« ja ® £ S3 i~ Q. © © X THE EXPOSITOR’S BIBLE. Edited by Rev. W. R, Nicoll, D.D., Editor of London Expositor. 1 37 Series in 6 Vols. MACLAREN, Rev. A lux —COLOS3IANS—PHILEMON. DOD8. Rev. Marcus.—GENESIS. CHADWICK, Rev. Dean—ST. MARK. BLA1KIK, Rev. W. G.—SAMUEL, § Vols. ~ • EDWARDS, Rev. T. C.—HEBREWS. . 2. ® 2d Series in 6 Vols. SMITH, Rev. G. A.—ISAIAH, Vol. I. - . j= ALEXANDER, Bishop_EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. 5 g “• PLCJHMER, Rev. A.—PASTORAL EPISTLES. E ® a FISH LAY, Rev. €». G.-GALATIANS. E a. c MILLIGAN, Rev. W_REVELATION. ?u ° DoDS, Rev. Marcus.—1 st CORINTHIANS. 25 >. c 3d Series in 6 Vols. SMITH, Rev. G. A .-ISAIAH, Vol. H. «niS()X, Rev. J. M—ST. MA'TTHEW. WATSON, Rev. R. A.-JUDGES - RUTH. BALL, Rev. C. J.—JEREMIAH. Chap. I-XX. CHADWICK, Hev. Dean.—EXODUS. BURTON, Rev. K.-ST. LUKE. 4th Series in 6 Vols. KELLOGG, Rev. S. H.—LEVI r TICUS. STOKES, Rev. G. T.—ACTS, Vol. I. HORTON, Hev. K. F.—PROVERBS. HODS, Rev. Marcus.—GOSPEL ST. JOHN, Vol. I. PLUMMER, Rev. A.—JAMES—JUDE. COX, Rev. S.—ECCLESIASTES. 5th Series in 6 Vols. DENNEY, Rev. J _THE.SSALONIANS. WATSON, Rev. li. A_JOB. MACLARKN, Rev. A.- PSALMS, Vol. I. STOKES, Rev. G. T _ ACTS, Vol. II. DOI)>, Rhv. Marcus.—GOSPEL ST JOHN, Vol. II. FINDLAY, Rev. C. G.-EPRESIANS. 8th Series in 6 Vols. f 1 ° „ RAINY, Rev. R.—PHILIPPI A NS. ^ FARRAR, Archdeacon F. \V. — 1st KINGS. o £ s BLAJKIE, Rev. W. G_JOSHUA. ° - MACLAREN, Rev. A.—PSALMS, Vol. II. * 2 Z HIM BY, Rev. J. R.-EPISTLES OF ST. PETER. = " j! ADENEY.Rev.W.F.-EZRA—NEIIEMIAH-ESTHER. ° - j 7th Series in 6 Vols. MOULF, Rev. K. C.G.—ROMANS. M FARRAR, Archdeacon F. W.—2 d KINGS. BKNNETT, Rev. W. H_1 st and 2d CHRONICLES. MACLAREN, Rev. A.-PSALMS. Vol. III. DENNEY, Rov. James.-2D CORINTHIANS. WATSON, Rev. R. A.—NUMBERS. 8th and Final Series in 7 Vols. FARRAR, Archdeacon F. W.—DANIEL. SKINNER, Rev. John.—EZEKIEL. BENNETT, Rev. W. H.-JERFMIAK. HARPER, Rev. Prof.-DEUTERONOMY. ADEWEY, Rev. W. F.-SOLOMON AND LAMENTATIONS. SMITH, Rev. G. A.—TEE MINOR PROPHETS, 2 Vols. _ & THE BOOK OF EXODUS. BY THE VERY REV. G. A. .CHADWICK, D.D., Dean of Armagh , AUTHOR or “CHRIST BEARING WITNESS TO HIMSELF,” “ AS HE THAT 6ERVETH,” “ THE GOSPEL OF ST. MARK,” ETC. NEW YORK: A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON, 51 East 10 th Street, Near Broadway. 1899. ^9 i £ pv l v.sl O'NEILL LIBRARY BOSTON COLLEGE O'NEILL LIBRARY BOSTON COLLEGE 7949 ° PREFACE. M UCH is now denied or doubted, within the Church itself, concerning the Book of Exodus, which was formerly accepted with confidence by all Christians. But one thing can neither be doubted nor denied. Jesus Christ did certainly treat this book, taking it as He found it, as possessed of spiritual authority, a sacred scripture. He taught His disciples to regard it thus, and they did so. Therefore, however widely His followers may differ about its date and origin, they must admit the right of a Christian teacher to treat this book, taking it as he finds it, as a sacred scripture and invested with spiritual authority. It is the legitimate subject of exposition in the Church. Such work this volume strives, however imper¬ fectly, to perform. Its object is to edify in the first place, and also, but in the second place, to inform. Nor has the author consciously shrunk from saying what seemed to him proper to be said because the utterance would be unwelcome, either to the latest critical theory, or to the last sensational gospel of an hour. But since controversy has not been sought, b PREFACE. although exposition has not been suppressed when it carried weapons, by far the greater part of the volume appeals to all who accept their Bible as, in any true sense, a gift from God. No task is more difficult than to exhibit the Old Testament in the light of the New, discovering the permanent in the evanescent, and the spiritual in the form and type which it inhabited and illuminated. This book is at least the result of a firm belief that such a connection between the two Testaments does exist, and of a patient endeavour to receive the edification offered by each Scripture, rather than to force into it, and then extort from it, what the expositor desires to find. Nor has it been supposed that by allowing the imagination to assume, in sacred things, that rank as a guide which reason holds in all other practical affairs, any honour would be done to Him Who is called the Spirit of know¬ ledge and wisdom, but not of fancy and quaint conceits. If such an attempt does, in any degree, prove successful and bear fruit, this fact will be of the nature of a scientific demonstration. If this ancient Book of Exodus yields solid results to a sober devotional exposition in the nineteenth Christian century, if it is not an idle fancy that its teaching harmonises with the principles and theology of the New Testament, and even demands the New Testament as the true commentary upon the Old, what follows ? How comes it that the oak is potentially in the acorn, and the living creature in the egg ? No germ is a manufactured article : it is a part of the system of the universe. ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS, CHAPTER I. The Prologue, i. i—6. Books linked by conjunction “And Scripture history a con¬ nected whole, I.—So is secular history organic : “ Philosophy of history.” The Pentateuch being a still closer unity, Exodus rehearses the descent into Eg} T pt, 2.—Heredity: the family of Jacob, 3.—Death of Joseph. Influence of Egypt on the shep¬ herd race, 4.—A healthy stock: good breeding. Goethe’s aphorism, 5*—Ourselves and our descendants, 6 . God in History, i. 7. In Exodus, national history replaces biography, 6.—Contrasted narratives of Jacob and Weses. Spiritual progress from Genesis to Exodus, 7.—St. Paul’s view: Law prepares for Gospel, especially by our failures, 8.—This explains other phenomena : failures in various circumstances, of innocence in Eden; of an elect family; now of a race, a nation, 9.— Israel, failing with all advantages, needs a Messiah. Faith justifies, in Old Testa¬ ment as in New, 10.—Scripture history reveals God in this life, in all things, 11.—True spirituality owns God in the secular : this is a gospel for our days, 12-13. The Oppression, i. 7—22. Early prosperity: its dangers: political supports vain, 13.—• Joseph forgotten. National responsibilities : despotism, 14.— Nations and their chiefs. Our subject races, 15.—The Church and her King: imputation. Pharaoh precipitates what he fears, 16.—Egypt and her aliens: modern parallels, 17.— Tyranny is tjrannous even when cultured, 18.—Our undue estrangement from the fallen : Jesus a brother. Toil crushes the spirit, 19.—Israel idolatrous. Religious dependence, 20. —Direct interposition required. Bitter oppression, 21.— ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. • •• via Pharaoh drops the mask. Defeated by the human heart. The midwives, 22.—Tneir falsehood. Morality is progressive, 23.— Culture and humanity, 24.—Religion and the child, 25. CHAPTER IL The Rescue or Moses, ii. I — 10. Importance of the individual, 26.— A man versus “ the Time* spirit,” 27.—The parents of Moses, 28.—Their family : their goodly child, 29.—Emotion helps faith, 30.—The ark in the bulrushes, 31.—Pharaoh’s daughter and Miriam, 32.—Guidance for good emotions : the Church for humanity, 33. The Choice of Moses, ii, 1 1 - 15 - God employs means, 34.—Value of endowment. Moses and his family. “The reproach of Christ,” 35.—An impulsive act, 36.— Impulses not accidents. The hopes of Moses, 37.—Moses and his brethren. His flight, 38 . Moses in Midian, ii. 16—22. Energy in disaster, 39. — Disinterested bravery. Parallels with a variation, 40.—The Unseen a refuge. Duty of resisting small wrongs. His wife, 41.—A lonely heart, 42. CHAPTER III. The Burning Bush, ii. 23—iii. Death of Raamses. Misery continues, 43.—The cry of the oppressed, 44.—Discipline of Moses, 45.—How a crisis comes, 46.—God hitherto unmcntioned. The Angel of the Lord, 47.— An unconsuming fire, 48.—Inquiry : reverence. God finds, not man, 49.—“Take off thy shoe.” “The God of thy father,” 50.—Immortality. “My people,” not saints only, 51.—The good land. The commission, 52.—God with him. A strange token, 53. A New Name, iii. 14; vi. 2, 3. Why Moses asked the name of God : idolatry : pantheism, 54.— A progressive revelation, 55.—Jehovah. The sound corrupted. Similar superstitions yet, 56.—What it told the Jews. Reality of being, 57.—Jews not saved by ideas. Streams of tendency. The Self-contained. We live in our past, 58.—And in our future, 59.—Yet Jehovah not the impassive God of Lucretius, ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. IX 60. —The Immutable is Love. This is our help, 6l. —Human will is not paralysed, 62. —The teaching of St. Paul. All this is practical, 63. —This gives stability to all other revelations. Our own needs, 64. The Commission, iii. 10, 16—22. God comes where He sends, 65.—The Providential man. Pru¬ dence, 66.—Sincerity of demand for a brief respite, 67.—God has already visited them. By trouble He transplants, 68.— The “ borrowing ” o jewels, 69. CHAPTER IV. Moses Hesitates, iv. 1—17. Scripture is impartial : Josephus, 70.—Hindrance from his own people. The rod, —The serpent : the leprosy, 72.—“I am not eloquent,” 73.—God with us. Aaron the Levite, 74.—Re¬ sponsibility of not working. The errors of Moses, 75.—Power of fellowship. Vague fears, 76.—With his brother, Moses will go. The Church, 77.—This craving met by Christ, 78.—Family affection. Examples, 79. Moses Obeys, iv. 18—31. Fidelity to his employer. Reticence, 80.—Resemblance to story of Jesus. He is the Antitype of all experiences, 81.—Counter¬ point in history. “Israel is My son,” 82.—A neglected duty Zipporah. Was she a helpmeet ? 83.—Domestic unhappiness. History v. myth, 84.—The failures of the good, 85.—Men of destiny are not irresponsible, 86.—His first followers : a joyful reception, 87.—Spiritual joy and reaction, 88. CHAPTER V. Pharaoh Refuses, v. i —23. Moses at court again. Formidable, 89.—Power of convictions but also of tyranny and pride. Menephtah : his story, 90.— Was the Pharaoh drowned ? The demand of Jehovah, 91.— The refusal, 92.—Is religion idleness? Hebrews were task¬ masters, 93.—Demoralised by slavery. They are beaten, 94.— Murmurs against Moses. He returns to God. His remon¬ strance, 95.—His disappointment. Not really irreverent, 96.— Use of this abortive attempt, 97-8* X ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. The Encouragement of Moses, vi. i—30. The word Jehovah known before : its consolations now, 99.— The new truth is often implicit in the old, 100.—Discernment more needed than revelation. “Judgments,” 101.—My people: your God, 102.—The tie is of God’s binding, 103.—Fatherhood and sonship, 104.—Faith becomes knowledge. The body hinders the soul, 105.—We are responsible for bodies. Israel weighs Moses down, 106.—We may hold back the saints, 107. —The pedigree, 107-8.—Indications of genuine history, 108-9. —“As a god to Pharaoh,” no.—We also, in. CHAPTER VII. The Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart, vii. 3—13. The assertion offends many, 112.—Was he a free agent? When hardened. A.V. incorrect, 113.—He resists five plagues spon¬ taneously. The last five are penal, 114.—Not “ hardened ” in wickedness, but in nerve. A.V. confuses three words : His heart is ( a ) “hardened,” 115.—( b ) it is made “strong” (c) “heavy,” 116.—Other examples of these words, 117.—The warning implied, 117-19.—Moses returns with the signs, 119.— The functions of miracle, i2Qk The Plagues, vii. 14. Their vast range, 121. —Their relation to Pantheism, Idolatry, Philosophy, 122.—And to the gods of Egypt. Their retributive fitness, 123.—Their arrangement, 124.—Like our Lord’s, not creative, 125.—God in common things, 126.—Some we inflict upon ourselves. Yet rationalistic analogies fail, 127.—Duration of the conflict, 128. The First Plague, vii. 14—25. The probable scene, 129.—Extent of the plague. The magicians. Its duration, 131.—Was Israel exempt? Contrast with first miracle of Jesus, 132 - CHAPTER VIII. The Second Plague, viii. 1—15. Submission demanded. Severity of plague, I33. —Pharaoh humbles himself, 134. —“Glory over me.” Pharaoh breaks faith, 135. ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. xi The Third Plague, viii. 16—19. Various theories. A surprise. Magicians baffled, 136—What they confess, 137. The Fourth Plague, viii. 20—32. “ Rising up early,” 137.—Bodily pain. Beetles or flies? “A mixture,” 138.—Goshen exempt. Pharaoh suffers. He sur¬ renders, 139.—Respite and treachery. Would Moses have returned ? 140. CHAPTER IX. The Fifth Plague, ix. 1—7. First attack on life. Animals share our fortunes, 141. The new summons. Murrain, 142.—Pharaoh’s curiosity, 143. The Sixth Plague, ix. 8—12. No warning, yet Author manifest. Ashes of the furnace, 144.— Suffering in the flesh. The magicians again. Pharaoh s heart “made strong,” 145.—Dares not retaliate, 146. The Seventh Plague, ix. 13—35. Expostulation not mockery, 146-7.—God is wronged by slavery, 147.—Civil liberty is indebted to religion. “Plagues upon thine heart,” 148.—A mis-rendering : why he was not crushed, 149.—An opportunity of escape. The storm, 150.—Ruskin upon terrors of thunderstorm, 151.—Pharaoh confesses sin, 152.— Moses intercedes. The weather in history. Job’s assertion, 153 - CHAPTER X. The Eighth Plague, x. I —20. Moses encouraged, 154.—Deliverances should be remembered. A sterner rebuke. Locusts in Egypt, 155.—Their effect. The court interferes. Yet “their hearts hardened” also, 156 — Infatuation of Pharaoh. Parallel of Napoleon, 157.—Women and little ones did share in festivals, 158.—A gentle wind. Locusts. Another surrender, 159.—Relief. Our broken vows, 160. The Ninth Plague, x. 21—29. Menephtah’s'sun-worship, 161.—Suddenness of the plague. Con¬ centrated narrative, 162.—Darkness represents death, 163.— XVI ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. The First Commandment, xx. 3. Monotheism and a real God, 289.—False creeds attractive. Spiritualism. Science indebted to Monotheism, 290.—Unity of nature a religious truth. Strength of our experimental argument, 291. Informal apostacy. Luther’s position. Scrip¬ ture. The Chaldeans, 292.—Animal pleasure, 293. —The remedy: “Thou shalt have . . . Me,” 294. The Second Commandment, xx. 4—6. Imagery not all idolatry. The subtler paganisms, 295. Spiritual worship, like a Gothic building, aspires : images lack expan¬ siveness, 296.—Gcd is jealous, 297.—The shadow of love, 298. Visiting sins on children, 299, 300.—Part of vast beneficent law, 300-2.—Gospel in law, 302. The Third Commandment, xx. 7. Meaning of “in vain,” 302.—Jewish superstition. Where swear¬ ing is wholly forbidden, 303.—Fruitful and free use of God’s name, 304-5. The Fourth Commandment, xx. 8 —II. Law of Sabbath unique. Confession of Augsburg. Of West¬ minster, 305.—Anglican position. St. Paul, 306.—The first positive precept. Love not the abolition of the law, 307.— Property of our friends. The word “remember.” The story of creation, 308.—The manna. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 300. —Christ’s freedom was that of a Jew. “ Sabbath for man,” 310.—Our help, not our fetter. “My Father worketh,” 311. The Fifth Commandment, xx. 12. Bridge between duty to God and to neighbour, 312.—Father and child, 313.—“ Whosoever hateth not.” Christ and His mother. Its sanction, 314 . The Sixth Commandment, xx. 13. Who is neighbour? Ethics and religion, 315-16.—Science and morals, 317.—A Divine creature. Capital punishment, 318. The Seventh Commandment, xx. 14. Justice forbids act: Christ forbids desire. Sacredness of body, 319.—Human body connects material and spiritual worlds. Modifies, while serves, 320.—Marriage a type, 321. ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. xvn The Eighth Commandment, xx. 15. Assailed by communism, by Rome. Various specious pleas, 322. —Laws of community binding, 323.—None may judge his own case. St. Paul enlarges the precept, 324. The Ninth Commandment, xx. 16. Importance of words. Various transgressions, 325. —Slander against nations, against the race. Love, 326-7. The Tenth Commandment, xx. 17. The list of properties, 328. —The heart. The law searches, 329. THE LESSER LAW, xx. 18—xxiii. 33. A remarkable code. The circumstances, 331.—Moses fears : yet bids them fear not, 332-3.—Presumption v. awe. He receives an expanded decalogue, an abridged code, 334.—Laws should educate a people; should not outrun their capabilities, 335-6.— Five subdivisions, 337. I. The Law of Worship, xx. 22—26. Images again forbidden, 337.—Splendour and simplicity. An objection, 338.—Modesty, 339. CHAPTER XXI. THE LESSER LAW ( continued). II. Rights of the Person, xxi. 1 —32. The Hebrew slave. The seventh year. Year of jubilee. His famil}’, 340.—The ear pierced. St. Paul’s “ marks of the Lord.” Assaults, 341.—The Gentile slave, 342.—The female slave, 342-3.—Murder and blood-fiends, 343.—Parents. Kidnappers, 344.—Eye for eye. Mitigations of lex talionis , 344-5.—Vicious cattle, 346. III. Rights of Property, xxi. 33 —xxii. 15. Negligence: indirect responsibility: various examples, 346-8.— Theft, 348. CHAPTER XXII. THE LESSER LAW ( continued ). IV. Various Enactments, xxii. 16— xxiii. 19. Disconnected precepts. No trace of systematic revision. Certain capital crimes, 348-9. xviii ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. Sorcery, xxii. 18. Abuses have recoiled against religion, 349.—Sorcerers are im¬ postors, but they existed, and do still, 350.— Moses could not leave them to enlightened opinion. Propagated apostaey, 351. —Traitors in a theocracy, 352.—When shall witchcraft die ? 353 * The Stranger, xxii. 21 ; xxiii. 9. “ Ye were strangers,” 354.—A fruitful principle. Morality not expediency, 355.—Cruelty often ignorance: Moses educates, 356.—The widow. The borrower, 357.—Other precepts, 358. CHAPTER XXIII. THE LESSER LAW ( continued ). An enemy’s cattle. A false report, 359.—Influence of multitude : the world and the Church, 360-1. Favour not the poor, 361-2. Other precepts. “A kid in his mother’s milk,” 362. Lesser Law, V. Its Sanctions, xxiii. 20—33. A bold transition: the Angel in Whom is “My Name,” 363.—- Not a mere messenger, 364.—Nor the substitute of chap, xxxiii. 2, 3, 365-6.—Parallel verses, 366-7. CHAPTER XXIV. The Covenant Ratified. The Vision of God, xxiv. The code is accepted, written, ratified with blood, 368.—Exclusion and admittance. The elders see God : Moses goes farther. Theophanies of other creeds, 369.—How could they see God ? 370.—Moses feels not satisfaction, but desire, 371.—His progress is from vision to shadow and a Voice, 372.—We see not each other, 373.—St. Augustine, 373-4.—The vision suits the period : not post-Exilian, 374-5.—Contrast with revelation in Christ, 375 - CHAPTER XXV. The Shrine and its Furniture, xxv. i —40. The God of Sinai will inhabit a tent. His other tabernacles, 376-7.—The furniture is typical. Altar of incense postponed, 377 •—The ark enshrines His law and its sanctions, 377-8 — The mercy-seat covers it, 378-81.—Man’s homage. The table of slicwbread, 382-3.—The golden candlestick (lamp-stand) 3 ^ 3-6 ANALYSIS OF CONTEXTS. xix The Pattern in the Mount, xxv. 9, 40. Use in Hebrews. Plato, 386.—Not a model, but an idea. Art, 387. —Provisional institutions, 387-8.—The ideal in creation, 388. — In life, 389. CHAPTER XXVI. The Tabernacle. “Temple” an ambiguous word, 390.—-“Curtains of the Taber¬ nacle,” 391.—Other coverings, 392.—The boards and sockets, 392-3.—The bars. The tent, 393.—Position of veil, 394, and of the front, 395. CHAPTER XXVII. The Outer Court. The altar, 396.—The quadrangle, 397.—General effect, 398-400. CHAPTER XXVIII The Holy Garments. Their import, 401.—The drawers. “Coat.” Head-tires. Rooe of the ephod. Ephod. Jewels, 402.—Breastplate. Urim and Thummim. Mitre. Symbolism, 403. The Priesthood. Universal desire and dread of God, 404.—Delegates, 405.—Scrip¬ ture. First Moses, 406.—His family passed over. The double consciousness expressed, 407-9.—Messianic priesthood, 409. CHAPTER XXIX. Consecration Services. Why consecrate at all? 410.—Moses officiates. The offerings, 41 1.—Ablution, robing, anointing, 412-13.—The sin-offering, 413-14. “ Without the camp,” 414. The burnt-offering, 415.— The peace-offering (“ram of consecration’), 415.—The wave- offerings, 415-16.—The result, 416-17. CHAPTER XXX. Incense, xxx. i—10. The impalpable in nature, 418.—“The golden altar, ”419. —Repre¬ sents prayer. Needs cleansing, 420. XX ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. A Census, xxx. ii —16. A census not sinful. David’s transgression. The half-shekel. Equality of man, 421.—Christ paid it, 422.—Its employment, 423. The Laver, xxx. 17—21. Behind the altar. Purity of priests, 423.—Made of the mirrors, 424- Anointing Oil and Incense, xxx. 22—38. Their ingredients. All the vessels anointed, 424.— Forbidden to secular uses, 425.—Modern analogies, 426-7. CHAPTER XXXI. Bezaleel and Aholiab, xxxi. I—18. Secular gifts are sacred, 428-30.—The Sabbath. The tables and “the finger of God,” 431. CHAPTER XXXII. The Golden Calf. Sin of the people; of Aaron. God rejects them, 432.—Intercession. The Christian antitype, 433-4. CHAPTER XXXIII. Prevailing Intercession. The first concession. The angel, 435.—“The Tent of the Meet¬ ing,” 436. CHAPTER XXXIV. The Vision of God. To know is to desire to know. A fit season. The greater Name, 438.—The covenant renewed. The tables. The skin of his face shone, 439.—Lessons, 440. CHAPTERS XXXV.—XL. CONCLUSION. The people obey, 441.—The forming of the nation: review 441 - 3 * CHAPTER I. THE PROLOGUE. Exodus i. 1-6. “And these are the names of the children of Israel which came into Egypt.” M ANY books of the Old Testament begin with the conjunction And. This fact, it has been often pointed out, is a silent indication of truth, that each author was not recording certain isolated inci¬ dents, but parts of one great drama, events which oined hands with the past and future, looking before and after. Thus the Book of the Kings took up the tale from Samuel, Samuel from Judges, and Judges from Joshua, and all carried the sacred movement forward towards a goal as yet unreached. Indeed, it was impossible, remembering the first promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, and the later assurance that in the seed of Abraham should be the universal blessing, for a faithful Jew to forget that all the history of his race was the evolution of some grand hope, a pilgrimage towards some goal unseen. Bearing in mind that there is now revealed to us a world-wide tendency toward the supreme consum¬ mation, the bringing all things under the headship of Christ, it is not to be denied that this hope of the I 2 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. ancient jew is given to all mankind. Each new stage in universal history may be said to open with this same conjunction. It links the history of England with that of Julius Caesar and of the Red Indian; nor is the chain composed of accidents: it is forged by the hand of the God of providence. Thus, in the conjunction which binds these Old Testament narra¬ tives together, is found the germ of that instinctive and elevating phrase, the Philosophy of History. But there is nowhere in Scripture the notion which too often degrades and stiffens that Philosophy—the notion that history is urged forward by blind foices, amid which the individual man is too puny to assert himself. Without a Moses the Exodus is inconceivable, and God always achieves His purpose through the providential man. The Books of the Pentateuch are held together in a yet stronger unity than the rest, being sections of one and the same narrative, and having been accredited with a common authorship from the earliest mention of them. Accordingly, the Book of Exodus not only begins with this conjunction (which assumes the pre¬ vious narrative), but also rehearses the descent into Egypt. u And these are the names of the sons of Israel which came into Egypt,’’—names blotted with many a crime, rarely suggesting any lovable or great association, yet the names of men with a marvellous heritage, as being the sons of Israel,” the Prince who prevailed with God. Moreover they are conse¬ crated : their father’s dying words had conveyed to every one of them some expectation, some mysterious import which the future should disclose. In the issue would be revealed the awful influence of the past upon i. 1-6.] THE PROLOGUE. 3 the future, of the fathers upon the children even beyond the third and fourth generation—an influence which is nearer to destiny, in its stern, subtle and far-reaching strength, than any other recognised by religion. Destiny, however, it is not, or how should the name of Dan have faded out from the final list of “ every tribe of the children of Israel" in the Apocalypse (Rev. vii. 5-8), where Manasseh is reckoned separately from Joseph to complete the twelve ? We read that with the twelve came their posterity, seventy souls in direct descent from Jacob; but in this number he is himself included, according to that well- known Orientalism which Milton strove to force upon our language in the phrase— u The fairest of her daughters Eve.” Joseph is also reckoned, although he 11 was in Egypt already." Now, it must be observed that of these seventy, sixty-eight were males, and therefore the people of the Exodus must not be reckoned to have sprung in the interval from seventy, but (remembering polygamy) from more than twice that number, even if we refuse to make any account of the household which is mentioned as coming with every man. These house¬ holds were probably smaller in each case than that of Abraham, and the famine in its early stages may have reduced the number of retainers ; yet they account for much of what is pronounced incredible in the rapid expansion of the clan into a nation.* But when all * Professor Curtiss quotes a volume of family memoirs which shows that 5,564 persons are known to be descended from Lieutenant John Hollister, who emigrated to America in the year 1642 (Ex- posilor, Nov. 18S7, p. 329). This is probably equal in ratio to the increase of Israel in Egypt. 4 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. allowance has been made, the increase continues to be, such as the narrator clearly regards it, abnormal, well-nigh preternatural, a fitting type of the expansion, amid fiercer persecutions, of the later Church of God, the true circumcision, who also sprang from the spiritual parentage of another Seventy and another Twelve. “And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation." Thus the connection with Canaan be¬ came a mere tradition, and the powerful courtier who had nursed their interests disappeared. When they remembered him, in the bitter time which lay before them, it was only to reflect that all mortal help must perish. It is thus in the spiritual world also. Paul reminds the Philippians that they can obey in his absence and not in his presence only, working out their own salvation, as no apostle can work it out on their behalf. And the reason is that the one real sup¬ port is ever present. Work out your own salvation, for it is God (not any teacher) Who worketh in you. The Hebrew race was to learn its need of Him, and in Him to recover its freedom. Moreover, the influ¬ ences which mould all men’s characters, their surround¬ ings and mental atmosphere, were completely changed. These wanderers for pasture were now in the presence of a compact and impressive social s} r stem, vast cities, gorgeous temples, an imposing ritual. They were infected as well as educated there, and we find the men of the Exodus not only murmuring for Egyptian comforts, but demanding visible gods to go before them. Yet, with all its drawbacks, the change was a neces¬ sary part of their development. They should return from Egypt relying upon no courtly patron, no mortal might or wisdom, aware of a name of God more pro- i. 1-6.] THE PROLOGUE. 5 found than was spoken in the covenant of their fathers, with their narrow family interests and rivalries and their family traditions expanded into national hopes, national aspirations, a national religion. Perhaps there is another reason why Scripture has reminded us of the vigorous and healthy stock whence came the race that multiplied exceedingly. For no book attaches more weight to the truth, so miserably perverted that it is discredited by multitudes, but amply vindicated by modern science, that good breed¬ ing, in the strictest sense of the word, is a powerful factor in the lives of men and nations. To be well born does not of necessity require aristocratic parent¬ age, nor does such parentage involve it: but it implies a virtuous, temperate and pious stock. In extreme cases the doctrine of race is palpable ; for who can doubt that the sins of dissolute parents are visited upon their puny and short-lived children, and that the posterity of the just inherit not only honour and a welcome in the world, “an open door,” but also immu¬ nity from many a physical blemish and many a perilous craving ? If the Hebrew race, after eighteen centuries of calamity, retains an unrivalled vigour and tenacity, be it remembered how its iron sinew has been twisted, from what a sire it sprang, through what ages of more than “ natural selection ” the dross was throughly purged out, and (as Isaiah loves to reiterate) a chosen remnant left. Already, in Egypt, in the vigorous multiplication of the race, was visible the germ of that amazing vitality which makes it, even in its over¬ throw, so powerful an element in the best modern thought and action. It is a well-known saying of Goethe that the quality for which God chose Israel was probably toughness. 6 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. Perhaps the saying would better be inverted : it was among the most remarkable endowments, unto which Israel was called, and called by virtue of qualities in which Goethe himself w T as remarkably deficient. Now, this principle is in full operation still, and ought to be solemnly pondered by the young. Self- indulgence, the sowing of wild oats, the seeing of life while one is young, the taking one’s fifing before one settles down, the having one’s day (like 11 every dog,” for it is to be observed that no person says, 11 every Christian ”), these things seem natural enough. And their unsuspected issues in the next generation, dire and subtle and far-reaching, these also are more natural still, being the operation of the laws of God. On the other hand, there is no youth living in obedience alike to the higher and humbler laws of our complex nature, in purity and gentleness and healthful occupation, who may not contribute to the stock of happiness in other lives beyond his own, to the future well-being of his native land, and to the day when the sadly polluted stream of human existence shall again flow clear and glad, a pure river of water of life. GOD IN HISTORY. i. 7. With the seventh verse, the new narrative, the course of events treated in the main body of this book, begins. And we are at once conscious of this vital difference between Exodus and Genesis,—that we have passed from the story of men and families to the history of a nation. In the first book the Canaanites and Egyptians concern us only as they affect Abraham or Joseph. In GOD IN HISTORY, 7 i. 7.] the second book, 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. For Jacob it was a discovery that God was in Bethel as well as in his father’s house. But now the Hebrew nation was to learn that He could plague the gods of Egypt in their stronghold, that His way was in the sea, that Horeb in Arabia was the Mount of God, that He could lead them like a horse through the wilderness. When Jacob in Peniel wrestles with God and pre¬ vails, 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 revelation of God for the nation to learn. And in all their later history we feel that the national life w r hich it unfolds was nourished and sustained by these glorious early experiences, the most unique as well as the most inspiriting on record. Here, then, a question of great moment is suggested. Beyond the fact that Abraham was the father of the Jewish race, can w r e discover any closer connection between the lives of the patriarchs and the history of Israel ? Is there a truly spiritual coherence between them, or merely a genealogical sequence ? For if the Bible can make good its claim to be vitalised throughout by the eternal Spirit of God, and leading forward steadily to His final revelation in Chiist, then its parts will be symmetrical, proportionate and well designed. 8 THE BOOK OB EXODUS . If it be a universal book, there must be a better reason for the space devoted to preliminary and half secular stories, which is a greater bulk than the whole of the New Testament, than that these histories chance to belong to the nation whence Christ came. If no such reason can be found, the failure may not perhaps outweigh the great evidences of the faith, but it will score for some¬ thing on the side of infidelity. But if upon examina¬ tion it becomes plain that all has its part in one great movement, and that none can be omitted without marring the design, and if moreover this design has become visible only since the fulness of the time is come, the discovery will go far to establish the claim of Scripture to reveal throughout a purpose truly divine, dealing with man for ages, and consummated in the gift of Christ. Now, it is to St. Paul that we turn for light upon the connection between the Old Testament and the New. And he distinctly lays down two great principles. The first is that the Old Testament is meant to educate men for the New; and especially that the sense of failure, impressed upon men’s consciences by the stern de¬ mands of the Law, was necessary to make them accept the Gospel. The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ: it entered that sin might abound. And it is worth notice that this effect was actually wrought, not only upon the gross transgressor by the menace of its broken precepts, but even more perhaps upon the high- minded and pure, by the creation in their breasts of an ideal, inaccessible in its loftiness. He who says, All these things have I kept from my youth up, is the same who feels the torturing misgiving, What good thing must I do to attain life ? . . . What lack I yet? GOD IN HISTORY. 9 i. 7.] He who was blameless as touching the righteousness of the law, feels that such superficial innocence is worthless, that the law is spiritual and he is carnal, sold under sin. Now, this principle need by no means be restricted to the Mosaic institutions. If this w T ere the object of the law, it would probably explain much more. And when w 7 e return to the Old Testament with this clue, we find every condition in life examined, every social and political experiment exhausted, a series of demon¬ strations made with scientific precision, to refute the arch-heresy which underlies all others—that in favour¬ able circumstances man might save himself, that for the evil of our lives our evil surroundings are more to be blamed than w r e. Innocence in prosperous circumstances, unwarped by evil habit, untainted by corruption in the blood, uncompelled by harsh surroundings, simple innocence had its day in Paradise, a brief day with a shameful close. God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions, until the flood swept away the descendants of him who was made after the image of God. Next w 7 e have a chosen family, called out from all the perilous associations of its home beyond the river, to begin a new career in a new land, in special covenant with the Most High, and with every endowment for the present and every hope for the future which could help to retain its loyalty. Yet the third generation reveals the thirst of Esau for his brother’s blood, the treachery of Jacob, and the distraction and guilt of his fierce and sensual family. It is when individual and family life have thus proved ineffectual amid the happiest circumstances, that the tribe and the nation essay the task. Led up from the furnace of affliction, 10 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. hardened and tempered in the stern free life of the desert, impressed by every variety of fortune, by slavery and escape, by the pursuit of an irresistible foe and by a rescue visibly divine, awed finally by the sublime revelations of Sinai, the nation is ready for the cove¬ nant (which is also a challenge)—The man that doeth these things shall live by them : if thou diligently hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God . . . He shall set thee on high above all nations. Such is the connection between this narrative and what went before. And the continuation of the same experiment, and the same failure, can be traced through all the subsequent history. Whether in so loose an organisation that every man does what is right in his own eyes, or under the sceptre of a hero or a sage,— whether so hard pressed that self-preservation ought to have driven them to their God, or so marvellously delivered that gratitude should have brought them to their knees,—whether engulfed a second time in a more hopeless captivity, or restored and ruled by a hierarchy whose authority is entirely spiritual,—in every variety of circumstances the same melancholy process repeats itself; and lawlessness, luxury, idolatry and self-right¬ eousness combine to stop every mouth, to make every man guilty before God, to prove that a greater salvation is still needed, and thus to pave the way for the Messiah. The second great principle of St. Paul is that faith in a divine help, in pardon, blessing and support, was the true spirit of the Old Testament as well as of the New. The challenge of the law T was meant to produce self-despair, only that men might trust in God. Appeal v/as made especially to the cases of Abraham and David, the founder of the race and of the dynasty, clearly GOD IN HISTORY. 11 1.7.] because the justification without works of the patriarch and of the king w^ere precedents to decide the general question (Rom. iv. 1-8). Now, this is pre-eminently the distinction between Jewish history and all others, that in it God is everything and man is nothing. Every sceptical treatment of the story makes Moses to be the deliverer from Egypt, and shows us the Jewish nation gradually finding out God. But the nation itself be¬ lieved nothing of the kind. It confessed itself to have been from the beginning vagrant and rebellious and unthankful: God had always found out Israel, never Israel God. The history is an expansion of the parable of the good shepherd. And this perfect harmony of a long record with itself and with abstract principles is both instructive and reassuring. As the history of Israel opens before us, a third principle claims attention—one which the apostle quietly assumes, but which is forced on our consideration by the unhappy state of religious thought in these degenerate days. “ They are not to be heard,” says the Seventh Article rightly, u which feign that the old fathers did look oniy for transitory promises.” But certainly they also would be unw’orthy of a hearing who would feign that the early Scriptures do not give a vast, a preponderating weight, to the concerns of our life on earth. Only very slowly, and as the result of long training, does the future begin to reveal its supremacy over the present. It would startle many a devout reader out of his pro¬ priety to discover the small proportion of Old Testa¬ ment scriptures in which eternity and its prospects are discussed, to reckon the passages, habitually applied to spiritual thraldom and emancipation, which were spoken at first of earthly tyranny and earthly deliverance, 12 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. and to observe, even in the pious aspirations of the Psalms, how much of the gratitude and joy of the righteous comes from the sense that he is made wiser than the ancient, and need not fear though a host rose up against him, and can break a bow oi steel, and has a table prepared for him, and an overflowing cup. Especially is this true of the historical books. God is here seen ruling states, judging in the earth, remember¬ ing Israel in bondage, and setting him free, providing supernatural food and water, guiding him by the fiery cloud. There is not a word about regeneration, con¬ version, hell, or heaven. And yet there is a profound sense of God. He is real, active, the most potent factor in the daily lives of men. Now, this may teach us a lesson, highly important to us all, and especially to those who must teach others. The difference between spirituality and secularity is not the difference between the future life and the present, but between a life that is aware of God and a godless one. Perhaps, w T hen we find our gospel a matter of indifference and weari¬ ness to men who are absorbed in the bitter monotonous and dreary struggle for existence, we ourselves are most to blame. Perhaps, if Moses had approached the Hebrew drudges as we approach men equally weary and oppressed, they would not have bowed their heads and worshipped. And perhaps w T e should have better success, if we took care to speak of God in this world, making life a noble struggle, charging with new signifi¬ cance the dull and seemingly degraded lot of all who remember Him, such a God as Jesus revealed when He cleansed the leper, and gave sight to the blind, using one and the same word for the “ healing” of diseases and the “ saving” of souls, and connecting faith equally with both. Exodus will have little to teach us, unless THE OTTRESSION. 13 i. 7-22.] we believe in that God who knoweth that we have need of food and clothing. And the higher spiritual truth* which it expresses will only be found there in dubious and questionable allegory, unless we firmly grasp the great truth, that God is not the Saviour of souls, or of bodies, but of living men in their entirety, and treats their higher and lower wants upon much the same principle, because He is the same God, dealing with the same men, through both. Moreover, He treats us as the men of other ages. Instead of dealing with Moses upon exceptional and strange lines, He made known His ways unto Moses, His characteristic and habitual ways. And it is on this account that whatsoever things were written aforetime are true admonition for us also, being not violent interruptions but impressive revelations of the steady silent methods of the judgment and the grace of God. THE OPPRESSION, i. 7-22. At the beginning of the history of Israel w T e find a prosperous race. It was indeed their growing import¬ ance, and chiefly their vast numerical increase, which excited the jealousy of their rulers, at the very time when a change of dynasty removed the sense of obligation. It is a sound lesson in political as well as personal godliness that prosperity itself is dangerous, and needs special protection from on high. Is it merely by chance again that we find in this first of histories examples of the folly of relying upon political connections ? As the chief butler remembered not Joseph, nor did he succeed in escaping from prison by securing influence at court, so is the influence of 14 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. Joseph himself now become vain, although he was the father of Pharaoh and lord of all his house. His romantic history, his fidelity in temptation, and the services by which he had at once cemented the royal power and saved the people, could not keep his memory alive. The hollow wraith of dying fame died wholly. There arose a new king over Egypt who knew not Joseph. Such is the value of the highest and purest earthly fame, and such the gratitude of the world to its benefactors. The nation which Joseph rescued from starvation is passive in Pharaoh’s hands, and persecutes Israel at his bidding. And when the actual deliverer arose, his rank and influence w T ere only entanglements through which he had to break. Meanwhile, except among a few women, obedient to the woman’s heart, we find no trace of independent action, no revolt of conscience against the absolute behest of the sovereign, until selfishness replaces virtue, and despair wrings the cry from his servants, Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed ? Now, in Genesis we saw the fate of families, blessed in their father Abraham, or cursed for the offence ot Ham. For a family is a real entity, and its members, like those of one body, rejoice and suffer together. But the same is true of nations, and here we have reached the national stage in the education of the world. Here is exhibited to us, therefore, a nation suffering with its monarch to the uttermost, until the cry of the maid¬ servant behind the mill is as wild and bitter as the cry of Pharaoh upon his throne. It is indeed the eternal curse of despotism that unlimited calamity may be drawn down upon millions by the caprice of one i. 7-22.] THE OPPRESSION. 