The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 345

are inspired by the unchanging God himself I Changing thus, we shall get into a state partaking somewhat of God's own stendfastness; or, rather, the only change will be from good to better and better to best. Man may become such that it shall no longer be his reproach that he lies, either carelessly, ignorantly, or maliciously, and repents, playing the weathercock to every wind that blows. God, we may be sure, desires the day to come when, instead of finding in man this awful and humiliating contrast to himself, he will rather be able to say, "Man is now true, clear from all belief in lies, from all deception and evasion, and steadfast in all the ways of right- eousness, hohneee, and love. II. THE PBOPHEOY GOES ON TO REVEAL STILL MORE or IsB.AEL's STRENGTH. The unchangeable God, having purposed to bless Israel, must go on blessing them. He does it in word continually through the great official channel ( eh. vi. 22-27), and now it is Balaam's Jot (strange expositor of the Divine goodness I) to show clearly that the blessing of God is anything but a nominal or a secondary one. Much has been done to show this in the first prophecy, but a great deal more is done in the second. God has not only put Israel by themselves and made them into this vast multitude, which was a great deal to do, for Jacob's posterity is likened to the dust in number; but now through Balaam he shows quality as well as quantil,y. The people are not only separated outwardly and visibly, but separated stilf more by some great peculiarity in their inward life. Their vast numbers are but the most easily perceptible result of the vigorous, abundant vitality within. When Balaam got his first glance from the top of the rocks he saw the most obvious fruit of Israel's peculiai relation to God. Now in the second survey he comes as it were nearer, and sees the root and trunk and branches, the sap and substance whence these fruits take their origin. 1. There is the righteO'US11,US of the people. God, who searches into all secrets, and to whom the darkness and the light are both alike, has beheld no iniquity in Jacob, no wrong in Israel; that is to say, putting the thing plainly, there wo.s no iniquity in Jacob. And though it seems a strange thing to say, considering God's late dealings with the people, we feel at once that it must not only be true, but very important, or it would not be put so prominently forward. God looks upon the ideal Israel which lies yet undeveloped in the midst of all the unbelief and carnality of the present generation. Though at the present moment any dozen Israelites might be as debased as any dozen Moabites, yet in Israel there was a seed of holiness, a sure beginning of the perfect and the blessed, which was not to be found anywhere in Moab. God, bear in mind, sees what we cannot se«,. God is not a man, that he should lie ; neither is he a man that his eye should be stopped by the surface and first appearance of things. Jesus sought a solid ground for the future of his saving work in the world, and he found it not amidst the world's wisdom, but where we assuredly should never have looked-among the stumbling, ignorant disciples whom he gathered in Galilee. Looking with other eyes than men, and where proud men never look, he finds whnt they never find. 2. There is the presence of God with. them, and that not only as God, but as King. "When you attack Israel, 0 Balak, you attack the kingdom of God. You, the king of Moab, appeal to the King of Israel. to curse his own people." His sanctuary is also his throne, and where he is worshipped, there he also rules. Every act of worship is also an exr.ression of loyalty. Balak described Israel as a people come out of Egypt (eh. xxii. 6); he is now tn learn that they came because they were brought; because that very God brought them whose curse he bad so laboriously and patiently sought to invoke. "Does it stand to renr.on, 0 Balak, that God can have brought them so far now to leave them for the t•nke of your sacrifices and Balaam's enchantments?" Thus also we may gather that as God in all the fulness of his being, Father, Son, and Spirit, has so long give~ his indubitable presence to his Church, he will assuredly for this very reason contmue it to the end. God indeed looks on that Church in its actual coldness, indolence1 ~nd C~I;lality,-and the I~rael o; Go~ to-day is quite as far away from the fulness ot its privileges, the perfection of its faith, and the exactness of its service as was Israel in the wildemess,-but he regards the ideal still. It is through the believers in Christ alone, the spiritual children of the faithful Abraham, that the nations are to be truly blessed. The ideal believer is the ideal man. Where the faithful  332 TIIE BOOK OF NUMBERS. [en. xxn. 41-xuv