§ 1. Introduction
MOSES interrupts his narrative where the divine revelations ceased for a time. Of the condition of the nation, which was now for a time left to its own development, he relates only so much as is necessary for the understanding of what follows, and takes up the narrative again where the divine revelations begin anew. We shall here give a brief summary of the accounts which we possess of the condition of the Israelites in Egypt before the time of Moses.
1.In reference to their External and Civil Relations.
Respecting the dwelling-place of the Israelites, comp. The Books of Moses and Egypt, p. 40 et seq.
After the death of Israel and Joseph the descendants of Abraham rapidly grew to be a numerous nation. Their increase, comparatively so great, is in Exodus 1:12 represented as the result of special divine blessing, which does not, however, preclude the possibility of this gracious power of God having worked through the natural means present in Egypt. In the most fruitful of all countries, it was quite easy for each one to procure the necessary means of substance for himself and his family. According to Diod. Sic. i. 80, the maintenance of a child cost only twenty drachmae = thirteen shillings. Early marriages were therefore customary. Add to this the unusually rapid increase of population in Egypt. Aristotle, in his Hist. Anim. 7:4, 5, relates that the women in Egypt not only brought forth twins at one birth, but not seldom three and four, sometimes even five. Indeed, he tells of one woman who in four births brought twenty children into the world. Pliny, in his Hist. Nat. 7:3, gives still more exaggerated accounts. But this exaggeration must have a basis of truth, as our knowledge of modern Egypt attests: comp. Jomard, in the Description, ix. 130 et seq. In the objections which have been raised against the acceptance of so rapid an increase of the Israelites, it has been too much overlooked that the increase of nations is widely different, and depends altogether upon circumstances. Thus, for example, in South Africa ten children may be reckoned to every marriage among the colonists: Lichtenstein, Travels in S. Africa, i. p. 180. The increase of population is also very rapid in North America. Then, again, many proceed on the unfounded assumption that the residence of the Israelites in Egypt lasted only 215 years instead of 430; and finally, it has been left out of consideration that to the seventy souls of Jacob’s family we must add the number of servants, by no means inconsiderable, who by circumcision were received into the chosen race, in order à priori to preclude the thought that participation in salvation was necessarily associated with carnal birth. With respect to the constitution of the Israelites during their residence in Egypt, they were divided into tribes and families. Every tribe had its prince—a regulation which dates beyond the Mosaic time; for we nowhere read that it was made by Moses, and indeed it is at variance with his whole administration: comp. Numbers 2:29. The heads of the greater families or tribes, the משפחות or בתּיאבות (the former is the proper termin. tech.; on the other hand, the latter appears also of the individual family, and of the whole race: comp. Exodus 12:3; Numbers 3:15, Numbers 3:20), were called heads of the houses of the fathers, or simply heads. They appear also under the name of elders, or זקנים, which is not a designation of age, but of dignity: comp. Exodus 4:20, according to which Moses and Aaron begin their work by collecting the elders of the people, Kurtz (Gesch. des A. T. ii. § 8) is quite wrong in maintaining that the elders of the tribes and the heads of the families were distinct. In Deuteronomy 29:10, to which he appeals, “your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers,” the magistracy and the people are first of all contrasted; then the two classes of magistrates, the natural rulers or elders, and the scribes, a sort of mixture of the patriarchal constitution,—jurists, who in Egypt, where the condition of the people had assumed a more complex character, had come to be associated with the natural rulers. We find the same constitution among the Edomites, the Ishmaelites, and the present Bedouins, among the ancient Germans, and the Scotch: comp. Michaelis, Mos. R. i, § 46. These rulers were also the natural judges of the people. Yet in the times of the Egyptian oppression only a shadow remained of their judicial power. We have already pointed out the error of the common assumption that the Israelites continued a nomadic life