CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
3 1924 101 872 897 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924101872897 
 
THE PENTATEUCH 
 
 AND BOOK OF JOSHUA 
 
 CRITICALLY EXAMINED. 
 
tONDON; FEINTED ET 
 
 BPOTTISWOODB AND CO., NEW-STRTCKT SQOAEK 
 
 AND PAELIAMEKT STEKET 
 
THE PKNTATfiU'CH 
 
 AND BOOK OF JOSHUA 
 
 CRITICALLY EXAMINED 
 
 BY THE RIGHT KEV. 
 
 JOHN WILLIAM COLENSO, D.D. 
 
 BISHOP OP KATAIi. 
 
 ' We fan do notliing against the Truth, but for the Truth.'— Sf. Fault 2 Cor. xiii. S. 
 
 'Not to exceed, and not to fall short of, facts,— not to add, and not to take away,— to 
 (tate the truth, the whole truth, and notliing but the truth,— are the grand, the vital, 
 siaxims of Inductive Science, of English Law, and, let us add, of Oiristian Faitli.' 
 Qttarterlp Review on * Essays and Reviews,' Oct. 1861, p. 309. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 LONGMANS, G-EEEN, AND CO. 
 
 1870. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Flos 
 
 Part I. 1 
 
 Part n .73 
 
 Pari IIL . . . . 101 
 
 Part IV. . 273 
 
 Pari V 857 
 
PART L 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 <^-^- . PAGE 
 
 Advehtisement to the People's Enmos .»..,. s,s 
 
 Preface to Pakt I. . 7—24 
 
 I. IXTRODUCTOET KE^IAUKS , . , 25— 2S 
 
 n. The Famiiies op Jitdah and Moses 2*0,30 
 
 III. The Ntjmeeii op the CosGiiEGA'nON 30—32 
 
 rv. The Camp akd the Piuest's Ddties 32—34 
 
 V. The Israelites ntjmbered, dwellikg in Tents akp armed . 34-37 
 
 VI. The iKSTiTcnoif op the Passover , , ... 37—40 
 
 VII. The March out op Egypt 40,41 
 
 VIII. The Tloofb and Herds in tbe DEh-ERT 41—48 
 
 IX. The Land op Cakaan : the Number op the First-borns . 48— SO 
 X. The SoJomtNiNR- in Egypt, and tiie Exodus in the fourth 
 
 G-ENERATIUA' 51—54 
 
 XI. The Number op Israeutes at the Time op the Exodus , 54 — 09 
 
 XII. The Number op Priests at tee Exodus 69—64 
 
 XIII. The Wab on Midian 64—06 
 
 XIV. CoscLUDiNa Bejuakks 6J— 72 
 
SyEAK thou the Truth. Let others fence, 
 - ' And trim their words for pay ; 
 In pleasant sunshine of pretence 
 Let others bask their day. 
 
 Guard thou the Fact : though clouds of night 
 Down on thy watch-tower stoop ; 
 
 TfiDugh thou shouldst see thine heart's delight 
 Borne from, thee by their SAvoop. 
 
 Face thou the wind. Though safer seem 
 
 In shelter to abide, 
 Wd were not made to srit and dream ; 
 
 The nufe must Jirst be tried. 
 
 Dean Alfopd. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 TO 
 
 THE PEOPLE'S EDITION. 
 
 In this edition of my work on the Pentateuch, I have desired to 
 place, in a clear and intelligible form, before the eyes of the 
 general reader, the main arguments which have been advanced in 
 my first four Parts, as proving the unhistorical character, the later 
 origin, and the compound authorship, of the five books usually 
 attiibuted to Moses. 
 
 Hitherto I have addressed myself only to the Clergy and to, the 
 more highly-educated among the Laity ; and the dilEculties, con- 
 nected with the strict scientific treatment of the subject, have 
 confined, of course, the study of my work to a comparatively 
 limited, though still in itself extensive, circle. But now I address 
 the general public. I should feel, indeed, that, unless I had 
 first stated at length, for the consideration and examination of 
 the learned, the grounds on which my conclusions are based, I 
 should not be justified in bringing the discussion of these ques- 
 tions in this form within the reach of the People at large. . But a 
 long interval has now elapsed, since my First Part was published ; 
 and I have sufficiently tested the validity of my arguments by the 
 character of the answers, which have been given to some of them. 
 Being thus satisfied of the soundness of my position,' and the 
 general truth of the main results of my critical labours, I here 
 lay my work before the many, corrected and condensed, without 
 any loss of real substance, but stripped of the Hebrew quota- 
 tions and some more difficult details, for which reference may be 
 made to the larger volumes. And I have the less hesitation in 
 doing this, inasmuch as the subjects here treated of have been 
 of late, and are still, discussed freely in the public journals ; so 
 that no thoughtful person can fail to see that we have here before 
 us one of the great questions of the time, of which this generation 
 must give account to future ages. 
 
 Further, the violent denunciations which in so many instances 
 have taken the place of argument, and the course adopted by the 
 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, in circulating a 
 
6 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 ' People's Edition ' of the late Dr. M'Caitl's ' Reply,' which has 
 been commended by the Bishop (Bickeesteth) of Ripon in hia 
 recent Charge as having- given to my work 'a decisive and 
 complete refutation,' have made it the more desirable that the 
 ' People ' themselves, — that is, all persons of common sense, 
 whether learned or otherwise, — should have the opportunity of 
 seeing with their own eyes what is the real state of the case. And 
 especially I must desire that the inhabitants of Natal and of South 
 Africa, generally, who have heard me condemned in very violent 
 terms by the Metropolitan Bishop of Capetov™', and who cannot 
 be expected to have made much acquaintance with my boobs in 
 their larger form, should be able to judge for themselves as to the 
 contents, and as to the whole tone and spirit, of my work. 
 
 Lastly, when I find the Bishop of Ripon, urging his Clergy to 
 impress upon their flocks that — 
 
 t?te whole Bible is the infallible record of the Mind and Will of God, . . . The Bible, 
 like its Author, is pure unchaTigeable truth — truth, without admixture of error, — 
 
 when I find the Bishop (Hampden) of Heeeeoed asserting in like 
 manner (Guardian, June 15th, 18B4) that, to ' deny the infallible 
 authority of the Bible,' thafia, I presume, of every line and letter 
 of the Bible,i8to 'depaH from the faifh,' — and the Bishop of Cape- 
 town maintaining, in his Judgment on my (so called) ' Trial,' 
 that ' in the belief of the Chm-ch' — 
 
 thi' whole Bible is the unerring Word of the Living God, p.3S2— 
 
 the Church regards, and expects all its officers to regard, the Holy Scriptures as 
 teaching pure and simple truth—it is nothing to reply that they teach what is true in 
 dU things necessary to salvation, ^.390 — 
 
 I hold it to be my duty, as a servant of God and a lover 
 of the souls of men, to do my utmost to counteract a system of 
 teaching, which I believe' to be erroneous and mischievous, and one 
 of the greatest hindrances to the progress of true Religion in the 
 land, 
 
 J, W. NATAL. 
 London: Auffuat 18, 1864. 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET I. 
 
 The cinoTJMSTAifCES, under which this hook has heen ■wiitten, -will 
 be best indicated by the following extracts from a letter, which I 
 addressed some time ago, (though I did not forward it,) to a 
 Professor of Divinity in one of our English Universities, (Prof. 
 Haeoid Beowite, now Bishop of Ely.) 
 
 'My remembrance of the friendly intercourse, which I have 
 enjoyed with you in former days, would be enough to assure me 
 that you will excuse my troubling you on the present occasion, 
 were I not also certain that, on far higher grounds, you will 
 gladly lend what aid you can to a brother in distress, and in very 
 great need of advice and assistance, such as few are better able to 
 give than yourself. You will easUy understand that, in this 
 distant colony, I am far removed from the possibility of converse 
 with those, who would be capable of appreciating my difficulties, 
 and helping me with friendly sympathy and counsel. I have 
 many friends in England ; but there are few, to whom I would 
 look more readily than to yourself, for the help which I need, from 
 regard both to your public position and private character ; and you 
 have given evidence, moreover, in your published works, of that 
 extensive reading and sound judgment, the aid of which I specially 
 require under my present circumstances. 
 
 ' You will, of course, expect that, since I have had the charge 
 of this Diocese, I have been closely occupied in the study of the 
 Zulu tongue, and in translating the Scriptures into it. Through 
 the blessing of God, I have now translated the New Testament 
 completely, and several parts of the Old, among the rest the books 
 of Genesis and Exodus. In this work I have been aided by 
 intelligent natives ; and, having also published a Zulu Grammar 
 and Dictionary, I have acquired sufficient knowledge of the lan- 
 guage, to be able to have intimate communion with the native 
 mind, while thus engaged with them, so as not only to avail 
 myself freely of their criticisms, but to appreciate fully their 
 objections and difficulties. Thus, however, it has happened that 
 
8 PREFACE TO PABT I. 
 
 I hare been brought again face to face ■with questions, which 
 caused me some uneasiness in former days, but with respect to 
 which I was then enabled to satisfy my mind sufficiently for 
 practical purposes, and I had fondly hoped to have laid the 
 ghosts of them at last for ever. Engrossed with parochial and 
 other work in England, I did what, probably, many other clergy- 
 men have done under similar circumstances, — I contented myself 
 with silencing, by means of the specious explanations, which are 
 given in most commentaries, the ordinary objections against the 
 historical character of the early portions of the Old Testament, and 
 settled down into a willing acquiescence in the general ti'uth of the 
 narrative, whatever difficulties might still hang about particular 
 parts of it. In short, the doctrinal and devotional portions of the 
 ]jible were what were needed most in parochial duty. And, if a 
 passage of the Old Testament formed at any time the subject of a 
 sermon, it was easy to draw from it practical lessons of daily life, 
 without examining closely into the historical truth of the narra- 
 tive. It is true, there were one or two stories, which presented 
 great diiSculties, too prominent not to be noticed, and which were 
 brought every now and then before us in the Lessons of the Church, 
 such, for instance, as the account of the Creation and the Deluse. 
 But, on the whole, I found so much of Divine Light and Life in 
 these and other parts of the Sacred Book, so much wherewith to feed 
 my own soul and the souls of others, that I was content to take all 
 this for granted, as being true in the main, however wonderful, 
 and as being at least capable, in an extreme case, of some sufficient 
 explanation. 
 
 ' Here, however, as I have said, amidst my work in this land, I 
 have been brought face to face with the very questions which 
 I then put by. While translating the story of the Flood, I have 
 had a simple-minded, but intelligent, native, — one with the docility 
 of a child, but the reasoning powers of mature age, — look up, and 
 ask, ' Is all that true ? Do you really believe that all this happened 
 thus, — that all the beasts, and birds, and creeping things, upon the 
 earth, large and small, from hot countries and cold, came thus by 
 pairs, and entered into the ark with Noah ? And did Noah gather 
 food for them all, for the beasts and birds of prey, as well as the 
 rest ? ' My heart answered in the words of the Prophet, ' Shall a 
 man speak lies in the name of the Loed ? ' Zech.xiii.3. I dai-ed 
 not do so. My own knowledge of some branches of science, of 
 Geology in ' particular, had been much increased since I left 
 England; and I now knew for certain, on geological grounds, a 
 fact, of which I had only had misgivings before, viz. that a 
 Universal Deluge, such as the Bible manifestly speaks of, could 
 not possibly have taken place in the way described in the Book of 
 Genesis, not to mention other difficulties which the story contains. 
 
PEEFACE TO PAUT I. 9 
 
 I refer especially to the circumstance, well known to all geologists, 
 that Tolcanio hills of immense extent exist in Auvergne and Iian- 
 guedoc, which must have been formed ages before the Noachian 
 Deluge, and which are covered with light and loose substances, 
 pumice-stone, &c., that must have been swept away by a Flood, 
 but do not exhibit the slightest sign of having ever been so 
 disturbed. Of course, I am well aware that some hava attempted 
 to show that Noah's Deluge was only a partial one. But such 
 attempts have ever seemed to me to be made in the very teeth of 
 the Scripture statements, which are as plain and explicit as words 
 can possibly be. Nor is anything really gained by supposing the 
 Deluge to have been partial. For, as waters must find their own 
 level on the Earth's surface, without a special miracle, of which 
 the Bible says nothing, a Flood, which should begin by covering 
 the top of Ararat, (if that were conceivable,) or a much lower 
 mountain, must necessarily become universal, and in due time 
 sweep over the hills of Auvergne. Knowing this, I felt that I 
 dared not, as a servant of the God of Truth, urge my brother man 
 to believe that, which I did not myself believe, which I knew 
 to be untrue, as a matter-of-fact, historical, narrative. I gave 
 him, however, such a reply as satisfied him for the time, without 
 throvring any discredit upon the general veracity of the Bible 
 history. 
 
 ' But I was thus driven, — against my will at first, I may truly 
 say, — to search more deeply into these questions; and I have 
 since done so, to the best of my power, with the means at my 
 disposal in this colony. And now I tremble at the result of my 
 enquiries, — rather, I should do so, were it not that I believe 
 firmly in a God of Kighteousness and Truth and Love, who both 
 ' IS, and is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.' Should 
 all else give way beneath me, I feel that His Everlasting Arms 
 are still under me. I am sure that the solid ground is there, on 
 which my feet can rest, in the knowledge of Him, 'in whom I 
 live, and more, and have my being,' who is my 'faithful Creator,' 
 my 'Almighty and most Merciful Father.' That Truth I see 
 with my spirit's eyes, once opened to the light of it, as plainly as 
 I see the Sun in the heavens. And that Truth, I know, more 
 or less distinctly apprehended, has been the food of living men, 
 the Sitrength of brave souls that ' yeai-n for light,' and battle for 
 the light and the true, the support of struggling and sorrow- 
 stricken hearts, in all ages of the world, in all climes, under all 
 religions.' 
 
 [The letter then proceeded to state some of the principal diffi- 
 culties in the account of the Exodus, which are set forth at full 
 length in the present work, and concluded as follows.] 
 • f Will you oblige me by telling me if you know of any books, 
 
10 PEEFACE TO PABT I. 
 
 which to your own mind deal with these questions satisfaetorilyj 
 
 or, rather, will you kindly direct Messrs. to send to me the 
 
 book or books you may recommend, with others which I have 
 ordered from them ? Among the rest, I have sent for Hengsten- 
 BEKe's book on the Pentateuch, which I see commended in a 
 remarkable article in the Quarterly on ' Essays and Reviews.' 
 That article, however, appears to me to shrink from touching the 
 real question a,t issue, and, instead of meeting the Essayists with 
 ai'gument, to be chiefly occupied with pitying- or censuiing them. 
 Certainly, there are not a few points, on which I differ strongly 
 from those writers. But I cannot think it to be a fair way of 
 proceeding to point out, as the apparent consequence of the course 
 they are pursuing, that it will necessarily lead to infidelity or 
 atheism. It may be so with some ; must it, therefore, be so with 
 all? The same, of course, might have been said, and probably 
 was said, freely, and just as truly, by the Jews of St. Paul and 
 others, and, in later times, by members of the Romish Church of 
 our own Reformers. Our duty, surely, is to follow the Tmth, 
 wherever it leads us, and to leave the consequences in the hands 
 of God. Moreover, in the only instance, where the writer in the 
 Quarterly does attempt to remove a difficulty, he explains away a 
 miracle by a piece of thorough ' neologianism,' — I mean, where he 
 accounts for the sun ' standing still,' at the word of Joshua, by 
 referring to ' one of the tliousand other modes, by which God's 
 mighty power could have accomplished that miracle, rather than 
 by the actual suspension of the unbroken career of the motion of 
 the heavenly bodies in their appointed courses,' which last the 
 Bible plainly speaks of to a common understanding, though the 
 writer seems not to believe in it.* 
 
 * So, too, Archd. Pratt writes, Scripture and Science not at variance, p. 25, — ' The 
 accomplislxnient of this [miracle] is mpposed by some [N.B.] to have been in the 
 arresting of the earth in its rotation. In what other words, then, could the miraola 
 have been expressed ? Should it have been said, ' So the earth ceased to revolve, and 
 made the sun appear to stand stiU in the midst of heaven ? ' This is not the language 
 •we should use, even in these days of scientific light. "Were so great a wonder again 
 to appear, would even an astronomer, as he looked into the heavensi exclaim ' The 
 earth stands still ! ' ? Would he not be laughed at as a pedant ? Whereas, ti, use the 
 language oi appearances, and thus to imitate the style of the Holy Scriptures them- 
 selves, would be most natural and intelligible.' 
 
 It wiU be observed that Archd. Phait does not commit himself to maintaining the 
 above view : he says, ' it is supposed by some' to have been accomplished thus But 
 he argues as if this explanation were possible, and not improbable ; that is to say he 
 lends the weight of his high position and mathematical celebrity to the supBOrt of a 
 view, which every natural philosopher will know to be whoUy untenable. For - not 
 to speai; of the fact, that, it the earth's motion were suddenly stopped a mail's feet 
 would be arrested, while his iody was moving at the rate (on the equator) of 1 000 
 miles an hour, (or, rather, 1,000 miles a minute, since not only niust the earth's 
 diurnal rotation on its axis be stopped, but its annual motion also through snacel so 
 that every human being and animal would be dashed to pieces in a moment and a 
 mighty deluge overwhelm the earth, unless aU this were prevented by a profusion of 
 miraculous interferences,— one point is at once fatal to the above solution Arohd 
 Pratt quotes only the words, ' So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven arid 
 hasted not to go down about a whole day ; ' and, although this is surely one of tlin 
 most prominent questions, in respect of which it is asserted that ' siipture m^4 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET 1. 11 
 
 'After reading that article, I felt more hopelessly than ever how 
 hollow is the ground upon which we have so long been standing, 
 with reference to the subject of the Inspiration of Scripture. I 
 see that there is a very general demand made upon the clerical 
 authors of ' Essays and Reviews,' that they should leave the 
 Church of England, or, at least, resign their preferments. For my 
 own part, however much I may dissent, as I do, from some of their 
 views, I am very far indeed from judging them for remaining, as 
 they still do, as ministers within her pale, — ^knowing too well, by 
 my own feelings, how dreadful would be the wrench, to be torn 
 from all one has loved and revered, by going out of the Church. 
 Perhaps, they may feel it to be their duty to the Church itself, 
 and to that which they hold to be the Truth, to abide in their 
 stations, unless they are formally and legally excluded from them, 
 and to claim for all her members, clerical as well as lay, that 
 freedom of thought and utterance, which is the very essence of 
 our Protestant religion, and without which, indeed, in this age 
 of advancing science, the Church of England would soon become a 
 mere dark prison-house, in which the mind both of the teacher and 
 the taught would be fettered still with the chains of past ignorance, 
 instead of being, as we fondly believed, the veiy home of religious 
 liberty, and the centre of life and light for all the land. But, 
 whatever may be the fate of that book or its authors, it is surely 
 impossible to put down, in these days, the spirit of honest, truth- 
 seeking, investigation into such matters as these. To attempt to 
 do this, would only be like the futile endeavour to sweep back the 
 tide, which is rising at our very doors. This is assuredly no time 
 fur such trifliag. Instead of trying to do this, or to throw up 
 sandbanks, which may serve for the present moment to hide from 
 our view the swelling waters, it is plainly our duty before God and 
 Man to see that the foundations of our faith are sound, and deeply 
 laid in the very Truth itself. 
 
 ' For myself, if I cannot find the means of doing away with my 
 present difficulties, I see not how I can retain my Episcopal Office, 
 in the discharge of which I must require from others a solemn 
 declaration, that they ' do unfeignedly believe all the Canonical 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Testament,' which, with the 
 evidence now before me, it is impossible wholly to believe.* 
 
 Science are at variance,' he dismisses the whole Bnbject in a short note, and never 
 even mentions the moon. But the Bible says, * The sun stood still, and the moon 
 stayed,' Jo.x.13 ; and the arresting of the earth's motion, while it might cause the ap- 
 pearance of the sun * standing still,' would not account for the moon ' staying.' 
 
 It is impossible not to feel the force of Archd. Pratt's own observation, ^,30, 
 ' The lesson we learn from this example is this : How possible it is that, even while 
 we are contending for truth, our minds may be enslaved to error by long-cherished 
 prepossessions r 
 
 * This was written before the recent deoLsion of the Court of Arches, viz. that the 
 above words must be held only to imply ' a boni fide belief that the Holy Scriptures 
 
12 PREFACE TO PART L 
 
 ' I need not say to you that, whatever suppoit and comfort I 
 may feel in the conaciousneas of doing what appears to be right, it 
 would be no light thing for me, at my time of life, to be cast 
 adrift upon the world, and have to begin life again under heavy 
 pressure and amidst all unfavourable ciroumatances, — to be sepa- 
 rated from many of my old friends, to have my name cast out as 
 evil even by some of them, and to have it trodden under foot, 
 as an unclean thing, by others, who do not know me, — not to 
 speak of the pain it would cause me to leave a work like this, 
 which has been committed to me io this land, to which my whole 
 heart and soul have been devoted, and for which, as it seemed, 
 God had fitted me iu some measure more than for others, — a 
 work in which I would joyfully stiU, if it please God, spend and 
 be spent. 
 
 ' But God's Will must be done. The Law of Truth must be 
 obeyed. I shall await your reply, before I take any course, which 
 may commit me in so serious a matter. And I feel that I shall do 
 right to take time for careful deliberation. Should my difficulties 
 not be removed, I shall, if God will, come to England, and there 
 again consult some of my friends. But then, if the step must 
 be taken, in God's Name I must take it ; and He Himself will 
 provide for me future work on earth, of some kind or other, if He 
 has work for me to do.' 
 
 The above letter I wrote, but did not forward, in the early part 
 of 1861. I had not then gone so deeply into the question as I 
 have done since. And, as I do not wish to be misunderstood by 
 some, whom I truly esteem and love, — ^to whom I owe all duty 
 and respect, hut allegiance to the Truth above all, — I may here 
 say that, at the time when I took coimsel with my Episcopal 
 Brethren at the Capetown Conference in January, 1861, I had 
 not even begun to enter on these enquiries, though I fully in- 
 tended to do so on my return to Natal. Then, however, I had 
 not the most distant idea of the results at which I have now 
 arrived. I am sensible, of course, that, in stating this, I lay 
 myself open to the objection, that the views, which I now hold, 
 are comparatively of recent date, and, having been adopted within 
 less than two years, may be found after a while untenable, and be 
 as quickly abandoned. I do not myself see any probability or 
 possibility of this, so far as the mam question ia concerned viz. 
 the unhistorical character of the story of the Exodus which is 
 exhibited in the First Part of this work. But, however this may 
 be, I have thought it right to state the simple truth. And, though 
 
 contain everything neoessary to salvation, and that to that extent they have thn 
 direct sanction of the Almighty,'— by whioh, of course, the above conclusion is ma/i. 
 rially affected. " "^ '^^ 
 
PREFACE TO PAUT I. 13 
 
 these views are, comparatively speaking, new to me,— and will be 
 new, us I believe, to most of my English readers, even to many of 
 the Clergy, of whom, probably, few have examined the Pentateuch 
 closely since they took Orders, while parts of it some of them may 
 have never really studied at all,— yet I am by this time weU aware 
 that most of the points here considered have been already brought 
 forwai-d, though not exactly in the present form, by various 
 continental writers, with whom the critical and scientific study 
 of the Scriptures has made more progress than it has yet done 
 in England.* 
 
 Some, indeed, may be ready to say of this book, as the Quarterly 
 says of the Essayists, ' the whole apparatus is dravm hodUy from 
 the German Rationalists.' This, however, is not the case; and 
 I will, at once, state plainly to what extent I have been indebted 
 to German sources, in the original composition of this work. 
 Having determined that it was my duty, without loss of time, to 
 engage myself* thoroughly in the task, of examining into the 
 foundations of the current belief in the historical credibility of 
 the Mosaic story, I wrote to a friend in England, and requested 
 him to send me some of the best books for entering on such a 
 course of study, begging him to forward to me books on both sides 
 of the question, 'both the bane and the antidote.' He sent me 
 two German works, Ewaid {Oesehichte des Volkes Israel, 7 vols.) 
 and KiTETZ {History of the Old Covenant, 3 vols.), the former in 
 German, the latter in an English translation {Clark's Theol. Libr.), 
 and a book, which maintains the traditionary view, of the Mosaic 
 origin and historical accuracy of the Pentateuch, with great zeal and 
 ability, as will be seen by the numerous extracts which I have made 
 from it in the body of this work. On receiving these books, I laid, 
 for the present, EwAxr on the shelf, and devoted myself to the close 
 study of Kurtz's work, — ^with what result the contents of this 
 volume will -show. I then grappled with Ewald's book, and 
 studied it diligently, the parts of it, at least, which concern the 
 0. T. history. It certaioly displays an immense amount of erudi- 
 tion, such as may well entitle it to be called, as in the Ed. Review 
 on 'Essays and Reviews,' a 'noble work.' But, with respect to 
 the Pentateuch, anyone, who is well acquainted with it, will 
 perceive that my conclusions, on many important points, differ 
 materially from Ewaib's. -Besides these, I had, at first, two 
 books of HBifGSiEifBEKe, on the Fsalms and on the Christology of 
 
 • Hengotenbebs is very fond of representing almost all his opponents as followers 
 of De Wette : — ' They supply themselves very freely from his stores, and have made 
 scarcely the least addition to them.' Pe»t.ii.p.S. This is, of course, intended to 
 diminish the force of their multiplied testimony, and to reduce it to the single voice 
 of De Wbite. But the same difflcnlties, if they really exist, must, of course, occur to 
 all, who baing'a fair and searching criticism to bear upon the subject, however they 
 may differ in their mode of stating them. 
 
14 PEEFACE TO PAET I. 
 
 the O.T. And these comprised tlie whole of my stock of German 
 Theology, when the substance of my First Part was written.^ Since 
 then, however, and while rewriting it with a view to publication, 
 De Wette's Einleitung, and Bieek's excellent posthumous work, 
 JEMeitung in das A. T., have come into my hands. I have also 
 carefully studied the most able modern works, written in defence 
 of the ordinary view, such as Hbngstenbers's Dissertations on tlie 
 Oenuineness of the Pentateuch, Haveenick's Introduction to the O. T., 
 &c., with what effect the contents of the present work will show. 
 At a still later period, I have been able to compare my results 
 with those of Kitenen, in his Ilistorisch-Kritisoh Onderzoek, of 
 which Part I, on the Historical Books of the 0. T., has just been 
 published at Leyden, (Sept. 1861,) — a work of rare merit, but 
 occupied wholly with critical and historical questions, such as do 
 not come into consideration at all in the First Part of the present 
 work. And, since my return to England, I have had an oppor- 
 tunity of consulting Dr. Davidson's Introduction to the 0. T., 
 Vols. I and II, the most able work which has yet appeared in 
 England on the subject of Biblical Criticism. 
 
 It will be observed that I have quoted repeatedly from KuBlz, 
 Hengsienbeeg, &c., as well as from English works of eminence, 
 written in support of the ordinary view. I have made these 
 quotations on principle, in order that the reader may have before 
 him all that, as far as I am aware, can be said by the best wi-iters 
 on that side of the question, and may perceive also that I have 
 myself carefully considered the arguments of such writers, and 
 have not hastily and lightly adopted my present views ; and I have 
 often availed myself of their language, in illustration of some 
 point occurring in the course of the enquiry, as being not only 
 valuable on account of the information given on good authority, 
 but liable also to no suspicion of having been composed from my 
 own point of view, for the purpose of maintaining my argument. 
 
 Being naturally unwilling in my present position, as a Bishop 
 of the Church, to commit myself even to a friend on so grave a 
 subject, if it could possibly be avoided, I determined to detain my 
 letter when written, for a time, to see what effect further study 
 and consideration would have upon my views. At the end of 
 that time, — in a great measure, by my being made more fully 
 aware of the utter helplessness of Kurtz and HEKGSTijfBERG, 
 in their endeavours to meet the difficulties, which are raised 
 by a closer study of the Pentateuch,— I became so convinced 
 of the unhistorical* character of very considerable portions of 
 
 • I use the expression ' nnMstorioal ' or ' not historically true ' throughout rather 
 than ' flctitions,' since the word 'fiction' is frequently understood to imply a con- 
 scious dishonesty on the part of the writer, an intention to deceive. Yet, in writing the 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET I. 15 
 
 the Mosaic narrative, that I decided not to foi-ward my letter 
 at all. I did not now need counsel or assistance to relieve my 
 own personal doubts; I had no longer any doubts; my former 
 misgivings had been changed to certainties. The matter was 
 become much more serious. I saw that it concerned the whole 
 Church,— not myself, and a few more only, whose minds might 
 have been disturbed, by making too much of minor diiiiculties and 
 contradictions, the force of which might be less felt by others. It 
 was clear to me that difficulties, such as those which are set forth 
 in the First Part of this book, would be felt, and realised in their 
 full force, by most intelligent Englishmen, whether of the Clergy 
 or Laity, who should once have had them clearly brought before 
 their eyes, and have allowed their minds to rest upon them. I 
 considered, therefore, that I had not a right to ask of my friend 
 privately beforehand a reply to my objections, with respect to 
 which, as a Divinity Professor, he might, perhaps, ere long be 
 required to express his opinion in his public capacity. 
 
 That the phenomena in the Pentateuch, to which I have drawn 
 attention in the first iustance, and which show so decisively its 
 unhistorical character, have not yet, as far as I am aware, been set 
 forth, in this form, before the eyes of English readers, may, perhaps, 
 be explained as follows : 
 
 (i) Some of these difficulties would only be likely to occur to 
 one in the same position as myself, engaged as a Missionary in 
 translating the Scriptures, and, therefore, compelled to discuss all 
 the minutest details with intelligent natives, whose mode of life 
 and habits, and even the nature of their country, so nearly corre- 
 spond to those of the ancient Israelites, that the very same scenes 
 are brought continually, as it were, before their eyes, and vividly 
 realised in a practical point of view, in a way in which an English 
 student would scarcely think of looking at them. 
 
 (ii) Such studies as these have made very little progress as yet 
 among the Clergy and Laity of England ; and so the English mind, 
 with its practical common-sense, has scarcely yet been brought to 
 bear upon them. Add to which, that the study of the Hebrew 
 language has, till of late years, been very much neglected in 
 England in modern times. 
 
 (iii) The difficulties which have been usually brought forward 
 in England, as affecting the historical character of the Pentateuch, 
 are those which concern the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge ; 
 and many, who feel these difficulties very strongly, are able to get 
 
 story of the Exodus, from the ancient legends of his people, the Scripture writer may 
 have had no more consciousneBS of doing wroDg or of practising historical deception, 
 than HojtER, Herodotus, or LivT. It is we, who do him wrong, and do wrong to 
 the real excellence of the Scripture story, by maintaining that it must be historicalljr 
 true, aM that the writer meant it to be received and believed as such, not only by his 
 own countrymen, but by all mankind to the end of time, # 
 
16 PEEFACE TO PAET 1. 
 
 over them, by supposing the first two to embody some kind of 
 allegorical teaching, and the last to be a report of some dread 
 catastrophe, handed down in the form of a legend from hoar 
 antiquity, without questioning at all the general histoi-ical truth of 
 the stoiy of the Exodus, upon which such important consequences 
 depend. Hence such minds are little impressed by discussions 
 mooted upon these points, and, indeed, are rather irritated by 
 having these questions brought before them at all, when, as they 
 think, they can be fairly disposed of 
 
 (iv) Thus it is that English books, upon the historical credibility 
 of the Mosaic narrative, are at present very few, and still fewer 
 those, which treat the subject with the reverence due to a question, 
 which involves the dearest hopes, and fondest beliefs, of so many ; 
 while others again, as the essays in 'Aids to Faith ' and ' Replies 
 to Essays and Reviews,' which are written in defence of the 
 traditionary view, while professing a desire for candid and free, 
 though reverential, examination of the subject, yet pass by entirely 
 the main points of difficulty, as if they were wholly unknown to 
 the writers. 
 
 (v) It is not unlikely that the works of the (so-called) orthodox 
 German writers, Haveenick, Kuetz, Hengstenbees, Keii, &c., 
 which are now'being translated, and published in Clark's Theo- 
 logical Library, might before long have effected indirectly a con- 
 siderable change in the current theology of England, by its being 
 seen how feebly they reply to some of the more striking objections, 
 which occur on a close study of the Pentateuch, — and which many 
 an English reader will often learn first from these very attempts 
 to answer them, — and also how often they are obliged, by the force 
 of the Truth itself, to abandon gi'ound long held sacred in England, 
 of which several instances will appear in the body of this book. 
 But, even then, these portions of their works are often so overlaid 
 with a mass of German erudition, in illustration of other questions 
 of no consequence, about which there is no doubt or dispute, that 
 the reader is carried on from one real difficulty to another, without 
 being exactly satisfied on each point as he passes, but yet without 
 feeling very forcibly the failm-e in each pai-ticular instance, his 
 cattention being distracted, and his patience and perseverance often 
 rather painfuUy tasked, in the labour of going through the inter- 
 mediate matter. 
 
 (vi) On the other hand, writers of the liberal school in Germany 
 take so completely for granted,— either on mere critical grounds 
 or because they assume from the first the utter impossibility of 
 miracles or supernatural revelations,— the unhistorical character 
 and non-Mosaic origin of the greater portion, at least, if not the 
 whole, of the Pentateuch, that they do not generally take the 
 trouble to test the credibility of the story, by entering into such 
 
PREFACE TO PABT I. 17 
 
 matter-of-fact enquiries, as are here made the basis of the whole 
 argument. 
 
 There can he no douht, however, that a very wide-spread distrust 
 does exist among the intelligent Laity in England, as to the sound- 
 ness of the traditionary view of Scripture Lispiration. But such 
 distrust is generally grounded on one or two ohjections, felt 
 strongly, perhaps, but yet imperfectly apprehended, not on a 
 devout and careful study of the whole question, with deliberate 
 consideration of all that can he said on both sides of it. Hence 
 it is rather secretly felt, than openly expressed; though it is 
 sufficiently exhibited to the eye of a reflecting man in many 
 outward signs of the times, and in none more painfully than in 
 the fact, which has been lamented by more than one of the 
 English Bench of Bishops, and which every Colonial Bishop must 
 still more sorrowfully confess, that the great body of the more 
 intelligent students of our Universities no longer come forward to 
 devote themselves to the service of the Church, but are drafted off 
 into other professions. The Church of England must fall to the 
 ground by its own internal weakness, — ^by losing its hold upon the 
 growing intelligence of all classes, — unless some remedy be very 
 soon applied to this state of things. It is a miserable policy, which 
 now prevails, unworthy of the Truth itself, and one which cannot 
 long be maintained, to ^keep things quiet* 
 
 Meanwhile, a restraint is put upon scientific enquiry* of every 
 
 * Note to * Peoples Edition* 1864. I commend to the reader's attention the admira- 
 ble ' Exeter Hall Lecture ' on * The Power of God in Hie Animal Creation,' lately 
 delivered by Prof. Owen before * The Toung Men's Christian Asociation,' from. 
 which I copy the following extracts. 
 
 ' Did time permit, I could open out to you another field of the Power of Gk>d, as 
 manifested in the law of the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and 
 show you how the peculiar life-forms, for example, which now respectively charac- 
 terise South America, Australia, and New Zealand, are closely allied to, or identical 
 with, the forms represented by fossils that characterised those parts of the dry land, 
 before Niagara began to cut back its channel in the platform of rock, over the face 
 of which, when uplifted 50,000 years ago, it first began to fall. And mch knowledge 
 is incompatible with the notion of the divergence of all existing ^ air-breathtTig, or drotm' 
 able, animal species from one Asiatic centre within a period q^ 4,000 years. 
 
 * But to how many in this hall might such bodies of fact and inference be distaste- 
 ful, — such enlargement of their knowledge'of the Power unwelcome ? May I suppose 
 that there are any here who would arrest the course of Science if they could, — would 
 gladly fetter its diffusion ?....! would fain believe that there are not among the 
 representatives of the Christian world, whom I am now honoured in addressing, any 
 to whom the expositions of the Power, teaching the world's vast age, the co-relation 
 and concomitancy of death with life, the unintermittance of creative acts, may be 
 abhorrent, — who look with suspicion, dislike, or dread, upon the evidences, reason- 
 fi^, proofs, of GTeology, Palaeontology, Greographical Zoology, — who have ears to 
 hear, and wiH not listen, who have eyes to see, and will not behold. But, if such 
 there be, let me remind them that their mental condition is the same as that of the 
 devout Christians, when the discoveries of the shape, the motions, and cosmical rela- 
 tions, of our small planet were first propounded. They know not, or they refuse to 
 receive, the later evidences of the Power of God : ' They think they know the 
 Scriptures, and they do err.* 
 
 * Not but that, for all that is essential to the right life here and in the life to come. 
 Scripture alone suflSceth : the eternal truths are plainly told. ... It is the human 
 element, mingling with the divine, or meddling with it, which the discoveries ol 
 science expose : it is the fence, set np about some narrowed and exclusive view, which 
 the^ break down. Beware, therefore, of logically precise and definite theologiesy 
 
 B 
 
18 PEEFACE TO PAET I. 
 
 kind, by the fear of transgressing; in some way tlie 1)0X01(38, wMch 
 the Scripture statements are supposed to have set to such specula- 
 tions, and by the necessity of propitiating to some extent the 
 popular religious feeling on the subject. Men of science, generally, 
 have not the leisure to pursue veiy far for themselves such inves- 
 tigations as these. And, if men of devout minds, they will feel 
 obliged to acquiesce, more or less, in the dicta of the Church and 
 the Clergy, while conscious oftentimes that such dicta are painfully 
 at variance with truths, which they have begun to glimpse at as 
 the results of their own researches. They may proceed, and, 
 probably, very many do proceed, far enough to see that there is 
 something hollow in the popular belief, and that the modem view 
 of Scripture Inspiration cannot possibly be true in all points. But 
 the work of examining into its truth or falsehood is a work for 
 theologians, not for natural philosophers, and, to be done tho- 
 roughly, it requires great labour and a special training. Hence 
 they will probably drop the subject altogether, some sinking into 
 practical, if even imavowed, unbelief of the whole Mosaic story, 
 as told in the Pentateuch, others smothering up their misgivings 
 with a general assumption that the account must be substantially 
 true ; while there are very many, who appreciate to some extent 
 the difficulties of the traditionary view, but yet are unable to satisfy 
 themselves that it is wholly untenable, and live in a state of 
 painful uncertainty, which they would gladly have terminated, 
 though even by the sharp pang of one decisive stroke, which shall 
 sever their connection with it once and for ever. 
 
 I believe that there are not a few among the more highly 
 educated classes of society in England, and multitudes among the 
 more intelligent operatives, who are in danger of drifting into 
 irreligion and practical atheism, imder this dim sense of the 
 unsoundness of the popular view, combined with a feeling of 
 distrust of their spiritual teachers, as if these must be either igno- 
 rant of facts, which to themselves are patent, or, at least, in- 
 sensible to the difficulties which those facts involve, or else, being 
 aware of their existence, and feeling their importance, are con- 
 
 iicoounting, from their point ol view, for all tMngs and cases, natural and preter- 
 natural, claiming to be final and all-suffloient. ' Systems of Doctrine," ' SohemeB of 
 Christianity,' ' Dogmatic Formularies," are of human fabrication, the worts of man's 
 brain, of which he is as proud and jealous as of the works of his hands Tlim for- 
 sooth, must not be meddled with I Any ray of light, exposing a hole or a bad joint 
 in them, mult be shut out>-the light-bringer, perhaps, anathematised 1 Tlieu must 
 be the exception to the common lot awaiting aU mortal constructions I . . . Eman- 
 cipate yourselves from notions of textual meanings, which may have been earlv im- 
 pressed upon your plastic understanding. Clear away the film or medium which has 
 been systematically screwed upon your mind's eye by your early teacher with best in- 
 tentions, and m best faith, whether Anglican or Athanasian, Lutheran Weslevan 
 Presbyterian, &o. As much as may be, become again ' as Uttle children ' in seekins 
 guidance from Holy Wnt. Above all, square your actions by Christian ethics and 
 be assured that, as you do so, the essential trutlis wlU become plainer to^Vonr 
 tatellcot : for ■ He, that doeth of the will, shall know of the doctrine, whetlier it ba 
 
PREFACE TO PART I. 19 
 
 ficioiisly ignoring tliem. It has been said by some^ ^ Wliy make 
 this disturbance ? Why publish to the world matters like these, 
 about which theologians may have doubts ?^ I answer, that they 
 are not theologians only, who are troubled with such doubts, and 
 that we have a duty to discharge towards that large body of our 
 brethren,— Ao?i7 large it is impossible to say, but,' probably, much 
 larger than is commonly imagined, — who not only doubt, but dis- 
 believe, many important parts of the Mosaic narrative, as well as 
 , to those, whose faith may be more simple and unenquiiing, though 
 not, therefore, necessarily, more deep and sincere, than theirs. 
 We cannot expect such as these to look to us for comfort and help 
 in their religious perplexities, if they cannot place entire coniidence 
 in our honesty of purpose and good faith, — if they have any reason 
 to suppose that we are willing to keep back any part of the truth, 
 and are afraid to state the plain facts of the case, aewe know them. 
 On this subject I commend to the reader's attention -the follow- 
 ing admirable remarks of Archbishop Whaxelt, (Bacon's Essays, 
 with Annotations, p.ll) : — 
 
 We are boimd never to countenance any erroneuns opinion, however seemingly 
 beneficial in its results, never to connive at any salutary delusion (as it may 
 appear), but to open the eyes (when opportunity oSers, and in proportion as it 
 offers) of those we are instructing, to any mistake they may labour under, though it 
 may be one which leads them ultimately to a true result, and to one of which they 
 might otherwise fail. The temptation to depart from this principle is sometimes 
 excessively strong, because it will often be the case that men will be in some danger, 
 in parting with a long-admitted error, of abandoning, at the same time, some truth 
 tbey have been accustomed to connect with it. Accordingly, censures have been 
 passed on the endeavours to enlighten the adherents of some erroneous churches, on 
 the ground that many of them thence become atheists, and many, the wildest of 
 fanatics. That this should have been in some instances the case, is highly probable ; 
 it is a natural result of the pernicious effects on the mind of any system of blind 
 nnenquiring acquiescence. Such a system is an evil spirit, which, we must expect, 
 will cruelly rend and mangle the patient as it comes out of him, and will leave him 
 half dead at its departure. There will often be, and oftener appear to be, danger in 
 removing a mistake, — the danger that those, who have been long used to act rightly 
 on erroneous principles, may fail of the desired conclusions when undeceived. In 
 such cases, it requires a thorough love of truth, and a firm reliance on Divine 
 support, to adhere steadily to the straight course. If we give way to a dread of 
 danger from the inculcation of any truth, physical, moral, or religious, we manifest 
 a want of faith in God's power, or in the will to maintain His own cause. There 
 may be danger attendant on every truth, since there is none that may not be 
 perverted by some, or that may not give offence to others ; but, in the case of any- 
 thing which plainly appears to be truth, every danger must be braved. .We must 
 maintain the truth as we have received it, and trasX, to Him, who is * the Truth,' to 
 prosper and defend it. 
 
 That we shall indeed best further His cause by fearless perseverance in an open 
 and straight course, I am firmly persuaded. But it is not only when we perceive 
 the mischiefs of falsehood and disguise, and the beneficial tendency of fairness and 
 candour, that we are to be followers of truth. The trial of our faith is when we 
 cannot perceive this ; and the part of a lover of truth is, to follow her at all seeming 
 hazards, after the example of Him, who ' came into the world, that He should bear 
 witness to the Truth.' 
 
 For such persons especially, as I have indicated above, I have 
 written this book, and for all, who would really see and know how 
 the case actually stands in this matter. Thave desired to set before 
 the reader at full length the arg-uments, by which I have been myself 
 convinced upon the subject, and to take him with me, as it were, 
 along. the path, which I have followed in the search after the 
 
 B 2 
 
20 PEEFACE TO PAET I. 
 
 Truth. It ia not sufficient merely to make general statements, or 
 to refer to this or that -vmter, as having irrefragably proved the 
 truth of certain results. I have wished to enable the reader to 
 satisfy his own mind on each point as it arises, precisely as I have 
 satisfied mine, by a thorough discussion of all that can be said on 
 both sides of the question. 
 
 I have here confined my enquiries chiefly to the Pentateuch 
 and book of Joshua, though, in so doing, I have found myselt 
 compelled to take more or less into consideration the other books 
 of the Old Testament also. Should God in his Providence call 
 me to the work, I shall not shrink from the duty of examining on 
 behalf of others into the question, in what way the doctrines, 
 usually drawn from the New Testament, are afiected by the un- 
 historical character of the Pentateuch. Of course, for the satis- 
 faction of my own mind, and in the discharge of my duties to 
 those more immediately dependent on me, I cannot avoid doing 
 BO, if health and strength are granted me, as soon as I have com- 
 pleted the present work, and ascertained that the ground is sure, 
 on which I here take my stand. For the present, I have desired 
 to follow the leading of the truth itself, and not to distract my 
 attention, or incur the temptation of falsifying the conclusions, to 
 which the argument would honestly lead me, by taking account 
 d priori of the consequences ; and I would gladly leave to other 
 hands the work of conducting the above enquiry at greater length 
 for the general reader. 
 
 On one point, however, it may be well to make here a few 
 observations. There may be some, who will say that such words 
 as those in John vi.4e,47, ' For had ye believed Moses, ye would 
 have believed Me, for Ae wrote of Me. But, if ye believe not his 
 writings, how shall ye believe my words P ' — or in Luke xx.37, 
 ' Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, 
 [ie. in the passage about the ' bush,'] when he called the Loeb, 
 the (rod of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,' 
 —or in Luke xvi.29, ' They have Moses and the Prophets ; let 
 them hear them,' and v. 31, 'If they hear not Moses and the 
 Prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from 
 the dead,'— are at once decisive upon the point of Moses' author- 
 ship of the Pentateuch, since they imply that oui- Lord Himself 
 believed in it, and, consequently, to assert that Moses did not 
 write these books, would be to contradict the words of Christ, and 
 to impugn His veracity. 
 
 To make use of such an argument ia, indeed, to bring the 
 Sacred Ark itself into the battle.-fleld, and to make belief in 
 Christianity itself depend entirely upon the question whethei 
 M..»<. w..t» +>,» P»^t„f«,ich, or not. There is, however, no force 
 
PEEFACE TO PART L 21 
 
 in this particular objection, as will appear from the following 
 consid*^rations. 
 
 (i) First, such words as the above, if understood in their most 
 literal sense, can only be supposed, at all events, to apply to certain 
 parts of the Pentateuch j since most devout Christians will admit 
 that the last chapter of Deuteronomy, which records the death of 
 Moses, could not have been written by his hand, and the most 
 orthodox commentators are obliged also to concede the probability 
 of some other interpolations having been made in the original 
 story.* It would become, therefore, even thus, a question for a 
 reverent criticism to determine what passages give signs of not 
 having been written by Moses, 
 
 (ii) But, secondly, and more generally, it may be said that, in 
 inaking use of such expressions, our Lord did but accommodate 
 His words to the cuiTent popular language of the day, as when 
 
 * Note to Pe&ple's Edition, 1864. — Thus in a book recently published, and dedicated 
 by permission to the Archbishop of York, we find the following statements : — 
 
 ' We entered the discussion unbiassed by any theory, but prepared to adopt what- 
 ever conditions the facts of the case, fairly considered, might seem to require, . . . 
 And it must be confessed that tlie results we have thus arrived at do differ very materially 
 from Gie views commonly held. The pre- Mosaic origin of large portions of G-enesis, 
 tfte existence of two records of tte Exodus, one certainly, therefore, non-Mosaic, — the in- 
 corporation of nwrraiives of foreign origin, — tte numerous additions and occasional 
 alterations made by a later writer after the Conquest, — these are facts very strongly at 
 variance with the notions generally entertained. Facts they are, however — not m£re theo' 
 retic fancies or unfounded assumptions; and in accordance with them must we frame 
 our final view of the true origin of the Pentateuch, 
 
 ' Much of it is certainly un-Mosaic, some earlier, some contemporary, some later than 
 Moses. Many portions of the Pentateuch couuD NOT have proceeded from hispen, or even 
 have been written under his direction. 
 
 * The materials, of which the first four books are composed, appear thus to be of 
 very various dates and characters, the larger portion, however, being almost certainly 
 Mosaic. They may be arranged as follows : — 
 
 * (i) A series of * Annals,' embracing the chief features of primeval Mid patriarchal 
 history down to the death of Joseph— date and authorship unknown, but some pro- 
 bably written in Egypt, and all certainly pre-Mosaic ; 
 
 ' (ii) Additional matter referring to the same periods, from the pen of Moses, 
 variously inserted among these, to enlarge, supplement, or replace, different portions 
 of them ; 
 
 * (iii) An EloMstic narrative of the sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus— (tofe and 
 at^horship unknown ; 
 
 ' (iv) A Jehovistic narrative of the Exodus and passage through the wildamess, up 
 to the erection of the Tabernacle, including the earlier portion of tlie Sinaitic laws,— 
 also a list of the joumeyings in the wilderness,— wnftew by Moses ; 
 
 * (v) A series of laws delivered during the last thirty-nine years of the journey 
 through the wilderness, recorded probably by Moses ; 
 
 * (vi) A narrative of the events of the second and fortieth years, with which these 
 laws have been incorporated, written shortly after the conquest of Canaan ; 
 
 * (vii) Three isolated narratives, concerning Abraham's war with the four Kings, 
 Jethro's visit to Moses, and Balaam's prophecies-^ro&oftZy (in part at least) of 
 foreign origin ; . . ^ 
 
 * C viii) A variety of explanatory notes, additions, and occasional alterations, with a 
 few passages of greater length, chiefly from other ancient narratives, introduced by a 
 writer of much later date — veryprobcAly in the days of Saul. 
 
 ' Out of these diverse materials we believe the first four books of the Pentateuch to 
 have been compiled. The proportion in which they are to be found may be roughly- 
 expressed as foEows :— , , ^, ,.^ ^^ _ . 
 
 *If these four books were divided into 1,000 equal parts, then (i),the pre-Mosaui 
 annals would make up 164 of them ; (ii), (iv), and (v), the Mosaic portions, 676 ; 
 (vi), the later narrative, 214 ; (vii), the foreign records, 26 ; (iii) and (viii), the Llo- 
 histic Exodus, and the last revision, 10 each.'— 27te Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuch 
 considered, pp. 141-151. -«..». ^ _«• 
 
 I do not agree with many of the critical concmsions above stated. But the reader wm 
 observe what very important admission'' are here made, in a book published under 
 fcuoh auspices, though His Grace haa since said that he ' does not concur ' in them. 
 
22 PREFACE TO PAET I. 
 
 He speaks of God 'rasildng His sun to rise,' Matt.v.45, oi- of fhe 
 'stars falling from lieaven,' Matt.xxiv.50, or of Lazarus being 
 ' cai-ried by tbe angels into Abraham's bosom,' Luke xvi.22, or of 
 the woman ' with a spirit of infirmity,' whom ' Satan had bound 
 eighteen years,' Luke xiii.l6, &c., without our being at all 
 authorised in drawing from them scientific or psychological 
 conclusions. 
 
 (iii) Lastly, it is perfectly consistent with the most entire and 
 sincere belief in our Lord's Divinity, to hold, as many do, that, 
 when He vouchsafed to become a 'Son of Man,' He took our 
 nature fully, and voluntarily entered into all the conditions of 
 humanity, and, among others, into that which makes our growth 
 in all ordinary Imowledge gradual and limited. We are expressly 
 told, in Luke ii.52, that ' Jesus increased in wisdom,' as well as in 
 ' stature.' It is not supposed that, in His human nature. He was 
 acquainted, more than any educated Jew of the si^'e, with the 
 mysteries of all modern sciences ; nor, with the above statement of 
 St. Luke before us, can it be seriously maintained iiisb, as an infant 
 or young child, He possessed a knowledge, anrpassing that of the 
 most pious and learned adults of Hiia nation, upon the subject of 
 the authorship and age of the different poi-tions of the Pentateuch. 
 At what period, then, of His life upon earth, is it to be supposed 
 that He had granted to Him, as the Son of Man, iupernaturally, 
 full and accurate information on these points, so that He should 
 be expected to speak about the Pentateuch in other terms, than 
 any other devout Jew of that day would have employed P Why 
 should it be thought that He would speak with certain Divine 
 knowledge on this matter, more than upon other matters ot 
 ordinary science or history ? 
 
 Finally, I am not aware of any breach of the Law of the 
 Chm-ch of England, as declared by the recent judgment in the 
 Court of Arches, which is involved in this publication. It is now 
 ruled that the words in the Ordination Service for Deacons, ' I 
 do unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures,' must be 
 understood to mean simply the expression of a hond Jide belief, 
 that 'the Holy Scriptures contain everything necessary to sal- 
 vation,' and ' to that extent they have the direct sanction of tbe 
 Almighty.' 
 
 I am not conscious of having said anything here, which contra- 
 venes this decision. Should it be otherwise, and should the strange 
 phenomenon be witnessed, of a Bishop of the Protestant Church of 
 England, — ^more especially one, who has been expressly occupied 
 in translating the Scriptures into a foreign tongue, — being pre- 
 cluded by the Law of that Church from entering upon a close, 
 critical, examination of them, and from bringing before the great 
 body of the Church, (not the Clergy only, but the Clergy and 
 
PREFACE TO PART I. 23 
 
 Laity,) the plain, honest, results of such criticism, T must, of 
 course, hear the consequences of my act. 
 
 But, meanwhile, I cannot hut believe that cur Church, repre- 
 senting-, as it is supposed to do, the religious feeling- of a free, Pro- 
 testant, nation, requires us no-w, as in the days of the Eeformation, 
 to protest against all perversion of the Truth, and all suppression 
 of it, for the sake of Peace, or by mere Authority. As a Bishop 
 of that Church, I dissent entirely from the principle laid down by 
 some, that such a question, as that which is here discussed, is not 
 even an open question for an English clergyman, — that we are 
 bound by solemn obligations to maintain certain views, on the 
 points here involved, to our lives' end, or, at least, to resign our 
 sacred office in the Church, as soon as ever we feel it impossible 
 any longer to hold them. 
 
 On the contrary, I hold that the foundations of our National 
 Church are laid upon the Truth itself, and not upon mere human 
 prescriptions, and that the spirit of our Church, as declared in the 
 days of the Reformation, fully recognises my right to use all the 
 weight of that office, with which the Providence of God has in- 
 vested me, in declaring the Truth, and recommending the subject 
 of this work to the thoughtful consideration of English Church- 
 men. Nine years ago, I was deemed not unworthy to be called to 
 this high office. 1 trust that the labours of those years may be 
 accepted as an evidence that, to the best of my power, I have 
 striven to discharge faithfully the duties entrusted to me, and may 
 serve also as a guarantee, that, in putting forward this book, I am 
 acting in no light spirit, but with the serious earnestness of one, 
 who believes that he owes it as a duty to the Church itself, of 
 which he is a minister, to do his part to secure for the Bible its 
 due honour and authority, and save its devout readers from 
 ascribing to it attributes of perfection and infallibility, which 
 belong to God only, and which the Bible never claims for itself. 
 More than all others, I believe, is a Bishop bound to do this, if his 
 conscience impels him to it, — inasmuch as he, above others, is 
 bound to be an example to the Flock of that walking in the 
 Light, -without which there cannot be true Life in a Church, any 
 more than in an individual soul, — ' renouncing the hidden things 
 of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of 
 God deceitfully, but, by manifestation of the Truth, commending 
 himself to evei-y man's conscience in the sight of God.' 
 
 If the arguments, on which the conclusions of these first 
 chapters rest, shall be found, upon a thorough examination, to 
 be substantially well-grounded and true, I trust that we shall not 
 rest until the system of our Church be reformed, and her bounda^ 
 ries at the same time enlarged, to make her "what a National 
 Church should be, the Mother of spiritual life to all -within the 
 realm, embracing, as far as possible, all the piety, and learning, 
 
24- PEEFACE TO PAET I. 
 
 and earnestness, and goodness, of the nation. Then, at last, would 
 a stop he put to that internecine war hetween the servants of one 
 God and the professed followers of the same religion, which now 
 is a reproach to our Christian name, and seriously impedes the 
 progress of truth and charity, hoth at home and abroad. Should 
 the reception of this book, by the more thoughtful portion of the 
 community, indicate that such a Reform is possible and probable, 
 and will be but a question of time, so that, being able meanwhile 
 to speak out plainly the truth, we shall have only to bear with the 
 inconveniences and inconsistencies, which must attend a state of 
 transition, it would not be necessary for me, or for those who think 
 with me, to leave the Church of England voluntarily, and abandon 
 the work to which we have devoted ourselves for life. 
 
 In conclusion, I commend this subject more especially to the 
 attention of the Laity. They are happy enough to be able to lay 
 aside such questions as these, if they will, while still continuing 
 members of the National Church. I implore them to consider the 
 position, in which the Clergy will be placed, if the facts, brought 
 forward in this book, aie found to be substantially true. Let 
 them examine their own hearts solemnly, in the sight of God, on 
 these points. Would they have the Clergy bound by Subscrip- 
 tions and Declarations, to which they would not on any account 
 commit themselves ? Are they willing that their own sons, who 
 may feel the Divine call to devote themselves to the ministry of 
 souls, should be entangled in these trammels, so galling to the con- 
 science, so injurious to their sense of truth and honesty, so 
 impeding to the freedom and heartiness of their ministrations ? 
 We, indeed, who are already under the yoke, may have for a time 
 to beat it, however painful it may be, while we struggle and hope 
 on for deliverance. But what youth of noble mind, with a deep 
 yearning for truth, and an ardent desire to tell out the love of 
 God to man, will consent to put himself voluntarily into such 
 fetters? It may be possible to represent some of the arguments 
 in this book as invalid, others as unimportant. But, if the main 
 result of it be ti-ue, as I beheve it vrill be found to be, it seems to 
 me impossible that, five years hence, unless liberty of speech on 
 these matters be frankly acknowledged to belong to the Clergy as 
 well as to the Laity, any of the more hopeful and intelligent of 
 our young men wiU be able, with clear consciences, to enter the 
 ministry of the Church of England. 
 
 I now commit this First Part of my work into the Hands of 
 Almighty God, beseeching Him mercifully to accept and bless it 
 as a feeble effort to advance the knowledge of His Truth in the 
 world. 
 
 J. W. NATAL. 
 
 London : Oct i, 1862. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH EXAMINED AS AIT 
 HISTOEICAL NAEEATIVE, 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 INTRODTJOTOKT EEMABKS. 
 
 1. The first fire books of the Bible,— 
 commonly called the Pentateuch, or 
 Book of Five Volumes, — are supposed 
 by most English readers of the Bible 
 to have been written by Moses, except 
 the last chapter of Deuteronomy, vrhieh 
 records the death of Moses, and which, 
 of course, it is generally allowed, must 
 have been added by another hand, per- 
 haps that of Joshua. It is believed 
 that Moses wrote under such special 
 guidance and teaching of the Holy 
 Spirit, • that he was preserved from 
 making any error in recording those 
 matters, which came within his own 
 cognisance, and was instructed also 
 supematuraUy in respect of events, 
 which took place before he was bom, 
 — before, indeed, there was a human 
 being on the earth to take note of what 
 was passing. He was in this way, it is 
 supposed, enabled to write a true ac- 
 count of the Creation. And, though 
 the accounts of the Fall and of the 
 Flood, as well as of later events, which 
 happened in the time of Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob, may have been handed 
 down by tradition from one generation 
 to another and even, some of them, 
 perhaps, written down in words, or re- 
 presented in hieroglyphics, and Moses 
 may, probably, have derived assistance 
 from these sources also in the composi- 
 tion of his narrative, yet in all his state- 
 ments, it is believed, he was under such 
 constant control and superintendence 
 
 of the Spirit of God, that he was kept 
 from making any serious error, and 
 certainly from writing anything alto- 
 gether untrue. We may rely with un- 
 doubting confidence— such is the state- 
 ment usually made — on the historical 
 veracity, and infallible accuracy, of the 
 Mosaic narrative in all its main par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 2. There was a time, in my own life, 
 before my attention had been drawn 
 to the facts, which make such a view 
 impossible for most reflecting and en- 
 quiring minds, when I thought thus, 
 and could have heartily assented to such 
 language as the following, which Bck- 
 GON, Inspiration, &c. p.89, asserts to 
 be the creed of orthodox believers, and 
 which, probably, expresses the belief of 
 many English Christians at the present 
 day:— 
 
 The BiBLB is none other tlian the Voice 0/ 
 Him that sUteth upon the Throne 1 Bvery boob 
 of it — every chapter of it — every verse of it^^ 
 every word of it— every syllable of it^Cwhere 
 are we to stop ? ) every leUer of it — is the direct 
 utterance of the Most High I The Bible is 
 none other than the Word of God — not some 
 part of it more, some part of it less, but all 
 alike, the utterance of Him who sitteth upon 
 the Throne— absolute — ^faultless — ^unerring — 
 
 3. SuehwasthecreedoftheSchoolin 
 which I was educated. God is my wit- 
 ness ! what hours of wretchedness have 
 I spent at times, while reading the Bible 
 devoutly from day to day, and reveren- 
 cing every word of it as the Word of 
 God, when petty contradictions met me, 
 which seemed to my reason to conflict 
 with the nation of the absolute histori- 
 
26 
 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 
 
 cal veracity of every part of Scripture, 
 and which, as I felt, in the study of any 
 cthir book, we should honestly treat as 
 errors or misstatements, without in the 
 least detracting from the real value of 
 the hook ! But, in those days, I was 
 taught that it was my duty to fiing the 
 suggestion from me at once, ' as if it 
 were a loaded shell, shot into the for- 
 tress of the soul,' or to stamp out des- 
 perately, as with an iron heel, each 
 spark of honest doubt, which God's own 
 gift, the love of Truth, had kindled in 
 my hosom. And by many a painful 
 effort I succeeded in doing so for a 
 season. 
 
 4. But my labours, as ,a translator of 
 the Bible, and a teacher of intelligent 
 converts from heathenism, have brought 
 me face to face withquestions, from which 
 I had hitherto shrunk, but from which, 
 under the circumstances, I felt it would 
 be a sinful abandonment of duty any 
 longer to turn away. I have, there- 
 fore, as in the sight of God Most High, 
 set myself deliberately to find the 
 answer to such questions, with, I trust 
 and believe, a sincere desire to know 
 the Truth, as God wills us to know it, 
 and with a humble dependence on that 
 Divine Teacher, who alone can guide 
 us into that knowledge, and help us to 
 use the light of our minds aright. The 
 result of my enquiry is this, that I 
 have arrived at the conviction, — as 
 painful to myself at first as it may be 
 to my reader, though painful now no 
 longer under the clear shining of the 
 Light of Truth, — ^that the Pentateuch, 
 as a whole, cannot possibly have been 
 written by Moses, pr by any one ac- 
 quainted personally with the facts 
 which it professes to describe, and, 
 further, that the (so-called) Mosaic 
 narrative, by whomsoever written, and 
 though imparting to us, as I fully be- 
 lieve it does, revelations of the Divine 
 Will and Character, cannot be regarded 
 as historically true. 
 
 5. Let it be observed that I am not 
 here speaking of a number of petty 
 variations and contradictions, such as, 
 on closer examination, are found to 
 exist throughout the books, but which 
 may be in many cases sufficiently ex- 
 plained, by alleging our ignorance of 
 
 all the circumstances of the case, or by 
 supposing some misplacement, or loss, 
 or corruption, of the original manu- 
 script^ or by suggesting that a later 
 writer has inserted his own gloss here 
 and there, or even whole passages, 
 which may contain facts or expressions 
 at variance with the true Mosaic Books, 
 and throwing an unmerited Busfieion 
 upon them. However perplexing such 
 contradictions are, when found in a 
 book which is believed to be divinely 
 infallible, yet a, humble and pious 
 faith will gladly welcome the aid of a 
 friendly criticism, to relieve it in this 
 way of its doubts. I can truly say 
 that I would do so heartily myself. 
 
 6. Nor are the difSculties, to which 
 I am now referring, of the same kind 
 as those, which arise from considering 
 the accounts of the Creation and the. 
 Deluge, (though these of themselves 
 are very formidable,) — or the stupen- 
 dous character of certain miracles, as 
 that of the sun and moon standing 
 still, or the waters of the river Jordan 
 standing in heaps as solid walls, while 
 the stream, we must suppose, was still 
 running, or the ass speaking with 
 human voice, or the miracles wrought 
 by the magicians of Egypt, such as 
 the conversion of a rod into a snak^' 
 and the latter being endowed with life. 
 
 7. They are not such, again, as arise, 
 when we regard the trivial nature of a 
 vast number of conversations and com- 
 mands, ascribed directly to Jehovah, 
 especially the miiltiplied ceremoni^ 
 minutise, laid down in the Leviticiu 
 Law. They are not such, even, as 
 must be started at once in most pious 
 minds, when such words as these are 
 read, professedly coming from the 
 Holy and Blessed One, the Father and 
 ' Faithful Creator ' of all mankind : — 
 
 ' If the master (of a Hebrew servant) haw 
 given him a wife, and she have borne himsoDSi 
 or daughters, the wife and her children shall bt 
 her master's, and he shall go out firee by hlm- 
 Belf ,' B.xjd.4 : 
 
 the wife and children in such a case 
 being placed under the protection of 
 such other words as these, — 
 
 * If a man smite his servant, or hla maid, 
 with a rod, and he die under his hand, he ela " 
 be surely punished. NotmithsUmding, tf ) 
 continue a day or two, he shall not 1 
 punished; tovheishis'nwney* Kzzi,20,21. 
 
INTEODUCTOEY EEMAEES. 
 
 27 
 
 8. I shall never forget the revulsion 
 feeling, with which a very intelligent 
 
 [iristian native, with whose help I 
 ds translating these last words into the 
 jlu tongue, first heard them as words 
 id to bfi uttered by the same great and 
 aeious Being, whom I was teaching 
 m to trust in and adore. His whole 
 ul revolted against the notion, that 
 ,e Great and Blessed God, the Merciful 
 ither of all mankind, would speak of 
 servant or maid as mere 'money,' and 
 Iowa horrible crime to go unpunished, 
 scause the victim of the brutal usage 
 id survived a few hours ! 
 
 9. But I wish, before proceeding, to 
 peat here most distinctly that my 
 ason, for no longer receiving the 
 sntateueh as historically true, is not 
 at I find insuperable difficulties 
 ith regard to the miracles, or super- 
 itural revelations of Almighty God, 
 corded in it, but solely that I cannot, 
 
 a true man, consent any longer to 
 .ut my eyes to the absolute, palpable, 
 If-contradictions of the narrative, 
 e need only consider well the state- 
 ents made in the books themselves, 
 ' whomsoever vrritten, about matters 
 liieh they profess to narrate as facts of 
 mmon history, — statements, which 
 ery Clergyman, at all events, and 
 ery Sunday-School Teacher, not to 
 y, every Christian, is surely hound to 
 amine thoroughly, and try to under- 
 md rightly, comparing one passage 
 ±h. another, until he comprehends 
 eir actual meaning, and is able to 
 ;plain that meaning to others. If we 
 1 this, we shall find them to contain 
 series of manifest contradictions and 
 consistencies, which leave us, it would 
 em, no alternative but to conclude 
 at main portions of the story of the 
 todus, though based, probably, on 
 me real historical foundation, yet are 
 rtainly not to be regaided as histori~ 
 Uy true. 
 
 10. The proofs, which seem to me to 
 coEclusive on this point, I feel it to 
 my duty, in the service of God and 
 
 8 TWth, to lay before my fellow-men, 
 t without a solemn sense of the re- 
 onsibiUty which I am thus incurring, 
 d not without a painful foreboding of 
 R fiflrlmis conseouences which, in manv 
 
 cases, may ensue from such a publica- 
 tion. There will be some now, as in 
 the time of the first preaching oi Chris- 
 tianity, or in the days of the Eeformation, 
 who wUl seek to turn their liberty into 
 a ' cloke of lasciviousness.' ' The un- 
 righteous will be unrighteous stiU ; the 
 filthy wiU be filthy still.' The heart, 
 that is unclean and impure, will not 
 fail to find excuse for indulging its 
 lusts, from the notion that somehow 
 the very principle of a living faith in 
 God is shaken, because belief in the 
 Pentateuch is shaken. But it is not so. 
 Our belief in the Living God would 
 remain as sure as ever though not 
 the Pentateuch only, but the whole 
 Bible, were removed. It is written on 
 our hearts by God's own Knger, as 
 surely as by the hand of the Apostle 
 in the Bible, that ' GOD IS, and is a 
 rewarder of them that diligently seek 
 Him.' It is written there also, as 
 plainly as in the Bible, that ' God is 
 not mocked,' — that, ' whatsoever a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap,' — and 
 that ' he that soweth to the flesh, shall 
 of the flesh reap corruption.' 
 
 11. But there will be others of a 
 different stamp, — meek, lowly, loving 
 souls, who are walking daily with God, 
 and have been taught to consider a 
 belief hi the historical veracity of the 
 story of the Exodus an essential part of 
 their religion, upon which, indeed, as 
 it seems to them, the whole fabric of 
 their faith and hope in God is based. 
 It is not really so : the Light of God's 
 Love did not shine less truly on pious 
 minds, when Enoch 'walked with God ' 
 of old, though there was then no Bible 
 in existence, than it does now. And 
 it is, perhaps, God's WiU that we shall 
 be taught in this our day, among other 
 precious lessons, not to build up oui 
 faith upon a Book, though it be the 
 Bible itiielf, but to realise more truly 
 the blessedness of knovring that He 
 Himself, the Living God, our Father 
 and Friend, is nearer and closer to us 
 than any book can be, — that His Voice 
 within the heart may be heard con- 
 tinually by the obedient child that 
 listens for it, and that shall be our 
 Teacher and Guide, in the path of duty, 
 which is the path of life, when aU othct 
 
INTEODUCTOEY EEMAEKS. 
 
 28 
 
 helpers — even the words of the Best of 
 Books— may fail us. 
 
 12. Indischarging, however, my pre- 
 sent duty to God and to the Church, I 
 trust that I shall be preserved from 
 Baying a single word that may cause 
 unnecessart/ pain to those, who now em- 
 hrace with all their hearts, as a primary- 
 article of Faith, the traditionary view of 
 Scripture Inspiration. Pain, I know, 
 I must cause to some. But I feel very 
 deeply that it behoves every one, who 
 would write on such a subject as this, 
 to remember how closely the belief in 
 the historical truth of every portion of 
 the Bible is interwoven, at the present 
 time, in England, with the faith of 
 many, whose piety and charity may far 
 surpass his own. He must beware lest, 
 even by rudeness or carelessness of 
 speech, he 'oifend one of these little 
 ones ' ; while yet he may feel it to be 
 his duty, as I do now, to tell out plainly 
 the truth, as God, he believes, has en- 
 abled him to see it. And that truth in 
 the present instance, I repeat, is this, 
 that the Pentateuch, as a whole, was 
 not written by Moses, and that, with 
 respect to some, at least, of the chief 
 portions of the story, it cannot be re- 
 garded as historically true. 
 
 13. But the Bible does not, therefore, 
 cease to 'contain the true Word of God,' 
 to enjoin 'things necessary forsalvation,' 
 to be 'profitable for doctrine, reproof, 
 correction, instruction in righteousness.' 
 It stOl remains for us that Book, which, 
 whatever intermixture it may show of 
 human elements, — of error, infirmity, 
 passion, and ignorance, — has yet, 
 through God's Providence, and the 
 special working of His Spirit on the 
 minds of its writers, been the means 
 of revealing to us His True Name, the 
 Name of the only Living and True 
 God, and has all along been, and, as 
 far as we know, will never cease to be, 
 the mightiest instrument in the hand 
 of the Divine Teacher, for awakening 
 in our minds just conceptions of His 
 Character, and of His gracious and mer- 
 ciful dealings with the children of men. 
 Only we must not attempt to put into 
 the Bible what we think ought to be 
 there : we must not lay it down as cer- 
 tain beforehand that God could onlv 
 
 reveal Himself to us by means of an 
 infallible Book. We must be content to 
 take the Bible as it is, and draw from it 
 those Lessons which it really contains. 
 
 14. Accordingly, that which I shall 
 do, or endeavour to do, in this work, ie 
 to make out from the Bible — at leasti 
 from the first part of it — what account it 
 gives of itself, what it really is, what, if 
 we love the truth, we must understand 
 and believe it to be, what, if we will 
 speak the truth, we must represent it to 
 be. I believe assuredly that the time is 
 come, in the ordering of God's Provi- 
 dence and in the history of the world, 
 when such a task as this miist be taken 
 in hand, not in a light and scoffing spirit, 
 but in that of a devout and living faith, 
 which seeks only Truth, andfoUows fear- 
 lessly its footsteps, — when such ques- 
 tions as these must be asked, — be 
 asked reverently, as by those who feel 
 that they are treading on hallowed 
 ground, — but be asked firmly, as by 
 those who would be able to give as 
 account of the hope which is in them, 
 and to know that the groimds are sure, 
 on which they rest their trust for time 
 and for Eternity. 
 
 15. The spirit, indeed, in which suoli 
 a work should be carried on, cannot be 
 better described than in the words of 
 Mr. BuEGOK, who says, Inspiration, 
 &c. ^.cxli : — 
 
 Approach the volume of Holy Scripture with 
 the same candour, and in the same unpreju- 
 diced spirit, with which you would approacli 
 any other famous book of high antiquity. 
 Study it with, at least, the eame attention. 
 Give, at leaat, equal heed to all its Btatementfli. .^ 
 Acquaint yourself at least as industriously 
 with its method and principle, employing and 
 applying either with at least equal fidelity in 
 its interpretation. Aiove alltbeware of playing 
 tricks with its plain language. Beware of sup- 
 pressing any part of the evidence whldi'it 
 supplies to its own meaning. Be truthful, and 
 unprejudiced, and honest, and consistent, and 
 logical, and exact throughout, in your work 
 of interpretation, ' ^ 
 
 And again he writes, commending ■M 
 closer attention to Biblical studies to t tj 
 youngermembersoftheUniversity,p.l2, 
 
 I contemplate the continued exercise of lh~ 
 most cunous and frying, as well as a moflb 
 vigilant and observing, eye. JVo difficulty isto 
 be neglected ; nc peculiarity of expression l8 
 to be disregarded ; no minute detail is to M 
 overlooked. The hint, let fall in an earlier 
 chapter, is to be oomptured with a hint let fall 
 in the later place. Do they tally or not t Ani 
 
THE FAMILIES OF JUDAH AND MOSES. 
 
 29 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FAUXLIES OP TODAH AND HOSES. 
 
 16. I SHAH first show, by means of a 
 few prominent instances, that the books 
 of the Pentateuch, in their own account 
 of the story which they profess to re- 
 late, contEiin such remarkable contra- 
 dictions, and involve such plain impos- 
 sibilities, that they cannot be regaj-ded 
 as true narratives of actual, historical, 
 matters of fact. 
 
 17. The Family op Judah. 
 
 'And the sons of Judah, Er, and Onanf and 
 Shelah, and Pharez, and Zarah; but Er and 
 (Man died in the land of Canaan ; and the sons 
 of Pharez were Hezron and Pamul.' G.xlTi.l2. 
 
 It appears to be certain that the 
 writer here means to say that Hezron 
 and Hamul were bom in the land of 
 Canaan, and were among the seventy 
 persons, (including Jacob himself, and 
 Joseph, and his two sons,) who came 
 into Egypt with Jacob. 
 
 * These are the names of the children of 
 Israel, which came into Egypt,' v.8. 
 
 *A11 the souls, that came with Jacob into 
 Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides 
 Jacob's son's wives, were threescore and six,' 
 e.26,— which they would not be without 
 Hezron and Hamul. 
 
 * And the sons of Joseph, which were bom 
 him in Egypt, were two souls : all the souls of 
 the house of Jacob, which carne into Egypt, 
 were threescore and ten.* v.27. 
 
 * These are the names of the children of 
 Israel, which came into Egypt ; every man and 
 his household came with Jacob. And aU the 
 Bouls, that came out of the loins of Jacob, 
 were seventy souls ; for Joseph was in Egypt 
 ahready." E.L1,5. 
 
 * Thy fathers went down into Egypt with 
 threescore and ten persons; and now the 
 Iiord thy God hath made thee as the stars of 
 heaven for multitude.' I>.z.22. 
 
 . T assume, then, that the narrative of 
 the Exodus distinctly involves the state- 
 ment, that the sixty-six persons, ' out 
 of the loins of Jacob,' who are men- 
 tioned in G.xlvi, and no others, went 
 down with him into Egypt. 
 
 18. Now Judah was /orty-<j»o* years 
 
 • Joseph was thirty years old, when he 
 •stood before Pharaoh,' as governor of the 
 land of Egypt, G.xli.46 ; and from that time 
 nine years elapsed, (seven of plenty and two of 
 famine,) before Jacob came down to Egypt. 
 At that time, therefore, Joseph was thixty- 
 nine years old. But Judah was about three 
 years older than' Joseph ; for Judah was bom 
 In fhs fourth year of Jacob's double marriage, 
 G,xxiz.35, and Joseph in the seventh, .G.xxx. 
 24-26, xxxi.41. Hence Judah was forty-two 
 years old when Jacob went down to Egypt. 
 
 old, according to the story, when he 
 went down with Jacob into Egypt. 
 
 But, if we turn to G.xxxviii, we shall 
 find that, in the course of these forty- 
 two years of Judah's life, the following 
 events are recorded to have happened. 
 
 (i) Judah grows up, marries a wife, 
 and has, separately, three sons by her. 
 
 (ii) The eldest of these three sons 
 grows up, is married, and dies. 
 
 The second grows to maturity, (sup- 
 pose in another year,) marries his 
 brother's widow, and dies. 
 
 The third grows to maturity, (sup- 
 pose in another year still,) but declines 
 to take his brother's widow to wife 
 
 She then deceives Judah himself, 
 conceives by him, and in due time bears 
 him twins, Pharez and Zarah. 
 
 (iii) One of these twins also grows 
 to maturity, and has two sons, Hezron 
 and Hamul, bom to him, before Jacob 
 goes down into Egypt. 
 
 19. The above being certainly incre- 
 dible, we are obliged to conclude that on e 
 of the two accounts must be untrue. Yet 
 the statement, that Hezron and Ha- 
 mul were bom in the land of Canaan, 
 is vouched so positively by the many 
 passages above quoted, which sum up 
 the 'seventy souls,' that, to give np 
 this point, is to give up an essential 
 part of the whole story. But then, 
 this point cannot be maintained, how- 
 ever essential to the narrative, without 
 supposing that the other series of events 
 had taken place beforehand, which we 
 have seen to be incredible. 
 
 20. The Familt op Moses. 
 
 *And Moses was content to dwell with 
 the man; and he gave Moses Zipporah his 
 daughter, and she bare him a son, and he 
 called his name Gershom ; for he said, I have 
 been a stranger in a strauge land.* E.ii.21,-22. 
 
 Proceeding a step further in the his- 
 tory, we find here also, apparently, a 
 great inconsistency. Moses 'was grown,' 
 E.ii.ll — 'full forty years old,' Acts vii. 
 23, — ^when he slew the Egyptian, im- 
 mediately after which event he fled to 
 Midian, where he ' was content to dwell 
 with the man,' Jethro, and married his 
 daughter. When, however, he returned 
 to Egypt, we are told that he was eighty 
 years old, E.vii.7, and thenhehadtwo 
 sons, E.xviii.3, young children, whom 
 he 'set upon an ass' with their mother, 
 
30 
 
 THE NUMBER OF THE CONGEEGATIOIT. 
 
 E.iT.20, and one of whom their mother 
 circumcised by the way, E.iT.25. 
 
 21. We must, consequently, suppose 
 either that Moses, though already forty 
 years old, lived nearly forty years with 
 Jethro before he took Zipporah to wife, 
 — although the story would lead us to 
 conclude that she was one of the ' seven 
 daughters' of Jethro, whom Moses, at 
 his first coming to Midian, 'helped' 
 at the well, and ' watered their floct,' 
 E.ii.l7, — or else that Moses lived with 
 Zipporah nearly forty years before she 
 bare him her first child. Eut these 
 suppositions are both of them at vari- 
 ance with the plain, natural, meaning of 
 E.ii.21,22, as quoted above, from which 
 we should infer, — unless we 'choose to 
 force another meaning upon it, — that 
 Moses married Zipporah soon after he 
 had consented to dwell with Jethro, and 
 that Gershom was born to him in due 
 course of time after his marriage. And 
 so the name of his second son, ' Eliezer ' 
 ' God is a help,' is expressly said to have 
 been given, — 
 
 * because the God of my Father, said /w, was 
 mine help, and delivered me from the sword of 
 Pharaoh,' E.xviii.4, — 
 
 which also points to .a recent escape 
 from danger in Egypt, and not to a 
 deliverance wrought for him nearly forty 
 years ago. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE NUMBEE OF THE CONOEEGATION. 
 22. * And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, 
 . . . Gather thou all the Congregation together 
 unto the door of the Tabernacle of t/ie Congrega- 
 tion. And Moses did as Jehovah commanded 
 him. And the Assembly was gathered together 
 unto the door of the Tabernacle of the Congrega- 
 tion.' L.viii.1-4. 
 
 First, it appears to be certain that 
 by the expressions used so often, here 
 and elsewhere, 'the Assembly,' 'the 
 whole Assembly,' ' all the Congrega- 
 tion,' is meant the whole body of the 
 people— or, at aU events, the adult 
 males in the prime of life among them 
 — and not merely the elders or heads 
 of the people, as some have supposed, 
 in order to escape from such difficulties 
 as that which we are about to consider. 
 
 • The whole Assembly of the Congregation of 
 Israel shall kill it in the evening,' E.xii.e. 
 
 ' The whole Congregation of the Children of 
 Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in 
 
 the wilderness J and the children of Israel salil 
 xmto them, ... Ye have brought us forth 
 into this wilderness, to kill this whole Assemhly 
 with hunger.' B.xvl.2,3. ^^ 
 
 * Take ye the sum of all &ie Congregation of 
 the children of Israel.' N.i.2. i 
 
 Eorah ' gathered all the Congregation against 
 Moses and Aaron, unto the door of the Taber- 
 nacle of the Congregation ; and the glory o£ 
 Jehovah appeared unto all the Congreg^ion, 
 . . . And Moses rose up, and went unto Da. 
 than and Abiram, and the elders of Israel fol- 
 lowed him,' N.xvi.19,25,— 
 
 where the ' elders ' are plainly dis- 
 tinguished from 'all the Congrega- 
 tion,' as are the 'princes' from 'allthf 
 Assembly,' in the following passage: — 
 ' When they shall blow with them (the two 
 trumpets), all the Assembly shaU assemble 
 themselves to thee at the door of the Taber- 
 nacle of the Congregation ; and, if thou blow 
 but ^vith one trumpet, then the princes, which 
 are heads of the thousands of Israfil, shall 
 gather themselves unto thee.* K.x.3,4. 
 
 23. Now the men in the prime of 
 life, ' above twenty years of age,' N.i,3, 
 were more than 600,000 in numher. 
 We may reckon that the women in the 
 prime of life were about as many, the _ 
 males under twenty years, 300,OOdj/_ 
 the females under twenty years, 300,000, 
 and the old people, male and female 
 together, 200,000, making' the whole 
 number about two millions. This 
 number is, indeed, a very moderate es- 
 timate. In Hoenh's Introd. ii.^.205, 
 they are reckoned to have formed ' an 
 aggregate of upwards of three miUions.' 
 Accordingly, Cjesae, Bell. Gall, i.29, s# ■ 
 that the Helvetii numbered 92,000 men 
 capable of bearing arms, whilst their 
 wholepopulation 'including children,old 
 men, and women,' amounted to 368,000 
 souls, or exactly four times the former 
 number. In short, for general purposes, 
 we may fairly compare the whole body 
 of Israelites, together with the ' mixed 
 multitude,' E.xii.38, to the entire popu- 
 lation of LoNBOK, which was 2,362,236, 
 by the census of 1861, increased to 
 2,803,035, by that of 1861. 
 
 24. This vast body of people, then, 
 received on this occasion, and on other 
 similar occasions, as we are told, an 
 express command from Jehovah Him- 
 self, to assemble ' at the door of the 
 Tabernacle of the Congregation.' Of 
 course, no one would suppose that eva^ 
 individual would be able to attend such 
 a summons, or would be expected to do' 
 
THE NUMBEE OF THE CONGEEaATIOIT. 
 
 31 
 
 so. Many might he prevented by sick- 
 ness, many by accidental circumstances, 
 and others by other claims of duty. 
 Yet still the number of persons implied 
 in the expression, 'aU the Congrega- 
 tion,' the ' ■whole Assembly,' must surely 
 be understood to bear some reasonable 
 proportion to the whole number. At all 
 events, the great body of the 603,550 
 warriors ought, we must believe, to have 
 obeyed such a Divine command, and 
 hastened to present themselves at the 
 'door of the Tabernacle of the Congre- 
 gation.' 
 
 25. And so says Dr. McCato, Ex- 
 amination of Part I, p.n, — 
 
 The whole congregation was convoked or 
 summoned— [i.e. ' not merely the600,000 adult 
 males, but women and children,' as he • freely 
 admits.'] And all thus convoked, who were 
 not prevented, turned out of their tents to 
 assist at a great national ceremony, the con- 
 secration of Aaron's Priesthood. 
 
 Supposing, then, with him, p.l8, — 
 that as many as could of this great multi- 
 tude stood at the door,— that the princes, 
 elders, and officers, had the precedency, — that 
 the rest stood behind and about, with their faces 
 turned to the Tabernacle, knowing what was 
 going on, and expecting some manifestation 
 of the Lord's Presence,— 
 let us try to realise more distinctly, by 
 the aid of a numerical example, to what 
 this statement amounts,— the prodigi- 
 ous number of people here concerned, 
 and the incredibility of the fact which 
 is here narrated. 
 
 26. Now the whole width of the 
 Tabernacle was 10 cubits or 18 feet, 
 reckoning the cubit at 1-824 feet, and 
 its length was 30 cubits or 54 feet. 
 Allowing two feet in width for each 
 full-grown man, nine men could just 
 have stood in front of it. Supposing, 
 then, that ' all the Congi-egation ' of 
 adult males in the prime of life 
 had given due heed to the Divine 
 Summons, and had hastened to take 
 their stand, side by side, as closely as 
 possible, in front of the whole end of 
 the Tabernacle, in which the door or 
 entrance was, they would have reached, 
 allowing 18 inches between each rank 
 of nine men, for a distance of more 
 than 100,000 feet,— in fact, nearly 
 twenty miles.' or, if we reckon, with 
 Dr. McCatii,, the old men, women, and 
 children, for a distance of more than 
 sixt^ miles.' It is surely inconceivabJe 
 
 that such an enormous ■congregation— 
 the warriors alone being nearly timce 
 the whole population of Manohestee, 
 — should have been summoned expressly 
 by Jehovah Himself, to attend for the 
 purpose of witnessing a ceremony, 
 taking place in a tent eighteen paces 
 long and six wide, which could only 
 have been seen by a few standing at 
 the door. 
 
 27. * These be the wordt which Moses spake unto 
 all Israel.' D.i.l. 
 
 * And Moses called all Israel, and said iMta 
 them.' D.T.I. 
 
 * And aftervia/rd he read all the words of the 
 Law, the blessings and the cursings, according to 
 all that which is written in the Book of the Law. _ 
 There was not a word of all thai Moses com- 
 Tnanded, which Joshua read not b^ore all the 
 Congregation of Israel, with the women, and the 
 little ones, and the strangers that were conversant 
 among them.' Jo.Tiii.34,35, 
 
 We have just seen that ' all the Con- 
 gregation of Israel, with the women, 
 and the little ones, and the strangers 
 that were conversant among them,' 
 may be reasonably compared to the 
 whole population of London. How, 
 then, is it conceivable that a man should 
 do what Joshua is here said to have 
 done, unless, indeed, the reading every 
 ' word of all that Moses commanded,' 
 with 'the blessings and cursings, ac- 
 cording to all that is written in the 
 book of the Law,' was a mere dumb 
 show, without the least idea of those 
 most solemn words being heard by those 
 to whom they were addressed ? For, 
 surely, no human voice, unless strength- 
 ened by a miracle of which the Scrip- 
 ture tells us nothing, coidd have reached 
 the ears of such an enormous body nf 
 people, however they might be arranged. 
 Under favourable circumstances, many 
 thousands, perhaps, might hear the 
 voice of a speaker. But imagine the 
 whole population of London addressed 
 at one time by one man ! 
 
 28. It may be said, indeed, that 
 only a portion of this great host wag 
 really present, thoiigh 'all Israel' is 
 spoken of And this might have been 
 allowed without derogating from the 
 general historical value of the book, 
 though, of course, not without impeach- 
 ing the literal accuracy of the Scripture 
 narrative, which by some is so strenu- 
 ously maintained. But the words above 
 
THE CAMP AUD THE PEIEST'S DUTIES. 
 
 32 
 
 quoted from Joshua are so comprehen- 
 BiTe, as to imply that, at least, the 
 great body of the Congregation was 
 present, and not only present, but able 
 to hear the words of awful moment 
 which Joshua addressed to them. And 
 the expressions of D.xxix.10,11, are 
 Btill more decisive on this point : — 
 
 ' r« Oand this day, all of you, before Je- 
 hovah your God, — your captains of your tribes, 
 your ^ders, and your oflBcers, all the- men of 
 Israel, — your little ones, your wives, and the 
 stranger that is in thy Camp, from the 
 hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy 
 water.' 
 
 29. Thus in the 'Morning Herald' 
 report of the entrance of Gaeibai,di 
 into London there occurs the following 
 
 London turned out to a man — and a woinan 
 — and a child— along the route from Nine 
 Elms to Stafford House. 
 
 We accept this as a fair rhetorical 
 description of the immense mass of 
 people, which welcomed the Italian 
 hero ; though even that enormous 
 crowd was after all but a small fraction 
 of ' all London ; ' and we will suppose 
 that, when Moses ' called all Israel,' 
 D.xxix.2. to hear his last words, the 
 numbers who attended at the summons, 
 and who are recognisedin the above pass- 
 age, D.xxix.10,11, as actually standing 
 before him, did not in reality exceed 
 some such small fraction of the whole 
 population of Israel. Yet who could 
 believe that Gaeibai,di addressed at 
 one time the multitude of human 
 beings, that crowded the roads for 
 three miles, from Nine Elms to St. 
 James's Park? — or that a host like 
 this, large enough to throng Hyde 
 Park from one end to the other, could 
 have assembled— much less, could have 
 been summoned to assemble — in order 
 that a few standing in front might 
 witness what was passing at the door 
 of his host's house in Prince's Gate ? 
 In short, while it is conceivable that 
 a later writer, imagining such scenes 
 as these, may have employed such ex- 
 aggerated expressions as occur in the 
 above passages, it cannot be believed 
 that an eye-witness, with the actual 
 facts of ike case before Mm, could have 
 expressed himself in such extravagant 
 language. 
 
 CHAPTER rV. 
 
 THE CAMP AND THE PEIESt'S DUTIES. 
 
 30. 'And the skin of the bullock, and all his 
 flesh, with his head, and with his legs, and his 
 inwards, and his dung, even the whole bullock, 
 shall he {tlie Priest) carry forth without the 
 Camp, unto a clean place, wliere the ashes are 
 poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire. 
 
 Where the ashes are poured out, there shall he 
 be burnt.' L.iv.11,12. 
 
 ' And die Priest shall puton his linen garment, 
 and his linen breeches shall he put upon his 
 flesh, and take up the ashes which the are hath 
 consumed with the burnt offering on the Altar, 
 and heshallput them beside the Altar, And he 
 shatlput off his garments, and put on other gar- 
 ments, and carry forth the ashes without the 
 Camp unto a clean place,' L.vi.10,11. 
 
 We have seen (23) that the whole 
 population of Israel at the Exodus 
 may be reckoned at two millions. Now 
 we cannot well allow for a living man, 
 with room for his cooking, sleeping, and 
 other necessaries and conveniences of 
 life, less than three or four times the 
 space required for a dead one in his 
 grave. And even then the different 
 ages and sexes would be very disagree- 
 ably crowded together. Let us allow, 
 however, for each person on the average 
 three times 6 feet by 2 feet, the size of a 
 coffin for a full-grown man, — that is, 
 let us allow for each person 36 square 
 feet or four square yards. Then it fol- 
 lows that for two millions of people, 
 (without making any allowance for the 
 Tabernacle itself, and its Court, and the 
 44,000 Levites, male and female, N.iii. 
 39, 'who pitched round about it,' N.i. 
 63,) the Camp must have covered, the 
 people being crowded as thickly as 
 possible, an area of 8,000,000 square 
 yards, or more than 1,652 acres of 
 ground. 
 
 31. ITponthis very moderate estimate, 
 then, (which in truth is far within the 
 mark,) we must imagine a vast encamp- 
 ment of this extent, swarming with 
 people, more than a mile and a half 
 across in each direction, with the Taber- 
 nacle in the centre. And so says JosB- 
 PHTis, Ant. III.xii.5 : — 
 
 It was like a well-appointed market ; and 
 everything was there ready for sale in due 
 order ; and all sorts of artificers were in the 
 shops ; and it resembled nothing so much as a 
 city, that sometimes was moveable, and some- 
 times was fixed. 
 
 Thus the refuse and ashes of these 
 
THE CAMP AND THE PRIEST'S DUTIES. 
 
 33 
 
 crifices would have had to be carried 
 .t for a distance of three-quarters of a 
 ile. And it would seem, from the 
 cond of the passages ahove quoted, 
 at the Priest himself in person was to 
 ) this, or, at least, to superintend the 
 lainess of doing it. From the outside 
 so of this great camp, wood and 
 ater would have had to he fetched 
 )r all purposes, if, indeed, such sup- 
 [ies of wood or water, for the wants of 
 ich a multitude as this, could have 
 sen found at all in the wilderness, — 
 ader Sinai, for instance, where they 
 re said to have encamped for nearly 
 reive months together. How much 
 ood would remain in such a neigh 
 ourhood, after a month's consumption 
 f the city of London, even at mid- 
 immer? And the .'ashes,' &c., of 
 lie whole camp, for a population like 
 lat of London, would have had to he 
 irried out in like manner, through 
 lie midst of the crowded mass of 
 eople.. They could not surely all 
 ave gone outside the camp for the 
 ecessities of nature. There were the 
 ged and infirm, women in chUdbirth, 
 ick persons, and young children, who 
 ould not have done this. 
 
 32. But, indeed, the very fact, that 
 irovisions for ensuring cleanliness, such 
 £ that laid down in I).xxiii.l2-14,— 
 
 ' for Jehovah thy God walketh in the midst 
 1 thy camp ; therefore shall thy camp be 
 LOly, that He see no unclean thing in thee, 
 nd turn away from thee,' — 
 rould have been so limited in their 
 ipplioation, is itself a very convincing 
 ffoof of the unhistorical character of 
 he whole narrative. It is true that this 
 )artieular direction is laid down, as 
 ippears from the context, with special 
 ■eference to a moveable camp of soldiers 
 mgaged in a military expedition. Yet 
 low much more necessary must some 
 luch a provision have been, for the 
 Tost stationary/ camp of two millions? 
 3r, rather, how is it conceivable that 
 iuch a camp could have existed with- 
 rat any sewage arrangements, without 
 iven the assistance for this purpose of 
 1 small running stream of water? And 
 irhat would such a stream have been 
 :o the whole population of London ? 
 
 33 But how huge does this difficulty 
 become, if, instead of taking the exces- 
 
 sively cramped area of 1652 acres, lessi 
 than three square miles, for such a 
 Camp as this, we take the more reason- 
 able allowance of the Eev. T. Scott, who 
 says, ' this encampment is computed to 
 have formed a moveable city of twelve 
 miles square,' that is, about the size of 
 London itself, — as it might well be, 
 considering that the population was as 
 large as that of London, and that in 
 the Hebrew tents there were no first, 
 second, third, and fourth stories, no 
 crowded garrets and underground cel- 
 lars ! In that case, the oflfal of these 
 sacrifices would have had to be carried 
 a distance of six miles ; and the same 
 difficulty would have attended each of 
 the other transactions above-mentioned. 
 In fact, we have to imagine the Priest * 
 having himself to convey, — we may 
 suppose, with the help or by the 'hands 
 of others, — from St. Paul's to the out- 
 skirts of the Metropolis, the ' skin, and 
 flesh, and head, and legs, and inwards, 
 and dung, even the whole bullock,' and 
 the people having to carry out their 
 rubbish in like manner, and bring in 
 their daily supplies of water and fuel, 
 after first cutting down the latter 
 where they could find it ! Further, we 
 
 * There probably was at Jerusalem some 
 place ' outside the camp,' i.e. outside the wall 
 of the city, where ' the ashes were poured out,' 
 and whither, in DavicPs or SoloTnon's time and 
 afterwards, the remains of. certain sacrifices 
 were axjtually carried, by one or more of the 
 ofdciating priests or their attendants. Bee 
 20h.xxix.l6, ' and the priests went into the 
 inner part of the House of Jehovah, and 
 brought out all the unolearmess that they found 
 in the Temple of Jehoyah into the court of the 
 House of Jehovah. And the Levltes took it, 
 to carry it abroad into the brook Kidron.' And 
 compare Heb.iiii.11,12,— ' For the bodies of 
 those beasts, whose blood is brought into the 
 sanctuary by the High Priest for sin, are 
 burned mthout the camp. 'Wlifirefore Jesus also, 
 that He might sanctify the people with Hia 
 own biood, suffered without the gate.' 
 
 It is inconceivable that any lawgiver, with 
 the actual camp b^ore him, aa large and popu- 
 lous as LONDOlf , could have laid down such 
 directions as those in L.iv.ll,12.vi.l0,ll, for 
 the priest. It is, however, conceivable that 
 a writer, living (suppose) in David's or 
 Solomon's days, and wishing to connect the 
 practices which actuallyexlsted in those times 
 with those which might be supposed to have 
 existed in the wUdemess,— not having, there- 
 fore, the Camp itseU before his eyes, but 
 only imagining the state of things in question, 
 —should, for want of due consideration, have 
 committed such an jnajdvertence as this. 
 C 
 
31 
 
 have to imagine half a million of men 
 going out daily, — the 22,000 Levites 
 for a distance of six miles, — from St. 
 Paul's to the suburbs, for the common 
 necessities of nature ! 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 tiib israelites numbeeed, d-weixing 
 in tents, and aesied. 
 
 34. The Israelites numbered. 
 
 ' And Jehovah spake unto Moses, sarfing. 
 When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel 
 after their number, then shall they give every man 
 a ransom for his soul unto Jehovah when thou 
 numberest them, that there be no plague aTnong 
 them when thou nuniberest them. This they shall 
 give, every one thatpasseth among them that are 
 7iumhei'ed, lialf a shekel after the shekel of the 
 iSanctuary; {a shekel is twenty gerahs ;) an half 
 shekel shall be the offering of Jehovah.' B.xzx. 
 H-13. 
 
 The expression, 'shekel of the Sanc- 
 tuary,' in the above passage, or, as 
 §ome render it, 'sacred shekel,' could 
 hardly have been used in this way 
 until there was a Sanctuary or sacred 
 system in existence, or, rather, until it 
 had been suTne time in existence, and 
 such a phrase had become familiar in 
 the mouths of the people. Whereas 
 here it is put into the mouth of Jehovah, 
 speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, six 
 or seven months before the Tabernacle 
 ■was made. Some, however, suppose 
 that the words ' a shekel is twenty 
 gerahs,' which appear like a later note 
 of explanation, are a Divine definition 
 of the shekel for the first time. 
 
 35; But these words direct that, 
 whenever a numbering of the people 
 should take place, each one that is 
 numbered should pay a ' ransom for his 
 soul' of half a shekel. Now in E.xxxviii. 
 2S we read of such a tribute being 
 paid, — 
 
 ' A bekah for every msn, that is, half a 
 shekel after the shekel oJE the Sanctuary, for 
 every one that went to be numbered, from 
 twenty years old and upward.* 
 
 Here, then, it seems, the atonement- 
 money is collected; but nothing is 
 said of any census being taken. On 
 the other hand, in N.i.1-46, more than 
 six months after the date of the former 
 occasion, we have an account of a very 
 formal numbering of the people, the 
 result being given for each particular 
 
 THE ISRAELITES NUMBERED, 
 
 tribe, and the total number summed 
 up at the end. And here, therefore, 
 the census is made, but there is no in- 
 dication of any atonement-m^ney being 
 paid. The omission in each case might 
 be considered, of course, as accidental, 
 it being supposed that, in the first in- 
 stance, the numbering really took place, 
 and in the second the tribute was paid, 
 though neither circumstance is men- 
 tion ed. 
 
 36. But then it is surprising that 
 the number of adult males should have 
 been identically the same (603,650) on 
 the first occasion as it was half a year 
 afterwards. And each account prO' 
 fesses to be a strictly accurate account 
 of the numbers in question, — the first 
 being checked, as it were, and verifiedi 
 thrice over, in E.xxxviii, «>. in ^.26, 
 where the silver paid is reckoned in 
 talents and shekels, in ■w.26, where the 
 number of men is given, and in u27,28, 
 where the separate portions of silver 
 are specified, which were devoted to 
 different purposes, — and the second 
 being verified, in like manner, by the 
 numbers of the tribes being repeated 
 twice over, and summed up in differ- 
 ent ways, N.i,ii. 
 
 37. In this interval of six months, had 
 none arrived at maturity, i.e. 'twenty 
 years,' N.i.3, who would be numbered 
 at the census, but would not have paid 
 the atonement-money ? Or, of those' 
 who had died or hecome sitperanmiated 
 in this interval, out of a population as 
 large as that of London, where the 
 mortality (of aU ages) is 1250 weekly, 
 were there none who had paid the 
 ' atonement-money,' but would not be 
 numbered at the census? Or must 
 we suppose that the number of super- 
 numeraries in the one ease was miracu- 
 lously ordered so as to exactly balance 
 that in the other ? . 
 
 38. The Iseaeliths dwelling m 
 
 TENTS. 
 
 Take ye every man for them which are iii 
 his tents' B.xvi.l6. 
 
 Here we find that, immediately afte* 
 their coming out of Egypt, the people 
 were provided with iejife,— cumbrous 
 articles to have been carried, when 
 they fled out in haste, — 
 
 ' XaMng their dough before it was leavened/ 
 
DWELLING IN TENTS, AND ARMED. 
 
 their kneadlng-troughs being bound up in 
 their clothes upon their shoulders,' E.xil.34, 
 It is true, this statement conflicts 
 strangely with that in L.xxiii.42,43, 
 where it is assigned as a reason for 
 their ' dwelling in booths ' for seven 
 days at the Eeast of Tabernacles, — 
 
 ' That youx generations may know that I 
 made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, 
 when I brought them out of the land of 
 Egypt." 
 
 39. There is no indication, however, 
 in the story that they ever did live in 
 .booths, nor is it conceivable when they 
 could have done so. For it cannot 
 surely be supposed that, in the hurry 
 and confusion of this flight, they had 
 time to cut down ' boughs and bushes ' 
 •to make booths of, if even there were 
 trees from which to cut them. But, 
 however this may be, they must have 
 needed from the first some kind of 
 shelter from the heat and cold, and 
 privacy in some way or other for the 
 necessities of social life. And we are 
 required to believe that thet/ had tents, 
 at aU events, as these are repeatedly 
 mentioned in the story; whereas booths 
 are only spoken of in this single passage 
 of the book of Leviticus. 
 
 40. Now, allowing ten persons for 
 each tent, — (aZulnhutinNatal contains 
 on an average only three and a half,) — 
 two millions of people would require 
 200,000 tents. How then did they ac- 
 quire these ? Had they provided this 
 enormous number in expectation of 
 marching, when all their request was 
 to be allowed to go ' for three days into 
 th6 wilderness,' E.V.3? Eor they were 
 not living in tents in the land of Egypt, 
 as we gather from the fact, that they 
 were to take of the blood of the paschal 
 lamb, and ' strike it on the two side- 
 posts, and on the lintel or upper door- 
 post,' oi theh houses, E.xii.7, and none 
 of them was to ' go out at tlie door of 
 his fiouse until the morning,' ^.22. 
 
 41. But, further, if they had had 
 these tents, how could they have carried 
 them? They could not have borne 
 them on their shoulders, since these 
 were already occupied with other 
 burdens. And these burdens them- 
 selves were by no means insignifi- 
 cant. Eor, besides their 'kneading 
 troughs,' with the dough unleavened, , 
 
 35 
 
 ' bound up in their clothes upon their 
 shoulders,' as well as all other neces- 
 saries for daily domestic use, for sleep- 
 ing, cooking, &o., there were the in- 
 fants and young children, who could 
 scarcely have gone on foot twenty miles 
 a day as the story requires ; there were 
 the aged and infirm persons, who must 
 have likewise needed assistance ; they 
 must have carried also those goods of 
 various kinds, which they brought out 
 of their treasures so plentifully for the 
 making of the Tabernacle ; and, above 
 all this, they must have taken vAth them 
 grain or flour enough for at least a 
 month's use, since they had no manna 
 given to them till they came into the 
 wilderness of Sin, — 
 
 'On the fifteenth day of the second month 
 after their departing out of the land of Egypt,' 
 B.xvi.l. 
 
 42. There were the cattle certainly, 
 which might have been turned to some 
 account for this purpose, if trained to 
 act as pack-oxen. But then what a 
 prodigious number of trained oxen 
 would have been needed to carry these 
 200,000 tents! One ox will carry 
 120 lbs., and a canvas tent, ' that will 
 hold two people and a fair quantity of 
 luggage,' weighs from 25 to 40 lbs. 
 (Galton's Art of 'Travel, yp.33,177). 
 Of such tents as the above, with poles, 
 pegs, &c., a single ox might, possibly, 
 carry ./b»r, and even this would ■require 
 50,000 oxen. But these would be of 
 the lightest modem materisl, whereas 
 the Hebrew tents, we may suppose, 
 werejnade of hair, E.xxvi.7, xxxvi.l4, 
 or, rather, of sJcin, E.xxvi.l4, xxxvi.l9, 
 and were, therefore, of course, much 
 heavier. Also, these latter were family 
 tents, not made merely for soldiers or 
 travellers, and required to be very much 
 larger for purposes of common decency 
 and convenience. One ox, perhaps, 
 might have carried one such a tent, 
 large enough to accomodate ten per- 
 sons, with its apparatus of pole and 
 cords: and thus they would have needed 
 for this purpose 200,000 oxen. But 
 oxen are not usually trained to carry 
 goods upon their backs as pack-oxen, 
 and will by no means do so if untrained. 
 
 43. The Israelites aumed. 
 
 ' The children of Israel went up harnessed 
 out of (lie land of Egypt.' E.xiii.18. 
 c2 
 
36 
 
 The Hebrew 'word -which is here 
 rendered ' harnessed,' appears to mean 
 ' armed ' or ' in battle array,' in all the 
 other passages where it occurs, viz. — 
 
 Jo.i.l4, 'But ye shall pass before your 
 brethren armed, all the mighty men of valour, 
 and help them ; 
 
 Jo.iT.12, * And the children of Beuhen, and 
 the children of Gad, and haU the tiibe of 
 Manasseh, passed over armed before the chil- 
 dren of Israel, as Moses spake unto them ; 
 
 Ju.vii.ll, 'Then went he do^vn, with 
 Phurah his servant, unto the outside of the 
 armed men that were in the host,' 
 
 44. It is, however, inconceivable that 
 this down-trodden, oppressed people 
 should have been allowed by Pharaoh 
 to possess arms, so as to turn out 
 at a moment's notice 600,000 armed 
 men. If such a mighty host, — nearly 
 nine times as great as the whole 
 of Wellington's army at Waterloo, 
 — (69,686 men, Alison's Sistorf/ of Eu- 
 rope, xix.p.401), — had had arms in 
 their hands, would they not have risen 
 long ago for their liberty, or, at all 
 events, would there have been no 
 danger of their rising? Besides, the 
 warriors formed a distinct caste in 
 £gypt, as Heeodotcs tells us, ii. 165, — 
 * being in number, when they axe most 
 numerous, 160,000, none of whom leom any 
 mechanical art, but apply themselves wholly 
 to military affairs.' 
 
 Are we to suppose, then, that the Israel- 
 ites acquired their arms by 'borrowing' 
 on the night of the Exodus ? Nothing 
 whatever is said of this, and the idea 
 itself is an extravagant one. But, if 
 even in this, or in any other, way they 
 had come to be possessed of arms, is it 
 to be believed that 600,000 armed men, 
 in the prime of life, would have cried out 
 in panic terror, 'sore afraid,' E.xiv.lO, 
 when they saw that they were being 
 pursued ? 
 
 45. The difficulty of believing this 
 las led many commentators to endea- 
 vour to explain otherwise, if possible, 
 the meaning of the word. Accordingly, 
 in the margin of the English Bible we 
 find suggested, instead of ' harnessed ' 
 or 'armed,' in all the abovfe passages 
 except Jo.iv.l2, 'by five in a rank.' 
 And others again explain it to mean 
 ' by fifties,' as the five thousand were 
 arranged in the wilderness of Bethsaida, 
 ilark vi.40. 
 
 46. It will be seen, however, that 
 
 THE ISEAELITES ARMED, &c. ' 
 
 these meanings of the word will not at 
 all suit those other passages. And, 
 indeed, by adopting the first of them, we 
 should only get rid of one difficulty to 
 introduce another quite as formidable. 
 For, if 600,000 men marolied out of 
 Egypt ' five in a rank,' allowing a yard 
 for marching room between each rank, 
 they must have formed a column 68 
 miles long, and it would have taken 
 several days to have started them all 
 o&, instead of their going out alto- 
 gether 'that self-same day,' E.xii. 
 41,42,51. On the second supposition, 
 they might have formed a column 
 seven miles long, which was certainly 
 possible in the open, undulating, desert 
 between Cairo and Suez. But it can- 
 not surely be supposed that the strong, 
 able-bodied, men kept regular ranks, 
 as if marching for war, when they 
 were only hasting ont of Egypt, 
 and when their services must hare 
 been so much required for the assist- 
 ance of the weaker members of their 
 families, the women and children, the 
 sick, infirm, and aged. 
 
 47. It has been suggested, indeed, 
 that the Hebrew word may have been 
 used originally of warriors, with refer- 
 ence to theb marching in ranks of 
 five or fifty, but may here be used in a 
 metaphorical sense, to express the idea 
 that they went out of Egypt ' with a 
 high hand,' E.xiv.8, in a spirited and 
 orderly manner, not as a mere himy- 
 ing, confused, rabble. 
 
 48. But, if this be admitted, we must 
 still ask where did they get the armour, 
 with which, about a month afterwards, 
 they fought the Amalekites, E.xvii, 
 8-13, and ' discomfited them with the 
 edge of the sword'? And whenc( 
 came the ' swords ' and ' weapons ' men 
 tioned in E.xxxii.27, D.i.41 ? It may 
 perhaps, be said that they had strippec 
 the Egyptians, whom they saw ' lying 
 dead upon the sea-shore,' E.xiv.30 
 And so writes JosEPHns.4Bi.II.xvi.6 :— 
 
 On the next day, Moses gathered togethe 
 the weapons of the Egyptians, which woi 
 brought to the camp of the Hebrews by th 
 current of the sea and the force of the wind 
 assisting it. And he conjectured that thi 
 also happened by Divine Providence, that s 
 they might not be destitute of weapons. 
 
 It is plain that Josephus had pei 
 
THE INSTITUTION 
 ceired the difficulty. The Bible-etory, 
 however, says nothing about this strip- 
 ping of the dead, as surely it must have 
 done, if it really took place. And, 
 though body-armour might have been 
 obtained in this vray, would swords, 
 and spears, and shields, in any number, 
 have been washed upon the shore by 
 the waves, or have been retained, still 
 grasped in the hands of drowning men ? 
 
 49. If, then, the historical veracity of 
 this part of the Pentateuch is to be main- 
 tained, we must believe that 600,000 
 men in the prime of life, of whom some 
 portion at least were armed, had, 
 by reason of their long servitude, be- 
 come so debased and inhuman in their 
 cowardice, — (and yet they fought 
 bravely enough with Amalek a month 
 afterwards,) — that they could not strike 
 a single blow for their wives and chil- 
 dren, if not for their own lives and 
 liberties, but could only weakly waU, 
 and murmur against Moses, saying, — 
 
 *It had been better for lis to serve the 
 Slgyptians, than that we should die in the 
 wiidemess.' E.xiv.ia. 
 
 CHAPTER VI, 
 THE DrsTprnnoN op the passovee. 
 
 50. * 7%en Moses called for all the elders of 
 Israel, and said unto them. Draw out, and take 
 you a lamb according to your families, and kill 
 the Passover. And ye shall take a bunch of 
 hyssop, and dip it in thebloodthat isin tJwbason, 
 and strike the lintel and the too side^osts with 
 the blood that is in the bason ; and none of you 
 shall go out at the door of his house Ttntil the 
 Tnoming. . . . And the children of Israel went 
 away, and did as Jehovah had commanded Moses 
 and Aaron ; so did th«y' E.xii.21-28. 
 
 That is to say, in one single day, the 
 whole immense population of Israel, as 
 large as that of London, was instructed 
 to keep the Passover, and actually did 
 keep it. I have said 'in one single 
 day ' ; for the first notice of any such 
 Eeast to be kept is given in v.Z of this 
 very chapter, and we find it written in 
 «.12,— 
 
 , •! will pass through the land of E^ypt this 
 night, and will smite all the flrst-bom in the 
 land of Egypt, both man and beast.' 
 
 61. It is true that the story, as it 
 now stands, with the directions about 
 'taking' the lamb on the tenth day, 
 and 'keeping' it tUl the fourteenth, 
 is perplexing and contradictory. But 
 ■this is only one of many similar -ghe- 
 
 OF THE PASSOVEK'. G7 
 
 nomena, arising, as will appear here- 
 after, from interpolations having been 
 made by a later writer in the original 
 document. 
 
 Let lis now see what the above state-' 
 ment really implies, when translated 
 into simple every-day matter of fact. 
 
 52. ' Moses cdled for all the elders 
 of Israel.' 
 
 We must suppose, then, that the 
 ' elders ' must have lived somewhere 
 near at hand. But where did the two 
 millions Uve? And how could the 
 order, to keep the Passover, have been 
 conveyed, with its minutest particulars, 
 to etfcA individual household in this 
 vast community, in one day, — rather, 
 in twelve hours, since Moses received 
 the command on the very same day, 
 on which they were to kill the Pass- 
 over at even, E.xii.6 ? 
 
 53. It must be observed that it was 
 absolutely necessary that the notice 
 should be distinctly given to each 
 separate family. Por it was a matter 
 of Hfe and death. Upon the due per- 
 formance of the Divine command it 
 depended whether Jehovah should 
 ' pass-over,' i. e. ' stride across,' the 
 threshold, (Is.xxxi.5,) and protect the 
 house from the angel of death, or not. 
 
 64. And yet the whole matter was 
 perfectly new to them. The specific 
 directions, — about choosing the lamb, 
 killing it at even, sprinkling its blood, 
 eating it with unleavened bread, — 
 'not raw, nor sodden at all with water, 
 but roast with fire,' ' with their loins girded, 
 their shoes on their feet, and their staff in 
 their hand,* — 
 
 were now forthefirst time communicated 
 to Moses, by him to the elders, and by 
 them to the people. These directions, 
 therefore, could not have been conveyed 
 by any mere sign, intimating that they 
 were now to carry into execution some- 
 thing about which they had been in- 
 formed before. They must be plainly 
 and fully delivered to each individual 
 head of a family, or to a number of 
 them gathered together ; though these, 
 of course, might be ordered to assist in 
 spreading the intelligence to others, 
 but so that no single household should 
 be left uninformed upon the matter. 
 
 54. This would, of course, be done 
 inost easily, if we could suppose that 
 
38 
 
 THE INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVEE. 
 
 tlie wliole Hebrew community lived as 
 closely together as possible, in one 
 great city. In that case, we should 
 have to imagine a message of this 
 nature, upon which life and death de- 
 pended, conveyed, without fail, to every 
 single family in a population as large 
 as that of London, between sunrise and 
 sunset, — and that, too, without their 
 having had any previous notice what- 
 ever on the subject, and without any 
 preparations having been made before- 
 hand to facilitate such a communica- 
 tion. 
 
 55. Further, we are told that — 
 
 ' Every woman was to borrow of lier neigh- 
 bour, and of her that sojonrned in her house, 
 jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and rai- 
 ment.' E.iii.22. 
 
 From this it would seem to follow 
 that the Hebrews were regarded as 
 living in the midst of the Egyptians, 
 mixed up freely with them in their 
 dwellings. And this appears to be 
 confirmed by the statement, E.xii. 35,36, 
 that, when suddenly summoned to de- 
 part, they hastened, at a moment's no- 
 tice, to ' borrow ' in all directions from 
 the Egyptians, and collected such a 
 vast amount of treasure, in a very short 
 space of time, that they ' spoiled the 
 Egyptians.' 
 
 66. But the supposition of their bor- 
 rowing in this way, even if they lived 
 in such a city, involves prodigious diffi- 
 culties. For the city, in that case, 
 could have been no other than Eameses 
 itself, from which they started, E.xii. 37, 
 a 'treasure-city,' which they had 'built 
 for Pharaoh,' E.i.ll — doubtless, there- 
 fore, a well-built city, not a mere 
 collection of mud-hovels. But, if the 
 Israelites lived in such a city together 
 with the Egyptians, it must have been 
 even larger than London, and the 
 difficulty of communication would have 
 been thereby greatly increased. For 
 we cannot suppose that the humble 
 dwellings of these despised slaves were 
 in closest contiguity with the mansions 
 of their masters. And, in fact, several 
 of the miracles, especially that of the 
 ' thick darkness,' imply that the abodes 
 of the Hebrews were wholly apart from 
 those of the Egyptians, however difficult 
 it may be to conceive how, under such 
 circumstances, each woman could have 
 
 borrowed from her that 'sojo'.:nied in 
 her house.' Thus we should have now 
 to imagine the time that would be 
 required for the poorer half of London 
 going hurriedly to borrow from the 
 richer half, in addition to their other 
 anxieties in starting upon such a sudden 
 and momentous expedition. 
 
 57. The story, however, willnot allow 
 us to suppose that they were living in 
 any such city at all. Having so larga 
 flocks and herds, 'even very much 
 cattle,' E.xii.38, many of them must 
 have lived scattered over the large extent 
 of grazing-ground, required under their 
 circumstances; and, accordingly, they 
 are represented as still living in ' the 
 land of Goshen,' E.ix.26. But how 
 large must have been the extent of this 
 land? We can form some judgment 
 on this point by considering the num< 
 ber of lambs, which (according to the 
 story) must have been killed for the 
 Passover, for which the commandwas,-- 
 
 * They shall take to them every man a 
 lamb, according to the house of their fathers, 
 a lamb for an house : and, if the household be 
 too little for the lamb, let him and his neigh- 
 bour, next unto his house, take it according 
 to the number of the souls ; every man, ac- 
 cording to his eating, shall make your couiLt 
 for the lamb, B.xii.3,4. 
 
 58. Now JosEPHUs {Jew. War, VI. 
 ix.3) reckons ten persons on an average 
 for each lamb ; but, he says, ' many of 
 us are twenty in a company.' KvETa 
 allows ^/i(ee» or twenty. Taking ten as 
 the average number, two millions of 
 people would require about 200,000 
 lambs ; taking twenty, they would re- 
 quire 100,000. Let us take the mean 
 of these, and suppose that they re- 
 quired 150,000. And these were to be 
 all 'mate lambs of the first year,' E.xii.o. 
 AVe may assume that there were as many 
 female lambs of the first year, making 
 300,000 lambs of the fiirst year alto- 
 gether. 
 
 59. But these were not all. For, if 
 the 150,000 lambs that were killed for- 
 the Passover comprised all the males 
 of that year, there would have been no 
 rams left of that year for the increase 
 of the flock. And, as the same thing 
 would take place in each successive 
 year, there would never be any rams 
 or wethers, but ewe-sheep innumerable. 
 
THE INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVER. 
 
 39 
 
 Instead, then, of 150,000, we may sup- 
 pose 200,000 male lambs of the first 
 year, and 200,000 female lambs, making 
 400,000 lambs of the first year alto- 
 gether. Now a sheepmaster, experi- 
 enced in Australia and Natal, informs 
 me that the total number of sheep, in 
 an average flock of all ages, wiU. be 
 about .^?;e times that of the increase in 
 one season of lambing. So that 400,000 
 lambs of the first year implies a flock 
 of 2,000,000 sheep" and lambs of all 
 ages. Taking, then, into account the 
 fact, that they had also large herds, 
 ' even very much cattle,' we may fairly 
 reckon that the Hebrews, though so 
 much oppressed, must have possessed at 
 this time, according to the story, more 
 than two millions of sheep and oxen. 
 
 60. Whatextentofland, then, would 
 ^11 these have required for pasturage ? 
 Having made enquiries on the subject 
 &om experienced sheepmasters, I find 
 that in ISew Zealand there are a few 
 spots, where sheep can be kept two to 
 the acre ; in other places, one can be 
 kept per acre ; but, generally, two acres 
 are obliged to be allowed for one sheep. 
 Another writes as follows : — 
 
 Tn Australia^ some sheep-nms are estimated 
 to carry tme sheep to an acre, and these, I 
 think, are of the best quality. Others are esti- 
 mated at different numbers of acres to a sheep, 
 until as many as five acres are allowed for one 
 sheep by the Government, for the purposes of 
 assessment. Natal is able to support a much 
 greater number, principally from its climate, 
 83 well as from the fact that the proportion of 
 good land is incomparably greater with refer- 
 ence to the extent of poor land. But I thirik 
 that I am within the mark, when I say that 
 three sheep wUl hereafter be found to be sup- 
 ported by an acre of land. 
 ■ Let us allow fine sheep, or goats, 
 E.xii.5, to an acre. Then the flocks 
 alone of the Israelites would have re- 
 quired 400,000 acres of grazing land, 
 — an extent of country considerably 
 larger than the whole county of Hert- 
 fordshire or Bedfordshire, and more 
 than twice the size of Middlesex, — 
 besides that which would have been 
 required for the herds of oxen. 
 , 61. We must, then, abandon alto- 
 gether the idea of the people living 
 together in one city, and must suppose 
 a great body of them to have been 
 scattered about in towns and villages, 
 throughout the whole land of Goshen, in a 
 
 district of 400,000 acres, that is, twenty- 
 five miles square, larger than Hertford- 
 shire (391,141 acres). But then the diffi- 
 culty of informing such a population 
 would be enormously increased, as well 
 as that of their borrowing, when sum- 
 moned in the dead of night, E.xii.29-36, 
 to the extent implied in the story. For, 
 even if we supposed the first message, 
 to prepare, kill, and eat the Paschal 
 lamb, communicated to the whole 
 people within the twelve hours, and 
 acted on, when they were abroad in 
 full daylight, — or that they actually 
 had had a previous order, several days 
 before as some suppose, to ' take' thfl 
 'lambs on the tenth day, and 'keep' 
 them to the fourteenth, — yet how 
 could the second notice, to start, have 
 been so suddenly and completely cir- 
 culated ? 
 
 62. Let us look at this matter more 
 closely. We are told that not one 
 was 'to go out at the door of his 
 house until the morning,' E.xii.22. 
 Consequently, they could not have 
 known anything of what had happened 
 in Pharaoh's house and city, as also 
 among his people throughout the whole 
 ••land of Egypt,' E.xii.29, until the 
 summons from Moses, or, at least, the 
 news of the event, reached each in- 
 dividual house. The whole popula- 
 tion of Hertfordshire, by the census of 
 1851, was considerably under 200,000 
 (167,298). We are to imagine then 
 its towns and villages increased more 
 than tenfold in size or in number. 
 And then we are to believe that every 
 single household, throughout the entire 
 county, was warned in twelve hours to 
 keep the Feast of the Passover, was 
 taught how to keep it, and actually did 
 keep it ! 
 
 63. Or, even if we suppose that they 
 were warned and taught to keep the 
 Passover some days previously, yet 
 still the story represents that this vast 
 population, spread over a large extent 
 of country,* was warned again suddenly 
 at midnight, to start in hurried flight 
 
 * Allowing eren that one lamb or kid suf- 
 ficed for a hundred persons, as some have 
 asserted, it would still follow, as above, that 
 the people would be spread over 53,333 acres of 
 land. ' ■ 
 
THE MARCH OUT OF EGYPT. 
 
 40 
 
 for the -wilderness, and started in obedi- 
 ence to the order, after ' borrowing ' of 
 theirmasters 'jewels' and 'raiment,' — 
 when each family was shut up closely 
 in its own house, and strictly forbidden 
 to come out of it till summoned, and 
 they could not, therefore, communicate 
 the tidings freely, as by day, from one 
 person to a number of others. That 
 they did start suddenly in 'hurried 
 flight,' according to the story, is mani- 
 fest from the statement in E.xii.39, — 
 
 * They baked unleavened cakes of the dough 
 which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it 
 ■was not leavened ; because they were thrust 
 out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither had 
 they prepared themselves any victual/ 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE MAHCH OUT OF EGYPT. 
 G4. ' And the children of Israel Journeyed 
 
 from liameses to Succoth, about six hundred 
 
 thousand on foot that were men, besides children. 
 
 And a mixed multitude went up also with tliem, 
 
 and flocks and herds, even very much cattle,' E. 
 
 xu..37,3S. 
 
 Itappears from !N'.i.3,ii.32, that these 
 
 'six hundred thousand on foot, were the 
 
 men in the prime of life, — 
 'From twenty years old and upward, all 
 
 that were able to go forth to war in Israel.' 
 
 And, (as we have seen,) this large 
 number of able-bodied warriors implies 
 a total population of, at least, two mil- 
 lions. Here, then, we have this vast 
 body of people of all ages, summoned 
 to start, according to the story, at a 
 moment's notice, and actually started, 
 not one being left behind, together with 
 all their multitudinous flocks and herds, 
 which must (60) have been spread out 
 over a district as large as a good-sized 
 English county. I do not hesitate to 
 declare this statement to be utterly in- 
 credible and impossible. Were an 
 English village of (say) two thousand 
 people to be called suddenly to set out in 
 this way, with old people, women, young 
 children, and infants, what indescrib- 
 able distress there would be! But 
 what shall be said of a thousand times 
 as many ? And what of the sick and 
 infirm, or the women in recent or im- 
 minent childbirth, in a population like 
 that of London, where the births* are 
 
 * The births in London, for a week taken 
 at random {Times, Sept. 3, 1862), were 1,852 
 and the deaths, 1,147. ' ' 
 
 264 a day, or about one every fiva 
 minutes? 
 
 65. But this is but a very small part 
 of the difficulty. We are required to 
 believe that, in one single day, the 
 order to start was communicated sud- 
 denly, at midnight, to every single 
 family of every town and village, 
 throughout a tract of country as largo 
 as Hertfordshire, but ten times as 
 thickly peopled ; — that, in obedience to 
 such order, having first 'borrowed' 
 very largely from their Egyptian neigh- 
 bours in aU directions, (though, if we 
 are to suppose Egyptians occupying the 
 same territory with the Hebrews, the 
 extent of it must be very much in- 
 creased,) they then came in from all 
 parts of the land of Goshen to Rameses, 
 bringing with them the sick and in- 
 firm, the young and the aged ; — further, 
 that, since receiving the summons, they 
 had sent out to gather in aU their flocks 
 and herds, spread over so wide a dis- 
 trict, and had driven them also to 
 Rameses ; — and, lastly, that having 
 done all this, since they were roused at 
 midnight, they were started again from 
 Rameses that very same day, and 
 marched on to Succoth, not leaving a 
 single sick or infirm person, a single 
 woman in childbirth, or even a ' single 
 hoof,' E.x26, behind them ! 
 
 66. And now let us see them on the' 
 march itself. If we imagine the people 
 to have travelled through the open 
 desert, in a wide body, fifty men 
 abreast, as some suppose to have been 
 the practice in the Hebrew armies, 
 then, allowing an interval of a yard 
 between each rank, the able-bodied 
 warriors alone would have filled up the 
 road for about seven miles, and the 
 whole multitude would have formed a 
 dense column more than twenty-two 
 mtles long,— BO that the last of the body 
 could not have been started tiU the front 
 had advanced that distance, more than 
 two days' journey for such a mixed 
 company as this. 
 
 67. And the sheep and cattle— these 
 must have formed another vast column, 
 but obviously covering a much greatei 
 tract of ground m proportion to their 
 number, as they would not march of 
 course, in compact order. Hence 'the 
 
THE FLOCKS AND HEEDS IN THE DESERT. 
 
 drove must have teen lengthened out 
 for many long miles. And such grass 
 as there was, if not eaten down by the 
 first ranks, must have been trodden 
 imder foot at once and destroyed, by 
 those that followed them mile after 
 mile. What, then, did those two millions 
 of sheep and oxen live upon, during 
 this journey from Rameses to Succoth, 
 and from Succoth to Etham, and from 
 Etham to the Red Sea? 
 
 68. Even if we supposed with some, 
 contrary to the plain meaning of the 
 Scripture, that they did not all ren- 
 dezvous at Rameses, but fell into the 
 
 ' line farther on, on the first day or the 
 second, stiU this would not in reality 
 in any way relieve the dif&eulty, of so 
 niany miles of people marching with 
 BO many miles of sheep and oxen. It 
 would only throw it on to a farther stage 
 of the journey. Eor when, on the third 
 day, they turned aside and ' encamped 
 by the Sea,' E.xiv.2, what then did 
 this enormous multitude of cattle — 
 whether 2,000,000 or (say) 200,000 or 
 even 20,000 — feed upon ? Kitto, Sisi. 
 of the Jews, p.l17, says, — 
 
 The journey to this point had been for the 
 most part over a desert, the surface of which 
 is composed of hard gravel, often strewed 
 with pebbles. 
 
 What, again, did they eat the next 
 day, when they crossed the Sea ? What 
 on the next three days, when they 
 marched through the wilderness of 
 Shur, and ' found no water,' E.xv.22 ? 
 Of this last stage KiTTO says, «S.p.l91: — 
 
 Their road lay over a desert region, sandy, 
 gravelly, and stony, alternately. In about 
 nine miles they entered a boundless desert 
 plain, called M Ati, white and painfully 
 glaring to the eye. Proceeding beyond this, 
 the ground became hilly, with sand-hills near 
 the coast. 
 
 69. They had not ' prepared for iAcm- 
 telves any victual,' E.xii.39 : much 
 less, we must believe, had they pre- 
 pared food for their cattle. Who, in- 
 deed, could suppose that, when they 
 started with 'their kneading-troughs 
 bbimd up in their clothes upon their 
 shoulders,' (showing their want of 
 carts, &c., to convey their common 
 necessaries,) they carried also bundles 
 of forage for their flocks and herds? 
 Or were the oxen so laden with forage, 
 that they could not also carry the 
 
 41 
 
 kneading-troughs ? Afterwards, indeed, 
 as they advanced into the wilderness,, 
 we are told how the peop'.e were sup- 
 plied with manna, E.xvi.35. But there 
 was no miraculous provision of food for 
 the herds and flocks. They were left to 
 gather sustenance, as they could, in 
 that inhospitable wilderness. We will 
 now go on to consider the possibility 
 of such a multitude of cattle finding any 
 means of support, for forty years, under 
 these circumstances. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE FLOCKS ABD HERDS IN THE DESEET. 
 
 70. And, first, it is certain that the 
 story represents them as possessing 
 these flocks and herds during the 
 whole of the forty years which they 
 spent in the wilderness. Thus, in the, 
 second year, Moses asks, — 
 
 ' Shall the flocks and the herds be slaan for 
 them to suffice them ? ' K.xi.22. 
 
 And in the fortieth year we read, — 
 
 * The children of Reuben and the children of 
 
 Gad had a very great multitude of cattle,' 
 
 N.xxxii.1. 
 
 This, it is true, is said immediately 
 after the captm:e of a great number of 
 cattle and sheep from the Midianites, 
 N.xxxi. But the spoil in that case was 
 divided among all the people. And, 
 therefore, if the tribes of Reuben and 
 Gad could stUl be distinguished among 
 the rest, as having a great multitude 
 of cattle, they must have been so noted 
 before the plunder of the Midianites.. 
 Accordingly, we find that, at the end 
 of the first year, they kept the second 
 Passover under Sinai, N.ix.5, and,' 
 therefore, we may presume, had at that 
 time, as before, 200,000 male lambs or 
 kids of the fiist year (59) at their com- 
 mand, and two millions of sheep and 
 oxen close at band. 
 
 71. Again, it cannot be supposed, as 
 some have suggested, that the flocks 
 and herds were scattered far and wide,, 
 during the sojourn of the people in the 
 wilderness, and so were able the more, 
 easily to find pasture. The story says, 
 nothing, and implies nothing, whatever, 
 of this; but, as far as it proves any- 
 thing, it proves the contrary, since we 
 find the whole body of the people to- 
 gether, on all occasions specked in the 
 
TEE FLOCKS AISTD HERDS IN THE DESERT. 
 
 42 
 
 history. If, indeed, they had been so 
 dispersed, they would surely have re- 
 quired to be guarded, by large bodies 
 of armed men, from the attacks of the 
 Am^lekites, Midianites, and others. 
 
 72. But, even if this was the case dur- 
 ing the thirty-seven years, about which 
 the story is silent altogether, yet, at all 
 events, during nearly twelve mouths, 
 they were all collected under Sinai, 
 while the Tabernacle was in process of 
 building, at the end of which time the 
 eecond. Passover was kept. "We must, 
 therefore, conclude that they came to 
 Sinai with those immense bodies of 
 sheep and oxen, with which, three 
 months before, they had set out from 
 Egypt, Hence we find the command 
 in E.xxxiT.3,' — 
 
 * Neither let the flocks nor herds feed before 
 that mount.' 
 
 73. Lastly, it cannot be said that the 
 State of the country, through which 
 they travelled, has undergone any ma- 
 terial change from that time to this. 
 It is described as being then what it is 
 now, a ' desert land,' a * waste howling 
 wilderness,' D.xxxii.lO. 
 
 ' "Why have ye brought up the Congregation 
 of Jehovah into this wilderness, thai: -wq and 
 our cattle should die thers? And wherefore 
 have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to 
 bring us imto this evil place ? It is no place 
 of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pome- 
 pi-anates ; neither is there any water to drinkj 
 N.xx.4,5. 
 
 Erom the above passage it appears 
 also that the water from the rock did 
 not follow them in all places, as some 
 have supposed. 
 
 ' Beware that thou forget not Jehovah, thy 
 God, who led thee through that great and 
 terrible wildemeps, wherein were fiery ^r- 
 pents, and scprpions, and drought, ip/iere mere 
 was no water, who brought thee forth water 
 out of the rock of flint.' D.viii.l5. 
 
 ' Neither said they, * "Where is Jehovah, that 
 brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that 
 led us through the wildemeas, through a land 
 of deserts and Of pits, through a land of 
 drought and of the shadow of death, through 
 a land that no man passed through, and where 
 BO man dwelt ? ' Jer.ii.6. 
 
 74. Let us now see what Dqan 
 Stanley tells us, first, as to the nature 
 of the country, through which the host 
 of Israel must have marched from the 
 Bed Sea to Sinai. (Sinai and Pales- 
 tine.) 
 
 The wind drove us to shore— the shore of 
 Arabia and Asia. We landed in a driving 
 Band-storm, and readied this place, Ayun- 
 
 Musa, the wells of Mosea. It is a strnnge spot, 
 this plot of tamarisks, with its seventeen 
 wells, literally an island in the dese7't, and now 
 used as the Richmond of Suez, a comparison 
 which chiefly serves to show what a place 
 Suez itself must be. Behind that African 
 range lay Egypt, with all its wonders,— the 
 green fields of the Nile, the immense cities, ) 
 the greatest monuments of human power and 
 wisdom. On tJiis Asiatic side begins immediately 
 a wide circle of level desert, stone, and sandy 
 free as air, but with no trace of human 
 habitation or art, where they might wander, 
 as far as they saw, for ever and ever. And, 
 between the two, rolled the deep watei^ of the 
 Eed Sea, rising and falling with the tides, 
 which, except on its shores, none of them 
 could have seen,— the tides of the great Indian 
 Ocean, unlike the still dead waters of the 
 Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 The day after leaving Ayun-Musa was at 
 first within sight of the blue channel of the 
 Red Sea. But soon Red Sea and all were lost 
 in a saud-storm, which lasted the whole day, 
 (I have retained this account of the sand- 
 storm, chiefly because it seems to be a phenn- , 
 menon peculiar to this special region. Vabt 
 Egmont, NrEBUHR, MisB Martineau, all 
 noticed it ; and it was just as violent at tho 
 passage of a friend in 1841, and again of ' 
 another two months after ourselves in 1853.) 
 Imagine all distant objects entirely lost to ■ 
 view,— the sheets of sand floating along the 
 surface of the desert, like streams of water, 
 the whole air filled with a tempest of sand, 
 driving in your face like sleet. 
 
 We were, undoubtedly, on the track of the 
 Israelites ; and we saw the spring, which 
 most travellers believe to be Marah, and the 
 two valleys, one of which must almost cer- 
 tainly—both perhaps— be Elim. The general ■ ' 
 scenery is either immense plains, [i.e bare and 
 barren plains of sand, as described below,] or, 
 latterly, a succession of watercouises, [without ' 
 water, see below,] exactly like the dry bed of a 
 Spanish river. These guUies gradually bring 
 you into the heart of strange black and whiia 
 mountains. For the most part the desert was 
 absolutely bare. But the two rivals for Elim 
 are fringed with trees and shrubs, the first 
 vegetation we hcvoe met in the desert. First, there ' 
 are the wild palms, successors . of the ' three- 
 score and ten ,' not 1 ike those of Egypt or of pic- 
 tures, but either dwarf, that is, trunkless, or 
 else with savage, hairy trunks, and branches 
 all dishevelled. Then there are the feathery ' 
 tamarisks, here assuming gnarled boughs and 
 hoary heads, on whose leaves is found what 
 the j^abs call manna. Thirdly, there is the '• 
 wild acacia, but this is also tangled by its ■ 
 desert growth into a thicket,— the tree of the 
 Burning Bush and the Shittim-wood of the 
 Tabernacle. . . A stair of rock brought us ' 
 into a glorious wady, enclosed between red 
 granite mountains, descending precipitously 
 upon the sands. I cannot too often repeat ' 
 that these wadys are exactly like rivers, eX' 
 cept in having no water \ and it is this appear- ' 
 ance of torrent-bed and banks, and clefts in 
 the rocks for tributary streams, and at times 
 even rushes and shrubs fringing their course ' 
 which gives to the whole wilderness a dovbly dry 
 and thirsty aspect,— signs of ' Water, water ) 
 everywhere, and not a drop to drink,* ■ * 
 
THE FLOCKS AND HERDS IN THE DESERT. 
 
 43 
 
 ^ Sere too began the curious sight of the 
 mountains, streaked fi'oni head, to foot, as if 
 ■with boiling streams of dark red matter 
 poured over them — ^really, the igneous fluid 
 spurted upwards, as they were heaved from 
 the ground. The road lay through what 
 geemed to be the ruins, the cinders, of moun- 
 tains calcined to ashes, like the heaps of a, 
 gigantic foundry, p.96— 71. 
 • There are at first sight many appearances, 
 which, to an unpractised eye, seem indications 
 of volcanic agency. But they are all, it is 
 believed, illusory. The vast heaps, as of 
 calcined mountains, are only the detritus of 
 iron in the sandstone formation. The traces 
 of igneous action in the granite rocks belong 
 to their first upheaving, not to any subse- 
 (Juent convulsions. Everywhere there are 
 signs of the action of water, nowhere of fire. 
 p.22. 
 
 75. Such, then, is the track, along 
 which, according to the story, the two 
 millions of Israelites had to pass with 
 their two millions of sheep and oxen. 
 Let us now see what Dean Stanley 
 tells us ahout the vegetation generally 
 in the Sinaitic peninsula. 
 
 Another feature [of the mountains of this 
 peninsula] is the infbiite complication of 
 jagged peaks and varied ridges. This is the 
 characteristic described by Sir P. Henwiker, 
 with a slight exaggeration of expression, when 
 he says that the view from Jehel Musa is ' as 
 if Arabia Petrsea were an ocean of lava, 
 Which, while ite waves were rumiing moun- 
 tains high, had suddenly stood still.' It is an 
 equally sinking and more accurate expression 
 of the same, when he speaks of the whole 
 range as being the ' Alps unclothed.' This — 
 Ui^ir union of grandewr with desolation — is the 
 point of their scenery absolutely unrivalled. 
 They are the Alps of Arabia, but the Alps 
 planted in the desert, and, therefore, stripped 
 of aU the clothing which goes to make up 
 onr notions of Swiss or English mountains, — 
 Elaipped of the variegated drapery of oak, and 
 birch, and pine, and fir, of moss, and grass, 
 and fern, which to landscapes of European 
 llilis are almost as essential as the rocks and 
 peaks themselves. The very name of Alp is 
 strictly applied only to tlie green pasture- 
 lands, eaclosed by rocks or glaciers, — a sight 
 in the European Alps so common, in these 
 Arabian Alps so wholly unknown. i?.13. 
 
 The general character of the wadys, as well 
 OS of the mountains, of Sinai is entire desola- 
 tion. If the mountains are naked Alps, the 
 Valleys are 6r^ rivers, p.\Q. Por a few 
 weeks or days in the winter, these wadys 
 present, it is said, the appearance, of rushing 
 streams. But their usual aspect is absolutely 
 bare and waste, only prraenting the image of 
 thirsty desolation the more strikingly, from 
 the constant indications of water, which is no 
 longer there. _p.l5. , 
 
 ' There is nearly everywhere a thm, it might 
 almost be said, a tran^areni, coating of vege- 
 tation. There are occasional spots of verdure, 
 which escape notice in a general view, but for 
 that very reason are the more remarkable. 
 When observed. Not, perhaps, every single 
 
 tree, but every group of trees, lives in th« 
 traveller's recoUection, as distinctly as tne 
 towns and spires of civilized countries. . . . 
 The more definitely marked spots of verdui-e, 
 however, are the accompaniments, not of the 
 empty beds of winter torrents, but of the few 
 living, perhaps pei'ennial, springs, whic!^, by 
 the mere fact of their rarity, assume an im- 
 portance difiQcult to be understood in the moist 
 scenery of the "West and North. The springs, 
 whose sources are for the most part high up 
 in the mountain clefts, occasionally send down 
 into the wadys rills of water, which, however 
 scanty, however little desei-ving of the name 
 even of brooks, yet become immediately the 
 nucleus of whatever vegetation the desert 
 produces. (Ruppell notices four perennial 
 brooks.) Often their course can be traced, nor, 
 by visible water, but by a track of moss here, 
 a fringe of rushes there, a solitary palm, a 
 group of acacias, which at once denote that 
 an unseen life is at work. ^.15-18. 
 
 The highest of these [peaks of Mount 
 Serbal] is a huge block of granite. On this 
 you stand, and overlook the whole peninsula 
 of Sinai. Every feature of the extraordinary 
 conformation lies before you, — the wadys, 
 coursing and winding in every direction,— the 
 long crescent of the Wady es Sheikh,— the in- 
 finite number of mcuntaina likeamodel, their 
 colours all clearly displayed, the dark granite, 
 the brown sandstone, the yellow desert, the 
 dots of vegetation along the "Wady Peiran, and 
 the one green spot of the great palm-grove (if 
 so it be) of Bephidim. p.72. 
 
 76t We thus see the character of the 
 desert of Sinai, in which this immense 
 number of cattle was sustained, accord- 
 ing to the story, for the space of forty 
 years. Dean Stanley will not, how- 
 ever, evade the difficult question, which 
 is thiis raised ; and this is his comment 
 upon it, ^.23-27, with the replies which 
 must be made to the different parts of 
 his argument. 
 
 (i) 'The question is as^ed, 'How could a 
 tribe, so numerous and powerful, as on any (?), 
 hypothesis the Israelites must have been, be 
 maintained in this inhospitable d^ert ? It ia 
 no answer to say that they were maintained 
 by miracle. Por, except the !hanna, the 
 quails, and the three interventions with I'egard 
 to water, none such are mentioned in the 
 Mosaic history ; and, if we have no warrant to 
 take away, we have no warrant to add.* 
 
 Ans, But, even if the people were supported 
 by miracles, yet there is no .provision what- 
 ever made in the Scripture for the support 
 of the cattle. And these would need water 
 as wall as green food ; and from N.xx.5 ifc 
 appears that the miraculous supply of water 
 -was not permanent, ^ ^ jju- 
 
 (ii) ' Nor is it any answer to say that thig 
 difficulty is a proof of the impossibility, and, 
 therefore, of the unhistorical character, of the 
 narrative. For, -as Ewald has well shown, 
 the general truth of the wanderings in the 
 wilderness is an essential preliminary to^tha 
 whole of the subsequent history of Israel. 
 
 Ans, Ewald certainly asserts this; but 
 
44 
 
 THE FLOCKS AND HERDS IN THE DESERT. 
 
 ■where does he show it? The stoiy of theExo- 
 das is, no doabt, an * essential preliminary ' to 
 certain recorded parts of the subsequent his- 
 tory of Israel, but not to the whole, even of 
 the recorded history. If that story be shown 
 to be untrue, those parts may also have to be 
 abandoned as untrue^ but not the whole 
 Jewish history. 
 
 (ill) * Much tnay he allowed for the spread 
 of the tribes of Israel far and wide through 
 the whole peninsula, and also for the con- 
 stant means of support from their own flocks 
 and hercte.' 
 
 Ans. Can any allowance be made for such 
 spreading (71)? The Mosaic narrative says 
 nothing of any such a dispersion of the 
 people. And, surely, the whole tone of it im- 
 plies that they were kept constantly together, 
 under the direct personal control of Moses. 
 As before observed, if the cattle had been 
 scattered in the way here supposed, they 
 would have needed to be guarded by large 
 bodies of armed men, from the attacks of 
 other hostile tribes. But the numbers of the 
 warriors of each tribe axe carefully summed 
 np in N.i,ii ; and the position of each camp is 
 assigned in N.x, with distinct directions how 
 they were to march, in front, and in the rear, 
 and on either side of the Levites bearing the 
 Tabernacle. How otherwise, indeed, could 
 the different camps have been started by the 
 mere blowing an 'alarm' upon a silver 
 trumpet, N'.x.S.ejOrthe 'whole congregation' 
 have been * gathered together ' by blowing 
 simply without an ' alarm,' u.7 ? 
 
 Besides which, it seems to be clearly im- 
 plied in N.ix.17-23 that they travelled all 
 together, and were not separated into different 
 bodies. ' When the cloud was taken up from 
 the Tabernacle, then after that the children 
 of Israel joumejed; and in the place, where 
 the cloud abode, there the children of Israel 
 pitched their tents.' * Whether it were two 
 days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tar- 
 ried upon the Tabernacle, remaining thereon, 
 the children of Israel abode in their tents, and 
 journeyed not ; but, when it was taken up, 
 they journeyed.' Who, in these verses, are 
 meant by ' the children of Israel' ? Plainly, 
 the same who, a few verses before, in the same 
 chapter, are ordered to keep the second Pass- 
 over in the wilderness of Sinai, N'.ix,l,2, — 
 that is, the whole body of the people. Such 
 words as the above cannot surely be under- 
 stood pnly of Moses and Aaron and the Taber- 
 nacle, guarded, perhaps, by a troop of armed 
 men, going about in circuit continually to 
 visit the different scattered knots of families. 
 
 But, at all events, they were all, according 
 to the story, assembled together under Mount 
 Sinai, in one of the most desolate parts of the 
 whole peninsula ; and they continued therefor 
 nearly twelve months, and had their flocks 
 there, since at the end of that time they kept 
 the second Passover, N.ix.5, 
 
 Doubtless, they may be supposed to have 
 derived some support from the slaughter of 
 their flocks and herds. The question is, how 
 were the flocks and herds themselves sup- 
 ported ? 
 
 (iv) Something, too, might be elicited from 
 the undoubted fact, that a population nearly, 
 if not quite, equal to the whole permanent 
 population of thepeninsulai doe^ aotually pass 
 
 through the desert, in the caravan of the fii 
 thousand African pilgrims on their way 1 
 Mecca.' 
 
 Ans. Butthepopulation, whichwe areno 
 considering, was ttco millions, not^re tho', 
 sand. 
 
 And these two millions of all ages had bee 
 driven out of Egypt in haste, and ' had n( 
 prepared for themselves any victual,' and hs 
 no means of carrying food, if they had hadi 
 Whereas the Mecca- caravan will, no doub 
 have made all due preparation for the joume 
 long beforehand, and will carry with it, ti 
 must suppose, ample store of provisions on tl 
 backs of its camels. 
 
 Again, the two millions remain twel^ 
 months at a time in one most desolate spo 
 and wander forty years in the dry and wear 
 land. Whereas the caravan merely "passu 
 tiurough in a fejp days at the most. 
 
 Lastly, the Israelites had, according to tl 
 story, vast multitudes of cattle, which had t 
 be sustained in the desert without miraculoi 
 help. But the caravan has no flocks or herdi 
 and travels with camels, which can go fc 
 weeks without water. 
 
 (v) ' But, among these considerations, it i 
 important to observe what indications thei 
 may be of the mountains of Sinai having eve 
 been able to furnish greater resources than a 
 present. These indications are well summe 
 
 up by ElTTER.' 
 
 Ans. Whatever they may be, they canno 
 do away with the plain language of the Bibl 
 ^ready quoted, which shows that the generj 
 character of the desert was as desolate an 
 barren then as now. 
 
 (vi) • There is no doubt that the vegetatioi 
 of the wadys has considerably decreased. 1: 
 part, this would be an inevitable efl!ect of th 
 violence of the winter- torrents. The trunli 
 of palm-trees washed up on the shore of th 
 Dead Sea, from which the living tree has no^ 
 for many centuries disappeared, show wha 
 may have been the devastation produced amon 
 these mountains, where the floods, especiall; 
 in earlier times, must have been violent to 
 degree unknown in Palestine; whilst th 
 peculiar cause, the impregnation of sail 
 which has preserved the vestiges of the olde 
 vegetation there, has here, of course, no exist 
 ence. The traces of such destruction wer 
 pointed out to BuncKHAitDT on the easter] 
 side of Mount Sinai, as having occurred withi 
 half a century before his visit ; also to Wmjl 
 BTED, as having occurred near Tur in 1832/ 
 
 Am. That palm-trees are found, washed u] 
 on the shores of the Dead Sea, into whid 
 they found their way, no doubt, from the rive 
 Jordan, gives surely no shadow of ground fo 
 believing that such trees, or any other, gre^ 
 in the wilderness of Sinai. Dean STANlF 
 himself writes of the Dead Sea, ^.293,— 
 
 * Strewn along its desolate margin, lie th 
 most striking memorials of this last confiic 
 of life and death,— trunks and branches o 
 trees, torn downfrom the thlcketsof the river 
 3ungle by the violence of the Jordan, thrus 
 out into the sea, and thrown up again by it 
 waves.* 
 
 It does not appear why the floods are sup 
 posed to have been more violent in earlie 
 times than now. But, supposing that the' 
 were, and much more violent than i;i Pales 
 
THE FLOCKS AND HEEDS IN THE DESERT. 
 
 46 
 
 rtlne,'ana that Bttr(3khaiidt and 'Wellsted 
 Baw the traces of the devastation caused by 
 them, it is notorious that the flood of one 
 year, by the* deposit which it leaves, rather 
 assists than otherwise the vegetation of the 
 next year. A few trees may be washed away ; 
 but the general verdure, which concerns most 
 the prraent question of the cattle, would be 
 
 , promoted by a heavy fall of rain. 
 
 (vii) * In fact, the same result has followed 
 from the reckless waste of the Bedouin tribes 
 —reckless in destroying, and careless in re- 
 plenishing. A fire, a pipe, lit under a grove 
 of desert trees, may clear away the vegetation 
 of a whole valley — . Again, it is mentioned 
 by BuppEU., that the acacia trees have been 
 ^f late years ruthlessly destroyed by the 
 Bedouins for the sake of charcoal ; especially 
 since they have been compelled by tbe Pasha 
 of Egypt to pay a tribute in charcoal, for an 
 a^ault committed on the Mecca caravan in 
 the year 1823. Charcoal is, in fact, the chief 
 — perhaps, it might be said, the only — ^traflBc 
 «f the peninsula. Camels are constantly met, 
 loaded with this wood, on the way between 
 Cairo and Suez. And, as this probably has been 
 .carried on to a great degree by the monks of 
 the convent, it may account for the fact, that, 
 whereas in the valleys of the eastern clusters 
 this tree abounds more or less, yet in the 
 central cluster itself, to which modem tradi- 
 ,tion certainly, and geographical considera- 
 tions prolj^bly, point as the mountain of the 
 * burning thorn,' and the scene of the building 
 of the Ark and all the utensils of the Taber- 
 nacle, from this very wood, there is now not a 
 single acacia to be seen.' 
 
 An^s. It is possible that the Ark may have 
 been made of the wood of this acacia, of 
 which the Hebrews may have found a few 
 trees in the desert. But it is certainly a veiy 
 noticeable fact, that * not a single acacia' is 
 now to be seen in the very region, where, ac- 
 cording to the story, notmerely the Ark, with 
 the vessels of the Tabernacle, but the Taber- 
 nacle itself, was built, with its forty-eight 
 boards of shittim (acacia) wood, each 10 
 cubits by H cubit, that is, 18 J ft. long by 2| 
 ft. broad, E.xxxvi. 20-30. It may be doubted 
 if the * probable' labours of the monks, in 
 burning charcoal during late years, are enough 
 to account for such a complete disappearance 
 of the tree. In Natal, trees of this kind are 
 cut down for firewood; and, by wasteful 
 or excffisive cutting, a piece of good bush- 
 land may be stripped of all the trees, which 
 are JU for mch a purpose. But there will still 
 remain a multitude of young trees and small 
 saplings, which have sprung up from the seed 
 ?hed by the old ones, and have not been cut 
 down, because utterly useless as firewood. 
 
 Besides, the destruction of U'ees would not 
 affect directly the growth of grass, on which 
 the flocto and herds depended in the case of 
 ttie Israelites, however (as Dean Stani^by 
 suggests in the next passage) it might, perhaps, 
 affect it indirectly, but surely to a very slight 
 and almost inappreciable degree, by diminish- 
 ing the quantity of moisture attiaxsted to the 
 land. 
 
 (viii) 'If this be so, the greater abundance 
 of vegetation would, as is well-known, have 
 fuTDished a greater abundance of water ; and 
 tiiis again would react on the yegetation, 
 
 from which the means of subsistence wouKI 
 be procured.' 
 
 Ans. The general answer to the above is, 
 that the Bible speaks of the desert in exactly 
 the same terms as those, which would even 
 now be used to describe it. Espedally, the 
 extreme scarcity of water is expressly noticed. 
 It is plain, therefore, that the removal of a few 
 acacias has not materially changed the face 
 and character of the countiy. 
 
 (ix) * How much may be done by a carefnl 
 use of such water and such soil as the desert 
 supplies, may be seen by the only two spots, 
 to which, now, a diligent and provident at- 
 tention is paid, namely the gardens at the 
 Wells of Moses, under the care of the French 
 and English agents from Suez, and the gardens 
 in the valleys of Jebel Musa, under the care of 
 the Greek monks of the convent of St. Cathe- 
 rine. Even so late as the seventeenth century, 
 if we may trust the expression of Monconys, 
 the Wady-er-Eahah, in front of the convent, 
 now entir^y bare, was a vast green plain, 
 une grande ^utmpagneverte.' 
 
 And so writes Shaw, Travels to the Eolp 
 Land, ch.ii : — 
 
 * Though nothing thai can he properly called 
 soil is to be found in these parts of Arabia, 
 these monlffl have, in a long process of time 
 (K.B.) covered over, with dung and the 
 sweepings of their convent, near four acres 
 of these naked rocks, which produce as good 
 cabbages, salads, roots, and all kinds of pot- 
 herbs, as any soil and cUmate whatsoever. 
 They have likewise raised apple, pear, plum, 
 almond, and olive trees, not only in great, 
 numbers, but also of excellent kinds. Their 
 grasses also are not inferior, either in size or 
 flavour, to any whatsoever. Thus this little 
 garden demonstrates how fax an indefatigable 
 industry may prevail over nature.' 
 
 Ans. But the fact, that, in a few favoured 
 spots, by great care and industry, and in a 
 long process of time, * little gardens ' like this 
 have been raised, is no proof that in the 
 peninsula generally, for forty years, and 
 in particular at the foot of Sinai, tot 
 twelve- months together, at a moments jwtice, 
 such an immense body of cattle could have 
 been provided with the food and water they 
 required. The expression of Monconts, * iS 
 we may trust it,' may have reference to the 
 *thin transparent coating of vegetation,' of 
 which Stanley" himself speaks (75). But, 
 whatever it may mean, the desert was then, aa 
 it is now, a • great and terrible wUdeme^,' a 
 * land of drought and of the shadow of death.* 
 
 (x) ' And that there was, in ancient times, a 
 greater population than at present,— which 
 would again, by thus furnishing heads and 
 hands to consider and to cultivate these spota 
 of vegetation, tend to increase and pr^erve 
 them,— may be inferred from several indica- 
 tions. 
 
 * The Amalekites, who contested the parage 
 of the desert with Israel, were— if we may 
 draw an inference from this very fact, as well 
 as from their wide-spread name and power, 
 even to the time of Saul and David, and from 
 the allusion to them in Balaam's prophecy, as 
 ' the first of the nations,'— something mora 
 than amere handful of Bedouins.* 
 
 Ans. If the Pentateuch be mainly unhls- 
 torical, we can take no account of the power 
 
THE FLOCKS AND HERBS IN THE DESERT. 
 
 46 
 
 of the Amolekites, as dracribed in it. In the 
 etory of Saul's dealing with them, IS.xv, and 
 . David's, IS.xxx, there is nothing to show that 
 they were any other than a powerful Arab 
 tribe, between which and Israel there was a 
 deadly feud. 
 
 Besides, did the Amalekites live in the deserc 
 of Sinai? On the contrary, we have the 
 express statement of the Prophet, that it was 
 ' a laud that no man passed through, and 
 where no man dwelt,' Jer.ii.6. 
 
 (xi) ' The Egyptian copper-mines, and 
 monuments, and hieroglyphics, in Surabit- 
 d-Khadim and the Wady Mughareh, imply a 
 degree of intercourse between Egypt and the 
 peninsula in the earliest days of Egypt, of 
 wMch all other traces have long ceased.' 
 
 Ans. Tliis does not help to prove in any way 
 that two millions of people, with their two 
 millions of sheep and oxen, could have lived 
 .under Sinai for twelve months, and could 
 have been maintained for forty years in a 
 coimtry, which was then described as * a 
 diisert land, a waste howling wilderness.' 
 .Supplies of com were, no doubt, forwarded 
 regularly by the king of Egypt for his work- 
 men ; and they had no vast flocks and herds 
 .that we know of. 
 
 (xii) 'The ruined city of Edom, in fche 
 mountains east of the Arabah, and the re- 
 mains and histoiy of Petra itself, indicate a 
 tratflc and a population in these remote 
 ■regions, which, now seem to us aJmost incon- 
 ceivable.' 
 
 Ans. Dean StanIxRT himself writes,^. 87 :— 
 
 ' The first thing that struck me, in turning 
 out of the Arabah, up the defiles that lead to 
 I^ctra, was that we had suddenly left the desert. 
 Instead of tlie absolute nakedness of the 
 Binaitic valleys, we found ourselves walking 
 on grass, sprinkled with flowers, and the 
 level platforms on each side were filled with 
 sprouting corn. And this continues through 
 the whole descent to Petra, and in Petra 
 itself.' 
 
 He elsewhere describes Petra, ji.94, as 'an 
 oasis of vegetation in the desert lulls.' 
 
 There was a reason, therefore, for Petra 
 maintaining a certain amount of population 
 in former days, as it miglit do now, which 
 does not exist for the valleys of Sinai. But, 
 even then, Petra had no population to support 
 like that of Israel, and no such, multitudinous 
 flocka and herds. 
 
 (xiii) • And even much later times, extend- 
 ing to the sixth and seventh centmries of our 
 era, exhibit signs both of movements and 
 . habitations, which have long ago ceased, such 
 OS the writings of Christian pilgrims on the 
 codes, whether in the Sinaitic character, in 
 Greek, or in Arabic, as well as the numex'ous 
 remains of colls, gardens, chapels, and 
 churches, now desa*ted and ruined, both in 
 the neighbourhood of Jebel Musa and 
 Serbal.' 
 
 Ans. But the fact of a few thousand pil- 
 gi-ims paying a passing visit to such places, 
 bringing, probably, supplies of food with, 
 them, or of a number of monks and hermits 
 contriving to live in the neighbourhood of 
 one or two favoured spots, avails little to 
 show hov/^ Isi-ael could huve lived under Sinai 
 it-aelf for BO many months together, with 
 fiuch immeuso flocks and herds, or how 
 
 they could have marched to and fro in tbo 
 peninsula, fi-om station to station, journeying 
 'by day or by night, when the cloud was 
 taken up,' and abiding in their tents, * whe- 
 ther it were two days, or a month, or a 
 year,' when the cloud rested, N.ix.18-28, 
 but finding all along the necessary supplies df 
 food, and wood, and water, for themselveB 
 and their cattle. The pilgrims and hermits 
 needed only to find their own scanty fare: 
 they had no flocks and herds as the Israelites. 
 Dean Stanley adds in . conclusion,— ' It 
 must be confessed that none of these changes 
 solve the difaculty, though they may mitigate 
 its force. But they, at least, help to meet it: 
 and they must under any circumstances bo 
 borne in mind, to modify the image, which 
 we form to ourselves, of what must havo 
 always been— as it is even thus early de- 
 scribed to be—' a great and terrible wilder- 
 ness.' 
 
 77. I Iiave the more closely examined 
 and carefully weighed the above argii>- 
 ments, because we may be certain that, 
 by so able and earnest an advocate, 
 every thing has been said, that well 
 conld be said, to make it in any way 
 credible, that the means of suppoilt 
 could have been found for so large a 
 body of cattle in the peninsula of Sinai;, 
 without a special njiracle, of which th? 
 Eible says nothing. The reader will 
 be able to judge for himself to what 
 these arguments really amount, even 
 when most fully and favourably stated. 
 
 78. But it may be well now to quote 
 one or two passages from other writers, 
 which yet more plainly develope the 
 absolute barrenness of this wild and 
 desolate region, as it now appears, and 
 as, we have every ground fi:om the 
 Bible itself to believe, it must then 
 have appeared also. 
 
 In •winter, when the whole of the nppet 
 Sinai is deepfy covered utith snow, and many of 
 the passes are choked up, the mountains of 
 Moses and Saint Catherine are often inac- 
 cessible. Mr. Pazakerlt, who ascended 
 them in the month of EebrxTary, found a 
 great deal of snow, and the ascent was severe. 
 ' It is difQcult,' he says, * to imagine a scenfl 
 more d^olate and terrific, than that which is 
 discovered from the summit of Sinai, A 
 haze limited the prospect, and, except a 
 glimpse of the sea in one direction, nothinf? 
 was within sight but snow, huge peaks, and 
 crags of naked granite.' Of the view froui 
 Mount Saint Catherine, he says, 'The view, 
 from hence is of the same kind, only much 
 more extensive than from the top of Sinaii 
 It commands the t^vo gulfs of Akaba and 
 Suez ; the island of Tiran and the village of 
 Tui- "were pointed out to us ; Sinai was far 
 below us ; all the rest, wherever the eye coulrl 
 reach, was a vast wilderness, and a con/uston 
 of granite nwuniains and valleys destitute of 
 
THE FLOCKS AND HEEDS IN THE DESERT. 
 
 .verdure.' Cosdee'b Modem Traveller, Arabia, 
 'I).159,160. 
 
 79. We have here another question 
 raised, -vrhich is not generally taken 
 into consideration at aJJ. The Israel- 
 ites, according to the story, were under 
 Sinai for nearly twelve months together, 
 and they kept the second Passover 
 under the mountain before they left it, 
 N.ix.l. As this was in the first month 
 x>{ the Jewish ecclesiastical year, corre- 
 sponding to the latter part of March 
 and beginning of April, they must 
 have passed the whole of the winter 
 months under Sinai, and must have 
 found it Utterly cold. 
 
 In the mountainous districts it is very cold 
 in the •winter nights. Sometimes -the water 
 in the garden of the monastery at Saint 
 Catherine freezes even in February. And, on 
 the contrary, in the summer months, the sun 
 pours down his rays burning hot from 
 heaven, and in reflection from the naked 
 rocky precipices, into the sandy valleys. 
 RuppELL, quoted in He&'gsteneerq'b Ba- 
 laam, Clark's Theol. Library, ^.338. 
 
 80. Where, then, amidst the scanty 
 vegetation of the neighbourhood, where 
 at the present time there seems not to 
 grow a single tree fit for firewood, — 
 and there is no reason to suppose that 
 it was ever otherwise, — did the Israel- 
 ites obtain supplies of fuel, not only for 
 the daily cooking necessities of a 
 population like that of LoNDOif, but 
 also for relief against the piercing cold 
 of the winter season, or when, as 
 JosEiiHus says, ^ni.III.vii.4, 'the wea- 
 ther was inclined to snow ' ? And 
 
 - the cattle, — unless supplied with arti- 
 ficial food — must they not also have 
 perished in multitudes from cold and 
 starvation under such circumstances? 
 We find this to be the case even in the 
 fertile colony of Natal, where in some 
 winter seasons they die from these 
 joint causes in great numbers, when 
 the grass, though abundant, is dried 
 up, and the cold happen-/ to be more 
 severe than usual, thoi'gh not severe 
 enough for ice and sn*- .v, except in the 
 higher districts, and then only for 
 a month or six weeks in the year. 
 
 81. If the last quotations describe 
 the state of things in the depth of 
 winter, the following, (in addition to 
 the words of Ktjppell, above quoted,) 
 
 47 
 
 aspect of the country in the height of 
 the Slimmer season. It would seem 
 that travellers generally choose the 
 most favourable season of the year for 
 visiting these desert regions. We must 
 make due allowance for this fact also, 
 in considering even their accounts of 
 the desolate barrenness of the whole 
 district, with reference to the story told 
 in the Pentateuch. 
 
 BuKOKHAHDT visited tJm Shamner, the 
 loftiest mountain in the peninsula, and 
 writes of the scene as follows. ' The devns. 
 tations of torrents are everywhere visible, the 
 sides of the mountains being rent by them in 
 numberless directions. The surface of the 
 sharp rocks is blackened by the sun ; all vor 
 getation is dry and withered ; and the whole 
 scene presents nothing but utter desolation 
 and hopeless barrenness.' Cosder' a Araina, 
 p.199. 
 
 He afterwards travelled from the neighT 
 bourhood of Sinai eastward, across the pe- 
 ninsula, to the gulf of Akaba. But, he says, 
 * the barrenness of this district exceeded any- 
 thing we had jet vntiiessedf except soTjis parts 
 of the desert of El Tih [that is, the desert of 
 Sinai]. The Nubian valleys might be called 
 pleasure-grounds in comparison. Not the 
 sniallest green leaf could be discovered. And 
 the thorny mimosa, which retains its verdure 
 in the tropical deserts of Nubia with very 
 little supplies of moisture, was here entirely 
 withered, and so dry that it caught fire from> 
 the lighted ashes which fell from our pipes aa 
 we passed,' i&id.^,204. 
 
 Bdkckhardt also says, Syria, p, 
 560:— 
 
 I believe that the population of the entire 
 peninsula does not exceed 4,000 souls. In 
 years of dearth, even this small number is 
 sometimes at a loss to find pasturage for 
 their cattle. . . . Their herds are scanty, and 
 they have few camels. 
 
 82. As to the little spots of greater 
 luxuriance, which are found here and 
 there in the Sinaitic peninsula, the 
 above traveller says of one of them, — 
 
 It affords good pasturage in spring, but has 
 no Vioier, and is ther^ore Utile frequented bJf 
 tlie Bedmdns ; 
 and of another, — ■ 
 
 I was told that very good water is found 
 at about two miles to the east of this valley; 
 
 and of a third, — 
 
 The owners seldom visit this place, except 
 in the date-harvest. 
 
 What provision would such as these 
 afford for the v^t herds and flocks of 
 the Israelites, in the drought of summer, 
 or in the cold winter season ? 
 
 83. But. indeed, we may form some 
 idea of their character, and of the fitness 
 
 vill convey some idea of the general of any one of them to sustain even for a. 
 
•4S 
 
 THE LAND OF CAKAAK. 
 
 single day sucli a Ta8t multitude of 
 .cattle, from the following description 
 by BuBOKHAUDT of Wady Kyd, 'one 
 of the most noted date-Talleys of the 
 Sinai Arabs.' This valley he entered, 
 and pursued its ■windings, till he came 
 in an hour's time to a small rivulet, 
 two feet across and six inches in 
 depth, ' which is lost iminediately below 
 in the sands of the Wady.' 
 
 It drips down a granite rock, whicli blocks 
 np the valley, there only twenty paces broad, 
 end forms at the foot of the rock a small 
 {mnd, overshadowed by trees, with fine ver- 
 dure on its banks. The rocks, which over- 
 hang it on both sides, almost meet, and give 
 to the whole the appearance of a grotto, most 
 delightful to the traveller, after passing 
 through these dreary valleys. . . . Beyond it 
 we continued in the same narrow valley, along 
 the rivulet, amidst groves of date, nebek, and 
 some tamarisk trees, until [in half an hour] 
 we reached the source of the rivulet. The 
 contrast of its deep verdure with the glaring 
 rocks, by which it is closely hemmed in, is 
 very striking, and shows that, wherever water 
 passes in these districts, however barren the 
 
 ground, vegetation is invariably found 
 
 Beyond the spot, where the rivulet oozes out 
 of the ground, vegetation ceases, and the valley 
 widens. , . . Notwithstanding its verdure, 
 however, Wady Kyd is an uncomfortable 
 halting-place, on account of the great number 
 of gnats and ticks, with which it is infested, 
 Ibid.p.21B. 
 
 84. Bearinginmind that two millions 
 of sheep and oxen, allowing a space of 
 three feet hy two feet as standing 
 ground for each, would require, when 
 packed together as closely as in a pen 
 in a cattle-market, nearly 300 acres of 
 land, it seems idle to expend more 
 time in discussing the question, whether 
 these, or a much smaller number, could 
 have been supported in the wilderness 
 by the help of such wadies as these, 
 which a hundred oxen would have 
 trampled down into mud in an hour. 
 
 CHAPTER IX, 
 
 the laud of canaan : the ndmbee of 
 
 fihstboens. 
 
 85. The Land of Canaan. 
 
 * / will send my fear before tjiee, and will 
 destroy all the people to whom thou shall come, 
 and I will make all thine enemies turn their 
 backs unto thee. And I will send hornets btfore 
 Oiee, which shall drive outjhe Hivite, tlie Ca- 
 nauniie, and the Hittlte, from before thee. I 
 vill not drive them out from before tliee in one 
 year, lest the land become desolate, and the beast 
 of the field multiply against thee. By little and 
 little I will drive them out from before thee, until 
 thou be increased and inherit the land* E. 
 xxiii.28-30. 
 
 The whole land, which was dividecl 
 among the tribes in the time of Joshu^. 
 including the countries beyond the 
 Jordan, was in extent about 11,000 
 square miles, or 7,000,000 acres. 
 (KiTTo's Geogr. of the Holy Land, 
 Knight's series, p.T.) And, according 
 to the story, this was occupied by 
 more than two millions of people. 
 
 86. Now the following is the extent of 
 the three English agricultural counties 
 of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, with the 
 population according to the census of 
 1851:— 
 
 Acres. Fop.inlSSlt 
 Norfolk contains. 1,854,301 . , 442,714". 
 Suffolk .... 947,681 . . 837,215 
 Essex. . , . . I,0e0,549 , . 369,318 
 
 3,362,581 1,149,247 
 
 By doubling the above results, we 
 find that these counties of England 
 were, at that time, about as thickly 
 peopled as the land of Canaan would 
 have been with its population of Is- 
 raelites only, without reckoning the 
 aboriginal Canaanites, who already 
 fiUed the land. And surely it cannot be 
 said that these three Eastern Counties, 
 with their flourishing towns and in- 
 numerable villages, are in any danger 
 of lying ' desolate,' with the beasts of 
 the field multiplying against the human 
 inhabitants. 
 
 87. But, perhaps, a still better com- 
 parison may be instituted with a coun- 
 try, which resembles in many respects, 
 in its natural featiu'es and other cir- 
 cumstances, the state of Canaan in 
 those early days. The colony of Natal 
 has an extent of 18,000 square miles, 
 and a population, white and black in- 
 cluded, probably not exceeding 200,000 
 altogether. This population is, of 
 course, very scanty, and the land will 
 allow of a much larger one. Yet the 
 human inhabitants are perfectly well 
 able to maintain their ground against 
 the beasts of the field. And, in fact, the 
 lions, elephants, rhinoceroses, and hip- 
 popotami, which once abounded in the 
 country, have long ago disappeared. 
 Leopards, wild boars, hysenas, and 
 jackals are killed occasionally in the 
 bush. But many a white man may have 
 lived for years in the colony, as I have 
 done, and travelled about in all parts of 
 
THE NUMBER OF FIRST-BORNS. 
 it, without seeing or hearing one. But 
 the population of the land of Canaan, 
 (2,000,000 inhabitants within less than 
 12,000 square miles, equivalent to 
 3,000,000 within 18,000 square miles,) 
 would have heenjifteen tiTnes as thick 
 as that of Natal, (200,000 within 
 18,000 square miles,) — and this, with- 
 out reckoning the old inhabitants,' seven 
 nations, greater and mightier, than, 
 Israel itself, D.iv.38,vii.l,ix.l,xi.23. 
 
 88. The Numbeb of Fiest-boens. 
 
 * All the first-born males, from a month old, 
 and upwards, of those that were numbered, were 
 22,273.' N.iii.43. 
 
 Let us see what this statement im- 
 plies, when treated as a simple matter 
 of fact. For this purpose I quote the 
 words of Dr. Kurtz, who strenuously 
 maintains the traditionary view of the 
 strict historical veracity of the Penta- 
 teuch. 
 
 If tliere were 600,000 males of twenty years 
 and upwards, the whole number of males 
 may be reckoned at 900,000, [he elsewhere 
 reckons 1,000,000,] in which case there would 
 be only one first bom to forty-two [forty-four] 
 males. In other words, the number of boys 
 in every family must have been on the 
 average forty-two. — Mist, of the Old Covenant, 
 iii.iJ.209. 
 
 This will be seen at once if we con- 
 sider that the rest of the 900,000 males 
 were not first-borns, and, therefore, 
 each of these must have liad one or 
 other of the 22,273 as the first-born 
 of his own family, — except, of course, 
 any eases where the first-born of any 
 family was a daughter, or was dead, of 
 which we shall speak presently, 
 
 89. And these were not the first-bom 
 on the father's side, as IMichaelis sup- 
 poses, so that a man might have many 
 wives and many children, but only one 
 first-bom, as was the case with Jacob 
 himself. They are expressly stated to 
 have been the first-born <& the mother's 
 side—' all the first-born that openeth 
 the matrix,' N.iii.l2. So that, ac- 
 cording to the story in the Pentateuch, 
 everj/ mother of Israel mtcst have had 
 on the average forty-two sons / 
 
 90. ,How then is this difftculty to be 
 explained ? Kurtz says : — 
 
 •We must enquire whether there are no 
 other means— (than that suggested by Mi- 
 CHAELis, which the Scripture will not allow, 
 us Kurtz admits, — ) of explaining the fact, 
 
 49 
 
 that, on an average, there was only one first- 
 born to forty-two males.' 
 
 And Kurtz is bold enough to say, 
 •There are plenty;' and proceeds to 
 state them as follows. 
 
 (i) 'The first is the rarity of polygamy, 
 which lessened the proportion of the first- 
 born.' 
 
 Ans. Kurtz means to say that, if poly- 
 gamy had prevailed among them, the diffi- 
 culty would have been enormously increased, 
 and, as he says himself, ' rendered perfectly 
 colossal.' For, in that case, if a man had had 
 four wives, and had had children by each of 
 them, he must have had on the average forty- 
 two sons by each. ' So, then, the rarity of 
 polygamy, (which, indeed, Kurtz assumes 
 without proof,) does not at all help to lessen 
 the difficulty already existing in the in- 
 credible statement, that every mother in 
 Israel had, on the average, forty-two male 
 children. 
 
 (ii) • A second is the large number of chil- 
 dren to whom the Israelitish mothers gave 
 birth.' 
 
 Ans. This, again, is assumed without 
 proof, or, rather, directly in the face of 
 all the facts which are given us, by which to 
 judge of the size of the Hebrew families. We 
 have no reason whatever to suppose, from the 
 data which we find in the Pentateuch, that 
 the mothers of Israel were prolific in any un- 
 usual degree. We read of one, two, three, 
 &c, sons, just as in ordinary families, occa- 
 sionally of six or seven, once of ten, G.xlvi. 
 21, but not of an average of ten, or fifteen, or 
 twenty. The average in G.xlvi is five sons, 
 and in E.vi it is three. And, as regards 
 daughters, all the indications are against their 
 being as numerous even as the sons. Jacob 
 had only one daughter, G.xlvi.15 ; Asher had 
 only one, G.xlvi.l7 ; Amram had only one, N. 
 xxvi.59 ; Zelophehad had five, but no sons, N. 
 xxvi. 33. 
 
 (iii) * Thirdly, the constantly recurring ex- 
 pression, ' Every first-born that openeth the 
 womb,* warrants the conclusion, that the 
 first-born of the father was not reckoned, 
 miless he was also the first-bom of the 
 mother.' 
 
 Ans. This would only apply to a very small 
 number of cases, where a man had married a 
 woman, who had borne children before he 
 married her, and who had, therefore, been a 
 widow or a harlot. 
 
 But, in point of fact, it does not affect the 
 present question at all. The woman's first- 
 born will still have been numbered, whoever 
 the father was. And the result is, as before, 
 that there are reckoned only 22,273 first-borr. 
 sons of all the mothers of Israel, after one or 
 other of whom the other males must all be 
 ranged in their respective families, (except, 
 as before, cases, where the first-bom of a 
 family was either a female or was dead,) so 
 that each mother must have had on the 
 average forty -two sons. 
 
 (iv) ' Fourthly, it leads also to the still more 
 important assumption, that, if the first-bom 
 was a daughter, any son, that would be born 
 afterwards, would not be reckoned at all 
 among the first-borns. Now statistical tables 
 D 
 
50 
 
 THE NUMBER OF FIRST-BORNS. 
 
 Bh&w that the first-born is more frequently a 
 female than a male.' 
 
 Avi. Bub in the case of the Hebrews, accor- 
 ding'to the story in the Pentateuch, (what- 
 ever may be the case generally,) the first-born 
 was much more frequently a male than a 
 female. We have the instances of Abraham, 
 aiid Isaac, and Jacob, and Jacob's twelve 
 sons, (except Asher who had a daughter 
 before going into Egypt, and she may have 
 been his first-born child,) in each of which 
 the first-bom was a male. Amram's first- 
 born, indeed, was a daughter, and Zelophehad 
 had only daughters. As far, however, as we 
 have any data to guide us, we should be jus- 
 tified in assuming that the number of the first- 
 bom males far exceeded that of the females. 
 
 But let us suppose that they were even equal 
 in number, — that, in short, besides the 22,'273 
 first-bom males, there were also 22,273 first- 
 bom females. This, however, will not by 
 any means get rid of, or at all diminish, the 
 essential difficulty of the question now before 
 lis : it will only change the foim of it. For, 
 having now brought in the idea of the 
 daiighters, we must remember that, lE there 
 were 900,000 [1,000,000] males, there must 
 have been about as many females. And 
 4'1,.')J(! first-born children among a population 
 of 1,800,000, would imply that each mother 
 had, on the average, forty-two children, as 
 before, but twenty-one sons and twenty-one 
 daughters. 
 
 (V) * Lastly, such of the first-born, as were 
 themselves heaxls of families, were not reck- 
 oned at all as first-born, who had to be re- 
 deemed, but only their sons.' 
 
 Ans. This is a pm-e assumption, and un- 
 warranted by anything that is found in the 
 Scripture. The command in N.iii.40 is this, 
 * Number all the first-bom of the males, from 
 a month old and upward.' Hence, says 
 Kdbtz, very justly, ;if there had been any 
 age, beyond which the numbering was not to 
 go, [or, we may add, any class of persons, 
 such as heads of families, who were to be ex- 
 cepted from it,] it would undoubtedly have 
 been mentioned here. But there is nothing 
 of the kind.' 
 
 Have we any reason to suppose that the first- 
 born son of an Egyptian was exempt from 
 death, because he was the head of a family? 
 He was the first-bom to his father, and thei-e- 
 fore died, according to the story in Exodus, 
 ' from the first-bom of Pharaoh that sat on 
 his throne, unto the first-born of the captive 
 that was in the dungeon,' so that ' there was 
 not a house where there was not one dead ' 
 B.xii.29,30. 
 
 Besides, there ie one fact, which seems 
 by itself to imply that the 22,273 first-borns 
 were intended to include all the first-bom 
 males of all ages, whether married men and 
 heads of families or not, viz. this, that the 
 22,000 male Levites, of Ml aga and conditions, 
 *from a month old and upward,' whether 
 heads of families or not, were substituted for 
 22.000 of the first-borns 'from a month old 
 and upward,' the remaining 273 first-boms 
 being redeemed with money, N,iii.39,45,46. 
 
 91. Thus not one of 'Kurtz's 'many 
 rays' of relieving this difficulty is 
 
 really of any use whatever for that 
 purpose. There is, indeed, one point, 
 though he has not noticed it, -which 
 might help slightly to diminish it. In 
 some families the first-born may have 
 died before the numbering ; some, too, 
 who were born about the time of the 
 birth of Moses, may have been killed 
 by the order of Pharaoh. And, if all 
 those, who may have thus died, be 
 reckoned with the 22,273, the propor- 
 tion of the remaining males, to be 
 placed under each of the first-born, 
 will be somewhat altered. StiU, we 
 cannot suppose any unusual mortality 
 of this kind, without checking, in the 
 same degree, the increase of the people. 
 Let us, however, reckon that one out 
 of four first-borns died, so that instead 
 of 44,546 first-borns, male and female, 
 there would have been, if all had 
 lived, about 60,000. But even this 
 number of first-borns, for a population 
 of 1,800,000, would imply that each 
 mother had on the average thirty chil- 
 dren, fifteen sons and fifteen daughters. 
 Besides which, the number of mothers 
 must have been the same as that of 
 the first-horns, male and female, in- 
 cluding also any that had died. Hence 
 there would have been only 60,000 
 child-bearing women to 600,000 men, 
 so that only about one' man in ten had 
 a wife or children ! 
 
 92. By this time, surely, great doubt 
 must have arisen, in the minds of most 
 readers, as to the historical veracity of 
 some considerable portions of the Pen- 
 tateuch. That doubt, I believe, will 
 be confirmed into certainty, when it is 
 seen to follow, as a direct consequence 
 from the data of the Pentateuch itself, 
 that there could not have been any 
 such population as this, to come out of 
 Egypt,— in otjier words, that the chil- 
 dren of Israel, at the time of the 
 Exodus, if only we attend carefully to 
 the distinct statements of the narra- 
 tive, could not possibly have amounted 
 to two minions,— that, in fact, the 
 whole body of warriors could not have 
 been two thousand. 
 
 In order, however, to show this more 
 clearly, we must first premise a few 
 considerations, which are set forth in 
 the following chapter. 
 
THE SOJOUENING IN EGYPT. 
 
 51 
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 THE SOJOmiNIHG IK EGYPT, AND THE 
 EXODTIS IN THE FOCJETH GENEEATION. 
 
 93. The SoiotrENiNG iK Egtpt. 
 'Now the sojourning 0/ the children of Israel^ 
 
 who dwelt in Egypt, icasfoui- hundred and thirty 
 years,' E.xii.40. 
 
 ■The question, which we haTe here to 
 consider, is this, — To what ' sojourning' 
 do the above words refer? Do they 
 refer to that of Jacob and his descen- 
 dants in the land of Egypt only, or to 
 the entire sojourning of them and their 
 forefathers, Abraham and Isaac, ' in a 
 strange land,' both in Canaan and 
 Egypt, from the time when the promise 
 of old was given to Abraham, and he 
 ' sojourned in the land of promise, as 
 in a strange country,' Heb.xi.9 ? 
 
 94. The verse above quoted, as it 
 stands in the E. V., does not decide the 
 question. But there is evidently some- 
 tliing unusual and awkward in the man- 
 ner, in which the phrase, ' who dwelt in 
 Egypt,' enters into the above passage. 
 And, in fact, the original words would 
 be more naturally translated, (as in the 
 Vulgate, Chald., Syr., and Arab. Ver- 
 sions,) — 
 
 *tlie sojourning of tlie cMldren of Israel, 
 which they sojowTied in Egypt,' — 
 
 but for the serious difficulties which 
 would thus arise. 
 
 95. In the first place, St. Paul, re- 
 femng to 'the covenant, that was 
 confirmed before of God' unto Abra- 
 ham, says, — ' 
 
 'The Law, which was four hundred and 
 thii'ty years after, cannot disannul it.' Gal. 
 iii.l7. 
 
 It is plain, then, that St. Patjl in this 
 passage dates the beginning of the four 
 hundred and thirty years, not from the 
 going down into Egypt, but from the 
 time of the promise made to Abraham. 
 
 96. Again, in E.'vi.l6-20, we have 
 given the genealogy of Moses and 
 Aaron, as follows : — 
 
 ' These are the names of the sons of Levi, 
 according to their generations, Gershon, and 
 ■Kohath, and Merari. And the years oj the life 
 of Levi were a hundred thirty and seven years.' 
 
 ' And the sons of Kohath, Amram, and Izhar, 
 and Hebron, and Uzaiel. And the years of the 
 life oj Kohath were a hundred thirty and three 
 years.' 
 
 'And Amrajn took him Joohebed,his father's 
 
 sister, to wife ; and she hare him Aaron and 
 Moses. And tlie years of the life of Amram 
 were a hundred thirty and seven years.' 
 
 Now supposing that Kohath was 
 only an infant, when brought down 
 by his father to Egypt with Jacob, 
 G.xlvi.ll, and that he begat Amram 
 at the very end of his life, when 133 
 years old, and that Amram, in like 
 manner, begat Moses, when he was 
 137 years old, still these two numbers 
 added to 80 years, the age of Moses 
 at the time of the Exodus, E.vii.7, 
 wduld only amount to 350 years, instead 
 of 430. 
 
 97. Once more, it is stated in the 
 above passage, that 'Amram took him 
 Jochebed, his father's sister,' — Kohath's 
 sister, and therefore, Levi's daughter, 
 — ' to wife.' And so also we read, — 
 
 ' The name of Amram's ■wife was Jochebed, 
 tlie daughter of Levi, whom {her mother) bare to 
 him in Egypt.' N.xxvi.59. 
 
 Now Levi was one year older than 
 Judah, and was, therefore, 43 years 
 old (18), when he went down with 
 Jacob into Egypt; and we are told 
 above that he was 137 years old, when 
 he died. Levi, therefore, must have 
 lived, according to the story, 9+ years 
 in Egypt. Making here again the 
 extreme supposition of his begetting 
 Jochebed in the last year of his life, 
 she may have been an infant 94 years 
 after the migration of Jacob and his 
 sons into Egypt. Hence it follows 
 that, if the sojourn in Egypt was 430 
 years, Moses, who was 80 years old at 
 the time of the Exodus, must have been 
 born 350 years after the migration into 
 Egypt, when his mother, even on the 
 above extravagant supposition, would 
 have been at the very least 256 years 
 old! 
 
 98. Itisplain,then,thatthe430years 
 are meant, as St. Paul understood, to 
 be reckoned from the time of the call 
 of Abraham, when he yet lived in the 
 land of Haran. Thus, reckoning 25 
 years from his leaving Haran, G.xii.4, 
 to the birth of Isaac, xxi.5, — 60 years to 
 the birth of Jacob, xxv.26,— 130 years 
 to the migration into Egypt, xlvii.9,— 
 we have 215 years of sojourning in tlie 
 land of Canaan, leaving just the same 
 length of time, 2 1 5 years, for the soj ouru 
 in theland oj Egyiit. 
 
 D 2 
 
52 
 
 THE EXODUS IN THE FOUETH GENERATION. 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that the 
 translation in the English Bible of 
 E.xii.40, howerer awkwardly it reads, 
 is correct as it stands, if the Hebrew 
 words thetnselvea are correct, as they 
 appear in all manuscript and printed 
 copies of the Pentateuch. 
 
 99. The Septuagint and Samaritan 
 Versions, however, insert a few words, 
 which are either a gloss to make the 
 meaning of the passage more plain, or 
 else are a translation of words, which 
 existed in those copies of the Hebrew 
 Bible, that were used for those Ver- 
 sions, though they are not found in our 
 own. The Vatican copy of the Septua- 
 gint renders the passage thus : 
 
 • The sojourning of the children of Israel, 
 which they sojouniecl in Egypt and in tlie land 
 of Canaan, was 430 years.' 
 
 The Alexandrian has, — 
 
 ' The soioumiug of the children of Israel, 
 which they and their fathers sojomra&l in Egypt 
 and in the land of Canaan, was 430 yeal's.' 
 
 The Samaritan has, — 
 
 *The sojourning of the children of Israel 
 and of their fathers, which they sojourned in 
 the land of Canaan and in the land of Egypt, 
 was 430 years.' 
 
 In fact, during all those 430 years, 
 Abraham and his seed were, according 
 to the story, sojourning as strangers 
 ' in the land of promise as in a strange 
 land,' — in a land which ' was not their 
 own,' but for the present 'the posses- 
 sion of the Gentiles.' 
 
 100. And this agrees also substan- 
 tially with the promise in G.xv.13-16, 
 which is quoted by Stephen, Acts vii.6 : 
 
 * Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a 
 stranger, in a land that is not theirs, and shall 
 serve them, and they shall afflict them, four 
 hundred years. And also that nation, whom 
 
 . they shall serve, will I judge ; and afterwards 
 they shall come out with great substance. 
 And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace ; 
 thou Shalt be buried in a good old age. But 
 %n the fourth generation they shall come hither 
 again ; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not 
 yet full.' 
 
 At first sight, indeed, it would seem 
 from the above that Abraham's de- 
 scendants were to be afflicted for 400 
 years, in one land, such as Egypt, by 
 one nation. But it is certain that they 
 were not aflicted, according to the 
 story, during all the time of their so- 
 journ in Egypt. And hence it appears 
 that the time here specified, 400 years, 
 is meant to refer to the time during 
 
 which the ' Seed of Abraham ' should 
 be sojourners in a strange land, rather 
 than to the oppression, which they 
 were to suffer during some part of that 
 sojourning. They lived as 'pilgrims 
 and strangers ' in the land of Canaan ; 
 and they were at times, no doubt, 
 much more uncomfortable among the 
 people of that land,G.xxvi.l5-21,xxxiv, 
 than they were in Egypt during the 
 seventy years while Joseph yet lived 
 (103), and, we may suppose, for somfe 
 time after his death. 
 
 We believe, then, that the 400 years 
 in the above passage are meant to date 
 from the birth of Isaac, 'Abraham's 
 seed,' from which to the Exodus there 
 may be reckoned, as in (98), 405, or, 
 in round numbers, 400, years. 
 
 101. The Exodus nr the Foueth 
 Genekatiok. 
 
 Again when it is said, G.xv.16, 'in 
 the fourth generation they shaE coma 
 hither again,' this seems to mean 'in 
 the fourth generation,' reckoning from 
 the time when they should leave tho 
 land of Canaan, and go down into 
 Egypt. Thus we find Moses and Aaron 
 in the fourth generation from the mi- 
 gration, viz. — 
 
 Jacob begat Levi, 
 
 Levi begat Kohath, 
 
 Kohath begat Amram, 
 
 Amram begat Aaron. 
 Or, as Jacob was so aged at the time 
 of his descent into Egypt, and Moses 
 and Aaron also, at the time of the 
 Exodus, were advanced in life beyond 
 the military age, we may reckon from 
 those, as Levi, who went down into 
 Egypt in the prime of Ufe; and then 
 the generation of Joshua, Eleazar, &c., 
 in the prime of life, will be the fourth 
 generation. 
 
 102. Accordingly, if we examine the 
 different genealogies of remarkable men, 
 which are given in various places of 
 the Pentateuch, we shall find that, as a 
 rule, the contemporaries of Moses and 
 Aaron are descendants in the third, 
 and those of Joshua and Eleazar in 
 the fourth, generation, from some one 
 of the sons, or ad.uU grandsons, of 
 Jacob, who went down with him into 
 Egypt. Thus we have :— 
 
THE EXODUS IN THE FOUETH GENERATION. 
 
 Levi . . 
 Levi . , 
 
 Levi . . 
 
 Levi . , 
 Levi . , 
 Eenben . 
 Beuben . 
 Zarah . 
 Pharez . 
 Levi , . 
 Pharez . 
 Pharez , 
 Pharez , 
 
 1st i}en. 
 
 . Kohath 
 . Kohath 
 > Kohath 
 . Kohath 
 ■ Kohath 
 . Pallu 
 . Pallu 
 . Zabdi 
 . Hezron 
 . Kohath 
 . Hezron 
 , Hezron 
 . Hezron 
 
 2nd. Gen. 
 
 Amxam 
 
 Amratn 
 
 TTzziel 
 
 tJzziel 
 
 Izhar 
 
 Eliab 
 
 Eliab 
 
 Carmi 
 
 Segub 
 
 ■ATVirfl,Tn 
 
 Bam 
 
 Bam 
 Caleb 
 
 Svd Gen. 
 Moses 
 Aaron 
 Mishael 
 Elzaphan 
 Korah 
 Dathan 
 Abiram 
 Achan 
 Jair 
 Aaron 
 Amminadab 
 Amminadab 
 Hur 
 
 63 
 
 iiti G'Ti. 
 
 103. Again, we are told that the 
 
 children ofMachirthe son of Manasseh, 
 were brought up upon Joseph's knees, 
 Gr.l23. Hence, as Joseph was 39 years 
 old, when Jacob came down to Egypt 
 (18, note), and died at the age of 110, 
 G.1.22, having lived, therefore, 71 years 
 after that event, we, may assume that 
 Machir's son, G-ilead, was born about 
 70 years after the migration, and we 
 read of his grandson, Zelophehad, 
 whose daughters came to Moses for 
 land, at the end of the wanderings, and 
 who died in the wilderness, N.xxvii.1-3. 
 
 104. It is true that in lCh.vii.20-27 
 we have one remarkable exception to the 
 above rule, where we find the genealogy 
 of Joshua given as follows : — 
 
 ' And the sons of Ephraim,— Shnthelah, and 
 Bered his sou, and Tahath his son, and Eladah 
 his son, and Tahath his son, and Zabad his son, 
 and Shuthelah his son, and Ezer, and Elead, 
 whomjthe men of Gath, that were bom in that 
 land. Blew, because they came down to take 
 away their cattle. And Ephraim their father 
 mourned many days, and his brethren came 
 to comfort him. And when he went in unto 
 his wife, she conceived and bare a son, and 
 he called his name Beriah, because it went 
 evil vrith his house. And hie daughter was 
 Sherah, who built Beth-horon the nether, and 
 the upper, and Uzzen-Sherah. And Eephah 
 his son, and Eesheph, and Telah his son, and 
 Tahan his son, Laadan his son, Ammihud his 
 son, Blishama his son, Nun his son, Jehoshuah 
 his son.' 
 
 ^ Here then, apparently, Joshua is 
 given in the ninth generation from 
 Ephraim, or the ientk from Joseph. 
 
 105. Upon this I would first remark 
 as follows : — 
 
 (i) This is an exception to the rule, which 
 prevails universally in the Pentateuch. 
 
 (ii) We are not here concerned with the 
 books of Chronicles, (which, as all commenta- 
 tors will admit, were certainly composed c^r 
 the Captivity,) but with the narrative in the 
 Pentateuch and book of Joshua, and must 
 abide by the data which they furnish. 
 
 (iii) The book of Chronicles itself exhibits 
 the rule of the Pentateuch in all other cases, 
 as in that of Moses and Aaron, vi.1-3, Korah, 
 
 Eleazar 
 Elisheba 
 Nahshon 
 Uri 
 
 5th Qcn. 
 
 . E.vi.16,18,20 
 . E.vi.16,18,20 
 . L.X.4. 
 . * . L.X.4. 
 
 . N.xvi.l. 
 . . N.xxvi.7-9. 
 . K.xxvi.7-9. 
 . Jo.vii.l. 
 . lCh,ii.21,22. 
 Phinehas E.vi.23,25, 
 . E.vi.23. 
 . Buth iv.18,19. 
 Eezaleel lCh.ii.18-20. 
 vi.37,3S, Achan, ii.4,6,7, Nahshon, ii.9,10, 
 Bezaleel, ii.lS,20, Jair, ii.21,2^. 
 
 It is strange, then, that in this single in- 
 stance of Joshua there should be so remark- 
 able a variation from the general rule. 
 
 106. Let us now, however, examine 
 more closely this statement in the book 
 of Chronicles. 
 
 Since Joseph * saw Ephraim's children of 
 the third generation,' G.1.23, Telah, one of 
 these, may have been bom about seventy years 
 after the migration into Egypt (103). 
 
 We have no express statement of the age of 
 Joshua at the time of the Exodus. But we 
 may suppose it to have been about the same 
 as that of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, with 
 whom he is so often coupled ; and Caleb was 
 forty years old, when sent to spy the land at 
 the end of the first year after the Exodus, 
 Jo.xiv.7. We may, therefore, adopt the esti- 
 mate of 'JosEPHUS, Ant.Y.i.29, who reckons 
 that the age of Joshua was forty-five at the 
 time of the Exodus. This will agree well 
 with the fact, that, shortly after leaving 
 Egypt, while still young enough to be the 
 ' minister ' or servant of Moses, Eixxiv.13, 
 he was old enough also to command the host 
 of Israel when fighting with Amal^, E.xvii. 
 9,10. 
 
 Hence, since the Exodus took place 215 years 
 at most after the migration into Egypt, there 
 must have intervened between the birth of 
 Telah and that of Joshua215— 70-45, that is, 
 100 years ; so that, according to the Chronicler, 
 there must have been six complete genera- 
 tions in 100 years, which is hardly credible. 
 
 Again, according to the Chronicler, ' Eli- 
 shama, the son of Ammihud,' was the grand- 
 father of Joshua. But ' Elishama, the son of 
 Ammihud,' was himself the captain of the 
 host of Ephraim, N.ii.l8, about a year after 
 his grandson, Joshua, had commanded the 
 whole Hebrew force which fought with Ama- 
 lek, E.xvii.8-16, which also is hardly credible. 
 
 107. But in truth, the account of 
 Joshua's descent in lCh.vii appears to 
 be very perplexed and contradictory. 
 
 Thus, in -0.24, we are told that Ephraim's 
 daughter built three villages in the land of 
 Canaan. If we suppose this to mean that the 
 descendants of Ephraim's daughter, after the * 
 conquest in' the time of Joshua, did this, yet 
 in t).22,23, we have this strange fact stated, 
 that Ephraim himself, after the slaughter by 
 the men of Gath of his descendants in the 
 seventh generation, * mourned many days,' and, 
 
54 
 
 THE NUMBER OF ISRAELITES 
 
 then married again, and had a son, Beriah, 
 who was the ancestor of Joshua ! 
 
 Kmo remarks upon this point, Bist. of 
 the JeaSfP.ne : — 
 
 ' It is impossible that Ephraim should have 
 been then alive to mourn OYer the seventh gene- 
 ration of his descendants. Kead 'Zabad' for 
 * Ephraim,' and aU becomes intelligible.' 
 
 This is, of course, mere conjecture, and it 
 does not by any means dispose of the difficulty : 
 for, by this con-ection, as a little consideration 
 will show, Joshua will be made a descendant 
 in the seventeenth generation from Joseph, to 
 associate with Eleazarinthe/o«/"^ generation 
 from Levi. 
 
 Bertheau suggests that the whole passage 
 in i'.-'O, 'and Bered his son, and Tahath his 
 son, and Eladah his son,' may he parenthetical, 
 caiTying on the line of the first Shuthclah, so 
 that, omitting this parenthesis, the words 
 would rmi, ' and the sons of Ephraim — Shu- 
 thelah, and Ezer, and Elead,' &c., in which 
 case Ezer and Elead, for whom Ephraim 
 'mom-ned,' would be the sons of Ephraim, 
 elder brothers of Beriah, and younger brothers 
 of the first Shuthelah, instead of the second. 
 But why is not this important son of Ephraim, 
 Beriah, the ancestor of so illustrious a per- 
 son as .Toshua, mentioned in the list of the 
 sons of Ephi'aim which is given in the Penlja- 
 teuch itself, N.xxvi.35 ? 
 
 108. Upon the whole we are justified 
 in dismissing this statement in the book 
 of Clironicles, about the genealogy' of 
 Joshua, as in its present form uncer- 
 tain or erroneous, and as being of no 
 consequence at all in reference to the 
 question before us, since it is found in 
 a book written more than a thousand 
 years after the time of the Exodus, 
 and it stands alone even in that book, 
 directly at variance with so many tes- 
 timonies from the Pentateuch and from 
 the book of Chronicles itself, all tending 
 to a different conclusion. 
 
 109. We believe, then, that the story, 
 as told in the Pentateuch, intends it 
 to be understood — 
 
 (i) that the children of Israel came 
 out of Egypt about 215 years after 
 they went down thither in the time 
 of Jacob, — 
 
 (ii) that they came out in t\i^ fourth 
 generation from the adults in the prime 
 of life, who went down with Jacob. 
 
 But the reader is requested to ob- 
 serve that the second of these conchi- 
 sions does not in any way depend upon 
 the correctness of the former. 
 
 And this is the view of Josephus, 
 
 They left Egypt four hundred and thirty 
 years after our forefather Abraham came into 
 
 Canaan, but two hundred and fifteen yeaiB 
 
 only after Jacob removed into Egypt. 
 
 And he says of Moses, Ant.ll.hi.& : — 
 Abraham was his ancestor of the seventh 
 
 generation. 
 And of Joseph, Against Apion,i.^i : — 
 He died four generations before Moses, which 
 
 four generations make almost 170 years. 
 
 So, too, Archd. Peatt observes, Sci- 
 ence and Scripture, &c.^.78 : — 
 
 It was to be in the fourth generation that 
 his seed were to retm-n to Canaan. But 430, or 
 even 400, years is very much longer than four 
 generations, and therefore must include some- 
 thing besides the bondage in Egypt, viz. the 
 sojourning in Canaan. This prediction regard- 
 ing the ' fourth generation ' was literaUy ful- 
 filled. Moses and Aaron were sons of Jochehed, 
 who was the daughter of Levi, !N.xx\d.59, a 
 text which incidentally confirms the correct- 
 ness of our general outline. Eleazar. the 
 Priest, the son of Aaron, was, therefore, of 
 the fourth generation from Ja£ob. 
 
 110. From this it will appear that 
 it is impossible that there should -have 
 been such a number of the people of 
 Israel in Egypt, at the time of the 
 Exodus, as to have furnished 600,000 
 warriors in the prime of life, represent- 
 ing, at least, two millions of persons, 
 of all ages and sexes, — that is to say, 
 it is impossible, if we will take the data 
 of the Pentateuch itself in their plain 
 natural meaning, and not force into 
 them a meaning of our own. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE NtJlIBEK OF ISRAELITES AT THB 
 TIME OF THE EXODUS. 
 
 111. In the first place, it must be ob- 
 served, as already noted, that we no- 
 where read of any mry large families 
 among the children of Jacob or their 
 descendants to the time of the Exodus. 
 We may suppose, in order to have the 
 population as large as possible, that 
 very few died prematurely, and that 
 those, who were born, almost all lived 
 and multiplied. But we have no rea- 
 son whatever, looking only at the data 
 which are furnished by the Pentateuch 
 itself, to assume that they had families 
 materially larger than thosp of the 
 present day. Thus we are told in 
 G.xlvi that Reuben had 4 sons, Simeon 
 6, Levi 3, Judah 5, Issachar 4, Zebulun 
 3, Gad 7, Asher 4, Joseph 2, Benjamin 
 10, Dan 1, Naphtali 4. And the list 
 of families at the end of the Exodus, 
 
AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS. 
 
 55 
 
 as given in N.xxvi, so nearly agrees 
 with the list of males in G.xlvi, as to 
 prove that, according to the writer, if 
 any more sons were bom to the sons 
 or grandsons of Jacob, after the de- 
 scent into Egypt, (except in the case of 
 Ephraim and Manasseh,) they did not 
 swmm or did not fructify, so as to be 
 reckoned as heads of families. 
 
 112. The twelve sons of Jacob, then, 
 as appears from the above, had be- 
 tween them 53 sons, that is, on the 
 average, 4 J each. Let lis suppose that 
 they increased in this way from gene- 
 ration to generation. Then in the first 
 generation, that of Kohath, there would 
 be 54 males, (according to the story, 
 there were only 53, or, rather, 51, since 
 Er and Onan died in the land of 
 Canaan, ■w.12, without issue,) — in the 
 second, that of Amram, 243, — in the 
 third,, that of Moms and Aaron, 1,094, 
 — and in the fourth, that of Joshua 
 and Eleazar, 4,923; that is to say, 
 instead of 600,000 warriors in the 
 prime of life, there could not have 
 been 5,000. 
 
 113. Further, if the numbers of all 
 the males in the four generations be 
 added together, (which supposes that 
 they were all living at the time of the 
 Exodus,) they would only amount to 
 6,311. If we even add to these the 
 number of the fifth generation, 22,154, 
 who would be mostly children, the 
 sum-total of males of all generations 
 Could not, according to these data, 
 have exceeded 28,466, instead of being 
 1,000,000. 
 
 114. But in the above we have tacitly 
 assumed that each man had daughters 
 as 'well as sons. There musthave 
 been females born in the family of 
 Jacob as well as males; and the 
 females must have been as numerous 
 as the males, if we are to suppose that 
 all the males had families as above. 
 'Jacob's sons' wives,' it is true, are 
 spoken of in G-.xlvi.26, as not being 
 out of his loins. But, with the story 
 of Isaac's and Esau's and Jacob's mar- 
 riages before us, we cannot suppose 
 that the wives of the sons of Jacob, 
 generally, were mere heathens. Judah, 
 indeed, took a Canaanitish woman for 
 his wife or concubine, G.xxxviii.2. 
 
 But ■ we must not infer that all the 
 other brothers did likewise, since we 
 iind it noted, as a special fact, that 
 Simeon had, besides his other five 
 sons, ' Shaul, the soh of a Canaanitish 
 woman,' G-.xlvi.lO. Joseph, again, 
 compelled by the peculiarity of his 
 situation, married an Egyptian lady, 
 whom Pharaoh gave him to wife, 
 G.xli.45. The other brothers, we may 
 suppose, obtained their wives, as their 
 fathers, Isaac and Jacob, did before 
 them, from their relations in Haran. 
 
 115. But, however this may have 
 been, we must suppose that in Egypt, 
 — at all events, in their later days, for 
 a hundred years or more, from the 
 time that their afflictions began, — such 
 friends were not accessible. We must 
 conclude, then, that they either took 
 as wives, generally, Egyptian heathen 
 women, or else intermarried with one 
 another. The former alternative is 
 precluded by the whole tone and tenor 
 of the narrative. As the object of the 
 king was to keep down their numbers, 
 it is not to be supposed that he would 
 allow them to take wives freely from 
 among his own people, or that the 
 women of Egypt, (al least, those of 
 the generation of Amram, which gave 
 birth to Moses, and after it,) would be 
 wining, generally, to associate their lot 
 with a people so abject and oppressed 
 as the Hebrews. Besides, we are told 
 expressly that, in childbirth, — 
 
 * The Hebrew women were not as tlie Egy];t» 
 tian women,' B.i.l9,— 
 
 By which it is plainly implied that 
 the wives of the Hebrews were also 
 Hebrews. The narrative itself, there- 
 fore, requires us to suppose that the 
 Hebrew families intermarried, and 
 that girls, as well as boys, were born 
 to them freely in Egypt. 
 
 116. Yet we have no ground for sup- 
 posing, from any data which we find 
 in the narrative, that the whole num- 
 ber of the family was on that account 
 increased. On the contrary, Zelophe- 
 had had five daughters, but no sons, 
 N.xxvii.l; Amram had two sons and 
 one daughter, N.xxvi.59 ; Moses_ had 
 two sons and no daughter, E.xviii.3,4 ; 
 Aaron had /oar sons and no daughter, 
 N.xxvi.60 ; Izhar, Amram' b brother, had 
 
56 
 
 THE NUMBER OF ISEAELITES 
 
 three sons, E.Ti.21, TJzziel had three 
 sons, E.vi.22, Korah had three sons, 
 E.vi.24, Eleazar had one son, E.Ti.25. 
 In the last four cases we cannot say 
 whether, or not, there were any 
 daughters. But, if we take all the 
 families given in E.vi.14-25, together 
 with the two sons of Moses, we shall 
 find that there are 13 persons, who 
 nave between them 39 sons, which 
 gives an average of 3 sons each. This 
 average is a fairer one to take for our 
 purpose than the former ; because 
 these persons lived at all different 
 times in the interval, between the 
 migration into Egypt and the Exodus. 
 We may suppose, also, that the average 
 of children is still as large as before, 
 or even larger, so that each man may 
 have had on the average six children, 
 three sons and three daughters. 
 
 117. Supposing, now, the 51 males 
 (112) of the first generation (Kohath's) 
 to have had each on the average three 
 sons, and so on, we shall find the num- 
 ber of males in the second generation 
 (Amram's) 153, in the third (Aaron's) 
 4i)9, and in the Jourth (Eleazar's) 
 1,377,— mstead of 600,000. 
 
 In fact, in order that the 51 males 
 of Kohath's generation might produce 
 600,000 fighting men in Eleazar's, we 
 must suppose that each man had 46 
 children (23 of each sex), and each of 
 t'.iose 23 sons had 46 children, and so 
 on! — of which prolific increase, it 
 need hardly be said, there is not the 
 slightest indication in the Bible, ex- 
 cept, indeed, in the statement of the 
 number of the first-borns, which has 
 been already considered. 
 
 118. Bishop Patrick suggests, (note 
 on E.i.7,) that the Hebrew women 
 might, by 'extraordinary blessing of 
 God,' have brought forth ' six children 
 at a time '1 It is plain that he felt 
 very strongly the difficulty raised by 
 the Scripture statement, and did not 
 consider how this fecundity would 
 affect the Hebrew women, as regards 
 either the hirth, or the rearing, of the 
 children. 
 
 But the Scripture implies no such 
 fecundity among the Hebrews, either 
 in Gr.xlvi, or in E.vi, or in E.i.l9, 
 where the midwives say of the Hebrew 
 
 women, 'they are delivered ere (hs 
 midwives come in unto them' — which 
 could hardly have been said, if three or 
 more children were often born at a time, 
 119. In lCh.ii.34,35, we read that 
 Sheshan, a descendant of Judah in the 
 ninth generation, — 
 
 'had a servant, an Egyptian, whose name 
 was Jarha ; and Sheshan gave hia daugnier 
 to Jarha his servant to wife, and she bare him 
 Attai,'— 
 
 whose descendants are then traced 
 down through twelve generations, and 
 are reckoned, apparently, as Israelites ' 
 of the tribe of Judah. Prom this it 
 would seem that Hebrew girls might 
 be married to foreigners, — we may 
 suppose, proselytes, — and their children 
 would then be reckoned as 'children 
 of Israel.' It is obvious that such 
 cases would be comparatively rare. 
 But let us suppose that each man had 
 six children as in (116), three sons and 
 three daughters, and that even half the 
 daughters of Israel were married to 
 foreign proselytes, — a most extravagant 
 supposition. This would be equivalent 
 to reckoning that each man had on the 
 average— not 3 sons, but — 4|, as in 
 (112). And the total niimber of war- 
 riors in the fourth generation, resulting 
 from 61 progenitors, would, as before, 
 not amount to 5,000. 
 
 120. When, however, we go on fnN 
 ther to examine into the details of this 
 large number of male adults, the re- 
 sults will be found yet more extra- 
 ordinary. 
 
 Thus Dan in the first generation has 
 one son, Hushim, G.xlvi.23 ; and, that 
 he had no more born to him in the 
 land of Egypt, and, therefore, had only 
 one son, appears from N.xxvi.42, where 
 the sons of Dan consist of only one 
 family. Hence we may reckon that in 
 the fourth generation he would have 
 had 27 warriors descended from him, 
 instead of 62,700, as stated in N.ii.26, 
 which number is increased to 64,400 in 
 N.xxvi.43. 
 
 121. In order to have had this num- 
 ber born to him, we must suppose that 
 Dan's one son, and each of his sons 
 and grandsons; must have had about 
 80 children of both sexes. 
 
AT THE TIME OE THE EXODUS. 
 
 S7 
 
 TVe may observe also that the off- 
 spring of the one son of Dan, 62,700, 
 is represented as nearly double that of 
 the ten sons of Benjamin, 36,400, 
 N.ii.23. 
 
 122. Again we have in E.vi the gene- 
 alogy, before quoted, of the three sons 
 of levi, who came with Jacob into 
 Egypt, — Gershon, Kohath, Merari. 
 
 (i) These three increased in the 
 second (Amram's) generation only to 
 8, (not to 9, as it would have been, on 
 our supposition, that they had had 
 each three sons on the average,) viz. 
 the sons of Kohath i, of Gershon 2, of 
 Merari 2, E.vi. 17-19. 
 
 (ii) The 4 sons of Kohath increased 
 in the third (Aaron's) generation only 
 to 8, (not to 12, as on our supposition,) 
 viz. the sons of Amram (Moses and 
 Aaron) 2, of Izhar 3, of TJzziel 3, 
 E.vi.20-22. If we now assume that 
 the two sons of Gershon and the two 
 sons of Merari increased in the same 
 proportion, that is, to 4 and 4 re- 
 spectively, then all the male Levites 
 of the third generation would have 
 been 16. 
 
 (iii) The two sons of Amram in- 
 creased in the fourth (Eleazar's) gene- 
 ration to 6, viz. the sons of Aaron 4, 
 (of whom, however, 2 died, N.iii.2,4,) 
 and of Moses 2. Assuming that all 
 the 16 of the third generation in- 
 creased in the same proportion, then 
 all the male Levites of the generation 
 of Eleazar would have been 48, or 
 rather 44, if we omit the 4 sons of 
 Aaron, who were reckoned as Priests. 
 Thus the whole number of Levites, 
 who would be numbered at the first 
 census, would be only 44, viz. 20 Ko- 
 hathites, 12 Gershonites, 12 Merarites; 
 whereas in N.iv.48 they are numbered 
 as 8,580, viz. 2,750 Kohathites, 2,630 
 Gershonites, and 3,200 Merarites. 
 
 123. Or we may put the matter in 
 another, and a yet stronger, light, usinff 
 onJy the express data of Scripture, and 
 omitting all reference to the 215 years' 
 sojourn in Egypt and to the four gene- 
 rations, — in fact, making no assump- 
 tions of ov/r own whatever. 
 
 The Amramites, numbered as Le- 
 vites in the fourth (Eleazar's) genera- 
 tion, were, as above, only two, viz. the 
 
 two sons of Moses, the sons of Aaron 
 being reckoned as Priests. Hence the 
 rest of the Kohathites of this genera- 
 tion must have been made up of the 
 descendants of Izbar and TJzziei, each 
 of whom had three sons, E.vi.21,22. 
 Consequently, since all the Kohathites 
 of Eleazar's generation were numbered 
 at 2,750, N.iv.36, it follows that these 
 six men must have had between them, 
 according to the Scripture story, 2,748 
 sons, and we must suppose about the 
 same number of daughters t 
 
 124. It must now, surely, be suffi- 
 ciently plain that the account of these 
 numbers is of no statistical value 
 whatever. 
 
 But then what are we to say of the 
 whole story of the Exodus, — of the 
 camping and marching of the Is- 
 raelites, — of their fighting with Amalek 
 and Midian,— of the 44 Levites (122) 
 slaying 3,000 of the 'children of Israel,' 
 E.xxxii.28, — of the people dying by 
 pestilence, 14,700 at one time, N.xvi.49, 
 24,000 at another, N.xxv.9, — as well as 
 of the whole body of 600,000 fighting 
 men being swept away during the 
 forty years' sojourn in the wilderness ? 
 Several chapters of the book of Num- 
 bers are occupied in laying down the 
 duties of the Levites, — not of the 
 Levites, as they were to be in after 
 years, when their numbers might be 
 multiplied, but as they were to be then, 
 ill the wilderness, in attendance upon 
 the Tabernacle. How were the 20 
 Kohathites, the 12 Gershonites, and 
 the 12 Merarites, to discharge the 
 offices assigned to them in N.iii,iv, in 
 carrying the Tabernacle and its vessels, 
 — to do, in short, the work of 8680 
 men, ]S'.iv.48 ? What were these forty- 
 four people, vrith the two Priests, and 
 their families, to do with the forty- 
 eight cities assigned to them, N.xxxv.7? 
 How could the Tabernacle itself have 
 been erected, when the silver spent 
 upon it was contributed, as we are 
 expressly told, by a poU-tax of half a 
 shekel, E.xxrviii.26, levied upon the 
 whole body of 603,550 warriors, who 
 did not exist ? 
 
 125. In fact, the consequences of ad- 
 mitting the reality of the above results 
 
68 
 
 THE NUMBER OP ISRAELITES 
 
 are obviously so important, that, of 
 course, the most strenuous efforts have 
 been made to 'reconcile' these dis- 
 crepancies, if possible, by those theo- 
 logians, ■who support the traditionary 
 view, and who have studied the Pen- 
 tateuch sufficiently to be aware of the 
 difficulties thus raised. The nature of 
 the attempt will be best seen, by stating 
 the contrivances resorted to for this 
 purpose, to the sacrifice of historical 
 truth and consistency. 
 
 126. Thus says Xuktz, ii.l49,— 
 It is a gross mistake to suppose that the 
 
 two millions "were all the direct descendants 
 of Jacob. When Jacob and his sons went 
 down to Egypt, they must certainly have taken 
 with them all their menservants and maid- 
 Bervants, as well as all their cattle. "We know 
 that Abraham had 318 servants, fit for war, 
 and trained to arms ; his nomadic household 
 must have contained, therefore, more than a 
 thousand souls. Jacob, again, who inherited 
 all these, brought with him from Syria so 
 many menservants and maidservants, and so 
 much cattle, that, when he was afraid of an 
 attack from Esau, he divided them into two 
 armies. "With such data aa these, then, we 
 are justified in assuming that the number of 
 those, who went down with Jacob into Egypt, 
 was not limited to his sixty-six children and 
 grand-childi'en, but consisted of several thou- 
 sand menservants and maidservants. But, 
 according to G-.ivii.l2,13, these had all been 
 circumcised ; and in Egypt the descendants 
 of Jacob will, no doubt, have married the de- 
 scendants of his servants. Hence we regard 
 the two million souls, who left Egypt at the 
 Exodus, as the posterity of the whole of the 
 pec^le, who went down into Egypt with Jacob. 
 
 127. We might reply as follows : — 
 (i) There is no indication of any such a 
 
 csortfige having accompanied Jacob into Egypt. 
 
 (ii) There is no sign even in G-.xxxii,xxxiii, 
 where Jacob meets with Esau, of his having 
 any such a large body of servants. Twenty 
 or thirty would suffice for all the wants of 
 the story. 
 
 (iii) K he had had so many at his command, 
 can we suppose that he would have sent his 
 darling Joseph, without a single attendant, 
 to wander about in search of his brethren, in a 
 country where not only human foes, G.xxxiv. 
 30, but wild beasts, G.xxxvii. 20,33, were to be 
 dreaded? 
 
 (iv) These also are spoken of as 'feeding 
 their flocks,' and seem to have had none of 
 these ' thousands' of servants with them, to 
 witness their brother's arrival, and their ill- 
 treatment of him, and report it to their father. 
 
 (v) Nothing is said about any of these ser- 
 vants coming down with the sons of Jacob to 
 buy com in Egypt, on either of their expe- 
 ditions. Eather, the whole stoiy implies the 
 contrary, — ' they speedily took down every 
 man his sack to the ground, and opened every 
 msji his sack,'—' then they rent their clothes, ' 
 
 seek occasion against us, and take us for bond- 
 men and our a^ses,' not a word being said 
 about servants. 
 
 (vi) In fact, their eleven sacks would have 
 held but a very scanty supply of food for the 
 reli^ of so many starving * thousands' 
 
 (vii) If Jacob had so many • servants,' and 
 not only • flocks' and 'herds,' Gr.xMi.l, but 
 * camels' and ' asses,' Gr.xxxii.l5, it is strange 
 that he did not send some of these servants with 
 additional camels and asses, instead of sending 
 merely his sons with their asses, to bring 
 food for his people. If it be said, the com 
 was only needed for the use of Jacob and his 
 sons, not for the thousands of servants, who 
 might live upon such coarse and scanty food 
 as the land of Canaan still supplied, yet the 
 language used on each occasion, ' that we may 
 live and not die,' G-.sili.2, xliii.8, and the fact 
 that Jacob parted at last with Benjamin, 
 imply that the com was a necessary for them, 
 and therefore also for their servants, and not 
 merely a superfluity. 
 
 128. But, besides all this,it is evident 
 that the whole stress of the story is laid 
 upon this very point, that the multitude, 
 — the males, at all events, — ^who went 
 up out of Egypt at the Exodus, had come 
 out of the loins of Jacob, ajid increased 
 from the * seventy souls/ who -went 
 down at first. 
 
 'Thy fathers went down with threescore 
 and ten persons ; and now the Lord thy God 
 hath made thee as the stars of heaven for 
 multitude.' D,x.22. 
 
 Could this have been written, if, be- 
 sides the ' threescore and ten ' out of 
 Jacob's loins, there went down with 
 him some thousands, or even hundreds, 
 of servants, whose offspring constituted 
 the great bulk of the future people, — 
 in fact, more than 600,000 of the 
 warriors, since the Israelites proper 
 (117) numbered less than 2,000? 
 
 If, then, we supposed that all the 
 women were obtained from strangers, it 
 is certain that the Pentateuch repre- 
 sents the 600,000 fighting men as 
 Jacob's actual descendants, and 62,700 
 of these as the offspring of Dan at the 
 time of the Exodus. And we have 
 the same difficulty as before, to ex- 
 plain how this could have happened 
 in 215 years and four generatious. 
 
 129. But, says Kurtz, ii.^.l33, for 
 215 years, we must reckon 430 years, ' 
 and • four generations ' must mean 
 four centtiries.' Even then, he admits 
 the increase would be * unparalleled in 
 history.' Even then also there would 
 
 and laded every man his ass, and retunied to J"^™'"'! otner insuperable difficulties, 
 tlie city,'—' we are brought in, tliat lie may as, for instance, that connected with 
 
AND PRIESTS AT THE EXODUS. 
 
 59 
 
 the question of the first-born (90), 
 namely, that every Hebrew mother 
 must hare had, on the average, more 
 than forty children. 
 
 But here the genealogies of Moses 
 and Aaron, and the others quoted in 
 (103), come in the way, and show 
 distinctly what is meant by the ' fourth 
 generation.' And the ages of Kohath 
 and Amram are both given, so as to 
 make it impossible, as we have seen 
 (97), to extend the sojourn in Egypt 
 to 430 years. 
 
 130. Then, Ktjetz suggests, in the 
 pedigree of Moses and Aaron there 
 must be some names omitted. 
 
 The four members which commonly appear, 
 Levi, Kohath, Aim:am, Moses, are intended 
 merely to represent the four generations, who 
 dwelt in Egypt. ii.l41. 
 
 But, as the pedigree of Moses and 
 Aaron is repeated again and again, 
 in a very precise and formal manner, 
 without the least intimation being given 
 thatit is meanttobe less historically true 
 than any of the other genealogies, we 
 must accept it as it stands. And, indeed, 
 it would be strange, that we should have 
 accurate genealogies given us for a 
 number of persons of very second-rate 
 importance in the story, and none at 
 all for Moses and Aaron. And, even if 
 we supposed that some names may 
 have been omitted in this particular 
 genealogy, how is it that so many 
 other genealogies, as quoted in (103), 
 contain only the same number of 
 names f Besides, it is expressly stated, 
 as a matter of bond fide domestic his- 
 tory, (as much so as that of Abraham 
 marrying Sarah, or Isaac, Eebecca, or 
 Jacob, Leah and Eaehel,) that Amram 
 married ' Jochebed his father's sister,' 
 E.vi.20, ' the daughter of Levi, whom 
 (his wife) bare to Levi in Egypt,' 
 N.xxvi.59. 
 
 131, Bat then, says Ktjetz, the word 
 here rendered ' father's sister' may only 
 mean 'blood-relative on the father's 
 side.' And there is one instance in the 
 Scripture (Jer.xxxii.l2 compared with 
 V.7) where the Hebrew word seems to 
 be used in this sense, though the other 
 is the common aiid proper one. 
 
 Jochebed, then, may be called a ' daughter 
 of Levi ' in the same sense in which Ohnst is 
 called a ' son of David.' And this very phrase 
 itseK, ' whom f his wife) bare to Levi in Egypt,' 
 
 has the appearance of a gloss appended to the 
 preceding words 'daughter of Levi,' which 
 the author of the gloss seems to have under- 
 stood in their litaral sense, as denoting an 
 actual daughter of Levi, and then to have 
 endeavoured to soften down the improbability 
 of Moses' mother being a daughter of Levi, 
 [as no daughter of Levi is mentioned in G. 
 xlvi,] by appending a clause to the effect that 
 the daughter in question was bom in Egypt. 
 This gloss, we admit, must have been intro- 
 duced at a very early period, as it is found in 
 every codex and version, ii.141. 
 
 But, even if these words are a gloss, 
 and Jochebed was not an actual daughter 
 of Levi, (which, however, is a mere 
 conjecture of the above commentator,) 
 the main fact would remain the same, 
 viz. that the pedigree of Moses and 
 Aaron is undoubtedly meant to be 
 understood as a bona fide pedigree. 
 And, as we have seen, it brings with it, 
 as a necessary consequence, a number 
 of absolute impossibilities, — among 
 others, that six men must have had 
 between them 2,748 sons (123). 
 
 132. Accordingly we find Kurtz 
 himself almost driven to despair iu his 
 attempts to get over this dif&culty. 
 
 Are we to beilieve, then, that Kobath's de- 
 scendants through Amram consisted of no 
 more than 6 males at the time of the census 
 recorded in K.iii, (viz. Moses and his two 
 sons, Aaron and his two sons,) whilst his 
 descendants through the other three sons, 
 Izhar, Hebron, and TJzziel. consisted at the 
 very same period of 8,656 males [? 8,594, 
 N.iii.28] at the very same time, that is, 2,885 
 for each? This, certainly, is a large demand 
 upon our faith. Still, as we cannot say that 
 it is impossible, we submit and believe. But 
 we are further required to believe, N.iii.27, 
 that at this census the 6 Amramites— what 
 am I saying ? there could really have been 
 only two included in the census, namely, the 
 two sons of Moses ; for Aaron and his sons 
 were Priests, to whom the Levites were to be 
 assigned as a present ; and, as it was for this 
 very purpose that the census was taken, they 
 would certainly not be included in it, any 
 more than Moses himself :— hence, then, we 
 are required to believe that the two remaining 
 Amramites formed a distinct family, with 
 precisely the same privileges and duties, as 
 the 2,885 Izharites, the 2,885 Hebronites, and 
 the 2,885 Uzzielites. "We must candidly con- 
 fess that our faith will not reach so f ar oa 
 this, ii.144. , 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE NUMBER OP PRIESTS AT THE EXODTTS. 
 
 133. The book of Leviticus is chiefly 
 occupied in giving directions to the 
 Priests for the proper discharge of the 
 different duties of their office, and 
 
THE NUMBER OP PRIESTS AT THE EXODUS. 
 
 60 
 
 farther directions are given in the 
 
 book of Numbers. 
 
 (i) In the case of * every humt-ofering, 
 which any man shall offer,' whether bullock, 
 or sheep, or goat, or turtle-dove, ' the Priests, 
 Aaron's sons, shall sprinkle the blood upon the 
 altar, and put fire upon the altar, and lay the 
 wood in order on the fire, and lay the parts, 
 the head and the fat, in order upon the wood ;* 
 and * the Priest shall bum all on the altar, to 
 be a bunit-sacrifice.' L.i. 
 
 (ii) So in the case of a meat-offering, L.ii, 
 peace-offering, L.iii, sin-offering, L.iv, or ^res- 
 ^as5-ojrering',L.v,vi,theiVt6sJ has special duties 
 assigned to him as before. 
 
 (iii) Every woman after childbirth is to 
 bring a lamb for a burnt-offering, and a pigeon 
 or turtle-dove for a sin-offering, or two, young 
 pigeons for the two offerings, and the Pri^ 
 is to ofSciate, as before, L.xii. 
 
 (iv) Every case of leprosy is to be brought 
 again and again to the Priest, and carefully 
 inspected by him till it is cui'ed, L.xiii. 
 
 (v) Any one, cured of leprosy, is to bring a 
 burnt-offering and a sin-offering, and the 
 Priest is to officiate, as before, L.xiv. 
 
 (vi) For certain ceremonial pollutions,wluch 
 are specified, the Priest is to offer sacrifice, L. 
 xv.15,30. ^ 
 
 (vli) For a male or female ITazarite, when 
 the days of separation are fulfilled, the Priest 
 is to offer a burnt-offering, a sin-offering, and 
 a peace-offering, N.vi. 
 
 (viii) Every day, morning and evening, the 
 Priest is to offer a lamb for a continual burnt- 
 offering, besides additional sacrifices on the 
 Sabbath, the New Moon, at the Feast of TJn- 
 leavened Bread, and at the Feast of the First- 
 fruits, N.xxviii. 
 
 (ix) Lastly, if itwhould be thought that the 
 above sacrificial system was not meant, gene- 
 rally, to be in full operation in the wilderness, 
 we may call attention to the frequent refer- 
 ences made, in the enunciation of these laws, 
 to the Camp, L.iv.l2,21,vi.ll,xiii.46,!av.3,8, 
 as well as to the words of the prophet Amos 
 V.25, — 'Have ye offered unto Me sacrifices 
 and offerings in the wilderness, forty years, 
 O House of Israel ? ' — which show that, in 
 the prophet's view, at all events, such sacri- 
 fices were reqxiired and expected of them. 
 And, indeed, why was the Tabernacle, with 
 the Brazen Altar, erected in the wilderness at 
 all, or why were the Priests consecrated, if 
 the laws of sacrifice were not meant to be 
 carried out generally, at once, in the wilder- 
 ness? 
 
 134. And now let us ask, for all 
 these multifarious duties, during the 
 forty years' sojourn in the wilderness, 
 — ^for all the bnmt-ofFerings, meat- 
 offerings, peace-offerings, sin-offerings, 
 trespass-offerings, thank-offerings, &e., 
 of a population like that of the city of 
 LoKDON, besides the daily and extra- 
 ordinary sacrifices, — ^how many Priest-s 
 were there ? 
 
 The answer is very simple. There 
 were only three, — Aaron, (till his 
 
 death,) and his two sons, Eleazar and 
 Ithamar. And it is laid down very 
 solemnly in N.iii.lO, — 
 
 ' Thou Shalt appoint Aaron and his sons, 
 and they shall wait in the Priest's ofBce ; and 
 tlie stranger, that cometh nigh, shall be put to 
 death.' 
 
 135. Yet how was it possible that 
 these two or three men should have 
 discharged all these duties for such a 
 vast multitude ? The single work, of 
 offering the double sacrifice for women 
 after child-birth, must have utterly 
 overpowered three Priests, though en- 
 gaged without cessation from morning 
 to night. As we have seen (64), the 
 births among two millions of people 
 may be reckoned as, at least, 250 a 
 day, for which, consequently, 500 sa- 
 crifices (250 burnt-offerings and 250 
 sin-offerings) would have had to be 
 offered daily. Looking at the direc- 
 tions in L.i,ix, we can scarcely allow 
 less than^ae mimitesfor each sacrifice; 
 so that these' sacrifices alone, if offered 
 separately, would have taken 2,500 
 minutes or nearly 42 hours, and could 
 not have been offered in a single day of 
 twelve hours, though each of the three 
 Priests had been employed in the one 
 sole incessant labour of offering them, 
 without a moment's rest or inter- 
 mission. 
 
 136. It may, perhaps, be said that 
 mamy such sacrifices might have been 
 offered at the same time. This is, 
 surely, somewhat contrary to the notion 
 of a sacrifice, as derived from the book 
 of Leviticus ; nor is there the slightest 
 intimation, in the whole Pentateuch, 
 of any such heaping together of sacri- 
 fices; and it must be borne in mind 
 that there was but one altar, five cubits 
 (about 9 feet) square, E.xxvii.l, at 
 which we have abeady supposed all 
 the three Priests to be officiating at the 
 same moment, actually offering, there- 
 fore, upon the altar three sacrifices at 
 once, of which the burnt-oSeringa would, 
 except in the case of poor women, 
 L.xii.S, be lawhs, and not pigeons. 
 
 137. But then we must ask farther, 
 where could they have obtained these 
 250 'turtle-doves or young pigeons' 
 daily, that is 90,000 annually, in the 
 wilderness ? There might be two offered 
 for each birth ; there must, according 
 
THE NUMBEE OF PEIESTS AT THE EXODTJS. 
 
 to the Law, be one, L.xii.6,8. Did the 
 people, then, carry with them turtle- 
 doves and young pigeons out of Egypt, 
 when they fled in such haste, and so 
 heavily laden, and as yet knew nothing 
 of any such law ? Or how could they 
 hare had them at aU under Sinai ? 
 
 138. It cannot be said that the par- 
 ticular laws, which require the sacrifice 
 of such birds, were intended only to 
 suit the circumstances of a later time, 
 when the people should be finally 
 settled in the land of Canaan. For we 
 have one of these very laws, in which 
 manifest reference is made to their life 
 in the wilderness, L.xiii,xiv. In this 
 passage after it has been ordered that 
 the leper ' shall dwell alone, without the 
 Camp,' xiii.46, and that 'the Priest shall 
 go forth out of the Camp to look at 
 file leper,' xiv.3, and that the leper duly 
 cleansed shall 'after that come into the 
 Camp, and shall tarry abroad out of his 
 tent seven days,' v.i, and on the eighth 
 day shall offer 'two he-lambs and one 
 ewe-lamb,' &c. t;.10, it is added, «.21, — 
 
 'And, if lie be poor, and cannot get so 
 mncli, then lie shall take one lamb, &c., and 
 two twrtle-doves or two young pigeons, such as 
 he is ahle to get.' 
 
 139. Here, then, the 'turtle-doves' or 
 'young pigeons' are prescribed as a 
 l^hter and easier offering for the poor 
 to bring. They are spoken of, therefore, 
 as being so common, as to be within 
 the reach of the poorest, — as being in 
 dbwadance, so as to be offered at the 
 rate of 90,000 a year, — in the wilder- 
 ness, under Sinai! But can any one 
 believe that pigeons or turtle-doves, 
 even if found on the rocks of Sinai at 
 all, are found there in such numbers, 
 as to make a pair of them a cheap 
 offering for a poor man? It would 
 seem, then, to follow that such laws as 
 these could no£ have been written by 
 Moses, — ^much less have bgen laid 
 down by Jehovah Himself, — ^but must 
 have been composed at a later age,-— 
 as, for instance, in the days of David 
 or Solomon, or afterwards, — when the 
 people were already settled in Canaan, 
 and the poor, who could not afford a 
 lamb, could easily provide themselves 
 with pigeons. 
 
 140. Again we have in N.xviii.9-11 
 
 61 
 
 the following commands, addressed to 
 Aaron by Jehovah Himself. 
 
 ' Bvcry oblation of theirs, eveiy meat-ofler- 
 ing of theirs, and every Bin-offering of theirs, 
 and every trespass-ofEering of theirs, which 
 they shall render unto Me, shall be most holy 
 for thee and for thy sons. In the most holy 
 place Shalt thou eat it; every male shall eat it; 
 it shall be holy unto thee, 
 
 ' This also is thine, the heaye-oSering of 
 their gift, witli all the waTe-offerings of the 
 children of Israel. I have given them unto 
 thee, and to thy sons, and to thy daughters 
 ■with thee, by a statute for ever ; eveiy one 
 that is clean in thy house shall eat of it.* 
 
 Then follow other directions, by 
 which it is provided that the Priest 
 should have also ' the best of the oil, 
 and all the best of the wine, and of the 
 wheat, the first-fruits of them, which 
 they shall offer unto Jehovah,' and 
 ' whatsoever is first ripe in the land ; ' 
 which laws we may suppose were in- 
 tended only to be appKed, when the 
 people had become settled on their farms 
 in the land of Canaan, as also the 
 law, v.25-29, for their receiving also a 
 tenth of the tithes of corn and wine 
 and oil, which were to be given for the 
 support of the Levites. 
 
 141. But in '!;.14-18 we have again 
 provisions : — 
 
 ' Every thing devoted in Israel shall be thine. 
 Every thing that openeth the matrix in aU 
 flesh, which they bring unto Jehovah, whether 
 it be of men or beasts, shall be thine : never- 
 theless, the first-bom of man shalt thou 
 surely redeem, and the firstling of unclean 
 beasts shalt thou redeem. 
 
 ' But the firstling of a cow, or the firstling 
 of a sheep, or the firstling of a goat, thou 
 shalt not redeem ; they are Ijoly ; thou shalt 
 sprinkle their blood upon the altar, and shalt 
 bum their fat for an offering made by fire, 
 for a sweet savour unto Jehovah. 
 
 * And the Jksh of them shall be thine, as the 
 wave-breast and as the right shoulder ajre thine* 
 
 Similar directions are also laid down 
 in L.vii : — 
 
 ' As the ««<iffering is, so is the trespass- 
 offering ; ttiere is one law for them : the 
 Priest, that maketh atonement therewith, shall 
 have it. And the Priest, which ofEereth any 
 man's ftwrnf-ofEering, even the Priest shall 
 have to himself the skin of the 6«m^ofEering . 
 which he hath offered. And aU the meat- 
 offiering that is baked in the oven, and all that 
 is dressed in the frying-pan and in the pan, 
 shall be the Priest's that offereth it. And 
 every meoi-offering, mingled with oil, and dry, 
 Shan all the sons of Aaron have, one as much 
 as another.* p.7-10. 
 
 'For the wave-breast and the heave-shoulder 
 have I taken of the children of Israel from off 
 the sacrifices of their peace-offerings, and have 
 given them unto Aaron the Priest and unto 
 
THE NUMBEE OF PEIESTS AT THE EXODTJS. 
 
 144. Henostenbeeg, in fact, Pent. 
 ii.p.60, recognises, unawares, the force 
 of the above argument, when he insists 
 upon there having been a multitude of 
 Priests in attendance on the Taber- 
 nacle in Eli's time, besides Eli him- 
 self and his two eons, Hophni and 
 Phinehas. 
 
 62 
 
 his fions, by a statute for ever, from among 
 tlie children of Israel.' «.34. 
 
 142. These last directions are given 
 in the story before Aaron and his sons 
 were consecrated. Hence they must 
 be considered as intended to apply to 
 them, while the Camp was in the 
 wilderness, as well as to the ' sons of 
 Aaron' in future generations. But 
 what (},n enormous provision was this 
 for Aaron and his four, afterwards two, 
 sons and their families! They were 
 to have the skins of the burnt-oSerings, 
 and the shoulder and breast (that is, 
 double-breast) of the ^eace-offerings, of 
 a congi-egation of two millions of people, 
 for the general use of their three 
 fiimilies ! But, besides these, they 
 were to have the whole of the sin- 
 offerings, and trespass-o&r'mgs, except 
 tlie suet, which was to be burnt upon 
 the Altar, L.iv.31,35,v.6 ; and the whole 
 of the mca!!-offerings, except a handful, 
 to be burnt as a memorial, L.ii.2 ; and 
 all this was to be eaten only lyy the 
 three males, in the most holy place, 
 N.xviii.lO! 
 
 143. And it would seem that they were 
 not at liberty to burn the sin-offerings, 
 or consume them in some other way 
 than by eating: they must be ' eaten in 
 the holy place.' At all events, we find 
 it recorded that, on one occasion, — 
 
 ' Moses diligently souglit the goat of the sin- 
 ofEering, and, behold, it was burnt! and he 
 was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, the 
 sons of Aaron, saying, Wherefore have ye not 
 eaten the sin-offering in the holy place, 
 seeing it is most holy, and God hath given it 
 you to bear the iniquity of the Congregation, 
 to make atonement for them before Jehovah ? 
 I'e, should indeed have eaten it in Uie holy place, 
 as I commanded.' L.x.16-20. 
 
 The very pigeons, to be brought as 
 sm-offerings for the birth of children, 
 would have averaged, according to the 
 story, more than 250 a day; and each 
 Priest would have had to eat daily 
 more than 80, for his own portion, ' in 
 the most holy place ' ! 
 
 Can it be believed that such a system 
 was really laid down by Jehovah Him- 
 self, which, if properly carried out by 
 pious Israelites according to the Divine 
 Command, would have involved imme- 
 diately absurd impossibilities like the 
 above, and reciuii'ed instant modifica- 
 tion? 
 
 Let it be considered that an extensive supply 
 of Priests and sacrifices was required by the 
 great reverence, in which, according to IS. 
 iv-vii, the Ark of the Covenant was held at 
 this period. In the address of theman of God 
 to Eli, lS.ii.28, it is represented as the pre- 
 rogative of the Priesthood to plaoe the sacii- 
 flces on the Altar, to bum incense, and to 
 receive all the offerings made by fire of 
 the children of Israel. An order, possessed 
 of such prerogatives, must have been held in 
 high esteem, and must have contained a con- 
 siderable nimiber of members. For tchut 
 could one or two isolated Priests do viith tlie 
 sacrifices of all Israel ? 
 
 And again he writes, ii.52 : — 
 Since all Israel at that time offered their 
 saciifices at the Sanctuary in Shiloh, how y:as 
 it possible for two or three Priests perform the 
 requisite service f 
 
 145. Hengstenbeeg does not appear 
 to see how strongly this argument bear,* 
 against the historical veracity of the 
 Pentateuch itself. Por, if it was im- 
 possible for two or three Priests to 
 suffice at Shiloh, for the Israelites who 
 lived scattered about the land of 
 Canaan, and who, therefore, could not 
 possibly have all come continually to 
 offer sacrifice, how was it possible for 
 Aaron and his two sons to have ' per- 
 formed the requisite service' for the 
 'whole assembled host in the wilder- 
 
 146. Further, in Jo.xxi we have an 
 account of the forty-eight Levitical 
 cities ; and we read v.lS, — 
 
 'All the cities of the children of Aaron, 
 the Priests, were thirteen cities, with their 
 suburbs.' 
 
