CRITICAL NOTES.—
Joshua 13:9. Medeba unto Dibon] The southern part of a table-land reaching from Rabbath Ammon to the river Arnon. Both places were given to the Reubenites (Joshua 13:16-17), but were afterwards retaken by Moab (Isaiah 15:2). Dibon, now Diban, was rebuilt by the Gadites after it was taken by Moses (Numbers 32:34), and thus for a short time seems to have borne the name of Dibon-Gad (Numbers 33:45-46). The famous “Moabite Stone,” containing an inscription of great antiquity, was found here a few years since.
Joshua 13:17. Bamoth-baal] Cf. Margin, and Numbers 21:20; Numbers 22:41; Isaiah 15:2. Baal-Meon] “One of the towns which were built by the Reubenites (Numbers 32:38), and to which they ‘gave other names.’ It occurs in 1 Chronicles 5:8, and on each occasion with Nebo. In the time of Ezekiel it was Moabite, one of the cities which were the ‘glory of the country’ (Ezekiel 25:9). In the days of Eusebius and Jerome it was still called Balmano nine miles distant from Heshbon, and reputed to be the native place of Elisha.” [Smith’s Bib. Dict.]
Joshua 13:18. Jahaza] Probably on the east of Dibon, bordering on the desert (cf. Numbers 21:23, etc.). Here Sihon was defeated and slain. The city was given to the Levites, as were the two other cities named in this verse (chap. Joshua 21:36-37), both of which seem to have been not far distant (Deuteronomy 2:26; 1 Chronicles 6:78-79; Jeremiah 48:21).
Joshua 13:19. Kirjathaim] The Emim were defeated hers by Chedorlaomer (Genesis 14:5). With Sibmah, and Zareth-Shahar, it seems to have stood in the rise of the valley from Heshbon towards Mt. Nebo. Sibmah was famous for its vines (Isaiah 16:8-9; Jeremiah 48:32).
Joshua 13:20. Beth-Peor] Near to or upon Mt. Peor (Numbers 23:28; Deuteronomy 3:29). Ashdoth-Pisgah, etc.] Cf. on chap, Joshua 12:3.
Joshua 13:21. Dukes of Sihon]=“Vassals of Sihon;” so Keil and others. While “princes,” or petty “kings” (cf. Numbers 31:8) of the Midianites, they were probably tributaries to Sihon in whose country they were dwelling.
Joshua 13:22. Balaam also, etc.] There is no good reason for considering this and the preceding verse to be “irrelevant” and “borrowed from the history in Numbers,” as suggested by Dr. A. Clarke. Balaam’s counsel had been the cause of the battle in which he and the five princes who dwelt in this territory were slain. When dealing with the geography of this country, it was not irrelevant but natural for the historian to tell us of these people who were in the unusual position of pastoral settlers among its regular inhabitants, and to allude thus briefly to the cause of their destruction.
Joshua 13:23. Jordan and the border thereof] The natural boundary which the Jordan formed. The Jordan is similarly mentioned in Joshua 13:27.
Joshua 13:25. Jazer] “It was taken from the Amorites, and fortified by the Gadites (Numbers 21:32; Numbers 32:35). It was assigned to the Levites (Joshua 21:39; 1 Chronicles 6:81) and afterwards taken by the Moabites. After the exile it belonged to the Ammonites (Isaiah 16:8; Jeremiah 48:32; 1Ma. 5:8). Its situation, according to Eusebius, was ten Roman miles westward from Philadelphia (Rabbath-Amman), and fifteen miles from Heshbon.” [Keil.] Aroer that is before Rabbah] Thus distinguished from Aroer of Reuben, on the banks of the Arnon. Rabbah] Called sometimes, in distinction from other cities of the same name, “Rabbath of the Ammonites.” It was the chief city of Ammon, and though not originally assigned to Israel, it was subsequently besieged by Joab, and taken by David (2 Samuel 11:1; 2 Samuel 12:26-31). About B.C. 250, Ptolemy Philadelphus gave it the name Philadelphia.
