Numbers 10:35

And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, LORD, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(35-36) And it came to pass . . . —It appears from these words that the marches of the Israelites began and ended with prayer, a significant lesson to the Church of all after ages. It is deserving of observation that the prayers were offered by Moses, not by Aaron. The inverted nuns, or parenthetical marks, which are found in a large number of Hebrew manuscripts at the beginning and end of these verses, are thought by some to denote their insertion as a break in the narrative whilst others have ascribed to them a mystical meaning. The words, “Return, O Lord,” Bishop “Wordsworth observes,” pre-announced the blessed time of rest and peace, when God would abide with His Church on earth, by the gift of the Holy Ghost, and will tabernacle for ever with His people in heavenly rest and joy.” (Revelation 7:15; Revelation 21:3.)

MacLaren's Expositions

Numbers

THE HALLOWING OF WORK AND OF REST

Numbers 10:35 - Numbers 10:36.

The picture suggested by this text is a very striking and vivid one. We see the bustle of the morning’s breaking up of the encampment of Israel. The pillar of cloud, which had lain diffused and motionless over the Tabernacle, gathers itself together into an upright shaft, and moves, a dark blot against the glittering blue sky, the sunshine masking its central fire, to the front of the encampment. Then the priests take up the ark, the symbol of the divine Presence, and fall into place behind the guiding pillar. Then come the stir of the ordering of the ranks, and a moment’s pause, during which the leader lifts his voice-’Rise, Lord, and let Thine enemies be scattered, and let them that hate Thee flee before Thee.’ Then, with braced resolve and confident hearts, the tribes set forward on the day’s march.

Long after those desert days a psalmist laid hold of the old prayer and offered it, as not antiquated yet by the thousand years that had intervened. ‘Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered,’ prayed one of the later psalmists; ‘let them that hate Him flee before Him.’ We, too, in circumstances so different, may take up the immortal though ancient words, on which no dimming rust of antiquity has encrusted itself, and may, at the beginnings and the endings of all our efforts and of each of our days, and at the beginning and ending of life itself, offer this old prayer-the prayer which asked for a divine presence in the incipiency of our efforts, and the prayer which asked for a divine presence in the completion of our work and in the rest that remaineth.

I. So, then, if we put these two petitions together, I think we shall see in them first, a pattern of that realisation of, and aspiration after, the divine Presence, which ought to fill all our lives.

‘Rise, Lord, let Thine enemies be scattered.’

But was not that moving pillar the token that God had risen? And was not the psalmist who reiterated Moses’ prayer asking for what had been done before he asked it? Was not the ark the symbol of the divine Presence, and was not its movement after the pillar a pledge to the whole host of Israel that the petition which they were offering, through their leader’s lips, was granted ere it was offered? Yes. And yet the present God would not manifest His Presence except in response to the desire of His servants; and just because the ark was the symbol, and that moving column was the guarantee of God’s being with the host as their defence, therefore there rose up with confidence this prayer, ‘Rise, Lord, and let Thine enemies be scattered.’

That twofold attitude, the realisation of, and therefore the aspiration after, the divine gifts, which are given before they are desired, but are not appropriated and brought into operation in our lives unless they are desired, is precisely the paradox of the Christian life. Having, we long for, and longing, we have, and because we possess God we pray, ‘Oh! that we might possess Thee.’ The more we long, the more we receive. But unless He gave Himself in anticipation of our longing, there would be neither longing nor reception. Only on condition of our desiring to have Him does He flow into our lives, victorious and strength-giving, and the more we experience that omnipotent might and calming, guiding nearness, the more assuredly we shall long for it.

Let us then, dear brethren, blend these two things together, for indeed they are inseparable one from the other, and there can be no real experience in any depth of the one of them without the other. Blessed be God! there need be no long interval of waiting between sowing the seed of supplication and reaping the harvest of fruition. That process of growth and reaping goes on with instantaneous rapidity. ‘Before they call I will answer,’ for pillar and ark were there ere Moses opened his lips; and ‘while they are yet speaking I will hear,’ for, in response to the cry, the host moved triumphantly, guarded through the wilderness. So it may be, and ought to be, with each of us.

