The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 12

to keep God in his remembrance. The days of BOITOW came, and he flung hitneelf with sincere repentance into his Father's arms." 1 But even over hie repentance crept the insincerity of formalism. In the days of his idolatry Israel murdered the rrophets ; in the days of his Pharisaism he crucified the Christ. Yet through l\ll that long dnrk tragedy, in which Jehovah and his people were the actors God's will wns bring accomplished. The vineyard had been given to the husband~en for the hle,;sing of the world. They proved unworthy, and were cast out; 1 but "if the casting away of Israel v.·as the reconciling of the world, what shall their receiving be but life from the dead?" 1 a. No lessons could be more instructive for the homilist than those which he may find abundantly in the scenes and characters of the historic books; but among them the lesson of the history as a whole should not be overlooked. What con- cei-rnble explanation is there of the history of the Jews, with their inextinguishable "t"itality, and the fulfilment again and again of their unquenchable hopes, except the truth that God had chosen them, and that God was with them? They had no right- eousness, but were a stiff-necked people. They had no splendid territory, but a strip of barren, narrow, ill-watered land. They had no grand genealogy-a Syrian ready to perish was their father. They were not powerful enough of themselves even to conquer their own small land. They were not united; Ephraim envied Judah, and Judah vexed Ephraim. They were not free, but became the prey of nation after nation. They were not a maritime people, for their strip of sea-coast was mostly harbourless, and not their own. They had no commercial industry like Venice or Holland ; no art like Greece; no arms like Rome; no colonies like England; no philosophy like Germany. They were constantly starting aside like a broken bow. Yet no power has ever been able to crush, no persecution to destroy them. They have influenced, taught, pervaded mankind. Their sacred book is the sacred book of humanity, their religious ideas are becoming more and more the religious ideas cf the race. What explains it all, and alone explains it? Nothing but the truth that "God showed his word unto Jacob, his statutes and ordinances unto Israel. He hath not dea1t so with any nation, neither have the heathen knowledge of hie law." /3. The period of desert wanderings was to the Jews a special training for their future history. It was meant to transform them from a nation of full-fe.d slaves into a nation of warriors. With the entrance into Canaan their proper national history begins. In the Old Testament it falls into three epochs-that of the Judges, that of the Kings, and that of the Exile and return. The epoch of the Judges, so rich in heroic incidents, was a period of apparent anarchy, but of secret growth. The lesson which it was designed to tea.eh them was that apart from God the Israelites were helpless and contemptible, but that with God they were happy and strong. Amid wild stories of crime and repentance, of raids and reprisals, of barbarity and gene- rosity, we see, and not least in the exquisite story of Ruth, that the nation was gradually learning its appointed lesson. Then arose one of the greatest men in Jewish annals, the Prophet Samuel. The time for political unity had come, and, acting under God's permission, he reluctantly gave them a king. After the first tent- ative, which was a failure owing to the character of the passionate and unstable Saul, began the splendid career of David, the true hero of the monarchy and the darling of the people, whose personal ascendancy stamped a type of character on the nation's histo,y. He gave thew an army, he gave them a temple, he gave them a psalter, be gave them a capital. The reign of his son Solomon was but the gorgeous corn• 1 Ji1uak. 2 Matt, xxi. 39 8 Rom. xi, 16,  UENJrnAL INTRODUCTION TO Tlrn OLD TESTA11E:-..T. xv