"The Book of Joshua" and "The Book of Hebrews"
James Ebenezer Batten
Table of Contents
The Book of Joshua, and The Epistle to the Hebrews - 1
The leadership of the people of Israel by “the ark of the covenant and the priesthood,” under Joshua, when the time was come for them to cross over Jordan into Canaan, form the magnificent fore-front of this book. Besides this, their history reveals the coming forth of “the captain of the Lord’s host with the drawn sword in his hand,” followed by their victories, and overthrow of all their enemies. Nor is this all; for it is not till after this clearance is made, that “the tabernacle of the congregation was set up at Shiloh,” under Eleazar the high priest, in order that the covenant relations of Jehovah with the twelve tribes might be seen to stand upon election and grace, and be maintained inviolate amongst them, on what God was in Himself. Moreover, “the tabernacle at Shiloh in the land of Canaan” was as necessary a part in the book of Joshua, as opening the way of approach to God for Israel as worshippers; as was Gilgal, and their recurrence to it, indispensable in the history of their conflicts, for their renewal of strength in the day of battle.
If we look into these subjects we must take a larger view than this circle embraces, and think of the nation of Israel in their primary relations to Jehovah. For this we must obviously refer to the books of Numbers and Exodus, that we may not lose sight of the original ways of God and His purposes, as declared to them by Moses, when he was their commander and mediator, and Aaron their great high priest. Indeed this link is manifestly kept up in the early chapters of the book of Joshua, and applied in a most encouraging way to him by the Lord, who said, “As I was with Moses, so will I be with thee, I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” Besides this assurance to Joshua personally, as the appointed successor of Moses, there was the necessary continuation. of the high priest, and the Levitical priesthood in their midst for services connected with the ark of the covenant and the order of the tabernacle at Shiloh, which neither Joshua nor his armed men dare touch. Each of these great functionaries held their respective appointments directly from the Lord; and the two in their combined action, whether in the sanctuary of God, or in the camp of Israel, carried out the mind of Jehovah concerning His own holiness and majesty, or His people’s glory.
Indeed, the priesthood and the tabernacle were indispensable as the way of approach for them as worshippers; whilst outwardly the relations of God with Israel by the ark of the covenant were manifested in the sight of all their enemies. This was true during the ministration of Aaron in the wilderness, or the Levites with Joshua when Jordan fled; or when marching round the city Jericho, and the walls fell down flat. Moses and Aaron were inseparable in their varied ministries at their exodus from Egypt, as were the priest and the captain at the door of the tabernacle in Shiloh for the settlement of the twelve tribes in the promised land. Indeed, these orders and services were not only established by God at the first, but when Aaron died on Mount Hor (as recorded in Num. 20) “Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son,” as the Lord commanded him. So likewise when Moses was to die on Mount Abarim, and he prayed the Lord “to set a man over the congregation,” he was directed to take Joshua and put him before Eleazar the high priest, and give him a charge in the sight of all the people. The connection, and yet the contrast between these two, are also marked in Num. 27, “And he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall ask counsel for him, after the judgment of Urim before the Lord, at his word shall they go out; and at his word shall they come in; both he, and all the children of Israel with him, even all the congregation.”
It is necessary to gather up this divine order given to Moses respecting the man who was to succeed him for a commander—as had been previously done on Mount Hor concerning the successor of Aaron as a priest. “And Moses did as the Lord commanded him; and he took Joshua, and set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation. And he laid his hands upon him and gave him a charge.”
The book of Numbers (and especially chapters 20 and 27.) introduces to us Eleazar and Joshua, and the latter is seen to be under the guidance of the former, who was to ask counsel of God by the mysterious Urim. This order, and these enactments and appointments (one need scarcely say) are the basis for the onward history of Israel under. Joshua, and the anointed priesthood with “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God;” and also “the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth,” which they bore along. This ark was not only the witness of Jehovah’s presence, but the symbol of His relations with His people; and embodied typically to their faith by the costliness of its construction and its marvelous contents, together with its staves and rings, the coming forth from God of the Word made flesh. In due time Christ would begin His mysterious journey in this wilderness world, or else, like the tabernacle at Shiloh, dwell among them, or later still in Jerusalem, fill the temple itself. In result He would finish that work which the Father had given Him to do for His own glory, and our eternal redemption, to which the ark and all the vessels of the sanctuary pointed.
It is of the greatest moment for us who are Christ’s, and who are now sealed by the Holy Ghost, to gather up this precious fact, that God always takes care of His own glory; and of the full and final blessing of His people according to His purpose; yea, that He never lets them be separated, or pass out of His own hands, but works them out together, because (wonderful to say) He has made His people and their blessedness a constituent part of His glory. How suited, therefore, was this ark of the covenant to be in advance of the twelve tribes on their way to rest in the habitation of God, upon the mountain of His holiness, that Mount Zion which He had chosen for the full display of Himself in the midst of His people, in the still future day of their millennial joy. Such was the ark at Gilgal.
On our part, we may charge ourselves that we neither separate our present communion with God from the pathway of His own glory in the life we live on earth; nor accept any other object for eye or heart, than Christ Himself, in whom and through whom the glory of God and His people’s present and eternal blessedness meet, and are counseled and established.
Every eye was upon “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God” who had gone forth before them to find a resting-place worthy of Himself, and in which to keep His appointed feasts, and to share his delights with Israel, whom He had chosen. Their journey out of the wilderness had begun, for “it came to pass after three days, that the officers went through the host, and commanded, saying, When ye see the ark, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place and go after it.” Besides the hidden but glorious contents of the ark, as typifying the Christ of God, since manifested in His life, and death, and resurrection, and besides being the external and abiding symbol of God’s presence in sovereign goodness, the ark was a witness from Himself of the manner in which He was to be known by them, and approached.
