The Pulpit Commentary-Book of Numbers (Old Testament)


But the Loeb Classical Library is a series of editions, not of works. Home Groups Talk Zeitgeist. I Agree This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and if not signed in for advertising. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms. Common Knowledge Series Pulpit Commentary. Pulpit Commentary Series by cover. Commentary on the Old Testament: Keil Same series: Exposition of Genesis, Volume II: Chapters Leupold's Commentaries. I The Pulpit Commentary. History of the Christian Church: The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Volume 6: Series description This is a volume series.

How do series work? Pulpit Commentary Series by cover 1—8 of 24 next show all. Pulpit Commentary, Volume Deuteronomy, Joshua and Judges by H. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon by H. This may well alarm us, since in justice He will require these trespasses at our hand; but on the other hand, faith spies comfort in this fact, for the Lord will see to it that stains unseen by us shall yet be washed away. He sees the sin that He may cease to see it by casting it behind His back. Our great comfort is that Jesus, the true priest, has made atonement for all the congregation of the children of Israel.

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That atonement secures the pardon of unknown sins. His precious blood cleanses us from all sin. Whether our eyes have seen it and wept over it or not, God has seen it, Christ has atoned for it, the Spirit bears witness to the pardon of it, and so we have a three-fold peace. O my Father, I praise thy divine knowledge, which not only perceives my iniquities, but provides an atonement which delivers me from the guilt of them, even before I know that I am guilty.

Numbers 20. The Waters of Meriba

THIS is a glorious gospel type. Jesus, numbered with the transgressors, hangs before us on the cross. A look to Him will heal us of the serpent-bite of sin, will heal us at once: I have found it so. I looked to Jesus and lived at once. I know I did. Reader, if you look to Jesus you will live too.

True, you are swelling with the venom and you see no hope. True, also there is no hope but this one. Whether the bite has made you a drunkard, or a thief, or an unchaste or a profane person, a look at the Great Savior will heal you of these diseases and make you live in holiness and communion with God. We need fresh supplies of heavenly grace, and in the covenant the Lord has pledged himself to give all we require. The well next became the cause of a song. Before the water gushed forth, cheerful faith prompted the people to sing; and as they saw the crystal fount bubbling up, the music grew yet more joyous.

In like manner, we who believe the promise of God should rejoice in the prospect of divine revivals in our souls, and as we experience them our holy joy should overflow. Let us not murmur, but sing. Spiritual thirst is bitter to bear, but we need not bear it—the promise indicates a well; let us be of good heart, and look for it. Moreover, the well was the centre of prayer. This evening let us ask that the Scripture we have read, and our devotional exercises, may not be an empty formality, but a channel of grace to our souls.

O that God the Holy Spirit would work in us with all his mighty power, filling us with all the fulness of God. Lastly, the well was the object of effort. Our staves are ill adapted for digging in the sand, but we must use them to the utmost of our ability. Prayer must not be neglected; the assembling of ourselves together must not be forsaken; ordinances must not be slighted.

The Lord will give us his peace most plenteously, but not in a way of idleness. Let us, then, bestir ourselves to seek him in whom are all our fresh springs. WHO would wish to dwell among the nations and to be numbered with them? Why, even the professing church is such that to follow the Lord fully within its bounds is very difficult. Certain it is that the Lord would have His people follow a separated path as to the world and come out decidedly and distinctly from it.

We are set apart by the divine decree, purchase, and calling, and our inward experience has made us greatly to differ from men of the world. Therefore, our place is not in their Vanity Fair, nor in their City of Destruction, but in the narrow way where all true pilgrims must follow their Lord. Our names are not in the same book; we are not of the same seed; we are not bound for the same place; neither are we trusting to the same guide.

Therefore, it is well that we are not of their number. Only let us be found in the number of the redeemed, and we are content to be odd and solitary to the end of the chapter. HOW this should cut up root and branch all silly, superstitious fears! Even if there were any truth in witchcraft and omens, they could not affect the people of the Lord. Those whom God blesses, devils cannot curse. Their powder is damp, the edge of their sword is blunted. They gather together; but as the Lord is not with them, they gather together in vain. We may sit still, and let them weave their nets, for we shall not be taken in them.

Though they call in the aid of Beelzebub and employ all his serpentine craft, it will avail them nothing: What a blessing this is! How it quiets the heart! We need not fear the fiend himself, nor any of those secret enemies whose words are full of deceit and whose plans are deep and unfathomable.

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They cannot hurt those who trust in the living God. We defy the devil and all his legions. Kindred has its obligations. The Reubenites and Gadites would have been unbrotherly if they had claimed the land which had been conquered, and had left the rest of the people to fight for their portions alone. We have received much by means of the efforts and sufferings of the saints in years gone by, and if we do not make some return to the church of Christ by giving her our best energies, we are unworthy to be enrolled in her ranks.

