By Patrick Fairbairn
Published by Smith & English, 1854
BOOK THIRD.
THE DISPENSATION WITH AND UNDER THE LAW.
CHAPTER FIRST.
THE DIVINE TRUTHS EMBODIED IN THE HISTORICAL TRANSACTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE REDEMPTION FROM EGYPT, VIEWED AS PRELIMINARY TO THE SYMBOLICAL RELIGION BROUGHT IN BY MOSES.
SECTION II.
The condition to which the heirs of promise were reduced in the land of Egypt, we have seen, called for a deliverance, and this again for a deliverer. Both were to be pre-eminently of God---the work itself, and the main instrument of accomplishing it. In the execution of the one there was not more need for the display of divine power than for the exercise of divine wisdom in the selection and preparation of the other. It is peculiar to God's instruments, that, though commonly at first they appear the least suited for the service, they are found on trial to possess the highest qualifications. "Wisdom is justified of all her children," and especially of those who are appointed to the most arduous and important undertakings.
But in the extremity of Israel's distress, where was a deliverer to be found with the requisite qualifications? From a family of bondsmen, crushed and broken in spirit by their miserable servitude, who was to have the boldness to undertake their deliverance, or the wisdom, if he should succeed in delivering them, to make suitable arrangements for their future guidance and discipline? Who was likely at such a time even to gain their confidence as appearing in any measure equal to the task? If such a person was anywhere to be found, he must evidently have been one who had enjoyed advantages very superior to those which entered into the common lot of his brethren--who had found time and opportunity for the meditation of high thoughts, and the acquirement of such varied gifts as fitted him to transact, in behalf of his oppressed countrymen, with the court of the proud and the learned Pharaohs, and amidst the greatest difficulties and discouragements to lay the foundation of a system, which was to nurture and develope through coming ages the religious life of God's covenant people. Such a deliverer was needed for this peculiar emergency in the affairs of God's kingdom, and the very troubles, which seemed from their long continuance and crushing severity to preclude the possibility of obtaining what was needed, were made to work toward its accomplishment.
It is not the least interesting and instructive point in the history of Moses, the future hope of the church, that his first appearance on the stage of this troubled scene, was in the darkest hour of affliction, when the adversary was driving things to the uttermost. His first breath was drawn under a doom of death, and the very preservation of his life was a miracle of divine mercy. But the Lord "made the wrath of man to praise him," and the bloody decree, which, by destroying the male children as they were born, was designed by Pharaoh to inflict the death-blow on Israel's hopes of honour and enlargement, was rendered subservient, in the case of Moses, to prepare and fashion the living instrument, through whom these hopes were soon to be carried forth into victory and fruition. Forced by the very urgency of the danger, on the notice of Pharaoh's daughter, and thereafter received, under her care and patronage, into Pharaoh's house, the child Moses possessed, in the highest degree, the opportunity of becoming "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and grew up to manhood in the familiar use of every advantage which it was possible for the world at that time to confer. But with such extraordinary means of advancement for the natural life, with what an atmosphere of danger was he there encompassed for the spiritual! He was exposed to the seductive and pernicious influence of a palace, where not only the world was met with in its greatest pomp and splendour, but where also superstition reigned, and a policy was pursued directly opposed to the interests of God's kingdom. How he was enabled to withstand such dangerous influences, and escape the contamination of so unwholesome a region, we are not informed; nor even how he first became acquainted with the fact of his Hebrew origin, and the better prospects which still remained to cheer and animate the hearts of his countrymen. But the result shews, that somehow he was preserved from the one, and brought to the knowledge of the other; for when about forty years of age, we are told, he went forth to visit his brethren, and that, with a faith already so fully formed, that he was not only prepared to sympathize with them in their distress, but to hazard all for their deliverance. [1] And, indeed, when he once understood and believed that his brethren were the covenant-people of God, who held in promise the inheritance of the land of Canaan, and whose period of oppression he might also have learned was drawing near its termination, it would hardly require any special revelation, besides what might be gathered from the singular providences attending his earlier history, to conclude that he was destined by God to be the chosen instrument for effecting the deliverance.
