t Moses; in all My
house he is faithful. Mouth to mouth I speak to him, and face to face,
and not in dark speeches; and the appearance of the Lord he beholds."
Moses, as a prophet, is here contrasted with the whole order of
prophets of ordinary gifts. A higher dignity among them is claimed for
him on the ground that not some special mission, [Pg 112] but the care
of the whole economy of the Old Testament, was entrusted to him;
compare Heb. iii. 5. His is a specially close relation to the Lord, a
specially high degree of illumination. The collective body of ordinary
prophets cannot, therefore, by any possibility be the "prophet" who is
_like unto Moses_, as completely equal to the task of the future as
Moses was for that of his day. But the greater the work of the future,
the more necessary is it that the prophet of the future, in order to be
_like unto Moses_, should, in his whole individuality, and in all his
gifts, be far superior to him; compare Heb. iii. 6.

_Finally_,--The common prophetic order itself refuses the honour of
being the prophet like unto Moses. The prophecies of Isaiah, in
chapters xlii., xlix., l., and lxi., are based upon our passage, and in
all of them the Messiah appears as the prophet [Greek: kat' exochen].
It is to Him that the mission is entrusted of being the restorer of
Jacob, and the salvation of the Lord, even unto the end of the world.

Whilst these reasons demand the reference of this prophecy to Christ,
there are, on the other hand, weighty considerations which make it
appear that a reference to the prophetic order of the Old Testament
cannot be excluded. These considerations are, 1. The wider context.
Deuteronomy is distinguished from the preceding books by this, that
provisions are made in it for the time subsequent to the death of
Moses, which was now at hand. From chap. xvii. 8, the magistrates and
powers--the superiors, to whose authority in secular and spiritual
affairs the people shall submit--are introduced. First, the civil
magistrates are brought before them, xvii. 8-20; and then the
ecclesiastical superiors, chap. xviii. Vers. 1-8 treat of the priests
as the ordinary servants of the Lord in spiritual things. Everywhere
else, offices, institutions, orders, are spoken of. In such a
connection, it is not probable that _the prophet_ should be only an
individual; and the less so, because evidently the prophet, as the
organ of the immediate revelation of God, is placed by the side