Part 5 (1/2)
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” He saw him in that ineffable and, to mortals, all but insupportable splendor of glory, which caused such an impression of his deity and his holiness, as in contrast to make him conscious of his own vileness as a sinner, and induce in him the utmost self-abas.e.m.e.nt; as in the parallel instance of Ezekiel, it is said that ”he fell upon his face;” and in that of Isaiah, that he exclaimed, on seeing Adonai Jehovah Zebaoth, ”Woe is me! for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips;” and of Daniel, in an a.n.a.logous instance of his vision of the same glorified Person in the likeness of man, chap. x., that he fell with his face to the ground, that there remained no strength in him, that his comeliness was turned into corruption. So at the Transfiguration on the mount, the disciples fell on their faces and were sore afraid. Paul, on witnessing a like personal manifestation, fell to the earth; and John, in Patmos, seeing that glorified Person, fell at his feet as dead.
There was prevalent, at a very early period, a sentiment that to see G.o.d would occasion or be followed by the death of the beholder; which probably arose, not from simple appearances in the likeness of man, on occasions which called for no exhibitions of Divine majesty and glory, but from manifestations of overpowering, insupportable radiance, comparable only to that of lightning, or that of the unclouded sun. Such a manifestation we may well suppose to have been made on the expulsion of Adam from Eden, in conjunction with the cherubic forms, as in repeated instances afterwards. It was demanded by the occasion and the end to be accomplished. There were sword-like flames, or lightnings, as when Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with (the) Elohim, when he descended on mount Sinai; and they, terrified by the lightnings, said, ”Let not Elohim speak with us, lest we die;” and as in the vision of Ezekiel, ”out of the fire went forth lightning.” So when the seventy elders ascended mount Sinai with Moses, ”and saw the Elohe of Israel, the sight of the glory of Jehovah was like devouring fire.”
The sentiment or apprehension above referred to is indicated by Jacob, after wrestling with the Messenger Jehovah: ”I have seen Elohim face to face, and _my life is preserved_.” Also in the words addressed to Gideon after he had exclaimed, ”Alas, O Adonai Jehovah! for because I have seen the Messenger Jehovah face to face. And Jehovah said unto him, Fear not, thou shalt not die.” And, ”Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen Elohim.” Such an inference is very likely to have been drawn from the declaration of Jehovah to Moses, Exod. x.x.xiii.
20: ”Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man _see me_ and live;” that is, _see me_ unveiled by the human form, or by a dark or luminous cloud-like envelope, as in the burning bush, on mount Sinai, and in the tabernacle; for in these modes of appearance Moses had repeatedly seen him, and in the chapter above referred to, vs. 9, we read that, ”As Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle; and Jehovah spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” But, owing to the defection of Aaron and the people in making and wors.h.i.+pping a molten image, he had, to the consternation of Moses, intimated a purpose to withdraw from among them; and after he had, upon the earnest entreaty of Moses, signified that his presence should continue with them, Moses, in his anxiety and perturbation, and perhaps fearing that he would not visibly manifest himself, (see vs. 16,) besought that he would show him his glory, the unclouded glory of his person. This was denied, as certain to be fatal. But as far as he could endure the sight and live, the request was granted. ”And Jehovah descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Jehovah. And Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and wors.h.i.+pped.”
CHAPTER X.
Further notice of Divine Manifestations to Abraham and Jacob--Mysteriousness attending the Divine Appearances--The visible Form always like that of Man.
In resuming the notice of expressions and statements in the history of the patriarchs, which imply the local and visible presence of Jehovah, the first to be referred to is in Gen. xii.: ”Now Jehovah had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee; and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing, and in thee”--thy SEED, which is Christ, Gal.
iii. 16--”shall all the families of the earth be blessed. So Abram departed, as Jehovah had spoken unto him. And Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran ... to go into the land of Canaan.” He had, some time before this, migrated with Terah his father from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran, as is related chap. xi. 31. That removal, by which probably he was separated from idolatrous neighbors, is thus referred to, chap. xv. 7: ”And Jehovah said unto him, I am Jehovah that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.” And again, Nehemiah ix. 7: ”Thou art Jehovah (the) Elohim, who didst choose Abram, and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees.” From those references it is apparent that he was chosen, called, and received immediate personal communications from Jehovah, whom he afterwards saw in the form of man, and knew as El-Shadai, Jehovah, Adonai Jehovah, and Melach Jehovah.
Having arrived at the plain of Moreh, in the land of Canaan, ”Jehovah _appeared_ unto Abram and said, Unto thy SEED will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto Jehovah who _appeared_ unto him.”