But it is often less difficult to get the principle of faith, than to exercise the patience necessary in waiting God's time for its proper and seasonable exercise. Moses shewed he possessed the one, but seems yet to have wanted the other, when he slew the Egyptian whom he found smiting the Hebrew. For though the motive was good, being intended to express his brotherly sympathy with the suffering Israelites, and to serve as a kind of signal for a general rising against their oppressors, yet the action itself appears to have been wrong. He had no warrant to take the execution of vengeance into his own hand; and that it was with this view, rather than for any purpose of defence, that Moses went so far as to slay the Egyptian, seems not obscurely intimated in the original narrative, and is more distinctly implied in the assertion of Stephen, who assigns this as the reason of the deed, "for he supposed they would have understood, how that God by his hand would deliver them." The consequence was, that by anticipating the purpose of God, and attempting to accomplish it in an improper manner, he only involved himself in danger and difficulty; his own brethren misunderstood his conduct, and Pharaoh threatened to take away his life. On this occasion, therefore, we cannot but regard him as acting unadvisedly with his hand, as on a future one, he spake unadvisedly with his lips. It was the hasty and irregular impulse of the flesh, not the enlightened and heavenly guidance of the Spirit, which prompted him to take the course he did; and without contributing in the least to improve the condition of his countrymen, he was himself made to reap the fruit of his misconduct in a long and dreary exile. [2]
We cannot, therefore, justify Moses in the deed he committed, far less say of him with Buddeus (Hist. Eccles. Vet. Test. i. p. 492), Patrick, and others, that he was stirred up to it by a divine impulse, nor regard the impulse of any other kind than that which prompted David's men to counsel him to slay Saul, when stretched helpless and alone in the cave (1 Sam. xxiv.)--an impulse of the flesh presuming upon, and misapplying a word of God. The time for deliverance was not yet come. The Israelites as a whole were not sufficiently prepared for it. Their affliction, indeed, had already become almost intolerable; but as the then reigning monarch of Egypt was probably the first who had treated them with any extreme degree of harshness, they would endure through his reign in the hopes of seeing better days, when another should ascend the throne; and it would only be, when they saw that successor determined to pursue the same cruel policy, with an aggravation rather than an abatement of its rigour, that they would be disposed to hail the prospect of a deliverance. But Moses himself also yet wanted much to complete his preparation. Other and very different elements required to mingle in his previous training, besides such as he could acquire in Egypt. Before he was qualified to take the government of such a people, and be a fit instrument for executing the manifold and arduous part he had to discharge in connection with them, he needed to have trial of a kind of life precisely the reverse of what he had been accustomed to in the palaces of Egypt,--to feel himself at home amid the desolation and solitudes of the desert, and there to become habituated to solemn converse with his God, and formed to the requisite gravity, meekness, patience, and subduedness of spirit. Thus God overruled his too rash and hasty interference with the affairs of his kindred, to the proper completion of his own preparatory training, and provided for him the advantage of as long a sojourn in the wilderness to learn divine wisdom, as he had already spent in learning human wisdom in Egypt. We have no direct information of the manner in which his spirit was exercised during this period of exile, yet the names he gave to his children shew, that it did not pass unimproved. The first he called Gershom, "Because he was a stranger in a strange land,"--implying, that he felt in the inmost depths of his soul the sadness of being cut off from the society of his kindred, and perhaps also at being disappointed of his hope in regard to the promised inheritance. The second he named Eliezer, saying, "The God of my father is my help,"-- betokening his clear, realizing faith in the invisible Jehovah, the God of his fathers, to whom his soul had now learnt more thoroughly and confidingly to turn itself, since he had been compelled so painfully to look away from the world. And now having passed through the school of God in its two grand departments, and in both extremes of life obtained ample opportunities for acquiring the wisdom which was peculiarly needed for Israel's deliverer and lawgiver, the set time for God was come, and he appeared to Moses at the bush for the special purpose of investing him with a divine commission for the task.
