NOTE 1. PAGE 92.—Though not only the justice of God, but even his faithfulness to his gracious promise demanded this, the tender loving-kindness of Jehovah appears in such expressions as these: “It repented Jehovah that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him”—literally, “it pained into his heart.” The one term, of course, explains the other. When we read that God repented, it is only our human way of speaking, for, as Calvin says, “nothing happens by accident or that has not been foreseen.” It brings before our minds “the sorrow of divine love over the sins of man,” in the words of Calvin, “that when the terrible sins of men offend God, it is not otherwise than as if his heart had been wounded by extreme sorrow.”—Dr. Edersheim.
NOTE 2. PAGE 125.—Adam lived till Methuselah was 243 years old. Methuselah lived till Shem, the son of Noah, had reached the age of 98 years. Shem must have had 150 years to live after the birth of Abraham, and 50 years after the birth of Isaac. Abraham lived till Jacob and Esau were 15 years old, Isaac till they were 120. Thus we see how directly the knowledge of all that God had taught Adam could be communicated to his descendants; Adam imparting it to Methuselah, Methuselah to Shem, Shem to Abraham and Isaac, and these patriarchs to Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel.
NOTE 3. PAGE 253.—This miracle had a meaning which Moses could not mistake. The serpent was probably the basilisk or Uræus, the Cobra. . . . This was the symbol of royal and divine power on the diadem of every Pharaoh. It was a poisonous snake, as is shown by the flight of Moses, and by most passages in which the same word occurs, nahash, derived from hissing. This snake never attacks without first inflating its neck, and then hissing; on the monuments it is always represented with its neck enormously swollen. The conversion of the rod was not merely a portent, it was a sign, at once a pledge and representation of victory over the king and gods of Egypt.—Speaker’s Commentary.
NOTE 4. PAGE 258.—In the command for Israel’s release, the Lord said to Pharaoh, “Israel is my son, even my first-born. . . . Let my son go, that he may serve me.” Ex. 4:22, 23. The psalmist tells us why God delivered Israel from Egypt: “He brought forth his people with joy, and his chosen with gladness; and gave them the lands of the heathen; and they inherited the labor of the people; that they might observe his statutes, and keep his laws.” Ps. 105:43-45. Here we learn that the Hebrews could not serve God in Egypt.
In Deut. 5:14, 15, we find special emphasis given to that portion of the fourth commandment which requires the man-servant and the maid-servant to rest, and the Israelite was told to remember that he had been a servant in the land of Egypt. The Lord said, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.” In Ex. 5:5 we learn that Moses and Aaron made the people “rest from their burdens.”
From these facts we may conclude that the Sabbath was one of the things in which they could not serve the Lord in Egypt; and when Moses and Aaron came with the message of God (Ex. 4:29-31), they attempted a reform, which only increased the oppression. The Israelites were delivered that they might observe the statutes of the Lord, including the fourth commandment, and this placed upon them an additional obligation to keep the Sabbath strictly, as well as to keep all the commandments. Thus in Deut. 24:17, 18, the fact of their deliverance from Egypt is cited as placing them under special obligation to show kindness to the widow and the fatherless: “Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow’s raiment to pledge; but thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee thence; therefore I command thee to do this thing.”
NOTE 5. PAGE 272.—That the plagues were designed to destroy the confidence of the Egyptians in the power and protection of their idols, is clearly shown in the following extracts from the “Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation”:—
“The first miracle, while it authenticated the mission of Moses, destroyed the serpents, which among the Egyptians were objects of worship; thus evincing, in the outset, that their gods could neither help the people nor save themselves.
“The second miracle was directed against the river Nile, another object which they regarded with religious reverence. This river they held sacred, as the Hindoos do the Ganges; and even the fish in its waters they revered as objects of worship. They drank the water with reverence and delight, and supposed that a divine efficacy dwelt in its waves to heal diseases of the body. The water of this their cherished object of idolatrous homage was transmuted to blood; and its finny idols became a mass of putridity.