In like manner, coupling these two petitions together, and taking them as unitedly covering the whole field of life in their great antitheses of work and rest, effort and accomplishment, beginning and ending, morning and evening, we may say that here is an example, to be appropriated in our own lives, of that continuous longing and realisation which will encircle all life as with a golden ring, and make every part of it uniform and blessed. To begin, continue, and end with God is the secret of joyful beginning, of patient continuance, and of triumphant ending. There is no reason in heaven, though there are hosts of excuses on earth, why there should not be, in the case of each of us, an absolutely continuous and uninterrupted sense of being with God. O brethren! that is a stage of Christian experience high above the one on which most of us stand. But that is our fault, and not the necessity of our condition. Let us lay this to heart, that it is possible to have the pillar always guiding our march, and possible to have it stretching, calm and motionless, over all our hours of rest.

II. Now, if, turning from the lessons to be drawn from these two petitions, taken in conjunction, we look at them separately, we may say that we have here an example of the spirit in which we should set ourselves, day by day, and at each new epoch and beginning, be it greater or smaller, to every task.

There are truths that underlie that first prayer, ‘Rise up, Lord, and let Thine enemies be scattered,’ which are of perennial validity, and apply to us as truly as to these warriors of God in the wilderness long centuries ago. The first of them is that the divine Presence is the source of all energy, and of successful endeavour after, and accomplishment of, any duty. The second of them is that that presence is, as I have been saying, granted, in its operative power, only on condition of its being sought. And the third of them is that I have a right to identify my enemies with God’s only on condition that I have made His cause mine. When Moses prayed, ‘Let Thine enemies be scattered,’ he meant by these the hostile nomad tribes that might ring Israel round, and come down like a sandstorm upon them at any moment. What right had he to suppose that the people whose lances and swords threatened the motley host that he was leading through the wilderness were God’s enemies? Only this right, that his host had consented to be God’s soldiers, and that they having thus made His enemies theirs, He, on His part, was sure to make their enemies His. We are often tempted to identify our foes with God’s, without having taken the preliminary step of having so yielded ourselves to be His servants and instruments for carrying forward His will, as that our own wills have become a vanishing quantity, or rather have been ennobled and greatened in proportion as they have been moulded in submission to His. We must take God’s cause for ours, in all the various aspects of that phrase. And that means, first of all, that we make our own perfecting into the likeness of Jesus Christ the main aim of our own lives and efforts. It means, further, the putting ourselves bravely and manfully on the side of right and truth and justice, in all their forms. Above all, it means that we give ourselves to be God’s instruments in carrying on His great purposes for the salvation of the world through Jesus Christ. If we do these things, whatever obstacles may arise in our paths, we may be sure that these are God’s antagonists, because they are antagonists to God’s work in and by us.

Only in so far as they are such, can you pray, ‘Let them flee before Thee!’ Many of the things that we call our enemies come to us disguised, and are mistaken by our superficial sight, and we do not know that they are friends. ‘All things work together for good to them that love God.’ And, when we desire His Presence, the hindrances to doing His will-which are the only real enemies that we have to fight-will melt away before His power, ‘as wax melteth’ before the ardours of the fire; and, for the rest, the distresses, the difficulties, the sorrows, and all the other things that we so often think are our foes, we shall find out to have been our friends. Make God’s cause yours, and He will make your cause His.

