history-
making, nation-making men. But we are what we are. We are
what God has made us to be ; and Moses himself is no more. And
Moses may be as glad to meet me in my teachableness and in my
love and in my reverence as I am to meet him in his magnificent
supremacy and high solitariness of gift and of office.1
Tf That we are what we are brings obligation to be just that
to others. The poet and the philosopher need each other, and
each must hamper the other into some semblance of practicalness.
The enthusiast finds not only his antithesis, but also his comple
ment, in the phlegmatic person, and the good of society brings
them together, one to keep the other from saibng off on wild
vagaries and bving on the film of day dreams, and he, in turn, to
save the other from the curse of petrifaction and a failure to see
the beauties of God's Universe. The singer lifts his brother from
the shrieks and smells of a distracting mart, and leaves him some
sweet strains to lighten toil as he plods along his more prosaic
path, but the tradesman is needed to " pay the piper." The multi
tude may need the orator to voice the thoughts and feelings
which they have had but could not utter, but the orator needs the
flashing eyes and ears attent, to magnetize him and loose the
torrent of his speech. Temerity and timidity, antipodes are they,
and yet complements. For the timid man may hold his fool
hardy brother back from rash and ruthless sacrifice — from
martyrdom when martyrs are not needed — and the daring man
may impart to his more fearful fellow such measure of his own
spirit as will make of him a martyr when martyrdom is the price
of righteousness and honour. The Calvinistic temperament needs
its Arminian or Methodistic complement, and it will not hurt
them at all to be in the same church, as we have them ; for one
will keep the other from despairing and doubt, and will be kept at
work by him in spiritual exercise. The Eituabst will keep tbe Low
Churchman from any tendency to slovenliness and disorder, and
will be saved by him from a dead and unspiritual ceremonialism.2
1 A. Whyte. 2 0. C. Pierce, The Hunger ofthe Heart for Faith, 198.

318 AARON
3. Aaron was the mouthpiece of Moses, but Moses was to
Aaron as God. Here we have the second great point in Aaron's
character. He was indeed indispensable to Moses, but Moses was
still more indispensable to him. This has often been regarded
as a grave fault in Aaron's character ; but dependence on others
is in itself no crime. Without Moses Aaron would probably never
have been heard of, and he was quite justified in leaning to
a certain extent on his stronger brother, if by that means he could
complete his own life.
TJ A common man and a man of no gifts may be set in a place,
and may have a calling of God that he cannot escape — a place
and a calling which demand constant speaking and constant teach
ing at his bands — a minister, for instance. He may not be a great
scholar or a great thinker himself, but he is set over those who are
still less scholars, and who think still less. Now, what is such a
man to do ? What, but just to take Moses instead of God. What,
but just to find out those great divines and other great authors
who have been so immediately and richly gifted of God, and to
bve with them, and work with them, and make them his own, just
as if God had given him all the great gifts He has given them. If
I am a man of no learning and no originality, then I know men,
both bving and dead, who are ; and they are all that, of God and
under God, for me. And, if I had to travel barefoot to Horeb for
them, if I had to sell my bed for them, at any cost I would have
them. I would take no rest till I had found them, and then,
as God said of Aaron, I would be glad when I saw them, and I
would kiss them, and claim them as my own.1
4. Aaron's dependence on Moses, however, was so great that
he tended to become a mere cypher ; he had grown so accustomed
to speaking for Moses that he had gradually lost the power of
speaking for himself or of thinking for himself. He had every
quabty fitted for a great leader but one — tenacity of purpose. He
was eloquent, shrewd, persuasive, pleasing in manner and address,
endowed with the gifts that win popularity ; but he was vacillat
ing. He was perfectly sincere ; he spoke the genuine sentiment
which he entertained at the moment. But there was no Guarantee
that he would retain this sentiment at the end of the hour.
TJ The Bible's test of strength is tenacity of will. To be im
movable like the great mountains, to be steadfast as the solid rocks,
1 A. Whyte.

AARON 319
is ever its deepest aspiration. The things of nature which it
admires are the things which it can think of as tenacious. The
tree whose leaf " shall not wither," the city which " shall never be
moved," the sun that " shall no more go down," the well of water
"springing up eternally," the rainbow which shall be a sign
" while the earth remaineth " — these are among its fondest fancies.
And all these are to the Bible but the symbols of a deeper tenacity
stiU — the endurance of a human heart, the steadfastness of a
human purpose.1
(1) Aaron's weakness appeared especially on the occasion of the
general apostasy, which took place during the absence of Moses
on the mount, and when the people prevailed on Aaron to make
for them a molten image. The older Jewish writers have laboured
hard to vindicate Aaron from the charge of idolatry on this un
happy occasion. He yielded, some of them have alleged, to the
people's wishes in the matter only that he might prevent their
perpetrating the greater crime of laying violent hands on himself,
should he resist their importunate demands ; others, that he
might protract the business till Moses should return and arrest
its execution ; and others still, that he might render the apostasy
less complete, by proclaiming a festival to Jehovah, under the
symbol of the calf, not to the calf itself. But we find no such
palliations of his conduct in Scripture. With its wonted and
stern impartiality it represents him as having contributed to bring
a great sin upon the people, and made them naked to their shame
before their enemies. Moses even speaks of having made his sin
the subject of special intercession, as being one of peculiar aggrava
tion. It was not, however, that Aaron prompted, or in any proper
respect headed, the apostasy ; it was only that he showed himself
too facile in giving way to the evil, instead of using the authority
and influence he possessed to withstand it.
(2) Such, too,. appears to have been the part he acted on the
next occasion of backsliding, when, along with Miriam, he yielded
to a spirit of envy against Moses, and reproached him, both for
having married an Ethiopian woman and for assuming too much
authority. Miriam was plainly the ringleader in this more private
outbreak, since she is mentioned first, and on her, too, as the more
guilty one, the special judgment of Heaven comes down.
(3) The only other occasion on which Aaron is charged with
1 G. Matheson.

320 AARON
open transgression was at that fearful tumult which arose in the
desert of Sin, on account of the want of water, and which overcame
even the stronger faith and more patient endurance of Moses. It
betrayed a failure, if not in the principle of faith, at least in its
calm and persistent exercise. And, happening as it did at a com
paratively late period in the wilderness sojourn, and too palpably
indicating an imperfect sanctification in the two leaders, they were,
partly on their own account, and partly as a solemn lesson to
others, alike adjudged to die, without being permitted to enter the
Promised Land.
TI What profound knowledge of human nature, what psycho
logical intuition had Moses, who dared to let four generations of
his weakened and demoralized followers perish, and merely serve
as stepping-stones to the one destined to enter the Land of
Promise and to settle down there in peace and plenty. What in
domitable strength of purpose, what iron resolution must the man
have possessed, who could wait thus calmly for results ! Well
might he feel that he had power to bid water flow from the
barren rock, nay more, that in his righteous indignation he was
justified in breaking the Tables of the Law, which he had just
received, since it lay with him to inscribe them again. The light
that flashed from his eyes was of more than mortal brilliancy; it
was the sacred fire of enthusiasm, the glory that might illumine
his face alone who knew himself to be in direct communication
with the Deity. And well and wisely has that kindred soul,
Italy's greatest sculptor, portrayed him thus, with the aureole of
genius and titanic strength encircling his brow. Across the
centuries these two, mystically allied by their superhuman
energies and achievements, have met and understood one another,
and the real Moses stands forever revealed to us in the form and
features lent him here. It is strength in its highest manifestation
which Michelangelo has symbolized, and we feel ourselves in
presence of something that transcends our puny human faculties,
— that springs from Faith, unswerving and unshaken.1
1 From Memory's Shrine : Reminiscences of Carmen Sylva, 74.

AARON 321

II.
The Peiest.
And bring thou near unto thee Aaron thy brother . . . that he may
minister unto me in the priest's office. — Exod. xxviii. 1.
Aaron the saint of the Lord. — Ps. cvi. 16.
He is called of God, even as was Aaron.— Heb. v. 4.
Aaron's place in religious history is more distinctly measured,
if we consider the great office to which he was called. He was
the first of a long line of men who were at the head of what was
for ages the only true religion in tbe world. He was the first of
the high priests of the chosen people. That he was to be con
secrated to this new office, and how he was to be consecrated, was
a matter of special revelation to Moses ; and in this Aaron illus
trates the principle, which is as applicable to Christian as to
Jewish times, that, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews
says, " no man taketh the honour unto himself, but when he is
called of God, even as was Aaron." Moses, indeed, inaugurated
him ; but in this Moses acted, not as the civil ruler of Israel, but
as a mediator between God and His people, as the immediate
organ of God's revelation of His will ; so that in the view of later
Israel, Moses as well as Aaron was among His priests, just as
Samuel was among those that call upon His Name. If Aaron's
consecration was of itself calculated to awe the mind of Israel, it
was followed by high sanctions of his office which would have
done so still more. His own sons, Nadab and Abihu, died for
offering strange fire on the altar; and Korah's ambitious and
selfish rebelbon against his authority was visited with swift and
unsparing punishment. No high priest in later days could
occupy so great a place as did he who was the first of all ; and
when Aaron died, Israel, during the thirty days of mourning,
must have felt that the greatest of Israelites but one had been
withdrawn from sight.
1. Aaron was invested with the high priest's office although
it was well known to the world that he had been guilty of com
promise, that his was a vacillating spirit. A man rejected by the
State as unfit to be a leader by reason of his vacillating spirit is by
MOSES-SAMSON — 2 1

322 AARON
that same State selected to be the head of a religious community
within its own pale ! Is there not in this picture an inartistic ele
ment, a breach of consistency which mars its beauty ? We can
understand that a stone once rejected should afterwards become
the head of the corner, provided its rejection were found to be a
mistake ; but that a stone which was once rejected and which is
still known to possess the defect attributed to it should be made
the head of the corner — this is surely the fault of the builder !
We cannot explain this apparent lack of proportion, as some
do, by insisting on the difference of qualifications requisite for a
leader in the State and a leader in the Church. It is surely
wrong to say that the ideal statesman could never become the
ideal pastor without a fundamental change of character. The
same qualifications are needed for both, and Aaron succeeded in
the priesthood, not because he had failed as a leader of tbe people
in civil affairs, but because he had added something to his former
qualifications. The faculty of bending to the will of others no
doubt helped him to a certain extent in his priesthood as it would
have done in any other walk of life; but that alone could not
have fitted him for his high office. This same characteristic had
already worked to his undoing in the incident of the golden calf,
and it is not to be supposed that it would now constitute itself
his chief virtue, unless some fundamental change had taken place.
Tbe explanation of Aaron's fitness for the priesthood must then
be elsewhere. Tf The essence of the priest is that he should believe himself,
however humbly and secretly, to be set in a certain sense between
humanity and God. He is conscious, if not of a mission at least
of a vocation, as an interpreter of secrets, a guardian of mysteries ;
he would believe that there are certain people in the world who
are called to be apostles, whose work it is to remind men of God,
and to justify the ways of God to men. He feels that he stands,
like Aaron, to make atonement ; that he is in a certain definite
relation to God, a relation which all do not share ; and that this
gives him, in a special sense something of the Divine and fatherly
relation to men. In the hands of a perfectly humble, perfectly
disinterested man, this may become a very beautiful and tender
thing. Such a man, from long and intimate relations with humanity,
will have a very deep knowledge of the human heart. He will
be surprised at no weakness or frailty ; he will be patient with all

AARON 323
perverseness and obduracy; he will be endlessly compassionate,
because he will realize the strength and insistence of temptation ;
he will be endlessly hopeful, because he will have seen, a hundred
times over, the flower of virtue and love blooming in an arid and
desolate heart.1
Tf A select few had built a little Meeting-house at Ecclefechan,
thatched with heath, and chosen them a Priest by name John
Johnston, — the priestbest man I ever under any ecclesiastical
guise was privileged to look upon. He, in his last years, helped
me well in my Latin (as he had done many) ; and otherwise pro
cured me far higher benefits. This peasant union, this little
heath-thatched house, this simple Evangelist, — together consti
tuted properly the " Church " of that district : they were the
blessing and tbe saving of many : on me too their pious heaven
sent influences still rest, and live; let me employ them well.
There was, in those days, a " Teacher of the People." He sleeps
not far from my Father (who built his monument) in the Eccle
fechan Churchyard ; the Teacher and the Taught : " Blessed," I
again say, " are the dead that die in the Lord. They do rest from
their labours, and their works follow them." 2
2. At the outset it certainly does seem remarkable that
immediately after Aaron's great sin, and almost as though it had
not occurred, God's fore-ordained purposes were carried out in
Aaron's consecration to the office of high priesthood. The
explanation lies in the fact of Aaron's repentance. The fall and
the repentance made him one who could " have compassion on
the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way ; for that he
himself also is compassed with infirmity." Not the fall alone,
but Aaron's repentance, made him fit to bear the high office to
which God had called him.
Aaron's inward piety is attested by the blossoming of his rod.
It was not the symbol of the official priest that was so honoured :
the rod of the mere official never buds. It was the rod of a good
shepherd of souls, the symbol of a spirit which was greater than
office. The rod of the false priest is bard and dry ; it may rule
the devotees because it terrifies them. But the rod of the true
priest is in flower ; it wins through tenderness, it rules through
its beauty of holiness. Aaron won the title of "saint of the
1 A. C. Benson, From a College Window, 217.
s Carlyle, Reminiscences, i. 40.

324 AARON
Lord," not through his office, we may feel sure, but through the
worth of his spirit, his readiness to give back to God what was
God's. This appears still more strikingly in the narrative of his
staying the plague : " He stood between tbe dead and the living."
He ran, at the word of Moses, into the midst of the plague-
stricken congregation, waving the incense, and making atonement
for the people. Had he been a mere priest, he would have been
courting death to stand there. As well might a rescuer go with
naked lamp to the exploding coal-mine as an unworthy priest
stand, in God's hour of wrath, to intercede for stricken souls.
The mother who has sinned cannot pray for her child in the day
of anguish ; the minister who has been unfaithful cannot intercede
as he should for those who go astray.
TI John Foxe used to declare that both he and his people had
got much more good of his sins than ever either he or they had
got out of his good works.1
3. The hallowed dignity of the high priestly office of Aaron,
great and honourable in itself, appears yet more so when viewed
in the typical relationship which it bore to the priesthood of
Christ. There were certain obvious differences between them,
and in these differences marks of inferiority on the part of Aaron
and his successors in office, which it became necessary to render
prominent in New Testament Scripture, on account of the mis
taken and extravagant views entertained regarding the religion of
the old covenant by tbe pharisaical Jews of later times. For this
reason, the priesthood of Melchizedek had to be exalted over the
priesthood of Aaron, as foreshadowing more distinctly some of the
higher and more pecubar elements of the Messiah's priestly
function. But there was still both a closer and a more varied
relation between the priesthood of Aaron and that of Christ.
For it was a priesthood exercised in immediate connexion with
the tabernacle, which the Lord had Himself planned, and chosen
for His holy habitation — a priesthood which, in every feature of
its character and calling, in the personal qualifications required
for it, the vestments worn by it, the honours and privileges it
enjoyed, and the whole train of occasional as well as of regular
ministrations appointed for its discharge, had a divinely- ordained
1 A. Whyte.

AARON 325
respect to the better things to come in Christ. All were, indeed,
but shadows of these better things ; yet they were shadows bearing
throughout the form and likeness of what was hereafter to be
revealed. And it cannot but be regarded as a high honour
assigned to Aaron, that he should have been constituted the head
of an order which had such lofty bearings, and was to find such a
glorious consummation.
TJ Once, when his servant read in the Psalms the verse, '' I
have sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever,"
Luther said, " That is the most beautiful and most glorious verse
in the whole Psalter; for herein God holds forth this Christ
alone as our Bishop and High Priest, who Himself, and no other,
without ceasing, makes intercession for His own with the Father.
Not Caiaphas, nor Annas, nor Peter, nor Paul, nor the Pope ; He,
He alone shall be the Priest. This I affirm with an oath. ' Thou
art a priest for ever.' In that saying every syllable is greater
than the whole Tower of Babel. To this Priest let us cling and
cleave. For He is faithful ; He has given Himself for us to God,
and holds us dearer than His own life. When we stand firm to
Christ, there is no other God in heaven or on earth but One who
makes just and blessed. On the other hand, if we lose Him from
our heart and eyes, there is no other help, comfort, or rest."
Tf Our Lord's Priesthood, it seems to me, is almost invariably
treated as though it were after the order of Aaron and not after
the order of Melchizedek. In the Mosaic symbolism the Lamb is
the symbol which represents the Priesthood of Christ in the days
of His flesh. The High Priest in the Mosaic ritual is a subordinate
figure, not the Central, which is the Lamb. The Priesthood of our
Lord, i.e., of the glorified Christ, which is the Priesthood of the
Christian dispensation — the ministration of Life unto holiness, in
contrast with the old dispensation, which was of sin unto death —
is after the order of Melchizedek, the special characteristics of
which are power, signified in royalty, and permanence, signified
in inherent nature of Sonship, and exercised in Benediction — for
the fulfilment of the promise or gospel preached to Abraham
that through his seed all nations of the earth should be blessed.
The purpose of the Priesthood of the Lord is the fulfilment of the
Divine will in the Salvation of the world, which purpose is affected
through the exercise of inward judgment, which in the Christian
dispensation is declared to be unto victory, i.e., unto the utter
condemnation of sin, and the salvation to the uttermost of the
sinner. The sphere of the Lord's judgment is the heart, and the
complete sanctification of the heart is the work of the Fire-

326 AARON
Baptism of the Holy Ghost. The Priesthood of our Lord now —
i.e., in the day of His Glory, when He, the Son of Man, is sitting
on the Throne of His Glory — is no longer, as in the days of His
flesh, on behalf of man towards God, the Priesthood of obedience
to the Father's Will as our elder brother — but it is on behalf of
God towards men, ministering to us the blessing of the Spirit of
Holiness, whereby we are reconciled in heart and mind unto God,
and made Holy even as He is Holy.1
1 E. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day, xvi.

MIRIAM.

Literature.
Banks, L. A., The Great Saints ofthe Bible (1902), 108.
Cook, S. A., in Encyclopaedia Biblica, iii. (1902), col. 3152.
Dods, M., How to become like Christ (1897), 85.
Farningham, M., Women and their Work (1906), 35.
Gray, G. B., Numbers (International Critical Commentary) (1903), 120.
Home, C. S., The Rock of Ages (1901), 41.
Jerdan, C, For the Lambs ofthe Flock (1901), 160.
Lauterbach, J. Z., in The Jewish Encyclopedia, viii. (1904) 608.
Lewis, H. E., in Women of the Bible : Rebekah to Priscilla (1904), 33.
Lorimer, P., in The Imperial Bible Dictionary, iv. (1888) 257.
Mackay, W. M., Bible Types of Modern Women (1912), 148.
Matheson, G., The Representative Women ofthe Bible (1907), 129.
Miller, T. E., Portraits of Women ofthe Bible (1910), 55.
Peck, G. C, Old Sins in New Clothes (1904), 277.
Simeon, J., Some Women ofthe Old Testament (1905), 121.
Stanley, A. P., in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (1863) 383 f.
Talmage, T. de W., Sermons, vii. (1899) 155.
Vickery, J., Ideals of Life, 271.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters : Adam to Achan (1896), 217.
Williams, I., Female Characters of Holy Scripture (1890), 57.
Christian World Pulpit, lxvii. (1905) 38 (J. G. Stevenson).
Dictionary of the Bible, iii. (1900) 396 (H. A. Redpath).

3*8

MIRIAM.
For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of
the house of bondage ; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.—
Mic. vi. 4.
The history of the children of Israel, as described in the Hexa
teuch, is the history of the making of a nation. To make a
nation, something more than common blood and language is
necessary. The rabble of fugitive slaves that fled with Moses
from Egyptian bondage had common blood, and at bottom,
perhaps, a common tradition of faith. But it would be impossible
to describe that undisciplined multitude as in any true sense a
nation. Before they could be a nation, and play a nation's part,
certain influences must be brought to bear upon them ; common
beliefs and hopes, sentiments and habits had to be developed.
The Israelites furnished no more than tbe raw material which
sympathy and skill might work to, or towards, a product of stable,
resolute and enthusiastic national life. For so great and difficult
a work certain forces were necessary.
1. The function of the prophet we see in Moses. Moses,
indeed, was something more than a prophet. He was what many
prophets were not — eminently practical-minded. He had not
only a grasp of high principles, but an equally eminent skill in
their application. He was, in short, a great lawyer and a great
statesman as well as a great prophet. It was to his genius, and
to his genius alone, that that extraordinary Church-State which
existed so long an absolutely singular and unique feature of the
world's life was due. But he had the prophet instinct and
capacity as well. He was one of the elect who are habitually
aware of the near reality of a personal God, and who enter into
communion and awful familiarity with that unseen presence.
The people that is truly inspired by some prophet voice with

330 MIRIAM
thoughts bke these will grow in dignity and power, and develop
elements of strength which will go far to make it a nation.
2. The priest, as Aaron represented him, was the organizer of
the religious life; and this organization was of the highest
importance and value in dealing with a people which had been
thoroughly disorganized and demoralized by long years of servi
tude to an idolatrous nation.
Tf The Priest, as I understand it, is a kind of Prophet, in
him too there is required to be a light of inspiration, as we must
name it. He presides over the worship of the people; is the
Uniter of them with the Unseen Holy. He is the spiritual
Captain of the people; as the Prophet is their spiritual King
with many captains : he guides them heavenward, by wise guid
ance through this Earth and its work. Tbe ideal of him is, that
he too be what we can call a voice from the unseen Heaven;
interpreting, even as the Prophet did, and in a more familiar
manner unfolding the same to men. The unseen Heaven, — the
" open secret of the Universe," — which so few have an eye for !
He is the Prophet shorn of his more awful splendour; burning
with mild, equable radiance, as the enlightener of daily life.
This, I say, is the ideal of a Priest. So in old times ; so in these,
and in all times. One knows very well that, in reducing ideals
to practice, great latitude of tolerance is needful ; very great.
But a Priest who is not this at all, who does not any longer aim
or try to be this, is a character — of whom we had rather not
speak in this place.1
3. But there is a third whose gifts are from God for the
cultivation of a deep and noble national spirit. "I sent before
thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam." To the prophet and the
priest there is added the poet, the inspired singer, the lyrist and
melodist, whose office and function it is to take the national hopes
and aspirations and wed them to music,
Bequeathing honeyed words to Time,
Embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme.
This was Miriam's gift. It was not the gift of the prophet : it
was the gift of the poet. The prophet was above his audience;
he moved for the most part in regions of thought and feeling
1 Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero- Worship, Leet. iv.

MIRIAM 331
inaccessible to the common people, and they stood in awe of him,
admixed and wondered from afar. Miriam's was a far inferior
soul to that of Moses. But Miriam was far nearer to this people ;
she was more kith and kin with them than he. Her outbursts
of song ring with human triumph and exultation. She sang as if
the very life-blood of Israel were in her veins : and by her con
sciousness of that life, she made all Israel feel and know that
they had a national unity, a national destiny, and a national
mission. No one did more than she in the making of this
nation. Tf Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions
of tbem. In some old languages, again, the titles are synony
mous ; Vates means both Prophet and Poet : and indeed at
aU times, Prophet and Poet, well understood, have much kindred
of meaning. Fundamentally indeed they are still the same : in
this most important respect especially, That they have penetrated
both of them into the sacred mystery of the Universe; what
Goethe calls " the open secret." " Which is the great secret ? "
asks one, — " The open secret " — open to all, seen by almost none !
That Divine mystery which lies everywhere in all Beings, " the
Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the bottom of
Appearance," as Fichte styles it ; of which all Appearance, from
the starry sky to the grass of the field, but especially the
Appearance of Man and his work, is but the vesture, the embodi
ment that renders it visible. Tbis Divine mystery is in all times
and in all places ; veritably is.
Whoever may forget this Divine mystery, the Vates, whether
Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it : is a man sent hither to
make it more impressively known to us. That always is his
message ; he is to reveal that to us — that sacred mystery which
he more than others lives ever present with. While others forget
it, he knows it ; — I might say, he has been driven to know it ;
without consent asked of him, he finds himself living in it, bound to
live in it. Once more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight
and Belief ; this man too could not help being a sincere man !
Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is for him a
necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. A man
once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all others were
but toying with it. He is a Vates, first of all, in virtue of being
sincere. So far Poet and Prophet, participators in the " open
secret," are one. With respect to their distinction again: The
Vates Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery
rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and Prohibition ;

332 MIRIAM
the Vates Poet on what the Germans call the aesthetic side,
as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may call a revealer of
what we are to do, the other of what we are to love. But indeed
these two provinces run into one another, and cannot be
disjoined.1

I.
By the Nile.
And his sister stood afar off, to know what would be done to him.— Exod.
ii. 4. The Bible story of Miriam is given in three scenes. The first
has the river Nile for a background. We see her watching the
little cradle-boat among the long reeds of the Nile — a dark-eyed
girl of perhaps fifteen years of age, clever, sensible, and self-
possessed. All the world knows the interesting story connected
with the preservation of the child Moses : the resolve on the part
of this Hebrew mother to commit her little one to the ark of
bulrushes and to place it there in that sheltered nook of the river
where the great princess and her maidens came each day; for
something told her that the helpless babe would appeal to the
heart of the heathen princess.
Tf Of the three females in the transaction — the mother, the
princess, and the young sister — the last is by far the most
advanced in mind. The ark left to itself would have only post
poned the catastrophe. The princess left to herself would have
saved the child's life at the expense of its nationality. But little
Miriam by a stroke of precocious genius preserved the nationality
as well as the life of the child Moses. The mother and the princess
were both actuated by tenderness of feeling. Miriam had also
tenderness of feeling, but it was blended with something of a
stronger mould — a power of suggestion, a depth of shrewdness, a
fertility and readiness of resource, which placed her even in girl
hood on a height entirely her own.2
1 Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero- Worship, Leet. ii.
2 G. Matheson, Representative Women of the Bible, 135.

MIRIAM 333
II.
At the Eed Sea.
And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her
hand ; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.—
Exod. xv. 20.
1. For many years there is a dropping of the curtain. When
it rises again it is upon a new scene. Egypt has vanished,
and another world has dawned. The slaves have become free.
Again they stand upon the banks of a water ; but it is no longer
the water of the Nile river ; it is that of the Eed Sea. They
stand upon these banks triumphant; they have emancipated
themselves from the Egyptian thraldom. The military strength
of Egypt had been in pursuit of them, and the proud host had
just been engulfed in tbe waters of the Eed Sea. It was at that
moment, when the first amazement and wonder had passed, that
the voice of Miriam rang out in the camp, and, timbrel in hand ,
she sounded out the notes of a noble song of exultation and
thankfulness. Even to-day, thousands of years after, we feel the spirit of the
scene, and we seem to feel the surging swell of triumph as Miriam
sang out that triumphal song, " Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath
triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his rider hath he thrown
into the sea." This is the woman whose name lives in the
Hebrew history, emerging from that stormy and troubled time as
a figure of singular courage, of impassioned utterance, of intense
patriotism. It was as if the genius of the Hebrew people had
incarnated itself in a noble female figure and had broken into
fine audibility, and through its voice and song the whole camp
was thrilled and inspired and uplifted.
2. When one has read over carefully this first outburst of the
nation's heart and life, this earliest National Anthem, although
we are not expressly told the authorship, the conviction grows
that it is from the pen of Miriam. We know that women had to
appear and do duty on the east side of the sanctuary, organized
just like the Levites. Proper sacerdotal functions, whether
higher or lower, cannot be ascribed to them : it was characteristic

334 MIRIAM
of the whole of the religion of Jehovah to confine these to men.
But we know from other sources that dances accompanied by
singing were performed at the sanctuary by women ; and if
numerous women from each of the tribes always took part in
these dances on festivals there must still have been some
constantly at the sanctuary who should know how to lead the
dances, and they may have been the same as those who daily
performed the sacred music there. That women who sang and
played lived there we know as a certainty, as well as that the
culture of the Muses was left chiefly to the women down to the
days of David. The singing and playing Miriam, therefore, clearly
furnishes us with the original type of these women about the
sanctuary. 3. We cannot, of course, go into any analysis of this poem ; it
is a war song with a religious basis and a religious spirit pervading
it. It belongs to a very early period, and yet there are passages
in it — passages like that second verse, " The Lord is my strength
and song, and he is become my salvation ; this is my God, and I
will praise him ; my father's God, and I will exalt him " — that link
tbis Old Testament Mary to the New Testament Mary, and that
make the " Magnificat " of the one not altogether unworthy of a
place beside the " Magnificat " of the other. Not as a timid,
trembling woman, but as a leader of devotion, did Miriam sing in
the chorus of triumph. Both a poetess and a fervent prophetess,
Miriam has since then inspired to song and enthusiasm greater
hosts of women than those who rehearsed the triumph of the Eed
Sea. And the bands of singers who have followed her reach the
highest note only when their theme is the same as hers — " Sing
ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously."
TI After the defeat of the Scottish army at Dunbar " The Lord
General made a halt," says Hodgson, " and sang the Hundred-and-
seventeenth Psalm," till our horse could gather for the chase.
Hundred-and-seventeenth Psalm, at the foot of the Doon Hill:
there we uplift it, to the tune of Bangor, or some still higher
score, and roll it strong and great against the sky :
0 give ye praise unto the Lord,
All nati-ons that be;
Likewise ye people all, accord
His name to magnify !

MIRIAM 335
For great to-us-ward ever are
His lovingkindnesses ;
His truth endures forevermore :
The Lord 0 do ye bless l1

III.
In the Wilderness.
Remember what the Lord thy God did unto Miriam, by the way as ye
came forth out of Egypt.— Deut. xxiv. 9.
1. Again the scene changes, and a new act of the drama opens.
We find ourselves in a totally different environment from either
of the foregoing. We have passed from the Nile river ; we have
passed from the Eed Sea; we have entered into the heart of
the wilderness. And we have left behind also the song of
triumph. A cloud has settled over the singer — a moral cloud.
That long wilderness experience was a great trial, especially
to the leaders of the people. It tried their faith, it tried their
temper and enthusiasm. They found it difficult to keep alive
those early ideals associated with the birth of the nation and with
the great experiences of Sinai. And probably it indicated a lapse
on the part of Moses to take to wife a Cushite or Ethiopian
woman. It was so regarded at least by his sister Miriam. It
was a tremendous blow to her that Moses should bryig into the
family circle an alien woman. And, clearly enough, to Miriam's
mind this was not only a retrograde step on the part of Moses
but a lapse from grace, a betrayal of the Divine trust reposed in
him as leader of Israel.
2. Miriam's pain is all the greater because she thinks she is
shut out from a place in the councils of the nation to which her
great gifts entitle her. Under this jealous feeling her love almost
turns to hatred. She wins over Aaron to her faction, and
threatens to break up the camp unless more regard is paid to her
place and position in the councils of the people. Such seems to
have been the temptation which made Miriam chide with Moses
1 Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, iii. 37.

336 MIRIAM
saying, " Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses ? hath he
not spoken also by us ? "
Tf In one pathetic passage of Henry Varley's autobiographical
memoranda, there is mention — though I suppress the name — of a
neighbouring pastor at Notting Hill, specially gifted and quabfied
as an expositor of tbe Scriptures. His ministry was attracting
some members of my father's congregation. He missed them
frequently from their seats in the Tabernacle. " Henry Varley
did not like tbis," he writes. To his intense self-loathing, he
found that the " green-eyed monster " of jealousy had its claws
upon his soul. " I shall never forget," he continues, " the sense of
guilt and sin that possessed me over that business. I was
miserable. Was I practically saying to the Lord Jesus, ' Unless
the prosperity of Thy Church and people comes in this neighbour
hood by me, success had better not come ' ? Was I really showing
inability to rejoice in another worker's service ? I felt that it was
sin of a very hateful character. I never asked the Lord to take
away my life either before or since ; but I did then, unless His
grace gave me victory over this foul image of jealousy." The
suggestion inevitably arises of the possibility of vacant pulpits if
preachers jealous of other preachers' success were to pray to die,
and their prayers were answered.1
3. It does not appear that Moses attempted to defend him
self against his brother and sister. In his meekness he was un
willing to argue his own case, but it is significantly stated, " the
Lord heard it." From that moment the controversy was between
Him and these two, not between them and their brother; he
might be ready to let the accusation pass, but the Lord was not.
Suddenly the three were called out " unto the tabernacle of the
congregation," and when they came out " the Lord came down in
tbe pillar of the cloud," and Aaron and Miriam had to come forth.
It was true that Aaron and Miriam had both been recognized
by the Lord and given a position of authority in connexion with
the conduct of affairs in Israel. But although the Lord would
make Himself known to any prophet and would " speak unto him
in a dream," He reserved a more intimate fellowship and clearer
revelation of Himself for His servant Moses. Moses was not bke
any ordinary prophet, although in his extreme meekness he would
not vindicate his own position. He " was faithful," or approved,
1 Henry Varley's Life-Story, 235.

MIRIAM 337
" to him that appointed him," not merely in any one special matter,
but " in all the house," of Jehovah, that is, in all pertaining to the
Kingdom of God. And the Lord now vindicated His servant.
Miriam and Aaron were left with the stern challenge, " Wherefore
then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses ? "
TJ Make no great account who is for thee or against thee but
mind only the present duty and take care that God be with thee
in whatsoever thou doest. Have a good conscience and God will
defend thee, for he whom God will help no man's perverseness
shall be able to hurt. If thou knowest how to hold thy peace
and to suffer, without doubt thou shalt see the help of the Lord.
He knoweth the time and the way to deliver thee, therefore must
thou resign thyself to Him. To God it belongeth to help and to
debver from all confusion.1
4 Miriam and Aaron were both severely rebuked, but the
chief punishment fell upon Miriam. " The cloud removed from
over the tent; and, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as
snow." Aaron understood the sin when he saw the result of it,
and immediately he appealed to Moses for forgiveness that his
sister might " not be as one dead," because leprosy was simply a
living death. It is beautiful to see how quickly the man who was
silent under reproach became eloquent on behalf of the one who
had wronged him, and made use of his privilege to " speak mouth
to mouth " with the Lord in pleading for her recovery. " Heal
her now, 0 God, I beseech thee."
The healing and forgiveness sought for Miriam were not
refused. Tet God is represented as resenting the speedy oblivion
of tbe offence on account of which the leprosy had been sent and the
Divine displeasure incurred. There was cause to apprehend that
the whole matter might be too quickly wiped out and forgotten,
and that the sinners, reinstated in their old position, might think
too bghtly of their offence. This detrimental suddenness God
takes measures to prevent. Had an earthly father manifested
his displeasure as emphatically as God had now shown His,
Miriam could not for a time have held up her head. God
desires that the shame which results from a sense of His displeasure
should last at least as long. He therefore enjoins something like
1 Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Bk. ii. ch. 2 (Of Lowly Submission),
p. 89 in Benham's edition.
MOSES-S AMSON — 2 2

338 MIRIAM
a penance ; He removes His stroke, but provides for the moral
effects of it being sufficiently impressed on the spirit to be
permanent. Miriam was subjected to a temporary disgrace. She
was expelled from the congregation of the Lord for seven days.
She was placed during that time in the position of a moral leper
who could not be touched without spiritual uncleanness. She
had to bear the sorrow of seeing Israel's march to the Promised
Land arrested — arrested on her account during the days of her
banishment. These were among the things that Miriam could not
forget and never did forget ; and we may say of her, what is said
later of one of the kings of Israel, that she " went softly " all the
days of her life.
Miriam came out of her cloud with an unstained reputation.
She resumed her leadership by the side of her two brothers. She
lost nothing of her respect among the ranks of Israel. She kept
an honoured name not only through the marches of the wilderness
but through the long march of Jewish history, and men ever spoke
of her as Miriam the Prophetess.
Tf " Ob, my Father ! keep me humble. Help me to have
respect towards my fellow-men — to recognize their several gifts
as from Thee. Deliver me from the diabolical sins of malice,
envy, or jealousy, and give me hearty joy in my brother's good, in
his work, in his gifts and talents ; and may I be truly glad in his
superiority to myself, if Thou art glorified ! Eoot out all weak
vanity, all devilish pride, all that is abhorrent to the mind of
Christ. God, hear my prayer ! Grant me the wondrous joy of
humility, which is seeing Thee as All in All ! x
5. We hear nothing more of Miriam till we come to the
twentieth chapter of Numbers. The children of Israel are nearing
the end of their wanderings ; they have entered upon their last
year; they have reached Kadesh, in the upper part of the
wilderness of Sin ; and all that is told us of the end is in two
sentences : " And the people abode in Kadesh ; and Miriam died
there, and was buried there."
Miriam never reached the Promised Land; she died in the
wilderness. She died when the goal was almost won, at the
opening of the fortieth year of Israel's wanderings — by only a
very short time predeceasing her two brothers. It seems a sad
1 Memoir of Norman Macleod, ii. 818.

MIRIAM 339
thing to have fainted so near to the crown. Tet a " death in the
desert " was a fitting close for such a life as hers. Miriam was a
bird of song, and songs are sweetest in the night. Miriam was
meant to sing in the wilderness and for the wilderness ; and when
the wilderness was past her work was done. Her mission was to
cheer the desert; and when the end of the desert was reached
her task was over.
Sad doom, to know a mighty work in hand,
Which shall from all the ages honour win;
Upon the threshold of this work to stand,
Arrested there, while others enter in.
And this was theirs; they saw their fellows bound
To fields of fame which they might never share;
And all the while within their own hearts found
A strength that was not less, to do and dare:
But knew that never, never with their peers
They should salute some grand day's glorious close,
The shout of triumph ringing in their ears,
The bght of battle shining on their brows.
Sad doom: — yet say not Heaven to them assigned
A lot from all of glory quite estranged:
Albeit the laurel which they hoped to bind
About their brows for cypress wreath was changed.
Heaven gave to them a glory stern, austere,
A glory of all earthly glory shorn;
With firm heart to accept fate's gift severe,
Bravely to bear the thing that must be borne;
To see such visions fade and turn to nought,
And in this saddest issue to consent;
If only the great work be duly wrought,
That others should accompbsh it, content.1
1 B. C. Trench, Poems, 348.

BALAAM.

Literature.
Barry, A., The Parables ofthe Old Testament, 226.
Benson, E. W., Fishers of Men (1893), 135.
Black, H., University Sermons (1908), 223.
Brooks, P., The Mystery of Iniquity (1893), 208.
Butler, J., Works (ed. W. E. Gladstone), ii. (1896) 121.
Clapperton, J. A., in The Divine Artist (1903), 135.
Cox, S., Balaam (1884).
Dods, M., Christ and Man (1909), 163.
Eyton, R., The True Life (1889), 319, 334.
Gray, G. B., Numbers (International Critical Commentary) (1903), 307.
Greenhough, J. G., Old Pictures in Modern Frames (1902), 49.
Greer, D. H., From Things to God (1893), 176.
Hunt, A. N., Sermons for the Christian Year, ii. (1891) 59.
Kalisch, M. M., Bible Studies, i. (1877).
Liddon, H. P., Sermons (Contemporary Pulpit Library), iii. (1902) 129.
Lightfoot, J. B., Sermons Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral (1891), 1
Lock, W., The Bible and Christian Life (1905), 141.
Longhurst, T. J., The Royal Master (1905), 191.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Exodus, etc. (1906), 367, 371.
Moberly, G., Sermons on the Beatitudes (1861), 203.
Mortimer, A. G., Studies in Holy Scripture (1901), 71.
Munger, T. T., The Appeal to Life (1887), 107.
Newman, J. H., Parochial and Plain Sermons, iv. (1868) 18.
Peck, G. C, Vision and Task (1905), 163.
Plummer, A., The Humanity of Christ, 155.
Randolph, B. W., Christ in the Old Testament (1907), 35.
Skrine, J. H., Sermons to Pastors and Masters (1910), 23.
Stanley, A. P., Scripture Portraits (1867), 36.
Trench, R. C, Shipwrecks of Faith (1867), 1.
Tuckwell, W., Nuggets from the Bible Mine (1913), 42.
Vaughan, C. J., University Sermons (1888), 31iL
Watson, R. A., The Booh of Numbers (Expositor's Bible) (1894), 260.
Wharton, M. B., Famous Men of the Old Testament (1903), 279.
Wilberforce, B., "Following on to Know the Lord" (1903), 185.
Wilson, J. M., Truths New and Old (1900), 156.
Wilson, S., Lenten Shadows and Easter Lights (1910), 154.
Christian Commonwealth, xxxi. (1911) 457 (R. J. Campbell).
Dictionary ofthe Bible, i. (1898) 232 (F. H. Woods).

