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mination of it. A repentant people is not one falling away. As regards the passage quoted from Ezekiel, it speaks first of sins in Egypt (chap. xx. 8), which are not now under consideration; the more general sins in the desert (ver. 13) do not belong here; not until the fifteenth verse is there an obscure hint of the time of punishment in Kadesh; and ver. 21 speaks of a new generation, which was afterwards delivered to the service of Moloch (vers. 25, 26; comp. chap. xxiii. 37). But this corruption is joined with the worship of lust, and hence we can suppose that the mention of it refers to the great sin in Shittim. To the same great sin, in all probability, Stephen refers in his speech, Acts vii., where he quotes the passage in Amos. That the sins of omission of the sacrifices and meal-offerings and circumcision were general, is explained by the temptations of their trials in the desert. The worship of Moloch and that of Saturn are allied as the gloomy antithesis of the more cheerful worship of Baal or of Jupiter, and yet they are connected with them. The history of the company of Korah, which occurs at this time, shows that the covenant of Jehovah with Israel was not suspended at this period.

For the position of Kadesh, see the Lexicons and Travels in this region.

12. RELIGIOUS AND SYMBOLIC MODE OF REPRESENTATION-ESPECIALLY THE POETICAL AND HISTORICAL SIDE OF THE THREE BOOKS.

But we

In general, we refer to what was said in this Comm. Introd. to Genesis. must reiterate that the religious mode of representation requires repetitions and insertions which are foreign to a scientific exact treatise; as, for instance, the mention of Aaron, Deut. x.; the insertion of Kadesh, Numb. xxxiii. 36, etc.

More important is the consideration of symbolic expression. We have before (Comm. Genesis, page 23) distinguished it plainly from the mythical and the literal. It cannot be understood without a perception of its specific character, as it is used to define clearly (e. g., the Nile became blood), to generalize (bringing the quails), to hyperbolize (Egyptian darkness), but constantly to idealize (words of Balaam's ass), for the vivid representation of the ideal meaning of facts. The mythical conception disregards not only the essential constancy of the facts, but also their perennial religious effect; the literal conception, on the other hand, disregards entirely their ideal meaning, as well as the spirit and the mode of statement, the theocratic-epic coloring. Both are united in being opposed to the peculiar mysterious character of revelation. This is specially true of the miracles of the Mosaic period.

The highly poetic and yet essentially true history of the leading of Israel to Canaan culminates on its poetical side in its songs (SACK, Die Lieder in den historischen Büchern des Alten Testaments, Barmen, 1864). The first lyrical note in Genesis is heard in God's words on the destiny of man (Comm. Gen. i.), then in the song of Lamech and in other portions. Again we hear it in Moses's song of redemption (Ex. xv.), and again, after the afflictions of the old generation, it awakes with the new generation. In close connection with the original poetic works (Book of the Wars of the Lord, Numb. xxi. 14) come the songs of victory and festival (Numb. xxi. 14, 15, 17, 18, 27-30); the blessings of Moses (Numb. vi. 24-27; x. 35, 36); blessings even out of the mouth of Balaam, their enemy. The crown of those lyrics is formed at the close of Deuteronomy by the two poems, the Song of Moses and the blessing of Moses, the solemn expression of the fundamental thought of the whole law, especially of Deuteronomy, blessing and curse. The first poem is well-nigh all shadow, the last is full of light.

The historical side of the three books culminates in the lists of generations, in the directions for building the tabernacle, in the list of encampments, in the statutes, and, above all, in the decalogue. We must also remark that the history of Moses would be entirely misunderstood if we should regard it as the beginning of the history of the Israelites, or if we should sunder it entirely from the history of the patriarchs. Moses and his legislation are only understood in connection with Abraham and the Abrahamitic basis of his religion. By this measure those new theological opinions are to be judged which would commence this history with Moses.

13. MIRACLES OF THE MOSAIC PERIOD.

Abraham prayed to God under the name of El Shaddai, God Almighty. He learned to know God's marvellous power by the birth of Isaac (Rom. iv. 17), and manifested his trust in His omnipotence by his readiness to sacrifice his only son (Heb. xi. 17). Thus the foundation was laid for belief in miracles under the theocracy.

The miracles of the Mosaic period appear as peculiarly the miracles of Jehovah. He is ever present with His miraculous help in the time of need. All changes and events in the course of nature He orders for the needs of the theocracy, for the people of God but lately born, to whom such signs are a necessity. The prophet as the confidant of God has not only the natural presentiment, but also the supernatural, God-given prescience of these great deeds of God. Yet, since they are to serve for the education of the faith of the people, he is not only to make them known beforehand, but performs them in symbolical acts as the organ of the omnipotence of Jehovah. Hence we may call these miracles double miracles (see Life of Christ, Vol. II., Part 1, p. 312).

