Holy Writ, represents Moses as attended to the top of Pisgah by Joshua,
his successor, Eleazar, the high priest, and the whole senate; and that,
after he had dismissed the senate, while he was conversing with Joshua
and Eleazar, and embracing them, a cloud suddenly came over and
enveloped him; and he vanished from their sight, and he was taken away
to a certain valley. In the sacred books,” says he, it is written, that
he died; fearing to say that on account of his transcendent virtue, he
had departed to the Deity.” The Jewish historian has here, perhaps,
imitated the account of our Lord’s ascension, furnished by the
evangelist, Luke xxiv, 50; Acts i, 9; wishing to raise Moses to a level
with Christ. The preëminence of Moses’s character is briefly described
by the sacred historian, Samuel or Ezra: And there arose not a prophet
since, in Israel, like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face; in
all the signs and the wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the land
of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and all his servants, and all his land; and in all
that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses showed in the
sight of all Israel,” Deut. xxxiv, 10–12.
So marked and hallowed is the character of this, the most eminent of
mere men, that it has often been successfully made the basis of an
irresistible argument for the truth of his divine mission. Thus
Cellérier observes, Every imposture has an object in view, and an aim
more or less selfish. Men practise deceit for money, for pleasure, or
for glory. If, by a strange combination, the love of mankind ever
entered into the mind of an impostor, doubtless, even then, he has
contrived to reconcile, at least, his own selfish interests with those
of the human race. If men deceive others, for the sake of causing their
own opinions or their own party to triumph, they may sometimes, perhaps,
forget their own interests during the struggle, but they again remember
them when the victory is achieved. It is a general rule, that no
impostor forgets himself long. But Moses forgot himself, and forgot
himself to the last. Yet there is no middle supposition. If Moses was
not a divinely inspired messenger, he was an impostor in the strongest
sense of the term. It is not, as in the case of Numa, a slight and
single fraud, designed to secure some good end, that we have to charge
him with, but a series of deceits, many of which were gross; a profound,
dishonest, perfidious, sanguinary dissimulation, continued for the space
of forty years. If Moses was not a divinely commissioned prophet, he was
not the saviour of the people, but their tyrant and their murderer.
Still, we repeat, this barbarous impostor always forgot himself; and his
disinterestedness, as regarded himself personally, his family, and his
tribe, is one of the most extraordinary features in his administration.
As to himself personally: He is destined to die in the wilderness; he is
never to taste the tranquillity, the plenty, and the delight, the
possession of which he promises to his countrymen; he shares with them
only their fatigues and privations; he has more anxieties than they, on
their account, in their acts of disobedience, and in their perpetual
murmurings. As to his family: He does not nominate his sons as his
successors; he places them, without any privileges or distinctions,
among the obscure sons of Levi; they are not even admitted into the
sacerdotal authority. Unlike all other fathers, Moses withdraws them
from public view, and deprives them of the means of obtaining glory and
favour. Samuel and Eli assign a part of their paternal authority to
their sons, and permit them even to abuse it; but the sons of Moses, in
the wilderness, are only the simple servants of the tabernacle; like all
the other sons of Kohath, if they even dare to raise the veil which
covers the sacred furniture, the burden of which they carry, death is
denounced against them. Where can we find more complete
disinterestedness than in Moses? Is not his the character of an upright
man, who has the general good, not his own interests, at heart; of a man
who submissively acquiesces in the commands of God, without resistance
and without demur? When we consider these several things; when we
reflect on all the ministry of Moses, on his life, on his death, on his
character, on his abilities, and his success; we are powerfully
convinced that he was the messenger of God. If we consider him only as
an able legislator, as a Lycurgus, as a Numa, his actions are
inexplicable: we find not in him the affections, the interests, the
views which usually belong to the human heart. The simplicity, the
harmony, the verity of his natural character are gone; they give place
to an incoherent union of ardour and imposture; of daring and of
timidity, of incapacity and genius, of cruelty and sensibility. No!
Moses was inspired by God: he received from God the law which he left
his countrymen.
