rT^r.-^r.: 
 
 WHY I STILL BELIEVE 
 
 MOSES WROTE DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 SOME UEi-LKCTIUNS AFTKIl KEADi: 
 
 PlIOFESSOK ROBERTSON S^IITK'S 
 
 ADDITIONxVL ANSWER TO THE LIBEL. 
 
 GEORGE a M. DOUGLA^^. Pi) 
 
 BS1225 
 
^^ tilt Shpnlnsfra/ ^ 
 
 ^^i 
 
 1^^ PRINCETON, N. J. *^ 
 
 Divisiott iZj...>^.. I ^ Z_ 3 
 Section » T 
 
WHY I STILL BELIEVE 
 
 THAT 
 
 MOSES WROTE DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 SOME REFLECTIOXS AFTER READING 
 
 PEOFESSOR ROBERTSON SMITH'S 
 
 ADDITIONAL ANSWEE TO THE LIBEL. 
 
 GEORGE C. M. DOUGLAS, D.D., 
 
 PRINCIPAL AND PROFESSOR OF HEBREW IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 
 MACLAREN AND MACNIVEN, PRINCES STREET. 
 
 1S7S. 
 
If any verbal errors are discovered by the reader, Ms 
 indulgence is craved, on account of the ^vriter's absence 
 from the country. 
 
Hi ft£C. SEP18HI \ 
 
 WHY I STILL BELIEVE 
 
 THAT 
 
 MOSES WEOTE DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 N the following pages I wish to deal with the 
 critical evidence j^resented by Professor 
 Smith in favour of the opinion that parts of 
 the Pentateuchal Law are later than the time 
 of Moses, and that in particular Deuteronomy is of an 
 age subsequent to Hezekiah's reforms. My Jiealth, 
 and other circumstances beyond my control, have kept 
 me out of the discussion in the Church Courts ; and 
 now that the action of the General Assembly has tended 
 to awaken hopes of a settlement of the legal questions 
 in a way in which all parties may be enabled to 
 acquiesce, I desire to write nothing which may in any 
 way prejudice any one. But there is another ques- 
 tion that would have to be answered, whatever course 
 might have been taken in the Courts of the Church- 
 namely, What is the value of the evidence alleged in 
 favour of Professor Smith's critical views as they stand 
 out in contrast with the opinions generally held in this 
 country, that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch ? 
 In attempting to answer this, I shall confine myself to 
 the statement that he has made in his "Additional 
 Answer to the Libel." Of this he modestly says (p. 11): 
 " I shall select from an argument of enormous compass 
 only a few of the simplest lines of evidence, and these I 
 
shall attempt to set before the Court in a form suffi- 
 ciently popular to be followed by those who have not 
 the advantage of scholarly training, and a knowledge 
 of the original language. Such a statement must 
 necessarily omit many powerful arguments, and convey 
 a very imperfect idea of the critical position. It must 
 not, therefore, be supposed that in laying this paper 
 before the Presbytery I take upon myself the burden 
 of proof, which properly lies on the prosecution, or that 
 I consent to limit the discussion of the case to the 
 points which I now raise." In point of fact, I am dis- 
 posed to think that his case is stronger on account of 
 the selection and compression of the arguments ; while 
 the rhetorical form, with occasional repetitions and 
 excrescences, owes not a little to the warmth of his 
 feelings as he throws his whole soul into a brilliant yet 
 earnest pleading in a case whose importance to himself 
 it is impossible to exaggerate. In these circumstances, 
 no one can take offence at occasional pungent state- 
 ments which a calm student might pronounce to be 
 indefensible ; and, as a whole, his statement is marvel- 
 lously free from certain blemishes which disfigure the 
 writings of many of the recent critical school. His 
 evangelical Christianity, his extensive reading, his high 
 intellectual and moral qualities, which secure the esteem 
 and affection of all who know him, appear all through 
 the pleading ; and if I believe that his arguments are 
 inconclusive, and that his assertions are often based on 
 suppositions instead of ascertained facts, I reply to 
 him not without diffidence, and I acknowledge 
 willingly how much weight I should be ready to 
 attach to any definitely formed judgment of his, unless 
 in certain speculative matters where I think he has 
 been somehow misled. 
 
Preliminary Stai'emexts. 
 As I also wish to make my statement l^rief, and 
 easily understood by all, I shall not dwell upon minute 
 points, nor argue over a word or phrase merely because 
 I can object to it. Nor shall I take up any extreme 
 ground, nor deny that there may, perhaps, have been 
 consideral)le " editing " of the work of Moses, how^ever 
 far I am from being convinced of this by any evidence 
 that I have seen. Nor shall I deny the possibility of 
 the Mosaic laws having been given orally between the 
 exodus and the conquest of Canaan, and yet having 
 remained for the most part unwritten till ages after- 
 wards ; and I should be able to point, in confirmation 
 of this possibility, to the case of the oldest and most 
 comprehensive of all prophetic utterances, which 
 formed no part of Scripture till it came to be recorded 
 in the Epistle of Jude. But Professor Smith's opinion 
 has reference, not principally, if at all, to the time 
 when the laws were reduced to writing, but to the 
 time when they were given forth by God. He says 
 (pp. 12, 13) :- 
 
 " According to the tradition which the libel proposes to incor- 
 porate with the official creed of the Church, and to protect from 
 criticism, by the use of ecclesiastical censures, the whole Penta- 
 teuchal law was delivered to Israel before the death of Moses, and, 
 with the possible exception of some temporary ordinances designed 
 for the special circumstances of the wilderness journey, all the 
 statutes of the law were meant to be observed in the land of Canaan 
 from the first settlement of the people downwards. When several laws 
 are given on the same subject, they ai-e to be regarded as mutually 
 supplementary, and theii- provisions cannot be really contradictory, 
 though at first sight they may appear to be so. Tliose critics, on 
 the contrary, whom I follow, and who maintain the character of 
 the Pentateuch as a record of revelation, while admitting that the 
 fundamental laws of the theocracy were given to Israel through 
 Moses, hold that these laws were modified and added to from time 
 
to time by prophets and other dhdnely guided leaders of the Old- 
 Testament dispensation, that the Pentateuch, in its legislative as 
 well as in its historical parts, is made up of several documents 
 originally distinct, that these documents were written at different 
 times, and that as their object was not merely to give a history of 
 the work of Moses, but also to expoiind in connection with this 
 history the laws which the people wei'e still bound to obey, the 
 legislative part of each document represents the whole or part of 
 the theocratic law, not precisely as it stood in the time of Moses, 
 but with the modifications which, in the progress of the dispensation, 
 were necessary to meet the needs of the people of God, and which 
 had either been actually put into practice, or were, by prophetic 
 authority, ordained as proper to be put into practice. As the 
 prophets and the priests who acted with them did not always, or 
 indeed often, exert so much authority with the Government as 
 belonged by right to the mouthpieces of God's will, the new laws 
 which they conveyed could not always be put into force at once. 
 In such cases they could only commit these laws to writing, awaiting 
 the earliest opportunity to get them recognised by the State. This 
 is what is meant when it is said by critics that some parts of the 
 Pentateuch may be supposed to be made up of legislative pro- 
 grammes ; the communication to the people by prophetic authority 
 of a necessary new application of the principles of the legislation of 
 Moses, often preceding the adoption of the new law by the civil 
 authorities. On this view the designation of all true theoci-atic 
 laws, as laws of Moses, must be taken in a figurative sense, which, 
 however, would not give rise to any misunderstanding. It was a 
 recognised convention to incorporate new ordinances with the 
 history of the first institution of the law by Moses, and however 
 inconvenient such a practice may appear to us, it had the important 
 advantage of constantly impressing on the people that no law could 
 have force in Israel which did not attach itself to the piinciples of 
 the Mosaic legislation as a genuine development of Mosaic ideas ; 
 wliile, at the same time, the people's duty of obedience to every law 
 of God was enforced by teaching the Israelites always to look at the 
 Divine commands in connection with the great work of God's grace 
 in redeeming His people from Egypt, entering into covenant with 
 them at Sinai, and guiding them to the land of promise." 
 
 On this extract I have only these two remarks to 
 make : (1.) That it is not incumbent on those who 
 
adhere to the old view to assert that " all the statutes 
 of the law were meant to be observed in the land of 
 Canaan, from the first settlement of the people down- 
 wards ; " or that it is only those who think that a part 
 of the laws were spoken by later " mouthpieces of 
 God's will " who may admit that " they could not 
 always be put into force at once." On the contrary, 
 the law of the kingxlom was not intended to come into 
 operation until after a long course of sinning opened 
 up the way for new methods of dealing with the 
 people. And it is fair enough to contend (though for 
 my part I do not) that the laws of one central 
 sanctuary in Deut. xii. were not to come into operation 
 until all the heathenish places of worship, &c., had 
 perished, and rest had come to the people fully (v. 2, 
 3, 10), which Stephen connects with the appointment 
 of Jerusalem for this purpose when the nations had 
 been finally driven out, in the days of David (Acts vii. 
 44-47). Nor do I look on the history of the Je^^dsh 
 Church, more than on that of the Christian Church, 
 as one of steady progress — far from this ; many a time 
 the folly and perversity of God's professing people, 
 ay, even of His true saints, has left things undone 
 which ought to have been done, as it has also led to 
 the doing of things which He has forbidden. (2.) I 
 do not acknowledge it as " a recognised convention to 
 incorporate new ordinances with the history of the 
 first institution of the law by Moses." On the 
 contrary, as I find our Lord expressly noticing earlier 
 elements in their worship which, therefore, Moses did 
 not give, John vii. 22, " Moses, therefore, gave unto 
 you circumcision, not because it is of Moses but of the 
 fathers," which does not seem to warrant his exposi- 
 tion (p. 88) that "Moses means no more than the old 
 
8 
 
 dispensation ; " so I find later regTdations attributed 
 to David, 1 Sam. xxx. 25 ; 1 Chi'on. xxii.-xxix. (see 
 especially xxviii. 19, '"'All this the Lord made me 
 understand in writing, by his hand upon me, even 
 all the works of this pattern," with a reference to what 
 was said to Moses, Exod. xxv. 40), and to Josiah, 
 2 Chron. xxx v. 3. And if there be some little varia- 
 tions in the ritual at Josiah's passover from that in the 
 book of Exodus, such a circumstance tends to contradict 
 the notion of such a " recognised convention. " 
 
 Professor Smith says again (pp. 15-17) of the 
 opinion which he rejects : — 
 
 " In truth, the confidence with which men propose to exit short 
 all critical inquiiy into the composition of the Pentateuch on mere 
 grounds of a priori probability would be impossible, but for the 
 fact that the difficulties of the critical theory lie on the surface, 
 while the difficulties of the current view are apparent in their full 
 force only when the Pentateuch is read with minute attention. 
 . . . According to the current view, Israel received at the commence- 
 ment of its national existence the laws which were to regulate civil 
 and religious life through the whole subsequent progi-ess of the state 
 and people. . . . Thus in Deut. xvii. 14 seq., a law is given for the 
 future kingship, and in Deut. six. 9, directions are given to 
 increase under certain cii-cumstances the number of cities of refuge. 
 The existence of such exceptional provisions for futui'e contin- 
 gencies in a limited number of cases only serves to make it more cleai- 
 that on the traditional view of the Pentateuch, the whole constitu- 
 tion and laws of Israel were designed to remain unmodified to the 
 close of the dispensation. ... In all nations new legislation is the 
 invariable accompaniment of progress in national life, and ... a 
 stationary system of theocratic institutions could only be designed 
 to correspond to a stationary condition of the whole national life. 
 In gi^T.ng to the people an invariable legislation, no pai-t of which 
 was to be abrogated or modified in later times by the inspired suc- 
 cessors of Moses, God designed to prescribe . . . an iVZeo/ of domestic, 
 social, and political life, from which, so long as the dispensation 
 lasted, no age could deijart without sin." The conditions of Hebrew 
 life, it is admitted, never did correspond with the ideal, and some 
 
parts of the law were therefore in every age impracticable. " But 
 though observance of the law might be suspended, the law itself 
 was there as a witness to the Divine ideal of theocratic Ufe, From 
 this ideal character of the legislation it is at once apparent that the 
 details of Pentateuchal laws cannot have been shaped with regard 
 to the special circumstances of national life in the age of Moses. 
 . . . The legislation is essentially prophetic ; even the form of 
 its words is sometimes addressed to future generations (as in 
 Deut. xix. 14)." It " did not grow up by successive revelations 
 adapted to changing circumstances — it was framed by Divine 
 wisdom in a shape independent of all change of national conditions 
 within the limits of the dispensation." 
 
 Here I must ao-ain offer some remarks on what is an 
 extreme or overstrained statement of the opinion I 
 hold. (1.) I shoidd not express myself to the effect 
 that in the beginning of their national existence Israel 
 received " the laws which were to regulate civil and 
 
 o 
 
 religious Hfe through the whole subsequent progress of 
 the state and the people," unless I made it very clear 
 that the regulation extended no further than to the 
 principles ; in which sense we should probably agree 
 in making the same statement, though we might differ 
 as to the classification of principles and details. I 
 believe that outside the Ten Commandments and the 
 ritual law there was very much in the sphere of 
 religious life left to development through the instru- 
 mentality of the prophets ; and in the sphere of civil 
 life I believe they were left to work out their laws 
 much as other nations were left, with this very 
 important exception, that principles were laid down, 
 especially in Ex. xxi.-xxiii., which secured the interests 
 of truth, and liberty, and pmity, and mutual con- 
 fidence, in a way unknown to the nations of heathen- 
 dom. (2.) Accordingly I should put much more 
 emphasis on modifications than he seems to think we 
 
10 
 
 can do. Tlie law of the kingdom, to wliicli I have 
 referred ah'eady, and which he names without ap- 
 parently attaching weight to it, is one of the most 
 remarkable of these, and it had its roots in the 
 promises made to the patriarchs (Gen. xvii, 6, 16 ; 
 XXXV. 11) ; though the fulfilment lay in a distant 
 future beyond the age of the republic, whereas it is 
 noted that a rival line of Abraham's descendants 
 attained early to this royal dignity " before there 
 reigned any king over the children of Israel " (Gen. 
 xxxvi. 31); and the prophet Balaam saw this kingdom 
 of Israel only in the far-off future (Num. xxiv. 7, 17). 
 Another very important modification was the substitu- 
 tion of a temjile, a house in which the Lord might 
 dwell for ever, for the movable tent and tabernacle in 
 which He had walked from the time of the exodus 
 onward (2 Sam. vii. 5-7). The structure of this temple 
 brought in many modifications, as to the courts, the size 
 of the buildings, and the furniture (the change upon the 
 altar giving rise to some needless difiiculties and 
 speculations, pp. 59, 60) ; also as to the age at which 
 the Levites were numbered for their work (1 Chron. 
 xxiii. 24, 26) ; and as to the courses into which they 
 and the jDriests were distributed. (3.) My position is, 
 therefore, one which insists on " new legislation " in 
 civil affairs, as the " accompaniment of progress in 
 national life ;" only this legislation was chiefly human 
 and natural, not supernatural and Divine : nor do I 
 overlook such new legislation even in religious affairs, 
 only I should assign it so limited a range as to place 
 myself in quite a different position from that which I 
 understand Professor Smith to occupy. And, practi- 
 cally, with these important explanations, I accept as a 
 fair description of my opinions, that " a stationary 
 
11 
 
 system of theocratic institutions coukl only be designed 
 to correspond to a stationary condition of the whole 
 national life." The gradually increasing manifestations 
 of Divine light to the patriarchs were not controlled 
 by anything in their course, so far as we know, except 
 by the law of essential harmony with the more rudi- 
 mentary manifestations abeady granted. A vast 
 advance was made in connection with the mission of 
 Moses and the institutions which he was to set up in 
 Israel ; and these, in turn, became the basis on which 
 the marvellous revelations were afterwards made, of 
 which we learn from the other books of the Old Testa- 
 ment gathered by the Jews into the two volumes, 
 which they named " The Prophets," and " The Writ- 
 ings " (Hagiographa), as distinguished from the first 
 volume, which they named " The Law." But during 
 his lifetime Moses occupied a unique position, since 
 Jehovah "spoke with him mouth to mouth, even 
 apparently, and not in dark speeches," while he beheld 
 the similitude of Jehovah ; in strong contrast to the 
 prophets, to whom Jehovah " made Himself known in 
 a vision and spoke in a dream " (Num. xii. 4-8) ; and 
 after his death the same unspeakable inferiority of the 
 other prophets was still acknowledged (Deut. xxxiv. 
 9, 10). Israel had been raised to a wonderfully high 
 level by the exodus and the work of Moses ; but from 
 that time forward they occupied a position of com- 
 parative conservatism ; not, indeed, that they abso- 
 lutely stood still, or that they had no missionary 
 duties to the heathen world out of which they had 
 been chosen and exalted, but that their chief duty was 
 to hold fast that which had been entrusted to them 
 durino- the lono: dark aQ-es in which He " suffered all 
 nations to walk in their own ways" (Acts xiv. 16). 
 
12 
 
 And thus the closing admonitions of the last prophet 
 of the Old Testament recognised no change in the law, 
 even at the time that he mentioned the greatest of the 
 line of prophets, and held out the prospect of a new 
 Elijah — "Eemember ye the law of Moses, my servant, 
 which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, 
 with the statutes and the judgments " (Mai iv. 4). 
 After the Old Testament had been completed, there 
 were indeed attempts at progress, as well by the 
 internal struggles of the sects which sprang up in the 
 later Jewish Church, as by the external influence of 
 contact with Greek philosophy, especially at Alexandria, 
 and with Oriental speculation ; yet they really never 
 rose above the level of the law of Moses, and if they 
 ever imagined that they rose higher, the only explana- 
 tion would be that really they were sinking below it. 
 No doubt this put a strain upon their minds, and 
 made them feel what " weak and beggarly elements " 
 were included in that law ; but it was impossible to 
 put new wine into old bottles, or to put a piece of new 
 cloth upon an old garment, as our Lord expressly 
 taught those w^ho questioned Him on the subject. 
 And the Epistle to the Hebrews uses similar language : 
 " In that he saith a new covenant, he hath made the 
 first old ; now that which decayeth and waxetli old is 
 ready to vanish away " (viii. 13). It is to some 
 extent the same even with the Christian Church and 
 the New Testament Scriptures. The centuries have 
 brought rich stores of experience to the Church since 
 our Lord and His apostles left our world, and new 
 insight has been granted us into the inexhaustible 
 wealth of Scripture. There are also peculiar difliculties 
 felt in these latter days, and men have longed for more 
 light than is given in the written Word. But we must 
 
13 
 
 Wcait for the second coming of Christ, just as the 
 Jewish Church had to wait for His first coming ; and 
 the lesson of Mahichi to the Jews is substantially the 
 lesson of Peter to us (2 Pet. iii. 1-3, 13-18). (4.) It 
 is a difficult matter to decide how far we are justified 
 in saying (p. 16), "that since the conditions of Hebrew 
 life never did correspond with the ideal, some parts of 
 the law were in every age impracticalDle. Political 
 complications, or social disturbances, themselves the 
 fruit of Israel's sins, led to a state of things in which 
 even the highest prophets made no attempt to carry 
 out important parts of the law" — that law, nevertheless, 
 remaining as " a witness to the Divine ideal of theo- 
 cratic life." In the law itself, we know from our Lord's 
 own lips, and in answer to a question as to the diffi- 
 culty involved, that Moses, because of the hardness of 
 their hearts, sufi"ered that to be legal which had been 
 otherwise in the beginning by the earlier law of God 
 (Matt. xix. 3-9 ; Mark x. 2-9). We know that in the 
 New Testament, in its connection with the Old, one 
 writer "had many things to say, and hard to be 
 uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing" (Heb. v. 11). 
 Nor need we be surprised should there have been evils 
 in both the Old and New Testament Church, which 
 have left effects never to disappear till the Church be 
 presented to Christ " without spot or wrinkle, or any 
 such thing." But I am not satisfied with the 
 supposition here made, that on our j)rinciples 
 the law of sacrifice at the central altar, of which 
 I shall have to speak, was one of these, or that 
 the prophets Hosea and Amos tolerated disobedi- 
 ence to it. 
 
 But in opposition to this "ideal staljility" of the 
 law. Professor Smith appeals to cases which we must 
 
14 
 
 supj^ose to have occnrred in the lifetime of Moses. 
 In p. 17 he says : — 
 
 " Ordinances whicli were not to vary in the subsequent cen- 
 turies, undergo repeated changes between Sinai and the plains of 
 Moab — changes perfectly intelligible if the different forms of the 
 law were adapted to the needs of different ages, and to changing 
 conditions of society, but altogether unintelligible in a legislation 
 given ... to be the unvarying and ideal rule of Israel's life." 
 
 And p. 18 :— 
 
 " On the current theory we must suppose that these variations 
 took place within a few years, or perhaps, in some cases, within a 
 few months, in laws which were . . . given by Divine authority 
 as the ideal and invariable rule of Israel's life in the promised land, 
 covering with prophetic foresight even contingencies of the remote 
 future. Does not this view suggest difficulties to belief, at least 
 as formidable as lie in the critical hy^iothesis of a figurative ascrip- 
 tion of later legislative developments to the first lawgiver?" 
 
 I shall have to speak afterwards of his theory that 
 these variations are explained by successive legislation 
 at great distances of time, and are connected with 
 great changes in the condition of Israel. At present, 
 I observe, that this might well be accepted as the 
 explanation, if no reason to the contrary were ad- 
 duced ; but that I do not feel his difficulty in apply- 
 ing it very readily (in so far as modifications actually 
 occurred) to the forty years between the exodus and 
 the conc[uest of Canaan. I attach vastly more im- 
 portance to this period than he appears to do, and I 
 believe that even Divine legislation might be con- 
 sidera])ly modified, on account of the changing con- 
 dition of God's people within that period. A great 
 statesman has just passed from among us, who, on his 
 death-bed, received a congratulatory address in refer- 
 ence to successful lesfislation which he had effected 
 
15 
 
 fifty years before : if his eye had not grown dim, nor 
 his natural force abated, what a review woiikl he have 
 had to make of the altered condition of his people 
 during that half century I I think the changes in 
 our country, however, have been insignificant in com- 
 parison with the changes during the administration 
 of Moses, beginning with the slaves whom Jehovah 
 brought out of Egypt with a high hand, because they 
 were incapable of doing anything for themselves ; 
 continuing it by a guidance signalised by a profession 
 of miracles, than which even those of our Lord are 
 scarcely more remarkable, and a series of murmurings 
 and rebellions which are absolutely unparalleled ; and 
 ending with the lawgiver and mediator himself 
 handing over to a chosen and beloved successor the 
 work which his own sin made him unfit to complete, 
 yet handing over also a new generation of Israelites, 
 the best, perhaps, that ever lived, — as well they might 
 be after such a history and training. We sjDcak of 
 formative periods in the history of an individual or 
 of a people, when every influence has an effect like 
 that of the seal on melted wax : was there ever a for- 
 mative period like these forty years ? The common 
 consent of Christendom has echoed the lano-uao-e of 
 the apostle (1 Cor. x. 1-11), who finds in it a mirror 
 for the experience of the whole Church of God ; and 
 it would not surprise me t-o be told that it contained 
 a rehearsal of the whole subsequent history of Israel, 
 and that, to the prophetic glance of Moses, the germs 
 w^ere visible of every evil and disorder, such as critics 
 have supposed might be the cause of later legislation. 
 Nor do I see any reason for comparing our view of 
 such changes to that of Talmudic Judaism, that would 
 " ascribe the workino-s of the IMost Hioh to a human 
 
IG 
 
 changefulness of purpose" (p. 19); since our "tradi- 
 tional" view has come to us by a tradition con- 
 fessedly unvarying, handed down from an age several 
 centuries before the Talmud came into existence. It 
 is altogether vain to object that we cannot point out 
 the circumstances occurring during these forty years 
 which led to the modifications ; for even if I conceded 
 the truth of this objection, which I do not, it is 
 enough for me to turn aside its relevancy by main- 
 taining that there is room enough in these forty years 
 to make these modifications possible and suitable. 
 And I might, with the utmost propriety, plead my 
 ignorance of particulars as my excuse for saying 
 nothing more ; as I must in justice to myself say, that 
 one of the greatest complaints I have against the self- 
 styled critical school is an inability to confess ignor- 
 ance, and a confidence that they can give the explana- 
 tion of everything, from what at the best appears to 
 me to be speculation, whose truth can never be estab- 
 lished. By two examples, however, I can justify my 
 plea of ignorance about the details of these forty 
 years, details which, if tliey had been known, might 
 have furnished explanations of changes in the law. 
 (1.) A fact of the highest importance, religiously and 
 historically, is known to us only by an incidental 
 expression in Joshua v. 2-9, that the generation who 
 were condemned for their unbelief to die in the wilder- 
 ness were laid under discipline, such as we might name 
 suspension from Church privileges, and their children 
 grew up uncircumcised, and, of course, unfit to enter 
 the courts of the tabernacle, to off"er sacrifices, or to 
 eat the Passover : how far their own wilfulness led to 
 this, and to what precise extent the disuse of circum- 
 cision extended, we cannot tell, but we do know that 
 
17 
 
 it must liave deranged the whole working of the 
 Jewish Church, and it might well lead to a great con- 
 cludino' work of Moses, settino- forth the law to them 
 anew, and calling them to re-enter into the covenant 
 as their fathers had done at Sinai. (2.) And another 
 fact, not much less important, is mentioned in Amos 
 V. 26, that so far back as in those forty years spent 
 in the wilderness, the house of Israel, whose right and 
 duty it was to bring sacrifices and offerings to 
 Jehovah, l)ore about images of heathen gods, which 
 they made to themselves : a fact stated categorically 
 in the common rendering of this somewhat difficult 
 text, and a fact to which I suppose that those would 
 make the prophet at least allude, who render the verb 
 so as to express a punishment in the future instead of 
 a sin in the past. 
 