This was two-fold in its declaration. First, Israel was to learn by it that God, as Jehovah, had put Himself into covenant relationship with them, “it was the ark of the Lord your God” by means of which (or rather what it foreshadowed) not a jot or a tittle of all He had ever promised should fail. Secondly, they were to learn by it that God, as creator of the heavens and the earth, would pass before them in His majesty and power, to make a way for them and drive out all their enemies. Therefore it was “the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth,” for He weigheth the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance, and taketh up the isles as a very little thing. These are some of the characteristics, both of the hidden and manifested glories of the ark that preceded them, and which charged itself with the entire weight and burden of the people, and the dangers and difficulties of the way. They and the ark were to inaugurate a new history, for God had come out of the heavens to walk with His people on the, earth, and lead them into His rest.
In the next place, who are the persons which demand our attention in this movement out of Shittim? This company is “the priests the Levites,” who are appointed to bear the ark, which, when Israel saw to be in motion, was their signal for advance, “then ye shall remove from your place and go after it.” This the congregation do, and the first act they behold is the way in which God gets glory to Himself, or puts a seal upon His own title, as “the Lord of the whole earth,” by the power through which Jordan, when it intercepted their path, was driven back, and stood up as in a heap. Nor was this merely an act or seal to the title and rights of God as “the Lord of all the earth,” (for how could He be this if Jordan were allowed to bar the way?) but Jehovah loves to give the seal to His own people, at the same time and by the same act, that He is the “Lord your God,” for it was when the priests feet that bare the ark touched the brine of the waters, that Jordan rolled itself back. The priests and priesthood thus gain a distinguished place in the book of Joshua, and are in the foreground because of their consecration and appointment to the services of the sanctuary. “And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people,” &c. The prominence of the priests, as bearing the ark, does not interfere with the place of Joshua (in this chap. 3.) as the leader, for he “spake unto the priests, saying, Take up the ark of the covenant;” nor indeed, throughout the book, when Eleazar comes out more distinctly into the forefront, to divide their inheritances.
Indeed, the value of these records is, in the concurrent action of Eleazar and Joshua, where they can be combined, as in chapters 14, 17, 19, 21, which we need not anticipate just now.
The Book of Joshua and The Epistle to the Hebrews - 2
(Continued from page 175.)
We shall thus find as we proceed with this chapter 4, and chapter 6, that the priests with the ark of the covenant, have a much larger footing as well as Eleazar and the tabernacle at Shiloh in this book, than we are accustomed, or perhaps know how, to make room for or give to the fact, especially when we come to apply it to ourselves and Christianity, and still more so when we attempt to run a parallel between the book of Joshua and the writings of Paul. Leaving this too for the moment, the priests, with the ark, whether in Jordan or when over it, and confronted by a great city instead of a river, are not only in prominence, but take the lead of the whole congregation and the armed men as at Jericho, or else stay in the danger, till all beside are gone clean over, as in Jordan.
In chapter 4, “twelve men” out of every tribe, were to take up twelve stones out of the river, “where the priests’ feet stood firm,” and carry them over, and leave them in the place where they would lodge that night. Besides this, “Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests stood which bare the ark of the covenant,” as a memorial that the twelve tribes who had risen up, out of the power of death at Gilgal, were the same people who had been there.
In this typical history of the children of Israel we may observe, that at the Red Sea they neither left twelve stones in its bed, nor took twelve out with them upon the other-side. On the contrary, Pharaoh and his captains, with their chariots and horses, lay dead at the bottom, as a witness that the mighty power of the enemy which held them captive in Egypt had been overthrown, and that the depths covered them. “But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on the right hand, and on the left.” Thus the Lord saved them that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, whom they saw dead upon the shore, whilst He put the song of redemption into their mouths, saying, “The Lord hath triumphed gloriously.” The Red Sea was a memorial between Jehovah and His people, that the antagonistic power which held them captive and refused to let them go, had been all broken in pieces; but Jordan was to be the overthrow of an opposing power of the enemy that refused to let the people enter into their inheritance. It is in these two ways, we have still to watch against the devil. God brought them to Himself at the Red Sea, having on the way sheltered them by “the blood of the Lamb as roast with fire,” and then taught them redemption by power when they sang unto the Lord, “Thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.” Beyond this difference in the ways of God with them or with us in our redemption out of Egypt by blood and by power (as confirmed to us now by the sacrifice and vicarious death of Christ) all that generation was cut off in the wilderness. They had crossed the Red Sea, but in their journey onward, they proved how incapable flesh and blood were, to walk with God, much less to keep company with Him.
A further lesson was taught by Jordan, beyond redemption by blood and by power as known at the cross and foreshadowed by the Red Sea, namely that the people thus brought to God must pass through their own death and resurrection by figure of the twelve stones in Jordan, and the twelve stones out. They were to begin another history with the ark of the covenant, and their new circumcision at Gilgal, with Joshua and the passover and the captain of the Lord’s host, with the drawn sword. The priests bearing the ark were not to be seen in the bottom of the Red Sea, but the enemies lay there, who had been consumed as stubble by the wrath of the Lord. On the other hand, no Canaanites were in Jordan nor was a single foe overthrown there; but it was sanctified to the Lord and to Israel, by the priests and the ark of the covenant for glory and victory; as much as were the waters of the Red Sea “when they returned, and covered the chariots and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh in terrible judgment.”
