Numbers 12:7 - Exposition

My servant Moses is not so. No words could more clearly and sharply draw the distinction between Moses and the whole laudabilis numerus of the prophets. It is strange that, in the face of a statement so general and so emphatic, it should have been doubted whether it applied to such prophets as Isaiah or Daniel. It was exactly in "visions" and in "dreams," i.e; under the peculiar psychological conditions so-called, that these greatest of prophets received their revelations from heaven. The exceeding richness and wonder of some of these revelations did not alter the mode in which they were received, nor raise them out of the ordinary conditions of the gradus propheticus. As prophets of future things they were much greater than Moses, and their writings may be to us far more precious; but that does not concern the present question, which turns exclusively upon the relation between the Divine Giver and the human receiver of the revelation. If words mean anything, the assertion here is that Moses stood on an altogether different footing from the "prophet of the Lord" in respect of the communications which he received from the Lord. It is this essential superiority of position on the part of Moses which alone gives force and meaning to the important declarations of Deuteronomy 18:15 ; John 1:21 b.; John 6:14 ; John 7:40 , &c.; Moses had no successor in his relations with God until that Son of man came, who was "in heaven" all the time he walked and spake on earth. Who is faithful in all mine house, נֶאֶמָן with בּ means to be proved, or attested, and so established (cf. 1 Samuel 3:20 ; 1 Samuel 22:14 ). The Septuagint gives the true sense, ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ οἴκῳ μου πιστός , and so it is quoted in the Epistle to the Hebrews ( John 3:2 ). The "house" of God, as the adjective "whole" shows, is not the tabernacle, but the house of Israel; the' word "house" standing for household, family, nation, as so often in the sacred writings (see Genesis 46:27 ; Le Genesis 10:6 ; Hebrews 3:6 ).