The only other point that I shall notice, as closing this part of my subject, is given in Numbers 21; that is, we find Israel in the presence of the Canaanite king of Arad, who at first takes some prisoners. Israel vows to Jehovah that he will utterly destroy them, if He will deliver the people into his hand. Jehovah hearkens, and such destruction ensues that the place is thence called Hormah.
Soon after this, however, occurs a very serious scene of warning for our souls (verse 4 and so forth). It is no uncommon case: a time of victory has to be watched, lest it be a precursor of danger. A time of defeat, on the other hand, constantly prepares one for a fresh and greater blessing from God – so rich is His grace. He knows how to lift up the fallen, but He makes those that are too light with their victory to feel their total weakness and the constant need of Himself.
So it was with Israel. They became much discouraged immediately after their great victory, and they speak against God and against Moses. “And Jehovah sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.” They at once fly to Moses, and ask him to pray to Jehovah for them; and Moses is directed by Jehovah to make a fiery serpent. “Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.”
It is important, I think, for our souls to see this – that, as connected with the wilderness and with the flesh, there is no life for man. Life is not for man in the flesh. Death is the Lord’s way of dealing with fallen humanity.
How then is man to live? “I if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me,” to quote another New Testament application of the truth now before our minds. “I if I be lifted up” – it is a Saviour no longer on the earth, but lifted up from it: I do not say in heaven, but a Saviour rejected and crucified. This is the means of divine attraction when sin has been thus definitively judged. There can be no adequate blessing without the cross for man as he is; for thus only is God glorified as to sin. This is what in type comes before us here that the New Testament also uses it in a very striking manner.
But inasmuch as the Lord’s three answers are taken from the early portion of Deuteronomy, which comes before us on this occasion, I have at once referred to this patent fact. We never can duly understand the Old Testament unless in the light of the New; and if there is anyone who is personally and emphatically “the light,” need it be said that it is Jesus? This men forget. No wonder therefore that Deuteronomy in general has been but little understood, even by the children of God; that the thoughts of expositors are comparatively vague in explaining it; and that men are apt to read it with so little insight into its bearing that the loss might seem comparatively trifling if it were not read at all. In short how could it be respected as it deserves, if regarded as an almost garrulous repetition of the law? Now, apart from the irreverence of so treating an inspired book, such an impression is as far as possible from the fact. Deuteronomy has a character of its own totally distinct from that of its predecessors, as has been already pointed out and will appear more fully, even for the wilderness. The well was not made by dint of hard work on the part of those used to labor. The princes put to their hands with their staves; and they probably did not know much about toil. But it was enough. Overabounding grace thus gives abundant refreshment for the people as following that which God had before Him – the beautiful type which Christ Himself applied to His own bearing the judgment of sin on the cross: once sin is judged, once life is given, what does God not give because of it and in unison with it? “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things.”
The rest of the chapter shows us the triumphant progress of the people, with their victories (often alluded to in the law and the psalms) over Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og king of Bashan. Two references are made in the account of this – one to a book of that day, the book of the wars of Jehovah (Num. 21:1414Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of the Lord, What he did in the Red sea, and in the brooks of Arnon, (Numbers 21:14)); the other to certain proverbial sayings or legends then in vogue (Num. 21:27-3027Wherefore they that speak in proverbs say, Come into Heshbon, let the city of Sihon be built and prepared: 28For there is a fire gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon: it hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Arnon. 29Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: he hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon king of the Amorites. 30We have shot at them; Heshbon is perished even unto Dibon, and we have laid them waste even unto Nophah, which reacheth unto Medeba. (Numbers 21:27‑30)). This does not, as the rationalists pretend, give the smallest support to the hypothesis that Moses composed the Pentateuch from a mass of previous material floating among the Israelites of his age and their Gentile neighbors. Written and oral, these foreign traditions are purposely cited with the exceptional end in view of proving from witnesses unimpeachable in the eyes of their most zealous adversaries that the land in debate, when Israel took it by conquest, did not belong to Ammon or Moab, but to the doomed races of Canaan and its vicinity. To the country of the former they had no just claim; that of the Amorite, and so forth, was given them up by God. The Amorite had taken it from Moab, and Israel from the Amorite, subsequently dwelling in all their cities, from Amon to Jabbok, in Heshbon and all its villages.
A Jewish record of its previous possessors and of their own victories might be disputed as interested by a foe; but a citation from their own current proverbial songs was conclusive; and the Spirit of God deigns to employ an extract to this end. In Judges 1133And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. (Judges 11:33) we see precisely this ground of recognized fact taken by Jephthah in refuting the claims of the then king of Ammon, and his pretensions proved baseless by the incontrovertible evidence that the Amorite had the disputed territory when Israel made himself master of it, spite of Balak king of Moab and all other rivals. On a somewhat similar principle the Apostle does not hesitate to cite heathen testimonies in the New Testament, as no mean confession on their part for the matter in hand (Acts 17:23,2823For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. (Acts 17:23)
28For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. (Acts 17:28); 1 Cor. 15:3333Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. (1 Corinthians 15:33); Titus 1:22).