The Books of Chronicles in relation 
 to the Pentateuch and the 
 
 1 ' H igher Criticism . f 
 
 BSI225 
 .4.H57 
 
 LORD A. 0. HERY13Y, 
 
 }}u;or or hatb awd wells. 
 
3.4&:o/ % 
 
 PRESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRINCETON TMEOLOGICHL SEMINSRY 
 
 Professor fienry Van Dyke, D.D., I1I1.D. 
 
The 
 
 Books of Chronicles in relation 
 
 to the Peiitatetich and the 
 
 "Higher Criticism!' 
 
 PROMOTING HIGHER RELIGIOUS EDUCATION " 
 AT WELLS, IN THE SPRING OF 1 892 
 
 By LORD A. C. HERVEY, D.D. 
 
 BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W C. , 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C 
 
 BRIGHTON : 135, North Street. 
 
 New York : E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 
 
 1892. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Prkfatory Note 
 
 pack 
 5 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 Theory of the "Higher Criticism" with regard 
 to the Pentateuch, and the Historical Books 
 of the Old Testament 7 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Theory of the " Higher Criticism" with regard 
 
 to the Pentateuch {continued) ... 44 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 Miscellaneous remarks on the Earlier Books of 
 
 the Old Testament, and their authenticity . <s->, 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 The Books of Chronicles 112 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 Conclusive Testimony of Chronicles to the Mosaic 
 
 Law 141 
 
 A2 
 
PEEFATOEY NOTE. 
 
 My object in the ensuing course of Lectures 
 is two-fold : first, to give you such information 
 with regard to the Books of Chronicles as it is 
 in my power to do, with a view of showing the 
 authenticity and historical trustworthiness of 
 the Books ; and secondly, to enable you by the 
 help of such information to form an independent 
 judgment upon some of the conclusions come to 
 by what is known by the name of the " Higher 
 Criticism." 
 
LIST OF BOOKS CHIEFLY USED IN THE 
 FOLLOWING LECTURES. 
 
 Wellhausen's Prolegomena to the History of Israel. 
 (English translation.) 
 
 Kuenen's Hexateuch. (English translation.) 
 
 Driver's Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 W. Smith's The Pentateuch. 
 
 Wright's Empire of the Hittites. 
 
 Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, Christus Comprobator. 
 
 Stanley Leathes, The Laiv in the Prophets. 
 
 Sayce, Fresh Light from the Monuments. 
 
 Kinns, Graven in the Bock. 
 
 Hervey's Genealogies of our Lord. 
 
 Lepsius' Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sinai. 
 
 Dictionary of the Bible, Articles — ' Kings and Chronicles. ' 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 Theory of the " Higher Criticism ' with 
 regard to the pentateuch, and the his- 
 TORICAL Books of the Old Testament. 
 
 The " Higher Criticism " is a system of crit- 
 ical analysis by which the critic professes to be 
 able to take the Books of Scripture which have 
 come down to us in a certain traditional form — 
 known as the Canon of the Old Testament — 
 and to break them up into their component parts. 
 In sifting 1 and separating* these parts he deter- 
 mines by the light of his own intelligence which 
 of them have any historical truth at all in them, 
 which have none ; he determines the age when 
 each was written, and the exact motives of each 
 writer in the statements which he makes ; when 
 there is any historical truth at the bottom of 
 any statement, the critic produces such truth in 
 the form in which it really happened three or 
 four thousand years ago, and explains to you the 
 motives of the writer in presenting it to the 
 
8 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 reader in the widely different form in which it 
 has been received as history through successive 
 ages. These motives are sometimes compara- 
 tively innocent, as e.g. when a false name, 
 such as that of Moses, is assigned to certain 
 useful laws to give weight and authority to 
 them ; but sometimes they are purely corrupt, 
 as when interested priests write spurious histo- 
 ries like the Books of Chronicles for the purpose 
 of enhancing their own dignity and securing 
 their own emoluments. 
 
 The results obtained by the exercise of these 
 ample critical powers are as follows : The his- 
 tory in our Bibles from Genesis to the close of 
 the Hexateuch — i.e. the Pentateuch plus the 
 Book of Joshua — is made up of the following 
 materials. First the Elohistic narrative, which 
 deals mainly with legislation strung together on 
 a framework of narrative. This part is dis- 
 tinguished by its use of the word Elohim for 
 God. With this is combined the Jehovistic story- 
 book, including the history of the Patriarchs. 
 This part is distinguished by the use of the name 
 Jehovah (Lord, A. V.) for God. But this divi- 
 sion does not meet all the exigencies of the case. 
 A third writer has to be invented, who partakes 
 of some of the characteristics of both the Jeho- 
 vist and the Elohist. These three contributors 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 to the Bible History are distinguished by the 
 letters E 5 J, and JE. A fourth and fifth, or 
 sixth is the Deuteronomist (whose work is quite 
 separate, and whose connection with Moses is 
 purely imaginary) and others who write in his 
 spirit, marked by the letter D, D \ and "D 2 . But 
 the combined labours of E and J and JE and the 
 D's, did not come into their present shape at once. 
 We have to distinguish as separate works (i) the 
 Priestly Code, comprising Leviticus, and the 
 allied portions of Exodus and Numbers, and 
 this again is subdivided into P 1 , P 2 , P 3 > &c., 
 according as they wrote in the priestly spirit. 
 
 (2) The Book of the covenant, comprising 
 Exod. xxi-xxiii, and other passages relating 
 to covenants represented by Q, meaning 4- 
 
 (3) Deuteronomy, and according to some, a 
 Book of Holiness. It is also thought that 
 some other fragments and interpolations may 
 have gone to make up the whole. And then 
 finally there is R, the Redactor or editor of 
 the whole Hexateuch, and successive Redactors 
 known as R 2 , R 3 , &c. As regards the very import- 
 ant question of the age of these different docu- 
 ments, though some difference of opinion still 
 exists among the leading critics, there is consi- 
 derable consensus on the following heads :— 
 
 I. The Book of Deuteronomy, or the bulk of 
 
10 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 it, was really composed in the reign of Josiah, 
 when Hilkiah, the High Priest, pretended to 
 have found it in the Temple, some seven centu- 
 ries after the death of Moses. 
 
 2. The Priestly Code, which comprises the 
 great bulk of what has been commonly known 
 as the Mosaic or Levitical law, with its whole 
 round of sacrifice, priesthood, central sanctuary, 
 one altar, and so on, dates from later still, about 
 B. c. 445. It is the work of the Exilic period, 
 and was first put into action by concert between 
 Ezra and Nehemiah. Its whole apparatus of a 
 movable Tabernacle, wandering camp, and other 
 archaic details, with its legislation strictly con- 
 fined to the situation in the wilderness, were so 
 skilfully contrived to conceal its true date, that 
 it has passed as genuine history till the " Higher 
 Criticism" arose to detect the imposture (Intro- 
 duction, Wellhausen, p. 9). 
 
 3. The Jehovistic narrative, comprising the 
 rest of the history of the Israeli tish people down 
 to the occupation of Canaan, was composed for 
 the most part in the time of the Assyrian mon- 
 archy, with the help of tradition and some old 
 documents. 
 
 4. To the same age belong the other historical 
 Books — Judges, Samuel, and Kings. But these 
 have not been allowed to come down to us in 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 11 
 
 their original state. " A revision of them much 
 more thorough than is commonly assumed" took 
 place towards the end of the Babylonian exile 
 (Wellhausen, Introd., p. 8), in other words, the 
 redactors of the Exilic period made the ancient 
 Books tell the story of the sixth or seventh cen- 
 tury before Christ, instead of that of the thir- 
 teenth, twelfth, or tenth, as the case might be. 
 
 5. The Books of Chronicles belong to the be- 
 ginning of the Greek domination (p. 294) after 
 B.C. 330. In them the writer, a Priest, or Levite, 
 has transformed the whole history so as to square 
 with the Priests' Code, and make it appear that 
 the so-called Mosaic legislation had existed all 
 through the times from Saul to the return from 
 the Babylonish Captivity. Among other things 
 he formed fictitious genealogies, to support his 
 views of the Aaronic Priesthood, and the Levitical 
 institutions. 
 
 Such are some of the main results reached by 
 this " Higher Criticism " as set forth chiefly in 
 the work of Wellhausen on " the History of Israel," 
 and Kuenen on " the Hexateuch." It is obvious 
 to remark that it revolutionizes the received 
 views of Holy Scripture as " given by Inspira- 
 tion of God," and degrades the books of the Old 
 Testament not only to the level of fallible 
 human writings, but to that of wilfully false and 
 
12 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 misleading history ; and this it does without one 
 particle of historical evidence to support it. 
 
 Nor is it only the Old Testament which is 
 affected by this destructive criticism. The Old 
 Testament is the foundation on which the New 
 Testament is built. The credit of our Lord and 
 His apostles is pledged to the truth of the Scrip- 
 tures. The Lord Jesus tells us Himself that He 
 came to fulfil the law ; that Moses wrote of Him ; 
 that all things must be fulfilled which were 
 written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, 
 and in the Psalms concerning Him ; that the 
 Scripture cannot be broken : with numerous 
 similar sayings. The apostles all speak in the 
 same strain. They speak of the death and 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ as the necessary ful- 
 filment of what God had showed by the mouth 
 of His Prophets. St. Paul in all his Epistles 
 refers to the " Holy Scriptures," to " the law/' 
 to "the oracles of God," to "the covenants and 
 the giving of the law," to " Moses," to the giving 
 of the law " 430 years after the promise to 
 Abraham," and always treats the Holy Scrip- 
 tures as authorities of absolute veracity and 
 trustworthiness. The Epistle to the Hebrews 
 dwells largely on the mission of Moses, on 
 the respective Priesthoods of Aaron and Jesus 
 Christ, on the spiritual significance of the 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 13 
 
 Tabernacle, and various parts of the Mosaic cere- 
 monial. And, in a word, the whole teaching of 
 the New Testament is founded upon the truth 
 and authenticity and divine authority of the 
 Holy Scriptures as we have received them from 
 the Jews. The theory therefore of the " Higher 
 Criticism " not only affects our estimate of the 
 Scriptures of the Old Testament, but also shakes 
 to its very foundations the fabric of New Testa- 
 ment doctrine which rests upon the Old. 
 
 In particular there is one way in which the 
 " Higher Criticism " affects the doctrine of 
 Christ, which is too important, too momentous, 
 to be passed over in silence. It is admitted 
 on all hands that our Lord Jesus Christ taught 
 plainly and unreservedly the divine authority 
 and Mosaic authorship of the Books traditionally 
 ascribed to him (e. g. Matt. v. 17, 1 8, xix. 8, 
 xxii. 31, 32, xxiii. 2 ; Mark x. 9, xii. 26; Luke 
 xvi. 31, xx. 37 ; xxiv. 26, 27, 44; John iii. 14, 
 v. 45, 46, 47, vi. 32, 49, vii. 19, 22, &c). 
 Hence those who accept the teaching of the 
 " Higher Criticism " with regard to the Penta- 
 teuch are reduced to the painful alternative of 
 believing either that our Lord taught what He 
 knew not to be true, or that He shared the 
 ignorance of the men of His own generation, 
 and believed that to be true which the brighter 
 
14 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 light of the " Higher Criticism " has since dis- 
 covered to be false. The English school of 
 critics has for the most part adopted the latter 
 alternative, and though they endeavour to 
 minimize the evil by speaking of the questions 
 at issue as mere literary questions, and on the 
 other hand by speaking of the " limitation of 
 our Lord's knowledge " as " self-imposed," and 
 as a part of the k4voh(tls (kenosis), or self-empty- 
 ing of His Divine Glory which was a necessary 
 part (they say) of the Incarnation (Phil. ii. 7), 
 yet the broad fact remains that the Lord Jesus, 
 the Teacher sent from God, to whom St. Peter 
 said, Lord, thou knowest all things ; in whom 
 dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily ; 
 in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom 
 and knowledge ; to whom the Father gave the 
 Spirit not by measure ; who spake the "Words 
 of God ; to whom the Father showeth all things 
 that Himself doeth ; was not merely passively 
 nescient of how the Father had dealt with the 
 chosen race in the ages past, but actively taught, 
 in the fulfilment of His Divine mission, that 
 which has since been proved to be false by the 
 wisdom of the " Higher Critics." 
 
 Obviously therefore the conclusions with re- 
 gard to the Old Testament Scriptures arrived at 
 by the " Higher Criticism " are matters affecting 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 15 
 
 very seriously the vital interests of Christianity 
 and of the Church of God. It is not too much 
 to say that no danger of an equally threatening 
 character and subversive tendency has appeared 
 in the Church during the many centuries of her 
 existence. 
 
 Still, had the " Higher Criticism " been con- 
 fined to the regions of its birth in Germany, it 
 might have been wise to leave it alone to perish 
 by the law of its own origin, and after the 
 example of its many predecessors in the regions 
 of speculative theology. It is a different matter 
 now that these speculations are taken up by 
 grave English Divines, and are fostered in our 
 English Universities. When the columns of 
 both the leading secular and religious newspapers 
 are filled with correspondence on w the Bible 
 and modern criticism," when the pages of our 
 magazines and reviews contain numerous articles 
 advocating and supporting the new views, and 
 when the press is teeming with publications on 
 either side of the controversy, it is no longer 
 possible for ordinary Christians to remain in 
 peaceful ignorance of the strife which is raging 
 around them. It becomes the duty therefore of 
 every educated Churchman or Church woman 
 to know something of the grounds on which 
 belief in the Old Testament Scriptures rests, 
 
16 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 and to be in possession of some rational and 
 valid arguments for rejecting decisively views, 
 from whatever quarter they may proceed, which 
 destroy confidence in the Bible as the revealed 
 word of God. And it is, I think, a proper func- 
 tion of our u Society for promoting higher re- 
 ligious education " to endeavour to supply such 
 arguments, and to set the minds of its members 
 at rest on matters so deeply affecting the faith 
 of Christendom. 
 
 I propose therefore in the ensuing course of 
 Lectures first to lay before you some of the chief 
 grounds, as far as my information goes, on which 
 the " Higher Criticism " rests its demands on all 
 Christian people to give up their belief in the 
 Pentateuch as in any true sense a faithful record 
 of the work and words of Moses, and a trust- 
 worthy historical record of God's dealings with 
 the Israeli tish people. And after each such 
 statement I shall endeavour to expose step by 
 step the utter insufficiency of each of these 
 alleged grounds to bear the conclusions which 
 are built upon them ; and in some cases I shall 
 rebut what are absolutely false statements by 
 clear historical evidence to the contrary. This 
 will occupy our two first Lectures. 
 
 Our third Lecture will contain a general view 
 of the historical books of the Old Testament, 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 17 
 
 their composition, their unity, their historical 
 accuracy, the transparent honesty of the writers, 
 the evidence of the ages to their unimpeachable 
 veracity. 
 
 Our fourth and fifth Lectures will deal directly 
 with the first and second Books of Chronicles. 
 
 In trying to lay before you the chief grounds 
 on which the " Higher Criticism " impugns the 
 authenticity and historical character of the 
 Pentateuch, I shall not attempt to follow Well- 
 hausen in his running fire of profane banter, 
 and utterly frivolous objections to the manner 
 in which things are stated, and his attempts to 
 make out contradictions and inconsistencies 
 where none exist. His method of treating' the 
 history as a collection of myths, some earlier and 
 some later, and of dealing with the myths relat- 
 ing to the earlier ages, as really the product of 
 the civilization of the later times to which he 
 relegates the writers who recorded them, is 
 utterly destructive of any real philosophical 
 treatment of the books, and simply turns them 
 upside down. But I shall collect under a few 
 heads the chief objections of weight, as far as I 
 know them, that have been brought forward by 
 different scholars, such as Bishop Colenso, Dr. 
 Davidson, Wellhausen, Kuenen, and others, 
 against the traditional view of the Pentateuch 
 B 
 
18 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 being* in the main the work of Moses, and a 
 faithful reporter of the events recorded in it. 
 These heads are as follows : 
 
 I. Contradictions and inconsistencies in the 
 several narratives betraying their composite 
 nature as the work of different writers, and 
 representing the ideas of very different ages 
 from that to which they profess to belong. 
 
 II. Anachronisms, showing that the writer 
 lived long after Moses. 
 
 III. That the Hebrew of the Pentateuch is 
 not the Hebrew of the age of Moses, but of much 
 later ages ; and also that many words and phrases 
 betray the fact that the people had long been 
 living in Canaan when such passages were written. 
 
 IV. That the Pentateuch betrays a much 
 higher state of civilization than could have 
 existed at so early an age. 
 
 V. That there is no evidence of the existence 
 of the Mosaic Institutions, between the time of 
 the Exodus, when the Mosaic laws purport to 
 have been given, and the later times of the 
 Jewish monarchy ; and that in point of fact 
 the moveable Tabernacle, the Aaronic Priest- 
 hood, the Levitical order, the one place of sacri- 
 fice, are all late inventions, with which Moses 
 had nothing whatever to do, and which were 
 unknown till many centuries after his death. 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 19 
 
 These are, I believe, the most weighty argu- 
 ments of the " Higher Criticism," and I proceed 
 to develop them as I find them in the books of 
 the " Higher Critics," and to deal with them one 
 by one, to the best of my ability. 
 
 I. It is alleged that there is a contradiction 
 between the account of the Creation given in 
 Gen. i.-ii. 3, the work of the Elohist, and that 
 given in Gen. ii. 4-25, the work of the Jehovist. 
 That whereas in the first the vegetable and 
 animal world are created before man, and man 
 comes into being last, in the second (Gen. ii. 
 4-25) man is created before the vegetable 
 world, #nd the animals were created after man 
 was planted in the garden of Eden, and brought 
 to him to see whether among them there was 
 any one meet to be a companion for man, and 
 that when none such was found then woman was 
 made. Now is there one word of truth in this 
 statement ? Any one who is familiar with the 
 narratives of the Old Testament must have ob- 
 served how frequent a method it is with the 
 Old Testament writers to give first a general 
 narrative, and then to go back and give the 
 details of any particular part of the preceding 
 narratives which it is desired to record. Thus 
 Gen. xi. 31 gives the general statement of 
 Abraham's departure with his father Terah 
 B 2 
 
20 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran. But Gen. 
 xii. i goes back to add the important detail 
 tbat God had appeared to him in Ur, and bid 
 him leave his father's house and go to the land 
 of Canaan. In Gen. xxxvii. 5 we read ''Joseph 
 dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren : 
 and they hated him yet the more ; " and then 
 follows the dream in verses 6 and 7. In 
 i Sam. xvi. 21 we read of David coming to 
 Saul to play to him when the evil spirit was 
 upon him, and that he became Saul's armour- 
 bearer. But ch. xvii. goes back and relates 
 the combat with Goliath, which was the imme- 
 diate cause of his becoming Saul's armour- 
 bearer, and abiding permanently at Saul's 
 court. Numerous other instances are scattered 
 through the pages of the Old Testament. In 
 accordance, then, with this common method of 
 Hebrew narrative, it is very natural that the 
 history of creation, after the general compre- 
 hensive narrative of ch. i., should go back to 
 supply certain details which it was desirable to 
 add. And that this is the character of ch. ii. 
 4-25, and that it has ch. i. in view all the 
 time, is evident from the repetition in ch. ii. of 
 the different phrases of ch. i. Compare ii. 4 with 
 i. t and ii. 3 ; and ii. 5 with i. 11, 12 ; and ii. 
 19, 20 with i. 20-26 ; and ii. 20-23 with i. 27. 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 21 
 
 I would also observe that if there are two pos- 
 sible interpretations of the meaning of a passage 
 in any book, even if it be a book of Scripture, 
 one of which is in direct contradiction of other 
 statements of that book, and the other is in 
 harmony with them, it is the dictate of common 
 sense and of sound criticism to accept the inter- 
 pretation which agrees with those other un- 
 doubted statements, and not the one which 
 disagrees with them. 
 
 Looking then at Gen. ii. 5 foil, we find that the 
 writer goes back to three heads which had been 
 summarily related in the preceding chapter, 
 viz. the creation of the vegetable world, of the 
 animal world, and of man, with the view of 
 adding certain details which the progress of the 
 history of man, now placed in the garden of 
 Eden, seemed to require. He therefore men- 
 tions first the interesting fact 1 that for a length 
 of time the growth of herb and tree could 
 not take place because there was no rain- 
 Neither, he adds, was there a man to till the 
 ground. But both these wants were in due 
 time supplied (ver. 9). And this gives occasion 
 
 1 There are two ways of translating ver. 5, that of the 
 Authorised Version, which in this follows the Septuagint, 
 and that of the Revised Version. But the difference does 
 not affect the question before us. 
 
22 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 to add, for the first time, the very important 
 statement concerning 1 man, that he was formed 
 out of the dnst of the ground \ But there was 
 another detail to be supplied concerning man. 
 Gen. i. 29 had merely stated generally " male and 
 female created He them." But how the woman 
 was created, whether simultaneously or other- 
 wise, no hint was given. This information, 
 with its far- spreading social consequences (v. 23- 
 25 ; i Cor. xi. 3-12 ; 1 Tim. ii. 12-15), was now 
 to be given. As soon as the man was set in the 
 garden of Eden it was evident that it was not 
 good for him to be alone. " I will make him 
 a help meet for him," said the Lord God. And 
 what immediately gave rise to the expression of 
 this divine purpose was the transaction recorded 
 in vv. 19, 20. In accordance with that sove- 
 reignty of man over the whole animal creation 
 which had been asserted in Gen. i. 26-28, the 
 Lord brought every beast of the field, and every 
 fowl of the air, which He had made, before Adam 
 that he might name thpm. And Adam gave 
 them all names. 
 
 Incidentally this parade of the animals re- 
 vealed the fact that in spite of all the various 
 
 1 The Hebrew for man is adam; for the ground is 
 adamah ; so in Latin, Homo is man (humanus) ; Humus is 
 the ground. 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 23 
 
 qualities possessed by various animals — strength, 
 and beauty, and swiftness, and sagacity, and 
 industry, and so on, not one was a help meet 
 for man. For not one was created in the image 
 of God, and so God said " I will make him an 
 help meet for him." And then follows the 
 mysterious account of the formation of the 
 woman out of man. 
 
 That there is any contradiction or incon- 
 sistency between the accounts of Creation 
 given in the first and second chapters of 
 Genesis is absolutely untrue. 
 
 Passing over divers frivolous objections to 
 the story of Jacob and Esau, to the history of 
 Joseph (usually considered a perfect model of 
 narrative, but in which Wellhausen doubts 
 whether there is any historical basis), and in 
 which Dr. Driver sees manifold proofs of the 
 mixture of two different accounts, we will 
 glance for a moment at the account of the 
 institution of the Passover given in Exod. xii. 
 Dr. Driver tells us in p. 26 of his Introduction 
 to the Old Testament that " the inference is 
 irresistible that Exod. xii. 21-27 is part of a 
 different account of the institution of the Pass- 
 over" from that contained in xii. 1-20, or 
 rather, xii. 1-13, because he strangely says " xii. 
 14-20 do not concern the Passover at all." 
 
24 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 Now what are the reasons for this inference 
 which it is impossible to resist ? " The verses 
 21-27 do not describe the execution of the 
 commands received by Moses in vv. 1-13." 
 " Moses does not repeat to the people tne in- 
 junctions received, by him." " Several points 
 of importance, e.g. the character of the lamb, 
 and the manner in which it was to be eaten, are 
 omitted." " Fresh points, the hyssop, the basin, 
 none to leave the house . . . are added." Now 
 let us see whether vv. 21-27 do or do not de- 
 scribe the execution of the commands received 
 by Moses. Verse 3 says, " Speak ye unto all the 
 congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day 
 of this month they shall take to them every 
 man a lamb, according to the house of their 
 fathers." In ver. 21, " Then Moses called for all 
 the elders of Israel, and said unto them, Draw out 
 and take you a lamb according to your families, 
 and kill the Passover." Verse 7 says, " And they 
 shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two 
 side posts, and on the upper door post of the 
 houses, wherein they shall eat it." Verse 22 says, 
 " And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip 
 it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike 
 the lintel and the two side posts with the blood 
 that is in the bason ; and none of you shall go 
 out of the door of his house until the morning." 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 25 
 
 Verse 1 2 says, " For I will pass through the land 
 of Egypt this night, and will smite all the first- 
 born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast." 
 Verse 23 says, " For the Lord will pass through 
 to smite the Egyptians." Verse 13 says, ' ; And 
 the blood shall be to you for a token upon the 
 houses where ye are : and when I see the 
 blood I will pass over you, and the plague shall 
 not be upon you to destroy you." Verse 23 says, 
 " And when He seeth the blood upon the lintel, 
 and on the two side posts, the Lord will pass 
 over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer 
 to come in unto your houses to smite you 1 ." I 
 affirm, then, that the inference is irresistible in 
 a directly contrary direction to that spoken of 
 by Dr. Driver ; and that unless it is an axiom 
 that when A gives instructions to B to be 
 delivered to C, and the history relates such 
 delivery, and goes on to describe the perform- 
 ance by C of the instructions so delivered, the 
 narrator must, if he is a true man, repeat 
 verbatim the exact terms of the instructions 
 three times, 1st as given by A, 2nd as delivered 
 by B, and 3 idly as performed by C. — I say 
 
 1 Tt may be worth noticing the identity of the Hebrew 
 root for plague in ver. 13, with that of the verb to smite in 
 ver. 23. And also the agreement in ver. 28 of the mention 
 of " Moses and Aaron" with the plur. of ver. 3. 
 
26 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 unless this is an axiom, the inference from the 
 points of agreement enumerated above is "irre- 
 sistible" that we have before us one consistent 
 and consecutive account of the Institution of 
 the Passover, and have no need of the help of 
 E or J, or JE, or any of the P's or D's, or any 
 one else, to clear up matters and set them 
 straight. 
 