 At this time, according to the story, 
 there was certainly one son of Aaron, 
 Eleazar, and one grandson, Phinehas, 
 and his family. Ithamar, Aaron's 
 other son, may have been alive ; but 
 no mention whatever is made of him. 
 We may suppose, however, that he 
 had sons and daughters. For this 
 small number of persons, then, there 
 are provided here thirteen cities and 
 their suburbs, and all, let it be ob- 
 
THE NUMBER OF PRIESTS AT THE EXODTTS. 
 
 63 
 
 served, in the immediate neighbourhood 
 of Jerusaltm, where the Temple was 
 biiilt, and where the presence of the 
 Priests was especially required, hut in 
 a later age. 
 
 147. The Eev. T. Scott notes as 
 follows : — • 
 
 The family of Aaron could not at this time 
 have heen very numerous (!), though it had 
 increased considerably (!) since his appoint- 
 ment to the Priesthood. Yet thirteen cities 
 were allotted to it as a patrimony, in the 
 divine knowledge of its future enlargement. 
 For we have reason to thint that no other 
 family increased so much in proportion, after 
 Israel's departure from Egypt, as thiit of 
 Aflxon. 
 
 The only coneeiTable ' reason ' for so 
 ' thinking ' is the fact now before us, viz. 
 that thirteen cities were assigned to 
 them. "We do not find the sons of 
 Aaron numerous in the time of the 
 Judges, or in Eli's time, or Samuel's 
 or David's, or Solomon's (except, in- 
 deed, in the record of the Chronicler). 
 Aaron himself had at most only two 
 sons living and one of these had only 
 one son. 
 
 148. Once more, how did these three 
 Priests manage at the celebration of 
 the Passover ? 
 
 We are told, 2Ch.xxx.l6, xxxv.ll, 
 that the people kiUed the Passover, 
 but,— 
 
 * The Priests sprinkled the blood from their 
 hands, and the Levites flayed them.' 
 
 Hence, when they kept the second 
 passover under Sinai, N.ix.6, where we 
 must suppose that 150,000 lambs (59) 
 were killed at one time ' between the 
 two evenings,' E.xii.6, for the two mil- 
 lions of people, — at which time, cer- 
 tainly, there were only three Priests, 
 Aaron, Eleazar, and Ithamar, L.viii.2, 
 N.iii,4, each Priest must have had to 
 sprinkle the blood of 50,000 lambs in 
 about two * hours, that is, at the jate 
 
 * Kmirz allows, ii.301, that the Caraites 
 and Samaritans are right in explaining the 
 expression ' between the two evenings ' to 
 mean ' the period between the disappearance 
 of the sun helow the horizon and the time 
 when it is quite dark, that is,from sixo'clock 
 till about half-past seven. Thus the first 
 evening begins with the disappearance of tbe 
 Bun, the second with the cessation of daylight. 
 Aben-Ezra gives the same explanation.' 
 
 Hence the time allowed for the killing of the 
 Passover was, in fact, the time of twilight, and 
 
 of about four hundred lambs every 
 minute for two hours together! 
 
 149. Dr. McCaui, has supposed, Ex- 
 amination, ^c, ^.137-9, that one lamb 
 or kid may have sufficed for a hundred 
 persons or more, and. also that only 
 the adult males kept the Passover, &c. ; 
 and he has thus reduced the number 
 of lambs required to 8,000. Yet even 
 this would have made it necessary that 
 each of the three Priests should sprinkle 
 the blood of more than twenty-two 
 lambs a minute for two hours, without 
 a moment's intermission. 
 
 160. Dr. McCaxtl again says. Exami- 
 nation, ^0. ^.141, that the phrase 'be- 
 tween the two evenings' means 'soon 
 after noon until six o'clock, at least 
 5J hours.' Be it so : let us allow six 
 hours, and suppose with Dr. JMcCaul 
 that only the ' adult males ' ate the 
 Passover, and that one lamb sufficed 
 for a hundred persons. Then, at this 
 second Passover, three Priests, with 
 8,000 lambs to be killed in six hours, 
 would still have had to sprinkle the 
 blood of about eight a minute, for six 
 hours (!) together, without a moment's 
 intermission, — quite as impossible a 
 performance, surely, as the former. 
 
 151. Further, in the time of Heze- 
 kiah and Josiah, when it was desired 
 to keep the Passover very strictly, 
 'in such sort as it was written,' 
 2Ch.xxx.5, the lambs were manifestly 
 killed in the Court of the Temple. We 
 must suppose, then, that the Paschal 
 lambs in the wilderness were killed in 
 the Court of the Tabernacle, — in accord- 
 ance, in fact, with the strict injunctions 
 of the Levitical Law, that all burnt- 
 offerings, peace-oflferiugs, sin-offering'i, 
 and trespass-offerings, should be killed 
 ' before Jehovah,' at the door of the 
 Tabernacle of the Congregation. 
 
 ■152. Thus we read in the case of a 
 burnt-offering, L.i.3,5, — 
 
 ' He shall offer it of his own volimtary will 
 at the door of the Tabernacle of the Congrega- 
 tion. And he shall kill the bullock be/ore Je- 
 hovah; and the Priests, Aaron's sons, sh.ill 
 
 cannot, therefore, have been more than two 
 hoiurs, as we have reckoned it. And so writes 
 JOSEPHUS (.Jewish War, TI.ix.3), ' They slay 
 their sacrifices at the Passover from the ninth 
 hour to the eleventh-' 
 
61 
 
 THE WAR ON MIDIAN. 
 
 bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round 
 about upon the Altar, that is by the door of the 
 Tabernacle of the Congregation.^ 
 
 Sointhatofapeace-offeriiig,L.m.2, — 
 
 * He shall lay his hand upon the head of his 
 offering, and kill it at the door of the Taber- 
 nacle of the Congregation ; and Aaron's sons, 
 the Priests, shall sprinkle the blood upon the 
 Altar round about.' See L.i.3,d,ll,16, iii.2,8, 
 13,iv.4,6,&o. 
 
 Besides all which, we hare this most 
 solemn command, laid down in L.xvii. 
 2-6, with the penalty of death attached 
 for disobedience. 
 
 *This is the thing which Jehovah hath 
 conunanded, saying, What man soever there 
 be of the House of Israel, that killeth an ox, 
 or lamb, or goat, in the Camp, or that kiUeth 
 it out of the Camp, and bringeth it not unto the 
 door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation, to 
 offer an offering unto Jehovah, blood shall be 
 imputed unto that man, he hath shed blood, 
 and that man shall be cut off from among his 
 people ; to the end that the children of Israel 
 may bring their sacrifices, which they offer in 
 the open field, even that they may bring 
 them unto Jehovah, unto the door of the 
 Tabernacle of the Congregation, unto the Priest, 
 and offer them for peace-offerings unto Jeho- 
 vah. Ajid the Priest shall sprinkle tlie blood 
 upon the Altar of Jehovah, at the door of the 
 Tabernacle of the Congregation, and bum the 
 fat (suet) for a sweet savour unto Jehovah.' 
 
 153. How, in fact, could the Priests 
 have sprinkled the blood at all, if this 
 ■were not the case, that the animals 
 were killed in the Court of the Taber- 
 nacle ? 
 
 But the area of the Court contained, 
 as we have seen (30), only 1,692 square 
 yards, and could only have held, when 
 thronged to the uttermost, about 5,000 
 people. How then are we to conceive 
 of 150,000 lambs being killed within 
 it, by, at least, 160,000 people, in the 
 space of two hours,— that is, at the rate 
 of 1,250 lambs a minuted Or, taking 
 even Dr. MoCaot.'s estimate, how can 
 ■we believe that within one-third of an 
 acre of ground more than a thousand 
 lambs an hour were killed for six horns 
 together ? 
 
 164. The only way, in short, of 
 getting over the difficulties of the ease 
 is to say, with Dr. McCaul, Examina- 
 tion, ^c. ^.143-6, that the blood of 
 the lambs was not sprinkled by the 
 Priests at the Passover. 
 
 The Passover is neither a bumt-offering, 
 nor a peace-offering, nor a sin-offering, nor a 
 trespass-offering : it is an offering per se, and 
 therefore these strict injunctions do not apply 
 to it. 
 
 Yet the Chronicler says, speaking of 
 the Passover kept in the days of 
 Josiah, 2Ch.xxx.l6, — 
 
 ' They stood in their place, after their man- 
 ner, according to t?ie Law of Moses, the man 
 of God ; thA Priests crinkled the blood from 
 the hand of the Levites.' 
 
 Either, therefore, this statement of 
 the Chronicler is not true, — and in 
 that case the main question at issue is 
 given up, as to the infallibility of the 
 book of Chronicles^ and, therefore, of 
 the Bible generally, — or it must be ad- 
 mitted that the Priests did sprinkle 
 the blood at the Passover, ' according 
 to the law of Moses,' — that is, accord- 
 ing to the whole spirit of that Law, and 
 according to the express command, as 
 quoted above from L.xvii.2— 6, that all 
 sacrifices of every hind — nay, that all 
 animals killed for common food, — 
 should be killed at the entrance of the 
 Tabernacle, and their blood sprinkled 
 or poured out by the Priests. Is it to 
 be believed that the Passover ■was to 
 be the only exception in this respect, 
 and this directly in the teeth of the 
 whole spirit of the Law, of its express 
 directions, and of the Chronicler's plain 
 stateipent ? 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE WAE ok MIDIAN. 
 
 165. Fhom the above considerations 
 it seems to follow, that the account of 
 the Exodus of the Israelites, as given 
 in the Pentateuch, whatever real foun- 
 dation it may have had in the ancient 
 history of the people, is mixed up, at 
 all events, ■with so great an amount 
 of contradictory matter, that it cannot 
 be regarded as historically true, so as 
 to be appealed to, as absolute, incon- 
 testable matter of fact. For the objec- 
 tions, which have been produced, are 
 not such as touch only one or two points 
 of the story. They affect the entire 
 substance of it ; and, until they are 
 removed, they make it impossible for a 
 thoughtful person to receive, without 
 further enquiry, any considerable por- 
 tion of it, as certainly true in an his- 
 torical point of ■view. 
 
 156. We cannot here have recourse 
 to the ordinary supposition, that there 
 may be something wrong in the Hebrew 
 
THE WAR 
 .numerals. First, the number ' 600,000 
 on foot, that were male beside children,' 
 isgiTendistinctlyinE.xii.ST.atthetime 
 of their leavmg Egypt; then we have it 
 recorded again, as we have said, thrice 
 over, in diferent forms, in E.xxxviii. 
 25-28, at the beginning of the forty 
 years' wanderings, when the number 
 of all that ' went to be numbered, from 
 twenty years old end upward,' is rec- 
 koned at 603,550 ; and this is repeated 
 again in N.i.46 ; and it is modified once 
 more, at the end of the wanderings, to 
 601,730, lSr.xxvi.51. Besides which, on 
 each occasion of numbering, each sepa- 
 rate tribe is numbered, and the sum of 
 the separate results makes up the whole. 
 
 156. Thus this number is woven, as 
 a kind of thread, into the whole story of 
 the Exodus, and cannot be taken out, 
 without tearing the whole fabric to 
 pieces. It aflfects, directly! the account 
 of the construction of the Tabernacle, 
 E.xxxviii.25-28, and, therefore, also 
 the account of the institutions, whether 
 of the Priesthood or of Sacrifice, con- 
 nected with it. And the multiplied 
 impossibilities introduced by this num- 
 ber alone, independently of all other 
 considerations, are enough to throw 
 discredit upon the historical character 
 of the general narrative. 
 
 157. These things we have all along 
 been looking at, as it were, from a 
 distant point of view, through a misty 
 atmosphere, dreading, it may be, some 
 of us, to approach and gaze more 
 closely upon the truth itseK, which, 
 once clearly seen, must dissipate 
 some of our most cherished convic- 
 tions, and hardly daring, indeed, to 
 engage in (what many would consider) 
 an irreverent and impious undertaking. 
 To those of my readers, however, who 
 have followed me thus far, I hope it 
 will now be apparent that there is no 
 longer any cause for superstitious ter- 
 ror, in respect of the enquiries which 
 we are making. Rather, it is our duty, 
 as servants of God, .the very God of 
 Truth, and in dependence on His help 
 and blessing, to pursue them yet far- 
 ther, whatever the result may be, — 
 fearing no evil, for what shall harm us, 
 if we are followers of that which is 
 right, and good, and true ? 
 
 ON MIDIAN. 
 
 66 
 
 158. But how thankful we must be, 
 that we are no longer obliged to be- 
 lieve, as a matter of fact, of vital cou' 
 sequence to our eternal hope, each separ- 
 ate statement contained in the Penta- 
 teuch, such, for instance, as the story 
 related in N.xxxi ! — where we are told 
 that a force of 12,000 Israelites slew 
 all the males of the Midianites, took 
 captive all the females and children, 
 seized all their cattle and flocks, 
 (72,000 oxen, 61,000 asses, 675,000 
 sheep), and all their goods, and ' burnt 
 all their cities, and all their goodly 
 castles,' without the loss of a single 
 man,— and then, by command of 
 Moses, butchered in cold blood aU the 
 women and children, except — 
 
 ' AJl the women-children, who have not 
 known a man hy lying with him,' d.18. 
 
 159. These last they were to 'keep 
 alive for themselves.' They amounted, 
 to 32,000, •y.36, mostly, we must sup- 
 pose, under the age of sixteen or 
 eighteen. We may fairly reckon that 
 there were as many more under the 
 age of forty, and half as many more 
 above forty, making altogether 80,000 
 females, of whom, according to the 
 story, Moses ordered 48,000 to be 
 killed, besides (say) 20,000 young 
 boys. The tragedy of Cawnpore, where 
 300 were butchered, would sink into 
 nothing, compared with such a massacre, 
 if, indeed, we were required to believe it. 
 And these 48,000 females must have 
 represented 48,000 men, all of whom, 
 in that case, we must also believe to 
 have been killed, their propbrty pillaged, 
 their castles demolished, and towns 
 destroyed, by 12,000 Israelites, who, 
 in addition, must have carried off 
 100,000 captives, (more than eight 
 persons to each man.) and driven 
 before them 808,000 head of cattle, 
 (more than sixty-seven for each man,) 
 and aU without the loss of a single 
 man ! How is it possible to quote 
 the Bible as in any way condemning 
 slavery, when we read here,~-t/.40, of 
 ' Jehovah's tribute ' of slaves, thirty- 
 two persons, who were given to Eleazar 
 the Priest, while three-hundred-and- 
 twenty were given to the Levites, 
 v.46,47 ? 
 
 160. Who is it that really dishououra 
 
66 
 
 THE WAR ON MIDIAN. 
 
 the 'Word, and blasphemes the Name, 
 of God Most High ? — he who believes, 
 and teaches others to believe, that such 
 acts, as those above recorded, were 
 really perpetrated by Moses imder 
 express Divine sanction and command, 
 or he who declares that such com- 
 mands as these could never have 
 emanated from the Holy and Blessed 
 One, the All-Just and All-Loving, the 
 Father of the spirits of all flesh, — that 
 we must not, dare not, believe this, 
 that we are bound not to do so by the 
 express authority of that Divine Law, 
 which we hear in our hearts, which is 
 written in our consciences, and answers 
 there to the voice which speaks to us 
 from without, D.xiii.1-3, — that we 
 miist not ' hear ' such doctrine as this, 
 no, not though all the Doctors and 
 Divines in the world should assert it, 
 and appeal to any number of pro- 
 phecies or miracles to prove it, — nay, 
 not though ' the signs or wonders, 
 whereof they spake to us,' should 
 ' come to pass ' before our very eyes, 
 for, when we hear these things from, 
 our fellow-men, however great in 
 learning or high in authority, however 
 near and dear to us, even the ' friend 
 which is as our own soiil,' we must 
 consider in our hearts that at such 
 times ' the Liring God, our God, is 
 proving us, to know whether we love 
 the Living God, our God,' — His Truth, 
 His Eighteousness, and the honour of 
 His Holy Name, — more than all the 
 precepts and teachings of men, 'with 
 all our heart and with all our soul.' 
 
 161. It may be well, however, at 
 once to show that, besides involving 
 the above incredible statements, the 
 narrative itself, as it now stands, is 
 unhistorical here as elsewhere. 
 
 (i) We are told that Aaron died on 'the 
 firsl day of the fifth month ' of the fortieth 
 year of the wanderings, N.xxxiii.38, and they 
 mourned for him a Tnonth^ W.xx.29. 
 
 (ii) After this, 'king Arad the Oanaanite 
 fought against Israel, and took some of them 
 prisoners ;' whereupon the Israelites attacked 
 these Canaanites, and utterly destroyed .ihem 
 and their cities. N.xxi.1-3,— for whicl^^e.- 
 transactions we may allow another monlKf^_ 
 
 (iii) Then they 'journeyed from Mount 
 Hor, by the way of the Bed Sea, to compass 
 the land of Bdom,' N.xxi.4, and the people 
 murmured, and were plagued with fiery ser- 
 pents, and Moses set up the serpent of brass, 
 
 N.xxi.5-9, — ^for all which we must allow, at 
 least, a fortnight. 
 
 (iv) They now marched, and made nine 
 encampments, N.xxi.10-20, for which we 
 cannot well allow less than a month. 
 
 'We believe that at every station, at least 
 three days' rest must have been required.' 
 KmiTZ, iii.^.261. 
 
 (v) Then they sent messengers to Sihon, 
 who ' gathered all his people together, and 
 fought against Israel,' and ' Israel smote liim 
 with the edge of the sword,' and ' possessed 
 his land from Amon unto Jabbok,' and ' took 
 aU these cities, and dwelt in all the cities of 
 the Amorites, in Heshbon and all the villages 
 thereof,' IT.xxi.21-25, — for which we may 
 allow another Tnonth. 
 
 (vi) After that ' Moses sent to spy out 
 Jaazer, and they took the villages thereof, 
 and drove out the Amorites that were there,' 
 N.xxi.32, — say, in another /ortoiigrAi. 
 
 (vii) Then they 'turned up by the way of 
 Bashan, and Og, the king of Bashan, went 
 out against them, and they smote him, and 
 his sons, and all his people, until there was 
 none l^t him alive, and they possessed his 
 land.' N.xxi.33-38. Por all this work of 
 capturing 'threescore cities, fenced with 
 high walls, gates, and bars, besides unwalled 
 towns, a great many,' I).iii.4,5, we must 
 allow, at the very least, a month. 
 
 162. Thus, then, from the 'first day 
 of the fifth Tnonth,' on which Aaron 
 died, to the completion of the conquest 
 of Og, king of Bashan, we cannot 
 reckon less altogether than six months, 
 (and, indeed, even then the events will 
 have been crowded one upon another 
 in a most astonishing, and really im- 
 possible, manner,) and are thus brought 
 down to the fi/rst day of the eleventh 
 month, the very day on which Moses is 
 stated to have addressed the people in 
 the plains of Moab. D.i.3. 
 
 163. And now what room is there for 
 the other events, which are recorded in 
 the book of Numbers as having occurred 
 between the conquest of Bashan and 
 the address of Moses ? The chief of 
 these were — 
 
 (1) The march forward to the plains of 
 Moab, K.xxii.l ; 
 
 (2) Balak's sending twice to Balaam, hia 
 joiurney, and prophesylngs, X3di.2-xxiv; 
 
 (3) Israel's ' abiding' in Shittim, and com- 
 mitting whoredom with the daughters of 
 Moab, xxv.1-3 ; 
 
 (4) The death of 24,000 by the plague, 
 XXV.9; 
 
 (6) The second numbering of the people, 
 xxvi; 
 
 Ce) The war upon Midian, above consi- 
 dered, during which they 'burnt aU their 
 cities, and all their goodly castles,' &c., and 
 surely must have required a month or six 
 weeks for such a transaction. 
 
CONCLXIDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CONCLTJBmo EEMAEKS. 
 
 164. The obvious inference from all 
 the above facts is, that such a narrative 
 as that of the Exodus co\ild never, — in 
 its present form, and, as a whole, at all 
 events, — have been written by Moses, 
 or by any one who had actually taken 
 part in the scenes which it professes to 
 describe. As Haveenick says, while 
 defending -the traditionaiy view, Pent. 
 ^.90:— 
 
 If the Pentateuch would fully maintain its 
 right to the position which it claims, as the 
 work of Moses and the commencement of the 
 sacred records of the covenant-people, it must 
 fulfil the requisition of showing iteelf to be a 
 work historically true, — containing a history 
 which shall vindicate itself by critical ex- 
 amination, as maintaining invariably the 
 character of perfect truth, in reference to the 
 assumed period of its composition. 
 
 AndsoHENGSTBNBEEG,Pc»i.ii.283 : — 
 
 It is the unavoidable fate of a spurious 
 historical work of any length, to be involved 
 in contradictions. This must be the case to 
 a very great extent with the Pentateuch, if it 
 be not genuine. ... If the Pentateuch is 
 spinious, its histories and laws have been 
 fabricated in successive portions, and were 
 committed to writing in the course of cen- 
 turies by different individuals. Prom such a 
 mode of origination a mass of contradictions 
 is inseparable, and the improving hand of a 
 later editor would never be capable of en- 
 tirely obliterating them. From these remarks 
 it appears that freedom from contradictions 
 is much more than the conditio sine qud non 
 of the genuineness of the Pentateuch. ... It 
 may be thought that Moses, in the history of 
 ancient times, found contradictions, and re- 
 peated the tradition without removing them. 
 Where, however, Moses narrates what he 
 himself spoke, did, or saw, there every real 
 contradiction becomes a witness against the 
 
 165. Hereafter we shall consider the 
 many other clear signs, which the 
 books of the Pentateuch give, upon 
 close inspection, of the manner, as well 
 as of the age or ages, in which they 
 have been composed. 
 
 But, meanwhile, if we would give 
 dne honour to the Bible, as containing 
 a message from God to our souls, it is 
 surely necessary that we take oiirselves, 
 in the fitet place, and teach, others to 
 take, a right and true view, both of the 
 contents of the Book and of the nature 
 of its Inspiration. 
 
 166. Thus, instead of looking to 
 
 the Bible for revelations of soienti^ 
 or historical facts, which God hfl 
 never promised to disclose in this waJB 
 by sudden supernatural communica^ 
 tions, without the use of human powers 
 of intellect, and without dne labour 
 spent in the search after truth, we 
 shall have recourse to it for that which 
 God has there in His Providence laid 
 up in store for our use, — food for the 
 inner man, supplies of spiritual strength 
 and consolation, living words of power 
 to spealc to our hearts and consciences, 
 and wake us up to daily earnestness of 
 faith and duty. The very Book of 
 Truth will then cheer us with the as- 
 surance of Divine help and blessing, 
 while we engage ourselves devoutly 
 and faithfully in such a work as that 
 which now lies before us, and diligently 
 exercise the best faculties of mind, 
 which God has given us, in searching 
 into the true omgiu and meaning of 
 the Bible narrative, and its relation 
 to other facts of science or history. 
 
 167. And this may be the step, 
 which God in His Providence calls us 
 to take in the present age, in advance 
 of the past generation, with refer- 
 ence to the subject now before us. In 
 the time of Galileo it was heresy to 
 say that the sun stood still and the 
 earth went round it. In far later 
 times, the days of the childhood of 
 many now living, it was thought by 
 many heresy to say that the fossil 
 bones, dug up within the earth, were 
 not the signs of Noah's Flood, 'or to 
 maintain that Death was in the world, 
 and pain, and multiplied destruction of 
 living creatures by fire and flood, mil- 
 lions of years before the first man had 
 sinned. Yet all these are now recog- 
 nised as facts, which cannot be dis- 
 puted, which our very cluldren should 
 be taught to know. And good men 
 will even set themselves down to wrest 
 the plain meaning of the Scriptures 
 into a forced conformity with these ad- 
 mitted results of modern science. 
 
 168. But, in this our day, by the 
 Gracious Favour of the 'Father of 
 Lights, the Giver of every good and 
 perfect gift,' other sciences, besides 
 astronomy and geology, have sprung 
 into sudden growth, and have attained 
 
68 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 already a wonderful development. And 
 though mauy of these were scarcely 
 known even by name to the men of the 
 last generation, their elements are now 
 taught, as iirst principles, in the insti- 
 tutions of our great towns, and in 
 many a well-ordered village-school. 
 And, in Klce manner, we may he sure, 
 the results of criticism, applied to the 
 examination of the letter of the Scrip- 
 tures, wiU also soon be acknowledged 
 as facts, which must be laid as the 
 basis of all sound religious teaching. 
 
 169. In view of this change, which, I 
 believe, is near at hand, and in order to 
 avert the shock, which our children's 
 faith must otherwise experience, when 
 they find, as they certainly will before 
 long, that the Bible can no longer be 
 regarded as infallibly true in matters of 
 history as well as science,— as we value 
 their reverence and love for the Sacred 
 Book, — let us teach them at once to 
 know that they are not to look for the 
 inspiration of the Holy One, which 
 breathes through its pages, in respect 
 of any such matters as these, which 
 the writers wrote as men, with the 
 same liability to error from any cause 
 as other men, and where they must be 
 judged as men, as all other writers 
 would be, by the just laws of criticism. 
 170. Let us rather teach them to look 
 for and discern the sign of God's Spirit, 
 speaking to them in the Bible, in that 
 of which their own hearts alone can be 
 the judges, of which the heart of the 
 simple child can judge as well as — often, 
 alas ! better than — that of the self- 
 willed philosopher, critic, or sage, — in 
 that which speaks to the witness for 
 God within them, the Keason and Con- 
 science, to which alone, under God 
 Himself, whose voice it utters in the 
 secrets of his inner being, each man is 
 ultimately responsible. Let us bid 
 them look for it in that within the 
 Bible, which tells them of what is pxire 
 and good, holy and loving, faithful and 
 true, which speaks from God's Spirit 
 directly to their spirits, though clothed 
 with tbe outward form of a law, or 
 parable, or proverb, or narrative, — in 
 that which they will feel and know in 
 themselves to be righteous and excel- 
 lent, however they may perversely 
 
 choose the base and evil,— in tllat, 
 which makes the living man leap up, 
 as it were, in the strength of sure con- 
 viction, which no arguments could 
 bring, no dogmas of Church or Council 
 enforce, saying, as the Scripture words 
 are uttered, which answer to the Voice 
 of Truth within, ' These words are 
 God's, — not the flesh, the outward 
 matter, the mere letter, but the inward 
 core and meaning of them, — for they 
 are spirit, they are life.' 
 
 171. But then, too, let us teach them 
 to recognise the voice of God's Spirit, in 
 whatever way, by whatever ministry, 
 He vouchsafes to speak to the children 
 of men ; and to realise the solid com- 
 fort of the thought, that,— not only 
 in the Bible, but also out of the 
 Bible, — not to us Christians only, 
 but to our fellow-men of all climes and 
 countries, ages and religions, — the same 
 Gracious Teacher is revealing, in dif- 
 ferent measures, according to His own 
 good pleasure, the hidden things of God. 
 172. Thus, for instance, we have the 
 noble words of Cicero, preserved by 
 Lactantius, Div. Inst. vi.8. 
 
 Law, properly understood, is no other than 
 right reason, agreeing with nature, spread 
 abroad among all men, ever consisteni; with 
 itself, eternal, whose oface is to summon to 
 ,duty by its commands, to deter from vice by 
 its prohibitions, — which, however, to the 
 good never commands or forbids in vain, 
 never influences the wicked either by com- 
 manding or forbidding. In contradiction to 
 this Law nothing can be laid down, nor does 
 it admit of partial or entire repeal. Nor can 
 we be released from this Law either by vote 
 of the senate or decree of the people. Nor 
 does it require any commentator or inter- 
 preter besides itself. Nor will there be one 
 Law at Athens, and another at Kome, one 
 now, and another hereafter : but one eternal, 
 immutable, Law wiU both embrace all na- 
 tions and at all times. And there will be one 
 common Master, as it were, and Hulei- of all, 
 namely, Gon, the Great Originator, Exposi- 
 tor, Enactor, of this Law ; which Law who- 
 ever will not obey, will be flying from himself, 
 and, having treated with contempt his human 
 nature, will in that very fact pay the greatest 
 penalty,even if he shall have escaped other pun- 
 ishments, as they are commonly considered. 
 
 Well might the Christian philoso- 
 pher observe that the heathen has here 
 depicted, 'that holy, heavenly, Law 
 with a voice almost divine,' and that 
 he regards such persons, ' speaking thus 
 the truth without design,' as 'divining 
 by some kind of Inspiration.' 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 173. And tlie same divine Teacher, 
 we cannot doubt, revealed also to the 
 Sikh Gooroos such truths as these : (Cun- 
 KmGHAM's Hist, of the Sikhs, ^.355-6.) 
 
 The True Name is God, without fear, "with- 
 oiit enmity, the Being without Death, the 
 Giver of Salvation. 
 
 Remember the primal Truth, Truth which 
 was before the world began, Truth which is, 
 and Truth, NanukO ,whjcli will remain. 
 
 How can Truth be told ? How can false- 
 hood be unravelled ? 
 
 Nanuk, by following the Will of GOD, as 
 by, Him ordained. 
 
 One Self-existent, Himself the Creator, 
 Nanuk, One contiuueth, another never was, 
 and never will be. 
 
 My mind dwells upon One, Him who gave 
 the soul and the body. 
 
 NTimerous Mahomets have tliere heen, 
 and multitudes of Brahmas, Yishnus, and 
 Sivas, thousands of Peers and Prophets, and 
 tens of thousands of Saints and Holy men ; 
 
 But the Chief of Lords is the One Lord, the 
 true name of GOD. 
 
 Nanuk I the qualities of God, without 
 end, beyond reckoning, who can understand ? 
 
 174. Here, again are prayers in use 
 among the G-allas of North-Eastern 
 Africa, as taken down from their lips. 
 (Tutschek's Diet, of the Galla Lan- 
 guage, fM.) 
 
 Good God of this earth, my Lord! Thou 
 art above me, I am below Thee. 
 
 Wlien misfortmie comes to me, as trees keep 
 ofE the sun from me, mayest Thou keep off 
 misfortune I My Lord, be Thou my shadow! 
 
 Calling upon Thee, I pass the day : calling 
 upon Thee, I pass the night : when this moon 
 rises, do not forsake me. 
 
 God, thou goest holding the bad and the 
 good in Thy hand : my Lord, let us not be 
 killed : we. Thy worms, are praying to Thee. 
 
 A man, who knows not evil and good, may 
 not anger Thee : if once he knew it, and was 
 not willing to know it, this is wicked, treat 
 him. as it pleases Thee. If he formerly did 
 not learn, do Thou, GOD, my Lord, teach 
 him : if he hears not the language of men, he 
 learns Thy language. 
 
 God, Thou hast made all the animals and 
 men that live upon the earth : the com also 
 upon this earth, on which we are to live, hast 
 Thou made, we have not made it. Thou hast 
 given us strength. Thou hast given us cattle 
 and com ; we worked witli them, and the seed 
 grew up for us. 
 
 "With the com, which Thou didst let grow 
 for us, men were satisfied. The com in the 
 house has been burnt up ; who has burnt the 
 com in the house ? Thou knowest 1 
 
 A single man haschased awayalloiu* people 
 from their houses ; the children and their 
 mother hashe scattered, like a flock of turkeys, 
 hither and thither. The murderous enemy 
 took the curly-headed child out of hismother's 
 hand and killed him. Thou hast permitted 
 all this to he done. "Why hast thou done this ? 
 Thou knowest I 
 
 The com which thou lettest grow, dost 
 Thou show to our eyes : the hungry man looks 
 at it and is comforted. "When the com blooms, 
 Thou sendest butterflies and locusts into it, 
 locusts and doves : all this comes from Thy 
 hand, Thou hast caused this to be done. Why 
 hast Thou done this ? Thou knowest I 
 
 My Lord, spare these who pray to Thee I 
 As a thief, stealing a man's corn, is bound by 
 the owner of the com, thus do not thou bind, 
 Lord I Binding the beloved one, Thou 
 settest free with love [=whom Thou lovt^st 
 Thou chastenest, but in mercy pardonest.] 
 If I am beloved by Thee, so set me free, I 
 entreat Thee from my heart! If I do not 
 pray to Thee from my heart. Thou hearest 
 me not. If I pray to Thee with my heart. 
 Thou knowest it, and art gracious unto me. 
 
 MORXING Pratek. 
 O God, Thou hast let me pass the night in 
 peace : let me pass the day in peace! Where- 
 ever I may go, upon my way, which Thou 
 madest peaceable for me, O GoD, lead my 
 steps. "When I have spoken, keep ofE caliunny 
 from me : when I am hungry, keep me from 
 murmuring : when I am satisfied, keep me 
 from pride. Calling upon Thee, I pass the 
 day, Lord, who hast no LordI 
 
 Evening Pbater. 
 
 God, Thou hast let me pass the day in 
 peace : let me pa^ the night in peace, O Lord, 
 who hast no Lord I There is no strength but 
 in Thee : Thou alone hast no obligation, 
 tXnder Thy hand I pass the day ! under Thy 
 hand I pass the night I Thou axt my Mother, 
 Thou my Father ! 
 
 175. These words, also, were written 
 by one who had no Pentateuch or 
 Bible to teach him, but who must have 
 learned such living truths as these by 
 the secret teaching of the Spirit of 
 Grod. {Journal of the Asiatic Society of 
 Bengal, vi.^.484-487.750-756, quoted 
 in H. H. Welson's Works.) 
 
 Thou, God, art the Author of all things 
 which have been made, and from Thee will 
 originate all thiAgs which are to be made. 
 Thou art the Maker and the Cause of all things 
 made. There is none other but Thee. 
 
 He is my God, who maketh aU things per- 
 fect. Meditate upon Him, in whose hands 
 are life and death. 
 
 1 believe that God made man, and that He 
 maketh every thing. He is my Friend. 
 
 Let faith in GOD characterise all your 
 thoughts, words, andactions. He, who serveth 
 God, places confidence in nothing else. 
 
 If the remembrance of GOD be in your 
 hearts, ye will be able to accomplish things 
 which are impracticable. But those who seek 
 the paths of God are few I 
 
 O foolish one I God is not far from you : 
 He is near you. You are ignorant ; but he 
 knoweth every thing, and is careful in be- 
 stowing. 
 
 Care can avail nothing ; it devoureth life : 
 for those things shall happen, which GOD 
 shall direct. 
 
 Kemember Gon, for He endued your body 
 
70 
 
 with life : remember that beloved One, who 
 placed you in the womb, reared and nourished 
 yon. 
 
 CrOD, thou art, bs It were, exceeding 
 riches ; Thy regulations are without com- 
 pare ; Thou art the chief of every world, yet 
 remainest invisible. 
 
 Take such food and raiment as it may 
 please G-OD to provide you with : you require 
 naught besides. 
 
 What hope can those have elsewhere, even 
 if they wandered over the whole earth, who 
 abandon God ? 
 
 It will be impossible for you to profit any- 
 thing, if you are not with God, even tE you 
 were to wander from country to country. 
 
 Have no desires, but accept what circum- 
 stances may bring before you ; because, 
 whatever GoD pleaseth to direct, can never 
 be wrong. 
 
 All things are exceeding sweet to those 
 who love God ; they would never style them 
 bitter, even iE filled with poison ; on the con- 
 trary, they would accept them as if they were 
 ambrosia. 
 
 Adversity is good, if on account of God ; 
 but it is useless to pain the body. Without 
 God, the comforts of wealth are unprofitable. 
 
 Do unto me, God, as Thou thinkest best: 
 I am obaiient to Thee, My disciples 1 behold 
 no other GOD ; go nowhere but to Him. 
 
 Condemn none of those things, which the 
 Creator hath made. Those are His holy ser- 
 vants, who are satisfied with them. 
 
 We are not creators : the Creator is a dis- 
 tinct Being ; He can make whatever He de- 
 sireth, but we can make nothing. 
 
 God ever fostereth His creatures, even as a 
 mother serves her offspring, and keepeth it 
 from harm. 
 
 God, Thou who art the Truth, grant me 
 contentment, love, devotion, and faith. Thy 
 servant prayeth for true patience, and that 
 he may be devoted to Thee. 
 
 He, that formed the mind, made it as it 
 were a temple for Himself to dwell in ; for 
 God liveth in the mind, and none other but 
 God. 
 
 O my friend, recognise that Being, with 
 whom thou art so intimately connected ; 
 think not that God is distant, but believe 
 that, like thy own shadow, He is ever near 
 thee. 
 
 If you call upon GOD, you will be able to 
 subdue your imperfections, and the evil in- 
 clinations of your mind will depart from you; 
 but they will return to you again, when you 
 cease to call upon Him. 
 
 176. Many other like passages might 
 be quoted from the writings of pious 
 heathens. And surely it may be said 
 of the writers of such words, ' These 
 men were not far from the Kingdom of 
 God.' Eather, let us say, they had 
 already entered the Kingdom: with 
 their earnest 'violence' they had ' taken 
 it by force,' Matt.xi.l2. The Living 
 Word had been speaking in their hearts, 
 and they had heard the Divine Voice, 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMAKKS. 
 
 and believed, and obeyed it. The 
 Light had been shining in their dark- 
 ness — 
 
 'The True Light, which lighteth every 
 man that cometh into the world,' St. Johni.9 — 
 and they had received it, and rejoiced 
 in it ; while as yet no Gospel message 
 had reached them from the lips of 
 Apostles, or by the labours of Christian 
 Missionaries. It is, I repeat, one of 
 the strongest confirmations of our faith 
 and hope in God to know this — that in 
 all ages of the world, among all nations, 
 there are signs, like these, that one and 
 the self-same Spirit of Grace has been 
 enlightening, strengthening, and com- 
 forting the minds of our fellow-men. 
 
 177. Yet, with all this, we cannot be 
 blind to the supreme excellence of that 
 Book, which tells us God's Truth, and 
 declares the Divine Will, more fully 
 and authoritatively than any other, 
 and which we therefore call the ' Word 
 of God ' — the Bible. Laying aside the 
 notion of its infallible accuracy, in mat- 
 ters of scientific or historical truth, — 
 admitting, as we must, that it contains 
 many legendary narratives, and even 
 much, in the Hebrew Scriptures, which, 
 considered in the light of Christianity, 
 we must pronounce to be defective in 
 a moral and religious point of view, 
 unworthy of that Divine Author, to 
 whom by so many the whole has been 
 directly ascribed, — yet still, throughout 
 the sacred writings, both of the Old 
 and New Testament, there breathes a 
 Divine Spirit of life and holiness, such 
 as we find nowhere else in the whole 
 compass of heathen literature. 
 
 178. Thus, then, while we are sure 
 that the ' Word of God ' will be heard 
 oftentimes by the pious heart in the 
 utterances of heathen men, — just as, we 
 know, there are passages in the apocry- 
 phal writings, e.g. in Ecclesiasticus, 
 which, though not parts of the canoni- 
 cal Scriptures, we yet feel to be living 
 words of Truth, and, as such, divinely 
 inspired, — ^yet still, in aU the writings 
 of heathen men that we know of, there is 
 nothing to compare with the devotional 
 Psalms, or with the prophecies of Isaaah 
 or Jeremiah, — still less, with the teach- 
 ings of St. Paul and St. John. Whatever 
 may be thought of its inspiration and 
 
CONCLUDIlirG EEMAEKS, 
 authority, the Bible must be confessed 
 to be a, Book sui generis, — unlike any 
 other book or collection of books what- 
 ever, -which have originated among 
 heathen nations, — unique in the history 
 of the world. 
 
 179. But, further, knowing what we 
 do of the gross and frightful idolatries, 
 which were practised, by the Israelites 
 generally down to the very time of the 
 Ca,ptiTity, — ^if not even during the 
 exile, — the spirituality/ of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures, and the clear views ex- 
 pressed in them as to the Unity, the 
 Majesty,, the Holiness, the Goodness, 
 of God, and the perfect purity of the 
 Divine Law, are indeed amazing, and 
 afford to the unprejudiced mind an 
 overwhelming proof, that the writers 
 were divinely inspired. 
 
 180. We know, for instance, that be- 
 fore the Captivity — in Judah, as well as 
 in Israel — ^human sacrifices were freely 
 offered, — nay, that Jerusalem itself was 
 habitually profaned with the ' innocent 
 blood ' of firstborn children, who were 
 made to 'pass through' the fire, — in 
 other words, were burnt to death, —as 
 victims, in honour of the idol whom 
 they worshipped, Moloch or Baal. 
 
 But this strange fact is of so much 
 importance, and is so little considered 
 in judging of the moral and religious 
 state of Israel before the Captivity, that 
 it may be well to produce at once the 
 proofs of the truth of this statement. 
 
 181. Let the reader, then, consider 
 well the following passages. 
 
 * The children of Judah have done evil in 
 my sight, saith Jehovah : they have set their 
 abominations in the House which is called by 
 my Name, to pollute it. And they have huilt 
 the high places of Tophet, which is in the 
 valley of the son of Hinnom, to bum their 
 sons and their daughters in the fi/re, — which I 
 commanded them not, neither came it into 
 my heart.' Jer.vii.30,31. 
 
 ' They have forsaken me, and have estranged 
 this pla^je, and have burned incense iu it 
 unto other gods, whom neither they nor their 
 fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, 
 and limejUUd this place with the Hood of inno- 
 cents; they have built also the high places of 
 Baal, to bum their sons with fjre for hwmt- 
 offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, 
 nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.' 
 Jer.adx.4,5, 
 
 ' Tea, they sacrificed their sons and their 
 daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood, 
 the blood of their sons and of their daughters, 
 
 71 
 
 whom then sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan, 
 and the land was polluted with blood.' Ps.cvi. 
 37,38. 
 
 182. It is plain that iu the above 
 passages the phrase, 'to shed innocent 
 blood,' is used with express reference 
 to the sacrifice of young children ; and 
 it appears also Uiat the expression, 
 'pass through,' = ' pass through the 
 fire,' is only an euphemism for 'burning 
 aUve.' Thus we read 
 
 L.xviii.21, ' Thou shall not (let) make any 
 of thy seed pass through to Molech,' comp. 
 I;.xx.2, ' ■Whosoever he be of the children of 
 Israel . . . that giveth his seed unto Molech, he 
 shall surely be put to death : ' comp. also Jer. 
 xxxii.35, ' and they built the high places of 
 Baal, which are in the valley of the son of 
 Hinnom, to cause their sons and their danyhiers 
 to pass through unto Molech, which I com- 
 manded them not, neither came it into my 
 mind, that they should do this abomination, 
 to cause Judah to sin.* 
 
 D.xviii.9,10, 'Thou shalt not learn to do 
 after the abominations of those nations ; there 
 shall not be found among you any one that 
 maketh his son or his daughter to pais through 
 the fire:' comp. D.xii.31, 'Thou shalt not do 
 so unto Jehovah thy God : for every abomina- 
 tion to Jehovah, which He hateth, have they 
 done unto their gods ; for even their sons and 
 their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their 
 gods.' 
 
 And so we read of the king of Moab, 
 that in his distress — 
 
 ' He took his eldest sou, that should have 
 reigned in his stead, and offered him for a 
 burnt-offering upon the wall,' 2K.iu.27 ; 
 and of the people of Sepharvaim that, 
 
 ' They bumi their children in fire to Adram- 
 melech, and Anammelech, the gods of Sephar- 
 vaim,' 2E:.xvii.31. 
 
 183. So, too, the fact that the children 
 were actually sacrificed and bwnt to 
 death, — not merely dedicated to the 
 idol, as many suppose, — is plainly 
 shown by the following passages: — 
 
 • Are ye not children of transgression, a 
 seed of falsehood, enflaming yourselves with 
 idols under every green tree, slaying the children 
 in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks f ' 
 Is.lvii,4,5. 
 
 ' Moreover, thou hast taken thy sons and thy 
 daughters, whom thou hast home unto me, 
 and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be 
 devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small 
 matter, that thou hast slain my children, and 
 delivered them to cause them to pass through 
 for them f Bz.3ivi.30,2]. 
 
 * Tea, declare unto them their abominations, 
 that they have committed adultery, and blood 
 is in their hands, and with their idols have 
 they committed adultery, and have also caused 
 their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass 
 through for them to devour. . . . For when 
 they had stain their children to their idols, then 
 they came the same day into my Sanctuary 
 
78 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 to profane it ; and lo, thus have they done in 
 tlie midst of my House.' Ez.xxiii. 37,39. 
 
 184. From the above instances we 
 may see what is really meant by ' pass- 
 ing through the fire ' in other passages, 
 e.g. wliere it is said of Ahaz, 2K.xvi.3, — 
 
 ' He walked in tlie ways of the kings of Israel, 
 yea, and made his son to pass through thefire^ 
 according to the abominations of the heathen, 
 ■whom Jehovah cast out from before the chil- 
 dren of Israel ; ' 
 and of Manasseh, 2K.xxi.6 — 
 
 ' He made his son to pass through thejire ; ' 
 and of the people, 2K.XTii. 1 7 — 
 
 ' They caused tlieir sons and their daughters 
 to pass through the fire: ' 
 while of Josiah it is told 2K.xxiii.lO — 
 
 ' He demed Tophet, which is in the valley of 
 the children of Hinnom, that no man might 
 make his son or his daughter to pass through the 
 Jire to Molech' 
 
 185. It will be seen that Ahaz and 
 Manasseh are stated to have offered 
 each his son, — not his sons, — and so, in 
 the last passage, we have ' his son or 
 his daughter.' These expressions cor- 
 respond with the following, from which 
 it would seem that only the first-born 
 child, that 'openeth the womb,' whether 
 male or female, was thus oiFered : — 
 
 ' I polluted them in their own gifts, in that 
 they caused to pass through all that openeth the 
 womb, that I might make them desolate, to 
 the end that they might know that I am 
 Jehovah.' Ez.xx.26. 
 
 And from the following it would 
 appear that the practice continued even 
 after the Captivity : — 
 
 ' Wherefore say unto the House of Israel, 
 Thus saitli the Lord God, Are ye polluted 
 after the manner of your fathers, and commit 
 ye whoredom after their abominations ? For 
 when ye offer your gifts, when ye make pour 
 sons to pass through tlte fire, ye pollute your- 
 selves with your idols, even unto this day: and 
 shall I be enquired of by you, O House of 
 Israel?' Ez.xx.30,31. 
 
 186. From all the above instances it 
 is sufficiently plain that the Israelites, 
 like the nations around them, practised 
 habitually, in the days of the later 
 kings, the horrid rites of human sacri- 
 fice. And, when we also read, lK.xi.7 — 
 
 ' Then did Solomon build an high place for 
 Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the 
 hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, 
 the abomination of the children of Ammon ' — 
 it can scarcely be doubted that Solomon 
 too, connived, at all events, at the usual 
 rites, with which these gods were wor- 
 shipped, and among which are specially 
 reckoned, as we have seen, 2K.iu.27, 
 
 xxiii.lO, human sacnficet. We shall 
 find these observations of considerable 
 importance, as we advance further in 
 our critical enquiries. 
 
 187. But, for the present, it will 
 be enough to note that this was the 
 state of Judah and Israel, when the 
 great Prophets of the Old Testament 
 lived, and witnessed for God among 
 their people. "With such fearful prac- 
 tices, and all the kindred vices of 
 heathenism, the grossest impurities, 
 and most loathsome abominations, pre- 
 vailing amongst them, even in their 
 most sacred places, 2K.xiv.24, xxiii.7, 
 the language of Isaiah and Jeremiah, 
 breathing the spirit of holy fear and 
 trust and love, — of meek piety and 
 patient faith, and pure self-sacrificing 
 devotion to the cause of truth and 
 righteousness, — can only be regarded as 
 inspired and Divine. 
 
 188. We conclude with the following 
 very important words of Bishop Thiel- 
 WALL in his recent Charge, ^.123. 
 
 A great part of the events related in the Old 
 Testament has no more apparent connection with 
 our religion than those of Greek and Roman 
 history. . . . The history, so far as it is a 
 narrative of civil and political transactions, 
 has no essential connection with any religious 
 truth; and if it had been lost, though we 
 should have been left in ignorance of much 
 that we desired to know, ouif treasure of 
 Christian doctrine would have remained 
 whole and unimpaired. Tfis numbers, migra- 
 tions, wars, battles, conquests, and reverses, of 
 Israel, have nothing in common with the teach- 
 ing of Christ, with tlie way of salvation, with 
 tlie fruits of t/ie Spirit. They belong to a 
 totally different order of subjects. They are 
 not to be confoimded with the spiritual reve- 
 lation contained in the Old Testament, much 
 less with that fulness of grace and truth, 
 which came by Jesus Cln-ist. Whatever 
 knowledge we may obtain of them is, in a re- 
 ligious point of view, a matter of absolute 
 indiflerence to us; and if they were placed 
 on a level mth the saving truths of the 
 Gospel, they would gain nothing in intrinsic 
 dignity, but would only degrade that with 
 which they are thus associated. Such an as- 
 sociation may indeed exist in the minds of 
 pious and even learned men : but it is only by 
 means of an artificial chain of reasoning, 
 which does not carry conviction to all beside. 
 Such questions must be left to every oyie's 'private 
 judgment and feeling, which have the fullest 
 right to decide for kach, but not to impose their 
 decisions, as tlie dictates of an infallible authoritu 
 on the consciences of others. Ami attempt 'to 
 erect such facts into articles of faith, would he 
 fraught Willi danger of irreparable evil to the 
 Cliurch, as well as with immediate hurt to 
 numberless souls. 
 
PART II. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAT. piOB 
 
 Preface to PAirr II. 77 
 
 I. Signs op diffeiient Authors is the Pentateuch ... 87 
 
 II. The ELOHiBno and Jehotistio WiUTEns 92 
 
 in. The Histohioai. Books op the OtD Testament .... 94 
 
 IV. Signs op i.ateb Date in the Pentateuch 97 
 
 v. ADDmosAi Signs op later Date in the Pentateuch . . 101 
 
 \I. Eepbtitions in the Pentateuch 105 
 
 TH. Was Samuel the BLOiitsno Writer op the Pentateuch . . 108 
 
 VIII. iNTEODUOnON OP THE UAME JEHOVAH Ill 
 
 IS. The Derivation op the Na^ie Mohiah . . . . ^ . 115 
 
 X. The Names Elohm and Jehovah 119 
 
 XI. The Blohisiio PatLiis op David 122 
 
 XII. The Psalms op the Second Boos 125 
 
 XIIX. The Sixtt-bighth Psalm . . . • 128 
 
 XTV. The remaining Blohis'itc Psalms . 1 . • • • a 136 
 
 xy. The JEHOvisno Psalms considered .*..•. 139 
 
 XVI. The Jehovistio Names in the Boob op Judges . . • * 141 
 
 XVII. The JEHOvisno Names in the Books op Samuel . . .- 146 
 
 XVIII. CONCLL-DING EEMAEKS 150 
 
 Appendix > 1*9 
 
The Hebrew Scriptures I liave examined and apiireciated, as T would any othei* 
 writings of antiquity; and I have bluntly and honestly delivered my sentiments of 
 their merit and demerit, their beauties or imperfections, as becomes a free and 
 impartial examiner. I am well aware that this freedom will, by the many, be 
 considered as an audacious licence, and the cry of heresy ! iT\fideUty I trreligion ! will 
 resoimd from shore to shore. But my peaceful mind has been long prepared for, and 
 indeed accustomed to, such harsh Cerberean barkings ; and experience has made me 
 (not naturally insensible) callous to every injury, that ignorance or malice may have 
 in store for me, 
 
 I only enter my protest against downright misrepresentation and calumny. I 
 disclaim and spurn the imputation of irreligion and infidelity. I believe as much as 
 I find sufficient motives of credibility for believing : and without sufficient motives 
 of credibility there can be no rational belief. Indeed, the great mass of mankind 
 have no rational belief. The common Papist and the common Protestant are here on 
 almost equal terms. . . . 
 
 The common Papist rests his faith on the supposed wfallibility of his CJmrrh. . . . 
 He reads in his catechism, or is told by his catechist, that the Church cannot err in 
 what she teaches, and then he is told that this unerring Church is composed only of 
 those, who hold communion with the Bishop of Rome, and believe precisely as he, 
 and the Bishops who hold communion with him, believe. From that moment reason 
 is set aside ; authority usurps its place, and implicit faith is the necessary con- 
 sequence. ... He dares not doubt : for in his table of sins, which he is obliged 
 to confess, he finds doubting in matters of faith to be a grievous crime. 
 
 But, on the other hand, is the faith of the common Protestant better founded ? 
 He rests it on a Boole, called the Holy Bible, which he believes to be the infallible 
 Word of God. . . . He is taught to believe the Bible to be the infallible Word of 
 God, before he has read or can read it ; and he sits down to read it, with this pre- 
 possession in his mind, that he is reading the infallible Word of God. . . . His 
 belief, then, is as implicit as that of the common Papist, and his motives of believing 
 even less specious. 
 
 On the whole, then, I think, it may be laid down as an axiom, that the bulk of 
 Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, cannot be said to have a rational faith ; 
 because their motives of credibility are not rational motives, but the positive asser- 
 tions of an assumed authority, which they have never discussed, or durst not 
 question. Their religion is the fruit of unenlightened credulity.— Eev. Dr. A, 
 GEDDE3 (Rom. Cath. Priest), Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures. 1800, 
 volJ,p.v. 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET 11. 
 
 Ii will be seen that, in this Second Part of my work, the argu- 
 ment to prove the non-Mosaic and unhistorical character of the 
 Pentateuch is removed altogether from the ground on which the 
 question was discussed in Part I, and is treated upon other, chiefly 
 philological, grounds. My former hook has had, I believe, the effect 
 which I desired, having met with such a reception, generally, at 
 the hands of English readers, as satisfies me that there will now 
 exist a very general feeling among them, that there is certainly 
 something in the story of the Exodus, as recorded in the Pentateuch, 
 ivhich needs to he explained, and assures me that the requisite attention 
 will be given to the further examination of this important subject. 
 It was my earnest desire and hope to secure such attention from 
 the more thoughtful and intelligent of the Laity, without whose 
 aid nothing, I knew, could be done to deliver the Church of Eng- 
 land from the restraints of those time-honoured traditions, which 
 liave hitherto checked freedom of thought and speech among her 
 members, and sealed, to a very great extent, the mouths of her 
 doctors and clergy. But, in order to do this, it was absolutely 
 necessary to awaken their interest in the question to be discussed, 
 by treating it, in the first instance, in the most plain and popular 
 manner, and using chiefly such reasoning as would require in the 
 reader no extensive scholarship, no knowledge of the Hebrew 
 tongue or acquaintance with the higher departments of Biblical 
 criticism, — nothing but an honest, English, practical common- 
 sense, with a determination to hnow, if possible, the real truth upon 
 the points at issue, where the argument turns upon matters of 
 every-day life, lying completely within his cognisance, and, when 
 known, to embrace and avoio it. 
 
 I must now take a step forward with those, who are resolved to 
 investigate thoroughly the question which has been raised, as to 
 the real origin, age, and authorship of the different portions of the 
 Pentateuch. I shall still, .however, bear constantly in mind that 
 my book, to produce the effect which I desire, must be brought 
 within the grasp of an intelligent layman, though unskilled in 
 
78 PREFACE TO PAET H. 
 
 Hebrew learning. The difficulty, no doubt, is great, wbich must 
 be here encountered, if it is to satisfy at once the demands of the 
 scholar and the requirements of the unlearned. But the vital im- 
 portance of the subject imder consideration is such as to leave me 
 no alternative but to make this attempt ; and I can have no excuse 
 for sparing any labour, -which may help to simplify, as far as 
 possible, the unavoidable difficulties of the case. This will account 
 for the endeavour, which I have made throughout, to make each 
 step of the reasoning plain to the apprehension of the general 
 reader, though a critical scholar may, perhaps, complain that time 
 and space are occupied in clearing ground, which has been cleared 
 for him long ago, and in fortifying a position, which, he may think, 
 needs no defence. I have gone upon the principle of taking nothing 
 for granted, — of assuming that my reader will desire to see for him- 
 self every step of the argument, and to have each point cleared up 
 completely as he goes. Where, therefore, it has been necessary to 
 appeal to some knowledge of the Hebrew language, I have sought 
 by means of a translation, or in some other way, to supply the infor- 
 mation needed to produce conviction in the mind of the unlearned, — 
 sufficiently strong, at all events, to enable him to go on confidently 
 with the train of reasoning, which is followed throughout this 
 Second Part, if less certain than that which would arise from 
 actual acquaintance with the original tongue. 
 
 A few words may here be said in reply to my Reviewers. I 
 desire to acknowledge thankfully the hearty welcome and encou- 
 ragement, which my book has met with from many influential 
 quarters. And I am too well aVare of the pain, which its publi- 
 cation must have caused to many excellent persons, to be surprised 
 at receiving some hard words from others. I am sure, however, 
 that the truth will prevail at last, and I shall abide patiently and 
 hopefully the issue of the contest. 
 
 Some of my critics have complained that I have set forth nothing 
 new in the First Part, — that the objections, which I have stated, 
 had all been heard and answered before. I made, however, no 
 pretence of bringing forward novelties. The very point, indeed, of 
 my argument in Part I was this, — that these difficulties were not 
 new, though many of them were new to me, when I first began to 
 engage in these investigations, as, I believe, notwithstanding the 
 assertions of not a few of my critics, they were new to very many 
 of my readers, lay and clerical, when first laid before them. But 
 I expressly said that these contradictions, generally, had been 
 noticed by others, and must be noticed by every one who would 
 carefully study the Pentateuch, comparing one statement with 
 another. I said, also, that they have never been satisfactorily ex- 
 plained; and I say so still. Having carefully considered the 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET II. 7 a 
 
 various replies wHcli have hitherto been made to the First Part ol 
 my work, I find no occasion to modify any of its main conclusions ; 
 though I have gladly availed myself of suggestions, whether from 
 friends or opponents, which have enabled me to amend, and, not 
 unfrequently, to strengthen, some of my arguments. 
 
 But the line of reasoning pursued in the present portion of my work 
 is that, probably, which with many minds will produce a more de- 
 cided effect. It will be seen that all the elaborate attempts, which 
 have been made to ' explain away ' difficulties and ' reconcile ' 
 contradictions, are but as breath spent in vain, when the composite 
 character of the story of the Exodus is once distinctly recognised, 
 and the Pentateuch falls to pieces, as it were, in the reader's hands, 
 the different ages of the different writers being established beyond 
 a doubt, and clearly exhibited. It was, perhaps, my knowledge of 
 the overwhelming amount and weight of this evidence, and of 
 much more of the same kind to be produced hereafter, which led 
 me to express myself in the First Part with an assured confidence 
 "in the certainty of my conclusions, which some of my reviewers 
 iave condemned, as scarcely warranted, in their opinion, by the 
 premisses, even if they were admitted to be true. 
 
 Others, again, have said that such a work as mine was unneces- 
 sary, because in these days the notion of literal inspiration is 
 generally abandoned. ' It is but fighting, therefore, vsdth a shadow, 
 to attack the doctrine of Scripture infallibility, which is a thing of 
 the past, and has either already died away, or is fast dying away, 
 under the influence of modem science, and amidst the gi-owing 
 intelligence of the age.' But is this statement true ? I quoted in the 
 Introduction to Part I, words addressed to the junior members of 
 the University of Oxford by one of their select preachers. Could 
 any language have set forth more explicitly the duty of regarding 
 the Bible, as in its every ' sentence, word, syllable, letter — where 
 shall we stop ? '—infallible and Divine ? But many of that writer's 
 best friends, it is said, regret the delivery and publication of those 
 sermons. ' It is not to be supposed that such views are at all 
 widely entertained within the Church in the present day.' What, 
 then, shall be said of the following extracts? 
 
 The Eev. E. Gakbbii, M.A., ' Select Preacher and Boyle Lec- 
 turer,' in a sermon also preached before the University of Oxford, 
 Nov. 16, 1862, writes as follows:— 
 
 But tUa notion of an infanible BibU, and ot the historical truth of its cmUnis, is 
 no more. It is replied, than the mistake of a popular religion, of which the severer 
 criticism and more accurate habits of modem thought have undermmai the very 
 
 foundations It is the clear teaching of those doctrinal formulanea, to which we 
 
 of the Church of England have expressed our solemn assent, and no honest interpretatiori 
 
 "■^S:Sin"?LlwSlibiHi/of the scripture be a falsehood, the Church founded 
 UDon it must be a living fraud ; ... in all consistent reason, ve must accept lite 
 wholeoftheinspiredautographsorrqiectlhewhole,asfromendtoendunauthoritalma,id 
 
 worthless, p.lO. 
 
80 PEEFACE TO PART II. 
 
 The Kev. Dr. Baylee, the Principal of St. Aidan's College, 
 Birkenhead, which, as the Bishop of Wixchestee states, Charycj 
 1862, p. 23— 
 
 now contributes the twentieth part of the candidates for the whole English Church 
 Ministry, — 
 
 writes as follows in his Manual—' Batlee's Verbal Inspiration' — 
 published * chiefly for the use of the students of St. Aidan's College.' 
 
 The wbole Bible, as a revelation, is a declaration of the Mind of God towards His 
 creatures, on all the suJifects of which the Bible treats. p.G. 
 
 What I believe to be the truth is this,— the Bible is God's Word, in the same sense as 
 if He had made use of no human agent, hut had Himself spoken it, as we know He did 
 the Decalogue. p.ZZ. 
 
 Modem Science, with all its wonderful advances, has discovered not one single in- 
 accurate allusion to physical ti'uffi, in all the countless illustrations employed in Hie Bible. 
 pAI. 
 
 The Bible cannot be Jess than verbally inspired. Every word, every syllable, every 
 letter, is just what it would be, had God ^okenfrom heaven without any human interven- 
 ■ tion. i).48. 
 
 Every scientific statement is infallibly accurate, all its history and narrations of every 
 kind are without any inaccuracy. The words and phrases have a grammatical and phi- 
 lological accuracy, such as is possessed by no human composition, p.&i. 
 
 [We have similar language from the Bishop (Bickeestexh) of 
 RiPON" in his recent Charge, 1864 : see the Adv. to this edition. 
 
 Let me implore of you to aim at establishing the flock committed to your charge in 
 the well-grounded assurance, that the whole Bible is the infallible record of the Mind 
 and Will of Ood, conveyed by direct inspiration to holy men of old, who spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost. The Bible, like its Author, is pure, unchangeable, truth 
 — tj-uth without admixture of error. 
 
 And so says the Bishop (Grat) of Capetown, see my (so-called) 
 * Trial,';?. 390:— 
 
 The Church regards, and expects all its officers to regard, the Holy Scriptures as 
 teaching ^wre and simple truth.} 
 
 After considering the above facts, will anyone say tliat there is 
 no cause for the publication of such a work as mine ? 
 
 Again, very grave censure has been passed by some upon the lan- 
 guage which I have used, with reference to the manner in which the 
 ' books of Moses ' are referred to in the New Testament. On this 
 point I shall say no more at present, than that I believe that, in 
 presence of the plain facts of the case, I have supported the 
 orthodox faith by those suggestions, which I have made in the 
 Preface to Part I, in the onlij way in which it can be supported, 
 as far as this particular question is concerned. 
 
 I am, of course, aware that some serious questions are raised, 
 with respect to the popular views of Christianity, by the consider- 
 ation of the facts, which are here, as I believe, proved in reference 
 to the Pentateuch ; and many of my Reviewers, as well as some 
 private correspondents, have urged upon me the desirableness of 
 stating at once in what way the usual elements of Christian doc- 
 trine appear to be affected by the unhistorical character of the 
 Pentateuch. But, however I may wish to satisfy my own mind 
 upon this point, it is impossible to do so, till it is seen what residuum 
 of real fact is left behind, when the Pentateuch is thoroughly ex- 
 raained. This only I repeat once more, — whatever difficulties may 
 be raised by such criticism, yet the recognition of the gradual 
 
PEEFACE TO PART II. 81 
 
 growth of Jesus, as the Son of Man, in human knowledge and 
 science of aU kinds, such as that which concerns the question of 
 the age and authorship of the Pentateuch, is perfectly compa- 
 tihle with — rather, is absolutely required by — the most orthodox 
 faith in His Divinity, as the Eternal Son of God. And I believe 
 that this view of the case is far more reverent and becoming than 
 that which is so very commonly adopted, viz. that, knowing how the 
 case really stood. He yet adopted the popular language of the day, 
 and so left His countiymen and disciples in total ignorance of the 
 facts of history and criticism, of which He Himself was fully cog- 
 nisant, and by His silence, at all events — or even by direct state- 
 ments — confirmed their mistaken notions on so important a question. 
 
 But leaving these Replies and Reviews, most of which are by 
 anonymous authors, I am naturally most anxious to see what the 
 Bishops and Doctors of the Church of England will say upon the 
 subject of my book, and how they will act in the present emer- 
 gency. At the time when I write, only one of the English Bench 
 of Bishops, the Bishop of Rochester, has, as far as I am aware, 
 expressed himself at any length with reference to the present ques- 
 tion, And he has stated, in his published letter to the clergy of 
 his Diocese, that he is 'no Hebrew or German scholar,' and, there- 
 fore, being necessarily ignorant, at present, of the real facts of the 
 case, he can scarcely be regarded as a fair and competent judge in 
 the mattter. 
 
 The Bishop of Condon in his recent Charge— admirable in re- 
 spect of the liberal and charitable spirit which it breathes through- 
 out, — while saying that — 
 
 it would never do to lay down tliat a clergyman is bound not to inquire, — 
 and that — 
 
 we cannot for a moment admit any theory, whicli, teaclung that as clergymen they 
 were bound to an unquestioning adherence to the Church's standards, removes the 
 Clergy out of the category of inquiring honest men, thus robbing the Church of aU 
 that weight of testimony in favour of its doctrines, which is derived from the heart- 
 felt free adherence of so many of the most intelligent and best men of each genera- 
 tion, who have found their highest happiness as its ministers, — 
 
 and while further saying that — 
 
 a clergyman cannot altogether avoid such questions— he is called every day, in his 
 common occupations, to announce that he has an opinion on one side or the other of, 
 at least, some of them— he cannot, therefore, shut his eyes to them, — 
 
 yet adds that — 
 
 if such inquiry leads to &!*«,— and if the doubt ends in disbelief of the Church's 
 
 doctrines,- of course he win resign his ofBca as one of the Church's authorised 
 
 teachers. 
 
 Now let US consider what this leads to. Let us suppose a cler- 
 gyman to begin to 'inquire,' having a difficulty about the Deluge 
 put before him by some intelligent layman of his flock. If he does 
 this, he will assuredly soon learn that the results of geological 
 science forbid our believing in an Universal Deluge, such as the 
 Bible manifestly speaks of. He will find also that mathematical 
 
82 PEEFACE TO PAET II. 
 
 and phydcal science, as well as the plain texts of Scripture, equally 
 forbid our believing in &particdDAuge, sucb as some have supposed, 
 since that involves an Universal Mood. Rather, -without any appeal 
 to science at all, if only he allows himself toi 'think' upon the 
 subject, and to realise to his own mind the necessary conditions of 
 the supposed event, he will need only a common practical judgment 
 to convince him that the story, which is told in the book of Ge- 
 nesis, is utterly incredible. 
 
 It is extremely probable, then, that any such clergyman, if he 
 once begins to ' inquire,' must needs come very soon to doubt, and 
 before long to disbelieve, the literal historical truth of the Scripture 
 account of the Deluge. Rather, let me ask, does any intelligent 
 clergyman at this day — anyone who has allowed himself to ' think' 
 upon the subject, as he would think about any other recorded fact 
 of ancient history — really believe in the historical truth of that 
 story ? Do the Bishops and Doctors of the English Church believe 
 in it? If they do not, then do not these Divines, one and all, 
 ' disbelieve the Church's doctrine ' on this particular point, whilst 
 yet, in common with all their fellow-clergy, they use habitually 
 that solemn form of address to Almighty God in the Baptismal 
 Service, which expressly assumes the reality and historical truth- 
 fulness of the stoiy of the Noachian Deluge — 
 
 AlmigMy and everlasting God, ■who of thy great mercy didst save Noah and hi3 
 family in the Axk from perishing by water ? 
 
 It may, indeed, be said, ' There was a Deluge of some land or 
 other, and this is only a legendary reminiscence of it.' But the 
 Church Prayer-Book does not mean this. When those formularies 
 , were laid down, and the Clergy were bound by a solemn subscrip- 
 tion to declare their ' unfeigned assent and consent to all things 
 written in the Book of Common Prayer,' it was assuredly meant to 
 bind them to express an unfeigned belief in the story of the Deluge, 
 as it is told in these chapters of Genesis, and not to some imaginary 
 Flood of any Hnd, which anyone may choose at his pleasure to 
 substitute for it. Are, then, aU these — ^Prelates, as well as ordinary 
 Clergy — ^to resign at once their sacred offices, because they disbelieve 
 the Church's doctrine on this point P 
 
 But what are they to do under these circumstances — ^those, I 
 mean, who have their eyes open to the real facts of the cas6,and who 
 cannot bear to utter what they know to be untrue in the face of 
 God and the Congregation ? Many — ^perhaps, most— vdll get rid of 
 the difficulty, with satisfaction to their own minds in some way, by 
 falling back upon the notion above referred to, that the account in 
 Genesis is a legendary narrative, however incorrect and unhistorical, 
 of some real matter of fact in ancient days. Others will justify 
 themselves in still using such a form of Prayer, by considering that 
 they are acting in a merely official capacity, as ministers of the 
 
PREFACE TO PART II. 83 
 
 National Churcli, and administrators of tlie laws which the main 
 body of the Church has approved, and has not yet rescinded. 
 
 But what shall he said to those, who cannot conscientiously adopt 
 either of the above methods of relieving themselves from the bur- 
 den of the present difficulty, and yet feel it to be impossible to 
 continue any longer to use such words in a solemn address to the 
 Almighty ? I see no remedy for these, but to omit such words — 
 to disobey the law of the Chiu'ch on this point, and take the con- 
 sequences of the act. 
 
 Is not this the way by which, in England, all laws become dis- 
 used and practically abrogated, long before they are formally and 
 legally annulled P At this moment, how many are there of the 
 Clergy who never read the Athanasian Creed ? And how many 
 are there of the Bishops, who make no enquiry as to whether, or 
 not, their clergy do use this creed, — who do not therefore, compel 
 them to use it ? 
 
 And the circumstances of the times are such, that those, who 
 know the facts of the case, dare not be silent any longer, while yet 
 it is possible, by a timely recognition of the truth, and by adopting 
 wise and liberal measures suited to the present emergency, to save 
 the Church of England from the ruin which threatens her by the 
 depreciation of the standard of learning among the Clergy. It is a 
 fact well known that the ablest minds are being daily excluded 
 from her ministry, and men of inferior attainments, from St. Aidan's 
 and other similar institutions, admitted in large numbers to it — to 
 such an extent, indeed, that in 1861, according to the statement of 
 the Bishop of Winchester, out of 670 candidates for Holy orders, 
 considerably more than one-third, viz. 241, were 'Literates' — [a 
 phrase which, as the Bishop of St. David's has told us, ' often means 
 the same thing ' as ' illiterates']. It was only a question of time 
 whether these results of critical inquiry should be brought to the 
 knowledge of English Churchmen in this our own day or in the 
 days of the next generation. There is yet a season in which we 
 may work together, to open the barriers, which at present shut out 
 from the National Church so many men of learning and genius 
 and piety, who might be numbered among her strongest friends, 
 and to get rid of those stringent fetters of subscription, by which 
 the young men of promise, at each of our Universities, refuse any 
 longer to be bound. 
 
 It is our duty at such a time as this to speak out plainly what 
 we know, even though, in so doing, we should be charged with 
 disobeying the written law of the Church. More especially are 
 we bound to do so, when we know that her voice has for a long 
 time not been heard — that it cannot now be heard — that the 
 Church, as a Body, is not allowed to speak ; for no one can suppose 
 
8-1 PEEFACE TO PART II, 
 
 that tlie present Houses of Convocation, where the Clergy are most 
 imperfectly represented and the Laity not at all, can be regarded 
 as in any sense 'expressing the mind of the National Church. Her 
 hands, we know, are tied, and her whole frame cramped with for- 
 mulae of bygone days, which she once adopted, as suited to her 
 then state of development, but which she has now outgrown. But 
 we know also what her voice wmdd be, if she could only freely 
 utter it this day, as she did in the days of the Eeformation. We 
 are sure that she would bid her children ' buy the Tktjth' at all 
 cost, without respect to Church censures or formularies, — ^that, if 
 she could only now express her mind, and the whole spirit of her 
 teaching, her language would be in fuU accordance with those 
 words of one of her most distinguished modem prelates, (Arch- 
 bishop Whateit on Bacon's Essays, p. 10) : 
 
 He who propagates a delusion, and he who connives at it when already existing, 
 both alike tamper with truth. We must neither lead nor leave men to mistake 
 falsehood for truth. Not to undeceive, is to deceive. The giving, or not correcting, 
 false reasons for right conclusions, false grounds for right belief, false principles for 
 right practice, — the holding forth, or fostering, false consolations, false encourage- 
 ments, or false sanctions, or conniving at their being held forth, or believed, are all 
 pious frauds. This springs from, and it will foster and increase, a want of veneration 
 for Truth : it is an ajfront put on the ' Spirit of Truth.* 
 
 It is true, the above passage was probably not written with the 
 remotest idea of its being applied to the present controversy. It 
 was written, as we may suppose, with a more direct reference to 
 what the Archbishop considered to be our duty, as Members and 
 Ministers of a Protestant Church, in our relations with Romanism. 
 But not the less truly or forcibly — ^because undesignedly — does it 
 express the very spirit of Protestantism, the spirit of our National 
 Church. In such words as these we hear the very tone in which 
 she would speak to us now, if she could only make her voice to be 
 heard, and would exhort her children, and enjoin her Clergy, to 
 search after and to speak the Truth, since thus only can they be 
 true children and servants of God. And, indeed, the Bishop of 
 London, in his recent Charge, distinctly recognises free inquiry 
 after Truth, as the very principle of our Protestant Church : 
 
 As to/rre inquiry, what shall we do with it ? Shall we frown upon it, denounce 
 it, try to stifle it ? This will do no good, even if it be right. But after all we are 
 Protestants. We have been accustomed to speak a good deal of the right and duty 
 of private judgment. It was 6y the exercise 0/ this right, and the discharge of this duty, 
 that our fathers freed their and our souls from Home's time-honoured falsehoods. 
 
 If this be true, it is impossible to suppose that she would en- 
 courage and enjoin 'free inquiry' as a didy on the one hand, and, 
 on the other, check it in the veiy outset, by requiring that any of 
 her Clergy, who, in these days of progress in learning and science 
 of every kind, should arrive by means of such ' inquiry ' at any 
 conclusions difierent from those, which were thought right three 
 centuries ago, must at once abdicate their sacred fimctions, and go 
 out of her Ministry. 
 
 I assert, however, without fear of contradiction, that there are 
 
PREFACE TO PART II. 85 
 
 multitudes now of the more intelligent Clergy, who do not believe 
 in the historical truth of the Noachian Deluge, as recorded in the 
 book of Genesis. Yet did ever a layman hear his clergyman speak 
 out distinctly what he thought, and say plainly from the pulpit 
 what he himself believed, and what he would have them to believe, 
 on this point ? Did ever a Doctor or Bisliop of the Church do this 
 —at least, in the present day?. I doubt not that cases may be 
 found, where such 'plainness of speech' has been exercised by the 
 Clergy. But I appeal to the Laity, generally, with confidence. 
 Have you ever heard yoiu: Minister— able, earnest, excellent, as 
 you know him to be— tell out plainly to his people the truth which 
 he knows himself about these things ? Or if ilot to the congrega- 
 tion at large — for fear lest the ' ignorant and unlearned ' should 
 ' wrest it to their own destruction ' — has he ever told these things 
 to you in private, to you, men and women of education and intelli- 
 gence, — ^parents of families, teachers of youth, — and so helped you 
 to lay wisely from the first, in the minds of your children and 
 pupils, in order to meet the necessities of this age of advancing 
 science and ' free inquiry,' the foundation of a right understanding 
 in respect of these matters? As before, I doubt not that here 
 also exceptions may be found to the general rule. But is not the 
 caae notoriously otherwise in the vast majority of instances ? 
 
 But how can a clergyman be expected to indulge free thought, 
 on some of the most interesting and important questions of physical, 
 historical, and critical science, when he knows that, for arriving at 
 any conclusions on certain points of Biblical criticism, which con- 
 tradict the notions of our forefathers, living in days of comparative 
 darkness and ignorance in respect of all matters of scientific re- 
 search, he is in danger of being dragged into the Court of Arches, 
 and of being there ejected, or, if not ejected, at least suspended, 
 from his living, and saddled, it may be, with a crushing weight of 
 debt.'' Is it any wonder that a young man of University distinction 
 and intellectual activity, however ready he may be, for the love 
 of God and his fellow-men, to engage himself in the holy and 
 blessed, though in respect to this world's goods often ill-rewarded, 
 labours of the ministry of souls, should yet be fovmd unwilling to 
 subject himself to the ' tender mercies ' of such a system as this, 
 and so, perhaps, suddenly, in the middle of his life, — ^when the 
 fire and energy of youth are spent, and the day is too far gone for 
 him to begin work again, and devote his powers to the heavy toil 
 of masteiing the details of some new profession, (if even such a 
 profession were open to him, which by the present law of England 
 IS not the case,) — find himself deprived of the moderate competence 
 which he had earned by having ' spumed delights, and lived labo- 
 rious days,' and stripped at a stroke of all his means of livelihood, 
 as one of the pains and penalties of thinking ? 
 
86 PREFACE TO PAET II. 
 
 Thavefelt obliged to express dissentfrom one expression in the late 
 Charge of the Bishop of London. But I cannot deny myself the 
 satisfaction of quoting other words of the same Prelate, which 
 show how well he appreciated, at the time when he spoke them, 
 the special needs of the present day. 
 
 Wherever a general suspicion is engendered, however unfounded it may be, that 
 something is amiss in our system of religion, which from policy or cowardice we are 
 anxious to conceal, there hidden infidelity will make rapid progress, and many a man 
 of honest mind will in secret be tortured with anxiety, having no leisure to examine 
 for himself the diffJcultiea ho has heard of, and be distressed by a painful impression 
 that those, who ought to examine for him, are deliberately or unwittingly bandeil 
 together to mislead. Thus, as is usual, wherever men take upon themselves to act 
 against God's purposes, that very infidelity, the fear of which scared them from their 
 duty, will grow with tenfold vigour because they have neglected to perform it. 
 
 And here it seems well .to remark that the critical study of the Bible is more than 
 ever necessary to be encouraged now, from the particular circumstances of our own 
 age and country. Whatever may be thought of the honesty or policy of endeavouring 
 to conceal difiiculties and stifle inquiry formerly, the days, when such methods of 
 propping up the truth of God were possible, are at an end. . , . The old times, 
 with their mingled good and evil — the old ideas of the paternal duty of government 
 both in Church and State to lead the mass of men, as it were, blindfold, and to shut 
 up knowledge within the privileged caste of those who were thought likely to make a 
 good use of it, have passed. . . . The old state of things can never be brought 
 back. It is in our own generation and amid the men of our own generation — amid 
 their thoughts, bad as well as good, their questionings and doubtings and shallow 
 disputations, aa well as their energetic impatience of concealment and hatred of all 
 formalism, that God has placed the scene of our responsibilities ; and it is vain to 
 think that we can do any good amongst them by attempting to teach them on the 
 principles of a departed state of society, and not as their own characters and circum- 
 stances require. Dangers and Safegvards, p. 83-87. 
 
 Can we not trust God's Truth to take care of itself in this world ? 
 Must we seek, in our ignorant feeble way, to prop it up by legal 
 enactments, and fence it round by a system of fines and forfeitm-es 
 and Church anathemas, lest the rude step of some 'free inquirer' 
 should approach too near, and do some fatal injury to the Eternal 
 Truth of God ? Save we no faith in God, the Living Godf And 
 do we not believe that He himself is willing, and surely able as 
 willing, to protect his own honour and to keep in safety the souls 
 of His children, and, amidst the conflict of opinion that will ever 
 be waged in this world in the search after truth, — which may be 
 vehement but need not be uncharitable, — to maintain in each 
 humble, prayerful, heart the essential substance of that Truth 
 which ' maketh wise unto salvation ' P Surely, as a friend writes — 
 
 To suppose that we can serve God's cause by shutting our eyes to the light, much 
 more to suppose that we can serve it by asserting that we see what we do not see, 
 because we wish to see it, is simply intellectual Atheism. 
 
 And when men declare, as some have done, that there can be no 
 belief in God, no Religion, no laws binding on the conscience, no 
 principles to purify the heart, no authoritative sanction for the 
 most sacred duties of private, social, and public life, unless these 
 old stories of the Pentateuch are received with implicit faith— at 
 least, in their main features— as literally and historically true, is not 
 this really, in however disguised a form, the very depth of Infidelity ? 
 
 J. W. NATAL. 
 London: Jan. 24, 1863. 
 
PART II. 
 
 THE AGE AND AUTHOESHIP OF THE 
 PENTATEUCH CONSn)EEED. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 SIGNS OF DUTEEENT ATITHOKS IN THE 
 PENTATEUCH. 
 
 1 89. In the First Part of this work we 
 have been considering some of the most 
 remarkable inconsistencies and contra- 
 dictory statements, which a closer 
 examination of the Pentateuch, as it 
 now lies before us, reveals to the atten- 
 tive reader. Most of these are of an 
 arithrrftical character, and some of 
 them might be greatly diminished, or, 
 perhaps, got rid of altogether, if it 
 were possible to suppose that the 
 number of warriors in the wilderness 
 was only 6,000, instead of 600,000. 
 But the story itself, as we have seen, 
 forbids such a supposition. Not only 
 is the number of warriors, ' 600,000 
 on foot that were men, besides children,' 
 given in round numbers in E.xii.37, 
 S'.xi.21, but it is stated more accu- 
 rately, as 603,550, thrice over in dif- 
 ferent forms, in E.xxxviii.25-28. And, 
 besides this, the numbers of the armed 
 men of the separate tribes are given on 
 two different occasions, and the sum- 
 total of these twelve tribe-numbers is, 
 in the one case, 603,550, N.i.46, and in 
 the other, 601,730, N.xxvi.51 ; and, on 
 the first occasion, the separate tribe- 
 numbers and the sum-total are again, 
 a second time, accurately repeated in 
 N.ii, — nay, are repeated oareftiUy twice 
 over, for the three tribes constituting 
 each of the four camps are numbered 
 and summed up together separately, 
 and then these four sum-totals or camp- 
 
 numbers, 186,400, 151,450, 108,100, 
 157,600, are added together, and make 
 up the same total as before, 603,550. 
 
 190. These numbers, indeed, are all 
 round numbers, each ending with a 
 cipher ; and it has been suggested that 
 there may be a clerical error, extend- 
 ing through the whole set of them, and 
 that, if these ciphers be struck out, 
 (which is equivalent to dividing all the 
 numbers by ten,) the sum-total vrill be 
 reduced to a more manageable number. 
 But, in fact, most of the difficulties 
 will remain really as formidable, with 
 a camp of 60,000 warriors, that is, with 
 a population of 200,000 or 300,000 
 people, as with the larger camp of 
 600,000. We should only have to sub- 
 stitute in our imaginations the town of 
 LivEEPooL or Manchester for the 
 city of London. Could the total 
 number be reduced to about 6,000, 
 some of the difficulties might, indeed, 
 as we have said, disappear, but, ever, 
 then, not all of them ; for we should 
 still have to imagine a town of 20,000 
 or 30,000 people, as Oxfohd or Cam- 
 bridge. But the separate numbers of 
 the tribes in N.i,ii,xxvi, forbid this last 
 reduction, as the numbers do not all 
 consist of so many round hundreds. 
 
 191. Besides, the number of the 
 Levites is expressly fixed by its rela- 
 tion to the number of firsiborns, 
 N.iii.39-51. These latter were 22,273, 
 a nimiber without a cipher, which 
 cannot, therefore, be 'reduced'; and 
 it is stated that these exceeded the 
 male Levites by 273, v.46, for each 
 
SIGNS OF DnTESfiNT AUTHORS 
 
 one of wliom a tax of five shekels was 
 paid, and the whole number of shekels 
 so paid is reckoned, t;.50, as 1,365. 
 Hence there can be no room for sup- 
 posing that the whole number of male 
 Levites was any other than 22,000, 
 N.iii.39, numbered separately as Ger- 
 shonites, 7,500, i;.22, Kohathites, 8,600, 
 ■K.28, Meraiites, 6,200, «.34,— the sum 
 of which three numbers, however, is 
 actually 22,300 instead of 22,000, 
 where we have a remarkable inaccuracy, 
 which has to be ' reconciled.' And of 
 these, we are toW, 8,680, N.iv.48, — -nz. 
 Kohathites, 2,750, «>.36, Gershonites, 
 2,630, vAO, Merarites, 3,200,* i).44,— 
 were ' from thirty years old and up- 
 ward, even unto fifty years old,' repre- 
 senting (say) 10,000 above the age of 
 twenty, at which the census of the 
 other tribes was taken, N.i.3. But, if 
 there were 10,000 Levites ' from twenty 
 years old and upward,' it is absurd to 
 imagine that there were only 6,000 
 warriors of aU the twelve tribes, and 
 very unreasonable to suppose that 
 there were only 60,000, even if the 
 diiiiculties of the story would really be 
 relieved by such a supposition. 
 
 192. If, therefore, it were still 
 possible to believe that a whole series 
 of numbers, such as the tribe-numbers 
 and totals, had been systematically 
 corrupted and exaggerated in conse- 
 quence of clerical errors, yet it would 
 then foUow that all the above particu- 
 lars about the Levites and first-borns 
 must have been a pure invention of a 
 later date, implying that the interpo- 
 lating inventor had no particular rever- 
 ence for the original text. Besides 
 which, the ' corruption ' of the text, re- 
 quired to produce the numbers of the 
 
 * The whole number of the mole Kohath- 
 ites, as above given, 8,600, is more than me- 
 fourih as large again as that of the Merarites, 
 6,200 ; whereas the converse is the case ■\\ith 
 the adults, since the number of Merarite 
 males from thirty to fifty years old, 3,200, is 
 just one-sixth as large again as that of the 
 Kohathites, 2,750. Besides this palpable in- 
 consistency, the Merarite males ' from thirty 
 to fifty' are more thanAay the whole number 
 of males of that family, ' from a month old 
 and upward,' contrary to all the data of 
 modem statistical science. It is obvious that, 
 ^vlth all the appearance of extreme accuracy, 
 there is no real historical truth in any of these 
 numbers. 
 
 Pentateuch, must have been of a very 
 peculiar kind. Por not only are the 
 twelve tribe-numbers in the first two 
 instances, N.i,ii, so fixed that their 
 sums, taken in diflferent ways, give 
 accurately the first sum-total, 603,550, 
 but in the third case, N.xxvi, they are 
 all changed, — each being either in- 
 creased or diminished by a certain 
 amount, — yet so judiciously changed, 
 that the result is obtained, which was 
 apparently desired, of having the to- 
 tal nearly the same as before, 601,730. 
 It is very plain that this Hebrew 
 author, whoever he may have been, 
 was not so ignorant and helpless in 
 matters of arithmetic as some have 
 imagined. 
 
 193. We are thus, it would seem, 
 compelled to adhere to the Scripture 
 number of 600,000 warriors, as that 
 which was intended by the sacred 
 writer, whatever contradictions and 
 impossibilities it introduces into the 
 story ; and, therefore, these ' arith- 
 metical ' arguments are reaUy of the 
 greatest importance, in the considera- 
 tion of the present question. And they 
 have this special advantage, that they 
 can be clearly stated in definite terms, 
 so as to be readUy appreciated \)tj 
 practical men, and are not mixedup with 
 those other difficulties of a moral 
 nature, which, however strongly felt 
 by very many, are not realised in the 
 same degree by all devout readers of 
 the Bible. 
 
 194. Thus, then, whatever process of 
 reduction may be applicable to the im- 
 mense Hebrew numbers which occur 
 everywhere throughout the Bible, — 
 (and my belief is that these numbers 
 are merely set down loosely at random, 
 in oriental fashion, not exaggerated 
 systematically by mistake, or design, 
 or accident, as some suppose,) — yet 
 with regard to these particular num- 
 bers in the story of the Exodus, there 
 can be no mistake, and no uncertainty. 
 There can be no uncertainty, because 
 the number, 603,550, is checked in 
 so .many ways, by so many different 
 statements, — especially by the state- 
 ment of the amount of silver contri- 
 buted for the Tabernacle,* — that there 
 
 * Suppose it were stated on authority that 
 
IN THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 can be no doubt as to the number of 
 warriors actually intended by the 
 writer of the story. There can be no 
 mistake — at least, if Moses wrote the 
 st-ory of the Exodus; because, we are 
 told, he himself personally took a care- 
 ful census of the people, the results of 
 which, for each tribe, are set down 
 exactly in N.i, repeated carefully in 
 N.ii, and again, with variations, in 
 N.xxvi. 
 
 195. It remains only to suppose that 
 Moses did not write these chapters at 
 all, (as we believe,) or did not write 
 them as they now stand, so that these 
 passages, and all the others, where 
 these numbers are involved, have been 
 systematically^ and deliberately falsified 
 in later days, which would indicate 
 that they were not regarded as so un- 
 speakably sacred and divine, as to be 
 secured from such ' free handling.' I 
 confidently challenge investigation on 
 this point ; and I eaU upon any, who 
 are prepared to maintain the possibility 
 of the story being true, although these 
 pumbers may be wrong, not merely to 
 suggest that the numbers Tnay have to be 
 reduced, but to point out in what way it 
 is conceivable that they can be reduced, 
 so as to get rid of the contradictions 
 and impossibilities which they involve, 
 without, at the same time, introducing 
 other difficulties into the question, as 
 grave as any which the numbers them- 
 selves occasion. Until this is done, I 
 must assume that I have proved above 
 that such a reduction is impossible, 
 without sacrificing some of the most 
 essential details of the story, and, in 
 fact, its general historical character. 
 
 196. But the reasonings, adduced in 
 Part I, are by no means all arithmeti- 
 cal, though they are all of a practical 
 character. 
 
 Thus, for instance, it requires only 
 the application of common sense, and 
 no arithmetical calculation whatever, 
 
 the receipts at the International Exhibition 
 for ten days, at a shilling a head, amounted to 
 30,177«.10«., would any one doubt that It 
 follows as a necessary consequence that the 
 number of persons, who entered on those 
 days at a shilling a head, was 603,560 ? This 
 is exactly the inference to be drawn from 
 E.xxxTlii.25-28. 
 
 to see that even a small boiy of men, 
 women, and children, must have needed 
 water during the long interval of nearly 
 forty years between the miracles at 
 Horeb, E.xvii, and Meribah, N.xx. 
 They wanted also firewood for daily 
 use, and must have certainly perished, 
 if exposed to the bitter cold of the 
 desert of Sinai during the severe winter 
 months without such constant supplies 
 of fuel, as were not to be obtained in 
 that desolate waste. Further, their 
 sheep and cattle, however few in 
 number, must have needed grass, as 
 well as water; and the rules for en- 
 suring perfect cleanliness, by carry- 
 ing out the refuse of the sacrifices, and 
 all their rubbish, &c., to a place with- 
 out the camp, would have been futilp, 
 if laid down for the population of an 
 ordinary English town, as well as for 
 a much greater multitude. Nor would 
 a small body of such fugitives any 
 more than a large one, have been able 
 to carry tents with them ; and it would 
 have been just as impossible for ten 
 poor men, as for ten thousand, to have 
 supplied themselves easily •^'lih pigeons 
 or turtle-doves under Sinai. 
 
 197. Once more, therefore, I repeat, 
 it is vain to argue that the story is in 
 the main correct and historically true, 
 though marred by the mistake, so com- 
 mon among Eastern writers, of exag- 
 gerating, perhaps a hundredfold, the 
 numbers of the people, and placing 
 this large body under laws, and in 
 circumstances, which were only possi- 
 ble for a small community. In fact, 
 we have only ■ to realise for once to 
 our minds the idea of a city, as large 
 and as populous as modern London, 
 set down, if that be conceivable _ or 
 possible, in the midst of the Sinaitie 
 waste, — and set down, not at one place 
 only in that Desert, but at more than 
 forty different places, N.xxxiii,_ if so 
 many places can be imagined in the 
 wilderness, where such a city could 
 have been planted, — without any kind 
 of drainage, with no supplies of water, 
 for purposes of cooking or cleanliness, 
 brought round, as in a modem town, 
 by running streams or waterpipes to 
 the neighbourhood, at least, of every 
 house, — nay. with no supplies of water 
 
90 
 
 SIGNS OF DIFFERENT AUTHORS 
 
 at all, except on three special occasions, 
 — ^with no supplies of fuel for warmth, 
 during the frost and snow of forty 
 winters,— even allowing that the mira- 
 culous 'manna,' together with the flesh 
 of their flocks and herds, (which must 
 have been supported, however, without 
 water or pasturage), may have sufficed 
 for all their wants as food, allowing 
 also that they needed no salt, nor re- 
 quired fresh stores of raiment, for — 
 
 * Their clothes waxed not old upon them, 
 nor their shoes upon their feet,' D.xxix.5 — 
 —we have only, I repeat, once for all, 
 deliberately to face this question, and 
 to try to realise to ourselves such a 
 state of things as this, and we shall 
 see the utter impossibility of receiving 
 any longer this story of the Exodus as 
 literally and historically true, whatever 
 real facts may lie at the basis of the 
 narrative. 
 
 198. The one only cause, indeed, for 
 astonishment is this — not that a Bishop 
 of the Church of England should now 
 be stating that impossibility — but that 
 it should be stated now, by a Bishop of 
 the Church, as far as I am aware, for 
 the first time — that such a belief should 
 have been so long acquiesced in by mul- 
 titudes, both of the Clergy and the Laity, 
 with an unquestioning, unreasoning, 
 credulity, — that up to this very hour, 
 in this enlightened age of free thought, 
 in this highly-civilised land, so many 
 persons of liberal educatiou actually 
 still receive this story in all its details 
 — at least, in all its main details— as 
 historical matter-of-fact, and insist on 
 the paramount duty of believing in the 
 account of the Exodus, among the 
 'things necessary to salvation' con- 
 tained in the Bible, as essential to an 
 orthodox faith in the True and Living 
 God. Still more strange is it, and sad, 
 that our Missionaries have been sent to 
 teach in our name such a faith as this 
 to the heathen, and to require them 
 also, on the pain of eternal perdition, 
 to believe that this history, in all its 
 parts, with all its contradictions and 
 impossibilities, has the seal of Divine 
 Authority set upon itj as truly as those 
 words, D.vi.5i — 
 
 * Thou Shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
 ail thy might,' 
 
 199. Now, however, that we are able 
 to feel that we stand on sure ground, 
 when we assert that these boots, what- 
 ever be their value, with whatever pious 
 purpose they were written, and what- 
 ever excellent lessons they may teach, 
 are not removed from the sphere of 
 critical enquiry, by possessing any such 
 Divine infallibility, as has been usually 
 ascribed to them, there is a multitude 
 of other difficulties, inconsistencies, 
 and impossibilities,- which will be at 
 once apparent, if we examine carefully 
 the Scripture narrative, and no longer 
 suffer our eyes to be blinded, by the 
 mere force of habit, to the actual 
 meaning of the words which we read. 
 Without, at present, stopping to con- 
 sider those, which arise from examining 
 the story of the Creation and the Fall, 
 as given in the first chapters of Genesis, 
 by the light of modem Science, we will 
 here notice the contradictions, which 
 exist between the first account of the 
 Creation in G.i.l-ii.3, and the second 
 account in G.ii.4-25. 
 
 200. Upon this latter passage I will 
 quote the words of Kalisch ( Genesis, 
 p.83), one of the most able modern 
 commentators on the Hebrew text of 
 Genesis : — 
 
 The Creation was finished. We might 
 imagine that we see the blooming meadows, 
 the finny tribes of the sea, and the number- 
 less beasts of the field, and, in the midst of 
 all this beauty and life, man with his help- 
 mate, as princes and sovereigns. But more : 
 the Creation was not only finished; it had 
 been approved of also in all its parts. And, as 
 the symbol of the perfect completion of His 
 task, God was represented to rest, and to bless 
 that day, which marked the conclusion of his 
 labouTB. 
 
 But now the narrative seems not only to 
 pause, but to go backward. The grand and 
 powerful climax seems at once broken off, 
 and a languid repetition appears to follow. 
 Another cosmogony is introduced, which, to 
 complete the perplexity, is, in many impor- 
 tant features, in direct contradiction to the 
 former. 
 
 It would be dishonesty to conceal these dif- 
 ficulties. It would be weakmindedness and 
 cowardice. It would be flight. Instead of com- 
 bat. It would be an ignoble retreat, instead 
 of victory. We confess there is an apparent 
 dissonance. 
 
 201. The following are some of the 
 more noticeable points of difference 
 between the two cosmogonies, which 
 we shall consider more at length here- 
 after. 
 
IN THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 91 
 
 (i) In the first, tl.e earth emerges from the 
 waters, and is, therefore, saturated with mois- 
 ture, i.9,10. 
 
 In the second, the * whole f acoof the ground ' 
 requires to he moistened, ii.6, 
 
 (ii) In the first, the birds and beasts are 
 created before man, i.20,24,36. 
 
 In the seconij, man is created "before the 
 birds and beasts, ii.7,19. 
 
 (iii) In the first, man and woman are 
 created together, as the closing and completing 
 work of the whole Creation,— created also, as 
 is evidently implied, in the same kind of way, 
 to he the complement of one another; and, 
 thus created, they are blessed together, i.28. 
 
 In the second, the beasts and birds are 
 created between the man and the woman, — 
 the man being made first, of the dust of the 
 ground, — then the beasts and the birds, to 
 which the man gives names, — and, after all 
 this, the woman being made last, out of one 
 of the man's ribs, hut merely as a helpmate 
 for the man. ii.7,8,16,22. 
 
 202. The fact is, that the second ac- 
 count of the Creation, ii.4-25, together 
 with the story of the Pall, iii. 1-24, is 
 the work of a different writer altogether 
 from him who wrote the first, i.l-ii.3. 
 
 The proof of this will be given in due 
 time, as we proceed. But the fact itself 
 is suggested at once by the circumstance 
 , that, throughout the first narrative, the 
 Creator is always spoken of by the 
 name Elohim, God ; whereas, through- 
 out the second acount, as well as in the 
 story of the Fall, He is always called 
 Jehovah Elohim, Lokd God, except 
 in iii. 1,3, 5, where the writer seems to 
 abstain, for some reason, from placing 
 the name 'Jehovah' in the mouth of 
 the Serpent. 
 
 This accounts naturally for the above 
 contradictions. It seems that, by some 
 means, the productions of two pens 
 have been here united,, without refer- 
 ence to their inconsistencies. 
 
 203. A similar contradiction exists 
 also in the account of the Deluge, as it 
 now stands in the Bible. 
 
 Thus in G.vi.l?,20, we read:— 
 
 * Of every living thing of all flesh, two of 
 every sort shalt thon bring into the Ark, to 
 keep them alive with thee ; they shall be male 
 and female. Of /amis after their kind, and of 
 cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing 
 of the earth after his kind, ftm of every sort 
 shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.' 
 
 But in G.vii.2,3, the command is 
 given thus : — 
 
 * Of every clean beast thou shalt take to 
 thee by levem, the male and his female, and 
 of beasts that are not clean by two, the male 
 and his female; of foals, also of the air by 
 
 sevens, the male and the female, to keep seed 
 alive upon the face of all the earth.' 
 
 It is impossible to reconcile the con- 
 tradiction here observed, in the numbers 
 of living creatures to be taken into the 
 Ark, especially in the case of the fowls, 
 of which one pair of every kind is to 
 be taken, according to the first direction, 
 and seven pairs, according to the second. 
 
 204. But here alsp the matter explains 
 itself easily, when we observe that the 
 former passage is by the hand of that 
 writer, who uses only Elohim, and the 
 latter passage by the other writer, who 
 uses Jehovah, as well as Elohim, 
 though he does not now use the com- 
 pound phrase, Jehovah Elohim. It 
 did not occur to the one, — whether 
 aware, or not, of the distinction be- 
 tween clean and unclean beasts, — to 
 make any provision for sacrificing im- 
 mediately after the Flood. The lattfer 
 bethinks himself of the necessity of a 
 sacrifice, G.viii.20, when Noah and his 
 family come out of the Ark ; and he 
 provides, therefore, the mystical num- 
 ber of seven pairs of clean beasts and 
 fowls for that purpose. 
 
 205. We shall produce hereafter the 
 full proof of the above statement. For 
 the present it will be suificient to quote . 
 the following remarks of the Bev. J. 
 J. S. Pbeowne, B.D., Vice-Prindpal 
 of St. David's College, Lampeter, and 
 Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of 
 NoRvncH, in Smith's Dictionary of the 
 Bible, II.p.774-8. 
 
 If, without any theory casting- its shadow 
 upon us, and without any fear of consequences . 
 before our eyes, we read thoughtfully only the 
 Book of Genesis, we can hardly escape the ' 
 conviction, that it partakes of the nature of a 
 conipilation. It has, indeed, a unity of plan, 
 a coherence of parts, a shapeliness and an 
 order, which satisfy us that, as it stands, it is 
 the creation of a single mind. But it bears 
 also manifest traces of having been hasetf 
 upon an earlier work ; and that earlier work 
 itself seems to have had embedded in it frag- 
 ments of still more ancient documents. . . . 
 
 At the very opening of the book, peculiari- 
 ties of style and manner are discernible, 
 which can scarcely escape the notice of a care- 
 ful reader even of a translation, — which cer- 
 tainly are no sooner pointed out, than we are 
 compelled to admit their existence. The, lan- 
 guage of chap,i.l-ii,3, (where the first chapter 
 ought to have been made to end) , is totally un- 
 like that of the section which follows, ii.4-iii, 
 23. Thislast is not onlydistinguished by a pe- 
 culiar use of t]io Bivine Names,— for here, and 
 nowhere else in the whole Pentateuch, except 
 
 G 
 
92 
 
 THE ELOmSTIC AND JEHOVISTIC WAITERS. 
 
 E.ix.30, liave we the combination ol the two, 
 Jehovah-Elohim— £in other places we have 
 such expressions as, * Jehovah, the Elohim of 
 Heaven,' Gen.xxiv.3,7, 'Jehovah, the Elohim 
 of my mastra",' v.l2,2t,42,4S, &c. but not 
 * Jehovah-Elohim ' simply],— but also by a 
 mode of expression peculiar to itself. lb is 
 also remarkable for preserving an account of 
 the Creation, distinct from that contained in 
 the first chapter. It may be said, indeed, that 
 this account does not contradict the former 
 [?], and might, therefore, have proceeded 
 from, the same pen. But, fully admitting that 
 there is no contradiction, the representation 
 is so different, that it is far more natural to 
 contdude that it was derived from some other, 
 though not antagonistic, source. . . . Still, 
 in any case, it cannot be denied that this 
 second account has the character of a supple- 
 ment,— th&t it is designed, if not to correct, 
 at least to explain, the other. And this fact 
 taken in connection with the peculiarities of 
 the phraseology, and the use of the Divine 
 Names in the same section, is quite sufficient 
 to justify the supposition, that we have here 
 an instance, not of independent narrative, but 
 of compilation from different sources. . , . 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ELOHISTIC AND reHOYISTlC WBITERS. 
 
 206. It will be seen hereafter, when 
 we proceed to examine critically the 
 whole book of Genesis, that throughout 
 the book the two different hands, which 
 we have already detected, are distinctly 
 visible ; and the recognition of this fact 
 will explain at once a number of 
 strange and otherwise unaccountable 
 contradictions and repetitions. One of 
 these two writers, it will be found, is 
 distinguished by the constant use of the 
 word Elohim, the other by the inter- 
 mixture with it of the name Jehovah, 
 which two words appear as God and 
 Lord, (not 'Lord,' Adonai,) in our 
 English translation. Sometimes the 
 latter writer uses only Jehovah as the 
 Divine Name for considerable intervals, 
 as the other uses only Elohim : thus, in 
 i.l-ii.3 we have only Elohim, 35 times, 
 in xxiv, only Jehovah, 19 times; and 
 though in this latter chapter the word 
 Elohim is used, it is not employed as 
 the Name of the Deity, but He is de- 
 scribed as ' Jehovah, the Elohim of 
 Heaven,' ».3,7, ' Jehovah, the Elohim of 
 Earth,' v.Z, 'Jehovah, the Elohim of 
 my master,' ».12,27,42,48. 
 
 207. Hence these two parts of the 
 book are generally known as the Elo- 
 histic and Jehovistic portions. And, 
 
 besides the peculiarity in the use of 
 the Divine Name, there are, as might 
 be expected, certain other marked dif- 
 ferences in style and language, which 
 are found to distinguish the two writers. 
 Of these two documents, as Mr. 
 Peeownb observes, f there can be no 
 doubt that the Elohistic is the earlier' : 
 and we shall show in Part IV. that the 
 Elohistic passages, which occur in the 
 First Eleven Chapters of Genesis, form 
 when put together, a complete, con- 
 nected, whole. Whether the Jehovistio 
 passages are also portions of an inde- 
 pendent narrative, which have been 
 extracted by some later compiler, and 
 blended by him with the Elohistic story, 
 or whether the Jehovist himself, instead 
 of writing a connected history, merely 
 interpolated his own additions into the 
 original work of the Elohist, is a ques- 
 tion which must be reserved for further 
 consideration at a more advanced stage 
 of this work. 
 
 208. For the present we content our- 
 selves with producing the following aA- 
 ditional quotation from Mr. Peeowne. 
 
 We come now to a more ample examination 
 of the question, as to the distinctive use of 
 the Divine Name. Is it a fact, as Aj^truc 
 was the first to sm^nise, that this early por- 
 tion of the Pentateuch, extending from G-.i 
 to E.vi, does contain two original documents, 
 characterised by their separate use of the 
 Divine Karnes, and by other peculiarities of 
 style ? Of this there can be no reasonable 
 doubt. We do find, — not only scattered verses, 
 but — ^whole sections thus characterised. . . . 
 And we find, moreover, that in connection 
 with this use of the Divine Names, there is also 
 a distinctive and characteristic phraseology. 
 The style and idiom of the Jehovah sections 
 is not the same as the style and idiom of the 
 Elohim sections. . , . The alleged design in 
 the use of the Divine Names will not bear a 
 close examination. How, onthe hypothesisof 
 HKNGgTENBERG, Can we satisfactorily account 
 for its being said in vi.2'J, ' Thus did Noah, 
 according to all that God {Elohim) commanded 
 him, so did he,' and in vii.5, ' and Noah did 
 according to all that Jehovah commanded 
 him,' while again, in vii.9, Elohim occurs in 
 the same phrase ? The elaborate ingenuity, by 
 means of which Hekgstenberg, Dhechslbb, 
 and others, attempt to account for the specific 
 use of the several names in these instances, 
 is, in fact, its own refutation. The stem 
 constraint of a theory could alone have sug- 
 gested it. . . . 
 
 Still this phenomenon of the distinct use of 
 the Divine Names would scarcely of itself 
 prove the point, that there are two docu- 
 ments which form the groundwork of the 
 existing Pentateuch. But there is other 
 evidence pointing the same way : — 
 
THE ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC WEITERS. 
 
 93 
 
 (i) We find, for instance, the same story 
 told by the two writers, and their two ac- 
 counts manifestly interwoven ; and we find 
 also certain favourite words and phrases, 
 which distinguish the one writer from the 
 other, . . . 
 
 (ii) But, again, we find that these dupli- 
 cate narratives are characterised by pecuHar 
 modes of expresssion, and that, generally, the 
 lElohistic and Jehovistic sections have their 
 own distinct and individual colouring. 
 
 209. It may be well here, before we 
 proceed further, to insert a few quota- 
 tions from Dr. Kubtz, which will show 
 the gradual progress of an honcfst mind, 
 in the investigation of the matter now 
 before us, from the most decided ortho- 
 doxy at starting, to a very considerable 
 change of opinion at the conclusion of 
 his work. 
 
 I qubte first from Tol.i.p.56-65. 
 It is a historical fact, better established 
 than any other in antiquarian research, that 
 the Pentateucii is the basis and the necessary 
 preliminary of all Old Testament history and 
 literature, both of which — and with them 
 Christianity as their fruit and perfection — 
 would resemble a tree without roots, a river 
 without a source, or a building which, instead 
 of resting on a firm foundation, was suspended 
 In the air, if the composition of the Penta- 
 teuch were relegated to a later period in 
 Jewish history. The references to the Penta- 
 teuch, occurring in the history and literature 
 of the Old Testament, are so numerous and 
 comprehensive, and they bear on so many dif- 
 ferent points, that we cannot even rest satis- 
 fied with the admission, which Bertheau 
 himself would readily make, that many por- 
 tions of the present Pentateuch date, indeed, 
 from the time of Moses, but were only collated 
 and elaborated by a later editor. We go fur- 
 ther, and maintain that the whole PeniateucJi 
 —its five boolffi, and all the portions of which 
 it is at present made up — is the basis and the 
 necessary antecedent of the history of the 
 Jewish people, commonwealth, religion, man- 
 ners, and literature. 
 
 But this principle may be held in a narrower, 
 and in a wider, acceptation of it. In the 
 former case, the whole Pentateuch, as at present 
 existing, is held to he from the pen of Moses, — 
 of course, regarding the passage D.xxxii.48- 
 XKxiv as a later addition and conclusion, 
 written by a contemporary who survived 
 Moses. In the latter case, it is thought that 
 only certain portions of the Pentateuch had 
 been written by Moses himself, and the rest 
 by his contemporaries or survivors (collabora- 
 tors or disciples), either at his own behest, 
 and under his own superintendence, or, at 
 least, in the same spirit, and that with them 
 the sections and fragments, left by Moses 
 himself, had been combined into one work. 
 The latter opinion baa of late been advocated 
 by Delitzsch ; the former, (which is also t he ol d 
 one,) has latterly been setforthby Hengsten- 
 
 EERO BANKE, HAVEItNICK,DRECHSLER,WELTfl, 
 
 Hbrbst, Scholz, Keil, and the Author, in 
 his ' Contribution towards proving and de- 
 
 fending the Unity of the Pentateuch,* and in 
 his * Unity of Genesis.' The same view will he 
 maintained and defended hy the Author in the 
 Introduction which is soon to appear. 
 
 We have not indeed at any time concealed 
 from ourselves or from others that, not- 
 withstanding the able works of Eengsten- 
 BERG, Banee, I]|keohsi:er, and our own at- 
 tempts, the argument, which upholds the 
 original unilgr of Genesis, and of the Penta- 
 teuch, was not wholly free from difflcul- 
 ties. . . . 
 
 But, despite these difiiculties, which at the 
 time we knew we had not perfectly removed, 
 we thought with a good conscience to main- 
 tain and defend the unity of Genesis. 
 
 210. Ij^X us now see how Kuetz is 
 obliged to modify his view, when he 
 has reached the end of his work, 
 iii.p.502-522. 
 
 We cannot conceal the fact that our exam- 
 ination of the middle books of the Pentateuch 
 has brought us more and more to the con- 
 clusion, that several authors have taken part in 
 the composition of the Pentateuch. . . . 
 
 In the historical portions of the Pentateuch, 
 we must admit the existence of two distinct 
 sources, which may be described as the 
 • groundwork ' and the * supplementary work.' 
 Whether the groundwork consisted originally 
 of historical matter only, or contained from 
 the very outset the groups of laws in the 
 central books, — whether it was written by the 
 author who compiled the central groups of 
 laws, or not, — these, and other questions of a 
 similar character, we are utterly unable to 
 determine. . . . 
 
 In addition to the fact, that it is not stated 
 that the whole of the Pentateuch was written 
 by Moses himself, but only a (considerable) 
 portion of it, throughout those portions which 
 are not so attested we constantly meet with 
 data, which are apparently altogether irrecon- 
 cilable with such a view. Notwithstanding 
 all that Havernick, Hengstenberg, Welte, 
 and ' Keil, have said to the contrary, (and 
 what they have said is to a g^eat extent very 
 important and convincing), it appears to be 
 indisputable, that, even apart from D.xxxiv, 
 there are portions of the Pentateuch which are 
 post-Mosaic, or, atcUleoerUs^Non-Mosaic, though 
 by far the largest part of what critics adduce 
 does not come under this head at all. 
 
 211. It will be seen that Dr. Kurtz 
 has been compelled, b^ a conscientious 
 regard to the truth, to abandon a great 
 part of the ground which he once 
 maintained, and which is still main- 
 tained so strenuously by those who 
 cling to the ordinary view. He still 
 believes, however, that large portions 
 of the Pentateuch were written down 
 by Moses himself, and the * groups of 
 laws in the central books,' by the 
 * direction of Moses/ at all events, and 
 ' under his supervision.' And, in fact, 
 it has been argued, 'Admitting the 
 
94 TlIE HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 existence of the Elohistic and Jehoyistic 
 doeumenta of the book of Genesis, 
 why may not Moses have had before 
 him those narratives, which describe 
 the patriarchal times before and after 
 the Flood, handed down, perhaps, 
 traditionally from a hoar antiquity, 
 from Adam to Noah, from Shem to 
 Abraham, &c. and at last, by some 
 unknown hand, reduced to writing ? 
 And why may he not have combined 
 them into one record, as we now find 
 them in this book, as a preface to his 
 own personal narrative, contained in 
 the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Num- 
 bers, and Deuteronomy ? ' 
 
 212. We reply as follows. 
 
 (i) These accounts in Grenesis conflict with 
 each other, as we have seen akeady in the 
 case of the accounts of the Creation and the 
 Deluge. Hence, even if Moses compiled the 
 book of Genesis from documents already ex- 
 isting, he was not under infallible guidance in 
 the selection of his materials. 
 
 .(ii) The difference of style, &c. which 
 shows a difference of authorship, is not con- 
 fined to the book of Q-enesis, as we shall see, 
 and as Ktjbtz himself implies, when he says 
 that the examination of the middle books of 
 the Pentateuch has * compelled him more and 
 more to the conclusion, that several authors 
 have taken part in its composition.' 
 
 (iii) And, in fact, the phenomena, which we 
 have considered in Part I, are irreconcilable 
 with the notion that these middle books, fi'om 
 which they are all with one exception taken, 
 can have been written by one sole author, — 
 much less by Moses, or any contemporary of 
 Moses, who had actually been concerned in 
 the transactions described. 
 
 (iv) It is only thus that the character of 
 Moses himself is relieved from the charges of 
 absurd exaggerations and self-contradictions, 
 which would otherwise be fastened upon him, 
 if we were obliged to believe that he wrote 
 every portion of the Pentateuch ; whereas 
 they are due to the circumstance, that in the 
 Pentateuch we have a composite work, made 
 up of different writings, of different persons 
 in different ages, from which cause such con- 
 tradictions would naturally and inevitably 
 arise, — more especially when we take into ac- 
 count the difficulty of harmonising completely 
 aU parts of such a work, which would be 
 caused by the mere material construction and 
 other peculiarities of a roll of Hebrew manu- 
 script. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IHE HISTORICAL EOOJCS OF THE OLD 
 TESTAMENT. 
 
 213. We must next endeavour to 
 arrive at some clearer notion, from an 
 examination of the books of the Penta- 
 teuch themselves, as to the time when. 
 
 the persons by whom, and the circum- 
 stances under which, they were most 
 probably written. And, in pursuing 
 our investigations, we need not now be 
 restrained by any fear of trespassing 
 upon divine and holy ground. The 
 writers of these books, whatever pious 
 intentions they may have had in com- 
 posing them, cannot now be regarded 
 as having been under such constant 
 infallible supernatural guidance, as the 
 traditionary doctrine of Scripture In- 
 spiration supposes. We are at liberty, 
 therefore, to draw such inferences from 
 the matter which lies before us, and to 
 make such conjectures, as we should be 
 readily allowed to do, in a, critical 
 examination of any other ancient 
 writings. 
 
 214. Here, then, first, it should be 
 noted that the books of tlie Pentateuch 
 are never ascribed to Moses in the in- 
 scriptions of Hebrew manuscripts, or 
 in printed copies of the Hebrew Bible. 
 Nor are they even styled the 'Books 
 of Moses' in the Greek Septuagint or 
 Latin Vulgate, but only in our modern 
 translations, after the example of many 
 eminent Fathers of the Church, who, 
 with the exception of Jehome, and, 
 perhaps, Okigen, were, one and all of 
 them, very little acquainted with the 
 Hebrew language, and still less with its 
 criticism. But, in fact, these very titles, 
 ' Books of Moses,' • Book of Joshua,' 
 may mean only 'Books about Moses 
 and Joshua,' and do not at all imply 
 that the Books in question were sup- 
 posed to have been written by Moses 
 and Joshua. We might as well infer 
 from their titles that the 'Book of 
 Judges' was written by the Judges, 
 and the 'Book of Ruth' by Ruth. 
 
 215. Again, it is probable that the 
 Pentateuch existed originally not as 
 Jive books, but as one. Bishop Tomiinb 
 writes : — 
 
 Though Gfenesis, Exodus, levitious, Num- 
 bers, Deuteronomy, stood as separate books in 
 the private copies, used by the Jews in the 
 time of Josephus, they were written by their 
 author, Moses, in one continued work, and 
 still remain in that form in the public copies 
 readintheJewishsynagogues. Itisnotknown 
 when the division into five books took place. 
 But, probably, it was first adopted in the 
 Septuagint Version (B.C. 277), as the Title?, 
 prefixed to the different books, are of Greek 
 
THE HISTOEICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 95 
 Fathers » seem to have attached some 
 belief. Here Ezra is introduced as 
 saying, «.21,22, — 
 
 ■Thy law is burnt; therefore no man 
 knoweth the things that are done of Thee, or 
 the works that shall begin. But, if I have 
 found grace before Thee, send the Holy Ghost 
 into me, and I shall write all that hath been 
 done in the world since the beginning, wliich 
 were written in Thy Law, that men may find 
 Thy path, and that they, which live in the 
 latter days, may live.* 
 
 And Ezra says that his prayer was 
 heard, and he received a command, to 
 retire into a private place with five 
 men, 'ready to write swiftly,' and 
 ' many box-tables to write upon.' 
 
 * So I took the five men, as He commanded 
 me, and we went into the field, and remained 
 there. And the next day, behold, ^ voice 
 called me, saying, Esdras, open thy month, 
 and drink that I give thee to drink. Then 
 opened I my mouth, and, behold, He reached 
 me a full cup, which was full as it were with 
 water, but the colour of it was like fire. And 
 I took it, and drank ; and, when I had drunk 
 of it, my heart uttered understanding, and 
 wisdom grew in my breast, for my spirit 
 strengthened my memory ; and my mouth 
 was opened, and shut no more. The Highest 
 gave understanding unto the five men, and they 
 wrote the wonderful visions of the night that 
 were told, which they knew not ; and they sat 
 forty days, and they wrote in the dfty, and at 
 night they ate breaid.* d.37-42. 
 
 218. In the Pentateuch and book of 
 Joshua we find recorded the history of 
 mankind, with special reference to its 
 bearing upon the Hebrew people, in 
 one continuous narrative, with only one 
 considerable break, (viz. of about 215 
 years (109) between the end of Genesis 
 and the beginning of Exodus,) until the 
 death of Joshua, after the Hebrew 
 tribes were settled, according to the 
 story, in the possession of the promised 
 land of Canaan. 
 
 flerivation. The beginnings of Exodus, Levi- 
 ticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, are very 
 abrupt, and plainly show that these books 
 were formerly joined on to Genesis. 
 
 Notwithstanding the support given 
 to the above conjecture, as to the time 
 when the whole work was divided into 
 five books, by the fact that each book 
 is now called by a Greek name, there 
 is reason for believing that the di' 
 vision may have been made at a 
 much earlier date, when the Jews had 
 returned from Babylon, and their 
 Sacred Books were collected and set 
 in order by Ezra about B.C. 450. 
 
 216. For we have an instance of 
 similar quintuple division in the 
 Fsalms, which also consist of five 
 books, each ending vpith a Doxology, 
 xli.l3,lxxii.l8, 19, lxxxix.52, cvi.48, cl.6, 
 or, rather, the whole of Ps.cl may be 
 "regarded as a closing Doxology. Now, 
 that the whole collection of Psalms, as 
 it now stands, — or, rather, to the end 
 of Book IV, — existed before the time 
 of the composition of the Book of 
 Chronicles, is indicated by the fact, 
 that in lCh.xvi.7-36, we have a 
 Psa!m ascribed to David, which is evi- 
 dently made up of portions of different 
 Psalms of Book IV. This will appear 
 plainly by comparing v.8-12 with 
 Ps.ev.1-16, 11.23-33 with Ps.xcvi, v.Zi 
 withPs.cvi.l,u35,36,withPs.evi.47,48, 
 which last two verses are the Doxology 
 at the end of Book IV, so that Book 
 IV must then have been completed, 
 and closed up as a separate collection. 
 Hence it follows that, if the Book of 
 Chronicles was composed, (as almost 
 all Commentators of all classes main- 
 tain), at an age earlier than that of the 
 LXX, this division of the Psalms must 
 have existed previously to the Greek 
 translation ; and it is very possible 
 that the 'quintuple division, both of 
 the Psalms and of the Pentateuch, 
 may have been made in the time of 
 Ezra. 
 
 217. And, indeed, that something of 
 importance was done by Ezra in re- 
 tditing a,n<\. copying the. Saxrei Books, 
 seems to be affirmed by a very strong 
 tradition among the Jews, and especi- 
 ally by the curious apocryphal story in 
 ZEsdr.xiv, to which Jeeome and other 
 
 * • Whether you choose to say that Moses 
 was the author of the Pentateuch or Esdrag 
 the renewer of that work, I have no objection.' 
 JER. Hebr.cS, 
 
 The earlier Fathers, Clemens Alex, and 
 IHEN^US speak yet more positively : — 
 
 ' And, when the Scriptures had been da 
 stroyed in the Captivity of Nebuchadnezzar, 
 in the times of Artaxerxes the king of the 
 Persians, Esdras the Levlte the Priest, having 
 become Inspired, renewed Again and produced 
 prophetically all the ancient Scriptures.' 
 Clem. Alex. J3tromJ,XKn.l43, 
 
 Then, in the time of Artaxerxes, the king 
 of the Persians, He inspired Esdras the Priest 
 of the tribe of Levi, to set in order again all 
 the words of the former Prophets, and resT^ro 
 to the people the legislatiun by Mose^t^' li;::x. 
 iii.2^. 
 
96 THE HISTOEICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 The history of the people is con- 
 tinued in the books of Judges, Ruth, 
 Samuel, and Kings, through the reigns 
 of the different kings, into the middle 
 of the Babylonish Captivity, the last 
 notice in the book of Kings being that 
 ' in the seven and thirtieth year of the 
 captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah,' 
 that is, about twenty-seven years after 
 the destruction of Jerusalem, — 
 
 ' EvU-Merodach, the king of Babylon, in 
 the year that he began to reign, did lift up 
 the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of 
 prison ; and he spake kindly to him, and set 
 his throne above the throne of the kings that 
 ■were with liim in Babylon, and changed his 
 prison-garments ; and he did eat bread con- 
 tinually before him all the days of his life. 
 And his allowance was a continual allowance 
 given hiTTi of the king, a daily rate for every 
 day, all the daps of his life.' 2K.xxv.27-30. 
 
 219. We have no occasion at present 
 to consider more particularly the age 
 of each of these books. It will be 
 sufficient to observe that the last por- 
 tion of the book of Kings must have 
 been written, as the words italicised in 
 the above text seem to indicate, after 
 the death of Jehoiachin. But Evil- 
 Merodach reigned but two years, and 
 came to the throne b.o.561. Hence 
 this portion must have been written 
 after b.c.560, which date is twenty- 
 eight years after the Captivity, b.o.588, 
 and twenty-four years before the decree 
 of Cyrus for the return of the Jews, 
 B.C.536. 
 
 It is very possible, therefore, and, 
 from the full details given in 2K.xxv, 
 it seems not at all improbable, that 
 this part of the story, and, perhaps, the 
 account of the last two or three reigns, 
 may have been written by an actual 
 eye-witness, who had himself taken 
 part in the proceedings, and shared in 
 the sorrows, of the time. 
 
 220. The books of Chronicles, how- 
 ever, which, after giving a series of 
 genealogical tables, go over much the 
 same ground as the books of Samuel 
 and Kings, and often in the very same 
 words, were unquestionably written at 
 a much later date. We may arrive at 
 some certain conclusions, as to the time 
 at which these books were written, from 
 the following considerations. 
 
 (i) In lCh.iii. 17-21 we have the fol- 
 lowing genealogy, Jeconiah, Assir, 
 
 Pedaiah, Zerubbabel, .Hananiah, Pela- 
 tiah; so that this book was written 
 after the birth of Zerubbabel' s grandson^ 
 and Zerubbabel was the leader of the 
 expedition, which returned to Jerusalem 
 after the decree of Cyrus, B.c.536. 
 
 (ii) Again in lCh.xxix.7 we find the 
 Persian coin, Daric, referred to fami- 
 liarly, as if it had been long in use 
 among the Jews. They 'gave for 
 the service of the House of God five 
 thousand talents and ten thousand 
 drams, Heb. darics.' This coin, how- 
 ever, could not have been freely em- 
 ployed among the Jews till some time 
 after its first introduction, which is 
 supposed to have been in the reign of 
 Darius Hystaspes, B.o.521-488. It ap- 
 pears, therefore, that the Jews must 
 have been for some time under Persian 
 government, before these books could 
 have been written. 
 
 221. Hence there are many who 
 ascribe the composition of the Chroni- 
 cles to Ezra, who arrived at Jerusalem 
 B.C.456. Thus ToMiiNE writes : — 
 
 The books of Chronicles are generally, and 
 with much probability, attributed: to Ezra, 
 whose book, which bears his name, is written 
 with a similar style of expression, au^ appears 
 to be a continuation of them, 
 
 Bather, the books of Chronicles are 
 probably due to the very same hand, 
 which wrote the two books of Ezra 
 and Nehemiah. And the writer, from 
 the special interest which he jshows 
 on all matters which concern the Le- 
 vites, and from the great length at 
 which he gives the genealogies of the 
 Priestly and Levitical families, and, 
 especially, of the Levitical singers of 
 the time of David, was, in all prolaa- 
 bility, himself a Priest or Levite,-rit 
 would rather seem, a Levite chorister* 
 
 ■who lived after the time of Nehemiah, 
 B.C.409, or even, it may be, so late 
 (223) as about b.c.332. 
 
 222. Por our present purpose, how- 
 
 ' The Chronicler treats of the Levitical 
 cJioristers and doorkeepers,iti the following pass- 
 ages, lCh.Ti.16, &o. l!i:.14^29. xv.16-24,27,28, 
 3rri.4Hl2, xxiii.6, xxv, X3cvi.l',12-19, 2Ch.v.l2, 
 &o. vii.6, viii.14, xx.19,21, xxiii.4,13,18, &o. 
 xxix.25-28,30, xxx.21, &o. xxxi.2,11-18, xxxiv. 
 12,13, XXXT.15. This array of passages indi- 
 cates his partiality for these bodies, and (as 
 an examination of them will show) especially 
 for the former. 
 
SIGNS OF LATER DATE 
 ever, it is sufiScient to observe that the 
 author of the book of Chronicles must 
 have been, to all appearance, a Friest or 
 Lmte, who wrote not before b.o.400, 
 about two centuries after the Captivity, 
 B.C.588, and six hundred and fifty years 
 after David came to the throne, B.C. 1055. 
 
 This must be borne in mind, when 
 we come to consider the peculiarities of 
 this book, and the points in which the 
 narrative differs from, and often contra- 
 dicts, the facts recorded in the books of 
 Samuel and Kings. We have already- 
 had occasion to point out some of its 
 inaccuracies ; and we shall see, as we 
 proceed, further reason for believing 
 that the Chronicler's statements, when 
 not supported by other evidence, are 
 not certainly to be relied on. 
 
 223. The books of Ezra and Nehe- 
 miah cannot, of course, have been 
 written till after the transactions in 
 which these eminent persons took so 
 active a part. Ezra arrived at Jerusa- 
 lem B.C.466, and Nehemiah's last act 
 of reformation was in b.c.409. But in 
 Neh.xii.ll we have given the genealogy 
 of Jaddua, who was High-Priest in 
 Alexander's time, b.c.332. 
 
 The book of Esther refers to events 
 in the reign of Ahasuerus, supposed by 
 some to have been the same Artaxerxes 
 by whom Ezra was sent to Jerusalem, 
 but more probably his father Xerxes, 
 who reigned in Persia from E.c.486 to 
 B.C. 465, from which we see the earliest 
 date at which this book could have 
 been written. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 SIGNS OF LATER DATE IN THE 
 PENTATEUCH. 
 
 224. FEOMthephenomenaconsidered 
 in Part I it is rather inferred, than 
 proved, that the account of the Exodus, 
 generally, as narrated in the Pentateuch, 
 could not have been written by Moses, or 
 by any one of his contemporaries. The 
 following instances will tend to confirm 
 the above conclusion, by showing plainly 
 that large portions, at all events, of the 
 Pentateuch, and with it, also, of the 
 book of Joshua, were written at a much 
 later date than the ago of Moses and 
 the Exodus. 
 
 IN THE PENTATEUCH. 97 
 
 225. (i) In E.XXX.13, xxxviii.24,25, 
 
 26, as already remarked, we have men- 
 tion made of a ' shekel after the shekel 
 of the Sanctuary,' or, as some render 
 the words, a 'sacred shekel,' before 
 there was, according to the story, any 
 Sanctuary in existence, or any sacred 
 system established in Israel. This ap- 
 pears to be an oversight, — aa is also the 
 command to sacrifice 'turtle-doves or 
 young pigeons ' in L.xiv.22, with express 
 reference to thiir life in the wilderness, 
 — arising li-om a writer in a later age 
 employing inadvertently an expression, 
 which was in common use in his own 
 days, and forgetting the circumstances 
 of the times which he was describing. 
 
 226. These passages show also plainly 
 the unhistorioal character of the narra- 
 tive, since in the first and last of them 
 the phrases in question are put into the 
 mouth of Jehovah Himself. The story, 
 therefore, could not have been written 
 by Moses, or by one of his age, unless 
 it be supposed that such a writer could 
 be guilty of a deliberate intention to 
 deceive. But it is quite conceivable 
 that a pious writer of later days, (When 
 the Tabernacle or the Temple was 
 standing,) might have inserted such 
 passages in a narrative already existing, 
 which had been composed as a work of 
 devout imagination, in the attempt to 
 reproduce, from the fioating legends of 
 the time, the early history of the 
 Hebrew tribes, for the instruction of an 
 ignorant people. 
 
 227. (ii) * And Jehovah turned amiglitystron(t 
 west-wind which took away the locusts, and cast 
 them into the Red Sea,' E.x.19. 
 
 For west-wind the original Hebrew 
 of this passage has wind of the sea, 
 that is, of course, the Mediterranean 
 Sea, from which westerly winds blew 
 over the land of Canaan, but not over 
 Egypt. This expression, obviously, 
 could not have been familiarly used in 
 this way, till some time after the people 
 were settled in the land of Canaan, 
 when they would naturally employ the 
 phrases, 'wind of the sea,' 'seaward,' 
 to express ' west- wind,' ' westward,' 
 lK.vii.25, lCh.ix.24, 2Ch.iv.4, though 
 they had also other ways of expressing 
 the west, Jo.xxiii.4, lCh.xii.l5, Is.xlv.6. 
 
98 SIGNS OF LATER DATE 
 
 It is erident that neither Moaes, nor 
 one of his age, could have invented 
 this form of expression, either while 
 wandering in the wilderness, or even 
 when, in the last year, according to the 
 story, they had reached the borders of 
 the promised land, and the Mediter- 
 ranean lay then actually to the west of 
 their position. Still less could he have 
 used the phrase ' wind of the sea ' to 
 express a westerly/ wind, with reference 
 to an event occurring in the land of 
 Egypt, where the Mediterranean lay 
 to the north, and the Eed Sea to the 
 east. And the same expression occurs 
 in many other places of the Pentateuch, 
 as G.xii.8, xiii.l4, xxviii.l4, E.sxvi.22, 
 27, xxvii.l2, xxxvi.27,32, N.ii.18, iii. 
 23, xi.31, xxxiv.6, xxxv.6, D.i.7, iii.27, 
 xxxiii.23. 
 
 228. It may, perhaps, be said that the 
 Hebrews retained their own language, 
 and their old forms of expression, after 
 they went down to Egypt, and so used 
 mechanically, as it were, the word ' sea' 
 for 'west,' though so inappropriate. 
 If this were the onlt/ difficulty to be 
 met, such an explanation might be 
 admitted. As it is, the phenomenon in 
 question is but one of many like 
 phenomena, very strongly suggestive 
 of a later date of composition for those 
 parts, at least, of the narrative in 
 which they occur. So, for instance, in 
 G.xli.6,23,27, the casi-wind is spoken 
 of as a parc/nng-wini, which it cer- 
 tainly is in Palestine, but not in 
 Egypt, where the east-wind is the most 
 wholesome and refreshing breeze that 
 blows, and the west and south-west 
 winds are dreaded as parching winds. 
 
 229. (iii) * Thou shall put the blessing upon 
 Mount Gerizim,and the curse upon Mount Ebal. 
 Are theynot on the other side Jordan , by the way 
 where t/te sun goelh down in the land of the 
 Canaanites, which dwell in the c/iampaign over 
 against Cttgal, beside the plains of Morehl' 
 D.xi.29,30. 
 
 These words are attributed to Moses. 
 It must seem strange, however, that 
 Moses, who had never been in the land 
 of Canaan, should know all these 
 places, and be able to describe them 
 so accurately. But it is still more 
 strange that he should know the name 
 Gilaal, which, according to the book of 
 Joshua, was not ffivin to the place till 
 
 IN THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 the people had been circumcised after 
 
 entering the land of Canaan :* — 
 
 • And Jehovah said unto Joshua, Tliis day 
 have I rolled away the reproach of Kg3i)t 
 from off you. "Wherefore the name of the 
 place is called Gilgal unto this day.' Jo.v.9. 
 
 It is plain that the text in Deuter- 
 onomy wa-s written at a later age, when 
 these places and their names were 
 familiarly known. 
 
 230. (iv) 'And pursued them unio Dan.' 
 G.xiv.U. 
 
 ' Jehovah shewed him, {Moses) all the land of 
 Gilead unto Ban.' D.xxxvf.l. 
 
 But the place was not named Dan 
 till long after the time of Moses. For 
 we read, — 
 
 ' The coasts of the children of Dan went out 
 too little for them. Therefore the children of 
 Dan went up to fight against Leshem, and 
 took it, and smote it with the edge of thn 
 sword, and possessed it, and dwelt therein, 
 and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan, 
 their father.' Jo.xix.47. 
 
 Further, in Ju.xviii we have the 
 whole transaction detailed at length. 
 And at the end it is added, w.29, 
 
 * And they called the name of the city, Dan, 
 after the name of Dan their father ; howbeit, 
 the name of the city was Laish at the first.* 
 
 231. Now, as we are told in w.l of this 
 chapter, that these events took place 
 when ' there was no king in Israel, 
 and ' every man did that which was 
 right in his own eyes,' xxi.26, they 
 must have occurred, not only after the 
 death of Moses, but after the death of 
 Joshua. Hence the book of Joshua, of 
 which the chapter, xix, from which the 
 above quotation is made, is an integral 
 portion, could not have been written 
 by Joshua. 
 
 232. A fortiori, the narratives in 
 Genesis and Deuteronomy, where refer- 
 ences are made to this place, and 
 where the name, Dan, occurs, not as the 
 mere modern representative of an older 
 name, (as ' Bela, which is Zoar,' 'the 
 vale of Siddim, which is the Salt Sea,' 
 &c. G.xiv.2.3,) — ^in which case it might 
 have been explained as being possibly 
 a note, inserted by a later writer — but 
 as a substantial part of the very body 
 of the story, cannot have been written 
 by Moses, or by any contemporary of 
 
 • It has been said that theGilgalmentionert 
 in Deut.xi.30 must have been a difCerent 
 Gilgal from that which Joshua named. But 
 see this theory examined at length aud dis- 
 proved in Part III./..l(;o-j. 
 
SIGNS OF LATEE DATE IN THE PENTATEUCH, 
 
 99 
 
 233. KuETZ admits the force of this 
 argument, and says, iii.^.622 : 
 
 In i.ji.216 I adopted Henqstenbeeo's ex- 
 planation that tlie Dan of G'.xlv.l4 and 
 l).zxxiT.1 was the same as the Dan-Jaan 
 of 2S.xxiv.6, and denoted a very different 
 place from the ancient Laish, But a closer 
 examination has convinced me that the 
 very same Dan is alluded to in the Penta- 
 teuch and 2 Samuel, as in Jo.xlx.'j;? and Ju. 
 3mii.29. 
 
 234. (v) 'And these are the kings that reigned 
 in the land of Edam, h^ore there reigned any 
 king aeerthe children of IsraeL' Gr.xxxvi.31. 
 
 The phrase, 'before there reigned any 
 king over the children of Israel,' is here 
 used in such a way as to imply that 
 one king, at least, had reigned, or was 
 reigning, over ' the children of Israel,' 
 — that is, apparently, not over one of 
 the separate kingdoms of Judah or 
 Israel, but over tie united people, — at 
 the time when it was written. In other 
 words, it could not have been written 
 before the time of Samuel. 
 
 235. (vi) ^Beforetime in Israel, when a man 
 went to inquire of God, ihus he spake, * Come 
 and let us goto the Seer'; for he, that is now 
 called a Prophet (Kabi), was b^oretime called 
 a Seer (Eoeh).' lS.ix.9. 
 
 This being the case, it is remarkable 
 that, throughout the Pentateuch and the 
 books of Joshua and Judges, the word 
 Soeh is never once used, but always 
 Nabi. Prom this it follows that those 
 portions of these books, which contain 
 this later word, — as Gr.xxT, E.vii.l, 
 XV.20, N.xi.29, xii.6, D.xiii.1,3,6, xviii. 
 15,18,20,22, xxxiv.lO, Ju.iv.4,vi.8,— 
 can hardly have been written before the 
 days of Samuel. In that age the word 
 Nabi may have been known, and em- 
 ployed by some, though Boeh was, it 
 seems, the word in popular use. But 
 in still older times, as those of Moses 
 and Joshua, we should expect to find 
 Boeh generally employed, and certainly 
 not Nabi eseclutsively. Nay, in 2S.xv.27, 
 we read, ' The Kng said also unto 
 Zadok the Priest, Art not thou a Seer 
 (Eoeh) ? ' Hence we may infer that the 
 
 • word.ffoeA was in use, at all events, till 
 the latter part of David's reign, though, 
 
 , it would seem, no longer exclusively, as 
 in the older time, since Nabi was the 
 word now commonly employed. 
 
 230. (vii) 'And the sun stood Mil, and the 
 moon stayed, until tlte people had avenged t/ieinr 
 
 selves upon their enemies. Is not this written in 
 tlie book of Jasher ? ' Jo.x.13. 
 
 Pirst, it would be very strange that, if 
 Joshua really wrote this book, he should 
 have referred for the details of such an 
 extraordinary miracle, in which he him- 
 self was primarily and personally con- 
 cerned, to another book, as the book of 
 Jasher. But in 2S.i.l8 we read, — 
 
 'Also he (David) bade them teach the 
 children of Judah the use of the bow, (or 
 'teach it,' that is, the song in question, 
 * thoroughly to the children of Israel,' Ewald). 
 Behold, it is written in the book of Jasher.' 
 
 Here, then, we have a fact in the life 
 of David recorded in this same ' book 
 of Jasher.' The natural inference is, 
 that this 'book of Jasher,' — whicii 
 probably means the ' book of the 
 righteous,' that is, of Israel or Jeshu- 
 run, the righteous one, the ' righteous 
 people, that keepeth the truth,' and 
 contained a number of notable passages 
 in their history, — was written not earlier 
 than the time of David, and the above 
 passage in the book of Joshua was 
 written, of course, after that. 
 
 237. (viii) ' For Ai'non is the border of Moab, 
 between Moab and the Amoi^tes; wherefore it is 
 said in the Book of the Wars of Jehovah, 
 ' What he did in the Red Sea, 
 And in the brooks ofArnon, 
 And at the stream of lite brooks. 
 That goeth dovm to the dwelling of Ar, 
 And lieth upon the border of iloab* 
 
 N.xxi.13-15. 
 
 Clearly this passage could not have 
 been written by Moses or by one of his 
 contemporaries. A writer of that age 
 would not have stated in this way a 
 fact, — 'Arnon is the border of Moab, 
 between Moab and the Amorites,' — 
 which must have been notorious to those 
 for whom he was writing. Nor would he 
 have used this statement, to illustrate 
 the words of a song, which could only 
 by any possibility have just been com- 
 posed, since it refers to events which 
 had happened, according to the story, 
 only a week or so before (162). In 
 fact, the language of the song itself 
 implies tiat the transactions at the 
 'brooks of Arnon,' as well as at the 
 Eed Sea, were long past. And, conse- 
 quently, the 'Book of the Wars of 
 Jehovah,' which contained this song, 
 must have been written long after the 
 ! days of Mos.es. 
 
SIGNS OF LATEE DATE IN THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 100 
 
 238. (ii) 'See, he halh brought in are Hebrm 
 vnto us to mock us* G.xxxix.l4. 
 
 ' The J-Iebrew servant, which thou hast brovglit 
 unto us.* G.xxxix.l7. 
 
 ' For indeed I was stolen away out of the land 
 of the Hebrews' G-.xl.15. 
 
 ' There waswWius a young man, an Hebrew,* 
 G.xli.l2. 
 
 In the atove passages, the word 
 ' Hebrew' is used in a familiar way, as 
 if it were a well-known appellation of 
 a whole people, — well-known even in 
 Egypt, — nay, as if the land of Canaan 
 could really he spoken of hy Joseph, as 
 the ' land of the Hebrews,' so as to be 
 readily understood by the Egyptians 
 with whom he was speaking. It seems 
 plain that here also expressions, which 
 were current in a later age, have been 
 allowed inadvertently to slip into the 
 narrative. 
 
 239. (x) So also, in Deuteronomy, 
 transactions, in which Moses himself 
 was concerned, are detailed at full 
 length, as by one referring to events 
 long past, when, according to the story, 
 only a very short time could by any 
 possibility have elapsed since they took 
 place, and, therefore, all the circum- 
 stances must have been quite fresh in 
 the memory of those, to whom Moses 
 is supposed to be speaking. See 
 D.i,ii,iii, and especially such a passage 
 as the following. 
 
 ' And we took all his cities at tliat time ; 
 there was not a city, which we took not from 
 them, threescore cities, all the region of Argob, 
 the kingdom of Og in Bashan. All these 
 cities were fenced with high walls, gates, and 
 bars, beside unwalled towns, a great many. 
 And we utterly destroyed them, as we did 
 unto Sihon, king of Heshbon, utterly destroy- 
 ing the men, women, and children, of every 
 city. But all the cattle, and the spoil of the 
 cities, we took to ourselves. And we took at 
 that time, out of the hand of the two kings of 
 the Amorites, the land that was on this side 
 [on the other side] Jordan, from the river of 
 Amon unto Mount Hermon, — ^which Hermon 
 the Sidonians call Sirion, and the Amorites 
 call it Shenir,— all the cities of the plain, and 
 all Gilead, and all Basban, unto Salchah and 
 Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. 
 For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the 
 remnant of the giants; behold, his bedstead 
 was a bedstead of iron ; is it not in RaJbhath of 
 the children of Amman ? nine cubits was the 
 length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of 
 it, after the cubit of a man.' D.iii.4r-ll. 
 
 Now we have already seen (162) that 
 only a week or two at the outside could 
 have elapsed since the time when these 
 
 transactions, according to the story, 
 took place. Even if they had happened 
 within the last few years, Moses could 
 hardly have spoken of them as eventJi 
 of a bygone time in this way. But, 
 with an interval only of a few days, 
 when they had hardly yet breathed 
 from the conflict, it seems impossible 
 that he should have thus addressed 
 them. 
 
 240. Thus it is obvious that large 
 portions of the Pentateuch, including 
 the account of the Exodus itself, (see 
 E.X.19, where the word 'sea' is used 
 for 'west'), must have been composed 
 long after the times of Moses and 
 Joshua. 
 
 Further, it cannot be supposed that 
 any later writers would have presumed 
 to mix up, without distinction, large 
 and important sections of history of 
 their own composition, with writings so 
 venerable and sacred, as any must have 
 been, which had been handed down 
 from the time of Moses, — still less, if 
 they were really believed to have been 
 written by his hand, and, chiefly, from 
 the very mouth of Jehovah Himself. It 
 is hardly conceivable that any pious 
 Israelite, much less a Prophet or Priest, 
 would have dared to commit an act 
 of such profanity, under any circum- 
 stances. Bat, certainly, we must be- 
 lieve, he conld not have done so, without 
 distinguishing in some way the Divine 
 words, as written down by Moses, from 
 his own. 
 
 241. There is not, however, a single 
 instance of any such distinction being 
 drawn throughout the books of Exodus, 
 Leviticus, and Numbers ; though in one 
 or two places of Deuteronomy, xxxi.30, 
 xxxiii.l, xxxiv, the expressions imply 
 that a later writer is professedly setting 
 forth the words or acts of Moses. And 
 many of the signs of a later date, which 
 we have just been considering, occur in 
 passages, which must, if any, have 
 been written by Moses hiihself, record- 
 ing the words which Jehovah had 
 spoken to him. We are compelled, 
 therefore, it would seem, to the conclu- 
 sion, that the later writer or writers 
 did not believe in the unspeakably 
 sacred character of any older docU' 
 
SIGNS OF LATEE DATE IN THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 ments, which may have come down to 
 them, — ^that they did not receive them, 
 as really written by the hand of Moses, 
 and conveying, on his own authority, 
 the astonishing facts of his awful com- 
 munion with God. 
 
 242. While, therefore, it is possible, 
 as far as we know at present, that laws, 
 songs, &c., may be included in the 
 Pentateuch, which are of very ancient 
 date, and may have even been handed 
 down from the times of Moses, we can 
 scarcely' suppose that even these were 
 actually written by his hand, any more 
 than we can believe that the whole 
 story of the Exodus, containing, as we 
 have eein, such strange contradictions, 
 could have had Moses for its author. 
 In short, without anticipating here the 
 result of closer enquiry, observing only 
 that the instances above adduced occur 
 in so many different places as to cover, 
 so to speak, the whole ground of the 
 Mosaic story,, we are warranted already 
 in asserting that the Pentateuch and 
 book of Joshua, generedly; must have 
 been composed in a later age than that 
 of Moses and Joshua, and some parts 
 of them, at all events, not earlier than 
 the time of Samuel (231) or of David 
 (236). 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 AJ)I>ITIOKAI. SIGNS OF LATER DATE IN 
 THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 243. Besides those already produced, 
 however, there are a number of minor 
 indications, all pointing to the same 
 result; though, perhaps, if they stood 
 alone, an ingenious criticism might 
 dispose of some of them, by suggesting 
 that glosses of later writers may have 
 crept in by accident, or may, possibly, 
 have been designedly interpolated in 
 the original test. 
 
 244. We may notice, for instance, 
 the frequent occurrence of the expres- 
 sion ' unto this day,' in places where 
 it could have had no meaning, unless 
 the 'day" referred to was considerably 
 later than the time of Moses or Joshua. 
 
 * Jair, the son of Mauasseta, took all the 
 country of Argob unto the coasts of Geshuri 
 and Maachathi, and called them after his own 
 name Bashau-Havoth-Jalr, unto this day' 
 D.iii.l4. 
 
 But this tool: place after the conquest of 
 
 101 
 
 Bashan, d.13, and, therefore, oonld only have 
 happened (162) a few days before the death of 
 
 ' No man knoweth of his (Moses's) sepul- 
 chre unto this day.' D.xxxiv.6. 
 
 'And Joshua set up twelve stones in the 
 midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet 
 of the Priests, which bare the Ark of the 
 Covenant, stood ; and they are there unto this 
 day.' Jo.iv.9. 
 
 ' "Wherefore the name of the plaoe is called 
 Gilgal unto this day.' Jo.t.9. 
 
 ' And they raised over him a great heap of 
 stones unto this day. . . Wherefore the name 
 of that place was called the valley of Achor, 
 unto this day.' Jo.vii.26. 
 
 * And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it a heap 
 for ever, even a desolation unto this day.' Jo. 
 viil.28. So viii.29,x.27. 
 
 * And Joshua made them that day hewers 
 of wood and drawers of water for the Con- 
 gregatioQ, and for the Altar of Jehovah, even 
 unto this day, in the place which He should 
 choose.' Jo.ix.27. 
 
 * Kevertheless, the children of Israel ex- 
 pelled not the Geshurites nor the Maacha- 
 thites; but the Geshurites and the Maachar 
 thites dwell among the Israelites unto this 
 day.' Jo.xiii.l3. So xv.63,xyi.l0. 
 
 * Hebron, therefore, became the inheritance 
 of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Zenezite, 
 unto this day' Jo,xiv.l4, 
 
 245. There are other passages in the 
 Pentateuch, in which the phrase ' unto 
 this day' occurs, as G.xix.37,38, xxii,14, 
 xxvi.33, xxxii.32, xxxv.20, xMi.26, 
 D.ii.22, X.8, where, however, the phrase 
 might have been used even by a writer 
 of the age of Moses, as the events 
 referred to were either ancient in his 
 days, or, in the case of D.x.8, (which 
 refers to the separation of the Levites 
 for religious offices,) had taken place, 
 according to the story, nearly forty 
 years before. 
 
 246. Again, such expressions as the 
 following indicate a later date than 
 that of Moses. 
 
 * And the Canaanite vas then in the land* 
 G.xii.6. 
 
 ' And the Canaamte-and Ferizzite dwelt then 
 m the land' G.xiii.7. 
 
 These words seem to imply that, at 
 the time when they were written, the 
 Canaanite was no longer dwelling in 
 the land, as its owner and lord. 
 
 247. 'And when the inhabitants of the 
 land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in 
 the floor of Atad, they said. This is a grievous 
 mourning to the Egyptians. Wherefore the 
 name of it was called Abel-Miziaim, which 
 is beyoTid Jordan, G.1.1I. 
 
 The story in G.l. 7-11 seems to intimate 
 that Joseph came with the funeral train 
 
102 SIGNS OF LATEE DATE 
 
 of his father to the ' threshing-floor of 
 Atad, which is beyond Jordan,' ulO, 
 where 'he made a mourning for his 
 father for seven days;' after which, 
 Joseph and his brethren ' carried into 
 the land of Canaan' the corpse of their 
 father, and buried it ' in the cave of the 
 field of Machpelah,' while the ISgyptiaTis 
 still remained on the other side of the 
 river. If so, the use of the phrase 
 'beyond Jordan' would imply a writer 
 who lived in the land of Canaan. 
 
 But the remark made above holds 
 good, at all events, of the other pas- 
 sages, in which the same expression, 
 ' beyond,' ' on the other side,' occurs. 
 
 ' These be the words, which Moses spake 
 unto all Israel on the other side (the B.V. has 
 here, erroneously, • on this side ') Jordan^ in 
 the wilderness.' D.1.1. 
 
 ' On the other side Jordan^ in the land of 
 Moab, beganMoses to declare this law.' D.i.5. 
 
 248. On this point Blbek writes as 
 follows, y.205 :— 
 
 These words could only have been written 
 by one who found himself on this side Jordan, 
 and, therefore, after the death of Moses 
 and the possession of the land of Canaan. 
 Some translate the expression ' on this side 
 Jordan ' ; but this the usage of the Hebrew 
 tongue will not allow. One might rather 
 say that the above formula was a standing de- 
 signatUmtoT the country €(w( of Jordan, which 
 might be used in this sense without any re- 
 gard to the position of the writer. So it is 
 often employed in later times, — [even as we 
 ourselves employ it in the present day, when 
 speaking, as it were, from the stand-point of 
 the Hebrews in Canaan, we talk of the * trans- 
 Jordanic ' land.'] But it is most probable 
 that this phrqse first formed itself among 
 the Hebrews after they were settled in 
 Canaan, and the greater part of them on the 
 west of Jordan. In that case, Moses, or a 
 writer of his age, would not have expressed 
 himself about it in this way, so long as he 
 himself was on the eastern bank. In Deuter- 
 onomy this use of the expression is the less 
 likely, since frequently, in the words of Mcses, 
 the phrase is used distinctly for the land of 
 Canaan, west of Jordan, that is, on the other side 
 from the stand-point of the speaker, iii.20,25, 
 xi.30 ; although it also stands in a speech of 
 Moses for the eastern side, iii.8, and so too in 
 the history itself, iv.41,46,47,49. If, however, 
 Moses himself had been the writer, who found 
 himself on the eastern side, he would certainly 
 only have used the expression of the land west 
 of Jordan, the land of Canaan. 
 
 249. Thus, for example, the expres- 
 sion 'Transalpine Gaul' might have 
 been used by a Eoman wrincr — ^when 
 that term had become the recognised 
 description of that part of Gaul, which 
 lay on the other side of the Alps with 
 
 IN THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 reference to the city of Eome, —whether 
 he lived on the North, or the South, of 
 the Alps. But it could not have been 
 so used, by a person living North of 
 the Alps, for the country lying North of 
 the Alps, until the phrase had come 
 into common use, and. a fortiori, not 
 until Eome itself had been built, to 
 which the reference is made. 
 
 250. 'And the children of Israel did eat 
 manna forty years, until they came to a land 
 inhabited ; they did eat manna, until they 
 came unto the borders of the land of Canaan* 
 B.xvi.35. 
 
 This verse could not have been 
 written till after they had ceased eating 
 manna, which, we are told, took place 
 ' on the morrow after they had eaten of 
 the old corn of the land.' Jo.v.l2. 
 
 251. * That the land spue not you out also, 
 when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations 
 which were b^ore you.* L.xviii.28, 
 
 This implies that the Canaanites 
 were already exterminated, when these 
 words were written. 
 
 252. ' And, while the children of Israel were 
 in the mldemess, they found a man that ga- 
 thered sticks upon the sabbath-day.' ir.XT.32. 
 
 This, according to its natural inter- 
 pretation, would seem to have been 
 written when the people were no longer 
 in the wilderness, that is, it coidd not 
 have been written by Moses. 
 
 253. * The Horims also dwelt in Seir before- 
 time ; but the children of Esau succeeded 
 them, when they had destroyed them from 
 before them, and dwelt in their stead ; as 
 Israel did unto the land of his possession, which 
 Jehovah gave unto them.' D.ii.l2. 
 
 These words are a mere parenthetical 
 interruption of the narrative. But, in 
 the time of Moses, Israel had not done 
 this unto the land of Canaan, which, 
 surely, — and not the country on the 
 other side of the Jordan, — is" meant 
 by the ' land of his possession,'as is in« 
 dicated distinctly in D.iv.l, — 
 
 * Now, therefore, hearken, O Israel, that ye 
 may live, and go in, and possess the land, which 
 Jehovah the God of your fathers givet/i you.' 
 
 254. 'Which Hermon the Sidonians call 
 Sirion, and the Amorites call it Shenir.* 
 D.iU.9. 
 
 In David's time, and afterwards, the 
 Sidonians were well known to the 
 people of Israel. But what could they 
 have known of them in the days of ^ 
 Mopes, that such a note as this should 
 have been inserted in the middle of a 
 speech of the great lawyver ? 
 
SIGNS OF LATER DATS IS THE PENTATEUGIT. 
 
 2r5. 'For onh Og, king of Bashan, re- 
 Biamea of the remnant of the giants ; behold I 
 his bedstead wi».i a bedstead of iron ; is it not 
 In Babbatti of the children of Ammon ? Nine 
 cubits (lej feet) was the length thereof, and 
 four cubits (7i feet) the breadth of it, after 
 the cubit of a man." D.iii.ll. 
 
 But only a very short time, according 
 to the story (162), could have elapsed 
 since the conquest of Og. How, then, 
 could his 'bedstead' have been re- 
 moved in that interval to Eabbath- 
 Ammon ? There was not one of hia 
 people left alive, D.iii.3, to bear off in 
 safety this cumbrous relic of their lord. 
 Or how could Moses, so soon after the 
 event, have spoken of Og at all in such 
 terms as these ? 
 
 256. It may be said, indeed, that it 
 was not captured by the Israelites 
 with the other spoils of Og, but had 
 been taken to Rabbath-Ammon before 
 the death of Og, — perhaps, captured 
 by the Ammonites in some former 
 war, or, perhaps, sent by Og himself 
 for preservation. The first of these 
 suppositions, however, is hardly con- 
 sistent with the fact that Og, at the 
 time of his overthrow by the Israelites, 
 is said to have had his 'threescore 
 cities, all fenced with high walls, gates, 
 and bars, beside unwalled towns a 
 great many,' D.iii.o; and, as to the 
 second, it is very unlikely that an ' iron 
 bedstead' of this kind should have 
 been deemed by Og himself so valuable 
 a treasure, as to have been sent to the 
 Ammonites for safe-keeping on the ap- 
 proach of the Israelites. In fact, it 
 was most probably a stone coffin, made 
 of the dark basalt of the district. 
 
 257. Again, names of places are often 
 used familiarly, which could scarcely 
 have been known to Moses, much less 
 to the Israelites generally, at the time 
 of the Exodus, some of which, indeed, 
 are modern names, which, according to 
 the story itself, did not even exist in 
 the time of Moses. 
 
 * Then Abram removed Ms tent, and came 
 and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in 
 Hebron.' G.Kiii.lS. 
 
 Yet in Jo.xiv.15, xv.l3, we are in- 
 formed that the name of this city, till 
 its conquest by Caleb in the days of 
 Joshua, was Kirjath-Arba, It is said 
 plainly in Jo.siv.l5, ' The name of the 
 
 103 
 
 city before was Eirjath-Arba ;' so that 
 Moses ccttld not have known the name 
 'Hebron.' 
 
 ' And he removedfrom thence unto amonn- 
 tain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his 
 tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on 
 the east.' G-.xii.S. 
 
 The familiar use of the name Bethel 
 in this passage, and in G.xiii.3, in the 
 story of Abraham's life, — a name 
 which was not given to the place till 
 Jacob's day, G.xxviii.l9,— betrays the 
 later hand of one, who wrote when the 
 place was spoken of naturally by this 
 name, as a well-known town. 
 
 ' And Lot lifted np his eyes, and beheld all 
 the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered 
 everywhere, even as the garden of Jehovah, 
 like the land of Egypt, as thou contest unto 
 Zoar.' G-.xill.10. 
 
 This is supposed to have been written 
 for the instruction, in the first instance, 
 of the Hebrews in the wilderness. But 
 what could they have known of the 
 nature of the country in the land of 
 Canaan, ' as thou earnest unto Zoar,' 
 G.xix.22? 
 
 258. Sometimes, the modem name of 
 a town or place is given, as well as the 
 ancient one. 
 
 * And Sarah died in Kirjath-Arba ; the same 
 is Hebron, in the land of Canaan.' G-,xxiii.2. 
 
 ' Bphrath, which is Bethlehem,' G.xxxv.iy, 
 ' Eirjath-Arba, which is Hebron,' v.27. 
 
 * Bela, which is Zoar,' G-.xiv.2, • the vale of 
 Siddim, which is the Salt Sea,' ij.3, *En- 
 Mlshpat, which is Kadesh,' v.7, 'the valley 
 of Slmveh, which is the king's dfde,' d.17. 
 
 259. The ' king,' who is referred to 
 in the above expression, ' king's dale,' 
 may have been Melchizedek, or some 
 other of the ancient kings of Canaan. 
 But it seems more probable that the 
 expression points to king David, who 
 was the first to make Jerusalem the 
 seat of government for the children of 
 Israel. And so we read, 2S.xviii.l8, — 
 
 'Absalom, in his lifetime, had taken and 
 reared up for himself a pillar, which is in the 
 king's dale." 
 
 He would be most likely to have 
 done this near the royal city. Accord- 
 ingly, JoSEPHUs writes, Ant.Yll.ii.S : — 
 
 Now Absalom had erected for himself a 
 marble pillar in the king's dale, two furlongs^ 
 distant from Jerusalem, which he named Ab- 
 salom's Hand. 
 
 This also would accord with he 
 statement that ' Melchizedek, king of 
 Salem' came out to the 'valley of 
 Shaveh,' to meet Abraham. For it can 
 
104 
 
 SIGNS OF LATEE DATE IN THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 scarcely be doubted that Salem bere 
 means Jerusalem, as in Ps.lxxvi.2, ' In 
 Salem also is His Tabernacle.' And it 
 is noticeable tbat the name Melchizedek, 
 •king of righteousness,' means the same 
 as Adonizedek, ' lord of righteousness,' 
 who is spoken of in Jo.x, as having 
 been king of Jerusalem in Joshua's 
 time. And so Josephus understands it, 
 Ant.l.x.2. 
 
 If this view be correct, then the use 
 of the word Salem also, occurring in 
 the substance of the main story, would 
 indicate a writer living in later times ; 
 since the Canaauitish name of the city 
 was Jebus, Jo.xviii.28, Ju.xix.10,11, 
 and there can be little doubt that the 
 name Jerusalem, 'possession of peace,' 
 was first given to it by David, after its 
 capture by him from the Jebusites. 
 2S.V.6-9. 
 
 260. 'Now an omer is a tentli part of an 
 ephah.' E.xTi.36. 
 
 These words imply that, at the time 
 when they were WTitten, the 'omer' 
 had gone out of use, and was not likely 
 to be known to the ordinary reader. 
 In fact, this word, ' omer,' is found no- 
 where else in the Bible as the name of 
 a measure. The ' homer,' which con- 
 tained ten ephahs.Ez.xlv.ll, and, there- 
 fore, a hundred 'omers,' E.xvi.36, was 
 quite another vessel. 
 
 261. So, too, in .Deuteronomy, thei-e 
 are little pieces of information given, 
 about the ancient history of the land of 
 Canaan, which we cannot conceive to 
 have been spoken or written down by 
 Moses, but must ascribe to the pen of a 
 later archaeologist. 
 
 ' There are eleven days' ioumey from Horeb, 
 by the way of Mount Seir, unto Kadesh- 
 Barnea.' D.i.2. 
 
 One glance at the connection, in 
 which this verse stands, will show that 
 it is simply a note of distance, which 
 interrupts awkwardly the course of 
 the narrative, and never certainly could 
 have been introduced by Moses himself 
 into the story. 
 
 262. Again we have the following 
 notices of a similar kind. 
 
 * And Jehovah said unto me. Distress not 
 the Moabltes, neither contend with them in 
 battle. For I will not give thee of their land 
 for a possession; because I have given Ar unto 
 
 the children of Lot for a possession. TVte 
 Emims dicelt therein in times past^ a people 
 great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; 
 which also were accounted giants, as the Ana- 
 kirns; but the Moabites call them Smims. The 
 Horims also dwelt in Seir bt^oreUme; but the 
 children of Esau succeeded them' D.li.9-12. 
 
 ' I will not give thee of the land of the 
 children of Ammon any possession ; because 
 I have given it unto the children of Lot for a 
 possession. That also was accounted a land of 
 giants; giants dwelt therein in old time; and 
 tlie Ammonites called them Zanuumminis, a 
 people many, and great, and tall, as the 
 Anakims; but Jehovah destroyed them before 
 them ; and they succeeded them, and dwelt in 
 their stead ; as He did to the children of Esau, 
 which dwelt in Seir, when He destroyed the 
 Horims from before them; and, they succeeded 
 them and dwelt in their stead, even unto this 
 day: and the Avims, which dwelt in Hazerim, 
 even unto Azzah, the Caphtorims, which came 
 out of Caphtor, destroyed them, and dwelt in 
 their stead.' D.ii.19-23. 
 
 263. Here the Her. Thos. Scott 
 
 These fragments of ancient history were 
 introduced to encourage the Israelites. If 
 the Loid destroyed these gigantic people before 
 the posterity of Lot and of Esau — ^what cause 
 had the posterity of Abraham, Isaac, and 
 Jacob, his chosen servants and friends, to 
 fear the Anakims or the Canaanites ? — 
 especially as Israel acted by commission from 
 God, and had His promise as their security of 
 success, and the pledge of it in His Presence, 
 and the wonders which He had already 
 wrought for them, and as they were the only 
 nation of worshippers of the Lord, in the 
 oxdinances of Hie institution, which could 
 be found on earth. 
 
 It will be plain, however, to an un- 
 prejudiced leader that this is not the 
 special reason, for which these notices 
 of ancient times are introduced. They 
 occur only as pieces of interesting 
 information on the points in question, 
 without a word to intimate that they 
 are expressly meant for the encourage- 
 ment of the people. 
 
 264. It is generally admitted that 
 D.xxxiv, which relates the death and 
 burial of Moses, and cont-ains the 
 statements, — 
 
 ' but no man knoweth of his sepulchre 
 unto this day,' v.G, 
 
 ' and there arose not a prophet since in 
 Israel like unto Moses,' tJ.lO — 
 must have been written by a later hand. 
 But so, too, the 'Blessing of Moses,' 
 contained in D.xxxiii, bears on its very 
 face unmistakable signs of having been 
 inserted, at all events, — if not originally 
 composed, — ^by a later writer. I"or we 
 read, — 
 
REPETITIONS IN THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 ■This is the blessing, wherewitli Moses, the 
 man of Ood, blessed the children of Israel be- 
 Xore. his death^ u.l. 
 
 And the expressions here used, 
 ' Moses, the man of God,' and ' before 
 his death,' are sufficient to satisfy us, 
 unless we have recourse to some forced 
 interpretation, that this ' Blessing,' even 
 if originally composed and spoken by 
 Moses, could not have been inserted by 
 himself into the narrative. 
 
 265. Also such passages as the fol- 
 lowing could hardly have been written 
 by Moses himself: — 
 
 ' Moreover, the man Moses was very great 
 in the land ol Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's 
 servants, and in the sight of his people.' 
 E.xi.3. 
 
 ' Now the man Moses was very meek, above 
 nil the men which were upon the f aoe of the 
 earth.' N.xii.3. 
 
 ■ * These are that Aaron and Moses, to whom 
 Jehovah said. Bring out the children of Israel 
 from the land of Egypt according to their 
 armies. These are they which spake to 
 Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring out the 
 children of Israel from Egypt : these are that 
 Moses and Aaron.' E.vi.26,37. 
 
 ' And, if ye jhave erred and not observed all 
 these commandments, which Jehovah hath 
 spoken uuta Moses, even all that Jehovah 
 hath commanded you by the hand of MoseSj 
 from the day that Jehovah commanded 
 Moses, and henceforward among your gene- 
 rations,' &c. N.xv.22,23. 
 
 ■It can scarcely be doubted that such 
 statements as the above must have been 
 written by some one, who lived in an 
 age after that of Moses. 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 EEPETITIONS Df THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 26i8. Again, there are several in- 
 stances in the Pentateuch of identical 
 repetitions of the same or very similar 
 incidents, such as could never have 
 been recorded by one and the same 
 hand in an original work. Thus we 
 have the following : — 
 
 G-.xxviii.l8,19. 
 
 * And Jacob rose up early in the morning, 
 and took the stone that he had put for his 
 jiillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured 
 oil upon the top of it. And he called the 
 name of that place Bethel ; but the name of 
 that city was called Luz at the first.' 
 
 Cr.XXXV.14,lo, 
 
 And Jacob set up a pillar at the place 
 where He talked with him, a pillar of stone, 
 and he poured adrinlc-offering thereon, and he 
 poured oil thereon. And Jacob called the name 
 of the place where God spake with him Bethel. 
 :: Thus wc have two different accounts 
 
 105 
 
 of the origin of the name 'Bethel,' 
 and the second incident is dated, 
 according to the story, twenty years 
 after the first. 
 
 267. And here it cannot be said that, 
 on the second occasion, Jacob merely 
 revived the name, which he had given 
 to the place twenty years befpre; for 
 the latter passage plainly implies that 
 Jacob then gave the name for the first 
 time to the place where God spake 
 with him. And, besides, in G.xxxv.1,3, 
 — a passage very probably due to the 
 same author as G.xxviii.18,19, — the 
 place is treated as already familiarly 
 known to Jacob, and to his house- 
 hold (!), as 'Bethel': nay, in xxxv.7, 
 we read — 
 
 ' And he built there an altar, and called the 
 place El-Bethel, because there God appeai-ed 
 to him, when he fled from the face of his 
 brother' — 
 
 as recorded in xxviii. 18,19; whereas 
 afterwards we read, tr.15, — 
 
 * And Jacob called the name of the place, 
 where God spake with him. Bethel.' 
 
 268. G.xxxii.27,28. 
 ' And he said unto him, what is thy name ? 
 and he said, Jacob, And he said. Thy namo 
 shall be called no rnore Jacob, but Israel, for 
 as a prince hast thou power with God and 
 with men, and hast prevailed.' 
 G.xxxv.9,10. 
 
 * And God appeared unto Jacob again, when 
 he came out of Padan-aram and blessed him. 
 And God said unto him. Thy name shall not 
 be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be, 
 thy name : and He called his name Israel.* 
 
 Here, likewise, we have two differ- 
 ent accounts of the origin of tho^ 
 name Israel. The second distinctly 
 says that God 'called Jacob's name 
 Israel' at a later period than that 
 referred to in the former passage, 
 where the name is also said to have^ 
 been given to him by the mysterious' 
 person who 'wrestled' with him: and 
 in xxxiii.20, we find Jacob himself 
 using the name — 
 
 ' And he erected there an altar, and called 
 it El-Blohe-Araei,'— 
 
 not to speak of xxxiv.7, where we 
 read — 
 
 'They were very wroth, because he had 
 wrought folly in Israel,' &c. 
 where the use of the word might be 
 accounted for by the writer^ using an 
 expression, which was familiar in the 
 age in which he himself lived. 
 
 H 
 
106 
 
 EEPETITIONS IN THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 269. Again, in G.xii.10-20, we have 
 an account of Abram's going into 
 Egypt because of a famine, — of his per- 
 Eua^ng his wife Sarah to call herself 
 his 'sister,' because he dreaded the 
 consequences of her beauty, — of Pha- 
 laoh's taking her into his harem, being 
 'plagued,' &c., and at length dismissing 
 him honourably. 
 
 But in G.xx.1-18, we have almost 
 identically the same account though 
 detailed at greater length, of a similar 
 ■visit paid by Abraham to Abimelech, 
 the Idng of Gerar, about thirty years 
 afterwards. Abraham shows the same 
 weakness, f.2,11,13, and, to save his 
 own life, exposes his wife, though 
 pregnant with the long-desired child, 
 XTii.21,xviii.l4, to the same danger 
 as before; Sarah, though now 'well 
 stricken in age,' xviii.H, ' ninety years 
 old,' xvii.17, is taken into the harem 
 of Abimelech, v,2, as before into that 
 of Pharaoh : Abimelech is visited with 
 dreams, v.3,6, and is plagued, i).17,18, 
 and finally dismisses Abraham with 
 honour, ■i;.i6. 
 
 And then, once more, in G.xxvi. 
 6-11, we have a very similar story 
 told of Isaac and Eebekah. Isaac 
 goes to Abimelech, king of Gerar, 
 because of a famine : — 
 
 • And the men of the place asked him of his 
 wife, and he Bald, She Ie my sister ; for he 
 feared to say, She is my wife, ' lest the men 
 of the place should kill me for Rebekah : * for 
 she wag fair to look upon,* 
 
 Abimelech, however, discovers ac- 
 cidentally that Eebekah is Isaac's 
 wife, and prevents any mischief, «.10; 
 and Isaac thrives in the land of Gerar, 
 f.13,14. 
 
 270. In like manner, we have in E.xvi 
 an account of the miracle of the quails, 
 which are here spoken of as given at 
 the same time with the manna, t;.12,13, 
 after murmurings of the people, «.2,3, 
 at the beginning of the forty years' 
 wanderings. But in N.xi we have a 
 very similar account of a miracle of 
 quails, at the end of the forty years' 
 wanderings ; and, that this is not re- 
 garded by the writer as a second 
 miracle, a repetition of the former, is 
 shown by the language ascribed to 
 Moses, which implies that he had no 
 idea how the people could be supplied 
 
 with 'flesh,' and had therefore not 
 witnessed the former miiade. Thus 
 he says, ».13, — 
 
 'Whence shouldl have flesh to give nnto all 
 this people? for they weep unto me, saying, 
 Give us flesh, that we may eat ? * 
 
 And when Jehovah himself had pro- 
 mised to supply them, u 16-20, — 
 
 * Therefore Jehovah will give you flesh, and 
 ye shall eat : ye shall not eat one day, nor 
 two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor 
 twenty days, but even a whole month, until 
 it come out at your nostrils, and it he loath- 
 some unto you,* — 
 
 Moses distrusts altogether the possi- 
 bility of this, and says, v.21,22, — 
 
 * The people among whom I am, are six 
 hundred thousand footmen ; and thou hast 
 said, I will give them flesh, that they may eat 
 a whole month. Shall the flocks and the herds 
 be slain for them to suffice them ? or shall all 
 the fish of the sea be gathered together for 
 them to suffice them ? ' 
 
 The writer in this case could hardly 
 have ascribed such words to Moses, if 
 he had supposed him to have already 
 witnessed the former miracle, under 
 very similar circumstances, when, in 
 reply to the murmurings of the people, 
 nearly forty years before, — 
 
 ' At even the quails came up and covered 
 the camp.' E.xyi.l3. 
 
 271. So, again, there are two ac- 
 counts of the ' smiting of the rock ' for 
 water, and of the giving to the place the 
 name ' Meribah,'— one at the begin- 
 ning, and the other at the end, of the 
 forty years' wanderings. 
 E.xvii,l-7. 
 
 * And all the congregation of the children 
 of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, 
 after their journeys, according to the com- 
 mandment of Jehovah, and pitched in Rephi- 
 dim ; and there was no water for the people 
 to djink. Wherefore the people strove with 
 Moses, and said. Give us water that we may 
 drink. And Moses said unto them. Why 
 strive ye with me ? Wherefore do ye tempt 
 Jehovah ? And the people thirsted there for 
 water ; and tho people murmured against 
 Moses, and said. Wherefore is this that thou 
 hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and 
 our children and our cattle with thii*st ? And 
 Moses cried unto Jehovah, saying, What shall 
 I do unto the people ? They be almost ready 
 to stone me. And Jehovah said unto Moses, 
 Go on before the people, and take with thee 
 of the elders of Israel, and thy rod, wherewith 
 thou smotest the river, take it in thine hand, 
 and go. Behold I I will stand before thee 
 there upon the rock in Horeb : and thoushalt 
 smite the rock, and there shall come water out 
 of it, that the people may drink. And Moscti 
 did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. 
 
REPETITIONS IN THE PENTATEUCH. 107 
 
 the people' are recorded after the eone- 
 sponding statement in *.8, that 'Moses 
 returned the ■words of the people unto 
 Jehovah.' It may be that some ■words, 
 have been omitted, ■which ■would ex- 
 plain the matter. 
 
 (ii) In ■B.22,24, are mentioned ' the 
 Priests, which come near to Jehovah/ , 
 when as yet there were no Priests, 
 according to the story. 
 
 (iii) In f.20 Moses is summoned to 
 ' come up to the top ' of Sinai, an opera- 
 tion thus described by Bueckhabdt, 
 Conder's Arabia, ^.153-4 : — 
 
 'After ascending for about twentp-Jive minutus^ 
 -we breathed a short time under a large im- 
 pending rock, close by which is a smsill ■well 
 of water, as cold as ice. At the end of three 
 guartert of an hour^t steep ascent, we came to 
 a small plain. According to the Koran and 
 Moslem traditions, it was in this part of the 
 mountain, which is called DJebel Oreb, or ' 
 Horeb, that Moses communicated ■with Je- 
 hovah, From hence a still steeper ascent of 
 Jtalfan hour leads to the summit.' 
 
 (iv) But no sooner has he reached 
 the summit, after all this labour, than 
 he is commanded to go do^wn again, 
 f.21,22, with a message to the people ; 
 and though he himsefi seems to object 
 to take ii, or, at least, — somewhat irre- 
 verently, as it appears to us, — ^reminds 
 Jehovab of His own previous command, 
 which rendered it needless to do so, 
 u23, yet he is ordered to go down, — 
 
 ' Away I get thee down I and thou sfialt 
 come up, thou and Aaron "with thee. So 
 Moees went down unto the people, and spa^e 
 unto them,' v.24,25. 
 
 (v) Then, most abruptly, without 
 any introduction, and without any 
 notice of his going up with Aaron, the 
 ' Ten Commandments are delivered,' 
 xx.1-17. 
 
 (vi). We must suppose, therefore, 
 that he has not ascended, but is stand- 
 ing ■with the terrified people below, 
 U18-20. 
 
 (vii) Then, when the people ' re- 
 moved and stood afar off,' Moses, 
 we are told, ' drew near to the thick 
 darkness, where God was,' •».21, and 
 Jehovah delivered laws to Moses, xx.22- 
 xziii.38, ^ 
 
 (viii) Hence Jehovah spake with 
 Moses at the foot of the Mount. For 
 what purpose, then, was Moses enm- 
 moned to the top of the MciUnt m 
 XX.20 ? Was it only to be sent down 
 H 2 
 
 And he called the name of the place Massall 
 (temptation) and Meribah (strife), because 
 of the striving of the children of Israel, 
 jind because they tempted Jehovah, saying, 
 Is Jehovah among us, or not ? ' 
 
 N.xx.1-13. 
 
 ' And the children of Israel, the whole con- 
 gregation, came into the wilderness of Sin in 
 the first month, and the people abode in 
 Kadesh. . . . And there was no water for the 
 congregation. And the people strove with 
 Moses, and spake saying, ■Would God that we 
 had died when our brethren died before 
 Jehovah I And why have ye brought up the 
 congregation of Jehovah into this "wilderness, 
 Liiat we and oiu: cattle should die there ? And 
 wherefore have ye made us to come out of 
 ^gypt, tc bring us unto this evil place ? It 
 is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or 
 of pomegranates ; neither is there any water 
 to drink. . . . And Jehovah spake unto 
 Moses, saying, Take the rod, and gather thou 
 the assembly together, thou, and Aaron, thy 
 brother, and speak ye unto the rock before 
 their eyes, and it shall give forth its water, 
 and thou shalt bring forth to them water out 
 of the rock ; so shaltthou give the congregE^ 
 lion and their beasts drink. And Moses took 
 t le rod from before Jehovah, as He com- 
 manded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered 
 the congregation together before this rock, 
 and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels I 
 must we fetch you water out of the rock ? 
 And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his 
 rod he smote the rock twice, and the water 
 came out abundantly, and the congregation 
 drank and their beasts also. . . . This is the 
 water of Meribah, because the children of 
 Israel strove ■with Jehovah, and He was sanc- 
 tified in them. 
 
 In the first of the above accounts, 
 the 'rod' is the 'rod of Moses,' with 
 which he 'smote the river,' E.xvn.5, 
 and did such wonders in Egypt: in 
 the second, it is the 'rod of Aaron,' 
 which was 'laid up before Jehovah,' 
 N.xvii.7,10, and which Moses was 
 commanded to 'take ftom before Je- 
 hovah.' But the statements in E.xvii. 
 7, N.XX.13, which explain the origin 
 of the name 'Meribah,' show plainly 
 that the two accounts — ^probably by 
 different ■writers — prefer to one and the 
 same transaction. . 
 
 272. Again, in the narrative of 
 E.xix-xxiv, as it now stands, there is 
 great confusion, in consequence, no 
 doubt, of some interference with the 
 original stoiy. 
 
 (i) In xix.9, the last words of ■a.S 
 are repeated — 
 
 * and Moses told the words of the people unto 
 Jehovah ' — 
 
 in a connection where they can have no 
 meaning, since no ' words of 
 
108 
 
 WAS SAMUEL THE ELOHISTIC 
 
 at once ^1111 the message as in xix 
 21,22? 
 
 (ix) Immediately at the close of the 
 laws thus delivered, we read, xxiv.l — 
 
 *And he eaid unto Moses, Come up unto 
 Jehovah, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, 
 and seventy of the elders of Israel.' 
 
 (x) But what now has become of the 
 command in six. 24? — 
 
 *Come up, thou, and Aaron with thee: but 
 let not the Priests and the peofple break through 
 to come up to Jehovah, lest He break forth 
 upon them.' 
 
 It is plain that in this verse Aaron 
 is meant to come up alone with Moses : 
 and, in fact, Nadab, Abihu, and the 
 seventy elders, are by the express words 
 of this very command forbidden to 
 ' come up unto Jehovah,' whether we 
 reckon the two sons of Aaron among 
 the 'priests' of that time or among the 
 ' people.' 
 
 (xi) However, the account proceeds 
 in xxiv.9-11: — 
 
 >Then went up Moses and Aaron, Kadab 
 and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; 
 and they saw the G-od of Israel ; and there 
 was under His feet, as it were, a paved work 
 of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body 
 of heaven in its clearness. And upon the 
 nobles of the children of Israel He laid not 
 his hand ; also they saw €h)d, and did eat and 
 drink.' 
 
 (xii) But then follows another com- 
 mand to Moses, ^).12, — 
 
 ' Come up to me into the Mount, and be 
 there ; and I will give thee tables of stone 
 and the law, and the commandments which I 
 have written, that thou mayest teach them.' 
 
 But Moses had already ' gone up,' ^.9, 
 and was now on the Mount, in the place 
 where he and Aaron, Nadab, &e. had 
 'seen God.' We may suppose that 
 this was not the top of the Mount, and 
 that Moses was to go up higher. 
 
 (xiii) Then Moses and Joshua 'went 
 up into the Mount of God,' ul3, 
 charging the elders thus, u.ll: — ■ 
 'Tarry ye here for us, until we come again 
 unto you ; and behold, Aaron and Hur are 
 with you ; if any man have any matters to 
 do, let him come unto them.' 
 
 But where were the elders at this time? 
 On the Mount, at all events, if not on 
 the top of it — in the place where they 
 had 'seen God'; they had not gone 
 down, for then Moses would not have 
 said, 'Tarry ye here for us, until we 
 come again.' Were the people, then, who 
 were not to dare even to draw near the 
 Mount, to go up to Aaron and Hur 
 
 with all their cases— if not for the forty 
 days of Moses' absence, which (it may 
 be said) he had not anticipated, yet 
 at least for the day on which he charged 
 them to ' tarry here' for him? 
 
 (xiv) But Joshua also ' went up ' 
 with Moses, v.lZ, and remained with 
 him all the forty days, for he came 
 down with him at the end of them, 
 xxxii.l7. How then was Joshua occupied 
 during all this time ? Did he also fast 
 forty days and forty nights, 'neither 
 eating bread nor drinking water' — an 
 act which is noted as so remarkable in 
 Moses, xxxiv.28, but which is seldom 
 spoken of in connection with his 
 ' minister,' Joshua ? 
 
 It is easy to see that the original 
 narrative has been disturbed by inter- 
 polations: thus xxiv.1,2 seem plainly 
 to be inserted between the laws in 
 XX.22 — xxiii, and xxiv.3-8, and xxiv. 
 9-11 seems properly to follow after 
 xxiv. 2. 
 
 CHAPTER Til. 
 
 WAS SAMUEL THK ELOHISTIO WEITBB OP 
 THE PENTATEUCH? 
 
 273. Thus in all these different 
 ways we have a corroboration of the 
 results, to which we had already ar- 
 rived on quite other grounds, viz. that 
 the Pentateuch is the work of more 
 than one hand, and that considerable 
 portions of it, at all events, must have 
 been written at a time lat«r than the 
 age of Moses or Joshua. 
 
 But, if so, there is no one indicated 
 in the whole history, before the time of 
 Samuel, who could be supposed to 
 have written any part of it. We have 
 no sign of any other great Prophet in 
 that age, except Deborah, nor of any 
 'School of the Prophets' existing be- 
 fore his time. 
 
 274. That Samuel did occupy him- 
 self with historical labours we read in 
 lCh.xxix.29,— 
 
 * Now the acts of David the king, first and 
 last, behold they are written in the Book of 
 Samuel the Seer, and in the Book of Nathan 
 the Prophet, and in the Book of Gad the 
 Seer.' 
 
 This, however, is from the pen of 
 the Chronicler, and, from the experience 
 which we have already had of the in- 
 
WEITEE OF THE PENTATEUCH ? 
 
 109 
 
 accuracy of his data (lOT-S), we cannot 
 rely upon his statements, when un- 
 supported hy other eTidence. And, in 
 point of fact, very littie of David's life, 
 and none whatever of 'the acts of 
 David as king,' could possibly have 
 been WT:tten by Samuel, since he died 
 three years after anointing David, and 
 -five years before the time when David 
 came to the throne of Israel. 
 
 275. It has been suggested, how- 
 ever, that the terms, ' Book of Samuel,' 
 'Book of Nathan,' &c. may only be 
 meant to apply to certain portions of 
 the present books of Samuel, viz. those 
 in which the respective Prophets play 
 a somewhat conspicuous part, and 
 shade, as it were, the historical ground 
 with their presence. Thus the ' Book 
 of Samuel' may be IS.Ll-xxv.l, and 
 the 'Book of Nathan' maybe the middle 
 part of the narrative, 2S.vii, together 
 with the sections before and after, i.e. 
 lS.xxv.2-2S.xxiii, and the 'Book of 
 Gad' may be 2S.xxiv. This supposi- 
 tion is very plausible, and certainly not 
 to be hastily rejected. But the ' acts 
 of David, first and last,' are not con- 
 tained in the two books of Samuel, but 
 . are carried on in lK.i,ii; and in the 
 first of these two chapters Nathan is 
 very prominent, so that we should have 
 to consider this also as a part of the 
 'Book of Nathan.' 
 
 276. If, however, we adhere to the 
 more usual notion, that by these three 
 'Books' of Samuel, Nathan, and Gad, 
 are meant books either written or sup- 
 posed to have been written, by the 
 Prophets whose names they bear, then, 
 in this mention by the Chronicler of 
 the 'Book of Samuel the Seer,' we 
 should have a sign of the activity of 
 Samuel in this cSrection. Either the 
 Chronicler might have actually seen 
 the Book in question, or, at least, a 
 vivid tradition might have come down 
 to him of the Seer's historical labours 
 in the olden time, six or seven cen- 
 turies before his own. This may also 
 seem to be confirmed by that other 
 fact recorded about him in lS.x.25, 
 viz. that, on the election of Saul to the 
 royal dignity,^ 
 
 ' Samuel told the people the manna of the 
 kinpiom. and wrote it In a Book, and laid it 
 before Je>iovah.' 
 
 277. And, certainly, it is very con- 
 ceivable that, when he gave up to Saul 
 the reins of government, and, during the 
 last thirty-five years of his life, — more 
 especially, during the last twenty 
 years, when he ' came no more to see 
 Saul,' but lived retired from public 
 life, presiding over the school of the 
 Prophets at Eamah, where at one 
 time he had David staying with him, 
 lS.xix. 18-24, (see also lS.x.5,6,)— he 
 may have devoted himself to such 
 labours as these, for the instruction 
 and advancement of his people. 
 
 278. And so, Tuch observes, Genesii, 
 y.xciii, where, after recapitulating the 
 
 signs of time,' which he finds in the 
 Elohistie document, he states his con- 
 clusion as follows : — 
 
 It is, consequently, the first fruit of the 
 progress, out of the condition of religious and 
 political indifference, to a settled state of order 
 and regulated social life, which the people 
 made chiefly through the activity of SamuEl. 
 . . . Who the "writer may have been cannot 
 [? with certainty] be conjectured. We might 
 imagine SAMtTEL, and- consider the primary 
 document to be the last service which he, 
 withdrawn from public occupations in the 
 evening of his life, rendered to Ms people 
 rescued by his activity. 
 
 279. In such a work as this, Samuel 
 may have been aided by the ' sons of 
 the Prophets,' who clearly must have 
 had some sort of occupation, besides 
 that of merely 'prophesying,' i.e. pro- 
 bably, chanting psalms,— see iCh.xxv.l, 
 where we read of — 
 
 'the sons of Asaph and of Heman and of 
 Jeduthim, who should prophesy with harps, 
 with psalteries, and with cymbals, — 
 and joining in religious processions, as 
 in 1S.X.5. They could not have been 
 engaged in the study of the Scriptures, 
 as in a modern theological Institution, 
 when such Scriptures, even those of the 
 Pentateuch, did not exist, — at least, in 
 their present form. It is very possible 
 that Samuel may have gathered in these 
 ' Schools ' some of the more promising 
 young men of his time, and may have 
 endeavoured to train them, to the best 
 of his power, in such knowledge of 
 every kind as he himself had acquired, 
 — among the rest, it may be, the art of 
 writing, lately learned from the Phoe- 
 nicians. 
 
 280. In short, these ' Schools may 
 have resembled somewhat a moderO 
 
110 
 
 WAS SAMUEL THE ELOHISTIC 
 
 ' college,' where the old Seer and Pa- 
 triot sought to impart, as he best could, 
 the rudiments, at least, of 'sound 
 , learning and religious education,' in 
 advance of the general spirit of the 
 rough age in which he lived, to a class 
 of choice youths, such as Nathan and 
 Gad. For their use, in the first in- 
 stance, he may have composed, — ^from 
 wliatever resources he had at his com- 
 mand, — from the traditions of the peo- 
 ple, or, it may be, as far as we know 
 at present, even with the help of written 
 documents handed down from an earlier 
 time, — some account of the early history 
 of Israel, as Bede wrote that of the 
 Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 281. It is, indeed, (it may be said,) 
 a rare combination for the same person 
 to be an historian, and, at the same time, 
 a great political character. Yet we have 
 seen such instances even in our own 
 days. And from IS.viii it would almost 
 seem that Samuel was not, perhaps, a 
 iiret-rate politician ; and in the latter 
 part of his life, at all events, he dis- 
 played less personal activity, and was 
 not wholly successful in his government. 
 It IS possible, in fact, that, at the time 
 when his sons, set up by himself as 
 judges in Beersheba, — 
 
 * turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and 
 ■perverted judgment,* lS.viii.3, — 
 
 Samuel may have been too closely 
 engaged, and his attention too much 
 absorbed, in such matters as these, to 
 correct such disorders. Among his 
 pupils, probably, as we have just said, 
 were Nathan and Gad themselves, who 
 thus may have had their first lessons in 
 the writing of history. 
 
 282. Hitherto we had been advancing 
 upon certain ground. It seemed to follow 
 as a necessary conclusion, from the facts 
 which we had already had before us, 
 (i) that the account of the Exodus, 
 generally, is not historically true, 
 (ii) that it is the work of more than 
 one writer, (iii) that it must have been - 
 written, — at least, a great part of it, 
 — in a later age than that of Moses. 
 
 But we are now entering on the 
 field oiF conjectui-e. And, though it will 
 be seen that there are some reasons, 
 which seem to warrant us in ascribing 
 
 the primary Elohistio document, the 
 groundwork of these books, to the age, 
 and, therefore, also to the hand, of 
 Samuel, yet this is a question merely 
 of probability, and our views in this 
 respect may be shewn to be erroneous, 
 and be set aside by a more sagacious 
 criticism, without at all afifecting the 
 positive results, to which we have al- 
 ready arrived. Formyself, at all events, 
 it would be a sinful shutting of my eyes 
 to the plain light of Truth, if I ven- 
 tured any longer to maintain the usual 
 opinion, as to the origin and composi- 
 tion of the Pentateuch. 
 
 283. Prof. EAwi.iNSoir expresses his 
 view of the composition of the Pen- 
 tateuch, as follows. Aids to Faith, 
 ^.251 :— 
 
 (i) It is not intended to assert that Moses 
 was the original composer of all the docu- 
 ments contained in his volume. The Book of 
 Genesis bears marks of being to some extent 
 a compilation. Moses probably possessed a 
 number of records, some of greater, some of 
 less, antiquity, whereof, under Divine guid- 
 ance, he made use in writing the history of 
 mankind up to his own time. It is -possible 
 that the Book of Genesis may have been, even 
 mainly, composed in this, way from ancient 
 narratives, registers, biographies, in' part tne 
 property of the Hebrew race, in part a posses- 
 sion common to that race with others. Moses, 
 guided by God's Spirit, would choose among 
 such documents those which were historically 
 true, and which bore on the religious history 
 of the human race. He would not be bound 
 slavishly to follow, much less to transcribe, 
 them, but would curtail, expand, adorn, com- 
 plete, them, and so make them thoroughly 
 his own, infusing into them the religion's 
 tone of his own mind, and at the same time 
 rewriting them in his own language. Thus 
 it would seem that Genesis was produced. 
 With regard to the remainder of his history, 
 he would have no occasion to use the labours 
 of others, but would write from his own 
 knowledge. 
 
 (ii) It is not intended to deny that the 
 Pentateuch may have undergone an authori- 
 tative revision by Ezra, when the language 
 may have been to some extent modernised, 
 and a certain number of parenthetic inser- 
 tions may have been made into the text. 
 And this authoritative revision would account 
 at once for the language not being mora 
 archaic than it is, and for the occasional in- 
 sertion of parentheses of the nature of a 
 comment. It would ftlso. explain the occur- 
 rence of ' Chaldaisms' in the text. 
 
 (iii) It is, of course, not intended to in- 
 clude in the Pentateuch the last chapter of 
 Deuteronomy, which was evidently added 
 after Moses's death, probably by the writer 
 of the Book of Joshua. 
 
 284. The above view, we muse sup* 
 
"WEITEE OF THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 Ill 
 
 pose has the deliberate sanction of the 
 Editor of ' Aids to Faith,' the present 
 Archbishop (Thomson) of York. It is 
 needless to observe how very much 
 even this differs from the traditionary 
 ■view as t3 the composition of the Pen- 
 tateuch, The idea of Ezra under- 
 taking to revise, in a later age, words 
 believed to have been written down by 
 Hoses, and to have been uttered by 
 Jehovah Himself, — of his modernising 
 language so venerable and sacred, — 
 must surely seem very strange to many 
 an English reader. 
 
 285. The followine admissions are 
 made in another "work, ' The Mosaic 
 Origin of the Pentateuch considered, &c 
 by a Layman, dedicated by permission 
 to the AJchbishop of York,' in addition 
 tothose which have been already quoted 
 from this work in the Preface to Part I, 
 People's Edition,y.21. 
 
 So far as the latter part of the Book of 
 Numbers is concerned, the order of laws and 
 narrative is regular and accurate enough, 
 although the two are everywhere perfectly dis- 
 tinct, and easily separable. In the former 
 part, however, considerable confusion exists ; 
 and not only are laws and narrative irregu- 
 larly disposed, but even different sections of 
 the latter transposed in the most unaccount- 
 able manner. . . . AH that we wish to^ point 
 out is the striking contrast between this part 
 of the history and that immediately preceding, 
 recorded in the Book of Exodus, as a proof 
 that they must have proceeded from difEerent 
 authors, and that the latter it, so far as its 
 narrative is concerned^ most certainly un- 
 Mosaic. ^.147-8. 
 
 We are certainly not warranted in supposing 
 that the Book [of Deuteronomy] in its present 
 ^orm is to be ascribed to Moses' pen. It con- 
 Kiins the account of his death, which (as 
 already remarked) we cannot, without the 
 most extravagant and unjustifiable assump- 
 tions, regard as written by himself. Some 
 part of the narrative, then, is clearly due to 
 another hand ; and, as there is no appearance 
 of this being a later addition. Ok same is 
 probably the case mth all Ike narrative sections. 
 p.156. 
 
 •286. As the attention of the Arch- 
 bishop of York hadbeen distinctly called, 
 both privately and publicly, by one of 
 the Clergy oi his Province, to these and 
 similar extracts from the book in ques- 
 tion, long before he withdrew his 
 patronage from it, it must, I presume, 
 be inferred that His Grace deliberately 
 allowed the circulation of these state- 
 ments under the authority of his name. 
 Whatever may be thought of the sound- 
 
 ness of the above conclusions, (which, 
 probably, a more close and deep study 
 of the subject will materially modify,) 
 yet at all events the ordinary Eng- 
 lish reader has here sufficient evi- 
 dence of the general nature of the 
 results, to which a serious examination 
 of the facts will inevitably lead any 
 candid and truth-seeking enquirer, — 
 as, indeed, we have seen already in the 
 case of Dr. Kdbtz and Mr. Pbrowne. 
 But after the above examples of the con- 
 sequences of applying a searching and 
 honest criticism to the contents of 
 the Pentateuch, with the most devout 
 intention of maintaining as far as pos- 
 sible the traditionary views of the 
 Origin and Authority of the Pentateuch, 
 it is obvious that a work, such as that in 
 which we are now engaged, so far from 
 deserving censure and refutation at the 
 hands of theologians, is laid upon us 
 as a primary necessity of the present 
 age, and as a positive duty. 
 
 CHAPTER Vni. 
 
 INTEODUCTIOIf OF THE NAME JEHOVAH. 
 
 287. In the story of the Exodus we 
 read as follows : — 
 
 * And Ch)d spake unto Moses, and said unto 
 Mm, I am Jehovah. And / appeared unto 
 Abraham, unto Isaac, and imto Jacob, by the 
 Name of God Almighty (El Shaddai) ; 6Mf by 
 my Name Jehovah was I not known to thent. 
 And I have also established my covenant with 
 them, to give them the land of Canaan, the 
 land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were 
 strangers. And I have also heard the groan- 
 ing of the children of Israel, whom the Egyp- 
 tians keep in bondage ; and I have remem- 
 bered my covenant. Wherefore say unto the 
 children of Israel, I am Jehovah. And I 
 will bring you out from under the burdens of 
 the Egyptians, and I wiU rid you out of their 
 bond^e, and I will redeem you with a 
 stretched-out arm and with great judgments. 
 And I wiU take you to me for a people, and I 
 wiU be to you a (jlod. And ye shall know 
 that I am Jehovah your God, which brlngeth 
 you out from under the burdens of the Egyp- 
 tians. And I will bring you in unto the land, 
 concerning the which I did swear to give it, 
 to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob ; and I 
 will give it to you for an heritage. I am 
 Jehovah.' E.vi.2-8. 
 
 288. The above passage cannot, 
 without a distortion of its obvious 
 meaning, — the meaning which would 
 be ascribed to it by the great body of 
 simple-minded readers, who have never 
 had their attention awakened to the 
 
112 
 
 INTEODTJCTION OF THE NAME 'JEHOVAH. 
 
 difficulties, in which the whole narra- 
 tive becomes involved thereby, — be 
 explained to say anything else than 
 this, that the Name, Jehovah, was not 
 known at all to the Patriarchs, but 
 was now for the first time revealed, as 
 the name by which the God of Israel 
 would be henceforth distinguished from 
 all other Gods. 
 
 So Prof. Lee admits, who in his He- 
 brew Lexicon explains Jehovah to be — 
 the most sacred and unalienable name of God, 
 unknown, however, to the Patriarchs : it is 
 noty ther^ore, more undent in all probability 
 than the time of Moses, 
 
 And SO says JosEPHUs,^ni.ILxii.4, — 
 Wherefore God declared to him (Moses) 
 His holy Name, which had never been dis- 
 covered to men before. 
 
 289. But then we come at once upon 
 the contradictory fact, that the name, 
 Jehovah, is repeatedly used in the 
 earlier parts of the story, throughout 
 the whole book of Genesis. And it is 
 not merely employed by the writer, 
 when relating simply, as an historian, 
 in his own person, events of a more 
 ancient date, in which case he might be 
 supposed to have introduced the word, 
 as having become, in his own day, after 
 having been thus revealed, familiar to 
 himself and his readers ; but it is put 
 into the mouth of the patriarchs them- 
 selves, as Abraham, xiv.22, Isaac, 
 xxvi.22, Jacob, xxviii.l6. 
 
 290. Nay, according to the story, it 
 was not only known to these, but to a 
 multitude of others, — to Eve, iv.l, and 
 Lamech, v. 29, before the Flood, and to 
 Noah, after it, ix.26, — to Sarai, xvi.2, 
 Kebekah, xxvii.7, Leah, xxix.35, Ea- 
 chel, XXX.24, — to Laban also, xxiv.31, 
 Bethuel, xxiv.50,61, and Abraham's 
 servant, xxiT.27, — even to heathens, 
 as Abimelech, the Philistine king of 
 Gerar, his friend, and his chief captain, 
 xxvi28,29. And, generally, we are 
 told that, as early as the time of Enos, 
 the son of Seth, iv.26,— 
 
 * Then began men to call upon the Name of 
 Jehovah.' 
 
 But the name was already known to 
 Eve, according to the narrative, iv.l, 
 more than two centuries before. 
 
 291. The recognition of the plain 
 meaning of E.vi.2-8, such as that 
 quoted above from Prof. Lee, (a writer 
 of undoubted orthodoxy,) woidd be 
 
 enough at once to decide the question 
 as to the Mosaic authorship of the 
 Pentateuch. If the Name was ' not 
 more ancient than the time of Moses,' 
 then Moses himself, in writing the 
 story of the ancient Patriarchs, would 
 surely not have put the Name into 
 their mouths, — much less into those of 
 heathen men, — nor could he have 
 found it so ascribed to them in an 
 older document. Prof. Lee's view, 
 therefore, would require ns to suppose 
 that, if Moses wrote the main story of 
 the Exodus, and of his own awful 
 communications with God, as well as 
 the Mohistio portions of Genesis, yet 
 some' other writer must have inserted 
 the Jchovistic passages. But then it 
 can hardly be believed that any other 
 writer should have dared to mix up, 
 without any distinction, his own addi- 
 tions with a narrative so venerable and 
 sacred, as one which had actually been 
 written by the hand of Moses. Thf 
 interpolator must have known that the 
 older document was not written by 
 Moses, and had no such sacred charac- 
 ter attached to it. 
 
 292. The ordinary mode of 'recon- 
 ciling ' these discrepancies is exhibited 
 in l£e following passage from Dr. 
 Ktirtz, ii.p.lOl : — 
 
 It is not expressly said that the Namej 
 Jehovah, was unknovm before the time of 
 Moses, -but merely that, in the patriarchal 
 age, God had not revealed the fulness and 
 depths of His Nature, to which that Name 
 particularly belonged. 
 
 But this is, evidently, an assumption 
 made only to get over a difficulty. If 
 Abraham made nse of the Name Je- 
 hovah at all, then God was known to 
 him in some measure — in some sense 
 or other — by that Name, if not known 
 so perfectly as by the Israelites in 
 later days. If the Patriarchs employed 
 the Name at all, it could scarcely have 
 been said,^ 
 
 *I appeared unto them by the Name, El 
 Hhaddai ; but by my Name, Jehovah, was I 
 nxit known to them,' E.vi.3. 
 
 293. And, surely, we cannot doubt 
 of this, when we read such words as 
 these : — 
 
 ' Abram believed in Jehovah, and He counted 
 it to him for righteousness. And He said 
 imto him, I am Jehovah, that brought thee 
 out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this 
 land to inherit it.' G.xv.0,7. 
 
INTRODUCTION OF THE NAME JEHOVAH. 
 
 •I am Jehovah, the God of Abraham thy 
 father, and the God of Isaac; the land, 
 ■whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and 
 to thy seed, &g. And Jacob vowed a vow, 
 saying. If God will be with me, &c. then shall 
 Jehova^t he my God.' G.xxviii.13-21. 
 
 ' O (iod of my father Abraham, and God of 
 my father Isaac, Jehovah, which saldst unto 
 me, &c.* G.2:xxii.9. 
 
 Could Abrara have 'believed in Je- 
 hovan,' and God Himself have declared 
 this Name to Abram, saying, 'I am 
 Jehovah, that brought thee out of Ur 
 of the Chaldees,' and yet Abram after 
 all be said not to ' know God ' by this 
 Name ? Could Jacob have said, ' Je- 
 hovah shall be my God,' if God was 
 'not known' to him by the name 
 Jehovah f And what is the meaning 
 of Abraham's servant repeatedly speak- 
 ing of ' Jehovah,' as ' the God of his 
 master Abraham' ? G.xsiv.12,27,42,48. 
 
 294. Like the other contradictions, 
 however, which appear in the accounts 
 of the Creation and the Deluge, the 
 whole is easily explained, when we 
 know that different writers were con- 
 cerned in composing the narrative of 
 the book of Genesis. The Jehovist, as 
 we have seen, uses the name Jehovah 
 habitually in G.ii.4-iv. 26. The Elo- 
 hist, as has been said, never uses the 
 name Jehovah at all, throughout the 
 book of Genesis, even when narrating 
 facts of history: much less does he 
 allow it to be uttered by any one of the 
 personages, whose story he is telling. 
 
 295. We have, for instance, the Elo- 
 histic passage, G.xlvi.2,3, — 
 
 ' And Israel took his journey with all that 
 he had, and came to Eeersheba, and offered 
 sacrifices unto the Klohim of his father Isaac. 
 And Elohim spake unto Israel in the visions 
 of the night, and said, * Jacob, Jacob.* And 
 he said, ' Here am I.' And He said, '/ am 
 Elohim, (he Elohim of Oiy father.' ' 
 
 Comp. this with the Jehovistic, xxviii. 
 13:— 
 
 'And, behold, Jehovah stood above it, and 
 said, ' 1 am Jehovah, the Elohim oj Abraham 
 thy father, aadOie Elohim of Isaac.' ' 
 
 So, again, in G.xlviii, where Jacob 
 blesses Manasseh and Ephraim, and 
 especially in «.15,16, where he accu- 
 mulates, as it were. Divine titles, — 
 
 * Elohim, before whom my fathers, Abraham 
 and Isaab, did walk, Elohim, which fed me 
 all my life long unto this day, the Angel 
 which redeemed me from all evil, bless the 
 lads,'— 
 and where the writer could hardly 
 
 113 
 
 have failed to have put the word Je- 
 hovah in the patriarch's mouth, if he 
 had supposed it known to him, it does 
 not once occur. 
 
 296. Further, in different parts of 
 the book of Genesis, a multitude of 
 names occurs, many of which are com- 
 pounded with the Divine Name in the 
 form Et ; whereas there is not a single 
 one compounded with the Name Je- 
 hovah, in the form either of the prefix 
 Jeho or Jo, or the termination Jah, 
 both of which were so commonly em- 
 ployed in later times. Thus there are 
 thirteen names in G.v, sixteen in 
 G.xi. 10-32, fifteen in G.xxii.20-24, 
 thirty -three in G.xxv.1-15, seventy in 
 G.xlvi, in all one hundred and forty- 
 seven names ; and in the last of these 
 passages we have Israel, Jerauc^, 
 Jahlee^, Malchie?, Jahzeel ; but in not a 
 single instance is any of these names 
 compounded with the word Jehovah. 
 
 297. Again, in N.i.5-15, among 
 twenty-four new names, there are nine 
 compounded with Elohim, — Elizyxr, 
 ShelumifZ, Nethanef/, i7iab, £fishama, 
 Gamaliel, Pagi«/, £/iasaph, Deurf, — 
 not one with Jehovah. Again, in the 
 list of spies, N.xiii.4-15, out of twenty- 
 four other new names, four are com- 
 pounded with Elohim, — Q-iiixel, Am- 
 laiel, Michael, Genel, — none with Je- 
 hovah. And in the list of those, who 
 are to divide the land by lot, N.xxxiv. 
 19-28, we have seven other names 
 compounded with El, — Shemud, EV\- 
 dad, Hannie?, Kemue?, Sizaphan; 
 Palti«?, Pedahe/, — none with Jehovah. 
 Also in Jo.xv we have six names of 
 tovms compounded with El, — Jabnec/, 
 Kabzee^, Jokteei, Jezreel, Stoled, El- 
 tekon, — besides the man, Othniel, but 
 not one mth Jehovah. 
 
 '298. Some of the passages just 
 quoted are, undoubtedly, Elohistic; 
 others may be, and in fact, as we shall 
 see hereafter, are, most probably, 
 Jehovistic. But, however this may be, 
 the argument derived from them is 
 decisive against the historical veracity 
 of those portions of Genesis, which 
 represent the name Jehovah as being 
 all along as familiar in the mouths of 
 men, even of heathen men, as Elohim, 
 
INTRODUCTION OF THE NAME JEHOVAH, 
 
 114 
 
 299. But they seem to do more than 
 this. They suggest also that even in 
 the time of the Jthovist, if he lived in a 
 later age than the Elohist, the word 
 Jehovah was not in very common use 
 among the people, so as to be frequently 
 employed in the composition of the 
 names of their children. Otherwise, as 
 he has introduced this Divine Name so 
 freely from the first in his narrative, 
 ■without apparently perceiving the in- 
 congruity which he was committing, we 
 might expect that he would have just as 
 inadvertently have introduced, here and 
 there, such names as were common in his 
 own time, compounded with Jehovah. 
 
 300. The above is said, assuming 
 that it has been already sufficiently 
 shown that there is no reason to sup- 
 pose that the details of the story of 
 the Exodus, including the lists of 
 names, fee, are historically true. 
 Otherwise, it might, of course, be 
 argued that the very fact, that no 
 such Jehovistic names occur in the 
 whole narrative, is itself a strong indi- 
 cation of the truthfulness and his- 
 torical reality of the record. 
 
 301. But since no such names, of 
 course, would be formed till the age of 
 Moses, if the name was then first re- 
 vealed, how can the absence of such 
 names be reconciled with the statement 
 that in the time of Enos, men ' began to 
 call upon the name of Jehovah,' or with 
 the perfect familiarity with that name, 
 which, according to the Jehovistic por- 
 tions of Genesis, existed in all ages ? 
 If so many names were formed, before 
 the time of Moses, compounded with 
 El, how is it that not one, throughout 
 the whole book of Genesis, is com- 
 pounded vrith Jehovah, on the suppo- 
 sition that this Name was known and 
 used so freely from the first ? In fact, 
 
 <!jf only one such name, e.g. Joehebed, 
 really existed in the age before Moses, 
 it is obvious that it would only have 
 been a type of a multitude of others, 
 which must have been in use in those 
 days, but of which we find no sign in 
 the Pentateuch. 
 
 302. As it is, there are only two 
 names of persons throughout the whole 
 Pentateuch and book of Joshua, which 
 are compounded with Jehovah, viz. 
 
 that of Joshua himself, (of whom we 
 find it expressly recorded, N.xiii. 1 6, that 
 Moses changed his name from Oshea 
 to Jehoshua), and, probably, that of 
 Joehebed, the mother of Moses. But 
 the very fact of the occurrence of this 
 latter name, as a solitary instance of 
 the forms so common in later days 
 being used in these early times, is 
 itself a very strong indication that the 
 passages in which it occurs, E.vi.20, 
 N.xxvi.69, may be later interpolations. 
 For the present it is enough to say that 
 it seems very strange that, if the names 
 of the father and mother of Moses 
 were known to the writer of the ac- 
 count of his birth in E.ii, they should 
 not have been there mentioned at the 
 first, instead of its being stated quite 
 vaguely, — 
 
 'There went a man of the house of Levi, 
 and took to wife a daughter of Levi.' 
 
 303. Very different is the result, 
 however, if we examine the Chronicles, 
 and quite in consistency vrith what we 
 have observed already of the character 
 of this book. Here we find Azsnah, 
 lCh.ii.8, in the third generation from 
 Judah. Nay, the wife of Judah's 
 grandson, Hezron, who went down 
 with Jacob into Egypt, is Ahiah, ii.24, 
 and Hezron's grandson is Ahy ah, ii.2o, 
 and Judah's grandson is ^eaiah, iv.2, 
 and another of his early descendants 
 is Jonathan, ii.32. So Issachar's 
 grandson is EephaioA, vii.2, and his 
 great-grandson, IzraMah, and his sons, 
 ObadmA, Joel, lahiah, v.3 ; and Ben- 
 jamin's grandson is Ahiah, v.8 ; and 
 among the early descendants of Levi 
 are Joel, xxiii.8, KehabiaA, v.l7, Jetiah 
 and Ama:riah, •».19, and Jesiah, •B.20, 
 the first cousins of Moses, Jesiah's son 
 Zechariah, xxiv.25, and Jasziah,. v.%1 ; 
 and we have actually BithiaA, the 
 daughter of Pharaoh, iv.18, appa- 
 rently the Egyptian king. So among 
 the ancestors of Samuel himself are 
 Joel, Azarja^, ZephanJaA, vi.36, which, 
 however, appear as Shaul, Uzziah, 
 Uriel, in 11.24 ; and among those of 
 Asaph and Ethan, David's contempo- 
 raries, are seven others, whose names 
 are compounded with Jehovah. 
 
 304. In short, such names abounded 
 in these early days, according to the 
 
DERIVATION OF THE NAME MORIAH. 
 
 115 
 
 Chronicler, from the age of Jacob's 
 great-grandchildren downwards, jiist 
 as freely as in later days. Before that 
 age no such names are given even by 
 the Chronicler ; while, among the hun- 
 dreds of names mentioned in the Pen- 
 tateuch and book of Joshua, down to 
 the time of the Conquest of Canaan, 
 there are only two names of this kind, 
 Joshua and Jochebed. It is scarcely 
 possible to doubt that the Chronicler 
 has simply invented these names. He 
 has, apparently, copied the earlier 
 names from the Pentateuch itself, 
 down to the age of Jacob's grandsons, 
 and a few of their children. But there, 
 it would seem, his authority failed 
 him, and for the rest he had to draw 
 upon his own resources; and, accord- 
 ingly, he has inserted many names 
 compounded with Jehovah, which were 
 familiar to himself in later days. 
 
 305. In fact, the argument obviously 
 stands thus. Either the Name, Jeho- 
 vah, was first revealed, according to 
 the story, in the time of Moses, or it 
 was known long before that age, from 
 the very first, — from the time of Eve, 
 G.iv.l, or of Enos, when ' men began 
 to call upon the Name of Jehovah, 
 G.iv.26. If, then, it was first made 
 known in the time of Moses, how can 
 we account for so many names appear- 
 ing in the Chronicles, of persons who 
 lived before that age, which are com- 
 pounded with Jehovah, to say nothing 
 of the Name itself being so freely put 
 into the mouths of all kinds of persons, 
 in the Jehovistic portions of the book 
 of Genesis ? If, on the other hand, 
 the statements in G.iv.1,26, are true, 
 then, as names compounded with Elo- 
 him were common enough, how is it 
 that none are found compounded vpith 
 Jehovah till more than two thousand 
 years after the time of Enos, —appear- 
 ing first, but then, according to the 
 Chronicler, as plentifully as in far 
 later times, in the age of Jacob's great- 
 grandchildren ? 
 
 306. If, indeed, such names had 
 first appeared after the time referred 
 to in E.vi, we might have supposed 
 that then, by the republication of the 
 Name, a fresh impulse was given to its 
 being freely used among the people. 
 
 But the Chronicler's data forbid such a 
 supposition. According to him, the 
 name first began to be used freely, and 
 then it was used very freely, in the 
 composition of names, among Jacob's 
 great-grandchildren, while they were, 
 we must suppose, miserable slaves in 
 the land of Egypt. However, the 
 character of the Chronicler's state- 
 ments is sufficiently shown by the fact, 
 that in the very age, in which he gives 
 so many of these names, the Pentateuch 
 and book of Joshua, amidst their nu- 
 merous additional names, furnish not 
 one single instance of this kind, except, 
 as before, Joshua and Jochebed. 
 
 307. It should be observed that the 
 inference, which, as it seems to us, may 
 be fairly drawn from the fact above 
 stated, is two-fold : — 
 
 (i) That main portions of the Pen* 
 tateuch and book of Joshua were com- 
 posed before the name Jehovah had 
 been long in such familiar use, as to 
 be freely employed in the formation of 
 Proper Names ; 
 
 (ii) That they were, probably, not 
 written in the later ages, to which 
 many eminent critics are disposed to 
 assign them, — were not vrritten, for 
 instance, long after the age of Solomon, 
 or even long after the latter part of 
 David's Hfe, when Proper Names com- 
 pounded with Jehovah began to be 
 common, as the history shows, and, 
 therefore, such names would most 
 likely have crept into the text. Thus 
 we have David's sons, AAaaijah, and 
 ShephatiaA, 2S.iii.4i Jedidi'oA, Solo- 
 mon's other name, xii.25, .Tbnadab, 
 David's nephew, xiii.3, Jonathan, the 
 son of Abiathar, xv.27, BenaiaA, Je- 
 Aoiada, and JeAoshaphat, xx.23,24, 
 another BenaiaA, Jonathan, 'Uriah the 
 Hittite, xxiii.30,32,39. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DEEIVATION OF THE NAME 
 MOBIAH. 
 
 308. There is, however, one word 
 in Genesis, the name of a place, 
 MoriaA, G.xxii.2, which appears at 
 first sight to be compounded with 
 Jehovah. Hbnbstbnbbeg, i.274-277, 
 insists very strongly on this point ; and, 
 
116 
 
 DERIVATION OF THE NAME MOEIAH. 
 
 for the sake of the Hebrew student 
 and critic, we have considered his 
 arguments at length in (Part 11.312). 
 
 309. For the ordinary English reader, 
 however, it will be sufficient to say : — 
 
 (i) This is the only instance in the 
 whole book of Genesis, where any 
 name of place or person is (apparently) 
 compounded with the name Jehovah ; 
 it is, therefore, highly probable from 
 the first, that the derivation main- 
 tained by Hengstenbbeg is erroneous. 
 
 (ii) It is most unlikely that this 
 place was generally known — (as the 
 Divine command in v.2, ' Get thee 
 into the land of Moriah,' evidently 
 implies) — known, therefore, to the 
 idolatrous Canaanites, — by a name 
 compounded with Jehovah, when there 
 is not a single other instance, in the 
 •whole Bible, of the existence of another 
 name, so compounded, in that age. 
 
 (iii) It is impossible that the place 
 could have been already known fami- 
 liarly as ' Moriah,' which means, accor- 
 ding to Hengstenbeho, 'appearance 
 of Jehovah,' before that very ' appear- 
 ance of Jehovah ' took place, described 
 in the story, G.xxii, to which the 
 giving of the name itself is ascribed : 
 that is to say, it is impossible that 
 when God said to Abraham, ' Get 
 thee into the land of Moriah,' He 
 could have commanded Abraham to go 
 to a land which was not yet known by 
 the name by which He called it. 
 
 310. It remains now to be consi- 
 dered what may, perhaps, be the real 
 meaning and origin of the name Moriah. 
 
 The argument of Hengstenberg 
 rests mainly on one assumption, viz. 
 that the 'mount' which he supposes to 
 be indicated by the name ' Moriah ' in 
 G.Ttxii 2, is the same as that ' mount 
 Moriah.' which is actually mentioned 
 in the Hebrew text of ZCh.iii.l, as the 
 hill at Jerusalem on which the Temple 
 was built, and where an 'appearance of 
 Jehovah' took, place, according to the 
 Chronicler, in the time of David, cor- 
 responding to this first ' appearance of 
 Jehovah ' to Abraham. 
 
 3 11 . Now first, let it be observed that 
 G.xxii.2 does not speak of any ' m,ount 
 Moriah,' but of the ' land of Moriah,' 
 which is supposed to have been well- 
 
 known to Abraham ; whereas the 
 mount, on which he was to sacrifice 
 his son, was not as yet known to him, 
 but was to be pointed out to him by 
 God Himself: — 
 
 * Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, 
 whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land 
 of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt- 
 offering, upon one of the mountains which I 
 will tell thee of,* 
 
 312. Again, the narrative says, ul4, 
 that Abraham called the place of sacri- 
 fice, — that is, this very mount — by the 
 name ' Jehovah-Jireh.' It is very arbi- 
 trary to suppose that the writer meant it 
 to be understood that he did not really 
 call it by this name, but by another 
 name, ' Moriah,' — by which name, how- 
 ever, the whole district round iwas, 
 according to the story in G.xxii.2, 
 already generally known I 
 
 313. Hence it is not surprising to 
 find that some of the principal ancient 
 versions say nothing whatever of the 
 'land of Moriah,' but translate the 
 corresponding Hebrew word by ' high,' 
 ' conspicuous,' ' visible,' &c. Thus the 
 LXX. have ' into the high land,' — 
 AauiLA, ' into the conspicuous land,' — 
 Symmachxis, ' into the land of the 
 vision,' not (N.B.) 'into the land of 
 the vision of Jehovah,' — the Vulgate, in 
 terram visionis, 'into the land of vision.' 
 
 314. But the fact is, that in on*ly one 
 single place of the 0. T., vie. in the above 
 passage of the Chronicles, written (222) 
 two hundred years after the Captivity, 
 is the name Moriah, whatever may 
 be its meaning, applied to the Temple 
 Hill at all. In all earlier writings 
 after the time of Solomon, in the later 
 Psalms, and in the Prophets, the hill, 
 on which the Temple stood, is without 
 exception called Zion. Wherever men- 
 tion is made of the Sanctuary, Jeho- 
 vah's earthly dwelling-place, Zion is 
 invariably named, never once Moriah. 
 
 315. The following are some of the 
 passages of Scripture, which prove 
 that the Temple, as well as the Taber- 
 nacle, was built on Mount Zion. We 
 omit many^ where ' Zion ' may be un- 
 derstood as standing for the whole city 
 of Jerusalem, and also a multitude of 
 passages which occur in the Psalms, 
 since it might be disputed whether 
 
DERIVATION OF THE NAME MORIAH. 
 
 these, were written before or after the 
 days of David. But Thkupp truly 
 observes. Ancient Jerusalem, p.24 :— 
 
 It cannot be denied tliat the Idea of ' holi- 
 ness ' is inseparably connected with the name 
 Zion ; and, if Zion was the Temple- Hill, it is 
 easily seen why Jemsalem, as the holy city, 
 shotjd be called by this name ; but, had Zion 
 been exactly the part of the city in which the 
 Temple did not stand-, then the use of the 
 name Zion to convey the idea of holiness, be- 
 comes absolutely inexplicable. 
 
 316. The following passages from 
 the Prophets were certainly written 
 while the Temple was still standing, 
 and they refer plainly to the Sacred 
 Hill itself, and not to the city. 
 
 * Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound 
 an alarm in my holy mountain.^ Joel ii.l. 
 
 * So shall ye know that I am Jehovah your 
 God, dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain.' 
 Joel iii.l7. 
 
 * Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and 
 there shall be holiness' Ob.l7. 
 
 ' Jehovah of Hoste, which dwellefh in Mount 
 Zion' Is.viii.l8. 
 
 * Theplace of the Name, of Jehovah of Hosts, 
 die Mount Zion' Is.xviii,7. 
 
 * Jehovah shall reign over them in Mount 
 Zionfrom henceforth, even for ever.' Mic.iv.7. 
 
 317. In the following passages Mount 
 Zion is expressly distinguished from 
 the whole city of Jerusalem. 
 
 ' In Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be 
 deliverance.' Joel ii.32. 
 
 ' When Jehovah hath performed His whole 
 work upon Moimt Zion and on Jerusalem.' 
 lB.x.12. 
 
 • ' When Jehovah of Hosts shall reign in 
 Mount Zion and in Jerusalem.' ls.xxiv.23. 
 
 So, too, after the return from the 
 Captivity and the rebuilding of the 
 Temple, we read, Zeeh.viii.3 — 
 
 *Thu8 saith Jehovah, I am returned unto 
 Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jeru- 
 salem ; and Jerusalem shall be called a city of 
 truth, and the mountain of Jehovah of Hosts, 
 the holy mouiltain ; ' — 
 where the parallelism of the Hebrew 
 poetry shows that 'Zion' is the 'moun- 
 tain of Jehovah, the holy mountain.' 
 
 318. Again, in the time of the Mac- 
 cabees we read : — 
 
 'Upon this all the host assembled them- 
 selves .together, and went up into Mount Sion ; 
 and when they saw the sanctuary desolate 
 and the altar profaned, and the gates burned 
 up, and shrubs growing up in the courts, as in 
 a forest, or in one of the mountains, yea, and 
 the Priests' chambers pulled down, kc.' IM. 
 iv.37,38. 
 
 " * So they went up to Mount Sion with ]oy 
 and gladness, where they offered burnt-offer- 
 ings, &c.' 1M.V.54. 
 
 ' After this went Nicanor up to Mount Sion, 
 and there came out of the Sanctuary certain 
 
 117 
 Bee also 'I 
 
 of the Priests, &c.' lM.vii.33 
 will burn up this House,' v.35. 
 
 ' So then they wrote it on tables of brass, 
 which they set upon pillars in Mount Sion,' 
 lM.xiv.27 ; comp. o.48, ' So they commanded 
 that thi^ writing should be put in tables of 
 brass, and that they should be set up within 
 the compass of the Sanctuary in a conspicnous 
 place.' 
 
 319. It is true that in this age the 
 'city of David' was evidently distin- 
 guished from ' mount Zion ' ; since the 
 Syrian king's forces held a strong 
 'tower' in the 'city of David,' IM.ii. 
 31,vi.26,vii.32, xiii.49,52,xiv.7,36, while 
 the Jews fortified the 'mount Zion,' 
 lM.iv.60, vi.7,26,48,51,54,61,62, x.ll, 
 xiii.52 ; whereas Zion is called the 
 ' city of David,' in 2S.V.7, lK.viii.l, 
 lCh.xi.5. Perhaps, the ' city of David ' 
 with its 'tower' occupied the site of 
 the old Jebu.site fortress upon the north- 
 ern end of Mount Zion ; whereas the 
 'Sanctuary' was built upon the southern 
 eminence ofthe same Mount ; and hence 
 we read, lM.xiii.52, of the 'hill of the 
 temple that was bt/tbe tower.' But, how- 
 ever this apparent discrepancy may be 
 explained, and whatever view may be 
 taken of the Chronicler's solitary note 
 of the name ' Moriah ' being given to 
 the Temple-Hill, it may be considered 
 as certain, from the above evidence, 
 that both the Tabernacle and Temple 
 were built oh mount Zion, which fact 
 we shall find to be of some importance, 
 in considering the age of certain of the 
 Psalms. 
 
 320. Although, therefore, the name 
 Moriah may have been commonly used 
 for the Temple-Hill in the Chronicler's 
 days, (though this must be considered 
 doubtful,) yet the fact above stated 
 leads us at once to two conclusions : — 
 
 i) That no writer of later days, 
 ore the Captivity, could have 
 written this story of Abraham's sacri- 
 fice, introducing the name Moriah, in 
 order to attach celebrity to the Temple- 
 Hill ; since such a writer would surely 
 have sought to attach such honour to 
 the name of Zion ; 
 
 (ii) That the Jews, from David's 
 time and downwards, never could have 
 understood the hill of Abraham's sacri- 
 fice to have been mount Moriah, the 
 Temple-HUl ; since then the Psalmists 
 and Prophets would purely liave made 
 
 J- 
 oejoi 
 
118 
 
 BEEIVAXrOJ^ OF THE NAIIE MORIAH. 
 
 free uae^ or made use occasionally, of 
 this name Moriah, and not of Zion ex- 
 clusively. As it is, there is no indica- 
 tion in the Bible, except in this one 
 very late notice of the untrustworthy 
 Chronicler, that the Temple-Hill was 
 ever really called by this name. 
 
 321. The reader's attention may 
 now be called to the following extract 
 from Dean Stanley's Sinai and Pales- 
 tine, _p,250-253. 
 
 What is affirmed by the Gentile tradition, 
 ■with regard to the connection of Gerizim 
 with Melchizedek, is affirmed by the Samaritan 
 tradition, with regard to its connection with 
 the sacrifice of Isaac. ' Beyond all doubt,' 
 (this is the form in which the story is told 
 a«iongst the Samaritans themselTes,) ' Isaac 
 was ofEered on Ar-Gerizim, Abraham said, 
 * Let us go up, and sacrifice on the mountain. 
 He took out a rope to fasten his son ; but 
 Isaac said, * No I I will lie still.' Thrice the 
 knife refused to cut. Then God from heaven 
 called to Gabriel. ' Go down, and save Isaac, 
 or I will destroy thee from among the angels.' 
 From the seventh heaven Gabriel called, and 
 pointed to the ram,' The place of the ram's 
 capture is still shown near the Holy Place. 
 The Jewish tradition, aa represented by Jo- 
 sephus, transfers the scene to the hill, on 
 which the Temple was afterwards erected at 
 Jerusalem ; and this belief has been per- 
 petuated in Christian times, as attached to a 
 spot in the garden of the Abyssinian Convent, 
 not, indeed, on Mount Moriah, but imme- 
 diately to the east of the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre, with the intention of connecting 
 the sacrifice of Isaac with the Crucifixion. 
 An ancient thorn tree, covered with the rags 
 of pi^rrims, is still shown as the thicket in 
 which the ram was caught. 
 
 But the Samaritan tradition is confirmed 
 by the circumstances of the story. Abraham 
 was *in the land of the Philistines,' probably 
 at the extreme south. From Beersheba to 
 Gaza he would probably be conceived to move 
 along the Philistine plain ; and then on the 
 morning of the third day he would arrive in 
 the plain of Sharon, exactly where the mas- 
 sive height of Gerizim is visible ' afar off ;' 
 and from thence half a day would bring him 
 to its summit. Exactly such a view is to be 
 had in that plain ; and, on the other hand, 
 no such view or impression can fairly be said 
 to exist on the road firom Beersheba to Jeru- 
 salem, even if what is at most a journey of 
 two days could be extended to three. The 
 towers of Jerusalem are, indeed, seen from 
 the ridge of Mar Blias, at the distance of 
 three miles. But there is no elevation, 
 nothing corresponding to the * place afar off,' 
 to which Abraham ' lifted up his eyes.' And 
 the special locality, which Jewish tradition 
 has assigned for the place, and whose name is 
 the chirf guarantee for the tradition, — Mount 
 Moriah, the Hill of the Temple,— is 7k>( visible, 
 till the traveller is close upon it, at the southern 
 edge of the valley of Hinnom, from whence 
 he looks dotm upon it, tuona lover eminence. 
 
 322. The same author writes as fol- 
 lows, Lectures on the Jewish Churchy 
 p.48,49 :— 
 
 From the tents of Beereheba, he set forth 
 at the rising of the sun, and went unto the 
 place of which God had told him. It was not 
 the place which Jewish tradition has selected 
 on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem,— still less that 
 which Christian tradition shows, even to the 
 thicket in which the ram was caught, hard 
 by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, — still 
 less that which Mussulman tradition indicates 
 on Mount Arafat, at Mecca . Bather we must 
 look to that ancient Sanctuary of which I 
 have already spoken, the natural altar on the 
 summit of Mount Gerizim. On that spot, at 
 that time the holiest in Palestine, the crisis 
 was to take place. 'One, two, three days' 
 journey from Beersheba,— in the distance the 
 high crest of the mountain appears. And 
 ' Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the pla^ 
 afar off.* 
 
 323. To the above I will add the 
 following remarks. 
 
 (i) It is much more probable that 
 the site of such a sacrifice would be 
 laid upon the ' smooth sheet of rock * 
 upon the top of Mount Gerizim, in a 
 central situation, visible, as the Table 
 Mountain near Maritzburg in Natal, 
 like a huge natural altat, to all the 
 country round, yet where the transac- 
 tion would be private and concealed 
 from men*s eyes, than on the low hill 
 of the Temple, in the southern district 
 of Judah, and in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood of the Jefmsite city of Jeru~ 
 salem, if not, indeed, actually included 
 within its circuit, for Araunah the 
 Jebusite lived upon it in David's days, 
 and his family may have lived there in 
 Samuel's. 
 
 (ii) In D.xi.30 we read of Mount 
 Gerizim and Mount Ebal : — 
 
 ' Are they not on the other side Jordan, by 
 the way where the sun goeth down, in the 
 land of the Ganaanites, which dwell in the 
 champaign over against Gilgal, b^de the 
 terebinths (E.V. ' plains ') of Moreh ? ' 
 
 But there was evidently one very 
 remarkable hill or mountain in that 
 land, since in Ju.vii.l we read of the 
 host of the Midianites being *on the 
 north side of the hill of Moreh, in the 
 valley.' Now Gerizim -was noted, both 
 as the highest, and also as one of the 
 most fertile, of the hills of that district 
 May not Gerizim and Ebal have been 
 ' the mountains' of the ' land of Moreh,' 
 one of which was to be pointed out to 
 Abraham ? 
 
 (iii) Moreh was already distin- 
 
THE NAMES ELOHIM AND JEHOVAH. 
 
 119 
 
 puished and hallowed as the place 
 where Abram first halted, after his 
 entrance into the land of Canaan, 
 axii.6,— 
 
 * And Abram passed tbrougli the land nnto 
 the place of Sichem, unto the terebinth (B.T. 
 •plain') o/Moreh.' 
 
 It ■was, therefore, closely connected with 
 the life of Abraham, whereas the 'mount' 
 at Jerusalem was wholly strange to it. 
 
 324. The later Jews may have had the 
 same reason for corrupting this passage 
 in Genesis, by changing ' Moreh ' into 
 ' Moriah,' so as to draw awav attention 
 and honour from the famous, or, in 
 their view, infamous, Samaritan moun- 
 tain to their own Temple-hill, as they 
 had for making the change in D.xxvii.4, 
 Jo.vui.30, where, according to Ken- 
 NicoTT, JDissM.e.\, they have really 
 changed the original Gerizim, which 
 stiU stands in the Samaritaji copies of 
 the Pentateuch, into Ebal. By this 
 ehange.^instead of Gerizim, the mount 
 of blessing, D.xxvii.l2, on which Joshua 
 himself, with the royal tribe of Judah, 
 the prieAtly tribe of Levi, and his 
 own tribe of Joseph, were to stand 
 'to bless the people,' ^.12 — they have 
 made Ebal, the mount of cursincf, 
 D.xxvii.13, to be the mount, on which 
 Joshua and all Israel were to build an 
 altar, and ofier peace-offerings, and eat 
 there, and rejoice before Jehovah their 
 God, and set up great stones, with the 
 Law engraved upon them, to remain as 
 a record for all future ages. 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 THE NAMES ELOHIM AND JEHOVAH. 
 
 325. The word Elohim is a plural 
 noun, — derived, it is supposed, from a 
 root, which still exists in Arabic, mean- 
 ing ' to fear, dread, tremble.' Hence 
 the word means properly 'fear,' then 
 'object of fear': comp. G.xxxi.42,63, 
 where God is called ' the Fear of Isaac' 
 Hence it follows that Elohim, by virtue 
 of its original meaning, is the general 
 name for Deity in Hebrew, and may 
 be used, accordingly, for a heathen 
 God. 
 
 326. It is, therefore, quite a mistake 
 to think of proving the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, as some do, from the fact, that 
 Elohim is a plural name. It is true, 
 
 this plural noun is generally used with 
 a singular verb, — but not always; for 
 it occurs with a plural verb in G.xx.l3k 
 and with a plural adjective or participle 
 in Jo.xxiv. 19, Ps.lviii. 12. And, as above 
 mentioned, it is used of an idol, — Dagon, 
 IS. v. 7, Astarte, lK.xi.S, Baalzebub^ 
 2K.i.2,3,e,— as well as of the True God. 
 It is, therefore, most probably, a pluralis 
 exceUentite, according to the very com- 
 mon Hebrew idiom, by which a plural 
 noun is used to express a superlative 
 degree of excellence of any kind. Thus 
 we have — 
 
 * A cruel lord*,' l8.xix,4,— * If I am a lord*, 
 where Is my fear ? ' Mal.i.6, — ' the Holy One*^ 
 Pr.xi.lO, H:os.x1.12,— ' God my Makers,' Job 
 xxxv.lO,—* Remember thy Creator*,' Ecc.xii. 
 1, — ' thy Husband* is thy Maker*,' Is.liv.5, — 
 
 * Jehovah is thy Keeper*,* Ps.cxxi.5. 
 
 So, too, Adonai, ' Lord,' so often used 
 for God, is plural; and in D.x.17 we 
 have the double plural, 'Lords of 
 lords.' 
 
 327. The name 'Jehovah,' however, 
 is never used of a heathen god. It is 
 the proper Personal Name of Him, who 
 is declared to be emphatically the cove- 
 nant God of the Hebrew people, — 
 
 ' Jehovah the God of your fathers, the God of 
 Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob,' E.iii.l6, — 
 'Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews,' t?.18, — 
 ' Jehovah, your God,' vi.7. 
 
 Hence it is never used as an appella- 
 tive, as Elohim often is. Thus we may 
 find it written, ' thy Elohim,' ' Jehovah, 
 your Elohim,' &e.but not 'thy Jehovah,' 
 ' Elohim, our Jehovah.' 
 
 328. In E.iii.l4, 'I am that I am,' 
 we find explained, apparently, the deri- 
 vation of the name, ' Jehovah,' a<?cording 
 to the writer's view, from the Hebrew 
 word Mvdh, ' to be.' Whether this be 
 the true origin of the Sacred Name 
 or not, it appears to have been that 
 which approved itself to the writer- of 
 E.iii.l4. 
 
 And, thus derived, thename ' Jehovatf 
 may be considered to mean ' HE IS,' in 
 opposition to the gods of the Gentiles, 
 ' which are not,' which are ' no gods,' 
 Is.xxxvii.l9, and to represent, in the 
 mouths of mew, the'self-existentBeing,' 
 the 'Eternal,' the 'Living God,' 'Who 
 was, and is, and is to come,' Eev.i.8 ; 
 whereas ' I am' could only properly be 
 used> as in E.iii.l4, by the Divine Being 
 Himself. 
 
120 
 
 THE NAMES ELOHIM AND JEHOVAH. 
 
 329. The Elohist, then, represents 
 this name 'Jehoyah' as haying been 
 first announced to Moses and the 
 Israelites at the time of the Exodus. 
 And he carefully avoids using it in all 
 the foregoing part of the story from 
 Adam downwards, through the times 
 of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, 
 to that of Moses. The Jehovist uses it 
 freely all along. And, without giving 
 any account of its first introduction, he 
 puts it in the mouth of Eve, G.iv.l, 
 and remarks incidentally that, as 
 early as the time of Enos, ' men began 
 to call upon the Name of Jehovah,' 
 G.iv.26. 
 
 330. The question now to be con- 
 sidered is, which of these two writers 
 gives the- true account, or, rather, is 
 either statement correct ? Does not the 
 very existence of this discrepancy eug- 
 gestthe probability of neither version of 
 the story being the right one ? May it 
 not be possible that the Elohist wrote at 
 a time when the word was new, — when 
 it had only been recently introduced, 
 as the national Personal Name for the 
 Divine Being, with the view of drawing 
 more distinctly the line of demarcation 
 between the people of Israel, — now first 
 gathered under a king, and no longer 
 living in scattered, separate, tribes, — 
 and the idolatrous nations round 
 them? 
 
 331. May not the Elohistic writer, 
 wishing to enforce the adoption of this 
 Name, have composed for the purpose 
 this portion of the Mosaic story, while 
 the later Jehovist, writing when the 
 Name, though not, perhaps, even yet in 
 common every-day use, was beginning 
 to be more generally known, and was, at 
 all events, familiar to himself, uses it 
 freely from the first? And may not 
 these later passages have been blended 
 into one with the original narrative, 
 either by the Jehovist himself, if he 
 was merely an interpolator, or by some 
 later editor, if the Jehovist was an in- 
 dependent writer, without its being per- 
 ceived, or, at least, without its hexagfdt 
 very strongly, that a contradiction was 
 thereby imported into the narrative, as, 
 in fae^ it was not perceived that G.ii 
 contradicted G.i, and that G.vii con^ 
 tradicted G.vi, and so in many other 
 
 instances, of which we shall have to 
 take account hereafter? 
 
 332. In suggesting this, we assume, 
 of course, that, from what we have al- 
 ready seen of the unhistorical character, 
 generally, of the account of the Exodus, 
 it is no longer necessary to believe that 
 the name Jehovah really originated in 
 the way described in E.vi. Yet it must 
 have originated in some way, — at some 
 time or other, — in the real history of 
 the Hebrew people, just as the Zulu 
 Name for the Creator, Unkulunkulu, 
 ' the Great-Great-One,' must have been 
 first used by some deep-thinking person 
 in some part or other of thdr past his- 
 tory. Is it not possible, then, that the 
 Name Jehovah may have been first 
 employed by such a man as Samuel, 
 in order to mark more distinctly the 
 difference between the Elohim of the 
 Hebrews and the Elohim of the nations 
 round them, and make it more difficult 
 for them to fall away to the practice of 
 idolatry ? 
 
 333. Certainly, it would be much 
 more easy and natural to suppose, if 
 that were supported by the actual 
 evidence in the case before us, that 
 Samuel, or whoever else composed the 
 Elohistic document, found the Name 
 already in use among his people, and 
 with some legendary traditions attached 
 to it, as to the way in which it was first 
 made known to them by Moses, during 
 their march through the wilderness. If 
 it were right to wish any fact of history 
 to be other than it really is, one would 
 rather desire such a solution of the pre- 
 sent diflculty, and gladly embrace it. 
 But a firm and honest adherence to the 
 results of critical enquiry, as set forth 
 in the following chapters, does not, in 
 our judgment, allow of our making this 
 supposition. They seem to compel us 
 to the conclusion, that the Name was 
 really new to the Hebrew people in 
 the days of Samuel ; and, if so, we can 
 scarcely avoid the inference that he 
 himself must have first adopted it. 
 
 334, In that case, he may have 
 written the account of the revelation 
 to Moses in E.vi, with the view of 
 accounting for the origin of the Name, 
 and may have carefully abstained from 
 using it in his narrative, until it was 
 
THE NAMES ELOHIM AND JEHOVAH. 
 
 tlms, as it were, introduced with autho- 
 rity. We may conceiTe that the sheets 
 of parchment or papyrus, on which the 
 old Seer had inscribed, as best he could, 
 the early annals of the Hebrew history, 
 were left at his death, — unfinished, pro- 
 bably,— in the hands of the members of 
 his ' School,' for whose instruction, in 
 fact, they were, as we suppose, com- 
 posed in the first instance, though their 
 Teaeher'slarge and patrioticmind would 
 embrace, no doubt, the whole population 
 of the land, whom he hoped gradually 
 to reach by means of their influence. 
 
 335. This xmfinished work, then, 
 would fall naturally, after the Seer's 
 death, into the custody of some disciple 
 of Samuel, one of the ' Prophets ' of his 
 ' School,' such, for instance, as Nathan 
 or Gad, — not exactly, therefore, a con- 
 temporary of the Seer, so as to have 
 shared in his counsels from the first, 
 and to have taken a deep personal in- 
 terest in the original plan, — and yet 
 living at a time so near to his time, 
 that the Name, Jehovah, though well- 
 known to those of higher mind, such as 
 David and the Prophets and Priests of 
 his age, was not yet thoroughly popu- 
 larised, was not, therefore, used as 
 familiarly as the old name Elohim, in 
 the common speech of the people at 
 large, nor compounded freely in their 
 Proper Names. And he, who had al- 
 ready, perhaps, witnessed the actual 
 growth of the history under his mas- 
 ter's hands, and had imbibed, we may 
 suppose, some portion of his spirit, 
 might very properly seek to carry on 
 and perfect so interesting and useful 
 a work; he might even have been 
 charged by the dying Seer himself to 
 do so. 
 