in Egypt (comp. the copious refutation in the Beitr. ii. S. 431 et seq.). The foundation of the settled life was laid in the very first settlement. It was in the best and most fruitful part of the land that the Israelites received their residence, at least in part: Genesis 47:11, Genesis 47:27. The land of Goshen, the eastern portion of Lower Egypt, forms the transition from the garden-land of the Nile to the pasturage of the desert. It is inconceivable that they should not have taken advantage of the excellent opportunity for agriculture which presented itself; and to participation in Egyptian agriculture was added participation in Egyptian civilisation. It is expressly stated in Deuteronomy 11:10, that a great number of the Israelites devoted themselves to agriculture in Egypt, dwelling on the fruitful banks of the Nile and its tributaries. We learn from Numbers 11:5, Numbers 20:5, how completely they shared the advantages which the Nile afforded to Egypt. To this may be added passages such as Exodus 3:20-22; Exodus 11:1-3, according to which the Israelites dwelt in houses, and in some cases had rich Egyptians in hire: again, the circumstance that Moses founds the state on agriculture, without giving any intimation that the nation had first to pass over to this new mode of life; the skill of the Israelites, as it appears especially in the accounts of the tabernacle; the wide spread of the art of writing among the Israelites in the time of Moses, which we gather from the scattered statements of the Pentateuch, while in the patriarchal time there was no thought of such a thing, etc. On the other hand, the assumption of a continued nomadic life appears on nearer proof to be mere baseless prejudice. If this assumption were correct, the divine intention in the transplanting of the Israelites to Egypt would be very much obscured, so that the establishment of the right view has at the same time a theological interest. For a long period Israel remained unmolested by the Egyptians. This is implied in the statement that the oppression originated with a king who knew not Joseph, and therefore ensued at a time when the remembrance of him and his beneficent acts had already passed away. Then, again, in the statement of the motives of the Egyptians, which had their root in the circumstance that Israel had already become a great and powerful nation. Without doubt, the oppression began in the century previous to the appearing of Moses. Attempts have been made to explain that which is related of the oppression of the Israelites by the king who knew not Joseph, from a statement of Manetho, who states in Josephus, c. Apion, i. 14-16, that under the reign of King Timaeus, a strange people, named Hyksos, invaded Egypt from the eastern region, practised great cruelties and destruction there, subjected a great portion of the country, and made Salatis, one of their own people, king. After they had retained possession of the land for 511 years, they were finally conquered by the inhabitants. Despairing of their complete extinction, the conqueror concluded an agreement with them, and gave free exit. Hence 240,000 of them left Egypt, with their families and their possessions, repairing through the wilderness to Syria, and in the country which is now called Judea founded a town large enough to contain so great a number of men. This they called Jerusalem. Many scholars have therefore concluded that this is the dynasty which knew not the merits of Joseph, and oppressed the Israelites. They imagined that this happened in order to prevent the union of the Israelites with the inhabitants of the land, who only awaited an opportunity to throw off the yoke which was a burden to them. Thus recently Saalschlütz, Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der hebr. ägypt, Archäologie, Königsberg 1851; iii. die Maneth. Hyksos, § 41 ff. Others—lastly Kurtz, Gesch des A. B. ii. S. 197—assert that these shepherd-kings were already in possession of the laud when Joseph and his family immigrated. Afterwards the old Pharaoh-race again came to the throne, and, not without reason, suspicious of all shepherd-nations, caused the Israelites to feel their suspicion and severity. But against this are the facts, that already in Joseph’s time the Egyptians ate with no foreigner, Genesis 43:32; that shepherds were an abomination to the ruling race; that Joseph was obliged to free himself fro, the ignominy of his origin by marriage with the daughter of a high priest; and that the king bore the unmistakeably Egyptian title of Pharaoh. All this shows