The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 444

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS .AUTHORS. Vers. 1-49.-The journeyi'll{ls of tM lifraelues. Reading through thie record, which looks, on the first appearance of it, much like a page from a gazetteer, we are made to feel- I. How LI'ITLE WE SHOULD KNOW 01!' THE EXPERIENCES 01!' ISRAEL IN THEIR WAN- DERINGS IF WE HAD BEEN TOLD NO MORE THAN THIS. A period of forty years h11s to be covered ; and though by one kind of narration it takes four books full of solem!lity and cra~etr, aboundin~ i~ matters o_f stirring interest, and often gci'ing into the mmutest detail, m order to md1cate sufficiently the events of the period, yet by another kind of narration the period can be comprised in forty-nine short verses. All the way through these verses it is assumed that a particular aspect of the course of Israel is being presented, and that a full, edifying, and satisfying narrative is to be sought elsewhere. Consider what great omissions there are. We do indeed see something of the manner of starting, but even here there is hardly anything to explain how Israel came to leave Egypt. It is said that they passed through the midst of the sea, but nothing is said of the wonderful and glorious manner in which the passage was effected. There is nothing of all the law-giving at Sinai; nothing of the tabernacle, the ark, the offerings, and the priestly office; nothing of the great manna mercies; nothing even of the cloud and trumpets, though they had so much to do with the journeys; nothing of the rebellion which was the great cause of this long wandering. If it was a mere record of places we could better understand it, but there.are just enough of additional matters introduced to perplex us as to why some are inserted and others omitted. How clear it becomes, in the light of an artless record like this, that we shall err if we allow ourselves to look too constantly on the books of the Old Testament as being the literature, the classic literoture, of the Hebrews I That they are literature is of course true, but it is so email a part of the truth concerning them, that if we allow it to become too prominent, it will hide much more important truth. Moses was evidently not a man to care about the niceties and elaborations so dear to fastidious writers. His hands were too full of guiding and governing. If what he wrote was written in a way to glorify God, that was sufficient. We find in the Pentateuch not history, but the rough, yet authentic and unspeakably precious, materials of history. A man with the requisite interest and knowledge may analyse, select, and combine these materials into a history from hie own point of view, but thanks be to God that he took a meek, humble, and unselfish Moses, who had no views of his own to assert, and who thought of no monumentum rere perennius, and made him hie pen to write something a great deal more important than the history of any nation, namely, the dealings of God with hie own typical people, and through them with th,e world at large. IL Though this is such a brief and apparently artless record, little more than a copy of names from a map, yet HOW MUCH IT WOULD TELL us, EVEN Ill' WE HAD BEEN TOLD NO MORE. If thls were but the sole surviving fragment of the four books, it would nevertheless indicate the presence of God, and that in very remarkable ways. It would indicate the authority of Jehovah, over Israel. Moses o.nd Aaron are spoken of as the leaders of Israel (ver. 1), yet only leaders under God; for Moses wrote this very record at the commandment of God (ver. 2), and Aaron went up into Mount Hor to die at the commandment of God (ver. 38). We should also learn something of the punitive power of God. We should feel ourselves in the presence of some terrible sin, some terrible suffering, and some crowning blow which had come upon Egypt. We should learn that God was ttble to vindicate his majesty and glory against the arrogance of idolatry (ver. 4). Ne should learn that human life was at the sovereign disposal of God, for he controls the death of the first-born nnd the death of Aaron. And from what we thus plainly see of God's presence in certain places, we might infer that he was also in the places where we see him not. We might infer that if he was in the midst of the Israelites when they left Egypt, and in their midst forty years after, then he must have been with them all the time between. Thus, though in tbe~e forty-nine verses we are told nothing whatever, in a plain, direct wav, of kuman c/VJ,racter, we are yet brought face to face with very suggestive intimations OH. XXXIII. 50-XXXIV. 29.J THE BOOK OF NUMBEB8. 488