But here a new and unlocked for difficulty presented itself in his own reluctance to receive the commission. We know how apt, in great enterprises, which concern the welfare of many, while one has to take the lead, a rash and unsuccessful attempt to accomplish the desired end, is to beget a spirit of excessive caution and timidity--a sort of shyness and chagrin--especially if the failure has seemed in any measure attributable to a want of sympathy and support on the part of those, whose co-operation was most confidently relied on. Something not unlike this appears to have grown upon Moses in the desert. Remembering how his precipitate attempt to avenge the wrongs of his kindred, and rouse them to a combined effort to regain their freedom, had not only provoked the displeasure of Pharaoh, but was met by insult and reproach from his kindred themselves, he could not but feel, that the work of their deliverance was likely to prove both a heartless and a perilous task--a work, that would need to be wrought out, not only against the determined opposition of the mightiest kingdom in the world, but also under the most trying discouragements, arising from the now degraded and dastardly spirit of the people. This feeling, of which Moses could scarcely fail to be conscious even at the time of his flight from Egypt, may easily be conceived to have increased in no ordinary degree, amid the deep solitudes and quiet occupations of a shepherd's life, in which he was permitted to live till he had the weight of fourscore years upon his head. So that we cannot wonder at the disposition he manifested to start objections to the proposal made to him to undertake the work of deliverance, but are only surprised at the unreasonable and daring length, to which, in spite of every consideration and remonstrance on the part of God, he persisted in urging them.
The symbol in which the Lord then appeared to Moses, the bush burning but not consumed, was well fitted on reflection to inspire him with encouragement and hope. It pointed, Moses could not fail to remember, when he came to meditate on what he had seen and heard, to "the smoking furnace and the burning lamp," which had passed in vision before the eye of Abraham, when he was told of the future sufferings of his posterity in the land that was not theirs (Gen. xv. 17.) Such a furnace now again visibly presented itself, but the little thorn-bush, emblem of the covenant-people, the tree of God's planting, stood uninjured in the midst of the flame, because the covenant God himself was there. Why, then, should Moses despond on account of the afflictions of his people, or shrink from the arduous task now committed to him? Especially when the distinct assurance was given to him of all needful powers and gifts to furnish him aright for the undertaking, and the word of God was solemnly pledged to conduct it to a successful issue.
It is clear from the whole interview, at which Moses received his commission, that the difficulties and discouragements which pressed most upon his mind, were those connected with, the sunk and degenerate condition of the covenant-people themselves, who appeared to him hopelessly dead to the promise of the covenant, and even estranged from the knowledge of the God of their Fathers. His concern on the latter point led him to ask what he should say to them, when they inquired for the name of the God of their fathers, in whose name he was to go to them? His question was met with the sublime reply, "I Am That I Am; thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you; this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations." [3] When God thus claims to himself, and commands his servant to make him known to others, by a name which so peculiarly expresses his eternal being and Godhead, how immeasurably does he raise himself to the view of his people above the idolatrous atmosphere of Egypt! Nor was the idea, as some have alleged, too abstract and sublime for those to whom it was at first presented. For while unquestionably it is fitted to suggest thoughts of God, which the most enlightened and elevated mind must ever feel itself inadequate fully to comprehend, it at the same time presented him in a character peculiarly suited to the circumstances in which they were then placed. The name here, as usual in Scripture, was not assumed as an arbitrary, or even as a general designation, but as a particular, distinctive appellation, expressive of what God was in reference to them, for whose immediate behoof it was assumed, It was the manifestation of his peculiar and distinguishing character, with special reference to that covenant-relation, which, since the time of Abraham, he held toward them. It told them, that however changed their condition now was from what it had been in the time of their fathers, and however far they were from having received the fulfilment of the promises then made to them as a family, the God of their fathers remained, according to his essential nature, without the least variableness or shadow of turning, of the same mind and purpose as when he first entered into covenant with them. And not only so--but in the development of this most essential and characteristic name, as there would be in their experience a glorious fulfilment of covenant love and faithfulness, so there would be a higher manifestation than had yet been given of his eternal power and Godhead, a deeper insight afforded into his blessed nature, and the righteous principles of his government; so that in comparison of what was now to be done, it might even be said, that the earlier patriarchs "had not known him by his name Jehovah," but only as "El Shaddai," God Almighty. [4]
With such strong encouragements and exalted prospects, was Moses sent forth to execute in the name of God the commission given to him. And as a pledge, that nothing would fail of what had been promised, he was met at the very outset of his arduous course by Aaron his brother, who came from Egypt at God's instigation to concert with him measures for the deliverance of their kindred from the now intolerable load of oppression, under which they groaned.
