14. § 2. The Call of Moses

§ 2. The Call of Moses

Here we take this word in a wide sense. In the call of Moses, we reckon all those preparatory dispensations of God by which he was adapted for it, from his birth to the giving of the call on Sinai. And further, we include all those means by which he was strengthened in the faith, from this first commission to the commencement of the plagues, and by which he was prepared for the vocation upon which he really entered with the occurrence of this event. Until now all had been mere preparation. Now for the first time Moses is ready for the work of God. The narrative itself here breaks off into the first great section. It remarks, Exodus 7:6, that from this time Moses did as the Lord commanded him. In his former trials, human weakness was largely associated with divine power, but from this time only the latter can be perceived. In the place of probation now comes vocation. Our remarks in this paragraph include also the section Ex. 2:1-7:7. The work which was to be accomplished in the Mosaic time could only be completed by a distinguished personality. It is true that the people had been prepared for it by the divine guidance. The heavy suffering which they had experienced through the instrumentality of the Egyptians, the representatives of the world, had destroyed their inclination for Egyptian life, just as among us external bondage by the French destroyed the power of spiritual bondage. The traditions of antiquity had again become living; a desire for the glorious possessions which God had entrusted to this people alone among all nations of the earth was again aroused, and appears especially in the tribe of Levi, which distinguished itself in the beginning of the Mosaic time, Exodus 32, by zeal for the religion of Jehovah, and by reason of this zeal was appointed by the Lord to its guardianship. Comp. Deuteronomy 33:8 sqq. But the nation did not get beyond a mere susceptibility; it had sunk too deeply to be able to attain to complete restoration, except through an instrument endowed by God with great gifts,—a man of God, in whom the higher principle should be personally represented. All great progress in the kingdom of God is called forth only by great personalities. No man has ever gone out from the mass as such, although in every reformation a preparation took place in the mass. The deliverance granted to Moses in his childhood typified the deliverance of the whole nation from the great waters of affliction. We learn from Psalms 18:17 how individuals justly regarded it as a pledge of their own deliverance from distress. But a special divine providence appears most clearly in the circumstance that Moses, by deliverance, was placed in so closea relation to the daughter of the Egyptian king, called Thermuthis by Josephus in his Antiq. ii. 9. 5. In the statement that she treated him as her son, Exodus 2:10, is implied what Stephen expressly says, Acts 7:22, without giving any other proof for it than that contained in the former passage, that he had been brought up in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. This wisdom was essentially practical. It formed the foundation of the charismata which were afterwards imparted to Moses, and which always presuppose a human foundation. Here there was a repetition of what God had done for Joseph, who had first to be educated in the house of Potiphar for his future vocation, so important for Israel. Here was concentrated God’s design in leading the whole nation into Egypt, the most civilised country then in existence. Here was realized the idea which lies at the basis of the announcement to Abraham, that his descendants should go out from Egypt with great spoil. The possession which Israel here gained was far greater than the vessels of gold and silver. Here also the divine act is a prophecy whose fulfilment extends through all time. The world collects and works in art and science for itself and its idols, collects and works in opposition to God. But faith will not be misled by this. It is only unbelief or shortsightedness which suffers itself to be led into contempt of art and science, and anxiety regarding their progress. Even here the wisdom and omnipotence of God so order things, that what has been undertaken without and against Him, turns to His advantage and to that of His people. Look, for instance, at the period of the Reformation. The re-awakened sciences had been developed mainly in the service of the world. This natural development would have led to godlessness, but suddenly Luther and the other reformers stepped forth and bore away the spoil of Egypt. It is sufficient merely to indicate how this actual prophecy is realized in our time. But the working of special divine providence was not only manifested in the sending of Moses into this school. It was still more strongly displayed in the fact that he drew from it the good only, and not the bad. The wisdom was certainly essentially practical, but