6. Israel and the ordinances given her were appointed to be a gospel beacon to the nations. In furtherance of this purpose, the rites and ordinances with which she was endowed were clothed in forms of transparent significance, selected by divine wisdom as best adapted to set forth the gospel for men’s instruction. To suppose Elisha, on this occasion, to have ignored or essentially modified those respecting leprosy, would imply him to have deliberately veiled the light which God had kindled for the Gentiles. If any ritual observances were required of Naaman, the alternative was inevitable, that they be those appointed in the law, or that by neglect these be dishonored. No motive for the supposed change can be suggested that will not imply a disparagement of the neglected rite.

7. The distinctive office successively filled by Elijah and Elisha was that of prophet to the separated kingdom of Israel, to whom they were sent to vindicate the repudiated covenant of Sinai against the apostasies and sins of that people. (1 Kings, xix, 8, 10, 14-18.) They were appointed to keep alive in Israel the knowledge and faith of the covenant God and King whose worship and ordinances at Jerusalem they had wickedly abandoned. In the extraordinary circumstances of Naaman the offerings which the cleansed leper was required to make at the temple on the eighth day after his purifying, may have been omitted. But the supposition that the rites proper to the purifying, itself, were changed without necessity or apparent motive, so that instead of being sprinkled seven times, Naaman was seven times immersed, would imply that Elisha not only thus publicly repudiated the authority of the Levitical law, but at the same time and in so doing gave direct sanction to the conduct of Israel, in separating themselves from the temple at Jerusalem and the ordinances and worship which, by divine command, were there observed. The rites of purifying were part and parcel of the system of ordinances given to Israel and concentrated at the sanctuary,—a system, in all its parts, congruous and interdependent; each shedding mutual light on all the rest. If Naaman was sprinkled seven times, according to the Levitical order, that fact would of itself have referred him to the Word and ordinances of God, for light and information, as to the vastly important questions suggested to him by the nature and manner of his disease and cleansing. But, if he was immersed, the observance was without authority in the law; without example in the Word, then possessed or afterward given to Israel; without point of contact or principle of congruity or connection with the system therein unfolded; without explanation anywhere, and without conceivable motive or meaning, unless it was, to repudiate the authority of the Levitical law. Instead, therefore, of the ordinance being a guide line, to lead Naaman to the Word and worship of the true God, the natural effect of such a change as is supposed would have been to deter him from any such inquiries. The facts would have certified him that the God of Elisha was not the same that reigned at Jerusalem;—that the doctrine of the one, set forth in the rite of sprinkling, was manifestly different from that of the other expressed by immersion,—and that, therefore, the Word and ordinances of the God who dwelt in Zion were likely to mislead him, rather than to shed a true light upon the character of the God of Elisha, by whom he had been healed. The snare thus presented to the mind of Naaman would have been the more insidious and fatal in proportion as he should still have recognized an intimate relation, or even a kind of identity, between the God of Israel and the God of Judah. It was a general characteristic of the ancient idolatries, that the same gods, as worshiped at different places, were supposed to be endowed with different attributes and affinities, and to require different rites of worship. Thus, Zeus Olympius, Jupiter Capitolinus, and Jupiter Amon, were looked upon as the same deity; but revealing one character, as on Olympus he was worshiped by the tribes of Greece; another, as, on the Capitoline hill he presided over the destinies of mighty Rome; and yet another to the dark tribes who assembled at his temple in Thebes in Upper Egypt. Such was the idolatry which the supposed rite would have tended to confirm in the mind of Naaman. To all this we are to add the fact that the very purpose of the miracle wrought by Elisha was to let the Syrian “know that there is a prophet in Israel.”—2 Kings v, 8. Not, certainly, that Elisha thus proposed to glorify himself: but to announce himself a prophet and witness, for the only living and true God, the God of Israel, whose sanctuary was in Zion. (Compare Ib. 15-18.)

8. The fact that no administrator is mentioned, but Naaman is said to have “baptized himself,” is no embarrassment to our position. The self-baptism implied by the phrase, in the English translation, is not required by the form of the Greek nor of the Hebrew. The same kind of expression is used, in the directions originally given as to the water of separation. “If he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself ... the water of separation was not sprinkled on him; he shall be unclean.... A clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh.”—Num. xix, 12, 13, 19. The form of expression is intended to emphasize the responsibility of the person in the matter of his own cleansing, and is equivalent in meaning to the phrase,—“cause himself to be sprinkled.” Although he can not cleanse himself, he is not therefore irresponsible. He must seek to the cleansing, if he would enjoy it. The same form is used by Paul, who speaks of Ananias as saying to him (Anastas, baptisai), “Rising, baptize thyself, and wash away thy sins.”—Acts xxii, 16. In the parallel account, we are told that “he arose and was baptized.”—Acts ix, 18.

It has been shown already that, in the epistle to the Hebrews, baptismoi means the sprinklings ordained in the law for defilements of which leprosy was one. In our next section, it will appear that the sprinkling of the water of separation, upon those defiled by the dead, was familiarly known as a baptizing. And as to the case of Naaman, the considerations here presented render it certain that baptizo is there used in the same sense. He was not immersed, but sprinkled seven times, according to the law. Tābal is here used, not in a modal sense, but to express a cleansing, without defining the manner of it.

Section XXXIX.—“Baptized from the Dead.”

