Deuteronomy 33:27 The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before you… In one of the old classic fables of our schooldays, we used to read of the giant Sisyphus, condemned to go on forever and ever, rolling a mighty stone up a mountain, whose summit was forever becoming more distant and out of reach. Can such a fable be in any wise emblematic of the task of human life? Can it be that life is, after all, one long and meaningless rolling of an eternal stone up an eternal hill? Let the venerable lawgiver make answer to our questionings; let him teach us faith; let him show us the true meaning and dignity of our life on earth. I. THE ETERNAL GOD IS THY REFUGE. It is an impressive figure; one, moreover, we well can understand, in the mouth of Moses. The idea is borrowed, doubtless, from that wild and awful mountain scenery of which the aged lawgiver had seen so much in his experience of the Sinai peninsula. There, amid those lonely and tremendous heights, with here and there some majestic rock standing isolated from the rest, like a solitary watchtower and frontier fortress of the desert; amid such scenes as this, as all travellers can tell, the mind of man is over-mastered with a sense of human insignificance. What more natural than that Moses should draw from these Titanic battlements and buttresses a picture, however inadequate, of the omnipotence of the Creator; a parable of the Rock of Ages; an emblem of the Divine Power Himself; a similitude of that Tremendous and Ineffable Being, who is indeed the only abiding Refuge and Stronghold of the soul of man; the Rock, the Fortress, the Castle, the Tower of Strength, the House of Defence, to which it may always resort? II. "AND UNDERNEATH ARE THE EVERLASTING ARMS." The idea suggested here goes much further than the bare notion of protection from storms and troubles without; it suggests also that God offers to the soul of man the comfort of His love, the welcome to a Father's heart; it reminds us, irresistibly, of the unwearying pity of the Good Shepherd, rescuing the sheep that was lost, bearing it in the strong arms of His everlasting love, receiving the little ones into His enfolding embrace, gathering the lambs with His arm, carrying them in His bosom. (H. B. Ottley, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them. |
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