Joshua 13:26. Unto Ramath-mizpeh and Betonim] These two cities seem to represent the extent of the territory of the Gadites towards the north, from the direction of Heshbon, which stood in the lot of Reuben. This is the only place where the former of the two cities is mentioned under this name, though it is thought by some to be the same with Ramoth-Gilead. Mahanaim] = “Two hosts” (cf. Genesis 32:2; Genesis 32:7; Genesis 32:10). It seems to have been strictly a frontier town, as it is named as being also on the border of Manasseh (Joshua 13:30). It belonged to the lot of Gad, but was given to the Levites (chap. Joshua 21:38). Here Abner proclaimed Ishbosheth (2 Samuel 2:8-9), and to the same place David fled from Absalom (2 Samuel 17:24), it being then a walled town large enough to contain the king and the thousands who followed him (2 Samuel 18:1; 2 Samuel 18:4). Debir] There is some uncertainty concerning the name, and the site is unknown.
Joshua 13:27. In the valley, Beth-aram, and Beth-nimrah] The valley of the Jordan, in which these and the two following towns were situated. The order of the names is from the south of the valley upwards, Beth-aram being near Peor and Zaphon (Tsaphon=“the north”) the most northerly town of the four, and probably of the tribe, standing near to the sea of Chinnereth.
Joshua 13:30. All the towns of Jair] Heb. =“Chavvoth-Jair;” the same as the Havoth-Jair of Numbers 32:41. Chavvoth, pl. of chavvah—“life,” is the same with chayyah, which (according to Gesenius)—“A family, a tribe, especially of Nomades, hence a village of Nomades, a village [prop., place where one lives, dwells, so Germ, leben in proper names Eisleben. Aschersleben] (Deuteronomy 3:14; Joshua 13:30; Judges 10:4; 1 Kings 4:13).” Hence, the Havoth-Jair were “the dwelling-places of Jair.” The passage in Judges speaks of them as thirty cities, but the number is usually given as sixty (cf. also 1 Chronicles 2:22-23).
Joshua 13:31. The children of Machir] Machir was the eldest son of Manasseh. His descendants appear to have been by far the larger portion of the tribe (cf. Numbers 26:29; chap. 17,). It seems impossible to decide how the families of Machir, Jair, and Nobah, the sons of Manasseh, were distributed in the two lots, one on each side of Jordan, which fell to this tribe.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 13:8-33
Joshua 13:8-12. THE INHERITANCE ON THE EAST OF JORDAN.
The communication of God to Joshua closes at the end of the seventh verse. The Divine utterances are followed by the author’s personal reference to the inheritance of the Reubenites, of the Gadites, and of the remaining half tribe of Manasseh, on the other side of Jordan. Joshua 13:9-12 give a general definition of this eastern territory, which is more minutely specified in the latter half of the chapter.
The repetition in the eighth verse, contained in the words, “As Moses the servant of the Lord gave them,” must not be regarded as meaningless. It appears designed to emphasise the fact that Moses had acted as the servant of Jehovah in that particular assignment of the eastern possessions already made. The inheritance of the nine and a half tribes was decided by lot; that of the two and a half tribes seems to have been ordered according to the judgment of Moses (chap. Joshua 14:2-3). The Israelites undoubtedly believed in God’s guidance of the lot, the unerring direction of which had been so solemnly attested in the discovery of Achan. From these early instances in which God gave witness that He guided the lot, it most likely became a common faith that “the whole disposing thereof was of the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33; Proverbs 18:18). Lest it might afterwards be thought that God had not decided the respective positions of the two and a half tribes also, it is here emphatically asserted that Moses had acted as Jehovah’s servant. God provides not only for His people’s possessions, but likewise for their peace.
Joshua 13:13. This verse indicates that the book of Joshua was not written till after the time when it might have been expected that the Geshurites and Maachathites would have been expelled. But the phrase “unto this day” may only point to a few years later than the time of the general conquest. The king of Maachah was able to lead a thousand men against Joab in the time of David (2 Samuel 10:6); but after the defeat of Hadarezer, Maachah, with the neighbouring small states, probably became tributary to David (2 Samuel 8:5-6; 2 Samuel 10:19). As after this no more is heard of either Geshur or Maachah, and individual Maachathites are occasionally mentioned among the warriors of Israel, it seems natural to suppose that these petty kingdoms were attached to Israel by David.
