PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Exodus
Chadwick, G. A. (George Alexander) · 133,337 words · 210 reading sections
_Meribah._
Because God is not a Judge, but a Father, the murmurs of Israel do not prevent Him from showing mercy. Accordingly, when Moses prays, he is bidden to go on before the people, bringing certain of their elders along with him for witnesses of the marvel that was to follow. Such is the Divine method. As soon as unbelief an…
457 wordsSECTION 122_Amalek._
xvii. 8-16. Nothing can be more natural, to those who remember the value of a fountain in the East, than that Amalek should swoop down from his own territories upon Israel, as soon as this abundant river tempted his cupidity. This unprovoked attack of a kindred nation leads to another advance in the education of the p…
658 wordsSECTION 123_Amalek._
Another necessity of national development is the advancement of capable men. The empire of Napoleon would assuredly have withered, if only because its chief was as jealous of commanding genius as he was ready to advance and patronise capacity of the second order. It is a maxim that true greatness finds worthy colleague…
746 wordsSECTION 124_Amalek._
Observe, however, that as the active exertion of the host does not displace the silence of intercession, neither is it displaced itself: Joshua really bore his part in the discomfiture of Amalek and his host. And so it is always. The development of human energy to the uttermost is a part of the design of Him Who gave a…
464 wordsSECTION 125_Jethro._
xviii. 1-27. The defeat of Amalek is followed by the visit of Jethro; the opposite pole of the relation between Israel and the nations, the coming of the Gentiles to his brightness. And already that is true which repeats itself all through the history of the Church, that much secular wisdom, the art of organisation, t…
735 wordsSECTION 126_Jethro._
In the meantime, here is recognised, in the history of Israel, a Gentile priesthood. And, as at the passover, so now, the sacrifice to God is partaken of by His people, who are conscious of acceptance by Him. Happy was the union of innocent festivity with a sacramental recognition of God. It is the same sentiment whic…
487 wordsSECTION 127The Typical Bearings Of The History.
We are now about to pass from history to legislation. And this is a convenient stage at which to pause, and ask how it comes to pass that all this narrative is also, in some sense, an allegory. It is a discussion full of pitfalls. Countless volumes of arbitrary and fanciful interpretation have done their worst to discr…
693 wordsSECTION 128The Typical Bearings Of The History.
And if He marks, by a solemn institution, the period when we enter into covenant relations with Himself, and renounce the kingdom and tyranny of His foe, is it marvellous that the apostle found an analogy for this in the great event by which God punctuated the emancipation of Israel, leading them out of Egypt through t…
682 wordsSECTION 129_At Sinai._
The sober historian cannot prove anything, logically and to demonstration, by the reiterated interventions in history of atmospheric phenomena. And yet no devout thinker can fail to recognise that God has reserved the hail against the time of trouble and war. In short, it is absurd and hopeless to bid us limit our con…
732 wordsSECTION 130_At Sinai._
Therefore the Lord called to Moses as he climbed the steep, and offered through him a formal covenant to the people. "Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob,[33] and tell the children of Israel: Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto Myself." The appea…
699 wordsSECTION 131_At Sinai._
To this appeal the nation responded gladly. They could feel that indeed they had been sustained by God as the eagle bears her young--not grasping them in her claws, like other birds, but as if enthroned between her wings, and sheltered by her body, which interposed between the young and any arrow of the hunter. Thus, s…
704 wordsSECTION 132_At Sinai._
And the priests also, who come near to God, should sanctify themselves. It has been asked who these were, since the Levitical institutions were still non-existent (ver. 22, cf. 24). But it is certain that the heads of houses exercised priestly functions; and it is not impossible that the elders of Israel who came to ea…
679 wordsSECTION 133Footnotes:
We have also to ask for the production of those other narratives, sublime in their conception and in the vast audience which they challenged, sublimely pure alike from taint of idolatrous superstition and of moral evil, profound and far-reaching in their practical effect upon humanity, which deserve to be so closely as…
265 wordsSECTION 134_The Law._
xx. 1-17. We have now reached that great event, one of the most momentous in all history, the giving of the Ten Commandments. And it is necessary to consider what was the meaning of this event, what part were they designed to play in the religious development of mankind. 1. St. Paul tells us plainly what they did _no…
793 wordsSECTION 135_The Law._
And thus the grand paradox of Luther is entirely true: "Unless faith be without any, even the smallest works, it does not justify, nay, it is not faith. And yet it is impossible for faith to be without works--earnest, many and great." We are justified by faith without the works of the law, and yet we do not make void t…
707 wordsSECTION 136_The Law._
