When Tischendorf went to Mount Sinai, he found a copy of the Gospels there, where it had been for nearly 1,500 years. It was a strange phenomenon, the mountain laboring and bringing forth a dove. In the same way when the Law itself had existed for about 1,500 years, the Interpreter came Who showed us that in some respects within the letter of its text it held the spirit of the new dispensation. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God......and thy neighbor as thyself.” “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” The gospel goes beyond it, but not against it. There is sometimes a mistaken effort to exalt the gospel by contrasting it with, and by inference disparaging, the law. This is not “using the law lawfully.” For in its most legal and condemnatory passages it contains by implication or prophecy, a foreshadowing of good things to come; and even the record of the giving of the ten commandments is immediately followed by a most remarkable passage (Ex. 21), where the obedience of love is compared with the obedience of law—the spirit with the letter.
The slave who had to be set free on the sabbatical year might elect to remain in perpetual servitude “If the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children: I will not go out free; then his master shall bring him to the door post and bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.” Here the thought is so far from an obedience sub pcena, that the slave voluntarily suffers pain and sheds his blood sooner than not serve. Nor can there be any doubt that the interpretation is right which regards this as a type of the divine Servant voluntarily engaging Himself to perpetual servitude because of His love to God and to the spiritual Bride. In Psa. 40:66Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. (Psalm 40:6) He says, “Mine ears host Thou opened:” the word translated “opened” —kahrah—is translated in Psa. 22:1616For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. (Psalm 22:16) “pierced” (my hands and my feet).
As Jacob's seven years' service for Rachel suggests Christ's becoming a servant in order to win the church, so this represents an everlasting service willingly undertaken in order to retain it. The depth of love and the height of devotion here implied only seem the more infinitely beyond our contemplation the more we meditate upon them. Now and then we see some faint reflection here on earth, as when Devine, following her whom he had wooed into prison, was wedded to her in the condemned cell, and held her dead body in his arms till he himself expired with a last “Je t'aime” dying on his lips; or when Leonhard Dober deliberately gave himself into slavery that he might preach the liberty of Christ to his fellow-slaves in the West Indies. Sometimes too we see some reflection of such love and fidelity in a servant— “I love my master” —as when, that brave Russian leaped amongst the wolves to save his master, or when the French bonne recently gave herself to the mad dog that her mistress's children might escape.
There are two other typical references in this chapter which are significantly associated with this. In ver. 13 the Cities of Refuge are briefly alluded to, whither the poor outcast, blood-guilty by misfortune, might fly for protection; and in ver. 32 the mention of thirty pieces of silver, which we find stated as the compensation for a dead slave. To the dishonor of our race we remember that this was the precise value which, after bargaining, was put upon the Son of God by the religious leaders of the day. It was a sober business transaction, and therein consists its bitter contempt, its being undesigned. They thought Him a wicked man, but, even so, not worth more than a few shekels' reward. This insult was keenly felt, even amongst so many other terrible injuries. “They weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver...... Cast it unto the potter; a goodly price that I was prized at of them! “ We frequently see twenty times as much offered for the apprehension of some common malefactor. This was a long time ago. Yes, but there are millions of people around us who would not surrender even that for the possession of Christ now.
Consider for a moment what became of the money for which our Lord was sold. The traitor could not keep nor use it: it blistered his hands, and he threw it back to the priests; but their piety prevented their taking it. Eventually it was paid for a potter's field, as had been prophesied. Now is there anything more desolate than a field—robbed of its clay, and strewn with calcined cinders and other refuse—which a potter has done with? And to what purpose was the field put? The most miserable and melancholy of all, though perhaps in this world the most useful and necessary of all— “to bury strangers in! Therefore that field was called the Field of Blood onto this day.” Characteristically to the last, even the blood-money of the great Martyr goes to buy a refuge and resting-place for the bodies of wretched aliens. Oh, can there be a more pathetic connection of thought in all the long eternity, past or future, than the thought of the dead Benefactor hanging on that rude cross, with His thorn-crowned head sunken on His breast, and the desolate burying-ground for nameless paupers that was purchased by the price of His betrayal!