In this chapter is another instance of the same. They were to be an agricultural people. Their very worship was (if you can understand such a thing now-a-days) to be agricultural. Pentecost was a feast of the first-fruits of the harvest. The Feast of Tabernacles was a great national harvest home. The Passover itself, though not at first an agricultural festival, became one by the waving of the Paschal sheaf, which gave permission to the people to begin their spring-harvest—so thoroughly were they to be an agricultural and cattle-feeding people. They were going into a good land, a land of milk and honey and oil olive; a land of vines and figs and pomegranates; a rich land; but a most uncertain land—a land which might yield a splendid crop one year, and be almost barren the next.
It was not as the land of Egypt—a land which was, humanly speaking, sure to be fertile, because always supplied with water, brought out of the Nile by dykes and channels which spread in a network over every field, and where—as I believe is done now—the labourer turned the water from one land to the other simply by moving the earth with his foot.
It was a mountain land, a land of hills and valleys, and drank water of the rain of heaven; a land of fountains of water, which required to be fed continually by the rain. In that hot climate it depended entirely on God’s providence from week to week whether a crop could grow.
Therefore it was a land which the Lord cared for—a land which needed his special help, and it had it. ‘The eyes of the Lord God were always upon it, from the beginning of the year unto the end of the year.’
Beautiful, simple, noble, true words—deeper than all the learned words, however true they may be (and true they are, and to be listened to with respect), which men talk about the laws of Nature and of weather. Who would change them for all the scientific phrases in the world? The eyes of the Lord were upon the land. It needed his care; and therefore his care it had.
Therefore the Jew was to understand from his first entry into the land, that his prosperity depended utterly on God. The laws of weather, by which the rain comes up off the sea, were unknown to him. They are all but unknown to us now. But they were known to God. Not a drop could fall without his providence and will; and therefore they were utterly in his power.
‘And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full. Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside and serve other gods, and worship them; and then the Lord’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you.’
Now the Bible story is, that this warning came true. More than once we read of drought—long, and severe, and ruinous. In one famous case, there was no rain for three years; and Ahab has to go out to search through the land for a scrap of pasture. ‘Peradventure we shall find grass enough to save the horses and mules alive.’
And most distinctly does the Bible say that these droughts came at times when the Jews had fallen into idolatry, and profligacy therewith. That is the Scripture account. And if you believe in the living God, whose providence ordereth all things in heaven and earth, that account will seem reasonable and credible to you.
What special means God used to bring about these great droughts we cannot know, any more than we can know why a storm or a shower should come one week and not another. And we need not know. God made the world, and God governs the world, and that is enough for us.