Do not these passages show that these laws were made long after the Jews had left the desert, and that they were not given from Sinai? Can you imagine a God silly enough to tell a horde of wandering savages upon a desert that they must not eat any fruit of the trees they planted until the fourth year?
Forty-fifth. Ought a man to be despised and persecuted for denying that God ordered the priests to make women drink dirt and water to test their virtue? 1 Or for denying that over the tabernacle there was a cloud during the day and fire by night, and that the cloud lifted up when God wished the Jews to travel, and that until it was lifted they remained in their tents?2
1 Num. v, 12-31. 2 Num. ix, 16-18.
Can it be possible that the "ark of the covenant" traveled on its own account, and that "when the ark set forward" the people followed, as is related in the tenth chapter of the holy book of Numbers?
Forty-sixth. Was it reasonable for God to give the Jews manna, and nothing else, year after year? He had infinite power, and could just as easily have given them something good, in reasonable variety, as to have fed them on manna until they loathed the sight of it, and longingly remembered the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic of Egypt. And yet when the poor people complained of the diet and asked for a little meat, this loving and merciful God became enraged, sent them millions of quails in his wrath, and while they were eating, while the flesh was yet between their teeth, before it was chewed, this amiable God smote the people with a plague and killed all those that lusted after meat. In a few days after, he made up his mind to kill the rest, but was dissuaded when Moses told him that the Canaanites would laugh at him.1 No wonder the poor Jews wished they were back in Egypt. No wonder they had rather be the slaves of Pharaoh than the chosen people of God. No wonder they preferred the wrath of Egypt to the love of heaven. In my judgment, the Jews would have fared far better if Jehovah had let them alone, or had he even taken the side of the Egyptians.
When the poor Jews were told by their spies that the Canaanites were giants, they, seized with fear, said, "Let us go back to Egypt." For this, their God doomed all except Joshua and Caleb to a wandering death. Hear the words of this most merciful God: "But as for you, your carcasses they shall fall in this wilderness, and your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years and bear your sins until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness."2 And yet this same God promised to give unto all these people a land flowing with milk and honey.
1 Num. xiv, 15, 16. 2 Num. xiv. 32-33.
Forty-seventh. "And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day.
"And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation.
"And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.