Considering the reiterated statement in this brief pa.s.sage that Jehovah _appeared_ to Abram; that the occasion was that of the first formal announcement of the great promise of that dispensation to which all subsequent revelations, covenants and promises to Abraham relate; that on the most explicit renewal of this promise, chap. xxii. 18, Melach Jehovah is the speaker; and that Abram signalized the occasion of this first announcement by erecting an altar to Jehovah, and doubtless offering burnt offerings thereon, there seems sufficient ground to conclude that this was an instance of local visible presence.
Abram next removed to a mount east of Beth-El, ”and there he builded an altar unto Jehovah, and called upon the name of Jehovah.” Chap. xii. 8.
On the occurrence of a famine he went down to Egypt, whence he returned to Beth-El, ”unto the place of the altar which he had made there at the first, and there Abram called on the name of Jehovah.” xiii. 4. These pa.s.sages indicate his custom of offering typical sacrifices, and calling on the name of Jehovah at the place set apart, for the time being, to that purpose; and from the nature of the case, and its a.n.a.logy to other recorded instances (as Gen. x.x.xii. 13) of such offerings to Melach Jehovah, there is no ground to suppose that the same official Person was not the immediate object of homage in the present instance.
So of the ensuing narrative, Gen. xiii. 14-18: ”And Jehovah said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.” ”Then Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, and built there an altar unto Jehovah.”
In chapter xv. we read that ”The _Word_ of (rather _who is_) Jehovah _came_ unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram; I am thy s.h.i.+eld and thy exceeding great reward. And Abram said, Adonai Jehovah, what wilt thou give me, &c. And behold, the _Word_ (who is) Jehovah _came_ unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; ... and _He_ brought him forth abroad and said, Look now toward heaven and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them; and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be.
And he believed in Jehovah, and He counted it to him for righteousness.
And he said unto Him, Adonai Jehovah, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” In this narrative the Personal Word appears to be designated by a term equivalent to Logos, as applied in the first chapter of John, namely, _Dabar_, importing the same as the Chaldee term _Memra_, frequently inserted with the same personal reference by the Chaldee paraphrasts. The Dabar (who is) Jehovah _came_ unto Abram, saying, ... He brought him forth abroad, and said, &c. These are personal acts, not to be affirmed of an audible voice. They imply the local presence of the speaker, whom Abram addresses as Adonai Jehovah.
Throughout the chapter he is the speaker. Abram's faith in him as Jehovah is unto righteousness. In this, as in some instances hereafter to be noticed, the sense and construction of the pa.s.sage seem to require that the term translated _Word_ should be considered a personal designation, having the same relation to the term Jehovah as Adon, Adonai, and Melach.
On the occasion of changing the patriarch's name to Abraham, and that of his wife to Sarah, chap. xvii., ”Jehovah _appeared_ to Abram, and said unto him, I am El-Shadai; walk before me, and be thou perfect.... And Abram fell on his face, and Elohim talked with him.” vs. 1, 3; and vs.
19, 22: ”Elohim said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed....
And Elohim went up from Abraham.” Here the phraseology in each of the clauses quoted implies a local personal presence of Jehovah. That it was a visible appearance is further implied in the next chapter, where, in the narrative of his appearance in the likeness of man, he refers to this promise of a son as having been made by him, vs. 10; and to remove the doubts of both Abraham and Sarah, he adds: ”Is any thing too hard for Jehovah? At the time appointed _I will return_ unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”
Of the appearance last referred to, chap. xviii., when, in the form of a wayfaring man, he partook of the repast prepared by Abraham, spoke concerning Sarah, walked towards Sodom, disclosed his purpose of destroying that place, and heard Abraham's request on behalf of the righteous, there can be no question of its having been local and visible. It is noticeable that the narrative of this manifestation is introduced by the same formula as others which include no express indications of his visibility. Thus, vs. 1: ”And Jehovah _appeared_ unto Abraham in the plains of Mamre.” In the progress of the narrative, the Divine visitant is called a man, Jehovah, and Adonai, and at its close it is said that ”Jehovah went his way”--literally, ”walked away”--as ”soon as he had left communing with Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.” In the next chapter, which relates the destruction of Sodom, the same Person is called Jehovah and Elohim.
”Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before _Jehovah_”--that is, before the visible Person in the likeness of man, to whom he addressed his prayers for the righteous. ”And it came to pa.s.s when _Elohim_ destroyed the cities of the plain, that _Elohim_ remembered Abraham.”
When the time had arrived for Jacob to withdraw from Laban, ”Jehovah said unto him, Return unto the land of thy fathers.” Gen. x.x.xi. 3.
