There are eleven verses in the Book of the Law beginning and ending with 'N,' there are forty verses in which 'Lo' is read three times—and so on, and so on.
How tedious and meaningless such information appears! Of what value were all these details?
To spend all his days in learning such things as these could have no influence on a man's character, nor make him a power for good in the world. Not for this purpose had God revealed His will to man.
Some years ago in the coffin of an Egyptian mummy, a little jar of wheat was found. For thousands of years it had lain there, shut up in the dark, while out in the fields the corn which had been sown had grown up and been reaped every year, and men and women had been fed. But this jar of corn was useless, because it had been prevented from doing the work in the world for which it was created.
Just so was it with the Hebrew copies of God's Word. Locked up in a dead language, kept close, away from the world, they were like the jar of wheat which could not grow.
But meanwhile God's Book was growing in the wide fields beyond. While the Jews were keeping safe the letters of the Old Testament, the New Testament was beginning to do its mighty work in the great heathen cities of the world.
[[1]] Josephus: 'Wars,' Books v. and vi.