That applies to the great things of life, and to the little things. I begin my day’s work some morning, perhaps wearied, perhaps annoyed with a multiplicity of trifles which seem too small to bring great principles to bear upon them. But do you not think there would be a strange change wrought in the petty annoyances of every day, and in the small trifles of which all our lives, of whatever texture they are, must largely be composed, if we began each day and each task with that old prayer, ‘Rise, Lord, and let Thine enemies be scattered’? Do you not think there would come a quiet into our hearts, and a victorious peace to which we are too much strangers? If we carried the assurance that there is One that fights for us, into the trifles as well as into the sore struggles of our lives, we should have peace and victory. Most of us will not have many large occasions of trial and conflict in our career; and, if God’s fighting for us is not available in regard to the small annoyances of home and daily life, I know not for what it is available. ‘Many littles make a mickle,’ and there are more deaths in skirmishes than in the field of a pitched battle. More Christian people lose their hold of God, their sense of His presence, and are beaten accordingly, by reason of the little enemies that come down on them, like a cloud of gnats in a summer evening, than are defeated by the shock of a great assault or a great temptation, which calls out their strength, and sends them to their knees to ask for help from God.

So we may learn from this prayer the spirit of expectance of victory which is not presumption, and of consecration, which alone will enable us to pass through life victorious. ‘Be of good cheer,’ said the Master, as if in answer to this prayer in its Christian form-’I have overcome the world.’ We turn to the helmed and sworded Figure that stands mysteriously beside us whilst we are all unaware of His coming, and the swift question that Joshua put rises to our lips, ‘Art Thou for us or for our adversaries?’ The reply comes, ‘Nay! but as Captain of the Lord’s host am I come up.’ That is Christ’s answer to the prayer, ‘Rise, Lord, let Thine enemies be scattered.’

III. Lastly, we have here a pattern of the temper for hours of repose.

‘When the ark rested, he said, "Return, O Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel."‘ As I said at the beginning of these remarks, the pillar of cloud seems to have taken two forms, braced together upright when it moved, diffused and stretched as a shelter and a covering over the host of Israel when it and they were at rest. In like manner, that divine Presence is Protean in its forms, and takes all shapes, according to the moment’s necessities of the Christian trusting heart. When we are to brace ourselves for the march it condenses itself into an upright and moving guide. When we lay ourselves down with relaxed muscles for repose, it softly expands itself and ‘covers our head’ in the hours of rest, ‘as in the day of battle.’

Ah! brother, we have more need of God in times of repose than in times of effort. It is harder to realise His Presence in the brief hours of relaxation than even in the many hours of strenuous toil. Every one who goes for a holiday knows that. You have only to look at the sort of amusements that most people fly to when they have not anything to do, to see that there is quite as much, if not more, peril to communion of soul with God in times when the whole nature is somewhat relaxed, and the strings are loosened, like those of a violin screwed down a turn or two of the peg, than there is in times of work.

So let us take special care of our hours of repose, and be quite sure that they are so spent as that we can ask when the day’s work is done, and we have come to slippered ease, in preparation for nightly rest, ‘Return, O Lord, unto Thy waiting servant.’ Work without God unfits for rest with Him. Rest without God unfits for work for Him.

We may take these two petitions as tests of the allowableness of any occupation, or of any relaxation. Dare I ask Him to come with me into that field of work? If I dare not, it is no place for me. Dare I ask Him to come with me into this other chamber of rest? If I dare not, I had better never cross its threshold. Take these two prayers, and where you cannot pray them, do not risk yourself.

But the highest form of the contrast between the two waits still to be realised. For life as a whole is a fight, and beyond it there is the ‘rest that remaineth,’ where there will be not merely God’s ‘return unto the thousands of Israel,’ but the realisation of His fuller presence, and of deeper rest, which shall be wondrously associated with more intense work, though in that work there will be no conflict. The two petitions will flow together then, for whilst we labour we shall rest; and whilst we rest we shall labour, according to the great sayings, ‘they rest from their labours,’ and yet ‘they rest not day nor night.’

