BIBLE HISTORY - Classic Works of Apologetics

CHAPTER XI.
ISRAEL'S SIN AND THE RENEWAL OF THE CODE.
ENGRAVED, as these" Ten Words" were
to be, on tables of stone, this body of
law was also to be kept in the sacred ark,
while into the many-sided life of Israel their
regnant influence should proceed through the
subordinate laws, or ordinances, founded upon
them. Elsewhere, in this work, these and the
suggestive illustration they have are treatel1
more at length. But we may be permitted,
here, to say that these statutes, given by the
hand of Moses, were realiy the terms of the
covenant which Jehovah made. This covenant
had its inauguration in solemn sacrifice, the
renewal to their minds of that passover night
in Egypt, and the meal of sacrifice. Moses
himself sprinkled the altar with half of the
blood, read the laws and ordinances, and the
people ans,vered: "All that Jehovah hath
commanded will we do, and be obedient." 1
Then the rest of the blood was sprinkled over
the representatives of the tribes. Truly it was
"the blood of the covenant which God hath
made" 2 with them.
Back to the sacred mount the great leader
went with Aaron, his nephews Nadab and
Abihu, and the seventy tribal representatives.
The glory of God now revealed itself. 'Where
a little time before was thick darkness, it now
seemed" a paved work of sapphire stone, and
as it were the body of heaven in its clearness." 3
"They saw God, and did eat and drink." 4
Sending Aaron and Hur back to the people,
Moses took Joshua and approached the presence
chamber of Jehovah. Then, alone, the lawgiver
of Israel entered the cloud that covered
the mount, and there he remained for forty
days. Those forty days of absence put an intense
strain upon Israel's spirituality and faith.
It is easy to see them looking at the altar at
the foot of the mountain, remembering the covenant
made ""ith Jehovah, counting the twelve
pillars, while now and then the o'erstrained
eye searches the distant cloud for a glimpse
of Moses. All that heathenism possessed of
charm, or dignity, now'" swept in upon the
trembling heart of Hebrewdom. In the solitude
and splendor of yonder cloud, Jehovah
was giving to Moses and his people two tables
of stone on which the law was written by the
finger of God, and there Moses was beholding
the pattern of the tabernacle. Here, below,
thronged the memories and enchantments of
Egyptian worship; and, having lost their mediator,
the defenses of their souls were eas-
1 Exodus xxiv, 7.
3 Exodus xxh·, 10.
If)
2 Exodus xxiv, 8.
4- Exodus xxiv, II.
193
ily overcome; the visions of the old idolatry
ruled; God must be made visible; and so did
circumstances and panic, loneliness and desire
flow into one another that it seemed that a
golden calf came of itself to their fancied need.
Aaron shows how unconsciously he himself
yielded to the pressure of the stream, 'when he
answered Moses and said: "They gave me
gold. I cast it into the fire and there came out
this calf." 1
He had at first resisted. In vain had Aaron
thought Israel would halt at the point where
their golden ornaments were to he melted.
But Israel only cried out in a riot of joy, when
the form of the Egyptian god came forth:
.. These be thy gods, 0 Israel, which brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt." 2 It wasa fateful
compromise, in which they were glad to
worship Jehovah under the idolatrous Egyptian
symbol. Even Aaron was willing to say of the
feast which accompanied the event: "Tomorrow
is a feast to Jehovah." a
As Moses descended from the mount, though
he held in his soul the pattern of the tabernacle,
its priesthood and services and the
divinely graven decalogue, all seemed lost.
He would not wait to consider that it had perhaps
been asking too much that a throng of
Hebrew slaves, who, until recently, had blindly
worshiped Apis and Mnevis, should so soon
become a nation steadily enwrapt with its
vision of the Invisible. Truly, the leader had
himself alone been close enough to the fiery
cloud to keep its meaning clear. He looked
with pitiful dismay and holy wrath upon the
orgies which followed the feast presented to
the calf. He had come down from the solitude
of Jehovah, with a hint which Jehovah gave
him oftheir peril, to behold this shameless din
of idolatrous humanity. It was an awful distance
spiritually-but it is traveled by every
true lawgiver and reformer-from God's presence,
where the source of law and the tabernacle
of hope are, to the presence and condition
of that disappointing humanity which they are
to rule and to redeem. Even the mind of
Moses was not comprehensive enough - only
the mind of Jehovah as revealed in Christ has
proved to be comprehensive enough - to hold
in one faith and hope both the law and the
lawless. Moses hurled from his arms the two
tables of stone and hroke them to pieces on the
earth. It was an hour for righteous indignation.
He approached the detestable golden
1 Exodus xxxii, 24. 2 Exodus xxxii, 4.
:i Exodus xxxii, S.