Continued from Chapter IV. The Mosaic Programme – Part I..

(Note: I really like the section of the numerous comparisons of Moses with Jesus Christ in this article! I don’t remember anybody preach on that the 54 years I’ve been a Christian!)

The frog similarly was regarded as a sacred symbol, and formed the head of the great god Ptah. The cow and the ox were, of course, specially sacred—the Apis and Mnevis of Egyptian idolatry. They were, in fact, the chief of the gods; and when the murrain fell on the cattle, the priests must have beheld with consternation their primary deities laid low; and when at last the darkness that might be felt overshadowed the land for three days, the supreme Sun-god of Egypt seemed to be struck out by the God of Israel. But all availed not to bow the stubborn will of Pharaoh; his land might be destroyed, and yet the monarch would not yield to his Maker; and thus there came at last the dread catastrophe —the death by pestilence of the firstborn. “From the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne” (that is, who reigned with him) “unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of cattle” (including the deified beasts of the temples).

The connection of the plague of darkness with the pestilence that followed is remarkable, as something similar has not unfrequently happened in Egypt. The plague at times follows a severe blast of the Chamsin, or sand-storm, which may produce absolute darkness such as that described. Ten thousand men died in one day in 1696. In 1714 it was reckoned three hundred thousand died of the plague in Constantinople. In 2 Samuel xxiv. we read that seventy thousand died of it in Palestine in three days.

“Uhlemann strikingly reminds us that all the plagues are connected with the natural peculiarities and phenomena of Egypt, and that they show the narrator’s intimate knowledge of the country. ‘The Almighty hand of God,’ he continues, ‘shows itself, hence, not so much in the wonders themselves, as in their wide reach, their intensity, and the swift succession in which they came, at the Divine command—for, individually, they are specially characteristic of Egypt, in a certain degree, at all times.” (Geikie, p. 163.)

That the death of the firstborn was occasioned by the plague seems evident from the words in the Psalm, “He gave their life over to the pestilence, and smote all the firstborn in Egypt, the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham.”

“The direct and indirect effects of the plagues were, in fact, equally necessary, humanly speaking, for the accomplishment of that event.

“In the first place, it must be remarked that the delay occasioned by Pharaoh’s repeated refusals to listen to the commands afforded ample time for preparation. Two full months elapsed between the first and second interview of Moses with the king (see notes on v. 7, and vii. 17). During that time the people, uprooted for the first time from the district in which they had been settled for centuries, were dispersed throughout Egypt, subjected to severe suffering, and impelled to exertions of a kind differing altogether from their ordinary habits, whether as herdsmen or bondsmen. This was the first, and a most important step in their training for a migratory life in the desert.

“Towards the end of June, at the beginning of the rise of the annual inundation, the first series of plagues began. The Nile was stricken. Egypt was visited in the centre both of its physical existence and of its national superstitions. Pharaoh did not give way, and no intimation as yet was made to the people that permission for their departure would be extorted; but the intervention of their Lord was now certain; the people, on their return wearied and exhausted from the search for stubble, had an interval of suspense. Three months appear to have intervened between this and the next plague. There must have been a movement among all the families of Israel; as they recapitulated their wrongs and hardships, the sufferings of their officers, and their own position of hopeless antagonism to their oppressors, it is impossible that they should not have looked about them, calculated their numbers and resources, and meditated upon the measures which, under the guidance of a leader of ability and experience, might enable them to effect their escape from Egypt. Five months might not be too much, but were certainly sufficient, to bring the people so far into a state of preparation for departure.

“The plague of frogs followed. It will be shown that it coincided in time with the greatest extension of the inundation in September. Pharaoh then gave the first indication of yielding; the permission extorted from him, though soon recalled, was not therefore ineffectual. On the one hand, native worship in one of its oldest and strangest forms was attacked; on the other hand, Moses was not likely to lose any time in transmitting instructions to the people. The first steps may have been then taken towards an orderly marshalling of the people.

“The third plague differed from the preceding in one important point. There was no previous warning. It must have followed soon after that of frogs, early in October. It marks the close of the first series of inflictions, none of them causing great suffering, but quite sufficient on the one hand to make the Egyptians conscious of danger, and to confirm in the Israelites a hope of no remote deliverance.

“The second series of plagues was far more severe; it began with swarms of poisonous insects, probably immediately after the subsidence of the inundation. It is a season of great importance to Egypt. From that season to the following June the land is uncovered; cultivation begins; a great festival (called Chabsta) marks the period for ploughing. At that time there was the first separation between Goshen and the rest of Egypt. The impression upon Pharaoh was far deeper than before, and then, in November, the people once more received instructions for departure. There was occasion for a rehearsal, so to speak, of the measures requisite for the proper organization of the tribes and families of Israel.

“The cattle plague broke out in December, or at the latest in January. It was thoroughly Egyptian both in season and in character. The exemption of the Israelites was probably attributed by Pharaoh to natural causes; but the care then bestowed by the Israelites upon their cattle, the separation from all sources of contagion, must have materially advanced their preparation for departure.

“Then came the plagues of boils, severe but ineffectual, serving however to make the Egyptians understand that continuance in opposition would be visited on their persons, With this plague the second series ended. It appears to have lasted about three months.

“The hailstorms followed, just when they now occur in Egypt—from the middle of February to the early weeks of March. The time was now drawing near. The Egyptians for the first time show that they are seriously impressed. There was a division among them; many feared the word of the Lord, and took the precautions which, also for the first time, Moses then indicated. This plague drew from Pharaoh the first confession of guilt; and now for the third time, between one and two months before the Exodus, the Israelites receive permission to depart, when formal instructions for preparation were of course given by Moses. The people now felt also for the first time that they might look for support or sympathy among the very servants of Pharaoh.

“The plague of locusts, when the leaves were green, towards the middle of March, was preceded by another warning, the last but one. The conquest over the spirit of Egypt was now complete. All but the king gave way; see verse 10:7. Though not so common in Egypt as in adjoining countries the plague occurs there at intervals, and is peculiarly dreaded. Pharaoh once more gives permission to depart; once more the people are put in an attitude of expectation.

“The ninth plague concludes the third series. Like the third and the sixth, each closing a series, it was preceded by no warning. It was peculiarly Egyptian. Though causing comparatively but little suffering, it was felt most deeply as a menace and precursor of destruction. It took place most probably a very few days before the last and crowning plague, plague distinct in character from all others, the first and the only one which brought death home to the Egyptians, and accomplished the deliverance of Israel.