that the immigration of the Israelites took place under a national Egyptian dynasty. Other hypotheses still more intricate we pass by. There is no necessity for them. On impartial consideration, it soon appears that the Hyksos of Manetho are the Israelites themselves, and that his statements respecting them do not by any means rest upon independent Egyptian tradition, but are a mere perversion and distortion of the accounts in the Pentateuch, undertaken in the service of Egyptian national vanity,—accounts which came into circulation in Egypt during the residence of the Jews there after the time of Alexander. Hence the history of the Israelites can gain nothing from these statements of Manetho. Among the ancients, after the example of Josephus, Perizonius and Baumgarten have already shown this; but Thorlacius has given the most complete argument, de Hycsosorum Abari, Copenhagen 1794: comp. also Jablonsky, Opuscc. i. p. 356 ff.; and the treatise, Manetho und die Hyksos als Beilage der Schrift. die B.B. Moses u. Ægypten; also the researches of v. Hofmann (Stud. und Krit. 1839, ii. p. 393 ff.), Delitzsch (Commentar über die Genes. iii. Ausl. S. 518 ff.), and Uhlemann in the work Israeliten und die Hyksos in Ægypten vom Jahr. 1856. Although Bertheau, Ewald, Lengerke, Kurtz, and others, with remarkable lack of critical insight, employ Manetho as if they had the best contemporary sources before them, it may be seen how bad an authority he is for events which occurred in the Mosaic time, from the gross errors of which he is shown to be guilty, in the work Egypt and the Books of Moses,—errors of such a kind that it is impossible not to regard his statement that he has written as a distinguished priest under Ptolemy Philadelphus as false, and to assume that his work belongs to the time of all those other Egyptian narrations which are hostile to the Israelites, and have been preserved in fragments in Josephus, viz. the beginning of the Roman Empire.
Again, notwithstanding all misrepresentations undertaken in the Egyptian interest (the object was to retort upon the Israelites that shame which accrued to the Egyptians from the accounts of the Israelitish historical books, to throw back the reproach of barbarity and inhumanity upon those with whom it had originated), yet the dependence of the relation on the Mosaic narrative clearly appears. The Hyksos, like the Israelites, come to Egypt from the region πρὸς ἁνατολήν; they are shepherds, comp. Genesis 46:34; ῥᾳδίως, ἀμαχητί; they occupy Egypt,—a perversion of what is told in Genesis concerning the measures of Joseph. The name of their first king, Salatis, a sufficient argument of itself against Rosellini, who makes the Hyksos Scythians, has evidently arisen from Genesis 42:6, where Joseph is called השׁלּיט. (In Eusebius this name is corrupted into Saites, after an Egyptian reminiscence.) To this first king the measuring of corn is attributed as one of his principal occupations, σιτομετρεῖν, which has no other meaning than to provide food, and not that which Kurtz has attributed to it in his Gesch. des A. B. ii. S. 187. The position of Avarison completely agrees with that of Gosen. The name is evidently imitated from that of the Hebrews. The Hyksos repair to Palestine, and Jerusalem becomes their chief city.
Finally, Manetho himself has asserted that by the Hyksos are to be understood the Israelites. The contrary is generally concluded from another statement of Manetho, in Josephus, c. Apion, i. 26, where the Israelites appear as born Egyptians who have been driven out on account of leprosy. But there is nothing to prevent both accounts having reference to the Jews. Manetho’s view clearly is, that the Jews are a mixture of two elements, a barbaric (with respect to whose origin he is uncertain, probably Arabian) and an Egyptian, as we are told in the Pentateuch itself that on the exodus of the Israelites they were joined by a great number of Egyptians. The Hyksos, after their first expulsion, betake themselves to Palestine. (This clearly proves that to Manetho they are identical with the Israelites, and at the same time nullifies the argument on the other side.) Here they build Jerusalem, and hither they return after the second expulsion with the unclean.
They are pursued by Amenophis as far as the borders of Syria; Josephus, i. c. i. 27. In Chaeremon also we find the same double origin of the Jews. That Manetho denied the identity of the Jews and the Hyksos, seems never to have occurred to Josephus. Everywhere he presupposes the contrary, making no attempt to prove it.
