MAN (12)
[p. 204] MAN (12)
Exodus 3:1 - 6; Exodus 5:20 - 23; Numbers 12:1 - 16
JT It is thought that the scriptures read will suffice to convey some further thoughts as to Man, which is our subject in these readings. The thought now is that manhood will be seen in the character of Moses and the qualities that show themselves in him; the lowliness, and especially the meekness. He is said to have been the meekest man in all the earth, which is very suggestive. So that our subject at this time as bringing in meekness in man will link us in our thoughts with the Lord Jesus as He Himself says, “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, ... for I am meek and lowly in heart; ... for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”, Matthew 11:28 - 30. I think it is well to remind the brethren that man was not introduced early in the divine ways: angels were evidently created much earlier, known to God and used of God at an earlier period. So that the subject of Man comes in as of peculiar interest in the first of Genesis: “Let us make man in our image” — the word ‘man’ implying both man and woman, male and female — “after our likeness; and let them have dominion”, Genesis 1:26. So that man was peculiarly in the mind of God. As we come on to Exodus we can see the force of it in the service of God because Moses is the great man for the service. So that it is said of the Lord that “having begun from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”, Luke 24:27.
RWS It says in Exodus 2:21, “And Moses consented to remain with the man”, Exodus 2:21. Would there be something of manhood coming out in his consenting to this changed position in his [p. 205] circumstances?
JT Yes; we have earlier noticed that Jethro was concerned about his daughters leaving the man. “Where is he?” he said of him. So the man Moses is evidently in the mind of the Spirit in this sense.
RWS I suppose Moses would have been a prince in Egypt, and now he is content to dwell with a priest in Midian, which must have been a test to him practically in his changed circumstances and would bring out the work of God in him.
JT As you suggest, there was a drop as to his own position and dignity. Zipporah the daughter of the priest of Midian became his wife.
SCM Is it not worthy of note to see from where Moses sprang? It is stated that “a man of the house of Levi went and took a daughter of Levi”, Exodus 2:1.
JT Family status is in mind, I suppose, which is important. In the marriages amongst the brethren there is the family status, but that family is to be the family of God, not any other. No such thing as natural family status is to be made much of amongst the saints; it is a question of the family of God; and so the word, “See what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God”, 1 John 3:1. The children of God have family dignity, dignity according to God.
JHE This revelation which God was giving Moses at the thorn-bush would make him superior to the man with whom he was residing. God gave him this wonderful communication, which I suppose he never forgot: “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look at God”. How much superior was his position to that of the priest of Midian!
JT Just so, so that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are brought in; and if you speak of distinction as in manhood, there it lies, in [p. 206] that family.
ANW Could there be any greater honour than for a man to say by divine inspiration, as Moses did, “A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up to you out of your brethren like me: him shall ye hear”, Acts 3:22? That is an amazing scripture, referring as it does to the Lord, but honouring Moses as no other could be honoured.
ABP Would you say that manhood in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is to be perpetuated? The Lord says, as to this passage, that God is the God of the living, and I wondered if that suggests that as such He delights to continue this kind of man.
JT That is what we hope to get to; some thought about manhood that will stay with us and distinguish us. We do not belong to the lower creatures, however dignified they may be, we belong to man; so the word is, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”, Genesis 1:26. That shows what was in the mind of God, that He would do that, and He waited a long time to do it; He made other creatures long before.
EAL In Luke 16, in the narrative, Abraham says, “They have Moses and the prophets”, Luke 16:29. The Lord makes the prophetic words and the words of Moses very important there, does He not?
JT Just so, and He would direct us to Moses personally. What distinction he had in his history! He was with the Lord on the mount of transfiguration; Moses and Elias were both there. Moses was thus peculiarly distinguished as well as Elijah.
FHL Is there any suggestion in Moses’ name meaning ‘drawn out’, as if there was something special coming to light?
JT Just so, he was placed in the water, he began with water, so to speak, and he was drawn out. And Noah built an ark for the saving of his house. We are told that “few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water”, 1 Peter 3:20.
[p. 207] It shows the great place water has in the divine operations.
AR What is suggested in the thorn-bush?
JT Humility, I would say, it is nothing at all in itself, it is not like an oak or an apple tree; I believe what is in mind is humility, and in how lowly a way the whole race has begun! But then if you apply that to ourselves it becomes us to appropriate the fact that we belong to another order of man; not Adam, but Christ. And so God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion”, Genesis 1:26. They were very lowly, of course, as created out of dust, but God immediately establishes them in personal greatness: “Let them have dominion”, they both had dominion.
