LESSON VII.--MAY 15.

THE CALL OF MOSES.--EXODUS. 3:1-12.

      GOLDEN TEXT.--I will be thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.--EXODUS 4:12.
      TIME.--B. C. 1491, when Moses was eighty years old.
      PLACE.--In Arabia, among the mountains of Horeb.
      HELPFUL READINGS.--Exod. 2:11-15; Exod. 2:16-22; Acts 7:20-36.
      LESSON ANALYSIS.--1. The Burning Bush; 2. The Call of God; 3. The Cry of Israel Heard.

INTRODUCTION.

      The life of Moses divides itself into three periods of forty years each; the first spent in the Egyptian court &a the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter; the second, beginning with his banishment from Egypt for espousing the cause of his oppressed people and rashly killing one of the oppressors, was spent in Midian, a part of the Sinaitic peninsula in Arabia, where he married and devoted himself to the shepherd's life; the third begins with his call when he was eighty years old.

      As Moses is himself the historian of his own life, it is reasonable to infer from his silence that the period of his residence in Midian was not distinguished by any occurrences sufficiently important in his view to deserve a record. His days probably passed quietly away in the wonted discharge of his duties as a shepherd, and the shepherd, too, of another man's flock. His situation was no doubt favorable to contemplation and communion with God. He could scarcely fail to make progress in that divine knowledge which would do more to qualify him for his future mission than all the learning he had acquired in Egypt. The life, too, which he led was happily adapted to work within him that hardihood of constitution and character of which he would afterward stand so much in need, and of which the sequel of his story affords so many striking instances. Still it could not but be a severe trial of his faith to find year after year elapsing, and the prime and vigor of his age apparently wearing away with no tokens from above indicating that the great work of his vocation was any nearer at hand. Yet he seems meekly to have endured as seeing Him who is invisible, and to have evinced that true wisdom which consists in waiting and following the call of heaven instead of running before it.--Bush.

      I. THE BURNING BUSH.--1. Moses kept the look. There is no doubt a very [139] marked contrast between Moses in the court of Egypt, making his abode in a palace, and surrounded with all the splendors of royalty, and Moses, a humble hireling shepherd, leading his flocks over the rough places of the desert, sleeping often in the open air, exposed to heat and cold, to weariness and watchings, and living upon the coarsest fare. But as we know that he had voluntarily and deliberately made the exchange of one condition for the other, and as we know, too, the motives by which he had been governed in doing it, it would be no matter of surprise could we be assured, as was doubtless the fact, that he was as truly happy while thus traversing the rocky region of Midian, his tent his only shelter, as when treading the marble pavements of Egyptian halls.--Bush. Of Jethro, his father-in-law. It has been stated that Moses married the daughter of Reuel. As he had seven grown daughters (Exod. 2:16) he must have been already an old man. Forty years later he would hardly be living. Hence Jethro is thought to have been his son and successor in the priesthood. The term rendered "father-in-law" might mean any relative by marriage, brother-in-law as well. Backside of the desert. "Behind the wilderness." Jethro probably lived east of Horeb, near the shore of the Gulf of Akaba. The mountain of God. So called, not so much from its great height, as in anticipation of the remarkable scenes of which it was to be the theatre. The greatest of these were the call of Moses, as related in this lesson, and the delivery of the law at Sinai. Horeb. This name was given to the whole mountain cluster of which Sinai was a peak. At last the people and the deliverer were ready; "the iniquity of the Amorites" and of the Egyptians was "full"--events had ripened for another epoch of Providence to disclose itself, and the divine voice which had been silent for centuries was heard once more. The forty years' trial of Moses reminds us of the forty days' temptation of Jesus, also in the wilderness, before he began to break the bondage of which the Egyptian servitude is a constant Scripture symbol, and to announce the law for which the Sinai statutes were a preparation; himself, like Moses, "despised and rejected" by those he came to save.--F. H. Newhall.

      2. The angel of the Lord. It is properly a term of office, and not of nature, and is used to denote not only human and spiritual messengers, but also any of the impersonal agents, such as winds, fires, pestilences, remarkable dispensations, etc., which serve as a medium to make known the divine will, or to illustrate the divine operation in nature or providence. In fact, one of the most frequent uses of the term is as a personification of divine judgments.--Bush. What Moses saw was the flame of fire in the bush; what he recognized within was an intimation of the presence of God, who maketh "a flame of [140] fire his angel" (Psa. 104:4). The words which Moses heard were those of God himself, as all ancient and most modern divines have held, manifested in the person of the Son who is the Word.--Canon Cook. A bush. The seneh, "thorn-bush," or "bramble," is a species of acacia, common in the Sinai peninsula, rising in tangled thickets, and having long, stout and sharp thorns. It is here called the bramble--definitely--as the well-known desert bramble, or as the bramble of this divine appearance. Sinai was probably named from this seneh (senna) shrub, which abounds upon its sides and valleys. The shittah, or shittim tree, used so much in the construction of the tabernacle and its furniture, belongs to the same family.--F. H. Newhall. The accompanying cut will give some idea of the acacia, or shittim wood. The bush was not consumed. The fire was supernatural, and did not affect the wood or vegetable life of the acacia tree. It was this strange fact that arrested the attention of Moses.

