Expositions of Holy Scripture: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First Book of Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, and Second Kings chapters I to VIIMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First Book of Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, and Second Kings chapters I to VII
This truth was transiently manifested in our text. The vision passed,
the ground that was hallowed by His foot is undistinguished now in the
sweltering plain round the mound that once was Jericho. But the fact
remains, the humanity, that was only in appearance, and for a few
minutes, assumed then, has now been taken up into everlasting union
with the divine nature, and a Man reigns on the Throne, and is
Commander of all who battle for the truth and the right. The eternal
order of the universe is before us here.
It only remains to say a word in reference to the sweep of the command
which our vision assigns to the Angel of the Lord. 'Captain of the
Lord's host' means a great deal more than the true General of Israel's
little army. It does mean that, or the words and the vision would cease
to have relevance and bearing on the moment's circumstances and need.
But it includes also, as the usage of Scripture would sufficiently
show, if it were needful to adduce instances of it, all the ordered
ranks of loftier intelligent beings, and all the powers and forces of
the universe. These are conceived of as an embattled host, comparable
to an army in the strictness of their discipline and their obedience to
a single will. It is the modern thought that the universe is a Cosmos
and not a Chaos, an ordered unit, with the addition of the truth beyond
the reach and range of science, that its unity is the expression of a
personal will. It is the same thought which the centurion had, to
Christ's wonder, when he compared his own power as an officer in a
legion, where his will was implicitly obeyed, to the power of Christ
over diseases and sorrows and miseries and death, and recognised that
all these were His servants, to whom, if His autocratic lips chose to
say 'Go,' they went, and if He said, 'Do this,' they did it.
So the Lord of the universe and its ordered ranks is Jesus Christ. That
is the truth which was flashed from the unknown, like a vanishing
meteor in the midnight, before the face of Joshua, and which stands
like the noonday sun, unsetting and irradiating for us who live under
the Gospel.
II. I see here the Leader of all the warfare against the world's evil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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