The personal history of the deliverer and his commission, viewed in reference to the higher dispensation of the Gospel, exhibits the following principles, on which it will be unnecessary to offer any lengthened illustration. 1. The time for the deliverer appearing and entering on the mighty work given him to do, as it should be the one fittest for the purpose, so it must be the one chosen and fixed by God. It might seem long in coming to many, whose hearts groaned beneath the yoke of the adversary, and they might sometimes have been disposed, if they had been able, to hasten forward its arrival. But the Lord knew best when it should take place, and with unerring precision, determined it beforehand. Hence we read of Christ's appearance having occurred "in due time," or "in the fulness of time." There were many lines then meeting in the state of the church and the world, which rendered that particular period above all others suitable for the manifestation of the Son of God. Then for the first time were all things ready for the execution of heaven's grand purpose, and the vast issues that were to grow out of it.
2. The deliverer, when he came, must arise within the church itself. He must be, in the strictest sense, the brother of those whom he came to redeem; bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh; partaker not merely of their nature, but also of their infirmities, their clangers, and their sufferings. Though he had to come from the highest heavens to accomplish the work, still it was not as clad with the armoury, and sparkling with the glory of the upper sanctuary, that he must enter on it, but as the seed of the vanquished woman, the child of promise in the family of God, and himself having experience of the lowest depths of sorrow and abasement, which sin had brought upon them. Only, however, as of that family, not of the world at large. For the church, though ever so depressed and afflicted in her condition, cannot be indebted to the world for a deliverer; the world must be indebted to her. With her is the covenant of God; and she alone is the mother of the divine seed, that overcomes the wicked one.
3. Yet the deliverance, even in its earlier stages, when existing only in the personal history of the deliverer, is not altogether independent of the world,--the blessing of Israel was interwoven with acts of kindness derived from the heathen,--and the child Moses, with whom their very existence as a nation and all its coming glory was bound up, owed his preservation to a member of Pharaoh's house, and in that house found a fit asylum and nursing-place. Thus the earth "helped the woman," as it has often done since. The captain of our salvation had in like manner to be helped. For, though born of the tribe of Judah, he had to seek elsewhere the safety and protection which "his own" denied him, and partly---not because absolutely necessary to verify the type, but to render its fulfilment more striking and palpable-- was indebted for his preservation to that very Egypt which had sheltered the infancy of Moses. So that in the case even of the author and finisher of our faith, the history of redemption links itself closely with the history of the world.
4. Still the deliverer, as to his person, his preparation, his gifts and calling, is peculiarly of God. That such a person as Moses was provided for the church in the hour of her extremity, was entirely the result of God's covenant with Abraham; and the whole circumstances connected with his preparation for the work, as well as the commission given him to undertake it, and the supernatural endowments fitting him for its execution, manifestly bespoke the special and gracious interposition of God. But the same holds true in each particular, and still more illustriously appears in Christ. In his person, pre-eminently the father's gift--a gift of peerless value, and bestowed solely from regard to the everlasting covenant, which secured the redemption of the world; in his office as Mediator called and appointed by the Father; prepared also for entering on it, first by familiar converse with the world, and then by a season of wilderness-seclusion and trial; replenished directly from above with gifts adequate to the work, even to his being filled with the whole fulness of the Godhead:--Everything, in short, to beget the impression, that while the church is honoured as the channel through which the deliverer comes, yet the deliverer himself is in all respects the peculiar gift of God, and that here especially it may be said, "of him, and through him, and to him are all things."