“The third miracle was directed to the accomplishment of the same end, —the destruction of faith in the river as an object of worship. The waters of the Nile were caused to send forth legions of frogs, which infested the whole land, and became a nuisance and a torment to the people. Thus their idol, by the power of the true God, was polluted, and turned into a source of pollution to its worshipers.
“By the fourth miracle of a series constantly increasing in power and severity, lice came upon man and beast throughout the land. ‘Now, if it be remembered,’ says Gleig, ‘that no one could approach the altars of Egypt upon whom so impure an insect harbored; and that the priests, to guard against the slightest risk of contamination, wore only linen garments, and shaved their heads and bodies every day,’ the severity of this miracle759as a judgment upon Egyptian idolatry may be imagined. Whilst it lasted, no act of worship could be performed, and so keenly was this felt that the very magicians exclaimed, ‘This is the finger of God.’”
“The fifth miracle was designed to destroy the trust of the people in Beelzebub, or the Fly-god, who was reverenced as their protector from visitations of swarms of ravenous flies, which infested the land generally about the time of the dog-days, and removed only, as they supposed, at the will of this idol. The miracle now wrought by Moses evinced the impotence of Beelzebub, and caused the people to look elsewhere for relief from the fearful visitation under which they were suffering.
“The sixth miracle, which destroyed the cattle, excepting those of the Israelites, was aimed at the destruction of the entire system of brute worship. This system, degrading and bestial as it was, had become a monster of many heads in Egypt. They had their sacred bull, and ram, and heifer, and goat, and many others, all of which were destroyed by the agency of the God of Moses. Thus, by one act of power, Jehovah manifested his own supremacy, and destroyed the very existence of their brute idols.
“Of the peculiar fitness of the sixth plague (the seventh miracle), says the writer before quoted, the reader will receive a better impression, when he is reminded that in Egypt there were several altars upon which human sacrifices were occasionally offered, when they desired to propitiate Typhon, or the Evil Principle. These victims being burned alive, their ashes were gathered together by the officiating priests, and thrown up into the air, in order that evil might be averted from every place to which an atom of the ashes was wafted. By the direction of Jehovah, Moses took a handful of ashes from the furnace (which, very probably, the Egyptians at this time had frequently used to turn aside the plagues with which they were smitten), and he cast it into the air, as they were accustomed to do; and instead of averting evil, boils and blains fell upon all the people of the land. Neither king, nor priest, nor people escaped. Thus the bloody rites of Typhon became a curse to the idolaters, the supremacy of Jehovah was affirmed, and the deliverance of the Israelites insisted upon.
“The ninth miracle was directed against the worship of Serapis, whose peculiar office was supposed to be to protect the country from locusts. At periods these destructive insects came in clouds upon the land, and, like an overshadowing curse, they blighted the fruits of the field and the verdure of the forest. At the command of Moses these terrible insects came, and they retired only at his bidding. Thus was the impotence of Serapis made manifest, and the idolaters taught the folly of trusting in any other protection than that of Jehovah, the God of Israel.
“The eighth and tenth miracles were directed against the worship of Isis and Osiris, to whom and the river Nile they awarded the first place in the long catalogue of their idolatry. These idols were originally the representatives of the sun and moon; they were believed to control the light and the elements; and their worship prevailed in some form among all the early nations. The miracles directed against the worship of Isis and Osiris must have made a deep impression on the minds both of the Israelites and the Egyptians. In a country where rain seldom falls, where the atmosphere is always calm, and the light of the heavenly bodies always continued, what was the horror pervading all minds during the elemental war described in the Hebrew record; during the long period of three days760and three nights, while the gloom of thick darkness settled, like the outspread pall of death, over the whole land! Jehovah of hosts summoned Nature to proclaim him the true God; the God of Israel asserted his supremacy, and exerted his power to degrade the idols, destroy idolatry, and liberate the descendants of Abraham from the land of their bondage.