J.H.E. We often sing,
“Through weakness and defeat
He won the meed and crown;
Trod all our foes beneath His feet,
In being trodden down”. (24:2)
We delight in those features seen in the Lord Jesus.
JT Quite so; the Lord accepted reproach and humiliation, and that, of course, is to mark us as it marked the Lord Jesus.
CAM Would you say that what Moses learned in the vision was another order of manhood?
JT Quite so.
JTJr In contrast to the Egyptian man? Egypt, I suppose, represents the sphere of man in his pride.
JT That is the ground Pharaoh takes.
FHL Was Moses to learn that God was committed to this kind of man, this kind of people, as represented in the bush?
JT Yes, that is right; so that we might as well look at the first passage read, in chapter 3: “And Moses tended the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock behind the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God — to Horeb. And the Angel of Jehovah appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a thorn-bush: and he looked, and behold, the thorn-bush burned with fire, and the thorn-bush was not being consumed. And Moses said, Let me now turn aside and see this great sight, why the thorn-bush is not burnt. And Jehovah saw that he turned aside to see, and God called to him out of the midst of the thorn-bush and said, Moses, Moses! And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: loose thy sandals from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. And he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look at God”.
[p. 208] So that we have Moses prominently in the divine mind in this passage; and he is in a lowly attitude, for it is at the thorn-bush. God called to him out of the midst of the thorn-bush saying, “Moses, Moses!”. The double mention of his name is to call attention to him, the person drawn out of the water; that is what his name means and it is to give character to his whole life. We are born of water and of Spirit, everyone of us who is born of God is born of water and of Spirit. So that Moses has these characteristics.
CAM That is very interesting; and the way you stressed the meekness of Moses was very impressive. It says, “Blessed the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”, Matthew 5:5. What a place Moses had in that regard!
JT Yes; and the Lord says, “I am meek and lowly in heart” Matthew 11:29; it is the acceptance by the Lord Jesus of man’s place. Hence when it speaks of “the man Moses” it suggests “the man Christ Jesus”. “For God is one”, we are told, “and the mediator of God and men one, the man Christ Jesus”, 1 Timothy 2:5. He is the mediator of God [p. 209] and men.
JHE Even Pilate, who was so weak as judge, had to say, “Behold the man!”. The passage reads, “Pilate went out again and says to them, Lo, I bring him out to you, that ye may know that I find in him no fault whatever. (Jesus therefore went forth without, wearing the crown of thorn, and the purple robe.) And he says to them, Behold the man!” John 19:4,5.
JT Yes; whatever Pilate had in his mind, it was reproach; but it was distinction nevertheless. The greatest possible distinction enters into it, because it is moral distinction.
Ques We often speak of Luke 23:41, “This man has done nothing amiss”, Luke 23:41. Would that be a higher thought than Pilate’s?
JT “This man has done nothing amiss”. Well, quite. God has His own way of distinguishing men or persons; it may be that it is in lowliness, but it is nevertheless divine distinction. The very lowliness involves distinction, that He should have taken such a place!
ANW I was struck with the fact that the Spirit leads Moses to say, “Let me now turn aside and see this great sight”. He calls it a “great sight”.
JTJr I suppose the colours in Numbers 4 would perhaps suggest this distinctiveness of which you are speaking. There were the blue and the scarlet and the purple; these distinctive colours no doubt were in Christ in a moral way as He moved here. There would be suggestions of the same thing in Moses. We are told in Numbers 4 that the ark was covered with a cloth wholly of blue, and then a cloth of scarlet was placed over the utensils on the table, and a purple cloth was spread upon the altar.
JT That is, these colours are peculiarly distinctive, they attract the eye; and they would refer to [p. 210] something that is divine. While there may be nothing in a literal sense, yet they indicate what is divine. They are distinctly attractive in that sense.
AR Does the tabernacle system correspond in any way with chapter 3 of Exodus?
JT Well, I would think so; because we must have distinction if we are dealing with man in relation to God. And so we are to consider such a man as Moses; you might say, in a sense, Moses was the greatest man next to Christ.