Joshua 13:14. THE LEVITES.
The Levites, unlike the rest of the tribes, were to have no detached portion of the land as a separate inheritance. Instead of this, they were to have their inheritance in the religious offerings of all Israel, and in the eight and forty cities, scattered throughout Canaan, in which they were permitted to reside.
We see in these Levites,
I. Men called to special service for God, and specially exempted from the cares and responsibilities of secular life.
II. Men called to spiritual service for their fellows, and to be liberally cared for by their fellows.
The New Testament makes no effort to maintain the old Levitical machinery as a means of providing for those who minister in spiritual things; it certainly does maintain the principle of such provision. The machinery was necessarily temporary; the idea which the machinery worked was essentially as lasting as the necessity it was intended to meet. Some think that gifts for religious work should not be taken from irreligious men. No man has a right to judge who is religious enough to give and who is not. Every man’s gift to religion is to some extent an acknowledgment of religion, and in that measure is religious. Apart from the inability and sin of Christians who do not hesitate to sit in judgment on their fellows, no wicked man’s wickedness, however wicked he may be, exempts him from the duty of making personal sacrifices to support the worship and service of God in the land of which he is a citizen. A man’s wickedness exonerates him from no religious duty whatever. Every day in which a man lives in unbelief he is under obligation to believe; when he blasphemes, he is still bound to worship; when he lies, the obligation to be truthful is as fully upon him as ever; when he withholds his temporal things from service which God designs to be an eternal good to those around him, and whom he himself has helped to deprave, he is as much bound to give for religious work as the godliest man living. No rebel becomes free to rebel by rebelling, or ceases to be amenable to taxation for the crown by saying that he believes in a republic. No wicked Israelite was free to withhold his part in supporting the worship of God, because his personal love of transgression, or of his property, made any gift to the Levites distasteful. Probably God sets little value on the gifts for His service which are offered by a wicked man; yet when a wicked man tries to do what is right in anything, no other man is justified in hindering him; certainly no Christian man should dare to offer an unseemly rebuff to a fellow-man who is seeking even in one thing to discharge his conscience towards God. The Saviour, who saw in the Pharisees only “bruised reeds” and “smoking flax,” would neither break them in the one sense, nor quench them in the other. True, the Pharisees had not much religion left, but even Christ did not forbid them the little they had on the ground that they had only that little.
Joshua 13:22. THE WAGES OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.
The Apostle Peter tells us that Balaam “loved the wages of unrighteousness.” The hope of gain had induced Balaam to leave his home in Pethor of Mesopotamia (Deuteronomy 23:4), and come to the aid of the king of Moab. It is probable that the reward given to the false prophet was large; and, thus far, his expectations may have been satisfied. The real reward of his iniquity was yet to come. “The wages of sin is death,” and Baalam gives an example of the way in which these words may have a physical as well as a moral fulfilment. The connection between Balaam’s sin and his death is repeatedly and strongly marked in Scripture. The war against the Midianites was avowedly a war of retribution, and the death of Balaam is mentioned as that of the principal offender (Numbers 31:3; Numbers 31:8; Numbers 31:16). It seems named here for the same reason; the man had wrought great evil against Israel, and his death was the outcome of his wicked counsel. The successive stages of Balaam’s guilt and its consequences may be thus noticed. We see—
I. A weak man tempted to sin, and tempted where he was weakest.—
1. Temptation ever comes to men on the side on which they are least able to resist. A soldier may invest a fortress on all sides; he directs the strength of his assault where there are fewest means of defence. The man who loved the wages of unrighteousness was tempted with that which he loved. Men who are willing to run “greedily after the error of Balaam for reward,” are tempted in like manner with Balaam. Judas carried the bag and was a thief, and forthwith came the opportunity to sell Christ. Each man is tempted in the direction of his peculiar weakness. David was a man warm-hearted and enthusiastic, and the attack which overthrew him was on the least fortified side of his nature. Peter was at once ardent, impulsive, and possessed of a certain pride of manliness. Nothing would be so likely to betray him into falling as a sudden attack in the direction of shame. The point of weakness was the point of assault. Of the particular temptation before which Balaam fell, Addison well remarked: “A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy. Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and seruple in an instant, accommodates itself to the meanest capacities, silences the loud and clamorous, and brings over the most obstinate and inflexible. Philip of Macedon was a man of most invincible reason this way. He refuted by it all the wisdom of Athens, confounded their statesmen, struck their orators dumb, and at length argued them out of their liberties.”