“The Almighty having thus revealed himself as the true God by miraculous agency, and pursued those measures, in the exercise of his power, which were directly adapted to destroy the various forms of idolatry which existed in Egypt, the eleventh and last miracle was a judgment, in order to manifest to all minds that Jehovah was the God who executes judgment in the earth.”
NOTE 6. PAGE 282.—In Gen. 15:13 we read that the Lord said to Abraham, “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years.” Ex. 12:40 says, “The sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.” But Paul in Gal. 3:15-17 says that from the making of the covenant with Abraham to the giving of the law at Sinai was four hundred and thirty years.
From these scriptures, then, we are not to understand that the Israelites were in Egypt four hundred years. The actual time spent in Egypt could have been only about two hundred and fifteen years. The Bible says that “the sojourning of the children of Israel” was four hundred and thirty years. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the ancestors of the Israelites, were sojourners in Canaan. The period of four hundred and thirty years dates from the promise given to Abraham when he was commanded to leave Ur of the Chaldees. The four hundred years of Gen. 15:13 dates from a later period. Notice that the period of four hundred years is not only a time of sojourning, but of affliction. This, according to the Scriptures, must be reckoned from thirty years later, about the time when Ishmael, “he that was born after the flesh, persecuted him [Isaac] that was born after the Spirit.” Gal. 4:29.
NOTE 7. PAGE 316.—The golden calf was a representation of the sacred bull called Apis, which the Egyptians worshiped, and with which the Israelites had necessarily become very familiar during their long sojourn in Egypt. Concerning this god Apis and what it signified, we find the following:—
“Apis, the bull worshiped by the ancient Egyptians, who regarded it as a symbol of Osiris, the god of the Nile, the husband of Isis, and the great divinity of Egypt.”—Chambers’s Encyclopedia.
The “Encyclopedia Britannica” (art. “Apis”), referring to the Greek writers and the hieroglyphic inscriptions, says: “According to this view the Apis was the incarnation of Osiris manifested in the shape of a bull.”
Since Apis was regarded as the visible manifestation of Osiris, we must learn what Osiris stood for, in order to understand the calf-worship of the Israelites. Again we quote from the “Encyclopedia Britannica”:—
“All the mysteries of the Egyptians, and their whole doctrine of the future state, attach themselves to this worship [of Osiris]. Osiris was identified with the sun. . . . Sun-worship was the primitive form of Egyptian religion, perhaps even pre-Egyptian.”
“It was to Osiris that the prayers and offerings for the dead were made, and all sepulchral inscriptions, except those of the oldest period, are directly addressed to him.” “The bull Apis, who bears in Egyptian the same name as the Nile, Hapi, was worshiped at Memphis. . . . Apis was considered to be the living emblem of Osiris, and was thus connected with the sun and the Nile.”
From these extracts it appears that the worship which the Israelites paid to the golden calf was really the Egyptian form of sun-worship,—that form of idolatry which has always stood foremost as the antagonist of the true worship of God. It is indeed significant that just at the time when God manifested himself to the Israelites in a peculiar manner, and made known to them his Sabbath, they should have fallen back into the old sun-worship, whose chief festival day—the first day of the week—has always contended for supremacy with the day specially distinctive of the worship of the true God.
The Israelites, in their adoration of the golden calf, professed to be worshiping God. Thus Aaron, when inaugurating the worship of the idol, proclaimed, “To-morrow is a feast unto Jehovah.” They proposed to worship God, as the Egyptians worshiped Osiris, under the semblance of the image. But God could not accept the service. Though offered in his name, the sun-god, and not Jehovah, was the real object of their adoration.