BALAAM.
Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness
(R.V. the hire of wrong-doing).— 2 Pet. ii. 15.
1. Balaam is the subject of a very remarkable story in connexion
with the wanderings of the Israelites in the wilderness. The
present narrative has arisen from the combination of several more
or less ancient traditions. According to the latest, embodied in
the Priestly Code (P), and contained in Num. xxxi. 8-16. (cf. Eev.
ii 14), Balaam was a Midianitish counsellor, who persuaded his
people to seduce the Israebtes by means of certain immoral rites.
This is probably to be connected with the great sin of Baal-peor
(Num. xxv.), or, to be more accurate, with the affair of Cozbi,
which has been combined with the story of Baal-peor, the former
being connected with the Midianites, the latter with the Moabites.
In revenge for this, Balaam was afterwards slain with the princes
of Midian (Num. xxxi., Jos. xiii.). It has been conjectured that
this story arose partly out of a difficulty on the part of the
Priestly narrator in conceiving of a heathen being an inspired
prophet of God, partly from the need of accounting for the great
sin of the Israelites. It is, however, very doubtful whether this
story belongs to the earliest form of P, and it is assigned by
Kuenen to the very latest redactor. It is significant that Eev. b.
definitely connects the immorality with sacrificial rites to heathen
gods, a fact impbed, but not distinctly stated, by P.
The more ancient and far more picturesque story is that con
tained in Num. xxn.-xxiv. According to this, Balaam is a prophet
from Pethor, which is by the Euphrates, a place otherwise un
known, who is bribed by Balak, king of Moab, to come and pro
nounce a curse on the Israelites. Balaam earnestly endeavours
to carry out Balak's wishes, but by Divine inspiration pronounces
a blessing instead of a curse. He is dismissed by Balak, and
returns to his home, and is heard of no more. It is obvious that

344 BALAAM
this story has no point of contact with that of P, and can be re
conciled with it only by modifying or eliminating ch. xxiv. If
Balaam had returned to his home, he could not be in the
Midianitish camp immediately afterwards. It is generally
admitted that Num. xxii.-xxiv. belongs to the composite narrative
known as JE. But there is some difference of opinion as regards
the critical analysis of the passage.
(1) The most important difference in the stories is the contrast
i which they present in the character of Balaam. In J there is
nothing reproachful in his conduct. He acts up to his light with
perfect consistency. But the Balaam of E is of a much lower
order. He has indeed a higher perception of the moral beauty
of righteousness. He can say with all sincerity, " Let me die the
death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his ! " (Num.
xxiii. 10). But, in spite of such noble sentiments, the Balaam of E
is a selfish, grasping man. He covets the rewards of Balak, and
is restrained from taking them only by a sordid fear of God, who
could make the consequence of so doing worse than losing them.
He is not content to know God's will, but tries by every means
in his power to cajole God into changing His mind, or, in other
words, making wrong right.1
(2) It has been pointed out that to draw from the story a
consistent character sketch is not only impracticable, because the
story itself is not consistent, but also beside the mark. The
author's purpose is not to make a character sketch and deliver
an ethical lesson ; what he is aiming at is to contrast the religion
of the Gentile world, embodied in Balaam, with the religion of
Israel. His motive is perfectly clear, though it has generally
been hidden (or at least cast into the shade) by undue pro
minence given to what is not a matter of leading interest with
the writer, viz., the character of Balaam. Balak, except in so far
as he represents Moab, and Balaam are in reality subordinate
figures in the story ; the protagonists are Israel and Moab ; the
overruling thought is Jehovah's power to defend His people and
His purposes of good concerning them, and the fatal madness of
those who, through them, oppose Him.
(3) The same motive governs the two different stories which
have been brought together by the editor (JE); and it was
1 F. H. Woods, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, i. 233.

BALAAM 345
carefully preserved in the story as it left his hands. Drawing on
both sources (J and E), the editor is indifferent to incongruities,
produced by his method, which strike the modern reader ; but he
is careful so to combine his material as to give fuller effect to the
leading motive. Not once or twice only, but thrice in this final
form of the story, does Balak persist in his attempt to get Israel
cursed; and at each attempt his own doom approaches nearer:
for, as the editor has arranged them, the poems rise to a climax.
In the fourth unsolicited poem the climax is reached. Moab
itself is singled out by name as about to perish before Israel;
and on this note the episode in JE closed. All that followed it
was the simple statement that Balaam and Balak went their
respective ways.
(4) The subsequent fortunes of the seer were irrelevant to the
story. But the curiosity out of which the Haggadic Midrash on
the Old Testament sprang wanted to know more both of his fate
and of his character and personality ; and after its wont it created
what it wanted, till in the course of time it gave Philo material
for his lengthy and spirited description. In particular, the
exclusive spirit of a later age could not tolerate tbe appearance
of a true prophet of God among the heathen; it consequently
took care to represent him in an unfavourable light. Such is the
general tendency, though even later there are rare exceptions
to it. Some regret may be felt on the ground that such a critical
analysis of Balaam's story destroys its value as the study of an
instructively composite character. But this is not so much so as
appears at first sight. The great sermon of Bishop Butler, for
example, depends almost entirely on the narrative of E. His
allusion to P's story as part of Balaam's career does not affect his
main argument much more than the words of Micah erroneously
put by him into Balaam's mouth. The real value of his sermon
arises out of his insight into human nature and motive. On the
other side, it is only fair to state that the critical process removes
at least one very serious moral difficulty — that, as the narrative
now stands, God allows Balaam to go on certain conditions and,
before the conditions have been violated, is angry, and punishes
him for acting on this permission.1
1 F. H. Woods, in Hastings' Dictionary qf the Bible, i. 234.

346 BALAAM
2. One may accept this correction of the customary treatment
of this scripture, and yet, none the less, and even under the light
of the new critical understanding of the record, return to the
older point of view. It is true that there is one Balaam of the
Jehovist, and another of the Elohist, and another of the Priestly
writer. We have to face not only the fact that there are three
different traditions, but the fact that the compiler of JE combined
the first two so closely that they are almost inextricable, and that
the ultimate compiler of the Hexateueh, perhaps with a deeper in
sight into human nature than some of his modern interpreters, has
had no scruple in combining the three and treating them aU aa
features of one and the same character. The terrible warning of
the character remains untouched, an awful lesson to all rehgious
men who hold parley with suggestions of avarice ; an appalling
portrait of the double-hearted man, unstable in all his ways; a
warning especially to the preacher that no beauty of utterance,
however flawlessly beautiful, no heralding of truth to others,
however unqualifiedly true, is sufficient to prevent a man from
being himself a castaway. It concerns us little to analyse the
work of Elohist, Jehovist, Editor, if only we have seen by their
joint work a Balaam who is of a type that does exist ; if only he
mirrors to our eye a moral situation and a spiritual fortune which
has been, or may come to be, the situation and fortune of ourselves
or a brother man.
TJ My tastes are with the aristocrat, my principles with the
mob. I know how the recoil from vulgarity and mobocracy, with
thin-skinned, over-fastidious sensitiveness, has stood in the way of
my doing the good I might do. My own sympathies and principles
in this matter are in constant antagonism, and until these can be
harmonized true Christianity is impracticable. A greater felt the
same — Milton ; but he worked far more ardently for his principles.
To give a less august precedent : poor Balaam was in a similar
antagonism, with tastes, love of poetry, etc., on the side of Balak;
principles on the side of Israel ; only gold inclined the scales to
the wrong side, which happily is not my temptation.1
1 Life and Letters qf F. W. Robertson, 383.

BALAAM 347

I.
In the Hand op the Loed.
Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his ! —
Num. xxiii. io.
1. We know not whence the story of Balaam was obtained —
from a Moabitish or an Assyrian source ; some facts only Balaam
himself could have recorded ; others, such as the speaking ass and
the vision of the angel, are essentially pagan, not Israelite fancies.
The mysteries that surround the origin of Balaam, the sources of
his inspiration, his means and methods of divination may all be
passed by. He suddenly appears on the page of sacred history
as a diviner whose fame had spread from the Euphrates to the
Jordan, and probably farther. The Israelites, toughened physi
cally and morally by their long sojourn in the desert, and now
well consolidated into a nation, are beginning to emerge from
their southern retreat, and to betray their designs upon the
regions bordering on the Jordan. They have met and defeated
the desert tribes, and are now threatening Moab, which lies in
their way. Its politic ruler, Balak, thoroughly appreciated his
danger, and measured the natural possibilities of defence with
serious foreboding. Stronger kings than he had fallen, and the
rumour of a powerful tribal deity who had done wonders in Egypt
in his father's day, and still accompanied the invaders to victory,
filled him and his chieftains with apprehension and dismay. He
has learned that the Israelites are led by Moses, a prophet of
Jehovah, and that his prayers in the battle against Amalek
secured the victory. He will see what of the same sort he can do
on his side. Hundreds of miles away, near the head waters of
the Euphrates, there bved another prophet of Jehovah, whose
reputation filled the whole region. Balak sends for him. The
Israelites have a prophet ; he will have a prophet. He sees in
the battles hitherto fought a weight not belonging to the battalions,
a spiritual force that won the victory ; he will employ that force
on his side. Israel had a prophet who blessed them ; he would
employ a prophet who should curse them.

348 BALAAM
2. Balaam was a foreigner, a Gentile, scion of an idolatrous
race. He is, however, rather a diviner than a prophet; he is
the soothsayer, whose fame spreads throughout the East, who has
a supernatural power to bless and to curse, to whom ambassadors
come with the rewards of divination in their hands, who takes his
post on the mountain-top that thence his curse may be effective,
who goes out to meet with enchantments, to whom the Elohim
«peak. But it was not simply as a magician of note that Balak
resorted to him; it was as one who affected the worship of
Jehovah, and who was therefore thought likely to have had
some special influence in obtaining a curse on tbe children
of Israel from their own national God, whose power had
hitherto been exerted on their behalf. He was of heathen
descent and dwelt among heathen, and yet he had an extra
ordinary knowledge of the true God, whose will he interpreted
to his fellow-men. Men recognized that those whom he cursed
were cursed.
Balaam, then, is to be regarded as one reared in the midst of
falsehood, on whom the light is beginning to dawn, and who really
appreciates its beauty and worth. Balaam was in a transitional
stage, a position he could not long maintain ; one from which he
must advance into full light, or creep back to bury himself once
more in his old darkness. Entangled as he was in the meshes of
incantations and magic, he had an incipient knowledge and fear of
Ood, which might have led on to the full character of a genuine
prophet had it not been resisted.
TI Brought up in the irrational methods of heathenism,
accustomed to believe in the omnipotence of rites and spells, and
anxious to magnify his office, Balaam has yet a certain openness
of mind to facts, a capacity of his own to read their consistency
and rhythm and a courage to face their consequences, which
prevail over the prejudices and interests by which he is swayed.
There is a primitive integrity of mind and a primitive reverence
in the man which grips our respect — grips our respect and also ,
lets us see how God in all ages has chosen and equipped His
prophets. Nor is our appreciation of this mind, groping so far
back there on the confines of light and darkness; lessened by the
fact that it did not rise clear of all the passion of its time, but is
described (Num. xxiv. 15, 16) as working heavily in trance or
ecstasy.

BALAAM 349
Eede of Balaam, Be6r's son,
Eede of the eye-sealed (?) man:
In vision he sees the Almighty,
Falling yet open of eye (?).
In Israel the beginnings of prophecy were also in trance ; and
uncontrollable excitement has characterized the origins of
genuinely religious movements within Christianity itself. Balaam
has the servile temper which does not understand the fulness of
the truth that has come to him, and staggers beneath it. He
grovels under the approach of his convictions, but he honestly
utters them when they arrive. If I may take another Arabian
prophet, upon much tbe same stage of development as Balaam, I
would remind you that Mohammed behaved very similarly under
the earliest impulses of his calling — a bemused, ecstatic, perhaps
epileptic man : yet he lived to bring all Arabia to his feet.
For this is the kind of man whom, though blinded and
prostrate, God shall one day call to stand up and send upon his
way in full control of his faculties. ... In Balaam we have one
end of that long course of gradual revelation of which the other
is reached in Christ and His disciples.1
TJ It seems to be certainly implied that God did speak to
Balaam, open his eyes, unfold to him things far off in the future.
Although many cases might be adduced which go to prove that an
acute man of the world, weighing causes and tracing the drift of
things, may show wonderful foresight, yet the language here used
points to more than that. It seems to mean that Divine illumi
nation was given to one beyond the circle of the chosen people, to
one who from tbe first was no friend of God and at the last showed
himself a malicious enemy of Israel. And the doctrine must be
that any one who, looking beneath the surface of things, studying
the character of men and peoples, connects the past and the
present and anticipates events which are still far off, has his illumi
nation from God. Further it is taught that in a real sense the
man who has some conception of Providence, though he is false at
heart, may yet, in the sincerity of an hour, in the serious thought
roused at some crisis, have a word of counsel, a clear indication of
duty, a revelation of things to come which others do not receive.2
3. When the elders of Moab and Midian who were selected as
envoys had arrived at Pethor and delivered their errand, Balaam
bade them stay till he had ascertained the will of God ; and when
1 George Adam Smith, in The Expositor, 8th Ser., v. 8.
1 R. A. Watson, The Book qf Numbers, 267.

350 BALAAM
he learned, through a vision, that God disapproved of the journey
and the curse, since the Israelites were a blessed nation, he declined
to accompany the messengers. On hearing their reply, Balak
sent a second and still more weighty embassy, promising Balaam
the highest distinctions and rewards, if he yielded to his wishes.
But Balaam declared to the nobles that no treasures or honours,
however splendid, could induce him to act against the command
of God, whom therefore he would again consult. This time he
received permission to proceed to Moab, on condition, however,
that he should strictly adhere to God's suggestions ; after which
he entered upon the journey together with the ambassadors.
Tbe situation of Balaam at this point of the narrative is a
common one, allowing for the differences of time and custom and
the accidentals of bfe. It is simply the situation of a man who is
keenly desirous of doing something which he knows to be wrong,
and who seeks to reconcile a real conscientiousness with his desire.
Balak offers him things which his heart covets, if he will go to him
and curse for him the Israebtes. Balaam is persuaded in his own
mind that he cannot do this as things stand, that it will be con
trary to the will of God, who has blessed Israel ; and yet he would
fain earn the reward in some way without being absolutely false.
He would not accept once for all the plain intimation of God's
will and the simple demands of duty ; but at the same time he
is determined not to disobey the dictates of conscience. Instead
of sending the envoys away the second time, he bade them wait in
the hope that he might be able to get a more favourable answer.
He seemed to succeed ; for he did receive permission to go. " God
said unto Balaam, If the men come to call thee, rise up, and go
with them." Nothing was really altered. He knew he was not
allowed to curse instead of bless. But he still hoped that some
further concession might be granted which would enable him to
earn the reward. He was only entering into temptation, getting
nearer to it, playing with it, going with open eyes into a situation
which would inevitably make it more difficult for him to be true.
The permission he received to go did not change the facts of the
case, did not alter God's will, could not alter it ; it only brought
Balaam himself into deeper waters, and gave him a harder battle
to fight with temptation ; it was a long step towards the ultimate
degradation and the final plunge.

BALAAM 351
The incident of the miraculous voice of the ass brought him
to a sense of his sin ; and he said to the opposing angel, " I
have sinned; for I knew not that thou stoodest in the way
against me: now therefore, if it displease thee, I will get
me back again." However, he is bidden to proceed on his
mission. God is displeased with him, yet He appears to go
with him, and to allow him to proceed in the crooked ways
of his covetousness.
TJ I heard a preacher take for his text : " Am not I thine ass,
upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day ?
was I ever wont to do so unto thee ? " I wondered what he would
make thereof, fearing he would starve his auditors for want of
matter. But hence he observed :
1. The silbest and simplest, being wronged, may justly speak in
their own defence.
2. Worst men have a good title to their own goods. Balaam a
sorcerer ; yet the ass confesseth twice he was his.
3. They who have done many good offices, and fail in one, are
often not only unrewarded for former service, but punished for
that one offence.
4. When the creatures, formerly officious to serve us, start
from their wonted obedience (as the earth to become barren, and
air pestilential) man ought to reflect on his own sin as the sole
cause thereof.
How fruitful are the seeming barren places of Scripture. Bad
ploughmen, which make balks of such ground. Wheresoever the
surface of God's word doth not laugh and sing with corn, there
the heart thereof within is merry with mines, affording, where not
plain matter, hidden mysteries.1
TI Nine days before his death, Dr. Berry preached a sermon on
¦"Mistaken Interpretations of Experience," based on the words:
" And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled bis ass, and
went with the princes of Moab. And God's anger was kindled
because he went : and the angel of the Lord stood in the way for
an adversary against him " (Num. xxii. 21, 22). The points of an
ever-memorable discourse, one of the most powerful that Berry
ever preached, were these: While Balaam saddled an ass to
carry him, God commissioned an angel to obstruct him ; in what
followed, owing to his wilful blindness, he mistook the beneficence
of an angel for the stupidity of an ass ; and not until he ceased
buffeting his beast of burden did he awake to the presence of a
minister of instruction. It was not the ass, but the angel, that
1 Thomas Fuller, Good Thoughts im Worse Times.

352 BALAAM
stopped him; yet being such as he was and in such furious
temper at obstruction, he persistently and repeatedly mistook the
angel for an ass. The beginning of all mistaken interpretations
of bfe must be traced to the false ideas with which we start: —
false estimates of life's resources in liberty and self-sufficiency,
false ideas of life's meaning and intent, false motives and aims in
life's pursuits. Balaam had calculated and provided for all the
requirements of his journey. He had counted, weighed, estimated,
anticipated the facts of the situation as they presented themselves
to bis notice. He had looked behind, around, ahead. Why should
he not feel confident and complacent ? So asks worldly wisdom,
but the wisdom that is more than worldly detects an omission.
Balaam forgot to look above. Tbis initial blunder was the elimi
nation of God out of life's equation. Do not most men live in an
atmosphere that magnifies the ass and hides the angel ? Life is
not independent and self-sufficient, but dependent and under
government ; it is not given us for selfishness and luxury, but for
discipline, for the formation of character, for the attainment of
virtue and power ; its inclosing and completing circumference is
not to be found in a small rim round the centre, but in a circle,
and sweeps through eternity and reaches out after the infinite I
Begin life with any other views, from any other point, in any
other spirit, and as sure as Balaam's ass crushed his master's foot
against the wall, as sure as Balaam met with a check that filled
him with dismay and temper, so will you be turned upon and re
buked, by the ass of your own conceit, on which you have chosen
to ride through bfe to fortune.1
4. The scene of action is reached at last. Surrounded by the
princes of Moab, the weird seer stands above the craggy steep
beside the seven reeking altars. Willing to curse, and ready at
heart to fulfil the contract and earn the honours and rewards of
blasting malediction, Balaam is borne up perforce on wings of
rich and rare beatitude. His higher mood o'ermasters him.
Prophet and poet blot out the charlatan; the word which God
has put in his mouth, that must he speak. '' How shall I curse
whom God hath not cursed ? The people shall dwell alone, and
shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who can count the
dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel?"
And then as with a deep sigh of discontentment at his own false
position which yet he will not abandon, he adds, as though it
S. Drummond, Charles A. Berry, 205.

BALAAM 353
were to himself, " Let me die the death of the righteous, and let
my last end be like his ! "
Balaam next turns to enchantments ; he tries to elicit the
curses of the demons ; if he cannot bend the immortals, he will
move hell from beneath. But enchantment is vain ; malediction
is but babblement where God's benediction rests. The future is
as assured as the present. Eighteous Israel must triumph. Like
a great lion he shall lift himself, and cease not till he devour the
prey and drink the blood of the slain : " God hath blessed, and I
cannot reverse it." Balak and his princes are utterly disconcerted.
The royal anger burns fiercely, and utters itself in scornful re
monstrance, but the soul of the seer is on fire; he must speak
forth its hot burden ; Balak cannot choose but hear. Higher still
into the atmosphere of prophecy rises the quickened soul of the
son of Beor. Visions of future glory for Israel are unfolded in
rapid and blinding flashes of unearthly light. A king is described
higher than Agag. A star gleams out of Jacob, a sceptre rises
out of Israel that smites the corners of Moab and blasts the
children of Seth. Amalek, first of the nations, perishes. The
Kenites are seen led from their fastnesses to the bondage of
Asshur. The ships of Chittim come from the West, and Asshur
and Eber are in turn laid desolate to perish for ever.
In the ecstasy of prophecy he had climbed a moral pinnacle
whence he could spurn at once the bribes he had hankered after
and the royal briber who had offered them ; and, careless of con
sequences, he had spoken the word that God put in bis mouth. It
is the first prophetic outlook beyond Israel into the world at large ;
from that Pisgah height we have a predictive glance at once to
Gentile East and Gentile West. We are held too by the splendour
of the poetry, Homeric rather than Hebrew in its amplitude, itera
tion, ring ; for true sublimity of thought, for breadth and precision,
the prophecies which Balaam uttered are scarcely second to any.
TJ The Hebrew prophets did not foresee and foretell curious
coincidences, but they foresaw and foretold the inevitable triumph
of righteousness. First, they foretold it for all the men and
nations of their own day, and especially for those colossal un
righteous kingdoms of the heathen world which looked everlast
ing; then, for all time. "As the whirlwind passeth, so is the
wicked no more " ; — sooner or later it is, it must be, so. Hebrew
MOSES-SAMSON — 23

354 BALAAM
prophecy is never read aright until it is read in this sense, which
indeed of itself it cries out for ; it is, as Davison finely says, im
patient for the larger scope. How often, throughout the ages,
how often, even, by tbe Hebrew prophets themselves, has some
immediate visible interposition been looked for! "I looked,"
they make God say, "and there was no man to help, and I
wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore mine own
arm brought salvation unto me. The day of vengeance is in mine
heart, and the year of my redeemed is come." 0 long-delaying
arm of might, will the Eternal never put thee forth, to smite
these sinners who go on as if righteousness mattered nothing?
There is no need ; they are smitten. Down they come, one after
another ; Assyria falls, Babylon, Greece, Eome ; they all fall for
want of righteousness. ... To Israel are the promises, and to
Israel they are fulfilled. " The nation and kingdom that will not
serve thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted."
It is so ; since all history is an accumulation of experiences that
what men and nations fall by is want of conduct. To call it by
this plain name is often not amiss, for the thing is never more
great than when it is looked at in its simplicity and reality. Yet
the true name to touch the soul is the name Israel gave:
righteousness.1 5. All this is admirable ; and, were this all, the son of Beor
would deserve to be named among the moral heroes of the world,
but it is sad to remember that, whilst such lofty predictions are
flowing from his lips, Balaam is leading Balak from place to
place, building altars and sacrificing bullocks and rams, if by
chance from some point of view he may be able to see Israel
cursed of God. He will not say what he does not feel about
Israel, but he is quite willing to be blinded to Israel's greatness.
He feels bound to say what he knows, but he is willing to know
as little as possible. He dare not disobey God, but he has no
real sympathy with His purposes. And so he goes home without
reward or honour, having incurred the displeasure of Balak.
1 Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, 204.

BALAAM 355
II.
The Wages of Unrighteousness.
Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.— Num. xxxi. 8.
1. Driven with disgrace and dishonour from the presence of
him at whose bidding he had undertaken this ill-omened journey,
having offended God without pleasing men, like so many who
forfeit heaven and yet fail to win earth, who, letting go the
substance, snatch at the shadow, and miss shadow and substance
alike, Balaam makes one last and desperate effort to obtain the
favour and the rewards which he sees escaping from his hands ; and
he, the man to whom and by whom God had spoken, who saw the
vision of the Almighty, whose eyes God had opened, is the author
of the devibsh suggestion that the children of Israel should be
seduced to uncleanness, and so robbed of their righteousness.
Their crime and punishment are related in Deuteronomy and
Numbers. And from the narrative given in Numbers, it appears
that Balaam was the contriver of the whole matter. It is also
ascribed to him in the Book of Eevelation, where he is said to
have taught Balak to cast a stumbbng-block before the children
of Israel. 2. This was a man who would not for lucre or for influence
disobey his conscience, yet laboured to corrupt his conscience. He
saw the good and the blessing of goodness, yet longed and strove
to transfer that blessing to tbe evil, and " paltered with eternal
God " for leave so to bestow it. He saw that the endless victory
must rest with the children of God, and he yearned to attain to it
through a death like theirs ; yet he set himself to defraud God of
His children, and His children of their God, by the fiercest
temptation of their flesh. We are not to suppose that Balaam
now threw off the mask and became openly a bad man. It would
appear that he still kept up his self-deceit and dissimulation, as
if what he was doing were but lawful and right, so that he not
only led them into practices of sin, but corrupted and perverted
their principles also, persuading them that they might thus hold
with God and yet with sin and the flesh.

356 BALAAM
TJ The moral law of Jehovah and the comparative purity of
the Israelites as His people kept them separate from the other
nations, gave them dignity and vigour. To break down this
defence would make them like the rest, would withdraw them
from the favour of their God and even defeat His purposes. The
scheme was one which only the vilest craft could have conceived ;
and it shows us too plainly the real character of Balaam. He
must have known the power of the allurements which he now
advised as the means of attack on those he could not touch with
his maledictions or gain by his soothsaying. In the shadow of
this scheme of his we see the diviner and all his tribe, and indeed
the whole morality of the region, at their very worst.1
3. But retribution came, and swiftly. The due reward of
Balaam's works was given him. The death of the righteous was
not destined for this corrupting traitor, for this apostate seer.
It is no wonder that a bttle later he is entangled in the doom of
those with whom he has made common cause against God ; and
that, when the Midianites perish beneath the sword of Joshua, he
should perish with them. There is something very significant in
the brief parenthetic notice which records his doom : " Balaam
also the son of Beor they slew with the sword."
So on the blood-stained turf, so amid the routed ranks, so by
the pitiless swords of the men whom he had seduced to their
ruin, so after the wasted life and desecrated gifts, his blows frust
rated, his curses foiled, his name degraded into a by-word, died
one who, had he but been faithful to his own best convictions,
might have been almost as great as Moses himself. For the hope
of a handful of paltry dross he had sold his eternal jewel to the
enemy of man, and he had earned the dreadful twofold epitaph
which the New Testament inscribes with ceremonious reproba
tion upon his name. One epitaph is " Balaam the son of Beor,
who loved the wages of unrighteousness." The other is, " Balaam
who taught Balak to cast a stumblingblock before the children of
Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit fornication."
TI It is to be noted that it is neither by us ascertainable what
moments of pure feeling or aspiration may occur to men of minds
apparently cold and lost, nor by us to be pronounced through
what instruments, and in what strangely occurrent voices, God
may choose to communicate good to men. It seems to me that
' R. A. Watson, The Book of Numbers, 313.

BALAAM 357
much of what is great, and to all men beneficial, has been wrought
by those who neither intended nor knew the good they did ; and
that many mighty harmonies have been discoursed by instruments
that had been dumb or discordant, but that God knew their stops.
The Spirit of Prophecy consisted with the avarice of Balaam.
Could we spare from its page that parable, which he said, who saw
the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but baving his
eyes open ; though we know that the sword of his punishment was
then sharp in its sheath beneath him in the plains of Moab ? . . .
Selfish in their industry, unchastened in their wills, ungrateful
for the Spirit that is upon them, men may yet be helmed by that
Spirit whithersoever the Governor listeth ; involuntary instru
ments they may become of others' good ; unwillingly they may
bless Israel, but short-coming there will be of their glory, and
sure, of their punishment.1 1 Ruskin, Modern Painters, ii. ( Works, iv. 213).

JOSHUA. I.
The Faithful Servant.

359

Literature.
Barton, G. A., The Roots of Christian Teaching as found in the Old
Testament (1902), 134.
Bennett, W. H., Joshua and the Conquest of Palestine, 1.
Blaikie, W. G., The Book of Joshua (Expositor's Bible) (1893), 1.
Brooke, S. A., The Unity of God and Man (1886), 110.
Byrum, E. E., The Secret of Prayer (1912), 119.
Champness, T., New Coins from Old Gold (1878), 66.
Croskery, T., Joshua and the Conquest (1882), 1.
Dawson, W. J., The Endless Choice (1897), 85.
Qreenhough, J. G., Half-Hours in God's Older Picture Gallery, 55, 71.
Holden, J. S., Life's Flood-Tide (1913), 134.
King, E., The Love and Wisdom of God (1910), 20.
Lewis, H. E., in Men of the Old Testament : Cain to David (1904), 157.
Maogregor, G. H. C, Messages of the Old Testament (1901), 73.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Deuteronomy, etc. (1906), 87.
Matheson, G., The Representative Men ofthe Bible, i. (1902) 218.
Meyer, E. B., Joshua and the Land of Promise, 1.
Morgan, E., The Calls of God (1899), 79.
Waller, C. H., The Names on the Gates of Pearl (1903), 219.
Westphal, A., The Law andthe Prophets (1910), 211.
Wharton, M. B., Famous Men of the Old Testament (1903), 91.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters : Adam to Achan (1896), 276.
Christian World Pulpit, lxxvi. (1909) 200 (N. G. Phelps).
Church of England Pulpit, lxii. (1907) 355 (J. Silvester).
Churchman's Pulpit : Sunday after Ascension Day, ix. 23 (D. 0. Mears),
25 (G. Jackson), 28 (W. S. Wood) ; First Sunday after Trinity, ix.
433 (D. Wright), 438 (S. C. Haines).

360

The Faithful Servant.
Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' minister. — Josh. i. i.
1. The Books of Genesis and Exodus contain the story of the
debverance of God's people ; in Leviticus and Numbers we have
the law of holiness expounded. In Deuteronomy and Joshua we
have the account of how the house of Jacob obtained their
possessions. The Book of Joshua, in character as well as in
composition, is closely allied to the books which immediately
precede it. By the Jews it was separated from the law and
included among the "Former Prophets"; but neither by its
contents nor by its literary structure does the book itself warrant
this separation. We have been in the habit of speaking of the
Pentateuch ; it would be more correct to speak of the Hexateuch ;
for there is good ground for belief that the Book of Joshua forms
part, along with the other five books, of one great historical work,
which recounts the early history of Israel. As to the author of
this book, absolutely nothing is known. Many conjectures have
been made which are utterly valueless, and; the attempt to ascribe
the authorship of the book to Joshua himself finds no support
in Scripture. In these matters it is well for us not to be wise
above what is written.
TI It is obvious from the conclusion that the Book of Joshua
was written neither by Joshua, nor within his lifetime. But there
are certain entirely independent considerations that suggest so
much at least as this : the book was written long after the age of
Joshua, and in Judah.
(1) The presentation of the Hebrew settlement in Canaan as
the result of a rapid and complete conquest appears to be due to
the idealizing of long past events ; the Book of Joshua must on
this account be judged much later than the age which gave birth
to the account in the first chapter, and to the stories that form
the substance, of the Book of Judges : for the account in Judges,
in its broad features, accords, the representation that dominates
361

362 JOSHUA
Joshua is entirely at conflict, with what the conditions and his
torical movements prevailing about 1400 B.C., and revealed to us
by the contemporary Tell el-Amarna tablets, would lead us to
expect the nature of the Hebrew settlement, which took place
somewhat later, actually to have been.
(2) In Josh. xv. 63 we read : " But the Jebusite(s) the inhab
itants of Jerusalem, the children of Israel were unable to dispossess;
and (so) the Jebusite has dwelt with the children of Judah in
Jerusalem until this day." With the substitution of " Benjamin "
for "Judah" these words recur in Judg. i. 21. Probably in both
books the words are cited from a common and ancient source;
in any case there is no probability that Judges borrows from
Joshua; and so in Joshua at least the words are a quotation.
But these words throw back the (partial) conquest to a past age,
which is tacitly contrasted with " the present day." In any case
the book which cites the passage must be later than the source
it cites, and consequently the product of an age later certainly
than Joshua, possibly also later than David.
(3) The reference to the Book of Jashar (x. 13) certainly
implies a date later than David, for that book contained, among
others, poems of David (2 Sam. i. 18).
(4) Interest in South Palestine and specifically in Judah
dominates the book. Both in the account of the Conquest and in
that of the division of the land the South is dealt with much more
fully, and the district of Judah is more minutely described than
that of any other tribe. The conquest of Central Palestine, the
territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, is entirely omitted, and it
is only at the end of the book that this district comes into
prominence ; and then almost of necessity, for Joshua naturally
goes to his own country to make bis farewell and die.1
2. There are in the Bible a few men who were so extra
ordinary in their moral stature that no higher tribute could be
rendered to their unique personality and services than this, that
they were " hard to follow." Such a man was Elijah the Tishbite,
whose life was so full of heroic achievement and dramatic incident
that Elisha, although clad in the mantle of his predecessor, found
it no easy task to succeed him in the prophetic office. Such a
man was Moses, the man of God, whose character was such a
beautiful blend of strength and tenderness, and whose career was
distinguished by such signal tokens of Heaven's favour, that the
son of Nun trembled at the thought of taking his place as leader
1 G. B. Gray, A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament, 56.

THE FAITHFUL SERVANT 363
of the host of Israel. Elisha and Joshua were good and great
men, and their virtues and merits would have been more dis
tinctly recognized by us but for the surpassing and overshadowing
brilliance of the men whom they succeeded. No Hebrew prophet
or ruler equalled Moses in nobility of character, greatness of
mind, and extent of personal influence. Joshua was a small man
in comparison with his predecessor. He was no prophet or
constructive genius ; he was not capable of the heights of com
munion and revelation which the lofty spirit of Moses was able
to mount. He was only a plain, fiery soldier, with energy, swift
decision, promptitude, self-command, and all the military virtues
in the highest degree.
Tf Joshua could claim neither the breadth of Moses nor the
religious genius of Samuel ; he reminds us rather of David by his
military qualities, his unshakable faith in the help of Jehovah,
and his lack of reliance on the loyalty of the tribes which he was
leading on to victory. He set to work courageously, trusting to
God more than man, and his chequered career shows us in the
midst of perils a constancy of courage and faith which was the
cause of his success.1
3. There is something at once beautiful and significant in the
relationship between Moses and Joshua. It is the contact of
maturity and youth, of the master and the scholar, and it suggests
to us that deep natural order which ensures that the young ever
more step into the heritage of the aged, and carry on the progress
of the world. Moses made a firm, solid-set man out of his
follower. He succeeded because he worked patiently for many
years ; and he did his work quietly. He let Joshua's union with
him grow out of circumstances. We can well fancy the rever
ence and love which an unimaginative, plain, unthoughtful, un-
mystical, but fiery nature like Joshua's would have for a subtle,
many-sided, spiritual, imaginative, but fiery nature like that of
Moses. For in fire, and ardour, and courage, they were equal
and at one. By that reverence and love, growing deeper year by
year, Joshua won the power of understanding the ideas of Moses,
and of rooting them into his character.
TI The central thought of all the philosophy of Moses was that
religion was the base of all thinking, that it was the spring of all
1 A. Westphal, The Law and the Prophets, 215.

364 JOSHUA
right conduct, that it was the greatest thing in the world — the
only great and worthy thing — and in these thoughts Joshua
shared. He was a young man, with all a young man's heat of
blood and thoughtlessness of impulse, but he learned this great
lesson, and by learning it he fitted himself for a great life.1
Tf The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred charac
ter, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
Thus, Sir John Moore early distinguished the three brothers
Napier from the crowd of officers by whom he was surrounded,
and they, on their part, repaid him by their passionate admiration.
They were captivated by his courtesy, his bravery, and his lofty
disinterestedness ; and he became the model whom they resolved
to imitate, and, if possible, to emulate. " Moore's influence," says
the biographer of Sir William Napier, "had a signal effect in
forming and maturing their characters ; and it is no small glory
to have been the hero of those three men, while his early dis
covery of their mental and moral qualities is a proof of Moore's
own penetration and judgment of character." 2
Tf To be a true disciple is to think of the same things as our
prophet, and to think of different things in the same order. To
be of the same mind with another is to see all things in the same
perspective ; it is not to agree in a few indifferent matters near
at hand and not much debated ; it is to follow him in his farthest
flights, to see the force of his hyperboles, to stand so exactly in
the centre of his vision that whatever he may express, your eyes
will light at once on the original, that whatever he may see to
declare, your mind will at once accept.3

I.
Amalek.
1. The first mention that we have of Joshua's name is when it
is said, " Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men, and go out,
fight with Amalek." We do not know much of his earlier life,
we only know that he was born in Goshen, in the land of Egypt ;
was the son of Nun of the tribe of Ephraim ; was of the twelfth
generation from Joseph, and was about forty years of age when
the Exodus took place. He is styled "the minister of Moses,"
1 W. J. Dawson, The Endless Choice, 88. a S. Smiles, Character, 17.
8 R. L. StsTenson, Lay Morals.

THE FAITHFUL, SERVANT 365
and " the servant of Moses," and occupied about the same relation
to him as a chief of staff does to his general. When the Israelites
had been in the desert only about seven days, Joshua had an
opportunity of distinguishing himself. Encamped at Eephidim,
the children of Israel were attacked by a tribe of the Amalekites,
and Moses gave Joshua tbe task of repelling the attack. On
whatever grounds Joshua was appointed, the result amply vindi
cated the selection. On Joshua's part there is none of that hesita
tion in accepting his work which was shown even by Moses himself
when he got his commission at the burning bush. He seems to
have accepted the appointment with humble faith and spirited
enthusiasm, and to have prepared at once for the perilous
enterprise. TI Her idea of attacking the central stronghold of the world's
fashion and pleasure [Paris] was a daring one for a woman,
especially for a woman of the Martehale's youthful years. About
this time she read the Life of Napoleon, and found in his
astonishing career many lessons for an evangelist. She was
especially struck by his faith in his star, and his contempt for
ce bite de mot, impossible. She knew that she had something
better to trust to than a star, and stronger reason for holding
that all things are possible.1
2. Joshua was one of those men who, lacking initiative them
selves, build splendidly to another's plan. He was attracted,
inspired, moulded, ruled by the creative genius of Moses. Here
we have him in the valley fighting Amalek, receiving and dealing
hard blows ; now advancing victoriously, now doubtfully retreat
ing, finally winning a great victory. Any military report of the
battle would credit him with the whole achievement. But the
historian of God's ways introduces the silent, uplifted hand of
Moses on the bill, holding, from and for heaven, the key of
victory. Those in the valley are but tbe instruments of that
intercessory hand on the hill- top. If that falls through weariness,
the battle-flags will flutter and be lowered with it: while that
remains pointing heavenward, the banners will triumphantly ride
the wind of war. Hour after hour the battle raged, till the arm
of Moses became too weary to hold up the rod. A stone had to
be found for him to sit on, and his comrades, Aaron and Hur, had
1 J. Strahan, The Marechale (191S), 120.

366 JOSHUA
to hold up his hands. But even then, though the advantage was
on the side of Joshua, it was sunset before Amalek was thoroughly
defeated. Joshua returned in triumph, and then began his training.
It was an hour of great danger for his future work ; for no one can
help seeing that his temptation would be to feel that which every
Israelite was first taught not to feel — that it was his own arm
that had won the fight, and his own genius that had secured it.
Tf Prayer can obtain everything ; it can open the windows of
heaven, and shut the gates of hell ; it can put a holy constraint
upon God, and detain an angel till he leave a blessing ; it can open
tbe treasures of rain, and soften the iron ribs of rocks, till they
melt into tears and a flowing river : prayer can unclasp the girdles
of the north, saying to a mountain of ice, Be thou removed thence,
and cast into tbe bottom of the sea ; it can arrest the sun in the
midst of his course and send the swift-winged winds upon our
errand; and all those strange things, and secret decrees, and
unrevealed transactions which are above the clouds and far beyond
the regions of the stars, shall combine in ministry and advantages
for the praying man.1
Tf We had a meeting at the Council Office on Friday to order
a prayer " on account of the troubled state of certain parts of the
United Kingdom " — great nonsense.2
Darkly the battle fluctuates to and fro,
While, on the mount, uplifted hands of prayer
Diffuse a halo of calm radiance there,
The " noise of war " resounding far below ;
As when on some high peak, with lingering glow,
The sunset sits enthroned serene and fair,
While rolling mists obscure the lower air,
And darkling streams with voice of thunder flow.
Lord, I would climb each day prayer's shining height,
And draw with lifted hands Thy blessing down,
My sword to prosper in the strenuous fight,
My arm to strengthen for the victor's crown;
In life's stern warfare sword and arm may fail,
But backed by faith and prayer they must prevail.3
1 Jeremy Taylor. s The Greville Memoirs, ii. 101.
8 Richard Wilton.

THE FAITHFUL SERVANT 367

II.
Mount Sinai.
1. It is not without reason that history makes Moses take
Joshua up afterwards with him into the sacred mountain, into
the awful presence of God's power. While he went himself into
the central darkness, he left Joshua upon the outskirts, alone in
those dreadful solitudes. That was enough to take out of a man
the sense of his own greatness. Joshua learned his lesson for life.
There is not one touch, from beginning to end of his course, of any
self-exaltation to the exclusion of God. No man could more un-
dividedly carry out the idea that all Israel's success and victories
were due to God alone.
Joshua waited patiently for the return of his master in a
hollow of the mountain's brow. He was allowed to go with him
as far or as high as, nay even higher than, any other earthly
companion. There are grades in the soul's ascent and privilege.
It was enough for Joshua that day to have earned a place so near
the cloud, the nearest neighbour of the man who was called
within to be God's listener.
2. Tbe next step in Joshua's training was to learn how to obey
with love and reverence. Therefore, after he had been solem
nized upon tbe mountain, he became the "servant," tbe daily
attendant of Moses. He lived with him in the tabernacle, doing
his work, running to and fro in attendance, learning the duties
which should belong to him as leader by being the right hand of
the leader ; the greatest warrior of the camp in daily obedience to
the lawgiver of the camp. He began life well and nobly ; for it
is said of him, " Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed
not out of the tabernacle." As Moses passes with shining face,
a majestic presence, through the worshipping people, Joshua, a
young man, remains behind in the tabernacle, praying for that
vision of God which shall fit him to take up the work of his
vanishing master. Like One who after many ages came,
Jehoshua — God-Saviour — was His name.

368 JOSHUA
As to '' His Father's house " His way He made,
His type "within the Tabernacle" stayed.
Each by hard toil and lowly ministry
Learned through obedience that whieh he should be.
And, when the time appointed was at hand,
Each led his people to a Promised Land.