“We have thus throughout the characteristics of local colouring, of adaptation to the circumstances of the Israelites, and of repeated announcements followed by repeated postponements, which enabled and indeed compelled the Israelites to complete that organization of their nation, without which their departure might have been, as it has been often represented, a mere disorderly flight.” (“Speaker’s Commentary,” vol. i. pp. 241-243.)

The Exodus may be regarded as the commencement of the national history of Israel. From that point onwards they were a free and independent people. They had passed from Africa back into their own Asia, and they had emerged from the slavery of centuries into independence and liberty. The taint of slavery could not be removed in that generation, and it was not until the next had attained maturity that the conquest of Canaan was attempted. But the old life had passed away, and to Moses was committed the difficult task of training, educating, and organizing into a nation this band of fugitive slaves, who—unlikely as it looked at the time— were yet to be an independent nation for five hundred years under their own kings, and a separate people for 3,500 years, even to this day—the chosen people of God, destined to be the channel of the world’s redemption.

(Note: The children of Israel were the chosen people of God until the time the majority of them rejected Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah. John 1:11-13  He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.)

Their long sojourn in Egypt had not been in vain. Not only had they been protected from foes while still a mere tribe and too weak to resist the nations of Canaan, but they had acquired many of the arts of civilization, and when they entered the desert were far more advanced in knowledge and skill than when they first descended into Egypt. They had acquired the knowledge of writing and engraving, and of preparing papyri and skins for documents. The construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness indicates how many of the arts of Egypt they had brought with them—carpentry, metal working, gem engraving and setting, weaving, embroidering, smelting of gold, preparation and dyeing of leather, the making of incense and oil for lights, and many other operations, which had been acquired from their intercourse with the Egyptians, highly skilled as they were in all the arts of life.

The wisdom that Moses had gained, his experience of legislation, of the administration of justice, of civil organization and of military matters, were also fruits of the bondage in Egypt; so that one lesson which may be learned from that bitter experience is that contained in the lines—

To the wilderness episodes of the song of triumph, the waters of Marah, the wells of Elim, the manna, the water from the smitten rock, the struggle with Amalek, the advice of Jethro as to the organization of Israel, we must not allude,¹ but only linger for a moment on the sublime transactions of Sinai ere we pass to the prophetic programme given by Moses.

¹ Yet we cannot refrain from citing some lines of a translation of the Sinaitic inscriptions, first made by the Rev. Charles Foster, and authoritatively confirmed by a French savant, M. Lottin de Laval, who carefully investigated the subject for months on the spot, under the auspices of the French Government, and who entertains no doubt that these inscriptions are of the period of the wilderness wanderings. Twenty-two letters of the demotic Egyptian alphabet are constantly recurring in these inscriptions, with only a few variant letters. They are cut in hard granite, with tools made for the purpose, on surfaces which had been previously smoothed with much labour, high up on the rocks, so that the workmen must have employed ladders or scaffolding, and been numerous and skilful. These records have been preserved perfectly in the dry atmosphere of Arabia and the wild solitudes of Sinai, unseen and unknown by civilized man for thousands of years, to add another and a most interesting chapter to the testimony of the rocks in this nineteenth century. We quote only a few sentences:—

“’The wind blowing, the sea dividing into parts, they pass over. The Hebrews flee through the sea; the sea is turned into dry land. The waters permitted and dismissed to flow, burst rushing unawares upon the astonished men, congregated from all quarters, banded together to slay treacherously, being lifted up with pride. The leader divideth asunder the sea, its waves roaring. The people enter and pass through the midst of the waters. Moses causeth the people to haste like a fleet-winged she-ostrich, crying aloud; the cloud shining bright, a mighty army propelled into the Red Sea is gathered into one; they go jumping and skipping. Journeying through the open channel, taking flight from the face of the enemy. The surge of the sea is divided. The people flee, the tribes descend into the deep. The people enter the waters. The people enter and penetrate through the midst. The people are filled with stupor and perturbation, Jehovah is their keeper and companion.’

Again the inscribed rocks tell of the destruction of the Egyptian army:

‘Their enemies weep for the dead, the virgins are wailing. The sea flowing down overwhelmed them. The waters were let loose to flow again. The people depart fugitive. A mighty army is submerged in the deep sea, the only way of escape for the congregated people.’

“’Pilgrims fugitive through the sea find a place of refuge at Sidr. Lighting upon plain ground, they proceed on their pilgrimage full of terror.’

Then we track them by the imperishable waymarks, as they go journeying through the desert:

‘The Hebrews pass over the sea into the wide waterless desert, famishing with hunger and thirst. The people make many journeys, they are pilgrims far in the vast wilderness.’

The crying of the great multitude for water is continually recorded, as if their terror of perishing by thirst could never be forgotten, nor the miraculous answer to prayer, nor their thankless discontent.

‘The people clamour vociferously, The people anger Moses. Swerving from the tight way, they thirst for water insatiably. The water flows, gently gushing out of the stony rock. Out of the rock a murmur of abundant waters. Out of the hard stone a springing well. Like the wild asses braying, the Hebrews swallow down enormously and greedily. Greedy of food like infants, they plunge into sin against Jehovah.’

The continuity of supply is well confessed:

‘The people drink, wending on their way, drinking with prone mouth; Jehovah gives them drink again and again.’

Yet they fail to own the God who sustains them:

‘The wild ass drinks again and again, drinking copiously in the desert; the people, sore athirst, drink vehemently. They quaff the water-spring without pause, ever drinking. Reprobate beside the gushing well-spring.’

The people’s gluttony at Kibroth Hattadvah is registered:

‘The people have drink to satiety. In crowds they swill. Flesh they strip from the bone, mangling it. Replete with food, they are obstreperous. Surfeited, they cram themselves; clamouring, they vomit. The people are drinking water to repletion. The tribes, weeping for the dead, cry aloud with downcast eyes. The dove mourns, devoured by grief. The hungry ass kicketh: the tempted men, brought to destruction, perish. Apostasy from the faith leads them to the tomb. Devouring flesh rapidly, drinking water greedily. Dancing, shouting, they play’”—(Rule: “Oriental Records,” “ Monumental,” p. 95.)

Israel had learned in measure to know the Lord by all that had happened in Egypt, but only to a slight extent. They had seen His power and experienced His mercy, but their subsequent conduct had shown how slight and superficial was the impression that had been made. God was now to be more fully revealed to them, His will made known, His law given to them. The covenant of promise made with their father Abraham was to be supplemented by a covenant of law, to which the nation as such was to be a party. Most sublime and awe-inspiring was the theophany, or manifestation of God, which took place on this great occasion, though no form which could be made an excuse for the idolatry of graven images, to which men were so desperately prone, was seen. God came down upon Sinai; His glory was visible, His words were audible.