 336. Accordingly, he may have done 
 his best to this end, either by writing 
 a separate narrative, which at first 
 existed in an independent form, but 
 was incorporated by a later editor with 
 the Elohistic document, or by directly 
 interpolating the original story, making 
 additions here and there from any sources 
 at his command, illustrating, amending, 
 enlarging, and, perhaps, at times abridg- 
 ing it, and filling up the latter portion of 
 the narrative, which was left, perhaps, 
 altogether incomplete. Such a writer. 
 
 121 
 
 as this, accustomed from his youth up- 
 wards, as one of Samuel's pupils, to use 
 habitually, in his common discourse, the 
 name Jehovah, as the Proper Name of 
 the God of Israel, might not adhere to 
 this peculiarity of the earlier narrative, 
 but might use the name Jehovah freely 
 from the first, and might, indeed, desire, 
 or think it best, to represent it as a 
 Name known to pious worshippers from 
 a very early age. 
 
 337. Should it further appear, as I 
 believe it wiU, that there is very little 
 in the Pentateuch after E.vi which 
 really belongs to the Elohist, who seems 
 to have either brought his story to a 
 close very abruptly, or to have left if, 
 towards the conclusion, in a very im- 
 perfect and defective state, there would 
 have been the less reason for this se- 
 cond writer to have considered it in- 
 cumbent on him to adhere strictly to 
 the plan of the Elohist. He may, 
 therefore, have determined altogether 
 to abandon it in his own composition, 
 and to represent the name Jehovah, as 
 used commonly among men from the 
 days of Enos downwards. 
 
 338. In that case, however, and sup- 
 posing that he did not compose an ori- 
 ginal, independent, narrative, but wrote 
 only to supplement the primary story, 
 he must have retained deliberately the 
 grand Elohistic chapter, E.vi, as too 
 interesting and important to be omitted 
 in the story of the Exodus, though aware 
 of the inconsistency thus occasioned, or, 
 it may be, as above suggested, because 
 he did not feel very strongly the contra- 
 diction thus involved, any more than 
 those which exist between his own ac- 
 counts of the Creation and the Flood, 
 and those of his predecessor. And so 
 there are multitudes of devout and 
 thoughtful readers, who have studied 
 the Bible closely in our own days, 
 without perceiving these obvious dis- 
 crepancies. 
 
 339. It would be very natural, how- 
 ever, for a writer such as this, upon 
 first introducing the Name Jehovah into 
 the story, — a Name, as we suppose, not 
 yet thoroughly popularised, — to eowple 
 it with the famihar Name Elohim, so 
 making the transition, as it were, more 
 easy. In this way, perhaps, we may ao- 
 
 I 
 
122 
 
 THE ELOHISTIC PSALMS OF DAVID. 
 
 count for the fact that in G.ii.4-iu.24, 
 the firtt JehoTistie section of the Bible, 
 the Name ' Jehovah ' occurs twenty 
 times, and always in the fonn ' Jehovah 
 Elohim,' LoBD God, — not 'Jehovah' 
 only, as in the subsequent section, 
 which, however, as will be shewn here- 
 after, is due to the same writer. 
 
 340. This circumstance also rather 
 tends to confirm the idea, thatthe writer 
 composed it at a time, when the Name, 
 though already familiar to himself, was 
 not yet universally employed, and that 
 he wished in this way to commend it 
 to popular acceptance, instead of merely 
 adopting it as a word already common 
 in the mouths of the people. 
 
 In like manner, the Zulus can speak 
 of the Unkulunkulu of this, or that, 
 person, or people. In the Church of 
 England Missions, however, the word 
 uDio has been introduced for the Name 
 of God, as specially set forth in Chris- 
 tian teaching. And it is not uncommon 
 for a missionary to join the two together, 
 in speaking to the natives, in the form 
 uDio-Nkulunkulu. 
 
 341. At present, however, the sug- 
 gestions, which we have made above, 
 are only conjectural, except to this ex- 
 tent, that — 
 
 (i) We have seen reason already to 
 conclude with certainty (240) that 
 large portions, at least, of the story of 
 the Exodus must have been written 
 long after the time of Moses and 
 Joshua, whatever relics of that earlier 
 age may still, perhaps, be retained in 
 the narrative ; 
 
 (ii) We can scarcely doubt that the 
 age of Samuel is the earliest age, after 
 the time of the Exodus, at which such 
 a history can be conceived to have been 
 written ; 
 
 (iii) We have observed some indica- 
 tions (234), which seem to point to the 
 age of Samuel, as the time at which 
 some portions of the Pentateuch may 
 have been written ; 
 
 (iv) We have reason to believe (276) 
 that Samuel and his pupils did actually 
 employ themsdves in historical compo- 
 sition. . 
 
 Let us now see if we can bring any 
 proofs to bear more directly on thu 
 question. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THB ELOHISTIC PSAIMS OP DAVID. 
 
 342. Let it first be observed that, in 
 the Pentateuch, and Book of Joshua, 
 so soon as the Name Jehovah is pro- 
 claimed, it appears constantly in every 
 page as the ruling Name, the word 
 habitually and most commonly em- 
 ployed for the Divine Being. This 
 continues also through the books of 
 Judges, Ruth, Samuel, and Kings. 
 The Name Elohim is also used, but far 
 more frequently the Name Jehovah. 
 
 343. Thus a careful examination of 
 each book gives the following result, 
 reckoning only those instances in which 
 the Name El or Elohim is applied to 
 the True God, and not to human beings 
 or idols. 
 
 
 Elohim 
 
 Jahovah 
 
 Exodus . . . 
 
 134 . 
 
 . 393 
 
 Leviticus . . 
 
 S2 . 
 
 . 311 
 
 Numbers . . 
 
 34 . 
 
 . 396 
 
 Deuteronomy . 
 
 334 . 
 
 . 650 
 
 Joshua . . . 
 
 67 . 
 
 . 224 
 
 Judges . . . 
 
 52 . 
 
 . 174 
 
 Ruth .... 
 
 3 . 
 
 . 18 
 
 1 Samuel . , 
 
 97 . 
 
 . 320 
 
 2 Samuel . . 
 
 69 . 
 
 . 163 
 
 1 Kings . . . 
 
 88 . 
 
 . 258 
 
 2 Kings . . . 
 
 77 . 
 
 . 277 
 
 In Jo.ii.9-12, the Name Jehovah is 
 put fowr times into the mouth of 
 the danaanitish harlot, Rahab. In 
 N.xxii-xxiv it occurs twelve times in 
 the addresses of the heathen frophet, 
 Balaam, and Elohim only eleven times ; 
 nay, he is actually made to say, — 
 
 'I cannot go beyond the word of Jehovah, 
 my God,' N.2jdi.lS. 
 
 344. Thus it cannot be doubted that 
 the stoi^, as told in the Pentateuch and 
 all the otjier historical books, represents 
 the Name Jehovah as being far more 
 common in the mouth of the people 
 generally than the Name Elohim, all 
 along downwards, from the time of its 
 being announced as the special Name, 
 by which the God of Israel would be 
 known to His people. 
 
 345. If, then, we have any means of 
 testing independently the truth of this 
 representation, we shall thus have light 
 thrown, from an entirely new quarter, 
 upon the question now before us, as to 
 the historical veracity of the Books of 
 the Pentateuch. If we find, upon cer- 
 
THE ELOHISTIC PSALMS OF DAVID. 
 
 123 
 
 tain evidence, that the Kama Jehovah 
 was thus habitually employed by men, 
 who, beyond all doubt, lived and wrote 
 within the period embraced by these 
 Books, we shall have so far an agree- 
 ment with the Mosaic story, that there 
 is here no contradiction to it, though, 
 in face of the evidence, already pro- 
 duced, of the uuhistorical character of 
 the narrative, even such an agreement 
 as this Would not, of course, avail to es- 
 tablish its historical veracity. 
 
 346. But if, on the other hand, we 
 find the exact contrary, — if we find 
 that, so far from the Name Jehovah 
 being habitually used, it was used vertf 
 rarely, much less freely than Elohim, 
 and often not at ail, by most eminent 
 writers, who must have been familiar 
 vrith the Name, and must have used it, 
 if it was really common in their days, — 
 we shall have here a direct and palpable 
 contradiction to the intimations of the 
 Mosaic Books, and a strong independent 
 proo^ in addition to what we have ob- 
 served already, of the unhistorical cha- 
 racter of the Mosaic story. 
 
 347. Let us examine, then, for this 
 purpose, the Book of Psalms, and those 
 Psalms especially, in the first instance, 
 which appear by their titles to have 
 been written in the earlier part of 
 David's life. And let us see if David 
 makes use of the Name Jehovah, as 
 freely as we should expect him to use 
 it, from what we find in the Pentateuch, 
 — as freely as he must have used it, if 
 the word was in common use in his 
 days, and believed to have had set upon 
 it the seal, as it were, of Jehovah Him- 
 self, as the Name by which He would 
 be known as the Covenant God of 
 Israel. It is true that the titles of 
 the Psalms may be— and most pro- 
 bably are — in many eases, of much 
 later date than the Psalms themselves, 
 and are not to be depended on, when 
 unsupported by internal evidence of 
 their truthfulness. But the contents 
 of a Psalm will sometimes confirm the 
 statement in the title, as to the oc- 
 casion on which it was composed, and 
 be sufficient to satisfy us both as to its 
 having been written by David, or, at 
 least, in David's lifetime, and as to the 
 
 part of his life, in which it was, most 
 probably, written. 
 
 348. Of the hundred and fifty Psalms 
 contained in the Bible, nearly half, viz. 
 seventy-three, are, by their titles at- 
 tributed to David in the Hebrew text, 
 while the LXX assign eleven others to 
 him. Of the above seventy-three, four- 
 teen have inscriptions which specify the 
 event in David's life, with reference to 
 which the Psalm was composed. Eight 
 of these inscriptions refer to events in 
 his earlier years, before he was king. 
 
 349. Of these eight, six, when ex- 
 amined, give the following results : — 
 
 (i) In Ps.lii, when ' Doeg, the Edomite, 
 came and told Saul, and said unto him, David 
 is come to the house of Ahimelech,' we have 
 Elohim ^ve times, Jehovah rwtonce. 
 
 (ii) In Ps.liT, when ' the Ziphims came and 
 said to Saul, doth not David hide himself with 
 us ? ' we have Elohim fow times, Adonai 
 (Lord) once, Jehovah (Lord) once. 
 
 (iii) In Ps.lvi, when ' the Philistines took 
 David in Grath,' at the court of Achish, we 
 have Elohim nine times, Jehovah once. 
 
 (iv) In Ps.lvli, when ' David fled from Saul 
 in the cave,' we have Elohim seven times, Lord 
 tmce, Jehovah not once. 
 
 (v) In Fs.lix, when 'Saul sent, and they 
 watched the house to kill him,' we have 
 Elohim nvM times, Lord once, Jehovah three 
 times. But, in this Psalm, the expression in 
 v.ll, * Slay them not, lest my people forget it,' 
 would seem to imply that the writer was king 
 at the time, and, therefore, that, if written 
 by David at all, it was composed at a later 
 date than that which the title ascribes to it. 
 
 (vi) In Ps.lxiii, when * David was in the 
 wilderness of Judah,' we have Elohim ihree 
 times, Jehovah not once, 
 
 350. The above are all the Psalms 
 ascribed to David (with two exceptions, 
 Ps.xxxiv,Ps.cxlui, to be considered pre- 
 sently), whose early age is distinctly 
 intimated in their titles ; and in each 
 instance we see a phenomenon the very 
 opposite to that, which the Pentateuch 
 and other historical books would lead 
 us to expect. And let it be observed 
 that this is true, supposing that these 
 Psalms were really written by David, 
 whether he wrote them on the occasions 
 mentioned in the titles, or not, and 
 even if they were not written by David 
 at all, but by some other person of that 
 age. But, if the titles can be relied on, 
 (as some writers so strenuously main- 
 tain), it would follow from this that in 
 David's earlier days, — at a tinie when 
 he was in close intimacy with the 
 venerable Prophet Samuel, with whom, 
 
 I2 
 
124 
 
 THE ELOHISTIC PSALMS OF DAVID. 
 
 we are told, lie stayed some time at 
 Samah, lS.xix.18, while a fugitive from 
 Saul, and when he must, doubtless, 
 have mingled with the Prophets of 
 Samuel's ' School,' have heard their 
 sacred hymns, and taken part in their 
 religious services, — though he knew the 
 Name Jehovah, yet he was certainly rwt 
 in the habit of using it freely ; he 
 either used it not at aU in his com- 
 positions, or used it very sparingly, as 
 if he was only now beginning to use if, 
 as if it was somewhat new and strange 
 to him as yet, not so frequent on his 
 lips, not so familiar to his thoughts, as 
 tne old and well-known name, Elohim. 
 
 351. It is surely inconceivable that 
 a man, so eminently pious as David, 
 should, during a large portion of his 
 life, have been writing a number of 
 Psalms, in which this Name Jehovah is 
 hardly ever employed, if the story of 
 tlie giving of the Name is really true, — 
 if it was known to David that this 
 Name was first revealed to Moses by 
 the Lord Himself, and had the special 
 sanction and approval of Almighty God, 
 as the name by which He cb«se to be 
 addressed, the proper Name of the God 
 of Israel, — 
 
 * This is my Name for ever, and this is my 
 memorial unto all generations,' E.iii.lS. 
 
 It can hardly be believed that either 
 he, or any other good man of those days, 
 could have done this, if the Name was 
 so common in the moatbs of all pious 
 and devout men, — even of heathen per- 
 sons,— in his own and all the post- 
 Mosaic ages, as the history represents. 
 
 352. But the Psalms, above instanced, 
 are by no means the only cases in which 
 the same phenomenon occurs, among 
 the Psalms ascribed to David. For, if 
 we examine carefully all the thirty-one 
 Psalms of the Second Book (216), Ps.xli- 
 to Ps.lxxii, of which eighteen, marked 
 below with an asterisk, are ascribed to 
 David, we shall have the following very 
 noticeable result : — 
 
 Ps. 
 
 K. 
 
 J. 
 
 rs. 
 
 E. 
 
 J 
 
 43 
 
 13 
 
 1 
 
 Bl« 
 
 e 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 S 
 
 
 
 f>2« 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 44 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 .W* 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 45 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 64* 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 46 
 
 7 
 
 3 
 
 56* 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 47 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 fi6« 
 
 9 
 
 1 
 
 48 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 67* 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 49 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 6S« 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 m 
 
 10 
 
 1 
 
 69* 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 P«. 
 
 E. 
 
 J. 
 
 Pi. 
 
 E. 
 
 J 
 
 60* 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 67 
 
 6 
 
 « 
 
 61* 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 68» 
 
 SI 
 
 3 
 
 62* 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 09* 
 
 10 
 
 6 
 
 63* 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 70* 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 64* 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 71 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 65* 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 72 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 66 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 353. The eighteen Psalms, which are 
 here ascribed to David, include the six 
 which we have just been considering, 
 and which were written, as we have 
 seen, (supposing their titles to be cor- 
 rect), at an early period of his life, 
 when, in fact, he was not yet thirty 
 years old. They include, also, three 
 from the middle part of his life, — Ps.lx 
 (E.5,J.O), when 'Joab returned, and 
 smote of Edom in the valley of salt, 
 twelve thousand men,' in 'ihe forty-fifth 
 year of David's life,— Ps.li (E.6,J.O), 
 after his adultery with Bathsheba, in the 
 fiftieth year, — and Ps.lxxii. (E.3.J.1) — 
 or, rather (E.l,J.O), since v. 18,19, are 
 merely the doxology (216), added by 
 the compiler in later days, to serve as 
 a close to Book II of the Psalms, — 
 which is entitled ' A prayer for Solo- 
 mon,' and, if written by David, may 
 have been composed by him shortly 
 after Solomon's birth, in the fifty -first 
 or fifty-second year of his life. 
 
 354. Looking now at the above table, 
 is it conceivable that David should have 
 written the above eighteen Psalms, or 
 any number of them, — in which the 
 name Elohim occurs, on the average, 
 seven times to Jehovah once, and in 
 nine of which Jehovah does not occur 
 at all, if the latter name was used so 
 freely, so much more freely than Elo- 
 him, and under such high sanction, in 
 the common language of the people 
 when he wrote, as the historical books 
 with one voice imply? Nay, every 
 Psalm in this Book shows the same 
 characteristic preference for the word 
 Elohim. And, supposing as we na- 
 turally may before further inquiry, that 
 aU or most of them are Psalms of about 
 the same age, as they are found in the 
 same collection, and that age the age 
 of David, as the titles of so many of 
 them imply, it is obvious that the force 
 of the above argument is just as strong, 
 whether such Psalms were really writ- 
 ten by David, or by any other pious 
 writer of those days. 
 
THE PSALMS OF THE SECOND BOOK. 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE FSALKS OF THE SECOND BOOK. 
 
 355. Bdt it may be said ' It is Teiy 
 possible — nay, highly probable — ^that 
 very many of these Titles are erroneous, 
 and that Tery many of these Psalms, 
 though ascribed to David, were notreally 
 written by David at all.' We grant this 
 fuUy, and we wish it to be distinctly 
 observed that our argument does not in 
 the least depend on the accuracy of the 
 Titles. For our own purposes, indeed, 
 we should gladly at once set aside the 
 Titles altogether, and try to make out 
 the age of any particular Psalm from 
 its internal e\idenee. But &s Heno- 
 STENBEEG, One of the chief defenders of 
 the traditionary view, is so very de- 
 cided in maintaining their correctness, 
 it seems best, with Dr. Davidson, ii.255, 
 to ' assume the alleged Davidic author- 
 ship' as being possibly true, 'till in- 
 ternal evidence proves the contrary.' 
 In order, therefore, to make sure of our 
 ground, it is necessary to examine care- 
 fully, one by one, the Psalms of the 
 Second Book, and see if they con- 
 tain suficient internal evidence to 
 enable us to fix them, either upon 
 David himself as their author, or else 
 upon the age of David. 
 
 356. In Part II (362-428) we have 
 gone through at full length a minute 
 examination of the Psalms of Book II, 
 the result of which is as follows : 
 
 (i) There are three of these Psalms, 
 mz. Ps.l, Ps.Ix, Palxviii, which, as it 
 appears to us, may be assigned from 
 their internal evidence, with very great 
 probability— and, in the case of Ps.lx 
 and Ps.lxviii, with a near approach to 
 certainty — ^to the age of David ; 
 
 (ii) There is no strong internal evi- 
 dence, such as to compel us to a similar 
 conclusion, in the case of any other of 
 -the Psalms of this Book ; 
 
 (iii) But, on the other hand, there is 
 no decisive evidence to the contrary; 
 and it is possible that all of them may 
 have been written in David's time, and 
 even by David himself, — some of them, 
 as the Titles imply, in the earlier por- 
 tion of his life, some in the middle, and 
 some in the latter years of it, — and, at 
 all events, by some one of that age. 
 
 125 
 
 357. With respect, however, to the 
 above three Psalms, li, Ix, Ixviii, — and 
 especially the last two of them, — on 
 which the whole stress of our argument 
 will be laid, — it seems highly probable 
 that they were actually written by or 
 for David, and, adopting the Bible chro- 
 nology, in Vas fifty-first, forty-fifth, and 
 fortieth, years of his life, respectively. 
 Now, in the first two of these Psalms, 
 Jehovah is not used at all ; in the third, 
 Jehovah or Jah occurs four times, but 
 Elohim and Adonai thirty-eight times. 
 The inference from this fact would seem 
 to be irresistible, vis. that Jehovah was 
 not in common use with one, at leasti, 
 of the most devout and able writers of 
 that age, unless it can be met by con- 
 trary evidence of a very decisive cha- 
 racter, showing as certainly that some 
 Psalms were composed, iy or /or David 
 in the early part of his life, which con- 
 tain the name Jehovah as predomi- 
 nantly as Ps.lxviii contains Elohim. 
 
 358. Wemustnow proceed to examine 
 carefully the internal contents of each 
 of these three Psalms. Few English 
 readers, indeed — and, certainly, none of 
 the traditionary school — would be in- 
 clined to doubt the fact of these three 
 Psalms being really David's. But 
 such merely conventional belief wiU 
 not suffice for our present purposes. 
 We must endeavour to make out, if 
 possible, how the truth really stands 
 in this matter. 
 
 359. Ps.li (E.6,J.O) is generally be- 
 lieved to be the genuine utterance of 
 David's ' broken spirit,' when he came 
 to repentance after his grievous sin. It 
 appears to me that this Psalm is as- 
 signed in the Title to its true occasion. 
 The writer does not once use in it the 
 name 'Jehovah.' May it have been 
 that, in the anguish of his soul, he 
 had recourse to the old familiar name, 
 Elohim, as «• more real name, a name 
 dear to him from old associations, one 
 which he had used all along in' his 
 childhood and youth, and in the better 
 days of his ripened manhood, rather 
 than to the more modem name, Je- 
 hovah 1 
 
 360. Dr. Davidson, however, ob- 
 serves as follows, ii.253 : — 
 
THE PSALMS OF THE SECOND BOOK. 
 
 126 
 
 The fifty-first psalm is post-DaTidic, as the 
 two last verses prove, — ' Do good in Thy good 
 pleasure unto Zion : build Thou the walls of 
 Jerusalem. Then shalt Thou be pleased with 
 the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt- 
 offering and whole burnt-offering ; then shall 
 they offer bullocks upon Thine altar.' It is 
 true that they are but loosely appended to the 
 preceding context,and are therefore considered, 
 by many, a later addition. That hypothesis is 
 probably groundless. The psalm was written 
 at a time when the City and Temple of Jeru- 
 salem were thrown down. Both Zion and the 
 walls of the capital are expressly mentioned. 
 Hence the attempts, that have been made to 
 force the meaning into union with David's 
 crime in relation to Bathsheba, are unworthy 
 of notice. The psalm shows a right sense of 
 sin as committed mEunly against God, and a 
 thorough feeling of the worthlessness of ex- 
 ternal sacrifices, apart from purity of heart 
 or rectitude of motive. "Whether views so 
 near the Christian ones were entertained by 
 any Jew as early as David*s time is doubtful. 
 A later than David seems to be required by 
 the apprehension of sin, as well as the state of 
 Jerusalem, implied in the poem. The begin- 
 ning of the Babylonish Capitivity is the pro- 
 bable date. 
 
 361. HENGSTENBERGsays,ii.^.l82: — 
 That the Psalm was composed by David on 
 
 the occasion [of his sin with Bathsheba], 
 appears from the superscription, and also 
 from the wonderful agreement of the con- 
 tents with 2S.xi,xii. That we have to do 
 here with a sinner of high rank, is probable 
 even from v.l3, * Then will I teach trans- 
 gressors Thy ways, and sinners shall be con- 
 veited unto Thee,' — according to which the 
 compassion to be shown to the Psalmist shall 
 operate beneficially through an extensive 
 circle, — but quite certain from the conclu- 
 sion, «.18,19. That the Psalmist there passes 
 on to pray for the salvation of the wholepeople, 
 pre-supposes that this salvation was personally 
 connected with himself, that the people stood 
 and fell with him. In v.l4i the Psalmist prays 
 for deliverance from blood-guiltiness. Such 
 guilt David had incurred through the death 
 of Driah occasioned by him, and Nathaa had 
 threatened him in the name of God with the 
 divine vengeance for it. This is the more 
 remarkable from the circumstances of the 
 case being so singular. Of a true worshipper 
 of God — [much less of a pious Jting"] — the 
 whole histoiy of the Old Testament contains 
 nothing simUar. 
 
 362. EwALD, _p, 247, assigns this 
 Psalm to some time after the destruc- 
 tion of the Temple ; Olshatjsbn,^.226, 
 to the times of the Maccabees. Htjf- 
 FELD writes as follows, iii.^.3 : — 
 
 Against the referefice [to David's sin with 
 Bathsheba] may be urged the manner in 
 which, V.3, &c., the fundamental idea is ex- 
 pressed of more spiritual sins, pimishable by 
 God and not by man, and the inner unclean- 
 ness of human nature. The phenomena 
 usually produced by those who deny this 
 reference {e.g, Db Wktte, Hitzig, Ewald), 
 
 —as the 'disjointed, abrupt, language,' th« 
 multitude of sins, and that here we find the 
 first entreaty for forgiveness of sin, which 
 was already disclosed to David, the obviously 
 later idea of 'the original sinfulness of man,* 
 —are partly without any foundation, resting 
 only on narrow views of interpretation, and 
 partly not decisive. Only (he prayer c.l8, 
 *for the building of the walls of Jerusalem,' 
 which assumes their destruction, is manifestly 
 irreconcilable with the notion of its having been 
 composed by David. Yet is this conclusion 
 very loosely appended, and hence it is ex- 
 plained by several interpreters as a later addi- 
 tion. If it is genuine, then the Psalm must 
 belong to the time after the Babylonish 
 Captivity. 
 
 363. But we hare no reason to sup- 
 pose a priori that such a man as David 
 may not have had a deep spiritual ap- 
 prehension of the evil of sin, sufficient 
 to account for his language in this 
 Psalm ; and, if so, surely, the connec- 
 tion between -y.!? and y.18,19, is most 
 natural and intimate. The only 'sacri- 
 fice,' which he can presume to bring, in 
 the consciousness of his great crime, 
 and in the deep sense of God's forgiving 
 mercy, is ' a broken spirit ' : 
 
 * A broken and a contrite heart, O God, 
 Thou wilt not despise.' 
 
 Yet, if God will bless His chosen City, 
 not for its guilty king's sake, but of His 
 own free grace, and in His own * good 
 pleasure' will *do good to Zion/ then 
 would abundant and acceptable offer- 
 ings be made by the righteous zeal of 
 its inhabitants, such as his sorrowful 
 and shame -stricken spirit could not 
 think of bringing. 
 
 364. The fact, that the writer was a 
 * man of rank,^ v.ld, who had been 
 guilty of 'murder,' v.l4, seems to point 
 very strongly to David : and the whole 
 language of the Psalm suits thoroughly 
 the story of his sin and of his repent- 
 ance. In V.18 there seems to be no 
 reference to the * walls of Jerusalem' 
 being broken down and in ruins, but 
 only to their heing feeble, needing to be 
 'built up' and strengthened. The lan- 
 guage appears to be used metaphorically, 
 (as in Ps.exlvii.2, 'Jehovah doth build 
 up Jerusalem,' compared withul3, *For 
 He hath strengthened the bars of thy 
 gates,') with reference to the fact that 
 David had taken the stronghold of 
 Zion, and made Jerusalem his royal 
 city, only twelve years before, and that 
 there were still powerful enemies by 
 
THE PSALMS OF THE SECOND BOOK. 
 
 127 
 
 wliom his kingdom was threatened, as, 
 e.g. the Ammonites, 2S.xii.26-31. 
 
 366. Ps.lx(E.5,J.O), however, is, be- 
 yond all reasonable doubt, as it appears 
 to us, referred by its title to the true oc- 
 casion on which it was composed, and of 
 which we read the account in 2S.'viii.3, 
 13, in ^& forty-fifth year of David's life. 
 The fact that in v.^ the writer speaks of 
 his authority as extending over ' Gilead 
 and Manasseh,' i.e. the trans-Jordanic 
 tribes, as well as that of his calling 
 Ephraim 'the strength of his head,' and 
 Judah his own royal tribe, ' his lawgiver,' 
 seems to point, in our judgment, almost 
 with certainty, to David as its author. 
 
 366. Dr. Davidson, however, ii.252, 
 considers that this Psalm also *is much 
 later than David's time,' grounding his 
 conclusion upon these two points : — 
 
 ■ (i) v.1-3 shew a very unprosperona state of 
 affairs. The people had experienced great 
 disasters, and were discomfited. The marks 
 of the Divine displeasure were palpahle. But 
 the country was not in so disordered a state, at 
 the time of the Syrian wax, as is here repre- 
 sented. 
 
 Ans. It is very possible that David's forces 
 were not always victorious, in the deadly 
 struggle in which he was engaged while 
 estabUshing his empire, though such defeats 
 may not have been recorded in the rapid 
 summary of hisexploitsin2S.viii. Thewhole 
 account in 2S.x shows that th^ time of the 
 Syrian war was a most critical time for him, 
 as, indeed, Joab's words Intimate, u.l2, — * Be 
 of good courage, and let us play the meUj/or 
 our people, and for the cities of our Ood ; and 
 Jehovah do that which seemeth Him good I ' 
 
 (ii) Besides, David f^eady possessed the 
 whole land of Canaan. He could not, there- 
 fore, appeal in t).6-8, to the promise of 
 Jehovah, that his people should conquer and 
 possess it. 
 
 Am. The language of these verses may only 
 express David's confidence that his kingdom 
 should be permanently confirmed over the 
 tribes of Israel, in accordance with the words 
 of Nathan, 2S.vii.4,17, where the prophet says 
 to him, in the name of Jehovah, ' Thine house 
 and thy kingdom shall be established for ever 
 before thee ; thy throne shall be established 
 for ever.' And, as above observed, the words 
 of D.7 seem only applicable to the time of 
 David. 
 
 367. Hengstenbebg observes on this 
 
 Psalm, ii.^.276 :— 
 
 * The sketch of the historical circumstances, 
 by which this Psalm was called forth shews 
 that it moves within the s£une domain as 
 Ps.xliv. Ps-xliv is the earlier of the two ; 
 the sons of Korah sang [that Psalm] in the 
 midst of distress, probably whilst David was 
 Absent at the Euphrates; David followed 
 them [in this] after succour had been in 
 
 some measure obtained. The warlike, con- 
 fident tone, the triumphant contempt of the 
 enemy expressed In v.%, point to a time of 
 highlit prosperity in the state. And, in par- 
 ticular, the reign of David Is indicated by the 
 circumstances that the three hostUe neigh- 
 bouring nations, mentioned in this verse, 
 were idl singularly defeated by David, and 
 that in v.6,7, the countries on both sides of 
 Jordan, and also Ephraim and Judah, appear 
 as united in one kingdom, of which Mngdom 
 Judah was the head — a state of matters which 
 ceased to exist immediately after Solomon, to 
 whose time, however, it Is impossible to refer 
 the Psalm, on account of the prevailing war- 
 like character by which it is distinguished. 
 Finally, It is evident, from d.9-13, that the 
 Psalm was composed in view of an exp^iUon 
 against Edom, 
 
 368. Even EwALD, ^.374, who places 
 the date of its composition after the 
 Captivity, considers that portions of it 
 are of the Davidic age : — 
 
 Ps.lx shows at once that poetry in these 
 sorrowful times (of the Captivity) calls to its 
 help also the force and expression of the 
 ancient poetical science : for, on close exam- 
 ination, there can be no doubt that the words 
 from v.5(7), as far as the first half of u.l0(12), 
 are borrowed from an older, and, no doubt, 
 Davidic song. While all the other words quite 
 fall in with the Ian guage and state of affairs of 
 this later time, those on the contrary are 
 quite distinct in kind and colouring, subject- 
 matter and meaning ; the dissimilarity strikes 
 the eye at the first glance. The old passage 
 proceeds in the following strain : at the time of 
 great pressure in the latter part of David's life, 
 when the Philistines fiercely threatened, comp. 
 2S.V.17-25, xxiii.9, &c., and the king in the 
 Sanctuary had besought counsel and strength 
 from Jehovah, he records here thankfully the 
 cheering response which he received while 
 struggling with his doubts and distress. How 
 easily a later writer might apply this to the 
 needy and oppressed circumstances of his own 
 time, is obvious ; if at that time, it is true, 
 Philistines were not exactly the enemies to be 
 dreaded, yet they were heathens, and ' Philis- 
 tines ' are treated as equivalent to ' heathens/ 
 WMle, however, the later poefc repeated the 
 oracle, as the very centre and life of tho 
 whole, untouchai and completely unaltered, 
 and even produces something of the context, 
 («.9(11), and the first three words of u.l0(12),) 
 he adds quite a new introduction, and the 
 chief part of the conclusion, in his own words, 
 — incontestably because the beginning and 
 the remainder of the conclusion of the old 
 song didnot sufflcientiy suit this later time. 
 
 369. Olshausen assigns this Psalm 
 to the time of the Maccabees, but re- 
 marks, ^.263 : — 
 
 That the oracle quoted by the Poet in 
 u.e-8 Is only borrowed, must in any case 
 be assumed. That It contained, however, a 
 revelation then generally known, perhaps, 
 resting on the authority of the High Pri^, 
 andrrferring to the relations of the time, ia 
 much more probable than that it Is derived 
 from a Davidic song, aa Ewald supposes. 
 
128 
 
 THE SIXTY-EIGHTH PSALM. 
 
 HuPFELD says, iii. jo.l22: — 
 
 This Psalm seems to point to the times of 
 the still-existing kingdom, but to a later 
 time [than that indicated by the Title], since 
 the promise in the oracle expresses the idea 
 so common in the Prophets, of the restoration 
 of the unity of the kingdom, which is preceded 
 by an account of the division of the kingdom 
 and its sorrowful consequences. 
 
 Upon careful copsideration, however, 
 of its contents, and for the reasons 
 above stated, I cannot doubt that the 
 Psalm in its entirety is, as Hengsten- 
 BERG maintains, a product of the Da- 
 vidic age, and, probably, from the hand 
 of David himself. 
 
 370. In fact, the idea that the words 
 in vS-8 are supposed to be spoken not 
 by David, but by Jehovah Himself, in 
 the character of a mighty conqueror or 
 ruler, asserting his supremacy over all 
 the countries named, seems inadmis- 
 sible, for the following reasons : — 
 
 (i) Although some of the expressions in 
 v.6-8 might be explained thus, yet such 
 phrases as * Moab is my washpot, over Edom 
 ■will I cast my shoe/ seem hsxdly such as 
 would be ascribed to Jehovah. 
 
 (ii) Why should the * I,' ' my,* ' me,' in v.B, 
 7,8, not refer to the same speaker as the ' me,' 
 in V.9, 'Who will bring me into the strong 
 city ? Who will lead me into Edom ? ' — or in 
 V.5, ' That Thy beloved may be delivered, 
 save with Thy right hand, and heax Tne,' — 
 which last expressions (be it observed) plainly 
 imply that a king, or person in authority 
 is speaking ? 
 
 (iii) Is not the expression in u.6, 'Elohina 
 hath spoken in Sis Holiness^ inconsistent 
 with the notion of His speaking the words 
 following merely as a warrior or sovereign ? 
 Does not the phrase 'Elohim hath spoken' 
 correspond exactly with the common prophe- 
 tical formula, * Jehovah hafch spoken,' Is-xxii. 
 25, Jer.xiii.la, Ez.v.15, 17, while the addition 
 of the words ' in His Holiness ' is equivalent 
 to saying, ' and He will not depart from it,' 
 — so thac the whole sentence corresponds to 
 N.xiv.35, 'I, Jehovah, have spoken, I will 
 surely do it,* or to N.xxiii.l9, * Hath He said, 
 and shall Henotdoit? or hath He not spoken, 
 and shall He not make it good ? ' or to Is.xlvi. 
 11, *I have spoken, I wiU also bring it to 
 pass ' : comp. especially the change of persons 
 in Is.xlviii.l5, *I, even I, have spoken . . . 
 and he shall make his way prosperous,' with 
 * Elohim hath spoken . . . /will rejoice.' 
 
 (iv) Is not, in short, the argument in this 
 Psalm precisely like that employed in Ps. 
 lxxxix.19-37, comp. ?j.38-45, and see especially, 
 V.49, 'Lord, where are Thy former lovingkind- 
 nesses, which Thou swarest unto David in Thy 
 Titian {—in Thy Holiness) ?' 
 
 371. For the above reasons, it appears 
 to me that the expressions in v. 6-8 of this 
 Psalm are the utterances of the Psalmist 
 himself, who relies firmly on the Divine 
 
 word which has been pledged to him, 
 and in the midst of all his present dis- 
 tress and alarm, from the disasters ex- 
 perienced in the Edomite war, v. 1-3, 
 yet trust-s in the faithfulness of God, 
 who ' has given a banner to them that 
 fear Him, to rally to before the howj 
 (Httpf., Ew., Ols.) v.4, i.e. who has 
 given them a sure ground of confidence 
 in the certainty that His word will not 
 fail them in the end. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE SIXTY-EIGHTH PSALM. 
 
 372. Ps.lxviii (E.31,J.4), is also, as it 
 appears to us, undoubtedly a Psalm of 
 David's agej as the Title declares, and 
 we must call attention specially to it, 
 as one of paramount importance with 
 reference to the q^iestion now before us. 
 
 ' 373. That this Psalm is a Psalm of 
 David's age appears as follows : — 
 
 (i) In «.16, * This is the hill which God de- 
 sireth to dwell in, yea, Jehovah will dwell in 
 it for ever,' we have a plain reference to the' 
 hill of 21071 ; but this, as we have seen (325), 
 does not necessarily point to the Tabernacle, 
 and so to the age of David. 
 
 (ii) Again, in. V.29, 'Because of Thy Tem- 
 ple at Jerusalem,' we have a reference either 
 to the Tabernacle, lS.i.9, or to the Temple ; 
 and so in v.24 mention is made of the ' Sanc- 
 tuary,' and in r.35 we read, ' O Q-od, Thou art 
 terrible out of Thy holy places.' 
 
 (iii) In «.34,35,weread, 'Ascribe ye strength- 
 nnto Grod ; His excellency is over Israel' and 
 ' the God of Israel is He that giveth strength 
 and power unto His people.' 
 
 This language seems to belong clearly to 
 the time of the undivided kingdom, so that 
 the Psalm was composed in the days of Da- 
 vid or Solomon. 
 
 (iv) But the martial tone which pervades 
 the Psalm, t),l,12, 14,30,35, corresponds to the 
 age of David, not to that of Solomon. 
 
 (v) The expressions in «.27, ' There is little 
 Benjamin their ruler, the princes of JudaU 
 with their company, the princes of Zebulun, 
 the princes of NaphtaJi,' belong also to the 
 undivided kingdom, and correspond to the 
 time when Benjamin, which, as the tribe of 
 Saul, had been the ruling tribe in Israel, and 
 had afterwards been ruling again in the per- 
 son of Saul's son, Ishbosheth, had now sub- 
 mitted itself to David. It may be, tha*efore, 
 in a politic manner, spoken of here, as being 
 still a tribe of royal dignity. 
 
 374. This Psalm contains Elohim 
 -one times, and Adonai, Lord, 
 seven times, as well as the ancient name 
 Shaddai in t;.14 ; while Jehovah ap- 
 pears only twice and Jah twice. Mani- 
 * , therefore, the last Name waa 
 
THE SIXTY-EIGHTH PSAIM. 
 
 129 
 
 less familiar to the writer at the time 
 when he wrote, than Elohim, at all 
 events, — we might almost say, than 
 Adonai also ; but it would not be safe 
 to infer this last from a single instance. 
 
 375. In vA we have — 
 
 * Sing unto God, sing praises to His Name : 
 ejctol Him that rideth upon the heavens by 
 His Name Jah, and rejoice before Him ;' — 
 or, (French and Skinjjek), 
 
 * Sing ye unto God, hymn His Name ! 
 Baise a highway for Him, who rideth 
 
 through the desert I 
 Jehovah is His Name ; 
 Exult at His Presence ! ' 
 
 It is plain that a special stress is here 
 laid upon the fact that God's Name is 
 Jehovah. Setting aside, as we must, 
 from what we have seen already, the 
 Mosaic story as unhistorical, this seems 
 also rather to imply that the Name had 
 been newly introduced. 
 
 376. In v.l we read — 
 
 * Let JEIohim arise, let His enemies be 
 
 scattered ; 
 And let them, that hate Him, flee before 
 Him.' 
 And here we have almost the identical 
 words, which are found in N.x.35. 
 
 *And it came to pa.ss, when the Ark set for- 
 ward, that Moses said, 
 
 * Arise, Jehovah^ and let Thine enemies be 
 
 scattered ; . 
 
 And let them, that hate Thee, flee before 
 Thee.' 
 
 But let it be noted that the Name 
 Jehovah, in this passage of Numbers, 
 appears as Elohim in the Psalra. 
 
 Now, from the general identity of 
 the two passages, either in the E.V., or 
 when compared in the original, it is 
 certain that one of them has been copied 
 from the other. 
 
 377. Upon which we note as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 (i) Surely, if the Psalmist drew his language 
 from so sacred a boot as the Pentateuch, ac- 
 cording to the traxiitionary view, must have 
 been, he would not have changed the Name 
 from Jehovah to Elohim. 
 
 (ii) Besides, the Name Jehovah, if it had 
 really originated in the way described in the 
 Pentateuch, would have been the very Name 
 required for this Psahn, considering its cha- 
 racter, as the Name of the Covenant God of 
 Israel. 
 
 (iii) Moreover, ».l of the Psalm is closely 
 cotmeoted with the words that follow, and 
 has all the appearance of being an original 
 utterance, poured forth by the same impulse 
 which gave birth to them. 
 
 (iv) But, if the passage from Numbers, as 
 we believe, was written at a later date than 
 
 the PsaJm, at a time when the Name Jehovah 
 was in commoii use, (which, apparently, was 
 not the case when the Psahn was written,) it is 
 easy to understand how David's words in this 
 Psalm might have been first used, as most 
 commentators suppose, when the Arlc was 
 brought up to Mount Zion, and might after- 
 wards have been adapted by the writer of the 
 passage in Numbers, with the change of the 
 Divine Name, as fit words to be used with 
 every movement of the Arlc in the wilderness, 
 
 378. Upon the whole, we conclude 
 that this Elohistic Psalm was written 
 first, and that in a later day the writer 
 in the Pentateuch adapted the first 
 words of it, — which, he may have even 
 himself helped to chant, when the pro- 
 cession with the Ark wound its way up 
 the hill of Zion, — to the story, which 
 he was writing, of the movements of 
 the host of Israel in the wilderness. 
 
 379. The following expressions of 
 this Psalm are also noticeable : — 
 
 ' O God, when Thou wentest forth before Thy 
 
 people, 
 "When Thou didst march through the wilder- 
 ness. 
 The earth trembled. 
 
 Yea, the heavens dropped rain, at the Pre- 
 sence of God, — ' 
 Sinai itself trembled. 
 At the Presence of God, the God of Israel.' 
 
 11.7,8. 
 * The chariots of God are thousands on thou- 
 sands (E.V. twenty thousand, even thou- 
 sands of angels) ; 
 The Lord (Adonai) is among them, as at 
 
 Sinai, in the Sanctuary.' u. 1 7. 
 ' The Lord (Adonai) hath said, I will bring 
 
 again &om Bashan, 
 I will bring again from the depths of the 
 sea.' «.22. 
 
 The references in the above verses 
 to the passage of the Red Sea, the 
 transactions at Sinai, and, perhaps, the 
 conquest of Bashan, show that the 
 Psalmist was acquainted with certain 
 portions of the story of Exodus, which 
 might have been already written by 
 Samuel, since he died fifteen years be- 
 fore the bringing up of the Ark, and 
 might have composed his narrative 
 many years previously. 
 
 380. The above references, however, 
 occurring in a Psalm intended for a 
 public occasion, imply also that those, 
 who would be likely to join in chant- 
 ing it, must likewise have been familiar, 
 to some extent, with the story of the 
 Exodus. These would not, of course, 
 be the people generally, but only those 
 who would take part in the procecsion, 
 
130 
 
 — ^the ' sons of Heman, and Asaph, and 
 Jeduthun,' it may be, '-who should 
 prophesy with harps and psalteries and 
 cymbals,' lCli.xxT.1,6, and who, doubt- 
 less, had had their training in the 
 ' School of the Prophets' under Samuel's 
 direction, where they ' prophesied ' in 
 Samuel's time, as well as in David's,— 
 that is, evidently. Sang or chanted their 
 psalms of praise, — 'with a psaltery and 
 tabret and pipe and harp before them,' 
 1S.X.5. 
 
 381. These 'sons of the Prophets,' 
 then, as well as any Priests, &c., taking 
 part in the ceremonies, may have been 
 quite familiar with the facta of the 
 Elohistic story, and even have helped 
 already, by mixing with their own 
 families and in other ways, to com- 
 municate them in some measure to the 
 people. And, indeed, it is very con- 
 ceivable that the people may have had 
 among them, in a more imperfect form, 
 the same traditionary remnants of past 
 history, which the Prophet Samtjkl and 
 his School may have used as the basis of 
 their 'Elohistic story;' e.g. Ps.lxviii.8, 
 ' the heavens also dropped,' and Ju.v.4, 
 ' the heavens dropped the clouds also 
 dropped water,' — and the references to 
 the storm of thunder and lightning at 
 the passage of the Bed Sea, Ps.lxxvii, 
 16-19,— and Ps.lxxviii.9,— 
 • The children of Ephraim, being armed and 
 carrying bowB, turned back in the day of 
 battle,' — 
 
 of which facts we have no record in 
 the Pentateuch, unless, indeed, a refer- 
 ence may be made to the last in D.i.44. 
 
 382. The E.Y. of ul5,16, of this 
 Psalm, is as follows : — 
 
 The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan, 
 
 An high hill as the hill of Bashan. 
 
 "Why leap ye, ye high hills ? 
 
 This is the bill which God desireth to dwell in. 
 
 Yea, Jehovah will dwell in it for ever. 
 
 Thus translated, the ' hill of God ' can 
 only be understood to mean Mount 
 Zion. But this hill was not remarkably 
 high, and was not even the highest of 
 the two hills of Jerusalem. Probably, 
 the passage should be rendered thus : — 
 A lofty mountain {lit. mountalii of God) it 
 
 the mountain of Bashan, 
 A mountain of many heights » the mountain 
 
 of Bashan. 
 Why leap ye (in your pride), ye mountains of 
 
 many heights? 
 
 THE SIXTY-EIGHTH PSALM. 
 
 This mountain (Zion) hath God chosen to 
 
 dwell in, 
 Yea, Jehovah will tabernacle in it for ever. 
 
 383. It is probable, as we have said, 
 that few English readers will be dis- 
 posed to doubt that this Psalm, as well 
 as Ps.li and Ps.lx, is really a Psalm of 
 David's age, or that it was composed 
 for the occasion to which it is usually 
 referred, the bringing up of the Ark to 
 Mount Zion. Hensstenbebg, of course, 
 maintains strongly its Davidic origin, in 
 common with the great body of commen- 
 tators, ancient and modern. Neverthe- 
 less, there are some very eminent critics, 
 as HUPPELD, EwALD, Olshausbn, who 
 assign to it a much later date ; and, as 
 it is a Psalm of so much importance 
 in our present inquiry, it will be neces- 
 sary to examine the grounds upon which 
 they have come to this conclusion. 
 
 384. The matter has been treated of 
 most fully by Hupfeld in his recent 
 work, Die Psalmen, of which voLiii, 
 containing Ps.lxviii, was published at 
 Gotha in 1860. As this work has been 
 so lately issued, and the author has 
 discussed in it at length the opinions 
 of his predecessors, and has, in fact, 
 exhausted the subject, it may be re- 
 garded as representing, generally, the 
 views of this school of critics; so 
 that, having duly weighed his argu- 
 ments we may assume that we have 
 fairly mastered aU that can be said on 
 that side of the question. I will annex, 
 however, all the additional remarks, 
 deserving notice, which I find in Ewald 
 and Olshahsen. 
 
 385. HiiiTELD observes as fol- 
 lows : — - 
 
 ' This is a hymn in lofty lyrical style, treat- 
 ing of the entrance of Ood into His Sanctuary 
 on Zion, — (under the figure of the triumphal , 
 progress of a King, who, after conquest of 
 the coimtry, chooses and takes possession of 
 his place of residence, this being introduced 
 with a retrospective glance at the first leading 
 of the people through the Arabian waste, and 
 the conquest of the land of Canaan, but with 
 allusion to ordinary victories and triumpha] 
 processions), — His revenge upon the enemies 
 of His people, and His lordship over the na- 
 tions of the earth, who in conclusion are 
 required to join in the praise of God. Thus 
 much is in general clear, and is admitted by 
 most modem interpreters.' j>.194. 
 
 'The occasion, which most immediately 
 presents itself for this Psalm, is the removal 
 of the Ark by David to Mount Zion, 2S.vi ; and 
 this is adopted by moat of the ancient and 
 
THK SIXTY-EIGHTH PSALM. 
 
 131 
 
 later Interpreters, to the time of Rosen- 
 MtiUiER. It gives incontestably the best sense, — 
 rather, it is the only one, which suits notonly 
 the choice of Zion in opposition to Sinai and 
 the heights of Bashan, ti.15,16, and the his- 
 torical retrospective glance at the earlier 
 leading ol God from Sinai onwards, as intro- 
 ductory to the triumphal entrance, but also 
 the lofty expressions and sentiments connected 
 with it. This is not at all contradicted by the 
 signs of a warlike character, which some con- 
 sider an objection ; since God, as Leader and 
 Guardian of His people, is above all things 
 "Warrior and Conqueror over its foes, and, in 
 fact, must first make the conquest of its place 
 of settlement in Canaan. However, it is con- 
 tradicted (i) by the mention of the • Temple' 
 and * Jerusalem,' ?).29, (ii) by that of * Egypt ' 
 and * Ethiopia,' as lands conquered andpaying 
 homage, ff.30, (iii) by the denunciation of ven- 
 geance upon enemies in all parts of the world, 
 i?.22-24. and (iv) by the whole later character 
 of the Psalm.' ^.196. 
 
 And HuPFBLD expresses his own view,p.l99, 
 that ' in this Psalm we have the hope or pro- 
 mise of the return of the Jewish people foom 
 the Babylonish captivity, and the reestablish- 
 raent of the kingdom of God on Zion in a state 
 of great power, — as it is annoim.ced in the later 
 Isaiah, and ip close correspondence therewith, 
 perhaps, by the very same author, — in theform 
 of a lyrical utterance, such as frequently occurs 
 in the later Isaiah, in single spirited outbinsts, 
 in the midst of the prophetical discourse, but 
 here formed into a complete hymn, the most 
 spirited, lively, and powerful, which we have in 
 the whole collection of the Psalms' 
 
 Ans. (i) The veiy fact that this Psalm is 
 admitted to be ' the most spirited, lively, and 
 powerful,' HuPF. *the grandest, most splen- 
 did, most artistic,' Ew. j3.297, ' one of the most 
 able Mid powerful,' Ols. p.286, in the whole 
 book of Psalms, makes it highly improbable 
 — almost Incredible — that its author, evi- 
 dently an original poet of great eminence,— 
 ' in whom,' says Ols. j0.288, who considers it 
 to be a Maccabean Psalm, in ' spite of the 
 difficulties which meet us in the attempt to 
 understand it. one cannot butrecognise apoet 
 of remarkable genius,'— should have been will- 
 ing to borrow two sentences from two other 
 ancient documents, mz. v.l from N.x.sr), and 
 4;.7,8, from Ju.v.4. If we explain his intro- 
 duction of the former by the fact, that the 
 words quoted are said to have been used of 
 old at every movement of the Ark in the wil- 
 derness,— though the Ark appears to have 
 vanished after the Captivity, and, therefore, 
 it is not easy to understand how even the 
 former passage conld have been quoted bythe 
 later writer, supposed by those critics,— yet 
 how can we account for his introducing the 
 latter? Both these passages, however, as they 
 occur in the Psalm, are in close connexion 
 •with the context, and have all the appearance 
 of being part of the original effusion. 
 
 We have shown, in fact, in (440-^47), that 
 the Psalm was, in all probability, written^**, 
 and the passages in question copied from it by 
 the later writers of N.x.35 and Ju.v,4. 
 
 (ii) In 11.29, according to our view, re- 
 ference is not made to the Temple, but to the 
 Tabernacle just erected by David. We may 
 
 assume that this was a building of some archi- 
 tectural pretensions, to which the term ' tem- 
 ple,' might be applied, as here — a word which 
 is only used with reference to buildings of 
 some importance, as the palace of Ahab, 
 llC.xxi.l, or that of the king of Babylon, 
 2K.XX.18, Is.xxxix.7, and, constantly, of the 
 Temple. But it is also used of the Taber- 
 nacle at Shiloh, lS.i.9, iii.3, by the writer of 
 the story of Eli, though in lS.ii.22 it is called 
 by the usual appellation, ' tent of the Congrega- 
 tion,' which is the only one used throughout 
 the Pentateuch. This suggests that the writer 
 of 1 S.ii.22, may have actually seen with his 
 own eyes the Tabernacle of David, and may 
 have been accustomed to hear it commonly 
 spoken of by the name 'temple,' which he 
 here, accordingly, applies to the Mosaic Ta- 
 bernacle. 
 
 (iii) It is hardly to he thought that the 
 writer of this Psalm, living, as is supposed, 
 amidst the woes of the Captivity, should be 
 predicting here the conquest of Egypt and 
 Ethiopia. But the fact is that in v,Z\ there 
 seems to be no reference to any conquest, 
 but only to the princes of these regions ^Aowj/iy 
 respect and reverence for the glorious, trium- 
 phant, God of Israel, and sending gifts to His 
 Temple. We know that Solomon married 
 Pharoah's daughter, IK.iii.l ; and it is very 
 probable that relations of some kind, not al- 
 together unfriendly, may have existed between 
 his father and the Court of Egypt. If not, it 
 is easy to imderstand how expressions of this 
 kind might be used with rd'erence to these 
 two great powers in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood of the kingdom of Israel. 
 
 (iv) There surely is no reason why a Psalm 
 composed at the time when David was bring- 
 ing up the Ark to Mount Zion, should not 
 have contained such words ps those in tf.21- 
 23, denouncing God's judgment upon the 
 enemies of Himself and His people. The 
 many foes of David's rising empire, with 
 whom he was at war both before and after 
 the bringing up the Ark, would abundantly 
 explain such language. 
 
 (v) So far from the Psalm giving signs of 
 a * later character,' it seems to contain very 
 strong indications of an archaic style and a 
 very early origin. 
 
 (a) Its language is often very rough and 
 abrupt, and in some places ^most unintelli- 
 gible, for want of those connecting links, and 
 that polish and fulness of expression, which 
 wonld have characterised a Post-Captivity 
 Psalm : e.g. 17.10,11.13,14,17,18, &c. 
 
 (6) It has the phrases, ' Sing unto Elohim.' 
 D.4,32, 'Bless ye Elohim,' fl.26, 'Praise ye 
 Adonai,'«.32, *BlessedbeAdonai,' t).19, 'Bless- 
 ed be Elohim,* instead of the *Hallelu-jah, 
 ' Praise ye Jehovah,' which would certainly 
 have been found in a later Psalm, more espe- 
 cially at the end, as in P8.civ,cv,cvi,cxiii,cxv, 
 cxvi,cxxxv,c3dvi,cxlvii,cxlviii,cxlix,cl; where- 
 as the lastof the above four expressions occurs 
 only once more in the whole Bible, viz. in D.20 
 of the Elohistic Psalm, Ps.lxvi (E.8,J.O), and 
 the first, third, and fourth, are only found in 
 the Psalm before us. 
 
 (c) As HuPFELD says, p.197, *the choice 
 and possession of Mount Zion is the very 
 
132 
 
 THE SIXTY-EIGHTH PSALM. 
 
 centre, the essential and characteristic fea- 
 ture, of the Psalm,' which suits well with the 
 occasion in David's time, to which it is usually 
 referreil. 
 
 (d) The mention of * little Benjamin, their 
 ruler,* v.2T, seems to corresponii best, as we 
 have said (379. v), to the time when the tribe 
 of Benjamin had only just been deprived of the 
 royal dignity, by the death of Saul, and, after 
 supporting for a time the cause of Saul's son, 
 Ishbosheth, 2S.ii.9,l5,25,31, had yielded to the 
 counsel of Abner, 2S.lii.l9, and taken part 
 with David. It is difficult to see how this 
 allusion could well have been made by one 
 writing after the Captivity. 
 
 (e) The mention of four tribes only in v.27, 
 * Benjamin and Judah,' 'Zebulon and Naph- 
 tali,' as 'representatives of all Israel,* Hup- 
 FELD, p.23S, is intelligible in David's time, 
 when we observe that the former two were 
 the chief Sovihem tribes, and the latter two, 
 the chief Northern^ while the gi'eat tribe of 
 Ephraim occupied the central part between 
 them, but is not so easily explained on Hup- 
 FiiLD's supposition, ibid, that we have here ' a 
 prophetical idea of the reunion of the severed 
 brother-kingdoms, and the restoration of the 
 united kingdom of Israel.* Surely, Zebxilon 
 and Naphtali could not have been taken to re- 
 present, as HupFEiJ) supposes, the 'kingdom 
 of Israel,' of which the only proper exponent 
 wag the tribe of Ephraim. In Is.ix.l, * the 
 land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali' 
 is not used of the whole kingdom of Israel, 
 but only of the northern parts which suffered 
 in the first Assyrian invasion, 2K.xv.29, 
 whereas ' Samaria,* or ' Israel ' generally, was 
 carried captive in the second invasion, 2K. 
 jcvii.G. Fiirther, the omission of any reference 
 In this Psalm to the tribe of Ephraim, as at- 
 tending the grand ceremony of the bringing 
 up of the Ark, may be due to the fact, that 
 no representatives of that tribe were present at 
 all on that occasion. They may, in fact, have 
 resented the act, as an attempt to centralise 
 both the government and worship in the tribe 
 of Judah, and as a slight passfed upon their 
 own sacred place of Shiloh, even if SMloh it- 
 self was at the time in ruins. Thiswould not 
 lie inconiiistent with their afterwardsmarching 
 under David's command, like turbulent barons 
 under a sovereign prince, to attack the com- 
 mon foe in the great Syrian war, when the 
 national safety and existence were at stake, 
 and when David wi'ote, as we believe, so 
 warmly of that powerful and populous tribe, 
 ' Ephraim is the strength of my head,' Ps.lx. 
 7. "We see evident signs of such a dissatis- 
 fied spirit among them in the language as- 
 cribed to Jeroboam, at the time of the rebellion 
 of the Ten Tribes and their separation from 
 the house of David : ' And Jeroboam said in 
 his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to 
 the house of David. If this people go up to 
 do sacrifice in the house of Jehovah at Jeru- 
 salem, then shall the heart of this people turn 
 again unto the Lord, even unto Rehoboam, 
 king of Judah,' lK.xii.26,27. 
 
 (/) In U.22 we read 
 
 ' Adonai said, I will bring again from Ba- 
 shan, 
 I will bring again from the depths of the 
 
 And these words are supposed by some,aa 
 Olshausen,j3.294, to contain a promise that 
 God would bring back the exiles from their 
 wanderings in the East (beyond the hills of 
 Bashan) and in JSgypt (over the deep sea). 
 Htjpfeld, however, and Ewald explain them 
 of bringing back into the power of Isruel 
 their fugitive enemies from all their places of 
 refuge, from Bashan eastward and the Sea 
 westward, and delivering them up into their 
 hands for condign punishment, ' that their 
 foot may be dipped in the blood of their ene- 
 mies, and the tongue of their dogs in the 
 same,' «.23,— an explanation which, of course, 
 suits well with David's time, but hardly with 
 the days of the Captivity. 
 
 386. Htjpfeld's arguments, there- 
 fore, to prove the later origin of this 
 Psalm, are in our judgment to be re- 
 versed, as indicating rather its earlur 
 composition. And we may now recur 
 with more confidence to the usual sup- 
 position, which connects it with the 
 removal of the Ark in David's time to 
 MQunt Zion, — the occasion which, as 
 HuPFELD himself says, ' most im- 
 mediately presents itself,' and 'gives 
 incontestably the best sense' for it, 
 nay, 'is the on/i/ one which suits' cer- 
 tain features of the Psalm. Not without 
 reason, then, as it seems to us. Be 
 Wette * reckons this Psalm among the 
 oldest relics of Hebrew Poetry, of the 
 highest originality.' 
 
 387. Ewald, who supposes Ps.lxviii 
 to have been written 'at the dedication 
 of the second Temple,' observes as 
 follows : — 
 
 ' It bears all the marks of a song not flowing 
 out of an instantaneous impulse and inspira- 
 tion, but composed with design and much 
 skill for a certain end' [the bringing up of 
 the Ark ?], ^.297. ' It seems as if the pocft 
 had felt himself unequal to produce so lofty a 
 song from his own resources ; for the most 
 beautiful and forcible passages in it are, as it 
 were, flowers picked frohi old songs, which 
 we in part find elsewhere in the 0. T., and in 
 part must suppose to have been once in ex- 
 istence. The whole is rather compiled out 
 of a number of striking passages of oldra- 
 songs, as a new work firmly put together ; 
 and since many ancient passages are very 
 abrupt, (as being known, perhaps, to the 
 singers,) the explanation is often difficult. 
 Where, however, we have the easily-recog- 
 nised peculiar additions of the poet himself, 
 there we see generally this later time plainly 
 appear in the ideas, r.4,6,20,32, as well as in 
 the language. So that whoever considersthis 
 double nature of the contents, and then the 
 whole chai-acter of the Psalm, will not easily 
 persuade himself that it dates from the time 
 of the first dedication of the Temple under 
 Solomon, or, generally, that it was composed 
 earlier than the time when the second Templo 
 
THE SIXTY-EIGHTH PSALM. 
 
 133 
 
 ■was built. In an historical point of view 
 also it is -worthy of note that in v.SS only 
 four lay-tribes are named as coming to the 
 Temple, which in Solomon's time has no 
 meaning. And we learn from this that al- 
 ready,511 B.C., not only Benjamin and Judah, 
 but alsoZebulon and Naphtali, that is. inhabi- 
 tants of northern Palestine and Galilee, at- 
 tended the Temple on Zion.' ^.298. 
 
 Ans. As to the latter point, the explanation, 
 which we have given above (391,v.e) seems 
 much more natural. But, \vith respect to the 
 lalf^ ' ideas ' and ' language,' for which Ewald 
 gives certain references, the following are the 
 passages in question as translated by himself. 
 (i) «.4, ' Sing unto Elohim, sing praises to 
 
 His Name ; 
 Make a path for Him who travels through 
 
 the desert, 
 Kamed Jah, and rejoice before Him.' 
 Here a reference is supposed to the later 
 Isaiah, who writes : — 
 xl.3, ' Prepare ye the way of Jehovah, 
 Make— straight in the desert a highway for 
 our Grodj' — 
 where the Hebrew words for * path ' and 
 * highway * come from the same root. 
 Ivii.l4, * Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare ye 
 
 the way ; 
 lake up the stumbling-block out of the 
 
 way of my people.' 
 Ixii.lO, * Cast up, cast up, the highway, 
 Gather up the stones, lift up a standard for 
 
 the people.' 
 But in these two passages the path is to be 
 made for the people, in the Psalm for Mohim. 
 The expression seems to have been proverbi^ ; 
 but, if copied at all, the later Isaiah may have 
 copied from the Psalm, 
 
 (ii) V.6, ' Elohim brings again home the dis- 
 persed; 
 The prisoners He sets free in gladness and 
 
 wealth ; 
 The rebellious only abide in the waste.' 
 Here again, a reference is supposed to — 
 Is.lviii.7, 'And that thou bring home the 
 poor that are cast out.' 
 (iii) 17.20, ' Elohim is to us an Elohim for 
 
 salvation ; 
 And Jehovah Adonai has even from death 
 
 a way of escape [for us].' 
 (iv) f .32,33, • Ye kingdoms of the earth, sing 
 
 unto Elohim ! 
 Sing praises to Adonai ! * 
 It is difficult to see what signs of a later 
 date are contained ;in these words. I have 
 shown above (38o,v.6) that the expressions in 
 V.S2 rather indicate the contrary. 
 
 The only other additional argument which 
 BwAiJ> produces, to fix the composition of 
 this Psalm in a late age, is that the expression 
 first quoted from f. 20, * Jehovah Adonai has 
 even a way of escape from death,' can only 
 refer to the deliverance from the Captivity. 
 But surely such a reference is neither neces- 
 Bary in this case, nor probable, 
 
 388. Ewald translates i;.30,31,tliu9: 
 • Eestrain the beast of the reeds(E.V, mars', ) , 
 ' The host of bulls with the calves of the 
 people. , , ., 
 
 That hastens on with pieces of silver ; 
 
 Scatter the people that delight in war ; 
 
 That so nobles may come out of Egypt, 
 
 And Gush (Ethiopia) in haste lift up his 
 hands unto God.' 
 
 And he observes, p,804, 'The wild reed- 
 beast {lion or tiger, that is, the great Bang), 
 who with the host of bulls (mighty ones, 
 chiefs), and the calves (weaker foroes) of the 
 people, hastens through fear to bring homage 
 in silver pieces, but, whiM he does this simply 
 from fear, must first be punished and in- 
 structed, is, perhaps, a description of the then 
 existing warlike Persian kingdom, whose eym- 
 bol is the Euphrates and T^ris, rivers on 
 whose reedy banks lions abound.' 
 
 But it can scarcely be thoc^ht that this 
 Psalmist, writing during the Captivity, was 
 thinking of the vast Persian Empire being 
 subjected in this way to the restored kingdom 
 of ^ael. If the * beast of the reeds ' is really 
 the lion of the Euphrates and Tigris, it seems 
 more reasonable to suppose that David was 
 thinking of the forces of the Assyrian Empire, 
 to the borders of which his own dominions 
 are supposed to have reached, since Solomon 
 ^ said to have * had dominion over all on this 
 side of the river (Euphrates),' lK.iv.24, and 
 we do not read of his making the conquest of 
 these regions himself, so that he must have 
 inherited the sovereignty, such as it was, 
 from his father David. In tha.t case, ' the 
 troop of hulls ' might very well represent the 
 AsEryrian captains. But it is hardly conceiv- 
 able that even David, in the height of his 
 glory, should have thought of Assyria be- 
 coming tributary to himself, or hurrying in 
 fear to bring silver-pieces to tbe Temple. 
 
 Accordingly, Hupfeld draws attention to 
 tbe fact, that the above translation disturbs 
 completely the parallelism of the Hebrew 
 poetry of the third and fourth lines, in which, 
 in fact, there exists no parallelism of expres- 
 sion at present. He imderstands, also, (with 
 Oi£. and others), the 'reed-beast' to be the 
 crocodile, or, perhaps, the hippopotamus, as 
 the symbol of Egypt, and translates the two 
 lines in question as follows : — 
 
 ' Subject to thyseU the rapacious of silver ; 
 Scatter the people that delight in war.' 
 
 But ».31, as we have said, seems rather to 
 imply that the princes of Egypt and Ethiopia 
 would come witii their presents to the Temple 
 in a. friendly way. However this may be, and 
 whether the Egyptian or Assyrian king be 
 meant by the * reed-beast,' or, perhaps, the 
 Syrian king of Zobah, Hadadezer, * whom Da- 
 vid smote, as he went to recover his border at 
 the river Euphrates,' 2S.viii.D, the reference 
 is certainly quite as, intelligible, if written 
 in the days of David, as in the time of the 
 Captivity, or rather, much more natural and 
 intelligible. 
 
 In W.9, the ' plentiful rain ' seems to refer to 
 the ' manna,' which was ' rained from heaven ' 
 upon them, E.xvi.4,Ps.lxxviii.24; and in ». 10, 
 instead of *Thy congregation hath dwelt 
 therein,' with Hupfedd should be read, ' Thy 
 creatures (' the quails ') settled down among 
 it (the host).' 
 
 389. Hengstenberg makes the fol- 
 lowing remarks: — 
 
 ■Modem criticism has attacked also this 
 
lU 
 
 THE SIXTY-EIGHTH PSAXM. 
 
 Psalm. Many, with Ewald at their head, 
 would bring it down to a period after the 
 Captivity,— a mistake which may well fill the 
 mind with astonishment I The character of 
 the language, and of the description, is suffi- 
 cient to prove this. Bottchbr says, ' From 
 its archaic language, its impressive descrip- 
 tions, its fresh, powerful, tone of poetry, it 
 belongs assuredly to the most remote age of 
 Hebrew poetry ; ' and Hitzig remarks, ' Be- 
 fore everything else the Psalm, to an attentive 
 reader, conveys the impression of the highest 
 originality, . . The poem may be pronounced 
 with confidence to be as remarkable for its 
 antiquity as for its originality.' The idea of 
 Ewald, which he makes use of to counteract 
 these considerations, viz. that the Psalm is 
 made up of a series of splendid passages from 
 poems now lost, must be characterised as 
 merely an arbitrary one, at least so long as 
 not one single passage can be pointed out, as 
 borrowed from any of those pieces at present 
 in our possession, which were composed after 
 the time of David. 
 
 But the reasons drawn from the matters of 
 fact, referred to in the Psalm are much more 
 decisive. Here it is of great importance to 
 note that. 11.27, Zabnlon and Naphtali take 
 part in the procession, next after Judah and 
 Benjamin. After the Captivity, some of the 
 descendants of the ten tribes might be found 
 unifed with Judah ; but assuredly there could 
 be no such thing as the distinct tribes of 
 Zabulon and Naphtali with their ' princes.' 
 iJuring the whole period, when the two di- 
 vided kingdoms existed in a state of juxta- 
 position to each other, there could have been 
 no union between Benjamin and Judah and 
 Zabulon and Naphtali ; and, even supposing 
 that they were sometimes united^ by which 
 HrrziG would interpret u.27, yet, apart from 
 the consideration that, next to Judah, Ephraim 
 was the tribe thatwould have been named, and 
 that the naming of the northern and southern 
 tribes is equivalent to naming apart instead of 
 the whole, especially when Pa,lx.7 is compared, 
 — ' Gileodis mine, Manassehis mine; Ephraim 
 also is the strength of my head ; Judah is my 
 lawgiver,'— it is utterly impossible that these 
 tribes could ever have marched m company as 
 part of a triumphal procession to the Temple 
 at Jerusalem, 
 
 We must, moreover, go higher than the di- 
 vision of the kingdom, to the time of David. 
 For under Solomon there was no such war 
 and victory as the Psalm before us refers to. 
 Further, the epithets applied to Judah and Ben- 
 jamin in W.27 can be explained only from the 
 relations which existed in the time of David. 
 The mention also of Egypt, as representing 
 the power of the heathen world, shows that 
 the Psalm was composed before the rise of the 
 great Asiatic monarchies, especially the Assy- 
 rian [rather before their coming into contact 
 with Israel, for Semiramis reigned 1209 B.C., 
 160 years before David came to the throne]. 
 Israel, too, appears everywhere as a warlike 
 and victorious nation, comp. especially «, 21-23 ; 
 and an event such as that which, according to 
 P.18, formed the subject-matter of the Psalm, 
 could not have t^en place subsequent to the 
 Captivity. 
 
 The reasons which hare been urged against 
 
 the Davidic authorship of the Psalm are very 
 trifling. By * temple ' is here meant, in the 
 first instance, the holy tabernacle on Zion ; 
 and the temple of Solomon is to be considered 
 as its continuation. Comp. Fs.v.7,xlviil.9, 
 ]xv.4. That in v.30,31, there are no traces 
 whatever of a hostile relation to Egypt, which 
 did not exist in David's time, and that Egypt 
 is named simply as representing the might of 
 the World as separated from God, which it 
 still did in David's time, and continued to do 
 until the rise [or extension] of the great Assy- 
 rian monM*chy, is evident from the circum- 
 stance that Cush, which never was in a state of 
 hostility to Israel, is named next after Egypt. 
 
 390. "With reference to the strong 
 Eiohistic character of this Psalm, 
 Hengstenbeeg observes, and this is 
 all that he observes, ii./».339, — 
 
 Instead of Jehovah, David uses klohim ; and 
 this name is the one which is generally used 
 throughout the Psalm. Jehovah occurs only 
 (w)ice,v.l6,20,and Jah twice,vA,\^, The reason 
 of this lies in the misuse of the name Jeho- 
 vah, which changed the name, that was itself 
 the stronger, into the weaker (!) In such pas- 
 sages Jehovah is in the back-ground, a-nd the 
 simple Elohim is equivalent to Jehovah Elohim; 
 comp. the Jah Elohim in «.18 (I) 
 
 391. "We have now shown that in 
 
 the^e three Psalms, which there is good 
 reason for assigning, from the internal 
 evidence of their contents, to the ear- 
 lier part of David's life, the Name 
 ' Jehovah * is either not used at all, or 
 not used as the common, popular, 
 familiar name for the Deity. 
 
 Surely our own explanation of the 
 phenomenon, which is too remarkable 
 not to be noticed, is the most natural, 
 and, indeed, as it seems to us, the only 
 rational explanation of it. 
 
 392. We have next to consider whe- 
 ther there are any Psalms, which are 
 apparently to be ascribed to the same 
 part of David's life, and which do con- 
 tain the name Jehovah, employed freely 
 as the common name for the Deity. 
 
 Here, then, we are met by the two 
 excepted cases to which reference has 
 been already made in (350) viz. Ps. 
 xxxiv and Ps.cxlii. 
 
 393. Ps.xxxivis entitled 'A Psalm of 
 David, when he changed his behaviour 
 before Abimelech, who drove him away, 
 and he departed.* Abimelech here 
 stunds, no doubt, for Achish : and this 
 Psalm, supposing the title to be cor- 
 rect, would have been written in the 
 twenty-seventh year of David's life, and 
 yet it contains Jehovah sixteen times, 
 
THE SIXTY-EiaHTH PSALM. 
 
 135 
 
 and Elohim not once, — contrary to all 
 our other experience. 
 
 394. Upon this I remark as follows : — 
 
 (i) As already observed, we cannot depend 
 npon the Title in any case, unless it be sup- 
 ported by the contents of the Psalm. 
 
 (ii) Hengstenbero, who insists very 
 
 strongly upon the general 'correctness and 
 
 originality of the Titles,' (see his note on Ps. 
 
 xxx.l,) comments, however, in this case as 
 
 'follows, note on Ps.xxxiv.l: — 
 
 'It is not, however, to be imagined that 
 David composed the Psalm, when Immediately 
 threatened by danger. In opposition to any 
 Buch idea we have the gmiet tone which per- 
 vades it ; whereas all the Psalms, which were 
 immediately called forth by a particular occa- 
 sion, are characterised by a great deal more of 
 emotion. Besides which, we have the un- 
 questionably predominant effort to draw con- 
 solation and instruction for the Church from 
 bis own personal experience. Finally, we have 
 the dlphabeHcal arrangement^ which never 
 occurs in those Psalms, which consist of an 
 expression of feelingslmmediately called forth 
 by a particular object, but always in those, in 
 which the prevailing design is to edify others. 
 
 The fact is, that David, when on some oc- 
 casion, in the subsequent part of his history, 
 his mind became filled with lively emotions, 
 arising from the recollections of his wonder- 
 ful escape, in reference to which he even here 
 says, * I will praise Jehovah ai all Umes^ His 
 praise shall be continually in my lips,' made It 
 the groundwork of a treasure of edification 
 for the use of the godly in all ages.' 
 
 Hbngstenbeeo has here admitted all 
 that is necessaiy to confirm our view of 
 the case, viz. that this Psalm, if written 
 by David at all, must have been written 
 at a later period — it may he a much 
 later period— of his life than the title 
 would imply. 
 
 395. But there seems no reason to 
 believe that this Psalm was written 
 with* any reference at all to David's 
 escape from Abimelech or Achish. 
 There is nothing whatever in its con- 
 tents to bear out such a supposition. 
 As Hengstenbeko says, so calm and 
 artificial b, Psalm could not possibly 
 have been written at a moment of ex- 
 treme periL And David passed through 
 so many dangers in the course of his 
 life, that it is very unlikely, to say the 
 least of it, that he would be still refer- 
 ring back in later days to this particular 
 occasion, as one of special penl and de- 
 liverance, even if the Title would allow 
 of such an explanation of its meaning, 
 which, honestly interpreted, it certainly 
 will not. 
 
 396. The Title being thus shown to 
 
 be inaccurate, we can only form con- 
 jectures as to the authorship of this 
 Psahn, from its actual contents; and 
 these give us no reason for ascribing it 
 to David at all. It may well be the 
 thanksgiving of ant/ pious writer of 
 a»y age, — ^probably, however, of a man 
 well advanced in years, since we read, 
 f.ll,— 
 
 * Oome ye children, hearken unto me, I will 
 teach you the fear of Jehovah,' — 
 
 which would have hardly suited David 
 at the age of twenty-seven, or for many 
 years after. And we actually have a 
 Psalm composed by David, according to 
 its Title, on this very occasion, Ps.lvi, 
 and in a veiy different tone, — one of 
 anguish and fear, quite suitable to it ; 
 and in this we have, as we might ex- 
 pect, Elohim nine times, Jehovah once. 
 
 397. Again Ps.cxlii is entitled ' Mas- 
 chil of David, a prayer when he was in 
 the cave;' and it contains Jehovah 
 three times, Elohim not once. 
 
 On this I remark : — 
 
 (i) There is nothing whatever in the con- 
 tents of this Psalm, which helps to fix it to 
 this occasion. 
 
 (ii) We have here also a Psalm composed 
 by David 'while in the cave,' Ps.lvii, and 
 this, as we might expect, contains Elohim 
 seven times, Jehovah Twt once. 
 
 (iii) It is most unlikely that, on the very 
 same occasion, David should have written two 
 Psalms, in one of wllich he never uses the 
 word Jehovah, while in the other he never 
 uses Elohim. 
 
 (iv) As we have good reason to suppose 
 that in the earlier part of his reign he did 
 write Psalms without Jehovah, e.g'.,Ps,lx. and 
 Ps.lxviii, we conclude, until other evidence is 
 produced to the contrary, that the title of 
 Ps.lvii is most likely to .be genuine, and that 
 of Ps.cxlii fictitious. 
 
 398. And so writes Hengstbnbeeg, 
 the great defender of the genuineness 
 of the Titles, iii.^.517. 
 
 That the situation indicated in the super- 
 scription was not the proper occasion of the 
 Psalm, but that David here only applies what 
 he then experienced for the edification _ of 
 others, appears not simply from the expression 
 Maschil=' an instruction,' in the front of the 
 superscription, out of which the following 
 words, * when he was in the cave,' derive 
 their more definite import, but still more 
 from the fact, that the Psalm stands in close 
 contact with the rest of the cycle of which it 
 forms a part. 
 
 David sees in his desperate condition, when 
 he was in the cave,' a type of the future con- 
 dition of his race and of the Church. His 
 cave-reflections he sets before them as an in- 
 struction. When it might come with them to 
 
136 
 
 THE REMAINING ELOHISTIC PSALMS. 
 
 an extremity, (this is the postiire of affairs 
 contemplated)— and such must come, for it 
 cannot go otherwise with the son than with 
 the father, they too must have their Saul 
 to withstand) — ^they should still not despair, 
 but pour out their complaint Btefore the 
 Lord. 
 
 399. In short, the very circumstance, 
 that these two Psalms contain the name 
 Jehovah so often, to the ahsolnte exclu- 
 sion of Elohim, is surely a clear indica- 
 tion that they cannot be ranked with 
 the Psalms which we have been hitherto 
 considering, and which were written at 
 an earlier period of David's life. If 
 written by David at all, of which there 
 is no sign whatever, they must, we may 
 conclude, have been written towards 
 the close of his life. 
 
 400. For it cannot be said that the 
 peculiarity, which we have noticed in 
 certain earlier Psalms of David, arose 
 from some idiosyncrasy of his own 
 mind, — so that, while his predecessors 
 and contemporaries and successors used 
 freely the name Jehovah, David him- 
 self, for some reason, refrained from 
 using it as frequently as the name 
 Elohim all his life long. At least, we 
 shall find that certain Psalms, appa- 
 rently composed by him, according to 
 their contents, as well as their titles, 
 towards the end of Ms life, exhibit a 
 phenomenon the exact reverse of that 
 which we have already observed, and 
 are decidedly Jehovistic, so that some- 
 times the name Elohim does not even 
 occur at all in them. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE BEMAININO ELOHISTIO PSALMS. 
 
 401. That the reader may have the 
 ■whole ease before him, we shall now 
 give a table of the five books of Psalms, 
 marking, as before, with an asterisk 
 those Psalms which are ascribed by 
 their Titles to David. We use, also, 
 as before, the letters E. for Elohim, 
 God, J. for Jehovah, LORD, and A. 
 for Adonai,- Lord : but we do not 
 reckon any instances, where Elohim is 
 evidently used for ' gods ' or ' princes,' 
 or where it is used in cases in which 
 Jehovah could not have been used, as 
 'my Elohim,' 'thy Elohim,' &c., or 
 where both Jehovah and Elohim are 
 used together, as 'Je]:ovah Elohim,' 
 
 'Jehovah my Elohim.' We here take 
 account only of those which show that 
 the writers made choice of the name 
 which they would use for the Deity. 
 
 
 
 BOOK 
 
 I. 
 
 
 Ps. E. 
 
 J. 
 
 A. 
 
 Ps. 
 
 E. J. A. 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 •22 
 
 6 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 •23 
 
 2 
 
 •3 1 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 •24 
 
 6 
 
 •4 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 •26 
 
 1 10 
 
 »5 2 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 •28 
 
 6 
 
 *6 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 •27 
 
 13 
 
 *7 4 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 •28 
 
 5 
 
 »8 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 •29 
 
 1 18 
 
 *9 1 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 •30 
 
 8 
 
 10 4 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 *31 
 
 1 10 
 
 •11 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 •32 
 
 4 
 
 •12 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 33 
 
 18 
 
 •13 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 •34 
 
 16 
 
 *14 3 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 •35 
 
 7 3 
 
 *16 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 •36 
 
 2 2 
 
 *16 1 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 •37 
 
 15 1 
 
 •17 1 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 •38 
 
 2 3 
 
 •18 4 15 
 
 
 
 •39 
 
 2 1 
 
 *19 1 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 •40 
 
 8 1 
 
 •20 
 
 S 
 
 
 
 •41 
 
 6 
 
 •21 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 BOOK 
 
 II. 
 
 
 Fs. E. 
 
 J. 
 
 A. 
 
 Ps. 
 
 E. J. A. 
 
 42 9 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 •68 
 
 2 1 
 
 43 S 
 
 
 
 
 
 •69 
 
 4 2 1 
 
 44 4 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 •60 
 
 6 
 
 4.5 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 •61 
 
 3 
 
 46 5 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 •62 
 
 7 1 
 
 47 7 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 •63 
 
 3 
 
 48 S 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 •64 
 
 3 10 
 
 49 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 •66 
 
 2 
 
 60 9 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 66 
 
 7 1 
 
 •61 5 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 67 
 
 6 
 
 *62 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 •68 27 3 7 
 
 •53 7 
 
 
 
 
 
 •69 
 
 8 6 1 
 
 •64 4 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 •70 
 
 3 2 
 
 »06 6 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 71 
 
 6 3 2 
 
 •66 9 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 72 
 
 1 
 
 •67 7 
 
 
 
 1 
 BOOK 
 
 HI. 
 
 
 Ps. E. 
 
 J 
 
 A. 
 
 Pf. 
 
 E. J. A. 
 
 73 5 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 82 
 
 2 
 
 74 6 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 83 
 
 3 2 
 
 75 2 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 76 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 84 
 
 3 6 
 
 77 9 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 85 
 
 1 4 
 
 78 15 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 •86 
 
 3 4 7 
 
 79 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 87 
 
 1 2 
 
 80 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 88 
 
 4 
 
 81 1 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 BOOK 
 
 89 
 IV. 
 
 1 10 2 
 
 Ps. E. 
 
 J. 
 
 A. 
 
 Ps. 
 
 E. J. A. 
 
 90 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 99 
 
 1 3 
 
 91 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 100 
 
 1 4 
 
 92 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 •101 
 
 2 
 
 93 
 
 S 
 
 
 
 102 
 
 8 
 
 94 10 
 
 
 
 •103 
 
 11 
 
 96 1 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 104 
 
 19 
 
 96 
 
 11 
 
 
 
 105 
 
 6 
 
 97 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 106 
 
 2 9 
 
 9a 
 
 e 
 
 
 
 
 
THE EEMAINIKa ELOHISTIC PSALMS. 
 
 137 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 Pl. 
 
 E. J. 
 
 A. 
 
 Fa. 
 
 E. J. 
 
 A. 
 
 107 
 
 1 12 
 
 
 
 129 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 *108 
 
 6 1 
 
 
 
 130 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 »109 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 *131 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 •110 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 132 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 111 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 •133 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 112 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 134 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 113 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 135 
 
 19 
 
 1 
 
 114 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 136 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 115 
 
 13 
 
 
 
 187 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 116 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 *138 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 117 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 *13D 
 
 3 3 
 
 
 
 118 
 
 1 28 
 
 
 
 *140 
 
 7 
 
 1 
 
 119 
 
 24 
 
 
 
 *141 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 120 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 *I42 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 121 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 •143 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 *122 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 »144 
 
 1 4 
 
 
 
 123 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 *145 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 *124 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 146 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 125 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 147 
 
 7 
 
 1 
 
 126 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 148 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 127 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 149 
 
 1 4 
 
 
 
 128 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 150 
 
 1 3 
 
 
 
 402. We obtain the following results 
 from the above Table : — 
 
 (i) In Book I, almost all the Psalms 
 of which are ascribed to David, the 
 use of Jehovah is, in every instance, 
 very much more common than that of 
 Elohim. The former occurs 265 times 
 in the book ; the latter 27 times : that 
 is. Jehovah occurs nearly ten times to 
 Elohim once. 
 
 m^ch more common than Jehovah. The 
 former occurs, in the whole book, 178 
 times, the latter, 30 times ; that is, 
 Elohim occurs six times to Jehovah 
 once. 
 
 (iii) In the first eleven Psalms of 
 Book III, which form together one 
 small collection, being afi. entitled 
 Psalms of Asaph, the use of Elohim 
 also preponderates over .that of Je- 
 hovah, but not so decisively. The 
 former occurs 48 times, the latter,. 10 
 times ; that is, Elohim occurs five times 
 to Jehovah once. 
 
 In the remaining Psalms of Book III 
 the reverse is the case: Jehovah occurs 
 29 times, Elohim 9 times : that is, 
 Jehovah occurs three times to Elohim 
 once. 
 
 (iv) In Book IV the use of Jehovalj 
 preponderates decidedly in every in- 
 stance. It occurs altogether 103 times, 
 Elohim 7 times : that is, Jehovah oc- 
 curs more than fifteen times to Elohim 
 once. 
 
 (v) In Book V the same is the case, 
 but much more remarkably, except in 
 one instance, P3.eviii. Omitting this 
 Psalm, Jehpvah occurs 262 times, 
 Elohim 8 times : that is, Jehovah oc-. 
 curs thirty-three times to Elohim mrice. 
 
 (ii) In Book II, in every instariee, 
 the reverse is the case ; Elohim is very 
 
 403. We may collect the above briefly into one view, as follows : — 
 
 Book I , . containa , . Jehovali ten times to • Elohim once 
 
 Book II Elohim six , , . Jehovah once. 
 
 _ V TTT J Psalms of Asaph . . Elohim ^iic . , . Jehovah omx. 
 
 uooK Hi I Qjijgj Psalms . . Jehovah three . . . Elohim once. 
 
 Book IT Jehovah ^/tem . . Elohim once. 
 
 BookT Jehovah fliJrt2(-<Arce . Elohim once. 
 
 It is plain that the above results can- 
 not be accidental. 
 
 404. We have already seen that of 
 the Psalms of Book II, all of which 
 are so decidedly Elohistic, eighteen are 
 ascribed to David, of which three, at 
 least, were very probably written by 
 him, or for him, and all may have been 
 written by him, for anything that ap- 
 pears to the contrary. The three in 
 question appear to have been composed 
 in the middle part of his life ; and 
 others are assigned by their Titles, — 
 perhaps with reason, — to a yet earlier 
 time. It is possible also that all the 
 Psalms of Bpok II may belong to the 
 age of David. Let us now consider 
 the eleven Elohistic Psalms of Asaph 
 in Book III. 
 
 405. We have already examined one 
 'Psalm of Asaph,' Ps.l, and shown 
 that it may, very probably, be referred 
 to the age of David. But expositors 
 usually assume that many Psalms of 
 this 'Asaph' coUeetion in Book III 
 were manifestly written during or after 
 the Babylonish Captivity. Thus, says 
 the note in Bagster's Bible, Ps.lxxiv 
 is ' evidently a lamentation over the 
 Temple destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar,' 
 and Ps.lxxvii is ' allowed by the best 
 judges to have been written during the; 
 Babylonian Captivity;' andPs.lxxix is 
 'supposed, with much probability, to 
 have been written on the destruction 
 of the Cily and Temple of Jerusalem 
 by Nebuchadnezzar,' andPs.lxxx is • ge- 
 nerally supposed to have been written 
 
 K 
 
138 
 
 THE REMAINING ELOHISTIC PSALMS. 
 
 during the Babylonian Captivity,' and 
 as to Ps.Ixxxi, 'the most probable 
 opinion is that it was sung at the dedi- 
 cation of the Second Temple.' 
 
 406. We may demur, however, to 
 the above conclusions with respect to 
 some of the above Psalms. 
 
 Ps.lxxiv was probably written after the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, to which event the 
 expressions in if.3-7 eeem very plainly to 
 refer—' The enemy hath done wickedly in the 
 Sanctuary,* — 'They have cast fire into Thy 
 Sanctuary ; -they have defiled the dwelling- 
 place of Thy Name to the ground.' That 
 these words cannot he referred to the destruc- 
 tion of the Tabernacle at Shiloh appears from 
 v.J, 'this Mount Zion, wherein Thou hast 
 dwelt.' 
 
 So, too, Ps.lxxis must have been written 
 after the destruction of Jerusalem, as appears 
 by the language of «.1-S, * O God, the heathen 
 are come into Thine inheritance; Thy holy 
 Temple have they defiled ; they have laid Jem- 
 salem on heaps. The dead bodies of Thy ser- 
 vants have they given to be meat unto the 
 fowls of the heaven, the flesh of Thy saints 
 unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have 
 they shed like water round about Jerusalem ; 
 and there was none to bury them.' These 
 words are quoted in lMacc.vii.17. 
 
 On the other hand, Fb.1xxv contains no dis- 
 tinct signs of time, but may possibly have 
 been written by David before he came to the 
 throne, as some expressions seem to imply, e.g. 
 «.2, ' When I shall receive the Congregation, 
 I shall judge uprightly,' «.10, * All the horns 
 of the wicked also ^vill I cut off.' 
 
 P8.1xxvi may also have been written by Da^ 
 vid. The phrases in v.l, ' His name is great 
 in Israel^' and «.6, * O GrOd of Jacoh^ seem to 
 imply a time when the people was undivided ; 
 while the language in ii.l, 'In Judah is God 
 known,' and in u.2, ' In Salem also is His Ta- 
 bernacle, and His dwelling- place in Zion^ show 
 that it could not have been written h^ore the 
 time of David. Lastly, the martial tone of 
 «.3,5,6,12, restricts it to his days, rather than 
 Solomon's. 
 
 407. As some of the above are pri- 
 vate Psalms, written, it wouldseem, 
 by some royal personeige, and written 
 certainly at a very different age from 
 others of this collection, which refer to 
 the Captivity, it would rather appear 
 that this set is called ' The Psalms of 
 Asaph,' because the collection belonged 
 to the Asaph family, though some of 
 them may have been written by their 
 ancestor Asaph, who lived in the days 
 <;f David. We find here, however, in 
 this Asaph collection, some very late 
 Psalms, in which the same phenomenon 
 occurs as in those Psalms of David 
 which we have just been considering, 
 — viz. a preponderance of the name 
 
 Elohim, though not in the same do- 
 gree. 
 
 408. This accords also with the fact 
 that, in the book of Ezra we have 
 Elohim 97 times, Jehovah 37 times, 
 and in that of Nehemiah, Elohim 74 
 times, Jehovah 17 times, — contrary to 
 all the data of the other historical 
 books. It would almost seem as if, 
 after their long sojourn as captives in 
 a strange land, when Israel no longer 
 existed as a nation, they had begun to 
 discontinue the use of the national 
 Name for the Divine Being. However 
 this may be, we find the later Prophets 
 using the word freely again, — Haggai 
 (J.35,E.3), Zechariah(J.132,E.12), Ma- 
 laehi (J.47,E.8). At a still later date, 
 superstitious scruples prevailed so far, 
 as to prevent the name Jehovah from 
 being used at all. It is not found in 
 the whole book of Ecdesiastes, and 
 only in one chapter of Daniel, chap.ix. 
 
 409. There are some critics who as- 
 sign many of the Psalms to the age of 
 the Maccabees. But, at present, we see 
 no sufficient reason for believing that 
 any of these Psalms of Asaph, or any 
 others in the whole book of Psalms, 
 are later than the time of Nehemiah, 
 who probably first edited them in their 
 present form, in accordance with the 
 statement in 2Macc.ii.l3, that he, — 
 
 ' Founding a library, gathered together the 
 acts of the Kings, and of the Prophets, and o£ 
 David, &c.' 
 
 410. It is remarkable that not one of 
 the Psalms is ascribed to one of the 
 great Prophets, as Sajmuel, Isaiah, or 
 Jeremiah, the latter of whom must 
 surely have written many in his time, 
 which are very probably presen-ed in 
 the collection, though not assigned to 
 him by name. Thus, Ps.xxxi may be 
 one of Jeremiah's, as appears from the 
 following resemblances : — 
 
 (i) U.13, Magor missabib = ' fear on every 
 side,' as in Jer.vi.25, xx.3,4,10, xlvi.5, xlix. 
 29, Lam.ii.22, — nowhere else in the Bible ; 
 
 (ii) 0.13, 'I have heard the slander of 
 many : fear is on every side,' as in Jer.xx,! ; 
 
 (iii) D.1,17, 'I shall not be ashamed,' as in 
 Jer.xvii.18 ; 
 
 (iv) D.2, ' Bow down the eai*,' as in 3er, 
 vii.24,26,xi.8,xvii.23,xxv.4, xxxiv.l4, xxxv.1.5, 
 xliv.S J 
 
 (v) ».5, ' Jehovah, God of Truth,' as in 
 Jer.XjlO, nowhere else in the Bible ; 
 
 (vi) 11.10, ' Grief,' the same Heb. word at 
 in Jer.viii.l8,xx.l8, .\,\xi.l3,.xlv.3 ; 
 
THE JEHOVISTIC PSALMS CONSIDERED. 
 
 139 
 
 (vii) i?.10, 'Sighing,' the same Heb. word 
 as in Jer.xlv.3, Lam,i,22 ; 
 
 (viii) o.lO, ' My strength faileth me,' as in 
 Lam.i.ld ; 
 
 (ix) ».12, 'Like a broken vessel,' as in Jer, 
 ?xii.28,li.34 ; 
 
 (x) «.22, 'Supplications,' the same Heb, 
 word as in Jer.iii.21, x3Dd.9. 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 THE JEHOVISTIC PSAXMS CONSIDERED. 
 
 411. Wb have seen that all the 
 Psalms in Book II, together with the 
 eleven Psalms of Asaph in Book III, 
 are decidedly Elohistic. AU the re- 
 maining Psalms appear to be Jehovistic 
 with one single exception, Ps.cviii 
 (E.6,J.l). But this is evidently com- 
 pounded of parts of the two Elohistic 
 Psalms, Ivii and Ix, with one or two 
 slight variations, the most noticeable 
 being that Adonai, in Ps.lvii.9, is 
 changed to Jehovah in Ps.eviii.S, that 
 is, in the later edition, since, of course, 
 the two complete Psalms existed be- 
 
 ■fore — probably long before— the com- 
 posite Psalm was constructed. 
 
 412. Of the Jehovistic Psalms, fifty- 
 five are ascribed to David ; and it will 
 be found, on reference to the Table in 
 (401), that in these the name Jehovah 
 occurs ten times to Elohim once, while 
 in thirty-eight of them Elohim does 
 not occur at all, as the distinctive 
 Name, employed by choice for the Deity. 
 
 Now, as already observed, it is in- 
 credible, according to the ordinary laws 
 of the human mind, that David should, 
 in the very same part of his life, have 
 written a number of Psalms with 
 Elohim occurring on the average six 
 times to Jehovah once, in several of 
 which Jehovah does not occur at all, 
 and another number of Psalms, in 
 which Jehovah occurs on the average 
 ten times to Elohim once, and in very 
 many of which Elohim does not occur 
 at aU. Allowing that in either set 
 there may be many Psalms, which have 
 been incorrectly ascribed to David, the 
 argument holds good with regard to 
 the remainder. As some Elohistic 
 Psalms at all events— Ps.lx and Ps.lxviii 
 — were very probably written by David 
 in the earlier and middle parts of his life, 
 we may r'iasonably conclude that, if any 
 of these Jehovistic Psalms really belong 
 
 to him, they can only have been writ- 
 ten in the last part of his life, when, ac- 
 cording to our view, the name Jehovah 
 had become more familiar to himself, 
 and better known to the people. 
 
 413. Accordingly, as far as we can 
 depend upon the Titles, supported by 
 the consideration of the contents, we 
 find this to be the case. The following 
 four Psalms are ascribed by their Titles 
 to the latter part of David's life. 
 
 (i) PB.iii (J.6,E.l) when David ' fled from 
 Absalom,' in the sixty-third year of his life. 
 Henqstenberg, however, agrees with Lu- 
 ther in considering, that, from the artificial 
 construction of this Psalm, it must have been 
 written at even a later date than the event to 
 which it is supposed to refer. It speaks in 
 U.4 of * Jehovah's holy hill,' which points 
 either to the Tabernacle or the Temple on 
 Mount Zion, and, therefore, does not fix the 
 Fsalm to David's time. 
 
 (ii) Ps.vii (J.5,E.4), 'concerning the words 
 of Cush the Beniamite,^' whom Luther and 
 others identify with Shimei, the son of Gera, 
 the Benjamite, who insulted David on the 
 same occasion, 2S.xvi.7,8, and whom David 
 charged his son Solomon ' not to hold guilt- 
 less,' but to ' bring down his hoar hair to the 
 grave with blood,' lK.ii.8,9. HENesTENBEBO, 
 while he agrees with Luther, a.nd with mort 
 Jewish expositors, in regaardihg the word 
 Cush sts being not a proper name, but an epi- 
 thet, ' Ethiopian,' used metaphoi-ically of a 
 ' man of a black heart,' understands it, how- 
 ever, of some ujiknown calumniator of David 
 in the time of Saul. There is nothing in the 
 Psalm itself to decide the question. 
 
 (iii) Ps.xviii ( J.15,E.4), when ' David was 
 delivered from all his enemies and from the 
 hand of Saul.' 
 
 _The last words of this title might seem to 
 point to an earlier period, when he had only 
 been recently delivered from Saul's hand. 
 
 I copy, however, on this point the following 
 note of Hengstenberg;— 
 
 •We are told in the superscription that 
 David sang this Psalm, after that Jehovah 
 had delivered him from all his enemies. The 
 Psalm is thus designated, not as having arisen 
 from some special occasion, but as a general 
 song of praise, for all the grace and the assis- 
 tance, which he had received from God all his 
 life long, as a collection of the thanksgivin^rs 
 which David had uttered from time to time 
 on particular occasions,— a great Hallelujah, 
 with which he retired from the theatre of life. 
 In SS.xxii this Psalm is expressly connected 
 with the end of David's life, immediately be- 
 fore his ' last words,' which are presently after 
 given in chap.xxiii. With this design the 
 matter of the Psalm entirely agrees. In it 
 the Psalmist thanks God, not for any single 
 deliverance, but having throughout before his 
 eyes a great whole of gracious administra- 
 tions, an entire life rich with experience of 
 the loving-kindness of God.' 
 
 Thus this Psalm also, if written by David 
 at all, was written at the close of his life. 
 
 (iv) Ps.xx-x (J.8,E.O) was composed, 
 
 k2 
 
THE JEHOVISTIC PSALMS CONSIDERED. 
 
 140 
 
 according to the Title, 'for the dedication of 
 the House of Davia.' This Title also might 
 seem to point to the tini6, when David erected 
 the Tabernacle on Mount Zion, and brought 
 up the Axk to Jerusalem, in the fortieth year 
 of his life. But on this point again Henq- 
 STENBERG Observes: 
 
 ' The House, clearly, is the House of God, 
 the Temple, And the Title indicates that this 
 Fsklm was sung at the dedication by David of 
 the site of the future Temple, as recorded in 
 2S.xxiv and ICh.xxi.* 
 
 He then supports his statement by reference 
 to the contents of the Psalm, which, certainly 
 do not at all correspond with the circum- 
 stances under which David's Tabernacle was 
 consecrated, but agree with the history in 
 the above two passages. And he quotes with 
 reference to the site in question, lCh.xxii.l, — 
 * Then David said. This is the House of Jehovah 
 Elohim^ and this is the Altar for the bumt- 
 ofEeringfor Israel.' Thus, according to Heng- 
 STKNBERG, this PsaJm also was written in the 
 sixty-eighth year of David's life. 
 
 414. The above are all the Jehovistic 
 Psalms, ascribed to David, whose Titles 
 mark the time of their composition, 
 except Ps.cxJii, the title of which we 
 have shown to be erroneous (397). As 
 before observed, it cannot be regarded 
 as by any means certain that the above 
 Titles are correct, or that all or any of 
 the above Psalms are really David's. 
 It is possible that some of them are. 
 StUl some doubt, as to any of the Jeho- 
 vistic Psalms being David's, is caused 
 by the fact, that the ' last words ' of 
 David, as given in 2S.xxiii. 1-7, which 
 have all the appearance of being genuine 
 and which, in tone and character, are 
 very like those Elohistie Psalms, which 
 we know to be his, are also Elohistie, 
 containing Elohim/oar times and Je- 
 hovah once. 
 
 415. But, as far as these Titles are of 
 any value, as far as their statements 
 are confirmed by any internal evidences 
 from their contents, they help us to 
 maintain the ground already taken. 
 They show that all the Psalms in 
 question, and, therefore, we may justly 
 infer, in the absence of plain proof to 
 the contrary, any other decidedly Jeho- 
 vistic Psahns, which may really belong 
 to David, whether ascribed to him or 
 not, were written, not in the earlier or 
 middle part of his Ufe, when his com- 
 positions, as we have seen, were de- 
 cidedly Elohistie, but towards the 
 close of it. 
 
 416. In the larger edition, we have 
 
 examined carefully in detail all the 
 PsaJms of Books I,III,IV,V, whether 
 ascribed to David or not, which ex- 
 hibit in their contents any indications 
 of the times at which they were com- 
 posed. The result of our examination 
 is that there is not a single Jehovistic 
 Psalm, which there is any reasonable 
 ground for assigning to the earlier part 
 of David's life. There is no evidence 
 — such as that which seems to mark 
 Ps.bc and Ps.lxviii as really David's — • 
 which enables us to say with any ap- 
 proach to certainty, that any decidedly 
 Jehovistic Psalm was written by David 
 at all. 
 
 417. But, even admitting many Jeho- 
 vistic Psalms to be David's on the very 
 uncertain warrant of their Titles only, 
 yet all of these may be assigned, and 
 some of them must be assigned, to the 
 later part of his reign, at the time of 
 the rebellion of Absalom, in the sixty- 
 third year of his life, or at a time still 
 later. On the other hand, we have had 
 before us strong, and, as it seems to us, 
 conclusive, evidence, that in the earlier 
 and middle parts of his life he wrote 
 certainly some Psalms — and if so, then, 
 perhaps, many — which are decidedly 
 Elohistie. 
 
 418. Hence, whether such Jehovistic 
 Psalms were composed by David or not, 
 it is certain that, if David wrote those 
 earlier Psalms, e.g. Ps.lxviii (E.27,J.3, 
 A.7), he could not have had such an 
 idea of the sacredness of the Name Je^ 
 hovah, and of the paramount privilege 
 and duty of using it in obecGence to 
 the Divine command, as the Pentateuch, 
 upon the traditionary view of its his- 
 torical character, would lead us to ex- 
 pect, — at all events, in the case of a 
 man so pious and well-trained as David, 
 and one who had been from his youth 
 up in closest intimacy with the Prophet 
 Samuel. It seems absolutely impos- 
 sible that, while almost all other per- 
 sons, as the history teaches, — Eli, IS. 
 ii.24,25, and Samuel, IS.xii, and Jona- 
 than, lS.xx.12-23 — more common per- 
 sons also, as Naomi and Ruth, E.i, Boaz 
 and his reapers, Il.ii.4, Hannah, IS. 
 ii.1-10, Abigail, lS.xxv.26-31,— nay, 
 even the heathen Philistines, lS.vi.2,8, 
 xxix.6, — were using freely the sacred 
 
THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. 141 
 
 Name of Jehovah, yet David himself 
 used it so sparingly that in several of 
 his Psalms it appears not at all. 
 
 419. It is true, the history puts the 
 name in David's month much more 
 frequently than Elohim, lS.xxiv.6,10, 
 la, 15(J.8,E.O), xxvi.9-24(J.16,E.O)— 
 that is to say, the history represents 
 David as using constantly the name 
 Jehovah, and scarcely the name Elohim 
 at all, at the very time when he was 
 hiding in the wilderness, and writing, 
 apparently. Psalm after Psalm, in which 
 Elohim occurs continually, and Jehovah 
 scarcely at all. Nay, the history makes 
 the Philistine king Achish swear 
 familiarly by Jehovah, lS.xxix.6, 
 ' Surely, as Jehovah liveth, thou 
 hast been upright.' 
 
 420. But this can only be regarded 
 as one sign, among others, that the 
 history in the Books of Samuel was 
 composed at a later date, when the 
 name Jehovah was undoubtedly in 
 common use, and was, therefore, put 
 by the writer in the mouth of every 
 one. David's own Psalms are, surely, 
 the best possible proof of the actual 
 state of things at the time when be 
 lived. And the simple fact that David 
 wrote one such Psalm as Ps.lx or 
 Ps.lxviii, in the earlier part of his life, 
 would be enough to establish the point 
 now in question, provided that no 
 Psalm could be produced of opposite 
 character — that is, no decidedly Jeho- 
 ■mstic Psalm — which contains strong 
 internal evidence of having been written 
 by David in the same part of his life. 
 I'have looked for such a Psabn in vain. 
 
 421. And let it be observed once 
 more that the argument would hold 
 good with respect to any of the Psalms 
 in Book II, which bear distinct signs 
 of an early date, even if they had not 
 been written by David. There are 
 those Psalms; and they are, as it ap- 
 pears to me, undeniably early Psalms, 
 —that is to say, such a Psalm as Ps.lx 
 must, as I conclude from its internal 
 character, have been written in David's 
 time. For this was the only time that 
 can be thought of, in the history of 
 the Hebrew monarchy, when it could 
 be said that GOead and Manasseh, 
 Ephraim and Judah, were all under 
 
 one sway, except the time of Solomon i 
 and the references to Moab, Edom, and 
 Philistia, in i;.8, as well as the whole 
 tone of the Psalm, do not agree with 
 the age of Solomon, but do with the 
 age of David. 
 
 422. This Psalm, then, viz. Ps.lx, and 
 the others of a similar kind, must, it 
 would seem, have been written by some 
 pious person or persons of those days, 
 whether David or not. And all those,- 
 who maintain the traditionary view, 
 will, I imagine, heartily agree in this. 
 But then the writer, or writers, of these 
 Psalms, it is plain, could not have been 
 in the habit, at that time, of using 
 familiarly the name Jehovah. It could 
 not, therefore, have been commonly 
 employed in the devotions of pious 
 men in those days. And, if so, it 
 could not have been freely in use be- 
 fore those days ; and, above all, it could 
 not have been known and recognised by 
 these pious men, as the Name which 
 Almighty God Himself had revealed to 
 Moses, and had specially sanctioned as 
 the. Name, by which He would be 
 hereafter known in Israel, saying, — ' 
 
 * This is My Name for ever, and this i6 My 
 memoriaJ unto all generations.' £.iii.ld4 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IN THE BOOK 
 
 or jcnsES. 
 
 423. The inference from the abovS 
 seems to be plain, in complete accord- 
 ance with our previous supposition, vie, 
 that the word, Jehovah, had been but 
 newly formed, or, at least, newly 
 adopted and introduced, by some, great, 
 wise, and patriotic master-mind — very 
 probably Samuel's — at the time when 
 David came to the throne, with the 
 special purpose, probably, of conso- 
 lidating and maintaining the civil 
 and religious unity of the Hebrew 
 tribes, under the new experiment Of 
 the kingdom. As the facts, which we 
 have been here Considering, so far from 
 being in any way at variance with the 
 conclusion, to which we had already 
 come on other clear grounds, as to the 
 unhistorical character of the Mosnie 
 narrative, are, on the contrary, quite 
 in accordance with it, we cannot, as- 
 
142 THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. 
 
 before said, suppose that the Name 
 JehoTah really originated in the way 
 described in E.iii and E.vi. Yet, we 
 repeat, it must have been introduced at 
 some period or other of the history of 
 the Hebrew tribes, as the word Un- 
 kulunkulu must have come into use in 
 some intelligible and natural manner, 
 if we only Imew the story of it, among 
 the Zulus, or as the word uDio is now 
 being introduced among them. 
 
 424. And this Tiew seems to be con- 
 firmed, when we examine the names 
 mentioned in the historical books, 
 which follow the Pentateuch. We 
 have already seen (299) that not only 
 the Elohist, but even the Jehovist 
 has abstained from introducing names 
 compounded with Jehovah in the 
 course of the Mosaic story. They 
 occur only in two cases, Joshua and 
 Jochebed. Moses himself is described 
 as making the change of Hoshea to 
 Jehoshua in a very marked manner, 
 N.xii.l6; and Jochebed, as we have 
 seen some reason to believe (302), is, 
 most probably, a later interpolation. 
 
 425. The stories in the Book of 
 Judges are, apparently, founded upon 
 some real traditions ; and, though in 
 some places they are evidently ex- 
 aggerated, and in others they have 
 assumed a legendary form, and the 
 chronology, throughout, is the despair 
 of the ' reconciling ' school of theo- 
 logians, yet the heroes, whose exploits 
 are there described, seem to have been 
 real characters, and their names, in 
 most cases, may be supposed to be 
 prenuine. In this book, we have 
 ethnic?, i.l3, and PenueZ, viii.8, (the 
 name of a place), and in R.i.2 we 
 hiiveSimeleoh; but among all the nu- 
 merous Judges and their fathers we 
 find no other names compounded with 
 Elohim. 
 
 426. There are, however, four names 
 in the book of Judges, which may be 
 supposed to be compounded with 
 Jehovah, viz. Jbash, vi.ll, the father, 
 and i/otham, ix..5, the son, of Gideon, 
 Micah, xvii.l, and i/onathan, xviii.30. 
 
 Thus Micah is by pome considered to be an 
 abridged form of Micaiah, ' Who is like Je- 
 hovah?' while by others it is distinguished 
 from the latter name, and explained to mean, 
 • poor,' or * smitten,' or ' who is here ? " 
 
 This last is the explanation of the name in 
 Bishop PARKEa's Bible, where also the mean- 
 ing of Jotham is said to be ' perfect,' but that 
 of Joash ' fire of Jehovah.' Any Hebrew 
 scholar, however, will know that the name 
 ' Joash ' viay be formed precisely in the same 
 way as ' Jotham,' or as * Joseph,' without any 
 reference to the name Jehovah. 
 
 427. Hence it must be considered 
 doubtful, whether the first three of the 
 above four names are really com- 
 pounded with Jehovah at all, — so 
 doubtful, that no stress can be laid 
 upon them in argument against such 
 positive facts as have been already 
 produced. But the fourth, Jonathan = 
 ' Jehovah gives,' does certainly contain 
 the name Jehovah ; and we must ex- 
 amine how far our theory is affected 
 by this fact. 
 
 428. If we could be reasonably cer- 
 tain that this was a bond fide historical 
 name, and that a man, called Jonathan, 
 was actually ' Priest to the tribe of 
 Dan,' Ju.xviii.30, before the time of 
 Samuel, it would follow, of course, that 
 the name Jehovah was not first intro- 
 duced by Samuel. But then we are 
 met by the fact that this is the only 
 name in the whole history of the 
 Judges, with respect to which it can be 
 confidently maintained that it is com- 
 pounded with Jehovah. If we joined 
 with it the three doubtful names above 
 discussed, we should still be confronted 
 with the fact that, among the multitude 
 of names of persons and places, in Num- 
 bers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, many of 
 them compounded with the Divine 
 Name, we find no trace of other names of 
 this kind, save Joshua and Jochebed ; 
 whereas, according to the Jehovist, the 
 name Jehovah had been used freely 
 from the first, and, according to another 
 part of the story, even if it first came 
 into use at the time of the Exodus, 
 yet Moses himself had already set the 
 example of compounding names with it, 
 by changing Hoshea to iTbshua. Let 
 us, therefore, consider somewhat more 
 closely this case of ' Jonathan.' 
 
 429. Now, first, it must be observed 
 that this name does not occur in the 
 'Book of Judges,' properly so called, 
 but only in one of the two episodic 
 narratives, which are attached to the 
 end of it, xvii-xxi,.— appendices, as it 
 were, to the Book itself, and very pos- 
 
JEHOViaTIC XAMES 
 sibly, therefore, not written by the 
 same hand as that which composed the 
 main portion of the principal story. 
 At all events, we haye, in these two 
 episodes, distinct marks of the time at 
 which they were written, a time later, 
 at all events, than the days of Saul's 
 entering on the kingdom. This is im- 
 plied by the expression in xvii.6, — 
 
 ' In those days there was no king in Israel ; 
 but every man did that which was right in his 
 own eyes,' — 
 
 which is repeated inxviii.l, xix.l,xxi.25; 
 and more especially by the statement in 
 xviii.30,31, that,— 
 
 ' Jonathan, the son oJ Gershom, the son o( 
 Manasseh, he and his son were priests to the 
 tribe ol Dan, unUl the day of the CapUviij/ of 
 the laTid. And they set up Mieah's graven 
 image, which ho had made, all the time that 
 the House of God was in Shiloh.' 
 
 430. The 'Captivity' here mentioned 
 is supposed by some to refer to the time 
 when the Aik was taken captive in 
 Eli's days, after which calamity the 
 House of God ceased to be any longer 
 at Shiloh. Even according to this view, 
 this story must have been written after, 
 and the language seems to imply, some 
 time after, that event, and in days when 
 there was a ting ruling in Israel, and 
 comparative order under his govern- 
 ment. In other words, it may have 
 been written in the latter days of 
 Samuel, and, in that case, it would 
 probably be one of the productions of 
 his historical school; but it was cer- 
 tainly not composed at an earlier age. 
 
 431. If, then, we adopt the above 
 supposition as to the date of the com- 
 position of this narrative, the name 
 Jehovah had, according to our view, 
 long been published, and had been, in 
 fact, already introduced into the names 
 of Samuel's own two sons, Joel and 
 Abijah, as well as in some other names, 
 as AMah, Zeirmah, &c., of which we 
 shall speak presently. It is quite 
 possible, then, in accordance with our 
 view, that a writer of this age might 
 have introduced such a name as the 
 above, compounded with Jehovah, sup- 
 posing that it is not a bond, fide his- 
 torical name, the name of a person 
 who actually lived in an earlier age 
 than that of Samuel. 
 
 432. But is this account of ' Jona- 
 
 IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. 143 
 than to be relied on as historically 
 true ? We have hitherto taken it for 
 granted that the above interpretation 
 of the words ' captivity of the land,' is, 
 perhaps the true one. But the ex- 
 pression is a strange one to be used of 
 the ' capture of the Ark; as there is no 
 indication that the land was taken 
 captive at that time. If even the cen- 
 traZ part about Shiloh was overrun for 
 a time by the Philistine armies, it 
 seems very unlikely that the invasion 
 should have reached the extreme 
 northern corner, or that even, if it did, 
 it should have had any effect in stop- 
 ping the idolatries of the tribe of 
 Dan. 
 
 433. Hence it seems much more na- 
 tural to interpret the words in their 
 plain and obvious meaning with refer- 
 ence to the ' Captivity of the land ' of 
 Israel in the time of Pekah, 2K.xv.29, 
 when Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, 
 took captive 'all Gilead and Galilee, 
 and all the land of Naphtali,' (the dis- 
 trict in which the town of Dan was 
 situated, and that part of the tribe of 
 Dan with which we are here con- 
 cerned,) more than three centuries and 
 a half after the capture of the Ark and 
 the death of Eli. And so say several 
 eminent critics, who, however, refer 
 the expression rather to a still later 
 date, that of the Captivity of the Ten 
 Tribes by Shalmaneser. In either case 
 it would follow that this statement in 
 Ju.xviii.30 is a very much later interpo- 
 lation in the original story. 
 
 434. And that f.30 is an interpo- 
 lation seems to be indicated by the 
 manner in which it is introduced. The 
 original vn-iter would hardly have re- 
 peated himself in this way in two con- 
 secutive verses, — 
 
 * and the children of Dan set up for themselves 
 the graven imaged v.30, 
 ' and they set vip for themselves the graven 
 image, which Micah had made,* v.31. 
 
 It will be observed also that in ti.30 
 the Levite, whom the Danites had en- 
 gaged as priest, and of whom the story 
 has been speaking all along, suddenly 
 disappears, and without any word 
 of explanation, Jonathan, the son of 
 Gershom, the son of Manasseh, (or of 
 Moses, as in the margin,) abruptly 
 
1*4 THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IN THE BOOK OE JUDGES. 
 
 takes his place. It may be said that 
 this Jonathan, if he really was, as the 
 margin has it, a descendant of Moses, 
 must haye been a Levite, and may 
 have been the Levite of the story in 
 Ju.xviiixviii. But, if so, it is very 
 strange that he should never have 
 been named before, but have been 
 merely introduced as— 
 
 ' A young man out of Bethlehem- Judah, of 
 the family of Judah, who was a Levite,' xvii.7. 
 
 435. It would seem then that some 
 later writer, living after the 'Captivity' 
 of the kingdom of Israel, meant to 
 convey some information as to the 
 family of priests, who had long con- 
 ducted the idolatrous worship of the 
 tribe of Dan, from time immemorial 
 down to the period of the Captivity. It 
 can hardly be believed, however, that 
 from the time of the Judges, down to 
 that of the Captivity, for four centuries 
 at least, one family of priests continued 
 to oificiate at Dan, or that the genea- 
 logy of these idolatroas priests could 
 be traced up with certainty to so dis- 
 tant a parentage, far back into the 
 rude times of the Judges, by one who 
 wrote nearly a century after the ex- 
 tinction of their office. 
 
 436. It is quite possible, however, 
 that in some later age, as e.g. in the 
 time of Jeroboam, — who 'made two 
 calves of gold,' and ' set the one in 
 Bethel, and the other put he in Dan,' 
 lK.xii.28,29, and who, therefore, evi- 
 dently remodelled, at all events, the 
 idolatrous worship at Dan, — such a 
 priest as Jonathan may really have 
 been stationed at Dan, and his family 
 may have retained the priesthood till 
 the last. The interpolator may have 
 been aware of the fact that they traced 
 back their office to such a distant 
 time, 250 years before the ' Captivity 
 of the land ' ; and he may have in- 
 serted this verse as a record of the 
 circumstance, connecting this latter 
 priesthood with the story of the first 
 establishment of idolatrous worship 
 at Dan. In the age of Jeroboam, of 
 course, there is no reason why the 
 name of the priest at Dan should not 
 have been Jonathan, 
 
 437. The o«5r«»a?vpriter seems to have 
 meant to say in v.Zl that the Danites 
 
 continued idolaters all along, neglecting 
 the worship of the central sanctuary, 
 while other Israelites frequented the 
 ' House of God in Shiloh.' He does 
 not say that the children of Dan ceased 
 to be idolaters, when that ' House of 
 God' was destroyed. Nor, in fact, is 
 there any reason to suppose that they 
 did abandon their idolatrous practices, 
 or that they were at all likely to have 
 been affected by that event, as they 
 lived far away from this central sanc- 
 tuary, and seem to have had no con- 
 nection whatever with it. 
 
 438. Upon the whole, then, we con- 
 clude that there is no single instance 
 in the authentic history, from the time 
 of Moses downwards to that of Samuel, 
 which can be appealed to, as distinctly 
 showing that the name Jehovah was 
 used in the formation of proper names 
 in those days, — except, as before, the 
 cases of Joshua and Jochebed. And 
 yet, according to the Jehovist, the one 
 name was, from the very first, as com- 
 monly in use as the other ; and, ac- 
 cording to the Chronicler, names com.' 
 pomided with Jehovah, were common 
 from the age of Jacob downwards, and 
 were even given to converts from 
 heathenism, as in the case of Bithi;'aAj 
 the daughter of Pharaoh, ICh.iv.lS. 
 
 439. Even if Samuel, or the Elohist, 
 whoever he may have been, did not him- 
 self introduce this Name, yet there must 
 have been some reason for the earnest' 
 ness with which he evidently seeks to 
 commend it to his people by means of 
 the solemn story of its introduction in 
 E.\'i. It may have been already in use, 
 — introduced, perhaps, first in the time 
 of Moses,— but not very commonly em- 
 ployed, as the entire absence, or, in any 
 case, the extreme pazicity, of names com- 
 pounded with it undoubtedly proves ; 
 and the Elohist may have done his 
 best in this way to make it a house- 
 hold word in Israel. My own con- 
 viction, however, from the accumulated 
 evidence of various kinds before us, is 
 that Samuel was the first to introduce 
 the Name, perhaps from some Egyptian 
 or, more probably, Phoenician source. 
 
 440. In .Tu.v, however, which con^ 
 tains the Song of Deborah, we have 
 
THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IK THE BOOK OF JUDOES. 
 
 8ome phenomena whieli require at- 
 tentive consideration. 
 ' Jehovah, -when Thou wentest out of Seir, 
 ■When Thou marchedst out of the field ol 
 Edom, 
 The earth trembled,and the heavens dropped, 
 The clouds also dropped water : 
 The mountains melted from before Jehovah, 
 That Sinai from before Jehovah, the God of 
 Israel.' v.4,5. 
 
 441. Here we have a plain reference 
 to the story, at all events, of the Exodus 
 and the giving of the Law under Sinai, 
 if not to the actual record of that story, 
 which is now in our hands. And in 
 this passage, as well as throughout 
 the song, the word Jehovah is familiarly- 
 used. It is important, therefore, to 
 determine, if we can, in what age this 
 Song was really written. It professes, 
 of course, to be the Song actually 
 uttered by ' Deborah and Barak ; ' 
 though the very fact, that the two are 
 joined together in singing it, rather 
 militates against the notion of its 
 genuineness, and seems to indicate, at 
 all events, that it is an artistic com- 
 position, and not the unpremeditated 
 effusion of the moment of triumph. 
 
 442. And, certainly, there are parts 
 of the Song, which appear, at first sight, 
 to imply that it was composed at a very 
 early date, perhaps in the age to which 
 its contents refer, and not later, at ail 
 events, than the days of Samuel. 
 
 (i) ywZoA is not mentioned at all, which 
 seems to correspond to a time before David's 
 accession to the throne, —before even the 
 30,000 men of Judah followed the standard of 
 Saul, lS.xi.8. 
 
 (ii) Levi is not named, nor is there any 
 reference whatever, throughout the Song, to 
 the Priesthood or the Sanctuary. 
 
 This also corresponds to a time, earlier than 
 the days of David, in whose reign the Levites, 
 after the bringing up of the Ark, were called 
 into greater activity, and into a more promi- 
 nent position, than they appear to have oc- 
 cupied during the time of the Judges, — the 
 •ZevUes, as a body, being never once meniioned 
 throughout the whole hook of Judges. 
 ' (iil) The expression in u.lO, 'Ye that ride 
 on white asses,' suits the same early time ; 
 but then, as such asses or mules were used 
 by chief persons, lS.xxv.20,2S.xvi.2,xvii.23, 
 Srix.26,2S.xiii.29,lK.i.33,.38,44, down even to 
 the time of Solomon, this argument cannot 
 be regarded as a, proof at the great antiquity 
 of the Song. 
 
 443. On the other hand, we must 
 observe — 
 
 (i) The song is thoroughly Jehovistic as re- 
 gards the use of the Divine Name (B.2,J.13) : 
 and it is inconceivable that, if the word Jeho- 
 
 115 
 
 vah was used so freely at that time, David 
 should have used it so sparingly, as we have 
 seen he did, till, at least, a late period of his 
 life. 
 
 (ii) The language in d.S, ' Was there a shield 
 or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel ?' 
 seems to refer to the early times of Saul and 
 Samuel, lS.xiii.19-22. 
 
 (iii) Some expressions of the story are iden- 
 tical with those of Ps.Ixviii, as is exhibited 
 below by the italics of the English version. 
 
 Ju.v. 
 V.3, To Jehovah I will sing, I will sing praise 
 
 to Jehovah. 
 vA, Jehovah, in Thy going ovt from Seir, 
 In thy marching from the field of Edom, 
 TIte earth trembled, the heavens also dropped. 
 The clouds also dropped water. 
 V.5, Bejore Jehovah the mountains melted. 
 That Sinai before Jehovah, the EloMm of 
 Israel. 
 
 Ps.lxviii. 
 ».4, Sing to Elohim, sing praise to His Kame. 
 V.7, Elohim, in Thy going out before Thy 
 people, 
 Jn Thy marching in the wilderness, 
 V.8, The earth trembled, the heavens too dropped. 
 Before Elohim, 
 
 That Sinai before Elohim, tlie Elohim of 
 Israel. 
 Compare, also, * Lead thy captivity captive^. 
 V.12, with ' Thou hast led captivity captive* 
 Ps.lxviii.l3. 
 
 444. From the above it seems to 
 be certain that either the Psalmist 
 was acquainted with the Song of 
 Deborah, and borrowed expressions 
 from it, or that the writer of that 
 song drew his ideas from the Psalms 
 of David. Which, then, of these two 
 poems was first written ? 
 
 We reply, without hesitation, thi 
 Fsalmt For it is far more probable 
 that a later writer may have changed 
 Elohim into Jehovah, than that the! 
 Psalmist — as we believe, David — should 
 have changed Jehovah, the covenant- 
 name of the God of Israel, into Elohim : 
 more especially in the last clause, in 
 which he has actually written 'before 
 Elohim, the Elohim of Israel,' where 
 the other, has 'before Jehovah, the 
 Elohim of Israel.' 
 
 445. If any s.iy, the Psalm was, 
 perhaps, written at a very late date, 
 when pious men for some reason re- 
 frained from using the name Jehovah 
 (414), and therefore the Jehovah of 
 Ju.v.5 has been changed into Elohim, 
 we answer that this supposition is at 
 once negatived by the fact that thfl 
 Psalmist does use the name Jehovah, 
 three times, and does not refrain from 
 
146 THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IN THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL. 
 
 using it altogether. It is, therefore, 
 most unlikely that hewould change the 
 formula, 'Jehovah, the Elohim of Israel,' 
 into ' Elohim, the Elohim of Israel.' 
 He might have written the latter ori- 
 ginally in the case supposed ; but it is 
 very unlikely that he would have modi- 
 fied the other form, if he actually had 
 it before him. 
 
 446. Besides which, u7,8, of the 
 Psalm are manifestly part of the con- 
 text. Our argument, therefore, is this. 
 Of the two phrases, 'Elohim, the 
 Elohim of Israel,' and 'Jehovah, the 
 Elohim of Israel,' it seems certain that 
 the former was the original expression, 
 and that the latter was derived team 
 it. But the former belongs to the 
 Psalm, which was, consequently, older 
 than the Song. 
 
 There is an appearance also in the 
 Song of an expansion of the words 
 of the Psalm; thus the expressions 
 'from Seir,' 'from the field of Edom,' 
 of the Song, seem equivalent to the 
 simple words, ' in the wilderness,' of the 
 Psalmist ; and so also the phrases ' The 
 clouds also dropped water,' ' The moun- 
 tains melted,' are merely amplifications 
 of the older language. 
 
 447. We conclude, then, that the 
 ' Song of Deborah ' was written after 
 Ps.lxriii, that is, after the middle part 
 of David's life, perhaps towards the 
 close of it, two or three centuries after 
 the time of Barak and Deborah, by a 
 writer who, except in the free use of 
 the word Jehovah, has produced an ad- 
 mirable imitation of an ancient song, a 
 'Lay of Ancient Israel,' and thrown 
 himself thoroughly into the spirit of the 
 age which he describes. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IN THE HOOKS 
 OP SAMUEL. 
 
 448. We now pass on to the Pirst 
 Book of Samuel. Here, throughout 
 the first chapters, we do not meet with 
 a single name compounded with Je- 
 hovah ; though we find Elkansh and 
 £/ihu, i.l, Samuel, ii.l8, JSXeazar, vii.l. 
 In vi.l8 we read — 
 
 • which stone remaineth in the field of Joshua 
 the Bethshemite wnto Oiis day ; ' — 
 
 where the name Joshua is compounded 
 
 with Jehovah, but evidently belongs to 
 a man living in the time when this 
 passage was written, which is shown, 
 by the expression 'unto this day,' to 
 have been a considerably later time 
 than that of the event in question, that 
 is, than the time of Samuel. 
 
 449. Then we read, — 
 
 'when Samuel was old, he made his sons" 
 judges over Israel ; now the name of his first- 
 born was Joel, and the name of his second, 
 AbiaA,' viii.1,2. 
 
 It is certainly remarkable that the 
 np,me of Samuel's first-born son should 
 be Joel, which Gesenius explains to 
 mean, ' Jehovah is Elohim,' and which, 
 in fact, is merely a contraction of the 
 compound name, Jehovah-Elohim. This 
 suits singularly with our view that 
 Samuel was introducing — or, at all 
 events, commending — the new name, 
 at the very time when his son had this 
 name given to him. The name of 
 Samuel's second son was Ahiah, i.e. 
 'Jehovah is my father.' Then we find 
 Abie/, ix.l ; but Aphiah in the same 
 verse is not compounded with Jehovah. 
 
 450. We next meet with Jonathan, 
 ' Jehovah gave,' the son of Saul, xiii.2. 
 Now Saul himself was a young man 
 ix.2, when he sought his father's asses, 
 and first made acquaintance personally 
 with Samuel ; and at that time Samuel 
 was old, and had already made his sons 
 judges over Israel, viii.1,2. Hence the 
 Name Jehovah had been published 
 certainly, judging only from their 
 names, for twenty or thirty years at 
 least ; and there is no reason why Saul's 
 son should not have borne a name com- 
 pounded with it, after the example of 
 the Prophet's two sons. This is said, 
 supposing that Jonathan was already 
 grown up, to be a youth of, at least, 
 seventeen or eighteen, when he was 
 placed in command of a thousand of 
 his father's troops, xiii.2, two years 
 after Saul came to the throne. 
 
 451. But even if he had been then 
 only seventeen years old, (which we can 
 hardly suppose), he would have been 
 twenty-five at the birth of David, and 
 fiftt/'five, when he fell at Gilboa, and 
 when David, aged thirty, mourned 
 over him thus : — 
 
 * I am distressed for thee, my brother Jona- 
 than ; very pleasant hast thou been unto me ; 
 
THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IN THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL. U7 
 
 thy love to me waa -wonderf ul, passing the 
 love of women.' 2S.i.]9-27. 
 
 TMa song has all the appearance of 
 being genuine. And it can scarcely be 
 believed that so roraantie an attach- 
 ment would have existed between David 
 and one old enough to have been his 
 father. 
 
 452. In fact, the chronology of the 
 earlier part of Saul's life is very con- 
 fused and uncertain. The account in 
 IS.ix, of Saul's first meeting with 
 Samuel, would seem to imply that he 
 was then but a young man, who could 
 not have had a son fourteen years old. 
 Nor is it possible to read the account 
 of the death of Saul, and the words of 
 David's lamentation over him, — 
 
 ' Satd and Jonathan were lovely and plea- 
 sant in their lives, and in their deaths they 
 were not divided; they were swifter than 
 eagles, they were stronger than lions,' 2S.i,23 
 —and believe that Saul was then 
 about seventy-five years old, (as he 
 must have been if Jonathan was 
 fifty-flve,) and that he was about 
 seventy, when he hunted David in the 
 wilderness. 
 
 4-53. It seems plain, then, that the 
 account of Jonathan's exploit in IS. 
 xiii.2, &c. must refer to a much later 
 part of Saul's life than it there ap- 
 pears to do. And now there is nothing 
 to prevent our supposing that Saul was 
 really a young man, when he had his 
 first interview with Samuel, as the 
 story throughout seems to imply, and, 
 probably, unmarried. If, however, we 
 suppose that Jonathan was born after 
 Saul's intimacy wdth the Prophet, — 
 perhaps, even after he had come to the 
 throne, — we shaU have Jonathan and 
 David more nearly contemporaries, and 
 it will be much more natural and 
 probable that David should have mar- 
 ried Jonathan's sister Michal. In that 
 case, it would be easy to account for 
 the name of Jonathan having been 
 given to Saul's eldest son, after Saul's 
 communications with Samuel, — more 
 especially since Saul himseK had 
 'prophesied' amidst the company of 
 Prophets, x.lO, in other words, had 
 joined in chanting their Psalms, in 
 which, most probably, the Name itself, 
 Jehovah, occurred. 
 454. We next meet with the name 
 
 of Ahiah, • the son of Ahitub, Ichabod's 
 brother,' xiv.3. Ichabod, we are told, 
 was born at a time when all Israel 
 already ' knew that Samuel was estab- 
 lished to be a Prophet of Jehovah,' 
 iT.20, — when, therefore, Samuel was 
 grown up to manhood. We have no 
 means of knowing how much older 
 Ahitub was than his brother ; but we 
 may assume that he was not much 
 older, and was, consequently, in the 
 
 generation junior to that of Samuel, 
 
 of about the same age, in fact, as 
 Samuel's own sons. From the close 
 relations, in which Samuel lived with 
 Eli and his family, it can scarcely 
 be doubted that both Ahitub and 
 Ichabod, after their parents' death, 
 came much under his influence, — pro- 
 bably were trained up by himself. Thus 
 it is easy to account for Ahitub also 
 giving to his son a, name compounded 
 with the new word Jehovah, and a, 
 name which has a strange resemblance 
 to that of Samuel's younger son. That 
 was Ahiah, ' Jehovah is my father ' ; 
 this is Ahiah or, rather, AkhraA, 
 ' Jehovah is my brother,'— ior, strange 
 as it may appear, this seems to be the 
 only meaning that can be assigned to 
 the word. 
 
 455. After this we meet with ^fiab, 
 xvi.6, and AAiiel, xviii.l9 : and then 
 we have Jo-dh, xxvi.6, son of Zeruiah, 
 David's sister, lCh.ii.l6, both of which 
 names are compounded with Jehovah. 
 Supposing Zeruiah to have been even 
 ten years older than her youngest 
 brother, David, still, at the time of her 
 birth, Samuel's two sons, with the 
 sacred Name mixed up in their names, 
 were already old enough to have been 
 set as judges over Israel. And, if htr 
 name contained Jehovah, it is natural 
 enough that her son's should contain it. 
 He may, in fact, have been called Jbab 
 in imitation of his uncle's name Miah. 
 
 456. In 2Samuel we have several 
 names compounded with Jehovah. We 
 Andfoitrteen compounded with El, viz, 
 Phaltie^, iii.16, — four of David's sons, 
 Bishua, v. 15, JXishama, Siada, Sipha- 
 let, W.16, — AmmUl, xvii.27, Elemz&r, 
 xxiii.9, Kahzeel, the name of a place, ».20. 
 Asahe^ and JKhanan, v.2i, Eliks., y.25, 
 Eliahha, v.S2, JSXiphelet and Elia.m, v.3i. 
 
148 THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IN THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL. 
 
 But there are also eleven names com- 
 pounded with Jehovah, viz. Adoni^aA 
 and Shephat/aA, David's fourth and fifth 
 sons, iii.4, JeAidiah, a name given to 
 Solomon, xii.25, iTbnadab, David's ne- 
 phew, xiii.3, J'onathan,the son of Abia- 
 tliar, XV.27. Bendz'aA, <7«Aoiada, and 
 i7«^oshaphat, xx.23,24, another BenataA, 
 xxiii.30, Jonathan, v.32, and Vnah the 
 Hittite, «.39. These seem all to have 
 been younger men than David, and of 
 about the same age as his eldest son, 
 except Jehoiada, the father of Benaiah, 
 who may have been about the age of 
 David. 
 
 457. Thus we see that, in the time 
 of David's manhood, it was not an un- 
 tisual thing for parents to give their 
 children names compounded with Je- 
 hovah. Since, therefore, wherever lists 
 of names occur in the Pentateuch, we 
 do not find a single name of this kind 
 (except,asbefore, Joshua and Jochebed), 
 it would seem that the author or 
 authors, to whom such lists are due, 
 could hardly have lived in a miich later 
 age than this. On the other hand, 
 since, in David's earlier Psalms, nay, 
 even in his ' last words,' we have had 
 clear evidence, as it seems to us, that 
 the name Jehovah was, at the time of 
 his writing, not in such free popular 
 use as the name Elohim, we infer that 
 all the Jehovistic portions of the Pen- 
 tateuch were written after the time of 
 David, or, at least, not before the latter 
 part of his life. 
 
 458. Thus, then, even if it wei-e 
 conceivable that Moses should have 
 written a story, about matters in which 
 he was personally concerned, involving 
 such contradictions, exaggerations, and 
 impossibilities, as we have already had 
 before us, yet the fact above noticed 
 would alone be decisive against such a 
 supposition. The great body of the 
 Pentateuch, and all the other historical 
 books which follow it, could not have 
 been compiled until the Name Jehovah 
 was in common popular use, and that, 
 as we believe, was not till after, at all 
 events, the middle of David's reign. 
 
 459. Whereas, on the other hand, the 
 Elohistic portions of the Pentateuch, 
 which appear to have been composed, 
 when the Name Jehovah was not in 
 
 common use, and with the very pur-' 
 pose of commending it to popular ac- 
 ceptation, must have been written 
 during, or shortly before, the eai-lier 
 part of David's life, when that word 
 was only occasionally employed by him. 
 H«uce we may, with very good reason, 
 abide by our supposition that they were 
 written, very probably by the hand, or, 
 at least, under the direction, and cer- 
 tainly in the time of Samuel. 
 
 460. And so writes Hartmann, His- 
 torisch-Kritische Forschungen,j>. 1 67: — 
 
 If all these phenomena lead us to assume a 
 mutual relation between Phosnicia and Pales- 
 tine in reference to religion, it cannot be 
 deemed improbable to assume that the name 
 Jehovah was derived from the same source, 
 but was stamped with a peculiar, sacred, mean- 
 ing, through its connection with the holiest 
 ideas. If this conjecture is well-founded, then 
 this name, at the earliest, can only have been 
 transplanted into the religious language of 
 the Israelites, in the a^e of David. 
 
 461. Hengstenbebg, i.277, disposes 
 of the above important point, in a note 
 as follows : — 
 
 • What Von Bohlen has adduced, in favour 
 of his scheme of the first ' Rise of JehDvahism ' 
 in the days of David and Solomon, £carce/^ de- 
 ser^es the name of argument (!). He appeals 
 to Pt'oper Naines compounded with Jehovah, 
 which first came into use contemporaneously 
 with^ or else after, the days of David. Every 
 one immediately thinks of Joshua ; and VoN 
 BoHLEN does not forget, but naturally avails 
 himself of, the fact, that he was originally 
 called Hoshea. This is, indeed, correct ; but, 
 if the name of Joshua was not a product of 
 the Mosaic age, if it had not been given him, 
 as the Pentateuch informs us, by Moses him- 
 self, how did it obtain universal acceptance 
 among the people? It would be can-ying 
 mythical notions to an extravagant length to 
 maintain that the nation had never retained 
 the right name of their distinguished com- 
 mander-in-chief, — that he received a new 
 name in the age of David or Solomon.* 
 
 Ans, According to our view, Joshua was 
 only a mythical or, perhaps, legendary per- 
 sonage, whose second name, compounded with 
 Jehovah, certainly originated in an age not 
 earlier than that of Samuel. At all events, 
 there is no evidence that this new name ffr/jf 
 popularised, that it ever did ' obtain universal 
 acceptance,' that Joshua ever was a well- 
 known, popular hero. His name is never 
 once mentioned in the later history, or by any 
 one of the Psalmists or Prophets, except in a 
 reference to the book of Joshua, lK.xvi.34. 
 
 ' Yet let us now turn from what the author 
 thought to that which escaped him, who so 
 often asserted without examining, and that 
 with inconceivableconfidence. No small num- 
 ber of Proper Names, in the times preceding 
 David, are compounded at the beginning with 
 Jehovah. Thus Jochebed the mother of Moses, 
 I whose name certainly was not (7) of later 
 
THE JEHOVISTIC NAMES IN THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL. 149 
 
 formation, Joash, the father of Gideon, Jo- 
 tham, Gideon's youngest sou, Jonathan, Priest 
 of the Danltes in the time of the Judges, 
 another Jonathan, lCh.ii.82, and so several 
 more [bat only in the Chronicles.] Besides 
 these, there are those names that stand on the 
 same footing, which have an abbreviated Je- 
 hovah at the end, as Moriah, Ahijah, the son 
 of Becher, the grandson of Beniamin [in 
 Chronicles], Bitliiah [in Chronicles], &c.' 
 
 Ans. We have already considered all these 
 instances, that of Jochebed (308), Joash and 
 Jotham, as well as Micah, not mentioned by 
 Hengstenberq (432), Jonathan (433-442), 
 Moriah (chap, ix), and the Chronicler's names 
 (309-312), and we have seen that not one of 
 them really militates against our theory. 
 
 * Thus much, however, is correct, that names 
 compounded with Jehovah become much more 
 frequent from the time of Samuel. [This is 
 true according to the more authentic history, 
 but not accon^g to the Ciironicler, who makes 
 them quite as numerous long before the time 
 Of Moses.] But this lends no support to Von 
 Bohlen's view, and is easily explicable from 
 facts, which the accredited history presents to 
 us. Owing to the prevalent view in Israel of 
 the close correspondence of names and things, 
 it could not be otherwise than that the power- 
 ful theocratic excitement in the times of 
 Samuel and David would create a demand for 
 the composition of Proper Names with the 
 theocratic name of God, Jehovah , and, what 
 at first proceeded from living reasons, would 
 In aftertimes (which leant upon that period, 
 so splendid both externally and internally) 
 be adopted from standing usage. What an 
 effect the state of the public mind has on 
 names has been exemplified clearly among 
 ourselves by the relation of names, in an age 
 of unbelief, to those of the preceding believing 
 times. Since the Proper Names, compounded 
 with Jehovah, had not yet had sufiicient time 
 to become naturalised, and since, in the period 
 of the Judges, only a few living roots were in 
 existence from which such names could be 
 formed — [how can this be said, if there were 
 BO many names in the Mosaic age compounded 
 with Blohim (303, 304) ?],— we might expect 
 beforehand not to find them very numerous 
 at that time.' 
 
 Ans. But, according to the Chronicles, we 
 do find them common enough from the time 
 of Jacob downward. Setting aside, however, 
 the Chronicler's statement as manifestly ficti- 
 tious, we agree ■^ith Hengstbnberg, (though 
 looking at tlie matter from a very difEerent 
 point of view), that the • powerful theocratic 
 movement, in the times of Samuel,' did ' create 
 a demand for such names,' wliich, according 
 to our view, tliat same age originated ; and 
 thus we also believe with him that such 
 names had not yet had * sufficient time to be- 
 come naturalised.' 
 
 462. We have thus something like 
 firm ground to stand upon, as the 
 result of this inquiry, and can at once 
 account for many of the strange phe- 
 nomena, which we observe in the 
 Pentateuch. The earliest portions of 
 
 it, including the account of the Exodus 
 itself, or rather, as we shall see, the 
 first scanty sketch of it, were written 
 four hundred years, at least, after the 
 supposed time of the Exodus, three 
 hundred of which, according to the 
 story, passed amidst the stormy and 
 disorderly period of the Judges, which 
 can only he compared with the worst 
 time-s of Anglo-Saxon England. 
 
 463. The chronology, indeed, of the 
 .fudges is, notoriously, very confused and 
 contradictory ;' and it is quite possible 
 that a much shorter apace of time than 
 three hundred years may really have 
 elapsed since the movement took place, 
 which, as we believe, lay at the basis 
 of the Elohistic narrative. During 
 that period however, it seems very un- 
 likely that any historical records were 
 written, or, if written, were preserved, 
 — ^preserved by whom ? Later writers, 
 at all events, mention no historians of 
 earlier date than Samuel, Nathan, 
 and Gad; so that whoever wrote the 
 Book of Judges wrote, most probably, 
 from the mere legends and traditions 
 of the people, 
 
 464. Thus, then, it is not necessary 
 to suppose that the narrative of Samuel 
 is a pure fiction, an invention of the 
 Prophet's own imagination, — in short, 
 merely a ' pious fraud.' It is very 
 possible that there may have been, as 
 we have said, floating about in the- 
 memories of the Hebrew tribes, many 
 legendary stories of their ancestors, and 
 of former great events in their history, 
 — ^how they once fled in a large body 
 out of Egypt, under an eminent leader, 
 such as lyioses, — how they had been 
 led through that 'great and terrible 
 wilderness,' had encamped under the 
 dreadful llount, with its blackened 
 peaks and precipices, as if they had 
 been burnt with fire (74), — how they 
 had lost themselves in the dreary waste, 
 and struggled on through great suffer- 
 ings, and many died, but the rest fought 
 their way at last into the land of 
 Canaan, and made good their footing 
 among the tribes which they found 
 there, by whom they were called 
 Hebrews, that is, people who had 
 ' crossed ' the Jordan, or, perhaps, the 
 Euphrates. 
 
150 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMARKS. 
 
 465. In fact, precisely the same ex- 
 pression is used by the natives of Natal 
 in speaking of those Zulus who from 
 time to time have been driven by fear, 
 or have migrated for other reasons, 
 from their native land lying to the 
 north of the Bri dsh colony, and ' crossed' 
 the large frontier river, the Tugela, 
 into the Natal district, either before or 
 after it came under British rule. It is 
 quite customary to speak of them, simply 
 as abawelayo, 'people who have crossed,' 
 or, perhaps, the movement may be 
 more closely defined, ' who crossed with 
 Umpande,' or whoever the principal 
 person may have been. 
 
 466. It is conceivable that the recol- 
 lections of that terrible march may 
 have left indelible traces on the minds 
 of tie people, and may thus have been 
 exaggerated, as is the case with legends 
 generally, whQe circulated in their talk, 
 and passed on by word of mouth, from 
 sire to son, in the intervening age. In 
 this way, natural facts may have been 
 magnified into prodigies, and a few 
 thousands multiplied into two millions 
 of people. It is quite possible that the 
 passage of the Red Sea, the manna, the 
 quails, and other miracles, may thus 
 have had a real historical foundation, 
 as will be shown more fully in oiu: 
 critical review of the different Books 
 of the Pentateuch. 
 
 467. And Samuel may have desired 
 to collect these legends, as far as pos- 
 sible, and make them the basis of a nar- 
 rative, by which he, being dead, might 
 yetspeakto them witha Prophet's voice, 
 and, while rejected by them himself, as 
 a ruler, might yet be able patriotically to 
 help ffirward their eivH and religious 
 welfare under kingly government, and 
 more especially under the rule of his 
 favourite David, whose deep religious 
 feeling accorded with his own senti- 
 ments so much more fully than the 
 impetuous, arbitrary, character of Saul. 
 
 His annual journeys of assize, when 
 
 'he went from year to year in circuit to 
 Bethel, and Gilgal, and Jfizpeh, and judged 
 Israel in all those places,'-^lS.vii.l6, 
 
 would have given him good opportunities 
 for gathering such stories, as well as for 
 knowing thoroughly the different parts 
 and places of the country to which such 
 
 legends were attached. He may have 
 spent a great part of his life, especially 
 the latter part of it since Saul came to 
 the throne (277), and he was himself 
 relieved from the cares of government, 
 in the elaboration of such a work as 
 this, filling up from his own mind, we 
 may conceive, the blanks left in such 
 legendary accounts, and certainly im- 
 parting to them their high religious tone 
 and spiritual character. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMAKKS. 
 
 468. The preceding investigations 
 have led us to the conclusion that the 
 Pentateuch most probably originated, 
 humanly speaking, in a noble effort of 
 one illustrious man, in an early age of 
 the Hebrew histoiy, to train his people 
 in the fear and faith of the Living God. 
 For this purpose he appears to have 
 adopted the form of a history, based 
 upon the floating legends and traditions 
 of the time, filling up the narrative, we 
 may believe, — perhaps, to a large ex- 
 tent, — out of his own imagination, where 
 those traditions failed him. In a yet 
 later day, though still, probably, in the 
 same age, and within the same circle of 
 writers, the work thus begun, which 
 was, perhaps, left in a very unfinished 
 state, was taken up, as we suppose, and 
 carried on in a similar spirit, by other 
 prophetical or priestly writers. To 
 Samuel, however, we ascribe the Elo- 
 histic story, which forms the ground- 
 work of the whole, though comprising, 
 as we shall show hereafter, but a very 
 small portion of the present Pentateuch 
 and book of Joshua. 
 
 469. But, in order to realise to our- 
 selves in some measure the nature of 
 such a work, as that which we here 
 ascribe to Samuel, we may imagine 
 such a man as Asser, in the time of 
 Bang Alfred, sitting down to write an 
 accurate account of events, which had 
 happened four centuries before, when 
 different tribes of Saxons, under Hen- 
 gist and Horsa, and other famous 
 leaders, — the old Saxons, Angles, 
 Jutes, &c., all kindred tribes, — came 
 over the sea at different times, in larger 
 or smaller bodies, and took possession of 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 the land of Britain. Yet Samuel's 
 sources of information, for the compo- 
 sition of such a history, must have 
 been far less complete than those which 
 the Anglo-Saxon author would haye had 
 before him, when writing was so com- 
 mon, and, midway between the times 
 of Hengist and Alfred, Venerable Bede 
 had composed his history. The Saxon 
 Chronicler, however, has no difficulty 
 in filling up a genealogy, and traces up 
 that of Alfred through Odin and }ub 
 progenitors to — 
 
 Bewick, who was the son of Sceaf, who 
 was the son of Koah ; he was bom in Noah's 
 Ark I Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bohn's Ed. i}.350. 
 
 470. In short, the same must be said 
 of these old Hebrew annals as has been 
 so justly observed of the records of our 
 Anglo-Saxon times, (Peaeson, Early 
 and Middle Ages of England, p.52) : 
 
 These narratives, even stripped of palpable 
 additions, are clearly not quite historical . . 
 The three hundred thousand Saxons of the 
 British account are like the three keels of the 
 Saxon narrative, a mTthical number, under- 
 lying, perhaps, a realnational division. More- 
 over, the dates assigned to the battles occur 
 suspiciously at regular intervals of eight years. 
 Kow eight was a sacred number among the 
 Saxons. It is probable, therefore, that the 
 whole chronology of the war was constructed 
 Jn the ninth century, or whenever the Saxon 
 Chronicle was written. £ut this wuxrtain^ 
 as to details, and numbers, and dates, throws an 
 air of doubt over the whole history. 
 
 471. It would seem that large ad- 
 ditions were made to this unfinished 
 historical sketch of • Samuel by his dis- 
 ciples, such as Nathan and Gad, or 
 by some other prophetical or priestly 
 writers of that and the following age ; 
 and these included the principal Jeho- 
 vistic portions of Genesis, as well as 
 the greater part of the present books of 
 Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. But 
 though, as we believe, these portions of 
 the Pentateuch were written in that age, 
 the history, when carefuUy examined, 
 gives no sign of the Pentateuch itself 
 being in existence in the age of Samuel, 
 David, or Solomon, — much less of the 
 Levitical laws being in full operation, 
 known, honoured, revered, obeyed, even 
 quoted or referred to, — as the contents 
 of a book, believed to be Mosaic and 
 Divine, would certainly have been, at 
 least, by the most pious persons of the 
 day. We shall have occasion hereafter 
 fully to discuss this question, and see 
 
 151 
 
 how far the actual historical facts, 
 which may be gathered from the books 
 of Samuel and Kings, and the vreitings 
 of the Prophets, tend to confirm the 
 above conclusions. 
 
 472. I must now, in conclusion, take 
 account of two cla.sses of objections, 
 which wiU undoubtedly be made to the 
 above results. First, it will be said, 
 'You will have us then believe that 
 Samuel, Nathan, &c., were after all 
 deceivers, who palmed upon their own 
 countrymen, in the first instance, a 
 gross fraud, which from that time to 
 this has been believed to be the true 
 Word of the Living God.' As one of 
 my friends has observed, ' I would 
 rather believe that two and two make 
 five, than that such a man as Samuel 
 could possibly have been guilty of so 
 foul an offence against the laws of re- 
 ligious truth and common morality.' 
 
 473. I address myself here to those 
 who believe that they are bound to use 
 their faculties of mind, as well as of 
 body, in the service of the God who 
 gave them, and that they cannot truly 
 gloriiy God by setting up a falsehood, 
 and bowing down and worshipping an 
 idol of their own making, though it be 
 in the form of a Book, the best of books, 
 which they believe to reflect the very 
 image of the Divine Mind. And to such 
 as these I reply, in the first place, ' It is 
 not /, who require you to abandon the or- 
 dinary notion of the Mosaic authorship 
 and antiquity of the Pentateuch. It is 
 the Teuth itself which does so.' It is 
 impossible, as it appears to me, after 
 a due consideration of the evidence, 
 which has been brought forward in theSQ 
 pages — independently of that which 
 will be set before the reader hereafter, 
 if God spare me strength for the work 
 — to maintain any longer that notion. 
 
 474. I believe that God calls upon ns 
 now in this age, in His Providence, as 
 He did in the days of the Reformation, 
 or of the first publication of Christi- 
 anity, to make a complete revision of 
 our religious views in this respect. And 
 I believe that we shall best serve Him 
 by giving ourselves reverently and de- 
 voutly, but piously and faithfully,— 
 with a humble dependence on His help, 
 
152 
 
 and a calm and fearless trust in His 
 guidance, — to the consideration of this 
 great question of our day. It was said 
 to them of old, — 
 
 • Thou Shalt lOTe Jehorah thy Goa with all 
 thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
 all thy strength,' D.vi.5. 
 
 It is Christianity which adds, — 
 
 • and with all thy mind, and thy neighhour as 
 thyself,' Lu.x. 27,-^ 
 
 and which teaches us also that from the 
 ' Father of Lights ' cometh ' every good 
 and perfect gift,' Ja.i.l7, and that He 
 holds us responsible for using them 
 ftU. 
 
 475. A true Qhristian, then, is not 
 at liberty to lay aside, as inconvenient 
 or discomforting, any single fact^ of 
 science, whether of critical or historical 
 research, or of any other kind which 
 God in His gracious Proyidence is 
 pleased to bring before him. He dares 
 not bury this talent in a napkin, and 
 go about his business, in his own way, 
 as if he had never heard it, as if it 
 were nothing. He is bound to turn it 
 to account in the service of his Great 
 Creator, to consider carefully how far 
 it is true, and to what extent it must, 
 therefore, interfere with notions, which 
 he had abeady, perhaps, registered as 
 certainties, but upon insufficient evi- 
 dence. This duty is laid especially on 
 those who have received gifts of other 
 kinds, — education, leisure, opportunity, 
 and it may be, from peculiar circum- 
 stances, a special call for the work, — 
 which many of their fellowmen have 
 not, and which place them in more 
 prominent positions, as leaders and 
 guides of others. 
 
 476. We are bound, then, to consider 
 carefully what are the facts, with re- 
 spect to the composition of the Penta- 
 teuch, which a close critical investi- 
 gation of the different books reveals to 
 us. But here, in the next place, it is 
 possible that a very wrong estimate 
 may be formed on some points by a 
 hasty judgment, from the conclusions 
 to which our enquiry hitherto has led 
 US, more especially with regard to the 
 conduct and moral character of Samuel. 
 There is not, as has been said repeatedly 
 already, the slightest reason to believe 
 that the whole story is a pure fiction — 
 
 CONCLUDING- EEMAEKS. 
 
 that there was no residence of the 
 Israelites in Egypt, no deliverance out 
 of it. 
 
 477. Upon consideration of the whole 
 question, it is impossible not to feel 
 that some real movement out of Egypt 
 in former days must lie at the base of 
 the Elohistie story. It is almost incon- 
 ceivable that such a narrative should 
 have been vraitten by Samuel, or any- 
 one else, without some real tradition 
 giving the hint for it. What motive, 
 for instance, could the writer have had 
 for taking his people down into Egypt, 
 representing them as miserable slaves 
 there, and bringiug them out of Egypt 
 into Canaan, unless he derived it from 
 legendary recollections of some former 
 residence of the Hebrews in Egypt 
 under painful drciunstances, and of 
 some great deliverance? 
 
 478. If then, some centuries it may 
 be, after such an event, a great mind, 
 like that of Samuel, devoted itself to ga- 
 thering up the legendary reminiscences 
 of this great movement, which still 
 survived among his people, — greatly 
 modified, no doubt, exaggerated, and 
 distorted, as they were passed on from 
 age to age in the popular talk, — and if 
 to these records of their national prime 
 he endeavoured to give unity and sub- 
 stance, by connecting them into a con- 
 tinuous narrative, and fixing them down 
 in written words for the use of his 
 countrymen, is there anything immoral 
 and dishonest in such an act, whether 
 it be viewed from a merely literary, or 
 a strictly religious, point of view, — 
 provided only that we do not insist 
 upon fastening upon the writer our own 
 modern notions of what he actually 
 did, and what he intended and really 
 professed to do ? 
 
 479. Thus, if our view be correct, as 
 to the true origin of the first sketch of 
 the story of the Exodus, we shall be 
 very far indeed from characterising the 
 act of SAjniEL, at all events, as an 
 ' impudent fraud.' Eather, the person 
 of the aged Seer will loom out from 
 those ancient times with a grandeur 
 and distinctness more remarkable than 
 ever. Like our own king Alfred, he 
 will have in that case to be reguided 
 as the great regenerator of his people, 
 
a model himself of intellectual activity 
 and vigour, of patriotic zeal and reli- 
 gious earnestness. Viewed in this light, 
 the Elohistic narrative must be received 
 with the respect and admiration of all 
 ages, even if regarded only as a mere 
 work of genius. Still more will it de- 
 mand our veneration aa containing the 
 records of true religion in its earliest 
 developments, and as having ministered 
 so largely, in God's Providence, to the 
 religious education of mankind. 
 
 480. It is true that the Elohist has 
 set the example of introducing in his 
 narrative the Divine Being Himself, as 
 conversing with their forefathers and 
 imparting laws to Moses, — though not, 
 indeed, the minute directions of the 
 ceremonial laws in Leviticus and Num- 
 bers ; for these, as we believe, are all 
 due to later writers. But, in this re- 
 spect, he has only acted in conformity 
 with the spirit of his age, and of his 
 people, which recognised, in their com- 
 mon forms of language, a direct Divine 
 interference with the a&airs of men. 
 The case, indeed, would have been 
 different, if the writer had stated that 
 these Divine communications had been 
 made to Mrnself, that Grod had spoken 
 to him, in his own person, instead of to 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and had 
 revealed laws to him instead of to 
 Moses. It would have been different 
 also, if he had claimed, for all he wrote, 
 Diirinelnfcdlibility, — if he had professed 
 to have received these early records of 
 the race by special inspiration, so that 
 every part of the story which he re- 
 corded must be received with unques- 
 tioning faith as certainly true. 
 
 481. But there is not the slightest 
 reason to suppose that the first writer 
 of the story in the Pentateuch ever 
 professed to be recording infallible 
 truth, or even actual, historical, truth. 
 He wrote certainly a narrative. But 
 what indications are there that he 
 published it at large, even to the 
 people of his own time, as a record of 
 matter-of-faot, veracious, history^ Why 
 may not Samuel have composed this 
 narrative for the instruction and im- 
 provement of his pupils, — ^from which 
 it would gradually find its way, no 
 doubt^ more or less freely, among the 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 153 
 
 people at large, — without ever pre- 
 tending that it was any other than an 
 historical experiment, an attempt to 
 give them some account of the early 
 annals of their tribes ? In later days, 
 it is true, this ancient work of Samuel's 
 came to be regarded as infallibly 
 Divine. But was it so regarded in the 
 writer's days, or in the ages immediately 
 following ? 
 
 482. On the contrary, we find no 
 sign of the Mosaic Law being venerated, 
 obeyed, or even known, in many of its 
 most remarkable features, till a much 
 later time in the history. We shall 
 enter into a full examination of this 
 point hereafter, and show the very 
 strong corroboration which our views 
 derive from this consideration. For 
 the present it may be sufficient to note 
 that even the Ten Commandments, 
 which one would have supposed would 
 have been, as it were, household words 
 in Israel, are never once quoted by any 
 one of the Psalmists or R:ophets. The 
 Levites are only once mentioned in the 
 Psalms, Ps.cxzxv.20, and once in (the 
 later) Isaiah, lxvi.21, thrice in one 
 chapter of Jeremiah, zxziii.18,21,22, 
 and in no other of the Prophets before 
 the Captivity. A^ron is mentioned 
 once only, by all the Prophets, Micvi. 
 4; Moses is named twice only before 
 the Captivitf, Jer.xv.l, Mic.vi.4, and 
 referred to, though not named, in Hos. 
 xii.13 ; Joshua is not mentioned by 
 them at all. 
 
 483. But, if we will lay aside our 
 own modem notions, of what Samuel 
 oiight to have been, and what he (mght 
 to have done, and merely regard mm 
 as a great statesman and lawgiver, im- 
 bued from his childhood with deep 
 religious feelings, and having early 
 awakened in him the strong conviction 
 of the distinct Personal Presence of 
 the Living God,— if we think of him 
 as ansiously striving to convey the 
 momentous truth, vrith which his own 
 spirit was quickened, to the young men 
 of his school, whom he had taken into 
 closer intimacy with himself, and whom 
 he hoped to influence for the permanent 
 welfare of the whole community, — then 
 the measures, which we suppose him 
 to have taken for the purpose, will 
 
154 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 appear to he rery natural, and quite 
 undeserving to be styled an 'impudent 
 fraud.' 
 
 484. As we have said, the notion of 
 his adopting this plan, of referring the 
 institutions, which he wished to enforce, 
 to the direct revelation of the Divine 
 Being, — though he did not profess to 
 have received them himself, but repre- 
 sented them as made of old to the 
 fathers or leaders of the Hebrew people, 
 to Abraham or Moses, — is quite at 
 variance with the traditionary view of 
 the Divine origin and Infallible autho- 
 rity of this part of the Scriptures, and 
 with the modem conceptions which are 
 formed of the nature of Inspiration and 
 the proper aim and object of Scripture 
 writers. But the results of our investi- 
 gations compel us to the conclusion that 
 either Samuel himself, or some other 
 devout vrriter of that age, did adopt it. 
 
 485. In this, however, there is 
 nothing inconsistent with the belief 
 that Saitoel was a true man, a true 
 servant of the Living God, in whose 
 Name he spoke, and of whom he wit- 
 nessed. Such Divine communications 
 have been imagined by men of most 
 devout and reverent minds, actuated by 
 the highest and hoHest motives, in all 
 ages, — whether we consider the speeches 
 ascribed to the Divine Being in the 
 poems of Milton, or those which we find 
 introduced in the Book of Enoch, a 
 Book which is quoted as authentic in 
 the Canonical Epistle of St. Jude, or 
 that grand address which is put into 
 the mouth of Jehovah himself in the 
 Book of Job, xxxviii-xU, which few, 
 probably, will maintain to have been 
 literally uttered 'out of the whirlwind,' 
 even though believing that the writer 
 of the Book of Job composed this mag- 
 nificent poem under special Divine In- 
 spiration. 
 
 486. There is nothing therefore to 
 prevent our beUeving that Samuel also, 
 or the Elohist, whoever he may have 
 been, was ' moved by the Holy Ghost,' 
 while he strove to teach his people, by 
 the examples of their forefathers, — set 
 before them in a life-like story, fall of 
 moral and religious significance, though 
 not historically true, — the duty of fear- 
 ing GK>d, and trusting in Him, and 
 
 loving and serving Him. There is 
 nothing to prevent our receiving the 
 narrative as bringing to us lessons of 
 like significance, as being 'profitable 
 for doctrine, reproof, correction, and 
 instruction in righteousness.' 
 
 487. With Abraham, we too may be 
 called to go forth, at the voice of Truth 
 which is God's voice, into a strange land 
 which we know not. but where He will 
 assuredly meet with us and bless us, or 
 to be ready to sacrifice, if need be, at the 
 bidding of the same supreme authority, 
 some dear object of our hope— perhaps, 
 some cherished tenet of our faith — ' ac- 
 counting that God is able to raise it up, 
 even from the dead,' to give us a 
 brighter hope, and a surer ground of 
 confidence in His Faithfulness and 
 Love, than ever. Or, again, with Moses, 
 we may have to be taught to stand 
 before the gulf of difficulty, when the 
 path of duty lies plainly forward, but 
 there seems no passage in front, no way 
 of escape to the right or to the left, and 
 then to be able to say, — 
 
 ' Fear not, stancl still, and ye shall see the 
 salvation of Gkid.' 
 
 488. These particular acts may never 
 have occurred : but simHai acts have oc- 
 curred, and are occurring daily. And 
 these stand forth in the Mosaic narra- 
 tive, as, indeed, does the whole march 
 through the wilderness, as records of 
 the writers experience in the past, and 
 types of the daily experience of man- 
 kind. In short, the Elohistic nar- 
 rative may be regarded as a series of 
 ' parables,' based, as we have said, on 
 legendary facts, though not historically 
 true, — but pregnant with holy instruc- 
 tion for all ages. 
 
 489. We might have wished, indeed, 
 that it were possible for us to suppose 
 that the account of the revelation of the 
 Name Jehovah, in E.vi, was also based 
 upon legendary matter of fact, — that 
 there were any clear signs of the exis- 
 tence of the word among the Hebrew 
 tribes in an earlier age than that of 
 Samuel. But the truth compels us to ad- 
 mit that there seems to be no such indi- 
 cations. On the contrary, the evidence 
 before us appears to tend in the opposite 
 direction, to fix the introduction of the 
 I Name as having occurred in the age, 
 
CONCLtTDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 155 
 
 and, therefore, we must suppose, by the 
 BOt of Samuel. It should be borne in 
 mind, however, that we yery probably 
 import into that Name, Jehovah, in 
 the present day, a fulness and depth of 
 meaning, which the Seer himself did 
 not ascribe to it. In his mind, it was 
 pnly the expression of the idea of the 
 Living God, the God of Israel, in oppo- 
 sition to the dead idols of the heathen. 
 49U. If Samxisl had once set the ex- 
 ample of this mode of composing the early 
 history of the Hebrew people, it would, 
 of course, be most easy and. natural 
 for his disciples in a later age to follow 
 him, — more especially if, as might very 
 naturally happen, the unfinished manu- 
 script was left in their hands by their 
 dying master, with the permission, or 
 even the injunction, to complete and 
 perfect it to the best, of their power. 
 The establishment of the Divine 
 Service at the Tabernacle in David's 
 time, and at the Temple in Solomon's, 
 would give occasion for additions to be 
 made of a ceremonial and ritualistic 
 character ; and, perhaps, for a succes- 
 sion of years, such a;Ceretions might 
 grow to the original document in the 
 hands of the Priests. Yet is there no 
 sign that the laws thus laid down were 
 published for general information, and 
 actually enforced by the best of kings, 
 or obeyed by those kings themselves or 
 by the most devout of their people. 
 
 491. The Levitical laws seem rather 
 to have served as a kind of directory 
 for the Priests in the discharge of their 
 duties in the Temple ; and supplied in- 
 formation, we may suppose, for the 
 instruction of pious worshippers, as in 
 the command for a woman after child- 
 birth to bring a lamb and a young 
 pigeon or turtle-dove, L.xii.6, or in that 
 for a poor man, after recoveiy from 
 leprosy, to bring ' two turtle-doves or 
 two young 'pigeons! L.xiv.22, — a com- 
 mand which is expressly laid down, as 
 for ihe camp in the wilderness, ^.3,6, but 
 which plainly betrays its character, as 
 a law laid down in later days, by pre- 
 scribing this act, which was imprac- 
 ticable in the wilderness. 
 
 492. In this form, the roll of the 
 Mosaic story seems to have lain for 
 nearly four centuries, kept, it may be, 
 
 in the Temple archives, in the posses- 
 sion of the Priests, and referred to, 
 perhaps, occasionally, when information 
 was desired, or an addition was to be 
 made to it. But we find no tokens in 
 the writings of the Prophets of that age, 
 of any such familiar acquaintance with 
 the contents of this ancient document, 
 as would imply that it was well known 
 and devoutly studied, even by them, — 
 much less by the people, — though, ac- 
 cording to the laws of the Pentateuch, 
 every king was to copy it with his own 
 hand, D.xvii.18, and it was to be read 
 publicly every seven years to the whole 
 assembled people at the Feast of Taber- 
 nacles, D.xxxi.10-13. On the contrdT)', 
 in Josiah's days, as we learn from 
 2K.xxii, the pious king himself, as well 
 as the people, was taken wholly by sur- 
 prise by the discovery of the ' Book of 
 the Law ' in the Temple, and evidently 
 was in complete ignorance of the nature 
 of its contents, before he heard them. 
 
 493. But, some one, perhaps, may 
 now say, ' Do you then take from us 
 God's Word, the Bible ?' I must reply 
 again, ' Whatever is done, it is not /, 
 but the Truth, which does it.' If the 
 arguments, which I have advanced, are 
 not really founded upon Truth, let 
 them be set aside and thrown to the 
 winds ; but, if they are, we dare not, 
 as servants of God, do this — we are 
 bound to hear and to obey the Truth. 
 
 494. It may be then — rather, it is, as 
 I believe undoubtedly — the fact, that 
 God Himself, by the power of the 
 Truth, will take from us in this age the 
 Bible as an idol, which we have set up 
 against His Will, to bow down to it 
 and worship it. But, while He takes 
 it away thus with the one hand, does 
 He not also restore it to us with the 
 other, — ^not to be put into the place of 
 God, and served with idolatrousworship, 
 but to be reverenced as a Book, the 
 best of books, the work of living men 
 like ourselves, — of men, I mean, in 
 whose hearts the same human thoughts 
 were stirring, the same hopes and fears 
 were dwelling, the same gracious Spirit 
 was operating, three thousand years 
 ago, as now ? 
 
 495. Is it nothing to know and feel 
 
 12 
 
T.66 
 
 this, that in those remote ages our 
 fellow-men hreathed the same spiritual 
 breath as we do now, lived the same 
 spiritual Kfe, and dreaded, as the conse- 
 quence and judgment of sin, the same 
 spiritual death ? Is it nothing to know 
 that whether Adam sinned or not, by 
 eating the forbidden fruit in Paradise, 
 whether Noah and his family were 
 saved in the Ark or not, whether the 
 cities of the plain were destroyed for 
 their sins or not, yet in the minds of 
 our fellow-men, whoever wrote those 
 stories of old, there was as deep and 
 true a conviction of the evil of sin, and 
 its bitter, terrible, consequences, as we 
 have now ? 
 
 496. And on the other hand, is there 
 no solid comfort in knowing that, to 
 the minds of pious men in those days, 
 as well as now, it was revealed that ike 
 heaven and the earth were the work of 
 the great Creator, that the blessed light 
 came forth by the Word of God, and 
 man himself was made in his Maker's 
 image ? Do we not feel the bonds of 
 our common humanity drawn yet more 
 closely around us, when we see that in 
 those days, as now, the Presence of God 
 Himself was realised as near to every 
 faithful soul, ready to strengthen, com- 
 fort, bless, or, if need be, to chasten, — 
 nay, that to their eyes, as to ours, the 
 gracious signs of nature were whisper- 
 ing of a bond between earth and 
 heaven, and the bright beauty of the 
 rainbow after the storm, — the simple 
 fact that, notwithstanding all our sins, 
 God still gives us power to see and en- 
 joy His Goodness, — was regarded as 
 a pledge of the continuance of His 
 loving care for His creatures, an assur- 
 ance of forgiveness and peace ? 
 
 497. In this way, I repeat, the Bible 
 becomes to us a human book, in which 
 the thoughts of other hearts are opened 
 to us, of men who lived in the ages 
 long ago, and in circumstances very 
 different from ours. And, for those 
 who devoutly study it in this spirit, 
 there will be ever-increasing joy and 
 consolation, in beholding how the face 
 of man answereth to face, under the 
 teaching of the self-same Spirit, how 
 the heart of the human race is really 
 one in its religious consciousness, — in 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 its 'feeling after God,' — in its deep 
 desires, which nothing of this world 
 can satisfy, — in its sense of sin, which 
 can only berelieved by confession andre- 
 pentance, — in its assurance of fatherly, 
 forgiving mercy, when sin is confessed 
 and forsaken. 
 
 * When I kept silence, my bonea waxed old, 
 tlirough my roaring all the day long ; I ac- 
 knowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine ini- 
 quity have I not hid. I said, I will confess 
 my transgressions unto the I^KD, and Thou 
 forgavest the iniquity of my sin.* Fs.xxzii. 
 3,e. 
 
 498. Is, then, the Bible to be read 
 like any other common book ? In one 
 sense, yes. It is to be read, like any 
 other book, with the ' understanding ' as 
 well as with the ' heart' We must not 
 blindly shut our eyes to the real history 
 of the composition of this book, to the 
 legendary character of its earlier por- 
 tions, to the manifest contradictions 
 and impossibilities, which rise up at 
 once, in every part of the story of the 
 Exodus, if we persist in maintaining 
 that it is a simple record of historic^ 
 facts. We must regard it, then, as the 
 work of men, of feUow-men, like our- 
 selves, fighting the same good fight, on 
 the side of God, and His Truth, against 
 all manner of falsehood and evil, though 
 fighting in their own primitive way, 
 and without the light of that Christian 
 teaching, which shines upon our war- 
 fare of to-day, and makes many things 
 plain and clear to our eyes, which to 
 them were still dark and uncertain. 
 
 499. But then, on the other hand, we 
 must study the Bible with the heart, aa 
 well as with the mind. The Bible is 
 not itself ' God's Word,' but assuredly 
 'God's Word' will be heard in the 
 Bible, by all who will humbly and de- 
 voutly listen for it. As the Greeks 
 have been endowed by the ' Father of 
 Lights ' with those special gifts in art 
 and science and literature, which have 
 made the works of their great masters 
 in all ages the models for the imitation of 
 mankind, — as the Roman has been dis-. 
 tinguished in matters of lawand govern- 
 ment, and other nations have had their 
 own peculiar endowments, for the com- 
 mon welfare of the race, — so, too, has 
 the Hebrew mind had its own special 
 gift from God. 
 
CONCLUDING EEMAEKS, 
 ' 600. For, whUe showing itself singU' 
 lariy defective in ancient days, (though 
 with many grand exceptions in later 
 times,) with respect to all matters of 
 science, art, literature, and general poli- 
 tics, yet has the Hebrew race been 
 Quickened from the first, more than all 
 others, with higher spiritual life, and 
 endued with special pita for the pur- 
 pose of propagating tJat life to others. 
 Throughout the Scriptures is this won- 
 derful jpower exhibited, by which, with 
 a few simple words, the springs of life 
 within our own hearts are touched, and 
 the whole inner man is stirred, and we 
 *taste the good Word of God, and the 
 powers of the world to come.' The 
 mighty voice of some great Prophet is 
 stiU heard delivering its burden of 
 righteous judgment and woe, against 
 the national sins of modem times, ob 
 well as those of the days of old, — ' Shall 
 I not visit for these things, saith the 
 Load ? Shall not my soul be avenged 
 on such a nation as this ? ' The plain- 
 tive «ries of some unknown Psalmist, 
 his meek resignation, his patient hope, 
 — or, it may be, his song of praise and 
 thanksgiving, — still find their echoes in 
 all true hearts, and are breathed afresh, 
 day by day, from a thousand lips, as 
 the most natural utterances of human 
 heings, ' in all times of their wealth, 
 in all times of their tribulation.' 
 
 601. Is it not thus, indeed, with us 
 all? So we not feel that there are 
 living words in the Bible, which come 
 home to us with a force, which no 
 multitude of signs or wonders can 
 strengthen, no diminution of them can 
 impair? And are we not sure that 
 those TTords, with which our spirits 
 have been fed from our youth up until 
 now, are quite independent of all the 
 results of criticism ? — that, as Bishop 
 Thielwail has said, — 
 
 The numbers, migrations, wars, battles, 
 conquests, and reverses of Israel have no- 
 thing in. common with the teaching of 
 Christ, with the way of salvation, with the 
 fruits of the Spirit,— they belong to a totally 
 difEerent order of subjects,— they are not to 
 be confomided with the spiritufd levelations 
 contained in the Old Testament, much less 
 with that fulness of grace and ismth which 
 came by Jesus Christ ? 
 
 602. Yes, truly, as it is written, 
 J3ei.iv.l2,— 
 
 'The Word of God is quick and pv,wo„ 
 and sharper than any two-edged sword, pii 
 mg even to the dividing asunder of soul * 
 spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a 
 discerner of the thoughts and intents of the 
 heart. 
 
 Thank Godr we have no need to 
 ' examine the grounds,' and to ' weigh 
 the evidence' of miracle and pro- 
 phecy, in order to believe that in the 
 Bible we have a record of a Divine 
 Eevelation, by which God's Word is 
 spoken to the heart of man. But then 
 the above apostolic description of the 
 Word of God cannot possibly be ap- 
 plied to the mere letter of the his- 
 tories in Genesis, or of the details of 
 the construction of the Tabernacle in 
 Exodus, or the minute directions for 
 sacrifice in Leviticus, or the records 
 of the numberings and marchings in 
 Numbers — ^to the wars and conflicts in 
 Samuel and Eings, to the genealogies 
 in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. 
 
 503. I wiU here quote the words of 
 the excellent Dr. Geddes, a Eoman 
 Catholic Divine, in his Critical Se- 
 marks (a.d. 1800), I. p. vi. : — 
 
 The Gospel of Jesus is my religions codes 
 His doctrines are my dearest delight : ' His 
 yoke (to me) is easy, and His burden is light.' 
 But this yoke I would not put on, — these 
 doctrines I could not admire, — ^that Gospel I 
 would not make my law,— if Season, pure 
 Beason, were not my prompter and precep- 
 tress. I willingly profess myself a sincere, 
 though unworthy, disciple of Christ : Chris- 
 tian is my name, and Catholic my surname. 
 Bather than renounce these glorious titles, 
 I would shed my blood; but I would not 
 shed a drop of it for what is neither CathoUc 
 nor Christiau. Catholic Christianity 1 revere 
 whenever 1 find it, and in whatsoever sect it 
 dwells. But I cannot revere the loads of hay 
 and stubble, which have been blended with its 
 precious gems, and which still, in every sect 
 with which 1 am acquainted, more or less 
 tarnish or hide their lustre. I cannot revere 
 metaphysical unintelligible creeds, nor bias 
 phemous confessions of faith. I cannot re- 
 vere persecution for the sake of conscience, 
 nor tribunals that enforce authority by fire 
 and faggot. I cannot revere formulas of faith 
 made the test of loyalty, nor penal laws made 
 the hedge of Church estoblishments. In short, 
 1. cannot revere any system of religion, that,~ 
 for divine doctrines, teacheth the dictates of 
 men, and, by the base intermixture of ' human 
 traditions,' maketh ' the commandments of 
 God of none effect.* This I say even of Chris- 
 tian systems ; and shall 1 grant to systematic 
 Judaism what I deny to systematic Chris- 
 tianlsm ? Shall I disbelieve the pretended 
 miraoles, the spurious deeds, the forged char- 
 ters, the lying legends, of the one, and give 
 full credit to those of the other ? May I, 
 
158 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMARKS. 
 
 blameless, ezamlnb the works of the Chris- 
 tian doctors and historians by the common 
 rules of criticism, explode their sophistry, 
 combat their rash assertions, arraign them 
 of credulity, and even sometimes question 
 their veracity, — and yet be obliged to con- 
 sider every frc^jment of Hebrew Scripture, 
 for a series of a thousand years, from Moses 
 to Malachi, — every scrap of prophecy, poesyj 
 minstrelsy, history, biography, — as the in- 
 fallible communications of Heaven, oracles 
 of Divine Truth ? Truly, this is to require 
 too much from credulity itself. 
 
 In the Hebrew Scriptures are many beau- 
 ties, many excellent precepts, much sound 
 morality, — and they deserve the attentive 
 perusal of every scholar, every person of 
 curiosity and taste. All those good things I 
 admit, and admire, and would equally ad- 
 mire them in the writings of Plato, Tully, 
 or Marcus Antoninus. But there are other 
 things in great abundance, which I can nei- 
 ther admire nor admit, without renouncing 
 common sense, and superseding reason, — a 
 sacrifice which I am not disposed to make, 
 for any writing in this world. 
 
 This language will, I doubt not, seem 
 strange to tiie systematic Christian, who has 
 founded his creed — ^not upon reason or com- 
 mon sense, but— on the prejudices of educa- 
 tion, who is a Papist at Home, a Lutheran at 
 Lelpsic, and a Calvinist at Geneva, a Prelatist 
 in England, and a Presbyterian in Scotland, a 
 Kestorian in Syria, in Armenia an Eutychian. 
 For such local nominal Christians my ' Re- 
 msirfcs ' were not intended : they would spurn 
 them with zealous indignation. But, if there 
 be, as I trust there are, in each of those com* 
 munions, men who have learned to think for 
 themselves, in matters of faith as well as in 
 matters of philosophy, and who are not 
 Christians morely because they were bom of 
 Christian parents, and bred up in Christian 
 principles, but because, on the most serious 
 and mature examination, they find Chris- 
 tianity a rational— a most rational— religion, 
 to such I address myself with confidence, and 
 by such I expect to be listened to with patient 
 candour. 
 
 To such I would say— It la time, it is fall 
 time, that Christianity should learn to walk 
 alone, without Jewish leading-strings or Gen- 
 tile go-carts. It is time that the pure spi- 
 ritual religion of Jesus should throw aside 
 all the tawdry cumbersome load of exotio 
 ornaments, borrowed either from Judaism or 
 Paganism, — from the temple of Jerusalem or 
 the temples of Jupiter,— and reclothe herself 
 in the white spotless robes, in which she was 
 originally invested. It is time for her ra- 
 tional admirers to vindicate her chaste cha- 
 racter from the aspersions of her professed 
 enemies, and from the false praise of her 
 pretended friends ; for the false praise of her 
 
 pretended friends has been often more inju- 
 rious to her reputation than the obloquy of 
 her professed enemies ; — or, rather, she has 
 had no enemies, but because her pretended 
 friends have exhibited her in a dr^ which 
 she disclEums and despises. Strip her at once 
 of this ungainly, meretricious garb ; reetoiQ 
 her to her primitive simplicity ; and she will 
 need only to be seen, to be admired, loved, 
 idolised I 
 
 504. Beading the Bible in this 
 spirit^ and believing that the Divine 
 Teacher has been all along, by secret < 
 ways of His Wisdom, leading on 
 the human race into the clearer 
 light, — into the further knowledge of 
 Fimself, and of their relations to 
 Him, — ^we receive the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures as a gracious gift of God, which 
 He in His Providence has ' caused to 
 be written for our learning ' in Divine 
 things. And the Hebrew race, it may 
 be — ^with all their noble qualities, theip 
 patient endurance under injuries, too 
 often practised upon them by Christian 
 men in the Name of God, their calm, 
 unshaken, trust in God*s faithfulness, 
 their steadfast continuance in well- 
 doing, according to that Law which 
 they believe to be Divine, — ^may have 
 yet a great part to act, and a great 
 work to do, in the regeneration of man- 
 kind. It may be that they, too, shall 
 shake off the superstitious belief of 
 ages, and, reverencing their Scriptures 
 for the living truths which they declare! 
 to their forefathers, while other nations; 
 lay yetwraptin the darkness of heathen- 
 ism, shall yield to the demands of 
 modem science, and give up the story 
 of the Pentateuch as a record of his- 
 torical fact. Then, also, may liCssion- 
 aries of their race, as well as ours, go 
 forth, far and wide, as heralds of sal- 
 vation, ministering the * glgxi tidings of 
 great joyrfor all people,' proclaiming with 
 free utterance the Name of the flving 
 God, whom their fathers of old knew and 
 worshipped, telling the nations of His 
 Grace, His Truth, His Righteousness. 
 
759 
 
 APPENDIX TO PAET n. 
 
 It is possible — if not, indeed, highly- 
 probable — ^that the mysterious Hebrew 
 name for the Deity, which in English 
 we pronounce ' Jehovah,' is derived 
 from a Phoenician source. The true 
 pronunciation of this name has long 
 been lost, — the vowel-sounds of ' Jeho- 
 vah ' being merely those of the word, 
 which the Jews read instead of the 
 sacred name. But it occurs also as 
 Jae, Jaeu, or Jeko; and Dion. Sic. 
 says, ii.333, — 
 
 It is said that among tlie Arimaspiana 
 Zathraustes professed that the good divinity 
 bad given him his laws . . . and that among 
 the Jews Moses made a similar claim with re- 
 spect to the Deity Bumamed JAO. 
 
 So Clem. Alex, says, Strom.Y.p.562 — 
 He IB called JAOtT, which is interpreted to 
 mean ' Who is and who shall be.' 
 
 Now the ancient Phoenician language 
 was almost identical with the Hebrew, 
 as is very plainly shown by the series 
 of Phoenician inscriptions, recently 
 published from the British Museum. 
 And this fact, indeed, may be regarded 
 as one which is now admitted by all 
 competent scholars. But, this being 
 the case, it appears further that among 
 the Phoenicians JAO was the Greek ex- 
 pression for the mysterious name of 
 their great Deity, the Sun, regarded as 
 the Source of aU Light and Life. He was 
 often caUed^oai, i.e. 'Master,' aMAdon 
 or Adonis, i.e. ' Lord,' (comp. the Heb. 
 Adonai (326)) ; but the greatest name 
 of all, that which conveyed the highest 
 idea of his grandeur and dignity as the 
 Supreme Deity, was that represented in 
 Greek by JAO. Thus a famous oracle, 
 quoted by Maoeobios, &«.il8, says — 
 It was right that the initiated should hide 
 the blessed mysteries ; lor in a little deceit 
 there is prudence and an adroit mind. Ex- 
 plain that JAO is the Highest Grod of alL 
 
 The other evidences of the existence of 
 this mysterious name are given at 
 length by Dr. Movees, in his Phcenicia, 
 i.^.639-558 ; and he sums up the result 
 of his investigation as follows : — 
 
 JAO is the Son-(Jod at the different times 
 of the year, with the predominant idea of 
 Adonis, as the Harvest-Deity. In general, I 
 
 however, he represents a complex host of 
 nature-deities, whose powers he comprehends 
 in the meaning of his name, which was one 
 lull of mystery, and, according to Sanchonia- 
 thon, was taught in the priestly mysteries by 
 the oldest Fhceoician hierophants. 
 
 Dr. Movees does not himself derive 
 the Hebrew name from the Phoenician. 
 He thinks that the latter must have 
 been originally sounded JaMt/eA=' Ha 
 makes to live ' : whereas the former 
 he supposes, in common with most 
 modern critics, to have been sounded 
 Jahveh = either ' He makes to be,' or 
 ' He is.' But, whatever may have been 
 the form and meaning of the Phoenician 
 name, it is plain that it must have been 
 very similar to the Hebrew, which is 
 expressed by the very same letters in 
 Greek, JAO. And, accordiiigly, we find 
 Phoenician proper names compounded 
 with Jah, just as in Hebrew, e.g. Ab- 
 daios, JoSEPH.c..4p.I.18, the name of 
 a Tyrian Suffete (or public officer), 
 which in Hebrew would be identical 
 with Obadiah, = ' Servant of Jah,' and 
 Bithias, Virg.L738, = Bithiah, ICh. 
 iv,18, — both of which names appear 
 also in Hebrew, with 'El' instead of 
 ' Jah,' in the forms Abdiel, Bethuel. 
 
 It seems, then, highly probable that 
 the Hebrews, soon after their eu trance 
 into Palestine, may have adopted this 
 name, which must have come to their 
 ears, — -just as they notoriously adopted 
 the worship, and, no doubt, the names, of 
 so many of the ' lords many and gods 
 many' of the tribes of Canaan ; comp. 
 Gideon's surname, Jerubiaoi, = ' Baal 
 contends,' Ju.vi.32, &c. ; David's Son, 
 JJoafyadah, = ' Baal knows,' lCh.xiv.7, 
 for which we have ElyaAah, 2S.V.16, &c. 
 And the common people, we must be- 
 lieve, worshipped JAO much after the 
 same fashion as the people of the 
 country worshipped, with bloody andim- 
 pure rites. Thus even Jephthah could 
 offer his only daughter as a burnt-offering 
 to Jehovah, Ju.xi.31,39 ; and men and 
 women might even think of bringing the 
 rewards of whoredom and sodomy 'into 
 the house of Jehovah,' in fulfilment of 
 a ' vow,' D.xziii.lS. 
 
160 
 
 APPENDIX TO PaUT H. 
 
 Some of higher mind, however, — such 
 as Samuel and his school of prophets, — 
 divinely taught to look ' above nature 
 unto nature's God,' may have desired 
 to lift up this name, so august and full 
 of meaning, from the base usage to 
 ■which they saw it exposed, in the wor- 
 ship of the tribes of Canaan and their 
 own idolatrous fellow-countrymen, and 
 to consecrate it to a higher purpose, as 
 well fitted to express the SeH-existent, 
 Eternal, Life-giving, Being, He Is or 
 He makes to be, and to be henceforward 
 the name of the Living Grod of Israel. 
 With this view the Elohistic document 
 may have been composed, in whatever 
 age it was written. For the Elohist, 
 who omits the name Jehovah in his 
 story, as not known to the patriarchs, 
 untU he comes to record the revelation 
 of that name to Moses, must have had, 
 obviously, some special object in view 
 in so doing. And, since the narrative of 
 the Burning Bush and the revelation to 
 Moses must be regarded as unhistorical, 
 there seems every reason to believe that 
 it was written by one, who desired to 
 invest this name, — not known to the 
 forefathers of the nation, but acquired 
 by them since they came out of Egypt, 
 — with a high and holy character, and 
 a special solemnity. 
 
 In this way, also, may be explained, 
 perhaps, the singular fact, that, whereas 
 so many other names of heathen gods 
 are mentioned, as worshipped by the 
 tribes around and by the Israelites 
 copying their example — Moloch and 
 Astarte, Baal and Ashera, Chemosh 
 and Bimmon, &e., — yet no name like 
 to JAO is ever mentioned, as the great- 
 est name of the chief Phoenician Deity, 
 though the sacred writers must have 
 known of its existence. It would almost 
 seem as if they shrank from mixing up 
 with dead ido^ the ' abominations ' of 
 the heathen, a name which had now 
 been set apart and sanctified, in the 
 mindsofall pious Israelites. The people 
 still, no doubt, for ages — even down to 
 the time of the Captivity — profaned 
 the name, just as the people of the land 
 did, in their common speech, and by the 
 licentious and cruel practices of their 
 worship. Nay, even for eighteen years 
 of Josiah's reign, there were vessels in 
 
 the temple at Jerusalem made for Baal 
 (==the Sun, Adonis), 2K.xxiii.4; there 
 was an Ashera (E.V. 'grove,' but really 
 an obscene symbol) in the ' House of 
 Jehovah,' v.6, and 'houses of sodomites ' 
 by the ' House of Jehovah,' ®.7, &e. ' 
 And during all this time those great 
 prophets of Judah and Israel, who had 
 been taught from above to glimpse at 
 the great truth, that — 
 ' God is a Spirit, and they that worship Hint 
 must worship Him in spirit and in truth' — 
 
 had been striving with their perverse 
 and stolid fellow-countrymen, seeking 
 to raise their minds to higher views of 
 the Divine nature, and to teach them 
 to invest that Name, which they were 
 daily using as a common thing, with a 
 high spiritual meaning. 
 
 Just so in Zululand we are now 
 teaching the natives to invest their own 
 name for the Supreme Being, UnhUun- 
 Jndu, = ' The Grreat-Great-One,' with a 
 higher, more spiritual meaning than 
 they would otherwise ascribe to it Yet 
 many years — perhaps, centuries — may 
 pass before the Zulus generally will 
 separate the name from all the absurd 
 notions and legendary stories, which 
 they may now in their wild heathen 
 state connect with it. We must long 
 expect to find that, while those of 
 higher mind, or more favoured with 
 opportunities of learning, will embrace 
 that Name, in all the high significance 
 which Missionaries attach to it, as the 
 Nameof their Great Creator, Falier, and 
 Friend, ' in Whom they live, and move, 
 and have their being,' yet the great 
 mass of the people will continue to use 
 it ignorantly and irreverently, even as 
 now. Just so, too, in Northern Europe, 
 for many centuries after Christianity 
 had been preached among the Scandi- 
 navian tribes, the orgies of the Feast 
 of Yule must have often contrasted 
 painfully, side by side with the joys of 
 the Christmas Festival; or, at least; 
 if the latter was observed in towns, i 
 where the clergy were at hand to stimu- 
 late and guide the devotions of the 
 people, yet in the country districts the 
 Name of Christ must have been long 
 profaned, and the new religion dese- 
 crated, by admixture with heathen rites 
 and most incongruous ceremonies. 
 
PART in. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface 
 
 The Book of Deuteronomy 
 
 I. The Dedterokomist Distinct prom the other Writers of the 
 Pentateuch 
 
 n. cttaracterignc expressions of the book of deuteronomy . 
 III. Pmsp Approximation 'ro the Age of the Deuteronomist 
 lY. The Book of the Law Found in the Temple .... 
 v. The BqoK Pororo in Josiah's Eeign, the Book of Deuteronomy 
 TI. Deuteronomy Pboeaely Written about the Time of Josiah 
 VII. Deut.1.1— n.37. 
 
 Tin. DEUT.in.i— is;.29 . 
 
 IZ. DEUT.X.l— XI.82 
 
 X. Dbdt.XII.1— XIII.IS 
 
 XI. Deut.XIT.I— 29 
 
 XII. DBnT.XV.l— XTI.23 
 
 xm. DEnT.xvir.1-20 
 
 XIT. DEUT.XVin.1-22 
 
 XT. DEnT.XIX.l— XXn.80 
 
 XTI. DEUT.XXm.l— XXTI.19 
 
 XTII. DeCT.XXTII.1-26 
 
 XTin. DEnT.XXVni.l— XXXI.30 
 
 XIX. The Sonq of Moses, Deut.XXXII, 
 
 XX. The Blessing of Moses, Deut.XXXIII.I-T. 
 
 XXI. The Blessing of Moses, DEUT.XXXin.8-12 
 
 XXH, The Blessing of Moses, Deot.XXXIII.13-29 
 
 XXIIl. DEDT.XXXIT.l-ia 
 
 XXIT Eesdlts of THE Examination of Deuteronomy 
 
 XXT. COHOLUIIING B.EMABKS 
 
 PAGE 
 165 
 189 
 
 185 
 189 
 193 
 194 
 196 
 200 
 202 
 206 
 2X0 
 213 
 219 
 226 
 228 
 231 
 233 
 237 
 240 
 243 
 247 
 248 
 252 
 267 
 262 
 264 
 267 
 
H.a sunt religiones, quas sibl a majoribus Buis traditas pertinacissimg tueri ac de- 
 fendere perseverant nee considerant quales sint, sed ex hoc probatas atque veras 
 esEe confidunt, quod eaa veteres tradidenmt. Tantaque est auctoritas vetostatis, ut 
 inquirere in earn scelus ducatur.— Lactantius, Inst. ii. 6. 
 
 m 
 These are religions beliefs, wliich, having been handed down to them traditionally 
 
 by their ancestors, they persist in maintaining, ay, and defending, most pertinaciously; 
 
 nor do they consider of what sort they are, but hold confidently that tuey are tried and 
 
 true, simply for the reason that their elders have transmitted them. And so great is 
 
 the authority of antiquity that to enquire into it is deemed a crime. 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET III. 
 
 In this Third Part of my -work the course of my argument leads 
 me to consider the Book of Deuteronomy, I have here, as I 
 belieye, brought out into view distinctly the following facta. 
 
 (1) There are plain signs that Deuteronomy was not written by 
 the same author or authors, by whom the main portion of the rest 
 of the Pentateuch was composed. 
 
 (i) There is a marked difference in. style and tone between the language of 
 Deuteronomy and that of the other four books of the Pentateuch ; 
 
 (ii) There are Tarious expressions, ■which are habitually used in the other four 
 books, which are never once used by the Deuteronomist ; 
 
 (iii) There are more than thirty osiers, which were evidently familiar to the Deuterono- 
 mist, as he uses each of them on the average eight times in the course of the book, 
 not one of which is used even once in the other foitr books ; 
 
 (iv) It c^mot be believed that Moses, in the short interval of a few weeks at most, 
 between the last act recorded in Numbers and the first in Deuteronomy, should have 
 so completely changed — not only his style and tone, but— his very forms of expres- 
 sion, as these facts wonld imply, if he had written the whole Pentateuch ; 
 
 (v) Hence the above facts prove that, whatever portion of the other four books 
 may be ascribed to Moses, he cannot have composed the book of Deuteronomy ; 
 
 (vi) And, of course, the same holds good of any other writer or writers, who may 
 have composed the main portion of those books. 
 
 (2) There are plain signs also that the writer of Deuteronomy 
 very probably lived about the age of Josiah and Jeremiah. 
 
 (i) There axe some exprrasions in Deuteronomy, which are only found in Jeremiah 
 and the latest writings of the Bible ; 
 
 (ii) Almost aU the peculiar words and phrases of the Deuteronomist are found also 
 in Jeremia-h ; 
 
 (iii) The history, as recorded in the Second Book of Kings, makes it highly pro- 
 bable that the book of Deuteronomy was first brought to light in the reign of 
 Josiah. 
 
 (3) A close examination of the contents of the book itself 
 confirms very strongly the above conclusions. 
 
 (i) There are distinct references to the other boo^ of the Pentateuch as already 
 existing ; , 
 
 (ii) There are numeroiia and palpable contradictions to the data of those books, 
 such as would be likely to be introduced by one writing in later days from a very 
 different point of view ; ,, , 
 
 (iii) In particular, there are remarkable modifications of some of the older laws, 
 which cannot be conceived to have been made by Moses, addressing the people only a 
 few months after those' s^ne older laws were promulgated (as is supposed) by 
 Jehovah Bimself ; . - ^ i j. 
 
 (iv) These modifications correspond to the altered curcumstances of much later 
 timra than those, in which the earlier portions of the Pentateuch (as we believe) 
 were written; . . , ^, . , . 
 
 (v) There are distinct ' signs of time/ which fix the composition of the book m an 
 age subsequent to the Captivity of the Ten Tribes, in the days of Hezekiah ; 
 
166 PEEFACE TO PART III. 
 
 (vi) There are special reasons for believing that it was not composed till the early 
 part of Josiah's reign, at which time Jeremiah lived, and had been already called to 
 the Prophetic of&ce. 
 
 It will be seen, throughout the -whole of our enquiry, that the 
 evidence is constantly pointing towards Jeremiah, as, possibly, the 
 writer of Deuteronomy. For my present purpose it is sufficient if 
 it appears that Deuteronomy was very probaWy written by some 
 great Prophet, in the latter times of the Jewish monarchy, abovi 
 the early part of Josiah's reign, — a general conclusion, in which 
 the greatest critics are almost unanimously agreed, however they 
 may differ in fixing the exact date of its composition. If the 
 above point is substantiated, the main object of my work is gained. 
 The details of my criticisms may be confirmed or rejected on 
 further examination: but the traditionary view, which regards the 
 whole Pentateuch as written by Moses, will appear untenable. 
 
 If, therefore, this point be established, it will be unnecessary for 
 me to discuss at length the numerous 'Replies' which have 
 appeared in answer to Part I of my work. There are some, which, 
 from their general fairness and their tone of courtesy and Christian 
 feeling, demand, and have received, my respectful attention. It is 
 obvious, however, that, if the arguments produced in this Part 
 shall appear to be valid, the objections to my reasonings in Part I 
 may, for the most part, be dismissed at once, as merely ingenious 
 attempts, — ^hke the 'cycles' and 'epicycles' of the old Ptolemaic 
 system of Astronomy, — to build up a theory, which has no real 
 foundation in fact, and which falls at last by the weight of its own 
 cumbrous additions. In short, it will then be plain that the con- 
 tradictions, which I have noticed, are real contradictions, such as 
 might d priori be expected to appear in a composite work like this ; 
 and the cause of religious truth will be relieved from the necessity 
 of inventing a variety of processes of ' reconciliation,' often in 
 direct contradiction with one another, which scarcely, I imagine, 
 satisfy altogether the mind of the 'reconcUer,' and still less that 
 of the general reader. 
 
 And this is, in effect, the conclusion of no less an authority than 
 
 Dean MiLMAif, who says, in his recently published work, Sist. of 
 
 the Jeios, Pref.^.xxxii, that ' all further enquiry has confirmed him 
 
 in the view,' which he announced ' above thirty years ago,' viz. — 
 
 Maintain the nmnbera [of the story of the Bxodus] as they stand, I see no way, 
 *ithont one vast continuous miracle, out of the diflBoulties, contradictions, impro- 
 babihties, impossibilities. Eednce them, and all becomes credible, consistent, and 
 harmoniouB. ' 
 
 A reduction of the numbers will make, no doubt, an Exodua 
 possible and, as I have said elsewhere, perfectly conceivable. But, 
 as is shown in (189-197), no reduction will make the story of the 
 Exodus, as recorded in the Pentateuch, consistent and possible. 
 One set of difiiculties may be got rid of in this way, but only to 
 introduce another equally formidable. 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET III. 167 
 
 But, if it be really true, as the Bishop of Oxford has said, that 
 * much harm has been done among the yoimg by my book,' and 
 that ' it is doing an amount of evil which it is difficult to estimate,' 
 — and if it be also true, as the same Prelate has written, that my 
 arguments are 'but the repetition of old and often-answered 
 cavils,' — it would surely be most desirable, — ^rather, I should say, 
 it would be felt to be imperatively necessary, — ^for the Bishops, 
 who condemn me, to put forth a 'Eeply,' such as to themselves 
 appeared to be sufficient and satisfactory, — such as might he 
 guaranteed in their name by the authority of the Primate. If 
 this were done, I should be bound by the sense of honour, as well 
 as compelled by the love of truth, to consider seriously the argu- 
 ments adduced in such a document. I should justly be condemned 
 and disgraced, in the presence of my fellow-countrymen, if I did 
 not do this, and either admit that I am wrong, or point out the 
 defective reasonings of the ' Reply.' 
 
 Scarcely any 'Reply' has been made, as yet, to the more 
 important critical arguments adduced in the latter portion of my 
 Second Part. Bishop Oilivant has, indeed, addressed to his 
 clergy a 'Second Letter' with reference to it. But, though 
 formerly a Professor of Hebrew literature, — and, as I believe, at 
 this moment the only English Bishop, who has distinguished him- 
 self in such studies, — ^he distinctly says, p.26, — 
 
 The task of exaniming seriatim the Bishop's minute criticisms / must leave to 
 others. 
 
 On one point, however, of these 'minute criticisms' Bishop 
 Ollivani does furnish a reply, and the reader will ffiid it quoted 
 in (515), and wUl be able to judge for himself how far it is 
 satisfactory. 
 
 The Rev. "W. H. Hoaee has also undertaken to make a reply to 
 
 my reasonings in Part II. But he, too, says, ^.127, — 
 
 The only omission of which I shall be conscious is, the not having gone into the 
 critical history [? ' discussion '] of the Psalms, the Book of Judges, and the Books of 
 SamneL As it would not help my argument to have done so, and as these are points 
 which turn purely on criticism, / must leave them to others, 
 
 I need hardly say that the critical discussion of the Psalms,* 
 
 &c., which flUs the latter half of my Second Part, is that portion 
 
 of my book, as far as it has yet been published, which appears to 
 
 • Since the above was written. Prof, (now Bishop) BaoWKE's ' Mve leisures' have 
 appeared, upon ' ITie Pentateuch and the Elohistic Psalms.' I find nothing in these 
 ■ Lectures ' requiring me to modify any of my previous conclusions. Prof. Bkowkb s 
 treatment of the Psalms is too general and mperflcial to meet the requirements of the 
 case. He asserts, on general grounds, that certain Psahna are David s ; bat he does 
 not go through a searching, minute examination of them, so as to prove that they 
 are most probably, David's Psalms, or Psalms of the Davidio age. And, until he 
 does this, his Arguments can have no weight against the conolusiftns to be drawn 
 from sudi Psalms as Ps-bc and Pabcviii, which I have proved, as I beheve,— the last 
 and most-important, at all events,— to be, in aU probability, David's. But tjis ques- 
 tion of the Psalms is only of secondary importance ; and if my arguments derived 
 from them were disproved and set aside altogether, the main results of my ontioismS, 
 as to the Mosaic Origin and Historical C3redibility of the Pentateuch, would not be at 
 all affected. ' 
 
168 PEEFACE TO PAET m. 
 
 me of most importance, and with respect to wMcli I have said ia 
 my Preface to Part 11, ^.79, and now repeat, with express refer- 
 ence also to the matter here laid before the reader in Part III, — 
 
 It was, perliaps, my knowledge of the overwhelining amount and weight of this 
 eridence, and of mMCh more of the same kind to be produced hereafter, which led me 
 to express myself in the First Part with an assured confidence in the certainty of my 
 oonolufiions, which some of my Reviewers have condemned, as scarcely warranted in 
 their opinion, by the premisses, even if they were admitted to be true. 
 
 Up to the present time none of my Episcopal Brethren, who 
 have condemned me, except Bishop Olitant, have taken any 
 notice of these criticisms, except that some have pronounced them, 
 generally, as being 'rash and feeble,' 'unfounded, false, and 
 childish.'* 
 
 I said, however, in my last preface, ^.81 : — 
 
 I am naturally anxiouB to see what the Bishops and Doctors of the Church of 
 England will say upon the subject of my book, and how they will act in the present 
 emergency. 
 
 Since then I have been answered, and, I confess, in a way which 
 has disappointed my expectations. For opposition and censure I 
 had prepared myself, — ^for being misjudged even by many good 
 men, whom I esteem, and for being misrepresented by others, who 
 care only for the triumph of a popular opinion, and not for the 
 truth. I knew from the first that these were the only conditions, 
 on which such a work as this could be conducted, coming, as it 
 does, in direct antagonism with many strong and dear preposses- 
 sions, and not a few deep-rooted prejudices. But I had confidence 
 in the power of Truth that it would in the end prevail ; and that 
 confidence has been sufficiently justified. To the many correspon- 
 dents, lay and clerical, who from all parts of the country have 
 written to cheer me with their sympathy, and strengthen me in 
 the resolve to carry on and, if God will, complete my labour, I 
 would here express my heartfelt thanks. It is a som-ce of great 
 comfort to know that so many earnest and devout minds are 
 watching with deep interest the conflict, and rejoicing in the 
 progress and triumph of the Truth. Great service also has been 
 rendered to the cause of 'free enqiury' by that portion of the 
 Public Press, which, often without expressing agreement with my 
 views, has yet insisted on & fair field being allowed for the discus- 
 sion of these important questions, and for time being given to test 
 the truth of my arguments 
 
 But I have, I confess, been disappointed in'^the course which 
 has been adopted by the great body of my Episcopal Brethren. I 
 had no reason to suppose that I should receive from all of them 
 expressions of sympathy, or encouraging help in my work ; from 
 
 » In *e single short letter of one of my Episcopal Brethren, forbidding his clergy 
 to allow me to minister in his diocese, the following expressions appear, applied either 
 to myself or my work :— ' unfounded,' ' false," ' childish,' ' hereticnl,' ' blasphemous " 
 'abominable,' 'unhappy,' 'blind,' ' daiing,' 'ignorant self-Buffloiency," 'instrument 
 of Satan,' ' poor Bishop Colenso.' 
 
PREFACE TO PART III. 169 
 
 some I could only expect condemnation; and, while dissenting 
 from their judgment, I should yet have respected the religious 
 feelings, however (as it seemed to me) mistaken, which to their 
 own minds justified their censures. But I did riot imagine that so 
 many of the Bishops of England, with the Bishop of Oxford at 
 their head, would have ahsolutely ignored the existence of such a 
 science as Bihlical criticism, and its imdouhted and undeniable 
 results, in its application to the earlier Hebrew Scriptures. I be- 
 lieved that there were men of science and scholars among them, 
 who, being acquainted generally with these ;:esults, would be 
 aware of their reality and importance, and who would feel it to 
 be impossible, in this age of enquiry, any longer to bar out their 
 admission, as facts to be talen account of, like any other facts of 
 science, by the more intelligent minds of the Church of England. 
 I had hoped that their influence would have prevailed to check 
 the hasty judgment of others, less informed than themselves on 
 these matters ; and that, if my Episcopal Brethren, generally, did 
 not think it expedient to hold out to me a brotherly right hand of 
 fellowship, — if they condemned me as going too far in my conclu- 
 sions, or as reasoning too confidently on insufficient preipisses, — 
 they would, at least, have recognised that my arguments were not 
 altogether without some real foundation, and ought to be judged 
 upon their merits, — ought to be considered, and, if need be, checked 
 and corrected, not merely thrown aside with contemptuous lan- 
 guage, as unfounded and ridiculous. I could not have believed, 
 for instance, that the Bishop of Oxpobb would have ventured to 
 say that my ' speculations, so rash and feeble in themselves,' are — 
 
 ' in all essential points bnt the repetition of old and often-answered cavils against 
 the Word of God ; ' — 
 
 and still less that His Grace, the Primate of all England, would 
 have pronounced with the high authority of his office, that my 
 objections 'are for the most part puerile and trite,' — 
 
 ' so puerile, that an intelligent youth, who read his .Bible with care, cotdd draw the 
 fitting answers from the Bible itself,— so trite, that they have been again and again 
 refuted two hundred years ago, by Archbishop TJSHER, one of the most learned 
 annalists of this or of any country, more recently by Bishop Watsoh and others.' 
 
 It is hardly necessary for me to repeat what thq Public Press has 
 already said in reply to such assertions as the above, viz. that many 
 of the criticisms in these volumes have never been answered, and 
 that the writings of Archbishop Usheb and Bishop Waison will 
 throw no light whatever upon the most important questions which 
 are here discussed. As well might we refer to books of the last 
 centurr for a refutation of the objections, which 'are raised to the 
 historical truth of some portions of the book of Genesis, by recent 
 discoveries in geological science. But, on behalf of those, who 
 regard the Bible with a true reverence, as a Divinely-given 
 Teacher which God in His Providence has 'caused to be wiitten 
 
170 PEEFACE TO PAET III. 
 
 for our learning,' but which He wills us to read with intelligent 
 discrimination of its contents, not with a blind unreasoning 
 idolatry of the mere letter, I respectfully protest against the 
 language which the Archbishop of Cajtibbbtjkt has, apparently, 
 applied to all those who read my books with interest, by summing 
 them up under three categories, as either ' ignorant,' or ' half-in- 
 formed,' or else 'rejoicing in anything which can free them from 
 the troublesome restraints of religion.' The object of my whole 
 work is to bind the consciences of men more imperatively than 
 ever by the law of true Religion, which is the law of life and 
 happiness. But, inasmuch as multitudes have already broken 
 loose from the restraints of that traditional religious teaching, 
 which they know to be contradicted by some of the most familiar 
 results of modem Science, now made the common heritage of 
 every educated English child, I believe tliat I have only done my 
 duty, as a Minister of the National Church, in endeavouring to 
 reestablish a permanent imion between the teachings of Eeligion 
 and Science, and to heal effectively that breach between them, 
 which otherwise wiU assuredly widen day by day, with infinite 
 injury to the Church itself, and to the whole community. 
 
 And here I think it desirable to correct three mistakes, which 
 (as I gather from the letters addressed to their Clergy by several 
 of the Bishops) have been entertained by many vrith respect to 
 my work. 
 
 (i) It has been stated that I deny the Inspiration of the Bible. 
 
 I reply that I have nowhere denied it, nor have even considered 
 at all the question of Scripture Inspiration. I have left that sub- 
 ject wholly untouched : it is no part of my present plan to discuss 
 it. Doubtless, the plain results of criticism, such as those set forth 
 in these volumes, must indirectly affect the views which may he 
 taken of Inspiration, and must certainly, if seen to be true results, 
 conflict entirely with the traditional view of the Divine Infallibility 
 of Scripture. But it is no part of my present object to prove even 
 this. I have only had in view ' to examine critically the Pentateuch 
 and book of Joshua,' vrith the special purpose of determining, as far 
 as possible, the age and authorship of the different books. 
 
 (ii) Again, it has been said that I ivish to prove the Pentateuch — ' 
 and in fact, the whole Bible — to be untrue. 
 
 Nothing can be further from my wish or purpose than this. 
 Rather, I desire to know what is true in the Pentateuch history, 
 and in the Bible generally. I wish to know, if possible, in what 
 age, by what persons, under what circumstances, the different por- 
 tions of the Bible were wiitten, that I may be able to judge for 
 myself, Bnd help others to judge, as to the amount of credibilify 
 to be attached to the different narratives. If I had found reason 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET III. 171 
 
 to believe that Moses really ■Wrote the account of the ExoduSj 
 describing what he had himself personally said, and done, and 
 ■witnessed, I should have felt bound to believe his statements, as 
 those of a devout, God-fearing, man ; and then, ■whatever miracu- 
 lous accounts they might have contained, such statements would, 
 assuredly, not have involved the contradictions, which appear upon 
 a close inspection of the present Pentateuch. But the process of 
 critical enquiry, so far from eliciting proofs and confirmations of 
 ■the Mosaic origin of these books, leads quite to the opposite con- 
 clusion. All the arguments, drawn from an examination of the 
 Pentateuch, point in one direction. It is well to observe this. 
 There is literally nothing in these books distinctly indicative of 
 Mosaic authorship. The whole force of the argument for that 
 authorship rests upon tradition, and may be referred back to the 
 opinion of the Jews, who lived nearly a thousand years after the 
 date assigned to Moses. It is not a question of balanced internal 
 evidence, but a case where there is a host of indications, all tending 
 to show diversity of authorship and late date, tcoA^none discover- 
 able, by all the ingenuity yet brought to bear upon the subject, 
 which tends decidedly the other way ; and the supporters of the 
 traditional view ■wiU be found to be constantly occupied, — not in 
 producing ' internal evidence ' to show that Moses did write the 
 Pentateuch, but — in tiying to account for the existence, on the 
 assumption of his authorship, of so much internal evidence of the 
 contrary. In short, the strength of the resistance to the critical 
 conclusion lies in the feeling, that we do not like to think that 
 those books could have grown up in the way, which the ' internal 
 e^ndence' clearly indicates, — ^the way in which, be it observed, the 
 reli^ous books of aU other nations are known to have been formed, 
 (iii) Further, it has been stated, by more than one of my Epis- 
 copal Brethren, that I have charged the Clergy generally with 
 dishonesty, in concealing their views about the Deluge, and using 
 the Baptismal Form of Prayer -without believing in it. I reply 
 that I have never chai-ged any -with ' dishonesty ' in this respect ; 
 and, if I thought that my words justly allowed of such a con- 
 struction bemg placed on them, I should express my regret that I 
 have made use of language that was capable of being so miscon- 
 Btrued. Nor did I volunteer to make any reference at all in this 
 matter to the Clergy. In what I said, I acted strictly in self- 
 defence. I was accused of being ' dishonest ' myself, in retaining 
 my clerical office, while disbelieving many or most of the details 
 of the story of the ^xoius,— directly, by many of the Clergy, and 
 indirectly by one, for whose high character, as a lover of truth and 
 fair-dealing, and for whose conduct under present circumstances, I 
 have the most profound esteem. The Bishop of London had stated, 
 in his Charge to his Clergy, that our National Church was based 
 
172 PEEFACE TO PART III. 
 
 upon the principle of ' free enquiry,' — that to enquire was the right 
 
 of an English Clergyman in all cases, and frequently his duty, — 
 
 but that, — 
 
 * if such enquiry led to dovbt, and if the doubt ended in disbelief of the Church's 
 doctrines, of course he would resign his office as one of the Church's authorised 
 teachers.' 
 
 I might have replied to such an observation that WTCLrp did 
 not retire from his sacred office, though disbelieving the doctrines, 
 ■which he himself believed when he entered the Ministry, and 
 which were taught by the clergy generally in his day, and that 
 Ckaitmbb, Riblbt, and Laiimbr, and other Bishops, though con- 
 secrated as Bishops of the Eoman Church, and bound by the 
 solemn vows of their ordination in that Church, did not resign their 
 sees as soon as they became Protestant Bishops, and the National 
 Church by the National WiU had become Protestant also, nor 
 afterwards, when by the same WiU the Church ceased to be Pro- 
 testant, and once more became Romanised. 
 
 But I felt that, in the present instance, there was far less reason 
 for urging upon me such a course as a plain duty, inasmuch as 
 very many of the Clergy, I believed, and certainly not a few of my 
 Episcopal Brethren, did not accept the story of the Noachian 
 Deluge as literally and historically true, and yet justified them- 
 selves in retaining their oifices in the Church. If my conduct was 
 ' dishonest,' so, too, was theirs; for my ' dishonesty,' surely, could 
 not consist in openly professing that which others secretly held. 
 11 they were ' honest ' in the course which they were pursuing — 
 and I expressed no doubt whatever of this — I felt that it waa 
 unfair and ungenerous to charge upon me, as a crime, the very 
 same proceeding as their own — the same exactly in principle, 
 though diifering, it may be, in degree. I admit fully that any of 
 the Clergy who do ' unfeignedly believe' — as some, I presume, 
 do — in the literal historical truth of the story of the Flood 6a 
 told ia G.vi,vii,viii, have a right to bring the charge against 
 me of not believing what they deem essential to a true faith in 
 the authority of the Bible. And, if there are not, as I said in 
 my former Preface, ' multitudes of the more intelligent Clergy,' 
 who, on geological or other grounds, have come to disbelieve in 
 that narrative as a true piece of history, then I am wrong in my 
 assumption, and owe my Clerical Brethren an apology for ascribing 
 such disbelief to them. 
 
 But as to those, be they many or few in number, who do not 
 believe in the literal truth of the Noachian Deluge, I did not 
 impute to them ' dishonesty ' in holding those opinions, and yet 
 retaining their clerical office. On the contrary, I assigned certain 
 reasons, which, I thought, would satisfy different classes of minds, 
 and enable them still with a clear conscience to use the Form of 
 Prayer which referred to that narrative. Being persuaded, how- 
 
PREFACE TO PAET III. 173 
 
 ever, that in this age of advancing Science such Clergymen are 
 many, and believing also that the Laity have rarely heard from 
 the pulpit any reference to the account of Noah's Flood, as being 
 otherwise than literally and historically true, I am obliged to con- 
 clude that, by some cause or other, such Clergymen have been 
 prevented from speaking to their people the plain truth upon this 
 point. And I believe that they have been impeded by the 
 restraints, real or supposed, of those stringent obligations, which 
 the Church of England at the present time enforces on her Clergy 
 at Ordination. 
 
 Here, also, I desire to say a few words more plainly in expla- 
 nation of my present position, with reference to the assumptions 
 made by some of my Episcopal Brethren, in their recent letters 
 of inhibition. His Grace the Archbishop of Cantekbttet, in a 
 letter dated March 31, addressed to the Clergy "of his Diocese, has 
 stated that I ' have refused to resign the See of Natal, though I 
 cannot deny that I am unable to exercise the most important func- 
 tions of that office.' 
 
 I presume His Grace to refer, in these words, to the reply which 
 I gave to a letter addressed to me by the great majority of the 
 Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England. In that 
 reply, I did not think it necessary to contradict formally the three 
 assumptions which had been made by my Episcopal Brethren, 
 considering that anyone acquainted with my books would be 
 aware that they were not correct statements of the facts of the 
 case ; and feeling also that an answer at full length was the less 
 needed, as the letter of the Bishops appeared in the Times almost 
 as soon as it had reached my hands, — ^before I had had time to 
 reply to it, — ^from which circumstance I could only infer that it 
 was intended rather for the ^m6& than for myself, though express- 
 ing ' deep brotherly anxiety' for me. As, however, the Archbishop 
 and several of the Bishops have again referred to this subject, I 
 think it due to myself to notice this charge; and I do it also 
 with a view to those of the Clergy and Laity, who agree with me 
 in believing that the right and duty of free enquiry to its fullest 
 extent is the very foundation on which— not true Eeligion only, 
 but — om- Protestant National Church is based, and that an 
 honest and fearless statement of the Truth, as the result of such 
 enquiry, is the only condition of its permanent existence, and the 
 only ground of hope for its continuance, from age to age, in 
 healthy and vigorous action, amidst the rapid advances of modem 
 Science. 
 
 The letter of my Episcopal Brethren contained, as I have said, 
 three assumptions, which are expressly or virtually negatived by 
 the plain words of my books, 
 (i) *We understand you to say that you do not now believe that which you 
 
174 PREFACE TO PART III. 
 
 voluntarily professed to believe, as the indispensable condition of your being en- 
 trusted with yoiur present office.' 
 
 Ans. When I was ordained Deacon and Priest, I professed to ' believe unfeignedly 
 all the Canonical Scriptures.' I have said that I then understood those words in their 
 most obvious and natural sense, — the sense in which some of the Bishops, and many 
 of the Clergy, at this very time receive them,— as implying that those Scriptures 
 were, in matters of historical fact, as well as in statements of moral and religioua 
 truth, divinely and infallibly true. I have said also that I had ceased to believe this, 
 and that I was pained to find my convictions contradicting, as I conceived, the words 
 of the Ordination Service, until it was declared, on the highest legal authority of the 
 Church of England, that my former view— I may say, the popular view— of the 
 meaning of those words was mistaken, and that they must be held to mean no more 
 than a simple expression of a bond fide belief that ' the Holy Scriptures contain 
 everything necessary to salvation,' and that * to that extent they have the direct 
 sanction of the Almighty.' I have stated distinctly. Part I, p.2'i, and I here re- 
 peat, that *I BSD. not conscious of having said anything which contravenes this 
 decision. 
 
 (ii) * We understand you to saythatyouhave entertained, and have not abandoned, 
 the conviction, that you could not use the Ordination Service, inasmuch eis in it you 
 must require from others a solemn declaration that they ' unfeignedly believe all tbe 
 Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament,' which, with the evidence now 
 before you, it is impossible wholly to believe in.* 
 
 Ans. I cannot but suppose that His Grace, and others of my Episcopal Brethren 
 who subscribed the above words, could not have been aware that they are directly 
 set aside by my own language in the Preface to Part I, where, after showing that at 
 one time I felt the impossibility of demanding from a candidate for Orders such a 
 confession of belief in the Holy Scriptures as I then considered — and as many still 
 consider — to be required by the formula of the Ordination Service, I have added 
 (since reading in England the judgment of Dr. Ltjshington) the following note : — 
 
 • This was written before the recent decision of the Court of Arches, by which, 
 of course, the above conclusion is Tnaterially affected* 
 
 It would now be possible for me to require such a declaration from a candidate for 
 Orders, provided that I had first fully explained to him, and to the Congregation, in 
 what sense the Church intends such a declaration to be made. 
 
 (iii) ' We understand you further to intimate that those who thinfc with you are 
 precluded from using the Baptismal Service, and consequently (as we must infer) 
 other offices of the Prayer Book, unless they omit all such passages as assume th^ 
 truth of the Mosaic History.* 
 
 Am. This assumption, again, is contradicted by my own language already referred 
 to, in the Preface to Part II, where I have said that many Clergymen, who do not believe 
 in the historical truth of the Noachian Deluge, will yet be able to justify themselves in 
 one of two ways, in using still such a Form of Prayer. If it is perfectly understood 
 that a Minister is at full liberty to explain to his people freely h^ opinion re6i)ecting 
 the Biblical accoimt of the Deluge, the unhistorical character of the Mosaic story, or 
 the age and authorship of Deuteronomy,— (and this appears likewise to be decided in 
 the affirmative by the same legal judgment,)— I apprehend that many, who have an 
 intelligent acquaintance with the results of modem criticism, may still be content to 
 read the allusions in the Liturgy. But I felt also that there might be others, of more 
 scrupulous conscience, who would not be satisfied with this mode of meeting the 
 difficulty, and to whom I could give no other advice than that which I have given, 
 viz. to omit such expressions, and take the consequences of such omission.* I con- 
 sider, however, that such passages ought no longer to be retained, as of absolute 
 obligation, in our Prayer Book ; and I hold it to be my duty, as a Bishop of the 
 National Church, to labour for their removal--or, at least, for the liberty being 
 granted of omitting them— as soon as possible. 
 
 This, then, is what I meant when I contradicted publicly the 
 assumption of my Episcopal Brethren, that, while holding my 
 present views, I cannot use the language of the Baptismal and 
 Ordination Services, I can use that language — ^provided that I 
 
 * I need hardly say that it Is satisfactory to me to find that, in giving such advice as the 
 above, I am supported by the practice of His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 who stated in his place in the House of Lords, on Monday, June 1, 1863, that ' he 
 had been consulted frequently' by clergymen, who had conscientious scruples against 
 using certain words of the Burial Service in particular cases, in which, however, by 
 the tow and by their ordination vows they were required to use them, — * and he had 
 
 said this, that nothing would induce him to pronounce these words ' in such, cases * 7« 
 
 would stand the risk of all the penalties of the law rather than do so.' 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET III. 175 
 
 claim, it as my right, as a Minister of the National Church, and 
 lay it upon myself as a duty, to explain freely and fully to my 
 people in what sense I use it. And what are others doing in this 
 respect ? How does my conduct differ essentially, in respect of 
 honest adherence to the principles of the Church of England, from 
 theirs ? The Bishop of Oxeokd was the first to issue a letter of 
 inhibition, after my reply to the address of the Archbishops and 
 Bishops. Not, then, in his personal capacity, but as a represen- 
 tative of those, who have followed him in adopting this extraordi- 
 nary mode of public Church censure, — upon the mere judgment of 
 each individual Bishop, without any hearing or trial of the 
 accused, — ^I would ask the Bishop of Oxfoed before my fellow- 
 countrymen, Does he, a Fellow of the Royal and other Scientific 
 Societies, believe unfeignedly in the literal historical truth of the 
 account of the Creation, the Noachian Deluge, or the numbers of 
 the Exodus ? If the Bishop wiU say that he doei ' unfeignedly 
 believe' in all these matters, as related in the Pentateuch, of 
 com-se, I have nothing more to say as regards this part of my 
 argument. But, if he does not, then how, I repeat, does his pre- 
 sent conduct differ essentially from mine ? JB.e has some way of 
 explaining these matters, which satisfies his own mind, as I have. 
 And the only difference is this, that I think it to be my duty, and 
 shall make it my practice, to tell my people plainly, on such points, 
 what I believe, and what I know to be true ; and the Bishop of 
 OxTOBD has not yet, as far as I am aware, thought it necessary to 
 say what he really thinks upon any one of these subjects. 
 
 In fact, judging from their published documents, it is very 
 difficult to say what many of those, who have so severely con- 
 demned me, do really believe themselves with respect to the 
 narratives of the Pentateuch. They have expressed themselves, 
 indeed, in the strongest terms, as resting their hopes of eternity 
 upon the 'Word of God.' But (hat, I trust, I do, as truly and 
 entirely as they. There is a sense also in which I am quite 
 ready to speak of the Bible as the ' Word of God,'— just aa we 
 call a Church the 'House of God,' vdthout meaning, therefore, to 
 say that the plan or material of the building is Divine, or that 
 God meets with us there exclusively. But I prefer the language 
 of the First Homily, ' In it (Holy Scripture) is contained the trm 
 Word of God;' and I agree fully with the language of Dean 
 MuMAN, who says, Sist. of the Jews, Pref.i?.xi:— 
 
 The moral and religions troth, and thU alone, 1 apprehend, is the ' Word of God" 
 contained in the Sacred Writings. I know no passage In which this emphatic term 
 is appUed to any sentence or saying, which does not convey or enforce such truth. 
 
 On this account I am unwilling to make use of the expression 
 ' The Bible is the Word of God,'— though in the sense of the 
 words above explained I can use it,— because it is so likely to mis- 
 lead the uneducated, and induce them to attach a superstitious 
 
176 PEEFACE TO PART III. 
 
 reverence to the mere text of Scripture. But, when my Brethren 
 use the expression ' Word of Grod/ the question arises, What do 
 they mean ? Their language at one time seems to imply that they 
 attach a Divine Infallibility to every line and letter of the mere 
 text of the Bible, so that, as the Bishop (Lee) of Manchester 
 said, — 
 
 * all ora: hopes for eternity, the very foundations of onr faith, our nearest and 
 dearest consolations, are taken from us, if one line of that Sacred Book be declared 
 to be unfaithful or untrustworthy.' 
 
 But, when the writer of the above words is pressed for an 
 
 answer, as to one particulai statement of the Bible being true on a 
 
 point of natural history, he immediately, while maintaining his 
 
 position in words, abandons it in point of fact, and retreats behind 
 
 the assertion that — 
 
 * eyery line of Scripture will amply bear the pressure of any test applied to it, if 
 viewed with relation to the suJy'ect it really r^ers to, the statey raentally and morally f 
 of those to whom it was addressed^ and the ^ect it was intended to convey '— 
 
 a statement, which, whatever may be its precise meaning, at all 
 events allows of the recognition of the results of my own critical 
 enquiries. The other inhibiting Bishops, as I have said, with the 
 single exception of the Bishop of Llaudapp, have contented 
 themselves with simply condemning my book.* 
 
 But what do my Episcopal Brethren mean by this proceeding ? 
 Do they really suppose that, by the obstructions of Church censm'cs 
 and anathemas, or the mere exercise of authority, they can bar out 
 the entrance of that light of Critical Science, which God Himself 
 has given us, as one of the special blessings bestowed upon us by 
 His Goodness in this day ? May it not be that the Science of 
 Biblical Criticism is as needful to our true progi'ess and highest 
 happiness as any other of the Sciences — as Geology, Astronomy, 
 Chemistry, Natural History, &c. — all which have been aroused 
 into new life in this very age, and many of which — ^like that of 
 Biblical Criticism — were almost wholly Unknown to our fore- 
 fathers ? May it not be true that each one of these Sciences is as 
 truly intended by the Wisdom and Grace of God for the present 
 stage of human development, as any other ojthe sisterhood,— that 
 we cannot despise or refuse the help of any one of them, without 
 'rejecting the counsel of God against ourselves,' — ^that, 'if this 
 
 * The venerable Bishop of Exeter has surprised me, as much as any of my 
 Brethren, by the course wMch he has taken. In a letter to his Clergy, he has very 
 justly condemned the practice of ' prejudging matters which must be the subject of 
 Judicial consideration before our Archbishop,' and not ' adhering' to the very proper 
 
 * resolution of a meeting of the Bishops,' viz. * to avoid any extra-judicial declaration' 
 on tliis subject. And his language bears with special force upon those who may be 
 called to sit hereafter as judges, but who, by distinct expression of their sentimenta 
 beforehand, in public official documents, have surely gone far to ' endanger the im- 
 partiality and purity of the tribunal of justice.' In a further address to his Clergy, 
 the Bishop of ExETEE is reported to have said that he ' has not read the book which 
 has occasioned so much alarm,' and ' cannot, therefore, speak of its real contents,' 
 and that, ' not having examined the book, he will not condemn it.' Yet he ' w thank- 
 ful tliot it hoe called forth so strong a feeling of indignation against me,' and he, too, 
 
 * inhibits me from ministering in his diocese.' 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET III. 177 
 
 work be of God, -we cannot overthrow it, lest haply we be found 
 fighting against God' ? In short, may it not be true that this light 
 of Criticism may be but one of the many-coloured rays of modem 
 Science, which come to us all from the ' Father of Lights,' in this 
 our own age of wonderful Illumination, and which are meant to 
 blend together into the pure, white, Light of Truth, that Light 
 which our spirits need, and which His Wisdom and His Love at 
 this time impart to us ? 
 
 Must we, then, English Christians, live on, as men did in former 
 ages, under strict ecclesiastical restraints, as if there was a ' dadc 
 chamber' in the house, into which we have once looked, but have 
 shut to the door, and dare not look again, lest we should see soiiie- 
 thing to frighten us out of our 'hopes for eternity,' and cause us 
 the loss of ' all our nearest and dearest consolations ' ? How much 
 better to open wide the door, and let in the blessed light and air of 
 day, into every part of our spiritual dwelling! That light, indeed, 
 may show us that the stories of the six days' Creation, the 
 Noachian Deluge,, the slaughter of 68,000 Midianitish women and 
 children, are no longer to be spoken of as historical facts. We may 
 perceive that it is no longer possible to confound the early legends 
 of the Hebrew people, and statements contraiy to reason and the 
 facts of natm-e, or condemned by our moral sense, and by the 
 Voice which witnesses for God within us, with the Eternal 'Word 
 of God.' But we shall find in the Pentateuch, notwithstanding, 
 precious things without number, of which little or no use is made 
 at present in the instruction of the people, — unquestionable facts 
 of ancient history, mixed up, no doubt, with much of imcertain or 
 unreal tradition,— and, above all, rich lessons of spiritual Truth, 
 by which our souls may be cheered end sti'engthened for the work 
 of life. What a day of regenerated life will it be for the Church 
 of England, when these things shall be spoken of, plainly and 
 freely, in every pulpit of the land, — ^when the Bible shall be 
 opened, and the story of its origin explained, and the real value of 
 its histories discussed, as the records of living men, like om-selves, 
 written down by living men, — vrith the reverence due to a Book 
 so venerable, and endeared to the inmost heart of every Christian, 
 but yet without fear of treading with iixeligious feet upon holy 
 
 ground, rather, with the deepest and most sincere conviction that 
 
 we can only thus serve God acceptably, and discharge our duty 
 before Him,, as Christian men arid Ministers, by such free enquiry 
 after Truth, and such free utterance of it. 
 
 But another cry has been raised against my work, and, indeed, 
 the loudest and most terrible of all, the cry of 'Heresy!' 'Blas- 
 phemy!' To my utter amazement, the two Archbishops have 
 swelled this cry,— not to speak of the language used by others of 
 my Episcopal Brethren, as that of the Bishop of Chichesiek, 
 
178 PEEFACE TO PAET III. 
 
 already quoted. The Archbishop of Cakterburt has spoken of 
 my works as ' derogatory to the person, the attributes, and the 
 ■work, of our Divine Redeemer,' and as ' charging Him, who knew 
 what was in man, with ignoraace and imposture.' And, in like 
 manner, the Archbishop of York reproaches me with ' having 
 imputed to the Lord of glory ignorance of holy things,' and 
 ' having described our Lord as a blind guide, quoting, for the very 
 Word of Life, the baseless fables of men.' 
 
 I say that 1 have been amazed at such language being used by 
 these eminent Prelates ; because I could not have believed that 
 persons so high in office and judicial position would, in statements 
 like these, have branded me publicly, before the whole Church, 
 with charges of 'heresy' and 'blasphemy,' for the expressions 
 which I have used in my books on this point. Whatever they 
 might have thought of the soundness of my criticism, or however 
 they might have differed from my views of Inspiration, yet I could 
 not have imagined that they would either have been unaware of 
 the fact; that, in using such expressions with respect to our 
 'Loid's ignorance as the Son of Man,' I was perfectly justified by 
 the practice of the most eminent theologians, both ancient and 
 modem, or that, being ^ware of this, they would have allowed me 
 to be covered with reproach and censure on this account, — nay, 
 with their own hands would have flung some of the hardest stones 
 against me. I thpught that, of course, the Bishops and Doctors 
 of the Church, — more especially those who, like Archbishop 
 Thomson and Bishop Ellicott, have gained a reputation for theo- 
 logical learning, or who, like Dean Alford and Prof. Browne, (as 
 will be seen below,) have expressed the veiy same view in sub- 
 stance as my own, — would protect me, at all events, from such 
 accusations. Otherwise, I should have produced further evidence 
 in my Second Part, to justify my use of the language so much 
 condemned. In support of my position I now produce it, in the 
 contents of the following communication, which has been sent to 
 me by a clergyman, unknown to me personally at present, though 
 well-known as the writer of various zoological papers in scientific 
 journals, and the chief contributor on the Natural History of the 
 Bible to the second volume of Dr. Smith's Dictionary. I will 
 only add that I am deeply sensible of the courage and sincerity 
 which he has shown, amidst the violent excitement of these times, 
 in thus coming forward, unsolicited, to bear this testimony in the 
 service of the Truth. 
 
 mt lohd, 
 
 H there is one passage in your recently published work on the Pentateuch, 
 which more than another has subjected you to very severe condemnation. It is that 
 -which contains the foUowing statement, (Part II,p,xvii) : — 
 
 ' This only I repeat once more. The recognition ol the gradual growth of Jesus, 
 aS'theSon of Man, in human knowledge and science of all kinds, such as that which 
 coaoems the question nt the a^e and authorship of the Pentateuch, is perfectly com. 
 
PEEFACE TO PAUT HI. 179 
 
 patible ■with— rather, is absolutely required by— the most orthodox faith in Hia 
 Divinitiy, as the Eternal Son of God.' 
 
 Very hard words, my Lord, have been uttered against you for maintaining this 
 BO-caUed ' heretical ' opinion. 
 
 The doctrine, -which is embodied in the paragraph quoted above from your book, 
 has lately been occupying my close attention-; and, as the result of my investigations, 
 I shall show — 
 
 (i) That it is expressly taught by our Lord Himself ; 
 
 (ii) That it has the sanction of very many eminent Biblical writers, both ancient 
 and modem ; 
 
 (iii) That it is implied in the language of tbe formularies of our Church. 
 
 (i) Speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem or of the end of the World, our Lord 
 says, * Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in 
 heaven, neither the Son, but the Father,' Mark xiii.32. 
 
 Leonitus de Sectis, act. ult. writes as follows : — 
 
 * One must know that most of the Fathers — indeed, almost all — appear to say that 
 He (Christ) was ignorant of some things ; for, if he is said to be in all respects of 
 the same substance with us, and we are ignorant of some things, it is manifest that 
 He also was ignorant, and the Scripture says of Him that He increased in age and 
 wisdom.' 
 
 St. Ambrose, De Fide, 5, cap.xviii, §221, though he was somewhat afraid of holding 
 the doctrine himself, yet admits that it was held by many, when he says : — 
 
 ' There ai*e many, however, not quite so timid as I am, — for I had rather fear deep 
 things, than be wise about them,— there are many, I say.relying on what is written, 
 
 * And Jesus progressed in wisdom, &c.,' who say confidently that, according to His 
 Divine Nature, indeed, He could not have been ignorant of those things which are 
 future, but that, according to His assumption of omr condition, He said before His 
 
 crucifixion, that He was ignorant as the Son of Man He seems, therefore, to 
 
 be ignorant in the same nature in which He progresses.* 
 
 Gregory Naz. Or.xxxvi(xxx).15, writes : — 
 
 * To whom can it be a matter of doubt that He has a knowledge of that hour, 
 indeed, as God, but is ignorant of it, as Man ? . . . For, inasmiich as the name 
 
 * Son' is used in this passage absolutely, and without being referred to any one, and 
 it is not added, whose Son, on that account a handle is hence afforded to us of so con- 
 sidering the matter as to interpret this ignorance in the most pious sense, ascribing 
 it to His Huma^ty, not to His Divinity. 
 
 Theodoret ad IV Cyr. Anathem. says : — 
 
 * The ignorance, then, does not belong to God the Word, but to the form of the 
 servant, which knew at that time such things as the indwelling Divinity revealed.' 
 
 Athanasius, Disc. II against Arianismt (Pusey's translation, Library of the 
 Fathers,) ch.xxviii, -writes as follows ;— 
 
 * Why, though He knew, He said * no, not the Son knows,' this, I think, none of 
 the faithful is ignorant, viz. that He made this, as those other declarations, as Man, 
 by reason of the flesh. For this, as before, is not the Word's deficiency, but of that 
 human nature, whose property it is to be ignorant. . . Not then, when the heaven 
 was made by Him, nor when He was with the Father Himself, the Word ' disposing 
 all things,' nor before He became Man, did He say it, but when * the Word became 
 flesh.' On this account it is reasonable to ascribe to His Manhood everything which, 
 after He became Man, He speaks humanly. . . . 
 
 ' Certainly, when He says in the Gospel, concerning Himself, in His human 
 character, * Father, the hour is come, glori^Thy Son,' it is plain that He knows also 
 the hour of the end of all things as the Word, though, as Man, He is ignorant of it, 
 for ignorance is proper to man, and especially ignorance of these things. Moreover, 
 thisls proper to the Saviour's love of man ; for, since He was made man, he is not 
 ashamed because of the flesh which is ignorant, to say, ' I know not,' that He may 
 show that, knowing as God, He is bid ignorant according to the flesh. And, therefore, 
 He said not, ' no, not the Son of God knows,' lest the Godhead should seem ignorant, 
 but simply,'* no, not the Son,' that the ignorance might be the Son's as horn among 
 
 ' For ' as on becoming man He hungers and thirsts and suffers with men, so with 
 men, as Man, He knows not.' ^ ^ ^. -u ^ -u -^ * ^ 
 
 Upon the above Dr. Pube? notes as follows, after stating what he considers to be 
 the 'doctrine of the Church 'on this point:— . , ^ .^ ^ ^ ^ crx 
 
 ' However, this view of tbe sacred subject was received by the Church after bt. 
 Athanasius'S day ; and it cannot be denied that he and others of the most eminent 
 Fathers use language, which pnmd facie is inconsistent with it. They certainly 
 spem to impute ignorance to our Lord as Man, as Athanabius in this passage. _ 
 And Dr Pttsey quotes St. Cyril, JWn.i>p. 623-4, ' Why blush they at the conditions 
 of the manhood, and determine to find fault with what especially befits the economy 
 of the flesh ' ' and he says, * Theodoeet expresses the same opinion very strongly. 
 He adds also in a note on jj.464, It is a question to he decided, whether our Lord . . . 
 spoke of a real ignorance, or of an ' economical ' or professed ignorance. He pro- 
 
 n2 
 
1«0 PREFACE TO PART III. 
 
 duces several of the Fathers in support of this latter view. But he quotes also 
 ThEODORETas 'very severe on the principle of 'economy': — 'If He knew the day, 
 and, wishing to conceal it, said He was ignorant, see what a hla^hemy ia the result 1 
 Truth tells an untruth ! ' 
 
 Cyril of Alexandria, Ed. Migne, Tom.75,p.367, says :— 
 
 ' "We ought not, on account of this expression, to accuse the Word of God, and 
 rashly to impute any ignorance to Him. But we should rather admire His love to- 
 wards man, who did not refuse, out of His love towards us, to bring Himself down 
 to so great humiliation, as to bear all things that are ours, one of which also is 
 ignorance.' 
 