1. Ex. ii, 11-15; Acts yii. 23; Heb. xi. 24.
2. "We can scarcely have a better specimen of the characteristic difference between the stern impartiality of ancient inspired history, and the falsely coloured partiality of what is merely human, than in the accounts preserved of the first part of Moses' life in the Bible and Josephus respectively. All is plain, unadorned narrative in the one, a faithful record of facts as they took place, while in the other, everything appears enveloped in the wonderful and miraculous. A prediction goes before the birth of Moses to announce how much was to depend upon it--a divine vision is also given concerning it to Amram--the mother is spared the usual pains of labour--the child when discovered by Pharaoh's daughter refuses to suck any breast but that of its mother--when grown a little, he became so beautiful that strangers must needs turn back and look after him, &c. But with all these unwarranted additions, in the true spirit of Jewish, or rather human partiality, not a word is said of his killing the Egyptian; he is obliged to flee, indeed, but only because of the envy of the Egyptians for his having delivered them from the Ethiopians (Antiq. ii. 9, 10, 11.) In Scripture his act in killing the Egyptian, is not expressly condemned as sinful; but, as often happens there, this is clearly enough indicated by the results in providence growing out of it. Many commentators justify Moses in smiting the Egyptian, on the ground of his being moved to it by a divine impulse. There can be no doubt, that he supposed himself to have had such an impulse, but that is a different thing from his actually having it; and Augustine judged rightly, when he thought Moses could not be altogether justified, "quia nullam adhuc legitiinam potestatern gerebat, nee acceptam divinitus, nee humana societate ordinatani."--Quaest. in Exodum, § ii.
3. Ex. iii. 14, 15. "From this passage we learn, 1. That *** (Jehovah) is to be derived from *** which is the same with *** (to be). 2. That it is the third person of the future. For it is certain, that mfis (I am) which God uses when speaking in his own person, is the first person future, and not less so, that *** (Jehovah) which he delivers to his people to be used when speaking of him, is the third. 3. We further learn that the name is to be taken in the signification of The Being, The Existing One; as the Lxx. already render it by ***; and that the ground for the choice of this name, is that which is given by John Damascene, viz. that it is the most suitable name of God, 'since he comprehends in himself everything that is, like a certain boundless and infinite ocean of being.' ... If God is who he is, i. e. constantly the same, the unchangeable, so is he also the Existing One, or the absolute Being, and if he is the absolute Being, he is also the unchangeable; as Malachi (ch. iii. 6.), from the expression, 'I am Jehovah,' draws the conclusion, 'I change not.' Of everything, which relatively is not being, it may be said: I am not that I am. Whatever is made does not continue uniformly alike, but in certain circumstances is unlike itself. Only God properly is, because the Being is constantly the same, and because the constantly the same is the Being." -- Hengstenberg, Authen. i. p. 244-6. The meaning of the term Jehovah, is given in Eev. i. 4, 8, Heb. xiii. 8, and being applied to Christ, the passages assert in the strongest language his essential Godhead. The explanation of Baumgarten and Delitzsch, who take, not being, but becoming, as the radical idea, and understand the name Jehovah to designate God, "as the one, who is always discovering himself anew to men, revealing himself through all ages, the God, in short, of the historical revelation," is by no means so natural as that of Hengstenberg, and is liable to some serious objections, which Hengstenberg has pressed in his Commentary on the Apocalypse.
4. Ex. vi. 3-8. In the view we have given of this passage, it is implied, that the want of knowledge ascribed to the patriarchs in respect to the name Jehovah, was not absolute, but relative. Literally they did know God by that name, for he frequently used it in his addresses to them, and they again in their addresses to him;--and, as men taught of God, they could not but possess some knowledge of his nature and character, as indicated by this name. But it was so imperfect and limited, that it might be represented as nothing, compared with what was presently to be given--like the glory of the Mosaic dispensation, which is declared to have been no glory, "by reason of that which excelleth" in Christ.--We trust it is not necessary to do more than notice, that Warburton, in the true spirit of Spencer and Le Clerc, finds in the whole of this communication about the name Jehovah, only an accommodation to Egyptian usage regarding the religion of names affirmed to have been prevalent then: "I before condescended to have a name of distinction, but now in compliance to another prejudice I condescend to have a name of honour."--(Div. Leg. B. iv. s. 6.) A notable discovery, truly! to use the Bishop's own language to an opponent--but certainly little fitted to throw light on the words of God, or to administer comfort to the Israelites.