 Illustrations of the Critical Argument. 
 
 Five examples of changes in the law are presented 
 in pp. 17, 18, which are meant to illustrate how per- 
 fectly intelKgible they are, " if the different forms of 
 the law were adapted to the needs of different ages, 
 and to changing conditions of society," far beyond what 
 was admissible during those forty years. 
 
 (1.) There is the age of the Levites at service. In 
 Num. iv. it is from thirty to fifty, and in Num. 
 viii. 23-26 it is from twenty-five to fifty. But in 
 explanation there is some weight to be put upon the 
 words used, for after the " service " was over, there 
 was still a " charge " to be kept by those above fifty. 
 Now, this " service " is denoted hj expressions more 
 or less diff*ering, mldcah occurring for this work only 
 in Num. iv. 3, and more important, that service is 
 said in vcr. 47 to be "the service of the burden (or 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 " carriao-e " of tlie ark, as in marfriu of 1 Cliron. xv. 
 22, 27, and in 2 Cliron. xxxv. 3) in the tabernacle of the 
 congregation," and the whole chapter is exclnsively about 
 this carrying of the ark in the movements of the camp 
 through the mlderness ; whereas the statement at the 
 end of chap. viii. is entirely general, or without restric- 
 tion, and follows the account of the consecration of the 
 Levites to their office. What can be a more natural 
 explanation than that they served from twenty -five to 
 fifty, but that not till they had been five years at 
 service were they permitted or j^romoted to carry the 
 ark ? I have already had occasion to call attention 
 to David's reduction of their ao-e for besfinninej work to 
 twenty, because this service of carrying the tabernacle 
 was now at an end (1 Chron. xxiii. 24-27). 
 
 (2.) I fail to apprehend the force of the next objec- 
 tion : — 
 
 " The laws of Exod. xxi. -xxiii., whicli, witli chap, xx., formed 
 the basis of the Sinaitic legislation, are plainly designed for the 
 period of settled residence in the land of Canaan. Now, at xxi. 7 
 it is expressly stated that a Hebrew maid-servant is not to be set 
 free, like a man-servant, at the close of seven years. In Deut. xv. 
 12, 17, the law is the same for both sexes, and so it is taken in 
 Jer. xxxiv." 
 
 The law in Exodus is in terms for males ; but the 
 rights of a male bond-servant would surely apply to a 
 female bond-servant, mutatis mutandis, just as the 
 case of a man, being smitten and dying (ver. 12), 
 applies also to a woman. A person might be sold to 
 bond-service as a punishment, or he might sell himself 
 on account of poverty. There was, however, this 
 peculiarity in addition to these cases, that a father 
 migjht sell his own clauo-hter to be a maid-servant in 
 the sense in which Hagar, and Bilhah, and Zilpah were 
 maid-servants — that is, with the chance or expectation 
 
19 
 
 of becoming a, secondary wife, or even a wife properly 
 so called, to her master or liis son. For tliis additional 
 case a provision is made in Exod. xxi. 7-11, and only 
 of such a one it is said, " she shall not go out as the 
 men-servants do." Deuteronomy repeats the law in 
 the usual style of that book, altering and enlarging 
 the expressions so as to bring in the law of love to act 
 in the way of loading the faithful servant, male or 
 female, as the case may be, w^ith presents, at going away ; 
 and as it takes no notice of the s^Decial female case, it 
 naturally presents the general law in all its comprehen- 
 siveness as applying to both sexes. I know of nothing 
 to justify the statement at p. 56 (where he returns to 
 this subject, and repeats the mistake of asserting " that 
 maid- servants are exempted from manumission" in 
 Exodus) that this belongs to a primitive state of things, 
 in which a Hebrew girl was ordinarily Iwught to be 
 the wife of her master or his son. 
 
 (3.) Reference is made to three laws which forbid 
 Israelites to eat that which dieth of itself, or which is torn 
 by beasts (Exod. xxii. 31 ; Lev. xvii. 12, 15; Deut. 
 xiv. 21). The difficulty is, that Deuteronomy permits 
 not only the selling of it to an alien, l)ut also the giving 
 it to the stranger within their gates, that he may eat 
 it ; whereas Leviticus requires the stranger sojourning 
 among them, no less than. one of themselves, if he has 
 eaten such food, to wash his clothes, and bathe himself 
 in water, and be unclean until the evening. This law 
 goes on to say : " But if he wash them not, nor Ijatlie 
 his flesh, then he shall bear his inicpiity." The utmost 
 that can be inferred from this difference seems to be 
 that some of these strangers clung to the Lord's people, 
 as this law encourages and invites them to do, and to 
 obey the connected law in ver. 12, forbidding them to 
 
20 
 
 eat blood ; but if any one of them declined to obey, 
 lie must bear his iniquity, and sink down to the lower 
 level of those strangers who preferred to rank among 
 the heathenish aliens, with whom they are classed in 
 the law in Deuteronomy. But this is precisely such 
 a modification as I should think it natural to meet 
 with in Deuteronomy, arising out of the experience 
 which the people acquired in the course of the forty years 
 of the varying moral and spiritual attitudes and inclina- 
 tions of these strangers or sojourners. And while it 
 is true that the law of the God of Israel did not change 
 in any essential feature, He wished to commend the 
 law to the consciences and understandings of His people ; 
 and the life and work of the great lawgiver might well 
 be lengthened out for this purpose among other reasons. 
 Similarly, the law of the Passover (Exod. xii. 43-49) 
 appointed one law unto him that was home-born, and 
 to the stranger that sojourned among them, in case he 
 wished to eat the Passover. But he was not bound to 
 eat it, and in that case he cast in his lot rather with 
 the foreigner and the hired servants who were not to 
 eat of it. 
 
 (4.) The burnt-offering for the day of Pentecost is 
 not the same in Lev. xxiii. 18 and in Num. xxviii. 27. 
 Nor ought it to be ; for any one who reads these two 
 chapters attentively ought to see that while they 
 describe the same cycle of holy days, they describe 
 them from different points of view, and, therefore, they 
 frequently diverge in their descriptions. On some 
 of these days there were cumulative services. For 
 instance. Num. xxix. 1-6 describes the special sacrifices 
 for the first day of the seventh month, resembling, yet 
 not identical with, those for the first day of every 
 month, which are expressly said to be offered besides ; 
 
21 
 
 and iu ver. 7-11 it describes the sacrifices for tlie day 
 of atonement, among other things, with a kid of the 
 goats for a sin-offering, which again is expressly said 
 to be besides the sin-offering of atonement of which we 
 read in Lev. xvi. So I do not doubt that the Pente- 
 costal service in Num. xxviii. 26-31 belongs to the day 
 as the second of the three great feasts or solemn assem- 
 bhes, and is distinct from the similar sacrificial service 
 in Lev. xxiii. 15-21, which accompanied the presenta- 
 tion of the two wave-loaves — the first-fruits of the 
 Jinished harvest. I am confirmed in this belief by the 
 fact that the preceding verses (ver. 9-14) describe the 
 sacrifice which accompanied the wave-sheaf — that is, 
 the first-fruits of the harvest commenced, at the Pass- 
 over time at the first of the three great feasts, a 
 sacrificial service of which no notice is taken in Num. 
 xxviii., as might be expected from the structure of 
 that passage. 
 
 (5.) The last instance is: " Li Exod. xiii. 11-13 a 
 law is given, that after the people enter Canaan the 
 firstling of an ass must be redeemed with a sheep, or 
 else killed. But before the wilderness joiu-ney is over, 
 and before the law has ever been put in force, the 
 ordinance is changed (Lev. xxvii. 27 ; Num. xviii. 15), 
 and it is provided that the firstling of an animal not 
 fit for sacrifice shall either be bought back by the 
 owner at the priest's valuation, or, failing this, shall 
 be sold by the latter." No contradiction can be 
 imagined between the laws in Exodus and Numljers ; 
 even modification seems to me quite improbable, the 
 latter passage simply mentioning an unclean beast in 
 general, instead of specifying an ass, and not taking 
 notice of the alternative of breaking its neck, instead 
 of redeemino- it. Kedcemino- an unclean animal was 
 
the o-eneral rule : both Exodus and Numbers direct 
 this in that case, as well as in the case of the first-born 
 of men ; but Exodus names a lamb (under which word 
 a kid may be included, according to the usage of the 
 Hebrew language), the commonest sacrifice, as that 
 which was to be the ransom ; and Leviticus says 
 nothing to the contrary, but puts in the caveat that 
 the priest was to estimate the value of it, since there 
 are lambs and lambs. The modification, therefore, 
 amounts to this, that when the laws relating to a 
 regular sanctuary and an organised priesthood came 
 into operation subsecjuent to the date of the law in 
 Exodus, the priests had the right to see that the ransom 
 in this, as in other cases, was not illusory ; and further, 
 that in case the owner did not agree to the priest's 
 estimate, the animal was to be sold, instead of ha\dng 
 its neck broken. This was surely a most natural 
 arrangement, and one which is provided for in several 
 cases in Lev. xxvii., which may fairly be regarded as 
 specimens of the application of a principle. Even if 
 there had been no express law, the lawfulness of such 
 a commutation of the death of the animal into a pay- 
 ment mia:ht almost have been taken for granted ; it 
 was expressly permitted in a case of forfeiture of a 
 man's life (Exod. xxi. 30), only murder and man- 
 slaughter being excluded from its operation (Num. 
 xxxv. 31). Nor do I attach any weight to the difiiculty 
 suggested, that this modification takes place " before 
 the wilderness journey is over, and before the law has 
 ever been put in force." For here again we may have 
 an illustration of the truth, that God would have His 
 law commend itself to the understandings and con- 
 sciences of His people ; and though it had not been put 
 in force, yet during these years of wandering I believe 
 
23 
 
 that Moses and his assistants were diligently teaching 
 the young generation, the hope of Israel, what the 
 laws were, and that they encouraged them to think 
 about these laws, and to ask questions about their 
 operation. 
 
 I am sorry to tax the patience of my reader with 
 what I may well call " tedious particulars," to l)orro"w 
 an expression from Professor Smith (p. 39) ; but it is 
 only by going over each of these selected instances 
 in pp. 17, 18 that I can meet the impression conveyed 
 by the jDaragraph. When the examination of these 
 difficulties conducts me naturally to the result of per- 
 fect compatibility and harmony, the impression on my 
 mind is, that this harmony, observed in consequence of 
 closer examination, is a new and powerful evidence in 
 favour of the old belief that all the legislation is the 
 work of Moses ; and that its alleged " varying ordi- 
 nances, frequent repetitions, and apparent contradic- 
 tions" (p. 19), are the vouchers to a thoughtful and 
 unprejudiced mind that the interlaced history and 
 legislation could scarcely have come into existence, 
 except as the entire Jewish and Christian Churches 
 have believed until quite recently."" I say a thought- 
 ful and unprejudiced mind, for I am perplexed by the 
 mention of a " criticism which started with no theo- 
 logical purpose, which argues solely on historical and 
 philological grounds" (p. 19). That this is the case 
 with individual critics, I do rejoice to believe ; l:)ut I 
 look on them as the exception, unless I were to under- 
 stand the words with an inuendo (which I do not), 
 that the critics started with no theological purpose, 
 
 * See, for instance, how tlie legislation for heiresses expanded 
 (Num. xxvii. 1-11, and xxxvi. 1-12); and for keeping the Passover 
 (Exod. xii. ; Num. ix. 1-5, 6-14). 
 
24 
 
 because tliey disbelieved in all tbeology, and despised 
 it or bated it. Notbing seems to me better establisbed 
 ill tbe bistory of tbat " bigber criticism," wbicb bas 
 exerted vast influence in Germany for a century, since 
 Koppe denied tbe autbenticity of tbe latter balf of 
 Isaiab, and Semler pulilisbed bis free investigations 
 into tbe Canon, tban its basis in tbe denial of super- 
 natural religion, wbatever industry and learning bave 
 been called into exercise for its support from bistory 
 and pbilology. I bave not a doubt tbat Professor 
 Smitb and some otbers are as free from tbis tendency 
 as myself ; but tbougb tbeir criticism bas sbaken off 
 tbe deadly malady, I bave my fears tbat it bas 
 inberited secondary symptoms, tbougb I bope tbese 
 may yet disappear. 
 
 Moses Assumed not to be the Writer of the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 " The present controversy turns directly on the date of the 
 several parts of the Pentateuchal law. But it is proper to observe 
 that, as matter of history, the earliest question discvissed by critics 
 was not whether all the laws as laws go back to Moses, but whether 
 the Torah or Pentateuch, in its present form, is the work of a 
 single author, and whether that author is Moses. And on this 
 preliminary question scientific inquiry has led to conclusions 
 which are no longer matter of dispute among scholars, which are 
 accepted by Hebraists of every school in our own country as well 
 as abroad, and from which, I imagine, no continental Hebraist, 
 known to the world of letters, now dissents, with the exception of 
 Talmudical Jews, Roman Catholics, and Keil, who is the surviving 
 I'epresentative in Germany of the school of Hengstenberg and 
 Havernick, to which many in our country still adhere " (p. 20). 
 
 On tbe adjustment of tbe terms of tbis "prelimi- 
 nary c|uestion," I bave sometbing to say afterwards ; 
 but it is quite reasonable tbat Ptofessor Smitb sbould 
 
25 
 
 remind the community liow many autliorities take the 
 same side as himself. It is right, however, to supple- 
 ment his statement, (l.) At least a vast proportion 
 of the prominent scholars to whom he can point are 
 open unbelievers, whose arguments on all subjects 
 connected with Scripture, he would admit as readily 
 as myself, are to be scanned with care, if not with 
 suspicion, by a believer. Accordingly, he excepts 
 Talmudical Jews — that is, he has the support of the 
 Jews who, refusing Christianity, have yet cast off their 
 own ancestral faith, Talmud and Scripture alike, and 
 are Pantheists or Deists. He excepts Roman Catholics, 
 whose Church connexion involves their reverence for 
 Scripture, and their belief in it. He claims orthodox 
 Protestant scholars, like Delitzsch and Kurtz, whose 
 position I shall explain later ; he himself refers to it 
 more precisely at p. 25. And if there be a want of 
 " continental Hebraists known to the w^orld of letters " 
 to uphold the ancient view, I suspect the reason is 
 either the unsatisfactory state of matters which I am 
 about to mention, or else the conviction of believing 
 men that they may be content with what " the school 
 of Hengstenberg and Havernick " have achieved, while 
 they give themselves to the pressing practical work of 
 the Church in Germany. I do not say that they are 
 wise to leave critical studies so much to others ; but 
 any one who has known the w^eariness of studying 
 volumes of doubtful speculations and verbal analyses 
 on these subjects, may sympathise with those who 
 think that enough has been done to satisfy them, and 
 who, therefore, turn to more urgent duties in fields 
 which promise far richer spiritual results. (2.) The 
 testimony of so-called " Protestant " scholars (p. 23) 
 comes largely from men who are inside the Churches of 
 
26 
 
 Germany and Holland, only because these Cliurclies 
 comprehend the population generally, exclusive of 
 Koman Catholics, Jews, anti- Christian Socialists, and 
 minute bodies of dissenters. The professorships are 
 filled by men appointed by the Government, generally 
 men of literary eminence, but whose appointment was 
 made without any regard to their spiritual insight ; 
 so that an eminent theological professor often has been 
 an utter stranger to the Gospel of Christ, and a bitter 
 enemy of what we understand by revealed religion. 
 Men who receive the Scriptures as the Word of God 
 and men who reject them in this character will almost 
 certainly handle exegetical and critical questions in 
 ways that will lead each to regard the other as misled 
 by prejudices. I rejoice in the confident conviction 
 that there are believino' critics among those who do 
 not acknowledge the Pentateuch to be the work of 
 Moses ; but, on the other hand, I know that it is 
 impossible for any unbelieving critic to accept it as 
 the work of Moses. (3.) Even believing men in the 
 German Churches (of which I speak with the strongest 
 affection and the deepest sympathy) are exposed to the 
 temptation to take a lower view of the Old Testament 
 than Professor Smith and I can take, because they so 
 often assign a place to the Apocryphal books, not 
 exactly inside it, as Koman Catholics do, but yet not 
 clearly on the outside of it ; and thus their notions of 
 what is implied in acceptance of these Scriptures as 
 the Word of God cannot be satisfactory to us. So 
 that it is premature when he thinks that he might at 
 this point " turn from the theological aspects of the 
 question to the evidence of Biljlical facts" (p. 20) ; for 
 this evidence is affected by the theology of those who 
 estimate it, even as in civil and criminal cases it is 
 
seen that the individuality of the judge affects his 
 estimate of evidence. The current of thinking at the 
 present day runs very much in directions which more 
 or less favour Professor Smith's views, and l)y this 
 current I have no doubt that he is influenced uncon- 
 sciously and with perfect honesty, even as he may, 
 perhaps, think that I labour under influences of an 
 opposite kind. It is not in theology alone that I see 
 this current toward attributing too much to speculations 
 of the energetic and well-read critic, who is charmed 
 with some supposed incidental confirmation of his 
 views, which confirmation, just because it is incidental, 
 seems to him of much greater value than the commonly 
 received statements which he rejects as things lying 
 on the surface. Thus in pp. 46, 47 the plain historical 
 testimony of Chronicles to the descent of Zadok and 
 Abiathar from Eleazar and Ithamar, which would l)e 
 fatal to his speculations, is set aside as meaning only 
 that they belonged to the higher and lower guilds of 
 priests ; and the testimonies of the book of Joshua are 
 very generally set aside by assumptions of interpolated 
 texts and successive authors, all whose works are 
 mixed up in the present form of that book (see in pp. 
 86, 87). In fact, anything like historical theology in 
 the Old Testament becomes an impossibility on the 
 new critical principles ; because, not to speak of com- 
 paratively smaller matters, instead of accepting the 
 Pentateuch, the books of Isaiah, Zechariah, Daniel, and 
 the historical books, as what to most eyes they still 
 seem to be, and what they have from time immemorial 
 been accepted as being, recent criticism has cut them 
 up into shreds, or entirely altered their date of com- 
 position on account of preconceptions as to the time 
 at which they ought to have been written. x\nd this 
 
28 
 
 criticism has such unboiincled confidence in itself 
 that even Professor Smith has not been able to keep 
 himself free of it. Such phrases occur frequently as 
 " would not have been possible," " it is plain, then," 
 "of course" (p. 21) ; "the universal consent of those 
 who have a right to speak," "it is plain," "it is 
 impossible to defend" (p. 25) ; "the meaning of this 
 passage plainly is" (p. 48) ; " how futile is the ordinary 
 interpretation " (p. 49), &c. I should be afraid to say a 
 word against the arguments in an interesting pamphlet 
 which bristles with these and other similar expressions, 
 meant, I suppose, for offence or defence as may be 
 necessary, were there not other passages which indicate 
 that the links in the chain of proof are of varying 
 strength ; " it is quite conceivable ... it is very 
 probable ... it is hardly to be thought ... we have 
 found distinct evidence . . . the other books exhibit 
 indications " (pp. 26, 27). 
 
 I am forced to express my very serious doubts, in 
 fact my disbelief, of all the three positions which are 
 admitted by so many, that he feels warranted in taking 
 them for granted. So far as I can form a judgment, 
 none of them is true, in any sense valid for the argu- 
 ment based upon them ; and when the present epidemic 
 among the critics has passed away, I believe that this 
 will be acknowledged. 
 
 The first supposed truth now admitted is "that the 
 first four books of the Pentateuch do not profess to be 
 written by Moses, though we read that from time to 
 time he was commanded to record some particular 
 precepts or facts " (p. 20). I continue to think that 
 the most natural rendering of Exod. xvii. 14 is, " The 
 Lord said unto Moses, write this for a memorial in the 
 book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua : " though 
 
29 
 
 even tlic renderiiio; " a book " leads me to ask, what 
 book if not that wliicli he was composing, and which 
 became our Pentateuch ? Of the act of writing this 
 work, I get glimpses in the particular passages to which 
 he refers : he thinks the writing by Moses is to be 
 restricted to these individual places ; I think the special 
 naming of this, on special occasions, indicates Moses' 
 habit, so that evidence is required to show that his hand 
 is to be excluded from any passage. And this, I think, 
 is confirmed by passages such as Lev. xxvii. 34 ; Num. 
 xxxvi, 13, I am not aware who of the adherents of the 
 traditional view have douljted that the account of his 
 death and burial is not from his own hand. How much 
 is thus to be held the work of an editor is a matter of 
 probable evidence. The oldest Jewish tradition already 
 excludes these closing verses ; many go further back to 
 chap, xxxi, yet holding that the song and the blessing 
 of Moses are truly his, though attached to the book by 
 his editor. Some give to this editor such functions as 
 that of inserting the name of Dan at Deut. xxxiv. 1 
 and Gen xiv, 14, and making geographical and 
 historical notes in a few inserted clauses for the sake 
 of plainness ; some allow him much greater liberty. 
 Nor do I know of anything but probable evidence ; I 
 know, indeed, of nothing but conjecture to guide us 
 here, and, if I spoke at all upon the subject, I should 
 like to speak with much difiidence and reverence. But 
 I understand Professor Smith to make the broad dis- 
 tinction that is generally made between the first four 
 books and the fifth, that on the face of it the last book 
 does profess to be written Ijy Moses with a directness 
 which is not found in the first four : and he separates 
 it emphatically from them as a l)ook, or its 
 legislative portion at least as a law-book quite 
 
30 
 
 distinct from tliem, Avhereas I connect them, and 
 thus I indirectly attribute to the first four books 
 what is said directly of the authorship of the fifth. I 
 wholly reject his statement that " the first verse of the 
 book, as it now stands, tells us that Moses spoke ' on 
 the other side of Jordan from that on which the verse 
 was written.' " Not that I think our authorised version 
 quite free from blame in its rendering of the same 
 Hebrew phrase sometimes " on this side of Jordan," 
 sometimes " on the other side Jordan," according to 
 their notion of the meaning intended, though I think 
 he attaches importance to it here and at p. 27, while I 
 attach none. I suppose the phrase means simply 
 " across the Jordan," and it was used by Moses some- 
 times of the eastern and sometimes of the western side 
 according to circumstances easily intelligible by his 
 readers or hearers, according as he had in his mind 
 their physical position to the east of Jordan, or their 
 ideal position in the proper land of Canaan to the west 
 of it, the land in which their forefathers lived, and to 
 which all their thoughts and aspirations turned as that 
 which was now to be their home.'"' I dissent also from 
 his views of the meaning and use of Tor ah. " In the 
 foregoing books Torali does not mean a law-book, or a 
 body of laws, but an individual revelation (literally, 
 instruction), or a legislative prescription on one definite 
 subject. In Deuteronomy, again, the expression 'this 
 Torah ' occurs very frequently, and is manifestly used 
 throughout in one consistent sense of the body of 
 instruction conveyed by Moses to the people in his 
 last speech, without reference to any previous law or 
 
 ''' See it used for the western side, chap. iii. 20, 25 ; xi. 30 ; and 
 for the eastern side, chap, iii, 8 ; and see it used in first the one 
 sense and then the other, in Num. xxxii. 1 9, 
 
31 
 
 laws ; " see clmps. i. 5 ; iv. 8 ; iv. 44 " (pp. 20, 21). The 
 etymology of the word certainly suggests the meaning 
 " that which will instruct ; " and this name is most 
 beautiful and appropriate, as pointing out the 
 characteristic of the law of God, that it combines 
 authority with instruction ; but nothing can be more 
 definite than the use of the word for " law," so that I 
 recollect of no case where it means instruction merely. 
 " The hook of the law " is also certainly mentioned 
 several times in Deut. xxviii.-xxxi., and not earlier, 
 because the middle Ijooks present this law to us only 
 in process of formation. But they do employ the 
 word in a pretty wide sense, as in Lev. vii. 37 for the 
 whole matter of chaps, i.-vii., and Lev. xiv. 54-57 for 
 the whole matter of the two long chaps, xiii. and xiv. 
 In cases where the expression occurs, " this is the 
 ordinance of the law which the Lord hath commanded," 
 or "commanded Moses" (Num. xix. 2; xxxi. 21), 
 1 see nothing so natural as to apply the term " ordi- 
 nance" to the particular enactment, and the term 
 " law " to the whole body of laws given through 
 Moses. When it is said " one law shall be to him that 
 is home-born and unto the stranger that sojourneth 
 among you" (Exod. xii. 49 ; see also Num. xv. 16, 29), 
 I prefer to understand it of the whole system of juris- 
 prudence, of which 23'^i'ticular instances are given. 
 And the meaning, the whole authoritative instruction 
 which God was about to give, appears to me to occur 
 in Exod. xiii. 9, " That the Lord's law may be in thy 
 mouth;" and in Exod. xvi. 4, " That I may prove them, 
 whether they will walk in my law or no." 
 