2. Most kinds of temptation come to every man, and temptation is strong or weak, according to the state of the heart that is tempted. A recent writer narrates an incident which aptly illustrates this. “Years ago, in Cheshire, some new plants, quite unknown before in the neighbourhood, sprang up beside the canals by which the salt was carried, and in pools around the salt works. The people did not know what to make of this phenomenon. At last, some one who had lived by the seaside recognised the plants as identical in kind with those which haunt the ledges of the rocks just above the flow of the tide, but within wash of the spray. Then the thing was clear. The germs of the plants had been from year to year borne by the wind, or carried by birds, to that place, but the conditions under which they could grow had not arisen. By-and-by the same conditions which prevailed on the sea-coast were fulfilled, and the germs which formerly had died took root and grew. Remove those conditions, and though the germs are brought there at intervals, they will not develop into life.” Thus the seeds of temptation are scattered far and wide. Most temptations, sooner or later, fall into the heart of every man. It depends on the state of the heart into which they fall whether they spring up and grow into destroying sins, or whether they die in the very beginnings of life. Earth has only known one Heart in which no seed of this kind ever even so much as germinated at all. Of Christ only has it been written, “Who did no sin.” Balaam received his temptation, and forthwith, in such fruitful soil, the seed grew apace.
3. No man is any stronger than the place where he is weakest. We are apt to measure the strength of our life by those traits of our character which are most promising. One man is benevolent, and he thinks of his whole manhood as in keeping with the compassion in which, possibly, he prides himself. Another man is strong in honesty, and by him the strength of his integrity is apt to be regarded as though it were the measure of the strength of all his manhood. The earnest evangelist, whom men call “a revivalist,” has not seldom been found taking it for granted that his Christian character is as strong all round as it is in that particular point in which he has been found to be peculiarly successful. Men look at the strong place of their life, and then go into temptation, forgetting the weak side of their temperament and disposition. It is as though a ship of war should be armour-plated over only some half a dozen square yards, and her captain should guide her into a conflict, thinking only of the small space through which the enemy’s shot could not penetrate, and forgetting that a ball in any other part of the vessel might sink him and his crew almost immediately. It is as if a miner should gauge the strength of his chain by a few stout links, and load the cradle by which he himself was about to descend, almost up to their breaking strain, heedless of the average power of the chain, and not concerning himself in the least about such links as were specially weak. An engine-driver who would avoid an explosion must have regard to the weakest part of his boiler. The girder of the bridge which spans the river is only as strong as where it is weakest. According to the axiom of the engineers, “the weakest is the strongest.” So should every man estimate his own character. He only is strong who watches, and prays, and fortifies himself where he is weak.
II. A tempted man restrained by God, and restrained earnestly and continuously.—The history in Numbers shews us how graciously God had interposed to prevent Balaam from this miserable end.
1. God restrained Balaam by the power of conscience. When the elders of Moab and Midian first tempted the prophet, he seems instinctively to have felt that it would be wrong for him to go on this mission (Numbers 22:8). He who overrides his conscience must be prepared to meet and confront it again under less favourable circumstances. Conscience thus outraged, like the ghost of Cæsar before the gaze of the bewildered Brutus, may seem to withdraw for a time; but there is always some Philippi where the sinner will have to look upon it again.
2. God restrained Balaam by actual words. “Thou shalt not go with them” (Numbers 22:12). All along the ways of iniquity men are opposed by the words of the Lord. It is easy to pass these words; it is hard to repass them, back to the way of holiness.