15 most unhappy man, himself blinded and half maddened by adulation, by the absence of restraint, by unlimited sensual indulgence if his tendencies be low and animal, and by the pride of power if he be high-spirited and aspiring. If we assume, what seems pretty well established, that the Pharaoh from whom Moses fled was Rameses the Great, his spirit was of the nobler kind, and he exhibits a terrible example of the unfitness even of conquering genius for unbridled and irresponsible power. That lesson has had to be repeated, even down to the days of the Great Napoleon. Now, if the justice of plaguing a nation for the offence of its head be questioned, let us ask first whether the nation accepts his despotism, honours him, and is content to regard him as its chief and captain. Accord¬ ing to the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, whoever thinks a tyrant enviable, has already himself tyrannised with him in his heart. Do we ourselves, then, never sympathise with political audacity, bold and unscrupulous li resource,” success that is bought at the price of strange compliances, and compromises, and wrongs to other men ? The great national lesson is now to be taught to Israel that the most splendid imperial force will be brought to an account for its treatment of the humblest —that there is a God Who judges in the earth. And they were bidden to apply in their own land this ex¬ perience of their own, dealing kindly with the stranger in the midst of them, u for thou wast a stranger in the land of Egypt.” That lesson we have partly learned, who have broken the chain of our slaves. But how much have we left undone ! The subject races w r ere never given into our hands to supplant them, as we have 16 TIIE BOOK OF EXODUS. supplanted the Red Indian and the New Zealander, nor to debauch, as men say we are corrupting the African and the Hindoo, but to raise, instruct and Christianise. And if the subjects of a despotism are accountable for the actions of rulers whom they tolerate, how much more are we ? What ought we to infer, from this old-world history, of the profound responsi¬ bilities of all free citizens ? We attain a principle which reaches far into the spiritual world, when we reflect that if evil deeds of a ruler can justly draw down vengeance upon his people, the converse also must hold good. Reverse the case before us. Let the kingdom be that of the noblest and purest virtue. Let no subject ever be coerced to enter it, nor to remain one hour longer than while his adoring loyalty consents. And shall not these subjects be the better for the virtues of the Monarch whom they love ? Is it mere caprice to say that in choosing such a King they do, in a very real sense, appropriate the goodness they crown ? If it be natural that Egypt be scourged for the sins of Pharaoh, is it palpably incredible that Christ is made of God unto His people wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and re¬ demption ? The doctrine of imputation can easily be so stated as to become absurd. But the imputation of which St. Paul speaks much can only be denied when we are prepared to assail the principle on which all bodies of men are treated, families and nations as well as the Church of God. It was the jealous cruelty of Pharaoh which drew dow : n upon his country the very perils he laboured to turn away. There was no ground for his fear of any league with foreigners against him. Pro¬ sperous and unambitious, the people would have i. 7-22.] THE OPPRESSION. *7 remained well content beside the flesh-pots of Egypt, for which they sighed even when emancipated from heavy bondage and eating the bread of heaven. Or else, if they had gone forth in peace, from a land whose hospitality had not failed, to their inheritance in Canaan, they would have become an allied nation upon the side where the heaviest blows were afterwards struck by the Asiatic powers. Cruelty and cunning could not retain them, but it could decimate a popula¬ tion and lose an army in the attempt. And this law prevails in the modern world. England paid twenty millions to set her bondmen free. Because America would not follow her example, she ultimately paid the more terrible ransom of civil war. For the same God was in Jamaica and in Florida as in the field of Zoan. Nor was there ever yet a crooked policy which did not recoil either upon its author, or upon his successors when he had passed away. In this case it fulfilled the plans and the prophecies of God, and the wrath of man was made to praise Him. There is independent reason for believing that at this period one-third at least of the population of Egypt was of alien blood (Brugsch, History , ii. 100). A politician might fairly be alarmed, especially if this were the time when the Hittites were threatening the eastern frontier, and had reduced Egypt to stand on the defensive, and erect barrier fortresses. And the circumstances of the country made it very easy to enslave the Hebrews. If any stain of Oriental indif¬ ference to the rights of the masses had mingled with the God-given insight of Joseph, when he made his benefactor the owner of all the soil, the Egyptian people were fully avenged upon him now. For this arrangement laid his pastoral race helpless at their 2 is THE BOOK OF EXODUS . oppressor’s feet. Forced labour quickly degenerates into slavery, and men who find the story of their misery hard to credit should consider the state of France before the Revolution, and of the Russian serfs before their emancipation. Their wretchedness was probably as bitter as that of the Hebrews at any period but the last climax of their oppression. And they owed it to the same cause—the absolute ownership of the land by others, too remote from them to be sympathetic, to take due account of their feelings, to remember that they were their fellow-men. This was enough to slay compassion, even without the aggravation of dealing with an alien and suspected race. Now, it is instructive to observe these reappearances of wholesale crime. They warn us that the utmost achievements of human wickedness are human still ; not wild and grotesque importations by a fiend, origi nated in the abyss, foreign to the world we live in. Satan finds the material for his master-strokes in the estrangement of class from class, in the drying up of the fountains of reciprocal human feeling, in the failure of real, fresh, natural affection in our bosom for those who differ widely from us in rank or circumstances. All cruelties are possible when a man does not seem to us really a man, nor his woes really woeful. For when the man has sunk into an animal it is only a step to his vivisection. Nor does anything tend to deepen such perilous estrangement, more than the very education, culture and refinement, in which men seek a substitute for religion and the sense of brotherhood in Christ. It is quite conceivable that the tyrant who drowned the Hebrew infants was an affectionate father, and pitied his nobles when their children died. But his sym- i. 7-22.] THE OPPRESSION. 19 pathies could not reach beyond the barriers of a caste. Do our sympathies really overleap such barriers ? Would God that even His Church believed aright in the reality of a human nature like our own, soiled, sorrowful, shamed, despairing, drugged into that apathetical insensibility which lies even below despair, vet aching still, in ten thousand bosoms, in every great city of Christendom, every day and every night ! Would to God that she understood what Jesus meant, when He called one lost creature by the tender name which she had not yet forfeited, saying, “ Woman, where are thine accusers?” and when He asked Simon, who scorned such another, “Seest thou this woman!” Would God that when she prays for the Holy Spirit of Jesus she would really seek a mind like His, not only in piety and prayerfulness, but also in tender and heart¬ felt brotherhood with all, even the vilest of the weary and heavy-laden ! Many great works of ancient architecture, the pyramids among the rest, were due to the desire of crushing, by abject toil, the spirit of a subject people. We cannot ascribe to Hebrew labour any of the more splendid piles of Egyptian masonry, but the store cities or arsenals which they built can be identified. They are composed of such crude brick as the narrative describes ; and the absence of straw in the later portion of them can still be verified. Rameses was evidently named after their oppressor, and this strengthens the conviction that we are reading of events in the nineteenth dynasty, when the shepherd kings had recently been driven out, leaving the eastern frontier so weak as to demand additional fortresses, and so far depopulated as to give colour to the exaggerated assertion of Pharaoh, the people are more and mightier than we.” It is by 20 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. such exaggerations and alarms that all the worst crimes of statesmen have been justified to consenting peoples. And we, when we carry what seems to us a rightful object, by inflaming the prejudice and misleading the judgment of other men, are moving on the same treacherous and slippery inclines. Probably no evil is committed without some amount of justification, which the passions exaggerate, while they ignore the prohibitions of the law. How came it to pass that the fierce Hebrew blood, which was yet to boil in the veins of the Maccabees, and to give battle, not unworthily, to the Roman conquerors of the w r orld, failed to resent the cruelties of Pharaoh ? Partly, of course, because the Jewish people was only now becoming aware of its national existence; but also because it had forsaken God. Its religion, if not supplanted, w r as at least adulterated by the influence of the mystic pantheism and the stately ritual which surrounded them. Joshua bade his victorious followers to “put away the gods whom your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord V (Josh. xxiv. 14). And in Ezekiel the Lord Himself complains, “ They rebelled against Me and would not hearken unto Me; they did not cast away the abominations of their eyes, neither did they forsake the idols of Egypt" (Ezek. xx. 8). Now, there is nothing which enfeebles the spirit and breaks the courage like religious dependence. A strong priesthood always means a feeble people, most of all when they are of different blood. And Israel was now dependent on Egypt alike for the highest and lowest needs—grass for the cattle and religion for the soul. And when they had sunk so low, it is evident i.7-22.] THE OPPRESSION. 21 that their emancipation had to be wrought for them entirely without their help. From first to last they were passive, not only for want of spirit to help them¬ selves, but because the glory of any exploit of theirs might have illuminated some false deity whom they adored. Standing still, they saw the salvation of God, and it was not possible to give His glory to another. For this cause also, judgment had, first of all, to be wrought upon the gods of Egypt. In the meantime, without spirit enough to resist, the}'' saw complete destruction drawing nearer to them by successive strides. At first Pharaoh “ dealt wisely with them," and they found themselves entrapped into a hard bondage almost unawares. But a strange power upheld them, and the more they were afflicted the more they multiplied and spread abroad. In this they ought to have discerned a divine support, and remembered the promise to Abraham that God would multiply his seed as the stars of heaven. It may have helped them pre¬ sently to “ cry unto the Lord.” And the Egyptians were not merely 11 grieved ” because of them : they felt as the Israelites afterwards felt towards that monotonous diet of which they used the same word, and said, “our soul loatheth this light bread.” Here it expresses that fierce and contemptuous attitude which the Californian and Australian are now assuming toward the swarms of Chinamen whose labour is so indispensable, yet the infusion of whose blood into the population is so hateful. Then the Egyptians make their service rigorous, and their lives bitter. And at last that happens which is a part of every downward course: the veil is dropped; what men have done by stealth, and as if they would deceive them- 22 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. selves, they soon do consciously, avowing to their conscience what at first they could not face. Thus Pharaoh began by striving to check a dangerous popu¬ lation ; and ended by committing wholesale murder. Thus men become drunkards through conviviality, thieves through borrowing what they mean to restore, and hypocrites through slightly overstating what they really feel. And, since there are nice gradations in evil, down to the very last, Pharaoh will not yet avow publicly the atrocity which he commands a few humble women to perpetrate; decency is with him, as it is often, the last substitute for a conscience. Among the agents of God for the shipwreck of all full-grown wrongs, the chief is the revolt of human nature, since, fallen though we know ourselves to be, the image of God is not yet effaced in us. The better instincts of humanity are irrepressible—most so,perhaps among the poor. It is by refusing to trust its intuitions that men grow vile; and to the very last that refusal is never absolute, so that no villainy can reckon upon its agents, and its agents cannot always reckon upon themselves. Above all, the heart of every woman is in a plot against the wrong; and as Pharaoh was after¬ wards defeated by the ingenuity of a mother and the sympathy of his own daughter, so his first scheme was spoiled by the disobedience of the mid wives, themselves Idebrews, upon whom he reckoned. Let us not fear to avow 7 that these women, wdiom God rewarded, lied to the king when he reproached them, since their answer, even if it w 7 ere not unfounded, w r as palpably a misrepresentation of the facts. The reward was not for their falsehood, but for their humanity. They lived when the notion of martyrdom for an avow 7 al so easy to evade w r as utterly unknown. i. 7 - 22 .] THE OPPRESSION, 23 Abraham lied to Abimelech. Both Samuel and David equivocated with Saul. We have learned better things from the King of truth, Who was born and came into the world to bear witness to the truth. We know that the martyr’s bold protest against unrighteousness is the highest vocation of the Church, and is rewarded in the better country. But they knew nothing of this, and their service was acceptable according as they had, not according as they had not. As well might we blame the patriarchs for having been slave-owners, and David for having invoked mischief upon his enemies, as these women for having fallen short of the Christian ideal of veracity. Let us beware lest we come short of it ourselves. And let us remember that the way of the Church through time is the path of the just, beset with mist and vapour at the dawn, but shining more and more unto the perfect day. In the meantime, God acknowledges, and Holy Scripture celebrates, the service of these obscure and lowly heroines. Nothing done for Him goes unrewarded. To slaves it was written that “From the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ” (Col. iii. 24). And what these women saved for others was wdiat was recompensed to them¬ selves, domestic happiness, family life and its joys. God made them houses. The king is now driven to avow himself in a public command to drown all the male infants of the Hebrew's ; and the people become his accomplices by obeying him. For this they were yet to experience a terrible retri¬ bution, when there was not a house in Eg}'pt that had not one dead. The features of the king to whom these atrocities are pretty certainly brought home are still to be seen 24 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. in the museum at Boulak. Seti I. is the most beautiful of all the Egyptian monarchs whose faces lie bare to the eyes of modern sightseers; and his refined features, intelligent, high-bred and cheerful, resemble wonderfully, yet surpass, those of Rameses II., his successor, from whom Moses fled. This is the builder of the vast and exquisite temple of Amon at Thebes, the grandeur of which is amazing even in its ruins; and his culture and artistic gifts are visible, after all these centuries, upon his face. It is a strange comment upon the modern doctrine that culture is to become a sufficient substi¬ tute for religion. And his own record of his exploits is enough to show that the sense of beauty is not that of pity : he is the jackal leaping through the land of his enemies, the grim lion, the powerful bull with sharpened horns, who has annihilated the peoples. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that artistic refinement can either inspire morality or replace it. Have we quite forgotten Nero, and Lucretia Borgia, and Catherine de Medici ? Many civilisations have thought little of infant life. Ancient Rome would have regarded this atrocity as lightly as modern China, as we may see by the absolute silence of its literature concerning the murder of the innocents—an event strangely parallel with this in its nature and political motives, and in the escape of one mighty Infant. Is it conceivable that the same indifference should return, if the sanctions of religion lose their power? Every one remembers the callousness of Rousseau. Strange things are being written by pessimistic un¬ belief about the bringing of more sufferers into the world. And a living writer in France has advocated the legalising of infanticide, and denounced .St. Vincent i 7-22.] THE OPPRESSION. 25 de Paul because, " thanks to his odious precautions, this man deferred for years the death of creatures without intelligence,” etc.* It is to the faith of Jesus, not only revealing by the light of eternity the value of every soul, but also replenishing the fountains of human tenderness that had well-nigh become exhausted, that w T e owe our modern love of children. In the very helplessness which the ancient masters of the world exposed to destruction without a pang, we see the type of what we must ourselves become, if we would enter heaven. But we cannot afford to forget either the source or the sanctions of the lesson. * J. K. Fuysmans—quoted in Nineteenth Century , May 1888, p. 673- CHAPTER II. THE RESCUE OF MOSES. ii. I-io. E have said that the Old Testament history V V teems with political wisdom, lessons of perma¬ nent instruction for mankind, on the level of this life, yet godly, as all true lessons must be, in a world of which Christ is King. These our religion must learn to recognise and proclaim, if it is ever to win the respect of men of affairs, and ‘Heaven the whole lump” of human life with sacred influence. Such a lesson is the importance of the individual in the history of nations. History, as read in Scripture, is indeed a long relation of heroic resistance or of base compliance in the presence of influences which are at work to debase modern peoples as well as those of old. The holiness of Samuel, the gallant faith of David, the splendour and wisdom of Solomon, the fervid zeal of Elijah, the self-respecting righteousness of Nehemiah, —ignore these, and the whole course of affairs becomes vague and unintelligible. Most of all this is true of Moses, whose appearance is now related. In profane history it is the same. Alexander, Mahomet, Luther, William the Silent, Napoleon,—will any one pretend that Europe uninfluenced by these per¬ sonalities would have become the Europe that we know? ii. i-io.] THE RESCUE OF HOSES. 27 And this truth is not at all a speculative, unpractical theory: it is vital. For now there is a fashion 01 speaking about the tendency of the age, the time-spirit, as an irresistible force which moulds men like potters' clay, crowning those who discern and help it, but grinding to powder all who resist its course. In reality there are always a hundred time-spirits and tendencies competing for the mastery—some of them violent, selfish, atheistic, or luxurious (as we see with our own eyes to-day)—and the shrewdest judges are continually at fault as to which of them is to be victorious, and recognised hereafter as the spirit of the age. This modern pretence that men are nothing, and streams of tendency are all, is plainly a gospel of capitulations, of falsehood to one's private convictions, and of servile obedience to the majority and the popular cry. For, if individual men are nothing, what am I ? If we are all bubbles floating down a stream, it is folly to strive to breast the current. Much practical baseness and servility is due to this base and servile creed. And the cure for it is belief in another spirit than that of the present age, trust in an inspiring God, who rescued a herd of slaves and their fading convic¬ tions from the greatest nation upon earth by matching one man, shrinking and reluctant yet obedient to his mission, against Pharaoh and all the tendencies of the age. And it is always so. God turns the scale of events by the vast weight of a man, faithful and true, and sufficiently aware of Him to refuse, to universal clamour, the surrender of his liberty or his religion. In small matters, as in great, there is no man, faithful to a lonely duty or conviction, understanding that to have discerned it is a gift and a vocation, but makes the world 28 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. better and stronger, and works out part of the answer to that great prayer “ Thy will be done.” We have seen already that the religion of the Hebrews in Egypt was corrupted and in danger of being lost. To this process, however, there must have been bright exceptions ; and the mother of Moses bore witness, by her very name, to her fathers’ God. The first syllable of Jochebed is proof that the name of God, which became the keynote of the new revelation, was not entirely new. As yet the parents of Moses are not named ; nor is there any allusion to the close relationship which would have forbidden their union at a later period (chap, vi. 20). And throughout all the story of his youth and early manhood there is no mention whatever of God or of religion. Elsewhere it is not so. The Epistle tc the Hebrews declares that through faith the babe was hidden, and through faith the man refused Egyptian rank. Stephen tells us that he expected his brethren to know that God by his hand was giving them deliver¬ ance. But the narrative in Exodus is wholly untheo- logical. If Moses were the author, we can see why he avoided reflections which directly tended to glorify himself. But if the story w 7 ere a subsequent invention, why is the tone so cold, the light so colourless ? Now, it is w T ell that v T e are invited to look at all these things from their human side, observing the play of human affection, innocent subtlety, and pity. God commonly works through the heait and brain which He has given us, and we do net glorify Him at all by ignoring these. If in this case there were visible a desire to suppress the human agents, in favour of the Divine Preserver, we might suppose that a different historian would have given a less wonderful account ii. i-io,] THE RESCUE OF MOSES . 25 of the plagues, the crossing of the Sea, and the revela¬ tion from Sinai. But since full weight is allowed to second causes in the early life of Moses, the story is entitled to the greater credit when it tells of the burning bush and the flaming mountain. Let us, however, put together the various narratives and their lessons. At the outset we read of a marriage celebrated between kinsfolk, when the storm of perse¬ cution was rising. And hence we infer that courage or strong affection made the parents worthy of him through whom God should show mercy unto thousands. The first child was a girl, and therefore safe; but we may suppose, although silence in Scripture proves little, that Aaron, three years before the birth of Moses, had not come into equal peril with him. Moses was therefore born just when the last atrocity was devised, when trouble was at its height. “ At this time Moses w T as born/' said Stephen. Edi¬ fying inferences have been drawn from the statement in Exodus that u the woman . . . hid him." Perhaps the stronger man quailed, but the maternal instinct w r as not at fault, and it was rewarded abundantly. From which we only learn, in reality, not to overstrain the words of Scripture ; since the Epistle to the Hebrews distinctly says that he “ was hid three months by his parents "—both of them, while naturally the mother is the active agent. All the accounts agree that he was thus hidden, 0 because they saw that he was a goodly child " (Heb. xi. 23). It is a pathetic phrase. We see them, before the crisis, vaguely submitting in theory to an unrealised atrocity, ignorant how imperiously their nature would forbid the crime, not planning disobedience in advance, nor led to it by any reasoning process. All is changed 3o THE BOOK OF EXODUS. when the little one gazes at them with that marvellous appeal in its unconscious eyes, which is known to every parent, and helps him to be a better man. There is a great difference between one’s thought about an infant, and one’s feeling towards the actual baby. He was their child, their beautiful child ; and this it was that turned the scale. For him they would now dare anything, “ because they saw he w T as a gocdly child, and they were not afraid of the king’s command¬ ment.” Now, impulse is often a great power for evil, as when appetite or fear, suddenly taking visible shape, overwhelms the judgment and plunges men into guilt. But good impulses may be the very voice of God, stirring whatever is noble and generous within us. Nor are they accidental : loving and brave emotions belong to warm and courageous hearts; they come of themselves, like song birds, but they come surely where sunshine and still groves invite them, not into clamour and foul air. Thus arose in their bosoms the sublime thought of God as an active power to be reckoned upon. For as certainly as every bad passion that we harbour preaches atheism, so does all goodness tend to sustain itself by the consciousness of a supreme Goodness in reserve. God had sent them their beauti¬ ful child, and who was Pharaoh to forbid the gift ? And so religion and natural pity joined hands, their supreme convictions and their yearning for their infant. “ By faith Moses was hid . . . because they saw he was a goodly child, and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.” Such, if w r e desire a real and actual salvation, is always the faith which saves. Postpone salvation to an indefinite future; make it no more than the escape from vaguely realised penalties for sins which do not ii. I-IO.] THE RESCUE CF MOSES. 31 seem very hateful ; and you may suppose that faith in theories can obtain this indulgence; an opinion may weigh against a misgiving. But feel that sin is not only likely to entail damnation, but is really and in itself damnable meanwhile, and then there will be no deliverance possible, but from the hand of a divine Friend, strong to sustain and willing to guide the life. We read that Amram lived a hundred and thirty and seven years, and of all that period we only know that he helped to save the deliverer of his race, by practical faith which made him not afraid, and did not paralyse but stimulate his energies. When the mother could no longer hide the child, she devised the plan which has made her for ever famous. She placed him in a covered ark, or casket,* plaited (after what we know to have been the Egyptian fashion) of the papyrus reed, and rendered watertight with bitumen, and this she laid among the rushes—a lower vegetation, which would not, like the tall papyrus, hide her treasure—in the well-known and secluded place where the daughter of Pharaoh used to bathe. Something in the known character of the princess may have inspired this ingenious device to move her pity ; but it is more likely that the woman’s heart, in her extremity, prompted a simple appeal to the woman who could help her if she would. For an Egyptian princess was an important personage, with an establish¬ ment of her own, and often possessed of much political influence. The most sanguinary agent of a tyrant would be likely to respect the client of such a patron. * The same word is used for Noah's ark, but not elsewhere; not, for example, of the ark in the Temple, the name of which occurs else¬ where in Scripture only of the “ coffin ” of Joseph, and the “chest’' for the Temple revenues (Gen. 1 . 26; 2 Chron. vxiv. 8, 10, 11). 3 2 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. The heart of every woman was in a plot against the cruelty of Pharaoh. Once already the midwives had defeated him; and now, when his own daughter # unexpectedly found, in the water at her very feet, a beautiful child sobbing silently (for she knew not what was there until the ark was opened), her indignation is audible enough in the words, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” She means to say “ This is only one specimen of the outrages that are going on.” This was the chance for his sister, who had been set in ambush, not prepared with the exquisite device which follows, but simply 11 to know what would be done to him.” Clearly the mother had reckoned upon his being found, and neglected nothing, although unable herself to endure the agony of watching, or less easily hidden in that guarded spot. And her prudence had a rich reward. Hitherto Miriam’s duty had been to remain passive—that hard task so often imposed upor the affection, especially of women, by sickbeds, and also in many a more stirring hazard, and many a spiritual crisis, where none can fight his brother’s battle. It is a trying time, when love can only hold its breath, and pray. But let not love suppose that to watch is to do nothing. Often there comes a moment when its word, made wise by the teaching of the heart, is the all-import¬ ant consideration in deciding mighty issues. This girl sees the princess at once pitiful and em¬ barrassed, for how can she dispose of her strange charge? Let the moment pass, and the movement of her heart subside, and all may be lost; but Miriam is prompt and bold, and asks “ Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee ? ” It is a daring stroke, for the • Or his sister, the daughter of a former Pharoah. ii. I -10 .3 THE RESCUE OF MOSES. 33 princess must have understood the position thoroughly, the moment the eager Hebrew girl stepped forward. The disguise was very thin. And at least the heart which pitied the infant must have known the mother when she saw her face, pale with longing. It is there¬ fore only as a form, exacted by circumstances, but well enough though tacitly understood upon both sides, that she bids her nurse the child for her, and promises wages. What reward could equal that of clasping her child to her own agitated bosom in safety, while the destroyers were around ? This incident teaches us that good is never to be despaired of, since this kindly woman grew up in the family of the persecutor. And the promptitude and success of Miriam suggest a reflection. Men do pity, when it is brought home to them, the privation, suffering, and wrong, which lie around. Magnificent sums are contributed yearly for their relief by the generous instincts of the world. The misfortune is that sentiment is evoked only by visible and pathetic griefs, and that it will not labour as readily as it will subscribe. It is a harder task to investigate, to devise appeals, to invent and work the machinery by which misery may be relieved. Mere compassion will accomplish little, unless painstaking affection supplement it. Who supplies that? Who enables common humanity to relieve itself by simply paying il wages,” and confiding the wretched to a pains¬ taking, laborious, loving guardian ? The streets would never have known Hospital Saturday, but for Hospital Sunday in the churches. The orphanage is wholly a Christian institution. And so is the lady nurse. The old-fashioned phrase has almost sunk into a party cry, but in a large and noble sense it will continue to be 3 34 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. true to nature as long as bereavement, pain or peni¬ tence requires a tender bosom and soothing touch, which speaks of Mother Church. Thus did God fulfil His mysterious plans. And according to a sad but noble law, which operates widely, what was best in Egypt worked with Him for the punishment of its own evil race. The daughter of Pharaoh adopted the perilous foundling, and educated him in the wisdom of Egypt. THE CHOICE OF MOSES. ii. 11-15. God works even His miracles by means. As He fed the multitude with barley-loaves, so He w r ould emancipate Israel by human agency. It was therefore necessary to educate one of the trampled race “ in all the learning of Egypt/' and Moses was planted in the court of Pharaoh, like the German Arminius in Rome. Wonderful legends may be read in Josephus of his heroism, his wisdom, and his victories; and these have some foundation in reality, for Stephen tells us that he was mighty in his words and works. Might in w r ords need not mean the fluent utterance which he so earnestly disclaimed (iv. 10), even if forty years’ disuse of the language were not enough to explain his later diffidence. It may have meant such power of composition as appears in the hymn by the Red Sea, and in the magnificent valediction to his people. The point is that among a nation originally pastoral, and now sinking fast into the degraded animalism of slaves, which afterwards betrayed itself in their com¬ plaining greed, their sighs for the generous Egyptian dietary, and their impure carouse under the mountain, one man should possess the culture and mental grasp w • . ^ 11. 11-15] THE CHOICE OP MOSES. 35 needed by a leader and lawgiver. u Could not the grace cf God have supplied the place of endowment and attainment?" Yes, truly; and it was quite as likely to do this for one who came down from His immediate presence with his face intolerably bright, as for the last impudent enthusiast who declaims against the need of education in sentences which at least prove that for him the want has by no substitute been completely met. But the grace of God chose to give the qualification, rather than replace it, alike to Moses and St. Paul. Nor is there any conspicuous example among the saints of a man being thrust into 4 a rank for which he was not previously made fit. The painful contrast between his own refined tastes and habits, and the coarser manners of his nation, was no doubt one difficulty of the choice of Moses, and a lifelong trial to him afterwards. He is an example not only to those whom wealth and power would entangle, but to any who are too fastidious and sensitive for the humble company of the people of God. While the intellect of Moses was developing, it is plain that his connection 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 w r ere evidently found to instruct him in the history and messianic hopes of Israel, for he knew that their reproach was that of u the Christ," greater riches than all the treasure 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 36 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. moment. Like all the best workers, he was led forward gradually, at first unconscious of his vocation. Many 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. We saw that the piety of his parents was not un¬ helped by their emotions : they hid him by faith when they saw that he was a goodly child. Such was also the faith by which Moses broke with rank and fortune. He went cut unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. Twice the word of kinship is repeated ; and Stephen tells us that Moses himself used it in rebuking the dissensions of his fellow-countrymen. Filled with yearning and pity for his trampled brethren, and with the shame of generous natures who are at ease while others suffer, he saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew. With that blended caution and vehemence which belong to his nation still, he looked and saw that there was no man, and slew the Egyptian. Like most acts of passion, this was at once an impulse of the moment, and an outcome of long gathering forces — just as the lightning flash, sudden though it seem, has been prepared by the accumulated electricity of weeks. ii* ii-iS ] THE CHOICE OF MOSES. 37 And this is the reason why God allows the issues of a lifetime, perhaps of an eternity, to be decided by a sudden word, a hasty blow. Men plead that if time had been given, they would have stifled the impulse which ruined them. But what gave the impulse such violent and dreadful force that it overwhelmed them before they could reflect ? The explosion in the coal-mine is not caused by the sudden spark, without the accumula¬ tion of dangerous gases, and the absence of such wholesome ventilation as would carry them away. It is so in the breast where evil desires or tempers are harboured, unsubdued by grace, until any accident puts them beyond control. Thank God that such sudden movements do not belong to evil only! A high soul is surprised into heroism, as often perhaps as a mean one into theft or falsehood. In the case of Moses there was nothing unworthy, but much that was unwarranted and presumptuous. The decision it in¬ volved was on the right side, but the act was self-willed and unwarranted, and it carried heavy penalties. 11 The trespass originated not in inveterate cruelty/' says St. Augustine, “ but in a hasty zeal which admitted of correction . . . resentment against injury was accom¬ panied by love for a brother. . . . Here was evil to be rooted out, but the heart with such capabilities, like good soil, needed only cultivation to make it fruitful in virtue." Stephen tells us, what is very natural, that Moses expected the people to accept him as their heaven-born deliverer. From which it appears that he cherished high expectations for himself, from Israel if not from Egypt. When he interfered next day between two Hebrews, his question as given in Exodus is somewhat magisterial: “ Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow ? 11 In 3S THE BOOK OF EXODUS. Stephen’s version it dictates less, but it lectures a good deal: u Sirs, ye are brethren, why do ye wrong one to another ? ” And it was natural enough that they should dispute his pretensions, for God had not yet given him the rank he claimed. He still needed a discipline almost as sharp as that of Joseph, who, by talking too boastfully of his dreams, postponed their fulfilment until he was chastened by slavery and a dungeon. Even Saul of Tarsus, wdien converted, needed three years of close seclusion for the transformation of his fiery ardour into divine zeal, as iron to be tempered must be chilled as well as heated. The precipitate and violent zeal of Moses entailed upon him forty years of exile. And yet his was a noble patriotism. There is a false love of country, born of pride, which blinds one to her faults; and there is a loftier passion which will brave estrangement and denunciation to correct them. Such was the patriotism of Moses, and of all whom God has ever truly called to lead their fellows. Never¬ theless he had to suffer for his error. His first act had been a kind of manifesto, a claim to lead, which he supposed that they would have under¬ stood ; and yet, when he found his deed was known, he feared and fled. His false step told against him. One cannot but infer also that he was conscious of having already forfeited court favour—that he had before this not only made his choice, but announced it, and knew that the blow was ready to fall on him at any provocation. We read that he dwelt in the land of Midian, a name which w r as applied to various tracts according to the nomadic wanderings of the tribe, but which plainly included, at this time, some part of the peninsula formed by the tongues of the Red Sea. For, as he fed his flocks, he came to the Mount of God. if. 16 - 22 .] MOSES IN MID IAN. 39 MOSES IN MIDIAN. ii. 16-22. The interference of Moses on behalf of the daughters of the priest of Midian is a pleasant trait, courteous, and expressive of a refined nature. With this remark, and reflecting that, like many courtesies, it brought its reward, we are often content to pass it by. And yet it deserves a closer examination. I. For it expresses great energy of character. He might well have been in a state of collapse. He had smitten the Egyptian for Israel’s sake : he had appealed to his own people to make common cause, like brethren, against the common foe ; and he had offered himself to them as their destined leader in the struggle. But they had refused him the command, and he was rudely awakened to the consciousness that his life w r as in danger through the garrulous ingratitude of the man he rescued. Now he was a ruined man and an exile, marked for destruction by the greatest of earthly monarchs, with the habits and tastes of a great noble, but homeless among wild races. It was no common nature which was alert and ener¬ getic at such a time. The greatest men have known a period of prostration in calamity : it was enough for honour that they should rally and re-collect their forces. Thinking of Frederick, after Kunersdor r , resigning the command (“ I have no resources more, and will not survive the destruction of my country ”), and of his subsequent despatch, “ I am now recovered from my illness ”; and of Napoleon, trembling and weeping on the road to Elba, one turns with fresh admiration to the fallen prince, the baffled liberator, sitting exhausted by the well, but as keen on behalf 40 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. of liberty as when Pharaoh trampled Israel, though now the oppressors are a group of rude herdsmen, and the oppressed are Midianite women, driven from the troughs which they have toiled to fill. One remembers Another, sitting also exhausted by the well, defying social usage on behalf of a despised woman, and thereby inspired and invigorated as with meat to eat which His followers knew not of. 2 . Moreover there is disinterested bravery in the act, since he hazards the opposition of the men of the land, among whom he seeks refuge, on behalf of a group from which he can have expected nothing. And here it is worth while to notice the characteristic variations in three stories which have certain points of contact. The servant of Abraham, servant-like, was well content that Rebekah should draw for all his camels, while he stood still. The prudent Jacob, anxious to introduce himself to his cousin, rolled away the stone and watered her camels. Moses sat by the well, but did not interfere while the troughs were being filled : it was only the overt wrong which kindled him. But as in great things, so it is in small : our actions never stand alone; having once befriended them, he will do it thoroughly, “ and moreover he drew water for us, and watered the flock.” Such details could hardly have been thought out by a fabricator; a legend would not have allowed Moses to be slower in courtesy than Jacob ; * but the story fits the case exactly: his eyes were with his heart, and that was far away, until the injustice of the shepherds roused him. * Nor would it have made the women call their deliverer “an Egyptian,” for the Hebrew cast of features is very dissimilar. But Moses wore Egyptian dress, and the Egyptians worked mines in the peninsula, so that he was naturally taken for one of them. ii. 16-22.] MOSES IN MW IAN 41 And why was Moses thus energetic, fearless, and chivalrous ? Because he was sustained by the presence of the Unseen : he endured as seeing Him who is in¬ visible; and having, despite of panic, by faith forsaken Egypt, he was free from the absorbing anxieties which prevent men from caring for their fellows, free also from the cynical misgivings which suspect that violence is more than justice, that to be righteous overmuch is to destroy oneself, and that perhaps, after all, one may see a good deal of wrong without being called upon to interfere. It would be a different world to-day, if all who claim to be “ the salt of the earth ” w*ere as eager to repress injustice in its smaller and meaner forms as to make money or influential friends. If all petty and cowardly oppression were sternly trodden down, we should soon have a state of public opinion in which gross and large tyranny would be almost impossible. And it is very doubtful whether the flagrant wrongs, which must be comparatively rare, cause as much real mental suffering as the frequent small ones. Does mankind suffer more from wild beasts than from insects ? But how few that aspire to emancipate oppressed nations would be content, in the hour of their overthrow, to assert the rights of a handful of women against a trifling fraud, to which indeed they were so well accustomed that its omission surprised their father! Is it only because we are reading a history, and not a biography, that we find no touch of tenderness, like the love of Jacob for Rachel, in the domestic relations of Moses ? Joseph also married in a strange land, yet he called the name of his first son Manasseh, because God had made him to forget his sorrows: but Moses remembered 42 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. his. Neither wife nor child could charm away his home sickness ; he called his firstborn Gershom, because he was a sojourner in a strange land. In truth, his whole life seems to have been a lonely one. Miriam is called “ the sister of Aaron ” even when joining in the song of Moses (xv. 20), and with Aaron she made common cause against their greater brother (Num. xii. 1-2). Zipporah endangered his life rather than obey the covenant of circumcision; she complied at last with a taunt (iv. 24-6), and did not again join him until his victory over Amalek raised his position to the utmost height (xviii. 2). His children are of no account, and his grandson is the founder of a dangerous and enduring schism (Judges xviii. 30, R.V.). There is much reason to see here the earliest example of the sad rule that a prophet is not without honour save in his own house; that the law of compensations reaches farther into life than men suppose; and high position and great powers are too often counterbalanced by the isolation of the heart. CHAPTER III. THE BURNING BUSH, ii. 23—iiL 11 T N process of time the king of Egypt died,” pro- X bahly the great Raamses, no other of whose dynasty had a reign which extended over the indicated period of time. If so, he had while living every reason to expect an immortal fame, as the greatest among Egyptian kings, a hero, a conqueror on three con¬ tinents, a builder of magnificent works. But he has only won an immortal notoriety. “ Every stone in his buildings was cemented in human blood.” The cause he persecuted has made deathless the banished refugee, and has gibbeted the great monarch as a tyrant, whose misplanned severities wrought the ruin of his successor and his army. Such are the reversals of popular judgment: and such the vanity of fame. For all the contemporary fame was his. “ The children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried.” Another monarch had come at last, a change after sixty-seven years, and yet no change for them ! It filled up the measure of their patience, and also of the iniquity of Egypt. We are not told that their cry was addressed to the Lord; what we read is that it reached Him, Who still over¬ hears and pities many a sob, many a lament, which 44 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. ought to have been addressed to Him, and is not. Indeed, if His compassion were not to reach men until they had remembered and prayed to Him, who among us would ever have learned to pray to Him at all ? Moreover He remembered His covenant with their forefathers, for the fulfilment of which the time had now arrived. 11 And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them.” These were not the cries of rel'gious individuals, but of oppressed masses. It is therefore a solemn question to ask How many such appeals ascend from Christian England ? Behold, the hire of labourers . . . held back by fraud crieth out. The half-paid slaves of our haste to be rich, and the victims of our drinking institutions, and of hideous vices which entangle and destroy the innocent and unconscious, what cries to heaven are theirs! As surely as those which St. James records, these have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Of these sufferers every one is His own by purchase, most of them by a covenant and sacrament more solemn than bound Him to His ancient Israel. Surely He hears their groaning. And all whose hearts are touched with compassion, yet who hesitate whether to bestir themselves or to remain inert while evil is masterful and cruel, should re¬ member the anger of God when Moses said, “ Send, I pray Thee, by whom Thou wilt send." The Lord is not indifferent. Much less than other sufferers should those who know God be terrified by their afflictions. Cyprian encouraged the Church of his time to endure even unto martyrdom, by the words recorded of ancient Israel, that the more they afflicted them, so much the more they became greater and waxed stronger. And he was right. For all these things •• «^ ••• *1 11. 