Referring to this, vs. 7, he says: ”The Elohe of my father hath been with me.” After relating to his family something of the treatment he had received from Laban, and of the special favor of Elohim to him, he recurs to the command above quoted, vs. 11-13: ”And Melach (the) Elohim spake unto me in a dream and said, I am the El of Beth-El, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me. Now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy kindred....
And Rachel and Leah answered, ... Now, whatsoever Elohim hath said unto thee, do.” The statements in the two clauses first above cited evidently refer to the same occasion as those which follow; and therefore the Elohe of his father, who had been with him, was Melach, the Messenger Elohim who spoke to him, vs. 11, and who doubtless appeared to him to be present, in a form with which he was familiar. This is further implied in the words at the close of his remonstrance with Laban, vs. 42: ”Except the Elohe of my father, the Elohe of Abraham, and the Fear of Isaac had been with me, surely thou hadst sent me away now empty. Elohim hath seen my affliction, and the labor of my hands, and rebuked thee yesternight.”
The familiarity of Jacob with the visible presence of Jehovah is indicated by his expression when, to his surprise and joy, Esau met him with a kindness and cordiality which showed that he no longer harbored any ill-will towards him. Jacob urged him to receive his present, and said: ”I have seen thy _face_, as though it had been the _face_ of Elohim, and thou wast pleased with me,” chap. x.x.xiii. 10; implying that this personal interview and manifestation of favor produced an effect upon his feelings resembling that of visible Divine manifestations, to which he was accustomed; a signal instance of which had just occurred, chap. x.x.xii., when ”he saw Elohim face to face.”
Doubtless there was a degree of mysteriousness inseparable from those appearances of the Divine Person, arising, however, not from their infrequency, for they seldom seem to have occasioned surprise, but rather from the different forms of manifestation, the different degrees of visibility; a consciousness that He who was sometimes visibly present was, when unseen, not absent; not less cognizant of their thoughts and actions, nor less their preserver and defender. They knew that he could, at pleasure, render himself visible in the simple form of man, in a vision, in a dense or a luminous cloud, in the colors of the precious gems and minerals, and in the insupportable splendors of the solar and electric fires. They knew that he was of purer eyes than to behold iniquity with any allowance, and were conscious of their defilement and ill-desert. Their faith reposed on him, unseen as well as manifest; and when he was locally present to their senses, it was necessary to exclude or modify their accustomed discrimination between spiritual and physical, invisible and visible conditions and modes of being.
There must have been, besides a familiarity with the fact of his visible appearances, a well-established a.s.sociation of authorized and intelligent convictions in their minds respecting his official person and character, the nature of his Agency, his mediatorial relations, which a.s.sumed a covenant or stipulated relations.h.i.+p of man with the Deity in his Person, and harmonized the Divine in his manifestations with the human in his visible form, all which necessarily involved more or less of the mysterious and unknown. Yet they well understood the tokens which identified him, and, if not exhibited in the first moments of his appearance, recognized them as soon as given, and promptly rendered him the homage, addressed him by the t.i.tles, and ascribed to him the prerogatives and works of the Creator, Proprietor, Ruler and Redeemer of the world.
But he was not at all times visible. The patriarchs lived by faith as well for the most part of their days and years, perhaps, with respect to him personally, as with respect to the future issues of his interpositions and administration. They could not see him at their pleasure, even when his words or acts indicated that he was locally near them. ”Lo, he goeth by me,” saith Job, ”and I see him not: he pa.s.seth on, also, but I perceive him not. Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: on the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him; he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him; but he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”
It would seem to have been by an effect wrought in them, both when awake and when asleep, that he, and also that created spiritual beings, when locally present, became visible or manifest to their consciousness. In several instances the eyes of the beholders are said to be opened, not to behold objects ordinarily visible, but objects which, though present, it was not, without that operation, their privilege to see. Thus, in the narrative of Balaam, ”the Messenger Jehovah stood in the way as an adversary against him,” and repeatedly checked his progress, while to him invisible. At length, ”Jehovah opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the Messenger Jehovah standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand,” &c. So in the case of the servant of Elisha: ”Jehovah opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire, round about Elisha.” And of the disciples on the way to Emmaus in company with the risen Saviour, it is said, ”their eyes were holden that they should not know him;” and at length ”their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight.”
Considering that in all ages and countries the minds of men have been startled and thrown off their balance by the supposed apparition of spirits, real or imaginary, angelic or human, from the invisible world, whether in material or in impalpable forms, and have regarded them as inscrutably mysterious and appalling, the fact that such impressions of surprise and dread were not commonly occasioned, or are so slightly indicated, when the Messenger Jehovah was unexpectedly and visibly recognized, strongly implies that the beholders were familiar not only with the reality and the modes of his appearance, but with his official Person, character and relations.