the more remarkable that he was, properly speaking, no Israelite.
The narrative at this point associates his family with the tribe of
Judah. But Caleb was a Kenizzite (Numb. xxxii. 12); and Kenaz appears
in Gen. xxxvi. 11, 15, as an Edomite or descendant of Esau. At what
time this particular Kenizzite family joined the expedition of Israel
we have no hint. As yet, however, there was no inter-marriage; and
it should be noticed that the district which in consideration of his
fidelity Caleb has for his inheritance in Canaan is the same as was
occupied by Kenizzites before the conquest. There is, of course, no
improbability in this; it may rather appear to give proof of the
genuineness of the narrative. Caleb joins the Israelites, attaches
himself to Judah in the camp and on the march, proves himself a
faithful servant of God and of the host, and has the promise of his
forefathers' inheritance when the distribution of Canaan shall be
made. He reported favourably of the region about Hebron; and Hebron
became his city, as we learn from Josh. xiv.
In contrast to the special promise made to Joshua and Caleb is the
fate of the other ten whose report brought "a slander upon the
land." These "died by the plague before Jehovah." It would seem that
before Moses appealed to God on behalf of the people, the pestilence
was spreading which might have swept the Israelites down like
Sennacherib's army in after-times. And the ten false spies had been
among the first to die. Little indeed know men how soon Providence
will convict them of their faithlessness and rebellion. Let us
save our lives, they say, by holding back from duties that involve
difficulty and danger. Why advance where we are sure to fall by the
sword? But the sword finds them nevertheless, or the plague lays hold
of them; and where then is the life they were so careful to preserve?
The men of Israel who said, "Let us not go to Canaan, but return to
Egypt," neither see Canaan nor Egypt. They gain nothing they desire;
they lose all they were so careful to keep.
Suddenly at ver. 40 we are brought to a new development. The people
no sooner hear their doom than they resolve to take the future into
their own hands. They acknowledge that they have sinned, meaning,
however, only that they have fallen into a mistake the consequence
of which they had not foreseen; and with this inadequate confession
of fault they decide to make the advance into Canaan forthwith. They
do not see that instead of recovering their hope in God by any such
attempt they will really deepen the alienation between themselves and
Him. Submission is indeed hard, but it is their one grace, their one
duty. If they press on into Canaan, they must go without the Lord, as
Moses warns them, and they shall not prosper.
It is not enough when men have discovered an evil heart of unbelief,
and turned again in repentance, that they take up the thread of life
which has become ravelled. Perverse faithlessness cannot be cured by
a sudden decision to resume the duty which was abandoned in fear. The
refusal was no superficial thing, but had its source in the springs
of will, the character and habits of life. We are apt to judge
otherwise, and to suppose that we can alter the whole current of our
nature by a single act of choice. To-day the trend is strongly in one
direction, along a channel which has been forming for many years;
to-morrow we think it possible to become other men, strong where we
were weak, determined upon that which we abhorred. But something must
intervene; some change must take place deeper than our impulse. We
must have the new heart and the right spirit; and in proportion to
the gravity of the situation and the importance of the duty to be
done must the time of discipline be long. The wilderness wandering
had to be for many years because the temper of a whole people was to
be altered. For a single person a far shorter ordeal may suffice.
He may pass through the stages of conviction, repentance, and new
creation in a few weeks or even days. Nay, sometimes the regenerating
Spirit brings about the change apparently in a moment. Yet the rule
is that stability in faith must come slowly, that the way of trial
cannot be hastened. A great task, therefore, the right doing of which
is necessary to the open vindication of religion, may not be gone
about in a sudden change of mind. We are not to take lightly, into
untried hands, the massive plough of the kingdom of God.
In Canaan, the Amalekites and Canaanites, Moses said, would dispute
the advance of Israel,--Amalekites skilled in desultory war,
Canaanites long trained in military art. These would fight without
any sense of the support of the true God. But how would the Hebrews
speed, meeting them on the same footing? The contest would be then
between human skill and daring on either side; and there could be
no doubt as to the issue. Bands of men acquainted with the country,
disciplined in war as the tribes of Israel were not, fighting for
their fields and homes with a defence of walled cities to fall back
upon, would certainly win. If the Hebrews went up, it would be
without the sign of Jehovah's presence; the ark of the covenant could
not be borne with the army on such an expedition. Their attempt,
being presumptuous, must end in disaster.