To Moses we owe that important portion of Holy Scripture, the
Pentateuch, which brings us acquainted with the creation of the world,
the entrance of sin and death, the first promises of redemption, the
flood, the peopling of the postdiluvian earth, and the origin of
nations, the call of Abraham, and the giving of the law. We have,
indeed, in it the early history of religion, and a key to all the
subsequent dispensations of God to man. The genuineness and authenticity
of these most venerable and important books have been established by
various writers; but the following remarks upon the veracity of the
writings of Moses have the merit of compressing much argument into few
words:--1. There is a _minuteness_ in the details of the Mosaic
writings, which bespeaks their truth; for it often bespeaks the
eye-witness, as in the adventures of the wilderness; and often seems
intended to supply directions to the artificer, as in the construction
of the tabernacle. 2. There are _touches of nature_ in the narrative
which bespeak its truth, for it is not easy to regard them otherwise
than as strokes from the life; as where the mixed multitude,” whether
half-castes or Egyptians, are the first to sigh for the cucumbers and
melons of Egypt, and to spread discontent through the camp, Num. xi, 4;
as the miserable exculpation of himself, which Aaron attempts, with all
the cowardice of conscious guilt, I cast into the fire, and there came
out this calf:” the fire, to be sure, being in the fault, Exod. xxxii,
24. 3. There are certain little _inconveniences_ represented as turning
up unexpectedly, that bespeak truth in the story; for they are just such
accidents as are characteristic of the working of a new system and
untried machinery. What is to be done with the man who is found
gathering sticks on the Sabbath day? Num. xv, 32. (Could an impostor
have devised such a trifle?) How is the inheritance of the daughters of
Zelophehad to be disposed of, there being no heir male? Num. xxxvi, 2.
Either of them inconsiderable matters in themselves, but both giving
occasion to very important laws; the one touching life, and the other
property. 4. There is a _simplicity_ in the manner of Moses, when
telling his tale, which bespeaks its truth: no parade of language, no
pomp of circumstance even in his miracles, a modesty and dignity
throughout all. Let us but compare him in any trying scene with
Josephus; his description, for instance, of the passage through the Red
Sea, Exod. xiv, of the murmuring of the Israelites and the supply of
quails and manna, with the same as given by the Jewish historian, or
rhetorician we might rather say, and the force of the observation will
be felt. 5. There is a _candour_ in the treatment of his subject by
Moses, which bespeaks his truth; as when he tells of his own want of
eloquence, which unfitted him for a leader, Exod. iv, 10; his own want
of faith, which prevented him from entering the promised land, Num. xx,
12; the idolatry of Aaron his brother, Exod. xxxii, 21; the profaneness
of Nadab and Abihu, his nephews, Lev. x; the disaffection and punishment
of Miriam, his sister, Num. xii, 1. 6. There is a _disinterestedness_ in
his conduct, which bespeaks him to be a man of truth; for though he had
sons, he apparently takes no measures during his life to give them
offices of trust or profit; and at his death he appoints as his
successor one who had no claims upon him, either of alliance, of
clanship, or of blood. 7. There are certain _prophetical_ passages in
the writings of Moses, which bespeak their truth; as, several respecting
the future Messiah, and the very sublime and literal one respecting the
final fall of Jerusalem, Deut. xxviii. 8. There is a _simple key_
supplied by these writings, to the meaning of many ancient traditions
current among the Heathens, though greatly disguised, which is another
circumstance that bespeaks their truth: as, the golden age; the garden
of the Hesperides; the fruit tree in the midst, of the garden which the
dragon guarded; the destruction of mankind by a flood, all except two
persons, and those righteous persons,
_Innocuos ambos, cultores numinis ambos_;
[Both innocent, both worshippers of Deity;]
the rainbow, which Jupiter set in the cloud, a sign to men;” the seventh
day a sacred day; with many others, all conspiring to establish the
reality of the facts which Moses relates, because tending to show that
vestiges of the like present themselves in the traditional history of
the world at large. 9. The concurrence which is found between the
writings of Moses and those of the New Testament bespeaks their truth:
the latter constantly appealing to them, being indeed but the completion
of the system which the others are the first to put forth. Nor is this
an illogical argument; for, though the credibility of the New Testament
