---

The prayer with which this prophecy concludes is one of the most remarkable pieces of composition ever written with pen, whether inspired or uninspired. The imagery employed is an impassioned setting forth of God's majesty and beneficence as He led His people through the wilderness. The prophet comforts himself in the assurance that the same Jehovah is the God of Israel still The chief interest of the text lies in its concluding words — the hiding of His power. The thought is, the Divine concealments which accompany all Divine revelations.

I. WHAT DO THE WORDS MEAN, AS APPLIED TO THE EVENTS HE MAINLY HAS IN MIND? The imagery here may have been suggested by the pillar of cloud and flame which led the host. When God's hand was stretched out to work some miracle of deliverance, to feed the famishing multitude, to make rivers for them in the desert, or to smite the foe that with. stood them, a glory streamed from it wholly Divine. In the imagery of the prophet, these rays of glorious manifestation were as horns, so often, in the poetical and prophetical Scriptures, used as symbols of power and sovereignty, coming out of His hand. And yet, so far from all these great acts of God constituting a full display of Him as He is, in reality they were but as hidings of His power. If you study closely those manifestations of God's goodness and power which were then and thus made, you will see that this was so. Look at them —

1. As His providences on behalf of His people. Behind the providences there was a grace — more mighty, more amazing than the providences: Incidents .then which seemed to intend some present deliverance, or some national restitution merely, we find now to have meant far more. Of even the smitten rock we read, "That Rock was Christ." Concerning the manna, we find Christ declaring, "I am that Bread from heaven." And the innocent victim from the flock, brought for sacrifice, led one, in the power of inspiration, to point to Jesus and say, "Behold, the Lamb of God!"

II. THIS OF WHICH WE SPEAK CANNOT BE A MERELY ARBITRARY THING IN GOD. Something in His dispensations without an adequate Divine reason. It results partly from the fact that in all the Divine dealings with us, it is God dealing with man. It must be the Study of a whole eternity for man to find out God or God s doings unto perfection. He must be full of concealments. And this applies even to the most common events and exigencies. It is impossible that God should, at each stage in our onward course, make us understand all things as He understands them. God leads us blindfold. God's concealments are not arbitrary; they are a necessity; and while they are so, they serve, in a most Divine way, the purposes of human instruction.

III. WHAT IS MEANT HERE BY THE HIDING OF GOD'S POWER IS THE KEY TO MUCH OF THE MYSTERY OF HIS DISPENSATIONS, BOTH IN PROVIDENCE AND IN GRACE. It is easy to say that what we see is the result of the operation of instituted laws and conditions. But this cannot be an exhaustive theory of the universe and of man's relation to it. The difficulties of providence have their solution, if not in any of our expedients for accounting for events, still in what we know of God's infinite power and resources. What a hiding of power it was which the world saw in Jesus; — a wonderful manifestation indeed, yet a far more wonderful concealing, with the great reality breaking through only as the fit occasion served.

(J. A. Smith, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power.

WEB: His splendor is like the sunrise. Rays shine from his hand, where his power is hidden.