In a word, then, the blood of the lamb met the people in Egypt, it accompanied them through the desert, and planted them in Canaan. It was the blessed basis of all the divine actings in them, with them, and for them. Was it a question of the judgment of God against Egypt? the blood of the lamb screened them from it. Was it a question of the numberless and nameless wants of the wilderness? the blood of the lamb secured a full provision for them. Was it a question of the dreaded power of the seven nations of Canaan? the blood of the lamb was the sure and certain pledge of complete and glorious victory. The moment we behold Jehovah coming forth to act on behalf of His people, on the ground of the blood of the lamb, all is infallibly secured, from first to last. The whole of that mysterious and marvelous journey, from the brick-kilns of Egypt to the vine-clad hills and honeyed plains of Palestine, served but to illustrate and set forth the varied virtues of the blood of the lamb. However, the chapter which now lies open before us presents the passover entirely from a wilderness stand-point; and this will account, to the reader, for the introduction of the following circumstance: “There were certain men which were defiled by the dead body of a man, that they could not keep the passover on that day; and they came before Moses and before Aaron on that day.” Here was a practical difficulty—something abnormal, as we say—something not anticipated, and therefore the question was submitted to Moses and Aaron. “They came before Moses”—the exponent of the claims of God, “and before Aaron”—the exponent of the provisions of the grace of God. There seems something distinct and emphatic in the way in which both these functionaries are referred to. The two elements of which they are the expression would be deemed essential in the solving of such a difficulty as that which here presented itself. “And those men said unto him, ‘We are defiled by the dead body of a man; wherefore are we kept back, that we may not offer an offering of the Lord in his appointed season among the children of Israel?’” There was the plain confession as to the defilement, and the question raised was this: Were they to be derived of the holy privilege of coming before the Lord in His appointed way? Was there no resource—no provision for such a case? A deeply interesting question, surely, but one for which no answer had as yet been provided. We have no such case anticipated in the original institution, in Exodus xii, although we have there a very full statement of all the rites and all the ceremonies of the feast. It was reserved for the wilderness to evolve this new point. It was in the actual walk of the people—in the real practical details of desert life, that the difficulty presented itself for which a solution had to be provided. Hence it is that the record of this entire affair is appropriately given in Numbers, the book of the wilderness.