itself may certainly be reasoned out from the truth of the Pentateuch
once established, it is still very far from depending on that
circumstance exclusively, or even principally. The New Testament demands
acceptance on its own merits, on merits distinct from those on which the
books of Moses rest, therefore (so far as it does so) it may fairly give
its suffrage for their veracity, _valeat quantum valet_: [it may avail
as far as it goes;] and surely it is a very improbable thing, that two
dispensations, separated by an interval of some fifteen hundred years,
each exhibiting prophecies of its own, since fulfilled; each asserting
miracles of its own, on strong evidence of its own; that two
dispensations, with such individual claims to be believed, should also
be found to stand in the closest relation to one another, and yet both
turn out impostures after all. 10. Above all, there is a comparative
_purity_ in the theology and morality of the Pentateuch, which argues
not only its truth, but its high original; for how else are we to
account for a system like that of Moses, in such an age and among such a
people; that the doctrine of the unity, the self-existence, the
providence, the perfections of the great God of heaven and earth, should
thus have blazed forth (how far more brightly than even in the vaunted
schools of Athens at its most refined era!) from the midst of a nation,
of themselves ever plunging into gross and grovelling idolatry; and that
principles of social duty, of benevolence, and of self-restraint,
extending even to the thoughts of the heart, should have been the
produce of an age which the very provisions of the Levitical law itself
show to have been full of savage and licentious abominations? Exod. iii,
14; xx, 3–17; Lev. xix, 2, 18; Deut. vi, 4; xxx, 6. Such are some of the
internal evidences for the veracity of the books of Moses. 11. Then the
situation in which the Jews actually found themselves placed, as a
matter of fact, is no slight argument for the truth of the Mosaic
accounts; reminded, as they were, by certain memorials observed from
year to year, of the great events of their early history, just as they
are recorded in the writings of Moses, memorials universally recognised
both in their object and in their authority. The passover, for instance,
celebrated by all, no man doubting its meaning, no man in all Israel
assigning to it any other origin than one, viz. that of being a
contemporary monument of a miracle displayed in favour of the people of
Israel; by right of which credentials, and no other, it summoned from
all quarters of the world, at great cost, and inconvenience, and danger,
the dispersed Jews, none disputing the obligation to obey the summons.
12. Then the heroic _devotion_ with which the Israelites continued to
regard the law, even long after they had ceased to cultivate the better
part of it, even when that very law only served to condemn its
worshippers, so that they would offer themselves up by thousands, with
their children and wives, as martyrs to the honour of their temple, in
which no image, even of an emperor, who could scourge them with
scorpions for their disobedience, should be suffered to stand, and they
live: so that rather than violate the sanctity of the Sabbath day, the
bravest men in arms would lay down their lives as tamely as sheep, and
allow themselves to be burned in the holes where they had taken refuge
from their cruel and cowardly pursuers. All this points to their law, as
having been at first promulgated under circumstances too awful to be
forgotten even after the lapse of ages. 13. Then again, the
extraordinary degree of _national pride_ with which the Jews boasted
themselves to be God’s peculiar people, as if no nation ever was or ever
could be so nigh to him; a feeling which the early teachers of
Christianity found an insuperable obstacle to the progress of the Gospel
among them, and which actually did effect its ultimate rejection, this
may well seem to be founded upon a strong traditional sense of uncommon
tokens of the Almighty’s regard for them above all other nations of the
earth, which they had heard with their ears, or their fathers had
declared unto them, even the noble works that he had done in the old
time before them. 14. Then again, the constant craving after a sign,”
which beset them in the latter days of their history, as a lively
certificate of the prophet; and not after a sign only, but after such a
one as they would themselves prescribe: What sign showest thou, that we
may see, and believe? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert,” John vi,
31. This desire, so frequently expressed, and with which they are so
frequently reproached, looks like the relic of an appetite engendered in
other times, when they had enjoyed the privilege of more intimate
communion with God; it seems the wake, as it were, of miracles departed.
