The

of Moses.

LECTURE VI.

THE WILDERNESS.

FROM the Exodus begins the great period of the life of Moses. On that night, he is described as first taking the decisive lead. Up to that point he and Aaron and Miriam 1 companions appear almost on an equality. But after that, Moses is usually mentioned alone. Aaron still held the second place, but the character of interpreter to Moses which he had borne in speaking to Pharaoh is withdrawn, and it would seem as if Moses henceforth became altogether, what hitherto he had only been in part, the Prophet of the people. Miriam, too, though always holding the independent position to which her age entitled her, no more appears as lending her voice and song to enforce her brother's prophetic power. Another who occupies a place nearly equal to Aaron, though we know but little of him, is Hur, of the tribe of Judah, husband of Miriam, and grandfather of the artist Bezaleel. The guide in regard to the route through the wilderness was, as we shall see, Jethro: the servant, occupying the same relation as Elisha afterwards to Elijah, or Gehazi to Elisha, was the youthful Hoshea, afterwards Joshua.

of Moses.

But Moses is incontestably the chief personage of the whole history. In the narrative, the phrase is constantly Importance recurring, 'The Lord spake unto Moses,' 'Moses spake unto the children of Israel.' In the traditions of the desert, whether late or early, his name predominates over that of every one else: 'The Wells of Moses' (Ayûn Mûsa) on the shores of the Red Sea, 'The Mountain of 'Moses' (Jebel Mûsa) near the convent of S. Catherine, 'The

''I sent before thee Moses and Aaron and Miriam' (Micah vi. 4).

'Ravine of Moses' (Shuk Mûsa) at Mount S. Catherine, 'The 'Valley of Moses' (Wady Mûsa) at Petra. 'The Books of 'Moses' are so called (as afterwards the Books of Samuel), in all probability from his being the chief subject of them. very word 'Mosaic' has been in later times applied, in a sense not used of any other saint of the Old Testament, to the whole religion of which he was the expounder.1

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It has sometimes been attempted to reduce this great character into a mere passive instrument of the Divine Will, as though he had himself borne no conscious part in the actions in which he figures, or the messages which he delivers. This, however, is as incompatible with the general tenor of the Scriptural account, as it is with the common language in which he has been described by the most enlightened scholars. The frequent addresses of the Divinity to him no more contravene his personal activity and intelligence than in the case of Elijah or Isaiah. In the New Testament the legislation of the Jews 'Moses gave you is expressly ascribed to him. circumcision.' Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you.' 3 'Did not Moses give you the law?'4 Moses' accuseth you.' 5 S. Paul goes so far as to speak of him as the founder of the Jewish religion: They were all baptized unto Moses.' He is constantly called 'a Prophet.' In the ancient language both of Jews and Christians, he was known as 'the great Lawgiver,' 'the great Theologian,' 'the great Statesman.' He must be considered, like all the saints and heroes of the Bible, as a man of marvellous gifts, raised up by Divine Providence for the highest purpose to which men could be called; and so, in a lesser degree, his name has been applied in later times: Peter was called after him the Moses of the Christian Church; Ulfilas, the Moses of the Goths; Almos, the Moses of the Hungarians; Benedict, the Moses of the Monastic Orders. The union of

The word 'Mosaic' (musivum, povσεῖον, μουσαϊκόν), as applied to the variegated pavement, was probably derived from a Phoenician word, unconnected with Moses (see an Essay of Redslob, Zeitschrift der Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesells. xiv. 663).

2

John vii. 22.

3 Matt xix. 8.

5 John v. 45.

* John vii. 19. I Cor. x. 2. "All these terms are freely used in Euseb. Præp. Evang. vii. 8; Philo, V. M. i. 80; Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 22, 24. The tenacious adherence to his laws is by Josephus (Ant. iii. 15, 3) ascribed to the respect felt for his character.

the Leader and the Prophet was such as Eastern religion has always admitted more easily than Western. Mahomet, Abd-elKader, Schamyl, are all illustrations of its possibility. But, amongst the heroes and saints of the best religion, no such union occurs again after Moses.