Further, we only remark, that more recent and really solid Egyptian researches have not discovered the smallest trace of a supremacy of the Hyksos in Egypt, as is said to have taken place in accordance with the customary opinion. Among others Uhlemann has shown this; and even Renan in an essay on Egyptian antiquity in the Revue des Deux Mondes of the year 1865 is obliged to confess it, and seeks to help himself by the far-fetched assumption that the native kings removed every trace of the hated Hyksos. As in Scripture the supremacy of the native Egyptian kings appears to have been uninterrupted, Abraham, Joseph, and Moses having to do with a Pharaoh, which is everywhere the name of native Egyptian kings; so also on the monuments. Herodotus, and in general all authors of ancient times, know nothing of the Hyksos. The words of the record, “There arose a new king in Egypt who knew not Joseph,” can in no wise be regarded as the beginning of the Hyksos-fable. The antithesis of the old and the new king may very appropriately lie in this, that the first king knew Joseph, the second refused to know anything of him,—a distinction of universally prevailing significance for Israel, from whose standpoint the account is written, and one which formed the beginning of a new era. But, at all events, the words do not indicate more than a change of the native dynasty, which demonstrably took place not unfrequently in Egypt. Josephus, indeed, refers to such a one, Antiq. ii. 9. 1: τῆς βασιλείας εἰς ἄλλον οἷκον μετεληλυθυΐας.
We may be fully satisfied with the motives given by the king of Egypt himself, Exodus 1:9et seq., as an explanation of the oppression of the Israelites in Egypt. The Israelites had grown to be a numerous nation. They had carefully asserted their national independence; and on both sides there were insurmountable barriers against every attempt to unite them with the Egyptians. This status in statu inspired the Egyptian kings with increasing apprehension, which more than outweighed the remembrance of all that Joseph had done for the land. It is true that the Egyptian kingdom was so mighty that it had nothing to fear from the Israelites alone. But circumstances might arise, where, in alliance with other nations, Israel might become a terror to them, comp. Exodus 1:10; and the thought of this lay the nearer, since Egypt was surrounded on all sides by natural enemies, by nomadic tribes whose eye was ever directed towards the fruitful valley of the Nile. At best, it was to be feared that the Israelites, availing themselves of the opportunity, would depart, and that not empty, but laden with the spoil of Egypt. This seemed the more probable, since it was known that the Israelites themselves looked upon Egypt only as a land of pilgrimage, and that the whole nation was animated by a lively hope of returning at some future time to Canaan, which they regarded as their proper fatherland. Had the voice of justice been listened to, if it seemed dangerous to suffer the Israelites to remain any longer in the country in their former independence, free exodus would have been given to them with all their possessions. The Egyptians had no claim upon them; they had been called into the country on condition of retaining their independence; and if this could and would no longer be conceded to them, they should have been allowed to depart. But because the foundation of right feeling, religion, had at that time almost disappeared from Egypt, and because human images, partial national gods, had been substituted for the holy and righteous God, and men deemed they were doing service to these deities by practising injustice on a people not belonging to them (in no land of the world are the gods so decisively a product of national egotism as in Egypt), therefore no voice was listened to but that of self-interest; and so it appeared most unwise voluntarily to relinquish such great possession and so many hands. The Egyptians were notorious throughout antiquity for their severity towards foreigners. Already Homer says that they regarded all strangers as enemies, and either killed them or forced them to compulsory service: σφίσιν ἐργάζεσθαι ἀνάγκῃ, Od. 14, v. 272, 17, 410. According to Herodotus (2, 108) and Diodorus, the Egyptians considered it a matter of pride to employ no natives, but only prisoners and slaves, in the building of their monuments. It was resolved to convert Israel into a nation of slaves, and with this object means were chosen which must have been eminently successful if there had been no God in heaven (but the neglect of this, as the result shows, was a very great mistake in the reckoning). The Israelites were driven to compulsory service, of whose magnitude and difficulty we may form some idea from those monuments which still exist as an object of wonder; but particularly from a monument discovered in Thebes, representing the Hebrews preparing bricks, of which Rosellini was the first to give a copy and description, ii. 2, S. 254 et seq.: compare the copious remarks on this interesting picture in B.B. Moses, etc., S. 79 ff.; Wilkinson, 2, 98 ff. Against its reference to the Jews Wilkinson has raised a double objection. (1.) It is incomprehensible how a representation of the labours of the Israelites should come to be on a tombstone in Thebes. But it might just as readily have happened that parties of them were sent to Thebes to compulsory service, as that the Israelites should have been scattered abroad throughout all Egypt to gather straw, Exodus 5:12. Even now in Egypt, the poor Fellahs are driven like flocks out of the land when any great work is required. (2.) The workers want the beard which forms so characteristic a mark of the prisoners from Syria, and especially of those of Sesonk. But this argument is refuted by what Wilkinson himself says in another place: “Although strangers who were brought as slaves to Egypt had beards on their arrival in the land, yet we find that, as soon as they were employed in the service of this civilised nation, they were obliged to adopt the cleanly habits of their masters, their beards and heads were shaved, and they received a narrow hat.” That which tells most in favour of this reference to the Jews, is that the physiognomies have an expression so characteristically Jewish, that every one must recognise them as Jews at the first glance. The clear colour of their skin already suggests the idea of captive Asiatics.