15. Lastly, the very _onerous_ nature of the law; so studiously meddling
with all the occupations of life, great and small;--this yoke would
scarcely have been endured, without the strongest assurance, on the part
of those who were galled by it, of the authority by which it was
imposed. For it met them with some restraint or other at every turn.
Would they plough? then it must not be with an ox and an ass. Would they
sow? then must not the seed be mixed. Would they reap? then must they
not reap clean. Would they make bread? then must they set apart dough
enough for the consecrated loaf. Did they find a bird’s nest? then must
they let the old bird fly away. Did they hunt? then they must shed the
blood of their game, and cover it with dust. Did they plant a fruit
tree? for three years was the fruit to be uncircumcised. Did they shave
their beards? they were not to cut the corners. Did they weave a
garment? then must it be only with threads prescribed. Did they build a
house? they must put rails and battlements on the roof. Did they buy an
estate? at the year of jubilee, back it must go to its owner. All these
(and how many more of the same kind might be named!) are enactments
which it must have required extraordinary influence in the lawgiver to
enjoin, and extraordinary reverence for his powers to perpetuate.
Still, after all, says Mr. Blunt, unbelievers may start
difficulties,--this I dispute not; difficulties, too, which we may not
always be able to answer, though I think we may be always able to
neutralize them. It may be a part of our trial, that such difficulties
should exist and be encountered; for there can be no reason why
temptations should not be provided for the natural pride of our
understanding, as well as for the natural lusts of our flesh. To many,
indeed, they would be the more formidable of the two, perhaps to the
angels who kept not their first estate they proved so. With such facts,
however, before me, as these which I have submitted to my readers, I can
come to no conclusion but one,--that when we read the writings of Moses,
we read no cunningly devised fables, but solemn and safe records of
great and marvellous events, which court examination, and sustain it;
records of such apparent veracity and faithfulness, that I can
understand our Lord to have spoken almost without a figure, when he
said, that he who believed not Moses, neither would he be persuaded
though one rose from the dead.
MOTH, עיש, Job iv, 19; and עשש, Job xiii, 28; xxvii, 18; Psalm vi, 7;
xxxi, 9, 10; xxxix, 11; Isaiah l, 9; Hosea v, 12. The clothes moth is
the _tinea argentea_; of a white, shining silver, or pearl colour. It is
clothed with shells, fourteen in number, and these are scaly. Albin
asserts this to be the insect that eats woollen stuffs; and says that it
is produced from a gray speckled moth, that flies by night, creeps among
woollens, and there lays her eggs, which, after a little time, are
hatched as worms, and in this state they feed on their habitation, till
they change into a chrysalis, and thence emerge into moths. The young
moth, or moth worm,” says the Abbé Pluche, upon leaving the egg which a
_papilio_ had lodged upon a piece of stuff commodious for her purpose,
finds a proper place of residence, grows and feeds upon the nap, and
likewise builds with it an apartment, which is fixed to the groundwork
of the stuff with several cords and a little glue. From an aperture in
this habitation, the moth worm devours and demolishes all about him;
and, when he has cleared the place, he draws out all the fastenings of
his tent; after which he carries it to some little distance, and then
fixes it with the slender cords in a new situation. In this manner he
continues to live at our expense, till he is satisfied with his food, at
which period he is first transformed into the _nympha_, and then changed
into the _papilio_.”