It is to our purpose here, as believers in Christ, to notice that at this juncture the epistles of Paul take up these types from Exodus and Joshua, and carry them out unto their fulfillments, in Christ, where He now sits “at the right hand of God.” The one to the Romans, which is founded on deliverance and redemption, accomplished typically at the Red Sea, is generally admitted. So also Jordan finds its spiritual application in the Colossians, by our own death and resurrection, as united to Christ who is our life and Head.
May we not, or rather must we not, on the same principle say, that the tabernacle at Shiloh, in the land of Canaan with Eleazar, find likewise their similitudes and accomplishments throughout Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews, in our great high priest, “passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,” as maintaining the relations of God with His people here below on the ground of His own sovereign purpose and grace? How necessary were Shiloh and the tabernacle as the witness of this to the Israelites in Joshua’s day. And how indispensable for the Hebrews, and to ourselves, for whom Paul wrote his epistle, leading them on into “the heavenly calling [by faith] under the apostle and high priest of our profession!”
Further yet, the agreement of the battles in Canaan with the epistle to the Ephesians, and our spiritual conflict with principalities and powers in the heavenly places, is admitted on the same principles of exposition. Nor do I judge that this group of epistles by Paul cannot be separated one from another (however profitable and necessary it be to distinguish them) without loss to the typical book of Joshua, and far greater to the completeness of Christianity, and our own relations to the heavens and the earth, of which they treat. “And it came to pass when the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord were come up out of the midst of Jordan, and the soles of the priests’ feet were lifted up unto the dry land, that the waters of Jordan returned unto their place, and flowed over all the banks, as they did before.” It was on such a day as this that “the Lord magnified Joshua in the sight of all Israel, and they feared him as they feared Moses all the days of his life.”
It was on the selfsame day, too, that the Lord put honor on priesthood, and even upon the soles of the priests’ feet, when they touched the brim, or stood firm in the midst of that Jordan till all the people had passed over. It was when they reached the dry land for themselves that the waters returned to their banks, and all because of “the ark of the God of the whole earth,” which they bore. Moreover, “those twelve stones which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal, and there they encamped. And he spake unto them, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? then ye shall let your children know that Israel came over Jordan on dry land.” Gilgal and the twelve stones, were a witness yet further “that all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty; that ye might fear the Lord your God forever.” Beyond all these memorials of rivers and their stones to the twelve tribes, was the witness they carried everywhere to God, that He was “the Lord their God” by relationship with them through the ark, for they had followed it in triumph to the other side; and likewise that He was “the God of the whole earth,” for Jordan had fled away and stood up as an heap before Him. It is in this double title and character that the Lord now appears before them and “all the people of the earth” at Gilgal, as a God that doeth wonders.
But there was another lesson at Gilgal, for “at that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time,” for a people in the flesh had been cut off, even all the previous generation, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness. This new or second generation of the children of Israel, had in Jordan accepted their own death and resurrection before God, by “the ark of the covenant,” which they followed, and were to learn their further separation to the Lord by circumcision at Gilgal, as suiting for the land into which they had now entered. The Colossian epistle in particular, takes these great typical facts out of the book of Joshua and connects them with our history as new creatures in Christ, and applies them to us as on our way with the second Adam into the new creation of God, as “not in the flesh, but in the Spirit” (beyond Romans). We pass on, and are circumcised with the circumcision of Christ, made without hands, in “putting off the body of the flesh.” Moreover, as dead and risen with Christ, “our life is hid with Christ in God;” and as in the power of the Holy Ghost (Gilgal) we “set our mind on things above,” not on things upon the earth. As spiritual men, we are over Jordan with “the ark of the covenant” which precedes us, and subsequently “with the tabernacle and Eleazar at Shiloh,” which maintained the relations of God with them through priesthood, in the times of the judges, and Eli and Samuel; and in which He has planted us (see Heb. 8) in the sanctuary which the Lord pitched. To this we belong, as a heavenly people, though actually upon the earth, and in the time of need; yet in respect of the heavenly calling we are the heirs who are “entering into rest” with Joshua and David’s Son and Lord, for “there remaineth a rest” for the people of God. (Heb. 4)
We may remark here that the walls of Jericho fell not by strategy, nor by the strength of the armed men, but “before the ark of the covenant, and the priests who bore it,” and even then not by sword or spear, but when the priests blew the rams’ horns. Indeed, it is as a victorious and a worshipping people who follow the ark with the priests, through the water floods, or walking up straight into the city of Jericho upon its prostrate walls, that the Israel of God first shine forth in the greatness of the Almighty, who refuses every obstacle, and makes a way for Himself and for them. Perhaps before going out with the captain of the Lord’s host, and much more in using the sword in our holy war, it is of more moment than we conceive to listen to the voice of the Prince, who bids us “loose the shoe from off thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy.” Some oversight as to this, and the right of the ark to the forefront, and the pre-eminence in Israel, may have occasioned the sad reverses of Joshua through the boasted sufficiency of the two or three thousand armed men who went up against Ai and were driven back, so that the hearts of the people melted, and became as water. Possibly the same neglect may have occurred as regards the sin of Achan and his concealment of the Babylonish garment and the wedge of gold, because of which trespass the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. Where was “the Urim” of Num. 28?
Be this as it may, “the ark of the Lord, and the priests,” were in the midst of the host, not merely as a token of the covenanted blessings to them outwardly in the land, but also as a means of approach as worshippers on their own part, and of consultation, too, by Him, when needed, through Eleazar their great high priest. Joshua, as the leader and commander of the people, failed to take counsel, either directly by the ark, or immediately by Eleazar, “at whose word they were to go out and come in, even he [Joshua] and all the congregation.” Under this double failure of Achan and Ai, “Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face, [and mark] before the ark of the Lord,” until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and “put dust upon their heads.” And alas! in this breakdown, by which Joshua had separated himself and Israel in its unity from the guidance of the ark, by accepting the counsel of the men who went to spy out Ai, he is further betrayed by his own mouth and the hard thoughts of his heart against God. “And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? Would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the other side of Jordan.”