3. God restrained Balaam by unusual and marvellous interposition. The dumb ass was made to speak, and the armed angel stood between this man and the consummation of his iniquity. Providence has still its extraordinary calls. Accidents, sicknesses, bereavements. Even these may be passed. The very angels must make way for the man who is determined to sin. It could not be otherwise. Sin may be prevented by warnings only when a man will accept the warning; goodness is not at the command of swords, even when they are celestial. The. persecutors of the old days might have learned a useful lesson from this retiring angel. Every wilful man may learn, no less, for himself, that God’s warnings stop short of coercion. The sword which Divine love puts across the path of the man who will go on to sin, is but the shadow of the “coming event” which heaven’s mercy thus casts before him, that he may turn again by the way which he came.
4. God restrained Balaam by a continuous influence, which to a certain point was all-powerful to hold this bad man back. Three times did Balak build for Balaam seven altars, on each of which was offered a bullock and a ram, but Balaam could only say, “How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed?” Most men have felt this restraining influence of the Almighty. God does not seek to compel men to be good; but where He will, He does hold men back from wickedness. He can say, even to the most violent desires and passions of the vilest, “Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther.”
III. A man restrained by God evading restraint, and sinning while appearing to obey.—Balaam only submitted to the restraint outwardly; he did not curse Israel, because he could not; but the curse was in his heart all the while. Mark a few points touching the man’s spiritual failure.
1. Balaam’s religion was negative rather than positive. He did not say, What can I do for God? How can I serve men? He preferred to put the case thus: Where must I obey God? What commandments must I keep? See where this spirit of mere commandment-keeping ends. A man may go on like Balaam saying, If I should have given to me my house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord, and yet come to an end as terrible and sad as this.
2. Balaam’s piety consisted of only so much obedience as might serve to keep him from harm. He sought to go as near to sin as possible without getting smitten. Religion is not a moderate love of the world; it is not moderate luxury, moderate avarice, moderate ambition, moderate selfishness; it is not in asking, How much of the world may I have, and yet get to heaven? “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” The overflowing Nile renders Egypt fertile; the overflowing of the world in a human heart causes spiritual barrenness and death.
3. Balaam’s religion was made up of feelings of duty rather than of thoughts of love. He “loved the wages of unrighteousness.” His heart was yearning to curse because of gain. Duty may be a good and sufficient word for ordinary conflicts. Nelson hung it out at the masthead of his ship for a battle signal, and dying said, “Thank God, I have done my duty.” But the stern warrior was moved to conflict by something more than the sense of duty. He loved his duty, and loved the nation which he served; otherwise even his conflicts had not so often ended in victory. The Christian has a sterner fight—a fight with foes unseen and innumerable. Let others do as they will, he can only triumph by love.
4. Balaam’s religion lay merely in fearing God rather than in desiring God’s glory. Only fear kept him from pronouncing the curse outright. We are told that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;” but he will be very foolish who lets his wisdom end there. Fear may do well enough for the beginning of the way, but only the love of God can keep a man to the end. David ardently desired to glorify God, and was restored from sin’s lowest depths; Solomon was enamoured of his own glory, and his end is sad and obscure. Peter loved his Lord with passionate fervour, and we see him go from his denial to the Sea of Tiberias, and thence into the joy of Pentecost and the mellow godliness of his epistles; Judas loved the bag, and he went and hanged himself.
IV. A man sinning while simulating obedience, and the sin working steadily towards death and ending in death.—From the time when Balaam started on this mission of cursing, he was unconsciously drawing near to his end. Each step was so much near to the time when he should lie a ghastly corpse on the battle-field of Midian. Added to this constant approach to the place where he should be slain, there was a concurrent movement towards spiritual death. Every hour of inward yearning to do what God had bidden him not to do was an hour of spiritual decay. Thus Balaam went on till he was able to give his fiendish counsel to the Midianites, and probably to rejoice in the terrible success which attended it. The dead body upon the battle-field was only a symbol and a consequence of the dead spirituality which it had once covered. The man was dead every way.