yet its foundation was pseudo-religious. How powerful, therefore, must have been the working of God’s Spirit in Moses, which enabled him, while descrying the snake in the grass, to hold to the simple traditions of his fathers, unblinded by the spirit of the time, which pressed upon him on all sides, although he was obliged to search after this tradition while the false wisdom pressed upon him! How mighty must have been that efficacy which enabled him to change its letter into spirit, its acts into prophecies, whose fulfilment he sought and found with burning zeal in his own heart! It was necessary for the calling of Moses that he should be placed in the midst of the corrupt Egyptian life. It served to call forth in him a violent contest, and to give rise to a mighty crisis, without which no reformer can become ripe for his vocation. He who is destined to contend effectively with the spirit of the world, must have experienced it in its full power of temptation. Thus the negative influence of the Egyptian school was as salutary and necessary to Moses as the positive. Again, Moses was brought up at court. That he was not blinded by its splendour, nor sank into its effeminacy, that he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, Hebrews 11:25, is a marvel as great to him who knows the disposition of human nature, and does not measure greatness by the ell, as the subsequent external miracles which one and the same carnal mind, only in a different form, either stumbles at, or regards as the only miracles. Therefore in this respect also God’s design is perfectly realized, which was to direct the glance of the people to Moses from the beginning, and so, by the manifestation of human power, to create in them a susceptibility for the subsequent ready acceptance of the proof of his divine greatness. In Eusebius, Artapanus in the Praep. Ev., and Josephus, Antiq. 2. 10, relate, the latter with the minutest detail, that Moses, as an Egyptian general, undertook a campaign against the Ethiopians. Attempts have been made to use this narrative to explain the knowledge of distant lands which Moses shows in the Pentateuch, and to account for his skill in war. Joh. Reinhard Forster takes great trouble to defend it; see his letter to Joh. Dav. Michaelis on the Spicilegium Geogr. Hebr. Ext., Goetting. 1769. But we might just as well invent such a story as accept it on authority so imperfect. The whole fable has been spun out from Numbers 12:1. Mention is there made of a Cushite wife of Moses. Zipporah is meant. In a wide sense, the Midianites belonged to the Cushltes. Or it might be that Zipporah was of a Cushite family who had immigrated into the Midianites, just as now negroes are to be found among the Arabs of the wilderness, who have been received by them into their community, according to the Countess de Gasparin’s Travels in the East, which appeared in 1849. But it has been supposed that reference was there made to another wife of Moses; and in order to obtain her, he has been represented as having undertaken a campaign into Egypt, as having conquered Meroe and won an Ethiopian princess.

Moses’ conduct towards the Egyptians gives us a deep insight into the constitution of his mind at that time. The matter has a beautiful side, which alone is made prominent in Hebrews 11:24, because it is viewed in an enumeration of examples of faith. Moses leaves the court in order to visit his suffering brethren. Love towards them, which rests upon faith, so overcomes him, that before it every consideration of his own danger disappears. Moses also here developes that natural energy which is in every reformer the substratum of those gifts necessary to his vocation. But the thing has also an evil side, which does not demand notice in the narrative, since the actual judgment on it is contained in what immediately follows; for here also history shows itself to be judgment. His princely education did not pass over him without leaving some trace. It is true that he would no longer be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, but yet he aspired to deliver his people by his own hand. The act towards the Egyptian, which is excused, though not by any means justified, by the oppressed condition of the Israelites, was intended only as a beginning. Immediately on the following day, Moses in his reformatory haste goes out to continue the work which had been begun. He throws himself as an arbiter between two Israelites, expecting that his powerful words would be followed by absolute submission. But the matter assumed quite a different aspect. He made the experience which all self-made reformers make. He was disregarded even by those whom he wished to help, for the sake of God as he thought. In Acts 7:25 Stephen says, “He supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not.” Instead of delivering his people from their misery, he himself was obliged to wander into misery, without possessions and without