The ordinary English arrangement assigns to the tables four commandments and six respectively. And the noble catechism of the Church of England appears to sanction this arrangement by including among "my duties to my neighbour" that of loving, honouring and succouring my father and mother. There are several objections …
331 wordsSECTION 137_The Prologue._
xx. 2. The Decalogue is introduced by the words "I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." Here, and in the previous chapter, is already a great advance upon the time when it was said to them "The God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, h…
673 wordsSECTION 138_The First Commandment._
Moreover, his emancipation by Christ from many sins and inner slaveries ought to be a fact plain enough to constitute the sorest of problems to the observing world. It must be observed, besides, that the Law, which was the centre of Judaism, does not appeal chiefly to the meaner side of human nature. Hell is not yet k…
704 wordsSECTION 139_The First Commandment._
Never let us weary of repeating that while we have ample controversial resource, while no missile can pierce the chain-armour of the Christian evidences, connected and interwoven into a great whole, and while the infidelity which is called scientific is really infidel only so far as it begs its case (which is an unscie…
652 wordsSECTION 140_The First Commandment._
Others had no thought of a higher blessedness than animal enjoyment. Their god was their belly. They set the excitement of wine in the place of the fulness of the Spirit, or preferred some depraved union upon earth to the honour of being one spirit with the Lord (Phil. iii. 19; Eph. v. 18; 1 Cor. vi. 16, 17). And some …
457 wordsSECTION 141_The Second Commandment._
"Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, ... thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them."--xx. 4-6. How far does the second of these clauses modify the first? Men there are who maintain the severe independence of the former, so that it forbids the presence of any image or likeness in the house of…
695 wordsSECTION 142_The Second Commandment._
To this precept there is added a startling and painful caution--"For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God." That a man should be jealous is no passport to our friendship: we think of unreasonable estrangements, exaggerated demands, implacable and cruel resentments. It would not enter the average mind to doubt that one i…
820 wordsSECTION 143_The Second Commandment._
At all events, the assertion so early made in Scripture is confirmed in all the experience of the race. Insanity, idiocy, scrofula, consumption, are too often, though not always, the hereditary results of guilt. Sins of the flesh are visited upon the bodily system. Sins of the temper, such as pride, cynicism and frivol…
719 wordsSECTION 144_The Third Commandment._
"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."--xx. 7. What is the precise force of this prohibition? The word used is ambiguous: sometimes it must be rendered as here, as in the verses "_Vain_ is the help of man," and "Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but _vain_ that build it" (Psalm cvii…
662 wordsSECTION 145_The Fourth Commandment._
And the prevalent notion that God should be mentioned seldom and with bated breath is rather an evidence of men's failure habitually to think of Him aright, than of filial and loving reverence. There is a large and powerful school of religion in our own day, whose disciples talk much more of their own emotions and thei…
665 wordsSECTION 146_The Fourth Commandment._
The position of the commandment among a number of moral and universal duties cannot but weigh heavily in its favour. It prompts us to ask whether our duty to God is purely negative, to be fulfilled by a policy of non-intervention, not worshipping idols, nor blaspheming. Something more was already intimated in the promi…
657 wordsSECTION 147_The Fourth Commandment._
How is the Sabbath spoken of in those prophecies which set least value upon the merely ceremonial law? Isaiah speaks of mere ritual as slightly as St. Paul. To fast and afflict one's soul is nothing, if in the day of fasting one smites with the fist and oppresses his labourers. To loose the bonds of wickedness, to fre…
697 wordsSECTION 148_The Fourth Commandment._
But there are other things more abject still; and one of them is the miserable insincerity of the affluent and luxurious, using the exceptional case of him whose week-days are thus oppressed, to excuse their own wanton neglect of religious ordinances, accepting at the hands of Christianity the sacred holiday, but ignor…
280 wordsSECTION 149_The Fifth Commandment._
"Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."--xx. 12. This commandment forms a kind of bridge between the first table and the second. Obedience to parents is not merely a neighbourly virtue; we do not honour them simply as our fellow-men: they are the…
713 wordsSECTION 150_The Sixth Commandment._
"Thou shalt do no murder."--xx. 13. We have now clearly passed to the consideration of man's duty to his fellow-man, as a part of his duty to his Maker. It is no longer as holding a divinely appointed relation to us, but simply as he is a man, that we are bidden to respect his person, his family, his property, and his…
724 wordsSECTION 151_The Sixth Commandment._