The whole series of miracles is begun by a glorious vision. Moses beholds the bush burning with fire, and yet not consumed, but glowing in the bright flame. This was Israel, his people, and how could he doubt that this vision would be fulfilled in the people of God (Exod. iii.)?

Also the three miracles of attestation which Moses at this time received (Ex. iv.) appear to be miracles in vision and served to strengthen the faith of the prophet. The second sign, the leprosy and its cure, is not used by Moses afterward, and the third, the change of the water into blood, became one of the series of Egyptian plagues. He only uses the miracle of the rod; doubtless it comprehends a mysterious fact in symbolical expression; the swallowing of the rods of the sorcerers being called "destroying their works." The natural basis of the Egyptian plagues has been well explained by HENGSTENBERG. They were all plagues usual in Egypt, but were made miracles by their vastness, their close connection and speedy sequence, by their gradation from stroke to stroke, by the prophetic assurance of their predestination and intentional significance and use, and finally by their lofty symbolic expression. In their totality they reveal the fearful rhythm in which, from curse to curse, great punitive catastrophes come forth. Symbolic expression is also found in their number, ten. It is the number of the historic course of the world. Their sequence corresponds to the course of nature.

1. Water turned into blood.

2. Innumerable frogs.

3. Swarms of gnats (mosquitoes).

4. Dog-flies.

5. Murrain.

6. Boils and blains.

7. Storm and hail.

8. Locusts.

9. Darkness for three days (Hamsin).

10. Death of the first-born (pestilence).

For particulars see HENGSTENBERG, Egypt and the Books of Moses; KURTZ, History of the Old Covenant, Vol. II., 245–288.

The contest of theocratic miracle with magic represented by the Egyptian magicians is very significant. It is an opposition of symbolic and allegorical significance, continued through New Testament history (Acts viii.; Simon Magus; chap. xiii.; Elymas; 2 Tim. iii. 8; Jannes and Jambres), and still through Church history to its last decisive contest, when the false prophet shall be destroyed together with his lying wonders (2 Thess. ii.; Rev. xiii. 13).

To the miracles of the Egyptian plagues, which culminate in the overthrow of Pharaoh and his host, is opposed the miracle of the passage of the Red Sea, the typical baptism of the typical people of God, by which they were separated from Egypt, a reminiscence of the flood

and a type of Christian baptism (1 Cor. x. 1, 2; 1 Pet. iii. 20, 21). This miracle also has a natural basis, as the Scriptures more than once mention. The Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind (Ex. xiv. 21). That a natural occurrence forms the basis of this miracle is shown by the Egyptians pursuing the Israelites into the sea-for they would hardly have ventured into it if there had been an absolutely miraculous drying up of the sea; just as the natural explanation of the Egyptian plagues became the snare of Pharaoh's unbelief. But on the other side, the Egyptians could hardly have made so great a mistake in taking advantage of a natural occurrence: the ebb-tide* was miraculously great, just as the sudden turn of the flood-tide was miraculously hastened, and therefore rightly celebrated in the Song of Moses (Ex. xv.), and often afterwards (Ps. lxvi. 6; cvi. 9; cxxxvi. 13-15 ; Zech. x. 11).

In the investigation of the passage of the Red Sea there is a conflict between those who seek to belittle the miracle and those who would enlarge it. Of those who take the first position, K. von RAUMER is one of the champions.

The leading of the people to the Red Sea is accomplished by the angel of the Lord in the pillar of cloud and of fire. At the sea the cloud came between the Israelites and the Egyptian host, so that they were separated by the cloud before they were separated by the sea. For the distinction which the Hebrews made between this cloud and the pillar of cloud see Ps. lxviii. 8-10; 1 Cor. x. 2. The pillar of cloud was a mystery, in which were united the manifestation of the angel of the Lord and the flame ascending from the sanctuary. Afterwards the ark of the covenant as a symbol led the people, and over it the glory of the Lord was revealed in the cloud, and in New Testament times (Isa. iv. 5) it was to cover Zion with its brightness. If we grasp these two miracles, the pillar of cloud and of fire and the Red Sea, we shall gain some idea of the harmonia præstabilita between the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of nature, as it emerges at great decisive epochs in ineffable glory.

The healing of the water at Marah from its bitterness is accounted for in the Scriptures by natural means. The Lord showed Moses a tree (see the exegesis) by which the water was made sweet. Here grace and nature work together, and here too a general idea, an ethical law, is connected with the extraordinary fact; Jehovah will be the Physician of His people if they will obey His voice (Ex. xv. 23-26).

