Another duty is here urged, considerateness for such as through natural infirmity are liable not only to err but to have advantage taken of them by the light-minded or the malicious. Other warnings are given that an Israelite might behave to his brother as became the people of Jehovah. His fear was to govern all the life, individually or together. Righteousness in judgment is insisted on, irrespective of low or high. Tale-bearing is frowned on: who could tell the mischief that might result? Hatred in the heart is the deep wrong against a brother; but it is immediately urged earnestly to rebuke one's neighbor that one bear not sin on his account (or, bring not sin on them).. In short, no allowance of grudge, or self-vengeance, but to love one's neighbor as oneself.
“14 Thou shalt not curse (or, revile) a deaf [person] nor put a stumbling-block before a blind one, but thou shalt fear thy God: I [am] Jehovah. 15 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shall not respect the person of the lowly, nor honor the person of the mighty; in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor. 16 Thou shalt not go about a tale-bearer among thy people; nor shalt thou stand against the blood (or life) of thy neighbor: I [am] Jehovah. 17 Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart; thou shalt earnestly rebuke thy neighbor, lest thou bear sin on account of him. 18 Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I [am] Jehovah” (vers 14-18).
We may view these injunctions as a class, and even from ver. 11. But it is well to observe that moral and ceremonial are expressly flowing together side by side, both founded on the revealed name of Jehovah, whose honor is at the head of all, and whose dishonor was more deadly and detestable than any other sin. It must and ought to be so, if He, the living God chose Israel to be His people, and Israel gladly owned Jehovah as their God, the one true God. And beautiful it is to note how He deigns to guide them in all the details of life, civil as well as religious, as their moral Governor: for so it really was.
Israel was in obvious contrast with the long abnormal time which stretched from man driven out of paradise till the deluge was sent on the race left to its self, and his so-called free-will ended in corruption and violence, greatly aggravated by the fallen angels, as Gen. 6 tells us, interpreted if we needed it by 2 Peter and Jude. It was now in Israel, apart from all nations, brought out of Egypt led through the wilderness, and established in Canaan under a divine government which comprehended all the people in their relation with Jehovah and with one another, and strangers too, with the utmost minuteness. Love would delight in it as showing His deep interest in them; self-knowledge would gratefully own His wisdom and their need. Insubjection to Him could only if distinct and unjudged bring death, as obedience was met by His manifested blessings.
Yet we must never forget that it necessarily and wholly differs from Christianity, which sprung from the sovereign grace of God in honor of His Son, after the Jew scornfully and with hatred refused Him, the end of their wicked history as a responsible people. So Isaiah had prophesied, disclosing first their captivity in Babylon for their idolatry (chaps. 40-48); next, the irretrievable ruin as far as they were concerned by the rejection of their Messiah (chaps. 49-57). But his last chaps. (58-66.) prove no less certainly, that divine mercy will restore them to better unfailing blessing for the elect remnant, who will become His strong and honored and holy people, when the Lord appears in power and glory for His world-kingdom (Rev. 11:15).
Christianity, and the church of which Christ is the glorified head, come in after His cross and ascension and before He comes to receive the saints destined for the heavenly places. Christ as revealed in the written word is their rule of life, and the Holy Spirit sent forth is their power, in faith working by love, on the ground of Christ's redemption and their deliverance by His death and resurrection. Hence, while taught to appreciate the faith and walk, the service and the worship of saints from Abel all through the O.T., there is in Christ a quite new standard of walk and worship. Also we are called to suffer for righteousness and Christ's name, to love our enemies, and to lay down our lives for the brethren, as no Jew was. Hence the N.T., which not only confirms the Old but reveals God's secrets, that were not then revealed to the fathers or their children, as they are now by the Spirit to the glory of the Father and the Son.
It could not but be that these wondrous counsels of God, when the cross of Christ and His exaltation furnished the fit moment for making them known to His children, introduced wholly new ways both in the individual Christian and in the church as a whole. Alas as they were the last to be revealed, they were the first to evaporate when the apostles departed to be with Christ. The Fathers so styled, the sub-apostolic Fathers, as far as we have their remains, are the clearest proof of their fall from the grace and truth which came through our Lord Jesus. The heavenly things are thereby eclipsed. The very righteousness of God as revealed in the gospel is ignored, clouded, or debased. What could be expected of their knowledge in the mystery of Christ and of the church? of its standing, or of its hope?
It thus appears that time is a vast parenthesis between eternity before it and eternity to follow, in which the earth and Israel with the other nations fill the scene as in the O. T. Within that parenthesis comes another, turning on Christ's rejection and exaltation on high, and the revelation of the great mystery concerning Christ, and concerning the church united to Him by the Spirit already, but awaiting His coming for heavenly glory and their reign with Him over the earth. Restored Israel will be blessed, at the head of all the nations here below, under the new covenant and the Messiah till eternity begins.