23-111. ] THE BURNING BUSH. 45 happened to them for ensamples, and were written for our admonition. It is further to be observed that the people were quite unconscious, until Moses announced it after¬ wards, that the}' were heard by God. Yet their deliverer had now been prepared by a long process for his work. We are not to despair because relief does not immediately appear: though He tarry, we are to wait for Him. While this anguish was being endured in Egypt, Moses was maturing for his destiny. Self-reliance, pride of place, hot and impulsive aggressiveness, were dying in his bosom. To the education of the courtier and scholar was now added that of the shepherd in the wilds, amid the most solemn and awful scenes of nature, in solitude, humiliation, disappointment, and, as we learn from the Epistle to the Hebrews, in enduring faith. Wordsworth has a remarkable description of the effect of a similar discipline upon the good Lord Clifford. He tells— 41 How he, long forced in humble paths to go, Was softened into feeling, soothed and tamed. “Love had he found in huts where poor men lie, His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills. “ In him the savage virtues of the race, Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts, were dead; Nor did he change, but kept in lofty place The wisdom which adversity had bred.” There was also the education of advancing age, which teaches many lessons, and among them two which are essential to leadership,—the folly of a hasty blow, and of impulsive reliance upon the support of mobs. 4 6 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. Moses the man-slayer became exceeding meek; and he ceased to rely upon the perception of his people that God by him would deliver them. His distrust, indeed, became as excessive as his temerity had been, but it was an error upon the safer side. “Behold, they will not believe rne,” he says, “ nor hearken unto my voiced* It is an important truth that in very few lives the decisive moment comes just when it is expected. Men allow themselves to be self-indulgent, extravagant and even wicked, often upon the calculation that their present attitude matters little, and they will do very differently when the crisis arrives, the turning-point in their career to nerve them. And they waken up with a start to find their career already decided, their character moulded. As a snare shall the day of the Lord come upon all flesh; and as a snare come all His great visitations meanwhile. When Herod was drinking among bad companions, admiring a shame¬ less dancer, and boasting loudly of his generosity, he was sobered and saddened to discover that he had laughed away the life of his only honest adviser. Moses, like David, was “ following the ewes great with young,’* when summoned by God to rule His I cople Israel. Neither did the call arrive when he was plunged in moody reverie and abstraction, sighing over his lost fortunes and his defeated aspirations, rebelling against his lowly duties. The humblest labour is a preparation for the brightest revelations, whereas discontent, however lofty, is a preparation for nothing. Thus, too, the birth of Jesus was first announced to shepherds keeping watch over their flock. Yet hundreds of third-rate young persons in every city in this land to-day neglect their work, and unfit themselves for any insight, or any leadership THE BURNING BUSH 47 iii. 2.] whatever, by chafing against the obscurity of their vocation. Who does not perceive that the career of Moses hitherto was divinely directed ? The fact that we feel this, although, until now, God has not once been mentioned in his personal story, is surely a fine lesson for those who have only one notion of what edifies—the dragging of the most sacred names and phrases into even the most unsuitable connections. In truth, such a phraseo¬ logy is much less attractive than a certain tone, a recognition of the unseen, which may at times be more consistent with reverential silence than with obtrusive utterance. It is enough to be ready and fearless when the fitting time comes, which is sure to arrive, for the religious heart as for this narrative—the time for the natural utterance of the great word, God. We read that the angel of the Lord appeared to him—a remarkable phrase, which was already used in connection with the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. xxii. 11). How much it implies will better be discussed in the twenty-third chapter, where a fuller statement is made. For the present it is enough to note, that this is one pre-eminent angel, indicated by the definite article ; that he is clearly the medium of a true divine appearance, because neither the voice nor form of any lesser being is supposed to be employed, the appearance being that of fire, and the words being said to be the direct utterance of the Lord, not of any one who says, Thus saith the Lord. We shall see hereafter that the story of the Exodus is unique in this respect, that in training a people tainted with Egyptian superstitions, no ‘ simili¬ tude' is seen, as when there wrestled a man with Jacob, or when Ezekiel saw a human form upon the sapphire pavement. 48 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. Man is the true image of God, and His perfect revelation was in flesh. But now that expression of Himself w r as perilous, and perhaps unsuitable besides ; for He w r as to be known as the Avenger, and presently As the Giver of Law, with its inflexible conditions and its menaces. Therefore He appeared as fire, w 7 hich is intense and terrible, even when “ the flame of the grace of God does not consume, but illuminates.” There is a notion that religion is languid, repressive, and unmanly. But such is not the scriptural idea. In His presence is the fulness of joy. Christ has come that we might have life, and might have it more abund¬ antly. They who are shut out from His blessedness are said to be asleep and dead. And so Origen quotes this passage among others, with the comment that “ As God is a fire, and His angels a flame of fire, and all the saints fervent in spirit, so they who have fallen aw r ay from God are said to have cooled, or to have become cold ” (De Principe ii. 8). A revelation by fire involves intensity. There is indeed another explanation of the burning bush, w 7 hich makes the flame express only the afflic¬ tions that did not consume the people. But this would be a strange adjunct to a divine appearance for their deliverance, speaking rather of the continuance of suffering than of its termination, for which the extinc¬ tion of such fire w 7 ould be a more appropriate symbol. Yet there is an element of truth even in this view, since fire is connected with affliction. In His holiness God is light (w 7 ith which, in the Hebrew, the very word for holiness seems to be connected); in His judgments lie is fire. “The Light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Ho ] y One for a flame, and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day ” (Isa. x. 17). iii. 2 - 13 .] THE BURNING BUSH. 49 But God reveals Himself in this thorn bush as a fire which does not consume; and such a revelation tells at once Who has brought the people into affliction, and also that they are not abandoned to it. To Moses at first there was visible only an extra¬ ordinary phenomenon ; He turned to see a great sight. It is therefore out of the question to find here the truth, so easy to discover elsewhere, that God rewards the religious inquirer—that they who seek after Him shall find Him. Rather we learn the folly of deeming that the intellect and its inquiries are at war with religion and its n^steries, that revelation is at strife with mental insight, that he who most stupidly refuses to “see the great sights” of nature is best entitled to interpret the voice of God. When the man of science gives ear to voices not of earth, and the man of God has eyes and interest for the divine wonders which surround us, many a discord will be harmonised. With the revival of classical learning came the Reformation. But it often happens that the curiosity of the in¬ tellect is in danger of becoming irreverent, and obtrusive into mysteries not of the brain, and thus the voice of God must speak in solemn warning: “ Moses, Moses, . . . Draw not nigh hither : put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” After as prolonged a silence as from the time of Malachi to the Baptist, it is God Who reveals Himself once more—not Moses who by searching finds Him out. And this is the established rule. Tidings of the In¬ carnation came from heaven, or man would not have discovered the Divine Babe. Jesus asked His two first disciples u What seek ye ? ” and told Simon “ Thou shalt be called Cephas,” and pronounced the listening 4 50 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. Nathaniel u an Israelite indeed/’ and bade Zaccheus “make haste and come down/’ in each case before He was addressed by them. The first words of Jehovah teach something more than ceremonial reverence. If the dust of common earth on the slice of Moses may not mingle with that sacred soil, how dare we carry into the presence of our God mean passions and selfish cravings ? Observe, too, that while Jacob, w r hen he aw T oke from his vision, said, “How dreadful is this place!” (Gen. xxviii. 17), God Himself taught Moses to think rather of the holiness than the dread of His abode. Nevertheless Moses also was afraid to look upon God, and hid the face which w ? as thereafter to be veiled, for a nobler reason, when it was itself illumined with the divine glory. Humility before God is thus the path to the highest honour, and reverence, to the closest intercourse. Meantime the Divine Person has announced Himself: “ I am the God of thy father ” (father is apparently singular w r ith a collective force), “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” It is a blessing which every Christian parent should bequeath to his child, to be strengthened and invigorated by thinking of God as his father’s God. It was with this memorable announcement that Jesus refuted the Sadducees and established His doctrine of the resurrection. So, then, the bygone ages are not forgotten : Moses may be sure that a kindly relation exists between God and himself, because the kindly relation still exists in all its vital force which once bound Him to those who long since appeared to die. It w r as impossible, therefore, our Lord inferred, that they had really died at all. The argument is a forerunner of that by which St. Paul concludes, from tne resurrec- ni. 2-13.] THE BURNING BUSH. 51 tion of Christ, that none who are u in Christ ” have perished. Nay, since our Lord was not disputing about immortality only, but the resurrection of the body, His argument implied that a vital relationship with God involved the imperishability of the whole man, since all was His, and in truth the very seal of the covenant was imprinted upon the flesh. How much stronger is the assurance for us, who know T that our very bodies are His temple! Now, if any suspicion should arise that the argument, which is really subtle, is over-refined and untrustworthy, let it be observed that no sooner was this announcement made, than God added the proclamation of His own immutability, so that it cannot be said He was, but from age to age His title is I AM. The inference from the divine permanence to the living and permanent vitality of all His relationships is not a verbal quibble, it is drawn from the very central truth of this great scripture. And now for the first time God calls Israel My people, adopting a phrase already twice employed by earthly rulers (Gen. xxiii. II, xli. 40), and thus making Himself their king and the champion of their cause. Often afterwards it was used in pathetic appeal:— li Thou hast showed Thy people hard things,”—“ Thou sellest Thy people for nought,”—Behold, look, we beseech Thee; we are all Thy people ” (Ps. lx. 3, xliv. 12; Isa. Ixiv. 9). And often it expressed the returning favour of their king : “ Hear, O My people, and I will speak ”; “ Comfort ye, comfort ye My people” (Ps. 1 . 7; Isa. xl. 1). It is used of the nation at large, all ol whom were brought into the covenant, although with many of them God was not well pleased. And since it does not belong only to saints, but speaks of a grace which THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 52 might be received in vain, it is a strong appeal to all Christian people, all who are within the New Coven¬ ant. Them also the Lord claims and pities, and would gladly emancipate : their sorrows also He knows. “ 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 out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey." Thus the ways of God exceed the desires of men. Their subsequent complaints are evidence that Egypt had become their country : gladly would they have shaken off the iron yoke, but a successful rebellion is a revo¬ lution, not an Exodus. Their destined home was very different: with the widest variety of climate, scenery, and soil, a land which demanded much more regular husbandry, but rewarded labour with exuberant fertility. Secluded from heathenism by deserts on the south and east, by a sublime range of mountains on the north, and by a sea with few havens on the west, yet planted in the very bosom of all the ancient civilisation which at the last it was to leaven, it was a land where a faithful people could have dwelt alone and not been reckoned among the nations, yet where the scourge for disobedience was never far away. Next after the promise of this good land, the com¬ mission of Moses is announced. He is to act, because God is already active : u I am come down to deliver them . . . come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth My people.” And let this truth encourage all who are truly sent of God, to the end of time, that He does not send us to deliver man, until He is Himself prepared to do so; iii. 2-13.] THE BURNING BUSH. 53 that when our fears ask, like Moses, Who am I, that I should go ? He does not answer, Thou art capable, but Certainly I will go with thee. So, wherever the ministry of the word is sent, there is a true purpose of grace. There is also the presence of One who claims the right to bestow upon us the same encouragement which was given to Moses by Jehovah, saying, “ Lo, I am with you alway.” In so saying, Jesus made Him¬ self equal with God. And as this ancient revelation of God was to give rest to a w r eary and heavy-laden people, so Christ bound together the assertion of a more perfect revela¬ tion, made in Him, with the promise of a grander emancipation. No man knoweth the Father save by revelation of the Son is the doctrine which introduces the great offer 11 Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest " (Matt. xi. 27, 28). The claims of Christ in the New Testament will never be fully recognised until a careful study is made of His treatment of the functions which in the Old Testament are regarded as Divine. A curious expression follows : " This shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee : When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain." It seems but vague encouragement, to offer Moses, hesitating at the moment, a token which could take effect only when his task was wrought. And yet we know how much easier it is to believe what is thrown into distinct shape and particularised. Our trust in gocd intentions is helped when their expression is detailed and circumstantial, as a candidate for office will reckon all general assurances of support much cheaper than a pledge to canvass certain electors within a certain time. Such is the constitution of 54 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. human nature; and its Maker has often deigned to sustain its weakness by going thus into particulars. He does the same for us, condescending to embody the most profound of all mysteries in sacramental emblems, clothing his promises of our future blessed¬ ness in much detail, and in concrete figures which at least symbolise, if they do not literally describe, the glories of the Jerusalem which is above. A NEW NAME. iii. 14. vi. 2, 3. “ 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.” We cannot certainly tell why Moses asked for a new name by which to announce to his brethren the appearance of God. He may have felt that the memory of their fathers, and of the dealings of God with them, had faded so far out of mind that merely to indicate their ancestral God would not sufficiently distinguish Him from the idols of Egypt, whose wor¬ ship had infected them. If so, he was fully answered by a name which made this God the one reality, in a world where all is a phantasm except what derives stability from Him. He may have desired to know, for himself, whether there was any truth in the dreamy and fascinating pantheism which inspired so much of the Egyptian superstition. In that case, the answer met his question by declar¬ ing that God existed, not as the sum of things or soul of the universe, but in Himself, the only independent Being. Or he may simply have desired some name to iii. 14 . vi. 2 , 3 .] A NEW NAME. 55 express more of the mystery of deity, remembering how a change of name had accompanied new dis¬ coveries of human character and achievement, as of Abraham and Israel; and expecting a new name like¬ wise when God would make to His people new revela¬ tions of Himself. So natural an expectation was fulfilled not only then, but afterwards. When Moses prayed "Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory,” the answer was " I will make all My goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord.” The proclamation was again Jehovah, but not this alone. It was "The Lord, the Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth ” (xxxiii. 18, 19, xxxiv. 6, R.V.) Thus the life of Moses, like the agelong progress of the Church, advanced towards an ever-deepening knowledge that God is not only the Independent but the Good. All sets toward the final knowledge that His highest name is Love. Meanwhile, in the development of events, the exact period w T as come for epithets, which were shared with gods many and lords many, to be supplemented by the formal announcement and authoritative adoption of His proper name Jehovah. The infant nation was to learn to think of Him, not only as endowed with attributes of terror and pow r er, by which enemies would be crushed, but as possessing a certain well- defined personality, upon which the trust of man could repose. Soon their experience would enable them to receive the formal announcement that He was merciful and gracious. But first they were required to trust His promise amid all discouragements; and to this end, stability was the attribute first to be insisted upon. It is true that the derivation of the word Jehovah is 56 THE BOOK OF EXODUS . still a problem for critical acumen. It has been sought in more than one language, and various shades of meaning have been assigned to it, some untenable in the abstract, others hardly, or not at all, to be reconciled with the Scriptural narrative. Nay, the corruption of the very sound is so notorious, that it is only worth mention as illustrating a phase of superstition. We smile at the Jews, removing the correct vowels lest so holy a word should be irreverently spoken, placing the sanctity in the cadence, hoping that light and flippant allusions may offend God less, so long as they spare at least the vowels of His name, and thus preserve some vestige undesecrated, while profaning at once the conception of His majesty and the consonants of the mystic word. A more abject superstition could scarcely have made void the spirit, while grovelling before the letter of the commandment. But this very superstition is alive in other forms to-day. Whenever one recoils from the sin of coarse blasphemy, yet allows himself the enjoyment of a polished literature which profanes holy conceptions,— whenever men feel bound to behave with external propriety in the house of God, yet bring thither wandering thoughts, vile appetites, sensuous imagina¬ tions, and all the chamber of imagery which is within the unregenerate heart,—there is the same despicable superstition which strove to escape at least the extreme of blasphemy by prudently veiling the Holy Name before profaning it. But our present concern is with the practical message conveyed to Israel when Moses declared that Jehovah, 1 am, the God of their fathers, had appeared unto him. iii. 14 . vi. 2 , 3 .] A NEW NAME. 57 And if we find in it a message suited for the time, and which is the basis, not the superstructure, both of later messages and also of the national character, then we shall not fail to observe the bearing of such facts upon an urgent controversy of this time. Some significance must have been in that Name, not too abstract for a servile and degenerate race to appre¬ hend. Nor was it soon to pass away and be replaced ; it was His memorial throughout all generations ; and therefore it has a message for us to-day, to admonish and humble, to invigorate and uphold. That God would be the same to them as to their fathers was much. But that it was of the essence of His character to be evermore the same, immutable in heart and mind and reality of being, however their conduct might modify His bearing towards them, this indeed would be a steadying and reclaiming consciousness. Accordingly Moses receives the answer for himself, “ I am that I am”; and he is bidden to tell his people u I am hath sent me unto you,” and yet again (l Jehovah the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you.” The spirit and tenor of these three names may be said to be virtually comprehended in the first; and they all speak of the essential and self-existent Being, unchanging and unchangeable. I am expresses an intense reality of being. No image in the dark recesses of Egyptian or Syrian temples, grotesque and motionless, can win the adoration of him who has had communion with such a veritable existence, or has heard His authentic message. No dreamful pantheism, on its knees to the beneficent principle expressed in one deity, to the destructive in another, or to the reproductive in a third, but all of 53 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. them dependent upon nature, as the rainbow upon the cataract which it spans, can ever again satisfy the soul which is athirst for the living God, the Lord, Who is not personified, but is. This profound sense of a living Person within reach, to be offended, to pardon, and to bless, was the one force which kept the Hebrew nation itself alive, with a vitality unprecedented since the world began. They could crave His pardon, whatever natural retributions they had brought down upon themselves, whatever tendencies of nature they had provoked, because He was not a dead law without ears or a heart, but their merciful and gracious God. Not the most exquisite subtleties of innuendo and irony could make good for a day the monstrous paradox that the Hebrew religion, the worship of I am, was really nothing but the adoration of that stream of tendencies which makes for righteousness. Israel did not challenge Pharaoh through having suddenly discovered that goodness ultimately prevails over evil, nor is it any cold calculation of the sort which ever inspires a nation or a man with heroic fortitude. But they were nerved by the announcement that they had been remembered by a God Who is neither an ideal nor a fancy, but the Reality of realities, beside Whom Pharaoh and his host were but as phantoms. I am that i am is the style not only of permanence, but of permanence self-contained, and being a dis¬ tinctive title, it denies such self-contained permanence to others. Man is as the past has moulded him, a compound of attainments and failures, discoveries and disillusions, his eyes dim with forgotten tears, his hair grey with surmounted anxieties, his brow furrowed with bygone lii. 14 . vi. 2 , 3 .] A NEW NAME. 59 studies, his conscience troubled with old sin. Modern unbelief Is ignobly frank respecting him. He is the sum of his parents and his wet-nurse. He is what he eats. If he drinks beer, he thinks beer. And it is the element of truth in these hideous paradoxes which makes them rankle, like an unkind construction put upon a questionable action. As the foam is what wind and tide have made of it, so are we the product of our circumstances, the resultant of a thousand forces, far indeed from being self-poised or self-contained, too often false to our best self, insomuch that probably no man is actually what in the depth of self-consciousness he feels himself to be, what moreover he should prove to be, if only the leaden weight of constraining circum¬ stance were lifted off the spring which it flattens down to earth. Moses himself was at heart a very different person from the keeper of the sheep of Jethro. There¬ fore man says, Pity and make allowance for me : this is not my true self, but only what by compression, by starvation and stripes and bribery and error, I have become. Only God says, I am that I am. Yet in another sense, and quite as deep a one, man is not the coarse tiss-ue which past circumstances have woven : he is the seed of the future, as truly as the fruit of the past. Strange compound that he is of memory and hope, while half of the present depends on what is over, the other half is projected into the future; and like a bridge, sustained on these two banks, life throws its quivering shadow on each moment that fleets by. It is not attainment, but degradation to live upon the level of one's mere attainment, no longer uplifted by any aspiration, fired by any emulation, goaded by any but carnal fears. If we have been shaped by circumstances, yet we are saved by hope. 6 o THE BOOK OF EXODUS. Do net judge me, we are all entitled to plead, by anything that I am doing or have done: He only can appraise a soul a right Who knows what it yearns to become, what within itself it hates and prays to be delivered from, what is the earnestness of its self- loathing, what the passion of its appeal to heaven. As the bloom of next April is the true comment upon the dry bulb of September, as you do not value the fountain by the pint of water in its basin, but by its inex¬ haustible capabilities of replenishment, so the present and its joyless facts are not the true man; his possibilities, the fears and hopes that control his destiny and shall unfold it, these are his real self. I am not merely what I am : I am very truly that which I long to be. And thus, man may plead, I am what I move tovrards and strive after, my aspiration is myself. But God says, I am 'what I am. The stream hurries forward: the rock abides. And this is the Rock of Ages. Now, such a conception is at first sight not far re¬ moved from that apathetic and impassive kind of deity which the practical atheism of ancient materialists could well afford to grant ;—“ ever in itself enjoying immortality together with supreme repose, far removed and withdrawn from our concerns, since it, exempt from every pain, exempt from all danger, strong in its own resources and wanting nought from us, is neither gained by favour nor moved by wrath.” Thus Lucretius conceived of the absolute Being as by the necessity of its nature entirely outside our system. But Moses was taught to trust in Jehovah as inter¬ vening, pitying sorrow and wrong, coming down to assist His creatures in distress. How r could this be possible? Clearly the movement iii. 14 . vi. 2 , 3 .] A NEW NAME. 61 towards them must be wholly disinterested, and wholly from within ; unbought, since no external influence can modify His condition, no puny sacrifice can propitiate Him Who sitteth upon the circle of the earth and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers : a movement prompted by no irregular emotional impulse, but an abiding law of His nature, incapable of change, the movement of a nature, personal indeed, yet as steady, as surely to be reckoned upon in like circumstances, as the operations of gravitation are. There is no such motive, working in such magnificent regularity for good, save one. The ultimate doctrine of the New Testament, that God is Love, is already involved in this early assertion, that being wholly independent of us and our concerns, He is yet not indifferent to them, so that Moses could say unto the children of Israel u I am hath sent me unto you." It is this unchangeable consistency of Divine action which gives the narrative its intense interest to us. To Moses, and therefore to all who receive any com¬ mission from the skies, this title said, Frail creature, sport of circumstances and of tyrants, He who com¬ missions thee sits above the waterfloods, and their rage can as little modify or change His purpose, now committed to thy charge, as the spray can quench the stars. Perplexed creature, whose best self lives only in aspiration and desire, now thou art an instrument in the hand of Him with Whom desire and attainment, will and fruition, are eternally the same. None truly fails in fighting for Jehovah, for who hath resisted His will ? To Israel, and to all the oppressed whose minds are open to receive the tidings and their faith strong to embrace it, He said, Your life is blighted, and your 62 THE BOOK OF EXODUS . future is in the hand of taskmasters, yet be of good cheer, for now your deliverance is undertaken by Him Whose being and purpose are one, Who is in perfec¬ tion of enjoyment all that He is in contemplation and in will. The rescue of Israel by an immutable and perfect God is the earnest of the breaking of every yoke. And to the proud and godless world which knows Him not, He says, Resistance to My will can only show forth all its power, which is not at the mercy of opinion or interest or change: I sit upon the throne, not only supreme but independent, not only victorious but unassailable; self-contained, self-poised and self- sufficing, I AM THAT I AM. Have we now escaped the inert and self-absorbed deity of Lucretius, only to fall into the palsying grasp of the tyrannous deity of Calvin ? Does our own human will shrivel up and become powerless under the compulsion of that immutability with which we are strangely brought into contact ? Evidently this is not the teaching of the Book of Exodus. For it is here, in this revelation of the Supreme, that we first hear of a nation as being His: “ I have seen the affliction of My people which is in Egypt . . . and I have come down to bring them into a good land.” They w r ere all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. Yet their carcases fell in the wilderness. And these things were written for cur learning. The immutability, which suffers no shock when we enter into the covenant, remains unshaken also if we depart from the living God. The sun shines alike when we raise the curtain and when w T e drop it, when our chamber is illumined and when it is dark. The immutability of God is not in His operations, for iii. 14. vi. 2, 3.] A NEW NAME. 63 sometimes He gave His people into the hand of their enemies, and again He turned and helped them. It is in His nature, His mind, in the principles which guide His actions. If He had not chastened David for his sin, then, by acting as before, He would have been other at heart than when He rejected Saul for dis¬ obedience and chose the son of Jesse to fulfil all His word. The wind has veered, if it continues to propel the vessel in the same direction, although helm and sails are shifted. Such is the Pauline doctrine of His immutability. “ If we endure we shall also reign with Him : if we shall deny Him, He also will deny us,”—and such is the necessity of His being, for w T e cannot sway Him with our changes : “ if we are faithless, He abideth faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.” And therefore it is presently added that “the firm foundation of the Lord standeth sure, having” not only “this seal, that the Lord knoweth those that are His,”—but also this, " Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness” (2 Tim. ii. 12, 13, 19, R.V.). The Lord knew that Israel was His, yet for their unrighteousness He sware in His wrath that they should not enter into His rest. It follows from all this that the new name of God was no academic subtlety, no metaphysical refinement of the schools, unfitly revealed to slaves, but a most practical and inspiring truth, a conviction to warm their blood, to rouse their courage, to convert their despair into confidence and their alarms into defiance. They had the support of a God worthy of trust. And thenceforth every answer in righteousness, every new disclosure of fidelity, tenderness, love, was not an abnormal phenomenon, the uncertain grace of 64 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. a capricious despot; no, its import was permanent as an observation of the stars by an astronomer, ever more to be remembered in calculating the movements of the universe. In future troubles they could appeal to Him to awake as in the ancient days, as being He who “cut Rahab and wounded the Dragon.” “ I am the Lord, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” And as the sublime and beautiful conception of a loving spiritual God was built up slowly, age by age, tier upon tier, this was the foundation which insured the the stability of all, until the Head Stone of the Corner gave completeness to the vast design, until men saw and could believe in the very Incarnation of all Love, un¬ shaken amid anguish and distress and seeming failure, immovable, victorious, while they heard from human lips the awful words, “ Before Abraham was, I am.” Then they learned to identify all this ancient lesson of trust¬ worthiness with new and more pathetic revelations of affection : and the martyr at the stake grew strong as he remembered that the Man of Sorrows was the same yes¬ terday and to-day and for ever; and the great apostle, prostrate before the glory of his Master, was restored by the touch of a human hand, and by the voice of Him upon Whose bosom he had leaned, saying, Fear not, I am the First and the Last and the Living One. And if men are once more fain to rend from humanity that great assurance, w 7 hich for ages, amid all shocks, has made the frail creature of the dust to grow strong and firm and fearless, partaker of the Divine Nature, what will they give us in its stead ? Or do they think us too strong of will, too firm of purpose ? Looking around us, w r e see nations heaving with in¬ ternal agitations, armed to the teeth against each other, ill. io, 16-22 ] THE COMMISSION. 65 and all things like a ship at sea reeling to and fro, and staggering like a drunken man. There is no stability for us in constitutions or old formulae—none anywhere, if it be not in the soul of man. Well for us, then, that the anchor of the soul is sure and steadfast! well that unnumbered millions take courage from their Saviour's w 7 ord, that the world's worst anguish is the beginning, not of dissolution, but of the birth-pangs of a new heaven and earth,—that when the clouds are blackest because the light of sun and moon is quenched, then, then we shall behold the Immutable unveiled, the Son of Man, who is brought nigh unto the Ancient of Days, now sitting in the clouds of heaven, and coming in the glory of His Father 1 THE COMMISSION. iii. 10, 16-22. We have already learned from the seventh verse that God commissioned Moses, only when He had Himself descended to deliver Israel. He sends none, except with the implied or explicit promise that certainly He will be with them. But the converse is also true. If God sends no man but when He comes Himself, He never comes without demanding the agency of man. The overruled reluctance of Moses, and the inflexible urgency of his commission, may teach us the honour set by God upon humanity. He has knit men together in the mutual dependence of nations and of families, that each may be His minister to all; and in every great crisis of history He has respected His own principle, and has visited the race by means of the providential man. The gospel was not preached by angels. Its first agents found themselves like sheep among wolves : 5 66 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. they were an exhibition to the w’orld and to angels and men, yet necessity was laid upon them, and a wee if they preached it not. All the best gifts of heaven come to us by the agency of inventor and sage, hero and explorer, organiser and philanthropist, patriot, reformer and saint. And the hope which inspires their grandest effort is never that of selfish gain, nor even of fame, though fame is a keen spur, which perhaps God set before Moses in the noble hope that “ thou shalt bring forth the people ” (ver. 12). But the truly impelling force is always the great deed itself, the haunting thought, the importunate inspiration, the inward fire; and so God promises Moses neither a sceptre, nor share in the good land : He simply proposes to him the work, the rescue of the people; and Moses, for his part, simply objects that he is unable, not that he is solicitous about his reward. Whatever is done for payment can be valued by its cost: all the priceless services done for us by our greatest were, in very deed, unpriced. 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 emancipation 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. The blustering assurance with which certain fanatics of our own time first assume that they possess a direct commission from the skies, and thereupon that they iii. 10, 16-22.] THE COMMISSION. 67 are freed from all order, from all recognition of any human authority, and then that no considerations of prudence or of decency should restrain the violence and bad taste which they mistake for zeal, is curiously unlike an}dhing in the Old Testament or the New. Was ever a commission more direct than those of Moses and of St. Paul? Yet Moses was to obtain the recognition of the elders of his people ; and St. Paul received formal ordination by the explicit command of God (Acts xiii. 3). Strangely enough, it is often assumed that this demand for a furlough of three days was insincere. But it would only have been so, if consent were expected, and if the intention were 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, u 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 recognised leaders. Certainly Pharaoh could not listen to any such proposal, unless he were prepared to reverse the whole policy of his dynasty toward Israel. But the refusal answered two good ends. In the first place it joined issue on the best conceivable ground, for Israel was exhibited making the least possible demand with the greatest possible courtesy —“ Let us go, we pray thee, three days’ journey into the wilder- 68 THE BOOK OF EXODUS . ness.” Not even so much would be granted. The tyrant was palpably in the wrong, and thenceforth it was perfectly reasonable to increase the severity of the terms after each of his defeats, which proceeding in its turn made concession more and more galling to his pride. In the second place, the quarrel was from the first avowedly and undeniably religious : the gods of Egypt were matched against Jehovah; and in the successive plagues which desolated his land Pharaoh gradually learnt Who Jehovah was. In the message which Moses should convey to the elders there are two significant phrases. 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 Revelation, He walks among the golden candlesticks, and knows the work, the patience, or the unfaithfulness of each. So He is not far from any one of us. When a heavy blow falls we speak of it as 11 a Visitation of Provi¬ dence,” 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 ? Again it is said, “ I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt into ... a land flowing with milk and honey.” Their affliction 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. Now, we wonder that the Israelites clung so fondly to the place of their captivity. But what of our own hearts ? Have they lii. 10, 16-22.] THE COMMISSION. 69 a desire to depart ? or do they groan in bondage, and yet recoil from their emancipation ? The hesitating nation is not plainly told that their affliction will be intensified and their lives made burdensome with labour. That is perhaps implied in the certainty that Pharaoh “will not let you go, no, not by a mighty hand." But it is with Israel as with us : a general knowledge that in the world we shall have tribulation is enough ; the catalogue of our trials is not spread out before us in advance. They were assured for their encouragement that all their long captivity should at last receive its wages, for they should not borrow * but ask of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and gold, and raiment, and they should spoil the Egyptians. So are we taught to have “ respect unto the recompense of the rew T ard.” * So much ignorant capital has been made by sceptics out of this unfortunate mistranslation, that it is worth while to inquire whether the word “ borrow” would suit the context in other passages. “He borrowed water and she gave him milk ” (Judges v. 25). “The Lord said unto Solomon, Because thou hast borrowed this thing, and hast not borrowed long life for thyself, neither hast borrowed riches for thyself, nor hast borrowed the life of thine enemies ” (1 Kings iii. Ii). “And Elijah said unto Elisha, Thou hast borrowed a hard thing” (3 Kings ii. 10). The absurdity of the cavil is self-evident. CHAPTER IV, MOSES HESITATES. i iv. 1-17. OLY Scripture is impartial, even towards its X X heroes. The sin of David is recorded, and the failure of Peter. And so is the reluctance of Moses to accept his commission, even after a miracle had been vouchsafed to him for encouragement. The absolute sinlessness of Jesus is the more significant because it is found in the records of a creed which knows of no idealised humanity. In Josephus, the refusal of Moses is softened down. Even the modest words, “Lord, I am still in doubt how I, a private man and of no abilities, should per¬ suade my countrymen or Pharaoh,” are not spoken after the sign is given. Nor is there any mention cf the transfer to Aaron of a part of his commission, nor of their joint offence at Meribah, nor of its penalty, which in Scripture is bewailed so often. And Josephus is equally tender about the misdeeds of the nation. We hear nothing of their murmurs against Moses and Aaron when their burdens are increased, or of their making the golden calf. Whereas it is remarkable and natural that the fear of Moses is less anxious about his reception by the tyrant than by his own people : “ Behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice ; for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee.” This is very unlike the invention of a ti i- 1 7J MOSES HESITATES. 7* later period, glorifying the beginnings of the nation ; but it is absolutely true to life. Great men do not fear the wrath of enemies if they can be secured against the indifference and contempt of friends; and Moses in particular was at last persuaded to undertake his mission by the promise of the support of Aaron. His hesitation is therefore the earliest example of what has been so often since observed—the discouragement of heroes, reformers and messengers from God, less by fear of the attacks of the world than of the contemptu¬ ous scepticism of the people of God. We often sigh for the appearing, in our degenerate days, of “ A man with heart, head, hand, Like some of the simple great ones gone.” Yet who shall say that the want of them is not our own fault ? The critical apathy and incredulity, not of the world but of the Church, is what freezes the fountains of Christian daring and the warmth of Christian zeal. For the help of the faith of his people, Moses is com¬ missioned to work two miracles; and he is caused to rehearse them, for his own. Strange tales were told among the later Jews about his wonder-working rod. It was cut by Adam before leaving Paradise, was brought by Noah into the ark, passed into Egypt with Joseph, and was recovered by Moses while he enjoyed the favour of the court. These legends arose from downright moral inability to receive the true lesson of the incident, which is the confronting of the sceptre of Egypt with the simple staff of the shepherd, the choosing of the weak things of earth to confound the strong, the power of God to work His miracles by the most puny and inadequate means. 72 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. Anything was more credible than that He who led 11 is people like sheep did indeed guide them with a common shepherd's crook. And yet this was precisely the lesson meant for us to learn—the glorification of poor resources in the grasp of faith. Both miracles were of a menacing kind. First the rod became a serpent, to declare that at God’s bidding enemies would rise up against the oppressor, even where all seemed innocuous, as in truth the waters of the river and the dust of the furnace and the winds of heaven conspired against him. Then, in the grasp of Moses, the serpent from which he fled became a rod again, to intimate that these avenging forces were subject to the servant of Jehovah. Again, his hand became leprous in his bosom, and was presently restored to health again—a declaration that he carried with him the power of death, in its most dreadful form ; and perhaps a still more solemn admonition to those w T ho remember what leprosy betokens, and how every approach of God to man brings first the knowledge of sin, to be followed by the assurance that He has cleansed it.* If the people w 7 ould not hearken to the voice of the first sign, they should believe the second; but at the * Tertullian appealed to the second of these miracles to illustrate the possibility of the resurrection. “ The hand of Moses is changed and becomes like that of the dead, bloodless, colourless, and stiff with cold. But on the recovery of heat and restoration of its natural colour, it is the same flesh and blood. . . So will changes, conversions and reformation be needed to bring about the resurrection, yet the substance will be preserved safe.” (De Res., lv.) It is far wiser to be content with the declaration of St. Paul that the identity of the body does not depend on that of its corporeal atoms. “ Thou sowest not that body that shall be, but a naked grain. . . . But God giveth ... to every seed his own body” (i Cor. xv. 37-S). IV. I-I 7 -] A/OSES HESITATES. 73 worst, and if they were still unconvinced, they would believe when they saw the water of the Nile, the pride and glory of their oppressors, turned into blood before their eyes. That was an omen which needs no inter¬ pretation. What follows is curious. Moses objects that he has not hitherto been eloquent, nor does he experience any improvement “ since Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant” (a graphic touch!), and he seems to suppose that the popular choice between liberty arid slavery would depend less upon the evidence of a Divine power than upon sleight of tongue, as if he were in modern England. But let it be observed that the self-consciousness which wears the mask of humility while refusing to submit its judgment to that of God, is a form of selfishness—self-absorption blinding one to other con¬ siderations beyond himself—as real, though not as hateful, as greed and avarice and lust. How can Moses call himself slow of speech and of a slow tongue, when Stephen distinctly declares that he was mighty in word as well as deed ? (Acts vii. 22). Perhaps it is enough to answer that many years of solitude in a strange land had robbed him of his fluency. Perhaps Stephen had in mind the words of the Book of Wisdom, that u Wisdom entered into the soul of the servant of the Lord, and withstood dreadful kings in wonders and signs. . . . For Wisdom opened the mouth of the dumb, and made the tongues of them that cannot speak eloquent” (Wisdom x. 16, 21). To his scruple the answer was returned, “Who hath made man’s mouth ? . . . Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.” The same encouragement belongs to every one who truly executes a mandate 74 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. from above : “Lo, I am with you alway.” For surely this encouragement is the same. Surely Jesus did not mean to offer His own presence as a substitute for that of God, but as being in very truth Divine, when fie bade His disciples, in reliance upon Him, to go forth and convert the world. And this is the true test which divides faith from presumption, and unbelief from prudence : do we go because God is w 7 ith us in Christ, or because we our¬ selves are strong and wise ? Do we hold back because we are not sure of His commission, or only because we distrust ourselves ? il Humility without faith is too timorous; faith without humility is too hasty.” The phrase explains the conduct of Moses both now and forty years before. Moses, however, still entreats that any one may be chosen rather than himself: “Send, I pray Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send.” And thereupon the anger of the Lord w T as kindled against him, although at the moment his only visible punishment was the partial granting of his prayer— the association with him in his commission of Aaron, who could speak well, the forfeiting of a certain part of his vocation, and with it of a certain part of its reward. The words, 11 Is not Aaron thy brother the Levite ? ” have been used to insinuate that the tribal arrangement was not perfected when they were writ¬ ten, and so to discredit the narrative. But when so interpreted they yield no adequate sense, they do not reinforce the argument; while they are perfectly intelligible as implying that Aaron is already the leader of his tribe, and therefore sure to obtain the hearing of which Moses despaired. But the arrangement in¬ volved grave consequences sure to be developed in iv. l-l?.] MOSES HESITATES. 75 due lime : among others, the reliance of Israel upon a feebler will, which could be forced by their clamour to make them a calf of gold. Moses was yet to learn that lesson which our century knows nothing of,—that a speaker and a leader of nations are not the same. When he cried to Aaron, in the bitterness of his soul, “ What did this people to thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them ? ” did he remember by whose unfaithfulness Aaron had been thrust into the office, the responsibilities of which he had betrayed ? Now, it is the duty of every man, to whom a special vocation presents itself, to set opposite each other two considerations. Dare I undertake this task ? is a solemn question, but so is this : Dare I let this task go pastime? Am I prepared for the responsibility of allowing it to drift into weaker hands ? These are days when the Church of Christ is calling for the help of every one capable of aiding her, and we ought to hear it said more often that one is afraid not to teach in Sunday School, and another dares not refuse a proffered district, and a third fears to leave charitable tasks undone. To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin ; and we hear too much about the terrible responsibility of working for God, but too little about the still graver responsibility of refusing to work for Him when called. Moses indeed attained so much that we are scarcely conscious that he might have been greater still. He had once presumed to go unsent, and brought upon himself the exile of half a lifetime. Again he presumed almost to say, I go not, and well-nigh to incur the guilt of Jonah when sent to Nineveh, and in so doing he forfeited the fulness of his vocation. But who reaches the level of his possibilities ? Who is not haunted by 76 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. faces, “ each one a murdered self/' a nobler self, that nught have been, and is now impossible for ever ? Only Jesus could say “I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." And it is notable that while Jesus deals, in the parable of the labourers, w T ith the problem of equal faithfulness during longer and shorter periods of employment; and in the parable of the pounds with that of equal endowment variously im¬ proved ; and yet again, in the parable of the talents, with the problem of various endowments all doubled alike, He alw 7 ays draws a veil over the treatment of five talents which earn but two or three besides. A more cheerful reflection suggested by this narrative is the strange power of human fellowship. Moses knew 7 and w 7 as persuaded that God, Whose presence was even then miraculously apparent in the bush, and Who had invested him with superhuman powers, would go w r ith him. There is no trace of incredulity in his behaviour, but only of failure to rely, to cast his shrinking and reluctant will upon the truth he recog¬ nised and the God Whose presence he confessed. He held back, as many a one does, who is honest when he repeats the Creed in church, yet fails to submit his life to the easy yoke of Jesus. Nor is it from physical peril that he recoils : at the bidding of God he has just grasped the serpent from which he fled ; and in con¬ fronting a tyrant with armies at his back, he could hope for small assistance from his brother. But highly strung spirits, in every great crisis, are aware of vague indefinite apprehensions that are not cowardly but imaginative. Thus Caesar, when defying the hosts of Pompey, is said to have been disturbed by an apparition. It is vain to put these apprehensions into logical form, and argue them dowrn: the slowness of speech of IV. 1-7 7.1 MOSES HESITATES . 77 Moses was surely refuted by the presence of Go/i, Who makes the mouth and inspires the utterance ; but such fears lie deeper than the reasons they assign, and when argument fails, will yet stubbornly repeat their cry: “Send, I pray Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou w 7 ilt send.’' Now this shrinking, which is not craven, is dispelled by nothing so effectually as by the touch of a human hand. It is like the voice of a friend to one beset by ghostly terrors: he does not expect his comrade to exorcise a spirit, and yet his apprehen¬ sions are dispelled. Thus Moses cannot summon up courage from the protection of God, but when assured of the companionship of his brother he will not only venture to return to Egypt, but will bring with him his wife and children. Thus, also, He Who knew what was in men’s hearts sent forth His missionaries, both the Twelve and the Seventy (as W’e have yet to learn the true economy of sending ours), u by two and two ” (Mark vi. 7; Luke x. 1). This is the principle w 7 hich underlies the institution of the Church of Christ, and the conception that Chris¬ tians are brothers, among whom the strong must help the weak. Such help from their fellow-mortals w T ould perhaps decide the choice of many hesitating souls, upon the verge of the divine life, recoiling from its unknown and dread experiences, but longing for a sympathising comrade. Alas for the unkindly and unsympathetic religion of men whose faith has never warmed a human heart, and of congregations in which emotion is a misdemeanour ! There is no stronger force, among all that make for the abuses of priestcraft, than this same yearning for human help becomes when robbed of its proper nourish¬ ment, which is the communion of saints, and the 78 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. pastoral care of souls. Has it no further nourishment than these ? This instinctive craving for a Brother to help as well as a Father to direct and govern,—this social instinct, which banished the fears of Moses and made him set out for Egypt long before Aaron came in sight, content when assured of Aaron’s co-operation,— is there nothing in God Himself to respond to it ? He Who is not ashamed to call us brethren has profoundly modified the Church’s conception of Jehovah, the Eternal, Absolute and Unconditioned. It is because He can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, that we are bidden to draw near with boldness unto the Throne of Grace. There is no heart so lonely that it cannot commune with the lofty and kind humanity of Jesus. There is a homelier lesson to be learned. Moses was not only solaced by human fellowship, but nerved and animated by the thought of his brother, and the mention of his tribe. “ Is not Aaron thy brother the Levite ? ” They had not met for forty years. Vague rumours of deadly persecution were doubtless all that had reached the fugitive, whose heart had burned, in solitary communion with Nature in her sternest forms, as he brooded over the wrongs of his family, of Aaron, and perhaps of Miriam. And now his brother lived. The call which Moses would have put from him was for the emancipation of his own flesh and blood, and for their greatness. In that great hour, domestic affection did much to turn the scale wherein the destinies of humanity were trembling. And his was affection well returned. It might easily have been otherwise, for Aaron had seen his younger brother called to a dazzling elevation, living in enviable magnificence, and earning fame by 1 word and deed "; and then, after a momentary fusion iv. 18-31.] MOSES OBEYS. 79 of sympathy and of condition, forty years had poured between them a torrent of cares and joys estranging because unshared. But it was promised that Aaron, when he saw him, should be glad at heart; and the words throw a beam of exquisite light into the depths ot the mighty soul wdiich God inspired to emancipate Israel and to found His Church, by thoughts of his brother’s joy on meeting him. Let no man dream of attaining real greatness by stifling his affections. The heart is more important than the intellect; and the brief story of the Exodus has room for the yearning of Jochebed over her infant "when she saw him that he was a goodly child,” for the bold inspiration of the young poetess, who li stood afar off to know what should be done to him,” and now for the love of Aaron. So the Virgin, in the dread hour of her reproach, went in haste to her cousin Elizabeth. So Andrew il findeth first his own brother Simon.” And so the Divine Sufferer, forsaken of God, did not forsake His mother. The Bible is full of domestic life. It is the theme of the greater part of Genesis, which makes the family the seed-plot of the Church. It is wisely recognised again at the moment when the larger pulse of the nation begins to beat. For the life-blood in the heart of a nation must be the blood in the hearts of men. MOSES OBEYS. iv, 18-31. Moses is now commissioned : he is to go to Egypt, and Aaron is coming thence to meet him. Yet he first returns to Midian, to Jethro, who is both his employer So THE BOOK OF EXODUS. and the head of the family, and prays him to sanction his visit to his own people. There are duties which no family resistance can possibly cancel, and the direct command of God made it plain that this was one of them. But there are two ways of performing even the most imperative obligation, and religious people have done irreparable mischief before now, by rudeness, disregard to natural feeling and the rights of their fellow-men, under the im¬ pression that they showed their allegiance to God by outraging other ties. It is a theory for which no sanction can be found either in Holy Scripture or in common sense. When he asks permission to visit 11 his brethren ” we cannot say whether he ever had brothers besides Aaron, or uses the word in the same larger national sense as when we read that, forty years before, he went out unto his brethren and saw their burdens. What is to be observed is that he is reticent with respect to his vast expectations and designs. He does not argue that, because a Divine promise must needs be fulfilled, he need not be discreet, wary and taciturn, any more than St. Paul supposed, because the lives of his shipmates were promised to him, that it mattered nothing whether the sailors remained on board. The decrees of God have sometimes been used to justify the recklessness of man, but never by His chosen followers. They have worked out their own salvation the more earnestly because God worked in them. And every good cause calls aloud for human energy and wisdom, all the more because its consum¬ mation is the will of God, and sooner or later is assured. Ivloses has unlearned his rashness. iv. 18*31.] MOSES OBEYS . 81 When the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return unto Egypt, for all the men are dead which sought thy life,” there is an almost verbal resemblance to the words in which the infant Jesus is recalled trom exile. We shall have to consider the typical aspect of the whole narrative, when a convenient stage is reached for pausing to survey it in its completeness. But resemblances like this have been treated with so much scorn, they have been so freely perverted into evidence of the mythical nature of the later story, that some passing allusion appears desirable. We must beware equally of both extremes. The Old Testament is tortured, and genuine prophecies are made no better than coincidences, when coincidences are exalted to all the dignity of express predictions. One can scarcely venture to speak of the death of Herod when Jesus was to return from Egypt, as being deliberately typified in the death of those who sought the life of Moses. But it is quite clear that the words in St. Matthew do intentionally point the reader back to this narrative. For, indeed, under both, there are to be recognised the same principles: that God does not thrust His servants into needless or excessive peril; and that when the life of a tyrant has really become not only a trial but a barrier, it will be removed by the King of kings. God is prudent for His heroes. Moreover, we must recognise the lofty fitness of what is very visible in the Gospels—the coming to a head in Christ of the various experiences of the people of God; and at the recurrence, in His story, of events already known elsewhere, we need not be disquieted, as if the suspicion of a myth were now become difficult to refute; rather should we recognise the fulness of the supreme life, and its points of contact with all 6 82 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. lives, which are but portions of its vast completeness. Who does not feel that in the world’s greatest events a certain harmony and correspondence are as charming as they are in music ? There is a sort of counterpoint in history. And to this answering of deep unto deep, this responsiveness of the story of Jesus to all history, our attention is silently beckoned by St. Matthew, when, without asserting any closer link between the incidents, he borrows this phrase so aptly. A much deeper meaning underlies the profound ex¬ pression which God now commands Moses to employ, and although it must await consideration at a future time, the progressive education of Moses himself is meantime to be observed. At first he is taught that the Lord is the God of their fathers, in whose descend¬ ants He is therefore interested. Then the present Israel is His people, and valued for its own sake. Now he hears, and is bidden to repeat to Pharaoh, the amazing phrase, “ Israel is My son, even My firstborn: 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.” Thus it is that infant faith is led from height to height. And assuredly there never was an utterance better fitted than this to prepare human minds, in the fulness of time, for a still clearer revelation of the nearness of God to man, and for the possibility of an absolute union between the Creator and His creature. It was on his way into Egypt, with his wife and children, that a mysterious interposition forced Zipporah reluctantly and tardily to circumcise her son. The meaning of this strange episode lies perhaps below the surface, but very near it. Danger in some form, probably that of sickness, pressed Moses hard, and iv. 18-31.] MOSES OBEYS. 83 he recognised in it the displeasure of his God. The form of the narrative leads us to suppose that he had no previous consciousness of guilt, and had now to infer the nature of his offence without any explicit announcement, just as we infer it from what follows. If so, he discerned his transgression when trouble awoke his conscience; and so did his wife Zipporah. Yet her resistance to the circumcision of their younger son was so tenacious, with such difficulty was it over¬ come by her husband’s peril or by his command, that her tardy performance of the rite was accompanied by an insulting action and a bitter taunt. As she sub¬ mitted, the Lord “ let him go ”; but we may perhaps conclude that the grievance continued to rankle, from the repetition of her gibe, “ So she said, A bridegroom of blood art thou because of the circumcision.” The words mean, “We are betrothed again in blood,” and might of themselves admit a gentler, and even a tender significance; as if, in the sacrifice of a strong prejudice for her husband’s sake, she felt a revival of " the kind¬ ness of her youth, the love of her espousals.” For nothing removes the film from the surface of a true affection, and makes the heart aware how bright it is, so well as a great sacrifice, frankly offered for the sake of love. But such a rendering is excluded by the action which went with her words, and they must be explained as meaning, This is the kind of husband I have wedded: these are our espousals. With such an utterance she fades almost entirely out of the story: it does not even tell how she drew back to her father; and thenceforth all w r e know of her is that she rejoined Moses only when the fame of his victory over Amalek had gone abroad. Their union seems to have been an ill-assorted or at 8 4 THE BOOK OF EXODUS . least an unprosperous one. In the tender hour when their firstborn was to be named, the bitter sense of loneliness had continued to be nearer to the heart of Moses than the glad new consciousness of paternity, and he said, " I am a stranger in a strange land.” Different indeed had been the experience of Joseph, who called his 11 firstborn Manasseh, for God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house ” (Gen. xli. 51). The home-life of Moses had not made him forget that he was an exile. Even the removal of imminent death from her husband could not hush these selfish complaints of Zipporah, not because he was a father of blood to her little one, but because he was a bridegroom of blood to her own shrinking sensi¬ bilities. It is Miriam the sister, not Zipporah the wife, who gives lyrical and passionate voice to his triumph, and is mourned by the nation when she dies. Both what we read of her and what we do not read goes far to explain the insignificance of their children in history, and the more startling fact that the grandson of Moses became the venal instrument of the Danites in their schismatic worship (Judges xviii. 30, R.V.). Domestic unhappiness is a palliation, but not a justification, for an unserviceable life. It is a great advantage to come into action with the dew and fresh¬ ness of affection upon the soul. Yet it is not once nor twice that men have carried the message of God back from the barren desert and the lonely ways of their unhappiness to the not too happy race of man. Now, who can fail to discern real history in all this ? Is it in such a way that myth or legend would have dealt with the wife of the great deliverer ? Still less conceivable is it that these should have treated Moses himself as the narrative hitherto has consistently done. V. 18 - 31 .] MOSES OBEYS. 85 At every step he is made to stumble. His first attempt was homicidal, and brought upon him forty years of exile. When the Divine commission came he drew back wilfully, as he had formerly pressed forward unsent. There is not even any suggestion offered us of Stephen's apology for his violent deed—namely, that he supposed his brethren understood how that God by his hand was giving them deliverance (Acts vii. 25). There is nothing that resembles the eulogium of the Epistle to the Hebrews upon the faith which glorified his precipitancy, like the rainbow in a torrent, because that rash blow committed him to share the affliction of the people of God, and renounced the rank of a grand¬ son of the Pharaoh (Heb. xi. 24-5). All this is very natural, if Moses himself be in any degree responsible for the narrative. It is incredible, if the narrative were put together after the Captivity, to claim the sanction of so great a name for a newly forged hierarchical system. Such a theory could scarcely be refuted more completely, if the narrative before us were invented with the deliberate aim to overthrow it. But in truth the failures of the good and great are written for our admonition, teaching us how incon¬ sistent are even the best of mortals, and how weak the most resolute. Rather than forfeit his own place among the chosen people, Moses had forsaken a palace and become a proscribed fugitive; yet he had neglected to claim for his child its rightful share in the covenant, its recognition among the sons of Abraham. Perhaps procrastination, perhaps domestic opposition, more potent than a king's wrath to shake his purpose, per¬ haps the insidious notion that one who had sacrificed so much might be at ease about slight negligences,—• some such influence had left the commandment un- 8 c THE BOOK OF EXODUS . observed. And now, when the dream of his life was being realised at last, and he found himself the chosen instrument of God for the rebuke of one nation and the making of another, how pardonable it must have seemed to leave an unpleasant small domestic duty over until a more convenient season ! How natural it still seems to merge the petty task in the high vocation, to excuse small lapses in pursuit of lofty aims ! But this was the very time when God, hitherto forbearing, took him sternly to task for his neglect, because men who are especially honoured should be more obedient and reverential than their fellows. Let young men who dream of a vast career, and meanwhile indulge them¬ selves in small obliquities, let all who cast out demons in the name of Christ, and yet work iniquity, reflect upon this chosen and long-trained, self-sacrificing and ardent servant of the Lord, whom Jehovah seeks to kill because he wilfully disobeys even a purely cere¬ monial precept. Moses was not only religious, but “a man of destiny/’ one upon whom vast interests depended. Now, such men have often reckoned themselves exempt from the ordinary laws of conduct.* It is not a light thing, therefore, to find God’s indig¬ nant protest against the faintest shadow of a doctrine so insidious and so deadly, set in the forefront of sacred history, at the very point where national concerns and those of religion begin to touch. If our politics are to be kept pure and clean, we must learn to exact a higher fidelity, and not a relaxed morality, from those who propose to sway the destinies of nations. * “I am not an ordinary man,” Napoleon used to say, “and the laws of morals and of custom were never made for me .”—Memoirs oj Madame de Remit sat, i. 91. iv. 18-31.] MOSES OBEYS . 87 And now the brothers meet, embrace, and exchange confidences. As Andrew, the first disciple who brought another to Jesus, found first his own brother Simon, so was Aaron the earliest convert to the mission of Moses. And that happened which so often puts our faithlessness to shame. It had seemed very hard to break his strange tidings to the people : it was in fact very easy to address one whose love had not grown cold during their severance, who probably retained faith in the Divine purpose for which the beautiful child of the family had been so strangely preserved, and who had passed through trial and discipline unknown to us in the stern intervening years. And when they told their marvellous story to the elders of the people, and displayed the signs, they believed; and when they heard that God had visited them in their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped. This was their preparation for the w r onders that should follow : it resembled Christ’s appeal, " Believest thou that I am able to do this ? ” or Peter’s word to the impotent man, u Look on us.” For the moment the announcement had the desired effect, although too soon the early promise was succeeded by faithlessness and discontent. In this, again, the teaching of the earliest political movement on record is as fresh as if it w r ere a tale of yesterday. The offer of emancipation stirs all hearts ; the romance of liberty is beautiful beside the Nile as in the streets of Paris ; but the cost has to be gradually learned; the losses displace the gains in the popular attention ; the labour, the self-denial and the self-control grow wearisome, and Israel murmurs for the flesh-pots of Egypt, much as the modern revolution reverts to a 88 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. despotism. It is one thing to admire abstract freedom, but a very different thing to accept the austere con¬ ditions of the life of genuine freemen. And surely the same is true of the soul. The gospel gladdens the young convert: he bows his head and worships; but he little dreams of his long discipline, as in the forty desert years, of the solitary places through which his soul must wander, the drought, the Amalekite, the absent leader, and the temptations of the flesh. In mercy, the long future is concealed; it is enough that, like the apostles, we should consent to follow; gradually we shall obtain the courage to which th; task may be revealed. CHAPTER V. FHARAOH REFUSES. v. 1-23. FTER forty years of obscurity and silence, Moses ii re-enters the magnificent halls where he had formerly turned his back upon so great a place. 1 he rod of a shepherd is in his hand, and a lowly Hebrew by his side. Men who recognise him shake their heads, and pity or despise the fanatic who had thrown away the most dazzling prospects for a dream. But he has long since made his choice, and whatever misgivings now beset him have regard to his success with Pharaoh or with his brethren, not to the wisdom of his decision. Nor had he reason to repent of it. The pomp of an obsequious court was a poor thing in the eyes of an ambassador of God, who entered the palace to speak such lofty words as never* passed the lips of any son of Pharaoh's daughter. He was presently to become a god unto Pharaoh, with Aaron for his prophet. In itself, his presence there was formidable. The Hebrews had been feared when he was an infant. Now their cause was espoused by a man of culture, who had allied himself with their natural leaders, and was returned, with the deep and steady fire of a zeal which forty years of silence could not quench, to assert the rights of Israel as an independent people. po THE BOOK OF EXODUS. There is a terrible power in strong convictions, especially when supported by the sanctions of religion. Luther on one side, Loyola on the other, were mightier than kings when armed with this tremendous weapon. Yet there are forces upon which patriotism and fanaticism together break in vain. Tyranny and pride of race have also strong impelling ardours, and carry men far. Pharaoh is in earnest as well as Moses, and can act with perilous energy. And this great narrative begins the story of a nation’s emancipation with a human demand, boldly made, but defeated by the pride and vigour of a startled tyrant and the tameness of a downtrodden people. The limitations of human energy are clearly exhibited before the direct inter¬ ference of God begins. All that a brave man can do, when nerved by lifelong aspiration and by a sudden conviction that the hour of destiny has struck, all therefore upon which rationalism can draw, to explain the uprising of Israel, is exhibited in this preliminary attempt, this first demand of Moses. Menephtah was no doubt the new Pharaoh whom the brothers accosted so boldly. What we glean of him elsewhere is highly suggestive of some grave event left unrecorded, exhibiting to us a man of uncontrollable temper }^et of broken courage, a ruthless, godless, daunted man. There is a legend that he once hurled his spear at the Nile when its floods rose too high, and was punished with ten years of blindness. In the Libyan war, after fixing a time when he should join his vanguard, with the main army, a celestial vision forbade him to keep his word in person, and the victory was gained by his lieutenants. In another war, he boasts of having slaughtered the people and set fire to them, and netted the entire country as men V. I- 23 -] PHARAOH REFUSES. 91 net birds. Forty years then elapse without war and without any great buildings; there are seditions and internal troubles, and the dynasty closes with his son.* All this is exactly what we should expect, if a series of tremendous blows had depopulated a country, abolished an army, and removed two millions of the working classes in one mass. But it will be understood that this identification, concerning which there is now a very general consent of competent authorities, implies that the Pharaoh was not himself engulfed with his army. Nothing is on the other side except a poetic assertion in Psalm cxxxvi. 15, which is not that God destroyed, but that He “ shook off” Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, because His mercy endureth for ever. To this king, then, whose audacious family had usurped the symbols of deity for its head-dress, and whose father boasted that in battle 11 he became like the god Mentu ” and “ was as Baal,” the brothers came as yet without miracle, with no credentials except from slaves, and said, “ Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness.” The issue was distinctly raised: did Israel belong to Jehovah or to the king ? And Pharaoh answered, with equal decision, “Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice ? I know not Jehovah, and what is more, I will not let Israel go.” Now, the ignorance of the king concerning Jehovah was almost or quite blameless: the fault was in his practical refusal to inquire. Jehovah was no concern of his : without waiting for information, he at once decided * Robinson, “The Pharaohs of the Bondage.” 92 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. that his grasp on his captives should not relax. And his second fault, which led to this, was the same grind¬ ing oppression of the helpless which for eighty years already had brought upon his nation the guilt of blood. Crowned and national cupidity, the resolution to wring from their slaves the last effort consistent w T ith existence, such greed as took offence at even the momentary pause of hope while Moses pleaded, be¬ cause “the people of the land are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens,"—these shut their hearts against reason and religion, and therefore God presently hardened those same hearts against natural misgiving and dread and awe-stricken submission to His judg¬ ments. For it was against religion also that he w T as unyield¬ ing. In his ample Pantheon there w T as room at least for the possibility of the entrance of the Hebrew God, and in refusing to the subject people, without investiga¬ tion, leisure for any worship, the king outraged not only humanity, but Heaven. The brothers proceed to declare that they have them¬ selves met with the deity, and there must have been many in the court who could attest at least the sincerity of Moses; they ask for liberty to spend a day in journeying outw r ard and another in returning, with a day between for their w T orship, and W’arn the king of the much greater loss to himself which may be involved in vengeance upon refusal, either by war or pestilence. But the contemptuous answ T er utterly ignores religion: “Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their work ? Get ye unto your burdens." And his counter-measures are taken without loss of time : “ that same day " the order goes out to exact the regular quantity of brick, but supply no straw for bind- V. i-23-3 PHARAOH REFUSES. 93 ing it together. It is a pitiless mandate, and illustrates the fact, very natural though often forgotten, that men as a rule cannot lose sight of the religious value of their fellow-men, and continue to respect or pity them as before. We do not deny that men who professed religion have perpetrated nameless cruelties, nor that unbelievers have been humane, sometimes with a pathetic energy, a tenacious grasp on the virtue still possible to those who have no Heaven to serve. But it is plain that the average man will despise his brother, and his brother’s rights, just in proportion as the Divine sanctions of those rights fade away, and nothing remains to be respected but the culture, power and affluence which the victim lacks. “ I know not Israel’s God ” is a sure prelude to the refusal to let Israel go, and even to the cruelty which beats the slave who fails to render impossible obedience. “ They be idle, therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God.” And still there are men who hold the same opinion, that time spent in devotion is wasted, as regards the duties of real life. In truth, religion means freshness, elasticity and hope: a man will be not slothful in business, but fervent in spirit, if he serves the Lord. But perhaps immortal hope, and the knowledge that there is One Who shall break all prison bars and let the oppressed go free, are not the best narcotics to drug down the soul of a man into the monotonous tameness of a slave. In the tenth verse we read that the Egyptian task¬ masters and the officers combined to urge the people to their aggravated labours. And by the fourteenth verse we find that the latter officials were Hebrew officers whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them. So that we have here one of the surest and worst 94 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. effects of slavery—namely, the demoralisation of the oppressed, the readiness of average men, who can obtain for themselves a little relief, to do so at their brethren’s cost. These officials were scribes, il writers”: their business was to register the amount of labour due, and actually rendered. These were doubtless the more comfortable class, of whom we read afterwards that they possessed property, for their cattle escaped the murrain and their trees the hail. And they had the means of acquiring quite sufficient skill to justify whatever is recorded of the works done in the con¬ struction of the tabernacle. The time is long past when scepticism found support for its incredulity in these details. One advantage of the last sharp agony of perse¬ cution was that it finally detached this official class from the Egyptian interest, and welded Israel into a homogeneous people, with officers already provided. For, when the supply of bricks came short, these officials w T ere beaten, and, as if no cause of the failure W T ere palpable, they w r ere asked, with a malicious chuckle, u Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task both yesterday and to-day, as heretofore ? ” And when they explain to Pharaoh, in words already expressive of their alienation, that the fault is with “ thine own people,” they are repulsed with insult, and made to feel themselves in evil case. For indeed they needed to be chastised for their forgetfulness of God. How soon w r ould their hearts have turned back, how much more bitter yet would have been their complaints in the desert, if it were not for this last experience ! But if judgment began with them, what should presently be the fate of their oppressors ? Their broken spirit shows itself by murmuring, not V. 1-2 3-] PHARAOH REFUSES. 95 against Pharaoh, blit against Moses and Aaron, who at least had striven to help them. Here, as in the whole story, there is not a trace of either the lofty spirit which could have evolved the Mosaic law, or the hero-worship of a later age. It is written that Moses, hearing their reproaches, “ returned unto the Lord/' although no visible shrine, no consecrated place of worship, can be thought of. What is involved is the consecration which the heart bestows upon any place of privacy and prayer, where, in shutting out the world, the soul is aware of the special nearness of its King. In one sense we never leave Him, never return to Him. In another sense, by direct address of the attention and the will, we enter into His presence; we find Him in the midst of us, Who is everywhere. And all ceremonial con¬ secrations do their office by helping us to realise and act upon the presence of Him in Whom, even when He is forgotten, we live and move and have our being. Therefore in the deepest sense each man consecrates or desecrates for himself his own place of prayer. There is a city where the Divine presence saturates every consciousness with rapture. And the seer be¬ held no temple therein, for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple of it. Startling to our notions of reverence are the words in which Moses addresses God. “ Lord, why hast Thou evil entreated this people ? Why is it that Thou hast sent me ? for since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Thy name, he hath evil entreated this people; neither hast Thou delivered Thy people at all." It is almost as if his faith had utterly given way, like that of the Psalmist when he saw the wickea in great prosperity, while waters of a full cup wer« 96 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. wrung out by the people of God (Ps. lxxiii. 3, 10). And there is always a dangerous moment when the first glow of enthusiasm burns down, and we realise how long the process, how bitter the disappointments, by which even a scanty measure of success must be obtained. Yet God had expressly warned Moses that Pharaoh would not release them until Egypt had been smitten with all His plagues. But the warning passed unapprehended, as we let many a truth pass, intellectually accepted it is true, but only as a theorem, a vague and abstract formula. As we know that we must die, that worldly pleasures are brief and unreal, and that sin draws evil in its train, yet wonder when these phrases become solid and practical in our experi¬ ence, so, in the first flush and wonder of the promised emancipation, Moses had forgotten the predicted interval of trial. His words would have been profane and irreverent indeed but for one redeeming quality. They were addressed to God Himself. Whenever the people murmured, Moses turned for help to Him Who reckons the most unconventional and daring appeal to Him far better than the most ceremonious phrases in which men cover their unbelief: “ Lord, wherefore hast Thou evil entreated this people ? ” is in reality a much more pious utterance than “ I will not ask, neither will J tempt the Lord." Wherefore Moses receives large encouragement, although no formal answer is vouch¬ safed to his daring question. Even so, in our dangers, our torturing illnesses, and many a crisis which breaks through all the crust of forms and conventionalities, God may perhaps recognise a true appeal to Him, in words which only scandalise the orthodoxy of the formal and precise. In the bold V. I-23-] PHARAOH REFUSES. 97 rejoinder of the Syro-Phoenician woman He recognised great faith. Plis disciples would simply have sent her away as clamorous. Moses had again failed, even though Divinely com¬ missioned, in the work of emancipating Israel, and thereupon he had cried to the Lord Himself to under¬ take the work. This abortive attempt, however, was far from useless : it taught humility and patience to the leader, and it pressed the nation together, as in a vice, by the weight of a common burden, now become intolerable. At the same moment, the iniquity of the tyrant was filled up. But the Lord did not explain this, in answer to the remonstrance of Moses. Many things happen, for which no distinct verbal explanation is possible, many things of which the deep spiritual fitness cannot be expressed in words. Experience is the true commen¬ tator upon Providence, if only because the slow building of character is more to God than either the hasting forward of deliverance or the clearing away of intellec¬ tual mists. And it is only as we take His yoke upon us that we truly learn of Him. Yet much is implied, if not spoken out, in the words, “Now (because the time is ripe) shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh (I, because others have failed); for by a strong hand shall he let them go, and by a strong hand shall he drive them out of the land.*' It is under the weight of the “strong hand" of God Himself that the tyrant must either bend or break. Similar to this is the explanation of many delays in answering our pra} r er, of the strange raising up of tyrants and demagogues, and of much else that perplexes Christians in history and in their own experience. These events develop human character, 7 98 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. for good or evil. And they give scope for the revealing of the fulness of the power which rescues. We have no means of measuring the supernatural force which overcomes but by the amount of the resistance offered. And if all good things came to us easily and at once, we should not become aware of the horrible pit, our rescue from which demands gratitude. The Israelites would not have sung a hymn of such fervent gratitude when the sea was crossed, if they had not known the weight of slavery and the anguish of suspense. And in heaven the redeemed who have come out of great tribulation sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb. Fresh air, a balmy wind, a bright blue sky—which of us feels a thrill of conscious exultation for these cheap delights ? The released prisoner, the restored invalid, feels it: “ The common earth, the air, the skiea, To him are opening paradise.” Even so should Israel be taught to value deliverance. And now the process could begin. CHAPTER VI. THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES. vi. 1-30. E have seen that the name Jehovah expresses V V not a philosophic meditation, but the most bracing and reassuring truth—viz., that an immutable and independent Being sustains His people; and this great title is therefore reaffirmed with emphasis in the hour of mortal discouragement. It is added that their fathers knew God by the name of Gcd Almighty, but by His name Jehovah was He not known, or made known, unto them. Now, it is quite clear that they were not utterly ignorant of this title, for no such theory as that it was hitherto mentioned by anticipation only, can explain the first syllable in the name of the mother of Moses himself, nor the assertion that in the time of Seth men began to call upon the name of Jehovah (Gen. iv. 26), nor the name of the hill of Abraham’s sacrifice, Jehovah-jireh (Gen. xxii. 14). Yet the state¬ ment cannot be made available for the purposes of any reasonable and moderate scepticism, since the sceptical theory demands a belief in successive redactions of the work in which an error so gross could not have escaped detection. And the true explanation is that this Name was now, for the first time, to be realised as a sustaining power. The patriarchs had known the name; how its fitness I GO THE BOOK OF EXODUS. should be realised: God should be known by it. They had drawn support and comfort from that simpler view of the Divine protection which said, “I am the Almighty God: walk before Me and be thou perfect” (Gen. xvii. i). But thenceforth all the experience of the past was to reinforce the energies of the present, and men were to remember that their promises came from One who cannot change. Others, like Abraham, had been stronger in faith than Moses. But faith is not the same as insight, and Moses was the greatest of the prophets (Deut. xxxiv. io). To him, therefore, it was given to confirm the courage of his nation by this exalting thought of God. And the Lord proceeds to state what His promises to the patriarchs were, and joins together (as we should do) the assurance of His compassionate heart and of His inviolable pledges: u I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel, . . . and I have remembered My covenant.” It has been the same, in turn, with every new revelation of the Divine. The new was implicit in the old, but when enforced, unfolded, reapplied, men found it charged with unsuspected meaning and power, and as full of vitality and development as a handful of dry seeds when thrown into congenial soil. So it was pre-eminently with the doctrine of the Messiah. It will be the same hereafter w T ith the doctrine of the kingdom of peace and the reign of the saints on earth. Some day men will smile at our crude theories and ignorant controversies about the Millennium. We, meantime, possess the saving knowdedge of Christ amid many per¬ plexities and obscurities. And so the patriarchs, w r ho knew God Almighty, but not by His name Jehovah, w r ere not lost for want of the knowledge of His name, but saved by faith in Him, in the living Being to vi. 1-30.] THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES. 101 Whom all these names belong, and Who shall yet write upon the brows of His people some new name, hitherto undreamed by the ripest of the saints and the purest of the Churches. Meantime, let us learn the lessons of tolerance for other men's ignorance, remem¬ bering the ignorance of the father of the faithful, tolerance for difference of views, remembering how the unusual and rare name of God was really the precursor of a brighter revelation, and yet again, when our hearts are faint with longing for new light, and weary to death of the babbling of old words, let us learn a sober and cautious reconsideration, lest perhaps the very truth needed for altered circumstance and changing problem may lie, unheeded and dormant, among the dusty old phrases from which we turn away despairingly. Moreover, since the fathers knew the name Jehovah, yet gained from it no special knowledge of God, such as they had from His Almightiness, we are taught that discernment is often more at fault than revelation. To the quick perception and plastic imagination of the artist, our world reveals what the boor will never see. And the saint finds, in the homely and familiar words of Scripture, revelations for His soul that are unknown to common men. Receptivity is what we need far more than revelation. Again is Moses bidden to appeal to the faith of his countrymen, by a solemn repetition of the Divine promise. If the tyranny is great, they shall be redeemed with a stretched out arm, that is to say, with a palpable interposition of the power of God, “and with great judgments." It is the first appearance in Scripture of this phrase, afterwards so common. Not mere vengeance upon enemies or vindication of subjects is in question : the thought is that of a deliberate weighing 102 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. of merits, and rendering cut of measured penalties. Now, the Egyptian mythology had a very clear and solemn view of judgment after death. If king and people had grown cruel, it was because they failed to realise remote punishments, and did not believe in present judgments, here, in this life. But there is a God that judgeth in the earth. Not always, for mercy rejoiceth over judgment. We may still pray, u Enter not into judgment with Thy servants, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified.” But when men resist warnings, then retribution begins even here. Sometimes it comes in plague and overthrow, some¬ times in the worse form of a heart made fat, the decay of sensibilities abused, the dying out of spiritual faculty. Pharaoh was to experience both, the hardening of his heart and the ruin of his fortunes. It is added, “ I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you for a God.” This is the language, not of a mere purpose, a will that has resolved to vindicate the right, but of affection. God is about to adopt Israel to Himself, and the same favour which belonged to rare individuals in the old time is now offered to a whole nation. Just as the heart of each man is gradually educated, learning first to love a parent and a family, and so led on to national patriotism, and at last to a world-wide philanthropy, so was the religious conscience of mankind awakened to believe that Abraham might be the friend of God, and then that His oath might be confirmed unto the children, and then that He could take Israel to Himself for a people, and at last that God loved the world. It is not religion to think that God condescends merely to save us. He cares for us. He takes us to Himself. He gives Himself away to us, in return, to be our God. vi. 1-30.3 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES. 103 Such a revelation ought to have been more to Israel than any pledge of certain specified advantages. It was meant to be a silken tie, a golden clasp, to draw together the almighty Heart and the hearts of these downtrodden slaves. Something within Him desires their little human love; they shall be to Him for a people. So He said again, “ My son, give Me thine heart.” And so, when He carried to the uttermost these unsought, unhoped for, and, alas ! unwelcomed overtures of condescension, and came among us, He would have gathered, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, those who would not. It is not man who conceives, from definite services received, the wild hope of some spark of real affection in the bosom of the Eternal and Mysterious One. It is not man, amid the lavish joys and splendours of creation, who conceives the notion of a supreme Heart, as the explanation of the universe. It is God Himself Who says, “ I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God.” Nor is it human conversion that begins the process, but a Divine covenant and pledge, by which God would fain convert us to Himself; even as the first disciples did not accost Jesus, but He turned and spoke to them the first question and the first invitation : “ What seek ye ? . . . Come, and ye shall see.” To-day, the choice of the civilised world has to be made between a mechanical universe and a revealed love, for no third possibility^ survives. This promise establishes a relationship, which God never afterwards cancelled. Human unbelief rejected its benefits, and chilled the mutual sympathies which it involved ; but the fact always remained, and in their darkest hour they could appeal to God to remember Ills covenant and the oath which He sware. 