III.
The Seventy Elders.
1. The next time that Joshua comes into notice is not so
flattering to him. It is on that occasion when the Spirit de
scended on the seventy elders who had been appointed to assist
Moses, and they prophesied round about the tabernacle. Two of
the seventy were not with the rest, but nevertheless they received
the Spirit and were prophesying in the camp. The military
instinct of Joshua was hurt at the irregularity, and his concern
for the honour of Moses was roused by tbeir apparent indifference
to their head. He hurried to inform Moses, not doubting that
he would interfere to correct the irregularity. But the narrow
spirit of youth met with a memorable rebuke from the larger and
more noble spirit of the leader — "Enviest thou for my sake?
would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the
Lord would put his spirit upon them ! "
2. The spirit which was exhibited by Joshua in this incident
was that of the martinet, and, if it had not been checked, would
have been the jealous and envious spirit in the commander of
an army; and in Canaan both would have been fatal to his
influence and success among the hot-tempered princes of Israel
and tbe fierce people. But, whatever be tbe reason, Joshua had
got rid of all this weak, jealous, and martinet temper when we
find him in Canaan. No complaints, no cabals, such as those
which were made against Moses, were made against him.
What Moses said to him when he carried his jealous tale about
the unauthorized prophets — "Enviest thou for my sake? would
God that all the Lord's people were prophets ! " — Joshua would

THE FAITHFUL SERVANT 369
have said to any one who reported to him an unauthorized deed
of war by one of his companions as dangerous to his supremacy —
" Enviest thou for my sake ? would God that all the Lord's people
were chieftains in war ! "
Tf Cardinal Manning, who regretted the alienation of Cardinal
Vaughan (then Bishop of Salford) from other than Catholic
workers, urged him to visit some of the Salvation Army Shelters.
Vaughan did so, accompanied by Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, who gives
the following account of the visit : " In one room sat a number of
women, mostly old women, at various sorts of needlework. ' Are
any of my people here ? ' asked the Bishop, addressing the
assembly. And, dotted about the room, aged dames, in the
dignity of Poverty, stood up for their faith. Then the Bishop
turned on the Captain : ' And do these attend Protestant prayers ? '
' They attend the praises of God every evening.' ' And what do
you preach ? ' ' We preach Christ and Him Crucified, and we
shall be very pleased if you will stay and so preach Him this
evening. We are quite unsectarian.' This was too much. ' Well,
but if I told them that unless they were baptized they could not
be saved ? ' 'I should tell them that it was not true,' said the
Captain. ' And I should tell them that it was not true,' echoed
Cardinal Manning when we told him the story an hour later ; ' I
should explain to them the Church's doctrine of the Baptism of
Desire.' Manning's Thomas More-bke love of rallying whatever
seemed too grave and too formal — a fashion of mind and speech
which increased with the passage of years — was much in evidence
that evening. Herbert Vaughan's great gravity offered a tempting
target for the darts and sallies of this Most Eminent Puck, who
greeted his return with the hope that Herbert, who had always
been so good a Catholic, would now, after his contact with the
Army, be also a good Christian ! But the Bishop insisted on a
ban, not banter. He went straight to the point. 'You are
quite mistaken, my Lord, in thinking that the work of the Army
is undenominational,' and he told the test case about Baptism,
with the result already named. The more sanguine the Cardinal
about the good done by the ' other sheep,' the more sore became
the Bishop. ' I know,' he said, ' you would labour and love out
of mere humanitarian motives. They would be enough for you,
but not for me. I could do it only as a duty, the duty of a
Christian Bishop. The natural man in me has no love for the
world.' ' God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten
Son — but that is a detail.' " x
1 J. G. Snead-Cox, The Life of Cardinal Vaughan, i. 481.
MOSES-SAMSON — 24

370 JOSHUA

IV.
The Eeport of the Spies.
1. Joshua was one of the twelve spies who were sent into the
land of Canaan to spy out the land and report as to the advis
ability of the children of Israel going over at once to take
possession of it. Upon their return, ten of the spies gave an
adverse report. Joshua was one of the two who alone had the
courage to bring a true report of the Promised Land. The
cowardly and false report of tbe other ten had filled the children
of Israel with fear ; they were on the point of revolt. " Let us
make a captain, they said one to another, and let us return into
Egypt." Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before the
assembly of the congregation. But Joshua with Caleb stood
forth and testified to the children of Israel : " The land, which we
passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land. If the
Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give
it us." Here is the real lesson of Joshua's character ; it is the
example not merely of a soldier's courage, but of intrepidity built
on faith ; he was not afraid of those who were avowedly God's
enemies ; be overthrew the Amalekites and Canaanites. He was
not afraid of the defection and threats of God's people, not
intimidated to withhold his message because other messengers of
God feared to tell the truth. For forty years his message had no
proof. None of the unbelieving and faint-hearted children of
Israel were allowed to enjoy the blessings they had refused to
believe in. But when their punishment was accomplished,
Joshua and Caleb, his brother in faith and courage, came again
to the Promised Land, and God gave them the assurance of His
support and presence.
Tf To be in a voluntary minority in great moral and spiritual
issues takes heroism of no common sort. Such heroism is only
born of a simple trust in God. Caleb and Joshua saw the giants
just as the others did, and knew themselves too to be but as
grasshoppers — but they saw God also ! The ten saw God, if at
all, only through the difficulties of the situation. These two men
saw the difficulties through God. In the one case the difficulties
minimized God. In the other God minimized the difficulties.

THE FAITHFUL SERVANT 371
All of which is an illustration of the way in which men of faith
and men without faith look out upon life and determine their
conduct ! The men who do not allow their vision of God to be
clouded by anything external and material are constantly saying
with these two, " Let us go up at once and possess the land, for
we are well able to overcome it." These are faith's heroes. For
without doubt Caleb and Joshua stood alone, scorned and derided
by a faithless people, always ready to follow the faithless leaders
who recommended to them the ever popular "line of least
resistance," and whose influence on the subsequent course of
the nation's life is too well known to need pointing out.
History always sets an unerring verdict upon such moral
mistakes as were made at Kadesh-barnea, whether by men or
nations. And the plainest man among us can always read it.
Moral heroism which yields uncontested sovereignty to the claims
of God has in itself the assurance of ultimate victory and pros
perity. In that hour of such magnificent resolve, faith received
a promise of reward to which Caleb and Joshua clung throughout
all the weary years which elapsed before they were again on the
borders of tbe Promised Land. Its accomplishment often seemed
far off and remote. Yet during those years the testimony of one
at least of them is that he " wholly followed the Lord." The
original purpose of his life was undaunted and undiverted. All
the way through the wilderness-wanderings he was true to the
light and cherished the promise. The undivided allegiance of his
heart was never withdrawn from God. Faith and patience were
in invincible alliance.1
2. This was the central point of Joshua's life in the wilderness
on this side of Canaan. For with the sending of him into
Palestine was linked his future work as conqueror of tbe land.
Moses drew him apart from the rest and changed his name from
Oshea, " tbe Saviour," to Jehoshua, " God tbe Saviour." The new
name enshrined his destiny; it dedicated him to his work as
captain of the Lord's host, as the winner of the land. It was a
kind of baptism, a solemn consecration. Henceforth he knew
what he was to do. A mighty, ruling idea was added to his life,
and, as events fell out, it guided, inspired, and developed him for
many years before be could put it into action.
Tf What I admire in Columbus is not his having discovered a
world, but his having gone to search for it on the faith of an

opinion.2

1 J. S. Holden, Life's Flood-Tide, 135. 2 Turgot.

372 JOSHUA
Tf There is one feature that is always prominent in those who
are strong personalities, and that is a unity of purpose, a con
centration of mind, a fixed determination which pursues its object
steadily and without wavering. Whether it be a statesman, a
general, a merchant, or a minister of God, they are all alike in
this, that their motto is that of St. Paul, " One thing I do." And
this unity of purpose is what religious people call consecration-
It is the separation of one duty, one ambition, one resolve from
all others, and giving it the prominent place in the life. It is
the application to human life of that which is often done with
buildings, vessels, and the like. The churches that are used for
one object, the sacred vessels that are set apart for the Holy
Communion, the Bible that is put into a place of its own, the-
military banner that is hung in some cathedral, all speak clearly
of the meaning of consecration. And we feel that things so
consecrated get a kind of virtue by reason of tbeir consecration.
They are different from other things of the kind, and have a
certain halo of romance thrown about them. So, too, when.
consecration is applied to human life : the men and women who
are known to be separate have a distinction of their own. It
may be some dark purpose, a feeling of revenge which seeks to
be satisfied; or some ambitious aim, a family estate to be won
back, a name to be won ; or it may be some philanthropic resolve,
such as that which has animated a Wilberforce, a Shaftesbury, a
Howard ; or some religious undertaking, such as that which has-
inspired a Livingstone, a Carey, a Patteson ; but, whatever it is
you feel, it has a power of its own, and strongly determines
personality. And the word "saint," so widely misunderstood,
testifies to the distinction consecration gives to it, meaning one
who is consecrated to the will of God. He may be very im
perfect, very human ; but, so far as he recognizes as a principle
of his life tbat he would rather do the will of God than any one-
else's, he is a saint, a consecrated man.1

V.
Leader of Israel.
1. The time had now come for the children of Israel to take
possession of their inheritance. Palestine was in sight, and
Moses, knowing that his end was near, asked God with great
1 G. H. S. Walpole, Personality and Power, 72.

THE FAITHFUL SERVANT 373
solemnity to name his successor, " that the congregation of the
Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd."
2. To Moses it would have been a source of legitimate
gratification if one of his two sons, Gershom or Eliezer, had been
appointed to be his successor. His brother Aaron had the joy
before he died of seeing his son Eleazar assume the high-priestly
robes, and the sacerdotal office remained in the family until the
time of Eb. But with Moses it was otherwise. However pleasing
such an arrangement would have been to his fatherly pride, in
this as in other matters he was supremely disinterested, and his
wish was in perfect harmony with the Divine choice. Joshua,
the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, was marked out by God
for the position, and solemnly invested wibh authority by Moses,
who gave the ordination charge before his decease.
3. The scene has a deep significance. It is not merely the
oramatic contact of old and young that interests us — the pathos
of a great man nearing his end, and the fascination of a young
man at the beginning of a great career — but we see that the bond
between them is a common religious ideal. Moses is fresh from
the vision of God ; Joshua is seeking it. There is a deep pathos
of clinging hands as the parting hour of the two draws nearer.
How often was the charge repeated by the older leader to the
younger, "Be strong, and of a good courage," till it became a
kind of national refrain.
4. As we pass from Moses to Joshua we feel as if we were
passing from poetry to prose. Practical though Moses was, his
sphere was on the height. The mountain was his native element.
It was on the mountain that he bad to prepare for the plain.
It was the soul of a poet that led him to glorify common things ;
his sober practice came from his ecstatic elevation. Joshua, on
the other hand, had never stood on the height, had never required
to occupy it. He had not possessed the genius to discover the
Promised Land. Moses was moving towards the Land of Promise.
Everything had been planned; everything had been arranged.
All that was needed was a patient drudge to execute the orders —
a man who would be content to take the servant's place. No
prophetic vision was required, no foresight. The head and the

374 JOSHUA
heart of the enterprise were already there ; all that remained was
to seek a hand. Joshua could no more have wielded Moses' rod
than Moses could have wielded Joshua's sword. The one did his
work and was laid aside. But new circumstances required a new
type of character — the smaller man was better fitted for the
rougher work. Joshua was a man fit not only for battle but for
tedious campaigning ; full of resources, and able to keep up the
heart of a whole people by his hopeful bearing. That he should
have been able to fill the place vacated by so great a man as
Moses gives us the highest idea of his calibre. That Moses was
missed there can be little doubt; yet not Moses himself could
have led the people more skilfully and successfully from victory
to victory, or have in the full tide of conquest held them more
thoroughly in hand, and settled them more quietly in the land.
Tf Traditions has not preserved any details which enable us
to realize the individual character of Joshua. The present writer
has said of Moses, " Moses' personality cannot be exactly defined.
In tbe oldest tradition he stands in such isolated grandeur, is so
constantly thought of as the ideal ruler and prophet, that the
traits of human, individual life and character are lost. Even
points that seem characteristic are soon seen to belong to the
Israelite ideal of the saint and prophet ... his wife and sons
vanish silently from the story, which cares nothing about his
personal relations, and is interested only in the official successor
to his leadership." (Article "Moses," in Hastings' Diction
ary of the Bible.) In the same way Joshua is not so much an
individual as a type, first of a devoted adherent to a divinely
appointed leader, and then of a God-fearing ruler and general.
As tradition is sifted and interpreted with a view to edification,
the individual traits are dropped, and hortatory writers, like the
editors of the Book of Joshua, only retain those ideal features which
they desire their readers to admire and imitate. Our sympathetic
interest in a historical character is derived from the blending of
light and shade, of strength and weakness, of failure and success,
and even of noble and of unworthy motives, which is found in
real men and women. But when once a hero is set up as a
shining example, there is a growing tendency to represent him as
a combination of a favourite of fortune, an admirable Crichton,
and a perfect saint. It is doubtful whether he becomes more
edifying, but he certainly grows less interesting. These and other
considerations have led some scholars to suppose that Joshua is
merely the personification of his tribe, Joseph ; or the eponymous

THE FAITHFUL SERVANT 375
ancestor devised for one of its clans. But if we had the ancient
traditions in all their primitive fulness and frankness, we should
probably find Joshua still there, as real and as human as Gideon,
Saul, or David. As it is, the successor of Moses stands out as a
noble ideal of a national leader in war and peace.1
«t> 5. Joshua had need of great strength and courage, for it was
one of the most difficult of tasks that was entrusted to him. He
was to lead the people through a series of the most brilliant and
exciting mibtary successes, and then to turn them to the most
peaceful pursuits. He was to teach them to shed blood pitilessly,
to harden them to such sights as the sacking of towns, and then
to enforce laws which in many points were singularly humane.
It has been said of the Eomans that they conquered like savages
and ruled bke philosophic statesmen. The same transition had to
be accomplished by Israel, and into the strong hand of Joshua
was this debcate task committed.
Tf A keen observer, who is also one of the most vivid of
contemporary writers, recently said in conversation that the
greatest fighters he had known were by temperament and
disposition the most peaceful of men. He named more than one
famous Engbsb soldier, whose name is a synonym for daring
audacity, who exhausts all the arts of diplomacy before resorting
to arms, who hates war, and yet who fights with Titanic energy
and apparent recklessness when the battle is on. These are men
of true courage, because they face the issues of life and death, not
with the stolidity of ignorance or the blind pluck of brute force,
but with clear intelligence of all that war involves. The bravery
of the Greek is more admirable than that of the Turk, because
the Greek is intensely alert and sensitive, while the Turk is stolid
and indifferent. It is said that no troops are so quiet under fire
as the Turkish troops. Nothing disturbs or excites them. Under
the play of murderous guns they move as calmly as if they were
deploying on a parade-ground. In some cases this courage is the
fruit of a fanatical religious faith ; in most cases it is due to lack
of physical and mental sensitiveness. The root of the noblest
courage is faith in God.2
Made of unpurchasable stuff,
They went the way when ways were rough,
They, when the traitors had deceived,
Held the long purpose, and believed;
1 W. H. Bennett, Joshua and the Conquest of Palestine, 86.
2 H. W. Mabie, The Life of the Spirit, 122.

376 JOSHUA
They, when the face of God grew dim,
Held thro' the dark and trusted Him —
Brave souls that fought the mortal way
And felt that faith could not betray.
Give thanks for heroes that have stirred
Earth with the wonder of a word,
But all thanksgiving for the breed
Who have bent destiny with deed —
Souls of the high, heroic birth,
Souls sent to poise the shaken earth,
And then called back to God again
To make heaven possible for men.

JOSHUA. II.
The Victorious Soldier.

mt

Literature.
Bennett, W. H., Joshua and the Conquest of Palestine, 31.
Blaikie, W. G., The Booh of Joshua (Expositor's Bible) (1893), 82.
Brooke, S. A., The Unity of God and Man (1886), 126.
Burrell, D. J., The Church in the Fort (1901), 104.
Byrum, E. E., The Secret of Prayer (1912), 122.
Campbell, R. J., The Song of Ages (1905), 203.
Croskery, T., Joshua and the Conquest (1882), 24.
Dods, M., Israel's Iron Age (1875), 1.
Ealand, F., The Spirit of Life (1908), 110.
Gibbon, J. M., The Vision and the Call (1894), 17.
Gowen, H. H., The Kingdom of Man (1893), 121.
Hall, B., Works, v. (1846) 248.
Ingram, A. E. W., Under the Dome (1902), 254.
Jerdan, C, Manna for Young Pilgrims (1912), 51.
King, E., The Love and Wisdom of God (1910), 20.
Lewis, H. E., in Men of the Old Testament : Cain to David (1904), 161.
MacgTegor, G. H. C, Messages of the Old Testament (1901), 73.
Maolaren, A., Expositions : Deuteronomy, etc. (1906), 87.
Meyer, E. B., Joshua and the Land of Promise, 24.
Moore, E. W., Christ in Possession (1899), 142.
„ „ The Christ-Controlled Life (1894), 49.
Simeox, W. H., The Cessation of Prophecy (1891), 89.
Stanford, C, Symbols of Christ, 89.
Vaughan, C. J., The Presence of God in His Temple (1872), 271.
Virgin, S. H., Spiritual Sanity (1905), 245.
Webster, F. S., The Beauty ofthe Saviour (1904), 31.
Westphal, A., The Law and the Prophets (1910), 211.
Wharton, M. B., Famous Men of the Old Testament (1903), 91.
Williams, I., The Characters of the Old Testament (1870), 138.
Wilmot-Buxton, H. J., Day by Day Duty (1905), 147.
Christian World Pulpit, x. (1876) 152 (G. B. Johnson) ; lviii. (1900) 346
(J. A. Irvine).
Church of England Pulpit, xxxiv. (1892) 279 (W. Ewen) ; xxxviii. (1894)
305 (E. A. Stuart) ; Mi. (1904) 182 (J. Penfold).
Churchman's Pulpit : Eirst Sunday after Trinity, ix. 443 (W. E. Griffis).
Keswich Week, 1908, p. 28 (J. Battersby Harford).
Literary Churchman, xxxii. (1886) 549 (J. B. C. Murphy).

378

The Victorious Soldier.
Be strong and of a good courage . . . and I will be with thee.— Deut.
xxxi. 23.
Joshua is represented in Scripture as a warrior, one might almost
say as nothing else; other soldiers have strongly marked char
acters of their own, as David, as the Centurion in the Gospels,
and Cornelius in the Acts. But in Joshua the character of the
man is lost in the soldier. It is remarkable how repeatedly it is
said to him, " Be strong and of a good courage " ; " Only be thou
strong and very courageous ; be not afraid." He was called upon
for this courage ; it was fulfilled in all his life ; and at his death
he gave the like injunction, saying to Israel, " Be ye therefore very
courageous." But this in Joshua was a sacred courage, not that
of the world, but of God ; it was founded on faith. He was called
upon to execute the purposes of God, and the call was ever
accompanied by the promise, " I will be with thee " ; and in that
promise be trusted. All through the arduous campaign that
followed, nothing could daunt Joshua's courage whilst that as
surance was ever ringing its silver tones in the belfry of bis
memory. " I will be with thee."
Tf There is the power of being mastered by and possessed with
an idea. How rare it is ! I do not say how few men are so
mastered and possessed : I say how few men have the power so to
be. The fine and simple capacity for it which belongs to youth
being once lost, how few men ever attain the culture by which it
is renewed. But without it there can be no courage. Without
some end set clear before you, what chance is there that you can
shoot your arrow strong and straight ? It does not need that
you should be bbnd to all the difficulties that lie between. Eeck-
lessness is no part of courage. When Cromwell and his men gave
the sublime picture of heroic courage which illuminates English
history, it was not that they undervalued the enormous strength
of what they fought against ; it was that they saw righteousness
379

380 JOSHUA
and freedom shining out beyond, and moved toward their fascinat
ing presence irresistibly. Courage, bke every other good thing,
must be positive, not negative.1

Jordan.
Moses is dead but the work goes on : divinely-gifted leaders
are never wanting. " After the death of Moses . . . the Lord spake
unto Joshua, saying, Moses my servant is dead ; now therefore
arise, go over this Jordan. ... Be strong and of a good courage
... for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."
Time and again, in his instruction of Joshua, the Lord seemed to
impress upon him the great necessity of being of a good courage.
He knew that Joshua would have opportunities of exercising bis
faith, and that trials would be heaped upon him to such an extent
that it would require the utmost courage to go through victori
ously. However, with all the instruction given to Joshua, and
the admonitions to be true to the Lord and courageous, there was
always this precious promise : " The Lord thy God is with thee
whithersoever thou goest."
1. The first command given to Joshua was a trial of his faith.
The whole land of Canaan was Israel's by deed of gift. But
though this was so, each square mile of it had to be claimed from
the hand of the peoples that possessed it. When Israel reached
its banks, the Jordan was in flood, and overflowing the low-lying
lands on either side of its bed. Across the river stood Jericho,
embosomed in palms and tamarisks, in a very paradise of exquisite
vegetation, its aromatic shrubs and gardens scenting the air. But
as the people beheld it, all their cherished hopes of taking it by
their own energy or courage must have been utterly dissipated.
To cross a stream in the face of the enemy is a difficult operation,
even for modern armies ; what must it have been for Joshua and
his horde ? Not a hint is given him as to the means by which the
crossing is to be made possible. He has Jehovah's command to do
it, and Jehovah's promise to be with him, and that is to be enough.
1 Bishop Phillips Brooks, Essays and Addresses, 333.

THE VICTORIOUS SOLDIER 381
Tf The narrative of the crossing of the Jordan has recently
received a remarkable illustration from a passage discovered in
an MS. Arabic history. This states that in a.d. 1266 a great
landslip at Damieh dammed the Jordan at a time when it was in
full flood ; and below Damieh the river ceased to flow from mid
night till about 10 a.m. This Damieh is often identified with the
Adam of the Book of Joshua, and is a point about seventeen
miles north of Jericho, where the valley of the river contracts
to a narrow gorge, which might easily be blocked by a landslip.
Thus the Jordan could be crossed by the Israelites at many
separate points. We must not, therefore, think of them as
marching in one long, continuous procession. A traveller who
lived for many years among tbe Bedouin, describing the great
pilgrim caravan from Damascus to Medina and Mecca,
writes :
" There go commonly three or four camels abreast and seldom
five : the length of the slow-footed multitude of men and cattle is
near two miles, and the width some hundred yards in the open
plains. The Hajjaj [pilgrims] were this year by their account
(which may be above the truth) 6000 persons ; of these more than
half are serving-men on foot; and 10,000 of all kinds of cattle,.
the most camels, then mules, hackneys, asses, and a few drome
daries of Arabians returning in security of the great convoy
to their own district." (C. M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia
Deserta, i. 7.)
The Israelites were not ordinary travellers but tribes migrating
with then' famibes and all their belongings, so that the proportion
of cattle and beasts of burden would be larger than in the Mecca
caravan. At the lowest estimate this gathering of nomad clans
would include a formidable multitude of men and animals, and we
may imagine them on the morning of the crossing encamped for
miles along the river, each kindred by itself. At dawn the tents-
were struck, and the scanty belongings of the nomads were
packed ; and later, perhaps at some concerted signal, the loads
were lifted on to the backs of the beasts of burden, and the clans-
crossed the river to take up new camping grounds in the plains
on the west of the Jordan. Again we may compare the account
given of the starting of the Damascus caravan for Mecca :
" The day risen, the tents were dismantled, the camels led in
ready to their companies, and halted beside their loads. We waited"
to hear the cannon shot which would open that year's pilgrimage.
It was near ten o'clock when we heard the signal gun fired, and
then, without any disorder, litters were suddenly heaved and
braced upon tbe bearing beasts, their charges laid upon the-

382 JOSHUA
kneeling camels, and the thousands of riders, all born in tbe
caravan countries, mounted in silence." x
2. Following the narrative, we are informed that three days
were allowed, if not for physical, certainly for moral and spiritual
preparation for the crossing of the river. Joshua moved his
camp to the very brink of the river. Then after appropriate
religious ceremonies, he placed the priests with the ark of God
in front. The waters as they approached moved to left and
right, and this vast multitude, with all their cattle and bear
ing their belongings, walked over on the dry bed of the river,
several hours being consumed in the passage. When the last
one of this mighty and consecrated host had set his feet upon the
sacred soil, the waters rolled back, and shut them out for ever
from their wanderings and bondage ; shut them in to a land which
was full of trials yet to come, but whose mountains were crested
with beauty and whose valleys laughed with abundance.
From Josh. iii. 7 and 10 we learn that the purpose of this
miracle was twofold. It was intended to stamp the seal of God's
approbation on Joshua, and to hearten the people by the assur
ance of God's fighting for them. The leader was thereby put on
the level of Moses, the people on that of the generation before
whom the Eed Sea had been divided.
Tf If I had to single out any one chapter in the Bible which I
am conscious of having influenced me most, I should say the first
of Joshua, with its oft-repeated exhortation to be strong and to
be very courageous ; and if I had to single out any particular
verses it would be those which were taught me when a boy and
which I long afterwards saw on the wall in General Gordon's
room in Southampton : " Trust in the Lord with all thine heart,
lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknow
ledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." 2
3. Intelligence of this marvellous event reached the ears not
only of the Amorite mountain-chiefs, but also of tbe Canaanite
lowlanders on the sea-coast, and filled them with the utmost
alarm ; " their heart melted, neither was there spirit in them any
more." No attack, therefore, was made upon the Israelites, who
1 W. H. Bennett, Joshua and the Conquest of Palestine, 38.
2 W. T. Stead, in Books which have Influenced me.

THE VICTORIOUS SOLDIER 383
were left in quiet possession of their advanced post on the
western side of Jordan. Here the rite of circumcision, so long
neglected during their desert wanderings, was performed, and in
memory of this removal of the reproach of their uncircumcised
state, the rising ground of their encampment was called Gilgal.
They were now also in a condition to keep the passover, which was
duly celebrated on the fourteenth day of the month at even on
the plains of Jericho, and the unleavened cakes prescribed for this
festival were made of the old corn of the land, and not of the
manna, which on the next day entirely ceased, and thus proved
that their desert life was really over.
Tf While the manna continued to descend, it was the staple
article of food; but when the manna was withdrawn, the old
corn and other fruits of the country took its place. In other
words, the miracle was not continued when it ceased to be
necessary. The manna had been a provision for the wilderness,
where ordinary food in sufficient quantity could not be obtained ;
but now that they were in a land of fields and orchards and vine
yards the manna was withdrawn. No sanction is given in the
Bible to the idea of a lavish and needless expenditure of super
natural power. A law of economy, we might almost say parsi
mony, prevails side by side witb the exercise of unbounded
hberality. Jesus multiplies the loaves and fishes to feed the
multitude, but He will not let one fragment be lost that remains
after tbe feast. A similar law guides the economy of prayer.
We have no right to ask that mercies may come to us through
extraordinary channels, when it is in our power to get them by
ordinary means. If it is in our power to procure bread by our
labour, we dare not ask it to be sent direct. We are only too
prone to make prayer at the eleventh hour an excuse for want of
diligence or want of courage in what bears on the prosperity of
the spiritual life. It may be that of His great generosity, God
sometimes blesses us, even though we have made a very inade
quate use of the ordinary means. But on that we have no right
to presume. We are fond of short and easy methods where the
natural method would be long and laborious. But here certainly
we find the working of natural law in the spiritual world. We
cannot look for God's blessing without diligent use of God's
appointed means.1
4. Gilgal, the first encampment, seems to have been the resting-
place of the ark and probably of the non-combatants, during the
1 W. G. Blaikie, The Book of Joshua, 123.

384 JOSHUA
conquest, and to have derived thence a sacredness which long
clung to it, and finally led, singularly enough, to its becoming a
centre of idolatrous worship. The rude circle of unhewn stones
without inscription was, no doubt, exactly like the many pre
historic monuments found all over the world, which forgotten
races have raised to keep in everlasting remembrance forgotten
fights and heroes. These grey stones preached at once the duty
of remembering, and the danger of forgetting, the past mercies of
God. Tf A few months before the death of Eobert Louis Stevenson,
certain Samoan chiefs whom he had befriended while they were
under imprisonment for political causes, and whose release he
had been instrumental in effecting, testified their gratitude by
building an important piece of road leading to Mr. Stevenson's
Samoan country house, Vailima. At a corner of the road there
was erected a notice, prepared by the chiefs and bearing their
names, which reads :
"The Eoad of the Loving Heart.
' Bemembering the great love of his highness, Tusitala, and his
loving care when we were in prison and sore distressed, we have
prepared him an enduring present, this road which we have dug
to last for ever.' " x

II.
Jeeicho.
Israel passed over Jordan, but there were more dangers in
front; they escaped from one difficulty only to meet another.
There stood Jericho, a strong city, walled up to heaven. But
the command was still — Go forward, Jericho must be taken. It
was the key of the country, and before they could open the-
country to take possession of the heritage their God had given
them they had to take that key. They had to take it, or fail
utterly; to take it or perish at the very threshold of their
enterprise. Tf Of the many fortresses in Palestine, Jericho appears to bave
been the most nearly impregnable. The Israelites had no siege:
1 M'Clwe't Magazine, July, 1895.

THE VICTORIOUS SOLDIER 385
engines; neither battering-ram, nor catapult, nor moving tower.
Their only weapons were slings, arrows, spears. Against the
walls of Jericho these were as straws and thistle-down. There
were two other passes by which Joshua might have entered the
Promised Land. Neither of them was guarded. It is significant
that God conducted him across the Jordan at the point where
the strongest fortification in the country stood directly in his
way; the point where the sole alternatives before him were
victory that seemed impossible or defeat that would be ruin.
Once before, the Israelites had entered Palestine. Then they
approached from the south, crossed the border unopposed,
ana fled back before they were attacked. But in conquering
Jericho they virtually subdued the Promised Land. No good or
permanently pleasant possession is ever gained in this world
except by overcoming obstacles. Jericho always bars the entrance
to the Promised Land. We see some object of desire. We see
the difficulties in the way. We wish they were removed. We
attack them, if we dare, for the sake of what we see behind them.
But in conquering our Jericho we always find something more
precious than we see or seek. Is it wealth one longs for ? It
must be earned by toil, frugality, self-denial. Indolence must be
overcome. Unless these difficulties have been mastered, wealth
is no blessing. There are no beatitudes save such as are ap
proached by steep and narrow ways.1
1. Joshua was a brave military leader ; but he needed Divine
guidance in beginning the great campaign, and also Divine
heartening and encouragement. It must have been a time of
great suspense for him. In anxious mood he went forward alone
to reconnoitre the place. While he was there, thinking and
thinking, all at once there glimmered in the twilight over against
him the figure of "a man with his sword drawn in his hand."
What was it ? Dream of the night, or spirit of the dead, solid
form or unsubstantial vapour, man or angel, friend or foe, —
Joshua knew not, but he was ready for the encounter. Simple as
a child, fearless as " one of the immortals," he looked the Mystery
in the face, and challenged the unknown warrior with the
question, " Art thou for us, or for our adversaries ? " Joshua
knew of no neutrality in the warfare of God. The stranger must
be friend or enemy. But there is something amiss with the
question, for it is rebuked. " Nay," says the vision, not for you,
1 W. B. Wright, The World to Come, 75.
MOSES-SAMSON — 25

386 JOSHUA
nor yet for your adversaries, am I come, but " as captain of the
host of the Lord am I now come."
Tf Surely we are not told in Scripture about the Angels for
nothing, but for practical purposes ; nor can I conceive a use
of our knowledge more practical than to make it connect the
sight of this world with the thought of another. Nor one more
consolatory; for surely it is a great comfort to reflect that,
wherever we go, we have those about us who are ministering
to all the heirs of salvation, though we see them not. Nor one
more easily to be understood and felt by all men ; for we know
at one time the doctrine of Angels was received even too readily.
And if any one would argue hence against it as dangerous, let
him recollect the great principle of our Church, that the abuse of
a thing does not supersede the use of it.1
2. It seemed to Joshua that there were two sides, his own and
the enemy's, between which the battle was to be fought out ; he
had to learn that it was not for him or for Israel to gain the
victory, but for the Lord their God. Up to that time Joshua
thought he was captain, but he was mistaken, and he saw it. In
deep reverence he fell on his face, and was bidden, like Moses at
the burning bush, to loose his shoes from off his feet, for the place
whereon he stood was holy ground. Then the captain of the
Lord's host gave His orders, told of His plan — not at all like tbe
plans of Joshua — how Jericho was to be taken, not by might or
strength of armed men, but by tbe blast of the Spirit of God
toppling down the stupendous walls in which the heathen
Canaanites put their trust. The Israelites were not to take
Jericho by their own strength, or to lift sword or spear against
it. Jericho was to be taken in God's way. Tbe priests were to
carry the ark round Jericho for seven days, bearing with them
trumpets of rams' horns. On the seventh day, when they blew
a blast, the walls would fall down.
Israel wondered but obeyed. Doubtless the men of Jericho
laughed behind their strong walls, and thought that a few priests
bearing trumpets could not hurt them. For six days the ark was
carried round Jericho, but tbe walls stood as strong as ever. On
the seventh day, whilst the people laughed, the priests went seven
times round Jericho, and the trumpets sounded, and tbe people
1 J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, ii. 365,

THE VICTORIOUS SOLDIER 387
shouted, and the walls of Jericho fell down flat. By no human
power had these walls fallen before the Israelites. The voice of
God was the cannon that made the breach. One moment they
had stood impregnable. The next they had fallen in ruins. The
Israelites had only to reap the victory. It was God who had won it.
Tf Jericho is a city surrounded by resources. Yet in war she
has always been easily taken. That her walls fell down at the
sound of Joshua's trumpets is no exaggeration, but the soberest
summary of all her history. Judaea could never keep her. She
fell to Northern Israel till Northern Israel perished. She fell to
Bacchides and the Syrians. She fell to Aristobulus when he
advanced on his brother Hyrcanus and Judaea. She fell without
a blow to Pompey, and at the approach of Herod and again of
Vespasian her people deserted her. It is also interesting to note
that three invaders of Judaea — Bacchides, Pompey, and Vespasian
- — took Jericho before they attempted Jerusalem, although she
did not lie upon their way to the latter, and that they fortified
her, not, it is to be supposed, as a base of operations so much as
a source of supplies. This weakness of Jericho was due to two
causes. An open pass came down on her from Northern Israel,
and from this both part of her water supply could be cut off
and the hills behind her could be occupied. But besides this, her
people never seem to have been distinguished for bravery ; and,
indeed, in that climate, bow could they ? Enervated by tbe great
heat, which degrades all the inhabitants of the Ghor, and unable
to endure on their bodies aught but linen, it was impossible they
could be warriors, or anything but irrigators, paddlers in water
and soft earth. We forget how near neighbours they had been to
Sodom and Gomorrah. No great man was born in Jericho: no
heroic deed was ever done in her. She has been called " the key "
and " the guardhouse " of Judasa ; she was only the pantry. She
never stood a siege, and her inhabitants were always running
away.1 3. The host advanced straight into Jericho and captured
it. Eahab, who had sheltered the two spies sent by Joshua to
reconnoitre the town and helped them to escape in safety, had
gathered her father and mother and other relatives together ; and
they were now led forth to a place of safety outside the camp of
Israel. The rest of the inhabitants, without exception, were slain
with the edge of the sword ; the city was burned, and everything
1 G. A. Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 267.

388 JOSHUA
was consumed except the vessels of gold and silver, of brass and
iron. And not only was the proud " City of Palmtrees " thus
utterly destroyed, but Joshua pronounced a solemn curse on any
one who attempted to rebuild it : he should lay the foundation
thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son should he set up
the gates of it (Josh. vi. 26). There was no reason in itself why
the city should not be rebuilt. Taking its fine position into
account, there was every reason why it should. But by perpetu
ating the destruction, Joshua was perpetuating the faith that
destroyed it.
Tf The capture of Jericho is the most popular of all Joshua's
exploits. And yet it is the one about which we should be most
cautious ; for the narrative is composed of two accounts, one very
ancient, which knows nothing beyond Joshua and the people, a
silent invasion and a sudden storming and capture of the town,
and another which introduces into the story the sacred pro
cession, tbe priests, the Ark of the Covenant, and the portentous
crumbling of the walls at the sound of the trumpets. What were
the real facts of this bold stroke ? Whether there really was a
religious demonstration around the walls to divert attention from
the siege operations, or whether Jehovah in this first stage of the
forward march intervened with miraculous aid, we are no longer
in a position to say. All those, therefore, who are anxious to
teach nothing but what is certain will be well advised not to lay
stress on the details of this campaign. One thing only we can be
sure of, that it remained indelibly impressed on the memory of
Israel as the type of the wars in which Jehovah Zebaoth worked
with His people and the victory was won by a display of faith.1
By Jericho's doom'd towers who stands on high,
With helmet, spear, and glittering panoply ?
" The Christian soldier, like a gleaming star,
Trained in the wilderness to iron war."
Take off thy shoes, thy promis'd land is found,
The place thou standest on is holy ground.
" Take Thou the shield and buckler, stop the way
Against mine enemies ! be Thou my stay ! "
I am thy rock, thy castle: I am He
Whose feet have dried up the Egyptian sea :
Fear not, for I am with thee ; put on might ;
'Gainst thrones and powers of darkness is the fight.
1 A. Westphal, The Law and the Prophets, 216.

THE VICTORIOUS SOLDIER 389
" I go, if Thou go with me ; ope the skies,
And lend me Pleaven-attemper'd armories."
Gird Truth about thee for thy mailed dress,
And for thy breastplate put on Eighteousness ;
For sandals, beauteous Peace; and for thy sword
The two-edg'd might of God's unfailing word ;
Make golden Hope thy helmet ; on, and strive : —
He that o'ercometh in those courts shall live,
Whose crystal floor by heavenly shapes is trod,
"A pillar in the temple of my God."1

III. Ai.
With one of those dramatic contrasts which are so character
istic of the prophetic narrative, the success at Jericho is followed
by the tragedy at Ai — a tragedy deeper than at first they knew ;
for it was not merely the failure of an attack and the loss of men,
but the breach of a great moral law, with the loss of stability and
power which such a breach always entails.
1. Fresh from the success at Jericho, the Israelites turned
their attention to the city of Ai. Acting upon advice given by
spies Joshua sent an attacking force of only three thousand men,
while the population of Ai numbered more than twelve thousand,
defended by a powerful and well-trained army. The Israelites
were repulsed with considerable slaughter, and thrown into the
deepest humiliation.
They had expected an easy victory; and now, at the close
of the day, we see Joshua and the leaders of Israel prone upon
the earth, with dust upon their heads and their clothes rent.
Israel had turned their backs upon their enemies, Israel had been
defeated; and it seemed to them, as they lay thus in utter
distress upon their faces, that God had forsaken them, that
destruction lay before them, that they were lost. The leader's
courage seemed to have forsaken him. The defeat was so
unlooked for, so strange, so unaccountable that it blotted out the
victory at Jericho, dimmed the Divine help at Jordan, and
clouded the whole horizon of his hopes. He raised up his voice
1 Isaac Williams, The Cathedral, 205.

390 JOSHUA
in prayer, and said, " Alas, 0 Lord God, wherefore hast thou at
all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand
of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been
content, and dwelt on tbe other side Jordan ! " It is now easily
seen why Moses and the Lord particularly charged Joshua to be
strong and courageous.
Simple but searching was the answer to his prayer: sin
there was somewhere, exposing the people to the wrath of theb
God; and until the sinful thing was put away, the wrath and
defeat would remain. By the divinely-guided lot, the offender
was discovered. Urged by Joshua to acknowledge Jehovah as a
just and all-seeing God, Achan confessed his sin — the sin of
covetousness. He had taken of the precious things already
devoted to Jehovah, and so had involved himself and all his
people in the doom of things devoted. The " troubler " of Israel
was stoned; his family and possessions were burned; and
communion between Jehovah and His people was restored.
Tf " A lover of silver," this latter word being the common and
proper word for covetous, in the Gospels and Epistles ; as of the
Pharisees in Luke xvi. 14; and associated with the other char
acters of men in perilous times, 2 Tim. ib. 2, and its relative
noun piXapyupla given in sum for the root of all evil in 1 Tim.
10, while even the authority of Liddell and Scott in the interpre
tation of vXiovifya. itself as only the desire of getting more than
our share, may perhaps be bettered by the authority of the teacher,
who, declining tbe appeal made to him as an equitable ^/tfrjjs
(Luke xn. 14-46), tells his disciples to beware of covetousness,
simply as the desire of getting more than we have got. " For a
man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he
possesseth." x
Tf One act of disobedience led to Adam's expulsion from
Paradise. It was one sin which brought darkness and death into
our world at first. And even now great mischief, sometimes
death, will follow one wrong act. One bar of iron pushed in
among the wheels of the most delicate machine will smash and
destroy it. One defect in the axle of the locomotive engine is
enough to smash it, wreck the train, and hurl death and destruc
tion all round. One leak in the ship is enough to start it on the
way to wreckage.2 1 Buskin, On the Old Road, ii. § 162.
2 Charles Leach, Sermons to Working-Men, 197.

THE VICTORIOUS SOLDIER 391
2. The sin of Achan punished, God now roused Joshua from
the dejection into which he had fallen by telling him to go forth,
and Ai should be given into his hands. Joshua practised a
remarkable stratagem upon his foes, reserving his main force in
ambush, while a small detachment attacked the city and drew
the defenders out, slaying them to a man, the king himself being
slain by Joshua's own hand. At the close of this victorious
expedition, Joshua held a service of thanksgiving on Mount Ebal.
The altar was in accordance with the Mosaic tradition ; no tool
was lifted on it. The victorious chief built the altar, the Levites
appearing as bearers of the ark, and, as such, being called priests.
Joshua, though an Ephraimite, was the principal celebrant. He
read the Law. And as he solemnly read, whether the blessing or
the curse, each several item was responded to by the Amens that
thundered forth from thousands of throats, and rolled in reverbera
ting echoes through the hills.
Tf The following account of the signing of the Scottish
Covenant, on Feb. 28th, 1638, in Greyfriars Church and church
yard, is given in Cunningham's Church History of Scotland : " All
were invited to come forward and sign. The aged Earl of
Sutherland was the first to append his name. He was followed
by Sir Andrew Murray, the minister of Abdy, in Fife. Then
high-born and low-born together crowded forward to add their
signatures. When all in the church had signed the solemn
document, it was taken out to the church-yard, and laid upon a
flat grave-stone. The enthusiasm of the crowd rose to its greatest
height. Men and women were alike ambitious to subscribe their
names. Some wrote after their signatures, ' till death ' ; others
could not restrain their feelings, and wept. This went on for
hours, till every part of the parchment was covered, and the
subscribers had only room to write their initials ; and dark night
alone put an end to the scene. Henderson afterwards described
it as ' the day of the Lord's power, wherein they had seen His
people most willingly offer themselves in multitudes, like the dew
of the morning.' ' It may well be said of this day,' says another
old writer, ' Great was the day of Jezreel.' It was a day wherein
the arm of the Lord was revealed — a day wherein the princes of
the people were assembled to swear fealty and allegiance to that
great King whose name is the Lord of Hosts." 1
1 J. Cunningham, Church History of Scotland, ii. 82.