courage, fearing to be punished as a common murderer; for his conscience told him that he had been zealous, not for God, but for himself. That which seemed always to exclude him from participation in the deliverance of his people, was really intended to serve as a preparation: there could not have been a worse preparation if the matter were to be accomplished by human power. God prepared a place of refuge for him, and here he was obliged to remain forty years, until he began to grow old. (It is not stated in the Pentateuch itself that the sojourn lasted so long, but only in the discourse of Stephen, Acts 7:23-30, according to tradition; but it is confirmed by the analogy of the eighty years of Moses at the time of the deliverance, Exodus 7:7, and by his death at 120 years of age, Deuteronomy 34:7.) The main object was to free him from those stains which a residence at court had left, even in him, especially from pride and arrogance. His new residence was well adapted to this end. It was a true school of humility, which we afterwards recognise as a fundamental trait in the character of Moses; comp. Numbers 12:3. In the eyes of his father-in-law Hobab, the son of Raguel, who was still living at the time of Moses’ coming, and stood at the head of the household, the priest of the Midianites dwelling to the east of Mount Sinai, the splendid title of Jethro, his Excellency, seems to have been the best external advantage which he derived from his office. Religion does not seem to have been highly estimated by this nation. It had perhaps come to them with the race of priests from abroad, and had taken no deep root among them. Moses was obliged to protect the daughters of the priest from the injustice of the Midianite shepherds. He himself had afterwards to do service as a shepherd, which, as the son of a king’s daughter, must have cost his pride a severe struggle. When he returned to Egypt, he had only an ass for the transport of his whole family. He set his wife and child upon it, and himself walked by the side with his shepherd-staff—the same which was destined to receive so great importance as the staff of God; comp. Exodus 4:2. It is certain that at this time he must have been in great difficulties. His marriage was also in many respects a school of affliction. The two single verses, Exodus 4:24-25, give a deep insight into the mind of his wife. She was so passionate and quarrelsome, that, owing to her opposition, Moses was obliged to omit to circumcise his second son, doubtless with great sorrow, for the circumcision of the first had given rise to so much strife; and she is unable to repress her vehemence when she sees her husband in evident danger of his life, and is thus obliged to do herself what she had been unwilling for him to do. At the same time, we see plainly how little Moses had in her a companion in the faith. Circumcision, the sacrament of the covenant, she regarded only with the eyes of carnal reason. She thought it foolish to give pain to her child for the sake of such a trifle. Moses spoke directly from his own experience, when he declared himself so strongly against marriage with a heathen woman. All this was well adapted to make him weak in himself, and therefore strong in God, for the power of God is mighty in the weak. It was of great advantage to him that he was separated for a considerable time from his people. He was thus protected against that human unrest which must constantly have received new nourishment from association with them, and from the sight of their sorrow. His shepherd-life was well calculated to call forth calm reflection. Here he could transport himself vividly to the time of his ancestors, when the grace of God was so manifestly with the chosen race. Thus, while his external man gradually wasted away, his spirit was renewed from day to day. We have memorials of his disposition in the names of his two sons, Gershom and Eliezer,—“a stranger here,” and “God helpeth.” The former gives utterance to the complaint, the latter to the comfort.

It cannot be regarded as accidental that the call of Moses took place on Mount Sinai, from which circumstance some have assumed, without any foundation (Ewald, Gesch. des Volk. Isr. ii. S. 86), that it had been already consecrated before Moses, as the seat of the oracle and the habitation of the gods. For there is not the least trace to lead to such a conclusion. All the sanctity of the mountain is due to the acts of the Mosaic time. By the circumstance that he was here solemnly called to the service of God, the place receives its first consecration as the mountain of God; when the Israelites afterwards arrived there, they found it already marked with the footprints of God: it was already holy ground. The call of Moses to God’s service prefigured the call of the Israelites to God’s service, which was to take place in the same spot. If history prove the former to be real and mighty, the latter must, à priori, be regarded as such.

