The Numerical
Structure of Scripture
LECTURE IV
THE BIBLE BOOKS: THEIR ARRANGEMENT AND
RELATIONSHIP
We are now to take up the Bible as a whole, beloved
brethren, to study the form in which it has come into our hands, and its parts,
and the relation of these to each other and the whole. Is it a complete organic
unity? Is there nothing defective, nothing redundant? There are other books
mentioned in Scripture itself, as the book of Jasher, the book of the wars of
the Lord, and others: are these books which perhaps have fallen out and are
lost out of the canon? If so, can we recognize this? is there any gap apparent
where their place should be? Is there any way of settling such questions?
Again, the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, the version in
common use in our Lord's time, and freely quoted by Himself and His apostles,
adds not a few so-called apocryphal books to the canon, and some of these are
pronounced by the Romish church to have really their place in it. Has the
numerical system any thing to say to this?
And once more, there are in our
New-Testament canon, books whose genuineness and authenticity have been in
question, as, the epistle of Jude, and the second epistle of Peter: can we give
any fresh light as to this? or whether the epistle to the Hebrews is the work
of Paul, or of some Alexandrian, like Apollos?
Questions such as these
are still asked, and although few of them perhaps trouble us seriously today,
yet there are few also as to which a fresh and decisive answer would not be
welcome. Cannot the numerical system, if it be really what is claimed for it,
settle some at least of these points? May we not expect as much from it?
It
is not too much to say that the numerical system is able to settle them all,
and fully settle them, so that now reopening shall be possible. It is capable
of showing the completeness of the Bible as a whole, the place of every book,
the relation of every book to the whole and to each other. This may seem to be
much to claim, but if God be its author, who shall say that it is too much? And
this is what we are to begin the proof of in the present lecture.
First
of all, then, as to the number of the books; is there any thing in this? I am
not likely to forget how, some years since, upon a country road, I asked myself
this question. The answer I got, you will, I think, admit, was calculated to
produce in me the conviction that there is nothing in this line which is not
significant.
In the Old Testament, there are just thirty-six books: in our
present Bibles, indeed, thirty-nine; but all critics are agreed that the three
double books, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, are in fact but each one book: the
Septuagint was the first version in which they were divided, and from this it
has crept into our common Hebrew Bibles. But the Hebrew at first knew nothing
of it.
Thirty-six Old-Testament books, then: what should we make of
this? The number could be taken, of course, as 6 x 6, and would be thus of no
significance that I am aware of; but the most readily occuring division perhaps
would be into 3 x 12, and here the numerals are full of meaning. Three is the
divine number, the number of the Persons in the Godhead; 12, the number of
divine government in the open form it took in Israel. What, then, more
significant than this - "God in government" - as the characteristic of the
thirty-six books of the law?
In the New Testament, on the other hand, there
are twenty-seven books, and this is just the most perfect number that can be:
it is the cube of 3, - 3 x 3 x 3, - the only number beyond 3 itself into which
the symbol of divine fullness and manifestation alone enters, and in its
highest power. "God in government" is God hidden: clouds and darkness are round
about Him; though His glory be seen, it is, as with Moses on the mount, His
back, and not His face; but it is the glory of the gospel that it reveals Him,
and in Christ we see His face. This the number 27 means, - God without a vail,
God fully manifest; and what more significant and beautiful that this numerical
stamp upon the twenty-seven books of the New Testament?
Take one book,
then, away from either the Old Testament or the New, the significance is gone,
the voice has died out; it is not any more as now a living voice that appeals
to us. Add another book to either, the same result is found. Does not this,
then, as plainly as simply declare to us that we have the full inspired canon
(as to the number of books at least,) just as God designed it for us?
But
we are only at the beginning of what the numerals show. The two parts into
which the Bible divides we have already glanced at. The first, the Old
Testament, or Covenant, is thus marked as the creation-, the second, the New
Testament, as the redemption-part. The Old Testament takes up man in the flesh,
addressing itself to one of the "families of the earth," as such. A man was
born of the seed of Israel, not new-born. The New Testament addresses itself to
the saved - to those in Christ Jesus. This is again the indication of a
completely characteristic difference.
