United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Until then it had been Israel's duty not to fight against a city of the heathens unless they had first proclaimed peace to it and the heathens had refused to accept it, but now they were instantly to proceed to hostility; and whereas they had formerly been prohibited from destroying the trees that surrounded a city, they were now ruthlessly to destroy all that lay in their path.
The questions connected with these points and with the history of the name do not enter into our present purpose. My task is rather to point out the religious significance of the self-revelation of God contained in the name, and how it becomes the foundation of Israel's deliverance, existence, and prerogatives.
He was calling them sinners and covenant-breakers, guilty of pride, covetousness, contention, lying, stealing, moral uncleanness and launching upon them the curse of Israel's God unless they should repent. "It has been told you again and again," he thundered, "that if you wish to be great in the Kingdom of God you must be good.
And sometimes, in the dead of the night, she would rise from her bed and go through the dark corridors, for darkness and light were as one to her, until she came to Israel's room, and he would awake from his sleep to find her, like a little white vision, standing by his bedside.
The human form divine, to which mankind aspired, took on its true and awful splendor, as the image of the God whom the conscience worshipped. Every passing "I would be," of the saints of old looked forth, transfigured from the face of One who said "I AM." True to Israel's ancient dream, around this righteous suffering servant of the Eternal, the nations gathered, to be taught of God.
WHAT had happened at Israel's house during Israel's absence is a story that may be quickly told. On the day of his departure Naomi wandered from room to room, seeming to seek for what she could not find, and in the evening the black women came upon her in the upper chamber where her father had read to her at sunset, and she was kneeling by his chair and the book was in her hands.
It had pleaded that the enemy's hostility was a poor 'reward' for Israel's ancient forbearance, and now, with a burst of agony, it casts down before God, as it were, Judah's desperate plight as outnumbered by the swarm of invaders and brought to their last shifts 'we have no might against this great company ... neither know we what to do. But the very depth of despair sets them to climb to the height of trust.
All this is a beautiful completion to the other side of the picture which the fierce fighting in Judges makes prominent, and teaches that Israel's relation to the nations around was not to be one of mere antagonism, but that they had another mission than destruction, and were set in their land, as the candlestick in the Tabernacle, that light might stream out into the darkness of the desert.
Israel's Hope Encouraged; 'Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. Psalms 130:7 This Psalm is said to be one of 'the Psalms of Degrees, which some say, if I be not mistaken, the priests and Levites used to sing when they went up the steps into the temple.
Other nations had temples, like the solemn structures of Egypt; but this slight, movable sanctuary was a new thing, and spoke of the continual presence of Israel's God, and of His loving condescension in sharing their wandering lives, and, like them, dwelling 'within curtains. It was a visible representation of a spiritual fact for the then present; it was a parable of the inmost reality of communion between man and God; and it was, therefore, a prophecy both of the full realisation of His presence among men, in the temple of Christ's body, and of the yet future communion of Heaven, which is set before us by the 'great voice ... saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men.
Word Of The Day