And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people: and it shall come to pass, that he shall be to thee a mouth, and thou shalt be to him as God.- Exo_4:16.
And Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.- Exo_7:1.
1. In ancient times the office of a priest and that of a preacher were known to be entirely distinct. The firstborn in every family was of course the priest in that family, by virtue of his primogeniture. But that gave him no right to be a preacher, or (in Scriptural language) a prophet. This office not infrequently belonged to the youngest branch of the family. For in this respect God always asserted His right to send by whom He would send. The eldest of the family was the priest, but any other might be the prophet. In the time of Moses, we are told, a very considerable change was made with regard to the priesthood. God then appointed that, instead of the firstborn in every house, a whole tribe should be dedicated to Him; and that all who afterwards ministered unto Him as priests should be of that tribe. Thus Aaron was of the tribe of Levi. Not many of the Levites were prophets, and if any were, it was a mere accidental thing. They were not such as being of that tribe.
2. God's own witnessing begins the history of Aaron: “I know that he can speak well.” The words are not only Aaron's credentials; they argue also the place of eloquence in the Divine economy. Aaron, we are told, could speak well, while Moses was slow of speech. Thus Aaron was providentially appointed to be a spokesman for his brother-his prophet, his interpreter; literally, his mouthpiece. If Moses furnished the ideas and plans of action, Aaron clothed them in the language which would explain and recommend them. If Moses was the receiver of God's revelations, he made them known to others through his more eloquent brother. It was Aaron who spoke during the interviews with Pharaoh; it was Aaron who generally addressed the Israelites; Aaron was, indeed, the immediate worker of many of the miracles which preceded the Exodus. A striking illustration of Aaron's relation to Moses occurs during the critical battle with the Amalekites, when Aaron and Hur supported the weary hands of Moses as they were lifted up to procure the victory of Israel. It may happen that those who cannot themselves lead may be strictly indispensable to those who can. If Aaron could never have taken the place of Moses, Moses could not have been what he was without the sympathy and support of Aaron. If Moses ranks before Aaron, Aaron can never be dissociated from Moses: Aaron shares with Moses, though as a subordinate, the glory of having ruled and shaped the course and conduct of his countrymen at a time of unexampled difficulty, pregnant with the highest consequences to the religious future of the world. Samuel, when solemnly reviewing the history of his people, places them thus side by side. “It is the Lord,” he says, “that advanced Moses and Aaron.” “Thou leddest thy people,” sings a later Psalmist, “like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”
We are not all the men of Moses-like genius and originality we might like to be. We are not all epoch-making, history-making, nation-making men. But we are what we are. We are what God has made us to be; and Moses himself is no more. And Moses may be as glad to meet me in my teachableness and in my love and in my reverence as I am to meet him in his magnificent supremacy and high solitariness of gift and of office.1 [Note: A. Whyte.]
That we are what we are brings obligation to be just that to others. The poet and the philosopher need each other, and each must hamper the other into some semblance of practicalness. The enthusiast finds not only his antithesis, but also his complement, in the phlegmatic person, and the good of society brings them together, one to keep the other from sailing off on wild vagaries and living on the film of day dreams, and he, in turn, to save the other from the curse of petrifaction and a failure to see the beauties of God's Universe. The singer lifts his brother from the shrieks and smells of a distracting mart, and leaves him some sweet strains to lighten toil as he plods along his more prosaic path, but the tradesman is needed to “pay the piper.” The multitude may need the orator to voice the thoughts and feelings which they have had but could not utter, but the orator needs the flashing eyes and ears attent, to magnetize him and loose the torrent of his speech. Temerity and timidity, antipodes are they, and yet complements. For the timid man may hold his foolhardy brother back from rash and ruthless sacrifice-from martyrdom when martyrs are not needed-and the daring man may impart to his more fearful fellow such measure of his own spirit as will make of him a martyr when martyrdom is the price of righteousness and honour. The Calvinistic temperament needs its Arminian or Methodistic complement, and it will not hurt them at all to be in the same church, as we have them; for one will keep the other from despairing and doubt, and will be kept at work by him in spiritual exercise. The Ritualist will keep the Low Churchman from any tendency to slovenliness and disorder, and will be saved by him from a dead and unspiritual ceremonialism.2 [Note: C. C. Pierce, The Hunger of the Heart for Faith, 198.]
3. Aaron was the mouthpiece of Moses, but Moses was to Aaron as God. Here we have the second great point in Aaron's character. He was indeed indispensable to Moses, but Moses was still more indispensable to him. This has often been regarded as a grave fault in Aaron's character; but dependence on others is in itself no crime. Without Moses Aaron would probably never have been heard of, and he was quite justified in leaning to a certain extent on his stronger brother, if by that means he could complete his own life.