“And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up.”(Exod. xix. 18-20)

Moses, in recalling this scene in Deuteronomy, emphasizes the point that no similitude was seen:

“And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude, only ye heard a voice” (Deut. iv. 11, 12)¹

¹ The contrast with the pretended Divine visions and audiences of Mohammed should be noted. There is nothing to attest them save his own ifse dixit (an assertion without proof). In this case all the people saw and heard.

“And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the Lord abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day He called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud. And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel. And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights” (Exod. xxiv 15-18). Moreover, Moses’ face shone as a result of the vision.

Moses was admitted to a nearer and clearer revelation, and God spake to him out of the cloud. The object of this glorious manifestation was twofold: to impress the people with the spirituality, the majesty, and the power of God, and their own close relation to Him, and also to give an everlasting and awful sanction to the law which was then promulgated, and to the covenant under which they were then placed. “A stubborn and ‘stiff-necked’ race like the Hebrews would never have accepted any merely human legislation, or regarded themselves as bound by it a moment longer than suited their own convenience. They had to be convinced that all the laws, all the statutes, all the ordinances which Moses gave them were the laws, statutes, and ordinances of God Himself. Hence, and hence alone, the enduringness of the law, which was regarded as valid in its entirety for more than fourteen hundred years, and is still held to be obligatory in many if not in most particulars. Never was there a case in which miracle was more justified by its results. Assuming the object to be the creation of a ‘peculiar people,’ marked out from all the world by a special set of unchanging laws, ordinances, and customs, then the means adopted must be pronounced at once absolutely effectual, and probably the only means by which the result aimed at could have been effected.” (Rawlinson’s “Moses: his Life and Times,” pp. 147, 148.)

The Law given on Sinai is seen in its true light only when compared with existing laws and customs prevalent in surrounding nations. Its monotheism was, of course, a vital contrast to the polytheism of Egypt and the Canaanites; while the fact that no image of the Invisible was to be made, cut at the root of all the multiplied idolatries of the ancient world. They were to make no symbol of the sun or moon, as in Egypt, nor of animals, as in Palestine and Assyria.

“To keep holy the Sabbath, ceasing from all work on the seventh day, was a custom already followed from antiquity—perhaps from the days of Adam—but it was now enforced with renewed strictness, as needed to deepen religious feeling, to provide for its constant reinvigoration, and even as a merciful rest for man and beast.

“That honour should be paid to parents was also of great moment for all ages, but especially when, as yet, morality had no high sanctions, and barbarism largely prevailed. Not a few nations of antiquity were wont to put their aged fathers or mothers to death or to abandon them when helpless. Among ancient races a mother generally stood in an inferior position, and, on the death of her husband, became subject to her eldest son. But it was now commanded that the son, even if he were the head of the family, should honour his mother as he had honoured his father.

“Human life was little valued in antiquity, but it was now proclaimed, ‘Thou shalt do no murder’ Man was created in the image of God, and therefore his life should be sacred. The old world was poisoned to the core by prevailing unchastity, for even the gods were represented as impure. But the Voice from Sinai commanded, ‘Thou shalt not be unchaste.’ Property was declared sacred, and theft stamped as a crime, as was also false witness. Nor was only the outward act condemned, for even the thought of evil was denounced in the words, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’

“What, in comparison with a moment like this, was the whole record of the Indian, Egyptian, or other nations, however ancient, with all their wisdom or their gigantic creations of temples, pyramids, and colossi? The transaction on Sinai was for all time and for the life beyond.” (Geikie, pp. 269-271.)

While Moses was still on the mount with God, the wayward people had already fallen back into Egyptian idolatry, and were found worshipping with licentious games and dances a golden calf! The terrible incident brought out two of the grandest features in Moses’ character—his capacity for stern indignation and terrible severity when occasion required (for on this occasion he sanctioned the judicial execution of three thousand that he might save two or three millions), and his superhuman love for the perverse and rebellious children of Israel. He would not accept the Divine offer to be himself made a second Abraham, the father of a new family; nay, he would rather offer himself a sacrifice for guilty Israel. Thus he entreated the Lord, “Blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book,” instead of Israel, if Thou wilt not freely forgive their sin. He was willing to be cut off himself, if only his people might be saved! In no incident of his life does he form so wonderful a type of the One that was to come. His noble, self-sacrificing heart seemed to anticipate in this offer the redemption afterwards to be revealed. If Isaac was a type of the Lamb of God, surely Moses foreshadowed the feelings and the action of the great Substitute, who was of His own free will made a curse for us.

God pardoned the people on the intercession of His servant, and established in their midst the tabernacle, where sacrifice and offering might be a ceremonial and typical means of putting away sin, and so forming a means of approach for sinners. When unbelief excluded the people from an early entrance into Canaan, Jehovah led them about in the wilderness for thirty-eight years longer by the hand of His servant Moses. Their deliverer and law-giver, their friend and intercessor became now their judge, their prophet, their teacher, and he reigned as king in Jeshurun. Not until he had conducted them to the very verge of Canaan, not until from the summit of Nebo he had gazed on the long-promised inheritance, did this great servant of God, who was faithful in all his house, resign his charge to younger hands, and die there in the land of Moab at a hundred and twenty years of age, his eye not dim nor his natural force abated.

How suitable that to this remarkable man in the closing days of his eventful life, and at the most critical juncture in Israel’s history, should be granted a fresh foreview of the future. Moses stands at the close of the patriarchal dispensation, and at the opening of Jewish national history. From Adam to Moses there was no law. With Moses the dispensation of law had commenced; the seed of Abraham to whom the inheritance had been given by promise, grown into a nation and organized into a theocracy, were placed under the covenant of law, and their blessings made conditional on their obedience. How would this new dispensation issue? What would be the character and conduct of the nation thus organized? — Privileged as no people had ever been before them, chosen of God to be a favoured nation, His own peculiar people, beloved for the fathers’ sake, having the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises, would Israel be an exception in the earth, a holy nation, showing forth the praises of the God who had called them out of the darkness of surrounding and universal idolatry into His marvellous light? Would they keep the law they had promised to obey? Would they be true to their solemn pledge—“All these things will we do and be obedient”? Would the light just kindled amid the darkness of degrading idolatries burn on through succeeding ages, and shed a steady lustre around in a benighted world, or would it be extinguished? Would Israel prove worthy of the noble mission of being God’s witness on earth?

