The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 406

is, Man's leisure must be fl.Sedfor God. Let there be a month largely occupied with special national approach to God. And, depend upon it~ something similar ie expected from us. There ie nothing in which the lot of men is Ieee equal than in the amount of leisure time which they have at their disposal. One man hae to labour long hours nnd hardly finds a holiday all the year round, while another has abundant leisure. What an awful responeibility for the rich and selfish triflers who lounge away their lives in a world where eo much may be done for the miserable and the needy I How be spends his leisure is one of the great teet.s of a man. Where hie heart is, there he will go, when for a few hours he is slipped out of harness. If we are God's at all, all our time is God's. If our hearts are right with him, our greatest joy will be in our religion, and we shall hail, we shall grasp, every opportunity of increasing our knowledge of God, of the Scriptures, and of how to render that service to Christ which is so plainly expected from us. The spirit in which an Israelite entered on this festal month would be a great test of him altogether. 2. If God requires a service out of the common, he will furnish sutfici,erd opportunity for it. God did not institute these services simply to fill up a leisure month. They had to be rendered at some time or other, and he selected a season when all the details of them could be most conveniently carried out. If God requires any service from us, we may be sure that he will make the duty of that service clear to conscience. It is not allowed to any of us to say, "I have no time for this service, no opportunity for it, therefore I cannot do it." The method of God is to put a service cleo.rly before us, and then tell ue to trust him for the making of a way. He wi11 not allow us to plead want of time and opportunity, any more than he a11owed Moses to plead want of ability (Exod. iv. 11, 12). Here is the reason why faithful and obedient spirits have been so succossful. God has said "Go," and they have gone, when there seemed no way more than a single step ahead; Wherever God finds a real believer he makes a way for him, like that royal road to which the Baptist referred (Luke iii. 4, 5). We see here how the events of the ecclesiastical year ere gathered and arranged. When the Israelites first received these commandments to make offerings, receiving them as they did at different times, they may have said to themselves, " How can we possibly get through so much?" But here they are all put in order, and it is seen that there is a time for everything, and that everything can be done in its time. The lesser service prepares for the greater. God does well continua1ly to ask hie servants for more, becanse he is ever making them able to give more. 3. The day of temporal fulness is the da'!J of spi:ritual danger. It is not only that the time of leisure is the time of temptation ; there is a peculiar temptation in the leisure bFlcauee it fo11owe on worldly success. In euch circumstances men are tempted to think of their own industry and skill more than of the needful blessing of God. Not without reason did the great day of atonement stand in thie month. Everything is good which will force upon a man, in the midst of hie worldly prosperity, a sense of the presence and claims of God. When Israel had a good harvest, the time of leisure that followed would be a time of great anxiety to many as to how they might most profitably dispose of the harvest. It ie oftentimee the rich man who is in danger of having the least leisure ; when hie riches lie in capital, the use of which he must watch continually.-Y. EXPOSITION. legislation dearing with tho same subject, but, CHAPTER XXX. for some reason which it is useless to attempt 0!' vows lllADB BY WOMBN (vere. 1-16). to discover, widely separated in the inspired Ver. 1.-And llloses spa.ke unto the heads record. Nor does there seem to be any valid of the tribe■ . The regulations here la.id reason for explaining away the apparently down e.bout vows follow with a certain pro- fragmentary and dislocated character of these priety upon those concerning the ordinary two sections (see the Introduction). The routine of sacrifices (see ver. 39 of last chap- statement, peculiar to this passage, that these ter), but we cannot conclude with any a.ssur- instructions were issued to the " heads of auce that they were e.ctua.lly given at thie the tribes" itself serves to differentiate it partic~r period. It would appear upon the from e.11 the rest of the "sto.tutes" given by tace of 1t that we have in Levit. xxvii. e.nd Moses, and suggests that this chapter Wll8 in this chapter two fragments of Mosaic inserted either by some other he.nd or from a 011. nx.1-16.] THE BOOK OF NUMBil:RS. 393