ABP Would that be seen in Revelation 15 where it speaks of the sea of glass, and it says that those who stand upon it sing the song of Moses bondman of God, and the song of the Lamb? Moses has a very distinctive place there, along with the Lamb.
JT That is very significant, because it is “the song of Moses ... and the song of the Lamb” Revelation 15:3; it is humility, yet it is distinction, God selecting something in the sense of moral distinction. Singing the song of Moses suggests suffering; he belonged to a suffering people, and the Lamb was a sufferer. It is an allusion to lowliness, the word ‘Lamb’ is a diminutive; it is not a great lamb, but a little one; we accept what is small and yet what is morally great.
FNW The Lord Jesus was meek; should we not be likewise as a company?
JT Just so. It is a question of what God makes us, because the new birth must underlie it all according to John’s gospel; the new birth must underlie everything. The Lord was meek and lowly in heart, as we have said, but we must be born again, that is the first thing, born again; and then born of water and of Spirit, the second thought. The water which means cleansing must come into it.
JTJr Meekness is a fruit of the Spirit, is it not? In Galatians it is mentioned in the fruit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control”, Galatians 5:[p. 211] 22.
JT Quite so; and the last is self-control; that is a fine expression!
EEH Is there something mysterious in the thorn-bush being burned and yet not being consumed?
JT It is mysterious; it is a miracle, God is pleased to work miracles; they are signs, just signs, but they are miracles nevertheless.
EEH I was thinking that it says that Moses turned aside to see why it was not consumed.
JT Showing that he was interested. God has great pleasure in seeing His people interested in His things or in Himself; because we ought to be interested in everything that is of God. How many people spend a great deal of time reading newspapers and novels and that sort of thing that does not relate to God at all. The Scriptures relate to God and the Holy Spirit’s activities relate to God; He carries on the ministry of Christ. So that it is a question of where our interests lie.
S W. Is there a point in that the thorn-bush was in Horeb, the mount of God?
JT Quite so; that is where the blessing is. He came to mount Horeb, the mount of God, it says.
CWM Paul, when speaking to the Corinthians in connection with the world not knowing God says, “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom has not known God, God has been pleased by the foolishness of the preaching to save those that believe. Since Jews indeed ask for signs, and Greeks seek wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews an offence, and to nations foolishness; but to those that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ God’s power and God’s wisdom”, 1 Corinthians 1:1 - [p. 212] 24 The first epistle to the Corinthians leads up to that; the apostle Paul makes a point of it in the character of his preaching. He did not pretend to be any great preacher using eloquent words or phrases, but his words were in power, there was power there.
CWM You have been stressing in relation to Moses, that he was the meekest man in all the earth; so that though the world by wisdom knew not God, the apostle brought God in by preaching this glorious Person who is God’s power and God’s wisdom.
JT The preaching in the mouth of a lowly man like Paul would not be eloquent; although he was an educated man, yet he was content to be nothing. There were those who said that his bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible. That is the way he was regarded by some and that is how the matter stands with us, as to whether we are content to be little but yet to be in power, that there should be power in our words; not simply words that men would speak in human wisdom with great flowing phrases, but words spoken in littleness. His bodily presence is weak, they said, and his speech contemptible.
SCM Is power seen when some were sent to take Jesus, and the Pharisees enquired, “Why have ye not brought him?”, and they said, “Never man spoke thus, as this man speaks”? John 7:45,46. Was the power seen there?
JT Quite so, “Never man spoke thus, as this man speaks”, that was the word. Never a man spoke like Him. What wonderful words they must have been!
GH The apostle speaking to the Corinthians in the second epistle says, “But I myself, Paul, entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of the Christ”, 2 Corinthians 10:1. [p. 213] Is that the idea?
JT Very excellent, that is just the point, “the meekness and gentleness of the Christ”.
RWS Would this section represent secret history with God? I understand that the first forty years of Moses’ life were in Egypt, the second forty years behind the wilderness, and the third forty years in leading the children of Israel through the wilderness. Does not this suggest secret history with God before we serve?
JT It is wonderful that we should have these three parts to his life, as you have mentioned; in Egypt, and then in the wilderness, and then leading the people. And in leading them out he asked God to show him that goodly mountain and Lebanon; he asked Jehovah for that and Jehovah granted him to see it. He wanted to see that, and I think God let him see it. But he was one hundred and twenty years old, and it would seem as if his life had been divinely divided into three parts so that all he had intended to do, or that was to be done by him, should be done. He completed his work, he finished his work, like the Lord Jesus. The Lord said, “I have completed the work which thou gavest me that I should do it”; John 17:4 and I would think Moses an apt type of that; he finished the work. His life was made up of three parts.