Too often the conflicts in which the Church is involved are of this
very kind. There is profession of high moral design and Christian
principle. Ostensibly it is for the sake of true religion that
something is undertaken. But in reality the affair is not one
that belongs to the essence of faith. It is perhaps a question of
prestige, of exclusive claim to certain rights or moneys, the very
last thing a Christian church should insist upon. Then the contest is
between human diplomacy and resolution, whether on the one side or
the other. It is idle to call a campaign like this a holy war. The
ark of the covenant does not accompany the army that calls itself
Jehovah's. As Israel found that even Amalekites and Canaanites were
too strong for her, so has the Church often found that men whom she
termed unbelievers were superior to her in the arms she chose to
use. Again and again have her forces had to retire smitten even unto
Hormah. For those who are called unbelievers and atheists have their
rights; and they will always be able to maintain their rights against
a presumptuous church which "goes up into the mountain" without the
sanction of its living Head.
It was no general advance of the tribes that on this occasion
ended in defeat. The solid, resolute march of the whole people was
a very different thing from the half-hearted sally of some hundreds
of fighting men. When the host of the Israelites, men, women, and
children, moved together, the men of war had support in the sympathy
of those they defended, in the prayers of the priest and of the
people. They were nerved to play the part of heroes by the thought
that all depended upon them, that if they failed their wives and
children would be put to the sword. And again there is a parallel in
the advance of the Church against her adversaries. If the officials
only go out to fight, if it is their affair, their expedition, if
there is no strong onward movement of the whole host, what is there
to give support to the enterprise? The fighting men may seem to
have heart enough for their battle; but the underlying feeling that
they are not engaged in the defence of the Gospel itself, or in
guarding any position on which the power and success of the Gospel
depend, must always, and properly, weaken their arms. There is all
the difference in the world between an ecclesiastical battle and the
contest for vital faith. And it is a matter of regret that so much
of the strength and ardour of good men should be wasted in downright
earthly fighting, when the feeling of the Church as a whole is not
with those who claim to be her army. Let all the tribes, that is
to say all the churches of Christ that are of one mind as to vital
truth, advance together, without jealousy, without mutual contempt,
and the opposition to Christianity will practically melt away.
From the twenty-first chapter, which appears to open with a
reminiscence of the first attack on Canaan, we gather that one of
those who opposed the expedition was the Canaanite King of Arad.
The advance appears therefore to have been made by way of Hezron
and Beersheba. The mountains visible from the camp were likely the
chalk hills beyond the "Ascent of Akrabbim." These passed, probably
near Hezron, a valley opened, stretching away towards Hebron. The
Amalekites gathering from every wady, and the Canaanites from the
ridge to the right, where Arad lay, seem to have fallen upon the
Hebrews with a sudden onset. While many escaped others were slain or
taken captive. A keen memory of the defeat survived; but it was not
till long afterwards, in the days of the judges, that the strongholds
of the region were reduced.
XIII
_OFFERINGS: SABBATH-KEEPING: DRESS_
NUMBERS xv
The enactments of this chapter regarding meal offerings and drink
offerings, the heave offerings of the first dough, and the atonement
for unwitting errors belong to the cultus of Canaan. Nothing generic
distinguishes the first and third of these statutes from some that
were presumably to be observed in the desert; but the note is
explicit, "When ye be come into the land of your habitations which
I give unto you," "When ye be come into the land whither I bring
you." The whole chapter, with its instance of presumptuous sin
introduced by the clause, "And while the children of Israel were in
the wilderness," marking a return to that time, and its commandment
regarding the fringes or tassels of blue to be attached to the dress
as remembrancers of obligations, may appear at first sight without
any reference either to what has preceded or what follows. The
compilers, however, have a definite purpose in view. The presumption
of Korah and his company, and of Dathan and Abiram, is in contrast
to the unwitting faults for which atonement is provided, and it
comes under the category of what is "done with a high hand"--a form
of blasphemy which is to be punished with death. The case of the
Sabbath-breaker is an instance of this unpardonable sin, and sends
its light on to the incidents that follow. Even the memorial fringes
or tassels, and the prophetic sentences that accompany the command to
wear them, seem to be forewarnings of the doom of sacrilegious men.
1. MEAL AND DRINK OFFERINGS.--The statute regarding offerings "to make
a sweet savour unto Jehovah" is specially occupied with prescribing the
proportion of flour and oil and wine to be presented along with the
animal brought for a burnt offering or sacrifice. Any one separating
himself in terms of a vow, or desiring to express gratitude for some
Divine favour, or again on the occasion of a sacred festival when he
had special cause of rejoicing before God, might bring a lamb, a ram,
or an ox as his oblation; and the meal and drink offerings were to vary
with the value of the animal brought for sacrifice. The law does not
demand the same offering of every person under similar circumstances.