So it is with us of to-day individually or collectively. We must either maintain ourselves in the right, by going when and where the ark goes, and by taking counsel of the Lord, and getting the victory in His sufficiency, or else be brought back in humiliation and confession before the Lord from whom we have departed, and, like Joshua, fall down before the ark, and wait for God.
In the midst of declension and departure like this (if indeed it be such) how good of the Lord to recover His servant by grace, and to the true thought and care for God’s glory! “O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies”; for the Canaanites shall hear of it, and “what wilt thou do unto thy great name?” God who waited upon them, by the mystery of the Urim, and Eleazar the high priest, in His own excellency and sovereign power as at Jordan and Jericho, now condescends to the prayer and contrition of Joshua and meets him upon the ground “of a broken and a contrite spirit.” The unity of the twelve tribes had likewise been violated, by this detachment of two or three thousand men; and these breaches and offenses are taken in hand by the Lord, in rebuke and chastisement, in the matter both of Achan’s trespass and of Joshua’s oversight. The unity of the tribes is righteously insisted on by God, who says “Israel hath sinned,” and He will have them all to share the shame and blame of Achan: so likewise in chapter 8, “the Lord said to Joshua, Take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai: see I have given the king and all into thine hand.”
A foreshadowing of “Ichabod” casts its dimness on the book of Joshua at this point where the ark is offended by the negligence of the leader, for certain it is, that from 7:6, when “he and all the elders of Israel fall upon their faces before it till eventide, and put dust upon their heads”, the ark of the covenant of the Lord retires. It only comes out again in chapter viii. to sanction “the altar in Mount Ebal, unto the Lord God of Israel, which Joshua built, an altar of whole stones, upon which they offered burnt offerings to the Lord and sacrificed peace-offerings.” And afterward Joshua read all the words of the law, the blessings and comings, according to all that Moses commanded, before all the congregation of Israel. After this retirement of the ark we necessarily find ourselves upon lower ground, where human thoughts get into place, and also natural expediency. We read of strategy and ambushments on the one hand, where Joshua is successful; but on the other, we see him and the princes over-matched and outwitted by the craft of the Gibeonites. Still God abideth faithful, for He cannot deny Himself; but we sadly miss “the ark of the covenant,” and the soles of the priests’ feet, and the blowing of the rams’ horns, and the victories which were won simply “by faith,” as the Spirit tells us in Heb. 11
Though the order of battle be thus changed, and the fighting more like “wrestling with flesh and blood,” yet the conquest is sure, and the kings of the countries are killed, and the confederated nations broken in pieces at Jerusalem, with its willful king, Adonizedec, as a type of the latter-day overthrow, in the greater confederation of Rev. 19 under the beast and the false prophet.
Grand it is to see the eternal God come forth to their help upon the heavens, and in His excellency in the sky— “yea, to cast down great hailstones upon the enemies of his people, so that they were more who were slain after this manner than those whom the children of Israel slew.” As “the possessor of the heavens and the earth,” and as the Creator of all they contain, He puts honor again upon Joshua, by commanding the sun to stand still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, at the bidding of His servant.
After all these conflicts, by the ark and its priests, and the shout of the people, at the first, or by the Prince of the Lord’s host with a drawn sword, or by the flesh and blood wrestlings under Joshua and his spear at the close, the thirty and one kings are slain, and the land rested from war. Israel is in quiet possession,, and the time is come for them to inherit the land according to their tribes, as the heirs of the Lord’s inheritance.
It is at this new point of their history that Eleazar personally takes his place, in conjunction with Joshua, for the distribution of the land at the door of the tabernacle. “Caleb” also takes a distinguished place, as “an heir of promise,” and claims the mountain of which “the Lord spake to Moses.” As to the common allotment “of the children of Israel, Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun,” distributed their inheritances to them in Shiloh. When difficulties arose, as in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad, they came near before Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, for their settlement. The tabernacle, in chapter 18, also takes its permanent place at Shiloh, where the whole congregation of Israel were assembled together. So that, what Gilgal was to Joshua and the armed hosts for power in their days of conflict, Shiloh and the tabernacle were to Eleazar and the priesthood, for maintaining the precious relations of Israel with Jehovah, as a worshipping people, in the time of peace and rest. Concerning the tribe of Levi and the Levites, they had no part among the people, “for the priesthood of the Lord is their inheritance.”
The tabernacle and Shiloh take their place as a new center, in chapter 18, from whence Joshua sent out the three men from each tribe to pass through the land, and describe it by cities, into seven parts, in a book. On their return to Joshua, “he cast lots for them in Shiloh before the Lord; and there he divided the land unto the children of Israel.” Their traveling days, by the pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night, were over and gone, and their migratory character as a people was to give place to citizenship in due season; but at present, under Joshua, they are only as dwellers in the land. “These are the inheritances which Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers,” divided by lot in Shiloh before the Lord, at “the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.” So they made an end of dividing the country. As a yet farther proof of the important and necessary place which the priest holds throughout these chapters, we may notice, in chapter 21, that “the heads of the fathers of the Levites came unto Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and spake unto them in Shiloh, in the land of Canaan, respecting the cities and suburbs which Moses commanded should be given to them to dwell in.” Finally, upon this point, in chapter 22, touching “the great altar, Ed,” which had been set up on the other side of Jordan, it was the priest, Phinehas, son of Eleazar, who was sent with ten princes to investigate this grave matter. On their return, “the children of Israel blessed God,” and gave up their intention of going to war against Reuben and Gad.
