Bible Commentaries

Every Man In His Place

Numbers 16:36-38).

So Christianity uses the weapons of its opponents: as David uses the sword of Goliath; so that which has been consecrated unto the Lord, even by men whose spirit and temper were not divine, must be claimed for the service of the altar. The altar was made of wood, yet it was covered with metal that the continual burning upon it might not injure the structure; and now "the censers of these sinners against their own souls," shall be made into "broad plates for a covering of the alta;r."—Behold the Cross—what changes it is undergoing in outward appearance! What are these things which men are nailing to it now? Swords taken in war, trophies brought from the battlefield, crowns once erected in ignoble pride against the supremacy of Christ. So the process goes on. What a Cross it is! What a spectacle!—nailed to it every weapon that has ever been raised against it; and in the very upbuilding of the Cross through the generations we shall read a history which no pen could ever fully write. Shall we join this process of nailing to the Cross that which we have used against it? We have used our little genius—let us go and nail it to the Cross. We have opened our mouth in rude eloquence in many a charge and objection against the Cross—let us give our remaining breath to the praise of him who has never looked upon us but with upbraiding or hopeful gaze. We have fooled away our money in helping those to propagate their views whose object was to turn all earth into a flat plane confined within the four corners of a definite boundary, and to shut out the blue heavens, or to use them merely for the sake of convenience—let us take what remains and say,—Thou wounded Lamb of God, we know thou canst pardon sin, but canst thou forgive folly?—we know not the measure between the tragedy of thy sacrifice and the turpitude of our guilt, but we are not only sinners: we are fools—oh canst thou, Son of God, pity the fool as well as forgive the criminal?—we thought to fight against thee: we meant to win: we accepted the challenge, and now there is nothing left of our rebellious selves but our censers,—Galilean, thou hast conquered!

Let us then accept our places in the divine providence; let us acknowledge a divine order in social relations; do not let us attempt to settle great social questions by the rule of thumb.—Do not imagine that rich and poor can be levelled together all into one plane by some easy democratic method; do let us recognise the presence of a marvellous providence in life. On the other hand, do not let us take such a view of that providence as to lead us to tyrannise over our weaker fellow-creatures; do not let us imagine that we are gods and have a right to override all poor and inferior persons; the true line of wisdom lies between. What hast thou that thou has not received?—that should be the question which every man should hear addressed to himself when he is counting his gold and adding fields to his estate and is most conscious of his commanding intellect and his imperial genius. And as for the poor, they should be taught that poverty is no disgrace. There is a rich poverty. There is a noble failure in life; there is a bankruptcy with extenuating circumstances. There are sufferings that have a divine meaning behind them. So we will have no boasting and no despairing. We are free—the rich and the poor, the leader and the follower. "The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice."

Note

Korah was the leader of the famous rebellion against his cousins Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, for which he paid the penalty of perishing with his followers by an earthquake and flames of fire ( Numbers 26:9-11). The particular grievance which rankled in the mind of Korah and his company was their exclusion from the office of the priesthood, and their being confined—those among them who were Levites—to the inferior service of the tabernacle, as appears clearly, both from the words of Moses in Numbers 16:9, and from the test resorted to with regard to the censers and the offering of incense. The same thing also appears from the subsequent confirmation of the priesthood to Aaron ( Numbers 3:30) may have further inflamed his jealousy. Korah's position as leader in this rebellion was evidently the result of his personal character, which was that of a bold, haughty, and ambitious man. This appears from his address to Moses in Numbers 16:3, and especially from his conduct in Numbers 16:19, where both his daring and his influence over the congregation are very apparent. Were it not for this, one would have expected the Gershonites—as the elder branch of the Levites—to have supplied a leader in conjunction with the sons of Reuben, rather than the family of Izhar, who was Amram's younger brother. From some cause which does not clearly appear, the children of Korah were not involved in the destruction of their father, as we are expressly told in Numbers 26:11, and as appears from the continuance of the family of the Korahites to the reign at least of Jehoshaphat ( 2 Chronicles 20:19), and probably till the return from the captivity ( 1 Chronicles 9:19, 1 Chronicles 9:31). Perhaps the fissure of the ground which swallowed up the tents of Dathan and Abiram did not extend beyond those of the Reubenites. From Numbers 26:27 it seems clear that Korah himself was not with Dathan and Abiram at the moment. His tent may have been one pitched for himself, in contempt of the orders of Moses, by the side of his fellow-rebels, while his family continued to reside in their proper camp nearer the tabernacle; or it must have been separated by a considerable space from those of Dathan and Abiram. Or, even if Korah's family resided amongst the Reubenites, they may have fled, at Moses's warning, to take refuge in the Kohathite camp, instead of remaining, as the wives and children of Dathan and Abiram did ( Numbers 16:27). Korah himself was doubtless with the two hundred and fifty men who bare censers nearer the tabernacle ( Numbers 16:19), and perished with them by the "fire from Jehovah" which accompanied the earthquake.

—Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

Prayer

Almighty God, thou art our Father. God is love. We live in God; without God we cannot live. Thou hast made us, and not we ourselves. The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. Thou hast given unto us a time of birth and a time of death, and no hand can alter the record. We stand in God's eternity. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Father; the very hairs of our head are all numbered. Behold, in what a way hast thou led us these many years in the wilderness! When there was no water, thou didst find streams in the rocks; when the pool was bitter, the healing tree was nigh; when thou didst send upon us a great judgment, in the whirlwind we heard a tone of mercy. In wrath thou dost remember mercy; in judgment thou art compassionate. The mercy of the Lord endureth for ever; and this will we say with the passion of great love. The way of man is not in himself. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, and the Lord's way is always right. Even Numbers 16:35

No man is indispensable to God.—Better that incense be not offered than that the censer be swung with unworthy hands.—Officialism does not necessarily involve personal fitness.—Incense does not disinfect corrupt hearts.—The Numbers 16:38

This is the tremendous hold which God has upon us, namely that we cannot sin against God without committing direct wrong upon ourselves.—All experience proves this to be the case. All the lower analogies tend to the confirmation of this doctrine: he who sins against cleanliness sins against his own health; he who sins against social honesty sins against his own advancement; he who sins against social truth deposes himself from the seat of honour and divests himself from all healthy influence.—We are physically so constituted that a bad thought lowers the health of the brain; and unregulated passion devastates the nature in which it rages; neglect of discipline means loss of force.—Carry up these analogies to the highest level; to cease to pray is to contract the outlook of the soul; to cease to do good is to diminish the power of doing it; to turn away from the heights of heaven is to impoverish the veneration which did homage to old age and bowed itself in the presence of genius and worth.—To go down religiously is to go down in every point and line of life.—If a man can resist God and yet maintain health of soul, without wound or scar, he would in effect be God himself.—If the branch could bear fruit without the vine it would in reality be the vine.—If mortality could overcome death it would prove itself to be immortality.—It is necessary to the unity of all things that Right should be the fountain of health, harmony, and all that is necessary to spiritual progress.—Following the line of this thought, Christians should be living exemplifications of the law which is exceeding broad; they should be men of lofty mind, able to take wide and generous views of all questions, willing to pardon offences and render assistance to weakness; their souls being right with God, their hands should be outstretched in every form of charity.—Christianity is infinitely more than a set of theological particulars; it educates the soul, it strengthens the mind, it ennobles all impulses, it increases and consolidates all the forces of manhood.—The soul that sins is in a state of ill-health.—Sin is a positive wrong done to the quality and function of the soul.—It is an insult to the better nature.—It is as if a man should strike loveliness in the face, or lay his hand upon the throat of living music.—Sin is murder.—We must not look upon sin as a mere mistake for which ample apology can be made; it is blasphemy against all right, health, beauty, music.—It is all this because it is an offence against God.—When night descends upon the earth, it does not darken one room only, it fills the whole house with darkness. So when, sin is committed it is not simply one faculty that is impaired, or one impulse that is discouraged; the whole man goes down and is made the slave of conquering evil.—The prodigal son was made to feel that in leaving his father he lost his property, his companions, his brother, his friends; and all these he lost because he first lost himself.