392 JOSHUA IV.
The Gibeonites.
1. The successes and terrible reprisals of the Israelites shook
the Canaanitish populations of the south which had not been
touched and decided them to take concerted action. The coalition
aimed ostensibly at punishing the Gibeonites, who, moved to fear
by the recent successes of Israel and by the fame of Israel's God,
sought to save themselves from their probable doom by making
league with the conquerors. The clever cunning with which they
posed as travellers from a very far country, eager to make a league
with the now famous people of Jehovah, threw the Israelites com
pletely off their guard. Their old shoes and old bottles and old
bread, and their wily speeches and other fine fetches completely
circumvented Joshua, till he made a covenant of peace with a
cruel and corrupt people that he had been commanded to sweep
off the face of the earth.
Up to this moment the initiative had always been taken by
the Lord. Now for the first time it is taken by Joshua and the
people. They " asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord."
And for this, and for other like mistakes of ignorance, and
simplicity, and over-leniency, both Joshua and all Israel suffered
long and bitterly. When the guile of the Gibeonites was dis
covered, the furious people were for slaying them. Joshua,
however, would not permit this; but, with a solemn curse, he
condemned them, for their guile, to be slaves of the sanctuary of
Israel's God.
Tf The essence of lying is in deception, not in words : a lie may
be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a syllable, by
a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence ;
and all these kinds of lies are worse and baser by many degrees
than a lie plainly worded ; so that no form of blinded conscience
is so far sunk as that which comforts itself for having deceived,
because the deception was by gesture or silence, instead of
utterance ; and, finally, according to Tennyson's deep and trenchant
line, " A lie which is half a truth is ever the worst of lies." 1
2. Then five southern kings, headed by the king of Jerusalem,
conspired to take revenge upon Gibeon for weakening the
1 Buskin, Modern Painters ( Works, vii. 352).

THE VICTORIOUS SOLDIER 393
confederacy by its alliance with Israel. In terror, the Gibeonites
appealed to Joshua, who, with the Divine assurance of success, at
once responded. His confidence was justified; for Jehovah
granted him a signal victory. The Canaanites were panic-
stricken, and gave but little resistance to the Israelites, who slew
them right and left ; and those who could get away fled through
the defiles westward, over roads broken by ascent and descent
which led to Beth-horon, five miles distant. In making the
descent to the town, down a precipitous and rocky defile, the
refugees were arrested by a hail-storm, which slew many of them.
Standing on the summit of Upper Beth-horon, Joshua
watched the foe flying in helpless confusion towards the western
lowlands. The Lord had already delivered them into his hands,
and only time was needed to render the rout complete and enable
his forces to avenge themselves on their enemies. But the day
was far advanced, and he feared the Canaanites might yet make
good their escape.
At this point our narrative quotes some lines from an ancient
collection of poems called the Book of Jashar. The lines quoted
here are given as a prayer uttered by Joshua to Jehovah in the
presence of Israel : they run as follows : —
" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon ;
And thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed,
Until the people had avenged themselves upon
their enemies."
These lines were originally a poetic figure, similar to those in the
Song of Deborah, which tells us that : —
"They fought from heaven,
The stars in their courses fought against Sisera."
Apparently Joshua with the main battle of Israel was then to
the west of Gibeon, so that the sun appeared in the eastern sky
over the city. The valley of Ajalon stretches S.W. from Beth-
horon, and over it could be discerned the setting moon. The
rout of the enemy was complete, and the prayer of Israel
was for time for effective pursuit, for a fair opportunity of
reaping all the fruits of a great victory. And the prayer was
granted ; in that chase of many miles, there was a great slaughter

394 JOSHUA
of wretched fugitives, blinded and battered by the storm. With
the ready hyperbole of Oriental rhetoric, the poets of Israel sang
that this had been no common day, the very sun and moon had
stood still in heaven to ensure the triumph of tbe chosen people.
Tf Moon and sun are continually found associated in the Old
Testament as two great lights, destined, the one to rule the day,
the other the night, intended to fix days, months, and years, and
also to serve for the miraculous manifestations portending remark
able events to come. Although their duty of regulating time
requires a certain regularity of movements and periods, it is not
considered impossible that their course should be arrested or even
turned back at the command of Joshua and other men loved by
Yahwe. An ancient Jewish poet, singing of Joshua's victory over
the Amorites, attributes to that commander the boast of having
arrested the sun and moon ; and certainly one could not conceive
a more effective flight of fancy, or one more fitted for the heights
of an heroic and lyrical composition. But, as bas happened in
other ancient nations, so among the Jews also the material of
heroic songs passed not infrequently into history, and as history
this episode in the wars of Israel is even now regarded by many.
According to the narrative in the historical portion of the book
bearing the name of Isaiah, that prophet is said not only to have
stopped the sun, but to have turned it back. So, too, of
Elimelech, husband of Naomi, an obscure tradition relates that
he stopped the sun; and according to the Vulgate of 1 Chron.
iv. 22, a descendant of Judah, son of Jacob, is said to have
accomplished a like feat.1
3. On his return to Makkedah, Joshua brought forth the five
kings out of the cave to which they had fled for shelter, and slew
them with his own hand. Their bodies were then buried in the
cave. The victory of Beth-horon did not stand alone. In like
manner throughout the whole of the southern campaign Jehovah
fought for Israel and subdued the country before Joshua.
Tf In an army, if once the confidence of the soldiers in their
officers is destroyed, the whole organization is relaxed, discipline
gives way, military courage rapidly sinks, and troops who under
other circumstances would have been full of fire, enthusiasm, and
steady valour, degenerate into a dispirited and vacillating mob.
With nations it is not very different. Few things contribute so
much to the strength and steadiness of a national character as the
1 G. Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament, 40.

THE VICTORIOUS SOLDIER 395
consciousness among the people that in every great struggle or
difficulty they will find their natural leaders at their head — men
in whom they have perfect confidence, whose interests are
thoroughly identified with their own, who are placed by their
position above most sordid temptations, to whom they are already
attached by ties of property, tradition, and association. A nation
must have attained no mean political development before it can
choose with intelligence its own leaders, and it is happy if in the
earlier stages of its career the structure of society saves it from
the necessity, by placing honest and efficient men naturally at
its head.1

Lake Mekom.
1. The decisive victory over the Amorites at Gibeon exposed
the states which had fancied themselves secure behind the
mountainous regions of Palestine. At the instigation of Jabin,
king of Hazor, a coalition was formed which appealed to all those
who wished to make a supreme effort to thrust back the invader.
But the rapidity of Joshua's marches once more foiled the
enemy's enterprise.
The distance he had to go was about seventy miles, and Josephus
says the march was made in five days. When Joshua was within
a few miles of the enemy God spoke to him saying, " Be not
afraid because of them; for to-morrow about tbis time will I
deliver them up all slain before Israel : thou shalt hough their
horses, and burn their chariots with fire." Suddenly, while the
Canaanites supposed him to be far away, Joshua swooped down
upon them, or, as the original has it, fell upon them like a
thunderbolt. Thrown into confusion, their numbers impeding
their progress, they were put to the sword. Then ensued a panic
rivalling the one at Gibeon. Having pursued them for a time,
Joshua returned and invested Hazor, burning it, and destroying
the inhabitants, including the great King Jabin himself. So he
treated all the cities that had gone with the confederation, but
spared the buildings. Nearly the whole of Palestine was now
subject to Joshua. It is true that the whole of the people were not
1 W. E. H. Leeky, A History of Ireland, i. 280.

396 JOSHUA
subdued; but, so far as was necessary for the great purpose
Joshua had in view, Palestine was conquered. Thus, after these
fierce but prosperous wars in which two kings on the east of the
Jordan were defeated and dispossessed and thirty kings on the
west, the weary land had rest.
Tf The Jewish scholars who edited the Book of Joshua during
the exile held a theory that Joshua completed the conquest of
Canaan; they expressed their views in numerous paragraphs,
enumerating among the places conquered by him all the districts
of Palestine, and most of its important cities. This view is
directly contradicted by Judg. i., xviii., which state, as they now
stand, that the process went on after the death of Joshua, and
that even then the Israelites did not succeed in occupying the
whole land. . . . When the combined action of Israel had secured
a basis of operations in the valley of the Jordan and the central
highlands, separate tribes and clans broke off on new ventures of
their own. They found their opportunities in the weakness of
isolated cities ; in the need of some Canaanite prince for allies ;
or in the willingness of townsmen to hire out their pasture lands
for tribute to tbe nomad herdsmen. Thus by degrees the Israelites
spread themselves over the country, here and there establishing
settlements that were practically small independent states, inter
spersed among the towns and territories of the Canaanites ; else
where mingling with the natives, sometimes absorbing them,
sometimes being absorbed by them. The Books of Judges and
Samuel tell us how after some centuries this process issued in the
formation of a single united Israelite state. It may be interesting
to compare this invasion with the Saxon and Norman invasions
of England. Israel, and many of the inhabitants of Canaan, like
the Normans and Saxons, were closely allied in race ; and Canaan,
like England at the Conquest, included a heterogeneous mixture
of peoples. But, unlike England, Canaan was not organized as a
single state, and its civilization was higher than that of its in
vaders. There is a somewhat greater resemblance between tbe
Israelite and tbe Saxon Conquest. It is true that the differences
of race, manners, customs and religion between the Saxons and the
Eomanized Britons were greater than those between Israel and
Canaan. But Eoman Britain like Canaan was far more civilized
than its invaders ; the Saxon Conquest was gradual ; it sometimes
found its opportunity in an alliance with a native prince ; it re
sulted in the foundation of separate states, which eventually
united in a single kingdom.1
1 W. H. Bennett, Joshua and the Palestinian Conquest, 72.

THE VICTORIOUS SOLDIER 397
2. These wars of Joshua leave the last word yet to be said.
The moral difficulty, let it be frankly confessed, is enormous : we
should not have known how enormous, were it not for the New
Testament. It is as the mystic tender light from the Gospels
falls upon these ancient battle-fields that we shudder. Joshua had
with his faith the terrible intolerance of the true believer. There
is nothing more exterminating than the idea of the one God
when it is not modified by the doctrine of the cross. And Joshua
was ruthless, but with the ruthlessness there was also determined
thoughtfulness towards his end. He slew, not because he
debghted in cruelty, but because he was resolute to get the land
for Israel, to satisfy the long desire of Moses, to fulfil what he
believed to be the will of God. He slew, not because he loved
blood, but because he was fixed in his resolution to overthrow
idolatry, and the only way men could think of doing that then
was by fire and sword. The world had not seen the more excellent
way of Christ. And Joshua won his day.
Foremost captain of his time,
Eich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime.1
Tf Hake, the biographer of General Gordon, says : " The work
he had begun and was bent on finishing was fraught with peculiar
perils. It demanded a tact, an energy, and a force of will almost
superhuman. He had to deal not only with worthless and often
mutinous governors of provinces, but with wild and desperate
tribesmen as well ; he had to disband 6000 Bashi-Bazouks, who
were used as frontier guards, but who winked at slave-hunting
and robbed the tribes on their own account ; he had to subdue and
bring to order and rule the vast province of the Bahr Gazelle, but
now beneath the sway of the great slaver Sebehr. It was a
stupendous task : to give peace to a country quick with war ; to
suppress slavery among a people to whom the trade in human
flesh was life and honour and fortune ; to make an army out of
perhaps the worst material ever seen ; to grow a flourishing trade
and a fair revenue in the wildest anarchy in the world. The
immensity of the undertaking ; the infinity of details involved in
a single step towards the end ; the countless odds to be faced ; the
many pests — the deadly climate, the horrible vermin, the ghastly
1 Tennyson.

398 JOSHUA
itch, the nightly and daily alternation of overpowering heat and
bitter cold — to be endured and overcome ; the environment of
bestial savagery and ruthless fanaticism — all these combine to
make the achievement unique in human history. Like the
adventurer in Browning's magnificent allegory, my hero was face
to face with a vast and mighty wrong ; he had everything against
him, and he was utterly alone; but he stood for God and the
right, and he would not blench. There stood the Tower of Evil
— the grim ruined land, the awful presences, the hopeless task, the
anarchy of wickedness and despair and wrath. He knew, he felt,
he recognized it all ; and yet — And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. — " Childe Boland to the Dark Tower came." 1
1 A. E. Hake, The Story of Chinese Gordon, 294. (Hake in the quotation uses
"stag-horn" ; Browning's word is "slug-horn.")

JOSHUA. III.
The Resolute Reformer.

399

Literature.
Bennett, W. H., Joshua and the Conquest of Palestine, 74.
Blaikie, W. G., The Book of Joshua (Expositor's Bible) (1893), 248.
Brooke, S. A., The Unity of God and Man (1886), 126.
Croskery, T., Joshua and the Conquest (1882), 65.
Greenhough, J. G., Half-hours in God's Older Picture Gallery, 80.
Howard, H., The Conning Tower ofthe Soul (1912), 163.
Jowett, J. H., The Transfigured Church (1910), 253.
Lewis, H. E., in Men ofthe Old Testament : Cain to David (1904), 168.
Macgregor, G. H. C, Messages ofthe Old Testament (1901), 78.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Deuteronomy, etc. (1906), 168.
Meyer, F. B., Joshua and the Land of Promise, 135.
Murphy, J. B. C, The Service ofthe Master (1897), 124, 130.
Seeker, T., Sermons, ii. (1795) 25.
Selby, T. G., The God ofthe Patriarchs (1904), 273.
Tuckwell, W., Nuggets from the Bible Mine (1913), 52.
Vince, C, The Unchanging Saviour (1875), 120.
Voysey, C., Sermons, v. (1882), No. 37.
Wharton, M. B., Famous Men ofthe Old Testament (1903), 108.
Whitefield, G., Sermons (1839), 68.
Ciiurch Pulpit Year Book, iv. (1907) 128.
Churchman's Pulpit : First Sunday after Trinity, ix. 447 (H. Alford).

The Resolute Reformer.
And the land had rest from war. — Josh. xi. 23.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. — Josh. xxiv. 15.

Distribution of the Land.
Joshua was probably about ninety years of age when the con
quest of Canaan was complete. But a very important part of
his work had yet to be performed. It would not have been
enough for him to assert the supremacy of Israel over the
Canaanites, unless he had taken measures to follow up his victories
by settling the people in their stead. The work of destruction
must be succeeded by that of construction. The warrior must
give place to the administrator and statesman.
1. The aged chief of Jehovah's armies had earned his rest, but
he was oppressed no less with anxiety than with fatigue. He had
a real danger to contend with in the supineness of the Israelites
who were not yet possessed of their territory. Weary of the war,
distrustful of the support of Ephraim and Judah, whose whole
strength was diverted to their political organization, and finding
themselves in the midst of Canaanites who were often of the same
race and language as themselves, they indolently slipped into
treaties with the natives and gradually lost their individuality and
religion through reciprocal encroachments and alliances in which
Baal had more to gain than Jehovah.
Tf We need higher qualities to bear with good fortune than
with bad.1
TJ Tbis Nebuchadnezzar curse, that sends men to grass like oxen,
seems to follow but too closely on the excess or continuance of
national power and peace. In the perplexities of nations, in their
1 Maxims of La Rochefoucauld, trans, by Walter Scott, 6.
MOSES-S AMSON — 2 6

402 JOSHUA
struggles for existence, in their infancy, their impotence, or even
their disorganization, they have higher hopes and nobler passions.
Out of the suffering comes the serious mind ; out of the salvation,
the grateful heart ; out of endurance, fortitude ; out of deliverance,
faith: but when they have learned to live under providence of
laws and with decency and justice of regard for each other, and
when they have done away with violent and external sources of
suffering, worse evils seem to arise out of their rest ; evils that vex
less and mortify more, that suck the blood though they do not
shed it, and ossify the heart though they do not torture it. And
deep though the causes of thankfulness must be to every people
at peace with others and at unity in itself, there are causes of fear,
also, a fear greater than of sword and sedition : that dependence
on God may be forgotten, because the bread is given and the water
sure ; that gratitude to Him may cease, because His constancy of
protection bas taken the semblance of a natural law ; that heavenly
hope may grow faint amidst the full fruition of the world ; that
selfishness may take place of undemanded devotion, compassion be
lost in vainglory, and love in dissimulation, that enervation may
succeed to strength, apathy to patience, and the noise of jesting
words and foulness of dark thoughts to the earnest purity of the
girded loins and the burning lamp. About the river of human
life there is a wintry wind, though a heavenly sunshine ; the iris
colours its agitation, the frost fixes upon its repose. Let us
beware that our rest become not the rest of stones, which, so long
as they are torrent-tossed and thunder-stricken, maintain their
majesty, but when the stream is silent, and the storm passed,
suffer the grass to cover them and the lichen to feed on them, and
are ploughed down into dust.1
2. Joshua, vexed at their listlessness in a cause which was
Jehovah's, urged them to send representatives from each tribe
throughout the land and bring back a plan of the cities in the
various districts thereof, to be solemnly apportioned to tbe tribes
by lot. On their return, Joshua collected all the information and
cast lots, and the apportionment was made at Shiloh, before the
tent of meeting. What exactly was each one's portion we cannot
know for certain. The division was never so definite as the later
calculations of the Priestly survey would imply. When Joshua
had settled all the tribes, he obtained for himself a modest in
heritance among the hills of his own tribe of Ephraim. It was
a rugged spot in his native district at Timnath-serab (" the portion
1 Kuakin, Modern Painters, ii. Pt. iii. ( Works, iv. 30).

THE RESOLUTE REFORMER 403
that remains "), the name being probably then applied to the spot
as it was the last allotment. It is suggestive of the unselfishness
and simplicity of Joshua's character that he should have selected
a home for himself among the deep valleys and rugged hills of
Timnath-serah. " First in service, last in reward." He had done
a great work, yet received no exceptional recompense.
Tf The " wages " of every noble Work do yet lie in Heaven or
else Nowhere. Not in Bank-of -England bills, in Owen's Labour-
bank, or any the most improved establishment of banking and
money-changing, needest thou, heroic soul, present thy account of
earnings. Human banks and labour- banks know thee not ; or know
thee after generations and centuries have passed away, and thou
art clean gone from "rewarding," — all manner of bank-drafts,
shop-tills, and Downing-street Exchequers lying very invisible,
so far from thee ! Nay, at bottom, dost thou need any reward ?
Was it thy aim and life purpose to be filled with good things for
thy heroism ; to have a life of pomp and ease, and be what men
cab " happy," in this world, or in any other world ? I answer for
thee debberately, No ! x

II.
Joshua's Farewell and Death.
The years of rest became years of wisdom. Joshua felt more
and more how much of his task was left unfinished. It was one
thing to remove evil roots, and cleanse the land ; another thing
to keep his own nation clean in it. The twenty-fourth chapter of
Joshua is a pathetic close to a book of battles. It is the confession
of all true warriors that it is easier to win a battle than to fight
against sin day by day ; it is easier to capture the impregnable
fort, than to keep the heart pure to God.
1. Joshua hears that more or less everywhere local sanctuaries
are corrupting the disloyal conquerors and Jehovah is no longer
the uncontested King of Israel. So the old soldier returns to
fight one more battle — harder than all the rest. He convenes the
great Israelite assembly at Shechem, and there, in a speech which
recalls that of Moses in the plains of Moab or that of St. Paul
1 Carlyle, Past and Present.

404 JOSHUA
taking leave of the Ephesian elders, Joshua rehearses the whole
plan of God. He expresses the strongest solicitude for what he
knows the public happiness to depend on — the preservation of
true religion, and consequently of virtue, in opposition to the
superstitious follies and shocking vices of the nations round them.
He recapitulates Jehovah's blessings and Israel's crimes and duties,
and gathers all his failing strength to remind the chosen people
that all their future and salvation depend on their loyalty to the
head of the theocracy, Jehovah, their King.
No one can read this farewell speech without being moved.
There is first the brief recapitulation of the mighty acts of the
Lord, and then the trumpet call to decision : " Now therefore fear
the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth : and put away
the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood,
and in Egypt ; and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto
you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve ;
. . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Here
is a statement of perfect liberty, but of courageous warning ; he
puts the truth of their position plainly before them. They were
to choose whom they would serve ; he taught them this important
moral truth that, if men will not choose to serve God, they will
still be servants, that is, they will be enslaved by Satan.
These words were the last utterance of a man whose days
on earth were run, and who spoke from that commanding
eminence which looks at once upon the clearness of the earthly
past and the dimness of the heavenly future, with the wisdom of
aged experience and the awe of coming death. He stood amongst
them, a monumental relic of the times pushed back, by a stirring
century of change, into remote history; one who had toiled in
Egyptian quarries, had crossed the sand of the Eed Sea, had
shrunk from the thunders of Sinai. He knew more than they
thought of their secret idolatrous inclinations ; he would have no
half-hearted renunciation. "As for me and my house, we will
serve the Lord." He would bind tbe nation so, with cords, " even
unto the horns of the altar." He made the very stone, which
" had heard all the words of the Lord," be a witness to them, lest
they should deny their God.
Tf The "great stone," like Jacob's stone at Bethel, was one of
those sacred monoliths which were among the apparatus of early

THE RESOLUTE REFORMER 405
Israelite, as of other primitive religions. They were known in
Israel as ma$ge~bas or "pillars." Having set up this macctba,
"Joshua said to all the people, This stone shall bear witness
against us ; it has heard all the words of Jehovah which he spoke
with us, and it shall bear witness against you, lest ye deny your
God." In the existing narrative there is no record that Jehovah
had spoken ; possibly Joshua's words are regarded as Jehovah's ;
or else the tradition has been mutilated. Perhaps in its original
form it told how Joshua set up in the sanctuary at Shechem the
tables of stone received by Moses from Jehovah at Sinai, and
carried by the Israelites throughout their wanderings. The idea
of a stone bearing witness is still found among the nomad Arabs.
Doughty teUs us {Arabia Deserta, ii. 538) that he was in
formed concerning a great bank of stones on the pilgrim road to
Mecca, that " Every pilgrim who casts a stone thereon has left a
witness for himself, for his stone shall testify in the resurrection
that he fulfilled the pilgrimage." 1
2. The simple but impressive ceremony which ratified the
covenant thus renewed consisted of two parts — the writing of the
account of the transaction in "the book of the law," and the
erection of a great stone, whose grey strength stood beneath the
green oak, a silent witness that the Israelites, of their own choice,
after full knowledge of what the vow meant, had reiterated their
vow to be the Lord's. Thus on the spot made sacred by so many
ancient memories, the people ended their wandering and homeless
life, and passed into the possession of the inheritance, through the
portal of this fresh acceptance of the covenant, proclaiming
thereby that they held the land on condition of serving God, and
writing their own sentence in case of unfaithfulness. It was the
last act of the assembled people, and the crown and close of
Joshua's career.
Tf There is a solemn choice in life. Life and death, light and
darkness, truth and lies are set before us. At every instant the
cry comes for us to choose one or the other, and the choice of one
involves the putting away of the other. And we must choose.
That is one of the certainties of life. There is no such thing as
offering one hand to God and another to evil ; one hand to the
self-sacrifice of Christ and the other to the covetousness of the
world. You cannot serve God and Mammon. You cannot follow
1 W. H. Bennett, Joshua and the Palestinian Conquest, 83.

406 JOSHUA
Jesus at home, and your own pleasure in your outward life.
Your life, whether you like it or not, becomes of one piece.1
Tf On the morning of his wedding-day, James Taylor, the
father of Hudson Taylor, was haunted by the words " As for me
and my house, we will serve the Lord," probably heard at some of
the Methodist services, and unheeded, until, as he threshed out
wheat in preparation for his bride, the responsibility of the step
he was taking was borne in upon him. The words would not
leave him.
" Hour after hour went by. Tbe sun rose high over the hills,
lighting the white-roofed village where the bride was waiting.
Taylor was due there long before noon, and had yet to don
wedding apparel. But all, all was forgotten in this first, great
realization of eternal things. Alone upon his knees among the
straw the young stone-mason was face to face with God. ' As for
me ' had taken on new meaning. The fact of personal responsi
bility to a living though unseen Being — Love infinite and eternal,
or Justice as a consuming fire — had become real and momentous
as never before. It was the hour of the Spirit's striving with this
soul, the solemn hour when to yield is salvation. And there
alone with God James Taylor yielded. The love of Christ
conquered and possessed him, and soon the new life from above
found expression in the new determination : ' Yes, we will serve
the Lord.'"2
3. It was at Shechem also, in full assembly of Israel, that
Joshua celebrated the fulfilment of the promise by laying the
bones of Joseph at last to rest. They had remained, waiting for
deliverance, in Egypt for many, many years. " God will surely
visit you," said Joseph, dying, " and ye shall carry up my bones
from hence." They had been taken from Egypt that terrible
night, and crossed the sea with the escaping host. They had
rested at Sinai, gone through the wilderness, accompanied the
conquest — their Palladium, the immortal witness of what Israel
had done in Egypt, and was to be in Canaan — and, on this solemn
day, of all that Israel had attained. And now, after so many
restless years, they were put to sleep at last, in the plot of ground
that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
His task ended, Joshua retired to his inheritance; but the
influence of his character and life was felt as long as he lived, and
1 S. A. Brooke, Sunshine and Shadow, 194.
2 Hudson Taylor in Early Years, 5.

THE RESOLUTE REFORMER 407
afterwards. At last he died, one hundred and ten years old,
"and they buried him."
Hast thou chosen, 0 my people, on whose party thou shalt
stand,
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against
our land ?
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is
strong.
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all
wrong.
Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see,
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's
sea;
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet
earth's chaff must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath
passed by.
Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the
Word ;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim
unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His
own.1

III.
Joshua's Character.
There is no character that is brought before us with such
detail in Holy Scripture, and about which we have so few
blemishes recorded, as the character of Joshua, the son of Nun.
1. Joshua stands out from the Bible pages as the type of a
great soldier, to whom great causes were committed, and by whom
great things were done. His work was the conquest and dis-
1 J. B. Lowell, The Present Crisis.

408 JOSHUA
tribution of the Promised Land. In this he showed not only the
valour of a warrior, but the justice, gentleness, forbearance,
humility, disinterestedness of an exemplary ruler, leading his
people to victory, giving to each his inheritance. It was his utter
indifference to all selfish considerations and to human opinion,
and his complete and constant submission to the revealed will of
God, that enabled him triumphantly to accomplish his God-
appointed task.
Tf There have been soldiers who were religious in spite of their
being soldiers — some of them in their secret hearts regretting the
distressing fortune that made the sword their weapon ; but there
have also been men whose energy in religion and in fighting has
supported and strengthened eacb other. Such men, however, are
usually found in times of great moral and spiritual struggle, when
the brute force of the world has been mustered in overwhelming
mass to crush some religious movement. They have an intense
conviction that the movement is of God, and as to the use of the
sword, they cannot help themselves ; they have no choice, for the
instinct of self-defence compels them to draw it. Such were the
Ziskas and Procopses of the Bohemian reformation ; the Gustavus
Adolphuses of the Thirty Years' War ; the Cromwells of the
Commonwealth, and the General Leslies of the Covenant. Euled
supremely by the fear of God, and convinced of a Divine call to
their work, they have communed about it with Him as closely
and as truly as the missionary about his preaching or his translat
ing, or the philanthropist about his homes or his rescue agencies.
To God's great goodness it has ever been their habit to ascribe
their successes ; and when an enterprise has failed, the causes of
failure have been sought for in the Divine displeasure.1
2. Joshua was the first of an order that seems to many a
moral paradox — an enthusiastic fighter, yet a devoted servant of
God. His mind ran naturally in the groove of military work.
To plan expeditions, to devise methods of attacking, scattering, or
annihilating opponents, came naturally to him. Yet along with
this the fear of God continually controlled and guided him. He
would do nothing deliberately unless he was convinced that it
was the will of God. In all his work of slaughter, he believed
himself to be fulfilling the righteous purposes of Jehovah. He
regarded his enemies as God's enemies, and believed their de-
1 W. G. Blaikie The Book of Joshua, 403.

THE RESOLUTE REFORMER 409
struction necessary to keep Israel pure and a distinct race. His
life was habitually guided by regard to the unseen. He had no
ambition but to serve his God and to serve his country. He
believed that God was behind him, and the belief made him
fearless. His career of almost unbroken success justified his
faith. Tf Cromwell's habit of prayer is a notable feature of him. All
his great enterprises were commenced with prayer. In dark in
extricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he used to assemble,
and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite resolu
tion rose among them, some "door of hope," as they would name it,
disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent prayers, and
cries to the great God to have pity on them, to make His light
shine before them. They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt
themselves to be; a little band of Christian Brothers, who had
drawn the sword against a great black devouring world not
Christian, but Mammonish, Devilish, — they cried to God in their
straits, in their extreme need, not to forsake the Cause that was
His. The light which now rose upon them, — how could a human
soul, by any means at all, get better light ? Was not the purpose
so formed like to be precisely the best, wisest, the one to be
followed without hesitation any more ? To them it was as the
shining of Heaven's own Splendour in the waste-howling darkness;
the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them on their
desolate perilous way. Was it not such ? Can a man's soul, to
this hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsically
by that same, — devout prostration of the earnest struggling soul
before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be such prayer a
spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one ? There
is no other method. " Hypocrisy " ? One begins to be weary of
all that. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such
matters. They never formed a purpose, what one can call a
purpose. They went about balancing expediencies, plausibilities ;
gathering votes, advices ; they never were alone with the truth of
a thing at all.1
3. He met with his reward, the highest that life can yield : he
turned many to righteousness. All through his reign we hear of
no idolatry, no alliance with the heathen, no counterfeit and
private priesthoods, no worship in high places; none of these
transgressions which so often challenged God's vengeance in the
1 Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero- Worship.

410 JOSHUA
later history of the race. His personal example and authority
had held the traditions of Sinai unbroken, had kept worship and
religion pure.
Tf Joshua was strong and wise and true to the great trust
committed to his care by the people and by God ; and amid the
stars that shine in the firmament of heaven, not the least bright
and clear is the lustre of Joshua, the son of Nun, who was the ante-
type of the risen and ascended Saviour, and whose worthiest epitaph,
as written by a subsequent hand, is —
Joshua,
The Son of Nun,
The Servant of
Jehovah.1
Servant of God, well done !
Eest from thy loved employ ;
The battle fought, the victory won,
Enter thy Master's joy.
At midnight came the cry,
" To meet thy God prepare ! "
He woke, — and caught his Captain's eye;
Then, strong in faith and prayer,
His spirit, with a bound,
Left its encumbering clay ;
His tent, at sunrise, on the ground,
A darkened ruin lay.
The pains of death are past,
Labour and sorrow cease ;
And life's long warfare closed at last,
His soul is found in peace.2
1 F. B. Meyer, Joshua and the Land of Promise, 188.
2 James Montgomery.

CALEB.

4»I

Literature.
Banks, L. A., The Great Saints ofthe Bible (1902), 147.
Burrell, D. J., The Cloister Book (1909), 142.
Davies, D., Talks with Men, Women and Children, i. (1889) 123.
Ellis, J., Sermons in a Nutshell, 25.
Hood, E. P., The Villages ofthe Bible (1874), 151.
McNeill, J., Regent Square Pulpit, iii. (1891) 393.
Matheson, G., Tlie Representative Men ofthe Bible, ii. (1903) 106.
Parker, J., The City Temple, i. (1872) 8.
Peck, G. C, Old Sins in New Clothes (1904), 123.
Plump tre, E. H., Biblical Studies (1870), 69.
Price, A. C, Fifty Sermons, xi. (1894) 313.
Snell, H. H., Through Study Windows (1912), 108.
Walker, E., Sermons on Practical Subjects (1765), 349.
Young, D. T., Neglected People ofthe Bible (1901), 59.
Christian World Pulpit, lxxiii. (1908) 186 (J. T. Forbes) ; lxxiv. (1908)
183 (H. G. Edge).
Guardian, lxv. (1910) 948 (E. S. Talbot).
Homiletic Review, xx. (1890) 246 (W. Mudge).
Preacher's Magazine, ii. (1891) 70 (H. Smith).

?12

CALEB.
My servant Caleb, because he . . . hath followed me fully, him will
I bring into the land whereinto he went. — Num. xiv. 24.
Caleb is one of the finest characters in the Bible. He is a
stalwart, honest character, a man who obeyed God without
question, who never feared to do his duty, and never turned his
back on an enemy. His father, Jephunneh, is described as " tbe
Kenezite." Tbe Kenezites were outside tbe pale of the chosen
people. Thus Caleb was not of Israelitish birth or descent. He
was of an alien people. He was one of the first-fruits of the
Gentile harvest of which Jethro, Eahab, Euth, Naaman, and many
others were samples and signs. Yet this man, a stranger to Israel
by birth, became one of Israel's most illustrious ornaments. In
spirit and service he was " an Israelite indeed." The son of the
Kenezite was a true son of God.

The Witness.
And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once,
and possess it ; for we are well able to overcome it.— Num. xiii. 30.
1. The year that followed the Exodus was a wonderful one for
the children of Israel. It was spent at the foot of Mount Sinai,
where measures were taken to organize them into a theocratic
commonwealth. It was here that they received the Decalogue.
It was here that Moses, as God's viceroy, gathered about him
the princes and the forty elders, the former of whom constituted
the Upper and the latter the Lower House of Parliament.
And it was here that an army of able-bodied men was mustered
and mobilized under Joshua as commander-in-chief. Thus, in

414 CALEB
twelve months, the people who had escaped from Egypt a mere
rabble of slaves were transformed into a well-organized and
formidable nation.
And now at length they stood facing the land towards which
all hearts were yearning. The time was ripe. Everything hinged
upon a concerted movement to take possession. But the people
must deliberately choose. Moses could lead them only with their
will. Accordingly, a committee was representatively appointed,
one member from each tribe, through whose eyes the people might
see the land and upon the basis of whose report they might act.
2. The men did their work thoroughly, traversing the valleys
and climbing the hills, viewing the obveyards and vineyards, and
skirting the slopes of Hebron where the Anakim dwelt. After
forty days' search they returned, bringing with them a branch
with one cluster of grapes, and also a specimen of the pomegranates
and the figs. On tbe whole, their report was very gloomy. They
had, of course, some good things to say about tbe productiveness
of tbe land, but they gave a very alarming account of the people :
" The people be strong that dwell in the land." " All the people
that we saw in it are men of a great stature ; .... we were in
our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in tbeir sight."
Tf Thou earnest to spy out the land of promise ; go not back with
out one cluster of grapes to show thy brethren for their encourage
ment. Let them see that thou hast tasted of the wine, by the
gladness of thy heart ; and that thou hast been anointed with the
oil, by the cheerfulness of thy countenance ; and hast fed of the
milk and honey, by the mildness of thy disposition, and the sweet
ness of thy conversation. This heavenly fire would melt thy
frozen heart, and refine and spiritualize it, but it must bave time
to operate. Thus pursue the work till something be done, till thy
grace be in exercise, thy affections raised, and thy soul refreshed
with thy delights above. Blessed is that servant whom his Lord
when He cometh shall find so doing.1
3. The children of Israel, who had counted on an easy victory,
gave way to a cowardly despair, even before the report was brought
to its conclusion. They heard tbe words, " The people be strong
that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great,"
1 Richard Baxter.

CALEB 415
and there was an immediate outburst of panic and confusion.
Caleb, and at this point in the history he alone, " stilled the people
before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it ; for
we are well able to overcome it." His associates in the explora
tion, however, repeated their discouraging reports. The whole
work of the Exodus and of Sinai seemed on the point of being
frustrated : First, there was the despairing wish, " Would God
that we had died in the land of Egypt ! Would God, we had died in
this wilderness ! " Then there was the naturalresult of that backward
look, " Were it not better for us to return into Egypt ? " Then the
thought passed into a deliberate purpose, " Let us make a captain,
and let us return into Egypt." And then the two who had not
yielded to the first impulse of fear — Caleb the son of Jephunneh
and Joshua the son of Nun — stood forward against the madness
of the people. They "rent their clothes" in passionate protest
against the rebellious cowardice of the people. They testified
once more that the land to which they had been sent was an
exceedingly good land ; that the Lord Jehovah was able to bring
them into it, and give it them ; that the people of the land would
be as " bread " for them to devour. They ended with the watch
word of all true hero-souls, " The Lord is with us : fear them not."
The others had measured themselves against the trained soldiers
and giants, and were in despair. These two measured Amalekites
and Anakim against God, and were jubilant. They do not dispute
the facts, but they reverse the implied conclusion, because they
add the governing fact of God's help.
Tf Once Frederick the Great wrote to one of his generals, " I send
you against the enemy with 60,000 men." But, when the troops
were numbered, it was found that there were only 50,000 ; and
the officer was surprised and displeased. " There is no mistake,"
Frederick replied, " I counted you for 10,000 men." But who will
say for how many God counts ? 1
4. Caleb and Joshua saw two things. First, they saw and
put prominently forward the greatness of the opportunity; and
they saw also that behind the land's strength there was a real
weakness. It may have been that they detected the moral rotten
ness of the people among whom they had gone. But, whether or
1 The Morning Watch, 1890, p. 104.

416 CALEB
not, there was certainly in them the conviction that God was with
Israel to carry through the purpose which He had begun — that
astonishing conviction, one of the greatest of the world's miracles,
which went with Israel through its history, and which still binds
into unity for us the whole of the Old Testament. With that
conviction burning in them they gave their voice for the forward
policy. But the heart had gone out of the people. They feared and
trembled and refused to advance. It was in vain that Caleb
pointed to the grapes he had gathered at Eshcol ; it was in vain
he tried to tempt his countrymen. There were even some who
would have slain Caleb for his earnest exhortations. "Stone
him ! Stone him ! " they cried ; and there is no telling what
would have happened, but for tbe fact that just then the cloud
appeared above the tabernacle of the congregation to signify
that God would speak with the people. And through Moses He
delivered this message : " How long will this people despise me ?
and how long will they not believe in me ? . . . Because all those
men which have seen my glory, and my signs, which I wrought in
Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times
and have not hearkened to my voice ; surely they shall not see the
land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them
that despised me see it : but my servant Caleb, because he had
another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I
bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall
possess it."
Tf If Mistrust and Timorous had been prepared to face the
dangers of the way, they, like Christian, would have reached the
Celestial City. " Now when he was got up to the top of the Hill,
there came two men running to meet him amain ; the name of the
one was Timorous, and tbe other Mistrust. To whom Christian
said, Sirs, what's the matter you run the wrong way 1 Timorous
answered, That they were going to the City of Zion, and had got
up that difficult place; but said he, the further we go, the
more danger we meet with, wherefore we turned, and are going
back again. Yes, said Mistrust, for just before us lies a couple
of Lyons in the way, (whether sleeping or waking we know not)
and we could not think, if we came within reach but they would
presently pull us in pieces.
Chr. Then said Christian, You make me afraid, but whither

CALEB 417
shall I fly to be safe ? If I go back to mine own Countrey, That
is prepared for Fire and Brimstone, and I shall certainly perish
there. If I can get to the Celestial City, I am sure to be in safety
there, I must venture ; To go back is nothing but death, to go
forward is fear of death, and life everlasting beyond it. I will yet
go forward. So Mistrust and Timorous ran down tbe Hill ; and
Christian went on his way." x
5. Caleb was an optimist. He dreamed dreams and saw
visions. No wonder he possessed such a spirit, for he "wholly
followed the Lord his God." This is a striking expression. In
the Hebrew it is a pictorial word, and describes a ship going out
at full sail. This was the reason of his optimism : he flung
every power of body and soul and spirit like a free sheet to the
winds of God's grace and God's Spirit and God's providence. He
went in whole-heartedly for God and His cause, unhampered by
any spirit of bmitation. Caleb had something of Moses in him.
He had an eye for the future. He was capable of Pisgah
glimpses. His was one of those lives which seem always to be
pitched upon a hill ; he could see things afar off. He is the real
hero of this enterprise ; he has made the work of exploration his
own. Joshua is the actual conqueror of Canaan; Caleb is the
man who predicted the advantage of possessing it. But Caleb's
confidence that " we are well able to overcome " was more than
natural optimism ; it was religious trust, as is plain from God's
eulogium on him in Num. xiv. 24.
Tf We may compare Caleb, to use the metaphor of good old
Gotthold, to a tree. The wind had been blowing — it was a
dreadful hurricane, and Gotthold walked into a forest and saw
many trees torn up by the roots ; he marvelled much at one tree
which stood alone and yet had been unmoved in the tempest. He
said, " How is this ? The trees that were together have fallen,
and this alone stands fast ! " He observed that when the trees
grow too closely they cannot send their roots into the earth ; they
lean too much upon each other ; but this tree, standing alone,
had space to thrust its roots into the earth, and lay hold on the
rock and stones ; and so when the wind came it fell not. It was
so with Caleb — he always would lay hold upon his God, not upon
men ; and so when the wind came he stood.2
1 Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (Cambridge edition, 172).
2 C. H. Spurgeon.
MOSES-SAMSON — 27

418 CALEB
Tf The Eev. F. B. Meyer, in course of an appreciation of the
life and work of Dr. Paton, wrote : An invincible optimist !
For him, no good cause can ever be a lost cause. I question if
he has ever been permanently disappointed, or ever absolutely
failed. " Impossible " and " impracticable " are words for which
he has no use ; and though they have probably been hurled
often enough at his schemes, when first announced, they have
been found to be inappropriate and untrue. A visionary, whose
visions have been realized ; a dreamer, whose dreams have clothed
themselves in fact ! At an age when ninety-nine men out of a
hundred leave the conduct of affairs to others, he is in the fore
front and thick of the fight ; and the rest of us gladly recognize
that he is in his right place, and that years have not diminished
but enhanced his competence to lead in all that makes for the
betterment of the people. His optimism and enthusiasm are so
contagious that statesmen, bishops, deans, ministers of every
religious body, philanthropists, and shrewd business men are
swept into bis orbit and become inspired by bis aims. His
motives are absolutely selfless ; his soul is simple and pure as a
child's ; and the strength of his personality is fairly irresistible.
When he begins to weave his web around you to secure your
interest and co-operation, you may as well yield at once to his
genial persuasiveness, for you will have to do so sooner or later.
In fact, you would feel it mean to leave a load on those broad and
burdened shoulders which you could lighten or remove.1
Tf Florence Nightingale did many things herself, but she was
also the inspirer and instigator of more things which were done
by others. She was able of her own initiative to institute con
siderable reforms; but she was a reformer on a larger scale
through the influence which she exercised. Though she was in
truth no magician, there were men on the spot who, not being
able to understand the secret and sources of her power, seemed to
find something uncanny in it. Our good friend, Colonel Sterbng,
who hated the intrusion of petticoats into a campaign, was very
much puzzled. The thing seemed to him " ludicrous," as we have
heard, but he had to admit that " Miss Nightingale queens it with
absolute power"; and elsewhere he speaks of "the Nightingale
power" as something mysterious and "fabulous." The secret,
however, is simple. "The Nightingale power" was due to causes
of which some were inherent in herself and others were adventi
tious. The inherent strength of her influence lay in the master
ful will and practical good sense which gave her dominion over
the minds of men. The adventitious sources of her power were
1 J, Marchant, J. B. Paton, 108,

CALEB

419

that she had both the ear and the confidence of Ministers, and the
interest and sympathy of the Court. I have called this accession
of influence "adventitious," but it also accrued to her, in a second
ary degree, from the inherent force of her character.1

II.
The Eeward.
Now therefore give me this mountain. — Josh. xiv. 12.
1. Now followed a period of thirty-nine years in which the
children of Israel wandered to and fro, entangled in the wilder
ness. The life of Caleb, during those weary years, is recorded in
the single sentence, "He wholly followed the Lord." In other
words, he was doing his duty and biding his time. Not for a
moment did he lose his confidence in the promise of God. Nor
was he discontented or over-eager for action. He who " wholly
follows the Lord," knows how to labour and to wait. So Caleb
kept his soul in patience. He acquiesced in the postponement of
his own heaven. He concealed his aspiration. He hid his con
tempt for the sordid throng. He gave no hint that he was above
their business. He joined them on their own level, in their own
work. He took up his brothers' cares — cares about inferior
things. He put his hand to the duties of the desert when his
heart was up in Canaan. He saw the people dropping out, one
by one, until the entire generation that had come out of Egypt
lay in graves along the way. He saw Moses climb to his lonely
sepulchre, and heard his last farewell : " Lord, thou hast been our
dwelbng place in all generations. Even from everlasting to ever
lasting, thou art God." And still the faith of Caleb failed not.
2. Then came the crossing of the Jordan, the taking of
Jericho, the driving out of the native tribes and the distribution
of the land. The deadly plague which befell the ten, and the
nearly forty years' wandering which befell the people, the preser
vation of the bves of Caleb and Joshua only of all the nation
above twenty years of age who came out of Egypt, followed by
the ultimate conquest of the land, bad been a sufficient vindication
* Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 214.