 Then, again, I differ entirely from his opinion that 
 in Deuteronomy " ' Tor ah' is manifestly used through- 
 out ill one consistent sense of the body of instruction 
 
conveyed by Mosea to the people in his hast speech, 
 'without reference to any previous law or laws" (p. 21), 
 on which he insists again (pp. 35, 40). I think the 
 references to both the earlier history and the earlier 
 laws come up repeatedly, and that the book is unin- 
 telligible unless the historical and legislative substance 
 of the other books (whether in written form, as I sup- 
 pose, or, possibly, in unwritten form, though soon to 
 be in writing) is taken for granted, as already known. 
 Of this I see an example in a fact mentioned by him- 
 self (p. 23), though, in my opinion, he draws an 
 erroneous inference from it, that the law of man- 
 slaughter is incomplete, "inasmuch as Deuteronomy 
 says nothing about remaining in the city of refuge till 
 the death of the high priest ; " he might have added, 
 nor about remaining there at all, so that if this had 
 been the whole law, he might have returned to his own 
 home immediately after being acquitted of murder. 
 The very words (chap. i. 5), that "Moses began to de- 
 clare this law," point to an explanation and enforce- 
 ment of the law already known, as is the meaning of the 
 peculiar word here rendered " declare," which, at chap, 
 xxvii. 8, is represented in the English Bible by the 
 adverb "plainly." I know of no reason for saying, 
 "it is plain that the Deuteronomic Torah originally 
 formed a book by itself" (p. 21), in any other sense 
 than Genesis ; or, perhaps, than any of the three 
 middle books ; and just as little reason for an earlier 
 sentence, that, at the Feast of Tabernacles, in the 
 Sabbath-year, "to read the whole Pentateuch would 
 not have been possible ;" for I think that Ezra and his 
 companions did so (Neh. vii. 73 ; viii. 1-3, 13-18). I 
 may afterwards have cause for explaining why I can- 
 not even accept his statement that " this law " is used 
 
83 
 
 througliont Deuteronomy iu tlie one consistent sense 
 stated by liim here. 
 
 The second admission which I cannot make is, " that 
 the hand which \yYotQ down the Deuteronomic legis- 
 hation cannot have composed the four other books " 
 (p. 22). The argument from difference in a man's style 
 (though I hold that there are evidences of the unity of 
 style) is most precarious, as endless examples show, 
 not only in common authors, but in the case of an in- 
 spired author, as, I suppose, Professor Smith holds 
 with me in reference to the Gospel of John and the 
 Book of Eevelation. And it is not difference of time 
 alone, or chiefly, between the composition of the first 
 fom' books of the Pentateuch and the fifth that is re- 
 lied on when we explain the difference of style, but it 
 is the difference of their character : the first four are a 
 history, -wdth the legislation interwoven that was associ- 
 ated with all its windings ; the fifth is like poetry after 
 prose, a lofty style of rhetorical exhortation by the 
 dying prophet, varying from his previous words, as 
 the dying words of Jacob in Gen. xlix. vary from his 
 earlier words. This consideration fully covers all that 
 is presented of difference between the tone or language 
 in Num. xxxv. and Deut. xix. on the subject of the 
 cities of refuge ; not to say that a popular book upon 
 the system of law in any country would often avoid 
 the technical language of the laws themselves, for the 
 sake either of plainness or of greater im^Dression. 
 
 To my mind, a particularly instructive instance of 
 the errors into which recent criticism has led men is 
 afforded by the follomng passage. He points out that 
 it is not enough to appeal to lapse of time as affecting 
 a change in a man's style, since " the last chapters of 
 Numbers, which were not \\Titten before the fortieth 
 
 c 
 
34 
 
 year of the wandering, are as different from Deuter- 
 onomy as any part of Exodus or Leviticus, and, in 
 points of style, agree with the latter against the former. 
 For example, Deuteronomy always speaks of the 
 mountain of the law as Horeh, and Sinai occurs only 
 in the poetical passage, xxxiii. 2. But in the other 
 four hooks ive always hear of the law as given at 
 Sinai;'' adding a note that Horeb is named in Exod. 
 iii. 1 ; xvii. 6 ; xxxiii. 6. " And so we find Sinai and 
 not Horeb in Num. xxvi. 64 and xxviii, 6, passages 
 which were not written more than a few weeks before 
 the last speech of Moses " (p. 22). This difference in 
 the use of the names Sinai and Horeb is too obvious 
 to have escaped notice, and it has been often turned 
 to the account of the critical hypothesis, different 
 w^ords being pronounced the indication of different 
 authors ; while the three passages mentioned in Pro- 
 fessor Smith's note, in which Horeb occurs in Exodus, 
 are attributed to a writer other than the principal 
 author of the book. But is there no better explana- 
 tion than this clumsy one of inventing as many 
 authors as will meet the apparently varying pheno- 
 mena ? Gesenius, no bigot to evangelical or tradi- 
 tionary views, looked to a geographical solution, and 
 supposed that Sinai might be the name of the whole 
 mountain range, while Horeb was the name of the in- 
 dividual mountain from which the law was given. 
 Others followed him in this explanation ; only, an ex- 
 amination of the texts led Hengstenberg to invert the 
 suggested meanings, to make Horeb the comprehensive 
 name, and Sinai the particular mountain. His argu- 
 ment met with the approval of others ; among the rest, 
 of the greatest of the authorities in this century on 
 subjects of Biblical geography. Dr. Edward Eobinson 
 
35 
 
 ("Biblical Researches," vol. i. pp. 120, 591), after he 
 bad inclined to the opposite view. The reasons may- 
 be arranged under three classes : — (1.) Sinai is the name 
 used while the Israelites were upon the very spot — that 
 is, from Exod. xix. 11 to Num. iii. 1 ; whereas Horeb 
 is the term used in the recapitulation in Deuteronomy."" 
 Now, a person writing just under the shadow of a 
 famous mountain would naturally use its own indi- 
 vidual name, although if he wrote at a distance from 
 it, and after a considerable time, perhaps in old age, 
 giving a general description, he might be ready enough 
 to employ the word for the mountain range to which 
 this peak belonged. Moreover, we have Sinai men- 
 tioned so early as Exod. xix. 1, 2, and on so far as to 
 Num. X. 12, Avhere the breaking up of the camp, and 
 the first march toward Canaan are described ; but in 
 these texts it occurs in a phrase of somewhat more ex- 
 tensive geographical signification — " the wilderness of 
 Sinai," though still meaning a comparatively limited 
 district, in which this mountain was prominent ; on 
 the other hand, " the mlderness of Horeb " is a phrase 
 which never occurs. After the march from the wil- 
 derness of Sinai took place, the name is met with only 
 thrice. Two of these cases are no exceptions, being 
 this phrase, " the ^\^lderness of Sinai," in the list of the 
 encampments (Num. xxxiii'. 15), and in a census made 
 l)y Moses and Aaron on the spot (Num. xxvi. 64) ; " the 
 ^A^lderness of Horeb," I have said, is never used. The 
 only remaining case is in Num. xxviii. 6, at the head of 
 
 * The only time that Sinai is named in Deuteronomy is in the 
 Song of Moses (chap, xxxiii. 2) ; and it is the very nature of a song 
 to individualise and present vividly the scenery which it mentions. 
 In fact, so many spots are named together in tliat verse that Horeb 
 would not have been a sufficiently distinctive name. 
 
36 
 
 tlie list of the sacrifices for tlie several appointed sacred 
 seasons — " It is a continual burnt -ofFerino^, which was 
 ordained in mount Sinai for a sweet savour " — where 
 the precision of the nomenclature is quite intelligible ; 
 in truth, Moses was usino; languaa-e about the universal 
 laws for sacrifices which might have become a stereo- 
 typed phrase in his mind, and in the minds of the 
 people. The same geographical precision was required 
 in one still earlier passage, Exod. xvi. 1 — " The wilder- 
 ness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai." (2.) 
 Horeb is used in the middle books only the three times 
 mentioned in Professor Smith's note ; and all of them are 
 peculiar, suitable on the supposition that Horeb means 
 the mountain ridge, and not a single peak. At the 
 time he was about to see the burning bush (Exod. iii. 1), 
 Moses " came to the mount of God [even] to Horeb;" 
 or, as I should render it literally, he "came to the 
 mountain of God Horeb-ward " — that is, in the direc- 
 tion of Horeb, for Horeb need not be identified with 
 the sacred peak, but was that range in the direction of 
 which Moses came, till he was led to Sinai ; for, accord- 
 ing to ver. 12 ("ye shall serve God upon this moun- 
 tain"), the mountain on which he saw the burning bush 
 was the mountain on which God met with His people. 
 Again, Exod. xvii. 6 — " Behold I will stand before thee 
 there upon the rock in Horeb," &c. ; for the water was 
 brought forth on this occasion from the smitten rock 
 while the Israelites were encamped in Rephidim, ver. 1, 
 Avhich was the encampment preceding that in the wil- 
 derness of Sinai (chap. xix. 2). The third instance is 
 not so remarkable as these two, but fits in well with 
 the meaning of Horeb as a mass or group of mount- 
 ains : Exod. xxxiii. 6 — " And the children of Israel 
 stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount 
 
37 
 
 Horeb." Tlie preposition in the Hebrew is peculiar, 
 ''from the mount Horeb." If it means from this time 
 and onwards in their journey through the wiklerness, 
 as it is often understood, it falls in exactly with what 
 I said of the use of the more comprehensive or indefi- 
 nite term when looking l,)ack from a distance, in respect 
 of both place and time ; if it means that they retired 
 from Mount Horeb in such a spirit as is described in 
 Zech, xii. 12, 13, speaking of a deep and universal 
 mourning in a time of remarkable repentance, " every 
 family apart, and their wives apart," the statement 
 would be, that they retired from the whole group of 
 mountains. (3.) There is a difference in the use of 
 the prepositions with Sinai and Horeb. In Exod. xvii. 
 6, Jehovah says, "Behold I will stand upon the rock 
 in Horeb ;" that is, upon the particidar spot in the 
 district called Horeb. And it is this preposition i)i 
 (now and then needlessly altered to at in the Author- 
 ised Version), which is used wdth Horeb, not only here, 
 but also I believe uniformly in Deuteronomy, except, 
 of course, chap. i. 2, 19, where ^ro^i is used on account 
 of a different construction. And I think the same is 
 true of all the later passages in which Horeb is 
 mentioned (1 Kings viii. 9 ; 2 Chron. v. 10 ; Ps. cvi. 
 19 ; Mai. iv. 4) ; always excepting 1 Kings xix. 8, 
 " unto Horeb the mount of God," more exactly, " up to 
 the mount of God, Horeb-ward," as in Exod. iii. 1. 
 On the other hand, Sinai stands connected with several 
 prepositions : in and from, like Horel), and to ; but 
 especially upon (Exod. xix. 11, 18, 20; xxiv. IG), 
 describing the descent of Jehovah, and the resting of 
 the symbol of His presence upon that peak from which 
 the law w^as given. This preposition upon is also 
 connected with Sinai in Neh. ix. 1 3, the only passage 
 
38 
 
 of the later books in which Sinai is mentioned, except 
 Judges V. 5 and Ps. Ixviii. 8, 17, passages intimately 
 related to that already noticed in the Song of Moses. 
 I have dwelt upon this matter of Sinai and Horeb, 
 because it is one specimen (necessarily a full discussion) 
 of the way in which alleged critical difficulties may 
 become, by careful investigation, the evidence of a 
 single writer intentionally altering his phraseology to 
 suit his subject ; and yet, the intention is very slight, 
 such as would be found only in a writer thoroughly 
 familiar with the facts as well as the words. 
 
 " There is a third point on which Protestant scholars 
 are agreed — namely, that more than one hand was 
 engaged on the earlier books, that from Genesis to 
 Numbers, we can trace at least two distinct streams 
 of parallel narrative" (p. 23). I am sorry to be 
 again unable to accept " the consensus of scholarship 
 on this head." It is not only on account of the very 
 natural observation which he records, "that critics 
 differ much among themselves in their attempts to 
 dissect the constituent narratives out of the present 
 complex structure of the books;" though I look on 
 their hopeless disagreements as a very much more 
 serious stumbling-block than he does, in the way of 
 submitting to the guidance of the critical faculty. 
 It is not that I would attempt to silence the critics of 
 the authorship of the Homeric poems : but it is 
 impossible to draw any parallel between critical pro- 
 cedure about Homer, of whom we practically know 
 nothing, and Moses, of whose history, mission, and 
 legislation Professor Smith and I are quite agreed 
 that we are abundantly well informed ; whilst I hold 
 in addition, that his book of history and legislation 
 was written down to be the rule of Israel's guidance. 
 
39 
 
 as a theocracy, and read to the assembled people every 
 seventh year, in circumstances the most favourable for 
 securing leisure and reverent attention. It is not that 
 I deny that their process of vivisection has tortured 
 the text into yielding some curious results, which are 
 worth studying; but it is that these results do not 
 bring me one whit nearer the desired result, belief in 
 a varied authorship through successive ages. They do 
 show different lines of thought appearing and reap- 
 pearing, so that the critics group together the passages 
 in which these thoughts predominate, and attribute 
 them to different writers, as one might dissect a 
 history of England, at the frightful expense of time 
 and energy, and acumen, which have been expended 
 on the Pentateuch, and might attribute the military 
 and the civil history to different writers, with various 
 interpolations by old admirals, and writers on social 
 questions, and parliamentary orators, and political 
 parsons. And instead of calling these imaginary 
 writers 1, 2, 3, &c., we might give names to them, 
 which would be a great deal more vivid, and more 
 easily remembered, and might aid the pleasing illusion 
 that these creations of our own fancy had once actually 
 existed, like the innumerable individuals, nymphs, and 
 fauns, &c., of Greek mythology. So there is no doubt 
 that we might trace through Scripture the two great 
 things which it principally teaches — namely, what 
 man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God 
 requires of man ; and if, after a prodigious outlay of 
 labour, we made out a more theological and a more 
 humanistic series of passages, with certain words and 
 phrases which might be said to characterise them 
 respectively (as some such words and phrases would 
 certainly recur when the cognate ideas recurred and 
 
40 
 
 must be expressed), I dare say as much could be said 
 for more than one hand and for two streams of parallel 
 narrative as at present. The alleged parallel narra- 
 tives, beginning with the first and second chapters of 
 Genesis, will seem to certain minds the proof of two 
 authors, to others they will be no proof of this at all ; I 
 avow that I belong to the latter class, and that in 
 this particular instance the passage, Gen. i.-ii. 3, 
 presents itself to me as the general introduction 
 to the whole Pentateuch or Bible, the liasis of 
 all God's revelations toman; while chap. ii. 4-25 is 
 the history of the creation of man linked on to the 
 account of his fall and the promise of redemption 
 hy many similarities in language and arrangement. 
 Any other so-called parallel narratives that I have 
 seen adduced seem to me equally far from being 
 evidence of different authorship ; sometimes, as in 
 the case of the two accounts of Esau's wives — an 
 instance the more favourite on account of different 
 names being given to them (Gen. xxvi. 34 ; xxviii. 9 ; 
 and xxxvi. 2, 3) — a part of the critics themselves refer 
 the whole to that " fundamental document," which it 
 is now proposed to designate Q. The writer of it 
 used to be very generally styled the Elohist, a bar- 
 barous term formed upon Elohim, the Hebrew name 
 for God ; while the supplementer,""' or the chief of them, 
 w^as styled the Jehovist, on account of his preference 
 for that Divine name, which we pronounce Jehovah ; 
 and a justification of the distinction was found in 
 Exod. vi. 2, 3. For the hypothesis was something of 
 this sort, that the Elohist had written a history of the 
 
 * I do not trouble my readers with the minor question, whether 
 this writer was a supplementer or an independent historian, on 
 which point critics have differed long and much. 
 
41 
 
 patriarchs, in ^Yllicll Eloliim was the name appHed to 
 God, because, in his opinion, the name Jehovah, as 
 that of the covenant God of Israel, was unknown 
 until it was revealed to Moses at the burning bush ; 
 so that any passage earlier than Exod. vi. 2, in which 
 the name Jehovah occurs, is an interpolation by 
 another hand, that of the Jehovist. If anything in 
 criticism seems to me clearly established, it is that this 
 is a hallucination ; that the name Jehovah was earlier 
 in use ; that the writer never meant to say that the 
 vocable Jehovah was then for the first time made 
 known ; and that he gives direct proof to the con- 
 trary, as when in a thoroughly " Elohistic " passage 
 (Gen. xvii. 1), it is written — " Jehovah appeared to 
 Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; 
 walk before me, and be thou perfect." When it is 
 added, " But this criterion is only one of many others 
 which are altogether unmistakable " (p. 25), I can only 
 reply, with as much modesty as is compatible with 
 firmness, that to my mind these others are as unsatis- 
 factory or unfounded as this one ; that the sum of 
 even a number of worthless criteria would still be of 
 little worth ; and that, I suspect, their numlier is 
 alluded to rather in a rhetorical way, than with cool 
 logical accuracy. 
 
 It is, however, a speculative question, on which men 
 have diflfered, and are likely to differ still, whether 
 there is anything to indicate the work of more hands 
 than one in the composition of the Pentateuch. 
 Delitzsch, with whom, I suppose, that also Kurtz may 
 be classed, thinks that there is a prophetic hand visible 
 in those passages which are called Jehovistic, and the 
 hand of a priestly annalist in those which are called 
 Elohistic ; he thinks that Deuteronomy was written 
 
42 
 
 strictly by the hand of Moses, but that the Laws in 
 the middle books had l^een given only in an oral form 
 by Moses, and were reduced to writing by the priests, 
 one of whom, say Eleazar, was the Elohist of the 
 critics ; while Joshua, or one of the elders on whom 
 the spirit bestowed on Moses rested (Num. xi. 25), 
 incorporated Deuteronomy with Eleazar's work, and 
 gave us our present Pentateuch. Such a hypothesis 
 does not commend itself to my mind ; it is to me the 
 evidence of the strength of the present current of 
 criticism, but not any evidence that it runs in a right 
 direction. But I do not agree with Professor Smith's 
 classification (p. 25), as if this left mere questions of 
 detail between Delitzsch and the great body of recent 
 critics. On the contrary, I think that Delitzsch is 
 essentially opposed to them, for he holds, as I do, that 
 the Pentateuch lies at the beginning or foundation of 
 Israel's history — that it is the key to the history and 
 the cause of it ; whereas they look on the Pentateuch 
 as the outcome and result of that history. I grant 
 willingly, as I have said before, that while the vast 
 majority of the critics look on this result as a natural 
 process, the conviction of Professor Smith and some 
 others is, that the process was supernatural ; and in 
 this all-important respect he is at bne with me, and 
 essentially opposed to the mass of the critics. But I 
 wish the reader to observe, a man may hold that there 
 are the hands of two writers in the Pentateuch, and 
 yet hold that Moses is strictly the author. This 
 opinion was suggested as- a possibility or probability 
 l)y AVitsius, one of the noblest theologians of whom 
 the Reformed Church can boast. He had to deal in 
 the end of the seventeenth century with the first 
 feeble assaults of criticism upon the Mosaic authorship 
 
43 
 
 — assaults delivered under the influence of Hobbes' 
 Deism and Spinoza's Pantheism ; which he repelled so 
 vigorously that some of the assailants retracted their 
 opinions, and the controversy ceased for nearly a 
 hundred years. He suggested that Moses might have 
 drawn upon records preserved among the repositories 
 of the patriarchs. If any one says that Moses enlarged, 
 adjusted, and continued a patriarchal history already 
 written down, he differs from the commoner " tradi- 
 tional" opinion only in this, that the latter rather 
 supposes the patriarchs had handed down the remem- 
 brance of God's dealings by word of mouth. In this 
 case, Moses himself would be the supplementer or 
 editor of the original narrative. If people like to go on 
 conjecturing, occupying a field where there is plenty 
 of room for all, because there are no known facts to 
 hamper them, they may attribute the writing down of 
 the laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers to as 
 many priests or other assistants of Moses as they 
 please, all being done under his direction, and with or 
 without perceptible difl"erences of style, according to 
 the sharpness of the critic's eye, and the nature of the 
 medium through which he views the object ; while he 
 reserves Deuteronomy for the pen of Moses himself. 
 And thus in endless ways the suggestion sketched by 
 AVitsius may be shaded off,' and touched up, and more 
 or less highly coloured, till it comes to be very much 
 the hypothesis of Delitzsch or Kurtz. 
 
 Investigation into the Eelation of the Supposed 
 Component Parts of the Pentateuch. 
 Having given the name of Q to the supposed " docu- 
 ment which originally formed a separate book, and 
 which has been preserved almost entire, though pas- 
 
44 
 
 sages from otlier documents or supplementary state- 
 ments by a later hand, now come in to break its 
 continuity" (p. 24), it only remains to use D for 
 shortness to denote Deuteronomy, or, I suppose, rather 
 the Deuteronomic law-book, and to add S (the first 
 letter of the phrase " Sinaitic covenant") as the desig- 
 nation of the book which Moses wrote on occasion of 
 makino- the covenant at Sinai, and called " the Book 
 of the Covenant " (Exod, xxiv. 7), "generally held to 
 embrace all the laws in Exod. xx.-xxiii." (p. 26). 
 Much patient and ingenious labour is then expended 
 on investigating the relation in which these stand to 
 one another, the general result being that S is the 
 original law, and that the other two are developments 
 from it, which differ so that they cannot have proceeded 
 from the same author, and apparently so that D stands 
 nearer S than Q does. Many of these details present 
 few features of interest, comparatively s^^eaking, to 
 those who reject his three assumptions with which I 
 have been dealing, and who hold that, instead of 
 Deuteronomy standing alone, it manifestly refers to a 
 previous legislation, which it assumes to be known and 
 recognised as authoritative, and which it does not repeat 
 at length, but only enforces by exhortations, warnings, 
 and promises, together with a few additions and adap- 
 tations, whilst it brings out the essence of the law, 
 which pervades the individual statutes — namely, love 
 (Matt. xxii. 34-40 ; Rom. xiii. 8-10). This principle had 
 been already announced in its twofold form, of love to 
 God and love to man (Exod. xx. 6 ; Lev. xix. 17, 18); 
 but the fuller and more prominent statement of it 
 belongs to the final address of Moses as the great 
 prophet of the theocracy, opening up and enforcing 
 the principles of the law, and connecting this love in 
 
45 
 
 us with God's love to us. To one who holds the views 
 I have expressed, there is very little meaning in pp. 
 25-27. If the assertion in p. 27 — " Any one who has 
 taken the trouble to compare the parallel laws in dif- 
 ferent parts of the Torah must have been struck by the 
 want of references from later passages back to earlier 
 ones" — means that there are no formal references 
 such as one of our Acts of Parliament makes to earlier 
 statutes for the purpose of amending, extending, or 
 repealing them, I think I should have been struck 
 only if such references did exist ; if it means, as the 
 next sentence contrasting the middle books with 
 Deuteronomy possibly suggests, that there is more of 
 this reference among the laws of the middle books than 
 there is in Deuteronomy, which is therefore to stand 
 alone, as is insisted on in p. 28, I cannot admit that 
 the statement is correct. The variation of the technical 
 terms in Deuteronomy from those in the middle books 
 has been noticed already under his second assumption 
 (p. 33). Besides the " cities of refuge," of which he 
 spoke then, and the " year of release" (Dent. xv. 1-11), 
 which is sufficiently plain in itself to need no explana- 
 tion, and which eminently suits the character of the 
 book as bringing out that love which is the fulfilling 
 of the law, and which is seen in its being placed along- 
 side of the law of setting servants free in the seventh 
 year,'"" — he names one other, from which we may 
 estimate the value of the " similar variations in legal 
 expressions " which " might be multiplied almost 
 without number." " The feast of Pentecost is called 
 the feast of harvest in S (Exod. xxiii. 16), the day of 
 first-fruits in Q (Num. xxviii. 26), and the feast of 
 
 * Observe, also, the principle of love brought out in the statement of 
 this law (ver. 12-18) compared with Exod. xxi. 1-6. 
 