It was hoped that a great number of the Israelites would sink under the heavy work, and that the remaining masses would acquire a low, slavish spirit. And when it became evident that this measure had not attained its object,—that the concealed divine blessing accompanying the visible cross called forth a continued growth of the nation,—measures still more cruel were resorted to, which trampled under foot all divine and human rights, and failed to lead to a successful result just because of their exaggerated cruelty. The matter was thus brought to a climax. The existence of the nation was at stake, and at the same time God’s faithfulness and truth. To faith this misery was a prophecy of salvation. It was not in vain that believers so often cried out in the Psalms: “Save me, O God, for I am in misery,” or “I cry unto Thee.” Election being presupposed, every misfortune contains a promise of deliverance. This is the main- distinction between the sufferings of the world and the sufferings of God’s people. The cross of the latter is an actual appeal: “Lift up your heads, for ye see that your salvation draweth nigh.” The greater the cross, the greater and nearer is the deliverance. But Israel was enabled to come to this conclusion not merely from the fact of their having been chosen. God had already given them special comfort in this respect, having applied the idea individually. It had already been told to Abraham that his posterity should be strangers in a foreign land. The appointed time had expired, or was near its expiration; the severe oppression which had been foretold had come to pass; and therefore the salvation so closely connected with it must also be at hand,—deliverance from the land of the oppressors by means of great judgments; the march to Canaan with great possessions. It must come to pass, or God would not be God, Jehovah, the one, the unchangeable.
2. Respecting the Religious and Moral Condition of the Israelites in Egypt before Moses. On this subject a violent dispute has been carried on among ancient theologians. Spencer, de legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus, i. 1, cap. 1, sec. 1, p. 20 sqq., maintains that the Israelites in Egypt had almost lost the knowledge of the true God, and had given themselves up to the idolatry of the Egyptians. On this he based the opinion, to carry out which is the aim of his whole work, that the ceremonial law has not an absolute but only a relative value; that God permitted those heathen customs to which the Israelites had accustomed themselves to remain just as they were, so far as they were not directly associated with the worship of idols, so far as they were ineptiae tolerabiles, to vise his own expression, thus to leave the nation its plaything, lest, by having all taken from it, it might be induced to retain everything, even idolatry. From this opinion there is only one step to the acceptance of a purely human origin of the Mosaic law; and many theologians to whom it was justly offensive, regarding it as an ineptia intolerabilis, sought to undermine the foundation of it, and to show that the Israelites remained faithful to the true religion. Salomo Deyling, in his Oratio de Israelitarum Ægyptiacorum ingenio, at the end of vol. i. of the Observatt. Sacrae, goes farthest in this view.