      3. I will now turn aside and see. Moses came out of curiosity, but was called by God; so did many to the ordinances for novelty, as the Jews did to John Baptist; or for some other sinister respect; to catch, it may be, and are caught, as those in John 7:46. Or as in Austin, who, coming to Ambrose to have his ears tickled, had his heart touched. It is good to hear, howsoever. Come, said Latimer, to the public meetings, though thou comest to sleep; it may be God may take thee napping. Absence is without hope. What a deal lost Thomas by being but once absent.--Trapp.

      II. THE CALL OF GOD.--4. God called to him out of the midst of the bush. Hundreds of years had passed since there had been a divine revelation. The last of which we have any record was made to Jacob at the time when he was on his dying bed. God has only broken the eternal silence when some [141] crisis arose that demanded the divine utterance. One had now come. Here am I. An expression indicative of readiness to hearken.

      5. Draw not nigh hither. This may be taken as proper to the Old Testament dispensation, which was a dispensation of darkness, bondage and terror, which the Gospel happily frees us from, giving us boldness to enter into the holiest, and inviting us to draw near.--M. Henry. We must come to God; we must not come too near him. When we meditate of the great mysteries of his word, we come to him. We come too near him when we search into his counsels. The sun and the fire say of themselves, Come not too near; how much more the light, which none can attain unto? We have all our limits

SANDALS.

set us.--Bishop Hall. Put off thy shoes. By shoe here is meant the leathern or wooden sole attached to the bottom of the foot by "shoe-latchets" passed round the instep and ankle.--Bush. The reverence indicated by putting off the covering of the feet is still prevalent in the East. The Orientals throw off their slippers on all those occasions when we should take off our hats. They never uncover their heads, any more than we our feet. It would everywhere, whether among Christians, Moslems, or Pagans, be considered in the highest degree irreverent for a person to enter a church, a temple, or a mosque with his feet covered; and we shall observe that the priests under the law officiated with bare feet.--Kitto. Holy ground. That is, sanctified by the presence and manifestation of the Deity, who makes the heavens, the earth, the sanctuary, or whatever place it be in which his glory is revealed, to be accounted "holy," and therefore to be occupied with devout reverence for the divine presence.

      6. I am the God of thy father. The term father seems to be used collectively for the forefathers of Moses. The God of Abraham. God who had revealed himself to the old patriarchs and entered into covenant with them. Moses hid his face. The awe produced by the divine voice and the declaration that Jehovah was speaking caused him to hide his face lest he should be guilty of gazing, profanely on the revelation of the Holy One. [142]

      III. THE CRY OF ISRAEL HEARD.--7. I have surely seen the affliction of my people. Their oppression had now lasted for a period of eighty years, and in their affliction they were beginning to turn to God for deliverance. The long discipline of affliction was beginning to have a wholesome result.

      8. I am come down to deliver them. When the Scriptures speak of God "coming down" they use the language to adapt themselves to human understanding. It is meant that God would now intervene for the deliverance of his people. Bring them . . . to a land flowing with milk and honey. A proverbial description of a choice land abounding in the grasses that nurture cattle and the flowers that produce honey. The place of the Canaanites. The term Canaanites is general and embraces all the others; then are given some of the tribes of Canaan. The Hittites occupied the plains and the Amorites the mountains.

      9. I have also seen the oppression, etc. God's eyes are always upon his people, he notes all their sorrows, and their oppressors will finally have to reckon with him.

