Moses and Hobab
Numbers x. 29, 31
ind Moses said unto Hobab.. Leave us not, I pray thee; for* asmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest be to ns instead of eyes.
THE fugitives whom Moses led reached Sinai in three A months after leaving Egypt They remained there for at least nine months, and amidst the solitude of these wild rocks they kept the first Passover — the anniversary of their deliverance.” On the twentieth day of the second month they began again their march through the grim, unknown desert
One can fancy their thoughts and fears as they looked forward to the enemies and trials which might be awaiting them. In these circumstances this story comes in most naturally. Some time before the encampment broke up from Sinai, a relative of Moses by marriage, whose precise connection with him need not trouble ut now, Hobab by name, had come into camp on a visit He was a Midianite by race, one of the wandering tribes from the south-east of the Arabian peninsula. He knew every foot of the ground, as such men da He knew
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where the springs were and the herbage, the camping places, the short cuts, and the safest routes. So Moses, who had no doubt forgotten much of the little desert skill he had learned in keeping Jethro’s flock, prays Hobab to remain with them and give them the benefit of his practical knowledge — “to be to us instead of eyes.”
The free, wild wanderer does not care to leave the black tents of his tribe to link his fortunes with those of the unwieldy hosts of fugitives, and flatly refuses. Then Moses presses the proposal on him, with judicious compliments and large promises of sharing in all their prosperity.
It is noteworthy that the narrative does not tell whether the persistent request succeeded or not. We find, indeed, his descendants enrolled in the great Doomsday Book of the Conquest as possessing land and probably incorporated among the Israelites. It may, therefore, be supposed that either then or afterwards Hobab forsook his country and his father’s house to shelter himself beneath the wings of the God of Jacob.
But, at all events, the silence of the record is significant, especially if taken in connection with the verses immediately following. The historian does not think it worth while to tell whether Moses’ attempt to secure the help of a pair of sharp Bedouin eyes succeeded or failed, but passes on to describe at once how “the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them to search out a resting-place for them,” and how “the cloud was upon them when they went out of the camp.” He puts the two things side by side, not calling on us to notice the juxtaposition, but surely expecting that we shall not miss what is so plain. He would teach us that it mattered little whether Israel had Hobab or not, if they had the ark and the cloud. Perhaps he meant us to ask ourselves whether it was not a wavering of faith in Moses to be so anxious to secure a human guide when he had a Divine leader. So, at least, it appears to us, and from that point of view we purpose to view the incident now.
L There are times and moods in which our forward look brings with it a painful sense of the unknown wilderness before us.
The general complexion of the future may be roughly estimated. We soon outlive the illusions which dance before us at the beginning, and cease to expect such surprising delights and radiant flashes of unexpected good fortune as young dreams spread before us. We know very early in life, unless we are wonderfully frivolous and credulous, that the thread of our days is a mingled strand, and the prevailing tone a sober, neutral tint The main characteristics of what we shall meet we know well enough, “That which is to be hath already been.” But the particular events are hid, and it is strange and impressive when we come to think how Providence, working with the same uniform materials in all human lives, can yet, like some skilful artist, produce endless novelty and surprises in each life. All men tread substantially the same road.” There hath nothing a$4 MOSES AND HOBAB. [sbrm.
befallen us but such as is common to men,91 and yet for every one of us the road is new day by day. Some of us go on for years in an unbroken monotony of the same duties and circumstances, and know that in all probability we shall be doing the same things till we die, and yet every morning we come to our work with some feeling of novelty which is not all illusion. “We have not passed this way heretofore,” is always true of each new day’s tasks and incident?; for even if they be the same as those of a thousand days before, yet we who tread the road are not quite the same, and the bearing of the events on us is somewhat different
The solemn ignorance of the next moment is sometimes stimulating and joyous. To young life it gives zest and buoyancy, and secures many a joyful surprise. But to all there come times — and perhaps they are more frequent as life goes on, and the consciousness increases that changes now will generally be losses — when the blank curtain between us and the next beat of the pendulum is felt to be very near us and very thick, and when the ignorance is saddening, and when the shapes that we paint on its black folds are gloomy and threatening. Terrors come to us all, and we are apt to clasp our treasures with a spasmodic grasp, as much anguish as love, when we think of what must be some day, and may be any day. In some moods, and thinking of some things which are certainties as to the fact, and contingencies only as to the time, each of us must say —
“Forward though I cannot ft**
I guess and fear.”
It is a libel on God’s goodness to speak of the world as a wilderness. He has not made it so; and if anybody finds that “all is vanity and vexation of spirit,” it is his own fault But still one aspect of life is truly represented by that figure. There are dangers and barren places, and a great solitude in spite of love and companionship, and many marchings and lurking foes, and grim rocks, and fierce suns, and parched wells, and shadeless sand wastes enough in every life to make us quail often and look grave always when we think of what may be before us. Who knows what we shall see when we top the next hill, or round the shoulder of the cliff that bars our way? What shout of an enemy may crash in upon the sleeping camp; or what stifling gorge of barren granite — blazing in the sun and trackless to our feet — shall we have to march through to-day?
The great crises and trials of our lives mostly come unlooked for. There is nothing so certain as the unexpected. The worst thunder comes on us out of a clear sky. Our Waterloos have a way of crashing into the midst of our feasts, and generally it is when all goes “merry as a marriage bell” that the cannon shot breaks in upon the mirth, which tells that the enemy have crossed the river and the battle is begun.
II. We have here an illustration of the weakness that +Jings to human guides.
Most commentators excuse, or even approve of this effort by Moses to secure Hobab’s help, and draw from the story the lesson that supernatural guidance does not make human guidance unnecessary. That, of course, is true in a fashion; but it appears to us that the true lesson of the incident, considered, as we have already remarked, in connection with the following section, is much rather that for men who have God to guide them, it argues weakness of faith and courage to be much solicitous of any Hobab to show them where to go and where to camp.
Of course we are meant to depend on one another. No man can safely isolate himself, either intellectually or in practical matters. The self-trained scholar is usually incomplete. Crotchets take possession of the solitary thinker, and peculiarities of character that would have been kept in check, and might have become aids in the symmetrical development of the whole man, if they had been reduced and modified in society, get swollen into deformities in solitude. The highest and the lowest blessings for life both of heart and mind — blessedness and love, and wisdom and goodness — are ministered to men through men, and to live without dependence on human help and guidance is to be either a savage or an angel God’s guidance does not make man’s needless, for a very large part of God’s guidance is ministered to us through men. And wherever a man’s thoughts and words teach us to understand God’s thoughts and words more clearly, to love them more earnestly, or to obey them more gladly, there human guidance is discharging its noblest function. And wherever the human guide turns us away from himself to God, and say s, “Iamba voice, I am not the light that guides,” there it is blessed and safe to cherish and to prize it
But we are ever apt to feel that we cannot do without the human leader. Our hearts crave for earthly love, and that craving is, as it were, an open channel, through which the purest water of life which this world can yield is poured into our hearts. But how close to the joy and the blessedness does the temptation lie 1 Are we not ever in danger of giving the very choicest of our love to the dear ones of earth, lavishing on them the precious juice which flows from the freshly-gathered grapes, and putting God off with the last impoverished and scanty drops which can be squeezed from the husks? How we rejoice over the love of earth, and cherish it, and feel ourselves rich and strong by reason of it t How we sink in utter despair and hopeless sorrow when it passes from us, and feel “they have taken away my gods, and what have I more?” How we follow the counsel of those whom we love, cherishing their lightest word, and feeling glad and free when we are carrying out their faintest wishes t And, alas, how often, in a very real and tragical sense, “a man’s foes are they of his own household,” and their love and tenderness more deadly than their hate could ever be, because it keeps us back from God, and blinds our eyes to the pointing finger of our true Guide and Lover I
We are meant to get much of our belief and practice from human teachers and examples. But our weakness of faith in the unseen is ever tending to pervert the relation between teacher and taught into practical for*
getfulness that the promise of the new covenant is, “They shall all be taught of God.” So we are all apt to pin our faith on some trusted guide, and many of us in these days will follow some teacher of negations with an implicit submission which we refuse to give to Jesus Christ. We put the teacher between ourselves and God, and give to the glowing colours of the painted window the admiration that is due to the light which shines through it The teacher, be he preacher or author, has succeeded in his work when he has taught his pupils to do without him, having led them to the place where they can draw at first hand from the depths of God; and the highest eulogium that he can receive is when his scholars say to him, u Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard him ourselves.”
There are a thousand ways in which our poor weak hearts cry out in their sense-bound unbelief for visible stays to lean upon, and guides to direct us. In so far as that is a legitimate longing, God, who never 44 sends mouths, but He sends meat to feed them,” will not leave us to cry unheard. But let us guard against that ever-present weakness which clings tremblingly to creatures and men for help and guidance, and, in proportion as it is rich when it possesses them, trembles at the prospect of losing them, and is crushed and desolate when they go. Do not put them as barriers between you and God, nor yield your own clearness of vision to them, nor say to any, “Be to us instead of eyes,” nor be over anxious to secure any Hobab to show you where to camp or how to march
IIL The contrast which is brought into prominence by the juxtaposition of this section and that which follows it, makes emphatic the thought of the true leader of our march.
The true leader of the children of Israel in their wilderness journey was not Moses, but the Divine Presence in the cloud with a heart of fire, that hovered over their camp for a defence and sailed before them for a guide. “The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them the way, When it lay on the tent, whether it were for “two days, or a month, or a year,” the march was stayed, and the moment that the cloud lifted “by day or by night,” the encampment was broken up and the long procession was got into marching order without an instant’s pause, to follow its gliding motion wherever it led and however long it lasted, first to follow was the ark on the shoulders of the Levites, and behind it, separated by some space, came the “standard of the camp of the children of Judah, and then the other tribes in their order.” Surely there was no place here for Hobab’s skill, and if Moses had remembered how their marching and their encampments were fixed, he need not have been so anxious to secure his sharp eyes.
We have the same Divine guidance, if we will; in sober reality we have God’s presence; and waiting hearts which have ceased from self-will may receive leading as real as ever the pillar gave to Israel
God’s providence does still shape our paths, and God’s Spirit will direct us within, and God’s word will counsel us. If we will wait and watch we shall not be left undirected. It is wonderful how much practical wisdom about the smallest perplexities of daily life comes to men who keep both their feet and their wishes still until Providence — or, as the world prefers to call it, “circumstances” — clears a path for them. No doubt in all our lives there come times when we seem to have been brought into a blind alley, and cannot see where we are to get out; but it is very rare indeed that we. do not see one step in advance, the duty which lies next us. And be sure of this, that if we are content to see but one step at a time, and take it, we shall find our way made plain. The river winds, and often we seem on a lake without an exit Then is the time to go half-speed, and, doubtless, when we get a little farther, the overlapping hills on either bank will part, and the gorge will open out We do not need to see it a mile off; enough if we see it when we are close upon it It may be as narrow and grim, with slippery black cliffs towering on either side of the narrow ribbon of the stream, as the canons of American rivers, but it will float our boat into broader reaches and onwards to the great sea.
Do not seek to outrun God’s guidance, to see what you are to do a year hence, or to act before you are sure of what is His will; do not let your wishes get in advance of the pillar and the ark, and you will be kept from many a mistake, and led into a region of deep peace. Our blunders mostly come from letting our wishes interpret our duties, or hide from us plain indications of unwelcome
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tasks. We are all apt to do like Nelson, and put the telescope to the blind eye when a signal is flying that we dislike. No doubt sometimes even docile hearts make mistakes, but no man who has not tried it would conceive how many of the highest results of practical wisdom are secured by the simple in heart, whose only skill is to wait on the Lord and be guided by Him.
The old injunction is still our duty and our wisdom: “Go after the ark, yet there shall be a space between it and you; come not near it, that ye may know the way ye ought to go/9 If we impatiently press too close on the heels of our guide we lose the guidance. There must be a reverent following, which allows indications of the way full time to develop themselves, and does not fling itself into new circumstances on the first blush of apparent duty. The merely worldly virtues of prudence, caution, judgment unbiassed by inclination, and the like, have all a Christian side, and are all included and glorified in the elements of that temper which religion enjoins as certain to be rewarded with the Divine guidance: “The meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way.”
In the strength of that confidence let us turn away from dependence upon human guides, and lift our eyes to Him with the voice which is at once a prayer and a vow: “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel.” Better to take Moses for our example when he prayed, as the ark set forward and the march began, “Arise, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered,” than to follow him in eagerly seeking some Hobab or other to show us where we should go. Better to commit our resting times to
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God with Moses* prayer when the ark halted, “Return, O Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel,” and so to repose under the shadow of the Almighty, than to seek safety in having some man with us “who knows how we are to encamp in this wilderness.” God’s presence is enough for toil and enough for rest. If He journey with us by the way, He will abide with us when nightfall comes; and His companionship will be sufficient for direction on the road, and for solace and safety in the evening camp.
We have often to travel by solitary ways. Some of us have to journey all alone, with no fellow-travellers for society or for succour. Some of us have perplexed paths to tread. Some of us have sad memories of times when we journeyed in company with those who will never share our tent or counsel our steps any more, and, as we sit lonely by our watchfire in the wilderness, have aching hearts and silent nights. Some of us may be, as yet, rich in companions and helpers, whose words are wisdom, whose wishes are love to us, and may tremble as we think that one day either they or we shall have to tramp on by ourselves. But for us all, cast down and lonely, or still blessed with dear ones and afraid to live without them, there is a presence which departs never, which will move before us as we journey, and hover over us as a shield when we rest; which will be a cloud to veil the sun that it smite us not by day, and will redden into fire as the night falls, being ever brightest when we need it most, and burning clearest of all in the valley at the end, where its guidance will only cease because then “the xv.] MOSES AND HOBAB. a6f
Lamb that is in the midst of the throne will lead them.* “This God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even unto death.”
IV. A final thought suggested by this incident is, that our craving far a human guide has been lovingly met in the gift of Christ.
Moses sought to secure this Midianite guide because he was a native of the desert, and had travelled all over it His experience was his qualification. We have a brother who has Himself travelled every foot of the road by which we have to go, and His footsteps have marked out with blood a track for us to follow, and have trodden a footpath through the else pathless waste. He knows “how to encamp in this wilderness,” for He Himself has 11 tabernacled among us,” and by experience has learned the weariness of the journey and the perils of the wilderness.
His life is our pattern. Our marching orders are brief and simple: Follow your leader, and plant your feet in His footprints.
That is the sum of all ethics, and the vade meeum for practical life. However diverse our duties and circumstances are, the principles which come out in the Divine record of that fair life and wondrous death will fit with equal closeness to us all; and so Divine and all comprehensive is it that it abides as the sufficient pattern for every class, for every stage, for every variety of character, for every era, and every land, till the end, and beyond the end Our poor weak hearts long for a brother’s hand to hold us up, for a brother’s voice to whisper a word of cheer, for a brother’s example to animate as well as to instruct An abstract law of right is but a cold guide, like the stars that shine keen in the polar winter. It is hard even to find in the bare thought of an unseen God guiding us by His unseen Spirit within and His unseen Providence without, the solidity and the warmth which we need. Therefore we have mercifully received God manifest in the flesh, a Brother to be our guide and the Captain of our salvation.
To Him then transfer all those feelings of confidence and affection too often lavished on men. The noblest use for the precious ointment of love, which the poorest of us bears in the alabaster-box of the heart, is to break it on His head.
Thus loving and following Him, we shall be set free from undue dependence on human helpers whilst they are with us, from eagerness to secure them, from dread of losing them, from despair when they depart Perplexities will disappear. Duty will become plain. Life will not be a weary march through an unknown land where we have to choose our path by our own poor wisdom, and death is often the penalty of a blunder. All our duty and joy lie in the one command, “Follow me; “and if we only ask Him to be with us” instead of eyes n and accept His gentle leading, we shall not walk in darkness, but may plunge into thickest night and the most unknown land, assured that He will “lead us by a right way to the city of habitation.”