A common man and a man of no gifts may be set in a place, and may have a calling of God that he cannot escape-a place and a calling which demand constant speaking and constant teaching at his hands-a minister, for instance. He may not be a great scholar or a great thinker himself, but he is set over those who are still less scholars, and who think still less. Now, what is such a man to do? What, but just to take Moses instead of God. What, but just to find out those great divines and other great authors who have been so immediately and richly gifted of God, and to live with them, and work with them, and make them his own, just as if God had given him all the great gifts He has given them. If I am a man of no learning and no originality, then I know men, both living and dead, who are; and they are all that, of God and under God, for me. And, if I had to travel barefoot to Horeb for them, if I had to sell my bed for them, at any cost I would have them. I would take no rest till I had found them, and then, as God said of Aaron, I would be glad when I saw them, and I would kiss them, and claim them as my own.1 [Note: A. Whyte.]
4. Aaron's dependence on Moses, however, was so great that he tended to become a mere cypher; he had grown so accustomed to speaking for Moses that he had gradually lost the power of speaking for himself or of thinking for himself. He had every quality fitted for a great leader but one-tenacity of purpose. He was eloquent, shrewd, persuasive, pleasing in manner and address, endowed with the gifts that win popularity; but he was vacillating. He was perfectly sincere; he spoke the genuine sentiment which he entertained at the moment. But there was no guarantee that he would retain this sentiment at the end of the hour.
The Bible's test of strength is tenacity of will. To be immovable like the great mountains, to be steadfast as the solid rocks, is ever its deepest aspiration. The things of nature which it admires are the things which it can think of as tenacious. The tree whose leaf “shall not wither,” the city which “shall never be moved,” the sun that “shall no more go down,” the well of water “springing up eternally,” the rainbow which shall be a sign “while the earth remaineth”-these are among its fondest fancies. And all these are to the Bible but the symbols of a deeper tenacity still-the endurance of a human heart, the steadfastness of a human purpose.1 [Note: G. Matheson.]
(1) Aaron's weakness appeared especially on the occasion of the general apostasy, which took place during the absence of Moses on the mount, and when the people prevailed on Aaron to make for them a molten image. The older Jewish writers have laboured hard to vindicate Aaron from the charge of idolatry on this unhappy occasion. He yielded, some of them have alleged, to the people's wishes in the matter only that he might prevent their perpetrating the greater crime of laying violent hands on himself, should he resist their importunate demands; others, that he might protract the business till Moses should return and arrest its execution; and others still, that he might render the apostasy less complete, by proclaiming a festival to Jehovah, under the symbol of the calf, not to the calf itself. But we find no such palliations of his conduct in Scripture. With its wonted and stern impartiality it represents him as having contributed to bring a great sin upon the people, and made them naked to their shame before their enemies. Moses even speaks of having made his sin the subject of special intercession, as being one of peculiar aggravation. It was not, however, that Aaron prompted, or in any proper respect headed, the apostasy; it was only that he showed himself too facile in giving way to the evil, instead of using the authority and influence he possessed to withstand it.
(2) Such, too, appears to have been the part he acted on the next occasion of backsliding, when, along with Miriam, he yielded to a spirit of envy against Moses, and reproached him, both for having married an Ethiopian woman and for assuming too much authority. Miriam was plainly the ringleader in this more private outbreak, since she is mentioned first, and on her, too, as the more guilty one, the special judgment of Heaven comes down.
(3) The only other occasion on which Aaron is charged with open transgression was at that fearful tumult which arose in the desert of Sin, on account of the want of water, and which overcame even the stronger faith and more patient endurance of Moses. It betrayed a failure, if not in the principle of faith, at least in its calm and persistent exercise. And, happening as it did at a comparatively late period in the wilderness sojourn, and too palpably indicating an imperfect sanctification in the two leaders, they were, partly on their own account, and partly as a solemn lesson to others, alike adjudged to die, without being permitted to enter the Promised Land.
What profound knowledge of human nature, what psychological intuition had Moses, who dared to let four generations of his weakened and demoralized followers perish, and merely serve as stepping-stones to the one destined to enter the Land of Promise and to settle down there in peace and plenty. What indomitable strength of purpose, what iron resolution must the man have possessed, who could wait thus calmly for results! Well might he feel that he had power to bid water flow from the barren rock, nay more, that in his righteous indignation he was justified in breaking the Tables of the Law, which he had just received, since it lay with him to inscribe them again. The light that flashed from his eyes was of more than mortal brilliancy; it was the sacred fire of enthusiasm, the glory that might illumine his face alone who knew himself to be in direct communication with the Deity. And well and wisely has that kindred soul, Italy's greatest sculptor, portrayed him thus, with the aureole of genius and titanic strength encircling his brow. Across the centuries these two, mystically allied by their superhuman energies and achievements, have met and understood one another, and the real Moses stands forever revealed to us in the form and features lent him here. It is strength in its highest manifestation which Michelangelo has symbolized, and we feel ourselves in presence of something that transcends our puny human faculties,-that springs from Faith, unswerving and unshaken.1 [Note: From Memory's Shrine: Reminiscences of Carmen Sylva, 74.]