These quotations and references to the Book of Joshua have shown us “the ark of the covenant of the Lord” as going before the congregation, and borne along by the priesthood. A space of two thousand cubits was to be left between the ark and the people, “that ye may know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.” Need we say that, in Christianity, the Holy Ghost, as the glorifier of Jesus, gives this place and precedence to our blessed Lord, as having superseded the splendor of the typical ark in the full and eternal glory of His person?, This will be readily admitted when we follow the synoptical Gospels, and view Jesus as the Messiah, with the repentant nucleus of Israel, and baptized with them in Jordan, as the antitype of this ark of the covenant. The heavens opened over this scene as He begins their history over again, and the voice of the Father, and the descent of the Holy Ghost as a dove, do more than accredit these associations between “the ark” and another generation of the people. The Messiah, who goes before them, to lead them, by a way—they had not heretofore gone, into the kingdom of heaven, is also their true Joshua, to clear the way of every obstacle. If they had faith as a grain of mustard-seed, “they might say to this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and it should obey them.” As the Son called out of Egypt, He had come into the wilderness, and met His forerunner, at the end of the law and the prophets, who prophesied till John. There the Messiah stood, with the Baptist in Jordan, as the veritable Ark, between Jehovah and Israel, to begin a new history as the “fulfiller of all righteousness,” and in grace to identify Himself with them, as come in the flesh, and to carry all their sorrows and griefs, as a disgraced people. God had driven them out of the inheritances in Canaan, into which the typical ark, under Joshua and Eleazar, had formerly brought them and planted them.
The Book of Joshua and The Epistle to the Hebrews - 3
Continued from page 190
As their Messiah, He had not only been accredited from the opened heavens by the voice and the dove, in these new relations with a repentant people, accepting a baptism of John in the waters of Jordan, but Jesus had also been “led of the Spirit to be tempted of the devil.” The wilderness and the solitary place are made glad by reason of Him who, by His obedience to God, made the desert to rejoice, and blossom as the rose. As the Son of Abraham, and Son of David, according to the flesh, though Son of man, and Son of God (like the pure gold of the ark), He overcame the tempter morally first, and by means of the temptations to which He submitted. Unswerving in His obedience anti devoted allegiance to the Majesty of God, He overcame the devil, and said, Get thee behind me, Satan. He has entered into the strong man’s house in righteous title, and proved Himself, as the tempted Man, stronger than he. He then goes forth upon His mission as the Deliverer, with His disciples, to proclaim “the glad tidings of the kingdom of heaven,” to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and to cast out devils from the men into whom they had entered. Such was “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God,” when originally given out in pattern to Moses, and when borne along upon the shoulders of the priests under Joshua and Eleazar, in “the form of shittim wood, and the pure gold,” in the fore-front of the great congregation of Israel. Such, too, was “the ark of the covenant,” when “come in flesh and blood” into the midst of this same people, disgraced by their disobedience, and driven out of the land into which Joshua had led them aforetime. What a moment was this!
Will they welcome this Joshua-Jesus, come to begin a new history with them morally, by repentance and confession of sins to the Jehovah they had offended when in Canaan by their idolatry? He began this wonderful ministry in their synagogues, when He opened the book where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” But such beauty and glory as this, which dwelt in Him morally, and come so close to them bodily in grace, as to be in real flesh and blood in their midst, required other eyes and hearts to appreciate and worship; “And they said, Is not this Joseph’s son?” They have lost the sense of what “the shittim wood and the fine gold” of the typical ark represented to their fathers, nor can they see “the form and comeliness” in the mystery of the Word made flesh; and fail more deeply by refusing Him thus in the glory of His humiliation. They will not follow this “ark of the covenant of the Lord” in their midst, but rise up, and thrust Him out of the city, and lead Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, “that they might cast him down headlong.” They refuse “the acceptable year of the Lord,” and have rejected their Messiah, the true Ark of the covenant between God and Israel, till another day, when His people shall be willing in the day of His power.
We may now turn from the synoptical Gospels to the Holy Ghost’s subsequent testimony to Jesus in resurrection, as by Paul to the Hebrews, and see how “the ark of the covenant” is again brought out, and presented to another generation of Israel. The ark in this epistle, however, is no longer known after the flesh, nor as in the world, but as gone on before, and passed through the heavens for faith. Jesus sits there on the right hand of the throne of God, as the veritable “Ark of the covenant of the Lord,” once given out in pattern to Moses, and constructed by Bazaleel, and carried by the Levitical priesthood over Jordan to Shiloh, and by David to Mount Zion. Surely the Holy Ghost, as the Glorifier of Jesus, is bringing back to the Hebrews by Paul the essential glory of the Person of the Son, who, by His accomplished work on the cross (as foreshadowed in their tabernacle and its services), has substantiated all the promises of God to their fathers, and made them yea and amen to “the children of faithful Abraham.” What is the ministry of Paul, in chapter 1, but the embodiment “of the ark of the covenant” in the Book of Joshua; and beyond all that, the indestructible and incorruptible shittim wood, or the finest and purest gold, could prefigure of Him that was to come? What is Paul’s testimony to the Hebrews of his day, if it be not another presentation of Christ to their faith and hope, according to “the glory, above the brightness of the sun,” which had arrested the man who did so many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth? A pattern to them, and an example!