It is of great importance that the manifestation which presented itself to Moses, after the supernatural revelation of God had ceased for four centuries, should not be regarded as a mere portentum, but that its symbolical significance should be rightly apprehended. Then it appears that the substance stands infinitely higher than the form, that the marvellous element contained in it continues through all time, and that only he whose eyes are closed can seek a natural explanation of the miracles of the past (to which department it does not belong, if the occurrence be transferred to the region of the inner sense; for by this means it loses nothing of its reality), so that he is not able to apprehend the miracles which exist in the present. A thorn-bush burning and yet not consumed, this is the symbol. The thorn-bush is the symbol of the church of God, externally small and insignificant. In Zechariah 1 it appears again under the symbol of a myrtle-bush—not a proud cedar on the high mountains, but a modest myrtle; and again in Isa. viii, under the image of the still waters of Shiloah, in contrast to the roaring of the Euphrates; and in Psalms 46 under the image of a quiet river in contrast with the raging sea. Looking at the thorn-bush from this point of view, Moses himself, in Deuteronomy 33:16, speaks of God as He who dwelt in the thorn-bush, שכנישנה,—not so much He who once appeared in the physical thorn-bush, but He who continually dwells in the spiritual thorn-bush which is prefigured—in the midst of His people. Fire in the symbolism of Scripture denotes God in His essence, especially in the energetic character of His punitive justice; comp. instar omnium, “Our God is a consuming fire,” in the law itself, and in Hebrews 12:29. The thorn-bush burns, but is not consumed. The world is consumed by the judgment of God. For His people, the cross is a proof not only of God’s justice, but also of His love: He chastises them unsparingly, but does not give them over to death. Here we have the key to all the guidances of Israel, the key to the history of the church of the new covenant, and the key to our own guidances. For that which is applicable to the whole, is always applicable to the individual, in whom the idea of the whole is realized. We must burn, we must enter into the kingdom of God through much tribulation; but we are not consumed: the cross is always accompanied by the blessing. What a rich theme is afforded in the words of Moses, “I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt,”—rich in proportion as personal experience has opened the eyes to the perception of the historical fact!

Again, according to the opinion of Stephen, it was in a vision that Moses saw the bush which burned with fire, and yet was not consumed. For the ὅραμα, by which word he designates that which he has seen in Acts 7:31, is always applied in the New Testament to visions of the inner sense, and occurs very frequently in the Acts of the Apostles. But the symbolical utterance of God here stands in exact relation to the verbal. The latter contains the meaning of the former. God only applies the idea which animates the symbol to the present case, in explaining to Moses, who was filled with holy awe, that He would now lead His people out of the land of the Egyptians, and into the land of promise. The command follows this promise. Moses was to lead the people out of Egypt, not, as formerly, by his own hand, but by the commission of God. The manner in which Moses receives this commission; his lingering irresolution; his want of confidence in himself, which still suggested new scruples, desiring a special assurance from God for each doubt, although the answer to all was already contained in the universal promise, and led him to repeat even those objections which had been obviated whenever a new difficulty arose, and at last, when all escape was cut off from him, made him still hesitate to move in the matter, and led him after he had received the call to urge those difficulties made known to him by God, and designated as belonging to the matter, as a plea why he should not be sent; till at last he rises to confidence in that strength of God which is mighty in the weak, and now suddenly appears as an entirely new man: all this is important in more than one aspect. Let it be noticed especially how powerfully the character of truth is imprinted on the whole representation of the internal struggle of Moses. Where in mythical history do we find even an approach to anything similar? The heroes of mythology are of one piece—power at the beginning, and power at the end. Here the author could not have made a greater mistake, if it had been his intention to glorify Moses. That which must deprive him of the character of a great man in the eyes of the world (forty years before he had the intention of becoming so, but now he had abandoned it), appears to have made him so much the better adapted to the purposes of God. Whence, then, arises his great hesitation? It had its foundation first in his great humility, which led him to see himself just as he was. How many think that they are undertaking a work in faith in God’s help, while secret confidence in their own power lies at the foundation! Where this confidence is completely destroyed, it is very difficult to trust in God. It is easier for God to bestow confidence in His power, than to take away a man’s confidence in his own