Such must have been the questions weighing on the heart of Moses, as he prepared to resign the charge of the nation over whose birth and infancy he had presided. He must have longed, yet almost trembled to take a look into futurity; trembled, for the past was not encouraging. Already the children of Israel had proved themselves “a perverse and crooked generation.” How oft had they provoked God in the wilderness, and grieved Him in the desert! Yea, they turned back, and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.

But for forty years Moses had taught them and expostulated with them, warned and encouraged them; with true paternal love, he had pleaded with them, and set before them the results of fidelity to God, and of unfaithfulness. Unspeakably terrible were the curses that he told them would overtake them if they brake God’s covenant; just as exceedingly great and varied were the blessings attached to an observance of it. Israel had moreover seen both the goodness and severity of God exhibited in action during their desert wanderings. Had they taken the lesson to heart? Would they be wise?

With what yearning anxiety the leader of Israel must have peered into that page of future history which God unrolled to his gaze! And ah, how his heart must have sunk as he read its dark prophetic records!

“The Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thy days approach that thou must die: call Joshua, and present yourselves in the tabernacle of the congregation, that I may give him a charge. And Moses and Joshua went, and presented themselves in the tabernacle of the congregation. And Jehovah appeared in the pillar of a cloud; and Jehovah said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them: they will forsake Me, and break My covenant which I have made with them. Then My anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them. . . . For when I shall have brought them into the land which I sware unto their fathers, that floweth with milk and honcy; and they shall have eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat; then will they turn unto other gods, and serve them, and provoke Me, and break My covenant.”

God then commanded Moses to write the song contained in Deuteronomy chapter 33 that it might testify against Israel as a witness, and predicted that it should never be forgotten out of the mouth of the seed of Israel. This was the revelation made by God to Moses, who in his turn disclosed the same dark future to Israel.

“Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers,” said he, “that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to record against them. For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands ” (Deut. xxxi.).

Most sad and sorrowful is the Mosaic prediction of Israel’s apostasy, and terrible the prophecy of the judgments which would follow. Two long chapters, Leviticus xxvi. and Deut. xxviii, are filled with these dark forecasts of Israel’s future. The first describes the sevenfold wrath to be poured out upon Israel for their sins.

“I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries into desolation; I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you; ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.”

The second gives a still more detailed description of the chastisements that would fall upon them: they should be “oppressed and crushed alway,” “besieged in all their cities,” reduced to the most fearful extremities of famine, carried captive, “plucked off the land” they were then about to inherit, scattered from one end of the earth even to the other, reduced to a few in number from having been as the stars of heaven for multitude; they should be brought into Egypt again by ships and sold for bondmen and bondwomen to their old enemies the Egyptians; and that, even in the nations amid which they would be scattered, they would find no ease, no rest to the soles of their feet.

The general correspondence of the predictions of these most remarkable prophecies, with the general outline of the history of the Jewish nation, is too close not to strike every one who is in any measure acquainted with the subject. But a careful attention to certain definite predictions selected from the mass, and a comparison of them with the statements of historians of subsequent ages, will greatly enhance our conception of the Divine foreknowledge to which these prophecies, written 3,500 years ago, bear witness.

“The Lord shall bring a swift nation against thee from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favour to the young.”

The power under which Jerusalem fell at last, fifteen hundred years after these words were uttered, was that of the Roman empire. The Roman conquerors of Judea were emphatically brought from afar; for not only was Rome itself and Italy and all Europe “far” in the estimation of Moses, but even in much later ages it was so regarded in Palestine. Moreover, Vespasian and Adrian, the two greatest conquerors and destroyers of the Jews, both went to their work in Judea from commanding here in Britain. Their movements, like all the Roman conquests, were swift, like those of eagles; and their standards bore, as is well known, the device of an eagle. Their character and conduct was proverbially fierce and cruel; Josephus describes their merciless barbarity in graphic terms, and says they spared neither age nor sex, but slew old men and young infants, mothers and children alike.

“He shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, in all thy land.” The sieges of Jewish cities were many and sore. Shalmanezer besieged Samaria for three years; Sennacherib came up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them; Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and built forts against it, reduced it to the utmost extremity of famine, destroyed the city, broke down its walls and burnt its temple. This was but the first of a series of sieges of Jerusalem, which, strongly placed and well fortified, was always tempted to trust in the strength of its defences, and stand a siege rather than open its gates to a conqueror. But in spite of its strength it was taken, after sieges more or less prolonged, by Shishak king of Egypt, by Nebuchadnezzar, by Antiochus Epiphanes, by Pompey, by Sosius, and by Herod, before its final unparalleled siege and sack by Titus in A.D. 70.

One of the most terrible touches in the sketch of the sufferings that should overtake rebellious Israel is the description of ¢he famines that would result from these sieges, and especially from the Roman siege. It occupies five verses, which are almost too horrible to quote, but it may be matched by passages which narrate what actually happened on various occasions in Israel.

The terrible story of the mothers who agreed to boil and eat their children, describes (2 Kings vi. 28) an incident which occurred when the king of Syria besieged Samaria eight hundred years after the date of the prophecy we are considering. Jeremiah laments over similar cases at the time of the siege by Nebuchadnezzar, which was nine hundred years after the time of Moses; and Josephus, the graphic historian of the Titus siege, tells of similar ones with terrible distinctness of detail. He tells of a rich and noble lady who had been plundered of her all by the tyrants and soldiers, who was driven at last to cook her own child for food, and who, when she had boiled and eaten half, covered and concealed the rest for another time, thus recalling the words about “the tender and delicate woman” eating her children “secretly in the siege and in the straitness.”

Moses also predicts that very large numbers of the Israelites should be destroyed by their enemies, so that their remarkable tendency to rapid increase should be more than counterbalanced, and they should be left few in number.

Josephus reckons that in the Titus siege 1,100,000 persons perished in Jerusalem and Judea alone. No nation on earth has undergone so many cruel massacres and persecutions. All through Jewish history they recur so frequently that it is clear that the nation would long ago and many a time over have been exterminated, but for the unchanging promise given to them of a numerous posterity even to the most distant ages.

The prophecy also asserts that conquests foretold should result among other things in the enslavement of a large number of Israelites, and that especially in Egypt, the land out of which they had so lately been triumphantly set free. The very people to accomplish whose Exodus the sea itself had been dried up should be carried back to Egypt in ships and sold for slaves to their old enemies. After the fall of Jerusalem the markets of the Roman empire were glutted with Jewish slaves, and multitudes of these were sent into Egypt. Josephus states that captives above seventeen Titus sent bound to the works in Egypt, while those under seventeen were sold; but so little care was taken of them that thousands perished for want.