Ques Is the Angel referred to here the same as the Angel spoken of in Exodus 23?
JT Well, we just wonder if the latter is not the Holy Spirit; if you will read from chapter 23 I think we shall see there is something that would point to the Holy Spirit.
Ques “Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee to the place that I have prepared. Be careful in his presence, and hearken unto his voice: do not provoke him, for he will not forgive your transgressions; for my name is in him”, [p. 214] Exodus 23:20,21.
JT Just so; I think that is remarkable.
WWM The Lord in John 8 refers to Himself as a man; He says, “Ye seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you” John 8:40.
JT Just so; the Lord does not say the man; just a man. Was there something more in your mind?
WWM I was thinking of His manhood; how God has been set out in a Man for us; and I suppose our readings are that we might be formed in that order of Man.
JT Just so, and in lowliness in service.
Ques It is not until the third part of the life of Moses that it is recorded of him that he was the meekest man in all the earth. Is there some instruction in that for us who are younger? We may not be naturally meek.
JTJr The allusion to John 8 brings in Christ in conflict, ‘the Man of John 8’. That came up in London last year. I suppose it comes out here in Moses; in chapter 5 he is a man in conflict in Egypt and able to stand up against the enemy.
JT We referred in London to the words of Mr. Bellett: ‘The Man of the 8th of John’, he would say; that is Christ.
Ques There is difficulty with some about bringing the union matter into conflict; that is, whether we should take things up, or whether we should let the Lord take care of everything. Is there any help for us tonight about that?
JT It is a question of the power to deal with evil, and to assert good.
Ques We might take out of this thought of meekness tonight that if the brethren, in taking a stand, should lose their positions they ought to just accept it. But that would not be quite the truth, would it? Do we not enter into conflict at times?
JT [p. 215] The Lord did that, when the time for it came, and it was said that never man spake like Him. That is what it says. And that should come out in anyone of us, that we have a right spirit in what we are saying, and that we say it in a right and intelligent way; and that we convey something of God in what we say and do.
AMacd Do you think the words of Moses would help? He said, “Here am I”. Availability to God is a mark of manhood.
JT Very good, “Here am I”, to be ready for anything the Lord wants one to do.
Rem In John 8 the Lord Jesus stooped down twice. “But this they said proving him, that they might have something to accuse him of. But Jesus, having stooped down, wrote with his finger on the ground”. And then in verse 8, “And again stooping down he wrote on the ground”, John 8:6 - 8. I only thought of this wonderful matter of meekness, stooping down.
JT And then His writing on the ground! Think of that! Think of the Lord graciously condescending to stoop down and write on the ground! He might have taken a slate and written on that and hung it up on the wall, but He wrote on the ground. There is humility in that. But what a writing! We are not told what He wrote, it is the fact that He wrote on the ground, and He stooped down to do it. There is humility in the Lord Jesus.
ABP Would it not appear that the verses we read in Exodus 5 have to do with the labour problem?
JT Very good, that will help us, so that I think the passage might be read again. That is a burning question just now and brethren here and elsewhere are suffering from it.
ABP The paragraph begins with verse 19 where it says, “Ye shall not diminish anything from your bricks, the daily work. And they met Moses and Aaron, who stood there to meet them, as they came out from Pharaoh. And they said to them, Jehovah look upon you and judge, that ye have made our odour to stink in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his bondmen, putting a sword into their hand to kill us! And Moses returned to Jehovah, and said, Lord, why hast thou done evil to this people? why now hast thou sent me? For ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all!”
JT That is a passage to be remembered, the humility that entered into Moses’ and Aaron’s attitude at this time. “Jehovah look upon you and judge”, the officers said; that is to say they were reproaching Moses and Aaron, reproving them; Moses and Aaron are suffering as they take up this matter of the oppression of the Lord’s people.
JTJr It would take a good deal of courage for these men to go in before Pharaoh. They were really going to the supreme court in Egypt. It says that they went in; and they continually went in, showing that they had to come before the government in the matter.
JT Just so, and God knows what has to be done, and it may be that He will take up some persons who will do the speaking for Him; that is the idea. It is God speaking, nevertheless the speaking is by others. God may do that.
