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Leviticus 24
We should very imperfectly realize to our minds the idea of the great Hebrew camp, if we ignored the existence in it of a large body of Egyptian people. To their presence, their character, and the evil nature of the influence they exerted, we have more than once alluded. That they were of the lowest order of the people, in a nation where castes were distinctly marked, will be obvious from the consideration that they could have had no other apparent object in leaving with the Israelites than to better their condition; and those whose condition could be bettered, in human calculation, by following into the wilderness the liberated bondmen of Egypt, could have had no comfortable homes in their own country. The manner in which the books of Moses mention them, confirms abundantly this impression. In Exo_12:38, those who went up with the Israelites are described as “a great rabble,” for such is the literal import of the Hebrew phrase. In the grosser discontents and low repinings, it is, as might be expected from a people of this low condition, “the mixed multitude” who take the lead, Num_11:4; and in Deu_29:11, the members of this great body—the strangers of the camp—seem to be described as having, in the course of time, subsided into the condition of servants to the Hebrew host: “Thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood to the drawer of thy water.”
If there is any one who asks whether it be possible that the wealthy, powerful, and luxurious Egypt contained any people so low and miserable as to be willing to cast in their lot with the wanderers of Israel, we need but look at home for an answer. In our own case, a nation, perhaps the most powerful in the world, probably the most luxurious, and certainly the most wealthy, exhibits a greater amount of abject poverty, of utter destitution, than any other nation of the world can show, excepting, perhaps, only China, which is also a very wealthy, luxurious, and powerful nation. And if we not only see this, but see tens of thousands of our naturally home-loving people, driven from our golden shores year by year, in search of bread, let us not wonder that there were among the Egyptians a multitude of people, willing and glad to quit their country with the Hebrews, in the knowledge that for them any change must be for the better, because it could not be for the worse. But we do not want analogies to prove that Egypt afforded a sufficiency of people in this low condition. We have facts. History concurs with the monuments in placing before us the most marked and manifest distinctions of society, resulting in part, no doubt, from the institution of castes, such as we find in India, although, as we have seen, that institution is not necessary to account for it: “A part of the people,” says Hengstenberg, Note: Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 83. “appears to have been in the deep degradation that now presses upon the Fellahs. According to Herodotus, the caste of swineherds, a native tribe, was unclean and despised in Egypt. All intercourse with the rest of the inhabitants, even entrance into a temple, was forbidden, and they were as much despised as the Pariahs in India. The contempt in which they were held was not certainly the consequence of their occupation, but their occupation of the disdain which was felt for them.” But full light falls upon the notices of the Pentateuch, through the painting in Thebes—representing the making of bricks—to which we have already had occasion to refer. There, whether the laborers be Israelites or not, they are certainly foreigners, in an enslaved and despised condition; and among them we see native Egyptians reduced to the same condition, and sharing their labors and their stripes. In fact, so much were a certain class of Egyptians connected with the Israelites, even in Egypt, that intermarriages were formed between them; and in the chapter before us, we have the case of a young man whose father was an Egyptian, but whose mother was a woman of Israel, named Shelomith, of the tribe of Dan. As this person was old enough to engage in a personal conflict with a man of Israel, the union between his mother and his Egyptian father, must have been accomplished at least eighteen or twenty years before, in the time of the hard bondage. No doubt there were many persons of this class in the camp, and from the mixed influence under which they were brought up, we may easily believe that although probably recognized as members of the commonwealth of Israel, and occupying higher positions than persons of wholly alien parentage, they were, as a class, the most unsteady and dangerous persons in the camp. It is precisely such a person whom we should suspect to be more apt than any “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” to treat with irreverence the sacred name of Jehovah. And this was the case. The young man, in the course of the quarrel, dared to utter words of blasphemy against that holy name. In the authorized version it is written that he “blasphemed the name of the Lord, and cursed.” The words in italics are supplied, and do not exist in the original, where it is, “blasphemed the Name, and cursed.” Perhaps it had better been left so; for there can be no doubt what is meant by “the Name;” and the intentional