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

10:33-36 Their going out and coming in, gives an example to us to begin and end every day's journey and every day's work with prayer. Here is Moses's prayer when the ark set forward, Rise up, and let thine enemies be scattered. There are those in the world who are enemies to God and haters of him; secret and open enemies; enemies to his truths, his laws, his ordinances, his people. But for the scattering and defeating of God's enemies, there needs no more than God's arising. Observe also the prayer of Moses when the ark rested, that God would cause his people to rest. The welfare and happiness of the Israel of God, consist in the continual presence of God among them. Their safety is not in their numbers, but in the favour of God, and his gracious return to them, and resting with them. Upon this account, Happy art thou, O Israel! who is like unto thee, O people! God will go before them, to find them resting-places by the way. His promise is, and their prayers are, that he will never leave them nor forsake them.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Each forward movement and each rest of the ark was made to bear a sacramental character. The one betokened the going forth of God against His enemies; the other, His gathering of His own people to Himself: the one was the pledge of victory, the other the earnest of repose.

Numbers 10:36 may be translated: "Restore" (i. e. to the land which their fathers sojourned in), "O Lord, the ten thousands of the thousands of Israel." (Compare Psalm 85:4, where the verb in the Hebrew is the same.)

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

35, 36. when the ark set forward that Moses said, Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered—Moses, as the organ of the people, uttered an appropriate prayer both at the commencement and the end of each journey. Thus all the journeys were sanctified by devotion; and so should our prayer be, "If thy presence go not with us, carry us not hence" [Ex 33:15].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And it came to pass, when the ark set forward,.... Carried by the Kohathites, Numbers 10:21,

that Moses said; in prayer, as both the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem express it; and it was a prayer of faith, and prophetic of what would be done, and might serve greatly to encourage and animate the children of Israel in their journeys; for the following prayer was put up not only at this time, but at all times when the ark set forward; and so Ben Gersom says, it was the custom of Moses, at whatsoever time the ark was moved, to pray as follows:

rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered; the Jerusalem Targum is,"rise up now, O Word of the Lord;''and the Targum of Jonathan,"be revealed now, O Word of the Lord;''the essential Word of God, the Messiah, to whom these words may be applied; either to his incarnation and manifestation in the flesh, his end in, which was to destroy all his and his people's enemies, particularly the devil and his works, Hebrews 2:14; or to his resurrection from the dead, these words standing at the head of a prophecy of his ascension to heaven, which supposes his resurrection from the dead, Psalm 68:1; at the death of Christ all the spiritual enemies of his people were defeated, scattered, confounded, and conquered; Satan and his principalities were spoiled, sin was made an end of, death was abolished, and the world overcome; at his resurrection the keepers of the sepulchre fled; and after his ascension wrath came upon the Jewish nation, those enemies of his, that would not have him to rule over them, and they were scattered about on the face of the whole earth, as they are to this day:

and let them that hate thee flee before thee; the same petition expressed in different words, but to the same sense; enemies, and those that hate the Lord, are the same, as their defeat, conclusion, and destruction, are signified by their flight and dispersion; and it may be observed, that those who were the enemies and haters of Israel were reckoned the enemies and haters of God himself; as the enemies of Christ's people, and those that hate them, are accounted Christ's enemies, and such that hate him. Perhaps Moses may have a special respect to the Canaanites, whose land was promised unto Israel, and they were going to dispossess them of it, in order to inherit it, and Moses might expect it would be quickly done, at the end of these three days; which brought them to the wilderness of Paran, so near the good land that they sent from thence spies into it, and in all probability they would have then entered the possession of it, had it not been for their complaints and murmurs, and the ill report brought on the good land, on which account they were stopped thirty eight years in the wilderness.

Geneva Study Bible

And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said, {o} Rise up, LORD, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee.

(o) Declare your might and power.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Numbers 10:35-36. J

Prayers connected with the movements of the Ark

The two prayers have no real connexion with the journeyings. They appear to belong to a time when the Israelites had reached Canaan, and used to take the Ark with them into battle. The first prayer speaks of victory over enemies; and the second implies that the Ark returns to its sanctuary after the battle. In the desert it never returned to the people, but waited in advance until they came up to it.

