The Patriarchs: Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.Bellett, J. G. (John Gifford)
Religion
The Patriarchs: Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.
Bellett, J. G. (John Gifford)
Bible -- Biography; Patriarchs (Bible)
These features give clear expression and character to the picture. But
there is one other touch (the touch of a master’s hand, I would
reverently say) in this picture which is not inferior in meaning or in
beauty to any. I mean, that in all this settlement of the earth, Asenath
and the children get no portion. They are not seen; there is no mention
of them even. Jacob may get Goshen; but Asenath, Ephraim, and Manasseh,
nothing. Is it that the wife and children were loved less, and the
father and brethren more? Nay, that cannot be. But Asenath and the
children are heavenly, and have their portion, the rather in and with
him who is the lord and dispenser of all this, and they cannot mingle in
the interests and arrangements of the earth. Even Goshen, the fairest
and fattest of the land, is unworthy of them. They are the family of the
lord himself. They share the home, and the presence, and the closest
endearments of him who is the happy and honoured head of all this scene
of glory.
Is not this the great result, in miniature or in type? Have we not in
all this that promised "dispensation of the fulness of times," when God
will gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in
heaven; and which are on earth? Are not the heavens and the earth here
seen and heard together in their millennial order? I surely judge that
they are. "Known unto God are all His works, from the beginning of the
world."
But as we go on in the course of the divine dispensations, earthly and
heavenly scenes and purposes still unfold themselves. Israel, in their
turn, and after these scenes in the hook of Genesis, become the witness
of God, and an _earthly_ people. A portion of the world is sanctified
for God’s possession and dwelling-place again. As the deluge had
purified the whole of it for the divine power and presence in Noah’s
day, so the sword of Joshua now purifies a portion of it for the same
divine power and presence in Israel. God has His sanctuary and His
throne in the land of Canaan. He is worshipped in Jerusalem, and there
His law is dispensed. The glory is again in the earth. As Lord of the
earth, the God of Israel keeps court and rule on the earth again. But
all is corrupted again. Canaan was defiled by the apostasy of Israel, as
the Noah-earth had been defiled by the tower of Babel. Ezekiel, who was
set as a watchman in the day of this apostasy, sees therefore the glory
on its way from Jerusalem to _heaven_. It does not seek any other spot
on earth, but, being disturbed at Jerusalem by the defilements there, it
retreats to heaven. Ezekiel xi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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