Verses 22 to 38. God, who is a God of love and full of mercy and loving kindness, here ordains that every man who shall manufacture a particular kind of scented pomatum, shall be put to death. Christian Theist, you tell me that yours is the 'eternal, immortal, and only wise God' (vide 1st Timothy, chap, i., v. 17)—do you in truth believe that he would order me to be utterly cut off because I might perhaps unconsciously make a scented ointment of a particular character? Do you believe if I take a certain description of perfumed pomatum, and 'smell thereto,' previous to rubbing some on the hair of my head, that I shall be put to death? Perhaps these enactments were only meant for the Jews, who seem to have required some strange laws; if so, it is a pity God has allowed the Book to come to us in its present state, as we find it hard to conceive (without any fact to reason upon) that one verse is intended only for the Jews, and the following one intended for the whole world.
Chapter xxxi., v. 15. Moses would never have joined the 'Society for Abolition of Capital Punishment,' if it had been established in his day. This verse must have since become a dead letter, an obsolete statute which God does not enforce in the present age. But if this verse is a dead letter, how much more of the Bible is affected in the same manner? Who is to tell which enactments may be safely disobeyed, and which carry with them the terrible penalty?
V. 17. 'He rested and was refreshed.' Although even the most faithful and pious believer must have great difficulty in attempting to contemplate that stupendous work, the creation of the universe out of nothing, yet this great difficulty sinks into utter insignificance beside the greater one of endeavouring to imagine the omnipotent and immutable Deity resting after his labour, and being refreshed.
V. 18. The expression 'finger of God' is evidently intended to be understood literally here, but the question then arises as to the nature of an infinite spirit without body, parts, or passions (vide thirty-nine articles), yet having fingers, hands, face, and back parts. Dr. Pye Smith says, on the [—————] (anthropopatheia) of the Scriptures (treatment of God as if possessing a human shape and nature)—'This is very remarkable and very extensive, but it is manifested by comparison with many other parts of the Scriptures, that the terms employed are terms of condescending comparison with the acts and effects of the thus mentioned organs of the human body, to convey, especially to unpolished men a conception of those properties and actions of God, which to our feeble ideas have a resemblance, and that they were so understood. Language had not then terms for the expression of abstract conceptions.'
The Christian theologian tells me that God created man and all the circumstances that surrounded him, yet speaks of 'human incapacity, and infirmity,' and of 'the language of the Scriptures being formed in condescension thereto.'
Is it not remarkable that the all-wise Creator should have not foreseen the time when the language of his revelation should have sunken below the level of the human capacity? But it is worse than folly to put forward hypotheses as to God's condescension in using such language. The Book itself nowhere suggests such an idea, and I ask to what mind (however 'unpolished' he may be) can the following words convey any other conception of the properties and actions of God than that of the literal reading?—
'And I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen.' Dr. Smith says that 'metaphysical or philosophical preciseness is not in the character of Scriptural composition,' yet upon our precise conception of the true meaning of that composition, hangs the penalty of eternal torment.
Chapter xxxii. During the absence of Moses, the Jewish people applied to Aaron to make them other Gods; they used very disrespectful language, saying 'As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.' Aaron, who had been specially chosen by God to be his priest and Prophet, instead of reminding the people of the miracles God had just performed on their behalf, instead of reproving them for the slighting manner in which they had spoken of his brother Moses, instead even of appealing to Nadab and Abhu, and the seventy elders who had personally seen God so shortly before, and who must all have been impressed with the awful majesty of the Deity, forgetting the first and second commandment contained in chapter xx., w. 3, 4, and 5, and that their God is a jealous God, forgetting also the repetition contained in v. 23 of the same chapter, Aaron (who alone had been nominated to enter the holy of holies), without the slightest attempt at reason or remonstrance, asked the people for their golden earrings, and made a molten calf, and built an altar before it, and proclaimed a feast; and the people said, 'These be thy Gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt.'
God was very unfortunate in his choice; his chosen people are the first to forget him, or to doubt and deny his power. The miracles performed by Moses and Aaron in Egypt—events any one of which should have been sufficient to have struck terror into the Israelites for the remainder of their lives—the interview between God and the seventy-four, only a few days before, were all forgotten. God having permitted all this to happen, informed Moses thereof, and then uses this remarkable phrase—'Let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them, and I will make of thee a great nation.' Is this the language of an infinite and immutable Deity?
Moses reasoned with God, and endeavoured to persuade him not to allow his wrath to wax hot, and ultimately the unchangeable changed his mind, and 'repented of the evil he thought to do his people.' The mode of expostulation adopted by Moses is very remarkable (see vv. 11, 12, and 13); one of the chief arguments used is not as to the merits of the case, but as to what the Egyptians will say when they hear about it.