The miracle of healing is followed by the miracle of feeding the people with manna. The gift of quails appears to have been introduced into the account of the manna by a generalizing attraction (Ex. xvi. 11-13). In Numb. xi. 31 the gift of quails appears as an entirely new event: and they were far past Sinai then. The miracle of the manna enclosed a special mysterious occurrence, which was made the symbol of the true relation between the labor of the week and the rest of the Sabbath. The law also was symbolized, in that the food of heaven was common to all (Ex. xvi. 18). Concerning the natural basis of the miracle of manna see exegesis.

* [By the plain and repeated words of God we are prohibited from assuming an extraordinary ebb and flood tide in this miracle. The account is that "the Lord caused the sea to go (back) by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left." "But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left." Ex. xiv. 21, 22, 29. -here translated "divided"—is also used of “clearing" wood (Gen. xxii. 3; 1 Sam. vi. 14; Ps. cxli. 7; Eccles. x. 9), "the ground clave asunder" (Numb. xvi. 31), of "rending," "ripping up," making a breach in a wall, etc. A very close parallel to the use of this word in Ex. xiv. 21, etc., is found in Zech. xiv. 4: “And the mount of Olives shall cleave" (Niph. p—be cleft, divided) “in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a great valley, and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south." The word is here confined to this signification of division, cleaving asunder, by the additional and repeated statement that "the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left," which utterly excludes the idea of an ebb and flood tide, or that the waters were driven out of a shallow arm of the sea by the wind. (ROBINSON's Researches, I. 54–59.) The same representation is thrice repeated in Ex. xv. 8: "With the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together" (i. e., piled up); "the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea." See also in Ps. lxxviii. 13. Comp. with this the account in Josh. iii. 13-17, where it is said the waters of the Jordan to the north of the passing host stood and rose up upon an heap." It is vain to indulge in theories to explain a miracle. The division of the waters of the Jordan, descending an incline of three feet to the mile, laughs at all theories to account for it. In order to allow two or three millions of people, men, women and children, to pass over (eastward six or eight miles) in a night, there must have been a cleft in the sea several miles in width from north to south.-H. O.]

At Rephidim, the last station before the encampment at Sinai, the failure of water for the murmuring people was the occasion of a miraculous gift of water from a rock in the Horeb range of mountains. Paul, the Apostle, calls Christ the Rock from which Israel drank in the desert (1 Cor. x. 4), and by this reveals the prophetic meaning of the springs from the rocks and the desert. This event at Rephidim stands in a certain opposition to a similar miracle which took place during the sojourn in Kadesh. At Rephidim, Moses was ordered to strike the rock; at Meribah he was ordered, with Aaron, only to speak to the rock, and it was accounted as his great sin that he twice smote it. The victory also over the Amalekites was miraculous in its character, as it was obtained through the intercession of Moses (Exod. xvii.).

There is also a striking contrast between the occurrences at the reception of the first and of the second tables of the law. The reception of the first tables is introduced by the words: "And all the people saw the thunderings and lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, and when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off," Ex. xx. 8. But after the reception of the second tables, Moses descended the mountain, and his face shone with a brightness before which Aaron retired affrighted, and Moses was compelled to put a veil upon his face that the people might draw near him (Ex. xxxiv. 30). The glory of the holy law, so fearful in its majesty, shines out from Moses himself as soon as he heard the explanation of the gracious name of Jehovah given by Jehovah on Sinai (Ex. xxxiv. 6); but even in its human mediation and beauty the law affrighted the unsanctified people as well as the externally sanctified priests.

The pillar of cloud and of fire over the tabernacle consecrated it as the typical house of God (Ex. xl. 34). Over against this shining mystery is set the darkness of the death of the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, by fire, because they brought strange fire in their censers to the altar (Lev. x.). They died by fire (ver. 6-BUNSEN speaks of an execution)—and it is remarkable that these words are addressed to Aaron: "Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die." An extraordinary doom became forever afterwards the symbol of the putting away of all strange fire; that is, of fanaticism, of extravagance, of mere sensual enthusiasm in the service of the sanctuary, which required the pure flame of a holy inspiration. Miriam's leprosy, the punishment of her fanatical rebellion against Moses, stands, in its spiritual significance, on a plane with the doom of the sons of Aaron (Numb. xii.).

The departure of the children of Israel from Sinai is followed by the destruction of some of the people by fire from the Lord at Taberah, to punish them for complaining to Jehovah and longing for the flesh pots of Egypt. Then follows, in striking contrast to the manna, the miraculous gift of flesh to eat, the flight of quails, which settle down over the camp. While there was this murmuring among the people, there arose the opposite disposition on the part of some near Moses: not only did the seventy elders, chosen by Moses to be his helpers, begin to prophesy under the inspiration of the Mosaic spirit, but two other men in the midst of the camp prophesied. This opposition of the inspired exaltation of chosen men to the rebellious ill-humor of the people is well founded in the psychology of the theocratic congregation. The greedy eating of flesh is followed by a new and naturally necessary judgment, from which the place itself takes its name, Kibbroth-hattaavah, the graves of lust.