104 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. And this same assurance belongs to us. We are not to become good, or desirous of goodness, in order that God may requite with affection our virtues or our wistfulness. Rather we are to arise and come to our Father, and to call Him Father, although we are not worthy to be called His sons. We are to remember how Jesus said, “If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ! " and to learn that He is the Father of those who are evil, and even of those who are still unpardoned, as He said again, “ If ye forgive not . . . neither will your heavenly Father forgive you." Much controversy about the universal Fatherhood of God would be assuaged if men reflected upon the signifi¬ cant distinction which our Saviour drew between His Fatherhood and our son ship, the one always a reality of the Divine affection, the other only a possibility, for human enjoyment or rejection : “ Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father Which is in heaven" (Matt. v. 45). There is no encouragement to presumption in the asser¬ tion of the Divine Fatherhood upon such terms. For it speaks of a love which is real and deep without being feeble and indiscriminate. It appeals to faith because there is an absolute fact to lean upon, and to energy because privilege is conditional. It reminds us that our relationship is like that of the ancient Israel,—that we are in a covenant, as they were, but that the carcases of many of them fell in the wilderness; although God had taken them for a people, and was to them a God, and said, “Israel is My son, even My firstborn." It is added that faith shall develop into knowledge. Moses is to assure them now that they “shall know" vi. 1-30.] THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES. 105 hereafter that the Lord is Jehovah their God. And this, too, is a universal law, that we shall know if wc follow on to know: that the trial of our faith worketh patience, and patience experience, and we have so dim and vague an apprehension of Divine realities, chiefly because we have made but little trial, and have not tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious. In this respect, as in so many more, religion is analogous with nature. The squalor of the savage could be civilised, and the distorted and absurd con¬ ceptions of mediaeval science could be corrected, only by experiment, persistently and wisely carried out. And it is so in religion : its true evidence is unknown to these who never bore its yoke; it is open to just such raillery and rejection as they who will not love can pour upon domestic affection and the sacred ties of family life; but, like these, it vindicates itself, in the rest of their souls, to those who will take the yoke and learn. And its best wisdom is not of the cunning brain but of the open heart, that wisdom from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated. And thus, while God leads Israel, they shall know that He is Jehovah, and true to His highest revelations of Himself. All this they heard, and also, to define their hope and brighten it, the promise of Palestine was repeated; but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage. Thus the body often holds the spirit down, and kindly allowance is made by Him Who knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust, and Who, in the hour of His own agony, found the excuse for His unsympathising followers that the spirit was willing although the flesh was weak. So io6 THE BOOK OF EXODUS . when Elijah made request for himself that he might die, in the utter reaction which followed his triumph on Carmel and his wild race to Jezreel, the good Physician did not dazzle him with new splendours of revelation until after he had slept, and eaten miraculous food, and a second time slept and eaten. But if the anguish of the body excuses much weak¬ ness of the spirit, it follows, on the other hand, that men are responsible to God for that heavy weight which is laid upon the spirit by pampered and luxurious bodies, incapable of self-sacrifice, rebellious against the lightest of His demands. It is suggestive, that Moses, when sent again to Pharaoh, objected, as at first: ° Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips ? ” Every new hope, every great inspiration which calls the heroes of God to a fresh attack upon the powers of Satan, is checked and hindered more by the coldness of the Church than by the hostility of the world. That hostility is expected, and can be defied. But the infidelity of the faithful is appalling indeed. We read with wonder the great things which Christ has promised to believing prayer, and, at the same time, although we know painfully that we have never claimed and dare not claim these promises, w T e wonder equally at the foreboding question, “ When the Son of Man cometh, shall fie find the faith (faith in its fulness) on the earth ? ” (Luke xviii. 8). But we ought to remember that our own low standard helps to form the standard of attainment for the Church at large -—that when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it—that many a large sacrifice would be readily made for Christ, at this hour, if only ease and pleasure VI. 1-30.] THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES. 107 were at stake, which is refused because it is too hard to be called well-meaning enthusiasts by those who ought to glorify God in such attainment, as the first brethren did in the zeal and the gifts of Paul. The vast mountains raise their heads above mountain ranges which encompass them; and it is not when the level of the whole Church is low, that giants of faith and of attainment may be hoped for. Nay, Christ stipulates for the agreement of two or three, to kindle and make effectual the prayers which shall avail. For the purification of our cities, for the shaming of our legislation until it fears God as much as a vested interest, for the reunion of those who worship the same Lord, for the conversion of the world, and first of all for the conversion of the Church, heroic forces are demanded. But all the tendency of our half-hearted, abject, semi-Christianity is to repress ever} ? thing that is unconventional, abnormal, likely to embroil us with our natural enemy, the world; and who can doubt that, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, we shall know of many an aspiring soul, in which the sacred fire had begun to burn, which sank back into lethargy and the commonplace, murmuring in its despair, “ Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me ? ” It was the last fear which ever shook the great heart of the emancipator Moses. At the beginning of the grand historical work, of which all this has been the prelude, there is set the pedigree of Moses and Aaron, according to 11 the heads of their fathers’ houses,”—an epithet w T hich indicates a subdivision of the a family,” as the family is a sub¬ division of the tribe. Of the sons of Jacob, Reuben io8 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. ar^d Simeon are mentioned, to put Levi in his natural third place. And from Levi to Moses only four generations are mentioned, favouring somewhat the briefer scheme of chronology which makes four centuries cover all the time from Abraham, and not the captivity alone. But it is certain that this is a mere recapitulation of the more important links in the genealogy. In Num. xxvi. 58, 59, six generations are reckoned instead of four; in I Chron. ii. 3 there are seven generations; and elsewhere in the same book (vi. 22) there are ten. It is well known that similar omissions of obscure or unworthy links occur in St. Matthew’s pedigree of our Lord, although some stress is there laid upon the recurrent division into fourteens. And it is absurd to found any argument against the trustworthiness of the narrative upon a phenomenon so frequent, and so sure to be avoided by a forger, or to be corrected by an unscrupulous editor. In point of fact, nothing is less likely to have occurred, if the narrative were a late invention. Neither, in that case, would the birth of the great emancipator be ascribed to the union of Amram with his father’s sister, for such marriages were distinctly forbidden by the law (Lev. xviii. 14). Nor would the names of the children of the founder of the nation be omitted, while those of Aaron are recorded, unless we were dealing with genuine history, which knows that the sons of Aaron inherited the lawful priesthood, while the descendants of Moses were the jealous founders of a mischievous schism (Judges xviii. 30, R.V.). Nor again, if this were a religious romance, designed to animate the nation in its later struggles, should we read of the hesitation and the fears of a leader " of vl 1-30.] THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES. 109 uncircumcised lips,” instead of the trumpet-like calls to action of a noble champion. Nor does the broken-spirited meanness of Israel at all resemble the conception, popular in every nation, of a virtuous and heroic antiquity, a golden age. It is indeed impossible to reconcile the motives and the date to which this narrative is ascribed by some, with the plain phenomena, with the narrative itself. Nor is it easy to understand why the Lord, Who speaks of bringing out il My hosts, My people, the children of Israel” (vii. 4, etc.), should never in the Pentateuch be called the Lord of Hosts, if that title were in common use when it was written; for no epithet would better suit the song of Miriam or the poetry of the Fifth Book. When Moses complained that he was of un¬ circumcised lips, the Lord announced that He had already made His servant as a god unto Pharaoh, having armed him, even then, with the terrors which are soon to shake the tyrant’s soul. It is suggestive and natural that his very education in a court should render him fastidious, less willing than a rougher man might have been to appear before the king after forty years of retirement, and feeling almost physically incapable of speaking what he felt so deeply, in words that w T ould satisfy his own judgment. Yet God had endowed him, even then, with a supernatural power far greater than any facility of expression. In his weakness he would thus be made strong; and the less fit he was to assert for himself any ascendency over Pharaoh, the more signal would be the victory of his Lord, when he became ‘‘very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people ” (xi. 3). IIC THE BOOK OF EXODUS. As a proof of this mastery he was from the first to speak to the haughty king through his brother, as a god through some prophet, being too great to reveal himself directly. It is a memorable phrase; and so lofty an assertion could never, in the myth of a later period, have been ascribed to an origin so lowly as the reluctance of Moses to expose his deficiency in elocution. Therefore he should henceforth be emboldened by the assurance of qualification bestowed already : not only b}' the hope of help and achievement yet to come, but by the certainty of present endowment. And so should each of us, in his degree, be bold, who have gifts differing according to the grace given unto us. It is certain that every living soul has at least one talent, and is bound to improve it. But how many of us remember that this loan implies a commission from God, as real as that of prophet and deliverer, and that nothing but our own default can prevent it from being, at the last, received again with usury ? The same bravery, the same confidence when standing where his Captain has planted him, should inspire the prophet, and him that giveth alms, and him that showeth mercy; for all are members in one body, and therefore animated by one invincible Spirit from above (Rom. xii. 4-9). The endowment thus given to Moses made him “as a god ” to Pharaoh. We must not take this to mean only that he had a prophet or spokesman, or that he was made formidable, but that the peculiar nature of his prowess would be felt. It was not his own strength. The supernatural would become visible in him. He who boasted “ I know not Jehovah ” would come to crouch before Him vi. 1-30.] THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES. hi in His agent, and humble himself to the man whom once he contemptuously ordered back to his burdens, with the abject prayer, “ Forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat Jehovah your God that He may take away from me this death only." Now, every consecrated power may bear witness to the Lord : it is possible to do all to the glory of God. Not that every separate action will be ascribed to a preternatural source, but the sum total of the effect produced by a holy life will be sacred. He who said, “ I have made thee a god unto Pharaoh," says of all believers, u I in them, and Thou, Father, in Me, that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me." CHAPTER VII. THE HARDENING OF PHARAOHS HEART. vii. 3-13. W HEN Moses received his commission, at the bush, words were spoken which are now repeated with more emphasis, and which have to be considered carefully. For probably no statement of Scripture has excited fiercer criticism, more exultation of enemies and perplexity of friends, than 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 the fulfilment. When all is weighed, compared, and harmonised, it will at last be possible to draw a just conclusion. And although it may happen long before then, that the objector will charge us with special pleading, yet he will be the special pleader himself, if he seeks to hurry us, by prejudice or passion, to give a verdict which is based upon less than all the evidence, patiently weighed. Let us in the first place find out how soon this dreadful process began ; when was it that God fulfilled His threat, and hardened, in any sense whatever, the heart of Pharaoh ? Did He step in at the beginning, vii.3-13.] THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART. 113 and render the unhappy king incapable of weighing the remonstrances which He then performed the cruel mockery of addressing to him ? Were these as in¬ sincere and futile as if one bade the avalanche to pause which his own act had started down the icy slopes ? Was Pharaoh as little responsible for his pursuit of Israel as his horses were—being, like them, the blind agents of a superior force ? We do not find it so. In the fifth chapter, when a demand is made, without any sustaining miracle, simply appealing to the conscience of the ruler, there is no mention of any such process, despite the insults with which Pharaoh then assails both the messengers and Jehovah Himself, Whom he knows not. In the seventh chapter there is clear evidence that the process is yet unaccomplished; for, speaking of an act still future, it declares, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt” (vii. 3). And this terrible act is not connected with the remonstrances and warnings of God, but entirely with the increasing pressure of the miracles. The exact period is marked when the hand of doom closed upon the tyrant. It is not where the Authorised Version places it. When the magicians imitated the earlier signs of Moses, “his heart was strong,” but the original does not bear out the assertion that at this time the Lord made it so by any judicial act of His (vii. 13). That only comes with the sixth plague ; and the course of events may be traced, fairly well, by the help of the margin of the Revised Version. After the plague of blood “ Pharaoh’s heart was strong” (“hardened”), and this is distinctly ascribed to his own action, because “he set his heart even to this” (vii. 22, 23). 8 U4 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. After the second plague, it was still he himself who 11 made his heart heavy ” (viii. 15). After the third plague the magicians warned him that the very finger of some god was upon him indeed: their rivalry, which hitherto might have been somewhat of a palliation for his obstinacy, v/as now ended ; but yet “ his heart was strong ” (viii. 19). Again, after the fourth plague he u made his heart heavy ” ; and it " was heavy ” after the fifth plague, (viii. 32, ix. 7). Only thenceforward comes the judicial infatuation upon him w T ho has resolutely infatuated himself hitherto. But when five warnings and penalties have spent their force in vain, when personal agony is inflicted in the plague of boils, and the magicians in particular cannot stand before him through their pain, w 7 ould it have been proof of virtuous contrition if he had yielded then ? If he had needed evidence, it was given to him long before. Submission now 7 would have meant prudence, not penitence; and it w r as against prudence, not penitence, that he w T as hardened. Because he had resisted evidence, experience, and even the testimony of his own magicians, he was therefore stiffened against the grudging and umverthy concessions which must otherwise have been wrested from him, as a w 7 ild beast will turn and fly from fire. He was henceforth him¬ self to become an evidence and a portent; and so "The Lord made strong the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them” (ix. 12). It was an awful doom, but it is not open to the attacks so often made upon it. It only means that for him the last five plagues were not disciplinary, but w T holly penal. Nay, it stops short of asserting even this : they might still have appealed to his reason ; they were only vii. 3-13.] THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART. 115 not allowed to crush him by the agency of terror. Not once is it asserted that God hardened his heart against any nobler impulse than alarm, and desire to evade danger and death. We see clearly this meaning in the phrase, when it is applied to his army entering the Red Sea: “ I will make strong the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall go in” (xiv. 17). It needed no greater moral turpitude to pursue the Hebrews over the sands than on the shore, but it certainly required more hardihood. But the unpursued departure which the good-will of Egypt refused, their common sense was not allowed to grant. Callousness was followed by infatuation, as even the pagans felt that whom God wills to ruin He first drives mad. This explanation implies that to harden Pharaoh’s heart was to inspire him, not with wickedness, but with nerve. And as far as the original language helps us at all, it decidedly supports this view. Three different expressions have been unhappily rendered by the same English word, to harden; but they may be dis¬ criminated throughout the narrative in Exodus, by the margin of the Revised Version. One word, which commonly appears without any marginal explanation, is the same which is employed elsewhere about “ the cause which is too hard for ” minor judges (Deut. i. 17, cf. xv. 18, etc.). Now, this word is found (vii. 13) in the second threat that “ I will harden Pharaoh’s heart,” and in the account which was to be given to posterity of how “ Pharaoh hardened himself to let us go” (xiii. 15). And it is said likewise of Sihon, king of Heshbon, that he “ would not let us pass by him, for the Lord thy Gcd hardened his spirit and made his heart strong ” (Deut. ii. 30). But ii6 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. since it does not occur anywhere in all the narrative of what God actually did with Pharaoh, it is only just to interpret this phrase in the prediction by what we read elsewhere of the manner of its fulfilment. The second word is explained in the margin as meaning to make strong. Already God had employed it when He said “ I will make strong his heart " (iv. 21), and this is the term used of the first fulfilment of the menace, after the sixth plague (ix. 12). God is not said to interfere again after the seventh, which had few special terrors for Pharaoh himself; but from hence¬ forth the expression “to make strong " alternates wfith the phrase " to make heavy.” “ Go in unto Pharaoh, for I have made heavy his heart and the heart of his servants, that I might show these My signs in the midst of them" (x. 1). It may be safely assumed that these tw r o expressions cover between them all that is asserted of the judicial action of God in preventing a recoil of Pharaoh from his calamities. Now, the strengthening of a heart, however punitive and disastrous w 7 hen a man’s will is evil (just as the strengthening of his arm is dis¬ astrous then), has in itself no immorality inherent. It is a thing as often good as bad,—as when Israel and Joshua are exhorted to “ Be strong and of a good courage" (Deut. xxxi. 6, 7, 23), and when the angel laid his hand upon Daniel and said, “Be strong, yea, be strong" (Dan. x. 19). In these passages the phrase is identical with that which describes the process by which Pharaoh was prevented from cower¬ ing under the tremendous blows he had provoked. The other expression is to make heavy or dull. Thus “the eyes of Israel were heavy with age” (Gen. xlviii. 10), and as we speak of a weight of honour, vii.3-13.] THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART, x 17 equally with the heaviness of a dull man, so we are twice commanded, “ Make heavy (honour) thy father and thy mother " ; and the Lord declares, 11 1 will make Myself heavy (get Me honour) upon Pharaoh" (Deut. v. 1 6 , Exod. xx. 12, xiv. 4, 17, 18). In these latter references it will be observed that the making “strong" the heart of Pharaoh, and the making “ Myself heavy" are so connected as almost to show a design of indi¬ cating how far is either expression from conveying the notion of immorality, infused into a human heart by God. For one of the two phrases which have been thus interpreted is still applied to Pharaoh; but the other (and the more sinister, as we should think, when thus applied) is appropriated by God to Himself: He makes Himself heavy. It is also a curious and significant coincidence that the same word was used of the burdens that were made heavy when first they claimed their freedom, which is now used of the treatment of the heart of their oppressor (v. 9). It appears, then, that the Lord is never said to debauch Pharaoh's heart, but only to strengthen it against prudence and to make it dull; that the words used do not express the infusion of evil passion, but the animation of a resolute courage, and the overcloud¬ ing of a natural discernment; and, above all, that every one of the three words, to make hard, to make strong, and to make heavy, is employed to express Pharaoh's own treatment of himself, before it is applied to any work of God, as actually taking place already. Nevertheless, there is a solemn warning for all time, in the assertion that what he at first chose, the ven¬ geance of God afterward chose for him. For indeed the same process, working more slowly but on identical nS THE BOOK OF EXODUS. lines, is constantly seen in the hardening effect of vicious habit. The gambler did not mean to stake all his fortune upon one chance, when first he timidly laid down a paltry stake; nor has he changed his mind since then as to the imprudence of such a hazard. The drunkard, the murderer himself, is a man who at first did evil as far as he dared, and afterwards dared to do evil which he would once have shuddered at. Let no man assume that prudence will always save him from ruinous excess, if respect for righteousness cannot withhold him from those first compliances which sap the will, destroy the restraint of self-respect, wear away the horror of great wickedness by familiarity with the same guilt in its lesser phases, and, above all, forfeit the enlightenment and calmness of judgment which come from the Holy Spirit of God, Who is the Spirit of wisdom and of counsel, and makes men to be of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. Let no man think that the fear of damnation will bring him to the mercy-seat at last, if the burden and gloom of being “ condemned already ” cannot now bend his will. il Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind ” (Rom. i. 28). “I gave them My statutes and showed them My judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them. ... I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments wherein they should not live” (Ezek. xx. 11, 25). This is the inevitable law, the law of a confused and darkened judgment, a heart made heavy and ears shut, a conscience seared, an infatuated will kicking against the pricks, and heaping to itself wrath against the day of wrath. Wilful sin is always a challenge to God, and it is avenged by the obscuring of the lamp of God vii.3-13.] THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART. 119 in the soul. Now, a part of His guiding light is prudence; and it is possible that men who will not be warned by the fear of injury to their conscience, such as they suppose that Pharaoh suffered, may be sobered by the danger of such derangement of their intellectual efficiency as really befel him. In this sense men are, at last, impelled blindly to their fate (and this is a judicial act of God, although it comes in the course of nature), but first they launch themselves upon the slope which grows steeper at every downward step, until arrest is impossible. On the other hand, every act of obedience helps to release the will from its entanglement, and to clear the judgment which has grown dull, anointing the eyes with eye-salve that they may see. Not in vain is the assertion of the bondage of the sinner and the glorious liberty of the children of God. A second time, then, Moses presented himself before Pharaoh with his demands; and, as he had been fore¬ warned, he was now challenged to give a sign in proof of his commission from a god. And the demand was treated as reasonable; a sign was given, and a menacing one. The peaceable rod o-f the shepherd, a fit symbol of the meek man who bore it, became a serpent * before the king, as Moses was to become destructive to his realm. But when the wise men of Egypt and the enchanters were called, they did likewise; and although a marvel was added * It is true that the word means any large reptile, as when “God created great whales ”; but doubtless our English version is correct. It was certainly a serpent which he had recently fled from, and then taken by the tail (iv. 4). And unless we suppose the magicians to have wrought a genuine miracle, no other creature can be suggested, equally convenient for their sleight of hand. 120 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. which incontestably declared the superior power of the Deity Whom Aaron represented, yet their rivalry sufficed to make strong the heart of Pharaoh, and he would not let the people go. The issue w’as now knit: the result would be more signal than if the quarrel were decided at one blow, and upon all the gods of Egypt the Lord would exercise vengeance. What are we to think of the authentification of a religion by a sign ? Beyond doubt, Jesus recognised this aspect of His own miracles, when He said, " If I had not done among them the works that none other man did, they had not had sin ” (John xv. 24). And yet there is reason in the objection that no amount of marvel ought to deflect by one hair’s breadth our judgment of right and wrong, and the true appeal of a religion must be to our moral sense. No miracle can prove that immoral teaching is sacred. But it can prove that it is supernatural. And this is precisely what Scripture always proclaims. In the New Testament, we are bidden to take heed, because a day will come, when false prophets shall work great signs and wonders, to deceive, if possible, even the elect (Mark xiii. 22). In the Old Testament, a prophet may seduce the people to worship other gods, by giving them a sign or a wonder which shall come to pass, but they must surely stone him : they must believe that his sign is only a temptation ; and above whatever power enabled him to work it, they must recognise Jehovah proving them, and know that the supernatural has come to them in judgment, not in revelation (Deut. xiii. 1-5). Now, this is the true function of the miraculous. At the most, it cannot coerce the conscience, but only challenge it to consider and to judge. vii. 14.] THE PLAGUES. 121 A teacher of the purest morality may be only a human teacher still; nor is the Christian bound to follow into the desert every clamorous innovator, or to seek in the secret chamber every one who whispers a private doctrine to a few. We are entitled to expect that one who is commissioned directly from above will bear special credentials with him; but when these are exhibited, we must still judge whether the document they attest is forged. And this may explain to us why the magicians were allowed for awhile to perplex the judgment of Pharaoh—whether by fraud, as we may well suppose, or by infernal help. It was enough that Moses should set his claims upon a level with those which Pharaoh reverenced : the king was then bound to weigh their relative merits in other and wholly different scales. THE PLAGUES. vii. 14. There are many aspects in which the plagues of Egypt may be contemplated. We may think of them as ranging through all nature, and asserting the mastery of the Lord alike over the river on which depended the prosperity of the realm, over the minute pests which can make life more wretched than larger and more conspicuous ills (the frogs of the water, the reptiles that disgrace humanity, and the insects that infest the air), over the bodies of animals stricken with murrain, and those of man tortured with boils, over hail in the cloud and blight in the crop, over the breeze that bears the locust and the sun that grows dark at noon, and at last over the secret springs of human life itself. 122 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. No pantheistic creed (and the Egyptian religion struck its roots deep into pantheistic speculation) could thus completely exalt God above nature, as a superior and controlling Power, not one with the mighty wheels of the universe, of which the height is terrible, but, as Ezekiel saw Him, enthroned above them in the like¬ ness of fire, and yet in the likeness of humanity. No idolatrous creed, however powerful be its con¬ ception of one god of the hills and another of the valleys, could thus represent a single deity as wielding all the arrows of adverse fortune, able to assail us from earth and sky and water, formidable alike in the least things and in the greatest. And presently the demonstration is completed, when at His bidding the tempest heaps up the sea, and at His frown the waters return to their strength again. And no philosophic theory condescends to bring the Ideal, the Absolute, and the Unconditioned, into such close and intimate connection with the frog-spawn of the ditch and the blain upon the tortured skin. We may, with ample warrant from Scripture, make the controversial application still more simple and direct, and think of the plagues as wreaking vengeance, for the worship they had usurped and the cruelties they had sanctioned, upon all the gods of Egypt, which are conceived of for the moment as realities, and as humbled, if not in fact, yet in the sympathies of priest and worshipper (xii. 12). Then we shall see the domain of each impostor invaded, and every vaunted power to inflict evil or to remove it triumphantly wielded by Him Who proves His equal mastery over all, and thus we shall find here the justification of that still bolder personification which says, “ Worship Him, all ye gods ” (Psalm xcvii. 7). vii, 14.] THE PLAGUES . 123 The Nile had a sacred name, and was adored as 11 Hapee, or Hapee Mu, the Abyss, or the Abyss of Waters, or the Hidden,” and the king was frequently nortrayed standing between two images of this god, his throne wreathed with water-lilies. The second plague struck at the goddess Hekt, whose head was that of a frog. The uncleanness of the third plague deranged the whole system of Egyptian worship, with its punctilious and elaborate purifications. In every one there is either a presiding divinity attacked, or a blow dealt upon the priesthood or the sacrifice, or a sphere invaded which some deity should have pro¬ tected, until the sun himself is darkened, the great god Ra, to whom their sacred city was dedicated, and whose name is incorporated in the title of his earthly repre¬ sentative, the Pharaoh or Ph-ra. Then at last, after all these premonitions, the deadly blow struck home. Or we may think of the plagues as retributive, and then we shall discover a wonderful suitability in them all. It was a direful omen that the first should afflict the nation through the river, into which, eighty years before, the Hebrew babes had been cast to die, which now rolled bloody, and seemed to disclose its dead. It was fit that the luxurious homes of the oppressors should become squalid as the huts of the slaves they trampled ; that their flesh should suffer torture worse than that of the whips they used so unmercifully; that the loss of crops and cattle should bring home to them the hardships of the poor who toiled for their magnifi¬ cence ; that physical darkness should appal them with vague terrors and undefined apprehensions, such as ever haunt the bosom of the oppressed, whose life is the sport of a caprice; and at last that the aged should learn by the deathbed of the prop and pride of their 124 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. declining feebleness, and the younger feel beside the cradle of the first blossom and fruit of love, all the agony of such bereavement as they had wantonly inflicted on the innocent. And since the fear of disadvantage in war had prompted the murder of the Hebrew children, it was right that the retributive blow should destroy first their children and then their men of war. When we come to 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” (vii. 15), or “early in the morning ” (viii. 20, ix. 13). The third, sixth and ninth, on the contrary, are inflicted withon* 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, “ Thou shalt see my face no more ” (viii. 19, ix. 11, x. 29). The first three are plagues of loathsomeness—blood¬ stained 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. It has been observed, concerning the miracles of vii, 14.] THE PLAGUES. 125 Jesus, that not one of them was creative, and that, whenever it was possible, He wrought by the use of material naturally provided. The waterpots should be filled; the five barley-loaves should be sought out; the nets should be let down for a draught; and the blind man should have his eyes anointed, and go wash in the Pool of Siloam. And it is easily seen that such miracles were a more natural expression of His errand, which was to repair and purify the existing system of things, and to remove our moral disease and dearth, than any exercise of creative power would have been, however it might have dazzled the spectators. Now, the same remark applies to the miracles of Moses, to the coming of God in judgment, as to His revelation of Himself in grace; and therefore we need not be surprised to hear that natural phenomena are not unknown which offer a sort of dim hint or fore¬ shadowing of the terrible ten plagues. Either crypto- gamic vegetation or the earth borne down from upper Africa is still seen to redden the river, usually dark, but not so as to destroy the fish. Frogs and vermin and stinging insects are the pest of modern travellers. Cattle plagues make ravage there, and hideous diseases of the skin are still as common as when the Lord promised to reward the obedience of Israel to sanitary law by putting upon them none of “ the evil diseases of Egypt" which they knew (Deut. vii. 15).* The locust is still dreaded. But some of the other visitations were more direful because not only their * To this day, amid squalid surroundings for which nominal Christians are responsible, the immunity of the Jewish race from such suffering is conspicuous, and at least a remarkable coincidence. 126 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. intensity but even their existence was almost unpre¬ cedented : hail in Egypt was only not quite unknown; and such veiling of the sun as occurs for a few minutes during the storms of sand in the desert ought scarcely to be quoted as even a suggestion of the prolonged horror of the ninth plague. Now, this accords exactly with the moral effect which was to be produced. The rescued people were not to think of God as one who strikes down into nature from outside, with strange and unwonted powers, superseding utterly its familiar forces. They were to think of Him as the Author of all; and of the common troubles of mortality as being indeed the effects of sin, yet ever controlled and governed by Him, let loose at His will, and capable of mounting to unimagined heights if His restraints be removed from them. By the east wind He brought the locusts, and removed them by the south-west wind. By a storm He divided the sea. The common things of life are in His hands, often for tremendous results. And this is one of the chief lessons of the narrative for us. Let the mind range over the list of the nine which stop short of absolute destruction, and reflect upon the vital importance of immunities for which we are scarcely grateful. The purity of water is now felt to be among the foremost necessities of life. It is one which asks nothing from us except to refrain from polluting what comes from heaven so limpid. And yet we are half satisfied to go on habitually inflicting on ourselves a plague more foul and noxious than any occasional turning of our rivers into blood. The two plagues which dealt with minute forms of life may well remind us of the vast part which we are now aware that the smallest organisms play in the economy of life, as the vii. 14.] THE PLAGUES. 127 agents of the Creator. Who gives thanks aright for the cheap blessing of the unstained light of heaven ? But we are insensible to the every-day teaching of this narrative: we turn our rivers into fluid poison ; we spread all around us deleterious influences, which breed by minute forms of parasitical life the germs of cruel disease; we load the atmosphere with fumes which slay our cattle with periodical distempers, and are deadlier to vegetation than the hailstorm or the locust; we charge it with carbon so dense that multitudes have forgotten that the sky is blue, and on our Metropolis comes down at frequent intervals the darkness of the ninth plague, and all the time we fail to see that God, Who enacts and enforces every law of nature, does really plague us whenever these outraged laws avenge themselves. The miraculous use of nature in special emergencies is such as to show the Hand which regularly wields its powers. At the same time there is no more excuse for the rationalism which would reduce the calamities of Egypt to a coincidence, than for explaining away the manna which fed a nation during its wanderings by the drug which is gathered, in scanty morsels, upon the acacia tree. The awful severity of the judgments, the series which they formed, their advent and removal at the menace and the prayer of Moses, are considerations which make such a theory absurd. The older scepti¬ cism, which supposed Moses to have taken advantage of some epidemic, to have learned in the wilderness the fords of the Red Sea,* to have discovered water, when * But indeed this notion is not yet dead. “A high wind left the shallow sea so lew that it became possible to ford it. Moses eagerly accepted the suggcst ; on, and made the venture with success,” etc.— Wellhause "Israel,” in Encyc. Brit. 123 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. the caravan was perishing of thirst, by his knowledge of the habits of wild beasts, and finally to have dazzled the nation at Horeb with some kind of fireworks, is itself almost a miracle in its violation of the laws of mind. The concurrence of countless favourable accidents and strange resources of leadership is like the chance arrangement of a printer’s type to make a poem. There is a common notion that the ten plagues followed each other with breathless speed, and were completed within a few weeks. But nothing in the narrative asserts or even hints this, and what we do know is in the opposite direction. The seventh plague was wrought in February, for the barley was in the ear and the flax in blossom (ix. 31); and the feast of passover was kept on the fourteenth day of the month Abib, so that the destruction of the firstborn was in the middle of April, and there was an interval of about two months between the last four plagues. Now, the same interval throughout would bring back the first plague to September or October. But the natural discoloration of the river, mentioned above, is in the middle of the year, when the river begins to rise; and this, it may possibly be inferred, is the natural period at which to fix the first plague. They would then range over a period of about nine months. During the inter¬ val between them, the promises and treacheries of the king excited alternate hope and rage in Israel; the scribes of their own race (once the vassals of their tyrants, but already estranged by their own oppression) began to take rank as officers among the Jews, and to exhibit the rudimentary promise of national order and government; and the growing fears of their enemies fostered that triumphant sense of mastery, out of which vii. 14-25-] THE FIRST PLAGUE. 129 national hope and pride are born. When the time came for their departure, it was possible to transmit orders throughout all their tribes, and they came out of Egypt by their armies, which would have been utterly impossible a few months before. It was with them, as it is with every man that breathes : the delay of God’s grace was itself a grace; and the slowly ripening fruit grew mellower than if it had been forced into a speedier maturity. THE FIRST PLAGUE. vii. 14-25. It was perhaps when the Nile was rising, and Pharaoh w T as coming to the bank, in pomp of state, to make official observation of its progress, on which the welfare of the kingdom depended, and to do homage before its divinity, that the messenger of another Deity confronted him, with a formal declaration of w-ar. It wrns a strange contrast. The wicked was in great prosperity, neither was he plagued like another man. Upon his head, if this were Menephtah, was the golden symbol of his own divinity. Around him w T as an obsequious court. And yet there was moving in his heart some unconfessed sense of awe, when confronted once more by the aged shepherd and his brother, who had claimed a commission from above, and had certainly met his challenge, and made a short end of the rival snakes of his own seers. Once he had asked “ Who is Jehovah?” and had sent His ambassadors to their tasks again with insult. But now he needs to harden his heart, in order not to yield to their strange and persistent demands. He remembers how they had spoken to him already, u Thus saith the Lord, Israel is 9 *30 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. My son, My firstborn, and I have said unto thee, Let My son go that he may serve Me; and thou hast refused to let him go : behold, 1 will slay thy son, thy firstborn” (iv. 22, R.V.). Did this awful warning come back to him, when the worn, solemn and inflexible face of Moses again met him ? Did he divine the connection between this ultimate penalty and w T hat is now announced—the turning of the pride and refresh¬ ment of Egypt into blood ? Or was it partly because each plague, however dire, seemed to fall short of the tremendous threat, that he hoped to find the power of Moses more limited than his warnings ? u Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” And might he, at the last, be hardened to pursue the people because, by their own showing, the keenest arrow in their quiver was now sped ? Whatever his feelings were, it is certain that the brothers come and go, and inflict their plagues unrestrained ; that no insult or violence is attempted, and we can see the truth of the words 11 1 have made thee as a god unto Pharaoh.” It is in clear allusion to his vaunt, “ I know not Jehovah,” that Moses and A.aron now repeat the demand for release, and say, il Hitherto thou hast not hearkened : behold, in this thou shalt know that I am Jehovah.” What follows, when attentively read, makes it plain that the blow falls upon “ the waters that are in the river,” and those that have been drawn from it into canals for artificial irrigation, into reservoirs like the lakes Moeris and Mareotis, and even into vessels for immediate use. But we are expressly told that it was possible to obtain water by digging wells. Therefore there is no vii. 14-25.] THE FIRST PLAGUE. 