After the last Jewish war Adrian adopted the same expedient; for Jerome says of the captives, that many thousands were sold, and those who could not be sold were transported into Egypt, and either perished by shipwreck or famine or were massacred by the inhabitants.

But the most distinctive points of the prophecy remain. Wars and sieges, defeats and captivities are the common lot of nations in a state of decadence, but their complete overthrow leaves them generally a more or less subject race in their own land. Such was not the fate predicted for Israel, such has not been their history.

It was foretold—first, that they should be “plucked off their own land”; secondly, that they should be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth, scattered among all people from one end of the earth to the other; and thirdly, that in their dispersion they should still maintain their distinct nationality.

Sad and singular fate, yet how notoriously has it befallen the Jewish people. Were they not deported into Assyria and Media and Babylonia, carried captive again and again by Tiglath Pileser and Esarhaddon, and Nebuchadnezzar and Nebuzaradan? All these plucked them off their land to some extent, and scattered their captives far and wide over the East. But this strange doom in its fullest extent overtook them only after they had filled up the measure of their iniquity by rejecting Christ. It was the Romans who at last plucked them completely off their land, not at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus,—for crushing as was that blow, it did not drive the Jews out of Palestine,— but sixty-five years later, at the close of the last Jewish war. Adrian made the whole country a desolation, expelled all Jews from it, and forbade them on pain of death to return, or even to visit Jerusalem. He endeavoured to wipe out even the memory of Zion by calling the city which he built on the site of Jerusalem, Elia Capitolina; he slaughtered 580,000 Jews in the course of three or four years, sold thousands more into slavery at the lowest prices, and cleared the country completely of its Jewish inhabitants.

For many a long century afterwards, Assyrians, Romans, Greeks, Arabians, Turks, and others might freely occupy the soil and the cities of Palestine, but for Jews it afforded no home. Even so late as the twelfth century, when Benjamin of Tudela, a Spanish Jew who travelled far and wide to look after his people, visited the country, he found in Jerusalem only a couple of hundred Jews living together under David’s tower, and occupied as wool dyers, poor despised aliens in their own land. In Galilee he found scarcely any Jews at all, and elsewhere two in one city, twenty in another, and so on.

It is nearly eighteen hundred years since the seed of Abraham were thus “plucked off” the land of promise. They are returning to it now in considerable numbers, and will probably ere long do so much more rapidly and on a far larger scale; for their restoration to their land is as clearly foretold as their expulsion from it.

Note: I believe that Rev. Guinness was taking the prophecies in Ezekiel as a yet future event. Ezekiel 36:24 For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.” But this prophecy was already fulfilled by the time when Jesus Christ walked the earth!

But the fact of their long dispersion remains, inscribed prominently on the pages of history. Moses announced, 3,500 years ago, that the Jewish nation should be plucked off the land given to their fathers; by the mighty power of Rome they were so plucked off, and for eighteen centuries they have continued so.

Nor is this all. The Jews might have been plucked off their own land and transplanted to some other, as of old to Babylon. But their peculiar doom was to be scattered in all lands from one end of heaven to the other, and this doom has notoriously overtaken them. It has come to pass through the operation of a variety of second causes; partly through their own enterprise and commercial and financial talent, partly through the cruelty of the Gentiles towards them, and partly from other influences. But varied causes have only worked together to bring about the result long since announced by God, the universal dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the world. What land is without representatives of the house of Israel? We speak of Russian Jews, Polish Jews, German Jews, Dutch Jews, Italian Jews, English Jews, Spanish Jews, etc.; and we know that there is scarcely a large city in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, that has not its Jewish residents. Dr. Keith says truly: “There is not a country on the face of the earth where the Jews are unknown. They are found alike in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. They are citizens of the world without a country. Neither mountains nor rivers nor deserts nor oceans, which are the boundaries of other nations, have terminated their wanderings. They abound in Poland, in Russia, in Holland, and in Turkey; in Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and Britain they are more thinly scattered. In Persia, China, and India they are few in number among the heathen. They have trodden the snows of Siberia and the sand of the burning desert, and the European traveller hears of their existence in regions which he cannot reach, even in the very interior of Africa south of Timbuctoo. From Moscow to Lisbon, from Japan to Britain, from Borneo to Archangel, from Hindostan to Honduras, no inhabitant of any nation upon earth would be known in all the intervening regions, but a Jew alone.”

There is peculiar race of Jews in India called the “Beni Israel,” and there are Jews in China who appear to have settled there since the time of Ezra. There is nothing in the entire history of the human family at all parallel to the dispersion of the Jewish race.

The condition and experiences of the people during their dispersion is another point on which the remarkable prophecy of Moses enlarged. It was not to be the ordinary condition of exiles—a sad but calm, quiet, hopeless existence, which, if free from most of the joys of life, is also free from many of the cares and anxieties. No! Israel in their dispersion were to find no rest in any land, no ease, no peace; “trembling of heart,” perpetual fear and anxiety, “failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind,” would be their lot; their life should hang in doubt before them, and they should fear day and night, and have “no assurance” (Deut. xxxiii. 65). Their property should be “violently taken away before their faces, and not restored”; their sons and daughters should be given to other people; they should be oppressed and crushed alway, and driven almost to desperation by injustice and cruelty (verses 30-34).

History, both ancient and modern, bears abundant and painful witness to the correctness of this part of the foreview of Moses. Banishment and confiscation of property have been inflicted on the Jews times without number, and by almost every nation in which they have dwelt in any considerable numbers. We read in Acts xviii. 2, that the Roman emperor Claudius commanded all Jews to depart from Rome, even before their national dispersion. But from that time onward (with a brief respite during the persecutions of the Christians by the pagan emperors of Rome), the Jews were everywhere for more than a thousand years at intervals not only cruelly oppressed and persecuted, but perpetually exiled afresh. They were banished at one time or other from almost every country in Europe. Henry the Second, Edward the First, and other monarchs banished them from England; Charles the Sixth from France (for the seventh time), Ferdinand and Isabella drove 800,000 of them out of Spain, and Emanuel in 1479 banished the refugees from Portugal.

Their children have been by law taken from them to be educated in another faith, their property has been ruthlessly confiscated times without number, and they have themselves been tortured and imprisoned to make them give up their gold; they have been fined and fleeced of their dearly prized treasures, cruelly used and oppressed, insulted and ill-treated, and very often ruthlessly massacred.

The council of Vannes, A.D. 465, forbade Christians to eat with Jews; that of Beziers, A.D. 1246, prohibited the employing of a Jewish physician. At Toulouse, even as late as the thirteenth century, a Jew was compelled to receive every Easter a blow on the face before the doors of the principal church. It would require an entire volume to rehearse in order and in detail their sufferings in their long exile.

