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EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

GENESIS, EXODUS, LEVITICUS AND NUMBERS




EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

GENESIS




CONTENTS


THE VISION OF CREATION (Genesis i. 26--ii. 3)

HOW SIN CAME IN (Genesis iii. 1-15)

EDEN LOST AND RESTORED (Genesis iii. 24; Revelation xxii. 14)

THE GROWTH AND POWER OF SIN (Genesis iv. 3-16)

WHAT CROUCHES AT THE DOOR (Genesis iv. 7, R.V.)

WITH, BEFORE, AFTER (Genesis v. 22; Genesis xvii. 1; Deuteronomy xiii.
4)

THE COURSE AND CROWN OF A DEVOUT LIFE (Genesis v. 24)

THE SAINT AMONG SINNERS (Genesis vi. 9-22)

'CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN' (Genesis viii. 1-22)

THE SIGN FOR MAN AND THE REMEMBRANCER FOR GOD (Genesis ix. 8-17)

AN EXAMPLE OF FAITH (Genesis xii. 1-9)

ABRAM AND THE LIFE OF FAITH

GOING FORTH (Genesis xii. 5)

COMING IN

THE MAN OF FAITH (Genesis xii. 6, 7)

LIFE IN CANAAN (Genesis xii. 8)

THE IMPORTANCE OF A CHOICE (Genesis xiii. 1-13)

ABBAM THE HEBREW (Genesis xiv. 13)

GOD'S COVENANT WITH ABRAM (Genesis xv. 5-18)

THE WORD THAT SCATTERS FEAR (Genesis xv. 1)

FAITH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS (Genesis xv. 6)

WAITING FAITH REWARDED AND STRENGTHENED BY NEW REVELATIONS (Genesis
xvii. 1-9)

A PETULANT WISH (Genesis xvii. 18)

'BECAUSE OF HIS IMPORTUNITY' (Genesis xviii. l6-33)

THE INTERCOURSE OF GOD AND HIS FRIEND

THE SWIFT DESTROYER (Genesis xix. 15-26)

FAITH TESTED AND CROWNED (Genesis xxii. 1-14)

THE CROWNING TEST AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH

JEHOVAH-JIREH (Genesis xxii. 14)

GUIDANCE IN THE WAY (Genesis xxiv. 27)

THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM (Genesis xxv. 8)

A BAD BARGAIN (Genesis xxv. 27-34)

POTTAGE _versus_ BIRTHRIGHT (Genesis xxv. 34)

THE FIRST APOSTLE OF PEACE AT ANY PRICE (Genesis xxvi. 12-25)

THE HEAVENLY PATHWAY AND THE EARTHLY HEART (Genesis xxviii. 10-22)

MAHANAIM: THE TWO CAMPS (Genesis xxxii. 1, 2)

THE TWOFOLD WRESTLE--GOD'S WITH JACOB AND JACOB'S WITH GOD (Genesis
xxxii. 9-12)

A FORGOTTEN VOW (Genesis xxxv. 1)

THE TRIALS AND VISIONS OF DEVOUT YOUTH (Genesis xxxvii. 1-11)

MAN'S PASSIONS AND GOD'S PURPOSE (Genesis xxxvii. 23-36)

GOODNESS IN A DUNGEON (Genesis xl. 1-15)

JOSEPH, THE PRIME MINISTER (Genesis xli. 38-48)

RECOGNITION AND RECONCILIATION (Genesis xlv. 1-15)

JOSEPH, THE PARDONER AND PRESERVER

GROWTH BY TRANSPLANTING (Genesis xlvii. 1-12)

TWO RETROSPECTS OF ONE LIFE (Genesis xlvii. 9; Genesis xlviii. 15, 16)

'THE HANDS OF THE MIGHTY GOD OF JACOB' (Genesis xlix. 23, 24)

THE SHEPHERD, THE STONE OF ISRAEL (Genesis xlix. 24)

A CALM EVENING, PROMISING A BRIGHT MORNING (Genesis l. 14-26)

JOSEPH'S FAITH (Genesis l. 25)

A COFFIN IN EGYPT (Genesis l. 26)




 THE VISION OF CREATION


    'And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
    likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of
    the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
    cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping
    thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man
    in His own image: in the image of God created He him;
    male and female created He them. And God blessed them:
    and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and
    replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion
    over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
    and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
    And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing
    seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every
    tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed;
    to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the
    earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing
    that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I
    have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And
    God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it
    was very good. And the evening and the morning were the
    sixth day.

    'Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all
    the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His
    work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day
    from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the
    seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He
    had rested from all His work which God created and made.'
    --GENESIS i. 26-ii. 3.

We are not to look to Genesis for a scientific cosmogony, and are not
to be disturbed by physicists' criticisms on it as such. Its purpose is
quite another, and far more important; namely, to imprint deep and
ineffaceable the conviction that the one God created all things. Nor
must it be forgotten that this vision of creation was given to people
ignorant of natural science, and prone to fall back into surrounding
idolatry. The comparison of the creation narratives in Genesis with the
cuneiform tablets, with which they evidently are most closely
connected, has for its most important result the demonstration of the
infinite elevation above their monstrosities and puerilities, of this
solemn, steadfast attribution of the creative act to the one God. Here
we can only draw out in brief the main points which the narrative
brings into prominence.

1. The revelation which it gives is the truth, obscured to all other
men when it was given, that one God 'in the beginning created the
heaven and the earth.' That solemn utterance is the keynote of the
whole. The rest but expands it. It was a challenge and a denial for all
the beliefs of the nations, the truth of which Israel was the champion
and missionary. It swept the heavens and earth clear of the crowd of
gods, and showed the One enthroned above, and operative in, all things.
We can scarcely estimate the grandeur, the emancipating power, the
all-uniting force, of that utterance. It is a worn commonplace to us.
It was a strange, thrilling novelty when it was written at the head of
this narrative. _Then_ it was in sharp opposition to beliefs that have
long been dead to us; but it is still a protest against some living
errors. Physical science has not spoken the final word when it has
shown us how things came to be as they are. There remains the deeper
question, What, or who, originated and guided the processes? And the
only answer is the ancient declaration, 'In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth.'

2. The record is as emphatic and as unique in its teaching as to the
mode of creation: 'God said... and it was so.' That lifts us above all
the poor childish myths of the nations, some of them disgusting, many
of them absurd, all of them unworthy. There was no other agency than
the putting forth of the divine will. The speech of God is but a symbol
of the flashing forth of His will. To us Christians the antique phrase
suggests a fulness of meaning not inherent in it, for we have learned
to believe that 'all things were made by Him' whose name is 'The Word
of God'; but, apart from that, the representation here is sublime. 'He
spake, and it was done'; that is the sign-manual of Deity.

3. The completeness of creation is emphasised. We note, not only the
recurrent 'and it was so,' which declares the perfect correspondence of
the result with the divine intention, but also the recurring 'God saw
that it was good.' His ideals are always realised. The divine artist
never finds that the embodiment of His thought falls short of His
thought.

  'What act is all its thought had been?
   What will but felt the fleshly screen?

But He has no hindrances nor incompletenesses in His creative work, and
the very sabbath rest with which the narrative closes symbolises, not
His need of repose, but His perfect accomplishment of His purpose. God
ceases from His works because 'the works were finished,' and He saw
that all was very good.

4. The progressiveness of the creative process is brought into strong
relief. The work of the first four days is the preparation of the
dwelling-place for the living creatures who are afterwards created to
inhabit it. How far the details of these days' work coincide with the
order as science has made it out, we are not careful to ask here. The
primeval chaos, the separation of the waters above from the waters
beneath, the emergence of the land, the beginning of vegetation there,
the shining out of the sun as the dense mists cleared, all find
confirmation even in modern theories of evolution. But the intention of
the whole is much rather to teach that, though the simple utterance of
the divine will was the agent of creation, the manner of it was not a
sudden calling of the world, as men know it, into being, but majestic,
slow advance by stages, each of which rested on the preceding. To apply
the old distinction between justification and sanctification, creation
was a work, not an act. The Divine Workman, who is always patient,
worked slowly then as He does now. Not at a leap, but by deliberate
steps, the divine ideal attains realisation.