      10. I will send thee to Pharaoh. He will go as God's messenger and ambassador. The word he carries will be the word of God. The work is a momentous one. To return, after forty years' exile, to demand of a proud king and people the emancipation of an enslaved race, to brave and defy all Egypt's power; such a work was a mission that might well appall the stoutest heart. [143]

      11. Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh? Moses puts in many pleas to be excused from this grave task. The Lord patiently and encouragingly hears all these scruples of his creature's mind, gives a satisfactory explanation, and applies a complete remedy to every difficulty, until there is nothing in the mind of Moses but an unreasonable shrinking from an arduous and honorable task. Even then he provides a full relief for the trembling heart in the eloquence and company of his brother Aaron. Thus gradually and tenderly he prepares the mind of his servant for acquiescing in, and then heartily devoting himself to, the high office to which he is called.--Murphy. The change in the character of Moses since his first attempt is strongly marked by these words, which, however, indicate humility, not fear. Among the grounds which he alleges for his hesitation in no instance is there any allusion to personal danger; what he feared was failure owing to incompetency, especially in the power of expression. This shrinking from self-assertion is the quality which seems to be specially intimated by the word rendered "meek," in Num. 12:3.--Canon Cook. No chronicler in after times, when Moses was the great hero, the mighty champion of the nation, would have so spoken of him; but all through the Pentateuch Moses ever takes a most humble and modest place. None but himself would have drawn so close a veil over his greatness. It is only at his death, in the last chapter, added by another hand, that his high dignity is declared. There he is the prophet whose like Israel had never seen, with whom the Lord spake face to face, the worker of mighty wonders, the "servant," or, as the phrase really means, "the vicegerent of Jehovah."--R. Payne Smith.

      12. I will be with thee. The Lord is not moved from his purpose by the objection of Moses. He obviates it by undeniable argument, I will be with thee. The power of God with us certainly surmounts all difficulties. This promise will hereafter be embodied in a name, Immanuel--God with us. Here it is framed in a sentence importing the active presence of the Almighty with his chosen servant. This has been the source of the Church's life, strength and hope in all ages. This shall be a token. The mass of modern interpreters understand the token here spoken of to refer, not to the vision of divine glory in the burning bush, but to the actual future result of the mission now devolved upon Moses. The sign promised was no other than the event itself which was predicted, "Go now and try, and you shall find by the event that I have sent you."--Bush. [144]

PRACTICAL AND SUGGESTIVE.

      God's call comes, not to idlers, but busy men; Moses is called from his flocks; David from his sheep; Elisha from his oxen; the apostles from their fishing.

      God's call comes to men of humble position oftener than to those of lofty rank. Ver. 1. God's call comes to men when they have been trained by experience and made patient by adversity. Ver. 1. God's call has attestations and evidences proportioned to the importance of the work required. Vers. 2-4. God's call is attended with a proclamation of himself so clear and strong as to leave no doubt to those whom he summons. Ver. 6. God's call is not to ease and enjoyment, but to work of difficulty and danger. Vers. 7-10. God's call to duty is ever accompanied with the promise of his presence and help. Ver. 12.

      Strange contrasts occur in life. Moses was reared in the palace of the Pharaohs. Forty years had he spent there. But now he is an exile in the wilderness of Midian. He who refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter seeks the hand of a shepherd's daughter and busies himself with the shepherd's lowly toil, a calling despised of the Egyptians. Gen. 46:34.

      Apropos of the distrust of Moses of his own ability for the grand work to which he was called, it is remarked that the modest deportment of the real wise men, when contrasted to the assuming air of the young and ignorant, may be compared to the differences of wheat, which while its ear is empty, holds up its bead proudly, but as soon as it is filled with grain bends modestly down, and withdraws from observation.--J. Beaumont.

      The bush that lives unscathed by the lambent flame that winds round all its leaves and branches is an emblem of that which is pure and holy, and, therefore, of the true Church of God In the furnace of affliction. The lowliness of the shrub comports well with the seeming feebleness and insignificance of the people of God; the flame of fire corresponds with the fiery trial through which they have had to pass that the lusts of the flesh which had grown up in Egypt might be consumed, and faith and its kindred virtues he left behind in all their vigor and beauty.--Bush.

POINTS FOR TEACHERS.

      1. Outline the leading events of the three periods in the life of Moses. 2. Bring out how it came that at 80 years of age he was tending flocks at Horeb. 3. Contrast the circumstances of the first and second periods of forty years. 4. Show how each period helped to prepare him for his great mission. 5. Bring out the circumstances of his call at Horeb. 6. Apply the thought that God never forgets, his people, sees their oppressions, hears their cries, pities their sorrows but sometimes permits their afflictions for their discipline. 7. Note that the oppressor of God's people is observed, his conduct noted, and the day of punishment declared. 8. Note that God's promises all are kept. In due time he delivered Israel and led the people to the promised land. 9. Note the modesty of Moses; all who are really [145] fitted for a great work trust in God rather than themselves. 10. Bring out the strength of Moses, faith in the Divine Help. 11. Note that God elects and calls his servants, ever and anon, to special works; Noah, Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist, Paul, and other great servants who do not belong to the Bible period.

Source: Barton Warren Johnson. The Christian International Lesson Commentary for 1887. Des Moines, IA: