OFFERINGS:
SABBATH-KEEPING: DRESS
Numbers 15
THE enactments of this chapter regarding meal offerings and drink
offerings, the heave offerings of the first dough, and the atonement
for unwitting errors belong to the cultus of Canaan. Nothing generic
distinguishes the first and third of these statutes from some that
were presumably to be observed in the desert; but the note is
explicit, "When ye be come into the land of your habitations which I
give unto you," "When ye be come into the land whither I bring you."
The whole chapter, with its instance of presumptuous sin introduced
by the clause, "And while the children of Israel were in the
wilderness," marking a return to that time, and its commandment
regarding the fringes or tassels of blue to be attached to the dress
as remembrances of obligations, may appear at first sight without
any reference either to what has preceded or what follows. The
compilers, however, have a definite purpose in view. The presumption
of Korah and his company, and of Dathan and Abiram, is in contrast
to the unwitting faults for which atonement is provided, and it
comes under the category of what is "done with a high hand"-a form
of blasphemy which is to be punished with death. The case of the
Sabbath-breaker is an instance of this unpardonable sin, and sends
its light on to the incidents that follow. Even the memorial fringes
or tassels, and the prophetic sentences that accompany the command
to wear them, seem to be forewarnings of the doom of sacrilegious
men.
1. MEAL AND DRINK
OFFERINGS
The statute regarding offerings "to make a sweet savour unto
Jehovah" is specially occupied with prescribing the proportion of
flour and oil and wine to be presented along with the animal brought
for a burnt offering or sacrifice. Any one separating himself in
terms of a vow, or desiring to express gratitude for some Divine
favour, or again on the occasion of a sacred festival when he had
special cause of rejoicing before God, might bring a lamb, a ram, or
an ox as his oblation; and the meal and drink offerings were to vary
with the value of the animal brought for sacrifice. The law does not
demand the same offering of every person under similar
circumstances. According to Mhi means or his gratitude he may give.
But deciding first as to his burnt or slain offering, he must add to
it, for a lamb, the tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with a
quarter of a hin of oil, and also a quarter of a hin of wine. For a
bullock, the quantities were to be three-tenths of an ephah of fine
flour, with half a hin of oil, and, as a drink offering, half a hin
of wine.
The provision is a singular one, based on some sense of what was
becoming which we cannot pretend to revive. But it points to a rule
which the Apostle Paul may have recognised in this and other Jewish
statutes as belonging to universal morality: "Take thought for
things honourable in the sight of all men." To make a show of
generosity by giving a bullock, while the flour and oil and wine
were withheld, was not seemly. Neither is it seemly for a Christian
to be lavish in his gifts to the Church, but withhold the meal
offering and drink offering he owes to the poor. Throughout the
whole range of use and expenditure, personal and of the family, a
proportion is to be found which it is one of the Christian arts to
determine, one of the Christian duties to observe. And nothing is
right unless all is right. The penny saved here takes away the sweet
savour of the pound given there. No man is in this to be a law to
himself. Public justice and Divine are to be satisfied.
The presence or absence of oil in an oblation marked its character.
The sin offering and the jealousy offering were without oil. The
"oil of joy" {Isa 61:3} accompanied festal and peace offerings. All
ordinances prescribing the oblation of wine and oil necessarily
belonged to the cultus of Canaan, for in the wilderness neither of
these elements of the sacrifice could be always had. The idea
underlying the peace offerings, with their accompanying meal and
drink offerings, was unquestionably that of feasting with Jehovah,
enjoying His bounty at His table. Acknowledgment was made that the
cattle on the hills were His, that it was He who gave the harvest,
the vintage, and the fruit of the olive-grove. Confession of man’s
indebtedness to Jehovah as Lord of nature was interwoven with the
whole sacrificial system.
In connection with this ordinance of meal and drink offerings, and
that of atonement for unintentional failures in duty (Num 15:22
ff.), it is very carefully enacted that the law shall be the same
for the "homeborn" and the "stranger." "For the assembly there shall
be one statute for you and for the stranger that sojourneth with
you, a statute for ever throughout your generations: as ye are, so
shall the stranger be before the Lord." The design is to secure
religious unity, and by means of it gradually to incorporate with
israel all dwellers in the land. While certain ordinances were
intended to make Israel a holy nation separated and consecrated to
Jehovah, this admission of strangers to the privileges of the
covenant has another design. In the Book of Deuteronomy {Deu 7:2} a
statute occurs that entirely excludes from citizenship and
incorporation all Canaanites, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Hivites,
Girgashites, and Perizzites. There was to be no intermarriage with
them, no toleration of them, lest they led Israel away into
idolatry. The statute is enforced by the words, "For thou art a holy
people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to
be a peculiar people unto Himself, above all peoples that are upon
the face of the earth." With this emphatic assertion of the
severance of the Hebrews from other races the strain of Numbers, as
well as Exodus and Leviticus, generally agrees. When we endeavour to
harmonise with it the admission of strangers to the right and joy of
sacrificial festivals, we at once meet the difficulty that no other
races were, fitter to be received into religious confraternity than
those of Canaan. Neither Babylonians, Syrians, Phoenicians, nor
Philistines were free from the taint of idolatry; and however
degrading the rites of the Canaanites were, some of the other
nations followed practices quite as revolting.
We know that for a long period of Israel’s history strangers were,
according to the statute presently under consideration, admitted to
the fellowship of religion, as well as to high office in the state.
"We have only to study the Book of Joshua to discover that the
Israelites, like the Saxons in Britain, destroyed the cities and not
the population of the country, and that the number of cities
actually overthrown was not very large. We have only to turn to the
list of the ‘mighty men’ of David to learn how many of them were
foreigners, Hittites, Ammonites, Zobahites, and even Philistines of
Gath. {2Sa 15:18; 2Sa 16:10}. Nor must it be forgotten that David
himself was partly a Moabite by descent." In accordance with this
large tolerance we might be disposed to include among the
"strangers" admitted to privilege men belonging to races that
inhabited Canaan before the conquest. Even Deuteronomy seems in one
passage to exclude none but Ammonites and Moabites; and the covenant
law of Exodus 23, commands generous treatment of the stranger. In
contrast to the "homeborn," strangers may appear to mean those only
who had come from other countries. and chosen to identify themselves
with the faith and fortunes of Israel; still this passage attempts
no such definition, and on the whole we must allow that the Mosaic
law in regulating the political and social position of resident
non-Israelites showed "a spirit of great liberality." They had, of
course, to conform to many laws-those, for instance, of marriage,
and those which forbade the eating of blood and the flesh of animals
not properly slaughtered. If uncircumcised, they could not keep the
Passover; but being circumcised, they had equal rights with the
Hebrews. The purpose evidently was to make an open way to the
benefits of Israel’s government and religion.
The heave offering of the first dough is placed (Num 15:20) side by
side with the heave offering of the threshing-floor of the first
sheaves. In Leviticus {Lev 23:17} a harvest oblation is ordered-two
wave-loaves of fine flour baken with leaven. Here the heave offering
of a cake made from the first dough is not accompanied with
sacrifices of animals, but is of a simple kind, mainly a tribute to
the priests. The Deuteronomic statute regarding firstfruits, which
were to be put in a basket and set down before the altar, prescribed
a formula of dedication beginning, "An Aramean ready to perish was
my father, and he went down into Egypt": and the offering of these
firstfruits was to be an occasion of joy-"Thou shalt rejoice in all
the good which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee and unto thine
house, thou and the Levite, and the stranger that is in the midst of
thee." There can be no question that the most developed statute
regarding these harvest offerings is that given in Leviticus, where
the exact time for the presentation of the loaves is fixed, the
fiftieth day after the Sabbath, from the day when the sheaf was
brought. The feast accompanying the offering of the loaves came to
be known as that of Pentecost.
Passing now to the law of atonement for unintentional omissions of
duty, we notice that the introductory sentences (Num 15:22-23) have
a peculiar retrospective cast. They seem to point back to the time
when the Lord gave commandment by the hand of Moses. It would appear
that in course of years discovery was made that portions of the law
were neglected, and the provisions of this statute were to relieve
the nation and individuals of accumulating defilement. "When ye
shall err, and not observe all these commandments which the Lord
hath spoken unto Moses, even all that the Lord hath commanded you by
the hand of Moses, from the day that the Lord gave commandment, and
onward throughout your generations; then it shall be, if it be done
unwittingly, without the knowledge of the congregation"-so runs the
preamble. A series of statutes in Leviticus 4 contemplates offences
of a like kind, when something has been done which the Lord
commanded not to be done. The enactment of Numbers appears to point
to a "complete falling away of the congregation from the whole of
the law," an unconscious apostasy. Maimonides understands the
provision as relating to guilt incurred by the people in adopting
customs and usages of the heathen that seemed to be reconcilable
with the law of Jehovah, though they really led to contempt and
neglect of His commandments.