We may ask again, what is Paul doing with the Hebrews (as a new generation), if it be not acquainting them with the personal glory of the Messiah, like “the light which had appeared to him” before he was filled with the Holy Ghost, and “there fell from his eyes as it had been scales?” Under this anointing it is that Paul writes to his kinsmen, “God having spoken in many parts, and in many ways, formerly to the fathers in the prophets; at the end of these days has spoken to us in the person of the Son, whom he has established heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.” Indeed these glories far exceed all types, for this Son is not only the Creator of all worlds, but “the possessor of the heavens and the earth,” although He humbled Himself to pass along before His people, in “shittim wood and fine gold,” veiled under “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God,” and in the hidden character of “the Lord of all the earth.” But again, as to the brightness of its light, Paul says, “Who being the effulgence of his glory, and the exact expression of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, having made by himself the purification of our sins, set himself down on the right hand of the majesty on high.” Nor is this marvelous glory only that which the Son (as the true Ark) is essentially in His Person; but relatively He has in grace purged our sins, and officially as the Priest sprinkled the blood before the mercy-seat, where God in His holiness dwells, and where Christ has sat down.
What is all this but the antitype of “the ark of the covenant,” and of “the true tabernacle,” which goes before the people of God, and which, in this precious chapter, this remnant of Israel is exhorted to follow? Moreover, the kinsmen of Paul after the flesh had, like himself, refused Jesus in humiliation, as the Child born of the virgin, in Isa. 7; so that he can present Him now in the magnificence of His exaltation, as indeed He had appeared to Paul “above the brightness of the sun.” Taking a place, he says, by so much “better than the angels, as he inherits a name more excellent than they.” For to which of the angels said He ever, “Thou art my Son, I have begotten thee”? And again, “I will be to him for father, and he shall be to me for son?” And again, “When he bringeth in the first-born into the world, he saith, And let all God’s angels worship him.” Besides this presentation of the personal glories of the Son, as the only “Ark of the covenant between the Lord and his people,” whether with John the Baptist, in Jordan, on earth; or much more by His death and resurrection to the right hand of the throne of the
Majesty in the heavens; He concentrates likewise in Himself all relative and official glories, as King and Priest. He passes along before us, too, as “the appointed heir” of the inheritance, yea, and of all things. Moreover, the blessed promises and prophecies in this chapter touching “the throne, and the scepter, and the kingdom,” are all to be fulfilled in the city of Jerusalem, in the coming day of their millennial rest and prosperity, by redemption through His blood.
It is to be observed that Heb. 1 is more in character with Isa. 9 and His exaltation, than with Isa. 7 and His humiliation. In this, “the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful,” &c., “and of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth and forever.” And are not these relative and official glories made sure to David and his son, by an everlasting covenant? What does it mean, “The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this,” in Jerusalem and Mount Zion, if it does not find its place, and form part of the glory of “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God?” Doubtless, “these mercies of David” and of Israel are made sure to him and to them by the actual death and resurrection of Christ; but does this fulfillment in the heavenly places first, disconnect them from the typical ark and the priests, when they bore it along, in wood and in gold, into the land of Immanuel? It is significant that Paul propounds the same enigma (from Psa. 110.) as the Messiah did, “Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet,” only with this difference, that Paul quotes it to account for the absence of the Messiah from the earth, as rejected by His enemies; and Jesus, that He might oblige the Pharisees to confess that David’s Son must be David’s Lord at the right hand.
These were the ways of “the ark of the covenant” (in which they had not heretofore trodden, and for which, typically, they were to leave a epees of two thousand cubits), in order for them “to come to Mount Zion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,” &c., when “the Lord of all the earth” will come forth, and reign before His ancients gloriously. Nor were the throne, and the scepter, and the government, and the kingdom in Mount Zion, the only mercies promised to “the appointed heir,” and spoken of by the Messiah when upon the earth, or by Paul, in his Epistle to these Hebrews, when he bade them go after the Ark, which had really taken the way of Jordan, to reach its place of rest in glory. Either they took part with the enemies of the ark, when “in wood and gold,” or when it passed along “in flesh and blood,” or when it took the way “of death and resurrection to the right hand,” and would “be made a footstool for his feet” another day; or else they formed part of the new generation of Gilgal and Shiloh who believed, and were entering into rest, in the city for which Abraham looked. They had come out originally (Paul tells them in his epistle) by “the way of Mount Sinai, and the voice of words,” and the former covenant of works; but the ark of “the covenant of the Lord your God” refused to travel by “the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire.” It takes its path through “the tabernacle” of Moses in the wilderness, and then upon the shoulders of the priesthood across Jordan, in the days of Joshua, onward to Shiloh, by Eleazar, and finally is carried up by David, under other patterns, and another ministry, to Mount Zion, and then put into the temple of rest and peace, in the reign of Solomon, where the staves are drawn out. May be, these stages of the mysterious journeyings of the ark, and its spaces, are the ground-work of Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, and, if so, would illuminate and illustrate the Book of Joshua, whether for Jews, or for Gentiles, or Christians with their heavenly calling.
Certainly he bids “the children of Abraham” come forth, and follow the “true ark,” in the first chapters, as “anointed with the oil of gladness,” to conduct them into “the great salvation” of the second, where the ark (in flesh and blood, and by the passage of Jordan) goes down with the priests to the bottom, and stands firm till all the people are passed over. They were baptized unto Moses, in the cloud and in the Red Sea; but they came up out of Jordan under “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God,” to possess the land. In “flesh and blood,” too, Christ takes the place of Joshua as “the Captain of our salvation,” “made perfect through sufferings.” He took part of the same “with these children, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage.” What is this action, if it be not in type, meeting the whole strength and power of Jordan, at the time when its waters overflowed the banks too? They left twelve stones in the bed of the river, and they carried twelve stones out, as the abiding proof to their children that the tribes of Israel had followed the ark and the priests by the path they had not heretofore traveled; of death and resurrection, to Gilgal and Shiloh. Besides this, He, “the ark,” in flesh and blood, and as “Son of man,” in this chapter 2, takes His place as “the appointed heir of all things,” according to the scope and power of David’s Psa. 8, “in the world to come,” and all things put under His feet, according to “the everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure.”