5. The creation of living creatures on the fourth and fifth days is so
arranged as to lead up to the creation of man as the climax. On the
fifth day sea and air are peopled, and their denizens 'blessed,' for
the equal divine love holds every living thing to its heart. On the
sixth day the earth is replenished with living creatures. Then, last of
all, comes man, the apex of creation. Obviously the purpose of the
whole is to concentrate the light on man; and it is a matter of no
importance whether the narrative is correct according to zoology, or
not. What it says is that God made all the universe, that He prepared
the earth for the delight of living creatures, that the happy birds
that soar and sing, and the dumb creatures that move through the paths
of the seas, and the beasts of the earth, are all His creating, and
that man is linked to them, being made on the same day as the latter,
and by the same word, but that between man and them all there is a
gulf, since he is made in the divine image. That image implies
personality, the consciousness of self, the power to say 'I,' as well
as purity. The transition from the work of the first four days to that
of creating living things must have had a break. No theory has been
able to bridge the chasm without admitting a divine act introducing the
new element of life, and none has been able to bridge the gulf between
the animal and human consciousness without admitting a divine act
introducing 'the image of God' into the nature common to animal and
man. Three facts as to humanity are thrown up into prominence: its
possession of the image of God, the equality and eternal
interdependence of the sexes, and the lordship over all creatures. Mark
especially the remarkable wording of verse 27: 'created He _him_ male
and female created He _them_.' So 'neither is the woman without the
man, nor the man without the woman.' Each is maimed apart from the
other. Both stand side by side, on one level before God. The germ of
the most 'advanced' doctrines of the relations of the sexes is hidden
here.




HOW SIN CAME IN


    'Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the
    field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the
    woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree
    of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We
    may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of
    the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the
    garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither
    shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said
    unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth
    know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes
    shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good
    and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good
    for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a
    tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the
    fruit thereof, and did eat; and gave also unto her
    husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them
    both were opened, and they knew that they were naked;
    and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves
    aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking
    in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his
    wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God
    amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called
    unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he
    said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid,
    because I was naked; and I hid myself. And He said, Who
    told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the
    tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not
    eat And the man said, The woman whom Thou gavest to be
    with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the
    Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast
    done? and the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I
    did eat. And the Lord God said onto the serpent. Because
    thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle,
    and above every beast of the field: upon thy belly shalt
    thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy
    life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman,
    and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy
    head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.'--GENESIS iii 1-15.

It is no part of my purpose to enter on the critical questions
connected with the story of 'the fall.' Whether it is a legend,
purified and elevated, or not, is of less consequence than what is its
moral and religious significance, and that significance is unaffected
by the answer to the former question. The story presupposes that
primitive man was in a state of ignorant innocence, not of intellectual
or moral perfection, and it tells how that ignorant innocence came to
pass into conscious sin. What are the stages of the transition?

1. There is the presentation of inducement to evil. The law to which
Adam is to be obedient is in the simplest form. There is restriction.
'Thou shalt not' is the first form of law, and it is a form congruous
with the undeveloped, though as yet innocent, nature ascribed to him.
The conception of duty is present, though in a very rudimentary shape.
An innocent being may be aware of limitations, though as yet not
'knowing good and evil.' With deep truth the story represents the first
suggestion of disobedience as presented from without. No doubt, it
might have by degrees arisen from within, but the thought that it was
imported from another sphere of being suggests that it is alien to true
manhood, and that, if brought in from without, it may be cast out
again. And the temptation had a personal source. There are beings who
desire to draw men away from God. The serpent, by its poison and its
loathly form, is the natural symbol of such an enemy of man. The
insinuating slyness of the suggestions of evil is like the sinuous
gliding of the snake, and truly represents the process by which
temptation found its way into the hearts of the first pair, and of all
their descendants. For it begins with casting a doubt on the reality of
the prohibition. 'Hath God said?' is the first parallel opened by the
besieger. The fascinations of the forbidden fruit are not dangled at
first before Eve, but an apparently innocent doubt is filtered into her
ear. And is not that the way in which we are still snared? The reality
of moral distinctions, the essential wrongness of the sin, is obscured
by a mist of sophistication. 'There is no harm in it' steals into some
young man's or woman's mind about things that were forbidden at home,
and they are half conquered before they know that they have been
attacked. Then comes the next besieger's trench, much nearer the
wall--namely, denial of the fatal consequences of the sin: 'Ye shall
not surely die,' and a base hint that the prohibition was meant, not as
a parapet to keep from falling headlong into the abyss, but as a
barrier to keep from rising to a great good; 'for God doth know, that
in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall
be as gods.' These are still the two lies which wile us to sin: 'It
will do you no harm,' and 'You are cheating yourselves out of good by
not doing it.'