For the nation as a whole, under these circumstances, atonement was
to be made by the burnt offering of a young bullock with its meal
offering and drink offering, and the sin offering of a he-goat. In
this purgation all strangers resident with Israel are specially
included. When any person discovered that he had neglected a
precept, he was to offer a she-goat of the first year for a sin
offering. The Israelite and the stranger alike had in this way
access to the sanctuary. But in contrast to unintentional omission
of duty was set deliberate neglect of it. For this there was no
atonement. Whether the high-handed transgressor was homeborn or a
stranger, he was to be utterly cut off as a blasphemer; his iniquity
rested upon him. The distinction is morally sound; and the
punishment of the rebel against authority-apparently nothing less
than death, or perhaps, if he has fled the land, out-lawry-is such
as the theocratic idea obviously required. It was Jehovah Himself
who was defied. A man who, as it were, shook his fist in rebellion
against God had no right to live in His world, under the protection
of His beneficent laws.
The distinction between unwitting neglect and open rejection runs
through the whole range of duty, natural, Hebrew, Christian. What a
man knows to be right he has before him as a Divine law of moral
conduct. By the highest obligations, under which he lies to the Lord
of conscience, to his fellowmen, and to himself, he is bound to
obey. Judaism added the authority of revelation-the Mosaic law, the
prophetic word. Christianity still further adds the authority of the
word spoken by the Son of God, and the obligation imposed by His
death as the manifestation of eternal love. In proportion as the
Divine will is made clear, and the law enforced by revelation and
grace, the sin of rejection becomes greater and more blasphemous.
But, on the other hand, the unwitting transgressor, be he heathen or
imperfectly instructed Christian, has under the new covenant, in
which mercy and justice go hand in hand, no less consideration than
the Hebrew who unintentionally erred. There is no law that cuts him
off from his people. Wide as this principle may reach, it must be
that according to which men are judged. Many, knowing the invisible
things of God "through the things that are made," are without
excuse. They "hold down the truth in unrighteousness"; they are
high-handed transgressors. But others who have no knowledge of the
Divine law, and break it unwittingly, have their atonement: God
provides it. Nor are we to impeach Divine Providence by judging
before the time.
It may be asked, Why, since defiant rejection of Christian law is
more blasphemous than high-handed breach of the old Hebrew law, the
providence of God does not punish it? If any one with Christ and His
cross in view is guilty of injustice, or of hatred which is murder,
does he not prove himself unworthy to live in God’s world? And why,
then, does he not suffer at once the doom of his rebellion? The
theory of some stern moralists has been that human government should
administer the justice of Heaven and cut off the unbeliever. In many
a notable case this has been done, and has caused a righteous horror
which continues to be felt. But although men cannot safely undertake
the punishment of such offenders, why does not God? Christ boldly
stated that here and now this is not the method of the Divine
government, but that men enjoy the Father’s mercy even when they are
unjust, unthankful, and evil. Yet He spoke of judgment
universal-judgment and retribution that shall not miss a single
sinner, a single secret sin. And His view of the theocracy clearly
is that meanwhile God by mercy to the defiant desires to train men
in mercy, by forbearance towards the unthankful and evil commends to
us like patience and endurance. Transgressors are to have their full
opportunity of repentance, to which the very goodness of God calls
them. But justice which delays is not unobservant. Though He who
reigns moves slowly to His end, He will not fail to reach it. "He
hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in
righteousness." As for human law, its sphere is fixed. Society must
protect itself against crime, and is to do so in the name of God, in
conformity with the eternal principles of righteousness. The Hebrew
temper may seem to have carried this principle into a range that was
perilous to enter, as in the instance immediately to be considered;
yet the protection of society was even then the immediate motive,
not vain jealousy for the honour of God. For ourselves, we have a
duty which must be done without assumption or hypocrisy.