46 
 
 weeks in Exod. xxxiv. 22 and Deut. xvi. 10" (p. 27). 
 I suppose that the feast of weeks, seven times seven, 
 is just Pentecost, the fiftieth day. The passage in 
 Numbers is a list of the days of special offering ; and 
 the reason is obvious why this day should there be 
 named, not from its chronological relation to the Pass- 
 over, but from the character of the offering that day, 
 the first-fruits of the completed harvest ; as in the 
 same list the common terms " day of atonement " and 
 " feast of tabernacles " do not occur, though the days 
 are spoken of particularly. In the somewhat analogous 
 list of the holy convocations (Lev. xxiii. 15-21) this 
 feast is described by both of the characteristic marks — 
 the numl)ering of fifty days, and the presentation of 
 the first-fruits ; yet neither the one name nor the other 
 is actually given to it. In Exod. xxiii. IG the expres- 
 sion is " the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of thy 
 labours which thou hast sown in the field," both names 
 being used ; and in Exod, xxxiv. 22, which, I suppose, 
 is universally held to be most intimately connected 
 with the preceding passage, it is " the feast of weeks, 
 the first-fruits of wheat harvest"— that is, it has one 
 of the two names used in Exod. xxiii. 16, which is the 
 name in Num. xxviii. 26, and also it has the name 
 used in Deut. xvi. 10. AVhat could more convincingly 
 show that it is a mistake to tear the book of Deuter- 
 onomy in pieces, and to force upon one part of it the 
 character of a code, and then say, " There is no point 
 which a lawgiver is naturally more attentive to than 
 the use of the same expressions in the same sense 
 throughout his writings ?" * 
 
 * So in the teaching of the New Testament Church by Paul we have 
 the Lord's Supper, the breaking of bread, the communion, and I might 
 almost add the eucharist, as different names for the same ordinance. 
 
47 
 
 Furtlier, it is to be remembered that tliose with 
 whom I agree deny that in " the light of scholarship " 
 " the language of Q does show that consistency which 
 one expects in a lawgiver, and so does the language of 
 D" (pp. 27, 28), because we do not admit what he 
 alleges to be a fact to be clearly kept before us, " that 
 Q and D were originally self-contained works," and 
 that " an entirely independent line of incjuiry has 
 established the original sejDarate existence of two parts 
 of the Pentateuch," and " these systematic differences 
 occur between two documents which are otherwise 
 known to have been originally distinct publications " 
 (pp. 29, 30). No man does know — no man can prove 
 this. I have explained some of our reasons for believ- 
 ing in the unity of authorship ; and our conviction is, 
 that the critics proceed by reasoning in a vicious circle, 
 inferring the existence of different writers from pecu- 
 liarities of thought and diction, and then starting from 
 the assumption that these different writers existed, and 
 proceeding to notice their several peculiarities. 
 
 We also entirely object to such statements as his, 
 that " it is quite certain, from the expressions used in 
 Deuteronomy itself, that D was not meant as a mere 
 supplement to a book already in people's hands, but 
 as a self-contained system of Divine instruction (see 
 especially xvii. 18 ; xxvii. 26; xxviii. 1, 58 ; xxix. 29; 
 XXX. 10). It contains God's renewed covenant Vv^ith 
 Israel (xxix. 1), by which the people are to live, and 
 by which they are to be judged. Accordingly, its 
 ordinances must have been meant to be intelligible, 
 and to be an adequate guide to the peojDle without any 
 other written law" (p. 28). It is possible for us to con- 
 cede to Delitzsch, as a hypothesis, that the law referred 
 to may as yet have been unwritten, if the notes w^ere 
 
48 
 
 in the liands of those who were immediately to proceed 
 to reduce it to writinoj ; but in the strono-est lano-uao-e 
 we assert that Deuteronomy, not even as Professor 
 Smith breaks it up, is no code of Laws ; no self-contained 
 system of instruction ; no intelligible and adequate 
 guide by itself. Something has already been said by 
 me {pp. 31, 32) when commenting on his statements in 
 pp. 20, 21. I now add that there are supplementary 
 laws relating to matters suitable on the eve of the 
 conquest and settlement in Canaan. For instance, the 
 laws relating to war (chap. xx. ; xxi. 10-14 ; xxiii. 9-14) ; 
 the eating of the fruits of one another's fields and vine- 
 yards (xxiii. 24, 25) ; the prohibition of groves and 
 images [better, an asherah or a pillar] in worship, 
 however usual these might be found in Canaan (xvi. 
 21, 22) ; which of the outside races were admissible to 
 the congregation (xxiii. 1-8) ; various regulations about 
 marriage, modesty, and purity, and filial submission 
 (xxi. 15-21 ; xxii. 13-21 ; xxiv. 1-5 ; xxv. 1-12) ; on 
 letting the slave who had escaped dwell safely among 
 them (xxiii. 15, 16) ; on moderating punishments 
 (xxv. 1-3) ; not even allowing a malefactor's body to 
 hang all night on the tree (xxi. 22, 23) ; and prohibiting 
 the death of parents for their children, or children for 
 their parents (xxiv. 16) ; protecting the land from the 
 consequences of undiscovered murder (xxi. 1-9) ; and 
 caring for the welfare of the ox that trod out the 
 corn, xxv. 4. In several of these, perhaps in almost 
 all, we can trace that law of love which I have already 
 described as the characteristic of this last exhortation 
 by the mediator of the covenant ; I mentioned this 
 as visible in the comparison of the laws for the Sab- 
 bath year and for a servant, in Exodus and Deuter- 
 onomy, and the same, may be seen in other cases, as 
 
49 
 
 in the law of gleaning (Lev. xix. 9, 10, and Dent, 
 xxiv. 19-22) ; and in the law of teaching children, and 
 writing down at home the words of God (Exod. xiii. 
 8, 9, 16, and Dent. vi. 3-9 ; xi. 18-22). The references 
 to other laws are nowhere in the way of quotations ; 
 but I appeal to the convictions of the mass of devout 
 readers of the Word of God, and I ask them whether 
 the book of Deuteronomy does not imply a continuous 
 reference both to the history and to the laws of the 
 earlier books. The variations in little details of his- 
 tory, by no means amounting to contradictions, are 
 like the variations in the mode of expressing the laws 
 which are repeated ; they impress me with the belief 
 that no one but the original historian and the law- 
 giver himself would have ventured to make them. 
 For an example of this, take the account in Exodus 
 and that in Deuteronomy of the giving of the laws 
 from Mount Sinai, and the form of the Ten Commoand- 
 ments. His reference to chap. xxix. 1 in proof that 
 D contains God's renewed covenant with Israel, 
 seems to me an improbable assumption, if it is 
 meant that this is a signature or subscription at the 
 end of the original book (as I understand that he 
 inclines to think, — see at the foot of p. 21) ; I take it 
 to be the title of the chapter at the head of which it 
 stands in the English Bible. And the other texts he 
 quotes determine nothing in favour of either the 
 Pentateuch or Deuteronomy alone, as meant by the 
 expression "this law."'"' I think the whole Penta- 
 
 * Perhaps some think a smaller Look than the Pentateuch is 
 implied in the command to the king to write *' a copy of this 
 law" (xvii. 18). But where is the hardship of the king writino- 
 this, when later Judaism required every Jew to do so 1 And if 
 the English rendering is given up for that of the Septuagint 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 teiicli is also implied in such language as chap. iv. 14: 
 "And the Lord commanded me at that time [the 
 day of giving the law at Horeb, ver. 10] to teach you 
 statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in 
 the land whither ye go over to possess it." See also 
 chap, vi, 17. I do not know how any intelligent 
 believer can satisfy himself with the opinion that 
 Deuteronomy was the only written law contemplated 
 for Israel by the author ; the incompleteness of it, 
 the arbitrary character of the contents of the supposed 
 code, strike me as they strike very many — indeed, I 
 think all whose minds are not preoccupied by a 
 hypothesis. Professor Smith immediately explains 
 that "it does not, indeed, contain a system of cere- 
 monial ordinances for the priests, because it is meant 
 for the whole people, who did not require to carry in 
 their memories details which it fell to the priests to 
 execute." But his subsequent argument about sacri- 
 fices (pp. 64-66) gives a prominence to sacrifices, in 
 some respects I think exaggerated, such as makes 
 the omission of legislation in regard to them in- 
 credible to me. And, in fact, there are two side- 
 pieces of legislation on the subject, though few will 
 think that these could ever be intended to be the 
 whole (chap. xvi. 21 ; xvii. 1) — the prohibition of cer- 
 
 trauslators, " he shall write this Deuteronomy," this very name 
 implies all that I contend for at present, the unity of this book 
 with the preceding books, one law first given and now repeated. 
 The appeal might have been made more plausibly to xxvii. 3, 8, 
 to write upon the stones " all the words of this law." Even here 
 it is fair enough to think of the whole Pentateuch, considering 
 the importance of the occasion, and the multitude of scribes at 
 Joshua's command ; but it is also quite fair to restrict it by the 
 preceding words (ver. 1), " Keep all the commandments which I 
 command you this day.'" 
 
51 
 
 tain idolatrous things about the altar, and of the 
 presentation of anything blemished ; and chap, xii., 
 which begins and ends with warnings against keeping 
 up idolatrous worship, and encloses between these 
 warnings the law of the one place of worship. Now 
 there might well be instructions as to details of the 
 sacrifices which were given to the priests, and not to 
 the people — and this seems to be the case with Lev. 
 vi. 8 — vii. 36 (in Heb. vi. 1 — vii. 36), out of the whole 
 rule for the ritual, chaps, i.-vii. ; but it is a very dif- 
 ferent matter to have no rules at all about the sacrifices, 
 though burnt-ofi*erings, sacrifices [of peace -ofi'erings ?], 
 heave- off'erings, free-will-off'erings, and burning of 
 incense are all named, as also are the three great 
 feasts, without a word of the services connected with 
 them. So far from the absence of all ritual beino- 
 
 o 
 
 natural in this book, if it was meant to be an adec[uate 
 guide to the whole people, the outlines, at least, of 
 ritual were the very thing to be placed before them, 
 which would be no burden to their memories, while 
 priests and prophets might have been left to unfold 
 its meaning as the people should be able to bear it. 
 " The law of leprosy, for example, is not repeated, but 
 the people are simply told (xxiv. 8) to follow in this 
 matter the instructions . of the priest" (p. 28). I 
 should rather say they are very specially warned, 
 though, of course, no one would expect the details of 
 that long law (Lev. xiii., xiv.) to be repeated in this 
 dying exhortation, " Take heed in the plague of 
 leprosy, that thou observe diligently, and do accord- 
 ing to all that the priests the Levites shall teach you ; 
 as I commanded them, so ye shall observe to do." That 
 law was given to the priests (Lev. xiii. 1), and they were 
 to teach the people at every changing phase of the 
 
disease ; and to this the reference in Deuteronomy is 
 as express as it could have been made, unless some- 
 thing was to be introduced like the modern quotation, 
 by chapter and verse. Nor are the people " simply 
 told to follow the instructions of the priests ; " but 
 the reference to that law receives additional emphasis 
 when they are pointed to the cognate case in history, 
 the plague of leprosy which struck Miriam, and the 
 execution of the law in her case, as recorded in Num. 
 xii. " So also difficult c[uestions of judgment are 
 reserved for decision by the priests (xvii. 8) ; but the 
 plain duties of life are complete in the book, and 
 where it fails the appeal is not to another written 
 law-book, but to the priests in person " (p. 28). I do 
 not understand this statement. In chap. xvii. 8-13, 
 I read of the priests the Levites, certainly, but they 
 are coupled with the judge that shall be in those days, 
 who must have had as much to do with the matter as 
 they ; I should think from his name that he was the 
 person to decide, and that they were his assessors 
 and advisers, as it was their business to " teach the 
 children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord 
 hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses " (Lev. 
 x. 11), as it is also said here (ver. 11), "according to the 
 sentence of the law (Tor ah) which they shall teach 
 thee." And since ver. 12 speaks of a person not 
 hearkening unto " the priest that standeth to minister 
 there before the Lord thy God, nor unto the judge," 
 it looks like a plain reference to Num. xxvii. 18-21, 
 where we read of Joshua being appointed over Israel 
 as successor to Moses, and Eleazar the priest being 
 associated with him to ask counsel for him after the 
 judgment of Urim before the Lord, which was a 
 privilege of the head of the state exclusively, as we 
 
53 
 
 read in the histories of Saul and David/" "The 
 pLain duties of common life," exclusive of all sacrificial 
 worship (excepting what has been spoken of in chap, 
 xii., xvi.), exclusive, indeed, of all acts of worship, 
 never surely could be the equivalent of a book con- 
 taining "God's covenant Avith Israel, by which the 
 people are to live, and by which they are to be 
 judged." Nor, according to the notions that pervade 
 the revelation in the Old Testament, could we expect 
 entire silence as to the uncleanness of birth (Lev. 
 xii.), and the uncleanness of death (Num. xix.), 
 however little mioht be said of ritual. And thoug^h, 
 in a good sense, Deuteronomy contains a complete 
 body of law for Israel, since I have said it brings 
 out very prominently the two great principles of love 
 to God and love to man, I cannot admit that these 
 plain duties of life are complete if we take this book 
 without its predecessors, as we ordinarily reckon them. 
 Starting, then, ^\dth this fundamental difference 
 between Professor Smith and myself, I am not likely 
 to find any obstacles to my faith in the laws of priests 
 and Levites and of tithes, or some other minor diffi- 
 culties which he urges. First, about priests and 
 Levites (from p. 29 onwards) my conception of the 
 laws differs continually from his. The tribe of Levi, 
 as a whole, were consecrated to Jehovah (Exod. xxxii. 
 26-29) in connection with, or on account of, their 
 
 * This overlooking of the civil authorities occurs also in his 
 speaking of the copy of the law at the side of the ark, as if it was 
 placed imder the exclusive care of the priests, both at p. 25 and 
 at p. 32 ; whereas the priests and the elders of Israel were con- 
 joined in this charge (Deut. xxxi. 9). Granting him that the 
 priests proper alone could be entrusted with the book lying in 
 the Holy of Holies, they would be bound at all times to produce it 
 to their co-trustees. 
 
54 
 
 faithfulness on the occasion of the sin of the o^olden 
 calf ; the passage is general and comprehensive, and 
 particulars must be looked for in later laws. It is the 
 same in Deut. x. 8, 9, which also refers to that 
 historical occasion, only various particulars of their 
 service are named as examples, for, by this time, these 
 services had been familiar to the Israelites for forty 
 years ; but there is no distribution of these duties 
 among different classes or ranks in the holy tribe, only 
 the existence of these ranks is alluded to as a fixed 
 ordinance (ver. 8) — " There Aaron died, and there he 
 was buried ; and Eleazar his son ministered in the 
 priest's ofiice in his stead." And all through D the 
 difference of rank is assumed, since we read often of 
 the priests the Levites, and again of the Levites 
 simply ; of the whole tribe of Levi among the other 
 tribes (xxvii. 12), and of a priest -and a Levite as dis- 
 tinguished from one another (xviii. 3, 6). The only ques- 
 tion is, how deep this distinction of ranks cut into the 
 constitution of the tribe ? In Q it was " a sharp line of 
 distinction " which reserved to the priests " to bless 
 the people" and " everything of the altar and within the 
 veil " (p. 29) ; but, in a note, he himself candidly fur- 
 nishes the refutation of his accompanying assertion that 
 " the name of Levites is never applied to them [i.e., the 
 priests] but designates, exclusively, the Levites who 
 are not priests ;" add Num. iii. 12, 13 ; xxvi. 57, and 
 compare also "the sons of Levi" in Exod. xxxii. 26, 
 28, and " Aaron the Levite " in Exod. iv. 14, which is 
 probably not assigned by him to Q. But the entire 
 people of Israel are holy to Jehovah, as truly as the 
 tribe of Levi; nay, on occasion of making the covenant 
 at Sinai, the promise to them is that they shall be a 
 kingdom of priests as well as a holy nation ; and 
 
individuals among them actually appear as priests in 
 full exercise of their office (Exod. xix. 22, 24). "We 
 are nowhere informed whether these priests were 
 cashiered from office, or were left to act under Aaron 
 until they passed away in the course of nature ; I 
 venture no opinion beyond saying, that though no 
 stranger was to come near to the priest's office (Num. 
 xviii. 7), men already recognised as priests by Jehovah 
 might plausibly allege that they were no strangers, for 
 they had been already brought near. Every Israelite, 
 however, was essentially a priest to Jehovah, though 
 the Mosaic ritual interfered with the exercise of his 
 functions, so that he must take the responsibility on 
 himself if he broke this law in an emergency (as David 
 broke a law of the priesthood in respect of the shew- 
 bread, 1 Sam. xxi. 4-6 ; Matt. xii. 3, 4), or held that 
 a miraculous appearance of Jehovah to him raised him 
 above the ordinary rules, like Gideon and Samson's 
 parents. And every Israelite always retained one 
 priestly prerogative, that of killing the Passover and 
 performing all the rites appointed for it ; and, more- 
 over, he had the power of approaching indefinitely 
 near to the priesthood (always excepting the altar 
 service) by taking on him the vow of the Nazarite. 
 Once a powerful and well-concerted efi'ort was made by 
 Korah and his friends to place the whole Levites on 
 one level, without acknowledgment of Aaron's family 
 as the exclusive priests ; but the history tells how 
 disastrously this ended, and how^ the wrath of God on 
 the offenders w^as seen and admitted by the whole 
 congregation. Professor Smith accepts the history as 
 heartily as I do. Remembering this point of agreement 
 between us, I cannot discover how his critical results 
 " explain one curious difference, which might at first 
 
56 
 
 seem due to accident " — the omission of Korali's name 
 in Deut. xi. 6 ; because, "it .stands to reason that 
 his example could not serve as a warning in Deutero- 
 nomy, which concedes altar privileges to any Levite " 
 (pp. 34, 35). I should argue in the opposite direction, 
 that the historic facts being indisputable, his critical 
 results must be erroneous."' 
 
 But this created no wide breach between the Levites 
 and the priests, so that I am not surprised at the 
 sameness of the language applied to the priests in 
 Numbers and to the priestly tribe in Deuteronomy, 
 apart from the explanations wdiich Mr. Curtiss offers. 
 For instance, though it is said that the priests had the 
 Levites given to them, and that they were made to 
 stand before Aaron the priest and minister to him, as 
 is noticed in p. 30 ; yet, of the whole Levites, non- 
 priestly as well as priestly, it is said in the same 
 context, "they shall be mine " (Num. iii. 12, 13, 45), 
 as all ministering to Jehovah. The carrying of the 
 ark was a physical impossibility to Aaron and his 
 
 * If I rightly understood an oral statement of Ms on this point, 
 he defended his position by a different interpretation of the facts — 
 namely, that Korah sought the priesthood not for the whole tribe 
 of Levi, but for the whole congregation of Israel. If so, I cannot 
 but differ from him, on account of the express language of Num. 
 xvi. 5-11, 40 ; besides the revolt of the Levites who claimed to be 
 priests, there was a movement professedly for the liberation and 
 advancement of the whole congregation, but this was specially 
 directed against Moses, as the other movement was against Aaron ; 
 and the civil and ecclesiastical malcontents joined hands. The 
 passage in Deuteronomy speaks of the Divine administration and 
 guidance, and names this rebellion o£ Dathan and Abiram with its 
 punishment ; but there was no reason to mention specially Korah's 
 part in it, and the peculiar punishment that overtook him ; and his 
 punishment was less awful than theirs, for it did not involve his 
 children. 
 
57 
 
 two sons, or, I should say, probably even to them and 
 their grandsons : so that when the priests in the 
 wilderness bore the ark, it must have been by the help 
 of the Levites. 
 
 He thinks it would be " a very remarkable change 
 of language on the part of Moses since the time w4ien 
 he rebuked Korah and his Levites for ' seeking the 
 priesthood also,'" if "Deuteronomy uses the word 
 lyriest in a looser sense than the earlier books, and 
 applies the term to all Levites in virtue of the sjjecial 
 consecration of the tribe " (p. 31). I do not know 
 whether it is a phrase liable to misapprehension if 
 we speak of a looser sense of the word priest ; but 
 what I hold is, that for the hortatory purpose of this 
 book it was quite suitable to pass with little or no 
 remark over the distinction of priests and Levites, of 
 which no one could be ignorant, and which no one 
 would question, since the fearful death of Korah and 
 his friends ; and that now the dying mediator's object 
 naturally was to enforce the "Levitical priesthood," 
 on which his whole institutions rested (Heb. vii. 11), 
 in its general features, the body of Levites being 
 inseparably attached to the special family of the priests, 
 and distinguished from them only at one point, most 
 important in its owm way, but which did not here call 
 for remark. He does make one change in his phrase- 
 ology, to suit the altered circumstances of Deuter- 
 onomy. In the continuous legislation of the forty 
 years he used the expressions, "Aaron," "Aaron and his 
 sons," " the priests the sons of Aaron ;" but now that 
 Aaron was dead, the personal element was eliminated 
 by the progress of time, and that the Levites were of 
 tested loyalty in their adherence to the institutions of 
 worship, he speaks of the "priests the Levites" — that is. 
 