 And again Cyril says, Thes.p.221 : — 
 
 ' Just as Christ took this upon Himself in common with men, to hunger, thirst, 
 and suffer the other things which are spoken about Him, exactly in the same way 
 Viere w not/iing to offend any one, if He be said, as Man, to have been ignorant also in 
 common with men' 
 
 Chrtsostom, Horn, cxvii, says : — 
 
 ' He is ignorant then, according to His human nature, who knows all things 
 according to the power of His Divinity.* 
 
 AuausTiNE himself, however, and the Theologians of his day, interpret the ex- 
 pression, ' neither the Son,' to denote, not that Christ, even as Man, was actually 
 ignorant of the day of judgment, but that he was unwilling to communicate it, an 
 explanation plainly untenable, as Archbishop Tillotson has shown in his Sermon 
 cxxix, on the text in question, from which I extract the following : — 
 
 • Some, and those of no small account, have understood these words, as if onr 
 Saviour only intended to put ofE His disciples from a more particular enquiry 
 about the matter ; not that He was ignorant of the day of judgment, but that 
 He did not know it, so as to reveal it to them, — which is by no means to be ad- 
 mitted : not only because it looks too like the equivocation of the Jesuits, but like- 
 wise because the same may be said of &ie angels, since it is not otherwise denied of the 
 angels, that they know this time, than ic is of the Son. Others say that His human 
 nature was not ignorant of the day of judgment, but that it did not Imow this of 
 itself, but by virtue of its union with the Divine nature. But our Saviour absolutely 
 says that the Son did not know it. And, therefore, othej"s more resisonably have dis- 
 tinguished between His human nature and His Divine ; and, though as G-od He 
 could not be ignorant of anything, yet His human understanding did not know it. . 
 ... If this be not admitted, how can we understand that passage concerning our 
 Saviour, Luke ii.52, * that Jesus grew in wisdom, &c.'? , . . For, if the human 
 nature of Christ did necessarily know all things by virtue of its union with the 
 Divinity, He could not then, as Man, be said to grow in wisdom' 
 
 Hawmokd, on Mark xiii.32, writes : — 
 
 * But for the doctrine of those which . . . only aflflrra that, though as God 
 He knew all, yet as Man He was ignorant of some tilings, just in the same manner 
 as He was passible and subject to all human infirmities which had not sin in them, 
 and that this is His own express affirmation that the Son of Man knew not that day 
 and hour, this sure is so far from heresy that . . it is the [almost] unanimous asser- 
 tion of all the Fathers, to which neither the Council of Chalcedon nor any other hath 
 taught anything contrary.' 
 
 LiGHTFOOT, Exercit. on Mark xiii.32, writes :— 
 
 ' To say that the Second Person in the Trinity knows not something, is blasphe- 
 mous ; to say so of the Messias, is not so, who, nevertheless, was the same with the 
 Second Person in the Trinity.' 
 
 Calvin says on Luke ii.40 :— ' Certainly, when the Apostle teaches that (Jesus) 
 was like to us in all things, sin excepted, without doubt he comprehends this also 
 that His soul was subjected to ignorance. . . . Although the Person of God and 
 Man was one, yet it does not follow that anything, that was proper to the Divine 
 nature, Avas given to the human nature. ... In fine, unless anyone pleases to 
 deny that Christ was made a true man, let us not be ashamed also to confess that He 
 voluntarily took upon Himself all things, which cannot be separated from human 
 nature. The objection, however, is foolishly made that ignorance, as being the 
 punishment of sin, does not comport with Christ ; for the same would have to be said 
 also with respect to death. . . . But, when Luke says that He was strengthened 
 in spirit, and filled with wisdom, he signifies that whatever wisdom belongs to men, 
 and daily accrues to them, flows from that one only fountain, viz. the Spirit of God.' 
 
 But I need not multiply quotations. GRonus, Clamus, J. Capbllus, the elder 
 EoBENMULLKR, D'Oyly and Mant, WnrrBY, Bengel, all maintain the dociiuie. 
 
 Bishop HORNE writes, Disc.LVLm.p.208:— 
 
 ' He [the Son] had also a Soul, endued with the same faculties as ours. His under- 
 standing was capable of learning and improvement ; for, as Man, I/e was ignorant of 
 smnp thinqs which He might know, and He * grew,' it is said, ' in Wisdom as well as 
 Stature.' * 
 
 Watkrland, ii.p.l62, {Oxf. Ed. 1856,) writes as follows:— 
 
 ' As it may be truly said of the hndy of man that it is not immortal, though th** 
 soul be. so it may be truly said thai the Son of Man was not knowing, though the Son 
 
PREFACE TO PART III. 181 
 
 0/ God knew everything. ... He denies the knowledge of the day of indgment, 
 but in respect of His human nature ; in which respect also He is said to have 
 * inci-ensed in wisdom, Luke ii.52, the Divine Logos having with the human nature 
 assumed the ignorance and OLhei inji^^mities proper to it.' 
 
 Prof. Harold Browne writes, ^n.i.i).9G:— 
 
 *That He (Jesus) had a perfect human soul appears from His * increasing in 
 wisdom, Luke ii.52, from t/ie possibility of Bis being ignorant, Mark xiii.32, which 
 could not be true of Him considered ordy in his Divine nature.' 
 
 (iii) Lastly, this doctrine, lately so violently impugned, but so generally acknow- 
 ledged hitherto, is implied in the language of our Church's formularies. A few words 
 will BufBce. The 15th Article teaches that * Christ in the truth of our nature was 
 made like unto us in all things, sin only except.' In the Athanasian Creed we ac- 
 knowledge Christ to be ' perfect GrOd and pe7fect Man.' How can we possibly receive 
 this doctrine with regard to His human nature, if we deny to that nature one of the 
 most essential attributes of humanity ? 
 
 Thus, my Lord, you have been judged a heretic for promulgating a doctrine, which 
 is expressly taught by our Lord Himself and by the Evangelist St. Luke, which is 
 implied in the formularies of the Church of England, and is sanctioned by many of 
 the most learned and devout writers, both ancient and modem. 
 
 And now, my Lord, with respect to the general character of your recent publica- 
 tions on the Pentateuch, I feel it my positive duty, at whatever cost, to say a few 
 plain and honest wtirds. I have diligently, conscientiously, and prayerfully, studied 
 the whole question at issue for the last six months, and am compelled to admit the 
 general triUh of your arguments, though differing in some particulars. You are 
 aware that I published a pamphlet in reply to your Part I ; I have withdrawn that 
 teply from circulation. Before the appearance of your Book, however, I was quite 
 certain that the Bible and Science were opposed to each other. Four years' examina- 
 tion of almost every word in the Bible relating to its Natural History has convinced 
 me that, in many essential points, the Biblical and Natural records are, to use the 
 words of the learned and candid Kausch, ' utterly and irreconcilably at variance.' 
 The more I examine the whole question for myself, the more certain I become that 
 in the Bible ' legend is mixed up with history, poetic imaginings with prosaic nar- 
 rative, that no miraculous power has been exei-ted to preserve it from omissions, 
 interpolations, and corruptions of the text,' and that the Bible * is, therefore, not 
 infallible in the sense in which the popular creed assumes it to be.' 
 
 We acknowledge, my Lord, notwithstanding a large admixture of the human, and, 
 therefore, fallible, element in the Bible, that in that Book there is b. jewel of heavenly 
 lustre and of priceless value. Why are we to suppose that this jewel shines less 
 brilliantly, or loses one iota of its value, because the gold of its setting has a consider- 
 able percentage of aUoy ? Why will men refuse to drink of the * water of life,' 
 because it is offered to them in an earthen vessel ? 
 
 Your Lordship is at liberty to make any use you please of this letter. 
 
 I remain, my Lord, yoiu" faithful and obedient servant, 
 Preston Rectory, Welungton, Salop : May 20, 1863. W. Houghto??. 
 
 But, it is said, ' the same spirit of enquiry will be carried into 
 the waitings of the New Testament.' I answer, undoubtedly it 
 will, and must be j and, if there is any part of the Church's 
 teaching, depending on the New Testament, which will not bear 
 the test of Truth, we shall, of course, as servants of the God of 
 Truth, be bound to reject that also. Is there, then, a 'dark 
 chamber' here too, which we are afraid to examine, — into which 
 we dare not suffer the light of day to enter ? Is this the secm-ity 
 on which we hold our 'hopes for eternity,' our 'nearest and 
 dearest consolations,' that we must not venture to apply to the 
 records, on which we build our faith, an honest and searching 
 criticism, such as we should certainly bring to the examination of 
 documents of far less vital consequence ? Let not me, or those 
 who think with me, be blamed for this suggestion. It is not mine, 
 and I have no di'ead of such enquiries ; I know that they will only 
 tend still more to advance God's Gloi-y, and our eternal welfare, 
 through the progress of His Truth among men. Let those be 
 blamed who have put forth this argument, for the purpose of 
 
182 PREFACE TO PAET III. 
 
 keeping men still bound, hand and foot, in the swaddling-clothes 
 of old traditions, and checking all examination like this into the 
 historical truth of the Pentateuch, instead of recognising at once, 
 in the face of the Church, the results of modern criticism, as 
 established facts, and doing their part to harmonise them with 
 those doctrinal teachings, which they deem to be part of the sum 
 and substance of Christianity. One important difficulty, upon 
 which we have soon stumbled in the very outset of these enquiries, 
 I have done my best to remove; and for so doing I have been 
 reproached as a 'heretic' and 'blasphemer.' But other difficulties 
 will, no doubt, arise, and, indeed, have already been raised, not 
 merely by the progress of criticism, but by recent discoveries in 
 geological and other sciences, which must tend to modify materially 
 some of those traditional views, which have been hitherto main- 
 tained on the assumption of the historical truth of the early 
 portions of the Pentateuch. I believe that I am doing the best 
 service to the cause of true Religion by showing that we are not 
 obliged to receive as the Infallible ' Word of God ' these statements, 
 which conflict with the certain conclusions of Science, and by 
 asserting that the 'Word of God' is wholly independent of the 
 amount of credence which we give to these ancient narratives. 
 Very striking and important are these words of Dean Milman, 
 Xatin Christianity, vi./).633, quoted by me in Part I, but little 
 noticed by those, who have inveighed so severely against me : — 
 
 As it is my own confident belief tJiat the words of Clirist, and His words alone, (the 
 primal, ind^easible, truths of Christianity,) shall not pass away, so I cannot presiune to 
 say that men may not attain to a clearer, at the same time more full and compre- 
 hensive and balanced, sense of those words, than has as yet been generally received 
 in the Christian world. As all else is transient and mutable, these only eternal and 
 universal, assuredly, whatever light may be thrown on the mental constitution of 
 man, even on the constitution of nature, and the laws which govern the world, will 
 be concentrated so as to give a more penetrating vision of those midying truths. 
 
 And I commend to the consideration of those of my Right 
 Reverend Brethren, who have so strongly condemned me, these 
 other words of the same eminent writer, History of tlie Jews, 
 jD.xxxiv : — 
 
 If on such subjects [as those here discussed] some solid ground be not found, on 
 ■which higlily educated, reflective, reading, reasoning, men may find firm footing, I 
 can foresee nothing but a wide— a widening— I fear, an irreparable— breach between 
 the thought and the religion of England. A comprehensive, all-embracing. Catholic, 
 Christianity, which knows what is essential to religion, what is temporary and 
 extraneous to it, may defy the world. Obstinate adherence to things antiquated, and 
 irreconcilable with advancing knowledge and thought, may repel, and for ever,— how 
 ntany, I know not,— how far, I know still less. Avertat omen Deus 1 
 
 That portion of the work, however, which concerns the New 
 Testament, I leave at present to others. The Bishops and Doctors 
 of om- Church are many, and I am but one. Several of them are 
 learned in matters specially connected with the criticism of the 
 N.T., with the early records of the history of the Church, and of 
 the origin, progress, and development of dogmatic teaching within 
 her pale. 1 must confine myself,— for the present, at least,— to 
 the special work which I have here undertaken, and in which my 
 
PREFACE TO PABT III. 183 
 
 Brethren have left me hitherto to labour alone, vis. that of setting 
 before the Laity and Clergy of the National Church, to the best 
 of my power, the most certain conclusions of modem critics as to 
 the age and authorship of the different parts of the Pentateuch. 
 
 »** Since tlie above Preface was written, the Report of the Committee of the 
 Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, appointed to examine Parts I and II of 
 my work, has been presented, and endorsed by a vote of ten Bishops of the Province, 
 at the eai-nest instance of the Bishop of Oxford, but in opposition to the judgment 
 of two of the most eminent and learned Bishops of the English Bench, the Bishops 
 of London and St. DAvm's. 
 
 I rejoiced at the appointment of that Committee. Per the furtherance of the Truth 
 I desired nothing more than that my investigations and conclusions should be brought 
 under review by such a body of English Clergymen, distinguished, most of them, by 
 high ecclesiastical position, and many of them by eminent literary and theological 
 attainments. It is tame thsit Archdeacon Denison, who moved for the Committee, 
 and has acted as its chairman, — who expressed the wish to ' avoid the appearance of 
 approaching to intemperance in thought or language,' and who, therefore, in his 
 preliminary address to the Convocation, confined himself to speaking of me merely 
 as ' a sacrilegious person,' one ready to * damage the Bible by misrepresentation, to 
 tear out its leaves, mutilate it, and d^ecrate what is left,' addbig, ' I am going to say, 
 if any man asserts such things as are asserted in this book. Anathema Esto I Let 
 him be put away ! ' — ^took for granted that many naembers of Convocation had not 
 read the First Part of my work, and desired, apparently, that they should not read 
 either Part for themselves, but simply accept the report of his Committee ; for he 
 said, * I have tmj doubt, — at all events, I hope, — that there are many here, who have not 
 read the First Part, and I am sure that there are many, who have not read the Second 
 Part,' of the book, on which he was about to call them to pass some kind of judgment. 
 
 However, I presume that, at all events, those gentlemen, who have been engaged 
 on this Committee, have felt it to be their duty to read my two Parts, and have en- 
 deavoiured to div^t themselves, as much as possible, of all prejudices, and to deliver 
 ' a just and true verdict according to the evidence,' as in God's sight. I regret, in- 
 deed, that some of the most distinguished members of the Committee have taken no 
 part at all in its proceedings, including two professors of Divinity in the TJn versiby 
 of Cambridge, and others, from -whose learning and honesty of purpose I expected 
 much advantage for the cause of Truth. Nevertheless, I accept the Report, aa 
 exhibiting the result of nine days' searching enquiry into the contents of my books, 
 by fourteen clergymen, many of them eminent for piety and learning, who also, 
 however strongly animated by the desire to bear witness to the Truth, and do nothing 
 by partiality, yet had, many or most of them, spoken severely beforehand in censiu-e 
 of my writings, and would not, therefore, be likely to spare any traces of ' heresy ' 
 which might fairly be detected in them. 
 
 I observe, then, that the Committee has not reported that my criticisms are 
 unfounded or my critical conclusions /a?5e. They do not impeach the scientific truth, 
 but only the orOwdoxy, of my reasonings ; they leave to * individuals' the business 
 of replying to my books ; and they say • the work of a Synod of the Church is of a 
 different kind.' As Archd. BiCKERSTEnB observed, ' They have simply taken expres- 
 sions from the book, and placed them side by side with the Bible, and expressions 
 from the Formularies and Articles.' To me it is of little consequence, comparatively, 
 whether my conclusions are deemed to be orthodoi or not, provided only that they 
 are true. 11 so, they are * orthodox' in the best sense— the only right sense— of the 
 word, in the only one which is recognised by the whole spirit of our National Church, 
 based, as it surely is, upon the Truth, and not on authority. 
 
 But the Committee of Convocation has reported that, ' bearing in mihd that it is 
 not their province to pronounce definitely what are, or are not, opinions heretical, 
 they content themselves with submitting that three propositions, being the main 
 propositions of the book, involve errors of the gravest and most dangerous character, 
 subversive of Faith in the Bible as the Word of God.' They then ' proceed to cite 
 from the book a further proposition,' which they evidently mean to charactense aa 
 'heretical' and 'blasphemous.' , . , t a * ^ 
 
 These four points, however, sum up the cnmes, of which I am supposea to oe 
 guilty. Never, I presume, was any book subjected to the ordeal of a more searching 
 scrutiny And it may be safely concluded that such scrutiny has brought forth fully, 
 into the strongest light, all the offences, with which, in the opinion of these eminent 
 divines, my books can justly be charged. ■, .^ . 
 
 I need hardly say, that I am glad to find that my offences are so few, and that upon 
 the first three points complained of I am in substantial agreement with one of Uio 
 most learned and distinguished members of Convocation itself, Dean Milman, of bt. 
 Paul's, and upon the fourth with two others, the latter of whom attended all tho 
 
184 PREFACE TO PART III. 
 
 meetings of this very Commtttee, Prof. Hahold Browite and Denn Auono of 
 Canterbury. Some passages from these authors have been already quoted in tliia 
 Preface : but, under the circumstffinces of the case, it may be well to produce the 
 most important of them again, and to contrast them with the charges made against 
 me. 
 
 ri) I have said that * TJie Bible is not iiseJf God's Word,' it being, however, added 
 by me that ' assuredly God's Word will be heard in the Bible, by all who will humbly 
 and devoutly listen for it.' 
 
 Dean Muman says, Hist, of the Jews, p.xi : — 
 
 ' The moral and religious truth, and this alone, I apprehend, is the ' Word of God ' 
 contained in the Sacred Writings.* 
 
 (ii) I have said that ' Not Moses^ but Samuel^ and other pei-som of a later age, 
 composed the Pentateuch.' 
 
 Dean MnjiiN says, ibid, p.xxvii : — 
 
 • There are two theories, between which range all the conclusions of what may be 
 called the critical school : — 
 
 * First, that the Pentateuch in its present form is of venj late date, the reign of 
 Hezekiah, Manasseh, Josiah, or even subsequent to these ; 
 
 ' Secondly, that the Pentateuch, even in its present form, is of very high antiquity, 
 as high as the time of Moses, but that it has undergone many interpolations, iome 
 additions, and much modification, extending to the language, in successive ages, 
 
 ' If I am to choose, I am most decidedly for the second.' 
 
 (iii) I have said that ' The story of the Pentateuch, with respect to some, at least, of the 
 chi^ portions of the narrative, cannot be regarded as historically true.' 
 
 Dean Mtt.m aw says, ibid, ^.xxxii : — 
 
 ' Maintain the numbers [of the Pentateuch] as they stand, I see no way, without 
 one vast continuous miracle, out of the difQculties, contradictions, improbabilities, 
 
 The judgment of one such learned and devout historian, who gives the above 
 results as the conclusions of thirty years* careful study of these questions, will weigh 
 more, I imagine, with most intelUgent and candid readers, than the mere denuncia- 
 tions of others, who have never thoroughly examined the subject, and are not really 
 aware of its difficulties. 
 
 (iv) With respect to the fourth point, my words are reported as follows: — 
 
 ' Our Lord Jesus Christ, having taken our nature fiUly, and having voluntarily 
 entered into all the conditions of humanity, and, among others, into that which 
 makes our growth in all ordinary knowledge gradual and limited, ... at what 
 period of Ms life upon earth is it to be supposed that He had granted to Him, as the 
 Son of Man, supernaturally, full and accurate information, so that he should be 
 expected to spesdc about the Pentateuch in other terms than any other devout Jew 
 of that day would have employed ? Why should it be thought that He would spealc 
 with certain Divine knowledge on this matter, more than upon other matters of 
 ordinary science or history ? ' 
 
 And the Report goes on to say : — 
 
 ' Your Committee observe upon this proposition that it questions our Blessed 
 Lord's Divine Icnowledge, as witnessed in Scripture by the Holy Ghost.' 
 
 I think that, when my readers take account of the passages, which have been, 
 already quoted on this point in this Preface, — among which will be found the worda 
 of Prof. Browne and Dean AxFORD, — they will be surprised at the above statement. 
 They ^vill be surprised also to find that neither the Bishop of Oxford, nor any one 
 of the Bishops who voted with him, uttered one syllable to imply that he was aware 
 of any such passages existing, or expressed a brotherly hope, that on this particular 
 point, at all events, I might not be altogether so guilty as some have supposed. It is, 
 I repeat, an amazing fact, that so many Bishops, Doctors, and Divines should have 
 adopted this Report, without one single voice breaking the dead silence, to intimate 
 that there was ever the slightest doubt in the Church upon this question, — still less, 
 to give utterance to the simple truth, that here, at least, I am supported by the 
 consentient opinion of very many of the greatest Divines, both ancient and modern. 
 
 J. W. NATAL. 
 
 23 Sussex Place, Keksikgtoh, Loudon, W. 
 June 3, 186S. 
 
PAKT III 
 
 THE BOOK OF DEUTEEOFOMY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DETJTIRONOMIST DISTINCT FROM THE 
 OTHER "WRITERS OP THB PENTATEUCH. 
 
 505. The course of our argument will 
 lead us to consider next more closely 
 the age and authorship of the Book 
 of Deuteronomy. We may now assume 
 that we are no longer under the neces- 
 sity of regarding this portion of the 
 Pentateuch as being an actual authentic 
 record, by Moses himself or by one of 
 his cont-emporaries, of the last ad- 
 dresses of the great Hebrew lawgiver 
 to his people. In fact, if it be true, 
 as we believe, that the other parts of 
 the Pentateuch are, generally, of far 
 later date than the time of the Exodus, 
 there can be no reason a priori for sup- 
 posing that this Book forms an excep- 
 tion to the general rule. And, as we 
 have seen some ground for concluding 
 that the original Elohistic story has 
 been very considerably enlarged in later 
 days, — ^perhaps, by more than one 
 author, in different ages, — it is, from 
 the first, not improbable that the Book 
 of Deuteronomy also, which, as we 
 shall presently see, differs remarkably 
 from the rest, not only in its style and 
 tone, but also in its very language, and 
 verbal forms of expression, may have 
 been added in a still later age. 
 
 506. There can be no doubt that 
 Deuteronomy is throughout the work of 
 one and the same hand, with the ex- 
 ception of the last cha,pter, and, per- 
 haps, one or two other short sections, 
 (such as xxxii.48-52,) which will be 
 
 pointed out hereafter. Otherwise, the 
 Book is complete in itself, and exhibits 
 a perfect unity of style and subject. It 
 consists chiefly of addresses ascribed to 
 Moses shortly before his death ; viz. — 
 
 (i) An introductory discourse, i6— 
 iv.io, in which he is represented as 
 recounting to the people, by way of 
 encouragement and warning, a brief 
 sketch of their past history, after their 
 escape out of Egypt, which discourse, 
 however, as we have seen (261, 262), is 
 interrupted, here and there, with geo- 
 graphical and archaeological notices, 
 very ill-suited to such an occasion, and 
 involves anachronisms, where reference 
 is made to events of the previous weeks 
 as to events of a bygone age, which be- 
 tray at once the later time at which it 
 was written ; 
 
 (ii) The main body of the work, 
 v.l-xxvi.l9, a long and impressive ad- 
 dress, urging upon the people, by re- 
 iterated arguments of the most earnest 
 and affectionate kind, the duty and 
 blessedness of obeying the Divine com- 
 mands, and the danger of disobedience ; 
 
 (iii) Additional addresses, xxvii.l- 
 XXX. 20, expressed in language of great 
 eloquenfte, with powerful — almost, at 
 times, appalling — energy, in which the 
 people are warned, again and again, of 
 the fearful consequences of departing 
 from Jehovah ; 
 
 (iv) The conclusion, xxxi.l-xxxiv. 
 12, containing the 'Song' and last 
 ' Blessing ' of Moses, with the account 
 of his death and burial ' in the land of 
 Moab, over against Bethpeor; but no 
 
THE DEUTEEONOMIST DISTINCT FROM THE 
 
 186 
 
 man knoweth of his sepulchre unto 
 this day,' xxxiv.6. 
 
 507. No attentive reader of the Bible 
 can have failed to remark the striking 
 difference above referred to, which 
 exists between the style and contents 
 of Deuteronomy and those of the other 
 Books, generally, of the Pentateuch, 
 These latter are occupied almost en- 
 tirely with long details of legend or 
 history, with circumstantial directions 
 for the construction of the Tabernacle 
 and its vessels, or with multiplied re- 
 petitions of the minutiae of the cere- 
 monial Law ; so that the writers only 
 very occasionally break forth, from 
 their usual plain, prosaic, style, into 
 grand prophetical utterances, or soar 
 into the higher regions of poetry. 
 
 508. But the Book of Deuteronomy, 
 on the contrary, almost from beginning 
 to end, is one magnificent poem, or col- 
 lection of poems, full of noble thoughts 
 and glowing expressions, containing 
 scarcely a single lengthy detail of a 
 purely historical, artistic, or ceremonial, 
 nature, but wholly devoted to enforcing, 
 the paramount duties of morality and 
 religion, in tones of earnest and ini 
 passioned eloquence, — now with the 
 most persuasive and touching ten- 
 derness, now with the most impressive 
 and terrible denunciations. 
 
 609. Prof. BAWLiNSOir, indeed, writes, 
 Aids to Faith, p.liS : — 
 
 Considered as a literary work, the Penta- 
 teuch is not the production of an advanced 
 or refined, but of a simple and rude, age. Its 
 characteristics axe plainness, inartijiciality, ab- 
 sence of rhetorical ornament, and occasional 
 defective arrangement. , , , We look in vain 
 through the Pentateuch for the gnomic wisdom 
 of Solomon, the eloquentdenunciations of Ezekiel 
 or Jeremiah, or the lofty fligfits of Isaiah, 
 
 This, seems, indeed, to be a very strange 
 assertion. Surely, no one, after reading 
 the glorious rhetoric of D.xxviii or 
 D.xxxii, would hesitate for one moment 
 to pronounce either of these passages 
 to be one of the most ' eloquent de- 
 nunciations,' and one of the inost ' lofty 
 flights ' of prophetical, as well as of po- 
 etical, imagination, that can be found 
 within the whole compass of sacred 
 and profane literature. Most probably 
 Prof. Eawlinson was not really think- 
 ing, when he wrote the above words, 
 of these chapters, or of the Book of 
 
 Deuteronomy at all. His language, in- 
 fact applies generally, with sufficient 
 accuracy, to the other portions of the 
 Pentateuch. And it is the marked 
 contrast between the general plainness 
 of style in these other Books, and the 
 spirit and energy, the fire of holy zeal, 
 the warmth of imagination, which 
 characterize everywhere the Book of 
 Deuteronomy, by which we are from 
 the first, before instituting any closer 
 enquiries, compelled strongly to the 
 conviction that they cannot have had 
 the same author or authors. 
 
 610. But it may, perhaps, be asked, 
 'Was not Moses himself capable of 
 producing such a Book aS this ?' At 
 the close of his long life, after so many 
 awful communings with God, — being 
 now, as it were, in the very hour of 
 his own dissolution, with his bodily 
 eye, indeed, stUl undimmed, and his 
 natural force unabated, D.xxxiv.7, but 
 with his feet already standing on the 
 verge of the eternal world, and his 
 spirit's eyesight straining into the 
 darkness that lay before him, — is it 
 wonderful that he should have felt the 
 prophetical impulse seize him mightily, 
 at such a time, with a power unknown 
 before, and that he should have thus 
 poured forth his dying utterances, of 
 mingled laudation atid reproof, en- 
 couragement and warning, blessing and 
 cursing, in strains of unwonted force 
 and eloquence ? 
 
 511. Moses, too, it may be said,like 
 Jacob of old, G.xlix.l-27,mayhere have 
 gathered up the manifold and wonder- 
 ful experiences of his life, in this last 
 burst of grand, heart-stirring, oratory. 
 No longer now occupied with the things 
 of time, — the legends of hoar antiquity, 
 thehistoricalrecords of the events in the 
 wilderness, the ritual of external wor- 
 ship, the requirements of the Camp and 
 of the earthly Sanctuary, — we may well 
 believe that he would have wished to 
 have his last hours occupied, as herej 
 with the enforcement of eternal realities, 
 — of that worship in spirit and in truth, 
 of which these earthly things arebutthe 
 symbols, — so as to leave lingering in 
 the ears and in the hearts of his people 
 the echo of those words, which siun up 
 
OTHEE WEITEHS OF THE PENTATEUCH, 
 tlie whole substance of his preyious 
 teaching, — 
 
 187 
 
 ' Hear, O Zsrael I Jehovah our God is One 
 Jehovah; and thou shalt love Jehovah thy 
 God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, 
 and with all thy might,' D.vi.4,5,— 
 
 •words, which One greater than Moses 
 declared to contain the essence of all 
 the Law and the Prophets, only adding 
 from L.xix.l8 the 'new command' of 
 the Gospel, Matt.xxii.37-39 — 
 
 ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' 
 612. This argument, might, indeed, 
 have been employed, with some plausi- 
 bility, to vindicate to Moses the com- 
 position of this Book, if we had not 
 already seen that the story of the 
 Exodus, generally, cannot be regarded 
 as historically true, — if it were not also 
 plain that the other Books of the Pen- 
 tateuch must have been composed in a 
 later age than that of Moses, — if, 
 lastly, there were not, in the language 
 of Deuteronomy itself, abundant indi- 
 cations that we have here a very different 
 author, and one of a very different age, 
 from those concerned in writing the 
 main portions of the other books of 
 the Pentateuch. 
 
 513. One very remarkable instance 
 of this may be seen in the fact that, 
 whereas in the other Books the Priests 
 are repeatedly styled the ' sons of Aa- 
 ron,' L.i.5,7,8,ll,ii.2,iii.2,xiii.2, N.x.8, 
 eomp. i/.xxi.21, N.xviii. 1,9,11,19, and 
 are never once called the 'sons of Levi,' 
 yet in Deuteronomy, on the contrary, 
 they are repeatedly called the ' sons of 
 Levi' or 'Levites,' D.xvii.9,18,xviii. 
 l,xxi.5,xxiv.8,xxvii.9,xxxi.9, — comp. 
 XYiii.l,5,xxxiii.8-ll, — and never once 
 the ' sons of Aaron.' 
 
 614. Infact, a very strong line of dis- 
 tinction is drawn between the Priests, 
 the ' sons of Aaron,' and the ' Levites' 
 or ' sons of Levi,' in the Book of Num- 
 bers throuahout, — not only in the first 
 portions, iii.9,10, iv.l5,19,20,xvi.8-10, 
 40,xviii, 1-3,6,7, Sec, but also at the very 
 end of the forty years' wanderings, — see 
 xxxi.28,29,41, compared with 'y.30,47. 
 And so, in the fortieth year, we read of 
 'Eleazar, the sou of Aaron the Priest,' 
 xxv.7.11,xxvi.l, exactly as in xvi.37. 
 It cannot be thought that any writer, 
 whether Moses or any other, would so. 
 
 Suddenly change his form of expression 
 in such a case as this, in the very 
 short interval in question. And let it 
 be noted that ' the Priests the Levites,' 
 inD.xxvii.9, and 'the Priests the sons 
 of Levi,' in D.xxxi.9, are supposed to 
 be the Priests then living, Eleazar, 
 &e., the actual ' sons of Aaron.' 
 
 615. Bishop Ollivant, however, 
 Second Letter to his Ciergy, p.9, tries 
 to explain the above fact as follows : — 
 When we find that the death of Aaron had 
 been recorded in N.xxxiii.88, six months before 
 one word of Deuteronomy was spoken, 1 think 
 thatwe may well suppose, either that a sense 
 of his own loss might have induced Moses to 
 pass over his brother's name in silence (I), or 
 that, Aaron being now no more, so that his 
 feelings could not possibly be wounded by 
 the change, the Lawgiver, remembering the 
 jealousy of certain Levites, which had dictated 
 the cry against himself and Aaron, ' Ye take 
 too much upon you,' might deem it good 
 policy, or even be directed by Jehovah Him- 
 self, to endeavour to extinguish a flame, 
 suppressed, but perhaps not altogether extin- 
 guished, by henceforth adopting an appellation 
 which ref eri'ed rather to the common patri- 
 archal ancestor of Priests and Levites, than 
 to the family ancestor of Priests alone. 
 
 516. I leave the above to the con- 
 sideration of my readers, merely obser- 
 ving that, though the death of Aaron 
 is referred to in N.xxxiii.38, the full 
 account of it is given in N.xx.22-29, 
 after which we fiud the name of Aai'on 
 repeatedly mentioned — (^by Moses, as 
 is supposed)— 6'.(/'. in N.xxvi.64. Also 
 inN.xxv.7,ll,xxvi.l, we have, asabove 
 mentioned, the expression, — 
 
 ' Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of 
 Aaron the driest.' 
 
 So that, according to the history, 
 neither the 'feelings' of Moses, nor 
 his 'policy,' prevented his using the 
 name of 'Aaron the Priest,' within 
 six months after his death, — in his 
 writings at all events, — for the instruc- 
 tion of the people. 
 
 517. Again, the Deuteronomist uses 
 the word Torah, ' Law,' invariably of 
 theffiWeLaw, i.5,iv.8,44,xvii.ll,18,19, 
 xxvii.3,8,26, xxviii.58,61, xxix.20,28, 
 
 10, xxxi.9,11, 12,24,26, xxxii.46, 
 xxxiii.4,10, and never of a single parti- 
 cular precept. But in the other Books 
 the word is used most frequently, — 
 indeed, almost always, (the exceptions 
 being E.xiii.9,xvi.4. xxiv.l2,) — of^jar- 
 
188 
 
 THE DEUTEEONOMIST DISTINCT, &e. 
 
 ieci(7ffrlaws, E.xii.49,L.Ti.9,14,2.5,Tii.l, 
 7,11.37, xi.46, xii.7, xiii.69, xiv.2,32,54, 
 57, XT.32, N.v.29,30, vi.)3,21, xv.l6, 
 29, xix.2,14, xxxi.21. 
 
 518. Also the Deuteronomist confines 
 allsaorifioestoomc^^occ, 'which Jehovah 
 would choose, to put His Name there,' 
 xii.S.ll, 13,14,18,21,26,xiv,23,24,25,xv. 
 20, xvi.2,6, 7,11, 15,16, xvii.8,10, xviii.6, 
 xxTi.2,xxxi.ll. Whereas the other four 
 Books say nothing ahout this, but ex- 
 pressly imply the contrary, — 
 
 * In all places, where I record my Name, I 
 will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.' 
 E.XX.24. 
 
 519. Further, the Deuteronomist, 
 though he strictly enjoins the ob- 
 servance of the three Great Feasts 
 and of the Passover,* xvi.1-17, yet 
 makes no mention whatever of the 
 'Feast of Trumpets,' L.xxiii.23-25, 
 N.xxix.1-6, or the 'Day of Atone- 
 ment,' L.xxiii.26-32, N.xxix.7-11, on 
 each of which days it was expressly 
 ordered that they should 'do no servile 
 work,' that they should have ' a holy 
 convocation,' and that they should 
 'offer an offering made by fire unto 
 Jehovah,' just exactly as at the three 
 Great Feasts, and on the latter of 
 which they were ' to afflict their souls 
 by a statute for ever,' and it is added— 
 
 'Whatsoever soul it be, that shall not be 
 afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off 
 from among his people ; and whatsoever soul 
 it be, that doeth any -work in that same day, 
 the same soul will / (Jehovah) destroy from 
 among his people.' L.xxiii.29,30. 
 
 520. Let it be borne in mind that the 
 directions in N.xxix are supposed to 
 have been laid down by Jehovah Him- 
 self only a few weeks previously to this 
 address of Moses. Yet here, while 
 making, as he is represented to be 
 doing, a final summary of their duties, 
 as to the observance of their annual 
 sacred seasons, he omits all mention of 
 these two important days, upon which 
 the same stress is laid in L.xxiii as on 
 the three Great Feasts, and for the 
 neglect of one of which the punish- 
 ment of death by the stroke of Divine 
 judgment is threatened. 
 
 ♦ The 'Passover' is evidently distinguished 
 from the * Feast of Unleavened Bread.' (with 
 which it was connected,) in L.xxiii.5,6, 
 N.xxviii.16,17. 
 
 621. Again, there are a number of 
 sentiments or statements, repeated 
 again and again by the Deuteronomist, 
 which occur, most of them rarely, and 
 many of them not at all, e.g. (v), (ix), 
 (x),(xi),(xii),(xiv),(xv), in any of the 
 other Books of the Pentateuch : viz. — 
 
 (i) That Israel should possess the land of 
 nations 'greater and mightier' than itself, 
 iv.38, vii.l, ix.l, xi,23 ; comp. i.28, vii.l7, and 
 also (J.xviii.l8,N.xiv.l2 ; 
 
 (ii) That Jehovah had 'led them forty 
 years ' through the wilderness, viii.2,xxix.S j 
 comp. i.31,ii.7 ; 
 
 (iii) That Jehovah is God and ' none else,' 
 iv.35,39, xxxii.39 ; comp. vi.4 ; whereasintlie 
 other Books this truth is not thus stated in 
 plain terms, but rather the preeminence and 
 excellence of Jehovah above all other gods is 
 magnified, as it is also in D.x.17 ; 
 
 (iv) That obedience will be blessed with 
 long life, and the contrary, lv.1,40, v.16,33, 
 vi.2, viii.l, xi.21, xvi.2(), xxv.16, xxx.6,15-20, 
 xxxii.47 ; comp. £.xx.l2, xxiii.26, N.xiv.23, 
 xxxii.ll ; 
 
 (V) That the statutes, &c., which Mosea 
 had taught them, were those which Jehovah 
 had ' commanded him to teach them,* that 
 they might ' do them in the land which Jeho- 
 vah gave them,' iv.5,14, v,31, vi.l, xii.l ; 
 
 (vi) That they should 'teach their chil- 
 dren' about Jehovah's doings, &c., iv.9,10, 
 vi.7,20,&o., xi.l9 ; comp. E.xii.26, xiii.8,14; 
 
 (vii) That Mount Sinai ' burned with fii-e,' 
 and Jehovah spake ' out of the midst of the 
 Are,' iv.11,12,15,33,36, v.4,6,22,2S,24,25,26, ix. 
 10,15, X.4, xviii.l6, xxxiii.2 ; it is mentioned 
 in B.xix.18 that Jehovah ' descended on the 
 mount in fire,* and in E.xxiv.l7 that 'the 
 appearance of the glory of Jehovah was like 
 devouring fire;* butitissaid, ' He called unto 
 Moses oztt of the midst of the cloud,' and not, as 
 in Deuteronomy, ' ovt of the midst of the Jit-e'l 
 
 (viii) That Jehovah would ' inherit Israel, 
 iv.20, ix.26,29, xxxii.9 ; comp. B.xxxiv.9 j 
 
 (ix) That they should not, when 'fat' and 
 full with the good things of Canaan, 'corrupt 
 themselves,' &c., iv.25, vi.lO,&c., viii.lO,&c., 
 xi.lS.&c, xxxi.20, xxxil.l5,&o. ; 
 
 (x) That idolatry in every form is specially 
 ' abomination to Jehovah,* iv.25, xi.l6, xxvii. 
 15, xxvlii.36,64, Xxlx.l7, xxx.17, xxxi.16,20, 
 xxxii.16,17 ; 
 
 (xi) That Jehovah is to be served with in- 
 ward, spiritual worship, ' with all the heart, 
 and with all the soul,' iv.29, vi.5, x.l2, xi.l3, 
 xiii.4, xxvi.16, xxx.2,6,10 ; 
 
 (xii) That Jehovah had 'chastened' (in- 
 sti-ucted) them, as a father his child, iv.86, 
 viii.6, xi.2 ; 
 
 (xiii) That Jehovah ' would drive out,' iv. 
 38, ix.4,6, xi.23, xviii.12, ' cast out," vi.l9, vii. 
 1,22, ix.4, ' deliver,' vii.2,23, xxxi.5, ' destroy,' 
 vii.23, viii.20, ix.S, xxxi.3, 'cut ofl," lil.29, 
 xix.l,the nations before Israel ; comp. K.xxiil. 
 23,27,30,31, xxxiv.ll, L.xviii.24 ; 
 
 (xiv) That Jehovah had brought out Israel 
 ' by temptations, signs, wonders, &o.,' iv.84, 
 vi.22, vii.l9, xi.3, xxvi.8, xxix.2,3 ; 
 
 (XV) That Israel should hear and observe to 
 do Jehovah's commands, ' that it might t» 
 
CHAEACTEEISTIC EXPRESSIONS OF DEUTEEONOMY. 189 
 
 well with them,' and that they might be 
 multiplied, &o., tLS, Tii.13, viii.l, xiii.l7, 
 xxviii.63, XXX.I6 ; 
 
 (xvi) That Israel should *fear' Jehovah, 
 vi.24, Tiii.6, xlv.23, zxviii.S8 ; comp. L.xix. 
 14,32, J3y.l7,36,43; 
 
 (xTii) That Israel should 'smite,' vii.2, 
 •exterminate,' Tii.2, xx.l7, 'devour,' vii.l6, 
 'destroy with a mighty destruction,' vii.23, 
 • drive out and destroy,' ix.3, * leave nothing 
 alive of,' xx.l6, the nations of Canaan ; comp. 
 N.xxxiii.S2,53; 
 • (xviii) That the nations of Canaan would 
 be likely to turn the Israelites to idolatrous 
 practices, vii.4, xii.Sl, zx.l8 ; comp. B.xxiii.32, 
 33, xxxiv.12-16 ; 
 
 (xix) That Israel is 'holy imto Jehovah,' 
 above all nations upon earth, vii.6, x.l5, xiv. 
 2,21, xxvi.l9 ; comp. E.xix.6, L.xx.24,26 ; 
 
 (xx) That Jehovah would ' bless ' them, if 
 obedient, with plentiful supplies of food and 
 all earthly blessings, vii. 1 2-1 5 , xi. 1 3-1 5 ,xxviii, 
 1-14 ; comp. E.xxiii.25, L.xxvi.4,6,10 ; 
 
 (xxi) That no man should ' stand ' before 
 Israel, vii.24, xi.25 ; comp. ix.2, E.xxiii.27 ; 
 
 (xxii) That Jehovah would 'go before' 
 them, and lead them into the promised land, 
 ix.3, xxxi.3 ; 
 
 (xxiii) That great impression may be ex- 
 - pected to be made by capital punishments, 
 xiii.l2, xvii.l3, xlx.20, xxi.21. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CKAEACTEKISTIC BXPKESSIONS OF THE 
 BOOK OP DEUTEBONOMY. 
 
 522. Besides the above phenomena, 
 there is a mass of evidence of a similar 
 kind, but still more satisfactory andcon- 
 vincing, from which it will appear that 
 the language of Deuteronomy diflfers 
 so remarikably from that of the other 
 Books of the Pentateuch, that it cannot 
 be believed that so great a change, as 
 is implied by this difference, can have 
 passed over the mind of Moses, or any 
 other writer, in the course of a few 
 days or weeks. We shall find, for in- 
 stance, several expressions, which occur 
 frequently and famiharly throughout 
 the other four Books, but which never 
 occur at all in Deuteronomy. An d, on the 
 other hand, we shall find a multitude 
 of other words and turns of expres- 
 sion, which are used freely by the 
 Deuteronomist, and were evidently 
 favourites with him, but which never 
 appear in the other four Books of the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 523. Expressions used freely in the- 
 first four Books of the Fentateuch, but 
 never occurring in Deuteronomy. 
 
 (i) dkhtazah, 'possession, Q-.xvii.8,x.xili. 
 4,9,20, xxxvi.43, xlvii.ll, xlviii.4, xlix.30, 1.13, 
 
 L.xiv.34,34, xxv.10,18,24,25,27,28,82,83,33,34, 
 41,46,46, xxvii.l6,21;22.24,28, N.xxvii.4,7, 
 xxxii.5,22,29,32, xxxv.2,8,"^8, — vowlm'e in Deu- 
 tei'oiiomy, except in xxxii.49, and thisverse be- 
 longs to w.48-52, which is evidently a passage 
 of the older narrative, (referring to the death 
 of Moses, and corresponding to N.xx.22-29, 
 where the death of Aaron is described in 
 similar terms,) inserted in this place by the 
 Deuteronomist. 
 
 Instead of dkhuzzaltt the Deut. always uses 
 yirushoh, for 'possession,' ii.5,9,9,12, 19,19, iii. 
 20, — which word is never used in the first four 
 Books of the Fentateuch. 
 
 (ii) ishish, 'every man,' lit, 'man, man,' 
 E.xxxvi.4, L.XV.2, 3CVii.3,8,10, xviii.6, xx.2,1), 
 xxii.4,18, xxiv.l5, N.i.4, iv.19,49, v.l2, ix.lO, 
 — nowhere in Deuteronomy, 
 
 The Peut. always uses ish, only, i.16,41, iii. 
 20, xu,8,xvi.l7, xviii.l9,xix.ll,16,16,xxi.l5,18; 
 22, xxii.13,22,25,26,28, xxiii.lO, xxiv.1,.5,7,16. 
 
 (iii) SOTtth, ' die,' G.vi.l7, vii.21, xxv.8,17, 
 XXXV.29, xlix.33, N.xvii.12,13, xx.3,29,— mo- 
 vjhere in Deuteronomy. 
 
 (iv) malleh, 'tribe,' 96 times in Exodus, 
 Leviticus, and Numbers,— nowA«"e in Deuter- 
 onomy. 
 
 The Deut. always uses slievet, for 'tribe,' 
 i.13,15,15,23, iiiaS, V.23, x.8, xii.5,14, xvi.18, 
 xviii.1,6, xxlx.8,10,18,21, xxxi.28,xxxiii.5. 
 
 (v) 'in the bone of this day,'='on the self- 
 same day,' (J.vii.13, xvii.28,26, B.xii.17,41,51, 
 L.xxiii.14,21,28,29,30, — nowhere in Deuter- 
 onomy, except xxxii.48, as above (i). 
 
 (vi) ' gathered to his people'=die. G-.xxv.S, 
 17, xxxv.29, xlix.29,33, N.xx.24,'.!6, xxyii.13, 
 13, xxxi.2, — nowhere in Deuteronomy, except 
 xxxii.50, as above (i). 
 
 (vii) ' That soul shall be out off ' from 
 Israel, from his people, G.xvii.l4, E.xii.15,19, 
 xxx.83,38, xxxi.l4, L.vii.20,21, 25,27, xvii.4,9, 
 xviii.29, xlx.8, xx.17,18, xxii.3, xxiii.29, 
 M'.ix.l3, XV.30, xix.13,20,— no!cAe;'e m Deuter- 
 onomy. 
 
 The Deut. says always * that man shall die 
 or 'shall be stoned with stones,' and 'thou 
 Shalt put away (lit. ' bum up ') the evil from 
 the midst of you,' xiii.5, xvii.7,12, xix.13,19, 
 xxi.9,21, xxii.21,22,24, xxiv.7. 
 
 (viii) khok or khukkah, ' ordinance,' in the 
 singular, E.xv.25,xxx.21, L.vi.11,15, vii.34, 
 X.1S, N.xviii.8,11,19, -nowhere in Deuteronomy. 
 
 (Ix) ' land of Canaan,' G-. (35 times), E.vi. 
 4, xvi.35, L.xiv.34, xviii.3,xxv.38,N.xiii.2,17, 
 xxvi.l9, xxxii.80,32, xxxiii.40,51, xxxiv.2,2, 
 29, xxxv.10,14,— nowAere in Deuteronomy, ex- 
 cept xxxii.49, as above (i). 
 
 The Deut. uses twice the expression ' land 
 of the Canaanites,' i.7, xi.30 ; but he generally 
 uses some periphrasis, such as the ' land which 
 Jehovah sware unto your fathers,' i.8.36, 
 vi.10,18,28, viii.l, &c., the 'good land, iii.25, 
 iv.21 ,22, vi.l8, viii.7,10, &c., the ' land which 
 Jehovah giveth thee,' lv.1,21, v.31, &o., the 
 ' land whither ye go over to possess it, iv.5, 
 14,26, vi.l, vii.l, &c., the ' land that iloweth 
 with mUk and honey,' vi.8, xi.9, xxvi.lo, &c. 
 
 (X) par, • bullock,' occurs 9 times in Exodus, 
 29 times in Leviticus, 62 times in Numbers,— 
 nowhere in Deuteronomy. 
 
 The Deut. always uses shor, for bullock, 
 v.l4,21,xiv.l,xv.l9,xvii.l,xviii.3,xxu.l,4,10, 
 XXV.4, xxvili.31, xxxiii.l7. 
 
CHARACrEEISTlC EXPRESSIONS OE DEUTEEONOMY. 
 
 190 
 
 (xi) 'plains of Moab,' N.xxii.l, xxvl.n.es, 
 xxiti.12, xxxiii.48,49,50, xxxv.l, xxxvi.13,— 
 nowhei-e in Leutet'omymy^ except xxxiT.1,8, in 
 t le last chapter, a fragment at the older nar- 
 rative. 
 
 TheDent. uses' iond of Moab,' i.5,il.9,xxix.l 
 (xxviii.69), xxxii.*49, xxxiT.5,6. 
 
 (xii) \iedah, 'congregation,' 15 times in 
 Fixodus, 12 times in Leviticus, 83 times in 
 Kumbers, — nowhere in Deutet'onomy. 
 
 The Deut. always uses iahal, ' assembly,' 
 V.22,ix.l0,x.4,xviil.l6,xxiil.l,2,2,3,3,8,xxxi.30. 
 (xiii) nasiy * prince,' 71 times in Gen., Ex., 
 Lev., and Num., — nowhere in Deuieronomy. 
 
 The Deut. always uses rosh, ' head,' i.l3,15, 
 15, V.23C20), xxlx.lO(9), xxxiii.5,21. 
 
 (xiv) ' in your (their, &c.) generations,' G-. 
 xvii.7,9,12, E.xii.14,17,42, xvi.32,38, xxix.42, 
 xxx.8,10,31,xxxi.l3, L.iii.l7,vi.l8,x.9, xxii.3, 
 xxiii.l4,21,41,xxiv.8,xxv.30,N.ix.l0,x.8,xT.14, 
 l.'),21,23,xviii.23,xxxv.29 ; comp. G.vi.9,— no- 
 Khe^-e in Deuteronomy. 
 
 (XV) So 'tent of the congregation' occurs 
 34 times in Ex., 43 times in Lev., 56 times in 
 Num. ; 
 
 mishcan, ' Tabernacle,' 5G times in Ex., 3 
 times in Lev., 38 times in Num. ; 
 
 hedulht * Testimony,' 35 times in Ex., Lev., 
 and Num. ; 
 
 korban, 'offering,' 78 times in Lev. and 
 Num. ; 
 
 but not one of these expressions is used by the 
 Beuteronomist, though ' tent of the congrega- 
 tion' occurs in D.xxxi. 14,14, and 'tent' in 
 v.15,15, a fragment of the older document. 
 
 524. It may, perhaps, be said, with 
 respect to the instances last quoted, 
 that the Deuteronomist did not use 
 them, because he did not require them, 
 not having occasion to mention the 
 ' Tabernacle,' ' Testimony,' &e., in re- 
 cording the addresses of Moses ; though 
 certainly, it would be strange that such 
 long addresses should have really been 
 delivered, in the course of which so 
 many matters of the past history of 
 the people are referred to, without the 
 Tabernacle having been once men- 
 tioned. But this cannot, at all events, 
 be said of most of the other in- 
 stances, where we have shown that 
 the Deuteronomist did require to use 
 expressions synonymous with those 
 above quoted, that are used so freely 
 in the earlier Books, but where he did 
 not use these latter formulae. It is 
 plain, therefore, that, if he has every- 
 where abstained from using them, it 
 was because they were not familiar to 
 his pen, as they were to those of the 
 other writers, and he fell naturally into 
 
 * This expression, as will be shown below, 
 is a Deuteronomistic in terpolation in the fraj 
 ment ol the older narrative, xxxli.48-52. 
 
 the employment of other more favourite 
 forms of expression. 
 
 525. Expressions used freely in Deu- 
 teronomy, but never occurring in the 
 first four Books of the Pentateuch. 
 
 (i) ■ land of Moab,' i.5, ii.9, xxix.l, xxxii.49, 
 xxxiv.5,6 ; 
 
 (ii) 'make to inherit,' i.38, iii.28, xii.lO, 
 xix.3, xxi.16, xxxi.7, xxxii.8 ; 
 
 (iii) ' go in to possess,' * come in, go in, go 
 over, and possess,' i.8, iv.1,5,14,22,26, vl.1,18, 
 vii.l, viii.l, ix.1,6, x.ll, xi.8,8,10,11,29,81, 
 xii.29, xvii.l4, xxiii.20, xxvi.l, xxviii.'21,63, 
 xxx.16,18, xxxi.l3, xxxii.47 ; comp. i.21,39, 
 ix.4,23, XXX.5 ; 
 
 (iv) ' that they may learn to feai- Jehovah,* 
 &c., iv.lO, xiv.23, xvii.l9, xxxi.12,18 ; 
 
 (vj ' which Jehovah giveth thee for an in- 
 heritance,' &c. (used of the land of Canaan), 
 iv.21,38, XV.4, xix.lO, xx.l6, xxi.23, xxiv.4, 
 XXV.19, xxvi.l ; 
 
 (vi) ' remember that thou wast a servant 
 In the land of Egypt,' v.l5, xv.l5, xvi.12, 
 xxiv.18,22 ; comp. x.l9 ; 
 
 (vii) * words of this Law,' xvii.l9, xxvii. 
 3,8,26, xxviii.58, xxix.29, xxxi.12,24, xxxli.46 ; 
 
 (vlii) ' written in this Book, in this Book 
 of the Law,' &o. xxvlii.58,61, xxix.20,21,27, 
 xxx.lO. 
 
 526. It will be seen that the above 
 expressions have peculiar reference to 
 the special circumstances, under which 
 Moses is supposed to be addressing 
 the people. And the frequent recur- 
 rence of some of them might, perhaps, 
 be explained by the necessity which 
 then constrained him to remind the- 
 people in his last address, again and 
 again, — while yet beyond Jordan in 
 the ' land of Moab,' before they ' went 
 in to possess the land which Jehovah 
 gave them as an inheritance,' — of cer- 
 tain main facts of their history, of the 
 cruel ' service ' from which they had 
 been delivered, of the laws which they 
 had received out of ' the midst of the 
 fire,' and of their duty to ' fear Je- 
 hovah,' and obey the 'words of the 
 Law,' which were now ' written in a 
 Book' for all tuture time. But the 
 following instances are of a more 
 general kind, and have no connection 
 with the particular time at which Moses 
 is supposed to be speaking. And, there- 
 fore, as they appear so frequently in 
 Deuteronomy, it cannot be doubted 
 that, if the same writer had written 
 also the other Books, he must have 
 made use occasionally, at least, of 
 some of them. 
 
 627. Additional Deuteronomistic ex- 
 
CHARACTERISTIC EXPRESSIONS OF DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 prrssions, which never occur in the first 
 four Books of the Pentateuch. 
 
 (i) ' that Jehovah thy God may bless thee,' 
 &0., ii.7, xii.7, xiv.24,29, XV.4,G,10,14,I8, xvi. 
 ]0,1S. xxiu.20, xxlv.19, XXX.16; comp. HI, 
 xxviii.8 ; 
 
 (ii) ' work of the hands,' il.7, xiv.29, xvi.lS, 
 xxlv.19, xxvii. 15, XXTiii.l2,xxx.9, xxxi.29 ; 
 
 (iii) 'cleave' to Jehovah, iv.4, x.20, xl.22, 
 xm.4. xxx.20 ; 
 
 (iv) • provoke,' iv.25, ix.l8, xxxi.29, xxxil. 
 16,19,21,21,27; 
 
 (v) ' with all the heart and with all the 
 Boul,' iv.29, vi.5, X.12, xi.l3, xiii.3, xxTi.16, 
 xxx.2,6,10 ; 
 
 (vi) ' walk in the ways o( Jehovah,' v.33, 
 viii.S, x.12, xi.22, xix.9, xxvi.l7, xxvlii. 9, 
 XXX.16; 
 
 (vil) ' forfret Jehovah,' vi,12, viii.11,14,19, 
 xxxil. 18 ; comp. iv.23 ; 
 
 (viii) • abomination to Jehovah,' vil. 25, 
 xii.31, xvil.l, xviii.l2, xxii.5, xxill.l8, xxv.16, 
 Xxvii.16; 
 
 (ix) ' which thou knewest not,' ' which thy 
 fathers knew not,' &c., viii.3,16, xi.28, xlii. 
 2,6,13, xxviii.33,36,64, xxix.26, xxxi.18, xxxil. 
 17 : comp. vii.l5, ix.2 ; 
 
 (x) * the stranger and the fatherless and the 
 widow,' &c., X. 18, xiv.29, xvi. 11,14, xxlv. 
 17,19,20,21, xxTi.12,13, xxvli.l9; 
 
 (xl) * bum up the evil from the midst,' 
 xlii.3, xvii.7,12, xlx.13,19, xxi.9,21, xxli.21, 
 22.24, xxlv.7; 
 
 (xii) 'innocent blood,' xlx. 10,13, xxi. 8,9, 
 Zxvil.25. 
 
 528. We have given above only a 
 few of the expressions peculiar to the 
 Peuteronomist, — such as can be tested 
 at once by the English reader, by a 
 mere reference to the English Bible 
 and Concordance. But in the larger 
 edition we have shown that there are, 
 at least, thirty-three expressions, — 
 several of which are repeated more 
 than ten times in Deuteronomy, and 
 each of which is found on the average 
 eight times in that Book, — not one of 
 which is found even once in any of the 
 other four Books of the Pentateuch. 
 
 And we have given also twelve other 
 expressions, which occur three or four 
 times in Deuteronomy, and nowhere 
 else in the Pentateuch, such as these : — 
 
 (1) ' take good heed,' 11.4, iv.9,15, xxlv.8 ; 
 
 (ii) * be strong and of good courage,' 111.28, 
 xxxi.6,7,23 ; 
 
 (iii) ' hear and fear,' xlll.l2, xvll.l3, xlx.20, 
 xxl.21 ; 
 
 (iv) 'that shall be in those days,' xvll.9, 
 X'ix.17, xxvi.3 : 
 
 (v) 'all tl?at do these things,' xvlli.12, 
 xxil.5, xxv.16 ; * 
 
 (vl) * forsake Jehovah, His Law, &c. 
 xxviil.20, xxxi.16, xxix.25. 
 
 529. It is remarkable also how 
 frequently the Deuteronomipt i.ses »uch 
 
 J. 
 
 J.E. 
 
 
 (i) (ii) 
 
 13S 
 
 28* 1 
 
 888 
 
 12 27t 
 
 285 
 
 .. 2Bt 
 
 390 
 
 1 6 
 
 234 
 
 8 308 
 
 191 
 
 phrases as 'Jehovah thy God,' 'Je- 
 hovah our God,' &e., compared with 
 the other writers. The following 
 Table shows how often the expressions, 
 'Elohim' or 'El,' 'Jehovah,' and 'Je- 
 hovah Elohim ' — the first and third of 
 these, (i) without, (ii) with, a pronoun 
 (as ' thy Elohim,' &c.) — occur in each 
 of the five Books of the Penta- 
 teuch. Of course, considerable allow- 
 ance must be made for the fact that in 
 Deuteronomy Moses is supposed to be 
 speaking almost throughout, and, there- 
 fore, such expressions as ' Jehovah thy 
 God,' ' Jehovah your God,' would natu- 
 rally be used more frequently than in 
 the other books. But the preponder- 
 ance is still very noticeable. 
 
 (i) (11) 
 
 Genesis 20O 1 
 
 Exodus 78 3 
 
 Leviticus 5 21 
 
 Numbers 23 4 
 
 Deuteronomy.. 33 3 
 
 530. The conclusion to be drawn 
 from the above facts, in addition to 
 what has been produced of a similar 
 character, appears to be irresistible. 
 It seems to us impossible to believe 
 that either Moses, or any other writer, 
 could have had his whole tone of 
 thought and expression so changed 
 within a few days or weeks at the 
 outside, as would be necessary to 
 account for the above phenomena, — 
 unless, indeed, it be supposed that a 
 special miracle was wrought for the 
 purpose of so modifying his language. 
 
 531. We shall assume it, therefore, 
 henceforward, as a fact that has been 
 proved, about which we need no longer 
 have any doubt or uncertainty, that, 
 whoever may have composed the Book 
 of Deuteronomy, he was undoubtedly a 
 different person from those, who were 
 concerned in writing the main portions 
 of the rest of the Pentateuch. Unless 
 the preceding evidence be set aside, 
 this fact must stand good, whatever 
 else may be true, and whatever im- 
 
 • Of these 20 occur In &.ll,lli, 6 in G.xxlv. 
 
 t It is impossible at present to eay how- 
 many of these may really be due to the 
 Deuteronomist, as he may have revised the- 
 older document, and interpolated certain pas- 
 sages of his own In it. 
 
192 FIEST APPROXIMATION TO AGE OF DEUTERONOMIST. 
 
 portant consequences may follow &om 
 this conclusion. 
 
 532. But thus we find ourselves, at 
 any rate, in this dilemma. If Moses did 
 write Deuteronomy, then he did not 
 write the last part of Numbers, which 
 recounts the transactions of the last 
 year of the wanderings, down to the 
 Tery day on which the discourses in 
 Deuteronomy are supposed to be 
 uttered. And, if he did not write 
 these chapters of Numbers, then he 
 did not write a very large portion of 
 tlie rest of the four Books ; since no 
 critic will deny that the same hand 
 (hands), which composed the last 
 seventeen chapters of Numbers, was 
 (were) concerned also in writing a 
 preat part of the previous history. 
 Hence, if Moses wrote the book of 
 Deuteronomy, he certainly did not 
 write the greater part of the other four 
 Books. Or, if he did write the last part 
 of Numbers, and the kindred matter in 
 tlie other four Books, then he did not 
 write the Book of Deuteronomy. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FIRST APPROXIMATION TO THE AGE OF 
 THE DEUTERONOMIST. 
 
 533. The next question would 
 naturally be, to ask in what age it is 
 probable that the Deuteronomist lived. 
 But, for the convenience of our argu- 
 ment, it will be best to defer for the 
 present the full consideration of this 
 part of the subject. Something, how- 
 ever, may be said at once towards 
 satisfying the reader's mind on this 
 point. It is plain that he must have 
 lived after the other wi-iters, since he 
 refers throughout to passages in the 
 story of the Exodus, which are re- 
 corded in the other books, and refers 
 directly in xxiv.8 to the laws about 
 leprosy in Leviticus. If, therefore, we 
 are right in supposing from the evi- 
 dence produced in Part II, that the 
 Elohistic and Jehovistic portions of the 
 Pentateuch were written not earlier 
 than the times of Samuel, David, and 
 Solomon, it is plain, without further 
 enquiry, that the Deuteronomist must 
 have lived not earlier — and, probably, 
 later — than the age of Solomon. 
 
 634. And this agrees with other pro- 
 minent indications. Thus we have 
 seen (513) that the Deuteronomist 
 uses only the phrase 'Levites' or 'sons 
 of Levi ' for the Priests, and not ' the 
 sons of Aaron.' Now the same ex- 
 pression is used of the Priests in that 
 part of the book of Kings, which refers 
 to the times of Jeroboam, lK.xii.31 : — 
 * And be made an house of high places, and 
 made Priests indiscriminately of the people, 
 (B.V. 'from the lowest of the people,') which 
 were not of the sons of Levi.' 
 
 It is also the formula invariably 
 used by Jeremiah, and the other latCT 
 Prophets, Jer.xxxiii.18,21,22, Ez.xliii. 
 19, xliv.lo, xlviii.l3, Mal.iii.3; comp. 
 Mal.ii.4,8. 
 
 535. Again, the Deuteronomist uses 
 Torah, in the singular only (517), and 
 uses it of the whole Law. And so does 
 Jeremiah, ii.8,vi.l9,viii.8, ix.l3,xvi.ll, 
 xviii.18, xxvi.4, xxxi.33, xxxii.23,xliT. 
 10,23, Lam.ii.9. 
 
 Also the Deuteronomist confines all 
 sacrifices to the place, where Jehovah 
 'would place 'Bis Name' (618). And 
 so Jeremiah speaks repeatedly of Jeru- 
 salem or the Temple, as the place called 
 'by the Name' of Jehovah, vii.10,11, 
 14,30, xxv.29,xxxii.34,xxxiv.l5; comp. 
 iii.l7, vii.l2. 
 
 636. Let us now refer to (523). 
 
 (i) The Deuteronomist uses ySj-ushah, in- 
 stead of dkhuzzaJt, for ' possession ;' and so 
 does Jeremiah, xxxii.8. 
 
 (ii) The Deuteronomist employs isfi.and not 
 is?i ish, for ' every man ;' and so do the Prophets 
 universally, c.jr.Jer.i. 16, vi.S,ix.4(3),.5(4),xi.8, 
 xii.15, &o. — except the post-Captivity Prophet 
 Ezekiel in two instances. xiT.4,7. 
 
 (iii) The Deuteronomist never uses gavail 
 for ' die,' although the word is often used in 
 the older document ; and the Prophets only 
 use it in two instances, Lam,i.l9, Zech.xiii.S. 
 
 It would appear that the above expressions 
 had become antiquated and nearly obsolete in 
 the days of the Prophets, and, probably, in 
 those of the Deuteronomist. 
 
 (iv) The same may be true of matieh for 
 * tribe,' which is found in one place only of 
 all the Prophets, Hab.iii.9, (and even here 
 the expression is obscure) ; while sfievet, the 
 word used by the Deuteronomist, occurs in 
 Hos.v.f, Is.xix.13, xlix.6, lxiu.17, eleven times 
 in Ezekiel, and in Zech.ix.l. 
 
 (v) ' on the self -same day,' is found only in 
 Ez.ii.S, xxiy.2,2, xl.l. 
 
 (Ti) ' gathered tf his people,' (vii) ' that 
 sonl shall be cut oiT,' (viii) khvikah, ' ordi- 
 nance,' in the singular, (xiii) nasi, 'prince,' 
 <xiv) ' in your &o., generations,' which are not 
 found in Deuteronomy, occur nowhere in the 
 Prophets, except the last (37 times) in EzekieL. 
 
f mST APPEOXIMATION TO AGE OP THE DEUTERONOMIST. 193 
 
 837. The other expressions noticed in 
 (523), as employed in the older docu- 
 ment but not by the Deuteronomist, 
 seem not to have become antiquated 
 and out of use in the days of the 
 Prophets, except those in (xv), which 
 refer especially to the state of things 
 in the wilderness, as ' Tent of the Con- 
 gregation,' 'Tabernacle,' 'Testimony,' 
 which never occur in their writings, 
 any more than in that of the Deuter- 
 onomist; and this is almost the case 
 with korban, ' offering,' which is found 
 only in Ez.xx.28, xl.43. 
 
 538. Upon the whole, it will be plain 
 that the evidence just produced, though 
 we do not press it as conclusive upon 
 the point under consideration, tends, 
 however, to establish a connection in 
 point of time between the Deuterono- 
 mist and the later Prophets. And in 
 the larger edition several instances 
 are given, in which the Deuteronomist 
 makes use of expressions, which are 
 either only found in the latest books 
 of the Bible, as the post-Captivity 
 prophets and historians, or in none 
 before the time of Jeremiah, e.g. — 
 
 (i) 'to speak rebellion against Jehovali, 
 D.xiiLS, Jer.xxviii.16, zxix.32, camp. Is.* lix. 
 13, — nowhere else in the Bible. 
 
 (ii) ' for a removing,' D.xxviii.25, Jer.xv.4, 
 xxiv.9, xxix.l8, xxxiv.l7, Kz.xxiii.46, 2 Oh. 
 Xxix.8. 
 
 (iii) ' stubbornness of heart," D.xxix.l9(18), 
 Jer.iii.17, vii.24. ix.l4(1.3), xi.8, xiii.lO, xvi.l2, 
 XTiii. 12, xxiii. 17, Ps.lxxxi.l2(13),— jwioto'e 
 else in tfie Bible, 
 
 539. It will be noticed that, in the 
 above expressions, the Prophet Jere- 
 miah agrees with the Deuteronomist. 
 And, in like manner, it will be found 
 that almost all the expressions in (527), 
 which are found repeatedly in Deuter- 
 onomy, but do not occur in any other 
 Book of the Pentateuch, are also found 
 more or less freely used in Jeremiah. 
 
 (i) ' that Jehovah thy God may bless thee,' 
 Jer,xxxi.23. 
 
 (ii) ' work of the hands,' Jer.i.l6, x.3, xxv. 
 i,7,14, xxxii.80, xliv.8, Lam.iii.64, iv.2. 
 
 (iii) ' cleave' to Jehovah, Jer.xiii.ll. 
 
 * We use Is. to denote the -writings of the 
 later Isaiah, the ' unknown Prophet," to whom 
 chap.xl-lxvi of the present book of Isaiah 
 must be assigned. That some, at least, of 
 these prophecies were uttered after the Cap- 
 tivity, is obvious from such passages as 
 ixiii.l"-ll), lxiv.10,11. 
 
 (iv) 'provoke,' Jer.vii.18,19, viii.l9, xi.17, 
 xxv.6,7, xxxii.29,30,32, xliv.3,8. 
 
 (v) ' with all the heart and with all the 
 soul,' Jer.xxxii.41, comp. iii.lO, xxiv.7, xxix. 
 13. 
 
 (vi) ' walk in the ways of Jehovah,' Jer.vii. 
 23. 
 
 (vii) 'forget Jehovah,' Jer.ii.32, iii.21, xiii, 
 26, xviii.15, xxiii.27. 
 
 (viii) ' abomination to Jehovah," not in Jer., 
 nor anywhere else in the Bible, except Is,i.l3, 
 and repeatedly in the book of Proverbs ; bnt 
 comp. Jer.xliv.4, and see 'abomination' in 
 Jer.ii.7, vi.l6, vii.lO, viii.l2, xvi.l8, xxxii.36, 
 xliv.22. 
 
 (ix) * which thou knewest not, &c.,' Jer. v. 
 15,vii.9,tx.l6(15),xiv.l8,xv.l4,xvi.l3,xvii.4, 
 xix.4, xxii.28, xxxiiLS, xliv.S. 
 
 (x) 'the stranger, and the fatherless, and 
 the widow, &c.,' Jer.vii.G, xxii.3, comp. v.28, 
 xlix.ll. 
 
 (xi) ' bum up the evil from the midst,' 
 not in Jer., but in 2K.xxiii.24, which many 
 (557. V.) ascribe to Jeremiah. 
 
 (xii) 'innocent blood,' Jer.vii.6, xxii.3,17, 
 xxvi.l5, comp. xix.4. 
 
 540. So, too, many of those in (526) 
 find their representatives in his pro- 
 phecies, though with some of them, 
 from the nature of the ease, it could 
 hardly have been expected. 
 
 (i) ' land of Moab,' Jer.xlviil.24,33. 
 
 (ii) ' make to inherit,' Jer.iii.18, xii.l4. . 
 
 (iii) ' which ye go in to possess,' &c., Jer. 
 xxxii.23. 
 
 (iv) that they may ' learn to fear Jehovah, 
 &c., not in Jer. ; but comp. ' to fear me all tie 
 days,' D.iv.lO, Jer.xxxii.39. 
 
 (v) ' which Jehovah giveth thee for an in- 
 heritance,' Jer.xvii.4. 
 
 ^vl) * remember that thou waat a servant in 
 the land of Egypt,' not in Jer. 
 
 (vii) ' words of this Law," comp. Jer.vi.l9. 
 
 (viii) * written in this Book," &c., Jer.xxv. 
 13. 
 
 541. The above agreement in phra- 
 seology is certainly remarkable. And, 
 if further evidence tends to confirm 
 the indications, which we have already 
 observed, of the late origin of the book 
 of Deuteronomy, there is enough here 
 to raise a strong suspicion that- Jere- 
 miah may have been its author, or, 
 at all events, some later Prophet, 
 moving in the same circle of religious 
 ideas,' and habitually using the same 
 forms of expression as Jeremiah. 
 
 542. It is plain, however, that the 
 above phenomena are just what we 
 might expect to find in documents 
 differing from one another in age by 
 some considerable interval of time. 
 The first four Books of the Pentateuch 
 were viritten mainlv, as we have seen 
 reason to believe (468-471) by persons 
 
 O 
 
194 THE BOOK OF THE LAW FOUND IN THE TEMPLE. 
 
 liTing nearly in the same age, and in 
 the same literary circle. While, there- 
 fore, we should expect to find the 
 different parts of these Book.«!, -which 
 are due to different writers, exhihiting 
 characteristic differences in style and 
 tone, and even betraying, by incidental 
 allusions, the different circumstances 
 of the times in which they were written, 
 yet, if our view be correct, we should 
 not be able to detect any marked dis- 
 tinction between the Hebrew of the 
 Elohistio and Jehovistic authors, any 
 more than between tlie English of men 
 of letters of our own country, who may 
 have lived in the reigns of George III 
 and Queen Victoria. 
 
 543. On the other hand, we should 
 expect to perceive a more decided differ- 
 ence between good English compositions 
 of the Mizabethan and writings of the 
 present age, even though the spelling 
 of the former were modernised. Thus 
 words and expressions Would most pro- 
 bably have been used by the older 
 writers, which have now become anti- 
 quated ; while the latter would be found 
 to give signs of the possession of a 
 more copious vocabulary, would be 
 likely to employ a more free and flow- 
 ing style, and to make i\se of new words 
 and new expressions, reflecting the 
 spirit and practices of their time. And 
 just such a difference as this is found 
 to exist between the first four Books, 
 generally, of the Pentateuch and the 
 book of Deuteronomy. 
 
 644. We have said 'the first four 
 Books, generally.' For it must now be 
 observed that, besides the numerous for- 
 mulae above noticed, not one of which 
 is found in the first four Books of the 
 Pentateuch, there are several other 
 similar expressions, which occur freely 
 in all parts of Deuteronomy, but are 
 found also in certain well-defined por- 
 tions of the other Books ; that is to 
 say, they do not appear in all parts of 
 thoseBooks, as they do in Deuteronomy, 
 but onli/ in certain particular sections, 
 which are limited in extent, and which 
 betray also, when carefully examined, 
 other close affinities with the style of 
 the Deuteronomist. We can scarcely 
 doubt that such passages are interpo- 
 lations by bis hand. 
 
 546. And, indeed, it would be very 
 strange if there were no such insertions 
 as these. The writer, who could con- 
 ceive the grand idea of adding the 
 whole book of Deuteronomy to the 
 existing roU of the Tetrateuch, would 
 be almost certain, we may well believe, 
 to have first revised the work of the 
 older writers which had come isto his 
 hands, and to have inserted passages, 
 here and there, if he saw any reason 
 for so doing, in the original document. 
 The wonder, we repeat, weuld be, if 
 he did not do this. 
 
 For the present, however, it is un- 
 necessary to point out and investigate 
 these passages, which will come more 
 properly under consideration hereafter. 
 It will suffice to have drawn attention 
 here to the fact of their existence. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BOOK OF THE LAW FODNl) IS 
 THE TEMPLE. 
 
 646. In 2K.xxii.xxiii, we find an 
 account of the following remarkable 
 occurrence. 
 
 ' In the eighteenth year of king Josiah, the 
 king sent Shaphan the scribe to the House of 
 Jehovah, saying, Go up to Hilkiah the High 
 Priest, that he may sum the silver which is 
 brought into the House of Jehovah, which 
 the keepers of the door have gathered of the 
 people. . . . And Hilkiah the Priest said unto 
 Shaphan the scribe, / have found the Book of 
 the Law in the Hoitse of Jehovah, And Hilkiah 
 gave the Book to Shaphan, and he read it. . . 
 . . And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, 
 saying, Hilkiah the Priest hath delivered me 
 a Book. And Shaphan read it before the 
 king. And it came to pass, when the king 
 had heard the words of the Book of the Law, 
 that he rent his clothes. And the king com- 
 manded Hilkiah the Priest, &c. saying, Go^ye, 
 enquire of Jehovah for me, and for the people, 
 and for all Judah, concerning the words of 
 this Book that is found ; for great is the 
 wrath of Jehovah that is kindled against us, 
 because our fathers have not hearkened unto 
 the word^ of this Book, to do according to all 
 that which is written concerning us. . . And 
 the king sent, and they gathered unto him all 
 the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem. And 
 the king went up into the House of Jehovah, 
 and all the men of Judah, and aU the inhabi- 
 tants of Jerusalem with him, and the Priests, 
 and the Prophets, and all the people, both 
 small and great; and he read in their ears all 
 the words of the Book of the Covenant, which 
 was found in the House of Jehovah. And the 
 king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant 
 before Jehovah, to walk after Jehovah, and ta 
 keep His commandmentfi, and His testimonies, 
 and His statutes, with all their heart and with 
 
THE BOOK OF THE LAW FOUND IN THE TEMPLE. l95 
 
 all their soul, to perfoi-m the words of this 
 Covenant that were written in this Book. 
 And all the people stood to the Govemmt.' 
 
 547. If we met with, the atove 
 narrative in any other book than the 
 Bible, it would be natural to wish to 
 examine more closely into the state- 
 ment, and see what this occurrence 
 really means, by which the young king 
 was influenced to take in hand so stren- 
 uously the Eel'ormation of Beligion 
 throughout the land. The High-Priest 
 ' finds ' this Book of the Law in the 
 Temple. If it really had been written 
 by Moses, where, we might ask, had it 
 been lying all this while, during more 
 than eight centuries ? 
 
 548. It could not have been in the 
 Ark; for then Hilkiah would not have 
 ' found ' it, as he dared not look into the 
 Ark : and, besides, we are expressly told 
 that there was ' nothing in the Ark save 
 the two tables of stone,' lK.viii.9. 
 Nor could it have been lying for those 
 fight centuries beside the ark. For 
 then, surely, it would have been named 
 among the things, that were brought 
 into the Temple by Solomon ; and, at 
 all events, it would have been well 
 known to David and Solomon and other 
 pious kings, as well as to the succes- 
 sive High Priests, and we should not 
 find them so regardless of so many of 
 its plain precepts, as the history shows 
 them to have been, e.g. with respect to 
 the worshipping on high places, and 
 the neglect of the due observance of 
 the Passover. 
 
 649. When, further, we consider 
 that in this same Book of Deuteronomy 
 is found also the command, said to have 
 been given by Moses to the Levites, 
 zxxi.26, — 
 
 ' Take this Book of the Law, and put it U- 
 lidi (B.V. ' in the side of,' but sceB.ii.14, ' she 
 sat beside the reapers,' IS.vi.S, 'in a coffer by 
 me side thereof,' &o.) the Ark of the Covenant 
 of Jehovah your God, that it may be there for 
 a mtness against thee,' — 
 it is scarcely possible to resist the 
 Suspicion that the writing of the Book, 
 the placing it, and the finding it, were 
 pretty nearly contemporaneous events; 
 and that, if ' there was no king before 
 Josiah.'— not David, in his best days* 
 nor Solomon, in his early youth,— not 
 Asa, nor Jehoshaphat, nor Hezekiah,— 
 
 * that turned to Jehovah with all his heart, 
 and with all his soul, and with all his might, 
 according to all the Law of MoseSy 2K,xxiU.25, 
 
 — it may have been because there was 
 no king before him who had ever seen 
 this portion, at least, of the Penta- 
 teuch, or had believed that such parts 
 of it, as had come into his hands, were 
 really authoritative, and binding upon 
 himself and his people, as containing 
 the direct utterances of the Divine Will, 
 650. And this suspicion seems to be 
 confirmed into a certainty, when we 
 call to mind the proofs which we have 
 already had before us, that Deuter- 
 onomy was written in a later age than 
 the rest of the Pentateuch, and when 
 we consider more closely the account 
 which is given us of the finding of this 
 ' Book of the Law.' For, first, it could 
 hardly have been the to Aoie Pentateuch, 
 that Hilkiah now found. He gave it, 
 we are told, to Shaphan, and Shaphan 
 ' read it,' — perhaps, read only part of it, 
 — or, as the Chronicler says, 'read in it,' 
 2Ch.xxxiv.l8, — ^before he returned to 
 the king on the business, about which 
 he had been sent to the 'Temple. And 
 Shaphan read it also before the king, 
 and appears to have read to him all, 
 the words of the Book. 
 
 551. But, at all events, the next 
 day again, — perhaps, the same day,-— 
 the king himself, we are told, read in 
 the ears of the people — 
 
 'all the words of the Book of the Covenant., 
 which vf as found in the House of Jehovah.' 
 It cannot be supposed that he would 
 read on this occasion all the histories 
 in Genesis, the long account of the con- 
 struction of the Tabernacle and its 
 vessels, or the details of the Levitical 
 Law. Besides, the Book found by 
 Hilkiah is repeatedly called the ' Book 
 of the Covenant,' 2K.xxiii.2,3,21, which 
 name can scarcely have been used of the 
 whole Pentateuch, though it very well 
 applies to Deuteronomy, or to the chief 
 portion of that Book, since we find it 
 written, D.xxix.l, — 
 
 'These are the words of the Covenant, 
 which Jehovah commanded Moses to make 
 with the Children of Israel in the land ot 
 Moab, beside the Covenant which He made 
 with them in Horeb.' 
 
 552. Again, this ' Book of the Law," 
 which was found by Hilkiah, contained 
 
 02 
 
196 
 
 THE BOOK FOUND IN JOSIAH'S EEIGN, 
 
 also directions about the Passover, 
 2K.xxiii.21, such as we find in D.xvi. 
 1-8, and severe denunciations of the 
 Divine displeasure against all who 
 transgressed the commands contained 
 in it, 2Kxxii.l3, such as we find in 
 D.xi.l6,17,xxix.l8-28, xxx.l5-20,and, 
 especially, in D.xxviii.16-68. And it 
 led directly to the putting down, with 
 a strong hand, of every kind of idola- 
 trous practice, of all groves, high 
 places, altars, &c., as we read in 2E. 
 xxiii.24 : — 
 
 ' Moreover the familiar spirits, and the 
 wizards, aiid the images, and the idols, and 
 all the abominations, that were spied in the 
 land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah 
 put away, that he might perform the words 
 of the Law, which were written in the Book, 
 that Hilkiah the Priest found in the House of 
 Jehovah.' 
 
 And this too was in accordance with 
 the commands of the Book of Deuter- 
 onomy, xii.2,3, xiii, xvi.21,22, xvii.2-7, 
 xviii.10-12. 
 
 563. In short, the whole description 
 of the nature and effect of the words 
 contained in this ' Book of the Law,' 
 which was read in the ears of the 
 people, shows that it must have been 
 the Book of Deuteronomy. Accordingly, 
 we have seen already, and shall see yet 
 more plainly, as we proceed, that there 
 are internal signs in this Book, which 
 tend to fix the date of its composition 
 to somewhere about this period in the 
 Jewish history. 
 
 664. It was, we may believe, the 
 desire of Hilkiah, and, perhaps, of 
 men of yet higher mind about the 
 young king, to take advantage of his 
 own religious and impressible spirit, 
 and of the humbled state of the people, 
 when Judah had been brought low 
 through the oppressions of Manasseh, 
 and the t*n tribes had been carried 
 into captivity, to abolish once for all 
 the idolatrous practices which had so 
 long prevailed, and to try to bind the 
 hearts of the remnant of Israel to the 
 Court and to the Temple at Jerusalem. 
 And so there ensued at once, upon the 
 discovery of this 'Book of the Law,' 
 a complete Befoi'mation of Keligion 
 throughout the land, with a thorough 
 and violent rooting up of all idolatrous 
 practices, as described in 2K.x^ii, 
 
 556. And then a great Passover was 
 held by the king in Jerusalem. Por 
 once, it would seem, the attempt was 
 made to draw the great body of the 
 people thither : and never, we are 
 told,— 
 
 'from the days of the Judges that judged 
 Israel, nor in all the days of the Kings of 
 Israel, nor of the Kings of Judah,' — 
 
 was such a Passover held, as this that 
 was held in the eighteenth year of king 
 Josiah. But we have no sign whatever 
 of any other such Passover being held 
 even in the reign of Josiah. Perhaps, 
 after a time, the young king also became 
 aware of the real facts of the case, and 
 his zeal may have been damped by this 
 discovery. At aU events, we hear no 
 more of any such gatherings. 
 
 556. Nor is there the least indication 
 that the other two Feasts were kept by 
 Josiah with similar solemnity in that 
 very saine year. And yet the Law is 
 laid down with equal distinctness for all 
 three Feasts in E.xxiii.17, xxxiv.23,24. 
 And according to these laws, — 
 
 ' Three times in the year all thy males shall 
 appear before Jehovah,' — 
 
 it was just as necessary that they should 
 go up to Jerusalem at the Feast of Pen- 
 tecost, and especially at the Feast of 
 Tabernacles, — at which, once in seven 
 years, the Law was to be read in the 
 ears of the assembled people, D.xxxi. 
 10-13, — as at the Passover. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE BOOK FOUND IN JOSIAh's BBIGIN, 
 THE BOOK OP DEUTEEOKOMT. 
 
 657. We shall reserve for the pre- 
 sent the full discussion of the very 
 interesting question, to which we have 
 before referred (639-541), and which 
 was first raised by von Bohlen, viz., 
 whether the book of Deuteronomy 
 is to be ascribed to the hand of Jere- 
 miah, who was himself a Priest, tlie 
 son of Hilkiah, Jer. i.l, and was called 
 to the Prophetical office in the ' thir- 
 teenth year' of the reign of king 
 Josiah, v.% Jive years before the dis- 
 covery of the Book of the Law in 
 the 'eighteenth year of his reign,' 
 2IC.xxii.3. 
 
 658. But we shall here considerwhat 
 
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 197 
 
 HaVERNICK Bays on the subject of this first four Books of the Pentateuch. But, let 
 
 ' discovery.* PentpA07-4:lZ. 
 
 ' De 'Wette has come to the conclusion that, 
 ■ in the disccvery of the Book of the Law in 
 the Temple, t/ie first certain trace of tlie exist- 
 ence of a Mosaic Book is to be found.' But the 
 following considerations speak most decidedly 
 against this. 
 
 (i) ' The very words, * I have found the 
 Book of the Law,' t>.8, clearly show the con- 
 trary. How could the High Priest use these 
 words in delivering the Book to Shaphan, sup- 
 irosing that the latter knew nothing at all 
 about it ? Both individuals, on the contrary, 
 are so well acquainted with it, that it only 
 requires to he designated by this its known 
 name, for one to know what it is.' 
 
 Ans. "We believe that the greater portion of 
 the first four Books of the Pentateuch had 
 long been composed, and that the face was 
 known, more or less, to the more eminent 
 men of the day, and even to the people gene- 
 rally, that some 'written Law* at one time 
 existed. Perhaps, in the time of Josiah's 
 idolatrous grandfather, Manasseh, or even 
 before his time, the roll of the Pentateuch, or, 
 rather, as we believe, the Tetrateuch, had dis- 
 appeared. It may have been lying, little 
 heeded or even noticed, among the arcMves of 
 the Temple, and so came into the hands of the 
 successive High Priests, until it reached those 
 of Hilkiah, and those of the Deuteronomist. 
 
 (il) * The conduct of the king and of the 
 Court is inexplicable, supposing that they 
 now for the first time heard news of this 
 Book. We find no sign in the narrative of 
 mistrust or astonishment on their part at the 
 existence of such a Book. "Would the king 
 have been seized with such terror, when he 
 heard the words of this Book? Would he 
 immediately have adopted such energetic 
 measures, if he had not recognised it at once 
 as authentic ? 
 
 Ans. No doubt, the king believed it to be 
 authentic. He, too, was aware that some 
 such a Book had once existed ; and if, for 
 some time past, the Book of Deuteronomy was, 
 as we suppose, in actual process of composi- 
 tion, we may be sure that measures would 
 have been taken to keep alive in his thoughts, 
 and in the thoughts of others, the remem- 
 brance of that fact, imtil the day of the 
 • discovery.' 
 
 This would explain fully the words of 
 Hilkiah just considered, * I have found the 
 Book of the Law in the House of Jehovah,' 
 '' as well as the apparent want of surprise on 
 the part both of Shaphan and the king,— 
 apparent^ we say, because pone, at all events, 
 is betrayed in the Scripture narrative, what- 
 ever may have been really the case. 
 
 (iii) ' Further, the narrative says not a 
 word of the king's astonishment respecting 
 the exigence of the -Book, hut only respecting 
 its contents, and the long non-observance of 
 the Law and the refractory opposition to it. 
 When he complains that the fathers had not 
 acted according to it, it is evident that he 
 must have been convinced that the Law was 
 known and accessible to them.* 
 
 Ans. No doubt: this precisely a^rrees with 
 our own view of the previous existence of the 
 
 it be well observed, the contents of those first 
 four Books are of a very different character from 
 those of Dput&ronomy. They consist mainly, aa 
 we have said, of historical narratives, or cere- 
 monial directions, while thirteen whole chap- 
 ters of Exodus are devoted to the minntfl 
 description of the details of the construction 
 and setting up of the Tabernacle. In Deuter- 
 onomy it is the moral Law which is delivered 
 throughout, in some of the most impressive 
 language that has ever been written. 
 
 (iv) *It would also, assuredly, be a deci- 
 dedly false conclusion, to infer a general non- 
 acquaintance with the Pentateuch from the 
 circiunstance of the king's betraying an ig- 
 norance of its contents. In such a Court 
 as must have existed during the long reign of 
 Manasseh, does not such an ignorance appear 
 quite probable, and admit of being so ex- 
 plained ? ' 
 
 AnSi Josiah had already reigned seventeen 
 years, and, when he came to the throne, he 
 was too young, — indeed, only eight years old, 
 2K.xxii.l ,— to have been very much influenced 
 by the state of things in the Court of Manasseh , 
 — laying out of consideration the story, which 
 the Chronicler gives us, of Manasseh's deep 
 repentance and refoi'mation,2Ch.xxxiii.l2-lti, 
 according to which he must have restored 
 the Law, (supposed by the Chronicler to have 
 been in full operation in the days of his father 
 Hezekiah,2Ch.xxx.5,16, xxxi.3,21,) if he knew 
 of it. But, according to the more authentic 
 history of the book of Kings, Josiah from the 
 first * did that which was right in the sight of 
 Jehovah, and walked in all the ways of David 
 his father,' 2K.xxii.2 ; and from his youth he 
 must have been, we may believe, in these early 
 days of his reign, greatly under the influence 
 of the High Priest, Hilkiah. If, then, during 
 the first seventeen years of his reign, this pious 
 young king was all the while ignorant of the 
 contents of the * Book of the Law,' as Haveu- 
 NiCK admits, it is surely inconceivable that 
 the people generally were bettea* informed 
 about it, whatever may have been the case 
 with the few individuals, who were privy to 
 the present movement. And, indeed, the 
 whole story of the reading of the Book to the 
 people, 2K.xxiii, implies this. 
 
 (v) * But the opposite of this conclusion 
 may he proved convincingly (!) from the nar- 
 rative itself. The king sends a mrasage to the 
 Prophetess, Huldah, and makes enquiry of her 
 respecting the 'Book' and its declarations. 
 She then at once confirms the truth of those 
 words by a Prophetic declaration, and evidently 
 knows the Book that is spoken of^ for she says, 
 ' All the words of this Book, wherein the king 
 hath read, shall be fulfilled,' ' 
 
 Ans. Upon Havernick's supposition, how 
 could Huldah have known the Book ? II she 
 knew it, why did not Hilkiah the High Priest, 
 and the King himself, know it ? It is cleai* 
 that the idea cannot be maintained. It would 
 be more reasonable to say that she recognised 
 the words of the Book, when she heard them,' 
 (as she might have heard them from the mes- 
 sengers sent to consult her,) as Divine words, 
 or that she may liave given her attestation to 
 the Book by prophetic instinct. But, hc- 
 
198 
 
 THE BOOK FOUND IN JOSIAH'S EEIGN^ 
 
 where else in the Bibles except in the duplicate 
 of the passage now before us, 2Ch.xxxiv.25. 
 
 Also the complete phrase * desolation and a 
 curse* occurs in Jer.x3cv.l8,slii.l8,xliv.l2,22, 
 and nowhere else in the Bible, — though the two 
 words occur separately in Deuteronomy. 
 
 If this second conjecture be true, it would 
 be easy to account for Jeremiah's putting hia 
 own expressions into the mouth of Huldah, 
 
 cording to our view, Huldah, most probably, 
 did know the Book ; for she was in the secret, 
 and shared the hope of a gi'eat Reformation. 
 
 And this may seem, at first sight, to be con- 
 firmed by the fact, that she actually makes 
 verbal references to favourite expressions of 
 the Deuteronomist. Thus in 2K.xxii.l7 we 
 read ' that they might provoke me to anger 
 through aU the work of their hands,' as in 
 Ii.xxxi.29, * to provoke Him to anger through 
 the work of your hands.* And we have also 
 the following resemblances ; 
 
 (a) W.17, ' forsake ' Jehovah (528.vi.) ; 
 
 ((3) ' other gods,' D.v.7, vi.l4, vii.4, viii.l9» 
 xi.l6,2S, xiii.2,6,13, xvii.S, xviii.20, xxviii.l4, 
 odM, xxix.36, XXX.17, xxxi.18,20, and also 
 E.XX.3, xxiii.l3, xxxiv.l4 ; 
 
 (y) 'provoke' (527.iv.) ; 
 
 (5) ' work of the hands' (527.ii.) ; 
 
 (e) V.19, shammah, ' desolation,' (B.T. * as- 
 tonishment,') D.xxviii.37, nowhere else in the 
 J^entateuch ; 
 
 (O k&lalah, * curse,' D.xi.28,29, xxi.23, 
 xxiii.5, xxvii,13, xxviii.15,45, xxix.27, and 
 also G.xxvii.12,13. 
 
 ' These coincidences can hardly be accidental. 
 And, if we could be sure that the text really 
 records the words of Huldah, they would 
 show decisively that she must have been 
 familiar with the Book of Deuteronomy, and, 
 therefore, as she could not have known it, in 
 the usual way, as a Book publicly known, 
 (since then the King and High Priest must 
 have known it also,) it would follow beyond 
 •A doubt that she knew it jjrirate/j/,— that there 
 was some such a course pursued as we have 
 supposed, and that Huldah was privy to it. 
 But it is very possible that these are not 
 really the words of Huldah, but those as- 
 cribed to her by the writer of the narrative. 
 We have suggested (539-541) that J&'emiah 
 may have been the Deuteronomist, and the rea- 
 sons which lend support to this conjecture shall 
 be produced in due time ; and we also believe, 
 with many critics, that the latter part of the 
 Second Book of Kings may have been written 
 by this Prophet, who was contemporary with 
 the events described in it. Thus Dr. Davidson, 
 ii.37, while not giving his own assent to this 
 hypothesis, observes — ' According to the Tal- 
 mudists, followed by many of the older theo- 
 logians, Jeremiah was the compiler of the 
 Book of Kings. This opinion has been 
 adopted in modern times by Havermick and 
 
 CJ-RAP, &c.' 
 
 The many points of coincidence between 
 this passage, 2K.xxii.l6-20, and Jeremiah, as 
 well as Deuteronomy, are, indeed, remark- 
 able, as follows : — 
 
 (a) 11.17, ' forsake Jehovah,* Jer.i.l6,ii.l3,17, 
 I!),v.7,19,ix.l3,xvi.ll,ll,xvii.l3,xix.4,xxii.9. 
 
 (p) ' other gods/ Jer.i.16, vii.6,9,18, xi.lO, 
 xiii.lO, xvi.11,13, xix.4,13, xxii.9, xxv.6,xxxii. 
 t'9, XXXV.15, xliv.3,5,8,15, 
 
 (y) ' provoke,' Jer.vii.18,19, viii.l9, xi.l7, 
 xxv.6,7, xxxii.29,30,32, xliv.3,8. 
 
 (5) * work of the hands,' (539.ii.) 
 
 (e) shammah, ' desolation/ Jer.il.l5, iv.7, 
 V.30, &c., twenty-four places. 
 
 (i) k&lalah, 'curse/ Jer.xxiv.9, xxv.18, 
 xxTl.6, xxix.22, xlii.18, xliv.8,12,22, xlix.l3. 
 
 The full phrase ' burn incense to other gods' 
 occurs in Jer,i.l6, xix.4, xliv.5,8,15, and no- 
 
 (vi) * Hence the Prophetess Huldah must 
 have had a share in the ' concerted scheme.' 
 But we meet here with a fresh confirmation 
 of our view. Not only does the Prophetess 
 give confirmation to the Book that has been 
 discovered, but it ia also read out of, in pre- 
 sence of the Priests, the Prophets, and the 
 whole people 1 What a conjoint plot must 
 this * concerted scheme ' have been 1 Who 
 were the persons deceived here, since all appear 
 to have nothing else in view than to deceive ?' 
 
 Ans, It is obvioiM that very few beside the 
 writer may have been privy to the scheme, — 
 perhaps, only the Priest Hilldah, and, pos- 
 sibly, Huldah, and one or two others. 
 
 (vii) ' The relations between the Priests 
 and Prophets of that age were not exactly of 
 the kind that will allow us to imagine such a 
 combination, (see Jer.viii.8,) in which both 
 parties joined hand in favour of falsehood, 
 which tlie Prophets on other occasions so mi- 
 spaxingly expose and rebuke.' 
 
 Ans. Jer.viii.8 does not refer to the time of 
 Hilkiah. But, as we have said, there is no 
 reason to suppose that the Priests and Pro- 
 phets, genei'ally, were privy to the afEair. 
 
 (viii) • We must accordingly suppose that, 
 in the time of Josiah, even according to our 
 narrative, the * Book of the Law ' was by no 
 means generally unknown, and that it is only 
 the king in particular that betrays an ignor- 
 ance of its contents, yet without showing a 
 total ignorance of the existence of the Book.' 
 
 An^, Rather , it seems impossible— if the 
 people, generally, had knowledge of the 
 contents of the Book,— that, at the srtne 
 time, the king, — such a king as Josiah, 
 who from his youth ' did that which was right 
 In the sight of Jehovah,' 2K.xxii. 2, —should 
 have been totally ignorant of them. It ia 
 probable that both king and people knew of a 
 written Law having once existed. 
 
 (ix) * This circurastance rises to a still 
 greater certainty, when we consider that, even 
 before the finding of that Book, the king had 
 made reforms with regard to the idolatry 
 which had prevailed to a gi-eat extent.' 
 
 Ans. This fact, if true, would only make it 
 more inconceivable than ever that the king 
 should have been more ignorant of the con- 
 tents of the Book than his idolatrous people 
 were. But the account of this earlier attempt 
 of Josiah, for the Reformation of Religion ia 
 his land, rests only on the unsupported state- 
 ment of the Chronicler, who says that ' in hia 
 eighth year he began to seek after the God of 
 David his father, and in the twelfth year he 
 began to pmrge Judah and Jerusalem from 
 the high places and the groves, and the carved 
 Images, and the molten images,&c.' 2Ch.xxxiv, 
 
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 3-7,— in fact, carrying out at that early age, 
 of hia own mere motion, the very Eeforma- 
 tion, which, according to the more trust- 
 worthy Book of Kings, only followed the 
 finding and reading the ' Book of the Law.' 
 
 (x) * Josiah does know that there is a * Book 
 of the Law,' and he is partially acquainted, 
 probably by tradition, with the matter of its 
 contents, as is shown by his obeying ite Com- 
 mandments. But now, by a remarl^ble oc- 
 currence, — the discovery of the Temple copy, 
 — hia knowledge of it is not only made com- 
 plete, bnt a powerful Impression is also 
 produced on his heart ; it now becomes the 
 purpose of his life to live as far as possible 
 according to such a Law in its entire extent. 
 In this way, the whole history of the occur- 
 rence and the life of the king stand in perfect 
 accordance with each, other.' 
 
 Ans. The only reason for supposing that 
 Josiah was 'partially acquainted with the 
 contents of the Book,' is, as Havernigk says, 
 the fact, that he is represented as * obeying its 
 commandments ' in the purging of his land 
 from idolatries. But this, as we have said, 
 rests only on the authority of the Chronicler, 
 and is contradicted by the whole tenor of the 
 story, as told in the book of Kings. If Josiah, 
 indeed, had been *^a7'ft'aW2/ acquainted' with 
 the contents of such a Book, we may be sure 
 that he would have taken care to make him- 
 self ^lly acquainted with it ; and, in fact, 
 Josiah was just the person, if ever king of 
 Judah was, to have literally fulfilled the com- 
 mand laid down for every king in D.xvii.18-20, 
 —to copy out the Law with his own hand. 
 
 We believe that both king and people were 
 • partially acquainted by tradition ' with the 
 fact that a Law-Book once existed, and even 
 with the general nature of its contents. But 
 we see no signs of their being acquainted with 
 the details of the present Pentateuch. 
 
 (xi) * But, apart also from all these argu- 
 ments, if we only consider the matter more 
 seriously for a moment, as it appears when 
 viewed in itself, the inadmissibility of the hy- 
 pothesis, advanced by the opponents of the 
 genuineness, is clearly exhibited. A Book, 
 which penetrates so deeply into the whole life 
 of the nation, impressing on it the most pe- 
 culiar character, — which comes forward with 
 the most direct oi>position to an age sunken 
 in idolatry, and unsparingly denounces war 
 against it, — ^which is promulgated at a time 
 when the Prophets, such even as Jeremiah, 
 were exposed to the mockery of frivolous con- 
 temporMdes, from whom neither Law nor 
 Prophecy could expect any hearty recogni- 
 tion, — ^this book is said to make its appearance 
 suddenly, being a deceptive fabrication of the 
 Priests, announcing to the people their punish- 
 ment, and producing the deepest impression 
 Upon them, without anyone raising the cry of 
 deceit and falsehood, without a voice being 
 raised against it, when it appears to have been 
 the interest of all to detect and expose the 
 falseness of the book, and the deception which 
 had been practised with it ! Yet there was 
 nothing more simple and easy than the ad- 
 duction of proof in such a case, which besides 
 could not but reckon on the accordance and 
 sympathy of numbers.* ' 
 
 199 
 
 Ans. (a) There was every reason to expect 
 that, at Jirst, the whole body of the people 
 would be gi-eatly affected by the discovery,-^ 
 both because they had a general traditionary 
 knowledge of the existence of some such a 
 book in former days, and because of the 
 earnestness with which the king and leading 
 men received it, as well as because of the 
 solemn and impressive character of the lan- 
 guage of the book itself,— especially, that 
 part of it, Deuteronomy, which we believe to 
 have been read in their hearing. 
 
 (^) But how do we know that no voice was 
 raised against it, — if not immediately, in the 
 first years of zeal, upon the new discovery, 
 yet _ afterwards, at all events, when men's 
 feelings began to cool, and they began to re- 
 consider the matter? We have no record 
 except from one, who may himself have been 
 a party to the whole scheme,— who may, in- 
 deed, have been the chief person concerned. 
 
 (y) We do not. In fact, find that even the 
 thrilling language of this book made any 
 gi'eat permaTient impression on the people. 
 There is no sign, as we have said, that the 
 Passover was ever kept again with such 
 solemnity, or that the Feast of Weeks and 
 the Feast o£ Tabernacles,— respecting which 
 the command is laid down so distinctly in 
 E.xxiii.l4-17,xxxiv.22-24,L.xxiii.l5-21,33-3'J» 
 D.xvi.16, where we finfl it so strongly en- 
 joined, • Thie2 times in a year shall all thy 
 males appear before Jehovah thy God in the 
 place which He shall choose, in the Feast of 
 TTnleavened Bread, and in the Feast of Weeks, 
 and in the Feast of Tabernacle, and they 
 shall not appear before Jehovah empty,' — 
 were ever kept at all, even by Josiah, 
 
 (5) It would seem also that not till the 
 reign of ZedeMah, the son of Josiah, did ' the 
 king and princes and all the people,'— probably 
 at the instance of Jeremiah himself, — make a 
 covenant to carry out the law in D.xv.l2, for 
 releasing their Hebrew servants, and this co- 
 venant they presently broke, Jer.xxxiv.8-11. 
 So, too, all the solemn tlu-eatenings of the 
 Law did not prevent the children of Judah. 
 from ' remembering their altars and their 
 groves by the green trees upon the high hills,' 
 Jer,xvii.2, — ^from loving and serving, walking 
 after, seeking, worshipping, ' the sun and the 
 moon and all the host of heaven,' Jer.viii.S, — 
 from ' having gods according to the number 
 of their cities, and setting up altars, according 
 to the number of the streets of Jerusalem, to 
 that shameful thing, even to bum incense 
 unto Baal,* Jer.xl.lS. 
 
 (xii) * The copy found in the Temple was 
 beyond dispute the Temple copy. It is quite 
 an useless question, whether it was the auto- 
 graph of Moses, or a later transcription instead 
 of it ; for even in the latter case it should be 
 regarded as being as good as the autograph, 
 with as much justice as if we should say that 
 the Temple, when repaired by Josiah, still 
 remained Solomon's Temple. ... It is mani- 
 f^ how easily such a copy, unobserved, 
 might remain, especially as it did not lie in the 
 Ark itself, and be neglected, — how easily even, 
 under Priests who, to please the Kings, fa- 
 voured, rather than hindered, idolatrous prac- 
 tices, especially under Josiah's immediate 
 predecessors, the obnoxious testimony of 
 
200 DETJTERONOMY WEITTEN IN THE REIGN OF JOSIAH. 
 
 Jehovali against His people might be inten- 
 tionally put aside ; as, on the other hand, it 
 Is manifest, that just such a copy as this must 
 also have made a remarkable impression when 
 it waa found. The only thing, concerning 
 which we are left in the dark by the history, 
 that is specially occupied by the sequel of this 
 occurrence, is the way and manner in which 
 this copy had been lost. This circumstiince, 
 however, is so little essential, and may so 
 easily and naturally be explained from the 
 preceding accounts, — ^those of the practices of 
 Manasseh, in particular, — that any unpre- 
 judiced writer might suitably enough pass it 
 over. But on that account it is also inad- 
 missible, to attempt to settle how long that 
 copy ha4 been missing or unknown ; and the 
 main point of the whole narrative must still 
 be regarded as this, that a particularly re- 
 markable copy of the * Book of the Law * was 
 found in the Temple, the discovery and reading 
 of which produced an exceedingly beneficial 
 impression on the king and the nation, be- 
 cause it was recognised by all as a sacred 
 obligatory book and as the Mosaic Law.' 
 
 Ans. It is strange that for eighteen years of 
 Josiah's reign, (not to speak of the penitential 
 years of Manasseh, which rest upon the very 
 doubtful authority of the Chronicler,) the 
 Temple copy should have lain in the Temple 
 all the while, yet never have been found by 
 Hilkiah till now. It is also very strange that 
 the histoiian shotild not have given the least 
 hint anywhere, that the Book now found was 
 the identical Temple copy, which had been 
 long mourned as lost. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DEUTEKOTfOMT PEOEABtT 'WRITTEN 
 ABOUT THE TIME OF JOSIAH. 
 
 559. Thus there is nothing in the 
 known facts of the case to negative 
 the supposition, that the ' Book of the 
 Law' was the Book of Deuteronomy, 
 recently composed, and now for the first 
 time produced, and read in the ears of 
 the people, — except, of course, the moral 
 difficulty which we find in attributing 
 such a proceeding as this to good men, 
 as Hilkiah and, perhaps, Jeremiah. 
 But we must not judge of those times 
 hy our own ; nor must we leave out of 
 consideration the circumstances, which 
 may have justified to their minds such 
 an act as this. The deplorable con- 
 dition of their people, sunk in the 
 most debasing idolatries, might be 
 thought to require some powerful in- 
 fluence to be brought upon them, be- 
 yond even an ordinary prophet's voice. 
 
 560. Prophets, in fact, had already 
 spoken, — Joel, Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, 
 Micah ; but their words had not availed 
 to keep back the people from those 
 
 deadly sins, which had already brought 
 down upon the Ten Tribes a fearful 
 judgment, and threatened before long a 
 yet more terrible woe upon Judah and 
 Jerusalem. What if the authority of 
 the great Lawgiver should be brought 
 to bear upon them ? And, — since the 
 Law-Book, as it then existed, was not 
 well suited for the present necessity, 
 — with its long details of the lives of 
 their forefathers, and of the events 
 which attended the deliverance out of 
 Egj-pt and the march through the 
 wilderness, as well as its minute direc- 
 tions about artistic and ceremonial 
 matters, — what if the very spirit of 
 the older Law should be summed up 
 in a powerful address, adapted to the 
 present circumstances of the times — 
 such as Moses would have delivered, if 
 now present with his people — and be 
 put into the mouth of the departing 
 Lawgiver ? 
 
 561. Let it be remembered that in 
 the Book of Deuteronomy it is Moses 
 always, and not Jehovah, who is intro- 
 duced as speaking, except in xi. 14,15, 
 xxix.5,6, where the writer seems un- 
 consciously to have passed from the 
 person of Moses into that of Jehovah, — 
 
 * / will give you the rain of your land in 
 due season . . . and / will send grass in thy 
 fields for thy cattle.' ' And / have led yon 
 forty years in the wilderness . . . that ye 
 might know that / am Jehovah your God.' 
 Otherwise, the writer is only ascribing 
 to Moses himself such thoughts as he 
 might naturally be supposed to have, 
 when taking leave of his people. 
 
 And further, though it cannot be 
 supposed, as we have said, that the old 
 Law-Book was read out at length by 
 the king in the ears of his people, yet 
 it may have been only increased by the 
 portion newly added to it. Thus, when 
 the whole Book was found by Hilkiah, 
 he might have been able to say with 
 truth that he had found the ' Book of 
 the Law.' 
 
 562. There is also another point of 
 view from which the matter should be 
 regarded. Supposing (to fix our ideas) 
 that Jeremiah really did write the book, 
 we must not forget that he was a Pro- 
 phet and, as such, habitually disposed 
 to regard all the special impulses of his 
 
DEUTERONOMY PEOBABLY WRITTEN IN TIME OF JOSIAH. 201 
 
 mind to religious activity, as direct 
 inspirations from the Divine Source of 
 Truth. To us, vrith our inductive train- 
 ing and scientific habits of mind, the 
 correct statement of facts appears of 
 the first necessity ; and consciously to 
 misstate them, or to state as fact what 
 we do not know or believe from ex- 
 ternal testimony to be fact, is a crime 
 against Truth. 
 
 563. But to a man lilte Jeremiah, who 
 believed himself to be in immediate 
 communication with the Source of all 
 Truth, this condition must have been 
 reversed. The inner Voice, which he 
 believed to be the Voice of the Divine 
 Teacher, would become all powerful — 
 would silence at once all doubts and 
 questionings. What it ordered him to 
 do, he would do without hesitation, as 
 by direct command of God : and all 
 considerations as to morality or im- 
 morality would either not be enter- 
 tained at all, or would only take the 
 form of misgivings as to whether, 
 possibly, in any particular case, the 
 command itself was really Divine. 
 
 564. Let us imagine, then, that Jere- 
 miah, or any other contemporary Seer, 
 meditating upon the condition of his 
 country, and the means of weaning his 
 people from idolatry, became possessed 
 with the idea of writing to them an 
 address, as in the name of Moses, of 
 the kind which we have just been con- 
 sidering, in which the laws ascribed to 
 him, and handed down from an earlier 
 age, having become in many respects un- 
 suitable, should be adapted anew to the 
 circumstances of the present times, and 
 re-enforced with solemn prophetical 
 utterances. This thought, we may be- 
 lieve, would take in the Prophet's mind 
 the form of a Divine command. All 
 question of deception or fraus pia 
 would vanish. And Huldah, too, in 
 like manner, if she knew of what was 
 being done, would consider, not whether 
 it was right or wrong to speak to the 
 Jews in the name of Moses, but what 
 was surely about to hajjpen, since these 
 threats of coming judgment, thus 
 spoken, were uttered by Divine Inspira- 
 tion, and, therefore, were certainly true. 
 
 665. And this is very much what 
 herwordsimply, if truly reported. She 
 
 makes no reference to Moses ; she does 
 not even refer, as Josiah is said to 
 have done, to ' our fathers not having 
 hearkened to the words of this boojf, 
 2K.xxii.l3. She says only, ul6,17: — 
 
 * Thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I -will bring 
 evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants 
 thereof, even all the words of the book which 
 the king of Judah hath read, because they 
 have forsaken me, and have burned incense 
 unto other gods,* &c. 
 
 One might almost say that she 
 studiously avoids asserting anything 
 affirmatory of the notion that the book 
 itself was an old book, the work of 
 Moses, and confines herself to her pro- 
 phetic function of declaring that the 
 evil threatened would surely come to 
 pass. And this is equally true if this 
 part of the history was written, as some 
 suppose, by Jeremiah, and these words 
 are his words, expressing the tenor, 
 rather than the actual language, of 
 Huldah' s reply. 
 
 666. Again, the effect upon the king's 
 mind, and the consequent movement 
 among the people, may have been far 
 greater than had been even anticipated. 
 It might have been intended merely to 
 produce this new work, as a ' prophecy 
 in disguise,' in the hope that it might 
 take some strong hold upon the national 
 mind, and confirm the hands of tliose 
 who were labouring to restore the true 
 Faith in Judah. And, perhaps, at first, 
 it was felt to be difficult or undesirable 
 to say or do anything which might act 
 as a check upon the zeal and energy 
 which the king himself exhibited, and 
 in which, as it seems, he was generally 
 supported by the people, in putting 
 down by force the gross idolatries which 
 abounded in his kingdom. 
 
 567. That impulsive effort, in fact, 
 which followed immediately the read- 
 ing of the ' Book,' might have been 
 arrested, if Josiah had been told at 
 once the true origin of those awful 
 words, which had made so stong an 
 impression on him. They were not 
 less awful, indeed, or less true, because 
 uttered in the name of Moses by such 
 a Prophet as Jeremiah. But still it 
 is obvious that their effect was likely 
 to be greatly intensified under the 
 idea that they were the last utterances 
 of Moses himself. And, as we have 
 
202 
 
 DEUT.I.1-II.37. 
 
 said, we seem to hare an indication 
 that the real facts of the ease subse- 
 quently became known to the king, if 
 not to the people generally, in the cir- 
 cumstance, that no such efforts appear 
 to have been made afterwards in his 
 reign to bring the people to Jerusalem 
 at the other Great Feasts, even in that 
 same year, and that no other Passover 
 seems to have been kept with any 
 such solemnity. 
 
 568. At any rate, we may consider 
 that the following points have now 
 been sufficiently established : — 
 
 (i) The Book of Deuteronomy must 
 have been written chiefly by one 
 writer ; ' 
 
 (ii) This writer must have been a 
 different person from the writer or 
 writers, by whom the rest of the Penta- 
 teuch, speaking generally, was written ; 
 
 (iii) The Deuteronomist, whoever he 
 may have been, must have lived in a 
 later age than either the Elohist or 
 Jehovist, since he takes for granted 
 facts recorded in their narrative ; 
 
 (iv) There are some indications of 
 this book having been written in a 
 very late age of the Hebrew history ; 
 
 (v) There are historical circum- 
 stances, which suggest that it may have 
 been composed in the early part of 
 Josiah's reign ; 
 
 (vi) There is a remarkable corre- 
 spondence between the peculiar ex- 
 pressions of the Deuteronomist and the 
 language of Jeremiah, who did live in 
 that age. 
 
 (vii) The Deuteronomist must have 
 been either Jeremiah himself, or some 
 other great Prophet of the later times 
 of the Jewish Monarchy, whose lan- 
 guage was closely allied to that of 
 Jeremiah, 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 DEnT.i.l-n.37. 
 
 569. We shall next proceed to show 
 that this Book contains also many other 
 very distinct signs of such a later 
 origin, in the existence of numerous 
 contradictions to the older narrative, 
 such as might naturally be expected to 
 arise under these circumstances, when 
 
 a later writer was adding freely from 
 his own mind, and from his own point 
 of view, to writings of an older time, 
 and was not careful to preserve strictly 
 the unity of the different parts of the 
 story. This implies, however, that he 
 did not regard the older document as 
 so inexpressibly sacred and so infallibly 
 Divine, as is implied in modern popular 
 views of inspiration. 
 
 670. In order to set these contra- 
 dictions plainly before the reader, it 
 will be desirable to pass under review 
 the whole Book of Deuteronomy, taking 
 notice only of those passages, which 
 affect in any way the questions now 
 under consideration, and carefully 
 watching for any signs of time, which 
 may betray themselves in the writer's 
 expressions. We may assume that we 
 now know that he lived in a later day 
 than the other writers of the Penta- 
 teuch. But we are further seeking to 
 ascertain, if possible, from the internal 
 evidence of the book itself, in what 
 later day he lived. We shall prefix 
 an asterisk (*) to those passages, which 
 appear most important in this last 
 respect, as involving ' signs of time,' 
 
 571. D.i.l. 
 
 * These be the words which Moaes spake nn- 
 to all Israel on the other [B.V.this] side Jor- 
 dan, in the wilderness, in the Axabah over 
 against Zuph, between Paran, and Tophel, 
 and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab,' 
 
 The above words are, of course, per- 
 fectly intelligible, if we are not obliged 
 to believe that the Book of Deuteronomy 
 is historically true, or, rather, if we are 
 allowed to suppose (what is, doubtless, 
 the true state of the case) that it is 
 merely the product of a devout writer's 
 imagination, — a poem, in short, in 
 which he puts such words into the 
 mouth of Moses as he deemed appro- 
 priate to the occasion. The writer, in 
 such a case, would not have realised to 
 himself the fuE meaning of his own 
 words, — ' Moses spake unto all Israel' 
 
 672. Doubtless, the expression 'all 
 Israel ' may sometimes be used for the 
 ' elders,' &e. by whom an order might 
 be communicated to the whole host. 
 But, that it means certainly in this 
 passage the assembled host, and is in- 
 tended to mean it, (and not the ' elders ' 
 
DEUT.I. 
 or ' headmen ' only, as some have sug- 
 gested), if the narrative is toberegarded 
 as literally and historically true, can- 
 not, as it appears to me, be reasonably 
 denied. And surely the words in 
 D.xxix.10,11, are enough to decide the 
 question : — 
 
 ' Ye Btimd this flay all of you before Jehovah 
 yoxir God, — your captains of your tribes your 
 elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, 
 —your little ones, your wives, and the stranger 
 that is in Lhy camp, from the hewer of thy 
 wood unto the drawer of thy water.' 
 
 573. The -writer, however, I repeat, 
 was not guilty of any such absurdity 
 as the words, understood in their 
 natural and proper meaning, would 
 imply. For he never realised to himself 
 the thing stated as an historical fact, 
 any more than Tacitus would have 
 imagined that the words, which he has 
 put into the mouth of the barbarian 
 chief, Galgacus, would be supposed by 
 any intelligent reader to have been 
 actually uttered by him. Scott, of 
 course, takes the literal view of the 
 matter, and explains it as foUows : — 
 
 'The words,' as here mentioned, seem to 
 mean the subsequent exhortations, which 
 Moses delivered to the principal persons in 
 Israel, that they might make them known in 
 their several tribes and families. Perhaps he 
 spake some of the principal passages many 
 times over to the people in general, assembled 
 in large companies for that purpose. But 
 there is no ground to suppose that his voice 
 was miraculousli/ rendered audible to the 
 whole nation at once, as some have asserted, 
 
 574:. EJfOBEL observes, i)cM<.^.207: — 
 It is not easy to perceive for what reason 
 the author has denoted this locality in an 
 extraordinary and unnecessary way with six 
 names, especially as it has been so often named 
 ahready, N.xxii.l , xxvi.-3,63, xxxi,12, xxxiii.48, 
 49,50,X!txv.l,xxxvi.l3, and must have been 
 well knoTrn to the reader. 
 
 This circumstance is most naturally 
 to be accounted for by the fact of a 
 later — rather, a mvch later — writer 
 wishing to define more accurately in 
 his own age a locality, which he found 
 distinguished so remarkably in the 
 older records, — especially as it lay 
 within reach, as it were, of everyone 
 who cared to see it, not far away in 
 the Arabian waste, and he designed to 
 take it as the scene of the farewell ad- 
 dresses of Moses. And this is eon- 
 firmed by his adding in a parenthesis,— 
 ' There are eleven days' journey from Horeb 
 
 .1-11.37. 
 
 203 
 
 by the way of Mount Seir imto Kadcsh- 
 Bamea,' i>.2, — 
 
 words, which surely could never have 
 been inserted in this way by Moses or 
 any contemporary writer. 
 
 575. D.i.6-18. 
 
 The account of the appointment of 
 officers, as here given, involves more 
 than, one inconsistency. First, tha 
 Deuteronomist loses sight of the fact 
 that, according to the story, N.xxvi.64, 
 the whole generation was dead which 
 received the Law at Horeb ; and so he 
 makes Moses say, ■u.6, ' Jehovah our 
 God spake unto v,s in Horeb,' and stiU 
 more distinctly, v. 9, 'I spake unto you 
 at that time, saying, I am not able to 
 bear you myself alone,' and v.li, ' Ye 
 answered me, and said.' 
 
 576. But a more remarkable dis- 
 crepancy exists in v.\5, where the state- 
 ment is wholly at variance with that in 
 E.xviii.25, 26. In this latter passage, the 
 ap;pointment of the officers takes place 
 before the giving of the Law at Sinai ; 
 here it takes place nearly twelve months 
 afterwards, when they are jvst about to 
 leave Horeb, v.6. If it be said that we 
 must extend the meaning of the phrase 
 ' at that time ' in 11.9,18, to include the 
 whole twelve months, and must suppose 
 that the fact stated in i>.6-8 occurred 
 at a point of time subsequently to that 
 in V. 9-18, yet both these accounts are 
 contradictory to that in N.xi.14-17. 
 For here, after they have left Horeb, 
 Moses complains of the burden of the 
 people, (though, according to either of 
 the other two statements, he had a 
 multitude of officers to help him,) and 
 he is commanded then to appoint 
 seventy elders, — 
 
 ' and they shall bear the burden of the people 
 with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone.' 
 
 677. Scott attempts to reconcile the 
 difficulty as follows : — 
 
 The counsel, here referred to, seems to have 
 been suggested by Jethro before the giving of 
 the Law. Moses, in consequence, proposed 
 it to the Lord, who approved it, and then 
 with the concurrence of the people it at 
 length took place, about the time when they 
 departed from Horeb, and at no great distance 
 from that of the appointment of the seventy 
 elders. 
 
 That is to say, according to Scott, 
 though Moses was 'wearing away' 
 
204 
 
 DEUT.I.: 
 
 ■with the labour of judging the people, 
 he delayed twelve months to carry out 
 his father-in-law's adriee ! But the 
 words in E.xviii.24,25, plainly imply 
 that he acted at once on Jethro's advice ; 
 and they state also that ' Moses chose 
 able men out of all Israel ' for these 
 offices, i;.26, whereas in D.i. 1 3 we read — 
 ■ Take you wise men, and understanding, 
 and known among yonr tribes, and I will 
 malce tliem nUers over you.* 
 
 578. D.i.22,23. 
 
 * And ye came near vnto me, every one of 
 you, and said, We will send men before us, 
 and they shall search us out the land, and 
 bring us word again by what way we must 
 go up, and into what cities we shall come. 
 And the saying pleased me weU ; and 1 took 
 twelve men of you, one of a tribe, &c.' 
 
 But in N.xiii.1,2, the sending of the 
 spies is ascribed, not to a suggestion 
 from the people, but to an express 
 command of Almighty God : — 
 
 ' And Jehovah spake vnto Moses, saying. Send 
 thou men, that they may search the land of 
 Canaan, which I give unto the children of 
 Israel ; of every izibe of their fathers shall 
 ye send a man, every one a ruler among 
 them.* 
 
 Scott says on this point : — 
 We find elsewhere that the people first pro- 
 posed to Moses this design of searching the 
 land, who, not suspecting the distrust and 
 unbelief which had suggested it, approved the 
 proposal ana asked counsel of the Lord. He, 
 having been provoked by their former rebel- 
 lions, permitted it, and gave directions accord- 
 ingly, in order to a further discovery of their 
 ^vickedness, the display of His own glory, and 
 for the instruction of His Church in all ages. 
 
 579. But here again the writer seems 
 to have forgotten that these things 
 took place, according to the story, forty 
 years before, when most of those, whom 
 he was now addressing, were not even 
 bom, and none of them, except Caleb 
 and Joshua, were of age to be numbered. 
 Yet he makes Moses say, 'Ye came near 
 unto me, every one of you, &c.,' u22, 
 and the spies * brought us word again,' 
 ■!;.26, and 'ye would not go up,' vM, 
 and 'ye murmured in your tents,' u27. 
 So we have in v.29, ' 'Then I said unto 
 you, Dread not, neither be afraid of 
 them,' and v.i2, 'Yet in this thing ye 
 did not believe Jehovah your God,' — 
 with many more like instances, 
 
 • and ye came near, and stood under the moun- 
 tain, and Jehovah spake unto you out of the 
 Tnidst of the fire ; ye beard the voice of the 
 
 1-II.37. 
 
 words, but saw no similitude ; only ye heard 
 
 a voice,' iv. 11, 12. 
 
 See also the passages quoted iq 
 (604). 
 
 Again, in D.i.21, Moses is made to 
 exhort the people to ' go up and possess 
 the land,' before sending the spies; 
 whereas the whole account in N.xiii 
 implies, though it does not exactly state, 
 the contrary. 
 
 680. D.i.37-40. 
 
 * Also Jehovah was angry with me for your 
 sakes, saying, Thou also shalt not go in 
 thither. But Josliua, the son of Kun, which 
 standeth before thee, he shall go in thither ; 
 encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to 
 inherit it. Moreover, your little ones, which 
 ye said should be a prey, and your children 
 which in that day had no knowledge between 
 good and evil, they shall go in thither, and 
 unto them will I give it, and they shall possess 
 it. But as for you, turn you, and take your 
 journey into the wilderness by the way of the 
 Red Sea.* 
 
 Here, again, the Deuteronomist, 
 though thoroughly imbued with a 
 general notion of the story, seems to 
 have lost sight of the particular fact 
 that Moses was sentenced to die, and 
 Joshua appointed to succeed him, not 
 at the time which is here referred to, 
 in the days of the former generation, 
 but after an interval of thirty-seven 
 years, at the end of the wanderings, 
 N.xxTii.15-23, only just before this 
 address is snpposed to be delivered. 
 
 681. It should be noticed also that 
 three times in Deuteronomy, viz. i.37, 
 iii.26, iv.21, it is stated that Jehovah 
 ' was angry ' with Moses on account of 
 the perverse behaviour of the people. 
 Whereas, in N.xx. 1 2, xxvii.12-14, God's 
 displeasure is ascribed to the unbelief 
 or the impatience of Moses himself. 
 If this discourse in Deuteronomy had 
 really been delivered by Moses it would 
 be strange that he should omit to make 
 any reference whatever to the fact of 
 his own misconduct, and should throw 
 all the blame here upon the people. 
 
 •682. D.ii.4,5. 
 
 * And command thou the people, saying, Te 
 are to pass through the coast of your brethren 
 the children of Bsau, which dwell in Seir ; and 
 they shall be afraid of you. Take ye good 
 heed unto yourselves therefore ; meddle not 
 with them ; for I will not give you of their 
 land, no, not so much as a foot-breadth ; be- 
 cause I have given Mount Seir unto Esau tor 
 
DEUT.I, 
 -We hare here, most prpbably, an 
 indication of later time, when the 
 Deuteronomist lived, and when Edom 
 was independent, and there was no 
 lifcelihnod of its being subject again to 
 the yoke of Israel. We read, lK.ix. 
 26— 
 
 * And king Solomon made a navy of ships in 
 Ezion-geber, which is beside Elotli, [or Elalk, 
 D.ii.8,] on the shore of the Red Sea, in the 
 land of Edam.' 
 
 . But the possession of Elath was lost 
 for a time, and recovered at last by 
 Uzziah, who 'built Elath, and restored 
 it to Judah," 2K.xiv.22. 
 
 583. In the days of his grandson, 
 Ahaz, however, itwas lost permanently; 
 for we read, 2K.xvi.6 — 
 
 *At that time Bezin, king of Syria, re- 
 cover^ Elath to Syria, and drave the Jews 
 from Elath ; and the Syrians came to Elath, 
 and dwelt there unto this day.* 
 
 From that time the Edomites appear 
 to have maintained completely their 
 independence as regards Judah. In 
 Jeremiah's time this was the case, as 
 we gather from Jer.ix. 26, xxv.21,xxvii.3, 
 where Edom is reckoned as on a par 
 with Egypt, Judah, Ammon, Moab, &c., 
 and in Jer.xlix.l6 is threatened with 
 punishment for its pride : — 
 
 *Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and 
 the pride of thine heart, thou that dwellest 
 in the clefts of the rock, that boldest the 
 height of the hill ; though thou shouldest 
 inake thy nest as high as the eagle, 1 will 
 bring thee down from thence, saith Je- 
 hovah.' 
 
 884. D.ii.9. 
 
 'And Jehovah said unto me. Distress not 
 the Moabites, neither contend with them in 
 battle ; for I will not give thee of their land 
 for a possession; because I have given Ar 
 nnto the children of Lot for a possession.' 
 
 Here also we have most probably an 
 indication of the long and flourishing 
 independence of the Moabites in the 
 time of the Deuteronomist. 
 
 ' Moab hath been at ease from his youth, 
 and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not 
 been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither 
 hath he gone into captivity ; therefore his 
 taste remaineth in him, and his scent is not 
 changed.* Jer.xlviii.il. 
 
 * We have heard the pride of Moab, (he 
 is exceeding proud,) his loftiness, and his 
 arrogancy, and his pride, and the haughti- 
 ness of his heart.' Jer.xlviii.29. 
 
 »585. D.ii.l2. 
 
 ' As Israel did unto the land of his possession, 
 which Jehovah gave unto them.' 
 
 1-II.37. 205 
 
 We have already pointed out (253) 
 that the above language indicates that 
 the writer was living after the Con- 
 quest of the land of Canaan. The ex- 
 pression, ' land of his (Israel's) posses- 
 sion,' can denote nothing else than 
 the identical Palestine, and though it 
 might indude the trans-Jordamc land, 
 could not have been used to denote that 
 alone. 
 
 586. D.ii.l9. 
 
 ' When thou comest nigh over against the 
 children of Ammon, distress them not, nor 
 meddle with them ; for I will not give thee 
 of the land of the children of Ajnmon any 
 possession ; because I have given it unto the 
 children of Lot for a possession.' 
 
 We read of the Ammonites Jer.xlix. 
 1,4:— 
 
 ' Concerning the Ammonites, thus saith 
 Jehovah : Hath Israel no sons? hath he no 
 heir ? Why then doth their king inlierit Gad, 
 and his people dwell in his cities? . . . 
 Wherefore gloriest thou in the valleys, thy 
 flowing valley, O backsliding daughter, — that 
 trusted in her treasures, saying. Who shall 
 come unto me ? ' 
 
 And in Jer.xl.14 mention is made of 
 ' Baahs, king of the Ammonites.' Thus 
 it appears that these also were indepen- 
 dent in Jeremiah's days. 
 
 687. D.ii.9-12,19-23. 
 
 We have already noticed (262) that 
 the introduction of these archseological 
 notices about the 'Emim,' 'Horim,' 
 and ' Zamzummim,' who in ancient 
 days inhabited the countries subse- 
 quently occupied by Moab, Edom, and 
 Ammon, as also about the ' Avim,' who 
 were expelled by the ' Caphtorim,' 
 betrays the hand of a later writer, who 
 took an interest in recording such facts 
 as these, which implied that these 
 nations, akin to Israel, had, like Israel, 
 been favoured with special help and 
 guidance from above, and put in posses- 
 sion of the lands of other occupants, 
 whom Jehovah 'destroyed before them.' 
 
 588. D.ii.29. 
 
 The statement, which is here made, 
 viz. that the Edomites and Moabites 
 sold meat and water to the Israelites, 
 is at variance with those in N.xx.lS,20, 
 21, and, as regards Moab, also to 
 D.xxiii.3,4. Sowereadin Ju.xi.l7 — 
 
 ' Then Israel sent messengers unto the king 
 of Edom, saying, Let me, I pray thee, pass 
 through thy land ; but the king of Edom 
 
206 DEtJT.III. 
 
 ■would not hearten thereto. And in like 
 manner they sent unto the king of Moab ; 
 but he would not consent.' 
 
 589. Kdetz remarks, iii.p.332 : — 
 On the western side the mountains of 
 
 Edom rise abruptly from the Arabah. There 
 are only a few passes, which are at all acces- 
 sible from this side, and these can easily be 
 occupied. But, on the east, the mountains 
 elope gently off into a desert tract of table- 
 land, which is still a hundred feet higher, at 
 least, than the desert of El Tih. On this side, 
 therefore, the land was open ; and they were 
 not very likely to assume a hostile attitude 
 towards the 600,000 fighting men ,of Israel. 
 And the very fact that they had offended the 
 Israelites, by opposing them on the western 
 border, would make them more eager to avoid 
 everytliing that could give occasion for anger 
 or revenge, now that they had come round to 
 the eastern side. 
 
 590. But this does not dispose of the 
 difficulty; for in D.xxiii.3,4, we read — 
 
 ' An Ammonite or Moahite shall not enter 
 into the congi'egation of Jehovali, because 
 they met you not with bread and with water 
 in the way, when ye came out from Egypt, 
 and because they hii'ed against thee Balaam, 
 the son of Beor, to curse thee.' 
 
 KuBTz and Henqstenbebg say that 
 D.ii.29 refers to a request to sell bread 
 and water to the Israelites, which the 
 Moabites did, but not out of any kind 
 ness, — they did it only 'as a manifes- 
 tation of their selfish and grasping 
 disposition'; whereas in D.xxiii.4 tlie 
 charge made against them is that they 
 did not come forward of their own 
 accord to greet their brethren, the 
 Israelites, and ' meet them' on the 
 way with presents of food. But, what- 
 ever Edom may have done in the way 
 of kindness, (of which, however, there 
 is no indication in the book of Numbejs,) 
 there is not the least sign in the older 
 story that Balak, king of Moab, and 
 his people, supplied the Israelites with 
 bread and water at all, whether for 
 love or for money. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 EEUT.m.l-ix.29. 
 
 691. D.iii.11,14. 
 
 We have considered already (255) the 
 story of Og's 'iron bedstead' referred 
 t-o in v.W, and (244) the expression 
 ' unto this day' in v.\i, as being signs 
 of this Book having been composed at 
 a later date than the age of the Exodus. 
 It is very probable that Og's ' bed' was 
 really a large sarcophagus, made of the 
 
 1-IX.29. 
 
 dark basalt which abounds in the dis- 
 trict of Bashan. Many of these stone 
 coifins still exist in these regions, and 
 are used as water-troughs by the in- 
 habitants. 
 
 592. For an interesting account of 
 the ruined cities of Bashan, described in 
 f.4,5, as 'threescore cities, all fenced 
 with high walls, gates, and bars,' — 
 which now remain, ' crowded together' 
 in the country S.E. of Damascus, called 
 the Haurfiji, — 
 
 of great size, of very high antiquity, and in a 
 high state of preservation, — not mere sites, in 
 many cases not even ruins, but still standing 
 almost uninjured, the streets perfect, the 
 houses perfect, the walls perfect, the stone 
 doors still hanging on their hinges — 
 see papers by C. C. Graham, Esq. in 
 the Journal of the Geog. Soc. forJSoS 
 and Cambndge Essays for 1858. 
 
 Doubtless these massive Cyclopean 
 ruins existed in the time of the Deute- 
 ronomist, as they do now, and as they 
 probably existed for ages before him. 
 
 593. D.iii.29. 
 
 ' So we abode in the valley over against 
 Bethpeor.' 
 
 Here we have, as Knobel says, 
 ^.223— 
 
 An accurate note of place, which the author 
 has made for his readers^ not Moses for hia 
 Israelites. 
 
 This will be evident, when it is con- 
 sidered that, according to the story 
 (162), the facts related in this chapter 
 — to which the phrase 'at that time' 
 is repeatedly applied — had only just 
 occurred, a few days before, and that 
 they were actually now 'abiding in the 
 valley over against Bethpeor,' according 
 to the notice in iv.46. 
 
 594. D.iv.3,4. 
 
 ' Yoiu: eyes have seen what Jehovah did 
 because of Baal-Peor; for all the men that 
 followed Baal-Peov, JehovaJi thy Qod hath de- 
 stroyed them from among you. But ye, that did 
 cleave unto Jehovah your God, are alive every 
 one of you this day.' 
 
 Dean Graves remark3,i.p.l37,138: — 
 The legislator, in order to deter the Jews 
 from idolatry, alludes to this fact. But he 
 notices no circumstance but one which, though 
 in the original narrative not stated, was in- 
 finitely the most important to advert to on 
 this occasion, but which no persons but spec- 
 tators of the fact, and perfectly acquaints 
 with every individual concerned in it, could 
 possibly feel the truth of. 
 
DEUT.III.1-IX.29. 
 Upon such frail foundations are based 
 many of the much-commended argu^ 
 ments of our standard books on the 
 authenticity and historical veracity of 
 the Pentateuch ! It is obvious that the 
 whole question at issue is begged in 
 the first instance, when it is taken for 
 granted as a fact, that Moses actually 
 did deliver this address. 
 
 *695. D.iv.l9. 
 
 * And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, 
 ftnd when thou seest the Sun and the Moon 
 and the Stars, and all the Host of Heaven, 
 shouldest be driven to worship them, &c.' 
 
 The 'Sun' seems to have been an 
 object of worship in early days among 
 the tribes of Canaan, as is implied by 
 the fact that, the name of the town 
 Beth-shemesh means ' House of the 
 Sun,' corresponding to Beth-el, ' House 
 of God.' Probably, the Sun was wor- 
 shipped under the name Baal ovAdon, = 
 •Lord,' Jiw, &c. (seePartn,p.l59,160,) 
 and the Moon under that of ' Astarte.' 
 
 596. But the worship of the ' Host of 
 Heaven' is first named in the history, 
 as one of the sins for which the Ten 
 Tribes were carried captive, in 2K.xvii. 
 16; and it seems to have been first 
 geTierally practised in Judah in the 
 reign of Manasseh, the father of Josiah, 
 2K.xxi.3,d, 2Ch.xxxiii.3, and is ex- 
 plained by Knobbl, Deut.p.22&, to have 
 arisen out of Assyrian and Chaldee 
 influences. Manasseh's grandfather 
 Abaz may, indeed, have introduced it, 
 as appears from a comparison of 2£. 
 xxiii.l2, where we read of — 
 
 * the altars that were on the top of the upper 
 chamber of Ahaz, * — 
 
 with Jer.xijc.13, — 
 
 * the houses upon whose roofs they have burnt 
 incense unto all the Host of Heaven.' 
 
 597. But it is not mentioned among 
 the special offences of king Ahaz in 
 2K.xvi.3,4, and, therefore, if introduced 
 in that reign, probably was not much 
 practised, and it was certainly not 
 adopted by his son Hezekiah. In 
 Manasseh's reign, however, it seems to 
 have flourished. Hence we find ex- 
 jjress mention made of this worship in 
 the story of Josiah's reformation, 2K. 
 Sxiii, where we read of the vessels that 
 were made ' for all the Host of Heaven,' 
 t'.4, the Priests that burned incense 
 ' to the Sun and to the Moon and to the 
 
 2or 
 
 Planets and to all the Host of Heaven,' 
 ■0.5, 'the chariots of the Sun,' ^.11. 
 
 598. Though put down by Josiah so 
 strongly, it appears, however, to have 
 revived again, since we find in this 
 very reign Zephaniah prophesying the 
 destruction of ' them that worship the 
 Host of Heaven upon the housetops, 
 i.5. And Jeremiah says, — 
 
 ' Seest thou not what they do in the cities 
 of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem ? 
 The children gather wood, and the fathers 
 kindle the fire, and the women knead their 
 dough, to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven," 
 &c., Tii.17,18 ;— 
 
 ' And they shall spread them before the Sun 
 and the Moon and all the Host of Heaven, 
 whom they have loved, and whom they have 
 served, and after whom they have walked, 
 and whom they have sought, and whom they 
 have worshipped,' &g., viii.2 ; — 
 
 'And the houses of Jerusalem, and the 
 houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled 
 as the plaoe of Tophet, because of all the 
 houses upon whose roofs they have burned 
 incense unto all the Host of Heaven,* &c-, 
 xix.l3. 
 
 And see Jer.xliv. 1 7-1 9, 25, Ez. viii. 1 6. 
 
 599. We may observe a strong indi- 
 cation, of the Book of Deuteronomy 
 having been written in a later age than 
 the other four Books (generally) of the 
 Pentateuch, in the fact that this wor- 
 ship is not mentioned in any part of 
 the Pentateuch, except D.iv.l9,xvii.3. 
 So, too, complete phrases, similar to this, 
 ' the Sun and the Moon and aU the 
 Host of Heaven,' occur only in D.iv.l9, 
 xvii.3, Jer. viii.2, and 2K.xxiii.5, which 
 may have been written by Jeremiah 
 himself (667,v). 
 
 *600. D.iv.25-28. 
 
 * When thou Shalt beget children, and child- 
 ren's children, and ye shall have remained long 
 in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves. 
 ... I call heaven and earth to witness 
 against you this day, that ye shall utterly 
 perish from o£E the land whereunto ye go over 
 Jordan to possess it. . . , And Jehovah 
 shall scatter you among the nations, and ye 
 shall he left few in number among the heathen , 
 whither Jehovah shall lead you. And there 
 ye shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, 
 wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, 
 nor eat, nor smell.' 
 
 Assuming that these words were not 
 spoken by Moses prophetically, with a 
 view to future events, they seem to 
 imply that the writer had before him 
 the captivity of the Ten Tribes, and 
 wished to preserve Judah from the 
 same judgment. 
 
208 
 
 601. D.iv.29-31. 
 
 * But, if from thence thou Shalt seek Jehovah 
 thy God, thou shalt find Him, il thou seek 
 hira with all thy heart and with all thy soul. 
 ■Wlien thou art in tribulation, and all these 
 things are come upon thee, in the latter days, 
 if thou turn to Jehovah thy God, and shalt be 
 obedient unto His Voice, — for Jehovah thy God 
 is a merciful God, — He will not forsake thee, 
 neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant 
 of thy fathers which He sware unto them.' 
 
 Here also the Deuteronomist evi- 
 dently contemplates the possibility of 
 the Ten Tribes being restored from 
 their captivity, and reinstated in their 
 own land, if only they would repent 
 and return to Jehovah their God. His 
 hope was, doubtless, that the tribes of 
 Israel would all be gathered again one 
 day under the government of the House 
 of David. We shall see other similar 
 indications of these warm, patriotic 
 expectations of brighter days for Israel. 
 
 »602. D.iv.38. 
 
 * To drive out nations from before thee 
 greater and mightier than thou art, to bring 
 thee in, to give thee their land for an inherit- 
 ance, as it is this day.' 
 
 We have here another indication 
 that the writer was living in an age 
 after the Conquest; though the proof 
 is not so decisive as that in (585), since 
 it might be argued that the above lan- 
 guage is sufficiently explained by 
 reference to the Conquest of the trans- 
 Jordanie lands, which had already 
 taken place. 
 
 603. D.iv.41-49. 
 
 This section, as it now stands, is rather 
 perplexing, and may, perliaps, contain a 
 fragment of the older document, removed 
 from its proper place in connexion with 
 the narrative in N.xxxv.* In its present 
 position, it interrupts very awkwardly 
 
 * If this be, as we suppose, a passage of 
 mixedorigm.—Uiai is, a iragmetitol: the older 
 dijcuiiieut, recouoneil by the Deuteronomist, — 
 yet it is still difficult, if not impossible, to 
 separate the dlDeieut portions whicn are due 
 to diheient authors. 
 
 In 11.44, however, the expression, 'the Law,' 
 savours strongly of the Deuteronomist (517) ; 
 "while vA6 is certainly Deuteronomistic. The 
 multiplication in this verse of synonymous 
 tenns, * the testimonies, and the statutes, and 
 the judgments,* is very common in Deuter- 
 onomy, e.g. iv.1,5,8,14,40, v.81, vi.1,17,20, &o., 
 and the plural h£(2oM, is used, as here, in the 
 sense of ' precepts,* or * ordinances,' In D.iv.45, 
 vi.17,20, but nowhere else in the Pentateuch, 
 
 DEUT.III.1-IX.29. 
 
 the address of Moses, or, rather, it is 
 inserted abruptly between two separate 
 addresses, which have no connexion 
 either with it or with each other, for 
 D.v.l begins veiy abruptly. 
 
 604. D.v.2-5. 
 * Jehovah our God made a covenant with 
 
 us at Horeb. Jehovah made not this covenant 
 with our fathers, but with us, even iw, tcho are 
 all of us here alive this day. Jehovah talked 
 with you face to face in the mount out of the 
 midst of the fire. I stood between Jehovah 
 and you at that time, to show you the word of 
 Jehovah ; for ye were afraid by reason of the 
 fire, and went not up unto the mount.* 
 
 Here we have very strong instances 
 of the oversight referred to in (579). 
 It may, of course, be said that Moses, 
 in all these cases, is addressing the 
 people collectively, and that the fathers, 
 with whom the covenant was made at 
 Horeb, included the children to whom 
 he was now speaking at the end of the 
 wanderings. But, if every one of those 
 fathers was dead, as the narrative tells 
 us, and only a small proportion of those 
 now listening to Moses was present on 
 the former occasion, as children under 
 age, the above words could scarcely 
 have been used by one taking note of 
 this circumstance. Comp. also xi. 
 2-7:— 
 
 ' I speak not with your cliildren, which 
 have not known His miracles and His acts, 
 which He did in the midst of Egypt, unto 
 Pharaoh the king of Eg^'pt, and unto all his 
 land, &c. ; but your eyes have seen all the great 
 acts of Jehovah which He did.* 
 
 605. D.v.6-21. 
 That the later Deuteronomist had no 
 
 very strong sense of the unspeakable 
 sacreduess of the earlier document, is 
 sufficiently plain by the liberties he has 
 taken with its contents, in altering seve- 
 ral of its expressions, and, in particu- 
 lar, modifying in a remarkable manner, 
 the Fourth Commandment. One would 
 have thought that anyone — even Moses 
 himself — while repeating words be- 
 lieved to be ineffably holy, — which 
 had not only been littered in the ears 
 of all Israel by Jehovah Himself, but 
 had been written down by the Finger 
 of God, twice over, on the Tables 
 of stone, — would not have varied by 
 a single letter from the Divine original. 
 
 "06. Yet how stands the ease in this 
 respect? In the Hebrew there are 
 
DEUT. III.1-IX.29. 
 
 209 
 
 several mmor discrepancies, such as 
 changes or additions of words, some of 
 which may be observed in the English 
 translation. Thus we may note the 
 insertions, ' as Jehovah your God has 
 commanded thee,' ul2,16, 'nor thine 
 ox, nor thine ass,' i).14, 'that it may 
 go well with thee,' ul6, 'his field,' 
 u21, and the inversion of the order of 
 the clauses in u21. This last, indeed, 
 completely changes the original mean- 
 ing of the word 'house': for in E.xx.l7 
 it denotes the house and aU that be- 
 longs to it, so that ul7 sums up the 
 different parts of the ' house,' whereas 
 in D.V.21, the word denotes merely 
 ' dwelling.' 
 
 607. But the latter part of the Fourth 
 Commandment is completely altered, 
 and a totally different reason is as- 
 signed, m the passage of Deuteronomy, 
 for sanctifying the Sabbath, from that 
 laid down in the book of Exodus, and, 
 what is still more remarkable, without 
 any reference to the latter reason as 
 even existing. 
 
 E.xx.8-11. 
 
 Bemember tlie Sabbath Day to ballow it. 
 Six days shalt tboa labour and do all tby 
 work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of 
 Jehovah thy God. In it thou shalt not do 
 anywork, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, 
 thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor 
 thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is -withiu thy 
 gates : for in six days Jehovah made heaven 
 and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and 
 rested the seventh day ; wherefore Jehovah 
 blessed the SAbbatb Day and hallowed it. 
 
 D.T.12-15. 
 
 Keep the Sabbath Day to hallow it, as Je- 
 hovah thy God hath comTnanded thee. Six days 
 Shalt thou labour, and do aU thy work. But 
 the seventh day is the Sabbath of Jehovah thy 
 God. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou, 
 nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man- 
 servant, nor thy maid-servanfc, nor thine ox, 
 nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor tby 
 stranger that is within tby gates: that thy 
 man-servani and thy Tnaid-servajit may rest as 
 well as ^lou. And remember thai thou wast a 
 servant in the land of Egypt, and that Jehovah, 
 thy God, brought thee out thence, through a 
 mighty hand, and try a stretched-out arm; 
 WHEEBWOBB Jehovah thy God commanded thee 
 tomake (=keep) the Sabbath Day. 
 
 608. Upon the above we may remark 
 as follows. 
 
 (i) Each writer distinctly professes 
 to give the identical words which were 
 
 spoken by Jehovah Himself, at the very 
 same point of time. 
 
 * God spake all these words, saying, &c.* 
 E.XX.1. 
 
 ' Jehovah talked with you, face to face, in 
 the Mount, out of the midst of the fire .... 
 saying, &c.' D.v.4,5. 
 
 ' These words Jehovah spake unto all your 
 assembly in the Mount, out of the midst of 
 the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, 
 with a great voice, and ffe added no more. 
 And Re wrote them in two Tables of stone, and 
 delivered them unto me.' d.22. 
 
 (ii) This excludes the notion that 
 one passage gives a mere reminiscence 
 of the other, which might be defective, 
 or might vary in some points, without 
 materially aflfecting the general credi- 
 bility of the narrative. 
 
 (iii) Hence the two statements in- 
 volve an absolute contradiction. 
 
 (iv) Independently of the above con- 
 tradiction, the variation here observed 
 is so remarkable that it cannot be sup- 
 posed that Moses wrote the passage in 
 Deuteronomy, either forgetting, or de- 
 signedly modifying, the words of the 
 original commandment, which he had 
 received in so solemn and wonderful a 
 manner. 
 
 iy) The variation, therefore, between 
 these two passages, is enough to show 
 that the book of Deuteronomy, at all 
 events, could not have been written by 
 
 (vi) From the agreement between 
 the two passages there can be no doubt 
 that the later Deuteronomist had before 
 him the passage in Exodus. 
 
 (vii) As the Deuteronomist ventured 
 to make so important a change in this 
 Commandment, it is plain that he did 
 not think it a sacrilegious act to alter 
 the original form of the command, — 
 that, in short, he regarded it as merely 
 a human composition, emanating &om 
 some writer of a previous age. 
 
 609. D.viii.4. 
 
 'Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, 
 neither did thy foot swell, these forty yea-'S.' 
 
 So, too, we read in xxix.5: — 
 
 ' Your clothes are not waxen old upon you, 
 and thy shoe is not waxen ojd upon thy foot. 
 
 No mention is made of this miracu- 
 lous provision of clothing in the older 
 narrative. KtTEXz observes, iii. 312,313: 
 
 The history of the exposition of these verses 
 furnishes one of the most striking examples 
 
210 
 
 DEUT. X.1-XI.32, 
 
 of the extent to whicli a merely literal exe- 
 gesis of the Scriptures may go astray. A 
 ■whole series of both Jewish and Christian 
 commentators interpret these passages, with- 
 out the least hesitation, as meaning that the 
 clothes and shoes Of the Israelitish children 
 grew with their growth, and remained for 
 the whole of the forty years not in the least 
 the worse for wear. Thus JusnN says (Dial. 
 c. Tryph, c. 131), 'The strings of whose san- 
 dals never broke ; nor did the sandals them- 
 selves get old, nor their clothes wear out : but 
 those of the children grew with their growth.' 
 So Pfeiffer, * By a remarkable miracle, not 
 only did the clothes of the Israelites in the 
 desert never get old, but they grew with the 
 growth of the Israelites themselves, so ns to fit 
 both boys and men in succession.' PFsnTEa 
 also quotes a Eabbinical saying with appro- 
 bation : ' Cro, and learn from the snail, whose 
 shell grows with its body.' Other Rabbins 
 suppose the angels of God to have acted as 
 tailors to the Isi'aelites, while they were in 
 the desert, and interpret Ez.xvi.10-13 as con- 
 taining a literal allusion to the fact. With- 
 out going to such an absurd length as this, 
 AuGtrsTTNE, CHnvsosTOM, Theodoret, Gro- 
 ttos, and even Deylxng, abide by the literal 
 explanation, that, through the blessing of 
 Ctod, the clothes and shoes never wore out; 
 so that those, who grew to manh6od, were 
 able to hand them over, as good as new, to 
 the rising generation. By thus assuming a 
 succession of wearers, these commentators, 
 at all events, escaped the fatal notion that 
 the clothes and shoes grew with the bodies of 
 the wearers. When first Peyrektos denied 
 that the clothes and shoes of the Israelites 
 were miraculously preserved for forty years, 
 and maintained that the meaning of the 
 Mosaic account was nothing more than this, 
 that the Jews were never in want of any- 
 thing, during the whole of the forty years 
 that they were in the desert, but had so 
 abundant a. supply of everything, especially 
 of wool from their flocks, of cloth, oi skins, 
 and of leather, that they never were without 
 materials from which to make their clothes,' 
 — Deyleng-, who M usually so very tempe- 
 rate, protested most vehemently against such 
 ^ petulanUa et impieta^,' Nevertheless, the 
 opinion expressed by PeyKERius became gra- 
 dually the prevailing one. We And it advo- 
 cated, for example, by Clericus, Buddeus, 
 and LnJENTEAL. The last of the three, how- 
 ever, thinks it necessary to point, not only 
 to the flocks possessed by the Israelites, from 
 which they could obtain both wool and 
 leather in great abundance, but also to the 
 fact, that every Israelite must certainly have 
 brought some clothes and shoes with him out 
 of Egypt,— that they asked the Egyptians for 
 clothes, and obtained them (E.iii.22, xii.35), 
 —that they would, no doubt, take ofE the 
 clothes of the Egyptians, who were drowned 
 in the Bed Sea, and afterwards washed on 
 sliore (E.xiv.30), and, lastly, that they took 
 the booty of the conquered Amalekites, in- 
 cluding, according to Josephus, a quantity of 
 clothes. 
 
 610. But, surely, tlie literal inter- 
 pretation of the texts in question is 
 
 the true one, and plainly implies a 
 miracle of some kind, which prevented 
 their clothes and shoes from wearing 
 out, whatever may be the difl&culty of 
 conceiving what kind of miracle it 
 could possibly have been. 
 
 611. D.viii.9. 
 
 * A land whose stones are iron, and out of 
 whose hills thou mayest dig brass.' 
 
 "We may notice, in passing, the 
 familiar mention of 'iron* in this and 
 other places of Deuteronomy, as where 
 the writer speaks of the *iron furnace,' 
 iv.20, and iron tools, xix.5, xxviii.23, 
 48, in the (supposed) age of Moses, 
 preceding tliat of Homer by about five 
 centuries. 
 
 612. D.ix.3. 
 
 * So Shalt thou drive theih out, and destroy 
 them quickly, as Jehovah hath said unto thee,* 
 
 Knobel observes here, ^.244: — 
 In the ardour of the discourse, the writer 
 forgets that he has just forbidden this de- 
 stroying them ' quickly' in vli.22, 
 
 613. D.ix.18. 
 
 * I fell down before Jehovah as at the first, 
 forty days and forty nights; I did neither eat 
 bread nor, drink water/ 
 
 Nothing is said in E.xxiv.18 of 
 Moses ' fasting ' on the first occasion 
 of his spending 'forty days and forty 
 nights' on the mount. But this th« 
 Deuteronomist has very naturally as- 
 sumed, from the fact being recorded of 
 his fasting thus on the second occasion, 
 E.xxxiv.28. 
 
 614. According to the older story, 
 however, he fasted these forty days and 
 nights, after he had obeyed the command, 
 'Hew thee two tables of stone like unto 
 the first,' &c., and had goneup intothe 
 mount the second time, E.xxxiv.1,2,28. 
 Whereas the Deuteronomist, x.l, repre- 
 sents this very command to have been 
 issued after tiie forty days' fasting of 
 Moses, and as a gracious answer to it 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DEUT.X.1-XI.32. 
 
 615. D.x.1-5. 
 
 Great discrepancy exists between 
 the narrative here and that in the Book 
 of Exodus. It will be observed that 
 in E.xxxiv.29 the two stone-tables with 
 
DEUT. X.: 
 the Ten Commandments are in the 
 hands of Moses, before any receptacle 
 has been made in which to place them. 
 Here, however, the Ark is commanded 
 to be made, v.\, and is actually made, 
 v.Z, at the same time with the second 
 set of tables, before Moses goes up into 
 the Mount to receive them. But the 
 account in Exodus makes this impos- 
 sible. Not only is there nothing said 
 about the Ark in E.xxxiv.l, where he 
 is commanded to make the tables ; but 
 it is only after coming down with the 
 second set of tables that Moses, E.xsxv. 
 10-12, summonsthe 'wise-hearted' to — 
 * come and make all that Jehovah hath 
 commanded^ the Tabernacle, and his tent, 
 and his covering, &c., the Ark and the staves 
 thereof with the Mercy-seat, &c. ;* 
 
 and afterwards, in E.xxsvii.1-9, we 
 have the full account of Bezaleel making 
 it. And yet the Ark of the Deuterono- 
 mist was not, as might be suggested, a 
 mere temporary Ark; for he makes 
 Moses say, v.5 : — 
 
 ' I turned myself, and came down from the 
 Mount, and piU the tables into the Ark which I 
 had madiy and there they be, as Jehovah com- 
 manded me.* 
 
 616. Upon this point Scott says: — 
 ' Probably, before Moses ascended the 
 
 Mount the second time, he gave express 
 orders to Bezaleel to get the Ark ready 
 against he came down ; and, having directed 
 and ordered the making of it, he speaks as if 
 he had made it ; as Solomon is said to have 
 builded the Temple, which he caused to be 
 builded by the hands of others.* 
 
 Ans, Of course, there is no difficulty in sup- 
 posing that, what Moses ordered to be made, 
 he may be said to have made himself. The 
 difficulty is that, according to the story in 
 Exodus, the orders were plainly given, xxxv. 
 10, and executed, xxxvii.1-9, after Moses came 
 down from the Mount with the second set of 
 tables, which involves a direct contradiction 
 to the account in Deuteronomy, 
 
 ' Some, however, think tlmt Moses pre- 
 pared the Ark himself, as made of shittim- 
 wood, and carried it up with the tables into 
 the mount, and that Bezaleel afterwards 
 covered it with gold.* 
 
 Am. But the text of E.xxxvii.1,2, will 
 not aJlow of this — • Bezaleel made the Ark of 
 shttiim-wood : two cubits and a half was the 
 length of it, and a cubit and a half the 
 breadth of it, and a cubit and a half the 
 height of it. And he overlaid it with pure 
 gold imthm and wiihoui, &c.* 
 
 617. But may we not have here also 
 a sign of time? We have already 
 noticed the fact (523.xiT) that the Ta- 
 btrnacle, which is so constantly men- 
 
 1-X1.32. 
 
 2U 
 
 tioned in the middle three Books of 
 the Pentateuch, is never once named 
 by the Deuteronomist. May not this, 
 perhaps, have arisen from the fact that 
 he was living in a. later age, when 
 David's Tabernacle had long passed 
 away out of the sight and memory of 
 men, and the writer, consequently, did 
 not recognise its existence to himself 
 so vividly, as he did that of the Ark, 
 which he mentions in x.1,2,3,5,8, xxxi. 
 9,25,26, and which was actually pre- 
 sent, in his own days, in the Holy 
 Place of the Temple ? On the other 
 hand, the earlier writer, living, as ws 
 suppose, in the later days of David, or 
 the beginning of Solomon's reign, woidd 
 have had the Tabernacle on Mount 
 Zion before him, as his help in realising 
 the idea of the Tent in the wilderness. 
 
 618. D.x.6,7. 
 
 'And the children of Israel took their 
 journey from Beeroth of the children of 
 Jaakan to Mosera. There Aaron died, and 
 there he was buried; and Bleazar his son 
 ministered in the Priest's office in his stead. 
 From thence they journeyed unto Gudgodab, 
 and from Crudgodah to Jotbath, a land of 
 rivers of waters,' 
 
 This passage is evidently quite out 
 of its place, and, as here introduced, 
 it involves a complete contradiction. 
 For the death of Aaron is here described 
 as happening before the separation of 
 the Levites, i;.8,9, — 
 ' at thai Ume Jehovah separated the tribe of 
 Levi, &c.,' — 
 
 which took place, according to the older 
 story, in his life-time, N.iii.5,6. Nor 
 can the difficulty be relieved by under- 
 standing the expression 'at that time' 
 in a general sense, as equivalent to 
 ' about that time ; ' for the death of 
 Aaron took place in the fortieth year of 
 the wanderings, N.xxxiii.38, and the 
 separation of me Levites in the second, 
 N.i.l. 
 
 ' 619. It is probable that D.x.6,7, is a 
 fragment of the older record, inserted 
 here, out of its proper place, by the 
 Deuteronomist. 
 
 Scott observes : — 
 
 These verses so break in upon the- con- 
 nection of Moses's discourse, that they per- 
 plex commentators. It is evident thai Moses 
 did not much regard exactness of method in his 
 discourse. 
 
 620. D.x.8,9. 
 
 p2 
 
212 
 
 DEUT. X, 
 
 * At tliat time Jehovah separated the tribe 
 of Levi^ to beax the Ark of the Covenant of 
 Jehovah, to stand b^ore Jehovah to minister 
 unto Eim, and to bless in His Name, unto this 
 day. Wherefore Levi hath no part nor in- 
 heritance with his brethren ; J^ovah is his 
 inheritance, according as Jehovah thy God 
 promised him.' 
 
 It was the duty of the Kohathites — 
 not of the Levites generally, — to bear 
 the Ark, N.iv.15. Also the duty of 
 'blessing in the name of Jehovah' is 
 assigned, not to the Levites, but to 
 the Priests, 'Aaron and his sons,' in 
 N.Ti.22-27, and is, accordingly, per- 
 formed by Aaron, in L.ix.22. So, too, 
 ' the Priests, the sons of Aaron,' were 
 to stand before Jehovah to minister 
 unto Him, whereas the Levites were to 
 be presented (Heb. 'made to stand') 
 before Aaron the Priest, that they may 
 minister unto him, N.iii.6, or to stand 
 before the congregation, to minister unto 
 them, N.xvi.9, xviii.2. 
 
 621. This agrees with what we have 
 already observed of the Deuteronomist, 
 that he knows nothing whatever of that 
 very sharp distinction between the 
 dignities and duties of the Priests and 
 Leyites, which the Books of Leviticus 
 and Numbers exhibit throughout, and 
 which Jehovah himself is supposed to 
 have made only a few months previously 
 in N.xviii. Accordingly, he calls the 
 Priests always 'sons of Levi,' or 
 ' Levites,' and never, as the, other writers 
 do, ' sons of Aaron.' 
 
 622. Hence he says : — 
 
 ' For Jehovah thy God hath chosen him 
 {Levi) out of all thy tribes, to stand to minis- 
 ter in the name of Jehovah, >n'm and liis sons 
 for ever,* xviii.5 ; 
 
 ' And^ if a Levite come from any of thy 
 gates out of ajl Israel where he sojourned, 
 and come with bU the desire of his mind 
 :mto the place which Jehovah shall choose, 
 then he ^all minister in the Name of Je- 
 hovah his God, as all his brethren the Levites 
 do, which stand there before Jehovah. They 
 shall have like portions to eat, beside that 
 which Cometh of the sale of bis patrimony,' 
 xyiii.6-8. 
 
 ' And the Priests, the sons of Levi, shall 
 come near ; for them Jehovah thy God hath 
 chosen, to minister unto Him and to bless in 
 the Hame of Jehovah,' xxi.5. 
 
 623. So, too, in the older laws, the 
 declaration, — 
 
 ' I am thy part and thine inheritance 
 among the children of Israel,' N.xviii.20 — 
 is made only with reference to Aaron 
 
 1-XI.32. 
 
 and his sons, that is, it is confined to 
 the Priests, And in N.xxxi.28,29, 
 ' Jehovah's tribute' of the spoil of the 
 Midianites was given to Eleazar the 
 Priest; while the Levites received their 
 share from the 'children of Israel,' 
 11.30. Whereas here it is said, D.x.9, 
 'Jehovah is the inheritance' of Levi, 
 generally ; and in xviii.1,2, we read ; — 
 
 * The Priests the Levites, all the tribe of Levi, 
 shall have no part nor inheritance with 
 Israel . . . Jehovah is their inheritance, as He 
 hath said unto them.' 
 
 624. Here also, and in xxxi.25, the 
 Levites are to carry the. Ark, which 
 agrees, as we have said, to some extent, 
 with the command in N.iv.16, and the 
 practice in N.x.21. But in xxxi.9 we 
 read of ' the Priests, the sons of Levi, 
 the bearers of the Ark.' So in lK.viii.3 
 ' ths Priests took up the Ark;' and in 
 lK.ii.26 Solomon says to the Priest 
 Abiathar, — 
 
 * I will not at this time put thee to death, 
 because thou barest the Ark of Jehovah Elohim 
 before David my father.' 
 
 In like manner, the Levites ai'e to 
 utter the curses, xxvii.l4, and to put 
 the Book of the Law ' beside the Aik,' 
 xxxi.26 ; whereas, according to N.iv.15, 
 the Levites were not even to come 
 near to carry the Ark, till the Priest 
 had covered it; and Aaron was ex- 
 pressly ordered to keep them from 
 touching the holy vessels, N.xviii.3 : — 
 
 ' Only they shall not come nigh the vessels 
 of the Sanctuary and the Altar, that neither 
 they, nor ye also, die.* 
 
 *625. D.x.9. 
 
 ' Wherefore Levi had no (E.V. ' hath,' but 
 the Hebrew says, literally, 'there was not 
 to Levi') part nor inheritance with his 
 brethren.' 
 
 The Deuteronomist, in order to have 
 carried out properly the part of Moses, 
 should have written, — 
 
 * Wherefore Levi shall have no part with his 
 brethren ' ; — 
 
 for the Israelites are still supposed to 
 be only on the point of crossing the 
 Jordan, and no partition of the Holy 
 Land had yet been made among them. 
 It is plain that he writes from a later 
 state of things than that of Moses, 
 when the separate position of the Le- 
 vites, as ministers of the Sanctuary, 
 was recognised in IsraeL 
 
DEUT. XII.1-XIII.18. 
 
 213 
 
 626. D.xi.6. 
 
 Here the destruction of the Eeu- 
 benitea, Dathan and Abiram, is men- 
 tioned ; but nothing is said about the 
 death of the Levite Korah, who, ac- 
 cording to N.xTi, perished fearfully at 
 the same time, and who was, indeed, as 
 represented in that narrative, the leader 
 in the rebellion in question. Nor is any 
 , notice taken of the destruction of the 
 ' two hundred and fifty men, who 
 ofiered incense.' ■!;.5-H,35. 
 
 This, too, agrees with the practice of 
 the Deuteronomist, m making no dis- 
 tinction between Priests and Levites. 
 The sin of Korah and his company is 
 stated to have been this, that, though 
 only Levites, they ' sought the Priest- 
 hood also,' N.xvi.lO. This, it would 
 seem, was considered to be not such a 
 very grievous offence in the days of 
 the Deuteronomist. 
 
 627. D.xi.14,15. 
 
 ' I -will give you the rain ol your land In 
 his due season, the first rain and the latter 
 rain, that thou mayest gather in thy com, 
 and thy wine, and thine oil. And / will 
 Bend grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that 
 thou mayest eat and be full.' 
 
 Here the writer passes unconsciously, 
 from speaking in the assumed character 
 of Moses, to speaking directly in the 
 person of Jehovah. This single in- 
 stance — (see also the similar case in 
 xxLX.5,6,) — is sufficient to satisfy us as 
 to the real nature of this book and its 
 nnhistorical character. 
 
 *628. D.xi.29,30. 
 
 I have already (229) drawn attention 
 to the fact, that the name ' Gilgal' is 
 here supposed to have been uttered by 
 Moses in his address, before the name 
 was given to the place by Joshua, as 
 related in Jo.v.9. And in the larger 
 edition, ni!p.460-46S, I have shown 
 that there is no reason to doubt that 
 the Gilgal here mentioned is the famous 
 Gilgal-hy-Jericho, and that, conse- 
 quently, we have here a remarkable 
 anachronism in the narrative. It is 
 open, of course, for any one to say that 
 «).30 is a later interpolation. But what 
 did the Israelites know of Ebal or G-e- 
 rizim, at the time when the words in 
 D.xi.29 are supposed to have been ad- 
 dressed to them? 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 DETIT.XII.1-X1II.18. 
 
 *629. D.xii.2-8. 
 
 ' Te shall utterly destroy aU the places, 
 wherein the nations which ye shall possess 
 served their gods, upon the high mountains, 
 and upon the hills, and under every green 
 tree; and ye shall overthrow their altars, 
 and break their pillars, and bum their 
 Asheras (E.V. 'groves') with fire, and ye 
 shall hew down the graven images of their 
 gods, and destroy the names of them out of 
 that place. Te shall not do so unto Je- 
 hovah your God. But unto the place which 
 Jehovah your God shall choose out of all 
 your tribes to put His Name there, even 
 unto His habitation shall ye seek, and thi- 
 ther thou Shalt come; and thither ye shall 
 bring your bumt-ofEerings, and your sacri- 
 fices, &o. . . . Te shall not do after all the 
 things that we do here this day, eveiy man 
 whatsoever is right in his own eyes.' 
 
 630. Here we have for the first time 
 this announcement, which we find in 
 none of the earlier books of the Penta- 
 teuch — not even in N.xxviii, xxix, 
 where the laws of the offerings at the dif- 
 ferent festivals are laid down, it is sup- 
 posed, by Jehovah himself, only a few 
 months previously, — but which is re- 
 peated again and again in this Eook of 
 Deuteronomy, — viz. that there should be 
 one special place, which Jehovah would 
 ' choose out of all the tribes to put His 
 Name there.' All this — (if we assume 
 that Deuteronomy was written at a later 
 age than the rest of the Pentateuch) — 
 is indicative of such a time as that of 
 Hezekiah, 2K.xviii.4, or, more pro- 
 bably, Josiah, 2K.xxiii.4-20, for. the 
 composition of this book. 
 
 631. The idea, indeed, of «Zr'ffi«««5' the 
 affections of the people to Jerusalem, ex- 
 isted, no doubt, in fie time of David and 
 Solomon. But the notion of requiring 
 them to bring to the Temple all their 
 'burnt-offerings, sacrifices, tithes, heave- 
 offerings, and vows,' ■y.ll, and making 
 attendance at Jerusalem compulsory 
 three times a year, xvi. 1 6, could scarcely 
 have arisen in an age, when Solomon, 
 though he ' loved Jehovah, walking in 
 the statutes of David his father,' yet 
 'sacrificed and burnt incense in the 
 high places,' lK.ui.3, and specially at 
 the ' great high place ' of Gibeon, v.i, 
 whereas the Ark, the symbol of God's 
 
2U 
 
 DEUT. XII.1-XIII.18. 
 
 Presence, was at tliat time in the Taber- 
 nacle on Mount Zion. 
 
 632. Nor could it hare originated 
 in an age when the people of the Ten 
 Tribes would have had to travel aU the 
 way to Jerusalem for that purpose. We 
 do not read that the prophets of Israel, 
 such as Elijah or EUsha, ever went to 
 Jerusalem to keep the Passover, or 
 obeyed the solemn command to go up 
 thrice in every year to the ' place which 
 Jehovah had chosen.' And the most 
 pious kings, such as Asa, Jehoshaphat, 
 Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, and Jotham, 
 Hezekiah's grandfather, still sacrificed 
 without hesitation on the high places, 
 and brought their offerings to other 
 altars than that erected in the Temple, 
 — ^whieh they would not have done, we 
 must believe, if this law existed, and 
 was known to be of Divine, or even of 
 Mosaic, origin. 
 
 633. According to the older law in 
 L.v,vi, "sacrifices were to be offered for 
 trespasses of every-dayoccurrence, e.g. — 
 
 * If a soul touch any unclean thing, whe- 
 tlier it be a carcase of an unclean beast, or a 
 carcase of unclean cattle, or the caxcase of 
 unclean creeping things, and U be hidden 
 from him, he also shall be unclean and 
 guilty,* L.V.2; 
 
 ' If he touch the nncleanness of man, what- 
 soever uncleanness it be that a man shall be 
 defiled withal, and it be hid from him, when he 
 knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty,' v.Z ; 
 
 * If a soul commit a trespass, and sin through 
 ignorance, in the holy things of Jehovah, then 
 he shall bring for his trespass unto Jehovah a 
 ram, &c.' «.15 ; 
 
 ' If a soul Bin, and commit any of those 
 things which are forbidden to be done by 
 the commandments of Jehovah, though he vmt 
 a not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his 
 iniquity I and he shall bring a ram without 
 blemish out of the flook . . for a trespass 
 ofEering, unto the Priest . . he hath cer- 
 tainly trespassed against Jehovah,' v.18,19. 
 
 In short, comparing i).2, above quoted, 
 with L.xi.29,30, where among ' unclean 
 creeping things' areregistered the 'mole,' 
 'mouse,' 'tortoise,' 'frog,' 'snail,' and 
 certain lizards, anyone who accidentally 
 touched the carcase of one of these, 
 by that act ' had certainly trespassed 
 against Jehovah,' and must offer a tres- 
 pass offering. 
 
 634. It is, however, impossible to 
 believe that such laws were ever ex- 
 pected literally to be carried out, — much 
 less that they were ever uttered by the 
 Almighty, as in that case they must 
 
 have so entirely confused all principles 
 of right and wrong in the minds of the 
 people. They were laid down, as we 
 believe, and shall hereafter give more 
 folly our reasons for believing, in the 
 days of Solomon, when the Temple 
 Services were first instituted, and some 
 ' directory' was needed for the guidance 
 of the Priests in such matters as these, 
 as weE as for regulating the supply for 
 the Priests themselves from the offerings 
 of the people. And thus we find the 
 prescriptions laid down, not as for 
 the wilderness only, but especially for 
 the settled life in the Holy Land, by 
 the express mention of 'turtle doves' 
 and ' young pigeons ' as victims in 
 tj.7,11. 
 
 635. But there is no sign that such 
 laws were 'promulgated among the 
 people at large : though, doubtless, 
 pious persons were taught by the Priests 
 their duty in this respect, and some 
 would at all times wish to be cleansed, 
 by the appointed course of sacrifice, 
 from any special pollutions of this 
 kind, wluch they had contracted. It 
 cannot be supposed, however, that for 
 each such offence, however trifling, it 
 was needful for every Israelite, who 
 desired to obey strictly the (supposed) 
 Law of Jehovah his God, to go up with 
 a sacrifice to Jerusalem, whether from 
 the distant Dan, a journey of two hun- 
 dred miles, or from the trans-Jordanic 
 lands, when that river ' overflowed its 
 banks in time of harvest.' And, though 
 the Deuteronomist seems to include all 
 manner of sacrifices in v.6, yet he seems 
 afterwards, in v.\i,\i, to restrict the 
 command to ' burnt-offerings ' only, and 
 allows that the place, ' which Jehovah 
 would choose to put His Name there,' 
 might be 'too far ' for them to allow of 
 their going up to it in order to kill, 
 when they wished to ' eat flesh,' ul5,21. 
 
 636. But, doubtless, the Temple, with 
 its comparative grandeur and its choral 
 services, was the means of drawing 
 many from all parts of the land to Jeru- 
 salem, — more especially as the older 
 Sanctuaries at Eamah, Bethel, Mizpeh, 
 &c. seem to have been discontinued at 
 the time when David erected his Taber- 
 nacle OD Mount Zion. The ' high 
 places,' indeed, were BtiU left standing 
 
DEUT. XII.1-XIII.18, 
 at Gibeon and elsewhere. And it is 
 possible that many still continued the 
 custom, which the older laws seem to 
 have allowed, E.xx.24, xxiii.14,17, of 
 presenting themselves before -Jehovah 
 three times a year, by frequenting the 
 high place nearest to their own neigh- 
 bourhood. But others, no doubt, would 
 be attracted by the new Temple and its 
 services, which probably surpassed even 
 those of David's Tabernacle. The 
 presence of the Court would be an 
 additional inducement. And, doubt- 
 less, also, there was a conturaalpressure, 
 though, perhaps, of a gentle kind, 
 exerted upon the people, to draw them 
 more and more to Jerusalem. Hence 
 we find Jeroboam fuUy aware of the 
 political tendency of this practice, — 
 
 * If this people go up to do sacrifice in the 
 House of Jehovah at Jerusalem, then shall 
 the hearts of this people turn again unto 
 their lord, even unto Eehoboam, king of 
 Judah,' lK.xii.27. 
 
 And, accordingly, he says to the Ten 
 Tribes, ' It is too much for you to go 
 up to Jerusalem,' and sets up the calves 
 in Dan and Bethel, marking these as 
 the principal places of concourse for 
 his people on festal occasions. 
 
 637. In Solomon's days, however, 
 the time was not yet ripe for a formal 
 command that ' all the males ' should 
 go up to Jerusalem at each of the great 
 Feasts. Eather, the announcement of 
 such a law seems to point to a time, 
 when the Ten Tribes had been carried 
 off into captivity, and there remained 
 only the small centralised Mnqdom of 
 Judah. In that case, the injunction, 
 that aU the males should go up to Jeru- 
 salem three times a year from aU parts 
 of the land, would not have been so 
 utterly extravagant, or so impossible 
 to be obeyed, as the people would all be 
 living within a day or two's journey 
 of the capital. But even then the 
 inconveniences must have been so very 
 greatj that it is incredible that such a 
 law could ever have been strictiy and 
 habitually acted on, as its language 
 requires. Nor is there any indication 
 in the history of its ever having been 
 put in practice, except onco in the days 
 of Josiah, when, probably, as we have 
 seen, this very Book of Deuteronomy 
 had just been found in the Temple, 
 
 215 
 
 638. And this view is confirmed, as 
 we have said (632), iy the fact 
 that the best of the kings of Judah, 
 down to the time of Hezekiah, are 
 spoken of in the Books of Kings— and 
 without anyvery «?TOm^wordof censitte, 
 though the Chronicler, writing in a 
 much later day, condemns their con- 
 duct in this respect — as allowing the 
 people stm to sacrifice in the high 
 places, though the Ark was now set up 
 at Jerusalem, as Asa, lK.xv.l4, Jehosha- 
 phat, xxii.43, Joash, 2K.xii.3, Amaziah, 
 xiv.4, TTzziah, xv.4, Jotham, xv.35. In 
 each of these cases there is some deci- 
 sive language used in commendation of 
 the king's conduct: thus — 
 
 Asa's 'heart was perfect with Jehovah all 
 his days,* — 
 
 Jehosaphat 'walked in all the ways of 
 Asa his father, he turned not aside from it, 
 doing that which was right in the eyes of 
 Jehovah,' — 
 
 Joash 'did that which was right in the 
 sight of Jehovah, all his days wherein Je- 
 hoiada the Priest instructed him,' — 
 
 Amaziah, TJzziah, Jotham, — each ' did that 
 which was right in the sight of Jehovah, yet 
 libt like David his father; he did accoiding 
 to all things as his father had done.' 
 
 And in each case it is added, — 
 
 ' Howbeit the high places were not re- 
 moved; the people sacrificed and burned 
 incense still in the high places.' 
 
 639. It can hardly be believed that 
 the stringent commands of the Book of 
 Deuteronomy, to ' utterly destroy ' all 
 the high places of the heathen, and 
 sacrifice to Jehovah only at Jerusalem, 
 could have been read and studied by 
 these pious princes, much less copied, 
 as D.xvii.18-20 directs, by each of them 
 with his own hand, when seated upon 
 the throne of his kingdom. More 
 especially does this apply to the case of 
 Joash, who began to reign when seven 
 years old, 2K.xi.21, and for the greater 
 part of his life was directed wholly by 
 the High Priest, Jehoiada. 
 
 640. Hezekiah, 2K.xviii.4, seems to 
 have been the first of the kings of Judah, 
 who set himself to destroy the high 
 places, which, although originally in- 
 tended for the worship of Jehovah, were 
 probably perverted, more or less, to the 
 practice of idolatry, and, as such, had 
 become fruitfid nurseries of Vice. In 
 his time, or shortly before it, the pro- 
 
 jphets, Hosea in Istael, Isaiah and 
 
216 
 
 DEUT. Xn.l-XIII.18. 
 
 Micali in Judah, had oondenmed, in 
 strong terms, the worship on high 
 places. 
 
 ' They sacrifice upon the tops of the monn- 
 
 tains, 
 And bum incense upon the hills, 
 Under oaks and poplars and elms. 
 Because the shadow thereof is good ; 
 Therefore your daughters shall commit 
 
 whoredom, 
 And your daughters-in-law shall commit 
 
 adultery. 
 I will not punish your daughters when they 
 
 commit whoredom, 
 Nor your daughters-in-law when they com- 
 mit adultery; 
 For themselves are separated with whores. 
 And they saorifice habitually with harlots.' 
 
 Ho8.iv.l3,14. 
 *Ye shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye 
 
 have desired. 
 And ye shall be confounded for the gardens 
 
 which ye have chosen.' Is.i.29. 
 * For the transgression of Jacob is all this, 
 And for the sins of the House of Israel. 
 What is the transgression of Jacob? Isitnot 
 
 Samaria ? 
 And what are the high places of Judah ? Are 
 
 they not Jerusalem ? ' Mic.i.5. 
 
 641. It is probable that such prophe- 
 tic words as the above were sharpened 
 by the fact of the Ten Tribes having 
 been carried captive in the sixth year 
 of Hezekiah, by which his zeal also may 
 have been stimulated to destroy the 
 high places, and check the other idola- 
 trous practicesof Judah, 2K.xviii.4. But 
 the very expressions in D.xii.8, — 
 
 * Te shall not do after all the things that 
 we do here this day, every man whatsoever is 
 right in his own eyes,' — 
 
 wholly inapplicable, as they must surely 
 be considered to be, to any conceivable 
 condition of the people of Israel, in 
 the ' plains of Moab,' with Moses him- 
 self in their midst, — would correspond 
 thoroughly to the feelings of a Prophet 
 writing in the age of Josiah, after the 
 godless reigns of Manasseh and Amon. 
 As EiEHM observes, jj.30 : — 
 
 The writer, in these words, betrays his 
 consciousness that the attaching all public 
 worship to one Sanctuary was in Ms time 
 somewhat new^ and that he is puling inix) 
 the mouth of Moses what he himself could 
 say of his own contemporaries, who sacri- 
 ficed, as they chose, in various places. It 
 seems to me certain that Moses himself 
 could not have spoken such words as these 
 in D.xli.S, if the real substance of L.xvii.1-9 
 and other laws of sacrifice axe really his. 
 
 642. Upon the whole, it may be 
 concluded that such a law as this, con- 
 fining all sacrifices to Jerusalem, could 
 
 not have been written before the age of 
 Hezekiah, The destruction of the high 
 places would be a practical measure, 
 which would draw more direct attention 
 to the Temple. In the reign of his son 
 Manasseh, these high places were re- 
 built, 2K.xxi.3, and idolatry again pre- 
 vailed throughout the land. The short 
 reign of Amon, for two years only, 
 2K.xxi.l9, continued the same corrupt 
 practices. But then, as we suppose, 
 may have come the time, in the early 
 years of Josiah, when the young king's 
 piety, and the limited extent of his 
 kingdom, together favoured the idea of 
 realising sufch a unity of worship, by 
 which idolatrous practices (it was 
 hoped) might be effectually and for 
 ever done away, and when the attempt 
 was actually made to enforce attendance 
 at the Temple for all sacrifices, by the 
 authority of a (supposed) Mosaic and 
 Divine law. 
 
 *648. D.xii.l2. 
 
 * And the Levite that is within your gates.* 
 
 We must here draw special attention 
 to the fact, that the Deuteronomist in 
 this verse, and throughout the whole 
 book, instead of speaking of the Priests 
 and Levites as about to be settled in 
 their forty-eight cities, N.xxxv.1-8, 
 and as sure to be abundantly supplied 
 with the necessaries of life &om the 
 sacrifices, tithes, and freewill offerings 
 of the people, represents them every- 
 where — the Levites, at all events, and 
 we have seen that in the term 'Levites' 
 he includes the ' Priests ' — as likely to 
 be generally in a very necessitous 
 condition, living as stragglers about the 
 land, in ' any of the gates ' of the people. 
 
 644. It is true that in xviii,l-8 he 
 makes some provision from the sacrifices 
 for 'the Priests the Levites, all the tribe 
 of Levi,' — though here also, as we 
 shall see (716-720), he is strikingly 
 at variance with the older document. 
 And in xvii.8-13, xix.l7,xxi.6, certain 
 judicial duties are assigned to them, 
 at variance again (700-708,) with the 
 provisions of the older law. Pnrther, 
 in xxxiii.10,11, he speaks very highly of 
 the office and dignity of the Levites: — 
 ' They shall teach Jacob Thy judgments, 
 And Israel Thy Law ; 
 They shall put incense before Thee, 
 
DEUT.XII.1-Xin.l8 
 ^a whole burnt sa«rifloe upon Thine altar. 
 Bless, O Jehovah, his substance, 
 And accept the work of his hands • 
 SmltB ttaough the loins of them that rise 
 
 against mm, 
 And of them that hate Mm, that thev rise 
 
 not again.' 
 
 But he makes not the least allusion to 
 their being settled in cities of their 
 own. He takes it for granted that they 
 will be mostly living ' within the gates' 
 ot others, and that the ordinary condi- 
 tion of a Levite — at least, of any that 
 had not — 
 
 come from any of the gates out of all Israel, 
 where he sojonmed, and come with all the de- 
 eh-e of his mind unto the place which Jehovah 
 should choose,' zviii.6 — 
 
 would be one of utter poverty and 
 dependence. 
 
 64:5. Thus, throughout the Book of 
 Deuteronomy, the Levites are coupled 
 continually with the poor and desti- 
 tute, ' the widow, the stranger, and the 
 fatherless.' And not a word is said of 
 their having any divine right to demand, 
 or, at least, to expect, the payment of 
 tithes from the people, according to the 
 provision, supposed to have been made 
 by Jehovah himself, N.xviii.21, only a 
 few months before, through Moses, who 
 is now represented to be speaking — 
 
 * Behold, I h^ve given the children of Levi 
 all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance.' 
 
 646. But they are spoken of, again 
 and again, as depending, Kke other ne- 
 cessitous persons, mainly upon the 
 charity of others. 
 
 * And ye shall rejoice before Jehovah your 
 God, ye, and your sons, and your daugh- 
 ters, and your menservants, and your maid- 
 servants, and the Levite that is within thy gates, 
 forasmuch as he hath no part nor inheritance 
 with you,' xii.l2 ; so also «.18. 
 
 ' Take heed to thyself that thou forsake 
 not the Leoite, as long a& thou livest upon the 
 earth,' xii.l9. 
 
 'And the Zeviie, (because he hath no part 
 nor inheritance with thee,) and th£ si/raittger, 
 and Gie fatherless, and the widow, thai a/re within 
 thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satis- 
 fied,' ziv.29 ; so also v.27. 
 
 * And thui Shalt rejoice before Jehovah thy 
 God, thousand thy son, and thy daughter, 
 and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, 
 end the Levite that is within thy gates, and the 
 stroTiger, and the fatherless, and the widow, 
 that are among you,' xvi.li. 
 
 * And, thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, 
 and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man- 
 servant, and thy maidservant, and t?te Zevite, 
 and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the 
 mdow, that are within thy gates,' xvi.l4, 
 
 647. So we have 'the Levite and the 
 
 217 
 
 the Levite, 
 
 stranger that is amongyon, ,,„„ 
 
 the stranger, the fatherless, and the 
 widow,' xxvi. 11-1 3 ; and in xviii.6 the 
 Levite is actually spoken of as one of 
 the 'strangers 'or 'sojourners' within 
 the gates of others. And all this, as we 
 have noted, is supposed to be said by 
 Moses only a few months after the laws 
 had been laid down by Jehovah Him- 
 self, which provided for them abundant 
 supplies of food, and cities of their 
 own with their suburbs, thirty-six for 
 the Levites, twelve for the Priests ! 
 
 Not a trace of this poverty is found 
 in the other books of the Pentateuch. 
 
 648. D.xii.15,16. 
 'Notwithstanding thou mayest kill and eat 
 
 flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul 
 lusteth after, according to the blessing of Je- 
 hovah thy God, which he hath given thee ; the 
 unclean and the clean may eat thereof, as of 
 the roebuck and as of the hart. Only ye shall 
 not eat the blood; ye shall pour it on the 
 earth like water.' 
 
 It is obvious that this Law is directly 
 at variance with L.xvii.3,4, where it is 
 said, — 
 
 ' "What man soever there be of the House of 
 Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat 
 in the Camp, or that killeth it out of the 
 Camp, and bringeth it not unto the door of the 
 Tabemaele of the Congregation, to ofier an 
 offering unto Jehovah before the Tabemaele 
 of Jehovah, blood shall be imputed unto that 
 man, he hath shed blood ; and that man shall 
 be cut off from among his people,' 
 
 649. D.xii.17-19. 
 
 'Thou mayest not eat within thy gates 
 the tithe of thy com, or of thy wine, or of 
 thy oil, or the firstlings of thy herds or of 
 thy flock, nor any of thy vows which thou 
 vowest, nor thy freewill offerings, or heave 
 offering of thine hand. But thou must eat 
 them before Jehovah thy God, in the place 
 which Jehovah thy God shall choose, thou,' 
 and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man- 
 servant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite 
 that is within thy gates ; and thou shalt re- 
 joice before Jehovah thy God in all that thou 
 puttest thine hands unto. Take heed to thy- 
 self that thou forsake not the Levite as long 
 as thou livest upon the earth.' 
 
 650. But the tithes above mentioned 
 belonged wholly to the Levites, accord- 
 ing to the law in N'.xviii.21, 24,26, sup- 
 posed to have been laid down only just 
 before, in the very same year in which 
 this ' last address ' of Moses was de- 
 livered ; and the firstlings belonged 
 wholly to the Priests, Kxviii.15-18. 
 
 And here ^hd people are to feast upon 
 them, and not to ' forsake ' the Levite 
 
218 
 
 DEUT.XII.1-Xni.l8. 
 
 •ffitliin their gates, tut admit him to a 
 share in their enjoyment ! 
 
 The most complete contradiction 
 obviously exists betveen the two sets 
 of laws, supposed to be uttered, the 
 first directly by Jehovah Himseljf, the 
 second by Moses, within a few months 
 of each other. 
 
 651. Scott, with other commentators, 
 imagines a second tithe, and says : — 
 
 Either the female firstlings 1 [where has one 
 ever heard of these ?] or Bome other of their 
 young cattle, [but the text says distinctly 
 'firstlings of thy herds or of thy flock,' comp. 
 l).xii.6,17, xv.lS,] being presented as peace- 
 offerings, were thus to be feasted on before 
 the Lord. 
 
 But the notion of * firstling females 
 being here intended is at once set aside 
 by the plain words of D.sv.19,20 : — 
 
 *A11 the firstling males, that come of thy 
 herd and of thy flock, thou shalt sanctify 
 unto Jehovah thy Gk)d. Thou shalt do no 
 work with the flrstling of thy bullock, nor 
 shear the firstling of thy sheep ; thou shalt 
 —[have the blood sprinkled, and the fat 
 offered, and leave the flesh for the Priests, 
 as commanded in N.xviii.17,18 ? no, but] eat 
 it before Jehovah thy Grod, year by year, in 
 the place which Jehovah shall choose, thou 
 and thy household.' 
 
 But Scott is not discouraged even 
 here, and writes directly in the teeth 
 of the above text, — 
 
 The firstling, being a male, was sacrificed, 
 ,Bnd those parts, which were not burnt upon 
 the Altar, were eaten by the Priests. But, 
 if it icere a female, it was offered as a peace- 
 offering, and feasted upon by the offerer and 
 his friends. 
 
 652. As to the supposed * second 
 tithe ' it must be said : — 
 
 (i) The 'tithes' are here spoken of just 
 in the same way as the 'firstlings'; and, if the 
 latter are the same as those spoken of in the 
 old legislation, it is reasonable to suppose 
 that the same is true of the former also ; 
 
 (ii) If the 'firstlings' are no longer to be 
 given to the Priests, it is not reasonable 
 to suppose that the 'tithes' of the old Law 
 would be left for the Levites ; 
 
 (iii) Not a hint is given of the (supposed) 
 first tithes in Beuteronomy, nor of the second 
 tithes in the law of N.xviii, supposed to be 
 laid down by Jehovah a few months pre- 
 viously ; 
 
 (iv) Not a word is said In D.xviii.3,4, of 
 the tithe of tlie first tithe forming any portion 
 of the income of the Priests, as commanded 
 in N.xviii.28. 
 
 653. D.xiii.12-16. 
 
 ■ If thou shalt heax say in one of thy 
 cities, which Jehovah thy Grod hath given 
 thee to dwell there, saying, Certain men, 
 children of Belial, are gone out from among 
 
 you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of 
 their city, saying, Let us go and serve other 
 gods, which ye have not known ; Then shalt 
 thou enquire, and make search, and ask dili- 
 gently; and behold, if it be truth, and the 
 thing certain, that such abomination ia 
 wrought among you, thou shalt surely smite 
 the inhabitants of that city vrith the edge of 
 the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that 
 is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the 
 edge of the sword. And thou shalt gather 
 all the spoil of it into the midst of the street 
 thereof, and shalt bum with fire the city, and 
 all the spoil thereof, every whit, for Jehovah 
 thy QrCidi ; and it shall be an heap for ever ; it 
 shall not be built again.' 
 
 654. Scott remarks on this passage 
 thus: — 
 
 Many distinctions have been made, both 
 by Jewish and Chi^tian expositors, to abate 
 the severity of this law : but the text gives 
 no countenance to any of them. It should 
 not, indeed, be supposed that the crime was 
 charged on the city, unless a majority of 
 the inhabitants concurred in it, or that any 
 individuals, who had entirely escaped the 
 general contagion, might not separate from 
 their guilty neighbours ; and, perhaps, space 
 might on some occasions be allowed for 
 repentance. The destruction of the spoil 
 would evince that the prosecution and exe- 
 cution were not the effect of avarice, but of 
 zeal for the honour of God and religion ; and 
 nothing can be conceived more suited to re- 
 strain the people from idolatry than this sta- 
 tute. But we never read that it was carried 
 into ewedttionj and have reason to think that 
 this neglect was a national sin, which has< 
 tened the Babylonish Oaptivity. Had some 
 mortified limbs been cut off, the life of the 
 state might have been prolonged, 
 
 655. Such a law, it is plain, could 
 never have been carried out in this 
 legal form. How were they to put a 
 city on its trial, for the offence in ques- 
 tion, so as to give it an opportunity of 
 clearing itself of the charge? And was 
 every city to be destroyed, and utterly 
 exterminated in this way, where, per- 
 haps, an unruly mob — ^the majority- 
 might have become for a time too 
 strong for thebetter souls among them? 
 And were these, too, to be involved in 
 the general ruin ? For, as Scott says, 
 the text gives no countenaape to any 
 abatement of the severe rigour of the 
 law. 
 
 656. Probably, this law merely repre- 
 sents the strong feeling of theDeutero- 
 nomist upon the subject of idolatry. If 
 it were possible, this is what he would 
 have done to a city guilty of such 
 abominations, which brought down the 
 wrath of God upon Israel ; this is what 
 
DEUT.XIV.1-29. 
 
 might very justly be done to it; this is 
 what such a city deserved in the eyes of 
 God and of all good men. In this -way 
 he seeks to stir up a pious horror of the 
 accursed sin. And the text points to 
 a time when such guilt was prevalent. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 DETIT.XlV.1-29. 
 
 657. D.xiv.3-20. 
 
 We have here a repetition of the 
 animals, allowed and disallowed for 
 food, as in L.xi. The laws laid down 
 are almost identical, except that the 
 Deuteronomist — 
 
 (i) Names the clean beasts, u4,5, 
 which the other writer does not, — 
 
 (ii) Introduces among the birds some 
 bird of prey, dayah, v.Xi, — 
 
 (iii) Omits mention of the locusts, as 
 allowed for food, and of eight unclean 
 animals, named in L.xi.29,30, where 
 are reckoned together in the same cate- 
 gory as ' creeping things,' the ' weasel, 
 mouse, iortoise, ferret, chameleon, lizard, 
 snail, and mole.' 
 
 658. The animals whose names are 
 italicised above, are identified by Hebrew 
 scholars, while there may be doubts about 
 the others. Perhaps, the Deuteronomist 
 passes these over, because in his more 
 advanced time it was no longer neces- 
 sary to forbid their being used as food. 
 
 But, in fact, the command which is 
 given in D.xiv.l9, — 
 
 * Every creeping thing that flieth is unclean 
 unto you, they shall not be eaten,' — 
 is directly at variance with that in 
 L.xi.21-23, where we read — 
 
 ' These ye may eat, of every creeping thing 
 that flieth,'— 
 
 and four forms of the locust are 
 named. 
 
 659. In L.xi.5,6, D.xiv.7, the coney 
 and hare are spoken of as 'chewing the 
 cud.' This, as Knobel says, is a mis- 
 take, which has probably arisen from 
 the fact of these animals moving their 
 jaws when they eat, as if they were 
 chewing the cud, 'whence to all out- 
 ward appearance they seemed to the 
 ancients as ruminants.' On this point 
 I may quote the authority of Prof. Owen, 
 who says, — 
 
 ' The Hare does not chew the cud : it has 
 not the stomach of a ruminant.' j 
 
 219 
 
 660. For the following information 
 also I am indebted to Mr. Baetlett, the 
 superintendent of the Eoyal Zoological 
 GMdens, London. 
 
 _ I have several hares living in the collec- 
 tion ; and, having for some years carefully 
 studied these animals in every stage of their 
 existence, in order, if possible, to obtain a 
 cross between this animal and the rabbit, 
 to which it is nearly allied, I have in con- 
 sequence become well acquainted vrith ita 
 habit and structure, both external and in- 
 ternal. My frequent examination of the 
 stomach and intestines has convinced me 
 that these animals have not the power to 
 ruminate, and consequently that they ' do 
 not chew the cud.' 
 
 The structure of the stomachs of all ru- 
 minating animals is remarkable, aud well 
 known to comparative anatomists. And 
 this peculiar structure does not exist in any 
 of the Order ' Bodentia,' to which the hare 
 belongs. 
 
 But these animals possess very fleshy lips, 
 and the muscles of the mouth are largely 
 developed. By these means the parts ar(> 
 moved with great ease, and are kept in 
 almost constant motion; and this, when 
 noticed by persons whose knowledge of the 
 subject is limited, might easUy lead them to 
 believe that the animal was chewing. This 
 has, doubtless, led to the mistake made by 
 the early writers. 
 
 661. D.xiv.22-27. 
 
 ' Thou Shalt truly tithe all the increase of 
 thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year 
 by year. And thou shalt eat before Jehovah 
 thy (Jod, in the place which He shall choose 
 to place His Name there, the tithe of thy corn, 
 of thy wine, cmd of thine oil, and the firstlings of 
 thy herds and of thy flocks ; that thou mayesfc 
 learn to fear Jehovah thy God always. And, 
 if the way be too long for thee, so that thou 
 art not able to carry it, or if the place be too 
 far from thee, which Jehovah thy God shall 
 choose to set His Name there, when Jehovah 
 thy God hath blessed thee, then shalt thou 
 turn it into money, and bind up the money 
 in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place 
 which Jehovah thy God shall choose. And 
 thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever 
 thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, 
 or for wine, or for strong drink, or for what- 
 soever thy soul desireth ; and thou shalt eat 
 there before Jehovah thy God, and thou shalt 
 r^oice, thou and thine household, and the Levite 
 that is within thy gates ; thou shalt not forsake 
 him ; for he hath no part nor inheritance with 
 thee.' 
 
 662. In this passage, the permission 
 is given that, if the way was too long, 
 the whole of the tithes and firstlinga 
 might be turned into money ; and the 
 person must go up with his money in 
 his hand, ' to the place which Jehovjih 
 shall choose,' and there buy with the 
 money — 
 
 What his soul lusteth after, oxen, sheep, 
 
220 
 
 DEUT.XIV.1-29. 
 
 ■wine, sla'ong drink, whatsoever his soul 
 desixeth ; ' — 
 
 and the good things thus provided were 
 to be ' eaten before Jehovah ' by the 
 man and his household, and — 
 
 * The Levite that is -within thy gates— thou 
 shalt not forsake him.' 
 
 663. But no such provision is made, 
 for the conversion of the firstlings into 
 money, in N.xviii.l7, a law supposed to 
 be given by Jehovah Himself only a 
 few months previously, which says : — 
 
 ' The firstling of a cow, or the firstling of 
 a sheep, or the firstling of a goat, thou shalt 
 not redeem; they are holy; thou shalt sprinkle 
 their blood upon the Altar, and shalt bum their 
 /at for an offering made by fire, for a sweet 
 savour unto Jehovah.' 
 
 And, as before observed (650), aJl the 
 meat of the firstlings was expressly 
 given to the Priests by the law in 
 N.xviii.l8, where we read, — 
 
 'And the flesh of them shall he thine, as 
 the wave-breast and as the right shoulder are 
 thine.' 
 
 So, too, the tithes (except a tenth of 
 them which was to be given to the 
 Priests) were expressly to be consumed 
 by the Levites, according to the law in 
 N.xviii.25-32, where it is said, ti.31 — 
 
 * Ye (the Zevites) shall eat it in every place, 
 ye and your households ; for it is your reward 
 for your service in the Tabernacle of the Con- 
 gregation.' 
 
 664. Here, however, in D.xiv.22-27. 
 it is ordered, in direct contradiction to 
 the above laws, — issued, according to 
 the story, from the mouth of Jehovah 
 Himself, N.xviii.8,20,25, only a few 
 months previously, — that the man who 
 offers, and his family, and ' the Levite 
 that is within his gates,' shall make a 
 feast upon the produce of both the 
 Friests' firstlings and the Levites' tithes, 
 at Jerusalem, xii.6,17-19, xiv.22-27, 
 xv.19-23, whereas the Levites were 
 to have eaten them at their homes ' in 
 every place.' 
 
 665. SooTT, as we have seen (651), 
 takes refuge in the notion of ' female 
 firstlings,' and a ' second tithe.' 
 
 These verses require a second tithe from the 
 produce of the land, which, with that appro- 
 priated for the maintenance of the Levites, 
 amounted to a fifth part. 
 
 This agrees with Josephus, Ant.IV. 
 viii.S : — 
 
 Let there be taken out of your fruits a 
 tenth, besides that which you have allotted 
 to give to the Priests and Levites. This you 
 
 may indeed sell in the country ; but it is to 
 be used in those feasts and sacrifices, that are 
 to be celebrated in the holy city. 
 
 But, if this be a second tithe, how is 
 it, we repeat, that the Deuteronomist 
 gives no intimation of this fact, and 
 makes no mention whatever of the first 
 tithe, to be contributed for the support 
 of the Levites? Nor, when summing 
 up the income of the Priests in D.xviii. 
 1-6, does he take any account of the 
 tenth of the tithes, which they were to 
 receive from the Levites, N.xviii.25-32, 
 or mention anywhere the tithe of cattle, 
 L.xxvii.32,33. 
 
 666. The fact seems to be, as we 
 have intimated, that the Book of 
 Deuteronomy only represents the state 
 of ecclesiastical matters, which existed 
 in the later days when that book was 
 written. As already observed, the 
 Priests are called by the later Prophets, 
 as they are by the Deuteronomist, 
 ' Levites,' simply, JeT.xxxiii.l8,21|22; 
 Ez.xliii.l9, xliv.10,15, xlv.5, xlviii.l3, 
 or ' sons of Levi,' Ez.xl.46, Mal.iii.3, 
 comp. Mal.ii.4,8, — and never ' sons of 
 Aaron ; ' and so Jeroboam is censured, 
 lK.xii.31, for making Priests of men, 
 ' which are not of the sons of Levi.' 
 The name of Aaron, in fact, is but in- 
 cidentally mentioned once by all the 
 Prophets, Mic.vi.4; and Ezekiel calls 
 the faithful Priests by the title ' sons 
 of Zadok,' xl.46, xliii.l9, xliv.16, xlviii. 
 11, — not ' sons of Aaron." 
 
 667. It is probable, indeed, that we 
 very greatly over-estimate the numher 
 and importance of the Priests in the 
 time of the kings, taking for granted 
 that they really enjoyed the privileges 
 and dignities, which are assigned to thein 
 by the laws of the Pentateuch. Yet, if 
 we carefully examine the more authentic 
 history of the later kings, which we 
 find in the Second Book of Kings, we 
 shall perceive indications that their 
 number was but small and their in- 
 fluence inconsiderable. In the days 
 of Josiah there were a ' chief Priest,' 
 some 'Priests of the second order,' and 
 others who are called 'keepers of the 
 door,' 2K.xxiu.4. These 'door-keepers' 
 are expressly called ' Priests ' in 2K.xii. 
 9 ; and in the time of Josiah's son, 
 Zedekiah, there were only ./Jwe 'Priests' 
 
DEUT.XIV.1-29. 
 
 221 
 
 ministering in the Temple, 2K:.xxt.18, 
 viz. one 'chief Priest,' one 'second 
 Priest,' or ' Priest of the second order,' 
 as in 2K.xxiii.4, and three 'keepers of 
 the door.' 
 
 668. This very office of 'door-keeper,' 
 however, is so totally unlike any as- 
 signed to the Priests in the earlier 
 Books of the Pentateuch, that the 
 question is naturally suggested whether 
 tiiese ' Priests of the second order ' do 
 not, in reality, correspond to the Levites 
 of those Books, from among whom, we 
 should suppose, these door-keepers 
 would be taken. At any rate, it is 
 easy to see how the Deuteronomist, if 
 writing in these later days, would make 
 no distinction between the higher and 
 lower clergy, but would caU them all 
 by one common name, 'Priests ' or 
 •Levites.' How very little regard, 
 indeed, was paid in those days to the 
 rank and authority of the Priests, is 
 shown by the fact that, when the King 
 of Babylon carried Jehoiachin captive 
 in the eighth year of his reign, we are 
 told of his carrying with him — 
 
 ' all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all 
 the mighty men of valour, and all the crafts- 
 men and smiths,' 2K.xxiv.14, — 
 but not a word is said about the Priests. 
 Yet it is plain that some Priests were 
 carried oS, since Jeremiah addresses 
 them, Jer.xxix.l ; and this may partly 
 account for their being orHij five in num- 
 ber, as we have said, in Zedekiah's 
 time, shortly afterwards, 2K.xxv.l8. 
 
 669. There is no indication, how- 
 ever, that they were ever very much 
 more numerous. It is common to sup- 
 pose that there must have been always 
 a large body of Priests and Levites in 
 attendance at the Temple, because the 
 size of the Temple, as well as that of 
 the City itself in Solomon's time, is very 
 commonly over-estimated. As to the 
 City, 'its circumference,' saysBAETLETT, 
 Walks about Jerusalem, p.28, 'at the 
 best never exceeded fowr miles ' ; and 
 three Temples of Solomon* might have 
 
 • The Temple was 60 cubits long and 20 
 cubits wide, lK.Ti.2 ; that is, since a cubit= 
 1.824 ft., its area was 108 ft. by 36 ft.=3,991 
 sq,. ft. That of the Church of St. Martin's- 
 in-the Melds is 137 ft. 8 in. by 81 ft. not in- 
 cluding the steps and portico, (.Ub. of But. 
 Knowledge, Egypt Ant. i.;).89,)=ll,161 sq.ft. 
 
 been placed on the ground now occupied 
 by the Church of St. Martin's-in-the- 
 Fields in London. We cannot wonder 
 that in Solomon's, as in David's, time 
 we read of only two Priests, lK.iv.4, 
 (who had, doubtless, some attendants,) 
 or that in Zedekiah's time the whole 
 body of ecclesiastics employed at the 
 Temple was only five. Indeed, if two 
 or three clergymen can discharge the 
 duties of St. Martin's Church and 
 Parish in London, two Priests and 
 three door-keepers may very well have 
 sufficed for a Temple one-third as large, 
 and for a population so small as the 
 ordinary population of Jerusalem must 
 have been, considering that, at its 
 widest extent, it was not two-thirds of 
 a mUe from the centre to the circum- 
 ference.* 
 
 670. It would seem, however, that 
 even for this small body of Priests and 
 Levites the supplies of food were some- 
 times deficient ; and it is very probable 
 that the ' tithes ' and ' firstlings ' never 
 were duly contributed for their support, 
 as the earlier laws of the Pentateuch 
 direct. Either these laws in Leviticus 
 and Numbers had never been published 
 
 * I take no account here of the data of the 
 books of Chronicles, which we have seen to be 
 so very untrustworthy, when unsupported by 
 other evidence. Thus it is stated that ' there 
 came to David to Hebron, to turn the king- 
 dom of Saul to him,' 4,600 Levites and 3,700 
 Priests of the sons of Aaron, * and with them 
 Zadok, a young man mighty of valour, and of 
 his father's house twenty and two captains,' 
 10h.xii.26-2S. And yet, although David ' con- 
 sulted with the captains of thousands and hun- 
 dreds, and with every leader,' about bringing 
 up the Ark, 10h.xiii.l , and ' gathered all Israel 
 together' for the purpose, b.5, including, of 
 course, and above all, these 8,300 Priests and 
 Levites, he made use of laymen to remove the 
 Ark in the first instance ; and when, warned 
 of his fault by the death of TJzzah, ICh.xv. 
 12,13, he ' gathered all Israel ' again, v.S, and 
 specially ' assembled the (8,700) sons of Aaron 
 and the (4,600) Levites,' v.i, under such solemn 
 circumstances, for so momentous an occasion, 
 only two Priests and 862 Levites are reported 
 as answering to the call, D.5-1D. 
 
 We shall have occasion hereafter to con- 
 sider more closely the details of the Chroni- 
 cler's narrative, v^on which, in fact, mainly 
 rests the notion that the laws of the Pentateuch 
 were really carried out in Judah bifore tfie 
 Captivity. But not a hint is given in the 
 more trustworthy history, 2Si.'vi, of the pre- 
 sence of these Priests and Levites on either 
 of the two occasions of removing the Ark. 
 
222 
 
 DEUT.XrV.1-29. 
 
 extensively, which is most likely, or, 
 if known to many among the people, 
 they were not regarded as having any 
 special authority, human or divine. And 
 so the Priests and Levites appear to 
 have fared hut badly, like clergy in 
 a colonial diocese upon a voluntary 
 system. 
 
 671. Having no Levitical cities nor 
 pasture-lands, but living for the most 
 part in a. dependent condition, scat- 
 tered about the land, 'in the gates' 
 of others, — ^having no regular, abund- 
 ant, supply from tithes, first-fruits, or 
 firstlings, but deriving their sustenance 
 almost entirely from the casual offer- 
 ings and sacrifices, which pious persons 
 brought to the Temple, — they seem, 
 under the later kings, to have been 
 often in real distress for the very neces- 
 saries of life. It is reasonable to believe 
 that, in the time of David and Solo- 
 mon, a portion of the royal revenues 
 was appUed directly to the support of 
 Divine Worship. Even Saul had such 
 a revenue, as we may gather from the 
 language used in lS.viii.l5, — 
 
 * he will take the tenth of your aeed, and of 
 your vineyards, and give to his eunuchs and 
 to his servants ; ' — 
 
 though these words were, no doubt, 
 written at a much later date, perhaps 
 in the days of Solomon, and may ex- 
 press, rather, the practice of that time. 
 
 672. But under the later kings — at 
 all events, in the record of the Chronicler 
 —we have unmistakable indications of 
 the poverty of the Priests. We find 
 such indications in the disorderly and 
 impoverished state, in which the Temple 
 itself was found in the days of Heze- 
 kiah, at the end of the idolatrous reign 
 of his father Ahaz : — 
 
 * They have shut up the doors of the porch, 
 and put out the lamps, and have not burnt 
 incense nor oilered burnt-offerings in the holy 
 
 place unto the God of Israel And the 
 
 Friests went into the inner part of the House 
 of Jehovah to cleanse it, and brought out all 
 the uncleanness that they found in the Temple 
 of Jehovah into the court of the House of Je- 
 hovah. And the Levites* took it, to carry it 
 
 * These 'Levites 'only appear in the Chroni- 
 cler's narrative, (see note preceding,) as dis- 
 tinguished sharply from the ' Priests.' It is 
 probable that, in the time of Hezekiah, ' the 
 Priests the Levites' — not, perhaps, the Chief 
 Priest, but one or' more ' Priests of the se- 
 
 out abroad into tlie brook Kidron." SCh.xxix. 
 7,16. 
 
 Ahaz himself, the Clrronider tells 
 us, had 'shut up' the Temple, 2Ch. 
 xxviii.24, which he could hardly have 
 done, if the Levites had been an im- 
 portant and influential body. At all 
 events, their receipts from tithes, &c., 
 must, according to this account, have 
 been very small in his reign. 
 
 673. Moreover, we are told that 
 Hezekiah ordered afresh the courses of 
 the Priests and Levites, and provided 
 for their maintenance, by enjoining 
 that tithes and firstfruits should be 
 brought in, and they were brought in 
 abundantly ' in heaps.' 
 
 ' Then Hezekiah questioned with the Priests 
 and Levites concerning the heaps. And Aza- 
 riah, the chief Priest of the House of Zadok, 
 answered him and said, Since the people began 
 to bring the offerings into tlie House of Jehovah, 
 we have had enough to eat, and have 1^ pleni?.' 
 2Ch.xs:£l.9,10. 
 
 It would seem from the above that, 
 before the order in question was issued, 
 the Priests and Levites had not enough 
 to eat. And this is the testimony of 
 the Chronicler, whose tendency to 
 magnify the office and position of the 
 Priesthood and Levitical body is evir 
 dent throughout his narrative. 
 
 674. But the numerous passages in 
 Deuteronomy, which include the Levite 
 with the poor and destitute, with ' the 
 widow, the fatherless, and the stranger," 
 furnish far more satisfactory evidence 
 of the generally needy condition of the 
 ecclesiastical body in the time of the 
 later kings, supposing, as we may now 
 do, (with the evidence which we have 
 had already before us, and which we 
 shall find still fui-ther confirmed as we 
 proceed,) that this Book was written 
 about the time of Josiah. This being 
 the case, it can scarcely be doubted 
 that the laws which we are now 
 considering, D.xii.17-19, xiv.22-27, 
 were intended to secure some better 
 provision for the support of this ne- 
 cessitous priesthood. 
 
 676. The original tithe-system, as 
 
 cond order,' — had actually the duty of 'carry, 
 ing out ' in person the refuse of the sacrifices 
 and other rubbish of the Temple, * into a dean 
 place without the (camp) city *=' abroad into 
 the brook £idron.' See Part I,ch.lv. 
 
DEUT.XIV.1-29. 
 laid down in the book of Leviticus, 
 was evidently no longer effective, if, 
 indeed, it was ever at any time fully 
 put into operation, which seems very 
 doubtful. Here, however, it would 
 seem, an attempt is made to exchange 
 it for one much more likely to be popu- 
 lar, and practically effective; since 
 the tithes on this system were to be 
 consumed in feasting by the tithe- 
 payer and his family, the poor Levite 
 '|Within their gates' being included 
 only as a guest. It is evident that 
 any single wealths/ farmer, who made 
 it a religions duty to obey such a law 
 as this, when promulgated under the 
 combined influence of priestly, pro- 
 phetical, and royal authority, woidd be 
 likely to bring many firstlings of his 
 cattle and sheep annually, far more 
 than he himself and his family could 
 consume in feasting. Thus the eccle- 
 siastics of the Temple would have a 
 reasonable probability of sharing, at 
 all events, in the enjoyment of these 
 good things; though, according to the 
 levitieal Law, they had a right to the 
 whole. 
 676. D.xiv.28,29. 
 
 * At the end of three years thou shalt bring 
 forth all the tithe of thine increase the same 
 year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates. 
 And the Levite, because he hath no part nor 
 inheritance with thee, and the stranger, and 
 the fatherless, and the widow, -which are 
 within thy gates, shall come and shall eat 
 and be satisfied ; that Jehovah thy 6od may 
 bless thee in all the work of thine hand 
 which thou doest.' 
 
 Scott maintains here also the notion 
 of a ' second ' tithe, and quotes from 
 Medb as follows : — 
 
 Two years together they paid the Levite^ 
 tithe and the festival tithe. But in the third 
 year they paid the Lmtef^ tithe and the poor 
 man's tithe, that is, what was wont in other 
 years to be spent in feasting, [and, which was 
 now to be spent on the poor at home]. 
 
 JosEPHTis, ^Ki.IV.viii.22 explains the 
 matter by a third tithe, to be paid in 
 the third year, and introduces Moses 
 as saying : — 
 
 Besides these two tithes, which I have al- 
 ready said yon are to pay every year, the one 
 for the Levites, the other for the festivals, 
 you are to bring every third year a tithe to 
 be distributed to those that want, to -widows 
 also, and to orphans. 
 
 677. But both these explanations of 
 the difficulty are at once set aside by 
 
 823 
 
 the fact that, if the tithe named in 
 D.xii.l7,18,xiv.22-27,be the ' second' 
 tithe, and that in D.xiv.28,29, the 
 ' third ' tithe, both of which were to be 
 shared by the Levite with others, then 
 in all the Book of Deuteronomy no 
 mention whatever is made of the 
 ' iirst ' tithe, which belonged whoUy to 
 the Levites. 
 
 678. Those, however, who speak of 
 a 'second' and ' third ' tithe, merely 
 assume that the 'first ' or Levites' tithe 
 was actually paid, because it was en- 
 joined in N.xviii.20-24. But there is 
 not a trace of any such payment hav- 
 ing been made throughout the whole 
 history of the books of Judges, Samuel, 
 and Kings ; and in the books of Chro- 
 nicles, as we have seen, there are distinct 
 indications of the contrary. Nor is a 
 single word said about this Levites' 
 tithe throughout the whole Book of 
 Deuteronomy, — not in xviii.8, where 
 the provision for the Levites out of the, 
 sacrifices is mentioned, — 
 ' they shall have like portions to eat, beside 
 that which cometh of the sale of liis patri- 
 mony,' — 
 
 still less in xiT.28, where it is ex- 
 pressly commanded that ' the Levite,' as 
 well as 'the stranger, and the father- 
 less, and the widow,' shall ' come and 
 eat ' of this ' poor man's tithe ' — having 
 already, it is supposed, received their 
 own fiiU tithe, ' the Levites' tithe,' that 
 year — ' and be satisfied.' 
 
 679. There can be little doubt that 
 one and the same tithe is meant through- 
 out, — that which in N.xviii is ordered 
 to be given wholly to the Levites, as 
 the firstlings were to be given to the 
 Priests. .Aid it seems probable that 
 the Deuteronomistj — though he had en- 
 joinedin xii.17,18, xiv.22-27, that the 
 annual tithe and the firstlings should be 
 spent in feasting at Jerusalem, with 
 the view (675) of securing in this way, 
 for the Priests and Levites, some share, 
 at least, in those good things, which ought 
 to have been given wholly to them, but 
 which in his own time, at all events, were 
 notso given, — yet was not very sanguine 
 even of this modification of the original 
 direction being generally obeyed. Hence, 
 it may be, he has introduced this addi- 
 tional provision for the third year's 
 
•2U 
 
 DEUT.XIV.1-29. 
 
 tithe to be eaten at home, expecting, 
 perhaps, that this mode of disposing 
 of the tithe would be more popular, 
 and more likely to be observed, than 
 the more strict one of taking it np to 
 Jerusalem. This command, at all events, 
 might be pretty generally obeyed, if the 
 other was disregarded. 
 
 680. This view of the case seems 
 rather confirmed by the fact, that this 
 ' third year's tithe ' is most insisted on 
 by the Deuteronomist, both here, xiv. 
 22, and in xxvi.l2, where the 'third 
 year ' itself is called the ' year of tithing.' 
 It would seem that each pious per- 
 son, who might be disposed to carry 
 out this law, was to be left at liberty 
 to reckon his third year as he pleased. 
 Knobbl, indeed, suggests that these 
 triennial tithes were meant to fall due 
 in the third and sixth years after each 
 Sabbatical year. But, if this had been 
 intended, it is reasonable to believe 
 that some such definition of this ' third ' 
 year would have been made in the text. 
 In fact, in that case, the writer would, 
 most probably, have mentioned expli- 
 citly both the 'third' and 'sixth' years. 
 
 681. It may, indeed, be thought that 
 this ' third year's tithe ' was meant to 
 be given wholly to the poor, since it is 
 not expressly said here, as in xii.18, 
 that the householder and his family 
 were to feast upon them as well as the 
 Levite, &c. But the language used 
 with reference to this same tithe in 
 xxvi. 13,14, seems to imply that the 
 giver was expected to partake of them 
 himself, — and if so, then, of course, 
 in common with the members of his 
 family, — ^but only on proper occasions of 
 festivity, not for unlawful or unbecom- 
 ing uses : since he is made to say, — 
 
 *I have consumed (E.T. 'brought away') 
 the hallowed things out of mine house, and 
 also have given them unto the Levite, &c, ; 
 I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, 
 neither have I consumed (E.T. * taken away ') 
 ought thereof for the dead.' 
 
 It would surely have been said, 'I 
 have not consumed oughtthereof at all, 
 for any purfose,' if it had been in- 
 tended that the tithe should be given 
 wholly away. 
 
 682. In Am.iv.4,5, we read : — 
 
 ' Come to Bethel, and transgress ; at Gilgal 
 multiply transgression ; and bring your sacri- 
 
 fices every morning, your tithes after three 
 years', and ofEer a sacrifice of thanksgiving 
 with leaven, and proclaim and publish the 
 free-offerings : for this liketh you, O ye chil- 
 dren of Israel, saith Jehovah Elohim.' 
 
 These words appear to have been 
 addressed ironically to the people of 
 the Ten Tribes, who are represented as 
 substituting outward observances — and 
 these, perhaps, idolatrous — ^for purity 
 of heart and life. It is difficult, how- 
 ever, to see what is exactly meant by 
 the expression, ' your tithes after three 
 years.' The LXX has ' your tithes for 
 the three-days' feast' But, at any rate, 
 they cannot imply that the command 
 for the triennial tithe in D.xiv.28 was 
 actually carried out in the kingdom of 
 Israel, — (which, indeed, under any cir- 
 cumstances, could hardly have been 
 expected,) — since D.xiv.28 expressly 
 enjoins that the third year's tithe should 
 be feasted on at home, 'within thy 
 gates,' whereas here the tithes, what- 
 ever they may be, are taken to the 
 sacred place. Bethel or &ilgal. 
 
 683. If the translation of the English 
 "Version is correct, we might suppose 
 that, among the Ten Tribes, tithes were 
 really paid at this time with some 
 readiness, once in three years, perhaps 
 for the support of the Priesthood which 
 Jeroboam had appointed, and perhaps 
 by his order or suggestion. Aid this 
 might also be held to imply that in 
 the immediately foregoing time of Solo- 
 mon the annual tithe-system, enjoined 
 in the book of Numbers, and, as we 
 believe, first laid down in that reign, 
 with a view to the maintenance of the 
 Priests in attendance at the new-built 
 Temple, was really carried out to some 
 extent. This example may have been 
 copied by Jeroboam for the maintenance 
 of his own Priesthood, though he modi- 
 fied it to a triennial tithe; and from 
 this modification may even have been 
 derived the idea of the later law of the 
 Deuteronomist in xiv. 28. 
 
 684. In the story of Tobit, indeed, 
 we have a full account of first, second, 
 and third tithes, every year, and of 
 other dues being paid in the most re- 
 gular manner, and of the Feasts being 
 regularly kept, and of his going up to 
 Jerusalem to keep them, before the 
 captivity of the Ten Tribes. 
 
DEUT.XV.1-XVI.22. 
 
 225 
 
 * Now all the tribes ■whioli together re- 
 volted, and the house of my father Nepthall, 
 sacrificed unto the heifer Baal. But I alone 
 went often [why not always, as the Law en- 
 3pined, E.xxiii.l7, xxxiv.23 ?] to Jerusalem at 
 the Feasts, as it was ordained unto all the 
 people of Israel by an everlasting decree, 
 bearing the flrst-fruits and tenths of in- 
 crease, with that which was first shorn ; and 
 them gave I at the altar to the Priests the 
 soThs of Aaron. The first tenth of all increase 
 I gave to the som of Aaron, who ministered at 
 Jerusalem; [the command in lT.xviii.21 says 
 it should be given to the LeiiUes\\ another 
 tenth part 1 sold away, and went and spent 
 it every year at Jeru^em, and the third I 
 gave unto them to whom it was meet.* i.5,8. 
 
 685. But the story of Tobit is noto- 
 riously a mere fiction, written long after 
 tlie Captivity. The above statement, 
 however, accords vpith the well-known 
 fact that, after the return from the 
 Babylonish Captivity, great efforts were 
 made to carry out more strictly the 
 laws of the Pentateuch — those of the 
 earlier books, as well as those of Deuter- 
 onomy. The difficulty, which we have 
 been considering, about the tithes, was 
 probably then perceived, and, perhaps, 
 by some pious persons obviated in the 
 way described by Tobit. But, as we 
 have noted above, the law gave the 
 tithes to the Levites, not to the Priests 
 'the sons of Aaron.' 
 
 686. Blebk, while maintaining that 
 the Law in N.xviii is genuine Mosaical, 
 writes vrith reference to the law in Deu- 
 teronomy as follows, ^.216 : — 
 
 No one, upon an unprejudiced comparison 
 of these two laws, can mistake the fact, that 
 they vary much from one another, as regards 
 both their contents and character. In the 
 last, strictly speaking, no mention whatever 
 is made of a special legal provision by way 
 of tax for the benefit of the Levites, but 
 only of a free-will act of benevolence, which 
 the Israelites are required to show to the 
 landless Levites, just as to other needy per- 
 sons. Hence they are placed in one and the 
 same rank with the other destitute people, 
 and their whole position is entirely changed. 
 That Moses himself, with reference to the 
 maintenance o£ the Levites, should have de- 
 livered two laws, so different from each other 
 as is their whole character [oitMn the spam of 
 a fern months], cannot weU be beUeved, espe- 
 cially as ihe former law, just as much as the 
 latter, refers to the time when the tnbes of 
 Israel would find themselves in possession of 
 their promised land. We cannot but assume 
 that if the one law is Mosaic, the other be- 
 longs to a later time. And here there can 
 be no doubt that the law in Numbers is the 
 original, which also has all the character of 
 a Mosaic law. On the other hand, in Denta:- 
 onomy, we probably possess it in a form, to 
 
 which it was changed in a later time, — pro- 
 bably at a time when the original law, with 
 so many other Mosaic directions, had long 
 ceased to be followed, and when the rela- 
 'tions also had so settled themselves, that no 
 more hope could be entertained that they 
 ever would again be followed. Then, pro- 
 bably, it was sought in this way, at all 
 events, to awaken the compassion of the 
 Israelites for the, perhaps, in part, very 
 necessitous Levites. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 i)EnT.xv.l-XTi.22. 
 
 687. D.xv.1-11. 
 
 The Deuteronomist here enjoins that 
 every seventh year shall be a 'year 
 of release,' or remission of debts, with 
 reference, perhaps, as most commenta- 
 tors suppose, to the Sabbatical Year ; 
 though, if he really meant and ex- 
 pected that this law should be practi- 
 eaUy carried out in the Sabbatical Year, 
 it is reasonable to believe, as before ob- 
 served (680), that he would have more 
 strictly defined the meaning of the ex- 
 pression ' at the end of seven years.' 
 
 688. It maybe that the writer, ever 
 tender-hearted and considerate for the 
 poor and needy among his countrymen, 
 (as is shown by such a multitude of 
 passages throughout this Book,) has 
 availed himself of one of the older laws 
 about the Sabbatical Year, E.xxiii.ll. 
 L.xxT.1-7, (in neither of which pas- 
 sages, however, let it be noted, is a 
 single word said about releasing debts,) 
 to recommend compassion to creditors, 
 and suggest to them the duty of re- 
 mitting debts, which pressed heavily 
 upon their debtors. He may have con- 
 nected this duty with that portion of 
 the older document> which instituted 
 the Sabbatical Year, (seeking in this 
 way to gain, as it were, the authority of 
 Moses for such remission, after a debt 
 had been long due,) even if the practice 
 of observing the Sabbatical Year itself 
 had altogether ceased, or, perhaps, had 
 never even been practised at any time 
 in Israel. 
 
 689. For, in the whole history of the 
 Hebrew people, there is no sign of this 
 law of observing the Sabbatical Year 
 having been ever once obeyed. Bather, 
 there is a passage, 2Gh.xxxvi.21, which 
 would tend to prove the contrary, where 
 it is said that— 
 
 a 
 
226 
 
 DEUT.XV.1-XVI.22. 
 
 *tlie land ©njoyed her Sabtaths, for, as long 
 as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath,* — 
 the reference being plainly to the ex- 
 pressions in L.xxvi.34,43. So in his 
 note on 2K.xix.29, Scott remarks : — 
 
 The devastations of the Assyrians had, pro- 
 bably, prevented the land from being sown 
 that year ; and the next is supposed to have 
 been the Sabbatical Tear ; though this is the 
 only intimationy in alt the history of Israel^ that 
 any regard was paid to that institution. 
 
 The passage referred to by Scott, 
 2K.xix.29, is this: — 
 
 'And this shall be a sign nnto thee : Te 
 shall eat this year such things as grow of 
 themselves, and in the second year that 
 which springeth of the same, and in the 
 third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vine- 
 yards, and eat the fruits thereof.' 
 
 It is evidently a mere conjecture 
 that reference is here made to the Sab- 
 batical Year, -without any supporting 
 ground for it. 
 
 690. D.xv.12-18. 
 
 This is very nearly li repetition of 
 the law in E.xxi.2-6, with the excep- 
 tion that the Deuteronomist — 
 
 (i) Names the Hebrew maid-ssTvant, 
 as well as the man-servant, — 
 
 (ii) Commands that some means of 
 sustenance shall be given to the bond- 
 man set free, — 
 
 (iii) Is silent about the ear of the 
 servant, who wished to remain with 
 his master, being bored through with 
 an awl in the presence of the Judges. 
 
 The fact may be that the ' ear-bor- 
 ing,' which may have suited the earlier 
 and more barbarous age, in which the 
 original law in E.xxi.6 was, most pro- 
 bably, laid down, may have been wholly 
 out of place in the time of the later 
 kings. And, though the Deuteronomist 
 repeats the ancient law, it is more for 
 the purpose of enjoining such a release 
 of bondservants, than with a view of 
 this obsolete practice being revived. 
 
 691. In Jer.xxxiv.8-22 we have an 
 account given how king Zedekiah — 
 
 ' had made a covenant with all the people 
 which were at Jerusalem to proclaim liberty 
 nnto them, that every man should let his 
 manservant, and every man his maidservant, 
 being a Hebrew or Hebrewess, go free — ^that 
 none should serve himself of them, to wit, of 
 a Jew his brother.* 
 
 Accordingly, we are told, they did so 
 release them, but afterwards — 
 * turned, and caused the servants, whom they 
 had let go free, to return, and brought them 
 
 into subjection for servants and foi hand- 
 maids.' 
 
 Then Jeremiah prophesies, u 13-1 7 : 
 ' Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel : I 
 made a covenant with your fathers in the 
 day that I brought them out of the land of 
 "Egypt, out of the house of bondmen, saying. 
 At the end of seven years let ye go every man 
 his brother an Hebrew, which hath been sold 
 unto thee, and, when he hath served thee six 
 years, thou shalt let him go free from thee : 
 but your fathers hearkened not unto me, 
 neither inclined their ear. And ye were now 
 turned, and had done right in my sight, in 
 proclaiming liberty every man to his neigh- 
 bour ; and ye had made a covenant before me 
 in the House which is called by my Name. 
 But ye turned and polluted my Kame, and 
 caused every man his servant, and every man 
 his handmaid, whom he had set at liberty at 
 their pleasure, to return, and brought them 
 into subjection, to be unto you for servants' 
 and for handmaids. Therefore thus saith Je- 
 hovah, Te have not hearkened unto me in 
 proclaiming liberty, every man to his brother, 
 and every man to his neighbour. Behold, I 
 proclaim a liberty to you, saith Jehovah, to 
 the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine ; 
 and I will make you to be removed to all the 
 kingdoms of the earth.' 
 
 692. Upon the above passage we 
 may remark as follows : — 
 
 (i) It is plain that, neither before 
 nor after the time here referred to, was 
 it the practice to manumit their Hebrew 
 slaves in the seventh year. And, con- 
 sequently, this passage, as far as it 
 goes, shows that the command in ques- 
 tion was not obeyed, even in Judah, — 
 much less in Israel. 
 
 (ii) The king and princes seem to 
 have had some strong influence brought 
 to bear upon them, probably, by the 
 lugent representations of Jeremiah 
 himself, and appear at first to have 
 complied with the injunction, either 
 regarding it as Divine, or perhaps only 
 as a proper and humane institution. 
 
 (iii) For some reason they afterwards 
 changed their minds, and made no 
 scruple of retracing their steps, either 
 because they had become satisfied, in 
 the interim, that the law in question 
 was not of Divine origin, or because 
 more selfish motives prevailed over 
 their religion and humanity. 
 
 (iv) The Prophet, in the passage 
 before us, refers — not to the older law 
 inE.xxi.2, but — to the later Deuterono- 
 mistic version of it, D.xv.12, asappeaxs 
 by his quoting from it three expres- 
 sions : — 
 
DETJT.XV.1-XVI.22. 
 
 (i) 'be sola unto thee,' 
 ' If thoil Shalt buy * ; 
 
 227 
 
 instead of E.X3d.2, 
 
 (u) and he shall serve thes six years,' in- 
 stead of B.xxi.2, ' six years shall he serve" ; 
 
 (iii) ' and thou Shalt let him go free from 
 thee,' instead of B.xxi.2, ' he shall go out free 
 for nothing.' 
 
 693. Hence it can scarcely be doutted 
 that Jeremiah had been setting before 
 the king and princes the language of 
 the Book of Deuteronomy, then re- 
 cently found in the Temple in the days 
 of Zedekiah's father Josiah, and written, 
 it may be, with the full cognisance, if 
 not by the hand, of Jeremiah himself, 
 and that this was the influence, which 
 he had brought to bear for a time upon 
 them, whether they believed in the 
 Divine authority of that Book or not. 
 
 694. In fact, this prophecy of Jere- 
 miah was littered about b.o. 695, in 
 Zedekiah's time, Jer.xxxiv.8. And the 
 Book of Deuteronomy, as we suppose, 
 was first publicly produced and acted 
 on by the whole people in the eighteenth 
 year of Josiah, e.g. 624, about thirty 
 years before ; and, therefore, it might 
 very well be referred to by the pro- 
 phet as a well-known document. It is 
 noticeable that Zedekiah and his princes 
 and people made at first a solemn 
 covenant to carry out this command to 
 release their servants, as if moved to 
 it by some appeal of the Prophet, re- 
 presenting it as having issued from 
 Jehovah Himself — whidi, no doubt, as 
 a eonimand founded upon the principles 
 of humanity and brotherly kindness, 
 he himself believed it mrtvMly did. 
 But, afterwards, — 
 
 * they tamed, and caused the servants and 
 the handmaids, whom they had let go free, 
 to return, and brought them into subjection 
 for servants and for handmaids,' — 
 as if they had begun to doubt the Divine 
 authority of this injunction. 
 
 695. D.xv.19-23. 
 
 Here, again, as in (650), the firstling 
 males of the herd and of the flock are 
 to be feasted on by the offerer and his 
 household, instead of their flesh being 
 given to the Priest. 
 
 696. D.xvi. 
 
 In this chapter the regular obser- 
 vance of the tiiree great Peasts is en- 
 joined, the addition being now made 
 for the first time, — 
 
 ' Three times a year shall all thy males ap- 
 
 pear before Jehovah Va-jQai. in the place which 
 he shall choose,' «.16. 
 
 According to the original command, 
 the Passover sacrifice was always to be 
 a ' lamb ' or a ' kid,' E.xii.3,21 ; whereas 
 here we read, v.2, — 
 
 "Thou Shalt therefore Baorlflce the Passover 
 unto Jehovah thy God of the flock and of the 
 herd, in the place which Jehovah shall choose 
 to place His Name there.' 
 
 And so writes Dr. JH'Caul, Exami- 
 nation, &o.^.60: 
 
 If the Israelites had not larnbs enough, they 
 could take kids; and, if both failed, we learn 
 from D.xvi.2 that even oxen might be used- 
 Prom 2Ch.xxx.24, xxxv.7, it appears that in 
 the Passover of Hezekiah and Josiah bullocks 
 were actually employed as well as lambs and 
 kids. 
 
 If so, there was certainly a depar- 
 ture in these later days 6om the law 
 laid down in E.xii.1-10. 
 
 697. I).xvi.7. 
 
 'And thou shalt roast and eat it in the 
 place which Jehovah thy God shall choose; 
 and thou shalt turn in the morning, and go 
 unto thy tents.' 
 Upon this EiEHM observes, p.5\ : — 
 
 That the writer is here speaking of the 
 morning following the night in which the 
 Paesover was to be eaten,— that is, of the 
 morning of the fifteenth day, — is plain from 
 the context. But, that he here allows those, 
 who had come from other towns to Jeru- 
 salem for the festival, to go away honu on 
 the morning of the fifteenth, is impossible, 
 since then there could not be held the 
 ' solemn assembly,* v.8, on the seventh day. 
 We can only therefore assume that the Pas- 
 chal lamb was slaughtered at the Temple, — 
 (and what else could have been ^rinkled with 
 the blood, except the Altar, if it was slain at 
 all at Jerusalem? comp. 2Ch.xxxv.ll) — and 
 eaten in the fore-court of it, and that the 
 writer in the above words allows every one 
 to return in the morning from the Temple- 
 court, to the hostel in Jerusalem in which he 
 was living during the feast. 
 
 698. The above seems to be the true 
 explanation of the passage ; and in 
 this very way, probably, the famous 
 Passover in Josiah's time was actually 
 carried out. This, of course, excludes 
 the notion of so many sheep and cattle 
 havihg been killed, and cooked, and 
 eaten, in the Temple- court on this occa- 
 sion, as the Chronicler states, vie. 37,600 
 lambs and kids, and 3,800 oxen, 2Ch. 
 xxxv.7,8,9, — which we have shown 
 (148-163) to be impossible. The more 
 trustworthy historian— perhaps, Jere- 
 miah himself— says nothing of all these, 
 but merely writes, 2K.xxiii.22 — 
 
 «2 
 
228 
 
 DEUT.XVII.1-20. 
 
 ' Suiely there was not holden suoli a Pass- 
 over, from the days of the Judges that judged 
 Israel, nor in all the days of the Kings of 
 Israel, nor of the Kings of Judoh, but in 
 the eighteenth year of King Josiah, wherein 
 this Passover was holden to JehovEbh in Jeru- 
 
 The Denteronomist also, as we have 
 said (519), makes no mention what- 
 ever of the ' Feast of Trumpets ' and 
 ' Great Day of Atonement,' the celebra- 
 tion of which is enforced in L.xxiii as 
 solemnly as that of the three Great 
 Peasts, 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 i)ETjT.xvn.l-20. 
 
 699. D.xvii.2-7. 
 
 'If there be found among you , . , man 
 or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in 
 the sight of Jehovah thy God, in transgress- 
 ing His Covenant, and hath gone and served 
 other gods, and worshipped them, either the 
 Sun, or Moon, or any of the Host of Heaven, 
 . . . then Shalt thou bring forth that man or 
 that woman, , . , and shalt stone them with 
 stones, till they die. ... So thou shalt put 
 the evil away from among you.* 
 
 In this passage the Denteronomist 
 again expresses strongly his abhorrence 
 of allmanner of idolatry, and especially, 
 v.Z, of the worship of the Sun, or Moon, 
 or any of the Host of Heaven,' of the 
 prevalence of which, as we have said 
 (596), the first intimation, in the more 
 authentic history of the kings of Judah, 
 is found in the reign of Josiah's father, 
 Manasseh, 2K.2:xi.3,9. 
 
 700. D.xvii.8-13. 
 
 * If there arise a matter too hard for thee 
 in judgment, . . . then shalt thou arise, and 
 get thee up into the place which Jehovah thy 
 God shall choose, and thou shalt come unto 
 the Priests the Levites, and unto the Judge 
 that shall be in those days, and enquire, and 
 they shall show thee the sentence of judg- 
 ment. . . . And the man that will do pre- 
 sumptuously, and will not hearken unto the 
 Priest ... or unto the Judge, even that 
 man shall die ; and thou shalt put away the 
 evil from Israel, and all the people shaJl hear 
 and fear, and do no more presumptuously.' 
 
 Ktjenen, ^.150, is of opinion that 
 we have here a reference to the High 
 Court of Judicature, said by the 
 Chronicler to have been established by 
 Jehoshaphat in Jerusalem, 2Ch.xLx. 
 8-11. 
 
 701. Assuming this view of the case 
 to be true, the fact of Jehoshaphat 
 having been the first to establish such 
 
 a Court would rather tend to show that 
 the law in Deuteronomy was not Mosaic 
 and Divine, since Jehoshaphat's act is 
 spoken of as quite a novel one, with- 
 out any reference to this law. 
 
 It seems doubtful, however, if there 
 is really any reference here to such an 
 ecclesiastical Court, as that supposed 
 to be described in 20h.xix.8-ll, or to 
 any regular Court at all. The very 
 language which is here used by the 
 Denteronomist, — 
 
 ' Thou shalt come unto the Priests the Le- 
 vites, and unto the Judge that shall be in those 
 days,' — • the man that wlU not hearken unto 
 the Priest that standeth to minister there be- 
 fore Jehovah thy God, or unto the Judge' — 
 is so vague and uncertain, as rather to 
 imply the contrary. 
 
 702. Itmaybe doubted also, perhaps, 
 whether the Chronicler is here giving 
 an account of some one particular High 
 Court of Judicature first established 
 by Jehoshaphat, or whether his state- 
 ments, so far as we can depend upon 
 them, should be understood as saying 
 more than that Jehoshaphat, like our 
 Henet II, was traditionally famous as 
 a judicial reformer. It is possible, 
 indeed, that his name, which means 
 ' Jehoyahjiidges' may have some con- 
 nection with this account of his judicial 
 arrangements. It may have had a real 
 historical connection with them in 
 Jehoshaphat's lifetime ; or it may have 
 given rise to the tradition of this king's 
 having taken a lively interest in such 
 matters ; or it may have suggested to 
 the Chronicler himself the probability 
 of his having set the courts of justice 
 in his time in active operation, as de- 
 scribed in the narrative. 
 
 703. Of course, in the later days of 
 the monarchy, and above all in the 
 time of Josiah, who came to the throne 
 at eight years of age, 2K.xxii.l, the 
 chief and other principal Priests must 
 have been persons of some consequence 
 in Jerusalem, and would naturally be 
 called to take a part in the decision 
 of important causes, especially any 
 connected with matters ecclesiastical. 
 And so in D.xix.17,18, we read, — 
 
 ' Then both the men, between whom the 
 controversy is, shall stand before Jehovah, 
 before the Priesta and the Judges, which 
 shall be in those days ; and the Judges ^aU 
 make diligent inquisition,' &c. 
 
DEUT.XVII.1-20, 
 If, however, reference is here sup- 
 posed to be made to a regular Court, 
 then it deserves to be noted (as a token 
 that the writer is not Moses himself) 
 that the Court is not here introduced as 
 one established by Moses, only to be 
 called into operation hereafter, but is 
 set forth as already existing. 
 