The book of Ecclesiasticus, or “The Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach,” is one of the Apochrypha. It was written by Joshua ben Sira ben Eliezer, a priest, at Jerusalem, about two hundred years before the coming of Christ. “The original Hebrew, with the exception of a few fragments in the Gemaras and Midrashim, is no longer extant, but we have translations in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. The work has been always held in high esteem, by both Jews and Christians, and was judged by some of the Talmudists to be worthy of a place among the canonical Scriptures.”[[31]] In this work, the priestly author has written this proverb, “He that is baptized from the dead, and again toucheth the dead, what availeth his washing?”—Ecclus. xxxi, 30 (xxxiv, 25 of the English version). Here, it is unquestionable that reference is had to the cleansing of those who were defiled by the dead. Such persons were “baptized from the dead,” that is, purged from the defilement, incurred through the touch of the dead, by the sprinkling of the water of separation. It has been said, by Baptist writers, that the author of the proverb meant to designate the self-washing which was required of those who had been thus sprinkled. But, in the first place, we must again repeat it, the self-washings were not immersions. In the second, they were not the purification from the dead. On that point, the law was express. “The man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord: the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean.”—Num. xix, 20. The self-washings are never called purifyings, nor alluded to by that name. Besides, as before remarked, on another point, the pre-eminence thus assigned to those washings, as compared with the sprinklings, is contrary to the whole spirit and tenor of the law, and would imply a preference given to our own righteousness, which the former symbolized, over the blood of sprinkling of the Lord Jesus, and his renewing Spirit, typified by the latter. Moreover, upon this view, we are to suppose that the author of the proverb, himself a priest, ignored that official sprinkling which must be performed by a clean person, acting in priestly capacity, and which, in his days, was performed almost invariably by the priests, and falsely attributed the consequent cleansing to the self-washing, which was a private personal duty of the cleansed. On the relative position of the two ordinances, the prayer of the Psalmist, in his deep sense of guilt and defilement is very significant. “Purge me with hyssop. Wash me.” He does not once think of self-washing, but looks up to the great High Priest for all. It was unquestionably of the sprinkled water of separation that this writer says, “He that is baptized from the dead, and again toucheth the dead what availeth his washing?” Here again we have an impregnable demonstration. We have before seen that Paul testifies that the sprinklings of the Mosaic system were baptisms. We now have the added voice of the son of Sirach certifying the same thing. By the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. These witnesses are ignorant or false, or else baptizo does not here mean, to dip, to immerse.

This conclusion is yet farther confirmed by the light which the above proverb sheds upon a passage in the writings of Paul, which has greatly perplexed expositors. “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?”—1 Cor. xv, 29. Paul is discussing the doctrine of the resurrection. As elsewhere in the epistle, so here, he assumes his readers to know the law of Moses. (Compare 1 Cor. ix, 8-10; x, 1-10.) To it, he, therefore, appeals.—“You know that there is in the law an ordinance for the ritual restoration of such as, by contact with the dead, have become ritually dead. But what means this rite? If the saints shall not really be raised up, to what intent is this ritual resurrection?” That such was the meaning of Paul, will hardly be questioned by any who consider, (1.) That the law of defilement by the dead, and of purification with the water of separation, was a statute of universal obligation to Israel, at home, and in foreign lands: (2.) That the ordinance and its observance were so familiar that, two hundred years before Christ, it was made the ground of the proverb above cited. As we shall presently see, it is mentioned by Philo and by Josephus as, in their days, universally observed: (3.) That it was known to Paul by the name of baptism: (4.) That it meant the giving of life to the dead: (5.) That, hence, whatever might be Paul’s allusion, it was a fact, throughout the dwellings of Israel, that, whenever death visited a house, it involved the consequent necessity of the baptism of the family and attendants,—a baptism which signified the resurrection of the dead. It is, therefore, beyond question that Paul meant to refer to that Levitical purification. Such were the facts that his readers could not but so understand him. Moreover, his expression here, and that which we have heretofore examined concerning the divers baptisms of the law, mutually illustrate each other and confirm all our conclusions on the subject.

Thus, starting with the “divers baptisms” of the epistle to the Hebrews, we have identified them with the seal of the Sinai covenant and the water of separation. We have traced the ordinance in the historical books, the Psalms and the prophets; have found it, in the time of the son of Sirach, familiarly known as baptism, and have recognized it in the New Testament itself, referred to by the same name, by that Hebrew of the Hebrews, the apostle Paul. We may add that the same apostle again refers to imitations of this ordinance in his dissuasive against “doctrines of baptisms.” (Heb. vi, 2.) Here, he alludes to those Pharisaic rites which under the same name were condemned by the Lord Jesus, who reproved them as “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men,” concerning their baptizings. (Mark, vii, 7, 8.)

Section XL.—Judith’s Baptisms.

Returning to the Apocrypha, the next example of baptism occurs in the book of Judith. The book dates from the period of the Maccabean kings of Judah, between one and two hundred years before Christ; is a historical fiction, and is designed to present, in the person of Judith, an ideal type of female piety, courage, and virtue, as conceived by the Jews of that age. According to the story, “Nabuchodonosor, the king of Nineveh,” being incensed against the Jews, had doomed them to destruction. He therefore sent Holofernes, with a large army to execute his vengeance. This army being re-enforced by the Ammonites and the sons of Esau, the mighty host, enters on the siege of Bethulia, a frontier city of Judah. Surrounding the city and filling the whole country, they seize[seize] “the water and the fountain of waters,” upon which Bethulia depended for its supply. Soon, “all the vessels of water failed all the inhabitants of Bethulia, and the cisterns were emptied, so that they had not water, to drink their fill, one day; for they gave them drink by measure.”—Judith vii, 12-21.