The ark of the covenant, or “the brightness of the glory,” which came forth in the beginning of this epistle as the express image, and in the effulgence of the eternal Son, whom all the angels of God worship, enters by another way in chapter 2. “The ark” reveals itself here under the coverings and curtains, in the glory of His humiliation, and seen in the likeness of man, “for verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” Moreover, “in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest, in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” As the “Captain of our salvation, he was made perfect through sufferings,” and now, for loving sympathies as the High Priest, he has qualified Himself, being tempted, “to succor them that are tempted.” He has identified Himself as the ark with the congregation in the Book of Joshua, by “flesh and blood,” with the nucleus of a new generation in Jordan, by the baptism of John; and now, as on the other side of its waters, with “the children” and “the brethren” in the true tabernacle, and in the midst of the great congregation, by a real death and resurrection with Him. “He who sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one,” becomes the new principle and manner of “the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God,” when revealing itself in its other relations to us, in the tabernacle of Shiloh, on the way, or in the sanctuary of its permanent rest in heaven, and “made without hands.” (As in chapter 7.)
How graciously Paul seeks, in other parts of this epistle, to win these believing Hebrews away from the shittim wood and the pure gold; yea, and from the mere “likeness of flesh and blood,” and their associations with an earthly Messiah, as well as from their typical history under Moses and Joshua, by giving out the summary of all these, from “the ark of the covenant” passed on before them. “Now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum; we have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Indeed we must own, that the Hebrews is the only epistle which teaches us what Christian priesthood is, and which introduces to us “our great High Priest, Jesus, the Son of God, passed through the heavens.” Its connection, therefore, with the Book of Joshua, in which “the ark of the covenant” borne by the priesthood, and taking the way of Jordan into the promised rest, is of real importance, and is analogous in many respects to “the rest which yet remaineth for the people of God” (in chap. iv.), and into which “we who believe are entering,” though the space may be yet between the ark and ourselves.
(To be continued.)
The Book of Joshua and The Epistle to the Hebrews - 4
(Continued from page 202.)
The temple, it is true, is not named in the Hebrews, for how could it be, seeing that its patterns were not even given out till Solomon was in view, and after David had brought up the ark “from the fields of the wood at Ephratah?” We may turn for a moment from the ark, and its connection with Joshua and the drawn sword, to notice Eleazar and “the tabernacle which was pitched in Shiloh” for the worship of Jehovah, as this forms another center. Indeed we may ask, What would all the fighting in Canaan be worth, or the conquests, if the relationships of God “by the ark of the covenant” were not maintained with His people in their midst; and if Eleazar and the tabernacle were not at Shiloh, as the way and means of their approach to Him as worshippers? Again, we may inquire, Are not these three typical things, which are the prominent characteristics of the Book of Joshua, namely, the ark of the covenant, the Captain of salvation, and the priest in the tabernacle at Shiloh, the groundwork of Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews? To be sure, the book is typical and earthly; whereas the epistle is matter of fact, and heavenly; but such differences as these are familiar to us, and natural to the Christian standing, with the ark at the right hand of the throne, in its proper place of rest, and the journey, with its combats, over and ended. It is as out of Jordan, by Him who destroyed the whole power of death, and as one with the Priest who has made propitiation for our sine, and as one with Him who sanctifieth, that the “holy brethren” are addressed as “partakers of the heavenly calling,” and exhorted to “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.”
“Holy brethren” come into place in connection with the ark and the priest in the sanctuary, so that, perhaps, this part of the epistle has more to do with worship, from chapter 5 to 10, than with the ark of the covenant, and our following it through death and resurrection, at the time when Jordan overflowed its banks, as in chapters 1, 2. No doubt the tabernacle in the wilderness was taken over Jordan, and became the tabernacle in Canaan, for “the whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh, and set up the tabernacle of the congregation there.” Thus we find, in chapter 4, the wilderness, and the journeying, and the grace for “the time of need,” side by side with the rest of creation, and the rest of Canaan, and the rest that remaineth for God and His people. In short, there is no temple in the Book of Joshua, nor any temple in the Hebrews, but there is a tabernacle instead, with Eleazar, and pitched at Shiloh; and, correspondingly, we have the true one in chapter 8, “which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Indeed, it is because Shiloh, and the tabernacle, and Eleazar the priest are in such prominence in their own circle in the Book of Joshua, that the correspondence becomes so important in Paul’s epistle as the antitype.
Moreover, “the heirs of promise” are looked at by God, and encouraged on their way, in chapter 6, to lay hold upon the hope set before them, by the immutability of His counsel, as Joshua had done, in chapter 18, to the children of Israel: “How long are ye slack to go and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers hath given you?” There is this difference, however, and a most important one, that Paul says to his Hebrews, “whither the forerunner is for us entered it, even Jesus, made an high priest forever, after the order of Melchisedec.” Paul had not to fight that he might get possession, but Joshua had. The Forerunner Himself, “the appointed, heir” of all the inheritance, had already entered in, and appeared to Paul when on his way to Damascus. There is yet a difference to be noticed in the Book of Joshua, and one that brings Caleb forward as a claimant, in chapter 14, and which gives him priority and prominence as a true heir, amongst his co-heirs. Indeed, he takes the center of this circle, on account of his faith, and is remarkable for endurance and patience, whilst following the ark on its return journey into the desert, as he was famous in energy for conflict with the Anakims at Mount Hebron, when on the other side of Jordan.
