Selected From: Charles J. Brown, “The Doom of Meroz,” in The Word of Life (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1874), 63-74.
“Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”
– Judges 5:23
In these deeply solemn words two things claim our attention – the sin of the inhabitants of Meroz, and the judgment of the Lord against them because of it. Let me rapidly touch on this sentence; on the judgment; with one or two practical lessons arising out of both.
I. The sin of the men of Meroz is described in very remarkable terms, although we have grown so familiar with them as scarce perhaps to notice their strange character: it is said that “they came not to the help of the Lord.” Came not to the help of the Lord? Everywhere we read of the Lord’s coming to the help of man; but man coming to the help of the Lord, seems strange.
Constantly we find such prayers as “Help us, O Lord our God, for we rest on thee” – “Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man” – “Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name.” But helpless man coming to the help of the Lord! Is He in straits, then? “Can a man be profitable unto his Maker?” Is He in difficulties, that He should require the aid of His own creature? So it would seem, in some sense or other. And happily, although we have not elsewhere the exact expression in the text, we have kindred ones which lead us at once into its weighty import, as for example, “I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat” – “He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of his eye” – “Saul, Saul, why persecutes thou me?” – “Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these brethren, ye did it not to me.” – “They came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”
The particular case here was this. Israel, for their idolatries, – their “choosing of new gods,” as it is expressed in a previous verse, had been sold by the Lord into the hand of the Canaanites. For years they had held them down beneath a crushing oppression. At length the Lord raised up a deliverer for them in the person of Deborah, in conjunction with Barak, the son of Abinoam. Of Deborah it is written at the sixth verse of the previous chapter, that “she sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kedesh-Naphtali, and said unto him, Hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward Mount Tabor, and take with the ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun? And I will draw unto thee, to the river Kishon, Sisera, the captain of Jabin’s army, with his chariots, and his multitude; and I will deliver him into thine hand.” I will deliver him.
But the Lord employs instruments for the executing of His purposes, though He needs them not. The tribes of Israel were summoned to this war: and the inhabitants of Meroz declined the summons. Well; but God had entered into marriage covenant with Israel. The kingdom of Israel was His kingdom. The interests of Israel were His interests; and He had bound up with them the glory of His own name. Accordingly, it is not now said of the men of Meroz that they came not to Deborah’s help, nor to Barak’s help, nor even to the help of Israel; but that “they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.” True, they were deeply guilty in refusing to come to the help of Israel. It was the very spirit of the first murderer, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Nay, they were guilty in refusing pusillanimously to come, if I might so speak, to their own help. For they were a part of Israel; their own interests were involved in the struggle; and men are not entitled to fling their own liberties and welfare away. But pre-eminently their sin lay in this – just where the condemnation of the final judgment will lie, “Ye did it not to me” – “They came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”
(1.) A little more specifically, the sin of the men of Meroz had in it unbelief, – criminal distrust of the word and promise and power of the living God. No doubt it was largely cowardice that led them to refuse their aid. But whence the cowardice? They did not believe that the Canaanites could be subdued. They would keep on good terms with the oppressors to save their own heads. They “believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation.” Either they did not believe that the Lord was in covenant with Israel, or, which came to much the same, they limited the Holy One of Israel, like their fathers, – they deemed his strength unequal to cope with the princes of Canaan. Their spirit was that of the spies of old: “The people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled and very great.” It was the dark reverse of theirs who answered them, “They are bread for us; their defense is departed from them, and the Lord is with us; fear them not.”
(2.) But besides criminal unbelief – that root and strength of all other iniquities – the sin of the men of Meroz had in it a vile preference of their own ease, and fancied present interest, before the authority, and honour, and interest, of the God of Israel. Deborah had said, “Hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded, saying, Go, and draw toward Mount Tabor?” And the command had doubtless been made known to the men of Meroz. But they preferred their own selfish quiet before the authority of Jehovah – treason that, of course, against the King of kings. They preferred their own ease before His honour, which was now at stake, since He had said, “I will deliver Sisera, the captain of Jabin, into thine hand.” No thanks to the men of Meroz if the promise did not fail, – if the glory of the God of Israel became not the mockery of the heathen.
They preferred their own ease before God’s interest – for He had condescended to make Israel’s interest His own. And it was just as if the adorable God had been in distress, but they cared not for it; as if He had been an hungered, but they gave him no meat; as if He had been crushed beneath the rod of the oppressor, but they refused to lift a hand for his deliverance – “They came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”
(3.) And thus, further, their sin was nothing less than enmity, war, against the living God. Doubtless they would be fain to say, What have we done so much against him? we have but sat still in our quiet homes. Ay, and therein fought against Him. Oh, there is no possible medium between the love of the adorable God, and the hatred of him, – between willing, active service rendered to God, and hostility, war, against him – “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” He who prefers his own ease before the honour, authority, interest, of God, fights to the utmost of his power against his Being and Life. Nor will the condemnation of the judgment-day turn on aught else than just such a negative iniquity, “They came not to the help of the Lord” – “Ye did it not to me” – “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.”
