A father may chasten his son, but will be very wroth if he sees another man so dealing with him. No one may punish the child but the child's father. Now, thus is it with the Lord and his people. He will, he dogs, punish them himself, but he allows none other to do so; or, if they presume to touch them, as Moab had done to Israel, then sure, if not swift, vengeance follows. Then is fulfilled the saying, "He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of mine eye" (Deuteronomy 32:10; Zechariah 2:8). Now, why is this? The case supposed of the father who, though he chastens his own son, is yet angry if another touch him, may help us to answer this question.

1. The child is under no obligation to the stranger. The father has right to claim all obedience from his child; not so another.

2. The child is not beloved by a stranger. Anger and revenge can alone impel the stranger to do the child harm. But these are the last motives, are never the motives, of the chastisements the father inflicts.

3. The child is unknown to the stranger or but little known. Such a one, therefore, even if he be not actuated by evil motives, cannot possibly deal wisely with one of whom and whose character, circumstances, and needs he is ignorant.

4. The child will get no good from chastisement by a stranger. A father's chastisement, because of the father's love, cannot but have a mighty moral influence upon the child for his good. "What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?" But what good could come, or ever did come, to Israel and Judah from the cruelties inflicted upon them by such. people as the Moabites, and of which the prophet here tells?

5. The child will very likely be dealt cruelly and injuriously with by a stranger. A father will chasten for his child's profit; wisdom and love will guide him. True, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, "We have had fathers of our flesh who verily chastened us after their own pleasure." But we trust that his experience was a limited one, and that there were, and yet more that there are, but few lathers who "for their own pleasure" would chastise their children.

6. And the child, with all its guilt - in the case of the Lord's children - deserves to suffer less than they who have presumed to punish him. Israel and Judah were guilty without doubt; but were Moab and Ammon, Babylon and the rest, less guilty? Had they nothing to answer for? Had they not far more? And so, whilst the sin of a child of God is sin indeed, yet it does not make him so heinous, so black, so repulsive, as the persistent, high-handed, never-repented-of sin of the godless, the profane, and the unbeliever. To see one who is chargeable with great sin punishing one whose sin is comparatively trivial; the man who had incurred the debt of ten thousand talents taking by the throat him whose debt was but a hundred pence; - that is evidently a monstrous thing.

7. But chief of all, because God's people are God's children in Christ. We are identified with the well beloved Son. "Members of his body, his flesh and his bones, one with him." It is so, but it is not so with those who have never yielded themselves to God. Such surrender, which is faith, vitalizes the connection between us and God, and he becomes our Father, in a sense that he never was before. Conclusion. All history demonstrates the truth now insisted on, that "he that toucheth you," etc. Let us thank God that he will suffer none to chasten us but himself. Seek that such chastisement may be no longer necessary. Strive to do good to all, "especially to them that are of the household of faith," and tremble to do them harm. "Whosoever offendeth one of these little ones," said our Lord, "it were better for him that a millstone," etc. - C.

The first charge brought against Moab is self-confidence, self-trust, self-sufficiency (ver. 7). This makes us contemporaries of the Moabites. We thought they were an ancient people, but behold how human they are, how English, how like ourselves and our children! They were so pleased with the stone wall they had put up; they measured it, and admired it, and said that it would save them from the high wind and the mighty storm. It was enough — high enough, broad enough, impenetrable, invincible. Now that is the kind of reasoning which God will not allow in human life. He demands that human life be lived in Himself, and not in things that our own hands have made. We are to be taught distinctly that we do not live in ourselves; that in ourselves we have actually no life; that we have nothing that we have not received, and in that spirit alone we are to hold life and to live. It would seem to be easy to put our whole trust in the living God, and yet it is the most difficult of all lessons. We will persist, even in opposition to many theories of our own to the contrary, that we are self-contained, self-consisting, and self-managing; and herein arises God's perpetual controversy with mankind. There is, too, so much to favour the temptation. It looks as if we could do most things; that as we have so much we might easily have more. God says to us in every day's providence, You are here for a purpose; you are here for a little time; you now but begin to be; every lesson you must learn, and every commandment you must keep. It is against that arrangement that we chafe, just as the little child chafes against parental authority and loving restraint. From the history of Moab we see that even blessings may be perverted, and sacred privileges may be turned into occasions of self-destruction (ver. 11). Too much ease, too little upset, too little anxiety, too little trouble will kill any soul. To come into a business made to your hands, to have a fortune left you, and to have everything prearranged, is to be exposed to very peculiar and urgent temptation. Thank God for the rough places in your lives. They are unpleasant, but they are disciplinary. They are like steep hills, but remember that great temples and blessed sanctuaries stand at the top of them. When discipline is not endured gradually it is brought to bear upon the life as an overwhelming judgment. This is the burden of the text. Two classes of persons should consider this. First, those who have daily discipline; they should say, Better have discipline a little at, a time, as we are able to bear it. "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." These daily chafings and frettings are nard to bear, these daily disappointments are sharp thorns thrust into the very eyes; yet who knows what the judgment would be were it all to come at once? I will rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him: no temptation has happened unto me but such as is common to men; by and by the explanation will come, and then I shall be able to say, He hath done all things well. Then the lesson should be well considered by those who seem to escape discipline of God. The volcano is a long time in gathering all its fiery energy, but the outburst is momentary, and who can measure the destruction which follows? Christ may well say, "What I say unto one, I say unto all, Watch," — even those who have apparently least necessity to watch, should not relax their vigils for a moment. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall See how frightful m the humiliation to which God can bring a man or a people. Look at the picture of Moab — horn cut off, the arm broken, the man drunk but not with wine, and reeling in helplessness, the proud one wallowing in his vomit and laughed to derision! We cannot, however, rest here: for the mercy of the Lord endureth for ever. Mercy triumphs over judgment. The destruction, therefore, was not arbitrary, but moral, being based upon an assigned reason. "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." We should say, therefore, that this verse was the concluding verse in the whole history of Moab. What can there be after destruction? With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. The chapter does not end with the forty-second verse, but with the forty-seventh, and this is how it reads, "Yet will I bring again," &c. One would fain construe these words into a hopeful omen. Out of what extremities cannot God deliver mankind? Let the most desponding rekindle their hope, and the most distant prodigal hear his father's voice. Who can set bounds to the mercy of God? Yet must there be no trifling, even with a Gospel of hope.

(J. Parker, D. D.)