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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 11, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 10.

Schedule for the Week Ending March 15, 1913

Sunday	March 9	Numbers 30, 35
Monday	" 10	Deuteronomy 1
Tuesday	" 11	" 2
Wednesday	" 12	" 3
Thursday	" 13	" 4
Friday	" 14	" 5, 6
Sabbath	" 15	" 7, 8

We close our readings in the book of Numbers with chapters 30 and 35, 30 giving instructions as to the vows of a wife, daughter, etc., and 35 instruction as to the setting apart of the cities of refuge for manslayers. Altho it does not come within our reading, it is worthy of note that the death of Balaam is recorded in Num. 31:8. Eight chapters of Deuteronomy are given in this week's lessons. Deuteronomy means second law, or the repetition of the law. It was the reckoning of God's dealings among His children at the close of the forty years' wandering, before Israel passed over into the promised land.

Verse 2 contains a striking lesson, in its simple words, "It is eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir unto Kadesh-barnea." Horeb was where the law was given; Kadesh-barnea was right on the borders of the promised land. It would have taken the children of Israel only eleven days to go from Mount Sinai to the promised land. They went clear up to the very border, and then were turned back into the wilderness because of their unbelief. It took thirty-eight long years to do what eleven days' journey would have done. How many times, as individuals, do we take a long time in our own wanderings, to pass over moral ground which God desires us to do in much less time. Take home the lesson to heart. All these chapters are exceedingly practical, and God has in them lessons for His own children at the present time.

The repetition of the Decalogue in the 5th chapter does not aim to give the law as it was written upon tables, or as God spoke it as recorded in Exodus 20. It is simply the bringing out of the great thought in each commandment. In the repetition of the fourth commandment there is offered an additional reason as to why Israel should observe it, not alone in memory of God as Creator, but to hold in constant remembrance Christ as Redeemer.