Ver. 12. In all the great terror— In all the great miracles, Houbigant very properly translates it, after the Samaritan; for terror, as he well observes, does not suit with the miracles in the wilderness.
We have here the praise of the living governor, and a just encomium on the deceased. 1. Joshua was admirably qualified to succeed Moses in his arduous charge, being full of the spirit of wisdom, and skilled alike in the arts of government and of war; God had commanded Moses to lay his hands on him, and while he designed him his successor, communicated to him abilities for the task; and the people acknowledged the appointment, and paid a ready obedience to his orders. Note; (1.) Whom God calls to any charge, he qualifies for the employment. (2.) God will never leave his Israel destitute; but as one faithful minister is taken away, another shall be raised up in his stead. (3.) We must not, through prejudice to the living, exalt too much those who went before them, but submit with the same cheerfulness and love to the younger pastors, as to the more aged ones which are departed. (4.) Joshua is appointed for what Moses could not do. Thus the law of Moses leaves us in the wilderness of conviction; Christ Jesus, the true Joshua, alone can bring us to the true rest of peace of conscience on earth, or eternal bliss in heaven. 2. The encomium on Moses is great, and most deserved. He was, above all other prophets, distinguished by the free and frequent communion he enjoyed with God; others heard from him in dreams and visions, but Moses spake with him face to face, as a man talketh with his friend. None performed the like stupendous miracles, nor did any prophet ever arise in Israel like him. One prophet, however, was predicted to arise, and he has since arisen, more superior to Moses, than he was above his brethren: his gospel surpassing the law in glory, which was a ministration of condemnation; and his covenant established on better promises. Moses was a servant in the house, Christ a son over his own house; one lying buried in the plains of Moab, the other living for ever to bless his people, seated on the throne of eternal glory, and ruling for them, and in them, till all their enemies be put under their feet, and death itself at last be swallowed up in victory.
THOUGHTS ON THE CHARACTER OF MOSES.
PROVIDENCE raised up Moses in a time of oppression, to become an example to the whole world of those virtues which oppression only can cause to shine out. By a series of miracles, he escaped the fatal effects of a bloody edict, which condemned every male of the Hebrews to die as soon as born. What is still more remarkable, and shews how Providence mocks the designs of evil men, he owed, in some measure, his preservation to those very persons who sought his destruction; and they themselves formed that genius, and cultivated those great talents, which qualified him to be the deliverer of that nation which they were labouring to extirpate.
At length he found himself called to a choice on which the ardency of his passions seemed not likely to suffer him to deliberate, no, not for a moment. Pressed to choose between his religion and his fortune, he rose superior to his passions, nay in some sort to human nature itself, and sacrificed his fortune to his religion; resolved to share the miseries of an oppressed people, in order to serve that God who watched over his children, even while he seemed to have forsaken them and abandoned them to oppression. He knew nothing equal to the favour of God: he considered it as infinitely preferable to that of his king; nay, even to the hopes of inheriting the throne and crown; and, according to the expression of St. Paul, he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of Egypt.
He was not, however, contented merely to share the fate of an unhappy people; he resolved also to stop the course of their unhappiness: he could not prevail with himself to be a simple spectator of the tyranny exercised upon his brethren; he became their avenger, and thus, by an act of anticipation, commenced the deliverer of his nation.
Prudence obliged him to fly the punishment prepared for him: he fled into the country of Midian, where he experienced the effects of that wonderful providence which accompanied him through the whole course of his life. Unable here to perform the functions of a hero, he exercised those of a philosopher, employing the tranquillity of retirement in meditation on the greatness of God; or rather, Here he enjoyed intimate communications with the Deity, who had inspired him to lay the foundations of revealed religion; and Here, probably, he wrote that book of Genesis, which furnishes mankind with powerful arms against idolatry, combats two of the most extravagant errors ever imbibed (namely, that which affirmed the plurality of gods, and that which ascribed imperfections to the Deity), and opposes thereto the doctrine of the unity of a perfect being.
That God whose existence and attributes he asserted, appeared to him in a manner absolutely miraculous upon mount Horeb: he gave him the glorious but formidable commission, to make head against Pharaoh, to stop the torrent of his tyrannical persecutions, to endeavour to mollify him, and to compel, if he could not persuade him; to support his arguments by prodigies, and to enforce from the whole kingdom of Egypt, a compensation for their barbarities against a people whom God had chosen for the objects of his tenderest love and most alarming miracles.
Moses, rather from humility than obstinacy, declined to accept this commission. He could not persuade himself, having never been able to express his sentiments but with difficulty, that he was a proper person to speak to a king, or to subvert his kingdom. God pressed him; he resisted; at length he yielded, and, full of the spirit which animated him, entered the career of glory now opened before him. The first victory he obtained was over himself; he forced himself away from the calm pleasures which the country of Midian had afforded him, forsook the house of an affectionate father, and immerged into a world of enemies and persecutors.
He arrived in Egypt, presented himself to Pharaoh, prayed and entreated him, then used threatenings, and at length, in sad completion of those threatenings, brought down upon Egypt the most dreadful plagues. He marched out of that kingdom at the head of the people which had there undergone so many vexations: he was pursued by the tyrant, who followed close in the rear; he found himself surrounded by an invincible army, by a chain of impassable mountains, and by the Red Sea. He struck the waters of that sea, which presently obeyed the orders of a man whom God had made as it were the trustee of his power, and became a wall unto the children of Israel, on the right hand and on the left. And then, by another miracle, he saw the same waters which divided to make him a passage, close again to swallow up Pharaoh, his army, and his court.