Uncertain

This double career may be divided into three parts: the approach by Rephidim to Sinai; the stay at Sinai ; the march from Sinai to Palestine by Kadesh and by Moab. In the first and third of these he appears chiefly as the Leader; in the second, as the Prophet. Whatever is to be said on minute matters of topography has been said elsewhere; and with regard to all the details of the Israelite journey, there are many reasons why we should be content to remain in suspense for the present. Long as the desert of Sinai has been known to Christian pilgrims, yet it may almost be said never to have been explored before the beginning of this century. We are still at the threshold of our knowledge concerning it. The older pilgrims never troubled themselves to compare the general features of the desert with the indications of the Sacred narrative, ties of the and therefore they usually missed the cardinal points Desert. of dispute. A signal instance of this may be seen in the travels of Pococke, in the eighteenth century, who gives an account of the Sinaitic desert, such as entirely conceals from us the very localities which are most important for the whole comparison of the history and geography. He passes, almost without notice, the plain at the foot of one of the claimants to the name of Sinai; he says nothing of the commanding mountain which from early times has been the other claimant. He went through the sacred localities with his eyes closed to the impressions which all now see to be most important. We are still, therefore, in the condition of discoverers, but if we are thus compelled to abstain from positive conclusions, it is an abstinence which in this instance is the less inconvenient, because the very uniformity of nature by which it is occasioned also enables us to imagine the general framework of the events, even where the particular scene is unknown; and many will feel at a distance, what many have felt on the spot, that, in speaking

of such sacred events, uncertainty is the best safeguard for reverence; and that suspense as to the exact details of form and locality is the most fitting approach for the consideration of the presence of Him who has 'made darkness His secret ‘place, His pavilion round about Him with dark waters, and 'thick clouds to cover them.'1

1. In the flight from Egypt, the people of Israel disappear once more from the view of the Gentile world, The notices, scanty as they were, which we have of their earlier history, almost entirely cease on their entrance into the desert. A solitary glimpse of their wanderings, recorded by Tacitus, is all that Pagan records disclose. He relates 2 how, in the absence

of water, they threw themselves on the ground in despair, when a herd of wild asses guided them to a rock overshadowed by palm trees, where Moses discovered for them a copious spring. A seven days' journey brought them to Palestine; and the Sabbath was instituted to commemorate their safe arrival within that period, as their deliverance from thirst in the desert was commemorated by the erection of the image of an ass in their most holy place. On this scene the curtain falls, and, as far as the Western world is concerned, it is no more lifted up, till Pompey entered the Holy of Holies, and found, not, as he doubtless expected, this strange memorial of the wilderness, but 'vacuam sedem, inania arcana.' 3

The importance of the Wilderness

To us, on the other hand, the history which fills this space, and especially the earlier portion of it, has become almost a part of our minds. The onward march of the history, the successive localities through which it takes to Christian US, at least till the conquest of Canaan, are an history; epitome of human life itself. The reaction which followed at the waters of Strife, upon the exultation of the Passage of the Red Sea, has been fitly described as the likeness of the reaction which, from the days of Moses downwards, has followed on every great national emancipation, on every just and beneficent revolution: when 'the evils which it has caused

1 The recent investigations of Mr. Palmer and Mr. Holland have much cleared the ground. 2 Hist. v. 3. 3 Ibid. v. 9.

'are felt, and the evils which it has removed are felt no longer.'1 The wilderness, as it intervenes between Egypt and the Land of Promise, with all its dangers and consolations, is, as Coleridge would have said, not allegorical, but tautegorical, of the events which in almost unconscious metaphor we designate by those figures. It is startling, as we traverse it even at this day, to feel that the hard stony track under our feet, the springs to which we look forward at the end of our day's march, the sense of contrast with what has been and with what is to be, are the very materials out of which the imagination of all ages has constructed its idea of the journey of life.

to Jewish history.

But this period had a special bearing on the history of Israel. It was their beginning as a people: it was their conversion or their reconversion to the true faith; it had all the faults and all the excellences which such a new start of life always presents. With all its faults and shortcomings, it was the spring-time of their national existence. I ' remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine 'espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a 'land that was not sown.' 2 'When Israel was a child, then I 'loved him.' The Law, we are told, was 'a guide to bring 6 men to Christ.' 4 'Mount Sinai in Arabia' is opposed, both in preparation and in contrast, to the heavenly and free Jerusalem which is above. But, even in the earlier stages of the history of the Jewish Church, the Law was a schoolmaster, and Mount Sinai was a school for the dispensation and for the possession even of the earthly Jerusalem.

2. It is difficult, under the circumstances, to imagine a fitter scene for a new revelation than was the wilderness of Sinai to the Israelites. They had left the land of Egypt: Its ресиliarities. they had come out of the house of bondage, into a land as different, into a life as new, as it was possible to conceive. Instead of the green valley of the one abundant, beneficent river, where water and vegetation never failed, they were in the great and terrible wilderness,' where a spring in

1 Macaulay's History of England, ch. xi. * Jer. ii. 2.

3 Hos. xi. I.

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Gal. iii. 24, iv. 25; Heb. xii. 18.