It is clear that both parties have gone too far, occupied by preconceived opinions. On one side it is certain that the knowledge of the true God and His honour was not yet lost among the Israelites. Otherwise how could Moses, who came as the ambassador of this God,—comp. Exodus 3:15, “Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you;” Exodus 6:3,—have found a hearing? They were still familiar with the promises of the land of Canaan. Moses found them still in possession of the traditions of the life of the patriarchs, and their relation to the Lord. We have a memorial of continued union with the Lord in the names of that time, which contain the expression of a true knowledge of God. It is remarkable, however, that among these names there are very few which are compounded with Jehovah, such as Jochebed, while there are many with אל; for example, the three names ̕Uzziel, Mishael, ‘Elzaphan, in Exodus 6:22. Already Simonis remarks: Compositio cumיהוהmaxime obtinuit temporibus regum. From fear of God, the Hebrew midwives transgressed the royal mandate at their own peril. “The fault is in thine own people,” were the words of the oppressed Israelites to Pharaoh in Exodus 5:16; “by the injustice which thou doest unto us they incur heavy sin; and where sin is, punishment soon follows.” By this expression they show that they had not yet lost the consciousness of a holy and just God. The continuance of circumcision in Egypt is proved by the words of Exodus 4:24-26, and by Joshua 5:5, according to which all the Israelites were circumcised on their departure from Egypt. On the other side, it cannot be denied that those who persist in representing Israel as quite pure, are at direct variance with the most explicit testimony of Scripture. We see how much the Israelites had succumbed to Egyptian influence by their great effeminacy, which is denied by Ewald, notwithstanding the decided testimony of history. In Joshua 24:14, the Israelites are exhorted to put away the gods which their fathers served in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Ezekiel, Ezekiel 23, reproaches the Israelites with having served idols, especially in verses Ezekiel 23:8, Ezekiel 23:19, Ezekiel 23:21. Amos says in Amos 5:25-26 : “Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your God, which ye made to yourselves.” The sense of this passage (comp. the discussions in vol. ii. of the Beiträge, S. 109 ff.) is this: The mass of the people neglected to worship God by sacrifices during the greater part of the march through the wilderness, the thirty-eight years of exile, and in the place of Jehovah, the God of armies, put a borrowed god of heaven, whom they honoured, together with the remaining host of heaven, with a borrowed worship. These idolatrous tendencies of the Israelites in the march through the wilderness, of which Ezekiel also makes mention, Ezekiel 20:26, presuppose that the nation had in some measure succumbed to the temptations to idolatry during the residence in Egypt. It is also a proof of the corruption of the nation, that most of those who were led out of Egypt had to die in the wilderness before the occupation of Canaan. The whole history of the march through the wilderness is incomprehensible on the assumption that Israel remained perfectly faithful to the Lord. It can only be explained by the circumstance that the new, which Moses brought to Israel, consisted in a rude antithesis to the old. That the Israelites had practised idolatry, especially that of Egypt, is shown by the worship of demons, Leviticus 17:7. The goats there mentioned, to which the Israelites offer sacrifice, are the Egyptian Mendes, which is honoured in the goat as its visible form and incarnation, comp. Herod. ii. 46, and a personification of the masculine principle in nature, of the active and fructifying power. It was associated with the eight highest gods of the Egyptians, chap. 145; and even took precedence among them, Diod. i. 12 f. There were also other deities of the same stamp, explaining the plural, as the Bealim in 1 Kings 18:18. The worship of the golden calf in the wilderness also belongs to this period. It was an imitation of the Egyptian Apis, or bull-worship. It is immaterial that in the one case it is a calf, and in the other a bull. The name of calf is everywhere contemptible. They would willingly have made an ox, but they could not bring themselves to it, because it would dishonour their entire origin. The worshippers undoubtedly called the image a bull. According to Philo, a golden bull was made; and in Psalms 106:20 it is said, “They changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass.” The ceremonies also which the Israelites employed in this worship were Egyptian. This, therefore, was a yielding to Egyptian idolatry, even if the Hebrews, which is unquestionable, only wished to honour Jehovah in the image. Almost every participation of the Israelites in Egyptian life was of a similar kind, not a direct denial of the God of their fathers, but only an adaptation of heathen ideas to Him, resting upon a misapprehension of the wall of separation which holiness formed between Him and the