Fidelity in bearing witness.
The sinfulness of withholding evidence in a court of law is here formally and solemnly incorporated in the divine statutes. We may remind ourselves—
I. THAT WE SPEND OUR LIFE IN THE SIGHT OF MAN AS WELL AS UNDER THE EYE OF GOD. That we do everything in God's view is a truth the fullness and the greatness of which we cannot exaggerate. "Thou God seest me" should be as a frontlet for every man to wear between the eyes of his soul. But not unimportant is the truth that we act daily and hourly in the sight of man.
1. A very large proportion of our deeds is done obviously and consciously before man.
2. Many that we think are wrought in secret are seen by some unknown witness.
3. Many leave traces which point unmistakably to our agency. "Be sure your sin will find you out." Sooner or later, in unsuspected ways, our evil doings come under the eye of human observation, and under the ban of human condemnation.
III. THAT IT IS OFTEN OUR DUTY TO SCREEN AN OFFENDER FROM PUBLIC NOTICE. This is not in the text, but it belongs to the subject. He who would "do what wrong and sorrow claim" must sometimes "conquer sin and cover shame." There are many cases in which public justice does not demand inquiry and reprobation, but private consideration does call for tenderness and mercy (John 8:7). "Of some have compassion, making a difference" (Jud 1:22).
III. THAT IT IS OFTEN OUR DUTY TO BEAR WITNESS AGAINST A WRONG-DOER.
1. It is our duty to God, for he has ordained human justice. "The powers that be are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1-4). The Jewish judges had the right to adjure a witness to speak the truth in the name of the Supreme Judge ("hear the voice of swearing:" see 1 Kings 8:31; Matthew 26:63, Matthew 26:64). If, therefore, under an oath we withhold what we know, we are disregarding a demand that comes indirectly and ultimately from God himself.
2. It is also our duty to society. The commonwealth of which we are members has a right to expect that we shall take our share in the necessary conviction and punishment of crime. When solemnly summoned to state what we know, and especially when an oath of the Lord is upon us, we are not free to keep back evidence, but are bound to disclose it.
3. It may be our duty to the offender himself. For it is better for him that he should bear the penalty due to his crime than that he should elude justice and be encouraged in transgression.
4. It is further our duty to ourselves, for if we are called on to bear witness, and if we undertake, or are even supposed to undertake, to speak all we know, and if then we suppress important testimony, we are consciously misleading those who hear; we are not "doing the truth," but are acting falsely, and are injuring our own soul thereby.
IV. THAT NEGLIGENCE IN SUCH SOCIAL OBLIGATIONS IS A SERIOUS OFFENSE IN the SIGHT OF GOD. It is sin. It is a thing to be repented of and to be forgiven.—C.
Shunning the impure.
We naturally ask, Why such stringent regulations as to everything of man or beast that was "unclean"? We may understand—
I. THE EXPLANATION (THE RATIONALE) OF THESE REQUIREMENTS.
1. The two main truths God was teaching his people were the divine unity, and purity of heart and life. The state of surrounding heathendom made these two lessons emphatically and particularly necessary.
2. God's method of teaching was pictorial: it was by rite, symbol, illustration. The world was in its religious childhood.
3. Under this method bodily ills naturally stood for spiritual evils; as wholeness of the body stood for health of the soul, so the sickness of the body answered to the malady of the soul, and the uncleanness of the one to the impurity of the other.
4. Hence would result the fact that the careful avoidance of the one would be an instructive lesson in the shunning of the other. Associating the two things so closely in their minds, commanded to shun most scrupulously all bodily uncleanness, taught to look at the least defilement as a transgression of the law, they would necessarily feel, with all desirable intensity, that every moral and spiritual impurity must be most sensitively avoided. Therefore such enactments as those of the text.
II. THEIR MORAL SIGNIFICANCE. They say to us:
1. That we should avoid all that is suggestive of impurity..
2. That we should shun everything which can, in any way or in the least degree, be communicative of spiritual evil.
3. That a stain upon the soul may be contracted without our own knowledge; "if it be hidden from him." This may be through books, friends, habits of speech.
4. That we should point out to the unwary their danger or their error.
5. That on the first intimation of error we should penitently return on our way.—C.