The Pulpit Commentary — Exodus — Volume 1 — Section 115

be was still lacking in calm faith ; nevertheless we must bear in mind th11t the difficulty was a real one. There was only too much reason to apprehend th11t Israel would receive him in the way he indicated. Consider- I. THE POOR EX.PECTATION8 MOSES HAD OF A FAVOURABLE BE0EPTION FROM IBRAEL, Why should he ha'l'e these gloomy e.nticirtions? Was the cause of them to be looked for wholly in Israel or wholly in himself Did he mean to blame his brethren for their unbelief, or did he thus take another way of indicating his own utter distrust of himself? As he expresses no blame of Israel it is not for us to assume that he intended it. He knew very well that to go to his brethren with such a story, would be the very way to make them reject him and laugh him to scorn. He could not but feel that il he had been in their position, he would probably have behaved in the same way. What could it appear but presumptuous to return after forty years' absence from the distant and half-barbarous Midian, and pretend that he had been chosen to deliver Israel-he, a mere weather-beaten shepherd? Truth is stranger than fiction, and for this very reason it is too often believed to be the most improbable of all fictions, Moses thus had every ground to expect that he would be treated either e.s insane or as the most impudent of impostors. He-would have been more easily believed in telling some made-up story than when he told the simple truth. God had looked very kindly and favourably on Moses in all his deeply felt unworthiness; but the very things that commended him to God, hindered him with men. In what a humiliating aspect this word of Moses puts our fallen human nature I When the truth in which we are most of all concerned comes beforo us, we are tempted to neglect and repudiate it because the messenger does not look sufficiently dignified. Nor is unbelief our only danger. We must labour to have a state of mind in which we shall always not only receive the true but reject the false. We have to do with false apostles a.swell as true ones. The elders of Israel would have done very wrong if they had rushed into a welcome of Moses on his bare ipse di.zit. We must not, in our anxiety to avoid unbelief, deliver ourselves over to credulity. If the world has in it only too many of the unbelieving spirit, so, alas I it has only too many of the deceiving spirit; all the more deceivers because thoroughly deceived themselves. We must try the spirits whether they be of God, and ever live in thankful use of the infallible tests which God has given us. II. GoD GIVES TO MosES AMPLE EVIDENCES TO PRODUCE FAITH IN ISRAEL. Observe that God doei; not simply promise these signs. He works them at once, at least the two that were possible, before the very eyes of Moses. Moses has faith enough to be sure that it is indeed God who is with him at the present hour; but what about the future? True, God had said, "Certainly I will be with thee" (eh. iii. 12), and he might have repeated these words rebukingly. But he remembered that Moses was as yet very ignorant of the fulness of the Divine nature; and he acted with all his own wisdom and tenderness, to cherish the real but as yet very feeble and struggling faith of his servant. When Moses comes into the presence of his brethren, it is to cast down a rod that has already been a serpent, and to stretch forth a hand that has already been snow- white with leprosy. " What is that in thine hand? "-as much e.s to say, "Take note of it, look at it well, make sure that it is the rough, ea.sily replaced instrument of your daily work." Moses is to be taught that things are not what they seem. He who according to his good pleasure took some of the original matter of the universe, and from it made the rod-nature, and from other made the serpent-nature, now by the same power changes in a moment the dead rod into the liviog serpent, and the living serpent into the dead rod. The healthy hand is all at once infected with leprosy, and even while Moses is shuddering with the terrible experience, the leprosy is as euddenly taken away. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. As to the signi;ji,ca,,Me of these miracles, there is doubtless much that lies beyond our power to ascertain. Assuredly they had in them perfect propriety both as to their order and their nature. What the burning bush became to Moses, these three miracles might become to the Israelites; not only paving the way for Moses to act with full authority in their name, but giving many lessons to such as had eyes to see and hearts to under- stand. For instance how could they but perceive that when God began his dealings with Pharaoh, he began with two out of the three miracles which Moses had shown to them. Moses turned the rod into a serpent, and the water into blood before Israel, and Israel belie:ved (vers. 28-31 ), He did the same things before Pharaoh, and he remained Ull, IV, 10---1!.J THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 97