Ver. 6.-The blessing of Reuben; or, life impoverished through ancestral 8'm. For a bl~iug, there seems ~omething ~nusually weak in that pronounced on Reuben. Contmuance-a preservation from berng blotted out of existence-is all that the man of God seems to hope or expect from him. The English reader may wonder to see that the word "not" is in italics, as not being in the Hebrew, but supplied by the translators. It is, however, wisely done in this ca~e, as will be seen if the reader will put stress sufficient on the word" not" in the following rendering to carry the force of the negative on to the end of the sentence:-" Let Reuben live; and not die and his men be few;" i.e. if hi~ men became a mere handful, the tribe would be virtunlly extinct; nnd Mc,ses desires that this mny not be the case; so that, according to English idiom, the insertion of the italic 11ot is required to preserve the meaning of the original. 'l'he gist of the blessing then is, let not the tribe have such a paucity of men as to sink out of sight altogether. Bare continuance ;-this is all that is prophesied concerning that tribe. 'l'bis is, as far as we can follow its history, in strict correspondence with its after experience. There may be noted again and again a decrease in its numbers; cf. Numb. i. 2l; xxvi. 7; 1 Chron. v. 18, from which it appears "that the tribe had decreased since the Exodus, and also that in later times its numbers, even when counted with the Gadites and'the half of Manasseh, were fewer than that of the Reubenites alone at the census of Numb. i. They took possession of a large and fertile district east of Jordan. Occupied with their flocks and herds, they appear soon after the days of Joshua to have lost their early energy : they could not be roused to talte part in the national rising against Jabin (J udg. v. 15, 16). They do not seem to have cared to complete the conquest of their own territory; and e"<ln the cities assigned them were wrested from them by the Moabites. W'hile from this tribe no judge, prophet, or national hero arose" to redeem it from insignificance (see' Speaker's Commentary,' in loc., to which we are indebted for the above details). We are not at a loss to account for this. The gross wickedness of the head of this tribe left a stain upon its name which not generation after generation could wipe out, and "destroyed at once the prestige of birth, and the spirit of leader• ship" (J. L. Porter 1). Hence our topic for homilet.ic treatment-a topic which no teacher who desires to declare the "whole counsel of God" can forbear to touch upon in due season. It is this-Life impoverished thr()'U,gh ancestral sins (see Gen. xxxv. 22; xlix. 4). L THERE AllE CERTAIN BINS-BINS OF THE FLESH-TO WHICH MEN GENERALLY ARE LI ADLE; WIUCH TO SOME CONSTITUTIONS PRESENT THEMSELVES AS TEMPTATIONS SPECIALLY STRONG. Jn every one there is some weak point, at which seductive influences may easily enter: "Every one is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own liist (h-b -r1)s ,~la.s ,,r,hµ.la.s) and enticed." ll. THERE ARE NO BINS WHICH WORK GREATER HA VOO IN A MAN THAN THOSE TO WHIOII REUBEN GA VE WAY. The desperately wicked act recorded of him indicates with too much certainty a previously formed habit of self-indulgence, in which he had suffer_ed the reins of self-control and self-respect to fall from his bands. The effect of such habits in a physiological point of view is disastrous. But more grievous still are their m~ral issues. They lower the man himself in his own eyes. They lower his view of mankind 1 Se0 Mr. Porter's valuable article on• The Tribe of Reuben,' in Dr. .Alexander's edition
llf Kitto's • Bihl. Cyc.' cu. xxxm. 1-20.] THE IlOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 5 1