58 
 
 the Levitical priests. I have noticed already the 
 comprehensive use of the word Levites from time to 
 time in the earlier legislation. Even when the differ- 
 ence between the priests and the Levites is the special 
 subject of discussion, the difference is confined with- 
 in narrow limits ; instead of being separated, it is 
 emphatically said — " And thy brethren, also, of the 
 tribe of Levi, the tribe of thy father, bring thou with 
 thee, that they may he joined unto thee, and minister 
 unto thee" (Num. xviii. 2) ; "And they shall he joined 
 unto thee, and keep the charge of the tabernacle of 
 the conoTegation for all the service of the tabernacle, 
 and a stranger shall not come nigh unto you" (ver. 4). 
 Professor Smith has no difficulty about including the 
 high priest along with the other priests under one 
 common name at p. 32 ; and he need have no greater 
 difficulty, for the hortatory purposes of this book, in 
 habitually identifying the priests with the entire tribe 
 of Levi. In fact, the blessing on Levi (Deut. xxxiii. 
 8-11) places in the forefront of what is said of the 
 tribe, the use of the Thummim and Urim, which was 
 emphatically the privilege of the high priest alone. 
 When the rebellion of Korah was over, the institutions 
 of Moses in general, and particularly his administra- 
 tion and Aaron's priesthood, were guarded from future 
 assaults by the budding of a rod, which represented 
 the tribe of Levi, though it is interpreted to be " the 
 rod of Aaron for the house of Levi " (Num. xvii. 1, 2, 8). 
 Accordingly, this grouping of the whole tribe of Levi 
 together in a priestly character appears in the latest 
 of all the prophets, in whose time, surely, the most 
 negative criticism will acknowledge that the distinc- 
 tion between priests and common Levites was fully 
 established. " And now, ye priests, this command- 
 
59 
 
 ment is for you. . . . And ye sliall know tliat I have 
 sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant 
 might be with Levi, saith the Lord of hosts. My 
 covenant was with him of life and peace ; and I gave 
 them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and 
 was afraid before my name. The law of truth was in 
 his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips : 
 he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn 
 many away from iniquity. For the^^r/es^'s lips should 
 keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his 
 mouth : for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. 
 But ye are departed out of the way ; ye have caused 
 many to stumble at the law ; ye have corrupted the 
 covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts " (Mai. ii. 
 1-8). And the same thing stands out plainly in the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews (vii. 5, 9, 11, 14) — "And verily 
 they that are of the sons of Levi, ivho receive the office 
 of the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes 
 of the iJeople according to the law, that is, of their 
 brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abra- 
 ham. . . . And as I may so say, Levi also, who 
 receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham. ... If 
 therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood 
 (for under it the people received the law), what further 
 need was there that another priest should rise after the 
 order of Melchisedec, and not be called after the order 
 of Aaron ? . . . For it is evident that our Lord sprang 
 out of Juda ; of which trihe Moses spake nothing con- 
 cerning ^^rzes^/^ooc/." And, indeed, the oneness not only 
 of the whole tribe, but of the whole nation, in its 
 j)riestly character, is assumed to be a well-understood 
 truth in Hosea iv. 6 — " My people are destroyed for 
 lack of knowledge : because thou hast rejected know- 
 ledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no 
 
60 
 
 priest to me : seeing tliou liast forgotten the law of 
 tliy God, I will also forget thy children." 
 
 This principle of viewing the tribe of Levi as a 
 whole, without distinguishing the minor difference of 
 distribution into classes, would of itself turn aside the 
 edge of much of the reasoning, without going into the 
 details of Mr. Curtiss's able argument in his little 
 volume, of which Professor Smith makes light ; but to 
 go into this I should require more detailed discussion 
 than my plan permits. I also reserve consideration of 
 Dent, xviii. 1, which he mentions at p. 33, because he 
 returns to it (pp. 34, 36) ; but I say in a sentence, that 
 the same principle of reply defends me against his use 
 of this text — " The priests the Levites, and all the 
 tribe of Levi, shall have no part nor inheritance with 
 Israel ; they shall eat the offerings of the Lord made 
 by fire, and his inheritance." It is not that every 
 individual Levite is or may be a priest, and shall or 
 may eat the Lord's sacrifices (which the middle 
 books assign to the priests) and his inheritance ; 
 but they, being one body, have this privilege 
 among them ; though the fuller information afforded 
 elsewhere points out which individuals in this body 
 have special duties at the altar, and special 
 privileges connected with the offerings burnt upon 
 the altar. 
 
 Secondly, in regard to the tithes, of which Professor 
 Smith speaks from p. 35 onwards, I do not hesitate to 
 admit, I assert that there are obscurities, which I 
 do not profess to understand, much less to ex- 
 plain in a brief statement. The multitudinous 
 Jewish writings on this subject are proof that learn- 
 ing and skill have found abundant opportunity for 
 exercise on the laws relating to tithes and offer- 
 
61 
 
 ings. After stating many details, lie thus sums up 
 (pp. 39, 40) :— 
 
 " And now from these tedious particulars let us turn for a 
 moment to consider how thoroughly consistent Deuteronomy is 
 throughout, and how thoroughly clear and full its provisions 
 appear to be when we take them by themselves. The Levites are 
 a tribe set apart by God to the priestly office, and on this account 
 receive no landed property. Those who are at the sanctuary in 
 the discharge of their office are nourished by the altar dues. But 
 in these revenues no Levite remote from the sanctuary can share. 
 He who is not doing priest's work has no official income. He 
 belongs to the landless classes, and in an agricultural country is 
 presumably poor. He has, therefore, a special claim on the kind- 
 ness of the people in whose midst he sojourns, and has the first 
 place among those whom the lawgiver makes the object of a 
 systematic and divinely appointed charity. The observance of this 
 charity is specially laid on the consciences of the people, but they 
 are nowhere taught to pay the Levites, by way of tribute, the 
 liberal allowance prescribed in Q, which would have raised them 
 above the need of charity." 
 
 Now I agree so far with him in p. 38, that I see no 
 command in Deuteronomy for a new kind of sacred 
 offering, but a regulation of pre\dous usage. The 
 practice of paying tithes can be traced far back among 
 many nations ; and in the tithes given by Abraham to 
 Melchizedek, and in the vow of Jacob to acknoAvledge 
 a certain place as God's house, and to give Him tithes 
 of all that he should have, we see this practice existing 
 among the patriarchs, and recorded in the Word of 
 God with implied approbation. All that was needed 
 was to regulate the practice so as to bring it into con- 
 formity with the institutions of Moses on kindred 
 matters. For one thing, the land of Canaan w^as the 
 Lord's land, and it was given to the people only in a 
 limited sense ; this was a principle guiding them in 
 the law of the jubilee, for instance — *' The land shall 
 
62 
 
 not be sold for ever : for the land is mine ; for ye are 
 strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev. xxv. 23). But 
 when He chose one tribe, that of Levi, to be His own. 
 He called them to services, partly at His sanctuary and 
 partly throughout the country, on which account they 
 were to be relieved from many of the ordinary cares of 
 life ; they were to have no share in the land to be 
 divided among the tribes, only in lieu of this they 
 were to have certain cities to dwell in, and they were 
 to receive the tenth in Israel for an inheritance (Num. 
 xviii. 20-32; xxxv. 1-8).'" This tenth, however, was 
 very different from a tithe given to God according to 
 the old practice ; it was a commutation of the rights 
 which Levi had to the land as much as the other 
 tribes. In Deuteronomy we read of a tithe brought 
 to the place which the Lord should choose, along with 
 their sacrifices and other offerings, and eaten there at 
 the three sacred feasts, in which their children, their 
 servants, and the Levites were to share (chap. xii. 6, 
 7, 11, 12, 17-19) ; while a modification of this law re- 
 quires these to be eaten every third year within their 
 gates (or their own townships, as Professor Smith 
 paraphrases it), for the Levite, the stranger, the father- 
 less, and the widow (chap. xiv. 22-29) ; and a declara- 
 tion was to be made before the Lord that this law had 
 been faithfully carried out (chap. xxvi. 12-15). The 
 contention of the critics is that there are two incon- 
 sistent laws of tithing ; that the law in Numbers does 
 not fit in with that in Deuteronomy, and would not 
 have failed to be mentioned had the latter been a 
 
 * I need not dwell on details, sucli as a tithe of the Levitical 
 tithe being given to the priests, and their right to sell and redeem 
 their houses at all times (as the Israelites generally could not do), 
 but accompanied by the prohibition of selling the suburban fields. 
 
G3 
 
 supplemeritary law. I have already stated that we 
 entirely differ from this view of the supplementary 
 legjislation. I add that it is this second tithe which 
 corresponds most nearly with the old patriarchal tithe, 
 since the tithe in Numbers was the equivalent for the 
 Levites having no share in the land, but this was an 
 offering to God for joyful services at His house, in 
 consuming which the givers of the tithe and the Levites 
 were to rejoice together. This is undoubtedly the 
 tradition of the Jewish expositors, and they call the 
 Deuteronomic tithe the second tithe ; they even speak 
 of the third tithe in that third year, though I am not 
 satisfied that they meant a third tithe over and above 
 the second, but a third tithe (as they classified it) in the 
 year in which the second tithe was not eaten at the 
 place of worship for all Israel. If Deuteronomy does not 
 repeat the tithe law promulgated in Numbers, neither 
 does it repeat the arrangements for giving no share of 
 the land to Levi, on which that law rested ; it asserts 
 the well-known fact that Levi had no part nor inherit- 
 ance amono- the tribes settled on the land, but it oives 
 no reason for their being landless. The Deuteronomic 
 tithe could never have supported them ; applied as it 
 was to so many purposes, the part which came to them 
 would have left them to .starve. Accordingly, Pro- 
 fessor Smith confines its enjoyment to those of the 
 Levites who were engaged at the sanctuary as priests 
 — " As the Levite, who is not engaged in priestly work, 
 and resident at the sanctuary, has no duties recognised 
 in D, it is natural that he receives no emoluments " 
 (p. 35). If he has no sacred duties as a Levite, how has 
 he no land like the rest of the Israelites ? Or, if it is 
 his own fault that he does not volunteer to be a priest, 
 what would have been the working of the law had the 
 
64 
 
 whole of the Levites volunteered and crowded to 
 the house of God, and scrambled for this miserable 
 pittance ? But the lawgiver, it seems, " is not with- 
 out thought for the Levites who are scattered through 
 the land, and do not share these revenues. He pro- 
 vides, accordingly, that when the people go up to feast 
 at the sanctuary, the Levite that is within their gates 
 shall have a share in the festivity" (pp. 36, 37). But 
 surely this, again, is starvation ; and what is given to 
 these Levites is just so much taken from the priestly 
 Levites. Professor Smith, indeed, goes on to speak of 
 an additional provision, the firstlings of the flock and 
 herd (Deut. xiv. 23 ; xv. 19, 20) ; but what was eaten 
 at these festive occasions in the place which the Lord 
 chose could be no appreciable supply over the year for 
 the members of a tribe scattered throughout Israel. 
 The mention of it, however, gives occasion to notice 
 the vanity of the efforts of " harmonisers""^'" to reconcile 
 this feasting on the firstlings with the lav/ in Num. 
 xviii. 18, which gives them to the priests. I have not 
 been able to feel the force of the objection to the ex- 
 planation that they are given to the extent to which 
 the peace-offerings were given — that is, in those por- 
 tions called the wave-breast and heave-shoulder — since 
 if they were wholly given to the priests, these words 
 would be superfluous ; or, perhaps, the idea would be 
 countenanced that they were given like the trespass 
 and sin offerings, which the priests' daughters and ser- 
 vants might not eat (see Num. xviii. 9-11). Besides, 
 some right of the offerers to share in them, as they did 
 in the peace-offerings, seems plainly implied in the 
 earliest law on the subject (Exod. xiii. 15) — " I sacri- 
 
 * Nor do I understand the contempt or pity for the Larmonisers 
 in p. 39. 
 
Go 
 
 jice to tlie Lord all that opeiieth the matrix being 
 males." Also, if I overlooked that absence of sharp- 
 ness and detail which Mr. Curtiss is blamed for attri- 
 buting to Deuteronomy (p. 40), and forgot that priests 
 and people are mingled in these statements in a way 
 that would be impossible if D " professed to lay before 
 the laity their whole ordinary obligations under the 
 law" (p. 39) — I should not know how to account for 
 nothing being said of the firstlings of the flocks and 
 herds of the Levites. Finally, the more emphasis one 
 lays on " the firstlings of the flock and herd, and the 
 tithe of corn, wine, and oil," going together as the 
 supply for those festivities (p. 37), the more does he 
 bring out the distinction between this vegetable tithe 
 in Deuteronomy and the tithe of the middle books, 
 which was of animals as well as of vegetable products 
 (Lev. xxvii. 30-33).-" 
 
 If the Levites had a first tithe to themselves, it may 
 however be asked, would they be classed with the 
 stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, who were to 
 be called in to share the festivities supplied by the 
 second tithe ? Yes ; for (1.) though I think it an 
 exaggeration to suppose them poverty-stricken, yet in 
 almost any country, but especially in a thoroughly 
 agricultural community, if a portion of the people are 
 shut out from holding landed property, they are sure 
 
 * The like might be said of his distinction about Teriima (in the 
 Authorised Version, "heave-offering"), \>. 39, note. If in D it 
 means not the tithe but the first-fruits (though I do not draw any 
 inference from what appears only in Dent. xii. 6, 11, 17), whereas 
 in Q it is the tithe (though it is often applied to othei- things), this 
 goes to confirm the distinction Ijetween the first and the second 
 tithes. Yet in Ezek. xx. 40 Teruma is named along with "the first- 
 fruits of your oblations," which does not favour the identification 
 of the two things. 
 
 E 
 
to lose position and influence, and to be comparatively 
 ill off. (2.) They had no civil power to enforce the 
 payment of the tithe ; the duty might be Avholly 
 neglected by the ungodly and careless, or it might be 
 performed very irregularly and imperfectly by the 
 avaricious and the self-indulgent classes. What evil 
 this has brought on the Church of Christ is patent to 
 all eyes. No wonder that the latest of the prophets 
 looks back on the history of the people from the days 
 of their fathers down to his own, and declares that 
 they have robbed God in tithes and offerings, and that 
 therefore as a nation they are cursed with a curse 
 (Mai. iii. 7-9). The warnings, appeals, and encourage- 
 ments of Deuteronomy are just the first teachings of 
 systematic religious giving, to be carried on until Paul 
 wrote his epistles ; but the lesson, because it is a moral 
 lesson, requiring high spirituality, was hard to learn 
 and to carry out. It is to me, however, a most 
 improbable supposition that the later Jews should have 
 burdened themselves with a second tithe, if this had 
 not been the Divine law from the first ; and if any one 
 thinks that hierarchical influence might conceivably 
 have introduced it in the Jerusalem of Ezra, he will 
 have new difficulties in believing that it spread among 
 the Dispersion, who for generations had lived in exile 
 among the heathen, like the Jews of Egypt, as is shown 
 in the Septuagint version of Deut. xxvi. 12, and the 
 Eastern Jews, as in Tobit i. 7. On the other hand, it 
 is no new conjecture that the details of Joseph's tax of 
 one-fifth of the produce imposed on the Egyptians is 
 narrated partly that the Israelites might not think it 
 hard to pay two-tenths for Him who was at once their 
 God and their King ; especially as the first tithe was 
 really a commutation of property, and the second was, 
 
07 
 
 to a considerable extent, consumed by the very parties 
 who brought it. 
 
 Something, indeed, is made of the Levitical cities in 
 pp. 35, 36 ; and a "very precise sense" is attributed 
 to the word rendered " sojourn," though I should think 
 its meaning very much the reverse of precise if I accepted 
 as accurate the statement of its changes of meaning 
 given in the note, pp. 19, 20. I adhere to the common 
 view, that Moses appointed, and Joshua assigned, these 
 cities and their suburbs for the use of the Levites, 
 including the priests (Num. xxxv. 1-8 ; Josh. xxi). 
 But I do not believe that all the cities assigned by 
 Joshua actually came into the possession of the Israel- 
 ites ; and, judging by the analogy of the tithes, I should 
 not wonder if some of the cities assigned by Joshua 
 were needlessly and unrighteously withheld from them. 
 Neither do I understand that the entire city, all the 
 houses in it, was oiven to the Levites, thouofh a certain 
 portion of suburban pasture-ground was given to them ; 
 all that they had was a right to a sufficient number of 
 houses for their occupation. Any one who admits the 
 historical truth of Josh. xxi. must see that when ver. 4 
 assigns thirteen cities to the sons of Aaron, this might 
 at first be on an average one city to one family, or 
 somewhere thereabouts. And I believe that my 
 account of the occupation of these cities is confirmed 
 by the law of the jubilee (Lev. xxv. 33) : " And if a 
 man purchase of the Levites, then the house that 
 was sold, and the city of his possession, shall go out 
 in the year of jubilee ; for the houses of the cities of 
 the Levites are their possession among the children of 
 Israel." Among other things, it is to be noted here 
 that the word fairly enough rendered '* purchase," 
 literally is " redeem ; " for the city belonged to the tribe 
 
68 
 
 within whose territory it was situated, and might be 
 largely or even mostly occupied by the men of that 
 tribe. Levites, no doubt, had a special right to occupy 
 such houses as they required, but if one of their houses 
 was purchased from them, it was really redeemed and 
 restored to the people from whom it had been tem- 
 porarily alienated by an ecclesiastical servitude over it. 
 In this way I am at a loss to understand the comment 
 on Dent, xviii. 6 at p. 36 — 
 
 *' We find in xviii. 6 that the Levite who is not at the sanctuary 
 is supposed to be sojourning in some city of Israel, The woi-d 
 which our translators render sojourn has a very precise sense ; it 
 means to live, not as a burgess, but as a stranger (Ger), under the 
 protection of some person or community. That the word can be 
 used of Levites residing in their own cities is asserted by Keil 
 without an iota of evidence, and is absolutely excluded by the 
 words of the text, which speak of the Levite as sojourning in an^/ 
 Hebrew town." 
 
 The Levites might be sojourners, perhaps, even in 
 this precise sense, not burgesses, but strangers under 
 the protection of the tribe to whom what was called 
 their city belonged ; so thoroughly so that Micah's 
 Levite (albeit ajDparently the grandson of Moses, as 
 Professor Smith says, p. 21, note) is named " a young 
 man out of Bethlehem-judah, of the family of Judah, 
 who was a Levite " (Judges xvii. 7) ; and, in like 
 manner, the Levite, Samuel's father, is called an 
 Ephrathite (1 Sam. i. 1) — that is, I suppose, an Eph- 
 raimite, because he lived in Mount Ephraim. Nor is 
 there either contradiction of this view, or yet absurdity, 
 as Professor Smith supposes, if we prefer, with Mr. 
 Curtiss, after Aben Ezra, to understand the law (Deut. 
 xviii. 6-8) to apply to the extreme case of a Levite who 
 has reduced himself to the condition of a sojourner, 
 technically so called, by selling his house and going to 
 
G9 
 
 live in lodgings elsewhere ; even such a one was to 
 have his rights protected, and the purchase-money of 
 his house reserved, when he went up to the place 
 which the Lord should choose, to do service there. 
 
 And now I must look at Deut. xviii. 1-8. I have 
 already (p. 60) noticed his comment (p. 33 on ver. 1), 
 and it will be all the plainer now. The Levitical 
 priests, and the whole tribe of Levi, having no part 
 or inheritance with Israel, were to eat the offerings of 
 the Lord made by fire, and His inheritance ; this last 
 word including the first tithe (the commutation of their 
 interest in the land) and various small perquisites. 
 Besides this inheritance of the Lord, given directly by 
 Him, there is added (ver. 3, 4) the priest's diUQfrom the 
 people, about which I have no desire to avoid acknow- 
 ledging that there is sometliing not clearly known, of 
 which I am willing to let Professor Smith make all 
 that he does in pp. 40, 41. I shall have something 
 yet to say about my ignorance of such matters, though 
 I think he dismisses too summarily a cjuestion which 
 the Jewish as well as the Christian authorities have 
 long admitted to be very difficult, yet have tried to 
 explain as in all probability somehow an indemnity, 
 or equivalent, given to the priests by the people on the 
 necessary cessation of a law meant only for the camp 
 (Lev. xvii. 3), about killing animals for food at the 
 door of the tabernacle. Finally, as the ichole tribe of 
 Levi had been named after the Levitical priests in 
 ver. 1, so now, after the case of the priests (ver. 3-5), 
 we Ihave the case of Levites volunteering to minister 
 at the tabernacle. The Levites, being vastly more 
 numerous than the priests, must have done almost 
 everything for the few priests at first, except what 
 they were expressly forbidden to do ; and being so 
 
identified with them in the statements of this popular 
 book, it is no wonder that the Language applied to 
 their service is almost exactly the same in ver. 7 as 
 that applied to the priests in ver. 5. The priests 
 ministered to the Lord; so did the Levites (Num. 
 iii, 31), though it is also said that they ministered to 
 the priests (Num. xviii. 2), and even to the congrega- 
 tion (Num. xvi. 9) ; and the standing before the Lord 
 is a common expression for service, applied to the whole 
 people (Lev. ix. 5 ; Deut. iv. 10 ; Jer. vii. 10), and to 
 themselves by the prophets Elijah and Elisha. I see 
 no reason, then, for absolutely identifying the services 
 of "the priest" (ver. 3) and "the Levite" (ver. 6, 7), 
 though Professor Smith takes the identification as a 
 matter of course (pp. 32, 34). 
 
 In regard to the line of argument from difiiculties 
 in the way of reconciling certain laws in Deuteronomy 
 with certain others in the earlier books, I quote from 
 what Professor Smith has said in his first " Answer to 
 the Form of Libel " (pp. 35, 36) :— 
 
 " We find in different i:)arts of the Pentateucli several laws on 
 the same subject, which are not simply supplementary one to the 
 other, but differ in such a way that those who affirm that all are 
 really of Mosaic date, and designed to be in operation at one and the 
 same time, confess that it is often impossible to determine, otherwise 
 than hypothetically, how the scattered details are to be reconciled, 
 and what is the practice actually enjoined by the law. We have 
 here a problem which can only be solved by recognising some 
 peculiar pi'inciple in the composition of the Pentateuch. Laws 
 are meant to be obeyed, and to be obeyed they must be understood. 
 It was not enough for the people to believe the laws to be consist- 
 ent, unless they could actually make them consistent, and find 
 them unambiguous in practice. Either, then, we must suppose 
 an oral tradition descending from Moses as the real authority by 
 which the apparent contradictions in the laws were resolved in 
 practice, or we must seek an historical explanation depending on 
 
the way in which the Pentateuch was put together. The former 
 supposition places tradition above the written Word, and so the 
 Biblical student is, perforce, thrown back on the latter. "We cannot 
 give up the Pentateuch as a book which, from its very origin, was 
 a hopeless riddle, and, therefore, we must call in critical inquiiy 
 to help us to understand why one law-book contains precepts which 
 not only appear inconsistent to us, but which in many cases must 
 have been equally puzzling to the Hebrews themselves." 
 
 I look upon these difficulties as being, on the show- 
 ing of the critics themselves, very few and minute ; not 
 to be compared for a moment with the evidence for 
 unity of authorship from the habitual character of the 
 books. Further — (1.) In that first " Answer to the 
 Form of Libel " (p. 56), Professor Smith admits it to 
 be " conceivable that the last editor, who can hardly 
 be placed much before the time of Ezra, may already 
 have lost the knowledge that the Deuteronomic law 
 was not actually written by Moses. He perhaps 
 regarded all the laws as literally from Moses, and 
 traces of this opinion may appear in his editorial 
 work." If this be conceivable, the Jew at least can 
 scarcely have seen any irreconcilability in these laws. 
 (2.) If he or his fellow Israelites did think them 
 irreconcilable, as a modern critic does, on what prin- 
 ciple were they to regulate their obedience? Were 
 they, at all hazards, to stick to Moses, the original 
 leo;islator, and the neatest messeno-er from God to 
 Israel, whatever later authorities might teach ? or were 
 they to consider the older law repealed by the newer 
 one 1 and if so, on what principle were they to settle 
 the chronological order of these laws, since the critics 
 themselves are in the most divided state of opinion, 
 some placing the most of the laws in Leviticus at the 
 very end of the series (the time of Ezekiel being the 
 earliest possible), others looking on them as the oldest 
 
part of tlie legisLation in the middle books ? I pity 
 the poor people who had this law to obey, if they were 
 critics. (3.) It is a very natural supposition that some 
 of these laws referred to matters easily understood at 
 the time, which are dark to us, because the circum- 
 stances are now unknown, as they are unimportant, 
 to us ; for instance, the instructions to Moses for the 
 erection of the tabernacle ; as afterwards to David, for 
 the erection of the temple. So, indeed, the ritual of 
 the Mosaic institutions arose out of the ritual of patri- 
 archal worship ; on that simpler and broader basis it 
 pleased God to erect the complicated system under 
 which He placed the Church of Israel. (4.) I do not 
 like the language in which he expresses the supposition 
 which he rejects ; but in substance I accept it. Protest- 
 ants reject tradition as a co-ordinate authority with 
 the written Word of God, because they hold that the 
 written Word was completed in the earliest times of 
 the Christian Church, and that nothing now is to be 
 added to this written Word as authoritative from God 
 to men ; but so long as the written Word was incom- 
 plete, they hold that there were apostolic traditions of 
 equal authority with it, to which the apostle Paul 
 himself refers in his epistles (1 Cor. xi. 2 ; 2 Thess, 
 ii. 15 ; iii. 6). And they have never doubted that 
 during the centuries in which a succession of inspired 
 men rose up in the Jewish Church, authorita- 
 tive instructions were asked and given in regard to 
 difficult matters connected with the law. Professor 
 Smith himself insists on this in his "Additional 
 Answer" (p. 28) as quite a characteristic of Deuter- 
 onomy, that reference is made to the priests for 
 authoritative instruction (chap. xxiv. 8 ; xvii. 8) ; only 
 I have to object, as I have so often to do, to his way 
 
73 
 
 of stating the matter : "So, also, difficult questions of 
 judgment are reserved for decision by the priests 
 (xvii. 8) ; but the plain duties of life are complete in 
 the book, and where it fails, the appeal is not to another 
 law-book, but to the priests in person." It is just 
 these difficult questions in judgment, " between blood 
 and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke 
 and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy 
 gates " (ver. 8), which were to be brought up before, 
 not the priests alone, but them and " the judge that 
 shall be in those days" (ver. 9, 12). And if any one 
 think that this would not cover the case of ritual 
 difficulties, we have the prohibition of wine to the 
 priests on account of their duties : " And that 
 ye may put difference between holy and unholy, 
 and between clean and unclean, and that ye may 
 teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the 
 Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses " 
 (Lev. X. 10, 11). The habitual exercise of this func- 
 tion, I suppose, leads Hosea (iv. 4) to describe the 
 hopeless state of wilful disobedience which prevailed 
 in his day : " Yet let no man strive, nor reprove 
 another : for thy people are as they that strive with 
 the priest." Inquiries on the a2:)plication of the law to 
 the conduct of the people appear to be made to the 
 priests in Haggai ii. 10-13; Zech. vii. 1-3. In Mai. 
 ii. 7 the general principle is affirmed : " The priest's 
 lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the 
 law at his mouth." And in Ezra ii. 61-63 the difficulty 
 arose about admitting some to the rights of the priest- 
 hood whose lineage was not clearly made out, with, of 
 course, the corresponding difficulty that they might 
 otherwise be deprived of their rights and hindered in 
 the discharge of their duties ; and, by a compromise, 
 
the Tirsliatha said unto tliem, that they should not eat 
 of the most holy things till there stood up a priest with 
 Urim and with Thumraim, I think with a manifest 
 reference to what Eleazar the high priest was to do for 
 Moses' successor Joshua (Num. xxvii. 21). 
 
