On board a ship at sea, for instance, where the
safety of the whole ship, the lives of the whole crew, depend on
instant obedience, mutiny may be punished by death on the spot.
Many a commander has ere now, and rightly too, struck down the rebel
without trial or argument, and ended him and his mutiny on the spot;
by the sound rule that it is expedient that one man die for the
people, and that the whole nation perish not.
And so it was with the Israelites in the desert. All depended on
their obedience. God had given them a law--a constitution, as we
should say now--perfectly fitted, no doubt, for them. If they once
began to rebel and mutiny against that law, all was over with them.
That great, foolish, ignorant multitude would have broken up,
probably fought among themselves--certainly parted company, and
either starved in the desert, or have been destroyed piecemeal by
the wild warlike tribes, Midianites, Moabites, Amalekites--who were
ready enough for slaughter and plunder. They would never have
reached Canaan. They would never have become a great nation. So
they had to be, by necessity, under martial law.
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