FAREWELL SONG OF MOSES.
65
reasoning or cold analysis. Everything is presented in concrete form as to a nation still in its This is the educative song of Israel. spiritual childhood. Its imagery, In tone it is both tender and terrifying. of abstract
sometimes winning, sometimes startling, lends itself to warmest expostulations and appeals. How graphic and The divine words are at memorable are its emblems God the outset likened to the gentle rain and dew His faithfulness for stability and Rock, Himself is the !
;
;
training of Israel like the eagle with
people, an intractable
yoke
;
its
and stubborn ox
fledgelings
;
the
resentful of the
their apostate conduct, that of a faithless wife
the divine love glowing and gleaming about
them
;
like
and His indignation like and other figures follow in quick succession, many of them derived from Israel's wilderness experiences. For it is the poetry of the desert that dominates the song. Both language and imagery are earnest, simple, and direct, rising ever in sterner ruggedness as the song moves forward, and as the references thicken to the flaming mountain, the pillar of cloud and fire, the noxious serpents and wine like the poison of asps, the anguish of hunger and thirst, the scattered and bleaching bones, the terrible fights they had encountered, and all the other fierce struggles of their journey. But while the imagery is derived from the past, the
the
fire
of spousal jealousy
an armed host
;
— these
song
itself reaches out to the future. It is in fact a prophetic outline of Jewish history, designed to lodge in the nation's heart the solemn truth that '
Sorrow tracketh wrong,
As echo
follows song.'
This is the primitive or moral prophecy, the type and canon of all future prophetic work, as Moses' first song was the type of all that was to be spiritually poetic.
E