420 CALEB
of the faithfulness of God and the truthfulness of Caleb and
Joshua. Now, however, that the land was to be distributed
among the conquerors, and there were still a few unconquered,
although greatly weakened, districts — and notably the main
stronghold of the Anakim of the south, within whose walls the last
chief of the tribe held out against the conquerors — Caleb went to
Joshua, his old comrade, repeated the story of forty years before,
referred to the promise of Moses that he should possess this
stronghold, and pleaded that the privilege might be given him
to take it.
His case was a very strong one, his record good and fair. He
had been frank when truth was unpopular and hard to speak,
and loyal when defection was widespread; he had experienced
Providential help and deliverances ; he had retained the capacity,
and won the moral right, to essay the capture of Hebron ; he was
an efficient man, but he was in absolute dependence on the suffi
ciency of God. His estate that was to be was still occupied
by the enemy. He was not about to enter upon a peaceful
occupation ; it was a conquest that lay before him. The Lord
had preserved his life during these forty years — preserved it, as
he believes, that he might be permitted to conquer the sons
of Anak. 3. It makes the blood run fast in a man's veins to read the
courageous words of the grim old soldier. He stands there before
Joshua and says: "I am this day fourscore and five years old.
As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses
sent me : as my strength was then, even so is my strength now,
for war, and to go out and to come in. Now therefore give
me this mountain, whereof the Lord spake in that day ; for thou
heardest in that day how the Anakim were there, and cities great
and fenced : it may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall
drive them out, as the Lord spake." There is nothing in the
Bible more wonderful in its way than Caleb's testimony at eighty-
five years of age. Nor was this a mere boast. The old man was
not self-deluded in the matter of his strength. He was ready
for war, ready to storm the stronghold of Hebron. Jubilant
in prospect of driving out the Anakim, Caleb had youth's
strength and valour and optimism in extreme old age.

CALEB 421
Tf One day when Signor had ended a delightful talk with Sir
William Eichmond, as this sympathetic friend was leaving the
studio he said to me that he found Signor's interests and range of
thought wider even than they were. "Well, to grow still at
seventy-eight is youth," he added. Sir James Knowles spoke in
much the same terms, and gave me his interpretation of the
saying, " Whom the Gods love die young " ; which was, that in
mind they never grew old. Of this Sir James Knowles wrote to
me later : " I am so glad you like my interpretation of that old
proverb. This is how I put it down : —
' Whom the Gods love die young,' the proverb told ;
The meaning is they never can grow old
However long their list of labours past ;
God-given youth is with them to the last.
You have the proof of this before your eyes every day, and
long may it be so ! I send him my best regards." Once, speaking
of his own feeling, Signor told me the only difference he found in
himself as he grew older was this — "I am interested in more
things, and I feel younger instead of older. I know I am quite as
eager, quite as much striving for improvement in my work, as I
was at the beginning of life." 1
Therefore I summon age
To grant youth's heritage,
Life's struggle having so far reached its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.
And I shall thereupon
Take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new :
Fearless and unperplexed
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armour to indue.2
4. There is something very noble in Caleb's conception of a
possession worth the having as that which involves toil and hero
ism on our part. God's best gifts are after all given on these
conditions. It is "to him that overcometh" that the choicest
1 M. S. Watts, George Frederic Watts, ii. 238.
2 Erowning, Rabbi ben Ezra.

422 CALEB
blessings of the Apocalypse are given. The inheritance of the
saints in light, like that of Caleb, is to be the inheritance of the
conqueror. Caleb had caught this essential aspect of a noble life.
The reward of the man who has done well is that he shall do
more. The fire had been smouldering in the heart of this man for
forty-five years ; and now in sight of the mountain it flamed up.
All that time he had been waiting for an opportunity to have at
the giants ; and now that the hour had come, he proved himself
no idle boaster. He drove the giants from one town to another,
and finally they seem to have made their last stand in a strong
town called Kirjath-sepher. In his eagerness to gain this town
he offered the hand of his daughter Achsah to any warrior who
should obtain possession of it, and the prize was claimed by
Othniel. It was followed, in the striking story, which breathes in
every word the spirit of a remote antiquity, by the grant with it
of the " upper and the nether springs," that the city might not be,
in any sense of the word, a barren and unfruitful heritage.
Of all the Israelites who received their inheritance in the
Land of Promise, Caleb appears to have been the only one who
succeeded in entirely expelling the native occupiers of the
country. The Israebtes generally seem to have made but poor
headway against their strong and mighty foes, with their chariots
of iron and fenced walls. Eepeatedly we encounter the sorrowful
affirmation that they were not able to drive them out. But Caleb
was a notable exception. What though Arba was the greatest
man among the Anakim (Josh. xiv. 15), what though his three
grandsons, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the sons of Anak,
were prepared to yield their lives rather than give up possession
(xv. 14), Caleb drove them out — not he indeed, but the Lord,
who was with him, and gave him a victory that must have other
wise eluded even his strong hands. The man who "wholly
followed the Lord" was alone wholly victorious.
Tf Nowhere is thoroughness more needed than in religious
work, nowhere is slackness more prevalent. There are Christians
who serve Christ as diligently and faithfully as they do their
earthly work, and they shall not miss their reward ; but many of
Christ's servants would not be tolerated for a week by any other
master. The poorest joint-stock company in the land is better

CALEB 423
served by its directors than many congregations are by their
office-bearers. There are no teachers anywhere so ignorant and
so casual as certain Sunday-school teachers ; there is no clerk in
a dry-goods store dare treat his duty as lightly as some of the
voluntary officers of the Christian Church. They will absent
themselves without leave and without excuse ; they will never
inquire how their work is being done or whether it is done at all ;
they will not take the trouble to prepare themselves to do it, and
they are not concerned when it fails in their hands. They will
place their pleasure and their fancies, and their social engage
ments, and their imaginary ailments before their Christian duty.
And it would be difficult to say how little must be the burden,
how short must be the time, that they would be willing to count
an obligation upon them and would be prepared to face. One is
sometimes inclined to propose a general resignation of the Chris
tian staff, and then an invitation to all who are prepared to do
Christ's work as well as the work of the world is done, and it
might be that three hundred thoroughgoing men like the Band
of Gideon would do more for Christ than ten times the number
of irresponsible casuals.1
5. How much longer Caleb lived after he claimed Hebron for
his inheritance we do not know ; but the language he uttered in
his eighty-fifth year is very remarkable. What a sublime retro
spect ! He can look back on the voyage of his life and say, " I
wholly followed the Lord." Such a retrospect can be won only
by years of fighting the good fight. The people also acknowledged
his faithful service. " Joshua blessed him," we read of Caleb in
his mellow old age (Josh. xiv. 13). Joshua prayed for the aged
hero and saint. Joshua sought God's anointing for the venerable
soldier of Israel. Caleb reaped a harvest of sympathetic prayer.
Joshua not only prayed for Caleb but commended him in the
sight of Israel. He held him up to honour. He enthroned the
brave veteran on the approbation of the people. So the man
of complete devotion to God received honour of man.
Tf In February 1889, when he reached his seventieth birthday,
Lowell was entertained to dinner by his friends in Boston.
Describing the event in a letter to the wife of his English friend
Lesbe Stephen, Lowell says : " I was dined on my birthday, and
praised to a degree that would have satisfied you, most partial
even of your sex. But somehow I liked it, and indeed none but a
1 John Watson, The Homely Virtues, 57.

424 CALEB
pig could have helped liking the affectionate way it was done. I
suppose it is a sign of weakness in me somewhere, but I can't help
it. I do like to be liked. It gives me a far better excuse for
being about (and in everybody's way) than having written a fine
poem does. That'll be all very well when one is under the mould.
But I am not sure whether one will care for it much. So keep on
liking me, won't you ? " 1
Tf 19th Feb. 1826. — J(ames) B(allantine) came and sat an hour.
I led him to talk of Woodstock ; and, to say truth, his approbation
did me much good. I am aware it may — nay, must — be partial ;
yet is he Tom Telltruth, and totally unable to disguise his real
feelings. I think I make no habit of feeding on praise, and
despise those whom I see greedy for it, as much as I should an
under-bred fellow, who, after eating a cherry-tart, proceeded to
bck the plate. But when one is flagging, a little praise (if it can
be had genuine and unadulterated by flattery, which is as difficult
to come by as the genuine mountain-dew) is a cordial after all.
13th May 1826. — I think very lightly in general of praise ; it
costs men nothing, and is usually only lip-salve. They wish to
please, and must suppose that flattery is the ready road to the
good will of every professor of bterature. Some praise, however,
and from some people, does at once delight and strengthen the
mind, and I insert in this place the quotation with which Lord
Chief Baron Shepherd concluded a letter concerning me to the
Chief Commissioner (Adam) : " Magna etiam ilia laus et admirabibs
videri solet tulisse casus sapienter adversos, non fractum esse for-
tuna, retinuisse in rebus asperis dignitatem." I record these words,
not as meriting the high praise they imply, but to remind me that
such an opinion being partially entertained of me by a man of
character so eminent, it becomes me to make my conduct approach
as much as possible to the standard at which he rates it.2
1 Letters qf James Russell Lowell, ii. 410.
2 The Journal qf Sir Walter Scott, 128, 192.

ACHAN.

?*s

Literature.
Burrell, D. J., For Christ's Crown (1896), 361.
Byrum, E. E., The Secret of Prayer (1912), 122.
Clayton, J. W., The Genius of God (1903), 76.
Gibbon, J. M., The Children's Year (1903), 248.
Greenhongh, J. G., in Men of the Old Testament : Cain to David (1904),
181.
Jeffs, H., The Art of Exposition (1910), 116.
Keble, J., Sermons for the Gltristian Ysmr : Lent to Passiontide (1875), 83.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Deuteronomy, etc. (1906), 145.
Macleod, A., The Child Jesus (1895), 187.
McNeill, J., Regent Square Pulpit, i. (1890) 81.
Meyer, F. B., Joshua and the Land of Promise, 85.
Moore, E. W., Christ in Possession (1899), 165.
Morrison, G. H., The Footsteps ofthe Flock (1904), 105.
Moulton, J. H., Visions of Sin (1898), 37.
Murray, A., The Ministry of Intercession (1898), 67.
Oosterzee, J. J. van, The Year of Salvation, ii. 406.
Peck, G. C, Bible Tragedies (1900), 51.
Bankin, J., Character Studies in the Old Testament (1875), 116.
Vaughan, C. J., Liturgy and Worship (1867), 53.
Vaughan, J., Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), x. (1873), No. 831.
Virgin, S. H., Spiritual Sanity (1905), 245.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters : Adam to Achan (1896), 290.
Christian World Pulpit, xiv. (1878) 104 (A. Mursell) ; xviii. (1880) 40
(J. B. Heard) ; lxxvi. (1909) 199 (G. H. Abey).
Homiletic Review, xxxi. (1896) 35 (T. T. Eaton).
Keswick Week, 1908, p. 28 (J. Battersby Harford).
Literary Churchman, xxxvii. (1891) 276 (J. T. Parsons).

«»6

ACHAN.
And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Of a truth I have sinned against
the Lord, the God of Israel. — Josh. vii. 20.
The chapter that gives the history of the sin of Achan is one
of the darkest pages of the Word of God, but nevertheless it
contains many precious lessons. It shows in an eminent degree
the working of temptation in a man's heart before the evil deed
is done; it shows the hardening that results after the commit
ting of the sin ; it shows how one man's sin may prove a snare
to those about him ; it shows how the most secret crime is bare
before God; and it shows how God can and will bring about
exposure and punishment. The very fact that the sin of Achan
is so circumstantially narrated would itself lead us to infer some
strong reason for its being so — that it was in a peculiar manner
calculated to serve as a warning, and to impress the readers of
the Bible in all ages with somewhat of that deep horror which
thrilled through Israel at the time when the criminal was pointed
out. It was the deed of but one man, yet to understand it
aright it will be needful for us to look for a little at the position
of the whole people; for the sin of Achan not only had an
influence on all Israel after it was committed, but it was tbe
special circumstances in which Israel stood just before? tbis sin
that gave to it its pecubar wickedness.
1. The Israebtes were come out of Egypt, had ended their
desert sojourn, had crossed the Jordan, had taken Jericho. A stern
charge had been laid upon the invading army not to touch the
spoil of Jericho. One part of the spoil was to be brought into
the treasury : the rest was to be burnt with fire. A nation which
had been taken from the midst of another nation by a strong
hand not its own, and which was now to be brought into the
inheritance of another nation by the outstretched arm of God,

428 ACHAN
must be reminded, at the very outset, of its dependence and of
its responsibility ; there must be no forgetfulness of the source of
its strength, of the condition of its success, of tbe high purposes of
its mission ; there must be no selfish grasping, and no mean lust
of getting, to interfere with the grandeur and the sanctity of its
election ; on this first occasion of all, a lesson was to be taught
for all time as to the awf ulness of privilege ; as to the dreadful
consequences of being brought very near to God, as His Church
and His people, and forgetting or trifling with Him ; as to the
inseparable connexion between knowledge and duty, between
light and accountability, between trust and reckoning.
2. Every single soldier in all Israel had heard Joshua's pro
clamation about Jericho ; both what his men were to do till the
walls fell and how they were to conduct themselves after the city
had been given of God into tbeir hands. But war is war; and
the best of commanders cannot make war a silken work, nor can
he hold down the devil in the hearts of all his men. In the hearts
of many of them he may, if he first does it in his own heart,
but scarcely in the hearts of them alL Night fell on the prostrate
city, and the hour of temptation struck for Joshua and all his
men. " Blessed is the man that endureth temptation : for when
he is tried, he shall receive the crown of bfe." And Joshua and
all his men received the crown of life that night — all his men
but one.
Was it a sudden gust of temptation that swept Achan before
it when, with the rest of the host, he entered Jericho ? Or was it
that some long growth of unjudged evil flowered into that act
which has made his name a reproach to all after time ? It is
impossible to say. Only the terribleness of his fate seems to
indicate something more than a transient yielding to sin. This,
at least, is clear, that in the late afternoon of the day of Jericho's
capture, and before the lurid flames of its conflagration rose to
heaven, he had pilfered one of those robes of exquisite texture for
which the plain of Shinar was famous, together with gold and
silver — the latter coined, the former in a wedge — and had borne
them surreptitiously away.
Tf Theft is punished by Thy law, 0 Lord, and the law written
in the hearts of men, which iniquity itself effaces not. For what

ACHAN 429
thief will abide a thief? not even a rich thief one stealing
through want. Yet I lusted to thieve, and did it, compelled by
no hunger, nor poverty, but through a cloyedness of well-doing,
and a pamperedness of iniquity. For I stole that of which I had
enough and much better. Nor cared I to enjoy what I stole,
but joyed in the theft and sin itself. Behold my heart, 0 God,
behold my heart, which Thou hadst pity upon in the bottom of
the bottomless pit. Now, behold, let my heart tell Thee what it
sought there, that I should be gratuitously evil, having no tempta
tion to ill, but the ill itself. It was foul, and I loved it ; I loved
to perish, I loved mine own fault, not that for which I was faulty,
but my fault itself. Foul soul, falling from thy firmament to
utterdestruction ; not seeking aught through the shame, but the
shame itself ' x

I.
The Sin.
But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the devoted thing : for
Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of
Judah, took of the devoted thing : and the anger of the Lord was kindled
against the children of Israel. — Josh. vii. I.
After a victory like that of Jericho, given so manifestly by
Divine power, tbe people felt that it was unnecessary to take in
full force the toilsome march against the bttle highland fortress
of Ai. Three thousand men went up at Joshua's order — and fled
before the men of Ai. In the long chase fell thirty-six men of
the army which Israel believed invincible — invincible because the
Lord of Hosts was with them. No wonder that a panic seized the
people, that Joshua and the elders fell down in despair for a
whole day before the ark of God. In the evening came the
answer. Israel, said Jehovah, had sinned, and therefore Israel fell.
Those men of Israel were not less worthy than when they
compassed Jericho a few brief days before. There was no obvious
reason why they should not have sent the Canaanites flying before
them as they did in fact send them a few days after. The
signs seemed right for another triumph. And yet, as a matter
of fact, there was a deep-lying reason why the army had no
warrant in looking for victory that day. A vital nerve of Israel's
* Confessions of St. Augustine.

430 ACHAN
strength had been destroyed. A cankerworm was at the root of
her best hopes. Disobedience, disloyalty, decay had entered.
Under a certain tent in Judah's camp one might have found the
fresh marks of a spade. And, if one had dug away the carefully
laid earth, a curious display would have been brought to light — a
Babylonian garment and a pile of gleaming gold.
1. Achan's sin was a breach of trust, for so the phrase " com
mitted a trespass " might be rendered. The expression is frequent
in the Pentateuch to describe Israel's treacherous departure from
God, and has this full meaning here. The sphere in which
Achan's treason was evidenced was " in the devoted thing." The
spoil of Jericho was set aside for Jehovah, and to appropriate any
part of it was sacrilege. God had said, " And ye, in any wise keep
yourselves from the devoted thing, lest when ye have devoted it,
ye take of the devoted thing ; so should ye make the camp of Israel
accursed, and trouble it. But all the silver, and gold, and vessels
of brass and iron, are holy unto the Lord : they shall come into
the treasury of the Lord." This was the Divine edict against
which trespass had been made. In that restriction warning had
been given beforehand that any man's sin would occasion general
suffering, and bring a curse upon the whole camp. The univer
sality of the punishment was calculated to impress upon the
nation more strongly the necessity of perfect obedience, the
danger of evil beginnings, the need of strengthening each other,
and being careful every man alike for himself and for his
neighbour. The sin was, therefore, something more than an act
of disobedience. It was a violation of the Divine covenant. It
was sacrilege, a robbery of God, an impious seizure, for base,
selfish purposes, of that which belonged to Him.
Tf The Danes, having landed near the city of Worcester, from
which most of the peaceful burghers had fled on their approach,
looted the houses and the great church, and then made off to their
long ships. The heavy sanctus bell of the cathedral, abandoned,
one may suppose, by the rest of the marauders as too cumbersome
to carry off, seemed to one man a desirable acquisition, and he
lingered behind his comrades to get it. Presently, before he was
able, loaded as he was, to join the retreating Danes, tbe towns
men returned. Doubtless from a distance they had been witnesses
of many outrages, and right and left along their streets they now

ACHAN 431
saw signs of the violence of their foes ; and in the heat of their
rage and indignation they came upon the sacrilegious wretch upon
whose shoulder was the sanctus bell. We will not try to picture
the final seene ; the Englishmen's blood was up, the Dane was
caught redhanded in theft and sacrilege, and moreover there was
probably not a man in all the throng who did not burn under a
sense of some private wrong inflicted on him by the pirates. Upon
the devoted head of the one the misdeeds of all were visited ; and
his skin, in attestation of his guilt and of his doom, was fastened
to the church door.1
2. Achan's sin was a sin of covetousness, a sin that had to
do with the love of worldly things. Andrew Fuller says that
covetousness will probably prove the eternal overthrow of more
characters among professing Christians than any other, sin, because
it is almost the only crime that can be indulged in and a profession '
of religion at the same time be supported. Achan, we should
remember, was a professed servant of Jehovah. He was not a
Canaanite ; he was not a foreigner ; he was a member of the com
monwealth of Israel ; he was a man of privilege, a man who had
been admitted to the outward Church of that day, like Ananias
and Sapphira of later days. He was not a poor man, whose
family was starving. He belonged to the tribe of Judah, which
was to have the first and largest lot in the land of Canaan. But
he could not wait for what God gave him. If he had only
been patient he would have had a good inheritance in the new
country in a few months' time. He did not rob any man. He
did not take what belonged to other people. That was not his
fault. His fault was simply covetousness born of the selfishness
which leads to rebellion. The unhappy Achan could not resist
the desire to secure for himself a share of the booty. He sought
his own selfish ends in the cause of God.
Tf How mean — not to give it a greater name — how mean
was the sin of Achan. What a sin this was in a soldier, when he
ought to have been filled with enthusiasm, with patriotism, with
love to God, with great desires for his tribe and people. He saw
a goodly Babylonish garment, and the shekels of silver, and a
covetous gleam shot through his eyes, and all the soldier in him
withered up, and he became a sneaking thief. What a con
temptible figure — an Israelitish soldier a thief ! 2
1 W. Andrews, Church Treasury, 161, 2 J. McNeill.

432 ACHAN
Tf The criminal laws of a nation take cognizance only of overt
actions. Covetousness is a motive within the breast which could
only be guessed at by the law ; its precedence to an act of theft
could hardly be proved in the witness-box. The tenth command
ment is altogether outside the boundaries of civil jurisprudence.
Its presence in the Decalogue is a manifest proof of the spiritual
intention and ethical character of the Sinaitic Code. It reminds
us that Israel was to be not only a commonwealth but the people
of Jehovah's possession. The Decalogue does more than lay down
the duties of a citizen. It embraces within its purview more than
the crimes which it desires to express. It looks ultimately to the
cultivation of a better temper and a right spirit. Like the other
parts of the Mosaic Law it aims at developing the consciousness of
sin. Unless the Law had said, " Thou shalt not covet," Paul
affirms that he would not have known what sin meant.1
3. Achan's sin involved others in ruin as well as himself.
Observe that the sin is laid at the doors of the whole nation,
while yet it was the secret act of one man. That is a strange
" for " in Josh. vii. 1 — the people did it ; for Achan did it. Ob
serve, too, with what bitter particularity his descent is counted
back through three generations, as if to diffuse the shame and
guilt over a wide area, and to blacken the ancestors of the
culprit. Achan was the sinner; all Israel suffered. Those
soldiers who marched against Ai were just as loyal as any that
ever marched under Israelitish banners. They had all the
advantage of Joshua's superior skill. And they were just as
surely pushing forward the cause of righteousness in the sub
jugation of the land as at any later time. Yet they had no more
chance of effecting the overthrow of Ai that day than they had
of breaking into heaven: they went without God's blessing,
disqualified, alone.
It is needless to discuss the question, how one guilty of sin
should involve in the consequences of that sin those connected
with him, whether by family or by social ties. It is simply a fact,
admitting no discussion, and is equaby evident when God's law in
nature or when His moral law is set at defiance. The deepest
reason of it lies, indeed, in this, that the God of nature and of
grace is also the founder of society; for the family and society
are not of man's devising, but of God's institution, and form part
1 W. S. Bruce, The Ethics of the Old Testament, 165.

ACHAN 433
of His general plan. Accordingly, God deals with us not merely
as individuals, but also as families and as nations. To question
the Tightness of this would be to question abke the administra
tion, the fundamental principles, and the plan of God's universe.
Tf There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear
the punishment alone: you can't isolate yourself, and say that
the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as
thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe : evil
spreads as necessarily as disease.1

II.
The Confession.
When I saw among the spoil a goodly Babylonish mantle, and two
hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then
I coveted them, and took them ; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the
midst of my tent, and the silver under it. — Josh. vii. 21.
1. The Israelites were filled with despondency. " The hearts
of the people melted, and became as water." Joshua and the
elders remained all day prostrate before the Ark with rent
garments and dust on their heads, and were told, "There is a
devoted thing in the midst of thee, 0 Israel: thou canst not
stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the devoted thing
from among you." To ascertain the guilty person each tribe was
brought before Jehovah. By the casting of lots, or some other
similar method, the tribe of Judah was taken. The clans of the
tribe next presented themselves, and the Zerahites were indicated.
Of the Zerahites the guilt was declared to be in the family of
Zabdi. Finally, when the house of Zabdi were put to the ordeal,
Achan, the son of Carmi, was pronounced to be the culprit.
Joshua begged the unhappy man to " give glory to the Lord, the
God of Israel," by confessing his sin, and Achan admitted that he
had stolen from the spoils of Jericho a mantle from Shinar, two
hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels.
Tf Everybody who reads the best books will have long had by
heart Thomas il Kempis's famous description of the successive
steps of a successful temptation. There is first the bare thought
1 George Eliot, Adam Bede.
MOSES^feAMSON — 28

434 ACHAN
of the sin. Then, upon that, there is a picture of the sin formed
and hung up on the secret screen of the imagination. A strange
sweetness from that picture is then let down drop by drop into
the heart; and then that secret sweetness soon secures the
consent of the whole soul, and tbe thing is done. That is true,
and it is powerful enough. But Achan's confession to Joshua is
much simpler, and much closer to the truth. " I saw the goodly
Babylonish mantle, I coveted it, I took it, and I hid it in my
tent." i
2. In Achan's confession we see the four steps of his
transgression — " I saw, I coveted, I took them, and, behold, they
are hid."
(1) " / saw." — This implies something outside, or objective, as
the philosophers would say — the garment, the silver, the gold. Not
in me, but outside me. That is temptation — objective temptation
— allurement. Achan saw before him, wholly within his reach,
the glorious rich robes, the Babylonish garment, and the silver
and the gold. He kept looking at them. Perhaps he said
within his heart, '' It can do no harm to look at them." But it
was an evil heart that spoke in this way, and the evil heart
deceived him. It said to him, "No, there is no harm in a look, or
in a second, or in a third look." And by and by he could do
nothing else but look. He forgot his task as a soldier. He saw
the rich spoils. He stood still where they lay and still be looked.
He saw and continued looking until the sight inflamed his soul.
It was like the steady holding of a lens to catch the rays of the
sun, and, by collecting and concentrating them, giving them a
burning power : such was Achan's evil eye fixed on the glitter of
garment and gold.
(2) "/ coveted." — This is not outside me, it is inside; not
objective, but subjective. We call tbis appetite — a something
within me set in motion by something without me. Written in
my nature is a law that when certain things are seen outside me,
they quicken the desire inside. And if I do not bring my will to
bear upon my desire so as to control it, the desire passes into
action. When once Achan's eyes lighted on that rich garment he
never could get his eyes off it again. As Thomas a Kempis says,
the seductive thing got into Achan's imagination, and the devil's
1 A. Whyte.

ACHAN

435

work was done. Achan was in a fever now lest he should lose that
goodly garment. He was terrified lest any of his companions
should have seen that glittering piece. He was sure some of
them had seen it and were making off with it.
He coveted the silver and the gold that belonged to God, and
the Babylonish garment, which he ought to have destroyed. Up
till this moment he was innocent, or nearly innocent. But now
he was reaching out his heart to things that did not belong to
him. He coveted them. For the moment the silver and the
gold and the Babylonish garment, as they lay together in one
heap, were his god. He hungered after them. All that was good
and brave and upright in him bowed down before them. His evil
thought was hastening to become an evil deed.
(3) " I took." — This is the fateful step. When I stride out to
respond to temptation, when I close with its offer, that is the
fatal step, and for that step I must render an account to God.
To that step, to that choice, my will consents. Then my re
sponsibility begins. At last the evil thought became the evil
deed. Achan shut the eyes of his soul to God and honour and
duty, and reached out his hands for the spoils. He took them.
He was a thief now. It was no longer a look, a thought, a wish ;
it was a deed. He had done the evil. He took the goodly things
— the things that were not his own, but God's.
(4) " They are hid." — The whole progress of his crime is singu
larly plain to us. The taking might have been a hasty impulse
before consequences had been well weighed. Not so the hiding
in the earth in the midst of the tent ; then we bave to deal with
design and cunning. That is a deliberate adoption and defence of
the evil deed. And mark how that adoption was approved, and
the defence vigorously maintained, every hour during which the
treasure lay hid, especially as, day by day, and hour by hour,
events were happening which bore close relation to tbe secret of
Achan's tent and heart. Had he no misgiving when he saw the
increase by others of the contents of the treasury of the Lord ?
Had he no misgiving when Ai was to be attacked — none when
the attack had failed — none when the six-and-thirty men were
slain — none when it was proclaimed that an accursed thing was
in the midst of Israel — none when search was being made, when
his own tribe was suspect, when through family and household

436 ACHAN
the suspicion glided nearer and nearer ? And when it pointed to
him alone of all Israel, why did he not at once confess ? why wait
for the solemn adjuration of Joshua ? Was it a lingering hope
of escape? He did not care though the lot should fall on
another to suffer innocently, did not care for shame on God's
cause, did not care for future hindrance. Every stage was an
opportunity to repent, but every opportunity was passed by. The
confession, when it came at last, had not one fragment of volun
tariness about it, it was extorted by a divinely-framed line of
circumstances ; there was the very highest moral pressure exerted
on his evil conscience, until like an instant cold sweat there burst
forth this — " Of a truth I have sinned against the Lord, the God
of Israel, and thus have I done." He made confession soon
enough to glorify God, but too late to avert God's judgment.
Tf The entire body of the remaining texts [which speak of the
confession of our sins] is summed in Josh. vii. 19 and Ezra x. 11,
in which, whether it be Achan, with his Babylonish garment, or
the people of Israel, with their Babylonish lusts, the meaning of
confession is simply what it is to every brave boy, girl, man, and
woman, who knows the meaning of the word "honour" before
God or man — namely, to say what they have done wrong, and to
take the punishment of it (not to get it blanched over by any
means), and to do it no more. "Without courage," said Sir
Walter Scott, " there is no truth ; and without truth there is no
virtue." The sentence would have been itself more true if Sir
Walter had written " candour " for " truth," for it is possible to be
true in insolence, or true in cruelty. But in looking back from
the ridges of the Hill Difficulty in my own past life, and in all
the vision that has been given me of the wanderings in the ways
of others — this, of all principles, has become to me surest — that
the first virtue to be required of man is frankness of heart and
lip : and I believe that every youth of sense and honour, putting
himself to faithful question, would feel that he had the devil for
confessor, if he had not his father or his friend.1
1 Buskin, The Lord's Prayer and the Church, § 13 ( Works, xxxiv. 226).

ACHAN 437

III.
The Punishment.
And it shall be, that he that is taken with the devoted thing shall be
burnt with fire, he and all that he hath : because he hath transgressed the
covenant of the Lord, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel. —
Josh. vii. 15.
1. Only one thing more remained to be done. They led forth
the wretched man, with all his household, and all that belonged to
them, and all Israel stoned him. And then they burned the dead
body, and buried all beneath a heap of stones, abke as a memorial
and as a warning. But the valley they named "the valley of
Achor," or trouble, while the echoes of that story sounded through
Israel's history to latest times, in woe and in weal, for judgment
and for hope. It seems a terrible punishment ; but Achan had
already brought defeat and disgrace on his countrymen. He
had robbed God, and brought the whole community to the brink
of ruin. He had brought disaster on the nation, and shame and
ruin on himself and his house. In all coming time, he must
stand in the pillory of history as the man who stole the forbidden
spoil of Jericho. That disgraceful deed is the only thing that
will ever be known of him.
Tf Say what some may, the World is progressing, and part of
the progress is shown in our conceptions of the true punishment
of sin.1 Tf All true justice is vindictive to vice, as it is rewarding to
virtue. Only — and herein it is distinguished from personal
revenge — it is vindictive of the wrong done ; — not of the wrong
done to us. It is the national expression of deliberate anger, as
of deliberate gratitude; it is not exemplary, or even corrective,
but essentially retributive; it is the absolute art of measured
recompense, giving honour where honour is due, and shame where
shame is due, and joy where joy is due, and pain where pain is
due. It is neither educational, for men are to be educated by
wholesome habit, not by rewards and punishments; nor is it
preventive, for it is to be executed without regard to any
consequences ; but only for righteousness' sake, a righteous nation
does judgment and justice.2
1 H. B. Garrod, Dante, Goethe's Faust, and other Lectures, 88.
2 Ruskin, Lectures on Art, iii. § 90.

438 ACHAN
2. But if it be awful to contemplate the death, and the mode
of death, of Achan, how much more when we think that his wife
and his sons and his daughters were stoned to death along with
him. Israel had not in these early days learned how to dis
tinguish the guilty man from his innocent family, and the man
whose covetousness had first caused the death of nearly forty of
his countrymen now involved in his punishment his own children
and his very cattle. No doubt the Israelites thought they had
the sanction of God for these and like enormities. They thought
they were appeasing His anger by stoning and burning the
innocent with the guilty. They thought that He was well pleased
with this monstrous offering. But that was because they did not
know Him. They had only just emerged from heathenism, and
had brought with them into their new life no little of the old
leaven. They had been accustomed to believe that God was
cruel, vindictive, delighting in bloody sacrifices and the slaughter
of His enemies, and this clung to them more or less for a
thousand years, in spite of all their revelations, until Christ
showed them God's true face, and the old leaven was at last
purged out.
Tf While holding it to be impossible for men to know the
absolute truth about heavenly things, Browning yet bebeved
that knowledge was vouchsafed to us " according to the measure
of a man." Upon this view, his highest ideal, while not indeed
giving a complete picture of God as He is, yet represents Him
" in such conception as my mind allows."
Here by the little mind of man reduced
To bttleness that suits his faculty.
This revelation of Him is confessedly inadequate, and therefore
in a sense false; but it is nevertheless more fitting to say that
God is the highest that we can conceive and more, than to say
that He is not what we conceive Him to be. For man's mind
is a mirror which displays His glory on a diminished scale, just
as an "optic glass" draws the sun's rays together, and reveals
" tbe very sun in little," reduced to a mere pin-point circle, yet
"all the same comprising the sun's self." Pope Innocent, who
more than any character seems to speak for Browning, is only
expressing this thought under a slightly different form, when he

ACHAN 439
Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass,
Wherein are gathered all the scattered points
Picked out of the immensity of sky,
To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,
Our known unknown, our God revealed to men?
This view that reality is partially represented in thought, is, for
Browning, bound up with the further doctrine that the repre
sentation of it is continually growing more complete. " An
absolute vision," he says, "is not for this world, but we are
permitted a continual approximation to it." Our destiny is to
" creep ever on from fancies to the fact," as
Truth successively takes shape one grade above
Its last presentment.
Man, therefore, thus conditioned must expect
He could not, what he knows now, know at first;
What he considers that he knows to-day,
Come but to-morrow, be will find misknown;
Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns
Because he lives, which is to be a man.1
1 A. C. Pigou, Robert Browning as a Religious Teacher, 20.

DEBORAH.

441

Literature.
Black, J. S., The Booh of Judges (1892).
Brooke, S. A., The Old Testament and Modern Life (1896), 177.
Cooke, G. A., The Booh of Judges (1913), 44.
Davies, D., Talks with Men, Women and Children, iii. (1891) 161.
Dawson, W. J., The Comrade-Christ (1894), 150.
Fairweather, D., Bound in the Spirit (1906), 167.
Farningham, M., Women and their Work (1906), 43, 47.
Forbes, A. P., Sermons on the Grace of God (1862), 245.
Fraser, J., University Sermons (1887), 137.
Henson, H. H, The Value ofthe Bible (1904), 53.
Horton, B. F., Women ofthe Old Testament (1898), 119.
Ingram, W. C, Happiness in the Spiritual Life (1891), 85.
Mackay, W. M., Bible Types of Modern Women (1912), 78.
Maclaren, A., The Beatitudes (1896), 199.
Matheson, G., The Representative Women ofthe Bible (1907), 155.
Mayor, J. B., The World's Desire (1907), 102.
Miller, T. E., Portraits of Women ofthe Bible (1910), 75, 85.
Potter, H. C, Sermons ofthe City (1880), 125.
Simeon, J., Some Women of the Old Testament : Eve to Buth (1905), 195.
Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, i. (1888) 279.
„ „ Scripture Portraits (1867), 23.
Stuart, J., Church and Home (1900), 122.
Thatcher, G. W., Judges and Ruth (Century Bible), 56.
Watson, B. A., Judges and Ruth (Expositor's Bible) (1889), 91, 106.
Williams, I., Female Characters of Holy Scripture (1890), 80.
Christian World Pulpit, xxx. (1886) 1 (H. P. Liddon) ; xl. (1891) 40
(W. B. Carpenter); lxxi. (1907) 163 (J. H. Bushbrooke) ; lxxix.
(1911) 251 (F. Sparrow).
Churchman's Pulpit : Second Sunday after Trinity, x. 1 (R. Eyton), 3
(W. L. Williams), 5 (J. B. Mayor), 8 (T. J. Madden), 9 (J. E.
Woodford), 12 (W. F. Pelton), 14 (J. H. Newman), 18 (F. Ealand),
19 (A. P. Forbes).
Expositor, 3rd Ser., v. (1887) 38 (A. B. Davidson).
Preachers' Monthly, v. (1883) 335 (P. Brooks).

DEBORAH.
The rulers ceased in Israel, they ceased,
Until that I Deborah arose. — Judg. v. 7.
The history of the chosen people during the interval between
the death of Joshua and the rise of Samuel — between the establish
ment of the Sanctuary at Shiloh on the first occupation of the
country and its final overthrow by the Philistines — is specially
interesting. Other portions of Scripture may be more profitable
" for doctrine, for correction, for reproof, for instruction in righteous
ness " ; but for merely human interest — for the lively touches of
ancient manners, for the succession of romantic incidents, for the
consciousness that we are living face to face with the persons
described, for the tragical pathos of events and characters — there
is nothing like the history of the Judges from Othniel to Eli. It
would seem, if one may venture to say so, as if the Book of Judges
had been left in the sacred books with the express view of enforc
ing upon us the necessity, which we are sometimes anxious to
evade, of recognizing the human, national, let us even add barbarian,
element which plays its part in the sacred history. The Book of
Judges recalls our thoughts from the ideal which we imagine of
past and of sacred ages, and reminds us, by a rude shock, that even
in the heart of the chosen people, even in the next generation
after Joshua, there were irregularities, imperfections, excrescences,
whieh it is the glory of the sacred historian to have recorded
faithfully, and which it will be our wisdom no less faithfully to
study. 1. " In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man
did that which was right in his own eyes." This sentence,
frequently and earnestly repeated, is the key-note of the whole
book. It expresses the freedom, the freshness, the independence,
the bcence, the anarchy, the disorder of the period.