According to his means or his gratitude he may give. But deciding first
as to his burnt or slain offering, he must add to it, for a lamb, the
tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with a quarter of a hin of oil,
and also a quarter of a hin of wine. For a bullock, the quantities were
to be three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour, with half a hin of oil,
and, as a drink offering, half a hin of wine.
The provision is a singular one, based on some sense of what was
becoming which we cannot pretend to revive. But it points to a rule
which the Apostle Paul may have recognised in this and other Jewish
statutes as belonging to universal morality: "Take thought for things
honourable in the sight of all men." To make a show of generosity
by giving a bullock, while the flour and oil and wine were withheld,
was not seemly. Neither is it seemly for a Christian to be lavish in
his gifts to the Church, but withhold the meal offering and drink
offering he owes to the poor. Throughout the whole range of use
and expenditure, personal and of the family, a proportion is to be
found which it is one of the Christian arts to determine, one of
the Christian duties to observe. And nothing is right unless all is
right. The penny saved here takes away the sweet savour of the pound
given there. No man is in this to be a law to himself. Public justice
and Divine are to be satisfied.
The presence or absence of oil in an oblation marked its character.
The sin offering and the jealousy offering were without oil. The
"oil of joy" (Isa. lxi. 3) accompanied festal and peace offerings.
All ordinances prescribing the oblation of wine and oil necessarily
belonged to the cultus of Canaan, for in the wilderness neither
of these elements of the sacrifice could be always had. The idea
underlying the peace offerings, with their accompanying meal and
drink offerings, was unquestionably that of feasting with Jehovah,
enjoying His bounty at His table. Acknowledgment was made that the
cattle on the hills were His, that it was He who gave the harvest,
the vintage, and the fruit of the olive-grove. Confession of man's
indebtedness to Jehovah as Lord of nature was interwoven with the
whole sacrificial system.
In connection with this ordinance of meal and drink offerings, and
that of atonement for unintentional failures in duty (ver. 22 ff.),
it is very carefully enacted that the law shall be the same for the
"homeborn" and the "stranger." "For the assembly there shall be
one statute for you and for the stranger that sojourneth with you,
a statute for ever throughout your generations: as ye are, so shall
the stranger be before the Lord." The design is to secure religious
unity, and by means of it gradually to incorporate with Israel all
dwellers in the land. While certain ordinances were intended to make
Israel a holy nation separated and consecrated to Jehovah, this
admission of strangers to the privileges of the covenant has another
design. In the Book of Deuteronomy (vii. 2) a statute occurs that
entirely excludes from citizenship and incorporation all Canaanites,
Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Hivites, Girgashites, and Perizzites.
There was to be no intermarriage with them, no toleration of them,
lest they led Israel away into idolatry. The statute is enforced by
the words, "For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the
Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto Himself,
above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth." With this
emphatic assertion of the severance of the Hebrews from other races
the strain of Numbers, as well as Exodus and Leviticus, generally
agrees. When we endeavour to harmonise with it the admission of
strangers to the right and joy of sacrificial festivals, we at
once meet the difficulty that no other races were fitter to be
received into religious confraternity than those of Canaan. Neither
Babylonians, Syrians, Phœnicians, nor Philistines were free from the
taint of idolatry; and however degrading the rites of the Canaanites
were, some of the other nations followed practices quite as revolting.
We know that for a long period of Israel's history strangers were,
according to the statute presently under consideration, admitted to the
fellowship of religion, as well as to high office in the state. "We
have only to study the Book of Joshua to discover that the Israelites,
like the Saxons in Britain, destroyed the cities and not the population
of the country, and that the number of cities actually overthrown was
not very large. We have only to turn to the list of the 'mighty men' of
David to learn how many of them were foreigners, Hittites, Ammonites,
Zobahites, and even Philistines of Gath (2 Sam. xv. 18, 19; vi. 10).
Nor must it be forgotten that David himself was partly a Moabite by
descent."[6] In accordance with this large tolerance we might be
disposed to include among the "strangers" admitted to privilege men
belonging to races that inhabited Canaan before the conquest. Even
Deuteronomy seems in one passage to exclude none but Ammonites and
Moabites; and the covenant law of Exod. xxiii. commands generous
treatment of the stranger. In contrast to the "homeborn," strangers
may appear to mean those only who had come from other countries and
chosen to identify themselves with the faith and fortunes of Israel;
still this passage attempts no such definition, and on the whole
we must allow that the Mosaic law in regulating the political and
social position of resident non-Israelites showed "a spirit of great
liberality." They had, of course, to conform to many laws--those, for
instance, of marriage, and those which forbade the eating of blood and
the flesh of animals not properly slaughtered. If uncircumcised, they
could not keep the Passover; but being circumcised, they had equal
rights with the Hebrews. The purpose evidently was to make an open way
to the benefits of Israel's government and religion.