 704. It need hardly be said that the 
 notion of referring all difficult matters 
 to the Priests the Levites, — 
 ' by whose word shall every controversy and 
 every stroke he tried,' D.33d,5,— 
 could never have arisen in the days 
 of David and Solomon, or any of the 
 more powerful kings of Judah, who, 
 we may be certain, decided themselves, 
 as a Supreme Court, either in person 
 or by their judicial officers, all such 
 questions. Thus we are told that 
 David 'executed judgment and jus- 
 tice unto all people,' 2S.viii.l5; and 
 Solomon prays for 'an understand- 
 ing heart,' that he may be able to 
 'judge so great a people,' lK.iii.9. 
 And, accordingly, we have very soon 
 an instance of his deciding personaUv 
 in such a case between the two women, 
 lK.iii.16-27 ; and it is added, u29,- 
 
 'And all Israel heard of the judgment, 
 which the King had judged ; and they feared 
 the King; for they saw that the wisdom of 
 God was in him to do judgment.' 
 
 705. And this is confirmed when 
 we observe the very subordinate posi- 
 tion which the principal Priests occupy 
 in the lists of the great officers of 
 David and Solomon. Here, instead of 
 finding — as we might expect from what 
 we observe in the Pentateuch and 
 book of Joshua, (where Aaron always 
 Tanks next to Moses, and Eleazar to 
 Joshua, or even before him, Jo.xiv.l,) 
 — that the High Priest is named, as 
 first in honour and highest in rank 
 and dignity, next to the King, we have 
 mentioned, first, the chief captain, 
 Joab — then the recorder, Jehoshaphat, 
 — then the Priests, Zadok and Ahime- 
 lech, — ^the scribe, Seraiah, — the captain 
 of the guard, Benaiah, — and, last of 
 all, it is added, 2S.viii.l6-18,— • 
 
 ' And David's sons were ehpf rulers,* 
 And we find the Priests in a still lower 
 
 position in Solomon's time, lK.iv.1-6. 
 706. It is also very noticeable that 
 
 the word translated ' chief rulers ' in 
 
 229 
 
 2S.viii.l8 is in the original 'Priests.' 
 It stands distinctly ' David's sons [of 
 the tribe ofJudah]weTe Priests' The 
 Hebrew word is the same as is used 
 everywhere else for Priest, viz., Cohen, — 
 the same exactly as that used for Aaron, 
 Eleazar, or Phinehas. So m 2S.xx.26 
 we read, — 
 
 ' And Ira also, the Jairite, was a Frieit (B.V. 
 'chief ruler') about David.' 
 
 And in the passage which has just 
 been quoted from lK.iv.1-6, the word 
 translated ' chief officer ' is properly the 
 Cohen, ' the Priest,' and that rendered 
 'principal officer,' is Cohen, 'Priest.' 
 When thus we observe that — ^not the 
 sons of David alone, but — 'Ira, the 
 Jairite,' also, 2S.xx.26, and ' Zabud, the 
 son of Nathan,' lKiv.5, are each de- 
 signated by this name 'Cohen,' and 
 that 'Azariah the son of Zadok' was 
 I the Cohen ' in Solomon's days, lK.iv.2, 
 it can scarcely be supposed that the 
 Hebrew word is used exclusively of 
 'Priests' in the ordinary sense, or 
 that David's sons are called ' Cohanim,' 
 as some suppose, because he had em- 
 powered them to exercise certain sacer- 
 dotal functions. 
 
 707. It is true, no doubt, that David 
 and Solomon themselves did discharge 
 Priestly functions on various occasions. 
 And this is one of the numerous evi- 
 dences, which the history, betrays, of 
 the non-existence of the laws of the 
 Pentateuch in their present form in 
 their days, or, at all events, of their not 
 being in operation, and so of their ndt 
 being regarded in those days as 
 authoritative and Divine. But it is 
 clear that the word ' Cohen ' was not 
 used in those times, nor even in the 
 yet later time when the above passages 
 in Samuel and Kings were written, ex- 
 clusively with reference to religion. 
 The very fact that it could be employed 
 thus freely of laymen, shows that the 
 more restricted use of the word, which 
 afterwards prevailed, when the Priestly 
 office became more dignified, had not 
 yet come into vogue. It would be 
 strange that a word, already exoltisively 
 appropriated to denote such a high 
 sacred office, should be so lightly used 
 of mere laymen. 
 
 708, And, in fact, we do not find 
 
230 
 
 the word so used in the later ages of 
 the Jewish history. The Chronicler, 
 indeed, says, ICh.xxvii.S, — 
 
 'The third captain of the host for the 
 third month was Benalah, the son of Je- 
 hoiada, the chitf Priest, (lit. head Cohen, B.T. 
 margin, * principal officer').' 
 
 It is impossible to say what he ex- 
 actly means by this expression, whether 
 that Benaiah, or Jehoiada, was ' head 
 Cohen.' But he probably has adopted 
 the phrase from the passages just 
 quoted, 2S.viii, IK.iv. At all events, 
 he never uses it again ; and, instead of 
 saying that the sons of David were 
 ' Cohanim,' he writes, lCh.xviii.17, — 
 
 * The sons of David were at the hand of the 
 king.' 
 
 In other words, they were, probably, 
 ' Councillors of State,' and Azariah the 
 son of Zadok, 'the Cohen,' was, perhaps, 
 the 'President of the Council.' In 
 course of time, as the Priestly office 
 gained ground, more and more, in posi- 
 tion and influence, — though not in 
 wealth, — the word Cohen became re- 
 stricted to those who were set apart 
 for sacred offices, and had charge of 
 the ministrations of the Sanotiiary— 
 just as if in England the word 'Min- 
 ister' should no longer be used for 
 'ministers of state,' but be restricted 
 to ' ministers of religion.' 
 
 »709. D.xvii.14-17. 
 
 * "When thou art come unto the land which 
 Jehovah thy God giveth thee, and shalt pos- 
 sess it, and shaJt dwell therein, and shalt say, 
 I will set a king over me, like as all the na- 
 tions that are about me, thou shalt in any 
 ■wise set him king over thee, whom Jehovah 
 thy God shall choose ; one from among thy 
 Ijrethren shalt thou set king over thee ; thou 
 mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is 
 not thy brother. But he shall not multiply 
 horses to himself, nor cause the people to 
 return to Egypt, to the end that he should 
 multiply horses ; forasmuch as Jehovah hath 
 said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no 
 more that way. Neither shall he multiply 
 %vives unto himself, that his heart turn not 
 away, neither shall he greatly multiply to 
 himself silver and gold.' 
 
 It is plain that this passage, which 
 distinctly allows the appointment of a 
 ting, and, indeed, would have been 
 enough to have suggested it, if the 
 desire for one had not otherwise arisen, 
 — which, so far from disapproving of the 
 introduction of the kingdom, rather pro- 
 mises a special blessing, and a perma- 
 
 DEUT.XVII.1-20. 
 
 nent continuance of royalty, to any pious 
 king and his children, — could not have 
 existed, as the declaration of the Divine 
 Will, in the time of Samuel, or in the 
 still later time of the author of the 
 history of the election of the first king 
 of IsraeL 
 
 710. There we find Samuel charging 
 it upon the people as a great sin, that 
 they had desired a king, — 
 
 ' That ye may see that your -wickedness is 
 great, which ye have done in the sight of 
 Jehovah, in asking for a king. . . . And all 
 the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy 
 servants unto Jehovah thy Gro&, that we die 
 
 not ; for we have added unto all oor sins this 
 evil to ask us a king.' lS.xii.17-19, 
 
 Nay, Jehovah himself says to 
 Samuel, lS.viii.7 — 
 
 'They have not rejected thee, but they 
 have rejected Me, that I should not reign 
 over them.* 
 
 Throughout the whole narrative, not 
 the least reference is made to this law, 
 as surely must have been the ease if it 
 was really in existence in those days ; 
 since either Samuel might have been 
 expected to quote it, as laying down 
 the conditions of the kingdom, if they 
 were determined to have it, or the people 
 would naturally have adduced it, as 
 sanctioning, or, at any rate, excusing, 
 their wish for a king. 
 
 711. Solomon, as we know, was the 
 first king who 'multiplied' horses 
 brought -out of Egypt: — 
 
 * And Sol6mon had forty thousand stalls of 
 horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand 
 horsemen,' lK.iv.26 ; 
 
 'And Solomon gathered together chariots 
 and horsemen; and he had a thousand and 
 four hundred chariots, and twelve thousand 
 horsemen, whom he bestowed in the cities 
 for chariots, and with the king at Jerusalem, 
 1K.X.26 ; 
 
 'And Solomon had horses brought out of 
 Egypt. . . . And a chariot came up and went 
 out of Egypt for six hundred shekels of 
 silver, and an horse for an hundred and 
 fifty; and so for all the kings of the Hit- 
 tites, and for the kings of Syria, did they 
 bring them out by their means,' lK.x.28,29. 
 
 In later days Jotham also, Hezekiah's 
 grandfather, did this, as Isaiah implies : 
 
 ' Their land is also full of horses, neither is 
 there any end of their chariots,' Is.ii.7. 
 
 And Hezekiah did the same : — 
 ' "Woe to them that go down to Egypt for 
 help, and stay on horses, and trust in cha- 
 riots, because they are many, and in horse- 
 men, because they are strong! ' Is.xxxi.l ; 
 ' How wilt thou turn away the face of one 
 
DEUT.XVni.1-22. 
 
 captain of the least of my master's servants, 
 and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and 
 for horsemen ? ' lB.xx8:vi.9. 
 
 712. But, later still, Jeremiah con- 
 demns the kings of Judah strongly for 
 going down again to Egypt for help : — 
 
 'And now what hast thou to tjo in the 
 way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor ? 
 . . . Wliy gaddest thou about so much to 
 change thy way? thou also shalt be asliamed 
 of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria,' 
 ii.18,36. 
 
 And he speaks in xlii.15-19 with 
 special emphasis against the people's 
 ' returning' to Egypt to sojourn there. 
 
 While, therefore, in forbidding the 
 multiplication of wealth and of wives, 
 special reference may be made by the 
 Deuteronomist to the well-known causes 
 of Solomon's declension, lK.jc,xi, yet 
 such a passage as that before us might 
 very well have been written in the age 
 of Josiah, and by the hand of such a 
 Prophet as Jeremiah. 
 
 713. D.xviLl8-20. 
 
 'And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the 
 throne of his kingdom, that he shall write 
 Tiim a copy of this Law in a hook, out of 
 that which is before the Priests the Levltes. 
 And it shall be with him, and he shall read 
 therein all the days of his life ; that he may 
 learn to fear Jehovah his Grod, to keep all 
 the words of this Law and these statutes, to 
 do them; that his heart be not lifted up 
 above his brethren, and that he turn not 
 aside from the commandment, to the right 
 hand or to the left, to the end that he may 
 prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his 
 children, in the midst of Israel.' 
 , We observe here, first, that the Book 
 of the Law is said to be ' hefore the 
 Priests the Lemtes,' which seems to 
 imply that, as we have been suppos- 
 ing, the roll, containing the Mosaic 
 story, was left in the custody of the 
 Priests all along, before and after the 
 'discovery of the Law' in Josiah's 
 days. 
 
 714. But here Scott observes : — 
 
 It is probable that this law was very seldom 
 observed by the kings of Judah, and never by 
 the kings of Israel. 
 And upon 2K.xxii.8-ll, he says,— 
 
 It seems to have been entirely neglected, as 
 well as the command to read the Law pub- 
 licly to the people every year at the Feast of 
 Tabernacles. 
 
 It is possible that Josiah, after the 
 discovery of this Book by HUkiah the 
 High Priest in the Temple, may have 
 actually begun, at all events, to copy 
 
 231 
 
 the Book of the Law with his own 
 hand. But what sign is there that 
 either David or Solomon each made a 
 copy for himself of this Law, or that 
 any of the best kings did so, — even 
 Joash, as a youth, under the ' direction ' 
 of the chief Priest Jehoiada ? If they 
 did, pious kings as they were, how is 
 it to be explained that they completely 
 neglected its precepts in so many points, 
 as we know they did, — for instance, in 
 sacrificing at Gibeon and other high 
 places, lK.iii.3,4, and in not duly keep- 
 ing the Passover, 2K.xxiii.22 ? 
 
 715. On the other hand, if they did 
 not make a copy of the Law, why was 
 thisl Can it be believed that they 
 knovnngly omitted to do so, — that is to 
 say, that, having the Law itself (as is 
 supposed) in their hands, with Pro- 
 phets and Priests to remind them of 
 their duties, they wilfully or negli- 
 gently passed by so solemn, and, in- 
 deed, so essential, a part of their duty, 
 to themselves and to their people ? 
 Eather, have we not here also a proof, 
 that the Book of Deuteronomy, at all 
 events, was not known to these Kings, 
 or to the Priests and Prophets of their 
 day, — and, therefore, probably, did not 
 exist, — or, at least, ^ it did, was not 
 recognised as having Divine authority ? 
 Indeed, if, instead of writing out the 
 Law, these Kings, or any of their 
 Priests and Prophets, had only heard 
 or read it, as a Divine Law, it would 
 be equally impossible to explain their 
 surprising disregard of its most plain 
 and positive injunctions, in respect of 
 the Passover and other matters. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV, 
 rExrT.xvni.1-22. 
 
 716. D.xviii.1-5. 
 
 ' The Priests the Levites,* all the tribe of 
 Levi, shall have no part nor inheritance with 
 Israel ; they shall eat the offerings of Jehovah 
 ma/le by fire, and his inheritance. Therefore 
 shall they have no inheritance among their 
 brethren ; Jehovah is their inheritance, as He 
 hath said unto them. And this shall be the 
 Priest's due from the people, from them that 
 
 » As before observed, the translators of tha 
 B.Y., by inserting ' and' before ' all the tribe 
 of Levi,' have here modified greatly the mean- 
 ing of the original. 
 
232 
 
 DEUT.XVIII.1-22. 
 
 oflfer ft sacrifice, whether it be ox or sbeep; and 
 they shall give unto the Priest the shoulder and 
 the tu!0 cheeks and the maw. The flrstfruit also 
 of thy com, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and 
 the Jlrsl of the fleece of Ihg sheep, shalt thou 
 give him. For Jehovah thy God hath chosen 
 him out of all thy tribes to stand to minister 
 in the Name of Jehoyoh, liim and his sons for 
 ever.' 
 
 Here, again, the Priests and Levites 
 are treated as identically the same. 
 Jehovah is the ' inheritance ' of the 
 ■whole trihe of Levi; whereas in 
 N.xviii.20, He is spoken of as the in- 
 heritance of Aaron and his sons only. 
 And, accordingly, in N.xxxi.28,29, as 
 we have seen (623), ' Jehovah's tribute ' 
 is given to the Priests alone, and the 
 Levites are supplied from the share of 
 the booty which belonged to the people. 
 Here, also, as in x.8, 'Levi and his 
 sons' — not ' Aaron and his sons' — are 
 said to have been — 
 
 * chosen out of all the tribes to stand to mi- 
 nister in the Name of Jehovah,' 
 
 717. Again, we have here the income 
 of 'the Priests the Levites' laid down, 
 and in this account also there are some 
 notable Yariations from the original 
 directions. 
 
 (i) The firstfruits of wool are added, 
 v.i ; comp. N.xviii.l2. 
 
 (ii) The tithes are altogether omitted, 
 of which one-tenth belonged to the 
 Priests, and the rest to the Levites. 
 
 (iii) A much more sumptuous pro- 
 vision than here is made for the Priests 
 in E.xxix.28, L.vii.31-34,x.l4, N.vi.20, 
 xviii.l8, viz. the breast or brisket, and 
 the hind-leg (E.V. ' shoulder,') — 
 
 * The Vfave-ireast and the hBaye-Jiind-teg 
 have I talceu of the children of Israel from 
 off the sacrifices of their peace-oflerings, and 
 have given them unto Aaron the Priest and 
 unto his sons, by a statute for ever from 
 among the children of Israel.' L.vii.34. 
 
 718. Here, however, the Priest is only 
 to have ' the shoulder, the two cheeks, 
 and the maw.' Scott remarks — 
 
 The two cheeks, (probably, the whole head 
 with the tongue,) and the maw are supposed 
 to have been at this time first granted out of 
 the peace-offering, in addition to what had 
 before been allotted to the Priests and Le- 
 vites; for they are not mentioned in the 
 preceding laws. 
 
 But, if this provision for the Priests 
 is an additional one, why then is 
 nothing said aboat the former ? 
 
 It seems probable that the later more 
 moderate provision was thought to be 
 more suitable to the circumstances of 
 the times in which the writer lived. 
 
 719. D.xviii.6-8. 
 
 *And if a Levite come from any of thy 
 gates out of all Israel, where he sojourned, 
 and come with all the desire of his mind 
 unto the place which Jehovah shall choose, 
 then he shall minister in the name of Jeho- 
 vah his God, aa all his brethren the Levites 
 do, which stand there before Jehovah. They 
 shall have like portions to eat, beside that 
 which Cometh of the sale of his patrimony.' 
 
 By ' Levite ' is here meant, as usual 
 in this Book, ' Priest.' This appears 
 &om the mention made of ' his breth- 
 ren, the Levites,' as standing before 
 Jehovah,' a phrase only used of tlie 
 Priests (620). Besides which, he is 
 spoken of as having a right, like the 
 rest, to have his ' portion ' to eat of the 
 sacrifices, which it was only lawful for 
 the Priests to partake of, L.vi.18,29, 
 vii.6, though they might, probably, in- 
 vite others, as an act of favour, to share 
 in the Priest's portion of the peace- 
 offerings, L.vii.34. 
 
 720. We have here again the repre- 
 sentation of the 'Levite' or 'Priest,' 
 living 'in the gates' of others, with no 
 reference of any kind to his living in a 
 Levitical or Priestly city. Further, the 
 language used in this passage implies 
 that the Levites, as a body, were not 
 very desirous of being employed at the 
 Sanctuary, — that they did not generally 
 come with 'aU the desire of their 
 mind ' unto the place which Jehovah 
 had chosen. This corresponds with 
 the general declension of religion, and 
 the impoverished state of the ecclesi- 
 astical body, which must have existed 
 towards the close of Manasseh's, and in 
 the beginning of Josiah's, reign. 
 
 721. D.xviii.15-22. 
 
 'Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee 
 a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy 
 brethren, like unto me ; unto him shall ye 
 hearken. According to all that thou de- 
 slredst of Jehovah thy God in Horeb in the 
 day of the assembly, saying. Let me not hear 
 again the voice of Jehovah my God, neither 
 let me see this great fire any more, that I die 
 not. And Jehovah said unto me. They have 
 well spoken that which they have spoken. 
 I will raise them up a Prophet from among 
 their brethren like unto thee, and I will put 
 my words in his mouth, and he shall speak 
 unto them all that I shall command him. 
 
DEUT.XrX.l-XXII.30. 
 
 And it shall come to pasa that, whosoever 
 will not hearken unto my words, which he 
 shall speak in my Name, I will require it of 
 him. But the Prophet, which shall presume 
 to speak a word in my Name, which I have 
 not commanded him to speak, or that shall 
 speak in the name of other gods, even that 
 Prophet shall die. And, if thou say in thine 
 heart, How shall we know the word which 
 Jehovah hath not spoken? When a Pro- 
 phet speaketh in the name of Jehovah, if the 
 thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is 
 the thing which Jehovah hath not spoken, 
 but the Prophet hath spoken it presump- 
 tuously; thou Shalt not be afraid of him.' 
 
 233 
 
 722. KuETZ declares himself 'un- 
 conditionally in favour of the ex- 
 elusive reference [of these words] to 
 one distinct individual, vis. the Mes- 
 siah.' 
 
 It is needless, however, to discuss 
 the aiguments, which he gives at con- 
 siderable length in support of his view, 
 that Moses is here distinctly referring 
 to one individual, the Messiah ; because 
 we believe that it must now be con- 
 sidered to be a certain conclusion of 
 criticism, that this Book of Deuter- 
 onomy was written at a much later 
 date than the others, so that these 
 words can no longer be regarded as 
 words recorded by Moses from the 
 mouth of Jehovah Himself. 
 
 723. They appear to embody a pro- 
 mise of Divine help for the people, in any 
 of their future difficulties, as is shown 
 by their connection with the preceding 
 context. ' The Israelites are not to 
 consult diviners, soothsayers, and ne- 
 cromancers, as the heathen do ; Jehovah 
 will not leave them under any necessity 
 or with any excuse for doing this. But 
 He will Himself supply them with 
 counsel and comfort, when they need 
 it, by sending some Prophet such as 
 Moses, who, like him, should stand 
 between them and God, should hear 
 the words of €h)d, and deliver them to 
 the people. This is what they desired 
 at Horeb, and they promised to listen, 
 and diligently obey such Divine com- 
 mands, if only God would speak to 
 them by human mediation, and not 
 with that terrible voice. Jehovah grant- 
 ed their request then, and wiU do so 
 still, when Moses their present guide 
 is gone. They shall never be without 
 a divinely-instructed Teacher, if only 
 they will obey him.' 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 DEUT.XIX. 1-xxn. 30. 
 
 724. D.xix.1-10. 
 
 ' When Jehovah thy God hath cnt off the 
 nations, whose land Jehovah thy God giveth 
 thee, and thou sucGeedest them, and dwelleat 
 in their cities and in thek houses, thou shalt 
 separate three cities for thee in the midst of 
 the land, which Jehovah thy God giveth thee 
 to possess it. Thou shalt prepare thee a loay, 
 and divide the coasts of thy land, which Je- 
 hovah thy God giveth thee to inherit, into 
 three parts, that every slayer may flee thither. 
 . . . Wherefore I command thee saying. Thou 
 Shalt separate three cities for thee. And, if Je- 
 hovah thy God enlarge thy coast, as He hath 
 sworn unto thy fathers, and give thee all the 
 land which He promised to give unto thy 
 fathers, . . . then shalt thou add three cities 
 more for thee, beside tfiese three, that innocent 
 blood he not shed in thy land, &c.' 
 
 It seems plain that the writer con- 
 templates only six cities of refuge al- 
 together ; first, ' thou, shalt separate 
 three cities for thee,' v.2, and then, 
 when their land should be enlarged, 
 ' thou shalt add three cities more for 
 thee, besides these three,' v.9. 
 
 And so we read in N.xxxv.9-15 : — 
 
 'And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, 
 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say 
 unto them. When ye be come over Jordan 
 into the land of Canaan, then ye shall ap- 
 point you cities to be cities of refuge for you, 
 ... Ye shall give three cities on this side 
 Jordan, and three cities shall ye give in the 
 land of Canaan, which shall he cities of re- 
 fuge. These six cities shall be a refuge.' 
 
 725. In both the above passages, the 
 designation of the six cities is to be a 
 futwre event, ' when ye be come over 
 Jordan'; in both passages, first, the 
 three cities on the East of Jordan are 
 to be named, and then those on the 
 West; and there is no sign whatever 
 of more than six cities. 
 
 But then in D.iv.41-43 we are told, 
 as of an act at/ready past — 
 
 * Then Moses severed three cities on this 
 side Jordan toward the srm- rising . . . 
 namely, Bezer in the wilderness, in the plain 
 country, of the Beubenites, and Bamoth in 
 Gilead, of the Gajlltes, and Golan in Bashan, 
 of the Manassites.' 
 
 726. Scott supposes nine cities to 
 be intended, when the territory of Israel 
 should have reached its full extent : — 
 
 Three cities of refuge had already been 
 allotted on the East of Jordan; and the 
 other three were ordered to be set apart, as 
 soon as the people were settled in the couu- 
 
234 
 
 DEUT.XIX.1-XXII.30. 
 
 try West of Jordan ; and, in case their boun- 
 daries should in after ages be enlarged, tliree 
 more were to be added. 
 
 But this explanation, however at 
 first sight plausible, is not consistent 
 ■with the language of the Deuterono- 
 mist, f.2,7,9, which clearly speaks 
 only of six cities, in accordance with 
 N.xxxv.9-15. Besides which, it can 
 hardly be thought that, if he had written 
 D.iv.-H-43, as it now stands, he would 
 haye written also the passage nowbefore 
 us, without making any aUusion to the 
 three cities already set apart. 
 
 727. But, assuming now that the 
 later origin of this Book has been 
 demonstrated, the matter may be ex- 
 plained as follows. We have observed 
 abeady (603) that D.iv.41-43 is, per- 
 haps, a mixed passage, containing a 
 fragment of the older narrative, re- 
 touched by the Deuteronomist. It 
 would seem that the older writer 
 meant these six cities to be named, 
 as soon as the Conquest should be 
 completed; and, as trans- Jordanie lands 
 were already conquered, he represents 
 Moses himself as separating three cities 
 in these lands before his death. The 
 Deuteronomist has removed this pass- 
 sage from its original connection, and 
 placed it at the end of the first of 
 the addresses, which he puts into the 
 mouth of Moses. Here, perhaps, he 
 originally intended to have brought his 
 work to a close. But, afterwards, he 
 tegins again abruptly, v.l, another ad- 
 dress, in the course of which he intro- 
 duces the directions for the six cities 
 being severed, xix.1-10, without notic- 
 ing, apparently, the contradiction thus 
 caused. 
 
 728. It may be observed also that 
 no notice is taken in D.xix of the fact, 
 that in the older document, N.xxxv.6, 
 it is expressly ordered, that these six 
 cities shall be — 
 
 ' among the cities which he shall give to the 
 Levites;' 
 
 which cities are limited to forty-eight, 
 and are afterwards mentioned by name 
 in Jo.xxi, aH situated in the districts 
 lying immediately east and west of 
 the Jordan. He' adds the direction to 
 'prepare (keep in order) a way' to the 
 refuge-cities, and omits all reference to 
 
 the slayer's abiding in the city, which 
 he had safely reached — 
 
 * unto the death of the High Priest, which was 
 anointed with the holy oil,' IT.xzxt.25. 
 
 729. There is no indication in the 
 history that such cities of refuge ever 
 really existed. But the Deuteronomist 
 shows, in this chapter, and elsewhere, 
 (xix,10,13,xxi.8,9,xxii.8,xxvii.25),great 
 earnestness in warning against the 
 shedding of ' innocent blood,' by which 
 the land would be defiled, and guilt 
 He upon them, — with special reference, 
 we may believe, to the crying sins of 
 his own time. And Jeremiah refers re- 
 peatedly to such offences as common in 
 his dayp, vii.6, xix.4, xxii.3,17, xxvi.lfi, 
 in some of which passages, however, 
 he appears, from the context, to mean 
 the blood of innocent children, sacri- 
 ficed to idols (181). And so we read, 
 perhaps recorded, as we have said 
 (557.v), by the very same hand that 
 wrote the solemn warnings of the book 
 of Deuteronomy, — 
 
 * Moreover, Manasseh shed innocent blood 
 very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from 
 one end to another,' 2K.xxi.l6 ; 
 
 * Surely, at the commandment of Jehovah 
 came this upon Judah, to remove them out 
 of His sight, for the sins of Manasseh, ac- 
 cording to all that he did ; and also for the 
 innocent blood that he shed, for he filled 
 Jerusalem with innocent blood, which Je- 
 hovah would not pardon.' 2£.xx1t,3,4. 
 
 730. D.xix.l4. 
 
 * Thou Shalt not remove thy neighbour's 
 landmark, which they of old time have set in 
 thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in 
 the land that Jehovah thy &od giveth thee to 
 possess it.' 
 
 This language is that of one writing 
 long after the conquest and division of 
 the land of Canaan, notwithstanding 
 the reference to a future time in the 
 last clause of the verse. Unless, how- 
 ever, we had already proved sufficiently 
 the later age of the Deuteronomist, it 
 would be unsafe to regard it as implied 
 in such a text as the above, since the 
 Hebrew would, probably, allow of the 
 translation, ' which they of old time 
 shall have set, &c.' 
 
 731. D.xx.6,6. 
 
 * And the officers shall speaJc unto the people, 
 saying, What man is there that hath built a 
 new house, and hath not dedicated It ? Let 
 him go and return to his house, lest he die in 
 the battle, and another man dedicate it. And 
 
^hafc man is he that hath planted a -vineyard, 
 and hath not yet eaten ol it? &c.' 
 
 The Deuteronomist is plainly here 
 referring to his own times, when houses 
 were huilt and vineyards planted, and 
 has lost sight of the fact that the wars, 
 in which the people would be engaged 
 for some years, according to the story, 
 would be wars of conquest. 
 
 732. D.xx.10-15. 
 
 *When thon comest nigh unto a city to 
 fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. 
 And it shall be, if it msike thee answer of 
 peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be 
 that all the people that is found therein shall 
 be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve 
 thee. And, if it will make no peace with 
 thee, but will make war against thee, then 
 thou Shalt besiege it. And, when Jehovah 
 thy God hath d^ivered it into thine hands, 
 thou Shalt smite every male thereof with the 
 edge of the sword. But the women, and the 
 little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in 
 the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou 
 take unto thyself ; and thou shalt eat the spoil 
 of thine enemies, which Jehovah thy God hath 
 given thee. Thus sbalt thou do imto all the 
 cities which are very far ofE from thee, which 
 are not of the cities of these nations.* 
 
 It is well that we are no longer 
 obliged to believe that the above fright- 
 ful command emanated &om the mouth 
 of the Most Holy and Blessed One. 
 This does not apply to the cities of 
 Canaan only. But any city, which the 
 Israelites might decide for any cause to 
 ' fight against,' if it did not surrender 
 on the very first summons, ' make an 
 answer of peace,' and open to the foe, 
 on the condition of becoming 'tribu- 
 taries and servants,' was, according to 
 this injunction, to be besieged and cap- 
 tured, and to this end the express aid 
 of the Almighty is promised ; and then 
 all the males, except young children, 
 are to be put ruthlessly to death. 
 
 733. D.xx.16-18. 
 
 ' But of the cities of these people, which 
 Jehovah thy God doth give thee for thine 
 inheritance, thon shalt save alive nothing 
 that breatheth, but thou shalt utterly de- 
 stroy them, the Hittites, and the Amorites, 
 the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hi- 
 vites, and the Jebusites, as Jehovah thy God 
 hath commanded thee ; that they teach you 
 not to do after all their abominations, which 
 they have done unto their gods; so should ye 
 sin against Jehovah your God.* 
 
 Here also it is well for us to know 
 that these are the words of the later 
 Deuteronomist, and that such com- 
 mands were never really carried out, 
 
 1-XXII.30. 235 
 
 (as we know by the oases of TTriah the 
 Hittite and Araunah the Jebusite), nop 
 ever meant by the writer to be carried 
 out, but express, rather, his burning 
 zeal against the idolatrous vices of his 
 own countrymen in his own age, which 
 he desired thus to brand with infamy, 
 and to represent as worthy only of 
 death. A people, that could practise 
 these abominations, was only fit to be 
 exterminated; and that would surely 
 be the fate of Israel, if they persisted 
 in them, according to the doom here 
 denounced upon the nations of Canaan. 
 
 734. D.xxi.7,8. 
 
 • And they shall answer and say. Our hands 
 have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes 
 seen it. Be merciful, Jehovah, unto Thy peo- 
 ple Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and lay 
 not innocent blood unto thy people of Israel's 
 charge.' 
 
 We have instances of similar 'litur- 
 gical ' formulae in several places in 
 Deuteronomy, e.g. xxi.7,8, xxvi.3,5-10, 
 13-15, xxvii.15,16 ; comp. xx.2-8, xxii. 
 16,17, xxv.7-10. The only instance 
 in the other books of the Pentateuch 
 is N.vi.24-26 ; comp. also N.x. 35,36. 
 It may be doubted whether such for- 
 mulae were ever really in use, or inten- 
 ded to be used. But, in the case 
 before us, the Deuteronomist gives 
 another indication of the horror which 
 he had of the shedding of 'innocent 
 blood' (729). 
 
 735. D.xxi.10-14. 
 
 •When thou goest forth to war against 
 thine enemies, and Jehovah thy God hath 
 delivered them into thine hand, and thou 
 hast taken them captive, and seest among 
 the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a 
 desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her 
 to thy wife ; then shalt thou bring her home 
 to th^e house ; and she shall shave her head, 
 and pare her nails ; and she shall put the rai- 
 ment of her captivity from off her, and shall 
 remain in thine house, and bewail her father 
 and mother a full month ; and after that thou 
 shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and 
 she shall be thy wife. And it shall be, if thou 
 have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her 
 go whither she will ; but thou shalt not sell 
 her at all for money, thou shalt not make 
 merchandise of herj because thou hast hiun- 
 bled her.' 
 
 Here also we have the manners and 
 customs of the writer's age exhibited, 
 and not the justice, mercy, and purity, 
 which would have marked a command 
 really emanating from the Divine Wis- 
 dom and Goodness. The Persian Cyrus 
 
236 
 
 deut:six.i-xxii.3o. 
 
 or the Roman Scipio, though heathens, 
 taught by their lives a higher morality 
 than this, ■which, besides the inhumanity 
 involved in it, practically sanctions 
 concubinage and polygamy, as do also 
 the following words, v.15-17 — 
 
 * If a man have two wiYCS, one beloved and 
 another hated, &c.' 
 
 736. Scott remarks here— 
 
 By taking the captive into the house, and 
 there keeping her retired, her disposition 
 ■would be discovered more easily ; and, if 
 that proved disagreeable, the passion might 
 abate. The becoming attire and ornaments, 
 in which she might be taken captive, being 
 changed for the mean habit of a mourner, 
 might tend to diminish her attractions (!) ; 
 * shaving her head * would certainly have this 
 efEect; and the words, rendered 'paring her 
 nails,' seem rather to mean ' letting them 
 grow.' Some, however, think that she was 
 in the interim to be instructed in the Law ; 
 and that these were external tokens of her 
 renouncing idolatry, and embracing the reli- 
 gion of Israel, 
 
 Only * one full month' was to be al- 
 lowed for the captive maiden to bewail 
 her parents, and, when * humbled,' she 
 was not to be sold. Probably, the 
 practices of the times, to which the 
 Deuteronomist is here referring, were 
 even more unrighteous and inhuman 
 than this ; and the law, which he has 
 here laid down, may have been designed 
 to remedy such evils to some extent. 
 
 737. D.xxi.18-21. 
 
 * If a man have a stubborn and rebellious 
 eon, which ■will not obey the voice of his 
 father or the voice of his mother, and that, 
 when they have chastened him, will not 
 hearken unto them ; then shall his father 
 and his mother lay hold on him, and bring 
 him out unto the elders of his city, and unto 
 the gate of his place ; and they shall say 
 unto the elders of his city, This our son is 
 stubborn and rebellious ; he ■will not obey 
 our voice ; he is a glutton and a drunkard. 
 And all the men of his city shall stone him 
 vnth stones that he die : so shalt thou put 
 evil away from among you, and all Israel 
 shall hear and fear.' 
 
 It can hardly be believed that the 
 above command was ever carried out, 
 or written ■with a view to its being 
 carried out, as it involves a number of 
 inconsistencies, which will appear suffi- 
 ciently upon a little consideration, 
 
 738. The following is Scott's com- 
 ment upon the passage. 
 
 This law has great -wisdom and mercy 
 couched under its apparent severity ; and it 
 could not fail of producing most salutary 
 effects, as /ar as any regard was paid to it. 
 
 The parents were the only prosecutors ; both 
 must concm* in the prosecution ; [no notice 
 is taken of the case of a widower or widow 
 ha^ving a rebellious son, or of a son being 
 disobedient to one parent, and-, perhaps, en- 
 couraged in his faults by the other, or of a 
 rebellious and dissolute daughter, or of, per- 
 haps, the most common case of all, when a 
 son has been corrupted by the example of 
 viciotcs paren-fes, or ruined by the mismanage- 
 ment of weak ones;] and the elders of the 
 city must decide the cause. The prosecution 
 could not be admitted but for stubbornness 
 and rebellion, connected with gluttony and 
 drunkenness, and persisted in after rebukes 
 and corrections ; and these vices tended 
 directly to ruin families and communities. 
 [How much more the vices or weaknesses 
 of the parents, who had brought up such 
 a child to the injury of the State I] The 
 offender must be convicted and proved in- 
 corrigible, by evidence sufficient to induce 
 the judges to denoimce the sentence, and 
 the men of the city to execute it, [There is 
 nothing to indicate that any evidence was 
 needed beside the simple assertion of the 
 parents.] Natural affection would seldom be 
 so overcome even by the basest crimes^ as to 
 admit boVi parents thus to join in prosecuting 
 a son, much less to do so without sufficient 
 cause. And, in the very few instances, in 
 which hasty rage, or implacable resentment, 
 might induce parents to attempt such a 
 horrid unnatural murder, as a needless pro- 
 tiecution must imply, the most effectual 
 precautions were taken to prevent the con- 
 sequences. [Where is there any sign of such 
 ' precautions ' ?] The execution of the law 
 roust, of course, very seldom take place ; 
 and, if ever it did, it could not fail to ex- 
 cite general attention and alarm, and prove 
 a salutary warning -to "tens of thousands. Its 
 very existence, as far as knovm, would ex- 
 ceedingly strengthen the authority of parents, 
 give weight -to their commands, reproofs, and 
 corrections, and create an additional fear of 
 provoking their deep resentment. It would 
 fortify young men against the enticement of 
 bad companions, and the force of strong 
 temptations, and thus check the progress of 
 wickedness. Moreover, it would be a con- 
 stant admonition to parents to watch over 
 their children, and not improperly to in- 
 dulge them or -withhold correction, but to 
 establish their authority over them wMle 
 young, to pray for them, to check the first 
 buddings of vice, and to set them a good 
 example. [It is difficult to see how such a 
 law as this could tend to produce this effect 
 on the parents. A law to punidi them, for 
 the misconduct of their children of either 
 sex, might in many cases have been at once 
 more just and more beneficial.] This sta- 
 tute, therefore, so harmless and beneficial 
 in Its operations, yet so contrary to human 
 policy [and the laws of natural affection], 
 rather proves [I] than invalidates the Divine 
 authority of the book in which it stands 
 recorded. No impostor would ever have 
 thought of enacting such a law. 
 
 739. As before observed, there is no 
 reason to suppose that the above laWi 
 
DEUT.XXIII.1-XXVI.19. 
 
 237 
 
 though imagined Iby the Deuteronomist, 
 was ever really meant to be acted on. 
 It was, as Scott says, very ' harmless ' 
 in its operations, as regards any actual 
 execution of its injunctions. But it 
 may be that the writer intended to 
 teach a great lesson to the people of 
 his time and of all times, by thus in- 
 sisting on the paramount dignity of 
 the parental authority. Besides the 
 fact that, in a, profligate age, 'dis- 
 obedience to parents ' is sure to be one 
 of the prominent signs of the general 
 corruption, Kom.i.30, the gmlt of which 
 attaches as much to the parents them- 
 selves as to the children, the Deute- 
 ronomist may have had a special pur- 
 pose in marking this sin as deserving 
 condign punishment, inasmuch as it 
 shadowed forth the crying sins of the 
 people of his time in their relations to 
 Almighty God. 
 
 740. Accordingly, we find Jeremiah 
 continually appealing to the Fatherhood 
 of Jehovah, and condemning in the 
 strongest terms the disobedience of His 
 Chilfien, the people of Israel, Thus 
 he complains of their — 
 
 * saying to a stock. Thou art my Father, to a 
 stone. Thou hast brought me forth,' ii.27. 
 
 And he writes :-^ 
 
 * Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me. 
 My Father, Thou art the Guide of my youth? ' 
 iii.4. 
 
 ' And I said, Thou shalt call me. My Father, 
 and Shalt not turn away from me,' iii.l9. 
 
 * I am a Father to lirael, and Ephraim is 
 my first-bom,' zxxi.9. 
 
 And in ch.xxxv he compares the 
 obedience of the sons of ' Jonadab, the 
 son of Eechab,' with the stubborn and 
 unruly conduct of his own children; 
 comp. also xxxi.18— 20. 
 
 In this view of the case, the words 
 of D.xxi.21 would have a great signifi- 
 cance, — 
 ' and all Israel shall hear and fear.' 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 DErT.xxin.l-xxvi.l9, 
 
 741. D.xxiii.1,2. 
 
 Superstitious rules like these, e.g. — 
 'A bastard shall not enter into the con- 
 gregation of Jehovah : even to his tenth 
 generation shall he not enter Into the con- 
 gregation of Jehovah,' — 
 (the like to which have even been re- 
 
 peated in the Christian Church,) cannot 
 certainly be ascribed without irreve- 
 rence to the Gracious God and Father 
 of all. Especially, the exclusion of a 
 ' bastard ' to the tenth generation team 
 the privileges of the Sanctuary, while 
 the father, the guilty cause of his 
 child's illegitimate birth, was not ex- 
 cluded, and when children by a concu- 
 bine, — by one, perhaps, of many be- 
 longing to the same man, — ^had also 
 free access to the sacred place, — seems, 
 to our modem sense of right and 
 equity, most unjust. 
 
 742. This law was evidently designed 
 to act as a check to some extent on 
 promiscuous fornication and adulterous 
 connections, while polygamy and con- 
 cubinage were allowed. But its action 
 would have been directly opposed to 
 the principles of Divine government, 
 as announced by Ezekiel, xviii.20, and, 
 indeed, by the Deuteronomist himself 
 in another place, xxiv.l6, — 
 
 The fathers shall not be put to death for 
 the children, neither shall the children be put 
 to death for the fathers : every man shall be 
 put to death for his own sin ; ' 
 
 whereas this law punished the child 
 and his descendants for centuries for 
 the sin of the parent. 
 
 743. D.xxiii.3. 
 'An Ammonite oriMoabite shall not enter 
 
 into the congregation of Jehovah.' 
 
 The ' Ammonite ' and ' Moabite * 
 are mentioned here, in connection with 
 the ' bastard,' &c. with manifest refer- 
 ence to the story of the incestuous 
 origin of Moab and Ammon in G.xix. 
 30-38 ; and these, too, are to be ex- 
 cluded from the 'congregation of Je- 
 hovah' unto their tenth generation,, 
 U3. There is, doubtless, here a refer- 
 ence also to the inveterate enmity 
 which existed between these nations 
 and Israel in the writer's own time. 
 
 744. We have already quoted pas- 
 sages (584,586), which show that both 
 the Moabites and Ammonites were in- 
 dependent and powerful communities in 
 the days of Jeremiah ; and in 2K.xxiv.2 
 bands of each nation are spoken of as 
 harassing Judah, together with the 
 Ohaldees and Syrians, shortly after the 
 death of Josiah. We may infer that 
 both these kindred peoples entertained 
 
238 
 
 DEUT.XXm.l-XXVI.19. 
 
 the same spirit of hostility towards the 
 people of Jehovali, which we find ex- 
 pressly ascribed to Moab in Jer.xlviii. 
 26,27,42 :— 
 
 'Make ye him drunken, for lie magnified 
 himself against Jehovah ; Moab also shall 
 wallow in his vomit, and he also shall be 
 in derision. For was not Israel a derision 
 unto thee? . , , Moab shall be destroyed 
 from being a people, because he hath mag- 
 nified himself against Jehovah/ 
 
 It may be with reference to this 
 permanent state of ill-feeling, which 
 existed between Israel and tbese two 
 nations, that the Deuteronomist charges 
 the Israelites with respect to them, *.6 — 
 
 * Thou Shalt not seek their peace nor their 
 prosperity all thy days for ever.' 
 
 745. D.xxiii.7,8. 
 
 'Thou Shalt not abhor an Edomite; for 
 he is thy brother. Thou shalt not abhor an 
 Bgyptian ; because thou wast a stranger in 
 his land.' 
 
 The singular reason here given for 
 ' not abhorring the Egyptian,' after all 
 the afflictions which lie people had 
 suffered in the ' iron furnace,' the 'house 
 of bondage,' — viz. ' because thou wast 
 a stranger in his land,' — points, pro- 
 bably, as we have said (712), to some 
 close connection with Egypt in the days 
 of the Deuteronomist. Josiah himself 
 was killed by Pharaoh-Necho, king of 
 Egypt, 2K.xxiii.29. But it is very 
 probable that, in the earlier part of 
 his reign of 31 years, there was a much 
 better feeling between Judah and 
 
 746. In the time of his grandfather 
 Hezekiah there must have been an 
 alliance between them ; since Kabsha- 
 keh says, 2K.xviii.21, — 
 
 * Now, behold, thou trusteth upon the staff 
 of this broken reed, even upon Egypt.' 
 
 And though the Prophet Isaiah did 
 not approve of this connection, yet 
 there was evidently a great deal of 
 Mendliness between the two peoples in 
 his days. Thus he writes : — 
 
 'Woe to the rebellious children . . , that 
 walk to go down into Egypt, and have not 
 a^ed at my mouth, to strengthen themselves 
 in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in 
 the shadow of Egypt, . , , For the Egyp- 
 tians shall help La vain, and to no purpose.' 
 
 IS.333.1,2,7. 
 
 ' Woe to them that go down to Egypt for 
 help. , , , Now the Egyptians are men, and 
 not God, and their horses flesh, and not spirit.' 
 ls,xzxi,I,<j, 
 
 And, as observed above (712), the 
 language of Jeremiah in ii.18,36, im- 
 plies that in the early part of his reigu 
 Josiah expected friendly help &om 
 Egypt: — 
 
 ' What hast thou to do in the way of 
 Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor ? . , . . 
 Thou also Shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as 
 thou wast ashamed of Assyria.' 
 
 747. Egypt also was a place of refuge 
 for many Jewish fugitives after the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, in spite of 
 the strong remonstrances of the Pro- 
 phet, whom they carried with them, 
 Jer.xliii.6,7. The reason for his oppo- 
 sition to this movement was, evidently, 
 the certainty which he felt that the 
 people would there give themselves up 
 to gross idolatry, as, in fact, they did, 
 Jer.xliv.7,8: — 
 
 ' Wherefore commit ye this great evil 
 against your souls, to cut off from you 
 man and woman, child and suckling, out 
 of Judah, to leave you none to remain; in 
 that ye provoke me unto wrath with the 
 works of your hands, burning incense unto 
 other gods in the land of Egypt, whither ye 
 be gone to dwell ? ' 
 
 748. Of Judah's relations with Edom 
 we know nothing from the history, in 
 the reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh, 
 Amon, and Josiah. In the days of 
 Ahaz, Hezekiah's father, the Edomites 
 had come, and smitten Judah, and 
 carried away captives, according to 
 the Chronicler, 2Ch.xxviii.l7, There 
 may have been peace with them after- 
 wards, — at all events, at the time when 
 the Deuteronomist was writing; and; 
 indeed, we hear nothing of their 
 troubling Judah any further, till they 
 seem to have triumphed at the Fall of 
 Jerusalem, Lam.iv.21, Ob. 10-14, 
 
 749. D.xxiii.17,18, 
 
 ' There shall be no whore of the daughter 
 of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel, 
 Thou Shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or 
 the price of a dog ( = 'reward of sodomy'), 
 unto the House of Jehovah thy God for any 
 vow : for even both these are abomination 
 unto Jehovah thy God,' 
 
 The words which are here translated 
 ' sodomite ' and ' whore,' mean literally 
 ' consecrated.' It appears, therefore, 
 that the practice, which prevailed among 
 the Aramaean tribes, of maidens and boys 
 prostituting themselves in honour of 
 their deities, existed also in the writer's 
 time among the Hebrews, and was not 
 
DEUT.XXIII.1-XXVI. 1 9, 
 
 23!.i 
 
 thought incompatible with tbe worship 
 of Jehovah. 
 
 750. This no doubt arose from the 
 idolatrous worship of Jehovah which was 
 carried on in the 'high places; ' and it 
 accounts for the energy with which the 
 Deuteronomist declares himself against 
 them, and the strong effort he makes 
 to abolish them throughout the land. 
 Keference is most probably made to 
 these vicious practices in the account 
 of the sins of Israel, committed with 
 the 'daughters of Moab' in N.xxv. 
 But the older legislation, apparently, 
 did not find it necessary to forbid these 
 abominations, which were the growth 
 of a more advanced state of corrupt 
 civilisation. 
 
 761. D.xxiii.20. 
 
 'TTnto a stranger tbou mayest lend upon 
 usury ; but unto tliy brother thou shalt not 
 lend upon usury.* 
 
 The law against usury, as laid down 
 by the older writer in E.xxii.25-27, 
 is here qualified in a way which indi- 
 cates the growth of commercial inter- 
 -cowrse in the writer's time. 
 
 752. D.xxiv.8,9. 
 
 * Take heed in the pla^e of leprosy that 
 thou observe diligently, and do accort^g to 
 all that the Priests the Levites shall teach 
 you; as I commanded them, so ye shall ob- 
 serve to do. Kemember what Jehovah thy 
 God did unto Miriam by the way, after that 
 ye were come forth out of Egypt.' 
 
 This is the only direct reference to 
 the older statute-book, which we find 
 in Deuteronomy : and here we have no 
 longer the usual phrase, ' as I command 
 thee this day.' It is plain from the 
 above that the older document, with 
 its laws about leprosy, &c., did remain, 
 KS we have supposed, in the keeping 
 of the Priests, in a book that was 
 ' before the Priests the Levites,' D.xvii. 
 18, and served as a kind of directory 
 for their proceedings in aU matters of 
 this kind, and as a record from which 
 they might instruct the people. This 
 is in accordance with the words of the 
 old Law, L.x.ll, addressed to the 
 Priests — 
 
 ' And that ye may teach the children of 
 Israel all the statutes which Jehovah hath 
 spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.' 
 
 And this explains also the allusions 
 in the Prophets to the Priests being the 
 professed teachers of the Law, e,g. — 
 
 ' The Law shall not perish from the Priest, 
 nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from 
 the Prophet,' Jer.xviii.18 ; 
 
 ' And they shall teach my people (the dif- 
 ference) between the holy and profane, and 
 cause mem to discern between the unclean 
 and the clean,' Ez.xliv.23; 
 
 and see also Hag.ii.11-13, Mal.u.7. 
 
 753. D.xxv.5-10. 
 
 This law, that a brother must take 
 to wife his dead brother's widow, must 
 in all cases, where the surviving brother 
 was abeady married, not only have 
 permitted and sanctioned, but actually 
 encouraged, nay, even enjoined, poly- 
 gamy, under the penalty of a lasting 
 disgrace attaching to the man who 
 refused to take this additional wife, — 
 not to speak of the consequences of his 
 disregarding a (supposed) Divine com- 
 mand. Even if immarried, it would 
 have been a great hardship to have had 
 his brother's widow forced upon him, 
 as his OB^y companion for life. It can- 
 not be supposed that such a man would 
 generally have been content with her 
 alone, especially as polygamy was per- 
 mitted. She might be old, iU-favoured, 
 ill-tempered, sickly; and his dead 
 brother might have left him more wives 
 than one to be taken in this way. All 
 these inconveniences are actually expe- 
 rienced among the Zulus and other 
 South African tribes, where the same 
 practice prevails. 
 
 754. D.xxv.17-19. 
 
 "We have here the command enforced 
 upon Israel — 
 
 Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of 
 Amalek from under heaven ; thou shalt not 
 forget it.' 
 
 We hear nothing of the Amalekites 
 in the history of the later kings. But 
 in Ps.lxxxiu.7, written apparently in 
 David's time, we find mention made of 
 Amalek, as joined with the other neigh- 
 bouring nations, Edom, Moab, Ammon, 
 the Philistines, and the Syrians, in a 
 grand confederacy against Israel. They 
 may have survived as a people dovni to 
 the days of the Deuteronomist, though, 
 perhaps, they existed in his time as a 
 small and inconsiderable tribe, dwin- 
 dling away to nothing. 
 
 765. D.xxvi.12-15. Upon this pas- 
 sage see (649-652). 
 
 It can scarcely be supposed that this 
 
240 
 
 DEUT.XXVII.1-23. 
 
 difEuse formula was ever really intended 
 to be used. It was meant most probably 
 to remind the pious Israelite of his 
 duty towards the poor and the Levite ; 
 and, as before noticed, the stress is here 
 distinctly laid upon the due employ- 
 ment in works of charity of the tithe 
 of the third year, * the year of tithing,' 
 which was to be spent at home in 
 general feasting, to which, besides all 
 the members of the family, the needy 
 and destitute of all kinds were to be 
 invited. It seems as if the writer did 
 hope that this law with respect to the 
 tithes might be carried out, whatever 
 might be the case with the others. 
 
 CHAPTER XVU. 
 DEUT.xxvn.1-26. 
 
 766. D.xxvii.1-8. 
 
 * And Moses, with, the elders of Israel, com- 
 manded the people, saying, Keep all the com- 
 mandments, which I command you this day. 
 And it shall be on the day when ye shall pass 
 over Jordan into the land which Jehovah thy 
 God giveth thee, that thou ehalt set thee up 
 great stones, and plaster them with plaster. 
 And thou shalt write upon them all the words 
 of this Law, when thou art passed over, that 
 thou mayest go in unto the land, which Je- 
 hovah thy God giveth thee, a land thatfioweth 
 with milk and honey, as Jehovah, the God of 
 thy fathers, hath promised thee. Therefore 
 it shall be, when ye be gone over Jordan, that 
 ye shall set up these stones, which I command 
 you this day, in Mount JEbal, [Sam. ' Gerizim,' 
 LXX. 'MaV], and thou shalt plaster them 
 with plaster. And there shalt thou build an 
 altar unto Jehovah thy God, an altar of stones ; 
 thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them. 
 Thou shalt build the altar of Jehovah thy God 
 of whole stones ; and thou shalt offer bm-nt- 
 offerings thereon unto Jehovah thy God ; and 
 thou shalt offer peax:«-offerings, and shalt eat 
 there, and rejoice before Jehovah thy God. 
 And thou shalt write upon the stones all the words 
 of this Law very plainly,' 
 
 The Samaritan Pentateuch has a re- 
 markable addition after E.xx.17, that 
 is to say, immediately after the Ten 
 Commandments. It introduces here 
 a passage which is almost identically 
 the same with D.xxvii.2-8, except that 
 it has Mount Gerizim as the place, 
 where the stones of the Law were to 
 be set up, instead of Mount Ehal. 
 
 757. The following are the par- 
 ticulars, more precisely, in which the 
 passage in Deuteronomy differs from 
 that in the Samaritan Pentateuch after 
 E.xx.17 :— 
 
 (i) In t).2, for ' It shall be when Jehovah 
 thy God shall bring thee into the land of the 
 Canaanites, whither thou goest to possess it,* 
 the Deuteronomist writes, * It shall be on the 
 day when ye shall pass over Jordan unto the 
 land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee,* 
 
 (ii) In «.3, after ' the words of this Law/ 
 he has added, 'when thou art passed over, 
 that thou mayest go in unto the land which 
 Jehovah thy God giveth thee, a land that 
 Jloweth with milk and hoTiey, as Jehovah thy 
 God hath promised thee.' 
 
 (iii) In W.4, he has changed *Moimt Gerizim* 
 into ' Mount Ebal,' and repeated superfluously 
 the command, ' Thou shalt plaster them with 
 plaster,' already given in v.2. 
 
 (iv) He has omitted the last sentence of the 
 Samaritan passage, and inserted it, slightly 
 modified, in D.2i.30. 
 
 758, Upon this point, Kennicott 
 writes as follows, l)iss.i.p.9G : 
 
 It must have appeared strange, surpriangly 
 strange, during the reader's perusal of the 
 preceding remarks, that it is not more clearly 
 expressed what this Law, thus to be engraved, 
 wcw,— that a point of so much importance 
 should not have been, somewhere or other, 
 very accurately noted, and very particularly 
 circumscribed by Moses, partly for the more 
 secure direction of Joshua, and partly to 
 render this awful transaction more intelli- 
 gible through future ages. But all this sur- 
 prise ceases — all this puzzle is unravelled — oil 
 this uncertainty is at once removed— if we 
 allow the authority of the Samaritan Penta- 
 teuch, if we will but grant that there may 
 have been in the Hebrew text a certain pas- 
 sage, which is now found in all the copies of 
 the Samaritan Text and Version, and which 
 is also found, exactly as in the Samaritan 
 Pentateuch, in that Arabic version of it, in 
 the Arabic character, which has been before 
 mentioned, and which is a very valuable, 
 because a very literal, version. For in E.xx, 
 as soon as the Tenth Commandment is con- 
 cluded, we read in the Samaritan Pentateuch 
 the five following verses — 'And it shall be, 
 &c.' 
 
 Here, then, according to this truly vene- 
 rable copy of the Book of Moses, all is clear. 
 The whole is perfectly regular, and in har- 
 monious proportion. We have seen the se- 
 veral circumstances, concurring to render it 
 highly probable that the Ten Command- 
 ments constituted the Law, which was to be 
 engraved. And, as it can scarcely be con- 
 ceived that such a point could have been 
 quite omitted by Moses, it makes greatly 
 for the honour of the Samaritan Pentateuch, 
 to have preserved so considerable a passage. 
 WJiy the ancient Jews should omit this pas- 
 sage, can be a matter of no doubt at all with 
 those, who mark the honour it does to Mount 
 Gerizim. And, therefore, the same men who 
 corrupted D.xxvii.4, have but acted with uni- 
 formity, if they have also corrupted E.xx, 
 omitting Gerizim in the latter instance, just 
 as honestly as they altered it in the former. 
 
 That the Samaritan Text should be con- 
 demned as corrupted merely for having more 
 in it than the Hebrew, no man of learning 
 will maintain. Certainly, the Jews m^A^oTnif, 
 
DEUT.XXVII.1-26. 
 
 ns easily as the Samaritans might insert. And 
 I presume that it has been, and will be here- 
 after more fully, proved, that several whole 
 passages, now in the Samaritan, but not in 
 the Hebrew Pentateuch, are not interpola- 
 tions in the former, but omissions in the 
 latter. 
 
 759. In addition to the above remarks 
 of Kennicott we may observe : — 
 
 (i) If the Samaritans introdtioed the 
 passage after E.xx.17, in order to do 
 special honour to their sacred Mount 
 Gerizim, they must have copied it from 
 the passage in Deuteronomy already 
 existing, only changing Ebal into Geri- 
 zim. 
 
 (ii) But in that case they would not 
 surely have omitted the very character- 
 istic expression, ' a land that floweth 
 with milk and honey,' which occurs in 
 the latter, v.S. 
 
 (iii) There was a reason why, after 
 the Captivity, when such hostility ex- 
 isted between the Jews and Samaritans, 
 and the latter had built their opposition 
 Temple on Mount Gerizim, the Jews 
 should have corrupted the Text of these 
 Scriptures, as KJEiraicoTT supposes. 
 
 (iv) But there was no reason why 
 any Jewish writer, living in any age 
 before the Captivity, should not have 
 chosen the splendid Table-Mountain 
 of Gerizim (323), in the very centre of 
 the land of Canaan, and visible afar 
 oif, as the site on which the stones 
 should be set up, containing the record 
 of God's covenant with Israel, in sight, 
 as it were, of all the people of the land. 
 
 (v) And we actually find Gerizim 
 chosen by the Deuteronomist himself 
 (763), as the Mount ot Blessing, xxvii. 
 12, on which Joshua himself was to 
 take his stand, with the principal tribes 
 of Levi, Judah, Joseph, and Benjamin ; 
 whereas Ebal was to be the Mount of 
 Cursing, ul3, on which the inferior 
 tribes were to be stationed. 
 
 760. There seems, therefore, every 
 reason to believe that Kbnniootx's 
 suggestion is weU-founded, iiiz. that — 
 
 (i) The passage D.xxvii.2-8 has been 
 copied by the Deuteronomist from the 
 passage which stood originally iu the 
 Hebrew MS. after E.xs.l7; 
 
 (ii) He has inserted in it the phrase 
 'a land that floweth with milk and 
 honey,' which is one of his favourite 
 
 241 
 
 phrases, vi. 3,xi.9,xxvi.9, 15,xxvii.3,xxxi. 
 20; 
 
 (iii) The later Jews have altered in 
 v.i the name Gerizim, which the Deu- 
 teronomist wrote, into Ebal, and have 
 struck out also altogether the original 
 passage after E.xx.l7. 
 
 761. Hence we can explain the origin 
 of the expression ' all the words of this 
 Law,' «.3,8, which in the context, in 
 which they now stand, can only, as 
 Knobel says, be referred — 
 
 not to the 'blessings and curses,' nor to the 
 * law of Deuteronomy ' only, but to the whole 
 Mosaic Law, though the writer means only 
 the actual prescriptions of the Law, — ac- 
 cording to the Jews, 613 in number, — and 
 not, at the same time, all narratives, warn- 
 ings, admonitions, speeches, reasonings, &c. 
 
 But to engrave on stones even the 
 'blessings and curses,' if by this is 
 meant the matter in D.xxvii.l5— xxviii. 
 68, would have required an immense 
 amount of labour and material, — much 
 more the whole Law of Deuteronomy, 
 or the 613 precepts. 
 
 762. Applied, however, as the direc- 
 tion appears to have been in its original 
 position, only to the ' Ten Command- 
 ments,' the 'ten words,' E.xxxiv.28, 
 which are expressly 'called the Law, 
 E.xxiv.l2, (not 'a Law,' E.V.), the 
 phrase ' all the words of this Law ' is 
 quite intelligible. The Deuteronomist 
 appears to have transferred the direc- 
 tion from the end of the Ten Command- 
 ments to the end of (what may be con- 
 sidered to be) his expansion of the 
 Ten Commandments, v.l-xxvi.l9, with- 
 out observing that in that connection 
 it was incongruous and impracticable, 
 as, in fact, he never really contemplated 
 its being actually carried out. 
 
 763. D.xxvii.11-26. 
 
 'And Moses charged the people the same 
 day, saying, These shall stand upon Mount 
 G-erizim to bless the people, when ye are 
 come over Jordan, — Simeon, and Levi, and 
 Judah, and Issachar, and Joseph, and Ben- 
 jamin ; and these shall stand upon Mount 
 Ebal to curse,— Beuben, G-ad, and Asher, and 
 Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. And the Le- 
 vites shall speak, and say unto all the men of 
 Israel with a loud voice. Cursed be the man-, 
 &c. And all the people BhaU answer and say, 
 Amen.' 
 
 It is not easy to see what is the exact 
 meaning of the above direction, as it 
 now stands. Six tribes are to bkss, 
 
242 
 
 DEUT.XXVII.1-26. 
 
 and six to curse, and among the former 
 is placed the tribe of Levi ; then, after- 
 wards, the Levites, who should be stand- 
 ing with the other five blessing tribes, 
 are to pronounce the curses, and all 
 the people are to ' say. Amen.' It is 
 true, these ' Levites ' are most probably 
 the 'Priests,' whom we find so con- 
 tinually mentioned as 'Levites' in 
 Deuteronomy ; and, as the whole pas- 
 sage appears to be due to one hand, we 
 may suppose that the whole tribe of 
 Levi was to stand on Gerizim to bless, 
 while the small body of Priests were 
 to take their place, perhaps, in such a 
 position as to command both parties, 
 and ' give out ' the words both of bless- 
 ing and of cursing. 
 
 764. Still it seems strange that the 
 tame writer should have left such a con- 
 fusion in his story as now exists, setting 
 the ' tribe of Levi' to bless, in v.12, and 
 the ' Levites ' to pronounce the curse, in 
 V 14, without any kind of explanation. 
 Nor is there any indication whatever 
 of the original direction being carried 
 out, of six tribes blessing and six 
 cursing. And the 'blessings' which 
 foEow in xxviii.3-6 are not given at all 
 in the same way as the curses. In fact, 
 ch.xxviii begins abruptly, in such a 
 manuer, that it is impossible to say 
 from the context who is supposed to be 
 speaking, though from the contents we 
 may infer that it is Moses. 
 
 765. We may suppose, however, as 
 we have said, that the writer means the 
 whole body of the tribe of Levi to stand 
 with the other five tribes on the Mount 
 of Blessing, while the Levites proper, or 
 Priests, were to stand by the Ark in 
 some central position, — at one end, it 
 may be, of the long narrow valley 
 which parted the two mountains, on the 
 slopes of which the twelve tribes were 
 to be stationed. This would agree with 
 the description in Jo.viii.33 : — 
 
 'And all Israel, and their elders and offi- 
 cers, and their judges, stood on this side the 
 Ark and on that side, before the Priests the 
 Levites, which bare the Ark of the covenant 
 of Jehovah. , . . half of them over against 
 Mount G-erizim, and half of them over against 
 Mount Bbal.' 
 
 This agrees, too, with the fact that 
 the Deuteronomist speaks of Joseph as 
 a single tribe in xxxiii.13, and it seems 
 
 to be confirmed by the expressions 
 in xviii.6-8, already considered (720), 
 which imply that, according to his 
 view, only some of the tribe of Levi 
 would be likely to enter upon the 
 sacred ofSce. 
 
 766. StUl the difficulty remains to 
 conceive in what way the Deuterono- 
 mist meant this ' blessing ' and ' curs- 
 ing' to be conducted. I must confess 
 that I cannot explain the matter in 
 any way satisfactorily, or without some 
 extravagant assumption as to what the 
 writer has omitted to state. It may be 
 suggested, for instance, that in 4).14 it 
 should be translated, — 
 
 ' And the Levites shall answer, and say unto 
 all the men of Israel with a loud voice,' — 
 
 as if they were first to hear the curses 
 from the party on Mount Ebal, and 
 then to repeat them to the whole com- 
 munity. But then there is no expla- 
 nation of the way in which the ' bless- 
 ings ' were to be delivered. And it 
 is plain that ch.xxviii passes away 
 altogether from any formal utterance 
 of the blessings like that of the curses, 
 and shapes itself into a solemn address 
 of the Lawgiver, abruptly begun with- 
 out any introduction. 
 
 767. Upon the whole, it appears to 
 me to be most probable that the writer 
 has departed from his original inten- 
 tion. In xi.29 he meant the tribes to 
 pronounce the blessings and curses, 
 and made the arrangement for that 
 purpose in xxviill-lS. But he then 
 decided to place them in the mouths of 
 the Priests, and make the people say, 
 ' Amen ; ' and this he actually did with 
 the curses. Instead of limiting himself 
 in this way, however, with respect to the 
 blessings, he has insensibly been carried 
 away by his subject, and poured out 
 his full heart in the glowing and 
 vehement words of ch.xxviii. Thij 
 chapter he has now left without any 
 introduction or explanation, without 
 any intimation of its connection with 
 the matter before or after. He may 
 have intended that the Levites should 
 be made to utter a series of short 
 blessings, like the curses, such as those 
 in xxviii.3-6, which correspond almost 
 exactly to the curses in U16-19, so that 
 these cannot be themselves the bless- 
 
DEUT.XXVIII. 1-XXXI. 30. 
 
 243 
 
 ings intended in xxvii.l3. But, if so, 
 he was presently overpowered by his 
 own intensity of feehng, and has thus 
 left us the magnificent language of this 
 chapter, in which blessings and curs- 
 ings, both of the strongest kind, are 
 mixed up together. 
 
 768. As it is plain that this whole 
 transaction is only an ideal scene, 
 which the author himself, apparently, 
 has not even realised completely in his 
 own imagination, it is hardly necessary 
 to consider at any length the question 
 of the physical possibility of such bless- 
 ings and curses being uttered in this 
 way, so as to be heard by the people 
 and duly responded to. The length of 
 the valley between the two moimtains 
 is said to be about three miles, and its 
 breadth from 200 to 300 yards. 
 
 769. Dean Stajtley writes, Sinai 
 and Palestine, ^.237, — 
 
 High above the lertile vale [of Sheohcm] 
 ro^ the long rocky ridge of Mount Gerizim, 
 facing the equally long and rocky range of 
 Ebal ;— 
 
 and he quotes alao Jerome's statement 
 with respect to the two mountains, — 
 
 They are a considerable distance apart ; nor 
 would the sounds of persons blessing or cursing 
 in turns be heard from one to the other. 
 
 Jbeome, accordingly, wishes to select 
 two other mountains near Jericho. 
 But, as Dean Stanley observes, — 
 
 The positive statement, that the mountains 
 were by the terebinths of Moreh, D.3d.30, com- 
 pels us to adhere to the common view. . . . 
 The ceremony may have taken place on the 
 lower spurs of the mountains, where they 
 approach more nearly to each other. And I 
 am informed that even from the two sum- 
 mits shepherds have been heard conversmg 
 witli each other. 
 
 770. Doubtless, in peculiar states of 
 the air, as when, perhaps, on a calm 
 and still evening, the dews are begin- 
 ning to fall, shepherds may be able to 
 hear and answer one another, and even 
 to maintain, by special effort, a con- 
 versation at considerable distances, as 
 the natives of Australia and Natal now 
 do. But can such an exertion of the 
 voice be thought of in connection with 
 such a solemn ceremony as this ? In 
 this particular case, there is no possi- 
 bility of evading the full meaning of 
 the expression 'the whole congregation, 
 as implying the great body, at all 
 
 events, of the 600,000 warriors, and 
 of substituting for them the 'elders,' 
 since in Jo.viii.33, just quoted, where 
 the transaction in question is described, 
 we are told that — 
 
 'All Israel, and their elders and ofBcers, 
 and their judges, stood on this side the Ark 
 and on that side, before the Priests the Le- 
 vites, the bearers of [E.V. ' which bare'] the 
 Ark of the covenant of Jehovah, as well the 
 stranger as he that was born among them ; 
 half of them over against Mount Geriiiim, 
 and half of them over against Mount Ebal ; 
 as Moses the servant of Jehovah had com- 
 manded before, that they should bless the 
 people of Israel.' 
 
 771. This immense host, surely, 
 though posted (as Dean Stanxey sup- 
 poses) ' on the lower spurs of the moun- 
 tains,' would have stretched along, we 
 must suppose, for miles. It is common, 
 however, to suppose a magnificent scene, 
 where the people would be standing as 
 above, and the 'curses' in ■i).15-26 
 would be repeated by the Levites, and 
 heard by those standing nearest to them. 
 These might then begin the 'Amen,' 
 which would be swelled by the tremen- 
 dous thunder of the ' whole congrega- 
 tion,' who need not be supposed to haie 
 heard the words, as they knew them 
 beforehand. But what are the ' bless- 
 ings,' to which special reference is made 
 in the above quotation, as well as in 
 D.xxvii.l2? 
 
 CHAPTER XVIU. 
 
 DEUT.XXVIII.1-XXXI.30. 
 
 •772. D.xxviii.1-68. 
 
 This grand chapter appears to have 
 been written by one who had abeady 
 the ruin of the Ten Tribes before him, 
 and who foreboded the same terrible 
 calamity for Judah also, if it persisted 
 in its idolatry and wickedness. The 
 nation of ' fierce countenance andstrange 
 tongue from afar,' •w.49,50, was either 
 the Assyrian, if he wrote in the days of 
 Hezekiah, or the Chaldee, if he wrote, 
 as seems most probable, in the days of 
 Josiah. It will be seen, as we proceed, 
 that many of the expressions here used 
 are used also by Jeremiah in his pro- 
 phecies with reference to the Chal- 
 deans. Thus the ' yoke of iron,; vA8, 
 appears in Jer.xxviii.l4,— the 'nation 
 from afar,' vA9. in Jer.v.15,— ' as the 
 b2 
 
244 
 
 DEUT,XXVni.l-XXXI.80. 
 
 eagle flietli,' ti.49, in Jer.xlviu.40, xlix. 
 22,comp. iv.l3, Lam.iT.19; and u53 — 
 ' Thou Shalt eat ... . the flesh of thy sons 
 and of thy daughters ... in the siege and in 
 the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall 
 distress thee,' — 
 
 is repeated in Jer.xix.9 — 
 
 •I will ma.ke them eat the flesh of their 
 sons and the flesh of their daughters ... in 
 the siege and in the straitness wherewith 
 their enemies shall distress them.' 
 
 773. According to the Chronicler, 
 2Ch.xxxiii.ll, Josiah's father, Ha- 
 nasseh, was actually carried captive to 
 Babylon; but this is not mentioned 
 in lie more authentic history. How- 
 ever, this prediction that, if they con- 
 tinued in their sins, the whole people 
 with their king, v.S6, would suffer at 
 the hand of the Chaldseans the same 
 fate as their brethren of the Ten Tribes 
 had experienced from the Assyrians, 
 was written, no doubt, with reference 
 to the king then reigning, probably 
 Manasseh, Amon, or Josiah in his early 
 years, 
 
 774. D.xrviii.36. 
 
 'Jehovah shall bring thee, and thy king 
 uhich thou Shalt set over thee, unto a nation 
 which neither thou nor tl^ fathers have 
 known.* 
 
 Here the writer, as in xvii.14-20, 
 represents Moses as assuming that they 
 will ' set over ' themselves ' a king ' in 
 later days, and referring to such a pro- 
 ceeding as a very natural one, instead 
 of speaking of it as a ' rejection of Je- 
 hovah,' lS.viii.7, a 'great wickedness,' 
 xii.l7. EiEHM observes, very justly: — 
 
 The writer here — very probably, at least — 
 sets forth the kingdom as already existing. 
 For how should Moses have come to think of 
 this, viz. that, while seeking to stimulate the 
 people of his own time, (to whom, of course, 
 his discourse is primarily addressed,) through 
 tiueatenlngs of punishment, to a closer ob- 
 servance of the Law, he should threaten with 
 evil a king who was first to be set over them 
 in afar later time ? 
 
 776. D.xxviii.68. 
 
 ' And Jehovah shall bring thee Into Egypt 
 again with ships, by the way whereof I spake 
 mito thee, Thou shalt see it no more again : 
 and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies 
 for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man 
 shall buy you.' 
 
 By these 'ships,' the writer may have 
 meant either the Phomieian merchant- 
 ships, — which would carry off the He- 
 brew slaves, purchased from the Chal- 
 
 dseans to sell them in different countries, 
 Joel iii.4-8, Am.i.6,9, Ez.xxvii.13, and, 
 among others, in Egypt, where they 
 would be bondmen a second time to 
 the Egyptians, — or, more probably, the 
 famous Egyptian fleets of Pharaoh- 
 Necho, HEEOD.ii.l69. It is not neces- 
 sarily implied that there were already 
 hostile relations with Egypt, or that 
 danger was to be immediately dreaded 
 from that quarter. 
 
 776. On the contrary, (746-747) 
 the Deuteronomist recognises a certain 
 amount of friendliness on the part of 
 the Egyptians towards Israel at the 
 time of his writing, as he does also on 
 the part of the Edomites. But this state 
 of amicable relation might at any mo- 
 ment be disturbed ; and so, in fact, we 
 find that Josiah himself was kUled by 
 Fharaoh-Necho, 2K.xxiii.29, and his 
 son Jehoahaz, after a reign of three 
 months, was 'put in bands' by the 
 King of Egypt, 'that he might Hot 
 reign in Jerusalem ;' and ' he put the 
 land to a tribute of an hundred talents 
 of silver,' and he ' took Jehoahaz away, 
 and he came to Egypt, and died there.' 
 
 777. D.xxix.4-8. 
 
 ' Yet Jehovah hath not given you an heart 
 to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear 
 unto this day. And / have led you forty 
 years in the wilderness [see D.viii.2] : your 
 clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy 
 shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot. Ye have 
 not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine 
 or strong drink ; that ye might know that /am 
 Jehovah your God. And when ye came unto 
 this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og 
 the king of Bashan, came out against us unto 
 battle, and we smote them, and we took their 
 land, and gave it for an inheritance unto the 
 Beubenites, and to the G-adites, and to the 
 half tribe of Mana^eh.' 
 
 It is obvious that the writer has here 
 inadvertently slid from speaking in the 
 character of Moses in vA, to speaking 
 in that of Jehovah in v.5fi, and has 
 again returned to that of Moses in u7,8. 
 We have a similar and yet more notice- 
 able instance (627) in xi.14,16. The 
 LXX appear to have perceived, and 
 avoided, this difSeulty in both these 
 passages, by changing / into He, 
 
 778. D.xxix.10,11. 
 
 ' Ye stand this day all of yon before Jeho- 
 vah your God; your captains of your tribes, 
 your elders, and your officers, all the men of 
 Israel, your families (E.T. 'little ones') your 
 wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp. 
 
DEUT.XXVIII. 1-XXXI 30. 
 
 from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer 
 of thy water.* 
 
 Manifestly, the -whole assembled host 
 of two or three millions is here de- 
 scribed as present before Moses at one 
 time. If words have any meaning, 
 surely this is what is meant here, and, 
 therefore, as we may reasonably believe, 
 in the other places also, where Moses 
 and Joshua are spoken of as addressing 
 ' all Israel ' at one time. 
 
 *779. D.xxix.24-29. 
 
 ' Even all nations shall say, 'Wherefore hath 
 Jehovah done thus unto this land? What 
 meaueth the heat of this great anger ? Then 
 men shall say. Because they have forsajcen the 
 covenant of Jehovah, the &od of theirf athers, 
 which he made with them when he brought 
 them forth out of the land of Egypt. For they 
 went and served other gods, and worshipped 
 them, gods whom they knew not, and whom 
 He had not given unto them. And the anger 
 of Jehovah was kindled against this land, to 
 bring upon it all the curses that are written 
 in this Book. And Jehovah rooted them out 
 of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in 
 great indignation, and cast them into another 
 land, as it is this day. The secret things be- 
 long unto Jehovah our God : but those things 
 which are revealed belong unto us and to our 
 children for ever, that we may do all the words 
 of this law.* 
 
 In this way the writer would have 
 the people of Judah, in his own time, 
 look back upon the desolated kingdom 
 of Israel. They had been grievously 
 chastened for their sins, and cast into 
 another land, ' as it is this day,' for an 
 example to their brethren of the king- 
 dom of Judah, lest they also should 
 provoke the righteous anger of Jehovah, 
 and come at last to suffer the same 
 terrible visitation. 
 
 780. What mercy, indeed, might yet 
 be in store, even for the afflicted Ten 
 Tribes, the Prophet knows not, though 
 there are expressions in this Book which 
 imply that he had still great hopes for 
 them in their latter end, if only they 
 would repent and return to the strong- 
 hold of their Hope, e.g. xxx.1-9 : — 
 ■ * And it shall come to pass, — when all these 
 things are come upon thee, the blessing and 
 the curse, which I have set before thee, and 
 thou Shalt call them to mind among all the 
 nations, whither Jehovah thy God hath driven 
 thee, and shalt return unto Jehovah thy (Jod, 
 and Shalt obey His Voice according to all that 
 I command thee this day, thon and thy chil- 
 dren, with all thine heart and with all thy 
 soul,— that then .Tehovah thy God will torn 
 thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, 
 and will return and gather thee from all the 
 
 245 
 
 nations, whither Jehovah thy God hath scat- 
 tered thee. . . . And Jehovah thy God will 
 bring thee into the land which thy fathers 
 possessed, and thou shalt possess it, and He 
 will do thee good, and multiply thee above 
 thy fathers. . . . And Jehovah thy God will 
 make thee plenteous in every work of thine 
 hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit 
 of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy land, for 
 good ; for Jehovah will again rejoice over thee 
 for good, as He rejoiced over thy fathers.' 
 
 781. But these 'secret things belong 
 unto Jehovah' xxix.29; He will know 
 what to do in His own good time for the 
 restoration of His people. Meanwhile 
 'those things which are revealed,' — 
 the manifest signs, which we have had 
 before us, of God's righteous judgment 
 upon His sinful children, — ' belong unto 
 us and to our children for ever,' that 
 we may lay them to heart with all 
 earnestness, and ' do all the words of 
 this Law.' 
 
 Such seems to be the strain of the 
 Prophet's address contained in this 
 
 *782, D.xxix.28. 
 
 ' And Jehovah rooted them out of their land 
 in anger, and in wrath, and in great indigna- 
 tion, and cast them into another land, as it is 
 this day.* 
 
 Upon which Scott observes — 
 Probably, the clause ' as it is this day ' was 
 added by Ezra, or by some scribe, who had 
 witnessed the desolations of the Babylonish 
 Captivity. But the emphasis of it, as the ac- 
 knowledgment of the accomplishment of this 
 ancient prophecy, supposing the words * ss it 
 is this day' to be spoken by a modem Jew, 
 after the long-continued dispersion of the na- 
 tion, is inconceivably enhanced. 
 
 The words, as we believe, were written 
 by one, who had before him the actual 
 desolation of the Ten Tribes, who were 
 carried away captive B.C. 721, andmSy 
 very well have been described in Josiah's 
 reign, about B.C. 630, some eighty or 
 ninety years afterwards, as having been 
 ' cast into another land, as it is this day.' 
 This expression could not have been 
 employed so naturally at a much ear- 
 lier time, — for instance, by one writing 
 in Hezekiah's reign, B.C. 727-698, in 
 the sixth year of which the Captivity 
 in question took place. 
 
 783. D.xxxi.1-9. 
 
 Knobel observes here, ^.319 : — 
 This section [and«.10-13,] is purely Deuter- 
 onomistic matter, as we perceive by its rela- 
 tion to what precedes, and by its whole expres- 
 sion. But the statement iu v,2, [where Moses 
 
2m 
 
 DEUT.XXVIII.VXXXI.30. 
 
 is made to say, ' I am an hundred and twenty 
 years old this day, / can no more go out and 
 come in,'} does not agree with that in xxxiv.7^ 
 [where we read, * Moses was an hundred and 
 twenty years old when he died ; his eye was not 
 dim, nor his natural force oftoted.'] 
 
 We shall find (862) that this latter 
 passage is a fragment of the older docu- 
 ment, from which the Deuteronomist 
 has borrowed the datum as to the age 
 of Moses, though he has not adhered to 
 the rest of the statement, as to his still 
 retaining his eye-sight and vigour to 
 the last. 
 
 784. D.xxxi.9. 
 
 * And Mosea wrote this Law, and delivered 
 it unto the Priests the sons of Levi, the bearers 
 of the Ark (B.V. ' which bare the Ark ') of the 
 covenant of Jehovah, and unto all the elders 
 of Israel.' 
 
 The Hebrew participle in the above 
 implies the habitual practice of the 
 Priests in bearing the Ark, not that 
 they bore it merely on the present oc- 
 casion, as the rendering of the E.V. 
 might be supposed to imply. When, 
 however, the same author writes again, 
 on the very same occasion, v.ld,— 
 
 'Then Moses commanded the Zevites, the 
 bearers of the Ark,'— 
 
 he does not really contradict himself, 
 though he does contradict the language 
 of the other books of the Pentateuch. 
 For his 'levites,' u25, as we have 
 seen, are Priests, 'the Priests the 
 Levites,' v.9, who, according to him, 
 were the regular Ark-bearers, instead 
 of the common Lentes, 'the sons of 
 Kohath,' to whom the duty of carrying 
 it is assigned in the Book of Numbers, 
 iv.lS, vii.9,x.21. 
 
 785. As to this ' Book of the Law,' 
 SoOTT observes : — 
 
 ' Some understand this of the Book of 
 Deuteronomy alone. But it is far more rea- 
 sonable to conclude that the whole Law was 
 delivered to the Priests and Elders, a copy 
 perhaps to the prijicipal person in each tribe, 
 besides one to be deposited in the side of 
 [beside] the Ark. It may be supposed that 
 afterwards many more copies would be 
 taken, though they would not be greatly 
 multiplied in that infancy, as it were, of 
 writing. 
 
 There is, however, no sign that any 
 such copies were taken, nor any indica- 
 tion that the 'whole Law' was known 
 to David and the best kings of Israel, 
 who habitually, and, in their most ear- 
 nest and pious days, transgressed so 
 
 thoroughly its plain commandments. 
 The writer, probably, referred to the 
 Book of Deuteronomy, as 'this Law'; 
 for by this expression he repeatedly dis- 
 tinguishes it from that pait of the Law 
 contained in the other books, e.g. — 
 
 ' On this side Jordan, in the land of Moab, 
 began Moses to declai*e this Zaw,' i.5 ; 
 
 ' This Law, which I set before you this day,' 
 iv.8; 
 
 ' And this is the Law, which Moses set before 
 the children of Israel. . . on this side Jordan, 
 &o.,' iv.44-46. 
 
 786. Moses is here spoken of as first 
 'writing this Law, and delivering it' 
 unto the Priests and Elders, v.d, and 
 even commanding the Levites to ' put 
 it beside the Aik,' 'W.26, and still con- 
 tinuing to write on, as in ch.xxxii, 
 xxxiii. Hence some, who maintain the 
 Mosaic origin of Deuteronomy, allow 
 that these chapters, at least, must have 
 been inserted into the book by a later 
 hand, or else suggest that Moses must 
 have taken it back again for the pur- 
 pose of malting these additions to it, 
 or that the ' delivering it ' to the 
 Priests in v.9 may have been merely a 
 ' symbolical ' action, and that he imme- 
 diately resumed possession of it again. 
 
 787. But then we find him in still 
 earlier passages speaking of the book as 
 already existing, before ho had finished 
 the addresses, of which it is mainly com- 
 posed, and, of course, before he, or any 
 one else, could have written them ; e.g. — 
 
 ' If thou wilt not observe to do all the 
 words of this Law, that are written in this 
 Book,' xxviii.58 ; 
 
 'Every sickness, and every plague, which is 
 not written in the Book of this Law,' v.Gl ; 
 
 'All the curses that are written in ihlB 
 Book,' xxix.20,21,27 ; 
 
 and in xvii.l8 the king is ordered to— 
 ' write him a copy of this Law in a book, 
 out of that which is before the Priests the 
 Levites.' 
 
 All these are obvious indications of 
 the later origin of the Book of Deuter- 
 onomy, and of the unhistorical cha- 
 racter of the addresses recorded in it. 
 
 788. D.xxxi.10-13. 
 
 'And Mosea commanded them, saying, At 
 the end of every seven years, in the solemnity 
 of the year of release, in the Feast of Taber- 
 nacles, when all Israel is come to appear be- 
 fore Jehovah thy G-od in the place which He 
 shall choose, thou shalt read this Law before 
 all Israel in their hearing.' 
 
 There is no indication in the history 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXII. 
 that this command was ever earried out 
 till after the return from the Captivity, 
 Neh.viii. Scott observes : — 
 
 Doubtless, this -was not merely conflnea to 
 one person or place ; but numbers were en- 
 gaged in different situations, so that every- 
 one might have an opportunity of hearing. 
 Though the men alone were obliged to at- 
 tend at the festivals, it might be supposed 
 that many of the women, children, and 
 servants, would come on this occasion. A 
 few (!) instances of the observation of this 
 command are recorded ; but the neglect of it 
 seems to be one main cause why the nation 
 was so soon carried away with idolatry and 
 iniquity. 
 
 789. The cmly instances, to which 
 Scott refers his readers, are two : — (i) 
 that in the time of Josiah, after the 
 discovery of the 'Book of the Law,' 
 when, probably, the book of Deuter- 
 onomy vias read to the people, — but 
 this was an accidental occurrence, not 
 at the Feast of the Tabernacles, and in 
 no way to be regarded as an instance of 
 obedience to the Law — and (ii) that of 
 Ezra's reading after the return from the 
 Captivity. There is not the slightest 
 infication that Samuel, David, Solo- 
 mon, or Hezekiah, paid any attention 
 to this important Law. 
 
 790. D.xxxi.l4r-15. 
 
 Evidently, these two verses, in which 
 the 'Tabernacle' is mentioned, are part 
 of the older document. The Deutero- 
 nomist never refers to the Tabernacle, — 
 perhaps, as we have said, trom the cir- 
 cumstance that he had it not daily 
 before his mind's eye, as he had the 
 Arh, (which he names in x.1,2,3,5,8, 
 xxxi.9,25,26,) the Tabernacle of David 
 having long disappeared from the sight, 
 and almost from the memories, of men, 
 while the Ark was stiUin the 'Temple. 
 
 791. In this passages it will be seen 
 that Moses and Joshua go into the Ta- 
 bernacle, as in E.xxxiii 7-11, the Taber- 
 nacle, apparently, being supposed to 
 stanc^ as then, without the camp, 
 E.xxxiii.7 ; and Jehovah appears in 
 the ' pillar of cloud,' which stands over 
 the door of the Tabernacle,' ii.l6, just 
 as in E.xxxiii.9. So, also, we read in 
 N.xii.4:,S, — 
 
 'And Jehovah spake suddenly nnto Moses 
 pnd unto Aaron and unto Miriam, Come out, 
 ye three, unto the Tabernacle of the Congre- 
 gation. And they three canie out. And Je- 
 hovah came down in the pillar of the cloud. 
 
 247 
 
 and stood in the door of the Tabernacle, and 
 oaUed Aaron and Mkiam; and they both came 
 forth.' 
 
 In short, it seems plain that D.xxxi. 
 14,15,_ is due to the same writer as 
 E.xxxiii.7-11 and N.xii4,6, whoever 
 this may be. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 THE SONG 0^ MOSES, DEUT.XXXII. 
 
 792. D.xxxii.1-43. 
 
 This ' Song ' contains a great num- 
 ber of words which occur nowhere 
 else in the Bible, and does not contain 
 many of the Deuteronomist's favourite 
 expressions. It does, however, contain 
 soTne of them, e.ff. v.8, 'make to in- 
 herit,' — ».16, 'provoke,' — ».17, 'whom 
 they knew not,' — 1;.18, 'forget Je- 
 hovah,' — each of which, as we have seen 
 (525,527), is repeated several times in 
 Deuteronomy, and is used also by Jere- 
 miah (639,540), but not one of which 
 is foimd in any of the other Books of 
 the Pentateuch. In the larger edition 
 we have given a complete list of the 
 many other identical forms of expres- 
 sion, which are common to the writer 
 of this Song and the Deuteronomist. 
 
 793. The occurrence of so many un- 
 usual words, which are not found else- 
 where in the Bible, might have been 
 reasonably Rooked for in a Song like 
 this, written in the highest style of 
 poetry, and not in the mere rhetorical 
 prose of the rest of the Book. And for 
 the same reason we should not expect 
 to find many of the prosaic phrases, 
 which are so common in the other parts 
 of the Book, repeated here. We con- 
 clude, therefore, that it is probably due 
 to the Deuteronomistic author. But 
 there are some eminent critics who are 
 of a different opinion, and suppose that 
 the Deuteronomist found the Song al- 
 ready in existence, and worked it into 
 his own narrative. 
 
 794. In this passage we have clear 
 signs of the late date at which this 
 Song was written. Thus we read, 
 i;.15,17 : 
 
 * But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked ; 
 Thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, 
 
 thou art covered with fatness. 
 Then he forsook Grod which made him, 
 
248 
 
 THE BLESSIKG OF MOSES, DETJT.XXXIlI.1-7. 
 
 And lighUy esteemed the Bock ol his salTO- 
 
 tion. 
 They provoked Him to jealousy with strange 
 
 gods: 
 With abominations provoked they Him to 
 
 anger. 
 They sacrificed imto devils, to no-gods (E.T. 
 
 •not to God,'), 
 To gods whom they knew not. 
 To new gods that came newly up, 
 "Whom your fathers feared not.* 
 
 Of course, the above words cannot te 
 supposed to describe the state of Israel 
 in the ■wilderness. Those, who desire 
 to maintain the Mosaic origin of this 
 Book, will have recourse to the sup- 
 position of 'prophetical perfects.' After 
 the evidence, which we have had before 
 us, of the later origin of the Book, 
 there can be little doubt that the words 
 really refer to the idolatries practised 
 in the kingdom of Israel, and almost as 
 freely in Judah also. 
 
 795. So ti.36-43 refer also very 
 plainly to the hardships which the 
 captives of the Ten Tribes had already 
 suffered, and which, in His own due 
 time, Jehovah would visit upon their 
 conquerors : — 
 
 * To me helongeth vengeance and recompense ; 
 Their foot shall slide in due time : 
 
 For the day of their calamity is at hand. 
 And the things, that shall come upon them, 
 
 D^ake haste. 
 For Jehovah shall judge His people. 
 And repent HimseU for His servants, 
 ^When He seeth that their power is gone. 
 And there is none shut up or left. . . . 
 Bejoice, O ye nations, with His people ; 
 For He will avenge the blood of His servants. 
 And will render vengeance to His adversaries, 
 And wUl be merciful unto His land and to His 
 
 people.* 
 
 The writer appears to be looking 
 back upon the time of distress which 
 the sister-kingdom had experienced, 
 and using it as a warning for Judah. 
 
 796. D.xmi.48-52. 
 
 This is an enlarged form of the an- 
 nouncement of the death of Moses, 
 which we find in N.xxvii.12-14, and 
 belongs to the older document ; except 
 that it can hardly be supposed that 
 the original writer would have put into 
 the mouth of Jehovah the words — 
 
 * which is in the land of Moab, which is over 
 against Jericho,' — 
 
 thus defining for Moses himself the ex- 
 act site of the mountain, close to which 
 he is supposed to be at this very time 
 encamped. Accordingly, these words 
 
 are, most probably, a Deuteronomistic 
 interpolation, and we have already seen 
 that ' land of Moab ' is a Deuterono- 
 mistic phrase, (625.i), whereas 'plains 
 of Moab ' is that employed by the older 
 writer (523.xi). 
 
 797. That the whole passage, how- 
 ever, with the above exception, is a 
 fragment of the older document, ap- 
 pears from the follovnng phrases : — 
 
 (i) «.48, 'in the bone of this day'=on the 
 self-same day, (523.v) ; 
 
 (ii) «.49, ' land of Canaan' (523.1x) ; 
 
 (lii) dkhuzzdh, possession (528.i) ; 
 
 (iv) i).50,'begatheredtothypeople' (52.S.vi) 
 
 (v) B.51, ' trespass,' L.v.15, vi.2, xxvi.4U, 
 N.v.6,12,27, xxxi.16, — nowhere else ; 
 
 (vi) 'wilderness of Zin,' N.xiii.21, xx.l, 
 zxvii.l4, xxxiii.36, xxxiv.3,4, — nowhere else in ^^ 
 Daaermwmy. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE BLESSIKQ OF MOSES, 
 DEUT.XXXni.1-7. 
 
 798. D.xxxiii also, which contains 
 the ' Blessing of Moses,' is ascribed by 
 many eminent critics to a rather older 
 writer than the Deuteronomist. 
 
 As beforSj however, a close critical 
 examination of its contents, as given at 
 length in the larger edition, seems to 
 us to fix this passage also, though not, 
 perhaps, so certainly as ch.xxxii, upon 
 the later Prophet, who wrote the rest 
 of Deuteronomy. And in •«. 10 we have 
 Levi, i.e. the Levites generally, spoken 
 of as chosen to ' put incense before ' Je- 
 hovah, and ' whole burnt sacrifice upon 
 His Altar,' which proper duties of the 
 Priesthood, as we have seen, the Deuter- 
 onomist assigns to the 'whole tribe 
 of Levi,' whereas by the earlier writers 
 they are restricted to the ' sons of Aaron.' 
 
 799. Besides which, if this poem was 
 written by a different writer from him 
 who wrote the rest of the Book of 
 Deuteronomy, we should expect to see 
 more of that writer's compositions mixed 
 up in the Pentateuch. At least, it would 
 be strange if so powerful a composer 
 wrote no more than this, or that no 
 more of his compositions have come 
 down to us. It is shown in the larger 
 edition that very many of the peculiar 
 expressions of this chapter do resemble 
 considerably the style of the Deutero- 
 nomist and of Jeremiah ; while there 
 
THE BLESSING OE MOSES, DEUT.XXXIII.1-7, 
 is no such special resemblance between 
 them and those of _the other Books of 
 the Pentateuch. 
 
 The fact, that the 
 resemblance between this passage and 
 the rest of Deuteronomy is not more 
 complete and decisive, and that it eon- 
 tains many words found nowhere else 
 in the Bible, may arise from this com- 
 position, Uke the Song in eh.xxxii, 
 being lughly poetical, whereas Deuter- 
 onomy itselJF is only poetical prose. 
 
 800. Perhaps, both the Song and the 
 Blessing, or, at least, the Blessing, may 
 even have been written some years before 
 the Book of Deuteronomy, if (as is not 
 at all imppssible) the writer intemled 
 them originally to close his new edition 
 of the earlier document, before he con- 
 ceived the idea of writing the Book of 
 Deiiteronomy itself. The writings of a 
 young poet are often much more florid 
 and artificial than those composed by 
 him in more mature life, after the 
 experience of even a few years. If, 
 then, upon a closer consideration of 
 the contents of this chapter, we find 
 nothing which really militates with 
 the supposition that the Deuterouomist 
 was its author, there is no reason why 
 we may not — provisionally, at least- 
 ascribe this also to him. 
 
 801. We may first, however, quote 
 the words of Kuetz, who, it will be 
 seen, while contending for the Mosaic 
 authorship of the main part of the 
 'Blessing,' yet is compelled by his 
 sense of truth to make admissions, 
 which are, in fact, fatal to its Mosaic 
 origin. He writes as follows, iii.493 : — 
 
 The authenticity of the 'Blessing of Moses* 
 has been most conclusively demonstrated by 
 BiESTSL. In fact, there is nothing in the 
 particular blessings, which could give the 
 least warrant for regarding it as a voH- 
 cinmm post evmtum,. The introductory and 
 concluding clauses, however, the critic just 
 named feels obliged to set down as additions 
 of a later hand. But, so far as the conclud- 
 ing words are concerned, I do not see on 
 What ground the authorship of Moses can 
 possibly be disputed. It is somewhat dif- 
 ferent with the introduction, seeing that 
 there is at least one clause here, (mz. in tJ.4, 
 • Moses commanded us a Law,') which seems 
 to favour Diespel's view. It must be ad- 
 mitted that these words sound somewhat 
 strangely from the lips of Moses. , . . It 
 the passage before us had read, ' Moses gave 
 you a Law,' there would be nothing strange 
 about it. But, when we bear in mind that 
 Moses did not write down this ' Blessing,' as 
 
 249 
 
 he did the 'Song' and the Law of Deuter- 
 onomy,-that, on the contrary, he uttered 
 them verbaUy to the people a short tiiS- 
 perbaps immediately -before his departure 
 to Mount Nebo, and that they were pro- 
 bably first appended to the Book by the last 
 editor of the Pentateuch, there cannot be 
 anything very dangerous in the assumption 
 that the introductory, and possibly also the 
 concluding, words, which were the produc- 
 tion of some other divinely-inspired psalmist 
 were also added by him. 
 
 802. But it can scarcely be believed 
 that any one would have presumed to 
 introduce in this way his own words in 
 v.i, in the midst of such a remarkable 
 composition, the memorial of the last 
 hours of the Lawgiver. And so Scott 
 says : — 
 
 It is probable that the heads of the seve- 
 ral tribes gathered around Moses, after he had 
 received the summons recorded in the close of 
 the former chapter, and just before he as- 
 cended the Mount where he ended his life, 
 and that he delivered to them, both by word 
 o( mouth and in writing, these his last dving 
 words. 
 
 What 'danger' can there be in our 
 following the light of Truth, and ad- 
 mitting the fact, which is patent, that 
 v.i at all events, was certainly not 
 written nor uttered by Moses, and that, 
 consequently, it is highly probable 
 a priori that the whole ' Blessing ' is 
 by a later hand ? 
 
 803. D.xxxiii.6. 
 
 ' Let Reubebt live, and noi die ; 
 And lei his men ie soTnewftat (lit. a number),' 
 v.e. 
 
 There is some doubt as to the proper 
 rendering of the second line of the 
 above. The E.V. supplies 'not' from 
 the foregoing line, as in Ps.xxxviii. 1, 
 lxxv.5, 'And let his men (not) be a 
 number,' i.e. not be so small as to be 
 numbered; theLXX has 'and let him 
 be many in number.' But it is obvious 
 that the feeble wish implied in the 
 clause, ' and not die,' hardly agrees 
 with the LXX translation. Eeubek 
 receives, indeed, a blessing, but one 
 which sounds mournfully, and tells of 
 the dwindled numbers of the tribe in 
 the writer's time. In the days of Jehu 
 we are informed, 2K.x.32,33 : — 
 
 'Jehovah began to cut Israel short, and 
 Hazael smote them in all the coasts of 
 Israel, from Jordan eastward, all the land 
 of Gilead, the Gadites, and the Revbenites, 
 and the Manassites, from Aroer which is by 
 the river Amon, even Gilead and Bashan.' 
 
250 
 
 THE BLESSING OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXIII.1-7. 
 
 And this is the last glimpse -which 
 we have of Eeuben iu the history. 
 
 804. It is next noticeable that Simeon 
 is altogether omitted. Knobel ob- 
 serves, Dent.p.Sii: — 
 
 ' In many texts and editions of the LXX, 
 the second member of v.G reads thus, ' And 
 let Simeon be many in number.' This seems 
 to be the original Text. The wish suits 
 Simeon very well, who at the second num- 
 bering was much smaller than at the former. 
 He would then be connected with Reuben as 
 Is?achar is with Zebulon, v.lS. If this is not 
 allowed, then we must suppose him left out 
 for the reason given inQ-.xlix.7, [where Jacob 
 says of Simeon and Levi, ' Cursed be their 
 anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for 
 it was cruel ; I will divide them in Jacob, and 
 scatter them in Israel.'] 
 
 805. KuKTZ also remarks, ii.y.493: — 
 The iirst thing which strikes us, on ex- 
 amining this ' Blessing,' is the omission of 
 the tribe of Simeon. Baumgartes observes 
 that 'we are not to imagine, from the fact 
 that Simeon is passed over, that he is to be 
 regarded as left without a blessing. In any 
 case he was included iu the general blessing 
 in v.1,29, just as even the sons of Jacob, to 
 whom threatening words were addressed by 
 their father, were stUl said to be 'blessed.* 
 But the fact that Simeon is not mentioned 
 by name, and that the harsh words addressed 
 to him by the patriarch, as well as to Reuben 
 and Levi, are not softened down in his case, 
 has been correctly explained as denoting that 
 the sentence of dispersion pronounced on 
 Simeon, according to which he was not to 
 have an independent position, but to live 
 within the boundaries of the rest, had not 
 been repealed or mitigated, as in the case of 
 Levi, in consequence of any aot of obedience 
 and faith, but, on the contrary, had been 
 greatly siiengthened by the wickedness of 
 his prince Zimri, N.XXV. 14. A striking proof 
 of this, we believe, is to be foimd in the re- 
 markably diminished number of Simeon, 
 N.xxvi.l4.' This is, probably, the best solu- 
 tion of the diflficulty, if we are unable to adopt 
 DiEsrEL's conclusion, that the ' Blessing' has 
 not come down to us in its fullest integrity. 
 
 806. But -was not the rebellion of 
 Dathan, Abiram, and On, sons of 
 Eeuben, which drew down upon the 
 people a plague, by which — 
 
 * 14,700 perished, beside them that died about 
 the matter of [the Levite'] Korah,' N,xvi.49, — 
 a very notable event, as well as the 
 affair of Zimri by which 24,000 died? 
 Yet Eeuben receives a blessing, though 
 a mild one. And what reason is 
 there to suppose that the Simeonites, 
 generally, were more guilty than the 
 other tribes, because one of their princes 
 was compromised ? 
 
 The fact is, most probably, that in 
 the time of the writer — and, therefore, 
 
 long after the time which Knobel as- 
 signs to him — the tribe of Simeon had 
 for some reason or other — whether be- 
 cause to a large extent absorbed in 
 Judah, or, it may be, because of a con- 
 siderable migration, — been long alto- 
 gether lost sight of. 
 
 807. The tribe of Simeon, we are 
 
 told,— 
 
 ' obtained their inheritance in the midst of ths 
 inheritance of the men of Judah,' Jo.xix.lr9. 
 
 Seventeen cities, with the surround- 
 ing villages, are assigned to them, 
 which means, no doubt, that, at the 
 time when this passage was written, 
 the Simeonites were either found oc- 
 cupying these cities, or were known 
 to have occupied them in former days, 
 or, at least, to have had some special 
 connection with them. But of these 
 seventeen towns, Hormah and Beer- 
 sheba are numbered, in the times of 
 David and Ahab, respectively, among 
 thetowns of Judah, lS.rxx.30,lK.xix.3. 
 Another of their towns, Ziklag, was 
 given by the Philistine king, Achish, to 
 David, lS.xxvii.6 ; and so we read, — 
 
 ' wherefore Ziklag pertaineth unto the kings 
 of Judah unto this day,' 
 
 They are said to have conquered, 
 with Judah's help, Hormah, Gaza, 
 Askelon, and Ekron, Ju.i.17,18 ; but 
 they could not keep their hold on 
 these cities, since Hormah, as we have 
 said, is reckoned to Judah in IS.xxx. 
 26,30, and the other three are spoken 
 of as independent Philistine cities in 
 lS.7i.l7. It is mentioned in 2Ch.xi.6 
 that Eehoboam 'built' Etham or Ether, 
 which also belonged to Simeon, Jo. 
 xix.7. 
 
 808. Thus seven, at all events, of 
 their seventeen towns were lost to them, 
 four of which are distinctly reckoned 
 to Judah. And, imperceptibly, the 
 tribe of Simeon appears, as we have 
 said, to have become to a large extent 
 absorbed in Judah ; and, at last — 
 mainly, we may suppose, for this 
 reason — they entirely disappear &om 
 the history. In lK.xii.21,23, where 
 the military force of Eehoboam is mus- 
 tered, which, we must suppose, from 
 their situation, included the Simeonites, 
 they are not mentioned, and we read; — 
 
 ' The word o£ God came unto Shemaiah, 
 
THE BLESSING OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXIII.l. 
 the man of God, saying, Speak unto Reho- 
 boam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, 
 and unto all^the house of Judah and Bm- 
 iamin, and to tfte remnant of the people.' 
 
 809. If any Simeonites were then 
 numbered among the troops of Eeho- 
 boam, they must haTe been included 
 among this 'remnant of the people.' 
 Their name, in fact, is not once men- 
 tioned in the Books of Samuel and 
 Kings, though it occurs in the Books of 
 Chronicles, lCh.iT.42,vi.65,xii.25,xxvii. 
 16,2Ch.xv.9,xxxiT.6; andinoneof these 
 places, ICh xii.25, they are spoken of 
 as bringing help to Dayid : — 
 
 * Of the children of Simeon, mighty men 
 of valour for the war, seven thousand one 
 hundred.' 
 
 But this statement must, like so many 
 other of the Chroniclpr's data, be re- 
 jected as untrustworthy.* 
 
 810. There is, however, a curious 
 note preserved by the Chronicler, 
 lCh.iv.39-41, apparently from some 
 ancient tradition, which seems to imply 
 an important migration from the land oi 
 Canaan of a large body of the Simeon- 
 ites: — 
 
 * And they went to the entrance of Gedor, 
 unto the east side of the valley, to seek pas- 
 ture for their iiocks. And they found fat 
 pasture and good, and the land was wide, and 
 quiet, and peaceable; for they of Ham had 
 dwelt there of old. And these written by 
 name went in the days of Hezekiah, king 
 of Judah, and smote their tents, and the 
 habitations that were found there, and de- 
 
 * Here, of those who supported David, 
 there are numbered only 6,800 of J)a/oi(Ss 
 own tribe -of Judah, and 3,000 of Benjamin ; 
 whereas the Levites (including the Aaronites) 
 were, according to the Chronicler, 8,300, and 
 the Simeonites 7,100 ; and of Ephraim there 
 were 28,000, of Western Manaeseh, 18,000, of 
 Zebulon, 60,000, of Naphtali, 1,000 captains, 
 with 37,000 men, of Dan, 28,600, of Asber, 
 40,000, of Issachar, 200 men, * that had under- 
 standing of the times, to know what Israel 
 Qught to do,' U.32, with all their brethren at 
 their command, of the trans-Jordanic tribes, 
 120,000, [44,760 only, lCh.v.l8— ? in whose 
 reign,] making altogether 348,000 men— five 
 times as large as Wellington's whole force at 
 Waterloo, ALLSON,3dx.401— of which Judah 
 supplied only 6,8001 and Simeon, 7,1001 and 
 'all (I) tliese men of war, that could keep 
 rank, came with a perfect heart to Hebron, 
 to make David king over all Israsl ; and aU 
 the rest also of Israel were of one heart to 
 make David king. And there they were 
 with David three days, eating and drinking; 
 for their brethren had prepared for them.' 
 lCh.3di.38,39. 
 
 261 
 
 stroyedthem utterly unto this day, and dwelt 
 in their rooms ; because there was pasture 
 there for their flocks.' 
 
 It has been argued of late by Dozy, 
 not without much appearance of reason, 
 that this points to a considerable move- 
 ment of the Simeonites from their 
 original settlements in the south of 
 Canaan, into the ' neighbourhood of 
 Mecca in Arabia. 
 
 811. D.3mdii.7. 
 
 * Sear, Jehovah, the voice of JunAH, 
 And bring him unto his people ; 
 Let his hands he sufficient for him. 
 And be Thou an help to him from his enemies' 
 
 v.T. 
 
 Very remarkable is the difference in" 
 tone between this prayer, almost a cry 
 of anguish, and the grand words which 
 are spoken of Judah ia the ' Blessing 
 of Jacob,' G.xlts:.8-12:— 
 
 * Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall 
 praise; 
 
 Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine 
 
 enemies ; 
 Thy father's children shaU bow down before 
 
 thee. 
 Judah is a lion's whelp : 
 From the prey, my son, thou art gone up ; 
 He stooped down, he couched as a lion, 
 And as an old lion — who shall rouse him 
 
 up? 
 The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, 
 Nor a laWt-^fiver from between his feat, 
 rntU ho come to Shiloh, [E. V. ' Until Shiloh 
 
 come'] ; 
 And unto him shall the gathering of thd 
 
 people be. 
 Binding his foal unto the vine. 
 And his ass's colt unto the choice vine. 
 He washed his garments in wine, 
 And his clothes in the blood of grapes. 
 His eyes shall be red with wine. 
 And his teeth white with milk.* 
 
 812. Aceordingtoourview,the words, 
 ' bring him unto his people,' express a 
 prayer that the tribe of Judah rnight 
 again be restored to its old sovereignty, 
 by the return of the Ten Tribes, at no 
 very distant day, under the sceptre of 
 the sons of David. This seems, in fact, 
 to have occurred already in soma 
 measure in Josiah's time, 2K.xxiii. 
 15-20, by the gathering of the scat- 
 tered fragments of them stiU remaining 
 in the land, and these, probably, far 
 more numerous than is generally sup- 
 
 We have seen (780) that the 
 DeutCTonomist did, apparently, enter- 
 tain such a fond hope for the restora- 
 tion of Israel. 
 
THE BLESSING- OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXin.8-12. 
 
 252 
 
 813. And sOj too, Jeremiah breathes 
 the same in his prophecies, xxx.3-9 ; — 
 
 * For, lo, the days come, saitli Jehovah, that 
 I will bring again the captivity of my people 
 Israel and Judah, saith Jehovah, and I will 
 cause them to return to the land that I gave 
 to their fathers, and they shall possess it. . . . 
 For it shall come to pass in that day, saith 
 Jehovah of Hosts, that I will break his yoke 
 from ofE thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, 
 and strangers shall no more serve themselves 
 of him. But they shall serve Jehovah their 
 Grod, and David their king, whom I will raise 
 up unto them.' 
 
 And see also the glorious prophecies 
 in Jer.xxxi,xxxiii, where we read, — 
 
 * There shall be a day that the watchmen 
 upon the Mount Ephraim shall cry, * Arise ye, 
 and let us go up to Zion, xmto Jehovah our 
 God,' xxxi.6 ; 
 
 ' For thus saith Jehovah, If my covenant 
 be not with day and night, and if I have not 
 appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth, 
 then will I cast away the seed of Jacob and 
 David my servant, so that I will not take 
 any of his seed to be rulers over the house of 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; for I will cause 
 their captivity to return, and have mercy 
 upon them.' xxxiii.25,26. 
 
 814. In point of faet> the deporta- 
 tion of the Ten Tribes into Captivity 
 seems to have been by no means so 
 great and so universal as is generally 
 supposed. After Shalmaneser had 'car- 
 ried Israel away into Assyria,' 2K.xvii. 
 6, we are told that 'Hezekiah wrote 
 letters to Ephraim and Manasseh,' to 
 beg them to come and keep the Pas- 
 sover ; 
 
 * but they laughed them to Bcom, and mocked 
 them ; nevertheless, divers of Asher and Ma- 
 nasseh and Zebulun hiunbled themselves, and 
 came to Jerusalem,' 2Ch.xxx.lO,ll. 
 
 This, however, depends on the un- 
 supported testimony of the Chronicler. 
 
 815. But Josiah's authorityevidently 
 extended over Samaria as well as Ju- 
 dah ; since he destroyed the altar 
 which was at Bethel, and the high place 
 which Jeroboam had made : — 
 
 * both that altar and the high place he brake 
 down, and burned the high place, and stamped 
 it small to powder, and burned the Ashera 
 [B.V. grove]. . . And all the houses also of 
 the high places, that were in the cities of Sa- 
 maria, which the kings of Israel had made to 
 provoke Jehovah to anger, Josiah took away, 
 and did to them according to all the acts thai; 
 he had done in Bethel. . . . And he slew all 
 the prieste of the high places, that were there, 
 upon the altars, and burned men's bones upon 
 them, and returned to Jerusalem.* 2K.xxiii, 
 15-20. 
 
 It is possible, also, that in this phra'-e, 
 
 * bring him unto his people^* there may 
 be a reference to the words spoken of 
 Judah in Jacob's blessing, G.xlix,10, 
 
 * Unto him shall the gathering of fAe pe<^le 
 be.* 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE BLESSING OF MOSES, 
 DEUT.XXXUI. 8-12. 
 
 816. D.xxxiii.8-11. 
 
 And of Levi he saidy 
 
 Let Thy Tfmmmim and Thy Urim be toith Thy 
 
 holy one ; 
 Whom Thou didst prove at Massah, 
 Whom T/iou didst right (B.V. ' strive with,' 
 
 but see Is.i.l7, where we have ' strive for ' 
 
 [E.y. 'plead for']=*right*the widow,) a( 
 
 the toaters of Meribah ; 
 Who said of his father and his mother^ I taw 
 
 him not; 
 Neither did he acknowledge his brdihren^ nor 
 
 knew his own children; 
 For they have observed Thy word. 
 And they have kept Thy covenant. 
 They shall teach Jacob ThyjvdgmentSf 
 And Israel Thy Law; 
 They shall put incense before Thee, 
 And whole burnt sacrifice upon Thine Altar, 
 Bless, Jehovah, his substance, 
 And accept the work qfhis hands; 
 Smite through the loins of ffiem tliat rise against 
 
 him, 
 And of them that hate him, that they rise not 
 
 again. 
 
 817. Still more surprising, than even 
 that which we have observed in the 
 case of Judah, is the contrast between 
 the strong language of praise here ad- 
 dressed to Levi, and the sentence of 
 censure in G.xlix.5-7 : 
 
 * Simeon and Levi are brethren ; 
 Instruments of cruelty are in their habita- 
 tions. 
 
 my soul, come not thou into their secret ; 
 Unto their assembly, mine honour, be not 
 
 thou united ; 
 For in their anger they slew a man, 
 And in their seUwill they digged down a widl. 
 Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce,— 
 And their wrath, for it waa cruel : 
 
 1 will divide them in Jacob, 
 And scatter them in Israel.* 
 
 818. Indeed, the change is wholly 
 unaccountable on the traditionary view. 
 For the usual notion that, because of 
 their zeal, in slaying three thousand 
 of their brethren, about the affair of 
 the golden calf, E.xxxii. 26-28, (which 
 some suppose to be referred to in v.9,) 
 they were really distinguished with 
 such words of high commendation, can 
 scarcely be admitted, when it is re- 
 membered that Aaron himself, the head 
 
THE BLESSING OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXIIl.8-12. 
 
 of the tribe, to whose sons all its chief 
 honours, in point of fact, were to be 
 giien, was the very leader in that sin, 
 and was so greatly at fault also at the 
 waters of Meribah, N.xx.l2, that, for 
 his offence on that occasion, he, as well 
 as the other principal Levite, Moses, 
 was sentenced to die, without setting 
 his foot upon the holy land. We do 
 not find in the narrative siny account 
 of the Levites distinguishing themselves 
 at Massah and Meribah. 
 Scott, accordingly, remarks — 
 
 The Prophet, in this passage, seems to have 
 referred to some remarkable instances, not 
 elsewhere recorded, in which the Levites were 
 tried, and honourably distinguished themselves 
 in the cause of Grod. 
 
 819. If we suppose, however, as we 
 may, that this chapter of Deuteronomy 
 was written at a much later age — pro- 
 bably, at the very beginning of Josiah's 
 reign before the composition of the 
 rest of this book, or even towards the 
 end of Manasseh's, — and that it was 
 written by a Priest, perhaps, even by 
 Jeremiah himself, — it is easy to explain 
 every allusion in these verses. In those 
 days, by aE truly religious persons, 
 devoted to the worship of Jehovah, 
 the Levites — at least, the Chief Priest 
 and the other Levites or Priests, who 
 ministered at the Sanctuary — ^if known 
 as earnest and devout men, would be 
 held in high estimation, as the guar- 
 dians of the true faith in a corrupt 
 age, amidst an idolatrous and gain- 
 saying generation. 
 
 820. Well, then, might the writer in 
 this passage — a Priest himself— utter 
 for his own brethren, (including his 
 own father, who may have been Hilkiah, 
 then perhaps already, as he was a few 
 years afterwards, 2K.xxu.4, at the head 
 of the Priesthood,) the prayer, — 'Let 
 Thy Thummim and Thy Urim— Thy 
 Truth and Thy Light — be ever with 
 Thy holy one, whom Thou didst prom at 
 Massah (temptation), whom Thou didst 
 justify at the waters of Meribah (strife)-' 
 i.e. whom Thou dost expose now, as 
 Thou didst then, to the rebellious try- 
 ing tempers, — the angry strife and tur- 
 bulence,— of an unthaiiful unbelieving 
 people. 
 
 821. If we refer to the story in 
 
 25ii 
 
 E.xvii, TS.xx, we shall find that, in each 
 case, the faith and patience of the re- 
 ligious leaders, — in one ease, Moses, 
 in the other, Moses and Aaron, — are 
 represented as 'tried' in this way. 
 The people come to them murmuring, 
 and complaining that they had not the 
 supplies of good things, or even neces- 
 saries, which they required, and they 
 are ready to go back to the ' fleshpots 
 of Egypt.' 
 
 ' And the people murmured against Moses, 
 and said, "Wherefore is this, that thon hast 
 brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and 
 our children and our cattle with thirst ? 
 And Moses cried unto Jehovah, saying. What 
 shall I do unto this people ? They be almost 
 ready to stone me,' B.xviL3,4 ; 
 
 'And they gathered themselves together 
 against Moses and against Aaron. And the 
 people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, 
 Would God that we had died when our bre- 
 thren died before Jehovah ? And why have 
 ye brought up the congregation of Jehovah 
 into this wilderness, that we and our cattle 
 should die there ? And wherefore have ye 
 made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring ns 
 unto this evil place? It is no place of seed, or 
 of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates, neither 
 is there any water to drink,' N.xx.2-5. 
 
 822. Who can doubt that in the age 
 of the later kings, and especially just 
 before the time of Josiah's Beformation, 
 there must have been much ' mur- 
 muring ' of this kind, even among those 
 who stiU adhered outwardly to the 
 worship of Jehovah, but in their hearts 
 had gone back to Egypt, and were 
 ready to say with those of old, E. xvii.7, 
 'Is Jehovah among us or not?' A 
 pious and zealous Priest, like Hilkiah, 
 must have had a painful life in such 
 times, with those in high places (Ma- 
 nasseh and his princes) violently op- 
 posed to his endeavours to keep up the 
 true faith in the Living God. He 
 must have found it a hard task at 
 times to bear up, in the path of duty, 
 against the strength of public feeling, — 
 the expressed illwiU of some, the se- 
 cret dislike of others, the neglect and 
 indifference of almost all. Living in 
 such days, and sharing fully in the 
 sentiments of his more faithful brethren, 
 the writer might well refer to the re- 
 cord of similar ' trials ' of the great 
 leaders in the wQdemess, — to their 
 being succoured and supported by Di- 
 vine Power, when tempted, — ^to their 
 being ' righted ' or ' justified ' before 
 
254 
 
 THE BLESSING OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXIII.8-12. 
 
 the people by the direct interference of 
 Jehovah, in answer to their cry, and 
 in reply to the rebellious unbelief of 
 the multitude. 
 
 823. So would it be again, the -writer 
 hopes, in God's owu time. Let the 
 Levite (i.e. the Priest) be faithful still 
 to his sacred calling, saying to father, 
 mother, brothers, children, 'I know 
 you not ;' i.e. let him not be turned by 
 any family ties from the straight path 
 of duty ; let him be ready to forsake 
 home and its delights, (as some, doubt- 
 less, of that day had done,) and — 
 
 ' go up from the gates out of all Israel where 
 he sojourned, and come with all the desire of 
 his mind to minister in the Name of Jehovah 
 ins God at Jerusalem,' D.xviii.6,7. 
 
 Let him stiU possess his soul in faith 
 and patience, ' observing Jehovah's 
 word, andkeepingHis Covenant,' 'teach- 
 ing Jacob His judgments, and Israel 
 His Law,' ' putting incense before Him, 
 and vfhole burnt sacrifices upon His 
 Altar.' Then vrould the Blessing of 
 the Most High attend him ; then would 
 he in due time be 'justified,' though 
 ' tried ' to the uttermost ; his Priest- 
 hood should continue, his oflSce be held 
 in honour, his judgments be respected, 
 his teachings obeyed. Then Jehovah 
 would ' bless his substance, and accept 
 the work of his hands, — would smite 
 through the loins of them that rise 
 against him, (the adversaries of the 
 true religion, whether high or low, in 
 Israel,) and of them that hate him,that 
 they rise not again.' 
 
 Such appears to us the more rational 
 and intelligible explanation of these 
 verses, regarded as referring to the cir- 
 cumstances of the times in which the 
 ■writer Hved. 
 
 824. It is true that Jeremiah in many 
 passages of his prophecies describes the 
 state of the Priests, as well as of the 
 Prophets, in his time as excessively 
 bad: e.g. — 
 
 * The Priests said not. Where is Jehovah ? 
 and they that handle the Law inew me not : 
 the pastors also transgressed against me, and 
 the Prophets prophesied by Baal,* ii.8 ; 
 
 ' As the thief is ashamed, when he is found, 
 so is the house of Israel ashamed, they, their 
 Kings, their Princes, and their Priests, and 
 their Prophets, saying to a stock, Thou art 
 my father, and to a stone. Thou hast brought 
 iiie forth; for they have turned their back 
 
 unto me, and not their face,' ii.26,27, xxxii. 
 32,33 ; 
 
 •A. wonderful and horrible thing is com- 
 mitted in the land,— The Prophets prophesy 
 falsely, and the PriesU bear role by their 
 means ; and my people love to have it so ; 
 and what will ye do in the end thereof?' 
 v.30,31 ; 
 
 •From the least of them even unto the 
 greatest of them every one is given to 
 covetousness ; and from the Prophet even 
 unto the Priest every one dealeth falsely,' 
 vi.l3, viii.lO; 
 
 ' Both Prophet and Priest ai« profane; yea, 
 in my House have I found their wickedness, 
 saith Jehovah,' xxiii.ll ; 
 
 ' For the sins of her Prop?iets and the iniqui- 
 ties of her Priests, that have shed the blood of 
 the just in the midst of her,' &c., Lam.iv.l3. 
 
 825. Yet still there must have been 
 exceptions to this general rule. In 
 Josiah's reign Zephaniah prophesied, 
 and Jeremiah himself was both a Priest 
 and a Prophet; and there seems no 
 reason to suppose that Hilkiah and the 
 Priests under him were any other than 
 pious men, who did their best to dis- 
 chai'ge the duties of their office amidst 
 the difficulties of the time. This pas- 
 sage may have been written at a time 
 when Hilkiah was in office, and had 
 entered on his sacred duties with a deep 
 sense of his responsibilities, and a de- 
 termination to stem, to the uttermost 
 of his power, the corruption of the 
 times. But the writer may also, and 
 specially, have had in view that glori- 
 ous restoration for which he longed, 
 when ' the sons of David ' should reign 
 in righteousness, and the ' sons of Levi' 
 minister in faithfulness, in the midst 
 of the regenerated and rejoicing people. 
 
 826. 'To this hope Jeremiah points 
 when he says, — 
 
 'Jehovah hath redeemed Jacob, and ran- 
 somed him from the hand of him that was 
 stronger than he. Therefore they shall come 
 and sing in the height of Zion, and shall 
 flow together to the goodness of Jehovah, for 
 wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the 
 young of the flock and of the herd ; and their 
 soul shall be as a watered garden, and they 
 shall not sorrow any more at all . . . And I 
 will satiate the soul of the Priests with fat- 
 ness, and my people shall be satisfied with my 
 goodness, saith Jehovah,' xxxi.11.14: ; 
 
 • Thus saith Jehovah, David shall never 
 want a man to sit upon the throne of the 
 house of Israel; neither shall the Priests the 
 Levites want a man before me to ofEer bumt- 
 olTerings, and to kindle meat-oSerings, and to 
 do sacrifice continually,' xxxiii.17,18 ; 
 
 ' Thus saith Jehovah, If ye can break my 
 covenant of the day, and that there should 
 not be day and night in their season, then 
 
THE BLESSING OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXIII.8-12: 
 
 may also my covenaiit be broken with David 
 my servant, that he shotdd not have a son to 
 reign upon his throne, and with the Levites the 
 Priests, my ministers. As the host of heaven 
 cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the 
 sea measured, so will I multiply the seed of 
 David my servant and the LemUs that minister 
 unto me/ xxxiii.20-22. 
 
 827. D.xxxiii.l2. 
 
 ' 0/ Benjamin he said. 
 
 The beloved of Jehovah shall dwell securelv (tv 
 aim, B.T.) ; 
 
 He shall cover him at all timeSf and dwell be- 
 tween his shoulders,* 
 
 Knobel notices the peculiar order 
 in which the tribes are here mentioned, 
 differing from any other in which they 
 are found in the Bible; and he ex- 
 plains this fact by supposing that the 
 writer meant to notice them in a kind 
 of 'geographical order from South to 
 NorSi.' But it win be seen at once 
 that this account of the matter is not 
 at all satisfactory ; since, even if we 
 suppose that Levi, being so closely con- 
 nected with Jerusalem, might properly 
 be placed between Judah and Ben- 
 jamin, yet Grad lay on the eastern side 
 of Jordan, to the north of Eeuben, and 
 is placed between Issachar and Dan, 
 both on the western side, with which 
 it had no geographical relations. 
 
 828. Perhaps, the following explana- 
 tion of the order here observed may be 
 more satisfactory. Eeuben comes first, 
 as usual, as firstborn, and it is possible 
 also, as having been, &om his position, 
 on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, 
 less exposed to the consequences of the 
 great Assyrian invasion, than the other 
 trans-Jordanic tribes, which lay more 
 directly in the track of the invading 
 hosts. The remnant of Eeuben, there- 
 fore, in Josiah's time may really have 
 been more considerable than those of 
 Gad and Eastern Manasseh. Then 
 come Judah, Levi, Benjamin, the only 
 substantial tribes remaining in Josiah's 
 time, Simeon having disappeared (804- 
 810), and Judahforming, with Benjamin, 
 the kingdom of Judah. Hence we find 
 Jeremiah joining together repeatedly 
 'the cities of Judah, and the places 
 about Jerusalem, and the land of 
 Benjamin,' xvii,26, xxxu.44, xxxiii.l3. 
 The other tribes had all been carried 
 captive. They are named, however, 
 one after another, as they must have 
 
 255 
 
 been by one personating the part' of 
 Moses, and something is said about 
 each, corresponding, probably, in some 
 measure to their circumstances either 
 then or aforetime, as well as to those 
 which, the writer fondly hoped, to see in 
 due time revived through the Mercy of 
 God, when Judah should be ' brought 
 to his people ' again. 
 
 829. Khobel notes as follows on the 
 blessing of Benjamin, y.347 : ' 
 
 Benjamin dwells secmrely, since Jehovah, as 
 hia Protector, hangs over him, and has His 
 earthly abode between the ridges of Benjamin 
 . . . The writer points to Gibeon, where the 
 Tabernacle stood after the destruction of Nob 
 throughSaul. ThemodemZJ/iS,twofn]lhours 
 north-west from Jerusalem, with four foun- 
 tains and springs, lies on a ridge in the middle 
 of a fruitful and pleasant valley or basin , "which 
 consists of broad valleys or plains, and is sur- 
 rounded by different mountains. The length 
 of the beautiful valley is, from east to west, 
 ten English miles, the breadth five miles. The 
 word katheph, ' wing, shoulder,' in geographi- 
 cal notices, signifies not the side generally, but 
 the mountain-side, which rises to the moun- 
 tain or mountain-ridge, N.xxxiv.ll, Jo.xv.8, 
 10, xviii.l2,13,16,18,&o. The passage cannot, 
 therefore, apply to Jerusalem, since Jehovah 
 dwelt there not between mountain-ridges, but 
 on Moriah, So , too, it does not suit Jerusalem , 
 if we take katheph in the sense of ' side,' and 
 understand the notice of the territory of Ben- 
 jamin, generally. For Jerusalem lay on the 
 south side of this tribal territory, and not in 
 the midst of Benjamin. The phrase, ' be- 
 tween the shoulders,' occurs also lS.xvii.6. 
 The suspended javelin hung down from the 
 right shoulder to the left hip, and so between 
 the shoulders. 
 
 830. There is, however, no good 
 reason to believe that the ' Tabernacle ' 
 ever was transferred from Nob to 
 Gibeon, as £Inobeii, and many other 
 eminent vpriters suppose. It is true the 
 Chronicler states that it was at Gibeon 
 in the time of David and Solomon, 
 lOh.rvi.37-40,xxi.29, 2Ch.i.3-6: e.g.— 
 
 'David left there, before the Ark of the 
 covenant of Jehovah in Jerusalem, Asaph and 
 his brethren to minister before the Ark con- 
 tinually, as every day's work required, and 
 Zadok the Priest and his brethren the Priests, 
 before the Tabernacle of Jehovah, in the high 
 place that was at Gibeon, to offer burnt-offer- 
 ings unto Jehovah upon the Altar of the burnt- 
 offering continually, morning and evening, and 
 to do according to all that is written in the 
 Law of Jehovah, which he commanded Israel.^ 
 lCh.xvi,37-40. 
 
 831. But the more authentic history, 
 in the books of Samuel and Kings, says 
 nothing whatever of the Tabernacle 
 being at Gibeon, which is the more 
 
THE BLESSING OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXIII.8-12. 
 
 256 
 
 remarkable, since in the latter it is 
 recorded that — 
 
 • Solomon went to G-ibeon to sacrifice therej 
 for that was the great high-place ; a thousand 
 bumt-offerings did Solomon offer upon that 
 altar.' lK.iii.4. 
 
 The writer would surely have men- 
 tioned the existence of the Mosaic 
 Tabernacle and the Brazen Altar of 
 Bezaleel at Gibeon at this time, as 
 soije reason for Solomon's sacrificing 
 there, if he knew that they were there, — 
 more especially as in the previous verse, 
 V.3, he blames Solomon for ' sacrificing 
 and burning incense in high places.' 
 
 832. "We might ask, again, which, in 
 the opinion of the Chronicler, was the 
 place which 'Jehovah had chosen to 
 put his Name in,'— Gibeon, with its 
 Tabernacle and Brazen Altar, where 
 'Zadok and the Priests' attended, but 
 where the Ark was not, — or Mount 
 Zion, where the Ark and Mercy-Seat 
 were placed, and where ' God dwelt 
 between the cherubiras,' though only 
 the Levites, ' Asaph and his brethren,' 
 were stationed to 'minister before it 
 continually ' ? Under such circum- 
 stances, the people would have paid a 
 very divided allegiance. And it is 
 difficult to understand how Solomon 
 could sacrifice before the Ark at Jeru- 
 salem, lK.iii.15, when neither the 
 Priests were there, nor the Brazen 
 Altar, upon which alone it was lawful 
 for him to sacrifice, according to the 
 Law laid down in L.xvii.8,9, — 
 
 Whatsoever man there be of the house of 
 Israel, or of the strangers which sojourn 
 among you, that ofCereth a burnt-offering or 
 a sacrifice, and bringeth it not unto the door of 
 the Tabernacle of the Congregation, to offer it 
 unto Jehovah, even that man shall be cut off 
 from among his people. 
 
 Hence, in Jo.xxii.29, the trans-Jor- 
 danie tribes are made to say — 
 
 ' Q-od forbid that we should rebel against 
 Jehovah, and turn this day from following 
 Jehovah, to build an altar for burnt-offer- 
 ings, for meat-offerings, or for sacrifices, be- 
 side the Altar of Jehovah our God, that is 
 before Mis Tabernacle.' 
 
 833. Further, if the Tabernacle was 
 ever moved from Shiloh to Nob, and from 
 Nob to Gibeon, how is it that we have 
 no account of such removal, either in 
 the books of Samuel or of Chronicles ? 
 It was just as great an act of sacrilege, 
 according to the Pentateuch, to touch 
 
 the Tabernacle with profane hands, as 
 to touch the Ark itself. 
 
 ' When the Tabernacle setteth forward, the 
 Levites shall take it down ; and when the Ta- 
 bernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set 
 it up ; and Gie stranger thai cometh nigh shall 
 be put to deaih,' K.i.51. 
 
 Since, therefore, the Tabernacle was 
 so much more cumbrous than the Ark, 
 much greater preparations must have 
 been made for moving it than for 
 merely taking up the Ark ; and, surely, 
 some notice would have been teken in 
 the history of so remarkable an event. 
 
 834. Above all, how was it that the 
 Ark, when brought back from the 
 Philistines, was not restored to the 
 ' Tabernacle of Moses,' by the direc- 
 tions of Samuel, if that Tabernacle was 
 really at hand, instead of being stored 
 away for so many years in the house 
 of Abinadab, lS.vii.1,2 ? And what 
 need was there for David to have hwlt 
 a Tabernacle on Mount Zion, to hold 
 the Ark, if the ' Tabernacle of the Con- 
 gregation ' was actually in existence ? 
 Sui-ely, no tent that he could build was 
 so fitted to receive it as this grand 
 ancient Mosaic Tabernacle, so vene- 
 rable through its age, and so unspeak- 
 ably sacred from its history, — framed, 
 even as to its minutest details, as is 
 supposed, after the express instruc- 
 tions of Jehovah, according to 'the 
 pattern which Moses saw in the 
 Mount, ' E.xxv.40,xxvi. 30, — sanctified 
 by the most holy and stupendous 
 events, glorious with so many grand 
 associations, endeared by the most pre- 
 cious memories, — which had shared all 
 along the fortunes of Israel, and had 
 passed through so many most astonish- 
 ing and awful scenes in the wilder- 
 ness — at the entrance of which not only 
 Moses and Aaron had stood, but the 
 Divine Presence itself had more than 
 once been seen, when — 
 
 ' Jehovah came down in the pillar of a cloud, 
 and stood in the door of the Tabernacle, and 
 talked with them,' N.xi.25,xii.5. 
 
 835. Though so splendid, also, with 
 its costly curtains of ' fine twined linen, 
 blue, purple, and scarlet,' its cover- 
 ings of goats' hair and rams' skins, 
 its boards of shittim-wood with their 
 sockets of silver, upon which alone, as 
 we are told, E.xxxviii.27, were spent a 
 
THE BLESSINa OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXUI. 13-29. 
 
 267 
 
 hundred talents (34,0002.) of silver,— 
 yet (according to the views of Knobkl,) 
 it had been often removed, and might, 
 therefore, ■without any very serious 
 difficulty have been removed again, — 
 nay, (according to the Chronider) it 
 had certainly been once removed to 
 Gibeon, and was not worn out, and 
 unfit for further sacred uses, since 
 Zadok and the Priests were stationed 
 at it. Surely, such a, Tabernacle as 
 this would never have, been allowed 
 by tihe pious David to remain standing 
 empty of the Ark which belonged to it, 
 whether it stood at Shiloh or at Gibeon. 
 He would not have dared to substitute 
 for it one built by his own contrivance. 
 It would have been an act of sacrilege to 
 have done this. He mttst have brought 
 up such a Tabernacle to Jerusalem, as 
 the only fitting home for the Ark. 
 We may, surely, say with confidence, 
 it is certain that he would have done 
 so, had such a Tabernacle really been 
 at that time in existence. 
 
 836. "We shall have occasion to con- 
 sider more fully hereafter the history 
 of those times, and the special history 
 of the Ark and the Tabernacle. But 
 we have, as we believe, shown suffi- 
 ciently that there is no real ground for 
 supposing that the Tabernacle was at 
 Gibeon in the time of Saul. And, even 
 if it had been, the Ark was not there, 
 and that was the sign of Jehovah's 
 Presence; He would scarcely be said 
 to ' dwell ' at a place where the Ark 
 was not. From this, however, it ap- 
 pears that the very ground, on which 
 Knobel's opinion rests, is gone from 
 under him. And we fall back on the 
 explanation that he rejects, m*. that 
 the words do refer to Jerusalem, where 
 the Ark was, and where Jehovah was 
 specially said to ' eatise His Name to 
 dwelt: The word Katheph, ' shoulder,' 
 is, in fact, used for ' side' in N.xxxiv. 
 11, 'the side of the sea of Chinnereth,' 
 and so in lK.vi.8,39, 'the right side 
 of the House,' 2Ch.iv.lO, 'he set 
 the sea on the right side of the east 
 end,' 2Ch.xxiii.lO, ' from the right aide 
 of the Temple to the left side of the 
 Temple.' Possibly, the idea in the 
 writer's mind was this, that, as Jeru- 
 salem lay in the middle of the southern 
 
 boundary of Benjamin, it was thus 
 between the shoulders of the tribe, i.e. 
 between the southern ends of the 
 eastern and western sides of it — sup- 
 ported, like the head, between the 
 shoulders, as it were, and not lower 
 down upon the back. 
 
 837. It may be noticed that it is the 
 Deuteronomist alone, who speaks, as 
 here, of Jehovah ' dwelling' in Jeru- 
 salem, and that the phrase, 'to rest 
 safely,' occurs only in ■!).12,28 of this 
 chapter, and in Jer.xxiii.6,xxxiii.l6, 
 Ps.xvi.9, Pr.i.33, in the first of which 
 passages we have the whole phrase, as 
 in D.xxxiii.28, ' Israel shall dwell 
 safely.' We must not forget, alec, 
 that Jeremiah himself was one of the 
 ' Priests that were at Anathoth in the 
 land of Benjamin'; so that, when at 
 home, he lived in ' one of the gates of 
 Benjamin,' and felt, doubtless, a special 
 tenderness for the tribe, which is here 
 called the 'darling of Jehovah.' 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE BLESSING Off MOSES, 
 
 DEUT.xxxm.l 3-29. 
 
 838. D.xxxiii.13-17. 
 
 ' And of Joseph fte said, — 
 J3lessed of Jehovah be his land. 
 For treasures of heaven above [E.T. 'for thi 
 
 dew'], 
 And of the deep that Ueth heneath. 
 And for treasures brought forth by the sun. 
 And for treasures put forth by the rtwon. 
 And for the th^f things of (Ae ancient mouii- 
 
 tarns. 
 And for treasures of the lasting hills. 
 And for treasures of the earth and fulness 
 
 thereof, 
 And for the goodwill of Sim that daeU in (He 
 
 hush; 
 The blessing shall come upon the Tiead of Joseph, 
 And upon the crown of the consecrated of his 
 
 BisJirsS>om steer is his glory; 
 
 And his horns are like the horns of a buffalo 
 
 [B.V. 'unicorn'']; 
 With them he shall push the people together to 
 
 the ends of the eairth: 
 And they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, 
 And they are the thousands of Manasseh. 
 
 839. This blessing on Joseph, cer- 
 tainly presents at first sight some diffi- 
 culty, since the Ten Tribes, of which 
 Ephraim was the head, had been car- 
 ried into Captivity in the days of 
 Hezekiah, and therefore such language 
 as the above would seem altogether 
 
 8 
 
258 
 
 THE BLESSING OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXin. 13-29. 
 
 inapplicable to them in the time of 
 Josiah. But a close consideration of the 
 question will show that there is abso- 
 lutely no one time in the history of the 
 people, to which the different parts of 
 the 'Blessing' will apply. 
 
 840. MosES could not hare written 
 it ; for, if, looking down with prophetic 
 eye along the stream of time, he had 
 been moved by Divine impulse to utter 
 these intimations as to the future 
 destinies of the tribes of Israel, it is 
 impossible that he should have dis- 
 missed the iUnstrious tribe of Judah, 
 from which David and David's son, 
 the Messiah, were to spring, with a 
 few mournful words, and glorified the 
 tribes of Joseph — ^who in later days 
 were to be distinguished by rebellion, 
 idolatry, and even apostacy from the 
 worship of Jehovah — with such extra- 
 ordinary laudation as this. 
 
 841. Nor will the time of Samuel 
 suit better for all parts of the Blessing : 
 since, though Judah was not yet famous, 
 and Ephraim was very flourishing, yet 
 Levi was quite in the background, and 
 the remarkable language, which we 
 have just been considering, ».8-ll, 
 could hardly have been used with re^ 
 ference to that tribe. 
 
 Nor will the days of David answer 
 to the requirements of the case; for 
 then Judah could not have been passed 
 over so lightly, with so little distinc- 
 tion, or, rather, with a prayer expressive 
 of sadness, while the praise of Joseph 
 is loud and triumphant. 
 
 A similar consideration forbids still 
 more decidedly the supposition of its 
 having been composed in the age of 
 Solomon, when the splendour of Judah 
 was at its highest. 
 
 842. After Solomon's time, and the 
 division of the two kingdoms, the 
 question first arises, was the writer 
 one of the northern, or the southern 
 kingdom ? The glorification of Joseph 
 might be thought, at first sight, to 
 indicate the former. But, on the other 
 hand, we observe that the Levitical 
 Priesthood was confined to Jerusalem, 
 and the roll of the Tetrateuch was, no 
 doubt, kept in their charge, — that there 
 IB no trace of the hand of a writer of 
 the northern kingdom to be found in 
 
 any portion of it, — and that the men- 
 tion of Jehovah 'dwelling' between 
 the shoulders of Benjamin, — i.e. as we 
 have seen, inJerusalem, — as well as the 
 high commendation of the Levites, 
 points distinctly to a Jewish writer. 
 But what Jewish writer, during the ex- 
 istence of the separate kingdoms, would 
 have written of Judah so mildly and of 
 Joseph so warmly, as the writer of this 
 Blessing does? 
 
 843. Thus we are brought down to 
 the time after the Captivity of the Ten 
 Tribes, without finding any period, 
 which suits all the parts of the Bles- 
 sing. As far, therefore, as Joseph is 
 concerned, there is no reason why it 
 should not have been written in 
 Josiah's time, as well as any other ; 
 and this time suits best, as we have 
 seen, the words spoken aboitt the other 
 chief tribes. It is plain also that such 
 laudatory language would be more 
 likely to be used of Joseph by a pious 
 Jewish writer, whem, the northern king- 
 dom no longer existed, and when all 
 the best feelings of an Israelite would 
 go forth in tender pity and hope to- 
 wards his brethren in their time of 
 distress, than while it stiU stood forth 
 as the rival, and, by its idolatries, the 
 corruptor of Judah. 
 
 844. Compare, in this point of view, 
 the language of Jeremiah, xxxi, and 
 especially the following verses : 
 
 * At tlie same time, saith Jehovah, will I be 
 the GrOd of all the families 0/ Israel, and they 
 shall be my people,' v.l. 
 
 'Again I will bnUd thee, and thon shalt be 
 bnilt, O virgin of Israel ; thou shalt again be 
 adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth 
 in the dances of them that make merry,' b.4. 
 
 ' For thero shall be a day that the watchmsu 
 upon the Mouni Ephraim shall cry, Arise y9, 
 and lei us go up to Zion, unto Jehovah our God, 
 U.6. 
 
 ' Behold. I will bring them from the north 
 country, and gather them from the wastes of 
 the earth, ... a great company shall return 
 thither. They shall come with weeping, and 
 with supplications will I lead them ; I will 
 cause them to walk by the rivers of waters 
 in a straight way, wherein they shaJl not 
 stumble ; for I am a Father to Israel, and 
 Ephraim is my first-hom,* «.8,9. 
 
 * Hear the word of Jehovah, O ye nations, 
 and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He 
 thai scattered Israel, will gather him, and keep 
 him, as a shepherd doth his flock. Por Jeho- 
 vah hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him 
 from the hand of him that was- stronger than 
 he. Therefore they shall come and sing In tli9 
 height of Zion, &c.' e.lO-lZ. 
 
THE BLESSING OP MOSES, DEUT.XXXlII.13-29. 
 
 And, from beginning to end, the 
 whole chapter sets forth these delight- 
 ful prophetic anticipations of the 
 future reunion of Israel and Judah, 
 and their happy estate in those blessed 
 days which were coming, when chas- 
 tisement should have done its work 
 effectually, ?).18, and the gracious pro- 
 mise should be fulfilled, v.SS, — 
 
 ' I will be their God, and they shall be my 
 people.' 
 
 845. In short., the most reasonable 
 explanation of the matter seems to us 
 to be, that the Deuteronomist has here 
 expressed confidently a prophetic hope 
 for the future prosperity and glory of 
 Joseph, as he has for the reunion of 
 all the tribes under the sway of Judah, 
 for the continuance of a pious and 
 faithful Priesthood in the tribe of Levi, 
 andfor the permanent resting of Jehovah 
 ' between the shoulders ' of Benjamin. 
 He views the whole people reunited 
 once more; and thus, after briefly 
 touching upon each of the other tribes, 
 with a few words suggested by their 
 situation, character, or past or present 
 circumstances, he closes the address 
 by imagining all Israel compacted again 
 into one great nation, rejoicing once 
 more in the favour and blessing of 
 Jehovah, i;.26-29 :— 
 
 There is none like unto the God of Jeshumn, 
 
 "Who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, 
 
 And in His excellency on the sky. 
 
 The Eternal God is thy refuge, 
 
 And underneath are the Everlasting Arms ; 
 
 And He shall thrust out the enemy from 
 
 before thee, 
 And shall say, Destroy them. 
 Israel then shall dwell in safety alone ; 
 The fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of 
 
 com and wine ; 
 Also his heavens shall drop down dew. 
 Happy art thou, Israel I 
 ■Who is like unto thee, people saved by 
 
 Jehovah, 
 The shield of thy help, and Who is the sword 
 
 of thy excellency I 
 And thine enemies shalldissemble (useglozing 
 
 speeches) unto thee. 
 And thou shalt tread upon their high places. 
 
 846. This view of the blessing on 
 Joseph will be found confirmed, when 
 we examine the language of it, which, 
 excepts. 17, is in many places a literal 
 transcript of the words addressed to 
 Joseph in Jacob's Blessing, G.xlix.22- 
 26, and respects only, as the reader 
 will perceive, the land of Joseph, whose 
 
 269 
 
 extreme fertility is well known, and 
 whose qualities were not affected by 
 the captivity of its inhabitants. The 
 chief of these correspondences are given 
 below : — 
 
 G.XIJX. 
 B.25, Blessings cf the heavens above. 
 
 Blessings of the deep that lieth beneaik^ 
 V.26, To the desire of the everlasting hills : 
 They shall be upon the head of Joseph, 
 And on the cromi of the consecrated of his 
 brethren, 
 
 D.xxxm. 
 V.13, From treasures of the heavens above. 
 And from the de^ that lieth beneath. 
 V.15, And from treasures of the everlasting hills. 
 V.16, It shall come upon the head of Joseph, 
 And on the crown of the consecrated of his 
 brethren, 
 
 847. It is plain that the writer had 
 before him the ' Blessing of Jacob " 
 And, though he has not used its expres- 
 sions in dealing with Beuben, Judah, 
 Levi, or Benjamin, the tribes which 
 were still in existence, and of which 
 he could speak in accordance with their 
 present circumstances, yet, when he 
 comes to the captive Joseph, as if at a 
 loss almost what to say, he refers to 
 the older document, and adapts its very 
 words with slight changes and amplifi- 
 cations. But, as before observed, the 
 greater portion of the blessing refers 
 entirely to the fertility of the land, 
 including 'the goodness of Him that 
 dwelt in the bush,' by which, probably, 
 allusion is made to the expressions in 
 E.iii.8, ' a good land and a large, a land 
 flowing with milk and honey.' Joseph 
 is spoken of here, and in G.xlix.26, as 
 ' consecrated by his brethren,' because 
 the tribe of Epbraim was recognised as 
 the leader of the Northern tribes, (as 
 Judah was of the Southern,) from a 
 very early age down to the time of the 
 Captivity. 
 
 848. Intl. 17 is described the strength 
 of this populous tribe, which, when 
 restored to its pristine vigour, as the 
 Prophet hoped, would push the nations 
 with its horns, like a Eeem or buffalo, 
 as once it did of old in the days of 
 David. Then should the son of David 
 reign triumphantly once more in the 
 place ' which Jehovah had chosen to 
 set His Name there,' and Ephraim be 
 the 'strength of his head,' and Judah 
 his 'Lawgiver.' Joseph's 'firstborn 
 steer' is Ephiaim, whom Jacob 'set 
 
 s2 
 
THE BLESSING OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXIII.13-29. 
 
 260 
 
 before Manasseh,' his elder brother, 
 G.xlviii.20, and whose tribe was in 
 later times by far the strongest, in 
 agreement with the words of the text, — 
 
 *And they are the ten thousands of Ephralm, 
 And they are the thousands of Manasseh,' — 
 
 though not in accordance with the state- 
 ments of the second ' muster ' of the 
 people at the end of their wanderings, 
 according to which the number of 
 Manasseh was 62,700, N.xxvi.34, and 
 that of Ephraim only S2,600, «.37 ; 
 and yet the story represents Moses as 
 making this muster only just before he 
 uttered the Song. 
 
 849. There is nothing very remark- 
 able in the other blessings, which, as 
 has been said, seem to be uttered, be- 
 cause something must be said of each 
 tribe, (by one who had undertaken to 
 place a blessing in the mouth of Moses, 
 like that ascribed to Jacob,) with some 
 kind of reference to their past or present 
 circumstances, and with the hope that, 
 though now only a remnant of each 
 tribe occupied the seat of its forefathers, 
 yet, in God's own time, the tribe would 
 be restored to its old locality, and 
 flourish abundantly again, and the 
 Blessing be fulfilled. In almost every 
 ease there is a reference to the language 
 used in the Blessing of Jacob, G.xlix, 
 as if the Seuteronomist was at a loss 
 for other words, in which to speak of 
 these tribes now carried into captivity. 
 
 860. We add some remarks on each : 
 
 * R^oice, Zebulun, in thy going outy 
 And, ISSAOHAE, in thy tents,' vM. 
 
 The relations of both tribes shall be 
 joyful and prosperous, the one 'going 
 oiit,' i.e. carrying on a brisk and pleasant 
 commerce, e.g. with the Phoenicians, — 
 (comp. G.xlix.13, 'Zebulun shall dwell 
 at the haven of the sea, and he shall be 
 for in haven of ships, and his border 
 shall be unto Zidon,') — and the other 
 remaining at home, and practising 
 comfortably agriculture and cattle- 
 breeding in theproductive land where it 
 dwells, — (comp. G.xlix.14,15, 'Issachar 
 is a strong ass, couching down between 
 two burdens ; and he saw that rest was 
 good, and the land that it was plea- 
 sant '). 
 
 851. ' Then shall call the people unto the Moun- 
 
 tain ,- 
 Thus shall they offer sacrifices ^frighteoui- 
 
 ness,' V.19. 
 According to our view, the ' Moun- 
 tain ' here is the holy ' Mount Zion | at 
 Jerusalem, to which, as the writer 
 hoped, and as the Deuterononiist en- 
 joined, all the tribes would in future 
 days go willingly up in great numbers ; 
 though, of course, it was never sup- 
 posed that the command for 'every 
 male' to go up thrice a. year would 
 be literally obeyed. Comp. Jer.xxvi.l8, 
 ' the Mountain of the Houjse,' and es- 
 pecially, Jer.xxxi.23, 'Thus saith Je- 
 hovah of hosts, the God of Israel, As 
 yet they shall use this speech, in the 
 land of Judah and in the cities thereof, 
 when I shall bring again their (i.e. 
 Ephraim's) captivity, Jehovah bless 
 thee, Habitation of justice, Moun- 
 tain of holiness ! ' 
 
 852. ' For they shall suck the affluence qf the 
 
 sea. 
 And &ie hidden treasures of the sand,' 
 
 They shall draw profit from the sea, 
 have gain which the sea brings to them, 
 e.g. through commerce generally, and 
 the special trade in fish, purple-shells, 
 and sponges, which is still carried on. 
 By 'treasures of the sand ' the writer 
 seems to mean ' glass, ' which by the 
 ancients was considered as something 
 costly, (Job.xxviii.l7, ' The gold and 
 the crystal cannot equal it,') and which 
 has been found by the river Belus, a 
 little south of Akko. Between Akko 
 and Tyre, also, the coast yielded a 
 glassy sand, which, however, was first 
 melted in Sidon. In Tyre there are 
 still remains of a glass-melting-house 
 of ancient times. 
 
 853. ' Blessed he He that enlargeth Gad .' 
 
 As a lion he coucheth, and teareth arm, 
 yea, and croum,' v,20. 
 Blessed be Jehovah, who gives this 
 tribe a spacious territory, and lets him 
 extend himself far and wide, (G.xlix.l9, 
 ' Gad, a troop shall overcome him ; but 
 he shall overcome at the last '). Just 
 in the same way ' Blessing ' is ascribed 
 to the God of Shem in G.ix.26, where 
 Shem's prosperity is to be brought for- 
 ward. Gad is like a lion, which has 
 made a prey, and, couching in peace- 
 ful security, tears it asunder and de- 
 vours it 
 
THE BLESSING OF MOSES, DEUT.XXXIII.13-29. 
 
 261 
 
 854. 'Ajtd he saw the firstfruUa [e.y. of the 
 
 Congiiesfi for Mmsey,' ».21. 
 He ' saw for himself,' i.e. he chose.'pro- 
 vided,' for himself, (as in G.xxii.8,) 
 the firstfruits of the conquest as a 
 possession. This was the kingdom of 
 Sihon; Gad had the northern half of 
 it, and in the southern also he had 
 cities, N.xxxii.34. The Gadites seem, 
 at the Conquest of the trans-Jordanic 
 lands, to have been specially forward. 
 For they appear, N.xxxii.2,6,25,29,31, 
 33, at the head of the 2| tribes, who 
 obtained that district, and they re- 
 built cities not only in their own, but 
 in the Eeubenite territory, while the 
 Eeubenites confined themselves to their 
 own land, N.xxxii.34:-36. 
 
 855. ' I'or there was the porticm of the leader 
 
 And he came as head of the people: 
 Me did the righteousness of Jeluyvah, 
 And His judgments with Israel.* 
 Upon the above passage Knobel 
 observes as follows : 
 
 The firstfruits of the Hebrew Conquest be- 
 longed to the * leader' ; and, since Gad showed 
 at the head of the tribes a special activity and 
 bravery, he therefore laid claim to that land, 
 which, however, was only as good as something 
 * laid up ' for him, since the regular possession 
 could only begin after the fulfilment of the con- 
 dition laid down by Moses, N.xzxii.l9. 
 
 At the bead of the people, as foreman, 
 fighting in advance, G-ad marched with them 
 into Canaan, D.iii. 18, N. xxxti. 17, 20-22, 
 Jo.i.l4,iv.l2, and fulfilled what Jehovah had 
 commanded as becoming and right, as a duty 
 towards Israel. 
 
 The above explanation is not al- 
 together satisfactory. But it is diffi- 
 cult, knowing so little as we do of the 
 special history of the diflFerent tribes, 
 to offer a better. This difficulty, how- 
 ever, is not at aU removed by assigning 
 the composition of the Song to Moses. 
 
 856. * D^N is a young lion. 
 
 Thai springs forfft from Bashan (Enob. 
 ffieplain),' v.22. 
 Dan seizes where one least expects 
 him, falls upon the prey unawares, and 
 grasps it. There may be a reference to 
 the capture of Laish, Jo,xix,47,Jn,xviii, 
 27 ; so G,xlix.l7, 'Dan shall be a serpent 
 by the way, an adder in the path, that 
 biteth the horse-heels, so that his rider 
 shall fall backward,' 'Shenir' and 
 ' Hermon ' were in the district of Ba- 
 shan, and we read, Sol,Songiv,8, 'From 
 the top of Shenir and Hermon, from 
 the lions' dens, from the mountains of 
 the leopards.' Zechariah also seems 
 
 to connect the ' oaks of Bashan,' xi.2, 
 with the ' roaring of the yoang lions ' 
 on the banks of the Jordan, B.3. 
 857. * Naphtali, ie fat with favour. 
 
 And full with the Messing of Jehovah! 
 
 Thesea (B.V, west) and the south do thou 
 
 * Blessed with children be Asher I 
 
 May ?te be a source of pleasure to his 
 
 brethren. 
 And dipping his foot in oil 1 * v,24. 
 
 * May thy bars [E,V. ' shoes ' ] 6e iron and 
 
 brass. 
 And as thy days thy rest {r^ose, secu- 
 rity) I ' tj,25. 
 Knobel, instead of ' bars ' in the above, 
 reads ' castles, forts,' and writes : — 
 
 ' The Asherites lived as far as Lebanon, 
 where mluing was practised, and where they 
 seem to have obtained metals, of which they 
 may have made much use in strengthening 
 their towns. And, in fact, they needed this in 
 the midst of hostile people.' 
 
 868, In the concluding verses, ■w.26- 
 29, the greatness and gloiy of Je- 
 hovah are set forth, and the happy 
 estate of Israel, under His protection 
 and blessing, is described in glowing 
 terms : — 
 
 ' There is none like unto the God of Jeshumn , 
 &c,,' 
 ' Israel then shall dwell securely, &c.,' 
 ' Happy art thou, Israel I who is like unto 
 thee?' 
 * O people saved by Jehovah! &c.' — 
 The following passages may be com- 
 pared from the Prophet Jeremiah: 
 ' There is none like unto Thee, Jehovah : 
 Thou art great, and Thy Name is great in 
 
 might. 
 Who would not fear Thee, King of na- 
 tions? 
 For to Thee doth it appertain : _ 
 Forasmuch as among all the wise of the na- 
 tions, and in all their kingdoms. 
 There is none like unto Thee.' x,e,7, 
 ' In his days Judah shall be saved. 
 And Israel shall dwell securely,' xxiii,6,xxxiii, 
 16. 
 
 859. Ktortz, iii.492, remarks on 
 D.xxxiii as follows : 
 
 We cannot fail to be struck with the fact, 
 that the ' Blessing of Moses ' does not con- 
 tain the slightest trace of any special Messianic 
 allusion, whereas they are so very prominent 
 in that of Jacob, and, since his time, the 
 Messianic expectations had been so greatly 
 enlarged by the prophecy of the • Star out of 
 Jacob' and the 'Prophet like unto Moses.' 
 But this may, perhaps, account sufficiently 
 for the omission here. Since the time of 
 Jacob, the Messianic expectation had ad- 
 vanced so far, that it had assumed the form 
 of a belief in one single personal Messiah. 
 But from which of the families or tribes the 
 personal Messiah would spring was not y&t 
 known. The prophecy of Balaam, like that 
 of Moses, had simply intimated that he would 
 
262 
 
 DEUT.XXXIV.1-12. 
 
 spring out of the midst of Israel, and from 
 the posterity of Jacob. It is true that eTcn 
 in G-.xlix the tribe of Judah is distinguished 
 above all the rest, as the one to which be- 
 longed the supremacy among the tribes. But 
 there was something too indefinite in the de- - 
 scription for the belief to take root in Israel, 
 that from this particular tribe a personal 
 Messiah would spring. This did not take 
 place until the time of David. It might 
 even be said that the distinction, conferred 
 by * Jacob's Blessing ' upon the tribe of 
 Judah, had fallen since then into the shade ; 
 for neither Moses, nor Aaron, nor Joshua, be- 
 longed to th^ tribe. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 DEUT.XXXIV.1-12. 
 
 *860. D.xx3dv.l-3. 
 
 'And Moses went up from the plains of 
 Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top 
 of Fisgah, that is over against Jericho ; and 
 Jehovah ^owed him all the land of G-ilead 
 unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of 
 Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of 
 Judah, unto the utmost sea, and the south, 
 and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the 
 city of pabn-trees, unto Zoar.' 
 
 Here we have signs of a later writer 
 in the mention of * Ban ' (243), and 
 ' all Naphtali, and the land ofEphraimj 
 and Manassekj and all the land of 
 Judah^ — ^where the different terms are 
 used as well known, though the land 
 was not yet divided. So we have ' unto 
 this day,' v.6. 
 
 Scott observes : — 
 
 The last chapter closed the words and 
 writings of Moses, and this chapter must 
 have been added by another hand ; but it is 
 uncertain whether by Joshua, or by Samuel, 
 or by some other Prophet. Some, indeed, 
 maintfdn that Moses himself wrote it by the 
 spirit of prophecy; this, however, is not at 
 all probable. But, by whomsoever it was 
 written, the information must have been 
 originally communicated by immediate reve- 
 lation. Perhaps, the three last verses were 
 added by Ezra ; but all the subsequent booliB 
 of Scripture assume as imdoubted facts the 
 things recorded in it. 
 
 861. These verses, -u.l-S, are plainly 
 part of the older -document, in con- 
 tinuation of xxxii.52 ; and we have 
 here the expression ' plains of Moab,' 
 which is used exclusively by the older 
 writer (523.xi), as also 'landof Gilead,' 
 N.xxxii.1,29, In ^j.I, however, we have 
 the phrase * over against Jericho, * 
 which occurs also in the Deuterono- 
 mistic interpolation in xxxii.49, where- 
 as the older writer, whenever he in- 
 troduces a similar reference to Jericho, 
 employs invariably the form, *on the 
 
 other side Jordan (near) Jericho,^ op 
 *by Jordan (near) Jeridio,' — ^in each 
 case, the word * Jericho ' being used 
 without any governing words, N.xxi.l, 
 xxvi. 3, 63, xxxi. 12, xxxiii. 48, 50, xxxiv. 
 1 d,xxxv. l,xxxvi. 1 3. This suggests that 
 the whole defining clause, ' the top of 
 Pisgah that is over against Jericho,* is 
 an insertion by the Deuteronomist. 
 
 862. D.xxxiv.4-7. 
 
 * And Jehovah said imto him. This is the 
 land which I sware unto Abraham, unto 
 Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it 
 unto thy. seed ; I have caused thee to see it 
 with thine eyes,, but thou shalt not go over 
 thither. So Moses, the servant of Jehovah, 
 died there, in the land of Moab, according 
 to the word of Jehovah. And He buri^ 
 him in a valley in the land of Moab, over 
 against Bethpeor ; but no man knoweth of 
 his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was 
 an hundred and twenty years old, when he 
 died; his eye was not dim, nor his natural 
 force abated.' 
 
 This passage, again, belongs partly 
 to the older document, though some 
 part also is from the hand of the Deu- 
 teronomist, as is shown by the expres- 
 sion, v.5,6, 'land of Moab,' (525.i). 
 Probably vA is his entirely, and the 
 two insertions 'land of Moab' in u5,6, 
 and the rest belongs to the older docu- 
 ment (783). 
 
 863. D.xxxiv.8,9. 
 
 * And the children of Israel wept for Moses 
 in the plains of Moab thirty days : so the 
 days of weeping and moiuning for Moses 
 were ended. And Joshua, the son of Nun, 
 was full of the spirit of wisdom : for Moses 
 had laid his hands upon bim ; and the chil- 
 dren of Israel hearkened unto him, and did 
 as Jehovah commanded Moses.* 
 
 We have here the older writer, as 
 appears by the expression, uS, 'plains 
 of Moab,' (523.xi). Also the ' thirty 
 days ' of weeping correspond to those 
 for Aaron, N.xx.29 ; and the phrase ' as 
 Jehovah commanded Moses,' v.9, is 
 constantly recurring in Exodus, Le- 
 viticus, and Numbers. 
 
 864. D.xxxiv. 10-12. 
 
 •And there arose not a Prophet since in 
 Israel like imto Mosra, whom Jehovah knew 
 face to face, in all the signs and the wonders, 
 which Jehovah sent him to do in the land of 
 Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, 
 and to ^ his land, and in all that mighty 
 hMid, and in all the great terror, which Moses 
 showed in the sight of all Israel/ 
 
 These words appear to belong to the 
 Deuteronomist for these reasons : — 
 (i) w.ll, ' signs and wonders,' D.iv.84,vl.22, 
 
yii.l9 xiii.1,2, iiTi.8, xxTm.46,xxix.3,xi3dv, 
 11, and also E.vii.3 ; 
 
 ^ (ii) U.12, * migUty hand/ D.iii.24,lT.34,T.]5, 
 •n.21,-vii.8,19, ix.26, xi.2, xxYi.8, ximv.12, and 
 also E.m.l9, vi.1,1, xiii.9, xxsdi.ll, N.xx.20 : 
 (iii) « terror,' iv.34,xi.25,xxvi.8, and also 
 G-.1X.2. 
 
 865. Upon the * burial' of Moses 
 xxxiv.6, KuETZ writes thus, iii.p.494 : 
 
 * Moses died there,' says the scriptural ac- 
 count, ' according to the mouth— i.e. accord- 
 ing to the -word— of Gtod.' The Eabbina 
 render this ' at the mouth of God,' and call 
 the death of Moses 'a death by a kiss.' Im- 
 mediately afterwards It Is stated that *He 
 buried him in the valley in the land of Moah.* 
 Even if it were grammatically admissible to 
 render the verb impersonally, (* they buried 
 him/ LXX,) or to take the subject &om the 
 verb itself, ' he [one] buried hiUn/ viz, * who- 
 ever did bury Imn,' the context would not 
 allow it, but would still force us to the con- 
 clusion that Jehovah is the subject. The 
 clause, * and no man knoweth of his sepul- 
 chre unto this day,' imquestionably implies 
 a peculiar mode of burial. The valley^ in 
 which Moses was buried, must have been a 
 depr^sioD. at the top of the mountains of 
 Fisgah. 
 
 ^om the time of the Fathers, the answer 
 given to the question, • Why should Jehovah 
 Himself have buried Moses ? ' has almost in- 
 variably been this, to prevent a superstitious 
 or idolatrous veneration of his sepulchre or 
 his remains. But, notwithstanding all the 
 pious feelings of the nation, and their vene- 
 ration of the greatest of all the Prophets of 
 the O.T., such a result as this was certainly 
 not to be apprehended at the time in ques- 
 tion. The notions which prevailed, with re- 
 ference to the defiling influence of graves and 
 of the bodies of the dead, — notions which the 
 Law had certainly only adopted, sanctioned, 
 and regulated, and had not been the first 
 to introduce, — were sufficiently powerful to 
 guard against any such danger as this. 
 Abraham's sepulclure was known to every- 
 body. But it never entered the mind of any 
 Israelite under the O.T. to pay idolatrous or 
 even superstitious veneration to it, however 
 nearly the reverence of later Jews for the 
 person of Abraham might border upon super- 
 stition and idolatry. The remains of Jacob 
 and Joseph were carried to Palestine, and 
 buried there. But we cannot find the 
 Blightrat ground for supposing that they 
 were the objecis of supeirstitious adoration. 
 
 866. Ktjbtz then attempts to account 
 for this strange hurial. 
 
 If Moses, therefore, was buried by Jehovah 
 Himself, the reason must certainly have been, 
 that such a burial was intended tot him, 
 as no one else could possibly have given. 
 That there was something very peculiar in 
 the burial of Moses, is sufficiently evident 
 from the passage before us. And this is con- 
 firmed in a very remarkable manner by the 
 N.T. history of the Transfiguration, where 
 Moses and Blias appeared with the Eedeemer. 
 We may see here very clearly that the O.T. 
 account may justly be understood, as imply- 
 
 DEUT.XXXIV.1-12. 
 
 263 
 
 ing that the design of the burial of Moses 
 by the hand of Jehovah was to place ht m in 
 the same category with Enoch and Elijah, to 
 deliver him from going down into the grave 
 like the rest of Adam's children, and to pre- 
 pare for him a condition, both of body and 
 soul, resembling that of those two men of 
 God. It is true that Moses was not saved 
 from death itself in the same manner as 
 Enoch and Elijah ; be really died, and his 
 body was really buried ; th^ is expressly stated 
 in the Biblical history. But we may assume 
 with the greatest probability, that, lUce them, 
 he was saved from corruption. Men bury the 
 corpse that it may see corruption. If Jehovah, 
 therefore, would not suffer the body of Moses 
 to be buried by men, it is but natural to seek 
 for the reason of this in the fact, that He did 
 not intend to leave him to corruption, but at 
 the very time of his burial communicated 
 some virtue by His own hand, which saved 
 the body from corruption, and prepared for 
 the Patriarch a transition into the same state 
 of existence, into which Enoch and Elijah 
 were admitted without either death or burial. 
 The state of existence in the life beyond, into 
 which Moses was introduced by the hand of 
 Jehovah, was, probably, essentially the same 
 as that into which Enoch was taken, when he 
 was translated, and Elijah, when he was car- 
 ried up to heaven, though the way was not to 
 be the same. "What the way may have been 
 we can neither describe nor imagine. We are 
 altogether in ignorance as to what the state 
 itself was. The most that we can do is to 
 form some conjecture of what it was not. 
 For example, it was not one of absolute glori- 
 fication and perfection, of which Christ alone 
 could be the firstfruits, lCor.xv.20,23 ; nor 
 was it the dim ' sheol ' life, into which all 
 the other children of Adam passed. It was 
 something between the two — a state as incon- 
 ceivable as it had been hitherto unseen, 
 
 867. Kurtz goes on to say that he 
 considers his view to be supported by 
 the mention in Jude, v.9, of a conflict 
 and dispute between the Archangel 
 Michael and the Devil respecting the 
 body of Moses. Ci^m. Alex. Obigen, 
 and DiDTMUS, he says, speak of an 
 apocryphal book entiued the 'Ascen- 
 sion or Assumption of Moses,' from 
 which Jude took this story. But this 
 he cannot allow: the author of that 
 book and of Jude most probably drew 
 &OUI the same source — tradition, — and 
 independently of each other. In short, 
 he considers the Epistle of Jude to be 
 ' canonical and written under the guid- 
 ance of the Holy Spirit,' and that ' the 
 adoption and use of this tradition in a 
 canonical epistle gives it all the sanc- 
 tion of apostolical authority,' which 
 means, in other words, that it is * ac- 
 credited by the Spirit of God.' When, 
 therefore, it is said that He, Jehovah^ 
 
264 
 
 DEUT.XXXrV.1-12. 
 
 'buried him,' Kurtz understands it to 
 mean that the ' Angel of Jehovah,' who 
 was Jehovah's personal representative 
 in all transactions with Israel in the 
 wilderness, did so, and this 'Angel of 
 Jehovah ' he regards as identical with 
 Michael the Archangel, and not with 
 the Logos, as Henqstenberg does. In 
 conclusion he adds — 
 
 The death of Moses was not like the death 
 of the first Adam, which issued in corruption, 
 nor was it like that of the second Adam, which 
 was followed by a resurrection. Itwasrather 
 somethingintermediate between the two forms 
 of death, just as Moses himself occupied an in- 
 termediatJB position between the first and the 
 second Adam, — between the head of sinful 
 dying humanity, and the Head of humanity 
 redeemed from sin. 
 
 868. We might embrace Kurtz's view 
 in this quotation, if there was any 
 ground for believing that this narrative 
 contains an historically true account of 
 the death and burial of Moses. But 
 the above notes of Kurtz show to what 
 extremities an honest mind must be 
 driven in the attempt to recognise such 
 a statement as infallibly true, and to 
 realise it, as in that case we should be 
 bound to do, in its details and conse- 
 quences. There is no greater intel- 
 lectual cowardice than to shrink from 
 contemplating the results to which any 
 tenet fairly leads, and so to profess a 
 loose general belief, which we shrink 
 from analysing in particulars. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 BESULTS OP THE EXAMDIATION OF 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 869. We have now completed the 
 review of this Book, and, even if we 
 had not previously proved the fact 
 upon other grounds, the phenomena 
 which we have here observed, — the con- 
 tradictions, variations, and numerous 
 indications of a more advanced state of 
 civil and religious development,— would 
 be sufficient to satisfy us that it must 
 have been written in a different age 
 from thatin which the other four Books, 
 generally, of the Pentateuch were writ- 
 ten, and in a much later day. 
 
 870. If we now proceed to sum up 
 the 'signs of time,' which we have ob- 
 eerved in the course of our examina- 
 
 tion, we may state the conclusions to 
 which they woiJd lead us, as foEows : — 
 
 (i) Deuteronomy was written after 
 the Elohistic and .lehovistic portions of 
 the other four Books, since reference is 
 made throughout to matters of fact re- 
 lated in them, and expressly to the 
 laws about leprosy in xxiv.8. 
 
 (ii) Hence it was written after the 
 times of Samuel and David ; and this 
 is further confirmed by the fact that 
 the laws referring to the kingdom seem 
 not to have been known to Sam^^el, 
 lS.viii.6-18, nor to the later writer of 
 Samuel's doings. 
 
 (iii) The mention of the kingdom in 
 xvii.14-20, with the distinct reference 
 to the dangers likely to arise to the 
 State from the king multiplying to him- 
 self ' wives,' and ' silver and gold,' and 
 'horses,' implies that it was written 
 after the age of Solomon ; and this is 
 confirmed by the very frequent refer- 
 ences to the 'place which Jehovah would 
 choose,' that is, Jerusalem and the 
 Temple. 
 
 (iv) The recognition of the indepen- 
 dence of Edom carries down its com- 
 position to the time of their complete 
 liberation from the control of the kings 
 of Judah in the reign of Ahaz. 
 
 (v) It was written after the time of 
 Hezekiah's Eeformation, when the high 
 places were removed, which the former 
 kings of Judah, even the best of them, 
 had freely permitted. 
 
 (vi) It was written after the Cap- 
 tivity of the Ten Tribes, in the sixth 
 year of Hezekiah's reign ; since the sor- 
 rows of that event are evidently referred 
 to as matters which were weU known, 
 but which now were things of the 
 past. 
 
 (vii) It was written after the great 
 spread in Judah, in Manasseh's time, 
 of the worship of the ' Sun and Moon 
 and the Host of Heaven.' 
 
 (viii) It was written before the time 
 of Josiah's Eeformation, since the words 
 ascribed to Huldah expressly refer to 
 it; and, indeed, there can beHttle doubt 
 that this Book, whether alone or with 
 the other Books, was that found in the 
 Temple by Hilkiah, and was the direct 
 cause of that Eeformation. 
 
 (ix) Hence it can scarcely be doubted 
 
EESULTS OF THE EXAMINATION OF DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 that the Book of Deuteronomy was 
 written, either in the latter part of 
 Manasseh's reign^ or in the early part 
 of Josiah's. 
 
 871. Ewai.d,Riehm,Bleek,Ktienen, 
 and others, are of opinion that the 
 most probable supposition is that the 
 book was written in the latter part of 
 Manasseh's reign; De Wbttb, Von 
 BoHLEN, Knobel, &c. (with whom we 
 agree, for reasons which shall be pre- 
 sently stated), plaee its composition in 
 the reign of Josiah. The difference in 
 this point of detail is, of course, incon- 
 siderable, and of no importance what- 
 ever with reference to the main question, 
 whether or not this Book of Deutero- 
 nomy was written by Moses. The above 
 able critics may vary within a limit of 
 thirty or forty years in fixing the precise 
 date of its composition ; but they are all 
 agreed in assigning it to the same later 
 pejiod of Jewish history. And this, 
 indeed, may be ranked among the 
 most certain results of modern scientific 
 Biblical criticism. 
 
 872. EiEHM,^. 98-105, fizes the age 
 of the Deuteronomist, with Ewald, in 
 the latter half of Manasseh's reign, and 
 writes as follows : — 
 
 In D.a3cviii.68, among the punishments 
 threatened to the people in case of their de- 
 parting from Jehovah, this is threatened as the 
 sorest and last— that Jehovah will carry them 
 back to Egypt in ships, so that they would be 
 sold there to their enemies into shameful and 
 endless slavery. Hence it appears,^««, that, 
 in the time of the Deuteronomist, Egypt had 
 become again so strong that he might expect 
 the full dratruction of the Israelitlsh State — 
 not from the A^yrians (to whom ti.36,48-50, 
 refer,) — but from the Egyptians, and, se- 
 condly, since a removal in ships is threatened, 
 that the Egyptians were at that time already 
 powerful at sea. Lastly, it follows from the 
 parage about the king, D.xvii.l6, which for- 
 bids the king to * cause the people to return 
 to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply 
 horses,' that at that time already theEgyptian 
 kings sought and employed foreign soldiers ; 
 60 that the Israelitlsh king could only obtain 
 horses out of Egypt upon the condition that 
 he, on his part, should send Israelitish foot- 
 soldiers (comp. Is.xxivi.S), and place them at 
 the disposal of the Egyptian king. . . All 
 this suite Egypt only during the reign of 
 Psanmietichus, but does not suit the state of 
 Egypt before that reign. Certainly, we can- 
 not maintain from ancient testimony that 
 Psammetichus had a remarkable fleet. But, 
 since he besieged Ashdod for twenty-nine 
 years, (HBROD.ii.l57,) he must have brought 
 the troops which he marched thither, and 
 
 265 
 
 their supplies, not surely by the laborious 
 land-journey, but by ships ; and so it is not 
 improbable that he possessed already a rather 
 considerable navy, and that Pharaoh-Necho, 
 of whom Herodotus tells us, ii.l59, that he 
 built two fleets, only carried on in this in- 
 stance, as in others, his father's under- 
 takings. 
 
 That, however, through Psammetichus the 
 Egyptian kingdom, altogether weakened 
 through internal dissension, and, as it seemed, 
 tending to its fall, suddenly attained to new 
 power, and raised itself to such might that 
 it became very dangerous to its neighbours, 
 and even, in course of time, was destruc- 
 tive to the Jews, 2KLxxiii.29, is well known. 
 Since, however, at that time the Assyrian 
 power, after the death of Bsarhaddon II, was 
 manifestly tending more and more to its end, 
 while Babylon was not yet an independent 
 mighty kingdom, our writer might probably 
 expect the greater danger for the kingdom of 
 Judah from the rejuvenescent Egyptian power, 
 especially since the army of Psammetichus, 
 which was besieging Ashdod, was in such 
 threatening neighbourhood. That Psamme- 
 tichus sought and employed strange soldiers, 
 and particularly Arabians, we know from 
 ancient authorities. If, therefore, at any 
 time, the possibility existed of an alliance of 
 the above kind between Judaea and Egypt, it 
 existed in the time of Psammetichus. We 
 must then, with Ewald, assume that Deute- 
 ronomy was written during the reign of 
 Psammetichus, , , . in the latter Tia^f of the 
 reign of Manatselu 
 
 Who, however, was the author, it is impos- 
 sible to say. The assumption of Ewald, that 
 the author wrote in Egypt, * in the presence of 
 the unhappy people whom Manasseh had sold 
 into Egypt,' rests upon no foundation, and 
 is altogether improbable. . . . How could 
 such a writer have laid down the command 
 that all male Israelites should go up to the 
 Temple at Jerusalem three times yearly ? 
 The untenable supposition, that Deuteronomy 
 was written by Jeremiah, has already been 
 copiously refuted [?] by Konig, A. T. Studien, 
 II. Justly also has Ewald prot^ted against 
 the groundless assumption, that the discoverer 
 of the Law-Book, the High Priest HilMah, 
 had himself composed Deuteronomy, but de- 
 nied his authorship. 
 
 That the author must have been a very 
 eminent man, in a spiritual point of view, 
 is certain, and equally so that he, on one 
 side, was well acquainted with the ancient 
 legislation, and, on the other, was influenced 
 by the writings of the earUer Prophets, and 
 himsdf highly gifted with the prophetical 
 spirit. And so one might, perhaps, assume 
 that the author was a Priest, who, however, 
 was at the same time conscious of a prophetic 
 gift. More nearly to determine, Is impossible 
 without arbitrariness. That we do not know 
 so great and very remarkable a man ought 
 not to perplex us, since it is just the same 
 with us in the case of the not less remark- 
 able author of the second part of Isaiah, and 
 since analogous phenomena are not wanting 
 in the New-Testament literature, (e,g. Bp. to 
 the Hebrews). 
 
 Ans. (i) The moral difficulty remains the 
 
266 KESULTS OF THE EXAMINATION OF DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 same whether Jeremiali, or any other eminent 
 person, or * prophetical Priest,' of those days 
 wrote the Book of Deuteronomy. 
 
 (ii) It seems to ns almost incredible that 
 flo great a writer as the Deuteronomist— 
 evidently a master-mind, and a man of poli- 
 tical as well as religious activity, — should 
 have so completely disappeared from history, 
 and left no other work of a similar kind be- 
 hind him. 
 
 (iii) The case of the later Isaiah is not a 
 parallel case, since he lived in the midst of 
 the confusion and distress of the Captivity, 
 of which no historical records have come 
 down to us ; whereas the Deuteronomist lived 
 in a well-known age, of which distinct ac- 
 counts are left to us, possibly by the hand of 
 Jeremiah himself. 
 
 (iv) The Epistle to the Hebrews is still less 
 a case in, point, especially if written by St. 
 Paul, since he left many oth^ signs of his 
 activity behind him. But many eminent 
 writers lived in the time of this writer, who- 
 ever he may have been : whereas the Deute- 
 ronomist must have been almost the only 
 writer of great eminence in his own age ; and 
 we cannot but suppose that so copious an 
 author must have composed other writings, 
 and that some of these would have come down 
 to us. 
 
 (v) While admitting that the Book may 
 have been written, as far as intramal evidence 
 qhows, in the latter half of Manasseh's reign, 
 yet it seems to us moreprobable, from the same 
 internal evidence, that its author lived in a 
 yet later age, perhaps in the earlier part of 
 Josiah's time, for the following reasons : — 
 
 (a) The expressions in D.xxviii.4:9,d0, — 
 * Jehovah shall bring a nation against thee 
 from far, from the end of the eaxth, as the 
 eagle flieth, a nation whose tongue thou shalt 
 not understand, a nation of fierce coimte- 
 nance, &c.' — seem hardly to refer to the weak 
 and sickly Assyrian power, * manifestly tend- 
 ing more and more to its end,' but to the 
 young and vigorous Babylonian kingdom ; and 
 this last, as Reehm says, was not sufficiently 
 developed till towards the end of Manasseh's 
 days; 
 
 (j3) We do not know/or certain that Fsam- 
 metichus had notable fleets ; but we do know 
 this of his son Pharaoh-Necho , who was reign- 
 ing at the time when Josiah came to the 
 throne ; 
 
 (v) The Deuteronomist appears to have 
 doubted from which of these two great powere 
 the danger was most likely to come ; which 
 corresponds to the fact that ' Pharaoh-Necho, 
 king of Egypt, went up against the king of 
 Assyria (? the Babylonian power) to the river 
 Euphrates,' on which occasion Josiah also 
 went up,— apparently, to fight with the Egyp- 
 tians,— and was killed, 2K.xxiv.29, in the 
 thirty-ninth year of his life and the thirty- 
 first of his reign ; 
 
 (&) The *book of the Law* was found In 
 the eighteenth year of his reign, thirteen years 
 before ; and previously to that time Josiah 
 seems to have been on friendly terms with 
 Egypt, JCT.ii.18,36, and, perhaps, was lending 
 soldiers, and obtaining horses, in the very 
 way condemned in D.xvii.16. It is probable 
 that this very language of Deuteronomy, or 
 rather (as we suppose) the remonstrances of 
 
 the living Deuteronomist, may have produoed 
 this change of relations, which ended, how- 
 ever, fatally for the young king. 
 
 (vi) We shall consider fully in the proper 
 place the negative arguments of K5nig, as well 
 as the positive indiccUiom, however strong or 
 weak, of Jereuiah's authorship. 
 
 873. The following argument, how- 
 ever, tends strongly (in our opinion) 
 to fix the composition of Deuteronomy 
 in the early years of Josiah. 
 
 If it really was written in Manasseh's 
 time, we are then met by the following 
 difficulties. In that case, the author 
 may have placed it in the Temple in 
 Manasseh^s lifetime, without the know- 
 ledge of anyone, which of course is 
 conceivable. But then he must have 
 gone his way, leaving so valuable a fruit 
 of so m-uck oabour to the chances of the 
 future, — or, we may say, to the over- 
 ruling of Providence, — without com- 
 municating to anyone the fact of its 
 existence. And, further, he must have 
 died vrithout betraying the secret, — 
 without showing any personal interest 
 in the success of his great enterprise, or 
 caring to see any result of it in his own 
 days, — ^nay, without even making any 
 provision against the possibility of the 
 Book itself being neglected, destroyed, 
 or lost, while it lay unknown and un- 
 heeded in the Temple, during the latter 
 portion of Manasseh's idolatrous reign. 
 For we take no account of the Chroni- 
 cler's story of Manasseh's repentance, 
 2Ch.xxxiii.l8,19, of which the Book of 
 Kings says nothing. 
 
 874. Or, if the writer himself sur- 
 vived the reign of Manasseh, and the 
 short reign of Amon, and so was living 
 in the early years of Josiah, — or if any 
 one was then living to whom the writer, 
 before his death, had communicated his 
 secret, — it seems yery difficult to ac- 
 count for the long and total silence 
 with respect to the existence of this 
 Book, which was maintained during 
 seventeen years of Josiah's reign, when 
 the king*s docile piety and youth would. 
 have encouraged the production of such 
 a Book, if it really existed, and there 
 was such imperative necessity for that 
 Reformation to be begun as soon as 
 possible, with a view to which the Book 
 itself was written. 
 
 875. Thus it seems to us, on the 
 
CONCLUDING EEMAEKS, 
 above grounds only, mosi reasonable to 
 suppose that the book was in process of 
 composition during these first seventeen 
 years of Josiah's reign. The youth of 
 the prince — his piety— his willingness 
 to follow the teaching of the Prophets 
 around him — gave every encourage- 
 ment for such an attempt being made 
 to bring about the great change that 
 was needed. Possibly some years of 
 Josiah's reign had passed before the 
 work was begun, though we can scarcely 
 doubt that it must have taken some 
 time for its completion. Still two or three 
 years, at most, might suffice for this. 
 And during that interval, however short 
 or long, we may conceive insertions to 
 have been made from time to time, as 
 firesh ideas occurred to the writer; and 
 thus we may account, in some measure, 
 for the numerous repetitions of the 
 same sentiment, by which the book is 
 characterised. 
 
 S76. But who was the writer? As 
 Knobel observes — 
 
 The author seems to have heen an eminent 
 man, who took upon himfelf to make so &ee 
 with the Law-Book. 
 
 Independently of this ' 'free handling' 
 of the earlier records, the man who 
 could conceive, and cany out so effec- 
 tively, the idea of adding another book 
 to the existing Tetrateuch, must have 
 been, indeed, a remarkable person. A 
 writer of such originality, power, and 
 eloquence, — of such earnest piety, such 
 ardent patriotism, such tender human 
 affections, — ^must have surely filled a 
 very prominent position in the age in 
 which he lived. As we have said, he 
 can hardly have disappeared so com- 
 pletely from the stage of Jewish history, 
 in an age when historical records were 
 diligently kept, without leaving behind 
 any other trace of his existence and 
 activity than this Book of Deuteronomy. 
 That Jeremiah lived in this very age 
 we know, and that he began to pro- 
 phesy ' in the thirteenth year of king 
 Josiah,' Jer.i.2, four or five years before 
 this Book was found in the Temple. 
 And we have also seen, as our investiga- 
 tions have advanced, not a few very 
 striking indications of a close resem- 
 blance between the language of Jere- 
 miah and that of the Deuteronomist. 
 
 May it be that the two writers are 
 identical, — that among the prophecies 
 of Jeremiah, during the first five years 
 of his labours, may be reckoned the 
 addresses, which are here delivered 
 under the name of Moses? 
 
 CHAPTER XXV, 
 
 COKCLUMNG BEMABES. 
 
 877. As the result of the preceding 
 investigations, it must, aa we think, be 
 admitted that the traditional belief, that 
 the whole Pentateuch, with a few un- 
 important exceptions, was written by 
 Moses himself, can no longer be main- 
 tained in face of the plain facts of the 
 case, as they lie before us in this 
 volume. These facts, it would seem, 
 compel us to this conclusion, that, what- 
 ever portion of the other four Books 
 may have been actually composed by 
 the hand of Moses, — ^whatever of the 
 laws and ceremonies contained in them 
 may have been handed down from the 
 Mosaic age, — ^yet certainly the Book of 
 Deuteronomy was not written by him, 
 but is the product of a much later time, 
 and bears the distinct impress of that 
 time and its circumstances. 
 
 878. And, if this be so, we cannot 
 serve God by wilfully shutting our eyeg 
 to the truth, and walking stiU in dark- 
 ness, when He is pleased to give us 
 Hght. It would be no acceptable wor- 
 sMp of Him, who is the very Truth, to 
 do so : it would be sinful and displeas- 
 ing in His Sight. ' We are bound to 
 obey the Truth, which we see and 
 know, and to foUow it whithersoever it 
 may lead us, — calm in the assurance 
 that, in so following, we are best do- 
 ing the blessed Will of our Heavenly 
 Father, that His Voice wiU. cheer and 
 strengthen us, His Hand lead on and 
 uphold us, and we shall know suffi- 
 ciently all that we need to know, for 
 this Itfe and for the life to come. Only 
 we must be ' strong and of good cou- 
 rage'; we must fear no evil, since He 
 is with us, but go straightforward at 
 His Word in the path of duty. 
 
 879. Unless, therefore, t^e evidence, 
 which has here been produced, can be 
 set aside by reasonable argument, we 
 must accept it henceforth, as a matter 
 
268 
 
 of fact, — wtich is now, perhaps, to 
 many made plain for the first time, 
 though long well-known to a few scho- 
 lars here in England, and to very many 
 on the Continent, — that, whatever may 
 be true of the rest of the Pentateuch, 
 the Book of Deuteronomy, at all erents, 
 was not the work of Moses. We must 
 accept this, I repeat, with all its im- 
 portant consequences. 
 
 880. And yet this Book it is, and 
 this alone, of which the authorship is 
 actually claimed for Moses. We find 
 mention made in the other Books of 
 his 'writing' on several occasions 
 e.g. — 
 
 ' And Jehovah saici unto Moses, Write tins 
 for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in 
 the ears of Joshua,' E.xvii.l4 ; 
 
 * And Moses wrote all the words of Je- 
 hovah . . . and he took the book of the 
 covenant, and read in the audience of the 
 people,' B.xxiv.4r-7 ; 
 
 ' And Jehovah said unto Moses, Write thou 
 these words : for after the tenor of these 
 words I have made a covenant with thee and 
 with Israel,' E.xxxiv.27 ; 
 
 * And Moses wrote their goings out accord- 
 ing to their journeys by the commandment of 
 Jehovah,' N.xzxiii.2. 
 
 From such passages it might be fairly 
 argued, (though it certainly is not dis- 
 tinctly stated,) that other portions also 
 of these Books, besides those to which 
 direct reference is made in the above 
 quotations, — perhaps the main portions 
 of them, — are, of course, to be regarded 
 as also the work of Moses. 
 
 881. But that, which can only be 
 inferred in the case of these Books, is 
 expressly asserted with respect to Deu- 
 teronomy. Not only are we told, 
 D.xxxi.22, that Moses ' wrote ' the Song, 
 which we find recorded in D.xxxii, but 
 the writing of the whole Book or, at 
 least, of the principal portion of it, 
 is plainly ascribed to hmi in D.xxxi. 
 9-11:— 
 
 * And Moses wrote this Law, and delivered 
 it unte the Priests the sons of Levi. . . . 
 And Moses commanded them saying. At the 
 end of every seven years, in the solemnity of 
 the year of release, in the Feast of Taber- 
 nacles, when all Israel is come to appear 
 before Jehovah thy God in the place which 
 He shall choose, thou shalt read this Law 
 before all Israel in their hearing.' 
 
 882. But this Book also it is, in point 
 of fact, which forms, so to speak, the 
 most living portion, the very sum and 
 substance, of the whole Pentateuch. 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 When we speak of the ' Law of Moses,' 
 we mean chiefly the Book of Deute- 
 ronomy. And we cannot but remember 
 that it is this Book also, which is quoted 
 again and again, with special emphasis, 
 in the New Testament : e.g. — 
 
 * He answered and said. It is written. Thou 
 Shalt not live by bread alone, but by every 
 word that proceedeth out of the mouth of 
 God,' Matt.iv.4; 
 
 * Jesus said unto him. It is written again. 
 Thou shall nob tempt the Lord thy God,' 
 r.7.' 
 
 * Then saith Jesus unto him. Get thee hence, 
 Satan I for it is written. Thou shalt worship 
 the Lord thy God, and Him only ahait thou 
 serve, v.lO. 
 
 Here we have quotations from D.viii. 
 3,Ti.l6,vi.l3,x.20. And it is wellknown 
 that there are many other passages in 
 the Gospels and Epistles, in which this 
 Book is referred to, and in some of 
 which Moses is expressly mentioned as 
 the writer of the words in question, e.g. 
 Actsiii.22, Eom.x.l9. And though it 
 is true that, in the texts above quoted, 
 the words are not, indeed, ascribed to 
 Moses, but are merely introduced with 
 the phrase, ' It is written,' yet in Matt. 
 xix.7 the Pharisees refer to a passage 
 in Deut.xxiv.l as a law of Moses, and 
 our Lord in His reply, v.S, repeats their 
 language, and practically adopts it as 
 correct, and makes it His own. 
 
 883. When, however, such words as 
 the above are quoted from Deutero- 
 nomy, are they the less true — have 
 they less binding power upon the con- 
 science — because they were written by 
 some later prophet, and not by Moses ? 
 Are they true only because they are 
 ' written ' in this ' Book of the Law ' ? 
 Are they not rather true, because they 
 are true in themselves, by whomsoever 
 written or spoken, — eternally and un- 
 changeably true, — ^and, as such, come 
 home at once, with living power and 
 authority, to the hearts and consciences 
 of living men ? 
 
 884. It is ' written' in the Bible,— 
 
 * Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant 
 thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun,' 
 Bocl.xi.7. 
 
 But is the light sweet to our eyes 
 because it is tiius stated in the Bible 
 — ^by Solomon, as is generally believed, 
 writing undej? Divine inspiration ? Or 
 would it be less sweet, if the results of 
 
CONCLUDING EEMARKS. 
 
 modem criticism sliould show that the 
 Book of Ecclesiastes, though ascribed to 
 the ' Son of David, king in Jerusalem,' 
 Eecl.i.l, was reo* written by Solomon, but 
 by some unknown author long after the 
 Captivity ? Is not the light sweet to 
 onr eyes, because our gracious God and 
 Father has made the Sun, and given us 
 our visual powers, that we may open 
 our eyes and they shall be filled with 
 light, and we shdl behold the glorious 
 beauty of His universe ? 
 
 885. And is the Light of Truth only 
 sweet to us — does it only exist for 
 US — because we find the bright reflec- 
 tion of it in the Bible ? Is it not 
 rather joy for us to know that God's 
 Truth exists eternally, and shines like 
 the Sun in the spiritual heavens, and 
 we. His children upon earth, have a 
 spiritual sense and spiritual eye- 
 sight given us, to which this Light 
 of the inner man is 'sweet,' by 
 which we can 'behold' its bright- 
 ness, — ^whether it comes to us direct 
 from the ' Father of Lights ' in some 
 moment of blessed inspiration, or shines 
 upon us as reflected from the pages of 
 theBible, or, rather, as rc/j-ocieii through 
 the human media, by which in the 
 Bible the ' Word of God ' is given to us ? 
 
 886. For wiU it be any longer main- 
 tained, in this age of scientific enlight- 
 enment, that all our ' hopes for eternity ' 
 depend upon every ' line ' of the Bible 
 being vouched by Divine authority as 
 infallibly true ? Is the statement, that 
 ' the hare chews the cud,' to be received 
 as true, because written down in Le- 
 viticus and Deuteronomy? Or would 
 it have become true, if quoted, as it 
 might have been, in the New Testa- 
 ment, as part of the ' Law of Moses ' ? 
 No one, surely, with the known facts 
 of science before him, will hesitate to 
 give the answer to snch a question. 
 
 887. But, if we are obliged to allow 
 that some portions of the teaching of 
 the Bible cannot be regarded as having 
 Divine authority, — as being ' faithful ' 
 and ' trustworty ' statements, ' infalli- 
 bly true,' — ^because they contradict the 
 known facts of science; there are surely 
 others which we must equally reject, 
 because they are at variance, with the 
 laws of our moral being, because they 
 
 269 
 
 conflict at once with the plain lessons 
 of the Gospelj and with those eternal 
 principles of right and wrong, which the 
 Great Creator has planted within us, 
 in respect of which it is specially true 
 that man is made ' in the image,' and 
 ' after the likeness,' of God. 
 
 887. Must we not feel, for instance, 
 that the Eternal Law of Justice and 
 Equity, which God himself has written 
 with His own Finger upon the tables 
 of our hearts, is directly at variance 
 with such commands as these quoted 
 below, — that these cannot, at all events, 
 be regarded as utterances of the blessed 
 Will of God, — that the writer oi them, 
 though an inspired man, cannot cer- 
 tainly have written thus by Divine in- 
 spiration? e.g. — 
 
 (i) D.xxiii.l, which excludes from 
 the congregation of Jehovah one muti- 
 lated, perhaps in helpless infancy ; while 
 those, by whose agency the act in ques- 
 tion was encouraged or, perhaps, per- 
 formed, are allowed free access to the 
 Sanctuary ; 
 
 (ii) D.xxiii.2, which excludes in like 
 manner an innocent base-born child, 
 but takes no account of the vicious 
 parent ; 
 
 (iii) D.xxi.18-21, which commands 
 that a 'stubborn and rebellious son' 
 shall be stoned to death, when often- 
 times the father and mother, who by 
 their bad example had corrupted, or 
 by their faulty training had ruined, 
 their child, deserved rather to suffer 
 punishment ; 
 
 888. So, too, D.xx.10-15 orders that 
 any city of any distant people, with 
 whom Israel might be at war, shall 
 first be summoned to surrender ; and, if 
 it win make no peace on condition of 
 all the people becoming tributaries and 
 doing service to Israel, shall then be 
 besieged, and with Divine help cap- 
 tured ; and then it is written — 
 
 ' When JehoTah thy God hath delivered It 
 into thine hands, thou Shalt smite every male 
 thereof with the edge of the stoord: but the 
 women and the little ones, and the cattle, and 
 all that is in the city, even all the spoil 
 thereof, shall thou take unto Oiyself, and thou 
 Shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which 
 Jehovah thy God hath given thee. Thus 
 Shalt thou do unto all the cities which are 
 very far off from thee, which are not of the 
 cities of these nations. 
 
270 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 ' But 0/ the cities of these people, whicli Je- 
 hovah thy God doth give thee for an inhe- 
 ritance, thou Shalt save alive iwthing that 
 breathefft ; butthou shalt utterly destroy them, 
 the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites 
 and the Ferizzites, the Hivites and the Jebu- 
 sites, as Jehovah thy Ood hath conunanded 
 thee ; that they teach you not to do after all 
 their abominations, which they have done 
 unto their gods; so should ye sin against 
 Jehovah your (Jod/ 
 
 889. Such laws as the atore are felt 
 at once to be directly contradictory to 
 those first principles of humanity and 
 equity, which God our Creator has 
 planted within us, to be our monitors 
 and guides through life; and they 
 equally contradict the plainest teaching 
 of the Gospel of Christ. I have ex- 
 plained how the writer may be justly 
 relieved from the reproach of having 
 set on record such sanguinary laws as 
 these, with any idea of their being really 
 carried out. The 'rebeUious son' is 
 only a figure of ' rebellious Israel ' ; and 
 the judgment denounced against his 
 disobedience shadows forth the penalty 
 deserved by those who will not ' obey 
 the voice of Jehovah,' their Heavenly 
 Father. And so, too, the last of the 
 above laws simply expresses the burn- 
 ing zeal which glowed within him 
 against the idolatrous practices, human 
 sacrifices, impurities, &c. which were 
 then common among his own people, 
 and which they had adopted either 
 from the Canaanite nations of former 
 days, or more probably from the heathen 
 tribes then living around them. 
 
 90. The Prophet here makes use of 
 the tribes of Canaan as a standing type 
 of such idolaters. In the age of Josiab, 
 when these words were written down, 
 those tribes, we may believe, no longer 
 existed : they had long disappeared, or 
 been merged in the Israelitish people. 
 The history teaches us that they never 
 were exterminated, — that 'Uriah the 
 Hittite' served as a captain in David's 
 army, and ' Araunah the Jebusite ' had 
 his threshing-floor on the site of the 
 future Temple at Jerusalem. But the 
 Deuteronomist, by setting forth before 
 his people the figure of these tribes, 
 driven out from their old abodes as a 
 judgment for their sins, and ruthlessly 
 exterminated by the hands of Jehovah's 
 worshippers, seeks to remind the latter 
 
 of their duty and of their danger — of 
 the terrible woe of expatriation, and 
 even extermination, which would be 
 their just recompense, if they, too, 
 practised the like abominations. The 
 command to slay the men of a distant 
 city, and to save the women and chil- 
 dren, &c. alive, is probably introduced 
 by way of contrast to the other more 
 terrible command, and not with any 
 view of its being really executed. And, 
 indeed, in Josiah's time there was little 
 probability of any such distant con- 
 quests being made by Israel. 
 
 891. In such a way as this we can 
 explain intelligibly the fact, that even 
 a good man, a lover of justice and 
 mercy, an inspired Prophet, could yet 
 write down such laws as these. But 
 it is surely nothing else than a tamper- 
 ing with the truth, — an unintentional, 
 doubtless, but yet a real, dishonesty, — 
 and therefore, if done with a religious 
 motive, only (disguise it as we will) an 
 idolatroiis worship, of a God, who is 
 not our God, the God and Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, the very God of Truth, 
 — if we endeavour to defend such laws 
 as these as truly and infallibly Divine, 
 and really uttered from the Mouth of 
 the Most Holy and Blessed One, on the 
 principle that — not a mere man like 
 Moses, but — the Divine B^ing Himself 
 was compelled to adapt His laws to an 
 imperfect state of society, — ' to precon- 
 ceived and popular id? as,' — and, there- 
 fore, was led to utter commands, which 
 a child instructed in the first lessons 
 of the Gospel, — nay, which a heathen 
 walkingin thatLightj which 'lighteneth 
 every man that Cometh into the world,' 
 — can at once condemn as unjust and 
 inhuman. 
 
 892. We must, then, even in reading 
 the Scriptures, ' try the spirits, whether 
 they are of God.' In this way only 
 can we do the Will of God, and dis- 
 charge the true duty, and rise to the 
 true dignity, of man as the child of God. 
 We might wish, perhaps, — many do 
 wish, — to have it otherwise, to be able 
 to fall back upon the notion of an In- 
 fallible Book, or an Infallible Church. 
 But God has not willed it so. He will 
 not give us, — at least He has not given 
 
CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 271 
 
 ns, — a KeTelation of such a kind, as tx) 
 relieve us from the solemn duty of 
 judging, each for himself, what is right 
 and true in His Sight. His Spirit has 
 quickened us, that we may do, as liTing 
 men, His work in the world. He will 
 not suffer us to abdicate the glorious 
 office to which He calls us. We mtisi 
 — not only claim and exercise the right, 
 but — ^bear the responsibility of private 
 judgment, upon the things of the life 
 to come, as well as of this world. 
 
 893. The Deuteronomist himself will 
 teach us this lesson. He tells us, in- 
 deed, that God in aU ages wOl raise 
 up prophets like unto ourselves, xviii.l8, 
 will kmdle His Fire within the heart, 
 and put His Words into the mouth, of 
 men, who, in all the weakness of hu- 
 manity, shall speak to their fellow- 
 men aU that they feel commanded to 
 teach in His Name, — who shall utter 
 His Eternal Truth, and minister to their 
 brethren the lessons of 'doctrine, re- 
 proof correction, instruction in right- 
 eousness.' And their brethren shall 
 'hear' them; they dare not neglect 
 the truth, of whatever kind, which God's 
 own grace imparts and brings home to 
 them from the . lips of a fellow-man, 
 however high or humble. 
 
 894. But they must not listen to him 
 with a blind unreasoning acquiescence, 
 though He speak to them in the name 
 of Jehovah, and though the 'sign or 
 wonder' come to pass, xiii.2, which he 
 brought to them as the very credentials 
 of his mission. They must 'try the 
 spirit ' of the Prophet's words by that 
 law which they have within them, 
 written upon their hearts. Jehovah, 
 their Gtid, is proving them, to know 
 whether they truly and entirely love 
 Him, and love His Truth, ' with all 
 their heart, and with all their soul.' 
 If the words, which that Prophet speaks 
 to them, come home to their consciences 
 as right and true words, then in God's 
 Name let them acknowledge and wel- 
 come them, and send them on with a 
 blessing of 'God speed!' to others. 
 If the Voice, which speaks within, de- 
 clares that the utterance from without 
 is false, then ' shalt thou not hearken,' 
 xiiLS ; the word is not God's, and he 
 who hears must not obey it. 
 
 896. In this spirit we must read the 
 Book of Deuteronomy itself, and we shall 
 find the Living Bread which our souls 
 may feed on, — we shall find in it the 
 Word of God. And that Word will 
 not be at variance with the eternal 
 and essential substance of Christianity, 
 with those words which ' shall not pass 
 away.' Then we shall live no more 
 in constant fear, that some rude stroke 
 of criticism may shake, perhaps, the 
 ' very foundations of our faith,' or that 
 the announcement of some simple fact 
 of science or natural history may 
 threaten ' to take from us our nearest 
 and dearest consolations.' We shall 
 leain thus to have ' faith in God,' as 
 our Lord has bidden us, Mark xi.22, 
 and not in the written records, through, 
 which He has been pleased, by inspir- 
 ing the hearts of our brother-men with 
 life, to quicken and comfort our own. 
 When we hear such words as these — 
 
 ' Man doth not live by bread alone, but by 
 every word that proceedeth out of the month 
 of God doth man live,' D.viii.S — 
 
 ' Thou Shalt also consider in thy heart that, 
 as a man chasteneth his son, so the Living 
 Q-od, thy God, doth chasten thee,' D.viii.S — 
 
 * If from thence,' — ^from the very depth of 
 sin- wrought misery — ' thou shalt seek the 
 Living God, thy God, thou shalt find Him, if 
 thou seek Him with all thy heart and with 
 all thy soul,' D.iv.29— 
 
 we shall joyfully welcome them as 
 messages of truth, not merely because 
 we find them in the Bible but because 
 they are true — eternally true. 
 
 896. It is true that God loves us as 
 dear children, and that we may go to 
 Him at all times, as to a wise and tender 
 Father, with a childlike trust and love, 
 as with a childlike reverence and fear. 
 Bather, we must go to Him thus if we 
 would please Him, and act in the spirit 
 of those words, which have taught us 
 aU to say, ' Our Father.' We must 
 believe, not only that He is 'loving 
 unto every man,' and 'His tender 
 mercies are over all His works,' but 
 that that deep love, which human pa- 
 rents feel, is a true reflection of His 
 Great Love, — ^is meant to image forth 
 to us, however faintly, the Love of Him 
 who is the Father of us all. ' He that 
 planted the ear,' says the Psalmist, 
 'shall He not hear? He that formed 
 the eye, shall He not see? He that 
 
272 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 teaohetli man knowledge, shall He not 
 know?' Ps.xciv.9,10, and we may add 
 for our consolation, ' He that teaoheth 
 man to love, shaE He not lov« ? ' 
 
 897. This truth, then, we must ' con- 
 sider in o\ir hearts ' that He, who has 
 planted in our breasts, as parents, dear 
 love to our children, a love stronger than 
 death, does by that very love of ours 
 intend to shadow forth to us His own 
 Eternal Love. Our love, we know, can 
 take in every child of the family : our 
 hearts can find a place for all ; yes, and 
 our love embraces the far-off prodigal, 
 in his miserable wanderings, no less 
 surely, and no less tenderly, than the 
 dear obedient child that sits by our side, 
 rejoicing in the sweet delights of home. 
 He that has taught us to love our chil- 
 dren in this way, how shall He not 
 also love His children, — love us and 
 love ours, — with a love in which the 
 separate loves of earthly parents are 
 blended, and find their full infinite 
 expression, — the Father's loving wis- 
 dom and firmness, to guide and counsel, 
 and, if need be, to correct and chasten, 
 — the Mother's tender pity and com- 
 passion, that will draw near with sweet 
 consolations, in each hour of sorrow 
 and suffering, will sympathise with 
 every grief and trial, will bow down to 
 hear each shame-stricken confession, 
 will be ready to receive the first broken 
 words of penitence, and whisper the 
 promise of forgiveness and peace ? 
 
 898. Ah I truly, the little child may 
 cling to its mother's neck, and the 
 mother's love will feel the gentle pres- 
 sure, and will delight to feel it : but it is 
 not the feeble clinging of the httle one 
 that holds it up ; it is the strong arm of 
 love that embraces it. And we, in our 
 most earnest prayers and aspirations, 
 in our cleaving unto God, in our long- 
 ing and striving after Truth, are but 
 as babes, 'stretching out weak hands 
 of faith ' to lay hold of Him Whom no 
 man hath seen or can see, but Who, 
 unseen, is ever near us. Whose tender 
 Love embraces all His children — those 
 
 that are far off as well as those that 
 are near, the heathen and the Chris- 
 tian, the sinner and the Saint. 
 
 899. Happy, indeed, are we, who are 
 blessed to know this — to know the 
 high calling and the glorious privileges 
 of the children of God ! Not that we 
 may be more safe than others, who as 
 yet know it not, but that we may be 
 filled with hope and strength and cou- 
 rage in t he assurance of this Truth, — 
 that we may be more living and earnest 
 and joyful in our work, — more brave to 
 speak the Truth, to do the Bight, to 
 wage eternal war with all that is false 
 and base and evil, within us and with- 
 out, — more patient in suffering, — ^more 
 firm and true in temptation and trial, — 
 more sorrowful and ashamed when we 
 have fallen, — more quick to rise, and 
 go on again, in the path of duty, with 
 tears and thankgivings, — more eager 
 to tell out the Love of God to others, 
 whether to those who as yet are grop- 
 ing, ' if haply they may feel after Him 
 and find Him,' Who 'is not far from 
 any one of them,' ■ in Whom they live 
 and move and have their being,' or to 
 those who have known Him, but know 
 no longer now the joy of His children, 
 ' sitting in darkness and in the shadow 
 of death, fast bound in misery and 
 iron.' 
 
 900. But, in all this, it is notour know- 
 ledge, however clear, or our faith, how- 
 ever firm and orthodox, or our charity, 
 however bright or pure, that holds us 
 up daily, and binds us to the Bosom 
 of our God. ' Our Father ' will delight 
 in all the sacred confidences of His 
 children, — their clingings of faith and 
 hope, — their longings of pure desire for 
 a closer sense of His Presence, — ^their 
 holy aspirations and penitential con- 
 fessions. But it is not our prayer that 
 will hold us up ; it is His Love alone 
 which does this. 
 
 'The Eternal God is oua befuge, 
 
 AND UNDERNEATH ARE THB EvBBLAST- 
 
 wa Abus.' S.xxxiii. 27. 
 
PART IV. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAOS . 
 
 PrKPACB ^ ', .i, 277 
 
 I. The Composite Chajiacter op the Pentateuch ... 293 
 
 n. AlTAlTSIS OE GrEN.I.l— IV.26. 294 
 
 m. Analysis oe &en.V.1— TII.24 296 
 
 lY. Analysis oe Gen.VIII.1— XI.26 299 
 
 T. CHAEACTERISnCS OE THE BLOHISr AND JEHOTIST ... 302 
 
 VI. The Blohtstic and Jbhovistio Passages in Gen.i.1-xi.26. . 306 
 
 Vil. GrENERAL REMARKS OK THE RELATION OF SCElPTUim AND SCIENCE 312 
 
 Tni. gen.i.i— n.3 816 
 
 IX. Legends oe the Creation among other Nations . . . 324 
 
 X. G-EN.II.4— 11.25 328 
 
 XI. GEN.in.l— III.24 333 
 
 xn. Stobies oe Paradise and the Fall in other Nations . . 341 
 
 Xin. Gen.IV.I— V.32 343 
 
 XIV. The Book of Enoch . . ; 347 
 
Truth, throughout her whole domain, illimitable as is its extent, is one in prin- 
 ciple and harmonious in details. It is no other than the having our conceptions in 
 accordance with the reality of things. And Truth in expression (= Veracity) is the 
 adapting of our language, written or spoken, to the honest utterance of our conceptions. 
 .... An assertion- cannot be true in Theology, and false in Geology, or any 
 department of scientific knowledge ; nor inversely. It really is an insult to men'a 
 understandings, to admit indirectly that there are affirmations or doctrines in the 
 records of revealed religion, which are disproved by the clearest evidence of Science, 
 and then to proscribe investigation, with a solemn pretence of mysteries not to be 
 inquired into, an hypocritical tone of reverence for sacred things. The veil is trans- 
 parent : no man can be deceived by it : but it is lamentable that any should attempt 
 
 to deceive by it True Theology, on the contrary, attracts to itself, ill^ls- 
 
 trates, and harmonises, all other knowledge. It is the science which relates to the 
 Author and Preserver of the whole dependent Universe, — whatever may be known 
 concerning Him, for the noblest purposes of intellectual improvement, of personal 
 
 virtue, and of diffusive happiness It is the friend of all Science : it 
 
 appropriates all Truth : it holds fellowship with do error. — Dr. Pyb Smith, Geology 
 and Science, pAd2, 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET IV. 
 
 I HATE explained in the body of this Part of my work the reasons 
 ■which have determined me to confine myself at present to the 
 examination of the First Eleven Chapters of Genesis, reserving- to 
 the next Part the consideration of the remaining Chapters, and the 
 discussion, which may then be raised, as to the respective ages of 
 the Elohistic and Jehovistic writers. 
 
 I have great hope that the clearness and certainty, with which 
 the two principal writers of Genesis can be distinguished in these 
 first Chapters, will bring conviction to many, who have hitherto 
 only had misgivings upon the question, or, perhaps, have turned 
 aside from these criticisms altogether, as being in their view too 
 abstruse and uncertain, — and will satisfy them that there is, indeed, 
 truth in the statement, which I have so often repeated, and which, 
 in fact, is the very core and centre of this controversy, viz. that the 
 Pentateuch is not in its present form the work of Moses, — or not 
 exclusively his work, — but a composite work by diiferent writers 
 of difierent ages. Here lies the gist of the whole question, how- 
 ever the details, as to the assig-nment of particular passages, or the 
 exact age of the different writers, may be ultimately settled. 
 
 I have shown in Chap. I- VII that these First Eleven Chapters 
 of Genesis are made up of two documents, in veiy nearly equal 
 proportions, and that one of these, — that containing the first ac- 
 count of the creation in G.i, — forms, when its diiferent parts are 
 put together a complete imbroken narrative. With respect to 
 the other, it must be left doubtful at present, whether it was 
 originally also a complete narrative which has been combined 
 with the former, with the suppression of some clauses, by the hand 
 of a later editor, or whether it was merely intended from the first 
 to be supplementary, and so exhibits only the additions which 
 have been made by a later writer to the primitive story. In any 
 case we have here the compositions of two writers, not only 
 distinct but in some points actually at variance with each other, 
 even within the limits of these few Chapters. 
 
 The accuracy and cogency of the above analysis may be easily 
 
273 PREFACE TO PAET IV. 
 
 tested ty the English reader, though unacquainted with Hebrew, 
 if he will only follow carefully the course of reasoning pursued in 
 one or two sections, with an English Bible in his hand, in which 
 he has marked the Jehovistio passages by a line drawn down the 
 margin. Many, I believe, will be more satisfied, as to the main 
 facts of the case, by the consideration of this kind of internal 
 evidence, than by any arguments from withcmt, such as those based 
 upon the contradictions which may be shown to exist between 
 many of the statements, in these ancient accounts of the Creation 
 and the Deluge, and the results of Science. Here, however, the 
 fucts are, for any who are willing to look at them, and they cannot, 
 I believe, in the main be gainsaid. 
 
 But having completed this portion of the work, and thereby 
 established, as I conceive, the right and duty, for myself and for 
 every minister of God's Truth, to examine seriously, and yet freely, 
 the actual contents of these chapters, with the desire to know what 
 they really contain, I have exercised this right, and have en- 
 deavoured to discharge this duty, to the best of my power. The 
 result of my examination I have laid before the reader in the last 
 chapters of this Part, and have proved abundantly, as I believe, 
 that the statements of both the Elohist and .Tehpvist, in these 
 First Eleven Chapters of Genesis, — whatever value they may have, 
 whatever religious lessons maj'be drawn from them, — cannot be re- 
 garded as historically true, being contradicted in their literal sense, 
 a^aiu and again, by the certain facts of modern Science. I trust 
 that by both divisions of my labour in this Fourth Part, — which 
 is complete in itself, and needs not any help from the arguments 
 and criticisms in the preceding portions of my work, — I shall 
 have done something to relieve the cause of Science itself, and the 
 speculations of devout and earnest scientific men, from the charges 
 so often made in former days — made even recently by more than 
 one Bishop of the Church of England — of being injurious to re- 
 ligion, and dishonouring to the Word of God. I shall have done 
 this by showing that the injury and dishonour are not to be 
 charged upon the^n, but upon those who will still insist on 
 teaching that the mere letter of every part of Scripture is to be 
 regarded as the authoritative, infallible. Word of the Living God. 
 
 In discussing the questions raised by the examination of these 
 Chapters, I have, as before, availed myself frequently of the lau-' 
 guage of others, instead of expressing the very same thing in my 
 own words. I have done this, both because I have felt it to be 
 due to those eminent critics, who have led the way in these in- 
 quiries, to give them the credit of research and originality, while 
 making use of their stores of learning, — and, in doing this, it seemed 
 more desirable, for the satisfaction of the reader, to produce their 
 
PREFACE TO PART IV. 279 
 
 actual words, than merely to refer to them by name,— and because, 
 in the case of (so-called) orthodox writers, I preferred to make use 
 of their statements and admissions, as being free from the imputa- 
 tion of having been possibly influenced by a desire to support my 
 own side of the argument. 
 
 I should, indeed, have desired, if it had been possible, to have had 
 recourse for this purpose to some eminent living authodty of the 
 Church of England. But I am not aware that any of the existing 
 Bishops or Doctors of the English Church has published any work 
 of importance, connected with the criticism of the Pentateuch. 
 There was, however, one distinguished Prelate of our Church, whom 
 death has only lately removed Irom us. Archbishop Whately of 
 Dublin, to whom a tract has been publicly ascribed — and he has 
 not (I believe) disowned it — bearing upon questions in the second, 
 third, and eleventh Chapters of Genesis. This tract was published 
 anonymously in 1849, and, being written in Latin, is little known 
 to English readers. I translate from it the following passage on 
 the ' Tower of Babel : '— 
 
 G-.xi.l-lO. This short narrative in the Book of Genesis labours under great 
 difficulties. 
 
 (i) If we look at the design of those, who attempted to build, in order that they 
 might not be scattered abroad, how was that to be effected by the help of a very high, 
 tower ? And what dispersion was either to be feared by them or avoided, since, it 
 would seem, it was permitted to each to choose his own place of abode ? 
 
 (ti) Let us consider the mode of frustrating their purpose. It is believed that a 
 great multitude of men, through a wonderful change, forgot their ancestral tongue, 
 and spoke suddenly a new language. This would be a great miracle, and yet would 
 not conduce to the end proposed. For, unless they are supposed to have been struck 
 out of their senses by the prodigy, they would have been able to continue their work 
 after a very short inconvenience. Any architect, set over workmen of different 
 tongues, would, in a short time, be able to impart his orders by means of signs : and 
 in the space of a few days they would have learned enough of his words, to be able 
 to go on together, their laboiurs being joined, with continually diminishing difficulty. 
 Besides, when the project of building was dismissed, why was it necessary that they 
 should be all scattered very widely through all regions ? How many countries also 
 are inhabited by races speaking different tongues, e.g. Wales, Scotland, Ireland, many 
 parts of the Efist Indies ? . . . . 
 
 This granted, the whole matter may have taken place thus. Some chief men had 
 determined to found an empire, which should embrace the whole human race. That 
 this empire might have the sanction of religion, they wished to found a temple, 
 dedicated to some idol, in that city which was to be the head of the world. Since it; 
 was not in the power of these men, living in the plain, to place that building on a 
 mountain, (which custom afterwards prevailed, as the passages in Scripture testify, 
 which speak everjTvhere of ' high places,') therefore they determined to erect a very 
 high tower, like an artificial mountain. Such a purpose of founding a false religion 
 could not but be displeasing to the True and Living God. He, therefore, entirely 
 frustrated their impious design, by throwing discord into the minds of the ambitious 
 founders. He made them to quarrel about religious worship, by which dissension He 
 woiUd much more certainly vitiate their attempt, than by a diversity of tongues. 
 History abounds in examples of such dissension : we may mention the Jew3_ and 
 Samaritans, Pharisees and Karaites, and, lastly, the various sects of Christianfi. 
 Thus it came to pass at Babel, that the strongest of the factions kept possession of 
 the city and tower, only dropping the magnitude of the tower and that height which 
 they had originally intended, while the other factions went ofE in different directions,' 
 and settled themselves, some in one locality, some in another. 
 
 But as SO much stress had been laid upon the writings of Arch- 
 bishop UssHER and Bishop Watsoit of former days, I thought it 
 my duty to refer to them again, while engaged in the consideration 
 of these questions. I was, of course, well aware that their works 
 
280 PREFACE TO PART IV. 
 
 would tlirow not a single ray of light upon the critical difficulties, 
 which have arisen in this controversy. But, as it had been pub- 
 licly asserted, on very hig-h authority, that my obj ections to the 
 accuracy of the Pentateuch, in historical and scientific matters, — 
 
 have been again and again refuted, two hundred years ago by Arclibishop TJSSHER, 
 more recently by Bishop Watson and others,— 
 
 I took for granted that upon the points, most likely to be discussed 
 in the last chapters of this Part, — leaving out of consideration the 
 critical analysis, — I should certainly iind some important observa- 
 tions in these works, some remarks which I should be bound to 
 consider well, and either to allow or to refute. 
 
 To my great surprise, after the distinct and pointed reference 
 made to them, I find in these writers nothing, or next to nothing, 
 of this kind. Ajchbishop Usshbb deals almost entirely with mat- 
 ters of chronology, with which my books are very little concerned. 
 Bishop Watson scarcely discusses at length a single important 
 point of those, which I have raised in my different volumes. And 
 the most decisive of all his attempts to clear up a difficulty is with 
 reference to the introduction of the name of the town Dan, which 
 I have dwelt upon in (II. 230-233.) He first suggests that the 
 passages in question, Gr.xiv.14, D.xxxiv.l, as well as G.xxxvi.31, 
 may be 'interpolations,' and he then adds, /).205 : — 
 
 But if this solution does not please you, I desire it may be proved that the Ban 
 mentioned in Genesis waa the same town as that mentioned in Judges. [This ia 
 admitted by such strong defenders of the traditionary view as KuiiTZ and I)ELrrzsOH, 
 — by the former, after having maintained at one time the contrary.] I desire further 
 to have it proved, that the Dan mentioned in Genesis waa the name of a town, and 
 not of a river. It is merely said, Abraham pursued tbera, the enemies of Lot, to Dan. 
 Now a river was full as likely as a town to stop a pursuit. Lot, we know, was settled 
 in the plain of Jordan, ; and Jordan, we know (!), was composed of the united streams 
 of two rivers, called Jor and Dan. 
 
 I need hardly say that such reasoning, which might be allowed to 
 
 pass in the days of Bishop Watson, would not be accepted, as of 
 
 any value whatever, in our own days. The rivers ' Jor ' and ' Dan ' 
 
 are not mentioned in the Bible, and their existence is not, I believe, 
 
 recog-nised in the geography of Palestine. Mr. Ffoulkes writes,— 
 
 It haa been well observed that the Hebrew word ¥arden,=' Jordan,'— has no 
 relation whatever to the name ' Dan,' and also that the river had borne that name 
 from the days of Abraham, and from the days of Job, at least five centuries before 
 the name of ' Dan ' was given to the city at its soui'ce.— Smith's Diet, of the Bible, 
 p. 1129. ■^ 
 
 But, having been referred in this manner to the works of Bishop 
 Watson, as writings of great authority,— and, indeed, since, for 
 more than a quarter of a century, he was Professor of Divinity in 
 the University of Cambridge, he may be considered to have spoken, 
 in ecclesiastical matters, with the weight of professorial learning, 
 as well as vnth that of episcopal authority, — I have consulted 
 those works, and have found some passages, which deserve, I 
 think, consideration under present circumstances. For instance, 
 the folio-wing extracts, from his ' Life,' will show what views ho 
 
PEEFACE TO PAET IV. 281 
 
 held on one particular point, to which attention is strongly drawn 
 at the present time, — namely, the liberty of private judgment, as 
 asserted by our Protestant Church, and secured to every Minister 
 in the very terms of the Ordination Service. It will be seen that, 
 in reference to the Creeds, Bishop Watsoit held that they were 
 ' all of human fabrication,' and might he used or disused at pleasure 
 in public worship, being merely venerable document?, which ex- 
 pressed the ancient belief of the Church, but were not binding on 
 the conscience of any clergymen, ' notwithstanding subscription to 
 the Thirty-nine Articles,' except so far as he is ' persuaded/ in his 
 own private judgment, that their statements * may be concluded 
 and proved by the Scriptures ' : — 
 
 I never troubled myself with answering any arguments, wMch the opponents in 
 the_ Divinity-Schools brought agitinst the Artioles of the Church, nor ever admitted 
 their authority as decisive of a difficulty . But I used on such occasions to say to 
 them, holding the New Testament in ray hand, ' En sacrum codicem / Behold the 
 sacred text ! Here is the fountain of truth. Why do you follow the streams derived 
 from it by the sophistry, or polluted by the passions, of man ? . . . Articles of 
 Churches are not of divine authority. Have done with them, — for they may be true, 
 they may be false,— and appeal to the Book itself.'— i.jo. 63. 
 
 I certainly dislike the imposition of all Creeds formed by human authority ; though 
 I do not dislike them as useful summaries of what their compilers believe to be true, 
 either in natural or revealed religion. ... As to revealed religion, though all its 
 doctrines are expressed in one book, yet such a diversity of interpretations has been 
 given to the same passages of Scripture, that not only individuals, but whole Churches, 
 have formed to themselves different Creeds, and introduced them into their forms of 
 worship. The G-reek Church admits not into its ritual either the Apostles' Creed or 
 the Athanaaian, but only the Nicene. The Episcopal Church in America admits the 
 Nicene and the Apostles' Creed, but rejects the Athauasian. The Church of England 
 admits the whole three into its Liturgy ; and some of the foreign Protestant Churches 
 admit none but the Apostles'. These and other Creeds, which might be mentioned, 
 are all of human fabrication. They oblige conscience as far as they are conformable 
 to Scriptmre, and of that conformity every man must judge for himself. This liberty 
 of private judgment is recognised by our Church {nohcithstanding the Subscription to 
 the Thirty-nine Articles), when in the service of the Ordering of Priests, it proposes this 
 question, ' Are you determined, out of the said Scriptures, to instruct the people com- 
 mitted to your charge, and to teach nothing, as required of necessity to eternal salva- 
 tion, but that which totj shall be persuaded may be concluded and proved by the 
 Scriptures ? '— i.^.395-97. 
 
 What are the catechisms of the Eomish Church, of the English Church, of the 
 Scotch Church, and of aU other Churches, but a set of propositions, which men of 
 different natural capacities, educations, prejudices, have fabricated, (sometim'^s on 
 the anvil of sincerity, oftener on that of ignorance, interest, or hypocrisy,) from the 
 Divine materials furnished by the Bible ? And can any man of an enlarged charity 
 believe that his salvation will ultimately depend on a concurrence in opinion with 
 any of these niceties, which the several sects of Christians have assumed, as essen- 
 tially necessary for a Christian man's belief ? Oh ! no : Christianity is not a specu- 
 lative busines. One good act, performed from a principle of obedience to the declared 
 Will of God, will be of more service to every individual Christian than all the 
 speculative theology of Atjgushne.— ii.iJ.215. 
 
 Nay, he goes even so far as to say, ii.j3.217, — 
 
 I am disposed to accede to your remark that whatever doctrine is not contained in 
 the form prescribed by Christ, for receiving disciples by baptism iuto His Church, 
 cannot be necessary to be believed by Christians. And you have excited a reasonable 
 doubt, whether the doctrine of the Trinity be positively contained in the baptismal 
 form. 
 
 The following passage also, from one of Bishop Watson's 
 Charges {Apologies^ &c.^.449), is worthy to be commended, at least 
 for the sake of the facts which it mentions, to the notice of some 
 modern defenders of the traditionary theology :— 
 
282 PREFACE TO PART IV. 
 
 The time, I tMnk, is approaching,— or is already come,— when Christianity will 
 undergo a more severe investigation than it has ever yet done. My expectation as 
 to the issue is this,— that Catholic countries will become Protestant, and t/iai 
 Protestant countries will admit a further Reformation. In expressing this expectation, 
 which I am far from having the vanity to propose with oracular confidence, I may 
 possibly incur the censure of some, who think that Protestantism, as established in 
 Germany, in Scotland, in England, is in all these, and in other countries, so perfect 
 a system of Christianity, that it is incapable of any amendment in any of them. If 
 this should he the case, I must console myself by reflecting that the greatest men 
 could not, in their day, escape unmerited calumny. Every age has had its Sachevei-ela, 
 its Hickeses, and its Chenellses, who, with the bittei-ness of theological odium, 
 sharpened with party rancour, have not scrupled to break the bonds of Christian 
 charity. Hoadlet was called a Dissenter, Chtltjngworth a Socinian, and Tillot- 
 sos both Scciuian and Atheist. And all of them experienced this obloquy from 
 contemporary zealots, on account of the liberality of their sentiments, — on account 
 of their endeavourmg to render Christianity more rational, than it was in certain 
 points generally esteemed to be. 
 
 Meanwhile^ as far as my own justification is concerned^ it will, 
 I believe, in the opinion of many, be considered to be complete, 
 when they peruse the following recently-expressed judgments of 
 others, in reference to the main facts of these criticisms. 
 
 I shall first quote extracts from communications which I have 
 received from Prof. Ktjenek" of Leyden, one of the most eminent 
 critics of the present day in Holland, and especially distinguished 
 in this department of Biblical Criticism. Prof. Ktjenen writes, 
 with reference to Part I and Part II of my work ; 
 
 ' I see, in your critical labours, more than a mere important episode of the Church- 
 conflict of our days. It appears to me that through you already, in Part I. the 
 attention has been fixed upon a series of facts, which, in the latest time, have been 
 too much neglected, with great damage to the truth. You have entered upon the 
 enquiry, as to the value and origin of the narratives about the Mosaic time, from a 
 fiide to which by many scarcely any attention has been paid. This I say in the first 
 instance with reference to myself. While writing my Introduction to the Pentateuch 
 and to the Book of Joshua, I was, it is true, aware of the unhistorical character of 
 many narratives : but I had not hitherto given to myself proper account of the ex- 
 tent of these difficulties. They could only be fully and plainly brought into the light 
 thi'ough the method followed by you ; and they now lie bare before everyone who is 
 willing to see. When I take into consideration in how unsatisfactory a way even 
 some of the very best writers indicate and clear out of the way these difficulties, I 
 consider your endeavour to treat them entirely apart, and exliihit them visibly, as 
 equally opportune and useful. As far as I am concerned, shoiiLd the opportunity 
 arise for me to treat again expressly of the Pentateuch, either in my lectures, or in 
 writing, I shall not neglect thereby to make use of the light Idndled by you. 
 
 'When engaged upon the Third Part of my " Hist. Grit. Enquiry," in which I shall 
 have to speak about the Psalms, I shall haue an opportunity of stiidying expressly 
 the Elohistic and Jehovistic Psalms, with an eye to your enquiry about them in 
 Part II. I wish to do so with all the calmness and impartiality, wiLh which so 
 thorough a demonstration as yours desei-ves to be treated. 
 
 ' But I may not detain you longer with ray remarks. Regard them only as a proof 
 that I have read your important work with care, and that I hope still further to do 
 so, when the course of my studies shall give rae occasion for it. The question as to 
 the composition of the Pentateuch and the age of its portions is so intricate, that it 
 may well be that at fii-at no unanimous agreement will he arrived at respecting 
 it. But the difference of feeling that remains is small ih comparison with the great 
 main-point, and with the important consequences which follow from it. It is to me 
 a cause of great joy that the main-point also, through your work, is put anew 
 clearly into the light, and wiU certainly be recognised in a continually widening 
 circle.'— /wree 23, 1863. 
 
 ' I gladly give you the desired permission to insert in your Preface the portion of 
 my former letter translated by you. It not only expressed then, but it expresses also 
 now, so entirely my feeling, that I allow it to be published without any hesitation/ 
 ^Nov. 23, 1863. 
 
 The next quotation is from the pen of Prof. Hupeeld of Halle, 
 who ranks aa a veteran among the first of Hebrew scholars in 
 
PREFACE TO PAET IV. 283 
 
 Gennany, and "who was cliosen, indeed^ to fill the chair which was 
 vacated by the death of Gensenitjs. Prof. HuprBLD writes thus, 
 with reference to Part III : 
 
 * It woald be far too late to acknowledge the receipt of tbe Third Part of your 
 work._ But it is not too late, I hope, to express the great satisfaction which this part 
 has given me. I would have done so earlier, but I was interrupted by other duties 
 in the perusal of the volume, before having finished which I disliked to utter a 
 judgment. 
 
 ' At the first view, I was favourably impressed by the long series and accurate 
 enimieration of words and phrases peculiar to Deuteronomy, in comparison with the 
 former books of the Pentateuch, and common with the later historical and prophet- 
 ical books of the Old Testament, by which the demonstration of the later origin of 
 Deuteronomy is supported. This matter-ol-fact evidence is begun by De Weite in 
 the first product of his pen (1805), and augmented by Knobel; but yours is far 
 
 the most complete and accurate or discriminating At the same time, 
 
 this manner of demonstration from the language would be the fittest means of 
 shaming your opponents, who, conscious of their own Hebrew ignorance, are so loud 
 and busy in decrying your Hebrew scholarship. There are some, not important, par- 
 ticulars in wMch I am not of the same mind with yon, . , . and, in my opinion, 
 you are too positive and eager in pointing out Jeremiah as the author of this Book 
 (Deuteronomy), which is only certain to be of his time, phrases and notions being 
 common to that period. But, upon the whole, I am satisBed with the proofs of your 
 sound critical feeling in this volume. 
 
 ' The Preface to the volume contains very curious evidences of the dishonesty of 
 your judges, in striking contrast with the honesty of one clergyman, who was at first 
 among your opponents. These documents, like those in the former volumes, will not 
 be lost upon the great body of thinking and impartial bystanders, which will be 
 Increasing the more as the opposite cause is so miserably pleaded. They are not 
 wanting in zeal and industry ; in one number of the " AthenEcum," I read the titles of 
 more than twenty pamphlets against you. But, if I may mfer from the specimens 
 which I have seen, (M'Caul, Rogers, the Author of the "Eclipse of Faith," and 
 BiRKS' "Exodus of Israel," sent to me a few days ago,) they will not make any 
 impression on the piiblic mind. It was some consolation that at least two of your 
 eminent Bishops, Tait and Thirlwall, had the courage and regard for their 
 character to withhold from partaking in these measures.'— /wijf 30, 1863. 
 
 For many the names of Htjpeeid and Kuenek will have their 
 due weight. But the next witness comes reoommended as an 
 English clergyman, filling more than one office of distinction, — 
 the Rev. J. J. S. Perowne, B.D., Vice-Principal of St. David's 
 College, Lampeter, Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich, 
 and late Hebrew Lecturer of King's College^ London, and Assis- 
 tant Preacher of Lincoln's Inn. 
 
 The story of the article upon the Flood in Dr. Smith's 
 'Dictionary of the Bible' is well-known,— how when you turn to 
 'Delttge,'" you find ' [FloodI/ and, when you turn to 'Flood,' 
 you are referred on to '[Noah].' The delay is generally under- 
 stood to have arisen from the conservative tendencies of the editor 
 or publisher, and the difficulty of encountering the subject, in such 
 a way as not to shock too strongly the popular religious notions of 
 the day. However, the second and third volumes of this valuable 
 work have now appeared ; and Mr. Perowne, it seems, has con- 
 tributed the articles on 'Noah' and 'Pentateuch.' To what 
 extent the writer's own opinions are in accordance with the 
 traditionaj-y view, maybe judged from- the following extracts, 
 which I make from the first of these ai-ticles ; though Mr. Pe- 
 BOWNE, it will be seen, has been obliged, in common with many 
 
284 PEEFACE TO PAET IV. 
 
 others, to abandon the notion of an Universal Deluge, which alone 
 the Bible plainly speaks of : — 
 
 It should be remembered that this huge structure was only intended to float on the 
 water, and was not, in the proper sense of the word, a ship. It had neither mast, 
 sail, nor rudder ; it was, in fact, nothing but an enormous floating house or oblong 
 box. . . Two objects only were aimed at in its construction : the one was that it 
 should have ample stowage, and the other, that it should be able to keep steady upon 
 the water.— SMrrn's Diet, of the Bible, ii.p..566. 
 
 It is not only the inadequate size of the ark to contain all, or anything like all the 
 progenitors of our existing specits of animals, which is conclusive against an univer- 
 sal Deluge. . . It is true that Noah is told to take two ' of every living thing of 
 all flesh': but that could only mean two of every animal then known to him, unless 
 we suppose him to have had supernatural information in zoology imparted, — a thing 
 quite incredible. . . Again, how were the cimivorous animals supplied with food 
 during their twelve months' abode in the ark ? This would have been difficult even 
 for the very limited number of wild animals in Noah's immediate neighbourhood. 
 For the very large numbers, which the theory of a universal Deluge supposes, it 
 would have been quite impossible, unless again we have recourse to miracle, and 
 either maintain that they were miraculously supplied with food, or that, for the time 
 being, the nature of their teeth and stomach was changed, so that they were able to 
 live on vegetables. But these hypotheses are so extravat<ant, and so utterly imsup- 
 ported by the narrative itself, that they may be safely dismissed without further 
 comment. . . Indeed, it is out of the question to imagine that the ark rested on 
 the top of a mountain (Ararat), which is covered for 4,000 feet from the summit with 
 perpetual snow, and the descent from which would have been a very serious matter 
 both to men and other animals. — ii.^. 567-569. 
 
 Yet the statement in Gen.vii.5, that the tops of the monntaina 
 were not seen until seventy-three days after the Ark ' rested,' 
 proves that, if it rested on Ararat at all, it must have been upon the 
 summit. I have shown, however, in Chap. XIX of this Part, that 
 & partial Deluge, of the kind here described, is quite as impossible 
 as a general one. There is no use, therefore, in twisting the plain 
 meaning of the Scripture, to make it say what to the ' wayfarmg 
 man' it certainly does not say. But I doubt if any article could 
 be written upon the Deluge in this day, — by anyone who desired 
 to maintain some character as a man of science or, indeed, of 
 common sense, — more conservative than that which Mr. Pbbo^vne 
 has written. He is therefore, I presume, a most unexceptionable 
 witness. 
 
 Let us now, then, see what Mr. Peeowne has to say about the 
 Pentateuch. I must commend him for the candour and courage 
 which he has shown, in speaking out plainly the truth as he sees 
 it. But let my readers — my lay-readers especially — consider the 
 force of the following admissions, coming from a writer who is 
 still trammelled, it is plain,— as we see by his remarks on the 
 Deluge, — by the influence of his educational training and pre- 
 
 H, without any theory casting its shadow upon us, and without any fear of conse- 
 quences before our eyes, we read thoughtfully only the Book of Genesis, we can 
 hardly escape the conviction, that it pari akes of the nature of a compilation. . . . 
 
 At the very opening of the book, peculiarities of style and manner are discernible, 
 which can scarcely escape the notice of a careful reader even of a translation,— 
 which certainly are no sooner pointed out, than we are compelled to admit their 
 existence. The language of chap, i.l-ii.8 is totally unlike that of the section which 
 follows, ii.4-iu.23. This last is not only distinguished by a peculiar use of the 
 Divine Names, but also by a mode of expression peculiar to itself. It is also remark- 
 able for preserving an account of the Creation, distinct from that contained in the 
 first chapter. It may be said, indeed, that this account does not contradict the 
 
PREFACE TO PART IV. 285 
 
 former (?), and might, therefore, have proceeded from the same pen. But, fully 
 admitting that there is no contradiction, the representation is so different that it ia 
 far more natural to conclude that it was derived from some other, though not anta- 
 gonistic, source. . . Still, in any case, it cannot be denied that this second account 
 has the character of a supplement, — that it is designed, if not to correct, at least to 
 explain the other. And this fact, taken in connection with the peculiarities of the 
 phraseology, aud the use of the Divine Names in the same section, is quite sufficient 
 to justify the supposition, that we have here an instance, not of independent narrative, 
 hut of compilation from different sources. . . 
 
 Still this phenomenon of the distinct use of the Divine Names would scarcely of 
 itself prove the point, that there are two documents which form the groundwork of 
 the existing Pentateuch. But there is other evidence pointing the same way :-~ 
 
 (i) We find, for instance, the same story told by the two writers, and their two 
 accounts manifestly interwoven ; and we find also certain favourite words and 
 phrases, which distinguish the one writer from the other. , . 
 
 (ii) But, again, we find that these duplicate narratives are characterised by peculiar 
 modes of expression, and that, generally, the Elohistic and Jehovistic sections have 
 their own distinct and individual colouring. 
 
 So far, then, judging this work simply by what we find in it, there is abundant 
 evidence to show that, though the main bulk (?) of it is Mosaic, certain detached 
 portions of it are of later growth. — ii.^.774r-8. 
 
 The above extracts are enough for my purpose, and they are 
 written by the ' Examining Chaplain of the Bishop of Norwich.' 
 BIr. Pebownb differs from me decidedly in some important points 
 of criticism. In particular, he maintains that Moses wrote the 
 whole Book of Deuteronomy, whereas I believe that a later Pro- 
 phet wrote it about the time of Josiah ; and I have given, as I 
 conceive, a demonstration of that fact in Part III. 
 
 But this is only a difference in detail. The passages, above 
 quoted from Mr. Pekowne's paper, are abundantly sufficient to 
 confirm me in the opinion that the ' great main point,' for which I 
 am contending, ia undeniably true, and that the traditionary 
 opinion concerning the authorship of the Pentateuch must hence- 
 forth be abandoned. It is plain that the Pentateuch is not 
 by any means the work of one single hand, the hand of Moses, 
 but a composite work, the work of different hands in different 
 ao-es. And therefore, though critics may ascribe to Moses himself, 
 some more, some less, and some none at all, of the torittm stoiy, 
 as it now lies before us, yet this is merely a question of detail, 
 which can only be settled with more or less certainty by such 
 processes of careful, laborious, and conscientious criticism, as those 
 which I have endeavoured, to the best of my power, to carry out 
 in my different volumes. And who so fitting, as the Clergy of 
 the Church of England, to conduct and complete such criticism ? 
 
