A COMMENTARY ON THE HOLY BIBLE BY VARIOUS WRITERS #K< 6f met * JUL 16 1909 EDITED BY '^^%£6/GAL St^Aj^ The Rev. J. R. DUMMELOW M.A. queens' college, CAMBRIDGE COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME WITH GENERAL ARTICLES AND MAPS NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1909 Copyright, 1908, 1909, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1909. Reprinted March, 1909. NorlrcoH 13rf33 : Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE A FEW words will suffice to explain the purpose and plan of the present volume, which has been specially written to meet the wants of the ordinary Bible reader. The Bible is the inspired record of God's gradual revelation of Himself, His Nature, Character, and Will, — a revelation made in the first instance to a people who were chosen to be the guardians of this treasure and to communicate it in due time to the rest of mankind, — a revelation consummated in the Person, Life, and Work of Jesus Christ. In this light it is regarded by at least a third of the human race, who have accepted it as a sure guide through time to eternity. It therefore demands and deserves constant and reverent study, which will be richly repaid by an ever-growing appreciation of its beauties, and a clearer perception of its spiritual power and truth. Yet it is often forgotten that 1800 years have elapsed since the last pages of the Bible were written, that it deals with events of the remote past, with races moved by ideas and influenced by a civilisation very unlike our own, and that the lano-uage of its larger half has ceased to be a living speech for more than two thousand years. Even the translation which is in common use — the Authorised Version — was made 300 years ago, at a time when Christian scholars had only just become conversant with Hebrew, and when no one thought of employing for critical purposes those ancient Versions, such as the Septuagint, which throw so much light on both text and interpretation. It is also only within recent years that travellei's have familiarised themselves and othei-s with Eastern scenes and customs, and have become acquainted with the literature, history, religion and archaeology of the nations connected with Israel. It is therefore evident that the reader who possesses only the text of the Bible is greatly hampered by ignorance of the circumstances under which the various books were originally composed, the mental habits of the people to whom they were addressed, and the actual needs which they were designed to meet. Oftentimes he fails to realise that the prophecy, psalm, or epistle was sent forth in response to contemporary circumstances, as urgent and vital as any we experience. Hence arises an inadequate apprehension of the intense reality of the message delivered. Spiritual help may, no doubt, be derived from its perusal — that being the main purpose for which God's providence has preserved it, — but even this will be less efficacious than if there had been caught a more distinct echo of the original bearing and significance of the record. The One Volume Commentary is an attempt to meet such needs as have been indicated, and to provide, in convenient form, a brief explanation of the meaning of the Scriptures. Introductions have been supplied to the various books, and Notes which will help to explain the principal difficulties, textual, moral or doctrinal, which may arise in connexion with them. A series of Articles has, also, been prefixed, dealing with the larger questions suggested by the Bible as a whole. It is hoped that the Commentary may lead to a perusal of many of the books of Holy Scripture which are too often left unread, in spite of their rare Hterary charm and abundant usefulness for the furtherance of the spiritual life. PREFACE The Authoi'ised Version has been commented on as being still in general use, but pains have been taicen to indicate the innumerable passages where the Revised Version leads to a better understanding of the original. In recent years much light has been thrown upon cjuestions of authorship and interpretation, and the contributors to this volume have endeavoured to incor- porate in it the most assured results of modern scholarship, whilst avoiding opinions of an extreme or precarious kind. Sometimes these results differ from traditional views, but in such cases it is not only hoped, but believed, that the student will find the spiritual value and authority of the Bible have been enhanced, rather than diminished, by the change. The Editor desires to express his gratitude to the many well-known biblical scholars who have responded so readily to his appeal for help, and by their encouragement and contributions have made the production of the Commentary possible. He regrets that the problem of space, which has confronted him from beginning to end, has allowed him to assign to them only sufficient room for the briefest and simplest treatment of their several books. For the conception and methods of the work the Editor is alone responsible. He has been induced to undertake the task from a belief that, notwithstandino- the many commentaries in existence, there is still room for another more suited to the needs and means of the general public. To treat so vast a subject in so small a space must inevitably evoke criticism, but he trusts that even within the limits of a single volume, much will be found to remove difficulties, to strengthen faith, and to lead to a wider study and fuller comprehension of the Word of God. vf CONTRIBUTORS OLD TESTAMENT Ayles, Rev. H. H. B., D.D., Rector of Barrow, Suffolk. Curtis, E. L., Ph.D., D.D., Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature, Yale Divinity School. Davison, Rev. W. T., D.D., Professor of Theology, Richmond, Surrey. DuMMELOV^, Rev. J. R., General Editor. *Edie, Rev. W., M. A., B.D., formerly Examiner for the Degree of B.D., St. Andrews. Green, Rev. E. T., M.A., Professor of Hebrew, St. David's College, Lampeter. Jordan, Rev. W. G., B.A., D.D., Professor of OT. Criticism, Queen's University, Ontario. Kennett, Rev. Canon R., B.D., Regius Pro- fessor of Hebrew, Cambridge. Kent, C. F., Ph.D., Professor of Biblical History and Literature, Yale University. LoExnousE, Rev.W. F., M.A., Professor of OT. Languages and Philosophy, Handsworth College, Birmingham. McFadyen, Rev. J. E., M.A., Professor of OT. Literature and Exegesis, Knox College, Toronto. *Moulton, Rev. W. J., M. A., Professor of OT. Languages and Philosophy, Headiugley College, Leeds. Paton, Rev. L. B., D.D., Professor of OT, Exegesis, Hartford Seminary, Conn. *Patrick, Rev. J., B.D., B.Sc, formerly Examiner for Degrees in Divinity, St. Andrews. *Ragg, Rev. Canon L., M.A., sometime Warden of the Bishop's Hostel, Lincoln. Robinson, G. L., Ph.D., Professor of OT. Literature and Exegesis, McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago. Sanders, F. K., Ph.D., President of Wash- burn College, Topeka, Kansas. *Stott, Rev. G. G., M.A., B.D., Examiner for Degrees in Hebrew and Theology, St. Andrews. Streane, Rev. A. W., D.D., Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. ♦Taylor, Rev. J., Litt.D., Yicar of Winch- combe. Wade, Rev. G. W., D.D., Professor and Senior Tutor, St. David's College, Lampeter. Welch, Rev. A., B.D., Glasgow. Woods, Rev. F. H., B.D., Rector of Bainton, Yorks ; sometime Fellow and Tutor, St. John's College, Oxford. NEW TESTAMENT ♦Adeney, Rev. W. F., D.D., Principal of the Lancashire College, Manchester. Campbell, Rev. J., M.A., B.D., Monquhitter. Curtis, Rev. W. A., B.D., Professor of Sys- tematic Theology, Aberdeen. ♦Findlay, Rev. G. G., D.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, Heading- ley College, Leeds. FuLFORD, Rev. H. W., M.A., Fellow and Dean (formerly), Clare College, Cambridge. ♦Harris, Rev. C, D.D., Yicar of Claverley ; Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Llandaff. Meyrick, Rev. F., M.A. (the late), Rector of Blickling, Norfolk. Nairne, Rev. A., M.A., Professor of Hebrew, King's College, London ; Examining Chap- lain to the Bishop of St. Albans. Palmer, Rev. F., M.A., Rector of Andover, Massachusetts. Peake, a. S., D.D., Dean of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Man- chester. Plummer, Rev. A., D.D., sometime Master of University College, Durham. Ropes, Rev. J. H., D.D., Bussey Professor of NT. Criticism and Exegesis, Harvard University. Slattery, the Rev. C. L., D.D., Rector of Ch. Ch., Springfield, Massachusetts. Smith, Rev. G. Abbott, D.D., Professor of OT. and NT. Literature, Diocesan Theo- logical College, Montreal. Smith, Rev. H., M.A., Lecturer at St. John's College, Highbuiy. Sturges, Rev. M. C, M.A., sometime Lecturer in Theology, Cavendish College, Cambridge. Vll CONTRIBUTORS, ETC. ARTICLES CONDER, Colonel, R.E., D.C.L., LL.D. Frew, Rev. D., B.D., formerly Black Theo- logical Fellow, Glasgow University. Paterson-Smyth, Rev. J., LL.D., Litt.D., Rector of St. George's, Montreal. PuLLAN, Rev. L., M.A., Fellow and Tutor, St. John's College, Oxford. And other Contributors marked thus * on previous page. ABBREVIATIONS AV = Authorised Version. RV — Revised Version. RM = Margin of RV. OT. = Old Testament. NT. = New Testament. op. = compare. f . = following. Heb. = Pebrew. Gk. = Greek. MSS = Manuscripts. VSS = Versions. WH. = Westcott and Hort's text. LXX — The Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament. HDB. = Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, a valuable work of reference. COLLECT Bi-ESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning ; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience, and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given U3 in our Saviour Jesus Chj'ist. Amen. Vlll CONTENTS GENERAL ARTICLES 1 General Introduction to the Bible ......( ; Hebrew History to the Exile ....... ^ d Introduction to the Pentateuch ...... .r The Creation Story and Science ^-^ Genesis and the Babylonian Inscriptions xxxii The Laws of Hammurabi xxxv Heathen Religions referred to in the Bible xxxvii Introduction to Hebrew Prophecy ....... xli The Messianic Hope xlv The History, Literature, and Religious Development of the Jews in the Period between the Testaments ..... xlviii The Life of Jesus Christ ......... Ixxiv The Teaching of Jesus Christ Ixxix The Synoptic Problem Ixxxiii The Dynasty of the Herods ........ Ixxxvi The Life and Work of St. Paul ....... Ixxxviii Survey of the Epistles of St. Paul ....... xci Belief in God xcix The Person of Jesus Christ cvi The Trinity cxiii Miracle cxv The Resurrection cxxiii The Atonement cxxviii Inspiration cxxxi The Study of the Bible cxxxiv The Elements of Religion cxxxix Palestine cxlv Bible Antiquities cxlviii Hebrew Calendar, Coins, Weights and Measures .... cli Bible Chronology . . . . . . . . . . clii IX CONTENTS ^^'^HE Old Testament ^HE New Testament COMMENTARY PAGE 1 617 MAPS {At end of Volume) 'The Holy Land as allotted by Joshua to the Twelve Tribes of Israel Egypt, Sinai, and Canaan Lands of the Jewish Captivities Palestine in the time of Christ Ancient Jerusalem Plan of (a) Solomon's Temple, (6) Herod's Temple St. Paul's Journeys GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE The Bible is the source as well as the result of inspiration. The utterances of the men of old, at the suggestion or under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, live and move again, with informing, uplifting, redeeming power, under the blessing of the same Spirit, in the hearts and lives of men. Every detail regarding it therefore is interesting. I. Titles. The Bible is not one book, but many. The original form and meaning of the word itself bear this out. Biblos in Greek means ' book,' so called from byblos^ the inner bark of the papyrus reed on which early writings were inscribed. Biblos is used in Mtli, but in Lkii'' a diminutive form bibl/on is used with the same meaning. The early Greek Christians called their Scriptures Ta Biblia, i.e. the books par excellence. So they were called for centuries. Later, however, the Latin form biblia, although plural, was mistaken for a feminine singular, this idea being doubtless helped by the increasing view that the Scriptures were a complete whole — the unique Word of God to the world. In this way the word as a singular acquired popular vogue, and ultimately the Jewish and Christian sacred books, which had been known at first chiefly as ' the Scriptures' {hai graphai), became familiar in all the languages of Europe as ' the Bible.' The term ' Testament,' familiar to us in the phrase, ' Old and New Testaments,' is due probably to some misunderstanding of the Greek word diatheke. This term is used by the Greek translators of the Old Testa- ment to render the Hebrew word Berith, ' covenant,' which originally had a very general significance, and referred to decisions or judg- ments and agreements of different kinds. As these, however, were usually accompanied by religious observances and sanctions, the word ' covenant ' came to have a specially religious sense, and was applied to the decisions or judgments of God, and His agreements with His chosen people, or their outstanding repre- sentatives. Thus we have His ' covenant ' with Noah, Abram, etc., and the new ' cove- nant ' which He made with men in Christ. Under the former the patriarchs of Israel and their descendants came under obligation to render God obedience and service ; while He, on His part, undertook to requite them with His blessing and favour. Israel's failure to keep the covenant of works necessitated the covenant of grace under which forgiveness and righteousness are secured through faith in Christ. It is in this sense the word is used by St. Paul (2 Cor 3 «). Only once (Heb 9 1«. 17) is it possible that it may refer to a dhposition or ivill. But this is the sense of the Latin word teatamentum used to render it, viz. a will, or disposition (of property). An attempt was made to supplant this word testanientum by another word, i/isfrume/itum, meaning an authoritative document. But the former sur- vived and gave to us the familiar words, ' the Old and New Testaments,' meaning the core- nants or agreements made by God with His people in the Jewish and Christian times respectively. 2. Language. The Bible was written in the language of the people among whom it first appeared. The language of the Old Testament is Hebrew. Hebrew is written from right to left. In a modern Hebrew Bible the pages run also from right to left, and the writing is in square characters (consonants), with small signs and dots attached variously for vowels. Originally Hebrew had no vowels, and the difficulty of reading it must have been to a beginner very great. Thus DBR might be ddbhdr, ' a word,' or dibber, ' he spoke,' or dobher, ' a speaker,' or dobher, ' pasture,' or debhe?; ' pestilence.' The vowel system, as will be seen hereafter, was only introduced in the sixth century A.D. in order to preserve the correct pronunciation. This explains one of the difficulties still experi- enced in the interpretation of the OT. Scrip- tures. It is sometimes doubtful whether the correct vowels have been added to the con- sonants of the original text, and, if not, what others should be substituted for them. Hebrew includes Aramaic, a kindred dialect with distinctive peculiarities. Parts of the Old Testament, viz. Ezr4S-6is 712-26 JerlO^ Dan 2 ^-7 2S, are written in Aramaic, while isolated words and phrases occur in many other parts of the Old Testament, due either to the local peculiarities of the original writer, or more probably to careless copyists. The common speech of our Lord and His disciples is generally believed to have been some form of Aramaic, and a more careful study of this dialect has already thrown much light on their teaching. The allusions to Hebrew in the New Testament (Jn52 19i3,i7 Ac 2 1*0 222, etc.) are mainly to Aramaic. The term ' Chaldee,' sometimes applied to the Ai'amaic portions of the Old Testament, XI GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE is a misnomer. Chaldea is Babylonia, and Chaldee is the language of the Babylonian inscriptions. In the third century B.C. there began to be made at Alexandria a Greek version of the Old Testament. It is called the Septuagint version from the traditional belief that seventy scribes (Lat. Septuaginta) were employed in its production. This version was probably completed some time before the Christian era, and is of great value in the study of the Old Testament (see art. ' Literature of the Period between Old and New Testaments '). The language of the New Testament is Greek, a particular form hitherto known as Hellenistic Greek. Recent discoveries have, however, proved conclusively that, in form and in substance, it was simply the language of the Greek-speaking world of New Testament times. The modes of expression in the Septuagint, in the Epistles of St. Paul, and in the Gospels are not peculiar to Christianity or its message, but are due to the style of speech common in that age. Some parts of the Gospels may have been originally in Aramaic, but this is disputed. 3. Divisions. "We have already seen that the two main divisions of the Bible are the Old and New Testaments. As it stands in our English Bible, the Old Testament consists of thirty-nine books, but these are only reckoned as twenty-four in the Hebrew Bible, 1 and 2S, 1 and 2K, 1 and 2Ch, Ezra, Neh, and the twelve (so-called) Minor Prophets, being each reckoned as one book. The Hebrew divisions are on large lines. The first five books are known as the Torah (i.e. ' Law ') ; then come the Nehhiim (i.e. ' Prophets '), sub- divided into Earlier (four books) and Later (four books) ; while the third great division is the Kethubhhn (i.e. 'writings,' called in the Septuagint, ' Hagiographa '). The following table shows the grouping of the various books in the Hebrew Bible : — I. Torah rr. Nebhilm. rGenesis. I Exodus. A Leviticus. I Numbers. ^Deuteronomy. rJoshua. Earlier J J^<^g®^- learner-; g^^^^gi^ Kings. Isaiah. I; Later Tsalms Proverbs Job Jeremiah. Ezekiel. -Twelve Minor Prophets. III. Kethlibhim {Canticles P"^*^ X X- I Called the five Megill6th Lamentations V fj p ■Roiia'\ Ecclesiastes I Esther J Chronicles Hagiographa means ' sacred writings,' a paraphrase of Kethuhhim. The five Megilloth were so called because each was written on a separate roll. They were read yearly at the Jewish festivals : Canticles at the Passover ; Ruth at Pentecost ; Ecclesiastes at the Feast of Tabernacles ; Esther at the Feast of Purim ; Lamentations on the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem. A later grouping of the Hebrew books given by Josephus enumerates twenty- two, being designed to correspond with the twenty- two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This was accomplished by reading Ruth as part of Judges, and Lamentations as part of Jeremiah. 4. Arrangement. From the grouping of the Hebrew Bible given above, it will be seen that not only the divisions, but also the arrangement of the books differs considerably from those adopted in our English Bible. The latter follows the Latin Vulgate, which in turn is based on the Septuagint. Here the division is according to subject-matter : Law (five books). History (twelve books), Poetry (five books), and Prophecy (seventeen books). This arrangement proves, however, on exami- nation to be superficial and inadequate. It is even less satisfactory than the order in the Hebrew Bible. Modern scholars have striven rather to obtain some historical arrangement of the books ; their aim being to enable students to read the various writings in the light of contemporary events. A sketch of the pro- phetical books in their historical order, given by the late Prof. A. B. Davidson, illustrates at once the advantages and the difficulties of xu GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE such an arrangement. ' (1) Prophets of the Assyrian Age — Amos, Hosea, Isaiah (740-700), Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah ; (2) prophets of the Babylonian age — Habakkuk, Jeremiah (626-580), Ezekiel (593-576) ; (3) prophets of the Exile and Restoration — Isaiah xl-lxvi (550), Haggai, and Zechariah (520), Malachi (420) ; the age of Joel and Obadiah is uncertain ; while Jonah is late.' In the case of the other two great divisions of the Old Testament the difficulties would be much greater (see under ' Canon,' § 5). The arrangement of the New Testament, on the other hand, is easily explained. The books, twenty-seven in number, fall readily into six groups : (1) The Gospels, (2) The Acts of the Apostles, (3) The Epistles of St. Paul, (4) The Epistle to the Hebrews, (5) The General Epistles, (6) The Book of the Revelation. This order fits in, more or less, to a com- prehensive scheme showing the origin of Christianity in Jesus Christ, its progress under the Apostles, early Christian letters unfold- ing its doctrines and ideals, and finally its consummation in apocalyptic vision. This arrangement, however, is not chronological — St. Mark being probably the earliest of the Gospels, while some of the Epistles of St. Paul were written still earlier. It is necessflary to add that the arrangement of chapters and verses has nothing to do with the original book. It was an artificial invention of the middle ages. The first printed Bible with chapters appeared in 1525, and the first Bible with verses in 1551. While very convenient for reference, this arrange- ment often obscures the sense and needlessly interrupts the narrative. The chapters and verses have therefore by the Revisers of 1885 been relegated to the margin. 5. The Canon. Every introduction to the Bible uses the phrase ' Canon of the Old Testament,' or ' Canon of the New Testament,' or ' canonical books.' What is meant by these phrases ? The word ' canon ' is Greek, and denoted originally a measuring-rod or line. Later it came to mean a standard of measure- ment, and last of all the space covered by such a measure. The term ' canon ' came to be used in connexion with the books of the Bible about the fom-th century of our era, to indi- cate either that these books were the standard of faith, or that they occupied a special place, where they were marked ofE from all other books. Usually the Canon means the collection of books in the Old and New Testaments as opposed to those books (see Apocrypha) which were left out, and on this subject two ques- tions are suggested. (1) Why were such collections made ? (2) What principles guided the choice of book ? Taking the first question as it applies to the Old Testament, we find the subject involved in some obscurity. As early at least as the days of Samuel there existed the ' schools of the prophets,' where the training was not only religious but scholastic. In these schools were preserved the first records of Israel's history. The compilation and arrangement of these records would be the work of later generations, and how this was done we cannot now say for certain. We may, however, take the great divisions of the Old Testament as indicating how the Canon was formed. The process was gradual. In all likelihood the Pentateuch was the only part recognised as canonical when Ezra read the Torah to the people (NehS). This is supported by the fact that the Samari- tans, who formed themselves into a separate community about that period, possess only the Pentateuch. The work of Ezra answers the first question asked above. Ezra and Nehemiah were social and religious reformers. They desired clear and definite guidance for the people, and so they set up the Pentateuch as the standard of faith and morals. Mean- while the works of the various prophets would be preserved along with the histories, and these would be added to the Pentateuch at a later date. Later still, and only after much discussion, was the third great division, the Kethubhim, added. The claim of the pro- phetic books to a place in the Canon would readily be admitted in an age when the living voice of the prophet was no longer heard. The purpose of the Kethubhim would vindicate a place for the Psalms, so necessary for the service of the second Temple, and for the Megilloth as read at the various festivals. The general principles on which the books were chosen to form the Canon are threefold. (1) They were books that had been in exist- ence for a considerable time and were well known ; or, (2) they were books associated with some great name, e.g. the books of Moses, the Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon ; or, (3) they were books closely connected with national history or with national festivals. In all the books admitted into the Canon, it was of course believed that the voice of God was to be heard, as He had spoken to the fathers, saints, and prophets of the Hebrew race, that is to say, as He had at no time spoken to men of other lands : or that His power was to be realised as it had been ex- hibited not only in the experiences of individ- ual lives, but in the general history of the nation. This presence of God in the books, or the inspired element as we would call it, rendered them unique and sacred in their eyes. The exact date of the fixing of the Old Testa- ment Canon is uncertain. It could hardly have been earlier than the end of the second century B.C., while even as late as the second century Xlll GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE A.D. the Jewish rabbis were still discussing the claims of such books as Ecclesiastes and Canticles to a place in the Canon. The history of the New Testament Canon is somewhat different. It is now generally admitted that all the books of the New Testa- ment as we know them, were in existence before or soon after the end of the first cen- tury A.D. But not for many years did the New Testament, as a complete whole, receive recognition. So long as the Apostles lived there was no apparent need of any written word concerning Jesus Christ and the gospel. The first Christians believed that the Spirit of God descended upon them to lead them into all truth. They further believed that the end of all things was at hand. And these two beliefs made needless the setting up of any written standard of authority. So late as the middle of the second century a Christian leader, Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, expresses in writing his preference for the spiritual gifts as superior to any written testimony. But when the fervour of the Apostolic age began to lose its first glow, and when Christianity went forth to do battle with pagan philosophy, the early Christian records became more pre- cious. Justin Martyr about 150 a.d. tells how 'Memoirs of the Apostles' — doubtless the Gos- pels— and the prophets of the Old Testament were read on the Lord's Day. By the end of the second century the Syriac "Version of the New Testament included all the books in our Canon, except 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation ; while in the West, by this time, all the books found acceptance within the Canon, except Hebrews, James, and 2 Peter. Euse- bius, writing about 325 a.d., divides the books of the New Testament into three classes : those universally acknowledged as authorita- tive {Hoinologoumenci), those whose authority was disputed (Antilegomena) , spurious books (Notha). The disputed books were James, Jude, 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Hebrews, and Revelation. The spurious books were the Gospel of Peter, the Acts of Paul, and various other Gospels and Apocalypses, most of which are now lost. It is well to point out that in regard to the disputed books the question at issue was their authority as standards in the Church. Opinions were divided. In the East opposition to Revelation lingered even in the fourth century; while in the West the book whose authority was longest disputed was the Epistle to the Hebrews. The subject was much discussed at many councils of the Church, and it was not till the third council of Carthage in 397 that the Canon of the New Testament was finally settled in its present form. 6. The Text of the Bible. A comparison of an English Bible in the Revised Version with one in the Authorised Version reveals at once many changes. Some are due to the progress of the English language, but many others are due to what scholars call various readings in the text. The text is the original Hebrew of the Old Testament and the original Greek of the New Testament. Formerly an idea largely prevailed that this text was an unchanging, unchangeable thing, preserved miraculously from ancient times. The preser- vation of the Bible is certainly one of the greatest miracles. When we reflect that the Bible had existed for a thousand years before printing was invented in Em-ope, that all copies had to be made laboriously by hand, and that thousands of copyists must have been employed, the wonder is not that there are various readings of the text, but that these are comparatively few and unimportant. The text of the Bible was preserved by human hands, working under human limitations, but the hand of God is in it too. 7. The Text of the Old Testament. One of the old arguments against the authenticity of the Old Testament was, that writing could not have been known so early ; but this argument has vanished. We now possess tablets written in the fifteenth century B.C. by governors of cities in the south of Palestine to their masters, the kings of Egypt ; while inscrip- tions in Egypt itself carry us back at least five thousand years before the Christian era. Scholars now agree that parts of the Old Testament may have existed in writing a thou- sand years before the Christian era. These were probably copied at first on skins in the form of rolls — megiUoth. Early Hebrew dif- fered considerably in form (as seen in the Moabite Stone — about 850 B.C.) from modern Hebrew, in which the characters are square. In the work of transcription through all these centuries down to the age of printing many slips would undoubtedly be made. For many centuries no vowel signs were used at all, and the consonants were written without any spaces between words. The scribes who copied were undoubtedly very careful, but sometimes the same consonant was written twice. Sometimes, of two consonants of the same form one was omitted ; or a word might occur twice in one verse, and the scribe going on to the second as he copied the first would omit the intervening words. About the third century a.d. certain consonants began to be used to express unchangeably long vowels. This was called scriptio 2>lena, i.e. full writing. About the middle of the sixth century, when the Jews were much scattered, the danger arose that the proper pronunciation of Hebrew would be lost. A set of scribes called Mas- soretes, i.e. Traditionists, introduced a com- plete system of points to indicate the vowels as traditionally pronounced. Long before XIV GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE that time the consonantal text had come to be regarded by the Jews as absolutely sacred in every jot and tittle. The Massoretes were most careful to change nothing in this text — where change was obviously necessary they placed notes to that eifect in the margin. So sacred was the text that everything was repro- duced ; letters written large were written large, those small were kept small ; even signs unknown, some of them probably due to acci- dent, were faithfully copied. Thus thousands of copies of the Hebrew Scriptures must have been made, at first on skins, and later on papyrus. But thousands perished in these early centuries. The Jews themselves in superstitious reverence hid away many copies that were thus lost for ever. They also de- stroyed all worn copies lest the sacred text should suffer. In the early persecutions of the Christians under the Roman emperors the most strenuous attempts were made to stamp out Christianity by destroying its literature, which included both Old and New Testaments. Even more zealous were the followers of Mahomet, in their mad career of conquest, to extirpate all religious books except the Koran. The result is that th^e oldest part of the He- brew Bible now in existence is a section of the prophetical books made in 916 a.d., while the oldest complete MS of a whole Bible belongs to the eleventh century a.d., and we have very few MSS to guide us as to readings of various texts. We can, however, get much help frpm the versions. (a) There is Aquila's Greek version. Aquila was a learned Jewish proselyte who made a word-for-word translation of the Hebrew text in the second century a.d. (6) Symmachus, an Ebionite, also made- a translation into G-reek in the same century. (c) Theodotion revised the Septuagint ver- sion about the same time. (fZ) Very important too, for comparison, is a version of the Scriptures in Syriac made from the Hebrew and Septuagint probably as early as the second century, and known as the Peshitto, i.e. the plain version. (e) We have also fragments of an old Latin version made mainly from the Septuagint. (/) More important than the old Latin is the translation of the Old Testament made by St. Jerome. This was made mainly from Hebrew into Latin about the end of the fourth century a.d., and is now universally known as the Vulgate. It must be noted, however, that although many various readings exist, the vast majority are of small importance, and bear testimony both to the marvellous accuracy of the Jewish scribes, and to the miraculous preservation of these Scriptures through many vicissitudes. In recent years much patient and laborious study has been given to the Old Testament towards what may be called the reconstruction of the text, wherein scholars making abundant use of Hebrew, Targums (i.e. the marginal explanations given in Aramaic by early Jewish rabbis), and versions, and even going behind all these, have sought to reproduce more accur- ately the various books of the Old Testament. 8. The Text of the New Testament. The story of the text of the New Testament may be told more briefly, although the subject is more complicated. The New Testament was written in Greek, and when we want to get at the original words of any text our materials are threefold. (1) Early MSS in Greek. Of these the most famous are the following : (a) The Sinaiticus (known as N, Aleph), found by Tischendorf in the Convent of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai in 1859. It was made, probably, not later than 350 a.d., and contains the Old Testament (Septuagint) and whole of the New Testament. It is now in the Imperial Museum at St. Peters- burg, (b) The Alexandrinus (known as A), presented to Charles I by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1627. It belongs to the fifth century, and contains the Old Testament (Septuagint) and nearly all the New Testament. It is now in the British Museum, (c) The Vatican (B. 4th cent.) containing the Old Testament (Septuagint) — not complete — and the New Testament down to HebB^'*. It is now in the Vatican at Rome, and includes the General Epistles ; but the Pastoral Epistles, Philemon, and Apocalypse are wanting. These are the three chief MSS ; while almost equally important are the MSS known as C, D, and Dg. (2) Quotations from the Early Fathers. These include Clement of Rome, Tatian, Justin Martyr, Irenseus, and Origen in Greek, and Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augus- tine in Latin. The difficulty with such quota- tions is that the writer often quotes from memorj, and gives the sense rather than the words. These quotations are also as liable to error in transcription as the New Testament itself. (3) Versions of the New Testament. Among the more important is the Diatessaron of Tatian, a harmony of the Four Gospels inter- woven with texts (the word diatessaron means 'according to four') made about 170 a.d. Tatian was a disciple of Justin Martyr, and his work survives both in an Arabic version, and also in a commentary on the Diatessaron by Ephraim the Syrian. In addition we have the Peshitto version, the Old Latin, and the Vulgate, all mentioned in connexion with the Old Testament ; while, as in the case of the Old Testament, there are less important versions in Armenian, Egyptian, and Gothic. The Hebrew Scriptures were printed in 1488, XV GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE but no edition of the Greek New Testament ap- peared till 1514. This was the work of editors acting under Cardinal Ximenes. Erasmus produced a different version in 1516, and the so-called 'received text' was the work of R. Stephens (1550), and was printed by the Elze- virs at Leyden in 1624. Since that time great progress has been made in collating MSS, and several noteworthy editions have been issued, including those of Tischendorf (1860), West- cott and Hort (1881), and Nestle (1901). The work of the scholar who seeks to know the mind of the New Testament writers is much more difficult than similar work in the Old Testament. To begin with, the writers of the Gospels report in Greek (although they may have had some Aramaic sources) the say- ings of Jesus Christ, who for the most part probably spoke Aramaic. Nor is it likely that these writers or their copyists had any idea that their records would go beyond the early Churches, with which they themselves were familiar. The same applies to St. Paul. His letters, now so valued, were messages intended only for the Churches to which they were addressed. Those who first copied them would not regard them as at all ' sacred ' in our sense of the word. Nor even in later centuries do we find that scrupulous regard for the sacred text which marked the transmission of the Old Testament. A copyist would sometimes put in not what was in the text, but what he thought ought to be in it. He would trust a fickle memory, or he would even make the text accord with the views of the school to which he belonged. Besides this, an enormous number of copies are preserved. In addition to the versions and quotations from the early Christian Fathers, nearly four thousand Greek MSS of the New Testament are known to exist. As a result the variety of readings is considerable. But while we can see how intricate and difficult is the task of the New Testament scholars, we must remember, on the one hand, that the vast majority of the differences are unimportant, and, on the other hand, that where they are important we have in the providence of God such range of material as no age has ever possessed for learning the truth. We can still search the Scriptures in perfect confidence that they will testify of Christ, and that their testimony is true. g. English Versions. The first attempts to render the Scriptures in English are repre- sented by some extant translations and para- phrases of the Psalms and other books dating from a very early time. About the end of the fourteenth century (1382) the complete version of Wyclif was made from the Latin Yulgate, the Gospels being his own work, and the rest of the Bible (including the Apocrypha) being done by some of his followers. The Reformation and the invention of printing together stimulated the production of versions, and the following appeared during the six- teenth century : Tyndale's New Testament, Pentateuch, and other books of the Bible (1525-1535) ; Miles Coverdale's complete Eng- lish Bible (1535) ; Matthew's Bible (1537), made up out of the earlier versions, and pub- lished as an ' Authorised Version ' with the Royal licence ; the Great Bible (1539), a revi- sion of Matthew's ; the Geneva Bible (1560), published by the exiled reformers in Geneva dm'ing the reign of Queen Mary, and long popular with the common people, being still known as the ' Breeches ' Bible from its render- ing of Gn37 ; and the Bishops' Bible (1568), produced by episcopal scholars, mostly bishops, and vulgarly termed the ' Treacle ' Bible, from its rendering of Jer 8 2^. In 1604 a conference was convened by James I at Hampton Court, to set in order things amiss in the Church, and one result was a new translation of the Scrip- tures, done by six committees of divines, two sitting at Westminster, two at Cambridge, and two at Oxford, the whole work being finally revised by a general committee. This version appeared in 1611, and gradually displaced the previous versions, winning its way with learned and unlearned alike by its faithfulness to the original languages and its peculiar felicities of English style. It is the version still generally used, and known as the 'Authorised ' version. In the latter half of the last century it became increasingly felt that the new materials which had accumulated upon the Bible in the way of early MSS, versions, and quotations from ancient writers necessitated a fresh translation of the text, and on the suggestion of the Con- vocation of Canterbury, this was undertaken by two companies of translators, one for the Old Testament and the other for the New. With them were associated two similar companies of American scholars, and the result of their joint labours was the Revised Version, of which the New Testament was published in 1881, and the Old in 1885. It retains so far as possible the character and style of the Authorised Version ; but it corrects its mis- translations, substitutes modern English words for words that have become obsolete or archaic, arranges prose matter in paragraphs and poetry in lines according to modern usage, and intro- duces such changes in the text as are required by the new sources of information that have come to light. It is thus of great value, not to scholars only, but to all who desire to get closer to the original language of the Scriptures than the limited range of authorities used by previous versions could render possible. xvi HEBHEW HISTORY TO THE EXILE 1. The unique value of Hebrew History. In every record of human progress the story of the Hebrew people must always take the fore- most place. Whilst other peoples have ruled over vaster empires, and left behind them far greater monuments in literature or in art, it is to this race that we owe the Christian religion. If it is true that on the secular side our intel- lectual life is rooted in Greece and Rome, on the religious side it is rooted in Israel. So long as men recognise the abiding value of religion as the answer to their deepest need, they will turn with inexhaustible interest to the story of the first beginnings and the gradual development of the people whose faith has conquered the civilised world. 2. Need of a Special Statement. There are special reasons why a separate sketch of the history of the Hebrews is required. The Bible narratives differ from secular history in that all other interests^are entirely subordinated to the religious one. Hence public events of the utmost "importance are lightly passed over, whilst whole chapters are devoted to the re- cords of spiritual experience. Moreover, as the detailed expositions of this volume show, books from widely differing ages lie side by side with very slight indications of date. Further still, recent archaeological discoveries have en- abled us to understand, as never before, the place that Israel filled among the suri-ounding nations. In this brief sketch a twofold aim has been followed :— (1) The exhibition of the history of the Hebrews in its relations to the great world-movements of other peoples. (2) The setting forth of the emergence and growth of the great ideas which culminated in Jesus Christ. 3. Origin of the Hebrews. The Hebrews belong to the Semite branch of the human race, a branch whose original home, in all probability, was in Arabia. Pressing north and west these peoples established themselves in Western Asia, above all in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Here, in the third and fourth millenniums B.C., the earliest records show them as settled nations, highly developed both in civilisation and in religious beliefs and practices. About 2400 B.C. the rulers of the ancient city of Babylon suc- ceeded in establishing their supremacy over the greater part of this region, and founded a dynasty of which Hammurabi was the most famous member (see art. 'Laws of Hammu- rabi ')■ Seeing that Hammurabi is now gener- ally identified with Amraphel (Gn 14 1). we are thus able to fix the date of Abraham, circ. 2250 B.C. Some scholars incline to bring Ham- murabi's date down as low as 1900 B.C. We are safe in saying that the Patriarchal period reaches back to the beginning of the second millennium B.C. For a discussion of the historicity, in broad outline, of the Bible narratives about Abra- ham, reference must be made to the intro. to Gn 12-25. The fact there emphasised that we have a right to see in Abraham the founder of the distinctive religion of Israel makes the question as to the religious influences amongst which he grew up one of vital interest. Were there present in the world before his day any tendencies towards a pure faith '? We find that all the records of this period are permeated with religion. Religion was the mainspring of intellectual activity, priests were the leaders in all departments of thought. This religion, at first sight, offers a picture of hope- less confusion. Gods of the sky, gods of the earth, gods of the deep, families of gods, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, local gods of cities and hills, gods directing and involved in all the powers of nature confront and bewilder us. The whole effect is that of a crass poly- theism, full of degrading superstition. Yet when we look a little closer higher thoughts are not wanting. Looking upwards to the sky, familiar to Orientals in a degree altogether un- known to us, the Babylonian thinkers watched the movements of the heavenly bodies and saw in them the seats of the great gods. To them the whole universe was divided into three regions. First came the northern heavens, in which the pole-star burned continually ; then the broad belt of the zodiac spanning the skies, within which all the movements of sun, moon, and planets were confined ; lastly, the southern depths. Over these regions the three great gods, Anu, Bel and Ea presided. Simi- larly in the zodiac itself there was a threefold division, ruled over by moon, sun, and Yenus the evening star. Again and again it seemed as though the thought of one supreme God, of whom all others were manifestations, was about to break forth. So Sin the moon-god is hailed in lofty strains — ' Lord, the ordainer of the laws of heaven and earth, ) Whose command may not be broken. In heaven who is supreme ? Thou alone, thou art supreme ! On earth who is supreme ? Thou alone, thou art supreme ! ' xvu HEBREW HISTORY TO THE EXILE Similarly as the local deities became more and more absorbed into the conquering Marduk of Babylon ; or, as in the ' penitential psalms,' the worshipper seems led out far beyond the limits of his creed, we come again to the very verge of a new revelation. Yet the step across that verge was never taken. In the highest thoughts of Babylonia the gods seem rather pale abstractions than living persons with dis- tinctive characters. It is here that the Bible narrative of Abraham finds its place. Living in the midst of all this movement of thought he heard in his own conscience and heart a deeper voice speaking to him, found that he could enter into real communion with a God who was indeed a Person, and for the sake of that intercourse forsook his home and wandered out into Canaan. The strange figure of Mel- chizedek suggests that there may have been others who found something of the same truth. Yet Abraham alone was able to pass on his faith to those that followed him. If so he was the first to understand that religion means personal communion with God. We have no means of judging how far his faith led him into a theoretical monotheism, nor how high his conceptions of morality were. But if he was led to make the great step that has been described, then he was truly ' the father of the faithful,' and we understand why the course of subsequent revelation followed the line of his descendants, rather than any other. Here the Father who had always been seeking those who would worship Him ' in spirit and truth ' found at last one who could understand His message. 4. Israel and Egypt. After an indefinite period, during which the Hebrews lived as nomads in the pasture lands between Hebron and Beersheba, in the district afterwards known as the Negeb, or south-country of Judah (Gn 2219 2810), they passed on to Goshen, an allu- vial region on the border of Egypt. Egypt at this time was under the rule of the Hyksos, or Shepherd kings, probably themselves of Semitic origin, who had established a dynasty there which lasted till the sixteenth century B.C. The favour with which the Hebrews were received is easily explained by their racial affinities with the ruling house. "When the Hyksos had been expelled, not later, probably, than 1530 B.C., a new king arose who knew not Joseph (Ex 1 S), and the oppression began. It is now fairly well established that the Pharaoh of the oppression was Ramses II, who has been identified as the builder of the treasure city Pithom (Ex 1 H). 5. The Exodus. Converging lines of evi- dence make it probable that the date of the exodus was not later than 1180 B.C. ; it may have been as early as 1250 B.C. Before that time Palestine had been, as the Tel el Amarna tablets show, an Egyptian province, and the control of Egypt was too strong to admit of the Hebrew conquests. Afterwards came a time of royal weakness and general anarchy, when the hold on the outlying parts of the empire was greatly relaxed. The reign of Ramses III (1180-1148 B.C.) has been sug- gested as the most likely period for the desert wanderings. Merenptah, son of Ramses II, is most probably the Pharaoh of the exodus. For a discussion of the plagues and of the route from Goshen, reference must be made to the Commentary. The Passage of the Red Sea, however explained, left an abiding mark on the national memory. As Cornill says : ' This overwhelming moment created the people of Israel ; they never forgot it. Here they recognised the God of their fathers, who with strong hand and outstretched arm had saved His people, and brought them out of the house of bondage, out of Egypt.' 6. The Religious Teaching of Moses. For some time after this deliverance Israel remained in the neighbourhood of Sinai, and here the great work of Moses, the religious reorganisa- tion of the people, was achieved. After all the critical discussion of the various sources of the Pentateuch, it remains abundantly clear that under the guidance of Moses a covenant between Jehovah and the people of Israel was concluded at Sinai (Ex 34 10, etc.). This covenant was no merely national bond. It was the out- come of the free moral choice of the God of their fathers, who, moved by pity, had rescued them from Egypt, and was ready to save them in the future. As the Commentary states, there is no reasonable ground for denying the Deca- logue in its primitive form to Moses ; hence it is possible to summarise the faith of Moses as follows : (a) He believed in a personal God, who had revealed Himself in former days to the fathers, and who was once more manifesting Himself to His people. This God, whose sacred name was Jehovah, was not bound to the Hebrews because of any blood relationship or any external necessity — the relationship between Him and them rested upon His own free determination ; hence Israel was the people of Jehovah because He had chosen them. No other nation had ever had such a thought about its god. (b) He believed in a God whose fundamental attributes were righteousness and mercy. The strength of this God was greater than that of the mighty power of Egypt ; but it was not brute force — it was always used to serve moral ends. (c) He taught that this God, having con- cluded His covenant with the people, demanded on their side righteous conduct, justice, and brotherly kindness between man and man ; hence he insisted on the indissoluble bond between religion and morality. xviu HEBREW HISTORY TO THE EXILE So whilst for the time of Moses, and for long a:fter, the religion of Israel remained a national one, there were hidden in his teaching the germs of a universal religion. His great fundamental ideas were often forgotten, and sometimes bm'ied beneath the corruptions of heathenism ; yet it was these truths that en- abled the religion of Israel to resist the in- fluences of Canaan, and to outlast even the nation itself. The victory of his teaching is the sufficient proof of the justice of his claim to be the specially chosen messenger of God. 7. The Conquest of Canaan. Much of the wilderness period was spent in Kadesh-Barnea, in the desert S. of Canaan, out of reach of the Egyptians (Nul32f5 Dtl4<3). But meanwhile events had been making possible the invasion of Canaan. Many alien races, amongst them the pirates from the West known to us as the Philistines, had been sweeping down on Pales- tine. Ramses III, in a great expedition, re- asserted the Egyptian power, but this was the last intervention of Egypt for some centuries. Egypt lost Syria, which now became the home of many independent city states, and the way was open for a resolute assault upon the Land of Promise. The first campaigns were on the E. of the Jordan, where an Amorite kingdom had been established, with its capital at Hesh- bon. Its king, Sihon, was defeated and slain, and his territory occupied (Nu 21 2i-2.5)_ Moses having now died was succeeded by Joshua, and with the passage of the Jordan opposite to Jericho the invasion was begun (Josh 1-3). Combining the accounts in Joshua with those in Jg 1 (see the Commentary), we gather that the people, by united victories under Joshua, gained a foothold in the land. After his death, since much remained unconquered, expeditions were undertaken by separate tribes, Judah and Simeon, Joseph, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan (Jgl). In the end the maritime cities of Phoenicia and Philistia remained independent, and strong fortresses such as Taanach, Megiddo, Bethshean (1-^), secured to their former inhabitants the richest inland plain, the valley of the Kishon, while such citadels as Ajalon (1 35), Jebus (1 21), and Gezer (129) siiut off Judah and Simeon almost com- pletely from the rest of the Israelites. The recent explorations of Palestine have proved conclusively the truth of this representation, since they make it clear that the development of these Canaanite cities went on unbrokenly for nearly two centuries after the invasion. Proofs of this statement must be sought in the many publications of the Palestine Exploration Fund. 8. The Period of the Judges. The date as- signed to the exodus reduces this period to less than 200 years, seeing that it closes about 1050 B.C. (see Intro, to the book of Judges). The deliverances achieved by Deborah and Barak (Jg4, 5) and by Gideon (Jg6-8), show that the people still rallied to the name of Jehovah. Nevertheless the religion of the conquered country exercised a powerful influence over the victors. Many altars standing on high places, formerly consecrated to local deities, were now adapted to the worship of Jehovah. This became the fruitful source of many later evils, as the writings of the prophets so clearly show. Still, on the whole, Ewald's statement remains true : ' The people learned by per- petual struggle to defend valiantly their new home and the free exercise of their religion, and were thereby preparing for coming genera- tions a sacred place, where that religion and national culture might unfold itself freely and fully. ' D eborah's Song ( Jg 5), admitted gener- ally as a product of this age (see Commentary in loco), is a striking proof both of the national consciousness of unity, and of the vigour of the true faith in Jehovah. The period closes with the oppression of the Philistines. This bold and warlike race, much resembling the Danes in the early history of England, were greatly superior in military art to the Hebrews. They seem to have conceived the idea of subduing to their sway the whole of Israel. Shamgar (331) and Samson (12 f.) were popular -heroes who by single-handed deeds of daring destroyed many marauding bands. But the Hebrews were quite unable to resist an organ- ised attack. With the loss of the sacred ark at Aphek near Mizpah (1 S4), the doom of the nation seemed sealed. The Philistine rule was extended over the whole centre and south of Israel, their head-quarters were established at Geba in Benjamin, even the use of military weapons is said to have been forbidden to the Israelites (IS 13 3, 19-23). 9. Samuel and the Founding of the Kingdom. In this crisis there arose a man who has a double claim to honour, as the first of the order of prophets, and as the founder of the monarchy. The narratives about Samuel are, as the Com- mentary shows, derived from sources of un- equal value. His victories (1S713) cannot have been nearly so decisive as one source represents them. In a time of great national humiliation he was led to see that a king was needful to weld the disorganised tribes into a whole, so as to enable them to face their enemies. In his patriotic aims he was seconded by the wandering bands of prophets, who were enthusiastic adherents of Jehovah. This re- sort to a monarchy, though not ideal (IS 8), was in the situation the only wise choice. In Saul, a Benjamite of great personal prowess, the destined leader was found. After a bril- liant feat of arms, by which Jabesh-Gilead was rescued from the Ammonites (IS 11), he XIX HEBREW HISTORY TO THE EXILE succeeded in rallying to himself all the tribes (1114, 15)_ Saul's reign was an almost continu- ous struggle against the Philistines. Starting from the E. he gi'adually regained the high- lands of Judah and the centre of Palestine (IS 14, 17, etc.). At the close of his reign, weakened by his quarrel with David, and with his mind clouded by his recurring melan- cholia, he died in battle on Mt. Gilboa, in the plain of Jezreel, a fact which shows that the Philistines had again penetrated into central Israel (1 S31). The date of this battle is about 1017 B.C. 10. The Reign of David. After a seven years' interval, durin^, which David reigned as king of Judah at Hebron, and Saul's adherents made Mahanaim, across the Jordan, their centre (2 S 2^.s.ii), the murder of Ishbosheth (2 S 4 5-7) opened the way for David's accession as king of a united people (2S51-3). His reign is marked by the complete conquest of the Phil- istines, who henceforth play little further part in the history (2 S 5 1^-^^ 8 1), by conquests over the surrounding peoples, which marked the real foundation of an Israelite empire (S^"!"* and c. 10), and by the capture of Jerusalem, and the transference thither of the ark (2S6*'-io 612-19)_ ^t this time Assyria was weak, the northern empire of the Hittites had dis- appeared, and Egypt was divided and power- less. All this explains the rapid growth under David and Solomon. 11. Solomon. Solomon's reign was marked by the building of the Temple, and great com- mercial prosperity ; but his attempts to reduce the free yeomen of Israel to the status of the subjects of an Oriental king caused deep dis- satisfaction, and was one main cause of the disruption as soon as his strong hand was removed (IK 4 21-28 513 1126, etc.). 12. Relig-ion in the Early Monarchy, The religious conditions of this period may be gathered from many scattered notices. The strict law of the central sanctuary, which after- wards concentrated all sacrificial worship at Jerusalem, was unknown. Samuel sacrificed at Mizpah (1 S 7 % built an altar at Ramah (7 1 ' ), sacrificed on the high place there (9 ^2), also at Gilgal (1115), and at Bethlehem (165). We may gather from 14^5 that Saul built more than one altar to Jehovah in token of his loyalty. So in 20 ^ there is a most natural reference to the yearly sacrifice for Jesse's family at Bethlehem. The simple and un- forced way in which these notices are given shows that they are not dealing with excep- tions, but relating the normal practice : see on Ex 20 24. At the same time prophets such as Nathan maintained the moral character of the claims of Jehovah, and were treated with the utmost respect (2 S 1 2 1-15). With the founding of David's kingdom the hope was raised of the perpetual kingdom of Jehovah, which plays so great a part in the writings of the later prophets (2 S 7 i"i"). 13. Disruption ofthe Kingdom, 937 B.C. With the disruption of the kingdom after Solomon's' death Judah was left relatively small and in- significant, and was further weakened by the invasion of Shishak of Egypt (IK 1425,26). Egyptian lists in the temple of Amon at Karnak record this raid. From the fact that Ephraim- ite cities also are said to have paid tribute, it is supposed that for a time both Israel and Judah became tributary to Egypt ; but there is no record of any warlike operations against Northern Israel. For a time the two king- doms were at war, Israel being the stronger. A fateful step was taken when Asa, king of Judah, invited the help of Benhadad, king of Syria, against Baasha (IK 1518-21), circ. 900 B.C. The condemnation of this action (2 Ch 1 6 '^-^) is fully justified, as it resulted in the first invasion of Israelite territory by Syrian armies. After repeated revolutions, a strong dynasty was founded by Omri, 889 B.C. (IK 1623-28). Omri built Samaria as his capital. Under him peace was made between Israel and Judah, and the royal houses were afterwards allied by marriage. The Moabite Stone, with Mesha's inscription, shows that he subjugated Moab. References to him on Assyrian monuments prove that he was regarded as the founder of the kingdom of Israel. The silence of the Bible narratives as to the more brilliant ex- ploits of his reign is a striking illustration of the indifference of the Hebrew writers to purely secular interests. 14. Jehovah or Baal. In the reign of Ahab, Omri's son, came the great conflict between Elijah and the priests of Baal. As a matter of state policy Jeroboam had erected golden bull-shaped images of Jehovah at Bethel and at Dan. The official religion of the Northern Kingdom was therefore a cor- rupted form of the worship of Jehovah. It is precarious to argue, as is often done, that Elijah's silence, so far as om* records go, as to this bull-worship, is a proof that he found nothing offensive in it. The higher conscience of Israel was always against any form of image-worship. Even in Northern Israel there were probably altars where the purer worship of Jehovah was maintained : cp. Elijah's com- plaint IK 19 10, and his action IK 18 so. But when Ahab's Phoenician wife Jezebel, princess of Zidon, sought to establish the worship of the Tyrian Baal and persecuted the adherents of Jehovah (1 K 16 31-33 184), Elijah came forward as the* champion of Jehovah. The question was no longer that of a pure or debased worship of Jehovah, but the life and death alternative — Jehovah or Baal. This explains the relentless severity with which Elijah xs HEBREW HISTORY TO THE EXILE pushed home his victory (IKIS"*"), and the part taken by Elisha in instigating the revo- lution which resulted in the overthrow of Omri's house and the accession of Jehu (2 K 9). 15. The Syrian Wars. This time of reli- gious conflict was marked by long-continued wars with Syria, which had lasted since the invasion referred to dming the reign of Baasha. The kings of Israel appear to have been reduced to the position of vassals ( 1 K 20 3), and in 854 B.C. Benhadad of Syria, with Ahab, who is said by the monuments to have fur- nished a contingent of 2,000 chariots and 10,000 men, was defeated at Karkar, near Hamath, by Shalmaneser II of Assyria. Afterwards Ahab succeeded in asserting his independence against Syria, and won several victories (IK 20). Syria at this time was weakened by successive Assyrian campaigns against Damas- cus, in 850, 849, and 846. In 842 Shal- maneser received tribute from Jehu (see the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser in the British Museum), and in 839 again defeated Hazael of Damascus. At this point an insm-rection in Assyria, headed by Shalmaneser's son, who drove that king to take refuge in North Baby- lonia, gave Syria S, respite and enabled the kingdom to recover its strength. Repeated invasions of Israel followed, reducing the people to the last extremity (2K1032 IS^-T 1 4 26). Then, under Ramman-Nirari of Assyria (812-783), Damascus was once more subdued, and under Joash and Jeroboam II the lost prestige of Israel was recovered, and all the captured territory regained (2 K 13^5 1425-2S)_ In these victories Elisha appears as a watchful and fearless patriot (2 K 13 14-20). Thus in the reign of Jeroboam II (782-741) Israel enjoyed a period of prosperity which had had no parallel since the days of Solomon. The legitimate succession in the Southern Kingdom, which had acted as the ally of Israel both against Syria and Moab (IK 22 2K3), was interrupted by the usurpation of Athaliah (2K11), but restored through Jehoi- ada (11**^). Amaziah, breaking the alliance with Israel, was disastrously defeated by Joash (148-14). But under Uzziah (790-749) Judah recovered her position, and defeated the Philistines (2Ch276), whilst the army was reorganised (27 1^- 1*)^ and frontier towers built as barriers against the desert nomads (2710). 16. The Decadence of Israel. With the death of Jeroboam the Northern Kingdom's brief period of prosperity passed away. Re- peated revolutions weakened the strength of Israel (2K15io-i4). Meanwhile, under Tig- lath-pileser III (called Pul in 2K1519), Assyria resumed her aggressive policy, and Mcnahem of Israel became tributary to him (15 19. 20). In 734-3 Pekah of Israel, in alli- ance with Rezin of Syria, invaded Judah, apparently to coerce Judah to join a coalition against Assyria (2K153'' 165 Isa7). Judah was saved by the intervention of Assyria, and Northern Israel devastated (2 K 15 29). Pekah 's murderer, Hoshea, was recognised as a vassal king by Tiglath-pileser (so the monuments). But Hoshea's intrigues with So of Egypt (17*) brought speedy retribution. Shalmaneser IV marched into Israel, but died during the siege of Samaria. His work was completed by his successor, Sargon, and in 722 Samaria was captured and the Northern Kingdom finally destroyed. 17. The Teaching of the Prophets. A bright light is thrown on this period by the utterances of Amos and Hosea. Amos, ap- pearing in Jeroboam's reign, reasserted with tremendous force that the moral claims of Jehovah extended not only over Israel, but over the surrounding peoples. Utterly re- pudiating the ritual worship of Bethel, he declared the approaching ruin of the nation. The one hope that he saw for the future was in the restoration, after heavy chastisement, of the kingdom under a Davidic king (9 n : see Commenta.ry in loco). Hosea, whose ministry lay in the dark days after Jeroboam's death, and whose tragic per- sonal history is the key to his"^ message (see Commentary), sounds another note, but repeats Amos's prophecy of doom. He treats the bull- worship as sheer idolatry : ' of their silver and their gold have they made them idols ' (8 4). The fact that it is the love rather than the righteousness of God which Hosea emphasises only makes his threatenings more terrible ; yet beyond the storm he also sees the abiding kingdom of God, and believes in its permanence (35, etc.). The importance of the testimony of these two piophets is supreme. They come forward not as innovators, but as restorers of the ancient faith. Their teaching is in essence one with i." at of Moses ; but the boldness with which they present Jehovah as the God of the universe, and their unwavering conviction that no past privileges can save Israel from the consequences of her breaches of the law of righteousness, broaden and deepen the founda- tions of the true religion. It must be said that it is extremely hard to believe, as is sug- gested, that Hosea was the first to denounce the image-worship of Jehovah. At any rate, he shows not the slightest consciousness that he is making any new declaration when he says, of the calf in Samaria, 'The workman made it, and it is no god' (8^). 1 8. Judah during the Assyrian Period. With the fall of Northern Israel Judah was left de- pendent for its existence on Assyria. Despite the protests of Isaiah, Ahaz freely imitated 221 HEBREW HISTORY TO THE EXILE both the customs and religion of the conquerors (2K16i«-i8). His son, Hezekiah (720-692 B.C.), succeeded to a troubled inheritance. In the south the Ethiopian kings of Egypt were grow- ing in strength, and sought alliance with him. This policy was strongly denounced by Isaiah (301"'', 311"*), y^Yio counselled entire absten- tion from world-politics and simple trust in Jehovah. Hezekiah, however, pursued the policy of alliances. He carried on negotiations with Merodach-Baladan (2 K 20 1^-^^), who from 721-710 B.C. had succeeded in establishing himself in Babylon, formed a league against Assyria with Tyre, Sidon, Ashkelon, and Ekron, and looked for help from Egypt. The victorious advance of Sennacherib, Sargon's successor, broke up this coalition. Egypt was defeated at El-tekeh, near Ekron, and Heze- kiah, after the loss of forty-six ■cities and many subjects, only secured the safety of Jerusalem by the payment of a huge, ransom (2K18i'i"i*^). The Bible narratives that follow are extremely confusing. In the monuments nothing is said of any disaster to Sennacherib's army, and some have conjectured that this happened in a later, unrecorded campaign ; yet the fact that Jerusalem remained untaken needs explanation. The most probable explanation is, that after receiving Hezekiah's ransom, a section of the Assyrian army returned and treacherously de- manded the surrender of the city ; then the main body, lying on the borders of Egypt, was smitten with plague, and Sennacherib retired to his own land. This delivei-ance (701 B.C.) was foretold by Isaiah (31 ^ 3733-35), ^ho held that Jerusalem, God's own city, could not be taken. 19, The Religious Teaching of Micah and Isaiah. Two prophets throw light on this period. Micah the countryman, denouncing fiercely the social wrongs of the peasantry, prophesied the downfall of Jerusalem (3^2) ; yet he believed in the permanence of the divine rule, and looked for another king like David to come from the heart of ..he people and restore the ruined state (5 2*-). Isaiah looked for repeated punishments, from which only a remnant should escape (6 ii-i3, etc. : cp. the name of his son Shear-jashub = ' a rem- nant shall return,' 7 3). Yet his hope of a better kingdom is borne witness to by his prophecy of Immanuel (713-16), and the magnificent promise of the Prince with the four names (9'^''^), who will reign in an age of millennial peace and blessing, and who is called ' a shoot out of the stock of Jesse ' (11 i-W). In Hezekiah's reign partial attempts were made to destroy the high places and concen- trate the worship at Jerusalem, but the work must have been very incomplete (2K 184-22, etc.). 20. The Reaction imder Manasseh. Manas- seh's long reign (692-1341 B.C.), though for the most part externally prosperous, was marked by a recrudescence of heathenism, in which much of Isaiah's work was undone(2K21i-i'i'). Towards the close of his reign he appears to have become involved in the revolt against Assyria of the viceroy of Babylon, and to have been taken to Babylon to expiate his crime before his suzerain, Assurbanipal (2 Ch 3311-13). The survival of the true faith is witnessed to by the book of Deuteronomy, probably com- piled during this reign, and possibly "by the last two chapters of Micah (see Commentary). 21. The Reign of Josiah. Josiah (639-608), succeeding his murdered father Amon, began his reign under unfavourable auspices. The invasion of Western Asia by hordes of Scythians probably gave rise to the gloomy anticipations of Zephaniah, who looked for the coming of the day of universal judgment. But these invasions, seriously shaking the power of Assyria, really left Judah free to follow her own destiny. The first prophecies of Jeremiah belong also to this period (see Commentary). An earnest attempt at religious reform was greatly helped by the providential finding of the Book of the Law, 621 B.C., almost certainly Deuteronomy (2K228, etc.). On the basis of this book all the high places where Jehovah was worshipped with semi-heathenish accom- paniments were destroyed, and the Temple at Jerusalem made the one central sanctuary (2 K 23 4-15). Meanwhile Assyria was tottering to its fall, and, while Nineveh was besieged by Babylonians and Medes, Pharaoh-Necho of Egypt marched northwards to make his bid for the empire of the world. In resisting his progress Josiah was defeated and slain at Megiddo, 608 B.C. (2 K 23 29. 30). In the following year Nineveh fell, and by his defeat of the Egyptians at Carchemish, on the Euphrates, Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon became master of the world, 605 B.C. During the brief period of Egyptian supremacy in Palestine Jehoahaz was deposed and Je- hoiakim made king (2 K 24 31-35). Rebelling against Babylon three years later Jehoiakim was deposed and carried to Babylon (2 K 24 1 2Ch36^). Three months later his successor Jehoiachin was taken after him, together with the flower of the nation, including Ezekiel, 597 B.C. (2 K 248-16). The prophetic teaching during this period is found in Nahum, with his fierce exultation over the doom of Nineveh, and Habakkuk, who looking out over a ruined world and finding each successive conqueror equally guilty, yet declares with invincible assurance, ' the just man shall live by his faithfulness ' (2*). "The central part of Jeremiah's heroic ministry also falls here. xxu HEBREW HISTORY TO THE EXILE 22. The Fall of Jerusalem. Rejecting ■warnings of Jeremiah, Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, involved himself in many plots against Babylon ( Jer 27 1-^ Ezk 1 7 1^). The inevitable result followed. Jeremiah had long since foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and almost paid the price of his daring with his life (Jer 26). Now, after a siege of nineteen months, from January 588 to July 586, the city was taken and destroyed by Nebuchadrezzar, and the Temple burnt (2K25). Jeremiah's noble personality is the chief glory of these closing years. Despite his re- peated declarations of the ruin of Jerusalem, he looks forward to the time when once more it shall be ' the throne of Jehovah ' (3 1"). De- spite his word about Jehoiakim, ' no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah ' (22^0), he can still hope that Jehovah will raise up a righteous branch unto David (23 5). His hope in the kingdom of God was deeper than his despair. But his grandest word of all came, as it seems, from his prison. There, while the Babylonian armies surrounded Jeru- salem, he was inspired to speak of the new covenant, which God Himself would write on the hearts of the people, when all from the least to the greatest should know Him, and, pardoned and restored, enjoy His favour (3131-3^). Thus this great history closes with a note of hope, and a conception of religion that, far below all externalism, rests on the personal and intimate relationship between the indi- vidual soul and its God. Though the hopes of the prophets of a glorious kingdom in Jerusalem under a righteous Ruler were never realised, they have been fulfilled in a far deeper sense than those who uttered them ever dreamed by the King whose kingdom is ' not of this world,' who sealed the new covenant with His own blood. So we claim that the faith of the prophets, embodied in many forms and figures, has outlived them all and is tri- umphant in the world to-day. Jesus took the faith which they held, ennobled it and purged it, and through His life and death established a kingdom which will never pass away. Look- ing backwards we see that all history is one, knit together by the guiding, inspiring con- trolling Spirit of God. Looking forward we believe still, with more assured faith than ever, in the perfect establishment of that kingdom so long desired, so wistfully looked for, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. xxiu INTRODUCTION TO THE PENTATEUCH I. Divisions and Contents. Pentateuch is a Greek word meaning the 'fivefold volume,' and has been used, since the time of Origen (third century A.D.) as a convenient designation for the first five books of the Old Testament. It serves to remind us that these constitute really one volume in five parts. In the Old Testament itself this is called ' The Law,' or 'book of the Law,' to which is sometimes added ' of God ' or ' of Moses ' : see e.g. Neh 8i,2f. 93 131. Later Jewish vsriters call it the 'book of the Law,' or the 'Five Fifths of the Law.' In Hebrew manuscripts the division into five books is not so strongly marked as in the English Bible, the Pentateuch being treated as one and divided into a number of larger and smaller sections, which are numbered consecutively from Genesis to Deuteronomy. The five larger sections are usually named by the first word or first important word in each. Thus Genesis is called B'reshith, i.e. ' In the Beginning' ; Exodus is Sheinoth, i.e. ' Names ' ; Leviticus is Vayyikm, i.e. ' And He called ' ; Numbers is Vaydahher, i.e. ' And He spake,' or, Baminklhar, i.e. ' In the Wilderness ' ; and Deuteronomy is Ubarim, i.e. ' Words.' Some- times titles more particularly descriptive of their contents are applied to the books ; thus Leviticus is styled the ' Law of the Priests,' Numbers the ' Fifth ' (part) ' of Numberings,' and Deuteronomy the ' Second Law.' The English titles are taken from the Vulgate Latin Version, which again derived them from the Septuagint. The fivefold division of the Pentateuch is thus shown to be earlier than the origin of the Septuagint, and is prob- ably as old as the time of Nehemiah. It is older than the division of the Psalter, which was arranged in five books on the model of the Pentateuch. As the book of Joshua displays a certain affinity with the Pentateuch both in spirit and literary style, and forms its natural continua- tion and complement, modern scholars speak of a Hexateuch, or ' sixfold volume,' and re- gard the books from Genesis to Joshua as six parts of a complete whole. For details of the Contents of the Pentateuch reference should be made to the introductions prefixed to the separate books in the Commen- tary. It will suffice here to say that they are made up of two elements, history and legislation. The theme is the Kingdom of God upon the earth, and its gradual revelation and embodi- ment in Israel as the chosen people, both in its external (historical) and intes'-ial (legislative) aspects. The Song of Moses (Dt 32) and such Psalms as 106, 106 may be regarded as giving a summary of this history. From the way iu which the Pentateuch opens it might have been supposed that its aim was to outline the his- tory of the whole human race. But it soon appears that the account of the creation of the world, the entrance of sin, and the rise and spread of the races, is only preliminary to the main subject. Little by little the his- tory is narrowed down till at Gnl2 we come to Abraham, who is chosen as the progenitor of the people to whom God will specially reveal Himself. From this point the Penta- teuch, and indeed the entire Old Testament, becomes a history of the Hebrew nation. In the third generation from Abraham his de- scendants to the number of seventy, with their households, migrate from Canaan to Egypt. There they increase in spite of all obstacles till they become a great nation. The book of Exodus tells of their deliverance from Egypt by the hand of Moses. They come into the Sinaitic peninsula on their way to the pro- mised land, and there they enter into a solemn covenant with Jehovah on the basis of the Law given to them at Mount Sinai. Practicallj^ the whole of Leviticus is occupied with legis- lation, the purpose of which is to mark this nation off from all others as the ' peculiar people ' of Jehovah, a ' kingdom of priests ' and a ' holy nation.' The book of Numbers continues the history of the sojourn in the wilderness, until they come to the borders of Canaan, and is interspersed with numerous laws. Deuteronomy contains the discourses addressed to the people by Moses before his death. It consists largely of laws, and closes with an account of the solitary death of the great leader and Lawgiver. "The book of Joshua relates the entrance into Canaan, and its conquest by the Israelites under the leader- ship of Joshua, the successor of Moses. 2. The Mosaic Authorship. The question of the authorship of the Pentateuch, or rather of the Hexateuch, has been the subject of much discussion in modern times, and scholars are still carefully investigating the subject. The traditional view was that Moses was the author of the five books which bear his name • in our Bibles ; and until comparatively recent times this belief was accepted without ques- tion or inquiry regarding its grounds. A thorough study of these books, however, has XXIV INTRODUCTION TO THE PENTATEUCH led many to the conclusion that this view of their authorship does not fit in with the facts and that another view is necessitated by the evidence which the books themselves ^ Two arguments are often brought forward for the Mosaic authorship which demand some notice, (a) One is the fact that our Lord when auotine the Pentateuch refers to it as the work of Moses: cp. Mtl98 Mk7io 1226 Lk 2444 Jn5*5-47 719. Regarding this it has passages indicate that Moses wrote and laid up for preservation records of certain important events and laws. It is also to be kept in view that many of the laws preserved in the Pentateuch relate to circumstances which imply a nomadic life in tents, pointing to a period contemporary with Moses: cp. e.g. Lvl43 with 143^ IG20-22 NulOi-7. There is no difficulty in understanding the rise of the belief in the Mosaic authorship or sometimes been pointed out that these refer- in sympathisi^ng with the feelings which sug- someLiiuus uccii ^ 1 .„ j.„ u„i;^„^ „^c+orl i+ Ar^nrf, froTYi Moses it would be ences by our Lord do not compel us to believe that Moses wrote the whole of the Pentateuch, but only that certain parts of it were derived from him, which indeed many of the foremost scholars admit. But another answer may be given, and that is that our Lord did not come to deal with questions of literary authorship, but to bring men salvation ; that He appeals to the Pentateuch entirely for the practical purposes of quickening men's consciences and reproving their sins ; and that He called it the Law of Moses because that was the name by which it was commonly known. It may be accepted as a guiding principle in the study of the Scriptures, that the subjects of divme re- velation are not matters such as biblical author- ship or physical processes, which men can dis- cover by the exercise of their faculties, but only those truths of God's love and His purposes of salvation ' which the angels 'desire to look into.' The force of our Lord's teaching, it is hardly necessary to add, is not afCected by the view taken of the authorship of the Pentateuch. (b) The other argument for the traditional view is, that Jewish tradition consistently ascribes the composition of the Pentateuch to Moses. With reference to this point it must be remembered that there is no trace of the ex- istence of this tradition until a comparatively late period, and that it is unsupported by any strong evidence. It must also be noted that as a whole the Five Books are anonymously written, and that there is no passage in the Old Testament which claims Moses as their author. The ' Law of Moses ' indeed is frequently spoken of, and it is unquestionable that Israel- itish law did originate with him ; but this ex- pression is not evidence that Moses was the writer of the Pentateuch as we have it, or that the laws which it contains represent throughout his unmodified legislation. On the other hand, there are parts of these books which are expressly ascribed to him ; e.g. (1) the account of the defeat of Amalek (Ex 17 1-*); (2) the book of the Covenant, Ex 20-23 (Ex 244,7); (3) the Renewed Covenant, Ex34io-26 (cp Ex 34^') ; (4) the Lists of Stations on the March in Nu33 (332) ; (5) the law spoken of in Dt319.ii.2-t-26 ; (6) the Song of Moses, Dt 32 : cp. also Joshl'.s 831.35 23 « 2426. These XXV gestedit. Apart from Moses it would be impossible to account for the religion of the Old Testament. It was to him that the de- cisive creative revelation of Jehovah's nature and His relation to Israel came. It was he who laid the foundations of the ideas, laws, and institutions, which made Israel the nation in which all the families of the earth have been blessed. The later developments of faith, custom, and ritual require him at the beginning as their primary explanation. And if he was thus under God the originator of the beliefs and practices which lie at the root of Old Testament religion, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he put into writing some of its laws and some narratives of leading events to guide the conduct and inspire the patriotism of the people whom he had welded into a nation. On close examination, however, it must be admitted that the Pentateuch reveals many features inconsistent with the traditional view that in its present form it is the work of Moses. For instance, it may be safely granted that Moses did not write the account of his oym death in Dt 34 . The statement in Dt 1 1 that Moses spoke these words ' beyond (RV) Jordan in the wilderness ' (see note there) is evidently made from the standpoint of one living in Canaan, which Moses never did ; and when we read that the ' Canaanite was then in the land ' (Gn 126 137), and that ' these are the kings that reigned in Edom before there reigned any king over Israel' (Gn3G3i), jt is difficult to resist the impression that the speaker was living in the one case after the conquest, and in the other after the establish- ment of the monarchy. In Gn 14 1* and Dt34 mention is made of Dan ; but the territory did not receive that name till it was conquered by the Danites, long after the death of Moses (Josh 19 47 Jg 18 29). Again,inISru 2 114,15 there is quoted as an ancient authority ' the book of the Wars of the Lord,' which plainly could not have been earlier than the days of Moses. Other passages which can with difficulty be ascribed to him are Ex 6 26, 27 113 1635,36 Lv 1824-28 Nu 123 Dt2i2. Of course such things do not amount in themselves to a disproof of the Mosaic author- INTRODUCTION TO THE PENTATEUCH ship, but they naturally lead to the question : ' On what authority does this belief rest, that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch in its present form?' And it appears that no authority could be cited except the late tradi- tion of the Jewish Church. Therefore men have thought themselves at liberty to mvesti- gate the matter, and a careful examination has led many scholars to the conviction that the writings of Moses formed only the rough material or part of the material, and that in its present form it is not the work of one man, but a compilation made from previously exist- ing documents. In this connexion it must be remembered that editing and compiling is a recognised mode of authorship in Old Testa- ment history. Just as St. Luke tells us (Lk 1 1) that, before our Four Gospels were written, there were many earlier accounts of our Lord's life already in existence, so the Old Testament writers tell us of similar accounts already written of the facts which they record. And not only so, but they distinctly indicate that they used these earlier accounts in composing their own books. It is most interesting to find embedded in the existing books fragments of the old literature of ancient Israel, as geologists find the fragments of the lost animal life of early ages embedded in the rocks of to-day. See, for example, ' the book of the Wars of Jehovah' (Nu21ii), 'the book of Jasher ' (2 S 1 is), ' the books of Gad and Nathan ' (1 Ch2929), ' the books of Shemaiah and Iddo ' (2 Chi 2 15). Here we have evidence of the existence of sources of information to which editors and compilers of later days had access. We find also several ancient poems incorporated in the sacred text, e.g. Gn423f. Ex 15, 17 1« Nu21i7,i8,27f. jg6^ etc., and it is probable there were other early writings avail- able besides those which can now be traced. There is thus nothing strange in the suggestion that the books of the Pentateuch were based on preexisting materials. 3. Composition. The following are the main grounds of the conviction that the Pen- tateuch is not the original work of one man, but a compilation from previously existing documents. (1) In the historical parts we find duplicate accounts of the same event, which do not always agree in detail. Sometimes the two accounts are set down side by side ; sometimes they are fused together more or less com- pletely ; but in many instances no attempt has been made either to remove or to reconcile their differences. Thus two distinct and independent accounts of the Creation are given, one in Gnl-24, the other in Gn24-25. Two accounts of the Flood may be detected on a careful reading of Gn6-9. Again, we find two sets of instructions for the ob- servance of the Passover in Ex 12, one in vv. 1-13, the other in vv. 21-27. We may also instance the contrasts between such passages as Gn 27 1-45 and 27-*6-289, where Eebekah is actuated by one motive in the former and by quite another in the latter ; Gn28i9 and 35 ^-is, where the name is given to Bethel in very different circumstances ; Gn35io and 3228. Compare also Ex3i-6i with 6 2-7 13, where the latter section takes no account of the former, but begins the story of the mission to Pharaoh anew, as if 3 1-6 1 had never been written. (2) Similarly in the legislative portions of these books we find apparent contradictions, and these not in minor or insignificant details', but in fundamental enactments ; and the only way in which we can solve the problem thus presented is by understanding that in these books (especially Exodus to Deuteronomy) we have the records of laws laid down at various periods of the national history, and dealing with radically different conditions of life. In Ex 20-23, e.g., we have a set of laws which are evidently suited to the circumstances of an agricultural and pastoral community scat- tered over a considerable tract of country with their flocks and herds. This legislation IS of a very simple and practical nature, based on the fundamental principles of truth and righteousness, and having reference to a primi- tive state of society. Thus the worship is very simple ; altars are to be built of earth or of rough stones at amj place where God has blessed them (2024-26). firstlings and first fruits are to be offered o?i the eighth day (2228-30). the law of injuries is ' eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life' (21i-2i); murder is to be atoned by the death of the culprit, but the altar gives refuge to the homicide by accident (2112-H); special reference is made to oxen and sheep, to vineyards and fields of corn, and restitution for damage done to these is com- manded (2133-23'). Again, the poor are provided for by the produce of the fields every seventh year (23io.ii); the seventh day is appointed as the sabbath — a day of rest for man and beast (2312); three feasts are to be kept — two of them agricultural— the feast of unleavened bread in memory of the exodus, and those of harvest and ingathering. The laws are suited to the conditions of life ex- perienced by the Israelites in the wilderness, and in their earlier days in Canaan. In the book of Deuteronomy we find a more advanced type of legislation, applying evidently to different circumstances. Many injunctions indeed, are repeated, but many others are changed. The principles are the same as in the older legislation, but the rules are largely modified. Deuteronomy is the Mosaic Law applied to the altered conditions of a later XXVI INTRODUCTION TO THE PENTATEUCH and more complex age. Thus the worship is to be ceiitvulked in one place, and local altars are to be abolished (Dtl2'*-6. 13-2S)^ because of abuses that had sprung up in connexion with them ; firstlings are to be offered once a year- instead of on the eighth day, and in place of the local altars cities of refuge are provided for ' him who killeth his neighbour unawares ' (Dtl92). The conditions of life are different from those in Ex 20-23 ; the people dwell in cities, not in the camp (Dt 1312-15 172 21<3, etc.) ; a commercial element has entered into the nation (23i9, 20 25i3-i'^), and intercourse with foreigners has brought new dangers to religion (13 0.7 173.*). Again, in the book of Leviticus, with parts of Exodus and Numbers, we find another type of legislation, founded still upon the same Mosaic principles, but more elaborate, more priestly, more rigid than that of Ex 20-23 or that of Deuteronomy. Here we find detailed rules for the ritual of the Temple, for the consecration of priests, for many points in ordinary life and conduct. Many of these are found in the other codes ; but many are new (e.g. the feasts in Lv 23), and in- dicate the result of a long'process of develop- ment. The worship is highly developed and centralised in the Temple ; the altar is an elaborate structure (Ex27i-S) ; the duties of priests and Levites are carefully detailed, and the Levites are distinguished from the priests as their servants (NuS^^ 18 1-^). (3) Different parts of the Pentateuch ex- hibit marked differences of vocabulary and literary style. Many of these differences, especially of vocabulary, can only be appre- ciated by those acquainted with Hebrew ; but any one can see that the book of Deuteronomy is written in a much more rhetorical style than, say, the book of Leviticus, and can appreciate its lofty and inspiring eloquence. Again, in one set of passages, of which Gn 1-24 is a type, the Almighty is called God (Hebrew Elohim), while in another set, of which Gn 24-26 is an example, He is designated Lord (Hebrew Jehovah) ; and there are many other points of difference which are most satisfactorily explained by the theory that the writer of the Pentateuch, as we have it, made use of and incorporated into his work docu- ments originally separated. Following up the clue given by these differences, scholars have endeavoured to dis- entangle the separate documents from which it is suggested that the Pentateuch was com- piled, and we shall now give a brief outline of the results of their investigations. 