NUMBERS 13;14NUM 13 NUM 14
Tic the history contained in these chapters, we shall find, if we consider them, a type of the present outcast condition of Israel. Twelve men, we there read, a ruler out of every tribe being chosen by Moses, went forth in order to spy out the country; and that they returned after a forty days' search, saying that though the land, it was true, was both pleasant and fruitful—as the grapes of Eshcol, which they brought with them, showed—still that it was in vain to attempt to possess themselves of it, seeing that the cities were walled, and that the people were giants, and altogether too strong for them. Thus, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, who only were faithful, they brought a false and evil report of the land. And the people believing them, murmured both against the Lord and against Moses: "Wherefore," said they, "hath the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?" &c. Thus they despised the pleasant land, the inheritance promised of old to their fathers. Consequently, though the Lord, at the intercession of Moses, spared the lives of all except those of the ten spies who had sinned, He gave them to know that, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, not one of that generation above the age of twenty should enter the land. "Your little ones," says the Lord, "which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised. But as for you, your carcasses, they shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness. After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise." Thus we see how their sin and their punishment are made to correspond with each other—their forty years' wandering with their forty days' search. In all which, I believe, we may trace, as it were, the embryo of the sin of the people from Abraham to Christ, and also a sample of their loss of God's presence, which they are enduring at present—the Lord's "breach of promise," the altering of His purpose (see margin), in a much larger sense than the above with regard to His people, as I shall endeavor to show.
Here then let us look again at the year of jubilee, and in connection with it at the four cycles between Abraham and Christ. The year of jubilee occurred, as we know, at the end of every forty-ninth, or seven times seventh year; so that within the compass of seventy weeks, or four hundred and ninety years, it was repeated ten times over, which, reckoning from Abraham to Christ through the four cycles, makes the number amount to forty in all, which, as these ages rolled on and succeeded each other, all told out the secret of grace. They spoke of a rest that remaineth, showing that though sickness and death had for the present usurped it, yet the inheritance given to Abraham at first would one day be cleared—that the pleasant land would, in the full sense, be pleasant at last—a fit abode for the redeemed of the Lord. But did this people give ear to the voice of the jubilee? Did they receive instruction from thence? Alas! no. There was no oneness of mind between them and the Lord; they knew nothing of grace; their hearts, as it were, were in Egypt: and to them did they listen, rather than to the cheering report which the jubilee bore of a new state of things—of redemption and blessing, of an inheritance cleared of all that offends. Such by nature is man. Such, therefore, was Israel, who was used by the Lord to show what we all are by nature. And what is now the result? The Lord has hid His face from His people, and will continue to' do so for the same space of time that He showed them favor of old. The ages roll on—the four ages above named—but where is the trumpet that sounded at the return of every fiftieth year through the land, telling the children of Israel who had sold their possessions to take them again, and speaking at the same time of full redemption and blessing at last? It is utterly silent.
The cycles roll on as before, but are wholly unmarked by any such token of favor on the part of the Lord to His people; nor will they till the fourth, and last, of them ends; or (reckoning time by the jubilees only) till forty years have elapsed will they return to the land of their fathers. Then the remnant of Israel, the children of those who have sinned, will learn the value of that which their fathers despised. Thus we see in all this how the sin and punishment agree; we see forty jubilees profaned on the one hand, and forty jubilees lost on the other; just as the forty years in the wilderness, the fruits of Israel's transgression, correspond with the forty days of their sin, "each day for a year," as we are told.
But here I am aware that an objection will arise as to what I have stated, namely, that the jubilee was not given to Israel till the time of their redemption from Egypt; and hence that from Abraham to Christ I am not thus entitled to count so many as forty. This is quite true; but while I allow it, I also contend that if the actual ordinance did not exist all that time, it had a place in the thoughts of the Lord, who from the beginning had His heart upon that to which it bore witness. And not only so, but His purpose was more or less made known to His people all through. The Sabbath in Eden, what was it but a pledge—like the jubilee afterward, which itself was a Sabbath—of the future rest of creation? Then the prophetic word of Lamech, when his son Noah was born, the type of Christ, the true restorer of all things, spoke the same language: “This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed." (Gen. 5:2929And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed. (Genesis 5:29).) Then, after this, the covenant established with Noah after the flood—God's promise to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob—all told the same tale; all spoke of future blessing and rest, of the time of restitution of all things. But did man, even the Lord's people themselves, ever fully enter into His mind as to this? Never; the whole of man's history bears witness to this sorrowful truth. Each failed in his day. Even Abraham himself, whose faith was so blessed, despised the pleasant land for a season, when he, as soon as a famine arose, failing to trust the Lord for the supply that he needed, departed from Canaan, where he ought to have dwelt, and went down into Egypt. Thus, if the actual ordinance was not despised, it was so in principle; and hence the Lord is dealing at present with Israel as though, through the four cycles above named, this mystical year had thus often passed over them without finding them either willing or able to understand its true import. As a parallel case, we may remember that the Jews were not actually and personally guilty of all the righteous bloodshed from the time of Abel down to the time of Zacharias, but they were so in principle. They allowed the deeds of their fathers, and for this they were punished. So, in this instance, Israel does just the same: they allow the deeds of their fathers, from the time of Abraham downward, in profaning God's Sabbath, in despising the jubilee, and hence they are suffering accordingly.
All this may remind us of the Lord's ways in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, when, as we have seen, the seventy years of Israel's captivity answered to the number of Sabbaths comprised within the cycle of seventy weeks, and how the land in the way of judgment was then doomed to lie waste, because Israel at the due season would not allow it to rest in the way that the Lord had appointed.
Then there is another point. Forty we find is a number very common in scripture, in connection with Moses especially. He was forty years old when he was first made known to his people; forty years he spent in Midian, away from his brethren; and then forty years more he was leading them through the wilderness. Then, again, he twice was forty days with the Lord in the mount. Besides which the Lord Himself was afterward forty days in the wilderness tempted by Satan. And will it, be going too far to speak of the forty stripes to which the judge was restricted in chastening a criminal, and to say that perhaps this also bears on the subject, showing the Lord's measure of punishment, as in the above case of the jubilee, in chastising the nation? I just throw out these hints as to the number in question, leaving them for the consideration of others in connection with Num. 13 and 14.