We must look at the arrangement
of the books before we can go further. And first, have we any authoritative
arrangement of the books? The question may seem strange to not a few of us. A
reader simply of the English Bible finds, in these days of printing and
uniformity of copies, one invariable order of books, which he naturally
supposes, therefore, has been from the beginning. He would be very likely to
consider any interference with this an act of rashness and an infringement upon
the sacred character of the book. On the other hand, the reader of the Hebrew
Bible finds an order different in many respects. The Septuagint has another,
although in most respects similar to the English one, which is derived from it.
This, of course, affects only the Old Testament. But in the New Testament also
the Greek copies show, as is well known, many minor variations in order,
although these are confined to the epistles.
To return to the Old
Testament, the Hebrew arrangement would seem to have the first claim to be
considered, the more so that we find its threefold division into "Law,
Prophets, and Writings," apparently recognized by our Lord Himself, in Luke
xxiv. 44, as "the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms." This inverts the
order, let it be noted, of our books, putting the prophets before the psalms.
It would surely seem that so far we are bound, if the Lord Himself attach
importance to the order, to the Hebrew arangement.
Further than this,
however, when we turn to the Hebrew, we seem to be confronted by a strangeness
that in our ordinary Bibles seems strangely disturbed, and the last class of
Kethubim, "writings," is made the receptacle for fragments torn unnaturally
from their kindred books, and as unnaturally brought together.
And where
are the rest of the historical books? They stand under the second head, as the
"earlier prophets," - the Jews claiming them to be written by prophets, -
certain books, however, being cut off from them for the Kethubim, while the
prophets proper, - or "later prophets," lose also two books; and the "writings"
fall thus into three divisions: first, the Psalms, Proverbs, Job; secondly, the
Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther; thirdly, Daniel, Ezra,
Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
Now this order, strange as it seems, might of
course have deeper wisdom in it than we see. It would be mere rationalism at
once to set it aside because of its apparent lack in this respect. But the
question seems in place, Is this accepted as the order invariably? I quote an
extract from Delitzch on the book of Job, which will show how far this is from
being the fact: -
"As the work of the Chokma [the didactic class], the
book of Job stands, with the three other works belonging to this class of the
Israelitish literature, among the Hagiographa, which are called in Hebrew
simply Kethubim. Thus, by the side of the Law and the Prophets, the third
division of the canon is styled, in which are included all those writings
belonging neither to the province of prophetic history nor prophetic
declaration. Among the Hagiographa are writings even of a prophetic character,
as Psalms and Daniel, but their writers are not properly prophets. At present,
Lamentations stands among them; but this is not its original place, as also
Ruth appears to have stood originally between Judges and Samuel. Both
Lamentations and Ruth are placed among Hagiographa, that there the five
so-called Megilloth, or scrolls, may stand together: the Song of Songs, the
feast-book of the eighth passover-day; Ruth that of the second Shabuoth-day;
Lamentations, that of the ninth of Ab; Ecclesiastes, that of the eighth
Tabernacle-day; Esther, that of Purim. . . . The position which [the book of
Job] occupies is, moreover, a very shifting one. In the Alexandrine canon,
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, follow the four books of the
Kings. The historical books, therefore, stand, from the earliest to the latest,
side by side; then begins with Job, in stricter sense poetical books. The
Melity of Sardis, in the second century, places Chronicles with the books of
the Kings, but arranges immediately after them the non-historical Hagiographa
in the following order: Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Job. Here,
the Solomonic writings are joined to the Davidic psalter, and the anonymous
book of Job stands last. In our editions of the Bible, the hagiographa division
begins with Psalms, Proverbs, Job (the succession peculiar to MSS. of the
German class): in the Talmud, with Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs; in the Masora,
and in MSS. of the Spanish class, with Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs. All
these modes of arangement are well considered."
Perhaps; but the only thing
they leave plain is that the later arrangement of books differs from the
earlier, that at any time perhaps arrangements differed; that that of the "five
rolls" is simply a more or less recent one for liturgical purposes; and that we
have no recog- nized divine one at all, save only that of the Law, the
Prophets, and the Psalms, which the Lord recognized in the last chapter of
Luke.