4. Sources. (a) There is first what we may call the Primitive source (itself resting upon older written authorities), usually denoted by the symbol JE. It has sometimes been called the Prophetic document, because it reflects the same ideas found in more developed forms in the writings of the prophets, especially their religious and moral teaching. By some, again, it is styled Pre- prophetic, as earlier in date than the prophets, and simpler in its outlook. It begins at Gn24, and may be said to supply all the more detailed and picturesque narratives in Genesis, and Exodus, part of Numbers, and the first twelve chapters of Joshua. To it we owe entirely the narratives of the Fall and Cain and Abel, the details of Abraham's trials and wanderings, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob's fraud, his journey to Haran and his successful career, and of the life of Joseph. A feature in this Primitive source is its fondness for antiquities. It reaches back into a remote past, and delights to record the traditions and history that centred round the great figures of the race. It is this document that pre- serves the early legislation already referred to (Ex 20-23) with its permission of local sanctuaries ; that gives us the ten command- ments, and that records the ancient songs of Lamech, of Moses, and of the conquering Israelites (Nu 2 1 i-t-i5, 17-18, 27-30). it makes use of the term ' Jehovah ' for God from the very outset of its narrative. Plausible attempts have been made to analyse it into two com- ponents, J and E ; but for these reference must be made to larger works. In any case, the parallel threads are closely allied, and may for our purpose be treated as a unity. This source presents a very simple, vivid, and picturesque narrative, and is characterised among other things by its naively anthropo- morphic conception of God, i.e. it speaks of God in language that is strictly appropriate to man only. For example, it represents God as planting a garden and walking in it in the cool of the day (Gn 2^3 §), as coming down in order to see what men are doing on the earth (Gnll5 1821), as shutting the door of the ark behind Noah (Gn 7 16), as smelling the sweet odour of sacrifice (Gn82i), and as experi- encing the emotions to which men are subject (cp. e.g. Gn6'5), etc. This bold way of speaking about God, it may be remarked here, is not due to any irreverence or familiar- ity, but is the outcome of an intensely religious spirit that is completely possessed by the con- sciousness of God's immediate presence and power in the world. The Primitive narrative, too, is not careful to conceal the moral faults of the patriarchs. The English reader will form an idea of its style and characteristics from such passages as Gn24i>_324 920-27 111-9 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 27, and practically the whole of the history of Joseph. xxvii INTRODUCTION TO THE PENTATEUCH It seems probable that the older written authorities underlying this Primitive or Pro- phetic narrative were drawn up not later than 750 B.C., and perhaps even a century earlier ; they themselves in their turn being founded on writings like ' the book of the Wars of the Lord,' and ' the book of Ja.sher,' as well as on traditions handed down from generation to generation in the tribes of Israel. The early prophets make frequent and confident appeals to events of past history and to promises of God to the fathers which are recorded in this Primitive narrative : cp. Hos 910 111 123.4,9,12 Am29 3i 525. (i) There is, secondly, the Priestly docu- ment (usually designated P), This work is so called because it regards the history of Israel from the priestly point of view, and because it contains the greater part of the priestly and ceremonial legislation in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. It is written in a somewhat dry and formal style, with little descriptive colour or poetic gi-ace ; but in parts (e.g. the story of Creation) its diction is dignified and worthy of the subject. It gives an outline of the history of Israel from the earliest times ; though this is usually of the slightest, many incidents detailed at length in the Primitive document receiving a bare men- tion, and long periods being passed over with little more than a list of the names of the leaders who lived at the time : cp. Gn 1 1 lo. It is only when the wi'iter comes to some epoch-making event or to the origin of some well-known institution that he enters into particulars (e.g. Gn 17 1-27 Ex 12 1-20). This writing, however, gives a systematic account of the rise and progress of Israel as a theocracy, paying special attention to the laws and institutions, and showing great interest in everything pertaining to the Ceremonial Law, the division of the nation into tribes, and the partition of the promised land among them (cp. e.g. Nu 1-4 Josh 13 15-145 151-13,20-62^ and most of 17-22). It abounds in genealogies (e.g. Gn5 69-22 466-27)^ inventories (e.g. Ex 25-31), and chronological details (e.g. Gn 1 1 1^'-). A favour- ite expression, usually beginning a list, is ' These are the generations of . . ' (Gn 2^51 69 101 11102512 361). This Priestly document avoids all anthropo- morphic representations of God, and in this respect is in striking contrast to the Primitive writing JE, which represents God as thinking and acting like a man : cp. Gnl8, 19 Ex244^ In P God's revelations take the form, not of visible appearances, but of speech (Gn 1 28 6 1^ Ex 61 121) ; except on the one occasion of the supreme revelation on Mount Sinai (Ex 24 16 2522). A feature of its references to God is that it makes use of the name Elohim (God) for God almost exclusively (El Shaddai, GnlTi 283 3511 483) until Ex 6 3, where God reveals His name Jehovah (the Lord) to Moses. The writer of this document evi- dently belonged to the priestly class ; his aim was entirely a religious one ; he sought to show from a sketch of Israel's history that ' God was in the midst of her.' Scholars are of opinion that this document was drawn up, in the form in which it is embedded in the Pentateuch, for the guidance of the priests and others after the return from the captivity in the days of Ezra. The worship is regarded in it as completely cen- tralised in Jerusalem; the priests are exclu- sively the descendants of Aaron, and the Levites are distinct from them ; the system of sacrifices and feasts is much more de- veloped than even in Deuteronomy (see under (c)); the idea of God is purer and less akin to that of a magnified man. The Priestly document thus exhibits signs of the disci- pline and purification which the nation ex- perienced in the exile and is appropriately dated at the close of that event. (c) The third document underlying the Pen- tateuch (or rather the Hexateuch) is the book of Deuteronomy, usually cited as D, and iden- tified in its main parts with the Law-book dis- covered in the Temple by Hilkiah in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, 621 b.o. (2K22). This book has a strongly marked literary style, being smooth, redundant, and rhetorical: cp. e.g. Dt 11, 12. It insists on the worship of the one God at the one sanctuary, and is characterised by a lofty spiritual, moral , and humanitarian tone. In many respects it differs from the earlier legislation of the Primitive document ; but alv/ays in matters of detail. Its laws are suited to a later age and to a more complex condition of society than those of JE ; the worship is centralised in Jerusalem, because the local shrines had been abused ; and the centralisation of the worship necessitated many changes in detail. Thus Deuteronomy, or the Second Legislation, is simply the development of the first ; it is the Mosaic principles applied to new conditions. It is animated by the same spirit as the older law, inspired by the same desire for purity of worship, for singleness of heart, for holiness of life. It is supposed that these three documents — the Primitive writing, the Priestly writing, and the book of Deuteronomy — were welded together somewhat in this way. The fii-st attempts to write a history of Israel probably originated in the schools of the prophets in the ninth century B.C. ; and in the Primitive writing JE we have the finished result. About the same time as JE was composed, the Second Legislation (D) was set down in writing and made public as recorded in 2K22. This was xxvm INTRODUCTION TO THE PENTATEUCH afterwards combined with the earlier writing, which gave it a historic background. Then during, or immediately after the exile, the ritual law was di'awn up in accordance with priestly traditions, and given an appropriate setting in a historical framework, the result being the Priestly writing (P). Finally a later historian, taking these as his author- ities, wove them together into a complete whole, connecting them by notes and ex- planations, where these were necessary ; not putting the history in his own words or presenting it from his own standpoint as a modern historian would do, but piecing toge- ther the sections of the sources which referred to the same events, and thus preserving not only the history, but the very words in which it had reached him, for all coming generations. In this writer's work we have the Pentateuch of the Old Testament Scriptures. This, then, is a brief outline of the views held by most scholars who have devoted them- selves to the thorough study of these books of the Bible. Such a theory of the compo- sition of the Pentateuch, while it may surprise us at first sight, will give us larger ideas of God's working and inspiration, and will strengthen rather than disturb our faith. For it will remove many difficulties in the inter- pretation of these books, and explain those contradictions of which we are all conscious when we read them. When we realise that God did not teach Israel only by Moses, but ' at sundry times and in divers manners ' by teachers and leaders whom He inspired accord- ing to the work He gave them to perform, we shall have worthier ideas of His government of the world and of His watchful care over His people. The fact that the legislation of the Pentateuch was given not all at one time, but to diflPerent generations, according to their circumstances and needs, surely teaches us, as perhaps nothing is better fitted to teach us, that ' He that keepeth Israel neither slum- bers nor sleeps.' And the view of the books which scholars suggest to us shows us that His inspiration wrought not through one but through many, and that in every age of Israel's history there were men inspired by the spirit which animated their master, Moses, eager to make known to their fellows how great things God had wrought, and longing to win them to loyalty and devotion to Him who was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and who desired still to be their God. ZZIZ THE CREATION STORY AND SCIENCE Many of the difficulties felt in connexion with the Bible story of creation arise from a misunderstanding of the bearing of modern science upon it. A few general considera- tions, therefore, may help to obviate them. (a) There is a vague idea in many minds that science demands a much greater antiquity for the world than the Bible account will allow. This impression has probably been gathered from the statement in the margin of many Bibles that creation took place in the year 4004 B.C. It is well, therefore, to be reminded that this marginal note is not a part of the Bible. It originated in calculations, both Jewish and Christian, which are now admitted to have been based upon imperfect knowledge. The sacred writer in Genesis does not commit himself to any definite limits of time, but simply speaks of the creation as taking place 'in the beginning,' and this phrase is elastic enough to cover the modern scientific position. (b) Another difficulty is caused by the ap- parent antagonism between modern scientific theories and the statement of Gnl that the work of creation was completed in six days. Attempts have been made, from several points of view, to get rid of this antagonism, by taking the language of Scripture in a figurative sense. For example, it has been suggested by some that the sublime panorama of creation was flashed into some primeval prophet's con- sciousness in a series of visions that occupied a space of six days ; and by others that the days are not to be interpreted as natural days of twenty-four hours each, but as age-long periods of time corresponding to the succes- sive stages in the evolution of the world. Whatever truth there may be in these sugges- tions, and however helpful they may be to many minds, others may be able to obtain a more satisfactory rendering of the Bible ac- count of creation, by looking at it in the light of the three following considerations. (1) The story was written in the very childhood of our race, when human knowledge was only at the dawn, and men's minds were awakening for the first time to Ike problems of life and the world. It was inevitable, therefore, that it should be cast in a simple and childlike form, if it was to be at all intelligible to those among whom it appeared ; and the wisdom of giving it such a setting has been more than justified by the impression it has left, and still continues to make, upon the thought of the world. (2) It is now widely admitted that the Genesis account of creation contains elements of belief which existed, perhaps thousands of years before the book of Genesis ' was written, among the peoples of Babylonia and Assyria. The connexion between the traditions of these early nations and the story of Genesis is still a matter of discussion, but one thing has emerged clearly from their com- parison. Whatever elements the sacred writer in Genesis may have in common with the Babylonian and Assyrian beliefs, he has been able to redeem and purify them from their baser form, and invest them with the presence and power of a Sovereign God, the one only Creator of heaven and earth. (3) The pur- pose of the writer in Gn 1 is not scientific but religious. His scientific knowledge may be bounded by the horizon of the age in which he lived, but the religious truths he teaches are irrefutable and eternal. To put the matter in another way : The scientific account of creation has been written by the finger of God upon the crust of the earth, and men are slowly spelling it out ; but the religious ac- count of creation is written in the first chapter of Genesis, in letters that all can read. Both accounts are from God, and should be received accordingly. As Dr. Marcus Dods has said : ' The greatest mistake is made when men seek in the one record what can only be found in the other, when they either refuse to listen to the affirmations of nature because they seem to disagree with what is found in the Bible, or when they are content with the teaching of nature, as if nature could tell us all we need to know about ourselves, about the world, and about God.' What was necessary in the primitive world to save men from grovelling, debasing polytheism was the knowledge that it was God, holy and good, who made alL things, and that the crown and summit of Hisfl - work was man ; and this is the knowledge sett forth in the book of Genesis. The rear question for us is then : ' Does the story of 1 Genesis so accomplish what seems to be ita purpose, that only inspiration from God can account for it ? ' To ask : ' Is it a completely > scientific account of creation? ' is to raise an issue that is scarcely fair. (c) These considerations must be kept in mind, for they are equally helpful, in dealing i with the further difficulty that has arisen in ' connexion with the theory of evolution, and the marvellous discoveries with which it has i THE CREATION STORY AND SCIENCE been associated. Science is now teaching that the order and beauty of the world are not the result of one directly creative act, but the outcome of a long and gradual process, con- tinued probably over myriads of years ; and that the varied life of nature is not as it was fixed ' in the beginning,' but as it has been evolved, through age-long periods and many lower stages, from original germs. On the face of it, this teaching seems to conflict with the teaching of the Bible, and in particular to throw suspicion upon the story of creation as given in Genesis. It was thus it was received at first ; but in recent years, as men have gone back to the old creation story, and pondered it afresh, in view of the teaching of science, their difficulties and perplexities have largely disappeared. Besides making allowances for the considerations already urged under (i), they have come to see that creation would be just as divine and miraculous, if it were slow and gradual, as it would be if it were sudden and complete. The power necessary to originate and support a ceaseless and pro- longed process of development in the world would be no less than that required to bring it into being in a moment, ^nd sustain it in its ordered course. Doubtless, God could in- stantaneously make a mighty oak ; but it is no less wonderful that He should make it gradually, causing it to grow out of the little acorn, of which we can carry a dozen in the hand, yet every one of which contains within it a germ endued with power to carry on a succession of mighty oaks through ages to come. To realise this is to advance a long way in the solution of the difficulty arising from the theory of evolution, and rob it of its power to disturb a genuine faith in the Bible. A further reflection, however, may be called in to support the mind of the biblical believer. Not only is evolution itself only a theory, which may in the future undergo modification, and may possibly be displaced by some other theory, but even if it is a true and final account of the origin of created things, the old creation story of Genesis is, to say the least, not incompatible with it. The process of creation, as unfolded in Genesis, when viewed in the light of the new scientific teaching, reveals a law of continuous development, which is at least a foreshadowing of the process of evolution. And so the apparent irreconcilability between them becomes largely reduced, if it does not indeed altogether dis- appear. ' These,' we read, ' are the genera- tions of the heavens when they were created.' ' The inspired historian saw no Almighty hand building up the galleries of creation : he heard no sound of hammer nor confused noise of workmen : the Spirit of the Lord moved upon the face of the deep : chaos took form and comeliness before his inspired vision : and the solar system grew through a succession of days to its present order and beauty.' At last, when all things were ready — after how many myriads of years we know not — man came forth, the summit of the whole creation, for ' God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul.' TTTYI GENESIS AND THE BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS 4 During the last thirty years a considerable amount of light has been thrown on the first few chapters of Genesis by the recovery and interpretation of an extensive Babylonian literature. The Assyrian king, Assurbanipal, who reigned in the middle of the seventh cen- tury B.C., caused copies of immense numbers of documents from other libraries in the country to be made for his library at Nineveh, some of these writings dating from many hun- dred years earlier. They comprised works on religion, history, mathematics, law, magic, and astronomy. The copies, like the originals, were on tablets of fine clay, inscribed, whilst in a soft state, with wedge-shaped (cuneiform) characters, and then burned in a furnace till they became hard and dry. These clay tablets are of all sizes, from an inch to more than a foot long, and the museums of Europe and America now possess thousands of them, de- rived from Assurbanipal's library and other places. Excavations are still being carried on, with the result that every year sees a large addition to the recovered treasures. In 1872 Mr. George Smith discovered on some of the tablets, which may now be seen in the British Museum, accounts of the Creation and the Flood, written from the religious standpoint of the Babylonians. Many similarities were at once observed between them and the early chapters of Genesis. This will not cause sur- prise, for the Hebrew and Babylonian peoples were allied branches of the great Semitic race, and it was natural that their ideas respecting the origin of the world, and their traditions as to its primitive history, should have much in common. But these Babylonian records, which have thrown so much light on the character of the early narratives of Genesis, have at the same time done more than anything else to confirm the real divine inspiration of the latter, and their peculiar religious worth. The biblical narratives, when compared with these kindred legends, present differences which are even more striking than the resemblances. And it is these differences which reveal their spiritual value. The Babylonian stories arc full of grotesque and polytheistic ideas, while those of the Bible speak only of the one living and true God. Compared with the former, the Scriptures are incomparably truer and grander from a religious point of view. They conveyed to the Hebrews, and they still convey to us, the worthiest conceptions of God and of His relation to the world and xxxii men. They are a standing witness to the fact that the nation of Israel enjoyed a peculiar revelation of the true God. If the ' folk-lore ' of the Hebrews, like that of all other peoples, was inconsistent at many points with our modern knowledge of nature and history, yet it was so purified among them, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, from all taint of heathenism, that, as it stands in the open- ing chapters 'of Genesis, it contains nothing inconsistent either with the religion of Jeho- vah or with the fuller revelation of Jesus Christ. I. The Babylonian Account of the Creation. Two Babylonian legends of the Creation are known. The longer and more important is inscribed on seven tablets, some of which are imperfect. According to it, all things were produced at the first from Tiamat, a personi- fication of the primeval chaos, represented as a huge dragon. The gods came into being in a long succession, but at length enmity arose between them and Tiamat, who created mon- sters to oppose them. Merodach, a solar deity, known also as Bel, and regarded as the supreme god and patron deity of Babylon, was chosen as the champion of the gods. He vanquished Tiamat, cut her body in two, and with one half of it made a firmament sup- porting the upper waters in the sky : see on Gn 1 6-8. Merodach then fixed the signs of the zodiac in the sky as the stations of the great gods, and also placed the moon in the heavens to determine the months. The next part of the tablets is mutilated, but describes the creation of the heavens. The seventh tablet contains a hymn to Merodach. The following are a few passages from the Babylonian Creation epic, extracted mainly from T. G. Pinches' translation — ' When, above, the heaven wsls not named, Beneath, the earth did not record a name, The ocean {Jpsu) the prmieval was their begetter, The tumult Tiamat was mother of them all, Their waters in one united together. Then were the gods born, Lahmu Lahamu came forth, Ansar, the god Anu "... The rest is fragmentary. The second, third, and fourth tablets de- scribe the conflict between Merodach and Tiamat. The victory of the former appears to signify the conquest of light and order over darkness and chaos. Then follows the formation of the firmament from the body of GENESIS AND THE BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS Tiamat and creation of the heavens, as a habitation for the gods — ' He cleft her like a fish into two parts, The half of her he set up and made a covering for the heaven, Set a bar before it, and stationed a watchman. Commanding him not to let the waters escape. ' 'Then Bel (i.e. Merodach) measured the extent of the abyss, A palace he founded in its likeness, Esarra ; The palace Esarra which he made (is) the heavens, A habitation for Anu, Bel, and Ea. ' The fifth tablet describes the creation and arrangement of the heavenly bodies. ' He (Merodach) made stations for the great gods. Stars their likeness — he set up the Zodiac, He ordained the year, defined divisions. Twelve months, each with three stars, he ap- pointed. He caused the moon to shine, ruling the night : ' etc. In spite of certain obvious parallelisms of thought, the iirst chapter of Genesis, it will be be seen, is greatly superior to the Babylonian account of the beginning of the world. It has striking symmetry of arrangement, and a fixed the time of the flood. A wild storm of wind and rain raged for seven days and caused the gods to flee to heaven and to cry out in alarm. Istar (Ashtoreth = ' Venus ') interceded for men, and the rain ceased. Ut-napistim looked out from his ship and saw land in the distance. The ship grounded on a mountain in the land of Nizir, E. of the Tigris, and after seven days Ut-napistim sent forth in succession a dove, a swallow, and a raven. The first two came back, but the latter did not return. Ut-napistim thereupon sent out all the animals and offered a sacrifice on the mountain top. The gods gathered around it like flies. Istar came and held up the ' signets ' which Anu had made. She took an oath by her ' necklace ' that she would always remember this time, and asked that Bel might not be allowed to come to the sacrifice. Bel came, however, and was angry at Ut-napistim for his escape. But Ea reproached Bel for having caused the flood, and advised him to take some other means (lions, hyaenas, famine, pestilence) for checking human population in future. Bel was appeased, conferred immortality on Ut- A few extracts from the tablets will show the parallelism of ideas in the Babylonian and Hebrew accounts. ' Surippak, the city which thou knowest, Lies (upon the bank) of the Euphrates, That city was old, and the gods within it. The great gods decided in their hearts to make a flood. There was their father Anu Their counsellor, the warrior Bel ' . . . Ea warns Ut-napistim to save simple dignity which contrasts favourably with napistim and his wife, and gave them an abode the childish and grotesque elements of the other ' afar at the mouths of the rivers.' narrative. But, above all, its religious teach- ing differs from that of the Babylonian story as day from night. Here we have no multitude of divinities, but one living and true God. Here we have no primeval matter from which the gods arise, but ' In the beginning, God.' Here the heavenly bodies are not deities to be worshipped, but the handiwork of God. Here man is at the head of creation, because he shares the image of God. 2. The Babylonian Flood Legend bears more directly upon the narrative of Genesis. One version of it has been preserved by Berosus ; but it is now known to us in a fuller and more authentic form, from the series of cuneiform tablets discovered in the library of Assurbani- pal. These tablets contain an ancient Baby- lonian epic, the hero of which is Gilgamesh, whose adventures are related in twelve books. The eleventh book tells how Gilgamesh visited the deified hero Ut-napistim (or Pir-napistim), and heard from him the story of the flood and of his deliverance from it. The four gods, Anu ('Lord of the ocean of heaven'), Bel (' Lord of the air '), Ninip (' the god of man '), and Ennugi resolved to destroy mankind with a deluge. The god Ea (' Lord of the earth ') warned Ut-napistim, who worshipped him, to escape by building a ship, and told him what to say to those who should ask him what he was doing. Ut-napistim built the ship, made it watertight with pitch, stored it with food and drink, and brought into it all kinds of living creatures along with his family, his workmen, and a pilot. The sun-god Shamash The god himself — ' Surippakite, son of Umbara-Tiitu, Forsake thy house, build a ship. Leave what thou hast, see to thy life. Take up the seed of life into the midst of the ship.' A vivid description of the storm is given — ' At the appearance of dawn in tlie morning There arose from the foundation of heaven a dark cloud : Ramman thundered in the midst of it. . . Then came Ninip casting down destruction. The Anmmaki (spirits of the earth) raised their torches. With their brilliance they illumined the land: Everything bright to darkness turned In lieaven the gods feared the flood. They fled, they ascended to the heavens of Anu ; The gods kennelled like dogs, crouched down in the enclosures. Six days and six nights the wind blew, Tlie deluge and flood overwhelmed the land, The seventh day when it came, the storm ceased, XXXIU GENESIS AND THE BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS The sea shrank back, the evil wind ended, Like palings the marsh reeds appeared. I opened my window, the light fell on my face, I fell back dazzled, I sat down, I wept. I noted the region, the shore of the sea, The ship had stopped at the land of Nisir, I sent forth a dove, and it left. But there was no resting-place, and it returned. I sent forth a swallow, etc., I sent forth a raven, and it left, It ate, it waded, it croaked, it did not return. I sent forth (the animals) to the four winds, I made an offering on the peak of the mountain, Seven and seven I set incense-vases there. The gods smelled a sweet savour, They gathered like Hies over the sacriiicer. ' As in the Creation story the immense reli- gious and moral superiority of the biblical account must be manifest to every reader. There is no multitude of gods, divided in counsel, crying out in fear, wrangling like children, and changing from capricious hate to capricious favour. The unity of God, His hatred of evil, His love of righteousness, His mercy and faithfulness appear instead of the vain conceptions of the heathen. One or two interesting questions arise as to the general relationship between the biblical and the Babylonian accounts of the Creation and the Flood. Was the one set of traditions directly derived from the other, and if so which was the original one, and when did the borrowing take place ? Or must both sets be traced to a common source which was prior to either of them ? That the Babylonian accounts were derived from the Hebrew ones is most unlikely. The Creation and Flood tablets discovered in 1872 were taken from the library of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal, who lived 668-626 B.C. This date shows that the traditions recorded on the tablets were current in Babylonia almost a century before the exile. Further, the literature preserved in Assurbanipal's library consists almost en- tirely of copies of Babylonian documents, belonging in all likelihood to a time before the beginnings of the Hebrew nation. The local colouring of the narratives, too, points clearly to Babylonia as their original home. If, on the other hand, the Hebrews obtained the traditions from the Babylonians, it can- not have been during the exile, since the Primitive document, which has an account of the Flood, was drawn up before that time. As the Tel el Amarna tablets show that Pales- tine was under the influence of Babylonian culture in the second millennium B.C., it is possible that the traditions in question may have passed from the Babylonians to the Canaanites, and from them to the Hebrews after the Conquest. But as Abraham, the ancestor of the Hebrews, himself came from Babylonia, it is in every way more natural to suppose that the biblical narratives are to be traced to their source through some such direct channel. There still remains the question as to how the difference between the Hebrew and the Babylonian traditions m their pre?.ent form is to be explained. Were the polytheism and superstition of the Babylonian stories present in them from the first, and simply eliminated among the Hebrews before the narratives passed into the Bible ? Or have the present Babylonian legends degenerated from a purer original, of which the Bible has more faithfully preserved the religious tone ? Probably the truth lies midway between these two views. On the one hand, both the evidence of the Babylonian records and the analogy of other religious systems, suggest that the gross poly- theism reflected in the Babylonian stories, as we have them, was preceded by a higher and simpler belief, approaching to monotheism. On the other hand, we cannot assume a primi- tive religion so exalted as to do away with the reality of the revelation in the after history of Israel which the Old Testament records. The Hebrew nation was set apart not merely to preserve or revive ancient truth, but to receive a progressive unfolding of God's character and will. The Babylonian and biblical accounts of primitive times are best regarded as two streams of tradition flowing from one source (itself Babylonian) — each in its own direction. The former has lost whatever religious value the tradition originally had ; while the latter has preserved whatever truth the source contained, and has developed it still further under the guidance of God's Spirit, in the course of the revelation which has been completed in Jesus Christ. I xxxiv THE LAWS OF HAMMURABI In Grnl4 we read of a certain ' Amraphel, king of Shinar,' who was contemporary with Abraham. It is generally agreed that this Amraphel is identical with Hammurabi, the sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon, under whom the kingdom was first united, with Babel as its capital. It has long been known that a code of laws existed in ancient times bearing the name of the ' Judgments of Hammurabi.' Fragments of the code had been discovered on tablets dating from the reign of Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus : ? Asnapper, Ezr4i0), king of Assyria, 668-625 B.C., and now preserved in the British Museum and the Berlin Museum. But our knowledge of this most ancient code of laws was enormously enhanced by the discovery made by the French Exploration Society in Dec. 1901-Jan. 1902 at Susa (Shushan, Esth 1 2, Gk. Persepolis, capital of an old Elamite kingdom, and rival of Babylon) of a block of black diorite about 8 ft. high, containing on one side 16 and on the other 28 columns of -Tvriting, amounting in all to 3654 lines. When deciphered this monument was found to contain the long-lost Code of Hammurabi. At the top there is a fine representation of King Hammurabi receiving his laws from the Sun-god Shamash. The value of this Code of Laws lies in its antiquity. It is the ' oldest (known) code of laws in the world.' It is perhaps a thousand years older than the time of Moses, and the laws themselves must have been in operation long before their codification and promulgation by Hammm-abi. Old as it is, it discloses a very highly advanced state of civilisation. We find a central government with organised local administration. We find professional men, priests, lawyers, and doctors, business men and tradesmen, farmers, brickmakers, builders, carpenters, tailors, merchants, boatmen, as well as a host of slaves. The duties of each class are determined, and fees, wages, rents, and prices are regulated by statute. Over and over again we are impressed by what seems the curiously ' modern ' spirit of many of these ancient regulations. To the student of the Bible this code is particularly interest- ing. Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees, and if the identification of Hammurabi with Amraphel is correct, the ancestor of the Hebrew people in all probability not only knew these laws, but may have found them to some extent in operation in Canaan, where Babylonian influence was preponderating. The Laws of Hammurabi, therefore, may have formed part of the original tradition of the Hebrew race. Already the question of the relationship between the Mosaic legisla- tion and that of this great Oriental ruler, and the possible dependence in parts at least of the former upon the latter, have been much discussed, and given rise to a considerable literature. In the space at our disposal we can only refer to a few of the more interesting features of this ancient code, particularly those to which a parallel may be traced in the Law of Moses. Curiously enough, considering that Baby- lonia is the home of magic and witchcraft, the code opens with two judgments directed against sorcery. ' If a man weave a spell and put a ban upon a man and has not justified himself, he . . shall be put to death.' With this we may compare Ex 22 is. The next section prescribes an ordeal by water. ' If a man have put a spell upon a man and has not justified himself, he upon whom the spell is laid . . shall plunge into the holy river, and if the river overcome him, he who wove the spell shall take his house. If the holy river makes that man to be innocent and has saved him, he who laid the spell upon him shall be put to death.' The same ordeal is prescribed in § 132 in the case of a wife suspected of infidelity, with which should be compared Nu 5 1^ ^. Then follows a long series of offences punishable by death, including the intimidation or bribmg of witnesses, housebreaking, theft, and reset of stolen property, etc. Of these we may cite § 21, ' If a man has broken into a house, one shall kill him before the breach and bury him in it (?)' ; cp. Ex22i-4. § 14, ' If a man has stolen the son of a freeman, he shall be put to death': cp. Ex 2 lie. The same penalty is prescribed against harbouring a runaway slave. An interesting series of sections follows dealing with the duties and rights of officers or constables employed on active service as royal or public messengers, a kind of postal system. The laws relating to agi'iculture are most explicit. The rent of a garden is a tithe of the produce, the crop of the fifth year being divided between the owner and the tenant. § 64 reads, ' If a man has neglected to strengthen his bank of the canal . . and the waters have carried away the meadow, the man in whose bank the breach has been opened shall render back the corn which he has caused to be lost.' In § 57 we find a law similar to that in Ex 22 5, 'If a shepherd has caused the sheep to feed on the green corn . . without the consent of the owner XXSV THE LAWS OF HAMMURABI of the field . . he shall give 20 gar of com per gan to the owner of the field.' In § 112 a law dealing with deposits is laid down similar to that in Ex 22 '''*•, the penalty being in some cases fivefold, in others threefold. § 125 reads, ' If a man has given anything of his on deposit, and where he gave it, either by house- breaking or by rebellion, something of his has been lost along with something of the owner of the house, the owner of the house . . shall make good and render to the owner of the goods, and the owner of the house shall seek out whatever of his is lost and take it from the thief.' § 128f. deal with marriage, divorce, adultery, etc. § 128, 'If a man has married a wife and has not laid down her bonds, that woman is no wife.' A woman taken in adul- tery is to be drowned along with the man : cp. Lv20io Dt2222. Incest is, in general, punishable with death. The law of retaliation and restitution exhibits close analogies to that in Exodus. Thus, ' If a man has caused the loss of a gentleman's (i.e. noble's) eye, his eye one shall cause to be lost.' ' If a man has made the tooth of a man that is his equal to fall out, one shall make his tooth to fall out ' : cp. Ex 2 124-27. Injury in the case of a poor man is compensated with a money payment. Again, ' If a man has struck a man in a quarrel and has caused him a wound, that man shall swear, " I do not strike him knowingly," and shall answer for the doctor ' : cp. Ex 2118,19 'If a man has struck a gentleman's daughter and caused her to miscarry, he shall pay ten shekels of silver. If that woman has died, one shall put to death his daughter ' : cp. Ex 21 22,23. §§ 215-223 prescribe the fees which a doctor is entitled to charge for opera- tions, and the penalties, amounting to the cutting off both hands, in the event of the opera- tion proving fatal. The following are closely analogous to enactments in the Mosaic Law. ' If a builder has built a house for a man and has not made strong his work, and the house he built has fallen and he has caused the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death' : cp. Dt228. If it is the son or slave who has been killed, then the son or slave of the builder is put to death. ' If a wild bull in his charge has gored a man and caused him to die, that case has no remedy. If the ox has pushed a man, by pushing has made known bis vice, and he has not blunted his horn, has not shut up his ox, and that ox has gored a man of gentle birth and caused him to die, he shall pay half a mina of silver. If a gentleman's servant, he shall pay one- third of a mina of silver': cp. Ex21 28-32. ' If a man has caused an ox or sheep which was given him to be lost, ox for ox, sheep for sheep, he shall render to their owner.' ' If in a sheepfold a stroke of God has taken place or a lion has killed, the shepherd shall purge himself before God and the accident to the fold the owner of the fold shall face it ' : with this cp. Ex 22 9-i3. ' If a man has struck his father, his hands one shall cut off ' : cp. Ex 21i'5. Lastly, there maybe cited, as giving an interesting glimpse of the police regula- tions in those early days, § 109, 'If a wine merchant has collected a riotous assembly in her house and has not seized those rioters and driven them to the palace, that wine merchant shall be put to death.' Such are a few examples culled from this most interesting and wonderful code of laws, 4000 years old, and yet in many ways so modern in spirit. To read it is to be im- pressed with a feeling of reverence for this old-world ruler, who with justifiable pride says in the preamble of the code that he ' established law and justice in the land and made happy the human race in those days.' ' In that day I, Hammurabi, the glorious Prince, the Worshipper of my God, decreed justice for the land, for witness, plaintiff, and defendant ; to destroy the wicked tyrant and not to oppose the weak, like unto the Sun-god, I promulgated.' With regard to the relationship existing between this code and the Jaws promulgated by Moses at Sinai, reference may be made to what is said in the Introduction to the book of Exodus, § 2. In the present state of our knowledge it is hazardous to dogmatise. There are resemblances, but there are also differences. The resemblances do not neces- sarily imply direct derivation, for most of the enactments which exhibit them are such as might be promulgated by any lawgiver possessed of a high sense of justice and humanity. On the other hand, when all due allowance has been made for the possibility of suggestions being received from the earlier code, the differences are decided, and numer- ous enough to argue the independence and originality of the Law of Moses. On the whole, it is more merciful than that of Ham- murabi ; it takes less account of the social distinctions between the ' gentleman,' the ' poor man,' and the ' slave ' ; it bases its demands upon the sense of indebtedness and responsibility to the Most High God. It is true, Hammurabi ascribes his legislation to the Sun-god ; and he whom he ' ignorantly worshipped' under this symbol may in reality have been ' the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' In that case, his code of laws is simply another illus- tration of the great truth that God ' in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways ; nevertheless he left not himself with- out witness.' I XXX VI HEATHEN RELIGIONS REFERRED TO IN THE BIBLE Every careful reader of the Bible notices the number and variety of the forms of idolatry with which the Israelites came into contact. Nor was it a mere external contact. Idolatry and the pollutions attendant on it appealed with too much force to something in the people's own character. Nothing short of the great calamity which destroyed their national life in the year 586 B.C. could have rid them entirely of the taint. There has been much diversity of opinion as to the origin of those forms of heathenism which prevailed amongst the races with which the Hebrews were related. Some have found their main root in the worship of dead ances- tors. Others have discerned many tokens of the adoration of animals supposed to be related to the communities which worshipped them. Others, again, have found, most deeply seated of all, the belief in a world of spirits, sug- gested by dreams and uncanny experiences, spirits manifesting their power in nature, dwelling in trees or animals, animating springs and rivers, moving in wind and storm. But the beliefs of each race must be studied sepa- rately, and when this is done more than one cause may perhaps be found to have been at work. Joshua is represented (24 2) as reminding the Israelites that their fathers ' dwelt of old time beyond the River, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor : and they served other gods.' That carries our thoughts to the religion of the land from which Abraham was believed to have emi- grated. And there, in Babylonia, two types of faith and practice may be noted. First, the recognition of an immense number of deities, each with a distinct name and indi- viduality. There is a clay tablet still in existence, inscribed on each side with six columns of writing, each column containing more than one hundred and fifty lines, and on almost every line the name of a deity ! These deities were conceived of as possessing human form and human attributes. The greater of them were exceedingly mighty, but were actuated by the same passions as ordinary men, and performed, on a larger scale, the deeds which a Babylonian would have wished to emulate. They were magnified men. On the other hand, they were impersonations of the forces of nature. To one of them the motions of the sun were ascribed, to another the changes of the moon, to another tempests. Every city had its patron god, and when one city acquired mastery over its rivals their deities had to take a lower rank. The three who stood first were Anu, the god of heaven ; En-lil (afterwards called Bel), god of the earth and of mankind ; Ea, who presided over the abyss of waters. Next came the moon-god. Sin ; the sun-god, Shamash ; Ram- man, god of the atmosphere. The rise of Babylon to supreme power gave to its local deity, Marduk, the headship of the gods. He was then identified with the older Bel, and Nebo, the god of Borsippa, became his minister because Borsippa sank into a kind of suburb of the capital (Isa46i). With the exception of Ishtar the Babylonian goddesses were utterly devoid of importance. She presided over love, magic, and battle. At Erech, where her principal shrine was situated, she was served by a community of unmarried priest- esses, who sacrificed their chastity for her glory. Originally Ishtar was the goddess of the morn- ing and the evening star. In this connexion we may notice the worship offered to the heavenly bodies. This spread from Babylonia westwards. ' The chariots of the sun,' 2 K 23 ii, remind us of the chariot of the sun, to which sacrifices were brought, at Sippara in Baby- lonia : see also 2K23S EzkSie. The other, gloomier strain in the religion of Babylon was probably derived from an older stratum of the population. It came from the belief in a vast world of spirits, unnamed and unidentifiable, mostly hostile to man and easily provoked by unwitting offences. These demons were hideous in shape and features. An ill-omened word was sufficient to bring down their wrath. Charms and incantations were needed to avert or remove their displeasure. Hence the majority of the clay tablets from the buried libraries of Babylonia, so far as they have hitherto been read, are covered with formulas of in- cantation. The populace was deeply impressed by this darker side of their religion, and must therefore have been made very gloomy and un- happy by it. And there is much in the history of religion amongst the Hebrews to remind us of these superstitions. The teraphim were images representing dead ancestors, from whom counsel was sought (R V of Gn 3 1 19. 34 1 S 1 9 13, i6 Ezk212i ; in all which passages AV has the inadequate word ' images '). The ephod (cer- tainly an image at JgS^ef.) was consulted as an oracle (1 S 14 is RM, 239 307). The necro- XXX Vll HEATHEN RELIGIONS REFERRED TO IN THE BIBLE mancers plied their unholy trade of raising the dead (DtlSH IS 28 7 Isagi^^'f-)- The wizards and sorcerers found many dupes (Lv 1931 206 2K216 2324). As a whole the religion of Assyria closely resembled its parent in Babylonia. But there was a strong tendency to concentrate faith and devotion on the one god Asshur, who represented the State, who is glorified by the kings in terms which a Hebrew might have applied to Jehovah, whose predominant qualities, however, are martial ones, for he is praised above all else for the victories he gives to the king, his son and servant. The student of Egyptian religion finds it composed of three tangled threads which are so closely and so confusedly interlaced that it is most difficult to separate them, and impos- sible to keep them apart. The highest element is that connected with the name of Osiris, who appears to have been originally a deified human king. He was the god of the other world and of the resurrection. The require- ments for admission to that happy world were such as a Christian moralist would have no hesitation in subscribing to. But their efi'ect was sadly marred by the value ascribed to amulets, spells, words. And the inveterate habit of deifying the Pharaoh involved a pain- ful servility which lowered and degraded every subject. The letters written to him from governors of distant cities begin after this fashion : ' To the king, my lord, my god, my sun, the sun who cometh from the heavens . . I fall down before the feet of the king my lord seven times and twice seven times, back and breast.' Secondly, there was the adoration of the sun-god Ra, which, so far as the official cult was concerned, swallowed up the rest ; all the other deities coming to be regarded as forms and manifestations of him. This has led some modern scholars to write as though the Egyptians believed firmly and always in One Almighty God. But there was a vagueness about the belief which rendered it quite unlike what we mean when we speak of the unity of God, a changefulness, a phantasmagoric char- acter which must have made it hard to grasp the truth. On the whole, it chiefly meant the adoration of the forces of nature. Attention was called to the lower, not the highest, in God. The power displayed in the universe, even if it be almighty, is not so high a thing as righteousness and love. Thirdly, origin- ating no doubt in the least cultivated stra- tum of the population, but adopted perforce by the priests, there was the deification of animals — cats, lions, bulls, jackals, crocodiles, and the rest. The educated may have looked on these as symbols of the deity: to the un- learned they were actually divine. It seems most probable that Aaron's golden calf (Ex 32i"6) and the two set up by Jeroboam (IK 1228,29) -were not suggested by the worship of the bull Apis at Memphis, orMnevis atHeliopo- lis. To many primitive peoples the bull has been an apt emblem of creative power : Aaron and Jeroboam intended that Jehovah should be worshipped by means of this image. In later days, however, when the Hebrews were anxious to gather materials for their religion from every quarter, Egypt contributed the forms ' of creeping things und abominable beasts ' which Ezekiel in his vision saw portrayed on the walls of the Temple (EzkSiO). Every Phoenician town had its divine lord, who was in many cases called Baal, which means owner, possessor. Thus there are in- scriptions bearing the names Baal of Tyre, Baal of Sidon, Baal of Tarsus, Baal of Lebanon, Baal of Heaven. There are also such desig- nations as Eshmun, Tanith (goddess of Car- thage), Melkarth (of Tyre). The sun, certain springs, rivers, mountains, and trees were held sacred. Sacrifices were offered on elevated spots — the ' high places ' of the Bible — as being nearer heaven. Two foul enormities were perpetrated. First, the sacrifice of children. The image of El at Carthage (the most famous of Phoenician colonies) was of metal, and was heated inside : the child placed in its arms rolled into the flames below. In days of gloom and fanaticism the Hebrews were only too ready to make the same dread sacrifice (Dt " 1 2 31 2 K 1 6 3 23 10 Jer 1 9 s Mic 6 7). More loath- I some still was the sacrifice of honour. Refer- ence has already been made to the licentious- ness practised at Erech in Babylonia. The goddess of that place, Ishtar, was welcomed by the Phoenicians under the name Ashtoreth. She was the chief deity of Sidon (IK 11 5.33 2 K 23 13), and was regarded as the patroness of sexual passion. The ceremonial weeping for Adonis, which is one of the outstanding features of Phoenician worship, came from the same source, and resembled it in character. In Babylonia, Tammuz (the god of spring vegetation, slain by the fierce sun of summer) was mourned by Ishtar. In Phoenicia, Adonis, the husband of Ashtoreth, killed by the wild boar's tusk, was annually lamented. All the women of the town of Byblus went in a mad procession to Aphaka in the Lebanon, where rites of so shameful a nature were celebrated that Constantine the Great eventually abolished them by force. Similar unholy customs found a footing in Israel. The women wept for Tam- muz (Ezk 8 1* Zech 12 H). See also IK 1424 1512 2K237 Gn 3821.22 RM, Hos4i4, etc. Dt 23 1". 18 shows how deeply such practices were resented by the representatives of a better faith. In Canaan itself the conditions closely re- sembled those in Phoenicia. The local gods XXXVlll HEATHEN RELIGIONS REFERRED TO IN THE BIBLE were entitled Baalim, Baals of the several towns and districts ; each of them credited with the fertility of his own domain (Hos 2 ^-S). There were also many Ashtoreths (IK 7"* Jg 213 106). High places abounded, and the He- brew immigrants succumbed to the fatal fas- cination which hung around them. At the high place, near the altar, stood an asherah — wrongly translated 'grove' in our AV, — a sacred post, fixed in the gi-ound to represent the tree which in eai'lier times had been be- lieved to be animated by the life of the Deity. There was also a mazzebah, or pillar, wrongly translated 'image' in such passages as DtlG-^ Hos 3 4 101.2. At first the pillar would be a natural stone (Gn 28 ^^> 22), in which the divine being was supposed to dwell. Afterwards it was shaped into the form of an obelisk. A still later development of the mazzebah, de- rived from Phoenicia and connected with sun- worship, is the sun-pillar of Isal?^ 27^ 2Ch 142, etc. Grave immoralities were common at the high places (Hos 4 ^^ Am 2 <"). Little is known about the religions of Syria on the one hand, or the smaller nations by which Israel was surrounded on the other. The Syrians of Damascus^recognised Hadad as their greatest god. He seems to have been considered a sun-god, but was frequently iden- tified with Ramman, the god of the atmo- sphere, whom the Assyrians greatly venerated. Besides him were Shamas, El, Resheph (god of fire), Rekeb-el, etc. The main object of worship to the Moabites was Chemosh, and it would appear from 2K327 that he was thought to be most surely moved by human sacrifices. On the Moabite Stone, which con- tains an inscription of Mesha (2K3'i''5), a contemporary of Ahab, Ishtar-Chemosh, as well as Chemosh, is mentioned. This points to an identification of the two, and although Chemosh was a male deity there was nothing to prevent the identification, seeing that in Babylonia itself Ishtar was sometimes re- garded as of both sexes, and in Arabia was masculine — so shifting and uncertain were these shadowy products of the imagination ! The Ammonites served Milcom, which is but another form of the word for ' king,' or of the name Molech which meets us so often in the Old Testament. But we are not warranted in asserting that the children burnt in the valley of Hinnom (2K23i'^) were immolated to the Ammonite god : in v. 13 he is a distinct being ; in v. 10 Molech is a name for Jehovah. Yet the strong expression, ' Milcom the abomi- nation of the children of Ammon,' indicates that there were most objectionable details in the ritual of his worship. The Edomite deities of whom we read bear foreign names. Hadad came from Syria, A from the farther East. Dagon was supreme in Philistia. He was the god of agriculture, and also gave his people victory over their enemies (Jgl623, etc.). At Ekron Baal-zebub (lord of flies) was revered and consulted (2 K 1 2, 3) ; -why this title was given him remains uncertain. Ashtoreth also had a temple in one of the Philistine cities (IS 31 10). This is not the place for discussing the voluminous subject of the Greek and Roman religions. When Israel first felt the impact of the former, it had become a mixed pro- duct, imbued with many elements drawn from Oriental sources. Antiochus IV, the Greek monarch of Syria, attempted to force it on the Jews (1G8 B.C.). No wonder that they rose in revolt. The Temple at Jerusalem ' was filled with riot and revellings by the heathen, who dallied with harlots within the sacred precincts ' (2Mac6'*). Again, at a later period, when we come across the name of a Greek goddess, Artemis, or, as our Bible calls her, Diana of the Ephesians (Ac 19 28), she is Oriental rather than Greek in character. Her image, with its numerous breasts, symbolises the sustaining and reproductive forces of Nature : her worship is defiled by wild and immoral orgies. At Daphne, too, near Antioch in Syria, where the Greek god Apollo was honoured and oracles from him were sought, ' all that was beautiful in nature and in art had created a sanctuary for a per- petual festival of vice.' It is not a Christian, but one of the worthiest of the heathens who, in the fourth century of our era, writes con- cerning the great annual festival at Antioch, that it ' consists only of the perpetration of all that is impure and shameless and the renunciation of every lingering spark of decency.' It is hardly too much to say that when the Jews came under the yoke of Rome the reli- gion of Rome might be summed up as being the worship of the Roman State. The city was deified, so was the emperor. And so it was that all the munificent charities of Herod the Great towards his subjects could not atone in their eyes for the insult he offered to their religion by building at Csesarea a temple to Rome and another to Augustus. Thousands of Jews were ready to die rather than acquiesce in Pilate's placing the standards of the legions with the image of the emperor on them in the Holy City. They knew that the soldiers worshipped those images. The distinctive feature in the religion of their rulers was worship of self, reverence for power, a consecration of hiunan pride. The unpopularity of the Jew in and about the Christian era was largely due to the un- compromising intolerance with which he bore himself towards the faiths and rituals of his neighbours. This had been aroused in him xxxix HEATHEN RELIGIONS REFERRED TO IN THE BIBLE by the sad lessons of experience and the teachings of his sacred books. It may be that a modern reader sometimes wonders whether the lawgivers and prophets of the Old Testa- ment are not too bitterly contemptuous or too fiercely severe in their language concerning idolatry. But it is to be remembered that they were engaged in a life and death struggle. If Monotheism, the faith in One Only God, had not made unyielding resistance, it would have been submerged in the floods of ' gods many and lords many.' Then the soul of man would have known no settled peace. There is no security for him who has propi- tiated one god, but with whom another per- chance is angry. Think of the confusion and uncertainty implied in the Babylonian's prayer : ' May the god whom I know not be appeased ! May the goddess whom I know not be appeased ! May both the god I know and the god 1 know not be appeased ! ' And confusion An intelligent universe cannot coexist with a belief that the universe has been made and sustained by a plurality of independent powers. The uni- formity of Natm-e depends on the unity of God. The adoration of the forces of Nature which underlies so much ancient idolatry also distracts attention from the highest elements of the intellect also follows, grasp of the order of the in the Nature of God. The best we can learn of Him is that He is a living Person, holy, just, and good. And, as we have sufficiently seen, the worship in question led directly to licentiousness. If pictorial representations of the reproductive forces of Nature were constantly depicted on the walls of heathen temples ; if the Higher Beings were unchaste ; if impurity was part of their service, what chance was there for morality ? Rightly does the Wisdom of Solomon assert (14^7) ; ' For the worship of those nameless idols Is a beginning and cause and end of every evil.' Again, when a man — king or emperor, king of Babylon or Assyria, Pharaoh of Egypt, AntiocEus Theos (God) of Syria, or the irre- sponsible ruler of B,ome — is held as divine, and temples are dedicated to his honour when dead, or even whilst still alive, this is an im- pregnable barrier to liberty and progress. The religion of the Old Testament has conferred an inestimable boon on humanity by insisting on the unity and unapproachable majesty of Him before whom all mankind are equal, and by repudiating in His name all that is impure and cruel. The religion of the New Testament has softened down all harsher features and satisfied all legitimate cravings for One higher than man, yet in closest touch with him, by its revelation of the God-Man, the Mediator, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. INTRODUCTION TO HEBREW PROPHECY I. Place of the Prophetic Books in the Canon. The second, or prophetic, division of the Jewish Canon of the Old Testament com- prises the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings (' the Earlier Pro- phets '), as well as the more strictly prophetic books (' the Later Prophets '). The second of these groups forms the special subject of this Introduction, in the course of which, however, it will appear why the historical books above mentioned were also placed in tte prophetic portion of the Canon. The ' Later Prophets ' include Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the book of the Twelve Prophets. The last- named collection consists of the books from Hosea to Malachi, which, on account of their comparative brevity, are generally known as the ' Minor Prophets.' Daniel is not among the prophetic books, but belongs to the third division of the Canon. , 2. Early History of Prophecy. The pro- phetic books of the Old Testament may all be placed in the period between the middle of the eighth and the end of the fifth cen- tury B.C. But prophecy in Israel dated from much earlier times. The prophetic gift is ascribed to Moses (Dt34io Hosl2i3), to Miriam (Ex 15 20), to Deborah (Jg44), and to Samuel (IS 3 20). From the time of Samuel onwards there was a succession of prophets, like Nathan, Gad, Ahijah the Shilonite, She- maiah, Jehu the son of Hanani, etc., who appeared as the counsellors and monitors of David and the subsequent kings. In the beginning of the eighth century Micaiah, Elijah, and Elisha played a prominent part as prophets, though they have left no books bearing their names. In early times the prophet was called a 'seer,' and was consulted in times of perplexity, even upon matters of practical interest, receiving a present in re- turn for his services (IS 9 ''■9). In those days we find also companies of prophets, who were the subjects of a sort of ecstasy, which appears to have been contagious (IS 10 10-12 191S-24). It would seem that Samuel organised these enthusiasts, placing himself at their head, and making Naioth in Ramah their centre. In later times there was a prophetic guild, known as ' the sons of the prophets,' with branches in various places, such as Bethel and Jericho (2 K 2 2> 3, 15)_ The canonical prophets, however, had little direct connexion with these profes- sional communities, which became in the end the nurseries of false prophecy. Amos in xli particular affirms his independence of them (Am 7 1-1). The ' seer ' of early Israel performed func- tions somewhat akin to those of the sooth- sayers of other nations. Divination, however, and all allied practices were sternly discouraged by Jehovah's revelation of Himself to Israel; and as time went on the work of the true prophets became more and more ethical and spiritual. There were prophets of heathen gods, who worked themselves into frenzy by various physical means (IK 18 19-29), and there were also false prophets who claimed to speak in the name of Jehovah. But though pro- phecy in its beginnings had elements found also in the superstitious institutions of Israel's neighbours, and though even in later times it had its heathen parallels and its native counter- feits, yet in its genuine and fully developed form it was a unique phenomenon, and a channel of the loftiest and most direct divine revelation. 3, Arrangement of the Prophetic Books. These books are not placed in our Bibles according to their order of time. The three longer books come before the twelve shorter ones, and even the latter do not form a strictly historical series. Further, the books of Isaiah and Zechariah each contain the work of more than one author, and belong to more than one period. The table on the following page indicates how the canonical prophets may be historically grouped. The books of Joel and Obadiah are of un- certain date. Some place them among the earliest prophets, and others after the exile. The same is true of Zech 9-14. The prophet Jonah lived in the eighth century B.C. (2 K 14 25), but the book which bears his name is now regarded as post-exilic. 4. The Prophet's Inspiration and Work. The popular definition of a prophet is 'one who predicts the future.' This was the con- ception which heathen nations had of their inspired oracles, and it has very largely pre- vailed in the Christian Church regarding the Old Testament prophets. But such a view is narrow and misleading. The prophet is 'one who speaks for God ' — a forth-teller rather than a mere /ore-teller. This is seen from Ex 71, where Aaron's relation to Moses as his spokesman is compared with the prophet's relation to God. The prophets were men who claimed to have received from Jehovah the truths which they spoke in His name. The INTRODUCTION TO HEBREW PROPHECY Period. Israel. JUDAH. Century. Assyrian Amos, circ. 760-750 B.C. Hosea, circ. 750-737 Isaiah, circ. 740-700 B.C. Micah, circ. 724 and onwards Zephaniah, circ. 627 Nahum, circ. 610-608 Eighth Seventh Chaldean T T 1 S Habakkuk, circ. 605-600 In Jerusalem j Jeremiah, circ. 626-586 .J- -p , , i Ezekiel, circ. 593-573 in ±5abylon -j j^^j^j^ 13-U, 34, 35, 40-66, circ. 540 Sixth Persian Zechariah. 1-8 4 Malachi, circ. 460-450 Fifth bestowal of their prophetic gift is described in the phi-ase ' The word of Jehovah came.' The standing formula with which they prefaced their messages was, ' Thus saith Jehovah.' The prophet's inspiration was the process by which the truth was brought home to him by the Divine Spirit. Though inscrutable by us it was an undoubted reality to his consciousness. God's word to him was distinct from his own thoughts and desires (Jerl4, 15), as well as from the illusions of dreams (Jer2328). It came with a self- attesting and irresistible power (Jer2329'30 Am 38). It compelled the prophet to utter it in spite of all natural hesitation and fear (Jer209). The divine message might be presented in visionary form (Isa6 Ezk); or suggested by some sight of everyday life (JerlS^.e); or by some special circumstance to which God's inspiration gave a new meaning (Jer328). • It might be uttered in plain words, or in parables, or in symbolic actions, but in every case it was a declaration made in God's name. The work of the prophets was threefold. (1) They were first of all, and chiefly, preachers to their contemporaries. They ad- dressed themselves to the political, social, and religious conditions among which they lived. A great part of their writings, which is unintel- ligible without a knowledge of these conditions, becomes in the light of this knowledge full of living interest and meaning. Each book, and each prophecy, must be placed in its historical setting. This may be done by the aid of the historical books of Scripture, taken along with the allusions to dates and events which the pro- phecies contain, and with the internal evidence they furnish as to the state of things they have in view. The prophetic books often sup- plement the historical ones, so that a complete picture of the state of Israel at any period can be got only by combining the particulars obtained from the two sources of information. When their writings are read in this way the prophets appear in their true light as preachers of righteousness, whether as political counsel- lors, or as advocates of social or religious ■ reform. (2) They were also interpreters of the past. They reviewed the earlier history of Israel, and showed the divine meaning which their countrymen were slow to discern in it. Thus Jeremiah drew a moral from the desolation of Shiloh (Jer7i"'^-i5), and Ezekiel repeatedly told the story of Israel's past rebelliousness, and of God's patient love (Ezk 16, 20). This prophetic interpretation of the past was neces- sary, because the popular one was often greatly at variance with it. Thus in Jer44 the pro- phet traces the fall of Jerusalem to Israel's idolatry (vv. 2-6), while the people ascribe their troubles to their discontinuance of the worship of the queen of heaven (v. 18). The great lesson which the prophets drew from the history of Israel was the connexion between sin and calamity on the one hand, and between obedience and prosperity on the other. And as the historical books of the Old Testament emphasise the same truth above everything else they are simply an expansion of this side of the prophets' work. They were written from the point of view of the prophet rather than from that of the mere historian. The title ' the Earlier Prophets,' which has been given to some of them, expresses their true character. (3) The prophets were, lastly, predictors of the future. While this has often been wrongly regarded as their sole function, it was a real, though subordinate, element of their work. Prophetic prediction was of two kinds. (ci ) Some predictions were definite, and related xlii INTRODUCTION TO HEBREW PROPHECY to the near future. Thus, when the Assyrian power appeared in Western Asia, Amos and Hosea foretold that it would be the instrument of Israel's downfall. When Sennacherib's in- vasion of Judah took place, Isaiah predicted that king and people would be brought into great peril through their trust in earthly alli- ances, but that in the end they would be humbled, would seek God's help, and would obtain deliverance. When Nebuchadrezzar be- sieged Jerusalem, both Jeremiah and Ezekiel announced that the capture of the city was inevitable, and that the exile, though certain, would only last for a limited time. When Cyrus had begun his career of victory, the author of Isa 40-46 foretold that he would conquer Babylon, and would deliver the Jews from captivity. Such predictions related to persons already alive, to nations already exist- ing, to the issues of movements already in pro- gress. They cannot be explained as triumphs of mere human foresight and sagacity, and must be traced to the prophets' divine inspira- tion. At the same time they were not wholly unintelligible and miraculous revelations of isolated future events. They were the infer- ences which the prophets were enabled to draw from the great truths about God's character and God's purpose with Israel which had been revealed to them. The essence of the prophets' inspiration lay in their grasp of these princi- ples, and in their power of applying them to the situations in which they lived. In the view of New Testament writers, some definite predictions of the prophets extended much further than has been indicated, and in- cluded references to particular events of the remote future. Thus Hos 111, which jg pj-j, marily a description of the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage, is interpreted as a prediction of our Lord's flight into Egypt (Mt2 1^). JerSl i^, which is primarily a pictvire of the grief of Rachel (viewed as the ancestral mother of Israel) at the departure of the exiles from Ramah (see Jer40i), is regarded as a prediction of the massacre at Bethlehem (Mt 2 IS). And Mic 5 '^ foretells, not only the coming of a ruler of David's line who will deliver Judah from the Assyrians (see vv. 5, 6), but the birth of Christ at Bethlehem (Mt26). It is scarcely to be thought that these secondary fulfilments of their utterances were actually present to the minds of the prophets : still the suggestiveness, and even the legitimacy, of interpreting their prophecies in this way — as foreshadowings of events in the life of our Lord — can hardly be denied without incurring the danger of setting arbitrary limits to the free working of the Spirit of God. (b) Other predictions were of a more general kind, and had to wait for their fulfilment till a more distant future. In them the prophets presented their inspired ideals of a perfect king (Isa 1 1 i-io 32 1-'^), of a nation penitent and forgiven, united and restored (Ezk36, 37), of a righteous Servant of the Lord first sufi'ering and then triumphant (Isa 53), of a divine Shep- , herd (Ezk34), of a world-wide kingdom of God (Isa 60 Mic4i-7), of a new and spiritual relationship between God and His people (Jer 313i-34)_ Such prophecies are usually termed ' Messianic,' because they point forward to Jesus Christ; and to the religious conditions of New Testament times. In our Lord's day the expectation of a great deliverer, known as the Messiah (or the Christ), was current among the Jews, and was undoubt- edly based on Old Testament prophecy. It is true that none of the prophets applied the term Messiah to a single distinct figure in the future. This was rather done by Jewish writers in the period between the Old and the' New Testament. But the ideals of the prophets furnished the basis of the conception of the Messiah, which was adopted by our Lord as true, and which, according to His own teach- ing, was realised in Himself and His work (Mt 1 1 2-0 Lk 4 17-21 jn 4 25, 2(5). The argument from prophecy in defence of the truth of Christianity has lost none of its value, though it can no longer be stated in the terms which were formerly used. Its force depends not on isolated predictions of single occurrences in the far future, but on the many converging lines of spiritual anticipation along which the prophets gazed into the coming time, and which all meet in Jesus Christ. 5. The False Prophets. The nature of true prophecy receives additional illustration when it is compared with the spurious form of pro- phecy which accompanied it like a shadow. The professional prophets appear to have largely degenerated into this 'false' class. Their peculiar garb became a symbol of decep- tion, and their self -mutilations made them ob- jects of suspicion (Zechl34.6). The phrase, ' the burden of the Lord,' was on their lips conventional and misleading (Jer 23 33-40). The false prophets spoke in the name of Jehovah, but without any real inspiration from Him (Jer 23 21 Ezkl3'^''). In some cases they may have been conscious impostors, or deliberate time-servers, but in most cases they were prob- ably sincere in believing their own words. Yet their messages were often in direct contradic- tion to those of the real prophets. Thus Ahab's prophets foretold the success of his expedition against Ramoth-gilead (IK 220). Hananiah foretold the speedy return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon (Jer 28 1-^). Pro- phets in Babylon said the same thing (Jer 29 s> 9 Ezkl3i0). How, it may be asked, were the people to distinguish between the false pro- phets and the true ? Various tests are indi- xliii INTRODUCTION TO HEBREW PROPHECY cated in Scripture. When predictions were in question, the simplest test was that of fulfil- ment (Dt 18 21. 22)^ but this could not be applied until the fulfilment had taken place. A deeper principle is suggested in Jer28S'^. True pro- phets, as a rule, had messages of warning to deliver. One who foretold peace was therefore to be regarded with suspicion, and was not to be believed until the event justified his pre- diction. Thus the nature of the message was to be taken into account in judging of its truth. This principle is further developed in Jer2322. The true prophet is the man who denounces sin, and seeks to turn men away from it. The conflict between the false pro- phets and the true really arose from the dif- ferent conceptions which they had about God's character and His relation to Israel. The false prophets held that He was a purely national G-od, and so was bound to protect and favour His people in all circumstances ; while the true prophets knew Him as the one living God, ruling the whole world in righteousness, who had chosen Israel to be a righteous nation, and could not but punish them if they fell into sin (Am.3i'2). 6. Interpretation and Fulfilment of Prophecy. Though the test of fulfilment could not always be applied to a prophet's predictions by his contemporaries, it can be applied by us, and we can see that in a great many cases, and, indeed, on the whole, the words of the prophets about the future have come true. Yet there are some predictions which have not been, and cannot now be, literally ful- filled, and there are certain principles of inter- pretation which have a special bearing upon these, and which also hold good of the prophetic writings in general. (1) The language of the prophets is often poetic and figurative. The picture of the transformation of nature, for example, in Isa 1 1 ^-^, is an imaginative description of universal peace, and is not to be understood in a literal sense. The same thing is true of a great many other passages. (2) The predictions of the prophets were conditional. They were made to enforce the appeal for righteousness in the present. They foretold the consequences of sin on the one hand, and of righteousness on the other. Judgments might be averted by repentance. Blessings might be forfeited by disobedience. This principle is clearly laid down in Jer 18 '''■1'^, and is of universal application. The 'if is implied even when it is not expressed. Thus Jonah's prediction that Nineveh would be destroyed in forty days was not fulfilled, yet Jonah was not a false prophet, because the threat was only made on the supposition that Nineveh remained impenitent. Such predictions, it has been said, were made not that they might, but that they might not, be fulfilled. (3) The prophets' view of the future was limited by the circumstances of their own time. As Perowne justly remarks, ' Prophecy never seems wholly to forsake the ground of history. However extended the vista which stretches before him, that vista begins at the prophet's feet. The present is his home and starting-point, though he may make " all ages " his own.' Hence the prophets conceived of God's kingdom as continuing under the national form in which they knew it. Their descriptions of the future are often expressed in terms of a state of things which was destined to change and pass away. Thus Micah speaks of Jerusalem as the centre of God's kingdom i of Peace (41' 2). Ezekiel conceives the future ] divine kingdom as a restored Israel, with its Temple and sacrifices (chs. 40-48), and of its enemies as the same nations that have vexed Judah in the past (28 25, 26^. Even Jeremiah's new covenant is to be made with the House of Israel and the House of Judah (31^1). Much that was literal in the minds of the prophets themselves can therefore be only figurative for us. The permanent spiritual meaning has to be separated from the transient external form in which it is expressed. (4) It follows from this that the prophets' view of the future often takes no note of what may be called historical perspective. That is to say, their view of the future king- dom of God is so vividly present to their mind that any intervening stretch of time is disregarded. For all of them the Golden Age lies just beyond the horizon of their own times. Isaiah's pictures of it are attached to his predictions of deliverance from Assyria. Ezekiel and the author of Isa 40-66 represent it as following the return from Babylon. Messianic prophecy of an ideal kind is con- stantly combined with more definite predictions regarding the near future. Thus the King whom Isaiah describes as Immanuel is one who is to appear in the prophet's own time, to share the hardships of the Assyrian invasion, j and finally to conquer the oppressor ; but he * is spoken of in exalted language, which was not applicable to any king of Judah, and has only been truly realised in Jesus Chi'ist. See also art. ' Messianic Hope.' xliv THE MESSIANIC HOPE Strictly speaking the Messianic hope is Israel's expectation of a Messiah, the confident assurance of men of faith, inspired in them by the prophets, that a king and deliverer of the line of David would be sent by G-od to save them from their oppressors, to roll back the overwhelming tide of calamities that had swept over the nation, and to usher in an era of peace and prosperity such as the world had never seen before. But in a wider application of the term we may take it to indicate the be- lief in future divine deliverance and blessed- ness apart from the specific kingly idea. The whole subject is vague and various in its earlier appearances. The hope takes first one form, then another. While one school of religious teachers — that of the prophets — cherishes it, another school, consisting of the authors of the Wisdom literature, ignores it. But then this school has its ideal in the conception of wisdom, not itself a Messianic idea, but a thought which Christians have seen to be real- ised and consummated in Jesus Christ quite as much as that of the kingly deliverer. To put the case another way, our Lord gathers up into Himself a number of scattered hopes and ideas of Israel, fulfilling them all in His own way, which if it is not always the way ex- pected by the earlier dreamers, differs from that only by being more complete, more per- fect, more lofty. With this general notion of the whole sub- marauding neighbour-tribes, it extended its boundaries, and seemed to promise to become a great world-empire. For a time men's eyes were dazzled by the glamour of this secular imperialism. But before long they were un- deceived. Solomon's reign was even more magnificent than his father's. But it proved to be costly and burdensome. The issue was, that under his ill-advised and obstinate son there was a fatal revolt, and the Israelites be- came two nations. The subsequent history of these two kingdoms is of the usual mixed character. Some kings were good and great ; others were bad and mischievous. By the time of Isaiah people had come to look back on the golden glory of a splendid past, mag- nified by the sentiment of antiquity. The ideal David was now a much greater personage than the real David had been. The dreadful crimes with which the national hero had stained his career were forgotten. Only his successful achievements were remembered. Then there appeared the hope that a second David would come, and do for the later age what the founder of the kingly line had done in his day. Since Assyria was a more powerful and menacing foe than Philistia had been, a greater David would be needed to overthrow the Assyrians than the warrior king who had mastered the Philistines. At this stage the prophets came to the aid of the nation with inspired utterances that met the ject we shall be prepared to map out its dis- popular need, but elevated the popular hope tinct branches, and trace the development till the scattered rays of the earlier revelation are drawn together and focussed in the Gospel history. In the first place, we have a sacred character in the early Israelite kingship. This is brought out very vividly by the primitive account of Samuel's anointing of Saul (1S91*5). Here we see the king chosen by God, to be anointed by God's prophet in sign of the divine ap- pointment, and so commissioned to deliver the nation from its enemies. Thus the throne was established with high hopes. But those hopes were doomed to a speedy disappoint- ment. Saul went his own way, and Samuel in anger told him that God had rejected him. Then the same process was repeated in the selection and anointing of David, and with happier results. The second king of Israel, from being first a great warrior, became also in course of time a great monarch. The nation was not only saved from the ravages of petty above its merely political outlook. Isaiah cried, ' And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit : and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord ; and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord,' etc. (Isalli-^). This gi-eat oracle is the earliest clearly expressed, defi- nite prophecy of the Messiah as the Son of David. Hints and suggestions of coming de- liverance have appeared earlier, and mystic thoughts have gathered about promising sove- reigns ; but now at length we have the distinct promise of a Second David. The religious value of this prophecy is seen in its elaborate portraiture of the moral and spiritual cha- racter of the Messiah. He is more than a conquering ruler. He is the righteous ruler, just, merciful, pacific, because he is possessed by the fear of the Lord. xlv THE MESSIANIC HOPE Now in the light of this great utterance, which is the key to the Messianic ideas of Israel, we can go back to two earlier obscure oracles. The first is in Isa 7, where we read of the promised birth of Immanuel. The difficulty about this passage is that it is deeply embedded in contemporary history ; it plainly indicates a near approaching birth. Some have thought the reference is to a coming son of Isaiah himself, some to a young prince to be born in the palace. But when we go on to the second of these earlier oracles we find the mysterious child acclaimed with the most magnificent titles as, ' Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace' (Isa 9 6). These are the greatest things said of the Messiah anywhere in the Old Testa- ment. Can they be applied to a child of Isaiah's day ? Yet the oracle of c. 9 seems to refer back to that of c. 7, which is plainly contemporary. The solution of the difficulty that here emerges will be found in an explanation of an important feature of Messianic prophecy. We have to distinguish between its ideas and the local, temporal, personal application of them. The prophets were inspired to per- ceive the ideas which shone out on them as luminous stars in the firmament. But it was not given them to know ' the times and the seasons.' Even our Lord confessed that He did not know the divinely appointed day or hour of His Second Advent. Much less is it to be supposed that Old Testament prophets were endowed with an exactness of foresight in this matter that was denied to the Son of Man Himself. Accordingly, it should be no surprise to us that they looked for the Deliverer much earlier than He appeared. Being men of large enthusiasm, some of them were ready to hail one young promising prince or another as the very man in whom God's rich promises, that they saw so clearly and believed in so truly, were to be fulfilled. In this way Isaiah may have dreamed that the child to be born in the Syrian crisis, described in c. 7, would possess all the high qualities named in c. 9, and therefore appear as the victorious and pacific ruler portrayed in c. 11. History did not verify the dream. God was educating His people, even His prophets, through the illusions due to their own limited vision. But there was no illusion in the ideas of the prophecy ; the illusion was confined to their historical setting and personal embodi- ment. Here we come to the wonderful vitality of the Messianic hope. Disappointment did not kill it, did not even permanently damp its ardour. Yarious persons were supposed to realise the idea — Hezekiah, Zerubbabel, even the pagan Cyrus, and later the patriot Judas xlvi Maccabseus. They all did some good things in accordance with it. But the idea was too great for any of them. So it had to be con- fessed in the end with every case that the expectation had been disappointed. Still it survived ; it moved on ; it hovered above the prophets and the people — a divine idea, trying patience by its tardy tarrying, still firing hope by its invincible vitality. It is in view of this remarkable combina- tion of faith and disappointment that we must view many of the passages of Scripture that are commonly reckoned Messianic, although they are not prophetic in form. For instance, the second Psalm has been assigned by scholars to various personages — David, Solomon, Jeho- shaphat, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Alexander Jannaeus. Its glorious divine kingship was never fully realised by any of these men. Yet we cannot set it down to the adulation of a courtier. This is not the language of flattery ; it is an utter- ance of faith. The Psalmist is not merely trying to express exuberant loyalty. Trusting in God he sees clearly that what he here portrays must be accomplished in the person of God's true king. When he describes the king as God's Son, he has not attained to a vision of the mystery that St. Paul and St. John perceived in the incarnate Christ, but he is carried forward on luminous clouds of hope that will some day descend in the blessings of the definite Christian revelation. Similarly, Psalm 72 has been applied to Solomon, to Hezekiah, to others. It is fully true of none of them. These great kings partially realised its ideas, but the full realisation awaited a Christ who was never seen till Jesus was born. Sometimes what perhaps we may call the Messianic hope shrinks to little more than an assurance of an unending line of kings in the family of David. Psalm 89 seems to be written in this spirit. Even here it is remark- able that the hope clinging to the stock of David should be so persistent and confident. On the other hand, there is a large class of pro- phecies that have no connexion with the idea of a personal Messiah, but still predict redemp- tion and deliverance. Some of these pro- phecies centre in ' the day of the Lord.' Here it is God Himself who is the Deliverer. There seems to be no room for any human agent, nor does he seem to be needed. A prince of the House of David, vho vas no more than this, could not accomplish all that was needed. The evils of the times were too vast and the hopes of the golden age of the future too brilliant for any man, even the gi-eatest king, though chosen and anointed by God, to master or achieve. The Jews had been dis- illusioned with regard to the confidence they had placed in the throne of David. It had cost them much, and it had not secured them THE MESSIANIC HOPE the boons they had been promised with it. Accordingly, they turned from it in weariness and despair, till their hopes were kindled in another quarter. God and God alone was to be the Redeemer of Israel. This is the domi- nant note of the second Isaiah, during the captivity when human help had proved a dis- appointment. Then we read, ' Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel ; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel ' (Isa41 1^ RV). The idea of the day of the Lord is much earlier than this. Amos warns of God's coming to judgment ; Zephaniah sees a day of God's vengeance. The common thought is that the enemies of Israel will be smitten, and God's people rescued and exalted. That is the most elementary idea of redemption. But a deeper note is frequently struck by the prophets. The judg- ment is on Israel ; God's own people will be sifted and tried ; only a remnant will be spared. Then the great hope of the future goes on with the remnant. These two ideas— the idea of David's glorious son, and the idea of God's direct interference and rectification of affairs — are never united in the Old Testament, lliey are two broken lights that await their combination in the full- orbed Christian revelation. Three other important ideas that were not reckoned at the time to be Messianic may here be noted. The first is the conception of the prophet of the future (Dt 1 8 is). This is never connected with the Messiah in the Old Testa- ment, as it is in the New, where Jesus first appears as a prophet, and is afterwards hailed as the Christ. The second of these associated ideas is the great thought of the suffering servant of the Lord in the second Isaiah. The prevalent judgment of scholars, after very much dis- cussion of the subject, is that whoever this strange personage may be — whether Jeremiah, or Israel, or the pious remnant of Israel — it is scarcely probable that he was thought of in the first instance as the Messiah. A late tra- dition, little heeded by the Jews, makes men- tion of two Messiahs — the triumphant Son of David, and the suffering Son of Joseph. But this cannot be traced back to the authorship of the prophecy. Here, however, we have to apply the principle that has been our guide all along. The idea is great, and true, and in- spii-ed by God. It matters little what was the prophet's original application of it, except as a question of history and literary inter- pretation. The vital fact is that we have the idea. In the third place, we have Jeremiah's pre- diction of the new covenant : see JerSl^i-^'*. This is not associated with the Messiah by the prophet himself. But it is the most typical anticipation of the spirit and character of Christianity anywhere to be found in the Old Testament ; and it is a promise of the good time coming, that is to say, the 'Messianic era. As such it was adopted by Jesus in the insti- tution of the Lord's Supper, and applied to the gospel by the Apostles. When we consider the fulfilment of Mes- sianic prophecy by Jesus Christ, we must see that He did not attempt to do this in the out- ward way of the earlier expectation any more than to satisfy the hopes of contemporary Jews for a new and greater David, a later Maccabfeus, to break the yoke of the pagan oppression. But He came as the king, because He introduced the kingdom of God as a rule over society by means of inward influences ; as the Deliverer, because He came to save from the sin that was worse than its chastisement, and at the same time as the supreme Prophet or Revealer of God's will, the Suffering Servant of the Lord, and the Founder of the new covenant. That Jesus claimed to be the Messiah cannot be denied without tearing the gospel story to threads. Wrede was the most conspicuous scholar to make the denial ; but he has been amply answered. That our Lord was in fact the Messiah will be admitted by those who perceive that the spiritual essence of the Messiahship is its vital element, and note how, while He cast aside the trappings of its external form. He added to it the great ideas of the Day of the Lord and the divine Redeemer, as well as the prophetic, suffering, and covenant element, none of them joined to the Messiah in the Old Testament, but all enriching it in His fulfilment of that hope. This subject is discussed in Drummond, ' The Jewish Messiah ' ; Stanton, ' The Jewish and the Christian Messiah ' ; Briggs, ' Mes- sianic Prophecy,' ' The Messiah of the Gos- pels,' and ' The Messiah of the Apostles ' ; Schiirer, ' Jewish People in the Time of Christ ' ; Castelli, ' II Messia secondo gli Ebrei ' ; Dalman, ' Der leidende und der sterbende Messias.' xlvii HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. I tention over Palestine renewed, when Ptolemy IV Philopator filled the throne of Egypt. The weakness and dissoluteness of this king seemed to offer a favom-able opportunity to Antiochus III of Syiia, commonly called the Great, and he opened war upon him. To the joy of the Jews, Antiochus was signally defeated at Ra- phia (217 B.C.), and for a time had to relin- quish his plans. On the death of Philopator, and the accession of his infant son Ptolemy V Epiphanes, the Syrian king resumed the war, and in 198 B.C. gained a decisive victory over the Egyptians at Panium, near the sources of the Jordan. The Jews, now suffering from the degeneracy and misgovernment of Egypt, welcomed the change of dominion, and assisted Antiochus to oust the Egyptian garrison from Jerusalem. 