Numbers 30.
THE subject of this short chapter is the making of vows, —solemn promises, — before God, and particularly by women. A man making a promise is only mentioned at the beginning, in verse 2. “He shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.”
Here, the Holy Spirit, in moving Moses to write this book, had the only One before him who never had to recall a word, Jesus. He it is whose word stands forever, unchanged. What He has undertaken, He will surely finish, for though “the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, the Word of the Lord endureth forever” (1 Peter 1:24,25). Are you trusting Him?
The young woman in her father’s house in verses 3, 4 and 5; and the married woman spoken of in verses 6, 7 and 8, and 10 to 15, present the people of Israel in connection with God who had undertaken for them as a Father and a Husband. He heard their rash promises, all of them, from first to last, and He disallowed what was wrong, though He made them to feel the result of their own badness. This is also God’s way with believers now, —those who are His children by faith in Christ Jesus.
Verse 9 speaks of a widow or a divorced woman, and the way this is brought in, in the midst of the verses about a wife who sat home with her husband, fits in exactly with the place of Israel now. She is a widow, or divorced from her husband, so to speak; they are out of relationship with God, but it is not to be forever. (Isaiah 54:4-7).
ML 06/22/1924