(A motto for all Bereans, for the year 1947).

In the home of any orthodox Jew one will find, to this day, a strange device hanging

upon the east wall of the house. It is called a Mitsrach. Often it takes the form of the

ten commandments. Any who have access to Volume IV of The Berean Expositor will

find on page 62 (or Volume IV/V, page 51) a description and illustration of articles

used in the synagogue and Jewish home. The articles numbered 5 and 6, give some idea

of what a Mitsrach looks like. This word means "From the rising", and is hung upon the

east wall so that prayer can be directed toward Jerusalem. Now we have no intention of

hanging a Mitsrach on any wall of our house, nor of advising any of our readers to adopt

this Jewish custom, but we mention it here because of the lesson it may enforce.

The full expression is Mitsrach Shemesh. "From the rising of the sun", "Toward the

sunrising" (Numb. 21: 11). In Numb. 21: we have the record of Israel's transgression,

the lifting up of the brazen serpent and the healing of all who "looked". The concluding

words are.

We believe every redeemed child of God is expected to follow this course. First to

"set forward". Redemption is a deliverance "out of", therefore Egypt must be left behind.

It is however more than that; it has an inheritance in view, and this must be entered and

possessed. Consequently we discover that from the moment the Passover had been

offered Israel were on the move, and though they wandered forty years in the wilderness,

the word translated "set forward" (Heb. nasa) is used of that period forty-two times in the

record of the itinerary of  Numb. 33:,  where it is variously rendered "depart",

"remove" or "journey".

Among the earliest commands given to the redeemed people under Moses is that

found in Exod. 14: 15, "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward". If the

typical teaching of Israel's deliverance be acknowledged, it appears that Christian witness

also must be a "setting forward". There can be no turning back. There is however a great

difference between setting forward along the Divinely appointed path, and merely

blundering onward without guide or goal. Consequently we must add to our statement

taken from Exod. 14: further words of guidance from subsequent passages.

In Numb. 10: 33, for example, we read, "And they departed from the mount of the

Lord", and the word translated "departed" is nasa.  But this statement is followed

immediately by another, "and the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them".

Here once again the word "went" is a translation of nasa. Further, in Numb. 10: 34, we

read, "And the cloud of the Lord was upon them by day, when they went (nasa) out of

the camp", and yet once more in verse 35 we read the words, "When the ark set forward",