We are compelled, therefore, to examine for ourselves if there be any
arrangement that we can recognize as divine at all, for a mere human one is not
what we are seeking or would satisfy us in any respect. And here we will first
of all look for what would seem a natural arrangement, and then see what, if
any thing, the numerical system may have to say to it.
And undoubtedly
what would seem most natural, in view of the one limitation which Scripture
itself has imposed on us, would be in the main what we have in our Bibles, only
reversing the order of the poetical and prophetic books. The historical books
would thus stand first, in two divisions, - the Pentateuch, or Law, and the
rest from Joshua. Here, the chronological order would apparently be the
necessary one, with perhaps an exception in the case of Chronicles, which is a
rehearsal of the history with a special purpose. Then we should have the
Prophets, larger and smaller. Finally, the five poetical books.
Now
what struck me as I looked at these four divisions, could not but inspire me
with hope that here was indeed something like a divine arrangement. Each of
these divisions falls easily into five parts; and upon looking similarly at the
New Testament, it too seemed to fall also into five parts. Five Pentateuchs
make up the whole Bible!
This was indeed to me an illuminating
discovery. Was, then, that Pentateuch of Moses, so dishonoured by the
latter-day generation of critics, the basis of the structure of all Scripture?
If this were so then, as surely as the foundation must be before the
superstructure, so surely must these five books of the law have preceded all
that was built upon them. These books, then, are an organic unity, and as such
give form to all Scripture!
But let us see if it is so. The five books of
Moses themselves, as the first Pentateuch, we need not of course discuss. The
second division of historical books would give us, -
1. Joshua.
2.
Judges; with which the little book of Ruth joins as a natural supplement. It is
a story of the same times.
3. We have Samuel and Kings, which give us the
kingdom in Israel from first to last.
4. The books of the captivity, three
in number, - Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
5. Chronicles, a 'resume' of the
history of the king dom, with a special moral purpose.
Here is a division,
at least, which none can deny to be natural. As to the order, the place of
Chronicles is the only one that can be disputed, and this question we can
afford for the present to leave. Otherwise, it will be admitted to be
natural.
We may go on, then, to the Prophets. Here we have, -
1.
Isaiah.
2. Jeremiah, with its supplement, Lamentations.
3. Ezekiel.
4. Daniel.
5. The Minor Prophets, twelve in number.
The order in our
Bibles is here undisturbed. The only question that can arise as to naturalness
is as to the classing the twelve minor prophets together as one division. For
our purpose at present it is enough to say that the Jews seem always to have so
classed them, and Melity of Sardis expressly calls them monobiblos - one book.
The reason for this has been indeed said to be, lest on account of their size
any one might be lost. But this on the face of it seems mere supposition, and
it may be we can find, as we proceed, a better reason.
The fourth
division needs no reasoning or explanation. It consists of but just five books.
I put them in their true order, as I believe it, and hope afterward to give the
ground of it. They are, -
1. Psalms.
2. Job.
3. Song of
Songs.
4. Ecclesiastes.
5. Proverbs.
Passing to the New
Testament, some have supposed a natural division would be into three parts, -
the Historical books, Epistles, and Revelation. As to the form of writing, this
is natural enough; but the subjects suggest a further division. For the Gospels
claim surely to be distinguished from the Acts; while the Pauline epistles are
equally distinguishable from those of the other inspired writers. In this case,
we have again our five divisions.
If this were all, it would be a
noticeable fact, but an unsatisfying one. Our minds necessarily ask, Why is it?
and they are intended - may we not say? - to ask this. If God has so written
His Word, it is reverence to ask, Is there not meaning in it? We may be sure
there is. Shall He who has forbidden "idle words" do Himself an idle thing? No,
surely. But we it is who wrong Him by our indifference and unbelief. "Said I
not unto thee, that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of
God?" has manifold application. Let us now apply the test of which we have
spoken, and see if the appearance of numerical structure we have found in this
division of the books of Scripture be more than an appearance, - if these
Pentateuchs in form be not Pentateuchs in spirit also, - and what else God may
in His grace disclose to us, as we follow in this track.