1. Learn that sin in the heart will presently come out in the life. There comes a time when wickedness cherished in the heart will burst its way through the thin crust of a mere outward obedience, and, like some terrible Vesuvius, will pour out the hidden material of many years in a destroying lava—molten at last into that by the fierce fires of a long-encouraged passion.
2. Learn also that God will not always warn. There comes a time when He bids His dumb creatures speak to wilful sinners no more, when He stands no more angels in their path to destruction, and when His own forbidding voice ceases to be heard. Again it might be written, in this case with another meaning, “There was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour.” This silence of heaven is very awful. It is the pause in the spiritual world which immediately precedes the storm of judgment. Let those who hear nothing more from heaven be alarmed. “Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee.” Behold, in the similar silence of nature, they flee every one to his haunt! So let him who has ceased to hear the voices of God flee to the riven Rock of Ages. Let him hear in the very silence of heaven the final invitation of Jehovah, “Enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.”
Joshua 13:23-32.—THE INHERITANCE OF REUBEN, GAD, AND THE HALF-TRIBE OF MANASSEH.
The boundaries of these tribes whose possessions were “on the other side of Jordan” are as carefully defined as those of the tribes who inherited the land originally promised.
1. God’s people are His people everywhere. The people were not for the land, but the land was for the people.
2. God’s care of His people is irrespective of place. One side of Jordan or the other, it matters not, so long as they walk in the knowledge and love of Him.
3. God’s care of His people provides for their peace with each other. Lest disputes should arise, the territory of each tribe is, from the first, carefully marked. Lest the Levites should afterwards claim some of the land for a possession, they are repeatedly told, as in Joshua 13:14; Joshua 13:33, that their inheritance was to be in the Lord God of Israel. Peace also is meant to be a part of the earthly inheritance of the children of God.
Joshua 13:14; Joshua 13:33.—THE INHERITANCE OF THE TRIBE OF LEVI.
This exclusion of the Levites from any possession in the land, and the assurance that they had in some way beyond their brethren an inheritance in the Lord God of Israel, we find repeatedly mentioned in the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua. The emphasis which is laid on the arrangement shews unmistakably that it was deemed by God Himself to be one of unusual importance. Two distinct features are made prominent in this regulation on behalf of the Levites. God shews us—
I. Men with special religious work having as great an exemption as possible from secular anxieties. The Levites were only to have certain “cities to dwell in, with their suburbs for their cattle and for their substance” (chap. Joshua 14:4). They were not to be cumbered with the cares of business, nor burdened with the anxieties of great earthly possessions. Living to serve their fellows, they were to be maintained by their fellows. “They were to have no territorial possessions. In place of them they were to receive from the others the tithes of the produce of the land, from which they, in their turn, offered a tithe to the priests, as a recognition of their higher consecration (Numbers 18:21-26; Nehemiah 10:37).” [Smith’s Bib. Dict.] Is this system of tithes obligatory now? The chief answer to this question must be derived from Scripture itself. There is nothing whatever in the New Testament to perpetuate the practice. It is recognised as binding down to the very time of the last of the prophets (Malachi 3:10), and then all mention of it, as a duty, suddenly ceases. Not a word urging it is said either by Christ or His apostles. The continuance of the system of tithing by some churches might form, from an ecclesiastical point of view, a singular and interesting study on the recent doctrine of “the survival of the fittest.” The Saviour’s abolition of the Levitical ceremonial is distinctly recognised, but with a theological discernment which says much for their ingenuity, many ecclesiastics who make no question about the abolition of the Levitical service, have no doubt at all of the continued obligation of the Levitical dues. They have no thought of the whole service of the Church being confined to a single family, nor of “the priesthood” being limited to a particular branch of that family; the old law of hereditary succession is abrogated, the ancient service itself has expired, only the payments have survived. Among several grave reasons against the continuance of a system which God evidently designed to be limited to the Old Testament dispensation, only one other need be mentioned here. The Jewish theocracy contemplated the unquestioning submission of every Israelite to the law of Moses. No room was left for dissent or difference, as the fate of Korah and his companions so terribly attested. The very idea