 For our ordination-vows, as Ministers of a Protestant Church, 
 not only do not forbid, but positively bind us in the most solemn 
 way, in the face of the Congregation, to nvike such enquiries, and 
 to declare the results of them, if we think it needful or desirable 
 to do so. Every presbyter of the National Church is solemnly 
 pledged at his ordination to ' be diligent in reading of the holy 
 Scriptures, and of such studies as help to the knowledge of the 
 same '—of such critical studies, therefore, as contribute to the more 
 
286 PREFACE TO PAET IV. 
 
 thorougli understanding of the Pentateucli, as well as the New 
 Testament. Further, he is then solemnly pledged to teach nothing 
 as necessary to salvation, but what he ' shall he persuaded may he 
 concluded and proved by the same.' He is not, therefore, to teach 
 that ' all our hopes for eternity depend' upon belief in the histo- 
 rical truth of Noah's Flood or the story of the Exodus, or on the 
 trustworthiness of every line in the Bible, if in his own mind and 
 conscience he is not persuaded that the Scriptures, when carefully 
 examined, suffice to ' conclude and prove ' the truth of such stater 
 ments. And every Bishop is then pledged to banish and drive 
 away, 'privately and openly,'' all erroneous doctrine, contrary to 
 God's Word, — such as that which lays down the traditionary view 
 of Scripture, stated above. Such vows are taken by a Bishop at 
 his Consecration, in the presence of the people, ' to the end,' it is 
 said — 
 
 that tlie Congregation present may have a trial, and bear witness, how you be 
 minded to behave yourself in the Church of God. 
 
 The Church, moreover, in the Ordination Service, does solemnly 
 
 require a Bishop also to declare, that he will ' exercise himself 
 
 faithfully in the holy Scriptures, and to call upon God by prayer, 
 
 for the true understanding of the same,' and that he will ' teach or 
 
 maintain nothing, as required oi necessity to eternal salvation, but 
 
 that which he shall be persuaded may be concluded and proved by 
 
 the same.' In this vow is expressed the spirit of our Protestant 
 
 Church, the very principle of the Meformation, which, in the 
 
 words of Dean Hook {Manchester Church Congress, 1863), — words 
 
 that cannot be repeated too often, — ^is — 
 
 the necessity of asserting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, — 
 
 in opposition to the principle of Medicsvalism, which, he says, is, — 
 
 when the assertion of the truth is likely to promote discord, to postpone the true to 
 the expedient. 
 
 As Bishop Watson has justly argued, these promises, so solemnly 
 made, must overrule all others. 
 
 But ' we are perplexed by our Subscriptions, which the Law of 
 the Land, at present, requires to be made by everyone admitted to 
 Holy Orders.' Undoubtedly we are ; and, if subscription * is to 
 be regarded as expressing an unqualified assent to everything 
 subscribed, then, as Dean Staulbt has very truly said, — 
 
 • At present, the Law requires that every layman admitted to a vote In the Senate 
 of either of our great Universities, shall sign the Thirty-nine Articles. Here is an 
 ' engagement,' on the strength of which the Master of Arts has received his power 
 to vote upon important questions, affecting vitally, it may be, the future welfare of 
 the Universities, and their relations to the National Church. Yet who will assert 
 that every such layman is bound by this ' engagement ' to believe in all the points 
 of the Thirty-nine Articles unto his life's end, or to give up his vote, and take no 
 further part in the management of the Universities, if he comes at any time to enter- 
 tain a doubt upon any one of them ? 
 
PREFACE TO PAET IV. 287 
 
 There is not one clergyman in the Church of England, who can venture to cast j 
 a stone at another : they must all go out, from the greatest to the least, from the j 
 Archbishop in his palace at Lambeth to the humblest curate in the wilds of Cum- ' 
 berland. 
 
 It is a state of things much to be regretted ; for it cannot be 
 said that such compromises, as are now almost universally prac- 
 tised on some point or other, are at all conducive to a healthy, 
 vigorous, religious life, either among the teachers or the taught. 
 Even His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury declared in the 
 House of Lords that he could not, and would not, himself in 
 certain cases fulfil the ' engagement,' to which he boimd himself, 
 v^hen admitted to the sacred office. And now the Bishop of Ox- 
 ford has said that he will protect his clergy in so doing, if consulted 
 beforehand, and if the case is one which he approves. 
 
 Happily, our Church, as a National Institution, is not the crea- 
 tion of the Bishops and Clergy, but of the will of the Nation, ex- 
 pressed in Parliament. And, as Parliament has reformed it already 
 more than once, it may do so again, and remove some, at least, of 
 those hindrances, which now prevent it from discharging properly 
 its office, as the great religious educator of the people. The 
 very law which, as Bishop Wilbbefokcb thinks, relieves him 
 from the necessity of enforcing the Canons, is a law of the State, 
 with reference to which no consent of the ' Church ' was pre- 
 viously asked, — no approval even of ' Convocation ' needed. A 
 similar law may before long be passed to relieve the difficulties, 
 which press more heavily on other minds. And the time seems 
 fast ripening for this — when the voice of religious and earnest 
 laymen shall be heard throughout the land, calling loudly on Par- 
 liament to interfere for such a Reform. 
 
 for the truth is, and we must rejoice to know it, that there has 
 been a remarkable awakening of the religious life in this our day, 
 altogether without the pale of Church dogmas. The great body 
 of educated men do recognise the existence of ' Providence, Reve- 
 lation, and Grace/ — though they do not adopt certain narrow 
 definitions of these words. They 'believe in the Bible,' though 
 they do not believe in the historical or scientific truth of all its 
 statements ; they believe that God reveals Himself to the spirit of 
 man though they do not suppose that His Revelation of Himself 
 is confined to one nation or to one set of books. There is, in our 
 days, a general acceptance of the Highest and Deepest Truths, as 
 revelations in themselves, the communications of the Divine Being 
 to His children, vdthout a slavish adherence to the forms in which 
 they have appeared, or to the authoritative ecclesiastical system 
 of doctrine, to which some would limit their existence for ua. 
 And this very fact is the most impressive protest against the threat, 
 ■which is held out, that, if men vrill not shut their eyes, and re- 
 ceive without questioning every 'jot and tittle ' which the Church 
 
.288 PEEFACE TO PART IV. 
 
 administers, or each booli of the Bible contains, they will he left 
 before long without religion — without life, without hope, and with- 
 out God in the world. 
 
 Great eiforts are now being made to advance the education of 
 the middle, as well as the lower, classes of this country. Yet, 
 unless the way is first cleared, through such labours as those in 
 which I am now engaged, by removing the contradictions which 
 at present exist between the popular notions of Religion and the 
 results of Science, it is obviously impossible that the education of 
 the people should be carried on to any great extent in England. 
 For, while religious teaching is connected inseparably with the 
 traditionary belief in the historical truth of all parts of the Bible, 
 — a belief which the advance of knowledge in our days shows to 
 be utterly untenable, — it is certain that no considerable scientific 
 progress can be made in our schools. The schoolmaster will not 
 dare to introduce questions of Science, going at all beyond the 
 usual routine, by which the accounts of the Creation and the 
 Deluge are supposed to be ' reconciled ' with well-known facts. 
 Nay, he himself has very probably been reai'ed in some Training 
 Institution, from which all free scientific teaching must be banished, 
 lest ' one single line ' of Scripture should be shown to be ' imtrust- 
 worthy,' in a scientific or historical point of view, and so ' all our 
 hopes for eternity,' — ' all our nearest and dearest consolations,' — 
 should be suddenly, at one stroke, undermined. 
 
 I believe, then, that in endeavouring to do faithfully, to the best 
 of my power, such a work as this, — in which I maintain that Re- 
 ligious and Scientific Truth are one, and that, what God hath 
 joined, no man, and no body of men, has a right to put asunder, — 
 I am but discharging, however imperfectly, my duty as a Minister 
 of the National Church, and promoting the cause of National 
 education and improvement at home, as well as of those Missionary 
 labours abroad, to which, in God's Providence, my own life must 
 be more especially devoted. If it would be wrong for a Christian 
 Missionary of our day, to enforce the dogmas of the Church in 
 former ages, which we now know to be absurd, and to mislead a 
 class of native catechists, by teaching them that the Earth is 
 flat, and the sky a solid firmament, above which the stores of rain 
 are treasured, — when God has taught us otherwise, — ^it must be 
 equally wrong and sinful, to teach them that the Scripture stories 
 of the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge, are infallible records of 
 historical fact, if God, by the discoveries of Science in oui day, 
 has taught us to know that these narratives — whatever they may 
 be — are certainly not to be regarded as history. 
 
 But, using now the word ' Church ' in its true, ancient, and 
 venerable sense, as a general expression for the great Catholic Body, 
 
PREFACE TO PART IV. 289 
 
 'hich embraces all faithful souls tiirougliout the world, — all those 
 'ho have heen ' called out ' to receive more of Divine illumination 
 lan others, — all those who have been quickened with the word of 
 ruth, and have heard and obeyed it, as far as they heard it, — all 
 lose on whose eyes the Light of God has shone, 'the Light 
 'hich lighteneth every man that comes into the world,' and who 
 ave striven by God's grace to walk in it, — in one word, as em- 
 racing all true men and women, servants of God, sons and 
 aughters of the Lord Almighty, — by whatever name they are 
 nown to men, by whatever forms they may worship, whatever 
 leasure of the knowledge of Himself, and of His highest Revela- 
 ions of Himself, He may have been pleased to impart to them, — , 
 am fully satisfied that the cause of Truth must now advance in ■ 
 tie Church in England, — perhaps, as fast as ia desirable, seeing 
 tiat many strong prejudices and prepossessions have still to be 
 amoved, the rooting-up of which, however necessary to ensure the 
 L'ee growth of True Religion, and the full development of the 
 /hristian Life, must be a somewhat slow and painful work. 
 
 The difilculty is, indeed, increased by the conduct of those 
 rho, without stating what is to be believed, about the stories of 
 he Creation and the Deluge, or the numbers of the Exodus,— 
 rithout stating distinctly what our ovra. Church says is to be 
 lelieved on these points, and where she has said it, — ^without 
 tating what they themselves helieve, — are frightening their flocks 
 com looking calmly, in the fear and faith of God, at the plain 
 laked Truth, — delivering solemn warnings against some dark 
 remendous evil, which, they say, is approaching daily nearer, and 
 annot be kept ofij and even now overshadows us, — telling us that, 
 a all the literature of the day, in the works of poets, historians,* 
 eviewers, journalists, there is a lurking infidelity, and that in all 
 he noble utterances of science, and clear conclusions of Biblical 
 riticism, we may only be 'hearing the echoes of the coming 
 botfall of the great Antichrist.' Thus it is that the hearts of 
 uen and women, unlearned, may be troubled for a time, and their 
 ninds held in painful suspense, possessed with a feeling of dread 
 :nd uncertainty. 
 
 How difierent would it be, if all the more enlightened of the 
 leroy were to take at once the stand, which in the end must 
 ssuredly be taken,— were to take boldly God's facts, as they are, 
 nd bring them forth, in their habitual teaching, so making them 
 ly degrees familiar to the people ! When such teaching as this is 
 lonflrmed by the speaking earnestness of a pure and holy life, and 
 mforced by a course of loving and devoted labour for the good of 
 nen there need be no fear of men making shipwi'eck of their 
 rust in God, or finding suddenly all their hopes for eternity 
 ailino- all 'their nearest and dearest consolations' taken from 
 
290 PEEFACE TO PART IV. 
 
 them, Without any dangerous shock to their faith, a superstitious 
 reverence for the letter of the Bible would then give way to a 
 right and intelligent appreciation of the true value of the Scrip- 
 tures, as containing God's Word, a blessed and glorious Kevelation 
 of His Eternal Truth to Man. 
 
 J. W. NATAL. 
 
 23, Sussex Place, Kensington, W. 
 
 *** Since the above was written, the recent Charge of the Bishop of St. David's 
 has been published. I commend the following extracts from it to the reader's cai'eful 
 consideration, not on account of the bearing which they have on that part of the 
 controversy which is personal to myself, but for the sake of the judicial clearness, 
 witli %\iiich Bishop Thirlwall has described the proper limits of the action of Con- 
 vocation in respect of books, and for the sake also of his distinct recognition of the 
 ample latitude allowed to the clergy, by the law of our Church, in their enqulxies into 
 the genuinenet-s and authenticity of the Biblical writings : — 
 
 ' Thu Church has not attempted to fence the study of the Scripture, either for Clergy 
 or Lailij, with amj restrictions as to the subject of enguii-y, but has rather taught them to 
 consider every kind of information, which throws light on any part of the Snored 
 
 Volume, as precious, either for present or possible use fj the enquiry is 
 
 to be free, it is impossible consistently to prescribe its results.'— p. 91. 
 
 'The Resolution [of Convocation], by wliich the Bishop of Natal's book was 
 condemned, assumes a paternal authority, which rather suits an earlier period in the 
 education of the world; and it presupposes a childlike docility and obedience, in those 
 over whom it is exei'cised, which are now very rarely to be found. It also suggests 
 tlie question, what practical purpose it was desi'^ned to answer. Two were indicated 
 in the Committee's Report, — " the effectual vindication of the truth of God's "Word 
 bel'ore men," and " the warning and comfort of Christ's People." But it is not clear 
 bow either of these objects could be attained by a declaration, that " the book involves 
 errors of the gravest and most dangerous character." Both seem to require that the 
 censure should have pointed out the errors involved, or have stated the doctrine 
 which the book had at least indirectly impugned, so as to make it clear that the 
 alleged errors affected, not merely prevalent opinions, but truths universally recog- 
 Dised as part of the Church's creed.'— p. 101. 
 
 ' According to the view which I have ventured to take of the proper limits of 
 synodical action in the cognisance of books, the C immittee overstept those limits. 
 They were appointed to examine the Parts which had then appeared of the Bishop'a 
 work, and to report " whether any — and if any, «;/ifli— opinions, heretical or erroneous 
 in doctrine, were contained in it." They extracted three propositions, which they 
 have characterised as we have seen 
 
 ' It may seem, Indeed, as if the Committee, in their mode of dealing with the first 
 of the propositions, which they cite or extract for censure, had shown that they were 
 aware of the precise nature of the function they had to perfonn, and meant to 
 confine themselves to it. That proposition is, — "The Bible is not itself God's Word.'* 
 The author himself immediately adds, " But assuredly * God's Word ' will be heard 
 in the Bible, by all who will humbly and devoutly listen for it." Of this qualification, 
 the Committee, in their remarks on the proposition, take no notice whatever. But 
 thRv first observe that the proposition, as they cite it, " is contrary to the faith of the 
 Universal Churjh, which has always tai^ht that Holy Scripture is given by inspira- 
 tion of the Holy Ghost." They seem to have overlooked that this statement, how- 
 ever true, was irrelevant ; but they then proceed to refer to the Articles and Formu- 
 laries of our own Church, which are, indeed, the only authority binding on her 
 ministers. But, unfortunately, not one of the passages, to which they refer, applies 
 to the proposition condemnai. Many, indeed, among them do clearly describe the 
 Bible as the "Word of God." But not one affirms that "the Bible is itself God's 
 Word." .... No doubt, the expression indicated that the author made a dis- 
 tinction between the Bible a;id the Word of God, and considered the two terms as 
 rot precisely equivalent or absolutely interchangeable And there is cer- 
 tainly high authority for the diatinction. Among the numerous passages of the New 
 Testament, in which the phrase, the Word of Ood, occurs, there is not one in which it 
 Bigniftes the Bible, or in which that word could be substituted for it without manifest 
 absurdity. But, even in our Articles and Formularies, [there are several, in which 
 the two terms do not appear to be treated as synonymous.' . . . . Jfthe Word of 
 God isto be found nowhere but in Holy Writ^ riot only would no other Christian Litera- 
 ture be properly called sacredy but tlie M)le itself would be degro^ed to a dead and barren 
 letter, and would not be a living spring of Divine Truth. On the whole, the Report first 
 attaches an arbitrary meaning to an ambiguous expression, and then charges it with 
 contradicting autliorities, which are eittier wholly silent upon it, or seem to coun- 
 tenauce and warrant It. ... . 
 
PEEEACE TO PAET IV. . 291 
 
 • But, in their treatment of the next proposition, the Committee seem almost entirely 
 to have lost sight of the principle, which, although misapplied, appeared to guide 
 them in their examination of the first. For, with a single insignificant exception, 
 they confront it, not with our Articles and Formularies, but with passages of Scrip- 
 ture. Quotations from Scripture may add great weight to a theological argument ; 
 they are essential for the establishment of any doctrine of a Church, which professes 
 to ground its teaching on Scripture ; but they are entirely out of place where the 
 question is, not whether a doctrine is true or false, but whether it is the doctrine of 
 the Church of England. . . . This is no legal refinement, but a plain dictate 
 of common sense ; and it does not at all depend on the composition of the tribunal 
 before which such questions are tried, so as to be less applicable if the Court con- 
 sisted entirely of ecclesiastics I should think it a great misfortune to the 
 
 Church, if Convocation, sitting in judgment on the orthodoxy of a theological work, 
 though without any view to proceaJings against the author, should ignore and prac- 
 tically reject that principle. And, if in this respect the Report betrays the influence 
 of a personal prepossession, which, however natural, ought not to be allowed to sway 
 the decisions of a grave assembly,— above all, so as to bring them into conflict with 
 the highest legal authorities of the Realm, — we have the more reason to rejoice that 
 it did not obtain the sanction of the Upper House, 
 
 ' When I look at the Scriptural arguments adduced in the Report against the 
 second proposition extracted for condemnation, they do not seem to me of such a 
 quality as to deserve to form an exception, if any could be admitted, to the rule 
 
 which would exclude them from such an investigation The Committee 
 
 observe that '* Moses is spoken of, by our Blessed Lord in the Gospel, as the writer of 
 the Pentateuch." I suspect that even a layman, little acquainted with the manifold 
 aspects of the question, and the almost infinite number of surmises which have 
 been or may be formed concerning it, would be somewhat disappointed, when he 
 found that the proof of this statement consists of three passages, in which our Lord 
 speaks of " Moses and the Prophets," of the " law of Moses," and of "writings of 
 Moses." It is true that it would not be a fatal objection to the argument, that the 
 word " Pentateuch " does not occur in the Bible. It might have been so dracribed, 
 OS to connect every part of its contents with the hand of Moses, as distinctly as if 
 the observation of the Committee had been literally true. But in fact this is not the 
 case ; and still less is any such distinct appropriation to be found in any of the 
 passages cited by the Committee in support of their assertion, that " Moses is recog- 
 nised as the writer of the Pentateuch in other passages of Holy Scriptiure." They 
 are neither more nor less conclusive than the language of the Seventh Article, to 
 ■which the Committee confine all the reference they have made to the judgment of 
 the Church on this question,— though this was the only matter into which it was 
 their proper business to enquire. The Article alludes to " the law given from God 
 by Moses,"— a slender foundation for any inference as to the record of that law, 
 much more as to the authorship of other parts of the Pentateuch, especially as the 
 name of Moses does not occur in the enumeration of the canonical books in the Sixth 
 Article, If the question had been as to the authorship of the Book of Psalms, few 
 persons probably would think that it had been dogmatically decided by the Church, 
 because in the Prayer-Book the Psalter is described as tbe " Psalms of David." 
 
 * The third proposition, " variously stated in the book," relates to the h^orical truth 
 of the Pentateuch, which the author denies, not in the sense that everything in it is 
 pure fiction, but that all is not historically true. . . But it is to be regretted that 
 the Committee should again have lost sight of the object for which they were ap- 
 pointed, and have omitted to refo* to any doctrine of the Church, which the author 
 has contradicted. This was the more incumbent on them, since a recent judgment 
 has formally sanctioned a very wide latitude in this respect. It is clear that, in such 
 things, there cannot be two weights and two measures for different persons, and also 
 that it does not belong to any but legal authority to draw the hne, by which the 
 freedom, absolutely grarUed in theory, is to be limited in practice. . . 
 
 ' These are the propositions which they extract as the " main propositions of the 
 book,' which, though not pretending to "pronounce definitively whether they are oi 
 are not heretical," they denoimce as " involving errors of the gravest and most 
 dangerous character." But they proceed to cite a further proposition, which the 
 author states in the form of a question, to meet an objection which had been raised 
 against his main conclusion, as viri;uaUy rejecting Our Lord's authority, by which, as 
 the Committee state, " the genuineness and the authenticity of the Pentateuch have 
 been guaranteed to all men." Whether the passages, in which Our Lord quotes or 
 alludes to the Pentateuch, amount to such a guarantee, is a point which they do not 
 discuss. They only observe that the proposition " questions our Blessed Lord a 
 Divine knowledge,"— and with that remark they drop the subject. ^ . ,, .^ x 
 
 ' Considering that this proposition is incomparably the most important ot all tuat 
 thev cite T one is surprised that it should have been dismissed with sc very 
 cursory and imperfect a notice. For it is not even clear that it correctly expresses 
 the author's meaning. The question which he raises does not property concern Our 
 Lord's Divine knowledge, that is, the knowledge belongmg to His Divme Nature. It 
 
292 PREFACE TO PART IV. 
 
 is whether His human Iniowledge was coextensive with the Divine Omniscience. It ta 
 obvious, at the first glance, what a vast fidd of speculation, theological and meta- 
 physical, is opened by this suggestion. . . Bishop Jeremy Taylor observes: 
 *• They, that love to serve God in hard questions, use to dispute whether Christ did 
 truly, or in appearance only, increase in wisdom. . . Others . . apprehend no 
 Inconvenience in aflarming it to belong to the verity of human nature, to have 
 degrees of understanding as well as of other perfections ; and although ttie humanity 
 of Christ made up the same person with His Divinity, yet they think the Divinity 
 still to be free, even in those communications which were imparted to His inferior 
 nature. . . ." It is clear to which side Taylor inclines. But I must own I should 
 be sorry to see these hard questions revived. . . Still more should I deprecate any 
 attempt of the Church of England to promulge a new dogma for the settlement of 
 this controversy. And I lament that the Committee of the Lower House should 
 have caressed themselves, as if either there was no " dispute" on the subject, or it 
 belonged to them to end it by a word. But, at least, as their remark indicated 
 that the Bishop had, in their judgment, fallen into some grave error, it was due, not 
 only to him, but the renders of their Report, and to the Church at large, that they 
 should have pointed out what the error was, by a comparison with the doctrine of the 
 Church which it was supposed to contradict.' — p.103-115. 
 
 I add also the following from a Lecture on ' Science and Theology/ lately de- 
 livered by Chief-Justice Hajison, of South Australia. 
 
 ' The imiform course of opinion during the last half century among all competent 
 enquirers has been in a direction adverse to the historical character, at least of the 
 early part, of the Book of Genesis. Geology has, I believe I may say, utterly exploded 
 the notion of Creation in six days as given in the first chapter, as well as the idea of 
 a universal Deluge ; and it is gradually throwing back the date of the first appearance 
 of man upon the globe to an antiquity which, according to present appearances, will 
 ultimately be measured by hundreds of thousands of years. The Science of Langnage 
 and Ethnology both tend to show that the separation of the human family, if, as is 
 probable, it was one family originally, must be thrown back for tens of thousands of 
 years, and that the people of Canaan, whom the Israelites drove out, belonged, no 
 less than the Israelites themselves, to the Semitic race, instead of being Hamites, 
 while the Persians belonged to the Indo-European family, instead of being, as the 
 author of the tenth chapter of Genesis makes them, Semitic. And, at the same time, 
 critical investigations, as to the age and authorship of the Book, are leading unmis- 
 takably to the belief that, whoever its compiler might be, and whatever ancient 
 documents might be embodied in it, there were, at any rate, more than two persona 
 concerned in ite authorship, the earliest of whom could not have lived much befort-, 
 and probably did not live after, the time of David. I do not now put forward these 
 conclusions aa true, though personally I consider the evidence such as to warrant our 
 belief of their truth ; but I mention them as those conclusions, to which the ciurent 
 of opinion is now leading, and which the majority of independent thinkers, who devote 
 themselves to these enquiries, will be likely to adopt. Jn facty but for the theological 
 interests supposed to he at stake, and the theological passions therefore aroused, I believe 
 that there would at tJiis time be no more doubt, as to the general truth of the conclusions 
 which Bishop Colenso is enouncing, with regard to the uncertainty of the early history of 
 Hie world and of the Jews, than there is with regard to those put forth by Niebuhr, as to 
 Vie uncertainty of the early history of the Romans. But, however this may be, it 
 cannot be denied that among independent thinkers, who have directed their enquiries 
 to this subject, the tendency is towards the conclusions which I have indicated, in 
 spite of strong early prepossessions, and of no slight present inducements to maintain 
 the contrary views. Now, is it to be supposed,— will anyone venture to assert,— that 
 these views, if adopted, can affect the relation of man to Grod, or the purposes of God 
 to man ?— that the inducements to virtue or piety will he diminished, or that virtue 
 and piety will be less acceptable to God ? — or even that these opinions, if honestly 
 formed and manfully proclaimed, wiU be less pleasing in the eyes of the God of 
 Truth, than the contrary opinions, taken at second hand without enquiry, or ob- 
 tained as the result of an enquiry whose conclusion was foredetermined ? No doubt 
 it is true that many opinions, which we have been accustomed to hold,— rather, 
 though, upon the authority of the school-men and of Milton than of the Bible,— will 
 fall if these views ultimately prevail ; and those, who insist upon having their 
 Theology in a systematic form, may have to remodel their systems. But these are 
 the necessary consequences, in every branch of enquiry, of the discovery of new 
 truths, whenever systems have been prematurely formed. Still, whatever may bff 
 their results, unless we are prepared to prohibit all scientific investigation, these 
 enquiries are demanded by the very importance and saoredness of the subject ; and, if 
 instituted, they must be carried on with no other purpose than that of following 
 Truth, whithersoever it may lead us.' 
 
PAKT IV. 
 
 THE FIEST ELEVEN CHAPTEES OF GENESIS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE COMPOSITE CHAEACTEE OF THE 
 PENTATEUCH. 
 
 901. We shall now proceed to redeem 
 to some extent the promise made in 
 (205), so far, we trust, as to satisfy the 
 thoughtful reader, by actual presenta- 
 tion of the fact before his own eyes that 
 the Book of Genesis is, as we have said, a 
 composite narrative, the product of dif- 
 ferent authors, to each of whom may 
 be assigned his own particular part of 
 the work. As Hupfeld justly observes. 
 We have here tlie most simple and most 
 effective practical refutation of a liost of 
 * Keplies,' and of all tlie ingenuity expended 
 upon them, 
 
 902. We shall at present confine the 
 reader's attention to the first eleven 
 chapters of G-enesis. In these chapters, 
 the parts belonging to the different 
 authors can be very easily distinguished, 
 and can, in mo.st instances, be assigned 
 with confidence to their respective 
 writers. After the eleventh chapter, 
 the question becomes more complicated, 
 by the appearance of insertions by other 
 hands. Still, throughout the whole 
 Book of Genesis, the primitive Elohistic 
 narativecanbe traced without much dif- 
 ficulty, and, as we hope to show in the 
 sequel, can be almost reproduced in its 
 original form. 
 
 903. A few words must here be said 
 as to the method which will be pursued 
 in the following analysis. We have 
 already stated (206) that, throughout 
 the Book of Genesis, two different hands 
 at least are distinctly visible, one of 
 
 which is characterised by the constant 
 use of the name Elohim, the other by 
 the intermixture with it of the name 
 Jehovah, on which account the writers 
 are usually called the 'Elohist' and 
 ' Jehovist,' respectively. And we have 
 mentioned also (207) that there are cer 
 tain peculiarities of expression, which 
 mark the style of each of these writers. 
 We must not, however, assume, for the 
 purposes of the present analysis, that all 
 this will be granted beforehani 
 
 904.' Kather, we must lay aside^all 
 previous notions as to the characteristics 
 which distinguish the different writers, 
 and endeavour to track the footsteps of 
 each, from one passage to another, by 
 means only of. the internal evidence, 
 which a close consideration of the text 
 itself may furnish. In this department 
 of Biblical literature, as in many other 
 branches of Science, it is only this 
 minute, laborious, microscopic examina- 
 tion, — however neglected and, perhaps 
 despised by many, who are impatient 
 of such slow processes, and delight to 
 expatiate in 'larger and grander views ' 
 of the whole subject, — which can really 
 be of service, in enabling us to lay a 
 sound basis of fact, upon which to con- 
 struct a reasonable and trustworthy 
 theory, as to the age and authorship of 
 the different parts of the Mosaic story. 
 905. While, therefore, we shall retain 
 in the following analysis the words 
 ' Elohist ' and ' Jehovist,' as convenient 
 designations for the two principal 
 writers, whose hands can be plainly 
 discerned in these chapters, yet the 
 
294 
 
 COMPOSITE CHAEACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 reader -will find that nothing has heen 
 taken for granted beforehand; but each 
 passage, as it passes under review, is 
 traced to its writer by means of distinct 
 internal evidence, which shows that it 
 belongs to that particular writer, and 
 not to the other. It will be found that 
 the sections, marked as ' Elohistic,' are 
 aU linked together, each being con- 
 nected, by its modes of thought or 
 forms of expression, with other 
 Elohistie passages, and having no such 
 relation to the Jehovistie sections, — 
 while these latter not only exhibit 
 among themselves a corresponding 
 family resemblance, very distinct from 
 that which marks the style of the 
 Elohist, but also contain expressions, 
 which appear to indicate that they were 
 composed at a time, when the Elohistie 
 narrative was already existing, and 
 known to the Jehovistie writer. 
 
 906. In this analysis, intended for the 
 use of the English reader not acquainted 
 with Hebrew, we shall be obliged, of 
 course, to omit a great number of the 
 details, which form such a complete and 
 convincing mass of evidence in the larger 
 edition. Still we trust to be ^.ble to 
 produce enough of these details to 
 satisfy the mind of any candid and 
 attentive student, as to the general 
 truth of our conclusions. We shall 
 adopt throughout our own translation 
 of the original, as given below, which 
 differs slightly in some places from the 
 English version in consequence of being 
 more literal and accurate, 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ANALYSIS OP G13N.I.1-IV.26. 
 
 907. i.l-ii.3 (E.35*) is manifestly 
 Elohistie, the work of one hand through- 
 out. 
 
 * B., J., J.E., are used, as before, to denote 
 the "words ' Eloliim,' ' Jehovah,' • Jehovah- 
 Elohim'; and (E.oS) implies that 'Elohim' 
 occurs 35 times in the section, i.l-ii.3, and 
 * Jehovah ' not at all. Also d.4'*, v.4^, &c. , 
 are used to denote, respectively, the first, 
 second, &c., clauses of vA', co7ap.=compare, 
 contr, = contrast. 
 
 The reader is recommended to jnark each 
 one of the Jehovistie passages, when he is 
 eatisfted about it, in an English Bible, by a 
 line drawn down the margin. This will be 
 found very convenient for reference. 
 
 It is very possible that ii.l* — 
 ' These are the generations of the Heaven 
 and the Earth in their creation ' — 
 
 may also be Elohistie, for the following 
 reasons : — 
 
 (i) It contains ' the Heaven and the Earth,' 
 as in i.l,ii.l,the words being used with the 
 articles ; whereas in ii.4b we find the words 
 ioitJuyut the articles, anJ in different order, 
 ' Earth and Heaven ; ' 
 
 (ii) The expression * in their creation,* corre- 
 sponds to the Elohistie language in v.2, * in 
 the day of their creation ; ' 
 
 (iii) These words suit best ^^Q first account 
 of the Creation in which alone the actual 
 creation of ' the Heaven,' i.8, and ' the Earth,' 
 i.lO, is described ; whereas chap.ii mentions 
 only the formation of man, iij, plants, ii.9, 
 ammals, ii.l9, and woman, il.22. 
 
 908. We shall retain i.4°, however, as 
 the first clause of the Jehovistie narra- 
 tive, without deciding to whom it really 
 belongs. In any ease, the involved 
 construction in vA, when compared 
 with the verses which precede and 
 follow it, is a sign that it does not pro- 
 ceed in an independent, original form 
 from the pen of either of the principal 
 vpriters, but contains expressions of 
 both fused together, to form the con- 
 necting link between two distinct nar- 
 ratives. 
 
 909. ii.4-25 ( J.E. 11) is Jehomtie, the 
 writer using throughout — not Elohim, 
 as the writer of i.l-ii.3, but — Jehovah- 
 Elohim, and showing himself to be a 
 different writer by the following varia- 
 tions, which exist between his account 
 of the creation and that of the former 
 writer: — 
 
 (i) v.S, ' a mist rose from the earth, and 
 watered the whole face of the ground ' : contr. 
 i.9,10, where the earth is described as emerg- 
 ing from the waters, and as being, therefore, 
 already saturated with moisture ; 
 
 (ii) V.7, man is created first of all living 
 creatures, before the birds and beasts, u.l9: 
 conir.i.26, where he is created last of all, after 
 the birds and beasts, i.21,2.5 ; 
 
 (iii) V.7, man is ^formed of the dust of the 
 groimd ' : conlr.i.27, where man is ' created in 
 the image of God,' and, apparently, by a direct 
 act of creative power ; 
 
 (iv) v.7, the Tnan is made by himself, with- 
 out the woman, who is made last, v.29, by a 
 kind of afterthought, r.l8 : contr.i.i7, whero 
 man and woman .-ure created together, last of 
 all created things ; 
 
 (v) v,16, the man, after being made, is 
 
 It will be remembered that in the Eng, 
 Vers. ' Elohim ' is represented by God, ' Jeho- 
 vah' by Loan, and ' Adonai ' by Lord. 
 
ANALYSIS OF GEKI.1-IV.26. 
 
 295 
 
 placed alone In tlie garden, 'to till it and to 
 keep it," receiving also alone by himself the 
 Divine command ; and he continues in the 
 garden some time by himself, long enough to 
 ' call names to all the cattle, and to the Jowl 
 of the heaven, and to every animal of the 
 field,' U.20 : conir .i.28, where man and woman, 
 on the sixth day, immediately after their 
 creation, are blessed together, and are together 
 endowed with dominion over the whole earth ; 
 (vi) v.21,22, the woman is made out of one 
 of the man's ribs ; contr,i.27, where the 
 woman, is described, apparently, as created, in 
 the same kind of way aa the man, by a direct 
 act of creative power. 
 
 910. It is obvious that two accounts 
 of the Creation, so diflferent from each 
 other in general character, and in some 
 points varying so remarkably from each 
 other, cannot have proceeded from one 
 and the same hand. Accordingly, ob- 
 serving the peculiar use of the Divine 
 Name in them, we are already justified 
 in using the names ' Elohist ' and 
 ' Jehovist' to designate the two writers, 
 whoever they may have been, in what- 
 ever age they may have lived, to whom 
 these two sections, i.l— ii.3, ii.4-25, 
 may be now with good reason assumed 
 to be due. We shall find, as we pro- 
 ceed, that the remaining sections of 
 these first eleven chapters separate 
 themselves at once, when attention is 
 paid to the internal evidence which they 
 present, into two sets of passages, dif- 
 fering from each other in tone of thought 
 and forms of expression, and, with one 
 or two exceptions, distinctly referable 
 to the same two vpriters, to whom must 
 be assigned the composition of the 
 above two primary sections. 
 
 911. We now add the following re- 
 marks upon the Jehovistio passage, 
 ii.4-25. 
 
 (i) In C.20 we have the name *Adam,' 
 which the Jehovist mat/ have adopted from 
 the Elohist in i.26, — 'Let us maJce Adam 
 (B.y. man) ' ; and he wishes, apparently, 
 to connect it with Mamah, ' ground,' in ii.7, 
 — 'and Jehovah-Blohim formed the man 
 (,ka-Adam) of dust out of the ground (Aa- 
 Adamah)' . , . . .. 
 
 (ii) ■0-.23, the Jehovist notes the derivation 
 of the name ishah, ' woman,' from ish, ' man.' 
 
 912. iii.1-24, Jehovistic. 
 
 This section is manifestly due to the 
 writer of the preceding section, who- 
 ever he may be, since it not only con- 
 tains the same peculiar form of the 
 Divine Name, but is full of references 
 
 to the former section, as is shown below, 
 while it betrays no such relation to the 
 previous Elohistie section, — a fact, 
 which confirms decisively our previous 
 conclusion as to the difference between 
 the two authors. 
 
 (i) «.1,8,8,9,13,14,21,22,23, 'Jehovah-Elohim': 
 the writer, however, abstains from placing 
 it in the mouth of the serpent^ ''.IjS, and in 
 that of the woman, u.3, who apparently repeats 
 the words of the serpent ; 
 
 (ii) <i.l,2,8,8,10, 'the garden,' <KOTii.8,9,10, 
 15,16; 
 
 (iii) D.1-3, • is it so that Blohim has said,' 
 &c. : comp. the command in ii.16,17 J 
 
 (iv) «.1,14, ' animal of Vasjj£ld,' as in ii.l9, 
 20 : contr. ' animal of the earthy i.25,30 ; 
 
 (v) V.3, ' the tree which is in the midst oj the 
 garden' : C07?ip,ii.9 ; 
 
 (vi) V.5, * in the day of your eating of it' : 
 compAiM, ' in the day of thy eating of it ' ; 
 
 (vii) v.by ' knowing good and evil,' v.22, 
 ' for the knowledge of good and evil' : comp. 
 ii.9,17, 'the tree of the knowledge of good 
 and evil ' ; 
 
 (viii) t;.7, ' they kiiew that they were naked,' - 
 D.IO, ' I was afraid, because I was naked,' v.'ll , 
 'and clothed them' : com2?.ii.25, 'they were 
 both naked' ; 
 
 (ix) W.18, ' herb of the field,' as in ii.5 ; 
 
 (X) fl.20, the name khamah, ' Eve,' derived 
 from khavah, 'Hve' : comp. the derivation of 
 the names ' Adam,' ii.7, ' Ishah,' ii.23 ; 
 
 (xi) V.22, * and Jehovah-Elohim said ' : comp, 
 the secret speech which is ascribed to Jehovah- 
 Elohim in ii.l8 ; and observe that the some- 
 what similar E. passage, i.26, is essentially 
 dijferent in character, being merely an ex- 
 pansion of the creative words, ' Ajid Elohim 
 said,' in v.3,6, &c., and does not at all re- 
 semble the almost perplexed deliberation of 
 the Divine Being with Himself, in iii. 22 ; 
 
 (xii) u.22,24, ' tree of life,' as in ii.9 ; 
 
 (xiii) V.23, ' till the ground,' as in ii.5 ; 
 
 (xiv) U.23, 'the ground from which he was 
 taken ' : comp. the account of Adam's forma- 
 tion in ii.7 ; 
 
 (XV) D.23,24, 'garden of Eden,' as in ii.l5 : 
 comp. also ' Eden,' ii.8,10. 
 
 913. We may now assume that the 
 writer of ii.4-iii.24 is one and the same 
 person, and different from the Elohistio 
 author of i.l-ii.3. We may further 
 observe that this Jehovistic writer is in 
 the habit of using strong anthropomor- 
 phisms, ascribing to the Deity ordinary 
 human actions. Thus we have Jehovah- 
 Elohim spoken of as — 
 
 (i) forming the man of dust out of the 
 ground, ii.7 ; 
 
 (ii) breatliing into his nostrils, ii.7 ; 
 
 (iii) planting a garden, ii.8 ; 
 
 (iv) taking the man, and leaving him in 
 the garden, ii.l5 ; 
 
 (v) bringing the birds and beasts to Adam, 
 ii.l9 • 
 
 (vi) desiring to see what he would call 
 them, ii.l9 ; 
 
296 
 
 ANALYSIS OF GEN.I.1-IV.26. 
 
 (\ii) taking out one of the man's ribs, ii. 
 21 ; 
 
 (viiij closing up the fiesh in its place, ii. 
 21 ; 
 
 (ix) making the rib into a woman, ii.22 ; 
 
 (x) bringing the woman tmto the man, ii. 
 
 (xi) walking in the breeze of the day, iii. 
 8; 
 
 (xii) missing the man, and calling for him, 
 iii. 9 ; 
 
 (xiii) qnestioning him as to what he has 
 done, iii.ll ; 
 
 (xiv) making coats of skins, iii.21 ; 
 
 (xv) clothing the man and woman, iii.21 ; 
 
 (xvi) grudging the man being like himself, 
 iii.22; ' 
 
 (xvii) refusing to let him eat of the tree of 
 life, iii.22; 
 
 (xviii) dri-ring them out of the garden, iii. 
 24; 
 
 (xix) ta.king precautions to prevent their 
 return, iii. 24 ; 
 
 (xx) reasoniug within himself in human 
 fashion, ii.l8, iii.22. 
 
 914. As above observed (907.iii.), tlie 
 Jehovist does not dwell at length upon 
 the creation of the Heaven and the 
 Earth, nor does he even mention at all 
 the *light,' 'firmament^* 'seas,' 'lumi- 
 naries,' 'reptiles,' and 'fishes' of the 
 Elohistic document He is evidently 
 concerned mainly with man and his 
 doings, and is intent on describing (i) 
 his happy life in Paradise, blessed with 
 the institution of marriage, in connec- 
 tion with "which the beasts and birds 
 are introduced, v. 19, formed out of the 
 ground, and brought to Adam to be 
 named ; inasmuch as among these are 
 found the domestic animals, which sup- 
 ply a certain kind of companionship, 
 and prevent his feeling himself alto- 
 gether 'alone,' which was 'not good' 
 for him, v. 18, — and (ii) the terrible 
 change, by which this happy state was 
 lost. 
 
 915. This special object, which the 
 writer had in view, may account for the 
 somewhat abrupt manner in which he 
 begins, ii.4. Tuch observes, p. 40 : — 
 
 Let us imagine the Jehovistic writer, with 
 his purpose in his eye, set down before the 
 preceding cosmogony. Why should he repeat 
 circumstantially, what in that was freely 
 described ? "Why should he relate again the 
 Eeparation of the Heaven from the Earth, the 
 division of the waters, the creation of the 
 heavenly bodies, [the production of the rep- 
 tiles and fishes], which did not specially 
 concern his particular purpose ? "With a few 
 words,- then, he puts all this together, ' in the 
 day of Jehovah -Elohim's making Earth and 
 Heaven,' so at once passing over to that 
 which he piu^oses to describe. 
 
 916. iv.1-26, Jehovistic. 
 
 This section, it vrill be seen, belongs 
 to the same writer as the two preceding 
 sections, — though he uses now 'Je- 
 hovah ' only, instead of the compound 
 name * Jehovah-Elohim.' This ap- 
 pears from the numerous references 
 made in it throughout to ii.4-iii.24, 
 whereas there is no indication of any 
 relationship to the E. section, i.l-ii.3. 
 
 (i) v.l, ' Eve,* as in iii. 20 : the Elohist does 
 not mention at all the name of the first 
 woman, nor does it occur anywhere else in 
 the ax. ; 
 
 (ii) tJ.2, the name Kayin, * Cain,' derived 
 from kanahy ' get * : coinp. the derivations of 
 ' Adam,' ii.7, • Ishah,' ii.23, * Eve,' iii.20 ; 
 
 (iii) ■B.2,12, ' till the ground,' as in ii.5,iii, 
 23; 
 
 (iv) v.l, *and towards thee its desire, and 
 thou — ^thou Shalt rule over it' : comp. iii.l6, 
 ' and towards thy husband thy desire, and he 
 — he shall rule over thee ' ; 
 
 (v) V.9, * whereisAbel thy brother?' comp. 
 iii.9, ' where art thou ? ' 
 
 (vi) u.lO, ' and He said, What hast thou 
 done?' comp.iii.13, 'andHesaid, Whatisthis 
 thou hast done ? ' 
 
 (vii) w.ll, * cursed art thou,* &c.; comp. 
 the curses in iii.14,17 ; 
 
 (viii) «.12, ' when thoa tillest the ground, 
 it shall not henceforth yield unto thee its 
 strength ' : comp. the sentence on Adam, iii. 
 17-19 ; 
 
 (ix) «.14, ' face of the ground (E.Y. earth)* 
 as in ii,6 ; 
 
 (x) «.15, Jehovah *set a mark upon Cain' : 
 comp. the anthropomorphisms in (913) ; 
 
 (xi) U.16, the name ' Nod ' is derived, ap- 
 parently, from nad, ' vagabond,' v.12,14 : 
 comp. the derivations of Adam, Ishah, Eve, 
 Cain, as in (ii) above ; 
 
 (xii) «.16, ' Eden,' as in ii.8,10.154ii.23,24 ; 
 
 (xiii) r.25,26, the writer may have adopt^ 
 the names, * Seth ' and ' Enos,' from the Elo- 
 histic account in ij.3,6, if it lay before him, as, 
 perhaps, he has adopted the name ' Adam,' v.*2d, 
 from 1.26 or v.2; 
 
 (xiv) r.2&, the name Sheth, * Seth,' derived 
 from shith, 'appoint': comp. the derivations 
 of Adam, &c., as above. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ANALYSIS OF GEN.V.l-Yn.24. 
 
 917. v.1-32 (except v.29), Elohistic, 
 
 This section is the continuation of 
 
 the Elohistic narrative, i. 1 -ii.3, to which 
 
 it refers distinctly, but not at all to the 
 
 Jehovistic passage, ii.4-iv.26. 
 
 (i) c.l, * in the likeness of Elohim made He 
 him' : comp, i.27, *in the image of Elohim 
 created He him ' ; 
 
 (ii) v.1,3, ' likeness,' as in i.26 ; 
 
 (iii) v.2, 'male and female created He 
 them,' as in i.27 ; 
 
 (iv) v.2, * He blessed them,' as in i.28 ; 
 
ANALYSIS OF GEN.V.1-VII.24. 
 
 297 
 
 (v) D.8, 'in his likeness, after liis image' : 
 conip.i.26, • in our image, after our likeness.' 
 
 918. V.29 is a Jekovistic interpolation, 
 as appears — not only from its contain- 
 ingthename 'Jehovah,' but also — ^from 
 its referring distinctly to the Jehovistic 
 section, ii.4-iv.26. 
 
 (i) * OTer our "work and over the pain of our 
 hands' : comp. the * work and pain' imposed 
 on Adam in iii.17-19 ; 
 
 (ii) 'the ground which Jehovah cmrsed': 
 comp.iii.l7, 'cursed is the ground for thy 
 sake' ; 
 
 (iii) The name Nodkh, ' Noah,' connected 
 •with nikham, ' comfort ' : comp, the deriva- 
 tions of 'Adam,' ii.7, ' Ishah,' ii.23, ' Eve,' iii. 
 20, * Cain,' iv.l, ' Nod,' iv.16, ' Seth,' iv.25. 
 
 N.B. — Probably, the original conclusion of 
 W.28 was * and begat Noah,' as in iJ.6,9,12,15, 
 18,21,25. In «.3 the Elo hist writes, 'andbegat 
 [not ' begat a son *] in his likeness, after his 
 image, and called his name Seth.' This a^ 
 suggests that the Elohist would not at any 
 rate have written what now stands in u.28,29, 
 
 * and begat a son^ and called his name Noah.' 
 . As said above, he probably wrote ' and begat 
 
 Noah,' and the Jehovist, or some later com- 
 piler, has substituted a ' a son' for 'Noah,' 
 in order to Introduce his explanation of the 
 name. 
 
 919. Ti.1-8, Jehovistic. 
 
 In V.5 the E.V. and Latin Vulgate im- 
 ply Elokim : but the Heb., Sam., and all 
 the other ancient versions and Targums 
 have * Jehovah,' except that the LXX. 
 has * Jehovah-Elohim.' 
 
 Also in v.2,4, we find the phrase 
 'sons of Elohim'=:: angels. But this 
 was the current designation of angels, 
 which any vrriter, however thoroughly 
 Jehovistic, must have used, since the 
 phrase * sons of Jehovah ' is never 
 employed for them. 
 
 920. Thus it appears that this section 
 is quite Jehovistic, and it connects itself 
 with the previous Jehovistic matter, 
 and with that exclusively, by the follow- 
 ing links : — 
 
 (i) v.1,7, ' face of the ground' as in ii.6. 
 iv.l4 : the partiality of the Jehovist for the 
 use of the word Sdamah (911.1) ishereverj- 
 strongly marked, — v.l, 'when man began 
 to mxzltiply on the face of the ground,' — w.7, 
 
 * I will wipe out man from ofE the face of the 
 ground,' — in both which cases the E.Y. has 
 
 * earth' ; 
 
 (ii) r.7, * from off the face of the ground, 
 as in iv.l4 ; 
 
 (iii) ■y.3,6,7, the writer attributes to the 
 Deity human affections, disappointment, 
 change of plan, &c. (913) ; 
 
 (iv) w.3,7, 'and Jehovah said' : com^. the 
 secret speeches ascribed to Jehovah in ii.l8, 
 iii.22. 
 
 d21,yi.9-'22jMohistiCtexcG]^tv.l5,16. 
 
 (i) V.9, Noah 'walked with Elohim,' as in 
 V.22M ; 
 
 (ii) v.11,12 would hardly have been written 
 by one, who had already written v.d-B ; 
 
 (iii) TJ.12, • and Elohim saw the earth, and 
 behold i it was corrupted ' : comp.i.Z\ , ' and 
 Elohim saw all that He had made, and behold ! 
 it was very good' ; 
 
 (iv) 7?.20,20,20, ' after his kind,' as in 1.11, 
 12,21 ,&c. (Centimes) ; 
 
 (v) V.20, 'every creeping thing of the 
 ground,' as in i.2& ; 
 
 922. vi.15,16, Jehovistic. 
 
 These verses appear to be Jehovistic : 
 since the Elohist seems to have com- 
 pleted his directions for the making of 
 the Ark in «j.14, — 
 
 'make it of cypress- wood, make it in cells, 
 pitch it within and without ;— 
 
 after which we find a fresS set of di- 
 rections, — 
 and this is how thou shalt make it, &c.' 
 
 It is, however, impossible to speak 
 with perfect confidence here, as the indi- 
 cations are slight, and these last words 
 might be understood to mean, — 
 'This is how thou shalt determine the dimen- 
 sions of the Ark.' 
 
 But after this follow the directions for 
 a 'light' and a 'door/ ^.16, which are 
 here separated from the other Elohistic 
 detail in v.\^, * make it in cells.* Also 
 the preciseness of these directions, in 
 v.15,16, corresponds much more with 
 the style of the Jehovist than vrith the 
 simple generalisations of the Elohist. 
 
 923. vii.l-5, Jekovistic. 
 
 (i) D.l, the writer refers to Ufte Ark,* as 
 already known, whether referring to the 
 Elohistic narrative, or to his own words (?) 
 in vi.15,16, or to the well-known Ark of the 
 legend ; 
 
 (ii) v.l, 'thou and all thy house': contr. 
 the E. expression, vi.l8, ' thou, and thy sons, 
 and thy wife, and thy sons' wives, with 
 thee ' ; 
 
 (iii) «J.2, * thou shalt take to thee * : contr. 
 the E. expression, vi.20, ' they shall com£ unto 
 thee,' i.e. come of themselves ; E. says that 
 Noah is to 'take' of the /ood, and 'gather' 
 it ' to him,' vi.21 ; 
 
 (iv) D.4, ' / will wipe out all the substance, 
 which I have made, from off the /ace of the 
 ground' : comp. vi.7, '/ will wipe out man, 
 whom I have created, from off the face of the 
 ground ' ; 
 
 (v) V.4, ' from off the face of the ground,* 
 as in iv.l4,vi.7 : comp. also ' face of the 
 ground,' ii.6,vi.l. 
 
 924. As already remarked (203, 204), 
 it is obvious that a discrepancy exists 
 between the Jehovistic command in 
 vii.2,3,— 
 
298 
 
 ANALYSIS OF GEN.V.1-VII.24. 
 
 • to take'by sevens of every clean beast and of 
 every fowl,' — 
 
 and the Elohistic in ■vi.19.20, that — 
 ' two of every living thing, of fowl, and of 
 cattle, and of creeping thing,' — 
 should be brought into the Ark. After 
 the above plain exhibition of the dif- 
 ference of the sources, from which the 
 two accounts are derived, it is needless 
 to discuss the various attempts which 
 have been made to * reconcile ' the dif- 
 ficulty. 
 
 925. But we will quote the words of 
 Kalisch : 
 
 This text not only repeats several of the 
 statements already distinctly made, but, what 
 is more important, it is in one point irrecon- 
 cilable loith the preceding narrative. Noah was 
 commanded to take into the Ark seven pairs 
 of all clean, and one pair of all unclean, ani- 
 mals, Tii.2,3 ; whereas he had before been 
 ordered to take one pair of every species, vi. 
 19,20, no distinction whatever between clean 
 and unclean animals having there been made. 
 All the attempts at arguing away this discre- 
 pancy have been utterly unsuccessful. The 
 difficulty is so obvious, that the most desperate 
 efforts have been made. Some regard the 
 second and third verses as the later addition 
 of a pious Israelite ; while Rabbinical writers 
 maintain that six pairs were taken by Noah, 
 but one pair came to him spontaneously ! Is it 
 necessary to refute such opinions ? . . . We 
 appeal to every unbiassed understanding. 
 The Bible cannot be abused to defy common 
 sense, to foster sophistry or perverse reason- 
 ing, to cloud the intellect, or to poison the 
 heart with the rank weeds of Insincerity. 
 
 926. vii.6-9, Elohistic. 
 (i) «.6, ' and Noah was a son of six hundred 
 
 years' : comp.v.32, ' and Noah was a son of 
 five hundred years ' ; 
 
 (ii) V.6, * flood of waters,' as in vi.l7 ; 
 
 (iii) «.7, ' and he weilt, Noah, and his sons, 
 and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, 
 into the Ark': comp.vi.l8, 'and thou shalt 
 go into the Ark, thou, and thy spns, and thy 
 wife, and thy sons' wives "with thee ' ; and 
 contr. the J. expression, * go thou, and all thy 
 house, into the Ark,' vii.l ; 
 
 (iv) v.S, ' out of the cattle, &c. two, two, 
 they came unto Noah ' : comp. the same form 
 of sentence, vi.yO, ' out of the fowl, &lc. two 
 out of all shall come unto thee ' ; 
 
 (v) U.8, ' cattle, fowl, all thatcreepeth upon 
 the ground ' : comp. the same three classes of 
 creatures, vi.20, 'fowl, cattle, (all=) every 
 creeping-thing of the ground' ; 
 
 (vi) v.S, 'creepeth upon the ground': 
 comp. 'creeping-thing of the ground/ i.25, 
 vi.2l); 
 
 (vii) «.9, • two two,' comp. vi.19,20 ; 
 
 (viii) V.9, ' they came unto Noah' : comp.-vi. 
 20, ' shall coTne unto thee,' and contr. the J. 
 expression, ' thou shalt ta&e to thee,' vii.2. 
 
 927. vii.lO, Jehovistic. 
 
 * it came to pass after the seven days that the 
 waters of the flood were upon the earth ' : 
 
 comp. vii.4, ' for after yet seven days I will 
 cause-it- to -rain upon the earth.' 
 
 928. vii.H, Elohistic. 
 
 (i) ' in the six-hundredth year of Noah's 
 life' : comp. vii.6, *Noah was a sou of six 
 hundred years ' ; 
 
 (ii) ' the fountains of the great deep wera 
 broken u]i, and the windows of heaven were 
 opened ' : comp. the idea of the waters beneathy 
 and the waters above, the firmament, i.6,7 ; 
 
 (iii) 'deep,' as in i.2. 
 
 929. vii.l2, Jehovistic. 
 
 * and the rain was upon the earth forty days 
 and forty nights' : comp. vii.4, 'I will cause- 
 it-to-rain upon the earth forty days and forty 
 nigiits.' 
 
 Obviously, this Jehovistic statement 
 of the forty days' rain is here inserted 
 awkwardly, out of<ts proper place in the 
 story. In ■v.17 it comes in more suitably 
 to the context, after the description of 
 Noah and his family going into the 
 Ark on the first day : whereas both v. 10 
 and v.l 2 interrupt the continuity of the 
 narrative. 
 
 930. vii.l3-16S Elohistic. 
 
 (i) V.13, ' Noah, and Shem, and Ham, ana 
 Japheth, Noah's wife, and his sons' three wives, 
 with them' : com^. vi.lO,vii.7, and contr. the 
 J. expression, * thou and all thy house,' vii.l ; 
 
 (ii) u.14,14,14,14, ' after his kind,' as mi.ll, 
 12,&c. (ten times), vi.20,20,20; 
 
 (iii) V. 14, ' every creeping thing that creep- 
 eth upon the earth,' as in i.26 : comp. also 
 i.28, ' every animal that creepeth upon the 
 earth,' i.30, 'everything creeping upon the 
 earth ; ' 
 
 (iv) V.15, * they came unto Noah into the 
 Ark,' as in vli.9 : comp. also ' shall come unto 
 thee,' vi.20, and contr. the J. expression, 
 *thou shalt take unto thee,' vii.2 ; 
 
 (v) i;.15,16, ' all flesh,' as in vi.12,13,17,19 ; 
 
 (vi) v.15, ' two, two,' as in vii.9 ; comp. vi. 
 19,20 ; 
 
 (vii) W.T5, ' all flesh, in which is a spirit of 
 life,' as in vi.17 : comp. also i.30, ' all, in 
 which is a living soul ' ; 
 
 (viii) r.l6*, * male and female,' as in i.27,v. 
 2,vi.l9,vii.9 ; 
 
 (ix) U.16*, 'as Elohim commanded him,' 
 evidently closed originally this E. passage, as 
 the like phrase closes the E. passages vi.22, 
 vii.9. 
 
 931. In y.l3, we read,— 
 
 ' On that very same day went Noah, &c. into 
 the Ark,' — 
 
 i.e., apparently, on the same day that — 
 ' the fountains of the great deep were broken 
 up, &c.,' V. 11, 
 
 and the Flood began : whereas, accord- 
 ing to the Jehovist, 'U.1,4 — 
 ' and Jehovah said to Noah, Go thou, and all 
 thjr house, into the Ark . . . for yet seven days 
 and I will cause-it-to-raln upon the earth,' — 
 
ANALYSIS OF GEN.V.1-VTI.24, 
 
 it would seem that Noah and his family 
 were to go into the Ark seven days be- 
 fore the beginning of the Flood. If it 
 be said that Noah was to go in a week 
 before the Flood, and was to employ 
 the interval in * taking to him' the 
 animals, v. 2,3, so as to go in. finally on 
 the very same day when the Flood 
 began, yet ul4 appears to say that the 
 animals also went in, together with 
 Noah, on that same day, — ' 
 
 * they, and every beast after its Mud, &c.* 
 
 932. \ii.l6\l7, Jehovistic. 
 (i) v.lG^t ' and Jehovah shut up after him ' : 
 
 comp, the J. anthropomorphisms (913); 
 
 (ii) v.l6^, reference is here made to the 
 dooj' provided by the Jehovist (?) in vi.l6 ; 
 
 (iii) U.17, * and the Deluge was forty days 
 upon the earth ' : comp. the very similar form 
 of sentence, w.l2, ' and the rain was upon the 
 earth forty days' ; 
 
 (iv) v.\7, 'forty days' [LXS *and forty 
 nights '] : comp. the ' forty days and forty 
 nights' of rain, vli.4,12. 
 
 N.B. The Elohist says, «.24, that 'the 
 watera were mighty upon the earth 150 days,' 
 and he evidently means that they went on 
 increasing during all this time, since after 
 this he says, viii.2, ' the fountains of the deep 
 and the windows of the heaven were stopped.' 
 This seems to show conclusively that v.l7*, 
 
 * and the flood was /or(y days upon the earth,' 
 must belong to the Jehovist. The writer, 
 perhaps, mesint it to be understood that the 
 waters stood, at their highest, 15 cubits over 
 
 * all the high mountains, that were beneath 
 all the heaven,' v.l9, and that the Ark, which 
 was 30 cubits high, vi.l5, floated half below 
 the water, so that, when driven by the wind 
 over the mountain-tops, it would just touch 
 the top of Ararat, and ground at once, as soon 
 as the waters fell. 
 
 933. vii.18-20, Jehovistic, except 
 t;.18%19^ 
 
 (i) V.18*,— ' and the waters were mighty and 
 multiplied greatly upon the earth,' — appears 
 to be Elohistic, since the compound expression, 
 
 * be mighty and multiply,* corresponds ex- 
 actly, mutatis mutandis, (for 'fructify' could 
 not be used of the waters,) to the favourite E. 
 formula, 'fructify and multiply,' which oc- 
 curs in i.22,28,viii.l7,ix.l,7 ; 
 
 (ii) w.lS**, ' under all the heaven ' is Elohis- 
 tic : comp. vi.l7, * from under the heaven ' ; 
 
 (iii) «.18^,— * and the Ark went upon the 
 face of the waters.'—appears to be Jehovistic, 
 describing a further stage of the action of the 
 waters beyond that mentioned by the Jehovist 
 in iJ.17t>,— * and the waters multiplied, and 
 they raised the Ark, and it was lifted from ofE 
 the earth, and the Ark went upon the face of 
 the waters' ; . ^ ... , 
 
 (iv) w-lS* is also Jehovistic, for a critical 
 reason given in the larger edition (IV.57.i). 
 
 N.B. It would seem that in «.20 the Jeho- 
 vist wished to explain hoic the effect described 
 by E. in v.l9^,-^' and aU the high mountams, 
 that were under all the heaven, were covered. 
 
 299 
 
 —was brought about, and so he inserted 
 ' fifteen cubits upward the waters were 
 mighty, and the mountains were covered': 
 comp. ' cubits,' Ti.l5,i6, ' upward,' vi.l6. 
 
 934. Tii.21,22, Elohistic. 
 
 (i) U.21, * all flesh,' as in vi. 12,1 3,17,19, vii, 
 15,16; 
 
 (ii) V.21, * that creepeth upon the earth,' as 
 in i.28,30,vii.l4 ; 
 
 (iii) V.21, ' swarming-things,' 'swarm,' as 
 in i.20,21 ; 
 
 (iv) W.22, ' all in whose nostrils was the 
 breath of a spirnt of life' : comp. vi.l7,vii.l5, 
 ' all flesh in which was a spirit of life ' ; 
 
 (v) D.22, ' all out of all,' as in viii.l7,ix.l0. 
 
 935. Tii.23'', Jehovistic. 
 These words, as far as *and they 
 
 were wiped-out of (E.V. * destroyed 
 from *) the earth,' are a mere repetition 
 of V. 21, and of such a kind, that they 
 could hardly have been penned imme- 
 diately after v.21 by the saTne writer. 
 Accordingly we shall find that they 
 exhibit unmistakable signs of the 
 Jehovistic author. 
 
 (i) u.23», ' and He wiped-out [B.T. * was 
 destroyed '] all the substance, which was upon 
 the face of the ground, from man unto cattle, 
 unto creeping-thing, and unto fowl of the 
 heaven' : comp. vi.7, 'I will wipe out m£in, 
 whom I have created from off the face of the 
 ground, from man unto cattle, unto creeping- 
 thing, and unto fowl of the heaven,' and vii. 
 4, 'I will wipe out all the substance, which I 
 have made, from off the face of the ground' ; 
 
 (ii) i).23% ' substance,' as in vii.4 ; 
 
 (iii) t?.23*, ' face of the ground,' as in ii.6, 
 i iv.l4,vi.l,7,vii.4. 
 
 936. Tii.23^24:, Elohistic. 
 (i) v.23'>, * that was with him in the ark,' 
 
 comp. viii.l. 
 
 (ii) W.24, ' a hundred and fifty days' : see 
 (937 N.B.). 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ANALYSIS OP GEN.Vin.l-XI.26. 
 
 937. viii.l,2''3'*,4^5, Elohistic. 
 
 (i) v.l, ' every animal,' as in vii.l4 ; 
 
 (ii) v.l, * every animal, and all the cattle' : 
 comp. vii. 14 ; 
 
 (iii) v.l, ' that was with him in the ark,' as 
 in vii.23»> ; 
 
 (iv) v.2«, * the fountains of the deep,' ' the 
 windows of heaven,' as in vii. 11 ; 
 
 (v) u.2«, 'deep,' as in i.2,vii.ll ; 
 
 (vi) v.d\ ' a hundred and fifty days,' as in 
 vii. 24 ; 
 
 (vii) f.4, 'in the seventh month, in the 
 seventeenth day of the- month,' and v.5, ' in 
 the tenth, in the first of the month' : comp. 
 vii. 11, 'in the second month, in the seven- 
 teenth day of the month.' 
 
 N.B. Reckoning one month = 30 days, po 
 that 150 days = 5 months, we have the da^e 
 of the beginning of the flood, 2mo. 17d. (vii, 
 11) + the time of its continuance, 6mo. (vii. 
 
300 
 
 ANALYSIS OF GEN.VIII.l-XI.2e. 
 
 ?4,vju.3) = 7mo, 17d., the time when the 
 ark groimtled, viii.4, — from which it follows 
 that all these notices of time are by the same 
 writer. 
 
 938. yiii.2*»,3%4», are Jekovistic, 
 
 I assent now, for various critical 
 reasons, to the views of Hupfbld (from 
 whom I diifered in the larger edition), 
 and assign thesepassages to the Jehovist, 
 including the words in vA'^'^, 
 
 * and the Ark rested . . . upon the moun- 
 tains of Ararat ; ' 
 
 so that the original E. story ran thus — 
 
 * And at the end of a hundred and fifty days 
 the waters abated, in the seventh month, on 
 the seventeenth day of the month.' 
 
 939. -^{{.Q -12, Jekovistic. 
 
 (i) v.Q, 'forty days,' as in vii.4,12,17 ; 
 
 (ii) r.6, * window ' : comp. the direction for 
 making the * light,^ vi.l6, to which the writer 
 evidently refers in this passage, since he 
 speaks of Noah opening * the window which 
 he had ma4e': comp. also the reference to the 
 
 * door,' vi,16, in vii.16'' ; 
 
 (iii) e.8, ' to see i£ the waters were lessened, 
 &c.' : comp. ii.l9, * to see what he would call 
 them' ; 
 
 (iv) v.S, 'from oflE the face of the ground,' 
 as in iv.l4,vi.7,Tii.4 : comp. also ' face of the 
 ground,' ii.6,vi.l,vii.23 ; 
 
 (v) u.10,12, 'seven days,' as in vii.4,10 : 
 comp. the use of the number ' seven ' in iv. 
 15,24,vii.2,3; 
 
 (vi) The Elohist mentions only the day, 
 month, and year, of the most notable events of 
 the flood, vii.6,ll,viii.4,5, 13,14: the Jehovist 
 marks the stages of its progress by ' seven 
 days' and 'forty days,'vii.4,10,12,17,viii.6,10,12; 
 
 (vii) That we are right in assigning to the 
 Jehovist this section about the raven and 
 dove, is further confirmed by the inconsis- 
 tency which exists in the data of time, as the 
 story now stands. Between the time when 
 
 * the tops of the mountains were seen,' v.5, on 
 the first day of the tenth month, and the time 
 when ' the waters were dried up from off the 
 earth,' o.l3, on the first day of the first month 
 Cof the next year) , would be an interval of 
 three months = 90 days. If we deduct the 40 
 days of waiting, p.C, we have 50 days remain- 
 ing for the sending out of the raven and dove ; 
 whereas the story plainly implies an interval 
 of 7 days only between each sending, to which 
 might be added 7 days more after the dove 
 was sent out the second time,— -making only 
 21 days altogether. 
 
 N.B. It must have been supposed that 
 Noah, either by reason of the size, or situation, 
 or construction, of the window, or because of 
 the elevation of the Ark on the top of Ararat, 
 could not see for himseli what was passing 
 upon the plains below. 
 
 940. \iu.l3-19,Elohistic, except '^;.13^ 
 (i) 0.13, *in the six hundred and first year': 
 
 eomp. vii.ll, 'iu the six hundredth year of 
 
 Noah's life'; comp. also v.32,vii.6; 
 
 Cii) r.l3, ' in the first, in the first of the 
 
 month/ and v.I4, ' in the second month, in 
 
 the seven-and-twentieth day of the month': 
 comp. vii.ll,viii.4,5 ; 
 
 (iii) U.16, "thou, and thy wife, and thy 
 sons, and thy sons' wives with thee,' as in 
 vi.l8,vii.7,13 ; contr. the J. expression, 'thou 
 and all thy house,' vii.l ; 
 
 (iv) «.17,19, ' every animal,' as in vii. 14, 
 viii.l; 
 
 (v) V.17, 'every animal that is with thee* : 
 comp.yiu.l, ' every animal that was with him ' ; 
 
 (vi) 11.17, 'every animal . . . out of all flesh ' : 
 comp. vi.l9, * all the living out of all fiesh ' ; 
 
 (vii) r.l7, ' aU flesh,' vi.l2,13,17,19,vii.l5,16, 
 21; • 
 
 (viii) V.17, ' among fowl and among cattle,* 
 as in vii. 21 ; 
 
 (ix) W.17 ,* every creeping-thing that creep- 
 eth upon the earth,' as in i.26,vii.l4 : comp. 
 also i.2S,30 ; 
 
 (x) V.17, 'swarm,' as in i.20,21,vii.21 ; 
 
 (xi) U.17, ' fructify and multiply,' i.22,28 ; 
 
 (xii) r.l8, ' Noah, and his wife, &c.,' as in 
 (iii) above ; 
 
 (xiii) V.19, 'everything creeping upon the 
 earth,' as in i.30. 
 
 941. viii. 13^, JehovisHc. 
 
 (i) 'face of the ground,' as in ii.6,iv.l4, 
 vi.l,7,vii.4,23,viii.8; 
 
 (ii) ' covering ' explains, perhaps, the ob- 
 scure direction in vi.l6, ' in a cubit shalt thou 
 finish it above ' ; 
 
 (iii) this statement,—' and Noah removed 
 the covering of the ark, and saw, and behold I 
 the face of the ground was dry,' — introduces 
 into the account, as it now stands, the ano- 
 maly, that the Ark was uncovered nearly two 
 months before Noah and his family and the 
 multitude of animals came out of it, as ap- 
 pears from t).13,14. 
 
 942. The later ecclesiastical year 
 began in the Spring. But in the older 
 time the ' Feast of Ingathering ' was 
 ' in the end of the year,' E.xxiii.l6, so 
 that the new year, apparently, began 
 in Autvmn. It is probable that this 
 more ancient reckoning is observed in 
 this account of the Flood, which in that 
 case began, according to the story, 
 about the middle of the second month, 
 vii. 11, i.e. about the beginning of 
 November, and lasted over the five wet 
 and stormy winter months, vii.24, 
 Tiii.3, till the bright days of Spring 
 came round, and the waters were 
 ' dried up from off the earth * during 
 the heat of summer. But then the 
 herbivorous animals, coming out of the 
 Ark in the second month (November), 
 viii. 14, would be in want of food till 
 the spring. 
 
 943. Tiii.20-22, Jehovistio. 
 
 (i) D.20, these sacrifices require the ' seven ' 
 pairs of clean animals provided by the Jeho- 
 vist, vii.2,3, to which also the expression 
 ' clean cattle * in this verse refers ; 
 
(ii) U.21, 'Jehovah smelled the sweet sa- 
 vour : comp. the J. anthropomorphisms in 
 (913) yi.3,6,7,vil.l6i'; 
 
 (iii) V.21, 'Jehovah said unto His heart: 
 comp, the secret speeches ascribed to Jehovah, 
 u.]8,iii.22,vi.3,7; 
 
 (iv) V.21, * His heart,' as in vi.6 ; 
 
 (v) v.2\, ' I will not add to curse again the 
 ground for man's sake ' : com.p. iii.l7, * cursed 
 is the ground for thy sake,' v.29, ' about the 
 ground which Jehovah cursed * ; 
 
 (vi) U.21, ' curse the ground ' : comp. the J. 
 curses in iii.l4,iv.ll,v.29 ; 
 
 (vii) tf.2] , ' the imagination of man's heart 
 is evil from his youth,' as in vi.5 ; 
 
 944. i3:.l-17, Elohistic. 
 
 (i) «.l, • and Blohtm blessed Noah, and his 
 eons' : comp. the blessing on Adam, i.28,v.2 ; 
 
 (il) «.1,7, 'fructify and multiply,' as in 
 i.22,28,viii.l7 ; 
 
 (iii) tj.l, ' fructify, and multiply, and fill the 
 earth,* as in i.28 ; 
 
 (iv) ».2,10,10, * every animal of the earth,' 
 as in i,30 : contr. the J. expression, ' every 
 animal of t):iB field,' ii.l9,20,iii.l,14 ; 
 
 (v) ■W.2, ' the fear of you, and the terror of 
 you, shall be upon every animal of the earth, 
 &c.* : comp. the E. passage i.26,28, * let them 
 have dominion over' fish, fowl, cattle, &c. ; 
 
 (vi) 17.2, • all that creepeth the ground 
 (E.V. 'earth') : comp. i.25,vi.20, * every 
 cre^ing-thing of the ground,* vii.8, * all that 
 creepeth upon the ground ' ; 
 
 (vii) t).2, ' fishes of the sea ' : comp. ' fish of 
 the sea,' i.26,2S ; 
 
 (vlii) fl.3, ' every creeping-thing that liveth ' : 
 comp. i.21 , * every living soul that creepeth ' ; 
 
 (ix) v.Z, 'to you it shall be for food,' i.29 ; 
 
 (x) C.3, ' green herb,' as in i.30 ; 
 
 (xi) V.5, ' every animal,' vii.l4,viii.l,17,19 ; 
 
 (xii) V.6, ' in the image of Elohim made He 
 man,' a^ in i.27 ; 
 
 (xiii) t7.7, ' swarm,' (Wzrti.20,21,vii.21,vzu.l7; 
 
 (xiv) «.9,11,15, ' my covenant,' as in vi.l8 ; 
 
 (xv) «.9,11,17,' establish a covenant,' vi.l8; 
 
 (xvi) f .10, ' among fowl and among cattle,' 
 as iTO vii.21,viii.l7; 
 
 (xvii) v.10,12,15,16, ' every living soul,' i.21 ; 
 
 (xviii) 11.10,12, * that is with you:' comp. 
 'that was with him,* vii.23*',viii.l, 'that is 
 with thee,' viii.l7 ; 
 
 (xix) «j.ll,15,15,16,17, 'all flesh,' as in 
 Vi,12,13,17,19,vii.l5,16,21,viii.l7 ; 
 
 (xx) v.15,16, * remember,' as in viii.l ; 
 
 (xii) «.15,16, * every living soul among 
 all flesh': comp. vi.l9, 'every living thing 
 out of all flesh,' viii.l7, * every animal . , . 
 out of all flesh,' 
 
 945. In ix.3 the Elohist records the 
 permission to eat animal food, as 
 given only after the flood, in agree- 
 ment with his account of the Creation, 
 where we read, i.29 — 
 
 'And Elohim said, Behold, I give you every 
 herb seeding seed, which is on the face of all 
 the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit 
 of a tree seeding seed : to you it shall be for 
 food.' 
 
 The Jehovist, however, makes Abel 
 a * tender of sheep,' iv.2 : and though 
 
 A-JTALYSIS OF GEN.YIII.1-XI.26. 301 
 
 sheep might, no doubt, have been kept 
 only for the sake of their woolovmilJc^ 
 yet in iv.4 the firstlings of the flock 
 are sacrificed, and only, or chiefly, 
 their fat seems to have been offered. 
 It may be fairly inferred that, accord- 
 ing to the Jehovist, the rest was sup- 
 posed to be eaten afterwards, as in the 
 case of ordinary peace-offerings, 
 
 946. ix.18-27, Jehovistic. 
 
 Ham— he is the father of Canaan,' 
 
 (i) «.18, ' 
 as in V.22 ; 
 
 (ii) u. 20, this notice of the 'beginning' of 
 wine-making corresponds to the similar Jeho- 
 vistic notices of the beginning of cattle- 
 keeping, iv.20, music, iv.21, working in iron, 
 iv.22, and probably also of sheep-tending and 
 agriculture, iv.2 ; 
 
 (iii) U.25, ' cursed be Canaan ' : comp. the J. 
 curses, iii.l4,17,iv.ll,v.29,viii.21 ; 
 
 (iv) V.25, • a servant of servants shall he 
 (Canaan) be,* v.26,27, 'and Canaan shall be 
 his se7'vant' ; here there is a play on the name 
 Kendhan, ' Canaan,' which is derived from 
 Kanah, ' be low, be humble ' : but Canaan 
 really means the low coast country = the 
 ' lowlands ,* or its inhabitants, in opposition 
 to Aram, the high country or ' highlands * ; 
 
 (v) v,27, the name yepheth, ' Japheth,* is 
 played upon, in connection with the verb 
 yapht, ' he shall enlarge ' : comp. the J. deri- 
 vations of names, ii.7,23,iii-20,iv.l,16,25,v.29. 
 
 N.B. — ' Jehovah ' is named the ' Elohim of 
 Shem,* t).26, who [?Elohim or Japheth] ' shall 
 dwell in the tents of Shem,' «.27 : but this 
 name is nob used in the blessing of Japheth, 
 for which only the general name of the Deity 
 is employed, and not the covenant-name of 
 the Grod of Shem, and of Shem's offspring, 
 Israel. 
 
 947. ix.28,29, Elohistic. 
 
 These verses refer to the E. datum 
 in yii.6, and they correspond in lan- 
 guage with that of the E. genealogy in 
 v.7,8, &c., except that no mention is 
 made of Noah's ' begetting sons and 
 daughters ' after the Flood. It would 
 seem that he was supposed to have had 
 only three sons, ' Shem, Ham, and 
 Japheth,' all born before the Flood; 
 and, indeed, we read, in f.l9 — 
 * These were the three sons of Noah: and out 
 of them was all the earth overspread.' 
 
 948. x.1-32, Jehovistic. 
 
 (i) tJ.5, *out of these were separated the 
 isles,' «.32, 'out of these were separated the 
 nations': comp. ix.l9, 'out of these were 
 spread-abroad all the earth ' ; 
 
 (ii) v.5,32, 'was separated,' as in ii.lO ; 
 
 (iii) i;.5,20,31,32 : comp. these summarising 
 clauses, at the end of the corresponding pas- 
 sages, withix:.19 ; 
 
 (iv) «.18, 'were spread-abroad' : comp, 
 ' was spread-abroad,' ix.l9 ; 
 
302 
 
 ANALYSIS OF GEN.VIII.1-XI.26. 
 
 (v) U.21, * and to Shem— to him also there 
 •was bom ' ; comp, iv.26, ' and to Seth— to him 
 also there was born ; ' 
 
 (vi) tf.21, ' Shem, the elder brother of Ja- 
 pheth ' : comp. ix.24, ' his younger son' ; 
 
 (vii) t).25, the name * Peleg,' derived from 
 palag, * divide ' : comp. the J. derivations, ii. 
 7,23,iii.20,iv.l,16,25,v.29,ix.27; 
 
 (viii) tJ.25, * the earth,' used of the popu- 
 lation of the earth, as in uc.l9 ; 
 
 (ix) The Jehovist in this chapter shows a 
 remarkable amount of geographical and histo- 
 rical knowledge : comp. ii.lO-14,iv.l6,17,7iii.4. 
 
 949. xi.1-9, Jehovistic. 
 
 (i) «.l, ' all the earth ' = the whole human 
 race, as in ix.l9 ; 
 
 (ii) i).4, ' let us make to ourselves a nam£ ' : 
 comp. the J. expression, * men of a nam^^ \'i.4 ; 
 
 (iii) t'.4,8,9, 'spread-abroad,' 05 in lx.19,x.] 8 ; 
 
 (iv) d.4,8,9, ' upon the face of all the earth,' 
 as in vii.3,viii.9 : the Elohist, however, uses 
 this phrase in i.29 ; 
 
 (V) t).5, * Jehovah came down to see the 
 city,' and «.7, ' let us go down, and confound 
 their language ' : arnip. the J. anthropomor- 
 phisms, &c. ; 
 
 (vi) 11.5, ' the sons of man ' : cornp. * the 
 daughters of man,' vi.2 ; 
 
 (vii) «.6, * and Jehovah said ' : comp. the 
 secret speeches ascribed to Jehovah in ii.l8, 
 ili.22,vi.3,7,viii.21 ; 
 
 (viii) V.9, the name * Babel,' derived from 
 6a/a?, * confound ' : comp. the J. derivations, 
 ii.7,23,iii.20,iv.l,lG,25,v.29,ix.27,x.25; 
 
 N.B. Apparently, this account of the ' con- 
 fusion of tongues ' and dL^ipersion of mankind 
 is in connection also with the J. statement, 
 x.2y, that, in Peleg's days, *the earth was 
 divided.' 
 
 The derivation of ' Babel,' in «.9, is 
 incorrect. There is little doubt now, 
 among scholars, that the word is pro- 
 perly Bab-R, meaning ' House of God.' 
 
 950. xi. 10-26, Elohistic. 
 
 This table is plainly a continuation of 
 the E. genealogy in G.v. The Jehovistic 
 account has anticipated it in x. 22-25, 
 as to the births of Arphaxad, Salah, 
 Eber, Peleg, just as in iv.25 it anti- 
 cipated the E. mention of the name of 
 Adam, v.2, and in iv.25,26, the E. 
 mention of Seth and Enos, v.3,6. 
 
 (i) v.lO, 'These are the generations of 
 Shem ' : comp. vi.9, ' These are the generations 
 of Noah ' ; 
 
 (ii) r.lO, ' son of a hundred years ' : comp. 
 v.3a,vii.6 ; 
 
 (iii) tJ.11,13,15, &c., ' and Shem lived after 
 
 begetting and begat sons and 
 
 daughters ' : comp. the same form of expres- 
 Eion, V.7, 10,13, &o. ; 
 
 (iv) u.11,13, 1.1,16, &c., *and he lived,' asin 
 T.3,6,7,9, &c., ix.28. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CHAJKACXEKISTICS OF THE ElOHIST 
 AND JEHOVIST. 
 
 951. We have thus examined the 
 first eleven chapters of Genesis, down to 
 the point where the history of Abraham 
 commences. And we have seen that 
 these chapters may be separated, with 
 reasonable certainty, — so that the 
 general inference, that two hands 
 are traceable, will not be invalidated 
 because a difference of opinion may 
 still fairly exist among scholars as to 
 some minor details, — into two distinct 
 sets of passages, which may now be 
 summed up aa follows : — 
 
 ELOHTSnC. 
 (B.56,J.O) 
 i.l-ii.3 
 V. 1-28,30-32 
 vi.9-14,17-22 
 
 Tii.6-9,ll,13-16«,t8«,19'',21,22,231',2* 
 viu. 1 ,2»,3'',4',5,13»,14^19 
 ix.1-17,28,29 
 xi. 10-26 
 
 Jehovistic. 
 (E.8,J.30,J.B.20) 
 ii.4-iv.26 
 T.29 
 
 vi.l-8,1.5,ie 
 
 Vii.l-5,10,I2,16'>,17,-I8l>,19«,20,23« 
 viii.2l>,3»,4'»,6-12,13l>,2D-22 
 ix.l8-27,x.l-32 
 xi.1-9 
 N.B. Of the 293 verses in (J.i.l-xi.26, rather 
 less than half {viz. 136) are Elohistic, and the 
 rest (viz. 157) Jehovistic. 
 
 962. We have seen also that these 
 two sets of passages betray incontesta- 
 ble signs of different authorship. In 
 one of them, the name ' Jehovah' never 
 once occurs throughout, whereas Elo- 
 him is used 56 times. In the other, 
 ' Jehovah ' is the predominant name, 
 being used 50 times, while ' Elohim ' ii. 
 occurs 28 times, viz. 20 times in the com- 
 pound name, ' Jehovah-Elohim,' ii.4- 
 iii.24:, — (which is found only once be- 
 sides in the Pentateuch, viz. in E.ix.30, 
 for in G.xxiv.3,7, &c., the expression is 
 ' Jehovah, the Elohim of heaven,' &c.) 
 —four times in the mouth of the ser- 
 pent, iii.l, 3,5, 5, — twice in the popular 
 expression for angels, ' sons of Elohim,' 
 Ti.2,4, for which the writer could not 
 have used ' sons of Jehovah,' — once in 
 stating that Jehovah is the ' Elohim of 
 Shem,' ix.26, • — oruie in speaking of 
 
CHAEACTERISTICS OF THE ELOHIST AI^D JEIIOVIST. 303 
 
 Eloliim blessing Japheth, ix.27, appa- 
 rently because Japheth was not sup- 
 posed to stand in any special relation 
 to Jehovah, the Elohim of Shem and 
 of the Hebrew people, Shem's descend- 
 ants, — and once in the words of Eve, 
 iv.25, explaining the meaning of Seth's 
 name. 
 
 953. In other words, while the one 
 writer uses constantly the name ' Elo- 
 him ' and no other, the other writer 
 does not use it freely, as the Proper 
 Name of the Divine Being, and scarcely 
 uses it at all, except under special 
 circumstances, which explain in each 
 case his reason for using it. When writ- 
 ing freely, he uses habitually the name 
 ' Jehovah.' It appears, then, that the 
 names ' Elohist ' and ' Jehovist ' have 
 been applied very justly to distinguish 
 these two writers. But the reader is 
 especiaUy desired to notice that we have 
 not arrived at the conclusions, which 
 have been snmmed-up above (951), by 
 first assuming, as a fact, the existence 
 of this characteristic difference of style, 
 and then assigning to one writer those 
 passages in which the name ' Elohim ' 
 occurs predominantly, and those marked 
 by the name ' Jehovah ' to the other. 
 
 954. On the contrary, wehavededuced 
 this characteristic peculiarity itself 
 from an inspection of the two sets of 
 passages already separated. And these 
 have been discriminated, and assigned 
 to their respective authors, by a rigor- 
 ous process of deduction, from a great 
 ■waneiyof conspiringpeculiarities, which 
 have been detected upon a minute ex- 
 amination and careful comparison of 
 each passage, — a process, which, to our 
 own mind, has the force of an absolute 
 demonstration, as we believe it will to 
 most readers, who wiU be witling to 
 follow it carefully, step by step. 
 
 955. In the following chapters we 
 shall give separately, at full length, the 
 Elohistie and Jehovistio portions of 
 these first eleven chapters of Genesis, 
 by the consideration of which some of 
 the peculiarities of style and thought 
 which mark the two writers, besides 
 that which is connected with the use of 
 the Divine Name, will be obvious at a 
 glance. We may here, however, men- 
 tion a few of these, which have either 
 
 been already detected in the course of 
 our criticisms, or must be apparent, 
 even to a reader unacquainted wilh 
 Hebrew, upon a mere perusal and com- 
 parison of the two sets of passages. 
 
 956. Thus, the Elohist is very difiise 
 and simple in his style, and abounds in 
 repetitions, as in the use of the clause 
 'after his kind,' 17 times, i. 11, 12, 21, 
 24,25, vi.20,vii. 14, or of the formula 
 ' Noah, and his sons, and his wife, and 
 his sons' wives with him,' vi.l8,vii.7, 
 13,viii.l6,18, and in his repeated enu- 
 meration of the creatures taken into the 
 Ark,vi.20,vii.8,14,21,viii.l7,19. Where- 
 as the Jehovist is more pointed and 
 terse in his expressions, e.g. ' thou and 
 all thy house,'vii.l, more spirited, or- 
 nate, and rhetorical, iv.6, 7,9-15, vi.1-7, 
 viii.21,22 ; he quotes poetry, iv.23,24, 
 ix.25-27, andaproverb, x.9; he is fond 
 of deriving names, ii.7,23,iii.20,iv.l, 
 16,25, v.29,ix.27,x.25,xi.9;andhis words 
 serve at times to intensify the language 
 of the Elohist, as when he expresses 
 the wickedness of man before the Flood, 
 comp. vi. 5-7 with vi.11-13, orpaints the 
 destruction of life occasioned by that 
 catastrophe, comp. vii.23", with vii.21. 
 
 957. The Jehovist also uses frequently 
 strong anthroponwrphisms, ascribing 
 human actions, passions, and affections 
 to Jehovah. The Elohist has very 
 much less of this, and altogether ap- 
 pears to have had more grand views of 
 the Divine Being, and of His pater- 
 nal relations to mankind : contrast the 
 whole tone of the Elohistie account of 
 the Creation in i.l-ii.3 with that of the 
 Jehovist in ii.4-25. Though the Elo- 
 hist manifestly had a deep sense of sin 
 and its evil consequences, vi.11-13, yet 
 it is only the Jehovist who introduces 
 ' curses,' iii.l4,17,iv.ll,v.29,viii.21,ix. 
 25, and writes the story of the ' Fall.' 
 
 958. It appears that the Elohist lays 
 stress upon the observance of the sab- 
 bath rest, ii.2, 3, and the abstinence from 
 the eating of blood, ix.4, and the shed- 
 ding of man's blood, ix.6,6, ^- these 
 two last, indeed, having a close connec- 
 tion ; since, if blood was too sacred to 
 be eaten, as representing the 'Kfe,' the 
 law of abstinence from it as an article 
 of food would impress upon the people 
 continually the sin of shedding it. On 
 
304 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ELOHIST AND JEHOVIST. 
 
 the other hand, the Jehovist is the only 
 "Writer who, as yet, has mentioned sacri- 
 Jices, iv.3,4,viii.20,21. Also he makes 
 use repeatedly of the number seven, 
 vii.2,3,4,10,viii.l0,12, and lays parti- 
 cular stress on the number fortt/, vii.4, 
 12,17,^111.6, which so often occurs in 
 the subsequent Scripture history. 
 
 959. It is not necessary to instance 
 further at present the points which cha- 
 racterise the two writers. But the differ- 
 ence of style, generally, between them 
 cannot possibly be mistaken. When 
 the whole Book of Genesis has been 
 thus analysed, and we are able to com- 
 plete the separation of the Elohistio 
 and Jehovistie portions throughout, 
 we shall be still better able to judge of 
 the distinction between them. Then, 
 also, it will be the proper time to mark 
 in the separate portions any signs of 
 time, which may enable us to form some 
 definite conjecture as to the ages in 
 which they were respectively written. 
 
 960. In the latter part of Genesis, 
 however, distinct traces are found of, at 
 least, two other wTiters, so that the work 
 of discrimination is not so easy as we 
 have found it to be in these eleven 
 chapters ; and the ground will require 
 to be yet further cleared, before we can 
 proceed in a satisfactory manner with 
 this part of the work. For the present, 
 we content ourselves with the above 
 exhibition of the existence of two 
 different authors in the Book of Genesis, 
 —and these not only distinct in style 
 and habits of thought, but involving 
 remarkable discrepancies, as in the two 
 accounts of the Creation (907), in the 
 single pair and seven pairs of clean 
 animals at the Plood (925), and in the 
 statement of the Jehovist that the 
 ' Flood lasted forty days,' vii.4,12,17, 
 whereas the Elohist says that it lasted 
 150 days, since only a/Ver the 150 days, 
 vii.24, according to this writer, — 
 
 * The fountains of the deep and the windows 
 of the heaven were stopped,' Tiii.2. 
 
 961. But we may here take a glance 
 at the two sets of passages, with a -v-iew 
 to consider whether we can arrive at 
 any definite conclusion at present upon 
 one important point. It is agreed 
 generally by critics of note that the 
 Elohistio document was originally a 
 
 complete narrative ; and it will be seen 
 presently that, as it now lies before us, 
 separated from the Jehovistie matter, 
 the story of the Elohist is a perfectly 
 consistent whole, — a strong confirma- 
 tion this of the correctness of our pro- 
 cess of division. The question now 
 arises. Did the Jehovist merely in- 
 terpolate his own additions into the 
 primitive story, or was the Jehoristio 
 document originally a whole by itself? 
 962. HuPFELD and some other emi- 
 nent critics are of opinion that it was. 
 They suppose that the two documents, 
 each complete in itself, lay before a later 
 compiler, who put them together into 
 one narrative, in the form in which we 
 now possess them, taking passages out 
 of each as they suited his purpose, or 
 seemed to be worth preserWng, in order 
 to give more point and fulness to the 
 story. It is only in this way, they 
 think, that we can account for the 
 existence of such remarkable discre- 
 pancies as we find in the two accounts 
 of the Creation and the Deluge. A mere 
 interpolator would have avoided such 
 discrepancies; whereas a later editor 
 might consider the data of both such 
 venerable documents too precious to be 
 dispensed with altogether, notwith- 
 standing these discrepancies, or may 
 not even have perceived them ; as so 
 many devout readers, of ancient and 
 modern times, have studied the story, 
 as it stands, without perceiving them, 
 until their attention had been expressly 
 directed to them. 
 
 963. The Jehovistie sections of G.i- 
 xi, however, as they now lie before us, 
 seem hardly sufficient — at least, when 
 taken alone by themselves— to justify 
 the conclusion, that they once formed 
 parts of an independent connected 
 whole. These portions, in fact, of the 
 Jehovistie matter appear rather as en- 
 largements and embelUshmeuts of the 
 primitive simple story, by the hand of 
 one who wrote — not in slavish sub- 
 jection to the contents of the primary 
 document, but — with considerable free- 
 dom and independence. 
 
 964. And this seems true even of the 
 second account of the Creation, on 
 which HnpFELD lays much stress .in 
 support of his own position. It is 
 
CHAEACTEEISTICS OP THE ELOHIST AND JEHOVIST. 
 
 quite as easy to conceive that the Jeho- 
 Tist himself may not have perceived 
 the discrepancies, which in this passage, 
 as well as in those about the Flood, he 
 has imported into the narrative, as it is 
 to imagine this in the case of a later 
 editor,— more especially when we take 
 into account the difficulty in any ease 
 of mastering completely all the minute 
 details of a story, written by another 
 hand. It is almost impossible, indeed, 
 for one writer to place himself so accu- 
 rately in relation to the age and circum- 
 stances of another, as to be able to 
 regard the same subject from exactly 
 the same point of view ; and it might 
 be expected that any author, who would 
 undertake to illustrate and amplify a 
 narrative like that of the Elohist, 
 would fall inevitably, now and then, 
 into contradictions, which a close ex- 
 amination might detect. This might 
 be looked for under the most favourable 
 circumstances, if the interpolator had 
 had the prime narrative before him, in 
 clear roman type, in a printed volume. 
 How much more, it may be said, when 
 we take into acccount the dilBculty of 
 studying that narrative out of a long 
 roll, consisting of many sheets, stitched 
 together, of papyrus or parchment 
 manuscript ! 
 
 965. Upon the whole, wemustreserve 
 our judgment on this point until the 
 analysis has been carried farther, and 
 more of the Jehovistic matter lies 
 before us. But wei are justified, at all 
 events, in concluding, from the evidence 
 at present before us, that the Jehovistic 
 writer — whether we regard him as the 
 writer of a complete independent nar- 
 rative, or merely as the interpolator of 
 the primary Elohistic document, — was 
 cue who wrote with considerable inde- 
 pendence and boldness of thought, and 
 who felt himself in no way bound to 
 adhere scrupulously to the details of the 
 original story, or to maintain with it a 
 perfect unity of style, any more than 
 of sentiment. We have thus, to some 
 extent, a confirmation of the view which 
 has been already expressed (in 11.490), 
 as to the composition of the Pentateuch. 
 
 966. But we have more than this. 
 The analysis, as far as we have gone, 
 confirms the statement in (11.337) that 
 
 306 
 
 the Elohist never mentions the name 
 'Jehovah,' until he records the reve- 
 lation of it to Moses. From this it 
 would seem that the words in E.vi.3, 
 
 ■by my name Jehovah was I not known to 
 tnem — 
 
 are really meant to imply that, in the 
 
 view of this writer, the Name itself— and 
 
 not merely tliefull meaning of it— was 
 
 unknown before the time of Moses. 
 
 And this result conflicts, of course, 
 
 with the view of the Jehovist, who puts 
 
 it in the mouth of Eve, iv.l, and says, 
 
 iv.26, that from the time of Enos 
 
 ' it was begun to call upon the name of Je- 
 hovah.' 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE ELOHISTIO AND JEHOVISTIC PAS- 
 SAGES IN G.I.1-XI.26. 
 
 967. We shall now exhibit in full 
 the portions of G-.i.l-xi.26, which ap- 
 pear to us to belong to the Elohist and 
 Jehovist, respectively. In order to set 
 more_ distinctly before the eyes of the 
 English reader the agreements and 
 variations in style, which have been 
 noted in our preceding critical enquiry, 
 it has .been necessary to translate these 
 chapters again from the original, taking 
 care to render, as far as possible, the 
 same Hebrew word or phrase always by 
 the same English equivalent, — a rule 
 which is very often not observed in 
 the authorised version. Thus in nine 
 places (i.25,iv. 1 1, 14, vi. 1,7,20, vii.4,8,ix. 
 2) the original has ' the ground,' where 
 the E.V. has 'the earth,' whereas the 
 E.V. has correctly 'the ground' in seven- 
 teen other places, ii.5,6,7,9, &o. So 
 the same Hebrew word is expressed by 
 ' move ' in i.21,28,vii.21, and by ' creep' 
 ini.26,30,vii.8,14,viii.l7,19, and thecor- 
 responding noun, by 'creeping thing' 
 in nine places, i.24,25,26, &c., and by 
 ' moving thing ' in ix.3. 
 
 968. It is obvious that, without 
 uniformity of translation, no accurate 
 comparison can be instituted between 
 the two documents in English. 
 
 On this account it has been neces- 
 sary to translate as literally as possible ; 
 and so the following version does not 
 pretend to be an elegant, but only a 
 strictly faithful, representation of the 
 original. 
 
ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC PASSAGES IN UJ.1-XI.26. 
 
 K.B.— The sign t^ denotes that a Jehovlstic 
 or Elohistic passage has been remoTed. 
 
 THE ELOHISTIC NA^IUATITE. 
 
 1. (^) In the beginning Elohim created the 
 Heaven and the Earth. C) And the Earth 
 ■was desolation and emptiness, and darkness 
 icas upon the face of the deep, and the spirit 
 of Elohim hovering upon the face of the 
 waters. 
 
 (^) And Elohim said, ' Let there be light,' 
 and there was light. (*) And Elohim saw 
 the light that it was good; and Elohim 
 divided between the light and (between) the 
 darkness. (*) And Elohim called (to) the 
 light ' Day,' and (to) the darkness He called 
 * Night.' And it was evening, and it was 
 morning,— one day. 
 
 O And Elohim said, * Let there be an ex- 
 pause in the midst of the waters, and let it be 
 dividing between waters (to) and waters.' 
 (') And Elohim made the expanse, and divided 
 between the waters which were beneath the 
 expanse, (between) and the waters which were 
 above the expanse; and it was so. C) And 
 Elohim called (to) the expanse 'Heaven.' 
 And it was evening, and it was morning,— a 
 second day. 
 
 C) And Elohim said, 'Let the waters be- 
 neath the Heaven be gathered into one place, 
 and let the dry -land appear ' ; and it was so. 
 (") And Elohim called (to) the dry-land 
 •Earth,' and (to) the gathering of waters 
 called He * Seas ' ; and Elohim saw that it was 
 good. 
 
 (") And Elohim said, * Let the Earth vege- 
 tate vegetation, the herb seeding seed, the 
 fruit-tree making fruit, after its kind, whose 
 seed is in it, upon the Earth ' ; and it was so. 
 (") And the Earth brought forth vegetation, 
 the herb seeding seed after its kind, and the 
 tree making fruit, whose seed is in it, after its 
 kind ; and Elohim saw that it was gosd. 
 (") And it was evening, and it was morning, 
 —a third day. 
 
 (") And Elohim said, ' Let there be lumi- 
 naries in the expanse of the Heaven, to divide 
 between the day and (between) the night, and 
 let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for 
 days and years ; ('") and let them be for lumi- 
 naries in the expanse of the Heaven, to give 
 light upon theEarth' : and itwasso. (*') And 
 Elohim made the two great luminaries, — the 
 greater luminary for the rule of the day, and 
 the lesser luminary for the rule of the night, 
 — and the stars. (") And ErjDHiM (gave) 
 placed them in the expanse of the Heaven, to 
 give light upon the Earth, ("") and to rule 
 over the day and over the night, and to divide 
 between the light and (between) the darkness: 
 and Elohim saw that it was good. (") And 
 it -was evening, and it was morning,— a fourth 
 day. 
 
 (=") And Elohim said, * Let the waters 
 swarm with swarming-things of living soul, 
 and let fowl fly over the Earth upon the face 
 of tlie expanse of the Heaven.' C^) And 
 Elothm created the great monsters, and every 
 living soul that creepeth, which the waters 
 swarmed after their kind, and every fowl of 
 ■wing after its kind : and Elohim saw that it 
 was gcod. O And Elohim blessed them, 
 easing, * Fructify and multiply, and fill the 
 
 waters in the Seas, and let the fowl aboillid it 
 the Earth.' C) And it was evening, and ii 
 was morning, — a fifth day. 
 
 ("*) And Elohim said, ' Let the Earth bri^i? 
 forth living soul after its kind, cattle, ant 
 creeping-thing, and animal of the Earth afte: 
 its kind ' ; and it was so. ("') And Eloiu^ 
 made the animal of the Earth after its kind 
 and the cattle after its kind, and every creep- 
 ing-thing of the ground after its kind : and 
 Elohim saw that it was good. 
 
 C) And Elohim said, * Let us make man 
 in our image, after our likeness ; and let then 
 (tread) have-dominion over the fish of the 
 Sea, and over the fowl of the Heaven, anc 
 over the cattle, and over every animal of the 
 Earth, and over every creeping-thing thai 
 creepeth upon the Earth.' C") And Elohlm 
 created man in His image ; in the image oi 
 Elohim created He him ; male and femal* 
 created He them. C*^) Aiid Elohim blessec 
 them, and Elohim said to them, ' Fructify, 
 and multiply, and fill the Earth, and subdue 
 it ; and (tread) have-dominion over the fist 
 of the Sea, and over the fowl of the Heaven 
 and over every animal that creepeth upon tht 
 Earth.' (") And Elohim said, 'Behold! 1 
 give to you every herb seeding seed, which it 
 on the face of all the Earth, and every tree ir 
 which is the fruit of a tree seeding seed ; tc 
 you it shall be for food : C°) and to everj 
 animal of the Earth, and to every fowl of the 
 Heaven, and to everything creeping upon th( 
 Earth, in which is a living soul, / give everj 
 green herb for food ' ; and it was so. (^') Anc 
 Elohim saw all that He had made, and be- 
 hold ! it was very good. And it was evening, 
 and it was morning, — the sixth day. 
 
 2. O And the Heaven and the Earth wer( 
 finished, and aU their host. (") And ELOHra 
 finished on the seventh day His work whicl 
 He had made, and rested on the seventh daj 
 from all His work which He had made 
 O And Elohim blessed the seventh day, anc 
 hallowed it ; for on it He rested from all His 
 work, which Elohim ci-eated (to make) anc 
 made.i^ 
 
 5. (*) This is the book of the generation* 
 of Adam, in the day of Elohim's creating 
 Adam ; in the likeness of Elohim made He 
 him. O Male and female He created them 
 and blessed them, and called their name Adair 
 in the day of their creation. 
 
 C) And Adam lived a hundred and thirtj 
 years, and begat in his likeness, according tc 
 his image ; and he called his name Seth. 
 (*) And the days of Adam, after his begetting 
 Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat 
 sons and daughters. (*) And aU the days ol 
 Adam which he lived were nine hundred and 
 thirty years, and he died. 
 
 C) And Seth lived an hundred and five 
 years, and begat Enos. (') And Seth lived, 
 after his begetting Enos, eight hundred and 
 seven years, and he begat sons and daughters, 
 C) And all the days of Seth were nine hun- 
 dred and twelve years, and be died. 
 
 C) And Enos lived ninety years, and begat 
 Kenan. (") And Enos lived, after his be- 
 getting Kenan, eight hundred and fifteec 
 years, and he begat sons and daughters, 
 ('^) And all the days of Enos w^ere nine hun- 
 dred and five years, and he died. 
 
ELOHISTIC AJSD JEHOVISTIC PASSAGES IN G.I.1-XI.26. 307 
 
 (") And Kenan lived seventy years, and 
 begat Mahalaleel, (") And Kenan lived, 
 after his begetting JIahalaleel, eigtt hundred 
 and forty years, and he begat sons and 
 daughtera. (") And all the days of Kenan 
 were nine hundred and ten years, and he died. 
 (") And Mahalaleel lived sixty-and-five 
 years, and begat Jared. (") And Mahalaleel 
 lived, after his begetting Jared, eight hun- 
 dred and thirty years, and he begat sons and 
 daughters. (") And all the days of Mahala- 
 leel were eight hundred and ninety-five years, 
 and he died. 
 
 (") And Jared lived an hundred and sixty- 
 two years, and begat Enoch. (»") And Jared 
 lived, after his begetting Enoch, eight hundred 
 years, and he begat sons and daughters. C°) 
 And all the days of Jared were nine hundred 
 and sixty-two years, and he died. 
 
 C^) And Enoch lived sixty-and-five years, 
 and begat Methuselah. ('') And Enoch walked 
 with ELOHIM *, after his begetting Methuse- 
 lah, three hundred years, and he begat sons 
 and daughters. (^J And all the days of Enoch 
 were three hundred and sixty-five years. ('■") 
 And Enoch walked with ELOHIM, and he 
 was not, for Elohim took him. 
 
 ("*) A-nd Methuselah lived an hundred and 
 ei&hty-seven years, and begat Lamech. C^'") 
 And Methuselah lived, after his begetting 
 Lamech, seven hundred and eighty-two years, 
 and he begat sons and daughters- {") And all 
 the days of Methuselah were nine hnndred 
 and sixty-nine years, and he died. 
 
 (=*) And Lamech lived an hundred and 
 eighty-two years, and begat [Noah].i5«C") 
 And Lamech lived, after his begetting Noah, 
 five hundred and ninety-five years, and he 
 begat sons and daughters. C*') And all the 
 days of Lamech were seven hundred and 
 seventy-seven years, and he died. 
 
 (''=') And Noah was a son of five hundred 
 years, and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and 
 Japheth, ^ 
 
 6. n These are the generations of Noah. 
 
 Noah was a man just and perfect in his 
 generations : Noah walked with ELOHIM. 
 C°) And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, 
 and Japheth. (") And the earth was cor- 
 rupted before the face of ELOHIM, and the 
 earth was fiUed with violence. ('') And Erx)- 
 HIM saw the earth, and behold 1 it was cor- 
 rupted ; for aU fiesh had corrupted its way 
 upon the earth. ^ , . rm. ^ * 
 
 (") And ELOHIM said to Noah, The end ot 
 all flesh has come before my face ; for the 
 earth is full of violence from before them ; 
 and behold! I wiU (corrupt) destroy them 
 with the earth. (") Make to thee an Ark of 
 cypress-wood ; in cells shalt thou make the 
 Ark and shalt pitch it within and without 
 with pitch.^C) And I,beholdl I (am bring- 
 ing) will bring the Flood o/ waters upon the 
 earth, to (corrupt) destroy all fiesh m which 
 Is a spirit of life from under the liaayen ; all 
 which is in the earth shaU die. (") But I 
 establish my covenant with thee ; and thou 
 Bhalt go into the Ark, thou, and thy sons, and 
 thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. ( ) 
 
 « We shall print the name thus, in large 
 capitals, whenever it occurs in the original 
 with the article. 
 
 And out of every living thing out of all fiesh, 
 two out of all shalt thou bring Into the Ark, 
 to keep-alive with thee; male and female 
 shall they be. ("") Out of the fowl after its 
 kind, and out of the cattle after its kind, one 
 of every creeping-thing of the ground after 
 its kind, two out of all shall come unto thee, 
 to keep-alive. C") And thou, take to thee 
 out of all food which is eaten, and thou shalt 
 gather it unto thee, and it shall be to thee and 
 to them for food.' 
 
 ("'*) And Noah did according to all which 
 Elohim commanded him — so did he,^ 
 
 7. (") And Noah was a son of six hundred 
 years, when the Flood was of waters upon 
 the earth. (') And he went, Noah, and his 
 sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives, with 
 him, into the Ark, from the face of the waters 
 of the Flood. (*) Out of the clean cattle and 
 out of the cattle which are not clean, and out 
 of the fowl and all that creepeth upon the 
 ground, (^) two and two, they came unto 
 Noah into the Ark. male and female, as Elo- 
 him commanded Noah.)^ 
 
 (") In the six-hundredth year of Noah's 
 life, in the second month', in the seventeenth 
 day of the month, on this day were broken up 
 aU the fountains of the great deep, and the 
 windows of the heaven were opened, iji ('^) 
 On this very same day, {lit, in the bone of 
 this day,) went Noah, and Shem, and Ham, 
 and Japheth, Noah's sons, and Noah's wife, 
 and his sons' three wives with them, into the 
 Ark ; (") they, and every animal after its 
 kind, and all the cattle after its kind, and 
 every creeping-thing that creepeth upon the 
 earth after its kind, and all the fowl after its 
 kind, every bird of eveiy wing. (") And they 
 came unto Noah' into the Ai-k, two and t^^-o, 
 out of all flesh, in which is a spirit of life. 
 (16'^) And those coming, male and female 
 out of all flesh they came, as Elohim com- 
 manded him. ^ 
 
 ("») And the waters were mighty, and 
 multiplied (very) greatly upon the earth, »J« 
 ("^) and all the high mountains that were 
 under all the heaven, were covered. (=') 
 And all fiesh died, that creepeth upon the earth, 
 among fowl, and among cattle, and among 
 (animal) animals, and among all the swarm- 
 ing-things that swarm upon the earth, and 
 all man. C'^) All in whose nostrils was the 
 breath of a spirit of life, out of all which was 
 in the dry land, died. ^ ('=***) And only Noah 
 was left, and what -was with him in the Ark. 
 (^*) And the waters were mighty upon the 
 earth a hundred and fifty days.^I( 
 
 8, Q) And Elohim remembered Noah, 
 and every animal, and all the cattle, that was 
 with him in the Ark ; and Elohim caiised-to- 
 pass a wind upon the earth, and the waters 
 subsided. ('") And the fountains oE the deep 
 were stopped and the windows of the heaven ; 
 1^ (^^) and the waters decreased at the end of 
 a hundred and fifty days, ^ (*»•) in the seventh 
 month, in the seventeenth day of the month. 
 ijtC) And the waters were decreasing con- 
 tinually until the tenth month : in the tenth 
 month, in the first of the month, the tops of 
 the mountains were seen.^ 
 
 ("ft) And it came-to-pass in the six hua- 
 x2 
 
308 ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC PASSAGES IK G.I.1-XI.26. 
 
 dred and first year, in the first mon^, in the 
 first of the month, the waters were dried up 
 from off the earth : ^ (**) and in the second 
 month, in the seventeenth day of the month, 
 the earth was dry. 
 
 (") And Elohim spake unto Naah, saying, 
 ('") ' Go out from the ark, thou, and thy wife, 
 and thy sona, and thy sons' wives, with thee. 
 (") Every animal that is with thee out of all 
 flesh, among fo\\'l, and among cattle, and 
 among every creeping-thing that creepeth 
 upon the earth, bring forth with thee ; and 
 let them swarm in the earth, and fructify. 
 And multiply, upon' the earth.' (") Ajid he 
 went out, Noah, and his sons, and his wife, 
 and liis sons' wives, with him. (") Eveiy 
 animal, every creeping-thing, and every fowl, 
 everytlaing creeping upon the earth, — after 
 their families, they went out from the Ark.^ 
 
 9. (') And Elohui blessed Noah and his 
 sons, and said to them, ' Fructify, and multi- 
 ply, and fill the earth. (") And the fear of 
 yon and the ten'or of you shall be upon every 
 animal of the earth, ruid upon every fowl of 
 the heaven, amonfe all that creepeth the 
 ground, and among all the fishes of the sea : 
 into your hand they are given. C^) Every 
 creeping-thing that liveth, to you it shall be 
 for food : as the green herb, I give to you all. 
 (*) Only flesh (in) with its soul, its blood, ye 
 shall not eat. (') And surely your blood of 
 your souls will I require : from the hand of 
 ,every animal will I require it, and from the 
 hand of man ; from the hand of a man's 
 brother, will I require the soul of man. (") 
 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his 
 blood be shed : for in the image of Elohim 
 made He man. C) And you, fructify and 
 multiply, swarm in the eaxth, and multiply 
 in it.' 
 
 C) And Et,ohim said unto Noah, and unto 
 his sons with him, saying: (") *And I, be- 
 hold I I C«"i establishing) wiil establish my 
 covenant with you, and with your seed after 
 you, C^") and with eyery living soul which is 
 with you, among fowl, and among cattle, 
 and among (every animal) all animals of the 
 earth with you, from all going out of the Ark 
 to every animal of the earth. (") And I 
 establish my covenant with you, and all flesh 
 shall not be again cut off through the waters 
 of the Flood, and there shall not be again a 
 Flood to (corrupt) destroy the earth.' 
 
 ("■) And Elohim said, ' This is the sign of 
 the covenant, which I (am giving) will make 
 between me and (between) you, and (between) 
 every living soul that is with you for perpetual 
 generations. C^) My bow do I (give) set in 
 the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a 
 covenant between rae and (between) the 
 earth. C*) And it shall be, at my (clouding) 
 bringing a cloud upon the earth, that the 
 "bow shall be seen in the cloud. (") And I 
 •will remember my covenant which is between 
 me and (between) you and (between) every 
 living soul among all flesh ; and there shall 
 not be again the waters for a Flood to (cor- 
 rupt) destroy all flesh. (") And the bow shall 
 be in the cloud ; and I wiil see it, for a re- 
 membrance of the perpetual GO veuant between 
 Elohim and (between) every living soul 
 among all flesh that ia upon t^ learth.' 
 
 (") And Elohim said unto Noah, * This ia 
 the ^gn of the covenant, which I establish 
 between me and (between) all flesh that is 
 upon the earth.' pi< 
 
 (") And Noah lived after the Flood three 
 hundred and fifty years. ("") And all the days 
 of Noah were nine hundi'ed and fifty yeai-s, 
 and he died.^ 
 
 11. (") These are the generations of 
 Shem. 
 
 Shem wcu a. son of a hundred years, and 
 begat Arphaxad two years after the Flood, 
 (") And Shem lived, after his begetting 
 Ai^ihaxad, five hundred years, and begat sona 
 and daughters. 
 
 (") And Arphaxad lived five and thirty 
 years, and begat Salah. ('') And Arphaxad 
 lived, after his begetting Salah, four hundred 
 and three years, and begat sons and daugh- 
 ters. 
 
 (") And Salah lived thirty years, and begat 
 (Heher) Eber. (") And Salah lived, after his 
 begetting Eber, four hundred and three years, 
 and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 (") And Eber lived four and thirty years, 
 and begat Peleg. (") And Eber lived, after 
 his begetting Peleg, four hundred and thirty 
 years, and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 (") And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat 
 Reu. (") And Peleg lived, after his begetting 
 Eeu, two hundred and nine years, and begat 
 sons and daughters. 
 
 C°) And Heu lived two and thirty years, 
 and begat Serug. ("') And Reu lived, after 
 his begetting Serug, two hundred and seven 
 years, and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 (^'^) And Serug lived thirty years, and begat 
 Nahor. ("^) And Serug lived, after his be- 
 getting Nahor, two hundred years, and begat 
 sons and daughters. 
 
 ("*) And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, 
 and begat Terah. ("") And Nahor lived, after 
 his begetting Terali, a hundred and nineteen 
 years, and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 C") And Terah lived seventy years, and 
 begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran, 
 
 THE JEHOVISTIC PASSAGES. 
 
 2. (*) [These are the generations of the 
 Reav&n and the Earth in their creation'l in the 
 day of Jehovah-Elohim's making Earth and 
 Heaven. {^) And no plant of the field was yet 
 in the ecuith, and no shrub of the field yet 
 sprouted ; for Jehovah-Elohim had not 
 made-it-rain on the earth, and man was not, 
 to till the ground. (°) And a mist rose from 
 the earth, and watered the whole face of the 
 ground. 
 
 (') And Jehovah-Elohim formed the man 
 of dust oijt of the ^ound, and breathed in his 
 nostrils breath of life, and the man became a 
 livingsoul. (*) And J^ovAH-ELOHiMplanted 
 a garden ip Eden ea^ward, and placed there 
 the man whom He had formed. (°)AndJEHO- 
 vah-Blobim made-torsprout out of the ground 
 every tree pleasant for sight and good for 
 food, and the tree of life in the midst of the 
 garden, and the tree of knowledge of good 
 and evil. 
 
 (") And a river goeth out from Eden to 
 water the garden, and from thence it is sepa- 
 rated, and becomes four heads. C") The name 
 
ELOHISTIC A^D JEHOVISTIC PASSAGES IN G-.I.1-XL26. 309 
 
 of the first is Pison : that is it which boundeth 
 the whole land of Havilah, where is the gold ; 
 C') and the gold of that land is good ; there. 
 is the bdellium and the onyx-stone. C) And 
 the name of the second river is Q-ihbn : that 
 is it which boundeth the whole land of Cash. 
 (") And the name of the third river is Hid- 
 dekel : that is it which goeth eastward of 
 Assyria. And the fourth river — ^that is Eu- 
 phrates. 
 
 ('^) And JEaaovAH-ELOHiM took the man, 
 and left him in the garden of Eden, to till it 
 and to keep it. (") And Jehotah-Elohim 
 charged upon the man, saying, * Of every 
 tree of the garden eating thou shalt eat : 
 (") but of the tree of the knowledge of good 
 and evil — thou shalt not eat of it ; for, in the 
 day of thy eating of it, dying thou shalt die.' 
 -(") And Jehotah-Blohim said, ^ It is not 
 good, the man's being alone-by-himself : I 
 will make for him a help over-against-him.' 
 (") And Jehovah-Elohim formed out of the 
 ground every animal of the field and every 
 fowl of the heaven, and brought U to the 
 man, to see what he would call it ; and what- 
 soever the man would call it, the living soul 
 —that should he its name. C'") And the man 
 called names to all the cattle, and to the fowl 
 of the heaven, and to eveiy animal of the 
 field ; but for (Adam) the man he found not 
 (J..e. one found not=there was not found) a 
 help over-against-him. 
 
 (=') And Jehovah-Elohim made-to-faJl a 
 deep slumber upon the man, and he slept, and 
 He took one of his ribs, and closed up the 
 flesh in-its-place. (°^) And JEHOVAH-ELOHUt 
 built the rib, which He took out of the man, 
 into a woman, and brought her to the man. 
 (^) And the man said, 'This-time this is 
 bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh : to 
 this it shall be called Woman (Ishah), for out 
 of Man ilsh) was this taken. C^) Therefore 
 shall a man forsake his father and his mother, 
 and cleave unto his wife, and they shall be- 
 come one fl.esh.' 
 
 ("") And they were both of them naked, 
 the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. 
 
 3. Q) And the serpent was subtle, out of 
 (every animal) all animals of the field, which 
 Jehovah-Elohim had made : and he said unto 
 the woman, 'Js it so that Elohim has said, 
 Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden ? ' 
 C^) And the woman said unto the serpent, 
 ' Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we 
 shall eat: (") but of the fruit of the tree, 
 which is in the midst of the garden, Elohim 
 has said, ' Ye shall not eat of it, and ye shall 
 not touch it, lest ye die.' (*) And the serpent 
 said unto the woman, ' Ye shall not (dying) 
 surely die : C) for Elohim knows that, in the 
 day of your eating of it, your eyes shall be 
 opened, and ye shall be as Elohim, knowing 
 good and evil.' (") And the woman saw that 
 the tree was good for food, and that it was a 
 longing to the eyes, and the tree was pleasant 
 to behold ; and she took of its fruit, and ate, 
 and gave also to her husband with her, and 
 he ate. C) And the eyes of them both were 
 opened, and they knew that they were naked ; 
 and they sewed together fig-leaves, and made 
 to themselves girdles. 
 
 («) And they heard the (voice) sound of 
 Jehovah-Elohim, walking in the garden m 
 
 the breeze of the day ; and he hid himself, 
 the man, and his wife, from the face of 
 Jehovah-Blobim in the midst of the trees of 
 the garden. C) And Jehovah-Elohim called 
 unto the man, and said to him, ' Where art 
 thou?' C^") And he said, 'Thy (voice) sound 
 I heard in The garden, and I feared, for I am 
 naked, and I hid myself.' (") And He said, 
 'Who told to thee that thou art naked ? Of 
 the tree, which I commanded thee not to eat 
 of, hast thou eaten ? ' (") And the man said, 
 ' The woman, whom Thou didst (give) place 
 with me, she gave to me of the tree, and I ate.' 
 (^') And JEHOVAH-ELOHiMsaidtothewoman, 
 'What is this which thou hast done?' And 
 the woman said, ' The serpent beguiled me, 
 and I ate.' 
 
 Q*) And Jehovah-Blohim said imto the 
 serpent, ' Because thou hast done this, cursed 
 art thou out of all the cattle and out of 
 (every animal) aU animals of the field ; upon 
 thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou 
 eat, all the days of thy life : C'^) and enmity 
 wiU I put between thee and (between) the 
 woman, and between thy seed and (between) 
 her seed ; it shall bruise thee on the head, 
 and thou shalt bruise it on the heel.' 
 
 (") Unto the woman He said, ' Multiplying 
 I will multiply thy pain and thy conception ; 
 in pain shalt thou bear children, and unto 
 thy husband shall be thy desire, and he shall 
 rule over thee.' 
 
 (^'') And to Adam He said, ' Because thou 
 hast listened to the voice of thy wife, and 
 hast eaten of the tree, as to which I com- 
 manded thee, saying, " Thou shalt not eat of 
 it," cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in pain 
 shalt thou eat of it aU the days of thy life ; 
 (^^) and thorns and thistles shall it make-to- 
 sprout to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of 
 the field ; C°) in the sweat of thy face thou 
 shalt eat bread imtil thy returning unto the 
 ground, for out of it wast thou taken ; for 
 dust art thou, and unto dust shalt thou 
 return.' 
 
 C) And the man called the nam® of his 
 wife Eve (Khavvah), for she was the mother 
 of all living (khay). 
 
 (=^) And Jehovah-Elohim made to Adam 
 and to his wife coats of skin, and clothed 
 them. 
 
 C'^) And Jehovah-Elohim said, * Behold I 
 the man has become as one of us, for the 
 knowledge of good and evil : and now, lest 
 he put forth his hand, and take also of the 
 tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. . .' (=^) 
 And Jehovah-Elohim put him forth from 
 the garden of Eden, to till the ground from 
 whence he was taken. (^) And He drove- 
 away the man, and stationed eastward (?in 
 front) of the garden of Eden the cherubs and 
 the flame of the tumiag sword, to keep tha 
 way of the tree of life. 
 
 4, (*) And the man knew Eve his wife, 
 and she conceived and bare (Eain) Cain, and 
 she said, 'I have acquired {Kamthi). a man 
 with Jehovah.' (") And she added to bear his 
 brother Abel ; and Abel was a tender of 
 sheep, and Cain was a tiller of ground. 
 
 (") And it came to pass at the end of days 
 that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground 
 an offering to Jehovah. (*) And Abel brought, 
 he also, of the firstlings of his flock and of 
 
310 ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC PASSAGES IK G.I.1-XI.26. 
 
 bom a son, and be called his name Enos. 
 Then was it hegun to call upon the name of 
 Jehovah, iji 
 
 their fat. And Jehovah had respect unto 
 Abel and unto his ofEeriug ; (*) and unto Cain 
 au'l unto his offering He had not respect : 
 ail ^ it (anger) was (very) greatly kindled to 
 Cain, and his face fell. (") And Jehovah said 
 mito Cain, ' "Why has it been kindled to thee, 
 and why has thy face fallen ? C) Is there not, 
 if thou do well, (lifting up) acceptance? and 
 if thou doest not well, sin is crouching at the 
 entrance, and unto thee is its desire ; but 
 thou shalt rule over it.* 
 
 (") And Cain said (t.c said in his heart= 
 designed) against (unto) Abel his brother ; and 
 it came to pass, in their being in the field, 
 that Cain rose (unto) against Abel his brother, 
 and slew him. 
 
 (") And Jehovah said unto Cain, 'Where 
 is Abel thy brother ? ' And he said, ' I know 
 not ; am I keeping my brother ? ' ('") And He 
 said, ' What hast thou done ? The voice of 
 thy brother's blood is crying unto me out of 
 the ground. (") And now, cursed art thou 
 out of the ground, which opened her mouth 
 to take thy brother's blood from thy hand. 
 ('=) When thou tillest the ground, it shall not 
 add to give her strength to thee : a fugitive 
 and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.* 
 (") And Cain said unto Jehovah, ' My 
 iniquity is too great to forgive, (or *My 
 punishmentis too great to bear.') ('*) Behold! 
 Thou hast driven me away this day from being 
 upon the face of the ground, and from Thy 
 face shall I hide myself, and I shall be a 
 fugitive and a vagabond in the earth, and it 
 will be that anyone finding me will slay me.' 
 (""■) And Jehovah said to him, ' Therefore as 
 to anyone slaying Cain, he (Cain) shall be 
 avenged sevenfold.' And Jehovah set on (or 
 * to ' ) Cain a mark, that anyone finding him 
 might not smite him. 
 
 ('") And Cain went out from the presence 
 of Jehovah, and dwelt in the land of Nod, 
 eastward of Eden. (") And Cain knew his 
 wife, and she conceived, and bare Enoch , 
 and he was building a city, and he called the 
 name of the city after the name of his son, 
 Enoch. (") And there was bom to Enoch 
 Trad ; and Irad begat Mehujael, and Mehujael 
 begat Methusael, and Hethusael begat La- 
 mech. 
 
 ('^) And Lamech took to him two wives, 
 the name of the one Adah, and the name of 
 the second Zillah. (=") And Adah bare Jabal : 
 he was the father of dwellers in tents and 
 among cattle. C^) And the name of his 
 brother was Jubal : he was the father of all 
 handling lyre and flute. (^") And Zillah — she 
 also bare Tubal-Cain, a forger of aU instru- 
 ments of brass and iron ; and the sister of 
 Tubal-Cain was Naamah. 
 
 C^) And Lamech said to his wives : 
 * Adah and Zillah, hear my voice I 
 Wives of Lamech, give ear to my speech I 
 For I have slain a man for my wound, 
 And a youth for my hurt. 
 (") For Cain shall be avenged seven-times. 
 And Lamech seventy-times seven-times.' 
 C^) And Adam knew again his wife, and 
 she bare a son, and she called his name 
 (Sheth) Seth ; ' for Elohdi,' said she, * hath 
 appointed (shath) to me other seed in place of 
 Abel, for Cain slew him.' 
 (=«) And to Seth,— to him also, there was 
 
 5. (") And he called his name (Noakh) 
 Noah, saying, ' This shall comfort (nikham) 
 us (from) about our work and (from) about the 
 pain of our hands, (from) about the ground 
 which Jehovah cursed.' 
 
 6. C) And it came-to-pass that man began 
 to multiply upon the face of the ground, and 
 daughters were bom to them. (") And the 
 sons of ELOHIM saw the daughters of man 
 that they were goodly : and they took to 
 them wives of all whom they chose. (*)_ And 
 Jehovah said, ' My spirit shall not preside in 
 man for ever, forasmuch as he also is flesh, 
 and his days shall be a hundred and twenty 
 years.' 
 
 (■*) The giants were in the earth in those 
 days ; and also afterwards, as the sons of 
 ELOHIM went unto the daughters of man, 
 and begat to themselves, these were the 
 mighty-ones which were of old, the men of a 
 name. 
 
 (=) And Jehovah saw that the wickedness 
 of man was multiplied in the earth, and 
 every (formation) imagination of the thoughts 
 of his heart was only evil all the days. (") 
 And Jehovah repented that He had made 
 man in the earth, and He was pained (imto) 
 in His heart. C) And Jehovah said, * I -will 
 wipe-out man, whom I have created, from ofE 
 the face of the ground, from man imto cattle, 
 unto creeping- thing, and unto fowl of the 
 heaven ; for I repent that I have made them.* 
 (*) Bnt Noah found favour in the eyes of 
 Jehovah.^ 
 
 (") And this is how thou shalt make it,— 
 three hundred cubits the length of the ark, 
 fifty cubits its breadth, and thirty cubits its 
 height. (") A light shalt thou make to the 
 Ark, and unto a cubit shalt thou finish it 
 upward, and a door of the Ark shalt thou 
 place in its side; lower, second, and third 
 stories shalt thou make it.^ 
 
 7. C) And Jehovah said to Noah, 'Go 
 thou and all thy house into the Ark ; for thee 
 do I see righteous before my face in this 
 generation. O Out of all the clean cattle thou 
 shalt take to thee seven and seven, the male 
 and his mate, {lit. man and his woman) ; and 
 out of the cattle, which are not clean, it sfiall 
 be two, the male and his mate. (^) Also out of 
 the fowl of the heaven seven arid seven, male 
 and female, to keep-alive se d upon the face 
 of all the earth. (*) For after yet seven days 
 I will cause-it-to-rain upon the earth forty 
 days and forty nights ; and I will wipe-out all 
 the substance which I have made from off the 
 face of the ground.* 
 
 C) And Noah did according to all which 
 Jehovah commanded him.K^ 
 
 ('") And it came-to-pass after the seven 
 days that the waters of the Deluge were upon 
 theearth.iji (*") And the rain was upon the 
 earth forty days and forty nights. 
 
 ("") _ind Jehovah shut after him. (") 
 And the Flood was forty days upon the earth ; 
 and the waters multiplied, and they raised 
 the Ark, and it was lifted from off the eai'th. 
 
ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC PASSAGES IN G.L1-XL26. 311 
 
 ^C ") And the Ark went upon the face of 
 the waters. {""^) And the waters were very, 
 very mighty upon the (larth ; ^ C<'\ fifteen 
 cubits upward the waters were mighty, and 
 the mountains were covered. tjn («'a) And He 
 wiped-out all the substance which was upon 
 the face of the ground, from man unto cattle, 
 unto ereeping-tliing, and unto fowl of the 
 heaven ; and they were wiped-out from the 
 eax-th. 
 
 8. C"^) And the rain was restrained out of 
 the heaven ; C) and. the waters returned 
 from ofE the earth, returning continually ;ij. 
 (*") and the Ark restediji (■•<=) on the mountains 
 of Ararat.^ 
 
 C^) And it came-to-pass, at the end of forty 
 days, that Noah opened the window of the 
 Ark, which he had made. C) And he put 
 foi-th the raven, and it went-out, going-out 
 and returning, untU. the drying-up of the 
 waters from off the earth. (") And he put- 
 forth the dove from him, to see whether the 
 waters were lightened from ofE the face of the 
 ground. (") And the dove found not rest for 
 the sole of its foot, and it returned unto him 
 nnto the Ark ; for waters were upon the face 
 of all the earth ; and ne put-forth his hand, 
 and took it, and brought it unto him into the 
 Ark. C^") And he stayed yet seven other days, 
 and he added to put-forth the dove out of the 
 Ark. C^) And the dove came unto him at the 
 time of evening, and behold ! an olive-leaf 
 tom-ofE in its mouth ; and Noah knew that 
 the waters were lightened from off the earth. 
 (") And he stayed yet seven other days, and 
 he put-forth the dove ; and it added not to 
 return imto Tn'rn again. ^ (^^^) And Noah re- 
 moved the covering of the Ark, and taw, and 
 behold I the face of the ground was dry.iji 
 
 C^°) And Noah built an altar to Jehovah, 
 and took out of all the clean cattle and 
 out of all the clean fowl, and offered burnt- 
 offerings (by-means-of) on the altar. (^^) 
 And Jehovah smelt the sweet savour, and 
 Jehovah said unto His heart, ' I will not add 
 to ciurse again the ground for the sake of man ; 
 for the (formation) imagination of the heart 
 of man is evil from his youth ; and I will not 
 add again to smite (all living= ) every living- 
 thing, as I have done. {==) Still all the days 
 of the earth, seed and harvest, and cold and 
 heat, and summer and winter, and day and 
 night, shall not cease.'ij) 
 
 9. (") And the sons of Noah, those going 
 out of the Ark, were Shem, Ham, and 
 Japheth; and Ham— he is the father of 
 Canaan. (") These were the three sons of 
 Noah, and out of these was spread-abroad all 
 the earth. 
 
 (^°) And Noah began to be a man of the 
 groimd, and he planted a vineyard. C") And 
 he drank of the wine, and was drunken, and 
 he exposed-himself in the midst of his tent. 
 C"") And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw 
 his father's nakedness, and he told it to his 
 two brethren without, (-^) And Shem and 
 Japheth took the garment, and laid it upon 
 the shoulder of both of them, and they went 
 backwards, and covered their father's naked- 1 
 ness ; and their faces were backwards, and 
 their father's nakedness they saw not. 
 
 C ) And Noah awoke from his wine, and 
 he knew what his younger son had done to 
 him. C"-) And he said : 
 ' Cursed be Canaan ! 
 Servant of servants shall he be to his 
 bretliren.' 
 C") And he said : 
 * Blessed be Jehovah, the Elohim of 
 
 Shem! 
 And Canaan shall be a servant to them, 
 ("') Elohim shall enlarge Japheth ; 
 
 And he (? But He) shall dwell in the 
 
 tents of Shem ; 
 
 And Canaan shall be a servant to them.' ^ 
 
 3.O. C^) And these are the generations of 
 
 the sons of Noah,— Shem , Ham, and Japheth ; 
 
 and there were born to them sons after the 
 
 Deluge. 
 
 (-) The sons of Japheth, Comer, and Ma- 
 gog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and 
 Meshech, and Tiras. 
 
 C) And the sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz and 
 Riphath, and Togarmah. 
 
 (*) And the sons of Javan, Elisha and 
 Tarshish, Kittim and Dodanim. 
 
 O Out of these were separated the isles of 
 the nations in their lands, (man) each after 
 his tongue, after their families, in their 
 nations. 
 
 (") And the sons of Ham, Cush, and Miz- 
 raim, and Phut, and Canaan. 
 
 (') And the sons of Cush, Seba, and Havi- 
 lah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtechah ; 
 and the sons of Raamah, Sheba, and Dedan. 
 (*') And Cush begat Nimrod ; he began to be 
 a mighty-oue in the earth. C) He was a 
 mighty-one in hunting before 'the face of 
 Jehovah : therefore it is said, 'As Nimrod, 
 the mighty-one in hunting before the face of 
 Jehovah.' (") And the beginning of his 
 kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, 
 andCalneh,in the land of Shinar. (")Outof 
 that land he went out to (Asshur) Assyria, 
 and built Nineveh, and Rehoboth-^ir, and 
 Calah, (") and Resen between Nineveh and 
 (between) Calah : that is the great city. 
 
 C^) And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Ana- 
 mim, and Lehavim, and Naphtuchim, (") 
 and Pathrusim, and Casluchim,— out of whom 
 went out Philistim, — and Caphtorim. 
 
 C) And Canaan begat Zidon bis firstborn, 
 and Hethi (") and the Jebusite, and the 
 Amorite, and the Girgashite, (") and the 
 Hivite, and the Arkite, ajid the Sinite, (") 
 and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the 
 Hamathite : and afterwards the families of 
 the Canaanite were spread-abroad. (^°) And 
 the border of the Canaanite was from Zidon, 
 in thy going to Gerar, unto Gaza,— m thy 
 going to Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, 
 and Zeboim, unto Lasha. 
 
 C) These are the sons of Ham after their 
 families, after their tongues, in their lands^ 
 in their nations. 
 
 (=^) And to Shem, to him also there was 
 bom,— the father of all the sons of /^eber, 
 the elder brother of Japheth. 
 
 (==) The sons of Shem, Elam, and Asshur, 
 and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram. 
 
 C^) And the sons of Aram, Uz, and Hul, 
 and Gother, and Mash. 
 
 (=') And Arpbaxad begat Salah, and Salah 
 begat (i/eber) EOer. C") And to Eber were 
 
312 
 
 GENEEAL EEMAEKS ON THE 
 
 born two sons, — the name of the one Peleg, 
 for in his days the earth was divided (palag)^ 
 and the name of his brother, Joktaa. C) 
 And Jolrtan begat AJmodad, and Sheleph, and 
 Hazarmavcth, and Jerah, (") and Hadoram, 
 and L'zal, and Diklah, C) and Obal, and 
 Abimael, and Sheba, C") and Ophir, and 
 Eavilah, and Jobab : all these were the sons 
 of Joktan. i^) And their dwelling was from 
 Mesha, in thy going to Sephar, the mountain 
 of the East. 
 
 (^') These are the sons of Shem, after their 
 families, after their tongues, in their lands, 
 after their nations. 
 
 (■■') These are the families of the sons of 
 Noah, after their generations, in their nations; 
 and out of these were separated the nations in 
 the earth after the Deluge. 
 
 11. C) And all the earth was of one (lip) 
 language, and of one speech. (") And it came 
 to pa^, in their jouraeying eastward, that 
 they found a plain in the land of Shinax, and 
 dwelt there. (") And they said, (man) each to 
 his comrade, ' Come-on, let us make bricks, 
 and let us bm-n them (for a burning) tho- 
 roughly.' And the bricks were to them for 
 stone, and the slime was to them for the mor- 
 tar. (*) And they said, ' Come-on, let us build 
 to lis a city, and a tower (and) with its head 
 in the heaven ; and let us make to us a name, 
 lest we be spread-abroad upon the face of all 
 the earth.' 
 
 (') And Jehovah went down to see the 
 city and the tower which the sons of man had 
 built. C') And Jehovah said, 'Behold I the 
 people is one, and there is one (lip) language 
 to aU of them ; and this is their beginning to 
 do ; and now there will not be restrained 
 from them all which they have purposed to 
 do. (') Come-on, let us go down, and let us 
 confound there their (lip) language, that they 
 may not know (man) each the (lip) language 
 of his comrade.' (") And Jehovah spreaid- 
 abroad them from thence upon the face of all 
 the earth, and they left-ofE to build the city. 
 (") Therefore (he called, Le. onecaUed=) men 
 called its name Babel : for there Jehovah 
 confounded (balal) the flip) language of all 
 the earth ; and from thenie Jehovah spread- 
 abroad them upon the face of all the earth. ^ 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GENEBAI, REMARKS ON THE EELA'nON OP 
 SCEIPTUBE AND SCIENCE. 
 
 969. Hitherto, in the former Parts of 
 this work, we have not considered any 
 ohjection which has been raised to the 
 historical truth of the story in the 
 Pentateuch, on the ground of any 
 miraculous or supernatural events re- 
 corded in it. We have simply treated 
 the history as containing, or professing 
 to contain, an authentic narrative of 
 matters of fact. We have 'taken it 
 and placed it,' as we have heen eo 
 earnestly urged to do ( Quart. Beview, 
 Oct. 1861,^.368)— 
 
 in the crucible, and under the microscope of 
 strict Inductive Logic : — 
 and we have found it full of unsuspected 
 flaws, of 'difficulties, contradictions, 
 improbahilities, impossibilities.' 
 
 970. But we have seen also that these 
 phenomena have arisen in a grean 
 measure from the fact, that the Pen- 
 tateuch is not, as the traditionary view 
 assumes, the work of one single writer, 
 Moses, — describing transactions which 
 fell in part within his own certain cog- 
 nisance, and in many of which he him- 
 self was personally concerned, — but a 
 composite work, the product of several 
 different authors, who lived in diflFerent 
 ages. We saw in Part III. that one 
 large portion of this work, the Book of 
 Deuteronomy, was mainly composed 
 not earlier than the age of Josiah. We 
 have now seen that the First Eleven 
 Chapters of Genesis are manifestly due 
 to two separate authors, distinct in tone 
 and style, and writing from two very 
 different points of view, and, on a 
 mere literal principle of interpretation, 
 in many particulars irreconcilable. 
 
 971. I believe that no one, who has 
 followed the train of our previous 
 reasoning, or even that of the seven 
 preceding chapters, or who will give 
 serious attention to the fact, which is 
 laid bare before the eyes of English 
 readers in the last two chapters, where 
 the two documents are actually sepa- 
 rated, will any longer doubt as to 
 whether we are at liberty to criticise 
 freely this portion of the Bible, — always, 
 of course, reserving the respect whicli 
 is due to the venerable character of these 
 most ancient writings, and to the won- 
 derful part which they have filled, in 
 God's Providence, in the religious edu- 
 cation of mankind, and with due con- 
 sideration also of the feelings of many 
 earnest and devout worshippers, by 
 whom the Pentateuch, in all its parts, is 
 still regarded as the actual work of 
 Moses, and, in its every word and letter, 
 is reverenced as the ' very foundation 
 of our faith, the very basis of our hopi'S 
 for eternity,' — the awful, infallible Word 
 of the Living God. 
 
 972. Rather, it will be felt to be a 
 positive duty, laid specially by our 
 vocation upon us, the clergy of the 
 
RELATION OF SCEIPTUEE AIJD SCIENCE. 
 
 National Church, to face these great 
 questions of our time, soberly and 
 steadily, without fear, and without 
 misgi-ping, as to what may be the 
 ultimate consequences of pursuing such 
 enquiries, under the guidance of His 
 Spirit, who is the Spirit of Truth. If 
 men say, 'Whither are you going?' we 
 answer at once, 'We are going after 
 Truth; and doing this in the right 
 spirit — in the spirit of men who desire 
 to know the Truth, that they may live 
 more truly as becomes the children of 
 God, — we are Tery sure that we are 
 going towards God.' 
 
 973. As servants, then, — rather, as 
 sons — of God, we desire to see what is 
 really true, that we may know Him 
 better, aud serve Him better, than 
 before. We cannot glorify God, we 
 cannot make progress in the knowledge 
 of God, by refusing to look at the facts, 
 which He Himself is pleased to place 
 before us in this our day, or by refus- 
 ing to acknowledge them as facts, how- 
 ever they may contradict our previous 
 actions. For facts, when God makes 
 them plain to us, are solemn things, 
 which we dare not disregard, to which 
 we dare not shut our eyes, whether 
 from indolence and the mere love of 
 ease and quietness, or through fear of 
 unreasoning elamoiir or of the censure 
 and disapprobation of those, to whose 
 judgments, in matters less sacred, we 
 should naturally and properly defer. 
 
 'He, that is higher than the highest, re- 
 gardeth it, and there be higher than they.' 
 — Bco.v.8. 
 
 974. We are now, then, free to con- 
 sider the accounts of these miracles 
 and supernatural appearances, which 
 are recorded in the Pentateuch, and 
 especially the stories of the Creation, 
 the Fall, and the Deluge, in the light of 
 Modem Science, — not starting with the 
 assumption, that such events as are 
 here related are a priori in themselves 
 impossible, but examining carefully the 
 statements made, and comparing them 
 — ^not only with each other, but — with 
 what we certainly hnow to be true from 
 other sources. For the Light of Modern 
 Science, like any other 'good and 
 perfect gift,' is a gift of God, — 'is 
 from above, and cometh down from the 
 
 313 
 
 Father of Lights.' It is His special 
 gift to the present age. And ' in Him 
 there is no variableness, neither 
 shadow of turning.' His Revelation of 
 Himself has been one and the same 
 in aU ages of the world,— differing, it 
 is true, in degree, but the same essen- 
 tially. As the writer just quoted 
 {Quart. Bev.) has said, the Light of 
 Revelation ' cannot be at variance ' 
 with the Light of Science. And 
 'whenever a difference arises,' we- 
 must see if it is not caused by ' some 
 hypothesis, or assumption, or inference 
 of man,' not by anything existing 'in 
 the real Word, or the real Work, of the 
 Creator.' Then ' we may preserve 
 both peace and freedom.' 
 
 975. Stirely, it must now be plain to 
 most thoughtfid. readers, from the facts 
 which we have had before us, that the 
 cause of the differences in question 
 does lie in a vei-y false 'hypothesis, 
 assumption, or inference of man,' as 
 tjlwhat constitutes the ' real Word ' of 
 tSe Creator. It arises from the fact 
 that men have been taught all along to 
 regard the Bible in all its parts, and the 
 Pentateuch especially, as a divinely in- 
 fallible record of absolute historical 
 truth. It arises from men insisting on 
 the fallacy, that, if the Pentateuch be 
 shown to be even partially unhistorical, 
 then the whole history of the Jewish 
 people will be left {Quart. Bev.) — 
 
 a dead and hollow shell of moral monstrosi- 
 ties, more incredible than the most capricious 
 interferences with the world of matter, — 
 and coupling with it the still more 
 shocking statement, that such mon- 
 strosities in the Jewish history — ■ 
 
 would go far to disprove the very being of a 
 Bod I 
 
 This is indeed, as we have said else- 
 where, to bring the Sacred Ark itself 
 into the Camp, — promoting supersti- 
 tion by fostering prejudice, instead of 
 fighting the battle with the weapons of 
 sincerity and truth. 
 
 976. While .«uch language as the 
 above is stUl employed, and the attempt 
 is still made, by many from whom better 
 things might have been expected, to 
 urge upon the people the reception of 
 all the Pentateuchal narratives as actual 
 statements of real historical fact, there 
 
314 
 
 GENERAL REMARKS ON THE 
 
 is no alternative left to us but to show 
 that such a view is utterly untenable, in 
 the light of common sense, and oon- 
 sistenfly with what we know of the 
 Divine Attributes. We must do this, in 
 defence of the Truth itself, and for'^e 
 protection of those, especially in the 
 rising generation, who may thus be 
 misled to believe that Religion itself 
 demands at their hands the sacrifice of 
 their reasoning powers, — that God can 
 only be devoutly and faithfully served, 
 by renouncing at once all right of free 
 enquiry into these questions of Biblical 
 Criticism, and all thought of reconciling 
 the teachings of Religion with the re- 
 sults of Modern Science, and the great 
 discoveries of the age. 
 
 ■977. Who would otherwise wish to 
 be Employed in dissecting these grand 
 old stories, and pointing out their incon- 
 sistencies or their defects in scientific 
 accuracy? As TnoH observes, Gm.p.%: 
 
 yfho would deny the worth of these doc^u- 
 ments, because the authors knew nothiiifflcf 
 the system of Copemipua, or of Kepler's L^- 
 hook of the Heavens ? Or who will now any 
 longer make the attempt to bring these old 
 theories into unison with the results of scien- 
 tific investigations of Nature ? 
 
 And Von Bohlen observes, (Het- 
 wood's Eng. Ed.), ii.^.4 : — 
 
 Yerily, he who restricts himself to the letter 
 of this cosmogony [in G.i], and applies to 
 it Herschel's discoveries, ... to such 
 a man not only is all sense for poetry and an- 
 tiquity closed, but also, to speak plainly, all 
 feeling for the pious and elevating object of 
 the writer. But still more is there an absence 
 of poetical and classical taste in him, who 
 derives each step of the narrative through in- 
 spiration from the Deity, in order that this 
 cosmogony may far exceed everything that 
 we know from the wise men of the ancient 
 [or the modern] world. 
 
 978. Yet the attempt is still made, 
 which TnOH, writing twenty-five years 
 ago, deemed impossible even in that 
 stage of advancing Science. There 
 are still to be foimd those, high in 
 ecclesiastical position and influence, 
 who think it necessary to maintain that 
 ' Scripture and Science ' are not in any 
 single point 'at variance,' — that the 
 veracity of the Divine Being Himself 
 is pledged for the infallible truth of 
 each one of these ancient narratives, — 
 tliat every story in the Pentateuch ij,' 
 at all events, substantially true, as a 
 
 piece of authentic, historical matter- 
 of-fact, and that ' all our nearest and 
 dearest consolations will be taken 
 from us ' if we cease to believe this. 
 
 979. As Kalisoh writes, Gen.p.1'2 : 
 It was, and — incredible to say — is still 
 
 (1853) asserted, that the fossils have never 
 been animated structures, but were formed in 
 the rocks through the planetary influences, — 
 that the mammoth, wiiich at the conclusion 
 of the last century was iound in the ice of 
 the polar regions in such remai'kable preser- 
 vation that dogs and bears fed upon its flesh, 
 had never been a living creature, but was 
 created under the ice, and then preserved, in- 
 stead of being transmuted into stone, — that 
 all organisfha found in the depth of the 
 earth are models, created in the first day, to 
 typify the living plants and animals to bo 
 produced in the subsequent pai-t of the crea- 
 tive week ; but, inasmuch as many forma, 
 which lie buried in the earth, do not exist on 
 the earth, these latter were rejected, as inap- 
 propriate or imperfect, — they represent the 
 ' gates of death,' but foreshadow also the im- 
 mortality of the soul, the resurrection, and 
 the ultimate reunion of the dust of the human 
 bodies at the sound of the last trump I See 
 *A Bfiqf avd Complete Refutation of the Anti- 
 Scriptural Tlieory of Geologists,^ by ' A Clergy- 
 man of t/ie Church of England.' 
 
 Most justly does Kaiisch observe, 
 with reference tosuch assertions, p.l8 : — 
 
 The Bible has no more dangerous enemies 
 than those, who, either from indolence or 
 apathy, are deaf to the teaching and warning 
 of the other sciences ; and those men, how- 
 ever well-meaning and warm-heaited, must 
 be made mainly answerable, if the authority 
 of the Scriptures shoiUd be disregarded by the 
 most enlightened and most comprehensive 
 minds. 
 
 980. But while such assertions are 
 made, either of the scientific accuracy, 
 or of the infallible historical truth, of 
 the Hebrew Scriptui'es, — assertions 
 which the Church of England, at all 
 events, has never made in any of her 
 formularies, — it is necessary in defence 
 of Religion itself to show, as plainly 
 as possible, their utter groundlessness, 
 that so the progress of scientific enquiry 
 may not again be checked, as it was in 
 days not very long gone by, by the 
 blind irreverence of mere superstition. 
 Let it be once freely admitted that 
 these stories of the first chapters of 
 Genesis, whatever they may teach of 
 Divine Eternal Truth, and whatever 
 precious lessons may be drawn from 
 them by a devout mind, are in their 
 present form and structure mythical 
 descriptions, where the narrative is an 
 
EELATION OF SCRIPTURE AJ!TD SCIENCE. 
 
 315 
 
 imaginative clothing for ideas, and so 
 are not to be regarded as teaching ■un- 
 questionable matters of historical fact, 
 ■which occurred in the primitive times ; 
 and then such a comparison, as -we 
 must now make, between the state- 
 ments of the Bible and well-known 
 facts of Science, would be superfluous 
 and uncalled-for. 
 
 981. In the following chapters we 
 ehaU consider at length the accounts 
 of the Creation, Fall, Deluge, &c., as 
 given in G.i.l-xi.26, in the light of 
 Modern Science. "We may here, how- 
 ever, introduce a few remarks upon the 
 first of these subjects from a very can- 
 did writer, the Rev. Dr. Roeison, in 
 Replies to Essays and Beviews, ^.329 
 -338, for the othodoxy of which, we 
 presume, the Bishop of Oxford, the 
 avowed editor of the volume in question, 
 mast be held responsible : — 
 
 By what epithet shall we designate the 
 Mosaic heptameron ? Sceptics call it a myth, 
 or else, more mildly, the speculation of an an- 
 cient sage. Most Christians speak of it as a 
 history or nai-rative. The author of an able 
 and learned ' Reply ' to ' Essays and Reviews,' 
 written in a most reverential spirit, has come 
 to the conclusion that it is bi. parable. Others 
 suggest that it is a vision. One gontleman 
 considers it as an account of plan, as distin- 
 gruished from fulfilment. We venture tx) think 
 none of these descriptions satisfactory. The 
 Book of Grenesls opens -with the inspired 
 Psalm of Creation. 
 
 On the h3T)othesis tbat we have to do with 
 an ordinary prose narrative, chi'onicle, or 
 diary, there immediately emerges the great 
 difficulty of the ' days.' "With this it is not 
 too much to say that no ingenuity has as yet 
 grappled successfully. The choice lies be- 
 tween the Ohalmerian interpolation of the 
 geological ages before the first day begins, and 
 the Cnvierian expansion of the six days into 
 geological ages. For these solutions, respec- 
 ■ tively, Dr. Bttckland and Hu&H Miller 
 have done their best. But the arguments, 
 which compelled Hugh Miller to abandon 
 the older method, have not been answered. 
 Nor is his own scheme free from the gravest 
 difficulties. Who can bring himself to believe, 
 for example, that, when the sacred writer 
 speaks of trees laden for human use with 
 seed-enclosing fruit, he could have had in his 
 mind, or could have so described, the gymno- 
 genous flora of the coal-measures ? 
 
 Certain writers evade embarrassment by 
 declining to elect among the competing * re- 
 conciliations.' It is enough, they suggest, 
 that some one of them may be sound, although 
 it is inconvenient to become responsible for 
 any. one of them ; or they allege that the 
 record was not intended to do whac it ex- 
 pressly undertakes and professes to do ; or, 
 otherwise, that the time is not come for a 
 
 comparison between Rcriptm*e and Geology, 
 since there are points on which geologists are 
 not agreed among themselves. This multi- 
 form fallacy of evasion is exemplified by 
 BucKLAMD, p,\'2,,ZZ, Archd. Peatt, p.ZZ, &c. 
 Dr. Chalmers himself, in his private corre- 
 spondence, betrays a similar hesitancy, by 
 speaking of ' yet another way of saving the 
 credit of Vie record.' It, no doubt, escaped 
 this great and good man that his own ' way ' 
 brought him into direct collision with the 
 * Shorter Catechism,' which asserts that God's 
 work of Creation consists in ' His making all 
 things out of nothing ' in the space of six days, 
 — not millions of years before the first day 
 dpwned. 
 
 All this is but a manifestation of anxiety to 
 snatoh a cherished dogma from a dreaded foe. 
 Were the panic well-founded, the belief in- 
 debted to such expedients would be only 
 
 screened not saved The worst 
 
 dwservice to the cause of Truth is that con- 
 tributed by contorted Science and sophistic 
 exegesis, — e.g. ' Before sin entered, there could 
 be no violent death, if any death at all. But, 
 by the particular structure of the teeth of 
 animals, God prepared them for that kind of 
 aliment, which they were to subsist on after 
 the Fall ! '—Adam Clarics on G.i. 
 
 Enough whether of quibbles or of make- 
 shtfts ! When we consider the pervading 
 parallelism,— the rhythmic refrain, ' the even- 
 ing and the morning,' — the periodic fiat, ' Let 
 theire be light, a water-parting Firmament, 
 Land, Plants, — Lights in the Firmament, Life 
 in the Waters, Life on the Land, Man, — ^the 
 punctual fulfilment, ' It was so,'— the retro- 
 spect, * God saw that it was good,' — ^the chief 
 wonder is how it ever wa"? possible to exact 
 from the oldest and sublimest poem in the 
 world the attributes of narrative prose. 
 
 982. Then, after stating the 'struc- 
 ture of the Mosaic heptameron,' which 
 may, perhaps, be given more distinctly 
 thus : — 
 
 First Day, Light, corresponds to Fourth 
 Day, Luminaries. 
 
 Second Day, Water and Heaven, corresponds 
 to Fifth Day, Fish aud'Fowl. 
 
 Third Day, Land and Vegetation, corre- 
 sponds to Sixth Day, Animals and Man, who 
 are to inhabit the land, and feed on the vege- 
 tation. 
 
 Seventh i)ay— Best — 
 
 Dr. EoEisON adds, with reference to hia 
 own solution: — 
 
 He, who perceives this, has the true key to 
 the concord, which he will search for else- 
 where and otherwise in vain. Respect the 
 parallelism, cease to ignore the structure, 
 allow for the mystic sii^nificauce of the num- 
 ber seven, and all perplexities vanish. . . . 
 Thus the 'days' themselves aie transfigured 
 from registers of time into definitions of 
 strophes or stanzas, — lamps and landmarks 
 of a creative sequence,— a mystic drapery, a 
 parabolic setting, shadowing, by the sacred 
 cycle of seven, the truths of an ordered prO' 
 gress, & foreknown finality, an achieved perfec- 
 tion, and a divine repose. 
 
316 
 
 GEN.I.1-II.3. 
 
 983. Bishop WiLBBRFOitCB has also 
 lent the sanction of. his name to the 
 publication of the following passage in 
 the same work (Ecplics to Essat/s and 
 Bevkws, p.5li) from the pen of the 
 Eev. E. Main, M.A., Eadcliffe Ob- 
 server in the University of Oxfoed, 
 ■which directly denies the 'literal his- 
 torical truth ' of this portion of the 
 Pentateuch: — 
 
 Some school-books still teach to the igno- 
 rant that the earth is 6,000 years old, and that 
 all things were created in six days. No well- 
 educated person of the present day shares in 
 the delusion. We know that we cannot ex- 
 pand our ideas of God's universe too much, 
 both as to space and time. With Him a 
 thousand years are but as one day ; and, if 
 we take a thousand years as the unit of our 
 counting, we shall require still an incalcu- 
 lable number of such units, to enumerate the 
 sum of Creation-periods. Whatever be the 
 meaning of the six days, ending with the 
 seventh day's mystical and symbolical rest, 
 ijidisputably we cannot accept them in their 
 literal meaning. They serve, apparently, as 
 the divisions of the record of Creation, lest 
 the mind may be too much burdened and per- 
 plexed by all these wonderful acts : but they 
 as plainly do not deTwte tlie order of succession 
 of all the individual creations. Something is 
 symbolised, and the author of the Ep. to the 
 Hebrews uses the symbol ; and this, the only 
 mystical fact in the whole narrative (?), we 
 may surely, in all reverence, leave unex- 
 plained, without detracting at all from the 
 credit or the veracity of this wonderful 
 record. 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 GEN.i.l-n.3. 
 
 984. G.i.l— 
 
 In the beginning ELOHm created the 
 Heaven and the Earth.* 
 
 The plain meaning of this verse, — as 
 it would be understood by any simple- 
 minded reader, who had not yet per- 
 ceived the difficulties of the case, and 
 been taught to 'reconcile' them, — is 
 undoubtedly this, that, ' in the begin- 
 ning,' at the commencement of the 
 present state of things, as the first act 
 of that continuous six days' work, of 
 which man was to be the last, ' God 
 created the Heaven and the Earth,' i.e. 
 the Universe, the Hebrews having no 
 single word by which to express this 
 idea. The same Hebrew word is used 
 for 'create' in v.\ as is used in *.21, 
 ' God created great whales,' and in ^.27, 
 ' So Goicreated man in his own image.' 
 
 And, in E.xx.ll, it is expressly said' 
 that — 
 
 ' in six days Jehovah made the Heaven and the 
 Earth, the Sea, and all that in them is.' 
 
 985. Here, however, in E.xx.ll, the 
 word used is 'made.' And Archd. 
 Pratt [Scripture and Science not at 
 
 Variance, p.6&) attempts to argue that 
 G.i.l, where 'create' (bara) is used, 
 relates to an original calling out of 
 nothing the material, out of which the 
 things now existing were afterwards 
 'made:' so that immense ages and 
 numerous revolutions of the Universe 
 may have taken place, in strict agree- 
 ment with the statements of this 
 chapter, before the formation of the 
 world as it now is, and the constitution 
 of the present order of things, — i.e, 
 between v.X and f.3. 
 
 986. Accordingly, he says that the 
 wordinE.xx.il is not used in the sense 
 of ' create,' but — 
 
 in the sense of did, appointed, constituted, set 
 for a particular purpose or use ; and never 
 once, in the hundred and fifty places, where 
 it occurs in the Book of Genesis, is it used in 
 the sense of ' created.' 
 
 . So again he writes, p.32: — 
 In Genesis we read, • In the beginning God 
 created the Heaven and the Earth.' In the 
 following verses the work of the six days i8 
 described, in which God prepared the Earth, 
 and the sea, and the clouds, and the atmos- 
 phere (or heaven), for man's appearance upon 
 earth. 
 
 It is this six days' work which is alluded to 
 in the Fourth Commandment, and not the 
 
 original Creation of matter The 
 
 word hasah, made, which occurs 154 times in 
 Genesis, is not once rendered (I) 'created.' 
 . . . This word occurs about 2,700 times 
 in the O.T., and, I believe, is not once trans- 
 lated (I) ' created.* 
 
 987. But what matters it whether, 
 or not, our 'translators' have 'rendered' 
 this word by ' created,' when it plainly 
 means 'created' in numberless pas- 
 sages ? E.g. : — 
 
 ' And Blohim made the animal of the earth 
 after its kind,' i.25 ; 
 
 ' Let us make man iii our image,* i.26 ; 
 
 ' The serpent was more subtle than any 
 animal of the field, which jBHOVAH-Erx)HiM 
 had made,' iii.l ; 
 
 'It repented Jbhovah that He had made 
 man upon the earth,' vi.6. 
 
 Compare, also, — 
 
 ' In the image of Elohim created He him,' 
 i.27; 
 
 ' In the image of Blohim made He him," 
 ix.6— 
 
GEN.I.1-II.3, 
 ■whpre the two words are manifestly 
 used as synonymous. 
 
 988. It appears, then, — especially 
 from E.xx. 11,— that there is absolutely 
 no room for the supposition, to which 
 Chalmers gaTe popularity, that G.i.l 
 refers to a great primeval act, which 
 may have been separated by vast geo- 
 logical ages from the creative acts de- 
 scribed in the rest of the chapter, and 
 V.2, as Archd. Peatt writes, p. 31, to— 
 a state of emptiness and waste, into which 
 the earth long after fell, ere God prepared it 
 as the residence of the most perfect of his 
 creatnres, — 
 
 a view this which, however adapted to 
 the state of ge.ilogical science at the 
 time when it was proposed, has, with 
 the advance of that science, turned 
 into a 'broken reed,' piercing, like so 
 many previous attempts to reconcile 
 Scripture Poetry with Natural Science, 
 the ' hands that leant upon it.' 
 
 989. For v.2 is evidently in continua- 
 tion with v.l, and describes the state 
 of the ' Earth ' named in v.l, when first 
 created. And reference is made to 
 this creation of the Earth and the 
 Heaven, at the same time when all 
 other things were created, in ii.4 — 
 
 * These are the generations of the Heaven and 
 of the Earth in their creation, in the day 
 of Jehovah-Elohim's making Earth and 
 Heaven.' 
 
 Thus we are plainly taught in the 
 Book of Genesis, according to the 
 simple, straightforward meaning of the 
 words, that Elohim created the Heaven 
 and the Earth ' in the beginning ' of 
 these six dat/s, — that is, taking into 
 account the chronological data of the 
 Bible, about six thousand years ago. 
 
 But Geology teaches that the earth 
 has been in existence for hundreds of 
 thousands — ^perhaps millions — of years. 
 
 990. Again, we are told in this 
 chapter of Genesis that the different 
 races of living creatures, plants, &c., 
 were created in six days. And these 
 cannot be explained to denote six geo- 
 logical ages, as some have suggested ; 
 tliey are, in the meaning of the writer, 
 six common days of twenty-four hours. 
 Tliis appears both from the state- 
 ments in the chapter itself, noticed 
 below, and from E.xx.ll, where we are 
 told that God worked for six days, and; 
 
 317 
 
 rested ' on the seventh day,' which, 
 therefore. He sanctified as the Sabbath. 
 Consequently, since in the mind of tlie 
 writer of this passage the seventh day 
 was a common day, so also must the 
 other six days have been common days. 
 And so says Archd. Pkatt, Scripture 
 and Science, &c., p.i5 : 
 
 There is one class of interpreters with 
 whom I cannot agree, — I mean those who 
 take the six days to be si.x periods of indefi- 
 
 mte length Is it not a harsh and 
 
 forced interpretation, to suppose that, in E.xx. 
 the * six days ' in v.9 do not mean the same 
 as the ' six days ' in ii.ll, but that in this last 
 place they mean ' six periods ' ? In reading 
 through D.ll, it is extremely difficult to be- 
 lieve that the ' seventh day ' is a long period, 
 and the * Sabbath Day ' an ordinary day, that 
 is, that the same word ' day ' should be used 
 in two totally diiferent senses in the same 
 short sentence, and without any explanation. 
 
 991. In fact, we may ask, can the 
 fourth, fifth, and sixth days have been 
 supposed by the writer to be 'indefinite 
 periods,' when the two great lights had 
 been already set in the firmament, to 
 give light upon the earth, and to rule over 
 the day and over the night, and to divide 
 the light from the darkness"! If, in fact, 
 we were to take for the first three days 
 the word ' day ' to mean an indefinite 
 creation-period, yet then the same word 
 would be used in two passages directly 
 following each other, — even in two con- 
 secutive verses, tj.13,14,— in two totally 
 different senses, without the least inti- 
 mation being given that from the fourth 
 day onwards it must be understood in a 
 different sense from before, that is, in 
 the sense of an ordinary day (!). Well 
 may Mr. Buegon say, Inspiration, Sac, 
 p.38:— 
 
 Such an interpretation seems to stultify the 
 whole narrative. A week is described. Bays 
 are spoken of, each made up of an evening 
 and a morning. God's cessation from the 
 work of creation on the seventh day is em- 
 phatically adduced as the reason of the Fourth 
 Commandment, — ^the mysterious precedent for 
 our observance of one day of rest at the end 
 of every six days of toil, — ' for in six days (it 
 is declared) the Lord made Heaven and 
 Earth.' You may not play tricks with lan- 
 guage plain as this, and elongate a week until 
 it shall more than embrace the span of all 
 recorded time. 
 
 992. We conclude, then, that the 
 first chapter of Genesis, understood in 
 its plain grammatical sense, does mean 
 to say that, in six ordinary days, Al- 
 mighty God — 
 
318 
 
 GEKI.1-II3. 
 
 *Made the KeaveTi and the Earth, the Sea, 
 and all that in them is.* 
 
 But Geology shows that tie Earth 
 was not brought into its present form 
 in six days, but by continual changes 
 through a long succession of ages, 
 during which enormous periods innu- 
 merable varieties of animal and vege- 
 table life have abounded upon it, from 
 a time beyond all power of calculation'. 
 
 993. Further, the account in Genesis 
 represents the order of Creation to 
 have been — first, Plants, •0.12, next, 
 Fish and Fowl, v.il, then Cattle and 
 Reptiles, «.25, and, lastly, Man, v.ll. 
 
 But Geological observation shows 
 that, in different ages, plants and ani- 
 mals' of all kinds appeared together at 
 the same time upon the earth, so that 
 they were not successively created, as 
 the Bible says, — first, all the Plants, 
 then all the Fish, &c. 
 
 994. G.i.2. 
 
 * And the Earth was desolation and empti- 
 ness, and darkness was upon the face of the 
 deep.' 
 
 Here the Scripture represents the 
 earth as 'without form and void,' deso- 
 lation and emptiness, in a state of utter 
 chaos and confusion, — rudis indiges- 
 taque moles, — and wrapt in darkness, — 
 immediately before the races of plants 
 and animals, now existing on its sur- 
 face, were created. 
 
 But Geology proves that no such a 
 state of things immediately preceded 
 the epoch fixed in the Bible for the 
 Creation of Man, — that, in point of 
 fact, the face of the Earth has existed 
 generally just as now, with the same 
 kinds of animal and vegetable life as 
 now, long before the six thousand years 
 implied in the Bible story, and that no 
 sudden convulsion took place at that 
 time, by which they might have been 
 all destroyed, so as to give occasion for 
 a new Creation. As Hugh Millee 
 observes. Test, of the Socks, p.l2l : — 
 
 For many ages ere man was ushered into 
 being, not a few of his humble contemporaries 
 of the fields and woods enjoyed life in their 
 present haunts, and for thousands of years, 
 anterior even to tJieir appearance, many of 
 the existing moUusks lived in our seas. 
 
 995. G.i.5. 
 ' And it was evening and it waa morning — 
 one day.' 
 
 The appearance of the ' light ' waa, 
 ]perhaps, considered as the first morn- 
 ing, and the antecedent ' darkness' as 
 the first evening. This, at least, is the 
 explanation commonly given. But the 
 natural order of the account of the first 
 day would be to mention the morning, 
 i.e. the appearance of the light out of 
 darkness, before the evening. The 
 phenomena here observed, however, 
 taken in connection with other ancient 
 religious traditions, may, perhaps, throw 
 light on the origin of the account itself. 
 
 996. The Hebrews, Greeks, Persians, 
 Gauls, Germans, &c. began the day in 
 civil matters with the evening ; hence 
 the expression for a full day, viz. : 
 ' evening-morning,' Dan.'\'iii.l4 ; comp, 
 se'nnight (seven-night), fortnight (four- 
 teen-night). The Hindoos and later 
 Babylonians reckoned from sunrise, the 
 Umbrians from noon, the Eoman priests 
 fi'om midnight. 
 
 997. G.i.7. 
 
 ' And Elohim made the expanse, and divided 
 the waters which were beneath the expanse 
 from the waters which were above the ex- 
 panse.' 
 
 The Hebrews regarded the sky as a 
 spread-out surface, or expanse, from 
 which the upper waters were supposed 
 to be dropped in rain upon the earth, 
 and by which they were altogether 
 separated from the lower streams and 
 seas upon the earth's surface. 
 
 According to the mythical representation, 
 tliis heavenly vault is provided with a door, 
 Gr.xxviii.17 ; it rests upon pillars and founda- 
 tions, Job xxvi.n, 2S.xxii.8 ; and its glisten- 
 ing blue makes it appear as a crystal sapphire- 
 like mass, E.xxlv.lO, Dan.xii.3, or like a 
 
 * molten looking-glass,' Jobxxxvii.18. Above 
 this vault rolls the heavenly ocean, the 
 ' waters above the heavens,' ' Ps.cxlviii.4, 
 wherein Jehovah has set His throne, Ps.xxix. 
 3,10. Through the ' doors,' Ps.lxxviii.23, and 
 'windows,' G.vii.ll, 2K.vii.2,19, in the Fir- 
 mament, this ocean pours down upon the 
 earth as rain. 
 
 Yet we ought not to confound these mythical 
 representations, which later poets gladly re- 
 tained, with tlie science prtyper of the Hehrews ; 
 for already we read in Job xxvi.7, 'Hestretch- 
 eth out the Heaven over emptiness, He hang- 
 eth the Earth upon nothing' ; and in G-.il.6, 
 Job xxxvi.27, we find a more correct view of 
 the origin of rain. . . The idea of a heavenly 
 ocean above the Firmament is found also in 
 the Indian Mythology, Saniaveda, Bopp. p.301 , 
 
 * "Water is above the Heaven, which the 
 Heaven sustains.' TucH,(?en.p.21. 
 
 998. Dklitzsoh admits a ' defect' in 
 
OEN.I.1-II.3, 
 the statement made in the text before 
 us, ^.108: — 
 
 819 
 
 Accordmg to this view of the narrative, the 
 masses of water iloating in the air, and 
 coming down as rain, belong not to the 
 earthly, but to the heavenly, waters. It must 
 be allowed that the O.T. view is herein 
 chargeable with a detect, since no physical 
 connection exists between the waters which 
 descend in rain, and the heavenly waters, to 
 which the N.T. also refers : comp. ' sea as of 
 glass,' Eev.iv.6,xv.2, 'river of water of life,' 
 xxii.l. This view, however, is not without 
 deep truth. The rain is, as it were, a dole of 
 the heavenly waters let down, and a heaven- 
 ward-pointing type of it. . . Besides which, 
 it is worthy of consideration that the exactcst 
 astronomical enquiry teaches us that there 
 are white spots upon the poles of Mars, (I) 
 which exhibit just Che same appearances as 
 otu: snow-and-ice-covered polar regions, — 
 that the matter, of which Jupiter is com- 
 posed, is not more dense, and on the surface is 
 even less dense, than our water, — that the 
 matter of Saturn is not half as dense as water, 
 a little less dense, therefore, than^fir-wood, 
 &c. Such teachings of the latest Etetronomy 
 are of use to familiarise us with the thought, 
 that the npper waters denote a really supra- 
 fixmamental fluid or something hke water, 
 whatever it may be, — perhaps the substance 
 out of which, on the fom-th day, the Stars 
 were actually formed, as the dry-land out of 
 the ' lower waters.' 
 
 999. Sueh are the resources to which 
 men of great ability are driven, in 
 defence of the traditionary view. They 
 sacrifice the majestic poetry of the 
 ancient narrative, its sublime embodi' 
 ment of the impressions made on our 
 senses by the objects of created nature, 
 in order to extort from it a pretended 
 Eevelation of what we have already 
 learnt by scientific research. Can we 
 any longer doubt that the Scripture 
 ■writer had neither the ' sea' and ' river' 
 of the Eevelations, nor the steEar 
 matter, in his view, but simply ex- 
 presses the very natural conception of 
 his time, that there were stores of rain 
 in the upper regions of the sky, from 
 which water was let down, whenever 
 the 'windows of heaven' were opened? 
 
 1000. Dr. Thomas BuEfTET writes as 
 
 follows, Arch. Phit. ^.309 :— 
 
 The matter stands tjius. The vulgar do 
 not understand the natural production of rain 
 through condensed vapours, but believe that 
 rain is sent through Divine influence from 
 heaven, or immediately by Grod. That Moses 
 might fall in with this opinion, he placed a 
 common receptacle of the waters above the 
 skies, that God, at His pleasure, by opening 
 or closing the barriers, might send or hold 
 back the rain. 'S;)iis appears to me to have 
 
 been the mind and meaning of the sacred 
 writer, as regards the supercelestial waters. 
 And in this way we consult best for the 
 dignity of Moses, if, as often as there is a 
 departure from scienliflo truth, we suppose 
 this to be done, by acdommodating his ac- 
 count of the Creation of the world to the 
 powers and habits of thought of the people. 
 
 So, when mention is made of the primarr 
 Light, on the first day of the Creation, that 
 phenomenon is equally inexplicable on physi- 
 cal groimds. But, in order that God might 
 not seem to be working in the dark for three 
 days, it seemed expedient to Moses, to produce 
 the light at the very beginning of the work. 
 But what land of light? Light without 
 origin, without soin-ce. Light, however, if we 
 philosophise, proceeds from a centre of some 
 kind. . . . Besides, according to the letter of 
 Scripture, God seems to have intermitted His 
 work in the night-time, as men are wont to 
 do. Yet I see not how the other hemisphere, 
 celestial or terrestrial, could have been made, 
 if there was any intermission of laboiu:, if 
 God did not act except where there was light. 
 But the vulgar cares not for these niceties, nor 
 dreams of antipodes or another hemisphere, 
 but conceives of the universe as a tent, of 
 which heaven is the upper part, and tlie plane 
 surface of the earth, the base. ^ 
 
 1001. 6.i.9. 
 
 'And Elohim said. Let the waters under 
 the Heaven be gathered to one place, and let 
 the dry-land appear.' 
 
 KsxiscH observes, Gen.p.S^ : — 
 
 The formation of the continents, as described 
 incur text, agi'ees but very remotely with that 
 made probable by geological researches. For, 
 whilst the latter teach us that the same part 
 of the globe was many times alternately water 
 and dry-land, and that volcanic eruptions 
 were one of the chief agencies of these changes, 
 our text declares that, at the beginning of 
 time, the Will of God made, once for all, the 
 peiTnanent division between seas and conti- 
 nents ; there was no upheaving of the laud, 
 but only a concentration of the floods to cer- 
 tain parts. This does not explain the forma- 
 tion of the strata, nor of the fossil remains of 
 vegetables and animals — which, according to 
 the Bible, did not yet exist— in the interior of 
 the earth, nor any of the wonders, which 
 make Geology one of the most interesting and 
 absorbing sciences. But we have willingly 
 renounced the attempt to discover that har- 
 mony. 
 
 1002. G.i.l6. 
 
 'And Blohtm made two great lights, the 
 greater light for the rule of the day, and the 
 lesser light for the rule of the night.' 
 
 It is a mere e%'asion of the plain 
 meaning of these words, to say that 
 Elohim made the Sun and Moon to 
 appear first only on the fourth day, 
 though they had been long before 
 created, — appear, that is, to the Earth, 
 when, however, according to the story, 
 there were as yet no living creatures on 
 
320 
 
 GEKI.1-II.3. 
 
 its face to see them. The writer ma- 
 nifestly intends to teaoh that Elohim 
 atjtually made the Sun and Moon at 
 this time. And,^n fact, he uses here 
 the very same Hebrew word as he had 
 used before in f.T, 'Elohim made the 
 firmament/ and as he uses again in 
 1^.25, * Elohim made the animal of the 
 earth after its kind.' 
 
 1003. Thus "WiLLET writes in 1605, 
 before attempts were made to force the 
 Scripture into agreement with the re- 
 sults of Science, Hex. in Gen.p.lO : — 
 
 These Lights were neither made the first- 
 day, and but placed now in the firmament, as 
 the Hebrewes think, — neither was the Sunne 
 made the first day, the Moone the next, tlie 
 Starres the third, as Eugubinus, — but they 
 were all made upon the fourth day. . . . 
 That these two great lights are the Sunne 
 and Moone, there is no question ; and that the 
 Sunne is the greatest of all the celestial bodies, 
 it is also questionlesse. AiTAXAuuRAd did hold 
 the Sunne much greater than Peloponnesus, a 
 country in Q-recia, — ^AifAXiMANDEu, to be as 
 big as the Earth; but, since, the Mathema- 
 ticians have found that the Sunne exceedeth 
 the Earth in bignes 166 times,* and none of 
 the other Starres, which they call of the first 
 magnitude, whereof there are 115, to exceede 
 the Earth above 18 times. The Moone,— 
 though some among the heathen have judged 
 it bigger than the Earth, as the Stoikes, and 
 equall to the Sunne, as Parmenides, and somtf 
 auiong the Christians have thought it in big- 
 nes next to the Sunne, because it is here 
 named to be a great light, as Basil upon this 
 place, and Augustine,— yet, since, by more 
 diligent search, it is found to be lesse than the 
 Earth 39 times, and to be the least of all the 
 Starres, except Mercury. Moses, therefore, 
 here speaketh according to the opinion and 
 capacitie of the vulgar sort, to whose sight 
 the Moone seemeth greatest, next to the 
 Sunne, because it is nearest of all the starres 
 to the Earth, and for that it is greatest in 
 operation, and hath the government of the 
 night. The reason of the greatnes of these 
 lights is their farre distance from the earth. 
 Empedocles saith, the Moone is twice so far 
 from the Sunne as it is from the Earth ; but 
 the Mathematicians say it is 18 times so far 
 from the Sunne. 
 
 1004. But Geology teaches that, for 
 
 * Taking the Sun's diameter as 880,000 
 miles, and the Earth's as 8,000, it will follow 
 that bulk of Sun : bulk of Earth:: 110^ : 1:: 
 1,331,000 : 1. "We can form some conception 
 of this enormous bulk, by supposing the Sun 
 placed so that its centre shall be coincident 
 with the Earth's centre : then (since its radius 
 is 440,000 miles) its huge body would stretch 
 out in all directions nearly as far beyond the 
 Moon, as the Moon icself is distant from the 
 Earth (240,000 miles). We can thus gain 
 some idea of the enormous magnitude of the 
 ' greater Light,' the lord of the Solar System. 
 
 countless ages before l\Tan lived upon 
 the Earth, the Sun, beyond all douljt, 
 was the centre and source of light and 
 heat to the Earth, and to its living 
 creatures of all kinds, whose e/es were 
 formed, just exactly as they are now, 
 to receive its rays, — as well as to the 
 successive generations of plants, which 
 grewin those primeval forests, to which 
 are due the carboniferous formations. 
 
 1005. Dr. M'Caul, however, writes. 
 Aids to Faith, p.21S :— 
 
 Moses represents the Earth as existing for a 
 long period before the Sun became its source 
 of light and heat. During that period therfe 
 could have been no climatic difference, as this 
 depends upon the position of the Earth with 
 regai-d to the Sun. Now, this exactly agrees 
 with the conclusions of Geology, which asseiis 
 that, before the human period, there was no 
 difference of climate, that (he Earth was not 
 dependent on the Sun for its temperature (!) ; 
 that there was apparently one uniform high 
 temperature over the whole Earth, and, con- 
 sequently, that the Flora and Fauna of warm 
 climates are found, in the prehuman period, 
 in latitudes where they would not now exist. 
 Here, then, is an instance of the extraordinary 
 scientific accuracy of the Mosaic account. 
 
 1006. On the contrary, scientific geo- 
 logists maintain that, though there was, 
 probably, a time when the temperature 
 of the earth was more uniform than it 
 is now, yet that this was not the case 
 for long ages before the human period 
 began ; and, further, that, at all times, 
 the earth, with its vegetable products 
 and living creatures of all kinds, has 
 been to all appearance dependent upon 
 the Sun for light and heat, just exactly 
 as now. And Sir Charles Lybll has 
 shown how, without any violent con- 
 vulsion or sudden catastrophe, — by the 
 steady silent operation of natural 
 forces now in action, modifying gra- 
 dually the extent of land and water, 
 and slowly elevating, or depressing, 
 the former during a long lapse of 
 years, — a tolerably uniform temperature 
 might be difinsed over the whole or 
 large portions of the globe, whether 
 the warmth of the thermal or the cold 
 of the glacial period. 
 
 1007. G.i.l6. 
 * And the stars.* 
 
 It is plain that the writer of this 
 chapter had very little notion of the 
 real magnitude of the heavenly bodies, 
 and so he assigns one day only for the 
 
GEN.I.l-n.3. 
 
 formation of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, 
 •while three or four are spent upon the 
 Earth alone. He looked upon the Sun 
 as being, — what it appears to our 
 senses to be, and what, before the time 
 of Copernicus, it was almost univer- 
 sally supposed to be, — a mere append- 
 age to the Earth, which he regarded as 
 the scene of all God's wonderful ope- 
 rations, the centre of the universe, for 
 whose service only and convenience the 
 ' host of heaven ' was created, — 
 
 ' The Sim for the rule of the day, and the 
 Moon for the rule of the night.' 
 
 1008. And the Stars, those points of 
 light, he regarded, no doubt, as a small 
 addition to the greater luminaries, with- 
 out having the least idea that each one 
 of their glorious host,— which Astro- 
 nomy now shows to be infinitely more 
 numerous than he could have supposed, 
 — was itself a mighty Sun, though 
 placed at an immense distance from us,* 
 in comparison with whose bulk that of 
 our earth would shrink into nothing. 
 Indeed, how little the Jews had really 
 observed the Stars, appears from the 
 circumstance that there is no allusion 
 in the Old Testament to the distinction 
 between fixed and wandering stars, 
 which Milton supposes Adam to have 
 remarked before he had been upon the 
 Earth forty-eight hours, — ' 
 
 * It is diiBcult to realise to ourselves the 
 enormoiffi size and distance &0111 us of the 
 Fixed Stars, and the awful solitude in which 
 each separate Star, and its little troop of 
 Planets, exists by itself, in the midst of the 
 mighty universe. Perhaps the following 
 calculation may assist the reader's mind to 
 grasp more distinctly the reality of these 
 facts, and appreciate more fully the grandeur 
 of the heavenly host : — 
 
 One travelling at railway-speed, day and 
 night, 33J miles an hour, or 100 miles in 3 
 hours, would reaoh the Moon in 300 days ; 
 and at the same rate, he would reach the Sun 
 in 330 years. But, if he could reach the Sun 
 in one single (iay, it would take 550 years of 
 tuch travelling to reach the nearest Fixed 
 Star. And then, it must be remembered, for 
 all that enormous interval, on every side of 
 our Sun and its little family, there is, as far 
 as we know, an awful void, as far as regards 
 any possibility of the existence of animal lifel 
 And the same tremendous vacancy, as far as 
 the possibility of animal existence is con- 
 cerned, most probably extends between one 
 Star and another, and on all sides around 
 each separate Star,-.— nay, around each sepa- 
 rate mote of nebulary star-dust. 
 
 321 
 
 And ye five other wandering Stars, that move 
 In mystic daiice, not without song. 
 
 Paradise Lost, ti.77-8, 
 
 1009. G.i.21. 
 
 ' And every fowl of wing after its kind.' 
 It is plain that under the terms 
 ' fowl,' in this verse, and ' creeping- 
 thing,' a.25, the writer must be sup- 
 posed to include, not only birds and 
 reptiles, but aE flying and creeping 
 things whatsoever, worms, insects, &c., 
 and even animalcules. Otherwise, no 
 provision is made for the existence of 
 these things. And so we read, L.xi. 
 20,— ■ 
 
 * Mi fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall 
 be an abomination to you ' ; 
 
 and then the 'locust,' in four different 
 stages of its growth, is excepted. So 
 among unclean ' creeping-things ' are 
 numbered the ' mouse, tortoise, lizard, 
 snaU, mole, &c.' L.xi.29,30. 
 
 1010. It is probable that the author 
 supposed only one pair of each kind of 
 animal created originally, as he sup- 
 poses only one pair of human beings, 
 and makes Noah also take only one 
 pair of each kind of creature into the 
 Ark, for the continuation of the species 
 after the Deluge. Delitzsch, however, 
 maintaining as far as he can the tra- 
 ditionary view, writes as follows, p. 
 116:— 
 
 That these animals, created on the sixth 
 day, sprang from one common centre of crea- 
 tion, the record says not, and just as little, 
 that every kind has begun from a single pair, 
 and spread itself out from thence, as it in- 
 creased, over its present region. The older 
 natural philosophers, as Jassmus, and also 
 later ones, bring forward, not uninfluenced to 
 some extent by the Scripture record, this 
 view, which is hot in any sense favomred by 
 it. What the Biblical record says of man, 
 must not be transferred to the animal world. 
 That all kinds of animals, of all zones and 
 climates, have made their way across over all 
 hindrances to their present habitats, and that, 
 for instance, only two ants and bees, bufialoes 
 and antelopes, were created, — these are fMi- 
 cies which anyone may produce if he likes, 
 but must not consider as articles of faith, 
 under which the Holy Scripture takes him, 
 captive. There is all the differen<ie in the 
 world between the imity of the human race, 
 which Scripture does not call a 'kind,' and 
 the unity of a so-called ' kind ' or ' species ' of 
 animal. The unity of these latter exists, if 
 it begms at once with many specimens. If, 
 then. Natural Science must assume that ani- 
 mals, now spread over a wide extent of coun- 
 try and separated by vast regions, must have 
 proceeded at once from several centres of 
 
 Y 
 
322 
 
 GERI1-II.3. 
 
 Creation, this agrees with the Scriptural view. 
 And if also it is established, that the animals 
 ai-e not uniformly spread over the whole sur- 
 face of the region which they occupy,— that 
 they are most numerous in the mid-region, 
 but at the borders are fewer in number, and 
 at last disappear altogether, and make room 
 for others, — so also does the single glance 
 which we have taken, into the work-place 
 and operations of that divine fiat, which 
 passed upon the fifth and sixrth days, assure 
 us of the same. 
 
 Ans. The difficulty, which Delttzsch here 
 avoids, comes upon us again in the account 
 of the Deluge, where the Elohist says that 
 one pair only of each kind of animal was 
 saved, and, though the Jehovist excepts seven 
 pairs of clean animals, yet both agree that 
 only one pair of each kind of unclean crea- 
 tures was preserved in the Ark ; and all these 
 are supposed to have spread out after the 
 Flood from one centre to their present locali- 
 tios. Of course, refuge may be taken in the 
 notion of a partial Deluge, which question 
 will be discussed in the proper place. But, 
 we may ask at once, what reason could there 
 have been for taking a pair of ants or bees 
 into the Ark, — because these creatures lived in 
 the partial centre around, Ararat, supposed to 
 be flooded, — if they existed fxeely in other 
 countries, beyond the boundaries of the inun- 
 dation ? 
 
 1011. G.i.22. 
 
 * And Elohim blessed them, saying. Be 
 fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in 
 the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.* 
 
 Delitzsch is here harassed by another 
 dif&culty, and endeavours to struggle 
 out of it as follows, ^.117 : — 
 
 Had the animals, which are found buried in 
 Pie mountains, any share in this blessing f 
 CHATEAUBraA^'D and other modern writers 
 say, ' No : they cannot have been intended to 
 propagate.' But it is not possible to rtconcile 
 with the Scripture record the notion of a creaiion 
 of animals preceding the fifth day. . . . Also, 
 neither in the Scripture text, nor in the old- 
 world discoveries, lies there any necessity to 
 suppose a whole series of older creations of 
 animals antecedently to the fifth day, with 
 which the creation of animals begins. ... If 
 the Creation-days, as we ai'e persuaded, not 
 merely for scientific reasons, — [=we have 
 managed to force the Scripture into some ap- 
 pearance of agreement with the certain results 
 o£ Science,] — are Creation-periods of Divine 
 proportions, then is there more room allowed, 
 for the process of formation of the Earth's 
 sm-face, from before the third day until the 
 Creation of Man ; and nothing prevents our 
 assuming that this process of formation was 
 attended with catastrophes^ which burst t/irough 
 the creation of animals in the ffth and sixth 
 days, and swallowed up whole generations of 
 them, — [exce'pt the simple fact that, as it 
 advances, geological science obstinately re- 
 fuses to admit the possibility of any such 
 catastrophes having occurred.] 
 
 AYe shall find Delitzsch stating his 
 views on this point more fully below. 
 
 1012. G.i.26. 
 
 ' And Elohim said. Let us make man in our 
 image, after our likeness.* 
 
 As Delitzsch observes, ^.120: — 
 The Creation oJ Man, which the writer has 
 now next to relate, has such an attraction lor 
 him, that he hastens over the blessings of the 
 land-animals, without particulaiiy mention- 
 ing it, [whereas he has mentioned the blessing 
 on the fishes and birds, «.22.] 
 
 1013. With respect to the plural 
 forms here used, it is well-known that 
 in former days great stress was laid on 
 these, as proofs of the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, contained in the very first chap- 
 ter of Genesis. Thus Paschasitjs, de 
 Spir. Sanct, i.5, says: — 
 
 Perceive how thrice the name of God is 
 pronomiced in the creation of man. For thus 
 we have in Genesis, ' And God said, Let us 
 make man,' and again, 'GoD created man,' 
 and a third time, ' God blessed them.' God 
 said, God made, God blessed : on account of 
 the Tliree Persons is the One Divinity tlu-ice 
 repeated. In which passage understand evi- 
 dently the mystery of the Trinity. . , There- 
 fore, in the fact that He says, ' Let us make 
 man after our image,' the number of Persons 
 is unfolded. 
 
 And Hilary writes, Genesis 110-2: — 
 ' Let us make man,' Thou ' sayst. Tell me, 
 
 Thou Best, 
 With whom Thou now art speaking ? It is 
 
 plain : 
 E'en then, on the high Throne, the Son sits 
 
 by Thee, 
 And views the pleasant lands. 
 
 1014. Delitzsch, however, rejects 
 justly this interpretation, and explains 
 the words as implying that the Divine 
 Being communicated His purpdfee to the 
 angel-hosts surrounding him, _p.l21 : — - 
 
 PmLO, who explains the passage thus, ' The 
 Father of all discourses to his own Powers,* 
 i.556, understands by 'Powers' the angels, 
 and takes the words, therefore, as ' communi- 
 cating,' for which view we decide 
 
 When also in the Babylonian myth the ' other 
 gods ' take part in the production of men, — 
 when in the Persian the Amschaspands (celes- 
 tial beings) appear as demlm-gic Powers, and 
 Orrauzd is a^ociated with the divine spirits, 
 — when Ovid. Met.i.SS, says that Man is 
 formed 'after the image of the gods Wbo 
 govern all things,' — these are all echoes of 
 this ' Let us make,* which throw a certain 
 light on its true meaning. 
 
 1015. The above explanation, eon- 
 firmed, as it seems to be, by the occur- 
 rence of similar expressions in the other 
 oriental creatioti-stories, ma^ be the true 
 one. But the view of Kalisch, Gen. 
 p.SO, seems beat, viz. that we have here 
 only — 
 
GEN.I.1-II.3. 
 
 323 
 
 the plurnj usually, tliough not neceesarily, 
 employed in deliberations and self-exhorta- 
 tions : comp. xi.7, ' Go to, let us go down, and 
 there confound tlicir language,' with ii.18, • / 
 ■will make him an help meet for him ' : [see, 
 however, iii.;i2, ' The man has become as one 
 of us, to know good and evil'; but here also 
 the expression may be merely one in popular 
 use ; at any rate, there cannot here be any re- 
 ference to the Trinity.] 
 
 We have seen (11.326) that the 
 plural form, ' Elohim,' has no connec- 
 tion whatever with the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, being used of Dagon, 1 S.v.7, 
 Astarte, lK.xi.5,Baalzehub, 2Ki.2,3,6, 
 as well as of the True God. 
 
 1016. G.i.27. 
 
 • In the image of Elohim created He Mm.' 
 
 This idea occurs also in other ancient 
 writers generally. According to Lucian, 
 Pro Imag. 28, Man was named by the best 
 philosophers, 'the image of God' ;.he was 
 formed, according to Herme3, in Lact. Inst, 
 iJiu.ii.lO, ' after the image of God,' and ac- 
 cording to Ovid. Met.L%Z, ' after the image of 
 the gods who govern all things.' Cicero, De 
 Nat. Z)eor.i.32, speaks of men as 'like the 
 gods,' and refers, De Leg,i.9, as also does Jir- 
 VEN'AL,xv.l41-7, to their erect form, but also 
 to their spiritual nature. Aratus, Phanam,^, 
 names men ' the offspring of Zeus,' which St. 
 Paul, Acts xvii.28, enlarges, to ' the offspring 
 of God* ; and the Pythagoreans taught ' a re- 
 lationship of men with the gods,' DiOG. 
 I.AERT.viii.27, and imagined therewith that 
 the soul was an effluence of the Deity, while 
 others maintained also that * in form it re- 
 sembled the Deity,' Philoste. vU. Apoll.Tm.l. 
 Also Phooitl. Cairm.vn, names the spirit, 
 ' the image of God.'— Kkobel, Gen.p.lS. 
 
 1017. G.i.30. 
 
 * To every animal of the earth, and to every 
 fowl of the air, and to everything that creep- 
 eth upon the earth, wherein there i8_ Ule, I 
 have given every green herb for meat.' 
 
 The question would arise upon this, 
 (were we obliged to regard this chapter 
 as historically true,) how were the beasts 
 and birds ai 'prey to be supported — 
 since their teeth and stomachs, apd 
 their whole bodily conformation, were 
 not adapted for eating herbs? But, in 
 fact, Geology teaches that ravenous 
 creatures preyed upon their fellow- 
 creatures, and lived upon fiesh, m all 
 ao-es of the world's past history, just 
 exactly as they do now.' Besides which 
 almost aU fishes are camiyorous ; and 
 the leaves and stalks of vegetables, 
 grasses, &c., swarm with living things, 
 which are destroyed by the herbivorous 
 animals. . , . 
 
 1018. Dr. Pye Smith writes on this 
 point, Geology and Scrijiture, p.87 :— 
 
 Some persons have dreamed of sustaining 
 animal life by exclusively vegetable food, — 
 ignorant that in every leaf or root or fruit 
 which they feed upon, and in every drop of 
 water which they drink, they put to death 
 myriads of living creatures, whose bodies are 
 as ' curiously and wonderfully made ' as our 
 own, which were full of animation and agility, 
 and enjoyed their mode and period of exis- 
 tence as really and effectively, under the 
 bountiful care of Him, who ' is good to all, 
 and whose tender mercies are over all His 
 works,' as the stately elephant, the majestic 
 horse, or man. the earthly lord of all. By far 
 the larger portion of the animal creation is 
 formed, in every part of its anatomy, internal 
 and external, for living upon animal food, 
 and cannot live upon any other. 
 
 Knobel observes, Gen.p.20 : — 
 
 According to the Hebrew view, then, men 
 in the first age lived only on vegetables, and 
 first in a later time were allmved to eat flesh, 
 ix.3. This is the general opinion of ainti- 
 quity. According to Plato, De i(?t7.vi.(22) 
 ^.782, men abstained originally from eating 
 flesh, because they regarded the slaying of 
 animals as improper and sinful. So Ovid, 
 Met.xv.SSS, Fast.iY.S9S-7, allows men in the 
 golden age only to feed on the produce of trees 
 and herbs, but no flesh, and DlOD.Slc.i.4-5,ii.as, 
 adduces the same with reference to the ancient 
 Egyptians and Indians in parliicular. So too 
 was it among the Syrians according to Poi> 
 PHYR, AbsHn,iv,15. 
 
 1019. Dblitzsoh here writes, p, 
 
 124:— 
 
 The Creation is designed for propagation 
 and completion, not for destruction oE life; 
 the killing of one creature by another is con- 
 trary to the original will of God, which is here 
 explained. With this Soriptui-e notice we come, 
 indeed, into difficulties, when we look at men 
 of the present day, whose teeth, according 
 to their construction, are distinguished cer- 
 tainly from those of the properly carnivorous, 
 but not less from those of the properly h-r- 
 bivorous, animals, and (as also the intestines 
 by reason oE their length) are adapted for a 
 mixed kind of nutrition, partly of animal, 
 partly of vegetable food. Further, when we 
 consider that it is the Law and Order of 
 Nature, in the present world of plants and 
 animals, that the life of the one is prolonged 
 through the death of the other,— when we 
 consider that strife, pain, oppression, murder, 
 and robbery, lord it at present in all spots, all 
 elements, all seasons, all classes of organic 
 existence.- that not only visibly, but also 
 invisibly, all the bodies of living creatures, 
 innumerable large and mioroscopically-smiill 
 parasites and murderers are found-, (thus in the 
 intestines of a small tortoise many thousand 
 asoarides were found, eagles and vultures 
 swarm with tormenting skin-parasites, and 
 slugs worms, and other tormentors plague the 
 soft i'aws of crocodiles and alligators,)— that 
 everything living is now in a continual war, 
 —that it lies in the nature of certain anunala 
 to torture their prey in the most reflned man- 
 ner and it seems as IE it will and miu»t be so, 
 that, as limits ai-e set to the excessive inoreas* 
 
 Y M 
 
324 
 
 LEGENDS OF THE CEEATIOIJ AMONG OTHER NATIONS. 
 
 of tlie vegetable world through the herbivorous 
 animals, in like manner that of these is limited 
 through the predaceous animals, and that of 
 these latter through the death-dealing work 
 of man, — when we consider all this, we are 
 canicd on to ask further, can it ever have 
 been otherwise ? Among the old-world ani- 
 mals, the creatures of the water and the slime, 
 the partly fabulous Saurians were predaceous, 
 and lived mainly on lish : their excrements, 
 the so-called coprolites, show their great vo- 
 racity, and contain still recognisable remains 
 of animal food. Oeested, the renowned 
 discoverer of Electro-magnetism, urges con- 
 fidently against Mynster, the defender of the 
 Church-dogma, this point, — viz, that, even in 
 the old-world, animals have devoured other 
 living animals, and that actually plain marks 
 of disease have been found upon the bones of 
 old-world animals. . , 
 
 There are here two problems ; one concerns 
 killing and death in the primary world, the 
 other concerns killing and death in the mid- 
 world. The right solution of the former we 
 have already often indicated — [by the assump- 
 tion that the geological remains are those of 
 animals buried in the convulsions of the long- 
 extended filth-and-sixth days' periods. But 
 soTne of these, at all events, must have received 
 the blessing in w.22, though they were not 
 allowed, it seems, to propagate their species, 
 viz. those fishes and birds whose remains are 
 found buried, mired with the remains of beasts, 
 since these latter could only have been made 
 on the sixth day, and therefore the over- 
 whelmed fishes and birds must have survived, 
 and therefore must have received, the blessing 
 on the fifth.'] The second resolves itself, as 
 we say with Wagner, through the assumption, 
 — [unknown to the Scriptures, which do not 
 describe Adam as naturally immortal, but, on 
 the contrary, ascribe his banishment from 
 Paradise to the apprehension of Jehovah, that, 
 if iie remained there, he might take also of the 
 * tree of life,' and live for ever,] that, as the 
 body of man after the Fall underwent an 
 essential change in its material basis, so also 
 an analogous perversion and alteration took 
 place in the anim.al world. [And yet the 
 present forms of animals correspond in all 
 essential particulars to those of the buried 
 creatures of the old-world, which were formed, 
 as Deutzsch supposes, — and were not only 
 formed, but lived out their time and died, — 
 li^ore the creation of map, in the course of 
 the fifth and sixth days (1011) 1] 
 
 CHAPTER IX, 
 
 LEGENDS OF THE ORBATIOlf AMONO 
 OTHER NATIONS. 
 
 1020. We have thus seen that the 
 statements in G.i, if regarded as stater 
 ments of historical matter-of-fact, are 
 directly at variance with some of the 
 plainest facts of Natural Science^ as 
 they are now brought home, by the 
 extension of education, to every villagfi 
 — almost, we might say, to every 
 
 cottage— in the land. It is idle for 
 any Minister of Religion to attempt 
 to disguise this palpable discordance. 
 To do this, is only to put a stumbling- 
 block in the way of the young, — at all 
 events, of those of the next generation, 
 ■who, well-instructed themselves in 
 these things, and having their eyes 
 open to the real facts of the ease, may 
 be expected either to despise such a 
 teacher as ignorant, or to suspect him 
 as dishonest, and, in either case, would 
 be very little likely to attach much 
 weight to his instructions in things of 
 highest moment. 
 
 1021. Yet we can clearly see that 
 there are certain great principles, — the 
 very core and centre of all true religious 
 teaching, — which the pious writer of 
 this chapter lays down distinctly 
 amidst all his speculations upon the 
 construction of the universe : — 
 
 (i) God is the Creator andPreserver 
 of all things ; 
 
 (ii) Man is made in the image of 
 God; 
 
 (iii) AH that God has made is very 
 good. 
 
 We may add that he also appears to 
 lay down distinctly this additional 
 principle, that there is One Only True 
 and Living God, whose Unity underlies 
 the multifarious manifestations of His 
 agency. 
 
 1022. These truths this writer must 
 have received himself by the enlight- 
 ening operation of the Spirit of Truth. 
 And these truths, here uttered by a 
 fellow-man of other days, we reeeivo 
 and embrace, — and I have known the 
 untutored Zulu at once embrace them, 
 when set before him, as heartily as the 
 most learned European, — not because 
 we find them written in a Book 
 every word of which we believe to 
 be infallibly true, but because the 
 eye of our Reason, once enlightened, 
 and having statements such as these 
 set before it, approves them at once, 
 as Divine Eternal facts, — because we 
 see and feel them to be true. As 
 surely as, vrith our bodily eyes, we see 
 th^ Sun in the sky, and are certain of 
 the real existence of external sensible 
 objects, so surely, with the Mind's eye, 
 oaj> we see and rejoice in the glorious 
 
LEGENDS OF THE CREATION AMONG OTHEB NATIONS, 
 
 reality of such spiritual verities as 
 these. 
 
 1023. With respect to the mythical 
 creation-stories of antiquity, Von Boh- 
 iiEx writes as follo-ws, ii.^.3 : — 
 
 Tlie most iatitnate relationship may be ob- 
 served between the mytli of G-enesis and tte 
 Zend representation of Creation, which, was 
 compoBed near the same locality, and has a 
 similax outline and succession of development. 
 The universe is created in six periods of time 
 by Obmttzd (Ahura-Mazda) in the following 
 order : (i) the Heaven, and the terrestrial 
 Light between Heaven and Earth, (ii) the 
 Water, which fills the deep as the sea, and 
 ascends up on high as clouds, (iii) the Earth, 
 whose seed was first brought forth by Albordj', 
 (iv) trees and plants, (v) animals, and (vi) 
 lastly, Man, whereupon the Creator rested, 
 and connected the divine origin of the festi- 
 vals with these periods of Creation. "We must 
 remember, however, that Zoroaster had taken 
 the old Magian system as the foundation of 
 his reform, and had modified it to suit his 
 purposes, — that, consequently, his cosmogony, 
 is the old Ghaldcean, which very probably 
 spread from the times of the Assyrians into 
 Western Asia. 
 
 But the Bible narrative, apart from this com- 
 mon basis, far surpasses the description of the 
 Zendavesta in simple dignity, and possesses a 
 high intrinsic value in itself ... On the other 
 hand, the thought, ' Let there be Light, and 
 there was Light,' which LoNGiNrs considered 
 sublime, must not, remembering the limited 
 conceptions of the writer, be rated too highly ; 
 and we may admit, without lowering the value 
 of this cosmogony, that the Creation of the 
 Hindoos, though a mere act of thinking^ and 
 willing, was also very sublime, when it is 
 said in the Vedas, * He thought, I will create 
 worlds, and they were there 1 ' 
 
 1024. And so, too, says Dr. M'Caul, 
 Aids to Faith, p,lS9 : — 
 
 The Etruscans relate that God created the 
 world in six thousand years. In the first 
 thousand. He created the heaven and the 
 earth,— in the second, the firmament,— in the 
 third, the sea and the other waters of the 
 earth,— in the fourth, the sun, moon, and 
 Btars,— in the fifth, the animals belonging to 
 air, water, and land, — in the sixth, man alone. 
 
 The Persixm tradition also recognises the 
 six periods of creation, assigning to the first 
 the heavens, to the second the waters, to the 
 third the earth,,to the fourth trees and plants, 
 to the fifth animals, to the sixth man. 
 
 Knobel writes more fully, Gen.pA : 
 The Persian tradition also betrays connection 
 with this. Ormuzd (Ahura-Mazda) created 
 through his Word (Bonover) the visible world 
 In six intervals or thousands of years ; (i) the 
 Light between Heaven and Earth, together 
 •with the Heaven and the Stars,— (U) the Water, 
 which covered the Barth.sank into its depths, 
 formed, by means of wind, up-driv^ clouds 
 and then became enclosed by the Earth,— (in) 
 the Earth, and first, as the core and kernel of 
 the Eaxth, the highest mountain, Albord], then 
 
 325 
 
 the other mountains, — (iv) the trees, — (v) the 
 animals, which all proceeded from the primary 
 animal,— (vi) men, of whom the first was 
 Kajomorts. After the completion of the 
 Creation, Ormuzd kept a festival with the 
 celestials. 
 
 1025. It is obyious that traditions 
 such as these, which have so many 
 remarkable points identically in com- 
 mon, must have proceeded from one 
 and the same original story. And, 
 although the late date of the works, 
 whence our accounts of the Persian* 
 and Etruscan traditions are derived, 
 lays them open to the objection, that 
 possibly they may have been influenced 
 by a knowledge of the Hebrew story, 
 we have no proof that this was actually 
 the case, while many circumstances 
 make it at least highly probable that 
 they must have existed in the Mytho- 
 logy of the East long before the time 
 of the Exodus. 
 
 1026. Delitzsch, who maintains to 
 the utmost the historical truth of the 
 Scripture story, yet says, Gen.p.80: — 
 
 Whence comes the surprising agreement of 
 the Etruscan and Persian legends with this 
 section? . . . How comes it that the Baby- 
 lonian cosmogony in Berosus, and the Pho3- 
 nician in Sajichoniathon, in spite of their 
 fantastical oddity, come in contact with it in 
 remarkable details ? ' There was a time,' so 
 begins the Babylonian cosmogony, * in which 
 all was darkness and water.' According to 
 the Phcenician, the first human pair was pro- 
 duced by the Kolpia, ' the Divine Breath,' and 
 his wife Baau i=Bohu, emptiness, G-.i.2'] i.e. 
 the matter of Night. These are only instances 
 of that which they have in common. From 
 such an accordance outside of Israel, we must, 
 however, conclude that the author of G.i. 
 has no vision before him, but a tradition. It 
 might be replied, that the three cosmogonies 
 just mentioned are only echoes of the first 
 and second sections of the Hebrew Law, 
 which had become known to the Babylonians, 
 Phcenicians, and Persians. The points of 
 contact are strange enough to lead to such a 
 conjecture; and, whereas an influence of Je- 
 hovah-worship upon the religion of Babylon 
 is altogether improbable, and an influence of 
 
 * The Zendavesta, whence the Persian tradi- 
 tion is taken, though containing many pas- 
 sages which are, apparently, of the most 
 venerable antiquity, yet, in its present fonn, 
 is, like the Pentateuch, a composite work, the 
 product of different ages, and cannot, there- 
 fore, be used with perfect confirlence as an 
 authority for theprnmitive belief of the PersiaH. 
 people, any more than the Pentateuch can he 
 used with perfect confidence for that of the 
 Hebrews. The account of the Eti-uscan tradi- 
 tion is given by Sthdas, who lived in the tenth 
 or eleventh century of our era. 
 
S2r> LEGENDS OF THE CREATION AMONQ OTHER NATIONS. 
 
 it upon that of the Phoenicians rather im- 
 probable, yet, on the other hand, an influence 
 of it upon the Zend religion is very probable. 
 IF, however, here and there, the assumption 
 of Huoh an influence is allowable, yet it re- 
 miiius still certain that the author of G.i. has 
 expressed in words an old tradition already 
 existing. . . . And the interval of a week, 
 \vithin which G-.i. completes the Creation, — 
 how can that be anything visionary since 
 the seven-days' week is a common ancient 
 heritage of the Asiatic and African peoples, 
 Jiud probably, first of all, of the Babylonians ? 
 — nay, it is found actually existing among the 
 American tribes as yet unchristianised(?), and 
 in Africa with the Ashantees and Gallas. 
 Among the Egyptians, the civil use of the 
 seven-days' week has, certainly, not yet been 
 demonstrated ; as far back as the oldest times 
 of the great Pyramids, we find the ten-daijs' 
 week, which also is foimd among the Indians* 
 dagdlia, 'decade.' Still the seven-days' week 
 was so well known to the Egyptians, that 
 Dion Cassius, .xxxvii.l7,lS,19, notes the 
 naming of the days of the week after the 
 seven Planets as originally an Egyptian cus- 
 tom, which spread from Egypt also into the 
 Homan Empire. [The Brahmins also distin- 
 guish the days of the week by the planetary 
 names.] This consecration of the seven-days' 
 week and of the number ' seven ' generally, 
 as may be conjectured, and as G.i. establishes, 
 points back to a deeper, positive ground than 
 that to which Ideler, Lep.sius, Ewald, trace 
 it, viz. the division of the Synodic month into 
 four parts, of wliich each contains 7| or, 
 ■without a fraction, 7 days. Its ground is the 
 cosraogonic legend. This is a primary legend, 
 that has travelled from place to place. For 
 as Tucn justly observes, the same funda- 
 mental tones are heard echoing under the 
 most different harmonies, from the Ganges to 
 tJie Nile. 
 
 1027. In short, Dblitzsch regards 
 the story of the Creation, generally, 
 and of the origin of the seven-days' 
 week in particular, as a legend, i.e. an 
 historical fact realised by the imagina- 
 tion, and not as a myth, i.e. an idea 
 clothed in the form of an historical fact, 
 — as when, for instance, a statement, 
 expressing originally some fact in the 
 natural world, has come in later days 
 to be regarded as a piece of mere his- 
 tory, the original meaning having been 
 forgotten. And, if the main details of 
 these traditions, in which they are 
 generally agreed, were found to accord 
 with the certain facts of modern 
 Science, we might conclude that the 
 original tradition was actually based 
 upon facta which had really occurred. 
 As it is, we can only suppose that the 
 story of the Creation, — which was ciu:- 
 rent in the same form, substantially, 
 and with some of the same remarkable 
 
 details, among so many of the ancient 
 nations— musthave been originated as a 
 myth, in very ancient times, long before 
 the Hebrew people had any existence, 
 and before the great separation of the 
 Aryan tribes. 
 
 1028. But what is a universal myth 
 of this kind, in its essential features, 
 but a truth uttered by the combined 
 voice of humanity ? The mind of man, 
 in all ages and in all countries, musing 
 upon the origin of all things, has been 
 led by a Divine instinct to the same 
 grand conclusions, which are expressed 
 with more or less distinctness in all 
 these mythical narratives, — and in 
 many, which show no special rela- 
 tion to the Hebrew Type, — though 
 nowhere so clearly and completely as 
 in the Hebrew form, viz. that God is 
 the Maker and Preserver of all things, 
 — that all that God has made is good, 
 — that man is made in the image of 
 God-. As we have said (1022), the 
 Divine Spirit alone can have quickened 
 such thoughts as these in the mind of 
 theElohist. whoever he may have been. 
 But the same Divine Spirit, we must 
 surely believe, taught the Hindoo 
 Philosopher to say, ' He thought, I will 
 make worlds, and they were there,' and 
 taught also the Zulu first to say, though, 
 as it were, with childish lips, ' XJnku- 
 lunkulu — the Great-Great-One— made 
 all things, made all men.' 
 
 1029. When, also, we find the seven- 
 days' week spread over the world, — not 
 in all nations, it is true,— were it so, 
 there would be stronger proof of the 
 reality of the historical fact to which the 
 Bible ascribes its origin, — but over so 
 many nations of the world, as Delitzsch 
 says, it is scarcely possible to doubt that 
 the seven-days' week and the ten-days' 
 week both owe their origin to the same 
 cause — to the effort, namely, to divide 
 the 29| days of the lunar month into 
 equal periods of shorter duration, more 
 convenient for the common business of 
 life. The Sun and Muon, as all men 
 everywhere see, are set in the heavens 
 to be ' for signs, and for seasons, and for 
 days and years. Whatever else they 
 may do, in the counsels of Di^•ine 
 Wisdom, they certainly do this, and are 
 THeant to do this, for nian. The ' year' 
 
LEGENDS OF THE CREATION AMONG OTHEU NATIONS. 
 
 Snd the ' month ' ape thug marked, even 
 hy the most savage tribes, as natural 
 divisions of time. The Zulu keeps his 
 Annual Feasts, and observes the New 
 Moons, as the old Hebrews did : though 
 he has not learned, in his natural state, 
 to divide the month into weeks. 
 
 1030. But, if any sought to break 
 up this longer interval into equal parts, 
 it would be most natiu-al to take the 
 week of seven days, — the interval during 
 which the Moon is seen to pass from one 
 of its four chief phases to another : while 
 others, as the more scientific Egyptians, 
 might prefer to divide the month more 
 accurately into three equal parts often 
 days each. 
 
 The Peruvians divide the lunar month into 
 halves and quarters by the Moon's phases, but 
 have no names for the days ; and, besides, 
 they have a period of nine days, the approxi- 
 mate third part of a lunation, thus showing 
 the common origin of both. (G-arcilasso, Hist, 
 of the Incas, in TAYiiOR's Nat. Hist, of Society, 
 i.291-2). So also the Eomans had their nun- 
 dims or ninth day, which was a holiday even 
 for slaves. The Greek lunar month, of alter- 
 nately 29 and 30 days, was divided into decades 
 of days. (Prof. Baden Powell, Christianity 
 without Judaism, p,B0-2), 
 
 1031. G-AiLATiN writes, quoted in 
 T7/pes of Mankind, jp.294 : — 
 
 Almost all the nations of the world appear, 
 in their first efforts to compute time, to have 
 resorted to lunar months, which they after- 
 wards adjusted in various ways, in order to 
 make them correspond with the solar year. 
 In America the Peruvians, the Chilians, and 
 ^ the Muyscas proceeded in the same way — but 
 not so the Mexicans. And it is a remarkable 
 fact, that the short period of seven days (one 
 week), so imiversal in Europe and in Asia, 
 was unknown to all the Indians either of 
 North or South America. [Had this learned 
 and unbiassed philologist lived to read Lep- 
 Eius, he would have excepted the Egyptians, 
 who divided their months into three decades, 
 and knew nothing of weeks or seven days. Nei- 
 ther did the Chinese, ancient or modem, ever 
 observe a. ' seventh da.y of rest.' G-liddon.] All 
 the nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and, probably, 
 of Central America, which were within the 
 pale of civilization, had two distinct modes 
 of computing time. The first and vulgar 
 mode was a period of twenty days, — which 
 has certainly no connection with any celestial 
 phenomenon, and which was clearly derived 
 from their system of numeration or arith- 
 metic, which was peculiar to them. The other 
 computation of time was a period of thirteen 
 days, which was designated as being the count 
 of the Moon, and which is said to have been 
 derived from the number of days when, in 
 each of its revolutions, the Moon appears 
 above the horizon during the greater part of 
 the night. The Mexicans distinguished every 
 ©ne of their days of the period of twenty days 
 
 327 
 
 by a specific name, CipaclH, Ehecnil, Sac, and 
 every day of the period of thirteen days by a 
 numerical order, from one to thirteen. 
 
 1032. Clemens Alex., Stro-ni.x 2^)^, 
 quotes the following passages from 
 ancient Greek poets, which imply that 
 in the earliest ages a sanctity wns 
 attached to the number seven in other 
 nations beside the Hebrew : — 
 
 ' First, the first day, the fourth day, and 
 the seventh. 
 
 Is sacred.' — Hesiod. 
 
 ' On the seventh day the sun's resplendent 
 light, he'— Id. 
 
 ' When on the seventh arrived the sacred 
 day.'—HoMEii. 
 
 ' The seventh day sacrt'-d was.'— 7rf. 
 
 * The seventh day is among good things, 
 
 The seventh day is a feast :' 
 
 * The seventh day is among the first. 
 
 The seventh day perfect is.' — Calldha- 
 
 CHTJS. 
 
 And the elegies of Solon also greatly insist 
 on the divine character of the seventh day. 
 
 It is true, Clemens refers all these 
 to some knowledge of the Hebrew lite- 
 rature dispersed among the Greeks. 
 But it is difficult to believe this of the 
 times of Homer and Hesiod ; and it is 
 far more probable that the number 
 ' seven ' was considered sacred from its 
 connection with the ' seven planets ' of 
 those times, and the seven days of the 
 approximate fourth part of a lunation. 
 
 The fact that Hesiod notes as sacred 
 the fourth day also, i.r. the middle day 
 oith-esevcn^ or the approximate seventh 
 part of a lunation, agrees with this ex- 
 planation. 
 
 1033. Kaxisch writes on this point 
 as follows, Exodp.4:4:d : — 
 
 The simple and obvious explanation of the 
 holiness of the number seven is, that the 
 ancient Israelites, as most of the Eastern na- 
 tions, counted originally their months after 
 the course of the Moon, which renews itself in 
 four quarters of sc/en days each, and after this 
 time assumes a new phase. These periodical 
 and extraordinary changes of the Moon pro- 
 duced a powerful impression upon the sus- 
 ceptible minds of the ancient nations : they 
 excited them to refiections on this wonderful 
 phenomenon, and everytliing connected with 
 it assumed in their oyes a peculiar significance. 
 Hence the day of the 2Vew J/oora was generally 
 celebrated with some distinguishir.g solemnity, 
 which, like all festivals, is regulated and fixed 
 in the Mosaic Law : and the New Moon is in 
 the O.T, frequently mentioned together with 
 the Sabbath. Hereto we add that the number 
 of the sev»-n Planets known to them, Saturn, 
 Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, tlie 
 Moon, which successively presided over the 
 hours of the day, and each of which, therefore, 
 commenced a different day, contributed ia, 
 
328 
 
 GEN.II.4-II.25. 
 
 later times not a little to secure to it that 
 mysterious significance. But the division of 
 the week into seven days was known and 
 adopted by the most different nations, as the 
 Assyrians, Axabs, Indians, (Chinese, Peru- 
 vians, but not the Persians), and many Afri- 
 can and American tribes, which never came 
 into intercourse with the Israelites, and later 
 by the Greeks and Romans, who followed the 
 Egyptians. We must, therefore, recognise 
 therein, not an exclusively theocratical, but 
 a general astronomical arrangement, which 
 offered itself to the simplest planetary observa- 
 tion of every people. 
 
 1034. Delitzsch, 6^en.^. 84-88, while 
 cHuging to the utmost to the tradi- 
 tionary view, yet admits, as the neces- 
 sary result of his enquiries, the follow- 
 ing points : — 
 
 (i) The Creation-story was not revealed to 
 the writer of Gr.i.l-ii.3, whoever he may have 
 been, but, if revealed at all— if it was not, in 
 its original form, the expression of the clear- 
 sighted intuition of man before the Fall, — it 
 was revealed ' within the family of the first- 
 made man,' and from them handed down by 
 tradition, from Adam to Enos, &c., and from 
 them to Noah and his family, by whom 
 it was preserved — perhaps entire— till after 
 the Flood. 
 
 (ii) At the * confusion of tongues,' It was 
 
 * shattered by G-od himself,' and existed hence- 
 forward in broken fragments in different 
 nations,- -the most perfect, perhaps, in 
 Babylonia. 
 
 (iii) From Babylon, perhaps,— or, perhaps, 
 
 * in direct line within the chosen family,' — the 
 writer of Gr.i.l-ii.3 may have received the 
 tradition, which, ' before it had reached him, 
 had lived through many metamorphoses.' 
 
 (iv) The historical truth of this tradition, 
 however, aa now reported, is assured in all 
 substantial points by the ' Divinity of the 
 Law,'— [which is assumed,]~and ' the results 
 of Natural Science,' — [by which, as we have 
 seen, it is in many Important particulars ex- 
 pressly contradicted.] 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 GEN.n.4-ii.25. 
 
 1035. G.ii.7. 
 
 'And Jehovah-Elohim formed the man 
 (Adam) of dust out of the ground (Adamah).' 
 
 That a play on the words Adam, 
 AdaTnahj (comp, the Latin, homo^ 
 hvmms^ is here intended by the writer, 
 though not expressly stated in the text, 
 has been observed by most commenta- 
 tors. Kalisch notes, p. 1 05 : — 
 
 The origin of man from the earth is a 
 notion extensively adopted. It was prevalent 
 not only among the G-reeks and Bomans, but 
 among the Peruvians,^who believed that, 
 whilst the soul is immortal, the body consists 
 of clay, • because it becomes again earth,' — 
 among the Caribbees and the North- American 
 I n d i a na. It was familiar to the Egyptians, 
 
 who considered man to have been formed from 
 the slime of the Nile — to Hindoos, Chinese, 
 &c. In thecl assical writings we find many an a- 
 logous passages regarding the nature of man. 
 EuBiPiDES says, Supp,hZ^-^, 'The body re- 
 turns to the earth from whence it was formed, 
 and the spirit ascends to the ether* ; and still 
 more distinctly, Lucretius says, ii.997~100ij, 
 ' The earth is justly called our mother : that, 
 which first arose from the earth, retiuns 
 back into the earth ; and that which was sent 
 down from the regions of the sky, the re- 
 gions of the sky again receive, when carried 
 back to them.' 
 
 1036. a.ii.9. 
 
 ' And out of the ground Jehovah-Elohim 
 cansed-to-sprout every tree that la pleasant 
 for sight and good for food.' 
 
 Belitzsch here observes, ^.140: — 
 
 The record does not say that the whole 
 vegetable world first appeared after the crea- 
 tion of man, [which would directly contra- 
 dict i. 12,27, and which certainly seems to be 
 implied in the story as related in i2.5-9] ; only 
 the preparation of Paradise is mentioned after 
 the creation of Man. Still the appearance of 
 the Flora generally is brought close to the ap- 
 pearance of man, in a manner not to be recon- 
 ciled with G-.i. There the vegetable world has 
 already appeared, when first the Stars, then 
 the animals of the ^ater and the air, and then 
 the land-animals appeared ; so that, after the 
 appearance of vegetation, already two and a 
 half creation-periods have elapsed, before man 
 is created. Here, on the contrary, in order 
 that vegetation might appear, there needed 
 previous rain and the formation of man, v.!i, 
 which formation is prepared beforehand in 
 immediate connection therewith. The appear- 
 ance of vegetation is so inextricably bound 
 up with the entrance of these two preexisting 
 conditions, that it is doing violence to the text, 
 if we think of imagining whole series of other 
 creations between vegetation and man. This 
 is a contradiction between the two records.but, 
 as we shall see further on, one not incapable of 
 solution, and, what is more, very instructive. 
 
 We quote the above for the sake of 
 this candid admission, on the parf of 
 so strong a defender of the traditionary 
 view, that the discrepancy in questiun 
 does, in fact, exist. We shall see 
 hereafter in what way Deiitzsch pro- 
 poses to * solve * it. 
 
 1037. G.ii.11-14. 
 
 Of the four rivers of Paradise hero 
 named, the last, EupkratcSy is certain; 
 and, probably, Hiddekeland Gihon are, 
 as JosEPHUs says, (^«if.I.i.3), the Tigris 
 and Nile, respectively, and Pison, pro- 
 bably, the Indus. 
 
 With respect to Hiddekel, properly 
 Khidde/cel, KA1.1SCK writes, Gen.p.Q2: 
 
 This river has nearly the same name in the 
 Aram«an language and in Arabic, with the 
 
GEN.n.4-II.25. 
 
 329 
 
 omission only of the first letter, viz. diglath ; 
 and tlie Sam, Vers, [in tlie passage before us] 
 has this abbreviated form with the article 
 had-dikel. The root dekel signiiies, in the 
 Persian language, arrow^ which name was 
 given to the river on account of its swiftness ; 
 and in the present language of the Persians 
 the Tigris is designated by the word tir, 
 signifying arrowy Sanscr. tigra, hence Ugris. 
 The Hebrew khiddekel is evidently a compound 
 Kord, contracted from khad, ' sharp,' and, 
 dekel,— a sharp or swift arrow. 
 
 And again Kalisch notes, Gen.pMi : 
 The Sept. renders Shichor, which is the 
 Nile, in Jer.ii.l8, by Ttftiiv, that is Oihon. 
 JosEPHTjs observes distinctly, AntlS-S, that 
 the Grihon flows through Egypt, and is that 
 river which the Greeks call Nile . . . The 
 Arabians also include .the Nile among the 
 rivers of Eden, and the Ethiopians call it 
 G^dn or Qeic&n. 
 
 1038. The Pison is not so easily 
 identified, but the description of it, 
 ■which is given in ii.11,12, seems to in- 
 dicate the Indus. Aebian tells us, 
 ^Exp. Alex, vi.l : — 
 
 "When Alexander the Great saw crocodiles 
 and the Egyptian bean in the Indus, he 
 thought that he had found the origin of the 
 Nile, which he believed to rise in this part of 
 India, and, after flowing through vast deserted 
 regions, to lose the name of Indus ; for, when 
 it reaches again inhabited land, the Ethio- 
 pians and Egyptians call it Nile, and thus it 
 falls at last into the Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 The ' land of Khavilah, which Pison 
 bounds,' was probably India in the 
 sense of the ancients, including Arabia. 
 
 Thus the four rivers appear to be 
 Indus to the East, Nile to the South, 
 Tigris to the North, Euphrates to the 
 West. And Kalisch adds : — 
 
 In the Chinese tradition, four rivers flow 
 from the mountain Kuen-lun to the four 
 quarters of the world. And, in the sacred 
 book of the Persians, the fountain Ardechsur, 
 which rises in the holy mountain issuing from 
 the throne of Ormuzd, is said to diffuse its 
 waters over the whole earth by many canals. 
 
 1039. Here Delitzsch asks, ^.150 : 
 Is it, however, possible that the author has 
 
 supposed the Indian Pison and the Nile, with 
 the Tigris and Euphrates, to proceed out of 
 one common source, and that source in fact, 
 as is indicated by the mention of Tigris and 
 Euphrats, in th highland of Armenia, 
 which appears thus the starting-point, pro- 
 bably, of the first men, as well as of those 
 after the Flood ? Is it possible that he puts 
 forward so strange an idea ? 
 
 We, of course, can easily explain 
 this phenomenon, by abandoning the 
 notion of the infallible axicuracy of the 
 record, and supposing that the author 
 wrote merely after the defective notions 
 
 of geography, which prevailed amongst 
 the most learned of the ancients in 
 even far later days, as we have just 
 seen in the passage from the Life of 
 Alexander. Pausjlnias, ii.6, main- 
 tained in like manner the identity of 
 the Euphrates and the Nile, And 
 JosEPHus, Ant.l.i.Z, considered the 
 Euphrates, Tigris, and Nile to be 
 branches of the same river ; only, 
 instead of the Indus, he reckons the 
 Ganges. And, in short, it appears to 
 us that, whatever may be the river 
 meant by Pison, or even Hiddekel, the 
 text of Genesis itself distinctly does 
 unite the Nile and the Euphrates. 
 
 1040. Von BoHiEN observes, ii.p. 34 ; 
 The representation of Kosmas [about A.D. 
 
 550] strikingly shows how fabulous was the 
 view of the ancients. He imagines the earth 
 to be an oblong, with a mountain inhabited by 
 gods in the North : the sea flows round it on 
 all four sides, and beyond the sea, towards the 
 East, lies the Paradise in India. The inter- 
 vening sea [which now separates the land of ■ 
 Eden from the inhabited Earth] was caused 
 by the Flood, and was crossed by Noah. 
 Under this sea the Euphrates and Tigris con- 
 tinue their course [from Eden], and appear 
 again in the western world. Here is Gihon, 
 the Ganges, which afterwards becomes the 
 Nile in Egypt, in a manner somewhat similar 
 to what Alexander imagined respecting the 
 Indus. Pison, on the contrary, is the Indus, 
 emptying itself into the Persian Gulf. 
 
 1041. Delitzsch, however, is unwil- 
 ling to allow the existence of such a 
 mistake, and says, y.lSl : — 
 
 We must, therefore, close the inquiry either 
 by acknowledging that the notice in question ia 
 unintelligible, or we mudt submit to the neces- 
 sity of admitting that, with the disappearance 
 of Paradise, the more certain Imowledge also 
 of the four streams was lost ; and the author 
 only faithfully repeats the tradition, which re- 
 gaided the Indus, Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates, 
 — the four great beneficent streams of the 
 ancient circle of history,— as finger-marks 
 pointing back to the lost Paradise. It must 
 be allowed as possible that the writer, or the 
 tradition, has regarded the Nile as coming 
 round about Ethiopia out of the Norbh of 
 Asia, and springing not far from the Indus or 
 some one of the other Indian rivers. But we 
 might with the same right assume that the 
 four streams, without any further reference to 
 their former unity, have been regarded only as 
 disjecta membra of the no-longer-existing single 
 stream of Paradise, 
 
 1042. But, as Dr. Buknet observes. 
 Arch. Pkil.p.288 :— 
 
 It is hardly conceivable that rivers of any 
 kind, these or others, existed fi'Om the very 
 origin of the earth,— [on the very first day, 
 when ' Jehovah-Elohim had not yet caused-it- 
 
330 
 
 GEX.n.4-IT.25. 
 
 to-rain upon tlie earth,* but only * a mist went 
 up from the earth, aud wa_ei\xl the whole face 
 of the ground,' u.5,6,] whether you consider 
 these streams or their beds. For the beds of 
 rivers are usually made by gradual and long 
 attrition. But, if you say, when the bed of 
 the Ocean was made on the third day , the beds 
 also of the rivora were made, and when the 
 greatest part of the watei's of the * deep * 
 sant into the abyss of the Sea, so the rest 
 descended into these river-channels and 
 formed the first rivers, — yet, besides that 
 water of this kind would be salt, just like that 
 of the Sea, tlicro would be no perennial 
 fountains for feeding these rivers, and thei"e- 
 fore when the first stream had flowed down, 
 or the first river — inasmucli as there were no 
 waters to follow from bohind, — these rivers, 
 or these collections of water, would soon have 
 dried up. 
 
 1043. G.ii.l7. 
 
 * Of the tree of the knowledge of good and 
 evil, thou Shalt not eat of it ; for in the day 
 of thy eating of it, dying thou shalt die.' 
 
 Von Bohlen observes, ii.^.39: — 
 On account of certain interpretations, we 
 bring prominently for\vard some inconsisten- 
 cies, which, however, we do not wish to im- 
 pute to the simplicity of the narrator. Thus, 
 at the beginning the man has to watch [guard] 
 the garden ; whereas the animals are not 
 created until t).19, and they remain peaceably 
 by him. Again, the first female transgresssor, 
 Eve, cannot have heard the proliibition of Je- 
 hovah when Adam received it. because she was 
 not yet created ; yet she repeats it in a more 
 stringent form, iii.3, *Ye shall not eat of it, 
 neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.' And the 
 myth as little considers how the man himself 
 couid have understood the prohibition [i.e. the 
 consequence of disobeying it], as he had not 
 yet had death before his eyes. 
 
 Dr. Pye Smith says, Geology and 
 Scripture^ p.S22 : — - 
 
 The denunciation in G-.ii.17 would seem to 
 imply that they [Jie — the man ?] understood 
 ichat the penalty was, in consequence of their 
 having witnessed the pangs of death in the in- 
 ferior animals. [But did the man ' witness 
 the pangs of death' instantly aSt&v his Creation, 
 b^ore he was put into Paradise, — or when ?] 
 
 104-i. The Jehovist, however, here 
 writes evidently from a point of view 
 quite different from that of the Elohist, 
 who represents the Almiglity as saying 
 to the man and woman, i.29 — 
 
 * Behold I I give you eve?-}/ herb . . . and 
 every tree ... to you it shall be for food' ;— 
 
 ■whereas a prohibition is here given in 
 the ease of one particular tree, — not 
 one of the whole earth, but a tree of 
 the garden, — not to the man and 
 woman, but to the man only. 
 
 1045. G.ii.l9,20. 
 
 ' And Jehovah-Elohim formed out of the 
 groimd every animal of the field, and every 
 
 fowl of the heaven, and broncrht it "-o the man, 
 to see what he would call it, and whatsoever 
 the man would call it, tho living soul, — that 
 should be its name. And the man called 
 names to all the cattle, and to the fowl of the 
 heaven, and to every animal of the field.' 
 
 "We have noticed above (914) that in 
 this passage not only are the beasts and 
 birds formed after the creation of man, 
 whereas in i.21, 25.27, man is formed 
 after the birds and beasts, but the 
 fishes and reptiles are not mentioned 
 at all. 
 
 1046. On this point Delitzsch ob- 
 serves, ^.157 : — 
 
 "When we look at G.i, where the animals 
 after their kinds are all created before man, 
 and endeavour to reconcile the two Eiccounts by 
 translating ' and He had formed,' instead of 
 ' and He formed,' so as to state merely the fact 
 which precetied his ' bringing ' them, ' and so, 
 having previously formed them. He brought 
 them,' — we do v olence, as it appears to me, to 
 the proper meaning of the narrator. It is 
 better to allow the manifest contradiction to 
 stand ; at the end we shall gain more by that 
 than by a hasty reconciliation. 
 
 ^V^len God has indicated to man his actual 
 employment [to till and keep the garden]. He 
 wishes to give him a community to help him 
 for it, and forms next the animals, which, 
 certainly, are all meant to become useful to 
 him. Only the ' fishes ' [and reptiles] are not 
 mentioned, because they, in the light in which 
 the other animals are regarded, do not come 
 into consideration. 
 
 1047. The reason, which Delitzsch 
 gives for the omission of thf* fishes, is 
 probably true to some extent, though it 
 would be far from explaining why all 
 the beasts and birds should have been 
 brought to Adam, and none of the 
 reptiles and fishes, since the vast ma- 
 jority of the former cannot have been 
 regarded as special * helps' for him, 
 any more than the latter. Still the 
 few domestic animals are found among 
 the 'beasts' and 'birds,' and supply, 
 as we have said (914), some sort of com- 
 panionship for man, which is not the 
 case with the ' reptiles ' and fishes ' : 
 and this may account for the former 
 being mentioned, and not the latter. 
 
 1048. But how could the "Whito Boar 
 of the Frozen Zone, and the liumming- 
 Bird of the Tropics, have mot in one 
 spot? Or, being assembled, how could 
 they have been dispersed to their pre- 
 sent abodes, — with the beasts and birds 
 of all kinds, of totally different habits 
 and habitats, many of them ravenous 
 creatures, that would have preyed oa 
 
GEN.n.4. 
 
 one another, unless tieir fnry was 
 miracnlously restrained, or their hunger 
 ■wasmiraculouslyrelieved,ort)ieir whole 
 nature and bodily constitution changed, 
 BO that the lion shotdd cease to be a 
 lion, and eat grass like the ox? Or 
 how could Adam have given names to 
 all, it being remembered that, with 
 the Hebrews, the word ' fowl ' included 
 (1009) all ' creeping-things that fly,' as 
 the locust, L.xi.20-23 ? 
 
 1049. It is painful, though almost 
 ludicrous, to be obliged to sit down in 
 this age of the world, in a day of 
 widely-extended scientific education, 
 and deliberately reason out such a 
 question as this. But, in the interests 
 of truth, there is no alternative, since 
 influential and eminent men, distin- 
 guished by their attainments in sciencR 
 as well as by dignified ecclesiastical 
 position, are still found defending the 
 traditionary view with such arguments 
 as the following, — I quote from Archd. 
 Pratt, Scripture and Science, pA9 : 
 
 This difBculty need not stagger us, unex- 
 pected as it is. , For, in the first place, it is not 
 impossible that the regions, which are found 
 on the opposite side of the globe, and others 
 also, of which the limits are far from the 
 boundaries of man's first residence, have he- 
 come the scenes of creative power, at epochs sub- 
 sequent to the sue- days' work. [IIT.B. ' And the 
 Heaven and the Earth were finished, and all 
 theirhost,' ii.l.] And, further, there is nothing 
 in the account of the six-days' Creation to 
 militate against the idea, that Creation may 
 have been going on over the whole surface of 
 the Earth at the same time. It simply re- 
 quires us to suppose that the animals, brought 
 to Adam for him to name them, must have 
 Tbeen those only in the neighhourhood of Paradise. 
 [N.B. 'The man called names to a?i the cattle, 
 and to the fowl of the heaven, and to every 
 animal of the field,' ii.20.] 
 
 Delitzsch, too, assumes the actual 
 historical truth of this statement, when 
 he observes of the ' deep sleep ' which 
 fell on Adam, ^.159 : — 
 
 This Bleep is God's work, but caused by 
 means of the weai'iness of the man, the natu- 
 ral consequence of his attention having been 
 directed to so many dilferenfc creatures, and 
 deeply engaged in the contemplation of them. 
 1060. The question here involved is, 
 of course, this, whether we are to 
 believe, that there was originally onli/ 
 one centre of creation, or iriore than 
 one ? If all animals of every kind— we 
 may suppose one, or a pair, of each — 
 came to Adam to be named, then aU 
 
 -11.25. 
 
 Sal 
 
 must have been created in, or in the 
 neighbourhood of. Paradise itself. But 
 can anyone suppose that all kinds of 
 plants were created in Paradise, and 
 only there, so that the seeds were 
 scattered from thence to all ends of the 
 earth, — as that of maize or Indian corn, 
 for instance, which was not known to 
 the Eastern Hemisphere till after the 
 discovery of America, — or that all kinds 
 of reptiles, fishes, and insects were 
 formed only in the neighbourhood of 
 Paradise? Why, then, must this be 
 believed with respect to all kinds of 
 beasts and birds, in direct contradiction 
 to the conclusions of Modem Science, 
 from which we learn that certain species 
 of animals have lived all along, in par- 
 ticular regions of the earth, in the same 
 fixed habitats, from an age long ante- 
 cedent to the existence of man ? 
 
 1051. Thus Prof. Owen writes, Ad- 
 dress at Leeds, 1858 : — 
 
 Of the present dry land, different natural 
 continents have different f aunge and florffi ; 
 and the fossil remains of the plants and ani- 
 mals of these continents, respectively, show 
 that they possessed the same peculiar charac- 
 ters, or characteristic fades, during periods 
 extending far beyond the utmost limits of 
 human history. p.Z. 
 
 The class of animals, to which the restric- 
 tive laws of geographical distribution might 
 seem least applicable, is that of Birds. Their 
 peculiar powers of locomotion, associated in 
 numerous species with migratory habits, 
 might seem to render them independent of 
 every influence, save those of climate and of 
 food, which directly affect the conditions of 
 their existence. Yet the long- winged .4Z6a^oss 
 is never met with north of the Equator ; nor 
 does the Condor soar above other mountains 
 than the Andes. . . Several genera of Finches 
 are peculiar to the G-alapagos Islands; the 
 richly and fantastically ornate Birds of Para- 
 dise are restricted to New G-uinea and some 
 neighbouring islands. . . Some species have 
 a singularly restricted locality, as the Red 
 Grouse to the British Isles, the Owl-Parrot 
 to Philip Island, a small spot near New 
 Zealand. The long-and-strong-limbed Ostrich 
 courses over the whole continent of Africa 
 and conterminous Arabia. The genus of 
 three-toed Ostriches is similarly restricted to 
 South America. The Mmeu has Australia 
 assigned to it. The continent of the_ Casso- 
 loary has been broken up into islands, includ- 
 ing, and extending from, the north-eastern 
 peninsula of Asia to New Guinea and New 
 Britain. The singular nocturnal wingless 
 Apteryx is peculiar to the islands of New Zea- 
 land. Other species and genera, which seem 
 to be, like the Avteryx, mocked, as it were; 
 with feathers and rudiments of wings, 
 have wholly ceased to exist, within the 
 memory of man, in the islands to which they 
 
332 
 
 GENJI.4-II.26. 
 
 also were respectively restricted. The Dodo 
 of the Mauritius and the Solitaire are instances. 
 In New Zealand also there existed, within the 
 memory oE the Maori ancestry, huge birds 
 having their nearest affinities to the still- 
 existing ^pterg/x of that island, but generically 
 distinct from that and all other known birds. 
 I have proposed the name of Dinoimis for that 
 now extinct genus, of which more than a 
 dozen well-defined species have come to my 
 knowledge, all peculiar to New Zealand. . . 
 A tridactyle wingless bird of another genus, 
 ^pyomis, second only to the gigantic Dinomis 
 in size, appears to have also recently become 
 extinct— if it be extinct — in the island of 
 Madagascar. The egg of this bird, which 
 may h#ve suggested to the Arabian voyagers, 
 attaining Madagascar from the Ked Sea, the 
 idea of the Roc of their romances, would hold 
 the contents of 6 eggs of the Ostrich, 16 of the 
 Cassowary, and 148 of the common fowl. 
 j).34,35. 
 
 The two species of Orang are confined to 
 Borneo and Sumatra ; the two species of 
 Chimpanzee are limited to an intertropical 
 tract of the western part of Africa. They 
 appear to be inexorably bound by climatal 
 influences, regulating the assemblage of cer- 
 tain trees and the production of certain fruits. 
 With all our care in regard to choice of food, 
 clothing, and * contrivances for artificially 
 maintaining the chief physical conditions of 
 their existence, the healthiest specimens of 
 Orang or Cliimpanzee, brought over in the 
 vigour of youth, perish within a period never 
 exceeding three years, and usually under shel- 
 ter, in our climate, p.36. 
 
 Geology extends the geographical range of 
 the Sloths and ATynadillos from South to 
 North America. But the deductions from 
 recent rich discoveries of huge terrestrial 
 forms of Sloth, of gigantic Armadillos, and 
 large Anteaters, go to establish the fact, that 
 these peculiar families of the order Bruta 
 have ever been, as they are now, peculiar to 
 America, p.39. 
 
 The sum of all the evidence from the fossil 
 •world in Australia proves its mammalian 
 population to have been essentially the same 
 in pleistocene, if not pliocene times, as now; 
 only represented, as the Edentate mammals in 
 South America were then represented, by 
 more numerous genera, and much more 
 gigantic species, than now exist. p.40. 
 