If, then, the
Pentateuch be the basis of the structure of Scripture, can we perhaps find any
reason in this? The number 5, which this stamps upon it, should have in some
way a spiritual significance corresponding in Scripture as a whole, if the
numerical structure be indeed a reality. In the Pentateuch itself also we
should find first of all this correspondence also, if it be really the
fundamental form, as we have suggested. The form is only the fitting clothing
of the spirit, and without the spirit the body is dead.
Five we have
seen to speak of man exercised and responsible under the government of God; and
this responsible creature, lost in his responsibility, this soul excercised
with so many questions, in a path darkened by sorrow and sin, - is he about
whom nevertheless all God's infinite wisdom is employed, over whom His tender
love is pouring itself out. The five books of the Pentateuch are just the
connected picture of man in his whole course on earth - as the forlorn and
wretched creature indeed that sin has made him, but this as the background upon
which to display the divine mercies to him. Thus Genesis begins the account
with the story of the new life received from God, in its veried aspects and
stages of development. Exodus then narrates his redemption; Leviticus details
the holiness which suits and is demanded by his new relationship. Now he is
qualified for a walk through the world, and this is the reason of the apparent
descent in the character of the truth which Numbers next shows. Life,
salvation, the the knowledge of God in the sanctuary are all needed in order to
a walk with God thus; and in Numbers, the virtues of Christ's priesthood are
made good to us, and His tender sympathy and care. Deuteronomy completes the
picture with Him, as the judgment-seat of Christ will make us realize them, -
lessons of imperishable wisdom, which will be gathered up for us and made our
own; not lost, but gained forever, when eternity opens for us its
doors.
Thus the Pentateuch rounds off its significant series with the
survey of the ground traversed, and the victories won; His victories, at all
events, for us, often-times against ourselves; and we see how the jewels of
divine grace and glory are strung upon the thread of human need and sorrow and
sin. How sympathetic, how practical, how human is Scripture! How little are its
truths conformed to theological systems! how constantly are they employed in
meeting and ministering to the need of man! The most formal treatise, if I may
so say, is the epistle to the Romans, and that is what has directly to do with
the first necessities of the soul. The number 5 is stamped on all. The human
thread runs through all. The Pentateuch is still and ever the basis of
structure, - the architectural model of the whole.
The Bible is a
Pentateuch of Pentateuchs; and the division into Old and New Testaments does
not affect this; indeed brings it out more clearly for as 5 is a 4 + 1, so the
Old Testament contains four Pentateuchs; the New, one. And the meaning
corresponds throughout.
And why four Pentateuchs in the Old Testament?
Evidently because 4 is the world-number, and the number which speaks of trial.
Here, let us separate a little these connected thoughts, and view the Old
Testament in two different aspects of it.
First, then, it is the
earthly part of revelation, as the New Testament is the heavenly part. It is to
the earthly people that it is addressed; it is an eartly outlook that is given
in its widest scope of prophecy. No where does the law even conditionally
promise a heavenly portion, but an earthly one. "The way into the holiest of
all" - and that is, in type, heaven - " was not yet made manifest." "The
heaven, even the heavens," says the Psalmist, "are the Lord's," - or, as the
Revised Version puts it better now, "The heavens are the heavens of the Lord;
the earth hath he given to the children of men."
Thus, if the book of
Revelation be compared with the greatest of Old-Testament prophets, you will
find that in its view of the future it leaves out all those earthly promises
upon which Isaiah and Ezekiel and others dilate, while it supplements them with
a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the reign of the heavenly saints.
But there is another meaning to this number 4 also, as it speaks of trial,
probation. The Old-Testament books are those which take up those ages of
probation at the end of which Christ came. To quote again the Revised Version,
"Now once in the end of the ages hath He been manifested to put away sin by the
sacrifice of Himself" (Heb. ix. 26). The character of these "ages" is elsewhere
expressed: "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the
ungodly" (Rom. v. 6). This is what the law, the great schoolmaster's lesson for
those times. Hence, 4 x 5, - four Pentateuchs - once more give just expression
to the character of the Old-Testament books.
