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No.7. “Ye have compassed this mountain
long enough.”
It is a fact that should be reiterated until its significance is realized, that the FIRST BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT were the epistles of Paul. The Church has elected to travel by way of the Gospels and the Acts, even as Israel wandered their forty years, but that fact remains that the initial revelation of Divine grace was not accepted except by the minority.
The story of Israel’s failure under Moses and eventual triumph under Joshua is recorded in the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua. Deuteronomy is so called because the law was given a second time, and is taken from Deut. xvii. 18, where “copy of the law” is spoken in Rabbinic writings as the Mishneh or “doubling” and which the LXX translates deuteronomion “repetition of the law”. It is the time of restatement, after the period of wandering is over. The first four chapters of Deuteronomy were spoken by Moses “on this side Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red Sea”. The “plain” is the Arabah, the name of the valley that extends southward from the Jordan. There is a world of feeling in the retrospect which is spoken in parenthesis:
“(There are eleven days journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir unto
Kadesh-barnea)”,
even as the poet has expressed it:
“The saddest words of tongue or pen
It might have been . . . . .”
Moses, however, apart from the expression of regret, passes to the immediate present:
“And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month”,
and only reviews the past, in order to prepare the children of Israel for the tests of faith and endurance that now awaited them.
“The LORD our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying ‘Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount’.” (Deut. i. 6).
This command came on the twentieth day of the second month of the second year after Israel’s exodus from Egypt, as Numb. x. 11 records and with standards held aloft and with the camp in marching order, the move was made that might have ended in a speedy entry into the land of promise. Weakness, failure, rebellion, murmuring however are soon revealed to their undoing. These signs of weakness are as follows:
(1) Moses. “I am not able to bear you alone” (Deut. i. 9).
(2) Israel. “Ye came near unto me, every one of you, and said ‘We will send men before us’.” (Deut. i. 22).
(3) Israel. “Ye murmured in your tents.”
“Ye did not believe the Lord your God” (Deut. i. 27, 32).
(4) Moses. “Thou shalt no go in thither” (Deut. i. 37).
(5) Israel. “Went presumptuously up into the hill” (Deut. i. 43).
It will be seen that there is a blend of human frailty and human perversity in this record. Moses refers to his own inability to cope with the duties that belonged to his office, and this must be read together with the record given in Exod. xviii. There we discover that it was at the suggestion of Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, that arrangements were made to spread some of the ardous work of administration.
“And when Moses’ father in law saw all that he did to the people, he said, . . . . . Thou wilt surely wear away” (Exod. xviii. 14-18).
Whether the advice of Jethro was prompted by Divine or worldly wisdom we cannot tell; the main fact stands out clearly, that, strong and wise and endowed as Moses must have been, he was after all human and consequently frail. Moses moreover represented “the law” and not till Moses was dead could Joshua, the type of Christ, rise up and go over Jordan. Great and glorious as was Moses, type and foreshadowing as he was of the Prophet that should be raised up “like unto” himself, the fact that he places this acknowledgment “I am not able to bear you myself alone” and records that he spoke these words “at that time” is suggestive.
The sending of the spies, and the murmuring of the people were symptoms of a deadly unbelief which brought about their fall:
“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God . . . . . Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it” (Heb. iii. 12; iv. 1, 2).
The R.V. reads in verse 2 “because they were not united by faith with them that heard”. “Them that heard” the word and believed, were men like Caleb and Joshua, those who sided with the ten spies and their evil report were those who were not united by faith to the faithful two. The only other occurrence of sunkerannumi is in I Cor. xii. 24 “God hath tempered the body together”. All Israel were “baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual meat” (I Cor. x. 1-4); they were all, at least typically “saved” people, but the record continues “But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness” (I Cor. x. 5). Among the items picked out by the Apostle for our warning is the fact that “murmuring” ended in their destruction, even as in Philippians, the same Apostle, writing to believers of the high calling, warned against “murmuring” and those whose end is “waste” (destruction A.V.), and whose god was their belly (Phil. ii. 14; iii. 19).
The weakness and the perverseness of the human heart it will be seen early manifested itself in both leader and people, pointing on, in the first instance to Joshua who led the people in, and ultimately to the Lord, for it is written “If Jesus (i.e. Joshua) had given them rest” David would not have still spoken of that rest as future (Heb. iv. 8).
The remainder of the first chapter of Deuteronomy is occupied with the rebellion and the forty years’ wandering. Chapter ii. sums up that dreadful experience in the words of verse 1:
“Then we turned, and took our journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea, as the Lord spake unto me: and we compassed Mount Seir many days” (Deut. ii. 1).
At the end of this period the Lord again spoke:
“Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward” (Deut. ii. 3).
There is a world of frustration in that word “compass”. The same Hebrew word gives us “whirl about” (Eccles. i. 6); “wind about” (Ezek. xli. 7); “driven back” (Psa. cxiv. 3, 5).
We are not of them that “draw back unto perdition (or waste)” said the Apostle with an eye on this tragedy of wasted effort and breach of promise. Abraham knew something of this blank, unprofitable period (Gen. xii. 7 and xiii. 18), the intervening descent into Egypt and the dwelling with Lot being so much waste of precious time, mercifully blotted out, but waste nevertheless.
New directions however are given to Israel. No longer are they told to go up by way of the mountain of the Amorites, their route is altered and led by way of the lands of Esau, Moab and Ammon. We too must take it to heart, that while the basic truth of Ephesians and Philippians remains to us, practical and experimental modifications are observable in II Timothy, the last epistle of Paul. We cannot now “go up by way of the mountain”. Fellowship which is rich and full in Ephesians and Philippians is absent from II Timothy, where the insistence there is on “thyself”. We look with longing at the record of the Philippian assembly, but know that no such fellowship will again be manifested on earth. Rather the sphere and atmosphere of our service is indicated in the fourth chapter of II Timothy, where loneliness rather than the encouragement of “striving together” may be our lot.
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