The various subjects of thought suggested here should be followed
out. For us, they are complicated on the social as well as the
religious side by certain theories that are in vogue. The duty of
civil government, for example, is on one side extended beyond its
proper range by the attempt to give it authority in the domain of
religious truth; on the other hand it is unduly restricted by
toleration of what is against the well-being of society. The
Christian moralist has much to ponder in relation to popular
opinions and the trend of modern legislation.
2. THE SABBATH-BREAKER
If the actual sequence of events is followed in the narrative of
Numbers, it must have been after the condemnation of the adult
Israelites that judgment of the man who was found infringing the
Sabbath law had to be executed; and some who were themselves under
reprobation took part in convicting and punishing this offender.
There is a difficulty here which on high moral grounds it is
impossible to explain away. Disaffection and revolt had brought on
the mass of the people the sentence of destruction; and this had
only been exchanged on Moses’ intercession for the forty years of
wandering. Should not sins that were visited with this penalty have
excluded all who were guilty of them from any judicial act? But the
same objection would, if admitted, prevent all of us from taking
part in the execution of law. Neither the judge nor the jury,
neither those who legislate nor those who administer law, are free
from moral fault. The whole system dealing with crime has this
defect; and Israel in the wilderness was as much entitled as modern
society to take in hand the correction of offenders, the maintenance
of public well-being.
The law which had been broken was one specially connected with duty
to God. Sabbath-keeping might indeed seem to belong to worship
rather than to social morality. The seventh day was the Sabbath of
Jehovah. It was to be kept holy to Him, made a delight for His sake.
The statute regarding it belonged to the first table of the
Decalogue. Still, the commandment had a social as well as a
religious side. In good will to men Jehovah required the day to be
kept holy to Him. Had one and another like this offender been
allowed to set aside the fourth commandment, the interests of the
whole congregation would soon have suffered. It was for the good of
the race, physically as well as intellectually and spiritually, the
Sabbath was to be kept. Those who guarded the sanctity of the
Sabbath were guarding not the honour of God alone, though they may
have thought that the chief merit of their watchfulness, but the
interests of the people, a precious heritage of the nation.
It is not necessary to maintain that judgment was given by Moses
solely on the ground that the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath
was an offender against the public well-being. The thought of
Jehovah’s "jealousy" was constantly kept before the mind of Israel,
for by that idea, better than any other, beneficent legislation was
supported in a rude age; and judgment no doubt rested mainly on
this. Yet the interference of the people and their share in the
execution of punishment are to be justified by the undoubted fact
that Israel could not afford to let the Sabbath be lost. Even those
who were to a great extent earthly could perceive this. And if the
punishment seems disproportionate, we must remember that it was the
presumptuous temper of the man rather than his actual fault that was
judged criminal. St. James said, no doubt from this point of view,
"Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he
is become guilty of all." The criminal act was that of breaking
down, with daring hand, the safeguard of social and religious
prosperity.
And there is a sense in which without Pharisaism those who are
concerned for the public well-being may still insist on the strict
enforcement of the laws that guard the day of rest. Though all days
are alike sacred to spiritually minded persons, yet bodily health
and mental soundness are bound-up more than men in general know with
the Sabbatic interval between labour and labour. The Puritanism
often scoffed at is far more philanthropic than the humanitarianism,
so-called, which derides it. And when any one enforces the duty of
Sabbath-keeping by insisting on God’s claim to the seventh day, his
belief is no superstition. Convict him first of advocating what is
against the good of men, irrational, absurd, before venturing to
call him superstitious. If what is advanced as a claim of God can be
proved to be really for the good of men, it is a virtue to insist
that for God’s sake as well as the sake of men it should be
rendered. There were persons in our Lord’s time who made
Sabbath-keeping a superstition. Against them He testifieth. But it
is in His name. who was the great Friend of men the Sabbath law is
now insisted on; and the day of rest has all the higher sanction
that it commemorates His resurrection from the dead, His promise of
that new life which relief from labour enables us to pursue.
The institution of the Sabbath and the scrupulous observance of it
were, for Israel, and are still for all believers in Divine
religion, most important means of maintaining unity in the faith.