We may pass on now from the “holy brethren” with their heavenly calling, and the pilgrims and strangers in “time of need” —yes, and from “the heirs of promise,” with the hope of citizenship in the land, to their final rest on Mount Zion, as in chapter 22, with the ark of the covenant, to look at a further glory of the Son, which Paul connects with “their father Abraham.” “For this Melchisedek,” he says, “who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him, is king of Salem, and priest of the most high God” —to whom Abraham gave a tenth part of all; who is first, being by interpretation, “king of righteousness, and after that also king of Salem, which is king of peace.” It appears to me that this slaughter of the confederated kings in the time of Abraham, like the overthrow of the Adoni-zedek, and the Jabin confederation, in the days of Joshua, has very much in common with the yet coming confederacy and slaughter “of kings, and captains, and mighty men,” in the Apocalypse, and particularly in Rev. 19. In a certain sense the Book of Joshua is more like a clearing of the inheritance for the heirs, and putting them into possession of the promised land, with Eleazar and the tabernacle at Shiloh, as the connecting link of relationship with Jehovah, than as reaching further into their history. After Gilgal and Shiloh came Bochim, and after Joshua and Eleazar came the Judges; nor does Israel come out again in luster till the time of Ichabod had passed by, and “the Lord’s anointed King” was crowned, and Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord, instead of David his father, and the temple was filled with the glory of God. “Ye are come to Mount Zion,” &c.
Melchisedek is I submit, outside the Book of Joshua, and far beyond it, though I do not doubt it rightly comes in on the way with Paul’s Hebrews, as he leads them forward to “the heavenly Jerusalem, and city of the living God,” and will get its actual fulfillment in the grand millennial times of the true Solomon’s reign. Wonderful as the Book of Joshua is typically, yet, in some respects, it is short of the Hebrews; of course, I mean as regards Melchisedek and the ark of covenant, in its connection with Mount Zion, under “the king of righteousness and king of peace,” in the heavenly Jerusalem, which is, after all, their line of march and of inheritance, only under Paul’s leadership. As regards ourselves, as believers in Christ, and as true worshippers, “who worship God in spirit and in truth,” in the holiest, where He dwells, and where the ark of the covenant rests, and where Christ is sat down, we all know increasingly how precious this epistle is to us, as our new and completed Book of Leviticus. It may, and does, come short of the Colossians, and Ephesians, and some others, but it contains what neither of those does; and, above all, makes known to us the anointed “High Priest of our profession,” and this, too, in the essential glory of His person as Son, as well as in His twofold relations of the only-begotten Son of God, and the exalted Son of man, set over all the works of the Creator’s bands. The Book of Joshua does not lose by it.
Besides these, we have His glorious offices, as High Priest “passed through the heavens,” as Intercessor, living in the presence of God for us, and as Mediator of the new covenant to the house of Israel, when “the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” The Great High Priest “passed through the heavens,” even Jesus, the Son of God, is essential to Christianity, and for Christian worship and intercession. Such an High Priest became us, and Paul’s Hebrews (who followed the ark, up to the right hand of God, by faith), who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens. The priesthood and the priest must be equal to the position of the people, whether earthly or heavenly, and he made higher than their calling, and these give their character to the holiest, where God is, and to the worshippers and their worship, as in chapters 9, 10. The practice of elucidating Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, Colossians, and Ephesians, by the various chapters in the Book of Joshua, and their distinguishing records, is quite right (and vice versa), but neither of those epistles, be it remembered, takes up priesthood or worship.
The relations of God, therefore, which were maintained by the tabernacle of witness, and Eleazar the priest, at Shiloh, in the time of Joshua, must be passed over in any real exposition of this book; or an epistle is wanted which recognizes these relations, and applies them to ourselves and priesthood as over Jordan, and why not this Epistle to the Hebrews? If the answer he, that it is an epistle for the wilderness, this is freely admitted, but not for “the time of need” only—for the tabernacle was in the land of Canaan, as we have been examining. The classification of the Hebrews for priesthood, and its introduction, with Romans, Colossians, and Ephesians, under their characteristic differences, would make the group complete, and enable us to take up and elucidate all the parts in the Book of Joshua, under these four epistles of Paul. In this way the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests bearing it, as well as Eleazar and Shiloh, with the tabernacle for worship, would be no longer in the background, or omitted as they generally are. But enough has been said to call attention to the fact, and to help in the consideration of the real character of the Hebrew epistle as a complete reference to the Book of Joshua, and this is the main object in these remarks.
In conclusion, and as a summary, I judge that the ark of pure gold is beautifully embodied by “the express image and glory” of the Son, as in Heb. 1:2, 3, and that the Shittim wood of the ark is as perfectly represented by His manhood as the only-begotten Son, in verses 5, 6. Moreover, “the body prepared for him,” and in which He came to do the will of God, was the embodiment of the two tables of the covenant which the ark contained, but which were, in like manner, taken out, and magnified in Himself, who said, “Yea, thy law is within my heart.” What, too, are the central chapters of Hebrews, touching the Priest in heaven, but the transfer of “Aaron’s rod that budded,” and “the golden censer,” out of the typical ark, into their own proper place in the presence of God for us? Again, what is “the golden pot that had manna,” but the person, and words, and works, and ways of Jesus below, and of which this precious epistle is the exposition? So, likewise, as to the tabernacle itself (with Eleazar and Shiloh), wherein was the candlestick, and the table, and the showbread, what is Paul uncovering to his Hebrews in our epistle but the things themselves, in their great Antitype, who is passing before them in the glory of His person? But enough for inquiry and suggestion, though “Jesus the author and finisher of our faith,” and “so great a cloud of witnesses” form a marvelous company—of whom the world was not worthy!
J. E. B.
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