35. The prayer is quoted in Psalm 68:1.

36. unto the myriads of the thousands] i.e. of the clans of Israel. See on Numbers 1:16; Numbers 1:46.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 35. - When the ark set forward. These words, taken in connection with the words "when it rested," in the following verse, confirm the belief that at this time (at any rate) the ark went before the host; for if it had remained in the midst, it would not have stirred until half the tribes had moved off, nor would it have halted until half the camp was pitched, whereas it is evident that its setting forward and standing still were the decisive moments of the day. They had, as it were, a sacramental character; they were visible signs, corresponding to invisible realities, as the movements of the hands on the dial correspond to the action of the machinery within. When the ark and the cloud set forward, it was the Almighty God going on before to victory; when the ark and the cloud rested, it was the all-merciful God returning to protect and cherish his own. This is clearly recognized in the morning and evening prayer of Moses. The typical and spiritual character of that setting forward and that resting could not well have been lost upon any religious mind - that God going before us is the certain and abiding pledge of final victory, that God returning to us is the only hope of present safety. Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered. The sixty-eighth Psalm, which we have learnt to associate with the wonders of Pentecost and the triumphs of the Church on earth, seems to be an expansion of Moses' morning prayer. Numbers 10:35

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

In Numbers 10:35 and Numbers 10:36, the words which Moses was in the habit of uttering, both when the ark removed and when it came to rest again, are given not only as a proof of the joyous confidence of Moses, but as an encouragement to the congregation to cherish the same believing confidence. When breaking up, he said, "Rise up, Jehovah! that Thine enemies may be scattered, and they that hate Thee may flee before Thy face;" and when it rested, "Return, Jehovah, to the ten thousand thousands of Israel!" Moses could speak in this way, because he knew that Jehovah and the ark of the covenant were inseparably connected, and saw in the ark of the covenant, as the throne of Jehovah, a material pledge of the gracious presence of the Almighty God. He said this, however, not merely with reference to enemies who might encounter the Israelites in the desert, but with a confident anticipation of the calling of Israel, to strive for the cause of the Lord in this hostile world, and rear His kingdom upon earth. Human power was not sufficient for this; but to accomplish this end, it was necessary that the Almighty God should go before His people, and scatter their foes. The prayer addressed to God to do this, is an expression of bold believing confidence, - a prayer sure of its answer; and to Israel it was the word with which the congregation of God was to carry on the conflict at all times against the powers and authorities of a whole hostile world. It is in this sense that in Psalm 68:2, the words are held up by David before himself and his generation as a banner of victory, "to arm the Church with confidence, and fortify it against the violent attacks of its foes" (Calvin). שׁוּבה is construed with an accusative: return to the ten thousands of the hosts of Israel, i.e., after having scattered Thine enemies, turn back again to Thy people to dwell among them. The "thousands of Israel," as in Numbers 1:16.

(Note: The inverted nuns, נ, at the beginning and close of Numbers 10:35, Numbers 10:36, which are found, according to R. Menachem's de Lonzano Or Torah (f. 17), in all the Spanish and German MSS, and are sanctioned by the Masorah, are said by the Talmud (tract de sabbatho) to be merely signa parentheseos, quae monerent praeter historiae seriem versum 35 et 36 ad capitis finem inseri (cf. Matt. Hilleri de Arcano Kethib et Keri libri duo, pp. 158, 159). The Cabbalists, on the other hand, according to R. Menach. l. c., find an allusion in it to the Shechinah, "quae velut obversa ad tergum facie sequentes Israelitas ex impenso amore respiceret" (see the note in J. H. Michaelis' Bibl. hebr.). In other MSS, however, which are supported by the Masora Erffurt, the inverted nun is found in the words בּנסע (Numbers 10:35) and כּמתאננים העם ויהי (Numbers 11:1): the first, ad innuendum ut sic retrorsum agantur omnes hostes Israeliarum; the second, ut esset symbolum perpetuum perversitatis populi, inter tot illustria signa liberationis et maximorum beneficiorum Dei acerbe quiritantium, ad declarandam ingratitudinem et contumaciam suam (cf. J. Buxtorf, Tiberias, p. 169).)