444 DEBORAH
Once settled in Canaan, the Israelites could not resist the
temptation to adopt the worship of the native deities, on whom
the prosperity of flocks and fields was supposed to depend. The
God of Israel came from the desert; in the early days of the
settlement His home was believed to be in Sinai rather than in
Canaan; hence the popular religion, without ceasing to regard
Jehovah as the God of Israel, felt it necessary to pay homage at
the same time to tbe gods of the country. No doubt also the
popular mind tended to identify Jehovah with the local Baals and
Astartes, whose sanctuaries were scattered over the land. Such
confusions gravely imperilled the distinctive character of Israel's
rebgion ; they produced a degradation of faith and morals which
led the prophets to charge Israel with having fallen into Baal-
worship from the very day they entered into Canaan ; the popular
religion could only be described as a " forsaking '' of Jehovah.
2. These troubled and stormy times often produced a warrior-
hero to cope with them. Of these Israelite heroes many strange
and warlike deeds were told, as they are told also of warrior
chieftains in other lands. The compilers and editors called these
men "judges," but they were not judges in our sense of the word
at all ; they were chieftains and heroes, whose influence was felt
mainly in war and was of a local and temporary character. Such
leaders were Ehud and Barak, Gideon and Jephthah; while
several of the minor judges were perhaps rather heads of great
families, deriving their authority from the distinction of their
birth and the number of their relatives and dependents.

Deborah the Judge.
Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, she judged Israel
at that time. — Judg. iv. 4.
1. The crowning event of this period, both in its intrinsic
interest and in our knowledge of it, is the victory of Deborah and
Barak. The years of " rest " which the land enjoyed under Ehud's
rule came to an end with his death. The "children of Israel
again did (continued to do) evil in the sight of the Lord." The

DEBORAH 445
interval of comparative piety is over, and the under-current of
distrust and idolatry again resumes its influence. The spiritual
fidelity of Israel is an occasional thing ; the apostasy is the result
of a permanent tendency, often checked, but ever recovering its
sway. Ehud, by the moral ascendancy he had acquired, was for
the time the bulwark of his people's faith. But the presence of
Sisera in "Harosheth of the Gentiles" with "nine hundred
chariots of iron " overawed the Israelites ; and " twenty years he
mightily oppressed " them. This force powerfully affected their
imagination, and rendered them all but helpless. They forgot
that God is able to break the chariots in pieces, and to make all
their massive strength a disadvantage and a difficulty, as when
the Egyptians laboured heavily in the Eed Sea sand and waves ;
that the spirit that animates an army is greater than weapons or
fortifications. The spirit of patriotism was dead, and there was
little to distinguish God's people from the people that surrounded
them. The fear of Sisera and his nine hundred iron chariots shook
the hearts that were once proud and free, and his military raids
and exactions kept the land in constant terror.
2. " Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, she
judged Israel at that time" — not, it would seem, only the
families near where she resided, for many from far and near
sought the guidance and counsel of this woman. The report of
her wisdom, of her zeal and devotion to Israel's God, had
travelled north and south and east and west ; she judged Israel.
A prophetic woman, a seer somewhat bke what Samuel was in
later times, not content to give direction to the people for pay,
she carried in her breast faith in Jehovah and His helping hand.
The distress of the people went to her heart. It was at the same
time a dishonour to Jehovah. Therefore help must be given, and
deliverance must be at hand. The thought that the tribes
belonged to one another, that they were Jehovah's tribes —
perhaps also that they must become Jehovah's nation — lived in
her. Though to a great extent dead among a multitude which
was disheartened, and by this time tired of the obligation of
nationality, it still certainly bved here and there in individuals.
Deborah's wrath was fierce against all who slipped aside from
the worship of Jehovah, and all this religious passion mingled

446 DEBORAH
with her patriotic rage at the misery of her people to drive her
into insurrection. She is the magnificent impersonation of the
free spirit of the Jewish people and of Jewish life.
Tf On the coins of the Eoman Empire, Judsea is represented
as a woman seated under a palm-tree, captive and weeping. It
is the contrast of that figure which will best place before us the
character and call of Deborah. It is the same Judasan palm,
under whose shadow she sits, but not with downcast eyes, and
folded hands, and extinguished hopes ; with all the fire of faith
and energy, eager for the battle, confident of the victory.
Strength of character, intellect, clear-sightedness, tact, and the
wisdom which He alone who had called her to that lofty position
could give, were the endowments of Deborah, and she bravely did
her best with them for the problems and duties of that terrible
time. The people must be roused to meet and conquer Sisera.
It was the will of God. So she sent for the man whose duty it
was to summon the fighting-men to action, Barak, the son of
Abinoam, and reiterated to him the command of God, and His
instructions for the arrangements of the battle.
Tf We want in England — women who will understand and feel
what love of country means, and act upon it ; who will lose thought
of themselves and their finery and their pleasure in a passionate
effort to heal the sorrow and to destroy the dishonour, dishonesty,
and vice of England ; to realize that as mothers, maidens, wives,
and sisters, they have but to bid the men of this country to be
true, brave, loving, just, honourable, and wise, and they will
become so, just as they will become frivolous, base, unloving,
ashamed of truth and righteousness if women are so ; to be not
content to live only for their own circles, but to take upon their
hearts the burden of the poor, the neglected, and the sinful, for
whom many now exercise a dainty, distant pity, and no more.1

II.
Deborah the Deliverer.
I arose a mother in Israel. — Judg. v. 7.
The account of the deliverance of Israel from the Canaanites
exists in two versions, one in prose (Judg. iv.), the other in poetry
(Judg. v.). The two agree in the main ; the chief actors are the
1 Stopford A. Brooke.

DEBORAH 447
same — Deborah, Barak, Sisera, Jael ; the Canaanites are defeated
with Jehovah's powerful aid in a battle near the Kishon ; Sisera
is murdered by Jael in her tent. But there are some striking
disagreements ; in chap. iv. the oppressor is Jabin, king of Hazor,
and Sisera of Harosheth is his general ; Deborah is connected
with Ephraim, Barak with Kedesh ; two tribes only, Zebulun and
Naphtali, take part in the battle : Jael murders Sisera while he
lies asleep by driving a tent-peg through his temples. On the
other hand, chap. v. knows nothing of Jabin ; Sisera is the head of
a confederacy of Canaanite kings (ver. 19), and is in fact a king;
his mother has princesses for attendants (ver. 29); apparently both
Deborah and Barak belong to Issachar (ver. 15); the struggle is on
a much larger scale, all the tribes are summoned to arms, and for
the first time Israel acts almost as a nation (vv. 13-18) ; Jael
fells Sisera with a mallet while he is standing drinking (ver. 26 f.).
The Song is obviously ancient, and may well be contemporary
with the events it describes; it is not only one of the finest
odes in the Hebrew language, but it possesses the highest value
as a historical document.
1. After a spell of oppression, probably brought on by the
expansion of the Israelite tribes in the direction of the Great
Plain, the Canaanites, led by Sisera at the head of the local chiefs,
made a determined effort to drive the Israelites back into their
hills. To resist this formidable movement, and to put an end to
an intolerable state of insecurity and humiliation, Deborah roused
the tribes.
It was a great day for Israel when Deborah left the shadow of
the palm-tree, where she sat as "judge," and went northward
to summon Barak to the defence of his people. It shows the
commanding position to which Deborah had attained, that Barak
at once responded ; and it is a further tribute to the remarkable
personal influence of tbis woman that, when the matter was
explained to Barak and the line of action suggested, he refused
to enter upon this campaign unless they had the presence and
counsel of Deborah. Perhaps he recognized that the very presence
of Deborah in the army would be an inspiration to his soldiers
which he himself could not supply, because he did not feel it.
At all events, by his very attitude to Deborah we get the

448 DEBORAH
measure of her greatness; for it means that of all souls in
Israel this woman's was the most dauntless, the most resolved
and noble.
Tf I would that all those who have suffered at women's hands
and found them evil would loudly proclaim it, and give us their
reasons ; and if those reasons be well founded we shall be indeed
surprised, and shall have advanced far forward in the mystery. For
women are indeed the veiled sisters of all the great things we do
not see. They are indeed nearest of kin to the infinite that is
about us, and they alone can still smile at it with the intimate
grace of the child, to whom its father inspires no fear. It is they
who preserve here below the pure fragrance of our soul, like some
jewel from Heaven, which none know how to use ; and were they
to depart, the spirit would reign in solitude in a desert. Theirs
are still the Divine emotions of the first days ; and the sources
of their being lie, deeper far than ours, in all that was illimit
able.1 Ochone ! to be a woman, only sighing on the shore —
With a soul that finds a passion for each long breaker's roar,
With a heart that beats as restless as all the winds that
blow —
Thrust a cloth between her fingers, and tell her she must
sew;
Must join in empty chatter, and calculate with straws —
For the weighing of our neighbour — for the sake of social
laws.
0 chatter, chatter, chatter, when to speak is misery,
When silence lies around your heart — and night is on the sea.
So tired of little fashions that are root of all our strife,
Of all the petty passions that upset the calm of life.
The law of God upon the land shines steady for all time;
The laws confused that man has made, have reason not nor
rhyme.
0 bird that fights the heavens, and is blown beyond the
shore,
Would you leave your flight and danger for a cage to fight
no more ?
No more the cold of winter, or the hunger of the snow,
Nor the winds that blow you backward from tbe path you
wish to go?
1 M. Maeterlinck, The Treasure of the Humble, 92.

DEBORAH 449
Would you leave your world of passion for a home that
knows no riot ?
Would I change my vagrant longings for a heart more full of
quiet ?
No ! — for all its dangers, there is joy in danger too :
On, bird, and fight your tempests, and this nomad heart with
you!1
2. Six of the tribes, those immediately north and south of the
plain, responded to the summons; the remoter clans, Dan and
Asher in the north, Eeuben and Gilead (Gad) on the east of Jordan,
refused to stir themselves. Judah is not mentioned : it was cut
off from Ephraim and the rest by a line of Canaanite strongholds ;
Simeon and Levi, who are also passed over, seem to have been
unable to maintain a distinct existence after the early stages of
the invasion. The Israelites assembled on the heights of Tabor.
The Canaanites, who had received tidings of the movement,
mustered in vast numbers in the plain of Esdraelon, at its foot.
Thirteen miles away from Tabor, on a spur of the hills, at the
south-west corner of the plain, was Taanach, the outlying fortress
of the Canaanites ; and to this place their host, with all its war-
chariots, came ; and Deborah, watching from the lofty rock, cried
out : " Arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of
Abinoam." So Barak, with his ten thousand men, all on foot, went
out to meet his enemy. While he marched over these thirteen
miles, the Canaanites advanced from Taanach to their second
fortress of Megiddo, where near at hand a network of streams,
merging into four, fell down among the olives to join the Kishon
that flowed in the plain below. There at the waters of Megiddo
the battle joined on the level ground. It was at this critical
moment that (as we learn directly from Josephus, and indirectly
from the song of Deborah), a tremendous storm of sleet and hail
gathered from the east, and burst over the plain, driving full in
the faces of the advancing Canaanites. " The stars in their courses
fought against Sisera." As in like case in the battle of Cressy, the
slingers and the archers were disabled by the rain, the swordsmen
were crippled by the biting cold. The Israelites, on the other
hand, having the storm on their rear, were less troubled by it, and
derived confidence from the consciousness of this Providential aid.
1 Dora Sigerson Shorter, Collected Poems, 249.
MOSES-SAMSON — 29

450 DEBORAH
The confusion became great. The " rain descended," the four
rivulets of Megiddo were swelled into powerful streams, the
torrent of the Kishon rose into a flood, the plain became a morass.
The chariots stuck fast in the sodden ground, and the charioteers
were slain. The horse-hoofs hammered the soil in flight. The
mighty ones who rode the chariots now strove in vain to flee the
terror of battle. Half of them struggled downwards to the river
through the marshy ground. But tbe Kishon was now in furious
flood, and this part of the Canaanite army was engulfed in its
clashing torrent. The rest fled along by Endor, to the east, and
perished there.
Tf A remarkable parallel to what happened here was the battle
of Crimesus in Sicily when the Carthaginians were defeated by
the Greeks. The Greek encampment, like that of Israel, was on
the hill above the river. The chariots of their opponents are
broken by the Greek Infantry. The violent storm of wind, rain,
hail, thunder and lightning, beating in the faces of the Cartha
ginians but only on the backs of the Greeks ; the confusion in the
river becoming every moment fuller and more turbid through the
violent rain, so that numbers perished in tbe torrents ; the total
rout of the enemy and the capture of tbe chariots, the spoils of
ornamented shields— are the exact counterpart of the victory of
Deborah and Barak over Sisera.1
3. Sisera abandoned his chariot and ran for his life. He
managed to get to "the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the
Kenite." Though not herself an Israelite, she belonged to a tribe
which had long been associated with the fortunes of Israel. Her
husband was a descendant of Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses.
But though friendly with Israel and worshipping the God of Israel,
the Kenites were at the same time at peace with the Canaanites.
" There was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house
of Heber the Kenite " (Judg. iv. 17). The explanation has been
found in the situation in which these people were placed. Hazor
was only a few miles from Kedesh, so that it was policy to be at
peace with Jabin, seeing they had no power to resist him, though
it does not follow that they would not have risen against him if
they could. Sisera, therefore, had no hesitation in seeking refuge
in the tent of Jael, and had no suspicion of treachery when Jael
went out to meet him, and offer him hospitality.
1 T. E. Miller, Portraits of Women of the Bible, 82.

DEBORAH 451
There are, as has already been stated, two distinct accounts of
what Jael actually did. When we compare chap. iv. 21 with
chap. v. 26, 27, we observe that, according to the prose narrative,
Jael waited till Sisera was in a deep sleep, and then murdered
him as Macbeth murdered Duncan. And this certainly appears
to be a cold-blooded deed of cruelty. But in Deborah's poem a
different version is given. Jael offered him milk and butter, and
while he was drinking she attacked him with the tent-pin and a
workman's hammer, so that " he bowed down and fell at her feet,
and where he fell he died."
No sooner was the deed done than Barak came by, hot in
pursuit, and saw with joy his foe lie dead. The same day De
borah met him, and the prophetess changed into the poet. Like
a Norse scald, she sang tbe rising, the battle, and the death of the
enemy ; and uttered words of scorn and mockery rarely equalled
in the bterature of war.
Tf Sisera, for all his commanding nine hundred iron chariots, was
slain with one iron nail.1 III.
Deborah the Poet.
Then sang Deborah.— Judg. v. 1.
1. There can be little doubt that the splendid ode found in
the fifth chapter of Judges belongs to the same date as the events
which it describes. The passions roused by the battle have not
cooled down ; the sense of a common danger, the enthusiasm of
united action, the exultation in Jehovah's triumphant aid, are
felt with a vividness which only a contemporary could have put
into words. The religious temper and the political situation agree
with what we know of the period of the Judges from elsewhere,
while the antique poetic language may well be characteristic of
the same date. The ode, then, is a most ancient composition,
probably earlier than anything else of the same extent in the
Old Testament ; its original place may have been in some collec
tion of old Hebrew songs, such as the Book of Jashar or the Book
of the Wars of the Lord. A text so ancient must inevitably have
'Thomas Fuller, Pisgah Sight of Palestine.

452 DEBORAH
suffered in the course of ages ; and though the general sense is
clear, in many places we cannot follow the connexion of thought
or interpret particular words. But we have no difficulty in under
standing it sufficiently to be able to appreciate its great lyric
and dramatic qualities — its impetuous rapidity, its vivid and
picturesque suggestiveness, tbe brevity and compression, yet com
pleteness, with which it develops its theme. Apart from its
literary distinction, it has a high historical value from the light it
incidentally throws on the social condition of Israel at the time of
its composition. As regards its authorship there seems to be no
conclusive reason for rejecting the very ancient tradition accord
ing to which it was composed by Deborah, even though we should
fail to detect the peculiarly feminine traits that have been seen
by some in the allusions to Jael, Sisera's mother, and the like.
In its mechanical structure the main feature to be observed is the
parallelism which it shows in common with all Hebrew poetry,
and more particularly the progressive parallelism which is seen in
such clauses as :
From heaven fought the stars;
From their courses fought [they] with Sisera;
or: Through the window she looked forth and cried;
The mother of Sisera through the lattice.
2. It is pre-eminently a battle-song of triumph. Barak and
Deborah are twice addressed in it, but the poem was composed,
not to glorify them but to celebrate the triumph over the enemy.
It is, however, because of its association with the " judge " Barak
that it is put into the Book of Judges. The prose story of chap.
iv. is evidently regarded by the Deuteronomic editor as the more
important for his purpose. Yet it is almost certain that the poem
contains the truer account. Prose traditions were always liable to
additions and alterations in the mouths of the people, while it was
more difficult to alter poetry without disturbing the rhythm of
the whole. In the main, it is more patriotic than moral, more
warlike than religious, and thus unquestionably reflects the temper
of the time. In it we see the lyric poetry of war and patriotism
brought to perfection. Its treatment of the theme from so many
standpoints and with reference to so many national interests is

DEBORAH 453
itself a mark of long experience in literary composition. The song
is, in fact, a literary consummation, like the poems of Homer.
And, although in the mouth of a woman, it breathes the very spirit
of those that delight in war.
Tf It is necessary to say once more, because it is one of the
key-notes of his character, that all his bfe long F. W. Eobertson
was a soldier at heart. Again and again he expresses his convic
tion that, in a military life, the highest self-sacrifice he was
capable of could alone have been accomplished. Those who have
heard him speak of battle — battle not as an incident of mere
war, but as the realization of death for a noble cause — will
remember how his lips quivered, and his eyes flashed, and his
voice trembled with restrained emotion. Unconsciously to him
self, the ring of his words, the choice of his expressions, his
action even in common circumstances, his view of the Universe
and of Humanity, were influenced and coloured by the ideal he
had formed of a soldier's life, by the passionate longing of his
youth to enter it, and by the bitterness of the regret with which
he surrendered it.1
3. The song falls naturally into three divisions : vv. 2-11, an
introduction; vv. 12-22, a description of the battle; vv. 23-31,
the sequel.
(1) Ib the first part God is celebrated as the Helper
of Israel from of old and from afar; He is the spring of the
movement in which the singer rejoices, and in His praise the
strophes culminate. Jehovah is invoked and praised as the God
of the Hebrews alone. He seems to have no interest in the
Canaanites, or compassion towards them. Yet the grandeur of
the Divine forth-going is declared in bold and striking imagery,
and the high resolves of men are clearly traced to the Spirit of
the Almighty. Duty to God is linked with duty to country, and
it is at least suggested that Israel without Jehovah is nothing and
has no right to a place among the peoples. The nation exists for
the glory of its Heavenly King, to make known His power and
His righteous acts. The enemies of Israel are the enemies of
Jehovah, and they who fight for the national cause fight for God.
(2) The second part of the song tells of the battle, and
there never was a grander description of a battle, witnessed, as it
were, from the parapet of heaven. In Taanach by the waters of
1 S. A. Brooke, Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson, 41.

454 DEBORAH
Megiddo are the marshalled kings. But the very stars in their
courses are marshalled against them. And see, almost at once,
there is the ancient river Kishon sweeping them away — " 0 my
soul, march on with strength ! " And the fierce battle-horses are
pawing the ground — there is the thud and the thunder, the con
fusion and the conflict — and the victory is secured. Through
this wonderful song we are able to see with our own eyes and to
follow the events of that memorable day.
(3) After the vivid description of the battle come the cursing
of Meroz and the blessing of Jael. The courageous devotion of
Jael is set effectively against the unpatriotic selfishness of Meroz.
In considering this section we should remember that the song of
Deborah is no more than the passionate, poetic utterance of a
patriot who belongs to the wild, uncivilized and unchristian
period in which it was composed, and all that it says about God,
and about the fight and the slaughter of Sisera, is to be judged
in accordance with the morality and theology of the time in which
it was written. The Jehovah of the Hebrews, at this period in
their history, was very much like the gods of other nations
just emerged from the savage state. He was their own God, the
God who defended their country from the gods of other nations,
the existence of whom the Hebrews did not deny. Nothing could
be dearer to Him than that the Israelites should mercilessly slay
those who worshipped other gods who disputed His pre-eminence.
In judging Meroz for its lack of patriotic spirit, Deborah identifies
the cause of Israel with the cause of Israel's God. To be disloyal
to the nation implied religious treason. Tbe Canaanites were
Jehovah's enemies, and the highest goodness was to destroy them.
Yet Meroz sat still and allowed her brethren to do all the bloody
fighting, when it was in her power utterly to block the escaping
foe and thus to exterminate this enemy of God's people.
4. So overmastering is this religious feeling that Jael's breach
of hospitality, because committed in the interests of Jehovah, is
extolled as an act of heroism. We may imagine how Deborah
could cry with full bebef in the justice of her cry : " Blessed above
women be Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite." There are, however,
three things to be taken into account if we are to understand the
situation aright.

DEBORAH 455
(1) A Hebrew woman of undaunted courage but of fierce
spirit, in the first flush of victory chanting her triumphant war-
song, feeling that twenty years of cruel suffering and oppression
had now been signally revenged, seeing the oppressor himself laid
low and her nation once more free, may be forgiven if at the
moment she thought less of the mode and instrument by which
that freedom had been won than of the great result achieved —
may be almost forgiven, or at least understood, if, in the disturbed
balance of her mind, the true measure of things failed to impress
itself upon her conscience, and the end might seem to justify the
means. (2) But Deborah was here expressing not so much her own as
the nation's thankfulness for deliverance; the nation would
naturally warmly express its gratitude, without entering with
any minute criticism into the question of the morality of the act
whereby that debverance had been effected; and it was only
reasonable and right that Jael's name should be handed down to
posterity as that of one who shared the glory of having helped
in bringing about a great national blessing.
(3) Deborah's ode of triumph rises to its loftiest level at its
close — " So let all thine enemies perish, 0 Lord." It is not our
cause but Thine, it is not our vengeance that Jael has wreaked,
but the vengeance of Jehovah upon an oppressor and a savage —
" But let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth
in his might." It is a strange thing that so fierce a battle-chant
should settle down into such a sweet swan-song as this at the end.
It is a strange thing that in the same soul there should throb the
delight in battle, the almost delight in murder, and these lofty
thoughts. But let us learn the lesson that true love to God
means hearty hatred of God's enemy. We need not then deduct
anything from our admiration of the great woman, prophetess and
patriot, because she deals the meed of praise to the doughty deed
of Jael. It is only necessary to realize the whole situation, and
then we can follow with a heartfelt approval, making due
allowance for the different moral atmosphere of the time, her
quick transition from the cursed Meroz who came not to the help of
the Lord against the mighty, to the blessed Jael, the woman who did.
Tf I loved Frederick Maurice, as every one did who came near
him ; and have no doubt that he did all that was in him to do of

456 DEBORAH
good in his day. I only went once to a Bible-lesson of his ; and
the meeting was significant, and conclusive. The subject of
lesson, Jael's slaying of Sisera. Concerning which, Maurice,
taking an enlightened modern view of what was fit and not,
discoursed in passionate indignation ; and warned his class, in the
most positive and solemn manner, that such dreadful deeds could
only have been done in cold blood in the Dark Biblical ages; and
that no religious and patriotic Englishwoman ought ever to think
of imitating Jael by nailing a Eussian's or Prussian's skull to the
ground, — especially after giving him butter in a lordly dish. At
the close of the instruction, through which I sat silent, I ventured
to enquire, why then had Deborah the prophetess declared of Jael,
" Blessed above women shall the wife of Heber the Kenite be " ?
On which Maurice, with startled and flashing eyes, burst into
partly scornful, partly alarmed, denunciation of Deborah the
prophetess, as a mere blazing Amazon; and of her Song as a
merely rhythmic storm of battle-rage, no more to be listened to
with edification or faith than the Norman's sword-song at the
battle of Hastings. Whereupon there remained nothing for me, —
to whom the Song of Deborah was as sacred as the Magnificat, —
but total collapse in sorrow and astonishment ; the eyes of all the
class being also bent on me in amazed reprobation of my benighted
views, and unchristian sentiments. And I got away how I could,
but never went back.1
Tf The opening verse of Deborah's Song gives us the whole
secret of the national inspiration in a tribute of glory to
Jahweh: "For that the leaders took the lead in Israel, for
that the people offered themselves willingly, praise ye Jahweh ! "
In the end of the Song which thus grandly opens, we are repelled
by the savage exultation of a woman over the treacherous murder
of a defeated foe. And rightly ; for Christ has given us the right
to judge. But do we pay as much attention to the virtues which
are manifest in the Song ? Nowhere do we find a more scathing
exposure of those who prefer the material ambitions of life, how
ever legitimate, to the call of national need in the name of the
religious ideal ; and nowhere is self-sacrifice more finely celebrated.
" Zebulun was a people that jeoparded their lives to the death,
and Naphtali on the high places of the field." Whatever views
we have of war — and we are those who themselves owe their
religious liberty to the virtues of the battle-field — let us
remember what war did for Israel. "By war," says Jahweh
elsewhere, " I took you " ; and we may extend the meaning of
these words beyond the mere fact that so He helped them to
1 Buskin, Prcsterita, iii. chap. i. ( Works, xxxv. 486).

DEBORAH 457
freedom, to the moral assurance that by the call to fight Ho
redeemed them from selfishness, from servitude to material aims,
from schism and disloyalty to Himself. The battle-field was
the Golgotha of early Israel. It was there that Zebulun and
Naphtali laid down ' their lives for the brethren ; and there that
the Spirit of Christ which was in Israel from the beginning won
its earliest triumphs.1
Tf The Biblical way of conveying truth is not to be likened to
the erection of a building ; it is the gradual unfolding of a tree.
The acorn becomes a plant, the plant becomes a sapling, and the
sapbng, in turn, becomes the full-grown oak, until, by the process
of inward expansion, the tree becomes what the house built of
stone could never be, a bving, fruit-bearing, and organic unity.
This is the story of religion as set forth in the Biblical records.
It began as a tiny rill away up in the Semitic highlands. It
increased in volume and depth as it sped through the Mosaic age
and entered the period of the monarchy. It was fed by priest
hood and prophecy, psalm and proverb, discipline and deliverance,
until, in the fulness of the times, it flowed a mighty river and
poured its waters into the sea of the New Testament Gospel.2
1 G. A. Smith, Modern Criticism and the Preaching ofthe Old Testament, 153.
3 John Adams, Israel's Ideal 2.

GIDEON.

Literature.
Banks, L. A., The Great Saints ofthe Bible (1902), 172.
Beecher, H. W., Bible Studies (1893), 367.
Brown, J. B., The Sunday Afternoon (1871), 202.
Chapman, J. W., And Judas Iscariot (1910), 113.
Cooke, G. A., The Book of Judges (Cambridge Bible) (1913), 68.
Cumming, J. E., Scripture Photographs, 154.
Dods, M., Israel's Iron Age (1875), 31.
Elmslie, W. G., Expository Lectures and Sermons (1892), 3.
Home, C. S., The Rock of Ages (1901), 137.
Lang, J. M., Gideon and the Judges (1890), 81.
Leach, C, Old yet ever New (1893), 133, 191, 210.
Lewis, H. E., in Men of the Old Testament : Cain to David (1904), 197.
Lias, J. J., The Book of Judges (Cambridge Bible) (1882), 98.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Deuteronomy, etc. (1906), 225.
Matheson, G., The Representative Men of the Bible, ii. (1903) 150.
Merson, D., Words of Life (1889), 242.
Milligan, G., Lamps and Pitchers (1896), 9.
Moore, G. F., Judges (International Critical Commentary) (1895), 173.
Morgan, B. C, The Cross in the Old Testament (1908), 50.
Morrison, G. H., The Footsteps ofthe Flock (1904), 113.
Murphy, J. B. C, The Service ofthe Master (1897), 136, 143.
Newbolt, W. C. E., Words of Exhortation (1900), 339.
Purves, P. C, The Jehovah Titles ofthe Old Testament (1911), 36.
Selby, T. G., The God ofthe Patriarchs (1904), 257.
Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, i. (1889) 300.
Talmage, T. de W., Fifty Sermons, ii. (1874) 159.
Thatcher, G. W., Judges and Ruth (Century Bible), 74.
Waller, C. H., The Names on the Gates of Pearl (1903), 238.
Wharton, M. B., Famous Men ofthe Old Testament (1903), 115.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters : Gideon to Absalom (1898), 9.
Windross, H., The Life Victorious (1905), 267.
Wright, W. B., The World to Come (1896), 88.
Christian Age, xliv. (1893) 402 (0. H. Parkhurst).
Christian World Pulpit, lxii. (1902) 217 (B. F. Horton) ; Ixxii. (1907)
116 (J. H. Ward); lxxvi. (1909) 197 (A. Hearn); lxxvii. (1910)
301 (J. G. Bowran).
Preacher's Magazine, v. (1894) 513 (J. T. Hamly).

460

GIDEON.
The Lord looked upon him; and said, Go in this thy might, and save
Israel from the hand of Midian : have not I sent thee ?— Judg. vi. 14.
1. The writer of the Book of Judges has preserved scarcely any
information regarding the life of Gideon, except that which
belongs to one very brief period of it — the period of a few days
during which he gathered an army, attacked the Midianites, and
drove them out of the land. And the story is told in an ex
tremely complicated narrative. Two main documents can be
traced, but these have been so interwoven, both before and after
the Deuteronomic redaction of Judges, that the analysis in detail
must be regarded more as a critical experiment than as possessing
any degree of certainty.
2. Gideon was evidently a man of great influence in Central
Palestine. His own personal character is more clearly delineated
than that of any other hero except Samson, whose life is of quite
another character. Above even his simple straightforwardness
and his courage stands his religious nature. He receives from
Jehovah's angel the call to deliver his tribe. One of bis earliest
deeds is tbe destruction of the altar of Baal, after he has erected
one to Jehovah. Four traditions are recorded as to his inter
course with Jehovah and desire to know His will (vi. 36 ff., vii. 2f.,
4 ff, 9 ff.) ; and when he had crushed the Midianites he devoted
his share of the spoil to making an ephod by which Jehovah
might be consulted. The traditions here, as in other cases, were
doubtless collected from different quarters. Some of them were
told of Jerubbaal, so that the collector in vii. 1 feels it necessary
to explain in one of those which he is using that Jerubbaal is
Gideon. There are two distinct sets of traditions in chapters vii.
and vbi., the one telling bow he led the Hebrews against the
Midianites under Oreb and Zeeb, how he conquered them and
461

462 GIDEON
saved his people; the other (viii. 4ff.) telling how he and the
men of his family (Abiezer) pursued Zebah and Zalmunna to
exact blood -revenge, because they had killed his brothers.
Although in the story of viii. 22 f. Gideon is said to have declined
to rule over his people, it is evident from the story of Abimelech
that he had exercised a recognized authority, of such a character
that his family might be expected to continue it after him.

The Call of Gideon.
There would seem to have been two calls addressed to Gideon ;
or, if not, there are two accounts of the one call. In any case
the narratives must be treated separately.
i. The First Call.
The Book of Judges is one continuous exhibition of God's
providential prevention of the destruction of true religion.
Whenever the Hebrew conquerors amid tbeir Canaanite vassals
had become supine, when their relation to Jehovah had grown
slack, and their religious enthusiasm feeble, when selfishness,
comfort, and luxury were their supreme ends in life, they in their
turn became weak, the Philistines and their other enemies fell
upon them, made forays into their land, seized parts of it, until
by misery they were compelled to return to their loyalty and to
their God, Jehovah.
1. In the defeat of Sisera the last attempt of the old inhabi
tants of the land of Canaan to recover their sway was put down.
The next event is wholly different. It is tbe invasion of the
tribes of the adjoining desert. The whole of Southern Palestine
lay at the mercy of the Midianites — hordes of barbarians who
lived by pillage and rapine. The unity of Israel was broken, and
its unhappy people were a helpless prey in the clutches of their
fierce and merciless tormentors. The one thing the children of
Israel were so slow to see was that their unity as a people
depended on the purity of their faith. As soon as they began to
be taken in the toils of idolatries, some lost their soul to Baal,

GIDEON 463
some to Ashtaroth, and some to Melech ; and in the very multi
plicity of these base types of worship the unity of the nation was
lost. Israel was " greatly impoverished " ; they made dens in the
mountains, and caves and strongholds, leaving the fertile vales to
the marauding hosts of the desert.
2. In the midst of the distress of Israel a cry went up to the
Lord from some of them ; and the Lord answered by an unnamed
prophet, whose mission was to remind them that they had been
long in idolatry, in disobedience, and in disregard of the Lord's
commands. But to Israel's cry there was another answer. When
repentance was well begun and the tribes turned from the heathen
rites which separated them from each other and from Divine
thoughts, freedom again became possible, and God raised up a
liberator. And just as in the other invasions and oppressions, so
here, the deliverer is sought in the locality nearest to the chief scene
of the invasion. Overhanging the plain of Esdraelon, where the
vast army of the Midianites was encamped, were the hills of
Western Manasseh. Itjjss irom _ a small family of this proud
tribe_-that-the champion of -Israel unexpectedly arose — Gideon,
son of Joash of tbe tribe of Manasseh, who resided at Ophrah,
in Gilead beyond Jordan, the most heroic of all the characters of
jthis_period. 3. It was whilst Gideon was brooding over the wrongs of his
family and of his country that the call came upon him. The scene
was long preserved, and the manner of the call carries us back
to the visions of the patriarchal age. Gideon had succeeded in
getting together a quantity of wheat, which was to be food for
himself and his family. Having saved it from the raids of the
Midianites, and kept it from the searching eye of the robber, he
brought his grain to the winepress that he might thresh it ready
for use. He was in this act when the angel of Jehovah appeared
to him. Gideon's position and occupation brought out most
significantly the low and unhappy condition into which Israel had
fallen. He was threshing wheat, not in the usual place and
manner — but "by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites."
Poverty and subjection are here. His family, as we learn from
his own lips, is the poorest in Manasseh, and he himself is the

464 GIDEON
least in his father's house. The times can never have looked
darker or drearier to any human eyes than to the youngest son of
Joash the Abiezrite, working in fear and poverty, while the shadow
of a cruel and seemingly invincible oppression rested on his
unhappy land. Yet to tbis soul with darkened faith, heir to
national despair and family misfortune, came the great vision of
God and duty — the only vision that can lift any soul above such
circumstances as these, and set it in the broad highway of hope
and service. " The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour,"
said the messenger of God. Gideon's reply proves how sore his
spirit was. Whether the messenger was an angebc visitor or a
human prophet matters little: in any case, he represented God
to Gideon's mind. And yet he took up the authentic word,
and doubted it. " If the Lord be with us, why then is all this
befallen us ? The Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into
the hands of tbe Midianites." After the manner of men, this
seems to be a very sensible reply. He could not see God in the
affliction. He was unable to recognize the Almighty in the
poverty and suffering through which they were passing. Great
and valiant and mighty as Gideon was, he was but a man.
4. Gideon was not going to accept a mere religious phrase
in place of a Divine fact : He had too profound a conviction of
God's power to believe He could be present without interfering
to suppress unrighteousness. He desired a sign; but his wish
was a note of habitual caution, not of disbelief. He would do
anything that God commanded him, but he absolutely refused to
act for himself. He would be sure that the Lord was with him
at every turn. This is not cowardice ; it is that true discretion
which is the better part of valour — to attempt nothing without
the Lord. The sign was granted. For, when he laid his prepared
kid and unleavened cakes upon the rock, the angel of the Lord
put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched
tbe flesh and the unleavened cakes, and there rose up fire out of
the rock and consumed them. This circumstance betokened, not
rejection of the gift, but its acceptance in a higher sense; the
present becomes a sacrifice. Gideon no longer hesitated or
questioned. He rejoiced in the merciful visitation ; accepted its
message ; closed with its call ; and worshipped the Lord, who had

GIDEON 465
so graciously come to him : " Then Gideon built an altar there
unto the Lord, and called it Jehovah-shalom " — " the Lord sent
peace." The altar, with its title, testified to the faith and
gratitude and gladness of this man, called to the service of the
Lord. It was his significant acceptance of that high service, and
his solemn pledge to go through with it, depending on his Mighty
Master, and confident of a happy issue by His all-sufficient help.
Tf Don't allow your heart to hold or to utter such a thought
as that you do not trust God. Though you feel weak in faith,
don't give way to distrust, don't permit it in yourself. How often
is that call given as a needful one, " Be of good courage," " Be
strong"! Hold fast the beginning of your confidence without
wavering ; for He is faithful that hath promised. You know that
He is worthy of being trusted, that His love may be trusted safely,
that there is no safety but in trusting in Him. You know all
this, — and you know that now, in this life of trial, He is trying
our faith. After having shown us what He is to us, what His
heart is toward us, in the gift of Jesus, He will prove our faith
and strengthen it by sorrow and suffering. In Jesus He has
shown us the way to glory, tbe only way ; and what is that way ?
Sorrow, and grief, and death, suffered in the spirit of confidence.1
Tf He by whom God is known, perceiving how He governs all
things, confides in Him as his guardian and protector, and casts
himself entirely upon His faithfulness — perceiving Him to be the
source of every blessing, if he is in any strait or feels any want,
he instantly recurs to His protection and trusts to His aid — per
suaded that He is good and merciful, he reclines upon Him with
sure confidence, and doubts not that, in the Divine clemency, a
remedy will be provided for his every time of need — acknowledging
Him as his Father and his Lord, he considers himself bound to
have respect to His authority in all things, to reverence His
majesty, aim at the advancement of His glory, and obey His
commands — regarding Him as a just judge, armed with severity
to punish crimes, he keeps the judgment-seat always in his view.2
ii. The Second Call.
There now follows what seems to be a second version of the
call of Gideon and the building of the altar. Jehovah calls
Gideon first of all to destroy the altar of Baal which belongs to
his father and the sacred post {asherah) that stands beside it ; to
1 Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, i. 283.
2 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 129.
MOSES-SAMSON — 30

466 GIDEON
build on a designated spot an altar of Jehovah, and offer upon it
a certain bullock as a dedicatory sacrifice. He does so by night.
When the sacrilege is discovered and its perpetrator detected, the
townspeople demand that he be put to death. His father Joash
persuades them to leave it to Baal to avenge the outrage done
him : " If he be a god, let him plead for himself." The oracular
words of Joash, who as the custodian of the holy place was
naturally the priest of Baal, explain the name Jerubbaal.
There may be difficulties in the details of this narrative, but
it faithfully exhibits the twofold call to Gideon which forms the
framework of the rest of his history. The first call is the mission
— almost of a prophetic character — to strike a decisive blow at
the growing tendency to Phoenician worship in the central tribes
of Palestine. He was sent, first and foremost, to recover a lost
ideal. Israel had lowered to the level of tbe rest of the surround
ing nations. Her people had broken down the barriers, inter
married, abandoned what was distinctive in her own religious life,
borrowed the ritual of idolatry from this tribe and the other, and
so stood discrowned and dethroned, her power lost, her glory
diminished and destroyed. The second call is that by which in
later times Gideon has been chiefly known — the war of insur
rection against Midian.
1. Gideon began his work at once where it is hardest — among
his own people and in his father's house. His father had an altar
to Baal : it must have meant for Gideon a more painful struggle
of conscience to initiate the work of reform so near home. The
Midianites were a cruel foe, but Baal and the Asherim were
deadber and more cruel foes. The Midianites inflicted physical
woes, but idolatry struck at the soul of the nation. Gideon's
sword was drawn first against the spirit of idolatry. At no time
in his career was the strength and independence (or, rather, God-
dependence) of his character revealed as at this moment. It was
an unpopular deed he was told to perform ; one that demanded
the noblest kind of heroism, and the probable result of which
would be alienation from his friends. He knew the risks and
took them. The word of the Lord was in his soul : " Peace be
unto thee, fear not." It was either death for him or life for the
Kingdom of God.

GIDEON 467
Once for the least of children of Manasses
God had a message and a deed to do,
Wherefore the welcome that all speech surpasses
Called him and hailed him greater than he knew;
Asked him no more, but followed him and found him,
Filled him with valour, slung him with a sword,
Bade him go on until the tribes around him
Mingled his name with naming of the Lord.1
2. Having first, then, cast out the beam from the eye of the
nation itself, Gideon was free to deal straightly with evils outside
its own life. This was the second part of his work, and the
preface to this second chapter was a new vision, which marked
a further stage in the progress of his own religious insight. But
Gideon began to be nervous again. Beheld from afar the battle
seems grand and exciting ; but when it is imminent, when the
enemy is right in view, and the raw, undisciplined material needs
to be ordered and arrayed, the stoutest heart will quail, the
boldest and strongest faith will have its shrinkings and fears. Is
it to be wondered at that, with the thousands of Israel's chivalry
waiting for his word, ready to fight but for the most part men
" who before knew nothing thereof," Gideon, also an untried soldier
and ignorant of methods of warfare, invested suddenly with a
tremendous responsibility, should pause, should retire from the
noise and glare of the host, and pour out his heart before the God
whose call he had obeyed ? He had yet to arm his own inward
faith for victory. He would venture to ask God for proofs of His
helpfulness. Gideon asked God once more to confirm his call
by a simple sign. He put a fleece on the middle of an open
threshing-floor, and in the morning it was quite wet, while the
soil all around was dry. The next night the miracle was
reversed, the soil being wet all round and the fleece perfectly dry.
Then Gideon at last is at the disposal of God.
Gideon's action here again arose, not from cowardice, but from
his innate aversion to taking risks. It shows an absolute distrust
of his own personality, an abandoning of all confidence in any
thing within himself. He was a thoughtful man, who had diffi
culties other men had not. But now, having again been granted
1 F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.

