I. The mercy vouchsafed to them — This was,
1. Most signal —
[Never was there any thing like it from the foundation of the world. God had revealed himself to several in dreams and visions, and under the appearances of men and angels: but never in a visible stationary form, like that before us. By this cloud he guided them in the way. Without such a direc- tion they could not have found their way through that trackless desert : but by it they proceeded without fear of erring : and all their motions were regulated by it, whether by day or night a. By this cloud also they were protected. Though this use of the cloud is not noticed in the text, it is in other passages6. In that hot sandy desert, it would have been impossible for them to prosecute their journey under the rays of the meridian sun : indeed even without journeying, they could scarcely have endured the intense heat to which they would have been exposed. God therefore graciously protected them by the refreshing shadow of that cloud. And to this the prophet evidently alludes, when describing the superior privileges of the Christian Church c]
2. Most significant —
[This cloud was, in the first place, a symbol of God's pre- sence. After the Israelites had offended God in worshipping the molten calf, God threatened to leave them, and to commit the care of them to an angel : and on that occasion the cloud removed from the camp, in token that he was about to depart from themd. And afterwards, when, in the same spirit of rebellion, they were going up against the Canaanites without the pillar and the cloud, Moses said to them, " Go not up, for the Lord is not among youe."
This cloud was also a seal of his covenant. Though the covenant, afterwards made on Horeb, was not yet formally declared, yet it was considered as existing, not only because God had actually now taken the Israelites under his protection, but because he had, four hundred years before, engaged to Abraham, that his posterity should be parties in the covenant already made with him. It is true, that circumcision was the rite, by which all the descendants of Abraham were to be initiated into the bond of that covenant ; but still this was a (temporary) seal of that relationship, which now existed between God and them : and therefore the Apostle compares it with baptism, by which we are admitted into the Christian
a Numb. ix. 15 — 23.
b Numb. x. 34. and xiv. 14. and especially Ps. cv. 39.
c Isai. iv. 5, 6. d Exod. xxxiii. 2, 3, 7, 9. e Numb. xiv. 42.