of a theocracy was essentially an idea of uniformity. The personal and almost immediate rule of God, to whose actual presence with the people mighty works were continually bearing witness, necessarily supposed a universal and uniform obedience. The Gospel comes to men with all the old responsibilities touching obedience, but with a vastly enlarged measure of liberty. Christianity is emphatically a choice, not a compulsion. Christ stands by even His twelve apostles, and, while others are actually departing, says to them too, “Will ye also go away?” They could if they would. The sharply defined commands of the law of Moses stand out in strange contrast to the tender pleadings and tears of Jesus, and the very pathos of the Saviour’s entreaties supposes the misused liberty of those who so long rejected them. Under the Old Testament, and to the extent of those limits covered by the theocracy, the Church was the world; under the Gospel, the Church is in the world. In a word, under the Old Testament system, which regarded every Israelite as bound under severe penalties to serve God, the tithing of all Israel was logical and natural; under the Gospel, which appeals to men for voluntary discipleship, the compulsory and indiscriminate tithing of men, irrespective of the fact that many of them may reject the Gospel, carries an untruth upon its very face. It is, virtually, making Christ to say, “I give you liberty to accept the Gospel, or not; I give you no liberty whatever in the matter of paying for its support;” a position which would degrade the Saviour by the suggestion that His mercenary concern about human gifts was so much in excess of His spiritual concern for the souls for which He died.
While, however, the method of supporting those who minister in religious service essentially differs under the two dispensations, the principle laid down here is not lost sight of in the New Testament. “Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel.” Those who devote their lives to the spiritual welfare of their fellows are, no less than the Levites of old, to be set as free as possible from the anxieties of procuring the necessaries of life.
II. Men with special religious necessities and peculiar spiritual privileges.
1. The Lord God is the inheritance of all who serve God. Every true Israelite had a portion in the Lord. (a) Men may participate in this inheritance irrespective of family. Judah, Simeon, Ephraim, Levi, or either of the other tribes—it mattered not which—all might seek and find a possession in God. This most glorious of all estates came through no particular parentage, as such. (b) Men may participate in this inheritance, notwithstanding past history. The degradation of Egypt. The sins of the wilderness. Grace hides the past, blotting out even the worst transgressions. (c) Men cannot participate in this inheritance without regard to the present. Only a godly heart and a godly life can inherit God. When Israel forsook the Lord, the fact that they were known as God’s people did not secure them an inheritance in Him. This estate cannot be “conveyed” to a heart without love, or to a life devoid of holiness.
2. This Divine inheritance is ever adapted to the variety and stress of human want. The Levites were called to serve their brethren in a most responsible work, and God promised Himself to them for a peculiar possession. With God for an inheritance, and a heart right towards Him, great spiritual wants do but make way for a large measure of Divine mercy and help.
3. Thus he who has God for his inheritance may well feel satisfied, though all else seems to fail him. It was out of the cave, when hunted by Saul, that David cried unto the Lord: “Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.” (Cf. also Psalms 16:5-6; Psalms 73:26.) Still more remarkable is the similar expression of faith by Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:24. In his case we see an aged man with nothing else left, after forty years of apparently fruitless labour, and as many of pious experience with no strength or opportunity to begin his work over again, still rejoicing in God. Sitting in the streets of desolate Jerusalem, when all her inhabitants had been carried away captive, the aged prophet, with a sorrow beautiful in its humanness and a faith magnificent in its trust, cries out in one and the same song of grief: “Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people;” “The Lord is my portion saith my soul, therefore will I hope in Him.” Thus, like stars on the dark face of the night, does God shew us the jewels of His people’s faith shining forth from the setting of broken earthly hopes and utter destitution. So good Rutherford speaks to us from one of his letters: “I know not what you have if you want Christ; I know not what you want if you have Christ.” The Levites were at once the poorest and the richest tribe of Israel. They had no earthly estate in the land; they had a peculiar portion in God, who provided for their temporal wants, and who stood ready to give Himself to them specially in those necessities created by their religious service for their brethren.