Now that many causes interfere with the simultaneous exhibition of
regard for other symbols of Christian belief, the day of rest and
worship gives a universal opportunity which it would be fatal to
neglect. It has the advantage of beginning to claim men on the
ground where religion first appeals to them, that of God’s care for
their temporal well-being. Those with whom religious feeling is
quite elementary must see that a boon of incalculable value is
offered in this recurring refreshment to the wearied body and
strained mind. And with progress in religious culture the benefit of
the day of rest is found to advance. The opportunities of worship,
of religious meditation and service, which it brings, will be
esteemed as the value of Christian fellowship, the importance of
Christian knowledge, and the duty of Christian endeavour are
successively understood. On all these grounds the Sabbath, or Lord’s
Day, is for modern religion, as for that of the old covenant, a
great declaration, a means of unity and development which the
spiritual will earnestly uphold. Let it fail, and distinction
between religious and nonreligious will be without a sign. No doubt
the reality is more by far than the symbol. Yet fellowship, for
which in many cases the Sabbath alone gives opportunity, is far more
than a symbol: and unity requires an outward manifestation. Nothing
could be more perilous to the religious life of our people than the
tendency, shown by many who profess Christianity and sanctioned by
some of its teachers, to make the Sabbath a day of self-pleasing, of
mere individualism, and incoherent secularity.
3. THE MEMORIAL TASSELS
The unique sumptuary law with which the chapter closes may be
regarded as a sequence of the Sabbath-breaker’s conviction. That
Israelites might never be without a reminder of their duty, and of
the Divine laws they were scrupulously to observe, these tassels
with a band of blue were to be constantly worn. It appears to us
singular that men should be expected to pay heed to such mementoes
as these. We are apt to say, If the laws of God were not in their
hearts, the zizith would scarcely make them more attentive; and if
they had the laws in their hearts, they would need no memorials of
obligation. But the ornament was something more than a reminder of
duty. It was a badge of honour, and became more so as the Israelites
understood their high position among the peoples. The zizith would
be like an order, a mark of rank; or like the uniform of his
regiment, which to the good soldier recalls its history. The Hebrew
would have to live up to his duty as signified by these attachments
of his dress.
And Israelites were to be distinguished by the zizith from those who
were of other races, not under law to Jehovah. Every man who wore
this badge would be able to count on the sympathy of every other
Israelite. The symbol became a means of rousing the esprit of the
nation, and binding it together in a zealous fraternity. The nature
of the badge appears to us peculiar; but the value of it cannot be
denied. The modern peoples, far as they have travelled from the old
ways of the Hebrews, retain the use of symbolic dress, the liking
for ornaments, by which a man’s life may be known.
The name zizith is derived from a word meaning blossom. The tassel
was formed of twisted threads bound by a cord or ribbon of blue to
the garment. It was the blossom of the robe, so to speak, hanging by
a blue stem. The ornament is again mentioned in Deu 22:12, where it
has another name, gedilim, enlargements. With extraordinary pride
the Jews of our own time still wear the talith, which is a
fantastical development of the zizith of Numbers. "The rabbins
observe that each string consisted of eight threads, which, with the
number of knots and the numerical value of the letters in the word,
make 613, which, according to them, is the exact number of the
precepts in the law." The Pharisees in Christ’s time enlarged their
phylacteries, displaying superfluously the proofs of their Hebrew
orthodoxy and zeal. It is the danger of all symbols. In the youth of
a people they have meaning; they express fact, they give honour. The
Israelite, wearing his, felt himself reminded, put on his honour,
not to go about "according to his own heart and his own eyes by
which he used to go a-whoring." But afterwards the zeal became that
of pride, the symbol a mere amulet or a token of self-sufficiency.
The Jew of today is partly kept separate by his talith, and because
he wears it, feels himself in touch with the fathers and heroes and
prophets of his people. But he also feels, what is not always good,
his remoteness from heathen and Christian "dogs."
And Christian symbols, the few sanctioned by Scripture, the others
that have crept into use in the course of history, bring with their
use a similar danger. In many cases they are signs of privilege
rather than memorials of duty. They minister to pride, rather than
stimulate zeal in the service of God and men. The crucifix itself,
with consummate superstition, is worn and kissed as a talisman.
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