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37. And the liers in wait hasted, and rushed [set upon; see ix. 33] upon Gibeah; and the liers in wait drew themselves along, and smote all the city with the edge of the sword [an expression which denotes extermination].

38. Now there was an appointed sign between the men of Israel and the liers in wait, that they should make a great flame with smoke rise up out of the city 39. And when the men of Israel retired in the battle, Benjamin began to smite and kill of the men of Israel about thirty persons: for they said, Surely they are smitten down before us, as in the first battle.

40. But when the flame began to arise up out of the city with a pillar of smoke, the Benjamites looked behind them, and, behold, the flame of the city ascended up to heaven.

41. And when the men of Israel turned again, the men of Benjamin were amazed for they saw that evil was come upon them.

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42. Therefore they turned their backs before the men of Israel unto the way of the wilderness; but the battle overtook them; and them which came out of the cities [Benjamites] they destroyed in the midst of them [that is, in their own cities].

43. Thus they inclosed the Benjamites round about, and chased them, and trode them down with ease over against Gibeah toward the sunrising. ["The language and construction of this verse is poetical; it seems to be an extract from a song, and to describe, in the language of poetry, the same event which the preceding verse described in that of prose."]

44. And there fell of Benjamin eighteen thousand men ; all these were men of valour.

45. And they turned and fled toward the wilderness unto the rock of Rimmon [the rock of the pomegranate]; and they gleaned of them in the highways five thousand men; and pursued hard after them unto Gidom [mentioned nowhere else], and slew two thousand men of them.

46. So that all which fell that day of Benjamin were twenty and five thousand men that drew the sword; all these were men of valour.

47. But six hundred men [compare 1 Sam. xiv. 2] turned and fled to the wilderness unto the rock Rimmon, and abode in the rock Rimmon four months.

48. And the men of Israel turned again upon the children of Benjamin, and smote them with the edge of the sword, as well the men of every city, as the beast, and all that came to hand: also they set on fire all the cities that they came to.

"Having utterly destroyed the Benjamite army, except the six hundred men who were shut up in Rimmon, the Israelites returned through the Benjamite country and put to death all the remaining inhabitants, destroyed the cattle and burnt the cities" (The Speaker's Commentary). Keeping the whole tragedy vividly in mind, we shall the more profitably enter upon the study of the following subject.

Judges xxi. 3.

"O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to day one tribe lacking in Israel?"

ONE TRIBE LACKING.

HE spirit of this inquiry is the spirit of the whole Bible.

THE

It is, indeed, not so much an inquiry as a wail, a burst of sorrow, a very agony of kinship and disunion. The three-fold repetition of "Israel" indicates supreme distress. Israel was meant to be a unity-a constitution not only complete but inviolable-foursquare, without break or flaw, vital at every point -a noble integrity! And now Benjamin is threatened with extinction: Benjamin is not in the house of God. From the beginning, Benjamin was but a little tribe, the least of all in Israel, numbering at first from thirty to forty thousand fighting men. Over an extremely difficult and delicate question Benjamin came into conflict with the rest of Israel, and after an almost superhuman resistance was overborne, all but extirpated indeed, only some six hundred men being left, and they hiding themselves in the rock Rimmon-the impregnable Rock of the Pomegranate-some four months, thinking of the eighteen thousand men of valour who had been "trodden down with ease over against Gibeah toward the sunrising.". But there was a time of heart-breaking in Israel. In the battlefield men thought only of victory, but they went up unto what is called in the text "the house of God." That is the right point of observation. Until you have looked at your fellow creatures from the house of God, from the altar, from the cross, you have never looked at them. Israel was now in the house of God, and began to reckon, to say, Who is here? Who is not here? Then they sighed, and shed tears, as only strong men can shed them, and in their tears they said, "O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to day one tribe lacking in Israel?" Thus men come to their better selves; heat dies away, vengeance halts in its desperate pursuit, all deepest and truest instincts come to the support of reason, natural affection stands by the side of justice, and great questions are quieted by great answers.

