“This Moses whom they refused, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’—God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 35. Moses, whom they refused. Lit. denied. So have you rejected, and denied Jesus, of whom Moses prophesied, when he said that God would raise up to them a prophet like to himself, and commanded them to hear him. Witham.—Redeemer. In the Greek Λυτρωτην; Protestant version, Deliverer; though the learned Polus, in his Synopsis Criticorum, on this place, says, “that no greater injury is done to God, by calling Moses a Redeemer, in this place, than by calling him a Mediator, in Galatians 3:19. He is called a Redeemer, says this learned Protestant commentator, in as much as he led forth, and preserved the people of God safe by the blood of a lamb, and thus exhibited a figure of the true redemption, through the blood of Christ.” We all own that Jesus Christ, as having paid the ransom of our delivery with his own blood, is, strictly speaking, our only true Redeemer, and Advocate with his Father, who asks and obtains all things immediately by his own merit; but this does not exclude the prayers of the saints, both alive and dead. Did not the apostles pray for the people, and desire the people to pray for them? “Our Lord Jesus Christ still intercedes for us, and all the martyrs that are with him, pray for us: nor will their intercession cease, till we cease our groanings,” says S. Augustin, in Ps. lxxxv. in fine.