Others are combating the errors of the age manfully, or excavating perishing ones from amid the ruins of the fall, and if we fold our hands in idleness we had need be warned, lest the curse of Meroz fall upon us. Personal service of Jesus becomes all the more the duty of all because it is cheerfully and abundantly rendered by some. The toils of devoted missionaries and fervent ministers shame us if we sit still in indolence. Shrinking from trial is the temptation of those who are at ease in Zion: If the most precious are tried in the fire, are we to escape the crucible?

If the diamond must be vexed upon the wheel, are we to be made perfect without suffering? Who hath commanded the wind to cease from blowing because our bark is on the deep? Why and wherefore should we be treated better than our Lord? The firstborn felt the rod, and why not the younger brethren? It is a cowardly pride which would choose a downy pillow and a silken couch for a soldier of the cross. Wiser far is he who, being first resigned to the divine will, groweth by the energy of grace to be pleased with it, and so learns to gather lilies at the cross foot, and, like Samson, to find honey in the lion.

The 11 months at Sinai had brought about many changes in the life of Israel. The people had arrived at Sinai a fugitive and unorganized people; they left a well-organized nation, molded into a commonwealth of 12 tribes. All was beautifully ordered. Moses had spent the first 40 years of his life being trained in the courts of Pharaoh as a possible successor to Pharaoh. As such, Moses was trained in organization, and the writings of Josephus assert that he was the general of the Egyptian army.

Moses used all the knowledge he had accumulated in leading the Israelites. It was not, however, the unaided genius of Moses that God used. God leads through minds competent to receive and transmit His teaching. In Moses' case, his mental abilities were used to transmit to the Israelites an order of organization that was second to none. What Moses had learned in the world was translated into use for the glory of God. The Israelites left Sinai as a mighty nation in battle array. They had been furnished with a code of laws, including sanitary regulations, which have been a model for civilized peoples of the world.

They had also been provided with a system of sacrifices that continued for centuries. These sacrifices prophetically pointed to the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ for believers. The mixed multitude Num. Although the complaining was started by the mixed multitude, the Israelites were also guilty of complaining. This indicates how infectious a complaining attitude can be. Because every person has a sin nature, it does not take long even for believers to become disheartened and to develop an attitude of complaining against the goodness of God.

After salvation, Christians too often remember what they enjoyed in the world and occasionally long for the pleasures of sin. When this happens, the believer is guilty of leaving his first love. Christians who have not grown spiritually as they should, through the reading of God's Word and applying it to daily life, find it easy to murmur as the Israelites did.

Only a small minority may begin the complaining, but the Christian who is not mature is also susceptible. Just as the bark of one dog can start a whole group of dogs barking, one complaining believer can affect an entire group. Many pastors have had their hearts broken, and church work has been greatly hampered by a few disgruntled people who influence the entire church.

Every church group seems to have a few people who find it easy to complain about anything. Unless the other believers are mature, they will soon follow the pattern of the murmuring, weak believer. But even they took issue with Moses' leadership, although at first their complaints concerned his wife. Numbers 12 does not specifically say what Miriam and Aaron found objectionable about Moses' wife, but jealousy must have been the main problem. This jealousy took its usual hypocritical turn. Miriam and Aaron did not talk to Moses about his wife; instead, they complained about his authority.

How easy it is to disguise jealousy beneath a cloak of zeal for the law of God or to think of oneself as pure while rebuking somebody else's faults. Real jealousy originates from power hunger, and it usually breaks out in faultfinding, just as it did in this case. We need to spend time in the Word and be alone with God until we are more concerned about His honor than our own.

We do not have to worry about competition from other believers; our concern is only to glorify the Lord in all that we do. When a Christian is more concerned about God's honor than about his own, God will take care of his worries about competition from fellow believers. Granted, it is much easier to say this than to really live it, but we must come to grips with this problem if we are going to have victory in our Christian lives.

We must be aware of the indwelling Christ and rely on Him to give us victory in these areas.

In reviewing Isaac's life, we should also take special note of his spirit of meekness. All through his life his temperament was of a passive nature rather than of an active or aggressive nature. In childhood he was subjected to the insults of Ishmael, but there is no record that he became angry about them. As a young man he was taken to Mount Moriah to be offered as a sacrifice, and in meekness he surrendered and made himself available. He did not even choose his own wife, as she was chosen for him through his father's arrangements and the leading of the Holy Spirit.