(4.) I only add on the sin, that it is marked as a special aggravation of it that it was to “the help of the Lord against the mighty” they refused to come – against the mighty. Had the enemy, that is to say, been a feeble, contemptible one in numbers and strength, they might have had some plausible pretext for leaving the struggle to others. But all was in reality at stake. The existence of Israel hung in the balance. The enemy was in the last degree formidable. All available help was required. Yet, in this crisis of their country’s, and of the Church’s, history, the inhabitants of Meroz “came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”
II. But now we look, secondly, and more briefly, at the judgment, – the judgment of the Lord against the men of Meroz for this sin: “Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.” There can be very little doubt, from the prominence given to Meroz here, that, in the days of Deborah, it must have been a place, a town, of very considerable size and importance. Yet we find no mention anywhere made of it after this time. And it is every way probable that soon after this period, in God’s righteous judgment, and in execution of this very curse, it had become the subject of some desolating infliction, that had blotted the name and remembrance of it out from under heaven, “Curse ye Meroz” – and yet “there is none good but One, that is God” – “curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”
It is a remarkable circumstance, however, that other and very considerable sections of the Israelites seem to have been involved in the same sin, more or less, with the men of Meroz; yet we do not find the same curse denounced against them. Thus, in the fifteenth verse, after a commendation of the tribe of Issachar, “The princes of Issachar were with Deborah; even Issachar, and also Barak: he was sent on foot into the valley,” it is added, “For the divisions of Reuben there were great thoughts of heart. Why abodest thou among the sheep-folds, to hear the pleadings of the flocks? For the divisions of Reuben, there were great searchings of heart. Gilead abode beyond Jordan: and why did Dan remain in ships? Asher continued on the sea-shore, and abode in his breaches.” A fine contrast follows in the eighteenth verse, “Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.” I think there can be very little doubt that there must have been some special aggravation in the case of Meroz which has not been placed on record – perhaps its having been in the immediate neighbourhood of the field of action, together with some more expressive and emphatic treachery of dealing in its refusal of aid. At the same time I am well satisfied that the Holy Ghost does not record the case of Meroz here as some rarely exceptional one, but rather singles it out in order to place in bolder relief, by one striking example, the whole class of cases, – alas! too, too numerous – to which it belongs.
This much is certain, that the curse of Meroz was but the harbinger, a kind of anticipative specimen, of that wide spreading doom, – in which the Lord grant that none of us may share! – “Then shall the King say to them on his left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick and in prison, and he visited me not.” “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha” – accursed at the coming of the Lord. “Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”
III. But I am thus led, finally, to touch on one or two practical lessons arising out of the whole. There are, indeed, doctrinal lessons which might have been mentioned, such as the marvellous oneness between the Lord and his people, and His rich condescension and grace, seen in the very using of words like “coming to the help of the Lord.” But I limit myself to three immediately practical lessons.
(1.) And first, a lesson of duty – very urgent duty. It will help to bring both the beauty and the urgency of it better out, if it is borne in mind that, from the fall of our race downwards, – from the hour of the first sin, and of the first covenant promise, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel,” the Lord has had a controversy, so to speak, – a quarrel in this fallen world, – a war with mighty adversaries, Satan, sin, the world that lieth in the wicked one – His gracious purpose having all along been in that war to call a people out of the world for the glory of His own name, – an innumerable multitude of all kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, to be “washed, and sanctified, and justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” Just glance at those words of Deborah, describing the deep desolation of Israel, in the sixth and seventh verses, “In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travelers walked through byways. The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until” and so on. Some faint, very faint shadow this, of the spiritual profound desolation of this world lying in wickedness, dead in trespasses and sins – the two hundred millions, for example, of India’s heathen; or China, with her four hundred millions; or our own great cities, London, Glasgow, &c., with their multitudes estranged from all the decencies even, and outward observances, of religion. Well; and God uses instruments for the saving of the lost everywhere, “Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” And although all cannot go in person to fight this battle of the Lord, all can do very much, by prayers, by pecuniary gifts, any other ways, for the fulfilling of the commission, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” But, alas! how often are men, of whom from their profession other things might be expected, found coolly saying, That is not our work – complacently within their hearts saying, We injure no one, – we lead a quiet and harmless life. Well; there are different views of what injury, harm, is. God has His view of this, and men have theirs.
But be it so. Yet, if the blessed God has condescended to make the reclaiming of those multitudes at home, and millions upon millions abroad, his peculiar battle, and you refuse to bear your share in it; if He has condescended to espouse this as His own quarrel and cause, and, using instrumentality, has sent forth commands which have reached to you, laying you and your means and prayers and services all under tribute, then it is your duty just as plain as was that of the inhabitants of Meroz. Then must you needs share in their guilt and in their doom, refusing to give yourselves to the discharge of it. Then the same criminal distrust of God, the same vile preference of your own ease to His honour, authority, interest; the same enmity to Him, the same aggravated refusal to come to His help against the mighty, and the same curse, or a bitterer one, must rest on your heads as rested on theirs.