131 point whatever in the cavil that if Moses turned all the water into blood, none was left for the operations of the magicians. But no comparison whatever existed between their petty performances and the immense and direful work of vengeance which rolled down a putrid mass of corrupt waters through the land, spoiling the great stores of water by which later drought should be relieved, destroying the fish, that important part of the food of the nation, for which Israel afterwards lusted, and sowing the seeds of other plagues, by the pollution of that balmy air in which so many of our own suffering countrymen still find relief, but which was now infected and loathsome. Even Pharaoh must have felt that his gods might do better for him than this, and that it would be much more to the point just then to undo his plague than to increase it—to turn back the blood to water than contribute a few drops more. If this was their best effort, he was alreadv helpless in the hand of his assailant, who, by the up¬ lifting of his rod, and the bold avowal in advance of responsibility for so great a calamity, had formally defied him. But Pharaoh dared not accept the challenge : it was effort enough for him to “set his heart” against surrender to the portent, and he sullenly turned back into the palace from the spot where Moses met him. Two details remain to be observed. The seven days which were fulfilled do not measure the interval between this plague and the next, but the period of its infliction. And this information is not given us con¬ cerning any other, until we come to the three days of darkness.* It is important here, because the natural * x. 22. The accurate Kalisch is therefore wrong in speaking of “The duration of the first plague, a statement not made with regatd to any of the subsequent inflictions,”—Commentary in loco. 132 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. discoloration lasts for three weeks, and mythical ten¬ dencies would rather exaggerate than shorten the term Again, it is contended that only with the fourth plague did Israel begin to enjoy exemption, because then only is their immunity recorded.* But it is strange indeed to suppose that they were involved in punishments the design of which was their relief; and in fact their exemption is implied in the statement that the Egyptians (only) had to dig wells. It is to be understood that large stores of water would everywhere be laid up, because the Nile water, however delicious, carries much sediment which must be allowed to settle down. They would not be forced, therefore, to fall back upon the polluted common sources for a supply. And now let us contrast this miracle with the first of the New Testament. One spoiled the happiness of the guilty; the other rescued the overclouded joy of the friends of Jesus, not turning water into blood but into wine; declaring at one stroke all the difference between the law which worketh wrath, and the gospel of the grace of God. The first was impressive and public, as the revelation upon Sinai; the other appealed far more to the heart than to the imagination, and befitted well the kingdom that was not with observa¬ tion, the King who grew up like a tender plant, and did not strive nor cry, the redeeming influence which was at first unobtrusive as the least of all seeds, but became a tree, and the shelter of the fowls of heaven. * Speaker’s Commentary, i., p. 242; Kalisch on viii. 18; Kiel, i. 484. CHAPTER VIII. THE SECOND PLAGUE, viii. 1-15. A LTHOUGH Pharaoh had warning of the first plague, no appeal was made to him to avert it by submission. But before the plague of frogs he was distinctly commanded, “ Let My people go.” It is an advancing lesson. He has felt the power of Jehovah : now he is to connect, even more closely, his suffering with his disobedience; and when this is accomplished, the third plague will break upon him unannounced—a loud challenge to his conscience to become itself his judge. The plague of frogs was far greater than our experi¬ ence helps us to imagine. At least two cases are on record of a people being driven to abandon their settle¬ ments because they had become intolerable ; li as even the vessels were full of them, the water infested and the food uneatable, as they could scarcely set their feet on the ground without treading on heaps of them, and as they were vexed by the smell of the great multitude that died, they fled from that region.” The Egyptian species known to science as the Rana Mosaica, and still called by the uncommon epithet here employed, is peculiarly repulsive, and peculiarly noisy too. The superstition which adored a frog as the x 34 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. “ Queen of the two Worlds/’ and placed it upon the sacred lotus-leaf, would make it impossible for an Egyptian to adopt even such forlorn measures of self- defence as might suggest themselves. It was an un¬ clean pest against which he was entirely helpless, and it extended the power of his enemy from the river to the land. The range of the grievance is dwelt upon in the warning: “ they shall come up and enter into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed . . . and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading- troughs (viii. 3). The most sequestered and the dryest spots alike would swarm with them, thrust forward into the most unsuitable places by the multitude behind. Thus Pharaoh himself had to share, far more than in the first plague, the misery of his humblest subjects ; and, although again his magicians imitated Aaron upon some small prepared plot, and amid circumstances which made it easier to exhibit frogs than to exclude them, yet there was no comfort in such puerile emula¬ tion, and they offered no hope of relieving him. From the gods that were only vanities, he turned to Jehovah, and abased himself to ask the intercession of Moses : “ Intreat Jehovah that He takeaway the frogs from me and from my people; and I will let the people go.” The assurance would have been a hopeful one, if only the sense of inconvenience were the same as the sense of sin. But when we wonder at the relapses of men who were penitent upon sick-beds or in adversity, as soon as their trouble is at an end, we are blind to this distinction. Pain is sometimes obviously due to ourselves, and it is natural to blame the conduct which led to it. But if we blame it only for being disastrous, we cannot hope that the fruits of the Spirit will result viii. 1-15.] THE SECOND PLAGUE. 135 from a sensation of the flesh. It was so with Pharaoh, as doubtless Moses expected, since God had not yet exhausted His predicted works of retribution. This anticipated fraud is much the simplest explanation of the difficult phrase/' Have thou this glory over me.” It is sometimes explained as an expression of courtesy—“ I obey thee as a superior ” ; which does not occur elsewhere, because it is not Hebrew but Egyptian. But this suavity is quite alien to the spirit of the narrative, in which Moses, however courteous, repre¬ sents an offended God. It is more natural to take it as an open declaration that he was being imposed upon, yet would grant to the king whatever advantage the fraud implied. And to make the coming relief more clearly the action of the Lord, to shut out every possibility that magician or priest should claim the honour, he bade the king name an hour at which the plague should cease. If the frogs passed away at once, the relief might chance to be a natural one ; and Pharaoh doubtless con¬ ceived that elaborate and long protracted intercessions were necessary for his deliverance. Accordingly he fixed a future period, yet as near as he perhaps thought possible; and Moses, without any express authority, promised him that it should be so. Therefore he “ cried unto the Lord,” and the frogs did not retreat into the river, but suddenly died where they were, and filled the unhappy land with a new horror in their decay. But “ when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he made his heart heavy and hearkened not unto them.” It is a graphic sentence: it implies rather than affirms their indignant remonstrances, and the sullen, dull, spiritless obstinacy with which he held his base and unkingly purpose. THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 136 THE THIRD PLAGUE . viii. 16 19. There is no sufficient reason for discarding the ordinary opinion of this plague. Gnats have been sug¬ gested (with beetles instead of flies for the fourth, since gnats and flies would scarcely make two several judg¬ ments), but these, which spring from marshy ground, would unfitly be connected with the dust whence Aaron was to evoke the pest. Sir Samuel Baker, on the other hand, has said of modern Egypt that “ it seemed as if the very dust were turned into lice ” (quoted in Speaker’s Commentary in loco). Two features in this plague deserve attention. It came without any warning whatever. The faithless king who gave his word and broke it found himsell involved in fresh miseries without an opportunity of humbling himself again. He was flung back into deep waters, because he refused to fulfil the terms upon which he had been extricated. It must be understood that the act of Aaron was a public one, performed in the sight of Pharaoh, and instantly followed by the plague. There was no doubt about the origin of the pest, and the new and alarming prospect was opened up of calamities yet to come, without a chance to avert them by submission. Again, it will be observed that the magicians are utterly baffled just when there is no warning given, and therefore no opportunity for pre-arranged sleight of hand. And this surely favours the opinion that they had not hitherto succeeded by supernatural assist¬ ance, for there is no such evident reason why infernal aid should cease at this exact point. viii. 20-32.] THE FOURTH PLAGUE. 137 It is a mistake to suppose that thereupon they con¬ fessed the mission of the brothers. In their agitation they admitted that, on their part at least, no divinity had been at work before. But they rather ascribed what they saw to the action of some vaguely indicated deity, than confessed it to be the work of Jehovah. Again it has to be asked whether this resembles more the vainglorious structure of a myth, or the course of a truthful history. Nevertheless, their grudging and insufficient avowal was meant to induce a surrender. But “ Pharaoh's heart was strong, and he hearkened not unto them.” To this statement it is not added, “ because the Lord had hardened him,” for this had not even yet taken place; but only, il as the Lord had spoken.” THE FOURTH PLAGUE, viii. 20-32. When the third plague had died away, when the sense of reaction and exhaustion had replaced agitation and distress, and when perhaps the fear grew strong that at any moment a new calamity might befal the land as abruptly as the last, God orders a solemn and urgent appeal to be made to the oppressor, f And the same occurs three times : after each plague which arrives unexpectedly the next is introduced by a special warning. \ On each of these occasions, more¬ over, the appeal is made in the morning, at the hour when reason ought to be clearest and the passions least agitating; and this circumstance is perhaps alluded to in the favourite phrase of Jeremiah when he would speak of condescending earnestness—“ I sent my prophets, rising up early and sending them” 138 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. (jer. xxv. 4, xxvi. 5, xxix. 19, and many more ; cf. also vii. 13, and 2 Chron. xxxvi. 15). So far is the Scripture from regarding Pharaoh as propelled by destiny, as by a machine, down iron grooves to ruin. We have now come to the group of plagues which inflict actual bodily damage, and not inconvenience and humiliation only : the dogfly (or beetle) ; the murrain among beasts, which was a precursor of the crowning evil that struck at human life; and the boils. Of the fourth plague the precise nature is uncertain. There is a beetle which gnaws both man and beast, destroys clothes, furniture, and plants, and even now they “are often seen in millions” (Munk, Palestine , p. 120). “ In a few minutes they filled the whole house. . . . Only after the most laborious exertions, and covering the floor of the house with hot coals, they succeeded in mastering them. If they make such attacks during the night, the inmates are compelled to give up the houses, and little children or sick persons, who are unable to rise alone, are then exposed to the greatest danger of life” (Pratte, Abyssinia , p. 143, in Kalisch). Now, this explanation has one advantage over that of clogflies—that special mention is made of their afflicting lt the ground whereon they are” (ver. 21), which is less suitable to a plague of flies. But it may be that no one creature is meant. The Plebrew word means “ a mixture.” Jewish interpreters have gone so far as to make it mean “ all kinds of noxious animals and ser¬ pents and scorpions mixed together,” and although it is palpably absurd to believe that Pharaoh should have survived if these had been upon him and upon his servants, yet the expression “a mixture,” following after one kind of vermin had tormented the land, need not be narrowed too exactly. With deliberate parti- viii. 20-32.] THE FOURTH PLAGUE. 139 cularity the king was warned that they should come “upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine houses, and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of [them *], and also the ground whereon they are.” It has been supposed, from the special mention of the exemption of the land of Goshen, that this was a new thing. We have seen reason, however, to think otherwise, and the emphatic assertion now made is easy to understand. The plague was especially to be expected in low fat ground: the king may not even have been aware of the previous freedom of Israel; and in any case its importance as an evidence had not been pressed upon him. The spirit of the seventy-eighth Psalm, though not perhaps any one specific phrase, contrasts the earlier as well as the later plagues with the protection of His own people, whom He led like sheep (vers. 42-52). After the appointed interval (the same which Pharaoh had indicated for the removal of the frogs) the plague came. We are told that the land was corrupted, but it is significant that more stress is laid upon the suffer¬ ing of Pharaoh and his court in the event than in the menace. It came home to himself more cruelly than any former plague, and he at once attempted to make terms: “ Go ye, sacrifice to }mur God in the land.” It is a natural speech, at first not asking to be trusted as before by getting relief before the Hebrews actually enjoy their liberty^; and yet conceding as little as possible, and in hot haste to have that little done and * The Revised Version has “ swarms of flies,” which is clearly an attempt to meet the case. But it is worth notice that in the Psalms the expression was twice rendered “divers kinds of flies” (lxxviii. 45» ji A.V.) The word occurs only of this plague. 140 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. the relief obtained. They may even serve their God on the sacred soil, so completely has He already defeated all His rivals. But this was not what was demanded ; and Moses repeated the claim of a three days' journey, basing it upon the ground, still more insulting to the national religion, that lt We will sacrifice to Jehovah our God the abomination of the Egyptians," that is to say, sacred animals, which it is horror in their eyes to sacrifice. Any faith in his own creed which Pharaoh ever had is surrendered when this argument, instead of making their cause hopeless, forces him to yield—adding, however, like a thoroughly weak man who wishes to refuse but dares not, li only ye shall not go very far away: intreat for me." And again Moses concedes the point, with only the courteous remonstrance, i( But let not Pharaoh deal deceitfully any more." It is necessary to repeat that we have not a shred of evidence that Moses would have violated his compact and failed to return: it would have sufficed as a first step to have asserted the nationality of his people and their right to worship their own God : all the rest would speedily have followed. But the terms which were rejected again and again did not continue for ever to bind the victorious party : the story of their actual departure makes it plain that both sides understood it to be a final exodus ; and thence came the murderous pursuit of Pharaoh (cf. xv. 9), w T hich in itself w r ould have cancelled any compact which had existed until then. CHAPTER IX. THE FIFTH PLAGUE, ix. 1-7. O UR Lord when on earth came not to destroy men’s lives. And yet it was necessary, for our highest instruction, that we should not think of Him as revealing a Divinity wholly devoid of sternness. Twice, therefore, a gleam of the fires of justice fell on the eyes which followed Him—through the destruction once of a barren tree, and once of a herd of swine, which property no Jew should have possessed. So now, when half the gloomy round of the plagues was being completed, it was necessary to prove that life itself was staked on this desperate hazard; and this was done first by the very same expedient—the des¬ truction of life which was not human. There is something pathetic, if one thinks of it, in the extent to which domestic animals share our fortunes, and suffer through the brutality or the recklessness of their proprietors. If all men were humane, self-controlled, and (as a natural result) prosperous, what a weight would be uplifted from the lower levels also of created life, all of which groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now ! The dumb animal world is partner with humanity, and shares its fate, as each animal is dependent on its individual owner. 142 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. We have already seen the whole life of Egypt stricken, but now the lower creatures are to perish, un¬ less Pharaoh will repent. He is once more summoned in the name of u Jehovah, God of the Hebrews,” and warned that the hand of Jehovah, even a very grievous murrain (for so the verse appears to say), is “ upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the herds and upon the flocks.” Here some particulars need observation. Herds and flocks were everywhere; but horses were a comparatively late introduction into Egypt, where they were as yet chiefly employed for war. Asses, still so familiar to the traveller, were the usual beasts of burden, and were owned in great numbers by the rich, although rash controversialists have pretended that, as being unclean, they were not tolerated in the land. Camels, it is said, are not to be found on the monu¬ ments, but }^et they were certainly known and possessed by Egypt, though there were many reasons why they should be held chiefly on the frontiers, and perhaps in connection with the Arabian mines and settlements. Upon all these “in the field” the plague should come. The murrain still works havoc in the Delta, chiefly at the period, beginning with December, when the floods are down and the cattle are turned out into the pastures, which would this year have been signally unwholesome. It was not, then, the fact of a cattle plague which was miraculous, but its severity, its coming at an appointed time, its assailing beasts of every kind, and its exempting those of Israel. We are told that “all the cattle of Egypt died,” and yet that afterwards “ the hail . . . smote both man and beast ” (ix. 6, 25). It is an inconsistency very ix. 1-7.] THE FIFTH PLAGUE . *43 serious in the eyes of people who are too stupid or too uncandid to observe that, just before, the mischief was limited to those cattle which were "in the field’' (ver. 3). There were great stalls in suitable places, to give them shelter during the inundations; and all that had not yet been driven out to graze are expressly exempted from the plague. Much of Pharaoh’s own property perished, but he was the last man in the country who wouM feel personal inconvenience by the loss, and therefore nothing was more natural than that his selfish “ heart w T as heavy, and he did not let the people go.” Not even such an effort was needed as in the previous plague, when we read that he made his heart heavy, by a deliberate act. There was nothing to indicate that he had now reached a crisis—that God Himself in His judgment would henceforth make bold and resolute against crushing adversities the heart which had been obdurate against humanity, against evidence, against honour and plighted faith. Nothing is easier than to step over the frontier between great nations. And in the moral world also the Rubicon is passed, the destiny of a soul is fixed, sometimes without a struggle, unawares. Instead of spiritual conflict, there was intellectual curiosity. “ Pharaoh sent, and behold there was not so much as one of the cattle of the Israelites dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was heavy, and he did not let the people go.” This inquiry into a phenomenon which was surprising indeed, but yet quite unable to affect his action, recalls the spiritual condition of Herod, who was conscience-stricken when first he heard of Christ, and said, u It is John whom I beheaded " (Mark vi. 16), but afterwards felt merely vulgar 144 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. curiosity and desire to behold a sign of Him. In the case of Pharaoh it was the next step to judicial infatuation. When Christ confronted Herod, He, Who had explained Himself to Pilate, was absolutely silent. And this warns us not to think that an interest in religious problems is itself of necessity religious. One may understand all mysteries, and yet it may profit him nothing. And many a reprobate soul is contro¬ versial, acute, and keenly orthodox. THE SIXTH PLAGUE. ix. 8-12. At the close of the second triplet, as of the first, stands a plague without a warning, but not without the clearest connection between the blow and Him who deals it. To the Jews Egypt was a furnace in which they were being consumed—whether literally in human sacrifice, or metaphorically in the hard labour which wasted them (Deut. iv. 20). And now the brothers were commanded to fill both hands w T ith ashes of the furnace and throw them upon the wind,* either to symbolise the suffering which was to be spread wide over the land, or because the ashes of human sacrifices were thus presented to their evil genius, Typhon. If this were its meaning, the irony was keen, when at the same action a feverish inflammation breaking out in blains spread over all the nation. But, apart from any such reference to their cruel idolatry, it was right that they should suffer in the * The passage in Deuteronomy had not this event specially in mind, or it would have used the same term for a furnace. The word for ashes implies what can be blown upon the wind. ix. 8-12.] THE SIXTH PLAGUE. 145 flesh. When the higher nature is dead, there is no ap¬ peal so sharp and certain as to the physical sensibility. And moreover, there are other sins which have their root in the flesh besides sloth and bodily indulgence. Wrath and cruelty and pride are strangely stimulated and excited by self-indulgence. Not in vain does St. Paul describe a “mind of the flesh,” and reckon among the fruits of the flesh not only uncleanness and drunkenness, but, just as truly, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, heresies (Col. ii. 18; Gal. v. 19, 20). From such evil tempers, stimulated by evil appetites, the slaves of Egypt had suffered bitterly ; and now the avenging rod fell upon the bodies of their tyrants. And we may perhaps detect especial suffering, cer¬ tainly an especial triumph to be commemorated, in the failure of the magicians even to stand before the king. It is implied that they had done so until now, and this confirms the belief that after the third plague they had not acknowledged Jehovah, but merely said in their defeat, “ This is the finger of a god.” Until now Jannes and Jambres (two, to rival the two brothers) had withstood Moses, but now the contrast between the prophet and his victims writhing in their pain was too sharp for prejudice itself to overlook: their folly was 11 evident unto all men ” (2 Tim. iii. 8, 9). But it was not destined that Pharaoh should yield even to so tremendous a coercion what he refused to moral influences; and as Jesus after His resurrection appeared not unto all the people (hiding this crowning evidence from the eyes which had in vain beheld so much), so “ the Lord made strong the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them, as the Lord had spoken unto Moses.” In this last expression is the explicit statement that it w 7 as now that the prediction IO 146 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. attained fulfilment, in the manner which we have dis¬ cussed already. But even this strength of heart did not reach the height of attempting any reprisals upon the torturers. The sense of the supernatural was their defence : Moses was as a god unto Pharaoh, and Aaron was his prophet. In the narrative of this plague there is an expression which deserves attention for another reason. The ashes, it says, “ shall become dust.” Is there no controversy, turning upon the too rigid and prosaic straining of a New Testament construction, which might be simplified by considering the Hebrew use of language, exemplified in such an assertion as “ It shall become dust,” and soon after, “ It is the Lord’s passover”? Do these announce transubstantiations ? Did two handfuls of ashes literally become the blains upon the bodies of all the Egyptians ? THE SEVENTH PLAGUE. ix. 13-35- The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, we have argued, was not the debauching of his spirit, but only the strengthening of his will. “Wait on the Lord and be of good courage" ; “ Be strong , O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong f O Joshua, son of Josadak the high priest; and be strong , all ye people” (Ps. xxvii. 14; Hag. ii. 4), are clear proofs that what was implied in this word was not wickedness, but only that iron determination which his choice directed in a wicked channel. And therefore it was no mockery, no insincere appeal by one who had provided against the mischance of its succeeding, when God again addressed Himself ix. 13-35] THE SEVENTH PLAGUE, 147 to the reason, and even to the rational fears of Pharaoh. He had only provided against a terror-stricken submis¬ sion, as wholly immoral and valueless, as the ceasing to resist of one w r ho has swooned through fright. Now, to give such an one a stimulant and thus to enable him to exercise his volition, would be different from inciting him to rebel. The seventh plague, then, is ushered in by an expostulation more earnest, resolute and minatory than attended any of the previous ones. And this is the more necessary because human life is now for the first time at stake. First the king is solemnly reminded that Jehovah, Whom he no longer can refuse to know, is the God of the Hebrews, has a claim upon their services, and demands them. In oppressing the nation, therefore, Pharaoh usurped what belonged to the Lord. Now, this is the eternal charter of the rights of all humanity. Whoever encroaches on the just sphere of the free action of his neighbour deprives him, to exactly the same extent, of the power to glorify God by a free obedience. The heart glorifies God by submission to so hard a lot, but the co-operation of the 11 whole body and soul and spirit" does not visibly bear testimony to the regulating power of grace. The oppressor may contend (like some slave-owners) that he guides his human property better than it would guide itself. But one assertion he cannot make: namely, that God is receiving the loyal homage of a life spontaneously devoted ; that a man and not a machine is glorifying God in this body and spirit which are God’s. For the body is but a chattel. This is why the Christian doctrine of the religious equality of all men in Christ carries with it the political assertion of the equal secular rights of the whole human race. I must not 143 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. transfer to myself the solemn duty of my neighbour to offer up to God the sacrifice not only of his chastened spirit but also of his obedient life. And these words were also a lifelong admonition to every Israelite. He held his liberties from God. He was not free to be violent and wanton, and to say “ I am delivered to commit all these abominations.” The dignities of life were bound up with its responsibilities. Well, it is not otherwise to-day. As truly as Moses, the champions of our British liberties were earnest and God-fearing men. Not for leave to revel, to accumulate enormous fortunes, and to excite by their luxuries the envy and rage of neglected brothers, while possessing more enormous powers to bless them than ever were entrusted to a class,—not for this our heroes bled on the field and on the scaffold. Tyrants rarely deny to rich men leave to be self-indulgent. And self- indulgence rarely nerves men to heroic effort. It is for the freedom of the soul that men dare all things. And liberty is doomed wherever men forget that the true freeman is the servant of Jehovah. On these terms the first demand for a national emancipation was enforced. And next, Pharaoh is warned that God, who at first threatened to destroy his firstborn, but had hitherto come short of such a deadly stroke, had not, as he might flatter himself, exhausted His power to avenge. Pharaoh should yet experience “all My plagues.” And there is a dreadful significance in the phrase which threatens to put these plagues, with regard to others, “upon thy servants and upon thy people,” but with regard to Pharaoh himself “ upon thine heart.” There it was that the true scourge smote. Thence came ruin and defeat. His infatuation was more dreadful than hail in the cloud and locusts on the 13-35-] THE SEVENTH PLAGUE. 149 blast, than the darkness at noon and the midnight wail of a bereaved nation. For his infatuation involved all these. The next assertion is not what the Authorised Version made it, and what never was fulfilled. It is not, il Now I will stretch out My hand to smite thee and thy people with pestilence, and thou shalt be cut off from the earth.” It says, u Now I had done this, as far as any restraint for thy sake is concerned, but in very deed for this cause have I made thee to stand ” (unsmitten), “ for to show thee My power, and that My name may be declared throughout all the earth ” (vers. 15, 16). The course actually taken was more for the glory of God, and a better warning to others, than a sudden stroke, however crushing. And so we find, many years after all this generation has passed away, that a strangely distorted version of these events is current among the Philistines in Palestine. In the days of Eli, when the ark was brought into the camp, they said, u Woe unto us! who shall deliver us out of the hand of these mighty gods ? These are the gods that smote the Egyptians with all manner of plagues in the wilderness ” (1 Sam. iv. 8). And this, along with the impression which Rahab declared that the Exodus and what followed it had made, may help us to understand what a mighty influence upon the wars of Palestine the scourging of Egypt had, how terror fell upon all the inhabitants of the land, and they melted away (Josh. ii. 9, 10). And perhaps it may save us from the unconscious egoism which always deems that I myself shall not be treated quite as severely as I deserve, to mark how the punishment of one affects the interests of all. Added to all this is a kind of half-ironical clemency, *50 THE BOOK OF EXODUS . an opportunity of escape if he would humble himself so far as to take warning even to a small extent. The plague was to be of a kind especially rare in Egypt, and of utterly unknown severity—such hail as had not been in Egypt since the day it w*as founded until now. But he and his people might, if they would, hasten to bring in their cattle and all that they had in the field. Pharaoh, after his sore experience of the threats of Moses, would find it a hard trial in any case, whether to withdraw his property or to brave the stroke. To him it was a kind of challenge. To those of his subjects who had any proper feeling it was a merciful deliverance, and a profoundly skilful education of their faith, which began by an obedience probably hesitating, but had few doubts upon the morrow. We read that he who feared the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses; and this is the first hint that the plagues, viewed as discipline, were not utterly vain. The existence of others who feared Jehovah beside the Jews prepares us for the “ mixed multitude" who came up along with them (xii. 38), and whose ill-instructed and probably very selfish adhesion was quite consistent with such sensual discontent as led the whole congregation into sin (Num. xi. 4). To make the connection between Jehovah and the impending storm more obvious still, Moses stretched his rod toward heaven, and there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, such as slew man and beast, and smote the trees, and destroyed all the vegetation which had yet grown up. The heavens, the atmos¬ phere, w T ere now enrolled in the conspiracy against Pharaoh : they too served Jehovah. In such a storm, the terror was even greater than ix -* 3-35 ] THE SEVENTH PLAGUE. * 5 * the peril. When a great writer of our own time called attention to the elaborate machinery by which God in nature impresses man with the sense of a formidable power above, he chose a thunderstorm as the most striking example of his meaning. il Nothing appears to me more remarkable than the array of scenic magnificence by which the imagination is appalled, in myriads of instances when the actual danger is comparatively small; so that the utmost possible impression of awe shall be produced upon the minds of all, though direct suffering is inflicted upon few. Consider, for instance, the moral effect of a single thunderstorm. Perhaps two or three persons may be struck dead within a space of a hundred square miles ; and their death, unaccompanied by the scenery of the storm, would produce little more than a momen¬ tary sadness in the busy hearts of living men. But the preparation for the judgment, by all that mighty gathering of the clouds ; by the questioning of the forest leaves, in their terrified stillness, which way the winds shall go forth ; by the murmuring to each other, deep in the distance, of the destroying angels before they draw their swords of fire; by the march of the funeral darkness in the midst of the noonday, and the rattling of the dome of heaven beneath the chariot wheels of death;—on how many minds do not these produce an impression almost as great as the actual witnessing of the fatal issue ! and how strangely are the expressions of the threatening elements fitted to the apprehensions of the human soul ! The lurid colour, the long, irregular, convulsive sound, the ghastly shapes of flaming and heaving cloud, are all true and faithful in their appeal to our instinct of danger.”— Ruskin, Stones oj Venice, III. 197-8. 152 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. Such a tempest, dreadful anywhere, would be most appalling of all in the serene atmosphere of Egypt, to unaccustomed spectators, and minds troubled by their guilt. Accordingly we find that Pharaoh was less terrified by the absolute mischief done than by the 4< voices of God,” when, unnerved for the moment, he confessed at least that he had sinned “ this time ” (a singularly weak repentance for his long and daring resistance, even if we explain it, " this time I confess that I have sinned ”), and went on in his terror to pour out orthodox phrases and professions with suspicious fluency. The main point was the bargain which he proposed: “ In treat the Lord, for there hath been enough of mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go, and ye shall stay no longer/’ Looking attentively at all this, we discern in it a sad resemblance to some confessions of these latter days. Men are driven by affliction to acknowledge God: they confess the offence which is palpable, and even add that God is righteous and that they are not. If possible, they shelter themselves from lonely condem¬ nation by general phrases, such as that all are wicked; just as Pharaoh, although he would have scoffed at the notion of any national volition except his own, said, “ I and my people are sinners.” Above all, they are much more anxious for the removal of the rod than for the cleansing of the guilt; and if this can be accomplished through the mediation of another, they have as little desire as Pharaoh had for any personal approach to God, Whom they fear, and if possible repel. And by these signs, every experienced observer expects that if they are delivered out of trouble they will forget their vows. 13 - 35-1 THE SEVENTH PLAGUE . 153 Moses was exceedingly meek. And therefore, or else because the message of God implied that other plagues were to succeed this, he consented to intercede, yet adding the simple and dignified protest, “As for thee and thy pf jple, I know that ye will not yet fear Jehovah God." And so it came to pass. The heart of Pharaoh was made heavy, and he would not let Israel go. Looking back upon this miracle, we are reminded of the mighty part which atmospheric changes have played in the history of the world. Snowstorms saved Europe from the Turk and from Napoleon: the wind played almost as important a part in our liberation from James, and again in the defeat of the plans of the French Revolution to invade us, as in the destruction of the Armada. And so we read, “ Hast thou entered the treasuries of the snow ? or hast thou seen the treasuries of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war ? " (Job xxxviii. 22-3). * Except in one passage (Gen. ii. 4 to iii. 23) these titles of Deity are nowhere else combined in the books of Moses. CHAPTER X. THE EIGHTH PLAGUE. X. 1-20. HE Lord would not command His servant again A to enter the dangerous presence of the sullen prince, without a reason which would sustain his faith : " For I have made heavy his heart.” The pronoun is emphatic: it means to say, 1 His foolhardiness is My doing and cannot go beyond My will: thou art safe.' And the same encouragement belongs to all who do the sacred will: not a hair of their head shall truly perish, since life and death are the servants of their God. Thus, in the storm of human passion, as of the winds, He says, “ It is I, be not afraid ”; making the wrath of man to praise Him, stilling alike the tumult of the waves and the madness of the people. It is possible that even the merciful mitigations of the last plague were used by infatuated hearts to justify their wilfulness: the most valuable crops of all had escaped ; so that these judgments, however dire, were not quite beyond endurance. Just such a course of reasoning deludes all who forget that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance. Besides the reasons already given for lengthening out the train of judgments, it is added that Israel should teach the story to posterity, and both fathers and children should “know that I am Jehovah.” X. 1-20.] THE EIGHTH PLAGUE. 155 Accordingly it became a favourite title—“ The Lord which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." Even the apostates under Sinai would not reject so illustrious a memory: their feast was nominally to Jehovah; and their idol was an image of “the gods which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (xxxii. 4, 5). Has our land no deliverances for which to be thank¬ ful ? Instead of boastful self-assertion, should we not say, “We have heard with our ears, O God, and our fathers have declared unto us, the noble works that Thou didst in their days and in the old time before them ? " Have we forgotten that national mercies call aloud for national thanksgiving ? And in the family, and in the secret life of each, are there no rescues, no emancipations, no enemies overcome by a hand not our own, which call for reverent acknowledgment ? “These things were our examples, and are written for our admonition." The reproof now spoken to Pharaoh is sterner than any previous one. There is no reasoning in it. The demand is peremptory : “ How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself?” With it is a sharp and short com¬ mand : “ Let My people go, that they may serve Me." And with this is a detailed and tremendous threat. It is strange, in the face of the knowledge accumulated since the objection called for it, to remember that once this narrative was challenged, because locusts, it was said, are unknown in Egypt. They are mentioned in the inscriptions. Great misery w r as caused by them in 1463, and just three hundred years later Niebuhr was himself at Cairo during a plague of them. Equally arbitrary is the objection that Joel predicted locusts “such as there hath not been ever the like, neither THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 156 shall be any more after them, even to the years of many generations ” (ii. 2), w hereas we read of these that “beiore them there w r ere no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such" (x. 14). The objection is whimsical in its absurdity, when w 7 e remember that Joel spoke distinctly of Zion and the holy mountain (ii. 1), and Exodus of “the borders of Egypt” (x. 14). But it is true that locusts are comparatively rare in Egypt; so that while the meaning of the threat would be appreciated, familiarity w T ould not have steeled them against it. The ravages of the locust are terrible indeed, and coming just in time to ruin the crops which had escaped the hail, would complete the misery of the land. One speaks of the sudden change of colour by the disappearance of verdure where they alight as being like the rolling up of a carpet; and here we read “they shall cover the eye of the earth,"—a phrase peculiar to the Pentateuch (ver. 15; Num. xxii. 5, 11); and they shall eat the residue of that which has escaped, . . . and they shall fill thy houses, and the . . . houses of all the Egyptians, w r hich neither thy fathers nor thy fathers' fathers have seen." After uttering the appointed warning, Moses abruptly left, awaiting no negociations, plainly regarding them as vain. But now, for the first time, the servants of Pharaoh interfered, declared the country to be ruined, and pressed him to surrender. And yet it was now first that we read (ver. 1) that their hearts were hardened as well as his. For that is a hard heart that does not remonstrate against wrong, however plainly God reveals His displeasure, until new troubles are at hand, and X. I -20.] THE EIGHTH FLAGUE. *57 which even then has no regard for the wrongs of Israel, but only for the woes of Egypt. It is a hard heart, therefore, which intends to repent upon its deathbed; for its motives are identical with these. Pharaoh’s behaviour is that of a spoiled child, who is indeed the tyrant most familiar to us. He feels that he must yield, or else why should the brothers be recalled ? And yet, when it comes to the point, he tries to play the master still, by dictating the terms for his own surrender; and breaks off the negociation rather than do frankly what he must feel that it is necessary to do. Moses laid his finger accurately upon the disease when he reproached him for refusing to humble himself. And if his behaviour seem unnatural, it is worth observation that Napoleon, the greatest modern example of proud, intellectual, godless infatua¬ tion, allowed himself to be crushed at Leipsic through just the same reluctance to do thoroughly and without self-deception what he found it necessary to consent to do. “ Napoleon,” says his apologist, Thiers, “at length determined to retreat—a resolution humbling to his pride. Unfortunately, instead ot a retreat frankly admitted ... he determined on one which from its imposing character should not be a real retreat at all, and should be accomplished in open day.” And this perversity, which ruined him, is traced back to " the illusions of pride.” Well, it was quite as hard for the Pharaoh to sur¬ render at discretion, as for the Corsican to stoop to a nocturnal retreat. Accordingly, he asks, " Who are ye that shall go ? ” and when Moses very explicitly and resolutely declares that they will all go, with all their property, his passion overcomes him, he feels that to consent is to lose them for ever, and he exclaims, i5 8 THE BOOK OF EXODUS . “So be Jehovah with you as I will let you go and your little ones : look to it, for evil is before you ”—that is to say, Your intentions are bad. “ Go ye that are men, and serve the Lord, for that is what ye desire,"— no more than that is implied in your demand, unless it is a mere pretence, under which more lurks than it avow r s. But he and they have long been in a state of w 7 ar : menaces, submissions, and treacheries have followed each other fast, and he has no reason to complain if their demands are raised. Moreover, his own nation celebrated religious festivals in company with their wives and children, so that his rejoinder is an empty outburst of rage. And of a Jewish feast it was sak\ a little later, “Thou shalt rejoice before the Loid thy God, thou and thy son and thy daughter, and thy manservant and thy maidservant . . . and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow" (Deut. xvi. n). There was no insincerity in the demand ; and although the suspicions of the king w T ere naturally excited by the exultant and ever-rising hopes of the Hebrews, and the defiant attitude of Moses, yet even now there is as little reason to suspect bad faith as to suppose that Israel, once released, could ever have resumed the same abject attitude toward Egypt as before. They would have come back victorious, and therefore ready to formulate new demands ; already half emancipated, and therefore prepared for the perfecting of the work. And now, at a second command as explicit as that which bade him utter the warning, Moses, anxiously watched by many, stretched out his hand over the devoted realm. At the gesture, the spectators felt that a fiat had gone forth. But the result was strangely different from that wdiich followed his invocation, both X. 1-20.] THE EIGHTH PLAGUE . >59 ol the previous and the following plague, when we may believe that as he raised his hand, the hail-storm burst in thunder, and the curtain fell upon the sky. Now there only arose a gentle east wind (unlike the “exceeding strong west wind” that followed), but it blew steadily all that day and all the following night. The forebodings of Egypt would understand it well: the prolonged period during which the curse was being steadily wafted toward them was an awful measure of the wide regions over which the power of Jehovah reached; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts, that dreadful curse which Joel has compared to a disciplined and devastating invader, “the army of the Lord,” and the first woe that heralds the Day of the Lord in the Apocalypse (Joel ii. 1-11; Rev. ix. 1-11). The completeness of the ruin brought a swift surren¬ der, but it has been well said that folly is the wisdom which is only wise too late, and, let us add, too fitfully. If Pharaoh had only submitted before the plague instead of after it I* If he had only respected himself enough to be faithful, instead of being too vain really to yield ! It is an interesting coincidence that, since he had this time defied the remonstrances of his advisers, his confession of sin is entirely personal: it is no longer, u I and my people are sinners,” but “ I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you.” This last clause was bitter to his lips, but the need for their * Oddly enough, the same historian already quoted, relating the story of the same day at Leipsic, says of Napoleon’s dialogue with M. de Merfeld, that he ‘‘used an expression which, if uttered at the Congress of Prague, would have changed his lot sud ours. Unfortunately, it was now too late.” i6o THE BOOK OF EXODUS. intercession was urgent: life and death were at stake upon the removal of this dense cloud of creatures which penetrated everywhere, leaving everywhere an evil odour, and of which a later sufferer complains, “ We could not eat, but we bit a locust; nor open our mouths, but locusts filled them.” Therefore he went on to entreat volubly, " Forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and in treat Jehovah your God that Fie may take away from me this death only.” And at the prayer of Moses, the Lord caused the breeze to veer and rise into a hurricane: u The Lord turned an exceeding strong west wind.” Now, the locust can float very well upon an easy breeze, and so it had been wafted over the Red Sea; but it is at once beaten down by a storm, and when it touches the water it is destroyed. Thus simply was the plague removed. “But the Lord made strong Pharaoh’s heart,” and so, his fears being conquered, his own rebellious will went on upon its evil way. He would not let Israel go. This narrative throws light upon a thousand vows made upon sick beds, but broken when the sufferer recovers; and a thousand prayers for amendment, breathed in all the sincerity of panic, and forgotten with all the levity of security. It shows also, in the hesitating and abortive half-submission of the tyrant, the greater folly of many professing Christians, who will, for Christ’s sake, surrender all their sins except one or two, and make any confession except that which really brings low their pride. Thoroughness, decision, depth, and self-surrender, needed by Pharaoh, are needed by every soul of man. X. 2I-29-] THE NINTH PLAGUE. 