and reverent abstinence of the sacred writer from giving the name itself in this place, seems more strikingly and emphatically to paint the frightful profanity of the man who dared to use it blasphemously. It would seem as if he shrank from the idea of connecting that great name with the idea of its having been profaned. It is not impossible that this example may have had weight with the Jews in originating the practice which is known to have existed among them from a very early period, of regarding themselves as prohibited from uttering the name Jehovah, except on the sacred and solemn occasions, and scarcely on these; for it is well known that even in reading the Scriptures in Hebrew, they always pronounce the word Adonia, Lord, when they come to the word Jehovah. This practice our own translators have imitated, so far as generally to write the word Lord (in capitals) where the original has Jehovah. The recent Jewish translators of Genesis into English, give a singular instance of avoidance in the only case in which it is preserved in that book by our translators, and where it seems to be indispensably required. This is in Gen_22:14 “Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-Jireh;” where the Jewish translators have, “Abraham called the name of that place Adonay-yer’eh.” Frequently, indeed, the Hebrews did, and do, use the word hash-shem, “the Name,” for “Jehovah.” Ancient evidence of the custom of thus alluding to the Deity; without mentioning his name, has been found upon the marbles of Palmyra, among whose inscriptions we find such as these: “To the blessed Name be fear forever;” “To the blessed Name, forever good, and merciful, be fear;” “To the blessed Name forever be fear,” etc. This may remind one of a still earlier instance than the present of the direct mention of the sacred name being avoided, or rather expressed by periphrasis—this was when “Jacob swore by the Fear (rather by the Revered One) of his father Isaac.”—Gen_31:53.
It is recorded that there have been nations which had no law against parricide, because they would not that the law should recognize the possibility that a crime of such enormity could be committed. So in the present case, no law against this unparalleled offence had been given; and therefore the Hebrew magistrates, sensible of the deep enormity of the offence, but not able to measure the degree of punishment, and aware that a precedent was now to be established which would be followed in time to come, proceeded with becoming solemnity and deliberation. Nothing further was done in the matter than to detain the man in custody, “that the mind of the Lord might be showed them.” This was soon known—having been ascertained, probably, by the means now regularly appointed—from the Shekinah, between the cherubim. The Divine utterance, from the supreme Judge and Sovereign of the nation, was, “Bring him forth that hath sinned without the camp; and let all that heard him, lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him;” and a law was given that this should hereafter be the doom of every one, whether a native Israelite or a stranger dwelling in the land, who blasphemed the name of Jehovah.
As the presence of the Lord among his people rendered the camp of Israel holy, the execution within its bounds of one who had rendered himself so abominable and accursed, was not to be endured; and hence the direction that he should be stoned without the camp. Thus also our Lord, who was brought to death on a false charge of blasphemy, was executed without the gate; and thus likewise Stephen, who suffered on the same charge, was “cast out of the city,” and there stoned.
As to the witnesses laying their hands upon his head—this was a significant act by which those who had heard the blasphemy bore testimony to his being fully convicted, and declared that his blood rested upon his own head, and that they and the congregation of Israel were by his death freed from the stain of so great a crime. The Jewish commentators say that this ceremony only took place in the case of those convicted of blasphemy—and they are probably right, as we read of no other examples of the kind in the canonical Scriptures; and the apocryphal book of Susannah, which does contain an instance in relating the punishment of a different crime, is of too little authority, even in regard to Jewish customs, to be cited for the disproof of this assertion.
The Jews made another law for themselves, that every one who heard the name of God blasphemed should rend his clothes. According to this, the high-priest before whom our Lord was brought rent his garment when he heard what he chose to regard as blasphemy—not of course the sacerdotal garments which he wore in the temple (for that would have been a high crime, it being expressly forbidden to rend them even in utmost grief), but those which he wore on ordinary occasions, or which belonged to him in his judicial or civil capacity.
The Jews did not err in declaring that they had a law by which the blasphemer ought to be put to death; their crime was that, in order to compass the death of Jesus, they accused him unjustly, and against all evidence, of this offence—being the very one which they knew to be the best calculated to excite the rage of the people against him, and to lead them to think that they did God service by putting him to death.