2. Then comes the yielding to the tempter. As long as the prohibition
was undoubted, and the fatal results certain, the fascinations of the
forbidden thing were not felt. But as soon as these were tampered with,
Eve saw 'that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to
the eyes.' So it is still. Weaken the awe-inspiring sense of God's
command, and of the ruin that follows the breach of it, and the heart
of man is like a city without walls, into which any enemy can march
unhindered. So long as God's 'Thou shalt not, lest thou die' rings in
the ears, the eyes see little beauty in the sirens that sing and
beckon. But once that awful voice is deadened, they charm, and allure
to dally with them.

In the undeveloped condition of primitive man temptation could only
assail him through the senses and appetites, and its assault would be
the more irresistible because reflection and experience were not yet
his. But the act of yielding was, as sin ever is, a deliberate choice
to please self and disobey God. The woman's more emotional, sensitive,
compliant nature made her the first victim, and her greatest glory, her
craving to share her good with him whom she loves, and her power to
sway his will and acts, made her his temptress. 'As the husband is, the
wife is,' says Tennyson; but the converse is even truer: As the wife
is, the man is.

3. The fatal consequences came with a rush. There is a gulf between
being tempted and sinning, but the results of the sin are closely knit
to it. They come automatically, as surely as a stream from a fountain.
The promise of knowing good and evil was indeed kept, but instead of
its making the sinners 'like gods,' it showed them that they were like
beasts, and brought the first sense of shame. To know evil was, no
doubt, a forward step intellectually; but to know it by experience, and
as part of themselves, necessarily changed their ignorant innocence
into bitter knowledge, and conscience awoke to rebuke them. The first
thing that their opened eyes saw was themselves, and the immediate
result of the sight was the first blush of shame. Before, they had
walked in innocent unconsciousness, like angels or infants; now they
had knowledge of good and evil, because their sin had made evil a part
of themselves, and the knowledge was bitter.

The second consequence of the fall is the disturbed relation with God,
which is presented in the highly symbolical form fitting for early
ages, and as true and impressive for the twentieth century as for them.
Sin broke familiar communion with God, turned Him into a 'fear and a
dread,' and sent the guilty pair into ambush. Is not that deeply and
perpetually true? The sun seen through mists becomes a lurid ball of
scowling fire. The impulse is to hide from God, or to get rid of
thoughts of Him. And when He _is_ felt to be near, it is as a
questioner, bringing sin to mind. The shuffling excuses, which venture
even to throw the blame of sin on God ('the woman whom _Thou_ gavest
me'), or which try to palliate it as a mistake ('the serpent beguiled
me'), have to come at last, however reluctantly, to confess that 'I'
did the sin. Each has to say, 'I did eat.' So shall we all have to do.
We may throw the blame on circumstances, weakness of judgment, and the
like, while here, but at God's bar we shall have to say, '_Mea_ culpa,
_mea_ culpa.'

The curse pronounced on the serpent takes its habit and form as an
emblem of the degradation of the personal tempter, and of the perennial
antagonism between him and mankind, while even at that first hour of
sin and retribution a gleam of hope, like the stray beam that steals
through a gap in a thundercloud, promises that the conquered shall one
day be the conqueror, and that the woman's seed, though wounded in the
struggle, shall one day crush the poison-bearing, flat head in the
dust, and end forever his power to harm. 'Known unto God are all his
works from the beginning,' and the Christ was promised ere the gates of
Eden were shut on the exiles.




EDEN LOST AND RESTORED


    'So He drove out the man: and He placed at the east of
    the garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which
    turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.'
    --GENESIS iii. 24.

    'Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they
    may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in
    through the gates into the city.'
    REVELATION xxii. 14.

Better is the end of a thing than the beginning.' Eden was fair, but
the heavenly city shall be fairer. The Paradise regained is an advance
on the Paradise that was lost. These are the two ends of the history of
man, separated by who knows how many millenniums. Heaven lay about him
in his infancy, but as he journeyed westwards its morning blush faded
into the light of common day--and only at eventide shall the sky glow
again with glory and colour, and the western heaven at last outshine
the eastern, with a light that shall never die. A fall, and a rise--a
rise that reverses the fall, a rise that transcends the glory from
which he fell,--that is the Bible's notion of the history of the world,
and I, for my part, believe it to be true, and feel it to be the one
satisfactory explanation of what I see round about me and am conscious
of within me.

1. _Man had an Eden and lost it._

I take the Fall to be a historical fact. To all who accept the
authority of Scripture, no words are needed beyond the simple statement
before us, but we may just gather up the signs that there are on the
wide field of the world's history, and in the narrower experience of
individuals, that such a fall has been.

