BEZALEEL AND AHOLIAB.
Exo 31:1-18.
Next after this marking off so sharply of the holy from the
profane, this consecration of men to special service, this
protection of sacred unguents and sacred gums from secular use, we
come upon a passage curiously contrasted, yet not really
antagonistic to the last, of marvellous practical wisdom, and well
calculated to make a nation wise and great.
The Lord announces that He has called by name Bezaleel, the son
of Uri, and has filled him with the Spirit of God. To what sacred
office, then, is he called? Simply to be a supreme craftsman, the
rarest of artisans. This also is a divine gift. "I have filled him
with the Spirit of God in wisdom and in understanding and in
knowledge and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works,
to work in gold and in silver and in brass and in cutting of stones
for setting, and in carving of wood, to work in all manner of
workmanship,"--that is to say, of manual dexterity. With him God had
appointed Aholiab; "and in the hearts of all the wise-hearted I have
put wisdom." Thus should be fitly made the tabernacle and its
furniture, and the finely wrought garments, and the anointing oil
and the incense.
So then it appears that the Holy Spirit of God is to be
recognised in the work of the carpenter and the jeweller, the
apothecary and the tailor. Probably we object to such a statement,
so baldly put. But inspiration does not object. Moses told the
children of Israel that Jehovah had filled Bezaleel with the Spirit
of God, and also Aholiab, for the work "of the engraver ... and of
the embroiderer ... and of the weaver" (Exo 35:31, Exo 35:35).
It is quite clear that we must cease to think of the Divine
Spirit as inspiring only prayers and hymns and sermons. All that is
good and beautiful and wise in human art is the gift of God. We feel
that the supreme Artist is audible in the wind among the pines; but
is man left to himself when he marshals into more sublime
significance the voices of the wind among the organ tubes? At
sunrise and sunset we feel that
"On the beautiful mountains the pictures of God are hung";
but is there no revelation of glory and of freshness in other
pictures? Once the assertion that a great masterpiece was "inspired"
was a clear recognition of the central fire at which all genius
lights its lamp: now, alas! it has become little more than a
sceptical assumption that Isaiah and Milton are much upon a level.
But the doctrine of this passage is the divinity of all endowment;
it is quite another thing to claim Divine authority for a given
product sprung from the free human being who is so richly crowned
and gifted.
Thus far we have smoothed our way by speaking only of poetry,
painting, music--things which really compete with nature in their
spiritual suggestiveness. But Moses spoke of the robe-maker, the
embroiderer, the weaver, and the perfumer.
Nevertheless, the one is carried with the other. Where shall we
draw the line, for example, in architecture or in ironwork? And
there is another consideration which must not be overlooked. God is
assuredly in the growth of humanity, in the progress of true
civilisation--in all, the recognition of which makes history
philosophical. It is not only the saints who feel themselves to be
the instruments of a Greater than they. Cromwell and Bismarck,
Columbus, Raleigh and Drake, William the Silent and William the
Third, felt it. Mr. Stanley has told us how the consciousness that
he was being used grew up in him, not through fanaticism but by slow
experience, groping his way through the gloom of Central Africa.
But none will deny that one of the greatest factors in modern
history is its industrial development. Is there, then, no sacredness
here?
The doctrine of Scripture is not that man is a tool, but that he
is responsible for vast gifts, which come directly from heaven--that
every good gift is from above, that it was God Himself Who planted
in Paradise the tree of knowledge.
Nor would anything do more to restrain the passions, to calm the
impulses and to elevate the self-respect of modern life, to call
back its energies from the base competition for gold, and make our
industries what dreamers persuade themselves that the medi
val
industries were, than a quick and general perception of what is
meant when faculty goes by such names as talent, endowment, gift--of
the glory of its use, the tragedy of its defilement. Many persons,
indeed, reject this doctrine because they cannot believe that man
has power to abase so high a thing so sadly. But what, then, do they
think of the human body?
What connection is there between all this and the reiteration of
the law of the Sabbath? Not merely that the moral law is now made a
civic statute as well, for this had been done already (Exo 23:12).
But, as our Lord has taught us that a Jew on the Sabbath was free to
perform works of mercy, it might easily be supposed lawful, and even
meritorious, to hasten forward the construction of the place where
God would meet His people. But He who said "I will have mercy and
not sacrifice" said also that to obey was better than sacrifice.
Accordingly this caution closes the long story of plans and
preparations. And when Moses called the people to the work, his
first words were to repeat it (Exo 35:2).
Finally, there was given to Moses the deposit for which so noble
a shrine was planned--the two tables of the law, miraculously
produced.
If any one, without supposing that they were literally written
with a literal finger, conceives that this was the meaning conveyed
to a Hebrew by the expression "written with the finger of God," he
entirely misses the Hebrew mode of thought, which habitually
connects the Lord with an arm, with a chariot, with a bow made
naked, with a tent and curtains, without the slightest taint of
materialism in its conception. Did not the magicians, failing to
imitate the third plague, say "This is the finger of a God"? Did not
Jesus Himself "cast out devils by the finger of God"? (Exo 8:19; Luk
11:20).