Is there anything in the modern conception of a man which bids me spare him, if his existence dooms me to poverty and I can quietly push him over a precipice? It is quite conceivable that I can prove, and very likely indeed that I can persuade myself, that the shortening of the life of one hard and grasping man may bri…
555 wordsSECTION 152_The Seventh Commandment._
"Thou shalt not commit adultery."--xx. 14. This commandment follows very obviously from even the rudest principle of justice to our neighbour. It is among those that St. Paul enumerates as "briefly comprehended in this saying, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." And therefore nothing need here be said about th…
666 wordsSECTION 153_The Eighth Commandment._
If it be frailty of temper, failure of common sympathies, an irretrievable error recognised too late, it is a calamity which may yet strengthen the character by evoking such pity and helpfulness as Christ the Bridegroom showed for the Church when lost. But if estrangement, even of heart, come through the secret indulge…
727 wordsSECTION 154_The Ninth Commandment._
There is always the simple answer, Who made me a judge in my own case? But when we regard the matter thus, it becomes clear that honesty is not mere abstinence from pillage. The community has larger claims than this upon us, and is wronged if we fail to discharge them. The rich man robs the poor if he does not play h…
690 wordsSECTION 155_The Ninth Commandment._
It is a pity that our harsh judgments always speak more loudly and confidently than our kindly ones, but the reason is plain: angry passion prompts the former, and its voice is loud; while the calm reflection which tones down and sweetens the judgment softens also the expression of it. It has to be remembered, also, t…
480 wordsSECTION 156_The Tenth Commandment._
"Thou shalt not covet ... anything that is his."--xx. 17. It will be remembered that the order of the catalogue of objects of desire is different in Exodus and in Deuteronomy. In the latter "thy neighbour's wife" is first, as of supreme importance; and therefore it has been thought possible to convert it into a separa…
616 wordsSECTION 157The Lesser Law.
xx. 18-xxiii. 33. With the close of the Decalogue and its universal obligations, we approach a brief code of laws, purely Hebrew, but of the deepest moral interest, confessed by hostile criticism to bear every mark of a remote antiquity, and distinctly severed from what precedes and follows by a marked difference in t…
679 wordsSECTION 158The Lesser Law.
Meanwhile, there was a fear which should endure, and which God desires: not panic, but awe; not the terror which stood afar off, but the reverence which dares not to transgress. "Fear not, for God is come to prove you" (to see whether the nobler emotion or the baser will survive), "and that His fear may be before your …
698 wordsSECTION 159The Lesser Law.
The other, which seems to contradict the first, and does actually modify it, is that legislation must not move too far in advance of public opinion. Laws may be highly desirable in the abstract, for which communities are not yet ripe. A constitution like our own would be simply ruinous in Hindostan. Many good friends o…
411 wordsSECTION 160Part I.--The Law Of Worship.
xx. 22-26. It is no vain repetition that this code begins by reasserting the supremacy of the one God. That principle underlies all the law, and must be carried into every part of it. And it is now enforced by a new sanction,--"Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven: ye shall not make _other g…
616 wordsSECTION 161Part Ii.--Rights Of The Person.
[35] Prof. Tyndall, _Belfast Address_, p. 60. What progress has scientific unbelief made since 1874 in solving this "question of questions for the present hour"? It has perfected the phonograph, but it has not devised a creed. [36] "Or _beside Me_" (R.V.) The preposition is so vague that either of our English words ma…
656 wordsSECTION 162Part Ii.--Rights Of The Person.
It was not quite plain that these enactments extended to the Gentile slave. But in accordance with the assertion that the whole spirit of the statutes was elevating, the conclusion arrived at by the later authorities was the generous one. When it is added that man-stealing (upon which all our modern systems of slavery…
694 wordsSECTION 163Part Ii.--Rights Of The Person.
It is because the question in hand is the sanctity of man, that the capital punishment of a son who strikes or curses a parent, the vicegerent of God, and of a kidnapper, is interposed between these provisions and minor offences against the person (15-17). Of these latter, the first is when lingering illness results f…
695 wordsSECTION 164Part Iii.--Rights Of Property.
xxi. 33-xxii. 15. The vital and quickening principle in this section is the stress it lays upon man's responsibility for negligence, and the indirect consequences of his deed. All sin is selfish, and all selfishness ignores the right of others. Am I my brother's keeper? Let him guard his own property or pay the forfei…
589 wordsSECTION 165Sorcery.
_THE LESSER LAW (continued)._ xxii. 16-xxiii. 19. The Fourth section of this law within the law consists of enactments, curiously disconnected, many of them without a penalty, varying greatly in importance, but all of a moral nature, and connected with the well-being of the state. It is hard to conceive how the syste…
732 wordsSECTION 166Sorcery.
Now, it would have been preposterous to proscribe false religions and yet to tolerate the sorcerer and the sorceress. For these were the active practitioners of another worship than that of God. They might not profess idolatry; but they offered help and guidance from sources which Jehovah frowned upon, rival sources of…
655 wordsSECTION 167The Stranger.
The denunciation of witchcraft is quite naturally followed, as we now perceive, by the reiteration of the command that no sacrifice may be offered to any god except Jehovah (20). Strange and hateful offerings were an integral part of witchcraft, long before the hags of Macbeth brewed their charm, or the child in Horace…
699 wordsSECTION 168The Stranger.
"I, not ignorant of woe, To pity the distressful know." And the boldest assertion in Scripture of the natural development of our Saviour's human powers, is that which declares that "In that He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted" (Heb. ii. 18). To this principle, then, M…
627 wordsSECTION 169Chapter Xxiii.
_THE LESSER LAW (continued)._ xxiii. 1-19. The twenty-third chapter begins with a series of commands bearing upon the course of justice; but among these there is interjected very curiously a command to bring back the stray ox or ass of an enemy, and to help under a burden the over-weighted ass of him that hateth thee…
744 wordsSECTION 170Chapter Xxiii.
That Moses was really thinking of this tendency to court popularity, is plain from the next clause--"Neither shalt thou favour a poor man in his cause" (ver. 3). It is an admirable caution. Men there are who would scorn the opposite injustice, and from whom no rich man could buy a wrongful decision with gold or favour…
461 wordsSECTION 171Part V.--Its Sanctions.
xxiii. 20-33. This summary of Judaism being now complete, the people have to learn what mighty issues are at stake upon their obedience. And the transition is very striking from the simplest duty to the loftiest privilege: "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk. Behold, I send an Angel before thee.... Bewar…
653 wordsSECTION 172Part V.--Its Sanctions.
Moreover, Isaiah, speaking of this time, says that "In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence (His Face) saved them" (Isa. lxiii. 9). Thus we find that some angel is to be sent because God will not go up: that thereupon the nation mourns, although in this twenty-third chapter they had rec…
655 wordsSECTION 173_The Covenant Ratified. The Vision Of God._
[38] Even if the rendering were accepted, "Must My Presence (My Face) go with thee?" (Can I not be trusted without a direct Presence?) the argument would not be affected, because Moses presses for the favour and obtains it. xxiv. The opening words of this chapter ("Come up unto the Lord") imply, without explicitly as…
665 wordsSECTION 174_The Covenant Ratified. The Vision Of God._
It will not suffice to answer that Moses "endured as seeing Him that is invisible" (Heb. xi. 27), for the paraphrase is many centuries later, and hostile critics will rule it out of court as an after-thought. At least, however, it proves that the problem was faced long ago, and tells us what solution satisfied the earl…
760 wordsSECTION 175_The Covenant Ratified. The Vision Of God._
Thus we see that no conflict exists between this declaration and our belief in the spirituality of God. We have still to ask what is the real force of the assertion that God was in some lesser sense seen of Israel, and again, more especially, of its leaders. What do we mean even by saying that we see each other?--tha…
662 wordsSECTION 176_The Shrine And Its Furniture._
But it is hard to see why the human likeness of God should exist in Genesis and Joshua, but not in the history of the Exodus, if that story be a post-Exilian forgery. This is not all. The revelations of God in the desert were connected with threats and prohibitions: the law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by …
667 wordsSECTION 177_The Shrine And Its Furniture._
And this is the true reason why the altar of incense is not even mentioned until a later chapter (xxx.). We do homage to God because He is present: it is rather the consequence than the condition of His abode with us. The first step towards the preparation of a shrine for God on earth is the enshrining of His will: Mo…
679 wordsSECTION 178_The Shrine And Its Furniture._
The word "seat" has no part in the original; and we are not to think of God as reposing on it, but as revealing Himself above. The erroneous notion has probably transferred itself to the type from the heavenly antitype, which is "the throne of grace," but it has no countenance either in the Greek or the Hebrew name of …
953 wordsSECTION 179_The Shrine And Its Furniture._
Nor is it overstrained to add, that when this bread was given to their priestly representatives to eat, with all reverence and in a holy place, God responded, and gave back to His people that which represented the necessary maintenance of the tribes. Thus it was, "on the behalf of the children of Israel, an everlasting…
685 wordsSECTION 180_The Pattern In The Mount._
Again, in the Revelation, we find the New Testament Churches described as lamps, among which their Lord habitually walks. And no sooner have the seven churches on earth been warned and cheered, than we are shown before the throne of God seven torches (burning by their own incandescence--_vide_ Trench, _N. T. Synonyms_,…
689 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.