In this increase of theocratic inspiration, the following events may have their foundation. First, the legal, fanatical opposition of Aaron and Miriam to the mixed marriage of Moses, whose wife is spitefully called a Cushite, but who was probably an Egyptian, a spiritual disciple of the prophet (Num. xii. 2). Miriam is smitten with leprosy to mark her as the one chiefly responsible for the opposition. Nevertheless this new agitation continued, and was shown in the despair of the people at the report by the spies of the strength of the Canaanites, and then in the presumptuous and disastrous attack by the people in opposition to the command of God, which was followed by a second and greater commotion. After the well-deserved defeat of the people, Moses drew the reins of government more tightly by a series of legal precepts and by a stricter maintenance of the law of the Sabbath. It is again in accordance with the psychological oscillation of the life of the people that this is followed

by the insurrection of Korah's company, which, in the interest of an universal inspiration, threatened to put away the authority of Moses and Aaron (ch. xvi.). The revolt and the miraculous destruction of Korah's company belong to the second sojourn in Kadesh; and connected with these is another punishment of the people and Aaron's staff that blossomed (ch. xvi. 17).

The revolt of Korah's company was three-fold, and brought on one of the most dangerous crises in the history of Israel. The Korahites, as Levites, revolted especially against the priestly prerogative of Aaron; the sons of Eliab, descendants of Reuben, Jacob's first-born, were offended at Moses' position as prince; but the people themselves were so puffed up with their fanatical claims that even after the destruction of the company, they murmured again, and brought upon themselves a new chastisement. The Korahites seem to have been led into temptation by great natural gifts; at any rate, we find in later times, what was apparently a remnant of them, the sons of Korah, employed as chief singers in the service of the temple. The blossoming staff of Aaron indicated by an obscure, yet symbolic event the confirmation of the Aaronic priesthood, and even by this fact it was with difficulty that the excited spirit of the people was pacified (ch. xvii. 12, 13). The most important fact was that the staffs of all the princes of Israel paid homage to the staff of Aaron. It is a striking contrast to find the people who before had demanded a hierarchy now submitting to the established hierarchy with impatience and ill-humor.

The second murmuring about water, the occasion of the second miraculous gift of water, so momentous for Moses and Aaron (Num. xx. 12), occurred in the beginning of the second sojourn in Kadesh. The narrative in Num. xx. 1 is retrospective, for the want of water in the desert of Zin, the northern part of the great desert of Paran (see Bible Dict. Paran and Zin) would be found out on their entrance, not after a long sojourn. Their entrance into the desert of Zin is particularly recorded, because the name of the desert of Zin, the assembling of the whole people, and the long settlement there bring into prominence the want of water. The murmuring of the people and the impatience of Moses show that the discord which arose at the defeat at Hormah and at the insurrection of Korah's company still continued, but subsided in the darkness of the thirty-eight years over which the narrative draws a veil.

The history of Balaam and his ass forms a miraculous episode in the narrative of the exodus. It is in truth a double psychological miracle; the miracle of the trance of a sordid prophet, who by inspiration is lifted above his covetous intention, and beholds the ethical relations of the future of the theocracy; a fact which is repeated again and again in literature, and even in the pulpit; and the miracle of the influence of spiritual powers on the sensorium of animals, in order that they may make symbolic utterances. It is interesting to observe how BAUMGARTEN, in the second volume of his commentary (against HENGSTENBERG), adheres to the letter, as he had done earlier in the six days of creation.

The whole series of miraculous events, which made the exodus of Israel through the desert one great miracle of providence, is grandly closed by the mysterious death of Aaron on Mt. Hor and the mysterious death of Moses on Mt. Nebo. In both cases God's summons home and the heart of the dying man agree; freely and gladly he goes home. The mystery of Moses' death recalls the passing away of Enoch, the taking up of Elijah, and the last words of the dying Christ.

14. THE LEGISLATION OF MOSES IN GENERAL.

We must ever remember that there is a distinction to be made between Moses the lawgiver and Moses the prophet, for the true prophet or philosopher is never lost in the lawgiver; but his higher intelligence must accommodate itself to the culture and the moral capability of his people as he finds them.

Further we must regard the legislation of Moses in general: 1. According to its three divisions, which are plainly marked in the outline, Ex. xx.-xxiii., and are represented in the three books, of the prophetical, of the sacerdotal, and of the civil law; but each of these legislations, if considered by itself, would lose its theocratic impress.. 2. According to its

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