The heave offering of the first dough is placed (ver. 20) side by
side with the heave offering of the threshing-floor of the first
sheaves. In Leviticus (xxiii. 17) a harvest oblation is ordered--two
wave-loaves of fine flour baken with leaven. Here the heave offering
of a cake made from the first dough is not accompanied with
sacrifices of animals, but is of a simple kind, mainly a tribute to
the priests. The Deuteronomic statute regarding firstfruits, which
were to be put in a basket and set down before the altar, prescribed
a formula of dedication beginning, "An Aramean ready to perish was
my father, and he went down into Egypt": and the offering of these
firstfruits was to be an occasion of joy--"Thou shalt rejoice in
all the good which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee and unto
thine house, thou and the Levite, and the stranger that is in the
midst of thee." There can be no question that the most developed
statute regarding these harvest offerings is that given in Leviticus,
where the exact time for the presentation of the loaves is fixed,
the fiftieth day after the Sabbath, from the day when the sheaf was
brought. The feast accompanying the offering of the loaves came to be
known as that of Pentecost.
Passing now to the law of atonement for unintentional omissions of
duty, we notice that the introductory sentences (vv. 22, 23) have a
peculiar retrospective cast. They seem to point back to the time when
the Lord gave commandment by the hand of Moses. It would appear that
in course of years discovery was made that portions of the law were
neglected, and the provisions of this statute were to relieve the
nation and individuals of accumulating defilement. "When ye shall err,
and not observe all these commandments, which the Lord hath spoken unto
Moses, even all that the Lord hath commanded you by the hand of Moses,
from the day that the Lord gave commandment, and onward throughout
your generations; then it shall be, if it be done unwittingly, without
the knowledge of the congregation"--so runs the preamble. A series
of statutes in Lev. iv. contemplates offences of a like kind, when
something has been done which the Lord commanded not to be done. The
enactment of Numbers appears to point to a "complete falling away of
the congregation from the whole of the law," an unconscious apostasy.
Maimonides understands the provision as relating to guilt incurred by
the people in adopting customs and usages of the heathen that seemed
to be reconcilable with the law of Jehovah, though they really led to
contempt and neglect of His commandments.[7]
For the nation as a whole, under these circumstances, atonement was
to be made by the burnt offering of a young bullock with its meal
offering and drink offering, and the sin offering of a he-goat. In
this purgation all strangers resident with Israel are specially
included. When any person discovered that he had neglected a precept,
he was to offer a she-goat of the first year for a sin offering.
The Israelite and the stranger alike had in this way access to the
sanctuary. But in contrast to unintentional omission of duty was set
deliberate neglect of it. For this there was no atonement. Whether
the high-handed transgressor was homeborn or a stranger, he was to be
utterly cut off as a blasphemer; his iniquity rested upon him. The
distinction is morally sound; and the punishment of the rebel against
authority--apparently nothing less than death, or perhaps, if he has
fled the land, outlawry--is such as the theocratic idea obviously
required. It was Jehovah Himself who was defied. A man who, as it
were, shook his fist in rebellion against God had no right to live in
His world, under the protection of His beneficent laws.
The distinction between unwitting neglect and open rejection runs
through the whole range of duty, natural, Hebrew, Christian. What
a man knows to be right he has before him as a Divine law of moral
conduct. By the highest obligations, under which he lies to the
Lord of conscience, to his fellow-men, and to himself, he is bound
to obey. Judaism added the authority of revelation--the Mosaic law,
the prophetic word. Christianity still further adds the authority
of the word spoken by the Son of God, and the obligation imposed by
His death as the manifestation of eternal love. In proportion as the
Divine will is made clear, and the law enforced by revelation and
grace, the sin of rejection becomes greater and more blasphemous.
But, on the other hand, the unwitting transgressor, be he heathen
or imperfectly instructed Christian, has under the new covenant, in
which mercy and justice go hand in hand, no less consideration than
the Hebrew who unintentionally erred. There is no law that cuts him
off from his people. Wide as this principle may reach, it must be
that according to which men are judged. Many, knowing the invisible
things of God "through the things that are made," are without excuse.
They "hold down the truth in unrighteousness"; they are high-handed
transgressors. But others who have no knowledge of the Divine law,
and break it unwittingly, have their atonement: God provides it. Nor
are we to impeach Divine Providence by judging before the time.