And this unites singularly
with the voice of chronology here, as I have elsewhere pointed out. The voices
of chronologists are indeed so perplexingly at variance that it may be hard to
say what is the voice of chronology at all. I pretend to no ability whatever to
settle such questions, but simply taking up that which is to be found in our
common Bibles, and taking from it, as we are said to be entitled to do, the odd
four years, we find the Lord's birth falling on the four thousandth year of the
world. A little knowledge of the significance of numbers, and of the
characteristic of the previous ages as probational ones, makes that a very
interesting date indeed. Four thousand years are, of course, forty centuries.
Forty is the well-known symbol of probation in the fullest way. Israel had
their forty years of trial in the wilderness, the Lord His forty days; Esau was
forty years old when he married two Canaanitish wives, and stamped himself
fully as the "profane person" which his renunciation of the birth-right had
before indicated him to be. The world's probation lasted forty centuries. But
why this last factor? - why centuries?
The century is 10 x 10, the measure
of responsibility once more, intensified, as this self-multiplication shows. It
was the term of Abraham's age when he "considered not his body now dead, when
he was about a hundred years old, neither the deadness of Sarah's womb," and
God fulfilled to him the promise so long delayed in the birth of Isaac. It
cannot but appear, then, to stamp with accuracy and with significance the
common reckoning, to find, when man was discovered dead, the true Isaac born
according to it in the fortieth century of the world - the four thousandth
year.
Four Pentateuchs, then, fill up the Old Testament.
Let
us now see the significance of each of these in its place in the series.
First, the books of the Law. This bears the numerical stamp undoubtedly. The
supremacy of God is what the law, of course, affirms.
The second division
gives the Covenant-History. It is a history, alas! of sin and discord and
division while also of divine deliverances, until even God's patience is at an
end, and the people become Lo-Ammi (not My people). Even then, the return of a
remnant is permitted, though under the Persian yoke, to repeat their old
history on a smaller scale. The second book of this section, Judges, is
morrally the epitome of the whole of it.
The third division is that of the
Prophets; and here we are brought, as in the sanctuary, face to face with God.
"Thus saith the Lord" is the constant formula of the prophets, for prophecy is
one speaking for another. Thus sanctification also is the great theme of the
prophets, and not merely the prediction of the future, in which they see indeed
this sanctification accomplished, and the glory of God at last fully
revealed.
Finally, the fourth division is a peculiar one; it is
undoubtedly that which especially speaks of the world as the place of trial for
man, and the sorrows which are his lot in it; while all these books are, as in
the five books of the Psalms, prominently marked with the number 5, which
speaks of his exercises of heart amid these trials, so sure to be connected
with them. (This number 5, as it is a 4 and 1, will naturally approach 4 in
character; and so it does.) These books are thus pre-eminently the human voice
in Scripture, in which all the dark and difficult problems of life find
utterance. We have thus the divisions marked, however, briefly; but it yet
remains to establish, as to four of them, their real Pentateuchal significance.
We shall have but room in this lecture to take up one of them, that which I
have called the "Covenant-History," as being, in fact, the history of the
people of God in relation to that legal covenant which the first division saw
established with them at Mount Sinai. Let us now, then, proceed to
this.
1. Joshua.
The first part here is the book of Joshua; or,
"Jehovah the Saviour." It treats, as the foundation of all the rest, of the
conquest of the land of promise, and their establishment in it, spite of the
opposition of their enemies, by the sovereign power of God. It fills its
numerical place as being thus the fulfillment, by almighty power, of the
counsels of electing love toward them. The sovereignty of God is strongly
affirmed in the very first chapter; the law being His expressed will,
subjection to it strength and victory. By His power alone Jordan is cut off
below and its streams held back above, the ark of His strength being in the
river. By His power alone the walls of Jericho fall down. At Ai they are
smitten for disobedience and independency of Him; this judged, the career of
conquest rolls on with a flood tide, until, when only the middle of the book is
reached, the whole power of the enemy is smitten before them, "and the land
rested from war."
The power of the enemy is here prominent, for we are
in the second division of the Old Testament; but it is for the most part
external only, and Jehovah is their Saviour from it.