Nor were they to be only oppressed, but disliked and despised. They were to become “an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword” among all nations. Has not this been so? Do we not still use the name as a synonym for much that is odious when we speak of a person as “a regular Jew”? Are not avarice, heartlessness, cunning, lying, craftiness, and double-dealing associated in most minds with the name?

Christianity in its purity and power destroys prejudice, but in the dark ages of Popish corruption it seemed as if Mohammedans, heathen, and Christians could agree in nothing save in vilifying, abusing, and persecuting the Jews. They were compelled to live by themselves in separate quarters of cities and towns, and were treated as reprobate and repulsive outcasts; they were sometimes feared, sometimes despised, always disliked and misrepresented. Shakespeare’s character of Shylock may be taken as a specimen of the popular notion of a Jew in his days, and Dickens has given a modern sketch in his “Fagin.”

But perhaps the most remarkable point in the long and complex prediction of Israel’s fate given by Moses is that mentioned in Leviticus xxvi. 44. They would fall back into the sins and idolatries of the Gentile nations of the earth; they would in consequence and as a judgment be scattered among those Gentile nations, and their “plagues would be wonderful, even great plagues and of long continuance,” but notwithstanding this they would be preserved in their dispersion as a distinct people; God would remember on their behalf His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; He would not cast them away, nor abhor them, nor destroy them utterly, but would remember both the people and the land. In the midst of the long and sore judgment which God would send on them, He would still remember mercy; and the seed of Abraham, though sorely punished, should be preserved for ultimate blessing.

The existence of the Jews as a distinct nation in the world, after eighteen centuries of dispersion among all nations, is the standing miracle of history. They have suffered enough to destroy a nation a hundred times over, yet they are still preserved and now flourishing exceedingly all over Europe, Asia, and America. At this day they are a numerous, influential, rich, and cultivated people. After the wars, battles, and sieges, the famines, pestilences, and judgments, the massacres, spoliations, and oppressions of three thousand years—like the bush which burned with fire and was not consumed—they still exist, and exist as a separate, distinct, and peculiar people—a nation without a land, a people without a home. Their plagues have truly been great, wonderful, and of long continuance. They have never been free and independent in their own land since the days of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonish captivity, now 2,500 years ago.

After the restoration from Babylon a portion of the tribes enjoyed, it is true, a few centuries of comparative independence and restored national existence up to the coming of Messiah the Prince. But their rejection of Him brought on the final stage of their long tribulation, which has already lasted for eighteen centuries. Moses foretold all this, and he foretold, also, hope in the latter end. (Note: In the sense that some Jews do accept Jesus of Nazareth and get saved.)

Dirge-like in its mournfulness, storm-like in its wild terribleness is the divinely inspired “song” which he taught to the children of Israel; but it closes with words of peaceful hope, and with a bright glimpse, not only of Israel’s yet future restoration, but of the call of the Gentiles to share it. “Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people: for He will avenge the blood of His servants, and will render vengeance to His adversaries, and will be merciful unto His land, and to His people.” (Deut. xxxii, 43)

“They and they only amongst all mankind
Received the transcript of the Eternal Mind,
Were trusted with His own engraven laws,
And constituted guardians of His cause.
Theirs were the prophets, theirs the priestly call,
And theirs by birth the Saviour of us all.

Their glory faded and their race dispersed,
The last of nations now, though once the first;
They warn, and teach the proudest, would they learn
Keep wisdom, or meet vengeance in your turn!
If we escaped not, if Heaven spared not us,
Peeled, scattered, and exterminated thus;—
If vice received her retribution due,
When we were visited, what hope for you?

Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast,
How shall ye flee away and be at rest?
The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,
Mankind their country, Israel but the grave!”

Nor must we omit from this brief glance at the programme of the future of Israel under the law given by Moses, one remarkable MESSIANIC prediction which stands out prominently on the pages of Deuteronomy: “A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me,” said the great lawgiver and mediator of Israel. He was urging the people never to resort to necromancy and divination, familiar spirits or wizards, superstitious vices common among the Canaanites whose land they were going to possess; and he enforces the prohibition by this promise, as though he would say, You shall not need to resort to such means of ascertaining the mind of God, for He will give you another mediator and legislator like myself. He tells them that he had received this promise from God Himself at the time of the giving of the law forty years before, at Sinai.

The terrified people had exclaimed, “Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” They had realized their need of a human mediator, “in the days of the assembly in Horeb;” and God had responded to their desire by saying to Moses, “They have well spoken. I will raise up unto them a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put words in His mouth; and He shall speak unto them all that I command Him. And whosoever will not hearken unto My words which He shall speak in My name, I will require it of him.”

Now God raised up many prophets in Israel in after-years, but of them all we may say, “there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses.” So fully were the Jews in Christ’s day convinced that the promised prophet had never yet appeared, that they naturally put the question to John, “Art thou that prophet?” alluding to this very prediction. When subsequently they eat of the food miraculously provided by Christ for the five thousand, the thought was again suggested to them by the remembrance of the manna sent through Moses, and the people exclaim, “This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.”