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Isaac also accepted the rebuke of Abimelech in meekness. There were no reprisals. He and his men yielded whenever they were wrongly driven away from the wells they had redug. Isaac's meek spirit brought forth praise from even his enemies. They testified concerning his great power and might and their realization that the Lord was with him. The world thinks little of meekness, yet it is the fruit of the Holy Spirit Gal. The Apostle Paul urged all Christians: The Lord is at hand" Phil. Meekness involves the self-sacrifice of our own desires and interests.

Because Isaac gladly gave up his own personal desires, it pleased God to refer to Himself as "the God of Isaac. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength" Isa.

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They… cut down … a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff. God has sent over into our earthly wilderness-life many samples of the good things of the heavenly life - foretastes of the full glories there awaiting us. The joy, peace, love, and grace we get here are very sweet, but they are just little specimens of fruits that grow everywhere in the Better-Land.

The old rabbis say that when the famine began in Egypt and the storehouses were opened, Joseph threw the chaff of the grain upon the Nile, that it might float down on the river and show those who lived below that there was abundance of provision laid up for them farther up the river. So the blessings of divine grace, which we enjoy in this world, are little more than the husks of the heavenly good things, sent down on the river of divine grace as foretastes or intimations of what is in store for us in heaven.

The joy the Christian has here is deep and rich, but heaven's joy is infinitely deeper and richer. In addition to being characterized by unbelief, the Israelites were also characterized by self-will. Concerning the Israelites, the psalmist said, "They quickly forgot His works; they did not wait for His counsel, but craved intensely in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert.

So He gave them their request, but sent a wasting disease among them" Ps. The King James Version translates this last verse: This reveals that God sometimes permits what is not in His direct will. It also reveals that the individual loses out spiritually. The Israelites were to walk by faith, but they wanted to send spies into the land see Deut. What does faith want with spies? Apparently they were more concerned about walking by sight than by faith.

Many believers today find it extremely difficult to take God at His word. Instead of walking by faith, they want proofs about the future beyond what God has said and the power He has demonstrated. They are just like the Israelites who wanted to send spies into the land so they would know what it was like and how strong it was. Then they would choose whether or not to go in.

Joshua and Caleb had to suffer along with them for 38 more years. This is an example of the way decisions affect other people. But the faith of Joshua and Caleb was characterized by great patience. Because they believed God, they were able to endure even the experiences of the desert without losing hope. After God pronounced that none would enter the land except Joshua and Caleb and the younger generation, the Bible records God's judgment on the ten spies.

Commentaries – Old Testament

They were judged by physical death right there and then. Surely this judgment caused the others to realize that the Lord was not to be trifled with. This surely underscored in their minds that God expects to be taken at His word and not mocked by unbelief. IT IS a wonderful thing when we can look upon God as being our portion, when we can lay our hand upon all His nature and say there is nothing in God which will not in some way contribute to my strength and joy.

It makes one think of the early days of the settlement of emigrants in the Far West of Canada or Australia. The settler and his family would slowly travel forward, with their implements and seeds, till they reached the plot of ground allocated to them by the Government. At first the family would encamp on the edge of it, then they would prospect it, and go to and fro over its acres with a sense that it all belonged to them, though it needed to be brought under cultivation.

In the first year, within the fence hastily constructed, the farmer and his sons would begin to cultivate some small portion of their newly-acquired territory. This would yield the first crops; next year they would press the fences farther out, until at the end of a term of years the whole would have been brought under cultivation.

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So it is with the mighty Nature of God. No wonder that the Psalmist breaks forth into thanksgiving in Ps The devout soul rejoices in God as his great Inheritance. When He is always present to our mind, when we are constantly making use of Him, when we find ourselves naturally turning to Him through the hours of the day, then such quiet peace and rest settle down upon us that we cannot be moved by any anxiety of the present or future.

Death itself will make no difference, except that the body which has obscured our vision will be left behind, and the emancipated soul will be able more fully to expatiate in its inheritance, which is incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading 1Pe 1: We thank Thee, O Lord, that all things are ours in Christ, working for us, co-operating with us, and bearing us onward to that glorious destiny for which Thou art preparing us.

The rock mentioned in Exodus 17 foreshadowed Christ on the cross because there He was smitten. However, the rock of Numbers 20 foreshadowed the ascended Christ, who now intercedes as a High Priest for believers. The significant difference in the rocks of Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 is also indicated in that a different word for "rock" is used in these two passages. Although both rocks speak of Christ, God was endeavoring to communicate two different things to us concerning the Person of Christ.