The allusions to this insect in the sacred writings are very striking:
Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their
revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm
shall eat them like wool.” They shall perish with as little noise as a
garment under the tooth of a moth, Isaiah li, 7, 8. In the prophecies of
Hosea, God himself says, I will be as a moth unto Ephraim, and as a
lion;” that is, I will send silent and secret judgments upon him, which
shall imperceptibly waste his beauty, corrode his power, and diminish
his strength, and will finish his destruction with open and irresistible
calamities. Or the meaning may be, As the moth crumbles into dust under
the slightest pressure, or the gentlest touch, so man dissolves with
equal ease, and vanishes into darkness, under the finger of the
Almighty. Deeply sensible of this affecting truth, the royal Psalmist
earnestly deprecates the judgments of God, humbly confessing his own
weakness, and the inability of every man to endure his frown: Remove thy
stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of thy hand. When thou
with rebukes doth correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to
consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah,” Psalm
xxxix, 10, 11. Such, in the estimation of Job, is the fading prosperity
of a wicked man: He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that
the keeper maketh,” Job xxvii, 18. His unrighteous acquisitions shall be
of short continuance; they shall moulder insensibly away, returning to
the lawful owner, or pass into the possession of others. It is in this
sense that the Lord threatens: I will be unto Ephraim as a moth,” Hosea
v, 12. By the secret curse of God he shall fade away, and whatever is
most precious in his estimation shall be gradually dissolved and
consumed, as a garment eaten by the moth. The same allusion is involved
in the direction of our Lord to his disciples: Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do
not break through nor steal,” Matthew vi, 19, 20. The word _treasure_
commonly suggests to our minds the idea of some durable substance, as
precious stones, gold, and silver, upon which the persevering industry
of a moth can make no impression; but, in the language of inspiration,
it denotes every thing collected together which men reckon valuable. The
Jews had treasures of raiment as well as of corn, of wine, of oil, of
honey, Jer. xli, 8; and of gold, silver, and brass, Ezek. xxxiii, 4;
Dan. xi, 43. The robes of princes were a part of their treasure, upon
which they often set a particular value. Rich vestments made a
conspicuous figure in the treasury of Ulysses. These were, from their
nature, exposed to the depredations of the moth; fabricated of perishing
materials, they were liable to be prematurely consumed, or taken away by
fraud or violence; but the favour of God, and the graces of his Spirit,
and the enjoyment of eternal happiness, are neither liable to internal
decay nor external violence, and by consequence, are the proper objects
of our highest regard, chief solicitude, and constant pursuit. It is
also likely, that by moth” our Lord meant all the kinds of small insects
which devour or spoil the different kinds of property, such as corn,
honey, fruits, &c, which were treasured up for the future. These, in
warm countries, are very numerous and destructive.
MOURNING. See BURIAL and DEAD.
MOUSE, עבבר, in Chaldee _acalbar_, probably the same with the _aliarbui_
of the Arabians or the _jerboa_, Leviticus xi, 29; 1 Samuel vi, 4, 5,
11, 18; Isaiah xlvi, 17. All interpreters acknowledge that the Hebrew
word _achbar_ signifies a mouse,” and more especially a field mouse.”
Moses declares it to be unclean, which insinuates that it was sometimes
eaten; and, indeed, it is affirmed that the Jews were so oppressed with
famine during the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, that,
notwithstanding this prohibition, they were compelled to eat dogs, mice,
and rats. Isaiah, lxvi, 17, justly reproaches the Jews with eating the
flesh of mice and other things that were impure and abominable. It is
known what spoil was made by mice in the fields of the Philistines, 1
Sam. vi, 5, 6, &c, after this people had brought into the country the
ark of the Lord; so that they were obliged to take the resolution to
send it back, accompanied with mice and emerods of gold, as an atonement
for the irreverence they had committed, and to avert from their land the
vengeance that pursued them. Judea has suffered by these animals in
other times. William, archbishop of Tyre, records, that in the beginning
of the twelfth century a penitential council was held at Naplouse, where
five and twenty canons were framed for the correction of the manners of
the inhabitants of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, who, they
apprehended, had provoked God to bring upon them the calamities of
earthquakes, war, and famine. This last the archbishop ascribes to
locusts and devouring mice, which had for four years together so
destroyed the fruits of the earth, as seemed to cause almost a total
failure in their crops. Bochart has collected many curious accounts
relative to the terrible devastation made by these animals.