Numbers 9

THE SECOND PASSOVER.

Directions are given respecting the regular passover, (1-5,) and also a supplementary one for the unclean and the absent, (6-14.) The removals and encampments of Israel are directed by the Divine Presence in the cloud, (15-23.) The proper place for the signs and signals of the march would naturally be just before the beginning of the march. But the time for the celebration of the passover was before the census on the first day of the second month. Hence a strictly chronological arrangement would have put the first fourteen verses at the beginning of this book or in the book of Leviticus, or, more accurately still, at close of Exodus. One of the Hebrew doctors relieves this and similar apparent discrepancies in the history, of the Sinaitic legislation by the adage, “There is no order of former and latter in the law.” Houbigant says: “It is enough to know that these books contain an account of things transacted in the days of Moses, though not in their regular or chronological order.” Some Christian writers extend this remark to Christ and the gospels, because the laws defining uncleanness had been given since the passover supplementary legislation was required respecting the admission of the unclean to this rite. “It is in connexion with the decision of this question that the reference to the original institution occurs.” Moreover, a special divine warrant was requisite, since at the first passover there is no intimation that it was to be kept in the wilderness. It was not kept again till after the crossing of the Jordan. Joshua 5:10-12, notes.

CONCLUDING NOTES.

(1.) “For the further study of the subject of the pillar of cloud we add some passages from Holy Scripture which seem connected with the manifestation of God in cloud and fire. In the Old Testament the following may here be compared: Psalms 78:14; Psalms 99:7; Psalms 105:39; and from another point of view, Psalms 27:1; Psalms 91:5-6; Psalms 121:6; and again, Isaiah 4:5; Isaiah 6:4; Isaiah 52:12; Ezekiel 10:4. In the New Testament we read of the cloud that overshadowed the Christ on the mount of transfiguration, (Matthew 17:5, and parallels;) of that in which the risen Saviour visibly ascended, (Acts 1:9;) and, lastly, retrospectively, of that in which Israel was baptized unto Moses. 1 Corinthians 10:1-2.… This visible divine presence among Israel gave origin to the well known Jewish term Shekina, which does not occur in the Old Testament itself. On the Jewish traditions connected with the Shekina, this is not the place to enter. It is one of the few ideas and terms derived from later Judaism which we love to see transferred into Christian theology. But to us it means better than to them. It means the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in the hearts of all his faithful people.” Dr. Edersheim.

(2.) It is taken for granted by many, that this whole history of the wanderings of the children of Israel “was obviously intended to be typical of the varied experience of the Lord’s people in their life-journey through the world, so that we may regard these apparently zigzag marches and longer or shorter stations as pointing to that vast diversity of states through which the Lord’s pilgrims pass on their way to the heavenly Canaan.” But there is not only an entire lack of scriptural basis for this theory, but it is attended by great spiritual peril. If the spiritual wanderings of the Christian are the antitype of a type fashioned by the divine hand thousands of years ago, such wanderings are proper and normal in the creed of the Arminian, and necessary in the creed of the Calvinist, since a type implies a designed correspondence. Hence in either case a straight course from justification to entire sanctification, avoiding a zigzag of sinning and repenting, is considered abnormal and unscriptural. The history of Israel in the wilderness affords striking admonitory lessons or warning beacons, as is indicated in 1 Corinthians 10:1-12, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews. But to make the sins and stumblings of the Church in the wilderness a model of the life of the Church under the dispensation of the Spirit is to defeat the purpose of the New Testament writers when they hold up these instances of unbelief and failure as warnings to all following generations. It is one thing to say that the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans illustrates the actual life of multitudes of believers, but quite another to say that St. Paul therein portrays his ideal Christian. This assumption, that the actual must have been the divine ideal, is akin to the mistake of supposing that all the sins and backslidings of the modern Church are the designed antitype of the defections of Israel, and in a measure justified by this typical relation.