heathen idols. Again, on the assumption of the absolute purity of the Israelites, it is impossible to comprehend the lively exhortations, the strict rules, and the heavy threatenings of the law against all idolatrous life, comp. Deuteronomy 4:15et seq.; they presuppose the tendency of the nation to such deviations. On the other hand, the argument for the participation of the nation in Egyptian nature-worship, which is drawn from the symbolism of the law, is untenable. For the assumption on which it rests, that the home of symbolism is only in natural religion, has no foundation. Symbolism has nothing to do with the substance, but solely with the form, of religious consciousness. It is an embodiment, indifferent in itself. Neither is there any weight in the argument, that in many forms and symbols a more exact description is wanting. The people are supposed to be already conversant with them. Here it is forgotten that the Pentateuch in its present form was not written down until long after the introduction of these forms and customs. Between the Sinaitic legislation and the redaction of the Pentateuch lies a period of thirty-eight years. The correct view of the moral and religious condition of the Hebrews in Egypt has more than a mere historical importance: it is highly significant in a religious point of view. By partially giving prominence to the one side or the other, we lose sight of the most important thing in the matter, viz. its typical meaning. Those who try to represent the Israelites as pure as possible, have, notwithstanding their good intentions, done them a very bad service. The whole history of the departure from Egypt to the entrance into Canaan, is one vast, ever-recurring prophecy,—a type which, to be one, must bear in itself the essence of its antitype. The bringing out of Egypt signifies the continual leading out of God’s people from the service of the world and of sin; the sojourn in the wilderness typifies their trial, sifting, and purification; the leading into Canaan, their complete induction into the possession of divine blessings and gifts, after having been thoroughly purified from the reproach of Egypt. This symbolism pervades all Scripture, as we shall show more fully in considering the march through the wilderness. If the Israelites had become altogether like the Egyptians, they could not have continued to be the people of God. There can be no period in the history of the people of God in which they exactly resemble the world. To maintain this would be to deny the faithfulness and truth of God, and to assert that He is sometimes not God. It is not without foundation that we say in the creed of the Christian Church: “I believe in the holy, catholic church.” Balaam, in Numbers 23:10, characterizes Israel by the name ישׁרים, the upright. This predicate is always applicable to the church of God, even in times of the deepest deterioration. In her bosom she always conceals an ἐκλογή, in which her principle has attained to perfect life. And to the corrupted mass there is always a superior background: the fire which still glows in the ashes has only to be fanned in times of divine visitation. Since God’s carnal blessing accompanied the cross in so marked a manner, how is it possible to conceive that He should spiritually have abandoned His people? If the Israelites had kept themselves quite pure, then the exodus would have to be regarded merely as an external benefit, and the guidance through the wilderness would become utterly incomprehensible. The second step, that of temptation, necessarily presupposes a first, that of primary deliverance from spiritual servitude, and the first love arising out of it, whose ardent character was to be changed into one of confiding affection. Add to this, that already the external bondage of the Israelites itself afforded a proof of their internal bondage. The suffering of the people of God always appears in Scripture as a reflex of their sin: if they have given themselves up to the world, and have come to resemble it, they are punished by means of the world. How should there be an exception to the rule in this case only?
If we look at the moral and religious condition of the Israelites from this point of view, we see more clearly that it was necessary for God, in accordance with His covenant faith, to step forth from His concealment just at that time. It was not perhaps external misery alone, but rather internal misery, which gave rise to this necessity. When the carcase is in the church of God, there the eagles first collect; but then, in accordance with the same divine necessity, the dry dead bones are again animated by the Spirit of God. At that time the critical moment had arrived when the question turned upon the existence or non-existence of a people of God upon earth. But one century later, and there had no longer been any Israel in existence deserving of the name. What Israel had inherited from the time of the patriarchs, could not in the lapse of time hold out against the mighty pressure of the spirit of the world. A new stage of revelation must be surmounted, or that which had previously been gained would be lost.