The worship of Apis was accompanied with the grossest licentiousness, and the Scripture record indicates that the calf-worship by the Israelites was attended with all the license usual in heathen worship. We read: “They rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt-offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” Ex. 32:6. The Hebrew word rendered “to play” signifies playing with leaping, singing, and dancing. This dancing, especially among the Egyptians, was sensual and indecent. The word rendered “corrupted” in the next verse, where it is said, “Thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves,” is the same that is used in Gen. 6:11, 12, where we read that the earth was corrupt, “for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.” This explains the terrible anger of the Lord, and why he desired to consume the people at once.
NOTE 8. PAGE 329.—The ten commandments were the “covenant” to which the Lord referred, when in proposing a covenant with Israel, he said, “If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant,” etc. Ex. 19:5. The ten commandments were termed God’s covenant, before the covenant was made with Israel. They were not an agreement made, but something which God commanded them to perform. Thus the ten commandments—God’s covenant—became the basis of the covenant made between him and Israel. The ten commandments in all their details, are “all these words,” concerning which the covenant was made. See Ex. 24:8.
NOTE 9. Page 354.—When a sin-offering was presented for a priest or for the whole congregation, the blood was carried into the holy place, and sprinkled before the vail, and placed upon the horns of the golden altar. The fat was consumed upon the altar of burnt-offering in the court, but the body of the victim was burned without the camp. See Lev. 4:1-21.
When, however, the offering was for a ruler or for one of the people, the blood was not taken into the holy place, but the flesh was to be eaten by the priest, as the Lord directed Moses: “The priest that offereth it for sin shall eat it: in a holy place shall it be eaten, in the court of the tent of meeting.” Lev. 6:26, Rev. Ver. See also Lev. 4:22-35.
NOTE 10. PAGE 366.—That the one who spoke the law, who called Moses into the mount and talked with him, was our Lord Jesus Christ, is evident from the following considerations:— Christ is the one through whom God has at all times revealed himself to man. “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all762things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” 1 Cor. 8:6. “This is he [Moses] that was in the church in the wilderness, with the Angel which spake to him in the Mount Sinai, and with our fathers; who received the lively oracles to give unto us.” Acts 7:38. This Angel was the Angel of God’s presence (Isa. 63:9), the Angel in whom was the name of the great Jehovah (Ex. 23:20-23). The expression can refer to no other than the Son of God.
Again: Christ is called the Word of God. John 1:1-3. He is so called because God gave his revelations to man in all ages through Christ. It was his Spirit that inspired the prophets. 1 Peter 1:10, 11. He was revealed to them as the Angel of Jehovah, the Captain of the Lord’s host, Michael the archangel.
NOTE 11. PAGE 603.—The question has been raised, and is now much agitated, If a theocracy was good in the time of Israel, why would not a theocratical form of government be equally good for this time? The answer is easy:—
A theocracy is a government which derives its power immediately from God. The government of Israel was a true theocracy. That was really a government of God. At the burning bush, God commissioned Moses to lead his people out of Egypt. By signs and wonders and mighty miracles multiplied, God delivered Israel from Egypt, and led them through the wilderness, and finally into the promised land. There he ruled them by judges “until Samuel the prophet,” to whom, when he was a child, God spoke, and by whom he made known his will. In the days of Samuel, the people asked that they might have a king. This was allowed, and God chose Saul, and Samuel anointed him king of Israel. Saul failed to do the will of God; and as he rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord rejected him from being king, and sent Samuel to anoint David king of Israel; and David’s throne God established forevermore. When Solomon succeeded to the kingdom in the place of David his father, the record is: “Then Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord as king instead of David his father.” 1 Chron. 29:23. David’s throne was the throne of the Lord, and Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord as king over the earthly kingdom of God. The succession to the throne descended in David’s line to Zedekiah, who was made subject to the king of Babylon, and who entered into a solemn covenant before God that he would loyally render allegiance to the king of Babylon. But Zedekiah broke his covenant; and then God said to him:—
“Thou profane, wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, thus saith the Lord God: Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it: and it shall be no more, until He come whose right it is; and I will give it him.” Eze. 21:25-27; see chap. 17:1-21.
