afterwards was for his well-meant but erroneous zeal in presuming to touch it. The reason of such acts of severity is told us in the history of Nadab and Abihu, who were struck dead for offering strange fire on the altar of their God : they are designed to teach us, " that God will be sanctified in all that come nigh unto him, and before all the people he will be glorified6."
The next thing to be noticed is, Their desire to have some person appointed zvho should act as a Me- diator between God and them. They probably had respect only to the present occasion: but God inter- preted their words as general, and as importing a request that he would send them a permanent Me- diator, who should transact all their business, as it were, with God, making known to him their wants, and communicating from him the knowledge of his will. That God did construe their words in this extended sense, we are informed by Moses in a sub- sequent chapter of this book. In Deut. xviii. 15th and following verses, this explanation of the matter is given : " The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him shall ye hearken, according to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy God in Horeb, in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not. And the Lord said unto me, They have zvell spoken that zvhich they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I command him: and it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him." Who this Prophet was, we are at no loss to declare : for the Apostle Peter, endeavouring to con- vince the Jews from their own Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ, and that Moses himself had required them to believe in him, cites these very zvords as
e Lev. x. 1—3.