 1062. But, if this be so, then there 
 arises also the question, whether all 
 mankind are descended from one pair, 
 or whether there may not be different 
 races, generically alike — brothers, there- 
 fore, of one Great Family, having all 
 the same precious gifts, of speech and 
 thought, reason and conscience, proper 
 to human ity, — but yet from the first dif- 
 fering as species. In that case, it would 
 be no longer necessary to belieA'e that 
 the Bushman, Australian Savage, and 
 Andaman Islander are only degraded 
 descendants of Adam or Noah, and 
 that the European, Chinese, Negro, and 
 
 North-American Indian are all derived 
 from one pair of ancestors ; and it would 
 be possible to assume a different parent- 
 age from ours for those ancient makers 
 of flint-implements, who lived, as scien- 
 tific men assure us, many thousands — 
 perhaps, tens of thousands — of years 
 before the Scripture epoch of the Flood. 
 
 1053. Such questions as these must 
 now be open questions, since we are no 
 longer bound to believe in the historical 
 infallibility of this composite record, 
 which lies before us in the Book of 
 Genesis. Meanwhile, the remarks of 
 Dr. NoTT are very suggestive, Types of 
 Mankind, jp.76 : — 
 
 These facts [quoted from Prof. Aqassiz] 
 prove conclusively that the Creator has 
 marked out both the Old and New Worlds 
 into distinct zoological provinces, and that 
 Faunffi and Plorse are independent of climate, 
 or other known physical causes ; while it is 
 equally clear that, in this geographical distri- 
 bution, there is evidence of a plan^ — of a 
 design ruling thfi climar.ic conditions them- 
 selves. It is very remarkable, too, that while 
 the races of men, and the Faima and Flora of 
 the Arctic region, present great uniformity, 
 they follow in the different continents the 
 same general law of increasing dissimilarly, 
 as we recede from the Arctic and go South, 
 irre.tpectively of climate. We have already 
 shown that, as we pass down through Ame- 
 rica, Asia, and Africa, the farther we travel, 
 Oie grpater is the dissimilatHty of their PaunsQ 
 and Florse, to their very terminations, even 
 when compared together in the same latitudei 
 or zones. And an examination will show, that 
 differences of tj-pes in the human family be- 
 come more strongly marked, as we recede 
 from the Polar regions, and reach their 
 greatest extremes at those terminating points 
 of continents, where they are most widely 
 separated by distance, although occupying 
 nearly the same parallels of latitude, and 
 nearly the same climates. For instance, the 
 Fuegians of Cape Horn, the Hottentots and 
 Bushmen of the Cape of Good Hope, and the 
 inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land, are the 
 tribes which, under similar parallels, differ 
 most. Such differences of race are scarcely 
 less marked in. the Tropics of the Earth, as 
 testified by the Negro in Africa, the Indians 
 in, America, and the Papuan in Polynesia. 
 In the Temperate Zone we have, in the Old 
 World, the Mongolians and the Caucasians, 
 no less than the Indians iu America, living in, 
 similar climates, yet wholly dissimilar them- 
 selves. 
 
 History, traditions, monuments, osteological 
 remains, every literary record and scientific 
 induction, all show that races have occupied 
 substantially the same zones or provinces 
 from time immemorial. . . The Caucasian 
 races, which have always been the representa- 
 tives of [the highest] civilisation, ore those 
 alone that have extended over, and colonised, 
 all parts of the globe : and much of this is 
 
GEN.III.1-III.24. 
 
 the work of the last three hundred years. 
 The Creator has implanted in this group of 
 races an instinct, that, in spite of themselves, 
 drives them through all difficulties to carry 
 out their great mission of civilising the Earth. 
 It is net reason, or philanthropy, which urges 
 them on ; but it is destiny. When we see 
 great divisions of the human family increasing 
 in numbers, spreading in all directions, en- 
 croaching by degrees upon all other races, 
 wherever they can live and prosper, and 
 gradually supplanting inferior types, is it not 
 reasonable to conclude that they are fulfilling 
 a law of nature ? 
 
 1054. G.ii.22. 
 
 * And Jehovali-Elohim built the rib, which 
 he took out of the man, into a woman.' 
 
 JIiLTON, Far. Lost, Book viii, ap- 
 pears to regard the act here described 
 as having taken place only in a vision, 
 though his language is painfully literal 
 and graphic : — 
 
 Mine eyes He closed, but open left the cell 
 Of fancy, my internal sight ; by which. 
 Abstract, as in a trance, methought I saw. 
 Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the 
 
 shape 
 Still glorious before whom awake I stood ; 
 Who, stooping, open'd my left side, and took 
 I^m thence a rib, with cordial spirits warm. 
 And lifeblood streaming fresh ; vride was the 
 
 wound, , , , , 
 
 But suddenly with flesh fill'd up and healed ; 
 The rib He form'd and f asUon'd vrith His 
 hands. 
 
 1055. Kaxisoh notes, Gen.pSIl:— 
 The Greenlanders believed that the first 
 woman was fashioned out of the thumb of 
 the man. It is, therefore, absurd to urge 
 that the delicate body of woman was formed 
 —not out of the dust of the earth, but— ol 
 organic matter already purified, or that the 
 rib points to the heart of man and his love. 
 The Hebrew historian intended to convey his 
 idea of the intimate relationship between man 
 and woman, and of the sacredness and mdis- 
 BOlnbiUty of conjugal life ; and he expressed 
 this idea in a form which was f amihar to his 
 contemporaries, and which will, at all t™f . 
 be acknowledged as a beautiful and affecting 
 mode of enforcing a moral truth of the highest 
 Eoeiel importance. 
 1056. G.ii.23,24. 
 
 ■And the man said. This time t'lisjs bone 
 of my bones, and flesh of my A^j' = *^'*''^ 
 shall a man forsake Ms father and his moth^, 
 and cleave unto hig wife, and they shaU be- 
 come one flesh.' 
 
 Delitzsch says, ^.162 : — 
 Is this utterance a vrofhekcal saymg of 
 Adam about ma^riaee, or merely a r^-^ 
 «* +110 TiflT^ator? ... It 13, indeea, tne 
 Sus^m ofSwritei [the Jehovist], to ingrt 
 to the history remarks bepnning as this 
 
 Slth 'therefore,' ^■S.'^:^^''™'^?- f an 
 these and similar remarks are all "I an 
 
 bistoricalmatter-m-hand. On the contrary, 
 
 333 
 
 the remark in «.24 would be a pure reflection, 
 without any explanatory object ; and, as the 
 story of the creation of the woman is only 
 brought to a close in t),25, it would disturb 
 the historical connection. 
 
 But then the first man would be re- 
 presented as using these words, when 
 he could as yet have had no idea of the 
 relations of father and mother, or even 
 of the nature of marriage itself. We 
 might, therefore, suppose that vMi may 
 be a note of the Jehovist himself, as 
 well as iii.20, 'because she was the 
 mother of all living.' Still the context 
 makes this supposition in both cases 
 improbable. 
 
 1057. Kalisoh remarks on the above 
 text, (?cn.p.ll6:— 
 
 We must not forget to mention that similar 
 reflections to these are found in the holy 
 books of the Hindus and Persians : ' The bone 
 of woman is united with the bone of man, 
 and her flesh with his flesh, as completdy as 
 a stream becomes one with the sea into which 
 it flows.' 
 
 Thus in the Hindu marriage cere- 
 mony the husband says, .4s.i?e«.Tii.309 : 
 
 I unite thy breath with my breath, thy 
 bones with my bones, thy flesh with my flesh, 
 thy cWn with my skill. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 GEN.m.l-in.24. 
 
 1058. G.iii.l. 
 'And the serpent was subtle out of all 
 
 animals of the field, which Jehovah-Blohnn 
 had made : and he said unto the woman, &c. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Buenet observes, Arch. 
 PMl.p.295 :— 
 
 We read that aU these great and multi- 
 farious matters were transacted within the 
 short space of a single day. But I bum -mth 
 pain, when I see all things upset and dis- 
 ordered in a little moment of time, and the 
 whole nature of things, scarcely yet arranged 
 and dressed out, sinking into death and de- 
 formity before the setting of the first day. 
 In the morning of the day God said, that all 
 was ' very good ;' in the evening aU is exe- 
 crable. How fleeting is the glory of created 
 things I The work elaborated through six days, 
 and that by the Hand of Omnipotence, them- 
 f amous beast has destroyed in so many hours. 
 Dr BuENET would have been re- 
 Ueved of some part of his difficulties, 
 if he had known that the statements 
 which he contrasts were written by two 
 different authors. 
 
 1059. We are now, however, arrived 
 at the point where Delitzsch produces 
 his promised solution of the difficulties 
 
S34 
 
 GENJII.l-nL24. 
 
 noticed in (1046), which we commend 
 to the reader's consideration : Gen. 
 ^.164-9. 
 
 But had then the animals at that time 
 reason? Could the Serpent at that time 
 Bpeak ? This question is too readily settled, 
 if it is said that the Serpent is the symbol of 
 pleasure ( Clem. Alex, and others, after 
 pHiLO), or of the evil propensity (Phillip- 
 eon), or of the onesided understanding (BtTN- 
 ben). Others, who do not care at all if these 
 fundamgntal histories are regarded as mere 
 fables, maintain that the author has really 
 meant that the animals could then speak. 
 But, after it has been sho^sTi in chap.i that 
 man was the conclusion of the pi-ogressive 
 creations of God, and in ii.7 that G-od directly 
 • breathed into him the breath of life,' the 
 author, surely, will not again displace the 
 so-sharply-drawn boundaries of creation, and 
 make now the beasts to be brothers and sisters 
 of men, endowed with speech and, therefore, 
 with reason ! Let it be only considered that 
 out of the Serpent speaks the deepest possible 
 wickedness. That it speaks at all, is not a bit 
 more strange than that it speaks such down- 
 right wickedness. That it speaks at all, is a 
 ■wonder. Tliat it speaks such utter wickedness, 
 proceeds from this, that it is the instrument 
 of a higher, but deeply -degraded, nature. It is 
 thus a demoniacal wonder that it speaks. , . 
 
 But when was it that evil entered into the 
 Creation ? "We are here arrived at the point, 
 where the two yet outstanding contradictions 
 must be removed, vim. that G.i only knows of 
 a creation (i) of plants, and (ii) of animals, 
 antecedent to the creation of man, whereas 
 G.ii brings them both back into close connec- 
 tion with the creation of man, [placing them, 
 however, both subsequent to it]. So, then, 
 when did evil enter into the creation ? Not 
 first after the six-daj's' work, — for the remains 
 of animals and plants of the old world, ever 
 coming before our eyes in greater number 
 and variety, are acknowledged to be older 
 than the origin of man ; and not already 
 be/ore the six-days' work, — for the ' desolation 
 and emptiness ' concealed no MoUusks and 
 Saurians ; it was the conglomerated moss of 
 a world very different from a world of such 
 creatui'es as these, exhibitmg themselves as 
 lowest links in the chain of development of 
 the present creation. . . . 
 
 Demoniacal powers ?tave interfered with their 
 work in the course of creation, — not, certainly 
 OS demiurgic powers, which might have op- 
 posed contradictory caricatures to the creation 
 of God, against which supposition Zoology 
 raises a protest which must be admitted, 
 pince it shows in the old-world Fauna the 
 F^ime laws of construction and relations of 
 form as in the existing, — probably, however, 
 in such a way that they misled the Earth 
 translated thus into misery, stirred up the dark 
 fiery principle of the creature, and made un- 
 natural intermixtures and mongrel formations, 
 mutual murder, disease and death, common 
 among the races of God-created animals (!) 
 Thus the Divine Creation was not merely a 
 worldng-out of the dark matter into a bright 
 li\ing form, but also a struggle with the 
 mife'ht of evil ; whole generations, called into 
 
 esistencQ by God, yielded to the corrupting 
 influence of that might, and must, conse- 
 quently, be swept away. They were imbedded 
 in the bowels of the mountains. The first 
 act of the Third Day does not contradict this. 
 For it consisted in the separation of the dry 
 land from the water, not in unchangeable 
 fixed definition of the earth's external form. 
 The shaping of the mountains began on the 
 Third Day, without having been brought to 
 a close when plants and animals began to 
 appear. The Earth became again and again 
 the grave of the organic beings, wliich she had 
 long borne upon her surface. If we cast a 
 glance forwards, the reason for the judgment 
 of the Flood, vi.1-4, will sliow us that we are 
 saying nothing strange to the Scriptural view. 
 Also the story of the temptation of man 
 entitles us to look backwards. The creation 
 of the Earth and its inhabitants was, in some 
 sense, a struggle of the Creator ^vith Satan 
 and his powers, as the redemption is a struggle 
 of the Redeemer with Satan and his powers. 
 This background of the Creation is veiled in 
 G.i ; the writer has purposely veiled it ; but 
 we, to whom, through the N.T. Revelation, 
 an open look is allowed into the vanquished 
 kingdom of darkness, — ^we know that the 
 * and behold ! it was very good ' is a word of 
 victory, and that the Divine Sabbath is a rest 
 of triumph, similar to the ' it is finished I' of 
 the Redeemer and the triimiphal -march of 
 the Ascension. . . The Kature, which was 
 taken possession of by the spirits of evil, is 
 destroyed, and— here is the solution of the 
 two contradictions — a plant-world and an 
 animal-world have now come into being, (as 
 the last links of theplant-and-animal-ci'eation 
 which was begun with the third and sixth 
 days.) such as corresponds to him, who is 
 caTIed to be lord and conqueror of evil, viz. 
 Man. . . 
 
 It is now clear why Satan seeks to mislead 
 the man, against God's command, to taste the 
 deadly fruit of the Tree of Knowledge : he 
 wishes to destroy man, and, with him, the 
 whole of the last creation ... It is clear also 
 why he, since his power of destruction is so 
 limited and confined in the paradisaical plant- 
 world, makes use of a beast in order to befool 
 man, and to enslave him together with the 
 last of the creations. The narrator confines 
 himself to the extetmal appearances only of 
 the event, without raising the veil from the 
 being behind. He might well have raised it, 
 since even the heathen legend gives a full, 
 though distorted, account of it ; but he veils 
 it, because the unveiling would not be good 
 for the people of his time, inclined to heathen- 
 ish misbelief, and heathenish intercourse with 
 the demon-world (I). That the Devil himself 
 tempted the first pair, says the Book of Wis- 
 dom, ii.y3,24. It was also not so unknown 
 to the nan-ator as might appear from his 
 silence, since, even in the human race external 
 to Israel, a consciousness of this meets us in 
 many a legend and mythology. . . . The 
 Sei"pent is the first creature, tlu-ough which 
 Ahriman con-upts the first-created land of 
 Ormuzd ; Ahriman is represented as appear- 
 ing in the form of a Serpent, and ie even 
 named the Serpent. 
 
 1060. The reader will perceive that^ 
 
6EN.III.1-1II.24, 
 in order to reconcile the contradiction, 
 which Delitzsch admits to exist 
 between the two accounts of the Crea- 
 tion, in respect of the order in which 
 Man and the animals were created, he 
 is driven to make the following assump- 
 tions : — 
 
 (i) The creation was a' struggle' between 
 tne Divme Creator and the • might ol evil ' • 
 (u) The Evil One prevailed so far as to 
 
 • mislead ' the animals created in the fifth day, 
 1.31, and in the sixth h^on the creation of 
 man, i.S5 ; 
 
 (iii) Hence all these animals, beasts, birds, 
 reptiles, fishes, insects, &o., were obliged to 
 be ' swept away,' together with the vegelaMon, 
 created on the third day, iJ2 ; 
 
 (iv) A new creation of plants and beasts 
 and birds took place on the sixth day, after 
 the creation of man, as related in ii.9,19, — 
 [but what of the reptiles anA fishes 1] ; 
 
 (v) The Evil Spirit tried to corrupt this 
 last creation also, and, therefore * made use of 
 fi beast ' in order to deceive the woman. 
 
 1061. G.iii.8. 
 
 *And they heard the sound of Jehovah- 
 Elohim walking in the garden in the breeze 
 of the day.' 
 
 Deutzsoh explains this and other 
 
 * anthropomorphisms ' as being direct 
 consequences of the Fall, as follows, 
 p.l76: — 
 
 In this state they perceive the sound of 
 God's footstep. God draws near to them, as 
 one man to another. That this was the mode, in 
 which God originally had converse with man, 
 is not true. That, from this point onward, 
 the sacred history marks such an outward 
 distinction between God and man, has its good 
 reason in this, that through the Pall the 
 inner unity of God and man is really lost, and 
 now a gradual return to approximation on 
 both sides begins. Only then, when man has 
 lost the uniform inner presence of God's Love, 
 begin the (theophanies) Divine appearances. 
 Now, for the &:st time, God has intercourse 
 with man in an external form like this, cor- 
 responding to his changed condition. The 
 relation of Love is broken. This is what is 
 now also historically manifest, with a view 
 to th^ historical restoration of it. The 
 anthropomorphism of the mode of intercourse 
 culminates in the Incarnation (I) 
 
 Dr. LiGHTFOOT defines here the exact 
 time of day, Harm., &c., p.5 : — • 
 
 vith day of creation ... his (Adam's) 
 wife the weaker vesseU ; she not yet knowing 
 that there were any devils at all . . . sinned, 
 and drew her husband into the same trans- 
 gression with her ; this was about high noon, 
 the time of eailng. And in this lost condition, 
 into which Adam and Eve had now brought 
 themselves, did they lie comfortless, till 
 towards the cool of the day, or three o'clock 
 ufif^moon. 
 
 1062. G.iii.14, 
 
 'tTpon thy belly shalt thon go, and dust 
 Shalt thou eat, all the days of thy life.' 
 
 Here the serpent is represented as 
 haying had its nature degraded and 
 debased from what it was originally. 
 
 JosEPHus, Ani.l.i.i, and after him 
 the Fathers generally, conceived of the 
 serpent as having had originally a 
 human voice and legs. And Delitzsch 
 at this very day maintains that the 
 serpent's form was actually changed, in 
 consequence of its having been used 
 by Satan as the instrument of his 
 deception, ^.180 : — 
 
 The punishment of the serpent, as all 
 antiquity understood the sentence, consists 
 in this, that its mode of motion and its form 
 were changed. The consequence of sin is ever 
 something abnormal, which lies beyond the 
 proper end of creation : it works deformity, 
 as in the human body, though that is wholly 
 the instrument of the spirit, so also upon the 
 serpent, though it has only been the instru- 
 ment of a spirit. The serpent was before 
 made otherwise. Kow, with its fiery colour, 
 its forked vibrating tongue, its poison-distil- 
 ling teeth, its dreadful hiss, its arrow-like 
 motion, like a flash of light, its occasionally 
 fascinating glance, it is, as it were, the em- 
 bodiment of the diabolical sin and the divine 
 curse. This its present condition is the con- 
 sequence of a divine transformation, and, aa 
 its speaking is the firstdemoniacal wonder, so 
 this is the first divine transformation. Of 
 the original condition of the serpent it ia, 
 certainly, impossible to frame to ourselves a 
 conjecture. We might imagine generally a 
 machine, perhaps, but no living creature, 
 were it even a chimaera ; and even the recon- 
 struction of one, that has previously existed, 
 is impossible for us without given remains 
 and indications. 
 
 1063. But Geology shows us that the 
 serpent was the same kind of creature, 
 in the ages long ago, before men existed 
 upon the earth, as it is now. And the 
 notion, that the Devil took possession 
 of the serpent, and used it as an instru- 
 ment for his malicious purpose, is dis- 
 proved at once by the words of the 
 curse, which charge the crime upon 
 the serpent itself, — 
 
 * Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed 
 above all cattle and beasts of the field,' 
 
 — as well as by the expressions, ' upon 
 thy belly shalt thou go,' 'dust shalt 
 thou eat,' which refer distinctly to the 
 animaL Is it possible to believe that 
 a curse could have been passed by the 
 Gracious Creator upon an innocent 
 animal, which the Devil had mastered, 
 — while no mention is made of the 
 
S36 
 
 Devil himself being punished? As 
 well might "we believe that the Al- 
 mighty Father would curse a human 
 being afflicted with madness ! 
 
 1064. Dr. Thomas Burnet says, 
 Arch. Phil. p.291 :— 
 
 But you will say, * The woman ought to 
 have been careful, not to violate a law en- 
 forced by the penalty of death.' ' On the dap 
 on tchicfi you shall eat thereqf you shaU die, you 
 and yours,' so ran the law. ' Die 1 what does 
 this mean ?' says the virgin in her ignorance, 
 who had never yet seen anything dead, not 
 even a flower, nor had felt yet death's image, 
 sleep or night, with her eyes or with her mind. 
 And, as to what you add about her posteinty and 
 the penalty upon them, nothing of this is ex- 
 pressed in the law. But no laws ought to be 
 twisted,— certainly not penal laws. 
 
 Also no light difficulty arises about the 
 punishment of the serpent. If the Devil did 
 the whole under the form of a serpent, or if 
 he compelled the serpent to do or suffer all 
 this, why is the serpent punished for the 
 crime committed by the Devil ? Then, as to 
 the manner and form of the punishment in- 
 flicted on the serpent, viz. that hereafter it 
 should go on its belly, it is not easy to explain 
 what this means. It will hardly be said that 
 the serpent was formerly erect, or walked 
 after the manner of quadrupeds. But, if it 
 went upon its belly from the first, as serpents 
 do now, it may seem unmeaning that some- 
 thing should be imposed on this animal, as a 
 punishment and penalty for a particular deed, 
 which it had always by nature. 
 
 1065. On the point of the serpent's 
 •eating dust,' Kalisch says, G^e«.^. 125: 
 
 The great scantiness of food, on which the 
 serpent can subsist, gave rise to the belief, 
 entertained by many Eastern nations, and 
 referred to in several Biblical allusions, that 
 they * eat dust,' Mic.vii.l7, Ib.1xv.25. Sil. Ital. 
 vii,449, /erven^i pastas arend, ' feeding on hot 
 sand,' — see Bochart, Hier.i.4:, Roberts's 
 Xllustr, of SciHpture, ^.7,— while the Indians 
 believed them to feed upon wind. 
 
 And, as to the ' enmity' between the 
 woman's seed and the serpent, he adds : 
 
 In n^any Eastern religions, the extirpation 
 of the reptiles, and especially of the serpents, 
 was enjoined as an important duty. Among 
 the Persians, it was considered as equivalent 
 to the war for Ormuzd and against Ahriman, 
 and the most sacred festival was consecrated 
 to this ' destruction of evil.' HEROD.i.l40. 
 The Hindoos celebrated similar great feasts 
 for the same purpose ; and in Cashmere solemn 
 sacrifices were offered for the annihilation of 
 the serpents. (Prank, Vyasa,p.l39.) Thus 
 the 'open enmity' between man and the 
 serpent recurs throughout the whole Orient. 
 It is everywhere impressed with a religious 
 character ; it bears a hidden symbolical mean- 
 ing ; it is the combat either against the 
 Tempter, or against the Prince of Evil. 
 
 Ajuong the Zulus, on the contrary, 
 the snake is held in great respect, and 
 
 GEKIII.1-III.24. 
 
 s not willinjrly killed ; as their dead 
 ancestors are supposed to reappear in 
 the form of snakes. So among the 
 Greeks the serpent was the emblem of 
 healing wisdom ; while to the Phoeni- 
 cians it became the symbol of eternity, 
 from its habit of coiling itself into a 
 circle. 
 
 1066. G.iii.15, 
 And enmity will I put between thee and 
 
 the woman, and between her seed and thy seed: 
 it shall bruise thee on the head, and thou shalt 
 bruise it on the heel.' 
 
 Kalisch notes, Gen.p.S9 : — 
 Krishna also, as the incarnation of Vishnu, 
 is represented now as treading on the bruised 
 head of a conquered serpent, and now as 
 entwined by it, and stung in the heel. 
 
 And so says Mr. Sharpe, Egyptian 
 Mythology,pA6 : — 
 
 The serpent of evil, the great enemy of the 
 human race, plays an important part in all 
 [Egyptian] pictures and sculptures relating to 
 the next world. . . . "When it is pierced 
 through the head by the spear of the goddess 
 Isis, we see the enmity between the woman 
 and the serpent, spoken of in G-.iii. It is 
 always conquered by the good, sometimes 
 pierced through, its folds by a nimiber of 
 swords, and sometimes carried away alive in 
 the arms of its conquerors in triumph. 
 
 1067. Accordingly, the usual explana- 
 tion of the above passage is, that the 
 'seed of the serpent' typifies in some 
 way the Devil and all that belongs to 
 him ; while the ' seed of the woman ' 
 represents Jesus Chbist and all true 
 believers; the 'serpent' shall bruise 
 the woman's seed on the heel, i.e. — shall 
 have power to injure, but not fatally ; 
 while the * seed of the woman ' shall 
 bruise it on the head, i.e. — shall crush 
 and utterly destroy the power of evil. 
 So writes Delitzsch, p.lS2: — 
 
 The crafty venomous bite of the snake on 
 the heel of man, which he retaliates, without 
 having suffered fatal injury, by crushing its 
 head with his foot, shadows forth thejwiflict 
 of the human race with the Devil and au who 
 are ' of the Devil,'— and who are, therefore, 
 not so much the woman's as the serpent's 
 seed, — and the decisive victory of the human 
 race, in which this conflict ends. 
 
 1068. It is probable that the deadly 
 conflict of man with evil is symbolised 
 in this narrative by the mortal hatred, 
 which, for very natural reasons, exists 
 almost everywhere between the human 
 race and the serpent tribe. So most 
 people have a dislike of scorpions, Lu. 
 X.19, spiders, &c. But it is doubtful 
 
GEN.III.1-III.24. 
 
 it the injury is here supposed to be 
 mortal in the one case, and not in the 
 other. The serpent stings the heel, — 
 that part of the man which is most ac- 
 cessible to its bite, — -vp-henever it has an 
 opportunity of doing so, with a fatal 
 power ; while the man, in like manner, 
 wreaks his vengeance on the serpent 
 by crushing its head. 
 
 1069. Thus "WiLijiT writes, Hexap. 
 in Gen.p.5] : — 
 
 Part of this sentence is liter^ly true in the 
 serpent. For, as Kupertus noteth, if a wo- 
 man tread upon the serpent with her bare 
 foot, he presently dieth ; but, if he first bite her 
 heel, the woman dieth of tJtat poison. But, 
 howsoever this be true, it is most certain that 
 between man and those venomous creatures 
 there is a natural hatred, that one cannot 
 endure the sight and presence of the other. 
 Some do mangel why the serpent is not made 
 mute and dumb, seeing Satan abused his 
 tongue and mouth to tempt the woman. The 
 Hebrews think that the punishment is in- 
 cluded, in that dust is appointed to be his 
 meat ; for such, whose mouths are filled with 
 earth, cannot speak. And to this day we see 
 that the punishment remaineth upon the ser- 
 pent, who maketh no perfect sound, as other 
 cattle do, but hisseth only (I) 
 
 1070. G.iii.16. 
 'Unto tlie woman He said, Multiplying I 
 
 will multiply thy pain and thy conception ; 
 in pain shalt thou bear children.' 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that 
 the pain of childbirth has really been 
 increased to the woman. It would 
 arise — from the natural conformation of 
 her body, if she was to bear children 
 at all ; and the Elohistio command to 
 'fructify, and multiply,' i.28, implies 
 that she was meant to do so from the 
 first. So, too, the mention by the 
 Jehovist of a man ' leaying his father 
 and mother,' ii.24, shows that in the 
 view of this writer, also, the idea of 
 parentage was entertained as existing, 
 even in Paradise, before the Pall. In 
 tropical countries, indeed, the birth of a 
 child seems often to be attended with 
 little more pain and disturbance than 
 the birth of a beast. It is merely the 
 imagination of the Hebrewwfiter, which 
 ascribes the pain of childbirth, and the 
 natural subjection of the female to the 
 male, (which also is not peculiarto 
 man amongst animals,) to her being 
 foremost in sin. 
 
 1071. Delitzsch, however, assumes 
 a change in the woman's form, ^.184 : — 
 
 337 
 
 That the woman shall become a mother, is 
 G-od'a original will ; but the punishment is, 
 that she shall henceforth bear children with 
 pains, which tlnreaten her life as well as the 
 child's. This sentence also upon the wife 
 changes the original state of things judicially; 
 and, since the woes indicated are necessarily 
 grounded on the present physiological con- 
 dition of the woman, this also must have 
 undergone a change, without our being able 
 to frame to ourselves a conception of the 
 original state of things. 
 
 And again he writes, ^.184 : — 
 
 It was intended from the first that the man 
 should have a certain superiority over the 
 woman. But only now, when the harmony 
 of their mutual wills in God is disturbed, this 
 superiority is changed to lordship : the man 
 can command in a lordly manner, and the 
 woman is from without and within compelled 
 to obey. In consequence of Sin there exists 
 that subjection, bordering on slavish, of the 
 woman to the man, which, as it is still in the 
 East, was in the old-world usual, and which 
 first through the religion of Revelation has been 
 by ^3egrees made more endurable, and equal- 
 ised with the human worth of t^e woman. 
 
 Tacitus, however, says of the ancient 
 Germans, GermMii : — ■ 
 
 Moreover, they think that there is some- 
 thing sacred, or gifted with foresight,in their 
 women ; nor do they either despise their 
 counsels, or neglect tiieir prophetical utter- 
 
 1072. G.iii.17,18. 
 
 * Cursed is the ground for thy sake : in pain 
 Shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life ; 
 and thorns and thistles shall it make-to-sprout 
 to thee ; and thou shalt eat the herb of the 
 field ; in the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat 
 bread.' 
 
 Here the ground is represented as 
 cursed for man's sake, and on this 
 account bearing briars and thorns, and 
 requiring to be cultivated with hard 
 labour. 
 
 But Geology shows that the state of 
 things upon the Earth, before man ap- 
 peared upon it, was just the same as it 
 is now. There are no signs of any curse 
 having passed upon the Earth. Thorns 
 and briars were as plentiful in the 
 primeval world as they are now. The 
 same abundant crop of weeds would 
 have sprang up, under the same cir- 
 cumstances, then as now, on any ground 
 uncared-for. And man, if he had lived 
 then, could only have eaten bread by 
 the sweat of bis brow, in those days 
 as now. 
 
 1073. And, in fact, a life of toil and 
 exertion is far more healthy, Joyous, 
 and ennobling, — far more suited to 
 man's bodily and spiritual nature,, — 
 
 z 
 
338 
 
 GEN.in.l-III.24. 
 
 far better adapted to draw out his 
 highest facultie.s, than one of inac- 
 tivity and careless ease, such as the 
 life of Paradise is generally imagined 
 to have been. It is the kind of life 
 evidently mfa«< for man by his Creator, 
 the life for which man was made, — the 
 normal kind of life which, when not 
 excessive in its labours, is natural and 
 pleasant to him, happy and health- 
 giving, and not one to remind him at 
 all of sin and of the curse. 
 
 1074. G.iii.l9. 
 
 ' Until thy returning unto the ground, for 
 out of it wast thou taken : for dust art thou, 
 and unto dust shalt thou return.' 
 
 Beddenda est terrtB terrd, ' Earth to 
 earthmust be returned,' says EuEiprDES, 
 in Cic. rMsc.iii.25. 
 
 This appears to be the writer's mode 
 of £w;counting for death in the human 
 race. And Delitzsoh observes, ^.189: 
 With the man, however, — the threatened 
 one, — a change has now taken place. When 
 he was threatened, he was only one. Now he 
 is man and woman. Through the fact, that 
 God has given him the woman, arises on the 
 one side the possibility of a diminution of the 
 fault, on the other the possibility of a fulfil- 
 ment of the threatening, without breaking off 
 human history. It is now possible that the 
 man may die, without the human race coming 
 to an end. 
 
 1076. But Geology shows that living 
 creatures of all kinds died in the ages 
 long ago, as they die now, — died, 
 overwhelmed by floods, or falling earth, 
 or the fiery streams poured out by 
 volcanoes, — died by old age or the 
 action of disease, their bones being 
 found distorted, carious, or twisted 
 with pain, — died often tearing and 
 devouring one another, even as now, 
 the bones of one animal being found in 
 the stomach of another. As Dr. 1?ye 
 Smith says. Geology and Scrif)ture,p.S9 : 
 
 We can see and examine their powerful 
 teeth, the structure of their bones for the in- 
 sertion, course, and action of muscles, nerves, 
 and the tubes for circulation, indicating the 
 functions, and their very stomachs, beneath 
 their ribs, replenished with chewed bits of 
 bone, fish-scales, and other rema i ns of animal 
 food. 
 
 Death, therefore, has been in the 
 world from the very first, as the uni- 
 versal law for the animal as well as 
 for the vegetable creation. And there 
 is nothing to compel us to beUeve, — 
 even if we could gather a definite mean- 
 
 ing to that effect &om the Hebrew 
 writer, which, perhaps, we cannot, — 
 that man's mortal frame would liare 
 endured for ever, any more than those 
 of other animals similarly constituted 
 to his. 
 
 1076. Yet it may be questioned if 
 this passage of Scripture really means 
 to say that death was inflicted as the 
 penalty of sin, notwithstanding the 
 interpretation put upon it by the later 
 Jews, ■Wisd.ii.24, Eoclus.xxv.24. For, 
 as Knoeel observes, y.49 : — 
 
 According to the Bible, Adam is not to die 
 because he has sinned, but because he was 
 'taken out of the ground,' — because he 'is 
 dust,' he shall 'return to dust.' Hence he 
 was created mortal ; through his original na- 
 ture, according to which he is exposed to 
 death, it is plain he dies. He might have 
 gained inmiortality through the tree of life, 
 ii. 9, but only as something over and beyond 
 his created nature, only as a prerogative of the 
 celestial beings. But, because he wilfully ap- 
 propriated to himself another prerogative of 
 the spiritual powers, and waa not yet to be- 
 come like to these, he was prevented from 
 this, and death took place, in accordance with 
 his original nature. That prevention of fur- 
 ther encTOachment on the prerogatives of the 
 spiritual, and this entrance of the original 
 destiny of man, cannot be said to be the in- 
 fliction of death as the punishment of sin. 
 God cannot be said to have taken from Adam 
 immortality, — which he did not at all possess, 
 — and to have inflicted on him death, — which 
 from the beginning was to have been ex- 
 pected. But He left him simply with his 
 original mortality, which finally took effect 
 through death. 
 
 And, indeed, Bishop Jeeemt Taylok 
 is quoted by Archd. Peatt, pAS, as 
 havingwritten thus, two centuries ago : 
 
 That Adam was made mortal in his na- 
 ture, is infinitely certain, and proved by his 
 very eating and drinking, his sleep and re- 
 creation, Sic. That death, which God threat- 
 ened to Adam, and which passed upon his 
 posterity, is not the going out of this world, 
 but the manner of going. If he had stayed 
 in innocence, he should have gone placidly 
 and fairly, without vexatious and afflictive 
 circumstances; he should not have died by 
 sickness, defect, misfortune, or unwillingness. 
 
 1077. It need hardly be said, how- 
 ever, that the above explanation of 
 this scientific difficulty, though sup- 
 ported by the authority of so eminent 
 a writer, does not satisfy the ardent 
 defenders of the traditional view, or 
 those who have imbibed (as unhappily 
 we have, most of us, from childhood) 
 the defective theological teaching of 
 that great poet, who wrote — 
 
Of man s first disobedience, and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 
 Brought Death into the world. 
 
 Accordingly, Archd. Peatt, who 
 quotes it, does not agree -with the 
 ■writer, but referring to Eoni.v.l2, — 
 
 ' As by one man sin entered into the world, 
 and death by sin,' 
 
 — he admits that death was in the 
 world before man's sin, but reconciles 
 the difficulty as follows : — 
 
 Science here comes to our aid, to correct the 
 impressions we gather from Scripture (!); and 
 the lesson we learn from the Apostle is, not 
 that death had never appeared, even in the 
 irrational world, before the Fall of man, but 
 that, in that fearful event, sin had degraded 
 God's intellectual creature to the level of the 
 brutes in his animal nature, and in his 
 spiritual, to that of a lost and fallen being. 
 Death received its horrors when it fell upon 
 man, who alone was made in the image of 
 God. 
 
 1078. Prof. Hitchcock writes as fol- 
 lows, Geology, p.lZ: — 
 
 The common theory of Death maintains 
 that, when man transgressed, there was an 
 entire change throughout all organic nature ; 
 so that animals and plants, which before con- 
 tained a principle of immortal life, were smit- 
 ten with the hereditary contagion of disease 
 and death. Those animals which, before that 
 event, were gentle and herbivorous or fru- 
 givorous, suddenly became ferocious or car- 
 nivorous. The climate, too, changed, and the 
 sterile soil sent forth the thorn and the thistle 
 in the place of the rich flowers and fruits of 
 Eden. The great English Poet, in his * Para- 
 dise Lost,' has clothed this hypothesis in a 
 most graphic and philosophical dress; and, 
 probably, his descriptions have done more than 
 the Bible to give it currency. Indeed, could the 
 truth be known, I fancy that, on many points 
 of secondary [?] importance, the current the- 
 ology of the day has been shaped quite as 
 much by the ingenious machinery of the * Pa- 
 radise Lost,' as by the Scriptures, — the theo- 
 logians having so mised up the ideas of Milton 
 with those derived from Inspiration, that they 
 find it difBcuIt to distinguish between them. 
 
 The truth is that we literally groan, 
 even in the present day, under the 
 burden of Milton's mythology. 
 
 1079. No mention, howeyer, is made 
 of the im-mortality of the soul, of life 
 after death, in this passage, G-.iii.19; 
 and, indeed, in the writer's view, ap- 
 parently, the death of the body was 
 the end of all, as is so mournfully in- 
 timated in the Psahu of Hezekiah, 
 Is.xxicviii. 10-20. Nor does he draw 
 any strong distinction between the 
 nature of man and the brute creation : 
 both man and beast are formed by 
 
 GEN.III.1-III.24. 
 
 839 
 
 Jehovah-EloUm Himself, out of the 
 
 ground, ii.7,19, each is called a ' living 
 
 soul,' ii.7,19, each has ' in its nostrils 
 
 the breath of life,' ii.7,Tii.22. De- 
 
 LiTZSCH takes note of this, y.143,190, 
 
 and places the excellency of man in 
 
 this, that of him only it is said, that, — 
 
 ' Jehovah-Elohim breathed into his nostrils, 
 &c.' ' 
 
 1080. But it seems doubtful if the 
 writer intended to express this diifer- 
 ence. By whom was the spirit of life 
 breathed into the nostrils of any of the 
 creatures, unless by Jehovah-Elohim ? 
 In the later Hebrew writings, indeed, 
 we find, apparently, a distinction drawn 
 between the ' spirit of a man that goeth 
 upward,' and ' the spirit of a beast 
 that goeth downward to the earth,' 
 Ecel.iii.21. And though the writer 
 says, ■!;.19,20, — 
 
 ' That which befalleth the sons of men, be- 
 falleth beasts ; even one thing befalleth them: 
 as the one dieth, so dieth the other ; yea, they 
 have all one spirit (' breath ') ; ''o that a man 
 hath no preeminence above a beasv • for all is 
 vanity ; all go unto one place ; all are of the 
 dust, and all turn to dust again ' — 
 yet he seems to allow a preeminence 
 to the spirit of man above that of the 
 beast, both in the words of iii.21 above 
 quoted, and in those of xii.7, where, 
 speaking of the death of man, he 
 says, — 
 
 ' Then shall the dust return to the earth as 
 it was, and the spirit unto God who gave it/ 
 
 1081. Yet even this is doubtful, since 
 ' spirit' here means, probably, the 
 same as inEccl.iii.l9, where it is said 
 that man and beast ' have all one 
 spirit,' and therefore the language here 
 used of man might be used of beasts 
 also. And again, in iii.21, 'Who 
 knoweth the spirit of a man ? ' &c., the 
 construction of the interrogative, with- 
 out a negative, implies rather a negative 
 answer, as in Is.xl.13,14, ' "Who hath 
 directed the Spirit of Jehovah ? ' &e., 
 • — or Is.liii.l,' ' Who hath believed our 
 report?' — where the answer is meant 
 to be, ' No one.' So here the meaning 
 may be, ' No one knows whether the 
 spirit of man goeth upward, and the 
 spirit of a beast downward.' 
 
 1082. Delitzsch takes account of 
 some of the natural and necessary phe- 
 nomena of death, in the natural world 
 
 z 2 
 
340 
 
 of plants, animals, &c., before the Fall, 
 as follows, p.lS7 : — 
 
 To come into being and be deprived of being, 
 to be formed and unformed, to appear and 
 to pass away, are certainly grounded in the 
 essence of natural life, and it is true that the 
 right of the individual among the creatures 
 properly first begins with man. Thus, even 
 without the sin of man, the indiviilual forma- 
 tions of nature could not have existed eter- 
 nally ; they would, generally, have been re- 
 turned to that from which they were taken, but 
 without that anguish-and-torment-fraught, 
 for the most part violent, death, and that 
 offensive air-polluting putrefaction, which the 
 Scripture names ' death ' and ' corruption.' 
 
 1083. The fact is, in short, that we 
 have every reason from Science to sup- 
 pose that for man, as well as other 
 animals, in his natural normal state, 
 death is necessary, — that his body also 
 will at length be worn out naturally, as 
 those of the innumerable living crea- 
 tures of all kinds, which have died in 
 the ages before him, by the wear-and- 
 tear of seasons, which are just the 
 same now as in the days of old, or 
 that men may come, perhaps, to an 
 untimely end, by such accidents as 
 those which have buried so many 
 beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, 
 &c., as well as plants, of past ages, in 
 the very prime of their strength, and 
 in the midst of their activity. 
 
 1084. But then man's nature is a 
 glorious spiritual nature, conscious of 
 personal identity, prescient, desirous of 
 a future life, - a nature fitted to have 
 converse with the good and the true 
 and the beautiful, which things endure 
 for ever, — a nature that can live in 
 eternity, that even now has kindred 
 with the Divine, that can be filled 
 with the Light and Life of God. There 
 is good reason, therefore, for believing 
 that the dissolution of this mortal 
 framework of the human body wiU not 
 be the death of the spirit of man. 
 
 1085. G.iii.21. 
 * And Jehovah-Elohim made to Adam and 
 
 to his wife coats of skin, and clothed them.' 
 
 Belitzsch takes this passage as 
 being literally and historically true. 
 He makes this act, however, one of 
 great significance, p.l92 : — 
 
 Man, in consequence of sin, needs a covering 
 to hide his nakedness. He himself has made 
 the attempt to cover his nakedness by his own 
 contrivance ; however, he has not succeeded ; 
 before God he cannot present himself with his 
 
 GEN.m.l-IIL24. 
 
 flg-leaves. Only God Himself prepares for him 
 a covering, which may serve for man to appear 
 in before God,— and that from the skins of 
 slain animals, and, therefore, at the cost of 
 innocent life, at the expense of the shedding of 
 innocent blood. This blood was an iioage ol 
 thebloodof Christ, this clothing an image oj 
 the clothing of righteousness in Christ . . . 
 The original couple, clothed by God Himself, 
 upon believing apprehension of the word of 
 promise, are the image of all men justified 
 through faith in Christ. 
 
 It is of course allowable for any to 
 draw out such analogies, provided that 
 they are not enforced as articles of 
 faith, or as reaUy meant to be conveyed 
 in a passage like this. 
 1086. G.iii.24. 
 
 ' And he placed in front of the Garden of 
 Eden the cherubs,* 
 
 Dr. Thomas Bubkbt writes as fol- 
 lows. Arch. Phil, p.293 : — 
 
 The text says, v.7, ' They sewed togetherflg- 
 leaves, and made to themselves girdles.' Here 
 we have the iirst step in the art of sewing. 
 But whence had they a needle.whence a thread, 
 on that first day of their creation? These 
 questions may seem to be too free : but the 
 matter itself demands that we act freely, when 
 we are seeking the naked truth. When, how- 
 ever, they had made to themselves prdles, 
 God gave them besides coats, made, forsooth, 
 out of the skins of beasts. But here again we 
 run into dilficulties. To soften the matter, 
 let us substitute in the place of God an angel. 
 An angel, then, slew and skinned the animals, 
 or stripped the skin from innocent and living 
 animals. But this is the business of a slaught- 
 erer, or butcher, not an angel. Besides, through 
 this slaughter, whole races of animals would 
 have perished ; for it is not believed that more 
 than two of each kind were created at first ; 
 and one without the other, its male, would 
 have had no offspring. 
 
 After all this, however transacted, what 
 follows ? God drove our parents, thus clothed 
 in skins, out of Paradise, and placed at the 
 entrance of the garden cherubim, with a flam- 
 ing turning sword, lest they should reseek 
 the blessed abode by force, or even by accident, 
 la there any interpreter who will bend this to 
 the letter, and will assert that angels stood, 
 like guards, with drawn swords, before the 
 entrance of the garden through I know not how 
 many ages — as the dragons are said by tha 
 poets to have guarded the apples of the Hesperi- 
 des? Wby, how long did these angelic watchers 
 last ? To the Deluge, I suppose, it not longer. 
 Do you believe that angels were so occupied, 
 for more than 1,500 years, in keeping a garden 
 night and day? How easy would it have been, 
 in a well-watered place like Paradise, to hava 
 surrounded the garden with a stream or river, 
 which would have been an abundantly suffi- 
 cient obstacle to Adam and Eve, who knew 
 nothing as yet of the use and construction 
 of boats or ships I But these and such-liko 
 considerations, lest they should seem invi- 
 dious, I would rather leave to be pondered by 
 others. 
 
STORIES OF PAHADISE AND THE FALL IN OTHER NATIONS. 341 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 STORIES OP PARADISE AND THE FAXL 
 IN OTHER NATIONS. 
 
 1087. The Pemara myth, describing 
 the Fall of Man, which tears a striking 
 resemblance to the story in Genesis, is 
 thus given by Kalisch, Gen.p.87 : — 
 
 The first couple, the parents of the human 
 race, Meshia and Meshiane, lived originally in 
 purity and innocence. Perpetual happiness 
 was promised to them byOrmuzd, the Creator 
 oE every good gift, if they persevered in their 
 virtue. But an evil demon (Dev) was sent to 
 them by Ahriman, the representative of every- 
 thing noxious and sinful. He appeared unex- 
 pectedly in the form of a serpent, and gave 
 them the fruit of a wonderful tree, H6m;whicix 
 imparted immortality, and had the power of 
 restoring the dead to life. Thus evil inclina- 
 tions entered their hearts ; all their moral 
 excellence was destroyed. Ahriman himself 
 appeared under the form of the same reptile, 
 and completed the work of seduction. They 
 acknowledged him instead of Ormuzd as the 
 creator of everything good; and the conse- 
 quence was, that they forfeited for ever the 
 internal happinrss for which they were des- 
 tined. They killed beasts, and clothed them- 
 selves in their skins ; they built houses, but 
 paid not their debt of gratitude to the Deity. 
 The evil demons thus obtained still more per- 
 fect power over their minds, and called forth 
 envy, hatred, discord, and rebellion, which 
 raged in the bosom of the families.— .^eredo- 
 vesta, Klmker's £d.ii.217,280,lii.62,84,85. 
 
 It is unnecessary to point out the features of 
 this legend which are parallel with the Mosaic 
 narrative. It contains almost all the materials 
 of the latter,— the remarkable tree, the serpent, 
 the degradation and fall of man. It is, then, 
 evident that all these traits are not specifically 
 Mosaic ; they belonged to the common tradi- 
 tionary lore of the Asiatic nations; they 
 cannot, therefore, be essential in the system of 
 MosaK theology ; they serve to represent the 
 ideas, but are not indispensable for them ; 
 they are the vehicle used to convey certain 
 truths, but these truths might have been ex- 
 pressed in a thousand other shapes : the truths 
 are unchangeable and necessary, the form is 
 indifferent and accidental. 
 
 1088. And he gives the Chinese myth. 
 ^.89:— 
 
 The Chinese also— have their age of virtue, 
 when nature furnished abundant food to the 
 happy men, who lived peax!efully surrounded 
 hy the beasts, exercised virtue without the 
 aiistanoe of Science, and did not yet know 
 what it meantto do good or evil. Thephysioal 
 desires were perfectly subordinate to the dmne 
 spirit in mai, who had all ^^-'f^y'Pfj"! 
 ekrthly, dispositions ; disease and d^^ Sfver 
 Sproii^hedham; but partly an undue thirst 
 for knowledge, partly increasing sensuality, 
 Sid ae reduftioi of women, r*"'^,^? Hud 
 tion- all moderation was lost; passion a.nd 
 j J^ iined in the human mind ; the wax with 
 
 the animals began ; and all nature stood ini- 
 mically arrayed against him. 
 
 1089. So, again, Kalisch writes of 
 tlie Garden of Eden, ;>.108 : — 
 
 The Paradise is no exclusive feature of the 
 early history of the Hebrews. Most of the 
 ancient nations have similar narratives about 
 a happy abode, which care does not approach, 
 and which reechoes with the sounds of the 
 purest bliffl. The Greeks believed that, at an 
 immense distance beyond the Pillars of Her- 
 cules, on the borders of the Earth, were the 
 Islands of the Blessed, the Elysium, abounding 
 in every charm of life, and the Garden of the 
 Hesperides, with their golden apples, guarded 
 by an ever-watchful serpent (Ladon). But 
 still more analogous is the legend of the 
 Hindus, that, in the sacred mountain Meru, 
 which is perpetually clothed in the golden 
 rays of the Sun, and whose lofty summit 
 reaches into heaven, no sinful man can exist, 
 — that it is guarded by dreadful dragons, — 
 that it is adorned with many celestial plants 
 and trees, and is watered by/our rivers, which 
 thence separate and flow to the four chief 
 directions. Equally striMng is the resem- 
 blance to the belief of the Persians, who sup- 
 pose that a region of bliss and delight, the 
 townEriene Vedsho, or Heden,m.ore beautiful 
 than all the rest of the world, traversed by a 
 mighty river, was the original abode of the 
 first men, before they were tempted by Ahri- 
 man, in the shape of a serpent, to partake of 
 the wonderful fruit of the forbidden tree 
 Hdrn. 
 
 The 'tree of life' has analogies in the 
 'king of trees,' S6m, which the Persians 
 believed to grow at the spring Ardechsur, 
 issuing from the throne of Ormuzd, and in 
 the tall Pilpel of the Indians, to which was 
 also ascribed the power of securing immor- 
 tality and every other blessing. But the 
 ' tree of knowledge ' may be compared with, 
 the ' well of wisdom' in northern mythology, 
 from which even the great God Odin drinks, 
 and which gives knowledge even to the wise 
 Mimer. 
 
 1090. Delitzsch observes, ;p.l95: — 
 The cherubs appear here as guards of Para- 
 dise, just as in the Persian legend 99,999, i.e. 
 innumerable, attendants of the Holy _ One 
 keep watch against the attempts of Ahriman 
 over the tree H6m, which contains in itself 
 the power of the resurrection. Much closer, 
 however, lies the comparison of the winged 
 lion-and-eagle-formed griffins, which watch 
 the gold-oaves of the Arimaspian metallic 
 mountains, and of the sometimes more or 
 less hawk-formed— sometimes only winged 
 and otherwise man-formed— guardians, upon 
 the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments. The 
 resemblance of the symbols is surprisingly 
 great ; and the comparison of the King of 
 Tyre, Ez.xxviii.14-16, to a protecting chernb 
 with outspread wings, who, stationed on the 
 holy mountain, ' walked up and down in the 
 midst of the stones of fire,' instifiCR ns in 
 assuming such a connection. Its explanation 
 lies in this, that the human race, when sepa- 
 rating into peoples, took with them from^ 
 their original home the idea of the cherub, 
 
■M'2 STORIES OF PARADISE AND THE FALL IN OTHER NATIONS. 
 
 ann fashioned it mythologically. But the 
 1 tiii'lamental traces have remained unchanged, 
 )?or the occupation of the griffin is just as 
 twofold as that of the Biblical cherub. They 
 wntch before the rock of gold, but also they 
 ([raw the chariots of the gods, and carry gods 
 upon their wings. (JEsCH. Prom. Vinct) So 
 the cherubs keep watch over that which must 
 not be approached ; and the name is derived 
 pmbably from cftaraft, * grab, grapple, grasp, 
 gripe,' Sanscr. gribh, Pers. giriften, G-oth. 
 fjriffan : comp. Gr. ypv\l/, meaning a being 
 holding fast, and making what it holds unap- 
 proachable. But the cherubs also are de- 
 scribed as carrying the glory of God, when He 
 appears in the world, Ps.xviii.lO, Ez.i.l5, 
 Ecclus.xlix.8. 
 
 1091. Knobel observes, with respect 
 to the doctrine of ' Original Sin,' pAl \ 
 
 Upon this passage the doctrine of Original 
 Sin is [mainly] grounded. According to it, the 
 first pair found themselves at first in a state 
 of perfection and had an original righteous- 
 ness, or the divine image, to which also 
 belonged — in a corporeal point of view, in- 
 corruptibility, health, freedom from, pain, a 
 temperate state of sensual impulses, and 
 agreemeiit thereof with reason and will, and, 
 according to many, immortality also, — in a 
 spiritual point of view, right knowledge of 
 God and His AVill, also of self and of things 
 generally, and the power to love God, to fulfil 
 His Commands, and to act in entire agreement 
 with Him. The first pair, however, allowed 
 themselves to be misled by the Devil to the 
 transgression of the Divine Command, and 
 fell into sin : they lost the divine image, and 
 experienced a corruption of their whole na- 
 ture, and of all their powers, viz. death, and 
 other bodily evils, darkening of the spirit and 
 ignorance of God, inability to fear and love 
 God and to do His Commands, general inca- 
 pacity of the will for good, and supremacy of 
 the evil desires. This corruption descended 
 by inheritance through natural procreation to 
 all the posterity of Adam, 
 
 As this doctrine, however, is framed, it 
 finds very little support in the narrative 
 before us, independently altogether of the 
 question whethei* it is historically true. 
 
 (i) The \v#iter does not teach any original 
 state of perfection. As to the corporeal state 
 he is silent, and simply with respect to the 
 point of immortality betrays his view to this 
 efi:e(rt,that man was created originally Tno^-to/, 
 and only through partaking of the tree of 
 life, which, however, never took place, might 
 have become immortal, ii.l7, iii. 19,22. In- 
 stead of perfect knowledge, he rather ascribes 
 the opposite to the first pair, viz, the not 
 knowing good and evil, i.e, the want of moral 
 perception, and, in fact, to such an extent, 
 that they did not perceive at all that going 
 naked was unbecoming, and that clothing 
 was proper, ii.2-5. This want made them 
 •unlike God, iii.22, and was certainly not re- 
 garded by the narrator as part of the ' divine 
 image.' Of the Will of God they knew simply 
 the command forbidding them to eat of the 
 tree of knowledge, ii,17 ; at all eventSi the 
 narrative tells us of no other. Just as little 
 does the writer ascribe to the first pair a 
 
 moral perfection. He represents them rather 
 as finding themselves in a state of moral in- 
 difference, and could not do otherwise, since 
 he denies to them moral perception, — exactly 
 that, through which all morality and im- 
 morality is conditioned. Only they did not 
 transgress the above-named command before 
 the temptation ; more than this is not to be 
 seen in the narrative. 
 
 (ii) The writer relates nothing about the 
 Devil, and the temptation of Eve through him, 
 but speaks only of a serpent, iii,l,15. 
 
 (iii) He does not 1;each that a general cor- 
 ruption was introduced through the Fall. With 
 reference to the body, he represents only in 
 the case of Eve something of that kind, iii.16, 
 without, however, mentioning it as a corrup- 
 tion. On the contrary, in the case of Adam, 
 whom he makes merely to be pimished with 
 the labours of agriculture, he is silent about 
 any such change, and has certainly not as- 
 sumed any corruption of the sensitive nature 
 of man, and especially not that the latter then 
 first became mortal through the Fall. In an 
 intellectual point of view, he maintains not a 
 loss and retrogression, but a gain and advance^ 
 of the first pair, since he makes them through 
 the transgression attain a moral perception, 
 and thereby become like unto God, iii.22. 
 How that can be a loss of the divine image, it 
 is impossible to see. In a moral point of 
 view, he relates only that Adam and Eve had 
 transgressed the divine command, had com- 
 mitted a sin, and introdiiced evil into human 
 life. But he does not teach that, through one 
 single transgression, the moral nature of man 
 was entirely changed and con'upted, and man 
 has lost all capability for good. 
 
 (iv) He knows still less of a propagation of 
 the moral corruption through procreation, 
 but has manifestly assumed a grrowing in- 
 crease of evil through the free inclination of 
 man : at least, that terrible idea cannot be 
 shown to exist in his story. He sets forth the 
 direction given to Cain to master sin, iv.7, 
 and assumes, therefore, the possibility, and, 
 consequently, the capability also, for good, as 
 existing with him. 
 
 (v) He knows nothing at all of the * divine 
 image' in man, which only the Elohist has, 
 and says, therefore, notliing about the posses- 
 sion or the loss of it. 
 
 _ 1092. The truth is, that the expres- 
 sion ' divine image,' as used in dog- 
 matic theology, is used in a totally- 
 different sense from that in -wliich the 
 words are employed in Gr.i.26,27, where 
 it seems to mean chiefly the possession 
 by man of a more noble and divine 
 form, and especially of superior intel- 
 ligence, and the power of reason and 
 conscience : — 
 
 * He gave him mind,— the lordliest 
 Proportions, — and, above the rest, 
 Dominion in the head and breast.' 
 
 And the doctrine, which is above 
 stated, cannot be derived, by any pro- 
 cess of just interpretation, from the 
 
GEN.IV.1-V.32, 
 
 narrative in G.ii.l6-iii.24, though other 
 passages of Scripture uo doubt may be 
 adduced in support of it, e.g. Eom.v.l2, 
 lCor.xv.21,22. The -WTiter in Genesis 
 riither appears to have considered that 
 he was giving an account of the sub- 
 jection of the human race to fhysical 
 *vil . whereas St. Paul represents the 
 death of the human race in Adam as 
 involving that tendency to moral evil, 
 that ' lusting of the flesh against the 
 spirit,' that 'bodily death,' which he 
 felt in himself, and perceived to be 
 common to all mankind. 
 
 1093. It is sufficient merely to men- 
 tion in this place the horrible doctrine 
 of St. Augustine, upon the dogma of 
 * Original Sin,' with reference to which 
 Bishop Watson writ-es as follows, Apo- 
 logies, &c. p.463: — 
 
 * Hold thou, most firmly, nor do thou in any 
 respect doubt, that ini'ants, whether in their 
 toothers' wom.bs they begin to live and there 
 die, or when, after their mothers have given 
 birth to them, they pass from this Ife without 
 the sacrament of holy baptism, will be pun- 
 ished with the everlasting punishment of 
 eternal fire.' Parent of universal good! Merci- 
 ful Father of the human race 1 How hath the 
 benignity of Thy nature been misrepresented I 
 How hath the Gospel of Thy Son been mis- 
 interpreted by the burning zeal of presump- 
 tuous man ! I mean not on this occasion to 
 enter into the various questions, which learned 
 men have too minutely discussed, concerning 
 the lapse of our first pai-ents' original recti- 
 tude, Mid subsequent depravation of human 
 nature. I simply mean to say that a propo- 
 sition, which asserts that infants dying in the 
 womb will be tormented in everlasting fire 
 because of Adam's transgression, is a propo- 
 sition BO entirely subversive of all our natural 
 notions of the justice and mercy of the 
 Supreme Being, that it cannot be admitted 
 unless a passage in Scripture could be pro- 
 duced, in which it is clearly and in so many 
 words revealed. And I am certain that no 
 such passage can be produced. 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 GEN.IV.1-V.32, 
 
 1094. G.iv.2. 
 
 ' Abel was a keeper of sheep.' 
 Delitzsch observes, p. 199: — 
 
 The small domestic cattle, sheep and goats, 
 were kept in this earliest extra-paradisaical 
 time, on account of their woolly skin, not at 
 all to be used as food, although, perhaps, also 
 for the sake of their milk, since milk is cer- 
 tainly an animal nutriment, and, therefore, 
 was not used in paradise, but yet is not obtained 
 through the destruction of animal life. . . 
 The calling of each brother was directed 
 
 343 
 
 towards food,— that of Abel especially towards 
 that covering of their sinfnl nakedness, which 
 God's own initiation had consecrated. 
 
 It is obvious, however, that animals 
 must have been slain, if their hides 
 were usedfor covering,— unless, indeed, 
 Adam and Eve were taught the art of 
 weaving the wool into cloth, which the 
 statement in iii.21, ' Jehovah-El ohim 
 made coverings of skin,* is very far 
 from implying. It may be supposed 
 that they used the skins of animals 
 killed for sacrifices. But we have seeii 
 (1017) that, even in the use of vegeta- 
 ble food, there is necessarily infinite 
 destruction of animal life. 
 
 1095. aiv.l4. 
 
 * Every one that findeth me shall slay me.* 
 There seems to be an inconsistency 
 here in the story. Por, at this time, 
 the only man upon the face of the earth 
 was Adam — rather, the only 'male 
 person ; for Seth was not born tUl after 
 this, f.25, and, during the whole time 
 which had elapsed since the birth of 
 Cain and Abel, Eve had borne no son, 
 though she may be supposed to have 
 had daughters, among whom may be 
 reckoned Cain's wife, v.VJ. Hence 
 Cain would hardly have expected to 
 find people ready to kill him. 
 
 1096. Delitzsch writes, p.205: — 
 
 Eden {i.e. the land of Eden) was certainly 
 at this time the exclusive d^velling-place of 
 the young humanity. The writer seems here 
 to have forgotten himself. But not so : for, 
 whereas Cain feai's that beyond Eden he shall 
 be recognised as the well-known mm-dercr, 
 the story explains this by saying that there 
 was only one human family, the family of 
 Adam, and no other family standmg out of 
 connection with it, [so that eveft^ person, 
 whom he might hereafter chance to encounter 
 anywhere, would be a relative of the mm-dered 
 Abel.] It is manifestly the avenging-of -blood, 
 which Cain fears, when his father's family 
 shall spread itself : for, that murder is to be 
 punished through the death of the murderrar, 
 is a principle of justice written in every human 
 breast ; and the circumstance, that Cain al- 
 ready sees the earth full of avengers, is one 
 quite usual with the murderer, who feels him- 
 self everywhere surrounded and tormented by 
 avenging spirits. 
 
 1097. e.iv.l7. 
 
 * And he (Cain) was building a city.' 
 Delitzsch notes, /?.209 : — 
 That already a cUy comes upon the scene 
 seems absurd to those, who choose to imagine 
 to themselves the advance of human cultiva- 
 tion, as no other than a slow laborious pro- 
 
344 
 
 GEN.IV.1-V.32. 
 
 gress, out of an entirely, or partially, animal 
 state of existence. But, — leaving out of con- 
 sideration the fact that the introduction of 
 settled dwelling-places and buildings is lost in 
 the legends of all nations, fax back in the 
 mythical primal age, beyond the reach of 
 memory, — yet, when this Cainite town arose, 
 already centuries may have elapsed since the 
 origin of the human race, and 'city' means, 
 at first, nothing more than an enclosure with 
 fixed dwellings, — in opposition to mere shep- 
 herds' tents, standing near each other [like 
 huts in a Zulu kraal], and, further, changing 
 from place to place. . . It must appear much 
 more strange that Cain, who, according to 
 God's judgment, was to be ' a fugitive and a 
 vagabond,' settles himself down so firmly. 
 He has in this way set himself against the 
 divine curse, in order to feel it inwardly so 
 much the more, as outwardly he seems to have 
 overcome it. 
 
 1098. G.iv.17,18. 
 
 There is a considerable resemblance 
 "between the descendants of Cain, as 
 given in these verses, and those of Seth 
 in Gr.v. Thus ' Enoch ' and * Lamech ' 
 are found in both genealogies ; and in 
 this we have Kain, Irad, Methusael, in 
 that we have Kenan, Jered, Methuselah ; 
 also Enosh and Adam are both names 
 for ' man.' From this Buttmann infers 
 that these are two different versions of 
 the same tradition. 
 
 1099. The argnmentis ingenious and 
 plausible. Havehnick, p.l09, considers 
 that the circumstance of the similarity 
 of the two lists of names — 
 
 finds its most appropriate explanation in the 
 siiMll number of Tiames, that were in use in the 
 old world (!). 
 
 It is possible that there may be here 
 two different genealogies, or two dif- 
 ferent forms of the same genealogy. 
 Knobel, Gen.p.5^j considers that the 
 later form may, however, be merely an 
 imitation of the Elohistic genealogy 
 in chap.v, the names being ti'ansferred 
 from the Sethite to the Cainite list, 
 ■with some modifications. 
 
 1100. G.iv.20-22. 
 
 Here the first introduction of cattle- 
 keeping, music, and smithery is as- 
 cribed to the descendants of Cain. 
 With respect to these inventions, and 
 especially that of music, Delitzsch 
 observes, p. 212 : — 
 
 How comes the race of Cain to have the 
 honour of making such important advances 
 in civilisation ? For this reason, that the race 
 of the Promise has fallen out with the world, 
 while the race of the Curse is on good terms 
 with it,— for thJB reasoBi that the one is in- 
 
 fluenced from -within, and the other from 
 without,— for this reason, that the one has in 
 Grod its heart's treasure, the home of its 
 thoughts, and the object of its every aim and 
 act. while the other lives in the sensual and 
 visible, and from this seeks to enrich, adorn, 
 and establish, its poor, barren, restless life. 
 All human history confirms the observation, 
 to which the beginning of this primary his- 
 tory leads us, that culture becomes more 
 extended and refined in the treat bulk of men, 
 just in proportion as estrangement from God 
 increases. The Arts do not even now belie 
 the root of the Curse, out of which they have 
 sprung (!). There lies a magical attraction in 
 every Art and Science, which seeks to draw 
 back the heart from simplicity in God, and to 
 ensnare it in the bonds of Nature, the Flesh, 
 the life of tMs world. There is also in all 
 Music, not only an unspiritualised principle 
 still remaining, of material natural origin, 
 but also a Cainite element, of impure sensual 
 origin, which makes it at once the most 
 seemingly innocent, but, at the same time, 
 most dangerously seductive, Art. But, al- 
 though sprung from the soil of man's corrupt 
 nature, the Arts have, however, been taken 
 into the service of Holiness, because the un- 
 godliness, which clings to them is, after all, 
 common to all on this side the grave, &c. 
 
 1101. G.iv.23,24. 
 
 'Adah and Zillah, hear ray voice I 
 Wives of Lamech, give ear to my speech I 
 For I have slain a man for my wound. 
 And a youth for my hurt. 
 For Cain shall be avenged seven-times. 
 And Lamech seventy- times seven-times 1 ' 
 
 This song may have been current in 
 the popular legends at the time when 
 the Jehovist wrote. It was then com- 
 paratively old, as it would be, for in- 
 stance, if it referred to events a century 
 old. It seems to express the idea that 
 to kill in self-defence was lawful. If 
 Cain, who had killed one who had 
 done him no harm, was to be protected, 
 how much more Lamech, who had only 
 slain an enemy, on account of a 
 ' wound ' he had received from him ? 
 
 1102. In this old song, however, 
 Delitzsch finds a deep meaning, ^.215 : 
 
 We must not forget that Lamech did not 
 speak Hebrew, so that this song has passed 
 over from its original form into Hebrew 
 through a process of tradition (!) It is not 
 less a true mirror of the genesis of poetry. 
 If we look only at the contents of the song, 
 how deeply significant is this conclusion of 
 the Cainite piimeval history 1 There we find 
 expressed that Titanic pride, of which the 
 Scripture says that ' its power is its god,* 
 Hab.i.ll. Lamech looks at the fii'st arms 
 which his son forges ; his song is the song of 
 triumph at the invention of the sword. . , 
 Here is the genesis of the most spiritual of 
 ^ Arts, Poetry. Not the glorifying of God, 
 but the glorifying of murderous arms, self- 
 
deification, deifloation of the mgoaiy, waa 
 Its ongm. It -R-as coticelTed and bom in sin. 
 Its bu-thplaoe is not Heaven, and not Para- 
 di.-e, but the honse of Lameoh. It needed to 
 be regenerated, in order to be pleasing to God. 
 But it is just the same with this regeneration 
 as with that of man : he becomes a new per- 
 son, yet retains still the old nature. So has 
 Sacred Poetry certainly a new heart, directed 
 towaa-ds God ; but its bodily form is and re- 
 mains entangled in vanity, weakness, want 
 of clearness, want of harmony of everything 
 earthly (!) It is coupled, if not with sinful 
 worldliness, yet with the corse-stricken cha- 
 recter of things on this side of the grave, and 
 Btill awaits, though sanctified, its glorifi- 
 cation. 
 
 1103. Delitzsch, it will be seen, to 
 make out his theory of the ' curse- 
 stricken ' nature of Poetry, assumes — 
 
 (i) that this little song was the first 
 piece of poetry ever written, — 
 
 (ii) that it has connection with the 
 forging of the first sword. 
 
 Such, however, is the deadly Mani- 
 cheeism which is taught by many, 
 even in this day, as Christianity ! It 
 is that which seeks to turn this blessed 
 world in which we lire, and in which 
 God dwells, with all its light and 
 beauty and glory, into a dark gloomy 
 prison-house, and which represents the 
 very excellencies of our nature, its 
 divine faculties, its God-given capa- 
 bilities, its infinite strivings after im- 
 provement and progress, as standing 
 in close connection with the Curse, 
 and its manifold developments of 
 genius, in all kinds of A rts and Sciences, 
 as so many sources of danger and death, 
 instead of the healthy and happy mani- 
 festations of life. 
 
 1104. Von BoHLEN, ^.82, supposes 
 that the people of Eastern Asia gene- 
 rally, and especially of India, are re- 
 ferred to in this story : — 
 
 In the narrative of the Hebrew compiler 
 we find an acknowledgment, that the Asiatic 
 nations to the east of Palestine were of greater 
 antiquity than the Jews, [Cain was the Jirst- 
 lom, 11.1,]— that they did not worship Je- 
 hovah, [' from Thy Face I shall be aid,' v.li. 
 •and Cain went out from the face of 
 Jehovah," i>.16] — that they followed agri- 
 cultural pursuits at an earlier period than 
 the Hebrew nation, [' Jabal was the father 
 of all such as dwell in tents and among cattle,' 
 «i.20,] and inhabited towns, [' Cain was build- 
 ing a city, 0.17,] and became civilised, 
 [Jubal invented ' the lute and the flute,^ v.2i, 
 Tnbal-Cain wrought in ' brass and iron,' v.W, 
 Lamech composed a song, d.23,]— but that, 
 with all this, they must be regarded in the 
 light of proscribed outlaws, [' fugitive and 
 
 GEN.IV.1-V.32. 
 
 345 
 
 vagabond,' t;.12,14.]. . . TVe may notice the 
 circumstances, that the Zend religion de- 
 cidedly enjoins and favours agriculture, [the 
 occupation of Cain, d.2,]— this employment 
 appearing to be, according to its tenets, a 
 species of divine service. [The very name 
 'Aryan' is derived from .4r, ' to plough.'] . . 
 On the other hand, a pastoral life, [such as 
 that of Abel, D.2,] which in Palestine never 
 wholly disappeared, was considered by the 
 Hebrew narrator as protected and consecrated 
 by the blessing of Jehovah. Agriculture, too, 
 according to the same writer, had been im- 
 posed as a punishment on man, iii.17-19 ; and 
 it was here degi-aded, from the same feeling 
 of antipathy to that employment, which the 
 Hebrew derived from his nomad origin, and 
 which he still continued to manifest, long 
 after he had been obliged, by bis settled 
 position in Palestine, to devote himself to 
 the cultivation of the soil, and to enact 
 agrarian laws. Agriculturists were always 
 esteemed an inferior class to shepherds among 
 the Israelites ; kings kept their flocks ; men of 
 superior attainments arose from pastoral life. 
 
 1105. He suggests also, ^.90: — 
 Kod lay eastward of Eden: and if the com- 
 piler (as often happens in Arabic with foreign 
 names) was deceived by imagining that there 
 was a Semitic article in Bind, (Heb. and 
 Arab, for India, for which Hoddu—HondUf 
 stands in JGlsth.i.l,) we should in that case, of 
 course, with J. I). MiCHAEUs, see here an 
 expression for India in the widest meaning . . 
 We are reminded by the name of Cain's city, 
 (Enoch) Khanoch, v. 1 7 , of the very ancient com- 
 mercial city of Chanoge, Arab. Khanug, in 
 Northern India, celebrated in the early epica 
 of the Hindoos, and called by the ancients 
 Canogyza, of which the narrator might have 
 heard. 
 
 For our purpose, of course, no stress 
 can be laid upon the above suggestion, 
 which at the best cannot be raised 
 beyond a doubtful probability. It 
 seems, however, very possible that 
 India, with its early progress in civili- 
 sation and the arts, may be here re- 
 ferred to, since in Solomon's time, — 
 the age in which it is most likely that 
 this Jehovistic chapter was written, — 
 there was probably considerable inter- 
 course with theEast, 1 K.x.11; and thus 
 India, and even its great commercial 
 town, ' Chanoge,' may have become 
 known to the Israelites. 
 
 1106. Knoeei,,^.53, considers that 
 the nations referred to are rather the 
 northern and north-eastern peoples of 
 Asia, the Hunnish tribes of Mongo- 
 lian origin, to whom belonged the 
 original inhabitants of Thibet and 
 Higher India, as well as the Chinese, 
 Japanese, &c. The restless Tartar 
 tribes would thus correspond to the 
 
346 
 
 GEN.IV.1-V.32. 
 
 description ' fugltiTe and vagabond,' 
 ■while tile very aucient settlement and 
 civilisation of China would explain 
 the notice of inventions in the arts, &e. 
 All these tribes, being marked with a 
 peculiar physiognomy, were quite dis- 
 tinguished, not only from all the She- 
 mitic tribes, but from the supposed 
 kindred of the latter, the descendants of 
 Earn and Japlieth. And if the words in 
 iv.lo be translated, 'And Jehovah set 
 a mark on Cain,' and explained, as they 
 are by many interpreters, to imply 
 some peculiar mark set on his person, 
 there might be a reference to the 
 strangely-marked features of all the 
 people of this race. 
 
 1107. No doubt there is, as Knobel 
 observes, an important objection to any 
 explanation of this kind, viz. that, ac- 
 cording to the story, the Cainites must 
 have been altogether swept away by 
 the Deluge, and therefore it cannot be 
 supposed that they represent nations 
 living after that event. But he adds, 
 p.54 : — 
 
 It cannot be doubted, however, that the 
 writer was led to give the Table of Cainite 
 genealogy through his knowledge of the post- 
 diluvian Eastern-Asiatics, and follows this 
 knowledge in the separate details about the 
 Cainites. There exists, then, an inconsist- 
 ency, if, knowing of post-diluvian Cainites, 
 he yet makes all the Cainites perish through 
 the flood. Such mistakes, however, are not 
 uncommon with Mm [as in the notice of 
 Cain's fear of being killed, v,\i, his building 
 a city, V.17, when there was as yet no popula- 
 tion]. This inconsistency mght have been 
 avoided, if he had mentioned the Cainites, in 
 case he did not wish to omit them, among the 
 jios^diluvian men ; but then he would have 
 fallen into another error, since he must have 
 referred them back to Noah and his sons, 
 while he yet knew that the descendants of 
 Koah, and those of Seth generally, were con- 
 fined to the TTeif- Asiatic nations. 
 
 1108. The great longevity of ancient 
 days, beyond the reach of authentic 
 history, is common to the traditions of 
 all nations. 
 
 Dion. Sic.i.2e, HEEon.iii.23, Pun. Bid. Nat. 
 vli.48, speak of persons who have lived a 
 thousand years. According to the Lamaic 
 creed, the first man lived 60,000 years ; and 
 the Indian traditions speak of four epochs, 
 during which the dm-ation of hiunan life sank, 
 successively, from 400 to 300, :iOO, 100 years. 
 . . . There are ten Patriai'chs reckoned (before 
 the Flood. So the Hindoos believed in ten 
 great saints, the offspring of Mann, and 
 in ten different personifications of Vishnu , 
 the Egyptians knew ten mighty heroes, the 
 
 Chaldeans ten kings before the Flood, th* 
 Assyrians ten lungs from Ham to Ninyas, and 
 as many from Japhet to Ai-am ; and the Book 
 of Enoch enumerates tm periods, each com- 
 prising seven generations, from Adam to the 
 Messiah. Kausoh, Gen.p.\!>ii,wn. 
 
 So Plato enumerates ten sons of Neptnne, 
 as the nalers of his imaginary Island of 
 Atlantis, submerged by the Deluge. 
 
 1109. Delitzsch justly observes, p. 
 221, that the notion that these great 
 ages can be reduced to moderate dimen- 
 sions, by supposing that a year meant 
 a month, brings nonsense instead of 
 meaning into the story; for, in that 
 case, Mahalaleel and Enoch would have 
 each had a eon when only (65 months = ) 
 5i years old. Besides which, the 
 notices of Noah's age in the account of 
 the Deluge, vii.ll, viii.lS, refer incoil- 
 testably to common years, as appears 
 from the mention of second, sevinth, 
 ttnth, first months, vii. 11, viii. 4,5,13,14. 
 
 1110. As soon, however, as we come 
 down in the Bible to the account of 
 really historical times, we see no more 
 of these extraordinary ages. But the 
 average extreme duration of human 
 life, — which is described as lying be- 
 tween 1000 and 700 years from Adam 
 to Noah, between 600 and 200 years 
 from Noah to Abraham, and between 
 200 and 100 years from Abraham to 
 Moses and Joshua, — sinks down at last 
 to 'threescore-years-and-ten,' Fs.xc.lO, 
 even as now. 
 
 1111. G.V.3. 
 
 'And he (Adam) begat in his likeness after 
 his image, and called his name Seth.* 
 
 Knobel observes, p. 71 : — • 
 
 This passage teaches — 
 
 (i) That the Elohist, also, assumed onlyon6 
 human pair, which is not distinctly men- 
 tioned in i.'26 ; 
 
 (ii) That Seth was [according to this writer] 
 an image of God ; for the \\Titor first marks 
 distinctly that man hatl been created after 
 God's image, and then adds that he begat in 
 his likeness after his image, i.e. a bemg alto- 
 gether like himself. 
 
 The Elohist, in fact, knows nothing of 
 the account of the ]?all in G.iii, and, 
 therefore, cannot mean to say, in the' 
 passage before us, as some suppose, that 
 Adam begat a son in his own falkn 
 image. That duel rine cannot be based 
 on this passage of Spripture, rightly 
 interpreted according to the meaning 
 of its author. 
 
1112. G.T.24. 
 
 THE BOOK OF ENOCH. 
 
 347 
 
 'And Enoch walked with Elohlm, and he 
 was not, for Elohim took him.' 
 
 KNOBELhere notes, p.72 : 
 
 With Enoch may be well compared the 
 Phrygian King Aimakus or Nannakus, who is 
 said to have lived before the great Flood, and 
 whose name was proverbial for very ancient 
 things, a& well as for great calamities. Ac- 
 cording to the story, it was predicted in the 
 time of Annafcus, (who was more than WO 
 years old, and could prophesy,) that after his 
 death all should be destroyed, by reason of 
 which the Phrygians were very sorrowful. 
 Nannakus saw the coming Flood beforehand, 
 assembled all into the Temple, and offered 
 mournful intercessions. 
 
 1113. In Part V we shall discuss the 
 remainder of the First Eleven Chapters 
 of Genesis, including the consideration 
 of the physical, ethnological, and philo- 
 logical questions, which are raised by 
 the Scriptural accounts of the Flood, 
 the Dispersion of- Kations, the Tower 
 of Babel, &c. We shall conclude the 
 present Part by giving some account 
 of the remarkable apocryphal ' Book of 
 Enoch,' which is a work of great interest 
 and significance in relation to our pre- 
 sent inquiries. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE BOOK OF ENOCH. 
 
 1114. In the ' General Epistle of 
 JuDE,' !).14,15, we find the following 
 well-known reference to the ' Book of 
 Enoch ' : — 
 
 * And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, 
 prophesied of these, saying. Behold, the Lord 
 Cometh with ten thousands of His Saints, to 
 execute judgment upon all, and to convince 
 all that are ungodly among them of all their 
 ungodly deeds which they have ungodly com- 
 mitted, and of all their hard [speeches] which 
 imgodly sinners have spoken against Him.' 
 
 It seems plain that the author of 
 this Canonical Epistle believed that 
 the ' Book of Enoch,' in which the 
 above passage occurs as chap.ii, was 
 actually written by ' Enoch, the seventh 
 from Adam,' or, at least, contained 
 , the record of his prophecies, just as 
 confidently as he and others of hi.s 
 time, e.ff. St. Paui,, believed that the 
 Pentateuch was either actually the 
 work of Moses, or, at all events, con- 
 tained a true record of his doings. 
 
 1115. Itmay be said, indeed, that the 
 words are really Enoch's, handed down 
 
 by tradition from the years beyond 
 the Flood, and quoted by St. Jude 
 from this tradition, and not from the 
 ' Book of Enoch.' But it is unnecessary 
 to reply to such an extravagant suppo- 
 sition, more especially when we con- 
 sider the influence, which this ' Book ' 
 undeniably had upon the minds of 
 other writers of the New Testament, 
 as will be seen presently. 
 
 1116. Yet there is no doubt that the 
 ' Book of Enoch' is a fiction ; and, 
 according to Archbishop LiUEENCE, 
 {Book of Enoch, Prel. Diss, p.xliy), it 
 was composed within about fifty years 
 immediately preceding the birth, of 
 Christ : — 
 
 It may, perhaps, be remarked as a singu- 
 larity, that a book, composed at less than 
 one hundred — ^perhaps, at less than fifty — 
 years before St. Jude's Epistle was written, 
 should in so short a spa^e of time have so far 
 imposed upon the public, as to be reputed by 
 any the genuine production of the Patriarch 
 Enoch. 
 
 And he adds in a note, — 
 
 The Epistle of St. JuDE is generally sup- 
 posed to have been written about a.d. 70. If, 
 then, we place the composition of the Book of 
 Enoch in the eighth year of Herod, that is, 
 thirty years before Christ, its date will pre- 
 cede that of the Epistle by an exact centmy. 
 
 Many excellent critics, however, 
 maintain that the internal evidence of 
 the Epistle of St. Jude makes it nearly 
 — if not quite — certain, that it was not 
 written till the middle of the Second 
 Century at the earliest. 
 
 1117. But the facts connected with 
 the 'Book of Enoch' are of so great 
 interest and importance, in relation to 
 the present controversy as to the age 
 and authorship of the Pentateuch, 
 that we must dwell more at length 
 upon them, — ■ more especially as 
 tlieywill, probably, not be familiarly 
 known to many readers. It will be 
 observed that three points are at once 
 determined by the manner in which 
 this book is quoted, — as being as 
 authentic and authoritative as any 
 other part of Holy Scripture, — in this 
 Canonical Epistle, which is recognised 
 in the Church of England as ha-i-iug 
 been written by one of the Apostles. 
 
 1118. First, it appears that a spuri- 
 ous book like this could, even in so late 
 and advanced an age, acquire among the 
 
848 
 
 THE BOOK OF ENOCH. 
 
 Jews in a very short time, — within, 
 perhaps, fifty, or, at most, a hundred 
 and eighty years, — the reputation of a 
 veritable authentic document, really 
 emanating from the antediluvian Pa- 
 triarch, and either written originally 
 by his own hand, or, at leasts handed 
 down by tradition from those who lived 
 before the Deluge. In the face of this 
 fact, is there any reason to doubt that 
 the Pentateuch also, though not written 
 by Moses, may yet have been received 
 by the Jews, in the dark and troubled 
 times of the Captivity, as being really 
 and truly the work of the Great Law- 
 giver, and have been implicitly be- 
 lieved to be such by those who lived 
 in yet later days ? 
 
 1119. Secondly, it is plain that, if St. 
 JuDB was the writer of this Epistle, 
 even an Apostle could be mistaken in 
 such a matter, and could actually use, 
 as a powerful argument, a quotation 
 from the prophecies of ' Enoch, the 
 seventh from Adam.* Is there any 
 reason why the same, or any other 
 Apostle, as St, Paul, should not be 
 equally in error in quoting words, as 
 words of Moses, which had never been 
 written by him ? 
 
 1120. Thirdly, on the other hand, if 
 St. Jtob was not the author of the 
 Epistle, it would follow that abook (that 
 ascribed to St Jude) received in the 
 Church as Canonical, could be regarded 
 also as Apostolical, under a mistaken 
 opinion as to its authorship, and, there- 
 fore, that the fact of other books (as 
 the Books of the Pentateuch) having 
 been received as Canonical, and as- 
 cribed to a certain author (as Moses), 
 is no guarantee of their having been 
 really written by him. 
 
 1121. The following extract from" 
 Kalisch, Gen.p. 166, will give the 
 reader some idea of the nature and 
 general contents of the Book of Enoch: 
 
 The Book of Enoch insists, with the earnest- 
 ness of the old Prophets, upon the renewal and 
 restoration of the pure Biblical faith; it 
 combats with equal energy against the cor- 
 ruptions of Rabbinical interpretation and the 
 inroads of Greek philosophy, against super- 
 stition and paganism. The author deduces 
 aU his truths from no other source but the 
 written holy books, and rejects traditional 
 exaggerations and embellishments. He gives 
 enthusiastic descriptions of the world of 
 
 angels ; he delineates their respective rank 
 and glory ; he introduces men into the 
 abode of these pure spirits, and elevates them 
 to their light, and peace, and wisdom. He 
 furnishes the most elaborate and most de- 
 tailed descriptions of the future life in such 
 completeness, that no later time has been 
 able to enlarge them. He gives a clear pic- 
 ture of the Sheol, its different divisions, and 
 the preliminary judgment there held,— of the 
 hell (geheuna) where the wicked are doonted 
 to receive their punishment, — of the place 
 where the fallen angels and contumacious 
 powers of nature are fettered. He describes 
 in full outlines the resurrection of the dead, 
 and the Messianic judgment over the dead 
 and living. But one of the most remarkable 
 features of the Book of Enoch is its very 
 elaborate and clear description of the person 
 and the times of the Messiah. It does not only 
 comprise the scattered allusions of the O.T. 
 in one grand picture of unspeakable bliss, un- 
 alloyed virtue, and unlimited knowledge ; it 
 represents the Messiah, not only as the King, 
 but as the Judge of the world, who has the 
 decision over everything on earth and in 
 heaven. In the Messiah is the * Son of Man, 
 who possesses righteousness, since the GJod of 
 all spirits has elected him, and since he has 
 conquered all by righteousness in eternity.' 
 But he is also the ' Son of God,' the Elected 
 One, the Prince of Righteousness; he is 
 gifted with that wisdom, which knows all 
 secret things ; the Spirit in all its fulness is 
 poured out on him ; his glory lasts to all 
 eternity; he shares the throne of God's 
 Majesty ; king^ and princes will worship 
 him, and will invoke his mercy ; he pre- 
 existed before all time ; * before the sun and 
 the signs were made, and the stars of heaven 
 were created, his name was already pro- 
 claimed before the Lord of all spirits'; ' be- 
 fore the creation of the world he was elected '; 
 and although still unknown to the children 
 of the world, he is already revealed to the 
 pious by prophecy, and is praised by thrt 
 angels in heaven. Even the dogma of tbe 
 Trinity is implied in the book. It is formed 
 by the Lord of the spirits, the Elected One, 
 and the Divine Power : they partake both of 
 the name and of the omnipotence of God. 
 
 1122. Upon the latter point, the re- 
 cognition of a Trinity in the Book of 
 Enoch, Archbp. Laurence writes as 
 follows, Book of Enoch, p.lii : — 
 
 Neither is allusion thus only made to the 
 Elect One or the Messiah, but also to another 
 Divine Person or Power, both of whom, 
 imder the joint denomination of the Lords, 
 are stated to have been * over ,the water,' — 
 that is, as I conceive, over the fluid mass of 
 unformed matter, — at the period of Creation. 
 * He (the Elect One),' it is stated, ' shall call 
 to every power of the heavens, to all the holy 
 above, and to the power of God. The Cheru- 
 bim, the Seraphim, and the Ophanim, all the 
 angels of power, and all the angels of the Lords, 
 — viz. of the Elect One, and of the Other Power, 
 who waB upon earth over the water on that 
 day, — shall raise their united voice &c.' In 
 this passage, an obvious reference,! conceivei 
 
THE BOOK OP ENOCH. 
 
 occurs to the first verse of Genesis, in which 
 It IS said, ' the Spirit ot God moved on the 
 face of the waters.' As, therefore, the more 
 Ml description of the Son of Man here given 
 may be considered as the Jewish comment of 
 the day npou the vision of Daniel, so also, I 
 apprehend, must the last quoted allusion to 
 the Book of Genesis be considered as a com- 
 ment of the same nature upon that account 
 of Moses, which describes the commencement 
 of Creation. Here, then, we have not merely 
 the declaration of a Plwrality, but that of a 
 precise and distinct Trinity, of persons, under 
 the supreme appellation of Qod and Lords \ 
 the Lords are denominated the Elect One, and 
 the Other (divine) Power, who is represented 
 as engaged in the formation of the world on 
 that day, that is, on the day of Creation. And 
 it should be added that upon [each of] these 
 a particular class of angels is mentioned as 
 appropriately attendant. 
 
 And again he writes, y.lvi : — 
 Here there is nothing cabbalisticaJ ; here 
 there is no allegory, but a plain and clear, 
 though slight, allusion to a doctrine, which, 
 had it not formed a part of the popular creed 
 at the time, would scarcely have been intelli- 
 gible. Three Lords are enumerated, the Lord 
 of spirits, the Lord the Elect One, and the Lord 
 the Other Power, — an enumeration which evi- 
 dently implies the acknowledgment of three 
 distinct Persons, participating in the name 
 and in the power of the Godhead. 
 
 1123. In En.lxxi.18,19, we read as 
 follows : — 
 
 * At that period the day is longer than the 
 night, being twice as long as the night, and 
 becomes twelve parts ; but the night is 
 shortened, and becomes six parts.' 
 
 From this it wonld seem that, at the 
 place where the author lived, or, per- 
 haps, where he supposes Enoch to have 
 lived, the longest day was twice as long 
 as the night, i.e. was sixteen hours 
 long ; and from this it may be inferred 
 that it was a place in about 45° to 50° 
 North Lat., and, consequently, very 
 fartothenorthofPalestine(31°-33^°). 
 Archbishop Latibence supposes that 
 he may have been — 
 one of the inibes which Shalmaneser carried 
 away, and 'placed in Halah and Habor by 
 the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the 
 Jfeies', 2K.xvii.6, ajid who never returned 
 from captivity. 
 
 He adds, ^.xlvii : — 
 
 Composed, therefore, in the assumed name 
 and character of Enoch, and having been 
 brought into Judea from a distant country, 
 it could not have been well known or quoted 
 under any other title than that of the Bode 
 of Enoch : and although the generality must, 
 from its incongruities, have deemed Its con- 
 tents apoorTPbal, yet might there ia™ been 
 some who, deceived by its external evidence 
 and pretensions, ignorantly esteemed it to be 
 
 349 
 
 the genuine production ot the Patriarch him- 
 self, [as plainly did the writer ot Jude U,15.] 
 
 1124. It may be mentioned, as afaet 
 of interest with reference to our present 
 discussion, that the numerous names 
 of angels which occur in this book, are 
 in very many instances compounded 
 with 'Elohim ' or ' El', as Urakabara- 
 merf, Akiberf, Tamirf, Kamuf/, Dane/, 
 Azke«?, Asa( /, SamsaveeZ, Ertaf Z, TureZ, 
 Yomyae/, En.vii.9, (names of the ' pre- 
 fects ' of the ' two hundred angels,' 
 who took wives of the daughters of men, 
 G.vi.1,2,) —but none, apparently, are 
 compounded with Jehovah. 
 
 1125. Kaxisoh adds the following 
 information (condensed from Archbp. 
 Laueence) as to the fortunes of the 
 book, p.l66 :— 
 
 We may add, with regard to the history ot this 
 extraordinary book, that, when it appeared, 
 it was evidently received and read with eager 
 interest, — that it was soon translated into 
 Greek, and from this language into the Ethio- 
 pian dialect, — ^that most of the Fathers of the 
 Church, down to the time of Atigtjstike and 
 Jerome, used and quoted it,— that, however, 
 from this period, it fell into almost entire 
 oblivion. . . The MS., which ADGUsrns Mil 
 deposited in the library of the Vatican, re- 
 mained unnoticed. But the celebrated tra- 
 veller Jambs Bruce brought, in 1773, three 
 copies ot the Ethiopian version to Europe ; 
 and, since this time, translations and valuable 
 commentaries have been published. . . This 
 remarkable apocryphal production, which, if 
 we are not mistaken, will one day be em- 
 ployed as a most important witness in the 
 history of religious dogmas, deserves the 
 most careful study ; and it is accessible to the 
 English reader in the editions of LAmiENCE, 
 whose interesting ' Preliminary Dissertation' 
 commands especial attention. 
 
 1123. Itwouldappear — notonlyfrom 
 its being quoted in the Epistle of St. 
 Jude, but from the very many passages 
 of theN.T., which so strikingly resemble 
 it in language and imagery — that the 
 Book of Enoch must have exerted con- 
 siderable influence upon the minds of 
 devout persons in the first age of 
 Christianity, andanust have helped to 
 fashion many of the ideas which pre- 
 vailed at that time, especially as regards 
 the popular conceptions about Hell, 
 and the endless torment of the wicked. 
 We shall here produce, from the 
 translation of Archbishop Laueence,— 
 which, though in some respects de- 
 fective, is sufficiently accurate for our 
 present purpose,— a series of passageg 
 
350 
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 out of the Book itself, which closely 
 correspond with msmy familiar passages 
 of the N.T. writers. They will be 
 found also to illustrate many notices in 
 the first chapters of Genesis. 
 
 (i) En.ii, * Behold, He comes with, ten 
 thousands of His saints, to execiite judgment 
 upon them, and destroy the -wicked, and re- 
 prove all the carnal for everything which the 
 sinful and ungodly have done and committed 
 against Him.' 
 
 Co7np. Jude 14,15,* Behold, the Lord cometh 
 with ten thousands of His saints, to execute 
 judgment upon all, and to convince all 
 that are ungodly among them* of all their 
 ungodly deeds which they have ungodly 
 committed, and of all their hard [speechas], 
 which ungodly sinners have spoken against 
 Him.' 
 
 (ii) En.vi.9, ' The elect shall possess light 
 3oy, and peace, and they sJmll inherit the earth.' 
 
 Comp. Matt.v.5, ' Blessed are the meek, for 
 thev shall inherit the earth': but comp. also, 
 Ps!xxv.l3,xxxvii.9. 11,22. &c. 
 
 (iii) En.ix.3, * Then they said to their Lord 
 the King : Thou aa-b Lord of lords. God of 
 gods, Xing of kings. Tlie thi'one of Thy glory 
 is for ever and ever, and for ever and ever is 
 thy name sanctified and glorified. Thou art 
 blessed and glorified. Thou hast made all 
 things ; Thou possetsest power over all things ; 
 and all things are open and manifest before 
 Thee. Thou beholdest all thhigs, and nothing 
 can be concealed from Thee.' 
 
 En.lxxxiii.2-4, ' Blessed art Thou, Lord, 
 the King, great and powerful in Thy great- 
 ness, Lord of all the creatures of heaven, King 
 of Icings, God of the whole world, whose reign, 
 whose kingdom, and whose majesty endure 
 for ever and ever. From generation to gene- 
 ration shall Thy dominion exist. All the 
 heavens are Thy throne for e\'er, and all the 
 earth Thy footstool for ever and ever. For 
 Tliou hast made them, and Thou reignest 
 over all. No act whatever exceeds Thy power. 
 With Thee wisdom is unchangeable, nor from 
 Thy throne and presence is it ever averted. 
 Thou knowest all things, seost and hearest 
 them ; nor is anything concealed from Thee.' 
 
 Comp. Heb.iv.l3, ' Neither is there any 
 creature, that is not manifest in His sight : 
 but all things are naked and opened unto the 
 eyes of Him with whom we have to do.' 
 
 Kev.iv.ll, 'Thou art worthy, Lord, to 
 receive glory, and honour, and power ; for 
 Thou hast created all things, and for Thy 
 pleasure they are, and were created.' 
 
 Rev.xv.S, 'Great and marvellous are thy 
 works. Lord God Almighty ; just and true are 
 Thy ways. Thou King of Saints. Who shall 
 not fear Thee, Lord, and glorify thy name ? 
 for Thou only art holy ; for all nations shall 
 come and worship before Thee ; for Thy judg- 
 ments are made manifest.' 
 
 Bev.xvii.14, xLx.lG, 'King of kings and 
 Lord of lords.' 
 
 (iv) En.x.15,16, ' To Michael, also, the Lord, 
 said, Go, and announce his crime to Samyaza 
 and to the others who are with him, who 
 have been associated with women. . . . Bind 
 them for seventy generations underneath the 
 
 OF ENOCH. 
 
 earth, even to the day of judgment and of 
 consummation, until the judgment, which 
 will last for ever, be completed. Then shall 
 they be taken away into the lowest depths of 
 the fire in torments, and in confinement shall 
 they be shut up for ever.' 
 
 En.xii.5, 'Then He said to me, Enoch, 
 scribe of righteousness, go, tell the watchers 
 of heaven, who have deserted the lofty sky, 
 and their holy everlasting station, who have 
 been polluted with women, and have done as 
 the sons of men do, by taking to themselves 
 wives, and who have been greatly corrupted 
 on the earth, that on the earth they shall 
 never obtain peace and remission of sin.' 
 
 Comp. Jude 6, ' And the angels which kept 
 not their first estate, but left their ovtrn habi- 
 tation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains 
 under darkness, unto the judgment of the 
 Great Day.' 
 
 2 Pet.ii.4, * God spared not the angels that 
 sinned, but cast them down to hell, and de- 
 livered them into chains of darkness, to he 
 reserved nnto judgment.' 
 
 [Thus the ' fall of the angels,' alluded to in 
 Jude 6 and 2 Pet.ii.4. was not, it would seem, 
 previous to the creation of man.] 
 
 Bev.xiv.4, ' These are they, which were not 
 defiled with women, &c.' 
 
 Bev.xx.2, ' And he ]aid hold on the dragon, 
 that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, 
 and bound him a thousand years, &c.' 
 
 Rev.xx.lO, 'And the devil, that deceived 
 them, ^^■as cast into the lake of fire and brim- 
 stone. . . . and shall be tonnented, day and 
 night, for ever.' 
 
 (v) Bn.xiv. 17-24, 'Attentively I surveyed 
 it, and saw that it contained an exalted 
 throne . . . and there was the voice of the 
 cherubim. From underneath this mighty 
 throne rivers of flaming fire issued ; to look 
 upon it was impossible. One great in glory 
 sat upon it, whose robe was brighterthan the 
 sun, and whiter than snow. No angel was 
 capable of penetrating to view the Pace of 
 Him, the Glorious and the Effulgent ; nor 
 could any mortal behold Him. A fire was 
 flaming around Him ... so that not one of 
 those who surrounded Him was capable of 
 approaching Him, among the (myriads of 
 myriads) ten thousand times ten thousand 
 who were before Him. . . Yet did not the 
 sanctified, who were near Him, depart from 
 Him, either by night or by day.* 
 
 En.xxxix.l2, ' There my eyes beheld all 
 who, without sleeping, stand before Him and 
 bless Him, saying. Blessed be Thou, and 
 Blessed be the Name of God for ever and for 
 ever ! ' 
 
 Comp. ReT.iv.2, ' Behold a throne was set 
 in heaven, and One sat on the throne, and He 
 that sat was to look upon like a jasper and 
 sardine stone.' 
 
 Rev.iv.8, 'And they rest not day and night, 
 saying, Holy I Holy 1 Holy I ' 
 
 Rev.v.ll, 'And I beheld, and I heard the 
 voice of many angels round about the throne 
 . . . and the number of them was ten thou- 
 sand times ten thousand and thousands of 
 thousands.' 
 
 Kev.vii.l5, 'Therefore are they before the 
 throne of God, and serve Him day and night 
 in His temple.* 
 
THE BOOK OF ENOCH. 
 
 351 
 
 <Ti) En.xxlv.9-n, ' And that tree of an 
 agi-eeable smell, not one of a carnal odoiir 
 , . . tliero shall be no power to touch until 
 the period of the great judf^ent. When all 
 shall be punished and consumed for ever, 
 this shall be bestowed on tlic righteous and 
 himible. The Iruit of this tree shall be given 
 to the elect. For life shall be planted towards 
 the north in the holy place, towards the habi- 
 tation of the evei-lastiiig King. Thon shall 
 they greatly rejoice and exult in the Holy 
 One. The sweet odour shall enter into their 
 bones ; and they shall live a long life on the 
 earth, as thy forefathers have lived, neither 
 in their days shall sorrow, distress, trouble, 
 and punishment afflict them. And I blessed 
 the Lord of Glory, the everlasting King, be- 
 cause He has prepared this tree for the saints, 
 formed it, and declared that He would give it 
 to them.' 
 
 Comp. The ' tree of life,' G.ii.9,iii.22,' Lord 
 of glory,' Jamesii.l. 
 
 Rev.ii.7, ■■ To him that overcometh will I 
 give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the 
 midst of the paradise of God.' 
 
 Rev.xxii.2, ' In the midst of the street of it, 
 and on either side of the river, was there the 
 tree of life, which hare twelve manner of 
 fruits, and yielded her fruit every month ; 
 and the leaves of the tree were for the healing 
 of the nations.* 
 
 Bev.xxii.l4, * Blessed are they that do His 
 commftudments, that they may have right to 
 the tree of life.' 
 
 (vii) En.xxxi.2-5, • From thence I passed 
 on above the summits of those mountains to 
 some distance eastwards, and went over the 
 Erythrtean sea. And when I was advanced 
 far beyond it, I passed along above the angel 
 Zateel, and arrived at the garden of righteous- 
 ness. . . The tree of knowledge also was 
 there, of which if any one eats, he becomes 
 endowed with great wisdom. . . . Then holy 
 Raphael, an angel who was with me, said. 
 This is the tree of knowledge, of which thy 
 ancient father and thy a^ed mother ate, 
 who were before thee ; and who, obtaining 
 knowledge, their eyes being opened, and 
 knowing themselves to be naked, were ex- 
 pelled from the garden.' 
 
 Comp. the *tree of knowledge of good and 
 evil,' G.ii.iii. 
 
 (viii) En.xxxviii.2, ' Where will the habi- 
 tation of sinners be, and where the place of 
 rest for those who have rejected the Lord of 
 spirits ? It woold have been better for thdm, 
 if they had never been bom.' 
 
 C&mp, Matt.xxvi.24, * It had been good for 
 that man, if he had not been bom.' 
 
 (ix) En.xl.l, * After this I beheld thousands 
 of thousands, and ten thousand times ten 
 thousand, and an infinite number of people, 
 fctanding before the Lord of spirits. 
 
 Comp. Rev.v.ll, * And I beheld, and I heard 
 the voice of many angels round about the 
 throne . . and the number of them was ten 
 thousand times ten thousand, and thousands 
 of thousands.' .-,,.1,1^ ^ t . 
 
 Rev vii 9 ' After this I beheld, and lo I a 
 Rreat multitude, which no man could number, 
 of all nations, and kindred, and people, and 
 tnntnies stood before the throne. 
 
 (5 En!Sv:3-5, ' In that day shall the Elect 
 
 One sit upon a throne of glory, and shall 
 choose their conditions and countless habita- 
 tions, [comp. the ' many mansions,' St. John 
 xiv.2,]— while their spirits within them shall 
 be strengthened, when they behold my Elect 
 One, — ^for those who have fled for protection 
 to my holy and glorious Name. In that day I 
 will cause my Elect One to dwell in the midst 
 of them. I will change the face of the 
 heaven : I will bless it and illuminate it for 
 ever. I will also change the face of the earth : 
 I will bless it, and cause those whom I have 
 elected to dwell upon it.' 
 
 Comp. Matt.xxv.31-33, * When the Son of 
 Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy 
 angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the 
 throne of His glory, and before Him shall be 
 gathered all nations, &c.' 
 
 2Pet.iii.l3, ' Nevertheless, we, according to 
 His promise, look for new heavens and a new 
 earth, wherein dwelleth righteousne^.' 
 
 Rev.xxi.l, ' And 1 saw a new heaven and a 
 new earth ; for the first heaven and the first 
 earth were passed away.' 
 
 (xi) En.xlvi.1-2, ' Then beheld I the An- 
 cient of Days, whose head was like white 
 wool, and with Him another, whose counte- 
 nance resembled that of Man. His counte- 
 nance was full of gi-ace, like that of one of 
 the holy angels. Then I enquired of one of 
 the angels \\?ho went with me, and who 
 showed me every secret thing concerning this 
 Son of Man, who he was, whence he was, and 
 v/hy he accompanied the Ancient of Days. 
 He answered and said unto me : This is the 
 Son of Man, to whom righteousness belongs, 
 witb whom righteousness has dwelt, and who 
 will reveal all the tr-easures of that which is 
 concealed ; for the Lord of spiiits has chosen 
 him, and his portion has surpassed all before 
 the Lord of spiiits in everlasting upright- 
 ness.' 
 
 Comp. Dan.vii.l3, * I saw in the night 
 visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man 
 came with the clouds of heaven, and came to 
 the Ancient of Days, and they brought him 
 near before Him.' 
 
 Bev.i.l4, * His head and His hairs were white 
 like wool, as white as snow.' 
 
 Col.ii.3, ' In whom are hid all the treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge.' 
 
 (xii) En.xlvii.1,2, ' In that day the prayer 
 of the holy and the -righteous, and the blood 
 of the righteous, shall ascend from the earth 
 into the presence of the Lord of spirits. In 
 that day shall the holy ones assemble, who 
 dwell above the heavens and with united 
 voice petition, supplicate, praise, laud, and 
 bless the name of the Lord of spirits, on 
 account of the blood of the righteous which 
 has been shed ; that the prayer of the right- 
 eous may not be intermitted before the Lord 
 of spirits, that for them He would execute 
 judgment, and that His patience may not 
 endure for ever.' 
 
 Comp. Rev.vi.9,10,* I saw under the altar the 
 souls of them that were slain for the word of 
 God and for the testimony which they held. 
 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, 
 How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou 
 not judge and avenge our blood on them that 
 dwell on the earth ? ' _ ^ , , , ^ ^,. 
 
 (xiii) En.xlvii.3, ' At that time I beheld the 
 
S52 
 
 THE BOOK OF ENOCH. 
 
 Ancient of Daj^, •while He safc upon the 
 throne of His glory, while the hook of the 
 lining was opened in His presence, and while 
 Bll the powers which were above the heavens 
 stood ai'ound and before Him.' 
 
 En.l.l~5, 'In those days shall the earth 
 deliver up from her womb, and hell deliver up 
 from hers, that which it has received, and 
 destruction shall restore that which it owes. 
 He shall select the righteous and holy from 
 among them ; for tiie day of their salvation 
 has approached. And in those days shall the 
 Elect One sit upon his throne, while every 
 secret of intellectual wisdom shall proceed 
 from his mouth ; for the Lord of spirits has 
 gifted and glorified him. , . . And all the 
 righteous shall become angels in heaven ; 
 their countenance shall be bright with joy, 
 for in those -days shall the Klect One be ex- 
 alted. The earth shall rejoice, the righteous 
 shall inhabit it, and the elect possess it' 
 
 Comp. Rev.xx.11-13, *And I saw a great 
 TVhite throne, and Him that sat on it, . . . 
 and I saw the dead, small and great, stand 
 before God ; and the books were opened, and 
 another book was opened, which is the book 
 of life, and the dead were judged out of those 
 things which were \\'Titten in the books, 
 according to their works. And the sea gave 
 up the dead which were in it, and death and 
 hell delivered up the dead which were in 
 them.' 
 
 Luke xxi.28, 'Tour redemption draweth 
 nigh.' 
 
 Rom.xiii.ll, 'Now is our salvation nearer 
 than when we believed.' 
 
 Matt.xiii.43, ' Then shall the righteous shine 
 forth as the sim in the kingdom of their 
 Father.' 
 
 (xiv) En.xlvii.4, ' Then were the hearts of 
 the saints full of joy, because the consum- 
 mation of righteousness was arrived, the sup- 
 plication of the saints heard, and the blood 
 of the righteous appreciated by the Lord of 
 spirits.' 
 
 Comp. Rev.xviii.20, * Rejoice over her, thou 
 heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for 
 God hath avenged you on her.' 
 
 Rev.xix.1,2, ' I heard a great voice of much 
 people in heaven, saying, Alleluia! Salvation 
 and glory, and honour, and power, unto the 
 Lord our God I For true and righteous are 
 His judgments ; for He . . . hath avenged 
 the blood of His servants at her hand.' 
 
 (xv) En.xlviii.1-7, 'In that plac« I beheld 
 a fountain of righteousness, which never 
 failed, encircled by many springs of wisdom. 
 Of these all the thirsty drank, and were filled 
 with wisdom, having their habitation with 
 the righteous, the elect, and the holy. In that 
 hour was this Son of Man invoked before the 
 Lord of spirits, and his Name in the presence 
 of the Ancient of Days. Before the sun and 
 the signs were created, before the stars of 
 heaven were formed, his name was invoked in 
 the presence of the Lord of spirits. A sup- 
 port shall he be for the righteous and the holy, 
 to lean upon without falling ; and he shall be 
 the light of nations. He shall be the hope of 
 those whose hearts are troublei. All who 
 dwell on earth shall fall down and worship 
 before him, shall bless and glorify him, and 
 Bing praises to the name of the Lord of spirits. 
 
 Therefore the Elect and Vie Concealed One 
 existed in His presence, before the world waa 
 created and for ever. In His presence he 
 existed, and has revealed to the saints and to 
 the righteous the wisdom of the Lord of 
 spirits ; for he has preserved the lot of the 
 righteous, because they have hated and re- 
 jected this world of iniquity, [camp. Ual.i.4, 
 'this present evil world,' IJolm ii.l5, 'love 
 not the world,'] and have detested all its 
 works and ways, in the name of the Lord of 
 spirits. For in Hi.i Name shall they be pre- 
 served, and His Will shall be their life.' 
 
 Comp. Rev.vii.l7, ' He shall lead them unto 
 living fountains of watei's.' 
 
 Rev.xxi.6, ' I will give unto him that la 
 athirst of the fountain of the water of life 
 freely.' 
 
 Rev.xxii.l, ' And he showed me a pure river 
 of water of life.' 
 
 Rev.xxii.17, 'And let him, that is athirst, 
 come, and, whosoever will, let him take the 
 water of life freely.' 
 
 (xvi) En.liii.1-6, 'Thenllooked and timied 
 myself to another part of the earth, where I 
 beheld a deep valley burning with fire . . . 
 And there my eyes beheld the instruments 
 which they were making, — fetters of iron 
 without weight. Then I enquired of the 
 angel of peace, who proceeded with me, saying, 
 For whom are these fetters and instruments 
 prepared ? He replied, These are prepared for 
 the host of Azazeel, that they may be de- 
 livered over and adjudged to the lowest con- 
 demnation, and that their angels may be 
 overwhelmed with hiu'led stones, as the Lord 
 of spirits lias commanded. Michael and 
 Gabriel, Raphael and Phanuel, shall be 
 strengthened in that day, and shall then 
 cast them into a furnace of blazing fire, 
 that the Lord of spirits may he avenged of 
 them for their crimes ; because they became 
 ministers of Satan, and seduced those who 
 dwell upon earth.' 
 
 En.lxvi.5-8, * I beheld that valley in which 
 there was a great perturbation, and where 
 the waters were troubled. . . . There arose a 
 strong smeU of sulphur, which became mixed 
 with the waters ; and the valley of the angels, 
 who had been guilty of seduction, burned 
 underneath its soil. Through that valley 
 also rivers of fire were flowing, to which those 
 angels shall be condemned, who seduced the 
 inhabitants of the earth.' 
 
 Comp. Matt.xiii.42. ' And shall cast them 
 into a furnace of fire.' 
 
 Matt.xxv.41, ' Depart from me, ye cursed, 
 into everlasting fire, prepared for the DevU 
 and his angels.' 
 
 Rev.xix.20, ' These both were cast alive into 
 a lake of fire, burning with brimstone.' 
 
 Rev.xx.1-3, ' And I saw an angel come 
 down from heaven, having the key of the 
 bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand ; 
 and he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, 
 which is the Devil, and Satan, . . . and cast 
 him into the bottomless pit, . . . that he 
 should deceive the nations no more.' 
 
 Rev.xx.lO, ' And the Devil that deceived 
 them was cast into the lake of fire and brim- 
 stone.' 
 
 (xvii) En.lviii.7,8, ' In that day shall be dis- 
 tributed two monsters, a female mouater. 
 
THE BOOK 
 whose name is Leviathan, dweUing in the 
 depths of the sea, above the springs of waters, 
 and a male whose name is Behemoth, which 
 possesses the invisible wilderness. His name 
 was Dendayen, in the east of the garden [? in 
 the garden eastward], where the elect and 
 the righteous will dwell ; where he received 
 it from my ancestor, who was man,— from 
 Adam the first of men, whom the Lord of 
 spirits made.' 
 
 Comp. the * beast rising out of the sea,' and 
 * another beast coming out of the eaxth,' Kev. 
 xiii.1,11. 
 
 Comp. also * the great whore that sitteth 
 upon many waters,* and *the beast that 
 carried her,' Rev.xvii.1,7, in ' the wilderness,' 
 r.3. 
 
 (xviii) En.lx.lS-ie, ' He shall call to every 
 power of the heavens, to all the holy above, 
 and to the power of God. The Cherubim, the 
 Seraphim, and the Ophanim, all the angels of 
 Power, and all the angels of the Lords, — 
 namely, of the Elect One, and of the Other 
 Power, who was upon earth over the water on 
 that day,— shall rEiise their united voice, shall 
 bless, glorify, praise, and exalt with the spirit 
 of faith, with the spirit of msdom and patience, 
 with the spirit of mercy, with the spirit of 
 judgment and peace, and with the spirit of 
 benevolence, Icomp. ' the seven spirits which 
 are before His throne,' Rev.i.4,iii.l,iv.5,v.6,] 
 all shall say with united voice, Blessed is He I 
 and the name of the Lord of spirits shall be 
 blessed for ever and ever : all, (who sleep not) 
 sleeping not, shall bless it in heaven above. 
 All the holy in heaven shall bless it, all the 
 elect who dwell in the garden of life ; and 
 every spirit of light, who is capable of bless- 
 ing, glorifying, exalting and praising. Thy 
 holy name, and every mortjd man, more than 
 the powers of heaven, shall glorify and praise 
 Thy name for ever and ever. For great is the 
 mercy of the Lord of spirits ; long-suffering 
 is He, and all His works, all His power, great 
 as are the things which He has done, has He 
 revealed to the saints and to the elect in the 
 name of the Lord of spirits.' 
 
 Comp. Rev.v.13, 'And every creattire which 
 Is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the 
 earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that 
 are in them, he^rd I saying, Blessing, and 
 honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him 
 that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the 
 Lamb for ever and ever.' 
 
 Rev.xix.5, 'And a voice came out of the 
 throne, saying. Praise our God, all ye His 
 servants, and ye that fear Him, both small 
 and great.* , ^ ^. xi. 
 
 (xix) En.lxi.4r-9, ' The word of his mouth 
 shall destroy all the sinners and all the un- 
 godly, who shall perish at his presence . . . 
 Trouble shall come upon them, as upon a 
 woman in travail, whose labour is severe, 
 when her child comes to the mouth of the 
 womb and she finds it difficult to bring forth. 
 One portion of them shall look upon another : 
 thev shall be astonished, and shall abase their 
 countenance ; and trouble shall seize them, 
 when they shall behold this Son of woman 
 sitting upon the throne of his glory.' 
 
 C&mp. 2Thess.i.9, ' Who shaU be punished 
 with everlasting destruction from the presence 
 of the Lord, and from the glory of His power. 
 
 OF ENOCH. 
 
 353 
 
 IThess. V.3, • Then sudden destruction cometh 
 upon them as travail upon a woman with 
 child, and they shall not escape.' 
 
 2Thess.ii.8,' That "Wicked, whom the Lord 
 shall consume with the spirit of His mouth.' 
 
 Matt.xix.28, * In the regeneration, when the 
 Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His 
 glory.' 
 
 Matt.xxv.31. *When the Son of Man shaU 
 come in His glory, then shall He sit upon the 
 throne of his glory.' 
 
 Rev.i.16, ' Out of His mouth went a sharp 
 two-edged sword.' 
 
 Rev.ii.16, ' I will fight against them with the 
 sword out of My mouth.' 
 
 Rev.xix.l5, ' Out of His mouth goeth a sharp 
 sword, that with it He should smite the na- 
 tions.' 
 
 Rev.xix.21, 'And the remnant were slain 
 with the sword of Him that sat upon the horse, 
 which [sword] proceeded out of His mouth.' 
 
 (XX) En.lxi.12-17, ' All the kings, the 
 princes, the exalted, and those who role over 
 the earth, shall fall down on their faces before 
 him, and shall worship him. They shall fix 
 their hopes on this Son of Man, shall pray to 
 him, and petition for mercy. Then shaU the 
 Lord of spirits hasten to expel them from His 
 presence. Their faces shaU be full of con- 
 fusion, and their faces shall darkness cover. 
 The angels shall take them to punishment, 
 that vengeance may be infiicted on those who 
 have oppressed His children and His elect . . . 
 But the saints and the elect shall be safe in 
 that day . . . The Lord of spirits shall remain 
 over them : and with this Son of Man shall 
 they dwell, eat, lie down, and rise up, for ever 
 and ever.' 
 
 Comp. Rev.vii.15, *He that sitteth on the 
 throne shall dwell among them.' 
 
 Rev.vi.l5, ' And the kings of the earth, and 
 the great men, and the rich men, and the chief 
 captains, and the mighty men, . . . hid them- 
 selves in the dens and rocks of the mountains, 
 and said to the mountains and rocks, Pall on 
 US, and hide us from the face of Him that 
 sitteth. upon the Throne.' 
 
 Rev.xix.18, ' That ye may eat the flesh of 
 kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh 
 of mighty men, &c.' 
 
 Rev.xxi.3, ' Behold the tabernacle of God is 
 with men, and He will dwell with them, and 
 they shall be His people, and God Himself 
 shall be with them, and be their God.' 
 
 (xxi) En.l£x.l-13, * I beheld the sons of the 
 holy angels, treading on flaming fire, whose 
 garments and robes were white, and whose 
 countenances were transparent as crystal . . . 
 Then I fell on my face before the Lord of 
 spirits. And Michael, one of the archangels, 
 took me by my right hand, raised me up, and 
 brought me out to where was every secret of 
 mercy and secret of righteousness . . . There 
 I beheld in the midst of that light, a building 
 raisedwith stones of ice [? crystal]. . . . The 
 Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Ophanim, 
 surrounded it ; these are those who never 
 sleep, but watch the throne of His glory. 
 And I beheld angels innumerable, thousands 
 of thousands, and ten thousand times ten 
 thousand, who surrounded that habitation. 
 Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel went out of 
 that habitation, and holy angels innumerable. 
 A A 
 
3$4 
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 With them wss the Ancient of Days, whose 
 liead was white as wool, aiid pure, and His 
 robe was indescribable. Then I fell upon my 
 face, while all my flesh was dissolved, and my 
 spmt became changed. ' 
 
 Comp. Rev.iv.8,v.ll,i.l4,17. 
 
 (xxii) En.lxxxii.4,5, ' I was lying down in 
 the house of my grandfather Malalel, when I 
 saw in a vision heaven purifying and snatched 
 away ; and, fallingto the earth, I saw likewise 
 the earth absorbed by a great abyss.' 
 
 Bn.xcii.17, * The former heaven shall depart 
 and pass away, a new heaven shall appear.' 
 
 Comp. 2Pet.ill.lO, ' The heavens shall pass 
 away,' * the earth also shall be burned np.' 
 
 Rev.xxi.l, ' I saw a new heaven and a new 
 eai-th ; for the first heaven and the first earth 
 were passed away.' 
 
 (xxiil) Bn.lxxxv,2, ' And, behold, a single 
 Btar fell from heaven.' 
 
 En.lxxxvii.l-S, ' Then I looked at that one 
 of the four white men, who came forth first. 
 He seized the first star, which fell down from 
 heaven. And, binding It hand and foot, he 
 cast It Into a valley, a valley narrow, deep, 
 stupendous, and gloomy.' 
 
 Comp. ReT.viii.lO, ' There fell a great star 
 from heaven.' 
 
 ReT.ix.l, *I saw a star fall from heaven 
 unto the earth.' 
 
 (xxiT) Bn.xciii.6-xciT.6, * Woe to those who 
 build up Iniquity and oppression, and who lay 
 the foundation of fi'audi for suddenly shaU 
 they be subverted, and never know peace.' 
 
 'Woe to those who build up their houses 
 with crime I for from the very foundation 
 shall their houses be demolished . . . 
 
 * Woe to you who are rich 1 for in your riches 
 have ye trusted, but from your riches you 
 shall be remored, because you have not re- 
 membered the most High in the days of your 
 prosperity. 
 
 ' You have committed blasphemy and ini- 
 quity, and are destined to the day of the efEu- 
 slon of blood, to the day of darkness, and to 
 the day of the great judgment . . . 
 
 ' Woe to you, who recompense your neigh' 
 hour with evil 1 for you shall be recompensed 
 according to your works. 
 
 ' Woe to you, ye false witnesses, you who 
 affprravate iniquity 1 for you shall suddenly 
 perish. 
 
 ' Woe to you, ye sinners I for ye reject the 
 righteous.' 
 
 En.civ.1,2, *I swear to you, ye righteous, 
 that In heaven the angels record your goodness 
 before the glory of the Mighty One. Wait 
 with patient hope ; for formerly you have 
 been disgraced with evil and vrith aflHiction ; 
 but now shall you shine like the luminaries of 
 
 heaven Your cries have cried for 
 
 judgment ; and it has appeared to you ; for an 
 account of all your suffering shall be required 
 from the princes, and from everyone who has 
 assisted your plimderers. Wait with patient 
 hope, nor relinquish your confidence ; for great 
 joy shall be yours, like that of the angels in 
 heaven.' 
 
 Comp. Luke vl.24r-26, James v.1-8. 
 
 1127. These are only a few instances 
 of the influence, which this remarkable 
 Bouk seems to have exercised upon the 
 
 OF ENOCH. 
 
 minds of devout men in the first ap;e of 
 Christianity. In the language attri- 
 buted to Our Lord Himself, — in that of 
 St. Paul, especially in his earli/ episiles, 
 — in that of St. James, St. Peter, and 
 St. Jude, — we can distinctly trace an 
 intimate acquaintance with it, and re- 
 cognise its forms of expression. But, 
 above all, this is true of the Book of 
 the Revelations, where, it is plain, very 
 much of the imagery has been directly 
 adopted from that of the Book of 
 Enoch. And, though the apostolic 
 authorship of some of the above writ- 
 ings may be questioned, yet the fact 
 remains as before, that the writers of 
 these Scriptures, whoever they were, 
 appear to have been well acquainted 
 with this Book, and more or less im- 
 bued with its teaching. 
 
 1128. And, certainly, some of the 
 language above quoted must be ad- 
 mitted to be very grand and impress 
 sive ; — especially if we consider that the 
 version, from which we have quoted, is 
 a recent translation of a translation, 
 and has to recommend it, neither the 
 prestige of early association, nor the 
 flavour of antiquity, which modify in- 
 sensibly our judgment of the Scripture 
 language with which it is compared. 
 We cannot wonder at the effect which it 
 seems to have produced upon tlie minds 
 of readers in that age, and in still later 
 days,— more especially when it whs 
 actually believed to be the authentic 
 record of the prophecies of * Enoch the 
 seventh from Adam,* who, therefore, 
 must have been supposed to have 
 originated, and not imitated, the 
 imagery of the Book of Daniel, and 
 that remarkable expression, 'the An- 
 cient of Days.' Nevertheless, mixed 
 up with all these noble utterances, is 
 a great mass of matter of the most 
 fantastic and fabulous character, which 
 has probably prevented the book being 
 handed down to us, stamped with the 
 high authority which it had in those 
 first centuries of Christian teaching. 
 1129. Archb. Laurence 8ays,^.lvi : — 
 TTpon the whole, then, if this singular book 
 be censured, as abounding in some paiis with 
 fable and fiction, still should we recollect that 
 fable and fiction may occasionally prove both 
 amusing and instnictive, and can then only 
 be deemed injurious, when pressed into the 
 
THE BOOK 
 
 service of -rice and infldelity. Nor should we 
 forget that much— perhaps, most— of what we 
 censure was founded upon a national tradi- 
 tion, the antiquity of which alone, indepen- 
 dent of other considerations, had rendered it 
 respectable. That the author was uninspired, 
 wUl scarcely now be questioned. But, although 
 his production was apocryphal, it ought not 
 therefore to be stigmatised as necessarily re- 
 plete with error. Although it be on that 
 account incapable of becoming a rule of faith, 
 it may nevertheless contain much moral as 
 well as religious truth, and may be justly re- 
 garded as a correct standard of the doctrine 
 of the times in which it was composed. JVore 
 omnia esse eoncedenda antiquiUiti, ' that not 
 everything is to be allowed to antiquity,' is, it 
 is true, a maxim founded upon reason and ex- 
 perience. But in perusing the present relic of 
 a remote age and country, should the reader 
 discover much io condemn, still, unless he be 
 too fastidious, he will find more to approve ; 
 if he sometimes frown, he may oftener smile ; 
 nor seldom wiU he be disposed to admire the 
 vivid ima^nation of the writer, which tran- 
 sports him far beyond the flaming boundaries 
 of the world, — ' extra 
 
 ProcessU longbflwnvnumUa mcenia mundi,' 
 'Past the world's flaming walls has far ad- 
 vanced,' — 
 displaying to him every secret of Creation, — 
 the splendours of heaven, and the terrors of 
 hell, — the mansions of departed souls, — and 
 the myriads of the celestial hosts, the Sera- 
 phim, Cherubim, and Ophanim, which sur- 
 round the blazing throne, and magnify the 
 Holy Name of the great Lord of Spirits, the 
 Almighty Father of men and of angels. 
 
 Gfrokee also writes, Jahrhundert 
 des ife'fe, ^.105,109 :— 
 
 I salute our Enoch as in a certain sense a 
 fore-announcer of the coming of our Lo'd 
 Jesus Christ, — not as if he had a perception of 
 the truth, for his Messias is, as in the case of 
 other Jews, enveloped in a cloud of ambition 
 and false hopes : — but he is still an evidence 
 to show with what kind of feeling, and with 
 what glowing earnestness, twenty or thirty 
 years before Christ, the Anointed of the Lord 
 
 was expected There is no better 
 
 source, from which may be derived a know- 
 ledge of the state of the Jewish form of faith 
 before, and in the days of, Jesus Christ. 
 
 1130. But especially it deserves notice 
 that almost aU the language of the 
 New Testament, in which the judg- 
 ment of the Last Day is described, — the 
 Esnhatology, as it is called, of th« KT., 
 — appears to have been directly de- 
 rived from the language of the Book of 
 Enoch, as will be seen from _ the pas- 
 sages quoted above, (iv), (xiii), (xvi), 
 (xix), (xx). The ' everlasting chains,' 
 in which the fallen angels are 'kept 
 under darkness, unto the judgment of 
 the great day,'— the 'everlasting fire 
 prejiared for the devil and his angels,' 
 
 OF ENOCH. 
 
 353 
 
 —the 'Son of Man sitting upon the 
 throne of His glory,' choosing for the 
 righteous their ' countless habitations,' 
 and destroying the wicked with the 
 word of His mouth, — the ' book of life 
 opened ' before the Judge, — earth, hell, 
 and the grave, ' giving up their dead,' 
 — the joy of the righteous, the shame 
 and confusion of the wicked, who are 
 led off by the angels to punishment, — 
 the 'new heaven' and the 'new 
 earth,' old things having passed away, 
 — the ' furnace of fire,' and the ' lake 
 of fire,' — all these appear in the Book 
 of Enoch, and the last, the ' lake 
 of fire,' is, manifestly (xvi), a figure 
 introduced with distinct reference to 
 the Dead Sea ; and, accordingly, in 
 the same connection, we find ' the 
 an gels, which kept not their first estate,' 
 coupled with ' Sodom and Gomorrha 
 and the cities about them,' Jude 7, 
 which are spoken of as 'going after 
 strange flesh,' like those angels, and 
 being 'set for an example, suffering 
 the vengeance of eternal fire.' Nay, 
 those awful words spoken of Judas, 
 ' It had been good for that man if he 
 had never been born,' find their coun- 
 terpart also (viii) in the language of 
 this Book. 
 
 1131. This fact is of great importance. 
 For it shows that these -weTe popular 
 expressions, which were in common 
 use in the mouths of devout men of 
 that time, and must, therefore, be inter- 
 preted according to their general spirit, 
 and not be pressed too far in their 
 literal meaning. To the Jews of those 
 days, acquainted with the Book of 
 Enoch, these images would be quite 
 familiar, — Hke those which speak of the 
 ' stars falling,' the ' Son of Man coming 
 in a cloud with power and great glory,' 
 or those again, wliich were evidently 
 current in the popular talk, about 
 ' Abraham's bosom,' the ' torments of 
 hell,* and the ' great gulf fixed.' 
 
 1132. It is not impossible that the 
 Book of Enoch, as it now exists, may 
 contain some Christian interpolations 
 of a later dat«, as we Icnow to be the case 
 with another famous apocryphal book, 
 the 'Sibylline Oracles.' But, how- 
 ever this may be, the Epistle of Jude 
 seems plainly to recognise some por- 
 
356 
 
 THE BOOK OF ENOCH. 
 
 tions, at least, of the Book of Enoch, as 
 already existing, and as authentic and 
 authoritatiTe. Hence, even should any 
 critics propose to place the compo- 
 sition of the whole 'Book' at a later 
 date than that assigned to it hy Archhp. 
 LAtTEENCE and GrFBOBEE,* the age of 
 the Epistle would have to be depressed 
 with it, to a time far later than that of 
 the Apostles, — to a time, when the 
 real origin of the ' Book ' had been 
 forgotten, and its contents could be 
 confidently quoted, as the veritable 
 words of the antediluvian Patriarch. 
 And, generally, the occurrence of such 
 expressions, as we have quoted above, 
 common to the Book of Enoch and to 
 so many of the apostolical writings, 
 shows plainly the forms of thought 
 and language, which were prevalent 
 among the Jews in the first age of 
 Christianity. 
 
 H33. We must remember, therefore, 
 from what sources such expressions as 
 these were drawn, and not suppose 
 that they are meant to convey to us 
 accurate information about the details 
 of the invisible world. The substantial 
 truth, which underlies these figures, is 
 the fact, — the belief in which is deep- 
 
 * Mr. Westcott says on this point, Smtth's 
 Diet, of the Bible, i.p.547 ; Notwithstanding 
 the arguments of Hilgenfeld and Joss, the 
 whole book appears to be distinctly of Jewish 
 origin. Some inconsiderable interpolations 
 may have been madeinsuccessive translations, 
 and laJTge fragments of a much earlier date 
 were undoubtedly incorporated into the work. 
 But, as a whole, it may be regarded as de- 
 scribing an important phase of Jewish qpim'on, 
 shortly b^ore the coming of Christ,* 
 
 seated, by the gift of God, in our 
 nature, — of the everlasting distinetiun 
 between right and wrong, and of a 
 Perfect Justice, presiding over the 
 universe of moral being, which, as it is 
 not always manifested clearly in this 
 life, we believe with undoubting confi- 
 dence, will be revealed assuredly here- 
 after. Truths, such as these, which 
 underlie the figures of the N.T., are 
 not less true, nor is their authority less 
 binding, because we ai-e able to trace 
 their historical growth, just as the 
 excellence of the Lord's Prayer is not 
 diminished, because we know that it ia 
 made up of petitions, which were cur- 
 rent already among the Jews.* Bather, 
 this very growth among men, of the 
 recognition of a great Eternal Truth, 
 gives us the comforting assurance of 
 the Presence of a Living God in His- 
 tory, — not only advancing continually 
 the intellectual development of man- 
 kind, but — enlightening and inspiring, 
 with ever-increasing Light and Life, 
 the hearts of His children. 
 
 * On this point Gprorer writes, vol.i,Part 
 ii.p.l49 : ' I have, as it is seen, developed out 
 of the books of the Jews the principles, ac- 
 cording to which the * Lord's Prayer ' is com- 
 posed. Not only is its character Jewish, but 
 so also are the separate clauses, which occur 
 in diiferent Jewish prayers, (see Lightfoot, 
 SCHoTrGBN, Wetsttkin On Matt.vi.9, Wrrsins.) 
 It may be that it was a prayer already in use 
 before the time of Jesus : probably, however, 
 it was then first put together out of earlier 
 prayers. Though, generally, the portions of it 
 agree verbally with already existing Jewish 
 prayers, yet I have nowhere found the whole 
 among Jewish writers, though they have, 
 however, many similar prayers.' 
 
 END OP PART IT. 
 
PART V. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP, piOg 
 
 Frsface .... ....,, 361 
 
 I. Gen.VI.I— VT.t 365 
 
 n. GElf.TI.5— Ti.22 867 
 
 m. The Flood explained by TRADinoifiRY Wbitehb ... 371 
 
 IV. Gen.VU.I— Tni.22 375 
 
 ■^. Was Noah's Flood a Pabtiai, Deldgb ? 878 
 
 VI. ST0KIE3 op the FLOOD AMONG OTHEE NA'n0H3 .... 880 
 
 Tn. G-EN.IX.l— IX.29 384 
 
 VHI. Gen.X.1— X32 888 
 
 IZ. IDENTITT OP LAN&TTAGE OP THE HEBREWS AND CANAANITES . 394 
 
 X. The Hebbew Language, whence dbbived 397 
 
 XI. Gkm.XI.I— XI.9 ..." 401 
 
 XII. Gen.XI.10— XI.26 405 
 
 Xin. ScRiPTUHE References to the Creation, the Fall, ajtd the 
 
 Deluge 411 
 
 xrv. Conclcbing Remarks 415 
 
 App. The Complete Elohistic Narrativb in Genksis . . . 4ai 
 
Our little systems have their day 
 
 They have their day, and cease to hs I 
 They are but broken lights of Thee, 
 
 And ThoUj Lord, art more than they. 
 
 We have but faith ; we cannot know ; 
 
 For knowledge is of things we see ; 
 
 And yet we trust it comes from Thee— 
 A beam in darkness ; let it grow. 
 
 Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
 That mind and soul, according well. 
 
 May make one music as before, 
 
 But vaster. We are fools and slight ; 
 
 We mock Thee, when we do not fear ; 
 
 But help Thy foolish ones to bear ; 
 Help Thy vain worlds to bear Thy Light. 
 
 Tesnyson, In ifemonam^ p,vi. 
 
PREFACE TO PAET V. 
 
 I HAVE given in the body of tUs Part the scientific arguments, 
 which show conclusively that no Deluge, such as that desciibed 
 in G.vi-viii,— whether regarded as a Universal ov a Por^mi Deluge, 
 — could ever have happened within an age extending vastly beyond 
 the era of the Noachian Deluge. Among other matters, I have 
 drawn special attention to the very decisive evidence afforded on 
 this point by the actual state of the volcanic cones of Auvergne, as 
 attested by the concuiTont evidence of some of the most eminent 
 geologists of the present day. 
 
 My statements have been challenged by one or more clergymen, 
 writing in defence of the traditionary view. 
 
 It is denied that the volcanic hills in question are of such great 
 antiquity, and in proof of this reference is made (i) to two letters 
 from SiDONius Apolliitaris, Bishop of Clermont, in Auvergne, 
 (ii) to a homily of Aviltrs, De Eogationibus, and (iii) to the Histoiy 
 of Geegokt of Tours, from which it is inferred as follows : — 
 
 It be will seen from tliese authorities that the last eruptions fi-om these volcanoes, 
 which were most severe, occurred in the reign of G-underic, a.d. 4fi0-2 — that they 
 threw up ashes and pumice in such vast quantities as fell in ' Sodomitic showers,' 
 even in the vicinity of Vienna — that the three authors first above-named were con- 
 temporary and eyewitnesses, — and that, from their continuance for nearly three 
 years, entire new cones could hardly fail to be formed 
 
 It further appears that a three days' fast and humiliation being held, to beseech 
 the removal of these calamities, and being begged by Mamertus of all neighbouring 
 churches, it came to be annually repeated, and copied throughout not only all Gaul, 
 but also Britain, under the name of Rogation Days, the anniversary continued in our 
 calendar to this hour. 
 
 I win first translate the foUovidng account of the institution of 
 ' Rogation Days ' from Hofman's ' Lexicon,' iv. p. 77 : — 
 
 Days of Rogation, to be celebrated with prayers and fastings before the Ascension 
 of Christ, were instituted on account of an earthquake and incursions of wild beasts, 
 by Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne, a.d. 446. There are three of them which are cele- 
 brated before the Lord's Ascension, according to the custom of the Gallic church. 
 The wild beasts by which the Gauls were then infested were chiefly wolves. "When 
 these raged fiercely against the Gauls, and no remedy could be found for this scourge, 
 the bishops of the Gallic provinces, being collected at Vienne, appointed in common 
 that they should implore the mercy of God by a three days' fast. When this turned 
 out happily, it came to pass that these days came into a custom of annual celebration, 
 which also at the present time are observed carefully through the provinces of Gaul 
 for diverse calamities. 
 
 Thus, according to the above author, the institution of Rogation 
 Days had no connection with 'volcanic eruptions,' but was due to 
 an 'earthquake,' and chiefly the 'incursions of wild beasts' at 
 Vienne. Vienne, however, is in Dauphiny, not in Auvergne, 
 But the fact is, that there are no signs of any volcanic action what- 
 ever in or near to the city of Vienne, though there are in the 
 
362 PEEI'ACE TO PART V. 
 
 Vivarais, in the neighbouring department. As Dr. DAUBEirr 
 observes, 'Volcanoes/ 2nd edit., p. GQ, Note : — 
 
 There are no volcanoes near Vienna ; but ttie bishop's diocese may have extended 
 Into the neighbouring department of Ardeche, where they occur so abundantly. 
 
 But the volcanoes in Auvergne and those in the Vivarais are two 
 distinct groups, which, as the same authority tells us, p. 32, — 
 although scarcely a hundred miles distant from each other, are nevertheless divided 
 by a barrier of primaiy rocks, an* belong apparently to independent systems. . ._ . 
 "To infer that the volcanoes of Auvergne were in a state of activity at the time 
 when those of the Vivarais showed symptoms of disturbance, would be as rash as to 
 presume that the extinct volcano of Mount Vultur, in Apulia, was roused into 
 acti^'ity in the first century of the Christian era, because ancient writers have 
 recorded the ravages made at that time by Vesuvius. 
 
 Gregory of Tours died a.d. 595, more than 130 years after the 
 phenomena, whatever they were, of a.d. 460-2, of which we are 
 speaking. But, in truth, this writer does not speak of any ' erup- 
 tions.' He says only, ii. Ep. 34 :— 
 
 He (Avitns) relates in a certain homily which he ■wrote about Rogations, that 
 these same Rogations, which we celebrate before the triumph of the Lord's Ascension, 
 were instituted by Mamertus, bishop of the said city of Vienne, over which also he 
 then presided, at a time when that city was terrified by many prodigies. For it was 
 frequently shaken by an earthquake ; and, moreover, the wild nature of deer and 
 wolves having entered the gates, wandered (he wrote) about the whole city, fearing 
 nothing. And when this occurred through the circle of a year, upon the approach 
 of the days of the Paschal solemnity, the whole people were devoutly awaiting the 
 mercy of God, that, at least, this day of great solemnity might bring an end to this 
 terror. But on the very watch of the night of glory, while the solemnities of the 
 mass were being celebrated, suddenly the royal palace within the walls is set in flames 
 by divine fire. All being utterly terrified with fear, and having gone out of the 
 church, believing that either all the city might be consumed by this confiagration, or 
 certainly might yawn in chasms with the rending asunder of the earth, the holy 
 priest, prostrate before the altar, with groans and tears implores the mercy of the 
 Lord. Why more ? The prayer of the renowned chief-priest penetrated the lofty 
 regions of the sky, and the stream of flowing tears quenched the flames of the house. 
 It is plain that there is nothing here about ' Sodomitic showers.* 
 Gregory speaks only of ' earthquakes,' the strange entrance of wild 
 animals into the city, and the palace set in flames by divine fire, 
 i.e., apparently by a stroke of lightning. 
 
 Secondly, Avittts, the successor of Mamertus, who was really a 
 ' contemporary and eyewitness,' writes as follows : — 
 
 And, indeed, I know that many of us recollect the causes of the terrors of that time. 
 Forsooth, frequent conflagrations, repeated earthqualces, nightly sounds, kept 
 threatening a sort of prodigious graveyard for a kind of funeral of the whole world. 
 For an appearance of wild animals in a state of tameness presented itself to large 
 gatlierings of people, God only knows whether deluding the eyes or drawn by 
 portents; whichever, however, of these two was the case, it was understood to be 
 equally monstrous, whether thus in reality the savage hearts of brutes could be 
 softened, or the phantasms of false vision could be formed so horribly before the 
 sight of terrified men. Meanwhile the feeling of the common people took different 
 du-ections, and the opinions of different ranks were various. Some, dissembling 
 what they thought, attributed to chance what they were unwilling to give to tears ; 
 others, of a better mind, interpreted each new ptfi'tent by suitable significations of 
 the fitness of the plagues. For who, amidst frequent fires, would not fear Sodomitic 
 showers ? Who, when the elements were trembling, would not believe that either the 
 fall of the roof, or the disruption of the ground was imminent ? Who, when he saw, 
 or certainly thought he saw, deer, fearful by nature, penetrate through the narrow 
 gate's as far as the spacious forum, would not dread an impending feeling of desolation? 
 Here again there is no mention of * Sodomitic showers,' as having 
 been rained from heaven upon the city of Vienne, but of fires such 
 as that of the palace struck by lightning, or others caused by the 
 * fall of the roofs ' from repeated earthquakes, which brought to 
 
PREFACE TO PAET V. 363 
 
 mind tie destruction of Sodom, and made the people di-ead a 
 recurrence of ' Sodomitic showers.' 
 
 Lastly, the Letter of Sidonius, vii. Ep. 1, begins thus : — 
 
 There is a riunour that the Goths have moved their camp into Eoman soil. For 
 to this irruption we, miserable people of Auvergne, are always the gate. 
 
 And he goes on to say that he depends for deliverance not upon 
 earthly defences, hut upon the Rogations, which had been in- 
 stituted by Mamertus, and in which the people of Auvergue had 
 begun to practise. He then proceeds : — 
 
 For it does not escape our inquiries what kind of prodigies those were, tinder 
 whose terrijfying effect the city, committed from Heaven to your care, was being 
 emptied iu the first times, when these prayers were instituted. For now the sites of 
 the public walls were shaken by frequent earthquakes ; now fires, often with flames 
 (ignes sjepe flammati), heaped up the fallen ridges of the roofs with a piled-up 
 mountain of ashes ; now the fearful tameuess of audacious deer placed their por- 
 tentous beds in the forum ; whilst thou meanwhile, the state of the city being thinned 
 by the departure of the nobles and populace, quickly hadst recourse to a new example 
 of the ancient Nlnevites, lest thy despair also should mock the Divine admonition. 
 And truly thou, least of all men, after experience of thy virtues, couldst distrust God 
 without sin. For when once, by chance, the city had begun to burn, thy faith grew 
 the hotter by that heat ; and when in the sight of the fearful people, by the mere 
 presentation of thy body, the fire struck back, wound its retreating way in fugitive 
 curves, by a miracle, terrible, new, unwonted, it happened to the flame to give, way 
 through reverence, which by nature was devoid of feeling. 
 
 Here, again, we have mention made of ' earthquakes,' and of 
 ' flaming fires, piling up ashes on the fallen roofs ' ; but there is 
 nothing said of volcanic eruptions ; and these fires seem to be the 
 same as those mentioned by Avittjs, which were kindled by the 
 roofs falling in upon the household fires, through repeated earth- 
 quakes. Accordingly Dr. Baubent says, in his ' Volcanoes : ' — 
 
 I submit to my readers whether the entire silence of SmoNlus as to the existence of 
 volcanoes in Auvergne, although his residence was on the borders of the Lake Aidat, 
 which, as we have seen, was caused by an eruption from one of the most modem of 
 those wliich had desolated the country, is not a strong negative evidence of their 
 antiquity, especially when this author dwells in his poems on the scenery of his own 
 neiglibourhood, and even compares its natural beauties with those of Baiffi, a spot 
 which he must have known to be in the neighbourhood of a burning mountain. 
 How natural would it have been for him, after he had said, with reference to his 
 batlis on the Lake of Aidat — 
 
 High rise the heiglits like to the Baian cone, 
 Like too, with half-clothed summit, shines thepeak, — 
 to have added that, in its vicinity too, as in that of BaiK, there was a mountain 
 vomiting forth flames, supposing any such phenomenon to have been familiar to 
 him, near the spot where he resided !—p.83. 
 
 Although the testimony of Smouros Apollinaeis and of Alcdius Avrrtrs should 
 persuade us that some indications of activity were manifested, about the fourth 
 century after Christ, by the igneous agents that may be supposed to exist in-the 
 bowels of the earth at no great distance from the city of Tienne, yet it would seem 
 more probable that the reports of these writers bad reference to earthquakes than to 
 true volcanic eruptions that occurred in this district.— p.66. 
 
 In the Athmcsum, No. 1,020, we find the following report of a 
 lecture by Sir Chaeltds (then Mr.) Ltdil :— 
 
 Before considering these, Mr. Lvell entered into a short digression to refute the 
 doSe of the medieval origin of the volcanoes near Clermont (Auvergne), advanced 
 bvT^^ in the Quarterly Review for October, 1844, :p.295, where it is pretended 
 that S^SlsAPOIJOTAHls, Bishop of Clermont, who flourished at the close of the fifth 
 rentuw has b^e explicit testimony to the ■volcanic eruption, the crumbling of 
 the cSes and the heaping up of the showers of ashes and scoria, cast forth amidst 
 tbPirS'ITie passages relied on occur in a letter from SroONTOS to his contempo- 
 i^^ Mamertus Bishfp of Tienne in Dauphiny, ™tten when Auvergne was 
 t&SS a fresh irruption of the Goths, to avert which danger the bishop 
 pSpoStoX)* certain foiiis of prayer (rogations, or litanies), which Mamertu* 
 
S64 PREFACE TO PART V. 
 
 had already introduced on the occasion of some • prodigies,' which had happened in 
 Dauphiny sixteen years before. In alluding to these phenomena SiDOXius says that 
 •the walls of the city of Vienne were shaken by frequent earthquakes, many 
 fires broke out, and mounds of ashes were heaped up over the falli^Qg copinga 
 of the walls.' Deer also took refuge in the forum, and the people fled ; all but the 
 bishop, who had a right to reckon on divine protection, because, as SiDONius reminds 
 him, on a former occasion the flames at his approach had miraculously receded, outot 
 reverence to his holy person. At the time of the earthquake he (Mamertus) had told 
 his people that their repentant tears would extinguish the flres sooner than rivers of 
 water, and the stedfastness of their faith would cause the rocking of the ground to 
 cease. Sidonius finishes with asking the Bishop of Tienne to send him some relics to 
 make all secure. The style of the whole epistle is so faulty, ambitious, and poetical, 
 as to make it difficult to know the exact value of the expressions, and dangerous to 
 found upon them any philosophical argument about natural events. There is not a 
 word about Auvergne, but simply an allusion to the shocks which appear to have 
 thrown down buildings (at Vienne) and caused (as usual in such oases, where roofs 
 fall in) great confiagrations and heaps of cinders. The terror of the wild animals 
 when the earth rocks, and their sensitiveness to the slightest movements, are well 
 known. Although the epistle proves Sidonitjs to have had a fair share of the 
 credulity of his age, both in reject of miracles wrought in favour of a contemporary 
 saint, and the efficacy of relics, it would be unfair to charge him with a belief in the 
 occurrence of a volcanic eruption at or neax the site of the city of Vienne, which 
 the investigations of the ablest government surveyors, to whom the construction of 
 a geological map of France has been entrusted, have entirely disproved. There are, 
 in fact, no monuments of volcanos, ancient or modem, in Dauphiny ; and, if there 
 had been, they would not throw light on the date of eruptions in Auvergne. 
 
 Sir Charles Ltell writes thus also in his Elements of Geology , 
 6thEd.j9.684:— 
 
 The brim of the water of the Puy de Pariou near Clermont is so sharp, and has 
 been so little blunted by time, that it scarcely affords room to stand upon. This and 
 other cones in an equally remarkable state of integrity have stood, I conceive, unin- 
 jured, [by ordinary rain, but not by the waters of a Deluge,] not m spzife of their loose 
 porous nature, as might at first be rationally supposed, but in consequence of it. No 
 rills can collect where all the rain is absorbed by the sand and scorise, as is remarkably 
 the case on Etna ; and nothing but a waterspout breaking directly upon the Puy de 
 Pariou, [or the waters of a Deluge surging upon it,] could carry away a portion of 
 the hill, so long as it is not rent or engulphed by earthquakes. 
 
 Hence it is conceivable that even those cones, which have the freshest aspect and 
 most perfect shape, may lay claim to very high antiquity. Dr. Daubeny has justly 
 observed that, had any of these volcanos been in a state of activity in the age of 
 Julius Csesar, that general, who encamped upon the plams of Auvergne, and laid 
 siege to its principal city (Gergovia, near Clermont), could hardly have failed to 
 notice them. Had there being any record of their eruptions in the time of Pliny or 
 Sidonius Apollinaris, the one would scarcely have omitted to make mention of it 
 in his Natural History, nor the other to introduce some allusion to it among the 
 descriptions of this his native province. This poet's residence was on the borders of 
 the Lake Aidat, which owed its very existence to the damming up of a river by one 
 of the most modei-n lava-currents. 
 
 Lastly, the reader will observe that nothing would he proved 
 
 against the scientific evidence of the impossibility of the Noachian 
 
 Deluge as a matter of fact, if it could even be shown that some of 
 
 these volcanic cones are of more recent date. If there is one 
 
 ancient cone — and Sir Charles Ltell, as quoted below in 
 
 (1180), says there are many — composed of 'loose ashes,' 'an 
 
 incoherent heap of scorise and spongy ejectamenta/ which still 
 
 ' stands unmolested/ it is plain that no ' Noah's Flood ' can have 
 
 covered the earth, when, as the same authority has stated — 
 
 Had the waters once i-isen, even for a day, so high as to reach the level of the 
 base of one of these cones,— had there been a single Flood 50 or 60 feet in height 
 since the last eruption occurred,— a great partof th4e voicaiioea must inevitably have 
 been swepc away, 
 
 J. W. NATAL. 
 
 LOMDOS : Feb, 24, 1865. 
 
PART V. 
 
 THE FIEST ELEVEN CHAPTEES OP GENESIS 
 {continued). 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GEN.TI. 1-71.4. 
 
 1134. G.vi.1,2. 
 
 'And it came to pass that man began to 
 multiply upon the lace ol the ground, and 
 daughters were bom to them. And the sons 
 of Elohim saw the daughters of men that 
 they were goodly : and they took to them 
 wives of all whom they chose.* 
 
 By ' sons of God ' the Scripture in- 
 variably means 'angels,' Job i.6,ii.l, 
 xxx™i.7,Ps.xxix.l,lxxxix.7 : and, ac- 
 cordingly, the Book of Enoch gives a 
 very full account of the doings of these 
 angels, who ' sinned ' and ' left their 
 first estate,' and their pxmishment, as 
 described in this book (1126.xvi.), is 
 distinctly referred to in 2Pet.ii.4, 
 Jude 6. In the face of these facts, it 
 is not easy to suppose, as some have 
 suggested, that the expression here 
 means only ' Sethites,' who are called 
 ' sons of Elohim ' on account of their 
 piety, by which they were distinguished 
 from the Cainites, who are described, 
 generally, as ' man,' — or that it means 
 'rulers, chiefs, &c.' in opposition to 
 the people of lower rank, &c. On 
 either of these suppositions, indeed, it 
 is difficult to see how 'giants' could 
 have been conceived to have sprung 
 from the union. 
 
 1135. But this notion of the 'sons 
 of God,' descending to the beautiful 
 ' daughters of men,' appears to have 
 been borrowed from foreign and 
 heathen sources. 
 
 The sons of God cannot here be identical 
 with the angels, or with the sons of God 
 
 mentioned in other parts of Scripture : thev 
 are not ol Hebrew, but of general Eastern 
 origin. And these notions were, gradually, 
 more and more amplified ; they were enlarged 
 from other heathen sources, or from the fic- 
 tions of imagination. The Book of Enoch 
 shows that the chief of these sons of Heaven, 
 Samyaza, at first opposed their wicked design. 
 But they pledged themselves by awful oaths 
 and imprecations to execute it. They de- 
 scended, two hundred in number, to Mount 
 Hermon ; they chose wives, taught them sor- 
 cery and conjuration, introduced ornaments 
 of vanity and luxury, bracelets and trinkets, 
 paints and costly stuffs. Giants, three thou- 
 sand bubits high, were the offspring of these 
 alliances. They first consumed all the pro- 
 duce of the earth ; then they devoured all the 
 animals, and afterwards began to turn against 
 the men. The cries of the earth rose up to 
 heaven. The angels, Michael and Gabriel, 
 Surgan and TJrgan, brought the complaint 
 before the throne of God. He precipitated 
 Azazel, the most wicked of the * sons of God,' 
 into a dark cavern, where he lies in fetters, 
 and covered with rough pointed stones, in 
 order to be thrown into the burning pool on 
 the great day of judgment. He inspired the 
 progeny of these unnatural unions with fierce 
 rage ; and the consequence was that they de- 
 stroyed each other in mutual murder, after 
 which they were tied to subterranean hills, to 
 remain there for seventy generations, and 
 then to be for ever hurled into the fiery 
 abyss. But he assured the son of Lamech, 
 that an approaching deluge would spare him 
 and his cMldren, to become the ancestors of 
 better generations. Kalisch, Gen.p.171. 
 
 1136. G.vi..3. 
 
 'And Jehovah said. My spirit shall not 
 preside in man for ever.* 
 
 Delitzsoh notes on this, p.2SG : — 
 Here is not meant the Holy Spirit with its 
 judging, punishing power, but, with reference 
 to ii.7, the created human spirit, which on 
 account of its Divine origin and God- related 
 nature, or, perhaps, only as the Divine gift, 
 is called by God 'My spirit.' This rules 
 
366 
 
 GEN.VI.1-VI.4. 
 
 (presides) in man, inasmuch as it animates 
 and governs the bodily part of man. 
 
 The expression 'for ever' is used 
 apparently to denote merely a long 
 time, as in the following instances; — 
 
 lS.i.22, ' I ivill bring him, that he may ap- 
 pear before Jehovah, and there abide /or ever ;' 
 
 lS.xx.15, ' But thou Shalt not cut ofE thy 
 kindness from my house /or ever.* 
 1137. G.vi.3. 
 
 • And his days shall be a hundred and twenty 
 years.' 
 
 TvcH explains these words as fol- 
 lows, ^.157: — 
 
 This shall henceforward be the limit of 
 human life, with reference to the much 
 greater age of the Patriarchs, G-.v. The ob- 
 jection has been made that, even after the 
 Flood, the Patriarchs still overstepped this 
 limit of life, and so these words have been 
 explained to mean, 'I will still give them a 
 respite of 120 years, within which they may 
 repent.' But here it is overlooked that the 
 continually decreasing term of life at length 
 reaches that limit, [Aaron, 123 years, N. 
 xxxiii,39,— Moses, 120, D.xxxlv.7, — Joshua, 
 110, Jo.xxiv.29], and so the divine determi- 
 nation takes effect. If the author had meant 
 to express this thought, he would infallibly 
 have made the time to the Flood extend to 
 120 years, which the data in v.32,vii.6, make 
 
 The data, to which TuCH refers, 
 show that Noah was 500 years old 
 before the announcement in yi.S was 
 made, and 600 years old when the Flood 
 began, so that only 100 years could have 
 intervened. But the fact is that the 
 great ages of Abraham, Isaac, and 
 Jacob, are due to the Elohist, not to 
 the Jehovistic author of the verse be- 
 fore us. 
 
 1138. G.vi.4. 
 
 ' The giants were in the earth in those 
 days.' 
 
 The Targ. Jon. paraphrases here : — 
 
 Schamchazai ii.e. Samyaza, of the book of 
 Enoch) and Uzziel, who fell from heaven, 
 were on the earth in those days. 
 
 As already observed (1107) in the 
 case of the descendants of Cain, the 
 writer, — who may be endeavouring to 
 account for the existence of the sup- 
 posed giant races of the Mosaic times, 
 'great, many, and tall,' the Emim, 
 Anakim, Zamzummim, &c., which, ac- 
 cording to the old legends, reported 
 by the Deuteronomist, ii. 10,11,20, once 
 lived in that 'land of giants,' on both 
 sides of the Jordan, — seems to have 
 lost sight of the fact, that all these 
 
 gigantic beings, the product of this 
 mixture of the ' sons of Elohim ' with 
 the 'daughters of man,' must have 
 been swept away by the Deluge. 
 
 1139. It may be that the notion of the 
 existence of gigantic men in the primi- 
 tive times, which is found among so 
 many nations, has really arisen from 
 the discoveries of huge bones, the re- 
 mains of extinct animals, which have 
 been ignorantly supposed to be human 
 bones, and has been confirmed, per- 
 haps, by the gigantic statues and vast 
 architectural structures of Egypt, As- 
 syria, the Peloponnese, &c., among 
 which may be reckoned also the mas- 
 sive ruins of the Transjordanic lands 
 (592). Or it may have expressed 
 originally the sense of man, that he 
 was surrounded by gigantic powers in 
 nature, to which he gave a human form, 
 as the Arabs do to their ' jins ' at this 
 day. 
 
 1140. Mr. Earrar writes, Smith's 
 Diet, of the Bible, i.y.688 :— 
 
 The general belief (untU very recent times) 
 in the existence of fabulously enormous men, 
 arose from fancied giant-graves, (see De la 
 Valle's Travels in Persia, 11.89,) and above 
 all from the discovery of huge bones, which 
 were taken for those of men, iu days when 
 comparative anatomy was unlmowTQ. Even 
 the ancient Jews were thus misled, Joseph. 
 V.ii.S, — [' There were till then left the race of 
 giants, who had bodies so large and counte- 
 nances so entirely different from other men, 
 that they were surprising to the sight, and 
 terrible to the hearing. The hones of these 
 men are still shown to this very day, unlike 
 to any credible relations of other men.'] 
 AUGUEfTlNE appeals triumphantly to tills ar- 
 gument, and mentions a molar tooth which 
 he had seen in TJtica a himdred times larger 
 than ordinary teeth {de Oiv. Dei. xv.9). No 
 doubt, it once belonged to an elephant. 
 ViVES, in his commentary on the place, men- 
 tions a tooth as big as a fist, which was shown 
 at St. Christopher's. In fact, this source of 
 delusion has only very recently been dispelled. 
 Most bones, which have been exhibited, have 
 turned out to belong to whales or elephants, 
 as was the case with the vertebra of a sup- 
 posed giant, examined by Sir Hatjh Sloanb 
 in Oxfordshire. 
 
 1141. So VrEGiL believed, not only 
 that there had been a diminution of 
 size from primeval times, but that this 
 diminution would continue. When he 
 speaks of the slaughter on the plain of 
 Pharsalia, he pictures the ploughman 
 as going over the ground centuries 
 afterwards, and says, (?cor^.i497 :— 
 
GEN.VI.1-VL4. 
 
 And digging up the graves at the huge bones 
 will marvel. 
 
 That, however, the stature of the 
 human race was really the same, gener- 
 ally, in those days as now, is shown 
 by the remains discovered in ancient 
 tombs and in the pyramids. 
 
 1142. Kaxisch notes, Gen.p.l7\:— 
 Men of such extraordinary size seem never 
 
 to have lived. The human race has remained 
 iissentially the same in its physical propor- 
 tions ever since the historical time. The 
 laxge bones, which have occasionally been 
 
 - foimd, are the remains of huge antediluvian 
 [old-world] animals, not of human beings. 
 And the men, who have been mentioned in 
 history for their size, as being eight or nine 
 feet high, are as rare exceptions as the men 
 * with six fingers on every hand, and with six 
 toes on every fobt,' 2S.xxi.20, and are no 
 proof of a time when whole races of such men 
 existed. 
 
 1143. And so Eenrich: observes, 
 Prim. Hist, ^.71-74 : — 
 
 The mythology of several ancient nations 
 represents the dominion of the gods as not 
 Laving been established without struggles 
 with powerful enemies, by whom they even 
 suffered partial and temporary defeat. The 
 general idea, which such myths eihbody, is 
 derived partly from the conflictmg forces 
 which are still active in nature, and appear 
 to have possessed even greater energy in pri- 
 meval times, partly from the mixture of evil 
 with good, which pervades nature and hmnan 
 life. In the Greek mythology, in which a 
 moral element seldom appears, the conflict of 
 the gods with the Titans denotes merely the 
 slow and reluctant submission of the vast and 
 turbulent powers of nature to those laws, by 
 which the actual system is preserved in har- 
 mony and order. The giants, who endeavoured 
 to storm heaven, and were buried in the Phle- 
 grsean fields or under Mount Etna, represent 
 the violent disturbance which volcanic agency 
 introduces. The Egyptian Tj-phon combines 
 physical and moral evil : so does the Ahriman 
 of the Zoroastrian mythology. These fictions 
 show, not only that man has been universally 
 conscious of the mixed influences to which he 
 is subject, but also of the preponderance of 
 the good. 
 
 The fiction of a race of giants, engaged m 
 warfare with the gods, is so remote from all 
 historical probability, that its true nature is 
 at once seen. But it may be thought that 
 there is something of an historical foundation 
 for the very prevalent belief that a race, of 
 stature, strength , and longevity far surpassmg 
 ' that of later degenerate days, has once occu- 
 pied the earth, and even left on it the traces 
 of mighty works. We by no means deny the 
 possibility that such a ra^e may have existed ; 
 but . . the direct evidence will be found to 
 be fallacious. ... The supposed remaans of 
 eiffantic human bones, which afford to popu- 
 tl credulity an argument of their former ex- 
 istence, when examined, prove to be those of 
 cetaceous animals or elephants. The tra- 
 
 - ditions- which ascribe .great works to them, 
 
 367 
 
 are only proofs how completely che remem- 
 brance of their real origin has been lost. 
 Looking upward from the base of the Great 
 Pyramid, we might stippose it the work of 
 grants : but it is entered by passages admit- 
 ting with difficulty a man of the present size, 
 and we find in the centre a sarcophagus about 
 six feet long. The strength and stature of 
 the men of past ages have been exaggerated, 
 from the same causes as their happiness and 
 their virtue. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 GEN.VI.5--VI.22, 
 
 1144. G.vi.l6. 
 
 * A light Shalt thou make for the Ark, and 
 unto a cubit shalt thou finish it upward.' 
 
 If we were obliged to regard this 
 story of the Flood as historically true, 
 the question, of course, would arise, 
 how the animals in the three stories, 
 or, if one was used for the food, in 
 two of them, could have had the ne- 
 cessary supplies of air and light, if 
 there was only one window, and that, 
 apparently, only a cubit, = 22 inches, 
 high. ■ 
 
 1145. Mr. Pbrowne writes on this 
 point as follows : — 
 
 If the words, ' unto a cubit shalt thou finish 
 it above,' refer to the window, and not to the 
 ark itself, they seem to imply that this aper- 
 ture, or skylight, extended to the breadth of 
 a cubit the whole length of the roof [-525 feet] . 
 But, if so, it could not have been merely an 
 open sht, for that would have admitted the 
 rain. Are we then to suppose that some 
 transparent, or at least translucent, substance 
 was employed? It would almost seem so. 
 Note. The only serious objection to this ex- 
 planation is the supposed improbability of 
 any substance like glass having been dis- 
 covered at that early period of the world's 
 history. . . Arts and sciences may have 
 reached a ripeness, of which the record, from 
 its scantiness, conveys no adequate concep- 
 tion. [In that case, would the ark have had 
 only one 'skylight' and one door?] But 
 besides the windows there was to be a door. 
 This was to be placed in the side of the ark. 
 ' The door must have been of some size to 
 admit the larger animals, for whose ingress it 
 was mainly intended. It was, no doubt, 
 above the highest draught-mark of the ark, 
 and the animals ascended to it probably by a 
 sloping embankment.' Smtth's Diet, of the 
 Bible, ii.p.5B5. 
 
 1146. Delitzsch also notes, p.250 : 
 According to Badmgaeten's idea, this 
 
 opening, a cubit wide, was carried along the 
 whole upper length of the Ark,_ and, what 
 must also be conceived in addition to this, 
 was overarched,— [i.e. was supplied with some 
 kind of pent-house, to keep the floods of rain 
 from beating in, when the window was 
 opened to admit air.1 Was it also carried 
 
6EN.VI.5-VI.22. 
 
 along both sides of the ship ? [But, as there 
 ■were three stories, even thus a great many of 
 the creatures would have had no light or air, 
 — not to lay stress on the fact that, in Tiii.6, 
 Noah is spoken of as * opening the window 
 which he had made,' which seems plainly to 
 imply that this window was small enough to 
 be so opene.1, and was specially intended for 
 the use of Noah himself and his family.] On 
 the other hand, most commentators under- 
 stand a window a cubit each way, — according 
 to TUCH, for giving light to Noah's chamber, 
 while the animals had to be in darkness. So 
 LiFTHER, after the Vulgate. This explanation 
 Is so far modified by the jSyn'ac, that the Heb. 
 word for window, tsohoTt is taken collectively, 
 [=a row of windows] ; but this is not pro- 
 bable, not so much beiause in viii.6 mention 
 is made of only one ' \vindow,* khallon, as 
 because then the number of the windows 
 would have been given. [Still the difllculty 
 of having light and air in the different stories 
 remains.] .... Are we to think of this 
 window, or row of windows, as transpa- 
 rent? The name tsohar, ' light,* is favour- 
 able to this supposition : also from viii.7,9, 
 it seems that we must imagine a casement, 
 so that the birds flew to and fro before a 
 transparent window, [of glass or of horn?} 
 without being able to get in, until Noah 
 opened the window. 
 
 1147. G.V.17. 
 
 * 1 am bringing the Flood of waters upon 
 the earth.' 
 
 It is plain from the whole deserip- 
 tion of the Flood, and especially from 
 the mention oiEden, Havilah, Ethiopia, 
 Assyria, Euphrates, and the other 
 three rivers, in G.ii, as well as the 
 'land of Nod' in iv.l6, that the face 
 of the earth was supposed by the 
 writer to have been, generally, the same 
 before and after the Flood. Thus 
 there is no room for the theory, which 
 some have advanced, of the land and 
 sea having changed places at the time 
 of the Flood, or of the general geo- 
 graphical disposition of the earth 
 having been different from what it is 
 now. We do not refer, as evidence of 
 this, to the 'mountains of Ararat,' 
 mentioned in viii.4, since it might be 
 said that these may have first made 
 their appearance, and received their 
 appellation, after the Flood. 
 
 1148. G.vi.l9. 
 
 ' Of every living thing out of all flesh.' 
 
 These words are as general and com- 
 prehensive as possible ; and evidently 
 the ' fowls ' and ' creeping-things ' of 
 t).20 must be understood to include not 
 only birds and reptiles, but creeping 
 
 and flying things of all kinds, worms, 
 insects, &c. Otherwise, as has been 
 observed already ( 1 009), no provision is 
 made at the Creation for the existence 
 of these things, or at the Deluge, for 
 the continuance of them; and a new 
 and very extensive creation would have 
 been required after the Flood, of which 
 the Scripture tells us nothing. And, in- 
 deed, as we have seen, (1009), different 
 kinds of locusts are expressly named 
 among the ' fowls,' and the lizard and 
 snail among the ' creeping things,' 
 L.xi.22,30. 
 
 1149. How then could these snails, 
 and worms, and snakes, and lizards, of 
 all kinds, have found their way to the 
 Ark, across vast countries, mountains, 
 seas, and rivers, from the distant 
 localities in which they lived ? or how 
 could they have returned to them f 
 Every great continent has at this time 
 its own peculiar set of beasts and 
 birds; and these are known to have 
 occupied the circles around these cen- 
 tres in ages long before that ascribed 
 to the Deluge. 
 
 When America was first discovered, its in- 
 digenous quadrupeds were all dissimilar from 
 those previously known in the Old World. 
 The elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, 
 cameleopard, camel, dromedary, buffalo, horse, 
 ass, lion, tiger, apes, and baboons, and a 
 number of other mammalia, were nowhere to 
 be met with on the new continent ; while, on 
 the old, the American species of the same 
 great class, were nowhere to be seen, such as 
 the tapir, lama, peccary, jaguar, cougar, 
 agouti, paca, coati, and sloth. BUFFON, 
 quoted in Sir 0. Lybll's Principles of 6eol, 
 iii.6. 
 
 1 1 50. Andmost of these can live only in 
 a certain zone of latitude, and perish, if 
 suddenly transferred to an uncongenial 
 climate. Could, the sloth and armadillo, 
 from the tropical regions of South 
 America, have marched up to the Icy 
 North, and so across the Behring's 
 Straits, and at length, after many 
 years of painful wandering over field 
 and fiood, have been received into the 
 Ark? and did they again, after the 
 deluge, travel back once more in like 
 manner to their present abodes? 
 
 1151. What again shall be said of 
 the wingless bird {apteryx) of New 
 Zealand, or the ornithorhynehus, wom- 
 bat, and kangaroo, of Australia, which 
 
GEN.VI.5-VI.22, 
 are found no'vchere else upon the globe ? 
 Many insects have no wings: many 
 live but a few days, or even a few 
 hours, after they have obtained their 
 Wings. How, then, could these have 
 reached the Ark before the Flood? 
 Or how, after it, could they have made 
 their way to the distant regions of the 
 earth, where they are now found, 
 having crossed vast continents and 
 oceans to do so ? 
 
 1152. On this point Prof. Owen says, 
 AnnaU of Nat Hist., Feb. 1850 :— 
 
 Had all the terrestrial ammals, tliat now 
 exist, diverged from one common centre 
 within the limited period of a few thousand 
 years, it might have been expected that the 
 remoteness of their actual localities from such 
 ideal centre would bear a certain ratio with 
 their respective powers of locomotion. With 
 regard to the class of Birds, one might have 
 expected to find that those which were de- 
 prived of the power of flight, and were 
 adapted to subsist on the vegetation of a 
 warm or temperate latitude, would still be 
 met with more or less associated together, and 
 least distant from the original centre of dis- 
 persion, situated in such a latitude. But 
 what is the fact? The species of no one 
 order of birds are more widely dispersed over 
 . the earth than those of the wingless or 
 Btruthious Mnd. Assuming that the original 
 centre has been somewhere in the south- 
 western mountain range of Asia, there is but 
 one of the species of flightless birds whose 
 habitat can be reconciled with the hypothesis. 
 By the neck of land still uniting Asia with 
 Afi-ica, the progeny of the primary pair, cre- 
 ated or liberated at the hypothetical centre, 
 might have travelled to the latter continent, 
 and there have propagated 'and dispersed 
 themselves southward to the Cape of Good 
 Hope. It is remarkable, however, that the 
 Ostrich should not have migrated eastward 
 over the vast plains or steppes which extend 
 along the warmer temperate zone of Asia, or 
 have reached the southern tropical regions ; 
 it is in fact scarcely known In the Asiatic 
 continent, being restricted to the Arabian 
 Deserts, and being rare even in those paria 
 which are most contiguous to what we may 
 call its proper continent— Africa. 
 
 If we next consider the locality of the Casso- 
 wary, we find great difficulty in conceiving 
 how such a bird could have migrated to the 
 islands of Java, the Moluccas, or New Guinea, 
 from the continent of Asia. The Cassowary 
 is not web-footed like the swimming birds ; 
 for wings it has only a few short and strong 
 quills. How could it have overcome the 
 obstacles, which some hundreds of miles of 
 ocean would present to its passage from the 
 continent of Asia to those islands? and, 
 furthermore, how is it that no individuals 
 have remaned in the warm tropical southern 
 border of Asia, where the vegetable suste- 
 nance of the Cassowary seems as abundantly 
 developed, as in the islands to which the | 
 wingl^s bird is now exclusively confined ? 
 
 369 
 
 If the difficulty already be felt to' be great 
 in regajd to the insular position of the Casso- 
 wary. It is stiU greater when we come to 
 apply the hypothesis of dispersion from a 
 single centre to the Dodo of the island of 
 Mauritius, or the Solitaire of the island of 
 Rodriguez. How, again, could the Emeu have 
 overcome the natural obstacles to the migra- 
 tion of a wingless terrestrial bird from Asia 
 to Australia? and why should not the great 
 continent of Asia have offered in its fertile 
 plains a locality suited to its existence, if it 
 ever at any period had existed on that conti- 
 nent ? A bird of the nature of the Emeu was 
 hardly less likely to have escaped the notice of 
 naturalist travellers than the Ostrich itself • 
 but, save in the Arabian Deserts, the Ostrich 
 has not been found in any part of Asia, and 
 no other species of wingless bird has ever been 
 met with ton that continent : the evidence in 
 regard to such large and conspicuous birds is 
 conclusive as to that fact. 
 
 In order that the Ehea, or three-toed Os- 
 trich, should reach South America, by travel- 
 ling along that element on which alone it is 
 organised and adapted to make progress, it 
 must, on the hypothesis of dispersion from a 
 single Asiatic centre, have travelled northward 
 into the inhospitable wilds of Siberia : it must 
 have braved and overcome the severer regions 
 of the arctic zone : it must have maintained 
 its life, with strength adequate to the extra- 
 ordinary power of walking and running over 
 more than a thousand miles of land or frozen 
 ocean, utterly devoid of the vegetables that 
 now constitute its food, before it could gain 
 the northern division of America, to the 
 southern division of which it is at present, 
 and seems ever to have been, confined. The 
 migration in this case could not have bee» 
 gradual, and accomplished by successive gene- 
 rations. No individual of the large vegetable- 
 eating wingless bird, that now subsists in 
 South America, could have maintained its 
 existence, much less hatched its eggs, in arctic 
 latitudes, where the food of the species is 
 wholly absent. If we are still to apply the 
 current hypothesis to this problem in Natural 
 History, we must suppose that the pair or pairs 
 of the Ehea that started from the highest 
 temperate zone in Asia capable of sustaining 
 their life, must have also been the same indi- 
 viduals, which began to propagate their kind, 
 when they had reached the corresponding 
 temperate latitude of America. But no indi- 
 viduals of the' Rhea have remained in the 
 prairies or in any part of North America ; 
 they are limited to the middle and southern 
 division of the South American continent. 
 
 And now, finally, consider the abode of the 
 little Apteryx at the Antipodes, in the com- 
 paratively small insulated patch of dry land 
 formal by New Zealand, Let us call to mind 
 its very restricted means of migration,— the 
 wings reduced to the minutest rudiments, the 
 feetwebless like the common fowl's, its power 
 of swimming as feeble. How could it ever 
 have traversed sis hxmdred miles of sea, that 
 separate it from the nearest land intervening 
 between New Zealand and Asia ? How pass 
 from the southern extremity of that conti- 
 nent to the nearest island of the Indian Ar- 
 I chipelago, and so from member to member of 
 
370 
 
 GEN.VI. 
 
 that group to Anstralia,— and yet leave no 
 trace behind of such migration, by the arrest 
 of any descendants of the migratory genera- 
 tions in Asia itself, or in any island between 
 Asia and New Zealand ? 
 
 1153. Again, it is otvious that the 
 fish also in the rivers and fresh-water 
 lakes must almost all have died, as 
 soon as the salt-water of the sea broke 
 in, and rendered them brackish. And, 
 as the flood still increased, and the 
 waters of the sea began to lose their 
 saltness, the fish in the sea and the 
 shelUish on the shore must also have 
 
 So, too, a Mood, such as this must 
 have destroyed, not only all animal 
 life, but all mgetation also, from off 
 the face of the earth. Of the innumer- 
 able species of known plants, very few 
 could have survived submersion for a 
 whole year ; the greater part of them 
 must have certainly peri.<ihed. 
 
 Yet nothing is said in vii.21,23, 
 about the destruction of either fish or 
 . plants: nor are we told of any new 
 creation to supply the loss of these. 
 
 1154. On the contrary, an olive leaf 
 is brought, plucked apparently fresh and 
 green from a tree which had been 
 eight or nine months under water, 
 Tiii.H. The dif&calty, that so long an 
 immersion in deep water would kill 
 the olive, had, no doubt, never occurred 
 to the writer, who may have observed 
 that trees survived ordinary partial 
 floods, and inferred that they would 
 just as well be able to sustain the 
 Flood, to which his imagination sub- 
 jected, them. Of the, enormous pres- 
 sure* that would be caused by such a 
 superincumbent mass of water, he was, 
 we may be sure, entirely ignorant. 
 And, supposing that vegetable tissues 
 may have power to adapt themselves 
 rapidly even to such a prodigious in- 
 crease of pressure, yet what would be 
 the state of an olive-tree, after having 
 been buried for months in water, some 
 
 * The pressure of a column of water 17,000 
 feet high, would be 474 tons upon each square 
 foot of surface. This, however, would be the 
 pressure of such a Flood, as that here de- 
 scribed, at the ordinary sea-level ; and olives 
 would grow far above this. Still, even at the 
 level of the snow-litie of Ararat, the column of 
 water would bo 3,000 feet high, and its pres- 
 sure 83 tons on every square foot of surface. 
 
 5-VI.22. 
 
 thousands of feet deep, without its 
 natural supplies of air and light ? 
 
 1155. G.vi.l9. 
 
 ' Two out of all Shalt thou bring into the 
 Ark, to keep alivewith thee ; male and female 
 slmll they be.' 
 
 But there are many kinds of 
 animals, which do not pair ; but one 
 male consorts with many females, as in 
 a herd of buffaloes, or one female with 
 many males, as in a hive of bees. 
 Hence, while some of the animals in 
 the Ark would be in the natural state, 
 which was most proper for them, the 
 condition of others would be most 
 unnatural, if they were admitted two 
 by two into the Ark. As Nott writes, 
 Types of Mankind, p.73 : — 
 
 Is it reasonable to suppose that the Almighty 
 would have created [or preserved in the Ark] 
 one pair of locusts, of bees, of wild pigeons 
 of herrings, of buffaloes, as the only stajrting 
 point of these almost ubiquitous species? 
 The instincts and habits of animals differ 
 widely. Some are solitary, except at certain 
 seasons ; some go in pairs, — others in heids or 
 shoals. The idea of a pair of bees, locusts 
 herrings, buffaloes, is as contrary to the 
 nature and habits of these creatures, as it i'i 
 repugnant to the nature of the oaks, pines, 
 birches, &c., to grow singly, and to form 
 forests in their isolation. In some species, 
 males— in others, /«naZes— predominate, and 
 in many it would be easy to show that, if the 
 present order of things were reversed, the 
 species could not be preserved,— in the case of 
 
 bees, for example It is natural to 
 
 have one female for a whole hive, to whom 
 many males orei devoted, besides a number of 
 drones. 
 
 1156, G.vi.21. 
 
 * And thou, take to thee out of all food 
 which is eaten, and thou shalt gather it unto 
 thee, and it shall be to thee and to them for 
 food.' 
 
 We have noticed ali'eady (923.iii) 
 that, in the Elohistic narrative, the 
 creatures are to ' come ' to Noah of 
 their own accord, — impelled, we may- 
 suppose, by a Divine impulse, or by a 
 foreboding sense of the great calamity 
 which was impending, and he has only 
 to ' bring them into the Ark,' vi. 19 ; 
 whereas, in the Jehovistic, he is to 
 'take them to him,' vii.2, and this 
 seems to imply the writer's notion that 
 he was to go out and gather them. 
 But, however this may be, he is here 
 commanded to ' take to him ' food, for 
 himself and all the creatures. And this, 
 I of course, implies that he or his must 
 
GEN.VI.5-VI.22, 
 go out in person into aU lands, and 
 gather these supplies of food, and must 
 know also the different kinds of food 
 on which the different animals subsist. 
 
 1167. But what provision could he 
 have made for the carnivorous ani- 
 mals,— for the lions, tigers, leopards, 
 and hyaenas, the eagles, vultures, kites 
 and hawks,— and that for more than 
 twelve months' consumption? How 
 could he have supplied the otters with 
 their fish, the chameleons with their 
 flies, the woodpeckers with their grubs, 
 the night-hawks with their moths? 
 How could the snipes and woodcocks, 
 that feed on worms and insects, in the 
 bottoms of sedgy brooks, or the hum- 
 ming-birds that suck the honey of the 
 flowers, have lived for a whole year in 
 the Ark? And what would happen, 
 when they were all let out of the Ark, 
 and the predaceous animals turned, we 
 must suppose, to seek at once their 
 usual food? The loss of one single 
 animal out of a pair would have been 
 the destruction of a whole species. 
 
 1158. It is hardly necessary to esti- 
 mate the size of the Ark, so as to com- 
 pare it with that rec[uired for the 
 reception of so many thousands of 
 animals of all sizes, from the elephant 
 and hippopotamus down to the shrew- 
 mouse and the humming-bird, besides 
 half a million species of insects, and 
 innumerable snails, together with their 
 food for more than a year. Nor need we 
 stop to consider how Noah and his three 
 sons could have brought together the 
 materials for building this huge vessel, 
 seven times as large as the Great Britain 
 steamship,* and have built it, either 
 with their own hands, or with the help 
 of hired labourers, remembering with 
 what expenditure of labour such a 
 ' Great Eastern ' must have been con- 
 structed. Nor need we argue as to 
 the way in which, day by day, during 
 this whole year, supplies of food must 
 have been taken round, morning and 
 evening, by the eight human inmates, 
 to these tens of thousands of living 
 creatures, shut up (apparently) without 
 light or air, who must have needed 
 
 « Ark, 550 ft. X 98 ft. X 55 ft. ; Great Britain, 
 80 ft. X 41 ft. X 33 ft. 
 
 37r 
 
 also to he furnished daily with water 
 and fresh litter, their cribs being 
 
 cleansed, and impui-ities removed, 
 
 though how, and whither, they could 
 have been removed, are questions 
 equally perplexing. 
 
 1159. Yet, if this ancient story is still 
 to be put forward, and the people are to ' 
 be required by high authorityto believe 
 that it is historically true, — as if this 
 were necessary to salvation, — as if 'all 
 our hopes for eternity,' ' all our nearest 
 and dearest consolations,' depended 
 upon our believing this,— such ques- 
 tions as these must be asked, tiU the 
 fact is recognised that they cannot be 
 answered. 
 
 In the next chapter we shall consider 
 some of the arguments, with which the 
 defenders of the traditionary view en- 
 deavour to maintain their position. 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE FLOOD EXPLAINED BY TKADl- 
 TIONA.KY WKITEBS. 
 
 1160. Bishop Wilkins, F.E.S., dis- 
 poses of some of the scientific difScul- 
 ties which are raised by the Scripture 
 story of the Deluge, as follows. Essay 
 towards a real Character and a philo- 
 sophical Language, p.163-6 : — 
 
 'Tis agreed upon as most probable that the 
 lower story [of the Ark] was assigned to con- 
 tain all the species of beasts, the middle story 
 for their food, and the upper story in one part 
 of it for the birds and their food, and the 
 other part for Noah, his family and utensils. 
 . . . . As for the Morse, Seal, Turtle or 
 Sea Tortoise, Crocodile, &c,, these are usually 
 described to be such kind of animals as can 
 abide in the water ; and therefore I have not 
 taken them into the Ark; though, if that were 
 necessary, there would be room enough for 
 them, as will shortly appear. The serpentine 
 Idud, Snake, Viper, Slowworm, Lizard, JFrog, 
 Toad, might have sufficient space for their 
 reception and for their nouiishment in the 
 drain or sink of the Ark (1), which was pro- 
 bably three or four feet under the floor for 
 .the standings of the beasts. As for those 
 lesser beasts. Rat, Mouse, Mole, as likewise 
 for the several species of Insects, there can be 
 no reason to question but that these may find 
 sufficient room in several parts of the Ark, 
 without having any particular stalls ap- 
 pointed for them. 
 
 The carnivorous animals upon a fair calcu- 
 lation are supposed equivalent, as to the bulk 
 of their bodies and their food, unto twenty- 
 seven Wolves : but, for greater certainty, let 
 thera be supposed equal to thirty Wolves ', and 
 let it be further supposed that sixTolves will ■ 
 
372 THE FLOOD EXPLAINED BY TEADITIONAEY WEITERS. 
 
 every day devour a whole Sheep. According 
 to this computation, five Sheep must be al- 
 lotted to be devoured for food each day of the 
 year, which amounts in the whole to 1,825. 
 Upon these suppositions, there must be con- 
 venient room in the lower story of the Ark to 
 contain the fore-mentioned sorts of beasts, 
 which were to be preserved for the propaga- 
 tion of their kinds, besides 1,825 Sheep, which 
 were to be taken in as food for the rapacious 
 beasts. And, though there might seem no 
 just ground of exception, if these beasts 
 should be stowed close together, as Is now 
 usual in ships, when they are to be transported 
 for a long voyage, yet I shall not take any such 
 advantage, but afford them such fair stalls or 
 cabins, aa may be abundantly sufficient for 
 them in any khid of posture, either standing, 
 or lying, or turning themselves,— as likewKe 
 to receive all the dung that should proceed from 
 them for a whole year, [so as (we may suppose) 
 to save Noah and his family from the neces- 
 sity of cleansing daily the stalls. Alas I for 
 the boa-constrictors and others of the ser- 
 pentine kind, * snakes, vipers, slowworms, 
 lizards, frogs, toads,' condemned to live in the 
 * drain or sink' containing the whole year's 
 drainage 1] 
 
 1161. The learned Bishop then esti- 
 mates that 1 Beeve = 7 Sheep, and that 
 the total number of hay-eating animals 
 = 92 Beeves,— 'but,' he says, 'to 
 prevent all kind of cavil,' say 100 
 Beeves = 700 Sheep, — and those eating 
 'roots, fruits, and insects,' = 21 Sheep. 
 The carnivorous animals are reckoned, 
 as we have seen, ' for greater certainty,' 
 as = 30 Wolves=30 Sheep. Thus the 
 room required for all the animals pre- 
 served would be equivalent to 751 
 Sheep, while more than twice as much 
 room would be required for the 1,825 
 Sheep alone, to be taken in merely as 
 food for the carnivorous animals. And 
 the food for these Sheep again would 
 require nearly twice as much room as 
 the food of the herbivorous animals ; 
 or rather, as the Bishop observes, only 
 half this extra quantity of food would be 
 required, as Noah and his sons would be 
 butchering five Sheep daily, cutting 
 them up, and distributing the pieces 
 to the representatives of the 'thirty 
 Wolves,' 
 
 1162. He has forgotten, however, to 
 provide * insects ' for the swallows 
 and ant-eaters. And Hugh Milleb, 
 Test, of the Bocks, ;p.326, reckons that 
 there were 1,658 known species of mam- 
 malia, 6,266 of birds, 642 of reptiles, 
 and 550,000 of insects, — which num- 
 bers, of course, are being daily 
 
 increased with the advance of geo- 
 graphical science. But then, quite in 
 the spirit of Dean Graves, and other 
 'reconcilers,' ancient and modern, 
 Bishop WiLKiNS concludes with the 
 usual stereotyped form of assertion, 
 ^.168 :— 
 
 From what hath been said it may appear 
 that Uie measure and capacity of the Ark, which 
 some atheistical, irreligious, men make use of, 
 as an argument against [the historical credi- 
 bility of portions of] the Scriptures, ougM 
 rather to he esteemed a tnost rational confirma* 
 tion of the truth and divine authority ofU, 
 
 1163. These, again, are Willet's 
 views, Hex. in Gen. p. 80. 
 
 (i) There were neither four rooms, or re- 
 gions, in the Ark, as Josephus supposeth ; 
 
 (ii) Nor yet five, as Obigtcn thinketh, the 
 first for the dmig of the cattle, the second for 
 their food, the third for the cruel and savage 
 beasts, the fourth for the tame and gentle, 
 the fifth for man ; 
 
 (iii) Neither were there, beside the three 
 regions in the Ark, certain cabins without, in 
 the side of the Ark, for the beasts called am- 
 phitna, that live both in the waters and upon 
 the earth, as the crocodile, sea-calf, and such 
 like, as Hugo thinketh; for all the beasts 
 came into the Ark, which were preserved ; 
 
 (Iv) Neither, beside the three partitions in 
 the Ark was there a bottom beside to receive 
 the filth of the Ark, as PEREBius ; for convey- 
 ances might be made otherwise in the side of 
 the Ark for that use, and it would have been 
 a great annoyance to have kept the dung of 
 the cattle one whole year in the Ai-k. 
 
 All these opinions are repugnant to the text, 
 which presented but three ranks, the lower, 
 second, and third. 
 
 1164. As to the use of these cham- 
 bers, WiLLET writes : — 
 
 (i) Some make the lowest for the dung, the 
 next for the food, the third for the cattle ; 
 
 (ii) Some, the first for the beasts, the second 
 room for their food, which might be put down 
 into their cabins with ease ; 
 
 (iii) Some will not have the cruel and tame 
 beasts together, but make two several regions 
 for them ; 
 
 (iv) Some do place men and beasts together 
 in the upper and third room, dividing it into 
 three parts, having both the ends for the 
 beasts, the middle for the men ; 
 
 (v) Some do place the beasts together in the 
 lowest, — ^which theymakealso the drain of the 
 ^hip, — their food in the middle, and men to- 
 gether veith the fowls in the uppermost ; 
 
 (vi) It is most likely that the food and 
 provender was in the lowest room, and the 
 beasts in the middle, because of the fresh and 
 more open air, as also for the better conveying 
 of their dung by the sides of the Ark into the 
 water. , , , Otherwise, if the cattle were 
 in the lowest room, we must be forced, con- 
 trary to the text, to make a fourth place in 
 the bottom, to be aa the sink and drain of the 
 Ark, . . . Neither was the door five cubits 
 from the bottom, as FEKOBiua : but It wag 
 
THi; FLOOD EXPLAINED BY TRADITIONARY WEITEES. 373 
 
 placed lowest of all, for the more easy en- 
 trance of the beasts, -wMoh, being entered, 
 Bugbt ascend by stairs and other passages to 
 their cabins. 
 
 1165. If it te aaid that the opinions 
 ad-panced by Wiixet, a.d.1605, and 
 Bishop WiLKiNs, F.E.S., a.d.1668, are 
 now somewhat antiquated, yet the same 
 ■views — the same in substance, though 
 varying in details — have been main- 
 tained within the last few years, and 
 are stiU maintained, by dignified 
 dergy of the Church of England, as 
 e.g. by the Eev. Sir G. Macgeegoe, 
 Bart., ' Eector of Swallow, and Eural 
 Dean, in his Notes on Genesis, designed 
 frindpalli/ for the Use of Students in 
 Sivinitt/, 1853, who writes thus, p.l55 : 
 
 From this it follows that no genus, at least, — 
 if not no species, — was lost in the Flood. There- 
 fore those fossil land animals of es±inct species, 
 which we discover in the strata, must have 
 existed anterior to the Adamic economy ; and, 
 therefore, the strata which contain them must 
 
 have done so likewise G-od has 
 
 often made the beasts subservient to man's 
 purposes. At Creation, they came to Adam to 
 exercise his powers of language. Here they 
 came to Noah, to be included in the Ark. . , 
 This was as much a miracle as any of the 
 foregoing, when the animals all came to Noah, 
 two of every sort, for preservation. It does 
 not seem likely that this Included animal food, 
 for animal food would not keep well in the 
 Ark. Nor is it implied that more than two 
 animals of a kind were in the Ark; there- 
 fore it was probably farinaceous or vegetable 
 food. If so, this would agree with the no- 
 tion that the carnivorous animals were ori- 
 ginally created herlnvorous, and were, in fact, 
 omnivorous, 
 
 1166. The 'Eural Dean,' it wiU be 
 Been, purposes to relieve his ' Students 
 in Divinity,'— that is, the clergy of the 
 next generation, — ^from the difficulty 
 of taking account of the 'thirty 
 Wolves,' for whom Bishop Wilkins 
 provides so carefully. Others, again, 
 dispose of the whole question in another 
 and much more summary way: e.ff. 
 the Ecclesiastic can stUl, in this age, 
 ask seriously — 
 
 ■What difBculty can there be in acoepttog the 
 hypothesis, which seems so likely, that these 
 animals were further kept during their sojourn 
 in the Ark in a slate of torpor^— 
 though in G.vi.21 Noah is commanded 
 to 'take unto him of all food that is 
 eaten,' for the beasts, as well as for 
 himself, and though.onthat hypothesis 
 the building of the Ark at all would 
 
 have been unnecessary. 
 
 It is clear 
 
 that the writers describe it as built, 
 
 in order to keep the animals alive by 
 natural means. If we are to introduce 
 miracle for their preservation at all, 
 why not let each animal go to sleep 
 where the Flood found it, and be pre- 
 served in a state of torpor under the 
 water ? The omnipotence of the 
 imagination is as competent to the one 
 task as to the other. 
 
 1167. Some, again, have suggested, 
 that it may have sufficed that only a 
 very few primary types of animals 
 should be preserved in the Ark, from 
 which the numerous existing species 
 have all been developed, —so that, for 
 instance, from one single pair of 
 wolves, preserved from the Flood, may 
 have been derived all the different 
 ■varieties of the canine tribe, dogs, 
 wolves, hyaenas, foxes, jackals, &c. 
 But, ■without disputing the possibility 
 of such development, yet, at all events, 
 a great length of time would have been 
 required for it. Whereas on the most 
 ancient monuments of Egypt, of older 
 date than the time of Abraham, we 
 find depicted the wolf, hysena, jackal, 
 greyhound, bloodhound, turnspit, com- 
 mon dog, of 4,000 years ago, just 
 exactly the same animals as now. See 
 fig. 236-250, in Types of Mankind. 
 
 1168. WiLLET ■writes on this point 
 as foUows, Hexap. in Gen. p.87 : — 
 
 Neither came there of every kind of living 
 thing, for these are excepted: — 
 
 (i) All that liveth in the water,— either 
 whoUy, or partly in the water, partly in the 
 land ; for such creatures only came which 
 movai upon the earth ; 
 
 (ii) Such creatures as come bi/ corruption, 
 not by generation (!), as flies, of the water, — 
 worms, of dung, — bees, of buUook'sflesh, — Aor- 
 nets, of horse-flesh,— the scorpion, of the crab 
 or crevice [? ' oray fish,' or else icrivisse,' crab,'] 
 —moths, of putrefied herbs,— and certain small 
 worms, of the corruption of wood and corn ; 
 for those creatures only entered, which in- 
 crease by generation ; 
 
 (iii) Such creatures are excepted, whioa 
 are of a mixed kind, . . as the mule. 
 
 1169. It may be well to quote here 
 the words of the late Hugh Mili-er, 
 Testimony of the EocJes, ;).335-339, 
 who, however, while himself proving 
 the impossibility of a general Flood, 
 attempts, it will be seen, to show that 
 Noah's Flood was not universal, but 
 partial,— s, point which we shall con- 
 sider presently. 
 
374 THE FLOOD EXPLAINED BY TRADITIONARY WRITERS. 
 
 The Deluge was an event qf the existing 
 creation. Had it been imiversal, it would 
 either have broken up all the diverse centres 
 [of existing creation], and substituted one 
 great general centre instead, — that in which 
 the Ark rested ; or else, at an enormous ex- 
 pense of miracle, all the animals, preserved 
 by natural means by Noah, would have had 
 to be returned by svpeimatural means to the 
 regions, whence by means eqiutUy super- 
 natural they had been brought. The sloths 
 and armadilloes,— little fitted by nature for 
 long journeys, — ^would have required to be 
 ferried across the Atlantic [after the Flood] 
 to the regions [of South America, from 
 whence also they had been brought before the 
 Flood],— the kangaroo and wombat, to the 
 insulated continent [of Australia], and the 
 birds of New Zealand, including its heavy- 
 flying quails and its wingless wood-hen, to 
 the remote islands of the Pacific. 
 
 Nor will it avail aught to urge, with cer- 
 tain assertors of a universal deluge, that 
 during the cataclysm, sea and land changed 
 their places, and that what is now land had 
 formed the bottom of the antediluvian ocean, 
 and, vice versd, what is now sea had been the 
 land on which the first human inhabitants 
 of the earth increased and multiplied. No 
 geologist, who knows how very various the 
 ages of the several table-lands and moimtain- 
 cnains in reality are, could acquiesce in such 
 an hypothesis. Our own Scottish shores, — 
 if to the term of the existing we add that of 
 the ancient coast-line, — must have formed 
 the limits of the land, from a time vastly 
 more remote than the age of the Deluge. 
 
 But even supposing, for the argument's 
 sake, the hypothesis recognised as admissible, 
 what, in the circumstances of the case, would 
 be gained by tlie admission ? A continuous 
 tract of land would have stretched, — when 
 all the oceans were continents and all the 
 continents oceans, — between the South Ame- 
 rican and Asiatic coasts. And it is just pos- 
 sible that, during the hundred and twenty 
 years (?), in which the Ark was in building, 
 a pair of sloths might have crept by inches 
 across this continuous tract to where the great 
 vessel stood. But after the Flood had sub- 
 sided, and the change in sea and land had 
 taken place, there would remain for them no 
 longer a roadway; and so, though their 
 journey outward might, in all save the im- 
 pulse which led to it, have been altogether a 
 natural one, their voyage homewai'ds could 
 not be other than miraculous. . . Even sup- 
 posing it possible that animals, such as the 
 red deer and the native ox, might have swam 
 across the Straits of Dover or the Irish 
 Channel, to graze anew over deposits, in 
 which the bones and horns of their remote 
 ancestors had been entombed long ages before, 
 the feat would have been surely far beyond 
 the power of such feeble natives of the soil, as 
 the mole, the hedge-hog, the shrew, the dor- 
 mouse, and the field-vole. 
 
 Dr. Pye Sboth, in deling with this subject, 
 has emphatically said, that, ' all land animals 
 having their geographical regions, to which 
 their constitutional natures are congenial, — 
 many of them being unable to live in any other 
 Bituatlon,— we cannot represent to ourselves 
 
 the idea of their being brought into one small 
 spot fi"om the polar regions, the toiTid zone, 
 and all other climates of Asia, Africa, Europe, 
 and America, Australia, and the thousands 
 of islands, — their preservation and provision, 
 and the final disposal of them, — without 
 bringing up the idea of miracles more stu- 
 pendous than any that are recorded in Scrip- 
 ture.' ' The great, decisive miracle of Chris- 
 tianity,' he adds,—' the resurrection of the 
 Lord Jesus, — sinks down before it.' 
 
 And let us remember that the preservation 
 and re-distribution of the land animals would 
 demand but a portion of the amount of 
 miracle, absolutely necessary for the pre- 
 servation, in the circimistances, of the entu-e 
 fauna of the globe. The fresh-water fishes, 
 molluscs, Crustacea, and zoophytes, could be 
 kept alive in a universal deluge only by mira- 
 culous means. It has been urged that, though 
 the living individuals were to perish, their 
 j^azm might be preserved by natural means. 
 It must be remembered, however, that, even 
 in the case of some fishes whose proper habitat 
 is the sea, such as the salmon, it is essential 
 for the maintenance of the species that thq 
 spawn should be deposited in fresh watei-, nay, 
 in running fresh water ; for in still water, 
 however pure, the eggs in a few weeks addle 
 and die. The eggs of the common trout also 
 require to be deposited in mmiing fresh water; 
 while other fresh-water fishes, such as the 
 tench and carp, are reared most successfully 
 in still, reedy, ponds. The fresh-water fishes 
 spawn, too, at very different pensons, and the 
 yomig remain for very different periods in the 
 egg. The perch and grayling spawn in the 
 end of April or the beginning of May,— the 
 tench and roach about the middle of June,— 
 the common trout and powan in October and 
 November. And, while some fishes, such as 
 the salmon, remain from ninety to a hundred 
 days in the egg, others, such as the trout, are 
 extruded in five weeks. "Without sppoial 
 miracle, the spawn of all the fresh-water 
 fishes could not be in existence, as such, at one 
 and the same time; without special miracle, 
 it could not maintain its vitality in a uni- 
 versal deluge ; and without special miracle, 
 even did it maintain its vitality, it could not 
 remain in the egg-state throughout an entire 
 twelvemonth, but would he developed into 
 fishes, of the several species to which it 
 belonged, at very different periods. Farther, 
 In a imiversal deluge, without special miracle, 
 vast numbers of even the salt-water animals 
 could not fail to be extirpated. 
 
 Nor would the vegetable kingdom fare 
 greatly better thaa the animal one. Of the 
 one hundred thousand species of known 
 plants, few indeed would survive submersion 
 lor a twelvemonth ; nor would the seeds of 
 most of the others fare better than the plants 
 themselves. There are certain hardy seeds, 
 that in favourable circumstances maintain 
 their vitality for ages : and there are others, 
 strongly encased in water-tight shells or skins, 
 that have floated across oceans to germinate 
 in distant islands. But such, as every florist 
 knows, is not the general character of seeds ; 
 and, not until after many unsuccessful at- 
 tempts, and many expedients had been resorted 
 to, have the more delicate kinds been brought 
 
GEN.VII.1-VIII.22. 
 
 ^^i'i'^; ^™" ™ sliipboard, from distant 
 countries to our own. It is not too much to 
 two fm ;i,™'?°S' ^P""'"' miracle, at least 
 Iwioh^ *" ,1.*° terrestrial vegetation o( 
 Sf,!l fw™''"'°'™I'™s^'=* in a universal 
 aeluge, that covered over the dry land for a 
 year. Assuredly, the various vegetable centres 
 or region6,-estmated bySCHorwat twentv- 
 Sy-n'T?!?^ yitness to no such catastrophe. 
 StiUdlstmot and unbroken, as of old, either 
 no effacing flood has passed overthem, orthev 
 were shielded from its eflEects at an expense 
 of miracle many times more considerable 
 than that, at which the Jews were brought 
 cm of Egypt and preserved amid the nations 
 or Christianity itself was ultimately estab- 
 lished. 
 
 1170. 
 The 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GEN.YII.1-Vin.22. 
 
 G.vii._4,12,17,vm.6. 
 Jehovist here introduces the 
 number ' forty,' which occurs so fre- 
 quently in the subsequent history. 
 Thus Isaac and Esau were saoh forty 
 years old -when they married, G-.xxt.20, 
 xxTi.34. .For^y days were fulfilled for 
 the embalming of Jacob, G.1.3. Moses 
 was in the mount /oriy days 3,-aSL forty 
 nights on each occasion, E.xxiv.lS, 
 sxxiv.28. The spies were forty days 
 in searching the land of Canaan, 
 !N'.xiii.2o : the people wandered forty 
 years in the wilderness, N.xxxii.13. So 
 the land ' had rest ' forty years on 
 three occasions, Ju.iii.ll,T.31,viii.28, 
 and was ' delivered into the hand of 
 the Philistines' forty years, Ju.xiii.l. 
 Eli judged Israel /oj-i!^ years, lS.iv.18: 
 Goliath presented himself forty days, 
 lS.xvii.16 : David and his eon Solomon 
 reigned each/oriy years, iK.ii. 1 l,xi.42 : 
 Elijah ' went in the strength of that 
 rae&t forty days and /oriy nights,' &c., 
 &c. From these instances, it is plain 
 that the number was used in a loose, 
 indefinite, sense, to express a large 
 number ; just as we find, among other 
 oriental nations, the forty sources of 
 Scamander, and the forty pillars of 
 Persepolis. 
 
 1171. G.vii.19,20. 
 
 'And the waters were very, very, mighty 
 upon the earth ; and all the high mountains, 
 tnat were under all the heavens, were covered, 
 iifteen cubits upwards the waters were 
 mighty, and the mountains were covered.* 
 
 Here the waters are said to have 
 covered the Earth to the height of (15 
 cubits = ) 27 feet above the tops of the 
 
 375 
 highest mountains, — ^where, however, 
 the density of the air, and, consequently, 
 the temperature, would have been much 
 the same as on the present surface of 
 the earth, while the Flood lasted, 
 since the effect of a universal rise 
 of the waters would be to push oat the 
 air to a corresponding distance from 
 the Earth's centre. 
 
 1172. But, when the waters had re- 
 tired from the Earth, i.e. for at least 
 two months, according to the story, 
 the air would scarcely have supported 
 respiration, and all living creatures in 
 the Ark must have been frozen to 
 death. For the story evidently sup- 
 poses that the Ark rested on the highest 
 mountain-summit; since it says that 
 it ' rested on the seventeenth day of 
 the seventh month,' Tiii.4, and the 
 mountain tops were not seen till ' the 
 first day of the tenth month,' viii.5, i.e. 
 not till 73 or 74 days later. Now the 
 highest summit of Ararat is 17,000 
 feet high, more than 1,000 feet higher 
 than Mont Blanc (1S,668 feet), and 
 3,000 feet above the region of per- 
 petual snow, — above which, according 
 to the story, they must have lived, 
 from 'the seventeenth day of the 
 seventh raonih' to the 'twenty-seventh 
 day of the second month,' viii.l4, on 
 which day they came out of the Ark 
 — that is, for more than seven months. 
 
 1173. Delitzsch describes Mount 
 Ararat as follows, ^.267 ; — 
 
 Mount Ararat raises itself in two high 
 summits above the plain of the Araxes, G-reat 
 Ararat to 16,000 feet, and Little Ararat about 
 4,000 feet lower. Great Ararat forms a pretty 
 regular cone: its snow-field descends 3,000 
 feet from its summit, and its dark base, 10,000 
 feet high, forms a majestic pyramid, visible 
 far oif with its snowy crown. The eastern 
 declivity is connected by a narrow ridge, like 
 a neck, with the little Ararat, which shows a 
 clear conical form. F. Pahhot, who, as head 
 of a scientific expedition, set on foot by the 
 Petersburg Academy of Science, first made 
 the ascent of Great Ararat, Sept.26-8, 1829, 
 found a slightly-curved, almost circular, sur- 
 face of 200 feet in circumference, which at 
 the edge went down shfeer on every side, 
 covered with eternal ice, interrupted by not a 
 &ingle block of stone, — from which a wide 
 panorama ofEered itself to the astonished 
 gaze. On one of the summits of this moun- 
 tain was Noah's landing-place, the starting- 
 place of new humanity, spreading itself over 
 the whole earth. [PAraioT 'describes a 
 secondary summit, about 400 yards distant 
 from the highest point, and on the gentle 
 CO 2 
 
376 
 
 GEN,VII.1-VIII.22. 
 
 depress! on, which connects the two eminences, 
 he surmises that the Ark rested.' Smith's 
 Diet, of the Bible, i.p.lOO.] There is no point of 
 tlie old continent, which lies inland, and yet 
 BO truly island-like, surrounded by mighty 
 waters. It is as if from these heights the 
 water must run down on all sides. And there 
 is no point of the old continent, which would 
 have a position in so many respects central, — 
 in the middle of the great African and 
 Asiatic desert-track, in the middle of the 
 greatest line of breadth of the Caucasian 
 race, ill the middle of the longest old lines of 
 land, between the Cape of Grood Hope and 
 Behring's Straits, equally distant from, the 
 south point of Farther India and the north- 
 west Spitzbergcn Islands. This insular and 
 central position of Mount Ararat, next to the 
 peaks of Himalaya, the highest summit of the 
 Old "World, sei-ves as a surprising co-nfirmation 
 of the historical truth of the Biblical record (!). 
 
 1174. Eut, further, the depth of water 
 needed for a literal compliance with 
 the story is two miles greater than the 
 height of Ararat, and this wonldrequire, 
 according to Dr. Pte Smith's esti- 
 mate, about eight times as much water 
 as is contained in all the seas and 
 oceans of the Earth. Therefore, if all 
 the water on the Earth were evapo- 
 rated, and poured down as rain, the 
 fact of the Deluge, as stated in the 
 book of Genesis, would require a 
 miraculous creation of this vast amount 
 of water, and a miraculous removal of 
 it hy natural processes, viii.1-3, of 
 which the Bible gives not the least 
 intimation. 
 
 1175. Dr. Pye Smith's words are 
 these, Geology and Scripture, p.liO : — 
 
 The mass of water necessary to cover the 
 whole globe to the depth supposed, would be 
 in thickness about five miles above the pre- 
 vious sea-level. This quantity of water might 
 be fairly calculated as amounting to eight 
 times that of the seas and oceans of the globe, 
 in addition to the quantity already existing. 
 The questions then arise. Whence was this 
 water derived ? And how was it disposed of, 
 after its purpose was answered ? These ques- 
 tions may, indeed, be met by saying that the 
 water was created for the purpose, and then 
 anniliilated. That Omnipotence could effect 
 such a work none can doubt. But we axe not 
 at liberty thus to invent miracles ; and the 
 narrative in the Book of Genesis plainly as- 
 signs two natural causes for the production 
 oE the diluvial water,— the incessant rain of 
 nearly six wedts, — called in the Hebrew 
 phrase, the * opening of all the windows of 
 heaven,' i. e. of the sky,— and the * breaking 
 up of aU the fountains of the great deep.' By 
 the latter phrase some have understood that 
 there are immense reservoirs of water in the 
 interior of the earth, or that even the whole 
 of that interior, down to the centre, is a cavity 
 filled with water, a notion which was excusable 
 
 in the defective state of knowledge a centurj 
 ago, but which, from the amplest evidence 
 we now know tD be an impossibility. Th( 
 use of this expression, in other parts of Scrip' 
 ture, sufficiently proves that it denotes tht 
 general collection of oceanic waters. It it 
 scarcely needful to say that all the rain, which 
 ever descends, has been previously raised bj 
 evaporation from the land and water thai 
 form the surface of the earth. The capacitj 
 of the atmosphere to absorb and sustain watei 
 is limited. Long before it reaches the point 
 of saturation, change of temperature and elec- 
 trical agency must produce copious descents 
 of rain : from all the surface below, evapora- 
 tion is still going on ; and, were we to imagine 
 the air to be first saturated to the utmost 
 extent of its capacity, and then to discharge 
 the whole quantity at once upon the Earth, 
 that whole quantity would bear a very incon- 
 siderable proportion to the entire Bariace of 
 the globe, A few [about ^Zw] inches of depth 
 would be its utmost extent. It is, indeed, the 
 fact that, upon a small area of the Earth's 
 surface, yet the most extensive that comes 
 within experience or natural possibility, heavy 
 and continued rain for a few days often pro- 
 duces effects fearfully destructive, by swelling 
 the streams and rivers of that district. Jiut 
 the laws of Nature as to evaporation, and the 
 capacity of atmosphanc air to hold water in 
 solution, render such a state of things over the 
 whole globe not merely improbable, hut absoliUely 
 impossible. 
 
 Dr. Smith, therefore, endeavours to 
 maintain the notion of a partial 
 Deluge, which, as we shall presently 
 see, the Scripture itself, as well as 
 scientific considerations, will certainly 
 not allow. 
 
 1176. However, geological facts are 
 decisive against the possibility of an uni- 
 versal Deluge having ever taken place 
 within recent ages of the world's history, 
 — that is, within a period long antece- 
 dent to the time of the Creation, aa 
 narrated in the Book of Genesis. Not 
 only are there no indications of such 
 an event, — though if ' the fountains of 
 the great deep ' were * broken up,' and 
 the * windows of heaven opened/ and 
 the waters covered the Earth for a 
 whole year, we should expect to find 
 numerous and distinct traces of such 
 a stupendous occurrence in former 
 days ; but the researches of G-eology 
 absolutely deny and disprove the fact 
 of such an event having ever taken place. 
 
 1177. On this point Kalisch writes, 
 Gen.p.10^. 
 
 In the centre of Prance, in the provinces of 
 Auvergne and Languedoc, are still the re- 
 mains of several hundred volcanic hills and 
 mountains. The craters, some of which ere 
 
GEN.VII.1-VIII.22. 
 hu^ld «.i5^*° ** ''^'sMs ot fifty, one 
 ?ISi^hp^rlS^^°f "■"^ Distantperiods sepa- 
 
 ?iTnw i^**y^*'S"^<=etlie8e volcanoes ceased 
 that vast depth of lava ; they have peuetra^ 
 through basalt rocks one hundred and X 
 feet m height, and have even considerably 
 entered into the granite rocks beneath.- The 
 tmie r«iuired for such operations is immeasur- 
 ably slow. Centuries are required to mark 
 the_ least perceptible progress. The whole 
 period, which was necessary for the rivers to 
 overcome that hard and compact ma^, is 
 large almost beyond the conception of man ; 
 all our measures of chronology are insuf- 
 ficient ; and the mind stands amazed at the 
 notion of eternal time. That extraordinary 
 region contains rocks, consisting of laminated 
 formations of siliceous deposits ; one of the 
 rocks is sixty feet in thickness ; and a moderate 
 calculation shows, that at least 18,000 years 
 were requiredto produce that single pile. All 
 these formatioiM, therefore, are far more re- 
 mote than the date of the Noachian flood ; they 
 show not the slightest trace of having been affected 
 or disturbed by any general deluge; their pro- 
 gress has been slow, but uninterrupted ; even 
 the pumice-stone, and other loose and light 
 eubstances, with which many of those hills and 
 the cones of the volcanic craters are covered, 
 and which would have been washed away by 
 the action of a flood, have remained entirely 
 untouched, 
 
 1178. Hugh Miller says, TestiTnony 
 of the Socks, ^.341,342 :— 
 
 The cones of volcanic craters are formed of 
 loose incoherent scoriae and ashes ; and when 
 exposed, as in the case of submarine volcanoes, 
 such as Graham's Island and the island of 
 Sabrina, to the denuding force of waves and 
 currents, they have in a few wedcs, or at 
 most a few months, been washed completely 
 away. And yet, in various parts of the world , 
 such as Auvergne in Central France, and 
 along the flanks of ^tna, there are cones of 
 long extinct or long slumbering volcanoes, 
 which, though of at least triple the antiquity 
 of the Noachian Deluge, and though composed 
 of the ordinary incoherent materials, exhibit 
 no marks of denudation. According to the 
 calculations of Sir Charles Lyell, no devastat- 
 ing flood could have passed over the forest 
 zone of iStnaduring the last twelve thousand 
 years, — ^for such is the antiquity which he 
 assigns to its older lateral cones, that retain in 
 int^rity their original shape ; and the vol- 
 canic cones of Auvergne, which enclose in 
 their ashes the remains of extinct animals, 
 and present an outline as perfect as those of 
 .aitna,are deemed older sttU. G-raham Island 
 arose out of the sea early in July, 1831 ; in 
 the beginning of the following August it 
 had attained to a circumference of three 
 miles, and to a height of two hundred feet ; 
 and yet in less than three months from that 
 time the waves had washed its immense mass 
 
 377 
 
 down to the sea-level ; and In a few weeks 
 more It existed but as a dangerous shoal. And 
 such, inevitably, would have been the fate of 
 the equally incoherent cone-like craters of 
 ^tna and Auvergne, during the seven and a 
 half months, that intervened between the 
 breaking up of the fountains of the great 
 deep and the re-appearance of the mountain- 
 tops, had they been included within the area 
 of the Deluge. 
 
 1179. Further, Mr. Sceope says in his 
 Volcanoes of Central France : — 
 
 This amount of excavation can be attributed 
 only to the river, which still flows there ; 
 because the undisturbed and perfect state of 
 the cone of loose scoriae demonstrates that no 
 denuding wave, deluge or extraordinary body 
 of water has passed over this spot since the 
 eruption, (p.97.) 
 
 The undisturbed condition of the volcanic 
 cones, consisting of loose scoriae and ashes, 
 which actually let the foot sink ankle-deep in 
 them, forbids the possibility of supposing any 
 great wave or debacle to have passed over the 
 country since the production of those cones. 
 (p.206.) 
 
 It is impossible to doubt that the present 
 valleys of the Loire, and all its tributary 
 streams within the basin of Le Puy , have been 
 hollowed out since the flowing of lava- 
 currents, whose corresponding sections now 
 fringe the opposite margins of these channels 
 with columnar ranges of basalt, and which 
 constitute the intervening plains. Yet these 
 lavas are undeniably of contemporary origin 
 with the cones of loose scoriae which rise here 
 and there from the surface, and which would 
 necessarily have been hurried away by any 
 general and violent rush of waters over this 
 tract of country. It is, indeed, obviously 
 impossible that any such flood should have 
 occurred. The time that must be allowed for 
 the production of effects of this magnitude, 
 by causes evidently so slow in their operation, 
 is indeed immense. . . . The periods 
 which to our narrow apprehension, and com- 
 pared with our ephemeral existence, appear 
 of incalculable duration, are in all proba- 
 biUty but trifles in the calendar of nature. 
 (P.2D7.) 
 
 1180. Lastly, Sir C. Ltell writes, 
 Ant of Man, ^.192 : — 
 
 We behold in many a valley of Auvergne, 
 within 50 feet of the present river channel, a 
 volcanic cone of loose ashes, with a crater at 
 its summit, from which powerful currents 
 of basaltic lava have poured, usurping the 
 ancient bed of the torrent. By the action of 
 the stream in the course of ages, vast masses of 
 the hard, columnar basalt have been removed, 
 pillar after pillar, and much vesicular lava, 
 as in the case, for example, of the Puy Rouge, 
 near the Chalucet, and of the Puyde Tartaret, 
 near Neckers. The rivers have even in some 
 cases, as the Sioule, near Chalucet, not only 
 cut tlu:ough the basalt, which dispossessed 
 them of their ancient channels, but have 
 actually eaten 50 feet into the subjacent 
 gneiss ; yet the cone, an incoherent heap of 
 scoriaB and spongy ejectmenta, stands immo- 
 lested. Had the waters oilce risen, even for « 
 
378 
 
 WAS NOAH'S FLOOD A PARTIAL DELUGE? 
 
 day, so high as to reach the level of the base 
 of one of these cones,— had there been a single 
 flood 60 or 60 feet in height since the last 
 eruption occurred,— a great part of these 
 volcanoes must inevitably have been swept 
 away. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 T\'AS NOAH'S flood a PAETIAL DELUGE ? 
 
 1181. There are some, however, 
 and as we have seen, Hugh Miller 
 among them, who endeavour to make 
 it appear that the Flood in Noah's 
 time was not universal, but partial. 
 Not, however, that the difficulties al- 
 ready noticed, besides olhers yet to be 
 named, will really be removed by this 
 supposition. For it is just as incon- 
 ceivable that the worms, and snails, 
 and grasshoppers, should have crawled 
 into the Ark, from different parts of 
 some large basin in Western Asia 
 (as Hugh Miller imagines), as 
 that they should have done so from 
 different parts of the world. One 
 small brook alone would have been a 
 barrier to their further progress. Nor 
 could Noah have provided for the wild 
 carnivorous animals of those parts, 
 ■which included the lion and leopard, 
 the eagle and vulture. Besides, in 
 such a case, what need would there 
 have been tn crowd the Ark with * the 
 fowls of the air by sevens ' ? Gr.vii.3, — 
 since birds, surely, might have made 
 their escape easily beyond the boun- 
 daries of the inundation. 
 
 1182. And so writes Archd. Pratt, 
 Scripture and Science, p.55 : — 
 
 The words of Scripture, were there no facta 
 [of Science] , like those I have mentioned, to 
 modify our interpretation, would by most 
 [? all] persons, be understood as describing an 
 universal flood of waters over the whole ex- 
 tent of the globe. There would be no cause 
 for questioning (his and therefore no grounds of 
 doubt [The wordeof Scripture, consequently, 
 would be taken in their plain, obvious, mean- 
 ing, as any simple-minded reader would under- 
 stand them.] But, when the new facts become 
 known, as they are at present, then [the 
 ^vorcls of Scripture must be twisted to meet 
 them, or, as Archd. Pratt puts it,] the 
 question is started, * Does the Scripture 
 language present any insuperable obstacle to 
 this more limited interpretation ? ' That it 
 does not, may be inferred from the fact that 
 two of our celebrated commentators on Scrip- 
 ture, Bishop Stilungfleet and Matthew 
 Pool, both in the 17th century, long before 
 tlie discoveries of natural science required it, 
 advocated this view (I). [Modem science has 
 proved, by pointing to the hills of Auvergne, 
 
 that there certainly never was an universal 
 deluge. But Sth-linofleet and Pool, doubt- 
 less, felt some of the other insurmountable 
 difficulties of the case as strongly as we do, 
 and were tempted to * twist ' the Scripture 
 accordingly, to suit the facts which * required ' 
 it.] 
 
 And as to the birds, Archd. Pbatt 
 writes, p.55 : — 
 
 A better acquaintance with the habits of 
 many of the non-migratory birds will con- 
 vince an objector, that even in a local deluge, 
 of the extent which we suppose the Deluge may 
 have attained, many species would have become 
 extinct but for their preservation in the Ark, 
 as the surrounding regions could not have 
 supplied them. [But why, on this account, 
 should all the birds, &c., within this limited 
 district have been preserved in the Ark, since 
 most of them existed also beyond its boun- 
 dary ?] 
 
 1183. But, surely, plainer words could 
 hardly be used than the Scripture 
 employs to show that the Deluge was 
 universal : — 
 
 vi.7, * Jehovah said, I will destroy man, 
 whom I have created, from the face of the 
 Earth, both man and beast, and the ci^eeping 
 thing, and the fowls of the air.' 
 
 vl.l7, ' Behold I, even I, do bring a Flood 
 of waters upon the Earth, to destroy all fleshy 
 wh&rein is the breath of life, from under heaven, 
 and evef^ihing, that is in the Ea/rth, shall die,' _ 
 
 vi.l9, ' Of every living thing of all flesh,' &c. 
 
 vii.4, ' Every living substance, that I ?iave 
 made, will I destroy from off the face of the 
 Earih.' 
 
 vii.l5, * Two and two, of all flesh whei'ein is 
 the breath of life.' 
 
 vii.l9, ' All the high hills that were under the 
 whole heaven, were covered.' 
 
 vii,21-23, • And all flesh died that moved 
 upon the earth, . . . all, in whose nostrils was 
 the breath of life, of all that was in the dry landj 
 died. And every living substance was destroyed, 
 which was upon tlie face of the ground, both 
 man and cattle, and the creeping things and 
 the fowl of the heaven. And Noah only re- 
 mained alive, and they that were with him 
 in the Ark.' 
 
 See also viii.21,ix.ll,15. 
 
 11 84. Archd, Pratt, indeed, refers to 
 D.ii.25, as a proof that the expression 
 ' under the whole heaven * may mean 
 not the whole globe, * but only Pales- 
 tine and the countries in its immediate 
 neighbourhood.' But, first, this is not 
 the only expression, which is employed 
 here to denote the universality of the 
 catastrophe ; and secondly, in the very 
 passage quoted, the expression is 
 plainly used to express all nations on 
 the face of the whole earth : — 
 
 ' This day will I begin to put the dread of 
 thee and the fear of thee upon the nations 
 that are under the whole heaven, who shall 
 
WAS NOAH'S FLOOD A PARTIAL DELUGE? 
 
 hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and 
 Be 111 anguish because of thee.' 
 
 H8o. It appears, then, to be impossi- 
 ble to doubt,— if only the expressions of 
 the Bible are to be regarded, apd not 
 the incredibility, -which in tliat case 
 will attach to the story, as is freely 
 confessed by such a ■well-informed geo- 
 logist as Hugh Millbe, (1169.)— 
 that the Scripture speaks distinctly 
 of an universal, and not a partial, 
 Deluge. 
 
 1186. However, let us suppose that 
 the Deluge was partial, and that, in- 
 stead of the eight thousand species of 
 beasts and birds (1162), leaving out 
 of consideration the reptiles, insects, 
 &c. — only tight hundred — nay, only 
 eighty — needed to be received into the 
 AA, and that, of these, twenty were 
 species of clean animals, and sixty of 
 unclean. Then the whole number of 
 animals taken into the Ark would have 
 been 20x24 + 60x2 = 400. And now 
 let any person of common-sense picture 
 to himself what would be the condition 
 of a menagerie, consisting of four hun- 
 dred animals, of all kinds, confined in 
 '•. narrow space, under these circum- 
 stances for more than twelve months ! 
 
 1187. We must first suppose, of 
 course, that Noah and his wife and chil- 
 dren were occupied every day, and all 
 day long, incessantly, in taking to these 
 400 creatures, two or three times a day, 
 their necessary supplies of dry food 
 and water, tringing fresh litter, and 
 clearing away the old. But, shut up 
 together closely in this way, with 
 scarcely any light and air, is it not 
 plain that, in a very short time, every 
 part of the ship would have been full 
 of filth, corrupting matter, fever, and 
 pestilence ? 
 
 1188. 'But the ship may have been 
 kept clean, and the air pure, and the 
 animals healthy, though shut up with- 
 out light and air, by a miracle.' Yes, 
 certainly: by multiplying miracles fl(? 
 infinitum, of which the Bible gives not 
 theslightestintimation,— which, rather, 
 the whole tenor of the story as plainly 
 as possible excludes,— if this is thought 
 to be a reverent mode of dealing with 
 Scripture, or at all more reverent than 
 a course of criticism of the kind which 
 
 379 
 
 im now pursuing, while thus en- 
 deavouring to set the plain facts of the 
 case, in a clear, strong, light, before 
 the eyes of the reader. I feel it to be 
 my duty to do this, to the best of my 
 power ; nor ought I to be deterred by 
 being told that I am treating the Bible 
 with unwarrantable freedom, that I am 
 using a ' vulgar ' and ' coarse ' kind of 
 criticism, and delighting ' like a success- 
 ful fiend' in dwelling upon the details 
 of the sacred narrative. 
 
 1189. It is absolutely necessary that 
 thoughtful persons should bo called to 
 look at these things from a practical 
 every-day point of view, — that they 
 should be induced to think for them- 
 selves about the details involved in 
 the Scripture statements, and see for 
 themselves that the notion of such a 
 'Flood' as that described in these 
 chapters of Genesis, whether it be re- 
 garded as a universal or a partial 
 Deluge, is equally incredible and im- 
 possible. If this be so, then it will 
 also follow plainly, that, by beUeying 
 ourselves, or teaching others to believe, 
 in this account of ' Noah's Flood,' as a 
 statement of real historical matter-of- 
 fact, merely because the Bible records 
 it as such, we shall be sinning against 
 God and the Truth, and simply making 
 an idol of the Bible. 
 
 1190. But, indeed, the waters of a 
 Deluge, that could cover ' the high hills, 
 that were under the whole heaven,' 
 and the ' mountains ' in Armenia, must 
 have found their level on the surface 
 of the whole Earth,— such a 
 Deluge must have become u: 
 unless the Law of Gravitation was 
 suspended, by another stupendous mi- 
 racle, for the space of twelve months._ 
 
 1191. Delitzsch observes on this 
 
 point, as follows, ^.260 : — 
 
 The absolute generality of the Mood, if it 
 was to be expressed at all, could not be ex- 
 pressed more clearly. It seems as if we must 
 imagine the Flood to have covered the highest 
 peaks of the Himalayas and Cordilleras, reach- 
 ing to a height of 26,843 ft. [2S,178It.] But 
 ti.20 makes that impossible: 'Mteen cubits 
 upward the waters were mighty, and the 
 mountains were covered.' That can only be 
 a concise datum from a particular stand-pomt ; 
 and this stand-point is in that case the tri-eat 
 Ararat, by far the highest monntam-summit 
 of the neighbourhood, upon which theArK 
 grounded immediately aiter the highest state 
 
WAS NOAH'S FLOOD A PARTIAL DELUGE? 
 
 380 
 
 of the -waters. The Ajk went 15 cubits deep: 
 and so, at the moment when it grounded, the 
 water also reached the height of 15 cubits 
 over the top of Ararat. If this be bo, then 
 the statement in «,19, that ' all the high hiUs 
 that were under the whole heaven' were 
 covered by the waters, must not be imder- 
 fitood literally in the sense of vniversal. _ 
 
 Ebrabd contests the possibility of this, not 
 only exegetically, but as a matter of fact. 
 * A partial flood,' he says, * which reaches 15 
 cubits over the tops of even moderately high 
 mountains, is a nonentity, an. impossibili^. 
 A partial Flood is only conceivable in a basin, 
 enclosed by mountains, and, even here, only 
 then, when it does not reach the ridges of the 
 enclosing mountains.' But this objection is 
 not well-considered. It proceeds from the 
 false supposition that the water could not 
 form an irregular surface, — that it could not 
 assume a conical form{\). But this is only 
 true of standing water, which receives no sup- 
 ply. If, in the region about the Ararat, the 
 supply from beneath was greatest in intensity, 
 the Flood might go far above Ararat, without 
 at the same time covering far distant moun- 
 tains,— even low ones, 
 
 Dblitzsch, however, has not olDserved 
 that the peak of his ' conical ' moun- 
 tain of water, rising 3,000 feet above 
 the line of perpetual snow (11 72), would 
 have been converted into ice. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 BTOEIES OF THE FLOOD AMONG OTHER 
 NATIONS. 
 
 1192. Many heathen nations have 
 traditions concerning either an univer- 
 versal or a partial Deluge. These are 
 given at length by Ealisch, Gen.p. 
 202-204. That, with which the He- 
 brew agrees most closely, is the Chal- 
 daean, as follows :■ 
 
 The representative of the tenth generation 
 after the first man was Xisuthrus, a pious and 
 wise monarch. The god Chronos (or Belus) 
 revealed to biin that continual rains, com- 
 mencing on a certain day, the fifteenth of the 
 month DEBsiuB, would cause a general Deluge, 
 by which mankind would be destroyed. At 
 the command of the deity, Xisuthrus built an 
 immense ship, 3,000 feet long and 1,200 broad ; 
 [and, having first as commanded, buried the 
 reconis of the primitive world in Sippara, the 
 city of the Sun,] he ascended it \vith his 
 family, his friends, all species of quadrupeds, 
 birds, and reptiles, having loaded it with 
 every possible provision, and sailed towards 
 Armenia. "When the rain ceased, he sent out 
 birds, to satisfy himself about the condition 
 of the earth. They returned twice : but the 
 second time they had mud on their feet ; and 
 the third time they returned to him no more. 
 Xisuthrus, who had by this time grounded 
 upon the side of some Armenian mountain, 
 left the ship, accompanied only by his wife. 
 
 his daughter, and the pilot. They erected an 
 altar, and ofEered sacrifices to the gods, but 
 were soon raised to heaven on acco\mt of their 
 exemplary piety. ■ Those, who had remained 
 in the ship, now left it also with many lamen- 
 tations. But they believed that they heard 
 the voice of Xisuthrus, admonishing them to 
 persevere in the fear of the gods ; after which 
 they settled again in Babylon, from which 
 they had started, and became the ancestors of 
 a new human population. The ship waa 
 thought to be preserved in the highland of 
 Armenia, in the mountain of the Cordyseans; 
 and pieces of bitumen and timber, ostensibly 
 taken from it, were in later times used chiefly 
 as amulets. 
 
 1193. TucH gives the following ac- 
 count of these myths, ^.137-154, which 
 is here condensed from Mr. Hetwood's 
 edition of "Von Bohlen, ii.^.161-184: — 
 
 Many legends of a Flood are handed down 
 to us from antiquity, which represent the 
 inundation to have been in some cases a par- 
 tial one, as in the Samothracian Flood, DiOD. 
 Sic. v.47, explaining geographical relations, 
 and in other cases describe it as a general 
 Flood over the whole Earth. [There is no 
 ancient Egyptian legend of this kind, so that 
 Egypt certainly was not the source of them.] 
 Greece furnishes the accounts of two. In one, 
 Ogyges survives a universal Flood, which had 
 covered the whole surface of the Earth to 
 such a depth, that he conducts his vessel 
 upon the waves tlurough the air. The other 
 Grecian legend, which relates to Deucalion, 
 is more complete, but, like that of Ogyges, is 
 only narrated by later writers. Neither Ho- 
 mer nor Hesiod makes any mention of a 
 Flood ; and even Herodotus, though he men- 
 tions Deucalion, i.56, does not connect the 
 name with any inundation. Pimdab first 
 mentions Deucalion's Flood, Olymp.ix.S^-1\\* 
 and it \s given in a more perfect form by 
 LuCTAN, de Bed <Syr.xii,xiii.t The object of 
 
 * Man's first abode Deucalion reared. 
 When from Parnassus' glittering crown, 
 With Pyrrha paired, the Seer came dowru 
 Behind them rose their unborn sonSj 
 The new-named laity o/stones, 
 A homogeneous mortal throng.* 
 
 Moore's Pind. i.2J.94. 
 The idea of the creation of human beings, 
 from stones thrown behind them by Deuca- 
 lion and Pyrrha, evidently originated in the 
 similarity of the words IdaSj ' stone,' and lasOf 
 ' people.' 
 
 t * I heard a story about Deucalion among 
 the Hellenes, which the Hellenes tell about 
 him. Now the fable is this. The present 
 generation, the men now living, were not the 
 first that came into being ; but that genera- 
 tion all perished. These, however, are of the 
 second generation, which a second time grew 
 to great numbers after the age of Deucalion. 
 But about that generation the story is as fol- 
 lows. Being thoroughly insolent, they did 
 unlawful deeds ; for they never kept oaths, 
 nor entertained strangers, nor spared sup- 
 pliants — for which things this great calamity 
 bef el them. All at once the earth poured forth 
 
STORIES OF THE FLOOD AMONG OTHER NATIONS. 381 
 
 «nm?S^^?^'' '^J^S^ ^PP^^'^s *o liave been the 
 
 ?S« ^Fn!^ ^^T perished t«(fto«f any Flood. 
 wvS^'^^^'^^ ^^ destroyed, had acted 
 wS^ di^egaided oaths and the rights of 
 hospitality attended to no expostulations, and 
 in the end became necessarily punished. Ju- 
 piter sent violent torrents of rain, and the 
 Earth, says Lttcian, opened in order to let 
 the immense body of water run off. Deuca- 
 lion the only righteous man, entered the vessel 
 which he had made, with his wife Pyrrha 
 [h^?'. ^}^°- ^ wives'], and according to 
 the later form of the legend, took mth him 
 different kmds of animals in pairs. After 
 nine days and nine nights he landed on the 
 summit of Parnassus, which remained un- 
 covered, Paus.x.6 ; * while the greatest part 
 of Grieece was laid under water, so that only 
 a few men, who had fled to the highest moun- 
 tains, escaped alive. Plutajeigh, de Soil. 
 4nim.siii,tmentions the dove, which Deuca- 
 lion employed to find out if the rain had 
 ceased or the heavens had become clear. 
 
 The Phrygian legend is similar, though we 
 have only faint traces of it. Annakos, the 
 Biblical Enoch, foretells the coming Mood ; 
 and coins of Apamea, of the time of Septimus 
 Severus, a.d. 194^-211, represent a floating 
 vessel, in which a man and his wife may be 
 discerned, whilst upon the vessel is a bird, 
 and another is flying towards it, holding a 
 twi^ in its claw. The same couple are seen 
 standing on the dry land, with their right 
 hands uplifted, and upon these specimens of 
 the coin is the name Ni2. This Phrygian 
 legend must refer in some degree to a Flood, 
 and it settled the landing place of the Floating 
 Ark to be near Apamea, which bears the 
 name of • Ark.' The close coincidence, how- 
 ever, with the Biblical narrative, even in the 
 occurrence of the name of Noah (Ni2), excites 
 suspicion, and favours the presumption that 
 this representation of the coins was derived 
 from the Hebrew. 
 
 The same fundamental ideas are contained 
 In all these legendary narratives of the Flood, 
 
 much water, and much rain fell, and the 
 rivers came down in floods, and the sea rose 
 to a great height, until all became water, and 
 all perished. Only Deucalion was left of men 
 for a second generation, on account of his 
 prudence and piety. And this was the way 
 in which he was preserved. He embarked 
 his children and wives in a large Ark which 
 he had. And, as he entered, there came to 
 hJTn swine, and horses, and different kinds of 
 lions, and serpents, and whatever else lives in 
 the Earth, by pairs. And he received them 
 all, and they did him no harm, but great 
 friendship existed between them by the will 
 of Zeus. And in one Ark they all sailed so 
 leng as the water prevailed. 
 
 • ' And of the people, all, who were able to 
 escape the storm, were Saved through the 
 howling of wolves, by escaping to the heights 
 of Parnassus, following the beasts as guides 
 of the way.' ^^ ^ j * r 
 
 t * Story-tellers say that a dove, sent out 
 from the Ark, became a sign of tempest by 
 returning in again, and of fine weather by 
 having flown away.' 
 
 In every instance the legend was transplanted 
 by the people who relate it to their own 
 country. Himalaya, Ararat, and Parnassus, 
 occupy the same place in one set of myths, as 
 Meru, Albordj, and Olympus do in the others. 
 The Hebrew legend alone removes it entirely 
 from Canaanitish soil, because the Israelites 
 constantly retained the conviction that they 
 had not originally belonged to that country. 
 The scene of their legend of the Flood was 
 the original home of their national fore- 
 fathers, which was to them an inheritance of 
 primeval antiquity. 
 
 1194. The following lines are taken 
 from Dean Milmak's translation of 
 
 ' The Story of the Fish,' in Nala Dama- ' 
 yanti andother Poems, ^.114-15, where 
 Manu is represented as addressed by 
 Brahma in the form of a fish, as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 When the awful time approaches, — heax from 
 
 me what thou must do. 
 In a little time, O blessed I all the firm and 
 
 seated earth, — 
 All that moves upon its surface, — shall a 
 
 deluge sweep away. 
 Near it comes— of all creation the ablution- 
 day is near ; 
 Therefore, what I now forewarn thee, may 
 
 thy highest weal secure. 
 All the fixed and all the moving,— all that 
 
 stirs or stirreth not, — 
 Lo 1 of all the time approaches, the tremen- 
 dous time of doom. 
 Bmld thyself a ship, O Manu, strong, with 
 
 cables well prepared ; 
 And thyself, with the seven sages, mighty 
 
 Manu, enter in. 
 All the living seeds of all things, by th& 
 
 Brahmins named of yore. 
 Place them first within the vessel, well se- 
 cured, divided well 
 
 Earth was seen no more^ no region, nor the 
 
 intermediate space ; 
 All around a waste of water,— water all, and 
 
 air, and sky. 
 In the whole world of creation, princely son 
 
 of Bharatal 
 None was seen but those seven sages, Manu 
 
 only and the fish. 
 Years on years, and still unwearied, drew that 
 
 fish the bark along. 
 Till at length it came, where lifted Himavan 
 
 its loftiest peak. 
 There at length it came, and, smiling, thus 
 
 the fish addressed the sage : 
 • To the peak of Himalaya bind thou now the 
 
 stately ship.' 
 At the fish's mandate quickly, to the peak of 
 
 Himavan 
 Bound the sage his bark, and ever to this day 
 
 that loftiest peak 
 Bears the name of Naubandhana, from the 
 
 binding of the bark. 
 
 1195. We add here the following 
 quotation from Kenbick, Primeval HiS' 
 tory, p.33: — 
 
 It must appear very doubtful whether the 
 
382 STORIES OF THE FLOOD AMONG OTHER NATIONS. 
 
 earliest mythology of the Greeks contained 
 any reference to a destruction of the human 
 race by a Flood. But the, coincidence of the 
 Babylonian, the Indian, the Mexican, and the 
 Jewish accounts, can hardly be explained, 
 without supposing a very high antiquity of 
 the Asiatic tradition, an antiquity preceding 
 our knowledge of any definite facts in the 
 history of these nations. . . . However 
 high we may be warranted to carry up the 
 existence of this tradition in Asia, it will not 
 uepessarily follow that it was founded upon a 
 real fact. . . . There is abundant evidence 
 that the past changes of the globe, and the 
 fate of the human race as influenced by them, 
 have excited the imagination to speculate on 
 their causes and circumstances, and that these 
 speculations, assuming an historical form, 
 have been received as matter of fact. The 
 Mexicans believed in four great cycles, — the 
 first terminated by famine,— the second by 
 fire, from which only birds and two human 
 beings escaped, — the third by storms of wind, 
 which only monkeys escaped, — the fourth by 
 water, in which all human beings save two 
 wei'e changed into fishes ; and to these cycles 
 they ascribed an united duration of 18,000 
 years. It was a popular legend among the 
 Greeks that Thessaly had once been a lake, 
 and that Neptune had opened a passage for 
 the waters through the Yale of Tempe. . . 
 The legend, no doubt, originated in a very 
 Bimple speculation. The sight of a narrow 
 gorge, the sole outlet to the waters of a whole 
 district, naturally suggests the idea of its 
 having once been closed, and, as the necessary 
 consequence, of the inundation of the whole 
 region which it now serves to drain. The in- 
 habitants of Samothrace had a similar tra- 
 ditionary belief, that tihe narrow strait by 
 which the Kuxine communicates with the 
 Mediterranean was once closed, and that its 
 sudden disruption produced a Deluge, which 
 swept the sea-coast of Asia, and buried some 
 of their own towers. The fact of traces of 
 the action of water at a higher level in an- 
 cient times on these shores is unquestionable. 
 . . . But that the tradition was produced 
 by speculation on its cause, not by an obscure 
 recollection of its occurrence, is also clear 
 for it has been shown, Cutier, Eev. du Globe] 
 y.87, by physical proofs, that a discharge of 
 the waters of the Euxine would not cause 
 Buch a Deluge as the tradition supposed. , 
 The inhabitants of Polynesia have a tradition 
 that the islands, with which their ocean is 
 studded, are but the fragments of a continent 
 which once existed. In Greece, the continent 
 of Lyctonia was supposed to have been split 
 into the islands of the Mediterranean. The 
 inhabitants of the western part of Cornwall 
 have a tradition that the Scilly Islands were 
 once united to the mainland, by a ti-act now 
 submerged. In none of these instances does 
 any historical fact appear to lie at the foun- 
 dation of the tradition, even where, as in the 
 case last-mentioned, it is not in itself impro- 
 bable. If the tradition of a Deluge is more 
 widely spread than any of these, so also are 
 the phenomena on which it is founded. . . 
 The sand and shells, — which induced Hero- 
 dotus to believe. ii.l2, that all Lower Egypt, 
 and even the hills above Memphis", had once 
 
 been covered by the sea, — ^had lain there for 
 ages, before they drew his attention ; and 
 surely his was not the fii-st reflecting mind 
 that had speculated on their origin. . . , 
 
 If, from these marks of the action of water 
 on the Earth the notion of a Deluge arose, 
 it would not only include, as a necessary 
 consequence, the destruction of all living 
 things, but also the guilt of the race which 
 thus violently perished. No principle appears 
 more universally to pervade the legends of 
 early times than that great calamities implied 
 great guilt. At Mavalipuram.ou the coast 
 of Coromandel, the remains of several ancient 
 temples and other buildings, now close to tiie 
 sea, suggested the idea that a splendid city 
 had been buried under the waters. Sucb a 
 calamity must have been inflicted by lihe gods 
 as a punishment for some enormous crime ; 
 and this was found in the impiety of the 
 tyranrdcal king, the great Bali. According 
 to another account, the gods destroyed it, 
 because its magnificence rivalled that of the 
 celestial courts : see Southey's Kehama,^v, 
 It was on account of the wickedness of the 
 Atlantians that Jupiter submerged their 
 island and drowned the whole race. 
 
