1M
Come with Us.
And Moses said unto Hobab, the son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses' father in law, We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you : come thou with us, and we will do thee good : for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel. And he said unto him, I will not go ; but I will depart to mine own land, and to my kindred. And he said, Leave us not, I pray thee ; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou shalt be to us instead of eyes. — Num. z. 29-31.
The Israelites reached Sinai in three months after leaving Egypt. They remained there for at least nine months, and amidst the solitude of those wild rocks they kept the first Passover — the anniversary of their deliverance. " On the twentieth day of the second month " they began again their march through the grim, unknown desert. One can fancy their thoughts and fears as they looked forward to the enemies and trials which might be awaiting them. In these circumstances this story comes in most naturally. Some time before the encampment broke up from Sinai, a relative of Moses by marriage, Hobab by name, had come into the camp on a visit. He was a Midianite by race ; one of the wandering tribes from the south-east of the Arabian peninsula. He knew every foot of the ground, as such men do. He knew where the springs were and the herbage, the camping-places, the short-cuts, and the safest routes. So Moses, who had no doubt forgotten much of the little desert skill he had learned in keeping Jethro's flock, prayed Hobab to remain with them and give them the benefit of his practical knowledge — " to be to us instead of eyes."
The passage has been treated in two very different ways. Some expositors consider that Moses was to blame for seeking a human guide when God had given the pillar of cloud to conduct the Israelites through the wilderness. Maclaren takes this view. The historian, he says, after recording the appeal to Hobab, passes on to describe at once how " the ark of the covenant of the Lord
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went before them to search out a resting-place for them," and how " the cloud was upon them when they went out of the camp." The historian puts the two things side by side, not calling on us to notice the juxtaposition, but surely expecting that we shall not miss what is so plain. He would teach us that it mattered little whether Israel had Hobab or not, if they had the ark and the cloud.^
Others concentrate their attention on the invitation. They see that, rightly or wrongly, Hobab was invited to accompany Israel to Canaan, and that two arguments were used to induce him to do so : he would find good for himself, and he would be a benefit to them.
We may use both forms of exposition, though it will be well to use them separately. Then we have —
I. The Pilgrim and his Guides.
1. Life is a journey through the Unknown.
2. Who is to be the Guide ? II. The Pilgrim and his Friends.
1. The Invitation.
2. The Arguments.
(1) For the Good you will get.
(2) For the Good you can do.
The Pilgrim and his Guides.
i. Life is a journey through the Unknown.
The itinerant life of God's ancient people in the wilderness foreshadows and teaches much concerning the Kfe of His true Israel in all ages. It teaches us that the historic Israel, the people who journeyed from Egypt through the wilderness to Canaan, and the spiritual Israel, those who journey from this world to the heavenly country, are alike called out and separated by God from the world-life that is around them. Neither of them has yet reached or entered the promised rest, but they are journeying toward it. Both are beset by dangers along the way, because of malicious adversaries surrounding it, and because of the 1 A. Maclaren, The Secret of Power, 252.
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deceitfulness of their own hearts within. To both, the Lord, under whose orders they march, extends the protection of His power and the guidance of His light. He also furnishes both with bread from heaven to satisfy their hunger, and gives them waters of life from wells of salvation to quench their thirst. Besides, He ever holds before them the blessed hope of an abundant entrance into the rest He has promised, when each shall have reached the end of the journey.
^ Among my own very earliest recollections, said Dr. Eainy, are those of an aged lady, very dear to me, whose life was one continued strain of overflowing piety, a long pilgrimage of faith, rising into an unbroken Beulah of praise and prayer.^
^ It is a libel on God's goodness to speak of the world as a wilderness. He has not made it so ; and if anybody finds that " all is vanity and vexation of spirit," it is his own fault. But still one aspect of life is truly represented by that figure. There are dangers and barren places, and a great solitude in spite of love and companionship, and many marchings, and lurking foes, and grim rocks, and fierce suns, and parched wells, and shapeless sand wastes enough in every life to make us quail often and look grave always when we think of what may be before us. Who knows what we shall see when we top the next hill, or round the shoulder of the cliff that bars our way ? What shout of an enemy may crash in upon the sleeping camp ; or what stifling gorge of barren granite — blazing in the sun and trackless to our feet^ shall we have to march through to-day ? *