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
The second member of the blessing indicates under the figure of the
shining of Jehovah's face the revelation of enlightening truth. Here
are implied the unfolding of God's character, the kindly disclosure
of His will in promise and prophecy, the opening to the minds of men
of those high and abiding laws that govern their destiny. There is a
forth-shining of the Divine countenance which troubles and dismays
the human heart: "The face of the Lord is against them that do evil."
But here is denoted that gracious radiance which came to its fulness
in Christ. And of this Divine shining Jacob Boehme writes: "As the
sun in the visible world ruleth over evil and good, and with its
light and power and all whatsoever itself is, is present everywhere,
and penetrates every being, and yet in its image-like [symbolic] form
doth not withdraw again to itself with its efflux, but wholly giveth
itself into every being, and yet ever remaineth whole, and nothing
of its being goeth away therewith: thus also it is to be understood
concerning Christ's power and office which ruleth in the inward
spiritual world visibly, and in the outward world invisibly, and
throughly penetrateth the faithful man's soul, spirit, and heart....
And as the sun worketh through and through an herb so that the herb
becometh solar (or filled with the virtue of the sun, and as it were
so converted by the sun that it becometh wholly of the nature of the
sun): so Christ ruleth in the resigned will in soul and body over all
evil inclinations, over Satan's introduced lust, and generateth the
man to be a new heavenly creature and wholly floweth into him."[2]
For the Hebrew people that shining of the face of God became
spiritual and potent for salvation less through the law, the
priesthood, and the ritual, than through psalm and prophecy. Of the
revelation of the law Paul says, "The ministration of death written
and engraven on stones came with glory, so that the children of
Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses, for the
glory of his face." With such holy and awful brightness did God
appear in the law, that Moses had to cover his face from which the
splendour was reflected. But the psalmist, pressing towards the
light with fine spiritual boldness and humility, could say, "When
Thou saidst, Seek ye My face; my heart said unto Thee, Thy face,
Lord, will I seek" (Psalm xxvii. 8); and again, "Turn us again, O
God of hosts, and cause Thy face to shine; and we shall be saved"
(Psalm lxxx. 7). And in an oracle of Isaiah (liv. 8), Jehovah says,
"In overflowing wrath I hid My face from thee for a moment; but with
everlasting kindness shall I have mercy on thee."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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