 Other contradictions or inconsistencies, be- 
 traying a dual authorship, are alleged between 
 some of the laws in Deuteronomy and those in 
 other parts of the Pentateuch. Some of these 
 variations, as e. g. greater insistence on the One 
 Place where the Festivals were to be kept, and sacri- 
 fices offered (compare Deut. xxi. 6, j6 with Exod. 
 xxiii. 1 4), are so manifestly caused b} r the greater 
 proximity in time and place to the occupation 
 of Canaan when the laws of Deuteronomy were 
 given, compared with the time and place of 
 the giving of the earlier laws, that we need not 
 stop to dwell on them. Others, as e. g. the 
 silence of Deuteronomy about the year of 
 jubilee, apparent differences about the law of 
 tithes in Deut. xiv. and Num. xviii., may pos- 
 sibly indicate in some cases additions or modifi- 
 cations in particular laws in the course of ages. 
 But they are absolutely imponderable when 
 weighed with the solid mass of harmonious 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 27 
 
 agreement. I will therefore only take into con- 
 sideration one case of difference which has been 
 made a good deal of. I mean the version of 
 the ten commandments as given in Deut. v. as 
 compared with that given in Exod. xx. If you 
 place these two versions of the ten command- 
 ments side by side, you will see that the chief 
 difference is in the fourth commandment. In 
 Exod. xx., after the enacting clause prohibiting 
 labour on the Sabbath day for all, down to " thy 
 stranger that is within thy gates," there follows 
 the reason for this sanctity of the seventh day, 
 viz. " For in six days the Lord made heaven 
 and earth," and so on. 
 
 But in Deut. v., after the same enacting 
 clause as above, " nor the stranger that is within 
 thy gates," instead of the reference to the 
 six days' creation, and the rest on the seventh 
 day, there follows, " that thy manservant and 
 thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. 
 And remember that thou wast a servant in the 
 land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God 
 brought thee out thence through a mighty 
 hand and by a stretched out arm : therefore the 
 Lord thy God commandeth thee to keep the 
 Sabbath day." Now it seems to me that 
 nothing* can be more natural under the circum- 
 stances than such variation. According to the 
 
28 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 narrative in Deuteronomy Moses is not here 
 legislating. He is recalling to the memory of 
 his hearers the legislation given at Sinai. The 
 law of the ten commandments " written and 
 engraven on stones " was actually among them 
 (Deut. x. 5). In referring to it memoriter, he 
 added a comment of his own to enforce it, using 
 the same words as are recorded in Exod. xxiii. 
 12. The whole thing is so natural that I 
 cannot imagine anybody seeing any difficulty 
 in it. 
 
 It is not necessary to pursue this part of 
 the subject further. The above are only in- 
 tended as specimens of the kind of contradictions 
 alleged by the " Higher Criticism." They tell 
 us, it is true, that their arguments are cumula- 
 tive. But no number of arguments, each of 
 which is improbable in itself, can make up a 
 total probability, any more than any number of 
 minus quantities can make up an integral quan- 
 tity. I venture to think that there is absolutely 
 nothing in the cases we have considered to 
 throw the slightest suspicion upon the authen- 
 ticity of the books before us. 
 
 II. The second head of objections, that of the 
 existence of anachronisms in the Pentateuch, 
 showing that the writer lived long after Moses, 
 is, at first sight, much more serious, inasmuch 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 29 
 
 as the objections rest upon facts, and not upon 
 mere fancies. Let us look honestly and boldly 
 at the principal ones. 
 
 (a) Gen. xii. 6, " And the Canaanite was then 
 in the land." And xiii. 7, " The Canaanite and 
 the Perizzite dwelled then in the land." These 
 passages have often been adduced as proofs that 
 Genesis was written after the destruction of the 
 Canaanites. But on the whole thej^seem rather 
 to refer to Gen. x. 18, 19, and to mean that the 
 settlement of the Canaanites in the land of 
 Canaan had already taken place. 
 
 (b) Gen. xxxvi. 31-39, "These are the kings 
 of Edom that reigned in the land of Edom, 
 before there reigned any king over the children 
 of Israel." Here is a distinct mention of Kings 
 of Israel, and so a distinct proof that this pas- 
 sage was written after there were Kings in 
 Israel. Moreover, the genealogy of the Kings 
 of Edom here given goes down to the time of 
 Saul the first king of Israel. 
 
 (c) Another instance is found in Gen. xiv. 
 14, when we read that Abraham pursued the 
 kings " unto Dan." And in Deut. xxxiv. 1 
 that the Lord showed Moses "all the land of 
 Gilead, unto Dan.'"' But we read in Judg. xviii. 
 10 that the ancient name of the city was Laish, 
 and that the name was changed to Dan, by the 
 
30 THE BOOKS OF CHKONICLES 
 
 Danites who took possession of it in the days of 
 the Judges, long after the death of Moses. See, 
 too, Num. xiv. 45 ; xxi. 3 ; Deut. i. 44, com- 
 pared with Judg. i. 17 for the parallel case of 
 Hormah. 
 
 (d) In Num. xxxii. 40-43, we read that 
 Moses gave Gilead to Machir the son of 
 Manasseh, and that Jair the son of Manasseh, 
 took the small towns thereof, and called them 
 Havoth- Jair, i. e. the villages of Jair. In Deut. 
 iii. 14 this information is repeated, but with the 
 addition "unto this day," words which are 
 repeated in Judg. x. 4, but which seem out of 
 place with reference to an event which had 
 taken place only a few months before, and to 
 imply a duration of many years (cp. Josh. iv. 9 ; 
 Judg. i. 26 ; % Sam. vii. 6 ; 1 Kings viii. 9) during 
 which they were still known as Havoth-Jair. 
 
 (e) Deut. xxxiv. 10, " There arose not a pro- 
 phet since in Israel like unto Moses," implies 
 that a long time had elapsed between the death 
 of Moses, and the penning of this chapter of 
 Deuteronomy. 
 
 Now in regard to these anachronisms : if 
 it were contended that a Book with these 
 statements in it had been printed and pub- 
 lished in the time of Moses, I think that 
 these anachronisms would be conclusive evi- 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 31 
 
 dence against such a statement. But we have 
 to consider that the writings of Moses, in what- 
 ever state they were left by him, passed through 
 the hands of the guardians of the sacred 
 writings during a period of between eight 
 and nine hundred years to the time of Ezra ; 
 that several times of special literary activity 
 occurred within this period, as those of Samuel 
 and the schools of the Prophets, those of David 
 and Solomon and their contemporary Prophets, 
 those of Hezekiah and his copyists (Prov. xxv. i), 
 and those of Ezra the Scribe (Ezra vii. 6), and 
 that it is inevitable that verbal alterations 
 and additions should have been made in the 
 course of these ages to adapt them to the wants 
 of the people. We shall be strengthened in our 
 sense of the probability of such changes by 
 observing how the feeling of authorship is want- 
 ing with regard to the Scriptures. The writers 
 themselves, and the custodians of their writings, 
 seem to have had nothing either of the self- 
 importance of authors, or any sense of author- 
 ship as an ingredient in the authority of the 
 books of which they had the custody. To give 
 and to preserve a clear and authentic account 
 of the history of Israel and God's dealings with 
 His people ; to make the sacred records intel- 
 ligible to the people, and to add any such infor- 
 
32 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 mation as tended to throw light upon the books 
 which they had the care of, seem to have been 
 their main purpose. We } in editing an ancient 
 book, add as footnotes any such information 
 or illustrations as may seem necessary. They 
 incorporated them in the text. They did this 
 in perfect good faith. The vast majority of the 
 books transcribed by them had no author's name 
 attached. Even the Pentateuch does not claim 
 to have been written by Moses as a whole. Of 
 the authorship of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, the 
 Books of Samuel and Kings, we know abso- 
 lutely nothing. Moreover, the keepers of the 
 Scriptures had divine authority to teach as Priests 
 or Prophets or both. And hence we cannot be 
 surprised that in handing down to us the ancient 
 records of their nation, they made such addi- 
 tions or alterations in them as made them more 
 intelligible. Take for example the list of the 
 Edomitish Kings in Gen. xxxvi. The original 
 writer had given Esau's genealogy down to the 
 time when he was writing. This appendix to 
 that genealogy completed the history of the 
 Edomitish families, and was added accordingly 
 to the later revision. 
 
 It may be worth while to add that this 
 method of dealing with historical documents 
 receives a remarkable illustration from the Book 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 33 
 
 of Ezra. In the second chapter of that book, 
 where the history is dealing* with the reign of 
 Cyrus, and about the year b. c. 536, there is 
 inserted a document belonging to the reign of 
 Artaxerxes, and to about the year b. c. 445 (i. e. 
 ninety years later) in which mention is made at 
 v. 63 of the Tirshatha Nehemiah, who did not 
 come to Jerusalem till the later date. And again 
 in Ezra iv. 6, 7 and following verses, where the 
 history is still dealing with the times of Cyrus 
 (about B.C. 5^6), mention is made by way of 
 illustration of what happened in the time of 
 Xerxes and Artaxerxes, Cyrus's successors, down 
 to about the year B. c. 457, and then the history 
 goes back to the time of Cyrus. But it is not 
 till Ezra vii. that Ezra's own history begins. 
 So again in the Book of Nehemiah, a consider- 
 able portion is written by Nehemiah himself, 
 but other parts are the work of some unknown 
 writer, either Ezra or one of his companions. 
 Neh. i.-vii. 6 is written in the first person, and 
 this is resumed again at xiii. 6, to the end of the 
 book. The intermediate chapters are by another 
 hand. 
 
 It seems therefore highly probable that the 
 
 keepers and editors of the Scriptures should have 
 
 dealt in the same manner with the older books 
 
 which passed through their hands. It is a 
 
 c 
 
34 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 further confirmation of this explanation of the 
 introduction of anachronistic passages in the 
 Pentateuch, that the removal of them leaves the 
 context quite unaffected. The genealogy, e. g. of 
 the Edomitish Kings, and of the Dukes of Edom, 
 can be put in or left out, cf. Gen. xxxvi., without 
 any effect upon what goes before or follows after. 
 So, too, the substitution of the modern for the 
 ancient names of cities, disturbs nothing but the 
 single name itself. The same observation ap- 
 plies to those curious antiquarian glosses which 
 recur frequently in the Book of Deuteronomy, and 
 which are generally felt to be scarcely suitable 
 to the person of Moses, or the occasions on which 
 they appear. See Deut. ii. 10-12 ; 20-23 ; iii. 
 9, 11, 14. In every case they can be left out 
 without affecting the context, a strong indication 
 that they were inserted after the context was 
 written. I think we may conclude that the 
 anachronisms of the Pentateuch are no serious 
 objections to its belonging to the age of Moses. 
 III. The next objection brought by the 
 " Higher Criticism " against the authenticity of 
 the Pentateuch is that the Hebrew is not the 
 Hebrew of the age of Moses, but that of the 
 later Jewish monarchy ; and also that many 
 words and phrases betray the fact that the 
 people had long been settled in Canaan when 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 35 
 
 such passages were written. Among the words 
 and phrases thus objected to, the following may 
 be particularised. 
 
 (a) In Deut. i. I, 5; iii. 8; iv. 46 we have 
 the phrase " beyond Jordan 1 " (R.V.) to describe 
 the country on the east of Jordan. Also in the 
 same sense, Num. xxii. 1 ; xxxii. 32 ; xxxv. 14, 
 and elsewhere in the later books ; and it is 
 argued that the use of the phrase implies that 
 the persons so using it had long been living on 
 the west of Jordan, i.e. in Canaan. If the 
 application of the phrase was uniform, and in 
 every case was used by persons on the west of 
 Jordan to describe the country east of Jordan, 
 there would be considerable force in the argu- 
 ment. But this is by no means the case. In 
 Gen. iv. 10, 11 ; Deut. iii. 20, 25 ; Josh. ix. 1, 
 and elsewhere, it means the country west of the 
 Jordan, "the other side" varying in meaning 
 according to the side on which the person 
 speaking is. In Num. xxxii. 19 we find the 
 phrase used in the same breath of both sides : 
 when the Reubenites and Gadites say, "We will 
 not inherit with them on yonder side Jordan, 
 because our inheritance is fallen unto us on 
 this side Jordan, eastward," where the Hebrew 
 
 1 Heb. Hll'l "OP. The A.V. has " on this side Jordan." 
 C 2 
 
36 THE BOOKS OF CHEONICLES 
 
 word for yonder side and for this side is the same. 
 But in other cases the phrase has been fixed to 
 mean the country east of Jordan, irrespective of 
 the position of the speaker, as appears by the 
 name of the country Perea, literally, the land 
 beyond, i. e. to the east of Jordan, and as in the 
 analogous cases, Gallia trans-alpina, or cis-alpina, 
 or the part of Rome called Transteverina. 
 
 (I) Objection is again taken to the expression. 
 Deut. xix. 14, " Thou shalt not remove thy 
 neighbour's landmark which they of old times 
 have set in thine inheritance," as if it indicated 
 a long settlement in the land at the time the 
 precept was given ; and Deut. v. 14, and Exod. 
 xx. 10, " The stranger that is within thy gates," 
 as being inapplicable to the tents in which they 
 lived in the wilderness. But obviously the law 
 looked forward to the time of their occupation 
 of Canaan. So that this objection is pointless. 
 
 (c) Again, it is laid down as an axiom by 
 Wellhausen (p. 9 1 ), that Ci agriculture was learned 
 by the Hebrews from the Canaanites in whose 
 land they settled." And it is in accordance 
 with this axiom that all agricultural words and 
 phrases which are found in the Pentateuch, as 
 well as the Jewish Festivals which are founded 
 (as Wellhausen says) upon the agricultural sea- 
 sons, are supposed to be clear indications that 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 37 
 
 the passages in which such words are found, and 
 the Festivals which have such an origin, must 
 be posterior to the occupation of Canaan by the 
 Hebrews. As if the Israelites could have dwelt 
 for two hundred years in Egypt, the richest corn 
 country in the world, the land where their fathers 
 came in the days of famine to buy corn, the 
 land which for centuries supplied Rome with 
 bread, the land where agriculture was one of 
 the leading occupations of the people, and have 
 been ignorant of common agricultural words, or 
 unfamiliar with the use of the ox and the ass in 
 the labours of the field ! 
 
 (d) We turn then for a few moments to the 
 more important question of the language of the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 It is alleged that the Hebrew language in 
 which the Pentateuch is written is not the 
 Hebrew spoken and written in the time of 
 Moses, but that of the later Jewish monarchy. 
 Just therefore as we should pronounce certainly, 
 apart from all other evidence, that the Authorised 
 Version of the Bible was not written in the four- 
 teenth century because the English is quite dif- 
 ferent from the English, say, of Wycliff's Bible, 
 so they say the Pentateuch could not be written 
 in the fourteenth century before the Christian 
 era, because the Hebrew is the Hebrew of the 
 
38 THE BOOKS OF CHKONICLES 
 
 seventh or eighth century before Christ. But 
 you can see at once the difference between the 
 two cases. In the case of the English Bible we 
 have WyclifF's Bible before us with which to 
 make the comparison. In the case of the Hebrew 
 Bible we have no other work of the age of Moses 
 with which to compare it. The assertion there- 
 fore that the Hebrew of the Pentateuch is not 
 the Hebrew of the age of Moses is one which 
 has to be proved before we can give our assent 
 to it. 
 
 Let us look at the facts. First of all, what 
 was the real interval of time between Moses and, 
 say, King Josiah when the " Higher Criticism " 
 says Deuteronomy was written ? The old chro- 
 nologists placed the Exodus at about B.C. 1490, 
 as you will see by the dates on the margin of 
 your Bibles, being misled as to the Pharaoh of 
 the Exodus, and by some other chronological data 
 in the Bible itself. But recent discoveries have 
 produced unanimity among Egyptologists that 
 the Pharaoh of the Exodus was Menephthah 
 the 2nd, whose accession took place B.C. 1300, 
 which would bring the Exodus about 200 years 
 later, and would place Moses at about the year 
 1 290. The discovery of the Book of the Law 
 in the Temple is placed by chronologists at B. c. 
 621 (Driver's Introduction to Old Testament, 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 39 
 
 p. 232). Therefore the interval between Moses 
 and Josiah is under 700 years. The question, 
 therefore 5 is whether upon philological grounds 
 language could remain as unchanged for 700 
 years, as a comparison of Jeremiah and the Book 
 of Deuteronomy, if of the age of Moses, would 
 show the Hebrew to have done. There does 
 not appear to be the slightest improbability in 
 this being the case. Compare the Latin of 
 Plautus with the Latin of Gregory the Great 
 800 years afterwards 1 , or the Greek of Thucy- 
 dides with that of Procopius 1000 years later; 
 or the Arabic spoken at Mecca which is affirmed 
 by the great Arabic scholar Freytag to be pre- 
 cisely the same language as that of the Koran 
 twelve centuries before ; or the two Egyptian 
 Papyri spoken of by Brugsch w r hich, though 
 separated by 1000 years in time, yet are of the 
 same stamp and show not the slightest change 
 in grammar, and you will see that there is not 
 the slightest improbability in the Hebrew of 
 the Pentateuch being really the Hebrew of the 
 Mosaic age. The same conclusion may be come 
 to by a careful observation of the proper names 
 of persons and places which show how un- 
 changed the language was of which they were 
 compounded. We must remember too how un- 
 
 1 Smith's " Pentateuch." 
 
40 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 changing all things are in the East, manners 
 and customs as well as language — how isolated 
 the Israelites were in their social life,, and utterly 
 cut off from intermarriages and other social 
 intercourse with other nations ; what an influ- 
 ence upon their written and spoken language 
 the Scriptures would be likely to exercise, like 
 as the Authorised Version has upon our own 
 English tongue, and I think you will come with 
 me to the conviction that there is not any 
 reason on philological grounds to believe that 
 the language of the Pentateuch is not the lan- 
 guage of the age of Moses. 
 
 I do not, however, wish you to understand 
 that there is no difference between the lano-uag-e 
 of the Pentateuch and that of the later books. 
 Taking the books of the Old Testament, and 
 dividing them into three periods, the Penta- 
 teuch, the books presumably written during the 
 Jewish monarchy, and the books about the time 
 of the Exile (i. e. just before, during, and after 
 the Exile), we find three decided varieties of 
 Hebrew style. The central period gives that 
 of the best and purest Hebrew. The Penta- 
 teuch has a more limited vocabulary, and certain 
 archaic spellings 1 . The exilic books have a 
 
 1 As Xin for N\l, iyj for my:, pnV (whence Isaac), for 
 PW, &c. 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 41 
 
 strong- admixture of Aramean forms. There 
 are many words in the Pentateuch which occur 
 nowhere else, and there are many words in the 
 books of the two later periods which are not 
 found in the Pentateuch. And these differences 
 are valuable evidences that the books were 
 really written in the times to which they pro- 
 fess to belong*. 
 
 IV. The next head of objections — the last 
 which we shall consider this evening — need 
 detain us very few minutes. I do not think it 
 would have been possible for any critic to make 
 so frivolous an objection as u that the Penta- 
 teuch betrays a much higher state of civilization 
 than could have existed at so early an age," if 
 he believed the history which the Pentateuch 
 contains. The conception of Israel as a rude 
 nomad tribe may be inconsistent with such 
 civilization as the Pentateuchal code supposes. 
 But that any one who believes that the Israelites 
 had been settled in Egypt more than two hun- 
 dred years, and that Moses their leader and 
 lawgiver was " learned in all the wisdom of the 
 Egyptians," should make such an objection is 
 incredible. The truth is that the more we know 
 of ancient Egypt by that wonderful exploration 
 of her ancient monuments and documents which 
 has been so successfully carried on during the last 
 
42 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 half century, the more deeply are we impressed 
 with the high level of civilization attained by 
 her in that early age of the world's history. In 
 architecture, in sculpture, in music, in agricul- 
 ture, in government, in war, in navigation, in 
 the luxuries and embellishments of social life, 
 in manufactures, in her elaborate scheme of his- 
 torical record, her curious hieroglyphic writing, 
 her sepulchral monuments, her complicated re- 
 ligious system, Egypt stands far ahead of all 
 contemporary nations, and was the leader of the 
 civilization of the world. There is very much 
 in the Mosaic institutions which bears a distinct 
 stamp of connection with Egypt, and so adds 
 a striking testimony to the authenticity of the 
 Books of Moses. 
 
 And here I close for to-night. I reserve for 
 my next Lecture the consideration of by far 
 the most formidable objection brought by the 
 " Higher Criticism " against the authenticity of 
 the Pentateuch and the truth of the Mosaic 
 Law, and I shall deal with it at some length. 
 As far as we have gone to-night, I have tried 
 to put you in possession of the chief heads of 
 the arguments by which the " Higher Criticism" 
 attacks the authenticity of the Books of Moses, 
 as far as was possible in so short a compass, and 
 to show you how little cause for uneasiness there 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 43 
 
 is as to the ultimate issue of the conflict be- 
 tween the Scriptures given by God for the 
 guidance of His people in all ages, and the 
 criticisms of a school which rejects all Divine 
 revelation. 
 
 The subject of our next Lecture will be the 
 statement of the "Higher Criticism" that "there 
 is no evidence of the existence of the Mosaic 
 Institutions between the time of the Exodus, 
 when the laws purport to have been given, and 
 the later times of the Jewish monarchy ; " and 
 the peremptory refutation of it by clear his- 
 torical evidence. 
 
LECTUEE II. 
 
 Theory of the " Higher Criticism " with 
 Regard to the Pentateuch {continued). 
 
 We come now to the last of the grounds 
 on which the " Higher Criticism " impugns the 
 authenticity of the Pentateuch, and denies its 
 historical character. This is, as stated in my 
 last Lecture under head V., " that there is no 
 evidence of the existence of the Mosaic Institu- 
 tions, between the time of the Exodus, when 
 the Mosaic laws purport to have been given, 
 and the later times of the Jewish monarchy ; 
 and that in point of fact the moveable Taber- 
 nacle, the Aaronic Priesthood, the Levitical 
 order, and the one place of sacrifice, are all late 
 inventions, with which Moses had nothing what- 
 ever to do, and which were unknown till many 
 centuries after his death." 
 
 Now I consider this as by far the most 
 plausible ground of the allegations of the 
 " Higher Criticism ;" first because it professes to 
 rest upon facts, not on the mere fancies of the 
 critics as to what Moses oua>ht to have done, 
 and what the course of history ought to have 
 
THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES. 45 
 
 been ; and secondly because at first sight the 
 alleged facts seem to have a measure of truth 
 in them. I had for many years in the course 
 of my study of the Old Testament been some- 
 what puzzled by the absence of more prominent 
 notice of the Mosaic Institutions in the his- 
 torical books ; and less than two years a^o in 
 a paper which I printed for private circulation 
 I said that a careful statement of all that we 
 know concerning the existence of the Books of 
 the law between Moses and Ezra ... a collection 
 of references to the law of Moses in the his- 
 torical books ... or elsewhere . . . would help to 
 make a strong case against the conclusions of 
 the " Higher Criticism." But I had never care- 
 fully examined the intervening Books of the 
 Old Testament to see whether it realty is true 
 that there is no evidence of the existence of the 
 law of Moses between the time of the Exodus 
 and the later Jewish monarchy. Only I felt as 
 I am sure you will all feel with me, that if it 
 really is true that through a period of not less 
 than seven hundred years there w T as a complete 
 silence in Scripture concerning the Mosaic In- 
 stitutions it would be a fact difficult to account 
 for, if all the time the law of Moses had been 
 in existence. Hence the importance of our 
 present investigation. 
 
46 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 I would further premise that it is also su- 
 premely important that all our witnesses should 
 be unimpeachable. It is an essential part of 
 the contention of the " Higher critics " that the 
 Books of Chronicles, which bear such distiuct 
 witness to the Mosaic Institutions, are not his- 
 torical and that their evidence goes for nothing. 
 While, therefore, I hope to show in our latter 
 lectures that they are trustworthy, and that 
 their evidence is conclusive, I shall in the first 
 instance rest the strength of our case upon the 
 other historical books, keeping the Chronicles 
 quite in the background. 
 
 My method this evening will be first to lay 
 before you three or four of the most prominent 
 Institutions of the Mosaic law as they are con- 
 tained in the Pentateuch. Then, secondly, to 
 adduce some of the statements of the " Higher 
 critics" concerning them. And, thirdly, to con- 
 front these with passages from the historical 
 Books of the Old Testament from Joshua to 
 Ezra and Nehemiah, and leave you to form 
 your own conclusions. 
 
 First, let us take (i) the earliest, and in some 
 points of view one of the most prominent of the 
 Mosaic Institutions, I mean that of the Pass- 
 over. In Exod. xii. we have the striking 
 account of its institution by Divine command 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 47 
 
 on the eve of the deliverance of Israel from 
 their Egyptian bondage ; that great crisis of 
 their national life, celebrated in all after aee's 
 by Prophets and Psalmists as the most signal 
 display of God's mercy to His chosen people, 
 the most glorious manifestation of Jehovah's 
 almighty power. And in truth nothing can 
 exceed the grandeur of the occasion, or the sig- 
 nificance of the memorial destined to preserve 
 the recollection of it through all ages. The 
 pride of the greatest potentate in the world 
 broken down before the death of all the first- 
 born of his kingdom : a whole nation, with a 
 wonderful future before them, just poising their 
 wings for their flight into liberty and glory, 
 like a bird let loose from the snare of the fowler 
 — their extraordinary attitude by night, eating 
 the paschal lamb to whose blood, sprinkled upon 
 their houses, they owed their life, eating their 
 unleavened bread in haste with their loins ready 
 girded for the march, their staff in their hand, 
 and their shoes on their feet, waiting for the 
 signal to be off and to be gone. Mark too the 
 other features of the institution. The month 
 in which this happened was thenceforth to be 
 the first month of their year. The day on which 
 it happened was to be kept as a feast to the 
 Lord throughout their generations — " Ye shall 
 
48 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 keep it as a feast by an ordinance for ever." 
 And as if this was not enough to ensure the 
 perpetual observance of the Passover, it is added 
 (v. 24), " Ye shall observe this thing for an 
 ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever . . . 
 and it shall come to pass when your children 
 shall say unto you What mean ye by this ser- 
 vice, that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the 
 Lord's Passover, who passed over the houses of 
 the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote 
 the Egyptians, and delivered our houses — and 
 the people bowed the head and worshipped." 
 The order to keep the Passover is repeated again 
 in Levit. xxiii. 5, and Num. xxviii. 16 and ix. 
 j-5. And once more in Deut. xvi. 1-8 the com- 
 mandment is given at some length, "Observe the 
 month Abib, and keep the Passover unto the 
 Lord thy God, for in the month Abib the Lord 
 thy God brought thee out of Egypt by night : " 
 and the limitation is added that the Passover 
 was to be kept only at the place "which the 
 Lord thy God shall choose to put His name in." 
 I must not forget to add that in the first month 
 of the second year of the Exodus a solemn Pass- 
 over was kept by the children of Israel in the 
 wilderness of Sinai (Num. ix. 1-5) and that 
 this was added to the laws about the Passover, 
 that if any one by reason of uncleanness, or 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 49 
 
 absence on a journey, was unable to keep the Pass- 
 over on the fourteenth day of the first month, 
 he might do so on the fourteenth day of the 
 second month : a provision of which Hezekiah 
 availed himself according to 2 Chron. xxx. 2. 
 
