The covenant renewed.
The severe intercession of Moses succeeds at last, and he is directed to get two tables like unto the first, and to bring them up to God for his inscription upon them. He was also directed to make an ark for their reception. There was thus provided the tables of the testimony, and a place in which to keep them.
And here we have to notice—
I. MAN IS ASKED TO PROVIDE THE TABLES. God loves the co-operation of his people as far as possible. "Fellow-workers with God" is our highest honor. Just as when Christ was raising Lazarus he allowed men to roll away the stone (John 11:39-41), so when he would write the Decalogue anew, he directs Moses to provide the tables. This is better than to encourage man's indolence by God doing all.
In the very same way it is upon "the fleshy tables of the heart" God writes his Law (2 Corinthians 3:3). Man, so to speak, provides the material, offers his heart for the sacred inscription, and thus becomes a living epistle, known and read of all men.
II. GOD'S WILL IS UNCHANGING. The two new tables received the same words as the first which were broken. The second edition of the Decalogue was identical with the first. God's will may be stereotyped, it is so perfect and changeless. Man may be wayward; but God will not alter his standard to suit man's low ideal. The Divine plan is to keep before man the unchanging Law, and bring him by easy stages up to it. There is no depreciation of the Divine requirements.
III. THE ARK WAS PRIMARILY INTENDED AS A DEPOSITORY OF THE LAW. This chest of shittim wood, made strong and beautiful, was evidently meant as a "safe," where this precious deposit, this oracle of God, should be placed. There was nothing so precious in the keeping of Israel. It was their great riches. What advantage had the Jew? "Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God."
And this ark not only typified the care taken of the canon, but also it would seem Christ himself, who, as the Ark, kept the Law in its entirety; it was the expression of his own will, and it was the deposit within him. "Think not that I am come, to destroy the Law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17).
IV. SANCTIFIED MEN ARE SIMILARLY TO BE DEPOSITORIES OF GOD'S HOLY WILL. Those who are regenerated hide God's Law in their hearts, as Christ says prophetically he did (Psalms 40:8). The preservation of the sacred books has been wonderful—but better is it to have truth settled in the soul and manifested through the life. The blessedness of him who makes God's Law his meditation day and night is great indeed (Psalms 1:2). "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more" (Hebrews 10:16, Hebrews 10:17).
When God's word and will are so deposited; when human hearts receive, like Lydia's the truth,—then is it carried not only through the wilderness of life, but out into "the undiscovered lands." The ark of shittim wood, so strong and precious, only faintly images the more precious receptacle of the human heart, rendered by Divine grace strong and true, which accepts of God's word of promise, and becomes thereby partaker of the Divine nature and escapes the corruption of the world (2 Peter 1:4).—R.M.E.