 The Evidence from the Subsequent History. 
 
 Having settled to his own satisfaction the irrecon- 
 cilability of Q and D, Professor Smith discusses the 
 evidence from the history of Israel in Canaan as 
 furnishing " evidence that during part of that history 
 the law of Q was out of use, and current practice 
 agreed with what is taken for granted in D" (p. 43). 
 To those of us who believe that Q and D and their 
 irreconcilability are all imaginary there is no object 
 in dwelling upon this argument, unless there be some- 
 thing which, on our principles, it is important to notice. 
 
 For instance, as to priestly dues, it is an unautho- 
 rised interpretation and inference to say of the time of 
 Jehoiada the high priest, and king Joash of Judali, 
 " it is quite against the law of Q that a money pay- 
 ment was taken instead of the sin and trespass offer- 
 ing" (2 Kings xii. 16), p. 43; while his note there 
 that "Deuteronomy does not mention sin and tres- 
 j)ass offerings " would seem to prove that the cere- 
 monial law at that time, recognising sin and trespass 
 offerings, was that of Leviticus. I might add that, when 
 Samuel's father brought three bullocks and one ephah of 
 flour to the house of the Lord in Shiloh (1 Sam. i. 24), his 
 action corresponded with the rule of Num. xv. 9, one- 
 third of an ephah to a bullock. I do not think he 
 can expect to build any argument that tithes were 
 not paid, according to Numbers, from the threatening 
 to Eli, that " every one that is left in thine house 
 
shall come and croiicli to him for a piece of silver 
 and a morsel of bread, and shall say, Put me, I pray 
 thee, into one of the priest's offices, that I may eat 
 a piece of bread" (1 Sam. ii. 36). And I see nothing 
 in the tithe paid in Hezekiah's time (1 Chron. xxxi.), 
 which does not agree with the laws of the middle 
 books and of Deuteronomy ; though, perhaps, his 
 document Q may exclude the law of Lev. xxvii ; if 
 so, this is merely an instance of the arbitrariness with 
 which the limits of these imaginary documents are 
 drawn. 
 
 About the residences of the Levites I have already 
 spoken, and see little to notice in the statement in 
 pp. 44, 45, further than to say that if to Professor 
 Smith "it hardly appears that these cities were 
 occupied according to the law of Q," I do not know 
 anything in opposition to that law. I certainly could 
 infer nothing from the vagabond and ill-doing Levite 
 in the book of Judges (chap, xvii.) ; and I see nothing, 
 one way or other, in the Levite sojourning on the side 
 of Mount Ephraim (chap. xix. 1). " Abiathar's original 
 city, the priestly city, loai' excellence, in the time of 
 Saul, was Nob, which is not one of the forty-eight 
 cities named in Joshua." The same might be said 
 of the city to which the . priests and the tabernacle 
 afterwards moved — namely, Jerusalem ; but neither 
 the one circumstance nor the other invalidates the 
 historical truth of Josh. xxi. (which truth I shall 
 believe that Professor Smith accepts till I know the 
 contrary), that the cities of the priests and Levites 
 were set apart by Joshua according to the law in 
 Num. xxxv., and in so far as they were cities of 
 refuse, also in Deut. xix. I am at a loss to know 
 why Abiathar and Jeremiah might not possess fields 
 
76 
 
 at Anathoth, and sell them too, if only these were 
 not within the pasture-ground, 2000 cubits on each 
 side of the city, without going against the Penta- 
 teuchal legislation ; perhaps, even within that limit, 
 Jeremiah might sell ground to a cousin, if he was, like 
 himself, a priest. Undoubtedly there are difficulties 
 which we have not the means of solving, about the 
 distribution of the non-priestly Levites, whose cities 
 all lay outside of the tribes of Judali, Simeon, and 
 Benjamin, when Jeroboam's revolution cast them off; 
 but as we know that this was a strange destruction 
 of the provision for them, it is a good evidence that 
 this provision had been made in a period earlier than 
 Jeroboam's time. Somehow the Levites would be 
 provided for, no doubt; and, according to my view 
 of the Levites having merely the needed houses in 
 the cities assigned to them, it is not unlikely that all 
 along there might be some Levites in the priestly 
 cities of Judah, and that more were accommodated 
 there after that revolution. 
 
 But more important is the argument (pp. 45, 46), 
 that there is no trace of distinction between priests 
 and Levites generally : — 
 
 " In the period of the Judges we have clear proof that the law 
 of Q was not in force. Samuel, though not sprung from Aaron, 
 was from his childhood a priest, even wearing the ephod, which 
 was the instrument of the sacred lot, and is confined in Q to the 
 high priest {sivpra, p. 33). So all the priests of Nob wore the 
 ephod (1 Sam. xxii. 18), and even David, on a great occasion, 
 wore this vestment, offered sacrifices as a priest before the Lord, 
 and blessed the people in the name of Jehovah (2 Sam. vi. 14, 18). 
 Moreover, the sons of David were priests, as the Hebrew of 2 
 Sam. viii. 1 8 unambiguously declares. These facts, be it observed, 
 do n'ot imply mere temporary deflection from the law of Q under 
 the pressure of circumstances. They refer to the stated customs 
 
of the chief family of priests and the court of the king after God's 
 heart ; and therefore they are unambiguous proof that the strict 
 Levitical law had at that time no recognition." 
 
 I tliink this extract is of considerable value, because 
 it brings out Professor Smith's idea of " clear proof," 
 and "unambiguous proof," where I can see nothing 
 of the kind ; and thus it opens up the fact that the 
 recent critics and the school to which I attach myself, 
 take different views of the strength of probable evi- 
 dence. The high priest did have an ephod made " of 
 gold, of blue, and of purple, of scarlet, and fine twined 
 linen with cunning work" (Exod, xxviii. 6). But 
 it is rather too much to identify this with the " ephod 
 of linen," which the whole of the priests, Samuel, 
 and David wore, which wanted, we may say, every- 
 thing that distinguished the high priest's gorgeous 
 dress ; and this without entering on the difficult 
 question of the identity or difference of the words for 
 "fine linen," shesh in the high priest's ephod, &c., and 
 "linen," hadh in Samuel's and the others, as badk 
 is also used in Exod. xxviii. 42, of the linen breeches 
 worn both by Aaron and his sons.'''^ It is a gratuitous 
 assumption that David ofi'ered sacrifices as a priest 
 (2 Sam. vi. 18). He ofi'ered sacrifices, but this may 
 just as well mean that he ofiered them by the priests 
 as the appointed agents. So it was understood by 
 
 * In his note, p. 33, to which he refers the reader, he gives a 
 priestly character also to Samuel's mantle or coat (1 Sam. ii. 18, 
 19). It is possible that it bore a resemblance to the high priest's 
 "robe of the ephod" (Exod. xxviii. 31), and was connected with 
 his ephod, but this is not said, and is quite uncertain ; certainly 
 the same Hebrew word designates Jonathan's robe and Saul's 
 (1 Sam. xviii. i ; xxiv. 4, 11); those of the king's daughters 
 (2 Sam. xiii. 18) ; those of Job and his friends (Job i. 20 ; ii. 12) ; 
 and those of the princes of the sea (Ezek. xxvi. IC). 
 
the Chronicler, as the extremest of the critics allow, 
 yet he employs the same phrase (l Chron. xvi. 2 ; see 
 also xxi. 24, 26; 2 Chron. viii. 12, 13), though he 
 could have easily varied his expressions (as "com- 
 manded to offer," 2 Chron. xxix. 27) if he had felt 
 there was any risk of being misunderstood. So Solo- 
 mon offered 1000 burnt-offerings (1 Kings iii. 4 ; 
 2 Chron. i. 6), and Hezekiah speaks of our fathers 
 failing to offer sacrifices (2 Chron. xxix. 7). AVe read 
 also of a female offering (Isa. Ivii. 6, 7), and of the 
 Israelites under Joshua (Josh. viii. 31), and of Balak 
 and Balaam offering (Num. xxiii. 2). But, indeed, such 
 language is unequivocally used in the law of Moses, in 
 cases where it must mean that men offer by a priest, 
 and no explanation is vouchsafed of a thing that every 
 one may understand (Exod. xxx. 9 ; Lev. xvii. 8 ; 
 Deut. xii. 13, 14). "Moreover, the sons of David 
 were priests, as the Hebrew of 2 Sam. viii. 18 un- 
 ambiguously declares." It might have been proper 
 to add, at least, a note that many sufficiently pro- 
 nounced critics agree with those of the school of 
 Hengstenberg in believing that it is impossible to 
 think of priests here, or in the case of Ira the Jairite 
 (2 Sam. XX, 26), and in that of Zabud (1 Kings iv. 
 5), where the authorised version follows the ancient 
 ones in rendering the word "chief ruler "or "prin- 
 cipal officer," copying, indeed, 1 Chron. xviii. 17. 
 For this there is the analogy of the English word 
 "minister," now restricted to the two senses of a 
 servant of God or a servant of the king ; and so Ira 
 is styled "priest (i.e., principal officer) to the king, 
 and Zabud is styled " priest, the king's friend." 
 
 Samuel's case, however, is especially interesting. 
 Some critics have insisted that he was no Levite, in 
 
spite of the genealogy in Chronicles, but an Ephraimite, 
 on account of 1 Sam. i. 1, a passage to which I have 
 already alluded (p. 68). Professor Smith, on the con- 
 trary, heartily accepts the historical fact, but lays 
 emphasis upon his not being sprung from Aaron. But 
 Samuel's position was one altogether unique, a second 
 Moses, who, like him, was but a private Levite, and 
 whose children remained private Levites ; and as 
 Moses had been the instrument of giving the law to 
 Israel, Samuel appears as the instrument of its restora- 
 tion. In such persons it is vain to look for obedience 
 to the details of that law w^hich the one introduced, 
 and the other restored to life, in virtue of a Divine 
 commission : so that all through the Pentateuch 
 Moses appears capable of any priestly function, dis- 
 ij^charging it alongside of Aaron and his sons (Exod. xl. ; 
 Lev. ix), consecrating them to their office (Exod. xxix. ; 
 Lev. viii. ; Num. xx. 23-28), and expressly admitted 
 to privileges from which all others are excluded 
 (Num. xii). Samuel's history points him out as 
 occupying an analogous high position ; dedicated as a 
 Nazarite for life under peculiar circumstances, giving 
 special weight to this quasi-priestly consecration ; 
 called by Jehovah in his childhood ; commissioned to 
 denounce the existing priesthood and to foretell its 
 ruin ; seeing the ark carried captive and the house of 
 God laid desolate ; and then acknowledged all along 
 as the chosen mouthpiece of God to Israel, the instru- 
 ment of working out national repentance and reforma- 
 tion, and the man who restored the interrupted 
 national worship. Scripture, therefore, expressly 
 accords him a position quite above that of any other 
 servant of God in Israel after Moses and Aaron. 
 "Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel 
 
80 
 
 among them that call upon his name ; they called 
 upon the Lord, and he answered them. He spake 
 unto them in the cloudy pillar : they kept his testi- 
 monies, and the ordinance that he gave them. Thou 
 answeredst them, Lord our God : thou wast a God 
 that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance 
 of their inventions" (Ps. xcix. 6-8). "Then the Lord 
 said unto me. Though Moses and Samuel stood before 
 me, yet my mind could not be toward this people : 
 cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth" 
 (Jer. XV. 1). I know of only one other name in Scrip- 
 ture at all like Samuel's in the way it is linked on to 
 that of Moses ; it is Elijah's, see Mai. iv. 4-6 ; and he 
 was also a man outstanding in such a way as to be 
 distinct from all other prophets, and to be a witness 
 for that law of Moses in the kingdom of the ten 
 tribes, where he would have been another Samuel, 
 but that the nation had sunk too far. Of the reform- 
 ing work of Samuel and Elijah I may have a little to 
 say further on. 
 
 I am content to leave Professor Smith's discussions 
 of Eli's house (pp. 46, 47) to his intelligent readers, 
 without comment. I should think that few of them 
 will see any probability in his assertions that Zadok 
 " cannot have been a member of the house of Aaron ; " 
 that Eli and his descendant Abiathar "were unquestion- 
 ably sprung of Aaron through Eleazar and his son 
 Phinehas ; " and that " in the time of the Chronicler, 
 sons of Eleazar and Ithamar respectively w^ould mean 
 no more than the higher and lower guild of priests." 
 
 I do not well know how to deal, within such a 
 compass as I can allow myself, with the discussions of 
 Ezek. xliv. 6-16, in pp. 47-50, the substance of which 
 is, that all the Levites had hitherto been permitted to 
 
81 
 
 act as priests, but that the prophet now announced 
 the will of God that they should be excluded, as a 
 punishment for their sins, and condemned to lower 
 services, while the priesthood should be henceforth 
 limited to the house of Zadok. I fear that I do not 
 understand to what this Hmitation amounts : for since 
 the expression the sons of Zadok "naturally means 
 the whole guild of temple priests," p. 50 (and not yet 
 the higher as opposed to the lower guild of priests, 
 as it might perhaps mean in Chronicles, according 
 to the discussion in p. 47, to which we are referred), 
 I should have inferred that the judicial sentence, 
 " henceforth the priesthood is limited to the house of 
 Zadok," must be equivalent to saying, "henceforth 
 the priesthood is limited to the v^^hole guild of temple 
 priests," which I can scarcely suppose that Ezekiel 
 needed eleven verses to say. Then there are various 
 " singular " assertions, for which I should like a little 
 more authority than I can find : as that these lower 
 services to which the Levites were now to be restricted 
 " in Ezekiel's time were allowed to fall into the hands 
 of foreigners ;" for that the royal body-guard in David's 
 time consisted of Philistines, Cretans, and Carians, and 
 that two out of these three at all events continued to 
 act till towards the prophet's time ; that they had 
 come to be the temple guard as well as the palace 
 guard ; that to these foreigners Ezekiel doubtless 
 alludes ; and that " their functions were in fact so 
 nearly Le%dtical, that the Chronicler in his account of 
 Jehoiada's revolution calls them Levites" (p. 49). 
 
 With respect to Ezekiel's temple (chap, xl.-xlviii.), 
 I should wish to speak very cautiously. The peculi- 
 arities are great, both in respect of matters passed over 
 which the laws of the Pentateuch and the accounts of 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 Solomon's temple have mentioned, and in respect of 
 new legislation, not so much about the house itself as 
 about the courts. But the enormous size of the house, 
 the express abolition of any distinction between the 
 holy and the most holy place, and the ignoring of the 
 ark, and of the day of atonement, the disappearance 
 of the high priest altogether, while restrictions laid by 
 Moses on the high priest alone are now laid on the whole 
 of the priests, the marked silence also in reference to the 
 evening sacrifice and the feast of weeks or Pentecost, 
 and the institution of a new service on the first and 
 the seventh days of the first month ; these peculiari- 
 ties, along with the new arrangements for the prince 
 (not the king), and the division of the land in a way 
 that revolutionises the old allotment by Moses and 
 Joshua, while yet it manifestly alludes to it, forbid any 
 adhesion to the hypothesis which I understand Pro- 
 fessor Smith to favour, as he says of the priesthood, 
 henceforth to be restricted to the sons of Zadok, " on 
 our interpretation the command of God was fulfilled 
 under the second temple " (p. 50). I cannot for a 
 moment imagine that the scheme (Ezek. xl.-xlviii.) 
 was a programme to be carried out under the second 
 temple. I can imagine that it refers to some great 
 revival of worship at the temple and an occupation of 
 the land of Canaan l^y Christianised Israel in millennial 
 times, though this is not my actual opinion ; but I 
 have no doubt, with the mass of Christian interpreters, 
 that it refers exclusively to blessings in the times of 
 the Gospel, somehow connected with the old Jewish 
 services, while my own inclination is to expect a 
 metaphorical or spiritual fulfilment. Beyond this, I 
 feel no certain conviction, and I have no theory of 
 interpretation to favour ; I must wait for more light. 
 
88 
 
 Believing in a certain dependence of Ezekiel on Jere- 
 miah, and noticing in both prophets a connection 
 between the royal and the priestly offices, it would 
 not surprise me if Zadok — that is, righteous — were a 
 symbolical name, associated indeed with the historical 
 high priest who presided over the house of God wdien 
 David and Solomon prepared for the temple and 
 founded it, yet, also, associated with Jeremiah's pro- 
 phecy of the Righteous Branch, Jer. xxiii. 5 ; even as 
 I follow the mass of Christian interpreters in not 
 restricting to Zadok and his descendants that faithful 
 priest with the sure house, of whom Eli was told that 
 he should walk before the Lord's Anointed for ever 
 (1 Sam. ii. 35). I do not wonder, however, if any one 
 speculating on the matter reckons that probably the 
 line of the high priest Zadok kept up the reputation 
 of their ancestor, and were promised such a pre- 
 eminence as to warrant their being specially honoured 
 by being named in these chapters of Ezekiel ; but there 
 is nothing hinted in chap xliv. of their being the only 
 priests. Indeed, as we read in Ezra ii. 36-39 of the 
 return from exile of priests belonging to the second, 
 the sixteenth, the fifth, and the third of the twenty-four 
 classes into which David divided them — sixteen of 
 Eleazar's house, and eight of Ithcimar's (1 Chron. xxiv.), 
 according to the ordinary supposition that Eleazar's 
 house always drew two lots for Ithamar's one — the 
 third class, that of Harim, at all events, would belong 
 to Ithamar's, however many more there might be. 
 The priests of the high places, again, which Josiah 
 put down, might be partly descendants of Aaron, who 
 had a right to be priests, but had done wrong in 
 officiating at these places — and partly Levites who had 
 usurped the priestly office, as we read of Micah the 
 
84 
 
 Levite doiug in Judges xvii. ; we cannot say. Yet 
 Josiah's permission to them to eat the mileavened 
 bread among their brethren (2 Kings xxiii. 8, 9) is no 
 proof that he reckoned them all rightful priests ; but 
 in his great reformation he was as tender towards what 
 we call vested interests as he could possibly be, and 
 copying the merciful law wdiich permitted a share in 
 " the bread of his God " to the priest whose bodily 
 defects shut him out from service at the altar (Lev. 
 xxi. 16-24), since God spared the lives of these sinners 
 in times of general ignorance or backsliding, he merci- 
 fully made this provision for their living. Whether 
 there be any connexion between these priests of the 
 high places, deposed yet fed by Josiah, and the Levites 
 in Ezek. xliv. 1 3, who were not to draw near to do the 
 office of a priest to the Lord, I shall not pretend to 
 say. Ezekiel says nothing of the feeding mentioned 
 in Kings, and the book of Kings says nothing of their 
 being made keepers of the charge of the house spoken 
 of in Ezek. ver. 14. But both in respect of those 
 Levites who went astray, and those sons of Zadok that 
 kept the charge of the sanctuary, Ezekiel gives the 
 date, " when Israel went astray from me," or " went 
 astray, which went astray away from me after their 
 idols ;" and this may go back as far as the time when 
 Solomon built his high places in Jerusalem, or when 
 Jeroboam turned the Levites off, unless indeed they 
 became priests in his high places ; and from that time 
 onward they may have had sore temptations to be 
 unfaithful. It is a delio;htful field, in which the mind 
 of the speculative theologian may roam, because he is 
 not encumbered with facts ; almost the only thing 
 recorded, however, is to the honour of the Levites, 
 that in Hezekiah's reformation the Levites gave all 
 
85 
 
 tlie help tliey lawfully could to the j)riests, " for the 
 Levites were more upright in heart to sanctify them- 
 selves than the priests " (2 Chron. xxix. 34). 
 
 DiFFEREXCE OF THE DaTE OF D AND S. 
 
 " The Deuteronomic code is represented in chaps, v. 1 seq., vi. 1 
 seq., and in the subscription xxix. 1, as a renewal of the covenant 
 made with the people at Horeb, and a repetition of the command- 
 ments then laid upon them. 
 
 " Now the part of the Pentateuch which contains the original 
 Sinaitic Covenant is, as we have already seen, the document S 
 embracing Exod. xx.-xxiii. ; and when we speak of D as a repeti- 
 tion of the law, we must remember that it does not profess to 
 repeat any other law than that of S, to which the people were 
 solemnly pledged at Sinai. Between S and D a very intimate 
 relation subsists " (p. 54). 
 
 On this topic, as on the last, my position leads me to 
 say comparatively little. I have already said that I 
 look on Deut. xxix. 1 as the title of the covenant in the 
 plains of Moab, recorded in that chapter and the next. 
 The resemblance to S — that is, to Exod. xx.-xxiii. — is 
 indeed very considerable, but it cannot be on the 
 ground on which he puts it, if I am right ; indeed 
 others, with as much reason as he has for pronouncing 
 D a development and expansion of S, have traced 
 in the topics of Deuteronomy an expansion of the Ten 
 Commandments. In both views, we may allow that 
 there is considerable truth ; and for reasons already 
 given, I do not hesitate, in opposition to what he says 
 in p. 55, to answer with a decided affirmative the 
 cjuestion, whether the language and the matter of the 
 two books is consistent with the idea that both are 
 Mosaic, written within forty years. Of course D is 
 an expansion of S where they are parallel, because it 
 
86 
 
 is many times as long. The examples of changes, to 
 which he refers, have been already discussed, and I 
 hope they are seen to be of no value for his argument. 
 The law of seduction admits of viewing the act l3oth 
 as a crime and as a civil injury, for which damages are 
 to be obtained, and the prominence given to the one 
 view or the other furnishes no evidence of the date of 
 the law ; the latter view is that which the English 
 law lonsf took, and for ouQ-ht I know still takes. 
 
 But " the great central difference between S and D " 
 is that to which he gives his strength, from p. 57 
 onward ; Exod. xx. 24 being held to sanction 
 indefinitely numerous altars for worship, whereas 
 Deut. xii. sanctions only one. In order to concen- 
 trate attention on this, I shall not dwell on minor 
 things to which I object ; such as that simplicity was 
 the principle which required an altar of earth or 
 unhewn stones (p. 57), whereas the law itself says that 
 human work upon the altar polluted it ; or, that the 
 altar of burnt-ofi'ering is supposed by us to have 
 superseded that altar of earth or stones (p. 58), whereas 
 we think them identical, as in the next page he seems 
 to grant may have been the case ; or that in Dcut. xii. 
 15, 21, "the permission to kill animals for other than 
 sacrificial purposes appears to be new (p. 63, repeated 
 pp. 64, 72), as if Noah had not received this liberty on 
 coming out of the ark, of which the patriarchs made 
 use. This last point is connected Avith his belief in 
 a sacrifice, wherever and whenever flesh was eaten. 
 