161 THE NINTH PLAGUE. x. 21-29. We have taken it as settled that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was Menephtah, the Beloved of the God Ptah. If so, his devotion to the gods throws a curious light upon his first scorn of Jehovah, and his long continued resistance ; and also upon the threat of vengeance to be executed upon the gods of Egypt, as if they were a resisting power. But there is a special signifi¬ cance in the ninth plague, when we connect it with Menephtah. In the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes there is to be seen, fresh and lifelike, the admirably sculptured effigy of this king—a weak and cruel face, with the receding forehead of his race, but also their nose like a beak, and their sharp chin. Over his head is the inscription— “ Lord of the Two Lands, Beloved of the God Amen; Lord of Diadems, Beloved of the God Ptah: Crowned by Amen with dominion of the world : Cherished by the Sun in the great abode.” This formidable personage is delineated by the court sculptor with his hand stretched out in worship, and under it is written t( He adores the Sun: he worships Hor of the solar horizons." The worship, thus chosen as the most characteristic of this king, either by himself or by some consummate artist, was to be tested now. Could the sun help him ? or was it, like so many minor forces of earth and air, at the mercy of the Gcd of Israel ? There is a terrible abruptness about the coming of 11 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. the ninth plague. Like the third and sixth, it is inflicted unannounced; and the parleying, the driving of a bargain and then breaking it, by which the eighth was attended, is quite enough to account for this. Moreover, the experience of every man teaches him that each method has its own impressiveness: the announcement of punishment awes, and a surprise alarms, and when they are alternated, every possible door of access to the conscience is approached. If the heart of Pharaoh was now beyond hope, it does not follow that all his people were equally hardened. What an effect was produced upon those courtiers who so earnestly supported the recent demand of Moses, when this new plague fell upon them unawares ! But net only is there no announcement: the narra¬ tive is so concentrated and brief as to give a graphic rendering of the surprise and terror of the time. Not a word is wasted :— “The Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness that may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: they saw not one another, neither rose any from his place three days; but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings” (vers. 21-3). We are not told anything of the emotions of the king, as the prophet strides into his presence, and before the cowering court, silently raises his hand and quenches the day. We ma} r infer his temper, if we please, from the frantic outbreak of menace and rage in which he presently warns the man whose coming is the same thing as calamity to see his face no more. Nothing is said, again, about the evil angels by which, according X. 2I-29-] THE NINTH PLAGUE. i6 3 to later narratives, that long night was haunted.* And after all it is more impressive to think of the blank, utter paralysis of dread in which a nation held its breath, benumbed and motionless, until vitality was almost exhausted, and even Pharaoh chose rather to surrender than to die. As the people lay cowering in their fear, there was plenty to occupy their minds. They would remember the first dreadful threat, not yet accomplished, to slay their firstborn; and the later assertion that if pestilence had not destroyed them, it was because God would plague them with all His plagues. They would reflect upon all their defeated duties, and how the sun himself was now withdrawn at the waving of the prophet's hand. And then a ghastly foreboding would complete their dread. What was it that darkness typified, in every Oriental nation—nay, in all the world ? Death ! Job speaks of “ The land of darkness and of the shadow of death; A land of thick darkness, as darkness itself; A land of the shadow of death without any order, And where the light is as darkness” (x. 21, 22). With us, a mortal sentence is given in a black cap; in the East, far more expressively, the head of the culprit was covered, and the darkness which thus came upon him expressed his doom. Thus u they covered Haman's face" (Esther vii. 8). Thus to destroy “ the face of the covering that is cast over all peoples and the veil that is spread over all nations," is the same thing as to il swallow up death," being the visible destruction of the embodied death-sentence (Isa. xxv. 7, 8). And * Such is probably not the meaning in Ps. lxxviii. 49 (see R.V.), though from it the tradition may have sprung. 164 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. now this veil was spread over all the radiant land of Egypt. Chill, and hungry, and afraid to move, the worst horror of all that prolonged midnight was the mental agony of dire anticipation. In other respects there had been far worse calamities, but through its effect upon the imagination this dreadful plague was a fit prelude to the tenth, which it hinted and premonished. In the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom there is a remarkable study of this plague, regarded as retribution in kind. It avenges the oppression of Israel. “ For when unrighteous men thought to oppress the holy nation, they being shut up in their houses, the prisoners of darkness, and fettered with the bonds of a long night, lay exiled from the eternal Providence ” (xvii. 2). It expresses in the physical realm their spiritual misery : “ For while they supposed to lie hid in their secret sins, they were scattered under a thick veil of forget¬ fulness” (ver. 3). It retorted on them the illusions of their sorcerers : “ as for the illusions of art magick, they were put down. ... For they, that promised to drive away terrors and troubles from a sick soul, were sick themselves of fear, worthy to be laughed at” (vers. 7, 8). In another place the Egyptians are declared to be worse than the men of Sodom, because they brought into bondage friends and not strangers, and grievously afflicted those whom they had received with feasting; “ therefore even with blindness were these stricken, as those were at the doors of the righteous man.” (xix. 14-17). And we may well believe that the long night was haunted with special terrors, if we add this wise explanation : “ For wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous, and being pressed by conscience, always forecasteth grievous things. For” X. 21-29.] THE NINTH PLAGUE. 165 —and this is a sentence of transcendent merit—“fear is nothing else than a betrayal of the succours that reason offereth" (xvii. 11, 12). Therefore it is con¬ cluded that their own hearts were their worst tor¬ mentors, alarmed by whistling winds, or melodious song of birds, or pleasing fall of waters, “ for the whole world shined with clear light, and none were hindered in their labour: over them only was spread a heavy night, an image of that darkness which should afterward receive them : }^et were they unto themselves more grievous than the darkness” (vers. 20, 2l). Isaiah, too, who is full of allusions to the early history of his people, finds in this plague of darkness an image of all mental distress and spiritual gloom. “ We look for light, but behold darkness ; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity : we grope for the wall like the blind, yea, we grope as those that have no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the twilight ” (lix. 10). Here the sinful nation is reduced to the misery of Egypt. But if she were obedient she would enjoy all the immunities of her forefathers amid Egyptian gloom : “ Then shall thy light rise in darkness and thy obscurity as the noonday ” (lviii. 10); “ Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people, but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee ” (lx. 2). And, indeed, in the spiritual light which is sown for the righteous, and the obscuration of the judgment of the impure, this miracle is ever reproduced. The history of Menephtah is that of a mean and cowardly prince. Dreams forbade him to share the perils of his army ; a prophecy induced him to submit to exile, until his firstborn was of age to recover his dominions for him ; and all we know of him is admirably i66 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. suited to the character represented in this narrative. He will now submit once more, and this time every one shall go; yet he cannot make a frank concession : the flocks and herds (most valuable after the ravages of the murrain and the hail) must remain as a hostage for their return. But Moses is inflexible : not a hoof shall be left behind ; and then the frenzy of a baffled autocrat breaks out into wild menaces; u Get thee from me; take heed to thyself; see my face no more ; for in the day thou seest my face thou shalt die.’' The assent of Moses was grim : the rupture was complete. And when they once more met, it was the king that had changed his purpose, and on his face, not that of Moses, was the pallor of impending death. In the conduct of the prophet, all through these stormy scenes, we see the difference between a meek spirit and a craven one. He was always ready to intercede; he never “ reviles the ruler," nor trans¬ gresses the limits of courtesy toward his superior in rank; and yet he never falters, nor compromises, nor fails to represent worthily the awful Power he represents. In the series of sharp contrasts, all the true dignity is with the servant of God, all the meanness and the shame with the proud king, who begins by insulting him, goes on to impose on him, and ends by the most ignominious of surrenders, crowned with the most abortive of treacheries and the most abject of defeats. CHAPTER XI. THE LAST PLAGUE ANNOUNCED. xi. i-io. HE eleventh chapter is, strictly speaking, a X supplement to the tenth : the first verses speak, as if in parenthesis, of a revelation made before the ninth plague, but held over to be mentioned in con¬ nection with the last, which it now announces; and the conversation with Pharaoh is a continuation of the same in which they mutually resolved to see each other’s face no more. To account for the confidence of Moses, we are now told that God had revealed to him the close approach of the final blow, so long foreseen. In spite of seeming delays, the hour of the promise had arrived ; in spite of his long reluctance, the king should even thrust them out; and then the order and discipline of their retreat would exhibit the advantages gained by expectation, by promises ofttimes disappointed, but always, like a false alarm which tries the readiness of a garrison, exhibiting the weak points in their organisation, and carrying their preparations farther. The command given already to the women (iii. 22) is now extended to them all—that they should ask of the terror-stricken people such portable things as, however precious, poorly requited their generations of unpaid and cruel toil. (It has been already shown that the word THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 168 absurdly rendered u borrow ” means to ask; and is the same as when Sisera asked water and Jael gave him milk, and when Solomon asked wisdom, and did not ask long life, neither asked riches, neither asked the life of his enemies.) They were now to claim such wages as they could carry off, and thus the pride of Egypt was presently dedicated to construct and beautify the tabernacle of Jehovah. We read that the people found favour with the Egyptians, who were doubtless over¬ joyed to come to any sort of terms with them; “ more¬ over the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people." This is no unbecoming vaunt: it speaks only of the high place he held, as God's deputy and herald ; and this tone of keen appreciation of the rank conceded him, compared with the utter absence of any insistence upon any action of his own, is evidence much rather of the authenticity of the work than the reverse. By these demands expectation and faith were intensi¬ fied ; while the tidings of such confidence on one side, and such tame submission on the other, goes far to explain the suspicions and the rage of Pharaoh. With this the narrative is resumed. Moses had said, “Thou shalt see my face no more." Now he adds, “Thus saith Jehovah, About midnight" (but not on that same night, since four days of preparation for the passover were yet to come) " I will go out into the midst of Egypt.” This, then, was the meaning of his ready consent to be seen no more : Jehovah Himself, Who had dealt so dreadfully with them through other hands, was now Himself to come. “And all the firstborn of Egypt shall die," from the firstborn and viceroy of the king to the firstborn of the meanest of women, and even of the cattle in their stalls. (It is surely a remark- xi. I-io.] THE LAST PLAGUE ANNOUNCED. 169 able coincidence that Menephtah’s heroic son did actually sit upon his throne, that inscriptions engraven during his life exhibit his name in the royal cartouche, but that he perished early, and long before his father.) And the wail of demonstrative Oriental agony should be such as never was heard before. But the children of Israel should be distinguished and protected by their God. And all these courtiers should come and bow down before Moses (who even then has the good feeling not to include the king himself in this abase¬ ment), and instead of Pharaoh’s insulting “Get thee from me—see my face no more,” they should pray him saying, “ Go hence, thou and thy people that follow thee.” And remembering the abject entreaties, the infatuated treacheries, and now this crowning insult, he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. He was angry and sinned not. The ninth and tenth verses are a kind of summary: the appeals to Pharaoh are all over, and henceforth we shall find Moses preparing his own followers for their exodus. “ And the Lord (had) said unto Moses, Pharaoh will not hearken unto you, that My wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. And Moses and Aai-on did all these wonders before Pharaoh; and the Lord made strong Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go out of his land.” In the Gospel of St. John there comes just such a period. The record of miracle and controversy is at an end, and Jesus withdraws into the bosom of His inti¬ mate circle. It is scarcely possible that the evangelist was unconscious of the influence of this passage when he wrote: “ But though He had done so many signs before them, yet they believed not on Him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled which he 170 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. spoke, Lord, who hath believed our report ? . . . For this cause they could not believe, because that Isaiah said again, He hath blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and should turn, and I should heal them” (John xii. 37-40). This is the tragedy of Egypt repeated in Israel; and the fact that the chosen seed is now the reprobate suffices, if any doubt remain, to prove that reprobation itself was not caprice, but retribution. CHAPTER XII. THE TASSO VEX, xii. 1-28, E have now reached the birthday of the great V V Hebrew nation, and with it the first national institution, the feast of passover, which is also the first sacrifice of directly Divine institution, the earliest precept of the Hebrew legislation, and the only one given in Egypt. The Jews had by this time learned to feel that they were a nation, if it were only through the struggle between their champion and the head of the greatest nation in the world. And the first aspect in which the feast of passover presents itself is that of a national commemoration. This day was to be unto them the beginning of months ; and in the change of their calendar to cele¬ brate their emancipation, the device was anticipated by which France endeavoured to glorify the Revolution. All their reckoning was to look back to this signal event. “ And this day shall be unto you for a memorial, and ye shall keep it for a feast unto the Lord; throughout your generations ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever" (xii. 14). il It shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in thy mouth, for with a strong hand hath the Lord 172 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. brought thee out of Egypt. Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in its season from year to year” (xiii. 9, io). Now for the first time we read of (i the congregation of Israel ” (xii. 3, 6), which was an assembly of the people represented by their elders (as may be seen by comparing the third verse with the twenty-first) ; and thus we discover that the “heads of houses” have been drawn into a larger unity. The clans are knit together into a nation. Accordingly, the feast might not be celebrated by any solitary man. Companionship was vital to it. At every table one animal, complete and undissevered, should give to the feast a unity of sentiment; and as many should gather around as were likely to leave none of it uneaten. Neither might any of it be reserved to supply a hasty ration amid the confusion of the predicted march. The feast was to be one complete event, whole and perfect as the unity which it expressed. The very notion of a people is that of “ community ” in responsibilities, joys, and labours ; and the solemn law by virtue of which, at this same hour, one blow will fall upon all Egypt, must now be accepted by Israel. Therefore loneliness at the feast of Passover is by the law, as well as in idea, impossible to any Jew. Every one can see the connection between this festival of unity and another, of which it is written, “We, being many, are one body, one loaf, for we are all partakers of that one loaf.” Now, the sentiment of nationality may so assert itself, like all exaggerated sentiments, as to assail others equally precious. In this century we have seen a revival of the Spartan theories which sacrificed the family to the state. Socialism and the phalanstere xii. 1 - 28 .] THE TASSO FEE. *73 have proposed to do by public organisation, with the force of law, what natural instinct teaches us to leave to domestic influences. It is therefore worthy of notice that, as the chosen nation is carefully traced by revelation back to a holy family, so the national festival did not ignore the family tie, but consecrated it. The feast was to be eaten “ according to their fathers' houses ” ; if a family were too small, it was to the " neighbour next unto his house ” that each should turn for co-operation; and the patriotic celebration was to live on from age to age by the instruction which parents should carefully give their children (xii. 3, 26, xiii. 8). The first ordinance of the Jewish religion was a domestic service. And this arrangement is divinely wise. Never was a nation truly prosperous or perma¬ nently strong which did not cherish the sanctities of home. Ancient Rome failed to resist the barbarians, not because her discipline had degenerated, but because evil habits in the home had ruined her population. The same is notoriously true of at least one great nation to-day. History is the sieve of God, in which He continually severs the chaff from the grain of nations, preserving what is temperate and pure and calm, and therefore valorous and wise. In studying the institution of the Passover, with its profound typical analogies, we must not overlook the simple and obvious fact that God built His nation upon families, and bade their great national institution draw the members of each home together. The national character of the feast is shown further because no Egyptian family escaped the blow. Oppor¬ tunities had been given to them to evade some of the previous plagues. When the hail was announced, " he *74 THE BOOK OF EXODUS . that feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the house”; and this renders the national solidarity, the partnership even of the innocent in the penalties of a people's guilt, the 1 community ’ of a nation, more apparent now. There was not a house where there was not one dead. The mixed multitude which came up with Israel came not because they had shared his exemptions, but because they dared not stay. It was an object-lesson given to Israel, which might have warned all his generations. And if there is hideous vice in our own land to-day, or if the contrasts of poverty and wealth are so extreme that humanity is shocked by so much luxury insulting so much squalor,—if in any respect we feel that our own land, considering its supreme advantages, merits the wrath of God for its unworthiness,—then we have to fear and strive, not through public spirit alone, but as knowing that the chastisement of nations falls upon the corporate whole, upon us and upon our children. But if the feast of the Passover w r as a commemora¬ tion, it also claims to be a sacrifice, and the first sacrifice which was Divinely founded and directed. This brings us face to face with the great question, What is the doctrine which lies at the heart of the great institution of sacrifice ? We are not free to confine its meaning altogether to that which was visible at the time. This would contra¬ dict the whole doctrine of development, the intention of God that Christianity should blossom from the bud of Judaism, and the explicit assertion that the prophets were made aware that the full meaning and the date of what they uttered was reserved for the instruction of a later period (i Peter i. 12). xii. 1 - 2 S.] THE PASSOVER. 175 But neither may we overlook the first palpable significance of any institution. Sacrifices never could have been devised to be a blind and empty pantomime to whole generations, for the benefit of their successors. Still less can one who believes in a genuine revelation to Moses suppose that their primary meaning was a false one, given in order that some truth might after¬ wards develop out of it. What, then, might a pious and well-instructed Israelite discern beneath the surface of this institution ? To this question there have been many discordant answers, and the variance is by no means confined to unbelieving critics. Thus, a distinguished living ex¬ positor says in connection with the Paschal institution, “ We speak not of blood as it is commonly understood, but of blood as the life, the love, the heart,—the whole quality of Deity.” But it must be answered that Deity is the last suggestion which blood would convey to a Jewish mind: distinctly it is creature-life that it ex¬ presses; and the New Testament commentators make it plain that no other notion had even then evolved itself: they think of the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ, not of His Deity.* Neither of this feast, nor of that which the gospel of Jesus has evolved from it, can we find the solution by forgetting that the elements of the problem are, not deity, but a Body and Blood. But when we approach the theories of rationalistic thinkers, we find a perfect chaos of rival speculations. We are told that the Hebrew feasts were really agricultural — 11 Harvest festivals,” and that the epithet Passover had its origin in the passage of the sun into Aries. But this great festival had a very secondary * Though of course the Person Whose Body was thus offered 13 Divine (Acts xx. 28), and this gives inestimable value to the offering. 176 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. and subordinate connection with harvest (only the waving of a sheaf upon the second day) while the older calendar which was displaced to do it honour was truly agricultural, as may still be seen by the phrase, “ The feast of ingathering at the end of the year, when thou gatherest in thy labours out of the field” (Exod. xxiii. 16). In dealing with unbelief we must look at things from the unbelieving angle of vision. No sceptical theory has any right to invoke for its help a special and differentiating quality in Hebrew thought. Reject the supernatural, and the Jewish religion is only one among a number of similar creations of the mind of man “ moving about in worlds unrecognised.” And therefore we must ask, What notions of sacrifice were entertained, all around, when the Hebrew creed was forming itself? Now, we read that “in the early days ... a sacrifice was a meal. . . . Year after year, the return of vintage, corn-harvest, and sheep-shearing brought together the members of the household to eat and drink in the presence of Jehovah. . . . When an honoured guest arrives there is slaughtered for him a calf, not without an offering of the blood and fat to the Deity” (Wellhausen, Israel, p. 76). Of the sense of sin and propitiation “the ancient sacrifices present few traces. . . . An underlying reference of sacrifice to sin, speaking generally, was entirely absent. The ancient sacrifices were wholly of a joyous nature—a merry¬ making before Jehovah with music” (ibid., p. 3 i). We are at once confronted by the question, Where did the Jewish nation come by such a friendly concep¬ tion of their deity ? They had come out of Egypt, where human sacrifices were not rare. They had xii. 1-28.] THE TASSO FEE. 177 settled in Palestine, where such idyllic notions must have been as strange as in modern Ashantee. And we are told that human sacrifices (such as that of Isaac and of Jephthah’s daughter) belong to this older period (p. 69). Are they joyous and festive ? are they not an endeavour, by the offering up of something precious, to reconcile a Being Who is estranged ? With our knowledge of what existed in Israel in the period con¬ fessed to be historical, and of the meaning of sacrifices all around in the period supposed to be mythical, and with the admission that human sacrifices must be taken into account, it is startling to be asked to believe that Hebrew sacrifices, with all their solemn import and all their freight of Christian symbolism, were originally no more than a gift to the Deity of a part of some happy banquet. It is quite plain that no such theory can be reconciled with the story of the first passover. And accordingly this is declared to be non-historical, and to have origi¬ nated in the time of the later kings. The offering of the firstborn is only “ the expression of thankfulness to the Deity for fruitful flocks and herds. If claim is also laid to the human firstborn, this is merely a later generalisation ” (Wellhausen, p. 88).* But this claim is by no means the only stumbling- block in the way of the theory, serious a stumbling- * Here the sceptical theorists are widely divided among them¬ selves. Kuenen has discussed this whole theory, and rejected it as “irreconcilable with what the Old Testament itself asserts in justi¬ fication of this sacrifice.” And he is driven to connect it with the notion of atonement. “ Jahveh appears as a severe being who must be propitiated with sacrifices.” He has therefore to introduce the notion of human sacrifice, in order to get rid of the connection with the penal death of the Egyptians, and of the miraculous, which this example would establish. (.Religion of Israel, Eng. Trans., i., 239, 240.) 12 i 7 S THE BOOK OF EXODUS. block though it be. IIow came the bright festival to be spoiled by bitter herbs and (l bread of affliction ” ? Is it natural that a merry feast should grow more austere as time elapses ? Do we not find it hard enough to prevent the most sacred festivals from reversing the supposed process, and degenerating into revels ? And is not this the universal experience, from San Francisco to Bombay ? Why was' the mandate given to sprinkle the door of every house with blood, if the story originated after the feast had been central¬ ised in Jerusalem, w T hen, in fact, this precept had to be set aside as impracticable, their homes being at a distance ? Why, again, were they bidden to slaughter the lamb “ between the two evenings ” (Exod. xii. 6)—that is to say, between sunset and the fading out of the light—unless the story veas written long before such numbers had to be dealt with that the priests began to slaughter early in the afternoon, and continued until night ? Why did the narrative set forth that every man might slaughter for his own house (a custom which still existed in the time of Hezekiah, when the Levites only slaughtered 11 the passovers ” for those who were not ceremonially clean. 2 Chron. xxx. 17), if there were no stout and strong historical foundation for the older method ? Stranger still, why was the original command in¬ vented, that the lamb should be chosen and separated four days before the feast ? There is no trace of any intention that this precept should apply to the first passover alone. It is somewhat unexpected there, interrupting the hurry and movement of the narrative with an interval of quiet expectation, not otherwise hinted at, which we comprehend and value when discovered, rather than anticipate in advance. It is xii. 1-28.] THE TASSO FEE. 179 the very last circumstance which the Priestly Code would have invented, when the time which could be conveniently spent upon a pilgrimage was too brief to suffer the custom to be perpetuated. The selection of the lamb upon the tenth day, the slaying of it at home, the striking of the blood upon the door, and the use of hyssop, as in other sacrifices, with which to sprinkle it, whether upon door or altar; the eating of the feast standing, with staff in hand and girded loins; the application only to one day of the precept to eat no leavened bread, and the sharing in the feast by all, without regard to ceremonial defilement,—all these are cardinal differences between the first passover and later ones. Can we be blind to their significance ? Even a drastic revision of the story, such as some have fancied, would certainly have expunged every diver¬ gence upon points so capital as these. Nor could any evidence of the antiquity of the institution be clearer than its existence in a form, the details of which have had to be so boldly modified under the pressure of the exigencies of the later time. Taking, then, the narrative as it stands, we place ourselves by an effort of the historical imagination among those to whom Moses gave his instructions, and ask what emotions are excited as we listen. Certainly no light and joyous feeling that we are going to celebrate a feast, and share our good things with our deity. Nay, but an alarmed surprise. Hitherto, among the admonitory and preliminary plagues of Egypt, Israel had enjoyed a painless and unbought exemption. The murrain had not slain their cattle, nor the locusts devoured their land, nor the darkness obscured their dwellings. Such admonitions they needed not. But now the judgment itself is im- i8o THE BOOK OF EXODUS. pending, and they learn that they, like the Egyptians whom they have begun to despise, are in danger from the destroying angel. The first paschal feast was eaten by no man with a light heart. Each listened for the rustling of awful wings, and grew cold, as under the eyes of the death which was, even then, scrutinising his lintels and his doorposts. And this would set him thinking that even a gracious God, Who had u come down ” to save him from his tyrants, discerned in him grave reasons for displeasure, since his acceptance, while others died, was not of course. His own conscience would then quickly tell him what some at least of those reasons were. But he would also learn that the exemption which he did not possess by right (although a son of Abraham) he might obtain through grace. The goodness of God did not pronounce him safe, but it pointed out to him a way of salvation. He would scarcely observe, so entirely was it a matter of course, that this way must be of God’s appointment and not of his own invention —that if he devised much more costly, elaborate and imposing ceremonies to replace those which Moses taught him, he would perish like any Egyptian who devised nothing, but simply cowered under the shadow of the impending doom. Nor was the salvation without price. It was not a prayer nor a fast which bought it, but a life. The conviction that a redemption was necessary if God should be at once just and a justifier of the ungodly sprang neither from a later hairsplitting logic, nor from a methodising theological science; it really lay upon the very surface of this and every offering for sin, as distinguished from those offerings which expressed the gratitude of the accepted. xii. I-2S.] THE PASSOVER. 1S1 We have not far to search for evidence that the lamb was really regarded as a substitute and ransom. The assertion is part and parcel of the narrative itself. For, in commemoration of this deliverance, every first¬ born of Israel, whether of man or beast, was set apart unto the Lord. The words are, “Thou shall cause to pass over unto the Lord all that openeth the womb, and every firstling which thou hast that cometh of a beast; the males shall be the Lord's” (xiii. 12). What, then, should be done with the firstborn of a creature unfit for sacrifice ? It should be replaced by a clean offering, and then it was said to be redeemed. Substitution or death was the inexorable rule. “ Every firstborn of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb, and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck.” The meaning of this injunction is unmistakable. But it applies also to man: “ All thy firstborn of man among thy sons thou shalt redeem.” And when their sons should ask “ What meaneth this ? ” they were to explain that when Pharaoh hardened himself against letting them go from Egypt, “ the Lord slew all the firstborn in the land ; . . . therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the womb being males; but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem ” (xiii. 12-15). Words could not more plainly assert that the lives of the firstborn of Israel were forfeited, that they were bought back by the substitution of another crea¬ ture, which died instead, and that the transaction answered to the Passover (“ thou shalt cause to pass over unto the Lord”). Presently the tribe of Levi was taken “instead of all the firstborn of the children of Israel.” But since there were two hundred and seventy-three of such firstborn children over and above the number of the Levites, it became necessary 182 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. to “ redeem ” these ; and this was actually done by a cash payment of five shekels apiece. Of this payment the same phrase is used: it is “ redemption- money ”—the money wherewith the odd number of them is redeemed (Num. iii. 44-51). The question at present is not whether modern taste approves of all this, or resents it: we are simply inquiring whether an ancient Jew was taught to think of the lamb as offered in his stead. And now let it be observed that this idea has sunk deep into all the literature of Palestine. The Jews are not so much the beloved of Jehovah as His redeemed —“Thy people whom Thou hast redeemed” (1 Chron. xvii. 21). In fresh troubles the prayer is, “Redeem Israel, O Lord ” (Ps. xxv. 22), and the same word is often used where we have ignored the allusion and rendered it “ Deliver me because of mine enemies . . . deliver me from the oppression of men ” (Ps. lxix. 18, cxix. 134). And the future troubles are to end in a deliverance of the same kind: “ The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion ” (Isa. xxxv. 10, li. 11); and at the last “ I will ransom them from the power of the grave” (Hos. xiii. 14). In all these places, the word is the same as in this narrative. It is not too much to say that if modern theology were not affected by this ancient problem, if we re¬ garded the creed of the Hebrews simply as we look at the mythologies of other peoples, there would be no more doubt that the early Jews believed in propitiatory sacrifice than that Phoenicians did. We should simply admire the purity, the absence of cruel and degrading accessories, with which this most perilous and yet humbling and admonitory doctrine was held in Israel. xii. 1-28.] THE TASSO VEX. 183 The Christian applications of this doctrine must be considered along with the whole question of the typical character of the history. But it is not now premature to add, that even in the Old Testament there is abun¬ dant evidence that the types were semi-transparent, and behind them something greater was discerned, so that after it was written " Bring no more vain obla¬ tions/' Isaiah could exclaim, “ The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. When Thou shalt make His soul a trespass-offering He shall see His seed" (Isa. i. 13, liii. 6, 7, 10). And the full power of this last verse will only be felt when we remember the statement made elsewhere of the principle which underlay the sacrifices : “ the life (or soul) of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls ; for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life " (or 11 soul ”—• Lev. xvii. 11, R.V.) It is even startling to read the two verses together: 11 Thou shalt make His soul a trespass-offering; " il The blood maketh atonement by reason of the soul . . . the soul of the flesh is in the blood."* It is still more impressive to remember that a Servant of Jehovah has actually arisen in WLom this doctrine has assumed a form acceptable to the best and holiest intellects and consciences of ages and civilisations widely remote from that in which it was conceived. * The astonishing significance of this declaration would only be deepened if we accepted the theories now so fashionable, and believed that the later passage in Isaiah was the fruit of a period when the full-blown Priestly Code was in process of development out of “ the small body of legislation contained in Lev. xvii.—xxvi.” What a jtrange time for such a spiritual application of sacrificial language ! THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 1 S 4 Another doctrine preached by the passover to every Jew was that he must be a worker together with God, must himself use what the Lord pointed out, and his own lintels and doorposts must openly exhibit the fact that he laid claim to the benefit of the institution of the Lord Jehovah’s passover. With what strange feelings, upon the morrow, did the orphaned people of Egypt discover the stain of blood on the forsaken houses of all their emancipated slaves ! The lamb having been offered up to God, a new stage in the symbolism is entered upon. The body of the sacrifice, as well as the blood, is His : “ Ye shall eat it in haste, it is the Lord’s passover ” (ver. 11). Instead of being a feast of theirs, which they share with Him, it is an offering of which, when the blood has been sprinkled on the doors, He permits His people, now accepted and favoured, to partake. They are His guests ; and therefore He pre¬ scribes all the manner of their eating, the attitude so expressive of haste, and the unleavened “ bread of affliction” and bitter herbs, which told that the object of this feast was not the indulgence of the flesh but the edification of the spirit, “ a feast unto the Lord.” And in the strength of this meat they are launched upon their new career, freemen, pilgrims of God, from Egyptian bondage to a Promised Land. It is now time to examine the chapter in more detail, and gather up such points as the preceding discussion has not reached. (Ver. 1.) The opening words, “Jehovah spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,” have all the appearance of opening a separate document, and suggest, with certain other evidence, the notion of a xii. 1-28.] THE TASSO FEE. 185 fragment written very shortly after the event, and afterwards incorporated into the present narrative. And they are, in the same degree, favourable to the authenticity of the book. (Ver. 2.) The commandment to link their emanci¬ pation with a festival, and with the calendar, is the earliest example and the sufficient vindication of sacred festivals, which, even yet, some persons consider to be superstitious and judaical. But it is a strange doctrine that the Passover deserved honour better than Easter does, or that there is anything more servile and unchristian in celebrating the birth of all the hopes of all mankind than in commemorating one’s own birth. (Ver. 5.) The selection ot a lamb for a sacrifice so quickly became universal, that there is no trace anywhere of the use of a kid in place of it. The alter¬ native is therefore an indication of antiquity, while the qualities required—innocent youth and the absence of blemish, were sure to suggest a typical significance. For, if they were merely to enhance its value, why not choose a costlier animal ? Various meanings have been discovered in the four days during which it was reserved; but perhaps the true object was to give time for deliberation, for the solemnity and import of the institution to fill the minds of the people ; time also for preparation, since the night itself was one of extreme haste, and prompt action can only be obtained by leisurely anticipation. We have Scriptural authority for applying it to the Antitype, Who also was foredoomed, “ the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. xiii. 8). But now it has to be observed that throughout the poetic literature the people is taught to think of itself 186 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. as a flock of sheep. “Thou leddest Thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron ” (Ps. Ixxvii. 20); “ We are Thy people and the sheep of Thy pasture” (Ps. Ixxix. 13); “All we like sheep have gone astray” (Isa. liii. 6); “Ye, O My sheep, the sheep of My pasture, are men” (Ezek. xxxiv. 31); “The Lord of hosts hath visited His flock ” (Zech. x. 3). All such language would make more easy the conception that what replaced the forfeited life was in some sense, figuratively, in the religious idea, a kindred victim. One who offered a lamb as his substitute sang “The Lord is my shepherd.” “ I have gone astray like a lost sheep” (Ps. xxiii. I, cxix. 176). (Ver. 3, 6.) Very instructive it is that this first sacrifice of Judaism could be offered by all the heads of houses. We have seen that the Levites were presently put into the place of the eldest son, but also that this function was exercised down to the time of Hezekiah by all who were ceremonially clean, whereas the opposite holds good, immediately after¬ wards, in the great passover of Josiah (2 Chron. xxx. 17, xxxv. Ii). It is impossible that this incongruity could be de¬ vised, for the sake of plausibility, in a narrative which rested on no solid basis. It goes far to establish what has been so anxiously denied—the reality of the cen¬ tralised worship in the time of Hezekiah. And it also establishes the great doctrine that priesthood was held not by a superior caste, but on behalf of the whole nation, in whom it was theoretically vested, and for whom the priest acted, so that they were “ a nation of priests.” (Ver. 8.) The use of unleavened bread is distinctly said to be in commemoration of their haste—“ for thou xii. 1-28.] THE PASSOVER. 1 87 earnest out of Egypt in haste ” (Deut. xvi. 3)—but it does not follow that they were forced by haste to eat their bread unleavened at the first. It was quite as easy to prepare leavened bread as to provide the paschal lamb four days previously. We may therefore seek for some further explanation, and this we find in the same verse in Deuteronomy, in the expression “ bread of affliction.” They were to receive the meat of passover with a reproachful sense of their unworthiness : humbly, with bread of affliction and with bitter herbs. Moreover, we learn from St. Paul that unleavened bread represents simplicity and truth; and our Lord spoke of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod (Mark viii. 15). And this is not only because leaven was supposed to be of the same nature as corruption. We ourselves always mean something unworthy when we speak of mixed motives, possible though it be to act from two motives, both of them high-minded. Now, leaven represents mixture in its most subtle and penetrating form. The paschal feast did not express any such luxuri¬ ous and sentimental religionism as finds in the story of the cross an easy joy, or even a delicate and pleasing stimulus for the softer emotions, “a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and playeth well on an instrument.” No, it has vigour and nourishment for those who truly hunger, but its bread is unfermented, and it must be eaten with bitter herbs. (Ver. 9.) Many Jewish sacrifices were “ sodden,” but this had to be roast with fire. It may have been to repre¬ sent suffering that this was enjoined. But it comes to us along with a command to consume all the flesh, THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 188 reserving none and rejecting none. Now, though boil¬ ing does not mutilate, it dissipates; a certain amount of tissue is lost, more is relaxed, and its cohesion rendered feeble; and so the duty of its complete reception is accentuated by the words “ not sodden at all with water.” Nor should it be a barbarous feast, such as many idolatries encouraged: true religion civilises; “ eat not of it at all raw.” (Ver. io.) Nor should any of it be left until the morning. At the first celebration, with a hasty exodus impending, this would have involved exposure to pro¬ fanation. In later times it might have involved super¬ stitious abuses. And therefore the same rule is laid down which the Church of England has carried on for the same reasons into the Communion feast—that all must be consumed. Nor can we fail to see an ideal fitness in the precept. Of the gift of God we may not select what gratifies our taste or commends itself to our desires; all is good; all must be accepted; a partial reception of His grace is no valid reception at all. (Ver. 12.) In describing the coming wrath, we under¬ stand the inclusion equally of innocent and guilty men, because it is thus that all national vengeance operates ; and we receive the benefits of corporate life at the cost, often heavy, of its penalties. The animal world also has to suffer with us; the whole creation groaneth together now, and all expects together the benefit of our adoption hereafter. But what were the judg¬ ments against the idols of Egypt, which this verse predicts, and another (Num. xxxiii. 4) declares to be accomplished ? They doubtless consisted chiefly in the destruction of sacred animals, from the beetle and the frog to the holy ox of Apis—from the cat, the xii. 1-28.] THE rASSOVER . 189 monkey, and the dog, to the lion, the hippopotamus, and the crocodile. In their overthrow a blow was dealt which shook the whole system to its foundation ; for how could the same confidence be felt in sacred images when all the sacred beasts had once been slain by a rival invisible Spiritual Being! And more is implied than that they should share the common desolation: the text says plainly, of men and beasts the firstborn must die, but all of these. The difference in the phrase is obvious and indisputable ; and in its fulfilment all Egypt saw the act of a hostile and victorious deity. (Ver. 13.) “ And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are.’' That it was a token to the destroying angel we see plainly; but why to them ? Is it enough to explain the assertion, with some, as meaning, upon their behalf? Rather let us say that the publicity, the exhibition upon their doorposts of the sacrifice offered within, was not to inform and guide the angel, but to edify the people. They should perform an open act of faith. Their houses should be visibly set apart. u With the mouth confession" (of faith) u is made unto salvation," unto that deliverance from a hundred evasions and equivocations, and as many inward doubts and hesitations, which comes when any decisive act is done, when the die is cast and the Rubicon crossed. A similar effect upon the mind, calming and steadying it, was produced when the Israelite carried out the blood of the lamb, and by sprinkling it upon the doorpost formally claimed his exemption, and returned with the consciousness that between him and the imminent death a visible barrier interposed itself. Will any one deny that a similar help is offered to THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 190 rs of the later Church in our many opportunities of avowing a fixed and personal belief? Whoever refuses to comply with an unholy custom because he belongs to Christ, whoever joins heartily in worship at the cost of making himself remarkable, whoever nerves himself to kneel at the Holy Table although he feels himself unworthy, that man has broken through many snares; he has gained assurance that his choice of God is a reality: he has shown his flag; and this public avowal is not only a sign to others, but also a token to himself. But this is only half the doctrine of this action. What he should thus openly avow was his trust (as we have shown) in atoning blood. And in the day of our peril what shall be our reliance ? That our doors are trodden by orthodox visitants only ? that the lintels are clean, and the inhabitants temperate and pure ? or that the Blood of Christ has cleansed our conscience ? Therefore (ver. 22) the blood was sprinkled with hyssop, of which the light and elastic sprays were admirably suited for such use, but which was reserved in the Law for those sacrifices which expiated sin (Lev. xiv. 49; Num. xix. IS, 19). And therefore also none should go forth out of his house until the morning, for we are not to content ourselves with having once invoked the shelter of God: we are to abide under its protection while danger lasts. And (ver. 23) upon the condition of this marking of their doorposts the Lord should pass over their houses. 1 he phrase is noteworthy, because it recurs throughout the narrative, being employed nine times in this chapter; and because the same word is found in Isaiah, again in contrast with the ruin of others, and with an interesting xii. 1-28.] THE PASSOVER. 191 and beautiful expansion of the hovering poised notion which belongs to the word.* Repeated commandments are given to parents to teach the meaning of this institution to their children, (xii. 26, xiii. 8). And there is something almost cynical in the notion of a later mythologist devising this appeal to a tradition which had no existence at all; enrolling, in support of his new institutions, the testimony (which had never been borne) of fathers who had never taught any story of the kind. On the other hand, there is something idyllic and beautiful in the minute instruction given to the heads of families to teach their children, and -In the simple words put into their mouths, “It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt." It carries us forward to these weary days when children scarcely see the face of one who goes out to labour before they are awake, and returns exhausted when their day is over, and who himself too often needs the most elementary instruction, these heartless days when the teaching of religion devolves, in thousands of families, upon the stranger who instructs, for one hour in the week, a class in Sunday-school. The contrast is not reassuring. When all these instructions were given to Israel, the people bow T ed their heads and worshipped. The bones of most of them were doomed to whiten in the wilderness. They perished by serpents and by 11 the * So that it is used equally of the slow action of the lame, and of the lingering movements of the false prophets when there was none to answer (2 Sam. iv. 4; 1 Kings xviii. 26). “ The Lord of Hosts shall come down to fight upon Mount Zion. ... As birds flying, so will the Lord of Hosts protect Jerusalem; He will pass over and preserve it ” (Isa. xxxi. 4, 5). 192 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. destroyer”; they fell in one day three-and-twenty thousand, because they were discontented and re¬ bellious and unholy. And yet they could adore the gracious Giver of promises and Slayer of foes. They would not obey, but they were quite ready to accept benefits, to experience deliverance, to become the favourites of heaven, to march to Palestine. So are too many fain to be made happy, to find peace, to taste the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, to go to heaven. But they will not take up a cross. They will murmur if the well is bitter, if they have no flesh but only angels’ food, if the goodly land is defended by powerful enemies. On these terms, they cannot be Christ’s disciples. It is apparently the mention of a mixed multitude, who came with Israel out of Egypt, which suggests the insertion, in a separate and dislocated paragraph, of the law of the passover concerning strangers (vers. 38, 43-49). An alien was not to eat thereof: it belonged especially to the covenant people. . But who was a stranger ? A slave should be circumcised and eat thereof; for it was one of the benignant provisions of the law that there should not be added, to the many severities of his condition, any religious disabilities. The time would come when all nations should be blessed in the seed of Abraham. In that day the poor would receive a special beatitude; and in the meantime, as the first indication of catholicity beneath the surface of an exclusive ritual, it was announced, foremost among those who should be welcomed within the fold, that a slave should be circumcised and eat the passover. And if a sojourner desired to eat thereof, he should xii. 29 36.] THE TENTH PLAGUE. *93 be mindful of his domestic obligations : all his males should be circumcised along with him, and then his disabilities were at an end. Surely we can see in these provisions the germ of the broader and more generous welcome which Christ offers to the world. Let it be added that this admission of strangers had been already implied at verse 19; while every form of coercion was prohibited by the words “a sojourner and a hired servant shall not eat of it,” in verse 45 - THE TENTH PLAGUE . xii. 29-36. And now the blow fell. Infants grew cold in their mothers’ arms; ripe statesmen and crafty priests lost breath as they reposed: the wisest, the strongest and the most hopeful of the nation were blotted out at once, for the firstborn of a population is its flower. Pharaoh Menephtah had only reached the throne by the death of two elder brethren, and therefore history confirms the assertion that he u rose up,” when the firstborn were dead; but it also justifies the statement that his firstborn died, for the gallant and promising youth who had reconquered for him his lost territories, and who actually shared his rule and “ sat upon the throne,” Menephtah Seti, is now shown to have died early, and never to have held an independent sceptre. We can imagine the scene. Suspense and terror must have been wide spread; for the former plagues had given authority to the more dreadful threat, the fulfilment of which was now to be expected, since a’l negotiations between Moses and Pharaoh had been formally broken off. Strange and confident movements and doubtless 13 194 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. menacing expressions among the Hebrews would also make this night a fearful one, and there was little rest for “ those who feared the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh.” These, knowing where the danger lay, would watch their firstborn well, and when the ashy change came suddenly upon a blooming face, and they raised the wild cry of Eastern bereavement, then others awoke to the same misery. From remote villages and lonely hamlets the clamour of great populations was echoed back; and when, under midnight skies in which the strong wind of the morrow was already moaning, the awestruck people rushed into their temples, there the corpses of their animal deities glared at them with glassy eyes. Thus the cup which they had made their slaves to drink was put in larger measure to their own lips at last, and not infants only were snatched away, but sons around whom years of tenderness had woven stronger ties ; and the loss of their bondsmen, from which they feared so much national weakness, had to be endured along with a far deadlier drain cf their own life-blood. The universal wail was bitter, and hopeless, and full of terror even more than woe; for they said, “ We be all dead men.” Without the consolation of ministering by sick beds, or the romance and gallant excitement of war, “ there w 7 as not a house where there was not one dead,” and this is said to give sharpness to the statement that there was a great cry in Egypt. Then came such a moment as the Hebrew tempera¬ ment keenly enjoyed, when “ the sons of them that oppressed them came bending unto them, and all they that despised them bowed themselves down at the soles of their feet.” Pharaoh sent at midnight to surrender everything that could possibly be demanded, and in xii. 37-42.] THE EXODUS. 195 his abject fear added, “ and bless me also ”; and the Egyptians were urgent on them to begone, and when they demanded the portable wealth of the land,—a poor ransom from a vanquished enemy, and a still poorer payment for generations of forced labour,—- “the Lord gave them favour” (is there net a saturnine irony in the phrase ?) il in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. And they spoiled the Egyptians.” By this analogy St. Augustine defended the use of heathen learning in defence of Christian truth. Clogged by superstitions, he said, it contained also libera] in¬ struction, and truths even concerning God—“ gold and silver which they did not themselves create, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence, and misapplied. These we should reclaim, and apply to Christian use” (De Doct. Clir.j 60, 61). And the main lesson of the story lies so plainly upon the surface that one scarcely needs to state it. What God requires must ultimately be done; and human resistance, however stubborn and protracted, will only make the result more painful and more signal at the last. Now, every concern of our obscure daily lives comes under this law as surely as the actions of a Pharaoh. THE EXODUS. xii. 37-42. The children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. Already, at the outset of their journey, controversy has had much to say about their route. Much ingenuity has been expended upon the theory which brought their early journey along the Mediter- 196 THE BOOK OF EXODUS . ranean coast, and made the overthrow of the Egyptians take place in “ that Serbonian bog where armies whole have sunk.” But it may fairly be assumed that this view was refuted even before the recent identification of the sites of Rameses and Pihahiroth rendered it untenable. How came these trampled slaves, who could not call their lives their own, to possess the cattle which we read of as having escaped the murrain, and the number of which is here said to have been very great ? Just before Moses returned, and when the Pharaoh of the Exodus appears upon the scene, we are told that “ their cry came up unto God, . . . and God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant . . . and God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them ” (ii. 23). May not this verse point to something unrecorded, some event before their final deliverance ? The con¬ jecture is a happy one that it refers to their share in the revolt of subject races which drove Menephtah for twelve years out of his northern territories. If so, there was time for a considerable return of prosperity; and the retention or forfeiture of their chattels when they were reconquered would depend very greatly upon circumstances unknown to us. At all events, this revolt is evidence, which is amply corroborated by history and the inscriptions, of the existence of just such a discontented and servile element in the population as the 11 mixed multitude ” which came out with them repeatedly proved itself to be. But here we come upon a problem of another kind. How long was Israel in the house of bondage ? Can we rely upon the present Hebrew text, which says that 11 their sojourning which they sojourned in Egypt, was xii. 37-42.] THE EXODUS. 197 four hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord came out of the land of Egypt ” (xii. 40, 41). Certain ancient versions have departed from this text. The Septuagint reads, “ The sojourning of the children of Israel which they sojourned in Egypt and in the land of Canaan , was four hundred and thirty years ”; and the Samaritan agrees with this, except that it has il the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers .” The question is, which reading is correct ? Must we date the four hundred and thirty years from Abraham's arrival in Canaan, or from Jacob's descent into Egypt? For the shorter period there are two strong argu¬ ments. The genealogies in the Pentateuch range from four persons to six beween Jacob and the Exodus, which number is quite unable to reach over four cen¬ turies. And St. Paul says of the covenant with Abraham that the law which came four hundred and thirty years after ” (i.e. after the time of Abraham) u could not disannul it” (Gal. iii. 17). This reference by St. Paul is not so decisive as it may appear, because he habitually quotes the Septua¬ gint, even where he must have known that it deviates from the Hebrew, provided that the deviation does not compromise the matter in hand. Here, he was in nowise concerned with the chronology, and had no reason to perplex a Gentile church by correcting it. But it was a different matter with St. Stephen, arguing his case before the Hebrew council. And he quotes plainly and confidently the prediction that the seed of Abraham should be four hundred years in bondage, and that one nation should entreat them evil four 198 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. hundred years (Acts vii. 6). Again, this is the clear intention of the words in Genesis (xv. 13). And as to the genealogies, we know them to have been cut down, so that seven names are omitted from that of Ezra, and three at least from that of our Lord Himself. Certainly when we consider the great population implied in an army of six hundred thousand adult men, we must admit that the longer period is inherently the more probable of the two. But we can only assert with confidence that just when their deliverance was due it was accomplished, and they who had come down a handful, and whom cruel oppression had striven to decimate, came forth, no undisciplined mob, but armies moving in organised and regulated detachments : u the Lord did bring the children of Israel forth by their hosts” (ver. 51). 11 And the children of Israel went up armed out of the land of Egypt ” (xiii. 18). CHAPTER XIII. THE LAW OF THE FIRSTBORN. xiii. i. M UCH that was said in the twelfth chapter is repeated in the thirteenth. And this repetition is clearly due to a formal rehearsal, made when all “ their hosts ” had mustered in Succoth after their first march; for Moses says, 11 Remember this day, in which ye came out ” (ver. 3). Already it had been spoken of as a day much to be remembered, and for its perpetua¬ tion the ordinance of the Passover had been founded. But now this charge is given as a fit prologue for the remarkable institution which follows—the consecration to God of all unblemished males who are the first¬ born of their mothers—for such is the full statement of what is claimed. In speaking to Moses the Lord says, “ Sanctify unto Me all the firstborn ... it is Mine.” But Moses address¬ ing the people advances gradually, and almost diploma¬ tically. First he reminds them of their deliverance, and in so doing he employs a phrase which could only have been used at the exact stage when they were emanci¬ pated and yet upon Egyptian soil: “ By strength of hand the Lord brought you out from this place ” (ver. 3). Then he charges them not to forget their rescue, in the dangerous time of their prosperity, when the Lord 200 THE BOOK OF EXODUS . shall have brought them into the land which He swore to give them ; and he repeats the ordinance of un¬ leavened bread. And it is only then that he proceeds to announce the permanent consecration of all their firstborn—the abiding doctrine that these, who naturally represent the nation, are for its unworthiness forfeited, and yet by the grace of God redeemed. God, Who gave all and pardons all, demands a return, not as a tax which is levied for its own sake, but as a confession of dependence, and like the silk flag presented to the sovereign, on the anniversaries of the two greatest of English victories, by the descendants of the conquerors, who hold their estates upon that tenure. The firstborn, thus dedicated, should have formed a sacred class, a powerful element in Hebrew life enlisted on the side of God. For these, as w T e have already seen, the Levites were afterwards substituted (Num. iii. 44), and there is perhaps some allusion to this change in the direction that “ all the firstborn of man thou shalt redeem ” (ver. 13). But yet the demand is stated too broadly and imperatively to belong to that later modification: it suits exactly the time to which it is attributed, before the tribe of Levi was substituted for the firstborn of all. “They are Mine,” said Jehovah, Who needed not, that night, to remind them what He had wrought the night before. It is for precisely the same reason, that St. Paul claims all souls for God : “ Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price ; therefore glorify God with your bodies and with your spirits, which are God’s.” And besides the general claim upon us all, each of us should feel, like the firstborn, that every special Xlll I.J THE LAW OF THE FIRSTBORN. 201 mercy is a call to special gratitude, to more earnest dedication. “ I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice ” (Rom. xii. i). There is a tone of exultant confidence in the words of Moses, very interesting and curious. He and his nation are breathing the free air at last. The deliver¬ ance that has been given makes all the promise that remains secure. As one who feels his pardon will surely not despair of heaven, so Moses twice over instructs the people what to do when God shall have kept the oath which He swore, and brought them into Canaan, into the land flowing with milk and honey. Then they must observe His passover. Then they must consecrate their firstborn. And twice over this emancipator and law-giver, in the first flush of his success, impresses upon them the homely duty of teaching their households what God had done for them (vers. 8, 14; cf. xii. 26). This, accordingly, the Psalmist learned, and in his turn transmitted. He heard with his ears and his fathers told him what God did in their days, in the days of old. And he told the generation to come the praises of Jehovah, and His strength, and His wondrous works (Ps. xliv. I, lxxviii. 4). But it is absurd to treat these verses, as Kuenen does, as evidence that the story is mere legend: “ transmitted from mouth to mouth, it gradually lost its accuracy and precision, and adopted all sorts of foreign elements.” To prove which, we are gravely referred to passages like this. (Religion of Israel , i. 22, Eng. Vers.) The duty of oral instruction is still acknowledged, but this does not prove that the narrative is still unwritten. 202 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. From the emphatic language in which Moses urged this double duty, too much forgotten still, of remem¬ bering and showing forth the goodness of God, sprang the curious custom of the wearing of phylacteries. But the Jews were not bidden to wear signs and frontlets : they were bidden to let hallowed memories be unto them in the place of such charms as they had seen the Egyptians wear, 11 for a sign unto thee, upon thine hand, and for a frontlet between thine eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in thy mouth ” (ver. 9). Such language is frequent in the Old Testament, where mercy and truth should be bound around their necks; their fathers’ commandments should be tied around their necks, bound on their fingers, written on their hearts; and Sion should clothe herself with her con¬ verts as an ornament, and gird them upon her as a bride doth (Prov. iii. 3, vi. 21, vii. 3 ; Isa. xlix. 18). But human nature still finds the letter of many a commandment easier than the spirit, a ceremony than an obedient heart, penance than penitence, ashes on the forehead than a contrite spirit, and a phylactery than the gratitude and acknowledgment which ought to be unto us for a sign on the hand and a frontlet between the eyes. We have already observed the connection between the thirteenth verse and the events of the previous night. But there is an interesting touch of nature in the words “the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb.” It w 7 as afterwards rightly perceived that all unclean animals should follow the same rule; but why was only the ass mentioned ? Plainly because those humble journeyers had no other beast of burden. Horses pursued them presently, but even the Egyptians of that period used them only in war. The trampled xiii. I.] THE LAW OF THE FIRSTBORN. 203 Hebrews would not possess camels. And thus again, in the tenth commandment, when the stateliest of their cattle is specified, no beast of burden is named with it but the ass: “ Thou shalt not covet . . . his ox nor his ass.” It is an undesigned coincidence of real value; a phrase which would never have been devised by legislators of a later date; a frank and unconscious evidence of the genuineness of the story. Some time before this, a new and fierce race, whose name declared them to be “emigrants,” had thrust itself in among the tribes of Canaan—a race which was long to wage equal war with Israel, and not seldom to see his back turned in battle. They now held all the south of Palestine, from the brook of Egypt to Ekron (Josh. xv. 4, 47). And if Moses in the flush of his success had pushed on by the straight and easy route into the promised land, the first shock of combat with them would have been felt in a few weeks. But “ God led them not by the way of the Philistines, though that was near, for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent them when they see war, and they return to Egypt” (ver. 17). From this we learn two lessons. Why did not He, Who presently made strong the hearts of the Egyptians to plunge into the bed of the sea, make the hearts of His own people strong to defy the Philistines ? The answer is a striking and solemn one. Neither God in the Old Testament, nor God manifested in the flesh, is ever recorded to have wrought any miracle of spiritual advancement or overthrow. Thus the Egyp¬ tians were but confirmed in their own choice: their decision was carried further. And even Saul of Tarsus was illuminated, not coerced: he might have disobeyed the heavenly vision. He was not an insincere man 204 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. suddenly coerced into earnestness, nor a coward sud¬ denly made brave. In the moral world, adequate means are always employed for the securing of desired effects. Love, gratitude, the sense of danger and of grace, are the powers which elevate characters. And persons who live in sensuality, fraud, or falsehood, hoping to be saved some day by a sort of miracle of grace, ought to ponder this truth, which may not be the gospel now fashionable, but is unquestionably the statement of a Scriptural fact: in the moral sphere , God works by means and not by miracle. A free life, the desert air, the rejection of the unfit by many visitations, and the growth of a new genera¬ tion amid thrilling events, in a soul-stirring region, and under the pure influences of the law,—these were necessary before Israel could cross steel with the war¬ like children of the Philistines; and even then, it was not with them that he should begin. The other lesson we learn is the tender fidelity of God, Who will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able to bear. He led them aside into the desert, whither He still in mercy leads very many who think it a heavy judgment to be there. THE BONES OF JOSEPH. xiii. 19. It is certain that Moses, in the days of his greatness, must often have mused by the sepulchre of the one Israelite before himself who held high rank in Egypt. The knowledge that Joseph's elevation was providential must have helped him at that time, now many years ago, to think rightly of his own. And now we read that Moses took the bones of Joseph with him. In xiii. 19.] THE BONES OF JOSEPH. 205 the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 22) it is recorded as the most characteristic example of the faith of the patriarch, that instead of desiring to be carried, like his father, at once to Canaan, he made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave com¬ mandment concerning his bones. To him Egypt was no longer an alien land. There only he had known honour without envy, and happiness without betrayal. There his bones could rest in quiet; but not for ever. Personal elevation, which had not rent the cord between him and his unworthy family, could still less sever the bands between him and the sacred race. Let him sleep in Egypt while his grave there was honoured : let the remembrance of him be kept fresh, to protect awhile his kindred; and when the predicted days of evil came, let his ashes share the neglect and dishonour of his people, if only they would remember his remains when the Lord would lead them forth. This confidence in their emancipation was his faith—which meant, here as always, not a clear view of truth, but an assuring grasp of it. He had straitly sworn the children of Israel saying, il God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you.” Many a Christian might well envy a confidence so practical, so thoroughly realised, entering so naturally into the tissue of his thoughts and calculations. And their actual remembrance of him goes to show that the tradition of his faith had never completely died out, but was among the influences which kept alive the nation’s hope. And as the people bore his honoured ashes through the desert, these being dead spoke of bygone times, they linked the present and the past together, they deepened the national consciousness that Israel was 206 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. a favoured people, called to no common destiny, sustained by no common promises, pressing toward no common goal. If Israel had been wise, they would have thought of him, the Israelite in heart, though glittering in the splendours of Egypt; and would have considered well that as little as men detected his secret life from his appearance, so little could theirs be judged. To the eye, they were free from the foreign trammels in which he was seemingly entangled, yet many of them in heart turned back to all which strove in vain to bind his affections down. The lesson holds good to-day. Many a modern religionist looks askance at the u worldliness ” of high office and rank and state; little dreaming that the “ world " he censures is strong in his own ambitious and self-asserting spirit, and is overcome by the gentle and tranquil spirit of hundreds of those whom he con¬ demns. Bearing this hallowed burden, which might easily have become an object of superstitious regard, the nation moved from Succoth to Etham on the edge of the wilderness. And with them a Presence moved which rebuked all others, however venerable. The Lord went before them. It has already been pointed out that throughout the early history of this nation, just come out of an idolatrous land, and too ready to lapse back into superstition, God never reveals Himself except in fire. To Abraham and to Jacob He appeared in human form, and again to Joshua; but in the interval, never. So now they see Him by day in a pillar of cloud to guide them on the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light. The glory of the nation was that manifested Presence, lacking which, Moses besought Him to carry them up no farther. liii. 19.] THE BONES OF JOSEPH. 207 Nothing in the Exodus is more impressive, and it sank deep into the national heart. Many centuries afterwards, the ideal of a golden age was that the Lord should " create over the whole habitation of Mount Zion, and over her assemblies, a cloud of smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night" (Isa. iv. 5). But it has been well observed that, amid the various allusions to it in Hebrew poetry, not one treats it as modern literature has done, with an eye to its marvel¬ lous sublimity and picturesque effects : “ By day, along the astonished lands The cloudy pillar glided slow: By night, Arabia’s crimsoned sands Returned the fiery column’s glow.’* The Hebrew poetry is vivid and passionate, but all its concerns are human or divine—God, and the life of man. It is not artistic, but inspired. " The modern poet is delighting in the scenic effect; the ancient chronicler was wholly occupied with the overshadow¬ ing power of God.” * • Hutton’s Essays, Vol. ii., Literary : The Poetry of the Old Test. CHAPTER XIV, THE RED SEA. xiv. 1-31. I T would seem that the Israelites recoiled before a frontier fortress of Egypt at Khetam (Etham). This is probable, whatever theory of the route of the Exodus cue may adopt; and it is still open to every reader to adopt almost any theory he pleases, provided that two facts are borne in mind : viz., first, that the narrative certainly means to describe a miraculous interference, not superseding the forces of nature, but wielding them in a fashion impossible to man; and second, that the phrase translated “ Red Sea” * (xiii. 18, xv. 4) is the same which is confessed by all persons to have that meaning in chap, xxiii. 31, and in Numbers xxi. 4 and xxxiii. 10. Checked, without loss or with it, they were bidden to 11 turn back,” and encamp at Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. And since Migdol is simply a watch-tower (there were several in the Holy Land, in¬ cluding that which gave her name to Mary Magdal-ene), we are to infer that from thence their inexplicable * The Sea of Zuph, or reeds, the word being used of the reeds in which Moses was laid by his mother and found by Pharaoh’s daughter (ii. 3, 5), rendered “ flags ” in the Revised Version. xiv. I-31.] THE RED SEA. 209 movements were signalled back to Pharaoh. It was the natural signal for all the wild passions of a baffled and half-ruined tyrant to leap into flame. We are scarcely able to imagine the mental condition of men tvho conceived that a God Who had dealt out death and destruction might be far from invincible from another side. But ages after this, a campaign was planned upon the ingenious theory that “Jehovah is a god of the hills but He is not a god of the valleys " (1 Kings xx. 28); and plenty of people who would scorn this simple notion are still of opinion that He is a God of eternity and can save them from hell, but a little falsehood and knavery are much better able to save them from want in the meanwhile. Nay, there are many excellent persons who are not at all of opinion that the prince of this world has been dethroned. Therefore, when his enemies recoiled from his for¬ tresses and wandered away into the wilderness of Egypt, entangling themselves hopelessly between the sea, the mountains, and his own strongholds, it might well appear to Pharaoh that Jehovah was not a warlike deity, that he himself had now found out the weak point of his enemies, and could pursue and overtake and satisfy his lust upon them. There is a significant emphasis in the song of Miriam’s triumph—“Jehovah is a man of war." At all events, it was through an imperfect sense of the universal and practical import¬ ance of Jehovah as a factor not to be neglected in his calculations, through exactly the same error which mis¬ leads every man who postpones religion, or limits the range of its influence in his daily life,—it was thus, and not through any rarer infatuation, that Pharaoh made ready six hundred chosen chariots and all the chariots 14 210 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. of Egypt, and captains over all of them. And his court was of the same mind, saying, “ What is this that we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us ? ” These words are hard to reconcile with the strange notion that until now a return after three days was expected, despite the torrent of blood which rolled between them, and the demands by which the Israel- itish women had spoiled the Egyptians. Upon this theory it is not their own error, but the bad faith of their servants, which they should have cried out against. At the sight of the army, a panic seized the servile hearts of the fugitives. First they cried out unto the Lord. But how possible it is, without any real faith, to address to Heaven the mere clamours of our alarm, and to mistake natural agitation for earnestness in prayer, we learn by the reproaches with which, after thus crying to the Lord, they assailed His servant. Were there no graves in that land of superb sepulchres —that land, now, of universal mourning ? Would God that they had perished with the firstborn ! Why had they been treated thus ? Had they not urged Moses to let them alone, that they might serve the Egyptians ? And yet these men had lately, for the very promise of so much emancipation as they now enjoyed, bowed their heads in adoring thankfulness. As it was their fear which now took the form of supplication, so then it was their hope which took the form of praise. And we, how shall we know whether that in us which seems to be religious gladness and religious grief, is mere emotion, or is truly sacred ? By watching whether worship and love continue, when emotion has xiv. 1-31.] THE RED SEA. 211 spent its force, or has gone round, like the wind, to another quarter. How did Moses feel when this outcry told him of the unworthiness and cowardice of the nation of his heart ? Much as we feel, perhaps, when we see the frailties and failures of converts in the mission-field, and the lapse of the intemperate who have seemed to be reclaimed for ever. We thought that perfection was to be reached at a bound. Now we think that the whole work was unreal. Both extremes are wrong : we have much to learn from the failures of that ancient church, in which was the germ of hero, psalmist, and prophet, which was indeed the church in the wilderness, and whose many relapses were so tenderly borne with by God and His messenger. The settled faith of Moses, and the assurances which he could give the agitated people,* contrast nobly with their alarm. But his confidence also had its secret springs in prayer, for the Lord said to him, “ Wherefore criest thou unto Me ? speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward." The words are remarkable on two accounts. Can prayer ever be out of place ? Not if we mean a prayerful dependent mental attitude toward God. But certainly, yes, if God has already revealed that for which we still importune Him, and we are secretly * But his assurance is, “The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” When Wellhausen would summarise the work of Moses, he tells us that “ he taught them to regard self-assertion against the Egyptians as an article of religion” ( History, p. 430). It would be impossible, within the compass of so many words, more completely to miss the remarkable characteristic which differentiates this whole narrative fiom all other revolutionary movements. Ex¬ pectancy and dependence here take the place of “self-assertion.” 212 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. disquieted lest His promise should fail. It is mis¬ placed if our own duty has to be done, and we pass the golden moments in inactivity, however pious. Christ spoke of men who should leave their gift before the altar, unpresented, because of a neglected duty which should be discharged. And perhaps there are men who pray for the conversion of the heathen, or of friends at home, to whom God says, Wherefore criest thou unto Me ? because their money and their faithful efforts must be given, as Moses must arouse himself to lead the people forward, and to stretch his wand over the sea. And again the forces of nature are on the side of God : the strong wind makes the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over. History has no scene more picturesque than this wild night march, in the roar of tempest, amid the flying foam which “ baptized ” them unto Moses,* while the glimmering waters stood up like a rampart to protect their flanks ; the full moon of passover above them, shown and hidden as the swift clouds raced before the storm, while high and steadfast overhead, unshaken by the fiercest blast, illumined by a mysterious splendour, u stood ” the vast cloud which veiled like a curtain their whole host from the pursuer. This it was, and the experience of such protection that the Egyptians, overawed, came not near them, which gave them courage to enter the bed of the sea; and as they trod the strange road they found that not only were the waters driven off the surface, but the sands were left firm to traverse. But when the blind fury of Pharaoh, " hardened” * Not the adults only; nor yet by immersion, whether in the rain-cloud or the surf, xiv. 1-31.3 TIIE RED SEA. 213 against everything but the sense that his prey was escaping, sent his army along the same track, and this after long delay, at a crisis when every moment was priceless, then a new element of terrible sublimity was added. Through the pillar of cloud and fire Jehovah looked forth on the Egyptian host, as they pressed on behind, unable to penetrate the supernatural gloom, cold fear creeping into every heart, while the chariot wheels laboured heavily in the wet sand. In that direful vision at last the question was answered, “ Who is Jehovah, that I should let His people go ? ” Now it was the turn of those who said “ Israel is entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in/' themselves to be taken in a worse net. For at that awful gaze the iron curb of military discipline gave way; their labouring chariots, the pride and defence of the nation, were forsaken; and a wild cry broke out, u Let us fly from the face of Israel, for Jehovah ”—He who plagued us—“fighteth for them against the Egyptians.” But their humiliation came too late,—for in the morning w r atch, at a natural time for atmospheric changes, but in obedience to the rod of Moses, the furious wind veered or fell, and the sea returned to its accustomed limits; and first, as the sands beneath became satu¬ rated, the chariots w T ere overturned and the mail-clad charioteers v 7 ent down u like lead,” and then the hissing line of foam raced forward and closed around and over the shrieking mob which was the pride and strength of Egypt only an hour before. But, as the story repeats twice over, with a very natural and glad reiteration, “ the children of Israel walked on dry land in the midst of the sea, and the w T aters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left ” (ver. 29, cf. 22). 214 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. ON THE SHORE. xiv. 30, 31. 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 doubtless brought into some permanent shape their rudimentary organisation. There, too, their impressions were given time to deepen. They "saw the Egyptians dead on the sea-shore/’ and realised that their oppression was indeed at an end, their chains broken, themselves introduced into a new life,—“ baptized unto Moses.” They re¬ flected 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 believed in Jehovah.” This expression is noteworthy, because they had all believed in Him already. “By faith ‘they’ forsook Egypt. By faith * they ' kept the passover and the sprinkling of blood. By faith 1 they * passed through the Red 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 xiv. 30, 31.] ON THE SHORE. 215 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 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. CHAPTER XV. THE SONG OF MOSES. XV. 1-22. URING this halt they prepared that great song of triumph which St. John heard sung by them who had been victorious over the beast, standing by the sea of glass, having the harps of God. For by that calmer sea, triumphant over a deadlier persecution, they still found their adoration and joy expressed in this earliest chant of sacred victory. Because all holy hearts give like thanks to Him Who sitteth upon the throne, there¬ fore “deep answers unto deep/’ and every great crisis in the history of the Church has legacies for all time and for eternity; and therefore the triumphant song of Moses the servant of God enriches the worship of heaven, as the penitence and hope and joy of David enrich the worship of the Church on earth (Rev. xv. 3). Like all great poetry, this song is best enjoyed when it is neither commented upon nor paraphrased, but carefully read and warmly felt. There are circum¬ stances and lines of thought which it is desirable to point out, but only as a preparation, not a substitute, for the submission of a docile mind to the influence of the inspired poem itself. It is unquestionably archaic. The parallelism ot Hebrew verse is already here, but the structure is more free and unartificial than that of later poetry; and many ancient words, and words of XV. 1 22 .] THE SONG OF MOSES. 217 Egyptian derivation, authenticate its origin. So does the description of Miriam, in the fifteenth verse, as “ the prophetess, the sister of Aaron.” In what later time vvould she not rather have been called the sister of Moses ? But from the lonely youth who found Aaron and Miriam together as often as he stole from the palace to his real home—the lonely man who regained both together when he returned from forty years of exile, and who sometimes found them united in oppo¬ sition to his authority (Num. xii. I, 2)—from Moses alone the epithet is entirely natural. It is also noteworthy that Philistia is mentioned first among the foes who shall be terrified (ver. 14, R.V.), because Moses still expected the invasion to break first on them. But the unbelieving fears of Israel changed the route, so that no later poet would have set them in the forefront of his song. Thus also the terror of the Edomites is anticipated, although in fact they sturdily refused a passage to Israel through their land (Num. xx. 20). All this authenticates the song, which thereupon establishes the miraculous deliverance that inspired it. The song is divided into two parts. Up to the end of the twelfth verse it is historical : the remainder expresses the high hopes inspired by this great experi¬ ence. Nothing now seems impossible: the fiercest tribes of Palestine and the desert may be despised, for their own terror will suffice to ** melt ” them ; and Israel may already reckon itself to be guided into the holy habitation (ver. 13). The former part is again subdivided, by a noble and instinctive art, into two very unequal sections. With amplitude of triumphant adoration, the first ten verses tell the same story which the eleventh and twelfth 218 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. compress into epigrammatical vigour and terseness. To appreciate the power of the composition, one should read the fourth, fifth, and sixth verses, and turn immediately to the twelfth. Each of these three divisions closes in praise, and as in the “ Israel in Egypt,” it was probably at these points that the voices of Miriam and the women broke in, repeating the first verse of the ode as a refrain (vers. I and 21). It is the earliest recognition of the place of women in public worship. And it leads us to remark that the whole service was responsive. Moses and the men are answered by Miriam and the women, bearing timbrels in their hands ; for although instru¬ mental music had been sorely misused in Egypt, that was no reason why it should be excluded now. Those who condemn the use of instiuments in Christian worship virtually contend that Jesus has, in this respect, narrowed the liberty of the Church, and that a potent method of expression, known to man, must not be consecrated to the honour of God. And they make the present time unlike the past, and also unlike v/hat is revealed of the future state. Moreover there was movement, as in very many ancient religious services, within and without the pale of revelation.* Such dances were generally slow and graceful; yet the motion and the clang of metal, and the vast multitudes congregated, must be taken into account, if we would realise the; strange enthusiasm of the emancipated host, looking over the blue sea to Egypt, defeated and twice bereaved, and forward to the desert wilds of freedom. * There is no warrant in the use of Sciipture for Stanley’s assertion that the word translated “dances” should be rendered “guitars.” (Smith’s Diet, of Bible , Article Miriam.') XV. 1-22.] THE SONG OF MOSES. 219 The poem is steeped in a sense of gratitude. In the great deliverance man has borne no part. It is Jehovah Who has triumphed gloriously, and cast the horse and charioteer—there was no u rider”— into the sea. And this is repeated again and again by the women as their response, in the deepening passion of the ode.