Does not the text exhibit the human aspect of the solicitude of God's own heart? In this respect, as well as in other ways, is not man made a little lower than God? In all such emotion there are suggestions infinite in scope and tenderness-suggestions of unity, family completeness, absolute unselfishness, redemption, forgiveness, reconstruction, everlasting joy! There is of course a sentiment which is without value, but this must not blind us to the fact that there is also an emotion without which we cannot sound the depths of God's own love. When we feel most truly, we often see most clearly. "Where art thou?" was the inquiry of God when Adam did not come towards him in the fearless joy of innocence. "Where is thy brother?" was the divine inquiry when Cain was found in criminal loneliness. Rather than Israel should be lost Moses would be blotted out of God's book. Christ came to seek and to save the lost. And Paul-that marvellous compound of Moses and Christ-honouring the majesty of the law, yet feeling its weakness in the presence of sin-did he not tremble under the same emotion? The answer will be found in the most doctrinal and logical, yet the most profoundly emotional of all his Epistles. In the Epistle to the Romans not only is one tribe threatened with extinction, but all Israel seems to be lost. The writer cannot rest, therefore. He has "great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart." It is not enough for him that the forces of the Gentiles are moving towards the Cross, that from Midian, and Ephah, and Sheba men are arising to show forth the praises of the Lord; nor is it enough that the flocks of Kedar and the rams of Nebaioth shall be acceptable sacrifices: all this is good, beautiful, and an exceeding delight, but-but Israel is, not in the number of those who rejoice, Israel is hard of heart, and remembering this Paul says, "I could wish that myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." "My heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved." It was a sublime emotion. But who is the speaker? Take his own account of himself- "Of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin "—the very tribe which in the text is lacking! Thus history rolls round in amplified and ennobled repetition. In the Book of Judges all Israel mourned that Benjamin was lacking, and in the Epistle to the Romans, Benjamin, in the person of its most

illustrious descendant, laments that all Israel is away-far off in the wilderness of unbelief-he an alien who ought to have been a prince in the house of God.

"

Nor does the evidence of the presence of this emotion in the Bible end here. In the Apocalypse there is One-" faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God," and he says, Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in ;" the same who said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" the same who went after the lost sheep of the house of Israel; the same who said, "Preach the Gospel to every creature," for good news must evermore do good.

There is, then, what may be called a distinct unity of emotion, call it pity, solicitude, compassion, or by any equal term, throughout the whole Bible. The Bible varies a good deal in historical and even in moral colour, but it never varies in pity, and love, and mercy. From the first, God loved man, even with atoning and redeeming love. Marvellous, truly and instructively, is the development of Biblical history. It changes page by pagenow barbarous, now gentle, here an altar, there a commandment, yonder a ritual, and afar off an experience full of confusion, and riot, and tragedy: but in all the infinite tumult God looks after the wanderer with longing love, pursues him, pleads with him, says "Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?" importunes him : "Cries,-How shall I give thee up? Lets the lifted thunder drop." Even divine righteousness varies its aspects without varying its nature; in some sense it measures its demands by human weakness: now it is an order for a place or a time; then it is a series of initial and suggestive commandments; then it is an accommodation to hardness of heart,-never losing a ray of its eternal glory, it yet creates an atmosphere suited to the vision of the beholder;—but love, pity, mercy, care for the absent, wonder about the one lacking tribe,-this begins the book, ends the book stirs the book like the throb of an infinite heart.

The love of God, the mercy, the pity, the compassion of God is not a revelation of the New Testament only, it is the revelation of the whole Bible. In Eden there was a Promised Seed; in the wilderness there was a mercy-seat; in Genesis there is a covenant; in Malachi there is a book of remembrance; in Exodus the Lord keeps mercy for thousands, and forgives iniquity, and transgression, and sin; in Numbers "the Lord is longsuffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression;" in Judges "the Lord was grieved for the misery of Israel;" in Samuel he recalled the avenging angel; in Chronicles (a book of annals) he says, if his people will seek his face and turn from their wicked ways, he will hear them from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land; the Psalms are songs of forgiveness; Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are books glowing with the love of God; and Daniel says, "To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him;" in Hosea, God heals the backsliding of his people, and loves them freely; even Joel-that burning furnace -says that God is gracious and merciful; Jonah, in solemn anger, says he knew that God was "a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness;" and all the minor prophets praise the tenderness of God. So we find that this pity, compassion, mercy-by whatever name we call the emotion-is present from the beginning to the end of the Old Testament. Paul was the most Old Testament writer in all the New Testament. When he speaks of God being rich in mercy, good, forbearing, longsuffering, Paul is in very deed a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the tribe of Benjamin. When the Jews at Jerusalem heard that Paul spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue they kept the more silence. We ought to do the same; for we have understood that Paul was the Apostle of the Gentiles, that his place was far off among the heathen, that special grace was given unto him that he should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and at the very time he was preaching in Syria and Cilicia he was unknown by face unto the Churches of Judea which were in Christ. Yet this man, consecrated to preach in Gentile tongues, spake in the Hebrew tongue. Why? He missed his own people. He thought that the mother-tongue might fetch some of them.

His heart was

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