 In many points I believe that I agree with him, or 
 that our differences would be much less than might be 
 imagined on account of his partly taking his position 
 among the critics who are compelled to make the laws 
 look as different as possible so as to arrive at some- 
 
87 
 
 tiling like a contradiction. But the case, as I under- 
 stand it, is simply this — 
 
 The use of altars among the patriarchs is recorded 
 from the time that Noah came out of the ark. And 
 the normal state of matters comes out in Abraham's 
 history. " And Abram passed through the laud unto 
 the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And 
 the Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord 
 appeared unto Ahram, and said. Unto thy seed will 
 I give this land : and there huilded he an altar unto 
 the Lord, ivho appeared unto him. And he removed 
 from thence unto a mountain : . . . and there he 
 huilded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the 
 name of the Lord" (Gen. xii. 6-8). A Divine ap- 
 pearance was held to mark out a spot where he ought 
 to build an altar, as in two other passages properly 
 referred to by Professor Smith (Gen. xxvi. 24, 25 ; 
 XXXV. 7) ; and to such a place he might return very 
 naturally (Gen. xiii. 4) ; nevertheless, he did not think 
 himself restricted to a place where such a manifesta- 
 tion had been granted to him, but built an altar and 
 called upon the name of the Lord in other places 
 where he pitched his tent, as again Gen. xiii. 18 ; 
 xxxiii. 20. Such an altar Moses built in connection 
 with the apparently miraculous victory over Amalek 
 and the revelation of God's will there given (Exod. 
 xvii. 15). But when Israel entered into covenant 
 with the Lord at Sinai, and was warned against 
 heathenish practices, breaches of the first and second 
 commandments, — a general rule was laid down restrict- 
 ing the place where an altar might be erected (Exod. 
 XX. 24) — ''An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, 
 and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-ofi"erings, and thy 
 peace-offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen : in all places 
 
88 
 
 ivliere I record my name I will come unto thee, and I 
 will bless tliee." An altar was not to be set up by 
 them whenever they pleased, but only where He 
 recorded His name ; I need not discuss the precise 
 force of this expression, but it would certainly include 
 any place where a manifestation occurred such as God's 
 appearing to the patriarchs, or to Israel at Mount 
 Sinai. Further explanations of this general law might 
 be given, and were given ; but I know of no authority 
 for saying that it was ever repealed under the Old 
 Testament economy ; and under the influence of the 
 one sacrifice for sins for ever when Christ died upon 
 the cross, it continues in substance our warrant for 
 acceptable worship everywhere (John iv. 19-26 ; 1 
 Cor. i. 2 ; 1 Tim, ii. 3-8), as even Jewish prophets so 
 far could announce (MaL i. 10, 11). I thoroughly agree 
 with Professor Smith in his instances of Gideon's altar 
 at Ophrah (Judges vi. 24, 26), and David's in the time 
 of the great pestilence (2 Sam. xxiv. 18), at places 
 where the angel of the Lord appeared to them.'" 
 
 The question might then be raised, was a place 
 where he had recorded his name and where an altar 
 was accordingly built, a place of acceptable sacrifice 
 only at the time, or did it remain a holy place for all 
 time coming ? The latter was the view which one 
 might take, following the example of the patriarchs, 
 who loved and clung to places like Shechem, Bethel, 
 Hebron, and Beersheba; but the parallel is inexact 
 
 * I do not feel able to say wlietlier Saul's altar after liis super- 
 natural victory (1 Sam, xiv. 35), to wliicli he refers, was for 
 sacrifice, or merely for memorial like the altar Ed (Josh, xxii, 
 26, 27). The same uncertainty, perhaps, exists with reference to 
 the first of the two altars in the same place which Gideon built. 
 But this is an unessential matter. 
 
89 
 
 and insufficient, since tlie patriarchs had been placed 
 under no restriction, whereas Israel undoubtedly were 
 restricted, and the difficulty was to settle how far this 
 restriction operated. One circumstance would throw 
 light upon their course of duty, namely this : if God 
 were pleased to record His name continuously any- 
 where, this would certainly mark out such a place for 
 a continuing altar. And very soon He did set up a 
 sanctuary in Israel, on purpose that He might dwell 
 (Hebrew, shaJchan) among them (Exod. xxv. 8 ; xxix. 
 45, 46) ; and His dwelling there was represented by 
 the pillar of cloud and fire resting habitually over it 
 (Exod. xl. 35 ; Num. ix. 15-22), as it had rested 
 temporarily on Mount Sinai (Exod. xxiv. 16). This 
 symbol of His presence received from the later Jews 
 the name SheJcJitnah, on account of its dwelling so ; 
 and the house of God received as one of its commonest 
 names a derivative from the same verb, mishhan, the 
 dwelling-place, or habitation, or tabernacle, for in our 
 Authorised Version it is thus variously rendered. And 
 this cloud moved forward to guide the congregation in 
 their journeyiugs, and dwelt (Auth. Version "rested") 
 in the spot to which they were to come for encamp- 
 ment (Num. X. 12-28), carrying the ark and the 
 tabernacle with them ; hence, as these existed for the 
 sake of the congregation, and moved along with them, 
 and dwelt (Auth. Version "remained") among them 
 (Lev. xvi. 16), God bade them "not defile their camps 
 (or camp) in the midst whereof I dwell" (Num. v. 3 — 
 see Deut. xxiii, 14). Wherever the ark and the taber- 
 nacle were along with the congregation of the Lord, 
 there might be said to be a place where He recorded His 
 name ; and the continuance of this recording was mani- 
 fest so long as the pillar of cloud and fire continued. 
 
90 
 
 In this way the sacrificial system at the new sanctuary 
 is set up in the book of Leviticus. 
 
 This brings me to the great law in Lev. xvii. on 
 the place of sacrificing. In the camp-life during the 
 journey through the wilderness there would be 
 brought out many of the advantages and the disadvan- 
 tages, physical and moral, social and religious, with 
 which we are familiar in the life of laro-e cities, as 
 contrasted with the life of a scattered rural population. 
 The people had offered sacrifices in the open fields 
 (ver. 5), which certainly was not a place where the 
 Lord had recorded His name : and this evil was ao-ara- 
 vated greatly when these sacrifices were offered " unto 
 devils after whom they had gone a whoring " (ver. 7). 
 Hence this law was laid down, that oxen, lambs, and 
 goats, which were the beasts used for sacrifices, were 
 not to be killed in the camp, or out of it, unless they 
 were brought as an offerino- to the door of the taber- 
 nacle, and offered as peace-offerings, when the blood 
 would be sprinkled on the altar of the Lord, and the 
 fat would be burned upon the altar ; for such was 
 part of the ordinary rite in offering peace-offerings 
 (Lev. iii. 17 ; vii. 22-27). He writes (p. 62) :— 
 
 " Here, it is argued, we have a limitation of sacrifice to a single 
 altar in the time of Moses, and therefore a refutation of the view 
 which makes S license a plurality of sanctuaries. But in its form 
 of words the law is designed for the jDeriod of the wandering. If 
 limited to that period alone, it is by no means inconsistent with 
 our interpretation of S ; for in the wilderness the people would 
 have access to no altar which S acknowledges as legitimate, with 
 the one exception of that which stood before the tabernacle. It 
 appears, however, that the law is designed to be permanent, for we 
 read at ver. 7 that ' this shall be a statute to thena for ever in 
 theii- generations.' Now common-sense excludes the idea that 
 Moses could mean that after the people were scattered through 
 Canaan every animal designed for food must be brought up to the 
 
91 
 
 tabernacle. The law, if it is really Mosaic, can in its application 
 to Canaan have only one sense — viz., that as all animals in the 
 wilderness had to be presented at the tabernacle, so in Canaan they 
 must be presented at some legitimate sanctuary. And this pro- 
 vision is intelligible and practicable only under the law of S, which 
 allows altars in all parts of the land, and assumes them to be so 
 numerous that it is always practicable to sacrifice the firstlings 
 eight days after birth." 
 
 With the most of this statement I have no contro- 
 versy, always reserving the point for further investi- 
 gation, how far the plurality of sanctuaries permitted 
 in S was contemporaneous or successive : undoubtedly 
 Exod, XX. 24 admits of more sanctuaries than one, if 
 God recorded His name in more places than one ; the 
 only cjuestion is, whether He j^ermitted more than one 
 at once, which Professor Smith unhesitatingly answers 
 in the affirmative at the end of this extract. Here in 
 the wilderness they had one place where God con- 
 tinuously recorded His name, the place where His ark 
 and tabernacle were with His people ; and Professor 
 Smith seems to agree with me that this was the one 
 legitimate place in the wilderness — that is to say, that 
 a place w^here God had formerly recorded His name by 
 making the people encamp under the guidance of His 
 ark and tabernacle, ceased to be a legitimate place 
 when He had come to record His name in a new place 
 by a new encampment. The point where we differ is 
 as to the application of the words in ver. 7 — "This 
 shall be a statute for ever unto them in their genera- 
 tions." His view of the lawfulness of "altars in all 
 parts of the land " leads him to make this application 
 of the temporary law for permanent use, that in 
 Canaan the animals must be presented at some one of 
 many legitimate sanctuaries ; w^hereas I, who have 
 seen no evidence of these many legitimate altars, 
 
92 
 
 think tlie permanent parts of the law were — first, its 
 object, that sacrifices to devils must be summarily 
 interdicted and put down ; and secondly, its lesson in 
 connection with all legitimate sacrifices, that the blood 
 and the fat must be given to the Lord, and so strictly, 
 that in no case must blood or fat be eaten by the 
 people, as is expounded and enforced in vers. 10-16; 
 the whole law being cast into such a mould as to give 
 prominence to the great idea of a single place of 
 worship for Israel.'"' 
 
 I see no force in what he says (pp. 60, 61) : — 
 
 " Meantime, and before we turn to the corresponding legislation 
 in D, let us observe that the principle of plurality of altars is 
 tacitly assumed in other parts of S. The clearest passage is 
 Exod. xxii. 30, where it is provided that the firstlings of oxen and 
 sheep shall be given to God — i.e., offered in sacrifice, on the eighth 
 day from their birth. This could not have been done if sacrifice 
 was legitimate only at one sanctuary ; and, in fact, Deuteronomy, 
 which abolishes the local altars, changes the law and appoints only 
 that the firstlings be eaten year by year in the sanctuary, that no 
 woi'k must be done with the firstling of a bullock, and that a 
 firstling sheep must not be shorn {Deut. xv. 19 seq.)" 
 
 If Exod. xxii. 30 be the clearest passage, it is a 
 mere assumption that the giving of the firstling of the 
 oxen and the sheep on the eighth clay implied that 
 they were to be ofiered that day ; if it did, I should 
 pity the large breeder, who would have had nothing 
 
 * I agree with him (pp. 63, 64), that fat seems to be perma- 
 nently forbidden, though only blood is mentioned expressly in the 
 prohibition in Deut. xii. But it is only a probability by inference ; 
 and something can be said for the other view, that with tlie 
 cessation of the law in Lev. xvii. which made every killed animal 
 a sacrifice of peace-ofierings, if it might lawfully be sacrificed, the 
 consequent prohibition of fat also ceased. The question is, however, 
 of no importance to our argument. 
 
else to do, even if he liad had an altar within ten 
 miles of him. I take the meaning to be, that from 
 the eighth day and onward it was capable of beino- 
 offered in sacrifice, after being seven days with its dam ; 
 and so the law is exactly equivalent to Lev. xxii. 27. 
 And I am perplexed when he goes on to say : "Another 
 indication of the plurality of sanctuaries appears in 
 the law of asylum (Exod. xxi. 12-14), where the 
 principle that the right of asylum does not extend to 
 wilful murderers is expressed by saying that such 
 criminals must be taken fronn the altar to die. In 
 other words, the altar is the asylum," &c. Murderers 
 have tried in many countries to find a sanctuary at 
 God's altar, and though God authorised no such 
 asylums, yet in Israel we find one attempt, that of 
 Joab, which was dealt with according to this law 
 (1 Kings ii. 28-34) ; compare Adonijah flying to the 
 altar, when deservinsj to die for treason, and beino- 
 spared (1 Kings i. 50-53). But wholly difi'erent from 
 the altar, which was to be no asylum for the murderer, 
 was the city of refuge for the manslayer, pointed to in 
 the law (Exod. xxi. 13) — "And if a man lie not in 
 wait, but God deliver him into his hand ; then I w^ill 
 appoint thee a place whither he shall flee." 
 
 The original and general law of the altar (Exod. xx. 
 24), " wherever God might record His name," having 
 received some light from the erection of the tabernacle 
 and its permanent altar in connection with the ark, 
 and from the temporary law in Lev. x^di., that during 
 their camp-life they were to acknowledge no other 
 altar but this, and to honour it by not killing ox, 
 sheep, or goat for food without bringing it to this 
 altar as a sacrifice of peace-offerings — it remains to look 
 at Deut. xii., in which the modification is introduced 
 
94 
 
 to meet the exigencies of the change from camp-life 
 in the wilderness to settled life in Canaan. This law, 
 on the one hand, is the repeal of that other law, so far 
 as it required all oxen, &c., used for food to be brought 
 to the sanctuary and treated as peace-offerings ; now 
 they might kill and eat oxen, sheep, and goats as 
 freely as they had always eaten venison, only avoiding 
 the eating of blood, which was to be poured upon the 
 earth as water (ver. 15, 16, 20-25) ; on the other hand, 
 it is the stringent enforcement of a sul^stitute for the 
 influence with which that Levitical law had drawn all 
 the men in the camp to the altar before the tabernacle, 
 as the people were required still to bring to this altar, 
 at the place which the Lord should choose, out of all 
 their tribes, all their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices 
 (though these latter no longer included all the oxen, 
 &c., which they killed and ate), together with those 
 other offerings which would fall to be given to God 
 by the people when once established in their OAvn 
 land, tithes, heave- offerings, vows, free-will-offerings, 
 and firstlings, and to keep their feasts there (ver. 5-7, 
 17, 18, 26, 27), The laxity which was tolerated in 
 various respects while they were in the wilderness 
 (ver. 8, 9) must give place to strict obedience ; and 
 very special weight is placed upon obedience to this 
 law of the one sanctuary for the nation — " When ye 
 go over Jordan, and dwell in the land which the Lord 
 your God giveth you to inherit, and when he giveth 
 you rest from all your enemies round about, so that 
 ye dwell in safety" (ver. 10, 11). And they were 
 cautioned — "Take heed to thyself that thou offer not 
 thy burnt- offerings in every place that thou seest, but 
 in the place which the Lord shall choose in one^ of thy 
 tribes" (ver. 13, 14). This really need be no more re- 
 
striction than the law in Exod. xx. 24, now that, as 
 we have seen, there was in connection with the ark 
 and tabernacle a place where He continuously recorded 
 His name, the place of His Shehhinah, where He 
 dwelt and manifested His presence. To this place He 
 had, from the first legislation, commanded every male 
 to come at the three yearly feasts, and not appear 
 before Him empty, and to bring the first-fruits into 
 the house of the Lord their God (Exod. xxiii. 14-19), 
 repeated after the sin of the golden calf had been for- 
 given (Exod. xxxiv. 18-26) ; and in this repetition 
 there had been included the promise — " Neither shall 
 any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to 
 appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year" 
 (ver. 24); and with the idea in it Deut. xii. 10 agrees. 
 The principal difference in Deuteronomy from the 
 earlier laws is its greater fulness, reiteration, and 
 hortatory character, as usual ; and next to this is the 
 fact that the ark and tabernacle will come to rest in 
 "the place which the Lord shall choose to cause his 
 name to dwell there'' (ver. 11); repeated, xiv. 23; 
 xvi. 2, 6, 11 ; xxvi. 2 — of which expression we have 
 seen the beginnings in earlier laws, as we see the com- 
 pletion in regard to Shiloh, Josh, xviii. 1 compared 
 with Jer. vii. 12; and in. regard to Jerusalem, Ps. 
 Ixviii. 16-18 ; Joel iii. 21 ; Isa. viii. 18, compared with 
 1 Chron. xxii. 1, 2 ; 1 Kings viii. 12, 13 ; Ps. Ixxviii. 
 G7-69. And the mutual connection of every one of 
 these laws in Exod. xx., xxiii., xxxiv., Lev. xvii,, and 
 Deut. xii., is all the stronger because this appointment 
 by the Lord of the place where He records His name, 
 or causes it to dwell, or the like, is made to stand out 
 in strong contrast to idolatry, and to the dangers to 
 which the people were exposed of falling into it, 
 
96 
 
 especially by copying tlie ways of the nations whose 
 sacred places they were strictly charged to destroy/"' 
 
 It will be plain from what I have now said that 1 
 differ very widely indeed from the following extract 
 (p. 63), and why I do so : — 
 
 " Thus, on the traditional view of D, all sacrifices at other altars 
 would be illegitimate from the days of Joshua downwards. From 
 this date onward the laws of S and of Lev. xvii. would be a mere 
 dead letter ; though the former is meaningless unless it refers to 
 Canaan, and the latter is expressly given as a perpetual statute. 
 We are here face to face with a plain contradiction between law 
 and law, which must either be solved by historical criticism or 
 by finding some other exegesis of the laws which, as we have 
 interpreted them, are at variance with one another." 
 
 I hold the so-called law of S to be the permanent 
 ruling statute, and that of Lev. xvii. to be an applica- 
 tion of it in the wilderness, which was modified in 
 Deut. xii. for the people in common in a way uni- 
 versally allowed to be necessary. By this law, the 
 place where God was known to record His name con- 
 stantly and habitually was at the national sanctuary. 
 If He recorded His name elsewhere, an altar might be 
 built there to worship Him. But (1.) this would in 
 no way interfere with the law in Deuteronomy which 
 had reference to the national sanctuary, its feasts, and 
 the sacrifices and gifts to be brought thither, and no- 
 where else. (2.) It still furnishes no authority for 
 regarding that as the place of a permanent altar ; an 
 emergency called it into existence — namely, the special 
 
 * In Lev. xvii. 6 the blood is to be sprinkled upon " the altar 
 o/^/ie ion?," an expression not met with elsewhere in the Penta- 
 teuch, so far as I have noticed, till we come to this law in 
 Deuteronomy, which I have explained as referring to it and modi- 
 fying it (ver. 27) ; then it occurs in xvi. 21 ; xxvi. 4 ; xxvii. 6, and 
 but rarely elsewhere. 
 
manifestation of the Lord's name ; and when that 
 passed away, the reason for an altar being there may 
 reasonably be supposed to have also ceased, especially 
 in view of the fact that there was now a permanent 
 altar. The reasoning in the paragraph pp. 63, 64, so 
 far as it opposes this statement of mine, I think I have 
 abeady met. At least I fail to follow the argument 
 in the two follomng sentences (p. 64) : — 
 
 " Again, though Deut. xii., in gi^'ing the permission to kill 
 beasts for food without going to the sanctuaiy, implies that previous 
 custom was to sacrifice every animal killed for food, it is plain that 
 the law of D is not the formal abrogation of so much of Lev. xvii. 
 as was meant only for the -wilderness. The people to whom D was 
 adch-essed were not in the practice of bringing all their victims to 
 the tabernacle. On the contrary, we learn from Deut. xii. 8 that 
 every man did just as he pleased, and this is not put as matter of 
 blame, for the lawgiver identifies himself with current practice by 
 using the pronoun we." 
 
 It is of little practical importance whether we call 
 Deut. xii. " the formal abroo-ation of so much of 
 Lev. xvii. as was meant only for the wilderness," or 
 use other words to express the fact that it modified it 
 as I have indicated. And the argument from Moses 
 lovingly identifying himself with his people in their 
 wilfulness and carelessness, cannot be used for any 
 precise determination of the respects in which they had 
 gone astray ; only we know that all the men who had 
 left Egypt twenty years old were now dead (Num. xxvi. 
 64, 65 ; Deut. ii. 13-16), and that those who "Avere 
 born in the wilderness, by the way as they came forth 
 out of Egypt," had not been circumcised (Josh. v. 4-7), 
 so that in all probability there was very little sacrificing 
 kept up, and much uncertainty what was best to be 
 done in their anomalous position. 
 
 The difference between Professor Smith and m^'self 
 
 G 
 
98 
 
 will thus come to be very much this : that as yet I 
 have seen no evidence for the proposition that Exod. 
 XX. 24 contemplated a plurality of sanctuaries contem- 
 poraneously, such as he thinks clear and plain in the 
 following paragraph (p. 61) : — 
 
 " In general, then, it appears that S contemplates a plurality of 
 sanctuaries within the land of Canaan, and that not by way of 
 temporary concession, but as a fixed principle. The principle is 
 not inconsistent with the institvition of a special altar with special 
 priests for national, as distinguished from local worship. Perhaps, 
 indeed, the institution of such a central sanctuary is akeady con- 
 templated in what is said of the three pilgrimage feasts (Exod. 
 xxiii. 17 ; compare chap, xxxiv. 24), and in the command to bring 
 the first-fi-uits into the 'House of Jehovah' {Ibid., ver. 19). But 
 it is clearly not contemplated that the central sanctuary shall super- 
 sede the local altars which God has hallowed by a revelation of 
 Himself, and at which He is ready to meet with His people, and 
 bless them withoiit the mediation of a special priesthood. This 
 view of the meaning of the law in S is so plainly the natural one 
 that the objections taken to it are not drawn from exegetical con- 
 siderations, but solely from other parts of the Pentateuch with 
 which it appears to be inconsistent ; and particularly from the law 
 of D on the one hand, and from Lev. xvii. on the other." 
 
 An altar might be erected anywhere, if God recorded 
 His name there, and He did manifest Himself at times 
 by miraculous appearances ; or as the ark and taber- 
 nacle existed for the conoTesration, and not the cono;re- 
 gation for them, there might be times in Avhich the 
 ark was brought forth from its ordinary resting-place 
 to journey and go out to war with the Lord's host, as 
 it had done in the times of the wanderings through the 
 wilderness, and the sense of need and the expectation 
 of supernatural help w^ere to be interpreted as a proof 
 that He was now recording His name there. Only it 
 was to be recollected that, with a j)ermanent place 
 where He had chosen to make His name to dwell, the 
 
99 
 
 presumption was against any other place till the 
 evidence was clear in its favour ; and the responsibility 
 was serious if any one once took on himself to affirm 
 that in any instance the evidence was clear. And still 
 further, the inference must be carefully restricted within 
 the limits that the evidence warranted ; and, as I have 
 said, I have seen nothing to prove that such a place, 
 once a sanctuary, remained a sanctuary in all time 
 coming, except so far as ignorance, superstition, and 
 heathenish tendencies led the people to do this. 
 Professor Smith holds with me that these local high 
 places were the sources of demoralisation and apostacy 
 in Israel, and that they were swept away by Divine 
 command (pp. 75-81); only he mixes up various 
 speculations which give vividness and beauty to his 
 description ; and, far more important, he thinks that 
 the people were guided to this in the providence of 
 God, as the result of which we have the ^prohibition of 
 them embodied in a late addition to the Divine laws, 
 whereas I follow the opinion which has ever obtained 
 in the synagogue and the Church, and which the 
 words of the book undoubtedly suggest to every one 
 who has not other reasons for thinking this incredible, 
 that Moses was directed to leave all this in his last 
 words to the people, by which they ought to have 
 been guided from the first. 
 
 His instances from history (pp. 64-69) do not affect 
 my case so far as I have observed ; they only affect a 
 way of stating the case which I have rejDudiated.* 
 
 * I ought, in fairness, to say that I have not taken up his arguments 
 from priestly altars with steps and lay altars without tlaem (pp. 59, 60), 
 and from all killing animals for food being a sacrifice, and no ajjproach to 
 God without sacrifice (pp. 41, 65, 66), owing to the length of my remarks. 
 I do not think them of the essence of the discussion. 
 