The kingdom was then subject to Babylon. When Babylon fell, and Medo-Persia succeeded, it was overturned the first time. When Medo-Persia fell, and was succeeded by Grecia, it was overturned the second time. When the Greek empire gave way to Rome, it was overturned the third time. And then says the word, “It shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him.” Who is he whose right it is?—“Thou . . . shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” Luke 1:31-33. And while he was here as “that prophet,” a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,763the night in which he was betrayed he himself declared, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Thus the throne of the Lord has been removed from this world, and will “be no more, until he come whose right it is,” and then it will be given him. And that time is the end of this world, and the beginning of “the world to come.”
To the twelve apostles the Saviour said, “I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Luke 22:29, 30. From Matthew’s account of Christ’s promise to the twelve we learn when it will be fulfilled: “In the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Matt. 19:28. In the parable of the talents, Christ represents himself under the figure of a nobleman who “went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.” Luke 19:12. And he himself has told us when he will sit upon the throne of his glory: “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all nations.” Matt. 25:31, 32.
To this time the Revelator looks forward when he says, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever.” Rev. 11:15. The context clearly shows when this will take place: “The nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldst give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldst destroy them which destroy the earth.” Verse 18. It is at the time of the final Judgment, the reward of the righteous, and the punishment of the wicked, that the kingdom of Christ will be set up. When all who oppose the sovereignty of Christ have been destroyed, the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.
Then Christ will reign, “King of kings, and Lord of lords.” Rev. 19:16. “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High.” And “the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.” Dan. 7:27, 18.
Until that time the kingdom of Christ cannot be established on the earth. His kingdom is not of this world. His followers are to account themselves “strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” Paul says, “Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Heb. 11:13; Phil. 3:20, Rev. Ver.
Since the kingdom of Israel passed away, God has never delegated authority to any man or body of men to execute his laws as such. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Rom. 12:19. Civil governments have to do with the relations of man with man; but they have nothing whatever to do with the duties that grow out of man’s relation to God.
Except the kingdom of Israel, no government has ever existed on the earth, in which God by inspired men directed the affairs of State. Whenever men have endeavored to form such a government as that of Israel, they have, of necessity, taken it upon themselves to interpret and enforce the law of God. They have assumed the right to control the conscience, and thus have usurped the prerogative of God.
In the former dispensation, while sins against God were visited with temporal penalties, the judgments executed were not only by divine sanction, but under his direct control, and by his command. Sorcerers were to be put to death. Idolaters were to be slain. Profanity and sacrilege were punished with death. And whole nations of idolaters were to be exterminated.764But the infliction of these penalties was directed by Him who reads the hearts of men, who knows the measure of their guilt, and who deals with his creatures in wisdom and mercy. When men, with human frailties and passions, undertake to do this work, it needs no argument to show that the door is opened to unrestrained injustice and cruelty. The most inhuman crimes will be perpetrated, and all in the sacred name of Christ.
From the laws of Israel, which punished offenses against God, arguments have been drawn to prove the duty of punishing similar sins in this age. All persecutors have employed them to justify their deeds. The principle that God has delegated to human authority the right to control the conscience, is the very foundation of religious tyranny and persecution. But all who reason thus lose sight of the fact that we are now living in a different dispensation, under conditions wholly different from those of Israel; that the kingdom of Israel was a type of the kingdom of Christ, which will not be set up until his second coming; and that the duties which pertain to man’s relation to God are not to be regulated or enforced by human authority.
NOTE 12. PAGE 608.—Concerning the identity of the Ramah of Samuel with the Ramah of Benjamin, Dr. Edersheim says: “These two points seem established: Saul’s residence was at Gibeah, and he first met Samuel in Ramah. But if so, it seems impossible, in view of 1 Samuel 10:2, to identify the Ramah of Samuel with the Ramah of Benjamin, or to regard it as the modern Neby Samuel, four miles northwest of Jerusalem.”