7. The Seleucidae. The first Greek king of Syria, one of the best of Alexander's generals, had been Seleucus ; and his successors for a while took either his name or that of Antio- chus, while the djmasty as a whole is known as the Seleucidae. Antiochus the Great, the new overlord of Palestine, was the fifth in suc- cession from the founder. He made no attempt to interfere with the privileges which the Jews had enjoyed under the rule of Egypt, but on the contrary, conferred further favours upon them, and allowed them the free exercise of their religion. The effect, however, of the Syrian supremacy was to introduce disunion among the Jews, and involve them in troubles such as they had not yet experienced. Antioch, the Syrian capital, was a great centre of Hellen- ism ; and the intercourse with it, of which the new conditions admitted, opened fresh channels for the entrance of Hellenising principles into Judah. Soon there arose a powerful Greek party in Jerusalem, and conflicts ensued with those who still cherished the national ideals, and contended for the righteousness of the law. After the death of Antiochus the Great, his son Seleucus IV Philopator (187-175 B.C.) accentuated the situation in Jerusalem by re- pressing the patriotic party, and attempting to plunder the Temple. In the time of his suc- cessor Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 B.C.), matters came to a head. Onias, the high priest and leader of the orthodox party, drove the sons of Tobias and their Hellenising adher- ents out of Jerusalem ; Epiphanes intervened, and replaced Onias with creatures of his own, first Jason, then Menelaus ; Onias retired to Egypt, with many others of the devout, and at Leontopolis founded a new Jewish temple (170 B.C.). Jerusalem now seethed with dis- content ; and, a report obtaining ground that Epiphanes had died campaigning in Egypt, a rising took place, in which many of the sup- porters of Menelaus were put to death. Epi- phanes, on his return from Egypt, set himself not only to extinguish the revolt, but to pre- vent its recurrence. Besides treating the in- surgents with merciless severity, he entered the Temple and despoiled it of its treasures and sacred vessels, recast the service according to the forms of the Greek religion, and set up an image of the Greek god Zeus, probably bearing his own features. At the same time, he remodelled the little state after the pattern of a Greek republic, and appointed over it a royal commissioner. Not so much, perhaps, from real hostility to the Jewish religion, as from the desire to extirpate the cause of dis- affection and rebellion, torture and death were decreed against those who persisted in their Jewish practices, and refused to sacrifice to the heathen god. At this point we come upon what is gener- ally considered the most sublime moment in Jewish history. Many of the old patriotic party, now called the Hasidim, or ' righteous ones,' willingly gave up their lives, rather than betray their principles, thus setting a noble example for the martyrs of future ages. Some of them escaped to the wilder parts of the country, and, if taken on the sabbath, refused to defend themselves, lest they should desecrate the holy day. Passive submission was their answer to the hatred and cruelty of their persecutors. Human endurance, however, is not unlimited, and at length they stood at bay, and made a brave struggle for freedom. The fii'st blow was struck at Modin, between Beth-horon and Lydda, by Mattathias, an old country priest, and head of the house of Hashmon. His anger rising at the sight of a Jew offering heathen sacrifice, he cut him down, as well as the Syrian officer, Apelles, who was with him. Fleeing to the wilderness, with his five sons, he gathered others round him, and raised the standard of revolt. 8. The Maccabees. On the death of Mattathias in 16G B.C., his son Judas, known as Maccabaeus, or ' the hammer,' took over the leadership, and in less than two years, by a series of remarkable victories, at Beth-horon, Emmaus, and Beth-zur, cleared Judah of the Syrians, except for the garrison in the citadel (Acra) at Jerusalem. On 25 Dec. 165 B.C., the Temple was rededicated, and its worship restored — an event commemorated in the Feast of the Dedication, still observed by the Jews. In 163 B.C. Lysias, the regent of Syria for the young king, Antiochus V Eupator, advanced with an overwhelming force to re- lieve the garrison in the Acra, but Judas was able to make honourable terms with him, according to which the fortresses of Judah were to be dismantled, but the rights of the Jewish religion conserved. This settlement deprived the wai* of its religious character, 1 HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. and many of the Hasidim laid down their arms ; but Judas was not content with it, and determined to continue the struggle, till political liberty was achieved. Resisting the elevation to the high priesthood of Alcimus, a flagrant Helleniser and nominee of the Syrian king, he gained a fm-ther victory over the Syrian general Nicanor, but in 161 B.C. was himself defeated by Bacchides, and fell in battle, at Eleasa. Jonathan, the brother of Judas, succeeded to the leadership, and, after the death of Al- cimus (160 B.C.), had full charge of affairs. An adroit and vigorous man, he made good use of the opportunity, offered by the troubles that thickened round the Syrian government, to win advantages for the Jewish state. Treacherously done to death in 144 B.C. by the Syrian general Trypho, he was foliawed by Simon, another son of Mattathias, who forced the Syrian garrison to withdraw from Jerusalem, and thus delivered his country from, the last vestige of foreign control. "With great solemnity, he was appointed by the people to the threefold office of high priest, commander-in-chief, and ethnarch ; and the first Jewish coins were struck in his name (141 B.C.). 9. Independence. In the breaking up of the Syrian kingdom, Simon was able to con- solidate the new Jewish state, extend its influence, and secure for it the friendship of the Romans. In 135 B.C. he, and two of his sons, were murdered at the castle of Dok near Jericho, by his ambitious son-in-law, Ptolemaeus ; and his third son, John Hyrcanus, took his place. In spite of the attempts of the Syrians to regain their supremacy, Hyr- canus maintained the independence of the state, and extended its narrow limits by the conquest of (1) Samaria, where he destroyed the temple on Mount Gerizim, and (2) Idumssa, whose inhabitants he compelled to accept the Law, and submit to circumcision. In his time, the Hasmonaean house began to lose the confidence of the orthodox, patriotic party, now called the Pharisees, and to cultivate closer relations with the Sadducees, the party of cosmopolitan ideas and worldly ambition. Hyrcanus was succeeded by his son Aristo- bulus I, who assumed the title of king, and imitated the style of a foreign court. He only reigned a year (103 B.C.), but managed to annex Iturea (the Galilee of the Gospels) and compel its people to embrace Judaism. His brother, Alexander Jannseus (103-76 B.C.), a fierce and warlike king, extended still further the frontiers of the kingdom, and made Judaea the dominant power in Palestine. With him the house of Hashmon reached its greatest height, and began that downward course, which ended in its complete collapse. li His character and conduct, ill-suited to a high priest, made him hated by the Pharisees, on whom he inflicted many cruelties, and some 3,000 of whom sought safety in flight. At his death he bequeathed his high priesthood to his son Hyrcanus, and his political power to Alexandra his wife, whom he is said to have urged to peace with the Pharisees. Under her the Pharisees controlled affairs, and the kingdom, which equalled in power and extent the old Davidic dominion, had peace and rest; but at her death (67 B.C.) a fierce and pro- longed contest for supremacy ensued between her sons, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus : the former, an active and daring man ; the latter, feeble and irresolute, and almost entirely in the hands of a prominent Idumagan called Antipater. The Romans having now estab- lished themselves in Asia, both parties sought by presents and promises to enlist them in their favour. In 63 B.C. appeals were made at Damascus to the Roman general Pompey, who promptly marched upon Jerusalem, and, installing Hyrcanus as high priest, with a small territory subject to tribute, sent Aristo- bulus and his two sons to Rome. Thus, after eighty years of freedom, Judaea again came under foreign domination. 10. The Roman Dominion. (1) The Herods. For the next twenty years Hyr- canus (II) was high priest, but Antipater really exercised the power accorded under the Roman governor of Syria. During this time certain towns on the coast and in Pe- r£ea were released from Jewish control, and formed themselves into a league, under the name of the Decapolis (Mt 4 25). The attempts of Aristobulus and his sons, on escaping from Rome, to recover the crown, only added to the authority of Antipater. On his death by poison at the hands of a Jewish notable in 43 B.C., the government was divided between his sons Herod and Phasael, who received the titles of tetrarchs. Shortly afterwards the Parthians invaded Syria, and driving the Ro- mans before them put Antigonus, son of Ari- stobulus, on the Jewish throne. Phasael was captured and killed ; Hyrcanus had his ears cropped, to disqualify him for the high priesthood ; Herod fled to Rome, where he was favourably received, and nominated by the Senate king of the Jews. Returning to JudiBa with Roman help, Herod soon re- captured Jerusalem, and had Antigonus put to death (37 B.C.) ; thereafter maintaining his position till the dawn of the Christian era. The material splendours of the reign of Herod have gained him the name of ' the Great,' but he was unscrupulous and cruel in his character, and dissolute in his life. To secure his power, he ingratiated himself adroitly with successive parties at Rome ; and, HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. on one pretext or another, killed out the survivors of the Hasmonsean house, including his own wife Mariamne and her two sons. Political intrigue and brutal murder were leading characteristics of his reign. At the same time, be aimed at magnificence, and exe- cuted many public works, besides restoring order and encouraging intercourse through- out the kingdom. Posing as a Hellenistic king, he built new cities upon Greek lines, such as Sebaste (27 B.C.), on the site of the old Samaria, and Csesarea (22-10 B.C.), which became the second city of the kingdom. He also added a theatre and amphitheatre to Je- rusalem, and built temples, porches, and baths in foreign cities. One of his greatest works was the rebuilding of the Temple at Jeru- salem, which was begun in 20 B.C., and was not quite finished in the time of our Lord (Jn 2 20). In other ways he tried, but without success, to conciliate his Jewish subjects, re- specting their traditions, and using his influ- ence to protect their settlements abroad. To the end he was hated, especially by the Pharisees, who gave themselves more than ever to the minute observance of the Law, the study of the prophecies, and the hope of the Messianic kingdom. On the death of Herod in 4 B.C., his domin- ions were divided, with the consent of the Romans, between his three sons : Archelaus becoming ethnarch of Judaea and Samaria ; Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Per^a; and Philip, tetrarch of the region beyond Jordan. In 6 a.d. Archelaus was removed for misconduct, and his principality put under the charge of a Roman Procurator — so called from the original function of collecting the imperial taxes. (2) Procurators. The following were pro- curators of Judaea and Samaria (6-41 a.d.): Coponius, M. Ambivius, Annius Rufus, Vale- rius Gratus (15-26), Pontius Pilate (26-36), Marcellus (36, 37), and Marullus (37-41). Wittingly and unwittingly, they often offended the susceptibilities of the Jews ; and, apart from the extortion which they generally prac- tised, the duties and taxes which they were authorised to exact were a continual grievance. Pontius Pilate, whose condemnation of Christ has covered him with lasting infamy, aroused such exasperation otherwise that he was summarily recalled. The seat of the pro- curators was at Csesarea, but Pilate happened to be at Jerusalem for the great feast, when the outburst against Christ took place. The outcome of the procuratorial system was wide- spread discontent, which was fomented by the Zealots — a new party aiming at revolution, and the establishment of the Messianic king- dom by force. (3) Herod Agrippa. For a short time, a reversion took place to the old monarchical form of government, as it had existed in the time of Herod the Great. In 34 a.d. Philip, the tetrarch of the north, died ; and in 37 a.d. his dominions were given to Agrippa, a grand- son of the Great Herod, with the title of king. To these were added in 40 a.d. the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas, the murderer of John the Baptist, whose misdoings and ambition were punished by his banishment to Gaul. A year later, the procuratorship of Judaea and Samaria was abolished, and Agrippa's dominions were extended to include these provinces, so that he now held sway over the whole of his grand- father's kingdom. His policy was to please the Pharisees, without offending the Romans ; consequently he conformed to Pharisaic prac- tices, respected Jewish prejudices and tradi- tions,»and persecuted as schismatic the early Christian Church (Ac 121-19). After a reign of thi'ee years, he died suddenly at Caesarea (Ac 12 23); and, his son Agrippa II being set aside as too young for rule, the whole kingdom was placed under procurators, subordinate to the governor of Syria. (4) Palestinian Procurators. The order of these was : Cuspius Fadus (44-46 a.d.), Tibe- rius Alexander (46-48 a.d.), Ventidius Cuma- nus (48-52 a.d.), Felix (52-60 a.d.), Porcius Festus (60-62 a.d.), Albinus (62-64 a.d.), and Gessius Florus (64-66 a.d.). Under them the condition of things that had prevailed under the former procurators was accentuated ; mis- understanding, oppression, and extortion ripen- ing the hatred and disaffection of the Jews. Alexander, though of JeM'ish descent, was an implacable tyrant ; Felix was so cruel and intolerant that lawlessness grew rampant, and the Zealots, increasing in numbers and daring, and now called Sicarii, from the weapon (sica) which they can-ied, kept the country seething with revolt ; Florus strained the patience and endurance of the people to the breaking point. Caesarea was the scene of the first outbreak. In that Gentile city there was a large colony of Jews, who at this time had settlements all over the civilised world, in Babylonia, Asia Minor, Upper and Lower Egypt, Greece, and Italy. The Jews of Caesarea, having been deprived of their civil rights, were insulted and maltreated in the streets, and forced to quit the town. Florus chose this critical moment to plunder the Temple treasure and the upper city of Jerusalem, and put many of the in- habitants to death. Retaliations followed, and soon throughout the country Jew and Gentile were locked in deadly strife. The procurator appealed for help to the Governor of Syria, Cestus Gallius, who marched to his relief with 23,000 men, and, quickly subduing Galilee, appeared before Jerusalem. Forced to retreat, he was followed by the Jews, and defeated at lii HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. Beth-horon with heavy loss. Rome now sent her most experienced general, Vespasian, with a large increase of forces, to carry on the war. During the summer of 67 A.D. he brought the country districts into subjection, and took many of the smaller towns, Josephus, the his- torian, being one of the prisoners captured. Jerusalem he let alone for the time, as panic and fanaticism were there doing their deadly work, and thinning the ranks of the defenders. With the help of 26,000 Idumseans, the Zealots had secured complete control, and the consequent feuds and murders, aggravated by pestilence and famine, were fast bringing the city to a terrible pass. In the summer of 69 a.d. Ves- pasian was proclaimed emperor at Rome, and his son Titus took over the conduct of the war. Jerusalem fell to him in August of 70 A.D., after a four months' siege of terrible suffering and almost incredible orgies of rage and bloodshed. Titus would have spared the Temple and city, but they were set on fire by his soldiers, and burned to the ground. Most of the inhabitants were massacred ; those who survived were sold into slavery, or reserved to grace the conqueror's triumph at Rome. Thus was fulfilled the warning of Christ forty years before (Lkig'i^-is). Three fortresses held Qut for a while, but were ultimately taken : Machserus, to the E. of the Dead Sea, Herodeion and Massada to the W. The last-mentioned, which stood on an almost inaccessible mountain-top, was only captured after a prolonged siege (73 a.d.), and then the besiegers found to their horror that all the defenders had committed suicide together. (5 ) The end. Judasa became a colony under a Roman governor, the condition of the in- habitants resembling that of their brethren of the Dispersion. Without political rights, without their Sanhedrin, without their Temple and priests, they were like strangers in a strange land. Once again, in Hadrian's time, they rebelled and, under the leadership of Simon Bar-Kocheba, resisted the Roman power for over three years (132-135 A.D.) ; but the revolt was stamped out in blood, and Jeru- salem turned into a Gentile city, under the name of ^lia Capitolina, into which the Jews were forbidden to enter. Here their history closes, so far as their association with the land of their fathers is concerned. LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS According to the theory of the Jewish Church, direct revelation ceased with the pro- phets ; hence no books were admitted into the Old Testament Canon which were known to have been produced after the time of Ezra and the Great Synagogue. A considerable body of religious literature is extant, belong- ing to the period that supervened before the rise of the New Testament Canon. Emanat- ing from centres so widely diifused as Egypt, Palestine, and Babylonia, it is not only inter- esting in itself, but an indispensable source of information upon the course of contem- porary thought and events. The books of which it is composed vary in character, from the narrative and legendary to the didactic and prophetic, but as a whole reflect the later developments of social and religious life among the Jews, their national vicissitudes, and the foreign influences to which they were subjected. They thus help to bridge the chasm between the Old Testament and the New, and throw light upon the preparation proceeding in the world for the advent of the Christian faith, and the environment in which it originally found itself. Many of them are distinguished from the canonical Scriptures by their manifest infe- riority of thought and style, which betrays itself in a want of freshness and originality, and a tendency to rhetorical and artificial ex- pression. Reverence for the past is a prevail- ing feature of these books ; and this appears, sometimes, in the modification and enlarge- ment of Old Testament narratives and the imitation of books like Proverbs and Job : at other times, in exaggerated accounts of the doings of Jewish heroes, and fulsome esti- mates of their characters. Not infrequently, however, they rise to a higher level ; and not only, as in 1 Maccabees, contain reliable, historical matter of the utmost importance, but also, as in Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, ex- hibit a felicity of diction and grasp of religious truth which put them on a level with some of the books of the Canon. The higher elements of their teaching, the hopes they originated or sustained, and their anticipations of New Testament thought and phraseology, will be indicated in the review of the development of Jewish religion that follows this article (p. Ixvi). I. The Apocrypha 1 Esdras. 2 Esdras. Tobit. Judith. The rest of Esther. Wisdom. Ecclesiasticus. Baruch. Song of the Three Holy Children. History of Susanna. Bel and the Dragon. Prayer of Manasses. 1 Maccabees. 2 Maccabees. liii This is a collection of books important HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. enough to have had canonical authority claimed for them. They have never, however, been able to secure more than the general approval of the Jewish or the Christian Church. Among the Alexandrian Jews they were held in such high repute as, with the exception of 2 Esdras, to be embodied in their (Greek) ver- sion of the Old Testament Scriptures. Some of the early Christian Fathers, notably Au- gustine, accepted and used them as sacred literature, thereby establishing a tradition in the Roman Church, which led to the recogni- tion of their canonicity at the Council of Trent. In connexion with this view, the term deutero-canonical is sometimes applied to them : it indicates that they belong to a second canon of Scripture only slightly, if at all, inferior to the first. On the other hand, the Palestinian Jews rigidly excluded them from the Hebrew Canon, and were followed in their unfavourable estimate by the great Christian scholar Jerome. Generally speak- ing, his position with respect to them is that which prevails in the modern Reformed Church : they may be read for edification, as they contain valuable lessons for the conduct of life, but they are not to be used as a basis of doctrine. The term, ' Apocrypha,' by which they are known, is derived from the Greek, and means ' secret ' or ' hidden.' It used to be applied to the doctrinal writings of religious and philosophical sects, which were concealed from the world, and even withheld from many of their own members. Originally, therefore, there was nothing objectionable about it : it simply implied that the books so designated were confined in their use to a limited circle ; but, as some of them were found to assume an authorship to which they were not entitled, and as all of them had their claims of canon- icity rejected, the word acquired a disparaging sense, and ' apocryphal ' came to be an equi- valent for spurious or false. This no doubt has affected the estimate put upon these books, and the treatment they have received ; though their uncertain origin and uncanonical authority in no way detract from their historic significance and usefulness. Some of the books of the Canon are in similar case so far as uncertainty of origin is concerned. Like them, the 'apocryphal' books must be con- sidered on their merits, when it will be found that they are of great value both from the religious and historical point of view. They are the oldest and most important witnesses to the period that succeeded the Captivity ; they help to bring its great movements of thought and activity before us ; they provide an independent testimony to the place and influence which the canonical books of Scrip- ture had already acquired among the Jews ; and they show us, in actual operation, that fusion of Hellenistic language and culture with Jewish speech and modes of thought, which is reflected in the New Testament, and which prepared the way for the expansion and development of the Christian religion. (1) The First Book of Esdras Esdras is the Greek form of ' Ezra,' the name of the great Jewish scribe, with whom two of the canonical books are intimately con- cerned. These are frequently conjoined in a sequence with the two apocryphal books, which then become 3rd and 4th, 1st and 4th, or 1st and 3rd Esdras respectively. The English usage, however, which follows the method of the Geneva Bible, is to give the names of Ezra and Nehemiah to the canonical books, and call the apocryphal 1st and 2nd Esdras. This arrangement is sufficiently convenient, and is warranted by the fact that the apo- cryphal books exist only in Greek and Latin versions, not in Hebrew or Chaldaic. For the most part, 1 Esdras is a compilation from the canonical Scriptures, probably done by various hands. The passages transcribed, with unimportant alterations, are the last two chs. of 2 Chi'onicles, considerable portions of Ezra, and Nehemiah 7 '^'^-8 1^ ; all dealing with the destruction and rebuilding of the Temple, and the promulgation of the Law by Ezra. There is, however, an original section (chs. 3-5'^), in which a striking incident or legend is introduced. Zerubbabel, at the Persian court, gives such an exhibition of wisdom, as to secure the favour of king Darius, and the return of the captive Jews. In a contest of wits, he carries off the palm by his eloquent praise of truth, and vindication of the superi- ority of its power over that of wine, the king, or woman. ' Great is the earth,' he says, ' high is the heaven, swift is the sun in his course. . . Is he not great that maketh these things ? therefore great is the truth, and stronger than all thnigs. . . With her there is no accepting of persons or rewards. . . Neither in her judgment is any unrighteousness ; and she is the strength, kingdom, power, and majesty of all ages. Blessed be the God of truth.' To this all the people answer, ' Great is Truth, and mighty above all things ' ; which, with some slight variation, has passed into a proverbial expressifin {i^^-'^^). The date of this book cannot be determined with certainty, as there is no external evidence of its existence earlier than .Tosephus (100 A.D.). It is supposed, however, to have been written in Alexandria, about the end of the second or the beginning of the first centviry B.C. Its emphatic representation of the favour shown to the Jews by the Persian kings would sug- gest, as the aim of the author, the desire to 1 i 4 I HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. obtain similar benefits from the king of Egypt, but there is hardly support for the view that the occasion was the building of the Temple of Onias for the Jews of Alexandria in 170 B.C. (2) The Second Book of Esdras As cast in a prophetic rather than a historic mould, this book differs widely from the fore- going, and used to be called ' the Revelation of Ezra.' It is a combination of three distinct writings, or an original writing supplemented by two considerable additions from different hands. There are 16 chs. in all, but the first and last pairs form sections by themselves, and are evidently of later date than the main body of the work. Their affinities with New Testa- ment thought and phraseology suggest for each of them a Christian source : cp. 1 ^0-33 ^ith Mt2337f._ 213 ^th Mt2534, 158 with Rev6i«, and 1654 with~^kl6i5. The burden of these chs. is the rebuke of Israel for her rebellions, and the summoning of the Gentiles to the enjoyment of the blessings forfeited by her, with denunciations of judgment, quite in the vein of the Old Testament prophets, upon the nations that provoke and withstand Grod. They are probably as late as the third century a.d. Chs. 3-14, which form the larger section of the book, are of purely Jewish origin, though they were known from early times to the Christian Church. They describe a series of revelations and visions purporting to have been communicated to Ezra in the thirtieth year of the Babylonian captivity. Depressed with the sorrows of his people and doubts of the righteous government of God, he is visited by the angel Uriel, who reproves his sadnes-^ , and throws light upon the moral mysteries of the world. In three revelations and five visions Uriel shows him that, though the pur- poses of God are unsearchable, his Providence is surely working for the defeat of evil and the triumph of good. Iniquity may succeed for a time, but it has its appointed limit, and when the signs indicated in the visions are fulfilled, the Son of God, the Anointed One, shall appear and reign. The powers of the heathen shall be broken, and the lost tribes of Israel gathered together again into their city of Zion. Meantime Ezra is to have the Law written out for the people, and seventy books of mysteries prepared for those worthy to par- ticipate in the secret things of God. In several places there are noteworthy references to the Messiah (7 27f. I23if. 1332,37,52)^ and in one passage (729) a curious statement regarding His death : ' after these years shall my son Christ die, and all men that have life.' A clue to the date of the book is afforded by the vision of the eagle (1 1 i-125i), the wings and heads of which are evident allusions to successive emperors of Rome. The last to Iv whom reference is made is Domitian ; in his reign accordingly the composition of the book is generally placed (81-96 a.d.). The destruc- tion of Jerusalem by Titus, and the consequent troubles of the Jews, may account for the melancholy of the writer and his choice of subject. Some remains of a Greek version are extant ; but since the discovery of a missing fragment by Professor Bensly, in 1875, the whole exists in a Latin translation, and on this account is sometimes called the Latin Esdras, as distinguished from the other or Greek Esdras. (3) The Book of Tobit This is a religious tale, cast in very pleas- ing form. It may have had a historical basis, but that would be of little importance in com- parison with its purpose. The scene is laid in Nineveh, in the time of the Assyrian cap- tivity. Tobit, a pious, God-fearing man, of the tribe of Naphtali, loses his eyesight, and falls into such other grievous misfortunes as cause him to pray for death. Calling to mind ten talents of silver which he had left with a kinsman in Media, he sends his son Tobias for them, accompanied by a stranger hired for the journey. At Ecbatana they lodge in the house of Raguel, whose daughter Sara is in great distress and desirous of death, owing to the slaying of her seven successive husbands on the wedding night by the evil spirit Asmodeus. Tobias marries her, and she is delivered from the power of the evil spirit. The ten talents of silver are recovered, the eyesight of Tobit is miraculously restored, and both households enjoy renewed prosperity — all through the instrumentality of the travelling companion of Tobias, who proves to be the angel Raphael, sent by God in answer to the prayers of Tobit and Sara. The story was doubtless intended to en- courage and comfort the Jews of foreign lands, and stimulate their observance of the Law. Incidentally, considerable emphasis is laid upon almsgiving (e.g. 4"-ii 128' 9)^ and the marriage of Tobias may be introduced to point the advantages of Jews intermarrying with their own people. It is difficult to assign a date to the book, but various indications suggest either the second or the beginning of the first century B.C. It seems to have had a Hebrew original, but there is no Hebrew text extant earlier than the LXX version. (4) The Book of Judith This is another historical romance, though different in kind from that of Tobit. Judith, the heroine, a pious and beautiful widow, per- forms a deed of daring for her people not unlike that of Jael in the book of Judges. HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. Her native city of Bethulia (said in 4^ 7^ to be over against Esdraelon, though identified by some modern scholars with Jerusalem, on the interpretation of the name as ' House of God '), being besieged by Holofernes, the general of Nebuchadnezzar, she determines to effect its deliverance. Making her way with a single attendant into the camp of Holofernes, she captivates him with her beauty, and secures his favour ; then, when he is filled with wine, she cuts off his head, and returns with it to the city. The courage of the besieged is roused to such a pitch that they rush out upon the enemy, and put them to complete rout. The story has been a frequent subject of art, and may have had its origin in some actual occurrence ; but as it stands, it can hardly be historical. Its general features are improbable, and it contains many historical and geographical misconceptions. Its purpose evidently is to animate the patriotic zeal of the Jews, and confii'm them, not only in the observance of their own Law and customs, but in their re- sistance of foreign oppression. The time of the Maccabean struggle would accord well^with its spirit, and many are disposed to ascribe its composition to that period, about the middle of the second century B.C. Others bring it down a century later — to the time of Hyr- canus II — and find veiled allusions in the high qualities with which the heroine is credited to queen Alexandra, a strong supporter of the Pharisees (76-67 B.C.). It probably belongs to one or other of these periods. (•5) The rest of the Book of Esther In the LXX version of the canonical book of Esther a number of passages appear which are not in the Hebrew text. These interpola- tions were probably introduced in the Jewish schools of Alexandria, in which it was not un- usual to work up traditional narratives into longer form and embellish them with striking details. Collected together by Jerome, and placed at the end of his translation of Esther, they now form the apocryphal book. Besides amplifying the scriptural story, they evidently aim at giving it a more distinctly religious turn, by ascribing the deliverance of the Jews from their Gentile enemies to the intervention of God in answer to the prayers of Mordecai and Esther. In the six and a half short chap- ters of which the supplement consists these prayers are given, as well as a dream of Mordecai, and two letters of Artaxerxes the king — one commanding a wholesale destruction of the Jews, and another revoking that order and enjoining the thirteenth day of the twelfth month Adar to be kept as a memorial feast. These additions are generally supposed to belong to the first or second century B.C. It is easy to see why the Alexandrian Jews would admit them into their Canon. They illustrated the care of God over His people in foreign lands, and made up by the frequent mention of His name for the marked absence of it in the older book. (6) The Wisdom of Solomon This is a book of great interest and import- ance. As its title indicates, it belongs to the class of ' Wisdom ' literature, of which it is one of the most striking examples. In it may be seen the stream of revealed truth coming into contact with the current of heathen specu- lation, and the ' wisdom ' idea of Old Testament times passing into the later Logos doctrine. The ascription of its authorship to Solomon is, of course, an example of a common literary device of the period, and implies no intention of imposing upon the readers. The adoption of Solomon's name is only meant to suggest the character and scope of the work. It was quite in accordance with ancient usage, to affix to an original production the name of a great predecessor, in whose spirit it might be presumed to be written, or whose work it professed to continue. In the present in- stance, neither the author's contemporaries nor his future critics were likely to be deceived by the sponsorship assumed. The book is a hymn in praise of Wisdom, and falls naturally into two parts. (1) Chs. 1-9. Wisdom is regarded in a speculative aspect ; its origin and effects are discussed, and the pursuit of it is earnestly commended to men. Beginning with an exhortation to seek Wisdom, these chapters then lay down the conditions of success — purity of thought, truthfulness of speech, and uprightness in deed. The position of the Materialist is can- vassed, and shown to be the result of voluntary ignorance of God, and the introduction of death and sin into the world through the envy of the devil. This leads on to an elaborate contrast of the righteous with the wicked, in regard to their families, their length of life, and fate in the world to come. Wisdom is then eulogised as the true guide of life ; her properties are represented under the figure of a bride, and men, especially rulers, are enjoined to seek and pray for her after the example of Solomon. (2) Chs. 10-19. Wisdom is discussed in its historical aspect, as exhibited in the history of Israel. First, a sketch is given of the lives of the fathers from Adam to Moses, to illustrate the effects of the guidance of Wisdom ; this is followed up by warnings against the neglect of it, drawn from the punishments that overtook the Egyptians and the Canaanites ; then the revolting character and results of idolatry are described, and a comparison is instituted between the Israelites Ivi HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. and the Egyptians, greatly in favour of the former, which is kept up to the end of the book. Its apparently abrupt termination has sug- gested the idea that part of it has been lost, and a supposed diiference of manner between the two sections has been taken to betray a diiference of authorship ; but it is doubtful whether there are sufficient grounds for either surmise. The book is generally regarded as complete, and the work of one person — a Jew of Alexandria, probably writing about the period 217-145 B.C., though the date of his composition is sometimes put considerably before and after that period. The style throughout is in keeping with the sustained loftiness of its thought, and both alike are influenced by the fusion of Hebrew and classi- cal learning that^ook place in Egypt before the dawn of the Christian era. On the one hand, the point of view is Jewish, and the more valuable elements of the ancient faith are justified and enforced. Occasional Hebraic phrases are also used, and expressions and ideas borrowed from the Old Testament, as well as the name of Solomon, and the manner of the canonical writings previously assigned to him. On the other hand, the language is Greek, of a pure and polished character, some- times rising into strains of great eloquence ; and there are frequent allusions to Greek customs and ideas, which could only come from one intimately acquainted with the cul- ture of the West. Thus in 2^, the revellers crown themselves with garlands ; in 4 2, con- querors in a strife are rewarded with a wreath ; in 13^^, every household has its gods ; in 14 1, every ship has its protecting deity ; and in 1921, manna is termed 'ambrosial food.' Again, there are evident references to Platonic and Stoic philosophy, in the ' formless matter ' (1117) out of which the world is created ; in the application of the phrase ' understanding spirit ' to Wisdom (7 22) ; in the enumeration of the four cardinal virtues (8'''), and else- where. There are many compound words peculiar to the book, such as ' infant-slaying ' (117), 'child-killing' (1423), 'ill-labouring' (15^), and ' sounding-around ' (17^) ; and the word ' Protoplast,' now used as a scientific term, probably appears in it for the first time (71 10 1). There are, also, some felicitous ex- pressions that have now become current in religious speech ; for example, ' a hope full of immortality' (3 4), and 'the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God ' (3 1). The purpose of the book was to vindicate the essentials of the Jewish faith against materialism, idolatry, and speculative philoso- phy, and encourage the Alexandrian Jews to adhere to the religion of their fathers, in spite of the seductions of heathenism, and the ad- verse circumstances in which they were placed. That it had its effect in this direction, even to succeeding generations, may be seen from the influence it has exerted upon the New Testament. Some of the books, such as the Gospel of John and Hebrews, show consider- able affinities of thought with it, while most of them reflect its phraseology. The com- bination 'gi-ace and mercy' (3^415) reappears in 1 Tim 1 2 and elsewhere ; the expression ' for truly they perhaps err while they seek after God, and have the will to find Him' (13*5) is almost the same as 'that they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him ' (Ac 17 2^) ; and the likeness between 517-20 and Paul's description of the Christian armour in Eph 6 ^^'^" is too exact to be acci- dental: cp. also 35 with RevS* 166, 726 with Hebli3, 132 with 1 Cor 8 5, etc. (7) The Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus The former of these two titles is the more ancient, being that of the LXX version, and indicates the character and authorship of the book. The latter, which means ' pertaining to the Church' or * Churchly,' is the title given to it from the fourth century onward, on account of the use made of it in the worship and instruction of the Western Church : it ap- pears in the Latin and English versions. The shorter forms ' Proverbs ' and ' Ben-Sira ' are also found. It is a book of the same class as the preceding, having for its subject the praise and inculca- tion of Wisdom ; but it is ViTitten upon more practical lines, and from a more distinctively Hebraistic point of view. In style and thought it stands between the Wisdom books of the Old Testament Canon and the book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha. Its closest affinities are with the book of Proverbs. It starts from the same general conception of Wisdom, and follows a similar method in applying it by means of short, pithy sayings, to moral con- duct and behaviour. It broadens and develops the standpoint of Proverbs, but not to the same extent as the Wisdom of Solomon, nor does it exhibit the same speculative bias and admixture of Greek philosophical notions. The one is the native, Palestinian type of later Wisdom thinking : the other is its cosmopoli- tan, Alexandi'ian expression. There is no apparent plan in the book of Ecclesiasticus. It is a series of reflections upon life, some doubtless original, some simply gathered, rather than a reasoned treatise. Its contents, however, may be roughly divided into two unequal sections. (1) Chs. 1-43. This section opens with a chapter in praise of Wis- dom, and closes with a sublime and powerful passage upon the works of Nature. The inter- Ivii HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. vening chapters are devoted to the discussion of Wisdom, mostly in its practical bearings, a gi'eat variety of topics being introduced, such as obedience to parents, regard for the poor, friendship, prudence, envy, pride, boastful- ness, women, and money. These are sometimes called the Sayings of the Wise. They repre- sent the kind of instruction that was needed in the circumstances of the time. The decay of the national idea, consequent upon the exile, had given rise to questions of individual be- haviour and responsibility, which had not been pressing at the time the older canonical books were written. Something was needed to sup- plement the word of revelation, and this the son of Sirach undertakes to supply. Many of the sentiments are exalted enough, but others merely worldly wise, and some rather repellent to the modern mind. Even at their lowest, however, they seldom fail to be interesting for the light they shed upon contemporary life and thought. (2) Chs. 44-51. This section passes in re- view the great names of Hebrew history, and eulogises the bearers of them for their faith- fulness to God and the Law. The names of Ezra, Daniel, and Mordecai are omitted from the list, and in a kind of Epilogue the feeling of the time to the Samaritans is shown in a passing reference to them as ' a nation which my heart abhorreth ' (50 ^s. 26). it closes with an appendix in the form of a prayer or thanksgiving, the genuineness of which has been disputed, but which is perhaps the author's own afterthought. If there are any traces of Greek influence in the book, they are confined to a few general conceptions, such as the identification of virtue with knowledge, and the emphasis laid upon moderation in action. These may quite well be accounted for by the Hellenistic atmosphere that prevailed even in Palestine itself. The thought is predominantly Jewish, and of a period antecedent at least to the rise of the Maccabees. Wisdom is viewed in its later scriptural significance, as the knowledge of God, and the guide and inspiration of life ; God is regarded as the universal Lord, the Creator and Governor of the whole world of men and things ; no account is taken of inter- mediate beings, except in quotations from the Old Testament ; prominence is given to the Law, but there is no indication of a belief in the resurrection, and no definite Messianic anticipation ; the rewards of a good life are still to be found in temporal prosperity and posthumous fame. This is quite in agreement with the author- ship which the book itself claims, and the date which is accordingly assumed for it. Unlike the rest of the Apocrypha, it carries its real author's name with it. In 50 27, he calls him- self 'Jesus the son of Sirach of Jerusalem'; and there is a preface to the book containing further details. According to it, the book was composed by Jesus, in Hebrew, and translated into Greek by his grandson (the writer of the preface), in the thirty-eighth year of Euergetes, king of Egypt, in which country the translation is also stated to have been made. This is generally understood to refer to Ptolemy YII Physcon (170-116 B.C.), the thirty-eighth year of whose reign would give 132 B.C. as the date of the translation. Going back two genera- tions, we come to the first quarter of the century, in which accordingly the composition of the original must be placed. Corroboration of this date is found in the fact that the list of gi-eat men mentioned in the book closes with Simon the high priest, understood to be Simon II (218-198 B.C.) ; and the account given of him is so circumstantial as to suggest most strongly actual knowledge on the part of the author. This interpretation of the preface is sometimes disputed, on the strength of an ambiguity in the Greek, and the references ap- plied to a previous Euergetes and Simon ; but the probabilities are all in favour of it. Nearly one-half of the original Hebrew text, it may be mentioned, has been discovered in recent years. The preface of the translator, besides help- ing to solve the questions of date and author- ship, throws a valuable light upon the authority and contents of the Old Testament Canon in his day. He speaks of it as the Law, the Prophets, and the rest of the books. There are no direct citations from Ecclesi- asticus in the New Testament ; but various passages seem to show an acquaintance with it : cp. 29i2f. with Lkl2i9f-, 2 1-5 with Jasl2-4, and 511 with Jasl^^. Later writers, however, frequently appeal to it ; and John Bunyan, in his ' Grace Abounding,' relates how he was ' greatly enlightened and encouraged ' by the passage : ' Look at the generations of old, and see ; did ever any trust in the Lord, and was confounded ? or did any abide in His fear, and was forsaken ? or whom did He ever despise, that called upon Him ? For the Lord is full of compassion and mercy, longsuffering, and very pitiful, and forgiveth sins, and saveth in time of affliction ' (2 10, ii). Here, as at 18 w-is^ the conception of God's forbearance approaches very close to the thought of Ps 103. (8) The Book of Baruch In this book, which is not to be confounded with the Apocalypse of Baruch, several docu- ments are brought together under the name of Baruch, the faithful friend and secretary of the prophet Jeremiah. Most of it professes to have been written by him, at Babylon, five years after Jerusalem was destroyed by the Iviii HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. Chaldeans ; but linguistic and historical con- siderations alike preclude this. It consists at least of two distinct sections and a supple- mentary chapter, each in all probability eman- ating from a different hand. (1) 1-3*^. After a short historical introduction, a confession of sin is put into the mouths of the captive Jews, and a prayer that God will forgive them their offences, especially that of disregarding the prophets. (2) 3^-5^. A discourse is addressed to the Israelites scattered among the nations, ascribing their afflictions to their disobedience to God the fountain of Wisdom, and comfort- ing them with the hope of a glorious restora- tion. There is no organic connexion between these two sections, and they even appear to have been originally\,written in different lan- guages— the one in Hebrew, and the other in Greek. Both of them, however, adopt the prophetic style of utterance : the first being largely modelled upon Jeremiah and Daniel, the second upon Job and Isaiah. It is difficult to assign dates to them. If, as seems most probable, the mention of the fall of Jerusalem is an allusion to its destruction by the Romans, and not, as is sometimes supposed, to its cap- ture by Antiochus Epiphanes, the former section would require to be placed after 70 A.D. On the other hand, the latter section may be some- what earlier. Its closing verses bear some resemblance to a passage in the Psalms of Solomon, which are usually referred to the middle of the first century B.C., so that it is generally put subsequent to that, or about the beginning of the Christian era. The combina- tion of the two sections, as we have them in the book of Baruch, could not take place much before the end of the first century A.D. It does not seem to have been held in much esteem by the Jews. The supplementary chapter (6) purports to be a letter written by Jeremiah, the prophet, to the Jews about to be led captive to Baby- lon. It, too, is unauthentic, being most likely the production of an Alexandrian Jew of the first century B.C. It is a curious piece of writing, and deals chiefly with the folly of idolaters and the impotency of idols. Pro- bably it was suggested to the writer by the letter mentioned in Jer 29 1, and offered a safe medium for the conveyance to his fellow- countrymen of a warning against the dangers and temptations which surrounded them in Egypt. (9) The Song of the Three Holy Children This and the two following pieces, each of a single chapter, appear in the Greek Bible as additions to Daniel. They illustrate the tendency of the Jewish schools, especially in Alexandria, to weave moral and religious legends round the striking names of sacred lix history. Nothing is known of their origin, which may have been quite independent of the canonical book : in any case, they were incor- porated with it before the beginning of the Christian era. The Three Holy Children are Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, under their Hebrew names of Ananias, Misael, and Azarias (Dan l*^'^). Their Song is inserted in the Greek Daniel between vv. 23 and 24 of the third chapter, at the point where they ' fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.' It consists of (a) (vv. 1-22) a prayer of Azarias, which is quite general in its terms, and makes confession and suppli- cation for Israel as a whole, after the manner of Dan 9 and E5:r9 ; (b) (vv. 23-27) a con- necting narrative which, in its description of the preservation of the three Hebrews from the flames that consume some of the Chaldeans, seems to give the answer to the prayer ; (c) (vv. 28-68) a thanksgiving or invocation to creation in all its different orders to praise and bless the Lord. The last section, which is the Song proper, has only one reference to the deliverance which purports to be the occasion of it. It is largely dependent upon such thanksgiving Psalms as 10320f.^ 136, 148, and Ecclus 43. Under the name of ' The Benedicite,' or ' The Song of the Three Children,' it was sung in the Christian Church as early as the fourth century. It is still used in the Anglican Church at morning service as an alternative canticle to the ' Te Deum.' (10) The History of Susanna In the Greek Daniel, this story stands as a supplement to the twelve canonical chapters. It tells how Daniel, in his youth, by his great wisdom, delivered tlie chaste and beautiful Susanna from condemnation to death upon a shameful charge. The story recalls Ahab and Zedekiah, the two evil prophets of Babylon, who roused the anger of Jeremiah (29 -O"^^), and who are frequently mentioned in later Jewish writings. It may have been intended to reprobate iniquity in high places, or simply to glorify the wisdom of Daniel. Shakespeare must have had it in mind, when he made Shy- lock exclaim, ' a Daniel come to judgment ' (' Mer. of Yen.' IV, 1). (11) The History of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon Here are given two further stories of the wisdom and piety of Daniel. They are attached to the Greek text of the canonical book as a concluding or fourteenth chapter. In the first (vv. 1-22), Daniel exposes the deceit practised by the priests of Bel, in pre- tending that the god devours the large daily HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC, BETWEEN OT. AND offerings of food and wine, while they and their wives and children steal in by a secret entrance, and consume them during the night. The result is that the priests and their families are put to death, and Daniel is permitted to destroy Bel and his temple. The secoad story (vv. 23-42) tells of the destruction of a sacred dragon, to which the Babylonians paid divnie honours. The Jewish hero feeds it with indigestible materials, which cause it to burst, and he is thrown into a den of lions at the instigation of its enraged worshippers. NT. r:-r^rzirz± -^-^ =- «^.^e s ^r s^ - IS supported by food brought miraculously from Judaea by the prophet Habakkuk. On his release, his enemies are given to the lions, and at once devoured. This was supposed by the later Jews to be quite a different incident from that preserved in the canonical book. The Greek title of the double narrative is, ' From the prophecy of Habakkuk, the son of Jesu, of the tribe of Levi.' Its aim is to contrast the impotence of idols with the omnipotence of God, and expose the futility and absurdity of worshipping them. It may have been suggested by the references of Jeremiah (IQi-i 5134) to the falsehood of images, and the dragon-like voracity of Nebu- chadrezzar, king of Babylon. (12) The Prayer of Manassas This is a short confession of personal sin, and fervent supplication for the divine forgive- ness, cast in a very beautiful form. It purports to be the prayer of the penitent Manasseh, king of Judah, during his imprisonment in Babylon (2 Ch 33 n-is) . but, with the excep- tion of one expression, ' I am bowed down with many iron bands,' there is nothing that applies distinctively to him. There is no mention of specific sins that might have been expected to form the chief burden of his con- fession. The ascription of the prayer to him was probably suggested by 2 Ch33is.i9, which states that his prayer was written, along with his acts, ' in the book of the kings of Israel,' and 'among the sayings of the seers.'' Already in existence, it may have had the name of Manasseh affixed to it, on the strength of this passage ; or it may have been expres'sly 1 Maccabees is a history of the forty years (175-135 B.C.) during which, under the famous family, the Jews carried on their struo-gle for religious freedom and political independence Its general reliability, fulness of detail, and accuracy m regard to dates, render it of the highest value for the knowledge of the period After a brief introduction upon the conquests ot Alexander the Great and the origin of the Syrian empire, it follows the course of events almost m strict chronological order, from the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, to the brothers, (a) (1 iO-9) An account of the suf- ferings of the Syrian persecutions is given, and the revolt described which Mattathias initiated at Modin. (b) (3-922) The heroic efforts and achievements of Judas Maccabeus are detailed (167-161 B.C.), including his recovery of the Temple and dedication of a new altar to God. (c) (923_i6) The further fortunes of the nation are followed, through the reign of Jonathan (160-143 B.C.), to their climL under Simon (143-135 B.C.). A brief mention ot John Hyrcanus, Simon's successor, brines the book to a close. The narrative hardly ever fails to be interest- ing being written in simple, succinct style, with due proportion observed throughout and numerous graphic touches that suggest a 'con- temporary knowledge of places and events Ihe only exceptions that have been taken to Its general trustworthiness are, the statement m 16 that Alexander parted his dominions among his generals while yet alive, the refer- ence to the Eoman Senate in 8i5,i6^ and a tendency to exaggerate the numbers of the Syi-ians m the various battles opposed to the Jews. Except in the wonderful successes of the Jews, in view of the statements of the odds against them, there is no appearance of a miraculous element ; and seldom, as in other books of the kind, is the flow ot the narrative interrupted by the personal reflections of the author. One outstanding feature of the book IS the method of dating events from the begin- ning of 'the kingdom of the Greek' • that is to say, from the foundation of the Seleucid dynasty in Syria (312 B.C.). There is no such ^x ^^1,^ paBSctye ; or IT, may nave been expressly -j— ■'j "' >^jiia ^ui^ a.c.j. mere is no such composed for insertion in the canonical Scrip- ^^^curate reckoning upon the line of a recognised tures at this r>lnr>o T+ ic i.,„ — u. j .i. i era in nrevions .TpwisVi ]ifor.r.+,ir.^ tures at this place. It is largely dependent upon biblical phraseology and ideas, and is poetical in form. It is supposed to have had a Hebrew or Aramaic original. (13) The First Book of the Maccabees There are four books of the Maccabees in all— so called from the name of the family that rose to supreme power in Judeea during the second century B.C.— but only two of them era in previous Jewish literature. The composition of 1 Maccabees is usually assigned to the beginning of the first century B.C. On the one hand, it is said, the terms of friendliness and admiration in which it refers to the Romans (c. 8) necessitate the dating of It some years before the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey (63 B.C.), and, on the other hand, the last verses of the book (1623,24)^ i„ T^^jch it asserts that ' the rest of the acts of John that hi8 reign (135-105 B.C.) was concluded be HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. )ef ore it was composed. The latter inference, lowever, is sometimes disputed, on the ground hat the verses quoted embody a stereotyped Lormula, with which the author merely rounds off his book, and which he might quite well have used, though he wrote in the time of Hyrcanus. The tone of the book, it is argued, its remarkable accuracy, and certain specific references, require an earlier date, and so it is placed at the beginning of the reign of Hyrcanus, or between 136 and 125 B.C. ■^ There is little doubt that it was originally written in Hebrew by a Palestinian Jew. This was the opinion of Origen and Jerome, and it is confirmed by the number of Hebrew idioms in the Greek text and occasional evidences of mistranslation and transliteration of proper names. The interest, too, of the author in Palestine, and his minute acquaintance with its topography go to corroborate it. Other facts regarding the author may be gathered by inference from his book. It is plain that he was a patriotic Jew, devoted to the customs I and religion of his country. He was also in- ' timately acquainted with political affairs, being probably a man of rank, who moved in the highest circles. At the same time, he must have been a loyal adherent of the Hasmonsean family, whose deeds he extols, and to whom he asci-ibes the prosperity and glory of Israel. That he refrains from the mention of the name of Grod, generally substituting for it the term ' heaven,' is only in accordance with the prac- tice of his time, arising from the growing view of God's transcendence ; but his silence upon the resurrection, coupled with his uniform reverence for the Jewish priesthood, suggests that, of the two rising parties, he belonged to that of the Sadducees. He has no references to the Messianic hope, unless we count as such the remark that follows the statements of the laying up of the stones of the old altar (4'*6), and of the appointment of Simon as governor and high priest for ever (14^1) : 'until there should arise a faithful prophet.' (14) The Second Book of the Maccabees This book also purports to be a Maccabtean history, but is in no way related to the first book ; on the contrary, though covering part of the same period, it seems written in entire ignorance of it, and is quite unlike it in char- acter and style. Its narrative begins shortly before the accession of Antiochus Epiphanes to the Syrian throne (175 B.C.), and ends with the defeat and death of Nicanor, and the triumph of Judas Maccabfeus (161 B.C.). In the intervening chapters are related, with con- siderable detail, the unsuccessful attempt of Heliodorus to plunder the Temple treasury, the intrigues of the leaders at Jerusalem for the high priesthood, the desecration of the hd Temple by Antiochus, the subsequent calamities of the great persecution, and the wars by which Judas achieved the freedom of his country. The author makes no pretence to originality, but asserts that his book is merely an abridge- ment of an earlier woi'k in five volumes by Jason of Cyrene (223). Qf Jason and his history nothing certain is known, though the probabilities are that he wrote in Greek, some- where about the end of the second century B.C., and drew his materials from oral sources. The method of his abridger seems to have been to leave out large sections of the original work, and embody others very much as he found them. Of him we may almost certainly con- clude, from the style of his Greek, and the earliest allusions to his compilation, that he was a Jew of Alexandria ; and certain char- acteristics, in which he differs from the author of 1 Maccabees, suggest that he belonged to the Pharisaic party. Besides his unhesitating mention of the divine name, he has clear re- ferences to the belief in a resurrection (7 ^> i* 12 ■IS), and the practice of prayers for the dead ; and he loves rather to exalt the glory of the Lord, who uses all men as His instru- ments, than dwell upon the prowess of the Maccab^an heroes. The date of his work is uncertain ; but, as it was known to Philo and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (cp. 2 Mac 6 18-7 -12 with Hebll^sf.), it cannot be placed later than the beginning of the Christian era. Prefixed to the history proper, which only begins at 2 19, are two letters which profess to have been sent by the Jews of Palestine to their brethren in Egypt. II. Apocalyptic Writings Baruch. Testament of Twelve Enoch. Patriarchs. Ascension of Isaiah. Psalms of Solomon. Jubilees. Sibylline Oracles. Assumption of Moses. The name Apocalypse, which is derived from the Greek word for ' revelation,' is applied to a number of Jewish and early Christian works, to mark their distinctive character. The aim of these works is to solve the problem in- volved in the apparent discordance of events with the moral government of God. The Jewish thinker, who believed in the righteous- ness of God, and the rewards promised to the keeping of the Law, could not rest in the actual condition of things, when the servants of God were subjected to calamity and op- pression, and the heathen enjoyed prosperity and power. A method had to be sought of reconciling the sufferings of the righteous with the demands of the religious conscience. This was found by the Apocalyptists in a moral and HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. religious interpretation of the history of the world as a whole. Contact with the great empires of East and West had broadened their minds, and made them acquainted with the larger movements of human history : through- out it all, in the fate of individuals as in the rise and fall of nations, they saw the gradual unfolding of a divine purpose, of which the future held the complete fulfilment. The righteousness of God would be abundantly justified, and His faithful people vindicated in the eyes of the heathen. In a series of visions or revelations, generally attached to the name of an ancient prophet, they gave a rapid sketch or outline of the world's history, and depicted the glorious consummation to be confidently expected. The variety of style and contents in these writings is considerable. Some are addressed to the Gentiles, by way of showing the excellence of the Jewish faith, and the danger of neglecting its claims ; others are written for the comfort and encouragement of the author's co-religionists. Some are almost entirely mystical and apocalyptic ; others are largely taken up with the exposition and en- forcement of the Law. Some point generally to a revival of the glory and dominion of Israel ; others anticipate more definitely a world-wide Messianic kingdom, and a resur- rection life, while the nature and duration of these are also differently conceived by different writers. As a whole, they had an undoubted influence upon the development of Jewish life and thought, and so have an appreciable value for the historian. On the one hand, they helped to prepare the higher minds of Judaism for the reception of the gospel, with its world-denying precepts, and its glorious outlook upon the future. On the other hand, they stimulated the patriotic zeal of those who strove time after time to throw off the Roman bondage, and ultimately brought destruction upon the Jewish nation. Two examples of apocalyptic literature have been admitted into the Canon — the book of Daniel in the Old Testament and the Revelation of John in the New. In the Apocrypha, 2 Esdras comes under the same denomination ; but there are many others of which those cited above are the more im- portant. (1) The Apocalypse of Baruch In points of doctrine, as well as in other characteristic features, this book bears a strong resemblance to 2 Esdras. It purports to be a prophecy of Baruch, son of Neriah, uttered shortly before the Chaldean invasion of 586 B.C., and foretelling the destruction of Jeru- salem, and its subsequent restoration. There are seven distinct sections in it, mostly com- posed of prayers and visions, with connecting narrative portions, and separated from each other, except in one instance, by the observ- ance of a fast. The concluding chapters em- body a letter of Baruch to the tribes in captivity. This letter has been known for a considerable time, but the book, as we now have it, was only discovered in a Latin version so late as 1866. It seems to have come, through Syriac and Greek versions, from a | Hebrew original. Besides the fact that part of it appears to have been written before the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 68 a.d., and part of it afterwards, there are other grounds for concluding that it is a composite work, by various hands, produced at intervals between 50 and 100 A.D. It has a strongly Pharisaic cast of thought, and its language is occasionally reminiscent of the New Testa- ment. (2) The Book of Enoch The assumption of Enoch's name for apocalyptic purposes was probably suggested by the statement of Gn524. His supposed intercourse with God would furnish suflicient reason for ascribing to him revelations of things present and future, of things on earth and in heaven. A considerable body of apocalyptic literature seems to have been put forward in early times as proceeding from him, and portions of it that have been pre- served now form the book called by his name. These are generally believed to have been written in Palestine during the last two cen- turies B.C., but the Hebrew or Aramaic original has disappeared, and the complete text is only known in an Ethiopic version. The contents of Enoch are supposed to fall into five sections, all by different hands, and varying in date from 170 B.C. almost to the beginning of the Christian era. Interspersed through these are passages purporting to be written by Noah, and evidently interpolated by the editor from another Apocalypse circu- lating under that patriarch's name. The general theme is the overthrow and judgment of the enemies of God and His people, and the final establishment of the divine kingdom in righteousness and power. In one vision, seventy angels or shepherds are commissioned to watch in turn over Israel, but proving un- faithful to their trust, as the national history is adduced to show, they are cast with their adherents into an abyss of fire. Enoch visits heaven, and learns much of the destiny of men and angels ; he also penetrates the re- cesses of nature, and discovers its secret processes. In the middle of the book there is a series of three allegories (chs. 37-70), belonging, as some think, to the period 90-60 B.C., and certainly not later than the reign of Ixii HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC, BETWEEN OT. AND NT. King Herod. With the usual apocalyptic matter, there is in them a striking and original presentation of the person of the Judge, who is to redress the oppressions and injustices of the world. He is no mere descendant of David, but the Elect or Righteous One, the Christ or the Anointed, and still more ' the Son of Man who hath righteousness, with whom dwelleth righteousness, and who reveal- eth all the treasures of that which is hidden, because the Lord of Spirits hath chosen him ' (461-3). All four titles were subsequently applied to Jesus by Himself or His early followers. In addition to this, however, there are many other indications of the esteem in which the book of Enoch was held in the primitive days of Christianity. The language of the New Testament reflects it in quite a number of passages, and in one place it is directly quoted (Jude vv. 14f.). Its doctrine, too, bears distinct traces of its influence, espe- cially in connexion with the belief in the resur- rection, the rewards and punishments of the future, the ministry of angels, and the nature and activities of demons. Among the earliest Fathers of the Church, the book of Enoch was quoted with approval, and the Epistle of Barnabas even ascribes to it canonical authority. A few years ago, a book came to light, called ' The Secrets of Enoch,' which contains further fragments of Enochic Apocalypse. From the language in which it is written it is called the Slavonic Enoch, to distinguish it from the older Ethiopic book. Some of it seems to have been drawn from Hebrew originals, but the gi'eater part of it has evidently been com- posed in Greek, about the beginning of the Christian era. It describes the mysteries re- vealed to Enoch during his wanderings in the seven heavens, and is chiefly valuable for the light it sheds on the New Testament, some of the ideas of which, such as the millennium and the sevenfold division of the celestial regions, appear in it for the first time. (3) The Ascension of Isaiah This book, of which an Ethiopic version is the only complete text, comprises (a) an account of the martyrdom of Isaiah, (h) a short Apocalypse, in which the history of the early Church (50-80 a.d.) is outlined, and (c) a vision of Isaiah, in which he visits the seven heavens, and learns amongst other things of the coming advent, crucifixion, and resurrec- tion of the Saviour. The first part was probably written by a Jew about the be- ginning of the first century A.D.; the other two parts are of Christian authorship, and belong to the second half of the century. Hebll37f. is probably a reference to this book. Ixiii (4) The Book of Jubilees This Apocalypse is cast in the form of a homiletic commentary upon the book of Gene- sis, after the manner of the Jewish Haggadic teaching. Passing in review the period from the creation of the world to the institution of the Passover, it gives a rendering of the patriarchal history from the standpoint of the Jewish theologian of the century before the Christian era. The leading aim of the author is to emphasise the antiquity of the Law and the Levitical ordinances by carrying back their observance, even with heightened strict- ness, to the earliest times. At the same time he seeks to excuse or smooth over statements and facts that were calculated to give offence to the Hellenic mind ; for example, the ex- pulsion from Eden, the curse upon Cain, the deceit of Abraham and Jacob, and the severi- ties inflicted upon the Canaanites by the Israelites on their entrance into the Promised Land. There is no doctrine of the resurrec- tion taught in the book, though there are evident references to the immortality of the soul. The title of Jubilees is given to it from its system of time-reckoning, which is based upon Jubilee cycles of forty-nine years each, it is also called, from its subject-matter, ' The Little Genesis ' ; not because it is shorter than the canonical book, which it is not, but on account of its inferior authority. Though the only entire text extant is the Ethiopic version, it has evidently been written originally in Hebrew, and by a Pharisee. The date cannot be fixed more definitely than within the period of fifty years on either side of the birth of Christ. On the one hand, it assumes the existence of the Temple, and so must have been written before the fall of Jerusalem in 68 a.d. ; and on the other hand, it quotes largely from a section of the book of Enoch, which is regarded as not later than 60 B.C., and may have seen the light any time thereafter. It is of considerable value, not only for the study of Pharisaism and the New Testament, but also for the determination of the Hebrew text of Genesis. (5) The Assumption of Moses In this book, Moses, knowing that he is about to die, entrusts to the care of Joshua a collection of prophecies. These relate to the history of Israel, and subsequent chapters work over that history, from the apocalyptic point of view, down to the time when Judsea became a Eoman province. A statement by the author (c. 6) is significant for the deter- mination of the date. He says that the sons of Herod should reign for a shorter time than their father ; and as three of them reigned for longer periods, the book must have been HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. written during their lifetime, and therefore not later than 30 a.d. The author was pro- bably a Pharisee, and wrote in Hebrew, though the book is chiefly known to us in a Latin version. (6) The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs Here the twelve sons of Jacob are repre- sented as delivering their dying instructions to their descendants. Each in turn goes over the story of his life, and points the moral of it ; exhorts his children to emulate his virtues and shun his vices ; and utters a prediction of the calamities and oppressions that will come on account of sin. The mixed nature of the contents favours the theory that the book is based upon an original Jewish writing, largely interpolated by later Jewish and Christian hands. The oldest portions probably belong to the second century B.C., but the interpolations extend from that date well into the Christian era. Our chief author- ity for it is a Latin translation of the thirteenth century. It has the same system of time-reckoning as the book of Jubilees, and agrees with it in many of its biographical details. (7) The Psalms of Solomon These eighteen Psalms, fictitiously ascribed to Solomon in the usual literary sense, evi- dently emanate from one, or possibly two, of the later Pharisees. It is certain that they were originally written in Hebrew, though they are known to us now only in versions. In fig- urative language which is easily interpreted, they depict the course of events in Jerusalem from its capture by Pompey in 63 B.C. to his death fifteen years afterwards. The Has- monaean princes who welcomed him to the city are denounced as usurpers of the throne of David ; the defeat and massacre of the party of Aristobulus (II) are described, and the subsequent calamities depicted ; while Pompey is portrayed as a dragon, who would assume divine power and rule the world, but dies miserably on the shores of Egypt, with none to bury him. Not only in his rendering of events, but in his religious views and refer- ences, the author betrays his affinities with the Pharisees rather than with the Sadducees. The former are the ' saints ' and ' righteous ' ; the latter are ' proud sinners ' and ' trans- gressors.' The theocratic view of the Jewish state is emphasised, and righteousness chiefly presented as fulfilment of the Ceremonial Law. Throughout the book there are the usual warnings of judgment, but there are also distinct anticipations of a resurrection of the dead to rewards and punishments. The Mes- sianic hope is clearly defined only in the last two Psalms, which suggests the necessity of ascribing them to a different author than the others ; but the whole collection may be safely assigned to the period with which it deals, 70-40 B.C. (8) The Sibylline Oracles Sibyls in the ancient world were supposed to be inspired prophetesses, unconnected with any official order, through whom the gods re- vealed their thoughts and indicated their will. Their utterances were held in great esteem, especially at Rome, where upon momentous occasions they were consulted by the authori- ties. It is not surprising that the Jews of Alexandria, and after them the early Christians, sought to gain attention to their distinctive principles and beliefs by adopting a Sibylline style and guise. These were more likely to attract the notice of the Gentile world than the assumed authorship of one of their own prophets or patriarchs. The writings thus put forth as Sibylline Oracles form a heterogeneous collection, ex- tending ovpr several centuries and by many difi'erent hands. Originally they consisted of fourteen books, but only twelve now exist. The third book probably contains the nucleus round which the rest of the collection was gathered, jind which may have been produced as early as the middle of the second fcentury B.C. It gives an apocalyptic review of the history of Israel from the building of Babel to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and closes with a prediction of the coming glory and prosperity of the Messiah's kingdom. The other books pursue a similar vein, with a large admixture of Christian elements and frequent veiled allusions to the Roman power. They are of varying dates, some of them being supposed to be even as late as the second and third centuries of the Christian era. Besides the above there are other apocalyptic writings, bearing the names of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Elias, Zephaniah, etc. ; but these are not of sufficient importance to require separate treatment. III. The Septuagint References have already been made to the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, which originated among the Jews of Alexandria. It is called ' The Septuagint ' (LXX), from a tradition that persisted in Egypt regarding its inception. The story is told in a fictitious Jewish letter of the Ptolemaic period, pur- porting to have been written by Aristeas, a courtier of Ptolemy Philadelphus (284-247 B.C.). It relates how that Egyptian king sent to Jerusalem for seventy-two learned men — being six from each of the tribes — and set them, to work upon a translation of the Hebrew Ixiv HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. Scriptures for the great library of Alexandria, and how, without collusion, they agreed upon their renderings and completed their version in seventy-two days, which thereafter became the authorised Scripture of all the Greek- speaking Jews. In part, no doubt, the story is apocryphal, and in later years it received still further embellishments ; but the main elements of it may be perfectly true. It is highly probable that the Pentateuch at least was translated at the instigation of Philadel- phus, who was a great patron of learning, and had the laws of all nations collected for his library. In that case, his Jewish subjects would readilj'^ receive the new version as supplying the want that had arisen from their general adoption of the Greek tongue. The remaining books (which, as we have seen, in- cluded most of the Apocrypha) were translated at different times by various hands between the reign of Philadelphus and the beginning of the Christian era. The translator of Ecclesias- ticus (132 B.C.) refers to a Greek version of ' the Law and the Prophets and the rest of the Books,' but does not specify the writings com- prised under the last-mentioned section. Philo, tho Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, about the time of Christ, shows an acquaintance with the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures, with the exception of three or four books. About the end of the third century a.d. three recensions or critical revisions of the Septua- gint appeared, which were the work of Hesy- chius, Lucian, and Eusebius. These form the basis of the manuscripts' from which our text is derived. The diversity of hands employed upon the Septuagint is patent from the contents, which exhibit great variety of style and merit. On the whole, the Pentateuch reaches the highest degree of excellence, being a careful and scholarly rendering of the original : among the other books, the historical generally stand upon a higher level than the poetical. Some of the translations are done in very good Greek ; others are faulty, and abound in idioms carried over from the Hebrew. Some evince considerable capacity, but omit, alter, or expand, from mere arbitrariness, or the desire to avoid irreverence and the wounding of Jewish or Egyptian susceptibilities ; others are more conscientious, but frequently mis- read, mistranslate, or merely transliterate the original. Some aim at a correct reproduction of the Hebrew text ; others are more of a paraphrase or commentary than a translation. The order of the books, too, and in some in- stances even the order of the various chaptera, differs from that in the Hebrew text known to us ; and the Apocryphal additions inter- spersed throughout accentuate the divergence. In spite of these discrepancies, and the problems which they raise, this ancient trans- lation of the Old Testament Scriptures is of gi-eat interest and value. It is supposed to be the earliest translation of any considerable extent from one language into another ; and that alone would render it remarkable. Apart from that, however, it is of immense service, if it is not indeed indispensable, for the de- termination and elucidation of the text both of the Old and the New Testament. As evi- dently the translation of an ancient text of the Old Testament, now lost, it not only cor- roborates but enables us to correct the received text. On the other hand, as the Authorised Version circulating in Palestine, in the time of our Lord and the New Testament writers, it helped to shape their language, and affords a key to its interpretation. There is no doubt also, that in making the Hebrew Scriptures known to the Gentile world, it had its influ- ence in preparing the way for the reception of the gospel. IV. Other Eemains 3 Maccabees. Logia. 4 Maccabees. Josephus. Didache. (1) 3 Maccabees The only justification for the title of this book is that, like the genuine Maccab^ean Avritings, it deals with the sufferings of the Jews under foreign persecution. The scene of its story is not even laid in the Mac- caba3an age, but in the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator (222-204 B.C.). The Egyptian king is miraculously prevented from entering the Temple at Jerusalem, and afterwards frustrated by successive divine interpositions, from wreaking his vengeance upon his Jewish subjects. A similar story is related by Jose- phus of Ptolemy VII Physcon, and it may have had a foundation in fact. All that can be said of the date of the book is that it was written between 100 B.C. and 100 a.d. (2) 4 Maccabees This book derives its title from the fact that the greater part of it is taken up with reflections upon the story of the martyrs in 2 Mac (5 18-7^1. The purpose of the author, according to his own showing (1 1), is to prove that ' the pious reason is absolute master of the passions.' His work falls into two parts, (a) a discourse upon the general philosophic question, and (b) a restatement of the story of the Maccabsean martyrs, with the lessons to be drawn from it. Evidently he is a devout Jew, desirous of fortifying the faith of his brethren against the seductions of pagan phi- losophy. Incidentally he evinces his belief in universal immortality, and a state of future Ixv HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. I rewards and punishments. It is presumed that he belonged to Alexandria or some other Hellenistic city, and wrote about the begin- ning of the Christian era. (3) The Works of Josephus Flavius Josephus was born at Jerusalem in 37 A.D., and lived at least to the end of the century. He received a superior education, and rose to such esteem among the Pharisaic patriots that, on the outbreak of the war with Rome, he was appointed governor of Galilee. In the subsequent operations he distinguished himself by his wisdom and courage, but was taken prisoner by Vespasian, and ultimately retired to Rome, where he devoted himself to literary pursuits. His works are (1) ' The History of the Jewish Wars,' giving an out- line of events from the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and a full account of the struggle in which he himself had been engaged ; (2) ' Jewish Antiquities,' relating the story of his country from the earliest times to the close of Nero's reign ; (3) a ' Treatise against Apion,' which is chiefly valuable for its copious extracts from profane historical writers ; and (4) his ' Autobiography,' which is an elaborate vindi- cation of his defence of Galilee during the war. For centuries the works of Josephus were almost the only source of information possessed by the Christian world upon Jewish history, and even yet they are of great value in this respect. They are written in good Greek style, with a wonderful freedom from bias, though occasionally they may soften down statements and facts in deference to the Roman audience they were expected to secure. (4) The Papyrus Logia Several papyrus fragments have come to light in recent years, containing short collections of the sayings (logia) of Jesus. The first was published by Bickell in 1885 from the collec- tion of the Archduke Rainer, and is simply a parallel to Mkl4 2<3-30, The second was pub- lished in 1897 by Grenfell and Hunt, who had discovered it at Oxyrhynchus. It gives six sayings and the first word of a seventh ; three of them being parallels to LkG*^ 424 MtS^"*, and three new and distinctive. Har- nack supposes the second group to be extracted from the ' Gospel according to the Egyptians,' but there is no definite agreement yet as to the origin of either of them, and the same may be said of those still more recently dis- covered. (5) The Didache The 'Didache (Teaching) of the Twelve Apostles' was first printed in 1883 from a Greek manuscript of 1056, discovered at Constantinople. It consists of two distinct parts : (a) a number of moral precepts, called ' The Doctrine of the Two Ways,' which does not refer to any of the Gospels, and may have had a Jewish origin ; and (b) a collection of Church rules for discipline and worship, in which use has probably been made of the Gospel of Matthew. It is generally assigned to the period 80-110 a.d., but in its present form may be as late as the middle of the second century. In addition to the above, the names, and sometimes a few fragments of Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, have come down from the early days of the Christian Church. Of these it may be sufficient to mention : the Gospels according to Peter, the Hebrews, and the Egyptians ; the book of James usually called ' Protevangelium ' ; The Acts of Pilate, and of Paul and Thecla ; the Abgarus Letters ; the Epistles of Paul to the Laodiceans, the Alexandrines, and the Corinthians (the third). DEVELOPMENT OF JEWISH RELIGION IN THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS Though founded on divine revelation, and essentially conservative, the religion of the Jews did not escape modification from the ordinary human influences to which it was sub- jected. As encountered in the New Testament, it exhibits considerable variation from the pre- vailing type of Old Testament times. The intervening centuries had been characterised, not only by great political movements and momentous social changes, but also by a high degree of intellectual activity ; and these have left their mark upon the national religion. Old beliefs and practices have undergone a change of emphasis, if not a complete trans- formation ; new ideas have been introduced. and become the starting-points of fresh de- velopments. The process is reflected in the literature of the period (of which an account has been given) ; and some knowledge of it is necessary for the appreciation of the attitude of Jesus and the Apostles towards the religion of their day. I. The Doctrine or Idea of God. During the exile this central element of belief was purged of the heathen corruptions and accre- tions to which in former days it had been liable. After many warnings and chastise- ments, the people learned in national humilia- tion and personal suffering to adore the God of their fathers as the one supreme God of Ixvi HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. the world, and to dissociate His worship from the impure rites of the heathen. Idolatry was abjured and never again permitted to corrupt their faith, or foul the stream of their devo- tion. Even the severities of persecution — as in the instance of AntiochusEpiphanes — served only to confii'm their attachment to the unity and spirituality of God. As the sense of national abandonment and desolation increased, and the ideal methods of Greek thought gained ground among Jewish theologians, the tendency appeared to refine upon this idea, and remove God entirely from the world of material things. What is called the transcendent view of God became pre- dominant ; that is to say, He was regarded as BO far exalted above the world as to be out of touch or communication with men. He who had formerly tabernacled with His people and spoken familiarly to the prophets, seemed now to -dwell in a far-off heaven where no personal intercourse could be had with Him. This con- ception colours the literature of the period, which generally abstains from expressions that would suggest human passions or parts in God, and even avoids the mention of His name. Strongly imbued with it, the Jews of the time of Jesus resented the familiarity with which He spoke of God as Father, and asserted His interest in the humblest human concerns. 2. The Law. The sublimation of the idea of God was accompanied by an increasing reverence for the Divine Law. When God had retired within the clouds, and discontinued His communications with His people, the know- ledge of His will could only be obtained in- directly, through His actions and utterances in the past. No longer having the living voice I to guide them, they could but fall back upon the written word ; and the more perplexing and painful their circumstances, the more neces- sary it became for them to search and study it. Stimulated by the exile, the regard for the Law was deepened and confirmed by subse- quent calamities, and grew to a passion with the Pharisaical section of the nation, as the chains of foreign oppression were riveted upon them, and the shadow of impending dissolution fell upon the national life. It became, not only the basis of the civil polity, but the sovereign rule and standard of private con- duct ; and the scribes, whose special function was to expound and enforce it, rose to a position of great power and prominence. In a previous article it has been shown how the various parts of the Pentateuch were probably conjoined to form a rule of religious practice and belief. By the third century B.C., the prophetic books had been gathered together and invested with almost equal authority. Other books were subsequently added which were believed to date from the prophetic period. Ixvii and the Old Testament Canon was finally com- pleted and closed by the end of the first cen- tury of our era. Alongside this written standard of faith and practice, there was an ever-grow- ing body of oral tradition, which was supposed to have been delivered to Moses on Sinai, and handed down — through Joshua, the elders, and the prophets — to the men of the Great Syna- gogue (Ezra — 291 B.C.), and the schools of the scribes. It consisted of two parts, called Halakah or ' walking,' and Aggadah or ' teach- ing ' ; the former supplementing and defining the written Law, the latter explaining it and illustrating it with narrative matter. The whole was the care of the scribes, who in general united with the Pharisees in the scrupulous observance of its numerous minute and exact- ing precepts. It is the ' tradition of the elders ' referred to in the Gospels (Mt 152 Mk73, etc.), and was probably in Christ's mind when He spoke of the sayings of ' them of old ' (Mt 5 ^i), and the burdens of the Pharisees ' grievous to be borne ' (Mt23'i Lk ll-*"). In the early cen- turies of our era, this oral Law, with the ampli- fications and discussions which had gathered round it, was gradually committed to writing at two different centres, and formed what are called the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds. 3. Individuality. With the new conception and predominating influence of the Law, the emphasis was shifted from the national to the personal point of view. Hitherto the people as a whole had been the chief object of re- ligious consideration : the duties and privi- leges of the nation, its errors and backslidings, had been the main occupation of the religious mind : now the way of thinking is reversed, and the responsibilities and claims of the in- dividual come into prominence. The virtual abolition of the nation at the exile awakened the individual sense of sin, and stimulated in- dividual effort to regain the favour of God. The hope was still cherished that the nation would be restored ; indeed, as their outlook upon the world and mankind was widened by their Baby- lonian experiences, a larger vision began to flit before the devout — the overthrow of the heathen empires, and the recognition of the God of Israel by all the inhabitants of the earth. This, however, was only to be realised by the righteousness of individual men : it was to be the reward of the faithful keeping of God.'s La.w. On the return to Jerusalem, political claims were practically given up, and the community was rearranged and constituted upon a religious, not. a national, foundation. Its head was. the high priest : its centre the Temple worship : its members individually paid the Temple tax, made acknowledgment of sin, and promised obedience to the Divine Law. The result was to develop and strengthen the individual conscience, and make piety a per- HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. sonal concern (witness the narratives of Daniel and Susanna) ; also, as time went on, to beget a proselytising spirit, which encouraged and even compelled men of other nationalities to accept the Jewish faith. To understand the persistence of Judaism, especially among the Dispersed, it must be remembered that, from the exile onwards, except during the period of the Hasmonaean supremacy, the Jewish people were a religious fellowship, rather than a political combination ; a body of individuals held together by a common rite (circumcision), a common faith, training, and worship. 4. Angels and Demons. The doctrine of Grod's transcendence and absolute supremacy over the world left room for a development of belief in the action of intermediate beings between Him and men. Accordingly we find in the later Jewish literature statements about angels and demons, compared with which the references in preexilic writings are meagre and obscure. In the earlier books of the Old Testament superhuman beings other than God are occasionally introduced, and even the name ' angels ' is applied to them ; but they have not the definite doctrinal signifi- cance of later times, which regarded them as helpful and harmful spirits, entering into close relations with men, and influencing their lives. To the contemporaries of Jesus they were real heavenly messengers, or equally real messengers of Satan, countless in numbers, but divided into ranks, and occasionally bear- ing specific names. The development of this belief was probably encouraged liy the contact of the Jews with other nations, and especially with the Persians, in whose religion the hier- archies of good and evil spirits had been set forth with great elaboration. The movement, however, so far retained its native character that Satan and his hosts were never, as in Persian dualism, coordinated with God and the angels, but always relegated to an inferior position. The belief, as a whole, was rejected by the Sadducees (Ac 23 8), but it was fully shared by the Pharisaic party, and among the Essenes had an exaggerated importance given to it. To some extent it was countenanced by Christ. He accepted the belief in the ex- istence of spirits, but disf avom-ed some of the notions popularly associated with it, and in particular claimed for Himself and the Com- forter, or Holy Spirit, the sole power of imparting divine revelation and blessing. 5. Wisdom. Along with the belief in angels and demons, there gi'ew up an idea of the divine ' wisdom ' which is closely related to it. This idea is responsible for the tone and character of a section of the contemporary literature, embracing the book of Job, some Psalms, Proverbs, Ben-Sira or Ecclesiasticus, Ecclesiastes, and the Wisdom of Solomon, which are hence called the Wisdom Books. Here again the roots were planted in the days before the exile, but the gi'owth was stimulated and brought to fruit by the re- flexions and foreign influences of later times. The idea probably had its origin in the general conception of human sagacity, and the need of sympathy with the thought and will of God for its higher manifestations. Wisdom thus became associated with the Word of God, which by an easy extension of its meaning was applied to His whole message or revelation to men. In this sense it was personified in a kind of poetical way, and not only had divine attributes ascribed to it, but was regarded as having been seen by the prophets (Isa2i). The Wisdom Books take up the process at this point, and carry forward the personification upon more definite and elaborate lines. Wis- dom is the agent or messenger of God, through whom He reveals His will to men, and gives expression in the world to His benevolence and power (Prov8). She is His first creation, and the friend of all who love Him (Ecclus 1 "1-10) ; her thoughts are more than the sea, and her counsels profounder than the great deep (Ecclus 24 29). In vivid style, the Wisdom of Solomon describes the origin and character of Wisdom, recounts her praises, and expatiates upon her benefits (chs. 7, 8, 9). That this way of thinking took firm hold of the Jewish mind is evident from the Targums or Aramaic expositions of the Old Testament, which were current in the earlj^ Christian age. In them, the Word of God (Memra) appears almost as a real person, standing in the place of God Himself, as the vehicle of His self- expression, and the agent through whom He executes His purposes. Exalted above the world. He yet communicates with it, and acts upon it, through His Word. A somewhat simi- lar doctrine, though more largely marked by the influence of the Greek theory of ideas, was developed in Alexandria by the Jewish philo- sopher Philo. Accepting the Jewish concep- tion of the transcendence of God, he found in the Word {Logos) of Old Testament Scripture the power, or medium, through which His reason and energy still come into touch with the world. The Logos is His first-born Son. the highest Angel, even a second God : through Him the world of men and things is created and preserved. The widespread currency of these speculations, and the allegorical method of Scripture interpretation by which they were supported, are reflected in the New Testament, especially in such books as the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Fourth Gospel. In the pro- logue to the latter, the author seizes an idea familiar to his contemporaries and containing an- ticipations of the truth, and applies it in his own way to Him who is the Light and Life of men. Ixviii I HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. 6. Hellenism. At various other points the influence of Greek thought may be traced in the later beliefs of the Jews. In spite of their exclusiveness, the Hellenistic movement which overspread the civilised world in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great did not leave them untouched ; and for centuries there- after, especially in the Dispersion, they were largely affected by the close contact into which they were brought with the great speculative nation of the West. Their knowledge of its language and familiarity with its customs and ideas inspired them with a new breadth of thought which appears, not only in the later Jewish literature, but throughout the New Testament. The Wisdom of Solomon, for instance, is largely Greek in its way of think- ing, and uses phraseology borrowed from the schools of Greek philosophy. It enumerates with approval the four cardinal virtues of Greek morality (8^) ; it speaks in Platonic terms of a creation of the world from formless matter instead of from nothing (11 ^^) ; it calls manna ambrosial food (19'^^), and pictures virtue crowned with a wreath like the victor in the athletic games (4 2). Similarly the book of Revelation (79), in its description of the saints, uses a figure taken from the Greek contests, and St. Paul draws illustrations of Christian virtues and ideas from the circus and racecourse, which in former times were abhorred and avoided by the Jews. These are indica- tions of a considerable interchange of thought, in the course of which, not only moral and political ideas, but philosophical and religious conceptions, were communicated and received. To the Greeks the Jews are said to have been indebted for the distinction between the king- dom of heaven and the kingdom of the world, and they certainly found in the Greek thinkers clear and definite statements of gi'eat truths, like the immortality of the soul and the rewards and punishments of the future life, which had been but faintly outlined and suggested by their own religious teachers. The greatest consequences, however, of the familiarity with Western language and thought were the under- mining of the old division between the Jew and Gentile, and the preparation of the world for the preaching of the universal gospel. Only in the light of it is it possible to understand the wonderful success that attended the labours of St. Paul and other Apostles of the Cross. 7. The Messianic Hope. The circumstances of the Jews conjoined with their new thoughts of God and mankind to bring eschatological ideas into prominence : that is to say, ideas relating to the Last Things. So far as the world in general was concerned, these gathered round the Messianic Hope — the expectation of a God-sent Deliverer, who would restore the vanished greatness of Israel, and establish the rule of God's people in righteousness and power. The foundations of this expectation were laid in Old Testament prophecy, in which also numerous suggestions were afforded for the fulness of colour and detail which it event- ually assumed. The earlier as well as the later prophets had their visions of the salvation of Israel from all internal and external evils, and the complete reconciliation of the nation to God, with the consequent blessings of devo- tion and obedience. Their descriptions vary, according to the age in which they lived, and the circumstances of the people ; but the stress invariably falls upon the realisation of God's undisputed sovereignty, and the beneficent results of the holiness and submissiveness of the nation. Hints are given of a great out- standing figure, through whom the purpose of God is to be accomplished : he is ' a prophet like unto Moses,' ' a king of David's line,' ' the servant of the Lord ' ; but the conception as often is that God will employ no inter- mediate personality, but intervene Himself. The Old Testament, indeed, has no precise or uniform doctrine of the Messiah's person ; it does not even employ the term Messiah (' Anointed ') in the particular sense that afterwards attached to it — though Jew and Christian alike, in later years, could find in it prophetic anticipations of their own beliefs (see art. ' Messianic Hope '). After the exile, the prospect of national greatness and prosperity was too dim and distant to serve as a practical religious or political stimulus. The contact of the Jews with other nations, too, broadened their ideas of the world, and corrected the perspective in which the movements of history had appeared to them. As the scribes succeeded the pro- phets, and the sense of individuality took the place of the old national sentiment, the bulk of the people fell back upon an external religiosity, which lacked the confidence and inspiration of former days. At the same time, there were not wanting more reflective spirits, that still cherished the ancient hope, and saw nothing in the altered circumstances of the time to exclude the possibility of God's inter- vention. Transcendent as He was, could He not bend the firmament of heaven, and come down for the restoration of His penitent people ? Could He not arise for the shaking of the heavens and the earth, and the over- throw of the throne of kingdoms (Hag 2^1)? Side by side with the study of the Law, there went an anxious scrutiny of the promises and predictions of the prophets, with the result that a new and grander form of the old ex- pectation took possession of many minds. In this form it was to be fulfilled by supernatural power, and with a world-wide significance ; the heathen empires were to be overthrown ; Ixix HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. the dispersed of Israel gathered to their own land ; the worship of Jehovah reestablished at Jerusalem, and all the inhabitants of the earth made to do Him reverence. This is the view of Daniel, and there are sufficient refer- ences to it in other books of the period to prove its persistence both before and after the Maccabsean struggle. So far, however, no symptoms appear of the prominence of the idea of a personal Messiah, so characteristic of later Jewish thought ; and during the rise and supremacy of the Hasmonsean family, the hope itself of a future ideal kingdom fell into almost utter abeyance. At first, the fierceness of the struggle for independence monopolised the thoughts of the Jews, and discouraged reflexion upon ideal eventualities ; then the success of their cause secured to them such freedom and prosperity as served to withdraw their minds from the future. They were con- tent to enjoy the good already attained, and postpone further questions till a new prophet should arise among them (1 Mac 1441). A marked change is noticeable early in the century immediately preceding the birth of Christ. The Hasmonaean house was tottering to its fall : the excesses and feuds of its princes were bringing hopeless ruin upon themselves, and confusion and distress upon their country ; the Pharisees and other kin- dred spirits repudiated the actual government of the land, and turned for consolation to the old hope of an ideal kingship. Under the Hasmonaean rule, their sentiment of nationality had been revived and accentuated ; now that their confidence had been betrayed and their hopes disappointed, they threw themselves with new ardour into the old prophetic ex- pectations of a divinely-established kingdom. The feeling of the time is indicated in the ninetieth chapter of the book of Enoch, and still more clearly in the Psalter of Solomon. In the latter, for the first time, the name and person of the Messiah are dis- tinctly set forth. Probably the idea of a Messianic king had been shaping itself for some time in the Jewish mind ; thereafter it possessed it with increasing force, as the centre of religious hope, and the theme alike of theological study and devout reflexion. Under the tyranny of the Herods and the Roman Procurators, it took on almost a fever- ish intensity, the people praying and longing for the consolation of Israel, and eagerly watching the signs of the times for the evi- dences of the Messiah's advent, and the coming of God's kingdom (Lkl, 2, etc.). The hold it had obtained upon the popular imagina- tion is abundantly evidenced in the pages of the New Testament. It helps to explain the efl^ects of the preaching of .lohn the Baptist, and the favour with which the contemporaries of our Lord regarded His early ministry : it also throws light upon the vehemence with which Christ was ultimately rejected, when He failed to exhibit the expected characteristics of the Messiah, and proclaimed a spiritual kingdom which conflicted with preconceived notions. Later on, it led them to try those conclusions with the Roman power, which eventuated in their national eifacement. 8. Personal Immortality. No greater ad- vance was made during the period than in the determination and development of those eschatological ideas which bear upon the future life and condition of the individual soul. The stimulus to this advance may be found, not only in the new emphasis laid upon individuality, and the Persian and Greek in- fluences already noticed, but still more, per- haps, in the internal condition of the country, which was distracted by political and religious factions. In the strife and commotion of the time, the sudden reversal of fortune, and the eclipse of the hopes of national power and greatness, it was natural for the Jews to turn to the thought of a life after death, in which all inequalities would be adjusted, and all wrongs redressed. Especially would this thought be cherished in times of persecution, when they were called to sacrifice their lives for their country and their faith. Belief in a future dispensation of judgment is a condition of the martyr spirit, and was probably found necessary to support the fortitude of the early martyrs of the Jewish faith. The Old Testament has little to say upon the subject of individual immortality. In some of the later books, such as the Psalms (16, 17, 49, 73), and Job (14i3-i5 1925-29)^ sug- gestive hints are given of a continued exist- ence beyond the grave ; and it is possible to see in the accounts of the translation of Enoch and Elijah at least the faint anticipation of the later view of death ; but in general the faith of the Hebrew people does not seem to have been attracted by the prospect of a future life. It seldom rose above the con- sideration of earthly things, the continued enjoyment of which is the blessing they expect from God. The salvation for which they long is mostly of a national and tem- poral kind : deliverance from the ordinary calamities of life, or from the fear and power of their enemies. When they think at all of the future life, it is as a state of deprivation and loss, compared to which their earthly present life is an incalculable boon. They can see in it only the grim shadows and terrors of Sheol — an uncertain state of bodiless existence, into which death gathers good and bad alike, and from which even the most fervent piety and trust in God will not avail for deliverance. Ixx I HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. Starting from this slender basis of eschato- logical belief, Jewish thoug'ht was now led to richer and clearer conceptions of things to come. To begin with the cardinal idea, there was undoubtedly a steadily-growing sense and assurance of personal immortality. This is a conclusion forced upon us by a comparison of the confident utterances of the Apocryphal and Talmudic writers with the vaguer refer- ences of the Old Testament Scriptures. Even the words 'immortal' and 'immortality' seem now to have come into general use, as if the ideas conveyed by them formed part of the intellectual furniture of the ordinary Jew. Men certainly looked for a continued con- scious existence after death as different as could be from the dim and shadowy condition expressed in the old popular conception of Sheoi. Very soon, too, the idea of immortality became filled up with a wealth and intensity of meaning, which raised it to a prominent place in the regulation and government of life. There became associated with it, at least, two supplementary conceptions, which went to render it more tangible and effective : the thoughts of a resurrection of the body, and of a future distribution of rewards and punishments. Both of these, with some variations, have been adopted into the Christian system, and have exercised an untold influence upon modern thought. It seems to have been about the time of the Maccabaean wars that the belief in immortality came to be most strongly felt, and to include the resurrection of the body as an essential part. Twenty years before these wars the greatest teacher of the time — the Son of Sirach — could speak of departure from the world in strains of pathetic hopelessness (Ecclus41i-4 17-27-32). but during them the tone is completely changed, and afterwards we have the most precise utterances regarding the resurrection (Dan 1 2 ^ Ps Sol 7 1«3). In the second book of Maccabees (c. 7) we find the seven sons and their mother witnessing before the persecuting king to the hope of resurrec- tion to eternal life, and (14 ■i'^) Razis, at his death, throwing his entrails upon the people, and calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to restore him those again. Other references might be given (PsSollS^ 14^ 15i3 Enoch 9Q23 91 10^ etc.) ; but perhaps the best evidence of this belief, subsequent to the time of the Maccabees, is the fact that in the time of Christ it was a current popular doctrine, rejected apparently as an innovation by the Sadducees, but strenuously advocated by the Pharisees, and acquiesced in by the great bulk of the nation who held with them. The idea of the resurrection, as it presents itself in the thought of the period, exhibits considerable variety of form, if not a definite process of development. At first it seems to have been restricted to the godly, and antici- pated as an accompaniment of the establish- ment of the Messiah's kingdom. That king- dom had been delayed, but those who had lived in the hope of it, and had been over- taken by death before its realisation, would be raised to life again at the Messiah's advent, and share in the Lord's salvation. This is the view taken in the Psalter of Solomon. Afterwards there arose, as part of the gener- ally accepted Jewish belief, the doctrine of a universal resurrection to judgment before the divine throne and a life of eternal retribu- tion. Judging from 2 Esdras (7 27 f-), vrritten towards the close of the first century of our era, this view was probably current in the time of Christ. In some quarters it was com- bined with the more limited view, so that both a particular and a universal resurrection were anticipated : a resurrection of the just, at the coming of the Messiah, to participation in the blessings of His earthly reign ; and, after- wards, at the end of the world, a resurrection of the remainder of mankind to judgment and retribution. Evidences of this combination, in connexion with the Second Coming of Christ, are to be found in the New Testament, and especially in the eschatological ideas of the author of Revelation. As time went on, how- ever, the hope of the individual tended to dissociate itself from the national Messianic expectation, and become entirely independent of it. Reaching forward to a blessedness, of which after all the Messianic blessedness could only be the prelude, it gradually with- drew the thoughts of men from the Messianic hope, and gathered them about itself. Appar- ently, uniformity of belief on the nature of the resurrection life had not been attained at the close of our period ; in the time of Christ and afterwards questions regarding it still continued to be keenly agitated (Mt 22 23-33 Ac 23 6 lTh4i3-iS). The other adjunct to the idea of immortality — the thought of a future distribution of re- wards and punishments — seems also to have come into prominence about the time of the Maccabasan wars. Like the belief in the re- surrection of the body, no trace of it is to be found in the book of the Son of Sirach. At first it meets us in the simple undeveloped form of a division of the future world into two opposite states of happiness and misery, corresponding to the simplest moral classifica- tion of men as good and bad. The book of Wisdom says, ' the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them ' ; ' having been a little chastised, they shall be gi'eatly rewarded ' ; ' but the un- godly shall be punished according to their own imaginations' (Bi'^.io 514-16^ etc.). The same Ixxi HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. conception appears in the books of the Macca- bees (e.g. in the words of the martyrs before the king, 2 Mac 7 35-37). This is the first vague form of the belief in future retribution ; but it could not have been long till it acquired definiteness and precision, for we find from the rabbinical traditions that a tolerably elaborate theory on the subject was in exist- ence by the time of Christ. The two divisions of the future world were called Paradise (or sometimes, metaphorically, Abraham's Bosom) and Gehenna — a name derived from the valley in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which served as a common sewer and receptacle for the bodies of executed felons. To Paradise, the righteous were admitted without delay immediately after death ; but all others were consigned to Gehenna for longer or shorter periods, according to the degree of their iniquity. The former class was supposed to include only the true Israelites — those who believed the whole Law, and regulated their conduct accord- ing to its precepts ; but occasionally it was extended to embrace men of other creeds and nations who lived holy and righteous lives. The other class was composed of Gentiles and imperfectly righteous Israelites — that is to say, Israelites, who neglected or despised the Law and committed sin with their bodies. For them a retribution of suffering was reserved amid the gloom and misery of Gehenna. It is, however, to be noticed that the punish- ments of Gehenna were seldom, if ever, con- sidered to be of endless duration ; they were rather regarded as terminable in their nature and reformative in their effects. Between the two opposite states of the future world there was but a short space, which might be bridged over by the repentance and amendment of the sinner ; hence it was believed that the less sin- ful Jews confined in Gehenna — those who were not irredeemably bad — passed upward into Paradise after enduring pain for a period sufficient to purge them from sin and bring them to repentance. It is probable, also, that both Gehenna and Paradise were sometimes regarded as divisions of an intermediate state — the old Sheol — from which the righteous and those who had repented of their unrighteous- ness passed ultimately to the blessedness of Heaven. About the fate of the remainder — the incurably wicked — the common opinion seems to have been that they were annihilated, but this is not so clearly established as to be beyond dispute. Certain rabbinical expres- sions are supposed to suggest a belief in end- less punishment for the finally unrepentant. But against this it is urged that, if such a belief existed, it must have been dropped in later years ; for the teaching of the Talmud as a whole is decidedly against the idea of everlasting damnation, and in favour of a Ixxii temporary punishment even for the worst of sinners. Christ did not dispute these current concep- tions of His time, but occasionally made use of them in His teaching ; for example, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and in His promise to the thief upon the cross (Lk leiof. 2.3^3). Doubtless, too, they underlie His sayings about ' the many stripes and the few' (Lk 12 47, 48)^ 'the payment of the utter- most farthing' (Mt526), and 'the more toler- able judgment upon the sins of ignorance' (Mtll22f.). (His general attitude to the future life is discussed in art. ' Teaching of Jesus Christ.') 9. Worship and Practice. During the exile a more spiritual note began to pervade Jewish worship. Deprived of the ritual and sacrifices of the Temple, the better spirits of the nation, while maintaining the circumcision rite and the observance of the sabbath, betook themselves to more frequent prayer and meditation on the Law of God. It is probable, too, from the religious zeal afterwards exhibited by the exiles, that they met together periodically in local assemblies for mutual edification and encourage- ment. This, at any rate, is the origin generally assumed for the well-known institution of the Synagogue, which was already regarded as ancient in New Testament times (AclS^i). In the cu'cumstances of the exile, worship could only be an affair of scattered individuals, not of the nation as a whole ; consequently it lost much of its official aspect, and acquired a more personal character. After the Return, a rearrangement and elaboration of the Temple services took place. The daily sacrifices of a yearling lamb, morn- ing and CA^ening, were reestablished and main- tained without intermission — except for a short period during the persecution of Antiockus Epiphanes— until the fall of Jerusalem. Burnt offerings and sin offerings were appointed for the sabbaths and new moons and the great annual feasts. In course of time several other festivals were added to those that had been in existence before the exile — of these the chief were the Feast of Purim, supposed to celebrate the frustration of Haman's plots against the Jews of Persia (Esth 9 23-32)^ and the Feast of the Dedication, commemorative of the restitu- tion of the Temple worship by Judas Mac- cabeus in 165 B.C. The sacrifices on all these occasions were no longer provided by royal munificence, but by individual contributions from the Jews scattered over the world ; con- sequently they took on a more representative character, and became the symbols of a wide- spread religious fellowship. At the same time, as an effect of the increased study of the pro- phets, a deeper religious spirit was infused into them ; they were regarded as well -pleasing to HISTORY, LITERATURE, ETC., BETWEEN OT. AND NT. Grod, not so much for any virtue in themselves as in the expression they gave to pious and penitent feeling. It had come to be seen that God cared more for the doing of His will than for the blood of bulls and of goats (Pss406f. 50 '?f- Prov213 Ecclus 34 18-35^ etc.). Jesus, though He sets less value on the sacrifices than the Jewish teachers of His time, did not interfere with them, but in this, as in other respects, conformed to the ordinary practices of the Law (Lk2«f. Mkl4i2f- Jn^isf- 51*- 72f.). Other elements of worship were introduced or emphasised, which detracted from the prominence of the sacrifices, and gave the laity, as distinct from the priests, a larger interest in the services. This was partly the result and partly the cause of the multiplica- tion of synagogues as local places of worship apart from the Temple, one of which, and sometimes more, were to be found in every considerable Jewish community. Both in the Synagogue and the Temple, the Law was read and expounded for the popular benefit : in later times, the prophets also (Lk4 i"), and other Old Testament books ; while sacred songs (many of which are preserved in the book of Psalms) were chanted or sung, gener- ally by trained choirs, but yet as the praises of the congregation. Prayer was an import- ant element in the worship, as well as in the individual life ; with praise and thanksgiving, it accompanied every offering of incense or sacrifice. There were several stated forms of it for public use, the chief of which were ' The Eighteen Benedictions,' a short recension of which is called ' The Habinenu,' and ' The Kaddish.' In keeping with the eschatological ideas of the time, the practice seems to have grown up in the second century B.C. of making sacrifices and prayers for the dead. It may have been sug- gested by the heathen custom of making ob- ' lations at the graves of the departed ; but it differs from it in the fact that, according to the higher ideas of the Jewish religion, the offerings were made, not to the souls of the dead, but on behalf of them to God. In the form of prayer alone, without the accompani- ment of sacrifice, the practice afterwards passed into the early Christian Church. The origin of it cannot be exactly determined, but it is easy to see how natural it was to pious Jewish minds, that had come to a strong and earnest faith in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and the purifying purposes of the punishments of Gehenna. They might well believe that the souls that had been benefited by their prayers in this world might still be helped by them in the world beyond the grave. An instance of such prayers has been supposed to occur in Ps 132, assuming the post-Davidic date of the Psalm : ' Lord, remember David and all his afflictions ' ; but we cannot lay much weight upon that. For the first time, the usage comes clearly into view in the history of the Maccabasan wars, where a case of it is found on a toler- ably large scale (2Macl240-45). The teaching of the Jewish schools was quite in accordance with it ; and there is reason to believe that, during the life and ministry of Christ, though He is practically silent about it, prayers for the dead were offered in the synagogues, and repeated by the mourning relatives. In Jewish cemeteries of the first and second centuries after Christ, inscriptions have been found bearing witness to the usage ; and a trace of it may appear in the New Testa- ment in St. Paul's prayer for Onesiphorus (2 Tim 118). Except in small devout circles, such as those in which the gospel of Christ found a ready soil, Judaism, towards the close of our period, degenerated into pure legalism and formality. The doctrine of God's transcendence had be- gotten harsh conceptions of His nature, and arbitrary ideas of His judgments ; caprice and partiality, rather than love, were ascribed to Him ; His requirements were supposed to be contained in the Law and the traditions of the elders, which by this time had become a vast conglomerate of precepts bearing upon the minutest actions and circumstances of life. Only the strictest observance of the Pharisaic rules could make a man righteous before God ; but that need not be more than an external observance, and so the religious life came to be divided between the performance of rites and ceremonies, in which purifications played a great part, and punctilious attention to matters of outward conduct. The whole Pharisaic system aimed at making clean the outside of the cup and platter ; it tithed mint and rue and all manner of herbs, but passed over judgment and the love of God (Lk 11 39-42). Expedients were devised to atone for the shortcomings of those who failed in their efforts to keep the whole Law ; exceptional suffering and works of surpassing merit, especially almsgiving, even the good works and virtues of ancestors and friends were regarded as compensating for personal deficiencies. Under such a system a healthy spiritual life was hardly likely to be fostered ; its only outcome could be, as the New Testa- ment shows, pride and hypocrisy on the one hand, and hopelessness on the other. Jesus protested against it till His lips were closed on the cross, and in striking contrast to it presented that pure moral teaching and pro- found spiritual faith which have since conquered the world. Ixxiii THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST In the estimation of His followers, Christ's life is the central fact in the history of the world. Tliis is indicated externally in their manner of computing time, and dating other events, with reference to it. More particularly, however, they regard it as the most significant fact for their personal lives, the basis of their individual thinking and behaviour in the world. Christianity revolves so closely round the person and work of Christ that a knowledge and understanding of His life are requisite for the comprehension of Christian truth. Besides, as a life of absolute purity and devotion to God, it presents not only the perfect standard for moral conduct, but the ideal type of re- ligious aspiration and devotion. It deserves, therefore, the closest, most reverent study ; and in such study the following short sketch may be helpful, as bringing the various details of the Gospels together, and arranging them so far as possible in chronological order. 1. The accepted date of Christ's birth is wrong by several years. In reality He was born in B.C. 6 or 7, at a little village 5 m. S. of Jerusalem, called Bethlehem. There His mother gave Him birth in a stable, there being no room for her in the inn. His mother, Mary, and His reputed father, Joseph, were devout Jews of the tribe of Judah. They claimed descent from the royal house of David, but, like others of his descendants, were in poor circumstances. According to the Gospel nar- rative, based probably on the testimony of Joseph and Mary, Joseph was not in a literal sense the father of Jesus. Before their marriage Jesus had already been miraculously conceived by His mother, in accordance with an angel's message. A marvel so stupendous, which, if alleged of an ordinary person, could not be credited, is rendered credible, and almost natural, by the extraordinary subsequent career of Jesus. There is no need to enlarge upon the subject in this place, as it is fully discussed in the Commentary upon St. Matthew's Gospel. See on Mt 1 18-25. 2. Childhood and Youth of Jesus. When Jesus was bom, Herod the Great ruled Judaea and all Palestine. Soon afterwards he died (B.C. 4), and his kingdom was divided among his sons. Archelaus received Judaea, Samaria, and Idumaea ; Herod Antipas received Galilee and Peraea ; Herod Philip received Trachonitis and Ituraea. These princes were not inde- pendent, but subject to Rome. While Jesus was quite young, Archelaus was banished to Gaul for misgovernment, and Judaea was placed under direct Roman government (a.d. 5). An- tipas and Philip were allowed to retain their dominions. Joseph had intended to settle permanently in Bethlehem, that being the proper home of the Messiah (MicS^), but the hostility first of Herod the Great, from which he took refuge in Egypt, and afterwards of Archelaus, caused him to alter his plans. He returned to Naza- reth, his own city, in the dominions of Antipas, and brought up Jesus to his own trade, which was that of a carpenter, or possibly a smith. Jesus did not enter a rabbinical academy, but doubtless received the usual education of a Jewish boy in the synagogue of Nazareth. This consisted of reading, writing, and perhaps the elements of arithmetic. Schooling began at the age of six or seven. Before this age Jewish fathers were accustomed to teach their sons the Shema (DtG'^), certain proverbs, and certain verses from the Psalms. In school the children sat on the ground, and repeated the words of the lesson after the master until they knew it. Great attention was paid to pronuncia- tion and learning by heart. The principal study was the Law, of which Leviticus was taken first, as containing the information about legal observances most necessary for a boy approaching manhood to know. The boys were very anxious to read well, because the best readers were allowed to read the lessons from the Law in the synagogue services. The Jewish system of education was entirely different from the Greek. The Jewish school- masters were scribes, trained in the narrowest ideas of traditional rabbinism. They rigidly excluded from the curriculum all secular sub- jects, and every Gentile influence. Jewish boys had no sports or athletics like the Greeks, though we read that they played with one another in the streets (Mt 1 1 ^^). It may be safely affirmed that Jesus gi'ew up entirely uninfluenced by Greek culture, although it is probable that, owing to the presence of so many Gentiles in Galilee, He found it neces- sary to learn the Greek language. Some have maintained that He was acquainted only with the vernacular Aramaic (called Hebrew in the New Testament), but it is more probable that He was bilingual, speaking Aramaic or Greek according to circumstances. It is doubtful whether Jesus during His whole life ever read any other book than the Bible. With this He was intimately acquainted. Ixxiv THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST In His recorded discourses, He quotes nearly every book of the Old Testament, and shows a profound knowledge of its spirit and meaning. Only one incident of His childhood is recorded (Lk2'*i), but it is interesting as show- ing that even at twelve years of age He pos- sessed the consciousness of His divine Sonship (Lk2**9)_ The childhood of Jesus was marked by no miracle. Like other children He grew in wisdom and stature (Lk2S2) jje showed ex- ceptional, but not superhuman ability (Lk 2 ^'i')^ Passing through every stage of human life, He showed the virtues and capacities suitable to each. There is no scriptural support for the common idea that from the moment of the Incarnation His human nature possessed all knowledge and every possible perfection. On the contrary, the Scripture teaches that the growth of His human mind in grace and knowledge was real, and that He was subject to real temptations like other men. Jesus was brought up with several other children, who are called His brothers and sisters. These were either children of Joseph by a former wife, or children of Joseph and Mary born after Jesus, or, as some would prefer to believe with Jerome, cousins of our Lord (see on Mt 1 2 47-50)_ They appear to have been jealous of the superior talents of Jesus, and for some time refused to believe in Him (Jn75). After the Resurrection they were converted, and two of them, James and Jude, became prominent Christians. 3. The Ministry of Jesus. No teacher ever achieved so much in so short a time as Jesus. His ministry did not exceed two years and six months (according to some authorities three years and six months), and yet in that short time He founded a Church strong enough to survive the greatest political and social revo- lutions, and enlightened enough to adapt itself to the continual advance of human knowledge. Christianity to-day is as new as it was two thousand years ago. It already embraces more than a third of the human race, and is still extending its sway over the hearts and lives of men. The plan of Christ's ministry is quite defi- nite and clear. He felt that His first duty was to ofier Himself to the Jewish authorities at Jerusalem, and to the nation at large, as the promised Messiah. This He accordingly did (Jn 2 13-3 36). But He knew from the first that they would reject Him. His ideal of what the Messiah was to be, and theirs, were too far asunder for any other result to follow. They sought an earthly king to lead a revolt against foreign domination, and to found a world- wide Jewish state. He sought a kingdom not of this world. Gradually the nation which at first received Him favourably became estranged, and He devoted Himself more and more to training the Twelve for their future work. The outlook of Jesus was never confined to the limits of Judaism. H^ looked forward to the conversion of all the nations, and laid His plans accordingly (Mt8ii Jn 101*5 Mt28i9). The idea of the Catholic Church is due, not to St. Paul, but to Jesus. 4. The Localities of the Ministry. Roughly speaking, Jesus spent a year teaching in Jud^a, a year (some say two years) in Galilee, and six months in Peraea and other places. The Synoptic Gospels do not describe the Judsean ministry, and very rarely allude to it (Mt2337 Lk4« RM and Westcott and Hort). The omission is, no doubt, remarkable, but is capable of a simple explanation. Eight months of the Judsean ministry took place before the death of the Baptist and the public appearance of Jesus in Galilee, and were relatively un- important. The rest of the Judaean ministry consisted of occasional visits to Jerusalem. On these visits Jesus probably took with Him the Apostle John, who had a house at Jeru- salem, leaving Peter and the rest behind in Galilee to carry on His work. Hence the Synoptists, who depend upon St. Peter, omit the Judsean ministry, while St. John, who alone witnessed it, alone records it. 5. The Baptism. Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist, who claimed to be the Fore- runner of the Messiah, in the latter half of A.D. 2(3. After the Baptism, both John and Jesus saw a vision of a dove descending upon Jesus, and heard a voice from heaven saying : ' This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' This sign convinced John that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God, and henceforth he openly proclaimed the fact. The recognition of Jesus as the Messiah by John, which is most explicit in the Fourth Gospel, was of the greatest assistance to the future ministry of Jesus. John was universally recognised as a prophet, and his words carried weight ;(Mt 2 126, etc.). From the disciples of John Jesus obtained His first and most in- fluential followers ( Jn 1 35-42). 6. The Temptation. After His Baptism, Jesus retired to the wilderness to prepare for His ministry by a period of seclusion. He was wholly occupied in meditation, fasting, and prayer. Here He overcame the tempta- tion, suggested to Him by the Evil One, to take the easy and pleasant road to success by falling in with the ideas of the multitude, founding an earthly kingdom, and using His miraculous powers for unworthy ends. He resolved to live a life of self-denial, humility, and suffering, and to appeal for the spread of His principles, not to force, or to popular favour, but to the religious instincts of pious and holy minds. His should be a Kingdom of Truth(Mt4i). Ixxv THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST 7. The First Disciples. After the Tempta- tion Jesus returned to the neighbourhood of the Baptist, and several of the Baptist's dis- ciples attached themselves to Him. They were Peter, John, Andrew, Philip, and Bartholomew (Nathanael). They joined Him in the belief, or rather in the hope, that He was really the Messiah. But they did not commit themselves irrevocably at first. They followed Him, but did not entirely abandon their ordinary avoca- tions. It was not till the end of a year of personal experience of what Jesus was, that they left all and followed Him (Jnl^s Lk5ii). 8. Sketch of the Ministry. The Synoptic Gospels ignore chronology, and it is only by the help of the Fourth Gospel that anything like a chronological scheme of our Lord's ministry can be constructed. Following St. John, we may divide the ministry into eight periods. (1) From the Baptism, September A.D. 26, to the First Passover of the Mi)iistry, April a.d. 27. This period of about six months embraces the Baptism, the Temptation, the gathering of the first disciples, and the first miracle at Cana. The early part of the period was spent in the wilderness, the later part in Galilee. The life of Jesus was still more private than public, but the faith of His little band of disciples was growing, and His position as a teacher or rabbi was beginning to be recognised (Jn 129-2 12). (2) From the First Passover of the Ministry, April A.D. 27, to December of the same year. This period of eight months was spent entirely in Judaea. At the Passover He cleansed the Temple for the first time, prophesied His death and resurrection in words afterwards quoted against Him at His trial (Mt2G6i), converted a leading member of the Sanhedrin, and afterwards spent several months in Judaea teaching and baptising. He made many con- verts, but was not satisfied with their faith or earnestness. The apparent success of Jesus roused the envy of the disciples of John, who was obliged to rebuke them, and to renew His strong testimony to Jesus' Messiahship (Jn 2 13-3 36). (3) From December a.d. 27 to the Feast of Purim, March. A.D. 28. This period of three months was passed chiefly in Galilee. The hostility of the Pharisees, due to the success of Jesus, drove Him from Judsea. On His way to Galilee He passed through Samaria, where he made a number of converts, thus for the first time extending His work beyond the limits of Judaism. This return to Galilee marks the beginning of the active Galilean ministry, which the Sjmoptists so graphically record (Mkli^*-). At this period John was cast into prison, so that the eyes of all Galilee Ixxvi were now concentrated upon Jesus. Making Capernaum His head-quarters. He went on preaching tours through Galilee, proclaiming the kingdom of God, casting out devils, and healing the sick. A profound impression was produced. He was everywhere taken for a prophet, and it began to be the popular belief of Galilee that He must in truth be the Messiah. To this period, generally called the great Galilean ministry, in which the success of Jesus was most pronounced, are to be assigned the second miracle at Cana (Jn446), the final call of the Apostles (Mt4i9 Lk5ii), the choice of the Twelve, the Sermon on the Mount, much of the teaching by parables, and numerous miracles worked at Capernaum and throughout Galilee. The bulk of the work of Jesus recorded by St. Matthew and St. Mark belongs to this period. So crowded is it with incidents, and so extensive are the journeys which Jesus is said to have undertaken, that some suppose that it cannot have been com- pressed within the narrow limits of three months, and assign a year and three months to it. Towards the end of the period the Apostles were sent on a preaching tour (MtlOS). The whole period was one of intense activity, and full of hope and promise. Although Jesus did not openly call Himself the Messiah (the Christ), He assumed an authority which could only be justified on that assumption. Ap- pa,rently He avoided the title, because in the minds of the Jews it was inseparably connected with the idea of a temporal king and a tem- poral kingdom. But among the Samaritans, whose idea of the Messiah was not political, He showed no such reticence, and openly de- clared Himself to be 'the Christ' (Jn426). In the Fourth Gospel, which does not describe the Galilean ministry, Jesus appears to be less reluctant to allow Himself to be recognised as the Messiah than He does in the Synoptics. (4) From the Feast of Purim, March A.D. 28, to the Second Passover, April a.d. 28. jj This period of about a month began with a visit to Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Purim (Jn5i), but was chiefly spent in Galilee. At Jerusalem Jesus healed a man at the pool of Bethesda, and delivered an important discourse asserting His lordship over the sabbath, His equality with the Father, and His power to J raise the dead. His words caused great of- 1 fence, and henceforth plots were formed against His life. While Jesus was at Jerusalem the Apostles were engaged on their mission of healing and preaching in Galilee (MtlO'). Returning from Jerusalem, Jesus rejoined the Apostles, who reported with joy the success of their mission (LkQiO). Then followed the feeding of the five thousand on the E. of the Lake (Jn6i), an event recorded THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST by all the evangelists. This is the really critical point of the ministry. Hitherto, at least in Galilee, all had been most favourable. Now a change began. The multitudes for whose benefit the miracle was wrought were for the most part enthusiastic Galileans, journeying to Jerusalem to keep the Feast of the Passover. They insisted that Jesus should be conducted to Jerusalem and proclaimed king. Jesus r^iused, and in so doing dis pleased not only the multitudes but even the Apostles. On the next day He offended His followers still more by declaring in the synagogue at Capernaum that He was the living bread that came down from heaven, and that those who would have eternal life must eat His flesh and drink His blood. At this many of His followers left Him, but the Apostles, though grievously disappointed, stood firm. For the Passover which fol- lowed, the second (or, as some think, the third) of the ministry, Jesus does not seem to have visited Jerusalem (Jn7^). See Jn 5 1-6 71. (5) From the Second Passover^ April a.d. 28, to the Feast of Tabernacles in October of the same year. This period of about six months embraces the second and closing period of the Galilean ministry. The time was spent partly in Galilee proper, and partly in extensive excursions through Phoenicia, and the districts of Csesarea Philippi and Decapolis. The period is one of opposition, disappointment, and gloom, during which Jesus withdraws more and more from public life, and devotes Himself to His disciples. The Pharisaic party, which Jesus had deeply offended a month before by His speech at the Feast of Purim, now sent emissaries into Galilee to undermine His influence with the people, who were already beginning to be dissatisfied with Him for reasons of their own. A stormy encounter took place, in which Jesus denounced their pedantic traditions which in effect made void the Law of God (Mk7i*-). Nevertheless He still went on a tour through the land of Gennesaret, and perhaps through the whole of Galilee, and healed multitudes of sick (Mk g53-56)_ Perhaps at this period He visited Nazareth for a second time, and was again rejected (Lk4i6). At last He determined to leave Galilee and to undertake a tour through heathen territory. But first He pronounced a doom of woe upon those Galilean cities in which so many of His mighty works had been wrought, and wrought in vain (Mt 1 1 20). The motive for this extensive journey was probably not so much to undertake new work among the heathen, though this to some extent was done, as to be alone with the Apostles and to pre- pare them for His death. Passing through the land of Tyre and Sidon, He healed the Ixx daughter of the Canaanitish woman (MkT^*), and then made a circuit to the other side of the sea of Galilee (Decapolis), where the popu- lation was mainly heathen. Here He performed certain cures and fed the four thousand, who probably were mainly Gentiles. Then, cross- ing to Bethsaida, He healed a blind man (Mk 73i_826). Finding the Pharisees still active, and the country hostile (MkSH), He started on another tour to Cassarea Philippi, in the extreme N. of Palestine. Here occurred the great confession of St. Peter, in which in the face of apparent failure the Apostle expressed his faith not only in Jesus' Messiahship, but in His Divinity (Mt 161*5). Jesus, deeply moved, declared him to have fully merited the honour- able surname, which at their fii-st meeting had been bestowed upon him (Jn 1 ^3). Then fol- lowed the announcement of the Passion and of the Resurrection ; the Transfiguration ; and a secret return to Capernaum (MkO^^). Here occurred the miracle of the coin in the fish's mouth (Mt 17 24), the incident of the little child taken into Jesus' arms (MkQ^^), and the con- versation with His brethren, in which they taunted Him with the failure of His mission, and the present obscurity of His life (Jn72f-). (6) From the Feast of Tabernacles, early in October a.d. 28, to the Feast of Dedication in December of the same year. See Jn 7 10-1022. Jesus went up to Jerusalem secretly to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, skirting the borders of Samaria (Lk952), and healing ten lepers on His way (Lk 17 H). Finding a certain amount of support at Jerusalem, He ventured from His retirement, and publicly asserted His claims to divine dignity. On one occasion He nar- rowly escaped stoning (JnS^^). The only miracie recorded at this period is the healing of the man born blind. It is generally sup- posed that Jesus spent the whole of this period, which consisted of nearly three months, in Jerusalem. (7) From the Feast of the Dedication, Decem- ber A.D. 28, to the Raising of Lazarus., March A.D. 29. This period of about three months was chiefly spent in Peraea. At the Feast of the Dedication Jesus again nearly lost His life, and was obliged to retreat into Peraea, beyond Jordan. Here He preached and made many converts, the way having been prepared for Him by the preaching of John the Baptist : see Jn 10 22-42. This period is full of incidents, and IS not unlike the earlier Galilean ministry in character. Here, as in Galilee, Jesus was continually i6. For fasting, see Mt6i6-18 9 is. On almsgiving, see Mt542 61-4 2531-46 Lkl233,34 1412-19,21-23 1030-37 213,4 109. For repentance, see on Mt4i7 2128-32 Lk 5 31.32 132-5 15 10, 17-20 1 6 30, 31 24 46, 47. Qn gratitude, see Lk 7 40-47 839 1717,18. Qn hypocrisy, see Mt23. On marriage, see Mt 5 27-32 194,12. Qn Church and State, see Mt222i. On scepticism, see Mt 14 31 1717-20 Jn.3is.i9 448 824 1522-24. On the work of the Holy Spirit, see Jn33f- 1416-18,26 1526 167-14. On Satan and demonic possession, see on Mt425. On missionary work, see Mt28 18-20 Lk 24 46-49. Qn the Church, see Mtl6i8 1817. On the Sacraments, see Mt 26 26-29 2819 Jn35 63if. 2444 2653 Jn539,40, private prayer, see 181-8 9-14 Jn 14 13, 14 Ixxxu THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM The chief, and also the most difficult, criti- cal question connected with the Synoptic Gospels is their relation to one another and to their presumed sources. Prolonged investi- gations, extending over more than a century, have not yet reached final results, but a con- siderable consensus of opinion inclines to the following conclusions. I. That St. Mark is the oldest of the synoptists, and has been used by St. Matthew and St. Luke, who have incorporated the bulk of his Gospel into their own with comparatively few alterations. The evidence for this is extremely strong. In the first place, the whole of St. Mark's Gospel, except from thirty to forty compara- tively unimportant verses, is contained either in St. Matthew or in St. Luke, and most of it in both ; whereas large portions of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and those very important ones, are peculiar to each of those Evangelists. Hence, if there was borrowing at all, it must have been from St. Mark. The other pos- sibilities will not bear examination. St. Mark did not copy from St. Matthew, for he would not have omitted the Nativity, the Sermon on the Mount, and such parables as the Unmerci- ful Debtor, the Labourers in the Vineyard, the Ten Virgins, the Talents, and the Sheep and the Goats. St. Matthew did not copy from St. Luke, for he would not have omitted the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Rich Fool, Dives and Lazarus, and the Prodigal Son. Finally, St. Luke did not borrow from St. Matthew, for he would not have omitted those striking parables of St. Matthew which have been already mentioned. We shall now prove that there was actual borrowing, and, in order to do so, shall quote and comment on a few parallel passages. must conclude that one of them copied from the other. Mkl3i4 But when ye see the abom- ination of desolp-tion stand- ing wliere he nught not (let hira that readeth understand), then let them that are m Judaea flee vinto the moun- tains. Mt24l5.J6 When, therefore, ye see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in tlie holy place (let lum that readeth understand), then let them that are in Judsea flee unto the moun- tains. Here we have an author's comment (viz. 'let him that readeth understand') verbally identical in the two Gospels, and inserted at precisely the same point in our Lord's speech. As it is impossible to believe that the two Evangelists hit upon the same comment and inserted it at the same place by accident^ we Mk 6 16, 17 But Herod when he heard thereof, said, John, wliora I belieaded, he. is risen. For Herod himself liad sent forth and laid hold upon John, and bound him in prison for the sake (if Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, etc. Mtl4i-3 At that season Herod the tetrarch heard the report concerning Jesus, and said unto his servants, This is Jchn the Baptist, he is risen from the dead, and therefore do these powers work in him. For Herod had laid hold on John and bound him, and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Pliilip's wife, etc. Here the death of John the Baptist is intro- duced and described by both Evangelists at the same point in the history, but out of its true historical order. Nothing but copying will account for this. Mklis And passing along by the sea of Ga'ilee, he saw Simon, and Andrew the brother of Simon, casting a net in the sea ; for they were fishers. Mt4i8 And walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw two Vtrethren, Simon who is called Peter, and Andrew liis brother, cast- ing a net into the sea, for they were fishers. Observe here the comment upon the narra- tive (' for they were fishers ') made by both Evangelists. We cannot conceive that it oc- curred to them to make such a remark just at this point independently. Mk 3 19 And Judas Is- cariot, which also betrayed him. Mtl04 And Judas Is- cariot, who also betrayed him. Lk6l6 And Judas Is- cariot, which was the traitor. It cannot be an accident that the three Evangelists concur at this point in calling Judas a traitor any more than it can be an accident that, at the arrest of Jesus, all three Evangelists are careful to remind us that Judas Iscariot was ' one of the Twelve ' (Mk 14i0Mt26i4Lk223). Mk524 And he went with him, and a great multitude followed him, and they thronged him. And a woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suf- fered many things of manyphysicians, etc. Mt 9 19 And Jesus arose and followed him, and so did liis dis- ciples. And behold a woman which had an issue of blood twelve years, etc. LkS42 And as he went the multitude thronged him. Ai\d a woman ha^^ng an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all lier living upon iihysi- cians, etc. Observe here how all three Evangelists break off the story of Jairus's daughter pre- cisely at the same point to describe the cure of the woman with an issue, who, they all agree, had been ill twelve years. Ixxxiii THE SYNOPTIC PR(3BI.EM Mkl32 And at even, when the sim did set, tliey brought unto him all that were sick a d tiieui that were possessed with devils. Mt8i6 And when even «as come, thai brought uiiti) him many possessed with devils. Lk4 40 And when the sun was setting, kU they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him. Here we have a clear indication that it is St. Mark's Gospel which is used by the other two ; for of St. Mark's two expressions to describe the close of day (' even ' and ' when the sun did set '), St. Matthew adopts one and St. Luke the other. Cases of this kind occur throughout the Gospel history. St. Mark's account of the common incidents is generally the longest and the richest in detail, and what is found is that some of St. Mark's details are in St. Matthew, and some of them in St. Luke, and not all in both. Two other considerations tend to confirm the priority of St. Mark : (1) St. Mark's order of events is always supported either by St. speaks of St. Matthew as having compiled ' the oracles ' in the Hebrew (or Aramaic) tongue. The exact meaning of ' oracles ' is doubtful, but the tendency of modern criti- cism is to suppose that St. Matthew's Hebrew ' Logia ' was a collection of our Lord's dis- courses, rather than a continuous narrative. These ' logia ' of St. Matthew, in the form of a Greek translation, were probably used by the author of the First Gospel, perhaps even incor- porated entire, so that it is not without reason that the present Gospel is called ' according to Matthew.' Whether the 'logia' were also used by St. Luke, and if so to what extent, is a difficult question. St. Luke and St. Mat- thew have about 200 verses common to them alone. The question is whether St. Luke's deviations from St. Matthew in these verses, which are generally very considerable, are not altogether too great to allow the supposition that he used a common document. The Matthew or by St. Luke, w"hereas St. Matthew's reader will be able to form his own judgment upon this matter by comparing the parallel passages, a complete list of which is given in the following table. deviations from St. Mark's order are never supported by St. Luke, nor St. Luke's by St. Matthew's ; (2) the close resemblances between St. Matthew and St. Luke are generally con- fined to the incidents which they record in common with St. Mark. Their accounts of the Nativity have practically nothing in common, and the differences between their versions of the Sermon on the Mount are very great. 2. The version of St. Mark used by St. Matthew and St. Luke was probably the pre- sent Greek Gospel. For a long time it was customary to attribute the resemblances of the three Synoptic Gospels to a supposed ' original Mark ' ; but recent research has demonstrated that this ' original ' Mark re- sembled the present St. Mark so closely that the simplest view is to suppose them identical, as accordingly is now very generally done. 3. Oral tradition probably exercised some influence over the composition of the Synoptic Gospels, especially of the First and Third ; but the resemblances are altogether too close to allow us to suppose that the principal common source was mere oral tradition. The ' original Mark' was certainly icritten, for the author of it once addressed his readers (Mkl3i* = Mt 2415, see above), and St. Luke refers to numerous written sources (Lk 1 1). 4. There is much less agreement among critics as to the sources of St. Matthew and St. Luke in those portions of their works which are not parallel with St. Mark. These sources would include (1) oral tradition ; (2) in the case of St. Luke, at least, personal researches and enquiries in Palestine ; (3) earlier docu- ments which, though numerous, were probably rather fragmentary (Lk 1 1). A very early writer, Papias, who flourished about 130 a.d.. Mt. Lk. 37-10,12. 37-9,17. 43-11. 43-13. 5 1-6, 10-12 6 20-23 . . 25. 513. 1434,35. 5 18. 161". 525,26. 1257-59. 538-48. 627-30,32-36 63,4.' 1413,14. 69-13. 111-4. 619-21. 1233,34. 6 22, 23. 1134-36,' 624. 1613. 6 25-34. 1222-32. 71.2.' 637,38. 73-5. 641,42. 77-11. 119-13. 712. 631. 713,14. 1323,24. 7 15-20. -» 1233-37./ 643-45. 721. 646. 7 22, 23. 1325-27. 7 24-27. 6 47-49. 85-13. / 7 1-3, 6-10. -i \ 13 28, 29. / 819,20. 957,58. 821,22. 9 59. 60. 9 32-34. cp. 1222-24 } 1114,15. 9 36-38. 102. Preaching of John. Temptation. Sermon on the Mount. >» n 11 »> n >» n n n n 105-16. 1024-33. 101-12. 640 122-9. Ixxxiv Centurion's servant. ' The foxes have holes.' 'Let the dead bury their dead.' The deaf demoniac. ' The harvest truly is plenteous.' Charges to the Twelve and the Seventy. THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM Mt. 1034-36. 1037,38. 1039. 1040,41. 111-6. 117-11. 1 1 12-14. 1 1 16-19. 1 1 20-24. 1 1 25-27. [129-14* 12 27,28,30. 1238-42. 1243-45. 1316.17. 1333. 1614 162.3. 1719,20. 187. 1812-14. 1815,16,21,22 1928. [2131,32. 2144. [221-10. 234-7,12,13. 2323-33, Lk. 1251-53. 1426,27. 1733. 1016. 7 18-23. 6 24-28. 1616. 7 31-35. 1012-15. 1021,22. 141-6.] 1 1 19, 20, 23. 1 1 29-32. I 1 24-26. 1023,24. 1320,21. 639. 1254-56. 175.6. 181. 153-7. .173,4. 2228-30. 7 29, 30.] 2018. 1415-24] I I 43, 45, 46, 52 1411. 1137-44,47,48. Charges to the Twelve and the Seventy. John sends disciples. Christ's opinion of John. ' Woe to thee, Chora- zin.' ' I thank thee, Father.' ? Beelzebub. The sign of Jonah. The house swept and garnished. ' Blessed are your eyes.' Parable of the Leaven. Blind leaders of the blind. ' Ye can discern the face of the sky.' Faith as a grain of mustard-seed. ' Woe to the world be- cause of offences.' The lost sheep. ' If thy brother sin.' Judging the twelve tribes of Israel. ? ' He that falleth upon this stone.' \Woe to the Scribes J and Pharisees. Mt. 2334-36. 2337-39. 24 26-28. 2437-39. 2440,41. 2443-51. 2514-30. Lk. 1149-51. 1334,35. 1723,24,37. 1726,27. 1734-36. 1239-46. 1911-28. Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees. ' Jerusalem, Jerusa- lem, that killest the prophets.' Sayings about the Second Advent. The Talents and the Pounds. It will be noted that the common matter is mainly, though not exclusively, sayings and discourses, and that its order and arrangement in the two Gospels is generally very different. This variation in order and arrangement, which is extreme, constitutes a real objection to the view that the authoi-s of the First and Third Gospels both used the ' logia,' at least as a principal common source. When they copy St. Mark, they preserve, as a rule, not only his words, but also his order and context, but when they are supposed to copy the ' logia,' they deal much more freely with the words, and, as to the order and context, they either take no account of them at all, or differ from each other. Even if we admit that St. Matthew's habit was to collect our Lord's sayings into large masses, and St. Luke's to preserve the separate sayings in their original context, there still remain numerous diverg- ences of order and context, which are most diflticult to account for on the hypothesis of a single common source. It seems most natural to suppose that if St. Luke used the ' logia,' he used them only to a limited extent, and is indebted for his knowledge of our Lord's sayings mainly to other sources. Ixxxv THE DYNASTY OF THE HERODS 1. Herod I (The Great). The Herods were not Israelites by race, but Idumeans. Herod I's grandfather, Antipater (Antipas), was the chief ruler of Idumea. His father, also called Antipater (or Antipas), embraced the Jewish religion when Idumea was taken by John Hyrcanus, and Herod I was consequently brought up a Jew. In 47 B.C. his father was made procurator of Judasa by Julius Csesar, and he immediately assigned subordinate juris- dictions to his four sons. Herod received Galilee, which he governed with great vigour, putting down brigandage with a strong hand. In 40 H.C. the Roman senate, at the instigation of Antony, made Herod king of Judfea, but it was not till 37 B.C. that he succeeded in establishing himself in Jerusalem, the people being still strongly attached to the Asmonean dynasty which had ruled in Palestine for 126 years. At last Herod captured Jerusalem, and signalised his triumph by massacring the whole Sanhedrin except two persons, and putting to death all the adherents of the rival prince Antigonus. Antigonus himself was beheaded by Antony. Herod was a wise, far- seeing, firm, and enlightened ruler, altogether free from Jewish narrowness and prejudice, and inclined to adopt the learning and culture of the Romans and Greeks. On the other hand, he was suspicious, cruel, selfish and implacable. Towards the end of his life, when he was afflicted by a painful disease, his thirst for blood amounted almost to insanity. Among his victims were his tenderly loved wife Mariamne, her brother Aristobulus, her grand- father Hyrcanus, and his own sons Alexander, Aristobulus, and Antipater. The great work of his lifetime was the building of the Temple, which was begun in 20 B.C., and was not com- pletely finished till 65 A.D., just before the outbreak of the war with Rome. On his deathbed (4 B.C.) he ordered the principal Jews to be shut up in the circus at Jericho, and slaughtered as soon as he had breathed his last, in order that there might be some real mourners at his funeral. He had ten wives, and numerous children. 2. Herod Antipas was the son of Herod I by Malthake, a Samaritan. By the will of his father he received the tetrarchy of Galilee and Perea, which yielded a yearly revenue of 200 talents. He married the daughter of Aretas, king of Arabia Petrsea, but was guilty of an intrigue with Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, whom he afterwards incestuously married, in spite of the expostulations of John the Baptist, whose execution Herodias managed to procure by an artifice which is recorded only in the Gospels. Antipas was a great friend of Tiberius, in whose honour he built and named the city of Tiberias. In 38 A.D. he was banished to Lugdunum in Gaul, and eventually died in Spain. Herodias voluntarily shared his exile. 3. Herod Archelaus was also the son of Herod 1 and Malthake, and was junior to Antipas. In spite of this, his father's will assigned to him a superior position, giving him the govern- ment of Judsea and the title of king. He was extremely unpopular in Judaea, and when he sailed to Rome to ask to be confirmed in his kingdom, his subjects sent a message after him, requesting that he might be removed from the kingdom, and Judasa placed under direct Roman government. To this circum- stance our Lord alludes, Lkig^^-ST, Augustus assigned to Archelaus Jud^a, Samaria, and Idumea, with the title of ethnarch, not king. In 6 A.D. he was deposed by Augustus for tyranny, and banished to Vienna in Gaul. His dominions were placed under the govern- ment of a Roman procurator, and this arrange- ment continued till 41 a.d. We are told, Mt 2 22^ that Joseph avoided entering the territory of the tyrant Archelaus, and retired to Naza- reth to live under the government of the milder Antipas. 4. Herod Philip I, called Herod by Josephus, and Philip in the Gospels (Mtl43 Mk6i7 Lk3i9), must be carefully distinguished from Philip, tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis (Lk3i). He was the son of Herod I by the second Mariamne, daughter of Simon the high priest. Owing to his mother's treason, he was left out of his father's will, and lived all his life as a private gentleman, chiefly at Rome. He was the first husband of Herodias, who divorced him to marry her uncle Antipas. 5. Herod Philip II, generally known as Philip the tetrarch, was the son of Herod I and Cleopatra of Jerusalem. He was brought up with Archelaus and Antipas at Rome. His father's will assigned to him certain territories to the N. and E. of the Sea of Galilee (Bata- nea, Trachonitis, Auranitis), and the title of tetrarch. St. Luke calls him tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis (Lk3i). He reigned from 4 B.C. to 34 A.D., and was celebrated for his moderation, justice, and good government. Ixxxvi THE DYNASTY OF THE HERODS He built Caesarea Philippi, and Bethsaida Julias, whither our Lord on one occasion retired to avoid Antipas (LkQ^*^). His wife was Salome, daughter of Herod Philip I and Herodias. Since he was childless, his domin- ions were annexed on his death to the Roman province of Syi'ia. 6. Herodias (see Mtl4i Mk6i4 Lk3i«) was the daughter of Herod I's son Aristobulus, and his niece Berenice. She first married her uncle Herod Philip I, by whom she had a daughter Salome, who danced before Antipas and pleased him. Afterwards she divorced him and married his brother Antipas, who for her sake put away his wife, and thus provoked a disastrous war with his indignant father-in- law. Herodias procured the death of John the Baptist, and shared her husband's exile. She was sister to Herod Agrippa I. 7. Herod Agrippa I, called Agrippa the Great by Josephus, was the son of Aristobulus and Berenice, and grandson of Herod I. He was brought up at Rome on terms of the closest intimacy with the imperial family, and was particularly friendly with Caligula and Claudius. When Caligula became emperor in 37 A.D. he at once gave Agrippa the tetrarchy of Philip, who had died in 34 A.D., and in 38 A.D. added to this the tetrarchy of the exiled Antipas (Galilee and Persea). In 41 a.d., in return for great services rendered to Claudius, he received in addition Judaea and Samaria, and the title of king. He now ruled over all the dominions of Herod the Great. He con- stantly lived in Jerusalem, and kept the Mosaic Law with the utmost strictness, allowing no day to pass without offering sacrifice. His zeal for the Law caused him to persecute the Church (Ac 12). He died in 44 a.d. The account of his end given by Josephus is in substantial agreement with that of St. Luke. His wife was named Cypros, and among his children by her were Herod Agrippa II, Bernice, and Drusilla. 8. Herod Agrippa II, son of Herod Agrippa I and Cypros, was only 17 years old when his father died, and Claudius, thinking him too young to govern the kingdom, made it once more a Roman province. In 48 a.d. Claudius assignod to him the small kingdom of Chalcis, and in 53 a.d. gave him in exchange for this the tetrarchies of Philip and Lysanias, with the title of king. Nero added to his dominions certain cities in Galilee and Persea. He was entrusted with the general oversight of the Temple, and to him is due the credit of completing it. His capital was Caesarea Phil- ippi, which he enlarged and renamed Neronias, in honour of Nero. He advised his country- men not to rebel against Rome, and when war broke out sided with the Romans. After the fall of Jerusalem, 70 a.d., he received a con- siderable accession of territory. His later years were spent in Rome, where he died, about 100 A.D. , the last of the Herodian dynasty. Although ' expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews,' and well able to form an opinion as to the ortho- doxy of St. Paul's opinions (Ac 25, 26), he was of vicious life. 9. Berenice, or Bernice, see on Ac 25^3. 10. Drusilla, see on Ac 24 24. ABRIDGED GENEALOGY OF THE HERODS TO ILLUSTRATE THE NT. Antipater (ruler of Idumaea) Antipater (procurator of Judsea) Herod I Aristobulus Herod Philip I Antipas Archelaus (by Mariamne, (by Mariamne, d. of (by Malthake) (by Malthake) granddaughter of Simon) Hyrcanus I) | Herod Philip II (by Cleopatra) Agrippa I Herodias Salome •-- (by Herodias) Agrippa II Bernice Drusilla Ixxxvii THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL Of all the personalities of the apostolic age St. Paul shines brightest. Modern opponents of Christianity have, indeed, interpreted him very diiferently. They have never solved the problem that he presents to them. Some of them assert that he did little more than suc- ceed in corrupting Christianity. Others regard him as the real founder of Christianity in spite of the positive evidence which he gives to show he was only its disciple. A few have had the audacity to assert that none of the Epistles which bear his name were the product of his pen. But even those who maintain this in- credible theory cannot deny that St. Paul made a profound impression upon the mind of early Christendom. No one indeed would have taken the trouble to forge Epistles in his name if it had not already been venerated and loved as the name of one of the very foremost mis- sionaries of Christ. All indeed admit, whether they are Christians or not, that no person of the apostolic age laboured more successfully than St. Paul. Our sources for a knowledge of his life are the Acts written by his companion St. Luke, and St. Paul's own letters. Early traditions also preserve a few facts of value. Then there seem to be a few genuine traits in the apocry- phal ' Acts of Paul and Thekla,' a romance of the second century, and there is no reason for doubting the statement of St. Clement that he visited ' the limit of the West,' and the ancient belief that he suffered martyrdom at Rome. At the present time the more moderate op- ponents of orthodox Christianity admit that the evidence of the second century is too strong to be brushed aside, and say that none of the Epistles can be safely called pseudonymous, and that eight are almost certainly genuine (Gal, Ro, 1 and 2 Cor, Phil, Col, Philemon, 1 Th). We believe that we are most fully jus- tified in asserting the genuineness of all the thir- teen letters, and shall therefore regard them as trustworthy evidence for the Apostle's life. I. Early Life and Conversion. Saul, also called Paul, was of purely Jewish ancestry, of the tribe of Benjamin, born at Tarsus in Ci- licia. The fact that he was called by two names is probably to be explained by his in- heriting a Roman name with Roman citizen- ship. At the present day it is quite common for Jews to have a Jewish and a Gentile name, and as ' Saulos ' in Greek bears the ignoble sense of ' waddling,' it was not likely to be used in Gentile circles. Like all Jewish boys. Paul learnt a trade, in his case that of making tents, for the manufacture of which the hair of the Cilician goat was peculiarly fitted. His father was apparently well-to-do, and Paul was carefully educated. He studied rabbinical theology under Gamaliel at Jerusalem, and his literary method and stjde show a strong rabbinical and Pharisaic influence. He was, nevertheless, not uninfluenced by the broader and more Greek type of Judaism prevalent at Alexandria. His character was charged with zeal, courage and emotion. His physical powers were not equal to his intellectual. His presence was not imposing, his health was uncertain, and the ' thorn in the flesh ' of which he speaks, signifies some humiliating ailment which was most likely of an hysterical or even epileptic character. His early life was guileless, but his education developed within him an overpower- ing sense of the majesty of God's law, and with a sense of the meaning of the law there came also a sense of the meaning of sin. The com- mandment which was destined to be ' unto life ' he found to be ' unto death.' The knowledge that sin was forbidden, and that sin was pos- sible, led him into a severe inward conflict (Ro 7 : see Liddon's and Sanday and Headlam's Commentaries). The consciousness of inward failure seems to have stimulated his outward zeal for the Law. He regarded Christianity as a vile im- posture, and the work of persecuting it as one of the highest duties. He was known as an enthusiast before the martyrdom of Stephen. After it the Jewish ecclesiastical leaders saw in him an excellent instrument for the exter- mination of the new creed. Neither they nor he were content to persecute the Christians of Palestine only, and they commissioned him to go to Damascus. On his journey thither he became a Christian as the result of a personal revelation of Jesus Christ (.35 or 36 A.D.). His own statements and the three accounts in Acts show that the revelation was miraculous (Ac 91-16 224-16 269-18). Li 1 Cor 158 he puts the appearance of Christ to himself on a level with the appearance to Cephas and the other Apo- stles. An outward vision with an audible mes- sage having accompanied the inward revelation (Gal 1 !<>), St. Paul never ceased to believe that, like the original Apostles, he was an eye- witness of the risen Christ. With this vision he connected his call to be an Apostle to the Gentiles. And in writing to Corinth he as- sumes that his enemies could not well admit Ixxxviii THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL the outward vision and then deny his apostolic vocation. 2. Beginning- of Missionary Career. After three days spent at Damascus the future Apostle of the Gentiles was baptised by Ananias. And now, as a member of the Christian Church, he began to proclaim in the synagogues that ' this Jesus is the Son of God.' But the great mental strain which he had undergone soon made rest imperative. He retired for three years to Arabia, and then returned with new force to Damascus. In consequence of Jewish plots against his life, he went to Jerusalem in order to become acquainted with St. Peter (38 A.D.). He remained there only fifteen days, and, in accordance with his policy not ' to confer with flesh and blood,' saw none of the apostles except Peter and James, ' the Lord's brother.' Ac92'5-30 shows us that it was Barnabas who introduced him to these apostles. He was con- veyed by the disciples to the seaport of Csesarea Stratonis, and thence took ship for Tarsus (Gal 1 21. 23 Ac 9 30 1 1 25, 26). He appears to have spent about seven years in Syria and Cilicia, and made converts there : cp. Ac 1523. Summoned by St. Barnabas to Antioch, St. Paul took a leading position in this important Church. The next year, 46 a.d., he was sent with Barnabas to take alms from Antioch to the needy Christians of Judaea (Ac 1 1 30). After this the Holy Spirit singled out the two friends to begin the definite evangelisation of the Roman empire, 47 A.D. In company with John Mark, they set out for Cyprus, where they won a triumph in the conversion of Sergius Paulus, the Roman proconsul. They then set sail for Perga on the mainland, and, though deserted by John Mark, began boldly to preach in South Galatia. St. Paul persevered in preaching first to the Jews. They replied by hunting him from city to city. The missionaries every- where found that the Gentile proselytes heard them gladly, the heathen Gentiles also showed that they were willing to receive the gospel. The romantic and perilous adventures of the missionaries were not in vain. Churches were founded at Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and probably in other places. It was already clear that God ' had opened to the Gentiles a door of faith,' and that St. Paul had a special vocation to convert men who were not of his own race. 3. The Council at Jerusalem, 49 a.d. The influence of St. Paul was now to receive a fresh acknowledgment. A revelation (Gal 2 2) directed him to go from Antioch to Jerusalem, where he laid before the Apostles the gospel that he preached among the Gentiles. It was a time of acute crisis. Certain Judaising con- verts of the original apostles maintained that the promises of the gospel only belonged to those who observed the Mosaic Law. St. Paul had asserted the justification of all Gentiles who believed on Jesus Christ, without the Law. He saw that if the Gentiles had to be circum- cised, it meant that the Gentile had to become a Jew in order to become a Christian, and the gospel was then not primary but secondary. The ' pillar ' apostles supported St. Paul. They gave him the ' right hands of fellowship,' and he returned to Antioch with complete liberty to act as the appointed head of the mission to ' the uncircumcision.' All risk of Christianity becoming a mere sect of Judaism was now removed. 4. Second Missionary Journey, 49-52 a.d. Ac 1 5 3*5— 1 8 2- gives us an account of this journey, which was marked by the Apostle's greatest missionary successes, by the earliest of his letters now extant (1 and 2 Th), and by the extension of the gospel to Europe. It began with a rupture between St. Paul and St. Bar- nabas, occasioned by St. Paul's refusal to be accompanied by Mark, with whom, however, he was afterwards reconciled. In company with Silas, a Jewish Christian of Roman citizenship, he visited the Churches which he had founded on his first journey. At each place the decisions of the Council of Jerusalem were communicated to the faithful (AclG^'^). At Lystra St. Paul took as an assistant Timo- theus, whom he circumcised, as he was the son of a Jewess. The Holy Spirit forbade the missionaries to preach in the province of Asia, and a vision summoned St. Paul to Europe. At the seaport of Troas he was joined by St. Luke, who has told us the story (St. Luke uses the pronoun ' we ' in 97 vv. of Acts. They are 1 6 10-17 -20 5-15 211-18 27 1-28 1«). They crossed to Macedonia and began to preach at Philippi. Hitherto, with the exception of Antioch, St. Paul had not preached in any really large town since his mission began. Henceforward he was to preach mainly in great centres of population. He was cruelly opposed at Philippi, the first town where we find that the relations between the missionaries and the civil authorities became a difficulty. As afterwards at Ephesus, the opposition was not religious or political, but came from the mercenary hatred of men whose interests were bound up with superstition. At Thessalonica and Beroea St. Paul won staunch converts, in spite of a deadly per- secution directed against him by the Jews of Thessalonica. From Beroea he went to Athens, the educa- tional centre of Greece, where he delivered an earnest address on the hill of the Areo- pagus. One member of the court of the Areopagus was converted, but the intellectual men of Athens were not sufficiently conscious of their inward moral failure to receive the gospel seriously. The huge city of Corinth, the commercial capital of Greece, offered a Ixxxix THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL very diflEerent field. It was notorious for the sensuality of the rich and the misery of the poor. While there St. Paul lived as a poor man with the poor, and made it his determin- ation to preach nothing but ' Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.' Protected by Roman law, he won many converts, including some persons of distinction. While at Corinth he wrote twice to the Thessalonians. The second jour- ney closed with a visit to Jerusalem. It was probably soon after this visit that an incident happened which showed the Vitality of the Judaising party in the Church. They no longer denied that the uncircumcised believers were Christians, but they tried to gain a distinct and higher status for the circumcised. When St. Paul went from Jerusalem to Antioch in 52 a.d., St. Peter, fearing to offend these Judaisers, was guilty of pretending to believe that he agreed with them. He refused to eat with uncircumcised Christians. St. Paul then openly rebuked him for this 'dissembling' (Gal2ii), i.e. for acting in a manner contrary to his true convictions. (Some authorities place this in- cident earlier, shortly before the Council of Jerusalem, 49 a.d. : see on Acl5. It is still debated among scholars whether St. Paul ever visited North Galatia, or whether ' the Phry- gian and Galatian country' (Ac 16'') means one district known by two different names, extending from Iconiiun to Pisidian Antioch, Phrygian racially and Galatian politically. For list of authorities on either side see HDB. vol. iii. pp. 706, 707.) 5. Third Missionary Journey, 52-56 a.d. The Judaisers took their revenge by visiting the Churches founded by St. Paul, where they presented themselves with ' letters of com- mendation,' pretending that they represented the original Apostles, and came to supply the defects of St. Paul's teaching. In the mean- time St. Paul visited Galatia and Phrygia, made a long stay at Ephesus, and went to Macedonia and Greece. During these few years St. Paul reached the pinnacle of his power. Forced, against his will, to engage in controversy, he wrote the four Epistles, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans, which rank among the greatest masterpieces of all literature. The whole period was one of diffi- cult but victorious conflict. In Acts 19 we are told the dramatic story of the riot at Ephesus, where the craftsmen who made images of Artemis stirred up the mob to expel him. On leaving Ephesus he brought the gospel to Troas, and went on to Mace- donia, Illyria, and Greece, making Corinth his real goal. He had previously visited it ' in sorrow ' from Ephesus (2 Cor 2 1 13 1> 2), but was compelled to return there on account of re- newed controversies. These controversies oc- casioned the Apostle the greatest anxiety, and though 2 Corinthians shows that his anxiety was partly allayed before he left Macedonia, he continued his journey, and arrived at Corinth at the end of 55 a.d. He stayed there three months (Ac 20 3), during which he wrote the Epistle to the Romans. Wishing to return to Syria, he was prevented by a plot of the Jews from taking ship at Corinth for Syria. He therefore went round by Phil- ippi, where he spent the Easter of 56 a.d., and Troas. St. Luke describes the journey in Acts 20 and 21. St. Paul met with a friendly reception from St. James and ' all the elders ' at Jerusalem, a fact which shows that there was no split among the leaders of the Church, however much the partisans of those leaders might differ. Recognised in the Temple by certain Asiatic Jews, the Apostle was attacked by a hostile mob, and after defending himself in an address to the people and another ad- dress to the Sanhedrin, he was sent to the Roman procurator Felix at Caesarea. 6. Period of Imprisonment, 56-61 a.d. The course of proceedings taken against St. Paul is made perfectly intelligible by St. Luke. St. Paul was a Roman citizen, and the Roman procurators were too just to deliver him to the Jews, though Felix was not above hoping for a bribe. St. Paul finally determined to cut the matter short by appealing to the emperor, an appeal which the procurator Festus could not disregard. The voyage to Rome is de- scribed by St. Luke with picturesque accuracy, and shows St. Paul manifesting that easy ascendency over his fellows which he always gained in unprejudiced surroundings. At Rome the Jewish leaders did not oppose him, but the majority of the Jews deserted him. He remained at Rome until 61 A.D., living in his own hired house under the supervision of a soldier. During this period he wrote Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians and Philippians. They do not show the same exuberance of argu- ment as the four preceding Epistles. But their tenderness and devotion, their combina- tion of authority and humility, their insight into the true significance of Christ and of the Church, prove that St. Paul was still advancing ' from strength to strength.' 7. Conclusion. St. Paul was released from his first imprisonment at Rome, as he seems to have hoped would be the case when he wrote Philippians (1^" 224). jj^ had long wished to visit Spain (R0I528), and though his Epistles do not record such a visit, St. Clement of Rome, writing about 95 a.d., speaks of him as going ' to the limit of the West,' which in a Roman writer probably means Spain. From the Epistles to Timothy and Titus we learn that he returned to the East. His last Epistle is 2 Timothy, written with winter in prospect and when the first xc SURVEY OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL stage of his last trial was over. He had been lately at Troas and in Crete, and probably at Miletus and Corinth. 1 Timothy was ap- parently written from Macedonia on the way to Corinth, and the letter to Titus was written from Corinth when he was expecting to spend the next winter at Nicopolis opposite to Italy (Tit 31^). He must have been arrested soon after the letter to Titus was despatched. According to the traditions of the primitive Church he was beheaded about three miles from Rome on the Ostian Way, close to the place now occupied by the great basilica of St. Paul. The basilica contains his tomb, marked by an inscription of the fourth century. The year of his death was probably 64 a.d., though it was formerly dated 67 A.D. The year of his conversion was probably 36 a.d. No Christian in all history accomplished as much work in a period of twenty-eight years. SURVEY OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL I. Form of St. Paul's Writings. We have from the hand of the Apostle Paul thirteen Epistles — addressed four of them to individual helpers, and the rest to Christian societies of his foundation or lying within the circuit of his mission (Romans, Colossians). They are primarily not treatises upon religious doctrine, nor homilies enforcing specific duties, but letters of a friend to his friends, of the absent missionary and pastor to his flock. They are selections from a larger correspondence, and in several instances (notably 1 and 2 Cor) imply letters and messages from the other side. The acquaintance and mutual affection of the parties, their common interests in Christ, supply the basis of the communications. They are essentially personal documents, origin- ating in the relationship between writer and readers ; from this standpoint the questions, of theology or morals or church administration, that arise in them should be approached, as being the questions of the hour to the corre- spondents. In the Epistles we watch the vital Christian problems emerging in the experience of the earliest Churches and taking shape and colour from their constitution and surroundings. These writings give to the subjects of which they treat the actuality and living interest that attach to the career of the Apostle of the nations engaged in his mission- ary labours and in the shepherding of his strangely mingled flock. With this personal origin is connected the incidental nature of St. Paul's writings. The Apostle took up the pen to supply the lack of his presence (IThS^^)^ when his field of labour became too wide to admit of frequent visits to the Churches. He wrote for the most part upon the spur of the moment (Romans was an exception) — on occasion of recent news, in response to some message or enquiry, in self-explanation and in expression of the thankfulness or solicitude concerning his readers that occupies his mind : see, e.g., IThSS ICorlii 71 2Corl8 7^ 13io Phil2i2 410 Coll 4, 8 21 Philemon v. 10, etc. Yet through these disconnected and seemingly casual letters, thrown off in the intervals of travel, in prison, or from the Apostle's winter-quarters, there runs one master pur- pose, one all-embracing conception of human life and of the things of God. 2. Style of the Epistles. The saying that ' the style is the man ' holds especially of epistolary wi-itings. The letters of a gifted man are often more attractive than his laboured work, because they are written in freedom of heart and are the frank and unstudied expres- sion of himself. In this quality of St. Paul's Epistles is found at once their charm and their difficulty. His 'epistolary style is the most personal that ever was — a rapid con- versation reported verbatim and without correction ' (Renan). There is nothing in literature that reflects more vividly the personality of the writer than some of these Epistles. Now St. Paul's is not an easy style, for he was not a man framed to take things easily. Life was for him a continual struggle, both without and within. Beneath his restless missionary activity and the calm of his prison- daj's, there went on in him an unceasing effort to ' apprehend that for which he was apprehended by Christ.' He is ' travailing in birth ' not only over his wayward offspring in the faith, but over the grand ' mystery of God,' of which he is the appointed dispenser, striving to explore the unsearchable riches and sound the unfathomed depths of the love revealed in Christ. The strain of the author's mind is manifest in the involved sentences of which some of his greatest passages consist —such as Ro 5 12-21 Gal23-io, or Ephis-i*. With broken, impetuous utterance he sweeps us breathless through his long-drawn periods, xci SURVEY OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL until he reaches his lofty climax and the tangled path lies clear beneath our feet. St. Paul was a pioneer in religious thought, opening a way for the truth of the gospel to the conscience and intellect of the Gentile world. The difficult task has left its mark on his writings, like the lame thigh that witnessed to wrestling Jacob's victory. This subtle and eager thinker was at the same time a man of ardent feeling. In many places the en- tanglement of St. Paul's style is due to contending currents of feeling, to the quick play of emotion in his singularly mobile nature: see, e.g., 1 Cor 4 "-21 2Cor5ii-i5 75-9 Gal 4 12-20 Logic and sentiment, passion and severe thought, are fused in his utterance to form a combination of singular pliancy, tenderness, and strength. In his gram- matical constructions and the connexion of phrase with phrase there is frequent uncertainty arising from the throng and press of his thoughts ; the thoughts themselves are clear and luminous.. His leading terms are as crystalline in definition, as they are massive and profound in significance. The great watchwords of St. Paul's doctrine were framed to last for ever. A native of Tarsus, St. Paul knew Greek from childhood ; the niceties of its idiom come to him instinctively. The groundwork of his dialect was not, however, the literary Greek of the times, but the vernacular of every-day speech. Behind the Greek dress there lived in him a Hebrew spirit. Saul's youth had been spent ' at the feet of Gamaliel ' (Ac 22 3), and his mind formed by the rabbinical dis- cipline (Gallic). He draws freely on the language and ideas of the Old Testament, fol- lowing, though not, slavishly, the Septuagint Greek Version which was.in the hands of his readers. His imagery is mainly borrowed not like that of Jesus from nature and the open fields, but from the scenes of city life and the throngs of men. The Apostle's mind was fertile and plastic in expression ; each group of Epistles contains its distinctive locu- tions. He has his mannerisms and idiosyn- crasies, but is tied to no hackneyed formulae ; his speech reflected the colour of its surround- ings, and suited itself to the constituency ad- dressed. Compare from this point of view the stateliness and measured argument of Romans with the incisiveness, poignancy, and pathos of Galatians and 1 and 2 Corinthians, the affectionate frankness and spontaneity of 1 Thessalonians and Philippians, and the play- ful familiarity of the little letter to Philemon. 3. The Matter of the Epistles. St. Paul's letters were cast in the epistolary mould of the time. The salutation ' Grace and peace ' is adapted from the ordinary courtesies of greeting. The salutation, variously expanded and qualified, serves sometimes to strike the keynote of the Epistle, as in Romans and Galatians. A thanksgiving is next offered to God for the Christian worth of the corre- spondents (Galatians is the signal exception), commonly supplemented by an appropriate prayer ; in Ephesians the opening acts of praise and prayer swell into a principal part of the letter. After the introductory devo- tions, the writer's purpose comes into view ; where his object is theological, we may look for some fundamental statement of principle at this point : see Ro 1 16, iv Col 1 is, etc. The specific truth thus asserted is expounded and vindicated as need may require ; and its exposition is followed up by moral and prac- tical eidiortation. Details of personal news, messages, and greetings, with a final bene- diction, close the letter. Such is the order of the doctrinal Epistles — Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians. Where, however, the writer's main business is personal and practical, no such plan suggests itself : the explanations, discussions, or expos- tulations called for by the occasion naturally occupy the foreground, while directions of a more general bearing come in afterwards ; and theological passages occur here and there, wherever the handling of the matter strikes upon the underlying principles of the Gospel. Such is the case with Philippians, and the two Epistles to the Corinthians. The contents of the Epistles may be arranged, therefore, under the following heads : personal, theological, ethical, administrative, and devotional. These constituent elements are combined with perfect freedom ; no strict line can be drawn between them. The proportion in which they are blended, and the prepon- derance of the one strain or the other, give to each letter its complexion. Romans is above all the theological Epistle ; 2 Corinthians, Phi- lippians, and Philemon are intensely personal ; in 1 Corinthians and the Pastorals the prac- tical and administrative interests predominate, with a large infusion of the ethical and doc- trinal ; in 1 Thessalonians the personal and ethical ; in 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians doctrine and ethics are equally balanced, with a conspicuous development of the devotional vein in the last named ; Gala- tians is the best example of the union of the personal, theological, and moral in St. Paul's writings, the theological dominating the other two. The chapter- and verse-divisions — a modern invention of convenience — must be ignored by the reader who wishes to understand St. Paul's Epistles ; the paragraphic arrangement of the Revised Version is preferable. Furnishing himself with a preliminary outline, and noting difficult expressions for later examination, he xcii SURVEY OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL should read each document right through and allow it to make its complete impression, as he would treat a letter from a friend, return- ing to the salient passages and critical points of the Epistle, in order to fasten upon his mind its essential import. 4. Order and Connexion of the Epistles. The accepted order of St. Paul's letters has prevailed from early times. Originally they formed a distinct volume (to which Hebrews was attached), under the title of ' The Apostle/ with the several letters headed, 'To the Romans,' ' To the Corinthians 1,' and so on. First came the nine letters addressed to (seven) Churches, then the four to (three) friends — the two sections being arranged in the order of size and importance, not of time. (a) The first four in the traditional succession form a coherent group, in which First and Second Corinthians and Romans followed con- secutively at intervals of a few months. The date of Galatians is disputed ; but it clearly belongs in character and subject-matter to this group, and is akin to Romans (56-57 a.d.). (b) The next three, along with the little note to Philemon, fall into a later group ; amongst these Colossians and Ephesians are synchronous and ' twin ' Epistles, Philemon coming in as a private enclosure accompany- ing the former. Philippians stands somewhat apart, in character as in destination, from its neighbours ; opinions differ as to whether it preceded or followed them. These four were prison-letters — issued (Philippians certainly, the rest almost certainly) from Rome during the years 60-61 of St. Paul's first captivity there. (c) 1 and 2 Thessalonians, separated only by a few months, are the oldest of St. Paul's extant writings, having been v/ritten shortly after the Apostle's mission in Thessalonica (Acl7), while he was labouring at Corinth in the latter period of his Second Missionary Journey, probably during 50-51 A.D. (Acl8). ((I) The three Pastoral Epistles presuppose St. Paul's acquittal in Rome from the charges against which he had ' appealed to Caesar ' at Festus' tribunal (Ac 25), the extension of his missionary course to a period which lay out- side the narrative of the Acts, his re-arrest and approaching martyrdom in Rome (2 Tim). They are dated in the year 64, on the pre- sumption that the Apostle fell in the great Neronian persecution, or about 67 by those who think it likely that he escaped this storm, and who recognise the lengthened course of ministry necessary to account for the new complexion of the Pastoral Epistles, if brought within his life-time. Their succession was : 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy. (c), (a), (ft), (d) is therefore the historical order of the four groups. Their composition extended over some sixteen years: (c) 50-51, (a) 55-57, (b) 61-62, and (d) about 67 (? 64) A.D. 5. Course of Thought in the Epistles. The^ general course of St. Paul's thought in the later part of his life is revealed by the tenor and outstanding features of the several groups of his letters. When the earliest of them was written, the Apostle was midway in his career, and had been a Christian believer and preacher for at least fourteen years ; his mind was ripe, his doctrine in all essentials complete. The progress marked in the Epistles, while indicating certain changes of inward experience and the growth in- evitable in an active mind, was principally due to the advance of the Apostle's mis- sion, the development of his Churches and the trials through which they passed. As time goes on, his preoccupations become in- creasingly those of the pastor and teacher, rather than the missionary and evangelist ; compare 1 Thessalonians at the beginning with 1 Timothy at the end of the series of Epistles. His work as Gentile Apostle and Church-founder was exposed to three chief assaults — the first of these proceeding from Jewish Christians of Pharisaic temper, who desired to subject all believers in Christ to the Law of Moses ; the second from the reaction of heathen idolatry and immorality upon Gentile converts. The second group of the Epistles marks the crisis of the former struggle, which was decisive for St. Paul's authority, and gave shape to his characteristic doctrines of Justification by faith and Redemp- tion through the cross; in Galatians we witness the climax, in Romans the practical conclu- sion of this controversy. 1 and 2 Corinthians, during the same period, illustrate most vividly the dangers of relapse to paganism ; 1 Thes- salonians earlier, and Ephesians later, witness to the same effect. A more subtle type of error betrayed itself at Colossas, and reappears in. the evils denounced hy the Pastorals of the last group — .viz. the perversion of Christian truth by Greek 'philosophy' (Col 2 ^.7 ITim 6 20)^ from which sprang the imposing Gnostic systems of the second century. This move- ment had its source in the conception of the evil of matter and the consequent separation of God from the finite world — an idea which precluded any real incarnation or atonement, and perverted the whole ethics of Christianity; its working is seen already in the denial at Corinth of bodily resurrection (1 Cor 15). The Gnostic tendency took sometimes an ascetic (Col 2 20-23 1 Tim43-5)j sometimes an an tinomian turn (2 Tim 3 1-9 Tit 114-16) in morals. Some Jewish ingredients entered into this amalgam, which originated probably in the attempt to assimilate the gospel to Essenic or Alexan- drian theosophy. As the Apostle's doctrines XCIU SURVEY OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL of Salvation were wrought out in the heat of to young converts, whom he had left in the in- the legalist controversy (Galatians, Romans), so the incipient Gnosticism served, by contra- diction, to bring into relief his conception of the person of Christ and the nature of the Church, and to develop his ethical principles (Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians). The dangerous illness from which the Apo- stle suffered in the year 5G, between the date of 1 and 2 Corinthians, formed a crisis in his life, and materially affected his views of the future. Previously he had written as one ex- pecting the Lord's coming within the present generation (1 Th4i5-i7 i Cor 7^9-31 1552), though guarding himself against positive assertion on the subject or fixing of the date (1 Th52 2 Th 2 1, etc.) ; from this time he anticipates his own death ; the parousia recedes into the back- ground, and a wider prospect opens out for the Church and for the progress of humanity (see 2 Cor 1 9 5 1-8 Phil 1 21-23 2 Tim 4 6 Eph 2 7 1 Tim 116 26 2 Tim 2 2). The influence of Rome prob- ably counted for a good deal in the direction of St. Paul's thought and work. The memory of the impious emperor Caius Caligula (37-; 41 A.D.) and the popular Caesar-worship of Asia Minor supply a clue to the mystery of the Antichrist in 2 Th 2. On the other hand, St. Paul's conception of the universal Church under the headship of Christ owed something of its breadth and grandeur to the spectacle of the world-empire unfolding before his eyes. His mission was laid out on an imperial scale ; he planted his Churches at the strategic points of Roman commerce and administration. By the time St. Paul (in the words of 2 Tim 4 '^) had ' fought his fight ' and ' finished his course,' he had carried the gospel through every land from Syria to Spain, and through every class of Gentile society from the slave to the em- peror. This outward progress was matched by the development of his doctrine. His spirit has penetrated to the depths of the mystery of Christ ; his inspired logic and force of char- acter have won for the gospel a decisive victory over the Jewish and the pagan reaction, and over the antagonism of philosophic thought. He sees himself the recognised ' herald ' of Christ to the nations, the ' teacher of the Gen- tiles in faith and truth ' (1 Tim 2 7) ; his teach- ing is embodied in a line of organised Churches extending through the empire. The perma- nence of the gospel and its propagation amongst mankind are guaranteed ; ' a pillar and ground ' are set up, on which ' the truth ' will stand for ever (1 Tim 3 15). 6. Characterisation of the Epistles. There is a crescendo and diminuendo of vigour and fulness of thought in the sequence of the four groups : I. the forenoon ; ii. the noontide ; III. the afternoon ; iv. the evening Epistles. I. (a) 1 Thessalonians : a missio)iary's letter fancy of their faith ; full of tender recollection and solicitude ; consoling, edifying, non-con- troversial ; comparatively simple in style. Its chief warning is against heathen impurity (4 1-^). The one error corrected is due to a too eager expectation and narrow view of Christ's Second Advent (4i3-5ii). The full ' gospel ' set forth in Romans is implied in 1 Th4i^ 5^. io_ (b) 2 Thessalonians deals with the con- tinued unsettlement of the Church in regard to the Second Advent (1^-212), and the conse- quent neglect of secular labour (3''"i5). II. (a) 1 Corinthians is the Epistle of the doctrine of the Cross in apjAication, and holds in the practical sphere a place similar to that of Romans in the theological. Its first part (chs. 1-6) arises out of disquieting news received from Corinth (see 1 H' 12 5 1) j Jts second part from questions put to the Apostle in a letter from the Church (chs. 7-16). In the piercing light that shines from Calvary the manifold problems confronting the Apostle of the Gen- tiles are surveyed ; Greek wisdom and Cor- inthian vice, church parties and rival ministries, and disorders in worship, spiritual gifts and their use and abuse, great social questions such as mari'iage and slavery, lighter matters of diet and dress, the restoration of the body and the final state of the dead, are all discussed in their bearing on the relationship of men to Clirist and upon principles deduced from ' the word of the cross' (l^" 2 2). This 'word' embraces the truths of the resurrection of Jesus along with His death (IS^. *) of the new life in the Spirit and the union of the believer with the dyingand exalted Saviour (1 30 2 12 3 16 g 19^ etc.). (b) 2 Corinthians : St. PauVs apologia pro vita sua. Since 1 Corinthians much has hap- pened— ' fightings within, fears without ' : the Apostle's all but fatal sickness (1^ 4^-5^), a revolt quelled with difficulty and followed by a revulsion of loyal feeling toward him (25-ii 72-16), changes in his plans bringing the re- proach of vacillation (1 i^-is)^ the coming to Corinth of Judisan emissaries who disparage him and set up as his rivals (3i 10 12 114, 12-15)^ Chs. 1-7, addressed to the reconciled majority (see 2^), are St. Paul's defence of his ministry before the Church ; chs. 10-13, the vindication of h i mself Agamst his adversaries. The inter- jected chs. 8, 9 urge a more liberal contribu- tion for Jerusalem : cp. 1 Cor 16. This letter best reveals St. Paul as a minister of Christ and a man amongst men — the wealth of his heart, the ascendency and fire of his genius, and the charm of his disposition. (c) Galatians is St. Paul's vindication of the gospel against legalism. ' Another gospel ' (1^) is being preached with seductive effect (3 1) in Galatia : the Judaisers at Corinth as- sailed St. Paul's authority ; here they impugn xciv SURVEY OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL his doctrine, by insisting on circumcision as essential to the full Christian status (3i-^ 5 ^'4), thus seeking to bring Gentile believers under the Mosaic yoke and incorporate them in Judaism. The legalists appealed to the au- thority of St. Peter and the Jerusalem Church, from which (they asserted) St. Paul had re- ceived his knowledge of Christ. The Apostle exposes their statements by telling, in chs. 1 and 2, how he received his commission from Jesus Christ, and had won from the mother- church the recognition of Gentile liberties. 31-5^2 is the core of the Epistle, demonstrat- ing the salvation of men by faith in Christ crucified only, and the subordinate and pre- paratory office of Mosaism. S^^-G^o jg an ethical homily addressed to the faults of the readers, and Q^^-'^^ a trenchant summary of the letter. In historical interest and contro- versial power Galatians ranks first amongst the Epistles. (d) Romans is the most abstract and ob- jective of the Epistles : the grand exposition of GocVs plan of salvation for manhind. St. Paul will soon visit Rome, where he claims author- ity as Apostle to the Gentiles. In this Church, which has existed for some years, he has already a number of friends (1 5. 10-15 1515-29 161-16). At this crisis of his work, it is well to deliver a full manifesto in face of the ' other gospel ' with which he has been in conflict ; he will thus best introduce himself at Rome, and counteract by anticipation the legalist propaganda. Chs. 1-8 unfold in posi- tive, systematic, and deliberate fashion ' the word of the cross,' which Galatians ar- gued negatively and polemically, and which 1 and 2 Corinthians have assumed and built upon. Chs. 9-11 discuss the difficulty raised by the repudiation of the gospel on the part of the Jewish people, who had a prior claim to it (1-^^) — a distressing problem to the Apostle personally, and a very serious objec- tion to his argument. Chs. 121-15 13 is a digest of Christian ethics, social and civil, based on the consecration of the body and the ' renewal of the mind ' under Christ's all- embracing law of love. The rest of the letter is of personal and local interest. The above are ' the four evangelical Epistles,' containing the heart and sum of the Apostle's teaching. III. (a) COLOSSIANS, like Galatians, is con- troversial. This is the Epistle of the exaltation of Christ, whose headship of the Church is affirmed to rest upon His anterior headship over the created universe (1 15-20). The right understanding of Christ's lordship in the realms of nature and grace, and of the bound- less scope of His atonement (lis-20 2^'i0), leaves no room for the angel-mediations and ritual appliances by which the Colossian error- ists would have supplemented the Redeemer's work : see p. xciii above, and Intro, to Colos- sians. In the ethical half of the letter (3 1-4 6), each duty is enforced by the lordship of Christ : family relationships are dwelt upon with an emphasis new in the Epistles (318-41) : cp. p. xciii. (h) Philemon should be attached to Colos- sians. This exquisite little note — a specimen probably of many such — reveals St. Paul's char- acter in private life. It appeals for the reception by his master of Onesimus, a runaway slave now converted to Christ, ' as a brother beloved.' (c) Ephesians is the Epistle of the glory of the Church, regarded as Christ's body and His bride. Ephesians and Colossians are kindred in thought and language ; the former reads as the complement and continuation of the latter. Yet there is a marked difference of manner — Colossians being polemical, incisive, sometimes very abrupt and obscure ; Ephesians the most calm, expansive, and diffuse of St. Paul's writings. He has dismissed the Colossian error from his mind, and gives himself up to the train of meditation on the glory of Christ and the Church which the controversy has occasioned. In richness of ethical and hor- tatory matter (4 1-6 ^O)^ transfused with theo- logical thought, Ephesians resembles Romans, to which Colossians and Ephesians stand next in point of doctrinal importance. (cZ) Philippians is, above all, the Epistle of heartfelloimhip. Its simplicity and discursive freedom remind us of 1 Thessalonians. As 2 Corinthians discloses the loftiness of the writer's character and the supernatural powers of the ministry, Philippians reveals the depths of his inner faith and communion with Christ. It supplies essential matter for the Apostle's biography. 25-ii is a passage of surpassing theological interest. This is the most serene and beautiful of St. Paul's writings. IV. The three Pastorals are letters on Church discipiline. In 1 Timothy and Titus the Apostle's delegates, at Ephesus and in Crete, are instructed about the appointment of elders (or bishops) and deacons, the stress being laid on qualifications of character. They are exhorted as to their own conduct in the ministry, especially in face of the heretical and vicious teaching now coming into vogue. The like admonitions, mingled with personal reminiscences and forebodings of the writer's death, occupy 2 Timothy — St. Paul's ' swan song.' These are conservative and valedic- tory Epistles ; ' guard the good deposit,' 'speak the things that become the sound doctrine,' are their watchwords. 7. Summary of Doctrine. The Godhead. ' To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things and we for Him' (ICorS'^). This ' one God ' is known as ' The Father of xcv SURVEY OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL our Lord Jesus Christ ' — ours thi-ough Him ; there is ' one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all' (lTim25>6). Christ appears by the Father's side as the ' one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him ' (1 Cor 8 6). Li Him, ' the Son of God's love,' ' dwells all the fulness of the Godhead' (Collin 29); in Him, since He ' came in the likeness of men,' a complete and sinless humanity is realised (Gal 4 '^ Phil 2 ">■> §, etc.). The interests and destinies of mankind are lodged with Him, for salvation and for judgment (Ro52i 2 Cor 510, etc.). Li the end ' every knee shall bow ' to Him ; Christ will then ' deliver up the kingdom to God even the Father,' and ' the Son Himself will be subject to Him that subjected all things unto Him, that God may be all in all ' (Phil 2 10,11 1 Cor 15-^i-28). The divine Lordship of Christ does not impair, but vindicates, the unity of the Godhead. This is equally true of the Deity of the Holy Spirit, whom the Apostle associates with the Father and the Son in the benediction of 2 Cor 131-1 and elsewhere. ' The Spirit ' is God dwelling and working in the soul and in the Church (1 Cor 2 12 3i«3 619 Ro 826 Gal 4 6 Eph22i, etc.). He comes to men as the ' Spirit of God's Son,' and is the witness of their ' adoption ' in Christ, the ' earnest of their inheritance,' the agent of their sanctifica- tion, the imparter of all gifts and powers of grace (Ro 8 n-i^ Gal 5 16-25 2 Cor 1 21-22 Eph 1 is, 14 lTh47,s 1 Cor 12 4-11, etc.). As the Holy Spirit wrought in the resurrection of Jesus, He will be the means of ' quickening the mortal bodies ' of those in whom He dwells (R086-11). Grace— -the grace of God,' 'of our Lord Jesus Christ' — is the conspicuous attribute of the Godhead in Christianity. Sin mid Redemption. Except ' the one man Jesus Christ,' who is God's ' own Son,' ' all have sinned and are destitute of the glory of God ' (R0323 83). The sin of mankind, call- ing forth ' God's wrath,' has brought both Gentiles and Jews to their present shameful and guilty state (Ro 11^-320); it is ' laying up in store ' for the impenitent a dreadful retribu- tion (Ro 2 s 1 Th 1 10, etc.). From Adam down- wards our race has been in bondage under 'the law of sin and death' (Ro 5 12-14 723,24 82). The law of Moses, which expressed in a more definite and imperative form the universal law of God engraved on the human conscience (Ro 2 14-16 3 9, 19 5 13)^ has served to provoke and aggravate, rather than to prevent, transgression (Ro3i5 7 7-24 Gal 3 19, etc.). In the fulness of time, when the law had done its work, ' Christ redeemed us from its curse ' ; ' He was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might become God's righteousness in Him' (Gal 3 13 2Cor52i). Our Lord in ' the death of the cross ' submitted on His brethren's behalf to the judicial consequence of human sin, meeting in its course that holy ' wrath ' which deals out death to transgressors. So dying ' one for all,' He offered ' a propitiatory sacrifice in His blood ' and effected ' recon- ciliation (atonement)' for mankind — a fact certified by His resurrection (Ro 3 22-26 425 58-11 2 Cor 5 18.19). Faith in Him who thus ' died and rose again ' for us, makes the indi- vidual man participator in the common salva- tion and brings ' peace with God ' (Ro 3 22, 25 51,2 Eph 2 13-18, etc.); faith is the trustful and submissive hand of the sinner meeting God's outstretched hand of grace in Christ. The act of God in saving ' him who is of faith in Jesus,' St. Paul speaks of as ' justification.' By this he means not merely the (negative) forgiving of past sins, but the (positive) giving to the sinner of the status of a righteous man (Ro5i^-i'7), who is for Christ's 'sake counted for and treated as righteous, his past sin being regarded as though it had not been (Ro 4 3-8 52 2 Cor 5 21 Col 2 14), and is set there- by in the way of becoming righteous in life and conduct (Ro 6 4, is 8 4). Hence justification im- plies 'adoption,' the receiving of the alien into the divine household, his endowment with ' the Spirit of God's Son,' and his investiture with the inheritance of God's children (Ro 8I6, 17, 31-34 Gal 4 4-7 Eph 1 5). In view of Ckrist's ' propiti- ation,' this restitution of the sinner is not merely an act of love on God's part : He is ' just ' though He ' justifies the ungodly ' (Ro 326 46)^ and His action is legal in the highest sense (Ro 3 27-31). The 'redemption that is in Christ Jesus ' includes with the soul the body, won also for God by the price of His blood (1 Cor 6 20); of its recovery from the grave, completing man's salvation, the resurrection of Jesus gives pledge (Ro324 816-23 Ephl7,i4 1 Cor 15 20, 23, 45-57 iTh4i4 2 Tim 110, etc.). The New Life in Christ. ' Justification ' through faith in the death of Christ leads to ' sanctification ' by union with the living Christ (Ro 6 i-H). All believers in Christ are ' saints ' (1 Cor 1 2 6II, etc.), however defective their saintship ; they were consecrated to God in the act of saving faith (Ro 6 18, 22)^ and regard themselves as no longer ' their own ' (1 Cor 619,20). They practically ' live to God,' in so far as faith identifies them with Christ ; they ' have coalesced with Him by the likeness ' first ' of His death ' and then ' of His resur- rection' (Ro 6 4-11 Col 3 1-4, etc.). All human relations and earthly events are transformed for the man who is ' in Christ Jesus ' (2 Cor 5 15, 16) ; he ' knows no one ' merely ' after the flesh,' for he is a man of the Spirit, ' renewed in the spirit of his mind' (Eph 4 23, 24)^ and xcvi SURVEY OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL carries spiritual estimates and aims into every- thing (Ro89 Gal 5 25, etc.). 'The law of Christ,' summed up in the two commands of love to God and man, rules his whole con- duct (Ro55 12 9, etc.). Impurity is shunned as a defilement of ' the temple of God ' and an outrage upon the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6^9 1 Th 4 8) ; lying is impossible amongst those who are ' members one of another ' (Eph 4 25) ; unkindness contradicts the example of Christ's self-sacrifice (Eph 4 31-52) ; these are examples of the ethical logic of ' the word of the cross.' The obligations of the family and the state are not destroyed for the Christian, but assume a deeper meaning and a new sanctity. Even his eating and drinking are done to the glory of God (ICorlO^i Col3i7, etc.). ' All things' become his servants and ' work together for his good' (1 Cor 2 21-23 Ro828, etc.). For himself, his supreme desire is to be ' sanctified completely' (lTh523), to be 'conformed' — in spirit now, in body hereafter — ' to the image of God's Son' (Ro829 Phil .39-21); for others, that they may be saved from sin and finally 'presented perfect in Christ' (RolO^ Coll 28 2 Tim 2 10, etc.). Thus his entire being is ' rooted and built up,' and wrapped up, ' in Christ,' the Head and Soul of redeemed humanity (Gal 2 20 Col 2 6, 7 311 Eph 4 10 1 Cor 8 6 113, etc.). The Church. The Christian redemption is as truly social as personal ; Christ ' loved me and gave Himself up for me ' ; He also ' loved the Church and gave Himself up for her ' (Gal 2 20 Eph 5 25). 'The saints and faithful brethren ' addressed in the Epistles belong, all of them, to the Christian community and owe allegiance to it (Gal 6 2 Eph 5 21 1 Cor 12 12-27, etc.) ; they were ' called into the fellowship of God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord ' (1 Cor 1 lO). In earlier letters we read of this or that local Church, or ' churches of God.' Gradually the idea of ' the Church,' as the ' body of Christ ' and ' habitation of God in the Spirit,' which embraces the particular Churches and consists of all without distinction who ' hold fast the Head,' grows upon St. Paul's mind (Gal 3 26-28 Col 3 11) ; we see it completely formed in Ephesians (2 21 22) and the Pastorals (1 Tim 3 is 2 Tim 2 20). The Church is necessary to Christ as the body to the head ; in Eph 1 23 she is called His ' fulness ' or ' complement ' ; He ' cherishes ' her, as the husband does his spouse (Eph 5 23-32). The Church is no mere temporal, provisional institute ; through ' all the genera- tions of the age of the ages ' she shares the glory of Christ, and will appear in her splendour of holiness at the Lord's coming (Eph 3 21 527). ' Our gathering together unto Him,' in the perfected fellowship of the redeemed, is the goal of Christian hope (2Th2i, etc.). The grace given to individuals is corporate property. Each Christian must ' look on the things of others ' and ' by love serve ' his brethi-en ; no feeblest limb of the body of Christ is without its use (Eph 4 7, 16,25 Gal 5^3 Phil 2 1-5 lCorl2i4f.). Christ, who 'emptied Himself ' and ' humbled Himself unto death ' for His brethren's sake, is the Christian model (Ro 14 3 Phil 2 5-S). The various ' ministries ' with their specific ' gifts of grace ' (charisms), exist for the common benefit, and must be controlled for this end by the spirit of love (1 Cor 1 2 ■i-l 4 "10) ; their object is to furnish and enable ' the saints' for their 'work of ministry,' and to promote a mutual edification through the entire fabric of the Church (Eph4iii6)_ Hence it is character and soundness of faith, not ability, for which St. Paul is supremely anxious in his instructions to Timothy and Titus about appointments to Church-office. Christian teachers and pastors ' have no lord- ship over the faith ' of the flock ; they must ' commend themselves to every conscience of men in the sight of God ' (1 Cor 10 is 2 Cor 123 42 2 Tim 2 15). At Christ's tribunal they will ' give account,' as being His ' servants and stewards of the mysteries of God' (1 Cor 41-* 2 Cor 5 9). Fidelity to Christ, possession of His ' mind,' and a love for men that dictates unlimited self-denial, distinguish the gospel minister (1 Cor 2-4, 9, 2 Cor 12 15 Roli^-is 93). The Apostle lays stress upon the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper in respect both of their doctrinal significance and their covenantal force (Ro63,4 1 Corl0i6-22 1123-34)^ while he attaches small importance to his per- sonal administration of them (1 Cor 1 16. 17). The Kingdom of God, and the Consummation. The thought of ' the kingdom of God and of Christ ' retires in the Epistles somewhat behind that of ' the Church,' but it was never dis- placed in the Apostle's mind. He took over the Old Testament Messianic conception of ' the kingdom,' as it was transformed by Jesus. The Church consists of the ' citizens ' of God's kingdom (Eph 2 19 Phil320); 'the kingdom' embraces the entire order of things determined by the will of God in Christ, including the natural and secular provinces of life, which are bound up with the economy of grace (Ro 13 1-5 Col 3 22-4 1 1 Tim 4 3-5 6 is). Creation and redemption are parts of one scheme, and Christ is their unifying principle (Col 1 15-18). The history of God's kingdom pursues a hidden ' purpose of the ages,' conceived in His prescient wisdom and executed according to ' the good pleasure of His will,' which centres in the mission of Christ and is revealed by the preaching of the gospel to mankind (Ro 1 6 25-27 Eph 3 2-11 2 Tim 1 9, 10, etc.). The throne of this kingdom is 'the heart' (RolQio 2 Cor 4 6 Col 3 15) ; its power is that of ' the Spirit ' ; its xcvu SURVEY OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL ■wealth lies in ' righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost' (1 Cor24 420 RoUi^)- It is destined, however, to dominate all mun- dane affairs (1 Cor 3 21, 22 62 1525), and to liberate nature along with ' the children of God ' ' from the bondage of corruption ' (Eo 319-23) The Satanic powers regnant in heathenism, and all evil men, are the enemies of God and of Christ (Eph6io-i3 1 Cor 10 20-22, etc.) ; these constitute, in alliance, a ' dominion of darkness ' warring against ' the kingdom of the Son of God's love ' (Col 1 1^) ; they are doomed to an utter overthrow. ' Death, the last ' of Christ's foes, is in course of abolition (1 Cor 15 26, 54-57 2 Tim 110). The Apostle oftenest speaks of ' the king- dom of God ' in the light of its future con- summation, as matter of hope and ' inheritance ' (2 Th 1 5 1 Cor G 9, etc.). ' The fashion of this world is passing ' (1 Cor 7 29 31) ; at ' the revela- tion,' or ' coming (paromia) of our Lord Jesus Christ,' it will vanish (ICorl^ 2 Cor 51 1 Th 313 2Th2i, etc.). God's kingdom will then come in its ' glory ' (1 Th2i2) — the manifested ' glory of God ' streaming through the world (R052 Tit 2 13), and centring in the person of the enthroned Christ (Phil 2 n 2 Th 2 «. i" 1 Tim 61'!). But there are those to whom Chi-ist's 'appearing' will bring shame and ruin (ITh 52,3 2Th2S-iO); for He comes the second time as Judge. ' All must be manifested before Christ's tribunal,' where doom will be pronounced on ' the works of darkness ' (1 Cor 4 5 2 Cor 5 10 Ro 2 16). ' The day of the Lord ' to the impenitent is ' a day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God ' (Ro25.6,8,9)_ The risen saints, approved at His coming, will be ' conformed ' to Christ's 'body of glory' (Phil 3 21 Col3i-4 1 Cor 15^9). For Christians living in the flesh at His return the Apostle anticipates a transformation, with- out dissolution, of the ' earthy ' into the ' heavenly ' or ' spiritual body ' ; they will ' put on ' the latter ' over ' the former, so that ' the mortal ' part of them will be ' swallowed up of life' (lCorl55i-55 2Cor5i-5 lTh4i5-i7). In Christ's resurrection the Apostle sees the ' firstfruits ' of the glory destined for ' those who are Christ's at His coming' (1 Cor 15 20. 23 2 Cor 4 10-14 2 Tim 2 11. 12)— 'a weight of glory' irradiating all created nature, with which their severest tribulations ' are not worthy to be compared' (Ro8l'^-2i). Meanwhile, the saints ' dying in the Lord ' pass away to be ' with Christ,' in a state ' very far better ' than their present toil and warfare (Phil 1 21-23 2 Cor 58). ' God, all things in all,' is the goal to which creation and redemption move (1 Cor 1528). 8. Authenticity and Integrity of the Epistles. The Pauline authorship of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians has never been denied, except by a few eccentric scholars. 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon are added to the list of homologume7ia, as docu- ments which, though questioned for a while during the last century, have vindicated their genuineness by the clearness with which they reflect the personality of the Apostle. The other six are still counted as antilegomena — Colossians being the least disputed of them, the tliree Pastorals the most, while 2 Thes- salonians is held in considerable suspicion, and Ephesians in still more. Adverse critics re- cognise a Pauline nucleus in the personal data of Titus and 2 Timothj'. Some regard Colos- sians and 2 Thessalonians — perhaps 1 Timothy — as Pauline in basis, but interpolated. Ephe- sians must be treated as genuine or pseudony- mous in its entirety. A good and sufficient defence can be made for St. Paul's full authorship in each case : see the several Introductions. Where Pauline authenticity is maintained, the lauty of some Epistles is called in question. The difference in tone between 101-13 10 and the rest of 2 Corinthians leads some able in- terpreters to regard this section as imported from another Epistle of Paul to Corinth — pos- sibly the lost ' letter' of 23,4 and 78. 2 Cor 614-71, again, is a paragraph that fits badly into its context, and that seems suitable to the earlier letter alluded to in 1 Cor 5 9. It has been asked, moreover, whether the long chain of greetings found in R0I6 may not have been attached to a copy of this Letter, or of the principal parts of it, sent to some other Church than Rome — say to that of Ephesus, where the Apostle had laboured for three years. The triple ending of this Epistle (in 1533 1620 and 1625-27), and the absence of the words ' in Rome ' (17) from certain ancient copies, decidedly suggest the hypothesis of a manifold destination : see Intro, to Ro. It is to be noted that the most important of the thirteen Letters are the most certainly authentic. Whatever else may be denied, no one can reasonably doubt that there was such a man as Paul the Apostle of Christ Jesus, who wrote letters that are in our hands to Christian societies in Asia Minor, Corinth, and Rome, within thirty years of his Master's death. This is an historical fact of immense importance ; for these Epistles contain all the vital truths of Christianity, and exhibit them as living and transforming powers in society. These documents presuppose the person and teaching, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Without the Christ of the Foiu- Gospels, the Paul of the Epistles is unintelligible. XCVlll BELIEF IN GOD The central subject of the Bible is God. The Book opens with an account of His crea- tion of the heavens and the earth (Gn 1 1), and concludes with a description of the ' new heavens and earth' (Rev 21) — the ideal to which creation is moving, and wherein God Himself shall be the immediate source of illumination and the object of worship. Throughout the Bible God is referred to as almighty, all-wise, all -holy, the eternal creator, sustainer, and moral governor of the universe. He is represented as entering into special relations with his highest creature, man, who is created in His image, after His likeness (Gn 1 26, 27)^ to be His vicegerent upon earth (Gn 1 26-28^^ and to increase in sympathy and fellowship with Himself. Man has, however, abused His highest gift of free-will, and so introduced sin into the world, a blot upon the fair creation, and a hereditary taint upon his own stock. Henceforth God's rela- tion to man is changed. The glad love of pure beneficence becomes the wistful love of redemptive purpose. And in due time is chosen out for specially intimate relations with God, a single tribe — the ' seed of Abraham.' Israel is ' elected,' i.e. chosen out for special privilege and guidance, not from any motives of favouritism, but in order that he may be the vehicle of blessing to all mankind. To Israel — and through Israel to all men — is given an even deeper and clearer revelation of the cha- racter and will of God — that revelation which we see running through all the Old Testament, and reaching its climax in Jesus Christ : cp. Heb 1 1-^ ^ Different misconceptions are succes- sively purged away as opportunity occurs. At Sinai any lingering taint of idolatry and crude anthropomorphism is purged by the revelation of the ten commandments, and the natural tendency to irreverent, easy-going approach to the Almighty is met by the elaborate system of strict ceremonial. The prophets of the eighth centm-y B.C. point out the futility of ceremonial reformation apart from righteous- ness of character, and go far towards removing the still-prevailing misconceptions by which the Lord was regarded as the tribal God of Israel, pledged to protect and support them, irrespective of their deserts. The Lord is ' exalted in judgment ' (Isa 5 1^), and no re- specter of persons. Special closeness involves special responsibility (Am 3 2). Side by side with this comes a universalising tendency, a growing realisation of the one God's equal rule and care of all mankind (Am 9 " Isa2 2> 3 1 9 18-25)^ which finds strong emphasis in some of the later Psalms (cp. e.g. Pss96, 100, 117), and in the book of Jonah. Meanwhile the discipline of suffering and perplexity, which had its effect upon the Hebrew people throughout their history, but most markedly during the Babylonian exile, purified and spiritualised the conception of the meaning of religion and of life ; carried forward the thoughts of the faithful more and more wistfully to a future life, in which righteous- ness should be vindicated and the balance of happiness redressed ; and while it brought home to them the weakness and impurity of human nature, intensified the desire for personal holi- ness and communion with God ; and, finally, gave occasion for the portrayal of the ' Suffer- ing Servant of the Lord ' (Isa 4 1-53) gather- ing up into Himself at once human penitence and divine redemption — that most wonderful figure in all the Old Testament, which is strikingly typical of the central Figure of the New Testament. The statements about God in Holy Scrip- ture are uttered with an air of authority, dogmatically ; not as the result of a long chain of reasoning: 'The Lord said' this — 'did' that — or more emphatically, in the form of a message, ' Thus saith the Lord.' The teaching of the Bible is not the result of deductive or inductive reasoning. No direct arguments are adduced to prove the existence of God — that is assumed throughout. His attributes may be the subject of argument; His existence, never. His justice, His wisdom. His power may be momentarily obscured by the mystery of evil in the world — as in the book of Job. Incidentally we may get argumenis dealing with the nature of the Deity, as e.g. the inter- esting a fortiori argument from creature to Creator in Ps 94, 'He that made the eye, shall he not see ? ' etc., which logically carried out becomes an inference of Personality in God from man's personality — there are argu- ments such as these either stated or suggested in Holy Scripture, but the existence of God never comes within their scope. It lies behind all else ; it is the fundamental conception in the light of which all else is viewed. Not only in the Pentateuch and the Prophets and the Psalms, but in the historical narratives — in the brief and apparently barren records of the accession, regnal years, and death of the various kings, it is made clear that OQd'§ Han^ XCi? BELIEF IN GOD is at work throughout guiding the course of events, and that He is the ever-present Judge by wTiom the actions of king and subject alike are weighed. Even in the book of Esther, in which the divine Name never once occurs, no doubt is left upon the mind as to the provi- dential overruling of events both great and small. Nay, in those books which are least formally theological — Job, Proverbs, and Ec- clesiastes, the works of the ' wise men,' the humanists or philosophers of Israel — the thought of God is present from first to last. They do not grope and search after Him like the great pagan thinkers. They set out, not to discover, but to recognise Him ; to learn from His dealing with nature and human nature more about that divine Personality who is the primary presupposition of all their system, and with whom their heart holds sacred communion even while the intellect stands baffled before the insoluble problems involved in His permission of evil in the world He rules. The Bible, as we have said, does not offer arguments to prove the existence of the Deity, but it offers something which is far more valuable to most of us than any abstract proof. It gives us a concrete, experimental, descrip- tive theology. It shows us a pictm^e of the world with God at work in it, which the devout, appreciative soul instinctively recog- nises as true. It offers us, largely in the concrete form of narrative and history, a theory of the universe which, rightly under- stood, is found to meet the demands of hearts and minds alike : revealing a God whose character is such and whose relation to man is such that in Him both our needs and our aspirations find satisfaction. At the same time it incidentally provides a theory of human nature (see especially Gn 1-3) that affords the only satisfactory key to the raison d'etre of those needs and aspirations — the explanation of man's actual littleness and his potential greatness. "We will consider first the message of the Bible to man's heart, and then its message to his understanding. The needs and aspirations of heart and spirit can only be satisfied by personal com- munion with the Deity, such as the Psalter so wonderfully delineates (see especially Pssl6, 17, 63, 73), a communion which attains its fullest expression in the religion of the New Testament. This heart-knowledge is after all, to each individual who has it, the most direct form of evidence for the existence of God — the per- sonal intercourse with Him of our personal spirit — the communion in virtue of which we can say, ' I know that there is a God becmine I know Him. I experience in prayer and sacrament and meditation a conviction of His reality and His presence which is quite as real to me as is the conviction that those things exist which I can touch and see. This convic- tion is clearest and strongest when I am at my best, and I attribute all that is best and highest in my character to such communion, as thousands have done before me.' This is the kind of ' knowledge of God ' that cries aloud to us from the Psalms and Prophecies, and underlies the other writings of the Old Testament. And the perfection of this communion is to be found in Jesus Christ, as portrayed for us in the Synoptic Gospels (Lkl022; cp. Mkl332), but especially in St. John (5i9f- 1015,30 1411^ etc.), and reaches its climax in the great high-priestly prayer of Jnl7. After our Lord's Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit, it takes the form, for Christ's members, of a fellowship with the blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (2 Cor 13 14; cp. IJnlS). Being, however, in one sense, a purely per- sonal and individual matter, this sense of communion is commonly thought to be too subjective to be adduced as an argument for the existence of God. It is always open to an objector to say, ' You assert that you have this feeling ; I am willing to admit your sincerity, but you may be the victim of illusion. All I can say is that I have no such feeling myself.' To such an assertion it seems perhaps inadequate to reply, ' If you will but assume first provisionally (as we have to assume many things in practical life) that existence which you cannot demonstrate, and then act upon the assumption, conviction will come with experience.' Yet such a reply may be enforced and corroborated with all the weight of more than nineteen centuries of personal experience. Generation after genera- tion of martyrs and saints have testified in the strongest possible manner to their conviction that ' God is, and is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him ' (Heb 1 1 '^), and have been ready to seal the conviction with their life's blood. That such evidence is not without scientific value, is very strongly argued by no less a scientist than the late G. J. Romanes, who speaks of those who would ignore it as untrue to the principles of an impartial Agnosticism. Still it fails to appeal to a large class of enquirers, who look for a more definitely in- tellectual proof and one less intimately asso- ciated with personal feeling and emotion. There are such arguments for the being and character of God, and some of them have come down to us from very ancient times. It may be admitted that they do not — either singly or even in combination — amount to demonstra- tive proof ; yet they form, as we shall see, a BELIEF IN GOD very strong presumption in favour of belief in just such a Grod as the Bible claims to reveal. We will now briefly sketch the more im- portant of these types of argument, and then we may be better able to estimate the extent to which the Biblical revelation corresponds to, and completes, man's intellectual search after God. We must remember, however, at the outset that these traditional arguments are not the originating cause of man's belief, even where belief is found outside the influence of revelation, rather, they represent an intel- lectual analysis or justification of a belief already existing. As far back as Cicero in the first century B.C., or even earlier, pagan thinkers had observed that religion in some form or other is a universal trait in human nature. And though in modern days apparent exceptions of ' atheistical tribes ' have been adduced to prove the contrary, the trend of anthropological science may be said on the whole to support the judgment of antiquity. There may indeed be savages (though the point has not been proved) among whom no definite trace of religious observance can be discerned ; but are they normal representa- tives even of undeveloped humanity ? Is there no such thing as degradation ? And have not even these poor savages some vestige at least of the religious faculty ? for that is all our argument really requires. The world- wide progress of Christian missions to the heathen seems to testify quite triumphantly that no race or tribe of men, however degraded and apparently atheistic, lacks that spark of religious capacity which may be fanned and fed into a mighty flame. Granted, then, that the religious faculty is practically universal among mankind, what is the significance of this fact ? From ancient times it has been regarded as an argument — often (wrongly) as a proof — that God exists. It is called the argument ' from the general consent of mankind ' : in Latin, aryumentum e consensu gentium. The whole world, it is urged, must surely be right — securus jucUcat orbis terrarum. Of a truth it is exceedingly unlikely, if (as we must presume) the world is rational, that a phenomenon so universal as religion, so inti- mately and intricately interwoven with the central facts of human life and progress, should be founded on illusion. But the outward ex- pression of the religious principle in different ages and climes exhibits so much variety, in- consistency, and vagueness, that we ought not perhaps to speak of this argument (at least in this, its broader and vaguer form) as directly evidencing the existence and character of God. What it really amounts to is, as has been well said, ' an evidence that there are evidences.' If the religious instinct is observed to be practi- d cally universal, it will be worth while to see whether it is not essential to human nature. And this quest leads us to the formal argu- ments for God's existence. The grounds of this religious instinct will be found to lie partly in man's relation to the external world, partly in the constitution of human natm-e itself. The consideration of the external world around him, even in its broadest aspect, leads man up to the thought of an Eternal Cause ; the study of its phenomena in detail with its marvellous intricacy of harmonious interaction produces the impression of design, and leads to the thought of a Designer — i.e. of an Eternal Cause that is intelligent and free. Reflexion on his own consciousness and the fact that the external world corresponds in a mysterious way to his own thought leads to the idea of a primal and Universal Consciousness embracing all reality and forming, as it were, a meeting- place between Thought and Things. Lastly, his own moral nature — conscience, with its au- thoritative voice, clearly distinguishable from mere wish, taste, desire, and self-interest — speaks to him of a Universal Lawgiver, supreme and perfect, to whom alone the ' categorical imperative ' of the inner monitor can be ade- quately referred. The Eternal Cause is thus found to be endowed with all the attributes characteristic of personality as seen in man. Of the first of these arguments little further need be said. Man finds in himself a principle of causality in the light of which he interprets the external world. He cannot help regarding the succession of phenomena which he observes as effects — attributing each to some cause. When he examines that again he discovers it to be no true or absolute cause, but itself the effect of something further back, and so on. He finds in himself the nearest approach to a vera causa: yet he would recognise the ab- surdity of calling himself self-caused. And the mind cannot rest in an endless chain of cause-effects. There must be, it feels, if you go far enough back, a real Cause, akin, in some way, to man's own power of origination, yet transcending it — a cause that owns no cause — no source of being — but itself. And to this Eternal Cause all things, including man him- self, must be ultimately referable. The third argument, again, in favour of a Universal Consciousness, which has several different forms, is too abstruse for the ordinary reader, requiring for its appreciation some degree of metaphysical training. The second and the fourth — the ' Design ' and ' Conscience ' arguments — demand a somewhat fuller treat- ment here, being specially important in view of the light thrown on them by recent scientific theory. The Design-argument is perhaps the most ancient and the most popular of all. It is BELIEF IN GOD never actually formulated in the Bible, for the Bible, as we have seen, never treats God's ex- istence as the subject of argument. But its basis, the marvellous harmony of the created world, is the theme of more than one of the Psalms (cp. e.g. PsslO, 104, 147, 148) ; and St. Paul comes very near to stating the argument in so many words, when he says (Ro 1 20) in depreciation of pagan superstitions and immor- ality, that the ' everlasting power and divinity ' of the Creator are clearly discernible from His works. Granted that the very existence of the world implies an Eternal Cause, what can we learn about that Cause ? The nearest thing to a true first Cause of which I have experience, is my own personality : hence there is a pre- sumption that the world's first Cause will be at least what we know as personal. But that presumption is not all we have to go upon. There are definite indications in nature, when more closely observed, that make it impossible to regard the Eternal Cause as a merely me- chanical originator of the world-process, that stamp it — or rather Him — as intelligent and free, a nature like my own rational nature, only far above and beyond it. Everywhere in nature we see the teleological principle (as it is called) at work, i.e. we see means adapted to ends, and the present sub- ordinated to the future. This adaptation of means to ends manifests itself in a bewilder- ingly complex way — in each individual member of the great organism, in the lesser and greater groups, and in the whole. Everywhere, in fact, I see traces of purpose and design — for such adaptation speaks to me irresistibly of these. My only direct experience of like phenomena is in my own personality, and so I am led to infer a Designer. Some, however, have thought that this in- ference is invalidated by a closer scrutiny of those means by which the evolution of physical organisms is effected, according to modern scientific theory. Evolution, they say, has upset the Design-argument altogether. The marvel- lously adjusted interaction of forces and inter- ests which we observe in nature is not, as we have hitherto supposed, a perfect piece of elaborate machinery fresh from the Designer's Hand. It has a history behind it, and a history which we have only just begun to trace aright. The present state of things is not the result of a serene and orderly procession wherein every member has found its due and rightful place. On the contrary, it is the result in every department of a struggle for existence fierce and unintermitted, in which only a small pro- portion— ' the fittest ' — have survived. Nature's waste products, far outweighing her successes — how do they affect the Design-argument ? Again, we can see in part the actual means by which this relative progress in evolution has been made. On the one hand, there is the principle of Variation, whereby the offspring always varies in some degree from the parent, and, on the other hand, that of Natural Selec- tion, which results in the survival of the type best fitted to survive. Where, then, is there room for Design and a Designer ? The answer seems to be that the origin or root-principle of evolution has not yet been disclosed. "^^'Tiat is it that produces the Variation which Natural Selection fixes and makes the basis of an upward step ? The choice seems to lie between God and — chance. That chance, or some non-rational force, could work on such definitely ' teleological ' lines, could produce such ordered and systematic results, is a theory harder to believe than the theistic theory. And the difficulty of it is rather enhanced than otherwise by recent scientific discovery. For if a mechanically regular world in which neither failures nor waste products had place, would produce the impression of design and purpose, much more forcil^ly are we driven to the same conclusion when we see order growing out of chaos, peace out of strife, and apparently in- tractable material moulded to artistic perfec- tion. The background of struggle, pain, decay and seeming waste may be in itself difficult to account for ; but the result shows that behind the working of the principles of Variation and Natural Selection there must be uitelligence, will, purpose. The Design-argument may have been stated, in the past, in such a way as to expose it to the criticism of scientists ; but the argument itself — especially when broadly and generally treated — has only gained strength and illumin- ation from the modern view of nature's working methods ; for ' Evolution,' as Asa Gray said to Darwin, ' has brought back teleology to science.' The Moral argument — that drawn from the phenomena of Conscience — has been similarly assailed, but with no better success. Attempts have been made to discredit the authoritative character of conscience by claiming for it a non-moral origin. Conscience, it is urged, is the result of a long and complicated process of evolution, and really represents not the divine voice of an inward monitor, but the outcome of ages and ages of racial self-interest. To reduce it to a principle of individual self- interest is obviously absurd considering how frequently conscience and immediate self- interest are found to be ranged on opposite sides. But the interest of the community or the race is a different thing. Generation after generation has, as it were, mechanically im- pressed upon its members the tendency to act in a direction salutary to the race, so that at last this unselfish or ' altruistic ' principle has cii BELIEF IN GOD become a sort of instinct or second natiire, varying indeed in its range, intensity, and degree of enlightenment, but a constant characteristic of man as man. This line of argument is supported by the consideration that there are traces of ap- parently conscientious action in animals cus- tomarily regarded as irrational, and that conscience in mankind exhibits extremely various and inconsistent results in different circumstances and stages of civilisation. But to treat conscience and the moral argu- ment on these lines involves a misconception of the scope of Natural Science. The scope of Natural Science, properly so called, does not include the origin of things nor the pur- pose and end of their being. It is merely con- cerned with a description of their present state and the discovery and analysis of the process by which they arrived thereat. Conscience is what it is, quite independently of the process by which it may have been evolved ; just as man is man — an intelligent, rational, moral, spiritual being, whatever may have been the stages whereby the physical side of him climbed up from the humblest places of the realm of organic life. Undoubtedly the truer view of things is the teleological — that which sees in the humble beginning the germ of a great future — and not the view which refuses to man and conscience their proper names because there may have been a time when they were far removed from their present stage of development. As for the startlingly inconsistent ways in which conscience vents itself in action, that only emphasises the one underlying principle, the principle expressed in the words ' I ought.' The .sMi/ec^-ma^fer of conscience audits practical range of influence may vary indefinitely accord- ing to the surroundings, circumstances, and moral attainment of its particular possessor, and it is on this side that we speak of conscience as capable of education and enlightenment ; but the form of conscience remains constant. It may be stronger or weaker according to the measure of its use, but it remains in essence ever the same ; a principle of moral constraint, recognising in extreme cases no human tri- bunal whatever — not even the expressed will or the obvious immediate interest of society in general, and witnessing to an obligation that can only have reference to a Universal Moral Ruler and Lawgiver, whose will is regarded as at once morally perfect and absolutely without appeal. Whatever, then, may be the history of the evolution of conscience, the testimony of man's moral nature would seem to be direct and un- mistakable. It points to an Eternal Cause of the Universe and of mankind characterised not merely by creative power and wisdom, but also by moral holiness. Is it corroborated by the testimony of history ? for if the actual ordering of the world of mankind clearly contradicts the testimony of conscience, we may still be tempted to treat that tefstimony as illusory. Bishop Butler has shown convincingly that though the government of the world repre- sents a scheme imperfectly comprehensible to us, yet there exist quite undeniable marks of moral rule — tokens that the Power which guides the world is, in more modern phrase, ' something — not itself — which makes for righteousness.' The rise and fall and the succession of empires ; the advance and deca- dence of races, tribes, families ; the fortunes of individual men — all these, while they pre- sent many puzzling and inexplicable features, about which we shall have more to say later on — bear witness on the whole to the right- eousness of Him who sits on the world's throne. On the physical side of human nature, where we should expect things to work them- selves out most mechanically, the moral law is perhaps most clearly vindicated. Immoral conduct produces its own punishment in so large a number of cases that sin and suffering have sometimes been regarded as simply and in every case, cause and effect. Experience teaches us, however — and the Bible teaches it too, in the book of Job — that not all which we commonly regard as evil — all pain, suffer- ing or material loss — is the direct consequence of moral wrong-doing in the individual who suffers. And Christ Himself expressly dis- countenances this attribution of suffering to sin, as its necessary cause (Lk 1 3 2> 3, 4^. Indeed, suffering is not always an evil, as things are now, though we rightly look upon it as belong- ing to an imperfect state of existence. Some- times it seems to be the consequence of virtue and intended to stimulate the aspiring soul to still higher ideals. In history, the most striking picture of moral government is to be found in the fortunes of Israel. Here we are leaving Natural Religion and bordering upon Reve- lation. But if the Bible picture of Hebrew history be taken as substantially true, it will be found to supply a key to history in general, and to justify the believer's conviction that Old Testament history differs from secular history not so much in its subject-matter as in its treatment — that it is unique not mainly because the Chosen People were uniquely nurtured, guided, and disciplined, but because here alone the veil is lifted and the true issues of personal and national conduct are made plain as they appear to Him whose hand has guided the history of mankind from its begin- ning until now. For this reason, in spite of our enormous advance in historical method, cm BELIEF IN GOD and of the advantage that comes from an indefinitely wider horizon, it may be- boldly said that the historians of to-day can never hope to surpass or even to equal the funda- mental grasp of truth achieved in the early and unscientific efforts of the inspired historians of Israel. Revelation. ' Natural Religion,' as it is called — i.e. the witness of human nature to God — needs Revealed Religion to complete it. Man's mind, dwelling on external nature, is led up to the thought of an immensely wise, mighty and beneficent Creator and Ruler. But there are many considerations which tend to depreciate the design-argument and rob it of its force. Man needs some direct assurance from outside the circle of his ordinary thought, to combat the problems raised by the presence of anomaly, failure, and waste, to say nothing of pain. Again, man's nature bears on it the impress of moral law, and would lead him up to belief in an all-holy Universal Lawgiver. Yet there is much in the facts of human society that would draw him in a quite opposite direction. No one can read the Psalms or the book of Job, no one can face honestly the facts of human society around him to-day, without feeling .something of the almost overwhelming difficulty that is involved in the spectacle of successful wickedness, unpunished oppression, and unmerited suffering. We need some more direct assurance than conscience itself can give us if we are to exclaim with real conviction — ' God 's in His heaven ; All 's right with the world.' And it is natural to ask : If there be a God such as human nature seems to suggest or demand, could He not — would He not find some means of making Himself known to His rational creatures ? The presupposition of the Bible is that he has found such means, and supplemented and completed Natural Religion by direct Revela- tion. This Revelation is focussed in the divine-human figure of Jesus Christ, fore- told and expected in the Old Testament, present to teach and work in the New, and ever abiding by His Spirit in the Church. The fact of divine revelation is, of course, denied by Atheism : but apart from revela- tion altogether. Atheism is self-condemned by its presumption. To prove a negative is con- fessedly a difficult task in any field, and the Atheist claims to have proved it in the widest field of all — the universe — and in face of the many-sided testimony of Nature and Human Nature. To be justified in a flat and categorical denial of the existence of a deity I must be furnished with a full knowledge of the universe both as a whole and in its details, so as to be competent to declare that nowhere in all the realms of things existing is there any trace of evidence which might even probably tell in favour of Theism. None but a mind practically infinite, omnipresent, and all-knowing could compass this. And so it might be suggested that the Atheist really claims for himself the divine qualities and attributes of which he denies the existence in a God. Another line of thought antagonistic to reve- lation goes by the name of Agnosticism. It dwells on the obvious limitations of our mental powers, which find themselves baffled in every department when they attempt to pass beyond a certain point ; and says that the circumscribed human mind, excellent as it is in its own sphere, can never hope to comprehend the Infinite, the Absolute. ' The Power,' it says, ' which the universe manifests to us, is inscrutable.' It dwells also on the difficulties and anomalies in nature ; on the darker side of evolution — its aspect of failure, struggle and decay ; on the darker side of human nature — the presence of evil, especially of moral evil, in the world ; and says these so far balance the tokens of goodness observ- able, that we cannot be sure, if there be a government of the world, whether it is one that really ' makes for righteousness.' There is considerable justification for the emphasis laid by Agnosticism on these two factors in human life ; but it is just in regard to them that Revelation is our greatest help. The problem of evil scarcely falls to be dis- cussed here : but it may be remarked that, while a very real and pressing problem, it can be seen, in the light of Revelation, to be no insuperable obstacle to faith. With regard to the other point, the inadequacy of our faculties, it may be said at once that Natural Religion does fall short of certainty and completeness, and that this is fully admitted in the Bible. There is a sense in which the God of the Bible is ' incomprehensible,' ' inscrutable.' He is as high above man in His ways and thoughts as heaven is above earth (IsaSS^). His essential inaccessibility is expressed as a 'dwelling in the thick darkness' (1K81"-), or in 'light inapproachable' (ITimei*^). 'No man hath seen God at any time . . ' (Jn 1 is) ; ' No man knoweth who the Father is save the Son' (Lkl022). Again, man as we know him is, of himself, utterly incapable of any true knowledge of God : the natural man is in- capable of discerning the things of the Spirit (1 Cor 2 14). At the same time no duty is more persistently impressed on their hearers by the prophets than ' to know the Lord.' To its neglect are ascribed the woe and failures of the Chosen People (Isa 1 3 5 13 Hos 4 ^), and its presence is a guarantee BELIEF IN GOD of righteous conduct. In the New Testament the knowledge of the Father and the Son is identified with 'everlasting life' (Jnl?^). What is the meaning of this apparent con- tradiction ? Fallen man, though sin has blurred in him the image of his Creator, re- tains still the potentiality of that communion for which he was created ; and though he cannot of his own initiative ' by searching find out God ' (Job 1 1 '^), he can still, by penitent cooperation with Divine grace, attain to a true knowledge of One who has been seeking him ever since the first days of alienation in Paradise (Gn 3 9), and has revealed Himself to receptive hearts in times past ' by divers por- tions and in divers manners ' (Heb 1 1). In Himself essentially inscrutable, God wills to be known with the knowledge of personal com- munion. He has given man the capacity for such communion, and though man has rejected Him, God has devised means that His banished be not outcast from Him: cp. SSHi-i. The greatest prophet of the Old Testament por- trays in wonderful words this paradox of divine condescension (IsaST^^). The New Testament presents it to us in concrete form, in the Messiah on whom the wistful gaze of Prophet and Psalmist had for centuries been fixed. Then was given once and for all a revelation of God and of Man together in a single life. The revelation of God in Jesus Christ has stood the test of many generations as corre- sponding to the highest aspirations and most urgent demands of human nature. Consider- ation of its characteristics shows it is just the revelation that man needs. On the one hand, it is a revelation of the character of Almighty God, as in the highest and supremest sense ' our Father.' On the other hand, it is a revelation of Ideal Manhood: the bewildered question of ages about the meaning, purpose, and destiny of the human life is cleared up in the New Testament. What He tells us. in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, about our duty and our hopes in this life and beyond the grave — what He shows us in His own person of communion with the Heavenly Father, and successful resistance of temptation in the strength of that com- munion— what He shows us of absolute self- surrender, even to the point of death, of triumph through suffering, and of new life and glory after the grave — all these are essen- tial parts of His Revelation. But the Revelation is no bare presentation of truth and of an ideal utterly inaccessible to weak and fallen man. Grace as well as Truth came by Jesns Christ (Jn 1 1'^). And what differentiates this than perfection same time the arriving at the from all other so-called Revelations is that, while the ideal it holds up before man is uniquely lofty — nothing less (MtS'*^) — it supplies at the motive force necessary for ideal. The Revelation of Truth by itself might well generate despair. Its most characteristic effect has always been the production of a sense of sin : resulting from the felt contrast between the absolute holiness of Almighty God, re- quired by Him in man, and exhibited actually in the Man Christ Jesus, and the tale that conscience tells us of our own impurity and pollution. This terrible contrast — viewed in the light of God's revealed Love — would by itself produce an unspeakably bitter remorse ; but that remorse is transformed into penitence by the further revelation of Grace — i.e. of the means which Divine Love has devised for man's restoration. And so the sense of sin leads to ' Conversion.' In the Bible teaching about Atonement — culminating in the Self -offering of Christ — we see the true Representative of Mankind removing the barrier set up by sin, opening once more the avenue of access to God, and so rendering possible to man a sacramental sharing of the divine life and strength. Here find iheir satisfaction that instinct and yearnijjj^ ^t led to the primitive institution of sao ij^J^, Js old apparently and as universal as the human race. In the teaching about the Incarnation — ' the Word made flesh' — the Son of God taking upon Him not an isolated individual human person- ality, but our nature in a universal way, so as to become true representative man ; we find the fulfilment of the true idea underlying those strange dreams, clothed often in unworthy guise which find expression in the ' Incarna- tion Myth ' of Hindoo and other religions. While in the outcome of the Incarnation — the incorporation of human personalities one by one as members into the body of Christ, that incorporation which renders the atoning sacrifice effectual in each one — we see realised the ideal of the social instinct : all other social ' membership ' being but a poor metaphor beside the living membership in the Church, ' which is His Body.' Finally, the Revelation in both its sides receives a magnificent corroboration, when we see the life of Christ reproduced really, if not completely, in the thousands of His followers who, conscious of their own shortcomings, have yet been able to say with lips and life at once, ' I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me' (Gal 2 20). ' I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.' cv THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 1. Present Position of Christianity. Christi- anity is now the religion of at least a third of the human race. So rapid has been its advance during the past century, and so hopeful are its present prospects, that the remarkable prophecy of its Founder, that the whole world would ultimately be converted, is already within measurable distance of fulfilment. To investi- gate the origin of so remarkable a movement, and to attain to a clear conception of the character and personality of its great Founder, is the purpose of the present article. 2. What is Christianity ? Among the nations of the West, even those who reject Christianity as a creed, still revere Jesus of Nazareth as the noblest and purest, and probably the greatest character which has ever appeared on the scene of history. ' About the life and sayings of Jesus,' says John Stuart Mill, ' there is a stamp of personal originality combined with a pro- fundity of insight, ' 'hich . . must place the prophet of Na"- ^'^ "• in the estimation of those who 1: "P^ thffunpui ^n His inspiration, in the very first Cfi."*^... :»ie men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. . . Re- ligion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representa- tive and guide of humanity ; nor even now would it be easy even for an unbeliever to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life.' ' Jesus,' says Renan, 'is in every respect unique, and nothing can be compared with Him. Be the unlooked-for phenomena of the futm-e what they may, Jesus will not be surpassed. Noble Initiator, repose now in Thy glory ! Thy work is finished, Thy divinity established. A thousand times more living, a thousand times more loved since Thy death than during the days of Thy course here below. Thou shalt become the corner-stone of humanity, inso- much that to tear Thy Name from this world would be to shake it from its very foundations. No more shall men distinguish between Thee and God.' To Christians, however, Jesus is more even than this. A few, generally called Unitarians, are satisfied with regarding Him as the greatest of human prophets, but to the immense majority of Christians, in this as in every preceding age, He is the divine Son of God, who took our nature upon Him to redeem it, and after suffer- ing upon the Cross, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, where, seated upon the throne of the universe, He receives a homage indistinguishable from that paid to the eternal Father. 3. The Christian Doctrine of the Incarnation. The belief that the historical person Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God made man, and that accordingly (to use the words of an ancient hymn). He is ' God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds, and man of the substance of His mother, born in the world ; perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting, equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood,' is called the doctrine of the Incar- nation. The idea of incarnation as a mode of manifestation of the divine nature is not alto- gether peculiar to Christianity. It is character- istic of several Eastern religions, particularly of those of India. According to the teaching of Brahmanism, Vishnu, one of the triad of supreme gods, became incarnate many times. His best-known incarnation is the ninth, in which he appeared as Crishna, literally ' the black one.' After achieving various heroic exploits, such as the avenging of the murder of his parents, and the slaying of the serpent Caliga, he was put to death by being shot with an arrow, leaving behind him the prediction that thirty years after his death the iron age would begin. The resemblance, however, of these Eastern incarnations to that of Jesus Christ is altogether superficial. Those were temporary, Christ's was permanent. In those the incarnate god practices without shame every species of vice ; Christ's life was sinless, and a perfect model for imitation. In those no salvation is achieved, except occasionally from the oppression of some earthly tyrant ; in Christ salvation from sin and eternal life are offered to all mankind. Puerile, vulgar, un- spiritual, degrading, and limited in scope, the incarnations of other religions cannot for a moment compare with the splendour of the Incarnation of Christ, the aim of which is to atone for sin, to destroy the' power of evil, and to raise the whole human race into fellowship with God. 4. The Reasonableness of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is not accepted by Christians simply because it is taught in the Bible, or because it is part of the traditional creed of the Church, but because it is itself intrinsically reasonable and in harmony with the highest and best ideas about God and man. cvi THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST (1) It harmonises ivith the idea that man is made in God's image. All the higher forms of religion assume that the nature of God and the nature of man are closely analogous. The gift of reason, the knowledge of right and wrong, the freedom of the will, the desire of holiness, and the instinctive seeking after God which is found to some extent even in the most degraded races, are regarded as indicating that there is a real spiritual affinity between the Creator and the creature. The nature and character of God are manifested to some extent in the works of physical nature, but far more fully and adequately in the rational and spiritual nature of man, which, even in its fallen state, is the most God-like thing known to us. It is, therefore, altogether credible that human nature should be chosen as the medium of God's final revelation to the human race. An ideally perfect human life, lived under human conditions, and in the midst of ordinary human difficulties, is a far more satis- fying and morally fruitful revelation than a number of abstract propositions about God written in a book. (2) T7ie Incarnation reveals GocPs love more effectually than any other kind of revelation. I That God truly loves His creatures is in theory a truth of natural religion, but the present order of nature contains so much which seems to contradict it, that a special revelation in- tended to confirm it is lu'gently needed. The earthquake, the tornado, and the pestilence, overwhelm in a common destruction the saint and the sinner. Nature seems an adamantine system of blind resistless forces, which roll on for ever, careless of human needs and human tears or groans. What, therefore, is impera- tively required in a revelation designed to satisfy human needs is some definite and tan- gible proof, other than words, that nature is ruled by a personal Being friendly to the human race, and attentive to the needs of individual men. Such proof is offered by the Incarnation. God did not simply send a mes- sage from heaven announcing that He is friendly to the human race ; He sent His own Son to live a human life, to struggle like other men against sin, to suffer human sorrow, toil and disappointment, and finally to die a martyr's death. In Christ God shows His sympathy with our sufferings by suffering with us ; ' for ,we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one that hath been in all points tempted as we ire, yet without sin.' But it was not only in suffering, but also in acting, that Jesus Christ manifested the love of God. He ' went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed with the devil, for God was with him.' He restored reason to the insane, sight to the blind, muscular power to the paralysed, life to the dead. Every miracle which He wrought was a miracle of benevolence, intended to convince men that the Father whose nature He came to manifest, was truly a lover of men, and truly kind and just. (3) The Incarnation is the most adequate loay that ive can imagine of atoning for sin. The chief barrier between God and man is sin, and the religious instinct of our race recognises that man cannot of himself remove that barrier. Superficial thinkers sometimes affirm that no reconciliation with God is necessary, or that, if it is, it can be effected by human penitence. There is truth in this, but only a half-truth. It is quite true that penitence is the natural and fitting atonement for sin. Thus when one human being sins against another, penitence is accepted as an adequate atonement. Even in the case of a sin against God, a really adequate repentance would be an adequate atonement. But the awakened conscience of man knows that this is impossible. His peni- tence for sin, like all his other virtuous acts, is weak and ineffectual, and he needs some transforming power which will make his peni- tence perfect. The Incarnation provides for this. The Incarnate Son of God as head of the human race, and as responsible for it, renders to God adequate sorrow for the sins of the world, and gives individual men, through their union with Him, grace to attain deeper and deeper penitence, until in the end their penitence will become perfect, and God will accept it as adequate. (4) The It/carnation is designed to make siji- less perfection possible, not at o?ice, hut in due course. It effects this not simply by the in- spiring influence of Chi-ist's perfect example, but by means of constant supplies of super- natural grace given to those who are really walking by faith. According to the Christian theory, Christ by virtue of His holy Incarna- tion becomes the new ancestor of the human race. As by our natural birth and training we inherit the evil nature and sinful tendencies of our ancestors, so by our new and spiritual birth we are made partakers of Christ's holy and sinless human nature, and in its strength are enabled to obtain complete victory over sin. This sounds mystical, and to some minds fanciful, but it represents the central and vital religious experience of Christians. All who have advanced far in the religious life testify that through Christ they have been brought into vital union with God, and have received a new strength against the powers of evil. (5) The Incarnation achieves most perfectly the supreme end of religion, the complete union hetween the worshipper and tlif object of toor- ship. In Christ human nature is personally united to God, and since individual believers are related to Christ as members to the head, cvu THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST or as branches to the trunk, they are thereby brought into supernatural union with the life of God. In this world the full fruition of the divine life is not attained ; but in the world to come, when human nature has been perfected through suif ering, and cleansed from all stain of sin, every true believer will see God as He is, and will be united to Him per- fectly by knowledge and love, and will so fully partake of His nature as to be in a manner ' deified.' (6) The Incamatio7i emphasises human soli- darity a7i(l human brotherhood. The humanity of Christ is not individual or racial, but uni- versal. He is the ideal of humanity as a whole realised, and in Him races and individuals are brought into spiritual fellowship with one another, and form one Church, family, or brotherhood. The Incarnation saves men not as individuals, btit as members of the body of Christ, and makes the performance of social duties indispensable to admittance into the Kingdom of Heaven. 4. Christ's Deity. Having shown the reasonable character of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, we shall now proceed to state briefly the direct evidence for Christ's Divinity. (1) Christ's Divinity ivas accepted hy the earliest believers^ not only of the Gentile, but also of the Jewish-Christian Churches. The Pauline Epistles, of which all except the Pastorals are practically undisputed, fall between the dates .51 a.d. (1,2 Th) and about 67 A.D. (2 Tim). From them it appears that as early as twenty years after the Ascension the doctrine of Christ's Deity was already firmly established in the Church. It is not argued about or proved, but assumed as one of those fundamental ideas about which Chris- tians are agreed. Thus it is stated that He existed before He was born into the world (1 Cor 10 '1' 9), and indeed before all creation (Col 1 1'^), in a state of equality with God (Phil 2 6) ; that He created the world as the Father's agent, and still sustains it in exist- ence (Col 116, 17 1 Cor 8 6) ; that to redeem the human race He became man (Gal 4 *), and died upon the Cross (Col 1 20) ; that He dwells in believers as the source of their spiritual life (2 Cor 135); that He is the Son of God (Ro832), and actually God (RoO^ Tit 2 is RV), and therefore to be worshipped with divine honours by angels and men in His divine and human natures (Phil 2 lO). Prayer to Him is so much a matter of course, that Christians are spoken of as ' those that call upon His name ' (1 Cor 1 2). A certain real subordination of Christ to the Father, as being His Son, St. Paul admits (1 Cor 15 28), but He constantly unites His name with that of the Father on terms of equality as the author of grace, blessing, and all well-being (2 Cor 13 1*). That in all the Churches founded by St. Paul, Jesus was reverenced as a Divine Being, can scarcely be doubted by any careful reader of his Epistles. But now perhaps it will be said, ' How can we be sure that St. Paul's view was shared by the other Apostles ? Is it not possible that the Twelve regarded Jesus as a purely human Messiah, and that it was St. Paul who first introduced into the Church the idea that He was divine ? ' We are fortunately not without the means of answering this question. The Pauline Epistles themselves furnish us with important evidence. From them we learn that though the relations between St. Paul and the Twelve were not always harmonious, and that theological disputes at times waxed hot, yet those disputes were about questions of inferior moment (e.g. the obligation of Circumcision and of the Ceremonial Law, the position of Gentile Christians in the Church, the relative authority of St. Paul and the Twelve), and that on all matters of funda- mental importance the parties were agreed. We learn that the Apostle of the Gentiles laid before the pillars of Jewish Christianity a statement of the gospel which he preached, that they declared themselves satisfied, de- manded no modifications whatever in his doctrine, and gave him ' the right hands of fellowship ' as an Apostle of the true faith (Gal 2 1-10). In accordance with this, St. Paul uniformly assumes that his own gospel and that of the Twelve is identical (see, e.g., 1 Cor 1511, 'Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed '), which he could not have done unless there had been agreement upon the crucial doctrine of Christ's person, and His relationship to God and man. But we have still more definite evidence than this. The leader of the Twelve has left an Epistle, which was unquestioned in the early Church, and which is supported by testimonies so numerous and so ancient, that to reject it is most hazardous. From Clement of Rome (95 a.d.), Polycarp (110 a.d.), and Papias (130 a.d.), a long line of definite and coherent testimony establishes the antiquity and authority of the First Epistle of Peter. This document presents a view of the person of Christ in essential agreement with that of St. Paul. According to this Epistle, Christ existed before His nativity, for it was He who inspired the Old Testament prophets (lH). His death has a supernatural efficacy, being an atoning sacrifice, which procured for man- kind the remission of sins (12, is 921,24 3 16). He is now at God's right hand, invested with supreme authority over the universe, so that even the angels obey Him (3 22). He will come cvui THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST again to judge the world (l^.is 45,12 53) He is the centre of Christian love and devo- tion (1^). He is the one Mediator through whom the Father can be approached in wor- ship and prayer (2'^ 4ii). He is mystically united to His people, and present in their hearts (Si^'i^ S^O'i'*). Salvation is given through Him, and through faith in Him (l^ 5^*^). The absolute Divinity of Christ is espe- cially apparent in 1 11, where the Holy Ghost who inspired the ancient prophets, is declared to be the Spirit of Christ. Less certain is the doxology (4ii), which, though it probably refers to Christ, may perhaps refer to the Father. It is clear, therefore, that St. Peter's doctrine of the- person of Christ closely resem- bles that of St. Paul, and that not only in the Gentile, but also in the Hebrew Churches a very high conception of Christ's person was taught. Such other evidence as we have points in the same direction. The strongly attested, and in ancient times undisputed. First Epistle of John regards Christ as existing with the Father before His Incarnation as His ' Logos,' or ' Word,' and sharing His eternal divine life (1^'-), as manifested in the flesh to destroy the works of the devil, to take away sin, and to give eternal life to men (1^ 3^ 4^ 3^), as atoning by His death for the sins of the whole world, and by His blood cleansing the soul from sin (1^ 2 2, etc.), and as so in- separably one with the Father, that both are equally the objects of saving faith (2 23-25^ etc.). The disputed, but very ancient and probably genuine Epistle of James, coordinates Christ with God quite in the manner of St. Paul (11), calls Him 'the Lord of glory' (2i), a title suggestive of superhuman dignity and power, and looks for His Second Coming to Judgment (2 §' 9). The Epistle to the Hebrews, which, though not by an Apostle, was written by a disciple of the Apostles, regards Christ as eternal (1 12 13 s), as the agent of the leather in creation (l^.iO), as the sustainer of the universe (1^), as the superior of the angels and the object of their worship (1 ■*-•'). The early speeches of St. Peter in Acts, recorded by a companion of St. Paul, represent Christ as ' Lord of all,' i.e. of the whole universe (10 ^•'), as the Dispenser of the Holy Spirit (232), as the Prince or Author of life (3i5), as the sole Mediator between God and men, and only giver of salvation (4 2j, as sinless (3** 7^2), and as the future judge of quick and dead (10 "^2), Already at this early period Christ was invoked in prayer by the Church of Jerusalem (Ac 7 s^, probably also 1 2-1), and Christians were described as those ' who call upon the Name ' of Jesus (9 !•*). (2) Christ taufiht His oion divine Souship. The prevalence of such a type of teaching in the Apostolic Church renders it certain that Jesus must have claimed for Himself a far higher place in the system of religion which He came to found, than has been claimed by the founders of other religions. Whei-eas such teachers as Gautama, Mahomet, and Confucius have claimed faith in their doctrines, not in their persons, Jesus evidently claimed faith in His person, and submission to His authority, of an altogether unique kind. Our direct knowledge of the teaching of Jesus is almost confined to the Four Gospels. Of these the Second is universally recognised to be based upon the reminiscences of St. Peter, the First to have behind it (at least in its reports of our Lord's discourses) the authority of St. Matthew, and the Third to have been compiled by a companion of St. Paul from authentic sources. As to the Fourth Gospel there is less agree- ment among critics. Its direct authorship by St. John is strongly maintained in this Com- mentary in accordance with the prevailing opinion among English scholars, but as there is less agreement upon the point among German critics, and we wish to reach abso- lutely unquestionable results, we shall only use its testimony in this article to corroborate the statements made by other authorities. St. Mark's Gospel contains hardly any of our Lord's discourses, and therefore very little that bears directly upon our present enquiry. Nevertheless, it is clear even from this Gospel that Jesus claimed superhuman dignity. He was put to death as a blasphemer for claiming to be not merely the Messiah, but the Son of God, and prophesying His future session at God's right hand, and Second Coming to Judgment (Mkl4e2). To His death He at- tributed a significance unintelligible on the assumption that He was a mere human being. His death. He taught, was ' a ransom for many' (10-*5), a propitiation for sin, and the establish- ment of a new covenant between God and man (1424). Even while admitting His ignorance as man of the day and hour of His Second Coming, He assigned to Himself a position in the scale of being above the angels, and second only to that of the Supreme Father Himself ('But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father,' 1332, where notice the absolute use of the title ' the Son ' as in the Fourth Gospel). St. Mark's evidence is confirmed by the more copious evidence of the discourses of Jesus, recorded in the First and Third Gospels. Here we find Jesus demanding unlimited faith in His own Person — a faith so intense, and a devotion so consuming, that none but God can rightly claim it (Lk 142(3 Mt 10 1*. is, 32, 33, 37, 40 1 1 2S). He speaks with an authority higher than that of a prophet ; by His own authority revising the Mosaic Law, even the sacred words cix THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST spoken by God Himself on Sinai (MtS^i*-). Specially insistent is His claim to be the future judge of the world. It is found even in the Sermon on the Mount, which is some- times stated to be a purely ethical discourse (Mt722.23)^ and again and again in the dis- courses which follow (Mtl627 Lk 128.40 Mt 25^^). It often occurs in the parables, the most characteristic of the utterances of Jesus, and the least capable of alteration or per- version, e.g. in the parable of the Tares (' Let both grow together until the harvest, and in the time of harvest / will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them : but gather the wheat into my barn. . . So shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and -they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that cause stumbling and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire ; there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth,' Mt IS^'^'^o-^S); also in the parable of the Ten Yirgins, where it is undoubtedly Christ Himself who pronounces the sentence of exclusion (Mt'^251^), and in the parable which follows it, where Christ is repre- sented as going into a far country, and then returning and recompensing His servants ac- cording to their behaviour during His absence (Mt25l4f.; cp. Lkl9i2f). More striking still is the description of the Last Judgment (Mt 253if-), where the Son of man sits on the throne of His glory, summons all nations into His awful presence, separates the good from the wicked as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats, and says to the former, ' Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,' and to the latter, ' Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels.' Specially instructive, as illustrating the sense in which Jesus called Himself the Son of God, is Mtll27 = Lkl022, 'All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father ; and no one knoweth the Son save the Father ; neither doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.' In this passage, which is admitted on all hands to belong to the original ' Logia ' of St. Matthew, the point of greatest significance is neither the omnipotence granted to the Son, nor the fact that He alone knows the Father, but the remarkable statement that the nature of the Son is so transcendent, that it is apprehended by the Father alone. Is it not clear that a Being so exalted that He shares the Father's omnipotence, and is in- capable of being understood by any but Him is no creature, but is the Father's alter ec/o, His consubstantial Son, and the sharer of His throne and attributes ? The divinity of Christ is so clearly the doctrine of the Synoptic Gospels that there is no need to adduce in its support the evidence of the baptismal formula (Mt28i9). The testimony for and against the genuineness of that formula has been given with considerable fulness in the Commentary, and it has been shown that the balance of evidence is decidedly in its favour ; but whether it is original or whether it is a later addition, the doctrine which it represents, the essential divinity of the Founder of Christianity, is certainly original, and forms an important part of the teaching of Christ Himself in the oldest strata of our oldest authorities. It is certainly not the fact, as is sometimes asserted, that the doctrine of Christ's divinity is a later addition to the simplicity of the primitive Gospel. 5. Further evidence for Christ's Deity. We have shown that the doctrine of the Incarna- tion is in full harmony with what we know of the divine nature and of human nature, and is therefore reasonable. We have also shown that the New Testament teaches this doctrine, affirming that the Founder of Christianity, J esus Christ, is both God and man. We shall conclude with a few plain reasons for accepting this belief, reminding the reader that a full discussion would require a treatise, not a short article like the present. (1) Chrisfs sinlessness. If Jesus Christ was really God, His life must have been one of absolute holiness and beneficence. And this was really the case. His goodness is shown in part by the excellence of His moral and religious teaching, which is not derived from other teachers, but is stamped with the impress of His own beautiful personality. The best rationalist opinion confesses this. Keim speaks of ' the complete domination ' in His life, ' of the idea of moral good,' and adds, ' The life of Jesus, both in public and private, was in an eminent degree holy and pure, and allows us as such to infer a previous unsullied youth striving towards the noble and the exalted. The small defects that have been detected are no sins . . and vanish like a drop in the ocean of brilliant and superhuman achievement. . . We are still able to retain the strong and joyful conviction that it was Virtue herself who trod the earth in Him, and that the dolorous confession made by antiquity of the impossibility of sinlessness and of the non-existence of the ideal of virtue and wisdom found in Him its refutation and its end.' Similarly Strauss says : ' This intui- tion of a God good to all [as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount] Jesus could only have di-awn out of His own being ; it could only have emanated out of that universal benevo- lence which was the fundamental characteristic of His own nature, and by which He felt ex THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST Himself in perfect harmony with God. . . The dominant feature of His character was that love which embraces all creatures, and He makes of that the fundamental characteristic of the Divine Essence.' The goodness of Jesus is affirmed in the strongest language by those who have the best right to pronounce upon it — those, namely, who for nearly three years were brought into the closest daily contact with Him. Thus St. Peter represents Him as absolutely sinless : ' A lamb without blemish and without spot ' (1 Pet 1 ^^) ; ' who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth : who, when He was reviled, reviled not again ' ( 1 Pet 2 22, 2S) . ' Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God ' (1 Pet 3 1^) ; with which we may compare St. Peter's confession (Jn6<59RV), 'We have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God.' St. John, the bosom friend of Jesus, who knew Him even more intimately than St. Peter, speaks of Him as sinless : ' Jesus Christ the righteous ' (1 Jn2 1) ; 'If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that every one also that doeth righteousness is begotten of Him' (1 Jn 2 29) ; ' We know that He was manifested to take away sins ; and in Him is no sin ' (lJn35). Even the traitor Judas recognised the good- ness of Jesus, for ' he repented himself,' and said, ' I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood' (Mt273.4). The goodness of Jesus is also affirmed by those who were in no way connected with Him : by Pilate (' I am innocent of the blood of this just person,' Mt27 24 ; 'Why, what evil hath He done ? ' MklS^* ; ' I find no fault in this man,' Lk234,H,22 Jnlgss 194,6,12); by Pilate's wife (' Have thou nothing to do with that just man,' Mt27 1'^) ; by one of the thieves (' This man hath done nothing amiss,' Lk234i); by the centurion (' Certainly this man was righteous,' Lk 23 '*'■). Specially to be noted in this connexion is the fact that Jesus was without that conscious- ness of sin which exists in the holiest of men in proportion to their holiness. This is a point of deep significance. The general opinion of mankind has pronounced sinless- ness impossible. Demosthenes attributed it to the gods alone. Cicero had never found or heard of a perfectly wise man. Mahomet expressly disclaimed sinlessness, and recorded in the Koran God's command to him, ' Pray for the forgiveness of thy sins.' Gautama is not represented as having been sinless from the first, but as gradually attaining it. Socrates detected in his evil heart the germs of all the vices. Moses was guilty of serious sin (Ex 2 12). ' Isaiah was a man of unclean lips ' (Isa 6 ^). Elijah confessed, ' I am not better than my fathers' (IK 194). St. Peter wept tears of penitence (Mkl4'^2) gt. Paul confessed him- self the chief of sinners (1 Tim 1 1^). St. John, one of the most blameless of all the New Testament characters, says, ' If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us ; but if we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar ' (1 Jn 1 S). Jesus, on the other hand, never recognised in Himself the least moral blemish (for MklO^'^, see the Com- mentary). The most explicit statements of His sinlessness are found in the Fourth Gospel (Jn84G 1430 829 10 11 174), but the synoptic evidence is really as strong. The claim to be the personified Moral Law of the human race, and in particular to be not one of the subjects of judgment but the Judge, implies sinless- ness. So does His claim that His death is a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the whole world (Mkl045)_ Quite decisive also is the passage (Mt 1 1 '^^) where, after declaring that ' no man knoweth the Father, save the Son,' He says, ' Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls.' An invitation like this could never have been addi-essed, without extreme arrogance and impiety, by a sinner to fellow-sinners. We have, therefore, in Jesus the absolutely unique case of a man of vinexampled holiness, and yet without any consciousness of sin. This harmonises well with, and indeed suggests the belief, that the personality of Jesus was not merely human, but superhuman. (2) Christ's miracles. From human nature we expect works of human capacity, from superhuman nature works of superhuman capacity. A natural Christ may, perhaps, afford to dispense with miracles. A super- natural Christ cannot. From a supernatural Christ supernatural works are imperatively and rightly demanded, and, if they are not forthcoming, sober reason will be inclined to conclude that the ' supernatural ' Christ is not supernatural. Now the ministry of Christ is simply full of mighty works which exceed human capacity, and can only be regarded as miracles. The credibility of these miracles is discussed in a special article, to which the reader is referred ; all that we have here to do is to point out their bearing upon the doctrine of Christ's person. Every unpreju- diced mind which has come to the conclusion that they are true will surely admit, (1) that they harmonise with and confirm the view that Christ's personality was superhuman ; and CXI THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST (2) that they must be regarded as setting the stamp of divine approval upon the teaching of Jesus, part of which was, as we have shown. His Divine Sonship. This is particularly the case with regard to the Resurrection. Jesus was put to death as a blasphemer, because He re- affirmed at His trial His claim to be the Son of God. God the Father, by raising Him from the dead, proclaimed to the world that this claim was true. St. Paul, therefore, is perfectly justified in saying that Jesus was ' declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead ' (Ro 1 "*) : see art. ' The Resurrection.' (3) Chrisfs influence upon the ivorld. The moral and spu'itual influence of Jesus Christ upon the world during the last two millenniums has been so exceedingly great as to harmonise thoroughly with the view that He was a divine person. ' It is needless,' says a judicious writer, ' to attempt to prove that the supreme attractiveness of the Person of the Founder of Christianity has imparted to the Church the whole of its vitality. To this fact all history bears witness. Nor is its testimony less certain that of all the influences that have been exerted in this earth, that of Jesus has been the most potent. Enumerate all the great men who have ever existed, whether kings, conquerors, statesmen, patriots, poets, philosophers, or men of science, and their influence for good will be found to have been as nothing compared with that which has been exerted by Jesus Christ. . . He who was in outward form a Galilean peasant, who died a malefactor's death, has founded a spiritual empire which has endured for eighteen centuries of time, and which, despite the vaticinations of unbelievers, shows no signs of decrepitude. Commencing with the smallest beginnings. His empire now embraces all the progressive races of men. Those by whom it has not been accepted are in a state of stagna- tion and decay. It is the only one which is adapted to every state of civilisation. ' It differs from all other states and com- munities in that it is founded neither on force nor on self-interest, but on persuasion and the supreme attractiveness of the character of its Founder. . . History affirms that Jesus has not only been a great man among great men, or even the greatest of them, but that He stands at an immeasurable height above them. He is the one only catholic man, the one ideal of humanity, for whose presence in and action on history none of the known forces that energise in the moral and spiritual worlds can account. "What is the necessary inference from this ? I answer that, as those forces which have energised in man from the day of his appearance on this earth have failed to produce His fellow, we must be in the presence of a moral miracle.' (4) The argument from Christian experience. The argument which looks weakest upon paper, but which is really in many ways the strongest, is the argument from the experience of be- lievers. What keeps people Christian, and adds to the number of Christ's adherents, is the fact that He really does give to His followers that joy, and peace, and blissful communion with God, and victory over the powers of evil, which He declared that He would. Those who come to Jesus in faith do not find Him wanting. They receive from Him spiritual life and vital power. Their characters are gradually transformed, and they become capa- ble of acts of heroism and exalted virtue, which without Christ they could not possibly perform. Their souls are filled with serenity and peace beyond human understanding, which not even the fiercest storms of life can seriously disturb. Labouring and heavy laden they go to their Lord, and in Him find rest unto their souls. (5) The great dilemma. We have been led to the conclusion that the Founder of Christi- anity, who is revered not only by Christians but also by most Freethinkers as the best of men, and the greatest of religious and moral reformers, claimed to be divine. This con- clusion is supported by such varied and con- vergent evidence, that real doubt upon the subject is precluded. We are therefore brought face to face with a very serious dilemma : either the Author of Christianity was divine, or He was not good (aut Deus aut homo noti bonus). Of attempts to evade this dilemma the following are the chief, (a) It has been maintained that Jesus was insane. We reply that it is strictly impossible that a system of religion and morality which has commended itself to the intellect and conscience of the highest races of the earth can have been origin- ated by a madman, (i) It has been maintained that Jesus believed Himself to be divine, not because He had any internal knowledge of the fact, but because He interpreted the Old Testament prophecies, especially those of Daniel, as indicating that the Messiah would be a Divine Person. We reply that no mere man who interpreted the prophecies in this way, could (unless he was insane) possibly imagine Himself to be the Messiah. The dilemma, then, cannot be evaded. Either Christ was divine, as He claimed to be, or He was a deceiver. A deceiver He cannot have been, because He founded the purest system of religion and morals that has ever been presented to the world. He must, therefore, have been divine, as the Apostles themselves, and the Church ever since their day, have believed. The notes on Lk2iO Mkl332 and Phil 2 7 should be consulted. cxn THE TRINITY Although the exact theological definition of the doctrine of the Trinity was the' result of a long process of development, which was not complete till the fifth century or even later, the doctrine itself underlies the whole New Testament, which everywhere attributes divinity to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and assigns to them distinct functions in the economy of human redemption. The New Testament mainly contemplates the relations of the Divine Persons to man and the universe, regarding the Father as Creator, the Son as Mediator and Redeemer, and the Spirit as Sanctifier (the ' economic ' Trinity) ; but hints are not wanting that this threefold function in creation and redemption is an outward mani- festation of certain inward and eternal dis- tinctions in the Godhead Itself (the ' essential ' Trinity). In the early Church the Monarch- ians, and especially the Sabellians, laid such exclusive stress upon the ' economic ' Trinity, that they denied that there are any real dis- tinctions in the Godhead at all, and taught that Father, Son, and Spirit are only three different modes in which the One Personal God reveals Himself to and acts upon man. The main current of Christian thought, how- ever, has always held firmly to the belief that the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit repre- sent eternal and necessary distinctions, and those of a personal and ethical as well as of a merely metaphysical kind, within the Divine Substance. Christians have seen in the doc- trine of the Trinity not only an intellectual, but also a moral and spiritual revelation of the highest importance. I. Personality Human and Divine. Theism regards God as personal, and Christianity as tri-personal, but the term ' person,' as applied to God and to the ' Persons ' in God, is not used in quite the same sense as that in which it is used of human beings. The first distinction is that human personality is finite, and Divine Personality infinite. This constitutes so enor- mous a difference, that some thinkers deny that God can be conceived of as personal. Person- ality, they say, is essentially finite ; it is a definite thing marked off and distinguished by certain boundaries from other things, and if those boundaries are removed, personality ceases to be. Moreover, they maintain, even if personality could be predicated without contradiction of God, it is of the nature of a limitation or imperfection, and therefore could not be appropriately attributed to a Perfect Being. h cxiii We reply that though limitation character- ises the imperfect personality of man, it is no part of the essential idea of personality. When a being is spoken of as ' personal,' it is meant among other things less important (1) that he is intelligent, (2) that he is self- conscious, (3) that he possesses will. Now not one of these qualities implies, of itself, any limitation or imperfection. It is as easy to conceive a perfect intelligence, knowing all actual and possible things, as to conceive a limited intelligence like man's. Intelligence, therefore, in a perfect and infinite degree can be legitimately predicated of God. Self- consciousness, again, is implied in perfect in- telligence ; for if a perfectly intelligent Being did not know Himself, His intelligence would be limited. Will, in like manner, is capable of real perfection ; it does not necessarily imply any limitation of nature. It is as easy to conceive of a Will absolutely free and in- finitely powerful, as to conceive of a limited will like man's. It is perfectly legitimate, therefore, to say that God possesses a Will adequate to His Intelligence — that is, that He is able to achieve all that is possible. Person- ality, therefore, being potentially infinite, can be ascribed, not only without contradiction, but with propriety and truth, as the least inade- quate term known to us, to the Infinite and Absolute God. The second distinction is that, whereas human personality stands outside and excludes every personality except its own, the Divine Persons of the Trinity mutually pervade, inter- penetrate, include, and contain one another. This wonderful quality (technically known as perichoresis, c/rcumhicessio, or circuminseKfiio) cannot be distinctly conceived of by us from lack of any analogous experience among human persons. Perhaps the best way of gaining some faint glimpse of what it means, is to start with the idea of human sympathy, and to imagine it infinitely deepened and extended. If it were possible in the case of two friends, for the one not only to know the thought or feeling or resolution present in the mind of the other, but also to feel it in his own mind as his own thought or feeling or resolution, we should have a human analogy, real though extremely inadequate, of the far closer and more exalted union and communion which subsist among the Divine Persons. 2. The Trinity and the Divine Self-Con- sciousness. In man self-consciousness only arises when the self distinguishes itself from THE TRINITY the not-self, i.e. when the thinking subject has present to its consciousness some object of thought distinct from itself. Now the doctrine of the Trinity indicates that what is true of man is true also of God. From eternity the Father and the Son were personally distinct beings, knowing one another and themselves as such, and conse- quently for the Trinitarian there is no difficulty in understanding how God was self-conscious even before the world was created, i.e. before there was any created not-self from which He could distinguish Himself. 3. The Trinity and God's Moral Perfection. Since Christ taught the supremacy of love and the duty of universal benevolence, it has come to be felt and acknowledged with increas- ing clearness, that love is the most beautiful of human virtues, and the most adorable of the Divine Perfections. But perfect love is only possible between equals. Just as a man cannot satisfy or realise his powers of love by loving the lower animals, so God cannot satisfy or realise His love by loving man or any creature. If God is truly Love, in the full sense of that term. He must have always possessed some equal object of His love, some alter ego, or, to use the language of Christian theology, a consubstantial, co-eternal, and co-equal Son. 4. The Trinity and Social Life. An ideally perfect life is a social life. A life lived in the exercise of friendship, social intercourse, and benevolence, is a far higher life than that of a recluse, who seeks to attain perfection in solitude. If, therefore, the life of the God- head is as perfect as can be conceived, it must be a social life — that is to say, there must exist within the Divine Unity a plurality of Persons, among whom the most perfect fellowship exists. This conception of the Godhead as a Perfect Society, characteristic of Trinitarianism, is ethically more fruitful, and practically more stimulating than that of Unitarianism, which regards God as an iso- lated Person, incapable of social life, or of any real love but self-love. The Trinitarian, and the Trinitarian alone, is able to discern perfect love realised in his object of worship, and to recognise in the essential Nature of the God- head, the perfect pattern of the Family, of the Church and of the State. 5. The Ne-w Testament Doctrine. The leading Trinitarian texts in the New Testa- ment are discussed in the Commentary. Reference should be made to Mt3i3f. 28i9 Lkl35 Jnl4, 15, 16 (especially 1416 1526 1613-15), lCorl23-6 2Corl3i3 lPetli.2 (IJn 5'^). For the Deity of the Son, see art. ' Person of Jesus Christ.' For the Deity and Person- ality of the Holy Ghost, see also Jnl4is-26 1526 167 2022 Ac233 Ro826 Gal46. CUV MIRACLE I. Introductory. The attitude of the op- ponents of supernatural religion towards Miracle has changed very considerably during the last two centuries. The old frontal assault of the Deists, routed by men like Butler and Paley with weapons that are now largely out of date, has been succeeded by flank attacks, (1) from the direction of historical and literary criticism, and (2) from that of a more modern natural science. First a vigorous attempt was made by the celebrated Tubingen school of critics to discredit the documentary evi- dence, and the New Testament passed through a severe fire of criticism from which it issued stronger than ever. The old traditional and uncritical views, though modified at points, were in general deliberately and distinctly confirmed. As a result of this fierce attack the relation of the documents to the tra- ditional Christian faith remains unaltered, and their unique value as historical evidence of the first importance has been established on a new basis. Criticism of a more or less hostile tendency and of a progressively search- ing character still continues, and from time to time throws important light on some aspect of the problems concerned. But the trust- worthy character of the New Testament documents as a whole may be regarded as established permanently, on firmer ground than ever before. After the New Testament, the Old. We axe all familiar with the recent controversies raised by what is called ' the Higher Criti- cism ' ; and we may readily admit that it has modified very considerably our views of the external history and development of the documents in question. It has not, however, shaken our belief in inspiration, nor impaired the value of the Old Testament writings as the record of the earlier stages of God's progressive revelation to mankind. On the contrary, we may thankfully admit that the assured results of criticism, as distinct from its unverifiable speculations, have made clearer the stages of that revelation, and have given back to us the human aspect of the Bible without taking away the divine. We shall be justified, then, in approaching our subject in the simplest and most straight- forward way, taking for granted the general trustworthiness of the documents, though ready, as we go along, to deal with any special points that may come up before us. If the Bible really contains, as we believe, the record of God's revelation of Himself to men, we should expect it, while clearly in touch with every-day human life, to abound in traces of its special origin and purpose. We should expect it to offer us frequent glimpses of a higher order of things, beyond the range of our ordinary perception — to exhibit, in fact, a miraculous element. And such, indeed, is the case. The purpose of this article is to emphasise and illustrate this fact : to show that the Miraculous is too closely interwoven into the texture of the Bible to be removable ; then to consider the cause and purpose of its presence there, and its place as an integral and essential part of Revelation. Thus we may find ourselves in a position to meet the objections that are often urged against the possibility of Miracle, on the ground that it contradicts the scientific principle of Natural Law. A general treat- ment alone will be possible here. For further suggestions the reader is referred to the notes on the various passages in which the most important miracles are recorded. 2. Miracle inseparable from the Bible, When we assert that Miracle is an integral part of the Bible we mean that the miracu- lous considered generally — whatever may be thought of particular instances — is too closely interwoven into the texture of the Bible to be removable without destroying the character of the records. The consideration of the claims of individual miracles is quite another question. We are not compelled to put all miracles on the same footing, either as regards their importance or as regards their attestation. We may be will- ing to admit that the evidence for the different events recorded in the Bible, or the evidence that such and such recorded events were miraculous, varies considerably. For instance, the external attestation of our Lord's Resurrection is stronger than that avail- able for any other of the biblical miracles, or indeed for any other event of ancient history. On the other hand, the documentary evidence for His Virgin birth is less strong, though it has the combined and (in general) harmonious witness of two obviously independent nar- ratives, and receives full corroboration from the otherwise unaccountal)le difference be- tween His recorded life and character and that of any other human being. In the case of the Old Testament the external evidence is, throughout, naturally less abundant. But cxv MIRACLE here also we find varying degrees of attest- ation. That an exodus from Egypt, in some sense miraculous, took place in the time of Moses, is a fact which — as the many and varied references testify — has stamped itself too clearly upon the Hebrew consciousness to be seriously questioned, save by those who deny the miraculous altogether, and even they would probably admit a basis of historic fact. But the miracle of the 'sun standing still,' as popularly understood, is scarcely referred to again in the canonical books, and the poetical setting of the passage puts the problem of the actual miracle on an entirely different footing from the fact of the battle in which the miracle is thought to have occurred ; see note on JoshlO^^^ Similarly, it has been suggested (and the context gives some colour to the idea) that the incident of the ass speak- ing occurs in a dream of Balaam's, after which he arose and ' went with the princes of Balak ' (Nu2235). Again, the story of Jonah is by many regarded as an allegory of God's dealings with the Jewish Church, of which it certainly supplies a fruitful parable. Individual miracles, then, may be treated each on its own merits according to the evidence available. The question before us is a wider one. Can the miraculous element as a whole be regarded as an accidental or non-essential adjunct to the Bible ? Can the miracles be explained away altogether or one by one, or is there an ' irreducible minimum ' which refuses to be explained away ? Now there are two ways in which an attempt may be made to explain away miracles alto- gether. (1) By the first, they are regarded as the result of a superstitious tendency to ' super- naturalise' distant events ; (2) by the second, as the outcome of an unscientific tendency to regard as miraculous all that contemporary knowledge cannot explain. We do not deny that each of these explanations may possibly be applicable to some of the more obscure events usually regarded as miraculous, but we do deny emphatically that they have any general application to the miracles of the Bible. (1) If the first argument were sound, we should expect to find the miraculous element concentrated in, if not confined to, the earlier portions of Eevelation, so as to give the impression that the idea of miracle belongs to the dawn of Hebrew thought. But this is far from being the case. Miracle is not found exclusively or chiefly in the earlier or more obscure portions of the Old Testament, nor is it confined within the limits of the Old Tes- tament, but occupies a like or even a more important place in the New. And in par- ticular the miraculous is so intricately inter- woven into the life of Christ that the attempt to disentangle it from the Gospels necessitates such a grievous mutilation of the records as would change their entire character. If the Gospel material be reduced to the comparatively small residuum of matter which is common to all three synoptists, Miracle would still be there ; and, indeed, the Gospels denuded of the supernatural would be as inexplicable as the long discourse in the sixth chapter of St. John would be if deprived of the miracle of the ' Five Thousand ' which forms, as it were, its text. If the point of view of the writers themselves and their contemporaries counts for anything, we cannot fail to observe that the first preachers of the gospel boldly staked the truth of Christianity on the fact that Christ was risen, and regarded themselves in a special sense as ' witnesses of the Resurrection ' (an essential qualification for apostleship, as in the case of Matthias: see Acl 22 and cp. 2^2 315 420,33^ etc.). While St. Paul, in whose life and teaching the Resurrection plays a su- premely important part — as he himself tes- tifies, according to the narrative of the Acts, at Antioch, Thessalonica, and Athens, and before the Sanhedrin, Felix, Festus, and Agrippa — adduces, in an important argument on this subject addressed to the alert and critical Corinthians, more than five hundred witnesses for the fact of the miracle (1 Cor 15*^). Taking the Bible, then, as it stands, it may be confidently stated that the miraculous ele- ment is as strong (or stronger) in the later portions as in the earlier. But the question is complicated by the date of the documents. Are not the miracles, it may be asked, concen- trated in those documents, whether earlier or later in the Bible series, which may be sup- posed to have been written at the furthest distance of time from the events which they record ? It would be easy to show, did space permit, that, even on the hypotheses adopted by the majority of modern ' Higher Critics,' this is not the case. In the Old Testament, e.g., the re- cord of the Mosaic miracles does not come down to us wholly or mainly through the group of documents called by the critics the ' Priestly Traditions ' ; the older ' Prophetic Narratives ' supply a full account of the Flood, Egyptian Plagues, Crossing of the Red Sea, and many more. The miracles of the Kingdom period, again, are not confined to the book of Chro- nicles, which is rightly regarded as much later, in its present form, than the book of Kings ; on the contrary, the most striking and signi- ficant instances occur in one of the undoubt- edly oldest sections of the latter book — in the narrative of Elijah and Elisha. As regards the New Testament, the case is even stronger, for it is at least far from im- probable that the last of its books was written cxvi MIRACLE before the first century of the New era was well passed, while the earliest (1 Th) may be confidently dated at no more than twenty-five years after the Crucifixion. And so, whether we consider the narratives in their biblical order, or regard them in rela- tion to the nearest ascertainable date of the documents which record them, we find that in neither way is the view supported which would regard Miracle as the outcome of that super- stitious tendency which leads a later age to magnify far distant events — especially events connected with crises in the national history — and endue them with a supernatural colouring. So far from the supernatural being confined to those documents which originated at a period furthest distant from the events^ they record, the most stupendous miracle of all, and the most important, viz. Christ's Resur- rection, is attested by evidence which may, without any straining of language, be called contemporaneous. (2) We now have to face the second objec- tion. Admitting that the events occurred, and occurred to a large extent in the manner re- corded, may not the supernatural interpreta- tion of them be questioned ? Even the descriptions of contemporaries or eye-wit- nesses are sure to take colour from the age in which they originate. Must we not take into consideration the absence of scientific know- ledge of nature's laws characteristic of early ages, and especially the unscientific character of the Hebrew mind — its notorious tendency to ignore secondary causes, and find the im- mediate working of the finger of God in all events alike ? May it not be true that events described in the Old Testament as involving the direct interposition of the Almighty might, with the fuller knowledge of a later and more scientific generation, be traced to the working out of natural forces, and be characterised, not as miracles, but as unusually striking co- incidences ? May not, e.g., the drying up of the Red Sea and of Jordan be explained as due to the combined action of known natural forces, acting only more powerfully than has otherwise been observed? Have we not, in many at least of the Egyptian plagues, rather an emphasising of phenomena already common in Egypt, than an entirely new experience ? Do not the majestic accompaniments of the law- giving at Sinai recall the associations of a volcanic eruption, or a more than ordinarily lengthy and terrific electric disturbance ? Or again, to tread on still more sacred gi'ound, may not many of Christ's miracles of healing, whether in cases of demoniacal possession or otherwise, be explained as exhibiting an un- usually intense form of that many-sided influ- ence of mind over both mind and matter with which modern mental science has made us familiar ? In attempting to meet this form of objec- tion, we shall, as in the former case, be ready to admit the possibility that it may apply in some cases. Let each be judged, as far as pos- sible, on its own merits, when the principle has been allowed. "We shall maintain, how- ever, two positions: first, that the objection does not cover the whole ground, and, secondly, that it misconceives what we mean by Miracle. (a) It does not cover the whole ground. So far, at any rate, as science has yet gone, many of the miracles, and some of them among the most strongly attested, remain outside its range. There is an irreducible minimum which is not amenable to such ex- planation. It will be sufficient to take the New Testament. Here we find that, while many of Christ's miracles of healing find some sort of analogy in modern scientific treatment of hysteria and the like — and may thus be possibly regarded as miraculous rather in their inexplicable anticipation of the results of later human progress, than in anything else — many also are admitted by medical ex- perts to involve, if true, such organic changes in the patient as cannot be accounted for by reference to any power of mind over matter known to modern science. Further, there are the miracles wrought upon Nature, e.g. the turning of the water into wine, the feed- ing of the 4,000 and 5,000, the stilling of the storm, the walking on the sea, which physical science coiifessedly cannot as yet explain ; and above all, there is the central miracle of the Resurrection so uniquely attested. (i) It is a misconception of the meaning of Miracle as we understand it, to suppose that the defender of the miraculous is concerned to prove a contradiction of Law as such, or to minimise or exclude the operation, in these cases, of secondary causes. He does not argue in favour of a contradiction of Law, for according to his own belief the Author of miracles is also the Author of Nature and its laws. Neither does he hold a brief against secondary causes. If there be such a thing as Miracle, working definite effects upon the ex- ternal world, then it will be true of miraculous as of non-miraculous events that they are capable, in their measure, of scientific description. The physical condition, e.g., of Naaman, or of the blind man healed by Christ at Beth- saida (MkS-^-"-*^) would have been capable, no doubt, of medical diagnosis at any stage of the cure. The only factor which would re- main outside the range of medical science would be the force that originated the series of reactions which resulted in physical soundness. Again, to take an instance of a rather differ- ent kind. The miracle of the stoppage of cxvu MIRACLE Jordan's waters (see on Josh 3 1^) is curiously paralleled by an Arabic narrative of the middle ages, which records a similar stoppage in the same river, and accounts for it as the result of a damming up of the stream by an extensive landslip higher up. It is at least possible that a scientific account of the great event recorded in the book of Joshua would trace it to secondary causes of a similar kind. What physical science could not do would be to explain Joshua's foreknowledge of this very remarkable natural phenomenon, and its co- incidence with the needs and purposes of the Israelite army. Many other miracles of the Old Testament may be similarly treated and with a similar result. We may strip them of much of their 'portentous' clothing — of that which our present habit of thought is inclined to regard as crude and arbitrary. We may explain this as the outcome of a mode of speech, gi-aphic, figurative, poetical, insulted by translation into the prose of hard fact. We may make full allowance for the imaginative tendency of the Oriental mind : its pictorial and dramatic genius. But we shall not even so get rid of the miraculous. The miracles are not miracles merely or chiefly because of their intrinsic character. Their claim to be miraculovis lies rather in the moment of their occurrence, and its obvious relation to the necessities and pro- prieties of the great scheme in which they are set, and in the fact that, in so many cases, they could be predicted. And the belief that they involved the personal interposition of the Deity for a definite purpose, is not shaken in the least by the consideration that the Author of Nature may have chosen to inter- pose by the employment of those natural forces through which He normally works. 3. Miracleessentialtothe Biblical Revelation. So far we have seen that miracle is practically inseparable from the Bible ; that the miracu- lous element in Holy Scripture cannot be explained away as being simply a superstitious and unscientific interpretation of events which a later age could have explained satisfactorily on a basis of physical science. And in the course of our enquiry we have seen hints at least that there is some reason for this stub- born and unremovable presence of the mira- culous. If we can make clear to ourselves what is the place of Miracle in the Bible, and what is its relation to Revelation, we may also go far towards finding an answer to the further problems that arise in connexion with the relation of Miracle to Natural Law. In theology and biblical exegesis there has been a change of ideas corresponding in some degree to that which has marked the last century in the matter of physical science. The old mechanical conception of the universe which finds expression in Milton's description of creation, has given place to an organic con- ception. The world, we say now, is less fitly symbolised by Paley's ' Watch ' than by a living organism — growing, developing, pro- gressively fulfilling the law of its being, and in consequence witnessing more rather than less convincingly to the divine wisdom and power and purpose of its Originator and Sustainer, who is also its immanent principle of life. Similarly the problem of the miraculous has received a new setting. Miracles are not now regarded in the old way as external creden- tials to Revelation — a sort of artificial adjunct or added appendix. The evidential value of the miraculous may be fully recognised, but at the same time it is viewed as an organic part of the Revelation itself. The miracles of Christ, e.g., as we now see, were not isolated manifestations of supernatural power put forth simply and solely to excite wonder and astonishment, and as it were to compel belief. He refused, very definitely, to work a miracle of this kind (Mk 8 ^1 and parallels). Rather they are the outcomes of His won- derful and gracious character, integral portions of His teaching ; touches which, if removed, would leave a blank which would be felt in the complete, harmonious, and supremely natural if also supernatural portrait which the evangelists have artlessly combined to paint for us. And the supreme miracle, as we shall see shortly, is Christ Himself. His ' mighty works ' were, of course — and some of them especially — tokens of His divinity. The Resurrection, e.g., is classed as such by St. Paul (in Rol4: cp. Jn53« 1025,38 Mt 112-5). They were signs, not to compel belief — for compelled belief is no longer faith — but signs to stimulate and strengthen and develop the germ of faith already present, and to trans- form it into assured conviction. Thus St. John (2 11) speaks of Christ's first miracle at Cana — which was obviously a sign of sympathy and kindness — as being also a manifestation of His glory ; but the manifestation is to the inner circle of His disciples. Similarly Christ Him- self enumerates His characteristic miracles of healing, together with other works, as cre- dentials of His Messiahship. But the evidence, be it observed, is addressed to St. John the Baptist. This view of Miracle as an integral part of Revelation may explain to some extent the difference in character between the miracles of the Old Testament and those of the New. The Revelation, as we are observing more and more, is a progrefisire one, a gradual unfold- ing of divine truth to man, in divers parts and divers manners (Heb 1 1), as he was able to bear it. Will not the miraculous element, then, cxvui MIRACLE show itself progressive too ? Shall we be sur- prised if some of the Old Testament miracles, e.g. the shadow on Ahaz' dial, or the trans- formation of Moses' rod, seem to lack the obvious appropriateness and the richness of spiritual teaching and symbolism that shine forth from the recorded works of Christ ? If miracles are acted teaching^ should we not expect those which belong to an earlier and more elementary stage of Revelation to be of a simpler and more elementary sort ? One might venture to say that just as divine com- mands could be laid on Abraham and Joshua, in the childliood of morality, which could not be laid on us : so miracles could be wrought and be helpful in an earlier stage which in a later — such as our own age-^would be simply a stumbling-block to belief. Yet even the earliest, and, if we may so say, ' crudest ' of Old Testament miracles display a marked superiority, from this point of view, to many of the meaningless and ludicrous ' miracles ' of the Apocryphal Gospels and mediaeval hagiologies. The accepted view of the universe has ad- vanced, and Natural Science has taught us so well the lesson that the Almighty is a God of Law and order, that we instinctively suspect as unworthy of Him anything which seems to verge on the arbitrary or capricious. Many of the Old Testament miracles, if wrought to-day, would be as inappropriate as in their context they were appropriate. Let us consider for a moment some broad facts about them. At first sight they seem quite incidental and un- systematic. Possibly a progress may be dimly discerned, allowing for exceptions. The mi- racles, e.g., of the ninth century B.C. — especi- ally the more beneficent miracles recorded of Elijah and Elisha, seem more like those of Christ than the Mosaic miracles of some seven centuries earlier. These earlier ones, again, adapted as they are to the special circumstances of their occasion, have a more exclusively general appeal to masses of people, while the later ones involve more individual dealing. Other indications of law and system are to be found in the miracles of the Bible. Chief among these is their threefold group'mg. The miracles are, for the most part, concentrated in three epochs, epochs when a vindication of God's supremacy was specially to be looked for ; and they are grouped around those three figures which find places together on the mys- terious Mount of Transfiguration : Moses — Elijah — Christ. (1) The first or Mosaic group ushers in the redemption from Egypt, the giving of the divine Law, and the foundation of the Hebrew theocracy. (2) The second marks a new crisis, when owing to the religious innovations of Ahab and Jezebel the worship of the true God in Israel was first formally menaced by a new and hostile cult actively supported by the Court. (3) The third group is the climax of all. The miracles of Jesus Christ, with their peculiar appeal to reason, affection and con- science, throw back a flood of light upon the obscurer miracles of the Old Testament. ' The central point,' as Dr. Sanday has said, ' in the Old Testament revelation was that God is a living God; that the world is not a dead world, but instinct with life, which is all derived from Him. The New Testament takes up this and tells us that Christ the Word was the Light and Life of men.' The miracles of the Old Testament certainly exhibit God as a living God, and culminate in the Incarnate Life — the Christ of the Gospels, whose career on earth issues in a Resurrection and Ascension which have brought new life to the world. And in this supernatural figure we see Miracle exhibited to us most natur- ally and in closest contact with all that we instinctively recognise as highest and noblest. His character is indeed the supreme wonder of all : more marvellous than any of those particular miracles which were, after all, but partial ' signs ' of the fulness that was in Him. Whether we read it in the pages of the Gospels, or in St. Paul's description (1 Cor 13) of Love at work, we perceive in it an ideal perfection combining all the recognised manly virtues with those usually thought of as womanly. We mark its union of opposites — patience, gentleness, meekness, with a sternness and a force unequalled in history ; the cosmopolitan breadth of ideas found in one brought up in what would naturally have been the narrowest surroundings. Its superhuman claims are com- bined with an unparalleled humility and reasonableness ; its superhuman powers are controlled always and focussed on His mis- sion, never employed for His own material comfort or the earthly advancement of His followers. Above all, there is the ideal morality exhibited, as even opponents admit, in His life and teaching, and the marvellous fact that none of His many recorded sayings, whether in the ethical sphere or in any other, have become obsolete or subject to revision in the subsequent growth of human knowledge. But if Christ on earth is a wonder, still more is Christ ascended. It is the character of Christ as exhibited and developed in the history of His Church, impressing itself fruit- fully on successive ages and on divers races, at home in each and bringing out the best in each regardless of diversity of clime, race, tradition, antecedents, and civilised status ; it is the vital power of Him, exercised in the tremendous if familiar phenomenon of conver- sion, which persists to-day to prove that the age of miracle is not past. Believers see in cxix MIRACLE this but the fulfilment of His own recorded promise, ' Greater things than these shall ' the believer ' do ' ; ' because I go to the Father ' (Jnl4i2). That systematic and rhythmical sequence of miracle which is represented by the names, Moses, Elijah, Christ, does not suddenly come to an end with the close of the New Testa- ment, though its character, as we have seen, tends to change with the changing require- ments of successive ages. To us children of a practical, matter-of-fact, and scientific century ' signs and wonders ' like some of those in the Bible would be a hindrance and not a help, even had we the strength of faith necessary to evoke them. Yet He who after His Ascen- sion wrought ' many signs and wonders ' ' by the hands of the Apostles' (Ac 2 43 512) and 'confirmed the word with sigiis following' (Mk 1 6 20 ; cp. Ac 4 29. 30)^ has continued by moral and spiritual miracles to give evidence of His living presence throughout the centuries, ac- cording to the terms of His recorded promise, ' Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world' (Mt2820). 4. Miracle essential to Revelation as such knowledge of materia medica arrests the natural course of a disease. So, too, without any real contradiction of the system of Law which He has established for the working of the universe, the Personal Creator and Ruler of all things may be conceived as ' interposing ' — either directly or by means of His creatures — and so diverting or interrupting what would otherwise have been the inevitable course of events. Such interposition, if definite and striking in its external results, would be what we know as Miracle. It would differ from the action of our limited minds and wills in many points : notably in the range of its power and influence and in the constant perfection of its purpose. These exclude the element of capriciousness that makes the action of our wills so often un- accountable and out of harmony with the course of nature. In this conception of Miracle as a display of personality is to be found, we believe, the true solution of the various problems with which the question is encumbered. It helps us to understand, by the analogy of our own volition, what else would look like the introduction of We may claim, perhaps, to have shown that a capricious principle into a world where we Miracle is essential to the biblical Revelation May we not go further, and say that it would seem to be essential to Revelation con- sidered in the abstract — that is, to any con- ceivable method by which God might reveal Himself to man in a manner more direct and more unmistakable than is afforded by His revelation of Himself in the course of nature ? On this subject it was formerly considered ■ enough to observe that a divine message could only be sufficiently accredited by obviously supernatural accompaniments, and that there- fore miracles were appended to Revelation as its necessary ' credentials.' Such a statement is, however, from a modern point of view, far from satisfactory. We can no longer (as was pointed out above) look upon miracles as an external appendix added to Revelation by way of credentials. Miracle, we should say, has a great credential value, but its witness is intrinsic — from within ; it witnesses to the truth of Revelation by witnessing to the character of the person revealed. The miracles of Christ hold a supreme place as the work of Incarnate God ; but the other miracles also as emanating from the one per- sonal Deity may be expected to bear the stamp of a personal consciousness and will. We know that a succession of phenomena in nature can be diverted by the action of our own human wills, and that without any real breach of Nature's laws. This is done, for instance, whenever a surgeon performs a successful operation, or a physician using his have been accustomed to see Law reigning it helps us, moreover, to realise the place and purpose of miracle as evidencing, in the only way possible, the ^jersowaZ character of the Ruler of the universe : and it supplies a link between what we regard as the ordinary works of Providence — the normal phenomena which the world's process exhibits — and those ab- normal phenomena inexplicable by our accus- tomed methods, which we call miracles. Both alike are manifestations of a personal mind and will and power, working according to the law of a perfect nature '; but the one class of manifestations is deliberately intended to supplement — and interpret — the other. So we are led back again to Christ as the supreme miracle and the revealer of the ultimate naturalness, if we may so speak, of the super- natural. For He in whom meet heaven and earth, the human and the divine, expresses uniquely in His recorded miracles as in His words and life, the perfect character of Him ' whom no man hath seen, nor can see,' yet concerning whom He Himself hath said : ' He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.' In the Incarnate what we ordinarily call Miracle is, as it were, normal ; for in Him is God personally revealed to man, personally acting under conditions of human life. 5. Miracle and Natural Law. But since it is reverence for Natural Law that is responsi- ble for most of the modern distrust of Miracle, it will be necessary to enter a little more fully into the relation between Miracle and Natural Law. cxx MIRACLE Of course the whole structure of modern science is built upon the foundation of the uniformity of Nature. If things happen anyhow, as in a nightmare, then there can be no use in attempting to study Nature at all. And if the presence of Miracle disturbs the uniformity of Nature and in- troduces absolute chaos into the world, we can forgive people for refusing to consider the possibility of the miraculous. But is it true that a belief in Miracle contradicts the reign of Law in Nature ? As a matter of fact, the average believer in Miracle speaks and acts in his daily life as one who believes also that Nature is normally constant and uniform. His expectations, his forecasts, his plans imply just as steady and practical a reliance on this principle as do those of the veriest sceptic. And why ? Because the very possibility of Miracle depends on the fact of uniformity. Miracle needs the ordi- nary working of Natural Law as its back- ground. It does not exclude Natural Law, but it is relative to it. If all things were unaccountable, where would be place for Miracle ? St. Augustine had arrived at a really profound conception of the relation of Miracle to Natm-al Law, when he suggested that all God's ordinary works are wonderful — miraculous — but that, since familiarity has so blunted men's minds that they fail to appre- ciate the yearly miracle of harvest and vintage, the Lord of Nature who, year by year, by natural processes which He has ordained, multiplies bread-substance for hungry men, and turns rain-water into wine to gladden man's heart, once on a time saw fit to do these things by a momentary act of that Will to which one day is as a thousand years. Miracles, if they occur at all, must be, as St. Augustine saw, the work of the same Lawgiver who day by day exhibits to us the orderly wonders of Nature's processes. But if this be so it follows that miracles themselves must conform to Law, albeit some higher law than those with which physical science is convers- ant. Nature and conscience alike demand that we should regard God as the author ' not of confusion, but of peace ' (1 Cor 14^3)^ i.e. as self -consistent because absolutely perfect. It is true that there is a disturbing element in the world ; that there is a principle at work abso- lutely contrary to the principle of Law — what the Bible calls shi. ' Sin,' as St. John says, 'is lawlessness' (lJn3*). But sin is not a positive entity, a created thing ; it is rather the abuse of a choice offered to man by his Maker, and offered of necessity if man was to be a free agent. The possibility of clwoaitig to do right necessarily involves the possibility of choosing to do vrnng. How far human or angelic sin is responsible for the anomalies in the physical world which occasionally perplex and baffle the student of Natural Law, we are not here concerned to consider. There is one consideration, however, suggested by the pres- ence of this disturbing factor. If Miracle seems arbitrary and violent, may it not be because some forcible method is necessary to redress the balance already upset by the introduction of evil into a world originally ' very good ' ? And further, may not this forcible redress- ing of the balance, if such it be, be still performed in accordance with some higher principle of Law ? The analogy of human personal action suggested above may help us here. When the physician — acting, it must be remembered, in accordance with the laws of medical science — restores the body to health, although he forcibly interrupts a series of physical pro- cesses which apart from him must have worked themselves out, he is really ranged on the side of the natural and normal. And it may per- haps be worthy of remark that the abnormal conditions which his skill and determination have fought and conquered are often directly, more often, probably, indirectly, the result of human sin. May we not say then that in the sphere of biblical miracle ' the real intervention is not the intervention of grace, but that of the sin which required it ' ? We have seen above that there are traces of law and system discernible in the miracles of the Bible viewed generally, and that in the case of many of them the entire physical results may have been achieved by a disposi- tion of natural forces at a particular time and for a particular purpose. There are other cases, however, where such an explanation seems inadequate to account for the result. These cases cannot, it is true, be referred to Natural Law ; but may they not- be glimpses of a higher system which, for want of a better name, we must call ' Supernatural Law ' ? Nature herself supplies us with an illustration (and it is more than a mere illustration) which may enable us to realise the probability and, so to speak, naturalness of. there being above and beyond the laws which our reason is able to discover, a higher stratum of law such as must appear to our ordinary intelligence supernatural, miraculous. In external Nature we see four different worlds ; the higher in each case built upon the lower, in a sense including it, and yet remaining for ever distinct from it and apparently inaccessible to it. (a) First there comes the Inorganic World — chemical elements and their products — dead matter. This is subject to its own elementary laws of gravitation, cohesion, and the like. (h) Above that stands the Orgaiiic World, CXXl MIRACLE which takes up the inorganic into its cell- structure, and is in this respect amenable to the laws of Matter ; but has in it, besides, potentialities and conditions of existence wholly unknown to the inorganic, and is subject, in consequence, to a fresh set of laws which do not touch the lower sphere — the laws of organic life. (c) Higher up we have Animal Life, with its own peculiar gifts, conditions, laws of growth, nutrition, locomotion, etc. ; (d) and higher up, again, the rational, self-conscious, moral life of Ma?i. Each member of this ascending series of worlds is supernatural and miraculous from the point of view of those below it, while subject in a real sense to the laws governing its inferiors. None is lawless, arbitrary, capri- cious in reality, though the higher you go up the scale, the more apjyearance there is of absence of law and uniformity. The truth is that they are subject to ever higher, grander, more complex, more mysterious laws. The teaching of the Bible seems to be that above these familiar orders of the inorganic, the organic, the animal, and the rational as known in man, there is yet another order, (e) the sphere of the purely spiritual, glimpses of which appear now and again to us as ' miracles.' These glimpses are possible, because man is himself on one side a spiritual being, made ' in the image of God,' and so akin to the supernatural world. They appear to him miraculous, because his intelligence, which lives and moves habitually in the natural world, is not at home yet in the spiritual. They are given because the Ruler of that supernatural world is Ruler also of the natural, and desires personal contact and communion with His rational creature, man. If the relation of the supernatural to the natural world be such as our illustration suggests — if, that is, the former interpenetrates and completes while it also transcends the latter, we should expect that, though the laws to which miracles conform be beyond our reason as such, there would yet be something in them vvhich would appeal to us as reason- able, and would have contact at least with the principle of Law as we see it working in the world around us. This we have already, to some extent, found to be the case, and deeper consideration will confirm the impression that the Bible miracles may be explained as in- stances rather of the controlling action of a higher law than of sheer violation of the lower. One further suggestion may be made in this connexion — not as though it would cover the whole field of Miracle or offer in any sense an adequate explanation of all the miraculous phenomena of the Bible. We have already spoken of some of the miracles of Christ as involving an inexplicable anticipation of the results of later human pro- gress ; and surely it is true to say that a marked anticipation of a distinctly later stage of the advance of humanity is in itself of the nature of Miracle. It would have been nothing short of a miracle — e.g. if any one had made use of wireless telegraphy in the days of Queen Anne — because it would have been an advance quite out of touch with any- thing else in the conditions and circumstances of the time. From this point of view the mighty works of Christ would lose nothing of their miraculous character if it could be shown that modern or future medical science could produce identical results. The system of religion and morality set forth by Christ — which is intrinsically far more important than the miracles usually so called — gathers up into itself all the yearnings and gropings of the ancients, and at the same time repre- sents the goal towards which the ethical advance of humanity has been gradually mov- ing, so that His words have ' never passed away ' like the utterances of other ancient teachers. May not His wonderful dealings with matter and with mind in like manner represent the capacity oi perfect humanity — the goal towards which mankind is moving in- tellectually and scientifically by the help of the accumulated experience of centuries ? This, as we have seen, would render them no less miraculous ; and it strikes out a line of thought that has a much wider reference, in- cluding in its scope the Old Testament as well as the New. For if an inexplicable advance, out of all proportion to the contemporary development of the race, be miraculous, what claims may not be made for the Law, Prophecy, and History of the Old Testament. Conclusion. Man moves on the borderland of the rational and spiritual worlds. He belongs in part to both. The higher is his heritage as much as the lower ; but of the first he enjoys as yet but rare glimpses. One great purpose of the Bible's miraculous record, culminating as it does in that ResmTCction miracle without which subsequent history is inexplicable, is to warn us against the spirit which would discredit and reject those price- less glimpses when they are presented, and elect to live always on the lower plane. Such a despising of man's birthright is not possible to those for whom the statements of the Christian creed represent historic facts. Christ, the Incarnate Deity, at once natural and supernatural ; Christ crucified, risen, ascended, glorified, has achieved for them per- petual access to the higher realm ; they ' see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man ' (Ju 1 ^^). cxxu THE RESURRECTION It cannot be said of the Resurrection, as is sometimes said of other miracles, that it lacks an adequate motive. The greatest of all questions that it concerns man to know, is whether there is or is not a future life. ' It matters,' says Pascal, ' to the whole of life to know whether the soul is mortal or immortal.' If a supernatural revelation is possible at all (and all who believe in a Personal God who loves His creatures, must believe that it is), a revelation on the subject of a future life is of all others the most credible. For in the presence of this great question all human knowledge is bankrupt. Science can only trace the history of the conscious soul to the moment of death. The human heart may yearn for immortality, philosophy may speculate about it, but neither can prove it. Socrates more than any other man applied himself to prove the immortality of the soul, but when the death-sentence was passed upon him, he could only say : ' The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways, I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.' The Christian Church claims to have received from God a special revelation upon this great question. According to her settled belief, God raised her Founder from the dead for the special purpose of revealing to man- kind (1) the existence of a future life, and (2) the nature of that life. I. The Character of the Evidence. The evi- dence for the Resurrection is of a kind which appeals primarily to the spiritual faculty of spiritual men. Those who already know and love God, who feel in their souls a yearning for eternal commxmion with Him, and a deep sense that the injustices, disappointments, and failures of this life point to a future life in which God's righteousness and love will be finally vindicated, will be drawn to examine attentively the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Those, on the other hand, who are living without faith in a personal God, and to whom Nature therefore mani- fests only a series of unvarying mechanical laws, will either reject the evidence without examination, or, if they examine it, will pro- nounce it insufficient. Yet, although the final decision will depend largely upon a man's general attitude towards spiritual and moral truth, the Resurrection claims to be a historical fact, and therefore the evidence for it, so far as it is historical, admits of being tested by the samt canons of criticism as other historical evidence. It is the duty of Christians, there- fore, to subject the evidence for the Resurrec- tion to the most rigid scrutiny, a scrutiny all the more penetrating and searching in propor- tion as the practical results which follow from the alternative decisions of the question are momentous. 2. The Documents. All modern criticism, except that which is carried to the point of per- versity, acknowledges the genuineness of the chief Epistles of St. Paul, and since that Apostle was converted soon after the Resur- rection (according to Harnack as early as 30 A.n., and certainly not later than 36 a.d.), his Epistles will be admitted to be a valuable wit- ness as to what the belief of the first Christians was upon this subject. That the Resurrection of Jesus was firmly believed not only in the Chm-ches founded by St. Paul, but also in those founded by the original Apostles, is manifest from these writings. The leading passage is 1 Cor 15 3'-, in which St. Paul rehearses the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. Of the Resurrection he says (see RV) : ' For I delivered unto you first of all [this was in 50 a.d., about twenty years after the event] that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures ; and that He was buried ; and that He hath been raised [the perfect represents the permanence of the result] on the third day according to the Scriptures ; and that He appeared to Cephas [i.e. Peter], then to the Twelve [in reality to the eleven, but ' the Twelve ' is a recognised title of the apostolic body] ; then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the gi-eater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep ; then He appeared to James ; then to all the Apostles ; and last of all, as unto one born out of due time. He appeared to me also. . . Whether then it be I or they, so W6 preach, and so ye believed.' We learn from this passage that the Resur- rection of Jesus Christ was regarded as one of the foundation doctrines of Christianity, and that faith in it was taught to all converts ' first of all,' or more literally, ' among the first or most important truths ' of the new faith ; that St. Paul's teaching upon this subject was identical with that of the other Apostles ; and that more than five hundred private Christians (most of whom were still alive when St. Paul wrote) could testify that they had seen thw risen Lord. So fai- trom cxxiu THE RESURRECTION the Resurrection being based, as is sometimes alleged, on the all but unsupported evidence of a single hysterical woman, there is no mention of any appearances to women at all. The list is clearly an official one of appear- ances to the Church and its officers. There is an appearance to St. Peter, the leader of the Apostles; one to the Twelve, the recognised heads of the Christian community ; one to James the Lord's brother, destined soon to rule the great mother-church of Jerusalem ; one to all the Apostles, i.e. to other leading men besides the Twelve, perhaps to the whole Seventy (Lk 10 1) ; one to the whole Church, on which occasion over five hundred were present ; and one to St. Paul, the founder of Gentile Christianity. It is important to notice that two of these appearances were to unbelievers. The unbelief of James is particularly noted in the Gospels (Jn75 Mk32i Mtl537), and it was probably this appearance which effected his conversion (Ac 1 1*). As to St. Paul, his companion and biographer tells us that he was ' yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord ' (Ac 9 ^), when the risen Lord appeared to him outside the gates of Damascus. Taken altogether, the evidence to which St. Paul alludes in this passage represents a truly impressive mass of testimony. This is the opinion not only of defenders of traditional views, but even of recent negative criticism. Schmiedel, for example, says, ' This passage must be regarded as the earliest account of the appearances of the risen Jesus ; unquestionably it goes back to the communications made by Peter during the fifteen days' visit of Paul, three years after the conversion of the latter ' (Gal 1 1^) ; Weizsiicker says, ' Paul's knowledge of these things must have come from the heads of the primitive Church ' ; Wernle says, ' In the very earliest time St. Paul obtained this informa- tion from St. Peter ' ; Keim says, ' Paul wishes in pious earnestness to give the truth. . , It is beyond doubt that the facts were really experienced and believed as they were faith- fully related to him, and as he has again faith- fully reported them. . . Paul's help supplies the v?hole question with its fixed point, its Archimedean fulcrum.' The important evidence of St. Paul is con- firmed by the first-hand evidence of St. Peter. St. Peter's First Epistle is one of the best attested of all ancient documents, and since its contents are in harmony with its reputed date and authorship, we need have no hesita- tion in accepting its evidence. Its testimony to the Resurrection is remarkably strong. For St. Peter the Resurrection is not a speculation, but a most certain fact, the basis of the Christian's hope. ' Blessed,' he says, 'be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy begat us again into a living hope by the Re- surrection of Jesus Christ from the dead' (13). And again, 'God raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory ; so that your faith and hope might be in God ' (1 ^i). The testi- mony of two other Apostles can be added. The Gospel of St. Matthew, whether it be directly by that Apostle, or based upon his original Hebrew 'Logia,' apparently rests upon his authority. Its testimony to the Resurrec- tion is quite explicit (Mt28). The Gospel of St. John, though questioned in modern times by certain schools of criticism, was in ancient times universally accepted, and is in truth attested by weighty evidence, both internal and external, as the work of the Apostle. Its writer offers a personal testimony to the Resurrection, and gives a detailed account of three appearances of the risen Lord which he himself beheld. Besides these primary authorities the second- ary witnesses are of great importance. St. Luke, probably a Gentile of Antioch, during his long sojourn at Caesarea (Ac 24 27) from 56-58 A.D., had ample opportunities of con- sulting the actual eye-witnesses, and we have every reason to suppose he did so (Lk 1 1-^). His Gospel and Acts must therefore be re- garded as valuable authorities. Their testi- mony to the Resurrection is unmistakable. As for St. Mark, his position as secretary and interpreter to St. Peter (cp. 1 Pet 5 ^3) gave him exceptional opportunities of knowing the truth. Unfortunately the conclusion of his Gospel has been lost, but it is certain that his narrative was written from the point of view of a believer in the Resurrection, and that in its complete form it contained an accoimt of that event (MklG^, etc.). 3. The Number of Appearances. It is im- plied by the sacred writers that the appear- ances of the risen Lord were numerous (Jn2125 Ac 13). At least ten or eleven are definitely mentioned. (1) To Mary Magdalene (Jn20i6 • op. Mk 169). (2) To the other women (]Mt289). (3) To Peter (Lk2434 1 Cor 15 5). (4) To two disciples on their way to Emmaus (Lk24i5). (5) To the ten Apostles without Thomas (Lk2436 Jn20i9). (6) To the Apostles with Thomas (Jn 20 26). (7) To seven disciples, among whom were Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, and John (Jn21i). (8) To the eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee (Mt28i6), ^th which is probably to be identified — (9) The appearance to over 500 brethren at once (1 Cor 15 6). cxxiv THE RESURRECTION (10) To James the:iord'sbrother(l Cor 157). (11) To the Apostes on the occasion of the Ascension (Ac 1 *). (12) To St. PauU Ac 9 3, etc.). 4. Alleged Discepancies in the Evidence. The above passages taken together represent an impressive msss of cumulative evidence, the weight of vhich would not be sensibly diminished, even if it could be shown that dis- crepancies exst between the narratives. For it is one of the established rules of historical criticism that the disagreement of the witnesses in matters of detail, does not invalidate their testimoiiy to the main facts which they agree in relating. Up to a certain point, indeed, the presence of discrepancies in different narratives is rather a favourable indication than other- wise, because fictitious narratives, intended •jO win credit as history, would inevitably be precise, chronological, and harmonious not only in reality, but in appearance. The only question is whether the discrep- ancies in the accounts of the Resurrection are so numerous and important, as to throw dis- credit upon the history as a whole. The chief difficulties are the following. St, Luke and St. John mention two angels, St. Matthew and St. Mark only one. According to the synoptists, the angels were seen by the women ; according to St. John by Mary Magdalene oaly. According to St. Luke and St. Matthew, news was brought by the women that the tomb was empty, and that Jesus had risen ; accord- ing to St. Mark, ' they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid ' ; whereas, according to St. John, news of the empty tomb (but not of the Resurrection) was brought by Mary Magdalene only, though there is a hint (Jn 202) that other women also had been present. Again the words of the angel announcing a Galilean appearance are given in substantial agreement by St. Matthew and St. Mark ; but in St. Luke an important change is made. The word Galilee is retained, but the reference to a Galilean appearance is obliterated, pro- bably because it is not St. Luke's design to record any appearances in Galilee. These are all the discrepancies of any moment which can plausibly be alleged against the scriptural narratives. They relate almost entirely to the proceedings of the women on the morning of the Resurrection, and are easily explained by the fact that the women were so much startled by the appearance of the angel (Mt288 MklG^ Lk245), that they were unable to give an entirely consistent account of their experience : cp. Lk24ii. As to the often repeated statement that the authorities contradict one another as to the locality of the appearances, some placing them in Judaea and others in Galilee, we can only say that no sufficient reason has been shown why there should not have been appearances in both localities. The biblical wi-iters, at any rate, recognise no such incompatibility. Not one of them says that the , appearances were all in one locality. St. Matthew records one appearance in Jerusalem and one in Galilee ; St. John three in Jerusalem and one in Galilee ; while St. Paul does not mention the locality of any of the appearances. The discrepancies, therefore, are too slight to discredit the narratives as a whole. This is the opinion even of many leaders of modern rationalism — of F. C. Baur, for example, who says, ' For the disciples the Resurrection was as real as any historical fact — whatever may have been the medium of this persuasion ' ; and of Mr. Macan, who says, ' Two broad facts may be taken as certain — that Paul and the other Apostles had certain visions, and that, in con- sequence of these visions, they believed that Jesus had risen from the dead.' 5. The interpretation of the facts. Various attempts have been made to explain the facts which have just been described, most of them without supposing that a mn-acle occurred. The chief are — (1) The theory of fraud. This is the oldest. Soon after the Resurrection the Jews spread a report that the disciples had stolen Christ's body, and pretended that He had risen (Mt 28 13-15). This calumny is alluded to by Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Origen ; is found in the heathen Acts of Pilate, and the mediaeval Jewish Toledoth Jeshua ; and was advocated by the German rationalist Reimarus (1694-1767). In our day even rationalists reject this theory as ' repellent and disgraceful ' (Keim). It is acknowledged on all hands that so pure an ethical movement as Christianity cannot have originated in conscious fraud. (2) Tlie theory of the natural dimjjpearance of the body. The body is supposed to have been removed by some person or persons unknown (e.g. the gardener, unknown Galilean disciples, Mary Magdalene, the Sanhedrin, Pilate, etc.). But these unknown persons would either have produced the body, or at least have explained that they had removed it, as soon as the Apostles began to proclaim that Christ had risen from the tomb. (3) The theory of apparent death. It is alleged that Jesus did not die upon the cross, but fainted, and after burial revived and came out of the tomb, thus giving rise to the belief that He had risen from the dead. This theory, once the usual one among rationalists, is now nearly, if not quite, obsolete. Strauss (1864) says of it : 'A man half-dead, dragging Himself in languor and exhaustion out of His tomb, with wounds requiring careful and continuous medical treatment — could He, in such a state, have cxxv THE RESURRECTION produced upon the minds of the disciples the impression that He was victor over death and the grave, the Prince of Life — an impression which nevertheless was the source and spring of all their subsequent activity ? ' (4) The theory of subjective visions. This view, now the accepted one among rationalists, was already stated, nearly in its modern form, by Celsus (a.d. 170), who says, ' Who beheld the risen Jesus ? A half -frantic woman, as you state, and some other person, perhaps, of those who were engaged in the same system of delusion, who had either dreamed so, owing to a peculiar state of mind, or, under the influence of a wandering imagination, had formed to himself an appearance according to his own wishes, which has been the case with numberless individuals ' (see Origen, ' Against Celsus,' ii. 55). Modern advocates of this view maintain that they can account for the appearances by the ordinary laws of psychology, without introducing supernatural agency. Hallucinations are known to occur, (a) to persons afflicted with certain physical diseases, (h) to insane persons, (c) to persons, not insane, but suffering from certain disorders of the nervous system, (cl) to healthy persons intensely preoccupied with an idea which they have allowed to obtain exclusive possession of their minds. {c) It is also maintained by good authorities, but is not yet generally accepted, that the thought of one mind acting ' telepathically ' (i.e. without any material means of communication) upon the thought of another mind of a certain type of psycho- logical sensitiveness may induce a visual hallucination. Now it cannot be fairly said that the appear- ances of the risen Christ can be explained on any of these principles. For as to (o) none of the perceivers were sick ; as to (6), none of them were insane ; as to (c), even if it be sup- posed that Mary Magdalene and St. Paul suf- fered from some form of nervous ailment, this cannot be said of the Twelve, or of James, or of the five hundred brethren ; as to (r/), the disciples were certainly not intensely preoccu- pied with the idea of the Resurrection. The ignominious death of Jesus had scattered His followers, and thrown them into the deepest despondency. They were in the position of men who, having placed implicit trust in a leader, were beginning to wonder whether, after all, they had not made a great mistake. All the Gospels represent our Lord's prophe- cies of His Resurrection as falling upon deaf ears (Mtl622 MkO^o Jn209, etc.), and depict the despondency of the disciples (Mt26'^*^ Mkie^O), and their unwillingness to believe the good news (Mt28i7 Mkl6ii.i2,i4 Lk24ii. 25,37,38 Jn 20 25). As to (e), if hallucinations can be telepathic- ally induced at all (and ths is doubtful), this can only happen to persons of a very rare and quite abnormal psychologicil sensitiveness. To suppose that the nervous systems of the Twelve and of the five hundred wert all so abnormally ' sensitive,' that the visions o: Mary Magdalene could be ' telepathically ' communicated to them all, surpasses credence. Nor isthis all. Recent research has demonstrated (see the voluminous evidence collected by the Psych'jcal Research Society) that visual phantoms lardly ever speak, and, when they do, never more than a word or two. But the risen Lord spdie every time that He appeared, and carried en long conversations with the disciples. On the sig- nificance of the empty tomb, of the handling, and of the eating — all which circumstances are inconsistent with the theory we are consideriiig — more will be said in the next sections. (5) TJie theory of objective visions^ or of a ' spiritual resurrection.'' Many who reject the traditional belief in a corporeal resurrection, and yet desire to find a mediating position between that and the purely negative view, adopt the theory of objective visions. They suppose that, after Jesus had been put to death. His body did not rise, but that His glorified and immortal sj^irit was allowed by God to appear to the disciples, as a token that the teaching of Jesus had been ratified by the divine approval, and that, in particular, human immortality is a fact. This theory, often spoken of as that of a ' spiritual resurrection,' approximates very closely in practical effect to that usually denominated ' orthodox,' and deserves sympathetic and respectful considera- tion. Our objection to it is, that while it re- moves none of the real difiiculties involved in the older view, it introduces new and greater difficulties of its own. The great difficulty of believing in our Lord's Resurrection is its miraculous character. The theory of objective visions tries to eliminate the element of mira- cle by denying our Lord's corjioreal, while admitting His spiritual, Resurrection. But even on such a view the Resurrection of Jesus remains a miracle. It is as much a breach of the order of nature, and, therefore, as much a miracle, for a disembodied spirit to return and hold conversations with living persons, or for God to send 'a telegram from heaven' (Keim), as for a corpse to rise. It is a mistake to think that the philosophic objections to mira- cles apply exclusively, or even with especial force, to physical miracles. They apply equally to all miracles. It is more difficult, doubtless, to determine the limits of natural possibility in the case of mind than in the case of matter ; but when those limits are plainly transcended, as they are when the facts require the hypo- theses of spirit return and of telegi-ams from heaven to be entertained, the philosophic cxxvi THE RESURRECTION objections against alleged psychical miracles are as strong as those against alleged physical miracles. The half-hearted Rationalism, there- fore, which accepts a spiritual, while denying a corporeal resurrection, is as incapable as Orthodoxy of removing the great stumbling- block of miracle, and is under the additional disadvantage of being forced to deal with the evidence in a thoroughly arbitrary way. It is compelled, for instance, to disbelieve what even Schenkel regarded as incontrovertible, that the tomb was empty on the third day, and that the risen Jesus, in order to convince the disciples that He was not a phantom, allowed Himself to be handled, and ate before them. (6) Tlie theory of a corporeal resurrection. Upon the whole, no theory will be found to satisfy the facts, except the traditional one of a bodily resurrection. On the morning of the third day the tomb was empty. This fact, in spite of recent denials in the interest of the theory of a spiritual resurrection, stands firm. It is attested not only by Luke, who had good sources of information, but also by Mark (that is, by Peter), by Matthew, by John, by the Jews (Mt 28 1^), and apparently by Paul also, for that is the natural conclusion to draw from the fact that he mentions the burial in connexion with the Resurrection (1 Cor 15*1). To deny a fact so amply attested is not sound criticism. The tomb, then, was empty, and, since the removal of the body either by the disciples or by the Jews is (as we have shown) an inadmissible hypothesis, we must conclude that the body of Jesus rose to a new life. Other evidence points in the same direction. Thus the risen Lord sought to dispel the idea which the Apostles at first entertained, that He was a disembodied spirit, by offering Himself to be handled, and by showing the wounds in His hands, feet, and side (Lk 2437f. Jn20-0*-); ''ilso by eating before and with the disciples (Lk2442 AclO" ; cp. Ac 14 RM, MklQi^). It is no sufficient reply to this to say that the risen body could pass through solid matter (Jn 20 1^- '^^)^ could appear and vanish suddenly (Lk 2431. 3(3)^ could trans- port itself instantaneously from place to place (cp. Lk243i-3^), and therefore must have been a phantom or spirit. If we adopt the usual view, that at the Resurrection the body of Jesus was transfigured, and became a glorious and spiritual body, no longer limited by the laws and conditions of ordinary matter, . no contradiction arises. We shall suppose that our Lord's risen body belonged naturally to the sphere of heaven, not to that of earth, and that it was by way of condescension and to confirm the faith of the disciples, that He made it visible to earthly eyes, tangible to human hands, and capable of eating earthly food. His risen body was not like that of the widow's son or of Lazarus, but like that of the saints in glory (1 Cor 153'5^-). 6. The Permanent Significance of the Re- surrection. From many points of view the Resurrection is the most important event in human history, and a large treatise would hardly exhaust its many-sided significance. Only the briefest outline of its bearing upon human life and thought can be given here. (1) The Resurrection has brought new hope and happiness into the world by the light it throws upon human immortality (1 Pet 13,4). This is recognised even by rationalists. For example, John Stuart Mill says : ' The bene- ficial effect of such a hope (in human im- mortality) is far from trifling. It makes life and human nature a far greater thing to the feelings, and gives greater strength as well as solemnity to all the sentiments which are awakened in us by our fellow-creatures, and by mankind at large. It allays the sense of that irony of Nature which is so painfully felt when we see the exertions and sacrifices of a life culminating in the formation of a wise and noble mind, only to disappear from the world when the time has just arrived at which the world seems about to begin reaping the benefit of it. The truth that life is short and art long is from of old one of the most dis- couraging parts of our condition ; this hope (of immortality) admits the possibility that the art employed in improving and beautifying the soul itself may avail for good in some other life, even when seemingly useless for this.' (2) The Resurrection makes it possible to vindicate God's justice and benevolence in the government of the world. If this life is all, God cannot be regarded as perfectly just and benevolent, because he frequently permits the righteous to be afflicted, and even to be un- justly put to death, while the wicked go un- punished and enjoy worldly prosperity. But if, as the Resurrection indicates, there is a life beyond the grave in which all earthly wrongs are righted and all wickedness adequately punished, the moral character of God can be successfully vindicated. (3) The Resurrection indicates that the future life will be not that of the soul only, but of the soul united to a suitable organ or ' body.' Christians regard matter as possessed of an intrinsic excellence of its own. It has reached its present perfection as the result of many ages of cosmical development, and there- fore it is probable, on the theory that there is a final goal to which all creation moves, that matter as well as spirit will be ultimately per- fected and glorified (cp. Ro 8 18-25 2Pet3i3 Rev 2 1 1), and that in the future life we shall be surrounded by a ' material ' environment of some kind. Unless hereaf terwe possess bodies, cxxvii THE ATONEMENT it is difficult to understand how we shall even recognise one another, and unless there are beautiful objects, it is difficult to understand how the soul will enjoy, as Plato says it will, the contemplation of perfect beauty for ever. (4) The Resurrection sets the seal of the divine approval upon the Teaching of Jesus, and in particular (5) Declares Him to be the Divine Son of God. On the last two points see art. ' The Person of Jesus Christ.' THE ATONEMENT The meaning of the word ' atonement ' becomes plain when it is divided into syllables, ' at-one-ment.' It signifies the setting at one of those who have been estranged. ' We actually find the word " onement," reconcilia- tion, in old authors ' (Skeat). In the New Testament the word only occurs in Ilo6 11 AV, but in RV it has disappeared even from that passage, and is replaced by 'reconciliation' : cp. RoS^o His 2Cor5i^^-. where the Greek word is the same as inRoS^i. The word ' atonement ' is really taken from the Old Testament, where it occurs about fifty times, generally in conjunction with the verb ' to make.' Thus ExSO^^, ' to make an atone- ment for your souls ' ; Lv 9 '^, ' make an atone- ment for thyself, and for the people,' etc. It is given there as the translation of a form of a Hebrew word, which literally means ' to cover,' and describes the effect of the sacrifices of the Jews in ' covering, ' i.e. removing sin and uncleanness, and so restoring communion between God and man. Therefore, used of the death of Christ, the word may be taken to imply that Christ's death was sacrificial, and that its effect is to do away with that separa- tion between God and man which has been brought about by sin. Although the word ' atonement ' is absent from the New Testament (RY), yet the thought runs throughout the sacred volume. Thus in Mkl0*5 Christ speaks of giving 'his life a ransom for many,' and in Mk 14 24 says, 'This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many.' InJnl^s the Baptist pro- claims, ' Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world ' ; in Ro 5 ^^ St. Paul says, ' When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son ' ; and in 1 Pet 1 1^ we read of being re- deemed ' with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish, and without spot.' Cp. Jn3i4f. 6511011.15 1224 1513 Ro324f. 425 83,32,34 iCorl30 620 723 153 2Cor5i8*- Gall* 313 4f. Ephl7 2 16 52 Phil28f- Colli4'20f. 21* lTh5ioiTim26Tit2i4Heb727 9iif-26f. iQiof, 1224 i3iof. iPetl2 224 318 iJnir 22 35,i6 4iORevl5 56.9 714 i43f. In these passages the teaching of the New Testament may be clearly discerned. It may be briefly summed up thus : Christ died for us ; He became a Ransom, and redeemed us ; He became a Propitiation for our sins ; He became a ' curse ' for us, and was ' made sin ' on our behalf ; by His death, by the shedding of His blood, by the giving of His life, by His Cross come forgiveness, cleansing, the taking away of sin, eternal life. Although the connexion between His death and our salvation is so clearly stated in the New Testament, when we ask in what manner the death of Christ brings about our forgive- ness, no precise answer is given in Scripture ; and yet it seems impossible for man to rest satisfied without an answer. His heart may find rest and peace with God in the Cross of Christ, but, none the less, his mind calls out for an explanation of the mystery of the Cross. Various attempts have been made to supply this intellectual need. It was thought in the earlier Christian cen- turies that the death of Christ was a ransom paid to Satan, that mankind might be released from bondage to him. Afterwards it was taught that Christ gave up to God His sinless life in payment of the debt which man had incurred to God, by not rendering the obedience and honour due to Him. Again, it was held that God satisfied His justice by inflicting on Christ the punishment which the sins of man- kind deserved ; or, that Christ suffered to show God's justice, bearing a punishment instead of us, that we might recognise the wickedness of sin. Whatever support these theories may still obtain, they present such difficulties to modern religious thought as necessitate an advance to something more satisfactory. We cannot think either that God would punish the innocent, or that for the sake of punishment inflicted on the innocent He could justly spare the guilty. We cannot think that there can be cxxvm THE ATONEMENT anything formal and fictitious about our rela- tion to God. These unsatisfying theories have largely come from unduly pressing, in a literal manner, the details of metaphors which should be interpreted broadly and freely. The meta- phors of 'ransom' and 'redemption' are meant to express the greatness of Christ's self-sacri- fice, and its purpose and eifect in delivering us from sin and its consequences. The meta- phors of ' propitiation,' ' reconciliation,' and ' justification,' are meant to express, not that God needs to be appeased, but that the effect of the work of Christ, when taken into the heart of sinful man, is to do away with the barrier which sin has built between him and God, and to bring him back to God in peni- tence and obedience. Christ in His sacri- fice was at one with the mind of the Father. God did not hate the world, but ' so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.' In opposition to the penal theories, some have supposed that the death of Christ became the means of our salvation simply by giving us such a manifestation of God's love as would win our hearts, and lead us to surrender our- selves in love and gratitude to Him. This theory contains a measure of truth, but does not seem to take sufficient account of the representation of the death of Christ as a sacrifice offered to God for our sins to ' shew God's righteousness.' The meaning of the Atonement must be found in the facts. The great fact, of course, was the death of Christ. It was His death on which the main stress was laid both by Christ Himself and by His apostles. It is not said that His life was lived for the remission of sins, but that His blood was shed for that purpose. Now, historically considered, the death of Christ was a natural event. The manner of His death was the natural consequence of the life which He lived. The outstanding feature of His life was its deliberate and unceasing submission to the will of His Father in every point. The human society in which He lived, the human social organism by which He was surrounded, sought to bring Him into line with its own will, its own desires ; and those desires were self-centred, self-seeking. At the same time, the human nature which He shared with us had the natural feelings of man, which shrink from pain and sacrifice, and which desire self -gratification. So that, as has been said. He had ' all the external machinery ' for disobedience. But the will of human society, and the temptations of human nature, beat upon Him in vain. His life was, all through, the complete repre- sentation, the perfect realisation, of the will of God. Such a life naturally led to the Cross. The sinful passions of man, which could not bend Christ to yield to them, rose against Him in hatred, and put Him to death. Thus, on the part of men, the Crucifixion was a murder. But on the part of Christ, the death of the Cross was the culmination of His righteous life, the crowning act of assent to the will of God. It was a ' death unto sin.' It was the refusal of sin, carried to its last and vic- torious extremity. Looked at in this way, then, the death of Christ was the perfect display of right- eousness, the complete achievement of union with the Divine will, the absolute condemna- tion of human sin. But the life and death of Christ were more than individual. He was not one among many, but the man of all men, the son of man, the second Adam, the perfect represent- ative of the human race. He was made in all points like unto His brethren, that He might express, before man and before God, what the thoughts and wishes and acts of man should be. His life was an offering to God, and that not merely for Himself, but for others, as expressing the return to God of sinful humanity. It was the beginning of a new and reformed order of things for human nature. In the life and death of Christ, the best man, the natural leader of men, spoke to God for man. It remained for the rest of mankind to utter their ' Amen ' to that perfect prayer. Christ, then, is the elder brother of the human race, bound to mankind in such inti- mate relationship that some have liked to think that the Son of God would have become Incarnate even if man had not sinned. But since mankind has sinned, the righteousness and holiness and love for man of the Son of God must have produced in Him sorrow for the sin of man. A sinner's sorrow for his sin, when it is true, is penitence. Christ was sinless. But seeing that His relationship to man is so intimate, and His love for man so great, we can imagine that His sorrow for man's sin would be filled with shame, and be that true penitence which man himself did not rightly feel. For as a loving and saintly mother suffers shame and penitence for the sin of her son, so even more, and to an infinite degree, would the loving and holy Son of God feel shame and penitence for the sin of mankind which He ' bore ' when He identified Himself with our sins in such a manner that it is said that He was ' made sin ' (2 Cor 5 -i). The burden of our sins thus borne upon His heart would explain His agony in the garden and His cry of desolation upon the Cross. Accordingly, Christ accepted the Cross CXXIX THE ATONEMExNT when it came in His way, instead of escaping from it. He did so, not only because it was the culmination of His union with the will of the Father, but also because in the shame of that death, and in its utter emptying of Himself before God, He expressed the true penitence of man for the sin of man. Thus the death of the Cross was a double sacrifice offered in man's name. It expressed the sacrifice of self to the holy and righteous will of God, and the sacrifice of true peni- tence and righteousness. This sacrifice, joined as it was to self-sacrificing love, was ' the noblest act that God had ever looked upon.' It was acceptable to God, ' an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odour of a sweet smell ' (Eph52). But how could a sacrifice of penitence and righteousness, offered by Christ, alter the rela- tionship in which we stand to God ? The answer is to be found, partly, in the union between Christ and the human race, through which, in an ideal and sacramental way, ' one died for all, therefore all died' (2 Cor 5 1*). Practically and actually, for each individual the answer is to be found in the union of the believer with Christ. As St. Paul makes clear in his Epistles, he who has faith in Christ can be justified, i.e. accepted by God, because his face is set in the right way, because the seed has been sown which bears the fruit of life. Faith is more than abstract belief. It is even more than trust. It is that loving adhesion to Christ which loves all He is and all He did, which ' loves the Crucified because of the Cross and the Cross because of the Crucified.' Therefore the character of the believer is altered by his faith. He enters into the meaning of Christ's Cross and makes it his own. He, too, takes up his Cross and follows Christ. He. too, seeks the will of God, through his union with Christ, even at the cost of ' cutting off his hand ' or ' plucking out his eye.' He, too, dies to the sin of the world, in his heart and will and life. He shares the righteousness of Christ as well as His repudiation of sin. And he can do all this, not only through the transforming power of loving faith, but also because the Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of the Crucified, is given to him, reproducing Christ in Him, and changing him ' into the same image.' He of whom this has become true is one with Christ in God. oxxx INSPIRATION The -word ' inspire ' means ' breathe into.' In the Authorised Version Wisd 15 ^^ illustrates this meaning, ' Forasmuch as he knew not his Maker, and Him that inspired into him an active soul, and breathed in a living spirit.' The word ' inspiration ' occurs twice in the Authorised Version : (1) Job 32 s, ' But there is a spirit in man : and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding ' ; and (2) 2Tim3i'5, 'All Scripture is given by in- spiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine.' The last instance is, however, doubtful, and we shall probably do well to accept the render- ing of the Revised Version, ' Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable,' an inter- pretation which agrees with some of the oldest English versions. We must content ourselves with noticing that in any case this verse shows how the word ' inspire,' like many other M^ords, gradually passed from a physical to a spiritual meaning. St. Paul's phrase corresponds with that of St. Peter, who speaks of the prophets as ' moved by the Holy Ghost ' (2 Pet 1 ^i). Inasmuch as every faithful Christian is moved by the Holy Ghost who dwells within him, it is possible to speak of every Chi'istian as in- spired. But this does not imply that the Holy Spirit grants to every Christian the same degree of insight into truth, or that there is no pro- gress in the apprehension of different parts of truth, or that the Holy Spirit bids every man to manifest his inspiration in the same way. To assume that it does, is to raise needless difficulties in the interpretation of the Bible, which clearly exhibits, not only varying degrees of inspiration, and different ways of manifest- ing it, but also individual and general pro- gressiveness in the apprehension of divine truth. Bearing this in mind, then, we must enquire what is meant by the inspiration of the writers of the Bible. Speaking broadly, the Christian means by their inspiration an impulse from God causing certain persons to write, and directing them how to write, for the edification of others. Though it is closely connected with rexelation, it is not identical with it. By revelation God makes known to a soul truths which were un- known to it before. But it is not at all neces- sary that an inspired writer should receive any new truths by way of revelation. Thus St. Mark was inspired to write his Gospel, but he was inspired to write down truths which were already familiar to him and to others through the instructions given by St. Peter. While the Church has continuously witnessed to her belief in the inspiration of those Scriptures which she decided to include in the Canon, she has never defined the method of inspiration by saying how the Holy Spirit acted upon the natural faculties of the writers. Therefore the method of inspiration may still be regarded as, in a certain sense, an open question. But it is, nevertheless, not so open as to be unaffected by certain definite limits which we must now consider. The nature of inspiration must be ascertained (1) by a careful and exact study of the Holy Scriptures themselves : their own testimony as to their origin, design, and authority must be scrupulously observed. (2) From the action of the Church with regard to Holy Scripture and its meaning. To learn what inspiration is, we must not only see how the books were written, but also see their effect on the life of the Church and the testimony which the Church gave to them. (3) The Christian must ascertain the meaning of inspiration by submission to it. The man whose own life is not under the influence of the Holy Spirit cannot expect to understand inspiration. And a Christian can only learn to look upon the Scriptures from the right point of view in proportion as he acts as a member of that divine society which produced the Scriptures and set its seal to them. Fidelity to the above principles will keep us from the extreme theories which men have constructed with regard to the divine and the human elements in the Bible respectively. By saying ' extreme,' we do not mean that any opinion which is called ' extreme ' is necessarily wrong, or that any opinion which is called ' moderate ' is necessarily right. It is our duty to accept a doctrine, not because it is moderate, but because it is true. And the more extreme theories about the Bible must be rejected, not because they are extreme, but because they are false. They either lay such an emphasis on the divine element in the Bible as to make the human element unreal, or they lay such an emphasis on the human element as to leave no room for the divine element. Thus they offer a striking parallel to certain errors with regard to the Person of our Lord. In early times the Gnostics, Apollinarians, and Monophysites allowed our Lord no true human nature, while certain of the Adoptionists and all the Nestor- ians insisted so strongly upon the human nature as to limit or even eliminate the divine. One cxxxa INSPIRATION extreme was sometimes an actual reaction against the other. So it has been with the Bible. At the time of the Reformation there was among Protestants a strong tendency to appeal to the Bible against the traditions of the Church. And in order to make the appeal as effective as possible every attempt was made to safeguard the divine authority of the in- spired books. This attempt led to some extra- ordinary exaggerations. Many scholars were led to adopt the opinion of a Jew named de Biossi, who held that the little points in the Hebrew Bible denoting the vowels were in- spired, a theory which de Rossi defended by holding that the origin of the vowels was com- municated to Adam in Paradise and transmitted to Moses. In 1675 a.d. some Swiss Protestants actually made the divine inspiration of the vowel-points a doctrine of their articles of religion. The result was that people pinned their faith on separated passages in the Bible instead of its general teaching, and derived from it maxims for condemning historical and scientific enquiries which the authors of the Bible would not have condemned themselves. Thus the Old Testament was quoted to sup- port slavery when circumstances no longer justified its retention, and a line of poetry was employed to condemn Galileo for asserting that the earth moves round the sun. It is to be feared that many men were turned away from the doors of Christian churches for not accepting claims made for the Bible which the Bible does not make for itself. Then came the reaction. Atheists and Agnostics began to lecture on the ' mistakes of Moses,' assuming that if they could show that Moses committed some errors in science, their Christian hearers would give up Christ. Rationalistic writei-s deliberately tried to erase everything that is supernatural in the Old Testament, and all the miracles in the New Testament were treated as legendary wonders rising from a desire to enforce some pet theory held by the evangelists, or from a love of the marvellous in the minds of ignorant peasants. Thus the divine element in the Bible was either wholly denied or was reduced to such guidance as might be granted by God to any man in any place. The true and middle way is for us to see the divine element of inspiration in the human element of human words and thoughts. The Human Element. This can be recog- nised (a) in the cooperation of human minds with the mind of the Holy Spirit. The Psalmist who unburdened his soul in Ps51 must have been deeply conscious that he was himself imploring forgiveness, and like other humble saints may have been scarcely aware that the Divine Spirit was prompting his prayer. In the same way the prophets were perhaps often unaware of the full divine meaning which God intended their words to bear ultimately. When the Psalmist says, ' They pierced my hands and my feet,' and when Hosea says, ' When Israel was a child then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt,' we need not suppose that they were at all conscious that their words would correspond with the experiences of the Messiah. The human element can be recognised (6) in the materials employed by the sacred writers, and in the manner in which they are combined. The writers used various sources of informa- tion as modern writers do. Thus in Nu21i* we find a reference to a 'Book of the Wars of the Lord,' and in Samuel, Kings, and Chroni- cles several documents are quoted. Even in the New Testament the writers felt at liberty to rearrange or modify earlier inspired writings, for St. Luke and St. Matthew both appear to have absorbed much of St. Mark's Gospel, and St. Luke has endeavoured to make the Greek more elegant. Again, the fact that MklG^'^O and Jn 7 ^^-8 ii were probably not written by those evangelists themselves does not affect their inspiration. The Church has recognised them as true, and has connected them with the sacred narrative that embraces them. The human element can be recognised (c) in those occasional statements which appear to be inaccuracies. St. Jerome says plainly that there is an error both in MtlS^^ and in Mt 279, points which are well known to modem students. When different narratives have been combined we find some apparent contradictions ; thus in Gn3228 and 35^*^ we find two different explanations of the name Israel. In spite of such contradictions the biblical histories are of immense value even as histories, and apart from the precious instructions which they con- vey with regard to faith and morality. The human element can be recognised {(f) in the fact that the inspiration of the books and of the authors is progressive. Only to our Lord Jesus Christ was the Holy Spirit given ' without measure.' The inspiration of all other teachers was intermittent (Jer42'' 1 Cor 7 10). They received different measures of enlightenment. Inspiration was commen- surate with the medium through which it passed, and with the development of the minds for whose benefit it was originally given. We can readily admit, for example, that in the imprecatory Psalms the writers were probably so goaded by the persecution and cruelty which they experienced at the hands of their enemies, that those necessary ideals of religion — mercy and forgiveness — were, for a time at least, quite obscured. In a less degree, the human limitations of cir- cumstances and environment probably influ- enced such books as the Song of Solomon, cxxxu INSPIRATION Ecclesiastes and Esther, although each of these has a place and purpose in the Old Testament well understood by every student of Jewish history. The value of many of the laws of the Old Testament consists not in the fact that they afford a moral standard for all time, but in the fact that they afforded the best moral standard for their own age and prepared for the best moral standard in the future. And the history of the Old Testament shows us how God made use of imperfect men, and of literary methods which bslonged to the child-mind of the race. But though these are earthen vessels, they contain heavenly treasure. The Divine Element. This is (a) discernible in prophecy, which is a characteristic of the New Testament as well as of the Old. St. John in the Revelation (2"29) is shown to be among the prophets as Isaiah and Amos had been. The prophets were filled with the certain conviction that their inspiration came not from within them, but from without. The call of Moses (Ex 3, 4) shows that he is forced to be a prophet against his will. Isaiah receives his call with reluctance and self-abasement. It is the same with Jeremiah. We find repeatedly in the prophets that an irresistible impulse came upon them, and that after some deep communion with God they felt forced to speak. Ac'2i"'is shows that the Apostles on the day of Pentecost knew the same kind of impulse, and in Gal 1 1'^ St. Paul testifies to an inward revelation similar to that given to Moses. The inspiration was sometimes regarded as an ' answer ' from God like an answer to prayer (Jer2335 Mic3'^). Sometimes the inspiration implied a direct command to write (Isa 8^ JerSG^s Rev 21 5). The prophets are ' men of God,' ' interpreters.' They always insist on morality and religion in closest union, interpreting current events in the light of God's will. They foretell the fall of the Jewish state as St. John foretold the fall of Rome, and they insist that the destroying powers are instruments of God. But their teaching about the nature of God and the duties of the people are coordinate with an inspired outlook into the future. The prophets are ' seers,' and the predictive element in their teaching is essential (see Isa 1, 5, 6 Hos 11 Am 2). They foretell the punishment of the wicked, the kingdom of God that is to come, and the perfect king. We cannot always say that all the details of the prophecies have been fulfilled, but we can often say that these details are a setting and shrine of the brilliant truths which have come to pass. (6) The divine element can be discerned in the laws and in the worship of the Bible. The strong commands and prohibitions of the Decalogue lay down conditions that are neces- sary for the human race, and show us that a violation of the laws which are for the good of human society is an offence against God, who constituted human society. The elabor- ate regulations of external worship had a divine purpose in teaching man his need of the Saviour and in foreshadowing the priestly work of Christ. In the prayers and praises of private or of public worship which we read in the Old Testament we find a spiritual joy and self-humiliation which are unparalleled in other literature. (c) The divine element can be discerned in the history of the Bible. The events of his- tory are, in a sense, the words of God, and the inspired historians interpret these words. The intention of God, in the development or decline of Israel and Judah and the nations around them, was grasped by the writers and described for the religious education of the world. The traditions and fortunes of the race are represented to us as illustrating God's dealings with man, ' God's judgment on sin ; His call of a single man to work out a universal mission ; His gi-adual delimitation of a chosen race ; His care for the race ; His overruling of evil to work out His purpose.' To the historians of the Old Testament, as in a far deeper sense to the historians of the New, their records were not a series of disconnected facts, or the tale of a physical and material continuity. They were the story of God's purpose in establishing His own kingdom. (d) The divine element can be discerned in the action of the word of God upon the souls of men. We are sometimes told that we ought to read the Bible like any other book. This is true with regard to the language and grammar of the Bible. But it is not true with regard to the matter which the Bible contains. For the Bible is not like any other book. It bears the stamp of the divine, and it gathers round the person and word of Jesus Christ, who is the central figure of human history. The Bible tells us how the world can be regenerated, and how we can be saved. The remedy for its frequent misuse is not to read it less, but to read it more, and to read it with greater reverence. We need forgive- ness : where can we find language better than the Lord's Prayer, and Ps51 ? We need courage : what words are better than ' The Lord is my shepherd ' ? We need comfort : where can we find it better than in the story of Him who bore our griefs ? We need re- calling to the great simplicities of the moral life : what can we do better than ponder the words of the Sermon on the Mount ? CXXXlll THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 1. Function of Conscience in Bible Study God has given to men a conscience as well as a Bible. They are made to correspond with each other, as the eye is made to corre- spond with the light and the light to correspond with the eye. The chief function of the Bible is to develop the conscience. One great func- tion of the conscience is to interpret the Bible. If you read your Bible, ignoring this function of conscience, you will misinterpret it. Conscience is constituted to appreciate the distinction between right and wrong, between ought and ought not. If we make two lists — if truth, fairness, generosity, self-sacrifice be put in one list, and falsehood, unfairness, meanness, selfishness in the other, we are compelled by conscience to label the one set ' ought ' and the other ' ought not.' We can- not help it. No one in his senses could reverse these labels. We know that if practising the first set bring pain, and the second set pleasure, yet we cannot reverse our decision. Nay, more, we feel certain that the distinction belongs not to this earth alone — that the ought and ought not stretch to the furthest planets, to the angels of God, to God Himself. Wrong would be no less wrong if it were attributed to God. No revelation, no external portent, could persuade us of the opposite. If even a voice from heaven should declare to us that lying and dishonesty were right, we should, as St. Anselm says (' Cur Deus Homo,' 1. 12), be forced to believe not that they were right, but rather that the voice which spoke was not God. We must carry this belief into our Bible reading ; that is true faith. Faith in God means faith in a Person, faith in a character ; faith in an infinite justice and love and nobleness and generosity — faith in a God to whom it would be absolutely impossible to do what was unfair or ungenerous to any man. Therefore, if we are offered a certain inter- pretation in Scripture that clashes with men's highest sense of what is generous and fair, we must not ignore that clashing. We must refuse to accept that interpretation for the present till we have enquired more about it. For example, if we are told that in the ' hard- ening of Pharaoh's heart ' God punished Pharaoh for something that Pharaoh could not have helped, we must decline that inter- pretation. If we read in Ro 9 St Paul's famous passage about election, and if any man should explain it to mean that God destines some men to eternal heaven and some to eter- nal hell, not for anything of good or evil in them, but for His own glory to magnify Himself, we are bound to reject such a mean- ing without hesitation. This is not a question of doubting the Bible, but of doubting men's interpretation of it. True faith will not accept an interpretation that is dishonouring to God. It is as if a schoolboy got a letter from his father containing a passage capable of an evil meaning. A companion suggests such a mean- ing. The boy, though he does not understand the passage, instinctively rejects that inter- pretation as unworthy his father's character. If he can find no other meaning he prefers to leave the passage a mystery for the present. It is very necessary to say this ; yet it is necessary also to add a grave caution against the attitude that would make every man set up his own judgment as to what he would believe or disbelieve. It is not at all safe to judge from the recoil of this or that man's in- dividual conscience, lest there may be in it any- thing abnormal. It is only when one can feel sm-e that a certain interpretation of Scripture, though otherwise possible, clashes with the best men's sense of what is right and true, that he is justified in rejecting it. Such humble, prayerful, yet fearless use of conscience soon sets us asking questions which lead to important results. For we begin to find in the Old Testament utterances that fall below the level of the enlightened Christian conscience, and actions that one feels would not win the approval of Christ. We find per- mission of slavery, plurality of wives, divorce, etc. We find fierce, vengeful words in the imprecatory Psalms. Conscience insists on our questioning these things, and the more con- science is enlightened by the main teaching of the Bible the more will it insist on such questioning. II. The Divine and Human in the Bible There are two answers. First, that in the Bible the divine and human are blended (see art. ' Inspiration '). We must not regard the Bible as an absolutely perfect book in which God is Himself the author using human hands and brains only as a man might use a typewriter. God used men, not machines — men with like weakness and prejudice and passion as ourselves, though purified and cxxxiv THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE ennobled by the influence of His Holy Spirit ; men each with his own peculiarities of manner and disposition — each with his own education or want of education — each with his own way of looking at things — each influenced difi^er- ently from another by the different experi- ences and discipline of his life. Their in- spiration did not involve a suspension of their natural faculties ; it did not destroy their personality, nor abolish the differences of training and character ; it did not even make them perfectly free from earthly passion ; it did not make them into machines — it left them men. Therefore we find their knowledge some- times no higher than that of their contem- poraries, and their indignation against oppres- sion and wrong-doing sometimes breaking out into desire of revenge. This would not surprise us in the least in other good men who were, we knew, striving after God and righteousness. It surprises us in the Bible, because of our false preconceptions ; because it is in the Bible we do not expect the actors to be real and natural ; because of our false theory of Verbal Inspiration we are puz'zled when the divine is mingled with the human. We must learn that the divine is mingled with the human. We cannot draw a line between the divine and the human. We cannot say of any part, ' This is divine,' or ' That is human.' In some parts, as the Gospels, there is more of the divine ; in others, as the Chronicles, more of the human. It is as a mine of precious ore where the gold is mingled with the rock and clay — the ore is richer in one part than another, but all parts in some degree are glittering with gold. It is as sunlight through a painted window — the light must come to us coloured by the medium — we cannot get it any other way. In some parts the medium is denser and more imperfect, in others the golden glory comes dazzlingly through. It is foolish to ignore the existence of the human medium through which the light has come ; it is still more foolish to ignore the divine light, and think that the tinted dome is luminous itself, that the light of heaven has only come from earth. Both must be kept in mind — the divine and- the human — if the Bible is to be rightly understood. III. Progressiveness of Kevelation And the other answer to the questionings of conscience is this — that we must think of human life as the great school of God, where gi-adually, patiently, through all the ages He has been training humanity for nobleness of life. The Old Testament is to be read not as a series of perfect precepts equally applicable to all men in all ages of the world, but rather as the story of God's gradual education of humanity. It was like our gradual education of our children to-day. We begin with the lowest rudiments of knowledge. Very crude and imperfect conceptions must satisfy us at first. Though all the glory of the highest knowledge lie before the child by and by, yet he can only partially receive it now until his mind has grown. Perhaps a better illus- tration of the attitude of the Old Testament is seen in the attitude of the missionary to-day in dealing with the lower races of heathendom. He knows how little is to be expected from them at first. He has to tolerate and overlook much that grieves him. He must be content to move slowly. He rejoices at every effort after good, even though it be largely mixed with evil. He gives warm approval to acts which for these poor savages really mean progress upward, though to the Christian world at home they may seem worthier censure than praise. He believes that God is helping men by His Holy Spirit, even though error and wrong- doing yet remain. By and by, when some of his converts have grown into noble, faithful strugglers after Christ, will they not look back on the early training and the early notions as on a lower stage that they have long since passed, and yet confess that it was a necessary stage in their progress upward ? Such was God's progressive education of the race. Many things in the early stages were overlooked or 'winked at' (Ac 17^0). Slavery was not at once swept away, but its cruelties were forbidden and its abuses checked — divorce was not absolutely prohibited, but laid under stringent regulations. When we read of these evils so allowed to exist — when we find, as in the Psalms, the lofty teachings and burning aspirations after God now and then marred by the fierce prayer for vengeance on the wicked — we must remember that we are judging men in the lower classes of the great school of God, and that the presence of His Spirit with men did not necessarily involve absolute perfection in teaching and conduct. Notice in the Sermon on the Mount how clearly our Lord teaches this progressive- ness of revelation : ' Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time . . but I say unto you,' etc. : see Mt 5 17,21,27,33, 38, 43 uy, IV. The Bible in the Twentieth Century In the beginning of this new century there are other questions arising about the Bible besides those already referred to. There are questions of scientific accuracy, and questions as to the ' Higher Criticism,' as it is called. People have learned that the first chapter -of Genesis cannot be reconciled with science ; that the stories of the Creation and the Flood cxxxv THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE had existed as legends of other races long before the Bible was written. They have learned that there are certain books of Scrip- ture which bear on the face of them marks of being not original work, but compilations from earlier lost documents. And most of these things that they have learned are true. There is no doubt that the ordinary Bible reader will be compelled in the new century to shift his point of view. We have learned much during the past fifty years which has thrown new light on the meaning of parts of om* Bible, which has at any rate made doubtful some of our old views and interpretations of it. But we must learn not to be disturbed at changing our view-point, and we especially must try in educating the younger generation to prepare them for changes which must come. For example, we must not insist that the Bible teaches as God's infallible truth that the world was created in six literal days, and finished ofi: on Saturday night as a carpenter would finish his week's work, or that the order of Creation must be accurately given in the first chapter of Genesis. We cannot teach positively that the story of the Fall is an exactly literal narrative of facts. Some people think that it is, and others, who are certainly no less holy and no less learned, think that it is an ancient allegory embodying a deep and vital truth. We must keep an open mind about many such things as these. We must endeavour in our Bible study to be thoroughly real and thoroughly truthful, 'to assert nothing as certain which is not certain, nothing as probable which is not probable, and nothing as more probable than it is.' We must keep in mind that God's way of helping the world to the light may have been very different from what we thought it was, and that it is a dangerous thing to put in the place of inspiration certain popular notions as to what inspiration should be. We must therefore seek to let in the light on all sides, however it may ultimately modify our precon- ceived notions of inspiration. And if we do so we shall find by and by that the result will be not loss, but great gain to the Bible. There is a story of an ancient land where a fire once swept over the hills destroying the flowers and the foliage and changing the familiar aspect of the scene. But as the people were grieving for their loss they dis- covered that the fire which had destroyed the flowers and the foliage had opened by its heat- deep fissures in the rocks, disclosing to their view rich veins of silver — so it shall be with us if we face the new questions wisely. If by the searching fire of literary and scientific criticism we lose some cherished traditional notions, we shall gain in a deeper knowledge of truth. We shall gain in knowledge of the nature and limits of inspiration and in under- standing God's methods of communication with men, and we shall be saved from many of the errors and misapprehensions that are turning men away from the Bible to-day. And for the questions of the Higher Critic- ism, if we believe that the Old Testament story is true, that the inspired men who wrote it had access to soui'ces of knowledge in the past, why should it matter if the books in their present form were written much later than we thought, or that they are the result of compiling and editing again and again under the mysterious fi-ee supervision of the Spirit of God ? We do not all believe that all the statements of Higher Criticism will ultimately be accepted — many of them are being already relinquished and forgotten — but no doubt there will ultimately remain a residuum of established fact which must modify in some measure our views about the Bible. And we do not believe that in that residuum of fact will be anything to prevent thoughtful men from believing in the divine origin of the Bible. In these times of questioning and doubt about the Old Testament there are some reassuring thoughts that men should keep be- fore them. First think of the wonder of this, that any set of old documents always open to scrutiny and question should have been accepted as of divine origin and yielded to by men as having authority to impose on them commands often disagreeable to them. What gave them that authority ? There seems no possible answer but that they possessed it of themselves ; they commanded the position they held by their own power. Men's moral sense and reason combined to establish them. Where there were no miracles or portents, no external voices from heaven to compel alle- giance, men must have received these books largely because of their appeal to the God- given conscience within. That is to say, the authority of the Scriptures through all the ages primarily rests on the conviction which they themselves produced that they came from God. That conviction forces itself on us still to-day. In the records of other nations we see- the chief stress laid on power and pros- perity and comfort and wealth. In these strange records goodness is the only thing of importance. The chief business of prophet and historian and legislator seems to be to rebuke men for sin and point them to holiness. Look at the wonderful national poems and hymns : ' Have mercy on me, O God, after Thy great goodness' (Ps51) ; 'Praise the Lord, 0 my soul ' (Ps 103) ; ' The Lord is my shepherd' (Ps23), and think of the dark, horrible history of the outside Avorld at the time that all these wonderful national poems were written. Then notice the compulsion cxxxvi THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE that seemed laid upon the prophets, the mys- terious Spirit striving with them, enlightening them, compelling them to speak of God's righteousness. Hear the constant iteration, ' The Word of the Lord ' ; ' Thus saith the Lord.' Surely these are not the phenomena of ordinary human history ! Then see how the whole Bible centres in Jesus Christ. The Old Testament tells of the preparation for Christ ; the New Testament tells that when that preparation was complete ' in the fulness of time God sent forth His Son.' Jesus Christ as it were stands between the Old Testament and the New, and lays His hand on them both. The Old Testament, He insists again and again, is the Word of God, and bears witness of Him. The New Testament is the story of the words and works of Himself and of the Apostles sent forth by Him. And both to- gether form this Bible of ours, which beyond all the books of the world has proved its power to turn men towards righteousness. We never hear man speak of the power and peace and hope that come from the study of the Latin classics, or of lives wrenched round from darkness to light by any other teaching than that of the Bible. Therefore let us rest our hearts on these foundations and be at peace, while men are questioning and finding out for us what we did not know before about the inspired Word of God. V. Hints and Suggestions for Study I. On using Common Sense. The old objec- tion is often repeated that the Bible is like a ' nose of wax ' that can be turned every way ; that one can gather all sorts of contradictory teaching from its pages. Yes, if you read it foolishly ; for the Bible is no formal system of teaching with every precept accurately de- fined and limited, and every exception carefully pointed out. It deals with broad principles rather than with particular precepts. We are trusted to apply these principles ourselves to the practical guiding of our lives. Sometimes its commands are of universal application ; sometimes they apply only to such special cases as are before the writer ; sometimes they are figurative and intended to prescribe the spirit and temper of our lives, such as ' Give to him that asketh thee,' etc. The same caution is needed about the types and prophecies of the Old Testament. If man will not diligently use the common sense that God has given him he must make mistakes in reading the Bible. The inspired writers express themselves quite freelj', and usually without showing any anxiety to prevent mis- understandings. They seem to assume that their readers will be sensible people. They see no need of constantly guarding and quali- fying their statements, and reminding us that they are to be taken in connexion with other statements made elsewhere. There are many ways in which this absence of common sense shows itself. There is the thoughtless habit of quoting all parts of the Bible as Scripture, whether they be the words of our Lord or the words of Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, in the book of Job, who are afterwards represented as condemned and contradicted by God. There is the habit often indulged in by preachers of twisting the obvious meaning of words, and the commoner and more dangerous habit of quoting for the support of doctrines isolated texts utterly regardless of the context or of the circumstances under which they were originally uttered. One might as well take as a general proposition a single sentence of a letter without considering the context or the writer, or the purpose of the letter or the per- son to whom it was wi'itten. Thus people put St. Paul and St. James in opposition with regard to Faith and Works. It is quite natural that two teachers, or even the same teacher at different times, should make these different statements. A preacher dealing with penitents who in their misery were trying to win God's favour by piling up good deeds might very wisely tell them that God desired not this, but that they should come with simple trustful faith, as a little child to its father. But just as wisely might he, in deal- ing with people who justify frequent lapses into impurity and meanness and ill-temper by talking much about their faith and their rest- ing on the finished work of Christ and not on their own righteousness — just as wisely might he insist as indignantly as St. James that faith without works is dead. 2. On Taking Pains. Using common sense implies taking considerable pains in one's reading. Take two readers, say, of the Epistle to the Galatians. The first makes no attempt to get into touch with his author. He begins each day at the beginning of his daily chapter. Quite possibly, owing to faulty chapter divi- sion, this may begin in the middle of an argu- ment, or not be at all the logical commencement of the subject discussed ; so he reads over the chapter feeling very hazy as to its meaning. As he has read the previous chapter in the same hazy way, he never thinks of looking back to find the connexion ; thus he wastes a good deal of time, turns away dissatisfied, or contents himself with culling out one or two disconnected texts. The other reader takes pains. He knows that to understand any man's letter one must find out its drift and purpose, and get in touch with the writer and his original readers ; so he looks int6 the Acts of the Apostles to find out St. Paul's connexion cxxxvii THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE with these Gralatians. Then he reads over the whole Epistle two or three times for a general view of it. He notices its severe, indignant tone. He sees that the writer is hurt and offended about the fickleness of his converts and their reception of false teachers who oppose him. He seems very self-assertive as to his position. Perhaps this is all that a first or second perusal of the Epistle reveals. But this sets him thinking. He has kept clear of commentaries, trying to get his view o-f the Epistle by himself. But now he turns to his commentary, and with its assistance he goes back again to the Acts of the Apostles. He finds reason to believe that after Paul had left Galatia, his constant opponents, the emissaries of the Judaising party, had come proclaiming (as in the case recorded Acl5), ' Except ye he circumcised and obedient to the Law ye cannot be saved.' The reader at once understands the vexation of t"he Apostle at these fickle -converts deserting him for false teachers, and putting in jeopardy the whole future of Christianity in that region. With this key he turns back again to his perusal of the Epistle, and it becomes at once full of life and interest. Let this hint suffice. We cannot go further with the subjecii in our limited space. 3. Devotional Study. Surely it is not necessary to say that one should study regu- larly— should study with the object of growing acquainted with God, and with the purpose of finding God's will and doing it when he has found it. Still less is it necessary to say to any honest Bible reader study prayerfully, though it may be well to suggest to him the habit of reading his regular portion first, and then on his knees trying to turn it into prayer, so that there should be not only God's speak- ing to him, but also his speaking back to God in God's inspired words. All these things are matters of course to a devout reader. What, perhaps, he is most in need of is a help towards meditation. In Liddon's ' Clerical Life and Work ' there is a valuable section on this subject which has much helped the writer. So few know how to read their Bible profitably, especially few know how to meditate on it. Let us very diffidently suggest what a meditation should be. Not the leaning lazing on your elbow with the Bible open before you, reading the verses silently, and letting the thoughts fre- quently wander ; it is no such listless dream- ing over the text ; it is an act of the whole soul rising in the fulness of its energy to- wards God — memory, imagination, intellect, will, fully engaged ; it is the soul placing itself in the presence of Jehovah ; it is an effort after the Vision of God. First of all, let your imagination play freely on the passage. Think of the actor or writer. Put yourself in his place. Try to enter into the feeling of the formalist Pharisees, the jealous scribes, the ignorant mob, and especially of the great loving heart of Him who loved and understood and watched over them all. Try, as you read a passage of St. Paul, to ' put yourself in the place ' of the writer, with his keen, highly-strung nature, now glad, now despondent, now vexed and dissatisfied, but always with every thought full of loyalty to his Master. This use of the imagination will help you to the heart of the passage. Then the intellect is summoned before God to enter into His message, to grapple with the subject and select the leading thought in it. This is but preparatory ; then bring the will to bear on it — Will to love the highest, Will to imitate the noblest. Will to cast your- self down in lowly adoration before all the love and self-sacrifice told of God, of Jesus Christ. Get the habit of doing it — if not once a day, then once a week ; but as often as you can. Se- lect the fittest portions — the story of the Pas- sion, the words of Christ, the prayers of St. Paul for his beloved people. Thus let the soul linger in the presence of God, laying the inmost being before Him, and entering into reverent and affectionate yet trustful conference with Him. Lie low before Him. Let Him speak to your soul, and speak back to Him, face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend. Take a great deal of trouble to learn and acquire the habit of meditation. It is there the soul learns most to blame itself and to adore and love its Lord. CXXXVlll THE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION The opening pages of the Bible reveal to us the elements of religion, in language which, though figurative, is unmistakable in its im- port. We are told of the Creator who called the universe into being (Gn 1 1 *•), and formed man ' in His own image ' (Gn 1 2(5, 27)^ with the gift of free-will. We are told how man abused this gift, and, seeking a false independ- ence, fell under the bondage of sin and death (Gn3; cp. RoS^^f): a bondage from which divine succour alone could redeem him. The law-books, especially Leviticus, emphasise this need of divine help, in their doctrine of Sacrifice, laying stress on the awful holiness of God (Lvll45 192 207, etc.), and man's need of purification and self -surrender ; while the Psalmists and Prophets dwell on the inner spiritual character of repentance and of that obedience of the heart to God's moral law, without which sacrifice is worse than a mockery (IS 1622 Pss406 Slit^-iT Isaliif- Hos6G). Some of these thoughts are found, in a more or less incomplete or distorted form, in every religion. The dependence on an unseen spiritual being, or beings ; the consciousness of broken communion ; the consequent need of some new, heaven-given means of access — these ideas, as well as the simpler and more childlike thought of tribute or of free-will offerings of homage and thankfulness, lie at the root of those sacrificial customs in which religion has always expressed itself even among pagans. The Bible's teaching about religion, if we compare it with what we can learn of contemporary heathen customs, and especially those of the pagan Semites, seems to take up these common ideas, to purify and transfigure them, and make them the vehicle of a doctrine valuable for all ages. I. The Covenant of God with Man. One of the leading conceptions of the Old Testament — the one, in fact, from which the volume derives its name — is that of a Covenant be- tween God and man (Covenant with Noah, Gn6i8; with Abraham, Gn 121-3 171-14 22i6-i8 ; with Jacob, Gn 28 i^-is ; with the people of Israel. Ex 24 7 34 10, 27 Lv269 Dt 29 9-15 3124-30. with David, Ps 89 3. 28, 33-39) ;_a Covenant which, as St. Paul points out (Gal3i-5^-, especially v. 17), is prior to the Law, and superior to it. Herein the Almighty condescends to pledge Himself, that if man fulfil certain conditions, He, on His part, will pardon his sins and bless him. The true inner meaning of this Cove- nant is manifested in that New Covenant (of which the Old is but a shadow), foretold by prophets (JerSl^if- ; cp. Heb8S-i2 and 2 Cor 3 6), and announced by Christ in His in- stitution of the Lord's Supper, in the words : ' This is my blood of the New Covenant,' or ' This cup is the New Covenant in my Blood ' (Mt2628Mkl42't Lk2220 l Cor 11 25). 2. Covenant and Sacrifice. The Covenant of which the Bible speaks is made with sacri- fice (Ex 24 5 f. Ps .50 5 Heb 9 is f •). Its principle is an Atonement (At-one-ment) between man and God (Leviticus, especially c. 16, Day of Atonement, and Heb 9). The sacrifices of the Old Covenant, in their three leading types of sin-offering (Lv4-6), Burnt-offering (Lv l^t)^ Peace-offering (Lv3if), while revealing the true character of man's relation to God, and ministering in a provisional way to the devo- tional needs of the faithful, led up to the great Atonement of the New Covenant, in which all their defects were remedied, and their imperfec- tions removed. The Sin-offering teaches that communion is broken and that access to God can only be reopened by the shedding of life- blood (Lvl7ii), symbolising expiation and cleansing ; the Burnt-offering, in which the entire sacrifice is consumed upon the altar, speaks of that unreserved self-surrender which is the only homage God can accept from man; the Peace-offering, in which priest and offerer feast together at ' God's board ' symbolises the life of joyful communion between man and his Maker. 3. Christ's Sacrifice of Atonement. All these conceptions are realised completely in our Lord's self -offering as displayed to us in the New Testament. He gives Himself as an atonement for sin (Ro325 lJn22 410), as an offering of perfect obedience to the Father (Phil 2 8), as a gift of communion and life to His member^ (Jn632f, 10 10 1125 146 Col34). What are, after all, but types and shadows (Heb 101; cp. Col2i7) in the Old Testament, the New Testament reveals in real substance. For instance, the victim in the Old Covenant was unconscious and unwilling : Christ offers Himself of His own free-will ( Jn 1 0 1^. 18)^ and looks forward to the dread moment with wist- ful yearning (Lkl250). (go false, we may notice in passing, is that Idea of the Atone- ment which pictures it as an angry Father punishing an innocent Son.) Again, the victim under the Old Covenant was only by a sort of ' legal fiction ' identified with the offerer, who laid his hand on the beast's head, and pre- cxxxix THE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION sented its life instead of his own (Lv l-*). But Christ's offering is in a very real sense iden- tical with those on whose behalf it is made. The Victim is indeed Himself the offerer ; offering, however, as representative of all mankind. "When St. John tells us that the "Word was made flesh ( Jn 1 1*), he speaks of an incarnation in which the Son of God took upon Him not the physique of an individual man, but assumed our human nature in a general way ; an assuming which is the more universal in its effects because of the omni- potence and omnipresence of the Person who assumed it. Christ thus becomes, as St. Paul teaches, a second Founder of the race — the 'Second Adam' (ICorlS^s-*^ Ro5i2-2i). In this character, as being truly, and by no fiction, representative of the whole race. He was able to offer up to Almighty God the threefold sacrifice of expiation, homage, and communion on behalf of all mankind. Further, what He thus accomplished for all of us, He is able, if we are willing, to accomplish in each one of us individually : His divinity effectuating in de- tail, through the power of His Spirit, what His perfect humanity achieved once for all. Thus the redemption and sanctification which His Atonement brings to individual souls by His indwelling is no more a ' legal fiction ' than His self -offering on behalf of all. ' Christ in you,' says St. Paul, is 'the hope of glory' (Col 1 2"). His victorious might, working in those who are united to Him as members of His Body, and blending their wills with His, is able to transform them, step by step, into His own likeness, as He, literally, grows to maturity in them : and the effect of righteous- ness thus produced, is then quite truly both -His and ours — He is, in fact, 'our righteous- ness' (1 Cor 1^0). Dwelling in us. He frees us not only from the guilt of sin by His ex- piatory death, of which He makes us partakers (Ro 6 3, 4 2 Cor 4 lo Col 2 1^, 20 2 Tim 2 n), but also from its bondage and its taint, by the power of His resurrection life (Col2i3*- 31^-). His Holy Spirit, by whom He indwells in the be- liever, transforms the soul from glory to glory, making it a ' mirror ' of the Lord's perfection (2 Cor 3 17, IS). 4. Material Pledges of the Atonement. Sacraments. As in the Old Covenant God deigned to work by material pledges, so also in the New. Here again, however, we have no longer symbol but reality. ' Except a man be born anew — be born of water and the Spirit,' says our Saviour, ' he cannot see — he cannot enter into — the kingdom of God ' (Jn S^'^'^). And later on He bids His followers ' make disciples of all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost ' (Mt 28 is>). Again, He says : ' I am the bread which came down from heaven . . the bread of life . . the bread which I will give is my flesh for the life of the world . . except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves ' (Jn 6 3*' ■*!' '^^' ^i> ^3). And later on He takes up bread and wine in His Holy Supper, saying, ' This is my body,' ' this is my blood,' 'do this in remembrance of me'; and speaks of His Blood as that of the ' New Covenant ' (Lk 22 1^, 20 and parallels). So it is that the two great Sacraments of the Gospel, though they have been the subject of much discussion, especially since the Reformation, are recognised by all Christians as having a special importance in relation to the New Covenant, as pledges of our union with the Incarnate Redeemer. That He should use such humble material means as vehicles of spiritual blessing is not only appropriate to our own composite nature — part matter and part spirit — but of a piece also with the marvel of His Incarnation, whereby heaven and earth are wedded together : cp. Jn 1 ^i. The Sacraments are rightly considered as moral instruments for the conveying of G-od's grace in Christ to us. What God offers us therein is no mechan- ical or magical power, still less a mere symbol or fiction, but an indubitable spiritual boon. The effect upon ourselves depends on the attitude of our own souls. Repentance, faith, obediejice are the requisites for a right recep- tion of either of these Sacraments, as they are necessary conditions of a right relation to God : and these requisites are themselves gifts of the Holy Spirit, to be won by earnest prayer. 5. Infant Baptism. Those many Christians who practise infant baptism, do so because they believe (1) that it is in accordance with the mind of Christ and a proper understanding of the sacred rite, and (2) that its significance and effect are secured by the pledges of the sureties that as the child develops he shall be taught what are the privileges and responsi- bilities of a member of Christ and the initial gift be fostered by ' the nurture and admoni- tion of the Lord' (Eph64). The adult who is admitted to baptism takes these pledges upon himself, promising to for- sake sin, to accept trustfully the revelation of God's mercy in Christ, and to walk in the path of the divine commandments. In pagan lands it is usually as a result of preaching (cp. Ro 10 14, 15) that the light dawns upon him, and he experiences what we know as 'Conversion' ; then, after fuller instruction, he is brought to the baptism of the Covenant. 6. Conversion. This phenomenon of con- version often happens, and sometimes in a striking way to those who have been brought up in Christian surroundings, and those who have been baptised in infancy. The grace cxl THE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION of God in them has been so far quenched by contending influences — worldliness, careless- ness, vicious passions, or the like — like the seed in thorny ground whose growth is choked by worldly cares and riches (Mt 1 3 -2). At last the Voice of God makes itself heard ; with conviction of sin and sincere repentance union with Christ is realised and the divine forces of the indwelling Spirit are brought into play. The result is seen in a fruitful life of communion with God. This conver- sion is not to be confused with the gift of baptism. In adults converted from alien beliefs it normally precedes baptism, as in the case of St. Paul (Ac93f. and v. 18 22 6 f. and V. 16), while in those who are baptised as infants it naturally follows the rite. In some cases, as in that of St. Paul, the conversion comes in a single moment ; in others it is a gradual process, more or less continuous, of more intimate approach to God. Often it has a kind of rhythmical or recurring character, marked by definite stages in the external or internal life of the individual, as at confirma- tion and at first communion, in times of sick- ness or bereavement, or on the occasion of marriage or parenthood — these crises forming steps in a more or less regular evolution of the spiritual life. For all alike conversion in some sense is necessary, and for all alike it involves the individual realisation of our relation of son- ship to the heavenly Father. ' Except ye be converted,' says the Saviour, ' and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom' (Mtl83). 7. Religious Duties. The typical duties on which our Lord lays stress in His Sermon on the Mount — Fasting (Mt6i''-18), Almsgiving (Mt6i-4), and Prayer (Mt 6 5-i5)_cover the whole field of the religious life, representing respectively the three aspects of our Lord's atoning sacrifice, as sin-offering, burnt-offering, and peace-offering. (1) Prayer. Prayer is the soul's communion with its Maker. Its importance and some- thing of its nature are revealed to us by our Lord's example (we are told of His spending long hours alone in prayer, Mtl423 LkG^^ Mkl35), by His precepts (MtO^s Lk2136 Mk 7 7f. Il22f.^ etc.), and by the pattern prayer which He has given iis (MtG^'-is Lkll2-4). It is the outpouring of the child's soul to the heavenly Father, with whose will the child's will is blent. In a wide sense it is an attitude, not necessarily expressed in words, so that St. Paul can say, ' Pray without ceasing ' (IThS^'^). Yet that there is something more in prayer than a mere spiritual self -surrender — a ' Thy will be done ' — is clear from Christ's words and works. Always in submission to the all-wise will of the Father, He encourages cxli us to ask for definite things. For spiritual blessings, first of all, where there can be no doubt about God's will, and the only necessary condition is faith (Lk 11 is ; cp. 1 Cor 1231 14:1). By^; j^q^ f^j, gpiHtual blessings only. In His agony He prayed definitely to have the 'cup' removed, if it were the Father's will (Lk22-i2 ; cp. HebS*"). In His model prayer He bids us, after the petitions of which God is the subject, to ask for daily bread (Mt 6 H). In His works of healing He Himself answers the prayers of parents and friends for the restoration of their loved ones to health (Mt 85f- 92f. and v. 18f. 1435,36 15221^ etc.). In modern times people have often been puzzled about prayer. Science has taught us that God works in the world by law and system, and that everything works together in an extremely complicated interaction. "What place is there then, it is asked, for individual prayers ? If I ask for a definite thing for myself or my friend, even though it be not what we commonly call a ' miracle,' am I not presuming, and presuming in vain, to beg for a breach of the laws by which God works ? The answer is, first of all, that if God works by law and system, marshalling the forces of nature in harmonious interaction, the force of the prayer of faith is not outside that system, but is one of its most potent factors. Furthermore, we ask all subject to God's will, confessing our own ignorance ; and as we advance in the knowledge and love of Him, our own wills inevitably become more and more attuned to His, and it becomes growingly impossible that we should approach Him with extravagant and unworthy petitions. Again, as St. Augustine observes, we are bidden to ask all in the name of Jesus (Jn 15 16 1623,26)^ the Saviour : anything asked in ignorance which would, if granted, run counter to God's redemptive purposes, we shall expect to be withheld, as not being really in the Sa- viour's name. Finally, as we suggested above, Christ makes it quite clear that it is normal and right for the faithful to ask for such things as they need, and gives us many object lessons, in His works of mercy on earth, of answers to the prayer of faith in what must have seemed like desperate cases. It is noticeable also that He frequently combined with the physical boon prayed for, a corresponding spiritual boon, adding the healing of the soul to that of the body (Mt 9 2-6, etc.). The prayer of which our Lord is specially speaking in the Sermon on the Mount is that private intimate communion with God which the ' Father who seeth in secret ' is pledged to recompense (MtG^). This aspect of prayer is emphasised in contrast to the ostentatious praying in the streets of the contemporary Pharisees (MtG^), and is not, of course, meant THE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION to condemn those regular meetings for prayer ating advance. As there have been retrograde in which the corporate life of God's people ex- pressed itself alike in the Old Covenant and the New. (2) Fasting. Fasting — the spirit of the sin-offering — i.e. of purification and self- discipline, and almsgiving — the spirit of the burnt -offering, i.e. of self-surrender, are, like prayer, assumed and taken for granted in the Sermon on the Mouci, the necessity of unostentatious sincerity being similarly emphasised. Self -discipline, the inner principle of fasting, is rendered necessary by the disorder in our nature wrought by sin. Not even an apostle can do without it : ' I keep under my body,' says St. Paul, ' and bring it into subjection ' (lCor927 ; cp. 2 Corf? 5 11 ^r). It is, in fact, that renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the devil which from the earliest ages has ac- companied Christian baptism, and represents the penitent cooperation of man with the Holy Spirit in the work of self -purification. It naturally expresses itself in acts of self- denial, a mark of Christ's sincere disciples (Mtl6-^), and still more, perhaps, in the glad acceptance of God's manifold discipline in life. (3) Almsgiving. Self-surrender, the inner principle of almsgiving, is the recognition that all we have and are is doubly due to God, who has first, as Creator, granted us our exist- ence, and then, as Redeemer, bought us with a price (1 Cor 6 20 723) — the precious blood of Jesus Christ. 8. In these practices we realise our union with Christ. Thus in the three principles represented by fasting, almsgiving and prayer, the believer is united with the Saviour in His thi-eefold act of atonement ; and by the power of the divine indwelling his sinful body is progressively purified and assimilated to the stainless humanity of Christ, his warped will is brought more and more into line with that perfect will, his whole life is caught up into an ever closer communion with the life of God. And thus individual believers are gathered up into the pure offering of a re- deemed humanity, the sacrifice which He offered up once for all upon the Cross, and effectuates successively and in detail in those whom He unites to Himself. The sanctifica- tion of individual Christians is thus a kind of propagation of Christ Himself, and is a little type of that great corporate perfection of the whole body of the redeemed of which St. Paul speaks as the coming to a perfect, i.e. full-grown. Humanity, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (Eph4i3). 9. Penitence : Sins of Believers. It would be misleading, however, to describe this process of sanctification as one of steady and undevi moments and periods of decline and disloyalty in the Church in general (both under the Old Covenant and under the New), so too the individual Christian life is often a perplexing mixture of ascents and downfalls. The Old Testament is full of such instances, alike in the Church and in the individual. The fre- quent backslidings of the nation are paralleled by the failures of patriarchs like Israel him- self, and of subsequent saints of eminence like Moses and David — grave, though inci- dental failures, which do not affect the favour- able character of the final verdict. In the New Testament the mention of the single name of Peter is sufficient to show the po.ssi- bility of defection after an intimate walk with Christ, and the certainty of a full restoration after sincere repentance. There is, indeed, a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews which speaks of a form of disloyalty after which renewal is impossible (Heb6^-'5), and our Lord Himself has words of deepest solemnity about a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit ' which hath never forgiveness ' (Mk.329). We shall be justified in identifying these two sins — a deliberate and wilful ranging oneself against known truth — and in dis- tinguishing from this unforgivable offence the constant instances of frailty in the re- deemed for which Chi-ist expressly invites us to ask pardon (MtG^^, 14). For though the New Testament speaks of believing members of Christ as ' saints ' or holy people (e.g. Ro 17 1526 1615 iCorl2 61 1433, etc., etc.), and St. John, speaking of the believer ideally con- sidered, says that ' whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin' . . 'cannot sin ' (1 Jn3^'9) ; yet the Lord clearly contemplated in the faithful some deviations from the path of perfection, else He would not have inserted into His model prayer the clause ' forgive us our trespasses.' Nor can we forget that St. John, in the same Epistle just quoted, speaks clearly and strongly to believers about the forgiveness and cleansing that can be won by confession of sins (IJnl^.iO), The Christian consciousness has rightly regarded confession of sins as a normal part of private as well as public devotions, and a necessary condition of continuance in God's grace. It is especially appropriate as a preparation for the reception of Holy Communion, and has been so recog- nised by all Christian denominations. Con- fession accompanied by contrition and pui'pose of amendment, by which the soul renews from time to time its renunciation of the world, the flesh and the devil, wins, so Scrip- ture assures us, the forgiveness of the Father and restoration to effective communion with Him. ID. Eternal Life. The communion of the cxlii THE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION spirit with God in Christ, which the New Testament, taking up the language of the Old, describes as 'knowledge ' of God (Hos4i 63>6 Jnl73 Phill9 Coll 10, etc.), is called by St. John 'Eternal Life' (Jnl?^) ; a phrase by which the Apostle clearly means, not a future gift, but a present possession. It is a gift, no doubt, but imperfectly appropriated here — the ' crown ' of it, its full and triumphant fruition, is to be attained by the faithful after death (2 Tim 4 § Rev 2 lO) ; yet it is neverthe- less a real possession on this side of the grave. Even the Psalmists of the Old Testament recognised this truth, and the fact of present communion with God was to them the supreme argument for a futm-e life (PsslG^-ii 1715) . an argument clinched by our Lord when He said the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not a God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him (Lk2037,3S)_ Just as the phrase ' kingdom of God ' or ' of Heaven ' is used sometimes of the Church militant and imperfect (e.g. MtlS'^**- 47 f.)^ and sometimes of the perfect, triumphant Church of the future (Mt25^4) — and rightly so, because these are really two different stages of the same thing ; so too with ' Eternal Life.' It begins as soon as Christ is appropriated, as soon as the believer is first united to His triumphant resurrection life ; it is to be consummated when the Son of man shall come in His glory. II. Death and Judgment, Heaven and Hell. Over against Life stands Death, the penalty incurred by man as the result of his wilful breach with God : ' in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die ' (Gn 2 1''). The death thus spoken of in Scripture is not primarily or exclusively the physical disso- lution of the body, but rather that death of body and soul together of which Christ speaks in such solemn and mysterious tones (Lkl25). If God is Life and man's eternal life consists in close and constant communion with Him, it needs no dogmatic statement to make clear the terrible character of a permanent alienation from Him. The language of Scripture is forcible enough on this head (Mt2.5-ii'-t6 Mk 9^8) ; but there is no more powerful aid to the realisation of the appalling alternative than the consideration of the extent of the Saviour's sufferings for our redemption. The value of the redemption can only be estimated by an appreciation of the price paid. It is thus that Christ's passion, from the agony in the garden to the death on the Cross, has always been the strongest stimulus to con- version ; it draws us with a twofold cord of love and fear— fear of that ineffable doom which it cost so much to avert, and love to Him who for love of us willingly paid the price. The Cross is the only adequate measure of the hatefulness of sin and of the horror of its consequences. Those consequences are not to be regarded as belonging entirely to the future, any more than are the consequences of saving union with the Redeemer. As it was said in the Old Testament that ' in the day that ' man disobeyed ' he should surely die,' so also in the New Testament we are told by St. John that ' he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life' (1 Jn5i2), and that ' he that loveth not abideth in death ' (1 Jn 314,15^ In both cases, however, the consum- mation, whether of life or death, lies beyond the gi-ave, and Scripture describes the eternal future of mankind as following upon a Judg- ment in which all alike are to pass before Chi-ist's throne (R0I410 2 Cor 510). This is clear from our Lord's own words as well as from those of His Apostle (Mt 25 31, 32). The Judgment is represented as preceded by the general resurrection of the dead, at Christ's Second Coming (Jn5^^'"^). 12. Paradise. If we ask what is the con- dition, meanwhile, of those who have passed away from this life, our Lord's words to the penitent robber : ' T'o-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise' (Lk 23-13), to which the parable of Dives and Lazarus (LklG^of.) form a kind of commentary, suggest to us a state in which the believer's soul is in a special sense ' with Christ,' in a more intimate relation than is possible for us here : a state to which St. Paul seems to be looking forward when he says that ' to depart and be with Christ ' is far better (Phill 23). This 'waiting state' (Hebll39,40. cp. Rev 6 9) of the faithful has as its background in the parable the ' torment ' of Dives, which seems, correspondingly, a fore- taste of that 'Gehenna of fire' (MkQ'is-^S)^ under the symbolism of which our Lord refers to the eventual condition of the permanently wicked — the ' fire prepared,' He says, ' for the devil and his angels ' (Mt254i). Any attempt to reveal to us in our present state either the joys of heaven or the woes of hell must necessarilj' be couched in figurative language ; but the language of Scripture on this subject, though to be interpreted with caution, is certainly of a kind to be received with the utmost seriousness ; and when all has been said, no more appalling definition can be given of the state of the lost than that it is one of wilful, permanent, and absolute alienation from God who is Life and Love. 13. Faith in Christ. It was to save us from this doom that the Redeemer was given, 'for God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever be- lieveth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life ' ( Jn .3 16). This belief in Him — not a mere intellectual assent to certain doctrines, but a going forth of the whole nature in trustful homage — brings with it of cxliii THE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION necessity a fervent love, and with the love a patient submission and obedience. Thus the doctrine of St. James is complementary to that of St. Paul, and though in a sense faith is the one thing needful, because it opens the soul to accept God's grace, and thus makes His entry into us possible ; yet faith without works is not only dead but inconceivable (Jas 2i7f.). Faith, as we have said, is God's gift to those who desire it and are ready to receive it. It is in all ages a requisite to the effective work- ing of the Holy Spirit in man's soul ; even as in the days of our Lord's ministry it was an indispensable condition without which even He could do no mighty works on men (Mt 13 ^8). It is perhaps to stimulate faith that certain difficulties — like the problems of evil and of suffering — are allowed to remain unsolved for us, and certain eventualities unrevealed. Enough is told us to command our trust and to justify the venture of belief. If all were clear, there would be no place for the discip- line of faith ; we would walk, not by faith, but by sight (2 Cor 5 7 ; cp. Jn 20 29 1 Pet 1 §). Such are the leading elements of the Chris- tian religion ; and if, like its individual professors, it is to be judged by its fruits, we need have no fear of the result. To compare it, not merely with the polytheistic religions which once held sway in Europe, but with its great contemporary rival 5 for the homage of mankind — Buddhism and Mohammedanism — is to gain a fresh appreciation of its superiority, and be confirmed in our conviction of its truth. Consider what the Church has done for Europe ^nd for Western civilisation during the nineteen centuries of her existence. She leavened the great Roman Empire when it was festering with moral corruption, and so prolonged and purified the good mfluence of its ideals of law and government. When the knell of the old Empire as mistress of the world sounded, and the northern barbarians rushed in upon her borders, the Church took up her task of taming and civilising these barbarians, offering to each race and people from the inexhaustible treasury of Christ's perfect humanity the gifts specially adapted to develop its own peculiar character, and thus under her influence nationality slowly came into view ; that spirit to which modern Europe owes so much of her best. And what she has done for individual nations, bringing some sort of order out of chaos, she is doing gradually for the comity of nations, leavening the public opinion of the world in favour of peace and justice. In the social sphere, her teaching has trans- formed the family, especially in regard to the status of woman, has abolished slavery, and has brought out what the ancient world never di-eamed of, the infinite worth of the in- dividual personality, while inculcating at the same time the highest altruistic ideals of universal brotherhood and membership in a common Body. In the sphere of knowledge, where the Christian Church is often blamed as a reactionary and obscurantist influence (a blame which, no doubt, is well deserved in certain cases), she has on the whole exercised a salutary check upon wild and fantastic speculation, while supplying at the same time the strongest possible stimulus to research, declaring the wonders of creation and of human nature to be a mirror of the glory and beauty of its Creator. The religion of the Bible is one which, while it fixes our ultimate gaze on the world to come (2 Cor 4^8), gives a new and inexhaustible interest to God's visible creation, in which it reads a record of His everlasting power and divinity (Ro 1 ^^), and, above all, to the study of mankind — history, anthropology, and kindi-ed studies — for there are written the records of His educative and redemptive dealings with the being whom He formed in His own image (Gn 1 26, 27), oxliv PALESTINE Palestine is a little country, no bigger than Wales ; but it was in the centre of the ancient civilised world, and the highway of the nations led along its borders from Egypt to Assyria. It was a mountain land, with fresher climate than either the Delta or the plains of Baby- lonia, and it was rich in corn and oil. It was therefore always coveted by the kings of Egypt and Assyria ; and though it had no ports, yet in the immediate N. the Phoenicians developed a great sea-traffic, and sent out colonies to Africa and Europe. The land from Dan to Beersheba — i.e. from N. to S. — was about 150 m. long, and contained 6,000 sq. m. W. of Jordan and 4,000 to the E. in Moab, Gilead, and Bashan. Western Pales- tine consists of a chain of mountains rising generally not more than 3,000 ft. above the sea, having a wide plain on the W. and the deep Jordan valley on the E. The mountains are of limestone, the plain of good soil, bordered by sand dunes or by crumbling sandy cliffs. In Lower Galilee the ridge of Carmel juts out NW., and the range of Gilboa runs further E., leaving the triangular inland plain of Esdraelon between them, bounded on the N. by the hills of Nazareth and of Lower Galilee, with Tabor as an outlier on the E. N., again, are the mountains of Upper Galilee, sloping down to the narrow plains and hills between Accho and Tyre. In the centre of the land Ebal and Gerizim are among the highest summits, divided by the narrow valley of Shechem. Between the mountains of Jerusalem and Hebron and the plains of Sharon and Philistia is the region of the foot-hills, called the Shephelah in the Bible. This continues N. to Carmel. The western spurs, which receive the W. winds from the sea, are clothed with copses ; the foot-hills are covered with olive groves, while the plains are fit for corn. The Hebron mountains — and, indeed, most of those through- out the country — are green with vineyards ; but the appearance of the hills, especially round Jerusalem and Shechem, is rugged and barren. The land is well supplied with springs throughout. The eastern steep slopes are very rocky and bare, and on this side, towards the S., the desert of Judah is a waste of white ridges with tall precipices above the Dead Sea. On the S. the mountains fall fi'om Hebron to the rolling grassy downs of Beersheba. There are several perennial streams in Sharon ; and under Carmel the boggy Kishon, rising at Tabor, enters the sea in the only bay S. of Tyre. There are others, again, flowing k to the Jordan, of which the chief are the waters of ^non, NE. of Shechem, and the stream in the Valley of Jezreel. The Jordan rises near Dan, at the foot of Hermon, and runs through the papyrus swamps of the Huleh lake to the pear-shaped Sea of Galilee, which is flanked by precipices mirrored in its waters. Thence, still descending, it reaches the Dead Sea, which is 1,300 ft. below the Mediterranean. It winds through a thicket of tamarisks and other low trees, never being broader than about 30 yds., and having some 30 fords, the last opposite the plain of Jericho ; but the current is rapid, especially near the mouth. The Dead Sea is 10 m. wide and 40 m. long, and on either side sheer precipices rise sometimes 1,000 ft. above the water. The country E. of Jordan includes half the Jordan Valley, which has on an average a total width of 10 m. Very steep slopes lead up to a plateau which stretches E. to the Syrian Desert. These slopes are sandstone below and hard limestone higher up. In Moab the plateau is bare and treeless, but in Gilead, to the N., the hills are covered in parts with woods of fir and oak. The only real forest in Western Palestine has now been sadly thinned, but presented twenty years ago a dense wood of oaks between Nazareth and Carmel. In Gilead, where there are many beautiful streams, especially the Jabbok, opposite Shechem, the scenery is at times park-like, at times presents only grey mountain slopes. N. of this, again, are the rich corn plains of Bashan, and the basalt regions of Golan and Argob, with their extinct volcanoes ; while far to the E. the 'Hill of Bashan' rises over the plains. There is thus much variety of scenery in Palestine, and while the plains are hot and fever-stricken in summer and autumn, the hills are healthier and cooler, especially when the W. wind blows daily in June from the sea. The climate of Palestine is like that of Southern Italy. In spring the plains are gay with flowers, and the Jordan Valley is carpeted with bright colours. In autumn all is brown and grey, parched by the summer sun and the searching E. winds of May and October. But the country is famous in the East for its fruits ; and figs, grapes, pomegi-anates, melons, and apricots are found in all parts of it. It is a ' good land,' ruined only by the evil deeds of inan. Amid the copses the traveller often lights on the wine-pressee and vineyard towers, which betoken former cultivation. Palestine is capable of supporting ten times cxlv PALESTINE its present population, and could well have held the numbers which we are told dwelt there in the days of the Hebrews. All the ancient fauna of the Bible — beasts, birds, and reptiles — still remain, except the lion, whose bones are found in the Jordan gravel beds ; the wild bull (miscalled by Greek translators the ' unicorn '), which was still hunted in Lebanon in 1130 B.C. ; and the bear, which is now only found on the snowy slopes of Hermon, 9,000 ft. above the sea. Even the fallow-deer has been found among the oaks of Tabor, and the roebuck in the copses of Carmel and Galilee, and in the woods of Gilead. The antelope runs in herds in the plains ; the ibex leaps among the ' rocks of the wild goats ' in the Desert of Judah. The ' coney,' or hyrax, has there, too, its home in the clifis ; the leopard and wolf haunt the Jordan, and the fox, jackal, and hyena are common, as are all birds of prey, and the wild doves which fill the oak woods ; while the partridge runs in the higher hills. ' The trees of Palestine are also the same as of old, though the ' apple ' is rarely found in the S. Even Leviathan — the crocodile — survives in the Crocodile river S. of Carmel, though Behe- moth— the elephant — is unknown. In the sixteenth century B.C. there were, however, herds of wild elephants on the Euphrates, as mentioned in the annals of Thothmes III, and the great beast was no doubt well known when Solomon and Hezekiah had thrones of ivory and Ahab made an ivory shrine. We may turn briefly to consider the chief towns of the country noticed in the Bible. In the mountains W. of Jordan Hebron was the chief city of the S., standing in a flat mountain vale surrounded by vineyards, and having under the floor of its Mosque the ancient rock sepulchi-e which appears to have been that of the Patriarchs. Jerusalem — which was already a strong city of Amorites in Joshua's time — occupied a defensible position, surrounded, except on the N., by deep ravines. The old city occupied two spurs on the W., separated by interior valleys from the Temple ridge, which sank gi-adually to Ophel — the priests' quarter, walled-in later — beyond which on the E. was the gorge of the Kidron, with its pre- cipices ; and E. again the chalky slopes of Olivet dotted with olives. All that now re- mains of ancient Jerusalem are the ramparts of Herod's outer Temple enclosure, and part of the western wall and its great tower — also of the same age. The old city was rather larger than the present walled town ; and after 30 a.d. it had extended N. to include a total of 300 acres, requiring a new third wall on this side. Exploration shows that the traditional site of Calvary, in the Cathe- dral, is the summit of a knoll, with a steep southern slope, which appears to have formed the citadel of the lower city ; and it is prac- tically impossible that this should not have been very early included in Jerusalem. The more probable site of Golgotha is the hillock outside the N. gate of the city, to which Jewish tradition still points as the site of the ancient place of execution. Passing N. by Bethel, a hamlet on the grey rocks, we reach the ancient capital at Shechem, close to which on the E. is Jacob's Well — one of the few spots where we can feel certain of the presence of Christ ; it is now preserved in the ruins of a Crusaders' church. In Shechem the last remnant of the Samaritans preserve their ancient copies of the Law, and yearly observe the Passover on Gerizim. W. of this, Samaria, in the low hills, presents the ruins of Herod's temple and colonnades on a long, low hillock. Thence we pass to the small brown plain of Dothan, with its well, at the site still keeping the ancient name ; and so on to Jezreel on a spur of Gilboa, where we find remains of wine-presses to the E., where was Naboth's vineyard. A little to the N. is Shunem with its lemon gardens and springs ; and on the N. of the volcanic peak of Moriah, is the hamlet of Endor with its cave, and Nain, a little village to the W., hard by. The only other towns needing notice in the N. are Accho, on the N. side of its bay, a city mentioned on monuments very early ; and Tyre, with its two harbours N. and S., now a fair-sized place, and no longer a ruin. Sidon, which has a larger port, is beyond the limits of the Holy Land. On the sea-coast Gaza alone — on its hillock surrounded by long olive avenues — is left as a city, out of the five towns of the Philistines. Ascalon, on the shore, is a ruin half covered with sand, with remains of the walls built by Richard Lion Heart. Ashdod, on a hill of red sand, is but a mud village, as is Ekron further N. The site of Gath is probably the present Tell es Safi, at the mouth of the valley of Elah. Lachish is a Tell, or mound, further S., where remains have been excavated dating back to Joshua's time. Joppa remains the port of Jerusalem (connected now by rail), and is a considerable place, famous for its orange groves. In the plain of Sharon to the N., CaBsarea is now a ruin with a few cottages, and remains of the walls, the theatre, the race-course, and the temple of Herod's time, extending beyond the walls of the small Crusader city. In the Jordan Yalley, Jericho is represented by mounds of sun-dried brick, close to the hills at 'Ain es Sultan, N. of the Valley of Achor (Wady Kelt) ; while a solitary tamarisk in the plain to the E. marks the site of Gilgal. The only other town W. of the river is Beth- cxlvi PALESTINE shean, N. of the Valley of Jezreel, now a foot of the mountains. The latter site seems mud hamlet, but with walls, theatre, and temple, of the Roman age. E. of Jordan, all Moab lies in ruins ; and these, though retaining their ancient names, are mostly of the Christian period, such as those at Dibon, Medeba, Heshbon, Rabbath- Ammon, and Gerasa. The hill slopes, how- ever, are strewn with cromlechs and standing stones, probably of the Canaanite age. Maha- naim in Gilead is a ruin in the circular hollow plain on the hills, and is now called Mukhmah; while, N. of the Jabbok, Ramoth Gilead stands on a high hill at the present village of Reimun, and Suf further N. may be the Mizpeh of Jacob and Jephthah. Mizpeh in Benjamin is not to be confused, and is probably the present ruined mound Tell Nasbeh, S. of Bethel, near Geba, and Ramah, and Michmash with its deep 'Valley of Thorns,' and its cliffs Seneh and Bozez. In Bashan there are also few villages ; and the sites of Ashtaroth Karnaim (Tell 'Ash- terah), and Edrei (Adra) are ruined mounds. This region is full of fine houses and temples, now overthrown, which bear dated Greek in- scriptions of the second and third centuries a.d. — these have no connexion with the old cities of Og and Sihon ; but further E., at Sia, is a temple, which by its inscriptions is known to have been built for Herod the Great, to the god Baal Shemim. Damascus by the rush- ing Abana, beyond the limits of Palestine, is still a city under Hermon, with some 250,000 inhabitants. Banias, at the source of Jordan, above Dan (Tell el Kady), represents Csesarea Philippi ; and the scenery, where the river bursts full-grown from the rocky cave with its Greek shrine of Pan, is amongst the most picturesque in Palestine, tall poplars lining the river, while the ruins of the Crusader castle tower over the village, and the snowy Hermon dome rises to the N. The scenery of the New Testament is mostly connected with Lower Galilee. Naza- reth was a remote village, otherwise unnoticed in history, lying in a hollow plateau on the hills, with a cliff behind to the N. It is now a thriving town. Tiberias, which was a new city in the days of Christ, is now a walled town on the W. of the Sea of Galilee, and the remains of older walls, enclosing a larger area, are traced on the slopes above. Chorazin with its ruined synagogue is a cer- tain site. N. of the lake, as is Magdala, a village near the shore on the W., N. of Tiberias. The site of Capernaum has been disputed. Christian tradition placing it at Tell Hum (Caphar-Ahim of the Talmud) on the N. shore, where too are remains of a synagogue ; while Jewish mediaeval tradition places it further W., at the ruin of Minyeh, on the shore in the Plain of Gennesaret — a small recess at the best to meet the requirements of the account by Josephus, who speaks of the Fountain of Capernaum as watering the Gennesaret plain. As to Bethsaida, there appears to have been only one place so named — at the mouth of the Jordan where it enters the lake, and E. of the river. It is now called et-Tell, and a sort of delta has been formed which now makes the mouth of the river nearly a mile further S. The site of the Baptism at Bethabara was only a day's journey from Cana of Galilee (now Kefr Kenna), N. of Nazareth, and it was also about two or three days from Bethany (Jn 128, 35, 45 22 iQio 11(5,17) on the Mount of Olives. Thus the Christian tradition which places it E. of Jericho appears to be incor- rect ; and the name occurs only once in Pales- tine, at the gi'eat ford of 'Abfirah, not far S. of the Sea of Galilee. This situation fulfils all requisites in a satisfactory manner. Other doubtful sites, such as Gergesa and Ephraim, need not be discussed ; but the fact that Dalmanutha stands (Mk 8 ^O) instead of Magdala may be explained by the latter being the Hebrew term for ' tower,' while the former is probably an Aramaic name, meaning ' place of the fort.' Aramaic was the common tongue of Palestine when the Gospels were written, and probably the language spoken by Christ Himself. The last scenes of His ministry are con- nected with Bethany, now a little stone village on the S. slopes of the central top of Olivet, where is an old ruined castle, once guarding the Benedictine Nunnery of