Moses compared to Jesus Christ

The rich depth of meaning that lies concealed in those words, “like unto me,” was little understood by Moses, and is often little perceived among ourselves through deficient meditation. The following are some of the points that should be noted in the resemblance. Moses was saved from death in his infancy; so was Christ. Moses fled his country to escape the wrath of the king; Christ was taken into Egypt for the same purpose. Afterwards the Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go, return;” as the angel said to Joseph, “ Arise, and take the young child, and go back into the land of Israel, for they are dead which sought the young child’s life.” Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, though it might have led to his being a king; Christ refused to be made a king, choosing rather to suffer affliction and death for the sake of His people. Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Josephus says he was a forward youth, and had wisdom and knowledge beyond his years. Christ increased in wisdom and stature, and favour with God and man, as His discourse in the temple with the doctors when twelve years old proved. Moses contended with the magicians of Egypt, who were forced to acknowledge that he exercised Divine power; Christ also contended with and cast out evil spirits, who similarly acknowledged His Divine power. Moses was a lawgiver, a prophet, a worker of miracles, and a priest; Christ was still more illustriously all these. Moses brought darkness over the land; and the sun veiled His face when Christ died. The darkness in Egypt was followed by the destruction of the firstborn, and of Pharaoh and his host; so the darkness at Christ’s death was a forerunner of the destruction of the Jews. Moses foretold the calamities which would befall the nation for their disobedience; so also did Christ. The spirit which was in Moses was conferred in some degree upon the seventy elders, and they prophesied; Christ conferred miraculous powers upon His seventy disciples. Moses was victorious over powerful kings and great nations; so was Christ in the spread of His faith, and the conversion soon after His death of the Roman empire to His religion. Moses conquered Amalek by holding up his hands and praying for Israel; Christ overcame His and our enemies when His hands were fastened to the cross. Moses interceded for transgressors, caused an atonement to be made for them, and stopped the wrath of God; so did Christ. Moses ratified a covenant between God and the people by sprinkling them with blood; Christ with His own blood. Moses desired to die for the people, and prayed God either to forgive them or blot him out of His book; Christ did more,—He died for sinners. Moses slew the paschal lamb, none of whose bones were broken, and whose blood protected the people from destruction; “Christ our passover was sacrificed for us,” the true Paschal Lamb offered Himself. Moses lifted up the serpent of brass, that they who looked upon it might be healed of their mortal wounds; Christ said, “I, if I be lifted up (on the cross), will draw all men unto Me.” All the love and care of Moses for Israel, all his toils and sufferings on their account were repaid with ingratitude, murmuring, and rebellion; the same return was made to Christ. Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses; and as to Christ we read, “neither did His brethren believe on Him.” Moses had a wicked and perverse generation committed to his care; miraculous powers were given him to rule them, and he did his utmost to make them obedient to God, and to save them from ruin, but it was all in vain; in the course of forty years they all perished in the wilderness, save Caleb and Joshua. Christ was given to a similar generation, His doctrine and His miracles were alike lost on them, and in about the same space of time after they had rejected Him they were all destroyed in the Roman war. Moses was very meek, above all men that were on the face of the earth. Christ said, “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls.” Israel did not enter the land of promise till Moses was dead; and it is the death of Christ which has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

There is also a resemblance in some points between the death of Moses and the death of Christ, though imperfect, and associated with contrasts. Moses died in some sense because of the iniquities of the people; it was their rebellion which led to the fault on his part which drew down the displeasure of God on them and on him. He went up in the sight of the people to the top of Mount Nebo, and there he died, when he was in perfect vigour, his eye not dim or his natural force abated. Christ suffered for the sins of men, and was led up to Calvary in the presence of the people, in the flower of His age and in His full natural strength. Moses was buried, and no man knew where his body lay; nor could the Jews find the body of Christ. Just before his death Moses promised the people another prophet like himself; Christ promised “another comforter.”

Eusebius long ago noted many particulars of the resemblance between Moses and Christ. He says:

“Moses was the first to rescue the Jewish nation from Egyptian superstition and idolatry, and to teach them the true theology. Jesus was the first teacher of truth and holiness to the Gentiles. Moses confirmed his teachings by miracles; so likewise did Christ. Moses promised a happy life in the Holy Land to those who kept the law; and Christ a better country—that is, a heavenly—to all righteous souls. Moses fasted forty days, and so likewise did Christ. Moses gave the people bread in the wilderness; and our Saviour fed five thousand at one time, and four thousand at another with a few loaves. Moses went himself and led the people through the midst of the sea; and Christ walked on the water, and enabled Peter to do the same. Moses stretched out his rod, and the Lord caused the sea to go backward; our Saviour rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was a great calm. Moses’ face shone when he descended from the Mount; our Saviour’s shone like the sun in His transfiguration. Moses by his prayers cured Miriam of her leprosy; Christ with a word healed several lepers. Moses appointed seventy rulers, and our Saviour seventy disciples. Moses sent out twelve men to spy the land; our Saviour twelve apostles to visit all nations.”

Never was there a prophet so like unto Moses as Jesus Christ! Isaiah wrought no miracle; Jeremiah promulgated no new law; Daniel instituted no new system of worship. We may search over the sacred and profane historical portrait galleries of the past, during the fifteen hundred years that elapsed between the appearance of these two great deliverers in Israel, but not till we come to the Prophet of Nazareth do we meet with the predicted “like unto me.” And it should be noted that the emphatic “Him shall ye hear” of Moses is rendered by Peter in the third of Acts, “Every soul that will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people.” This settles the question that it was of Christ that Moses spoke. Previous generations had rejected previous prophets without perishing in consequence. But the generation that rejected Jesus were, according to His own prediction, “miserably destroyed”; and the total excision of the Jewish people for a time from their own olive tree, was the consequence of their refusal to hear the prophet like unto Moses. Seventy years of captivity in Babylon was inflicted on them on account of their iniquities and idolatries in the days of the kings, but eighteen hundred years of dispersion and misery have followed their rejection of Christ. Could Moses have foreseen this? Were not his words weighty with a mournful meaning he little imagined? Were not the mind and purpose of God expressed in the simple yet solemn and sublime prediction: “a prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me. And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people”? If the long and detailed prophecies of Lev. xxvi. and Deut. xxxiii. were programme of the future of Israel, may we not say that this brief but frequent utterance about the prophet that should come into the world illustrates that programme with a portrait? Not only was a long and complete history foretold, but an individual character was delineated in the words, “like unto me.”

The sketch is held up to the gaze of generation after generation; fifteen hundred years pass by, and no one at all like it appears. Judges and deliverers arise in Israel, David the man after God’s own heart orders and instructs the people, a line of kings and a line of prophets pass over the stage of Jewish history, but no one appears answering to the prophetic sketch, “like unto me.” After the lapse of fifteen centuries, however, Jesus of Nazareth appears, and, lo! every feature of the portrait can be recognised, and we need not inquire, “Art Thou that prophet that should come unto the world?” His likeness to Moses makes the question needless! Deliverer, leader, Saviour, lawgiver, mediator, ruler, judge, prophet, priest, king; God’s servant, God’s representative, God’s reflection, God’s ambassador among men, illustrious founder of a new order of things; mighty yet meek, patient yet inflexible, tender yet stern against sin, loving, even to tears and agony and self-sacrifice, yet denouncing sore judgments to come,— was any one ever so like Moses as Christ, and so like Christ as Moses? When they beheld these two stand side by side in glory in the transfiguration on the Mount, did Peter, James, and John perceive any likeness between them? We know not! There is something far deeper than face or form; when illuminated by the spirit in after-days, the apostles perceived and expounded this deeper likeness between the great prophet of the old covenant and the greater Prophet of the new, and called on all to obey the voice from the excellent glory which had fallen on their ears, “Hear Him.”

Most marvellously did the Lord Jesus Christ answer to this description, “a prophet like unto me;” and some of the points of resemblance are brought out by God’s own words as to Moses, as distinguished from other prophets.