 By the side of the ordinance of the Passover 
 we also find that of the two other great feasts, 
 viz. Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles. 
 It may suffice to refer for these to Deut. xvi. 16, 
 ' Three times in a year shall all thy males appear 
 before the Lord thy God, in the place which He 
 shall choose ; in the feast of unleavened bread 
 (i. e. the Passover) and in the feast of weeks 
 (Pentecost) and in the feast of tabernacles." 
 (See alsoExod. xxiii. 14-17, xxxiv. 18-23, Levit. 
 xxiii., Num. xxviii. xxix). We shall have occasion 
 by and bye to refer to these three festivals. 
 
 (2) and (3) We will turn next to two other 
 fundamental institutions of the law of Moses. 
 I mean the separation of the tribe of Levi for 
 the service of the Lord, and the Aaronic priest- 
 hood, and we will take the latter first because 
 it came first in order of time. We read in 
 Exod. xxviii. 1 the first distinct separation of 
 Aaron and his sons to the priesthood, " Take 
 unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his sons with 
 him . . . that he may minister unto me in the 
 Priest's office, even Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, 
 D 
 
50 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's sons " — where you 
 have Aaron the High Priest, and his sons as 
 assistant Priests. In the following chapters we 
 have an elaborate account of the garments to 
 be worn by Aaron and his sons respectively, of 
 the sacrifices to be offered at their consecration, 
 of the anointing oil with which Aaron was to 
 be anointed, and amon^ other things of the 
 Urim and Thummim by means of which the 
 High Priest should enquire of the Lord on 
 matters of high religious or national concern. 
 There are also many precise laws as to the 
 portions of the sacrifices belonging to the 
 Priests, and as to the various functions ex- 
 clusively belonging to Aaron and to his sons. 
 You will all doubtless remember especially the 
 imposing ceremony of the High Priest entering 
 once a year within the vail, with the blood of 
 the sacrifice and the sweet incense, and con- 
 fession of sins over the scapegoat that was to 
 be sent into the wilderness. And then to show 
 the perpetuity of the office, and its continuance 
 in the family of Aaron, it is enacted in Exod. 
 xxix. 29 that the holy garments of Aaron shall 
 be his son's after him. And accordingly when 
 the time came that Aaron must die, the Lord 
 bid Moses take Aaron and his son Eleazar up 
 into Mount Hor ; and there strip Aaron of his 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 51 
 
 priestly garments and put them upon Eleazar his 
 son, and Moses did so. And thenceforth Eleazar 
 appears as the High Priest, as e. g. in the 
 second numbering of the people (Num. xxvi. 63), 
 in the decision about the daughters of Zelophehad 
 (Num. xxvii. 2), and other occasions, but especially 
 in connection with one very important event, the 
 appointment of Joshua to be the successor of 
 Moses as the lay chief of the congregation. We 
 read as follows in Num. xxvii. 18, "And the 
 Lord said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the 
 son of Nun . . . and set him before Eleazar 
 the Priest, and before all the congregation, 
 and give him a charge in their sight . . . 
 And he shall stand before Eleazar the Priest, 
 who shall ask counsel for him after the judg- 
 ment of Urim before the Lord," and so on; 
 I call your special attention to this peculiar, 
 function of the High Priest in relation to the 
 civil rulers — enquiring of God for him through 
 the Urim and Thummim of the priestly ephod — ■ 
 because I shall have to refer to it by and bye. 
 The High Priesthood of Eleazar seems to have 
 lasted through the book of Joshua, his death 
 being recorded in the last verse of that book. 
 It may*however be doubted whether he was not 
 already dead at the time of the events recorded 
 in Josh. xxii. seeing that at v. 30 his son is 
 D 2 
 
52 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 called simply " Phinehas the Priest," and that 
 the other designation of him " Phinehas the 
 son of Eleazar the Priest " is equally compatible 
 with his being the High Priest at this time. 
 But this by the way. Anyhow we know from 
 Judg. xx. 28 that Phinehas succeeded his father 
 Eleazar. 
 
 But this provision for a, perpetual supply of 
 Priests of the House of Aaron did not exhaust 
 the provision made by the law of Moses for the 
 service of God. The whole of the remaining" 
 families of the tribe of Levi were separated to 
 assist the Priests in their ministrations. In 
 Num. ii. 5 ff. we read that the Lord spake unto 
 Moses, saying, " Bring the tribe of Levi near, 
 and present them before Aaron the Priest that 
 they may minister unto him. And they shall 
 ... do the service of the Tabernacle. And thou 
 shalt give the Levites unto Aaron and his sons ; 
 they are wholly given unto him out .of the 
 children of Israel." And it is further explained 
 (v. 13) that the Levites were thus taken into 
 the service of the Tabernacle in exchange for 
 the first-born who had been hallowed unto the 
 Lord on the Passover night when the first-born 
 of Egypt were smitten. The consequence of 
 this was that the tribe of Levi was not 
 numbered when the other tribes were, as we 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 53 
 
 read in Num. i. And that when the land of 
 Canaan was divided among the twelve tribes of 
 Israel, the tribe of Levi received no inheritance, 
 " the Lord was their inheritance," as it is said 
 more than once ; that is to say, that instead of 
 having land like the other tribes they were to 
 be wholly maintained by their allotted portion 
 of the tithes, and of the beasts offered in sacri- 
 fice by their brethren of the other tribes. 
 
 As the result of this whole legislation, as 
 appears equally from Exodus, Leviticus, Num- 
 bers and Deuteronomy — except that I do not 
 think there is any direct mention in Deuter- 
 onomy of the High Priest — the Israelitish 
 people as a fundamental part of their consti- 
 tution had a hierarchy drawn exclusively from 
 one of their tribes. It consisted of an hereditary 
 High Priest, a person of the highest dignity 
 and importance in the community, his assistant 
 Priests, and a large body of inferior ministers 
 scattered over the whole country. The whole 
 external religion of the community, which by 
 the same legislative code was of a most elabo- 
 rate and conspicuous kind, was under the con- 
 trol and management of this one tribe. 
 
 (4) We turn next to another singular and re- 
 markable ordinance of the Mosaic law. The wor- 
 ship of God, with the costly system of sacrifice 
 
54 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 and offerings, and the ministration of High 
 Priest, and Priests, and Levites, and all the 
 apparatus of altars, and tables, and candlesticks, 
 and the ark of the covenant, was by the law 
 strictly confined to one place. Again and again 
 it is said, Thou shalt sacrifice, &c, " at the place 
 which the Lord thy God shall choose to place 
 His name there — not in any of thy gates, . . . 
 but at the place which the Lord thy God shall 
 choose to place His name in " (Deut. xvi. 2, 5, 
 6, n, 16). "Unto the place which the Lord 
 your God shall choose out of all your tribes to 
 put His name there, even unto His habitation 
 shall ye seek, and thither shalt thou come, and 
 thither ye shall bring your burnt offerings and 
 your sacrifices," and so on (Deut. xii. 5, 11, 14, 
 1 8, 21). But these precepts in Deut. apply to 
 the time when they should have crossed over 
 Jordan, and the Lord should have given them 
 rest (Deut. xii. 10). But, meanwhile, while 
 they were still in the wilderness, and still 
 moving from place to place, this unity of altar, 
 and sacrifice, and place of worship, was equally 
 secured by the remarkable provision of the 
 moveable Tabernacle. The House of God, the 
 place which He chose to put His Name there, 
 was not yet a fixed place on the earth. But 
 still there was only one place at any given time 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 55 
 
 where God's Name was recorded (Exod. xx. 24) 
 and that was wherever the Tabernacle was (see 
 Levit. xvii. 1-9 and elsewhere). The whole 
 history of the Tabernacle in Exod. Levit. Num. 
 and Deut. is most remarkable. The pattern of 
 it showed to Moses in the mount (Exod. xxv. 
 9-40 ; xxvi. 30 ; Acts vii. 44 ; Heb. viii. 5) : the 
 command, <: Let them make me a sanctuary that I 
 may dwell among them" (Exod. xxv. 8). followed 
 by the promise, "There will I meet with the 
 children of Israel, and I will sanctify the Taber- 
 nacle . . . and I will dwell among the children 
 of Israel, and will be their God" (Exod. xxix. 
 43-45) ; the elaborate description of its material, 
 structure and furniture (xxv.-xxvii.) ; the de- 
 scription of the execution of the work by 
 Bezaleel and Aholiab, and then of its solemn 
 rearing on the first day of the first month of 
 the second year, and the taking possession of 
 His sanctuary by the Lord of glory, when " a 
 cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and 
 the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle " 
 (Exod. xl. 35), all these are particulars which 
 give an unrivalled importance and dignity to 
 the Tabernacle of the congregation. Nor are 
 the other details concerning it of less solemn 
 interest. The cloud of the Lord resting upon 
 it by day and the fire by night, in the sight of 
 
56 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 all Israel throughout their journeyings, sym- 
 bolising God's gracious Presence in the midst of 
 His people ; its being taken up when they 
 were to go forward on their journeys, and their 
 resting still so long as the cloud was not taken 
 up from over the Tabernacle (Exod. xl. 34-38); 
 the gathering together of the whole congrega- 
 tion to the door of the Tabernacle on solemn 
 occasions, such as the consecration of Aaron and 
 his sons to the Priesthood (Levit. viii.) ; the fre- 
 quent communing of the Lord with Moses "from 
 out of the Tabernacle of the congregation " 
 (Levit. i. 1 ; Num. xii. 4, 5 ; xvi. 42, 43) ; the 
 jealousy with which the sanctity of the Taber- 
 nacle was guarded, and the severity with which 
 the profanation of it was punished (Levit. x. 1-3 ; 
 xv. 31) ; the provision for the place of the 
 Tabernacle in the camp, for the encampment 
 of the Levites immediately around it, for the 
 offices of the Priests and Levites respectively in 
 the carriage of it and of the vessels pertaining 
 to it (Num. i. 50-53 ; iii. 23 ff. ; iv.) 5 and, not to 
 particularise further, such solemn scenes as that 
 described in Deut. xxxi. 14, 15, when Moses 
 and Joshua were summoned to the Tabernacle 
 that Joshua might receive his charge as suc- 
 cessor to Moses, and the Lord appeared in the 
 Tabernacle in a pillar of a cloud, and the pillar 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 57 
 ■ • 
 
 of the cloud stood over the door of the Taber- 
 nacle — I say all this throws a halo of sanctity 
 and dignity around the Tabernacle of the con- 
 gregation which places it in the forefront of the 
 institutions of the law of Moses, and, may I not 
 add, gives it a very high place in the reverential 
 affection of all the servants of God. But we 
 shall not have a complete view of the Taber- 
 nacle of the congregation, or tent of meeting, 
 unless we add that in it was kept " the ark of 
 the covenant." These two were inseparable, 
 and wherever one was we may infer the presence 
 of the other. • The ark (Exod. xxv. 10-22) was a 
 chest of acacia wood, overlaid with pure gold 
 within and without; about 3 ft. 9 in. in length, 
 and 2 ft. 3 in. in breadth and in height. In it 
 were placed the two tables of stone, on which 
 were engraved the words of the covenant, even 
 the ten commandments (Exod. xxxiv. 28 ; Deut. 
 it. 13 ; x. 4), which formed the basis of the 
 Covenant between God and the children of 
 Israel. On this ark rested the mercy-seat, and 
 over the mercy-seat were the two cherubims of 
 gold, whose wings stretched from end to end of 
 the mercy-seat. And there it was that God 
 " who dwelleth between the cherubims" promised 
 to meet with Moses and commune with him of 
 all things which He had to give in command- 
 
58 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 ment to the children of Israel (Exod. xxv. 22). 
 You see the ark was as it were the very kernel 
 of the Tabernacle, its chief treasure; it was " the 
 ark of God's strength," the seat of His Presence 
 and His Power. 
 
 The above then were a few of the most con- 
 spicuous and characteristic features of the 
 Mosaic Law. 
 
 Secondly. The " Higher Criticism " tells us 
 that in these grand and elevating narratives, in 
 these holy institutions by which the hearts of 
 thousands have been made to feel the nearness 
 and the awful holiness of God, there is not one 
 word of historical truth. To use Professor 
 Kuenen's phrase, they are "fictitious narratives." 
 The narratives which pretend to be contem- 
 porary with Moses and to give an account of 
 the ordaining of these institutions by the direct 
 command of God, are really the inventions of an 
 age many hundred years — 7 or 800 — later than 
 Moses, and have their origin not in any revela- 
 tion, but in the political needs of the heads of 
 the Jewish community, in an age shortly before, 
 during, or after, the Babylonish captivity. The 
 Book of Deuteronomy, we are told, was composed 
 in the reign of King Josiah, when Hilkiah the 
 High Priest pretended that during the repairs 
 of the Temple he had found " the Book of the 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 59 
 
 Law" — i.e. the Book of Deuteronomy, in the 
 Temple, in the place where, according to Deut. 
 xxxi. 24, it was ordered to be kept by the side 
 of the ark (2 Kings xxii. 8). Shaphan the 
 scribe, Josiah the king, Huldah the prophetess, 
 and all the elders and people of Israel believed 
 that the book found was the veritable work of 
 Moses. But unluckily there was no "higher 
 critic " at Jerusalem to expose the imposture. 
 Had they had the advantage of having Pro- 
 fessor Kuenen among them he would have told 
 them that this book which they thought was 
 700 or 800 years old, had quite recently been 
 written J and placed there for the express pur- 
 pose of being found, and frightening them into 
 a reformation (Kuenen, Hexateuch, p. 215). The 
 same opinion as to the age of Deuteronomy is 
 expressed by Wellhausen, who tells us that " It 
 is in evidence that Deuteronomy became known 
 in the year b. c. 621, and that it was unknown up 
 to that date" (p. 408). He tells us (p. 402) 
 that as this book is called in 2 Kings " the book 
 • of the Torah " (i. e. the law), " it was the first, and 
 in its time the only book of its kind " (p. 402). 
 In like manner (p. 408) "It is in evidence 
 that the remaining Torah of the Pentateuch 
 
 1 In the reign of Mauasseh (Driver, p. 82), others say 
 Hezekiah. 
 
60 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 became known in the year B.C. 444 and was 
 unknown until then." And he adds, " This 
 shows in the first place and puts it beyond 
 question, that Deuteronomy is the first, and the 
 priestly Torah the second stage of the legisla- 
 tion. But in the second place, as we are accus- 
 tomed to infer the date of the composition of 
 Deuteronomy from its publication and introduc- 
 tion by Josiah, so we must infer the date of the 
 composition of the priestly code (i. e. the rest of 
 the Pentateuch) from its publication and intro- 
 duction by Ezra and Nehemiah" (p. 408). 
 Kuenen also says (p. 192), " We are fully justified 
 in concluding : (1) that Deuteronomy was not 
 known before the last quarter of the seventh 
 century B.C., and (2) that the priestly laws and 
 narratives were still in the nascent stage in 
 EzekieFs time (592-570 B.C.), and did not exist 
 in the form in which we have them in the Hexa- 
 teuch before the time of Ezra and Nehemiah." 
 
 I think then, that without any further 
 extracts from the chief writers of the " Higher 
 Criticism," I may now say, without any fear of 
 misrepresenting them, that they lay it down as 
 an ascertained truth that the law of Moses, the 
 Torah, did not exist in the times between Moses 
 and the Babylonish captivity. That the first 
 instalment of it came to light in the reign of 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 61 
 
 Josiah and the second in the time of Artaxerxes 
 the King of Persia, under the auspices of Ezra 
 and Nehemiah. I ought to add that it is a 
 further development of their theory that con- 
 tinual additions were made to the priestly code, 
 i.e. to Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, for fully 
 ioo years later before the Pentateuch finally 
 received its present form. Their strongest 
 argument, as I have said, in favour of this conclu- 
 sion, is that there is no evidence of the existence of 
 the Mosaic institutions hetioeen the time of the 
 Exodus and the later times of the Jewish monarchy ; 
 and if this was really true it would be a very 
 weighty argument against the authority of the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 I proceed therefore now, thirdly, to lay 
 before you such passages as I have found in 
 the historical books between the Pentateuch 
 and Ezra and Nehemiah, as refer plainly to 
 those leading characteristic institutions of the 
 Mosaic law, the Passover, the hereditary Priest- 
 hood, the Levites, and the Tabernacle, and will 
 then ask you to form your own conclusions as to 
 the truth or falsehood of the "Higher Criticism." 
 
 I would observe in limine that one single 
 clear example of the existence of any one of 
 these four characteristic Mosaic institutions in 
 the time we are dealing with would be very 
 
62 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 strong* evidence of the existence of the law 
 which prescribed it. But that the combination 
 of examples of the co- existence of all four is a 
 threefold cord which cannot be broken. I 
 would observe also that in all such cases in- 
 cidental notices are the strongest kind of 
 evidence, because they are like undesigned 
 coincidences. They can only arise because they 
 are true, and they have this further effect : 
 they silence the argument which might be 
 drawn from the absence of more notices, by 
 showing that the writers would not have given 
 us even the notices which they have if incidental 
 circumstances had not led them to do so. 
 
 With these preliminary remarks we will now 
 proceed (i) to see how the case stands with 
 regard to the Passover, and the other two feasts 
 of weeks and of Tabernacles. 
 
 We have already seen that according to Num. 
 ix. 1-5 the second Passover was celebrated in 
 the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of 
 the second year after they were come up out of 
 the land of Egypt. We pass on to the Book 
 of Joshua, and there we read, at ch. v. 10, " And 
 the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and 
 kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the 
 month" ("the first month," we learn from Josh, 
 iv. 19). That was the third recorded Passover. 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 63 
 
 The fourth recorded Passover took place in 
 the reign of Hezekiah. The writer of the book 
 of Kings does not mention it though he dwells 
 generally upon Hezekiah's piety and zeal, and 
 the faithfulness with which "he followed the 
 Lord, and kept his commandments which the 
 Lord commanded - Moses" (see, too, 2 Kings 
 xviii. 12). But in 2 Chron. xxx. we have a 
 full account of Hezekiah's Passover, with the 
 remarkable circumstance that it was kept in 
 the second month, according to the provision of 
 Num. ix., and that some of the tribes of Asher, 
 Manasseh, Zebulun, and Ephraim, took part in 
 it. It was done, the writer adds, according to 
 the law of Moses the man of God (v. 16). 
 
 The fifth recorded Passover is that held in 
 the reign of Josiah, as related in 2 Kings xxiii. 
 and in 2 Chron. xxxv. Of this Passover the first 
 writer tells us that the king issued a command, 
 saying, " Keep the Passover unto the Lord your 
 God, as it is written in the Book of this 
 covenant" (i.e. the lately discovered Deuter- 
 onomy). And he goes on to say, <{ Surely there 
 was not holden such a Passover from the days 
 of the Judges that judged Israel, nor in all the 
 days of the Kings of Israel, nor of the Kings of 
 Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King 
 Josiah wherein this Passover was holden to the 
 
64 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 Lord in Jerusalem." He adds that "there was 
 no king like Josiah that turned to the Lord 
 with all his might according to all the law of 
 Moses " (v. 25). In like manner the writer of 
 2 Chron. xxxv. tells us that " Josiah kept a 
 Passover unto the Lord in Jerusalem : and they 
 killed the Passover on the fourteenth day of the 
 first month." And he goes on to say how 
 everything was done according to the word of 
 the Lord by the hand of Moses, and then adds 
 " there was no Passover like to that kept in 
 Israel from the days of Samuel the Prophet. 
 Neither did all the kings keep such a Passover 
 as Josiah kept" (v. 18). 
 
 The sixth recorded Passover is that kept by 
 the Jews who were returned from Babylon in the 
 sixth year of the reign of Darius, King of 
 Persia, under the government of Zerubbabel, 
 and the High Priesthood of Joshua, and under 
 the influence of the Prophets Haggai and 
 Zechariah, some sixty or seventy years before 
 Ezra and Nehemiab came up from Babylon. It 
 was immediately after the rebuilding of the 
 Temple was completed, and the celebration is 
 thus described : " And the children of the 
 captivity kept the Passover upon the fourteenth 
 day of the first month. . . . And the children of 
 Israel which were come again out of captivity, 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 65 
 
 and all such as had separated themselves unto 
 them from the filthiness of the land to seek the 
 Lord God of Israel, did eat, and kept the feast 
 of unleavened bread seven days with joy " (Ezra 
 vi. 19-22) : where I would observe how natur- 
 ally the Passover, and the unleavened bread, and 
 the cleanness of the partakers, are mentioned 
 as things well-known to all, and parts of their 
 ancient national customs to which they gladly 
 return. 
 
 I will also ask you to notice that besides 
 these six recorded Passovers we have hints of 
 others not recorded in the two passages in 
 2 Kings and 2 Chron. The writer of 2 Kings 
 xxiii. 22 says, " surely there was not holden 
 such a Passover (as that in the eighteenth year 
 of King Josiah) from the days of the Judges 
 that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the 
 Kings of Israel and Judah." And the writer 
 of 2 Chron. says of the same Passover, " there 
 was no Passover like to that kept in Israel from 
 the days of Samuel the Prophet, neither did 
 all the Kings of Israel keep such a Passover as 
 Josiah kept" (v. 18). Surely this implies that 
 other Passovers were kept of which we have no 
 special record. Of one such unrecorded Passover 
 we have an unmistakeable hint in 1 Kings ix. 
 25, where we are told that " Three times in a 
 E 
 
66 THE BOOKS OP CHKONICLES 
 
 year did Solomon offer burnt offerings and peace 
 offerings upon the altar which he had built, . . . 
 and he burnt incense upon the altar which was 
 before the Lord." What can these three times 
 in a year possibly be but the three great festivals 
 at which the Israelites were to appear before 
 the Lord at the place which the Lord should 
 choose to place His Name there, of which the 
 Passover was one. And so accordingly the 
 chronicler tells us that Solomon offered these 
 offerings "according to the commandment of 
 Moses, three times in the year, even in the 
 feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of 
 weeks, and in the feast of Tabernacles " (2 Chron. 
 viii. 13). In harmony with this we read in 
 1 Kings viii. 2 that "all the men of Israel 
 assembled themselves unto King Solomon at 
 the feast in the month Ethanim which is the 
 seventh month," of which a fuller account is 
 given in 2 Chron. vii. where it is added among 
 other things that " Solomon kept the feast seven 
 days " (v. 8) ; and that " on the three-and- 
 twentieth day of the seventh month, he sent 
 the people away into their tents" (v. 10). A 
 comparison with Levit. xxiii. 34 will show 
 beyond any possible doubt that the feast of 
 Tabernacles was the feast meant. This feast of 
 Tabernacles was also kept by the Jews who had 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. f)7 
 
 returned from Babylon in the time of Zerub- 
 babel (Ezra iii. 4), still, be it well remembered, 
 some seventy years or more before Ezra came 
 from Babylon. See, too, Zeeh. xiv. 16-19. And 
 now I would make the remark which the 
 comparative paucity of recorded observances of 
 the Passover suggests, viz. that Ave must be 
 extremely cautious in drawing conclusions from 
 the silence of Scripture on any particular sub- 
 ject. The Scriptures do not give us an ex- 
 haustive account of the whole times of which 
 they treat, nor of all the events which happened 
 in those times, but only such a selection as 
 seemed good to the Wisdom of God. For 
 example, thirty-eight years of the forty passed 
 in the wilderness have absolutely no events 
 assigned to them. They are a blank. The 
 first thirty years or so of Saul's reign are passed 
 over in almost complete silence. The long reign 
 of Uzziah — fifty-two years — occupies four verses 
 in 2 Kings. Even then if we had not had the 
 distinct record of six celebrations of the Passover, 
 and those hints of others contained in 1 Kings 
 ix. 25, and 2 Kings xxiii. 22 ; 2 Chron. viii. 13, 
 and xxxv. 18, it would have been a very pre- 
 carious conclusion from the silence of Scripture 
 that no celebration of the Passover had taken 
 place. And notice further how the justice of this 
 E 2 
 
68 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 observation is borne out by the fact that all the 
 records we have arise from incidental circum- 
 stances. Joshua's Passover was the first cele- 
 brated in Canaan. Hezekiah's was part of a 
 great reformation coming* after the wicked reign 
 of King Ahaz, when the Temple had been shut, 
 and the sacrifices had not been offered up, and 
 the lamps had been put out, and idolatrous 
 practices introduced into the Temple itself. 
 Josiah's was in like manner part of a similar 
 reformation coming after the long reign of the 
 idolatrous Manasseh, and stimulated by the 
 discovery of the Book of Deuteronomy in the 
 Temple. The Passover, recorded Ezra vi., was 
 a great event, being the first after the return of 
 the Jews from Babylon. Solomon's Passover 
 and two other festivals are mentioned merely 
 in connection with the altar which he had just 
 built unto the Lord ; and the celebration of the 
 Feast of Tabernacles in connection with the 
 great event of bringing the ark of the Lord 
 to its new place in the Temple which was just 
 completed. Had it not been for these remark- 
 able incidents the ordinary history might well 
 have run its course without any mention what- 
 ever of the celebration of these festivals. 
 
 However, the result is that we have direct, 
 clear, and certain evidence, that as far as the 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 69 
 
 celebration of the three great festivals ordained 
 by Moses goes, the law of Moses was known 
 and put in practice between the time of the 
 Exodus, and the coming of Ezra and Nehemiah 
 from Babylon to Jerusalem. 
 
 (2) and (3) We turn then next to the 
 Hereditary Priesthood of Aaron, and the separa- 
 tion of the rest of the tribe of Levi to be 
 assistants to their co-tribesmen the Priests. 
 Are there any traces of the existence of these 
 institutions in the times between the Exodus 
 and Ezra ? We have seen the transfer of the 
 High Priesthood from Aaron to his son Eleazar, 
 and how Eleazar was " the Priest " while Joshua 
 was the civil leader of Israel. From a passage 
 in the Book of Judges xx. 28, we learn that, at 
 the time of the great civil war with the tribe of 
 Benjamin, Phinehas, the famous son of Eleazar, 
 the son of Aaron, stood before the ark of the 
 covenant as High Priest, and performed that 
 remarkable function which was the prerogative 
 of the High Priest to " enquire of the Lord " at 
 the instigation of the civil ruler. So that you 
 not only have in this incidental notice the proof 
 that Phinehas succeeded his father Eleazar in 
 the priesthood, but have also a distinct reference 
 to the institution of Urim and Thummim 
 described in Exod. xxviii. 30 ; Levit. viii. 8 ; 
 
70 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 Num. xxvii. ai, as well as to "the ark of the 
 Covenant." 
 
 Passing down the stream of time a hundred 
 years, or more, to I Sam. i. we find Eli the 
 High Priest, with his two sons, Hophni and 
 Phinehas, the acting Priests under him. We 
 learn that he resided at Shiloh where we know T 
 that the Tabernacle, or House of God, w 7 as 
 (Judg. xviii. 31 ; Josh, xviii. 1 ; Ps. lxxviii. 60 ; 
 and Jer. vii. ia), at which Aaron, Eleazar, and 
 Phinehas had ministered before the Lord, and 
 where the ark of God was, "the ark of the 
 covenant of the Lord of Hosts, which dwelleth 
 between the cherubims" (iv. 4), and where 
 pious Israelites went up year by year to worship, 
 and to sacrifice to the Lord of Hosts. We 
 know too that Eli was the descendant of Aaron 
 the High Priest, because the message of God to 
 him by the Prophet, w r ho was sent to rebuke 
 him for the iniquit} r of his sons, w T as, " Did I 
 plainly appear unto the house of thy father 
 when they were in Egypt . . . and did I choose 
 him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my 
 Priest, to olFer upon mine altar, to burn incense, 
 and to wear an ephod before me ? " and so on. 
 We know too that he was succeeded in the 
 High Priesthood by his descendants down to 
 about the fourth generation, as we shall see by 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 71 
 
 and bye. Once more we know incidentally from 
 I Chron. xxiv. 3, that Ahimelech the great grand- 
 son of Eli was of the house of Ithamar the son 
 of Aaron. Putting all this together it becomes 
 absolutely certain, if we believe our authorities, 
 that Eli teas the hereditary High Priest of the 
 House of Aaron. Only we do not know why or 
 how it was that the High Priesthood passed 
 away from the line of Eleazar, to the line of his 
 brother Ithamar ; nor who succeeded Phinehas, 
 the last High Priest we know of of the line of 
 Eleazar till Zadok in the time of David. Nor 
 does it matter. But I have been led to enter 
 into these particulars because of the extraordinary 
 statements of Wellhausen who, in bold defiance 
 of all historical documents, denies the Aaronic 
 Priesthood, denies the High Priesthood of Eli, 
 makes him merely the Priest of a great sanctuary 
 belonging to the tribe of Ephraim at Shiloh, 
 denies all connection with Aaron to Zadok, who, 
 he says, was made a Priest by David, and tells 
 us that " the suddenness with which the full- 
 grown hierocracy descended on the wilderness 
 from the skies is only matched by the sudden- 
 ness with which it disappeared in Canaan leaving 
 no trace behind it" (p. 127). 
 
 Passing on, perhaps some forty or fifty years 
 later, to the reign of Saul, we light on a descrip- 
 
72 THE BOOKS OF CHKONICLES 
 
 tion of one of his conflicts with the Philistines, 
 and at I Sam. xiv. 3, we are told that among 
 those that accompanied Saul was " Ahiah, the 
 son of Ahitub, Ichabod's brother, the son of 
 Phinehas, the son of Eli, the Lord's Priest in 
 Shiloh, wearing an ephod." And at v. 18 we 
 read that " Saul said unto Ahiah, Bring hither 
 the ark of God : " or rather as it is in the 
 Septuagint and the phrase requires "the ephod" 
 mentioned in v. 3, for the purpose of enquiring 
 of the Lord by Urim and Thummim, in ac- 
 cordance with Num. xxvii. 21. I venture to 
 think that here again we have in Canaan " some 
 trace of the full-grown Hierarchy lohich descended 
 on the wilderness from the skies." 
 
 We pass on yet a few years, perhaps ten or 
 thereabouts, and we light on the incident of 
 David's flight from the persecution of Saul. 
 We read in 1 Sam. xxi. that after his touching 
 parting with Jonathan he came to Nob to 
 Ahimelech the Priest, and in the course of this 
 and the following chapter we learn that Ahime- 
 lech (who was either the same person as Ahijah, 
 or his brother) was the High Priest, that he 
 was the son of Ahitub, the son of Phinehas, the 
 son of Eli ; that the tabernacle was then at 
 Nob, the city of the Priests, and that Ahimelech 
 dwelt there at the head of eighty-five Priests, 
 
TN RELATION" TO THE PENTATEUCH. 73 
 
 all of his father's house ; that he had the ephod 
 with which to enquire of the Lord, and that 
 the table with the shew-bread was there in 
 accordance with Exod. xxv. 30 ; Levit. xxiv. 5, 
 6 ; and we learn that he was the father of 
 Abiathar who was High Priest all through the 
 reign of David. Here again then we have 
 "some trace"- of "the hierocracy which de- 
 scended from the skies." 
 
 I need but just glance at the next "trace" in 
 1 Sam. xxii. 20, and xxiii. 1-12, where we read 
 that when Saul slaughtered Ahimelech and the 
 eighty-five " Priests of the Lord," one of Ahime- 
 lech's sons, Abiathar, escaped and took " an 
 ephod in his hand," and came to David to 
 Keilah. Hence David was able to " enquire of 
 the Lord," as we read in v. 9, " David said to 
 Abiathar the Priest, Bring hither the ephod," 
 and then follows the enquiry, and the Lord's 
 answers, and so again 1 Sam. xxx. 7. I refer 
 you once more to Num. xxvii. 21. This Abi- 
 athar continued with David through his whole 
 reign as " Priest " in conjunction with Zadok 
 (2 Sam. viii. \J, xx. 25). He was faithful to 
 David in Absalom's rebellion (2 Sam. xv. 35, 
 36), but was deposed by Solomon for taking 
 part with Adonijah (1 Kings ii. 26, 27). 
 
 And here I would repeat the remark, which 
 
74 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 I made with reference to the observance of 
 the Passover, that almost all the notices of 
 the High Priests are incidental. Had not the 
 civil war with Benjamin occurred, had not 
 Samuel's birth required especial notice, had not 
 the ark been captured by the Philistines, had 
 not Saul taken Ahijah with him to the Philis- 
 tine war, had not David fled to Ahimelech, we 
 might never have heard of Phinehas as High 
 Priest, or of Eli or his sons, or Ahitub, or Ahijah, 
 or Ahimelech, and yet there they were fulfilling 
 their office generation after generation in succes- 
 sion to Aaron their ancestor, in exact accordance 
 with the law of Moses. So precarious is the 
 argument from the mere silence of Scripture ! 
 
 As regards the notices of Priests and Levites 
 in the times between the Exodus and Solomon, 
 it may suffice to refer to the eighty-five Priests 
 at Nob with Ahimelech, to Hophni and Phinehas 
 with Eli (i Sam. ii.) to the mention of the Levites 
 in i Sam. vi. 15 as taking down the ark of the 
 Lord when it returned from the country of the 
 Philistines, corroborating as it does the evidence 
 of I Chron. vi. that Obed-edom the Gittite, in 
 whose house the ark rested three months (2 Sam. 
 vi. 11) was a Levite ; to the mention in 2 Sam. 
 xv. 24 of " Zadok and all the Levites that were 
 with him bearing the ark of the covenant of 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 75 
 
 God," the casual mention in Judg. xvii. of 
 the Levite who became Micah's Priest, and 
 afterwards Priest to the tribe of Dan (Judg. 
 xviii. 30), and of the other Levite whose terrible 
 story is told Judg. xix., xx., and in still earlier 
 times to the bearing of the ark across the 
 Jordan by the Priests (Josh. iii. 6, 8, 13, 15, 
 1 7 > iv. 9, 17), to the non-assignment of land 
 to the Levites (Josh. xiii. 14, ^^ ; xviii. 9), and 
 lastly to the assignment of forty-eig*ht cities to 
 the tribe of Levi, both Priests and Levites, as 
 fully described in Josh. xxi. Unless all these 
 notices are to be arbitrarily blotted out from 
 the page of history, I submit to every candid 
 mind that they too are very distinct traces of 
 the " hierocracy which descended full-blown 
 from Heaven." 
 
 (4) We return lastly to the " Tabernacle of 
 the congregation" or "Tent of meeting," as 
 the Hebrew is more correctly rendered. Are 
 there any traces of the existence of this Taber- 
 nacle in the times between the Exodus and the 
 reiffn of Solomon? We examine first our earliest 
 authority the Book of Joshua. In xviii. 1 we 
 read this explicit statement, "and the whole 
 congregation of the children of Israel assembled 
 together at Shiloh, and set up the Tabernacle of 
 the congregation there," and again at xix. 51, 
 
76 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 we read (after the description of the different 
 inheritances of the seven tribes), " These are the 
 inheritances which Eleazar the Priest, and Joshua 
 the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers of 
 the tribes of the children of Israel divided for an 
 inheritance by lot in Shiloh, before the Lord, at 
 the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation." 
 And I will ask you particularly to notice the 
 expression " before the Lord,'"' as indicating the 
 Lord's special Presence at the Tabernacle, of 
 which there are such numerous examples in the 
 Pentateuch, and to compare with it Josh, xviii. 
 6, 8, io. We pass on to Josh. xxii. where we 
 have the remarkable story about the two and a 
 half tribes who had their inheritance on the east 
 of Jordan. You will remember that Reuben, 
 Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, though 
 they had received their inheritance in Gilead 
 and Bashan, yet accompanied their brothers 
 across the Jordan to assist them in taking 
 possession of Canaan. In this chapter we read 
 that, having fully accomplished their task, 
 Joshua dismissed them with a blessing to re- 
 turn to their inheritance on the east of Jordan. 
 But when they reached the Jordan it occurred 
 to them that in times to come the tiibes west 
 of Jordan might perhaps refuse to recognise 
 them as a true portion of God's people Israel, 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 77 
 
 and say to them, " Ye have no part in the 
 Lord." And so their children would become 
 as the heathen. They therefore built a great 
 altar, and called it the altar of witness. But 
 when their brothers, the nine tribes and a half, 
 on the west of Jordan heard of it they thought 
 it was intended to be a schismatical altar, set 
 up in rivalry to the one Altar before the Taber- 
 nacle. Accordingly a great national meeting 
 was held at Shiloh, the result of which was 
 that Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, and ten 
 princes, a prince from each tribe, were sent off 
 in hot haste as an embassy to the two and a 
 half tribes to demand an explanation, and to de- 
 clare war against them if they persisted in main- 
 taining an altar for sacrifice " beside the altar 
 of the Lord our God." In the course of their 
 message ' : from the whole congregation of Israel," 
 in which it is to be presumed Phinehas was the 
 spokesman, we find this remarkable expression, 
 " Notwithstanding if the land of your possession 
 be unclean, then pass ye over unto the land of 
 the possession of the Lord, wherein the Lord's 
 Tabernacle dwelleth, and take possession among- 
 us : but rebel not against the Lord, nor rebel 
 against us, in building you an altar beside the 
 altar of the Lord our God." The explanation of 
 the Keubenites and Gadites was quite satis- 
 
78 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 factory, and so the matter ended peaceably. 
 In 2 Sam. vii. 6, we find incidentally a few 
 words which cover the whole time we are con- 
 sidering. When David proposed to build a 
 Temple at Jerusalem, he said to Nathan, " See 
 now I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of 
 God dwelleth within curtains." But the answer 
 of God was, " Shalt thou build me an House for 
 Me to dwell in ? Whereas I have not dwelt in 
 any house since the time that I brought up the 
 children of Israel out of Egypt even to this 
 day, but have walked in a tent and in a Taber- 
 nacle." We have a curious identification too 
 of the Tabernacle which still existed in David's 
 time with that set up by Moses, in the incidental 
 circumstance mentioned in I Kings i. 39, that 
 " Zadok took an horn of oil out of the Taber- 
 nacle, and anointed Solomon." It is clear from 
 Exod. xxxi. 11, xxxix. 38, that the sacred 
 anointing oil w T as kept in the Tabernacle as 
 part of its furniture. In this connection we 
 have also the testimony of 1 Kings viii. 1— 11, 
 that at the solemn dedication of Solomon's 
 Temple at the feast of Tabernacles the Priests 
 and Levites *' brought up the ark of the Lord, 
 and the Tabernacle of the congregation, and all 
 the holy vessels that were in the Tabernacle," 
 and placed the ark of the covenant, containing 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 79 
 
 the " two tables of stone which Moses put there 
 at Horeb, in the most holy place, even under 
 the wings of the cherubim." The chronicler 
 (2 Chr. i. 3) adds expressly that it was "the 
 Tabernacle of the congregation of God which 
 Moses, the servant of the Lord, had made in the 
 wilderness." But we must not listen to the 
 chronicler just yet. And now with these testi- 
 monies fresh in your minds, let your thoughts 
 run back to those scenes and places which we 
 were thinking of a few minutes ago, the place 
 in Shiloh where Eli and his sons sacrificed and 
 ministered to the Lord, where the ark of God 
 was, where the lamp was lit every night by the 
 young Levite Samuel ; or to the place at Nob 
 where Ahimelech and his eighty-five assistant 
 Priests were in attendance, where the table of 
 shew-bread was, and the ephod, and Goliath's 
 sword, — is it possible to nurture the smallest 
 doubt in your minds that that place called in 
 1 Sam. "the House of the Lord," and "the 
 Temple of the Lord " was none other than the 
 Tabernacle of the congregation, which was 
 pitched in the wilderness by Moses, and which 
 was brought up to Jerusalem by Solomon ? 
 And then there is the further testimony of the 
 Prophet Jeremiah that the Tabernacle was for 
 a long time at Shiloh. He was rebuking the 
 
80 THE BOOKS OF CHKON1CLES 
 
 foolish confidence of the Jews in his day who 
 thought that because the Temple of the Lord 
 was at Jerusalem no harm could happen to 
 them though they continued in their sins (Jer. 
 vii. 2-1 1), and then he goes on at verse 12, 
 "But go ye now unto my place which was in 
 Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and 
 see what I did to it for the wickedness of my 
 people Israel, . . ." and adds, " I will do unto 
 this House as I have done to Shiloh." And 
 once more, xxvi. 6, standing in the courts of 
 the Temple at Jerusalem, he said to the people, 
 ''Thus saith the Lord, I will make this house 
 like Shiloh." We may add the passage in 
 Judg\ xix. 31, which tells us that Micah's 
 graven image remained at Dan "all the time 
 that the House of God was in Shiloh." 
 
 But even this does not exhaust the evidence. 
 Professor Stanley Leathes, in his lately published 
 work " The Law in the Prophets," has shown 
 that all the Prophets, those of Israel as 
 well as those of Judah, the earliest as well as 
 the later ones, were intimately acquainted with 
 the Pentateuch, and the old books of Scripture. 
 Their writings are full of references to the crea- 
 tion, the deluge, the destruction of Sodom and 
 Gomorrha, the history of the Patriarchs, the 
 destruction of the Amorites, the deliverance from 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 81 
 
 Egypt, and other events recorded in the Penta- 
 teuch, besides innumerable words and phrases 
 unquestionably borrowed from or referring to it. 
 But for details I refer you to the book itself. 
 
 And now with reference to the great question 
 which has been occupying us through this and 
 part of the preceding Lecture, whether there is 
 any evidence of the existence of the Mosaic insti- 
 tutions between the times of the Exodus, and 
 the later times of the Jewish monarchy, and 
 whether there is a shred of truth in the assertion 
 of the " Higher Criticism " that the Mosaic insti- 
 tutions, including the great Feasts, the moveable 
 Tabernacle with its furniture, the Aaronic Priest- 
 hood and the Levitical Order, and the one altar 
 of sacrifice, were all late inventions seven or eight 
 hundred years after Moses. I would put it to 
 every honest mind, if the Pentateuch did not 
 exist, why were the Passover and the Feast of 
 Tabernacles kept, as we have seen they were ? 
 Why was there an unbroken succession of High 
 Priests from Aaron to Abiathar and Zadok, as 
 we have seen there was, and onwards down 
 to the destruction of Jerusalem? Why was 
 there a body of Priests and Levites always 
 turning up as occasion required them? Why 
 through the most unsettled times was there 
 one Tabernacle with the ark of the Covenant, 
 F 
 
82 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES. 
 
 the table of shew-bread, the ephod with which 
 the High Priest enquired of the Lord at 
 the instigation of the civil ruler, and the 
 lamp kept burning by night ; whither men 
 came to worship and offer sacrifice, and where 
 the High Priest and his assistants always 
 abode ? Till I can get some better answer to 
 these questions than that with which Kuenen 
 disposes of the narrative of the Altar of witness, 
 " It is an absolutely unhistorical invention, 
 framed to defend the doctrine of a unique sanc- 
 tuary" (p, 109), I shall adhere to the ancient 
 belief which has come down to us with the sanc- 
 tion of 3000 years ; the belief which accounts 
 for all these things in the simplest and most 
 natural way ; the belief that the law of Moses 
 in all its essential features did exist and was 
 operative through all those dark ages; the be- 
 lief, let me add, that those Holy Scriptures to 
 which our risen Lord referred, " the law of Moses, 
 the Prophets, and the Psalms/' will hold their 
 place of supreme authority and loving credence 
 in the Church of God, when the speculations of 
 a presumptuous and sceptical criticism shall have 
 long been laid to rest in an unhallowed and dis- 
 honoured grave. 
 
LECTUEE III. 
 
 Miscellaneous remarks on the earliek 
 Books op the Old Testament, and their 
 authenticity. 
 
 In my two first Lectures I have endeavoured 
 to show you that the views of the "Higher 
 Criticism," however prevalent at the present 
 day, and whatever encouragement may he given 
 to them by English Divines, are not trustworthy. 
 I have thought that it might be a useful addi- 
 tion to what was then said, if before proceeding 
 to the examination of the Books of Chronicles, 
 I put before you a few miscellaneous considera- 
 tions with respect to the earlier Books of the Old 
 Testament which may help to give you a right 
 conception of them, and to establish their authen- 
 ticity. 
 
 And First I would ask you to notice the 
 
 unique character of the Scriptures. The unity 
 
 of purpose of Almighty God from the Creation 
 
 to the end of the world is traced in them with 
 
 F 2 
 
84 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 astonishing clearness and consistency, as is the 
 history of the development of that purpose in 
 the successive ages of the world. There is 
 nothing like it in the literature of Greece or 
 Rome, or Egypt or Assyria or India, or any 
 other race of men of whom we have any know- 
 ledge. Even the most advanced critics, who 
 split up the Pentateuch into countless fragments, 
 are struck with this unity of design. Let us 
 trace it hastily in its great outlines, and in its 
 two great branches, — the purpose of God, and 
 the actual history of the human race 1 . 
 
 And (i) as regards the purpose of God. The 
 Scriptures begin with an account of the creation 
 of the world, and, as the crowning act, the crea- 
 tion of man in the image of God, and the gift 
 to him of this earth for his abode, with the abso- 
 lute dominion over every other living creature 
 upon the earth. There was the first step in 
 God's gracious purpose of love and favour to the 
 human race. After the sad episode of the temp- 
 tation and fall of man, and his consequent loss 
 of the happy and peaceful abode provided for 
 him in the days of primeval innocence, this 
 same purpose of love takes the direction of reme- 
 
 1 See Kuenen's "Hexateuch,"p. 4. This unity of purpose, 
 beginning with the Exodus, and running on through the 
 history of Israel, is strikingly set forth in Psalm exxxvi. 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 85 
 
 dial grace. To check the downward progress, 
 to provide eventually for the restoration of man 
 to righteousness and life, by sending His own 
 Son to be the Saviour of the world, and mean- 
 while to separate from the nations of the earth 
 one family, to preserve in that family the know- 
 ledge of the One true and Living God by 
 Revelation, and to make them the channel of 
 eventual blessing to the whole human family, 
 was thenceforth the purpose of the Almighty. 
 The sacred Scriptures trace this purpose in suc- 
 cessive manifestations to Enoch, to Noah, and 
 then in growing fulness to Abraham, the father 
 of the faithful. And now the Divine counsel 
 begins to take a more distinct shape in the 
 separation of the seed of Abraham to be the 
 chosen people. The purpose of sending the 
 Christ into the world is more distinctly revealed. 
 The family in which the Christ was to be born 
 is more plainly marked out. The birth of Isaac, 
 and of Jacob, and of the twelve Patriarchs, 
 follow in a closely connected chain. The drama 
 advances in the descent of Jacob to Egypt with 
 all his descendants ; in the formation of the 
 Israelitish nation during their 200 years resi- 
 dence in Egypt, and then in that grand burst of 
 Divine Power which snapped asunder, like a 
 thread, the iron chains with which Egypt had 
 
86 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 bound the children of Israel, and sent them 
 forth from the bondage of slaves to the freedom 
 of the greatest nation in the world. It was at 
 this juncture, at the very pivot on which the 
 success of the Divine purpose turned, that 
 Moses was raised up. Moses, the man of God, 
 Moses who towers in the colossal stature of his 
 intellectual and spiritual greatness above all the 
 other Saints and Prophets whose record is in 
 the Book of God. Gigantic alike in his words 
 and in his deeds. Prophet, Confessor, Legis- 
 lator, Deliverer, Captain of the people. It was 
 the peculiar glory too of Moses, that he not only 
 led the men of his own generation to the know- 
 ledge of the Living God, but that he framed 
 those laws and institutions by which they were 
 kept a separate people, " not reckoned among 
 the nations" through some 1300 years, main- 
 taining all the while, in the midst of the idola- 
 tries of the great heathen world, the doctrine of 
 the unity of God, and, amidst all the pollutions 
 of heathenism and the foul mythologies of the 
 most civilised nations of the earth, holding 
 forth the light of righteousness, purity, and 
 truth, until the coming of Christ, to establish 
 the yet more excellent system of the everlasting' 
 Gospel. Nor were the Mosaic institutions 
 destined to fulfil their purpose without constant 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 87 
 
 hindrances and obstacles. The 200 years, or 
 thereabouts, of their occupation of Canaan in 
 the days of the Judges, put a constant strain 
 upon every joint of the system. The want of a 
 central power to bind the tribes together ; the 
 incessant inroads of Philistines, Moabites, and 
 Midianites ; and the allurements of the idolatries 
 of the nations around them, would probably have 
 led to the bursting of the bonds of the Mosaic 
 law had they been a whit less strong than they 
 were, and had not the fixed purpose of God 
 supplied the extraordinary aid of the Judges 
 raised up to be the saviours of Israel. And 
 here, in the times of the Judges, the Scriptures 
 bring before us another instrument destined to 
 exercise a great influence on the future destinies 
 of Israel. I mean the instrument of prophecy. 
 Samuel, whose great figure rises up at the close 
 of the age of the Judges, was the first of that 
 long line of prophets who followed one another 
 till it ended in the prophet Malachi. Samuel, 
 David, Nathan, Gad, Iddo, Shemaiah, Elijah, 
 and Elisha, together with those whose writings 
 remain, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, 
 Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, 
 Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and 
 Malachi, and others whose names are not pre- 
 served, form that goodly fellowship of prophets 
 
88 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 whom God's watchful care for His people raised 
 up from time to time to speak to them the word 
 of the Lord, to rebuke, reprove, and exhort in 
 His Name, and to keep alive the blessed hope 
 of the coming of Christ, and the establishment 
 of His kingdom upon earth. Can the whole 
 world produce any parallel to this? And yet 
 once more. So entirely was this particular 
 people separated to be the people of God, that 
 even their civil government was an object of the 
 Divine care. Saul, their first king, David, the 
 founder of a dynasty which lasted some 500 
 years, were called to the throne by the express 
 word of God. And the record of the reigns of 
 their other kings down to the Babylonian cap- 
 tivity, has been preserved in the Book of God. 
 And then came the seventy years of exile, and 
 the return of the exiles to their own land under 
 the kings of Persia. Can the whole range of 
 history show anything like this wonderful dis- 
 pensation ? A nation plucked up by the roots 
 and torn away violently from their own land 
 and transported to a distant country, their 
 capital destroyed, their national temple burnt 
 with fire. Kings, priests,' nobles, warriors, all 
 carried away captive, and the land left desolate ; 
 and yet in less than 100 years the nation re- 
 instated in possession of their ancient country, 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 89 
 
 their temple rebuilt, their priesthood restored, 
 their separate national life resumed, and lasting 
 in completeness and vigour for yet more than 
 500 years. And then the termination of this 
 Jewish polity, and this Jewish religion, still 
 more wonderful than any other part ! The Old 
 Testament running into the New ! Jesus Christ 
 the Lord born in David's city, and sitting upon 
 David's throne ! Christianity springing out of 
 Judaism, the kingdom of God rising out of the 
 ashes of the Mosaic institutions and the Jewish 
 commonwealth ! Thus manifestly do we see the 
 unity of design in Holy Scripture as regards the 
 counsel of God. 
 
 (2) View it in the history of the human race. 
 Starting from the creation of man, the Scrip- 
 ture immediately represents the human family, 
 as soon as it begun to multiply, as divided into 
 two classes, — those that feared God, and those 
 that feared him not. Cain and Abel ; just Noah 
 and the world of the ungodly ; the children of 
 Shem, and the sons of Ham ; Abraham and the 
 wicked cities of the plain ; Isaac and Jacob, and 
 the Canaanites amongst whom they dwelt, are 
 early examples of this division. It took more 
 definite shape in the later separation of Israel 
 from the nations, and the division of mankind 
 into Jews and Gentiles. The tenth chapter of 
 
90 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 Genesis gives a masterly sketch of the divisions 
 of the human family as they sprung from the 
 three sons of Noah, with their various settle- 
 ments ; and Deut. xxxii. 8 has the remarkable 
 statement, that " When the Most High divided 
 to the nations their inheritance, when he sepa- 
 rated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of 
 the people according to the number of the chil- 
 dren of Israel." But henceforth the history of 
 those different nations is handled only as far 
 as they came in contact with, and affected 
 Israel. Hence the notices in the Bible of the em- 
 pires of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, as well 
 as of the nations of Canaan, of the Philistines, 
 Edomites, Midianites, and others. I say, then, 
 that to read the Scriptures with intelligence, we 
 must take this unity of design, this continuity 
 of Divine purpose, into account. It is a leading 
 and striking feature in them. And to endeavour 
 to account for the production of those Scriptures 
 by imagining a host of independent writers, 
 some honest, and some dishonest, some speakers 
 of truth, and others disseminators of falsehood, 
 implies a want of percej)tion and appreciation of 
 their true character which is simply amazing, 
 and utterly incapacitates a man for explaining 
 their contents aright. It is as if a man should 
 account for any phenomenon in nature, without 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 91 
 
 any reference to the laws of nature which bind- 
 the whole system in one harmonious cosmos, or 
 ascribe the beautiful order of creation to an acci- 
 dental concurrence of jarring and opposing 
 forces. 
 
 But again, if it is true that the selection of 
 Israel from among all the families of mankind 
 to be a peculiar people was the purpose of the 
 wisdom of God, and that all that happened to 
 them through successive ages was the effect of 
 that purpose, and that the Almighty Ruler of 
 the Universe steadily pursued that purpose by 
 successive interpositions of His power, and by 
 the instrumentality of men whom He raised up 
 from time to time, and endowed with special 
 gifts of the Holy Spirit, how can we wonder 
 that critics who absolutely deny that Divine 
 purpose, who exclude the Hand of God from the 
 course of that eventful history, who will have 
 none of revelation, or miracles, or inspiration, 
 or special calling, who put the history of Israel 
 on the same level as that of any other people, 
 and the writers of that history on the same 
 level as any annalist or journalist, how can we 
 wonder, I say, that such critics cannot under- 
 stand the Scriptures, but only "darken counsel 
 by words without knowledge/" 
 
 Secondly, I would now ask your attention 
 
92 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 for a short time to another feature of those 
 Scriptures which are being so ruthlessly handled, 
 and one which does not at all comport with the 
 views of the " Higher Criticism," viz. their mar- 
 vellous accuracy in a variety of points where mis- 
 takes would have been easily made, and where 
 we have it in our power to test their accuracy. 
 
 We will take first the very first chapter of the 
 Bible, that which gives us an account of the 
 creation of heaven and earth, and of man, the 
 inhabitant and lord of the earth. Now an ac- 
 count of creation might have been confined to 
 the simple statement of the first verse, " In 
 the beginning God created the heaven and the 
 earth." But it is not so. The first chapter of 
 Genesis tells us certain particulars as to the 
 mode and order of creation. It tells us that 
 this creation was progressive. Heaven and 
 earth did not leap at once into their present 
 condition of order, and their present furni- 
 ture of light and water and dry land. The 
 present cosmos was preceded by chaos. The 
 earth was at first without form and void. Dark- 
 ness was upon the face of the deep. The waters 
 were diffused over the whole earth. But by 
 degrees a change took place. At the bidding 
 of the Creator light shined. The firmament or 
 expanse, or what we now call the sky, environed 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 93 
 
 the earth. As the earth cooled, the waters which 
 formed the sea were gathered into one place, 
 and the dry land appeared. But as yet nothing* 
 grew in the earth. The heat made vegetation 
 impossible. Well ! thus far I believe the Mosaic 
 account of creation is exactly borne out by the 
 latest results of scientific research and discovery. 
 
 But we proceed further. Hitherto we have 
 no life upon the earth, neither vegetable nor 
 animal life, neither fish, nor fowl, nor beast, nor 
 man, such as we see now existing. The Mosaic 
 record goes on to tell us of the creation of these, 
 and of the order in which they were introduced 
 into the earth, (i) There came vegetable life 
 — the grass, the herb, the tree. This was the 
 work of the third day. Passing over the fourth 
 day, (2) there came the great swarm of life in 
 the sea and in the air — the fish that move in 
 the sea, and the fowl that rly in the air. This 
 was the work of the fifth day. Then (3) the 
 earth brought forth the beasts of the field, the 
 cattle, and all the creeping things that creep upon 
 the earth. This was the work of the sixth day. 
 And last of all, at the close of the sixth day, God 
 created man in His own image and likeness — 
 with an intellect, reason, and conscience. 
 
 Here then is a definite order of creation. It 
 might have been in any one of 124 different 
 
94 THE BOOKS OF CHKONICLES 
 
 ways. But it is distinctly in the following: 
 Vegetables ; fish and fowl ; beasts and cattle ; 
 man. Now is this the order in which geolo- 
 gical science teaches us that these several created 
 things must have been introduced into the earth ? 
 or is it not? It is the precise order. In a 
 remarkable letter of the Duke of Argyll's to the 
 Times of February i, 1892, he says : " Alone, I 
 believe, among all the other cosmogonies of the 
 ancient world, it (the Mosaic cosmogony) repre- 
 sents an orderly progression in the creative 
 work. It represents it as work done in time, 
 in stages, and according to a definite sequence 
 of operation/' After showing how the descrip- 
 tion of chaos, and the formation of sea and 
 land, " are in harmony with the latest conclu- 
 sions on the physical development of a cooling 
 globe," he notices the sequence " vegetable life," 
 u animal life in the sea," " terrestrial fauna later," 
 " man the last and latest creative work, the 
 crown and consummation of the whole," and 
 proceeds : " Mr. Gladstone's assertion is substan- 
 tially true that the order of the apj>earance of 
 animals in the first chapter of Genesis has been 
 affirmed in our time by natural science, and may 
 be taken as a demonstrated conclusion, and an 
 established fact." The Duke concludes thus : 
 " Considering its obviously poetic form, and its 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 95 
 
 early date, preceding all that we now understand 
 as science, the depth and extent of its coinci- 
 dence with all that is as yet known to us, are 
 indeed astonishing." I wonder how the Elohist 
 found it out 1 ! 
 
 To turn next to the historical accuracy of the 
 Scriptures. The Scriptures deal more or less 
 with all the nations and kingdoms of the ancient 
 world. With some it is little more than a 
 casual mention, but with regard to others we 
 have full and copious details of their customs, 
 government, wars, kings, conquests, alliances, 
 and so on. Again, of some of these countries 
 we have considerable knowledge from secular 
 history, but of others, till within the last half 
 or quarter of a century, we had no secular in- 
 formation at all ; but within this space of time 
 we have acquired, from monuments and inscrip- 
 tions and newly-deciphered languages, a great 
 mass of fresh information. The nations with 
 which the Bible brings us in contact are the 
 Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the 
 Chaldeans, the Hittites, the Elamites, the Philis- 
 tines, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Midian- 
 
 1 The reader will find the same conclusions fully worked 
 out in Dr. Kinn's " Moses and Geology." See also a re- 
 markable paper by Mr. Gladstone in " Home Words," revised 
 in " The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture/' ch. ii. 
 
96 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 ites, the Ishmaelites, the Medes and Persians, 
 the Arameans or Sjaians, and many other minor 
 races. Now what a wide field was here for E. 
 or J. or D. or P. while they were writing their 
 " fictitious narratives " about Israel, and their 
 stories " in which there is not one word of 
 truth," to make mistakes in ! And yet, strange 
 to say, not one single historical mistake has 
 been detected in all the notices of the nations 
 brought before us in Holy Scripture. Indeed, 
 down to our own times many such notices 
 could not appeal to secular history for support, 
 because there was no extant history bearing 
 upon them. But in the last half century, by 
 the wonderful discoveries and decipherment of 
 the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria, and the 
 vast increase of our knowledge of Egyptian 
 monuments, a flood of light has been thrown 
 upon many dark pages of ancient history, and 
 in every instance the Bible record has been 
 wonderfully confirmed. 
 
 Let us take a very few among many examples 
 of this. In 2 Kings vii. 6 we read of " the kings 
 of the Hittites," coupled with " the kings of the 
 Egyptians " ; and in I Kings x. 29 we read again 
 of the great traffic in Egyptian horses " for the 
 kings of Syria, and for all the kings of the Hit- 
 tites " in the days of Solomon. Other notices 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 97 
 
 carry back their existence as a people to the 
 time of Abraham, and represent them later as 
 possessing land as far as the Euphrates (Josh. 
 i. 4). But history was absolutely silent about 
 them. " They had no place in classic history, 
 and therefore* it was supposed by some that the 
 Bible references to them could not be true. ..." 
 "But as soon as the key was found to the 
 Hieroglyphics of Egypt and the cuneiforms of 
 Assyria, a mighty Hittite people began to 
 
 emerge " " The increasing light from Egypt 
 
 and Assyria reveals to us in broad outline and 
 in incidental detail a series of facts with refer- 
 ence to the Hittites in perfect harmony with 
 the narratives of the Bible" (Preface to Dr. 
 Wright's "Empire of the Hittites," pp. viii. ix.). 
 From about the year B.C. 2050 to about B.C. 
 1320 the Hittites were in constant war with 
 Egypt under the greatest Pharaohs, including 
 Thothmes III and Ramesis II. About the last- 
 named year, shortly before the Exodus, there is 
 a full poetical account from an Egyptian papy- 
 rus of a great battle between Ramesis II and 
 the Hittites with 2500 chariots, followed by a 
 treaty of peace which seems to have lasted about 
 100 years. On the other hand, the Assyrian 
 cuneiform inscriptions tell of constant wars be- 
 tween the kings of Assyria and the Hittites. 
 G 
 
98 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 From Tiglath-Pileser I (b.c. 113c 1 ), for 400 
 years, there was a constant struggle for supremacy 
 between Assyria and the Hittites, and it is re- 
 markable that there is frequent mention of the 
 number of Hittite chariots. u I took one hun- 
 dred and twenty chariots fitted to the yoke," 
 says Tiglath-Pileser in his account of a battle 
 with the Hittites. Assur-Nasir-Pal (b.c. 883 
 to 858) says, "The chariots ... of Carchemish 
 (capital of the Hittites) I laid up in my maga- 
 zines.'' u The tribute due I received . . . swift 
 chariots, horses, silver, &c." (p. 40). " Their 
 chariots I took from them" (p. 43). The empire 
 of the Hittites in Asia was not brought to a 
 close till S argon's final victory over them, B.C. 
 717 (pp. 43, 44). For further interesting de- 
 tails I must refer you to Dr. Wright's " Empire 
 of the Hittites." 
 
 Genesis xiv. 1 supplies another example of 
 very early Biblical records, receiving remark- 
 able confirmation from the latest discoveries of 
 cuneiform texts. This verse smelt strongly of 
 myth in the nostrils of critics before the cunei- 
 form inscriptions had revealed their treasures. 
 We now know from the annals of Assur-bani- 
 pal that an Elamite king, Kudur-Nakhunti, had 
 
 1 " Becords of the Past," vol. ii. p. 145 note. 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 99 
 
 carried away a Babylonian image so early as 
 B.C. 2280 ; that the Elamites were a warlike 
 people ; that they pushed their conquests into 
 Phoenicia ; that near, or, Lenormant thinks, in 
 the time of Abraham, they had a king called 
 Kudur-Mabuk, who had a son named Eriaku. 
 who under his father reigned over Larsa — where 
 we recognize at once the Arioch and Ellasar 
 of Gen. xiv. 1. And whether or no Kudur- 
 mabuk is the same king as Chedor-laomer, we 
 learn that it was the practice of the Elamite 
 kin^s to call themselves by the name of their 
 favourite idol— Chedor or Kudur, the servant 
 of— Nakhunti, Mabuk, or La-omer, as the case 
 might be, just as in the names Nebo-polassar, 
 Nebuchadnezzar, Bel-shazzar, Merodach-Bala- 
 dan, &c, the names of the Babylonian gods 
 Nebo, Bel, and Merodach are contained. With 
 these discoveries I think we may say that the 
 smell of myth disappears from Gen. xiv. and 
 the sweet odour of truth breaks out in its 
 stead \ 
 
 Another striking example of the confirma- 
 tion of the historical accuracy of the Scriptures 
 given by recent discoveries is that in the case 
 of Belshazzar. It had been a great puzzle to 
 commentators to explain who the Belshazzar 
 1 Excursus on Gen. xiv. in Bp. Ellicott's Commentary. 
 G % 
 
100 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 of Daniel v. could be, as secular history (Berosus, 
 quoted by Josephus and Herodotus) tells us dis- 
 tinctly that Nabonidus was king of Babylon at 
 the time of its capture by Cyrus, and that his 
 life was spared by the conqueror, who treated 
 him kindly. The Assyrian cylinders, deciphered 
 by Sir Henry Rawlinson and others, explain 
 the mystery. They tell us that Bel-shar-ussur 
 was Nabonidus' eldest son, that he commanded 
 his armies, and, as appears by other signs, was 
 associated with his father in the kingdom, and 
 was holding Babylon at the time, his father 
 having fled to Sirpar. This explains his offer 
 to Daniel " that he should be the third ruler in 
 the kingdom " (Dan. v. 29), Nabonidus being 
 the first, and Belshazzar the second. 
 
 Another remarkable instance of the confirma- 
 tion of an obscure Biblical statement is that 
 afforded by the record " sculptured on the wall 
 of the great temple of El-Karnak " by Sheshauk 
 I, king of Egypt. We read in 1 Kings xiv. 25 
 that "in the fifth year of king Rehoboam 
 Shishak king of Egypt came up against 
 Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the 
 house of the Lord, and the treasures of the 
 king's house, and all the shields of gold which 
 Solomon had made." The Chronicler (2 Chron. 
 xii.) gives a somewhat fuller account, and specially 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 101 
 
 mentions that "he took the fenced cities that 
 pertained to Judah/' v. 4. Shishak's inscrip- 
 tion contains a list of places conquered or ruled 
 by him. In this list are seven certain, and 
 many more probable identifications with places 
 in Palestine, of which at least three are named 
 in 2 Chron. xi. 5-10 as having been fortified by 
 Rehoboam (" Diet, of Bible," Shishak). . 
 
 It would occupy too much time to go at all 
 fully into the history of the wars of the kings 
 of Assyria against the kingdoms of Judah and 
 Israel. It must suffice to state that whereas 
 our knowledge of the kings of Assyria named 
 in the Bible in their relations to the kings of 
 Israel and Judah, derived from secular writers, 
 was extremely scanty, and in some cases a 
 complete blank, the information we have ob- 
 tained from the newly-opened Assyrian sources 
 about the reigns and wars of such kings as Pul, 
 Shalmaneser, Sargon, Sennacherib, Esar-haddon, 
 agrees in every instance with the brief record 
 in the Bible history. I may add that the illus- 
 trations of the history of Hezekiah's reign as 
 given in 1 Kings xviii. xix. are most remark- 
 able. You will find the sculptures relating to 
 the siege of Lachish (2 Kings xix. 8) in Dr. 
 Kinn's interesting volume " Graven in the 
 Rock/' where there is also a representation of 
 
102 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 the cylinder (now in the British Museum) on 
 which the records of Sennacherib's reign are in- 
 scribed. 
 
 Time will not permit me either to refer to 
 the perfect agreement, now fully brought to 
 light by the large accession to our knowledge 
 of Egyptian papyri and sculptured records, be- 
 tween Egyptian history, manners, customs, laws, 
 &c, and the Mosaic record. But they are a 
 most valuable criterion of the severe historical 
 accuracy of the Pentateuch, to which it is well 
 that your attention should be called. 
 
 The next point to which I would draw your 
 attention is the probable scheme of the con- 
 struction of Holy Scripture. I do not think 
 any intelligible scheme can be propounded if 
 we exclude from our consideration the deter- 
 minate counsel of God that a faithful record of 
 certain events should be kept through all ages 
 for the instruction of His people. The old view 
 of the inspiration of Scripture, as if the whole 
 volume, exactly as we have it now in the 
 Massoretic text, without a clerical error, without 
 a false punctuation, without any exertion of 
 the human will, or the intervention of the 
 industry or intelligence of man in its com- 
 position, met this view and was therefore 
 so far satisfactory. But it failed to account 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 103 
 
 for other features of the case, as for instance 
 the different readings from existing Hebrew 
 MSS. and from the old Greek Version called 
 the Septuagint ; the existence of a few pal- 
 pable errors in numbers, proper names, and 
 the like ; a few anachronisms such as those I 
 pointed out in my first Lecture ; and generally 
 the appearance of a human element in the 
 Scriptures as well as a Divine. And so it 
 exposed the Scriptures to unanswerable assaults 
 from the sceptical school. Moreover, the assign- 
 ment of the different books of Scripture to par- 
 ticular authors in the same sense as we should 
 mean by a similar assignment, as of the whole 
 Pentateuch to Moses, of the book of Joshua to 
 Joshua, of the books of Samuel to Samuel, of 
 the books of Ezra and Nehemiah to the persons 
 whose names they bear, has in like manner laid 
 the Scriptures open to attacks, which lose all 
 their force immediately the false position is 
 abandoned. What seems to me the true account 
 is, that with a view to effecting His purpose of 
 preserving through all ages a record of certain 
 events, God providentially brought about the 
 recording by the Patriarchs in successive genera- 
 tions of genealogies — the oldest form of history 
 — and of certain events connected with those 
 genealogies — the flood, the destruction of Sodom 
 
104 THE BOOKS OF CHKONICLES 
 
 and Gomorrah, the call of Abraham, and the 
 like — of certain revelations of the Divine will 
 made to those Patriarchs, and ordered the 
 preservation of these records by safe hands. As 
 time advanced, and the Divine purpose of 
 separating- a peculiar people to be depositories 
 and guardians of the sacred records approached 
 its completion, and the events which were to 
 bring it about were rising in grandeur and in 
 importance, nothing can be more probable than 
 that such an one as Moses, with his unrivalled 
 opportunities, his splendid powers, his human 
 learning, should be divinely commissioned to 
 gather together and to arrange the ancient 
 patriarchal documents, and to incorporate with 
 them the wonderful narrative of the events in 
 which he played so conspicuous a part, and the 
 laws which he was commissioned to give to the 
 new-born nation. Whether his hand drew up 
 the whole narrative, or it was drawn up in 
 whole or in part by other hands tve are not told, 
 nor does it in the least matter. But when it 
 was written it was placed in the custody of the 
 Priests (Deut. xxxi. 9, 24-26), to be kept by 
 them for the instruction of the people in all 
 future ages. 
 
 In like manner, when under Joshua, the people 
 took possession of Canaan, a faithful record of 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 105 
 
 the event was likewise kept, in part, probably, 
 by Joshua himself, as seems to be indicated by 
 the We of Josh. v. I (till we were passed over), in 
 part possibly by others authorized to do so, and 
 then the narrative would be added to the other 
 national archives, and kept under the same 
 authority. When we come to the times of the 
 kings a regular system of historiography was 
 established. We have regular mention of the 
 Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel 
 and Judah, of which apparently the Books of 
 Kings and Chronicles contain extracts ; of " the 
 Book of the acts of Solomon," i Kings xi. 41 ; 
 and in David's time we are referred for all his 
 acts, first and last, to " the Book of Samuel the 
 seer, and the Book of Nathan the Prophet, 
 and the Book of Gad the seer" (1 Chron. xxix. 
 29). That the Prophets continued to write the 
 national records appears from duplicate entries 
 of certain chapters in the writings of Isaiah and 
 Jeremiah, and in the Book of Kings (Isai. xxxvi- 
 xxxix ; 2 Kings xviii. 13-xx. ; Jer. xli. Hi. ; 2 
 Kings xxiv. 18, xxv.). Another indication of 
 the set office of the historiographer may be seen in 
 the regular formula prefixed to the reigns of the 
 Kings. See 2 Sam. v. 4 ; 2 Kings xvi. 2 ; xviii. 2 ; 
 xxi. 5 ; 2 Chron. xii. 13 ; xxi. 8, &c, and in an im- 
 perfect state 1 Sam. xiii. 1, where the numerals 
 
106 THE BOOKS OF CHKONICLES 
 
 are not entered, probably because this heading to 
 Saul's reign was inserted much later, when the 
 exact figures were unknown. However, what I 
 wish to suggest is that the earlier annals, those 
 e. g. of the times of Moses, were in their original 
 form probably separate entries — annals of each 
 year, or journals of each day. How far they 
 were arranged by their author we cannot tell. 
 But as time passed on, and they had to be in- 
 corporated with subsequent annals, so as to make 
 one continuous history, it is obviously not improb- 
 able that some process of editing, arranging, ab- 
 breviating, supplying lacunae, and the like, may 
 have become necessary. Neither is it impossible 
 that in the case of laws an occasional new law or 
 an expansion of an old law may have been 
 added as occasion arose, just as in our own 
 Prayer Book, later additions have been admitted 
 besides the original services of a.d. 1662. But 
 I am far from affirming that this was so. 
 
 If the above is anything like the process by 
 which the earlier Scriptures came into shape, it 
 is obvious that these diversities of style, use of 
 particular phrases, prevalence of certain words, 
 and so on, would be fully accounted for without 
 the complicated and cumbrous machinery re- 
 sorted to by the higher critics. The use of 
 various materials would show itself in the one 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 107 
 
 author — the hand of the late editor would betray 
 itself in its handling of the ancient document. 
 But the suggestion of fraud and dishonesty, or 
 of a patchwork of ingenious and contradictory 
 materials, as the process by which such a book 
 as the Bible came into being, seems to me as 
 destitute of common sense as it is of religious 
 reverence for the Word of God. 
 
 Indeed, unless I am wholly blinded by preju- 
 dice in favour of Holy Scripture, I see in every 
 page of that wonderful book transparent evi- 
 dence of the honest truthfulness of the writers. 
 Their words are a genuine coinage stamped with 
 the image and superscription of the God of 
 truth. Literary or other fraud seems to me 
 wholly incompatible with the tone of lofty mo- 
 rality which breathes through those sacred pages. 
 And as to those milder suggestions of the Eng- 
 lish school of Higher criticism, that in imputing 
 speeches to Moses which never fell from his lips, 
 the writers of Numbers and Deuteronomy were 
 only doing what Thucydides did in putting into 
 the mouths of his great men speeches which 
 represent their sentiments, one has only to look 
 at the particularity with which each separate 
 incident is recorded to see at once how utterly 
 futile, if it were consistent with the respect 
 I feel for some who make it, I should say how 
 
108 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 childish, such an explanation is. Look, e.g., at 
 Num. i. i, or Deut. i. 3, and numerous similar 
 passages ; or such passages as Deut. ii. iii., or 
 Num. xiv., or at the instances in which particu- 
 lar laws sprung up from the incidents of the 
 day, such as the law limiting the marriage of 
 heiresses to their own tribe (Num. xxxvi.) ; the 
 law prohibiting the use of strong drink by the 
 priest before officiating in the Tabernacle, caused 
 by the offering of strange fire by Nadab and 
 Abihu ; the law punishing sabbath-breaking by 
 death, &c, and you will see that there is no 
 choice, no middle way, between deliberate fiction 
 of the most skilful kind, and a genuine docu- 
 ment, being what it pretends to be, a contem- 
 porary record of real events. 
 
 It is not pretended that there are no difficul- 
 ties to be explained, or, may be to be left unex- 
 plained. There are passages in which Moses 
 speaks plainly in the first person, and others in 
 which things are said of Moses which it does 
 not seem probable that he would say of himself 
 — they are more like the narrative of a looker- 
 on. There are discrepancies in the laws, as, e. g., 
 the law of tithes, the different age mentioned as 
 that at which the Levites entered on their ser- 
 vice (Num. iv. and viii. 24 1 ), the year of manu- 
 
 1 See Kuenen, p. 25 and following. 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 109 
 
 mission and release from debt, and some others. 
 There are passages, like Dent. x. 6-10, of which 
 it is difficult to say why they are in their present 
 position; and those already alluded to, Deut. 
 ii. 10-12 ; xx. 20-23 ; and others. But is it won- 
 derful that a book more than 3000 years old 
 should present certain difficulties ? Is it incon- 
 ceivable that the custodians of the Scriptures 
 should have ever made any blunder ? Is our 
 knowledge so extensive that whatever does not 
 exactly fit it must needs be false ? By all 
 means let us ever be on the look out for fresh 
 information, but let us mingle a little humility 
 with our curiosity, and not reject solid masses of 
 truth because a few atoms of error or doubt seem 
 to us to be associated with them. 
 
 One more general remark and I have done. 
 I began this evening by pointing out the re- 
 markable unity of design running through the 
 Scriptures from the creation to the latest book. 
 I will now ask you to look at the same unity of 
 Scripture from an opposite standpoint. I mean 
 looking backwards from the latest to the earliest 
 books through all the intermediate ones. Each 
 book presupposes those which precedes it. The 
 New Testament presupposes the Old, springs 
 from it, and rests upon it. Malachi presupposes 
 the history of Elijah, the law of Moses, the his- 
 
110 THE BOOKS OF CHEONICLES 
 
 tory of Jacob and Esau. Zechariah presupposes 
 the Feast of Tabernacles, the earthquake in the 
 days of Uzziah, the death of Josiah, king of Ju- 
 dah, the history of David, the Assyrian and 
 Egyptian domination over Israel, and the Baby- 
 lonish captivity. Haggai presupposes Solomon's 
 Temple, the Exodus from Egypt, and God's co- 
 venant with Israel by the hand of Moses (Exod. 
 xxxiv. 27, &c), and, not to go through all the 
 Prophets, every one of whom presupposes the 
 preceding history of Israel, and bases some part 
 of his exhortation on some special circumstances 
 in it, I may add that the consecutive history of 
 Israel at each stage presupposes what went be- 
 fore. The subsequent reigns look back to David 
 as the founder of the dynasty ; the history of 
 David looks back to the history of Samuel 
 (2 Sam. vi.). Samuel presupposes the time of 
 the Judges ; Judges (xx. 27, 28) links itself to 
 Joshua in the matter of Phinehas (Judg. xx. 28) 
 and of Jephthah (Judg. xi. 13-26); and the 
 Book of Joshua presupposes the Pentateuch ; 
 Deuteronomy presupposes Numbers (Deut. xxiii. 
 4, 5) ; Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers all pre- 
 suppose Genesis in the matter of the tribes, the 
 history of Joseph, the descent of Jacob to Egypt, 
 the history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and so 
 on. So that we have an unbroken chain from' 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. Ill 
 
 Malachi to Genesis, each link in which, bears 
 distinct testimony to all that went before it 
 through, say, 1500 years. 
 
 And now I have completed what I had to say 
 preliminary to the direct consideration of the 
 Books of Chronicles. I shall hope in the suc- 
 ceeding Lectures to show you how valuable those 
 Books of Chronicles are in their view of Israel- 
 itish history taken from a somewhat different 
 standpoint from the Books of Samuel and Kings, 
 and to establish their authenticity upon firm 
 ground. They will then be invaluable allies in 
 resisting the attacks of a destructive criticism, 
 and maintaining the faith which was once de- 
 livered to the Saints, and has been maintained 
 by the Church of God through well nigh 1900 
 years with unbroken and unfaltering confidence 
 in its absolute and perfect truth. 
 
LECTUEE IV. 
 
 The Books of Chronicles. 
 
 Having at length completed that preliminary 
 examination of the theoiy of the " Higher Criti- 
 cism " with regard to the Pentateuch which was 
 necessary to clear the ground, I now proceed to 
 the direct examination of the Books of Chronicles 
 themselves, with a view to establishing their 
 authenticity against the detraction of the 
 " Higher Criticism." 
 
 And first , let us determine, as far as we can, 
 the age at which the Books of Chronicles were 
 written, and the circumstances under which the 
 people of Israel were placed at the time, and the 
 special wants which the Books were intended to 
 meet. 
 
 The ninth chapter lets us know at once that 
 we have to do with a post-exilian book. For 
 it speaks, in the first and second verses, of 
 the deportation to Babylon, and of the return 
 from Babylon to their own land of the Israelites, 
 priests, Levites, and Nethinims. How long after 
 the return the Books were written we have to 
 
THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES. 113 
 
 gather from the contents of them, and the latest 
 date to which those contents come down. And 
 since the Book of Ezra is a continuation of the 
 Chronicles, as appears among- other things by 
 the three first verses of Ezra being duplicates of 
 the two last verses of i Chron. xxxvi., we must 
 take into our account the latest events contained 
 in Ezra, and the latest link in any genealogy 
 contained in either Chronicles or Ezra. Now 
 the history in Ezra comes down to at least b. c. 
 457, *he seventh year of the reign of Artaxerxes 
 Longimanus, king of Persia ; and one genealogy, 
 that of Zerubbabel (1 Chron. iii. 19-24), carries 
 us down either six, or more probably three \ 
 generations after Zerubbabel, which would bring 
 us to about B.C. 446, the twentieth year of 
 Artaxerxes, when we know that Ezra was still 
 at Jerusalem (Neh. viii.). We cannot therefore 
 be very far wrong if we assign the date of the 
 Chronicles to about the middle of the Persian 
 dominion, the time of which the Books of Ezra 
 and Nehemiah treat, the close of the reign of 
 Artaxerxes. 
 
 What then was the condition of Israel at that 
 time ? There had been two returns of the people 
 from Babylon. The first in the first year of 
 
 1 For the correction of Zerubbabel's genealogy see the 
 writer's "Genealogies of our Lord," p. 97 and following pages. 
 
114 THE BOOKS OF CHKONICLES 
 
 Cyrus, king of Persia, b. c. 536, under the leader- 
 ship of Zerubbabel, the heir of David's throne, 
 and Jeshua the high priest. The second in the 
 seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, under 
 the leadership of Ezra the priest, the scribe 
 (b. c. 457). It had been the great work of the 
 first batch to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, 
 and this had been accomplished in the course of 
 some twenty years, in the sixth year of Darius 
 Hystaspes, B.C. 515, amidst much opposition 
 from the people of the land. Some progress 
 had also been made with regard to the Temple 
 services. The old divisions of the priests and 
 Levites into courses had been re-established, and 
 the returned captives had kept the Passover. 
 But there is a gap after this in the history of 
 about fifty-eig-ht years, between Ezra vi. 22 and 
 vii. 1. It is likely that after the death of 
 Zerubbabel and Jeshua, and of Haggai and 
 Zechariah the prophets, things retrograded at 
 Jerusalem. There was probably great difficulty 
 in keeping up the Temple services, in finding 
 the requisite number of beasts for sacrifice, and 
 securing the attendance of priests and Levites 
 at Jerusalem. And tidings of this state of 
 things had reached Ezra at Babylon. And so 
 he obtained permission of king Artaxerxes to 
 go to Jerusalem, and also a decree permitting 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 115 
 
 any of the Jewish subjects of the king to go up 
 with Ezra. He also obtained a grant of money 
 from the king, and permission to collect in the 
 province of Babylon free-will offerings, together 
 with an exemption from taxation of all priests, 
 Levites, and Nethinims who ministered at the 
 Temple (Ezra vii. 1 1-26). 
 
 But there was another great evil threatening 
 the destruction of the " feeble Jews " who had 
 returned to Judea, and that was their intercourse 
 with the people of the land, those heathen races 
 whom the kings of Assyria and Babylon had sent 
 to take the place of the Jewish captives who had 
 been exported to Babylonia. It appears from 
 Ezra ix. and x. that many of the Jews, including 
 priests and Levites and chief men of the congre- 
 gation, had contracted marriages with the people 
 of the land. And later, in Nehemiah's govern- 
 ment, there were Jews who had married wives 
 of Ashdod and Moab and Ammon, and their 
 children spake half in the language of their 
 heathen mothers, and could not speak in the 
 Jews' language (Neh. xiii. 23, 24), one of the 
 offenders being grandson to Eliashib the High 
 Priest. Obviously, therefore, there was great 
 danger lest the Jewish race itself, as well as the 
 Jewish religion, should come to an end. It ap- 
 peared manifestly that the wise institutions of 
 H 2 
 
116 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 the Mosaic law were absolutely necessary for 
 the maintenance of the separate nationality of 
 the seed of Abraham, as well as for the main- 
 tenance of the worship of the One true and 
 Living God. The whole system hung together. 
 The possession of the land according to tribes 
 and families ; the genealogies by which the right 
 to possession was secured to each tribe and 
 family ; the payment of tithes and offerings by 
 which the priests and Levites were enabled to 
 live at Jerusalem, and keep up the central wor- 
 ship of the Temple ; the exclusive spirit of 
 nationality which kept the Jews aloof from 
 all other nations, and the kindred feeling of 
 caste which separated the tribe of Levi from the 
 other tribes of Israel, were all alike needful if 
 Israel was to be maintained as God's witness in 
 the world until the coming of Jesus Christ. 
 Especially important was it that the office of 
 the priests and Levites, which was a funda- 
 mental part of the Mosaic system, should be 
 preserved inviolate. 
 
 Hence we see the need of a history, for the 
 post-exilian Jews, written in the sense of the 
 Books of Chronicles. The preservation of the 
 ancient genealogies, special record of the part 
 played by the priests and Levites in events 
 already recorded in the national archives, the 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 117 
 
 perils of idolatry, the enmity of the nations, a 
 fuller record of certain passages in their history 
 than had been preserved in the Books of Kings, 
 and which earned for it the name given it in 
 the Greek Version — irapakeiTTOfjiivoov, i. e. supple- 
 ment or appendix of things passed over in the 
 former history — such were the special features 
 of this last canonical book, which sprung from 
 the wants of the times. 
 
 Other peculiar marks of the times in which 
 these books were written, and of the place of 
 their birth, are the following : — 
 
 (i) There is little mention of the kingdom of 
 Israel, or of its kings, or of its extinction. B3- 
 this time the sense of community between the 
 people for whom Chronicles were written and 
 the apostate kingdom of Israel was wholly lost. 
 The religious rupture between the kingdom of 
 David and the northern kingdom had produced 
 a complete alienation between the two com- 
 munities, and this would be felt in its full force 
 by the writers of the Chronicles, who were evi- 
 dently priests or Levites. The affairs of the 
 kingdom of Israel, therefore, are passed over in 
 silence as of little interest to the purely Jewish 
 people for whom Chronicles were written. 
 
 Again, if we compare those chapters of Chro- 
 nicles, which give the account of the closing 
 
118 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 reigns of the kings of Judah, with the parallel 
 account in the Book of Kings, we shall be struck 
 with the much greater fullness of the narrative 
 in 2 Kings of the reigns of Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, 
 and Zedekiah, as compared with the narrative 
 of 2 Chronicles, and the natural inference will 
 be that the writer of 2 Kings wrote in Judea 
 at the time as we know Jeremiah did, but that 
 the writer of 2 Chronicles did not write at the 
 time. On the other hand, the particularity 
 with which the return of the captives from 
 Babylon under Cyrus is related in the closing 
 verses of 2 Chron. xxxvi. and Ezra i.; Zerubbabel's 
 Chaldee name of Sheshbazzar ; the name of 
 Mithredath the Treasurer ; the inventory of the 
 gold and silver vessels of the Temple, and the 
 ijmssima verba of Cyrus' proclamation ; all in- 
 dicate that the writer was, or had been, a resi- 
 dent at Babylon. 
 
 (2) The circumstance, that while the bulk of 
 the book of Ezra is written in Hebrew, from 
 ch. iv. 8 to vi. 18, and ch. vii. 12-26, are in 
 Chaldee, is a strong indication of the time when 
 this part of the narrative was put together, viz. 
 by Ezra himself, or a contemporary, in the reign 
 of Artaxerxes king of Persia. 
 
 (3) The mention of Nehemiah the Tirshatha in 
 Ezra ii. 63, and of the sons of Jeshua the son 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 119 
 
 of Jozadak (Ezra x. 1 8) brings us down to the 
 same time. 
 
 (4) If we include the Book of Nehemiah as well 
 as Ezra, we still do not come below B. c. 432 — the 
 thirty-second year of Artaxerxes (Neh. xiii.) or 
 shortly after. We have however one genealogical 
 record (Neh. xii. 11, 22), reaching to Darius Codo- 
 manus, B. c. $$$, and, v. 23, mention of " the book 
 of Chronicles " as containing entries of Levites 
 down to his reign ; his designation " Darius the 
 Persian" probably implying that this entry 
 was made under the empire of Alexander the 
 Great. But this does not affect our Chronicles. 
 
 Secondly. Let us examine the sources — the 
 Quellen as our German friends call them — from 
 which the Books of Chronicles are compiled. 
 These are very various. (1) Some are very 
 ancient, evidently drawn from the oldest his- 
 torical records of Israel. The genealogies which 
 occupy the first nine chapters of 1 Chron. are 
 extracts from the national archives. They are 
 portions of those genealogies according to which 
 the Israelites were distributed by tribes and 
 families in their several inheritances, and in 
 which historical notices were also inserted, as in 
 our Parish registers we often find records of 
 interesting facts. Take a few examples. In 
 1 Chron. iv. 9 we have a curious mention of Jabez. 
 
120 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 The passage is manifestly an extract from some 
 other document, because we do not know who 
 this Jabez was, or who his brethren were. But 
 from the phrase in v. 10, "the God of Israel," 
 it appears that he was not an Israelite, and from 
 the names with which he is associated — Kenaz, 
 Othniel, Caleb and others, that he was a Kene- 
 zite. And then there is recorded his singular 
 punning prayer, u Oh ! that thou wouldest bless 
 me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine 
 hand might be with me and that thou wouldest 
 keep me from evil that it may not grieve me ! " 
 where he seems to follow up the original saying 
 of his mother when she called his name Jabez, 
 " because," said she, " I bare him with sorrow" by 
 his own prayer " Keep me from evil that it be 
 not to my sorrow" R. V. where the A. V. does 
 not seem to have noticed the allusion to his 
 name, which is apparently the reason why the 
 extract has been preserved. My object is simply 
 to give you an instance of the obvious antiquity 
 of the sources of I and 2 Chronicles. 
 
 Take another curious instance of the preser- 
 vation of an ancient document, which is in 
 other respects of some importance. I mean 
 that of the Kings of Edom in I Chron. i. 43-51, 
 of which a duplicate is in Gen. xxxvi, to which 
 I alluded in my first Lecture. The list is headed, 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 121 
 
 " These are the kings that reigned in the land 
 of Edom before any king reigned over the chil- 
 dren of Israel," and there follows a list of eight 
 kings, which would cover about 240 years. 
 Now the first of these kings was Bela the son 
 of Beor, and his name has clearly some close 
 connection with Balaam the son of Beor, and 
 we know from Num. xx. 14 that there was a 
 king of Edom at that time. On the other hand 
 the last king who preceded Saul was Hadad, 
 and we know that Hadad of the Royal family 
 of Edom escaped as a child from the massacre of 
 Joab and took refuge in Egypt (1 Kings xi. 14 
 fF.). Here again then we have in this scrap of 
 knowledge preserved in an ancient Edomitish 
 pedigree, evidence of the truthfulness of the 
 chronicler. Supposing Bela the son of Beor to 
 be about contemporary with Balaam the son of 
 Beor, and consequently with Phinehas, we have 
 then exactly the same number of generations 
 from Bela to Hadad inclusive, as from Phinehas 
 to Ahitub, Zadok's father, or, which is the same 
 thing, from the son of Ithamar to Ahijah, who 
 was High Priest in Saul's reign. 
 
 Or take the genealogy of a very interesting 
 person, Caleb the son of Jephunneh, of whom 
 we read in Num. xiii.-xv. It there appears 
 that he was one of the twelve spies who were 
 
122 THE BOOKS OF CHEONICLES 
 
 sent to search the land, one for each tribe, and 
 each one a head or ruler of his tribe, and that 
 he was for the tribe of Judah. On their return 
 from the land bringing the grapes of Eshcol 
 with them, you will remember that Caleb and 
 Joshua were the only two who brought a good 
 report, and encouraged the people to go up and 
 take possession. The other spies gave such an 
 evil report of the fenced cities, and the huge 
 stature of the sons of Anak, that the heart of 
 the people melted with fear, and they rose up 
 in rebellion against Moses and Aaron, and were 
 on the point of stoning them, and making a 
 captain to return to Egypt. As a punishment 
 for this rebellion, the Lord declared that none 
 of the grown-up men of that generation should 
 enter into the promised land, except Caleb the 
 son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun 
 (Num. xiv. 30). And accordingly in Josh. xiv. 
 we read how Caleb the son of Jephunneh the 
 Kenezite came to Joshua, reminded him of 
 Moses' promise, and asked to be allowed to drive 
 out the sons of Anak from the mountain, and 
 take possession of it. " And Joshua blessed him, 
 and gave unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh 
 Hebron for an inheritance." Hebron therefore 
 became the inheritance of Caleb the son of 
 Jephunneh the Kenezite unto this day, " because 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 123 
 
 that he wholly followed the Lord God of Israel " 
 (Josh. xiv. 14). Now in 1 Chron. ii. we have 
 Caleb's genealogy, derived from Judah through 
 Hezron, agreeing with Joshua xv. 13, "Unto 
 Caleb the son of Jephunneh he gave a part 
 among the children of Judah." On the other 
 hand we have no clue to who Jephunneh was. 
 Nor again have we any clue to the personality 
 of Kenaz, from whom he is called the Kenezite. 
 But a careful examination of the names in the 
 Edomitish genealogies reveals the fact that 
 Kenaz (1 Chron. i. 36, 53) is an Edomitish name, 
 and the names Shobal,Ileaziah,theManahathites. 
 Korah, Temani, Elah, are all common to the Edom- 
 itish families, and to the descendants of Caleb. 
 Putting all this together we get this consistent 
 story, that Caleb was not an Israelite at all, but 
 had attached himself to the children of Israel, and 
 so had obtained an inheritance with the children 
 of Judah; as a reward of his faithfulness to the 
 Lord God of Israel, having also doubtless married 
 into the tribe of Judah. I submit that " fictitious 
 genealogies " do not bring out such results. 
 
 Other little touches of history are not only 
 full of interest, but bear the strongest possible 
 marks of genuineness and truth. Among the 
 rare notices of the tribe of Simeon is that of 
 their raid upon the pastures on the east side 
 
124 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 of the valley of Gedor, and the utter destruction 
 of a certain Hamite population of shepherds 
 who had their tents there, and the appropriation 
 of the rich pastures to their own use. This 
 expedition seems to have been followed up by 
 another farther to the south, to Mount Seir, and 
 by the destruction of the remnant of the Ama- 
 lekites who dwelt there. And this information 
 was derived from some documents compiled in the 
 reign of Hezekiah, the time when these things 
 happened (i Chron. iv. 39-43). Or look at the 
 account in 1 Chron. v. of the war carried on by 
 the Renbenites against the Hagarites in the 
 days of Saul, their great victory and slaughter 
 of their enemies, their immense capture of 
 cattle, 50,000 camels, 250,000 sheep, 2000 asses, 
 and their expansion as far as the wilderness 
 bounded by the river Euphrates. And this 
 information, we gather, was gained from the 
 genealogies drawn up in the reigns of Jotham, 
 king of Judah, and Jeroboam II, king of Israel 
 (1 Chron. iv. 19). 
 
 Or look at the exceedingly ancient story 
 which the genealogy of Joshua the son of Nun, 
 of the tribe of Ephraim, brings us (1 Chron. vii. 
 20 ff.) There a bloody contest with the men of 
 Gath, caused as usual by a raid for cattle, in 
 which it does not appear clearly who was the 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 125 
 
 aggressor, issued in a terrible slaughter of the 
 Ephraimites, and a touching account is given 
 of the grief caused to the head of the tribe by 
 this calamity. There is a good deal of obscurity 
 in the account, and doubt as to the precise time 
 when the events took place ; but whether the 
 slaughter of the Ephraimites took place before 
 or after the entrance into Canaan, it is a 
 manifestly genuine extract from a very ancient 
 document, and seems to be extracted from a 
 genealogy drawn up in the time of Joshua. 
 
 Many more interesting scraps of history not 
 mentioned elsewhere are scattered amongst 
 these genealogies. But I will only advert now 
 to another class of entry, I mean the notices of 
 certain trades which came under the genea- 
 logical divisions of the land. Thus I Chron. ii. 
 $5 we read of " the families of the scribes which 
 dwelt at Jabez"; I Chron. iv. 14 of " Joab the 
 father of the valley of Charashim (craftsmen), 
 for they were craftsmen"; at 1 Chron. iv. 21 of 
 " the families of the house of them that 
 wrought fine linen, of the house of Ashbea." 
 Ver. 23 of the same chapter tells us of " the 
 potters, and those that dwelt among plants and 
 hedges : there they dwelt with the king for his 
 work." Little scraps of knowledge, these, 
 mingled with an occasional census of certain 
 
126 THE BOOKS OF CHEONICLES 
 
 tribes, or an occasional mention of an Assyrian 
 invader, Pul, or Tilgath Pilneser, which show 
 us what an interesting- collection the whole 
 must have been, and what rich materials it 
 contained for a social and statistical history of 
 the twelve tribes of Israel. 
 
 I turn next to an indication of the genuineness 
 of the Chronicles, which strikes me as of great 
 weight as showing that they are copies of the 
 original documents. You will doubtless have 
 observed in reading many of the genealogies, 
 which form so important a portion of these 
 books, that they are of very various lengths, and 
 break off at very various times, the reason of 
 which is not at first sight very clear. But a 
 very simple, I had almost said a very obvious 
 reason, is that the genealogy transcribed breaks 
 off necessarily at the time when it was made — 
 a genealogy drawn up in the reign of David 
 could not go beyond the reign of David. 
 One drawn up in the reign of Hezekiah could 
 not go beyond the reign of Hezekiah. A genea- 
 logy drawn up in the reign of Jotham king 
 of Judah, or Jeroboam king of Israel, would of 
 course end with the generation contemporary 
 with those kings respectively (i Chron. v. 19). 
 But we have not always the means of knowing 
 in what reign the last person in any list lived, 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 127 
 
 because he may be an utterly unknown person. 
 But sometimes we have. Take for instance the 
 genealogy in I Chron. ii. 25-41. It is a genea- 
 logy of the tribe of Judah, viz. of the descendants 
 of Jerahmeel the son of Hezron, the son of 
 Pharez, the son of Judah, for twenty generations. 
 In it are two names that we know, names i. e. 
 of persons of whom we know when they lived. 
 One is Zabad of the 14th generation after Judah, 
 whom we recognize at once as David's mighty 
 man Zabad the son of AJdai (1 Chron. xi. 41) by 
 the designation " the son of Ahlai." Ahlai being 
 the name of Sheshan's daughter who married her 
 father's Egyptian servant Jarha, and so gave 
 her name to that branch of the family. Reck- 
 oning four more generations from Zabad in 
 David's reign, brings us down to Azariah, whom 
 we identify at once as the Azariah son of Obed of 
 2 Chron. xxiii. 1 in Athaliah's reign, by his being 
 the grandson of Obed. Five more generations 
 bring us to the end of the list. But if we 
 reckon the number of generations from David 
 to Jehoram, Athaliah's husband, we find six, 
 corresponding to the four in the line of Azariah — 
 a perfectly satisfactory agreement, if you con- 
 sider that Zabad, the last of the mighty men, 
 was probably a full generation younger than 
 David, and that Azariah may well have been 
 
128 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 an older man by near a generation than Jehoram 
 who died at the age of forty (2 Chron. xxi. 20). 
 Lastly, from Azariah to Elishama, the last name 
 on the list, there are six names, and in the line 
 of kings there are six kings from Athaliah to 
 Hezekiah. We may be pretty sure therefore that 
 Elishama lived in the time of Hezekiah ; but we 
 know also that Hezekiah had a great staff of 
 scribes (1 Chron. iv. 41 ; Prov. xxv. 1). Hence 
 we conclude that the last name in the pedigree 
 indicates that the genealogy was drawn up in 
 Hezekiah's reign, and as a threefold coincidence, 
 Zabad, the 14th from Judah, is in his right place 
 as David's contemporary ; Azariah is in his 
 right place as contemporary with King Jehoram ; 
 Elishama is in his right place as contemporary 
 with Hezekiah's scribes. 
 
 Another example of the termination of a 
 genealogy in Hezekiah's reign is that in 
 1 Chron. viii. 34-40, where from Jonathan the 
 son of Saul to Ulam are eleven generations, 
 corresponding to the eleven generations be- 
 tween David and King Hezekiah. 
 
 An analogous indication of these genealogies 
 being transcripts of original genealogical tables 
 may be found in the different accounts they 
 give of the same tribe at different times. Take 
 e. g. the tribe of Benjamin ; we have four 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 129 
 
 different accounts of the families or houses into 
 which the tribe was divided (i) as it was when 
 Jacob went down into Egypt (Gen. xlvi. 21) ; 
 (2) as it was at the entrance into Canaan (Num. 
 xxvi. 41); (3) as it was in the days of David ; 
 (4) as it was in the days of Hezekiah (1 Chron. 
 viii), where you may observe another indication 
 of the historical character of these genealogies in 
 the greatly diminished numbers of the tribe 
 from 45,6co (Num. xxvi. 41) to 22,034 (1 Chron. 
 vii. 7), showing the desolating effect on the tribe 
 of Benjamin of the great civil war in the time 
 of the Judges. 
 
 Or we may test the historical accuracy of the 
 genealogies of the Chronicles on a much larger 
 scale, and in a manner which would not have 
 been possible fifty years ago. When I was 
 writing my little book on the genealogies of 
 our Lord some forty years ago, I had occasion 
 to examine as carefully as I could the chrono- 
 logy of the portion of time between the Exodus 
 and David. And I found that while in our 
 Saviour's genealogy there were orAj Jive persons, 
 — Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David— to fill up 
 the gap between the Exodus and the Kingdom 
 of David, the time, according to the received 
 chronology, to be accounted for was from 480 
 to 600 or even more years. It did not require 
 1 
 
130 THE BOOKS OF CHKONICLES 
 
 to be a conjurer to see that these two conditions 
 did not harmonize. I set to work therefore 
 and read all the best books on the chronology 
 of the times, Jackson, Hales, &c, to get the 
 difficulty cleared up. One solved the difficulty 
 after one sort, and others after another. 
 One learned man thought he had solved the 
 difficulty when he routed up the record of old 
 Parr, who lived to be 152 years old, and so 
 might have had a son at over 100 years, and 
 therefore why should not four or five in succes- 
 sion do the same ? But the most part, thinking 
 the received chronology, founded partly on the 
 Biblical chronology in 1 Kings vi. 1 ; Judg. xi. 
 26, &c, and partly upon Egyptian chronology, 
 to be incontestably true, resorted to the not 
 unreasonable expedient of supposing the genea- 
 logy to be defective, some of the links being 
 left out, and only the principal names inserted. 
 And this explanation might have sufficed if we 
 had only one genealogy to deal with. But, 
 upon looking carefully into the genealogies 
 covering this particular period of time, it 
 appeared that there were no fewer than eight 
 other genealogies covering the same interval of 
 time. In five of these there are fourteen 
 generations, in two fifteen, and in one eleven, 
 corresponding with the eleven in David's line. 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 131 
 
 Hence it was manifest that the contradiction 
 between the chronology and the genealogy w T as 
 not to be accounted for by supposing some of 
 the links in the genealogical chain to be- 
 missing. My own conviction therefore was 
 that it was the chronology which was at fault. 
 I was greatly confirmed in this conviction by a 
 passage in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's " Manners 
 and Customs of the Egyptians," vol. i p. 99, in 
 which he states that w^hile he acquiesces in the 
 then received opinion that Thothmes III. was the 
 Pharaoh of the Exodus, he thinks Lord PrudhoeV 
 view that Mene-phthah, who lived nearly 200 
 years later, was the Pharaoh of the Exodus is well 
 worth consideration. The difficulty in the way 
 of accepting it was that it brought down the 
 Exodus about 200 years too late, that is to just 
 the time indicated by the genealogies in the 
 Books of Chronicles. My book was not out of 
 the printer's hands when Dr. Lepsius' (the great 
 Prussian Egyptologer) Letters from Egypt ap- 
 peared, in which he argues with great force from 
 the Egyptian point of view that Mene-phthah 
 was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, shows how this 
 brings the date of the Exodus 178 years later 
 than the common date (and so 178 years nearer 
 to the time of David), and adds " that the Scrip- 
 ture genealogies, the only trustworthy although 
 1 2 
 
132 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 less exact chronological thread of those Hebrew 
 times, speak as decidedly against the calculation 
 hitherto adopted of 480 years (from the Exodus 
 to the building of Solomon's Temple) as in 
 favour of . . . about 300 years." Well this was 
 nearly forty years ago, and these forty years 
 have been a time of unexampled progress in the 
 study of Egyptian antiquities, and the know- 
 ledge of ancient Egyptian history. And what 
 has been the effect of this increase of knowledge 
 upon the question of the Exodus? Why that 
 every Egyptologist of any note now agrees that 
 Mene-phthah is the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and 
 that the Exodus took place nearly 200 years 
 later than the old chronologies had supposed ! 
 
 Now is it not most remarkable that the genea- 
 logies in the Chronicles should exactly bear out 
 what is thus discovered to be the truth ? Can 
 you conceive " fictitious genealogies " to be thus 
 in harmony with those ancient Egyptian monu- 
 ments which are now revealing the secrets of 
 3000 years ago ? Does it raise, or does it lower ^ 
 your estimate of that omniscient higher criticism 
 w T hich professes to find out, not by the light of 
 history, not by the light of newly discovered 
 documents, not by the revelation of newly 
 deciphered languages, but by the light of their 
 own searching intelligence, what happened and 
 
TN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 133 
 
 what did not happen 3000 years ago, and do not 
 scruple to brand as the work of deceivers and 
 forgers books which 100 generations of faithful 
 men, before and after Christ, have unanimously 
 accepted as the scriptures of truth ? When you 
 see that these men are not clear-sighted enough 
 to see the broad marks of truth stamped upon 
 these records, because those marks are destructive 
 of their theories, can you give them credit for 
 that marvellous keenness of mental vision which 
 enables them to break up the text of scripture 
 into a perfect mosaic of E's and J's, and D's, 
 and P's, and R's, contradicting one another, and 
 yet making up the most sublime, the most 
 beautiful, the most harmonious, the most in- 
 structive volume which the world has ever seen, 
 and which amidst all the glories of Greek and 
 Latin literature, and all the wisdom of Eastern 
 sages, and all the wealth of Western learning 
 and civilization, still holds its place, unrivalled, 
 and unapproached, as the Bible, the Word of 
 God? 
 
 I had forgotten specially to remind you that 
 several of these genealogies are those genea- 
 logies of High Priests and Levites which our 
 omniscient friends have informed us were in- 
 vented by the Priests of the fourth century 
 before Christ to support the fiction of an Aaronic 
 
134 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 Priesthood, and a central altar of sacrifice, and 
 to secure the payment of tithes for their own 
 personal emolument. 
 
 (2) But to proceed with the sources. Besides 
 those ancient genealogical rolls which' we have 
 just considered, and the existence of which proves 
 the preservation of the national records through 
 the Captivity, the following works are quoted by 
 the chronicler as used by him in compiling his 
 work. For the reign of David he had the Book 
 of Samuel the seer, and the Book of Nathan 
 the Prophet, and the Book of Gad the seer : 
 abundant materials of the most authentic kind. 
 What portion of the existing Chronicles could 
 have been derived from the Book of Samuel does 
 not clearly appear, seeing it does not begin till 
 after Samuel's death. But possibly at one time 
 much which we now read in 1 Sam. may have 
 been attached to the beginning of the Books 
 of Chronicles, and afterwards omitted, as not 
 required in duplicate. Or, without supposing 
 this, it may be that some of the arrangements for 
 the services of the Levites which were afterwards 
 adopted by David were originated by Samuel, as 
 seems to be suggested 1 Chron. ix. 22. See too 
 1 Chron. xxvii. 28. From the Book of Nathan 
 the Prophet he probably derived those particulars 
 about the preparation of materials for building 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 135 
 
 the Temple which are not found in 2 Sam. (i 
 Chron.xxviii., xxix.), and those details concerning* 
 the building which are not in i Kings. From 
 the Book of Gad he would derive the accounts 
 of the musical services of the Levites which are 
 scattered through the Books (i Chron. xvi. 4-6 ; 
 xxv. 1-6 ; xxiii. 5, &c), as we gather from the 
 statement in 2 Chron. xxix. 25. 
 
 The chronicler also refers for the acts of 
 Solomon to "the Prophecy of Ahijah the 
 Shilonite "' of whom we read 1 Kings xi. 29, 2 
 Chron. x. 15, and to "the visions of Iddo the 
 seer " (2 Chron. ix. 29, and xii. 15) ; for the acts 
 of Rehoboam to Shemaiah the prophet (2 Chron. 
 xii. 1 5) ; for the acts of Abijah to another work 
 of Iddo the prophet (2 Chron. xiii. 22) ; for the 
 reign of Jehoshaphat " to the book of Jehu the 
 son of Hanani " (2 Chron. xx. 34). For the reign 
 of Joash a book is referred to called the " stoiy of 
 the Book of the Kings " (2 Chron. xxiv. 27) ; and 
 for the reign of Uzziah we are referred to Isaiah 
 the prophet (2 Chron. xxvi. 22). The reign of 
 Hezekiah is also vouched for by " the visions of 
 Isaiah the son of Amoz " and " the Book of the 
 Kings of Judah and Israel" (2 Chron. xxxii. 33). 
 For the reign of Manasseh we are referred to a 
 book called W s ~)2\ " the sayings of the seers " 
 or c: the history of Hosai." 
 
136 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 Besides the above authorities the compiler of 
 Chronicles refers frequently under slightly vary- 
 ing- forms to " the Book of the Kings of Israel and 
 Judah " (i Chron. ix. i; 2 Chron. xxiv. 29) ; that 
 is, I conceive, the official annals of the kingdom 
 constantly cited in the Book of Kings, as the 
 Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel 
 or Judah (1 Kings xiv. 29 ; xv. 7 ; xv. 31 ; xvi. 
 20, &c.) ; so that he had the most authentic con- 
 temporary authority for the whole course of his 
 history down to the Captivity, and appears to 
 have been most painstaking and conscientious in 
 his use of the authorities at his disposal. How 
 far he used our present books of Samuel and 
 Kings is difficult to determine ; because, though 
 we have many consecutive verses identically the 
 same in Chronicles as those which we read in 
 Samuel and Kings, we cannot be sure whether 
 the author took them from our present books or 
 from those official annals to which they both so 
 frequently refer. I propose in my next Lecture 
 examining more closely the relations between 
 the Books of Chronicles and those of Samuel and 
 Kings which precede them, when perhaps we 
 shall be able to arive at some definite conclusion. 
 Coming down to the close of the Chronicles, and 
 the commencement of Ezra, we have a gap of 
 over fifty years, except so far as it is filled by the 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 137 
 
 Prophets Ezekiel and Daniel, and by the brief 
 statement of 2 Chron. xxxvi. 20. But at 2 Chron. 
 xxxvi. 22 the thread is taken up again, and we 
 find ourselves at the same point of time as we 
 touched at 1 Chron. ix. 1, viz. the return of the 
 captives from Babylon. Here then the con- 
 tinuity of the history is resumed. Ezra i.-vi. 
 relates the return of the Jews from Babylon 
 under the leadership of Zerubbabel of the House 
 of David and Jeshua the High Priest, and the 
 Prophets Haggai and Zechariah ; the rebuilding 
 of the Temple under the constant opposition of 
 the people of the land ; the celebration of the 
 feasts of Tabernacles and of the Passover, and 
 the gradual restoration of the Temple services. 
 Besides the direct narrative of the Book of 
 Ezra (which is the continuation of 2 Chron.) 
 we have too the Prophecies of Haggai and 
 Zechariah relating to the same time, and bear- 
 ing distinct evidence to the hereditary High 
 Priesthood and to the existence of the law. 
 Then follows another gap of about seventy 
 years. And then at last Ezra himself appears 
 upon the stage, having come up from Babylon 
 in the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus. 
 But I will ask you to notice particularly that 
 the great progress toward the resuscitation of 
 the law of Moses recorded in the first six 
 
138 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 chapters of Ezra ; the restoration of the Holy 
 Vessels, brought from Jerusalem to Babylon by 
 Nebuchadnezzar (ch. i) ; the building- of the 
 altar of the God of Israel to offer thereon burnt- 
 offering's, as it is written in the law of Moses the 
 Man of God (iii. 2) ; the keeping* of the Feast 
 of Tabernacles and the other set feasts (iii. 4, 5) ; 
 the ordering of the ministry of Priests and 
 Levites, with trumpets and cymbals and singing 
 after the ordinance of David king of Israel (iii. 
 9-i 1) ; and the rebuilding of the Temple (v. vi.) ; 
 had all taken place some seventy years before 
 Ezra came to Jerusalem, and between eighty and 
 ninety years before Nehemiah came. But no 
 doubt, with the Prophets Haggai and Zechariah 
 on the spot, and Zerubbabel and Jeshua at the 
 head of the civil and ecclesiastical establishments, 
 official Chronicles were kept of the transactions 
 of that period. And these are the authority, 
 probably to a great extent the very words, 
 of the first six chapters of Ezra. But that 
 we have not those official Chronicles exactly 
 as they were left by their authors, and as Ezra 
 found them, is certain, because ch. ii. is a 
 duplicate of Neh. vii. and iv. 6-23 relate to 
 Xerxes and Artaxerxes who reigned after, not 
 before Darius, and relate not to the building 
 of the Temple, but to the walls of the city, 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 139 
 
 which was the great work Nehemiah accom- 
 plished. 
 
 With Ezra vii. then, which is a manifest con- 
 tinuation of the preceding narrative, we have 
 introduced the authority of Ezra himself, an 
 e;fe-witness of all that he relates. For from 
 Ezra vii. i to ix. 14 is written in the first person, 
 and Ezra x. is also probably by his hand, though 
 Ezra is spoken of in the third person. Whether 
 Ezra himself edited the book that bears his 
 name with the preceding Chronicles, as we 
 now have them, or some later editor incorporated 
 Ezra's work with the Chronicles, and added 
 Nehemiah's, is difficult to decide, and at all events 
 need not detain us now. 
 
 I have concluded now all I have to say as 
 to the sources — the Qnellen — of the Books of 
 Chronicles. And I hope I have shown you 
 that they are of the most trustworthy kind. 
 Original documents, in many cases of great 
 antiquity, and contemporary authorities for 
 the whole of the time dealt with, together 
 with internal evidence of the suitability of 
 the book to the wants of the times and the 
 circumstances under which it purports to have 
 been published, and internal evidence also of the 
 genuineness of the documents appealed to, have 
 I think shown us that as a whole the Books may 
 
140 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES. 
 
 be thoroughly trusted, and may be absolutely 
 acquitted of the gross dishonesty and fraud 
 imputed to them by the " Higher Criticism." 
 
 In my next, concluding Lecture, I shall put 
 them to the further test of a close comparison 
 with the Books of Samuel and Kings ; and 
 shall then in conclusion show that they offer an 
 uncompromising and insuperable contradiction 
 to that audacious tenet of the higher criticism, 
 that the law of Moses is the fiction of a late 
 age and that the Pentateuch had no existence 
 till Moses had slumbered many centuries in his 
 ffrave. 
 
LECTUKE V. 
 
 Conclusive Testimony of Chronicles to the 
 Mosaic Law. 
 
 Our first task this evening is to examine 
 somewhat closely the relations of the Books of 
 Chronicles to the Books of Samuel and Kings, 
 with a view to discover whether, in the light 
 of such a scrutiny, they sustain the twofold 
 character of an independent history, and an 
 authentic trustworthy history. The facts of the 
 case are these. From i Chr. x. i to % Chr. 
 xxxvi. 21 we have a history of Israel running 
 parallel to that which begins I Samuel xxxi. 1 , 
 and ends 1 Kings xxv. 30. In what do these 
 histories agree, and in what do they differ ? 
 Where Chronicles differ, do they contradict 
 Kings? Where they agree, are they merely 
 a servile echo of Kings ? And what are the 
 main features of difference ? 
 
 Perhaps the clearest way of bringing out 
 these different points will be to take different 
 sections of the history and compare the treat- 
 
142 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 ment of them by the two books, one with 
 another. And we will take first the reign of 
 David. 
 
 If we place I Chr. x. 1-12 by the side of 1 
 Samuel xxxi. we see at once that, with one or 
 two slight verbal differences, they are verbatim 
 the same account, either copied the one from the 
 other, or both borrowed from a common source. 
 Again, 1 Chr. x. 13, 14 exhibits at once what 
 we shall see is a peculiarity of the chronicler, 
 viz. to moralize on the facts which he narrates. 
 His comment on the death of Saul is "So Saul 
 died for his transgression which he committed 
 against the Lord, . . . and for asking counsel of 
 
 one that had a familiar spirit to inquire of it, 
 
 therefore He slew him, and turned the kingdom 
 unto David the son of Jesse." Similar com- 
 ments recur frequently (2 Chr. xii. 2, 7, 12 ; 
 xiii. 18; xiv. 6, 7; xvi. 8, &c). If we pass 
 on to 1 Chr. xi. 1-9, and compare it with 2 
 Samuel v. 1-10, we find ourselves again on 
 identical ground, the accession of all the tribes 
 to David at Hebron, and the capture of the strong- 
 hold of Jebus, the castle of Zion, which is the 
 city of David. With slight variations the two 
 accounts are identical, either transcripts of the 
 same passage, word for word, or one the copy of 
 the other. But all the account of the civil war 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 143 
 
 between David and Ishbosheth, and the murder 
 of Abner, and of Ishbosheth, which occupies the 
 intermediate chapters of 2 Samuel (i-iv.), -is 
 omitted in Chronicles. 
 
 Advancing to I Chr. xi. io, and proceeding* as 
 far as xii. 30, we notice the chronicler's familiarity 
 with statistics, and official lists. For we have a 
 long list of David's mighty men and their valiant 
 deeds, and another of those tribes which joined 
 David at Ziklag ; and yet another of those who 
 joined him at Hebron, to make him king, down 
 to the end of ch. xii. And it was to this assembly 
 that David proposed bringing up the ark to 
 Jerusalem (2 Samuel vi. 1). The appearance is 
 of a reference to official records; but we are 
 struck at the same time with a feature which 
 we shall have to consider again, viz. of excessive 
 numbers beyond the bounds of probability. If 
 we reckon up the numbers of the armed bands 
 who came to David at Hebron, as given in the 
 last half of ch. xii., we find they mount to 
 309,600. And it is added that they all feasted 
 together three days, eating and drinking with 
 David. But to feast 300,000 men for three days 
 is no easy task. Now it so happens that in this 
 particular case we have the numbers given in 
 the parallel passage, 2 Samuel vi. 1, on a much 
 more manageable scale, 30,000. And this also 
 
144 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 suggests an easy correction of the numerals here 
 and elsewhere. In Hebrew numerals were often 
 expressed by single letters. Thus 3 stands for 
 three ; }' for 30, j" for 300, each ' having the 
 effect of multiplying by ten. If, therefore, in the 
 original list the sum total, 30,000, was expressed 
 by a gimel (for three) and one dash, and with the 
 word for thousand following it, the accidental 
 addition of one dash by a careless scribe would 
 at once convert 30,000 into 300,000, and big 
 numerals flattering the vanity of the Jews, what 
 was at first a clerical error would become the 
 textus receptus, like the impossible 50,070 of 
 1 Samuel vi. 19. 
 
 The next event recorded is the important one 
 of bringing the ark from Kirjath-jearim to 
 Jerusalem. The ark seems to have been at 
 Kirjath-jearim ever since it had been brought 
 there from Beth-shemesh (1 Samuel vii.), after 
 its restoration by the Philistines. The two 
 accounts in many respects agree verbally, and 
 are clearly derived from the same source. The 
 ancient name of Baal given to Kirjath-jearim, 
 the description of the ark as u the ark of God 
 that dwelleth between the Cherubims," the men- 
 tion of the instruments of music, the names of 
 Abinadab, Uzzah, Ahio, Obed-edom, the incidents 
 of the new cart, the stumbling* of the oxen, the 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 145 
 
 name Perez-Uzzah given to the place to com- 
 memorate Uzzah's death, and the turning aside 
 of the ark into the house of Obed-Edom the 
 Gittite, are decisive proofs of the two narratives 
 being derived from the same source. But even 
 in this part of the narrative there are several 
 indications of the chronicler having drawn from 
 other sources as well. The way the subject is in- 
 troduced in I Chron. xiii. i, 2, 3 ; the mention of 
 " Priests and Levites in their cities and suburbs," 
 and the description of the land of Israel as 
 extending from " Shihor of Egypt unto the 
 entering of Hamath," indicate that the chronicler 
 had some other account before him, or possibly 
 the same account from which 2 Sam. was taken, 
 but taken with much less abbreviation. 
 
 But with regard to the latter part of the 
 narrative the difference between the two accounts 
 is very marked. First, whereas in 2 Samuel vi. 
 the whole narrative of bringing up the ark to 
 Jerusalem is given consecutively, t Chron. xiii. 
 only brings the account down to the lodging of 
 the ark in the house of Obed-Edom, and then 
 interposes the chapter about Hiram, and David's 
 sons born at Jerusalem, and the battle with the 
 Philistines at Baal-perazim, and in the valley of 
 Rephaim, which corresponds with the latter half 
 of 2 Sam. v. And then chapter xv. 1 supplies 
 
146 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 information not given at all in 2 Sam., viz. 
 that during the three months that the ark was 
 resting at the house of Obed-Edom, David was 
 making preparations at Jerusalem for the due 
 reception of the ark. He pitched for it a tent, 
 and apparently the houses which he built in the 
 city of David ( i Chron. xv. i.) were for the Priests 
 and Levites who were to have charge of it. For 
 as appears from I Chron. xv. 29 and 1 Kings xiii. 
 1, the Tabernacle prepared for the ark was in the 
 city of David. And then there follow all the 
 details of the preparations made for assembling 
 the Priests and Levites at Jerusalem, for assign- 
 ing to them their respective parts as bearers of 
 the ark upon their shoulders "as Moses com- 
 manded," as singers, with instruments of music, 
 as blowers with trumpets, and as porters or 
 doorkeepers : details not one word of which 
 are given in the parallel account in 2 Sam. vi., 
 but which must all have existed in fact, and are 
 implied in the narrative in 2 Sam. vi. And 
 then the narrative in Chronicles at xv. 25 re- 
 joins that in 2 Sam. v. 1 2, telling with it, though 
 in somewhat abridged terms, of the progress of 
 the ark from the house of Obed-Edom to the 
 city of David, of the sacrifices offered on the w T ay, 
 of David dancing before the ark clothed in a robe 
 of w 7 hite linen, and a linen ephod, of Michal, 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 147 
 
 Saul's daughter, despising him in her heart, and 
 of the distribution of bread and meat and wine 
 among the people. Omitting the further 
 incident of Michal's reproach to David and 
 David's answer (2 Sam. vi. 20-23) the chronicler 
 proceeds with the matter which specially in- 
 terested him, the permanent provision made by 
 David for Levites and Priests to minister before 
 the ark — settling them, I presume, in the houses 
 which he had built on Zion. It is interesting, 
 with reference to the strange theories broached 
 about the Psalms, to notice that the special office 
 of some of these Levites was '-to record, and 
 to thank, and to praise the God of Israel 
 with psalteries and harps," and that the chapter 
 closes with several Psalms said to have been 
 given by David at that time for the service of 
 praise into the hands of Asaph and his brethren, 
 viz. the 1 06th, 1 -1 5 ; xlvi. ; lvi. 
 
 Passing on to 1 Chron. xvii. and xviii., we 
 find them, with scarce an exception, verbally 
 the same as 2 Sam. vii. and viii. But the in- 
 cident of David's enquiry after the house of 
 Saul, the restoration of Saul's land to Mephi- 
 bosheth the son of Jonathan, and the taking of 
 him to eat at the king's table continually, which 
 forms the subject of 2 Sam. ix., is wholly omitted 
 in Chronicles. 
 
 K 2 
 
148 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 The next event in David's life is his war with 
 Hanun the son of Nahash, the king of the 
 children of Ammon. This is related in identical 
 terms in 2 Sam. x. and i Chron. xix., down to 
 the time when the Syrian kings made peace 
 with David, and broke up their alliance with 
 the Ammonites. The issue too of the war in 
 the capture of Kabbah, and the taking the 
 crown of the king of Ammon and putting it on 
 David's head, is related mostly in identical 
 words in I Chron. xx. 1-3, and 2 Sam. xi. 1, 
 and xii. 26-31. But all the events which cast 
 so dark a shadow on this part of David's life, 
 and which are related in the Book of Samuel 
 with such unsparing fidelity, the adultery with 
 Bath-sheba, the death of Uriah, the troubles in 
 his family, the rebellion of Absalom, the flight 
 of David, in short the whole contents of 2 Sam. 
 xi.-xxiii. (except that the lists of the mighty 
 men in 1 Sam. xxiii. had been already given in 
 1 Chron. xi., and the battles with the Philistines 
 in 2 Sam. xxi. 15-22 are given in 1 Chron. xx. 
 4-8) are wholly omitted in Chronicles. And 
 then both the books meet again in the ac- 
 count of the numbering of the people, and the 
 building of the altar on the threshing-floor of 
 Araunah the Jebusite. The two accounts are 
 on the whole identical, but bear very much the 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 149 
 
 appearance in one or two places of being- drawn 
 from a common source, but differently abridged 
 or altered by the two parties. Thus what in 
 2 Sam. xxiv. occupies verses 5> 6, 7, 8, in 
 1 Chron. xxi. is condensed into the statement in 
 half verse 4, " Joab departed, and went through- 
 out all Israel, and came to Jerusalem." While 
 the statement in 1 Chron. xxi. 6, " Levi and 
 Benjamin counted he not among them : for the 
 king's word was abominable to Joab," is not 
 found in 2 Sam. at all, though it is again 
 alluded to 1 Chron. xxvii. 24, with a reference 
 to " the chronicles of king David." 
 
 So again the statement which in 2 Sam. xxiv. 
 is condensed into the last verse of the chapter, 
 in 1 Chron. xx. fills the last five verses, 26-30, 
 with the additional important statement about 
 the Tabernacle of the congregation at Gibeon, 
 confirming the statement of 1 Chron. xvi. 39, 
 and 1 Kings iii. 4. 
 
 This is exactly what would have happened, if 
 the two writers, having a common document 
 before them, had each put in or left out particular 
 portions according as it suited the main purpose 
 of their history. 
 
 The First Book of Kings opens with the ac- 
 count of the last illness of David, the intrigue 
 of Adonijah to secure the succession to the 
 
150 THE EOOKS OF CHEONICLES 
 
 throne for himself, the anointing of Solomon to 
 be king by David's order, his riding through 
 the city on the king's mule, David's last charge 
 and counsel to Solomon, and David's death, 
 i Kings ii. ic, 1 1. That is, the whole of what 
 is related of David's reign subsequent to the 
 numbering is comprised in one and a half 
 chapters. But in I Chronicles there follow 
 eight chapters. Yet we do not seem to meet 
 on any common ground till we come to I Chr. 
 xxix., second half of verse 22, in which, and the 
 following six verses, the whole contents of 1 
 Kings i.-ii. 1 1 are condensed — the only passages 
 of verbal agreement being 1 Chr. xxix. 26, 27, 
 and 1 Kings ii. 11, 12. 
 
 What then are the contents of these closing 
 chapters of 1 Chron. ? They relate almost exclu- 
 sively to David's preparation for the building of 
 the Temple by Solomon, and for the due conduct 
 of the Temple services after it was built. It 
 had been related in 2 Sam. viii., as well as in 
 identical words in 1 Chron. xvii., that David's 
 express desire to build a temple for the Lord had 
 been rejected because he had been a man of war 
 and had shed much blood ( 1 Chron. xxviii. 3), but 
 that God had promised him that Solomon his son 
 should build a House for God's Name. It was 
 a natural sequel to this that David should make 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 151 
 
 great preparations, and collect materials fitted 
 for the magnificence of the House which was to 
 be built. Accordingly, as soon as the preliminary 
 step of bringing up the ark of the covenant from 
 Kirjath-jearim to the city of David had been 
 accomplished, and a site had been purchased of 
 Araunah the Jebusite, David set to work to 
 make all the necessary preparations, and the 
 history of these preparations is what engrosses 
 the attention of the chronicler through the 
 remainder of the annals of the reign of King 
 David, the source of his information being doubt- 
 less " the chronicles of King David" (xxvii. 24). 
 These preparations were of a manifold character. 
 
 (1) He charged Solomon his son to undertake 
 the work, exhorting him to obey the law of Moses, 
 and promising him prosperity by God's blessing 
 if he did so (1 Chron. xxii. 6-16 ; xxviii.). 
 
 (2) He commanded all the princes of Israel to 
 help Solomon in the great work of building the 
 House to the Name of the Lord (xxii. 1 7-1 9 ; 
 xxix.). 
 
 (3) He collected the offerings of the whole 
 congregation, and joined with them in a solemn 
 service of prayer and praise (chapter xxix.). 
 
 (4) He collected a vast treasure from his own 
 private property, from the dedicated spoils of 
 war, and from the national treasure at his 
 
152 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 disposal, of gold and silver and brass, and cedar 
 wood, and iron and stone ; he secured a goodly 
 gang of hewers of wood from Tyre, and workers 
 in stone, and he called out for forced labour the 
 strangers, i. e. the old Canaanite inhabitants 
 throughout the land (xxii. 2). 
 
 (5) Having thus made provision for the 
 fabric, David's statesmanlike and organising 
 mind proceeded further to make provision for the 
 orderly conduct of the various services of the 
 Temple. As a skilled musician himself he had 
 a high conception of the part music, both vocal 
 and instrumental, ought to play, in showing 
 forth the praises of God, and in emphasizing 
 those Psalms and Hymns and spiritual songs 
 of which he himself was such a skilled composer. 
 As a musician, too, he well knew the importance 
 of numbers practising together if they would 
 attain to excellence. And then there were the 
 other ministries to be performed " for the service 
 of the House of the Lord, in the courts, and in 
 the chambers, and in the purifying of all holy 
 things, and in the work of the service of the 
 House of God : both for the show-bread, and 
 for the fine flour for the meat-offering, and for 
 the unleavened cakes, . . . and to offer all burnt 
 sacrifices unto the Lord in the Sabbaths, in the 
 new moons, and on the set feasts by number, 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 153 
 
 according" to the order commanded unto them. . . 
 and that they should keep the charge of the 
 tabernacle of the congregation, and the charge 
 of the sons of Aaron in the service of the House 
 of the Lord" (xxiii. 28-32), and accordingly he 
 caused all the Levites to be numbered from the 
 age of thirty years and upwards, even 38,000. 
 Their services were thus distributed. Twenty- 
 four thousand men for the service of the House 
 of the Lord ; six thousand were officers and 
 judges ; four thousand were porters or gate- 
 keepers of the various gates of the Temple ; and 
 four thousand formed the skilled choir of vocal 
 and instrumental musicians set apart to praise 
 the Lord. But of course this large number did 
 not act in their respective offices simultaneously. 
 Being first broken up genealogically into families 
 and houses, each under their respective heads, 
 they were thus, both Priests and Levites, distri- 
 buted into courses, and their order of succession 
 in their courses was decided by lot. Thus ch. 
 xxiv. tells us of the twenty-four courses of the 
 Priests, sixteen of the house of Eleazar, and 
 eight of the sons of Ithamar ; ch. xxv. tells 
 us of the twenty-four courses of Levites whose 
 office it was to praise with harps and psalteries 
 and song ; ch. xxvi tells us of the divisions 
 of the porters. These all attended in rotation, 
 
154 THE EOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 apparently (i Chron. xxvii. i) a month at a 
 time, or perhaps in some cases a week at a time 
 (2 Chron. xxii. 4). And so doubtless the other 
 divisions of the Levites had each their turn of 
 waiting on the active discharge of their duty 
 at the Temple, and when their waiting was over 
 went to their own homes in their several cities 
 and suburbs. 
 
 To convey this information concerning David's 
 j>reparations for the Temple was I conceive the 
 main object of the chronicler in these chapters ; 
 and that he derived his information from " the 
 chronicles of David" I think there can be no 
 doubt, both from the mention of them in 1 
 Chron. xxvii. 24, and from the nature of the 
 entries preserved in these last chapters. But it 
 was very natural that, having been led to record 
 these particulars in reference to the Temple, he 
 should add a few more details of general interest. 
 Such are the twelve courses, each under its own 
 captain, and each consisting of 24,000, into 
 which the whole kingdom was divided for 
 doing the king's business, and probably form- 
 ing the militia of the kingdom (1 Chron. xxvii.), 
 the interesting information that this census 
 took place in the fortieth year of David's reign 
 (xxxvi. 31, 32) ; the mention of the spoils won 
 in the battle by Samuel, and Saul, and David, 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 155 
 
 and Abner, and Joab, and others, and dedicated 
 by them, and placed in the Lord's treasury 
 under the hand of Shelomith the Levite, and 
 his brethren (i Chron. xxvi.) ; the curious in- 
 formation in ch. xxvii. about the officers who 
 had the charge of all the king's property, his 
 treasurer, the keeper of his store-houses in the 
 fields, in the cities, in the villages and in the 
 castles ; his chief bailiff over all his farm- 
 labourers ; the manager of his vineyards, the 
 manager of his cellars of wine, and those of oil, 
 the keeper of his olive trees and sycamore trees, 
 the several chief-shepherds of his divers herds 
 and flocks, the master of his camels and of his 
 asses (he had no horses), and the names of his 
 secretary, of his counsellor, of the governor of 
 his sons, of his companion, and of the general 
 of his army. I say it was very natural for one 
 who like the chronicler had a manifest interest 
 in statistical documents to throw in these very 
 interesting details, though they did not bear 
 directly upon the main object which he had in 
 view, viz. David's preparation for the building 
 of the Temple. 
 
 But I will ask you to notice in' passing what 
 a strong evidence these details of the civil 
 administration bear to the fact that this census, 
 taken in the fortieth year of David, is the source 
 
156 THE BOOKS OF CHKONICLES 
 
 of the important notices of Priests and Levites, 
 and other institutions of the law of Moses con- 
 tained in the Chronicles. Interesting as these 
 notices are in themselves, it strikes me that 
 their greatest value is the strong contradiction 
 which they offer to the offensive suggestion, 
 that these and all the references to Mosaic laws 
 and institutions are the impostures of a late age, 
 and of a designing and interested priesthood. 
 
 And now to sum up the results of the survey 
 we have taken of the two histories of the reign 
 of David. 
 
 I feel justified in affirming with perfect con- 
 fidence that the chronicler is both an inde- 
 pendent and a trustworthy historian. He is 
 not a mere copyist of the pages of Samuel and 
 Kings, and he is not a romancer and fable-writer 
 when he parts company from them. He drew 
 his information from authentic sources, and 
 original documents. Widely as he diverges 
 in his history of David from the writers of 
 Samuel and Kings, he never contradicts them. 
 But as the main purpose of his history was 
 different from theirs, it necessarily happens that 
 he often omits what they insert, and inserts 
 what they omit, and that he abridges when 
 they write in full, and enters into details when 
 they cut a matter short. Speaking generally 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 157 
 
 the Books of Chronicles give the ecclesiastical 
 history of David's reign, the Books of Samuel 
 and Kings give the civil history. 
 
 II. The same is true of Solomon's reign. 
 If we compare the account of the dedication of 
 Solomon's Temple in 1 Chron. v. vi. vii. with that 
 in I Kings viii. though there is perfect harmony 
 in the two accounts, and that in Kings makes 
 distinct mention of the ark of the Lord and the 
 Tabernacle of the Congregation — which the 
 w Higher Criticism" informs us did not exist for 
 more than 500 years afterwards — and of the 
 Priests and Levites, yet we shall notice the 
 much greater fullness of detail with which the 
 chronicler describes the action of the Levites, 
 the presence of all the Priests — not those only 
 whose course fell on that day — the music sung, 
 the dress of the Levites, the instruments of 
 music, and the worship of the people (2 Chron. v. 
 11-13 as compared with 1 Kings viii. 11). It 
 is an ecclesiastical mind that is speaking, one 
 deeply impressed with holy things, one wishing 
 to impress his readers with the vital importance 
 of maintaining in full vigour the religious ordi- 
 nances which they had inherited from their 
 fathers, and had lately so wonderfully recovered. 
 Any signs of fraud or fiction I have failed to 
 discover. 
 
158 THE BOOKS OF CHEONICLES 
 
 Occasionally, indeed, the account of secular 
 matters is given more fully in Chronicles than 
 in Kings, as, for instance, the account of the in- 
 vasion of Shishak, King of Egypt, is given 
 more fully in 2 Chron. xii. 2-9, than in 1 Kings 
 xiv. 25, 26, which is evidently owing to the 
 chronicler having before him the book of She • 
 maiah the Prophet (2 Chron. xii 7,15); a full 
 account is given of the invasion of Judah by 
 Zerah the Ethiopian, Shishak's successor, in the 
 days of Asa, which is wholly omitted in Kings 
 (2 Chron. xiv. xv.) ; and so in some other cases : 
 but usually, as in 2 Chron. xiii. in the account of 
 the war between Abijah and Jeroboam ; in 
 2 Chron. xvii. in the account of Jehoshaphat's 
 reign ; and elsewhere, the details which are 
 given in Chronicles, but not in Kings, are of an 
 ecclesiastical and Levitical character. 
 
 III. It would take too much time to 
 verify this by a comparison of all the reigns. 
 But it will fall in with my general design of 
 exhibiting the different method of the two his- 
 tories to compare their treatment of two other 
 reigns, those of Joash and of Hezekiah. In the 
 account of the restoration of Joash, the little 
 king, and the deposition and death of the 
 usurper Athaliah, the writer of Kings makes 
 mention only of the rulers over hundreds, and 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 159 
 
 " the captains and the guards," i. e. the king's 
 body-guard — the royal troops who were now 
 revolting from Athaliah — and whose duty it was 
 to be in the courts of the Temple for the protec- 
 tion of the sovereign (2 Chron. xii. 1 1) ; and he 
 relates how Jehoiada the High Priest arranged 
 that when they relieved guard on the Sabbath 
 the outgoing guard should remain, and with 
 the incoming guard should occupy certain 
 posts, and also guard the King's person ; but 
 he makes no mention of the Levites (2 Kings xi.). 
 On the other hand the chronicler (2 Chron. 
 xxiii.) relates that Jehoiada on that Sabbath did 
 not as usual dismiss the courses of Priests and Le- 
 vites, but retained the outgoing with the incom- 
 ing courses, and distributed them to guard certain 
 posts, and also as body guards to protect the 
 person of the little king. But he does not 
 speak specially of the king's guards. But in 
 the first verse he does make special mention of 
 certain captains of hundreds, one of whom way 
 our old friend Azariah, the son of Obed, entering 
 into covenant with Jehoiada, and of many chief 
 men from Judah joining the conspiracy, and of 
 Jehoiada arming the captain of hundreds with 
 spears and shields and bucklers, which David 
 had put in the House of the Lord ; and of 
 the princes (verse 13), and of the captains, of 
 
160 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 hundreds (verse 14). So that the chronicler's 
 account does not in any wise clash with that of 
 Kings, but is simply silent with respect to the 
 guards, while the writer of Kings is silent about 
 the Levites. But it stands to reason that the 
 same expedient of retaining the outgoing with 
 the incoming forces must have been applied 
 both to guards and Levites. 
 
 The clause in 2 Kings xii. 18 which says, 
 l ' And the Priest appointed officers (offices 
 Heb.) over the House of the Lord," in % Chron. 
 xxiii. 18 runs thus, "Also Jehoiada appointed 
 the offices of the House of the Lord by the 
 hand of the Priests the Levites, whom David 
 had distributed in the House of the Lord, to 
 offer the burnt-offerings of the Lord, as it is 
 written in the law of Moses, with rejoicing and 
 with singing, as it was ordained by David. 
 And he set the porters at the gates of the House 
 of the Lord, that none who was unclean in any- 
 thing should enter in " : where you see the 
 Levitical mind dwelling upon the ceremonial 
 details, but not a vestige of fraud or deceit. 
 What the chronicler records in detail agrees 
 exactly with what the writer of Kings sets 
 down in brief. 
 
 A comparison of the two accounts of the col- 
 lection of money for the repair of the Temple, 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 161 
 
 and of the repairs themselves, presents some 
 curious features. They agree in all main points, 
 in blaming the Priests and Levites for the delay, 
 in recording the actual restoration of the fabric, 
 and the part taken by the king, the High 
 Priest, and people respectively ; but there is less 
 appearance than usual of the narrative being 
 derived from a common source. A very impor- 
 tant allusion to Leviticus in 2 Kings xii. 16 is 
 not made in 2 Chron. ; though on the other hand 
 we see the usual an 'nuns of the chronicler in the 
 special mention of the action of the Levites, and 
 the identification of the collection with that 
 ordered by Moses for the Tabernacle of witness 
 (2 Chron. xxiv. 6). The chronicler also alone gives 
 us the information that the sons of Athaliah had 
 wilfully broken up the House of God, and 
 bestowed its treasures upon Baalim. 
 
 But the most striking difference between the 
 two histories of the reign of Joash consists in 
 the total suppression in the book of Kings of 
 the apostasy of Joash after the death of Jehoiada, 
 and the King's base ingratitude in the murder 
 of Zechariah the son of Jehoiada — referred to by 
 our Saviour in Luke xi. 51. But this is hinted 
 at in 2 Kings xii. 2, which tells us that " Joash 
 did that which was right in the sight of the 
 Lord all his days wherein Jehoiada the priest 
 L 
 
162 THE BOOKS OP CHKONICLES 
 
 instructed /iim" implying that after Jehoiada's 
 death he ceased to do so, as expressly stated in 
 2 Chron. xxiv. 17, 18. So that here again we 
 have proof that the chronicler is an independent 
 and also a trustworthy historian. 
 
 "We turn next to the reign of Hezekiah. In 
 2 Kings xviii. we have this record of him : " He 
 did that which was right in the sight of the 
 Lord according to all that his father did. He 
 removed the High Places, and brake the images, 
 and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces 
 the brazen serpent that Moses had made . . . 
 He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that 
 after him was none like him among all the 
 kings of Judah, nor any that were before him. 
 For he clave to the Lord, and departed not from 
 following Him, but kept His commandments 
 which the Lord commanded Moses." And then 
 the sacred historian passes immediately to the 
 secular affairs of the kingdom ; Hezekiah's rebel- 
 lion against the King of Assyria, his victory over 
 the Philistines, then the destruction of Samaria, 
 and the captivity of the northern kingdom. Then 
 he goes on to the invasion of Judah by Sen- 
 nacherib, and the memorable destruction of Sen- 
 nacherib's army ; and closes with Hezekiah's 
 sickness, and the visit of the ambassadors 
 of the King of Babylon. But he says not 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 163 
 
 one word about the ecclesiastical affairs of the 
 kingdom. 
 
 On the other hand the chronicler (2 Chron. 
 xxix. ft'.), after telling* us in identical language 
 with 2 Kings xviii. 3, that " He did that which 
 was right in the sight of the Lord according to 
 all that David his father had done," plunges at 
 once into the history of Hezekiah's ecclesiastical 
 reforms. He tells us that in his very first year 
 he began the restoration and purification of the 
 Temple which had been profaned. He gives 
 the King's stirring address to the Priests and 
 Levites, narrates how zealously they responded, 
 how they cleansed the House, and the altar, and 
 all the vessels which Ahaz in his transgression 
 had cast away. Then he tells us of the sacrifices 
 which they offered up to make reconciliation, of 
 the restoration of the Levitical services of song 
 and musical instruments according to the com- 
 mandment of David, and Nathan the Prophet, 
 and Gad the King's seer ; that the people 
 brought such a multitude of burnt offering's 
 that there were not priests enough to flay them 
 till more Priests had sanctified themselves. And 
 then in ch. xxx. gives a detailed and glowing 
 account of the great Passover — adding at the 
 end " So there was great joy in Jerusalem : for 
 since the time of Solomon the son of David 
 l % 
 
164 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 King* of Israel, there was not the like in Jeru- 
 salem." He then goes on in ch. xxxi. to detail 
 Hezekiah's other ecclesiastical reforms : the 
 destruction of all idolatrous objects, altars, groves 
 and the like ; the restoration of the courses of 
 Priests and Levites, for the service of the 
 Temple ; the appointment of the King's portion 
 of his substance for the regular sacrifices, and of 
 the people's portion of tithes and offerings for 
 the maintenance of the Priests and Levites ; he 
 describes with enthusiasm the liberality of the 
 people, and the abundance of first-fruits, of corn, 
 wine, and oil, and honey, and of the increase of 
 the field, as well as the tithe of oxen and sheep ; 
 he then gives the names of the principal officers 
 of the Levites who had the charge of all these 
 things " at the commandment of Hezekiah the 
 King, and Azariah the Ruler of the House of 
 God," i.e. as described in verse 10, "Azariah the 
 chief Priest of the House of Zadok." He then 
 mentions how the Levites from three years old 
 and upwards, and also the Priests, according to 
 their genealogies, received their portions from 
 the offerings of the people, and concludes " thus 
 did Hezekiah . . . and wrought that which is 
 good and right and truth, before the Lord his 
 God. And in every work that he began in the 
 service of the House of God, and in the law, 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 165 
 
 and in the commandments, to seek his God, he 
 did it with all his heart, and prospered." And 
 then, having given eighty -four verses to the 
 ecclesiastical history of Hezekiah's reign, he 
 closes it with thirty-three verses on the great 
 secular events of the reign, an abridged account 
 of the invasion of Sennacherib, and the destruc- 
 tion of his army, a brief allusion to Hezekiah's 
 illness, and to the ambassadors of the King of 
 Babylon, and a glowing description of Heze- 
 kiah's wealth and prosperity ; and, with only one 
 discordant note of blame for his pride in the 
 matter of the Babylonish ambassador, he con- 
 signs him to an honoured grave in the cbiefest of 
 the sepulchres of the sons of King David. Brief, 
 however, as the chronicler's account of Sen- 
 nacherib's invasion is, he manages to give some 
 interesting particulars concerning the defence 
 of Jerusalem, and the supplies of water during 
 the siege, which are not given in 2 Kings xviii. 
 (2 Chr. xxxii. 2-8). 
 
 Again, then, as the result of our scrutiny of 
 the chronicler's account of the reign of Hezekiah, 
 as compared with that in the Book of Kings, I 
 affirm boldly that his character as an independent 
 and trustworthy historian is thereby established. 
 That his mention of ceremonies and divers 
 ecclesiastical matters which are not mentioned 
 
166 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 in Kings is perfectly natural, and does not even 
 excite suspicion ; and that the charges brought 
 against him by the " Higher Criticism," of wil- 
 fully inventing things in order to bolster up 
 the fiction of the law of Moses, are false and 
 calumnious, and, not resting upon any solid 
 foundation, are unworthy of scholars and critics. 
 With regard to the few passages in which 
 contradictions are alleged to exist betw r een Kings 
 and Chronicles, this is hardly the fit time to go 
 into them at any length. I will only observe 
 generally that the omission by one writer of 
 things inserted by another is no disagreement. 
 Both writers have manifestly abridged the 
 common account they had before them, one in 
 one place, and another in another, according to 
 the special object each had in view\ And we 
 know that the omission of one circumstance in 
 a chain of events will often give an appearance 
 of contradiction which the missing fact im- 
 mediately removes. The most remarkable 
 omission is that in 2 Kings xxi. where no 
 mention wdiatever is made of the deportation to 
 Babylon of Manasseh, or of his repentance and 
 restoration, and of his buildings at Jerusalem 
 after his return — all which are related at large 
 in 2 Chr. xxxiii. It is perhaps worthy of 
 mention that whereas the w T riter of 2 Kings 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 167 
 
 xxi. 17 refers for his authority to "the Book of 
 the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah," the 
 chronicler refers, in addition to the " Chronicles," 
 to a book called " the sayings of the seers." The 
 apparent discrepancies in the account of the 
 Temple, and the collection of the funds in the 
 reign of Joash, are in any case trivial, and in 
 all probability are not real. The disagreement, 
 at first sight more serious, in the account of 
 Ahaziah's death in 2 Kings ix. 27 ff. and 2 
 Chron. xxii. 7 ff., disappears entirely when we 
 perceive that the account in Kings is very much 
 abridged, and that there is a gap of a day or two 
 between the first and last parts of 2 Kings ix. 
 27, allowance for which brings the narrative 
 into perfect agreement with the fuller account in 
 Chronicles. Ahaziah was not slain on his flight 
 from Jezreel the same day that Joram was, as we 
 should infer if we had only 2 Kings ix. 27 to 
 guide us, but on his flight from Samaria, where 
 he had been hiding, towards Megiddo \ and just 
 after the slaughter of his brethren to whom (and 
 not to Joram) the also in verse 27 refers. 
 
 1 If, as seems probable, the " Garden House " (Beth-Gan. 
 Heb.) 2 Kings ix. 27, is the same place as En-Gannim, now 
 Jenim, it is on the direct road from Jezreel to Samaria, and 
 so this verse confirms the statement in 2 Chron. xxii. 9, that 
 Ahaziah escaped in the first instance to Samaria. 
 
168 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 One word with regard to the enormous 
 numbers in the Books of Chronicles, which 
 is the only substantial charge I can see against 
 the accuracy of the chronicler. It must 
 be confessed that such numbers as " 500,000 
 chosen men of Israel " slain in one battle (2 
 Chron. xiii. 17), Asa's army of 580,000 men (2 
 Chron. xiv. 8), Zerah the Ethiopian's host of a 
 million men, and 300 chariots (verse 9) ; 
 Jehoshaphat's army of 1,160,000 men (2 Chron. 
 xvii.), the 1 20,000 valiant men of Judah slain in 
 one day by Pekah, and the 200,000 men and 
 women taken captive at the same time ; and 
 possibly some others, besides the 300,000, 
 which I referred to at the beginning of my 
 lecture, of those who met David at Hebron, 
 are incredible numbers. I think the most prob- 
 able explanation is, that which I have suggested 
 before, that they originated in clerical errors 
 caused by the method of expressing numerals 
 by letters, and perpetuated by the vanity of the 
 copyists who liked big numbers. There are two 
 causes of clerical errors in regard to numbers. 
 One is the resemblance of certain Hebrew letters 
 to one another. For instance 3 (beth) and 3 (caph) 
 are continually mistaken for one another in 
 MSS. But 3 as a numeral means 2, 3 means 
 70. The letters 1 (daleth) and 1 (resh) are 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 169 
 
 scarcely distinguishable from each other ; but 
 daleih as a numeral means 4, while res7i means 
 200. The other is, what I explained above, 
 the habit of expressing 30, 300, 3000 and so 
 on by the number of little dashes appended to 
 the letter expressing three, and so with other 
 numerals. I do not give this as a certain, but 
 only as a possible explanation of what seem 
 to be impossible numbers. 
 
 And now, in conclusion, having as I hope 
 vindicated the character of the Books of 
 Chronicles, and established their claim to be 
 honest witnesses and faithful historians, it only 
 remains to point out how absolutely destructive 
 of the theory of the " Higher Criticism " as to the 
 law of Moses their testimony is. Indeed the 
 advocates of that theory are well aware of this, 
 and hence their efforts to discredit the Chronicles. 
 Just as a counsel in a law-suit, who knows that 
 the evidence of one of the witnesses is fatal to 
 the cause of his client, does everything in his 
 power to blacken the character of that witness, 
 and show that his evidence is not worthy of 
 credit. 
 
 The contention of the " Higher Criticism" is, 
 you will recollect, that the law of Moses is really 
 of post-exilian origin, that it had no existence 
 during the ages of the Judges, and the Kings of 
 
170 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 Israel and Judah ; that the Pentateuch instead of 
 being* of the age of Moses is the work in part 
 of the time of Josiah, and in part of the days 
 after the return of the captivity from Babylon, 
 viz. the days of Ezra and Nehemiah ; that the 
 hereditary High Priesthood of the descendants 
 of Aaron is a post-exilian fiction; that the separa- 
 tion of the tribe of Levi for an exclusive ministry 
 is a fiction ; that there was no such thing as the 
 Tabernacle of witness or one altar of sacrifice, 
 but in the imagination of P, with other like 
 assertions. Well ! we have gone through the 
 reigns of twenty-one Kings of Judah from David 
 to Zedekiah. In David's reign we have found 
 the most elaborate organisation of Priests and 
 Levites for the service of God exactly according 
 to the Mosaic ritual ; we have seen most solemn 
 ceremonial for placing the Tabernacle of the 
 congregation and the ark of the covenant, and 
 the one altar of sacrifice on God's Holy Hill, and 
 frequent reference to the law of Moses as the 
 standard aimed at. Among genealogies, proved 
 in the most striking manner to be genuine, we 
 have seen the descent of the High Priests of 
 both lines deduced from Aaron, and the historical 
 High Priests all falling in their right place. In 
 the reign of Solomon we have seen the building 
 of the Temple, and everything still in accordance 
 
IN RELATION TO. THE PENTATEUCH. 171 
 
 in all their details with the law of Moses and 
 the Levitical institutions. Passing" over other 
 reigns, where the same truth might have been 
 brought out still more strongly, we came to the 
 reigns of Joash and of Hezekiah, and saw 
 precisely the same institutions existing as an 
 essential part of the life of the nation. Passing 
 on to the times after the return from Babylon 
 we saw, in our fourth lecture, how the returned 
 exiles struggled to restore the Mosaic in- 
 stitutions — rebuilt the Temple, restored the 
 courses of Priests and Levites, celebrated the 
 feasts of Tabernacles and of the Passover, and 
 that several scores of years before the return 
 of Ezra and Nehemiah. How is this com- 
 patible with the non-existence of the law of 
 Moses, and the Levitical order during those 
 600 years ? 
 
 Or put it in another way. The Tabernacle of 
 witness (or tent of meeting) is mentioned some- 
 thing over eighty times in the Pentateuch, in 
 which it occupies a most conspicuous place. In 
 each of the historical books which follow the 
 Pentateuch, viz. Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 
 2 Samuel, I Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles 
 2 Chronicles, it is mentioned once or more, in 
 all about eighteen times. How is this com- 
 patible with the non-existence of the tabernacle 
 
172 THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES 
 
 till after the time when these historical books 
 were written ? 
 
 The Pentateuch tells us very impressively 
 that God bestowed the hereditary High Priest- 
 hood upon Aaron and his sons. And we have 
 given us in the Chronicles a genealogy of High 
 Priests beginning with Aaron, and ending with 
 Jaddua, containing twenty-nine generations. Of 
 these w T e meet incidentally in the course of 
 the history (outside the Pentateuch), viz. in 
 the Books of Joshua, Judges, i and 2 Samuel, 
 i and 2 Kings, I and 2 Chronicles, Ezra 
 and Nehemiah, each turning up in his right 
 chronological place, nineteen filling the great 
 office of High Priest. How is this compatible 
 with the non-existence of an Aaronic Priest- 
 hood? 
 
 The Pentateuch in most vivid colours describes 
 the institution and celebration of the first Pass- 
 over, with reiterated provision for its perpetual 
 celebration as a memorial of the deliverance of 
 the children of Israel. We saw in our second 
 lecture that in the historical books (outside the 
 Pentateuch), viz. in Joshua, 2 Kings, 2 Chro- 
 nicles, and Ezra, there is a detailed account of 
 the celebration of four Passovers, with clear 
 hints of several other celebrations. How is this 
 compatible with the theory that the law enact- 
 
IN RELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 173 
 
 ing the Passover is posterior to all these recorded 
 celebrations of it ? 
 
 The Pentateuch records the separation of the 
 tribe of Levi for a special ministry, and assigns 
 them a livelihood from the tithes and offerings 
 of the other tribes. The historical books in all 
 subsequent ages exhibit this tribe in positions 
 agreeing with this separation. In consequence 
 of it we are told that they had no inheritance of 
 land allotted to them as the other tribes had. 
 The entire history of this wonderful people 
 bristles with notices of these Levites, their 
 functions, their ministry, their various offices. 
 The genealogies are full of them. We know 
 their divisions and sub-divisions into families 
 and houses of fathers, better than we know our 
 own. The names of their great musicians — 
 Heman, Asaph, Jeduthun, are as familiar to us 
 as the Mozarts and Beethovens of our own times. 
 We know the families who returned from 
 Babylon, who took part in the restoration of the 
 Temple service in virtue of their office, 2400 
 years ago. We know by name as familiarly as 
 we know our own Tyndales and Latimers the 
 Levites who helped forward Hezekiah's great 
 reformation, and those who were the coadjutors 
 of the good Josiah ; and now at the bidding of 
 Messrs. Wellhausen and Kuenen we are to 
 
174 THE BOOKS OF CHKONICLES 
 
 believe that the Levites were never set apart 
 at all, that their consecration was a fiction, their 
 origin and office a myth. We are bid take a 
 sponge and wipe out with remorseless cruelty 
 all that history and geography and poetry have 
 taught us of the most wonderful race of men the 
 earth has ever seen. The great record of God's 
 dealings with mankind, upon which our own 
 hope of good things to come is founded, is to be 
 put on the shelf with Aesop 's Fables and the 
 Lays of Ancient Borne, and the Arabian Nights : 
 the very teaching of our Lord Himself, the 
 faithful and true Witness, is to be discredited, 
 and we are to believe what the " Higher Criti- 
 cism " of to-day is pleased to teach us, leaving 
 it to our children to believe in the " Higher 
 Criticism " of to-morrow, and to our grand- 
 children to be involved in the darkness and 
 gloom of an universal scepticism. 
 
 My friends, my reason rises up in revolt at 
 the claims of this unreasonable criticism, and 
 my faith shudders at the surrender it is called 
 upon to make of its allegiance to the authority 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ. And when I have 
 put together as carefully as I can all the facts 
 of the case, and have weighed, as fairly and 
 impartially as I can, all the considerations which 
 the " Higher Criticism" brings before us, I only 
 
IN KELATION TO THE PENTATEUCH. 175 
 
 return with greatly increased confidence to the 
 ancient faith, and to an implicit reliance upon 
 the truth of Holy Scripture as given by In- 
 spiration of God. 
 
 If anything that has been said in the course 
 of these Lectures shall have helped you to retain 
 the same happy conviction, by showing you how 
 groundless are the arguments of the " Higher 
 Criticism," and, to borrow the words of a great 
 statesman, how impregnable is the Rock of 
 Holy Scripture, I devoutly thank Almighty 
 God, and rejoice that now that I am cut off 
 from other activities I have had this oppor- 
 tunity of speaking to you on one of the most 
 momentous subjects of the day. 
 
 Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto, 
 Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et in saecula saeeulorum. 
 
 Amen. 
 
Oxford 
 
 KORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
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