The sacred historian describes the wonderful increase of the descendants of Israel in the land of the Pharaohs, which had been saved from utter ruin by the genius of Joseph, Israel’s youngest son. Then, after the death of the wise minister, the hatred of the idolatrous Egyptians against the worshipers of the one true God was aroused by the spectacle of the latter’s wonderful increase in numbers. Egypt was full of enslaved foreign races whom their pitiless masters forced to work both in cultivating the land and in building the beautiful cities and stupendous monuments whose ruins survive to this day. To this slavery the Israelites were condemned one and all; and to check effectually their further increase—indeed, to extinguish the race altogether—the male children were ordered to be strangled at their birth.
Here comes in the story of Miriam or Mary, a little Hebrew maiden, who succeeds in saving from destruction her infant brother, ever afterward known as Moses, the most illustrious figure of our Lord, and the destined deliverer of his race. Adopted as her own son by Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses is brought up amid the splendors of the Egyptian court and in all the varied learning of its schools, till he is old enough to prefer openly God’s cause to the service of Pharaoh. He does not hesitate to cast his lot with his down-trodden brethren, but is repelled with unnatural ingratitude by them. After forty years of exile, he is commanded to return to “the House of Bondage,” clothed with authority from on high and commissioned to lead his people forth free in spite of every obstacle.
The central fact and miracle in the book is the passage of the Red Sea—so strikingly typical of Christ’s passion in Jerusalem, and of the manner in which the Cross wrought our redemption. The paschal lamb, whose blood on the Hebrew door-posts saved the believing households from the visit of the devastating angel, had its counterpart in the mystic oblation of Christ on the very eve of His death, and in the divine and ever-present reality of the commemorative sacrifice He then instituted for all coming time. “This is My Blood of the new testament which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins” (Matt. xxvi. 28), clearly points out the identity of the Victim, and of the redeeming Blood, both in the eucharistic celebration and in the fearful consummation of Calvary. The Cross was the instrument of victory used by the Redeemer in His supreme struggle; it was symbolical of the extremity of weakness and shame in the Sufferer—the Almighty Power thus shining forth in this very extremity. Even so did the aged Aaron’s staff in the hand of Moses open a pathway through the waves for God’s people in their dire need, and overwhelm in utter destruction Pharaoh and his pursuing hosts.
The fatal tree had been in the Garden the occasion of Adam’s downfall and of the ruin of his posterity; a feeble staff in the hands of Moses works out the liberation of the chosen race and effects the destruction of their enemies: even so did our Divine Deliverer tread the Red Sea of His passion with all its abysses of shame and degradation, dividing the waves of the sanguinary multitude by His cross of ignominy, and allowing Himself to be nailed to the accursed Tree and to hang therefrom in death as the true fruit of saving Knowledge and eternal Life for the nations.
The Law afterward given to Israel on Mount Sinai, together with the detailed legislation concerning the chosen people’s religion and government, all foreshadowed the more perfect Law to be given by Christ to His church and for the benefit of the whole world. Equally typical and prophetic of the sacraments and graces of the New Law were the manna, the water from the rock, the brazen serpent, and, indeed, all the incidents of the people’s life during the forty years’ wandering in the wilderness.
The whole of Exodus must be read in the light of the Christian revelation to be understood and appreciated.
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.—This book is so called because it chiefly treats of the ceremonies of divine worship to be performed under the direction of the Levites, the priestly order among the Jews. It is the detailed Ritual of the Jewish church.
It must never be forgotten, both in studying the solemn religious worship of the Jewish sanctuary and temple, and in assisting at the sacrificial service of the Christian church, that what God commanded to be done on earth is only the shadow, the preparation, and the foretaste of what takes place in the Heavenly City above, in that divinest of sanctuaries, where He receives unceasingly the worship of Angels and Saints, and in return eternally pours out on them the flood of His blissful love.
The Christian temple with its altar, its one sacrifice, its unchanging Victim, and its adorable and unfailing Presence, is but the lively image of that supernal Holy of Holies, in which the Lamb ever slain and ever immortal is the central object of praise and love and adoration (Apocalypse, chapters iv., v., and following). Thus the sweet and ever-abiding Presence in our tabernacles and the Communion in which in the Gift we receive the Giver, are but the foretaste and the pledge of the unchangeable union of eternity, and of that ineffable Possession destined to be the exceeding great reward of all the faithful children of God.
This blissful life of Angels and men, made perfect by charity in the City of God on high, being the End for which we are created, has, on earth, its nearest resemblance in the Church. But inasmuch as the Hebrew people of old were the forerunners of the Christian people, God so ordained it that the Jewish ritual and worship should be a preparation for the Christian liturgy.
Hence, the Mosaic sanctuary, first, and the Temple of Solomon, afterward, were, each in its turn, the House of God, in which He dwelt in the midst of His people—having, between the Cherubim of the Ark, His throne, on which He received their adorations, their hymns of praise, and their petitions, as well as His Mercy Seat for granting special favors in dire need.
Thus the Temple, the House of God, was also the house of the nation, who were God’s family, just as every family dwelling in Israel was, in God’s thought, and in the belief of the people, to be hallowed as God’s own house and kept pure from moral evil. Wherefore, holiness in the heavenly as well as in the earthly temple, spotlessness and perfection in the principal sacrificial victims that typified the Lamb of God immaculate; purity in the pontiffs, priests, and inferior Levites who ministered at the altar, and purity also in the people who offered the victims for sacrifice or assisted at its celebration; all these are inseparably connected with the notion of worship; all these form the subject of the various ordinances of Leviticus; and all point most significantly to the far greater moral perfection and far higher purity of heart and hand required of the priests and people of the New Law, when they approach its altar.
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.—It is so named from the double numbering or census of the Israelites mentioned, the first, in chapters i.–iv., and, the second, in chapter xxvi. It contains, moreover, the history of their wanderings in the desert, from their departure from Sinai till their arrival on the confines of their promised national territory, in the fortieth year of the Exodus. Both the census and the history are interspersed with various ordinances and prescriptions relating to the divine service and the moral purity of the nation.
Among the remarkable incidents which stand out in the narrative are: the sin and punishment of Aaron and his sister Mary (chap. xii.), and their death (chap. xx.); the prophecy of Balaam (chaps. xxii.–xxiv.); and the appointment of Josue as lieutenant to Moses.
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.—The title comes from a Greek word, meaning “a republication of the Law,” because in it