JHE In Australia it would appear that there was right speaking before the authorities, and God helped the authorities to give a right judgment.
JT That is a very good illustration — what happened in N.S.W., Australia. We should remember the case, because it involved suffering.
EAL Testimony was rendered, in effect, that God has given His people a conscience to judge evil,
[p. 217] not to compromise with it. As having a judgment that trade unionism is evil, there can be no compromise with it.
Rem Some may have difficulty about going to the authorities, but chapter 5:1 says, “And afterwards Moses and Aaron went in, and said to Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah”, Exodus 5:1. So that there is a basis for going to the authorities and stating matters.
JT Well now, with regard to the scriptures before us, we are going forward in a general way as to the thought of manhood with a view to finishing up in the book of Revelation next year. I mention this so that the brethren will have in mind what is before us, and that we may read about these things and pray about them. Now in the limited time left we should proceed to the passage read in Numbers 12.
Rem Reference has been made tonight to the passage in 1 Timothy 2; I wondered if perhaps we could read it before going on to Numbers: “For God is one, and the mediator of God and men one, the man Christ Jesus”, 1 Timothy 2:5. And prior to this we have, “I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for all men; for kings and all that are in dignity, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all piety and gravity”, 1 Timothy 2:1,2. I was wondering if this matter of approaching the authorities does not fit into this passage, “... that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all piety and gravity”. In our prayer meetings and private prayers we speak to God in relation to these matters, and that gives us a basis on which to approach men in authority in relation to the welfare of the Lord’s people.
JT That is all very simple and I believe intelligible to all here. The thing for the brethren, each one, is to take these things to heart and make them a matter of prayer, so that if the authorities have to [p. 218] be approached we shall know what to do and how to do it, in a gracious way so that we shall be acceptable to men.
ANW Sometimes we have had a question as to the rightness of the apostle making his appeal to Caesar. In the light of what has been said can we endorse his appealing to Caesar? The king said that if he had not appealed to Caesar he could be let go; but apparently the divine mind was that he was to appear before Caesar.
JT Well, I would think that Paul has to be taken into account in a special way because he was the leading assembly man; and he spent considerable time in prison as a sufferer. He was a prisoner, and he appeals to us: “Remember my bonds”, Colossians 4:18. He was a great sufferer for the truth. And that is the one thing I think that we all need to accept, that we are to be sufferers for the truth; the thing is to be prepared to suffer for the truth; suffer evil with the glad tidings. It is given unto us “as regards Christ, not only the believing on him but the suffering for him also”, Philippians 1:29 and that is what is needed.
CAM So that there is a good objective attained in testimony if we call attention to the fact that there is suffering for Christ’s sake.
JT Yes; we are to be sufferers whatever else may happen. It is given to us to suffer for His sake.
ABP God says to Pharaoh, “Let my son go, that he may serve me”, Exodus 4:23. Should that not underlie the effort to liberate the saints? It is not merely that relief is wanted but liberty to serve God.
JT The word ‘son’ is affecting, “Let my son go, that he may serve me”. It properly alludes to Christ, but also to Israel; Israel suffered, the twelve tribes suffered from the very outset. But then God had to deal with them eventually and He handed the government of the world over to the gentiles,
[p. 219] and that is where it is today. In the epistle to the Romans we are told how we are to act in relation to them, in regard to these matters. Now we will go on with chapter 12 of Numbers: “And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had taken; for he had taken a Cushite as wife. And they said, Has Jehovah indeed spoken only to Moses? has he not spoken also to us? And Jehovah heard it. But the man Moses was very meek, above all men that were upon the face of the earth”. Here Moses is being persecuted by his own brother and sister, and it often happens. “Then Jehovah spoke suddenly to Moses, and to Aaron, and to Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tent of meeting. And they went out, they three. And Jehovah came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood at the entrance of the tent, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forth. And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I Jehovah will make myself known to him in a vision, I will speak to him in a dream. Not so my servant Moses: he is faithful in all my house. Mouth to mouth do I speak to him openly, and not in riddles; and the form of Jehovah doth he behold. Why then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses? And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against them, and he went away”. Now we have the case of a brother, the most faithful man that we know of until the Lord Jesus came, one of the most faithful men in the history of the Scriptures, and he was a sufferer; others persecuted him, his own brethren persecuted him, and we have to watch for this that we do not persecute our brethren for any cause, especially if it be a marital affair. Very often persecution arises from this cause, and the thing is to learn from the kind of man that we are dealing with in this chapter, to see how he shines in this peculiar matter. His [p. 220] brother and sister were against him but they were in the wrong and he was in the right, and God defended him.
Rem Paul’s word to Timothy says that “a bondman of the Lord ought not to contend, but be gentle towards all; apt to teach; forbearing; in meekness setting right those who oppose, if God perhaps may sometime give them repentance to acknowledgment of the truth”, 2 Timothy 2:24,25.
JT Very good. And so it says, “Miriam and Aaron”, it is not Aaron and Miriam; that is to say, it is a sister that is principally involved. It was Miriam, Moses’ own sister. And so it says, “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had taken; for he had taken a Cushite as wife. And they said, Has Jehovah indeed spoken only to Moses? has he not spoken also to us?”. You see they were envious of Moses; his own brother and sister were envious of him.
FHN Miriam is called a prophetess in Exodus 15.
TEH She did excellent work earlier in the book when she stood before the daughter of Pharaoh in relation to fetching a nurse for Moses; she had intelligence then, but now she is below the mark.
JT Yes; on that occasion she asked if she might get a nurse for Moses; but now Moses is the great leader of God’s people, and he is being persecuted by Miriam and Aaron.
ANW And yet he becomes her mediator to cry to Jehovah to heal her. That is the kind of man he was.
JT And now the third verse is a beautiful verse: “But the man Moses was very meek, above all men that were upon the face of the earth”. Is there anybody like him outside the Lord Jesus Himself, when suffering in this way? “Then Jehovah spoke suddenly to Moses, and to Aaron, and to Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tent of meeting”.
[p. 221] Both Aaron and Miriam are under divine discipline, but Moses is justified. Miriam and Aaron are condemned. Moses was pleased to go with them, Jehovah tells him to do it. “And they went out, they three”. They did exactly what they were told to do now. “And Jehovah came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood at the entrance of the tent, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forth”. And then, later, Jehovah says, “Why then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?”. So that we are reminded now, dear brethren, about speaking against the brethren. If any are guilty of it we should judge ourselves now, at a time like this. “And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against them, and he went away; and the cloud departed from off the tent. And behold, Miriam was leprous as snow” — a most terrible thing that this should happen to such a woman as this, the sister of Aaron and the sister of Moses; “and Aaron turned toward Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. Then Aaron said to Moses, Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay not this sin upon us, wherein we have been foolish, and have sinned! Let her not be as one stillborn, half of whose flesh is consumed when he comes out of his mother’s womb. And Moses cried to Jehovah, saying, O God, heal her, I beseech thee! And Jehovah said to Moses, But had her father anyways spat in her face, should she not be shamed seven days? She shall be shut outside the camp seven days”. That is the sentence, a clear sentence of judgment; “and afterwards she shall be received in again. And Miriam was shut outside the camp seven days; and the people did not journey till Miriam was received in again”. That is one of the most wholesome lessons that I think we could have at this present time, so as to check any tendency to speaking against [p. 222] the brethren.
DP Zipporah was given to Moses; but Moses took the Ethiopian woman. Would that indicate that he knew what he was doing?
JT He knew what he was doing. He deliberately married the Ethiopian woman. The word is that she may marry whom she will, “only in the Lord”, 1 Corinthians 7:39.
AR Does the chapter not show the seriousness of this attack in that it is the only place where the cloud leaves the tabernacle in the wilderness?
JT Quite so; it was a very serious matter.
ABP Is it not particularly touching that Moses should be vindicated in this matter inasmuch as it typifies that the Lord Jesus is willing to identify Himself with us in all our peculiarities and lack of attractiveness in wilderness conditions?
JT And if we have committed sin, it says it shall be forgiven; committed sins can be forgiven if they are confessed. Why should we not confess sins and have them forgiven? And if we are sick we may be made well; we are to call for the elders of the assembly and we may be made well.
DMacd What Miriam did hindered the journey of the children of Israel, as seen in the last verse. If we speak against any godly effort to meet the union question it might hinder the matter.
Rem It says in Acts 12, “Unceasing prayer was made by the assembly” Acts 12:5 for Peter. It was a governmental matter really, was it not? And in the end of the chapter the Lord dealt with the king because he was not right.
JT Just so.