David Baron

“ Israel's history and God's dealings with them is no encouragement to the Christian to think lightly of sin and of backsliding from God, for we see that God is a jealous God, visiting the sins of His people even more than on the sins of the world; but it also displays the marvellous faithfulness of Jehovah and His love towards His redeemed, which all the many waters of their sins and backslidings cannot quench. ”

“ And when once Israel learns to know God in the face of Jesus Christ, and has unveiled to them His absolute truth and righteousness, as well as His infinite love, " they shall fear toward Jehovah and His good- ness in the latter days." ”

“ He was the Lamb of God, but by reason of their unbelief and the judgments which have befallen them in consequence of His rejection, His first coming to them, as depicted in the preceding verse, has been " as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah : He has torn and gone away." ”

“ The word translated here " return " is the Hebrew for repentance. It is the word the prophets so often used when they cried, " Turn ye ; turn ye, for why will ye die O house of Israel ? " but they have never yet as a nation returned to God, neither will they return until the Spirit is poured upon them from on high, and the work of grace begins in their hearts. Then " a voice will be heard upon the high places, even the weeping and supplication of the children of Israel, because they have perverted their way and have forgotten Jehovah their God." ”

“ The more Jews there are in a city the smaller the death-rate among the children. In Warsaw the Jews are one-third of the population, and the death-rate of 1,000 children during the first year of their lives is only 187. In Moscow, where the Jews are only 2 per cent, the death-rate of infants is 391.
" The Russian people, with the exception of the Jews, have the highest birth-rate and the highest death-rate of all the peoples of Europe. Of all the races and religious faiths professed in Russia the Jewish element is the most fruitful. ”

“ But Israel did not know, neither did they understand, and instead of hailing Him with acclamation, they said, " Not this man we will not have this man to reign over us." Early in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, impressed by His miracle-working power, they would have taken Him by force and made Him king, but their ideals of the Messianic kingdom were altogether different from His. ”

“ This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." " No man hath seen God at any time," nor can we see or truly know Him except the only-begotten of the Father declare Him unto us ; and by rejecting Him even the revelation in the scriptures of Moses and the prophets has become obscured to Israel, for that too was a revelation of God in Christ. Therefore the prophet says that they will not only seek Jehovah their God, but also " David their King." ”

“ When the great restoration takes place God says, " I will make them one nation in the land upon the moun- tains of Israel ; and one king shall be king to them all : and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all" (Ezek. xxxvii. 22) . The one king who shall be " king to them all " is the true David, " David's greater Son," who will raise up the tabernacle of David, and " close up the breaches thereof," caused by the defection of the ten tribes ; and He is " the Lion of the tribe of Judah." ”

“ Oh, no, " for ye see your calling, brethren," says the Apostle, echoing the warnings which were given to Israel of old, "how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence." Was it for our goodness or righteous- ness ? ”

“ In their political and religious creeds the Jews as a nation are put down as dead, and even many true Christians, when reading in the Scriptures the exceeding great and precious promises which God made to Israel, say, " Oh yes, Israel that is a nation that once lived, but died some nineteen centuries ago, when they rejected Christ, and now ' Israel ' means no longer Israel, but the Church which has entered into their inheritance." But Israel, though seriously wounded, is not dead, and refuses to be buried ”

“ The throne was Jehovah's, and Solomon and his successors only occupied it until the real king, Jehovah's true representative should appear. Hence it is that even when Israel had kings they were always pointed onward to another king: " Behold a king shall reign in righteous- ness, and princes shall rule in judgment " ; or, in the words of Jeremiah, " Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch and a king shall reign and prosper." ”

“ The perplexity of some even Christian people on witnessing the revival of the Jewish nationality is very natural, because they can find no place for a revived literal Israel in their political or theological programmes. ”

“ So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley : and I said unto her, Thou shalt abide for me many days ; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be any man's wife : so will I also be toward thee.
" For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without an image, and without ephod or teraphim : afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king ”

“ Here we have a sad instance of a certain knowledge of Jehovah mixed up with the worship of "a graven image and a molten image," which were abomination in His sight, and the illegitimate use of the divinely instituted ephod, which was only to be borne by the high priest, joined together with the pagan teraphim. ”

“ If we want to know what is implied in a theocracy we find it expressed in one verse by the prophet Isaiah when speaking of a future time when it shall be fully realised : " For Jehovah is our judge, Jehovah is our law- giver (or war prince) , Jehovah is our King; and He will bring us salvation," or " He also will be our Saviour" (Isa. xxxiii. 22) . " Jehovah is our king " : hence at an early period of Israe'ls history when they came to Samuel saying : " Make us a king to judge us like all the nations " ”

“ Jehovah Himself has anointed Him as His king on the holy hill of Zion ; and it was even then announced that " the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever ; and of His kingdom there shall be no end." But my people knew not the day of their visitation ; and for all these centuries have resolutely, as a nation, refused to acknow- ledge His claims. Meanwhile, also, the god of this world, " the prince of the power of the air," is permitted in the infinite wisdom of God to usurp Christ's sovereignty over the nations ”

“ In Babylon Israel was finally purged of all idolatrous tendencies, and since then they have manifested the greatest abhor- rence of everything bearing the remotest resemblance to idolatry. Of course there is another kind of idolatry : there are the " idols of the heart " (Ezek. xiv. 4) , which are quite as hateful in the sight of God as images of wood and stone, but with this our passage does not deal.
As a matter of fact, as far as the gross forms of idolatry are concerned, the Jews now are entirely free from it, and have been for these "many days" since the Babylonian Captivity ”

“ But ever since the Babylonish Captivity Israel has been free from this, as from the other forms of gross and outward idolatry.
A parallelism, in its spiritual significance, is to be found in Christendom. What the ephod or the prophet was in olden times, Holy Scripture is now. It is even " a more sure word " than voices from heaven, or answers by Urim and Thummim. ”

“ From earliest times in their national history, the Jews have had a religious aversion to being systematically counted, and in modern times, especially in countries where they are only "aliens," with scarcely any civil rights, and where the forced military service without any chance for a Jew of rising above the ranks is greatly hated, the ancient superstitious feeling against registration is strengthened by the desire to save as many of their sons as possible from military bondage, or themselves from the extortions and persecutions of corrupt officials. ”

“ Israel now is " without an ephod." As they are without a king and a priest, so it is also the time of God's long silence, and in ignorance of the cause they continue to cry out, " Why withdrawest
28 THE INTERREGNUM AND "AFTERWARD"
Thou Thy hand ? O God, how long shall the adversary reproach ? . . . We see not our signs ; there is no more any prophet, neither is there among us any that knoweth how long" (Psa. Ixxiv. 9-11) . Yes, there is neither sound nor hearing, nor is there one among them who can tell what Israel ought to do. ”

“ There are Jews and Gentiles at the present day who cavil at the New Testament genealogies, overlooking the fact that there is ample proof in the New Testament of the Davidic descent of our Lord, apart even from the genealogical records. ”

“ I will overturn, overturn, overturn it : this also " (whatever men may put up instead of Davidic rule on Mount Zion) " shall not be " (shall not be permitted to continue long) " until He come whose right it is ; to Him it shall be given " (Ezek. xxi. 25-27) . And as God has spoken by the mouth of His prophet so it has been. Centuries elapsed between Ezekiel's prophecy and the coming of our Lord Jesus. Nineteen centuries have elapsed since, but there has been no restoration of the throne of David ; no one of the seed of David reigning over Israel on Mount Zion. ”

“ His love and forgiveness which they will experience on the ground of re- demption will not make them think lightly of sin, or to have low views of God's holiness. A filial fear will take possession of their hearts in relation to Him, in whom alone they will find, even as we do now, all their blessedness ; in the loss of whose fellowship they will have discovered the cause of all their misery. ”

“ I have elsewhere dealt fully with the marvel of the continued existence of the Jewish nation, 1 but I would here in passing simply remind my readers that if the Jewish people, in spite of all the forces which have for many centuries been brought to bear against them with terrible severity, still lives, it is to testify to the truth of this and other statements of the Word of God. ”

“ There are grand underlying harmonies in the Scrip- tures where " the natural man " professes to see only contradictions.
Here is a prophet, and a pre-Exilic prophet too, who characterises the true religion of Israel by the one word " sacrifice " ; and truly there is no other word that could so well summarise the Divine system as unfolded in Moses and the prophets as the word "zebbach," which here and elsewhere (see Isa. i. 11) stands for slain sacrifices in general, and not for the "peace- offering," in which sense it is sometimes used. ”

“ There is a Christian as well as a Jewish Talmud, and Christendom also, since it lost the understanding of Scripture, has departed from the simplicity of the gospel, and has substituted for it a system of salvation by works, which is not different from Rabbinism. ”

“ The figures are not yet complete, but the Central Statistical Commission of the Minister of the Interior annually publishes figures of the rate of increase of the Russian population which de- monstrate the overwhelming importance of the Jewish Question to the ruler and people of Russia. In most of the text-books published on the subject of the Jewish population in the world the number of Jews in Russia is greatly underrated. ”

“ On that altar there is an inscription which explains the meaning of the whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament, and it reads thus : " The life of the flesh is in the blood : and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls : for it is the blood whic'i by reason of the life maketh atone- ment " (Levit. xvii. 1 1, Hebrew) that is, life covereth life; the life of the innocent offering in the blood poured out on this altar " covereth " J the life forfeited by the guilty offerer. ”

“ Saider " the solemn family ritual in commemoration of the deliverance of the nation from Egyptian bondage a piece of half-burnt shankbone is all that lies on the table to remind them of the lamb appointed by God, which they once used to offer and feed on. There is perhaps no more striking com- mentary on this item of Hosea's prophecy, and no more pathetic picture of Israel's present condition, than is presented by their liturgies. ”

“ The number of Orthodox Christians per cent, born in Russia during the same period was only I38'i4 per cent. This fecundity of the Jewish race is attributable to the universal practice of marriage, and to the phenomenally low death-rate ; 407 Orthodox Russian infants died out of every thousand. Only 232 Jewish children died. But these figures do not really indicate the rapidity with which the Jewish population is growing. Military service is immensely unpopular among the Jews, and they resort to many devices in order to free their sons from liability to serve in the army. ”

“ While engaged in this task they came across a poor man who was badly wounded, and left on the field for dead, but who had life enough in him to refuse to be buried. But the amusing part of the business was that the officer in command seemed very much perplexed. ”

“ In the cities and towns of the sixteen provinces which constitute the Jewish Pale, the Israelitish increase is four times more rapid than that of their Christian fellow-subjects. Their net annual increase amounts to 71-4 as compared with that of all the Christian de- nominations, which is only 17 souls. Their annual increase appears to amount to 80,000 a year, a rate which will continue to increase in the absence of pesti- lence, famine, or extermination. ”