Oh, how vain and hollow all the pleas which men are fain to set up for themselves in this matter! At best they ran out into the first murderer’s question. But, supposing it is conceded that you are not your brother’s keeper, at least you are the subjects and servants of the living God: and the fearful charge he brings here against those I now address is this, that “they have not come to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.” It was to small purpose that the unprofitable servant said, “I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth; lo, there thou hast that is thine” – I have harmed no one – God had no need of my poor services. “Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest” – didst thou? – “That I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not strawed. Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Cast ye the unprofitable servant” – not that profligate, the thief, the drunkard, but the unprofitable servant – “into outer darkness.” How replete with duty, in short, – urgent, paramount duty, are these words, “Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty”!
(2.) But observe a second lesson of a different character, one of precious and varied encouragement, to all such as are disposed, humbly, yet resolutely and prayerfully, to offer themselves to the help of the Lord against the mighty. See, for example, how He will condescend to receive and welcome your aid. Read the ninth verse of the song of Deborah, “My heart” – ah, what was the heart of Deborah but a shadow of the heart of God? – “My heart is toward the governors of Israel, that offered themselves willingly among the people. Bless ye the Lord”: and the second verse, “Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel, when the people willingly offered themselves.” And see the grateful mention, if I might so speak with reverence, which God makes of particular services. Ver. 14, “Out of Ephraim was there a root of them against Amalek; after thee, Benjamin, among thy people: out of Machir (Manasseh) came down governors, and out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer.” It seems that, besides the services which were common to all, each could offer something special to himself – “out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer. And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah…. Zebulun and Naphtali were people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.”
But the grand encouragement here lies in this same expression, “the help of the Lord,” – “coming to the help of the Lord,” which tells of the guilt and doom of those who refuse to come to it. Oh, is it to the help of the Almighty God you seek to come, dear brethren? Then you may well, I think, thank God, and take courage. Then, be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s – there be more with you than with them.
Then you may pray, and give, and labour, in the happy confiding spirit of those words, “God has spoken in his holiness, I will rejoice,” – “Arise, O God, plead thine own cause,” – “Lord it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many or with them that have no power; help us O Lord our God, for we rest on thee, and in thy name we go against this multitude. O Lord, thou art our God; let not man prevail against THEE.”
Is it to the help of the Lord you seek to come? Then are you permitted even to anticipate a glorious reward of services, which might well, indeed, be their own sufficient reward. But the Lord, in his matchless grace, is pleased to crown them with an everlasting blessedness and glory, “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me . . . inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.”
(3.) But once more we have a lesson here of solemn warning – duty, encouragement, warning. I expressed the persuasion a little ago, that the Spirit of God does not set down the case of Meroz here as some rarely exceptional one, but rather singles it forth to place in bolder relief, by an example, the whole class of cases to which it belongs – a class so fearfully numerous that we have cause indeed to say, each one of us, Lord, is it mine? cause to tremble lest we should be found under the guilt and doom of Meroz, – found in that vast company to whom, on His left hand, the King will say, “Ye did it not to me.” For, brethren, you will not fail to observe that it is by no means any and every kind of help and service that will suffice to separate us from the class, and save us from the curse, of the inhabitants of Meroz. A man may come, for example, with a help so stinted and grudging as to make it quite manifest that it is but the covering up of a desire to be let alone altogether.
Or he may come with a help not so stinted in the simple amount of it, yet not offered to the Lord Himself, which is the hinge, you will carefully observe, of this whole matter, “they came not to the help of the Lord” – “Ye did it,” or, “ye did it not, to me.” How deeply solemn the thought that, if there is the richest condescension in such a mode of speech as “coming to the help of the Lord,” it is a condescension which has, however, its two entirely different and opposite aspects, according as it is felt, appreciated, embraced, on the one hand, or despised and rejected, on the other! Assuredly, by how much the Lord has revealed His condescension and grace, in making offer to us of so marvelous a oneness of cause and interest and blessedness with Himself, by so much and more aggravated a judgment and doom must the contempt and rejection of that grace bring with it.
“Curse ye Meroz” – fearful words, beloved, but very gracious ones also, considered as set down for no other end than to shut us the more up to Him who redeemeth His people from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for them, – who is made of God to as many as put their trust in Him wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption – the very same Angel of the covenant, I doubt not, who is the speaker in the text, and will one day sit in the judgment-throne – CURSE YE MEROZ, SAID THE ANGEL OF THE LORD; CURSE YE BITTERLY THE INHABITANTS THEREOF; BECAUSE THEY CAME NOT TO THE HELP OF THE LORD, TO THE HELP OF THE LORD AGAINST THE MIGHTY.