Look at the condition of the world: its degradation, its savagery-all
its pining myriads, all its untold millions who sit in darkness and the
shadow of death. Will any man try to bring before him the actual state
of the heathen world, and, retaining his belief in a God, profess that
these men are what God meant men to be? It seems to me that the present
condition of the world is not congruous with the idea that men are in
their primitive state, and if this is what God meant men for, then I
see not how the dark clouds which rest on His wisdom and His love are
to be lifted off.

Then, again--if the world has not a Fall in its history, then we must
take the lowest condition as the one from which all have come; and is
that idea capable of defence? Do we see anywhere signs of an upward
process going on now? Have we any experience of a tribe raising itself?
Can you catch anywhere a race in the act of struggling up, outside of
the pale of Christianity? Is not the history of all a history of
decadence, except only where the Gospel has come in to reverse the
process?

But passing from this: What mean the experiences of the
individual-these longings; this hard toil; these sorrows?

How comes it that man alone on earth, manifestly meant to be leader,
lord, etc., seems but cursed with a higher nature that he may know
greater sorrows, and raised above the beasts in capacity that he may
sink below them in woe, this capacity only leading to a more exquisite
susceptibility, to a more various as well as more poignant misery?

Whence come the contrarieties and discordance in his nature?

It seems to me that all this is best explained as the Bible explains it
by saying: (1) Sin has done it; (2) Sin is not part of God's original
design, but man has fallen; (3) Sin had a personal beginning. There
have been men who were pure, able to stand but free to fall.

It seems to me that that explanation is more in harmony with the facts
of the case, finds more response in the unsophisticated instinct of
man, than any other. It seems to me that, though it leaves many dark
and sorrowful mysteries all unsolved, yet that it alleviates the
blackest of them, and flings some rays of hope on them all. It seems to
me that it relieves the character and administration of God from the
darkest dishonour; that it delivers man's position and destiny from the
most hopeless despair; that though it leaves the mystery of the origin
of evil, it brings out into clearest relief the central truths that
evil is evil, and sin and sorrow are not God's will; that it vindicates
as something better than fond imaginings the vague aspirations of the
soul for a fair and holy state; that it establishes, as nothing else
will, at once the love of God and the dignity of man; that it leaves
open the possibility of the final overthrow of that Sin which it treats
as an intrusion and stigmatises as a fall; that it therefore braces for
more vigorous, hopeful conflict against it, and that while but for it
the answer to the despairing question, Hast Thou made all men in vain?
must be either the wailing echo 'In vain,' or the denial that He has
made them at all, there is hope and there is power, and there is
brightness thrown on the character of God and on the fate of man, by
the old belief that God made man upright, and that man made himself a
sinner.

2. _Heaven restores the lost Eden_.

'God is not ashamed to be called their God, _for_ He hath prepared them
a _city_.'

The highest conception we can form of heaven is the reversal of all the
evil of earth, and the completion of its incomplete good: the sinless
purity--the blessed presence of God--the fulfilment of all desires--the
service which is _blessed_, not toil--the changelessness which is
progress, not stagnation.

3. _Heaven surpasses the lost Eden_.

(1) Garden--City.

The perfection of association--the _nations_ of the saved. Here 'we
mortal millions live alone,' even when united with dearest. Like
Egyptian monks of old, each dwelling in his own cave, though all were a
community.

(2) The richer experience.

The memory of past sorrows which are understood at last.

Heaven's bliss in contrast with earthly joys.

Sinlessness of those who have been sinners will be more intensely
lustrous for its dark background in the past. Redeemed men will be
brighter than angels.

The impossibility of a fall.

Death behind us.

The former things shall no more come to mind, being lost in blaze of
present transcendent experience, but yet shall be remembered as having
led to that perfect state.

Christ not only repairs the 'tabernacle which was fallen,' but builds a
fairer temple. He brings 'a statelier Eden,' and makes us dwell for
ever in a Garden City.




THE GROWTH AND POWER OF SIN


    'And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought
    of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And
    Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and
    of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel,
    and to his offering: But unto Cain, and to his offering,
    he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his
    countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art
    thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou
    doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest
    not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be
    his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked
    with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they
    were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his
    brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain,
    Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not. Am
    I my brother's keeper? And He said, What hast thou done?
    the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the
    ground.