Obs. I. God is not displeased with any thing in his people but sin; or, sin is the only proper object of God’s displeasure, and the sinner for sin’s sake: ‘With whom was he displeased, but with them that sinned ?’
IT need not set up my candle in the sun of this truth. I wish it were as seriously considered practically as it is confessed and ac-
Tois eh ptep= Thrust.
VER. 15-19.] EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 179
knowledged notionally. Every revelation of God, by his word or works, bears witness hereunto; and every man hath that witness hereof in himself as will not admit him to doubt of it. The nature of God, the law of God, the light of conscience, the sense that is in all of a judgment, at present fixed, and certainly future, testify unto it. And doubtless great is the power of sin and the craft of Satan, which prevail with most to continue in sin, notwithstanding this uncontrollable conviction.
Obs. II. Public sins, sins in societies, are great provocations of God.
It was not for their private and personal sins that God was thus provoked with this people, but for their conspiracy, as it were, in sin. The reasons hereof are manifest, and I shall not insist upon them. God help cities and nations, especially such as hear the voice of God, well to consider it, and all of us, to take heed of national prevailing sins !
Secondly, The apostle describes these persons by their punish- ment: ‘“ Whose carcasses fell in the wilderness.” Kaa, —how variously this word is rendered by translators I have showed before. That which the apostle intendeth to express, is the words of God unto the people, Num. xiv. 29: 128) MI Ta D3")38 ;—“ In this wilderness shall your carcasses fall.” Which is emphatically repeated, verse 32, 137 1372 ay DAS 0335 ;—“ Your carcasses, you, shall fall in this wilderness.” DAS} “ you,’ is em- phatically added, as to apply the threatening to their persons im- mediately, so to show them it should be their lot and not their children’s, as they murmured; as also to express a rédog and indig-
nation in the delivery. 732 is from 722, to be “ weary,” “ faint,” “cold,” “frigore enecari” (whence is that word), “slothful.” Thence is 38, “peger,” “a dead carcass,” a thing cold, without life, heat, er motion. It is used sometimes for the carcass of a beast, commonly called 7223, “ That’ which is fallen,” so Gen. xv. 11; most frequently for the carcasses of men. Elias Levita supposeth that it denotes only the carcasses of wicked men. And indeed it is most commonly, if not always, so used. See Amos vill. 3; Isa. xiv. 19, xxxiv. 3, Ixvi. 24; Jer. xxxiii. 5; Ezek. xlii. 9. There seems to be an excep- tion unto this observation of Elias, from Jer. xli. 9: “ And the pit whereinto Ishmael cast D287 "25-72 M¥,”—“all the carcasses of the men whom he slew.” But whether this be of force against the ob- servation of Elias I know not. Those men might be wicked for aught that appears in the text. Now, this word the LXX. render some- times by cua, “a body,’ Gen. xv. 11; ota vexpév, “a dead body,” Isa, xxxvii. 86;—sometimes by vexpés, “a dead person,” 2 Chron. xx. 24, Jer. xxxiii 5; rrijua, “ cadaver,” “a carcass,” Ezek. vi. 5;— but most frequently by x0, the word here used by the apostle, as
Kana.
180 AN EXPOSITION OF THE [CHAP. IIT.
Num. xiv. 29, 32, 33, the place here referred unto. Kédoy is a “member,” “membrum,” or “ artus;” which words are of the same importance and signification ; and the whole compages of them is the same with the body. As Tydeus in Statius, Theb. viii. 739:—
« ____ Odi artus, fragilemque hune corporis usum.”’ And the same author again, of Agylleus, ibid. vi. 841:—
“ Luxuriant artus, effusaque sanguine laxo Membra natant.’
Hence interpreters promiscuously render the word here by “membra” or “artus.” Kaw are principally “crura” and “ lacerti;” the greater members of the body, arms, legs, and thighs, whose bones are greatest and of longest duration. In the singular number, therefore, it sig- nifies not the whole body, but some distinct member of it; and thence it is translated into the use of speech, and denotes a part of a sentence, a sub-distinction. But x#A«,in the plural number, may denote the whole carcass. I suppose the 5°78, or “carcasses” of the people, may here be called their x#Aa, their “members” or their “bones,” as Suidas renders the word; because probably in those great plagues and destructions that befell them, their rebellious car- casses were many of them left on the ground in the wilderness, where consuming, their greater bones lay scattered up and down. So the psalmist complains that it befell them at another season: Ps. elxvii. 7, “Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth.” In such a work, pieces of the hewed or cleft wood will lie scattered up and down, here and there, in some places covering the earth,—so did their bones; and said to be at the mouth of the grave, because the opening of the earth is that which gives a grave to the carcasses of men. The ap- pearance and spectacle hereof the Roman historian represents in the carcasses, or bones rather, of the legions cut off by Herminius in Ger- many with Quintilius Varus, and left in the open field, when six years after Germanicus brought his army to the same place: —“ In medio campi albentia ossa (x#A«) ut fugerant, ut restiterant, disjecta vel aggerata; adjacebant fragmina telorum, equorumque artus,” Tacit. Ann., lib. i ;—“In the midst of the field, bones grown white, scattered or heaped, as they had fled, or resisted ; by them lay pieces of broken weapons, with the members of horses.” A great and sore destruc- tion or judgment this is accounted amongst men, and therefore is it made a representation of hell, Isa. Ixvi. 24, “ They shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.” Some of the Jews refer these words to the victory they fancy that they shall have against Gog and Magog, when they come to fight against their Mes-