In one thing only do
we miss in Joshua the general character of the Genesis-books, and that is with
regard to the largeness of view which has given Genesis itself the title of
"The seed-plot of the Bible." But this probably results only from our lack of
knowledge. Quite one half of the book is typically almost closed to us, and yet
here what a field presents itself for inquiry! The division of Canaan among the
twelve tribes, how much it ought to speak to us of our inheritance beyond
death! Oh, for faith so to go over and take possession of it, that the list of
now almost barren names may reveal the beauty of a land "which is the glory of
all lands," upon which the eyes of the Lord are continually"! Our eyes for all
this beauty, where are they.* (*I leave this as first written. I am thankful
to be able to refer to the Numerical Bible in proof of how much, through the
goodness of God, the numerical structure has since opened this out; and what a
proof it has given of the value of this as a key to
interpretation.)
2. Judges.
The second part, as we have seen,
is composed of two books, both of which may be comprised under the common title
of "Judges," as belonging to the same historical period, a period in sad
contrast to that of the previous book. If Gilgal, which the angel of the Lord
now leaves, and where the reproach of Egypt was rolled off, characterizes the
times of Joshua, Bochim, or "Weepers," to which he comes, no less characterizes
the times of the Judges, when the reproach of Egypt - of servitude - has nore
than returned. The book before us speaks alike of sin and its terrible fruit in
Israel, although the second, as a sort of gospel-supplement to the first, is
made to show us especially the help lain upon One that is mighty, and Him "in
whom might is," as Boaz' name signifies. This is a secret for the ear of faith,
however; the general history is in the book of Judges.
1. Judges, as
the first book here, reveals its character in the one word, - "independence."
As heading the second part of the historical books, it speaks of the power of
the enemy, of division in Israel, of captivity, alternating, however, through
the goodness of God toward them, with wonderful deliverances, in which He again
and again appears as their Saviour-God. The mode of their deliverance - by
judges who judge the people for God - agrees, of course, with the root of the
evil to be met. "The judges," says Keil, "were men who procured justice, or
right, for the people of Israel, not only by delivering them out of the power
of the foes, but also by administering the laws andd right of the Lord (chap.
ii. 16-19) Judging in this sense was different from the administration of civil
jurisprudence, and included the idea of government such as would be expected
from a king."
The character of Judges is, then, just that which should
be found in the first book of a second part.
2. The place of Ruth we have
seen to be a disputed one, and, among the Jews in general, to be among the
Kethubim. Its place in the Septuagint, and among the Hellenistic Jews, as
Josephus and others, is referred by Keil to their "freer tendencies " as to
inspiration, such as made them intersperse the canonical with apocryphal book.
Yet Keil admits that its posi- tion among the five megilloth "is connected with
the liturgical use in the synagogue," while in the Talmud it is placed before
the Psalms. This does not look as if the most orthodox Jews had any idea of any
very specific divine order. Keil admits also, what indeed is evident, that "so
far as its contents are concerned, it has its proper place between the book of
Judges and those of Samuel."
It is evident also that in all the
characters of the fourth division of the Old Testament it is deficient, and
could only be classed with the book of Psalms (!) by some such negative and
hypothetical mark as that it was not written by a prophet. On the other hand,
that the Spirit of prophecy has dictated every thing in Ruth those will be
assured who see in Boaz the picture of the true Kinsman-Redeemer of His people,
whether Jew or Gentile. For, as the apostle argues, the Jew also must be saved
like the Gentile, upon the ground of pure grace, so that Ruth may typify these
as well as those.
That Ruth thus stands as a gospel-supplement to the
ruin of man as Judges exhibits it appears clear from its conection both
backward and forward also. And let us look at this briefly here.
To go
back, then, to Joshua. The reference in Eph. vi. to the warfare with flesh and
blood in Canaan, as contrasting it with our conflict "with principalities, and
powers, with the rulers of the darkness of this world, with spiritual hosts of
wickedness in the heavenly places" (as the Revised Version rightly puts it
now), is an illumination of the book of Joshua. For that Canaan typifies these
heavenly places, which are for faith our present inheritance, is recognized by
Christians generally. Joshua's name is exactly that of our so much greater
Leader; and here we have the present conflict of faith, in which the devil
resists our taking possession of the good land that belongs to us.
