November 1928
669
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
The Divine Paymaster To J. K. W ILL you please tell me,” writes one sub scriber, “what do you think Christ was trying to teach in the parable of the laborers in Matthew 20?” This pkfâblé lies between two statements: “M'a.nf that ar,e, first shall be last; and the1last shall be firsf’ (Mt. 19: 30,)„ and “So the last shall be first and the first last” (20 ; 16)j The parable also dates back to Mt. 19:27-29, where tHe disciples had been trying to drive a legal bargain: “Be hold, we have forsaken all,” said Peter ; “what shall we hâve?” Our Lord immediately gives them a lesson de signed to show that they should not be anxious about com pensation. The time to get reward is when the day is ended. Now is the time for faith, sacrifice and work. Leave the settlement to Him who rewards, not on thé basis of the quantity of work or the amount of time put in, ibut on the basis of motive and the spirit in which it is done. The householder goes out early to hire men for his vineyard. He agrees with them for a certain sum. Here is the key to the parable. The disciples had been sticking for 1 ân agreement. They got i t J (19;28). Later in the day, the householder seeks mote laborers. No definite sum is promised these. He simply 'says : “Whatsoever is right I will give you.” They were glad of a chance to work and willing to trust Him to do the fair thing. They worked on the basis of pure grace. Still later more men are hired on the samé basis. There was but a short time left to work. Apparently it was very urgent that the work be done at once, and strenuous efforts were needed at the close of the day to finish the job. Evening comes and settlement is made with all. All were given the same amount. The householder recognizes soine special merit in those who had been hired later in the day. They had stipulated no wage, placed themselves confidently in their employer’s hands and had .done their best to please him. They drew “a hundredfold” wage (19:29). ¡iThen along came the first laborers for their “enve lopes.” Perhaps they had been longing all day for the whistle to blow. No doubt they had chuckled ovér the behefits of organized labor and the wage scale they had put over. You will notice that they had to stand in line until last to get their pay (v. 8 ). There was some pur- pcise in this. Imagine their surprise to see those ahead of them drawing the same amount for which they had agreed to* work all day! They set up a howl at once. “They supposed that they should have received more” (v. 10 ). £>Ut why SUPPOSE any such thing ? Had they not made (he boss sign the wage scale ? They expected more only vdien they saw others getting a better rate. They could nbt complain that the contract had been broken. Their complaint was that the boss was too good to others. They couldn’t bear to see others blessed. Can we not see this spirit often among Christian workers? ■ The employer holds them right to their bargain. “Take yçur money and get out,” he says. ' “I will deal with these others as I see fit” (v. 14). “So the last shall be first and the first last” (v. 16). Those who are too forward to make bargains with God will come out at “the little end of the horn.” God has a right to measure up our work as He
sees fit. He does not do it by the yard or by the hour. He has His own gracious ways of estimating it. Our reward is to be based on quality ( “sort”—1 Cor. 3:13), not quantity. We will fare better if we work for Him because “fhe lope of Christ constrains usM and because we n Him to reward us out of the riches of grace: j ü Joshua’s Long Day To H. E. R. B. We are asked why Joshua commanded the sun to stand"still when it is the movement of the ’earth which causes day and night (Joshua 10:12, 13). The translation of this passage has puzzled many Bible scholars. Dr. Torrey has said that the word rendered “stand still,” used elsewhere thirty times, is nowhere else rendered in this way, It is always taken to mean “to wait, rest, tarry, be retarded.” It is also pointed out that the words rendered “in the midst of heaven” do not indi cate one spot in the sky, but literally: “in the half of heaven.” This would make Joshua mean that the sun tarried or slowed down in the half of the sky, not that it stood absolutely still in one spot for a half day. The •words “hasted not to go down” (v. 13) are in accord with this interpretation. It seems çlëar that the cause of the Israelites could not have been prospered by having the noonday heat greatly prolonged. Joshua apparently de scribes the effect to the eye resulting from the slowing down of the earth’s rotation. Our friend Professor Harry Rimmer points out that if the speed of the earth’s rotation was halved,'the power of gravitation would be just one-half what it would be normally. This would enabjç man to lift twice as much weight; throw a spear twice as far and run twice as fast. Someone might suggest that this advantage would have helped the enemy as well as the Israelites, but observe in verse 11 that the enemy was terrorized not only by hail stones, but evidently by their superstitious .fear ;of what was happening in the heavens. Our readers will be interested in the solution offered by Professor Robert Dick Wilson of Princeton, who is a great authority upon lost meanings of Hebrew roots. He claims to find some of the words used in this passage in Joshua in an Assyrio-Babylonian tablet where the mean ing is perfectly clear. He believes that as the Bible was translated, the meanings of some of these original Hebrew roots were lost. In Babylonian astronomical tablets, the word meaning “eclipse” ( atalu ) is the very word found in the Joshua passage. Three other words are also found. Making use of these discoveries, Professor Wilson gives the following rendering: “Be eclipsed, O Sun in Gibeon, and Thou M°on in the Valley of Ajalon. And the sun was eclipsed and the moon remained while thé nation was avenged of its enemies. Is it not written upon the Book of Jasher ? And the sun tarried in the half of the heavens and set not hastily as on an ordinary day and there never was a day like that day before or since in respect to Jehovah’s hearing the prayer of a man.” If we follow this translation, the meaning would seem to be that the Israelites prayed and the answer to their prayer was the eclipse. It might be asked, How could God
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