Introduction
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
(1.) In the foregoing statutes for the sanitary and moral purity of the camp, how vividly Jehovah manifests himself as a God nigh at hand, and not afar off!
(2.) Nothing could be better adapted than these laws to create in the Hebrew mind a sense of the omniscience of Jehovah. This very Scripture may have contributed to that wonderful perception of this truth which David possessed. Psalms 139:0.
(3.) The particular providence of God could not have been doubted under an administration in which he infallibly interposed to mark the guilty and shield the innocent.
(4.) God’s holiness, and his abhorrence of sin, the conception of which was at this time very inadequate in the Hebrew mind, here shines forth. We who have enjoyed the light of a higher dispensation are often forgetful of the spiritual darkness of the masses of the people, even when led by the pillar of fire. The idea of God’s holiness dawned upon them slowly through that ritual, ordained expressly not only to illustrate this attribute of Jehovah, but to adumbrate the incarnation of the Holy One.
(5.) The fact that the only ordeal instituted by God is that which guards the sanctity of marriage shows the transcendent value of that institution, and teaches human legislators and jurists with what strict carefulness they should shield this sacred relation from the perils to which it is exposed in modern times.
(6.) But why is not the sanctity of marriage guarded on both sides? Why is there no ordeal for a suspected husband? 1.) One end of the jealousy-trial being the protection of innocence, the husband, as the stronger party and endowed with authority, was not so much in need of protection. He could not be severely oppressed or capriciously put away in divorce. 2.) To afford to the jealous wife the same appeal to Jehovah against her husband would have been derogatory to the great authority and superior dignity always accorded to him, in Oriental countries especially, and approved by the Holy Scriptures. Genesis 3:16; 1 Corinthians 11:3. 1 Corinthians 11:3.) Though the violation of the marriage vow by the husband is a sin as heinous as the infidelity of the wife, yet its social and civil effects are not so disastrous to the peace of the family and the good order of society. The husband might transgress without foisting a spurious heir upon a family: it is not so with the wife. Hence she should be entirely above suspicion. The ordeal was designed to lift her up to that enviable position. In case of the violation of the seventh commandment, proved by competent witnesses, the guilty parties, both being under marriage vows, suffered the same punishment. Leviticus 20:10.
(7.) Sceptics and visionary idealists, who demand the absolutely right in human legislation, attained by the very best method, severely criticise the trial of jealousy as unworthy of divine origin. All such we refer to Bishop Butler’s unanswerable declaration that men are endowed with the moral ability to judge of ends as right or wrong, while they are not competent to pronounce upon the means which God may select for the attainment of a right end. (Butler’s Analogy, chap. Numbers 7:2.) Moreover, all human legislators who aim at practicable legislation are compelled to regard the moral condition of those for whom they enact laws, and to aim at an attainable imperfect good rather than at an impossible ideal perfection. When God sets up a theocracy over the imperfect and depraved, it is not derogatory either to his wisdom or holiness to descend from the realm of the ideal into the sphere of the practical.
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