Q.-2 Kings 22 Chron. 34. How are we to reconcile the cleansing in the 12th year and in the 18th year? H.
A.-Both are true; and both speak of the cleansing which in Josiah's eighteenth year followed the discovery of the book of the law in the house of Jehovah. But 2 Chronicles alone adds the account of his earlier seeking after God ten years before, in the eighth year of his reign and the twelfth beginning to purge.
Q.-1 Chron. 21:6. What explains the apparent discrepancy between this and chap. 27:24?
II.
A.-There is no discrepancy. One text says, that Joab did not count among those that were counted Levi and Benjamin; the other adds the particular, that though he began to number, he finished not, and divine displeasure fell for it upon Israel; and the number was not put in the account of the chronicles of King David. All is harmonious; but the second is a fuller explanation.
Q.-Does Psa. 91:11, quoted by Satan, refer at all to the Lord? or are there not three parties implied in it? W.
A.-The godly one that relies on Jehovah in ver. 2, Who will surely deliver Messiah as in vers. 3-13, and is answered in vers. 14-16 by Jehovah.
Q.-Luke 15:18, 21. Why “heaven”? It is well known that the Chinese identify God and heaven, and worship heaven as a true deity? H.
A.-Heaven being Jehovah's throne, as earth His footstool, we can understand readily how that highest region of divine glory is associated with every thought of purity, love, and worship. But there is no identification with God. On the contrary, after naming heaven as the unsullied seat of His honor, in contrast with this wholly defiled earth of man's will and sin and lusts, the prodigal distinguishes “thee,” “Father.” Compare 2 Chron. 32:20, Dan. 4:26, Matt. 21:25 and Mark 11:30, 31, Luke 20:4, 5, John 3:27, &c.
Q.-Acts 15:20, 29. Are not “strangled” and “blood” separate prohibitions? and both distinct from “pollutions of idols”? But why is “fornication” joined with things so different? W.
A.-Meyer's view that the phrase, “the pollutions,” refers to the four particulars which follow seems to me untenable. The reason on which he argues (the absence of ἀπὸ before τ. π. has no force); for ἀπὸ is unnecessary any where after ἀπέχεσθαι, and is a doubtful insertion where some ancient MSS. give it. But there ought to be no question that “blood” means what is drawn out expressly from the animal for culinary use, and thus manifestly distinct from “strangled” where the purpose is to keep in the blood from flowing. Both are forbidden; for God demands that man shall by abstaining own that life belongs to Him. If any be so self-willed as to plead that they do not see or understand, let them own their ignorance and obey. It is not a Jewish or Mosaic statute only, but for man since Noah and the deluge (Gen. 9:4). “Things offered to idols,” though classed here like “fornication,” with the other two, as things which the heathen counted indifferent, are forbidden as evils unworthy of Christians (one might add, of men) apart from the law, which the Pharisaic party in the church strove in vain to impose on Gentile believers. But the decrees in no way meant to weaken the immorality of fornication, any more than the insult or indifference to the one true God in eating knowingly of pollutions of idols. The apostles were content here to determine, that none of these things is an open question to Gentile converts, but that, if they abstain from all these necessary things, they will do well.
Q.-Gal. 3:20: what is meant by “the mediator is not of one, but God is one”? D.
A.-It is the principle of the law on the one hand, and of promise on the other; which the apostle contrasts, in order to deliver the Galatians or any other souls from the dangerous error of mingling them together, as unbelief is prone to do. The legal mediator is intended, Moses, not Christ; and that office implies two parties: God demanding right, and sinful man wholly unable to render it. The law therefore cannot but be for sinners a ministry of death and condemnation, as we are told in 2 Cor. 3. It is wholly different with promise; for this rests on the sole and unfailing fidelity of God Who cannot lie. As God is the only party to promise in His sovereign and unconditional grace, all He promises comes to fruition. “God is one"; whereas under law man, being under obligation to perform and failing through sin, all his hopes thus come to nothing. God on the contrary accomplishes all in and by Christ, and hence to faith. And as in Him is the Yea, so through Him also is the Amen (2 Cor. 1).
Q.-Gal. 5:17, 25. Is “deliverance” all? Are we not after that to walk in the Spirit? W.
A.-Assuredly: to question it would be antinomianism, or systematic unholiness. We are called to walk in the Spirit by the faith of Christ, in confidence of His care, in habitual self-judgment, and in obedience of the word.
Q.-Have we any scriptural example for calling days of the week after the heathen usage? E.
A.-The only N. T. change from the Jewish “first of the week” is the Lord's day in Rev. 1:10. There is no example, we may presume, of the Gentile Sunday, Monday, &c. How could there be? “Easter” in Acts 12:4 should be “the Passover.”