100 
 
 There are, however, one or two passmg observations 
 which I may offer. The cases of Samuel and David 
 are thus stated (pp. Q7, 68) : — 
 
 " After the battle of Ebenezer, and the capture of the ark, the 
 sanctuary of Shiloh appears to have been destroyed, and during 
 the long period of oppression by the Philistines the worship of 
 Jehovah was grievously interrupted (1 Sam. vii. 2, 3). But the 
 reformation under Samuel again presents a proof that it was the 
 law of S and not of D that was looked to, even by prophets, as 
 the rule of the theocracy. The work of reformation began at 
 Mizpah — not Mizpah in Gilead, but perhaps the same Mizpah 
 which already appears as a sanctuary in Judges xx. Here, and 
 not before the ark at Kirjath-jearim, the people appear before the 
 Lord, and Samuel offers sacrifice (1 Sam. vii. 9). After the rout 
 of the Philistines, when the central district of the land was brought 
 back to a settled state under Samuel's rule, he judged Israel at 
 four centres — Bethel, Gilgal, Mizpah, and his own city of Eamah. 
 All these places were in his time sanctuaries as well as seats of 
 civil rule, for indeed under a theocracy the two ideas were hardly 
 separable (Bethel, 1 Sam. x. 3; Mizpah, x. 17 j Gilgal, xi. 15, 
 xiii. 9 ; Ramah, ix. 12), Moreover, at least three of them were 
 old sanctuaries under the law of S. Bethel and Mizpah we know 
 already ; Gilgal was the resting-place of the ark after the miracul- 
 ous passage of Jordan, and was then marked as a holy place by the 
 erection of twelve stones, exactly as in the case of the covenant 
 altar (Exod. xxiv. 4). The history of Ramah is not so clear, but 
 its very name seems to mark it as an old sanctuary. And finally, 
 when Samuel made his sons judges in the far south, he placed 
 them in another old patriarchal sanctuary, Beersheba (1 Sam. 
 viii. 2). The whole lines of Samuel's reformation are strictly 
 modelled on the law of S ; but he makes no attempt whatever to 
 realise the provisions of D. But perhaps this was only because 
 the land was still unsettled 1 Well, in the reign cf David this 
 difficulty was removed. The ark was brought up to Jerusalem, 
 and a new central sanctuary was established, with Divine sanction, 
 at the centre of government. But we stdl hear nothing of the law 
 of D. On the contraiy, we receive fresh confirmation of the law 
 of S, which grants permanent consecration to all j^laces of ancient 
 sanctity. Absalom opened his revolt at the Abrahamic sanctuary 
 of Hebron. He did so because he could have his father's consent 
 
101 
 
 to go there on pretext of dischai-ging a vow, and so could gather 
 his fellow-conspirators without suspicion to a sacrificial feast " 
 (2 Sam. XV. 7, 12). 
 
 As is correctly said, the national sanctuary at Shiloh 
 was destroyecl, and the law of Deut. xii. came to be in 
 abeyance through the providence of God, almost as 
 much as at the Babylonish captivity, until Jerusalem 
 was chosen in place of Shiloh, towards the end of 
 David's reign, according to passages formerly noticed, and 
 the temple was built in the reign of Solomon. Sacrifices 
 and national public worship may probably have very 
 much ceased, not only during the seven months the 
 ark was captive among the Philistines, but also during 
 the twenty years that it lay in obscurity at Kirjath- 
 jearim (1 Sam. vi. 1 ; vii. 2) ; and perhaps it was 
 neglected very greatly during the reign of Saul 
 (1 Chron. xiii. 3), though we find the empty taber- 
 nacle and some priestly services at Nob and Gibeou. 
 But we know nothing of the reasons for placing it 
 there ; and Samuel had no instructions, for the Lord 
 had not yet made known His choice of Zion. It was, 
 therefore, impossible to act on the law in Deut. xii., 
 unless in some very uncertain and imperfect manner ; 
 and, of course, Samuel was thrown back on the law in 
 Exod. XX. 24, and had to consider how to apply it in 
 the disorganised condition of the Church. I shall not 
 guess whether he had a special revelation, or whether 
 sanctified wisdom led him to think it best to rekindle 
 spiritual life in Israel at a variety of points where the 
 patriarchs had called on the Lord. But as soon as 
 David succeeded to the untheocratic king Saul, and 
 had made the necessary arrangements for bringing his 
 kingdom into a state of civil order, he did take steps 
 to carry forward the spiritual reformation by com- 
 
102 
 
 pleting the ecclesiastical reorganisation. I think that 
 somehow, perhaps by revelations to himself directly, 
 perhaps by intimations from the prophets at his court 
 or his faithful high priest with the Urim, he must have 
 been led (earlier than the final and most exact intima- 
 tion after the great plague, 1 Chron. xxii. 1, 2) to 
 think that Jerusalem was to be the ecclesiastical, as 
 well as the civil, capital ; but if so, he proceeded very 
 cautiously. His aim and duty was to establish Jeru- 
 salem as the place which the Lord had at length chosen 
 to place His name there, and to concentrate in it those 
 points of spiritual light which Samuel had kindled at 
 several altars ; but matters were not ripe, in God's 
 providence, for gathering all to this centre, and he 
 could advance no further than to bring down the 
 number of places of worship to two — ^Gibeon, where 
 the empty tabernacle stood ; and Zion, to which he had 
 brought up the neglected ark. It was as if one wished 
 to reduce a shapeless mass to the form of a circle with 
 its centre, and succeeded so far as to make an ellijDse 
 of it with two foci. And in this transitional arrange- 
 ment he was greatly helped by the unprecedented 
 circumstances that the troubles and convulsions 
 through which the people had passed left them in the 
 situation of having two high priests — namely, his 
 faithful follower in all his sulferings, Abiathar of the 
 house of Ithamar, and Zadok, of the original high- 
 priestly house of Eleazar — "So he left there before 
 the ark of the covenant of the Lord Asaph and his 
 brethren, to minister before the ark continually, . . . 
 and Zadok the priest, and his brethren the priests, 
 before the tabernacle of the Lord in the high place 
 that was at Gibeon, to offer burnt- offerings unto the 
 Lord," &c. (1 Chron. xvi. 37-42). The providence of 
 
103 
 
 God, on which he waited, guided the course of events 
 forward.'' Abiathar's complicity in Adonijah's treason 
 led to his deposition and the loss of the high priest- 
 hood to Eli's line (1 Kings ii. 26, 27), and left Zadok 
 the only rightful occupant of the office. This was 
 soon followed by the building of the temple, and the 
 establishment anew of a single place where the Lord 
 caused His name to dwell, and to which the people 
 were to bring all their sacrifices, &c. ; though, no 
 doubt, so long as the temple was unbuilt the law of 
 Deut. xii. could not be fully carried out, and Solomon 
 " went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the 
 great high place " (1 Kings iii. 2-4), " and received 
 God's gracious answer in a most notable revelation," 
 as Professor Smith truly says. 
 
 What a happy future lay within the reach of Israel 
 from that day forward ! Yet before Solomon's reign 
 was over he had clouded the prospect almost hopelessly 
 by building high places right over against the temple 
 he had built for Jehovah, " for Chemosh, the abomina- 
 tion of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and 
 for Molech the abomination of the children of Amnion. 
 And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which 
 burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods " (1 Kings 
 xi. 7, 8). These stood confronting and insulting the 
 worship of the God of Israel until Josiah's reformation, 
 
 * No doubt, he had many difficulties to contend with, as the 
 Psalms abound with references to a heathen pai-ty in Israel ; much 
 more must times of ignorance and disorder have created serious 
 difficulties in the way of carrying the people onward in the course 
 of reformation. This makes Absalom's vow at Hebron no trouble 
 to me ; and, indeed, besides the permissibility of these irregulari- 
 ties in a period of transition, we are to recollect that David's own 
 great sin had terribly weakened his hands in the work of control- 
 ling and reforming his people and his family. 
 
104 
 
 a single generation before the Babylonish captivity, 
 " The high places that were before Jerusalem, which 
 were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, 
 which Solomon the kino- of Israel had builded for 
 
 o 
 
 Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, and for 
 Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for 
 Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, 
 did the king defile. And he brake in pieces the 
 images,''' and cut down the groves [rather, the 
 Asherim], and filled their places with the bones of 
 men " (2 Kings xxiii. 13, 14). It has been naturally 
 enough supposed that this was the Bamah, or high 
 place, of which Ezekiel speaks (chap. xx. 29) in his 
 account of the daring and persistent provocations of 
 the people, for which they were about to be cast forth 
 from the land promised to their fathers. But how- 
 ever that may be, it is evident that these high places 
 dedicated to heathen deities were in daring opposition, 
 not to D alone, but to S, and to precepts occurring all 
 through the four last books of the Pentateuch. Now 
 if they were in full operation, from Solomon's reign till 
 Josiah's, close to Jerusalem, under the eyes of the kings 
 and other rulers, and priests, and prophets, and of the 
 whole people, it is proof positive how the national 
 conscience was drugged or debauched ; and it is idle 
 to base any inference about D being unknown upon 
 the fact that " it is explicitly recorded that all the last 
 kings, wp to the time of Hezekiah, however zealous 
 they showed themselves in the suppression of idolatry, 
 
 * Eather, pillars. I have not space to discuss the paragraph 
 (pp. 71, 72) as to the use of them in lawful worship till the supposed 
 late composition of D. 1 think his argument fanciful ; and, I dare 
 say, he will admit that it is of only secondaiy importance at the 
 utmost. 
 
105 
 
 tolerated the worship of Jehovah at local sanctuaries " 
 (p. 68). Nor do I know anything to prevent our 
 understanding by the high places mentioned in the 
 texts he quotes here (1 Kings xv. 14; xxii. 43 ; 2 
 Kings xii. 3 ; xiv. 4 ; xv. 4, 35), not local sanctuaries 
 for the worship of Jehovah, but these high places 
 built by Solomon which persistently held their ground 
 to the end. 
 
 But it is alleged (p. G9) that — 
 
 " In the Northern Kingdom the case is still clearer. The revolt 
 of Jeroboam was accompanied by religious declension, inasmuch as 
 the king departed from the law of S in setting up images to 
 counteract the attractions of the temple on Zion. But the prophets 
 who countenanced his revolt did not contemplate the cessation of 
 all national worship in the northern kingdom. Ahijah does not 
 rebuke the king for worshipping at northern sanctuaries, but only 
 for idolatry (1 Kings xiv. 9). And this was also the standpoint 
 of Elijah, the greatest of the northern prophets. In his campaign 
 against the worship of the Phoenician Baal, Elijah appears as the 
 defender and restorer of the altars of Jehovah, which had been 
 destroyed by Ahab in his attempt to introduce a national service 
 of the Tyrian deity. The scene upon Carmel was a victorious 
 assertion of the Sinaitic law of worshij), even following the analogy 
 of Exodus xxiv. in the use of twelve stones according to the 
 number of the Hebrew tribes (1 Kiiigs x\iii 30, 31). And in the 
 wilderness the prophet's complaint wag that the children of Israel 
 had " forsaken God's covenant and cast down his altars " — the 
 altar, that is, of the northern kingdom, built under the covenant 
 legislation of Sinai, but every one of them a breacli of covenant 
 under the law of D (1 Kings xix. 10)." 
 
 Surely there is some misapprehension here. Ahijah's 
 threatening does not mention the whole of Jeroboam's 
 sins ; yet under idolatry are to be included sins 
 against the second commandment as well as against 
 the first, and such would be Jeroboam's setting up 
 other places of stated public ^vorship to rival the city 
 
lOG 
 
 wliich the Lord head chosen to make His name dwell 
 there. Another of Jeroboam's sins was changing holy 
 times as well as holy places, appointing one of the 
 great feasts in the eighth month, " in the month which 
 he had devised of his own heart," to rival the feast in 
 the seventh month at Jerusalem (the seventh month 
 being fixed in Leviticus and Numbers, but not specified 
 in Deuteronomy), 1 Kings xii. 32, 33 ; and another of 
 his sins was in reference to holy persons, he " made 
 priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of 
 the sons of Levi" (ver. 31), an act that would be pro- 
 nounced sinful by Professor Smith as well as by me. 
 But none of these things are mentioned specifically as 
 expressed in the preaching of the great prophets of 
 the northern kingdom. The truth is, that as the 
 spiritual darkness deepened among the ten tribes, the 
 Spirit of God put forth more marvellous efi"orts as He 
 strove with His people before giving them up ; and 
 at the time of the ruin of the priestly services, a 
 missionary efi'ort was inaugurated by the prophets on 
 a scale of grandeur to which there is nothing compar- 
 able in the prophetic workings among the people of 
 the better-constituted kingdom of Judah. I have 
 compared Elijah in important respects to Moses and 
 Samuel, on account of his mission at a time when 
 Israel seemed on the point of falling away by a total 
 apostacy, substituting the worship of Baal for that of 
 Jehovah ; but even when success had crowned the 
 eff'orts of his successor, and a new dynasty came to the 
 throne which swept away this foreign suj^erstition, we 
 read the melancholy statement that "Jehu took no heed 
 to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all 
 his heart; for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, 
 which made Israel to sin" (2 Kings x. 31). "The 
 
107 
 
 altars of the Lord " in the northern kingdom, of whose 
 casting down Elijah speaks (1 Kings xviii. 30 ; xix. 
 10), might occupy a position analogous to those in 
 Samuel's days, interesting and imjDortant when the 
 place which the Lord had chosen was daringly set 
 aside, even though they represented a very imperfect 
 state of obedience and worship. Indeed, I am not 
 sure that Elijah spoke of casting down a material altar 
 at all, but of the people casting off regard for the true 
 worship of Jehovah ; or if he spoke of material altars, 
 it may well be that Ahab and Jezebel defaced and 
 destroyed places the memory of which was dear to 
 pious worshippers, though they did not approve of 
 sacrifices at them. 
 
 I cannot admit the force of his argument from 
 certain "minor details of worship" in pp. 70, 71 : — 
 
 " The law of S, constructed on the lines of the old patriarchal 
 religion, seems to contemplate something of the nature of a family 
 ])riesthood, in which the head of a Hebrew household brought his 
 gifts to the altar without waiting for the great pilgrimage feasts 
 [supra, pp. 60, 61). In D, on the contrary, all sacrificial worship is 
 strictly in the hands of the Levite priests. Now, in this respect also 
 the history agrees with S- The cases of Manoah and Gideon will, 
 no doubt, be objected to as exceptional, though there is notliing in 
 the history to mark them as such, and though it seems strange 
 theology to suppose that God will make exceptions to His own 
 covenant ordinances. But we filid a family sacrifice observed by 
 David's clan at Bethlehem (1 Sam. xx. 29). And we have seen 
 that David himself did sacrifice (2 Sam. vi. 17), and that his sons 
 are called priests (supra, p. 45). Moreover, though Samuel rebukes 
 Saul for his sacrifice at Gilgal (1 Sam. xiii. 8 seq.), the oflfence is 
 disobedience, and not interference with priestly prerogative, as is 
 clear from 1 Sam. xiv. 33-35. Finally, Elijah's sacrifice on Carmel 
 is in this, as in all other points, exactly conformed to the law of S-" 
 
 I see no strange theology in supposing that God will 
 make exceptions to His own covenant ordinances, where 
 
108 
 
 the exception has to do with mere ritual, and a mir- 
 aculous appearance of God, and a peculiar call (such as 
 to Gideon and to the parents of Samson, in times of 
 utter ecclesiastical disorder) led to the sacrifices in 
 question ; in a case of far smaller emergency I find our 
 Lord justifying David when he ate the shewbread, 
 which was not lawful for any jjut the priests to eat. 
 I have already denied that David sacrificed, and that 
 his sons were priests in the only sense which is to the 
 point. Of David's going to the yearly feast at Beth- 
 lehem (1 Sam. XX. 6, 29) I have to say that, at the 
 utmost, it proves, what we have seen already, that in 
 Samuel's time there was no place which the Lord had 
 chosen to make His name dwell there, and the effect 
 of this was a disastrous breaking up of the unity of 
 the religion of Israel. But we know nothing about this 
 feast, what priests were at it, or perhaps Samuel him- 
 self (compare 1 Sam. ix. 12, 13), especially if it was a 
 secret family service ever since he offered a sacrifice 
 there, and anointed David to be king (chap. xvi. 1-13). 
 I take the contrary view of Saul's conduct (1 Sam. xiii, 
 8 seq.) to that given in the extract. I think he was 
 blamed for arrogating priestly functions ; but if any 
 one thinks otherwise, he is at liberty to hold that Saul 
 sacrificed by means of a priest, as I said of David. 
 
 Only I have no object in maintaining that the law 
 was always carried out. People often know a law, and 
 acknowledge it to be a law, and for some reason dis- 
 regard it. It has been a common sin in the Christian 
 Church, from the apostles' days dow^n to this hour, to 
 Judaise, by going back on the obsolete rules for the 
 Church in Jewish times ; yet among the Judaisers 
 there has often been much real religion ; and the law 
 of sacrifice, even in its elementary form in Exod. xx. 
 
109 
 
 24, curtailed liberties that had been enjoyed in patri- 
 archal times. It may well be, if I may coin so clumsy 
 a word, that there were those in the Jewish Church 
 who i^atriarchalised — good and holy men, who went 
 back to the old ways of their forefathers before the 
 times of Moses. 
 
 Two striking cases of a law known, yet disobeyed 
 systematically, I shall simply mention. The second 
 commandment plainly forbids the worshipping of God 
 by images. Yet by far the largest portion of the 
 professing Christian Church, for much the largest part 
 of the time since the Church was founded, have used 
 images in the worship of God. Sometimes this dis- 
 obedience has been checked l^y an unfortunate arrange- 
 ment of the commandments which united the second 
 to the first ; and sometimes one step more has been 
 taken, and this double commandment has been abbre- 
 viated on the plea of expediency or convenience, or 
 the like, and the obnoxious prohibition of images has 
 been wholly kept out of men's sight. Again, polygamy 
 and divorce were very early corruptions of the original 
 law of marriaoje. Our Lord said of divorce, that 
 Moses made a certain allowance for the hardness of 
 the' people's heart, yet he added that from the begin- 
 ning it was not so ; but of- polygamy it is nowhere said 
 that God sanctioned it, or even tolerated it. Never- 
 theless, the best of men in Old Testament times 
 practised, or excused it, or said nothing against it. If 
 more puzzling things could be presented to us about 
 the breach of the laws in Deuteronomy than any that 
 I have ever seen, these two cases of the law of marriage 
 and the law against images would keep me from finding 
 in this circumstance any proof that the law did not 
 exist. 
 
110 
 
 I am content to leave the crucial case of the altar 
 Ed to any one who reads Josh, xxii, and Professor 
 Smith's comments on it. I think the case speaks 
 for itself as to the altar before the tabernacle 
 being the only lawful altar for Israel in ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, or as a permanent arrangement. I think 
 the same inference is to be drawn from Gideon's 
 ephod, put by him in his own city, " and all Israel 
 went thither a whoring after it : which thing became 
 a snare unto Gideon and to his house " (Judges viii. 
 27), quite apart from their going a whoring after 
 Baalim when he was dead (ver. 33, 34). It may not 
 be easy to prove that no private subsidiary altars 
 could be tolerated, provided they did not come into 
 rivalship with the central or national place of worship : 
 but it is difficult to see how they could do otherwise 
 than rival it, as those at Dan and Bethel were meant 
 l3y Jeroboam to rival Jerusalem, and I believe it is 
 impossible to find any support in Scripture for such 
 contrivances. There is the more room for those who 
 choose to speculate on these matters, because Scrip- 
 ture really gives extremely little information on the 
 subject of the ritual observances of the Israelites, 
 even the most important of them ; and in this, I 
 suppose, it stands out in contrast to a]l professedly 
 authoritative books of other religions. The one portion 
 of Scripture which may be called exceptional in this 
 respect is Chronicles, a book which, according to the 
 common belief of the Synagogue and the Church, 
 gathered up the permanent lessons of the theocracy 
 on its spiritual and ecclesiastical side, when its politi- 
 cal importance was gone ; and the authority or the 
 accuracy of this book is persistently impugned by the 
 most of the critics. Professor Smith has certainly no 
 
Ill 
 
 sympathy with them in this ; yet, unfortunately, his 
 references to Chronicles at p. 33 note, pp. 46-7, 49, 
 87, throw a sort of haziness around the statements 
 of the book, so that I should not know how to con- 
 vince him by any of its testimonies in favour of the 
 early existence of the Pentateuch, and of the lawful 
 sacrifices only at the temple and by the hands of the 
 priests of Aaron's family. Finally, on his principles 
 I do not see how a local sanctuary should not have 
 been set up by David, for instance, in the places to 
 which he was driven out by Saul's persecutions, or in 
 the country east of Jordan when he had to flee from 
 Absalom. 
 
 Closing Observations. 
 
 I have protracted this discussion to much greater 
 length than I had wished ; but I did not see how to 
 compress what I had to say within narrower limits, 
 without showing want of respect for Professor Smith 
 and his arguments if I dealt with them at all. Far 
 from having the least desire to do so, I cherish the 
 highest regard for him, and admire his great ability 
 and his extensive learning, I fear I may at times 
 have misunderstood his reasoning, and, in consequence, 
 may have done injustice to him : if so, I am sincerely 
 sorry. I can only say I have endeavoured to be 
 thoroughly fair to him ; so desirous of this have I 
 been, that perhaps I have to apologise to my readers 
 for following his order of topics, &c., rather than 
 taking a course of my own, which might, perhaps, 
 have been more interesting or more effective. 
 
 I conclude with directing my readers to another 
 kind of critical evidence for determininor the date of 
 
112 
 
 Deuteronomy, tliongh I must leave the working out of 
 it to themselves. If we do not allow it to be the com- 
 position of Moses, what other time can be suggested 
 that will not land us in much greater difficulties than 
 have ever been imagined against the traditional view ? 
 Take, for instance, the age after Hezekiah's reign, to 
 which Professor Smith inclines ; or that of Josiah, 
 which is probably more common, and ask — 
 
 1. How the system of laws uniformly takes for 
 granted that Israel is one Church and one people, 
 without any trace of the fearful schism, political and 
 religious, which took place on the death of Solomon, 
 and without any provision for the new circumstances 
 of the Church and nation which then emerged ? 
 
 2. How is there so much in it about the Canaanites, 
 most keenly urging their extermination, the utter 
 destruction of all traces of their worship, and the 
 avoidance of all marriage connexions with them ? 
 Surely this was inapplicable to the case of the feeble 
 remnant left in the age of the kings, who had more- 
 over apparently been received into the Church of 
 Israel as converts. And what was the meaning of 
 saying at that late date, " Thou shalt not be afraid of 
 them. . . . The Lord thy God will put out those nations 
 before thee by little and little : thou mayest not con- 
 sume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase 
 upon thee" (Deut. vii. 18, 22) ? 
 
 3. How do other laws fit into such a time ? Such 
 are the laws of the kingdom (chap. xvii. 14-20), so 
 unlike anything that would be given for the first time 
 in an age subsequent to Solomon, in spite of what 
 Professor Smith says in explanation of it (p. 82 note), 
 as if it were any difficulty to suppose that Samuel was 
 acquainted with it ; and the laws providing for the 
 
113 
 
 case of tlie land becoming too large for carrying out 
 old arrangements (chaps, xii. 20; xiv. 24; xix. 8) at the 
 very time when the Ten Tribes had been carried captive. 
 
 4. How is there an entire absence in Deuteronomy, 
 as in the other books of the Pentateuch, of any 
 reference to temples or equivalent buildings, such as 
 are most frequently mentioned in the later history ? 
 " High places " are named only twice in Deuteronomy, 
 neither time in the sense of places of worship ; thrice 
 in Numbers, two of the cases being in the history of 
 Baalim ; and again only once in Leviticus. And in 
 none of these cases is there any evidence of a temple : 
 there was a place of worship, but scarcely anything 
 that could be called a building. 
 
 5. How is there no mention of the great and 
 more distant heathen powers that exercised so com- 
 manding an influence over Israel and Judah as their 
 history advanced ? Except Egypt, the land of 
 bondage, from which Moses had brought them out, 
 Deuteronomy speaks only of lands like Edom, and 
 Moab, and Ammon, the petty countries immediately 
 bordering on Canaan. 
 
 6. In Deut. xxiii. 7, 8, a friendly feeling for Edom is 
 exhibited : he is "thy brother," and his offspring were 
 to be admitted into the congregation of the Lord 
 on the most favourable conditions ; whereas, in the 
 Psalms and the prophets, Edom invariably appears 
 among the bitterest enemies of Israel, often as the 
 leader of the hostile combination, or as the very 
 type of the whole of them, in accordance with the 
 embittered relations between Edom and Moab from 
 the days of David onwards, but not earlier. 
 
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