The land
is ours, fruit of our Jesus' victory; but alas! our failure - the failure of
the whole professing church to realize possession is as evident. The book of
judges typifies thus the breakdown of the heavenly people: failures and
revivals, captivities and deliverances,- this has been the history of
Christendom nearly from the beginning. The end, as to earthly history, is in
failure, a collapse of the Christian as of the Jewish dispensation.
Now
here comes in the book of Ruth, which exhibits (how beautifully!) the
Kinsman-Redeemer as Him in whom alone is strength. The Gentile heavenly, as the
Jewish earthly, bride must creep to His feet, and claim Him in lowliness, as
debtors only to His grace. Thus is He, then, for them.
The way is then open
for the book of Samuel - for David and the kingdom.
3. The Books of the
Kings.
The third part is composed likewise of two books, for we have seen
that Samuel and Kings are but one book each. The connection between these, and
their dis- tinction from all others, is plain enough. They are both books of
the Kings, and the title of Samuel for the first seems really a misnomer. From
the very beginning, in Hannah's song of praise, the anointed king is in view.
The opening shows the priesthood, as a link between God and the people, morally
gone. Soon the ark of the covenant is actually gone; and although it could not
remain in the Philistines' land, and quickly returns to within the Israelitish
limits, yet to the people themselves it scarcely can be said to return till
David brings it to Zion.
Thus this third part is a resurrection-period
; and the prophet at first becomes the spiritual link between God and the
people. When the kingdom is afterward divided, and Israel is following Baal or
the golden calves, then the prophet is again an extraordinary link while the
patience of God holds out toward them. Thus the books of the Kings speak more
of the prophet than all the rest of the historic books together. This is
clearly a numerical mark, therefore.
But the prophet is, as I have said,
the introduction to the king, and the king is of course the prominent feature
in these books. This seems, on the other hand, a difficulty. But it is more
than relieved, I think, by considerations to which I have been led but
recently.
We have seen that the book of Samuel opens with the ruin of
the priesthood, and that the ark, though soon returning out of the enemies'
land, is not by this restored to its former position. In the words of the
seventy-eighth psalm, "He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which He
pitched among men." To that tabernacle He never returns. The ark remains at
Kirjath-jearim, in the house of Abinadab, all the time of Samuel and of Saul.
The tabernacle we find afterward removed to Gibeon, but it is empty; nor is the
ark "inquired at in the days of Saul" (I Chron. xiii- 3).
It is this that
in the hundred and thirty-second psalm burdens the soul of David: "Surely I
will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor climb up into my bed; I will
not give sleep to my eyes, nor slumber to my eyelids, until I find out a place
for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God of Jacob." The ark is brought to
Zion, and God says, "This is My rest forever; here will I dwell, for I have
desired it." But the temple is built only by Solomon: not the man of war, but
the prince of peace must build it.
And in all this, a greater than David or
Solomon is to be seen. It is Christ who alone can give to God a final
dwelling-place among men: "Behold the Man whose name is The Branch; and He
shall grow up out of His place, and He shall build the temple of the Lord, even
He shall build the temple of the Lord; and He shall bear the glory, and shall
sit and rule upon His throne; and He shall be a priest upon His throne: and the
council of peace shall be between them both (Zech, vi. 12, 13)-
Thus behind
the kingship in Israel there is this greater question of the dwelling of God
with men. The king was necessary to this. Sovereign power must unite with
priestly intercession, and a David must put down opposition, in order for a
Solomon to reign in peace and build the temple of the Lord. For this, the whole
book of Samuel is a preparation; the book of Kings shows it a completed thing.
But these are only shadows of the true, therefore they pass. The sabbatic rest
is broken up again by sin. The kingdom is divided, the temple desecrated, and
the nation finally dispersed.
He is not yet come who unites the
kingship and the priesthood in His own person. David, as a shadow, may wear the
ephod, and order the worship, and provide the song; but the true Priest must be
the risen One: the almond-rod with its fruit out of death must be His type.
King and priest fall asunder therefore; the gleam of light passes away: the
glory leaves the temple on earth, and the characteristic of the next books is
that God is the "God of heaven." The kingdoms of the earth are given to the
Gentile.
This is an account too brief and shallow, yet it should make
plain that the great question in the books before us is that of the sanctuary
of God on earth. And this makes them a most suited third section. Of
these,-
(1) Samuel, as the first book, speaks of the introductory
tabernacle-period;-
(2) Kings, of the temple completed, and a reign of
glory and peace; but then of sin, of service divided with false gods, of
division in the kingdom, henceforth in intestine strife, of deliverances also
indeed, and the testimony of the prophets raised up, but still of con- stant
and worse departure, until the divided kingdom falls a prey to its
enemies.
4. The Books of the Captivity.
The times of the Gentiles
are now begun; the glory of God is in Jerusalem no more, and God is the God of
heaven. This gives the books of the captivity, with all their diversity. a
sorrowful unity, and separates them from the other historical books. This is
the Numbers part of the historical books - what God calls, in Ezek. xx. 35,
"The wilderness of the peoples," in which He pleads with Israel, and causes
them to pass under the rod. This condition is, of course, not ended, for the
times of the Gentiles are not.
The fourth division speaks, then, of
this time of trial; yet it has three books, while each of the two before it
have but two. For while the blessing before enjoyed was only a shadow of the
true, final one, their sorrow leads to that final one itself, when (as the
passage in Ezekiel goes on to say,) "Ye shall know that I am the Lord." We
shall find among the Minor Prophets a similar fourth section in the prophets of
this very period, in which there are likewise three books, of which Haggai and
Zechariah undoubtedly correspond with Ezra and Nehemiah, while Malachi, less
obviously, but still really, corresponds with Esther.
(1) First, then,
of these books comes Ezra, in which we have the return of a remnant to
Jerusalem, and the restoration of the temple there. But there is now no Urim
and Thummim, no ark, no glory: the temple is empty, - so that this is not a
third division as before, but a first; for its true significance is God's
sovereignty, which sways the kings of the earth, and in which He fulfils the
promise of return after seventy years; and the subjection of the remnant to
this sovereign God as His worshipers.
(2) Nehemiah, then, gives to this
remnant so returned (as his name imports) the "comfort of the Lord." The walls
of the city are built, and their deliverance from their enemies accomplished.
"As the hills stand round about Jerusalem, so the Lord standeth round about His
people."
(3) The book of Esther gives us (in what is of course only an
anticipation of it) the manifestation of God in the resurrection of the people;
the Jewish bride dis- placing the Gentile, and the Jewish Mordecai, as another
Joseph, exalted to the power of the throne; the enemies of Israel subdued under
them.
My object here being simply to show in the place of these books the
reality of the numerical structure, this meagre outline may be yet sufficient.
The filling in must be sought elsewhere.
5. Chronicles.
Finally, we
have, as the Deuteronomy of this division, the book of Chronicles; and it
should be easily apparent that it fills, in fact, this place. As Deuteronomy
was a rehearsal of Israel's ways with God in the wilderness, so is Chronicles
of the history of the Kings. And as the divine ways shine out in Deuteronomy,
so do they in the book before us. The purpose of enforcing obedience as the way
of blessing is most evident. Thus Keil says, -
"Now from these and other
descriptions of the part the Levites played in events, and the share they took
in assisting the efforts of pious kings to revivify and maintain the temple
worship, the conclusion has been rightly drawn that the chronicler describes
with special interest the fostering of the Levite worship according to the
precepts of the law of Moses, and holds it up to his contemporaries for earnest
imitation; yet . . . . the chronicler does not desire to bring honour to the
Levites and to the temple worship: his object is rather to draw from the
history of the kingship in Israel a proof that faithful adherence to the
covenant which the Lord had made with Israel brings happiness and blessing; the
forsaking of it, on the contrary, insures ruin and a curse."
The book
of Chronicles is thus very exactly the Deuteronomy of the covenant-history, and
with this brief statement our review of the historical books must for the
present close.
Lecture Five
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