The Hyssop

“THE hyssop that springeth out of the wall,” of which the wise king spoke (if it be correct to regard the asuf of the Arabs with the hyssop of the Bible), is a familiar sight in Jerusalem. Among its stems doves frequently build their nests. Our artist tells us that he often witnessed in the “holy” city the scene he has depicted for us. The asuf has a pretty flower, and bears a berry like a caper.
Hyssop is first mentioned in the Bible upon the occasion of God bidding Israel take a bunch of it and dip it in the basin wherein was the blood of the paschal lamb, and then, with the hyssop, sprinkle the side-posts and the lintels of their doors in Egypt. This command indicates that hyssop way common enough where Israel was in bondage. God did not bid His people obtain some very rare thing in order to carry on His command, which should ensure their safety, but a common little plant, which was within everyone’s reach. And thus in the work of redemption: the blood has been shed, and what we want with which to apply it is no great thing, but that which is at the hand of a child―the simplicity of faith!
The cedar of Lebanon is a figure of strength. The mighty and deeply-rooted tree and the hyssop are emblems of the great and the small things of earth. When the leper―type of the sinner―was cleansed (Lev. 14), both the great and the small were dipped in the blood of the sacrifice offered for his cleansing, together with scarlet wool-figure of man in his greatness; scarlet being the royal color of the Bible. A bird was sacrificed, and into its blood were dipped the cedar wood, the hyssop, and the scarlet wool, and also a living bird, and the blood was sprinkled by the priest on the unclean man.
The priest speaks to us of Christ who cleanses us from our sins in His own blood, and the living bird speaks of Christ alive to die no more. His blood has been once shed, and He lives forever. The cedar, the scarlet, and the hyssop, dipped in the blood of the sacrifice, teach us the nothingness of everything great or small on earth, and of all this world’s glory.
In the case of the purifying of any of the people of God who had sinned (Num. 19), we again read (vs. 6) of the cedar wood, and hyssop, and the scarlet. They were all to be burned in the burning of the sacrifice, the ashes of which, with water, became “a water of separation.... a purification of sin.”
We know that all the things of this earth, and all the glory of the world, have no place before God since the cross of His Son. When God the Holy Spirit applies to our erring souls the sufferings of Christ for sin, this is indeed as “a water of separation” to us. The great and the small, and the glory of the world, what are they but ashes to us when His sufferings are present to our souls!
He who applied the purifying water sprinkled it with hyssop upon the person whose purification was necessary.
King David prayed God, “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin... Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”(Psa. 51:2, 7.) David had transgressed against God, and felt the evil of his iniquities. He was God’s child and servant, but he had sinned, and he felt the solemn need of purification. The Christian who has sinned, in like manner needs cleansing, and “if we confess our sins, He (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9.) Our water of purification is the suffering of Christ for our sins, brought home to our souls by the Spirit of God.
When our Redeemer was crucified, and cried, “I thirst,” one filled a sponge with vinegar— that sour wine so commonly drunk in Palestine—and put it upon hyssop, and lifted it to His mouth. In all probability they put the sponge upon a hyssop plant, placing it among its stalks, and attached that to a reed and gave Him to drink (Mark 15:36).
The common little plant used by the ordinance of God for dipping and sprinkling was near to the Redeemer’s cross. It may have been springing out of the wall of Jerusalem, “outside the gate,” near Calvary, or it may have been “in the garden” “in the place where He was crucified.” Be that as it may, the Spirit of God has brought the hyssop close to us in the record of our Saviour’s sufferings and blood-shedding, and we are thus reminded of its sacred use in the shadows of olden days given to man ages before Christ’s death.
The dove is an emblem of the Holy Spirit. Under the figure of this bird of love and mourning the Holy Spirit of God descended and abode upon the loving, mourning Son of Man. In the fact of the dove building her nest in the asuf plants that spring up out of the walls of Jerusalem we seemed to hear a little voice reminding us of how the blessed Spirit of God directs our hearts to the memories of the precious blood of Christ, and in this spirit commend these few thoughts to our readers.

The Pharisees.
WHAT do we know respecting the origin of the Pharisees?