468 GIDEON
a sign, his mind was made up. He believed he had been called
of God to fight his country's battles. We never again read of
a sign asked. He knows whom he is trusting. Henceforth he is —
One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break;
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would
triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

II.
Gideon's Campaign.
i. The Battle of Jezreel.
The career of Gideon is more than a battle ; it is a campaign
of war, which divides itself into three parts.
1. Tbe first is the battle of Jezreel. The Midianite encamp
ment was on the northern side of the valley, between Gilboa and
Little Hermon. Gideon and his 32,000 Israelites encamped on
the slope of Mount Gilboa, by the spring of Jezreel, called, from
the incident of this time, " the Spring of Trembbng." Thirty-two
thousand men seems scarcely sufficient to put into the field to
risk the chances of battle with a successful, arrogant, and over
whelming enemy. Yet what is the first message that reaches him
from God, as he lies encamped before the Midianites? "The
people that are with thee are too many." God saw how much
untrustworthy material existed in this army. He thought that
with such an army the Israelites might pride themselves on their
own strength and claim as their own the victory which He had
promised. 2. Two devices were used to weed it of its elements of weak
ness, to reject from it all whom God counted unfit to fight His
battles. (1) The first was the usual and wise proclamation, issued as
soon as they came in sight of the enemy, that whosoever was
faint-hearted should leave the ranks and quit tbe field, that their
fear might not create a panic as soon as the battle began. No

GIDEON 469
fewer than two-thirds of the whole army took advantage of this
proclamation. Twenty-two thousand melted away, over hill and
valley, to their homes and their business ; and only ten thousand
remained who had " a heart for any fate."
"There remained ten thousand!" The leader's heart may
well have misgiven him as he looked upon these ten thousand men,
and then turned his eyes northward to the hill of Moreh, and to
the intervening valley, swarming with the vast hosts of the enemy.
But his faith is to be still further tried. There must be a further
weeding out from these sorely-diminished ranks, for " the people
are yet too many." The ten thousand who remained were all
brave men. But more than courage was required in a battle such
as Gideon had to fight.
(2) The victory was to be a victory of faith. The battle was
to be won against overwhelming numbers. The Lord needed men
who would be firm as a bow of steel in His hand. He needed
men in whom spirit should be dominant, who could hold the flesh
in habitual and iron control. So He supplied the second device
for further reducing the numbers, and the test of their fitness was
very curious. Gideon brought the people down to the stream of
water, and the Lord said to him, " Every one that lappeth of the
water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by
himself ; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to
drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand
to their mouth, was three hundred men : but all the rest of the
people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And the
Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will
I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand."
Tf Due South across the bead of the Vale is the rugged end of
Gilboa — Jezreel standing off it — and on this Gideon, like Saul,
drew up his men. The only wells are three, all lying in the Vale :
one by Jezreel itself, one out upon the plain, and one close under
the steep banks of Gilboa. The deep bed and soft banks of this
stream constitute a formidable ditch in front of the position on
Gilboa, and render it possible for the defenders of tbe latter to
hold the spring at their feet in face of an enemy on the plain :
and the spring is indispensable to them, for neither to the left,
right, nor rear is there any other living water. Anybody who
has looked across the scene can appreciate the suitability of the
test which Gideon imposed on his men. The stream, which

47o GIDEON
makes it possible for the occupiers of the hill to hold also the
well against an enemy on the plain, forbids them to be careless
in their use of the water ; for they drink in face of that enemy,
and the reeds and shrubs which mark its course afford ample
cover for hostile ambushes. Those Israelites, therefore, who
bowed themselves down on their knees, drinking headlong, did
not appreciate their position or the foe; whereas those who
merely crouched, lapping up the water with one hand, while they
held their weapons in the other and kept their face to the enemy,
were aware of their danger, and had hearts ready against all
surprise. The test in fact was a test of attitude, wbich, after all,
both in physical and moral warfare, has proved of greater value
than strength or skill — attitude towards tbe foe and appreciation
of his presence.1
Tf I never understood these two verses till I went to Aneityum.
In this country we never lap water like a dog; and when we
put our hand to our mouth, we make a cup of the palm of our
hand, and drink as if it were out of a small cup, in no way re
sembling the lapping of a dog ; but these men lapped not with
their tongue like a dog, but putting their hand to their mouth.
However, shortly after I went to Aneityum I saw what appeared
to me to give a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. I was standing
one day by the side of a stream where it was crossed by a path ; a
native came hurrying along, but he stopped to drink ; he did not,
however, bow down upon his knees as most people do among us,
who wish to drink heartily, nor did he lift the water to his mouth
with his hand formed cup-like as we do ; but he stooped till his
head was within eighteen inches or so of the water; then he
began to throw up the water into his mouth with his hand as
fast as a dog could lap ; and he looked, as near as might be, like
a dog lapping. I said at once to myself, That is the way Gideon's
soldiers lapped. I had an opportunity scores of times afterwards
of seeing the natives drink in the same way ; and I observed that,
as a general rule, it was the strong, the vigorous, and the energetic
who drank water in this way ; never the feeble, the lazy, or the
easy-going ; and the inference that I drew respecting God's inten
tions towards Gideon and his army was this : the Lord wished
to select the very best men in that army, and with them to ac
complish the deliverance of Israel.2
3. So Gideon was left with the three hundred men who waited
for the night. But he needed heartening before he would be
1 G. A. Smith, The Historical Geography ofthe Holy Land, 397.
2 J. Inglis, Bible Illustrations from the New Hebrides, 36.

GIDEON 471
ready to do his best. Knowing his distrustful disposition,
Jehovah bade him, if he feared to embark upon so great a venture
without further encouragement, take an attendant and go down
and listen to the conversation of the host. Says Bishop Hall, "He
that hath might enough to deliver Israel, yet hath not might
enough to keepe himselfe from doubting. The strongest faith will
ever have some touch of infidelitie." Gideon and his servant,
under cover of darkness, crept near enough the Midianite .camp
to hear the dream of a cake of barley-bread smiting a tent. In
waking hours, the tent would have remained intact, and the cake
would have been shivered ; but the dream transformed the result.
There are probable omissions in the narrative, which would have
accounted for this nervous tension on the part of so great an
invading host; for evidently the name of Gideon bad already
awakened their fear. "This is nothing else save the sword of
Gideon," said the affrighted interpreter. And the dream took its
place beside the fleece of wool in the education of the deliverer.
Assured therefore of success he immediately returned, and
prepared for the engagement. His three hundred men he divided
into three companies, and put a trumpet in every man's hand,
with empty pitchers, and lamps within the pitchers. So he
marched, in the midst of the night, to the outside of the camp.
The midnight watch had just been changed when Gideon's
trumpet shrilled, with three hundred others, on the silent air;
and the flash of his lamp, to the noise of the shattered pitchers,
with three hundred others, gleamed across the waking camp;
mad confusion took hold of captain and common soldier;
Midianite and Amalekite, perhaps not too trustful of each other
in clear daylight, now followed stark suspicion; and the valley
of dreamy silence became the threshing-floor of shrieking Death.
Every one drew his sword against every other, and the host fled
headlong down the descent to the Jordan.
Tf The motto of these disappearing men was this : " It can't be
done." They must have organized themselves into a society to
perpetuate their own idea. If so the society has shown great
vitality. Many of its members abide with us until this day. No,
probably they did not organize. They did not have enough
gumption to. And such a sentiment grows like a weed without
any cultivation. I recall a certain town in Ohio where I had gone

472 GIDEON
to talk about an enlargement and revitalizing of the Young Men's
Christian Association. Thousands of young men in the place
needed just such help as that organization is supposed to provide.
I outlined the plan to a clergyman. He said it was a good plan,
there was great need the thing should be done ; " but," he said,
with an air of settling the thing, " it can't be done in this town."
Among others I talked with a business man. He listened
attentively, approved the plans, agreed upon the great need, and
then, settling back in his chair with the same air of finality, used
exactly the same words, with the same emphasis, "It can't be
done in this town." I got the same reply from several men that
day. And I said to myself, " They are right ; it can't be done
with them, but it can be done without them." And it was.1
Who ordered Gideon forth
To storm the invader's camp,
With arms of little worth,
A pitcher and a lamp ?
The trumpets made his coming known,
And all the host was overthrown.
Oh ! I have seen the day
When with a single word,
God helping me to say,
"My trust is in the Lord,"
My soul hath quelled a thousand foes,
Fearless of all that could oppose.
But unbelief, self-will,
Self-righteousness and pride,
How often do they steal
My weapon from my side !
Yet David's lord and Gideon's friend
Will help His servant to the end.
ii. The Ephraimites.
1. But Gideon's work is but half done. The Midianites are
only scattered; they must be exterminated. Their aim was to
cross the river at the fords of Beth-barah. It was immediately
under the mountains of Ephraim, and to the Ephraimites accord
ingly messengers were sent to interrupt the passage. The great
tribe, roused at last, was not slow to move. By the time that
1 S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 244,

GIDEON 473
they reached the river, the two greater chiefs had already crossed,
and the encounter took place with the two lesser chiefs, Oreb
and Zeeb, who were both captured and slain.
2. In the pride of their success, the Ephraimites quarrelled
with Gideon for not having called in their assistance earlier. But
Gideon appeased their jealousy by a shrewd speech : " Is not the
gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of
Abiezer ? " Their remonstrance at not having before been called
to take part in the struggle is as characteristic of the growing
pride of Ephraim as his answer is of that calm forbearance which
places him at the summit of the heroes of this age. The gleaning
of Ephraim in tbe bloody heads of those chieftains, he told them,
was better than tbe full vintage of slaughter in the unknown
multitudes by the little family of Abiezer. There was sufficient
justice in this remark to appease the anger of Ephraim. Gideon's
three hundred men could not have done much towards the slaughter
of the Midianites, though he could claim the credit of having dis
persed them. The opportune seizing of tbe fords by Ephraim had
been tbe means of securing the persons of two of the leaders of
the Midianitish hordes.
Tf You may almost be sure that a man is wise if you find that
he has a cool spirit. When you see a person who cautiously
avoids the ground where strife is apt to be excited, and builds his
house on a spot where contention is impossible, you instinctively
respect him, for you know it betokens wisdom ; but when you see
a man always getting involved in quarrels, always showing his
teeth, you rightly conclude that he is a fool. "A fool uttereth all
his anger : but a wise man keepeth it back and stilleth it." If
we are naturally irritable or splenetic, wisdom will incline us to
avoid occasions which excite us, and to keep a watchful guard
over our spirits where the occasions are inevitable. If we neglect
such precautions we shall justly be counted fools, and the conse
quent outbreaks of passion will lead us into fresh exhibitions of
folly, and more completely justify the harsh judgment which has
been passed upon us.1
Tf "A soft answer turns away wrath; but a trying word
arouses anger." A scholar thus translates the Hebrew. Now,
many words that are not wrathful, not malicious, not exactly
offensive, are nevertheless trying. They are pin-pricks that are
1 B. F. Horton, The Book of Proverbs, 205.

474 GIDEON
difficult to define, but often hard to bear. Such a tongue resembles
one of those trees known as monkey-puzzles, which lacerate who
ever may incautiously come in contact with them. " A wholesome
tongue is a tree of life." Another growth this ! We recently
read of a tree on which dozens of different fruits had been grafted ;
so a restrained, healing, sanctified tongue is a tree of paradise on
which blooms every heavenly grace. Men are ambitious to possess
an eloquent tongue; but a wholesome tongue is far more than
a golden mouth. What a great work lies in this direction, the
hallowing of my lips, the sanctification of my words : that every
utterance may be true, enlightening, kindly, inspiring ! x
iii. The Final Rout.
1. We now come to the third part of Gideon's campaign. The
flight of the enemy has left the three hundred masters of the
field. Will they not now take time to stoop and drink ? No, not
yet. " And Gideon came to Jordan, and passed over, he, and the
three hundred men that were with him, faint, yet pursuing." We
see Gideon, after having sent messengers to Ephraim, himself cross
ing Jordan, and following such as had managed to escape this
way, making for the camp where the Midianite kings Zebah and
Zalmunna were. Against these he was urged by the sacred duty
of blood-revenge, for they had, on some occasion of which we are
not told, killed his brothers at Tabor.
Succoth and Penuel, the two scenes of Jacob's early life, on
the track of his entrance from the East, as of the Midianites'
return towards it, were Gideon's two halting-places. These two
towns, when Gideon passed them with his troops, now spent with
hunger and weariness, refused to give them even a little bread ;
and not only so, but when Gideon reminded them that he was
engaged in no private enterprise, but that he was pursuing the
host of Midian, the townsmen laughed at him, and asked him if
Zebah and Zalmunna were already in his hands, that they should
reward him with bread for his army. Gideon vowed that when
he returned from the pursuit he would teach the men of Succoth,
and slay the men of Penuel, and he kept his vow.
At Karkor, far in the desert, beyond the usual range of the
nomadic tribes, he fell upon the Arabian host. The Midianites
were entirely defeated, and their two leaders, Zebah and Zalmunna,
1 W. L. Watkinson.

GIDEON 475
taken. The two kings of Midian, in all the state of royal Arabs,
were brought before the conqueror on their richly caparisoned
dromedaries. They replied with all the spirit of Arab chiefs to
Gideon, who for a moment almost gives way to his gentler feelings
at the sight of such fallen grandeur. But the remembrance of
his brothers' blood on Mount Tabor steels his heart ; and when
his boy, Jether, shrinks from the task of slaughter, he takes their
fives with his own hand, and gathers up the vast spoils.
Tf These two marauding chiefs of the Midianites, " Oreb and
Zeeb," come before us in the history of the Judge Gideon. They
were truly dwellers in the wilds, and came up with their numerous
bands to prey upon the harvests and stores of the defenceless
Israelite. Such forays have been often made in modern times by
the wild tribes of North American Indians, but the natives of the
extreme North are at present inoffensive. It may be worth while to
notice how well the names of the Midian chiefs would befit a
modern Indian brave. Translated, they are " the Eaven " and
" the Wolf." The reference is to the feasts provided for birds and
beasts of prey by these plundering chieftains, who almost exhibited
the same spirit as those greedy animals. Many a modern Indian
has a similar appellation. " The Crow " or " the Fox," and other
such names, borrowed from animals, are frequent among present
Indian chiefs. Zebah and Zalmunna, the kings or leaders of
Midian, had similarly significant names. These may be rendered
" Slaughter " and " Wandering Shade." So a recent Indian chief
in the Saskatchewan plain was called "Wandering Spirit," an
idea very similar to that of Zalmunna, both implying the con
signment to the shades of death of the victims of their fury. It
may be noted also that it is now generally the custom to translate
into English the native Indian names, both for the preservation
of their significance and for avoiding the uncouth syllables of a
barbarous tongue. It might be well if the Hebrew names, which
are all significant and appropriate to the occasion of tbeir occur
rence, were also translated for a like reason.1
2. We read that afterwards the land had rest for forty years ;
and it is most instructive to note that the Midianites, as enemies,
are never mentioned again in Scripture. It was the unfaltering
persistence of Gideon and his men that secured permanent peace.
Tf Peace may be sought in two ways. One way is as Gideon
sought it, when he built his altar in Ophrah, naming it, " God send
1 An Apostle of the North : Memoirs of Bishop W. C. Bompas, 355.

476 GIDEON
peace," yet sought this peace that he loved, as he was ordered to
seek it, and the peace was sent, in God's way : — " the country was
in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon." And the other
way of seeking peace is as Menahem sought it, when he gave the
King of Assyria a thousand talents of silver, that "bis hand
might be with him." That is, you may either win your peace, or
buy it: — win it, by resistance to evil; — buy it, by compromise
with evil.1

III.
Lattek Days.
1. Triumphant, and bearing splendid trophies of his triumph,
Gideon recrossed the Jordan. Whether he was the object of a
great popular enthusiasm, and in what manner any such enthusiasm
was expressed, we are not informed. But one thing is mentioned,
and in it we see the reflection of the national sentiment. He was
asked to accept the position of ruler. The word " king " is not
used ; but the reality signified by the word is formally and
solemnly offered. And not for himself only, but for his family
also. For the first time in Israel's history the idea of a hereditary
dynastic government is articulated. These men were so dazzled
by the splendour of human achievements that they ignored the
Divine influence which was the source of them. Gideon's campaign
was especiaUy designed to avoid the danger of the people attribut
ing to men what was really the work of God. Yet they regarded
Gideon as the sole hero, and forgot to glorify God.
2. To his great honour, the patriotic virtue of Gideon was not
moved by this great temptation. He was mindful of what they
had forgotten ; and to the invitation, " Eule thou over us, both
thou, and thy son, and thy son's son also," his prompt answer, in
the true spirit of the theocracy, was, " I will not rule over you,
neither shall my son rule over you : the Lord shall rule over you."
Considering that the love of power is one of the strongest passions
in man, and that Gideon was the father of a large family of
promising sons, whose advancement might seem a reasonable
object of paternal solicitude, this refusal, solely on principle, to
1 Ruskin, Two Paths, § 195 ( Works, xvi. 410).

GIDEON 477
become the first monarch of the Hebrew state deserves to be
ranked with the most illustrious examples of patriotic self-denial
that history has recorded. Gideon's conduct here displays not
only disinterestedness but faith of a high order. That his faith
was not perfect is only another way of saying that he, like every
one else, was not free from the weaknesses incident to humanity.
Tf If you demand disinterestedness in the sense of gratifying
no principle of one's nature, your quest is hopeless ; it can't be
found. A missionary is disinterested, though he is gratifying
love. So was an Italian, who led a man into mortal sin, and then
stabbed him, that he might straightway go to eternal damnation.
Disinterested ! he sacrificed himself for hate. The truth is, that
disinterestedness, as it is called, is in itself neither good nor bad.
Its quality depends on its motive, and on whether it terminates
or not on self. The devil is as disinterested as Gabriel ; but the
one is prompted by hate, and the other by love to God.1
3. Gideon declined the kingship, but he did not retire to his
farm like the Eoman Cincinnatus. He did not continue to judge
Israel under a palm tree, like Deborah. On the contrary, there
are tokens, in the brief notice of his latter days, of a state and
importance bordering on the regal, and tokens, it must be added,
of a tendency to overstep the bounds of rule in the fear of God,
and of that moral deterioration which too often follows great
prosperity. The rich spoils of war became his ; he made an ephod
of the golden ornaments — "which thing became a snare unto
Gideon, and to his house."
4. Gideon's devotion to God appears to have been sincere and
earnest. He desired to offer Him the choicest of the spoil. But,
like many other good men, he appears to have been unable to
worship Him except in a visible form, with the usual, in fact the
universal, result — the gradual but certain deterioration of the
moral and spiritual instincts of those who so worship Him. The
making of the ephod was a pious work. Let us believe that
it was the interpretation of a genuinely pious feeling. The
connexion of the statement of the desire for the ear-rings with the
refusal of the hereditary rule on the ground that Jehovah was the
only Euler over Israel, suggests that, in this desire, Gideon had
1 A. A. Hodge, in Princetoniana, 207.

478 GIDEON
regard to Jehovah's glory. He may have thought that, by
devoting the spoil to a religious purpose, he was teaching the
people that their homage was due to the Unseen King, that by
Him tbe victory had been gained, and to Him its fruits should be
dedicated. But, whatever may have been Gideon's motives, the result of
his action was deplorable. He made Israel to sin. Sin was the
cause of all the evil that Gideon in his bravery had all his life
been battling with ; but, instead of going himself, and taking all
his Ironsides and all his people up with him to God's house
against sin, Gideon set up a sham house of God of his own, and a
sham service of God of his own, with the result to himself and to
Israel which the sacred writer puts in such plain words. Think
of Gideon, of all men in Israel, leading all Israel a-whoring away
from God !
Tf Though an idol is " nothing in the world " (1 Cor. viu. 4),
there is nothing in the world more real than idolatry. Putting
something else in God's place, making a God of something else
than God — that is a very real transaction.1
5. It is evident that in Gideon we have reached the cbmax of
the period. We feel " all the goodness " of Gideon. There is a
sweetness and nobleness blended with his courage, such as lifts us
into a higher region ; something of the past greatness of Joshua,
something of the future grace of David. But he was, as we should
say, before his age. He remains as a character apart, faintly
understood by others, imperfectly fulfilling his own ideas, stagger
ing under a burden to which he was not equal. There was much
primitive grossness in his conception of religion, of war, and of
government. Nevertheless the central, sovereign, animating
power in the man's soul was an absolute conviction that, whatever
came, he would do the will of the one true righteous God of heaven
and of earth. That made his career glorious ; for in so doing he
was faithful to the highest light he had access to.
Be faithful unto death. Christ proffers thee
Crown of a life that draws immortal breath:
To thee He saith, yea, and He saith to me,
" Be faithful unto death."
1 B. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 64.

GIDEON 479
To every living soul that same He saith,
" Be faithful " : — whatsoever else we be,
Let us be faithful, challenging His faith.
Tho' trouble storm around us like the sea,
Tho' hell surge up to scare us and to scathe,
Tho' heaven and earth betake themselves to flee,
"Be faithful unto death."1
Christina G. Bossetti, Verses, 115.

JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER.

MOSES-SAMSON — ^1

Literature.
Beecher, H. W., Bible Studies (1893), 383.
Bell, C. D., Tlie Roll-Call of Faith (1886), 293.
Burrell, D. J., The Golden Passional, 286.
Dawson, W. J., The Reproach of Christ (1903), 152.
Dods, M., Israel's Iron Age (1875), 89.
Farningham, M., Women and their Work (1906), 51.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., Biblical History of the Hebrews (1903), 106.
Gollancz, H., Sermons and Addresses (1909), 150.
Halsey, J., The Spirit of Truth (1895), 200.
Hessey, J. A., Moral Difficulties connected with the Bible, i. (1872) 51.
Lang, J. M., Gideon and the Judges (1890), 46.
Leach, C, Old yet ever New (1893), 31.
Mackay, W. M., Bible Types of Modern Women (1912), 154.
Parker, J., Studies in Texts, iii. (1899) 37.
Peake, A. S., The Heroes and Martyrs of Faith (1910), 152.
Simeon, J., The Women of the Old Testament : Eve to Buth (1905), 213.
Spurgeon, C. H., Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxiii. (1877), No. 1341.
Stanley, A. P., Scripture Portraits (1867), 46.
Watson, B. A., Judges and Ruth (Expositor's Bible) (1889), 224.
Wharton, M. B., Famous Men of the Old Testament (1903), 131.
Whitham, A. B., Old Testament History (1912), 183.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters : Gideon to Absalom (1898), 21.
Children's Pulpit : Boys and Girls of the Old Testament, xvi. 141
(S. Gregory).
Christian World Pulpit, lxvi. (1904) 164 (S. Horton); lxxvL (1909) 119
(W. M. Mackay).
Dictionary ofthe Bible, ii. (1899) 567 (G. A. Cooke).

482

JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER.
Jephthah . . . waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens.—
Heb. xi. 32, 34.
The story of Jephthah belongs to a semi-barbaric period of
history, when spiritual ideas were greatly confused. In the times
before the prophets rose in Israel, bringing with them a magnifi
cent system of theocratic government, we are specifically told
that there was no open vision in the land, and that each man did
what was right in his own eyes. There was no firm highway of
general sanction ; men toiled along a narrow uncharted path, and
won every onward step with difficulty. Jephthah lived in such a
time. His ideas of God and of religious truth were no doubt
barbaric. The merest child in the Kingdom of God who has
heard the voice that spake in Galilee, knew more than he. Yet
it will be seen that Jephthah did know some truths of duty and
religion which are among the very noblest, and may be counted
cardinal. There is more than a historic value in his story ;
there is a moral value. The main interest of the story clearly
lies, not in his personal history or defeat of the Ammonites, but
in his vow and its fulfilment, and in the origin of an Israelite
custom. A tragic interest gathers about the rough and ruthless
warrior but tender-hearted father, who purchased victory at a
price more terrible than he anticipated. I.
Jephthah.
Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head
and chief over them.— Judg. xi. 11.
1. Jephthah had an infamous origin. He was the son of one
who is spoken of as Gilead, and whom we may suppose to have
483

484 JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER
been the prince or leading man of the country, and therefore
by name identified with it. His mother was a " stranger," or
" another woman," an Aramaean harlot ; and this child of shame
was cast out by those born in wedlock. His irregular birth
in the half-civilized tribes beyond the Jordan is the key-note
to his life.
2. Driven from home, he betook himself to a wild, marauding
life on the borders of the tribe, where he became a sort of robber
chieftain, the head of a band of freebooters, " levying imposts on
weak Ammonites, plundering caravans, and surprising villages, as
did the Arabs of those and later days," and the Scottish Border
chiefs three centuries ago. By this sort of border-chieftain bfe
Jephthah became expert in the tactics of warfare, and in the art
of leading and governing men. He was prompt in an emergency,
bold in generalship, astute in policy. He was a born organizer,
and out of tbe broken men, the thieves and outlaws that gathered
to his standard, he made such an army of soldiers that one at
once thinks of Cromwell and his irresistible Ironsides.
Tf " Your troops," Cromwell said to Hampden, " are most of
them decayed old serving men, and tapsters, and such kind of
fellows ; do you think that such base and mean fellows will ever
be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour and courage
and resolution in them ? " And so, knowing that the quality of
the unit was the quality of the aggregate, Cromwell insisted that
every man should submit to discipline, and be sober, and bve in
the fear of God ; for he that feareth God need know no other fear.
And it was with great pride that he wrote, " My troops increase.
I have a lovely company. You would respect them did you know
them."1 3. Meanwhile the great crisis of Jephthah's life had come.
The Israelites were in sore straits from the children of Ammon.
There was a great national emergency which needed an intrepid
hero, and the thoughts of men turned instinctively to Jephthah.
The elders of Gilead begged him to be their leader; and, after
expressing surprise that such a request should be made to him,
Jephthah agreed, on condition that he should become their
chief when the Ammonites were defeated. A solemn compact was
1 Samuel Horton,

JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER 485
accordingly made, and Jephthah was appointed leader by popular
acclamation. He knew himself equal to the task ; but, once
committed, he was filled with a profoundly religious sense of the
importance and responsibility of the enterprise, and of his depen
dence for its successful achievement upon the favour and assistance
of Heaven. In no spirit of vain confidence or self-reliance, but
with a deep conviction of his personal insufficiency, apart from
Divine help and guidance — in the spirit of one alert to the call of
duty, and strong in the heroism of faith — did he undertake the
campaign. This is the moment when, in the eyes of the writer of
the Epistle to the Hebrews, he loomed so grandly as to be worthy
of a place in the sacred roll of fame. Jephthah was at first called
by the people to his office and work ; but God ratified the choice
by giving to him His Spirit in an extraordinary manner.
It was for this earnestness in his ascertained mission, it was
because in execution of it " he waxed mighty in war, turned to
flight armies of aliens," that God accepted Jephthah. His rash and
unhallowed vow, the no less rash and unhallowed performance of
it which issued in the death of his daughter, his haughty and
remorseless temper, were doubtless offensive in God's sight. But
for these he found pardon, because, like St. Paul, he sinned in
ignorance. In the chief trial of his life he found acceptance,
because he displayed faithful obedience.
Tf Of all the men who fought against the Union, General
Jackson possessed the most extraordinary characteristics. With
him the cause of the South was a religion. Every act of his life
was undertaken with prayer ; he was a Confederate Puritan.
Had the cause of the Confederacy been just and right, it might
have had a dozen Stonewall Jacksons.
And the result ? The world remembers that so long as Jack
son lived the Confederacy seemed invincible. " Who may pretend
to explain the incongruity of man ? " remarks the historian Ehodes,
in his final comment on General Jackson. " Both the conscien
tious Jackson and Barere, the man without a conscience, believed
in waging war like barbarians. During the wars of the Eevolution
the Frenchman proposed to the Convention that no English or
Hanoverian prisoners be taken. 'I always thought,' declared
Jackson, that ' we ought to meet the Federal invaders on the
outer verge of just right and defence, and raise at once the black
flag, viz., " No quarter to the violators of our homes and firesides."
It would, in tbe end, have proved true humanity and mercy.

486 JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER
The Bible is full of such wars, and it is the only policy that would
bring the North to its senses.' " x
4. At this moment, it would seem, when Jephthah was at
Mizpah of Gilead, he went to the holy place or altar, and there,
" before Jehovah," registered a vow to sacrifice whomsoever should
be the first to meet him when he returned victorious. That he
had a human victim in his mind is clear from the language which
he used. We must consider the vow separately and carefully,
but let us continue the history at present.
In his dealing with the Ammonites Jephthah appears as
a man of courage and dash, and an eager champion of Jehovah,
whom he regarded apparently as only the national God of Israel,
as Chemosh was the divinity of his enemies. He attempted
expostulation with the Ammonites before taking up the sword.
The latter asserted that the Israelites, when they came up from
Egypt, had taken away their land from Arnon to Jabbok. Jephthah
reminded them (1) that neither Moab nor Ammon had allowed
Israel even to pass their borders when they were marching on
Palestine ; (2) that the territory in question had been taken, not
from Ammon, but from Sihon, king of the Amorites ; (3) that no
complaint had been raised for three hundred years against the
Israelite occupation. Tbe conclusion was that Ammon ought to
be content with what Chemosh their god had given them, and if
they were not, then " Jehovah be judge this day."
The Ammonites remained obdurate to these historical
arguments, and Jephthah boldly led his army southwards to
attack them on their own ground. No details of that bloody war
are given; we are told merely that he smote the enemy from
Aroer, close to Jordan, to Minnith, sacking twenty cities, and
sweeping the region as far as a place which cannot now be identi
fied, but was then called Abel-Cheramim — the meadow of the
vineyards — "with a very great slaughter." The triumph was
complete; "the children of Ammon were subdued before the
children of Israel."
5. Jephthah returned in triumph to his home at Mizpah.
The first person who came to meet him was his only daughter,
1 F. N. Thorpe, The History of North America, 312.

JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER 487
accompanied by a chorus of women. The overwhelming grief of
the father, the noble self-surrender of the daughter, and her
courageous resignation to her fate, are told with admirable skill
and reserve. "He did to her what he had vowed to do." It
became henceforth a custom in Israel to celebrate the tragedy of
Jephthah's daughter by four days' mourning every year.
Tf In all poetry — all at least that I have seen — nothing comes
up to that. " She was his only child ; beside her he had neither
son nor daughter." The inspired writer leaves the fact just as it
stands, and is content. Inspiration itself can do nothing to make
it more touching than it is in its own bare nakedness. There is
no thought in Jephthah of recantation, nor in the maiden of
revolt, but nevertheless he has his own sorrow. He is brought
very low. God does not rebuke him for his grief. He knows
well enough the nature which He took upon Himself. He does
not anywhere, therefore, forbid that we should even break our
hearts over those we love and lose. ... He elected Jephthah to
the agony he endured while she was away on the hills ! That is
God's election, an election to the cross and to the cry, " Eli, Eli,
lama Sabachthani." " Yes," you will say, " but He elected him to
the victory over Ammon." Doubtless He did; but what cared
Jephthah for his victory over Ammon when she came to meet
him, or indeed for the rest of his life ? What is a victory, what are
triumphal arches and the praise of all creation, to a lonely man ? x
Since our country, our God, — oh, my sire!
Demand that thy daughter expire;
Since thy triumph was bought by thy vow —
Strike the bosom that's bared for thee now !
And the voice of my mourning is o'er,
And the mountains behold me no more;
If the hand that I love lay me low!
There cannot be pain in the blow!
And of this, oh, my father! be sure —
That the blood of thy child is as pure
As the blessing I beg ere it flow,
And the last thought that soothes me below.
Though the virgins of Salem lament,
Be the judge and the hero unbent!
I have won the great battle for thee,
And my father and country are free !
1 Mark Eutherford, The Revolution in Tanner's Lane.

488 JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER
When this blood of thy giving hath gush'd,
When the voice that thou lovest is hush'd,
Let my memory still be thy pride,
And forget not I smiled as I died ! 1

II.
Jephthah's Daughter.
And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto
her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed.—
Judg. xi. 39.
As is frequently the case, the chief interest and instructive-
ness of Jephthah's career gather round that event in his life which
to himself and his contemporaries might seem to mar its symmetry
and destroy its usefulness. It is the great blunder of his life, his
unfortunate vow, that unceasingly draws back men's attention
to him. He knew enough of war to understand that this under
taking he had entered into against the Ammonites would either
make or mar him. It was the golden opportunity that comes
once in a man's life. Through all his nature he was moved in
prospect of the approaching battle. It made him thoughtful,
concentrated, grave. He felt more than usually thrown back
upon God's help ; he wished to feel sure of God, and so, according
to his light, vowed a vow.
Tf Was it right of Jephthah to make a vow ? We know he
was wrong in the terms of it, but was he wrong in making any
vow in the circumstances ? It is open to any one to say that he
had a merely heathen idea of God, as a Being to be bribed, to be
secured by gifts and promises. It was very common with heathen
generals to record such a vow before engaging ; and it is common
still to see men who wish to acknowledge God in some way, but
do not know how to do it. They wish to be religious, think it a
good and right thing, but neither knowing nor loving God, they
are pitiably awkward in their demonstrations of religious feeling.
But as we have no distinct evidence regarding Jephthah's state of
mind in making this vow, it is the part of charity to believe that
though he was incomprehensibly rash in the terms of his vow, yet
he was justified in vowing to make some offering to God should
He deliver tbe Ammonites into his hand.2
1 Byron, Hebrew Melodies. 2 Marcus Dods.

JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER 489
1. Jephthah vowed that if victory attended his campaign he
would sacrifice to God the first of his household that should meet
him. And it was his own beautiful daughter who met him, and
then his vow hung heavily on his soul, and robbed him of all the
joy of conquest. But, right or wrong, Jephthah was a man of his
word. And while we shudder at the awful sacrifice, we cannot
but admire the grim determination of this half-wild, barbaric chief
tain, as he holds to the terms of his terrible vow, and at the
expense of rendering himself childless, proceeds to fulfil it.
Tf Jephthah, although the Spirit had come upon him, made a
foolish and superstitious vow, that after he gained the victory he
would sacrifice his own daughter. If there had been a godly and
reasonable man present, he could have made him sensible of the
folly of this vow, and have said, " Jephthah, thou shalt not slay
thy daughter on account of thy foolish vow ; for the law concerning
vows must be interpreted according to justice and fitness, not
according to the letter." 1
Tf In 1869 a farmer who lived near Eye, in Suffolk, after
reaping five acres of wheat, stacked it, and vowed that it should
not be threshed as long as wheat was under forty shillings a
coomb — a coomb being four bushels. And for thirty-four years
he kept his word, preferring to break God's law rather than his
own rash vow. For thirty-four years those stacks of grain stood
up, unused, refusing to make obeisance, an affront to God, who
gave them for man's food, and a proclamation to every passer-by
of their owner's pride and obstinacy.
That farmer died six weeks ago, and one or two days afterwards
his executors sold what little was left of the wheat amongst the
bundles of decayed straw, for twenty shillings the coomb. Some of
the man's acquaintance made two wreaths— corruptible crowns
indeed ! — out of the remnant that was saved, and laid them on his
grave. Doubtless, like the* man himself, they said, " He died
game ! " but God said unto him, " Thou fool ! " 2
Take ye no vow in jest; but still be strong
To keep your vow; yet be ye not perverse —
As Jephthah once, blindly to execute a rash resolve.
Better a man should say, I have done wrong,
Than keeping an ill vow, he should do worse.3
1 Luther, Table- Talk (ed. by Forstemann), i. 293.
'* The Morning Watch, 1903, p. 53.
8 Dante, Paradiso, v. 64 (trans, by Paget Toynbee).

490 JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER
2. The fatal vow at the battle of Aroer belongs naturally to
the spasmodic efforts of the age ; like the vows of Samson or Saul
in the Jewish Church of this period, or of Clovis or Bruno in the
Middle Ages. But its literal execution could hardly have taken
place had it been undertaken by any one more under moral
restraints, even of that lawless age, than the freebooter Jephthah,
or in any other part of the Holy Land than that separated by
the Jordan valley from the more regular institutions of the
country. Moab and Ammon, the neighbouring tribes to
Jephthah's native country, were the parts of Palestine where
human sacrifice lingered longest. It was the first thought of
Balak in the extremity of his terror (Mic. vi. 7) ; it was the last
expedient of Balak's successor in the war with Jehoshaphat
(2 Kings iii. 27). Melech, to whom even before they entered
Palestine the Israelites had offered human sacrifices (Ezek. xx.
26), and who is always spoken of as the deity thus honoured,
was especially the God of Ammon. It is but natural that a
desperate soldier bke Jephthah, breathing the same atmosphere,
physical and social, should make the same vow, and, having made
it, adhere to it. There was no high priest or prophet at hand to
rebuke him. They were far away in the hostile tribe of Ephraim. He
did what was right in his own eyes, and as such the transaction is
described. But the narrative itself trembles with the mixed feeling of
tbe action. The description of Jephthah's wild character pre
pares us for some dark catastrophe. Admiration for his heroism
and that of his daughter struggles for mastery in the historian
with indignation at the dreadful deed. He is overwhelmed by
the natural grief of a father. " Oh ! oh ! my daughter, thou hast
crushed me, thou hast crushed me ! " She rises at once to the
grandeur of her situation as the instrument whereby the victory had
been won. If the fatal word had escaped his lips, she was content
to die, " forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of
thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon." It is one of the
points of sacred history where the likeness of classical times
mingles with the Hebrew devotion. It recalls to us the story of
Idomeneus and his son, of Agamemnon and Iphigenia. And still
more closely do we draw near, as our attention is fixed on the
Jewish maiden, to a yet more pathetic scene. Her grief is the exact

JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER 491
anticipation of the lament of Antigone, sharpened by the peculiar
horror of the Hebrew women at a childless death — descending with
no bridal festivity, with no nuptial torches, to the dark chambers of
the grave. Into the mountains of Gilead she retires for two months
—plunging deeper and deeper into the gorges of the mountains, to
bewail her lot, with the maidens who had come out with her to
greet the returning conqueror. Then comes the awful end, from
which the sacred writer, as it were, averts his eyes. " He did with
her according to his vow." In her the house of Jephthah became
extinct. But for years afterwards, even to the verge of the
monarchy, the dark deed was commemorated. Four days in
every year the maidens of Israel went up into the mountains of
Gilead — and here the Hebrew language lends itself to the
ambiguous feeling of the narrative itself — " to praise," or " to
lament " the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.
Tf The following little story of Carlyle, which we find in a
pamphlet by John Swinton descriptive of a recent brief visit to
Europe, will disclose to many readers of that rugged and vehement
essayist an almost unsuspected trait of gentleness in his character.
It is a very touching picture of Carlyle in his lonely old age
which it presents. Mr. Swinton found the grave of Mrs. Carlyle
in the ruined church at Haddington, and on the stone is cut
Carlyle's tribute to her, in which, after referring to her long years
of helpful companionship, he says that by her death " the light of
his bfe is gone out." Mr. Swinton continues — " And Mr. Carlyle,"
said the sexton, " comes here from London now and then to see
this grave. He is a gaunt, shaggy, weird kind of old man, looking
very old the last time he was here." " He is eighty-six now," said
I. "Ay," he repeated, "eighty-six, and comes here to this grave
all the way from London." And I told him that Carlyle was a
great man, the greatest man of the age in books, and that his
name was known all over the world ; but the sexton thought there
were other great men lying near at hand, though I told him their
fame did not reach beyond the graveyard, and brought him back
to talk of Carlyle. " Mr. Carlyle himself," said the gravedigger
softly, " is to be brought here to be buried with his wife. Ay, he
comes here lonesome and alone," continued the gravedigger, " when
he visits his wife's grave. His niece keeps him company to the
gate, but he leaves her there, and she stays there for him. The
last time he was here I got a sight of him, and he bowed down
under his white hairs, and he took his way up by that ruined wall
of the old cathedral, and round there and in here by the gateway,

492 JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER
and he tottered up bere to this spot." Softly spake the grave-
digger, and paused. Softer still, in the broad dialect of the
Lothians, he proceeded — " And he stood here awhile in the grass,
and then he kneeled down and stayed on his knees at the grave ;
then he bent over and I saw him kiss the ground — ay, he kissed
it again and again, and he kept kneeling, and it was a long time
before he rose and tottered out of the cathedral, and wandered
through the graveyard to the gate, where his niece was waiting
for him."1 3. Nothing could reveal to us more significantly than the
story of Jephthah the imperfect notions of the Divine Being
entertained by tbe men of those times. He was a Being who
could be bargained with and bribed ; a Being who could be pro
pitiated by blood, even human blood. It was a more than half-
heathen idea of God that Jephthah possessed. And yet Jephthah,
groping through the maze of a semi-barbaric theology, laid his
hand upon this sure clue of truth : that God demanded sacrifice
from those whom He loved; and the greater God's love, the
greater His demand upon us.
Tf Sceur Therese of Lisieux, in her autobiography, tells of her
strong desire to become a Carmelite at the age of fifteen. Her
father had already parted with two daughters who had the
same vocation, and she dreaded to ask him to make another
sacrifice. "In tbe afternoon when Vespers were over, I found
the opportunity I wanted. My Father was sitting in the garden,
his hands clasped, admiring the wonders of nature. The rays of
the setting sun gilded the tops of the tall trees, and the birds
chanted their evening prayer. His beautiful face wore a heavenly
expression — I could feel that his soul was full of peace. Without
a word, I sat down by his side, my eyes already wet with tears.
He looked at me witb indescribable tenderness, and, pressing me
to his heart, said: 'What is it, little Queen? Tell me every
thing.' Then, in order to hide his own emotion, he rose and
walked slowly up and down, still holding me close to him.
Through my tears I spoke of tbe Carmel and of my great wish to
enter soon. He, too, wept, but did not say a word to turn me
from my vocation; he only told me that I was very young to
make such a grave decision, and as I insisted, and fully explained
my reasons, my noble and generous Father was soon convinced."
Her father took her to the Vicar-General. " As he took us
to the door the Vicar-General remarked that such a thing had
1 Mrs. A. Ireland, Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle, 323.

JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER 493
never been seen — a father as anxious to give his child to God
as the child was to offer herself." x
4. The sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, taking it at its worst,
was not a human sacrifice in the gross sense of the word — not a
slaughter of an unwilling victim, as when the Gaul and the Greek
were buried alive in the Eoman Forum ; it was the willing offering
of a devoted heart, to free, as she supposed, her father and her
country from a terrible obligation. It was indeed, as Josephus
says, an act in itself hateful to God. But, nevertheless, it con
tained just that one redeeming feature of pure obedience and love
which is the distinguishing mark of all true sacrifice, and which
communicates to the whole story the elements of tenderness and
nobleness. Tf The words of the preacher rekindled the fires of love half-
smothered in the heart of Lull. He now made up his mind once
and forever. He sold all his property, which was considerable,
gave the money to the poor, and reserved only a scanty allowance
for his wife and children. Tbis was the vow of his consecration
in his own words : " To Thee, Lord God, do I now offer myself
and my wife and my children and all that I possess ; and since I
approach Thee humbly witb this gift and sacrifice, may it please
Thee to condescend to accept all what I give and offer up for
Thee, that I and my wife and my children may be Thy humble
slaves." It was a covenant of complete surrender, and the
repeated reference to his wife and children shows that Eaymund
Lull's wandering passions had found rest at last. It was a family
covenant, and by this token we know that Lull had forever said
farewell to his former companions and his life of sin.2
Tf In Tennyson's Dream of Fair Women, that splendid
pageant of the illustrious women of history, the most lovely
picture of all is Jephthah's daughter. Upon her breast the poet
still sees the mark of the spear-wound, upon her face the gaze
of tragic sorrow. Yet, when he would commiserate her, she
refuses the proffered pity: she needs no pity.
So stood I, when that flow
Of music left the lips of her that died
To save her father's vow;
1 Sceur Thirise of Lisieux, 79.
2 S. M. Zwemer, Raymund Lull, 42,

494 JEPHTHAH AND HIS DAUGHTER
The daughter of the warrior Gileadite,
A maiden pure ; as when she went along
From Mizpeh's tower'd gate with welcome light,
With timbrel and witb song.
My words leapt forth: "Heaven heads the count of crimes
With that wild oath." She render'd answer high:
"Not so, nor once alone; a thousand times
I would be born and die.
"My God, my land, my father — these did move
Me from my bliss of life, that Nature gave,
Lower 'd softly with a threefold cord of love
Down to a silent grave.
" When the next moon was roll'd into the sky,
Strength came to me that equall'd my desire.
How beautiful a thing it was to die
For God and for my sire !
"It comforts me in this one thought to dwell,
That I subdued me to my father's will ;
Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell,
Sweetens the spirit still.
"Moreover it is written that my race
Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer
On Arnon unto Minneth." Here her face
Glow'd, as I look'd at her.
She lock'd her lips : she left me where I stood :
"Glory to God," she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,
Toward the morning-star.1
1 Tennyson, A Dream of Fair Women.

SAMSON. I.
The Glory of Strength.

Literature.
Ashby, L., To Whom shall we Go ? (1912), 35.
Back, W. J., in A Booh of Lay Sermons (1905), 245.
Beecher, H. W., Bible Studies (1893), 400.
Brooks,- B., The Law of Growth (1902), 253.
Burrell, D. J., God and the People (1899), 74.
„ Wayfarers of the Bible (1907), 107.
Camphell, B. J., Sermons addressed to Individuals (1904), 73.
Dods, M., Israel's Iron Age (1875), 119.
Greenhough, J. G., Half-Hours in God's Older Picture Gallery, 89.
Home, 0. S., The Soul's Awakening (1902), 265.
Jenkinson, A., A Modern Disciple (1892), 135.
Lang, J. M., Gideon and the Judges (1890), 64.
Liddon, H. P., Sermons on Old Testament Subjects (1891), 95.
Llewellyn, D. J., The Forgotten Sheaf, 95.
Maclaren, A., The God of the Amen (1891), 259.
Palmer, A. S., The Samson Saga (1913).
Purves, G. T., The Sinless Christ (1902), 71.
Spurgeon, 0. H., New Park Street Pulpit, iv. (1859), No. 224.
„ „ Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxiii. (1887), No. 1939 ;
lv. (1909), No. 3131.
Stanley, A. P., Scripture Portraits (1867), 53.
Talmage, T. de W., Sermons, v. (1892) 11.
Thomas, J., Myrtle Street Pulpit, iv. (1895) 243.
Tipple, S. A., Sunday Mornings at Norwood (1910), 72.
Townsend, W. J., in Men of the Old Testament : Cain to David (1904),
213.
Whitham, A. B., Old Testament History (1912), 185.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters : Gideon to Absalom (1898), 33.
Williams, I., The Characters of the Old Testament (1870), 149.
Young, D. T., The Unveiled Evangel (1912), 76.
Cambridge Review, vii. (1885) Supplement No. 156 (C. E. Searle).
Christian World Pulpit, xxxiv. (1888) 86 (R. Balgarnie) ; lvii. (1900)
203 (J. Durran) ; lxxvi. (1909) 196 (C. Davis) ; lxxvii. (1910) 180
(J. Moffatt).
Dictionary of the Bible, iv. (1902) 377 (K. Budde).
Keswick Week, 1899, p. 37 (W. H. G. Thomas).
Literary Churchman, xxv. (1879) 586 (J. E. Vernon).

496

The Glory of Strength.
The child shall be a Nazirite unto God from the womb : and he shall
begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. — Judg. xiii. 5.
Samson's tragic story has been treated in three ways.
(1) Some commentators on the Book of Judges have treated
it as an excellent piece of Hebrew folklore. They have collected
out of all the ancient books of the world wonderful tales of giants,
and heroes, and demigods, with their astonishing feats of strength
in war, in love, in jealousy, and in revenge — feats more or less
like the feats of strength and of revenge we have in Samson.
Tf No one with a modicum of the critical faculty can read the
bizarre story of Samson without recognizing that it is unique in
the Bible record. It stands out as a heterogeneous patch — and a
decidedly coarse one — in the sober, prosaic history to which it has
been very imperfectly assimilated. It may come somewhat as a
shock to some readers to be told that the Hebrews, like every other
people, had a childhood which they outgrew, a period in their
early history when they delighted in stories of adventure, abound
ing in exploits of superhuman prowess, from which even a coarse
comic element was not excluded. That some traces of such early
folk-tales should have survived and been preserved in the litera
ture of the Israelites is only what might be expected ; and if
one of them became so closely interwoven in the texture of one of
their books that it could not afterwards be disentangled and dis
carded, this need not surely give offence or pain to any pious
reader who recognizes how fully the human element abounds in
the Sacred History, especially in its earlier chapters.1
Tf Samson's extraordinary strength, which he displays in a
number of feats, led even in olden times to a comparison of him
with Hercules, and recently such comparisons have gone the length
of vain attempts to count up exactly twelve exploits of Samson.
After it came to be recognized or believed that the Hercules
legend is a solar myth, many in our own century proceeded to
take the story of Samson also as a sun-myth, and to interpret it
1 A. Smythe Palmer, The Samson Saga, viii.
MOSES-SAMSON — 3 2

498 SAMSON
so in detail. The derivation of the name tells indeed rather
against than in favour of this view, for it is not the way with a
nature-myth to borrow or even to derive the name of its hero
from the cosmical object which it describes. The derivation from
Beth-shemesh is a much more natural one. But such mythical
explanations are not capable of being refuted in detail, because
the elements with which they operate are so simple that any one
so disposed may find them in any history, and for the most part
in opposite ways.1
(2) Some evangelical preachers, again, have gone to the
opposite extreme, and have displayed Samson to us solely as a
type and pattern of Jesus Christ. They have selected texts out of
Samson's extraordinary history, and they have suspended excellent
New Testament sermons on these adapted texts, hanging great
weights on small wires.
Tf It is easy to allegorize the whole life of Samson — easy, for
example, to find in his falling in love with a selfish and faithless
Philistine woman a type of our Lord's loving the Church, alien as
she was, and unloving and apt to betray Him; in Samson's
slaying the lion that met him on his way to his bride at Timnath,
and finding honey in the carcase when he returned, you may, if
you please, see a picture of Christ fighting His way to His bride
through many dangers, and of His bringing meat and refreshment
out of the most roaring and formidable and ravenous of His foes,
even death itself. In the thirty Philistines vaunting their
solution of Samson's riddle after they had coaxed and threatened
it out of his bride, you may think you see a very apt and
significant and not too sarcastic representation of the men of
science and philosophers of the present day who vaunt their
knowledge of all the mysteries of nature, human and Divine,
while they forget that this their enlightenment is at bottom due
to the discovery Christ has made to His Church of the deepest
problems of existence; that they could never have made these
discoveries any more than the Greeks and Eomans but for the
impulse which Christianity has given to all knowledge, and for
the actual disclosures made by Christ on earth for the sake of His
Church.2 (3) The former is the mythical way of dealing with Samson's
history ; the latter is the mystical way. But there is a third way.
1 K. Budde, in Hastings' Dictionary qf the Bible, iv. 380.
8 Marcus Dods, Israel's Iron Age, 119.

THE GLORY OF STRENGTH 499
And the third way is the way that St. Paul takes, not only with
Samson, but with all the patriarchs and judges and kings and
great men of Old Testament times. We have this Apostle's way
with all those Old Testament men and women set before us again
and again in his own conclusive words : " For whatsoever things
were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we
through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope."
" Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples, and
they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the
world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth
take heed lest he fall." The story of Samson is a parable of the
way in which the noblest opportunities of birth and the largest
endowment of personal power may be prostituted, and how,
accordingly, a life which begins with the fairest prospects may
end in the deepest gloom. The age in which the life of Samson
was bved was one of the darkest and least civilized in the history
of Israel. Lawlessness and confusion were so great that only the
establishment of David's monarchy saved the state from destruc
tion and the religion of Moses from obbvion. In particular, the
moral bfe of the Hebrews had sadly deteriorated. Multitudes
had gone after the gods of the Philistines and those impure
Phoenician deities whose worship was an infamy, whose service
was open sin. The whole nation was corrupted by these associa
tions and, as might be expected, fell a prey to their heathen
neighbours. For forty years the Hebrews were subject to the
Phibstines. Tbe spectacle presented is that of utter weakness —
weakness as a nation, weakness as a religion, weakness as a people,
and as individuals.
The story of Samson's life partakes of the rough and unmoral
character of the times. There is much about him that appeals to
the imagination, especially to the youthful imagination. We
have all wondered at the feats of physical strength stated to have
been performed by him — how he slew the lion ; carried away the
city gates during the night ; slew a thousand of the Philistines
with the jawbone of an ass ; and how, greatest in the moment of
death, he brought the heathen temple in ruins upon himself and
his enemies. But though his physical strength was unparalleled,
he was so deficient in the essential qualities of a leader that he
failed to find any following, and he ended by betraying his trust.

500 SAMSON
Tf There was every expectation that one called of God, as
Samson had been before his birth, and sanctified from the womb,
endowed with just those gifts of faith, courage, and physical
strength out of which heroes are made, would become an effective
instrument for the work of God. And yet he failed, as many
another has failed, partly because he persuaded himself that
restraint in one direction allowed licence in others ; partly because
he trusted to the outward sign of his consecration to carry him
through. He had faith and audacity, great confidence in his gifts,
and a supreme contempt for the enemy; and he supposed that
these might take the place of that restraint of the body which his
strong nature specially needed. So he roamed free in fancy,
imagination, and mind. He allowed the other passions to centre
and gather force.1
Tf In his picture of Samson, that strange Hebrew Hercules,
whose character and life are altogether unlike the other heroes of
sacred story, Watts has depicted a type of man such as the Hebrew
tradition probably commemorates and had as its original Samson
Agonistes. We think of him as light of heart, and full of sportive
mirth, but Watts paints him in his picture in serious thought
ful mood, with a far-away look in his eyes that yet seem to see
nothing, reeling how far short he has come of his great consecra
tion ; how the Spirit's power has been to him a gift endowing him
at times with supernatural strength, but not a sanctifying grace
always abiding in him and transforming his nature. And perhaps
this was a more common mood with him, though he does not give
way to it, than the joyousness which overflowed in mirthful tricks
and plays upon words which is associated with him. His story, if we
rightly consider it, was pathetic and tragic in the highest degree.2
Tf In one of his lesser known poems, Whittier represents the
wife of Manoah as thus describing to her husband a vision she had
had of her baby son's " future dark " : —
Before me, in a vision, rose
The hosts of Israel's scornful foes, —
Eank over rank, helm, shield, and spear,
Glittered in noon's hot atmosphere.
I heard their boast, and bitter word,
Their mockery of the Hebrew's Lord,
I saw their hands his ark assail,
Their feet profane his holy veil.
1 G. H. S. Walpole, Personality and Power, 146.
2 H. Macmillan, The Ufe- Work of G. F. Watts, 160.

THE GLORY OF STRENGTH 501
No angel down the blue space spoke,
No thunder from the still sky broke;
But in their midst, in power and awe,
Like God's waked wrath, ouk child I saw !
A child no more! — harsh-browed and strong,
He towered a giant in the throng,
And down his shoulders, broad and bare,
Swept the black terror of his hair.
He raised his arm; he smote amain;
As round the reaper falls tbe grain,
So the dark host around him fell,
So sank the foes of Israel!
Again I looked. In sunlight shone
The towers and domes of Askelon.
Priest, warrior, slave, a mighty crowd,
Within her idol temple bowed.
Yet one knelt not ; stark, gaunt, and blind,
His arms tbe massive pillars twined, —
An eyeless captive, strong with hate,
He stood there like an evil Fate.
The red shrines smoked, — the trumpets pealed :
He stooped, — the giant columns reeled, —
Eeeled tower and fane, sank arch and wall,
And the thick dust-cloud closed o'er all!

I.
The Nazirite.
1. No man could have had a better start than Samson. The
account of his birth begins by saying that " the children of Israel
had done evil," and the Lord had in consequence " delivered them
into the hand of the Philistines forty years." Well might they
ask, Where is our Joshua, and the victory, and the kingdom, and
the power ? It was then that the angel of the Lord appeared to
the wife of Manoah, promising that to her, though barren, a child
beyond nature should be given of God ; but requiring the strict

502 SAMSON
dedication of herself from that time, and of her son from his
birth, as a Nazirite to God — one set apart and separate by a strict
consecration to Himself.
Tf Where God is steadfastly desired and worshipped; where
the language of tbe heart is " What is His will ? " " What wilt
Thou have me do ? " ; where there is the constant desire to be
like Him — there is consecration. Where consecration is, there
will be the realization of God's presence. We may rely upon it
that where one resolutely sets God before the soul as the object
of desire, adoration, and obedience, there God will become a living
reality. He will reveal Himself without doubt to such, and His
presence will come to surround the soul. And there will be joy.
That is to say, the sure fruit of consecration, like the fruit of the
Spirit, is joy. We do not always regard tbe matter in this bght.
We are disposed to speak of tbe duty of consecration — the duty
of setting apart substance or self to the use and service of God,
and it is a duty, the rightful claim of God upon us. What we
are apt to forget is that duty where it is discharged always comes
to wear the robes of gladness and is apparelled in celestial light.
That is especially true of our duty to God. In keeping His
commandments there is great reward.1
2. The Nazirite vow had of course a deep rehgious meaning :
it meant that the person who adopted it sacrificed himself to the
Lord. The Nazirite shunned all defilement from contact with the
dead — even when those dead were the nearest relatives — in order
to represent and remind himself of the purity which should be
the law of his bfe. He drank no wine or strong drink, partly to
express his separation from general society, and partly as a
pubbc symbol of rehgious asceticism.
Tf The true place of asceticism in Christianity is never to be
an end in itself, but only a means to an end. Manichseanism,
and all kindred systems of thought, which regard matter, and
therefore the body, as intrinsically evil, tend to make asceticism
an end in itself. They view the body, with all its appetites, as
an enemy, to be as far as possible destroyed, and consequently
attach a positive merit to its destruction; further encouraging
the morbid tendency that is sometimes found in human nature to
take a voluptuous delight in pain. The revolting austerities of
the Indian fakirs are, of course, the best-known examples of
these perverse opinions, which, for all their wonderful exhibition
1 C. Brown, in Youth and Life, 202.

THE GLORY OF STRENGTH 503
of endurance, degrade instead of elevating human nature. And
there can be no question but that Christian practice has, often in
its history, been contaminated and compromised by the taint of
these Eastern ideas. But, for all this, there is a distinctively
Christian asceticism which moves upon a far higher plane, and is
enjoined by Christ Himself. " If any man will come after me,"
He says, "let him deny himself," importing an ascetic element
at the outset into every Christian life. Christian asceticism is
primarily prudential. It springs from no under-estimate of the
goodness of God's creation, but simply from the recognition of
man's tendency to sin, and consequent need for the avoidance of
temptation. He cannot trust himself, and so he must fly. But
the man who feels this must be humbled by the feeling. Hence
the Christian ascetic is as far removed as possible from all
thought of accumulating merit by his austerities. They result
expressly from his demerit, and are a perpetual reminder of its
existence.1

3. Samson, it is easy to see, must have been, in practice, an
indifferent Nazirite at certain periods of his career; but his
inconsistencies did not ruin his work so long as he was not
unfaithful to its central idea : and so long as his hair was uncut he
felt that his bfe was a consecrated life, and that he must keep its
high purpose in view. Those seven locks of hair as they floated
in the breeze taught other Israelites what to expect of him, and
they rebuked in his own conscience all in his life that was not in
keeping with the Nazirite law. And accordingly the preter
natural gift of great physical strength was attached to this one
particular of the Nazirite observance, which did duty as a symbol
for all the rest, and upon the careful maintenance of which
fidelity to the general principle of a consecrated life would appear
to have depended.
Tf The vow of the Nazirite was essentially a vow to abstain
from fleshly lusts. He was to hold himself pure as God's
instrument ; he was not to yield his members unto evil ; he was
to nurture his life in Spartan severity and simplicity ; he was to
attain self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, and from that
discipline his whole body and soul were to derive strength.
Without any disparagement of the character of Samson, one may
fairly say that his keeping of the Nazirite vow had all along been
1 J. B. Illingworth, Christian Character, 46.

504 SAMSON
marked by adherence that was letter-perfect rather than spiritually
faithful. He had been temperate in the direction of his vow.
Desire of wine and all delicious drinks,
Which many a famous warrior overturns,
Thou could'st repress; nor did the dancing ruby,
Sparkling, out-pour'd, the flavour, or the smell,
Or taste that cheers the hearts of gods and men,
Allure thee from the cool crystalline stream.
But in that direction only. In others he had been weak.
The Nazirite vow, rightly understood, was a divinely-given
basis for moral development, a prophecy through outer separate-
ness of spiritual consecration. Nor could any man be said to
have drunk of its spirit who rested in the details of ritual, and did
not seek to penetrate to its essence — consecration to God.

II.
The Gift of Strength.
1. Samson grew up in the belief that he was consecrated to
God, that there was a definite, divinely-appointed work for him
to do, and that God would endow him for that work with aU the
necessary strength. " And the child grew," we are told, " and the
Lord blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to move him
at times in the camp of Dan." Of Joshua we read that by the
hands of Moses he was filled with the spirit of wisdom for his
great leadership ; but this was not the case with Samson ; he was
moved by the Spirit to great miracles of strength, but there was
no wisdom to guide a nation, or indeed his own steps. His gift
from " the Spirit of the Lord " was simply physical strength, and
it was associated with the defects of his qualities. His passions
were strong, and apparently uncontrolled. He had no moral
elevation or religious fervour. To help to preserve his race from
the contamination of Philistine intercourse was the ambition of
Samson's youth, and the final ideal to which he dedicated himself
in death — the highest patriotism possible to the Hebrews at the
time. Yet he does not seem to bave attempted to organize any
general effort to throw off the Philistine yoke ; his course was in
this very unlike that of Gideon, or Jephthah, or Barak. He acted

THE GLORY OF STRENGTH 505
alone, as if he could calculate on no help from others, or would
even bave been embarrassed by it.
His gift was not of the highest kind. It was far below
that of other judges in Israel, and it did not produce any great
results ; the country was never emancipated by his single-handed
desultory blows ; nevertheless, he did, and did earnestly, what lay
in him to do, and it served some purpose. At times, and in
certain places, amongst his father's tombs and amidst the recollec
tions of his father's exploits, Samson was moved by the Spirit, and
for a time would be filled with spiritual enthusiasm; and then
again he would relapse into lazy, self-indulgent ways, a prey to
every evil power. So he never produced any impression on the
people at large. His own countrymen, in spite of their admira
tion of his courage and wit, must have felt that he did the cause
of Israel more harm than good. True, he was their champion,
called of God ; but he never seems to have acted as their leader ;
we do not know that he organized a single expedition, and he
certainly never delivered his country.
2. Samson's chief value lay, perhaps, in the one inspiring
thought which his prowess awakened — tbe thought that God was
there. He simply crystallizes, in his titanic figure, the idea of
strength through obedience to God. If by obedience to the mere
vow of the Nazirite Samson was invincible, how invincible, as a
nation and as a church, might Israel become if obedient to the
whole moral law which God had given her. By the happy though
unnatural strength of this Nazirite the Hebrews were taught to
stand in reverence before Jehovah, and to seek for help again in
Him by disobeying whom all their disasters had been brought about.
TJ Who is the strong man ? Is he the man who passes through
/ society with the battle-axe of Eichard Cceur de Lion ? The child
1 ' sees a man lift a great weight with his teeth, and at once he
exclaims, What a strong man ! Is the child right ? He would
have been right had he said, What a strong animal ! Such poor
power wastes itself day by day ; the man's teeth perish, where is
the giant then ? Here are two men under circumstances of equal
provocation : the one man instantly resents the insult which has
been inflicted upon him ; in a moment he is in a paroxysm of rage,
asserting his dignity, and smiting his opponent ; men who are
standing by admire the fire of his character ; they say, What a

506 SAMSON
strong man ! The other man shows no sign of rage, holds himself
in the severest self-control ; instead of resisting evil, he answers
not again, and persons who look only on the surface of things
declare him a coward. Solomon would have declared him a
strong man, and so would Jesus Christ. The strength of man
hood is to be judged by the depth and solidity of moral foundation.1
Love alone is great in might,
Makes the heavy burden light,
Smooths rough ways to weary feet,
Makes the bitter morsel sweet:
Love alone is strength !
Might that is not born of Love
Is not Might born from above
Has its birthplace down below
Where they neither reap nor sow:
Love alone is strength !
Love is stronger than all force,
Is its own eternal source;
Might is always in decay,
Love grows fresher every day:
Love alone is strengtb ! 2

III.
The Eiddle.
1. A love affair first brought Samson into active opposition to
the Philistines. Attracted by a Philistine woman at Timnath,
he insisted on his parents obtaining her as his wife. They
expostulated, but the wayward son would not be thwarted, and, as
is the way in the East, the marriage was arranged by the parents.
A higher hand was guiding events ; a reference even in Samson's
mind indicated that "it was of the Lord," that, through the
wedding, occasion against the dominant Philistines would be
found. It was found in a train of consequences from one incident.
2. On the way to Timnath, Samson's supernatural strength
was shown. A young lion in the vineyards of Timnath " roared
1 Joseph Parker. 2 George MacDonald, Poetical Works, ii. 130.

THE GLORY OF STRENGTH 507
against him." Samson, without a weapon, " rent him as he would
have rent a kid," and left the carcase in the way. On a later
visit he found a swarm of bees had taken possession of the
carcase. The honey, which he took and ate, suggested the famous
riddle which he propounded to the Philistines at his marriage,
giving them seven days to answer it, and promising as a prize
thirty sheets and thirty changes of garments ; —
" Out of the eater came forth meat,
Out of the strong came forth sweetness."
The riddle proved impossible, but the Philistine guests with
threats persuaded the bride to extract the answer from her
husband. Samson could not withstand the feminine argument of
tears, and told the answer, which was promptly passed on to the
guests. So on the seventh day the triumphant rejoinder came —
" What is sweeter than honey ?
What is stronger than a lion?"
Samson knew that his wife had been false to him and that the
story of his adventure was out. Then with a daring quite as
notable as that with which he had killed the lion, he hurried to
Ashkelon, another Philistine city, and soon returned with the
garments of thirty men whom he had slain, with which he re
deemed his pledge.
3. The story reads at first like mere rude jesting and bloody
sport. It is clear, however, that under cover of his riddle Samson
meant to intimate to his foes themselves the defiance that was
already burning within him. In the honey from the carcase of the
lion which he had slain he had seen a Divine omen of the blessing
that was to come even out of the oppressor of Israel, and with the
recklessness which was part of his character he intimated vaguely,
even to the wedding guests, what they and their countrymen
might expect from him. He was going to tear this Philistine lion
in pieces and gather from its slain carcase honey for his people
Israel ; aud the thirty men, lying dead at Ashkelon, were but the
beginning of the slaughter which would befall her foes.
4. Samson came back to Timnath to find his wife given to
another, and he revenged himself by the fantastic malice of turn-

508 SAMSON
ing three hundred foxes with fire-brands tied to their tails among
the standing corn of the Philistines. The Philistines executed a
sort of wild justice upon the intended wife of Samson and her
father by burning them both with fire, hoping perhaps that this
would stop further reprisals. But Samson retaliated by smiting
them, " hip and thigh," with a great slaughter. He then retired
to a natural stronghold, the rock of Etam, in Judah.
The Philistines "spread themselves in Lehi," and demanded
the surrender of the fugitive ; and to their demand the men of
Judah pusillanimously consented. Instead of putting themselves
under Samson's leadership, they only urged weakly, " Knowest thou
not that the Philistines are rulers over us ? " Samson consented
to be given up to tbe Philistines, bound with two new cords. But
the exultant shout of his enemies at receiving the captive was
soon turned to the groans of the dying, for "the Spirit of the
Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his
arms became as flax that was burnt with fire." Seizing as an
impromptu weapon the jawbone of an ass, the champion, in a
religious frenzy, rushed upon the astonished captors, and slew
"heaps upon heaps" of them. The place bore afterwards the
name Eamath-lehi (" hill of the jaw-bone "). Overcome with
thirst, he prayed for refreshment, and God " clave an hollow place
that was in Lehi, and there came water thereout." The name
En-hakkore (" well of him that called ") preserved the memory of
his deliverance.
It is immediately after the events thus related that the words,
"He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years,"
are inserted. We may infer from this notice that the effects of
the exploit at Lehi was such that the Philistine power, though
still dominant, was held in check, that relief from the pressure
hitherto felt was realized, and that a measure of authority was
conceded to Samson.
Tf In Watts's picture, the young knight of God sits down on
a rock after his terrible encounter with the Philistines, whose
dead bodies lie in heaps around him. The jawbone with which
he has slain them lies white and polished at his feet, its blood
stains having been cleansed by the stream that flows from it to
quench his burning thirst. He is weary and worn-out with his
stupendous exertions. The Spirit of the Lord that had come upon

THE GLORY OF STRENGTH 509
him and given him tbe prowess of a thousand men bas departed,
and he suffers the sad reaction of such high excitement. He feels
the weakness of his will to hold his strong passions in leash.
He feels that though he could wrestle with and rend asunder the
young lion, with no weapon but his naked hand, he cannot wrestle
witb and subdue his own wild, ungoverned desires. The chains of
his own easily besetting lusts bind his spirit stronger far than the
withes and cords of the Philistines round his mighty thews.1
1 H. Macmillan, The Life- Work qf G. F. Walts, 160.

SAMSON. II.
The Profanation of Strength.

s«

Literature.
Brooks, P., The Law of Growth (1902), 256.
Clifford, J., The Gospel of Gladness (1912), 54.
Forbes, J .T., God's Measure (1898), 107.
Horan, F. S., A Call to Seamen (1907), 106.
Home, C. S., The Soul's Awakening (1902), 267.
Lang, J. M., Gideon and the Judges (1890), 76.
MacArthur, B. S., Quick Truths in Quaint Texts, ii. (1907) 50.
Maclaren, A., Expositions : Deuteronomy, etc. (1906), 250.
Townsend, W. J., in Men of the Old Testament : Cain to David (1904),
213.
Whitham, A. B., Old Testament History (1912), 187.
Wright, W. B., The World to Come (1896), 112.
Church of England Pulpit, lix. (1905) 38 (F. E. M. Hitchcock).
Expositor, 4th Ser., iv. (1891) 360 (W. G. Elmslie).

The Profanation of Strength.
And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out
of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times, and shake myself.
But he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.— Judg. xvi. zo.
Samson had come to middle life, not a faultless Adonis by any
means, but a man who in the main had loved righteousness and
hated iniquity, and who certainly had held no truce with the
principalities and powers of evil as he saw and knew them. Then
he judged Israel for twenty years ; and nothing is told of these
middle years, perhaps because there was nothing to tell. It is not
that tbe years were quiet and uneventful. It is not a case of the
proverb " Happy is the country that has no history." It is that
somehow or other he fell a victim to the fatal temptations of
middle life ; that he went into it with a soul and came out of it
with little or none.
Tf A man frequently goes on imagining that the religious
teaching with which he has been imbued in childhood is in full
force in him, whereas there is not even a trace left of it.
S  , an intelligent and truthful man, told me how he came
to stop believing. When he was twenty-six years old he once at
a night's rest during the chase followed his old habit, acquired
in his childhood, and stood up to pray. His elder brother, who
took part in the chase, was lying on the hay and looking at him.
When S  got through and was about to lie down, he said to
him : " So you are still doing these things ? "
That was all that was said. And S  that very day quit
praying and attending church. Thirty years have passed since he
stopped praying, receiving the communion, and going to church.
Not that he knew the convictions of his brother and had joined
them, not that he had decided on anything in his mind, but only
because the sentence which his brother had uttered was like the
pressure exerted with a finger against a wall which was ready to
fall of its own weight ; the sentence was merely an indication that
where he thought there was faith there had long been a vacant
spot, and that, therefore, the words which he spoke and the signs
moses-samson — 3 3

5H SAMSON
of the cross and the obeisances which he made during his praying
were quite meaningless actions. Since he had come to recognize
their meaninglessness, he could not keep them up any longer.
Thus it has always been with an enormous majority of people.
They are in that condition when the light of knowledge and of life
has melted the artificial structure, and they have either noticed
it and have cleared the place, or have not yet noticed it.1
The Philistine women continued to attract Samson. At
Gaza this led to his being discovered by his enemies, and the
town-gates were shut upon him. But Samson rose in the middle
of the night, and, in that jesting humour of his, took hold of the
brazen gates of the city, lifted them clean out, with the posts in
which they were placed, carried them to the top of a neighbouring
hill, and left them there. This, of course, added to the resent
ment of the Philistines against him, and helped to bring about
the crisis in which he perished.

Delilah.
1. The story of Delilah, either Philistine maiden or Hebrew
maiden, is one of the most graphic in the pages of the Old Testa
ment. Bribed by the lords of the Philistines to discover the
secret of the champion's strength, at first her wiles were unavailing.
Three times Deblah tried to draw from him the secret of his
strength. Three times Samson drugged his own conscience by
telling a lie to her. Yet he was so helpless in the coils of the
temptress that he failed to rouse himself in defence of his own
manhood. The man who dallies with temptation as Samson did
is doomed. With unholy persistence Delilah made a supreme
attempt to accomplish her ends. Asked the fourth time for the
secret of his strength, Samson replied that if his locks were shorn
his strength would be gone. The secret gained by so much deceit
was immediately sold to the enemy. When a fourth time the
challenge, "Samson! the Phibstines be upon thee," fell on his
heavy ears, he rose with a determination to display again his
wonderful strength.
His virtue gone, his vow broken, he staggered out to grapple
1 Tolstoy, My Confession ( Works, xiii. 5).

THE PROFANATION OF STRENGTH 515
with his foes, and he put forth his hands to fight, " for he wist not
that the Lord was departed from him " ; but the unhappy man
found that his great power had gone from him. He handled
himself as in the times past, but nothing came of it. He was
powerless. His foes did as they pleased with him. They put out
his eyes ! They bound his ponderous limbs with fetters of brass,
thrust him into a prison-house, and forced him to grind at their
machines ! He was a God-deserted man.
It is one of the most pathetic pictures of the Bible. Job
Bitting on the ash-heap and cursing the day of his birth has less
of tragedy in it. Jeremiah bemoaning the lost condition of his
beloved land, sad as is the sight, almost reaches the sublime of
pathos ; but great Samson, fighting himself, putting his defunct
forces into line only to find himself utterly beaten and wholly
ruined, is a sight to stir the pity of God and men.
Tf Burns, Sheridan, B^ranger, and many another, are sad
illustrations of the spirit of self-indulgence. Now and again we
hear of a sudden judgment overtaking those whom nature has
made very attractive by the gift of a sunny, bright disposition,
and varied powers of the Spirit. They have used their popularity
to press home the gospel of God— men like Samson, of wit and
humour, faith and spiritual insight, and at times capable of great
religious enthusiasm. For a time their name and what they
accomplish is in everyone's mouth ; and then there is an ugly
rumour, a hurried flight, and the man is known no more.
Eeligious people are perplexed. Was he not a consecrated man
and under vows ? Did he not at times sweep men off their feet
by the exercise of his gifts ? What then means this fall ? It
means that he never mastered himself, was never really under
discipbne. He controlled part of his nature, but not the whole ;
never really distinguished between liberty and licence ; whilst
rejoicing in the wonderful truths of the gospel which he taught
with such power and abundance of illustration, yet in the mean
time he allowed the enemy to creep in and take the citadel.1
Thrice I deluded her, and turn'd to sport
Her importunity, each time perceiving
How openly, and with what impudence
She purpos'd to betray me ; and (which was worse
Than undissembl'd hate) with what contempt
She sought to make me traitor to myself :
1 G. H. S. Walpole, Personality and Power, 148.

516 SAMSON
Yet the fourth time, when mustring all her wiles,
With blandisht parlies, feminine assaults,
Tongue-batteries, she surceas'd not day nor night
To storm me over-watch't, and wearied out,
At times when men seek most repose and rest,
I yielded, and unlock'd her all my heart;
Who with a grain of manhood well resolv'd,
Might easily have shook off all her snares:
But foul effeminacy held me yok't
Her bond-slave ; 0 indignity, 0 blot
To honour and religion ! servile mind,
Eewarded well with servile punishment!
The base degree to which I now am fall'n,
These rags, this grinding, is not yet so base
As was my former servitude, ignoble,
Unmanly, ignominious, infamous,
True slavery, and that blindness worse than this,
That saw not how degenerately I serv'd.1
2. Twenty years have passed since Samson, endowed with
superhuman powers, began his judgeship. Yet by his strength
and his courage, by his battles, his jokes, and his various activities,
he has accomplished practically nothing of the task he had been
appointed to perform, the task to which he had deliberately
dedicated his life. Near the close of the twenty years Samson
himself is lying supine upon the breast of the ablest, the most
patriotic, and the most fascinating of Philistine women. Surely
something must be wrong ; something for which not Delilah alone
is responsible; something which cannot be explained by the
theory of a moment's amiable weakness in Samson himself.
When Samson yielded to an irrational impulse and revealed
his secret, he only did once more what he had been doing all his
life. He had been entrusted with an important mission. He had
been furnished with abilities adequate to its demands. He was
allowed twenty years to complete his work. Instead of setting
himself to do it like a man, because it was given him to do, he
worked only when the impulse seized him — when it was therefore
easier for him to work than to play. Thus even the right things
he did trained him steadily to be more and more the slave of his
impulses ; and when at last the impulse to do wrong came upon
1 Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 396 ff.

THE PROFANATION OF STRENGTH 517
him, he obeyed it precisely as au untrained cat scratches, and an
untrained horse kicks. That fact explains why the magnificent
Samson was at last compelled to grind meal in the mills of his
enemies, though the sordid and servile Jacob came in due time to
be the prince of Israel.
Tf There must be moral as well as physical strength. There
must be the courage that stands to its convictions, whatever people
may think or say. The hardest mouth to face is not the cannon's.
It is rather that from whose throat comes the insistent roar of
the fickle populace. The majestic strength of royal manhood
treats this as an elephant does a fly. There are temptations to be
resisted. Nothing short of moral strength suffices for this. In
numerable iniquities solicit tolerance or indulgence, and, if yielded
to, they will damn here as well as hereafter. Strength means
moral courage, and ability to stand against ridicule and popular
clamour. Strength is not like the willow that bends low to every
breeze, but rather bke thej oak that stands stiff in the tempest, or
like tbe granite cbff against which the mad sea dashes itself to
pieces, or like the mountains that lift their calm faces toward the
silent stars defiant of all the bluff of storm. This is what it means
to be strong, and before such a life the world makes way. Strong
in purpose and strong in action ; strong within and strong without ;
strong against foes that are seen and strong against foes that are
unseen ; all the way up and all the way down, all the way round
and all the way through ; first, last and always — strong ! It needs
neither title nor crown to argue the imperial majesty of such
manhood.1 Whom have I to complain of but myself?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
In what part lodg'd, how easily bereft me,
Under the seal of silence could not keep,
But weakly to a woman must reveal it,
O'ercome with importunity and tears.
0 impotence of mind, in body strong!
But what is strength, without a double share
Of wisdom? vast, unwieldy, burdensome,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
By weakest subtleties; not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
God, when He gave me strength, to show withal
How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.2
1 J. I. Vance, Royal Manhood, 34.
a Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 47 ff.

518 SAMSON II.
Eevenge.
1. Blinded by the Philistines, Samson began to recover inward
sight. Slowly, no doubt, but surely, the old vow renewed itself
in his soul. It had been almost his first consciousness ; it should
be his last. He would never again " see the sights that dazzle " ;
but there was still opportunity to see the face of God, whose fiery
pillar of truth is given to our night-time. The day of Samson's
disgrace was nevertheless his day of grace also, and God lengthened
it out ; disgrace of man, grace of God. His fall had meant the
humiliation of his people ; if he could recover their freedom how
gladly would he die, and, dying, save Israel and expiate his sin.
He was a patriot once again, with a patriotism purged of the dross
of ambition and self-interest. The Philistines saw him bent, and
old, and blind as he ground at the prison mill ; but they never
suspected, nor would they have believed, that his soul was growing
young again.
2. At last came the day of his revenge and of his death
together. His hair had grown again, and one day he was brought
out by his tormentors to make sport before them at a great festival
in honour of Dagon, and there he found his opportunity. The
poor blinded hero went into the temple, stumbling, and laughed at
as he stumbled ; he was jeered and mocked ; he was dazed and
broken-hearted. But suddenly his ear caught that mocking song
of praise to Dagon, which exalted Dagon as the conqueror of
Jehovah and of Samson. And the inspiration came to him : still
his name is associated with that of Jehovah ; and they are mock
ing, not him, but Jehovah ! Like an echo from the past there
came to him that strange movement in his soul, a sense of the
Divine afflatus, an inspiration, a dim consciousness that his
strength had returned to him; and then the swift resolve. If
only he could do one deed that would undo the injury that he had
done to Jehovah and Jehovah's people. No place so fit for the
confession of his new faith and his recovered youth as the heathen
temple, no occasion so opportune as the idol feast. " 0 Lord God
of Israel, remember me." The strength of the Nazirite is upon

THE PROFANATION OF STRENGTH 519
him ; the old convictions surge through him, till his whole being
is flooded with the tide of sacred passion. One sees him erect at
last in the dignity of his new-won manhood, his face fronting the
mocking faces that he could not see — Samson Agonistes! with
the power of the Lord upon him gathering soul and sinew for
his final testimony against the idol-house and all the accursed
influences of the place. Imagination sees it still — the tragic, stately
form bowing itself against the central pillar, the shuddering build
ing, the gaping roof, the appalling avalanche of wood and stone. So
Samson's vow was kept.
Tf There was splendid promise in Samson's opening manhood.
He had the perfection of youthful beauty and strength. But he
fell very low and dragged his honour in the mire. And yet he
has still upon his bare head the shock of untouched hair which is
the sign of the Nazirite vow, the pledge that he is upheld by God
and endowed with power above his own, and consecrated to the
Divine service from his mother's womb. And this gives him an
inward strength to go through his dread probation, deprived of
strength and eyesight, in the lowest deeps of darkness and
wretchedness, till his hair begins to grow again, and he feels some
mysterious stir of returning power, and is nerved to the supreme
effort, the tremendous self-immolation, in which he avenges his
own hapless fate, and delivers his country. Through faith he
obtains in the end that gleam of hope, from beyond death, which
rests upon his grave.1 To Israel
Honour hath left, and freedom, let but them
Find courage to lay hold on this occasion;
To himself and father's house eternal fame;
And which is best and happiest yet, all this
With God not parted from him, aB was fear'd,
But favouring and assisting to the end.
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, ¦ or blame, nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.2
3. How beautifully the quiet close of the story follows the
stormy scene of the riotous assembly and the sudden destruction.
1 H. Macmillan, The Ufe- Work of G. F. Walts, 161.
2 Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 1714 ff.

520 SAMSON
The Philistines, crushed by this last blow, let the dead hero's
kindred search for his body amid the chaos, and bear it reverently
up from the plains to the quiet grave among the hills of Dan,
where Manoah his father slept. There they laid that mighty
frame to rest. It will be troubled no more by fierce passions or
degrading chains. Nothing in his life became him like the leaving
of it. The penitent heroism of its end makes us lenient to the
flaws in its course ; and we leave the last of the judges to sleep
in his grave, recognizing in him, with all his faults and grossness,
a true soldier of God, though in strange garb.
Tf What is the secret of strength ? It is the glory of life and
the source of high success. How is it obtained ? It is open to
all. It is not a matter of temperament or training, but of faith.
Follow the career of the great Apostle. Was ever a man stronger ?
He says : " I can do all things," but adds, " through Christ which
strengtheneth me." Paul's humble trust was the secret of his
marvellous power. It is faith in God that makes men strong.
Moral strength is the characteristic of a positively religious life.
God's strength flows into human life as the tide. There is no noise,
it is scarcely perceptible, but it is sovereign. It is the gift of
God, and it comes in answer to faith.1
1 J. I. Vance, Royal Manhood, 36.

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