While Israel was on the march near Rephidim, the Amalekites fell savagely upon their rear in a dastardly, unprovoked assault, described by Moses (Deut. 25: 17, 18): “Remember what Amalek did to thee by the way when ye were come forth out of Egypt; how he met thee by the way and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee when thou was faint and weary; and he feared not God.” The day following, Moses summoned Joshua to choose men for war and go out against Amalek, proposing for himself to take his stand upon a hill adjacent with the rod of God in his hand. His uplifted hand and rod became the symbol or rather the visible manifestation of prayer. While held up aloft, Israel prevailed; let down, Amalek prevailed. To achieve victory despite of the weariness of Moses, a stone was placed for him to sit upon; then Aaron and Hur on either side held up his hands until the going down of the sun. Thus victory was achieved; Amalek was defeated, and what is specially to be noted, a signal illustration was afforded of the power of prayer and a sublime testimony placed on record before all Israel that in God they were mighty against their foes and could have nothing to fear. So important were these great moral lessons that the Lord directed Moses to “write this for a memorial in the book” [not merely a book]—the well-known public record in which the wonderful works of God for Israel were to be permanently preserved.——Another reason for the record was that Amalek was doomed for this outrage, and the future kings and warriors of Israel received from time to time their divine commission to execute this sentence of extermination. (See Deut. 25: 19, and 1 Sam. 15, etc., etc.)
There are some differences of opinion as to the history and geographical location of these Amalekites. The name “Amalek” appears (Gen. 36: 12) as the grandson of Esau; whence some have found the origin, genealogically, of this people there; but they appear much earlier (Gen. 14: 7).——As to their home geographically, their nomadic habits require a somewhat wide range of territory within which they may be found. The passages 1 Sam. 15: 7, and 27: 8, locate them in the district lying between the Philistines and Egypt, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean in Arabia Petrea. We find them repeatedly associated with the Midianites, Moabites, and Ammonites in raids upon the children of Israel during the time of the Judges and onward to the reign of David (Judg. 3: 12, 13, and 6: 3, and 1 Sam. 30: 1). They come to view in the visions of Balaam (Num. 24: 20), spoken of there as “the first of the nations”—a phrase which can scarcely refer to their high antiquity (though this construction is barely possible); more probably it refers to the fact that they were the first to make war upon Israel after the latter assumed her distinctly national character. So understood, the description of Amalek looked historically back to the facts before us Ex. 17. Balaam foresaw their early destruction—their case being in this respect solemnly admonitory to the king of Moab.
Let us not pass this historic fragment without a passing allusion to its admirable fitness as the opening scene in Israel’s relation to hostile foreign powers. She had and was destined to have national enemies. It was clearly in the policy of the Lord her God that she should fight these enemies with arms in deadly combat. Hence it was vital that she should be taught in the outset where her strength for victory actually lay. This onslaught of Amalek upon her rear and the ensuing battle, terminating in victory through prayer without ceasing—the uplifted arms of their Moses sustained till the sun set upon the victorious arms of Joshua—became their standard lesson—the first and the permanent example to show them the fountain of their strength—the ground of assured victory while they lived in obedience to God and trusted his arm alone.——It scarcely need be said that all the spiritual conflicts of God’s people with sin and Satan fall under the same general law—victory through prayer sustained and unfaltering—victory in the strength of Israel’s God alone.
Jethro.
In Ex. 18, Moses narrates a visit from his father-in-law who brought to him his wife and children, left inhis care ever since the scenes of which we read Ex. 4: 18–26. Jethro is before us here as both a good and a wise man—good in that his heart is shown to be with God and with God’s people, “rejoicing for all the goodness which the Lord had done to Israel whom he had delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians” (18: 9); and wise in that he saw at a glance that the burdens then borne by Moses in the administration of justice among the people would soon break him down; and in his admirable suggestions of a better method which from that day became established among the Hebrew people. For both reasons such a visit deserved a permanent record. It refreshes us to think of that good man who had known Moses forty years as his worthy son-in-law, yet moving only in the humble sphere of a shepherd’s wilderness life; but now meeting him God’s recognized Leader of the thousands of Israel and hearing from his lips the wonders God had wrought on Egypt and on Pharaoh; the deliverance from national bondage; the passage of the Red Sea and the entrance upon a wilderness march underneath the cloudy pillar; subsisting on the “corn of heaven” and on rivers of water from the rock of Rephidim; and withal having just then achieved their first victory over the first foreign power that dared assail them:—all this recital from the lips of such a son must have moved the aged father’s heart with unwonted emotions. We are not surprised that he should exclaim: “Blessed be the Lord” [your nation’s own Jehovah] “who hath delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly, he was above them” (18: 10, 11).——Then, being a priest, [“priest of Midian” Ex. 2: 16 and 18: 1], he proceeded to offer sacrifices in the manner which had come down traditionally from the earliest fathers. “He took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God; and Aaron came and all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God” (v. 12). The term “burnt offering” is usually applied to a sacrifice which is burnt entire upon the altar. The phrase “sacrifice for God,” refers here to a peace-offering upon portions of which the worshipers partook in the manner of a religiousfeast—an act at once religious toward God and social toward man.
The next day Moses resumed his accustomed routine of labor, sitting for the administration of justice to the people from morning till evening. The spirit which we see in Moses where he appears first in active life (Ex. 2: 11–13) would naturally put him to this service. His prestige as the recognized Leader of Israel under God would turn the eyes of all the people to him as their Judge. Hence naturally this overwhelming burden, from which relief came through the wise suggestion of Jethro. This was that a gradation of subordinate courts be instituted so that cases of lesser magnitude and difficulty might be administered by others, and only the more difficult be brought before Moses. The guiding principle in the classification was at first both tribal and numerical—following their division into tribes and their numbers. After their location in Canaan the numerical element gave place to the geographical. Judges had their province and their responsibility limited, not by thousands and hundreds directly but by cities and localities. With this modification the system passed into established usage among the Hebrews.——In a parallel passage (Deut. 1: 9–18) Moses recites the same transaction, omitting all allusion to his father-in-law, and giving prominence to the qualities requisite in judges, and to the principles of justice and righteousness by which they were to be governed.——At the close of this brief interview Jethro returned to his home and people. His son Hobab, brother-in-law of Moses, appears in the history somewhat later (Num. 10: 29–32), and seems to have consented to act as guide to Moses and Israel in their march from Sinai to Kadesh, and not improbably until they reached the Jordan. The home of the family had been on the East and South of Horeb. In the period of the Judges and onward they are in the Northern border of the great Arabian desert. (See Judg. 1: 16 and 4: 11 and 1 Sam. 15: 6).
THE SCENES AT SINAI.
The National Covenant and the Giving of the Law.
Events of most vital bearing upon the national life of the Hebrew people are now before us. No longer onefamily as in Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; no longer a mere tribe, clustering several families under one or more patriarchs, but a group of many tribes, enlarging fast toward the proportions of a great nation;—and what is more, a people no longer under the emasculating incubus of bondage, but emancipated, and free to rise and assume the duties of self-government with all its possibilities of growth and improvement, personal and national—this great people, were at this point summoned of God to enter into solemn national covenant with himself. In its spirit and significance this covenant differed in no essential point from that which God made with Abraham more than six hundred years before. In that earlier covenant Abraham spake for himself, and so far as it was naturally possible, for his posterity as well; and God on his part promised to be a God not to him only but to his seed after him; yet when this seed of Abraham became a great people, there was special fitness in summoning them to renew this covenant for themselves. Precisely this was done before Sinai.
The Lord reminded them most appropriately of what he had so recently done for them. “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagle’s wings and brought you unto myself.” It was as if he had lifted them up from earth toward heaven and borne them forth and out from their national bondage—as the eagle might take up her young and bear them aloft beyond the reach of whatsoever hostile power were tied down upon the earth’s surface. God had done this for the definite purpose of bringing them to himself. “Now, therefore, (he proceeds) if ye will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure to me above all people, for all the earth is mine; and ye shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19: 4–6). In this divine proposal the central word, translated here “peculiar treasure,” appears in Ps. 135: 4 translated in the same way; but in Deut. 7: 6 with a different translation—“A special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.” The sense is—a special property—a people by the choice of God and by their own voluntary consecration, made peculiarly his own. Moses in Deuteronomy (as above) labors to impress upon the people the thought and purpose of God in this covenantrelation: “The Lord did not set his love upon you nor choose you because ye were more in number than any [other] people; for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and hath redeemed you out of the house of bondmen from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” Of kindred significance are the other phrases used to express their new proposed relation to God—“A kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” This strong language—“a kingdom of priests”—gives us the thought of a whole people—every man in all the nation, personally consecrated to God, as if the nation were made up of priests and of such only. God would have them understand that the holiness he required of them was not the professional service of a chosen few, but the free-will offering of every man’s own heart and life. The whole people—every individual man—was summoned to come into this national covenant. Would they come?