Thus delivered, to all appearance, from his most dangerous enemies, he found himself engaged with others yet more dangerous; his own people: a people of mean and servile education, of mistaken and absurd minds, of hearts most corrupt; cowardly, ungrateful, perfidious. At the very time that he bore the brunt of their rage and madness, he interceded with God to spare them: at one time he found himself under a necessity of defending the cause of God before them; at another, of pleading their cause before the offended Deity, who declared that he would no longer regard a society of men ever prone to affront him, and ever contaminating his worship with that of the most infamous idols among the Gentiles.
Sometimes Moses prevailed so far as to avert the wrath of God, and quell the extravagancies of the stiff-necked multitude: but more frequently it was impossible to restrain their fury by the bounds of reason, or the anger of God by prayer or supplication. Divine justice would assume its rights; it smote the Israelites with the severest strokes, and caused 23,000 of them to perish by one single plague.
But neither could the most terrible punishments, nor the most tender admonitions, reclaim them to their duty: nay, as if Moses were responsible for the evils incurred by their repeated crimes, they threatened to stone him, and proposed to choose another general, who might lead them back to that Egypt from which God had brought them with a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm: basely preferring a shameful slavery, to the miraculous direction which guided them through the wilderness, and to the kingdoms which God had promised them.
In these cruel exercises of his patience, Moses spent forty whole years, and at length brought the remainder of the people even to the borders of the Land of Promise. Did ever any man lead so singular a life? Was ever hero signalized by so many achievements?
If we enter into a detail of his conduct, we shall see all the graces and virtues shine forth in him. Magnanimity, in his command of armies, and his contempt of a crown when it interfered with the good of religion: constancy, in those repeated summonses and ready replies which he addressed to the despotic Pharaoh: Thus said the Lord, Let my people go—we will go with our young—our old—our sons and daughters, flocks and herds—there shall not an hoof be left behind.—Thou hast spoken well; I will see thy face no more. His zeal and fervency appear in his unremitted supplications to heaven, when Israel fought with Amalek, and in his ardent and reiterated prayers in behalf of a sinful nation. Exodus 32:11-12; Exodus 32:35. What love and charity animates those noble expressions,—Oh, this people have sinned—yet now if thou wilt forgive their sin:—and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book! His gentleness and sweetness of temper were unparalleled; witness what is said of him in the book of Numbers; The man
Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth. How desirous was he to seek for grace and truth at the fountain-head! If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence,—I beseech thee shew me thy glory. How zealous for God's glory! witness the broken tables of the law, and his rigorous order to the Levites, Put every man his sword by his side,—and slay his brother,—companion, and neighbour; and that self-denying answer of his to Joshua, when afraid that Eldad and Medad should eclipse the glory of his master, Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them! And what greater instance of perseverance can be given, than that song with which he ended both his ministry and his life?
Where can we find a ministry so arduous, a life so long, and diversified with so many circumstances, attended with so few faults? Nay, his very faults seem in some sort virtues, whose darkness would not strike so much, had not the rest of his life been bright and luminous. His backwardness for a while to go to Egypt at God's command; his unwillingness to administer the sacrament of circumcision to his child, out of humane considerations; his persuasion, that it consisted not with divine justice, for God to cause water miraculously to issue from a rock, to gratify a murmuring people; and his striking that rock with several blows, rather, as it should seem, out of indignation at the rebels, than distrust of a merciful God; these are faults, it is true, and faults deserving death, should God rigorously exact his rights.
Should there be thought any thing hyperbolical or extravagant in this encomium on Moses, we can still add to all the glorious features that we have been pourtraying, one, which is infinitely more glorious than the rest; it is represented by him who is the true distributor of glory; it is a character drawn up by God himself; and which, upon that account, has elevated Moses above all the praise we are able to bestow upon him. There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto MOSES, whom the Lord knew face to face: in all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land, and in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel.
It is true, the law which Moses published was not perfect; but it prepared the way for grace; for that GOSPEL which is the law of perfection; for a new covenant which was to be concluded between God and man, by that prophet like unto himself, the Conductor, the Christ; and this Christ is our Jesus; a man approved of by God by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him amidst the Jews, as they themselves know: Jesus, in whom God was, reconciling the world unto himself; Jesus, whom he hath fully declared his Son, with power by the resurrection from the dead, and to whom all the prophets give this witness, that, through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. This is he of whom Isaiah, or rather the Lord by his mouth, spake, saying, Behold my servant shall prosper, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high: even the ancient Jews agreed, that this prediction related to that Christ. "It is the king Messiah," they declared in one of their celebrated works, intitled In Tanchuma, "who shall be exalted above Abraham, extolled above Moses, and be made higher than the angels." We conclude this commentary with the words of a divine writer: "Let the Jews tell us who He is that can be exalted above the angels? What other can that character specify, than the WORD, who was in the beginning with God, who was God, by whom all things were made, and without whom was not any thing made that was made; namely, the Lord, the God of angels; to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory for ever? Amen."