“Were ye not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?” demanded the Lord of Aaron and Miriam when they spake against their brother. “Hear now My words: If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make Myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all Mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold.”

To other prophets God revealed His message by visions and dreams; to Moses face to face. Superior fidelity characterized the man; greater intimacy with God was his portion. Now “Moses verily was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, but Christ as a son.” How much more intimate the Son with the Father than Moses with Jehovah! Did not God put His words into the lips of Christ? “The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself,” He said; and again, “I have given unto them the words that Thou gavest Me.” “I have given them Thy words.” “He shall speak unto them all that I shall command Him,” said God of the prophet like unto Moses. “I have not spoken of Myself,” said Christ; “but the Father which sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that His commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto Me, so I speak.”

In this glance at the programme of the future sketched by the pen of Moses, we have confined ourselves to his plain and literal predictions, the fulfilment of which can be traced in history. Had we included the veiled prophecies of the future, given through him in the form of typical ordinance and enactment, we should have had to show that the entire history of redemption down to its minutest details and even to its very chronology were revealed through him. But we have purposely avoided this, because though we can see the types to be only another form of prophecy, yet they were not ostensibly given as such, and our present object is to consider only predictions that were given as such. That the ceremonial “law had a shadow of good things to come,” was a silent-acted prophecy, extending over all ages of Judaism, we doubt not, for the Epistle to the Hebrews so expounds it. And that its witness to the counsel and foreknowledge of God is as clear, or even clearer, than that borne by the more plainly expressed predictions, we cannot question. But in order to adduce that testimony, the true import of the types has to be first settled, and the perception of their teachings will always be a question of spiritual intelligence. We pass by entirely, therefore, this branch of the foreview of Moses, and present only prophecies that are perfectly plain, and fulfilments that are absolutely undeniable.

The incredulous nineteenth century, the age of the scoffers of the last days, is still confronted with an existing fact, a world-wide and well-known fact—the fact of a Jewish dispersion foretold in the days of Moses, accomplished sixteen hundred years later in the days of ‘Titus, Vespasian, and Adrian, just after their crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet like Moses, whom to reject would, he foretold them, be fatal, but whom they nevertheless did reject. If in face of such evidence men refuse to own the finger of God, are they not without excuse?

APPENDIX TO THE FOURTH CHAPTER.

The question of the date of the Exodus, and the Pharaoh under whom it took place, is a disputed one still among Egyptologists, and must remain so until further discovery gives more light, for we have not as yet the means to settle it absolutely. It is agreed by all that it took place under either the eighteenth or the nineteenth dynasty, but which is an insoluble problem at present. The view we have taken above is that Abraham and Joseph were in Egypt under the great Amenemhas of the twelfth dynasty, that AAHMES I. of the eighteenth dynasty was the Pharaoh of the oppression, and that the Exodus took place under his successor, THOTHMES II.

The other view makes Abraham and Joseph in Egypt in the time of the Hyksos, or shepherd-kings; postpones the oppression and the birth of Moses until the reign of RAMESES II., which was a long and grand one; and assigns the plagues and the Exodus to the time of his son, PHARAOH MENEPHTAH. A good many arguments may be urged in favour of this last view, but there are also very serious ones against it, and moreover its chronology makes it quite untenable for believers in Scripture.

Egyptian chronology is a dark and very uncertain subject. The Egyptians employed no era to which all the reigns of their kings are referred, as in the dynastic records of other countries. Lists of kings exist, and the inscriptions on the monuments tell how long a king reigned and in what years of his reign he performed his exploits. Thus we have the regnal years of the actual sovereigns, but no era to which to refer the reigns themselves. Hence the Egyptian antiquities establish absolutely no date whatever for any event, and they can never afford any clear, continuous, accurate, or complete chronology. The dynasties, moreover, given in the very defective lists we possess, are many of them now proved to have been contemporaneous, though arranged successively, and at one time supposed to have been successive. It is proved by the discovery of the Tablet of Abydos that the eighteenth dynasty immediately succeeded the twelfth, and that the intermediate ones are local and contemporary. Twenty centuries of Baron Bunsen’s long chronology of Egypt are thus cut off at a stroke! There is room for much and learned speculation, but for no certainty. One Egyptologist will insert a thousand years, where others reckon ten or none at all! The first date in Egyptian history that can be actually fixed with reference to other events whose absolute date is certain, is the invasion of Palestine by Shishak in the days of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, B.C. 972.

Now the dates assigned to the Pharaohs named in the text, Aahmes and Thothmes II., are variously given by different authorities, like all the rest. But the choice of epoch is limited in their case. The dates for the Exodus are ether B.C. 1625 or B.C. 1463. The former suits well with the Scripture chronology, which makes the period between the Exodus and Solomon’s dedication of the temple (in B.C. 1005) 620 years.

This period actually elapsed between the two events, as we prove by adding together the durations of the recorded incidents which intervened. Even omitting the periods of the administration of Joshua and Samuel, whose exact measures are not given, we have the following:—

Thus the statement in 1 Kings 6:1 that the interval between the and the building of the temple was 480 years, is evidently an error of transcription. It is impossible to crowd into that period the events recorded in the history.

(Note: Was it truly an error of transcription? KJV Only people don’t believe there are errors in the KJV. Can somebody shed some light on this?)

Rameses II. and Menephtah, who are by many assumed to be the Pharaohs of Moses, are on the other hand altogether too late for any possible reconciliation with Scripture chronology. Rameses II. is given as B.C. 1154, and he reigned sixty-seven years. Menephtah was his son and successor, and if the Exodus took place in his reign, it cannot have been before B.C. 1087, i.e., only about seventy years before Solomon time! Where, then, must we place all the above historical incidents which we know to have intervened? Either, then, Rameses II, and Menephtah were of the Pharaohs of Moses, or their assigned dates are altogether too late. Many weighty reasons, independent of chronology, lead us to adopt the former conclusion.

Much interesting information on this subject will be found in “Ancient Egypt,” by Canon Trevor of York (Religious Tract Society, 56, Paternoster Row, London), and especially in his tenth chapter, where he discusses in a clear and simple style the question of the chronology of Egyptian history. So many bold attacks on the Word of God have been based on this ground, that it is well Christians should be informed on the subject, and be able to prove that the ground is merely shifting sand that cannot sustain any weighty superstructure. A careful excursus (lengthy, appended exposition of a topic or point) on “the bearings of Egyptian history on the Pentateuch,” will be found at the end of the first volume of the Speaker’s Commentary.

Continued in Chapter V. The Davidic Programme. – Part I.

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness