The Book of
Exodus
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Chapter 6
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THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES.
Exo 6:1-30.
We have seen that the name Jehovah expresses 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 God 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
4:26), nor the name of the hill of Abraham's sacrifice, Jehovah-jireh
(Gen 22:14). Yet the statement 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 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 17:1). 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 (Deu 34:10). 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: "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 with
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
knowledge of Christ amid many perplexities and obscurities. And so
the patriarchs, who knew God Almighty, but not by His name Jehovah,
were not lost for want of the knowledge of His name, but saved by
faith in Him, in the living Being to 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, remembering 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 of merits, and rendering out 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, "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, sometimes 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.
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 His covenant and the oath which He sware.
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 significant distinction which our
Saviour drew between His Fatherhood and our sonship, 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" (Mat 5:44-45). There is no encouragement to presumption in
the assertion 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" hereafter that the Lord is
Jehovah their God. And this, too, is a universal law, that we shall
know if we 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 conceptions of medi Êval
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 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 weakness 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, we
wonder equally at the foreboding question, "When the Son of Man
cometh, shall He 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 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 everything 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 "the heads of their fathers' houses,"--- an epithet
which indicates a subdivision of the "family," as the family is a
subdivision of the tribe. Of the sons of Jacob, Reuben and 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 26:58-59, six generations are
reckoned instead of four; in 1Ch 2:3 there are seven generations;
and elsewhere in the same book (1Ch 6:22) 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 18:14).
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 (Jdg 18:30, 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 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 "My hosts, My people, the children of Israel" (Exo 7:4, 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 uncircumcised 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 would 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" (Exo 11:3).
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 by 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 12:4-9).
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 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, "I in
them, and Thou, Father, in Me, that the world may know that Thou
hast sent Me." |
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