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These are the commandments, etc. - See these different terms analyzed and explained, Leviticus 26:15; (note).
Thus ends the book of Numbers, containing a series of astonishing providences and events. Scarcely any piece of history in the sacred writings is better calculated to impress the mind of a serious reader with a sense of the goodness and severity of God. In every transaction his holiness and justice appear in closest union with his benevolence and mercy. From such a Being what have the wicked not to fear! From such a Father and Friend what have the upright not to hope! His justice requires him to punish iniquity, but his mercy inclines him to pardon all who truly repent and believe in the Son of his love.
The journeyings of this people, from the time they left Egypt, exhibit a series of providential wonders. Every where, and in every circumstance, God appears: and yet there is no circumstance or occasion that does not justify those signal displays of his Grace and his Justice. The genuine history of God's providence must be sought for in this book alone; and as every occurrence happened as an example, we have authority to conclude that in every case where his own glory and the salvation of man are interested, he will interfere and give the fullest proofs that he is the same to-day that he was yesterday, and will continue unchangeable for ever and ever. Reader, are these matters ensamples to thee? Art thou, like the Israelites, come into the plains of Moab, on the very verge of the promised land? Jordan alone separates thee from the promised inheritance. O, watch and pray, that thou come not short of the glory of God. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death; see then that the sting of death, which is sin, be extracted from thy soul, that, being justified by Christ's blood, thou mayest be made an heir according to the hope of an eternal life. Amen, amen.
"I will bring you into the Wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face, like as I pleaded with your fathers in the Wilderness of the land of Egypt. And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and bring you into the bond of the covenant," Ezekiel 20:35-37.
"He (Christ) is the Mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance," Hebrews 9:15.
Sections In the Book of Numbers, carried on from Leviticus, which ends with the Thirty-Third.
The Thirty-Fifth, called נשא nasa, begins Numbers 4:21, and ends Numbers 7:89.
The Thirty-Sixth, called בהעלתך behaalothecha, begins Numbers 8:1, and ends Numbers 12:16.
The Thirty-Seventh, called שלח shelach, begins Numbers 13:1, and ends Numbers 15:41.
The Thirty-Eighth, called קרח korach, begins Numbers 16:1, and ends Numbers 18:32.
The Thirty-Ninth, called חקת chukkath, begins Numbers 19:1, and ends Numbers 22:1.
The Fortieth, called בלק balak, begins Numbers 22:2, and ends Numbers 25:9.
The Forty-First, called פינחס pinechas, begins Numbers 25:10, and ends Numbers 30:1.
The Forty-Second, called מטות mattoth, begins Numbers 30:2, and ends Numbers 32:42.
The Forty-Third, called מסעי masey, begins Numbers 33:1, and ends Numbers 36:13.
The daughters of Zelophehad had obtained an ordinance Numbers 28:6-11 which permitted the daughters of an Israelite dying without male issue to inherit their father‘s property. The chiefs of the Machirites, of whom Zelophehad had been one, now obtain a supplemental enactment, directing that heiresses should marry within their own tribe.
Numbers 36:4
Be taken away - i. e. be permanently taken away. The jubilee year, by not restoring the estate to the tribe to which it originally belonged, would in effect confirm the alienation.
Numbers 36:11
Unto their father‘s brothers‘ sons - Or more generally, “unto the sons of their kinsmen.”
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