of
their pulverised god was strewn; receives the abject apology of Aaron,
thoroughly spirit-broken and demoralised; and finding the sons of Levi
faithful, sends them to the slaughter of three thousand men. Yet this is
he who said "O Lord, why is Thy wrath hot against Thy people?" He
himself felt it needful to cut deep, in mercy, and doubtless in wrath as
well, for true affection is not limp and nerveless: it is like the ocean
in its depth, and also in its tempests. And the stern action of the
Levites appeared to him almost an omen; it was their "consecration," the
beginning of their priestly service.

Again he returns to intercede; and if his prayer must fail, then his own
part in life is over: let him too perish among the rest. For this is
evidently what he means and says: he has not quite anticipated the
spirit of Christ in Paul willing to be anathema for his brethren (Rom.
ix. 3), nor has the idea of a vicarious human sacrifice been suggested
to him by the institutions of the sanctuary. Yet how gladly would he
have died for his people, who made request that he might die among them!

How nobly he foreshadows, not indeed the Christian doctrine, but the
love of Christ Who died for man, Who from the Mount of Transfiguration,
as Moses from Sinai, came down (while Peter would have lingered) to bear
the sins of His brethren! How superior He is to the Christian hymn which
pronounces nothing worth a thought, except how to make my own election
sure.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

_PREVAILING INTERCESSION._

xxxiii.

At this stage the first concession is announced: Moses shall lead the
people to their rest, and God will send an angel with him.

We have seen that the original promise of a great Angel in whom was the
Divine Presence was full of encouragement and privilege (xxiii. 20). No
unbiassed reader can suppose that it is the sending of this same Angel
of the Presence which now expresses the absence of God, or that He Who
then would not pardon their transgression "because My Name is in Him" is
now sent because God, if He were in the midst of them for a moment,
would consume them. Nor, when Moses passionately pleads against this
degradation, and is heard in this thing also, can the answer "My
Presence shall go with thee" be merely the repetition of those evil
tidings. Yet it was the Angel of His Presence Who saved them. All this
has been already treated, and what we are now to learn is that the
faithful and sublime urgen