power. But when He has accomplished this, those persons who have before completely despaired, turn out very different from those who have apparently trusted in God from the beginning, while in reality their confidence has been half in themselves. The latter always retain one part where they are vulnerable, if it be only the heel. They stumble and fall in the middle of the course, while Moses has everything arranged before beginning the race. His weakness therefore served only to make him the more humble. If it had overtaken him while in office, which would certainly have been the case if he had not been weak before entering upon it, then the reproach would have fallen on the cause of God. A second reason for Moses’ hesitation was his sobriety. It is impossible to imagine a more direct contrast to a fanatic. The latter is raised high into the clouds by his phantasy; mountains of difficulty disappear from before his eyes. And when he descends to earth, where he is called upon to act, the actual takes the place of the imagined reality: every stone upon which he stumbles is converted into a mountain, and every actual mountain becomes as high as heaven in his eyes. His enthusiasm disappears, and sad despondency takes its place. But Moses, on the contrary, is not disconcerted by the appearance of God. All difficulties appear in their natural size. Pharaoh the mightiest monarch, Egypt the mightiest kingdom, of the then existing world; and on the other hand an aged, infirm man, of humble appearance, with his staff in his hand, scarcely able to stammer forth his commission with his stuttering tongue. And again the difficulty which his humble appearance must present to the people themselves whom he was sent to deliver,—a people whose mind was already blunted by slavery, and who were so little able to rise to faith beyond the visible. But the very thing which was the cause of his original hesitation was the cause of his subsequent firmness. He is deterred by nothing, however unexpected. He is prepared for everything. He has fully counted the cost of building, and is therefore able to carry out the work without making himself and God a mockery to the world. In him we see clearly the distinction between enthusiasm and spirit. The former is essentially a product of nature, by which it seeks to supply the deficiency of the latter, and is the more dangerous, since it conceals this deficiency, and paralyzes the effort to supplement it.

God’s dealing with Moses is just as sharply defined, and bears equally in itself the imprint of truth. It repeats itself in all believers. All pride is an abomination to God, but He has infinite patience with lowliness and weakness: comp. Isaiah 66:2. A fictitious God would have crushed such hesitation as Moses displayed with a word of thunder. He would have been satisfied to say, “Thou shalt,”—the words with which Pharaoh, the image of the categorical imperative which reason has exalted to God, met the complaints of the Israelites who had to make bricks, and yet received no straw. The true God, with unwearying patience, points out, “Thou canst.” And it is only after He has done this, and Moses still refuses, that He threatens with His anger. Afterwards, on every relapse into his old weakness, God takes him by the hand and helps him to rise.

“What God intends to do to Israel, He comprises, on His first call to Moses, in the name Jehovah, which forms a prophecy, and from this time becomes His peculiar designation among Israel. Afterwards, in Exodus 6, before He begins his manifestation as Jehovah, He solemnly declares Himself once more as such. The name had been known to Israel long before; but now for the first time, and from this time through all centuries, the essence of which it was the expression was to be fully revealed to Israel, and at the same time the name was to lose that sporadic character which it had hitherto borne, and was to pass into common use. It is remarkable, that before the Mosaic time we find so few proper names compounded with the name Jehovah. The name is properly pronounced Jahveh, and means “He is,” or “the Existing” (not, as Delitzsch asserts in die bibl. proph. Theologie, Leipzig 1845, S. 120, “The Becoming,” “the God of development;” for Scripture knows nothing of a God of development—it abandons this to pantheistic philosophy: the God of Scripture does not become, but He comes. Exodus 3:14 is decidedly at variance with this view, however; for here אהיהאֹשׁראהיה is placed in essential parallel with אהיה, which can only be the case if we explain it, “I am,” and “I am that I am”). The name denotes God as the pure, absolute existence, the personal existence; for it is not in the infinitive. But the name is: I am, I am the only one who is real; all others can participate in being only by community with me; besides me there is only non-existence, impotence, death. The “I am” seals the “I am that I am,” constantly the same, unaffected by all change. For absolute existence excludes all change, which can only belong to existence in so far as, like all earthly existence, it has an element of non-existence. Immutability of essence necessarily implies immutability of will. So also purity of existence implies omnipotence. And if this were established, what then had Israel to expect from God? The name at once assured them of the power of their God to help them, and of His will to help them; assured them of the fact that, as omnipotent, He was able to help; and as unchangeable and true, He must help. But when God established His name Jehovah as a pledge, He gave effect to all that had been verbally predicted to the patriarchs—the deliverance out of Egypt, the possession of the land of Canaan, and the blessing on all nations. And not only this, but the whole history of the patriarchs, and all God’s dealings with them, became converted into a prophecy. For God, in accordance with His repeated declaration, had acted towards them not as to individuals, but as to the ancestors of the chosen race. If what He then did was not a work of caprice, which inheres only in non-existence; if it were the efflux of His essence, and if this essence were raised above all change and hindrance, then every act of God must be revived—God must have mercy on the nation, or He must cease to be God. And everything which He then did to prove His name of Jehovah, was again a prophecy, and a pledge of His future gifts. From these remarks it is clear how suitable Jehovah was to be the theocratic, ecclesiastical name of God, which it appears to have been from this time. It stands in close relation to the name of Israel. In establishing Himself as Jehovah, God shows what He will do to the nation, and what He must do in accordance with the necessity of His essence. By giving the name of Israel to the nation in their ancestor. He shows what they must do in order that He may reveal Himself to them as Jehovah. The struggle with God, the faith which does not leave Him till He blesses, is the destination, but at the same time the privilege, of the people of God. For the invitation to this struggle rests upon the fact that God is Jehovah. This name is the protection against all despair, the sure rock on which the waves of the world-sea break: it beams like a sun into the earthly darkness, and brings light into the benighted soul. The privilege of Israel over all the heathen consists not in their having only one God, but in their having such a God. There is nothing in heaven or earth that can in any wise harm a nation that has such a God; there is nothing in heaven and earth that can turn away from the service of such a God. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,” has its firm foundation in the name and essence of Jehovah. A God who is unconditionally exalted above everything, the only real existence in heaven and earth, must also be unconditionally loved above everything. Here all dividing of the heart is imprudence and sin. In the name of Jehovah lies the proper world-history of the people of Israel. By this they are separated from all other nations; in this they have the pledge of a glorious future, the prophecy of the future dominion of the world. For such a God can never be permanently confined within the narrow limits of a single nation. Under Him, they can only gain life and power for the purpose of beginning the triumphal march against the world from this firm starting-point. In the Revelation of John, Revelation 1, the name of Jehovah is paraphrased by the words, “which is, and which was, and which is to come.” God is, as the pure, and absolute, and unchanging being: He exists in the present, in the fulness of that power which supplies the church; He was—in the past He has testified His existence by deeds of almighty love; He is to come—He will appear to judge the world, and for the salvation of His church, and places will then be changed. The occurrence by the way, related in Exodus 4:24 (a confirmation of the vision of the thorn-bush, which burns and yet is not consumed, in the personal experience of the leader of the people), is important in many respects. The incident must be looked at thus. On the way Moses was suddenly afflicted by severe sickness, threatening immediate death. His conscience accused him of a sin, and God or His Angel gave him an internal conviction that the malady was a punishment for this offence. From fear of his wife, he had neglected to circumcise his second son. This disturbance of the relation between him and God must necessarily be done away before he could enter on his calling. He must be under no ban. In the anguish of her heart, Zipporah now does that which she had formerly refused to allow, and the punishment is removed. But Zipporah performs this compulsory act in anger: she says to Moses passionately, “Surely a bloody husband art thou to me”—going back to the time of the beginning of her relation to him, when she might still have taken a husband from among her own people, who would not have demanded such sacrifices from her. What first impresses us here is the openness with which we are told that the honoured lawgiver himself violated the fundamental law given by God to Abraham and his posterity. This is scarcely consistent with the assumption of a later author, aiming at the glorification of Moses, but applies excellently to Moses himself, who has God’s honour always in view, and not his own. It was impossible for him to pass over in silence an act which served to glorify God—the less, since it contains so rich a treasure of exhortation for his people. (God appears no less God in the manifestation of His righteousness, than in the manifestations of His love, which was also active in this event.) If God entered into judgment in this way with His servant, who erred only through weakness, what might not proud offenders expect?

How Moses turned to his advantage the doctrine which lay nearest to him in this event, is shown by his sending back his wife and children to Midian, which undoubtedly happened in consequence of it, and prefigured what every true servant of the Lord must do spiritually; comp. Deuteronomy 33:9, where Moses himself declares it to be indispensable for the service of God that a man should say unto his father and his mother, “I have not seen him, and should not know his own children.” That this sending back did really take place, is proved by Exodus 18:2, where it is related that, when the Israelites sojourned in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt, Jethro led back to Moses his wife and children. Without doubt, the neglected circumcision was not the only thing with which Moses had to reproach himself. He had also yielded in many other points where he ought not to have yielded, and all at once this became clear to him. He feared, not without reason, that wife and child would be detrimental to him in the great work which he now went to meet, and therefore he sent them back.

Before Moses began the great battle, he was still further strengthened in the faith. The lower promises of God passed into fulfilment, and were a pledge to him of the realization of the highest. Aaron, his brother and promised helper, was led to him by God on Mount Sinai. It almost appears that Aaron’s journey was connected with a revolt which arose among the people, and that all eyes turned to Moses. The people believe. Even Pharaoh’s opposition seems to have tended to strengthen their faith. It had been foretold by God. To him who does not know human nature, it must appear as an internal contradiction of the narrative, that Moses should now have been destitute of courage, when that which had been foretold was fulfilled, and the nation had fallen into still greater distress. But on any knowledge of the human heart, it is evident that this contradiction is inseparable from the thing. The flesh has so great a shrinking from the cross, that at the moment the bitter feeling absorbs everything else: the impression of the visible must first be overcome by struggle. At the conclusion of this consideration we have only one more point to discuss. God says, Exodus 4:21, that He will harden Pharaoh’s heart. In the subsequent narrative it is ten times repeated that God has hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and it is said just as often that Pharaoh hardened his heart. Here the similarity of number points to the fact that the hardening; of Pharaoh is related to the hardening of God, which is designedly mentioned first and last, as the effect to the cause. The whole spirit of the Pentateuch renders it impossible to suppose that this representation makes God the original cause of sin. The whole legislation rests on the presupposition of individual responsibility. The threatenings appended to the breaking of the covenant, and the promises attached to the faithful observance of it, Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28 sqq., most decisively presuppose this. Pharaoh himself is looked upon as an offender who deserves punishment. The semblance of injury to the idea of responsibility also disappears at once if we only consider that the hardening had reference throughout not to the sin in itself, but to the form of its expression—to his obstinate refusal to let Israel go. Pharaoh had power to relent, and the fact that he did not relent proves his guilt and the justice of his punishment. But because he could not, the form in which the sin expressed itself was no longer in his own power, but in the power of God, which is the case with all sinners. God so arranges it as to consist with His own plans. He who turneth the hearts of kings like water-brooks, makes Pharaoh persist in not allowing Israel to go (which he might have done without, however, being in the least better), that an opportunity might thus be given to Him to develope His essence in a series of acts of omnipotence, justice, and love. It was most important to draw attention to this cause of Pharaoh’s hardening. If it were not recognised, his long resistance to God would have been perplexing; but if it were recognised, then Pharaoh’s resistance serves no less to the glory of God than to his own destruction. Calvin strikingly remarks on the kindred passage in Psalms 105:25, “He turned their heart to hate His people, to deal subtilely with His servants:” “We see how the prophet designedly makes it his object to subject the whole government of the church to God. It might suffice for us to learn that God frustrates whatever the devil and godless men may design against us; but we receive double confirmation in the faith when we perceive that not only are their hands bound, but also their hearts and minds, that they can determine nothing but what God pleases.”