 A similar tale is related of an island near 
 China, the impious inhabitants of which thus 
 perished, while their righteous king escaped. 
 The remains of buildings, or rocks which, 
 fancy has converted into such, seen through 
 the transparent waters near the margin of 
 lakes, have very generally given rise to legends 
 of the destruction of towns for the wickedness , 
 of their inhabitants. Dr. Eoeinson, Trav. in 
 Palest. ^ii.b%%^ mentions a tradition that a city 
 had once stood in the desert between Petra 
 and Hebron, the people of which had perished 
 for their vices, and had been converted into 
 stone. Seetzen, who went to the spot, found 
 no traces of ruins, but a number of stony 
 concretions, resembling in form and size the 
 human head. They had been ignorantly 
 supposed to be petrified heads, and a legend 
 framed to account for their owners suffering 
 so terrible a fate. 
 
 1196. How easily legends grew up in 
 those days, through pious speculations, 
 with reference to ancient facts or me- 
 morials, the real meaning and tnie 
 history of which was unknown, or had 
 long been lost, may he gathered from 
 one which Josephus, Ant.lJa,^ sets 
 forth, as being quite as much a piece of 
 authentic history, as that of the Flood 
 itself or the Tower of Babel: — 
 
 Seth, when he was brought up, and came to 
 those years, in which he could discern what 
 was good, became a virtuous man ; and, as 
 he was himself of an excellent character, 
 so did he leave children behind him, who 
 imitated bis virtues. All these proved to be 
 of good dispositions. They also inhabited 
 the same country without dissensions, and in 
 a happy condition, without any misfortunes 
 falling upon them, till they died. They also 
 were the inventors of that peculiar sort of 
 wisdom, which is concerned with the heavenly 
 
STOBIES OF THE FLOOD 
 
 -• venHnnfS-'^?"'^'^"'^- And, that these in- 
 luffioivSlv f °°' ""^ lo^' "«"»■« tHey were 
 
 ttmehvtw^'^ "^f *° "^ Isstroyed at one 
 ta tW -^nf °™ "*, ^"^^^ ™« "t ano't'er time 
 ^l^^t '^?,°^ """^ quantity 01 water, they 
 
 ?JpmTr,Vl, Jv.T"'-*"^ **'™' aisooveries on 
 
 stone miglit remain, and exhibit those dis- 
 coveries to maaiind, and also inform them 
 that there was another pillar of brick erected 
 by them Now this remains in the land of 
 Sil'iad to this day. 
 
 1197. The ground, of the latter part 
 of the above legend may have been the 
 fact of the existence of remarkable 
 pillars, which are said to have been 
 erected by Sesostris, king of Egypt, to 
 commemorate his victories, — not by 
 Seth, son of Adam, and his descendants. 
 And this part of the legend may have 
 given birth to the former part, viz. that 
 Adam made such a prediction. Heeo- 
 DOTUS writes of these, ii.l06 : — 
 
 As to the pillars, which Sesostris, king of 
 Egypt, erected in thediflerent countries, most 
 of them are no longer in existence ; but in 
 Syrian Palestine I myself saw some still re- 
 maining. 
 
 1198. Delitzsch observes, ^.242: — 
 
 The legends about the Flood, which are 
 found in different nations, have just as much 
 their corrective in the Biblical record, as this 
 has in them a proof of its historical value. 
 In them are similar fundamental portions, 
 which form the basis of the heathen legends, 
 only mythologicaJly coloured, and altered in 
 such a way, that the moral significance of the 
 event retires into the background, the locality 
 of the place of settlement is brought as near 
 as possible, the horizon of an universal Flood 
 contracts itself more or less in national, 
 special, interests, and the forms of national 
 common-life .are carried back into the antedi- 
 lavian time. Nearest to the Biblical record 
 stand the Flood-legends of the West-Asiatic 
 circle of nations. 
 
 1199. So, DELiTzseH says, in Persia, 
 India, SiTiAChina, there is a second group 
 of Flood-legends, peculiar to the coun- 
 tries of Eastern Asia. A third group is 
 formed by the legends of the Gi-ecian 
 circle ; and a fourth by the legends of 
 nations lying beyond the intercourse of 
 the ancient world, as the Welsh, Mexi- 
 cans, Peruvians : — 
 
 The legend of the Mexicans and Islanders 
 of Cuba agrees even as to the.dowe and raven, 
 with the Biblical account. According to 
 the legend of the Macusi-Indians in South 
 America, the only man who survived the 
 Flood repeopled the earth by changing stones 
 into mm. According to that of the Tamanaks 
 
 AMONG OTHER NATIONS. 383 
 of Orinoko it was a pair of human beings, 
 who cast behind them the fruit of a certain 
 palm, and out of tJie kernels sprang men and 
 women. . . . Also the legends of a general 
 Flood, among the Tahitians and other Society 
 Islanders, betray an Asiatic origin, as gene- 
 rally much in this group of prople reminds ns 
 of India. The inhabitants of Baiatea show 
 — as a proof that a flooding of the land once 
 took place — the corals and mussels, which are 
 found on the highest summits of the island. 
 
 1200. The inference, which Deiitzsoh 
 draws from the ' dove and raven ' ap- 
 pearing in the mythology of Mexico 
 and Cuba, viz., that these legends are 
 all most probably derived from one 
 primeval historical fact, would be jus- 
 tified, if the other chief details of the 
 story were found repeated in these 
 legends. Otherwise, it might be just 
 as fairly argued that the primeval fact 
 involved also the changing stones into 
 men, which appears so prominent in 
 these South American legends, as well 
 as in that of the Greeks. 
 
 1201. In fact we can account for the 
 observed resemblance in one or other of 
 these three ways : — 
 
 (i) The different legends do point 
 to one common primeval fact ; but, if so, 
 the ' stones ' must have formed a feature 
 in it quite as much as the 'birds' ; 
 
 (ii) The legends of the new World 
 may have been derived from those of 
 the Old ; but, if so, the American In- 
 dians must have had connection with 
 the old mythology of Greece, which 
 contains the ' stones ' as well as of In- 
 dia, which has the ' dove' ; 
 
 (iii) The legend in each ease may have 
 arisen from the same cause, viz., the 
 inventive faculty of man, as he ob- 
 served the circumstances with which he 
 was surrounded, and pondered upon 
 them. 
 
 1202. We have just read that the in- 
 habitants of Eaiatea produced, as a 
 proof that a Flood of waters must 
 have covered their country in former 
 days,— 
 
 the corals and mussels, which are found on 
 the highest summits of the island. 
 
 Probably, we have here the real so- 
 lution of the question before us. The 
 Raiateans were right in believing that 
 the existence of the remains of these 
 shellfish upon their hUls was a cer- 
 tain indication that the sea had once 
 
884 STOEIES OF THE FLOOD AMONG OTHER NATIONS. 
 
 covered their land. But they attri- 
 buted to some remote era in the 
 history of their own people, what, as 
 we now know from the teachings of 
 Geology, may have happened vast 
 ages — perhaps, even millions of years, 
 — ^before man lived upon the face of the 
 the earth. 
 
 1203. It seems probable, then, that, 
 in all these different nations, the dis- 
 coveries, which were made from time 
 to time of these remains of marine 
 creatures, far away from the sea, and 
 far above the sea-level, must have led 
 to speculations upon the cause of these 
 phenomena. And wha* account could 
 be given of them, but that they were 
 the result of some tremendous Flood, 
 which covered the whole earth, and left 
 these signs of its terrible violence upon 
 the high mountain-tops, which were 
 buried beneath the waters? In such 
 a Flood aU living things must have 
 perished, except such as might have 
 been saved by some kind of floating 
 vessel. 
 
 1204. The legend, then, in each ease 
 would gradually shape itself, according 
 to the special peculiarities of the people 
 or country in which it originated : just 
 as the discovery of huge bones of ex- 
 tinct animals, and the sight of the 
 vast remains of ancient buildings, seem 
 (1139) to have given rise in different 
 coimtries to the legends about a race of 
 primeval giants. It is quite possible 
 also that, in certain cases, some actual 
 fact, handed down by tradition from 
 former days, may have helped to give 
 a substantial basis to the legendary 
 story. The Hebrew narrative, for in- 
 stance, may have had » real historical 
 foundation in some great Flood, which 
 overwhelmed a considerable tract of 
 country in the neighbourhood of 
 Ararat ; just as it is possible that, since 
 the existence of man upon earth, the 
 country of Lyonness, between the 
 Land's End and SciUy Isles, has been 
 actuaEy submerged, as the Welsh 
 legend teaches. 
 
 1205. Thus the Scripture story of 
 the Deluge may rest upon a reminis- 
 cence of some tremendous inundation 
 of the ancient fatherland of the Hebrew 
 tribes, — ^possibly, as Baron Bunsen 
 
 supposes, resulting from geological 
 changes, connected with the formation 
 of the present Caspian Sea, mixed up 
 with recollections of some more recent 
 catastrophe in the lower plains of Me- 
 sopotamia, which are not unfrequently 
 flooded by the Tigris and Euphrates, 
 the latt«r of which rivers has its source 
 in the Armenian mountains, and is 
 swelled prodigiously, at times, by the 
 melting of the snows. It is noticeable 
 that these inundations take place in 
 the Spring, when Noah's Flood also 
 was at its height, which began with 
 the autumnal rains in the middle of 
 the second month (October), G.vii.ll, 
 and was at its height, at the end of 
 150 days, in the middle of the seventh 
 month {March), G.viii.l. 
 
 1206. We have the following account 
 of such a Flood in the plains of Bag- 
 dad in the month of April. 
 
 A remarkable Flood occurred in April, 1839, 
 in Mesopotamia, when ttie Tiglis and Eu- 
 phrates were both out at the same time, and 
 the gi-eatest exertions were required on the 
 part of the inhabitants of Bagdad, to prevent 
 their city from being swept away by the in- 
 undation On April 21, Dr. Bell 
 
 wrote to a relative that the water was l»gh 
 upon the ramparts of Bagdad, and six feet 
 above the level of the city. As far as the eye 
 could reach, nothing was to be seen, from the 
 highest tower of the Mosques, but a great 
 waste of waters, studded here and there with 
 a few date-groves, which appeared like little 
 islands ; all cultivation in com and gai-den- 
 produce was completely destroyed. Thousands 
 of square miles of country were at that time 
 inundated, and numerous encampments of 
 Arabs were drowned in the localities, where 
 they had been accustomed to dig wells for a 
 scanty supply of brackish water. So exten- 
 sive. Indeed, was the inundation, that the 
 Euphrates steamer, under the command of 
 Captain Lynch, made long exciursions across 
 the newly-formed Flood. Nearly a third of 
 Mesopotamia was under water. Hetwood'S 
 
 VON BOHLEN, ii.23.178. 
 
 Dr. Beli, further mentions the fact 
 that the ferry-boats in use on the 
 Tigris at the present day are still 
 ' covered with bitumen* ; comp. 
 
 ' Thou Shalt pitch it within and without 
 with pitch,' Gr.vi.l4. 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 GEN.IX.1-IX.29. 
 
 1207. G.ix.3. 
 
 * Every creeping-thing that liveth, to you it 
 shall be for food ; as the green herb, I give to 
 you all,' 
 
GEN.IX. 
 
 Delitzsch notes here, p.271 : 
 
 Not as though men had not yet enjoyed the 
 
 X^L"!^*?;"™''! *°°'l' tat now first it is 
 allowed to them ; since, now that the fruit- 
 Mness of the ground and the nourishing 
 power of Its products have been diminished 
 Dy virtue of the divine curse, iii.l7,v.29, man 
 required a more extensive and more strength- 
 ening nutriment.' 
 
 But it rather seems that, whateyer 
 may have been the case (1094) with the 
 Jehovist, the Elohist did not suppose 
 that, before the Flood, animal-food was 
 used, as he makes no provision of such 
 food for Noah and his family during 
 the twelve months in the Ark. And 
 yet, as already noted (1017), even in 
 the eating of vegetables by men, or 
 grasses and leaves by animals, — nay, 
 even in the drinking of water, — there 
 must have been abundant destruction 
 of animal life, as common observation, 
 and, at all events, the microscope, 
 teaches. And great numbers of fish 
 live by suction, and cause thus infinite 
 destruction of animal life. 
 
 As regards the curse, it may be ob- 
 served that the Jehovist seems rather 
 to regard the Flood as having produced 
 an, alleviation of toil, v.29,viii.21. 
 
 1208. G.ix.4. 
 
 * Only flesh, with its soul, its blood, ye shatl 
 not eat.* 
 
 This may either be a recognition by 
 the Elohist, in the form of an express 
 law, of a custom already existing in his 
 time, of abstaining from the use of 
 blood as food, or it may have been in- 
 troduced with the view of checking and 
 extirpating among the Hebrews the 
 practice of eating raw meat, which, as 
 Kalisch observes, is stiU customary 
 among some tribes of Syria, as it is to 
 a certain extent among the Zulus, but 
 especially among the modem Abyssi- 
 nians, who are said to eat raw steaks 
 cut from the living animal: comp. IS. 
 xiv.32. 
 
 1209. G.ix.l3. 
 
 ' My bow do I set in the cloud.' 
 The -writer evidently intends to ac- 
 count in this way for the first appear- 
 ance of the rainbow. This is the plain 
 meaning of the language here used, 
 which must be twisted to imply that, 
 though the rainbow had often been 
 eeen before,— as it must have been, if 
 
 1-IX.29. 
 
 385 
 
 there was rain and sunshine together 
 before the Flood, — it was then first, 
 after the Flood, made the sign of 
 peace between God and, man. The 
 writer supposes it was then first set in 
 the clouds after the Flood. 
 
 1210. Dblitzsoh notes as follows, 
 ^.276 : 
 
 It is plain that, in the writer'a meaning, the 
 rainhow now appears for the first time, al- 
 though—and this requires to be especially 
 noticed— only that rainbow, which is Tisible 
 far ofE in the clouds of heaven, after they 
 have discharged their burden of water. For 
 the same phenomenon of refraction is also to 
 be observed at a waterfall, and it shows itself 
 at times in a dew-dropping mist. But first 
 after the deluge, with the entrance of the (so- 
 called) rainbow, entered also the natural con- 
 ditions, which made possible the appearance 
 of the rainbow, as a cloud-bow beaiding itself 
 high and far away over the earth. The in-o- 
 duction of the rainbow through a co-operation 
 according to natural laws, of air, and water, 
 and light, is no proof against its origin and ob- 
 ject as here d^cribed. 
 
 The Hindoos see in it Indra's weapon, [with 
 which he discharged his arrows of lightning 
 against the Asurns, the assailants of heaven, 
 and] which he placed by his side, [as a sign of 
 peace for men,] after his fight was ended. 
 The Grreeks named it Iris, [the daughter of 
 Thaumas («ron£/er),ViRG.,iEn.ix.5,byElectra 
 (brigMness), the daughter of Oceanm, Hes, 
 Theog. 265,] * the messenger between gods and 
 men,' [or they deemed it the path ^ which 
 Iris herself descended]. Among the Germans 
 it is the great bridge made by the gods, connect- 
 ing Heaven and Earth. . . . The Samoides 
 call it the border on the mantle of Hum, i.e. 
 the Deity. According to still existing German 
 folk-lore, golden coins drop from it, and, in 
 the spot where it rises, there lies a golden 
 key, or one finds hidden treasures. These and 
 similar views, existing also outside of Israel, 
 show that the knowledge of the origin and 
 signification of the rainbow had travelled out 
 of the house of Noah into the world of peoples, 
 and had not yet quite died away, though over- 
 powered and repressed by various, and, in 
 part, contradictory imaginations. 
 
 1211. Surely, we must believe that 
 these and similar views are merely the 
 results of human speculation upon the 
 origin, and attempts to explain the 
 meaning, of this remarkable phenome- 
 non. The Hebrew, however, is the most 
 intelligent and beautiful of aU theso 
 imaginings, and tme, as beautiful. Por 
 it is true that God has set His bow iu 
 the heavens, as a sign of His goodwill 
 to us. But He has done this fromthe 
 time when He first created the light 
 and the rain,— not then first after the 
 Flood. All things beautiful in heaven 
 and earth are signs of His loving- 
 
38t> 
 
 GEN.IX. 
 
 kindness, — of His special faTour to a 
 creature, like man, who is gifted with 
 power to behold this and other mani- 
 festations of the glory and beauty of 
 the universe, and with power also to 
 reflect upon and realise their meaning, 
 as messages of peace, with which our 
 Father's Goodness cheers us. The very 
 fact, that we have eyes to see the rain- 
 bow and rejoice in it, is a sign that we 
 are children of God, that we share His 
 favour, and are not an accursed race. 
 
 1212. The Elohist, then, was right, 
 when he viewed the rainbow as a 
 pledge of God's continuing care for 
 man ; though he has limited and nar- 
 rowed its meaning, by connecting it 
 thus with the story of the Flood. To 
 the eyes of all mankind, the appear- 
 ancB of the mild hues of the rainbow 
 after a storm is very soothing and re- 
 freshing. As Delitzsch says, ^.277 : — 
 
 Shining out upon the dark groimd, which 
 was just before discharging itsell with light- 
 ning flashes, it images forth the yictory of 
 the Divine Love over the dark fiery Wrath. 
 Caused by the eflicct of the sun's rays upon 
 the gloomy mass of cloud, it is a figure of the 
 willingness of the Heavenly to penetrate and 
 work upon the Earthly. Outspanned between 
 Heaven and Earth, it announces peace be- 
 tween God and Man. Overspanning the 
 homon, it shows the all-embracing univer- 
 sality of the covenant of grace. 
 
 1213. These metaphors may be mul- 
 tiplied to any extent, and they have 
 their proper use, as imaginative expres- 
 sions setting forth broken images of 
 the great eternal truth before our eyes. 
 But we must not forget that a rainbow 
 may herald a tremendous coming storm, 
 as well as illuminate the dark cloud 
 that has passed. 
 
 And, indeed, Homes speaks of it 
 as a ' portent,' foretelling either war 
 or winter-storms, i7.xi.27-28,xvii.647- 
 48 ; and the Chinese also regard it as 
 the prognosticator of calamity. 
 
 1214. We may fall back with a sure, 
 quiet, trust on the firmer ground of 
 ttie comprehensive fact just mentioned, 
 that He, who has made the rainbow 
 and other things so grand and beauti- 
 ful, and has given us eyes to see, and 
 hearts to appreciate, the beauty and 
 glory of His works, has surely kind 
 and gracious thoughts towards us. He 
 would not mock a world lying under 
 
 1-IX.29. 
 
 the power of the wicked one,-- -a race, 
 of whom (as some suppose) the vast 
 majority are doomed to endless woe, — 
 with these bright exhibitions of His 
 Goodness : for 'as His Majesty is, so 
 is His Mercy.' Ecclus.ii.l8. 
 
 1215. G.ix.25. 
 
 * Cursed be Canaan : a servant of servants 
 shall he be to his brethren.' 
 
 The other descendants of Ham, ac- 
 cording to G.X.6, viz., the Ethiopians 
 (Cush), the Egyptians (Mizraim), and 
 the Moors (Phut), are not included with 
 Canaan under this sentence of servi- 
 tude ; nor are the Babylonians and As- 
 syrians, the descendants of Cush, 
 x.8-12, or the different offshoots of 
 Mizraim, ul3,14, as the Philistines. 
 Only Canaan is doomed to be a ' ser- 
 vant of servants to his brethren.' This 
 Scripture, therefore, though so often 
 appealed to for this purpose, gives 
 not the least sanction to the notion, 
 that the African races, generally — as 
 ' sons of Ham ' — are doomed to be 
 slaves. 
 
 1216. Some explain the fact of the 
 Canaanites alone being selected for 
 this condemnation, by supposing that 
 Canaan, Ham's youngest son, was the 
 first to detect his grandfather's condir 
 tion, and reported it scoiEngly to his 
 father,— though the Bible says nothing 
 of this. Delitzsch writes, p.281 : 
 
 iNoah's curse lights on Ham, not in the case 
 of aH his descendants, but solely in that of 
 Canaan, the youngest of them ; the others 
 receive neither blessing nor curse ; and that, 
 too, has its meaning in reference to the 
 world's history. But is it, then, reconcilable 
 with the righteousness of G od, that for Ham's 
 sin Canaan should be punished, and not in 
 person merely, but in the entire body of his 
 descendants ? ISToah looks through the inner- 
 most machinery of the actions of his sons: 
 the development, proceeding from these acts as 
 first beginnings, is spread out before his pro- 
 phetic eyes. His curse attaches itself to the 
 descendants of Canaan, in so far as the sin of 
 their father became the type of their moral 
 condition ; and between them and their sin 
 arises a chain of consequences, occasioned 
 through their tribal extension and national 
 unity. 
 
 1217. Supposing, however, that the 
 Jehovist wrote in a far later age than the 
 days of Moses, e.a. in Solomon's age, 
 it would be obvious that these words 
 contain no prediction, but rather, — 
 like the 'Song of Moses,' — convey, 
 
GEN.IX.1-IX.J9. 
 
 387 
 
 most probably, an actual description of 
 the state of things when the writer 
 lived. The history of Samuel, Saul, 
 and David, exhibits several obstinate 
 struggles -with the tribes, whom the 
 migrating Hebrews found in possession 
 of the land of Canaan. And many 
 more such struggles must have pre- 
 ceded those times. The story before 
 us seeks to find a justification for the 
 manner in which the Canaanites were 
 subdued, and subjected, as we find 
 they were, for instance, in Solomon's 
 days, lK.ix.20,21 :— 
 
 ' All the people that were left of the Amo- 
 rltes, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebu- 
 sltes, which were not of the children of Israel, 
 their cliildren that were left after them in the 
 land, whom the children of Israel also were 
 not ahle to exterminate, upon these did 
 Solomon levy a tribute of bond-service unto 
 this day,' 
 
 1218. Hence is explained the signifi- 
 cant repetition of the fact, that Ham 
 was the 'father of Canaan,' ti.18,22. 
 The vicious practices of the Canaanites 
 are accounted for by their being sup- 
 posed to inherit the shameless character 
 
 to dwell in the tents of Shem.' The 
 Hebrew word, sJiacJiaii, here employed 
 is that used habitually to express Jeho- 
 vah's dwelling 'in the midst of ' Israel, 
 E.XXV.8, xxix.45,46,N.xxxv.34, iK.vi. 
 13, &c., for which yasAai) is never used; 
 and though the latter word is used oc- 
 casionally with .reference to Jehovah's 
 dwelling in the Temple, 2S.vii.6, IK.viii. 
 13, &c., yet it expresses more properly 
 His scttl(d abode in Heaven, IK.viii. 30, 
 39, 43, 49, &c. The complete phrase, 
 indeed, 'dwell in the tents of Israel, is 
 not used anywhere of Jehovah ; but we 
 find ' dwell (shachan) in the midtt of the 
 camps of Israel in N.v.S. In Job xi.l4 
 we read, ' Let iniquity not dwell {sha- 
 chan) in thy tents,' whereas we have in 
 ICh.v.lO :— 
 
 ' They made war with the Hagarites, who 
 fell by their hand, and they dwelt (yashav) iit 
 their tents' 
 
 1221. If 'Elohim' be the subject of 
 the verb, the meaning of the passage, as 
 we have said, is obvious : ' Elohim will 
 bless and prosper Japheth ; but He will 
 make His abode with His people Israel.' 
 
 of their progenitor. The other great ' j^ 'japheth' be the subject, it is not so 
 Hamite nations, as the Egyptians and j gg^gy ^^ explain the allusion. Targ. Jon. 
 
 Babylonians, would in that case, pro 
 bably, not be included with Canaan 
 in the sentence of servitude, for the 
 reason that, at the time when these 
 words were written, there was no like- 
 lihood of those mighty nations being 
 ever so reduced. 
 
 1219. G.ix.20. 
 
 ' And Noah began to be a man of the 
 ground, and he planted a vineyaid.' 
 Von BoHiEN observes, ii.^.l48 : — 
 It is weU known that the finest vines grow 
 over the whole of the Caucasus, and frequently 
 in a wild state,— so abundantly, indeed, that 
 in some parts the trees throughout whole 
 forests are covered with vines. Eijhinstoke, 
 Kabut, i.409. The Grecian mythology also 
 Ssf^ hither the scene of the legend of 
 Dionysus (or Bacchus). 
 
 1220. G.ix.27. , ^ , 
 ' and (He) shaU dweU in the tents of Shem. 
 
 The true meaning of ttejersj ^^J^^ 
 to be, ' and He (Elohim) shall dweU in 
 the tents of Shem,' i.e. though He shaU 
 bless and 'enlarge' Japheth, yet the 
 Shemite race-that is, of course more 
 
 particularly, the Hete«^ V' ^f^^S 
 favourites, among whom He will dwell, 
 -which the Targ. 0«A. expresses by 
 Baying ' He shall make His Shechinah 
 
 has, ' His sons shall be proselyted and 
 dwell in the schools of Shem.' But 
 were the sons of Bam to be excluded 
 from this privilege ? Manifestly not : 
 since the children of an Egyptian in 
 the third generation might ' enter into 
 the congregation of Jehovah,' D.xxiii.8. 
 Still less can the words be explained of 
 the reception of the Japhethites into 
 the Church, as Augustine* and Jeromet , 
 understand them : since surely the en- 
 joyment of this blessing would not 
 'have been limited to two-thirds only of 
 the great human family. 
 
 1222. There may be, here, as some sup- 
 pose, a reference to an introduction of 
 Japhethites, by colonisation or conquest 
 into the district which belonged pro- 
 perly in the writer's view, to the sons 
 of Shem. The words in this case are 
 
 « AUG. c. Famtum, xii.24 : 'in the tents of 
 Shem, i.e. in the Churqhes, which the Apostles, 
 the sons of the Prophets have bmlt. 
 
 t Jbb. Trad. HeK: ' m saying, ' and let him 
 dJeU in the tents of Shem,' he prophesies 
 concerning us, who engage ourselves m the 
 study and soieice of the Scriptures, now that 
 Israel has been cast out.' 
 
GEN.IX.1-IX.29. 
 
 thought to imply that the descendants 
 of Japheth should be so numerous, that 
 there should be no longer room for 
 them in their old locations, and they 
 would overflow into those of Shem. 
 But if so, our ■want of sufficient ac- 
 quaintance with the details of Israelitish 
 history makes it imppssible to con- 
 jecture with any degree of confidence 
 the circumstances referred to, — more 
 especially, as we have not yet arrived 
 at any definite conclusion as to the age, 
 in which this Jehovistic passage was 
 most probably written. 
 
 1223. Possibly, bodies of people of 
 Japhetic origin, among whom are 
 reckoned in x.2,4, the Cimmerians 
 (Gomer), Scythians (Magog), Medes 
 (Madai), Tlu'acians (Tiros), Greeks 
 (Javan), including Hellas (Elisha), 
 and Cyprus {Kittim),- — some, perhaps, 
 for trading purposes, others, it may be, 
 forced on by the increase of population, 
 — had settled in some parts of the 
 land of Canaan itself, which was 
 reckoned as belonging of right to the 
 Hebrew tribes, and had been allowed 
 to do so without opposition. It is not 
 unlikely that, on the northern boun- 
 daries of Palestine, there was always a 
 pressure from without : and we read in 
 Is.ix.l of — 
 
 ' the land of Zabulon and theland of Nephtha- 
 lim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, 
 Oalilee of tlie Oentiles.* 
 
 In the time of Josiah, it is known, a 
 foimidable horde of Scythians over- 
 spread Media, and almost all Asia. 
 They then marched towards Egypt, 
 and were diverted by presents from 
 the King Psammetichus. TJpon this 
 they returned into Palestine ; some of 
 them plundered the temple of Astarte 
 at Ascalon ; others settled at Bethshan, 
 in the tribe of Manasseh, which from 
 them was called Seythopolis. 
 
 1224. Something of this kind may 
 have happened in earlier days. 
 
 Or the reference may be to the fact 
 that the Medes, Jap/iethites, lived in 
 close contact with the Assyrians and 
 Mesopotamians, SMemites, or to the 
 founding of Greek settlements upon the 
 ' coast of Asia, 
 
 Or, perhaps, the words may be meant 
 to express nothing more than this, that 
 
 there was no bar to the existence of 
 friendly relations between the Hebrews 
 and the people of Japhetic descent, 
 whereas a very different feeling was 
 entertained by the former towards the 
 Canaanites. 
 
 But, on the whole, we prefer to adhere 
 to the view expressed above (1220). 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 (3EN.X.1-X.32. 
 
 1225. G.r. 
 
 In this chapter we have a very in- 
 teresting record of the extent of the 
 Jehovist's geographical and ethnologi- 
 cal knowledge, — though it gives plain 
 signs, of course, of the limited know- 
 ledge of the times. As Delitzsce 
 notes, p.289 : — 
 
 We cannot avoid the admission, that tho 
 horizon of the author of this tabiilrijr list of 
 nations was only as wide as the relations of 
 his time allowed. Hence it is explained why 
 e.g. he leaves the Chinese unmentioned, who 
 are probably named [?] in I8.xlix.l2, ' and 
 these from the land of Sinim,' but who in the 
 time of Joshua [? Solomon], in which we 
 place the composition of the Table, were as 
 yet unknown in "Western Asia. They were 
 not known either to the Egyptians, whose 
 ethnographical knowledge, as the monuments 
 indicate more and more clearly, was, in con- 
 sequence of the conquering expeditions of the 
 Pharaohs, surprisingly extensive, or to the 
 Phcenicians, ialthouph their ships went west- 
 ward, as far as Spain, and eastward, as far as 
 India. 
 
 1226. We find here registered many 
 names of countries, cities, and peoples, 
 of which the writer had, doubtless, 
 heard some rumour, — and especially, 
 if he wrote in Solomon's days, through 
 the closer intercourse which in that age 
 existed between the people of Israel 
 and the Phoenicians, lK.v.l-12,x.22, 
 and also the Egyptians, lK.iii.l,x.28,29. 
 Many of them are named in Ez.xxvii. 
 as having commerce with Tyre, e.g., 
 Kittim, Elisha, Arvad, Elam, Lud, 
 Phut, Aram, Togarmah, Dedan, Sheba, 
 Raamah, &c., comp. especially, ' Javan, 
 Tubal, Meshech,' named in the same 
 order in G.x.2,Ez.xxvii.l3. 
 
 1227. But about some of these he 
 may have known little more than the 
 bare name, or stories current among 
 the common people. We have an 
 instance of such popular talk in v.9, in 
 the case of Nimrod : — 
 
 'He was a mighty one in hunting before 
 
Jdiovah: wherefore it Is said, Even as 
 BUorod, the mighty one in hunting before 
 Jehovah. 
 
 Knobel otserves, Gen.p.lOS, that 
 bis account of nations — 
 GonSnes itself to Europe, Northern Africa, 
 and Westem Asia, and in particular reaches 
 eastward only so far as to the people lying 
 next beyond the Tigris. It includes, conse- 
 quently, about the same extent of district as 
 was covered by the commerce of the Phoeni- 
 cians at the time of its composition ; and we 
 may assume that the ethnological knowledge 
 expressed in it is in a great measure derived 
 from the connection of the Hebrew with the 
 Canaanite Fhcenician people. 
 
 1228. No tribes are so fully described 
 as those of Canaan, ». 15-19. Tuch 
 writes, y. 199: — 
 
 In the plainest manner the natUmal interest 
 of the writer betrays itself in reference to the 
 Ganaanites, who, contrary to the actual rela- 
 tions, are derived from Ham, in order to ex- 
 clude them from having anything in common 
 with the Shemites, especially the Hebrews, 
 lor which preparation is^ready made in ix.25. 
 While recognising in all these indications the 
 .ffefrrew, who allows his f eehng of interest to 
 influence his combinations, we have at the 
 same time gained a measure of the value of the 
 whole Table,whloh, accordingly, together with 
 much correct data, confirmed also from other 
 quarters, delivers much, which rests upon 
 special modes of explanation and private 
 speculations ; and we have through the Table 
 itself no certain guarantee for any statements, 
 where other ancient authorities leave us in 
 the dark,— to say nothing of those which are 
 contradicted by them. 
 
 1229. The nations of Eastern Asia 
 are not mentioned at all, having pro- 
 bably been unknown, even by name, to 
 the Jehovist, who, however, as already 
 observed (1105), appears to have had 
 Bome vague notion of the existence of 
 distant Eastern nations, not reckoned 
 among the descendants of Seth. In a 
 later age, when these nations became 
 better known, attempts were made to 
 connect them with Koah through Ja- 
 pheth, whom Arabic * writers describe 
 
 * Some Babblnical vmters also make Shem 
 to be the youngest son of Noah, upon these 
 
 ^(i)°The order of the genealogy in G.x is 
 (i) Japheth, (ii) Ham, (iii) Shem. 
 
 Am. Thl^ appears to be thus arranged, in 
 order to bring the family of Shem into connec- 
 tion wSh the account of his descendant Abra- 
 ham, in the following chapters. 
 
 (li) n Noah begat a son at the age ol Jive 
 hmired v.33, and entered the Ark at the age 
 
 a h'^dS yeaS oW two years after the 
 llo^SlO,he must have been theyoimgest 
 son, and Japheth the eldest. 
 
 GEN.X.1.-X.32. 389 
 
 as the Meet, not — aa he is in the 
 Bible — the youngest, son of Noah. 
 Thus Kalisoh writes, ffCT.jp.236 : — 
 
 They relate that Noah gave him (Japheth) 
 a mysterious stone, long preserved in the pos- 
 session of the Mongolians, on which the holy 
 name of God was written, and which furnished 
 him with power to call down rain from the 
 skies at his pleasure. They consider him as. 
 an inspired prophet, and as the ancestor of 
 the Turks, and call him, therefore, Aboulturk ;- 
 and they aJ9cribe to him seven sons, by whom 
 he became the sire of as many tribes or na- 
 tions, the most celebrated of which are the 
 Chinese, the Goths or Scythians, the Bussians, 
 and the Turcomans. 
 
 1230. Many names of peoples and 
 places are hero set down as names of 
 individuals, such as Tarshish, vA, 
 Sidon, v.\6, Ophir and Havilah, t).29. 
 So Mizraim, '0.13,14, which is merely 
 the dual name of the Double Egypt, 
 Upper and Lower, begets six sons, each 
 of whose names is a Plural Proper 
 Name, and evidently represents a tribe 
 or people, e.g. ' Casluhim, out of 
 whom came Philistim,' the Philistines. 
 Thus the Arabs derive the Persians 
 From Pharis, the son of Aram, the son 
 of Shem, and the Eomans from S&m, 
 the son of Esau, the son of Isaac. 
 From the occurrence of the above 
 Plural Names and Patronymics it is 
 plain that the writer was aware of the 
 real nature of the account which he 
 was giving, — that he himself did not 
 mean these names to be taken as the 
 names of individual men, — at least, 
 not in all cases, — but wished to be 
 understood as writing a chorographic 
 description of the world as then known. 
 1231. Knobel writes thus, |i.l06: — 
 As the Greeks assumed the mythical persons 
 of Pelagus, Lelex, Hellen, .Solus, Doras, 
 Achieus, Ion, Tyrrhenus, Iber, Kaltus, Scythes, 
 &c. , as progenitors of the peoples of Uke name, 
 so the Hebrews referred back the different 
 nations to separate progenitors having the 
 same names. This appears also from the sig- 
 nification and form of the names. They are 
 partly designations of countries, [Cush, Phut, 
 Havilah, Mizraim, &c.] which passed over 
 from the countries to their Inhabitants, and 
 
 Ans. It is plain that in the lists of G. v,xi, the 
 ancestors of Abraham are, in every other in- 
 stance, the first-born eons of their respective 
 fathers,— (the Blohist knowing nothing of 
 Cain and Abel),— and it is not likely that the 
 case of Shem would be exceptional. Perhaps, 
 it is merely meant in xi.lO to mark Shem s age 
 as a hundred at the time when the Flood be- 
 gan, two years after which he begat Apdhaxa. 
 D D 
 
390 
 
 GEN.X.1-X.32. 
 
 then are applied to the assumed progenitors, 
 —partly plural names, [Kittim, Dodanim, 
 Ludim, &c.], which do not suit the pro- 
 genitors, as single individuals, — partly patro- 
 nymics, [Jebusite, Amorite, Girgashite, &c.,] 
 which apply to races, not to single persons. 
 In the last two cases, it seems almost as if the 
 author himself had not thought of separate 
 individuals as progenitors. Leaving out of 
 consideration the derivation of the peoples, 
 thLs list of nations is an historical document, 
 for the nations brought forwai'd in it are his- 
 torical : their existence was the occasion of 
 the author's composing his description, and 
 his knowledge enabled him to do so. We need 
 not be surprised at this, if we realise the rela- 
 tion of the Hebrews to the Phoenicians, and 
 their comprehensive commerce. 
 
 And KIaiisch adds, Gen.p.2Z5: — 
 
 The Hindoos also connected all the untions 
 of which they had the least knowl dge, with 
 their own history. But they traced the ■ ther 
 nations to illegitimate alliances with the 
 different castes, and regarded them all as 
 impure rebels. 
 
 1232. The word ^enahflM, 'Canaan,' 
 v.lb, means 'low,'* i.e. Lowlands, in 
 opposition to Aram, 'high,' the High- 
 lands of Syria. Mr. Gteovb describes 
 the district of Aram, Smith's DioL of 
 the Bible, i.^.98, as — . 
 the great mass of that high table-land, which 
 rising with sudden abruptness from the Jor- 
 dan and the very margin of the Lake of 
 Gennesareth, stretches at an elevation of no 
 less than 2,000 feet above the level of the sea 
 to the banks of the Euphrates itself, contrast- 
 ing strongly with the low land bordering on 
 the Mediterranean, the ' land of Canaan,' or 
 the ' low country.' 
 
 And he writes of Canaan, 3., i.246 : 
 
 High as the level of much of the country 
 west of the Jordan undoubtedly is, there are 
 several things which must always have pre- 
 vented, as they still prevent, it from leaving 
 an impression of elevation. These are — 
 
 (i) That remarkable, -wide, maritime plain, 
 over which the eye ranges for miles from the 
 central hills,-:-a feature of i he country, which 
 cannot be overlooked by the most casual ob- 
 server, and which impresses itself most iu- 
 delibly on the recollection ; 
 
 (ii) The still deeper, and still more remark- 
 able and impressive, hollow of the Jordan 
 valley, a view into which may be commanded 
 from nlmost any of the heights of central 
 Palestine ; 
 
 (iii) The almost constant presence of the 
 line of the mountains east of the Jordan, — 
 which from their distance have the efEect 
 more of an enormous cliff than of a mountain 
 range,— looking down on the more broken 
 and isolated hiUs of Canaan, — and furnishing 
 
 * So AuGTiSTrNB says, Op. Offm.vi,p.501, 
 *Why, however, the land was called ' Canaan,' 
 the interpre ation of this name explains : for 
 * Canaan' is interpreted to meau * low-' 
 
 a constant standard of height, before which' 
 everything is dwarfed. 
 
 1233. The above is, beyond a doubt, 
 the true meaning of the word as ex- 
 pressing the country. But the Hebrew 
 writer has introduced a person, — Ca- 
 naan, the son of Ham, — and given him. 
 eleven sons, of whose names nine are 
 tribal names, and one is the name of the 
 ancient city, Sidon. The Canaanites 
 were, in point of fact, the lowland 
 tribes of that district, including more 
 particularly the Phcenicians, who lived, 
 upon the coast, and who both called 
 themselves Canaanites, and are so 
 called in the Bible. Thus we read : — 
 
 Is.xxiii.ll, ' Jehovah hath commanded con- 
 cerning Canaan [=Tyre] ' ; 
 
 Zeph.ii.5, ' O Canaan, land of the Philis- 
 tines.' 
 
 So Sidon is named as the Jirsibom of 
 Canaan, G.x.15; and, accordingly, in 
 the lists of the aboriginal tribes, E.iii, 
 8,17,&c., the first place is always given 
 to the 'Canaanite' in the stricter sense 
 of the word, i.e. the Phoenicians. 
 
 1234. Gesenius says of the name 
 Canaan, Heb.Gr.p.S : — 
 
 It is the native name both of the Canaanit- 
 ish tribes in Palestine, and of those who dwelt 
 at the foot of Lebanon, and on the Syrian 
 coast, whom we call PhoBnicians, while they 
 are called Mnahan, ' Canaan,' on their own 
 coins. Also the people of Carthage pfl,ve them- 
 selves the same name. 
 
 The Hebrew tribes were originally 
 Syrians, i.e. Aramseans or Highlanders, 
 But probably, as we shall presently see, 
 they were in reality kindred tribes 
 with and spoke the same language as, 
 the Canaanites or Lotulanders, whence 
 the Hebrew language is called, in Is. 
 xix.18, 'the (lip) language of Canaan.' 
 1235. In aU probability, the nations 
 in this chapter are, as Knobel says, 
 historicalj—th&t is, they had a real ex- 
 istence in the views of the writer, and 
 are not, as some have supposed, in 
 many cases, a mere fiction of his own 
 imagination. There is, however, one 
 point, in respect of which there is an 
 indication of artificiality in the list, 
 viz., that there are exactly seventy 
 national names given in this register 
 if we omit the passage about Nimrod,* 
 
 * So writes Mr. Bevan, Ssqth's Diet, ofth 
 Bible, p,545 ; ' It dees not seem to have formec 
 
GEN.X.1-X.32. 
 «.8-12, which has some appearance of 
 being a later interpolation, whether by 
 the same or another writer,— (since 
 five sons of Cush are given in v.T, and 
 It IS strange that the story should begin 
 V.8, 'and Cush begat Nimrod,')— and 
 Tvhich at all events is concerned with 
 the acts of an individual person, and 
 not with a tribe or people. This 
 number ' seventy ' may have reference 
 to the ' seventy' souls of the House of 
 Jacob, which came into Egypt, G.xlvi. 
 27 : comp. also D.xxxii.8, — 
 
 ' When the Most High divided to thenations 
 their inheritance, when He separated the sons 
 ot Adam, He set the bounds of the people 
 according to the number of the children of 
 Israel.' 
 
 1236. But there are several discre- 
 pancies in this account, which show 
 some uncertainty in the traditions, re- 
 ports, or theories, on which the writer 
 relies ; and there are other points, on 
 which it is at variance with the ethno- 
 logical science of the present day. 
 
 Thus the names of Sheba and 
 Havilah, — doubtless, the names of 
 countries, — occur both among the sons 
 of Ham, V.7, and the sons of Shem, 
 ■B.28,29 ; and again Sheba occurs a,mong 
 the grandsons of Abraham, xxv.3. 
 There may have been two branches of 
 each of these two tribes, one settled on 
 the E. coast of Africa, the other in 
 Arabia ; and the first in each ease may 
 have been reckoned by the writer with 
 the sons of Ham, and the other with the 
 Shemites. But then the two branches of 
 each name must really have been re- 
 lated to each other; they must have 
 been both Shemitic, or both Hamitic. 
 And so Deijtzsoh notes, p.307 : — 
 
 It is impossible for us to keep asunder the 
 Cushite Sheba, x.7,the Joktanite Sheba, x.28, 
 and the Abrahamite Sheba, xxv.3. 
 
 1237. But if so, then both Sheba and 
 Dedan, who are reckoned together as 
 grandsons of the Shemite, Abraham, 
 XXT.3, must be connected with the 
 Hamite Sheba and Dedan of x.7. 
 
 391 
 
 Again, Tarshish* {Tartessvs in 
 Spain), and Kittim {Cyprus), which 
 are known to have been Phceniciaix 
 settlements, are classed among the Ja- 
 phethites,v.i, though Sidon or Phoenicia 
 itself is placed among the Hamites,v.l5. 
 
 The Medes also (Madai) are separated 
 as Japhethites from the probably kin- 
 dred tribes of Asshur and Elam, who 
 are reckoned as Shemites, — perhaps 
 because the territory of the Medes was 
 supposed to extend indefinitely towards 
 the north. 
 
 part of the original genealogical statement, 
 but to be an interpolation of a later date. It 
 is the only instance in which personal cha- 
 racteristics are attributed to any of the 
 names mentioned. The proverbial expression 
 which it embodies, bespeaks its traditional 
 and fragmentary character; and there is 
 liothingto connect the passage either with 
 what precedes or with what f oUows it. 
 
 * The Chronicler writes, 2Ch.ix.21,— ' For 
 the king's ships went to Tarshish with the 
 servants of Hiram : every three years cam& 
 the ships of Tarshish bringing gold and silver, 
 ivory, and apes, and peacocks,' to king Solo- 
 mon. Here he has evidently meant to copy 
 the corresponding datum in lK.x,22 : — ' For 
 the king had at sea a navy of Tarshish with 
 the navy of Hiram : once in three years came 
 the navy of Tarshish, bringing gold and silver, 
 ivory, and apes, and peacocks.' But the 
 writer in Kings speaks only of a * navy of 
 Tarshish,' i.e. a fleet of merchant^essels, the 
 phrase ' ship of Tarshish' having become 
 proverbial for * merchantman,' Ps.xlviii.7,Is. 
 ii.l6,xxiii.l,14,lx.9,Bz.xxvii.25, from the great 
 traffic which the Phoenicians had with Tar- 
 shish (or Tartessus) in Spain. The Chronicler, 
 however, has understood the expression lite- 
 rally, and therefore writes of Solomon's ships 
 going to Tarshish. 
 
 So we find in lK.xxii.48, * Jehoshaphat made 
 ships of Tarshish to go to Ophir for gold : but 
 they went not, for the ships were broken at 
 Ezion-geber.' But in 2Ch.xx.36,37, we reaxi, 
 ' And he joined himself with him to make 
 ships to go to Tarshish ; and they made the 
 ships at Bzion-geber. . . And the ships were 
 broken, that they were not able to go to 
 Tarshish.' That is to say, the earlier writer 
 says, very correctly, that Solomon built 
 7nerchant ships at Ezion-geber, at the top of the 
 Bed Sea, to go to Ophir, on the SB. toast of 
 Arabia : whereas the Chronicler says that 
 Solomon made ships on the Jie^ Sea to go to 
 a port in Spain. Some commentators have 
 attempted to 'reconcile' the difficulty by 
 supposing Tarshish to be in Asia : but there 
 is no real ground whatever for this : comp. 
 Is.xxiii.6, Jon.i.S, from which it is plain that 
 Tarshish was directly accessible from the 
 coast of Palestine. Mr. TwisurroN writes, 
 Smzth's Bicl. of the Bible, iii.i!.1440 : 'The 
 compiler of the Chronicles, misapprehending 
 the expression ' ships of Tarshish,' supposed 
 that they meant ships destined to go to Tar- 
 shish ; whereas, although this was the original 
 meaning, the words had come to signify large 
 Phoenician ships of a particular size anfl 
 description, destined for long voyages, just as 
 in England 'Bast Indiaman' was a general 
 name given to vessels, some of which were 
 not intended to go to India at all. . . . This 
 alternative is in itself by far the most proba-^ 
 ble, and ought not to occasion any surprise. 
 DI>2 
 
392 
 
 GEN.X. 
 
 1238. On ».8-12 Kaxisch writes, 
 Gen.pM,65 : — 
 
 The whole import of this interesting pas- 
 sage has been perverted and contorted. The 
 * hero ' Nirarod has been, [through a false 
 interpretation of his name, as from Tnarad, 
 'rebel,'] transformed not only into a giant, a 
 tyrant, and a ravager, but into a rebel against 
 the authority of God, into a proclaimer of 
 ■wicked principles, teaching the docile people 
 that they owe all their happiness to their own 
 Tirtue and exertion, and not to the power 
 and goodness of God, — that the Divine rule 
 ■was an intolerable tyranny, which had in- 
 flicted a general Flood, but which they could 
 for the future escape by gathering around one 
 great centre, the tower of Babel. He was 
 regarded as a hunter of men, as well as of 
 ■wild-beaats ; his very name is believed to 
 imply impious revolt ; he has been identified 
 with the fearful monster ' Orion,' [called 
 KSsil, 'fool' or 'knave,' Job.xxxviii.31 ,] 
 chained in the expanse of heaven with indc- 
 stmctible fetters, to warn and to terrify ; he 
 ■was, aluong the later Arabic "writers, the 
 subject of incredible fables, which (it is as- 
 serted) are hinted at in these verses. And all 
 this because Nimrod is here called a ' hero ' 
 and a * mighty huntsman ' I 
 
 1239. G.X.21. 
 
 ' Shem . . . the father of all the sons of 
 Eber.' 
 
 By 'sons of Eber (He her) ' are evi- 
 dently meant 'Hebre'ws ; ' in other 
 ■words, the writer here deduces from 
 the name of an imaginary personal 
 ancestor, as a patronymic, the appel- 
 lative name, ' Hebrew,' which is most 
 probably derived from heber, ' across, 
 beyond, on the other side of,' and was 
 applied by the Canaanites to the people 
 of Israel, as men who had ' crossed 
 over,' i.e. had come originally from 
 beyond the Euphrates. Hence the 
 LXX express the word ' Hebrew ' by 
 inpiTris, ' one from the other side ;' 
 and exactly in the same way the na- 
 tives of Natal speak of the thousands 
 of fugitive Zulus, who have ' crossed- 
 over ' the boundary Eiver Tugela into 
 the British colony, for protection from 
 their tyrannical kings, as aiawelayo, 
 ' crossed-over.' 
 
 1240. Thus 'Eber' in this passage is 
 not really the name of a man, but, as 
 Mr. Bbvan says, Smith's Diet, of the 
 Bible, iii.^.l545, — 
 
 represents geographioally the district across 
 (i.e. eastward of) the Euphrates. . . the 
 country, which had been the cradle of their 
 race, and from which they had emigrated 
 westward into Palestine. i6.1.p.770. 
 
 1-X.32. 
 
 The name 'Hebrew' is first nsed 
 of Abraham, G.xiv.l3. It is applied 
 to hia descendants only in the mouth 
 of foreigners, G.xxxix.l4,17,xli.l2,E.i. 
 16,ii.6,7,lS.iv.6,9,xiii.l9,xiv.ll,xxix.3, 
 or when they are contrasted with 
 foreigners, G.xl.l5,xliii.32,E.i.l5,19,ii, 
 ll,13,xxi.2,D.xv.l2,lS.xiii.3,7. 
 
 1241. The Jehovist in this chapter 
 has deduced the inhabitants of the 
 countries with which he was best 
 acquainted, (whether through extended 
 intercourse with Egypt, Phoenicia, and 
 the East, or through other means,) 
 from the three sons of Noah, Shem, 
 Ham, and Japheth. In Hebrew, the 
 name Ham, kham, would be derivable 
 from the word khamam, ' be hot ' ; but 
 its real origin appears to be the native 
 designation for Egypt, khemi, 'the 
 black country,' — Plutahch, xIi"'"! 
 (whence 'chemistry,' 'alchemy,') — 
 which it received from the colour of 
 its soil. 
 
 1242. The name Japheth, yepheth, ia 
 supposed by some to be derived from 
 yaphah, 'be fair, beautiful,' and to 
 have reference to the light colour of 
 the European nations: whQe Shem, 
 means 'a name, renown,' vi.4,xi.4, and 
 may imply the favour -with which the 
 Hebrew branch of the Shemites was dis- 
 tinguished by Jehovah, or more gene- 
 rally, the grandeur and fame, which, in 
 the earliest historical times, was at- 
 tached to the nations of Western 
 Asia : comp. in modem Europe, ' la 
 grande natign.' The Jeho'vist, how- 
 ever, in ix.27, connects the name Ja- 
 pheth with pathah, ' enlarge.' Some, as 
 E'DTTMAifN, connect it -with the Greek 
 lapetos. The Targ. Jer. upon G.ii.7, 
 says that God created man ' red, black, 
 and white,' — showing that the idea 
 of a triple partition of mankind, ac- 
 cording to colour, was current among 
 the Jews. 
 
 1243. Those, who receive the Jeho- 
 vist's account as a sufficient explana- 
 tion of the origin of the different nations 
 of antiquity, must be prepared to ex- 
 plain how such remarkable permanent 
 differences in the shape of the skull, 
 bodily form, colour, physiognomy, as are 
 exhibited on the most ancient Egyptian 
 
GEN.X.1-X.32. 
 
 39S 
 
 monuments,— where we see depicted 
 toe Mongol with his distinctive features, 
 shaven except the scalp-lock on the 
 crown, or else with long hair and thin 
 moustache, and the Negro, hlack, flat- 
 nosed, thick-Hpped, woolly-haired, just 
 exactly as now, the chUdren even with 
 little tufts of woolly hair erect upon 
 their heads, (see Types of Mankind, 
 jp.252, fig.yiS,) with many correspond- 
 ing peculiarities in other cases, — could 
 have developed themselves so distinctly 
 in the course of a few centuries, though 
 no perceptible change has taken place 
 in the negro face for 4,000 years to the 
 present time. Nay, according to the 
 Biblical accounts, the period allowed 
 for the development of the physiologi- 
 cal and linguistic differences in the 
 races of men commences, not with 
 Adam or even Noah, but with Feleg, 
 in whose days mankind was dis- 
 persed. Gr.x.2.5; and Peleg was bom 
 (449) only 191 years before the birth 
 of Abraham. 
 
 1244. On this point writes Dr. Pte 
 Smith, Geology and Scripture, ^.353 : 
 
 We have no instance of a white family or 
 community acquiring the proper negro colour, 
 nor of a ne.ro family losing its peculiarity, 
 and becoming of a proper, healthy, North- 
 European white, where there are not inter- 
 marriages with fair persons, long continued 
 in- the favourable direction. This, I believe, 
 must be admitted ; and another fact of great 
 importance must be added to it. The recent 
 explorings of the Egyptian tombs and temples 
 have brought to light pictm-es of native 
 Egyptians, and of men and women of other 
 nations, comprising negroes, who are distin- 
 tinguished by their characteristic form of 
 face and their completely black colour. Some 
 of these highly interesting representations 
 are proved to be of the age of Joseph and 
 earlier, and some, in which negro figures 
 occur, are of the eighth century after the 
 riood. Assuming, then, that the complexion 
 of Noah's family was what I ventured _ to 
 suppose as the normal brown, there was not tiTne 
 for a negro race to he produced by the opera- 
 tion of all the causes of change with which 
 we are acquainted. 
 
 1246. And so writes Nott, Types of 
 Mankind, p.58 : — 
 
 We are told of the transmission from parent 
 to child of club feet, cross eyes six fingers, 
 deafness, blindness, and many other familiar 
 exampte of congenital pecuhanties. But 
 these examples merely serve to duprove the 
 ardent they are intended to sustain. Did 
 «nfS?e ever hear of a club-footed, cross-eyed, 
 orrix-fingered row, although such individuals 
 ^ excealingly common ? Are they not, on 
 
 the contrary, always swallowed up and lost ? 
 Is it not -trange, if there be any truth in thia 
 argument, that no race has ever been formed 
 from those congenital varieties which we know 
 to occur frequently, and yet races should 
 originate from congenital varieties, which 
 cannot be proved, and are not believed, by our 
 best writers, ever to have existed? No one 
 ever saw a Negro, Mongol, or Indian, bom 
 from any but his own species. Has anytno 
 heard of an Indian child bom from white or 
 black parents in America, during more than 
 two centuries that these races have beea 
 living there? Is not thia brief and simple 
 statement of the case sufficient to satisfy any- 
 one, that the diversity of species now seen on 
 the earth cannot be accounted for on this 
 assumption of congenital or accidental origin ? 
 If a doubt remains, would it not be expelled 
 by the recollection, that the Negro, Tartar, 
 and Whiteman, existed, with their present 
 types, at least one thousand years before 
 Abraham journeyed to Egypt, as a suppli- 
 cant lO the mighty Pharaoh? 
 
 1246. It is impossible to assign with 
 any degree of confidence the situation 
 of many of the places or peoples here 
 named. Some of them, of course, are 
 well-known from the later history, 
 while others have been identified with 
 considerable probability from a com- 
 parison of their names, and of the order 
 in which they are here enumerated, 
 with descriptions which occur elsewhere 
 in sacred or profane authors. Thus 
 Japheth represents the nations of the 
 north and west (in Europe andW. Asia), 
 Ham, those of the south (in Africa and 
 W. Asia), Shem, those of the central 
 parts of W. Asia, — comprising, pro- 
 bably, aU those of which the writer had 
 had some definite information, though 
 it is not impossible that some may have 
 been omitted or inserted, to make up 
 the important number seventy. The 
 Japhethites, being probablyleast known, 
 are given only to two generations, the 
 Hamites to three, the Shemites to four 
 or Jive, 
 
 1247. Among these may be noticed — 
 GosTEE, comp. Cimbri, Oymry, and his de- 
 scendants — 
 
 Aihkenaz =the Germans (?) ; 
 
 JUphath =the Kelts (?), whom tradition 
 
 connects with the Wiipcem, now the 
 
 CajyirtAian, mountains j 
 Togarmah^KHm-Taitsxs (?), or Aime^ 
 
 MAGOoiSoythians ; Gog=Khogh (Indo- 
 
 Germ.), ' mountain,' found m Cam-asm, 
 
 ' mountain of the Asi,' from whom Asia 
 
 is named ; 
 
 MAnAi=Meacs; . _■ , • 
 
 jAVAK=Ionians, on the coasts of W. Asili, 
 
394 
 
 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE OP 
 
 from whom are derived (contrary to the 
 
 Greek tradition, which makes Ion the 
 
 descendant of Hellen) — 
 Elishah =Hellas or (?) ^olians ; 
 Tarshish =Tartessus, in Spain ; 
 KiiUm =Cyprua ; 
 Z)odanim =Ehodes, ^ the reading of the 
 
 Sam. Vers,, JRodanim (as in lCh.i.7) is 
 
 correct ; 
 
 Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras (? Thrace) 
 are very uncertain. Among the des- 
 cendants of Ham and Shem are — 
 Lehabim =the Lybians ; 
 Caphlorim = Cretans; 
 Arvadite = people of Aradus, an isle 
 
 on the Phoenician coast ; 
 Arphaxad =Arrapachitis, a district in 
 
 Northern Assyria ; 
 Eazarmaveth—'B.B^amzut, 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE OF THE HEBKEWS 
 AND CANAANITES. 
 
 1248. We proceed now to the con- 
 sideration of the language spoken by 
 the Hebrew tribes. According to the 
 traditionary view, Hebrew mnst have 
 been the language of Paradise, since all 
 the conversations are recorded in that 
 tongue, — the words of Jehovah-Elohim, 
 those of Adam and Eve, and of the 
 serpent, and, especially, the two names 
 given by the man to his wife, ii.23, 
 iii.20, names given with express re- 
 ference to their meaning in Hebrew. 
 So, too, after the expulsion from Para- 
 dise, the names are pure Hebrew : and 
 Noah is made to play upon the name 
 of Japheth. ix.27, with reference to a 
 Hebrew root of like sound. 
 
 1249. Accordingly, there are some who 
 have maintained that Hebrew was actu- 
 ally spoken in Paradise, and by all the 
 inhabitants of the world before and after 
 the Flood, without suffering any ma- 
 terial modification, for 2,000 years (!), 
 BO that they remained still a people of 
 ' one lip,' until, at the ' confusion of 
 tongues,' the one primeval language 
 was shattered into a variety of different 
 languages, or, rather, a multitude of dif- 
 ferent languages were separated at that 
 time from the parent Hebrew tongue, — 
 which, however, was still maintained 
 in its purity among the descendants of 
 Peleg, — ' in whose days the earth was 
 divided,' x25, — in the line of the eldest 
 son till the time of Abraham. Delitzsch, 
 as we have seen (1034),oannot conscien- 
 
 tiously maintain this view, but believes 
 that the transactions in Paradise were 
 carried on in a different language, so 
 that only broken reminiscences of what 
 then took place have been handed down 
 to us by tradition. 
 
 1250. But, however this may have 
 been, we must suppose, it would seem, 
 that Abrabam, while living at Haran, 
 xi.31,32,xii.4,S, in his 'father's house,' 
 — which is elsewhere described as the 
 ' city of Nahor, in Mesopotamia,' xxiv. 
 10, comp. xxvii.43, — spoke the language 
 of the country, the Aramaic. We are 
 told, however, that when Laban, the 
 grandson of Nahor, Abraham's brother, 
 gave an Aramaic name to the stone set 
 up by himself and Jacob, xxxi.47, Jacob 
 gave to the same stonea. Hebrew name of 
 like signification. From this, regarded 
 as an historical matter of fact, we should 
 infer that Jacob spoke Hebrew, as his 
 mother-tongue, before he left his father 
 Isaac's house, and that he retained his 
 command of that language during the 
 twenty years of his residence in Haran, 
 (where, of course, Aramaean was spoken 
 by everyone else,) and adopted it again 
 on his return to the land of Canaan. 
 
 1251. But this would show also that 
 Abraham's family, while living in the 
 land of Canaan, had already changed 
 their language from Aramaean to He- 
 brew ; and it is natural to suppose that 
 they did this by adopting the tongue 
 of the people among whom they dwelt. 
 But, since the Hebrew and Aramaic 
 are merely different forms of the same 
 Semitic family of languages, this would 
 imply that the Canaanites spoke the 
 same tongue fundamentally as the He- 
 brews themselves, before, as well as 
 after, the migration of Abraham, — in 
 other words, that the Hebrew tribes 
 were originally kindred tribes to those 
 of Canaan, and were not, as they are 
 represented in G.x, the sons of Shem, 
 while the Canaanites were the children 
 of Ham. 
 
 1252. By those, who maintain Hebrew 
 to be the original tongue of Paradise, 
 or the nearest representative of the 
 original tongue, it will be assumed that 
 it was continued in its purity in the line 
 of Abraham, while Aramaic was a de- 
 flection from it, — a dialectic variation. 
 
THE HEBREWS AND CANAANITES. 
 Admitting this, the diiRculty will 
 
 . - - — ^^j ,.,.» re- 
 
 piain the same as before, to account 
 tor the fact of the Canaanites and Ph(e- 
 mcians speaking Hebrew, or, at least, 
 a language substantially the same as 
 the Hebrew, if they were, indeed, des- 
 cendants of Ham. 
 
 ^ 1253. That they did this, is clearly 
 implied m the narrative, where the He- 
 brews are represented as having had no 
 difficulty at any time in communicating 
 freely, by word of mouth, with the 
 aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan. In 
 Egypt we find Joseph's brethren speak- 
 ing with their brother, supposed to be 
 Wi Egyptian, by means of an interpreter, 
 xlii.23. The Hamite language of Egypt, 
 then, was very different — as, of course, 
 we know it was — from the Hebrew. 
 But we find Abram conversing freely 
 with the Canaanite King of Sodom 
 and with Melchizedek, the Jebusite 
 King of Salem, xi v. 19-24,— (who, how- 
 ever, has been supposed by some to 
 have been no other than the Patriarch 
 Shem, and who, in that case, of course, 
 would speak Hebrew, if that was the 
 original tongue,) — as also Lot with the 
 people of Sodom, xix..5-9, Abraham and 
 Isaac with the Philistine King of Gerar, 
 xx.9-15, xxi. 22-32, xxvi. 7-10, 26-29, 
 Abraham with the Hittites, xxiii.3-16, 
 Jacob, with the Himtes, xxxiv.8-12. 
 
 1254. It maybe suggested that these 
 three Patriarchs had, perhaps, lived so 
 long among the Canaanites, as to have 
 acquired the power of speaking their 
 tongue, supposed to be Hamitic, without 
 having lost their own Aramsean, or that 
 form of it, the Hebrew, into which it 
 had become modified among the mem- 
 bers of their families, who were origi- 
 nally, for the most part, also Aramaeans. 
 But then we find also the harlot Eahab 
 in Jo.ii talking freely with the Hebrew 
 spies, and the Hivites of Gibeon with 
 Joshua, Jo.ix.6-13, and the man of 
 l/uz with the spies in Ju.i.24 : so that 
 these dififerent natives of Canaan are 
 ■represented as speaking a language sub- 
 stantially the same as that of the 
 Hebrews. 
 
 1255. Again, the names of the Philis 
 tine King, Abimelech, G.xx.2, and of 
 the Jebusite Kings, Melchizedek and 
 Adonieedek, G.xiv.18, Jo.x.l, are pure 
 
 89S 
 
 Hebrew,— meaning, respectively,'father 
 of the king,' 'king of righteousness,' 
 'lord of righteousness,' the last two 
 being, in fact, identical. So the names 
 of many of the Canaanite cities in 
 Joshua, — e.g. ' Kirj ath-sepher ' = city of 
 the book, Jo.xv.15, and see those in 
 Jo.xv.21-62,— are pure Hebrew. Nay, 
 in Isaiah's time, the Jews, — speaking 
 Hebrew, of course, since their Prophets 
 addressed them in that tongue, — did 
 not generally understand the Syrian or 
 Aramsan tongue, 2K.xviii.26, Is.xxxvi. 
 11. Hence it is impossible to suppose 
 that the Hebrew was merely such a 
 slight modification of the Axamsean, as 
 might have sprung up among the mem,- 
 bers of one particular family. And, in 
 fact, we know that the two language^, 
 though closely allied, are very different 
 in form, and quite as distinct from each 
 other, as Dutch from German, or Spani'li 
 from Portuguese; though, says Mr. 
 T\('isLETON, Smith's Diet, of the Bible, 
 ii.^.863,— 
 
 It seems to be admitted by philologers that 
 neither Hebrew, Aramaic, no? Arabic, is de- 
 rived tlie one from tbe other, just as the same 
 may be said of Italiaji, Spanish, and Portu- 
 guese. ' 
 
 1256. In short, there can be no doubt 
 that the tribes of Canaan themselves 
 spoke substantially the Hebrew lan- 
 guage, which the descendants of Abra- 
 ham adopted from them, and which is 
 therefore called the ' language of Ca- 
 naan,' Is.xix.l8. And so writes Bleek., 
 Einl.p.6 1 : — 
 
 The geographical position also of Canaan, 
 between the Aramaic and Arabian tribes, 
 would lead one to assume beforehand that the 
 Canaanites belonged to the same family of 
 nations, and had a kindred speech, which, in 
 respect of its character and dialectic pecu- 
 liarities, would lie between the Aramaic and 
 Arabian dialects, as in f aot, the Hebrew does. 
 That, however, the Canaanites — (that is, the 
 people inhabiting the land before Abraham's 
 arrival)— spoke one and the same tongue with 
 the Israelites, or, at least, a tongue much 
 more nearly related to the Hebrew than the 
 Aramaic was, may be concluded from the 
 fact, that, so numerous and intimate as were 
 the relations of the Hebrews with these 
 people, we find no indication whatever of any 
 difference in their language, which either 
 hindered them from mutually understanding 
 one another, or made an interpreter necessary. 
 Lastly the Proper Names of Canaanitish 
 persons and places are pure Hebrew, and ex- 
 pressed in Hebrew not Aramaic forms. It 
 cannot be doubted, then, that the Canaanites 
 
396 
 
 IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE OF 
 
 spoke substantially the same language as the 
 Hebrews. But it cannot be supposed that 
 they adopted it from the solitary stranger, 
 Abraham. Hence it is obvious that he must 
 have adopted it from them, after settling in 
 the country, having dropped gradually by 
 disuse the Aramaic dialect, which he spoke 
 in his father's house. This language must 
 the Israelites have taken with them to Egypt, 
 and brought back again into the land of 
 Canaui. 
 
 1257. But, beside the indications tlius 
 afforded, that the Ternacular language 
 of the Canaanites was substantially 
 the same as the Scripture Hebrew, we 
 have other positive proof in the case of 
 the Phoenicians, who are spoken of as 
 Canaanites in Obad. 20 : — 
 
 ' And the Captivity of this host of the chil- 
 dren of Israel shall possess that of the Ca- 
 naanites even unto Za/re^hath^ i.e. * Sarepta, a 
 city of Sidon,' Luke iv.26. 
 
 So, in Matt.xv.22, we read of the 
 * woman of Canaan,' who came ' out 
 of the coasts of Tyre and Sidon ■ ; and 
 Sidon is named in G.x.15 as the first- 
 born son of Canaan. 
 
 1258. Accordingly, AtJGusTiNE, 
 speaking of the rural, population of 
 the Phosnician colony of Carthage, 
 writes as follows, Ep. Meh. ad Rom. 
 xiii: — 
 
 Our rustics being asked who they are, an- 
 swering in Punic ' Chananites,' what else do 
 they answer than * Canaanites? ' 
 
 So, Rept.quast. 16, he writes: — 
 
 Those tongues (Punic and Hebrew) do not 
 differ much from one another. 
 
 And, Tract, in Joh. Evang.xy.27: — 
 Those tongues are allied, and belong to 
 neighbouring people, the Hebrew, and Punic, 
 and Syrian. 
 
 And, Locut.i.2^, ad Gen.Yui.Q, — 
 It is an expression, which I consider to be 
 Hebrew for this reason, that it is also very 
 familiar to the Punic tongue, in which we 
 find many words agreeing with Hebrew, 
 
 And contr.litPeiil.ii.2Z9, — 
 Which word (Messias) corresponds with the 
 
 Punic tongue, as do very many other, and, 
 
 indeed, almost all Hebrew words. 
 
 1259. But our actual knowledge of 
 the ancient Phoenician tongue has been 
 greatly extended of late, and leaves no 
 doubt whatever on this point. It is 
 derived from the following sources: — 
 
 (i) Words quoted by old authors as Phoeni- 
 cian or Punic, such as names of persons, 
 places, &c., as well as many other words ; 
 
 (ii) The passages produced by Plautus, 
 
 P(m.v.l-10,ii.35, &c., ae speeches of the Cat* 
 thaginian Hanno in tbe Punic tongue ; 
 
 (iii) Inscriptions on coins of the Fhoeniciana 
 and their colonies ; 
 
 (iv) Inscriptions on engraved ston^ and 
 vessels, pillars, votive tablets, and sepulchral 
 monuments ; 
 
 (v) Especially the two very important, 
 newly-discovered, Phoenician relics, viz. an 
 altar of the fourth century B.C., discovered 
 in June 1845, by the fall of part of a house in. 
 Marseilles, the ancient port Massilia, add the 
 sarcophagus of the Sidonlan king, Eschmun- 
 azar, with a very perfect inscription, dis- 
 covered at Sidon, Jan. 15, 1855. 
 
 And for full proof of the substantial 
 identity of the two languages refer- 
 ence may be made to the Phoenician 
 Inscriptions, lately published by the 
 authorities of tbe British Museum. 
 
 1260. Prof. Ratviinson, however, 
 Aids to Faith, p.2G9, maintains that the 
 Phcenicians were an entirely different 
 race from the other inhabitants of 
 Canaan, and were, in fact, Shemites,-—^ 
 so that they might speak the same 
 language as the Hebrews, — while the 
 Canaanites, generally, were Hamites : 
 
 As for the argument from the presumed 
 identity of the Canaanites with the Phoeni- 
 cians, though it has great names in its 
 favour, there is really very little to be said 
 for it. Phoenicia, as a country, is distin- 
 guishable from Canaan, in which it may, 
 perhaps, have been included, but of which it 
 was, at any rate, only a part. And the 
 Phcenician people present in many respects a 
 strong and marked contrast to the Canaanites, 
 so that there is great reason to believe that 
 they wei'e an entirely different race. 
 
 But, if the Phoenicians were She- 
 mites, what, then, becomes of the 
 Scripture statement in G.x.15, that 
 Sidon was the 'first-born ' of Canaan, 
 and brother of the Hittite, Jebusite, 
 Amorite, &c. ? 
 
 12G1. Prof. Rawlinson seeks tb 
 confirm his view, by noting — ■ 
 
 Whereas between the real Canaanites and 
 the Jews there was deadly and perpetual hos- 
 tility, until the former were utterly rooted 
 out and destroyed, the Jews and Phoenicians 
 were on terms of perpetual amity, — an amity 
 encouraged by the best princes, who would 
 scarcely have contracted a friendship with 
 the accursed race. 
 
 But he here only draws attention to 
 another of the difficulties, which em- 
 barrass the traditionary view. If the 
 laws of the Pentateuch, as we now find 
 them in E.xxiii.31-33 — 
 
 ' I will deliver the inhabitants of the land 
 into your hand, and thou shall drive them, oiit 
 
^remembered not the brotherly covenant with 
 Israel^' Aln.i.9, 
 
 1262. It is true that in Nehemiah's 
 time, Neh.xiii.24, the speech of Ashdod 
 differed materially, it would seem, from 
 the Jews' language. But this was 
 after their return trom the Captivity, 
 and when it is highly probable that 
 their speech — at least, that of the 
 younger people — had become consider- 
 ably modified by so long a residence in 
 Babylon. As Bleek observes, — 
 
 We have no means of knowing certainly 
 what the Jews' language was at that time, 
 whether the old Hebrew, or the Aramaic 
 (Chaldee) : nor do we know in what the dif- 
 ference consisted, perhaps, only in a broader 
 utterance. 
 
 1263. The Semitic dialects are prin- 
 cipally three, — 
 
 (i) The Northern or Aramaic, in- 
 eluding the Chaldee, Samaritan, and 
 Syriac ; 
 
 (ii) The Southern, including the 
 Arabic and Ethiopie ; 
 
 (iii) The Middle, including the 
 Hebrew, Phoenician, and Canaanitish. _ 
 
 These dialects wonderfully agree. By far the 
 greater number of the root-words, which 
 Irfst in Hebrew, are found in the other Se- 
 jnitio dialects, and with the same, or very 
 little modified, meanings. But the Arabic 
 appears to be by far the richest of these dia- 
 lects partly because we have so many books 
 >«itten ia this language on all subjects, poe- 
 
 397 
 
 try, philology, history, geography, mathema- 
 tics, and especially astronomy. The Arabic 
 grammarians produce one thousand different 
 words for ' sword,' five hundred for ' lion,* 
 two hundred for ' serpent,' four hundred for 
 ' misfortune.' Bleek, j>,42. 
 
 THE HEBREWS AND CANAANITES, 
 
 ^lIlTi™'"^"'^' ' """' »'"•« "«'*« « covenant 
 rfZ;/ £"'«"",■"'* *^'=''S<"J«= l^^ «*«« "ot 
 ^ImeM""^' '^' ^^y ""*« "^^^ ^ 
 had really been in existence, and re- 
 cognised as of Divine authority, in the 
 days of David and Solomon, it can 
 todly be believed that these, among 
 the 'best princes,' would have con- 
 tracted such close alliance with the 
 Phoenicians, who are expressly named 
 in Ju.iii..3 among the nations of Canaan 
 which were not yet exterminated, but 
 ' left ' for a while ' to prove Israel ' — 
 'five lords of the Philistines, and all the 
 Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hi- 
 vites that dwelt in mount Lebanon,' — 
 
 or that, — even if Solomon could import 
 horses for the ' kings of the Hittites,' 
 1K.X.29, as well as take wives of the 
 'Zidonians and Hittites,' iK.xi.l, — 
 the prophet Amos, two centuries later, 
 would have threatened the Tyrians 
 with punishment, because they — 
 
 CHAPTEB X. 
 
 TEE HEBREW LANQUAQE, WHENCE 
 DERIVED. 
 
 1264. It would seem, therefore, aa 
 we have said, that the language of the 
 Canaanites and Hebrews was radically 
 the same, from the earliest times, and 
 that the former are incorrectly sepa- 
 rated, as to their origin, from the 
 latter, and referred to Ham as their 
 ancestor. Delitzsch, however, virrites 
 as follows, p.295 : — 
 
 The Semitic language of the Canaanites is 
 not opposed to their Hamitic origin; they 
 have, as other Hamites, become Sem,iUzedd 
 It is possible that they adopted the language 
 of . the primeval inhabitants of the future 
 Canaan; for, to judge from the remains o£ 
 Proper Names which have come down to us, 
 these were Semitic. It is possible also that, 
 on their way from the East to the West, 
 they dwelt long among the Semitic tribes of 
 Arabia; whereas the set.lement of the primi- 
 tive Egyptians was comparatively sudden, 
 and therefore may not have been attended 
 with any important intermixture with foreign 
 elements. The old Hamitic tongues have 
 certainly succumbed to Semitic,^at last, even 
 in Egvpt, — where the use and knowledge of 
 the Coptic have alniost entirely died out^ 
 The inability of the Hamitic^ and especially of 
 the Canaanitish peoples, to maintain themselvei 
 in (he possession of their natural tongue, cor- 
 responds to tlie absence of a blessing for Hamf 
 and to the curse of servitude laid on Canaan, 
 
 1265. It is obvious to reply that the 
 Hamite Egyptians retained the use of 
 their mother-tongue, long after the 
 Hebrew had ceased to be the verna- 
 cular of Palestine. Gtesenius says (see 
 Pakkeh's db Wettb, p.457) : — 
 
 This only is certain that, in Nehemiah's 
 time, the people still spoke Hebrew, and that, 
 in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and the 
 Maccabees, the Hebrew was still written, 
 though the Aramffian was the prevalent lan- 
 guage ; whereas, about this time, and shortly 
 after Alexander the Great, even the learned 
 Jews f oimd it hard to miderstand difficult pas- 
 sages in the old writings, because the lan- 
 guage had ceased to be a living Speech. 
 
 1266. Again, Nott writes, Types of 
 Mankind, p.l96 : — 
 
 It is no longer questionable, that the G-heea, 
 or Ethiopie, idiom of the Ethiopie version of 
 the Scriptures, and other modern books, 
 which constitute the literature of Abyssinia, 
 
THE HEBREW LANGUAGE, WHENCE DEBIVED. 
 
 is a Semilic dialect, akin to the Arabic and 
 Hebrew. 
 
 ' There is no reason to doubt,' says Pkichakd, 
 •that the people, for whose use these books were 
 written, and whose Tcmacular tongue was 
 the Gfheez, were a Semitic race.' The Ghcez 
 is now extant merely as a dead language. 
 The Amhaiic, a modem Abyssinian, has been 
 the vernacular of the country ever since the 
 extinction ol the Gheez. ... It is not a 
 dialect of the Gheez or Ethiopic, as some 
 have supposed, but is now recognised to be, 
 as Pbichard aflBrms, ' a language fundamen- 
 tally distinct.' ... It was, probably, an 
 ancient African tongue, and one of the abori- 
 ginal idioms of the SE. provinces of Abys- 
 sinia. PmCHARD winds up his investigation 
 with the following emphatic avowal, ' The 
 languages of all these nations are essentially 
 distinct from the Gheez and every other 
 Semitic dialect,' 
 
 In other words, we have here the 
 Semitic Gheez language becoming ex- 
 tinct, while the African or Hamitic 
 Amhario is still spoken, — in contradic- 
 tion to Dklitzsch's theory. 
 
 1267. It is, of course, impossible to 
 eZisprove the assertion, that the whole 
 body of Canaanites were Hamites, who 
 once spoke the same language, substan- 
 tially, as the Egyptians, but became 
 Semitised, by dwelling among the 
 (assumed) aboriginal Semitic tribes of 
 the future Canaan, or by tarrying long 
 among the Semitic tribes, through 
 which they are supposed to have passed 
 on their way from the eastern districts 
 westward, — much longer than their bre- 
 thren, the primary founders of the Egyp- 
 tian race. But the assertion is sup- 
 ported by no evidence, and is altogether 
 improbable. 
 
 1268. There appear to have been tra- 
 ditions, to which Herodotus, Tii.89, 
 refers, of the Fh^nidans having been 
 settled originally in the neighbourhood 
 of the Persian Gulf, from which they 
 migrated to the coasts of the Mediter^ 
 lanean. The Philistines also are eX' 
 pressed in the Sept. Vers, by a word 
 which meant 'Foreigners' or 'Emi- 
 grants,' and are believed to have come 
 back to the main land, from the Phoeni- 
 cian settlements in Caphtor, i.e. Crete, 
 of whom the Deuteronomist writes, 
 ii.23,— 
 
 ' As to the Avim, which dwelt in the vil- 
 lages unto Gaza,— the Caphtorim, which 
 came out of Caphtor, destroyed them, and 
 dwelt in their stead.' — 
 
 But the feet, (if it be a fact,) that the 
 
 Phcenicianshad come originally from the 
 Persian Gulf, would cnly make it more 
 probable that they belonged to the Se- 
 mitic family of nations, and spoke a 
 Semitic tongue, — as did also, most pro- 
 bably, the other Canaanite nationsj 
 Hittite, Jebusite, &&, whatever^ may 
 have been the case with the aboriginal 
 tribes, whom they may have dispos- 
 
 1269. But we must here notice ano- 
 ther point bearing upon the question of 
 the Mosaic authorship of the story of 
 the Exodus. That story represents the 
 people of Israel, when coming out of 
 Egypt, after a residence there of, at 
 leastj two centuries, speaking perfectly 
 pure Hebrew, without the slightest inter- 
 mixture of either Aramaic or Egyptian 
 idioms. Moses, throughout the Penta- 
 teuch — and not merely in the later book 
 of Deuteronomy — speaks to the people 
 always in the purest Hebrew, — makes his 
 addresses, writes his song, E.xv.1-18, 
 and delivers his laws, in pure Hebrew; 
 nay, the Ten Commandments, as re- 
 corded to have been uttered on Sinai, are 
 expressed in pure Hebrew. Throughout 
 the first four Books, with the exception 
 of one or two Aramaean words, as La- 
 ban's expression, yegar shakddutha, 
 ' heap of witness,' &.xxxi.47, and one 
 or two Egyptian words, as avrech, ' bow 
 the knee,' xli.43, — introduced, however, 
 with special reference to Aramaean or 
 Egyptian circumstances, — the language 
 is pure Hebrew, perfectly uneorrupted 
 by Aramaean or Egyptian peculiarities. 
 
 1270. Now let us consider for a mo- 
 ment the circumstances under which 
 this perfectly pure Hebrew of the 
 Pentateuch is supposed to have been 
 written. We find Jacob, as we have 
 said (1250), on his return from Haran 
 to the land of Canaan, returning also 
 to the use of the Hebrew tongue, which 
 we may suppose him to have been fa- 
 miliar with, as the language spoken in 
 his father Isaac's house, dTiring the 
 first seventy-seven years of his life, and 
 not to have lost, though he had but 
 little opportunity of speaking it, during 
 the twenty years of his sojourn with 
 Laban. But his four wives, and all 
 the servants, male and female, which 
 
THE HEBREW LAKGUAGE, WHENCE DERIVED: 
 lie trought witli him into Canaan, 
 must aU have been Aramsans. 
 
 ,, „, — must 
 
 all have spoken the same language as 
 Laban, viz. the Syrian or Aramsan 
 tongue; and -we must suppose that 
 the young children, of whom the eldest 
 was not more than twelve years old 
 brought up with their mothers and 
 these servants, must have spoken Ara- 
 maean also. 
 
 1271. We may, indeed, assume that 
 during the thirty years which they 
 6pent in Canaan, before going down 
 to settle in Egypt, they may have 
 changed their language, as Abraham 
 did, and, dropping the Aramaean, have 
 acquired the Hebrew tongue of the 
 tribes of Canaan. But it is not easy 
 to understand how they should have 
 changed it so completely, as to have 
 lost all trace of the Aramaean, or how, 
 going down into Egypt, as they did, 
 and living there, under the circum- 
 stances described in the book of 
 'Exodus, for two hundred and fifteer, 
 years at least, they should have re- 
 tained the Hebrew tongue, if they took 
 it with them, in perfect purity, without 
 the slightest intermixture of any foreign 
 element. As to the first point, the 
 •captives in Babylon, we know, had 
 their tongue soon corrupted, so that 
 'Chaldaisms abound in later Hebrew. 
 But Jacob's family (we must suppose) 
 exchanged the Aramsean for theHebrew 
 completely in thirty years, although for 
 «very one of those, who came into 
 •Canaan, except Jacob himself, — for all 
 the adult women and servants, as well 
 as the young children, — the Aramaean 
 was their mother- tongue, which they 
 had spoken from their birth. 
 
 1272. We will suppose, however, that 
 Jacob's children, being so young, may 
 have acquired the new tongue perfectly, 
 -through intercourse with Canaanites, as 
 Hamor, G.xxxiv, and others. Thus 
 Jacob himself, and his sons, and his 
 daughter Dinah, may have spoken 
 Hebrew, when they went down into 
 Egypt. And, though his son's wives, 
 ■Unless taken from the Canaanites as 
 Judah's, xxxviii.2, and Simeon's, xlvi. 
 ,10— (both these two, however, seem to 
 ■be noted rather as exceptional cases)— 
 %ould not have spoken Hebrew, wo may 
 
 399 
 assume that their children, brought up 
 among Canaanitish servants, may have 
 learned from them and from their fa- 
 thers, to speak the language of the 
 land. And so the majority of the 
 ' seventy souls,' who went down with 
 Jacob, may be regarded as speaking 
 Hebrew, though scarcely, we should 
 suppose, pure Hebrew. 
 
 1273. But how could this small com- 
 munity of 70 souls, surrounded, as they 
 were, by Egyptians, with whom they 
 were continually in contact, — as friends, 
 in the first instance, during the first 
 hundred years of their sojourn, — as 
 slaves, afterwards, for (at least) the 
 last eighty years, — have maintained 
 during all this time that perfect purity 
 of language, wliich we find exhibited 
 in the Pentateuch, uncorrupted by 
 the slightest influx of Egyptian, or 
 any other foriegn, idioms ? They may 
 have intermarried among themselves, 
 or taken wives from the Egyptians or 
 other foreigners, or from their old 
 Syrian home : but they could only 
 have been reinforced, in respect of 
 maintaining the pure Hebrew tongue 
 among them, by marrying Canaanites. 
 Some Hebrew women may have mar- 
 ried Egyptians', lCh.ii.34:,3.5, and their 
 offspring would be reckoned as Hebrews : 
 Moses himself married an Ethiopian 
 woman, if.xii.l: a 'mixed multitude' 
 went up with them out of Egypt, E.xii. 
 38. The children and grandchildren of 
 Joseph, we must suppose, — at least, 
 during the 80 years of Joseph's dignity, 
 — must have been brought up under 
 Egyptian influences, and in intimate 
 connection with the members of the 
 high Egyptian family, to which Joseph's 
 wife belonged, G.xli.45. And, indeed, 
 the expression in G.1.23, — 
 
 the children of Maohir, the son of Manasseh, 
 were brought up on Joseph's knees, — 
 
 implies his close relations with them. 
 
 1274. Under these circumstances, 
 during all this time, for more than two 
 centuries, it would indeed be strange 
 if they could maintain their language 
 identically the same pure Hebrew, as 
 that which their forefathers, — Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob, — spoke, while 
 living in daily contact with the tribes 
 of Canaan. It may, perhaps, be alleged 
 
400 
 
 THE HEBEEW LANGUAGE, WHENCE DEEIVED. 
 
 that tbe language of the Pentateuch is 
 sufficiently explained, if Moses spoke 
 and wrote Hebrew perfectly. Yet how 
 should Moses, — who, for the first forty 
 years of his life, was brought up in 
 Pharaoh's house, 'in all the learning 
 of the Egyptians,' — ^who may, of course, 
 have spoken Hebrew, as well as Egyp- 
 tian, but could only have learned it 
 from the speech of his fellow-country- 
 men, when they had already been liv- 
 ing in Egypt, under the circumstances 
 above described, for 130 years to the 
 day of his birth, — and who spent the 
 next forty years of his life in the 
 deserts of Midian, — have maintained 
 all along the perfect Hebrew tongue, 
 pure and simple, without the slightest 
 adulteration from any foreign influ- 
 ences, neither vocabulary nor syntax 
 being in the least degree modified ? 
 
 1275. What effect the residence of 
 150 years in Babylon had had already 
 upon the language, of the captive 
 Jews, notwithstanding the noble lite- 
 rature which they had among them, 
 in the writings of their psalmists, pro- 
 phets, and historians, may be seen, as 
 we have said, in the numerous Chal- 
 diiisms, which distinguish the later 
 Scriptures of the 0. T. The natives 
 of Natal, though they have lived only 
 thirty years under European govern- 
 ment, have already adopted many cor- 
 ruptions of English and Dutch words 
 into their common language., Who can 
 belipA-e that the Hebrews, so small a 
 community at first, only seventy souls, 
 of whom many were mere children, and 
 many others did not speak Hebrew as 
 their original tongiie, — and who at that 
 time possessed no literature, — main- 
 tained their language amidst the joys 
 of their prosperous, and the oppres- 
 sions of their miserable, days in Egypt, 
 without adopting a single idiom, or a 
 single term, — even the name of a com- 
 mon article of food or dress, tool, im- 
 plement, &e. — from the Egyptians, or 
 from those with whom they may have 
 intermarried, when they did not marry 
 Oanaanitish women ? Did these foreign 
 mothers not affect in the slightest degree 
 the speech of their children ? 
 
 It may be said, *a special miracle 
 may have been wrought for this.' But 
 
 wrought for what end ? To maintain 
 in its purity among the Hebrews the 
 language — not of the primitive home 
 of the Hebrew race, but — of the idola- 
 trous tribes of Canaan ! 
 
 1276. Upon the whole, the simple 
 fact, that the Pentateuch is written 
 in such pure Hebrew, appeaj:s to ua 
 a strong confirmation — if we do not 
 press it) as a positive direct proof — of 
 its having been written, not at a time 
 when the tribes were just fresh from 
 their long Egyptian sojourn, but at 
 a much later period of their national 
 history, when the language of Canaan 
 had become, after several generations, 
 the common tongue of the invading 
 Hebrews, as well as of the heathen 
 tribes, whom they deprived of their 
 possessions in Canaan, and whom they 
 were unwilling to acknowledge as bre- 
 thren, although, it is plain, the lan- 
 guage of the Canaanites belongs to 
 the same group, as that spoken by 
 the collateral branch of the Hebrew 
 family in the ' city of Nahor.' Thus, 
 in those later days, conversation is 
 supposed to pass without difSeulty 
 between the Philistine garrison and 
 Jonathan, lS.xiv.l2, and between the 
 Philistine Achish and David, IS.xxix, 
 6-10 ; and we do not read of any in- 
 terpreter interfering in the colloquy 
 between David ajtid Goliath, iS.xvii. 
 43-47. 
 
 1277. But what seems to demonstrate 
 plainly the later authorship of one im- 
 portant passage, at least, of the Pen- 
 tateuch, is this, that the prophecies 
 of Balaam, who was ' brought from 
 Aram, out of the mountains of the 
 east,' N.xxiii.7, corop. D.xxiii. 4, and 
 who is represented as speaking in the 
 ears of Balak, king of Moab, and of 
 all the princes of Moab, v.6, are ex- 
 pressed in the purest Hebrew. His 
 conversation with the Moabite mes- 
 sengers, and with the ass, which also 
 speaks and, apparently, understands 
 Hebrew, may be supposed to have 
 been modified, and to be merely de- 
 scribed and reported in the ' language 
 of Canaan.' But the prophecies, to be 
 worthy of credence as historically true, 
 must have been delivered in the form 
 in which we now possess them, and iji 
 
THE HEBEEW LANGUAGE, WHENCE DEEIVED. 
 
 wtich we have an _„,„, „^,„„^„g 
 
 in the purest Eebrm, to a company of 
 Moahites. ' 
 
 1278. By whom, it may be further 
 asked, were these prophecies remember- 
 ed, or written down, as Balaam uttered 
 them, and by whom were they commu- 
 nicated to Moses? Is it not plain thkt 
 ■we have here a grand composition of a 
 later age,—' profitable,' no doubt, ' for 
 instruction in righteousness,' but not to 
 be received as an infallible record of 
 historical matter-of-fact, involving the 
 obligation of believing in the story 
 of the speaking ass, or imputing the 
 massacre of 68,000 Midianitish women 
 
 •and children to a direct Divine Com- 
 mand? 
 
 1279. Whatmissionary, indeed, would 
 not shrink from reading either of these 
 passages, in the ears of an intelligent 
 dass of catechumens, as undoubted 
 facts. — to the truth of which the Di- 
 vine Veracity is pledged, — upon belief 
 in which depend aU 'our hopes for 
 eternity,' — of which to express any 
 doubt or disbelief, is to shake 'the 
 very foundations of our faith,' to 'take 
 firom us all our nearest and dearest 
 consolations ' ? 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 GEN.XI.1-XI.9. 
 
 1280. G.xi.l. 
 
 ' And the whole earth was of one lip and o£ 
 one language.' 
 
 The Jehovist — a person, evidently, 
 of a very enquiring and phUosophieal 
 mind, and, for the age in which he 
 lived, singidarly well-informed on geo- 
 graphical and ethnological matters — 
 wishes,, apparently, to account for the 
 variety of languages, which he finds 
 existing among the different families 
 of the human race. He assumes that 
 from the time of the Creation — for 
 about 2,000 years— no diversities _ of 
 language had yet arisen. Mankind 
 was still of ' one lip,' and stUl spoke 
 the same primeval tongue, — the 
 Hebrew, we must suppose, — which 
 was spoken by Adam, when he named 
 his wife in Paradise, ii.23,iii.20— by 
 Eve, after their expulsion from Para- 
 dise' when she gave names to her sons, 
 
 40t 
 
 Cain and Seth, iv.1,25, — by Lamech, 
 shortly before the Flood, when he <&- 
 plained the name of Noah, v.29. And, 
 indeed, it is obvious that the names of 
 the whole series of Patriarchs, from 
 Adam to Noah, in G.v., and from NoaU 
 onwilrds in G.xi.10-26, are, in almost 
 every instance, pure Hebrew names. 
 
 1281. On the traditionaryview, then, 
 we must suppose that Hebrew was cer- 
 tainly the primitive tongue. And so 
 WiiLET writes. Hex. in Gen. p.lZZ : — 
 
 Now, if any be desirous to know what lan- 
 guage this was, which before this confusion 
 of tongues was used through the world, it is 
 agreed by the most learned interpreters, that 
 it was the Hebrew. 
 
 (i) Augustine's reason is, de civ. Dei, xvi. 
 ll,xviii.39, because the Hebrew is so called of 
 Heber, In whose family that, which was the 
 common tongue before, remained : that tongue, 
 which Heber used before the division of 
 tongues, was the common speech; but that 
 was the Hebrew. 
 
 (ii) HiEROH's reason to prove the Hebrew 
 to be matrix, the mother of all other lan- 
 guages, [is] because every tongue hath bor- 
 rowed some words of the Hebrew, 
 
 (iii) ToSTATUS's reason is, because those 
 names, which were first given, as Adam, Eve, 
 Cain, Seth, are'Hebrew worils, as may appear 
 by their several derivations in that tongue. 
 
 1282. Delitzsch, however, as we have 
 already seen (1034), finds himself un- 
 able to adopt this view, and writes as 
 follows, ^.316 : — 
 
 The Synagogues, the Fathers of the Church, 
 and many of our orthodox teachers, are, in- 
 deed, of opinion that Hebrew was the primi- 
 tive tongue, maintained in thef amily of Eber, 
 the topgue already used before the Flood, the 
 tongue of Paradise. It is said that Noah, 
 (who overlived the event), Shem, and those of 
 kindred mind, certainly took no part in the 
 godless undertpking, and, consequently, were 
 not affected by the * confusion of tongues.' 
 Reference also is made to the names of -the 
 primeval history, with some of which the 
 derivations are given, as 'Adam,' 'Ishah'= 
 woman, *Khawah'=Bve, 'Kain,' &c. But 
 both these arguments want convincing power. 
 The family, from which Abram proceeded, 
 was certainly an AraTnaic, not a Hebrew, 
 family ; it was a family speaking Aramaic, as 
 the history of Jacob and Laban shows, 
 G.xxxi.47,(;omp.D.xxvi.5. ' The Hebrew lan- 
 guage,' says ASTRUC, and his view is incon- 
 testably correct,— ' was the common language 
 of the Oanaanites; and Abraham, when he 
 arrived among them from Chaldaa, needed to 
 learn it, which was not difBcnlt for him, be- 
 cause the language of the Chaldaeans, which 
 was his natural tongue, had considerable 
 aflJnity with it, and was a sort of dialect of 
 it.' Hence the assertion of Arabic and Per- 
 sian writers, that the Syriac or Nabatsean 
 tongue,— that which, after the confusion of 
 
402 
 
 GEN.XI.1-XI.9. 
 
 tongues, was maintained at Babylon itself, — 
 ^as the primitive tongue, is comparatively 
 more probable. However, dialects ai'e branches 
 whicb imply a common stem. We should, 
 therefore, in place of Hebrew or Aramaic, 
 have to assume the exist^ice of a Semitic 
 fundamental language, which later, though 
 at a very early age, branched into dialects. 
 But in opposition to this stands the fact that 
 the Semitic family of languEiges, setting aside 
 its peculiar honours, is inferior to others, as 
 the Indo-Germanic, in richness and expres- 
 siveness, and does not by any means possess 
 the completeness which must have belonged 
 to the primitive tongue, — as also the fact, 
 that tho family from whom Abram proceeded, 
 bad fallen away to idolatries just as the 
 others, Jo,xxiv.2,14, aiid that the fo-called 
 * Hebrew,' which we should rather call * Ca- 
 naanite,' l8.xix.18, although, as a sacred 
 tongue, it has had a very peculiar course of 
 development, appears originally as the lan- 
 guage of Canaan, the curse-laden, to whom 
 it had passed from the equally-heathen abori- 
 ginal inhabitants of the land. 
 
 Also, the proof drawn from the names of 
 the primeval history so little avails, that, in 
 point of fact, the ante-Babylonic language 
 cannot possibly have been the language of 
 Paradise. Adam says in Dante, Par, xxvi. 
 124-6:— 
 The speech, which once I spoke, was quite 
 
 extinct, 
 Before that to th' impracticable work 
 The race of Nimrod set their energies. 
 How can it possibly have been otherwise? 
 Certainly, the principle of the ' dispersion ' 
 was first powerfully energetic after the event 
 in Gr.xi.1-9. But the Fall of Man must 
 have changed their mode of speech as well 
 as thought : it brought among them ever- 
 spreading loss of spirituality, materialisa- 
 tion, and — since the nature of sin is false 
 — self-seeking, the destruction of their imity, 
 though, perhaps, at first, not yet to the ex- 
 tent of losing the power of mutual intelli- 
 gence. * The first man,' asDRECHSLER thence 
 justly infers, ' was not called Adam, nor the 
 first woman Eve, nor their sons Cain and 
 Abel ; only they axe so-called in Hebrew ; 
 their names are all true, but only relatively 
 true. With the occurrence of G-.xi.l-9, the 
 names of the old traditionary history degene- 
 rated also in, and with, the general language, 
 without any damage thereby to th ■ authenti- 
 city of these names and their ecymologies; since 
 it is the same thing, for example, whether I 
 say that Adam's firstborn had a name, which 
 corresponds to the name Kain, from Kanah, 
 * acquire, ' or to the G-reek name ktesias 
 from the Greek word for ' acquire.' The 
 veracity of the Law, which imparts to 
 us here the tradition, viewed in the light 
 of the spirit, which was inherited to Abra- 
 ham and Israel, through Shem fi-om the 
 family of Noah, ia not a verbal, but a living, 
 veracity, — it stands not in the letter, but in 
 the spirit.' So it is The deriva- 
 tion of all language from one primeval 
 tongue we Jiold fast upon the authority of the 
 Scripture. But the possibility of demon- 
 strating such a primeval language, out of a 
 more or less close relationship of all existing 
 
 tongues,— this possibility, before maintained 
 by us, we now dismiss, as though awakened 
 from a dream. 
 
 1283. It is manifest thatDELiTzscH's 
 great difficulty is this — to account for 
 the fact that the primeval Hebrew 
 tongue, spoken in Paradise, and by- 
 all before the Flood, and in Noah's 
 family after it, should have been re- 
 tained amidst the * curse-laden * tribes 
 of Canaan, and not in the family of 
 Abraham, — so that the latter must 
 actually first have learned it, when he 
 came into contact with them. Not 
 being able to allow the possibility of 
 this, he falls back upon the notion 
 that the names, Adam, Eve, Cain, . 
 Abel, Nod, Noah, &c, are all trans- 
 lations of the original forms, into 
 words of similar meaning in Hebrew,. 
 — a theory, which requi-res also to be 
 swelled by the assumption, that all the 
 conversations, recorded in Gr.i.l-xi.9, 
 are only translations, and that all the 
 names in G.v are, in like manner, 
 modified from the original forms into 
 pure Hebrew words, expressing lite- 
 rally the &arae meaning, and not only 
 these, but also the names in G.xi. 10-25, 
 at least till we come to Peleg, in whose, 
 time * the earth was divided.' 
 
 1284. The extravagance of these as- 
 sumptions, to which this able writer has 
 been driven in attempting to maintain 
 the traditionary view, makes it un- 
 necessary to discuss them at further 
 length. It is sufficient to remark- 
 that, if the authority of Scripture may 
 prove the fact of the existence of a 
 primeval language, it will also prove- 
 that this language was Hebrew. "We 
 have no right to assume a process of 
 translation, to which. the original, docu- 
 ments make no allusion. 
 
 1285. Kaxisch notes on this point 
 as follows, Gen.p.ZlS : — 
 
 The linguistic researches of modem times 
 have more and more confirmed the theory of 
 one primitive Asiatic language, gradually de- 
 veloped into various modifications by external . 
 agencies and influences. Formerly, the He- 
 brew tongue was, by many scholars, advo^ 
 cated as the original idiom : for it was main- 
 tained, both by early Jewish and Christian 
 authorities, that, as the race of Shem were no 
 partners in thS impious work of the Tower, 
 they remained in possession of the first lan- 
 guage, which the fathers of the earliest age 
 had left to Noah. But thiS' view,— like the 
 
GEN.XI.1 
 
 if^o T™ ™°'^'y' would speak ffebrew, 
 meaent fl,'; f ™ong popular errors. At 
 ?^ ?h?'o ^°?° °* Pi-obability inolines more 
 f^r frS™?'™*' =lth°"gli the disquisition is 
 tar (rom bemg concluded or settled. 
 
 According to Prof. Max Mullee 
 and Baron Bunsen, the Sanscrit and 
 bemitic tongues are aUke modifica- 
 ^ tions of an ' agglutinative ' language, 
 that IS, of a form of speech in which 
 the original compound roots had not 
 been rubbed down into affixes and 
 suffixes. 
 
 1286. But Kaxisoh's observation ap- 
 plies only to the different languages 
 of one race, as the Caucasian or the 
 Mongolian. No one would say that 
 ibere was any affinity between, the 
 Chinese tongue and the Indo-Euro- 
 pean family of languages, or between 
 these and those of the North-Ameri- 
 can Indians. Card. Wiseman, Lect. ii., 
 On the Connection, between Science and 
 Eevealed Bdigion, admits 'a radical 
 difference ' among languages : — 
 
 As the radical diilerence among the lan- 
 guages forbids their being considered dialects, 
 or olfshoots of one another, we are driven to 
 the conclusion that, on the one hand, these 
 languages must have been originally united 
 in one, whence they drew their common ele- 
 ments, essential to them all (?),and on the 
 other, that the separation between them, 
 which destroyed other and no less important 
 elements of resemblance, could not have 
 been caused by any gradual departure or in- 
 dividual development,— /or these we have long 
 since excluded, — but by some violent, unusual, 
 and active force, sufBcient alone to reconcile 
 these conflicting appearances, and to ac- 
 count at once for the resemblances and the 
 differences. 
 
 1287. But the truth is, as an able 
 writer has said. West. Rev. Jan. 1865, 
 p. 62, that ' the Analysis of Language 
 has taught some strange lessons.' 
 
 It tells us that man had lived, perhaps for 
 ages, before the process of metaphor had 
 created a single term to convey an immaterial 
 conception. It has traced the working of 
 metaphor, in its conversion of general notions 
 into personal beings, and in the translation 
 of phrases applied originally to outward 
 phenomena into incidents professedly his- 
 torical. And, thus teaching us, it has brought 
 us to a point from which we may well 
 turn to survey the ground which we have 
 
 The popular theology of Christendom 
 asserts that man started Into being in the 
 full perfection of his mental powers, and 
 with the privilege of an immediate inter- 
 course with his Maker. The Science of 
 
 -XI.9. 
 
 403- 
 
 Language has shown that man may at the- 
 first have been mute, and certainly that ha 
 was unable, during a long period, to express 
 more than the merest bodily sensations. Ita 
 dispassionate analysis has shown that — 
 
 'It was an event in the history of man, 
 when the ideas of father, mother, sister, 
 husband, wife, were first conceived and first 
 uttered. It was a new era, when the numerals' 
 from one to ten had been framed, and wheu 
 words like law, right, duty, virtue, generosity, 
 love, had been added to the dictionary of man. 
 It was a revelation, the greatest of all revela- 
 tions, when the conception of a Creator, a 
 Ruler, a Father^ of man,— when the name of' 
 G-od was for the first time uttered in this 
 world.' Prof. Max. Mullee, Lectwres on 
 Language, second series, p,d08. 
 
 1288. G.xi.4. 
 
 ' And they said. Come, let us build for us q 
 city, and a tower with its head in heaven.' 
 
 The story of the ' dispersion of 
 tongues ' is connected by the Jehovistie 
 writer with the famous unfinished 
 Temple of Belus (Sirs Mmroud), 
 of which, probably, some wonderful 
 reports had reached him, in whatever 
 age we may suppose him to have lived. 
 The language and actions, which are 
 here ascribed to the Divine Being, are 
 strangely anthropomorphic. But the 
 derivation of the name Babel, from the 
 Hebrew balal, ' confound,' which seems 
 to be the connecting point between this 
 story and the Tower of Babel, is, as we 
 have already noticed (949), altogether 
 incorrect,— the word being compounded 
 probably of ' El' or ' II,' so that ' Bab-Il' 
 means ' Grate of God.' This is sufficient 
 to show that the story before us is not 
 historically true. It does not, however, 
 necessarily imply, as TucH and Knobel 
 assume, that the jehovist himself origi- 
 nated the story, as he may have received 
 it in this form from others. Prof Eaw- 
 LiNSON says. Smith's Diet, of the 
 Bible, i.^.149:— 
 
 The name is connected in Genesis with the 
 Hebrew root, halal, ' conf uildere,' — ' because 
 the Lord did there confound the language of 
 all the earth.' But the native etymology is 
 Bab-Il, ' the gate of the God II,' or, perhaps, 
 most simply, 'the gate of God.' And this, 
 no doubt, was the original intention of the 
 appellation as given by Nimrod, though the 
 other sense came to be attached to it after the 
 'Confusion of Tongues.' 
 
 1289. The following account of £«>« 
 Mmroud is from Kalisch, (xen.p.Zl6 : 
 
 The huge heap, in which bricks, stone, 
 marble, and basalt, are iiTegularly mixed, 
 covers a surface of 49,000 feet ^ while the 
 
404 
 
 GEN.XI.1-XI.9. 
 
 chief mound Is nearly 300 feet high, and from 
 200 tx) 400 feet in width, commanding an ex- 
 tensive view over a country of utter desolation . 
 The tower consisted of seven distinct stages or 
 square platforms, built of kiln-burnt bricks, 
 each about twenty feet high, gradually di- 
 minishing in diameter. The upper part of 
 the brickwork has a vitrefied appearance ; for 
 It is supposed that the Babylonians, in order 
 to render their edifices more durable, submitted 
 them to the heat of the furnace ; and large 
 fragments of such vitrefied and calcined ma- 
 terials are also intermixed with the rubbish 
 at the base. This circumstance may have 
 given rise to, or at least countenanced, the 
 legend of the destruction of the Tower by 
 heavenly fire, still extensively adopted among 
 the Arabians. The terraces were devoted to 
 the planets, and were differently coloured, in 
 accordance with the notions of Sabaaan as- 
 trology, — the lowest, Saturn's, blacky the se- 
 cond, Jupiter's, orange, the third, Mars', red, 
 the fourth, the Sun's, yellow, the fifth, Venus's, 
 white, the sixth. Mercury's, blue, the seventh, 
 the Moon's, green. Merodach-adan-akhi is 
 stated to have begun it B.C. 1100. It was 
 finished five centuries afterwards by Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, who has left a part of its history 
 on two cylinders, which have lately been ex- 
 cavated on the spot, and thus deciphered by 
 Eawlinson. ' The building, named the Pla- 
 nisphere, which was the wonder of Babylon, 
 I have made and finished. With bricks en- 
 riched with lapis lazuli, I have exalted its 
 head. Behold now the building, named " the 
 Stipes of the Seven Spheres," which was the 
 ■wonder of Borsippa, had been built by a 
 former Wng. He had completed forty-two 
 cubits of height ; but he did not finish the 
 head. From the lapse of time it had become 
 ruined. They had not taken care of the exit 
 of the waters ; so the rain and wet had pene- 
 trated into the brickwork. The casing of 
 burnt brick lay scattered in heaps. Then 
 Merodach, my great lord, inclined my heart 
 to repair' the building. I did not change its 
 site, nor did I destroy its foimdation-platform. 
 But, in a fortunate month, and upon an aus- 
 picious day, I undertook the building of the 
 raw-brick terraces, and the burnt-brick casing 
 of the Temple, I strengthened its founder 
 tion, and I placed a titular record on the part 
 ■Which I had rebuilt. I set my hand to build 
 it up, and to exalt its summit. As it had 
 been in ancient times, so I built up its struc- 
 ture. As it had been in former days, thus I 
 exalted its head.' 
 
 1290. If the Jehovist lived in Solo- 
 xnon's days, atoufc B.C. 1015-975, and 
 the Temple of Belus was begnn, as 
 Kalisch has just said, by Merodach- 
 adan-akhi in B.c.llOO, not more than 
 a century would have elapsed to his 
 time, hardly long enough for the un- 
 finished building, however wonderful, 
 to have become the subject of a legend. 
 But, as the tower was apparently an 
 observatory, and the fact of its being 
 dedicated to the sevea ancient planets 
 
 shows that astronomical observations 
 
 had niade considerable progress among 
 the Chaldseans at the time when it was 
 built, the traditions connected with it 
 may have embodied stories of a much 
 earlier date, to which the new building 
 gave fresh currency. 
 
 1291. Prof, RAWLrsTsoN, however, 
 says. Smith's I)ict.i.p.l59 : — 
 
 The supposed date [of the building of the 
 Temple of Mugheir] is B.C. 2300~a little 
 earlier than the time commonly assigned to 
 the building of the Tower [of Babel]. Pro- 
 bably the erection of the two buildings was 
 not separated by a very long interval, though 
 it is reasonable to suppose that, of the two, 
 the tower was the earlier. If we mark its 
 date, as perhaps we are entitled to do, by 
 the time of Peleg, the son of Bber and 
 father of Reu, we may perhaps place it about 
 B.C. 2600. 
 
 But it is evident that the above rea- 
 soning is very loose, and based almost 
 entirely on traditionary prepossessions. 
 And here the date of the building of the 
 Toweris carried up beyond 2348 B.C., the 
 date which the Hebrew Scriptures fix for 
 the Deluge, though it is still below that 
 fixed by the LXX, — on which point see 
 below (1303). 
 
 1292. Mr. Bevajt also gives from 
 Oppert, in Smith's Diet, of the Bible, 
 iii. ^.1554, another version of the in- 
 scription, agreeing substantially with 
 the above; but instead of the pas- 
 
 Behold now the building, named ' the Stages 
 of the Seven Spheres,' which was the wonder 
 of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. 
 He had completed forfy-two cubits of height : but 
 he did not finish the head. "Broia. the lapse of 
 time it had become ruined — 
 
 Oppert translates : — 
 
 This edifice, the house of the seven Lights 
 of the Earth, the most ancient monument of 
 Borsippa, a former king built it, {(hey reckon 
 forty-two ages), but he did not complete its 
 head. Since a remote time people had aban- 
 doned it, without order expressing dieir words. 
 
 And this is quoted as ' mentioning 
 the Tower in connection with the Con- 
 fusion of Tongues/ — though Oppert 
 
 says, — 
 
 This allusion to the ' Tower of the Tongues 
 is the only one that has as yet been discovered 
 in the cuneiform inscriptions. 
 
 The reader must judge for himself 
 as to the degree of support afforded to 
 the probability of the historical reality 
 
of the Scripture ttoiy hy the above 
 translation. 
 
 1293. Kalisch describes also the lat- 
 ter fates of the Temple, as follows, 
 <?e«.^.316:— '^ 
 
 GEN.XI.1-XI.9. 
 
 405 
 
 The temple of Jupiter Belus with Ita tower 
 ■was regarded as one ol the most gigantic 
 works of antiquity, and attracted the curiosity 
 of travellers from every country. Heeodotds, 
 Who saw it himself, dwells upon it with em- 
 
 phasis,i.l81 It was partially destroyed 
 
 by Xerxes, when he returned from Greece, 
 B.C. 490 ; upon which the fraudulent priests 
 appropriated to themselves the lands and 
 enormous revenues attached to it, and seem, 
 from this reason, to have been averse to its 
 restoration. A part of this magnificent edi- 
 fice Btill existed more than five centuries later, 
 PlJN.vi.30. But the other part was, in the 
 time of Alexander the Great, a vast heap of 
 ruins. The ambitious Macedonian determined 
 to rebuild it, andissuedhisorders accordingly. 
 But, when the worli did not proceed with the 
 vigour and result which he had anticipated, 
 he resolved to undertake it himself with his 
 whole army. He lacked, however, the peise- 
 verance of the oriental despots ; for, when 
 10,000 workmen were unable to remove the 
 rubbish within two months, he abandoned his 
 pretentious designs. However, the portion of 
 the structure which was in existence in 
 Pldty's time was imposing enough to he 
 still called the Temple of Belus. And Ben- 
 jamin of Tudela, in the twelfth century, de- 
 scribed it as a brick building, the base mea- 
 suring two miles, and the breadth 240 yards ; 
 he adds, that a spiral passage, built round the 
 tower, in stages of ten yards each, led up to 
 the summit, which allows a wide prospect 
 over an almost perfectly level country ; and 
 concludes with the old tradition, that the 
 heavenly fire, which struck the tower, split 
 it to its very foundation. More than six hun- 
 dred years the ruins of Birs Nimroud re- 
 . mained unnoticed and unknown. They were 
 first rediscovered by Niebuhe, in 1756,— then 
 more accurately described by Beb Portee, 
 'Rica, Buckingham, &c. : but their examina- 
 tion, and the discovery of some of the monu- 
 mental records they contain, were reserved to 
 the last decennium, 1848-58. 
 
 1294. Kausch also observes, Gm. 
 p.313 :— 
 
 Most of the ancient nations possessed myths 
 concerning impious giants, who attempted to 
 Btorm heaven, either to share it with the 
 immortal gods, or to expel them from it. In 
 eome of these fables the confusion of tongues 
 Is represented as the punishment inflicted by 
 the deities for such wickedness. .And even 
 JOSEPHDB, Ant.l.ir.S, quot^ a similar tradi- 
 iten [in the words of t^/ Sibyl, probably of 
 VOTy late date, and copied from the Scriptural 
 Bto?y 'the gids sent storms of wind, and 
 OTerthrew the tower, and gave every one his 
 pLSSrTanguage : and J"' 'his reason it was 
 that the city was caUed Babylon ]. 
 
 Dblitzsoh adds, p.SU :— 
 
 Actually the Mexicans have a legend of a 
 tower building, as well as of a Flood. Xelhua, 
 one of the seven giants rescued in the flood, 
 built the great pyramid of Cholula, in order to 
 reach heaven, until the gods, angry at his 
 audacity, threw fire upon the building, and 
 broke it down, whereupon every separate 
 family received a language of its own. We 
 will not lay much stress upon it, since the 
 Mexican legend has experienced much colour- 
 ing at the hands of the narrators, — chiefly 
 Dominicans and Jesuits ; and we lay still less 
 upon the point that the Mexican terrace- 
 pyramid has a great resemblance to the con- 
 struction of the Temple of Belus : but both 
 these points deserve to be noticed. 
 
 1295. And upon the credibility of the 
 whole story, as a matter of history, he 
 writes as follows, p.Sli : — 
 
 "We have, however, other and incomparably 
 more important remains of the event than 
 those uncertain ruins, — {ujwertain, only in 
 respect of the question whether the mound, 
 Birs Nimroud, does represent the ruins of the 
 Temple of Belus— it is certain that such a 
 Temple, as above described, once existed, — ] 
 or these scanty reminiscences. They exist in 
 the languages themselves, standing in moreor 
 less remote connection of consequences with 
 that event. Each of these languages is, no 
 doubt, the production and expression of the 
 spiritual and natural constitution of the 
 people, to which it naturally belongs. . . . 
 Certainly, if this wonderful divine influence 
 had not occurred, the one primeval tongue 
 would not have remained in stagnating im- 
 mobility. It would, by virtue of the rich 
 abundance of the gifts and powers vouch- 
 safed to man, have gone through a process of 
 continual self-enrichment, and have gained 
 in spirit and uniformity. Now, however, 
 when the lingual unity of the race was lost, 
 together with their unity in God, together 
 also with the unity of their all-deflning re- 
 ligious consciousness, instead of a mantfold- 
 ness in unity, there came a splitting-up with 
 loss of unity, a cleaving-asunder with utter 
 loss of connection,— such, however, as pointe 
 back with a thousand fingers to the fact of 
 the original unity. 
 
 If the last statement be true, yet 
 how does it prove the historical truth 
 of the narrative in G-.xi.l-9 ? 
 
 CHAPTEB XII. 
 
 GEN.XI.10-XI.26. 
 
 1296. The following Table exhibits 
 the variations from the Heb., of the 
 Sept., Sam., and Josephus, in respect 
 of the numbers which express the 
 parent's age at the eldest son's birth, 
 in the Hst of the Post-Diluvian Pa- 
 triarehs : — 
 
406 
 
 GI;N.XI.10-XI.26. 
 
 
 Hcb. 
 
 Sept. 
 
 Sam. 
 
 Jose- 
 phus. 
 
 12 
 135 
 
 130 
 134 
 130 
 130 
 132 
 120 
 70 
 
 75 
 
 Shem (after the 
 Flood) . . . 
 Arpbaxad . . . 
 Cainan (not in 
 
 2 
 36 
 
 2 
 136 
 
 130 
 130 
 134 
 130 
 132 
 130 
 79 
 70 
 
 75 
 
 2 
 135 
 
 130 
 134 
 130 
 132 
 130 
 79 
 70 
 
 76 
 
 Salah . . . . 
 
 Eber 
 
 Peleg . . . . 
 
 Beu 
 
 Serug , . . . 
 Nahor . . , . 
 Terah . . . . 
 Abraham's mi- 
 gration . . . 
 
 30 
 34 
 30 
 32 
 30 
 29 
 70 
 
 75 
 
 Total from the 
 Flood .... 
 
 367 
 
 1,147 
 
 1,017 
 
 1,068 
 
 1297. The Scripture story, then, re- 
 presents that in Abraham's time, not 
 four centuries after the Deluge, the 
 descendants of Noah's three sons, 
 (who had no children before the 
 Flood, xi.lO), had so multiplied that 
 there were already in existence the 
 kingdoms of Shinar (Babylon), Mam, 
 &o., mentioned in (T.xiv.l, as engaged 
 in a joint campaign against five kings 
 of Canaan, and those of Egypt, G.xiii, 
 and Gerar, G-.xx. Besides these, how- 
 ever, there were the Rephahn, Zuzim, 
 Emim, Horim, who were smitten by 
 the king of Elam, G.xiv.2,5,6, and 
 the multitude of other nations, Gomer, 
 Magog, Madai, &c., who are referred 
 to in G.x as already existing before the 
 time of Abraham. This appears from 
 the fact that ' the earth was divided ' 
 in the days of Peleg, the fourth in 
 descent from Shem, and Abraham was 
 in the ninth ; whereas all the nations 
 in G.x are described as being in the 
 first or second from one or other of 
 the sons of Noah, except the Arabian 
 tribes in j).26-29, mentioned as the 
 sons of Joktan, Peleg's brother. Nay, 
 the small district of Canaan was al- 
 ready occupied by many powerful na- 
 tions, X. 1.5-19. 
 
 1298. And some of these nations had 
 already attained =• very high state of 
 civilisation. 
 
 When Egypt first presents itself to our view 
 she stands forth, not in ohlldhooa, but with 
 the maturity of manhood's age, arrayed in 
 the time-worn habiliments of civilisation. 
 Her tombs, her temples, her pyramids, her 
 manners, customs, and arts, an betoken a full- 
 grown nation. The sculptures of the ivth' 
 
 Dynasty, the earliest extant, show that ttM 
 arts at that day, some 3,500 B.C. [date oi 
 Menes, more than 3,400 B.C. (HuMBOLnr)— 
 3,643 B.C. (BUNSEN)— 3,892 B.C. (Kbnbiok)— 
 3,893 B.C. (Lepbius)— 8,895 B.C. (HiNOKS)— in 
 eax;h case more than 1,000 years before the 
 Usherian date of the Deluge,] had already 
 arrived at a perfection little inferior to that 
 of the xvliith Dynasty, which, until lately, 
 was regarded as her Augustan age. Norr, 
 Types of Mankind, p.^W. 
 
 Bas-reliefs, beautifully cut, sepulchral 
 architectm'e, and the engineering of the py- 
 ramids, — re(A-peps, inks (red and black), pa- 
 pyrus-paper, and chemically-prepared colours, 
 — ^these are grand evidences of the civilisation 
 of Memphis 5,300 years ago, that every man 
 with eyes to see can now behold in noble 
 folios, published by France, Tuscany, and 
 Prussia. Ibid. p.2S7. 
 
 The glimpse which we thus obtain of Egypt, 
 in the fifth century after Menes, according to 
 the lowest computation, [still 1,000 years bet- 
 fore the Deluge,] reveals to us some general 
 facts, which lead to import inferences. In all 
 its general characteristics Egypt was the 
 same as we see it a thousand years later, [and 
 for how many centuries before?] — a well 
 organised monarchy and religion elaborated 
 throughout the country, — the system of 
 hieroglyphic writing the same, in all its 
 leading peculiarities, as it continued to the 
 end of the monarchy of the Pharaohs. KEN- 
 KlCK'a Ancient Egypt, p,l51, 
 
 1299. Moreover, as before observed, 
 in this short interval the most marked 
 differences of physiognomy must have 
 become stamped on the different races, 
 since we find on the most ancient mo- 
 numents of Egypt precisely the same 
 negro face, head, hair, form, and colour, 
 fully developed, as we observe in our 
 own days. In three or four centuries 
 — not of the primeval time before the 
 Flood, but when that deteriorating 
 change, whatever it may have been, 
 which is intimated in G.vi.3, had al- 
 ready passed upon the race — the com- 
 plete change of colour, form of skull, 
 and general physical character, had 
 been effected, which seems not to have 
 been modified in the least, from that 
 time to this, during the lapse of four 
 thousand years. Arohd. Pratt says, 
 in reference to this, Scripture .and 
 Science, p.55 : — 
 
 There is no evidence (!) that Shem, Ham, 
 and Japheth had not in them elements differ- 
 ing as widely as the Asiatic, the African, and 
 the European differ from each other (I). 
 They may have married, too, into different 
 tribes, and their wives have been as diversified 
 as themselves. 
 
 1300. Delitzsoh notes on this point, 
 p.290 :— 
 
GEN.XI.10-XI.26. 
 
 Thug far the possibility of the derivatiou of i 
 Wnt.-^ '^'5^^ ^^'^^ 0^^ *a'"ily is established by 
 riatural Science. Meanwhile, we do not wish 
 to be silent as to the fact, that the maintenance 
 SLl 1 "^^^^^ ^s becoming more and more 
 prevalent. The distinguishing characteristics 
 ot the races, It is said, He not only in the 
 colrnir of the hair, but also especially in the 
 S!^ J^-^ skeleton, and particularly of the 
 SKuil. ihis difference is in the case of the 
 principal races so great that it is impossible 
 to account for the variation through any kind 
 of chmatic or other ordinary influence. And 
 even if such a variation were possible, yet, in 
 any case, a space of time of about 400 years 
 (from the Flood to the patriarchal times, in 
 ■which the race-development is already an ac- 
 complished fact) is besides far too short ; so 
 that both Natural Science and Chronology 
 give positive proof of manifold division of 
 the human race from the very first. As re- 
 gards the first proof, however, no account is 
 here taken of the incalculably great, and, in 
 correspondence with the character of the 
 primeval time, doubly intensified, influence of 
 the spixitual and moral tendency of that age 
 upon the bodily development. And as regards 
 the second, we await complacently the final 
 results of the investigation of the monuments, 
 especially the Egyptian, and of such inquiries 
 as that about the age of the by-gone American 
 — especially,* Mexican — civilisation. Perhaps, 
 the chronological net of the Biblical primeval 
 history really requires an extension. . . . 
 Allowing, however, that the Scripture has in 
 fact leapt over hundreds, or even thousands, 
 of years, would that be sufficient to throw 
 our thoughts into confusion about it ? The 
 Bible history is the history of salvation : the 
 history of salvation is, however, the heart 
 of the world-history. And, as the heart is 
 smaller than the man, although it determines 
 his life, BO, perhaps, the Bible chronology is 
 more contracted than the world-chronology, 
 although this is rEdsedupon the scaSold of the 
 other (!). For the sacred history, that of the 
 Gospel, as well as of the Pentateuch, is com- 
 plex, i.e., it steps from one main-point of the 
 history of salvation to the next, without 
 drawing marked attention to the interval 
 between them. 
 
 1301. As Delitzsch observes, the dif- 
 ficulty lies not so much in the question 
 whether the derivation of all the races 
 of the earth from one family is possible. 
 Mr. Dar-win's recent investigations, on 
 the origin of species, have shown us 
 that such derivation is, perhaps, not 
 scientifically inconceivable, provided 
 only that a sufficient lapse of time be 
 allowed for it But then this theory 
 would require thousands or tms of 
 thousands of years, instead of four 
 hundred, which is all the Bible allows 
 us for the development of seventy dis- 
 tinct nations from the three sons of 
 Noah ■ since, at the time when Abram 
 came into the land of Canaan, we are 
 told— 
 
 407 
 
 'the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled 
 then in the land,' Gr.xii.6, xiii.7. 
 
 1302. Accordingly, Prof. Rawlinson 
 writes* Aids to Faiths ^.282 : — 
 
 Were we bound down to the numbers of the 
 Hebrew text, in regard to the period between 
 the Flood and Abraham, we should, indeed, 
 find ourselves in a difficulty. Three hundred 
 and seventy years would certainly not seem to 
 be sufficient time for the peopling of the world, 
 to the extent to which it appears to have been 
 peopled in the days of Abraham, and for the 
 formation of powerful and settled monarchies 
 in Babylonia and Egypt. But the adoption of 
 the Septuagint numbers for this period, which 
 are on every ground preferable, brings the 
 chronology into harmony at once with the 
 condition of the world, as shown to us in the 
 account given in Scripture of the times of 
 Abraham, and with the results obtainable 
 from the study, in a sober spirit, of profane 
 history. A thousand years is ample time for 
 the occupation of Mesopotamia, Syria, and 
 Egypt, by a considerable population, for the 
 formation of governments, the erection even 
 of such buildings as the Pyramids, the ad- 
 vance of the arts generally to the condition 
 found to exist in Egypt tmder the eighteenth 
 dynasty, and for aSaost any amount of sub- 
 division and variety in languages. 
 
 1303. In anoUier place he writes, 
 p.259 :— 
 
 The date of the Deluge, which we are most 
 justifiedin drawing from the sacred documents, 
 is not, as commonly supposed, B.C. 2348, but 
 rather, B.C. 3099, or even B.C. 3159. The 
 modem objectors to the chronology of Scrip- 
 ture seek co.mmonly to tie down their oppo- 
 nents to the present Hebrew text. But there 
 is no reason why they should submit to this 
 restriction. The LSX version was regarded 
 as of primary authority during the first agea 
 of the Christian Church ; it is the version 
 commonly quoted in the N.T. ; and thus, 
 when it differs from the Hebrew, it is, at least, 
 entitled to equal attention. The larger 
 chronology of the T.YY would, therefore, even 
 if it stood alone, have as good a claim as the 
 shorter one of the Hebrew text, to be con- 
 sidered the chronology of Scripture. It does 
 not, however, stand alone. For the period 
 between the Flood aud Abraham the LXZ 
 has the support of another ancient and inde- 
 pendent (?) version, the Samaritan. It ia 
 argued that the LXX numbers were enlarged 
 by the Alexandrian Jews, in order to bring 
 the Hebrew chronology into harmony with 
 the Egyptian, But there is no conceivable 
 reason why the Samaritans should have 
 altered their Pentateuch in this direction, and 
 no very ready mode of accoimting for the 
 identity of the numbers in these two versions, 
 but by supposing that they are the real num- 
 bers of the original. 
 
 1304. However, even if we adopt 
 Prof. Rawxinson's extreme estimate, 
 and suppose the Flood to have oc- 
 curred B.C. 3099, yet still this is not 
 snfacient (1 99) to bring the Scripture 
 
 E E 2 
 
408 
 
 GEN.XI.10-XI.26. 
 
 narrative into agreement with scien- 
 tific fact And thus we have Lepsius 
 writing, Brief e aus Egt/pten, p. 35: — 
 
 "We are still busy with structures, sculp- 
 tures, and inscriptions, which are to be classed, 
 by means of the now more accurately deter- 
 mined groups of kings, in an epoch of highly 
 flourishing civilisation, as far back as the 
 fourth millennium before Christ "We cannot 
 sufflciently impress upon ourselves and others 
 those hitherto incredible dates. The more 
 criticism is provoked by them, and forced to 
 serious examination, the better for the cause. 
 Conviction will soon follow angry criticism ; 
 and finally those results will be attained 
 which are so intimately connected with every 
 branch of antiquarian research. 
 
 1305. It is easy, however, to under- 
 stand why the Alexandrian intei-pre- 
 ters muy have altered the numbers, 
 either for the reason above mentioned 
 by Prof. Eawlinson (1303), or, 
 perhaps, because they already saw 
 the difficulty which the smaller num- 
 bers occasioned. But can any good 
 reason be conceived for the Hebrews 
 corrupting their Scriptures, and chang- 
 ing the numbers in their Pentateuch, if 
 they had originally the same numbers 
 as are now found in the Septuagint? 
 Haies, indeed, says, Elements of Hist. 
 Chron., i.p.278:— 
 
 The motive, which led the Jews to mutilate 
 the Patriarchal genealogies, is most clearly 
 exposed by Ephrem Syrus, who died A.D. 378. 
 'The Jews,' says he, ' have subtracted 600 
 years from the generations of Adam, Seth, 
 &c., in order that their own books might not 
 convict them concerning the coming of Christ, 
 He having been predicted to appear for the 
 deliverance of mankind after 5,500 years.' 
 
 He quotes also Abuifabagius to the 
 same effect, — the corruption being sup- 
 posed to have been m ade after the Chris- 
 tian era, in order to give more time for 
 the appearance of the Messiah, who was 
 expected by tradition to come in the 
 sixth millenary age of the world. 
 
 1306. But, as only 4,000 years had 
 elapsed from the Creation to the Chris- 
 tian era, and the Messiah was not ex- 
 pected for 1,600 years, there would 
 seem to have been hardly sufficient 
 reason for the Jews making the altera- 
 tion in question at so earlt/ a time, — 
 if ever they desired to make it Mr. 
 Poole says, Smith's Diet, of tlie Bible, 
 i.^.320 :— 
 
 With respect to probability of accuracy 
 oiising from the state of the text, the Hebrew 
 
 certainly has the advantage. There is every 
 reason to think that the Eabbins have been 
 scrupulous in the extreme in making altera- 
 tions. The LXX,on the other hand, showssigna 
 of a carelessness that would almost permit 
 change, and we have the probable interpola- 
 tion of the second ' Cainan,' — [whose name is 
 inserted between Arphaxad and Salah in the 
 LXX, but is rejected by all commentators as 
 an interpolation into the original text.] 
 
 1307. Prof. Eawlinson adds further, 
 p.264 :— 
 
 Whether the chronology of these versions 
 admits of further expansion (I) — whether, 
 since the chronologies of the Hebrew Bible, 
 the Samarilan Pentateuch, and the LXX differ, 
 we can depend on any one of them (I), — or 
 whether we must not consider that this por- 
 tion of Bevelation has been lost to us, by tlie 
 mistakes of copyists, or the intentional altera- 
 tions of systematisers (I), — it is not necessary 
 at present to determine. ' Our treasure,' as 
 before observed, ' is in earthen vessels.* The 
 revealed "Word of Q-od has been continued in 
 the world, in the same way as other written 
 compositions, by the multiplication of copies. 
 No miraculous aid is vouchsafed to the tran- 
 scribers, who are liable to make mistakes, and 
 may not always have been free from the design 
 of bending Scripture to their own views. Still, 
 at present, we have no need to suppose that the 
 numbers have in every case (!) suffereA, 
 
 1308. It is difficult to see what could 
 have been the object of a miraculous re- 
 velation of numbers, if there was not to 
 be also a rsraae-alo'dspreservation of them. 
 But, as regards the numbers now under 
 consideration, it is plain from the Table 
 given in (1296), that the numbers in the 
 genealogy to the birth of Terah ' have 
 in every case suffered,' and been de- 
 signedly altered, either by the Hebrews 
 diminishing, or the LXX increasing, 
 each age by a century. There is no 
 indication in these lists of any other 
 than 'intentional alterations of sys- 
 tematisers.' The question is, who are 
 most likely to have corrupted the ori- 
 ginal numbers, the Hebrews or the 
 Alexandrians ? 
 
 1309. Upon the general question of 
 the possibility that all human beings 
 may have been derived from one pair, 
 and that all the now-existing varieties ' 
 of the race may have been gradually 
 developed during a prodigious lapse of 
 time, through a long succession of ages, 
 the following remarks of Dr. Nott, 
 tending to show that there may have 
 been different centres of creation for 
 the human race, are well worthy of con- 
 sideration, Ty^es of ManUnd,p.2'!i-5. 
 
GEN.XI.10-XI.26. 
 
 ae?TtK'"T"?' ™ ™PP»rt ot the extreme 
 
 are^not BS/if""? ■'° *= ^scientific, 
 Buch mn^i??'^ "^^ opinions ot a few; but 
 the leSf L°°? ^-^ ^""stantially adopted by 
 ine leading geologists everywhere Anrl J 
 
 See ?L'eS'*^ '' e^treSor mant^e'xis : 
 SonsT^^ r^ '5?°^ ^°°^^ preconceived 
 rapia accumulation of new facts is fast 
 
 ^«v^i™T'^''*°- .^^^ monuments of Egypt 
 
 hp?iS^ ^*°'^ adopted; and, when these 
 Sf^ ?+f ^ °rf o^^'-leaped, it is in vain for 
 ns to attempt to approximate, even, to the 
 w K J°^ ^ creation. This conclusion is 
 not based merely on the reseaxches of such 
 ^chEeologists Bs Lepsius, Bunsen, Birch 
 Httmboldt &c., but on those also of such 
 writers as Kenrick, Hincks, Osborv, and we 
 may add, of all theologians, who have really 
 mastered the monuments of Egypt. Nor do 
 these monuments reveal to us only a single 
 race, at this early epoch, in full tide of civili- 
 sation ; but they exhibit faithful portraits of 
 the same African and Asiatic races, in all their 
 diversity, which hold intercourse with Egypt 
 at the present day. 
 
 Now the question naturally springs up, 
 whether the aborigines of America were not 
 contemporary with the earliest races, known 
 to us, of the eastern continent. If, as is con- 
 ceded, 'Caucasian,' 'Negro,' 'Mongol,' and 
 other races, existed in the Old World, already 
 distinct, what reason can be assigned to show 
 that the aborigines of America did not also 
 exist, with their present types, 5,000 years 
 ago? The naturalist must infer that the 
 fauna and flora of the two continents were 
 contemporary. All facts, and all analo'jy, 
 war against the supposition, that America 
 should have been left by the Creator a dreary 
 waste for thonsands of years, while the other 
 lialf of the world was teeming with organised 
 beings. This view is also greatly strength- 
 ened by the acknowledged fact, that not a 
 single animal, bird, reptile, fish, or plant, was 
 common to the Old and New Worlds. No 
 naturalist of our day doubts that the animal 
 and vegetable kingdoms of Ajuerica were cre- 
 ated where they are found, and not in Asia. 
 
 The races of men alone in America have 
 been made an exception to this general law. 
 But this exception cannot be maintained by 
 any course of smentific reasoning. America, 
 It will be remembered, was not only unknown 
 to the early Romans' and Greeks, but to the 
 Egyptians ; and, when discovered, less than 
 four centuries ago, it was found to be in- 
 habited, from the Arctic Sea to Cape Horn, 
 and from Ocean to Ocean, by a population 
 displaying peculiar physical traits, uiilike any 
 races in. the whole world,— speaking lan- 
 guagC'i bearing no resemblance in structure 
 to other languages,— and living everywhere 
 among animals and plants, specifically dis- 
 tinct from those of Europe, Asia, Africa, and 
 Oceanica. ... 
 
 Further, in reflecting on the aboriginal 
 races in America, we are at once met by the 
 Btriking fact, that their phj'sical characters 
 are wholly independent of all climatic or 
 
 409 
 
 Imown physical influences. Notwithstanding 
 their ^mme^se geographical distribution, em- 
 bracing every variety of climate, it is ac- 
 knowledged by aU travellers, that there ia 
 among this people a prevailing type, around 
 which all the tribes (north, south, east, and 
 west) cluster, though varying within pre*' 
 scribed limits. With trifling exceptions, all 
 American Indians bear to each other some 
 degree of family resemblance, quite as strong, 
 for example, as that seen at the present day 
 among full-blooded .Tews ; and yet they are 
 distinct from every race of the Old World, in 
 features, language, customs, arts, religions, 
 and propensities. In the language of Morton, 
 who studied this people more thoroughly than 
 any other writer, 'All possess, though in 
 various degrees, the long, lank, black, hair,— 
 the heavy brow,— the dull, sleepy, eye,— the 
 full, compressed, lips,— and the salient, but 
 dilated, nose.' These characters, too, are be- 
 held in the most civilised and the most savage 
 tribes, along the rivers and sea-coasts,— in the 
 valleys, and on the mountains,— in the prairies, 
 and in the forests,— in the torrid and in the 
 icebound regions,- amongst those that liveon 
 fish, on fiesh, or on veget^ibles. 
 
 The only race in the Old World, with whicli 
 any connection has been reasonably conjec- 
 tured, is the Mongol. But, to say nothing of 
 the marked difference in physical characters, 
 their languages alone should decide against 
 any such alliance. No philologist can be 
 found to deny the fact, that the Chinese are 
 now speaking and writing a language sub- 
 stantially the same as the qne they used five 
 thousand years ago,— and that, too , a language 
 distinct &:om every tongue spoken by the 
 Caucasian races. On the other hand, we 
 have the American, races, all speaking dit^ects 
 indisputably peculiar to this continent, and 
 possessing no marked affinity with any other. 
 Now, if the Mongols have preserved a lan- 
 guage entire, in Asia, for 6,000 years, they 
 should likewise have preserved it here, 6r, to 
 say the least, some trace of it. But, not only 
 are the two linguistic groups radically dis- 
 tinct, but no trace of a Mongol tongue, dubious 
 words excepted, can be found in theAjnerican 
 idioms. If such imaginary Mongolians ever 
 brought their Asiatic speech into this country, 
 it is clear that their suppd^ed descendants, 
 the Indians, have lost it, and the latter must 
 have acquired^ instead, that of some extinct race, 
 which preceded a Mongol colonisaMon. It will 
 be conceded that a colony or nation could 
 never lose its vocabulary so completely, unless 
 through conquest and amalgamation, — in 
 which case they would adopt aTWiAer language. 
 But, even when a tongue ceases to be spoken, 
 some trace of it will continue to survive in 
 the names of individuals, of rivers, places, 
 countries, &c- . . The appellative, Missis- 
 sippi, Missouri, Orinoko, Ontario, Oneida, 
 Alabama, and a thousand other Indian names, 
 will live for ages after the last Red Man is 
 mingled with the dust. They have no likeness 
 to any nomenclature in the Old World. 
 
 1310. He adds also on ^.281 : 
 The following conclusions were advanced 
 by Mr. Ddponceau, as early as 1819, in sub- 
 stantially the following language :— 
 
410 
 
 GEKXI. 
 
 (i) The American languages, in general, 
 are rich in words and grammatical forms; 
 and in theij: complicated construction the 
 greatest order, method, and regularity pre- 
 vail; 
 
 (ii) These complicated forms appear to 
 exist in all these languages fi-om Greenland 
 to Cape Horn ; 
 
 (iii) These forms differ essentially from 
 those of the ancient and modem languages 
 of the Old Hemisphere. We have no reason 
 to believe that a race would ever lose its 
 language, if kept aloof from foreign influences. 
 It is a fact that in the little island of Great 
 Britain the Welsh and the Ei"se are still 
 spoken, although for 2,000 years pressed upon 
 by the strongest iniiuences, tending to exter- 
 minate a tongue. So with the Basque in 
 France, which can be traced back at least 
 3,000 years, and is still spoken. Coptic was 
 the speech of Egypt for at least 5,000 years, 
 and still leaves its trace in the languages 
 around. The Chinese has existed equally as 
 long, and is still undisturbed. . . The lan- 
 guage of Homer lives in a state of purity, to 
 which, considering the extraordinary duration 
 of its literary existence (2,600 years at least), 
 there is no parallel, perhaps, on the face of 
 the globe. 
 
 Although the nations of Europe and Western 
 Asia have been in constant turmoil for thou- 
 sands of years, and their languages torn to 
 pieces, yet they have been moulded into the 
 great heterogeneous Indo-European mass, 
 everywhere showing affinities among its own 
 fragments, but no resemblance to American 
 
 Noah 
 
 1311. This question, however, of the 
 Plurality of Baces, is independent of 
 that of the reliance to be pluced on 
 the accounts here given of the Pa- 
 triarchs after the Flood. And, that 
 these are unhistorical, is sufSciently 
 shown by the following Table, where 
 the numbers express the years after 
 the Flood of the respective events. 
 
 Bom Died years 
 
 after the Flood 
 350 
 502 
 
 Arphaxad 2 404 
 
 Salah 37 470 
 
 Eber 67 531 
 
 Peleg 101 340 
 
 Ecu 131 370 
 
 Serug 163 393 
 
 Nahor 193 341 
 
 Terah 222 427 
 
 Abraham 292 467 
 
 Isaac 392 672 
 
 Jacob 452 699 
 
 1312. According to the above, Noah, 
 Shem, Arphaxad, &e.— in fact, all of 
 Abraham's progenitors ■ — were living 
 during many years of Abraham's life, 
 and Shem, Sedah, and Eber, outlived 
 him. Shem, Arphaxad, SaUh, Eber, 
 
 10-XI.26. 
 
 Serug, Terah, were Uving at the birth 
 of Isaac ; and Shem and Eber lived, 
 the one during fifty, and the other 
 during nearly eighty, years of the life 
 of Jacob. Yet we do not find the 
 slightest intimation that either Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, or Jacob, paid any kind of 
 reverence or attention to any of their 
 ancestors, more especially to their great 
 ancestor Shem, who had gone through 
 that wonderful event of the Deluge,— 
 (except, indeed, on the strange suppo- 
 sition that Melchizedek was Shem), — 
 or that Abraham ever paid a visit to 
 Noah, who, however, is supposed by 
 some (without the slightest warrant 
 from Scripture) to have colonised the 
 extreme East, China, &c., and so to 
 have gone out of his reach. 
 
 1313. Again, it will be found that 
 at the time of Isaac's birth, — when 
 Sarah is represented as 'bearing a son 
 to Abraham in his old age' Gr.xxi.2, — 
 when Abraham and Sarah were 'old 
 and weU-strieken in age,' G.xvii.l7, 
 and Abraham ' laughed, and said in 
 his heart. Shall a child be born to him 
 that is a hundred years old?' as if that 
 were an extraordinary and surprising 
 age for a man to beget children, — there 
 were actually living, as above, Shem, 
 Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Serug, Terah, 
 aged 580, 390, 355, 325, 229, 179 
 years respectively, and Eber lived 139 
 years longer. Must we suppose that 
 none of these had children at the age 
 of a hundred ? But of Shem himself 
 we are told, Gr.xi.10,11 — 
 
 Shem was an hundred years old, and begat 
 Ai-phaxad two years after the Deluge ; and 
 Shem lived, after his begetting Arphaxad, five 
 hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 1314. It is plain, then, that Shem's 
 children were all born after he was a 
 hundi-ed years old ; and Shem himself, 
 and, we may suppose, these children, 
 or some of them, were still living at 
 the birth of Isaac. As to the other 
 patriarchs, we are only told their ages 
 at the birth of the firstborn son in 
 each case, and these ages range from 
 29 to 35 years, except in the case of 
 Abraham's father, who appears to have 
 begotten Abraham at the age of 70, 
 G.xi.26. This last, however, is not 
 certain; as the text may only mean 
 
GEN.XI, 
 that TeraVs three sons -were 1301:11 te- 
 fore he was 70. In aU the other cases 
 i® ,™'"'®ly ^^iii tliat they 'begat sons 
 and daughters,' and it may he supposed 
 that none, except Shem, had children 
 at the age of a hundred, or near it. 
 But this would involve the incongruity 
 that Arphaxad, Salah, and Eber had no 
 children bom to them, during three- 
 fourths or even four-fifths of their lives, 
 which is out of all proportion to the 
 state of things in the prfesent day, and 
 conflicts with the notion, usually enter- 
 tained, of a remarkable fecundity in 
 those early times, by which the human 
 race was replenished so soon after the 
 Flood. 
 
 1315. It will he observed also that 
 the more ancient progenitors, accord- 
 ing to the above list, survived the later 
 ones. Thus Noah died ten years after 
 Peleg, and therefore be was living at 
 the time of the ' dispersion of tongues.' 
 So also were Shem, Arphaxad, Salah, 
 Eber, and, perhaps, also all the other 
 forefathers of Abraham, viz. Eeu, Serug, 
 Nahor, Terah, since Peleg died first of 
 them all, and we are not told in what 
 year of his life the dispersion took 
 place'. It is impossible to say whether 
 the writer supposed that all these Pa- 
 triarchs, or any of them, took part in 
 the project of building the tower. We 
 may suppose that Noah and Shem did 
 not : but, as to the others, the Scrip- 
 ture only informs us that Terah and 
 his family were idolaters a hundred 
 years before the death of Shem, Jo.xxiv. 
 2 ; see also Judith, v.6,7. 
 
 1316. The following remarks are 
 quoted from Dr. Hales by Kitto, 
 Ilist. of the Jews, p.l7 : — 
 
 Upon this supposition, idolatry must have 
 tiegim and prevailed, and the patriarchal go- 
 vernment have been overthrown by Nimrod 
 and the builders o£ Babel, during the lite- 
 time of Noah himself, and his three sons. If 
 Shem lived unto the llOth year of Isaac, and 
 the 50th year of Jacob, why was not he in- 
 cluded in the covenant of circumcision made 
 with Abraham and his famUy? Or why is he 
 utterly unnoticed in their history? How 
 could the earth have been so populous m 
 Abraham's days ? Or how could the tang- 
 doms of Assyria, Egypt, &c. have been 
 established so soon after the Deluge ?Ttas 
 last difficulty was strongly felt by bir W. 
 Eateigh, who in his SisUiry of the World re- 
 marks — ' In this patriarch's time all the 
 then parts of the world were peopled : all 
 
 10-XI.26. 
 
 411 
 
 nations and countries had their kings ; Egyp'' 
 had many magriiflcent cities, and so had Pale- 
 stine, and all the neighbouring countries, 
 yea, all that part of the world besides, as far 
 as India, and these not built with sticks, but 
 of burnt stone and with ramparts, which 
 magnificence needed a parent of more anti- 
 quity than those other men have supposed.' 
 In another place he forcibly observes, ' If we 
 advisedly consider the state and countenance 
 of the world, such as it was in Abraham's 
 time, yea, before his birth, we shall find it 
 were very ill done, by following opinion with- 
 out the guide of reason, to pare the times 
 over-deeply between the Flood and Abraham; 
 because, in cutting them too near the quick, 
 the reputation of the whole itory might perchance 
 bleed.' 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SCErPTUHE BEPEEENCES TO THE CEEA7 
 no*, THE FALL, AN1> THE DELUGE. 
 
 1317. iThecomesnowan interesting, 
 and, for the supporters of the tradi- 
 tionary view, a very important, ques- 
 tion to consider what notice has been 
 taken by the later Scripture writers of 
 these early portions of the Pentateuch. 
 
 Do the Psalmists and Prophets refer 
 to the story of the First Man, — ^to that 
 of the Garden, the Forbidden Fruit, the 
 Serpent, the Fall, and the Deluge,— as 
 undoubted facts, the truth of which had 
 been attested by Divine authority ? Do 
 they speak of these subjects, or any one 
 of them, as if they were well-known and 
 familiar to their own thoughts, and to 
 the thoughts of all around them ? Do 
 they quote them freely, as a modern 
 devout poet or preacher would do, — as 
 any earnest student of the Bible, hold- 
 ing the traditionary view, would do, — 
 as if they believed in them, as truths 
 divinely revealed and infallibly certain ? 
 
 1318. The reply is easy to be given. 
 They do nothing of the kind. The 
 story of the first man is scarcely even 
 once referred to at all, and only, if at 
 all,-r-which, as we shall presently see, 
 is exceedingly doubtful, — with a slight 
 passing notice, enough just to show that 
 the story was written (as we suppose it 
 was), and in some measure known to 
 the writer and his readers. None of 
 its details are ever mentioned. As 
 Lengkeekb observes, Kenaan,p.^-m: 
 
 One single certaih trace of the employment 
 of the story of Adam's Fall is entirely want- 
 ing in the Hebrew Canon. Adam, Eve, the 
 Serpent, the woman's seduction of her hus- 
 
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES TO THE CREATION, 
 
 412 
 
 band, &c., are all images, to which the re- 
 maining words of the Israelites never again 
 recur. 
 
 At all events, there is not the slightest 
 indication that, in the teaching of the 
 Hebrew Prophets, the account of the 
 Pall was quoted and dwelt upon, as we 
 must certainly believe it would have 
 been, — at least, occasionally, — if they 
 had believed in the Divine authority of 
 the narrative. 
 
 And as to Noah, his name is never 
 once mentioned, nor is any reference 
 made to the Deluge by any one of the 
 Psalmists and Prophets, except in the 
 latter part of the book of Isaiah, Is.liv. 9, 
 andinEz.xiv.14,20, by writers undoubt- 
 edly living after the Captivity. 
 
 1319. KuBTz, however, i.^.87, endea- 
 vours to prove that there is, at least, 
 some reference to the story of the Fall 
 in the later writings of the O.T., though 
 he admits that — 
 
 it is indeed remarkable that special references 
 to these events occur so rarely. 
 
 But the following are the only in- 
 stances of this kind which he is able 
 to produce, and they include all which 
 Dr. M'Catjl has produced. 
 
 (i) ' ThetDolf and the lamb shall feed together, 
 and the lion shall eat straw like Uie bullock, 
 and dust shall be ^ serpent's meat.' Is.lxv.25. 
 
 Ans. These words, instead of refening in 
 any way to the curse pronounced in Q-.iii.14, 
 express quite another idea. In the passage of 
 Genesis, it is pronounced, as part of the curse 
 upon the serpent, that it should * eat dust,* 
 while the venomous creature itself was to re- 
 tain all its power to sting and injure, — to 
 * bruise the heel ' of man. But the Prophet's 
 language implies that the Serpent then, in 
 the Messianic time, like the wolf and lion, 
 shall be no longer hostile and deadly to other 
 creatures or to man, but shall feed contentedly 
 on * dust ' as they upon straw. The Prophet 
 merely refers to the common notion of those 
 times, that the serpent lived partially, if not 
 wholly, on the substance which it drew from 
 the dusfc through which it wriggled. See the 
 note of Kalisch quoted in (1065 
 
 (ii) ' They shall lick the dust like a serpent, 
 they shall move out of their holes like creeping 
 things of the earth; they sliall be afraid of 
 Jehovah our Elohim, and shall fear because of 
 Thee.' Mic.Tii.17. 
 
 Ans. The cause must have been a desperate 
 -one, indeed, which compelled Dr. KuiiTZ to 
 quote this passage, — wMoh merely describes 
 men wriggling along in terror, like worms, 
 upon the ground, (justaatheZulus usedtodo, 
 when approaching their dreaded king; Chaka, 
 and as people still do, when appeariugr before 
 an Oriental despot,) as having any rcievonce 
 whatever to the curse pronounced upon the 
 eeipent in G.iii.l4< 
 
 Dr. M'Caul, however, says, ^.176 :— 
 
 We have here not only a reference to G.iil, 
 14, but a quotation of certain words from 
 D.XXXU.24. The Hebrew word for ' creeping- 
 things ' occurs only here, in Deuteronomy, 
 and in Job xxxii.6. 
 
 Ans. That is to say, because in D.xxxii.24 we 
 find ' creeping- thiiigs of the dust,' and in Mic. 
 vii.17, * creeping-things of the earth,' and the 
 two phrases used in totally different connec- 
 tions, therefore Micab has made a 'verbal 
 quotation of certain words' (N.B. one word 
 at the most) from Deuteronomy 1 The alle- 
 gation reminds one of the ingenious critic 
 who adduced, as a proof of Shakespeare's 
 acquaintance with Latin, the verbal agree- 
 ment between the sentence, * Jprce, sequar,' to 
 be found in Tjbrence, and the corresponding 
 sentence, ' Go before, I'll follow,' to be foimd 
 in Shakespeare. If there is any copying in 
 the case, which appears to be most improbable, 
 we apprehend that it is the later Deuterone- 
 mist, who must have imitated his predecessor 
 Micah. 
 
 (iii) * Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled ; 
 Thou takest away their breath, they die, and re- 
 turn to their dust.' Ps.civ.29. 
 
 (iv) ' His breath goeth forth ; be retumeth to his 
 earth ; in that very day his thoughts perish.' Ps, 
 cxlvi.4. 
 
 * All go unta one place; all are of ike duatf 
 andall turn to dust again.' Bcc.iii.20. 
 
 ' Then shall the dust return to Gie earffi as it 
 was, and the spirit shall return unto Elohim 
 who gave it.' Ecc.xii.7. 
 
 Ans. There may be a reference in these verses 
 to G.iii.l9. But, surely, the sight or the burial 
 of a corpse might suffice of itself to awaken 
 in any pious mind such reflections as these,— 
 even, as we have seen (1074), in the mind of a 
 , heathen. And, in any case, Ps.civ,cxlvi, are 
 two strongly Jehovistic Psalms, and were, 
 perhaps, written long after the Captivity. 
 And the book of Bcclesiastes docs not con- 
 tain the name Jehovah at all ; which fact 
 combines with other internal evidence to ^ow 
 that it was not written by Solomon, as is 
 generally supposed, but composed (as most 
 critics agree) in a much later age, long after 
 the Captivity, when the name was disused 
 altogether, it would seem, for superstitious 
 reasons. There is no doubt that the present 
 Pentateuch was in existence and well-known 
 in those days, and therefore might have been 
 referred to by any writer ; but it cannot be 
 pronounced with any confidence that there is 
 actually any reference to t in the above paa- 
 
 But even these passages speak only of the 
 mortality of man. There is no reference 
 whatever to the Temptation, the Sin, the FaU^ 
 as an article of the Hebrew Faith, either here 
 or elsewhere. 
 
 1320. KuKTZ, however, says :^ 
 
 Equally clear is the reference, Job xxxi.83» 
 Hos. vi.7, to the history of the Pall. 
 
 In the first of the ahove texts, Job 
 xxxi.33, the E.V. reads: — 
 
 ' If I covered my transgressions as Adam, 
 by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom.' 
 
In the second, Hoa.vLT, we find:- 
 oo'v?"' 't"^^' '*** "^"' '"'™ transgressed the 
 
 With the limitation ' equally clear' the 
 statement of Kurtz may be admitted ; 
 for neither in these passages, nor in the 
 former, is there, as it appears to us, 
 the slightest reference to the Fall, 
 though, in the case of Hos.Ti.7, we 
 have Dr. M'Catil's opinion confirming 
 that of Dr. Kubtz. 
 
 1321. The Hebrew is the same in 
 both the expressions above italicised; 
 though our translators have rendered 
 it differently in the two cases. It 
 is clear that in the second instance 
 the word can hardly be translated 
 'Adam,' since Adam had not trans- 
 gressed any ' covenant,' unless it be 
 supposed (with some commentators) 
 that he transgressed a 'covenant of 
 works' ; and, certainly, in any case, 
 the sudden allusion to him would be 
 very abrupt, — the more so, as the other 
 Prophets do not refer to him freely in 
 this way, nor, indeed, do they ever once 
 mention his name at all under any cir- 
 cumstances. Our translators, therefore, 
 have understood the phrase to mean 
 ' like men,' ' after the manner of men,' 
 as in Ps.lxxxii.7, — 
 
 ' But ye shall die like men, and fall like one 
 of the princes.' 
 
 And this is, no doubt, the meaning 
 in the other passage also, as will be 
 seen by the following instances of 
 translation. 
 
 1322. Thus in Job xxxi.33 we have 
 these: — 
 
 * If I have hidden, as a man, my sin,' Vulg,; 
 'If I have conc^ed, as mm, my faults,' 
 
 Sj/r.; ■ 
 
 * If, even sinning involiuitarily, I concealed 
 my sin,' S^t. ; 
 
 'If I have covered, as Adam, my fault," 
 Oiald.; 
 
 ' If, as men, I have concealed my faults, 
 French, (Cahen) ; 
 
 ' If <M a man I have hid my sm.' Dowiy 
 Vers. , , 
 
 ' If , <M a man, I have covered my ropiery, 
 German, (LuTHEB) ; 
 
 ' If I have hidden my sm, as men are wont 
 to do,' Italian, (DioDAii) ; 
 
 ' If I have covered, as a man, my transgres- 
 sions,' (SCHMIDT) ; , ^ ,,. ^ . . . 
 
 ' It I have covered, after the fashion of mm,, 
 my faults,' (Jm!ros,TBEMMaius). 
 
 ' Have I ever done any wicked deed, where- 
 thorow I shamed myself hefore men T Wy- 
 
 THE FALL, AND THE DELUGE. 
 
 413 
 
 And in Hos.vi.7 we have : — 
 
 • They, however, as Adam, have transgressed 
 the covenant,' Vulg. ; 
 
 ' They, however, as a son of man, have 
 transgressed my covenant,' Syr. ; 
 
 ' They are as a man transgressing a cove- 
 nant,' iSept. ; 
 
 ' They are like a man breaking there a 
 covenant,' Arab. ; 
 
 'They, as the generations of old, trans- 
 gressed my covenant,' Targ. Jon. ; 
 
 ' They, as the common people, have trans- 
 gressed the covenant,' French (Cahen) ; 
 
 * They, as Adam, transgress the covenant,' 
 German (Luther) ; 
 
 ' They, like men, have transgressed a cove- 
 nant,' (Junius, Tremellius). 
 
 1323. KuKTZ further proceeds to say ! 
 The same remark applies to Is.3diii.27, 
 
 where the expression, • thy first father hath 
 sinned,' can only refer to Adam, as the best 
 commentators have shown. However, HOF- 
 MAN views the latter passage as an allusion to 
 Abraham. 
 
 But if we consider the whole verse, — 
 
 ' Thy first father hath sinned, and thy 
 teachers have transgressed against me,' — 
 
 it is clear that the reference cannot 
 possibly be to Adam, whoever may be 
 meant by it. What had Adam to do 
 particularly with the people of Israel ? 
 The reference is manifestly to the 
 people of Israel itself, when on its 
 march out of Egypt, which is here 
 personified as the ' first father ' of the 
 present generation. And, accordingly, 
 the LXX has 'your first fathers,' 
 which LuTHEE follows, 'Deine vorel- 
 tern haben gesundiget,' =Thy ancestors 
 have sinned. 
 
 1324. KuBTzadds: — 
 
 Let it also be remembered that all the 
 sacrificial services of the O.T. are based on 
 G.iii. (!). Nor can we be mistaken in finding 
 in the expression ' surely die,' which so fre- 
 quently occurs in the Mosaic crimmal legisla^ 
 tion, a. reference to the 'sm-ely die' of the 
 first legislation in (J.ii.l7(!). 
 
 If any inference could be drawn from 
 the occurrence of such a phrase both 
 in Leviticus and in G.ii.l7, it would 
 only be this, that the same writer was 
 concerned in both cases. 
 
 1325. Finally, Kurtz sums up, as 
 
 follows : — 
 
 If any doubt should still remain, we submit 
 that the facts, recorded in these chapters, are 
 chronixiled with a childlike simplicity, and that 
 hence the manifold deep bearing of this 
 narrative required a lengthened training, 
 before it could be perfectly apprehended m 
 the consciousness of the individual, [even of 
 such a Prophet as Isaiah or Jeremiah, or oi 
 
414 
 
 SCRIPTUEE EEFEEENCES TO THE CREATION, 
 
 any one of the Psalmists, after a ' lengthened 
 training ' of so many centuries !] So rich and 
 deep is always the commencement ot a develop- 
 ment, that the continuation of it is not sufficient 
 fully to bring its treasures to light. It is 
 only at its completion that all which had 
 lain concealed in it appears. 
 
 1326. We thus see how Tery slight, 
 if any, is the reference to this part of 
 the Pentateuch, in the writings of the 
 most devout men of latter days ; though 
 we find distinct references to the Fall 
 in the apocryphal book of ■Wisdom,ii. 
 24, where also the ' Serpent ' is for the 
 first time identified with the Evil 
 Spirit, after the Hebrews had come 
 into close contact with the later Per- 
 sian mythology : — 
 
 * Through the envy of the Devil came death 
 into the world.' 
 
 And so we read in Ecclns.xxv.24 : — 
 ' Of the woman came the beginning of sin, 
 and through her we aJl die.' 
 
 1327. TccH observes, p.5i : — 
 
 This later revival [of the ancient myth in 
 G.iii] explains itself through the acquaint- 
 ance, which, while in exile, the Israelites 
 made with the religion of the Parsees, the 
 influence of which shows itself plainly in 
 this, that the serpent is explained to mean 
 Satan, now incoi-porated into the Jehovah- 
 worship. . . . Thus the old Hebrew form of 
 the myth is brought nearer to the Persian 
 (1087). The essential difference of the two 
 myths ought to be a sufiBcient proof against 
 the derivation of the Hebrew from the Persian, 
 maintained by Yon Bom^EN and others, who 
 deduce from this the later [rather, very late] 
 origin of G-.iii. For why should not, in that 
 case, Satan appear in action [i.e. in person, not 
 in the form of a serpent,] which the later form 
 of the Helirew religion allowed^ Certainly, 
 however, these myths stand in a sisterly 
 relation, having proceeded fi-om one primary 
 legend, which in different forms has spread 
 itself over the whole Orient. 
 
 1328. But in the older Canonical 
 Scriptures we find no such references, 
 — no allusion of any kind to the story 
 of Adam and Eve and the Fall, or to 
 that of Noah and the Deluge, except, 
 as we have said, in Is.liv.g, Ez.xiv. 14,20. 
 
 Mention, indeed, is made in the Pro- 
 verbs of the 'tree of life ' in four pas- 
 
 ' She is a tree of life to them that lay hold 
 
 upon her,' iii.18 ; 
 ' The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,' 
 
 xi.SO; 
 ' When the desire oometh, it is a tree of life,' 
 
 xiu.l2; 
 A ' wholesome tongue is a tree of life,' xt. 
 
 4;— 
 
 and of the ' fountain of life ' in four 
 others : — 
 ' The mouth of the righteous is a fountain 
 oflife,'x.n ; 
 
 * The law of the wise is a fountain of life* 
 
 xiii.l4; 
 
 * The fear of Jehovah is a fountain of life,' 
 
 xiv.27 ; 
 
 * Understanding is a fountain of life unto 
 
 him that hath it,' xvi.22 : — 
 and so, too, we read, Ps.xxxvi.9 ;— 
 
 * With Thee is the fountain of life.' 
 
 But these expressions are evidently 
 proverbial, and drawn at all events 
 from some other source than G-.ii,iii, 
 which makes no mention at all of the 
 'fountain of life.' 
 
 1329. It is very difficult to explain 
 this silence on the traditionary view, as 
 it is stated by Dr. M'Caul, Examina- 
 tion, &c.,p.208, vis. that — 
 
 there never was a time in Israel, from the 
 days of Moses on, when the Pentateuch was 
 unknown. 
 
 It seems, in fact, with only the above 
 evidence before us, impossible to be- 
 lieve, that the devout Prophets, Priests, 
 an,d Kings, and pious people all along, 
 were thoroughly conversant with the 
 written Law, were deep in the study 
 of it, and practising its precepts daily, 
 — were reminded annually of its exis- 
 tence by the sacred ordinances, which 
 the more religious minds among them 
 faithfully observed, and were also sum- 
 moned once in seven years to hear the 
 whole Law read at the Feast of Taber- 
 nacles, D.xxxi. 9-13. 
 
 1330. But it is easy to account for 
 this phenomenop, if we suppose that 
 the story of the Fall was, as we have 
 seen already some reason to believe, 
 written by the Jehovist, not earlier 
 than the latter part of David's reign, 
 and was known to the great and good 
 of that time as only a narrative, written 
 for the edification of the people, by 
 some distinguished man of the age. 
 Probably, one or two copies may have 
 been made of it, or, perhaps, only one, 
 which remained in the charge of the 
 Priests, and may have been added to 
 from time to time. But the existence 
 of this was so little known in after 
 days, — in other words the book, in 
 the form which it had then assumed, 
 was allowed, even by the best Kings, 
 
THE FALL, AND 
 Priests, and Prophets, to drop so com- 
 pletely into oblivion,_that iif the time 
 ot Josiah, when the ' Book of the Law' 
 ■sras found in the Temple, the very idea 
 ot any such book hemg still in existence 
 seemed quite strange to the king and 
 to his people. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 1331. "We have now completed the 
 analysis and examination of the Pirst 
 Eleven Chapters of Genesis. The 
 analysis has clearly shown that this 
 portion of the Pentateuch, at all events, 
 is not the work of one author, -that 
 the hands of (at least) two distinct 
 writers can be traced throughout in it, 
 one of whom, as far as present appear- 
 ances indicate, must have written sub- 
 sequently to the other, and with the 
 older document before him, — though 
 it stUl remains to be considered 
 whether the later of the two wrote 
 merely to fill up the blanks, which 
 appeared to his mind to exist in 
 the older story, or whether he com- 
 posed originally a complete sepa- 
 rate narrative, which was afterwards, 
 in a later age, incorporated with 
 the older work. It is possible, also, 
 that some of the Jehovistic passages 
 in these chapters may be due to 
 the hand of a later Compiler or 
 Editor. But to anyone, who has fol- 
 lowed carefuUy the train of reasoning 
 by which the above main result has 
 been obtained, it will be evident, as we 
 beHeve, that it does not rest on mere 
 fancy or conjecture,— that it is an un- 
 deniable fact. 
 
 1332. If this be true, there is no 
 room for the supposition that these 
 are merely fragments of older docu- 
 ments, handed down from Jacob, Abra- 
 ham, Noah, — even from Adam, — which 
 have been worked in by Moses himself 
 into the narrative, which he was com- 
 posing in the wilderness for the in- 
 struction of the people of Israel in all 
 future ages. Even were this supposi- 
 tion well-founded, the historical value 
 of this part of the Bible would be 
 seriously weakened, and its (supposed) 
 infaUible accuracy impaired, not only 
 
 THE DELUGE 415 
 
 by the contradictions, which, as we have 
 seen, it presents throughout to innumer- 
 able facts of Modern Science, but also 
 by the discrepancies which are observed 
 to exist, when separate statements of 
 the different authors, whose writings 
 are here put together, are compared 
 •with one another. 
 
 1333. But the supposition itself is 
 inadmissible, because the same two 
 hands can be traced distinctly, not only 
 throughout the rest of the Book of 
 Genesis, but also in the later part of the 
 history, where Moses himself in person 
 comes upon the scene. Thus all critics 
 allow that in E.vi.2-7 we have a por- 
 tion of the Elohistic document, vnitten 
 undoubtedly by the selfsame hand 
 which wrote G.i. If, therefore, it be 
 supposed that Moses himself was the 
 writer of E.vi.2-7, — and it would seem 
 that Moses must have written it, if he 
 wrote any part of the Pentateuch, 
 since no other but Moses could have 
 given an account, from a.ctvi&l personal 
 knowledge, of the revelation of the 
 name ' Jehovah ' contained in this pas- 
 sage, — it must be admitted that this 
 older document, by the hand of the 
 greatLawgiver himself, has been greatiy 
 enlarged and materially modified, by 
 the introduction of a number of im- 
 portant passages by a later hand. 
 
 1334-. But, whether Moses wrote the 
 Elohistic document or not, — a question 
 which we must leave to be discussed 
 in a future Part of this work, — it is 
 plain, from what we have had before 
 us, that not only is the Elohistic matter 
 of this part of Genesis at variance in 
 some important points with the Jeho- 
 vistic, but they both confiict repeat- 
 edly, in the strongest manner, with 
 the undoubted facts of Science, and 
 neither, therefore, of the two narratives 
 can be regarded as throughout histori- 
 cally true. For, as already observed, 
 the Light of Eevelation cannot be at 
 variance with the Light of Science; 
 the real Word of God cannot either 
 contradict itself, or contradict the real 
 Work of God. It follows from this 
 that we must not look for the real Word 
 of God in these contradictory state- 
 ments of matters of fact, — in the 
 mere outward shell, the letter, of 
 
416 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 the Scriptures. The Word of God, in 
 the high and proper sense of this 
 expression, is that in the Bible — 
 the living Word — ^whioh speaks to 
 the hearts and consciences of living 
 men, — which stirs within them divine 
 thoughts, kindles devout feelings, im- 
 pels to faithful action, awakens holy 
 desire, reveals to the longing eye and 
 the pure heart the Living God. 
 
 1335. As Prof Owen has admirably 
 said. Inaugural Address at Leeds, Dec. 
 16, 1862,^.8:— 
 
 Those who contend that such religious 
 truths rest essentially on the basis of the 
 literal and verbal accuracy and acceptability 
 of every physical proposition in the Penta- 
 teuch, hazard much, and incur grave respon- 
 sibilities. . . When a physical fact is demon- 
 strated, and contradicts a canonical statement, 
 it is sometimes objected that the contradiction 
 is apparent, not real ; or, if the propositions 
 are too plainly and diametrically opposed, it 
 is next said that * the truth, as it is manifested 
 in the works, and as it is aflBrmed in the 
 Word, of God, must be one, must ultimately 
 harmonise.' But here the very point at issue 
 is assumed, viz. whether the ancient state- 
 ment of a physical fact be truly, as alleged, 
 a direct verbal inspiration from above; a 
 literal Word of God . . . whether, I say, the 
 alleged inspired statements as to these pheno- 
 mena, in their plain sense, be conformable to 
 the certain knowledge, which it has pleased 
 the Author of all Truth to put us in posses- 
 sion of, by the exercise of the powers He has 
 given for that purpose, and at the times when, 
 in His Providence, it was proper that such 
 tmths should be communicated to mankind. 
 
 When the canonical statement and the 
 Bcientific demonstration do concur, who re- 
 joices more than the Christian philosopher? 
 When they do not, and the opposing state- 
 ments are irreconcilable, who is more bound 
 than the Christian philosopher [or the Chris- 
 tian minister] to deliver the truth and declare 
 the error, and fiing from him Vie sfyphism by 
 Khich the error m salved or veiled, that it may 
 still be reverently cherished, notunthstanding the 
 admitted demonstration of its erroneous nature ? 
 
 1336. It is only, however, a careful, 
 critical analysis, such as that which wo 
 have attempted to carry out in the 
 larger edition, the presentation of the 
 different portions of the narrative, which 
 are due to different authors, "uch as 
 ■we have exhibited above in (968), 
 that can dispel effectually from the 
 minds of many even intelligent persons, 
 well read in science, the lingering re- 
 mains of that fancy, with which, per- 
 haps, they have been thoroughly im- 
 bued in their youth, that the Bible 
 cannot be a Teacher — a Divinely-given 
 
 Teacher^for us in spiritual things, 
 unless we regard it as a part of our 
 religious duty to receive, with submis- 
 sive, unquestioning, faith, all its state- 
 ments of fact, as indisputable, infaDible, 
 words of historical truth, to the accu- 
 racy of which the Divine Veracity itself 
 is pledged. So strong, indeed, is the 
 force of habit, that, while the Penta- 
 teuch is regarded as wholly or chiefly 
 the work of Moses, men will still cling 
 to the notion, — or the notion will still 
 cling to them, — that it may be possible 
 in some way to reconcile its statements 
 with fact. It is only when the work is 
 resolved into its separate elements that 
 the charm is broken, — the delusion 
 passes off, — and the power ceases to 
 act, which binds men to the mere letter 
 of the Scripture as the revealed Word 
 of God. 
 
 1337. And then comes the danger — 
 the result of all this erroneous teaching, 
 which insists upon maintaining that, — 
 * the very foundations of our faith, the very 
 basis of our hopes, the very nearest and 
 dearest of our consolations, are taken from 
 us, when one line of that Sacred Volume, on 
 which we base everything, is declared to be 
 unfaithful or untrustwoi-thy.' 
 
 It is tliis, — that, when men's eyes are 
 opened to the real facts of the ease, in an 
 age like this of great scientific activity, 
 they may lose their reverence for the 
 Scriptures altogether, and cease to re- 
 gard the Bible with that true, devout, 
 intelligent, affection, — with that deep 
 sense of the blessings, ofwhiehin God's 
 Providence it has been the minister to 
 man, and that living faith in the Di- 
 vine Truths, which it has been the 
 means of maintaining and propagating 
 through the world, — which every reli- 
 gious mind will feel, and which it is the 
 desire and aim of such critical labours 
 as these to develope and foster. 
 
 1338. Nay, even in the ease of those, 
 who, having been steeped to the lips in 
 Bibliolatry of this kind from their in- 
 fancy, have gradually worked their 
 way out of it through the greater part 
 of a life, not without help in various 
 degrees from this teacher and that, — 
 even in their case there may come at 
 length a crisis, when the apologies, 
 the explanations, the transcendental 
 meanings, the looking for the clearing- 
 
CONCLUDING REMAEKS, 
 tip of some hitherto dark mysteries, 
 from which light is to fall on all other 
 disputed points,— when all these are 
 seen to he needless, mere cobwehs of 
 men's hrains, spun to bridge over a 
 chasm, which does not really exist 
 between the Scriptures and other 
 writings. And when this crisis arrives, 
 it is not surprising that there should 
 often come with it at first a danger of 
 some revulsion of feeling against that 
 which has been treated as an idol, 
 and before which so much anxious 
 thought, so much painful feeling, has 
 been offered as incense. Even before 
 the crisis, it is probable that the study 
 of that Book will have been growing 
 less and less general, and the parts 
 inost dwelt upon confined to certain 
 more favourite passages. 
 
 417 
 
 1339. It will by this time, however, 
 I trixst, be apparent to any, who will 
 thoughtfully consider the evidence 
 produced in this work, that, whatever 
 may have been the case in times past, 
 our religious duty now, — our duty to 
 obey the Truth, and to follow the re^ 
 vealed Will of our Creator, — so far from 
 requiring us to receive any longer the 
 stories, which we have been here con- 
 sidering, as true unquestionable facts 
 of history — on the contrary, requires 
 us to reject them as stick. It requires 
 us all,— instead of forcing the Scrip- 
 ture narrative, in these first chapters 
 of Genesis, to yield to us lessons, 
 which it would not naturally teach 
 us, or trying to evade the conclusions, 
 which may naturally be drawn from 
 these atid other passages, — to be 
 ready to receive, with devout faith 
 and humble adoration, that wondrous 
 Eevelation of Himself, which God is 
 manifestly making in these our days, 
 by giving us the glorious Light of 
 Modem Science,— those grand lessons 
 of Eternal Truth, which that Light 
 displays to us. „ ^ , 
 
 1340. Why should not our clergy 
 be the 'first to teach these lessons to 
 their flocks, varying the dry routme 
 of dogmas, or the> stereotyped im- 
 provements ' of Scripture texts, to 
 which the discourses of so many ot 
 them are now exclusively confined, 
 
 by bringing before them freely the 
 ennobling and strengthening, yet, at 
 the same time, sobering, humbling, 
 solemnizing views, which the "great 
 scientific discoveries of our own time 
 unfold to us ? There are, indeed, 
 many among the clergy, who are 
 themselves distinguished in scientific 
 pursuits, and who are so constituted 
 mentally, that they do not heed the 
 restraints imposed on such studies by 
 dogmatic theology, or do not feel them. 
 It is far otherwise with many others. 
 They dare not entertain some of the 
 great questions of the day, or face for 
 themselves, much less for their congre- 
 gations, some of the most interesting 
 and certain conclusions, at which scien- 
 tific men have unanimously arrived.* 
 
 1341. Brought up in that narrow 
 school of theological training, which 
 ignores altogether the plainest results 
 of Biblical criticism,— taught to re- 
 gard every, word and letter of the 
 Scripture as infallibly true and un- 
 speakably Divine, — they dare not, for 
 their own pesice of mind, diScuss with 
 any freedom such questions as that of 
 the 'Antiquity of Man,' or the pos- 
 sible existence of different races of 
 mankind, not all derived from one 
 pair of ancestors, but corresponding 
 to different centres of creation, as do the 
 animals among which they are found. 
 They shrink from examining into the 
 historical credibiHty of the accounts of 
 the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge, 
 from discussing the Scripture account 
 of the formation of woman, of her 
 temptation, of the entrance of death 
 into the world, of the sentence passed 
 on the dust-eating serpent, the child- 
 
 » Bbydone writes. Tour through Sicily and 
 Malta, p.92 : ' Becupero has made use of this, 
 as an argument to prove the great antiquity 
 ot the eruptions of this mountain (Etna). . . 
 He tells me he is exceedingly embarrassed by 
 these discoveries, in writing the history of the 
 mountain,— that Moses hangs like a dca4 
 weight upon him, and blunts all his'zeal for 
 inquiry ; for that really he had not the con- 
 science to make his momitain so young as 
 that prophet makes the world. . . . . The 
 Bishop, who is strenuously orthodox, has al- 
 ready warned him to he on his guard, and 
 not to pretend to be a better natural historian, 
 than Moses, nor to presume to urge anything 
 that may in the smaUest degree be_deemed 
 contradictory to his sacred authority. 
 
418 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 
 
 bearing woman, the labouring man, — 
 of the curse passed upon this blessed 
 Earth, blooming now as (Geology tells 
 us) it did of old, when there was no 
 man upon the Earth to till it, no one 
 to see its beauty, and to tell out the 
 Greatness and Goodness of God. 
 
 1342. Or, if anyone dares to do this, 
 he is in danger of falling at once under 
 the 'thunders of censure,' threatened 
 by Bishop Wilbeefoece in his recent 
 Chai'ge, or under the weight of his 
 dictum. Guardian, Not. 25, 1863 — 
 
 The Church requires of a man a solemn 
 declaration of his belief in that which he is to 
 teach, and that engagement must last so long 
 as he continues to exercise his office. If he 
 ceases to believe, — [e.gr. in the literal, histori- 
 ccl, truth of the account of Koah's Flood or 
 the numbers of the Exodus,] — he is bound, in 
 common honesty, to resign his office ; and, if 
 the dulness of his spirit does not allow him 
 to apprehend that necessity, the Church is 
 bound to remove him. 
 
 If the Bishop of Oxfoed means the 
 ' belief,' which he speaks of, to include 
 belief in the literal, historical, truth of 
 all Scriptural narratives, he is distinctly 
 at variance with the Court of Arches, 
 which has now expressly declared that 
 that is not the law of the Church. Dr. 
 LxiSHiNGTON said : — 
 
 To put a particular construction on a part 
 of Holy Scripture, cannot be deemed a con- 
 tradiction of the Deacon's declaration of his 
 belief in Holy Scripture. Judgment in Bishop 
 of Salisbury v. Williams. 
 
 As to the right claimed by Mr. WILSON, to 
 deny the reality of any of the facts contained 
 in the Scriptures, it is one thing to deny that 
 the narratives are contained in Holy Scrip- 
 ture, and a very different thing to main- 
 tain that such narratives are to be understood 
 in a figurative sense. Judgment in FENDAIL 
 V. Wilson. 
 
 1343. Dean HooKhas said veryjustly, 
 Manchester Church Congress, 1863, that 
 ' the principle of the Eeformation (as 
 distinguished from Medisevalism),' is — 
 the necessity of asserting the truth, the whole 
 truth, and nothing but the truth. 
 
 And he added, — 
 
 The Medisevalist did not deny the necessity 
 of maintaining the truth ; nor does the Pro- 
 testant deny that the principle of love is a 
 principle enforced in the Scriptures of the 
 New Testament. But the diiference is here, 
 — that the Mediaavalist, in his desire to enlist 
 the affections in the cause of religion, could, 
 when the assertion of the truth was likely to 
 promote discord, postpone the true to the 
 expedient ; whereas the Protestant is pre- 
 pared to sacrifice peace to the maintenance of 
 truth, or what he believes to be such. 
 
 1344. We, then, I maintain, as Minis- 
 ters of the Church,— Ministers, not Of 
 a mediaeval, but of a Eeformed Protes- 
 tant Church, — are at once both exer- 
 cising our right, and discharging our 
 duty, in declaring to our people, as 
 opportunity shall offer, 'the truth, 
 the whole truth, and nothing but the 
 truth,' on these matters, so far as wa 
 already know it. And, when all Eu- 
 rope is moving on with the advance of 
 the age, we must refuse, as the clergy 
 of a great National Institution, to be 
 held in fetters by the mere word of 
 any man, or to be forbidden to search 
 out thoroughly the truth, in respect of 
 these questions of science and criti- 
 cism, and to speak out plainly the 
 truth which we find. 
 
 1345. For instance, while drawing 
 from these first chapters of Genesis 
 such religious lessons as may be fairly 
 and naturally drawn from them (1021), 
 we may proceed to show how we here 
 possess, by the gracious gift of God's 
 overruling Providence, a precious trea- 
 sure in these most ancient writings, 
 some parts of which are, beyond all 
 doubt, as we believe, among the most 
 ancient now extant in the world. For 
 we have here preserved to us a most 
 deeply interesting and instructive re- 
 cord of those first stirrings of spiritual 
 life among the Hebrew people, which 
 prepared the way for the fuller Revela- 
 tion, in God's due time, of His Fatherly 
 Love, in the Gospel of Jestjs Christ, — 
 from which also, by the quickening in- 
 fluences of the Spirit of Grace, has 
 been developed by degrees our modern 
 Christianity, — not vrithout contribu- 
 tions from the gifts bestowed on other 
 portions of the great Human Familyj 
 as the same good Spirit has been re- 
 vealing all along the Name of their 
 Creator to the hearts of men, ' at 
 sundry times and in divers manners,' 
 by different means, in different mea- 
 sures, among the various races of man- 
 kind. 
 
 1346. And then, too, while tracing in 
 these chapters the first imperfect be- 
 ginnings among the Hebrew people of 
 cosmological, astronomical, geographi- 
 cal, ethnological science, we may say 
 i plainly that the accounts of the Crea- 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 tion, &c. there given, cannot possibly be 
 regarded as bistoricaUy true, since the 
 results of Modern Science emphatically 
 contradict them. But we may go on 
 to say also that Science itself is God's 
 precious gift, light coming fi-om the 
 father of Lights, and specially coming 
 in greater splendour in this very age in 
 which we live, and given to ns by His 
 Grace in order that, by means of it, we 
 may see more clearly than before His 
 Glory and His Goodness. 
 
 1347. Such teaching as this, which I 
 venture to quote in conclusion from a 
 small book, First Lessons in Science, 
 written by me for the use of Zulus and 
 others, though not published, is surely 
 not so very unsound and ' dangerous,' 
 that it needs to be • inhibited ' in all 
 the pulpits of the land : — 
 
 (i) * Standing on the threshold of this 
 Science (Geology), we feel almost over- 
 whelmed, at first, with the awful sense of 
 the enormous lengths of time which have 
 passed, since first the world in which we live 
 was called into being. We obtain from it 
 such an idea of immeasurable duration^ or 
 what is popularly called eternity, as we have 
 never, perhaps, realised before. We look in, 
 as it were, into a dim vaulted chamber, and 
 see arch after arch, reaching away before us, 
 till we can see no farther. We follow, 
 trembling with emotion and dread, through 
 the still, solemn, halls ; and when we have a 
 length stepped on into the gloom, far from 
 the light of day and the converse of our kind, 
 we see the interminable range of arched 
 pillarp, stretched out aa before, age after age, 
 into the Infinite Past. Such is the feeling, 
 with whica any thoughtful person must read 
 the records of the Earth's past history, written 
 upon the rocks. 
 
 (ii) ' And Man has been living for a few 
 thousand years at most upon the Earth. We 
 know this certainly, because, though we find 
 traces innumerable of other living creatures, 
 buried up in the older strata of the Earth's 
 crust, we find none whatever of Man, except 
 in those of comparatively modem date. 
 Surely, then, we cannot say that the Earth 
 was made exclusively for Man. When we 
 think of the ages full of glory and beauty and 
 life, which have passed away before Man was, 
 'and of the very small portion of the Earth's 
 surface— stm less of the Earth's thin crust— 
 which we can even see and examine, we 
 cannot presume to say that the whole huge 
 Earth was made only for Man. As well 
 might we say that the Sun was made only to 
 give him warmth by day, and the Moon and 
 the Stars to give him light by night. 
 
 (iii) * Yet, if not made only for Man, these 
 things have certainly been made, in the Great 
 Creator's scheme, with express and most gra- 
 cious reference to Man. The Sun, that, 
 hundreds of thousands of years ago, gave 
 
 419 
 
 light and heat, under which the forests grew 
 m those pi-imeval swamps, where the coalbeds 
 were formed, must have shone with some ex- 
 press r^erence to such a being as Man, who 
 should be able to make use of such stores as 
 these of hidden treasure, to draw them out of 
 the depths in which they had so long been 
 buried, to turn them to his uses, to extract 
 from them metals and medicines, to obtain 
 from them supplies of light and heat, to con- 
 trive the mighty engines, that minister so 
 vastly to the comforts of his daily life, and 
 afford the mean^ of intercourse and com- 
 munion with hia fellows. 
 
 (iv) ' Who but a creature like Man could have 
 turned to account the coal, and the lime, and 
 the slate, and the building-stones of various 
 kinds,— the iron, copper, tin, and lead, and a 
 multitude of other substances, mineral and 
 vegetable, which the care of the Creator has 
 provided ? How plainly does the simple fact, 
 that these things are, and that Man a]one is 
 capable of using them, prove to the reasoning 
 mind that, whatever may be the case hereafter, 
 whatever may become of the Earth, whatever 
 creatures may be placed upon it in the ages 
 yet to come, yet Man was intended from the 
 first to inhabit this world in his own ap- 
 pointed time, and all the ages that have past, 
 whatever else they have done, have done this 
 also, to fit the Earth to be the home for a 
 time, and the working-place, of Man ! 
 
 (v) 'Ah, yes! Man's workiug-place—a place, 
 where we must work out that which accords 
 with the spiritual nature given to us,— a work 
 unto bfe, or a work unto death. We are sure 
 that, in the sight of Him who is a Spirit, 
 spiritual beings, such as we are, must have a 
 value very different from that of creatures 
 who have merely soul and body, who have 
 merely bodily life and those lower instincts, 
 which distinguish the brute beast .from the' 
 plant. They cannot know the right from the 
 wrong, the good from the evil. We have the 
 Law of God written within our hearts by the 
 finger of our Maker. We have the gracious 
 teachings of His Spirit, the whisperings of 
 His Love, the sense of His Di^tpleasure. We 
 have within us the faint reflections of His 
 glorious excellences. We know His perfect 
 Truth, and Purity, and Goodness, by that 
 very power which He has given us, to take 
 delight in Truth, and Purity, and Goodness, 
 — ay, to love and honour and glorify it in our 
 very heart of hearts, even when we are giving 
 way to some vile temptation, and consent to 
 do what we know to be evil. And there ia 
 that within us which tells us, as plainly as 
 the Bible tells us, that ' the wages of sin is 
 death,' that * he who soweth to the flesh shall 
 of the flesh reap corruption,' And there is 
 something too which tells us that to do the 
 Will of God is life, such life as spirits need 
 and long for, — the life Eternal, which comes 
 from knowing Him more truly, from whom 
 all Light and Life are flowiug. 
 
 (vi) ' For, even if we had not the Bible to 
 teach us, — wherein we find the utterances of 
 men's liearts in other days, breathed into by 
 the Spirit of God, and answering to that which 
 we feel within ourselves, breathed by the One 
 and selfsame Spirit — ^yet the contemplation of 
 the works of God could show us an Order, also. 
 
420 
 
 in His uiii\;erse— a steady, constant sequence 
 of cause and effect — the permanence of fixed 
 laws, from the very first age of the world's 
 existence until now. Those, who first begin 
 to study the formation of the Earth's crust, 
 may be led, as many have been, to imagine, 
 that only by wild, irregular, convulsive ef- 
 forts, unlike any which we now see in nature, 
 the rocks were made, and the mountains 
 raised, and the valleys sunk. They may fancy 
 that such immense results as these could only 
 have been brought about by a succession of 
 violent earthquakes, by mighty volcanic ac- 
 tion, such as might speak, indeed, of Power 
 and Wisdom, of a Will working all things to 
 an end, but would leave upon the mind a 
 painful bewildering sense of disorder, confu- 
 sion, insecurity. 
 
 (vii)'But True Science teaches us otherwise. 
 It tells us that there is, indeed, a Living Buler 
 of the Universe, who has made His actual 
 presence felt, and shown forth His Might and 
 "Wisdom, in calling into existence, from time 
 to time, whether by some law of development 
 or otherwise, new races of living creatures, 
 differing in size, and form, and character, in 
 wonderful number and variety, to fill up their 
 part in His stupendous whole. But it tells us 
 also that all things are under Law. It tells us 
 that even the volcano .and the earthquake, the 
 hmricane and thunderstorm, are all under 
 Law to God, are all governed by laws such as 
 even we can turn to account for a thousand 
 daily uses, when we bind the giant Steam to 
 do our work by land and by sea, and bid the 
 Lightning carry our messages. It teaches us 
 also that far greater results than these, which 
 have been wrought by the hidden action of 
 fire and flood, have been produced by slow, 
 long-continued, action of (rod's laws, cease- 
 lessly working with unwavering, unfiling 
 certainty. 
 
 (viii) * In one word, it makes us sure that 
 all things are ruled by Law and Order, under 
 the government of God, in the natural world 
 and this tells us that the same also is true in 
 the moral world. We are made to feel that, 
 if we break God's Order, or lead others to 
 break it, by acts of sin and fieshly self-indul- 
 gence, we shall surely reap the fruit of our 
 doings, — that the results of our actions, 
 whether good or evil, are sure and certain, 
 each answering to its kind, whether completed 
 by some sudden stroke at once, or long de- 
 layed, to be brought about after a greater 
 lapse of time, by the same Eternal Laws. 
 
 * Some men's sins are open beforehandj 
 leading the way to judgment ; and others 
 they follow after. Likewise also the good 
 deeds of some are manifest beforehand ; and 
 they which are otherwise cannot be hid.' 
 
 (ix) * This thought makes us feel safe and 
 happy under the government of God. It 
 would be a miserable world to live in, if we 
 could be left alone in sin,— if sin did not 
 surely find us out with judgment, — if we were 
 not sure of this, that things do not go on at 
 random, by caprice and arbitrary choice, 
 nnder God's government, but by fixed, un- 
 erring, immutable Laws, the Laws of Bight- 
 eouEness and Truth, a(bninistered, not by 
 mere Sovereign Authority, but by Fatherly 
 LoTe. 
 
 CONCLUDING EEMARKg. 
 
 (x) * And the worlds around us— are these 
 inhabited ? We know not yet ; nor, perhaps, 
 will it ever be given to man to know this cer- 
 tainly in this life. And one wise man of our 
 own days has taught us to remember this, that 
 we do not know, -that, as far as we do know, 
 the Moon and other Planets are probably not 
 inhabited, — that the Moon, at all events, pre- 
 sents no conditions of life, analogous to those 
 needed for animal and vegetable life on Earth, 
 — that this Earth, therefore, may be the only 
 body of our system, may be the only body of the 
 Universe, wherein is placed a creature gifted 
 with reason and conscience, such as Man. We 
 dare not say that this is so : nor is it easy to 
 suppose that all the hosts of Stars were made 
 to give us light by night, when a single Moon 
 would give more light than all the Stars, or 
 only to gladden our eyes with their glory and 
 beauty, when few can ever see the visible mul* 
 titudes of the Starry Heavens, or know the 
 awful wonders which they even now reveal to 
 us, while none can count the number of Suns 
 which make up the star-dust of a single 
 nebula. 
 
 (xi) * But this we know, that for millions 
 of years the Earth was formed, before Man 
 was placed upon it. Hosts upon hosts of 
 living creatures were brought into being, and 
 died, and passed away : their very kinds ap- 
 pear no more on Earth. But there was no 
 human eye to note their forms, or t^e ac- 
 count of their doings. The forest-tree tossed 
 its branches; the meadow-flowers bloomed; 
 bright colours beamed on every side. The 
 Lord God * gave rain from heaven and fruitful 
 seasons * for the multitudes of living thin^ 
 who then looked up to Him for food and 
 blessing, as they do now. Sweet scents were 
 spread abroad on every side ; sweet sounds 
 were heard. And God was there, to see the 
 works which He had made, and * behold I 
 they were very good.' 
 
 (xii) * Yet one living soul— one child of 
 Man, made in God's image — is worth more in 
 the eyes of a Spiritual Being, than all the 
 Suns, however grand and glorious, — than all 
 mere systems of unreasoning, unconscious 
 matter. Our happy privilege as Christians is 
 to know and believe this— to be able to look 
 up and say ' our Father,' to Him who made 
 this mighty whole, taking with us the words, 
 which Christ Himself has taught us, and be- 
 lieving that He, who has given us the powers 
 which we have, for seeing and feeling the 
 Greatness and Goodness of His works, has 
 meant us thus to use them, and will bless ua 
 of a truth, while we devoutly ' ponder these 
 things,' and seek to * understand the loving- 
 kindness of the Lord.' Meanwhile, from each 
 inmost recess of the great Temple of the 
 Universe, into which, while here on Earth, 
 we are permitted to gaze, we may hear, if our 
 hearts are pure and humble, the same solemn 
 utterance : — 
 
 * Stand in awe aisT) sin not ; 
 ' Commune with Toxm own heart, and 
 
 IN TOUR CHAMBER, AND BE STIliL. 
 
 * Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, 
 ' And put tour trust' in the Lord-' 
 
421 
 
 THE 
 
 COMPLETE ELOHISTIC NAEEATIVE IN GENESIS. 
 
 N^.B.~The sign li^ denotes that an interpolated passage has leen removed. 
 
 1. * In the beginning Elohim created the 
 Heaven and the Earth. " And the Earth 
 was desolation and emptiness, and darkness 
 was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit 
 of Elohim hovering upon the face of the 
 waters. 
 
 ■ And Elohim said, *Let there be light,' 
 and there was light. * And Elohim saw the 
 light that it was good ; and Elohim divided 
 between the light and the darkness. * And 
 Elohim called the light * Day,' and the dark- 
 ness He called * Night.' And it was evening, 
 and it was morning, — one dav. 
 
 " And Elohim said, * Let there be an ex- 
 pai^ in the midst of the waters, and let it be 
 divided between waters and waters.* ' And 
 Elohim made the expanse, and divided be- 
 tween the waters which were beneath the ex- 
 panse and the waters which were above the 
 expanse ; and it was so. ' And Elohim called 
 the expanse * Heaven.' And it was evening, 
 and it was morning,— a second day. 
 
 • And Elohim s«id, ' Let the waters be- 
 neath the Heaven be gathered into one place, 
 and let the dry-land appear ' ; and it was so. 
 *" And Elohim called the dry-land 'Earth,' 
 and the gathering of waters called He ' Seas ' ; 
 and Elohim saw that it was good. 
 
 ** And Elohim s^d, * Let the earth vege- 
 tate vegetation, the herb feeding seed, the 
 fruit-tree making fruit, after its kind, whose 
 seed is in it, upon the Earth ' ; and it was so. 
 *' And the Earth brought forth vegetation, 
 the herb seeding seed after its Mnd, and the 
 tree making fruit, whose seed is in it, after its 
 kind; and Elohim saw that it was good. 
 " And it was evening, and it was morning, — 
 a third day. 
 
 ** And Elohim said, ' Let there be lumi- 
 naries in the expanse of the Heaven, to divide 
 between the day and the night, and let them 
 be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and 
 years ; " and let them be for luminaries in 
 the expanse of the Heaven, to give light upon 
 the Earth' : and it was so. " And Elohim 
 made the two great luminaries, — the greater 
 luminary for the rule of the day, and the lesser 
 luminary for the rule of the night,— and the 
 stars. " And Elohim (gave) set them in the 
 expanse of the Heaven, to give light upon the 
 Earth, " and to rule over the day and over 
 
 the night, and to divide between the light and 
 the darkness : and ELomM saw that it was 
 good. " And it was evening, and it was 
 morning,— a fourth day. 
 
 "" And Elohim said, ' Let the waters swarm 
 with swarming things of living soul, and let 
 fowl fly over the Earth upon the face of the 
 expanse of the Heaven.' "* And Elohim 
 created the great monsters, and every living 
 soul that creepeth, which the waters swarmed 
 after their kind, and every fowl of vring after 
 its kind : and Elohim saw that it was good. 
 =* And Elohim blessed them, saying, ' Fruc- 
 tify and multiply, and fill the waters in the 
 Seas, and let the fowl abound in the Earth.' 
 " And it was evening, and it was morning, — 
 a fifth day. 
 
 ^ And Elohim said, * Let the Earth bring 
 forth living soul after its kind, cattle, and 
 creeping-thing, and animal of the Earth after 
 its kind ' ; and it was so. "* And Elohim 
 made the animal of the Earth after its kind, 
 and the cattle after its kind, and every creep- 
 ing-thing of the ground after its kind : and 
 Elohim saw that it was good. 
 
 =" And Elohim said, ' Let us make man in 
 our image, after our likeness ; and let them 
 have-dominion over the fish of the Sea, and 
 over the fowl of the Heaven, and over the 
 cattle, and over every animal of the Earth, 
 and over every creeping-thing that creepeth 
 upon the Earth,' *' And El»5HIM created man 
 in His image ; in the image of Elohim created 
 He him ; male and female created He them. 
 ^^ And Elohim blessed them, and Elohim 
 said to them, ' Fructify, and multiply, and fill 
 the Earth, and subdue it ; and have-dominion 
 over the fish of the Sea, and over the fowl of 
 the Heaven, and over every animal thatcreep- 
 eth upon the Earth.' "" And Elohim said, 
 * Behold I I give to you every herb seeding 
 seed, which is on the face of all the Earth, 
 and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree 
 seeding seed ; to you it shall be for food ; 
 ^° and to every animal of the Earth, and to 
 every fowl of the Heaven, and to everything 
 creeping upon the Earth, in which is a living 
 soul, [I give] every green herb for food ' ; aad it 
 was so. '^ And Elohim saw all that He had 
 made, and behold ! it was very good. Anditwas 
 evening, and it was morning,— the sixth day. 
 
422 
 
 APPK'ca)IX. 
 
 2. * And the Heaven and the Earth were 
 finished, and all their host. ^ And Elohui 
 fiTiished on the seventh day His worlc which 
 He had made, and rested on the seventh day 
 from all His work which He had made. 
 ' And Elohim blessed the seventh day, and 
 hallowed it ; for on it He rested from all His 
 work, which ELomit created and made.:<c 
 
 5. ^ This is the book of the generations of 
 Adam, in the day of Elohim's creating Adam; 
 in the likeness of Elohtm made He him. 
 ^ Male and female He created them, and 
 blessed them, and called their name Adam in 
 the day of their creation. 
 
 ' And Adam lived a hundred and thirty 
 years, and begat, in his likeness, according to 
 his image ; and he called his name Seth. 
 * And the days of Adam, after his begetting 
 Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat 
 sons and daughters. ' And all the days of 
 Adam which he lived were nine hundred and 
 thiiiiy years, and he died. 
 
 " And Seth lived an hundred and five years, 
 and begat Enos. ' And Seth lived, after his 
 begetting Enos, eight hundred and seven years, 
 and he begat sons and daughters. * And all 
 the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve 
 years, and he died. 
 
 ° And Enos lived ninety years, and begat 
 Kenan. " And Enos lived, after his beget- 
 ting Kenan, eight hundred and fifteen years, 
 and he begat sons and daughters. " And all 
 the days of Enos were nine hundred and five 
 years, and he died. 
 
 " And Kenan lived seventy years, and be- 
 gat Mahalaleel. '^ And Kenan lived, after 
 his begetting Mahalaleel, eight hundred and 
 forty years, and he begat sons and daughters. 
 ** And all the days of Kenan were nine him- 
 dred arid ten yeai-s, and he died. 
 
 " And Mahalaleel lived sixty-and-five years, 
 and begat Jared. '■" And Mahalaleel lived, 
 after his begetting Jared, eight hundred and 
 thirty years, and he begat sons and daughters. 
 " And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight 
 hundred and ninety-five years, and he died. 
 " And Jared lived an hundred and sixty-two 
 years, and begat Enoch. '*• And Jared lived. 
 after his begetting Enoch, eighthundred year?. 
 and he begat sons and daughters. "" And all 
 the days of Jared werenine hundred and sixty- 
 two years, and he died. 
 
 ^^ And Enochjivedsixty-and-five years, and 
 begat Methuselah. "- And Enoch walked with 
 ELOHIM*, after his begetting Methuselah, 
 tliree hundred years, and he begat sons and 
 daughters. "^ And all the days of Enoch were 
 three hundred and sixty-five years. °* And 
 En.och walked with ELOHIM, and he was not, 
 for Eloetem took him. 
 
 °' And Methuselah lived an hundred and 
 eighty-seven years, and begat Lamech. ^** And 
 Methuselah lived, after his begetting Lamech, 
 seven hundred and eighty-two years, and he 
 begat sons and dailghters. ^' And all the days 
 of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty- 
 nine years, and he died. 
 
 ^^ And Lamech lived an himdred and eighty- 
 two years, and begat tNoah].-^- ^^ And 
 
 * "We shall print the name thus, in large 
 <;apitals, whenever it xiccurs in the origiual 
 with the artisle. 
 
 Lamech lived, after his begetting Noah, five 
 hundred and ninety-five years, and he begat 
 sons and daughters. " And all the days of 
 Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven 
 years, and be died. 
 
 ^'^ And Noah was a son of five hundred 
 years, and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and 
 Japheth.;<c 
 G, " These are the generations of Noah. 
 Noah was a man just and perfect in hia 
 generations: Noah walked with ELOHTM. 
 " And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, 
 and Japheth. " And the earth was coiTuptad 
 before the face of ELOHIM, and the earth 
 was filled with violence. " And Elohim 
 saw the earth, and behold ! it was corrupted ; 
 for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the 
 earth. 
 
 '" And Elohiji said to Noah, * The end of 
 all flesh has come before my face ; for the 
 earth is full of violence from before them ; 
 and behold 1 I will destroy them with the 
 earth. " Make to thee an Ark of cypress- 
 wood ; in cells shalt thou make the Ark ; and 
 shaltpitch it within and without with pitch. ?(: 
 " And I, behold I will bring the Flood of waters 
 upon the earth , to (corrupt) destroy all flesh in' 
 which is a spirit of lifefrom under the heaven; 
 all which is in the earth shall die. '" But I 
 establish my covenant with thee ; and thou 
 shalt go into the Ark, thou, and thy sons, 
 and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. 
 ^^ Andoutof everylivingthingoutof all flesh, 
 two out of all shalt thou bring into the Ark, 
 to keep-alive with thee ; male and female 
 shall they be. ^^ Out of the fowl after its 
 kind, and out of the cattle after its kind, out 
 of every creeping- thing of the ground after 
 its kind, two out of all shall come unto thee, 
 to keep-alive. "'■ And thou, take to thee out 
 of all food which is eaten, and thou shalt 
 gather it unto thee, and it shall be to thee and 
 to them for food.' 
 
 "^ And Noah did according to all which 
 Elohui commanded him, — so did he.* 
 
 7. * And Noah was a son of six hundred 
 years, when the Flood of waters was upon 
 the eartji. ' And Noah went, and his sons, 
 and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, 
 into the Ark, from the face of the waters 
 of the Flood. * Out of the clean cattle and 
 out of the cattle which are not clean, and out 
 of the fowl and all that creopeth upon the 
 ground, " two and two, they came unto Noah 
 into the Ark, male and female, as Elohim 
 commanded Noah.* 
 
 " In the six-hundredth year of Noah's life, 
 in the second month, in the seventeenth day 
 of the month, on this day were broken up aU 
 the fountains of the great deep, and the win- 
 dows of the heaven were opened.* " On 
 this very same day, (lit. in the bone of this 
 day,) went Noah, and Shera. and Ham, and 
 Japheth, Noah's sons, and Noah's Avife, and 
 his sons' three wives with them, into the 
 Ark ; '* they, and every animal after its 
 kind, and all the cattle after its kind, and 
 every creeping-thing that creepeth upon the 
 earth after its kind, and all the fowl after its 
 kind, every bird of every wing. " And they 
 came unto Noah into the Ark, two and two, 
 out of all flesh, in which is a spirit of life. 
 "* And those coming, male and female out 
 
THE COMPLETE ELOHISTIC NARRATIVE IN GENESIS. 423 
 
 of all flesh they came as Elohim commanded 
 him.sf: 
 
 '^a And the waters were mighty, and mul- 
 tiplied greatly upon the earth, sf: '"band all 
 the high mountains that were under all the 
 heaven, weve covered. ""■ And all flesh died, 
 that creepeth upon the earth, among fowl, 
 and among cattle, and among animals, and 
 among all the swarming-things that swarm 
 upon the earth, and all man. ''=' All in 
 ■whose nostrils was the breath of a spirit of 
 life» out of all which was lu the dry land, 
 died.:^c "^b ^nd only Noah was left, and 
 what was with him in the Ark. 
 
 ^* And the waters were mighty upon the 
 earth a hundred and fifty days.:^: 
 
 8. ' And Elohim remembered Noah, and 
 every animal, and all the cattle, that was 
 with him in the Ark ; and Elohdi caused-to- 
 pass a wind upon the earth, and the waters 
 subsided. -'^ And the fou^Jiains of the deep 
 were stopped and the windows of the heaven ; 
 :{: ^b and the waters decreased at the end of 
 a hundred and fifty days,^ **> in the seventh 
 month, in the seventeenth day of the month, 
 jf: ^ A-nd the waters were decreasing con- 
 tinually until the tenth month : in the tenth 
 (month), in the first of the month, the tops of 
 the mountains were seen.:|t 
 
 "a And it came-to-pass in the six hundred 
 and first year, in the first (month), in the 
 first of the month, the waters were dried up 
 from ofE the earth : :^ ^* and in the second 
 month, in the seventeenth day of the month, 
 the earth was dry. 
 
 ^^ And Elohim spake unto Noah, saying, 
 '^ ' Go out from the Ark, thou, and thy wife, 
 and thy snns, and thy sons' wives with thee. 
 ^^ Every animal that is with thee out of all 
 fiesh, among fowl, and among cattle, and 
 among every creeping-thing that creepeth 
 upon the earth, bring forth with thee ; and 
 let them swarm in the earth, and fructify, 
 and multiply, upon the earth.' *" And Noah 
 went out, and his sons, and his wife, and his 
 sons' wives with him. " Every animal, every 
 creeping-thing, and every fowl, everything 
 creeping upon the earth,— after their families, 
 they went out from the Ark.* 
 
 9, * And Elohim blessed Noah and his 
 sons, and said to them, ' Fructify, and multi- 
 ply, and fill the earth. = And the fear of 
 you and the terror of you shall be upon every 
 animal of the earth, and upon every fowl of 
 the heaven, among all that creepeth the 
 ground, and among all the fishes of the sea ; 
 into your hand they are given. ^ Every 
 creeping-thing that livefch, to you it shall be 
 for food : as the green herb, I give to you all. 
 "* Only flesh with its soul, its blood, ye shall 
 not eab. ^ And surely your blood of your 
 souls will I require : from the hand of every 
 animal will I require it, and from the hand 
 of man ; from the hand of a man's brother 
 will X require the soul of man, « Whoso 
 Bheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood 
 be shed ■ for in the image of Elohim made 
 He man. ' And you, fructify and multiply, 
 swarm in the earth, and multiply in it,' 
 
 8 ^nd Elohim said unto Noah, and nnto 
 his sons with him, saying : ' 'And I, behold I 
 I will establish my covenant with you, and 
 With your seed after you, '" and with every 
 
 living soul which is with you, among fowl, 
 and among cattle, and among all animals of 
 the earth with you, from all going out of the 
 Ark to every animal of the earth. " And I 
 establish my covenant with you, ar.d all flesh 
 shall not be again cut ofE through the waters 
 of the Flood, and there shall not be again a 
 Flood to (corrupt) destroy the earth.' 
 
 " And Elohim said, ' This is the sign of the 
 covenant which I will (give) make between 
 me and you, and every living soul that is with 
 you for perpetual generations. " My bow do 
 I (give) set in the cloud, and it shall he for a 
 sign of a covenant between me and the earth. 
 ^^ And it shall be, at my bringing a cloud 
 upon the earth, that the bow shall be seen 
 in the cloud. " And I will remember my 
 covenant which is between me and you and 
 every living soul among all flesh ; and there 
 shall not be again the waters for a Flood to 
 (corrupt) destroy all flesh. '" And the bow 
 shall be in the cloud ; and I will see it, for a 
 remembrance of the perpetual covenant be- 
 tween Elohim and every living soul among 
 all flesh that is upon the earth.' 
 
 " And Elohim said unto Noah, ' This is 
 the sign of the covenant, which I establish 
 between me and all flesh that is upon the 
 earth.' sf: 
 
 ^^ And Noah lived after the Flood three 
 hundred and fifty years. "^ And all the days 
 of Noah were nine hundred and fifty yeai"5, 
 and he died.i|c 
 H. '° These are the generations of Shem. 
 Shetti was a son of a hundred years, and 
 begat Arphaxad two years after the Flood. 
 ^- And Shem lived, after his begetting Ar- 
 phaxad, five hundred years, and begat sons 
 and daughters. 
 
 " And Arphaxad lived five-and-thirty 
 years, and begat Salah. " And Arphaxad 
 lived, after his begetting Salah, four hundred 
 and three years, and begat sons and daughters. 
 '* And fcralah lived thirty years, and begat 
 (Heher) Eber. " And Salah lived, after his 
 begetting Eber, four hundred and three years, 
 and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 " And Eber lived four-and-thirty years 
 and begat Peleg. *' And Eber lived, after 
 his begetting Peleg, four hundred and thirty 
 years, and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 " And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat 
 Reu. ''' And Peleg lived, after his begetting 
 Eeu, two hundred and nine years, and begat 
 sons and daughters. 
 
 2<* And Reu lived two-and-thirty years, and 
 begat Serug. "' And Reu lived, after his be- 
 getting Serug, two hundred and seven years, 
 and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 " And Serug lived thirty years, and begat 
 Nahor. ^^ And Serug lived, after his beget- 
 ting Nahor, two hundred years, and begat 
 sons and daughters, 
 
 ^ And Nahor lived nine-and-twenty years, 
 and begat Terah. " And Nahor lived, after 
 his begetting Terah, a hundred and nineteen 
 years, and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 " And Terah lived seventy years, and begat 
 
 Abram, Nahor, and Haran. _ ^ ^r, t. 
 
 " And these are the generations of lerah. 
 
 Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Earan ; 
 
 and Haran begat Lot.* " And Terah took 
 
 Abram his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, hoa 
 
 ff3 
 
424 
 
 APPEKDIX. 
 
 son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the 
 wife of Abram his son, and they went out 
 with them together from Ur of the Chaldees 
 to go to the land of Canaan ; and they went 
 as far as Charran, and dwelt there. ^' And 
 the days of Terah were two hundred and five 
 yeara, and Terah died in Charran. :^e 
 
 12. *•* And Abram waa a son of seventy- 
 five years at his going out from Charran. 
 * And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot 
 his brother's son, and all their gain which 
 they had gotten, and the souls which they 
 had made in Charran, and they went out to 
 go to the land of Canaan, and they came to 
 the land of Canaan. j*; 13. " And the land 
 did not bear them to dwell together, for their 
 gain was much, and they were not able to 
 dwell together. ;f: " Abram dwelt in the land 
 of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the 
 cii'cnit.:^ 
 
 16. ^ And Sarai, Abram's wife, bare not to 
 him, and she had a maidservant, an Egyp- 
 tian, and her name was Hagar.* ^ And 
 Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyp- 
 tian, her maidservant, at the end of ten 
 years of Abram's dwelling in the land of 
 Canaan, and gave her to ^.bram her husband 
 to him for wife.* " And Hagar bare to 
 Abram a son, and Abram called the name of 
 his son, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. " And 
 Abram was a son of eighty-and-six years at 
 Hagar's bearing Ishmael to Abram. * 
 
 17. * And Abram was a son of ninety- 
 and-nine years, and [EW)giM] appeared unto 
 Abram and said unto him, 'I am El-Sh.U)- 
 DAl : walk before me, and be perfect. ^ And 
 I will (give) set my covenant between me 
 find thee, and I will very greatly multiply 
 
 ■ thee.' 
 
 ^ And Abram fell upon his face, and Elo- 
 HiM spake with him, saying, * ' I — behold I 
 my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be 
 a father of a multitude of nations. * And 
 thy name shall not be called any longer 
 Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham ; 
 for I (give) set thee a father of a multitude 
 of nations. " And I will very greatly fructify 
 thee, and will (give) set thee for nations ; and 
 kings shall go-forth out of thee. ' And I 
 will establish my covenant between me, and 
 thee, and thy seed after thee in their genera- 
 tions for a perpetual covenant, to be to thee 
 Elohim, and to thy seed after thee. " And I 
 will give to thee and to thy seed after thee the 
 land of thy sojoumings, the whole land of 
 Canaan, for a perpetual possession, and I will 
 be to them Elohim.' 
 
 "And Elohim said unto Abram, 'And 
 thou — ^my covenant thou shalt keep, thou and 
 thy seed after thee in their generations. 
 " This is my covenant, which they shall 
 keep between me and you and thy seed after 
 thee,— to be circumcised among you every 
 male. " And ye shall circumcise the flesh 
 of your foreskin, and it shall be for a sign of 
 a covenant between me and you. " And a 
 son of nine days shall be circumcised among 
 you, every male in your generations, — child 
 of the house, and purchase of silver from any 
 eon of a stranger, which is not out of thy 
 seed. ^^ Circumcised shall he surely be, child 
 of thy house and purchase of thy silver ; and 
 my covenant shall be in your flesh for a per- 
 
 petual covenant. " And an uncircumclsed 
 
 male, whose flesh of his foreskin is not cir- 
 cumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his 
 people ; he hath broken my covenant.' 
 
 " And Elohim said unto Abraham, * Sarai 
 thy wife— thou shalt not call her name Sarai, 
 for Sarah is her name. '" And I will bless 
 her, and also I will give to thee out of her a 
 son, and I wUl bless her, and she shall be 
 for nations; kings of people shall be out of 
 her/ 
 
 " And Abraham fell upon his face and 
 laughed, and said in his heart, * To a son of a 
 hundred years shall there be bom, and shall 
 Sarah, a daughter of ninety years, bear?' 
 " And Abraham said unto Elohim, * "Would 
 that Ishmael may live before thee ! ' " And 
 Elohim said, * Truly Sarah thy wife shall 
 bear to thee a son, and thou shalt call his 
 name Isaac ; and I will establish my cove- 
 nant with him for a perpetual covenant to 
 his seed aiter him. "" And as to Ishmael I 
 have heard thee. Behold! I have blessed 
 him, and I have fructified him, and multiplied 
 him, very greatly ; twelve princes shall he 
 beget, and I have (given) set him ffir a great 
 nation. "^ And my covenant will I establish 
 with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to thee at 
 this season in the following year.' " And 
 Elohim finished to speak with him, and Elo- 
 him went-up from Abraham. 
 
 =^ And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and 
 all the children of his house, and all the pur- 
 chase of his silver, every male among the men 
 of Abraham's house ; and he circumcised the 
 flesh of their foreskin on the very same day, 
 according as Elohim spake with him. "* And 
 Abraham was a son of ninety- and-nine years 
 at his being circumcised in the fiesh of his 
 foreskin. ''* And Ishmael his son was a son 
 of thirteen years at his being circumcised in 
 the flesh of his foreskin. '"' On that very 
 same day was Abraham circumcised, and Ish- 
 mael his son. " And all the men of his house, 
 child of the house, and purchase of silver, or 
 fi-ora a son of a stranger, were circumcised 
 with him.* 
 
 19. "' And it came to pass, at Elohim's 
 destroying the cities of the circuit, then 
 Elohim remembered Abraham; and He put 
 forth Lot from the midst of the overthrow, 
 at his overthrowing the cities in which Lob 
 dwelt.* 
 
 21. " And Sarah conceived and bare to 
 Abraham a son to his old-age, according to 
 the season which Elohui had spoken of with 
 him. ^ And Abraham called the name of his 
 son that was bom to him, whom Sarah bare 
 to him, Isaac. * And Abraham circumcised 
 Isaac his son, a son of eight days, as Elohim 
 had commanded him. ' And Abraham was a 
 son of a hundred years at Isaac his sou's being 
 born to him.* 
 
 23. ' And the life of Sarah waa ahundied 
 and twenty and seven years, — the years of the 
 life of Sarah. ° And Sarah died in Kirjath 
 Arba in the land of Canaan; and Abraham 
 came to mourn over Sarah and to weep her. 
 ^ And Abiaham came from before his dead, 
 and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying, 
 * ' A sojourner and a dweller am I with you : 
 give to me a possession of a burial-place with 
 you, and I wiU. bury my dead from before me.* 
 
THE COMPLETE ELOHISTIC NAREATIVE IN GENESIS. 425 
 
 ««t?!i .^^^^? °^ ^^^^ answered Abraham, 
 ^^S^^\ ^.^°^*^ *^a*) 'P^^y bear us, m^ 
 i^-^L f P"°^ °^ Elohim art thou in the 
 midst of iM : in the choice of our burial-places 
 bury thy dead ; no man of ua will hold-back 
 J^l^^ng-place from fchee, from burying thy 
 
 . ! -i^d Abraham arose, and bowed-himBelf 
 before the people of the land, to the sons of 
 .T* ■: ■ ^^"^ b® ^P^^e "with them, saying, 
 A aK^ y°^ ^^°^J '^^ *°' ^^ *o bury my 
 dead from before me, hear jne, and (reach) 
 entreat for me to Ephron, the son of Zohar : 
 
 and he shall give to me the cave of Mach- 
 pelah, which is his, which is the end of his 
 field : for full silver shall he give it to me in 
 the midst of you for a possession of a burial- 
 place. " And Ephron was dwelling in the 
 midst of the sons of Heth. And Ephron the 
 Hittite answered Abraham in the ears of the 
 sons of Heth, before all entering at the gate 
 of his city, saying, " 'No, my lord I hear 
 me : the field I give to thee, and the cave 
 which is iu it, to thee I give it : before the 
 eyes of the sons of my people I give it to thee : 
 bury thy dead.* 
 
 ** And Abraham bowed-himself before the 
 people of the land. " And he spake to 
 Ephron in the ears of the people of the land, 
 saying, *Only if thou [art for giving it], 
 (would that) pray hear me : I give the silver 
 of the field : take it from me : and I will 
 bury my dead there. " And Ephron answered 
 Abraham, saying, *^ • (Would that) Pray, my 
 lord, hear me : the land is four hundred 
 shekels of silvM' : between me Mid thee what 
 is that ? so bury thy dead/ 
 
 *« And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron ; 
 and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver 
 which he spake in the ears of the sons of 
 Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current 
 with the trader. " And the field of Ephi'on, 
 which was in Machpelah, which was before 
 Mamre, the field, and the cave which was in 
 it, and all the trees which were in the field, 
 which were in all its border round-about, 
 (arose) stood " to Abraham for a purchase 
 before the eyes of the sons of Heth, among all 
 entering at the gate of his city. 
 
 ^' And afterwards Abraham buried Sarah 
 his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah, 
 eastward of Mamre* in th6 land of Canaan. 
 '^ And the field, and the cave which was in 
 it, (arose) stood to Abraham for a possession 
 of a bnrying-place from the sons of Heth.3fc 
 
 25. ' And these are the days of the years 
 of the life of Abraham, which he lived, a 
 liundred and seventy and five years. " And 
 Abraham expired, and died in good gray-hairs, 
 old and full (of years), and was gathered unto 
 his people. ' And Isaac and Ishmael, his 
 sons, buried him in the cave of Machpelah, 
 in the field of Ephron, the son of Zohar the 
 Hittite, which was eastward of Mamre,— 
 " the field which Abraham bought from the 
 sons of Heth : there was buried Abraham and 
 Sarah his wife. * - ^ ^ , 
 
 " And these are the generationsof Ishmael, 
 the son of Abraham, whom Hagar the Egyp- 
 tian, Sarah's maid, bare to Abraliam. 
 
 " And these are the names of the sons of 
 Ishmael, by their names, according to their 
 generations : the first-bom of Ishmael, N&- 
 
 baioth, and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mib- 
 sam, '* and Mishma, and Dumah. and Maspa, 
 " Hadar, and Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and 
 Kedemah. " These are the sons of Ishmael, 
 and these are their names, by their villages 
 and by their kraals,— twelve princes after 
 their folks. 
 
 " And these are the years of the life of 
 Ishmael, a hundred and thirty and seven 
 years; and he expired and died, and was 
 gathered to his people. 3(c 
 
 " And these are the generations of Isaac, 
 the son of Abraham. 
 
 Abraham begat Isaac. ="• And Isaac was a 
 son of forty years, at his taking Rebekah, the 
 daughter of Bethuel the Syrian, out of Fadan- 
 Aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian, to him- 
 self for wife. "^ And Rebekah his wife con- 
 ceived ;* '^andherdayswerefulfilledtobear, 
 and behold, twins in her womb I '"' And the 
 first came-otit red iadmoni, with play on 
 * Edom'], all of him, as a mantle of hair, 
 Isehar, with play on sehir, * Seir,' and, per- 
 haps, also on hesav, ' Esau,'] and they called 
 his name Esau. "^ And afterwards came-out 
 his brother, and his hand grasping upon the 
 heel (hdkev) of Esau ; and (he) one called his 
 name (Yakov) Jacob : and Isaac was a son of 
 sixty years at her bearing them.jje: 
 
 26. ** And Esau was a son of forty years, 
 and he took as wife Judith, the daughter 
 of Been the Hittite, and Basmath, the 
 daughter of Blon the Hittite. '^ And they 
 were a bittemesB of spirit to Isaac and to 
 Rebekah. 3)e 
 
 28. '■ And Isaac called unto Jacob, and 
 blessed him, and charged him, and said to him, 
 *Thou Shalt not take a wife out of the 
 daughters of Canaan. ' Arise, go to Padan- 
 Aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother's 
 father ; and take to thee from thence a wife 
 out of the daughters of Laban thy mother's 
 brother. ' And El-Shaddai bless thee, and 
 fructify thee, and multiply thee, that thou be 
 for a company of peoples, * and give thee 
 the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy 
 seed with thee, to thy inheriting the land of 
 thy sojournings, which Elohim gave to Abra- 
 ham I ' "^ And Isaac put-forth Jacob, and he 
 went to Fadan-Aram, unto Laban, the son of 
 Bethuel the Aramtean, the brother of Rebekah, 
 the mother of Jacob and Esau. 
 
 ° And Esau saw that Isaac had blessed 
 Jacob, and had sent-him-away to Fadan- 
 Aram, to take to him Sxom thence a wife,— in 
 blessing him too he charged him, saying, 
 'Thou shalt not take a wife out of the 
 daughters of Canaan,' — ' and Jacob heark- 
 ened unto his father and unto his mother, 
 and went to Padan-Aram. ■ And Esau saw 
 that the daughters of Canaan were evil in the ■ 
 eyes of Isaac his father. ' And Esau went 
 unto Ishmael, and took Mahalath, the 
 daughter of Ishmael, the son of Abraham, 
 the sister of Nebaioth, (upon) over-and-above 
 his wives, to him to wife.:^c 
 
 [There occurs here the first hiatus, as we sup- 
 pose, in the Elohistic document, the original 
 statement of the marriage of Jacob (which 
 was, probably, as brief as that of Isaac's mar- 
 riage by the same writer in xxv. 19) having 
 been removed, to make way for the more cir- 
 cumstantial narrative of the Jehovist la xzix. 
 
426 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 still, it -would seem some fragments of the 
 older story have been retained, as below, and 
 that the births of all Jacob's sons, including 
 Benjamin, were here given, and their names 
 derived or played-upon by this ^vriter, as in 
 xvii.5,15, he has alluded to the meaning of 
 Abraham and Sarah, in xvii.17,20 to those of 
 Isaac (' Abraham laughed'), and Ishmael (' I 
 have heard thee') in xx.2o,26 to those of 
 Edom and Jacob, in xxxv.10,11,15 to those of 
 Js}-ael and Bethel. But these have been much 
 overlaid by Jehovistic insertions. It is plain, 
 that in u.20 the name Zebulun is (wice derived, 
 viz. from zabad, ' dower,' and zahal, ' dwell,' as 
 J'o5epAisintJ.23,24,(fromcwajp7i,'gather' = 'take 
 away,' and yasaph, 'add,') and thatinf.14^16 
 a different explanation is implied of the name 
 Jssachar (from sachar, * hire,') from what was 
 intended by the writer of ■w.9,18. We may sup- 
 pose that the Jehovist disapproved of some 
 of the Elohiatic derivations, thinking them, 
 perhaps, far-fetched or indistinct ; and he has 
 consequently sometimes added his own. and 
 sometimes substituted his own for that of the 
 Elchlst.] 
 
 2Q. ^* And Laban gave to her Zilpah his 
 maid to Leah his daughter as maid.^lc . . . 
 ="* And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter 
 Bilhah his maid for maid:*: . , . '""'*' And 
 Leah conceived and bare a son, . . . and she 
 called his name Reuben, :*: ^a** And she 
 conceived again and bare a son 4: . . . 
 and she called his name Simeon. ^* And 
 she conceived again and bare a son.:<c . . . 
 3Sad ^21(1 giie conceived again and bare a 
 sonsic , . . and she stood from bearing. 
 
 30. ^» And Rachel saw that she bare not 
 to Jacob,* ** and she gave to him Bilhah 
 her maid for wife.* " And Bilhah conceived 
 and bare to Jacob a son. "" And Rachel 
 said, * Elohim hath judged ((Zan) me.'* . . . 
 ' And Bilhah, Rachel's maid, conceived 
 again, and bare a second son to Jacob. 
 '^■'^ And Rachel said, ' With wrestlings {naph- 
 tulim) of Blohim have I wrestled with my 
 sister,'* and she called his name Naphtili. 
 
 " And Leah saw that she had stood from 
 bearing ; and she took Zilpah her maid, and 
 gave her to Jacob for wife. " And Zilpah, 
 Leah's maid, bare to Jacob a son. *' And 
 Leah said, ' A troop {gad) I ' and she called 
 his name G-ad. *^ And Zilpah, Leah's maid, 
 bare a second son to Jacob. ^' And Leah 
 said, 'My blessing I for daughters wUl 
 bless {ashar) me : ' and she called his name 
 Asher. * 
 
 " And Elohim hearkened unto Leah, and 
 she conceived, and bare to Jacob a fifth son. 
 *" And Leah said, ' Elohlm hath given me 
 my hire {sachar). because I have given my 
 maid to my husband ; ' and she called his name 
 Issachar. ^^ And Leah conceived (yet) 
 again, and bare a sixth son to Jacob. ^^ And 
 Leah said, • Blohim hath presented {zabad) 
 me with a good present,'* and she called his 
 name Zebulun. ^^ And afterwards she bare 
 a daughter, and she called her name Dinah. 
 
 " And Elohim remembered Rachel, and 
 Elohim hearkened unto her. and opened her 
 womb. =^ And she conceived and bare a 
 eon, and she said, ' Blohim hath gathered 
 {asaph) my reproach 1* " And she called 
 his name Joseph,* 
 
 31. " And he led away all his cattle, and 
 all his gain which he had gotten, the cattle 
 of his property, which he had gotten in 
 Padan-^am, to go unto Isaac his father, to 
 the land of (Ilanaan.* 
 
 35. " And Elohim appeared unto Jacob 
 again [ ? unto Jacob now, as before unto Abra- 
 ham, xvii.l] at his comingfrom Padan-Aram, 
 and spake with him ; '° and Elohim said to 
 him, ' Thy name (is) Jacob : thy name shall 
 not be called any longer Jacob, but Israel 
 shall be thy name ' : and He called his name 
 Israel. " And Slohim said to him, ' I am 
 Bl-Shaddai : fructify and multiply : a nation 
 and a company of nations shall be out of-thee ; 
 and kings shall go-forth out of thy loins. 
 " And the land, which I gave to Abraham 
 and to Isaac, to thee wUl I give it, and to thy 
 seed after thee I will give the land.* 
 
 '^ And Elohim went-up from him in the 
 place where He spake with him. ** And 
 Jacob erected a pillar in- the place where He 
 spake with him, — a pillar of stone ; and he 
 dropped upon it a drink-offering, and poured 
 oil upon it. " And Jacob called the name 
 of the place where Elohim spake with him, 
 Beth-El. 
 
 '"» And they set-off from Beth-El, and it 
 was still a space of laud to come to Eph- 
 rath.* '" And Rachel died, and was buried 
 in the way of Ephrath.* ^^ And Jacob 
 erected a pillar upon her grave.* 
 
 ==b And the sons of Jacob were twelve : 
 " the sons of Leah, Jacob's firstborn, Reu- 
 ben, and Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and 
 Issachar, and Zebulun ; =* the sons of Rachel, 
 Joseph and Benjamin ; ^° and the sons of 
 Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid, Dan and Naph- 
 tali ; ^° and the sons of Zilpah, Leah's hand- 
 maid, Gad and Asher. These are the sons of 
 Jacob, which were born to him in Padan- 
 Aram. 
 
 =' And Jacob came unto Isaac his father, 
 to Mamre, the city of Arba,^t where Abra- 
 ham sojourned, and Isaac. ^^ And the days 
 of Isaac were an hundred and eighty years. 
 -^ And Isaac expired, and died, and was ga- 
 thered unto his people, old and full of days ; 
 and Esau and Jacob, his sons, buried him. 
 
 36. ' And these are the generations of 
 Bsau — that is, Edom. " Esau took his vpives 
 out of the daughters of Canaan, Adah, daugh- 
 ter of Elon the Hittite, and Aholibamah, 
 daughter of Anah, son of Zibeon the Hivite, 
 ^ and Bashemath, daughter of Ishmael, sister 
 of Nebaioth. 
 
 * And Adah bare to Esau Eliphaz, and 
 Bashemath bare Reuel, ^ and Aholibamah 
 bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Kerah. 
 
 These are the sons of Bsau, which were bom 
 to him in the land of Canaan. 
 
 ^ And Esau took his wives, and his sons, 
 and his daughtei^, and all the souls of his 
 house, and his cattle and all his beasts, and 
 all his gain which he had gotten in the land 
 of Canaan, and went unto the land of Seir 
 from the face of Jacob his brother. ' For 
 their gain was plentiful above living together, 
 and the land of their sojourning was not able 
 to bear them because of their cattle. And 
 Bsau dwelt in Mount Seir : Bsau, he is Edom. 
 
 * And these are the generations of Esau, 
 the father of Edom, in Houut Seii. 
 
THE COMPLETE 
 
 ELOHISTIC NARRATIVE IN GENESIS. 
 
 These are the names of the sons of Esau. 
 
 Eliphaz, the son of Adah, Esau's wife ; 
 Reuel, the son of Basheraath, Esau's wife. 
 
 " And the sons of Eliphaz,— Teman, Omar, 
 Zepho, and Gatara.and Kenaz. " And Tim- 
 nah was concubine to Eliphaz, Esau's son; 
 and she bare to Eliphaz Amalek. 
 
 These were the sous of Adah. Esau's wife. 
 
 " And these the sons of Reuel— Nahath 
 and Zerah, Shammah and Mizzah. 
 
 These were the sons of Basheraath, Esau's 
 ■wife. 
 
 '* And these were the sons' of Aholibamah, 
 daughter of Anah, (daughter) granddaughter 
 of Zibeon, Esau's wife. 
 
 And she bare to Esau Jeush, and Jaalam, 
 and Korah. 
 
 '^ These were dukes (? clans) of the sons of 
 Esau. 
 
 The sons of Eliphaz, Esau's firstborn— duke 
 Teman, duke Omar, duke Zepho, duke Xenaz, 
 " duke Korah, duke Gatam, duke Amalek. 
 
 These were the dukes of Eliphaz in the land 
 of Edom ; these were the sons of Adah. 
 
 " And 'these the sons of Reuel, Esau's son 
 —duke Nahath, duke Zerah, duke Shammah, 
 duke Mizzah. 
 
 These were the dukes of Reuel in the land of 
 Edom ; these were the sons of Bashemath, 
 Esau's wife. 
 
 '^ And these were the sons of Aholibamah, 
 Esau's wife— duke Jeush, duke Jaalam, duke 
 Korah. 
 
 These were the dukes of Aholibamah, daugh' 
 ter of Anah, Esau's wife. 
 
 These were the sons of Esau, and th^e their 
 dukes : he is Edom.* 
 
 ^^ And these were the kings who reigned 
 in the land of Edom, before the reigning of a 
 king over the children of Israel. 
 
 ^^ And there reigned in Edom Bela the son 
 of Beor, and the name of his city was Din- 
 habah. 
 
 ^ And Bela died, and there reigned in his 
 stead Jobab the son of Zerah, out of Bozrah. 
 
 ^ And Jobab died, and there reigned in 
 his stead Husham, out of the land of the 
 Temajiite. 
 
 ^ And Husham died, and there reigned in 
 his stead Hadad the sonof Bedad,* and the 
 name of his city was Avlth. 
 
 ^ And Hadad died, and there reigned in 
 his stead Samlah, out of Masrekah. 
 
 *' And Samlah died, and there reigned in 
 his stead Shaul, out of Rehoboth of the River 
 {=x Broadways on Euphrates). 
 
 ""* And Shaul died, and there reigned in his 
 stead Baal-Hanan, son of Achbor. 
 
 ^^ And Baal-Hanan, son of Achbor, died, 
 and there reigned in his stead Hadar, and the 
 name of hia city was Pau, and his wife s name 
 was Mehetabel, daughter of Hatred, (daugh- 
 ter) granddaughter of Mezahah. 
 
 *" And these are the names of the dukes 
 (? clans) of Esau, according to their famiUes, 
 according to their places, by their names :— 
 duke Timnah, duke Alvah, duke Jetheth, 
 •' duke Aholibamah, duke Elah, duke Piuon, 
 *■ duke Kenaz, duke Teman, duke Mibzar, 
 ** duke Magdiel, duke -Cram. . 
 
 These are the dukes of Edom, according to 
 their dwellings in the land of their possession: 
 te is Esau, the father of Edom. 
 
 427. 
 
 37. ' And Jacob dwelt in the land of his 
 father's sojournings in the land of Uauaau. 
 =a These are the generations of Jacob. 
 
 Joseph, a son of seventeen years, was tend- 
 ing with bis brethren among the flocks, and 
 he was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and with 
 the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives * ... 
 "^■^ And there passed-by Midianites, mer- 
 chantmen -X- . . . ^'' And the Midianites sold' 
 him into Egypt, to Potiphar, an officer of 
 Pharaoh, chief of the executioners. Jp [It would 
 seem that no part of the dramatic history of 
 Joseph's being sold into Egypt, and of his 
 adventures there, is from the hand of the 
 Elohist. Indeed, it would be strange if he, 
 who has given us so little out of Abraham's 
 life, still less out of Jacob's, and scarcely any- 
 thing out of Isaac's, should hav^e expatiated at 
 this length in the history of Joseph. But the 
 critical analysis shows that no part of this nar-? 
 rative belongsto him, except, perhaps, w2*,28»-, 
 36. which we assign to him, as above, though 
 ^vith some hesitation, Ashe knows nothing of 
 any ill-blood between Sarah and Hagar, Ish- 
 mael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Leah and 
 Rachel, so he probably knew of none betweei^ 
 Josephand his brothers, and may have repre- 
 sented Josephjiere, as merely kidnapped and 
 carried off by the Midianites, while out one 
 day, with only four of his brethren, tending 
 his father's sheep. It is observable that these 
 ' sons of Bilhah and sons of Zilpah ' appear no 
 more in the story. The Elohist may in a very 
 f w words have described the carrying-ofE of 
 Joseph, e.g. ' and there passed-by Midianites, 
 merchantmen, [and they saw Joseph and 
 seized him], and the Midianites sold him int<> 
 Egypt, &c.' The Elohist must then have stated 
 how he came to be high in office under Pha- 
 raoh, and how Jacob and his sons became 
 aware of his still being alive, and were induced 
 to go down and settle in Egypt, all which has 
 been removed, and replaced by th^ narrative 
 which now stands in xxxvii.. xxxix — xlv]. 
 ■ 46. " And they took their cattle and their 
 gain which they had gotten in the land of 
 Canaan, and they came to Egypt, Jacob and 
 all his seed with him. ' His sons and his 
 sons' sons mth him, his daughters and his 
 sons' daughters, and aU his seed, brought he 
 with him to Egypt. 
 
 ^ And these are the names of the sons of 
 Israel that came to Egypt, Jacob and his sons ; 
 Jacob's firstborn, Reuben : ° And the sons of 
 Reuben, Enoch (E.Y. Hanoch) and Palln, 
 Hezron and Oarmi. " And the sons of 
 Simeon, Jemuel, and Jamin, and Ohad, and 
 Jachin, and Zohar, and Saul (E.V. Shaul) son 
 of the Canaanitess. " And the sons of Levi, 
 Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari. " And 
 the sons of Judah, Er, and Onan, and Shelah, 
 and Pharez, and Zarah.* *^ And the sons 
 of Issachar, Tola, and Phuvah, and Job, and 
 Shimron. " And the sons of Zebulun, Sered, 
 and Elon, and Jahleel. " These are the sons 
 of Leah, which she bare to Jacob in Padan- 
 Aram, and Dinah his daughter— all the souls 
 of his sons and his daughters, thirty-three. 
 y^ And the sons of (xad, Ziphion, and Haggi, 
 Shuni, and Ezbon, Eri, and Arodi, and Areli. 
 " And the sons of Aiher, Jimnah, andlshuah, 
 and Isui, and Beriah, and Serah their sister; 
 and the sons of Beriah, Heber and Malchiel. 
 
428 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 *" These are the Bons of Zilpah, whom Laban 
 gave to Leah his daughter, and she bare these 
 to Jacob, sixteen souls. " The sons of 
 VLachel, Jacob's wife, Joseph and Benjamin. 
 ** And there were bom to Joseph in the land 
 of Egypt, which Asenath daughter of Poti- 
 pherah priest of On, bare to him, Manasseh 
 and Ephraim. '^ And the sons of Benjamin, 
 Belah, and Becher, and Ashbel, Gera, and 
 Naaman, Ehi and Bosh, Muppim, and Hup- 
 pim, and Ard. "* These are the sons of 
 Bachel, which were bom to Jacob — all the 
 eouls, fourteen. '** And the sons of Dan, 
 Hushim. '* And the sons of Naphtali, Jab- 
 zeel, and Cruni, and Jezer, and Shillem, 
 '^ These are the sons of Bilhah, whom Laban 
 gave to Rachel his daughter, and she bare 
 these to Jacob— all the souls, seven. 
 
 *" All the souls of Jacob that came to 
 Egypt, coming out of his loins,:^: all the souls 
 were sixty- and-six. "' And the sons of Joseph, 
 which were bom to "him in Egypt, were two 
 souls. All the souls of the house of Jacob, 
 that came to Egypt, were seventy. 
 
 47. '' And Joseph brought Jacob his father, 
 and stationed Viim before Pharaoh, and Jacob 
 blessed Pharaoh. " And Pharaoh said unto 
 Jacob, * About what are the days of the years 
 of thy life ? ' ' And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, 
 * The days of the years of my sojoumings are 
 a hundred and th^y years ; few and evil have 
 been the days of the years of my life, and they 
 have not come-up-with the days of the years 
 of the life of my fathers in the daj^ of their 
 eojoumings.* ." And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, 
 and went forth from before Pharaoh. 
 
 ^^ And Joseph settled his father and his 
 brethren, and gave them a possession in the 
 land of Egypt:^ in the land of Bameses, :fe 
 =">> and they fructified and multiplied exceed- 
 ingly. " And Jacob lived in the land of 
 Egypt seventeen years, and Jacob's days of 
 the years of his life were a hundred and f orty- 
 seven years.;fc 
 
 48. ' And Jacob said unto Joseph, ' El 
 Shaddai appeared unto me at Luz in the land 
 of Canaan, and blessed me, * and said unto 
 me, " Behold 1 1 will fructify thee and multiply 
 thee, and (give) set thee for a company of 
 peoples ; and I will give this land to thy seed 
 after thee, a perpetual possession." ' And 
 now, thy two sons, which were bom to thee 
 in the land of Egypt before my coming unto 
 thee to Egypt, they are mine, Ephraim and 
 Manasseh : even as Reuben and Simeon, they 
 shall be mine. ' And thy progeny, which 
 thou hast begotten after them, sh^ be thine ; 
 by the names of their brothers ^all they be 
 called in their inheritance. ' And I, at my 
 coming from Padan — Rachel died beside me 
 in the land of Canaan, when there was yet a 
 space of land to come to Ephrath ; and I 
 buried her there in the way to Ephrath.'^^c 
 
 49. '* And Jacob called unto h^ sons,:^ 
 '* and he charged them, and said unto them, 
 * I shall be gathered to my people : bury me 
 unto my fathers, in the cave which is in the 
 field of Ephron the Hittite, ^ in the cave 
 which is in the field of Machpelah, which is 
 east of Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which 
 Abraham bought with the field from Ephron 
 the Hittite, for a possession of a burying- 
 place. ** There they buried Abraham and 
 Sarah his -svife ; there they buried Isaac and 
 Rebekah his wife ; and there I buried Leah. 
 ^ The purchase of the field, and of l^e cave 
 which is in it, was from the sons of Heth.* 
 ^ And Jacob ended to charge his sons, 
 and he gathered his feet into the bed, and 
 he expiKd and was gathered unto his 
 people. :(£ 
 
 50. ^* And his sons carried bim to the land 
 of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the 
 field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought 
 with the field for a possession of a bnry- 
 ing-place from Ephron the Hittite, east of 
 Mamce* 
 
 X.0NI)017: PBIKTED BY 
 
 SFOITISWOOOB AJn> CO., I7EW-STBBET SQUABd 
 
 AKD FABXiIAUEiri 6IBBET