In Exodus 17 the rock was smitten, just as Christ was "smitten of God" Isa. The rock of Numbers 20 foreshadowed Christ in the heavens, as referred to in Hebrews 9: In the incident of Numbers 20 the rock foreshadowed the exalted Christ, and that is why it needed only to be spoken to. It is so important that this distinction between the smitten Christ and the exalted Christ as He is foreshadowed in the two rocks be maintained. Since the Lord Jesus Christ has been judged on the cross by having all of the sins of the world placed on Him, those of us who have received Him as Saviour need now to speak to Him for our needs.

Although today a Christian is not under responsibility to fulfill the ceremonial law, the New Testament emphasis on the moral law is strong. We may not make vows as is referenced in Numbers Moses commanded the Israelites that a man "must not break his word but must do everything he said. In the course of a year, a person makes many more "vows" than is probably realized. For example, each credit card slip we sign is a vow. Don't sign unless you intend to pay.

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A tax form will ask if the answers given were truthful. Don't sign unless they were. A code of conduct may be included in the regulations for a student or an employer. Don't sign unless you plan to live by it. Then there are the other slips-not of paper, but of tongue. Jesus said, "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one" see note Matthew 5: We have been taught that we can have it our way and that we deserve a break today. Too often a Christian can be subtly sucked into thinking about self with little regard for others.

The follower of Christ, however, must remember that every believer is part of the Body and must consider how individual actions affect others. This is not a new problem. The Reubenites, Gadites and half the tribe of Manasseh liked the look of the land east of the Jordan. It was suitable for livestock. Their request to stay there seemed reasonable. But Moses saw the effect it would have on Israel: Why do you discourage the [nation]?

To their credit, when reminded of similar past situations and when made aware of how their action would affect others, these tribes did not choose to be discouragers. Yes, their families and livestock remained, but the men went to war with the rest of Israel. Too often people in the church think of themselves and not how their choices might discourage others. Determine to encourage others by your actions as well as your words. You can be an encourager or a discourager.

Putting your interests first can discourage others. Choose to be an encourager. Before you "go to the commentaries" go to the Scriptures and study them inductively Click 3 part overview of how to do Inductive Bible Study in dependence on your Teacher, the Holy Spirit, Who Jesus promised would guide us into all the truth John Remember that Scripture is always the best commentary on Scripture. Therefore the inclusion of specific links does not indicate that we agree with every comment. We have made a sincere effort to select only the most conservative, " bibliocentric " commentaries.

Should you discover some commentary or sermon you feel may not be orthodox, please email your concern. I have removed several links in response to concerns by discerning readers. I recommend that your priority be a steady intake of solid Biblical food so that with practice you will have your spiritual senses trained to discern good from evil Heb 5: God's Sevenfold Provision for Cleansing Numbers Inheritance Laws Numbers From Egypt to Jordan Numbers Census Instructions Numbers 1: Faithful Obedience Numbers 1: Faithful Obedience Numbers 2: Genealogy of Aaron and Moses Numbers 3: Historical Setting and Introduction Numbers 7: Ritual Cleansing Numbers 8: The Levite Retirement Numbers 8: Gathering and Disembarking the Camps Numbers Departure or Guidance in the Wilderness?

Assemble Seventy Elders Numbers Purification and Confession Numbers Elders Assembled Numbers With Meat in their Mouths Numbers Kibroth Hattaavah to Hazeroth Numbers Glory of Lord Appears Numbers The Ten versus Joshua and Caleb Numbers Offerings from the Land Numbers Garment Tassels and Growing Faith Numbers Yahweh Will Demonstrate Numbers Judgment Is Imminent Numbers Instructions and Commands Numbers Priests and Levites as Guardians of the Sanctuary Numbers Divine Instruction and First Statute Numbers Kadesh of Zin and the Death of Miriam Numbers Victory over Sihon of Heshbon Numbers Arabah of Moab along the Jordan across from Jericho Numbers First Messengers Sent to Balaam Numbers Curse the Mighty Israel Numbers Messengers Again Sent to Balaam Numbers Preparation for the First Oracular Event Numbers Speaks the First Oracle Numbers Speaks the Second Oracle Numbers Against the Amalekites Numbers Against the Kenites Numbers Against Assyria Numbers Setting of Immorality Numbers Part 1 of 6 Introduction: Definition of Terms Israelology: Part 2 of 6 Israel Present Note: Article begins on Page 2 Israelology: Part 3 of 6 Israel Present Continued Israelology: The Distinctiveness of Israel Numbers Numbers Overview Numbers 6: Numbers 16 Passing Judgment Numbers Introduction to Numbers Numbers 1: Three common errors about sin Numbers The Work of the Levites - Numbers 4: The Central Tabernacle - Numbers 5: Exclusion of the Unclean - Numbers 5: Cases of Restitution - Numbers 5: The Law of Jealousy - Numbers 5: