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First, wealth itself is good—Elohim commands humanity to possess the earth and subdue it, and Scripture approves righteous acquisition.
A human father could scarcely forgive such murderers; it requires the infinite mercy of Elohim to accomplish it.
Exell's *Biblical Illustrator* (1887) offers a striking agricultural parable: farmers along Scotland's Sutherland coast discovered that arable land covered with shore stones—from turkey-egg to eight-pound weights—consistently produced better crops of oats and pease.
But conviction of a man's worth matures slowly through lived experience.
Historically, Moab had suffered severe humiliation under King Jehoram of Israel (2 Kings 3:4, 25).
Exell (1887) illuminates this harsh pronouncement through agricultural metaphor: as farmers spread manure upon ploughed fields to enrich the soil and increase harvests, so Yahweh's judgments—though they deface and destroy nations—serve a remoter purpose of subsequent fruitfulness.
First, it is profoundly *personal*—not abstract truth, but living communion.
Consider the ivy clinging to wall and tree: it extends innumerable tendrils, each seeking adhesion, each striving to become one with its support.
The legalists nullify grace by rejecting Christ as the sole means of salvation, seeking righteousness through works of the law—which can only intensify consciousness of sin rather than remove it.
David declares that Yahweh will light his home lamp, making his dwelling joyful.
First, that his word should not issue in conversions.
He possessed the intellect, courage, and ancestral fervor to become a leader of the Pharisaic faction—perhaps another Maccabeus or Gamaliel, rallying noble spirits against Rome's armies.
Exell's 1887 commentary offers four obligations toward this treasure: First, **Appreciate it**.
The God who called Himself "the God of Israel" and "the Saviour" permitted His own people repeated abandonment to enemies and seventy years of Babylonian captivity.
When Herod sought the young child's life, evil demonstrated its relentless persistence against innocence itself.
Yet this climactic judgment resolves a tension Scripture-readers often overlook.
This passage illuminates redemption as God's exclusive work, accomplished contrary to human intention.
The Reformers—men like Tyndale and Cranmer—evinced through their very deaths an unwavering commitment that *euangelion* (the gospel) would survive intact for posterity.
The Preacher employed a single lamp to illuminate the young man's delusion about the strange woman's house: the lamp named "At the last." This is no ordinary light but Ithuriel's spear itself, which according to Milton's *Paradise Lost*, dispels all...
Moses, at his wits' end, cried to God, and received this command: take the elders, ascend Horeb with your rod, and strike the rock.
The kingdom lay low, fractured by foreign invasions and internal division, yet the surrounding nations—particularly the Philistines—watched with both enmity and fear.
This duty offends the natural mind and cannot be softened for worldly taste; it rests upon God's command alone, for our salvation hangs in the balance.
This term carries profound weight—not mere completion, but restoration to an earlier and better state.
We require this petition when surrounded by gloom, when tempted, and when our path grows rough.