The Expositor's Bible: The Book of NumbersWatson, Robert A. (Robert Alexander)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Numbers
Watson, Robert A. (Robert Alexander)
Bible. Numbers -- Commentaries
For us, whatever may be said as to the composition of the Bible, it
is supremely, and as no other sacred book can be, the Word of God. As
Moses was the one man in Israel who had a right to speak in Jehovah's
name, so the Bible is the one book which can claim to instruct us in
faith, duty, and hope. Speaking to us in human language, it may of
course be challenged. At one point and another, some even of those
who believe in Divine communication to men may question whether the
Bible writers have always caught aright the sound of the heavenly
Word. And some go so far as to say: There is no Divine Voice; men
have given as the Word of God, in good faith, what arose in their
own mind, their own exalted imagination. Nevertheless, our faith, if
faith we are to have at all, must rest on this Book. We cannot get
away from human words. We must rely on spoken or written language
if we are to know anything higher than our own thought. And what is
written in the Bible has the highest marks of inspiration--wisdom,
purity, truth, power to convince and convert and to build up a life
in holiness and in hope.
It remains true accordingly that doubt of the Bible means for us,
must mean, not simply doubt of the men who have been instrumental
in giving us the Book, but doubt of God Himself. If the Bible did
not speak in harmony with nature and reason and the widest human
experience when it lays down moral law, prescribes the true rules and
unfolds the great principles of life, the affirmation just made would
be absurd. But it is a book of breadth, full of wisdom which every
age is verifying. It stands an absolute, the manifest embodiment
of knowledge drawn from the highest sources available to men--from
sources not earthly nor temporary, but sublime and eternal. Faith,
therefore, must have its foundation on the teaching of this Book as
to "what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires
of man." And on the other hand infidelity is and must be the result
of rejecting the revelation of the Bible, denying that here God
speaks with supreme wisdom and authority to our souls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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