THE peculiar strictness of many of the laws which God delivered to Moses in the mount, has been accounted for by the consideration, that the people for whose use they were intended, were only to be governed by strictness, being of a self-willed and inconstant nature, unmindful of benefits, and ready to give way to carnal and idolatrous temptations. No stronger instance of such a character and propensity on their parts could possibly be afforded than the condition in which Moses found them, when, after an absence of forty days, he came again among them. Fancying themselves deserted by him, and totally disregarding the express command of God, that they should make them no graven image to worship it, they had compelled Aaron to use a portion of their ornaments in the formation of a golden calf, before which they reared up an altar, and sacrificed to it, and worshipped it, and said, "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt."* Thus, as it is expressed by the Psalmist," they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass"-a sort of idol which doubtless it had occurred to them to make, in consequence of their having seen the living animal itself worshipped in Egypt. And as the heathens generally ended their sacrifices with a riotous festival, so likewise did they: "the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play." In the midst of this their idolatrous merriment, Moses came among them his first impulse was one of zealous indignation, under which he cast out of his hands the two tables of stone which God had given him, and brake them upon the ground; his next, an exercise of rigid justice; for calling unto him the men of his own tribe, the sons of Levi, who probably had not joined the rest in their licentious conduct, he commissioned them to proceed through the camp, and inflict the punishment of death upon three thousand of the offenders; and lastly, moved by a spirit of tender affection for the endangered multitude, he returned unto the Lord, and humbly implored pardon for their sin, offering even himself to be blotted along with them out of God's book, if his intercession could not be accepted. God, assuring him that his principle of dealing with mankind was to punish the guilty, and the guilty alone, graciously condescended to pardon them at his request; and having delivered to his care new tables of stone, in place of those which had been broken, he favoured him also with a mysterious manifestation of some portion of his glory, and sent him down from the mountain with a face that shone with such extraordinary brightness, that, when he afterwards spake unto the people, he was forced Exod. xxxii. 4. + Psalm cvi. 20. Exod. xxxii. 6. to cover it with a vail, taking it off only when he entered into the tabernacle, into the presence of God. This vail, as St. Paul assures us, was a type or image of the obscurity which hung over the whole dispensation of Moses's law, and which to this day is upon the hearts of the Jewish people, to be removed only by their conversion to the religion of Christ.* Let us thank God that we enjoy the benefits of that religion, and as we have received mercy, let us faint not, but renounce the hidden things of dishonesty, and walk as children of the light. We have lately seen the people of Israel stripping themselves of their ornaments, and giving them to Aaron, to make them an idol: we shall now find them better employed in devoting a portion, and a large one, of their worldly wealth to the honour of the true God; for out of the free-will offerings of the princes and the people it was that the tabernacle was framed, and furnished with all the costly vessels of its worship. Aaron himself, whose conduct on the former occasion had been weak and blamable, was now to undergo a heavy trial; no sooner had he and his sons been consecrated to their new office of the priesthood, than two of them, Nadab and Abihu, departed from the strictness of God's regulations, and offering strange fire before him, which he commanded them not, were miraculously burnt to death in the very tabernacle and their father, though deep indeed must have been his grief, sustained the blow with silent resignation to the will of God: an example to be followed by all of us, who meet with similar misfortunes, and who have yet surer grounds of consolation and hope afforded us than we can find vouchsafed to him, in the assurance of immortality and resurrection from the grave, through Jesus Christ our Lord. One * 2 Cor. iii. 13-16. other violent death, under special circumstances, took place during the abode of the Israelites at Sinai; the son of Shelomith, whose crime was uttering words of blasphemy against God, and whose sentence, declared by God to Moses, was to be stoned to death, a punishment which we find afterwards unjustly inflicted upon the first martyr Stephen, upon a false charge to the same effect. The cloud which had now remained stationary for more than two years, again began to move. Their first resting-place was Taberah; there they complained, why we know not, and some of them were burnt by the fire of God, which was quenched at the prayer of Moses. At the next place, being already tired of the manna, or bread from heaven, which God gave them for their daily food, they tempted him in their hearts, "by desiring meat for their lust,"* and yet doubting the possibility of their obtaining it from him in the wilderness: "he gave them their desire," causing a vast flight of quails to light on the ground about the camp, so that they caught as many as they would; but while they were eating, he sent also a grievous plague, which destroyed many of them, and the name of the place was called Kibroth Hattaavah, because there they buried the people that lusted. Moses here obtained the sanction of God to be assisted, as his father-in-law had before advised him, by a chosen body of men, seventy in number, upon whom God vouchsafed to bestow a portion of the same spirit as that which enlightened him. And shortly afterwards, as if the management of an obstinate rebellious people was not burthen enough for him, he met with annoyance and opposition from his own family-Miriam and Aaron taking upon themselves to speak against him, because the woman whom he had married was not an Israelite. God however *Psalm lxxviii. 18-29. |