We shall have to go back in Israel’s history to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah to obtain an answer to this question. When at the end of the seventy years of which the prophet Jeremiah spoke (Jer. 29:10, & Ezra 1:1), a few of the children of Israel (Ezra 2:64) returned to their own land from the captivity in Babylon, they found Jerusalem in ruins, and the temple of Jehovah a desolate heap. All the glory of the olden days had departed because of the sins of God’s people. But at Jehovah’s bidding, through His prophets, the temple was rebuilt (Ezra 6:14), and the walls also of Jerusalem were restored. (Neh. 4:6, & 6:15.) Thus once more Israel—or rather, a remnant of their nation―was reestablished in their own land.
When the temple was finished, “the children of Israel, which were come again out of captivity, and all such as had separated themselves unto them from the filthiness of the heathen of the land,” kept the feast of unleavened bread, which accompanied the Passover. (Ezra 6:21.) Note the words, separated themselves. The people of Israel were denounced by the princes for not having separated themselves (ch. 9:1) from the heathen; the people were bidden, separate yourselves from the people of the land (ch. 10:11), and the seed of Israel is said to have separated themselves from all strangers. (Neh. 9:2.) We say note the words, separated themselves, for the meaning of “Pharisees” is The Separate.
Separation from evil (Neh. 10:28) and separation to God (vs. 29) was then the origin of the idea of the Pharisee. But the origin and the end were as distinct from each other as are light and darkness. And as we read these words of God about the Pharisees of the last time― “These be they who separate themselves, sensual (or natural), having not the Spirit” (Jude 19), we are appalled at the ingenuity of our fallen nature, which so adroitly turns the divine principle of holiness into that most corrupt thing―self-glorification.
In the temple as rebuilt, the ark of the Lord was not (2 Chron. vs. 9), nor had this new temple the glory-cloud as Solomon’s (ch. 7:3). That visible token of the divine presence had retreated from the earth and gone to heaven, as Ezekiel, the prophet, had seen in his visions. (ch. 8, & 11:12, 23.) Moreover, the sacred Urim and Thummim on the high priest’s breastplate, from or on which in some way God communicated His mind to His people, were no more. Hence Israel had its temple, but not the true glories of the temple.
It was, then, at this time, when the absence of these tokens of God’s delight should have rendered His people heart-broken and humble, that the pretentious sect of the Pharisees rose into power. They had lost the spirit of the separation God requires, and had seized upon the letter, the word―The Separated. Instead of being separated from sin and iniquity, and to God, they were separated from the people of God by their scriptural knowledge (see John 7:48, 49) and their traditions (Mark 7:3-8), and to themselves by their own proud thoughts about themselves.
But were the Pharisees at the first what they were in the time of our Lord? No; for undoubtedly there was real zeal for God to contend against the inroads of what in the remote times we refer to was “modernized religion,” time serving, and worldliness. Against these things the earnest and faithful separated ones of about 300 years before our Lord stood nobly, and, indeed, many died for the truth. But as the years rolled by, the true became corrupted, and the false took its place; so that God describes those who separate themselves as walking after their own ungodly lusts. (Jude 18.)
What were the distinguishing doctrines of the Pharisees? Briefly, we may say their doctrines were having their traditions as well as the written word of God. Had they confined their belief to the Scriptures, their conduct would have been condemned by the Scriptures. But they laid aside the commandment of God to hold the tradition of men. Hence said our Lord to them, “Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.” (Mark 7:9.) When once men depart from the written word of God, and allow ever so small an amount of human tradition a place of rule in their souls, it is like letting water through a dam―beginning as a trickling stream it grows into a rushing torrent, carrying the conscience before it.
We find the Pharisees wasting their time and pouring contempt upon God in discussing the veriest trifies, as, for example, whether an egg laid on a festival should be eaten or not; whether poultry should be eaten with milk; what kind of wick and oil candles used on the Sabbath should have! One rabbi said that boiled suet might be used for such candles, another equally wise rabbi said the contrary. These vain questions occupied their minds! It seems as if it were one of God’s judgments on self-satisfied traditionists, that they should be given over to occupation with petty trifles about which no truly earnest soul, having eternity before him, would dare to spend five minutes of his precious lifetime.