Queen Milicent of Jerusalem. The first scene of His life is laid at Bethlehem, which is now a well-built Christian town not far S. of Jerusalem, on a long spur with terraced sides planted with olives. The cathedral here is the oldest church in the world ; the pillars of its basilica are those erected by Constantine. The rocky grotto beneath, with its rock-cut manger, is the traditional stable by the inn — the only sacred site of Gospel history mentioned earlier than the fourth century a.d. by Chris- tian writers ; for it was known to Justin Martyr and Origen, as well as to Jerome. Such rock stables often occur in ruined towns of the Hebron mountains ; and the site is at least possible. Space does not allow further description of places like AduUam, Debir, Gezer, Megiddo, Antipatris, Bezek, Taanach. and other cities recently rediscovered with many more ; for of some 600 towns in Palestine noticed in the Bible at least 400 are well known; and about 150 of them were not to be found on any map before the survey of Palestine was carried out between 1872 and 1882 a.d. cxlvii BIBLE ANTIQUITIES The most distinctive characteristic of Bible study during the past century has not been criticism (which began in the eighteenth cen- tury), but rather discovery. The comparative method, as in other studies, has gradually taken the place of older forms of comment ; and a mass of independent and reliable informa- tion has come to light, in an unexpected man- ner, due to scientific exploration of Eastern lands, and of their hidden treasures. For more than twelve centuries Western Asia was practically closed to the scholar and explorer by Moslem fanaticism ; but when at length the increase of civilisation, and of facilities for travel, enabled Europeans to study the real- ities of Eastern life on the ground, unhoped- for treasures, forgotten civilisations, languages, and scripts, which had, for thousands of years, been preserved under the sands of Egypt, or the foundations of Asiatic palaces, were gradu- ally recovered, and made available by the zeal of explorers and the genius of scholars. Through such discovery the study of the Bible has been placed on an entirely new basis ; and, while many of the theories of the eighteenth and earlier centuries have thus been rendered obsolete, the testimony of monuments so pre- served has more and more served to confirm the history, and to explain the ideas and cus- toms, of the Hebrews and of their neighbours, as described in both the Old and the New Testament, by the light of original and en- tirely independent evidence. We have prob- ably not as yet by any means exhausted the possibilities of such study ; and almost every year now adds some welcome detail to the total of our knowledge, through research in Palestine, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, or in Asia Minor, and through the better under- standing of the languages and written char- acters of the monuments, in which such records are preserved as contemporary accounts of events noticed in the Bible. Before about 1820 a.d. only Greek, Roman, and a few Phoenician monuments, of late date, were available to the scholar ; and study was chiefly devoted to the comparison of manu- scripts and versions of the Scriptures, which only carry us back to 916 A.D. for the Hebrew, and to the fourth and fifth centuries of our era for the Greek, Syriac, and Samaritan manuscripts. Egyptian hieroglyphs, and cu- neiform tablets, had, it is true, excited the curiosity of observers even in the middle ages, but it was not mitil 1822 that an impetus was given to such study through the decipher- ment of the Egyptian by ChampoUion, the famous French scholar. Already in 1812 the first Hittite monuments had been described by Burckhardt at Hamath ; yet their importance, and the wide diffusion of this civilisation, re- mained unsuspected till about twenty years ago. In 1835 Sir Henry Rawlinson began the study of cuneiform, which by his genius was developed into a new special science ; but it was not till 1888 that proof of the civilisation of Canaan, in the time of Moses and Joshua, was afforded by the recovery of the political correspondence of Asiatic kings and chiefs with the Pharaohs, found at the village of Amama, between Memphis and Thebes in Egypt. The discoveries of E. Chantre (1893) and of Dr. H. Winckler (1907), in Cappadocia, have added cuneiform texts which give us the history of Hittites, Egyptians, and Babylonians in wonderful detail in the fifteenth and four- teenth centuries B.C. The modern scholar no longer relies on second-hand information derived from Greek or Roman writers, who were often ignorant of the realities of foreign civilisations ; or on the corrupted text of Josephus, the Hebrew his- torian, and of Manetho, the Egyptian chron- icler of Ptolemaic times ; or on the few fragments of Berosus the Babylonian. He can study the original sources on monuments of granite, basalt, and limestone, or in pottery tablets and in papyri, as easily as the later Phoenician texts, or the coins of Palestine, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Languages the existence of which had been entirely forgotten — such as the Akkadian (in Chaldea), the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Sabean (in Arabia), the ancient Persian, Vannic, and Lycian — have been recovered ; and have been explained by aid of living tongues, such as Turkish, Arabic, Coptic, etc. ; while others, found later, still form the subject of discussion among scholars, such as the Hittite and cognate dialects, which have only recently come to light. Egyptian research, while receiving perhaps more general attention than any other branch, still suffers from the fragmentary nature of the information recovered, and from the absence of systematic chronicles. We know that the civilisation of the Delta was very ancient, but the age in which it first arose is still uncertain within some two thousand years. From about IfiOO to 1200 B.C. the Egj'ptians were masters of the great trade-route, through cxlviii BIBLE ANTIQUITIES Palestine and Syria, to Mesopotamia. Monu- ments of Rameses II occur (about 1330 B.C.) at Sidon, Beirut, and even in Bashan, where also an inscription of Seti I (about 1400 B.C.) has quite recently been found ; but as yet we have only a single allusion to the Hebrews in Egyptian texts, namely, to the attack on ' Israel ' in Palestine by Mineptah after 1300 B.C. On the other hand, the most important contribution to early Bible history as yet recovered is found in the Canaanite letters, already mentioned as preserved in Egyptian archives ; and in these we have probably the earliest monumental notice of the Hebrews in the fifteenth century B.C., at the time of Joshua's conquest of Palestine. Babylonian and Assyrian monuments con- tain much more that has direct bearing on the Bible than is found in Egypt. The chronicles of Babylon preserve an exact chronology, back to the date of the founding of that great city about 2250 B.C. ; and the existence of Chaldean kings many centuries earlier has been ascertained, although the earlier chronology, befoi'e the date above given, still remains very uncertain. From the ninth century B.C. onwards the names of kings of Israel and Judah occur in the records of their Assyrian contemporaries who are noticed in the Old Testament ; and texts of Nebuchadnezzar, others referring to the Belshazzar of the book of Daniel, and later, Persian inscriptions of Darius and Artaxerxes serve to illustrate and to confirm biblical history. The famous excavations of Layard at Nineveh, which led to the recovery of most of this information, were first undertaken in 1845 ; but quite recent explorations by Ameri- cans at Nippur (Calneh) in Chaldea, south of Babylon ; by Germans at Babylon itself, and in North Syria ; by French Govei'nment Ex- peditions at Tell Loh in Chaldea, at Shushan (east of the lower course of the river Tigris), and in Cappadocia, immediately north of Syria, have materially added to our general know- ledge of the earliest ages of civilisation in Western Asia. Phoenician records are generally too late to be of assistance in respect to Bible history, though interesting as showing the influence of Hebrew speech on this famous maritime nation, which held the shores from Tyre northwards under Lebanon. In the fifteenth century B.C. the Phoenicians spoke the same language used in Babylonia and Assyria, and wrote in the cuneiform character, then com- monly employed throughout "Western Asia ; but their later inscriptions, about the fourth century B.C., are in alphabetic characters, and in a dialect closely akin to Hebrew, while the texts of the Samala ruins (in the extreme north of SjTia), in the eighth century B.C., give an Aramaic dialect, whence the later Palmyrene and Syriac are derived. Palestine has so far only yielded three very ancient texts, namely, the Moabite Stone (ninth century B.C.), the Siloam inscription (before 703 B.C.), and a cuneiform tablet of the fifteenth century B.C., found at Lachish, in which Zimrida — a local governor whose letters also occur in the Tell el Amarna collec- tion— is noticed. The Galilean synagogues of the second century a.d. present square Hebrew texts, and one somewhat earlier occurs on the tomb of the Beni Hezir at Jerusalem ; but as yet very few ancient inscriptions — even including coins and seals — have been found in the Holy Land. Hittite monuments present a very archaic art, with human figures which are recognised to be Mongolic, wearing a peculiar costume, and long pigtails like the Tartars. These carvings occur at Hamath and Aleppo in North Syria, accompanied by a distinct hieroglyphic system of writing ; and they are probably as old as 2000 B.C. They are found in the region where, as we know from other monuments, the Hittites lived from the earliest times down to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (600 B.C.) ; but they extend also all over Asia Minor ; and two examples have been found in Babylon itself, while Hittite seals have been recovered in Nineveh. The Hittites themselves were confined to North Syria and Cappadocia, but this class of antiquities belongs to a race evidently akin to the ancient Akkadians of Babylonia, of which the Hittites formed only one tribe or branch among many others. Greek antiquities in Western Asia are valu- able for comparative purposes, in studying the New Testament. The most important example is the stone found in Jerusalem, which pre- sents a text prohibiting any Gentile from entering the inner courts of Herod's temple. It was standing in place in the time of our Lord, and of St. Paul. Other texts witness the existence of a Greek-speaking population in Decapolis (east of the Sea of Galilee, within the province of Bashan) in the same age. Others again, further east, belong to the pagan temple of Sia, built by a subject of Herod the Great. It is well known that the technical expressions used, especially in the Acts of the Apostles, agree in a very remark- able manner with the wording of Greek texts, and of classic writings, which refer to the government of Syria and Asia Minor by the Romans in the first century of our era. The Greek papyri from Egypt have also added much that is interesting to our knowledge of early Christianity. Palestine Exploration has been an important feature in the general development of the comparative method of Bible studv. The cxlix BIBLE ANTIQUITIES first scientific enquiry into geography in Pales- tine, undertaken in 1838 by the famous Ameri- can explorer Dr. Robinson, substituted for the contradictory (and sometimes ignorant) traditions of the Latin and Greek Churches a real study of Bible topography on the ground, with the identification of ancient sites, where the old names still remain almost unchanged in modern Syrian speech. In 1864 the survey of Jerusalem was carried out by Sir C. W. Wilson, K.C.B., and in 1867-70 important excavations on the Temple hill, and in the city, were made by Sir Charles Warren, K.C.B. The survey of Western and Eastern Palestine by the present writer followed (1872-1882); and about 150 Bible towns were then dis- covered, which had not appeared on older maps. The survey of Sinai, begun in 1867, with later researches, has done much to clear up disputed questions as to the story of the exodus. But in addition to geographical re- search, the study of archaeology in Palestine has dispelled many false conceptions, and has brought to light many indications of ancient civilisation, both Hebrew and Canaanite, al- though at present the task of excavation, at sites other than Jerusalem, has only been re- cently begun, and much remains still to be done. At Lachish, and at the probable site of Gath, at Gezer, at Taanach in Galilee, and elsewhere, English, American, and German explorers have recently laid bare the founda- tions of ancient cities, in south and north alike. They have recovered inscriptions, He- brew weights and gems and coins, remains of early Canaanite idols, and other valuable indi- cations of the early civilisation of the country which illustrate Bible statements. The de- struction of Canaanite idolatrous emblems by the Hebrews renders it impossible to find such remains, on the surface, in the Holy Land ; and it is only by excavation that they can be recovered. The general result of such practical work has been to confirm the historical statements of the Bible as a whole, whenever these can be compared with contemporary records. The history of Babylonia is accurately traced to the days of Abraham ; and the civilisation of Canaan, as described in the time of Moses and Joshua, is proved by the Egyptian chro- nicles of victory, and by the extant remains, which equally attest the early wealth and cul- ture of the Hebrew kings. We find, more- over, that records on permanent materials — stone or brick — existed as early as the time when Moses wrote the tablets of the Law ; that gems were then carved, and tents with golden pillars used ; that ancient scribes were able to preserve their records correctly through the lapse of more than a thousand years, and were careful and faithful in copying their yet older authorities ; and in general, that there is nothing that suggests any anachronism or misrepresentation in the picture of ancient civilisation preserved to us in the Pentateuch. cl HEBREW CALENDAR, COINS, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES Calendar The growth of the Hebrew Calendar cannot be traced here, but its general form in later times may be given. The year, determined by the recurrence of the seasons, was divided into twelve months, according to the changes of the moon, numbering alternately twenty- nine and thirty days. There is some difference of opinion as to when the year was supposed to begin at different epochs of Hebrew history. Before the exile, it may have begun in autumn ; but afterwards there seems to have been a double arrangement, by which the civil year was reckoned to begin in autumn and the sacred year in spring. The months are usually indicated in the Old Testament by numbers, as the ' first ' month ; but the following names gradually became affixed to them. Abib, or Nisan, corresponded approximately to our April, and the others in order were : Zif, Sivan, Thammuz, Ab, Elul, Tishri or Ethanim, Bui, Chisleu, Tebeth, Shebat, and Adar. The month was divided into weeks of seven days each, the last, not the first as with us, being the sabbath day of rest. The day was reckoned from sunset to sunset, and was divided into watches or hours, according as night-time or daytime was in question. Money The earliest Jewish coins were struck in the time of Simon Maccabseus, about 140 B.C., but Persian, Egyptian, and Phoenician money was in use before that, and later on Greek and Roman coins were in circulation. Of course, from very early times, various precious metals were used as means of exchange, either in the lump or in the form of rings, the value being determined by the weight as shown by the balance. The following are the principal values of gold and silver as estimated by the weight : — Early Hebrew. Jewish. £ s. d. s. d. Light Shekel, silver 18 12 Heavy Shekel, silver 3 4 2 4 Light Manah, silver 4 3 4 Light Manah, gold 66 13 4 Light Talent, silver 250 0 0 Light Talent, gold 4000 0 0 Coins were not in use before 700 B.C., and none are noticed in the Bible before the time of Ezra. In Ezr269 and Neh 7 7o, 71, 72 ^e cli find darJcei)io)i, and in 1 Ch29 7 Ezr827 adarhon, probably the same piece of money, and trans- lated ' dram ' in the Authorised Version and ' daric ' in the Revised Version. It is a foreign word, probably of Persian origin, the Persians having a 'daric' which weighed 130 grains. In the New Testament the following words are to be noticed, belonging to the Greek or Roman coinage : — Mite {Leptori), Mkl242, the smallest Jewish (bronze) coin = J farthing. Farthing {Kodrantes), MtS^*^, \ Roman As = ^ farthing. Farthing (^.5sano«), MtlO^^, the Roman As = a halfpenny or cent. Penny (^Denarius or Denarioii)^ MtlS^s, etc., a Roman coin = %\d. Piece of silver (Z>?-ac/i/«e), LklS^, a coin of Antioch = the denarius. Tribute money (Didrachmo/i), Mtl724, equiva- lent to two drachms of Antioch = l.s. -id. Piece of silver (Argurion), Mt26i^, equal in value to three denarii, or 2s. l^d. Piece of money (Stater), Mtl727, same value as last. Weights Light Shekel = 160 grains. Heavy Shekel = 320 grains. Light Manah = 50 Light Shekels = 8,000 grains = 1 lb. 4 oz. 13 dwt. 8 grs. Heavy Manah = 100 Shekels = 16,000 grains. Light Talent = 3,000 Light Shekels = 480,000 grains. Heavy Talent = 3,000 Heavy Shekels = 960,000 grains. Bekah = i Shekel. Rebah = i Shekel. Gerah = ^ Shekel. Talent, or Kikkar = 60 Manahs. Measures of Length The Egyptians had a cubit of 20*6 inches, and used, later, one of about 21-6 inches. The ancient Akkadians of Chaldea used a unit of 10"5 inches ; we do not know if this was used by Babylonians and Assyrians. The length of the Siloam tunnel (1,200 cubits) shows that, in Hezekiah's age, the Hebrew cubit cannot have exceeded 1 7 inches. Accord- ing to Maimonides the building cubit was 16 inches, and the smaller cubit 13 "3 inches, equal to half of an Arabic Drad, or 'arm ' HEBREW CALENDAR, COINS, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES The word cubit means a ' forearm.' The cubit was divided as follows : — Barley corn •33 inches Finger , , •66 Palm , , 2-66 Hand , , 5-33 Span • > . 8-00 Foot , . 10-66 Small 3ubit . 13-33 Building cubit . . 16-00 Large cubit . 18-66 Square Measure The Hebrew square measure (Ex 27 9- 12) •was based on a square of 50 cubits, so that a Kor of land (with a 16-inch cubit) would be 3-03 acres, or very close to the Arabic Fecldan^ or ' yoke ' of land, of 3^3 acres. Dry Measure According to the rabbis the Hebrew Lug was equal to the contents of six hen's eggs, and held 6,000 grains weight of water. This measure agrees closely with that used in Log 24 cubic inches 0^69 pints. Cab 96 n 11 2-76 „ Omer 172^8 1) I) 4-96 „ Hin 288 )) )) 104 gallons. Seah 576 ?? n 2-08 „ E2jhah 1728 7) )) 6^20 „ Kor 17280 7) M 62^00 „ Liquid Measure This, as described by Josephus, agrees with Grreek measures : — Hebrew. Greek. cub. in. L6g 32-7 0^81 pts. I Xesta 0-94 pts. Cab 130^8 3^24 „ 4 Xcstce 3-76 ,, Omer 236 •O 6-70 „ 7 Xedx 6-58 ,, Hin 393 0 1 •40 gals. 2 Choas 1 ^39 gals. Seah 785^0 2^90 „ li Modii 2-80 ,, Bath 2.353 •e 8-40 „ 1 Mctretes 8^40 „ Kor 23536 •O 84-00 ,, 10 Metretes 84 ^0 ,, BIBLE CHRONOLOGY For the period before the Call of Abraham no chronology is possible, and for many years after that event, indeed until the times of the kings, the dates are more or less doubtful. The duration of the Oppression and of the rule of the various Judges as given in the book of Judges is greatly in excess of the interval probably to be assigned to them ; but it is likely that many of the events described were really contemporaneous, not successive. The dates assigned to the successive Hebrew kings are based upon the length of their reigns as given in the books of Samuel and Kings, corrected so far as possible by the evidence of the Assyrian, inscriptions which, in the matter of Clironology, are of great value. Dates. Events. B.C. ?2300 Abraham. ?1700 Joseph. Descent into Egypt. ? 1250 Moses. The exodus. 1200-1050 Period of the Judges. 1040 Saul. 1017 David. 977 Solomon. 973 Foundation of Temple. 987 Division of Monarchy. Dates. B.C. 937 920 917 915 914 900 (890) 899 (889) 899 (889) 876 Israel. Judah. Jeroboam I. Rehoboam. Invasion of shak. . . Abijah. Asa. Nadab. L^ .-^ c% e-\ 1^ n rJaasna. Elah. Zimri. Omri. Foundation of Sa- niaria. . . . . Jehoshaphat, After Division of Monarchy Shi- Dates. Israel. Juds B.C. 875 Ahab. 854 Ahab at battle of Karkar. 853 Ahaziah. 852 Jehoram (Joram). 851 . , Jehoram. 843 ■ • ■ . Aliaziah. 842 Jehu. . Athaliah. Pays tribute to Assyria. 8.36 . • Joash. • 815 Jehoahaz. 798 Joash. II BIBLE CHRONOLOGY Dates. B.C. 796 789 782 739 741 740 738 736 735 734 Israel. Jeroboam II. Judah. Amaziah. Azariali (Uzziali). Jotham. 729 Zechariah. Slial- lum. Menahem. Pays tribute to Assyria. Pekahiah. Pekah. Alliance with Rezin of Syria against Judah. Invasion of Tig- lath-pileser,king of Assyria. Hoshea. Ahaz. Dates. Israel. Judah. B.C. 722 Fall of Samaria. 720 Hezekiah. 701 Invasion of Senna cherib. 692 Manasseh. 641 Amon. 639 Josiah. 608 Battle of Megiddo Jehoahaz. 608 Jehoiakim. 607 Fall of Nineveh. 605 Battle of Carchem ish. 604 Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon 597 Jehoiachin. Zede kiah. 586 • O 0 • Fall of Jerusalem. Later Events B.C. 586-538 538 536 536-330 515 458 445 433 330 322 312 320-198 197-167 167 165 160 143 142-135 134-104 103 Period of the exile in Babylon. Capture of Babylon by Cyrus. Return of the Jews from e.xile. Period of Persian dominion. Building of Second Temple com- pleted. Ezra's arrival at Jerusalem. Nehemiah's first visit. Nehemiah's second visit. Conquest of Persia by Alexander. Beginning of Greek (Ptolemaic) dynasty in Egypt. Beginning of Greek (Seleucid) dynasty in Syria. Period of Ptolemaic dominion. Period of Syrian dominion. Revolt of the Maccabees. Temple services resumed. Judas Maccabseus (166-160) falls in battle. Jonathan (160-143) put to death. Simon High-Priest and Prince. Hyrcanus I. Aristobulus I, king. B.C. 102-76 75-67 66-63 63 62-40 40 40-37 37-4 7-6? B.C. 4-A.D. 6 A.D. 6-41 26-36 26-29 29 29-61 41-44 44-70 64 70 Jannseus. Alexandra. Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II. Jerusalem taken by Pompey. Be- ginning of Roman dominion. Hyrcanus II under Roman sove- reignty. Parthian invasion. Autigonus. Herod the Great. Birth of Jesus Christ. Archelaus ethnarch of Judfea, etc. Roman Procurators in Judaia. Pontius Pilate Procurator of Judsea. Ministry of Jesus. Death of Jesus. The story of the Acts of the Apostles. Agrii)pa I (grandson of Herod), king of Judpea. Second Period of Roman Procurators. Fire at Rome. Persecution by Nero. Destruction of Jerusalem. cliii THE COMMENTARY GENESIS INTRODUCTION 1. Title and Contents. Genesis is the first of the five books which compose ' The Pen- tateuch ' and deal with the history and religion of the Hebrews before their final settlement in Canaan. It is known in Hebrew as ' B're- shith ' (' In the beginning'), from the word with which it opens. ' Genesis ' is a Greek word meaning ' origin ' or ' beginning,' and is the name applied to it in the LXX version. It has passed into general use as an appropriate description of the contents. The book is divided into two main sections : chs. 1-11, giving an outline of the Hebrew traditions regarding the early history of the world and man ; and chs. 12-50, containing an account of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, in their bearing upon the origin of the Hebrew race. More particularly, its contents may be summarised as follows. Part 1. The Primeval History : (a) chs. 1-5, the story of Adam and his descendants ; (b) chs. 6-11, the story of Noah and his sons. Part 2. The Patriarchal History : (a) chs. 12-26, the lives of Abraham and Isaac ; (b) chs. 27-.36, the life of Jacob ; (c) chs. 37-50, the life of Joseph. The first eleven chapters may be re- garded as an introduction, designed to show the relation of the Hebrew race to other na- tions, and connect their history with that of the world. The real history of the book commences with the twelfth chapter, where the call of Abraham marks the beginning of an epoch. As a whole, the book presents an account of the origin and rise of the Hebrew nation, written from a religious point of view, to show how God chose them to be His pe- culiar people, and made with them those covenants and promises which were fulfilled in their later history. 2. Religious value. While recognising the progressiveness of revelation, and finding the standard of Christian morals in the New Tes- tament rather than in the Old, we must still regard the book of Genesis as ' profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for in- struction which is in righteousness.' Certain great fundamental truths of the religious and moral life are woven into the texture of its narratives, and the lessons to be derived from them have lost little or nothing of their original significance and force. That God is one, the Source of all that is, the Supreme Lord and Ruler of the world ; that what He creates and does is all ' very good ' ; that He does not brook disobedience to His will, but punishes the sinner, while He rewards them that diligently seek and serve Him : these are some of the ideas on which it insists, ideas which lie at the root of all morality and re- ligion. It has even a gospel to proclaim, for the love and grace of God are brought out conspicuously, not only in His normal rela- tions with man, but amid the ruin and havoc wrought by sin. He holds communion with the creature whom He has created in His own image ; He loves and cares for him in his state of innocence or rectitude ; He has mercy on him when he has sinned and forfeited the blessings of Paradise. Throughout the book there is a conception of God as one, holy, spiritual, and an insight into His relationship with man and the world, neither of which can be paralleled in ancient literature. Some of its earlier portions have points of re- semblance to the primitive traditions of other nations, but they are clearly distinguished from them in their representations of moral and religious truths. They may be cast in simple language, and embody ideas of their time ; but, unlike the ancient mythologies, they are never immoral or unreal, and they trace everything to the thought and action of a living, personal God. The teaching of Genesis, then, is still ap- plicable in Christian times. It is the more valuable that it is enforced, not by precept merely, but by concrete examples in personal and family life. Its characters are real men, not fictitious heroes or demigods. And God is actually in touch with them, working out His purposes in the events of their lives. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; in all the incidents of their careers, in the general march of human history in which they bear their part, we see Him moving and acting with merciful, redeeming aim. The promise that ' the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent,' the covenant with Noah after the Flood, the choice and call of Abra- ham, the covenants with him and his successors, the election of the Hebrew nation and its progressive consolidation into a theocracy or kingdom of God, are all indications of His underlying purpose to redeem the whole world INTRO. GENESIS INTRO. from the effects of ' man's first disobedience.' Genesis thus graphically and realistically de- picts the beginning and partial development of that long and patient process which cul- minated in the work of Christ. 3. Authorship. Until recently, Genesis, like the rest of the Pentateuch, was regarded as the work of Moses. This view was ac- cepted on the authority of Jewish tradition, which generally seeks to attribute the sacred books of the nation to the most famous names in its history. The tradition, how- ever, did not arise until a comparatively late period ; and, in the absence of corroboration, its evidence can hardly be regarded as con- clusive. The book itself is anonymous, and contains nothing to suggest a Mosaic author- ship. On the contrary, it bears traces of having been put together in its present form, many years after the death of the great Hebrew patriot, when the Canaanite was no longer in the land (Gn 12 6), and the Jewish monarchy indeed had been established (Gn 36^1). Dual accounts are sometimes given of the same event, and different passages exhibit such diversity of literary and other character- istics as point to an origin in independent sources. Accordingly the view is now largely entertained that Genesis is the work of an unknown editor who had access to documents containing the traditions and early records of the Hebrew race, and welded them together into a whole. For a fuller discussion of the subject, reference should be made to art. ' The Origin of the Pentateuch.' Of the three documents there mentioned as underlying the Pentateuch, only two are to be met with in Genesis, viz. the so-called Primitive and Priestly documents. The latter supplies the framework of the book, and the various parts of the former are dovetailed into it, as it were, by way of heightening the effect, and giving more detailed information. As is pointed out in the general article, the difference of style in the two documents is clearly marked. The Primitive document is lively and picturesque, and abounds in descrip- tive touches, which lighten up the narrative, and impart a living interest to the people and places described. The Priestly document, on the other hand, is written in a more formal manner : it is much taken up with chronologies and genealogies, and loves to dwell upon covenants and religious ordinances. In illus- tration of these characteristics, the Priestly account of the end of the Plood in Gn 8^-^ may be compared with the picturesque descrip- tion of the same event taken from the Primi- tive document in 8 ^^^ j also the appearance of God to Abraham in c. 17 with the ac- counts of similar appearances in 16 ''-^^ and 181-8.16. "^he two threads of narrative, Primitive and Priestly, are supposed to have been based upon older written accounts com- piled from oral traditions, and to have been put together, to form the present book of Genesis, in the days of Ezra. 4. Analysis. The framework of the book is marked by the repetition of the formula, 'These are the generations of,' a phrase which occurs ten times, and always at the beginning of a new section, except in 2*, where it is put at the end of the first account of the Creation, to which it properly belongs. The instances of its occurrence, with the references, are these : 2 * (of the Creation) ; 5 1 (of Adam) ; 6 9 (of Noah) ; 10 1 (of Shem, Ham, and Ja- pheth) ; 1110 (of Shem) ; 1127 (of Terah) ; 25 12 (of Ishmael) ; 25 19 (of Isaac) ; 361- 9 (of Esau); 37^ (of Jacob). The passages derived from the Priestly document which constitutes the framework are roughly as follow : in Part 1 (chs. 1-11) : 11-2 4a 51^ 6 9-22 7 6-8 5 813-19 9 1-17 8 28-10 T 10 20-23,31-32 1110-32. jn Part 2 (chs. 12-50) : (a) the history of Abraham and Isaac, 1615-17 27 211-6 231-20 257-20 26 34-35. (b) the history of Jacob, 27 *6-28 9 34 (parts) 35 9-i5. 23-29 36 ; (c) the history of Joseph 37 1-2^ 46 ^^ 47 ^-n 48 3-7 49 2g^ 5012-13. The Primitive document is traced in these passages : in Part 1, 2**^-4 QIS 71-5 §6-12,20-22 918-27 10 8-19,24-30 111-9- Jq Part 2, (a) 12i-16i^ 18i-20i8 217-2224 24 1^25 « 25 21-26 33; (b) 27i-« 2810-.3320 34 (parts) 351-8,16-22. (c) 37 2b-46 6 46 28-47* 4712-48 = 48 8-49 27 50 1-11' 1^26, The discovery of the composite character of Genesis, it may be added, need not be regarded as affecting the question of the inspiration of the book. That question re- mains practically the same, whether Genesis be the work of one or of several hands. The dates assigned to the parts of which it is sup- posed to be composed, as well as to the re- casting of them in their present form, are all embraced within the age of the prophetic activity in Israel ; and the whole bears all the marks of true and genuine inspiration. In this respect Genesis will stand comparison with any of the' historical books of the Old Testa- ment. God, it must be remembered, ' at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets ' (Heb 1 1). 1.1 GENESIS 1. 1 CHAPTERS l-2*» The Creation ' The foundation of foundations and pillar of all wisdom is to know that the First Being is, and that He giveth existence to everything that exists! ' Thus wrote Moses Maimonides, a Jewish scholar of the 12th cent, a.d., con- cerning whom the Jewish proverb rmis : ' From Moses to Moses there arose none like Moses.' He had in his mind the opening chap- ter of the Bible, the object of which is to lay this foundation ; to declare the existence of the One God ; to teach that the Universe was created by Him alone, not by a multitude of deities ; that it is the product of a living, personal Will, not a necessary development of the forces inherent in Matter ; that it is not the sport of Chance, but the harmonious result of Wisdom. The writer, and the Blessed Spirit who guided him, had but one object in view, to insist on the two truths which under- lie all others, the Unity of God and the deri- vation of all things from Him. If we remember that, we shall be relieved of a difficulty which has greatly troubled devout and tlioughtful men. Many are the essays and books which have been written on the discrepancies between the scientific account of the mode in which our globe came into being, and the account given in this first chapter of the Bible. Astronomy has shown it to be highly probable that, millions of years ago, an inconceivably immense mass of glowing gas gradually cooled down and took the form of a rotating sphere. This threw off the planets, our earth amongst the number. The central part is now the sun. The earth by slow stages grew fit to be the abode of life. Assuming that the astronomers are right, or, indeed, on any reasonable supposition, the sun and moon were not created later than the earth, on the Fourtinbay (1 i^- i''). Again, Geology has proved that animal life cannot be dated later than vegetable (l^* ^" compared with 1^^), and the remains of animals found in the rocks testify by their structure to their feeding on other animals, not on fruit and herbs (l^*^). But such discrepancies do not detract from the real value of our narrative, which is intended to teach Religion, not Science. For the ex- ercise and training of human faculties God, in His Wisdom and Goodness, has left men to find out physical truths by the use of the powers He has given them. The biblical writer availed himself of the best ideas on the subject then attainable, put them into a worthy form, freed them from all disfigurements, stamped them with the impress of Religion. And the miracle of it is that the result con- tinues valid and precious for all time, a noble presentation of the Unity and Spirituality of God, of the Omnipotence of His Will and of the Wisdom of His operations. (For a fuller consideration of this subject see art. ' Creation Story and Science.' The question will be asked, whence did the OT. writer derive his ideas about the creation of the world which we find in this passage ? It used to be generally supposed that they were given to him by direct revelation of God. Some competent authorities maintain that, if not appearing for the first time in his work, they were at least original to the nation to which he belonged. Something may be said for this view, but the majority of scholars, upon historical and literary grounds, incline to the opinion that they were more or less derived. All the great nations of antiquity, it is argued, endeavoured to account for the origin of the world, and there are striking similarities in the pictures they drew. There is little doubt that the Hebrews were deeply affected by Babylonian influences, political and literary, and the Creation Story written on the clay-tablets of Babylonia has so many features in common with that before us as to warrant the conclusion that there is a historical connexion between them. In an article ' Genesis and the Babylonian Inscriptions,' extracts are given from the Ba- bylonian stories of the Creation and the Flood, and the relationship of the two accounts is discussed. It is sufiicient to say here that no- where is the force of inspiration more manifest than in the way the whole subject is treated in the Bible. The Babylonian poem describes the Creation as an episode in the history of the gods; the Bible places it in its right position as the first scene in the drama of human history : the former represents the deities themselves as evolved from Chaos ; the latter assumes God to be before all things, and independent of them : the former loses itself in a confused, conflicting medley of deities ; to the latter there is but One God: the wild grotesqueness of the one story is in startling contrast with the gravity, dignity, and solemnity of the account with which we have been familiar from childhood, which has also its message for our maturer years. The present passage is full of the character- istics which mark the Priestly source. See on 2*"^ and art. ' Origin of the Pentateuch.' 1-3. Render, ' In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth — now the earth was waste and void, and darkness was over the deep, and the spirit of God was brooding over the waters — then God said: Let there be light.' On this rendering ' Creation ' is not ' out of nothing,' but out of pre-existing chaos. Vv. 1 and 3 tell how, when God deter- mined on the creation of the ordered universe. 8 1.2 GENESIS 1. 11 the first work was the formation of light as essential to life and progress. The first half of 2* was probably prefixed originally to v. 1. See on 2 i-s. 2. God] Heb. Eloliim. The word probably signifies ' strength,' but the etymology is obscure ; cp. Arabic Allah. The Heb. word is plural in form, but as a rule it is significantly followed by verbs in the singular, except when used of heathen gods. The plural form may be used to express the variety of attributes and powers which are combined in the divine nature, or it may indicate that with the Hebrews one God had taken the place of the many gods who were worshipped by their heathen kindred. Created] Heb. Bara ; a word used only of the creative action of God. The heaven and the earth] the ordered universe as contrasted with the dark watery waste of v. 2. The creation of the heaven and the earth did not precede the work of the six days, but com- prised it, cp. 2 1. There was no ' heaven ' until the second day. With the whole v. cp. Col 1^6, 17, Heb 3* 113. Without form (RV ' waste') and void] The word rendered void is hohu. It reminds us of the Phoenician myth that the first men were the offspring of ' the wind Kolpia and his wife Baau which is interpreted Night,' and of the yet earlier Babylonian Bau, ' the great mother,' who was worsliipped as the bestower of lands and flocks on mankind, and the giver of fertility to the soil. The deep] Heb. tehom : the mysteri- ous primeval watery mass which, it was con- ceived, enveloped the earth. The Babylonians personified it as Tiamat, the dragon goddess of darkness whom Merodach must conquer before he can proceed to the higher stages of creation. The Spirit (RV ' spirit ' : lit. ' breath ' or ' wind ') of God] In the Bab. myth the gods are first evolved from the primeval deep : here the Divine agency is described as working on formless matter from the beginning. Moved] rather, ' was brooding ' with life-giving power as a bird on her nest. 3-5. First day : — Creation of Light. 3. And God said. Let there be light] A sublime sentence 1 ' By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.' Light and darkness are regarded as two objects, each occupying a place of its own (Job 38 1^). Light is created on the first day, the luminaries on the fourth. Not as an explanation, for this it is not, but merely as an illustration, it may be remembered that, according to the generally approved modern theory, the matter composing our solar system existed at first in the shape of an inconceivably vast mass of fiery vapour, which gradually cooled down and took the form of a rotating sphere. This threw off the planets, our earth amongst the number. The central part is now the sun. So that light in itself may be regarded as prior to the specific lights that stood related as luminaries to the earth. The earth by slow stages grew fit to be the abode of life. 4. Good] i.e. perfect for the purpose for which God designed it. 5. And the evening, etc.] RV ' and there was evening and there was morning, one day.' In the endeavour to bring the Creation story into harmony with the ascertained results of science, it is often maintained that the writer meant indefinite periods of time by the term ' days.' But the science of Geology was entirely un- known to the ancients, and it is not legitimate to read a knowledge of modern discoveries into these ancient records. The author meant days in the sense of v. 16. Evidently, he had in mind the Jewish week, which he regarded not only as prefigured, but rendered obligatory, by God's example in creating the world, as God worked six days, and rested the seventh : so the week was to consist of six working days, and a vSabbath day of rest. At the same time the writer intended to show that there was an orderly process in the work of creation. Note that evening is put before morning, probably because the Jewish day began at sunset. 6-8. Second day : — Creation of the Firma- ment. 6. The firmament] the sky, heavens. The word means something 'solid' or 'beaten out,' like a sheet of metal. The ancients supposed that the sky was a solid, vaulted dome stretched over the earth, its ends resting on the moun- tains, and the heavenly bodies fastened to its inner surface. It served as the throne of God, cp. Ex 2410 Ezk 126_ Its purpose here was to divide in two the primeval mass of waters. Above, it supported the upper waters which fell upon the earth through ' the windows of heaven ' (7 1^) in the form of rain ; below were the waters on which the earth rested, and from which it emerged. These waters were sup- posed to form a subterranean abyss which supplied the springs and seas ; for the idea cp. Gn 711 4925 Dt 3313 Job 3816 Ps 242 Prov 828, also Ex 2410 Ezk 126. This thought of the division of the primeval ocean into an upper and lower portion is represented in the Baby- lonian story by the cleaving of the body of Tiamat. 9-13. Third day: — Separation of land and water. Creation of vegetation. 9. Let the dry land appear] by emerging from the lower waters which were now gathered into seas. See Ps 1046-8. n, 12. Grass . . herb yielding seed . . tree yielding fruit] a simple and popular classification of the vege- table world. Whose seed is in itself] RV ' wherein ' (i.e. in the fruit) ' is the seed thereof.' After his kind] i.e. according to their several species. 1. 14 GENESIS 2.3 14-19. Fourth day: — Creation of sun, moon, and stars. The special value of this part of the story- lies in its opposition to the worship of the heavenly bodies as deities, which was such a prominent feature of heathenism in Babylonia and elsewhere. Here they are declared to be created for the service of man, fulfilling a definite purpose. That purpose was threefold : (a) ' to divide the day from the night ' ; (b) to be 'for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years,' i.e. to give the means of reckoning time ; (c) ' to give light upon the earth.' 14. Lights] rather, ' luminaries,' to hold and distribute the light created on the first day. In] rather, ' on ' or ' before ' the firmament ; so vv. 17-20. See on v. 6. Signs . . seasons . . days . . years] For some of the modes in which the heavenly bodies were believed to serve as signs see 2 K 20^-11 IsaT^i Jer 10 ^ Joel 2 30 Mt 2 2 2429. The seasons of the year are of course determined by them. The sun and moon rule the day and night ; the length, temperature, etc., of day and night depending on their positions. 20-23. Fifth day : — Creation of fishes and birds. 20. Let the waters] render, ' let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures,' animal- culfe, insects, fish, etc. Fowl that may fly] RV 'let fowl fly.' 21. Great whales] Heb. denotes rather creatures like serpents, croco- diles, etc. 22. Blessed them] As animate creatures they received a divine blessing, which suggests God's jDleasure in the creation of beings capable of conscious enjoyment. 24-31. Sixth day: — Creation of animals and man. 26. Let us make man] the crowning work of creation and its highest development. The plural form 'us,' which occurs again 3 22 117 and Isa 6 8, has been interjareted of the Holy Trinity, but this would be anticipating a doctrine which was only revealed in later ages. The thought is perhaps that of God speaking in a council of angelic beings, or the form of the word may indicate a j)lural of majesty : see on ' God ' v. 1. The point of the expres- sion, however, is that it marks a closer relation of God to man than to the rest of His creation. It is not ' Let man be made ' but ' Let us make man.' Man] Heb. adam, the name of the race which becomes the name of the first man. In our image, after our likeness] The likeness to God lies in the mental and moral features of man's character, such as reason, personality, free will, the capacity for com- munion with God. These distinguish man from the animals with which on the physical side he has much in common, and inevitably ensure his dominion over them (cp. Ps8^'6)_ When the perfect Image of the Father (Heb 1^) had fully manifested His character, it became possible to declare, in yet more adequate lan- guage, what true likeness to God is (Eph 4^* Col 3 10). 27. Male and female] There is nothing in this account of the Creation to suggest that the sexes were not simultaneously created : contrast 2-1-23, which is from the earlier document. 29, 30. The writer of the Priestly narrative here represents men and animals as living only on vegetable food. We seem to trace the thought of a primitive golden age, when the animals did not prey on each other, but lived at peace together : cp. Isa 11 ''-^ 6525 Hos 2^^. It is he also who records the permission to use animal food after the Flood (92.3). But the parrallel narrative from the Primitive document refers to the keeping of flocks (4 2. *, 20-) ^ ^nd takes no notice of any prohibition of animal food. 31. Very good] Certain systems of philosophy and morality, ancient and modei'n, have proceeded on the assumption that evil is inherent in matter, and therefore that God and the world are antagonistic. This idea is quite foreign to the Scriptures, which teach that 'every creature of God is good.' Genesis teaches that evil enters the world from without : see on 3 1. 2 1-3. Seventh day : — God ceases from His work and sanctifies the day on which He rests. Vv. 1-3 clearly belong to the first narrative of the Creation, of which they form the natural conclusion. The first part of v. 4, ' These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created,' has probably been transposed from its original place before P, as in all other cases the phrase stands at the beginning of the section to which it refers, cp. 5 1 6 ^ 10 1. The second account of Creation begins in the latter half of v. 4, and should have formed the commencement of c. 2. I. All the host of them] i.e. ' all the contents of heaven and earth.' 2. He rested on the seventh day] God ceased (as the word means) from His creative work. 3. God blessed the seventh day and sanctified (RV 'hallowed') it] This is adduced in Exodus as the ground for the observance of the sabbath (see Ex 20 ^-H notes, Sfi^ Heb 4*). It was separated from ordinary days, and set apart as a day for rest, and at a later time for holy observance. Further instructions as to its use will be found in Ex 31^3 352. The Babylonians observed the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st and 28th days of the lunar month, as days when men were subjected to certain re- strictions : the King was not to eat food prepared by fire, nor offer sacrifice, nor consult an oracle, nor invoke curses on his enemies. But the weekly sabbath came to have a peculiar religious significance among the 2.4 GENESIS 2.4 Hebrews, which is not evident among other nations ; and by its regular recurrence every seventh day it was dissociated from its connexion witli the moon, and with lunar superstitions. 4. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created] i.e. this is the history of their creation. See on vv. 1-3. The phrase ' These are the gener- ations ' occurs ten times in Genesis, viz. 2 * 5 1 69 101 1110 1127 2512 2519 301 372. CHAPTERS 24b_324 Paradise and the Fall In this famous passage we possess a wealth of moral and spiritual teaching regarding God and man. The intention of the writer is evidently to give an answer to the question : How did sin and misery find their way into the world ? As is natural among Orientals he put his reply into narrative form ; and though it is generally accepted that the details are to be interpreted symbolically rather than literally, yet they are in marvellous agreement with the real facts of human nature and ex- perience. Adam is the representative of the human race. The story of his temptation, fall, and consequent forfeiture of Paradise shadows forth some of the greatest mysteries of the human lot — the strangely mingled gloiy and shame of man, his freedom of action, the war between the law in his members and the law of his mind. It thus comes to have a universal significance and shows each man, as in a mirror, his own experience. When he reads this nar- rative, his conscience says to him, like a prophet of God : ' Thou art the man ; the story is told of thee ! ' In c. 2 the nature of man is unfolded. It has two sides, a higher and a lower ; on the one hand, he is connected with the material world, as made of dust of the earth : on the other hand, he is related to God, who breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. He stands above the animal creation by his endowments of reason, discrimination, and language ; he gives names to the beasts. The ideal relationship of the sexes appears in the creation of woman from the side of man, and his delight in finding in her an adequate companion and helper. Special emphasis is laid upon the moral and spiritual aspects of human nature. Man is created with the faculty of holding free and trustful communion with God, and with the power of exercising freedom of choice. It is chiefly in virtue of these high prerogatives that he can be said to be created in the image of God. Liberty of choice, however, or free will, is a perilous gift. It may be used either rightly or wrongly, and so there arises the possibility of temptation, of sin, of a 'fall': see on 2 1*. C. 3 shows how man misuses his freedom. He is tempted by a mysterious power of evil, and falls before the temptation. Immediately the direst results ensue, both for his inward and outward condition. ' The fruit of man's first disobedience ' is seen at once in his con- sciousness of guilt, his interrupted communion with God, his miserable state, and even the altered condition of the world in which he dwells. Yet God does not abandon him. He continues His care over him, and comforts him with the promise of final victory over the power of evil. See on 3 1^ for the significance of this passage in the light of Christianity. It is to be expected that, in externals at least, the Bible narrative should resemble the tradi- tions of other Oriental peoples. Accordingly we find, as in the case of the Creation and Flood narratives, that certain parallels to the Paradise story existed among the ancient Babylonians. This, and the further fact that Eden is placed in the vicinity of the Euphrates, have been taken to suggest that the Hebrews brought the original tradition with them from their home in the plains of Babylonia. The Bible narrative, however, differs from all others in its worthy conception of the divine nature, its freedom from polytheistic and heathen associa- tions, and its embodiment of such profound religious truths as stamp it with the mark of inspiration. The passage (2^^-S'^^) now under considera- tion begins with a second account of the Crea- tion forming an introduction to the story of man's temptation and fall. Some scholars regard this account as simply complementary to that given in c. 1. They maintain that it is not a separate story of the Creation, but a continuation of the former, with special reference to man's position in the universe. There are strong reasons, however, for regard- ing 2 ^^^-s as a narrative independent of l-2'*a. (a) The primeval chaos, the creation of man and woman, vegetation and animals, are described, but there are striking differences in the two accounts, (b) The Creator is no longer called 'God' (Elohim) but 'The Lord God' (Jehovah Elohim), a fact which first suggested that the Pentateuch was compiled from different sources, and gave its name ' Jehovistic ' to the continuous Primitive document of which this passage forms the commencement. (c) The writer speafe of the universe and its Author in different terms to those of c. 1. God is regarded as intimately concerning Him- self with men rather than in His transcendental power ; and this concern of His is expressed in terms which are properly applicable to the only living persons we directly know, viz. men. This anthropomorphism runs through the whole of the Paradise story (cp. 2">^>i9>2i' 38). (d) The lordship of man over creation 6 2.4 GENESIS 2.14 is expressed, not by setting him up as the goal to which all tended (cp. l-^*-)i but by represent- ing him as the first created, before plants or herbs (2^), the being for whom the animals were afterwards made, and finally woman as a fitting mate, (e) The formal, orderly style of c. 1, which characterises the Priestly docu- ment, is exchanged here for the imaginative, poetical style which marks the Primitive (cp. 2 8,9,15,19,31-6,7,8). (f) Finally, if the two accounts of Creation liad been originally the work of one writer, he would surely have ex- plained that he was describing the same event from different standpoints, giving reasons for so doing. But he does not, and it is reason- able to conclude from all the variations which have been pointed out, that we possess two accounts of the Creation and of the origin of man upon earth, drawn from different sources. 4^-7. Render, ' In the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth ; and no herb of the field had yet sprung up . . the Lord God formed man,' etc. Vv. 5, 6, from ' For the Lord God,' thus form a parenthesis. 4. The Lord God] Where Lord is thus printed in capitals in the English Bible it stands for the Heb. JHVH, the sacred divine name which was probably pronounced * Yahweh.' In later times the word was con- sidered to be too sacred to be uttered ; the title Adonai (i.e. My Lord) was substituted in reading, and thus the true pronunciation was lost. Hebrew was originally written witliout vowel-signs ; when these were added to the MS text, the vowels of the name as read (Adonai) were attached to the consonants JHVH, and thus the artificial form ' Jehovah ' was produced, which has come into common Christian use. See on Ex S^^ for the signifi- cance of the word, which means perhaps ' The Self-existent' (or 'Self-unfolding'). Yahweh (Jehovah) is the proper name of the God of Israel rather than a title, and as such was used by other nations who regarded Jehovah as the tribal God of the Jews (cp. Isa 36*) ; the name also occurs on the Moabite stone set up by Mesha (2 K 3*). The American re- visers have substituted ' Jehovah ' for ' the Lord ' throughout the OT. In Gn 2 and 3 Jehovah is joined with Elohim ('the Lord God'). The latter name was probably added by the editor who combined the narratives in order to show that the Jehovah of this section (the God of Israel) is the same as the Elohim (the Creator of the world) of the previous one. The earth and the heavens] RV ' earth and heaven.' Note the difference in the order from that in 1^. The centre of interest in this c. is man on the earth. 6. Mist] The kindred word in the Assyrian language denotes the annual inundation of the Euphrates ; see on v. 8 and on 3'^. 7. Man] Heb. adam as in c. 1. AV renders the word as a proper name frequently in chs. 2-4; RV gives 'man' throughout except S^^ 42^, Ground] Heb. adamah. A connexion is thus suggested between the two words, but the derivation of Adam is uncertain. Formed man of the dust of the ground] The lowly origin of man, and his derivation on the physical side from the lower elements of creation, are here implied. To ' become a living soul ' means no more than to possess the principle of life possessed by the animals ; cp. v. 19, where the Heb. for 'living creature' is the same as for ' living soul ' here. But it is not said of the animals that God breathed into their nostrils the breath of life, only of man : this implies that man stands in a special relation to God, and may be taken as referring to the gift of those spiritual faculties by which he holds communion with God, and possesses a ' like- ness ' to Him ; see on l^s. 8. A garden] LXX renders by ' Paradei- sos' (a Persian word meaning 'a park'), hence the English 'Paradise.' Eastward] i.e. of Palestine, such as Babylonia would be. Eden] The Heb. word ede7i means ' de- light,' but there is a Babylonian word edinu, meaning 'plain,' and there maybe a reference to the great plain in Babylonia between the Tigris and the Euphrates. In the southern portion of this plain an ancient hymn placed a garden of the gods wherein ' a dark vine grew . . its appearance as lapis lazuli.' 9. Every tree] The garden was planted with trees, like a king's pleasure park. The trees are specially mentioned, partly because they were to provide man's food, and partly be- cause attention is directed to two of them for a particular reason. As life was to be sustained by them, so immortality was to be received through the fruit of the tree of life, and knowledge of good and evil with death in the end were the possible consequences of eating of the forbidden tree. The garden was di- vinely planted, and the trees had miraculous powers of good and evil. The tree of life] The Egyptians believed that in the blissful fields of Alu in the other world grew the tree of life, which the stars gave to the departed that they might live for ever; cp. also Rev 222. 10-14. There are many theories regarding these rivers. Perhaps the most likely is that the ancients, with their very limited notions of geography, regarded the four great rivers known to them, Euphrates, Tigris, Indus (Pishon) and Nile (Gihon), as having a com- mon source in some large lake in Eden. Cush will then be Ethiopia. It is possible, how- ever, that the main river stands for the Persian 2. 15 GENESIS 3.1 Gulf, which was anciently called ' The Salt two, the former being the noun and the latter River,' and the four heads were four streams the qualifying adjective on which the main connected with it, viz. (1) the Euphrates; (2) emphasis lies. Man might have many helps; the Hiddekel, which the Persians called the the vegetable and animal creation might minis- Tigra, and Greeks the Tigris ; (3) the Gihon, ter to his welfare and comfort. But though which is said to 'compass' tlie land of Gush, these are 'helps,' they are not ' meet,' i.e. suit- the country of the Kashshu in W. Elam, and able for him. Only a creature like himself which may therefore be the Kerkha, which can be an adequate companion; and so woman once ran with the Euphrates and Tigris into is formed: see v. 20. ig. The giving of a the Persian Gulf ; and (4) the Pishon, which name implies a power of discrimination and has not been identified. Havilah] the sandy reflection not possessed by the lower animals, region of N. Arabia, and thus not far from Even proper names in the Scriptures are the other localities. Bdellium] an odoriferous usually significant and descriptive of some transparent gum. Onyx] RM 'beryl.' Vv. quality supposed to be possessed by the person 10-14 are regarded by many as a later ad- who bears it. Cp. e.g. the importance attached dition to the narrative. to the ' name ' by which God is known : see on 15. Dress] i.e. cultivate. Keep] i.e. protect Ex 3^^. 21. The symbolical account of the (from the beasts). creation of woman teaches the close relation- 17. Knowledge of good and evil] i.e. moral ship of the sexes, and the dependence of consciousness issuing in moral judgment ; the power to distinguish between good and evil, not in act only but in consequence as well. woman on man. 23. This is now] Render, ' This time it is bone of my bones,' etc. It is Adam's cry of delight at finding a congenial. This faculty is necessary, in order that man sympathising companion, after failing to find may reach moral maturity. The narrative ira- one among the animals (v. 20). She shall be plies that it would have come gradually to man, called Woman] The similarity of the English through the teaching of God, and without the words 'man,' 'woman' (wife-man) is also found loss of his own uprightness. It is a faculty in tbe Hebrew Ish, Ishshah. 24. The crea- which is developed from within, not conferred tion of one man and one woman in the ideally from without. By discipline and self-control perfect state of Eden implies that monogamy man gains character and moral strength, or the is the ideal of the married life. Polygamy kaowledge of good and evil, and the power to and divorce were later accommodations to discriminate between them. Hence ' the fruit man's ' hardness of heart.' But ' from the be- of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ' is ginning' (i.e. in the original purpose of the forbidden to man, not given to him like that Creator) 'it was not so' (Mtl94>8). 25. See of the others. It can impart the knowledge on 3 ^. of good and evil at once, without a prolonged process of discipline or education ; but the attainment of it in this summary way is made an act of disobedience, perhaps to assist man's moral development by affording a test of his self-control. Man's freedom of choice, how- ever, makes it possible for him to disobey, and so come to the required knowledge by a wrong way ; for the knowledge of good and evil is bought dearly by doing ill. Shalt surely die] Man, it is implied, was created mortal, but had the privilege of attain- ing immortality by means of the tree of life. But by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil man forfeited his liberty to eat of the tree of life (see 3-2-24). This implies that the physical is the consequence of the CHAPTER 3 The Temptation and the Fall of Man This chapter describes how ' by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin' (Ro 512). Although there is here no ambitious attempt to search out the origin of evil in the universe, the biblical account of the Pall pierces the depth of the human heart, and brings out the genesis of sin in man. The description, as already said, is true to life and experience. There is no certain Babylonian counterpart to the biblical narrative of the Fall. I. The serpent] The writer here sets him- self to answer the question how evil came into the heart of man, who was created pure. His moral death. ' Some of the older expositors answer is that it came from without ; it did observe that the troubles and sufferings to not originate with man. And herein lies the which man became liable through sin, are hope of victory. The wrong approaches us nothing else than disturbances of life, the be- from outside ourselves, and is not the native ginning of death ' (D.).* product of our own heart. There are present 18-25. Now the other animals and woman in our world beings and objects which, con- are formed. The order of Creation is not the sciously or unintentionally, draw us towards same as in 1^*-^. that which is wrong; channels of sense, intel- 18. Help meet] This is not one word but lect, aspirations by which we may be touched * A. von Dilliuann, the greatest of all commentators on Genesis. 8 3. 1 GENESIS 3. 8 The narrative tells us that man was tempted by some evil power, whose personality remains in the background. But this power must have made use of a medium, which could not have been another human being, seeing there were as yet only Adam and Eve. That it was an animal was therefore a natural assumption. On two grounds the writer was left to fix upon the serpent as the medium of the tempt- ation. One was the natural habits of the creature, its stealthy movements, its deadly venom, and the instinctive feeling of repulsion which the very sight of it provokes. These things are all suggestive of the insidious approach and fatal'power of temptation. The other was the fact that already the serpent in older mythologies was associated with the powers of darkness. In Babylonian belief Tiamat, the power of darkness and chaos, and the opponent of the god of light, was repre- sented as a gigantic dragon, also known as Eahab and Leviathan (Job 9 is RV 26i2Ry Ps74i3,ii 8910 Isa27iAm93); while to the Persians the serpent was the emblem of Angra- Mainyu, the hostile god. In later times, when the power of evil was more definitely personi- fied by the Israelites as Satan, the serpent remained as the symbol under which he was popularly conceived. See e.g. Rev 129 20^. There can be no doubt that our author in- tended to teach that an actual serpent was the tempter. As one of our deepest thinkers puts it : ' There was an animal nature in Eve to which the animal nature in an inferior animal could speak.' We who have been taught that ' our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places,' are almost irresistibly led to think of the serpent as a mere agent of him that is called the Devil and Satan (Rev 12 9) ; but we shall miss something of the instructive- ness of the narrative if we do not, in the first instance, take the simple view originally in- tended. St. Paul, we must remember, adhered to it : ' The serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness' (2 Cor 11 3). And he said] An ancient Jewish legend represents all the animals as having had the gift of speech, and using one language, imtil the day when Adam was expelled from Eden. The woman] She is first addressed, as an easier prey to temptation (cp. 1 Tim 2 1'l). Observe that the serpent exaggerates the prohibition, and suggests that it is an undue curtailment of liberty. Sin usually begins as a revolt against authority. 2, 3. The woman denies that the prohibition extends to every tree. It applies only to one, and its object is man's own safety. She also adds that the danger is such that they are forbidden even to touch the tree. Evil is to be kept at arm's length. 4. The serpent grows bolder on seeing that the woman is willing to argue the matter, and now flatly denies the truth of the divine warning. It is due not to a solici- tude for man's safety, but to an ulterior motive, the envy or jealousy of God. The serpent avers that the threatened penalty will not be exacted, that God has selfishly kept out of their sight a great boon which men may gain ; that He is unwilling to see them rise too high. So the serpent sows discord between man and his Maker, by misrepresenting God's character. 5. As gods] RV 'as God.' It probably means here, as divine beings, like the angels. Cp. V. 22. 6. ' Our great security against sin consists in our being shocked at it. Eve gazed and reflected when she should have fled ' (Newman). Here we see the physical basis of temptation, the lust of the flesh, which ' when it hath conceived bringeth forth sin ' (Jas 115). She gave also unto her husband] It is not in malice, but with a sincere view to his advantage, that she persuades the man to eat of the fruit. 7. They knew that they were naked] The serpent's promise (v. 5) is fulfilled, but not in the way expected. ' To the pure all things are pure ' (cp. 2 25), but the act of sin is im- mediately followed by the sense of guilty shame. ' To innocence, standing in undis- turbed union with God, everything natural is good and pure (225). go goon as, however, by the act of disobedience, the bond of union with God is broken, and the sensuous nature of man has released itself from the dominion of the spirit which rests in God, it stands there naked and bare and calls forth in its possessor inevitably the feeling of weakness, un worthiness and impurity ' (D.). The first result of disobedience is the awakening of conscience. ' They lost Eden and they gained a conscience ' (Newman). The whole story of the Fall is a parable of every sinner's experi- ence. In every temptation there are an exciting cause without and an answering in- clination within : every act of submission to temptation is a choice exercised by the will : and the result of sin is an uneasy conscience and a haunting sense of shame. Aprons] RM 'girdles.' There is a Jewish legend to the effect that at the moment of the Fall the leaves dropped off all the trees but the fig. 8-13. Conscience is a witness-bearer to God. Accordingly the accusing voice of conscience is followed by that of God in judgment. 8. On the anthropomorphism of this v. see Intro, to 2'i-325. Cool of the day] lit. 'in the evening breeze,' i.e. in the evening when the heat of the day is tempered with a cool breeze, enabling Orientals to walk abroad ; cp. Gn 24 63 Song 2 17. Adam] RV ' the man ' : 3. 10 GENESIS 3.24 see on 2'^. Hid themselves] Hitherto they have been able to meet God in trustful sim- plicity : now conscious guilt moves them to hide from His presence. But the attempt is vain. 10. The man's answer shows that a change has come over him. He was not wont to be afraid of God. n. The question does not imply that God does not already know what has occurred. But He compels the man to make a full con- fession. 12. Instead of frankly confessing his sins, the man lays the blame upon the woman. Observe also that he even tries to lay part at least of the blame upon God Himself (whom Thou gavest to be •with me). This is a most life-like touch in the picture of the moral state which sin produces. 13. The woman in turn blames the serpent. Man is always inclined to blame the outward incitement to sin, rather than the inward inclination. 14-19. The Judgment. 14. The serpent, being the tempter and prime mover in the transgression, is judged first. It would appear that the writer con- ceived of the serpent as originally walking on feet. Its crawling in the dust, and taking dust into its mouth with its food (cp. Isa6525 Mic 7 1" and the figurative expression ' to lick the dust,' Ps729 Isa4923) are marks of its degradation. 15. Nature's social union is also broken. The serpent race is an object of abhorrence, even though many kinds of serpents possess a remarkable beauty and grace. The curse, however, goes beyond this. There is a min- gling of the literal and the allegorical in the sentence. The serpent, as representing the spirit of revolt from God, will continue to be the tempter of man. Man and the power of evil will be at constant feud. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel] cp. Rol6"^o. While each will hurt the other, it is here implied that man will have the best of the serpent in the end. The seed of the woman means the human race as sprung from her. But in the course of history it becomes more and more evident that mankind is unable of itself to gain the complete victory over evil. This has been achieved by One alone, in whom this word of hope has been fulfilled. It is, therefore, with justice that Christians read in this promise the Protevangelium, or first procla- mation of the Good Tidings of the final victory over sin. It is in Christ that the seed of the woman crushes the serpent. 16. The woman is now judged. Her doom is pain, chiefly the pain of child-bearing, and a position of subjection to and dependence on man. There is abundant evidence in human nature of the close connexion of sin and Buffering, though our Lord warns us against uncharitably arguing back from the fact of suffering to previous sin, in special instances, and in the case of others. See e.g. Lk 13 ^-^ Jn9i'3, and cp. the whole argument of the book of Job. In the case of child-bearing, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the pain and danger connected with it have been in- creased by the accumulated wrongdoing of mankind. Among the lower animals the pro- cess of birth is much easier. 17. The judgment on the man. Work had already been appointed as the duty of men (2 15). But it was not laborious. The change from innocence to sin is marked by the change of order from the keeping of the garden to the tilling of the ground (v; 23). Henceforth work is to be done under adverse conditions. The connexion between the sin of man and the productiveness of the earth is not so easily traced, but the conditions of labour are un- doubtedly made harder by the evils and inequalities of human society due to man's sin and selfishness. 19. Till thou return unto the ground] The story does not assume that man was created physically immortal. But the inevitable certainty of death is now seen to increase the sadness of his earthly lot. It is sin which gives death its sting (1 Cor 15^6) ; and though the Redemption of Christ has not abolished physical death, yet it gives victory over death, by removing the guilt and fear that make it so appalling and hopeless : cp. Heb2i4.i5. 20. Eve] Heb. ^awm/?, ' life.' 21. God does not cease to care for man, even though he has rebelled against Him : cp. Mt545. 22-24. Now that man has used his power of free-will to disobey God and become alien- ated from Him, a perpetuation of his sinful life would have been a curse rather than a blessing. Physical immortality which, accord- ing to the writer, he might have gained by eating of the tree of life, is therefore denied to him. But the blessing forfeited ' by one man's offence ' is restored ' by the obedience of one' (Ro 5 12-21). In Christian thought Adam is ' a figure of Him that was to come.' Adam and Christ are the originators of two different streams of humanity ; and as those descended from Adam by physical generation inherit the consequences of his disobedience, in virtue of an undoubted law or principle of heredity, or of the solidarity of the human race, so those regenerated in spirit through Christ enjoy the fruit of His perfect obedi- ence, and have a right to the tree of life. ' As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.' 24. Cherubims] RV 'the Cherubim' (plur. of ' Cherub '). These mystic beings are men- tioned as attendants of God in various passages of the OT. (Ps 1 8 10 Ezk 1 and 10). Here they appear as the guardians of God's abode : cp. 10 3. 24 GENESIS 4.11 Ezk 28 13-17, also on Ex 25 is 324. When the Psalmist says that ' Jehovah rode upon a cherub and did fly,' he is obviously describing a thunderstorm with its swift storm-clouds ; and when he goes on to speak of the ' brightness before Him,' he suggests a connexion between the flaming sword of this v. and the lightning- flash. To keep the way of the tree of life] Man, it would appear, had not yet eaten of the tree of life, not having felt the need of it. But now, when his knowledge of evil has brought him the fear of death, and he has realised the value of this tree, he is prevented even from approach- ing it. The tree of life, however, though denied to man on this side the grave, will be found by those who overcome in the conflict with evil, in the midst of the Paradise of God (Rev 2 7 222). CHAPTEE 4 Cain and Abel. The Descendants of Cain The narrative, which forms part of the Primitive document, impressively shows how sin, having once appeared, became hereditary in the human race, and speedily developed into its most revolting form. Its details en- able us to see how jealousy, when indulged, leads to hatred and murder, and violates not only the ties of humanity but those of family affection ; how the sinner casts off all regard for the truth and for his natural obligations ; how progress in sin adds to the misery of man's lot ; and ' conscience doth make cowards of us all.' The truths taught are, that God looks on the hearts of His worshippers, seeks to restrain the sinner ere he yields to passion, marks the death of the innocent, and graciously mitigates His punishment when His mercy is sought. The story is but loosely attached to that of Paradise. It assumes that there is already a considerable population in the world, for no explanation is given whence Cain got his wife, or who were the people whose vengeance he feared. It presupposes the institution of sacrifice, of which nothing has been said pre- viously, and of blood revenge. Various solu- tions of these difficulties have been suggested, but scholars now generally suppose that the story occupied originally a later position among the traditions than that in which we find it. I. Adam] RV 'the man.' Cain] Heb. Kayin^ ' a spear,' in Arabic ' smith ' (see v. 22). Here connected with Ka/iah, 'gotten,' or ' acquired.' The Hebrews attached a gi'eat importance to names, which were mostly re- garded as descriptive of some characteristic in the thing or person on whom they were bestowed. In the giving of a name," or in 11 explaining one already given, strict regard was not paid to the actual derivation of the word. It was enough if the name resembled in any way a word which might be taken as applicable to the subject : cp. Abel, Noah (5^9), Babel (11 9), and the names of Jacob's sons in chs. 29, 30. From the LORD] RV 'with the help of the Lord.' 2. Abel] perhaps from the Assyrian ablu, ' a son.' Here it may be connected with Heb. hebel, ' a breath,' a fitting name for one whose life was so brief : see on v. 1. 3. On the nature and origin of sacrifice see Intro, to Leviticus. 4. And the LORD had respect, etc.] The characters of the brothers rather than their offerings are kept chiefly in view. Many passages show that the decisive reason why a worshipper is accepted or rejected lies in the disposition with which he draws nigh (cp. 1 S 1 5 22 Isa 111-17 Ps 50 8-15 Heb 1 1 4). The man- ner in which God's approval was declared is not mentioned, but see Jg62i IKIS^* 2Ch7i. Possibly the contrast between his toilsome life in tilling the soil and the easier existence of Abel, makes Cain envious. 7. We may paraphrase thus, ' If thou doest well, is there not lifting up of the countenance, banishment of depression and gloom ? And if thou doest not well. Sin is at the door, crouching in readiness to spring on thee and make thee a prey, but thou must resist its promptings ' (RM ' Unto thee shall be its desire, but thou shouldest rule over it '). "What is suggested is that, if a sullen and jealous disposition is harboured, it will only require opportunity to tempt to malice and cruelty. 8. And Cain told (RV) Abel] Heb. 'said unto.' LXX and other versions insert here ' Let us go into the open country,' showing Cain's intention to murder. In his case the harboured jealousy tempted him not merely to take an opportunity of using violence, but to make one. 9. Cain sounds a much lower depth of depravity than his parents. Besides the guilt of murder, there is the impudent denial that he has harmed Abel, and the repudiation of responsibility for his safety. ID. Crieth unto Me] The thought of great evils crying to God is frequently met with in Scripture : cp. 18^0 1913. The ground, which has been unwillingly obliged to di-ink the blood of Abel, is represented as refusing to tolerate his murderer, or to make him an adequate return for his toil: cp. Job 16 is 3138-40. In Hebl22i the blood of Jesus, which appealed for men's pardon, is contrasted with that of Al)el, which demanded retribution. II. The earth] RV ' the ground.' Cain is banished from the ground which he had formerly tilled and had now polluted, to the wide world (v. 12), a sterner punishment 4 14 GENESIS 5. 2 than that of Adam and Eve. 14. From Thy face shall I be hid] Cain supposes that God's presence and protection are limited to his old home. Vagabond] RV ' wanderer.' Who- soever findeth me] See prefatory remarks. 15. Sevenfold] Vengeance should be taken upon seven of the murderer's family : cp. 2S 218. Set a mark upon Cain] RV ' appointed a sign for Cain.' Perhaps it was some token to assure him of safety, like the rainbow at the Flood. Others take it that Cain was marked in some way to show that he was under God's protection. 16. Went out from the presence of the LORD] from the land he had before inhabited. See on v. 14. Nod] The word, which means ' wandering,' is bj- some regarded as merely a figurative expres- sion for a nomadic life, but Cain appears to have built a city there (v. 17). 17-24. The descendants of Cain. In these vv. is traced the origin of the different forms of civilisation and culture. Their religious value lies in the fact that the inventions are attributed to men, whereas in heathen myth- ologies they were thought to be due to various deities. It will be observed that great similarity exists between the names of the descendants of Adam in this c. and those given in c. 5. The two accounts come from different docu- ments, and although the names differ somewhat in form and order, it is now generally supposed that they are merely two versions of the same traditional list of the Patriarchs before the Flood. The most important difference is that, whereas in c. 5 Seth and Enos are given as the son and grandson of Adam, and Cainan (whom we may identify with Cain) appears as the great-grandson, in the present c. Seth and Enos are put in a supplementary list (vv. 25, 2(5) and Cain appears as Adam's son. If the list in c. 5 is correct and the Cain of this c. be identified with Cainan there, it is evident that there must have then existed a consider- able population of his tribe. And this is indeed presupposed in v. 14 where Cain ex- presses his dread of Abel's avengers, and in V. 17 where he is said to have built a city. 17. Builded a city] The ' city ' of course would be a collection of huts surrounded by a defensive palisade. 19. The first mention of polygamy in the Bible. The custom of having more than one wife does not seem to have been uncommon among the Hebrews, and we find legislation on the subject in Dt 2115-17; but the divine intention was that a man should have but one wife : cp. 2^1 Mt 19^. 20. The father] i.e. ' originator ' ; the first to lead a pastoral life. 21. Organ] RV 'pipe.' 22. Tubal-cain] i.e. ' Tubal the smith ' : see on 4 1. An instructer of every artificer in] R V ' the forger of every cutting instrument of.' Br£iss] rather, ' copper ' (RM), or bronze. 23. I have slain, etc.] RM ' I will slay a man for wounding me, and a young man for bruising me.' On this rendering it would seem that Lamech, rejoicing, perhaps, in his son's invention of weapons, boasts that he would be able to amply repay any one who injured him. The words of Lamech are metrical and are the fii'st instance of poetry in the Bible. Hebrew poetry does not depend on rhythm as with us, but in parallelism of ideas in each couplet, as may be traced in this instance ; see Intro, to Psalms. 24. See V. 15 and note. 25, 26. A supplementary note mentioning the birth of Seth and Enos : see on V. 17. Seth] 'appointed' or 'substi- tuted.' Enos] ' man.' 26. Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord] Tlie Primitive or Jehovistic document uses Jehovah as the name of the God of Israel from the first ; but the Priestly document speaks of the name being first revealed to Moses. See Ex.^i"! 6^. What is here suggested is, either that Enos worshipped God as Jehovah (reading ' he began to call '), or that in his day men began to worship Jehovah by public invocation and sacrifice. CHAPTER 5 The Descendants of Adam to Noah The purpose of the historian in giving the names and ages of the antediluvian Patriarchs was, no doubt, to show the glorious ancestry of the chosen race, and to account for the period between the Creation and the Flood. This, according to the Hebrews, was 1656 years. (See on 10 ^2.) "Various attempts have been made to explain the great ages attributed to these Patriarchs, but they are purely con- jectural, and the view now generally held is that the Hebrews, like all other ancient nations, had a tradition that the forefathers of the race were vastly longer lived than their descendants. The golden age of the Hebrew lay in the past ; and he attributed in pre- eminent degree to his ancestors in these far-off days the blessing he valued most of all — length of days upon the earth. The similarity of the lists of names in chs. 4 and 5 has been discussed in a note on 4^'''. C. 5 continues the narrative of the Priestly document which we met with in 1^-2 ■i'^, as appears from (a) the recurrence of 1 2", 2S jn vv. 1, 2, (b) the phrase 'the generations of characteristic of P (see on 2"**), (c) the divine name God, and (d) the formal statistical style of the chapter. I. The generations of Adam] i.e. the genealogy of Adam's descendants, cp. 2* and note. • 2. Called their name Adam] This 12 5.3 GENESIS 6.5 shows that the word ' Adam ' was originally applied to the race, and was not a proper name. In the previous v. it is so used for the first time in the Priestly narrative. 3. His own likeness] as he himself was created in the likeness of God. 21-24. Enoch] the one figure which breaks the formality of this c. His conduct is men- tioned in a way which implies that the majority of men lived differently. In all his actions he recognised the duty which he owed to God ; from none of his thoughts was God absent ; he lived in communion with Him. The mean- ing of the expression He was not ; for God took him, is, no doubt, correctly given by the writer of Hebll, as that Enoch never died, but was translated to heaven, like Elijah, as a reward for the holiness of his life. In Jewish tradition Enoch's walking with God was taken to mean initiation into the mysteries of the universe, and the secrets of the past and future. A whole circle of apocalyptic literature was ascribed to him in the post-exilic days, which is embodied in the so-called book of Enoch. This book is quoted in Jude 14 as the work of ' Enoch the seventh from Adam.' 23. The days of Enoch] It is noteworthy that the life of Enoch is the shortest mentioned in this c. 29. Noah] here connected with 7iahem, ' to comfort.' 'The name is really derived from 7iuah, ' to rest.' The comfort may refer to the invention of wine, which is attributed to Noah in 9^0-27^ a passage perhaps from the same source as the present one. CHAPTEE 61-4 The Sons of God and the Daughters OF Men 1-4. This fragment seems to have been placed here as an instance of the wickedness which necessitated the Flood. Stories of unions between deities and the women of earth, which resulted in gigantic and corrupt races, were common to many nations of an- tiquity ; and it is now generally held that we have here traces of a similar tradition among the Hebrews, which had survived to the writer's day. But though the passage retains signs of these primitive ideas, it is free from the polytheistic and impure features which are found in the pages of heathen mythology. Probably such passages as 2 Pet 2 ^ Jude 6 f., which speak of the fall of the angels, are based on these verses. 2. The sons of God] This expression occurs in other passages, e.g. Jobl'^ 38^ DanS^^RV, where it is evident that the angels are meant, and this seems the only possible explanation here. It used to be supposed that the ' sons of God ' meant the Sethites, who became corrupted by marriage with the Cainites. But the phrase is nowhere else used to describe them, and, as Bishop Ryle remarks, ' the popular assumption that Cain's descendants were pre-eminently wicked has no foundation either in c. 4 or c. 6.' Nor could such unions have produced the race of giants mentioned in v. 4. The religious idea suggested is that the wickedness that pre- vailed was too great to be entirely of mere human origin. 3. The general meaning is that God now sets a limit (an hundred and twenty years) to human life, which up to this time had been indefinitely long. My spirit] refers to the spirit of life with which the fleshly nature of man had been endowed. It will not sustain man for ever (RV) in this world. 4. There were giants] RV ' the Nephilim were.' The Nephilim, a race of giants, famous in popular legend, are represented as being men of renown at the same time as these angels formed unions with the daughters of men. They are alluded to by the spies (Nu 1 3 33 R V) as ancestors of the giant races of Canaan : and this is probably what is referred to by the words and also after that. CHAPTERS 65-917 The Flood This narrative records the judgment of God upon the sinful forefathers of mankind, and His preservation of a righteous family, in whom the divine purposes for men might be carried out. The spiritual teaching of Noah's deliver- ance has always been recognised by Christians, who see in the ark a symbol of the Church into which they are admitted by baptism, God thereby graciously providing for their deliver- ance from the wrath and destruction due to sin. The story of the Flood was fittingly used by our Lord and the NT. writers to convey lessons of judgment (Mt2437 Lkl7 26 2 Pet 3 5-7), righteousness (2 Pet 2 5), repentance (1 Pet 3 20), and faith (Hebll 7). No section of these early chs. of Genesis has .excited more interest than the account of this terrible catastrophe. Traditions of a great primeval deluge, similar to the one here re- corded, exist in the annals of many nations besides the Hebrews. Of these the Babylonian Flood story is the most closely allied to the Bible narrative. Josephus and Eusebius both preserve fragments of a history of Chaldea which was written by Berosus, a priest of Babylon 250 B.C., and which he had gathered from the archives of the temple of Bel at Babylon. Among these fragments is a record of the Flood story as it occurred in his country. Two thousand years later, in 1872, Mr. G. Smith of the British Museum discovered frag- ments of a tablet of baked clay at Nineveh, inscribed in the cuneiform character, and of greater antiquity than the chronicle of Berosus, 13 6.5 GENESIS 6.5 which strikingly confirm the latter's account of the Flood. As is well known, the Hebrews and Babylonians belonged to the same Semitic stock, and the ancestors of the Hebrew race came from Babylonia. A comparison of the biblical and Babylonian stories shows clearly that they are two versions of the same nar- rative, although great differences exist in the religious standpoint. See art. ' Genesis and the Babylonian Inscriptions.' The question has been discussed whether the Flood was limited in its extent to the early home of man and the birth-place of the tradi- tion, viz. Central Asia, or whether it was world-wide. Various scientific objections to a universal immersion of the earth have been brought forward, such as its inconsistency with the existing distribution of animals, the impossibility of the different species of animals finding accommodation in the ark, the want of sufficient moisture in our world, either in the form of vapour or in that of water, to cover the highest mountains, and the disturbance to the solar system which would have been caused by the sudden creation of the amount required. In considering these objections, we must re- member that the impression of a general divine judgment would be quite adequately produced by the submergence of the com- paratively small district inhabited at the time by man ; also, that the preservation of the record could only be due to the survivors, whose ideas of the extent of the catastrophe were drawn from their personal experiences, and the limited geographical knowledge of the time. In this way the statements of 6^'^ and 74,21-23 may be satisfactorily accounted for. ' The language relating to the catastrophe is that of an ancient legend, describing a pre- historic event. It must be judged as such. Allowance must be made, both for the ex- aggeration of poetical description and for the influence of oral traditions during generations, if not centuries, before the beginnings of Hebrew literature ' (Bishop Ryle). We need not hesitate, therefore, to accept the opinion now generally held that the Flood was only local in its extent. The scene of the Flood is indicated by the traditions. Both mention the mountainous range on the borders of Ai'menia, Mesopo- tamia and Kurdistan as the region where the ark rested. The Babylonian account also places the building of the ' ship ' at Shurippak, a city on the Euphrates. This district was the original home of both Hebrews and Baby- lonians; and it is reasonable to conclude that the two accounts preserve the tradition of a calamitous occurrence in the early annals of their race, which left a lasting impression upon the two peoples, and which they both regarded as a divine visitation. A word must be added regarding the natural phenomena which occasioned the catastrophe. The chief cause may have been, in addition to excessive rains, an earthquake which drove the waters of the Persian Gulf over the low- lying plains of Babylonia, turning them into an inland sea. Something of this kind is sug- gested in 7^1. The same agency may have di'iven the ark towards the mountains. Such upheavals of ocean beds, or subsidences of the earth, resulting in a disastrous inrush of the ocean, have occurred in modern times. In 1819, in a district known as the Runn of Cutch in India, 2,000 sq. m. of land were turned into an inland sea, owing to sudden depression of land followed by an earthquake. The whole story emphasises the righteous- ness of God, who is ' of purer eyes than to behold iniquity,' His stern punishment of sin, and His abundant mercy towards them that fear Him. The narrative of the Flood affords an illus- tration of the composite character of Genesis. Many difficulties in the story are removed if we assume that the narrator made use of two distinct traditions. To the Priestly document may be assigned 69-22 76,ii,i3-i6a,i8-2i,24 8 12a, 3b, 13a, 14-19 9 1-17. This fumishes the groundwork of the story; the vv. assigned to the Primitive document are 7 1-^. 7-io, i2,iob, 17, 22,23 8 2b, 3a, 6-12, 13b, 20-22. In 77-10 the Primitive ac- count has been modified by the introduction of some expressions from the Priestly narra- tive. The following are the chief points in which the two versions of the Flood story differ from each other. According to the Priestly narrative only one pair of every kind of creature is preserved in the ark; the cause of the deluge is the opening of the fountains of the gi-eat deep as well as of the windows of heaven; the waters prevail for an hundred and fifty days; it is five months after the be- ginning of the Flood when the ark rests on the mountains of Ararat; more than two months still pass before the mountain tops are visible; other two months elapse before the waters disappear; and almost two months more before the ground is perfectly dry; God's promise is, that He will not again destroy the earth with a Flood. According to the Primitive document, seven pairs of all clean beasts and fowls, and one pair of all unclean animals, are taken into the ark; the Flood is caused simply by a prolonged rain which lasts for forty days and nights; forty days after the rain ceases, Noah sends forth a raven and a dove; seven days later, the dove is sent out a second time, and again after other seven days ; the ground is then dry ; God promises to curse the gi-ound no more, and to maintain the fixed order of all natural seasons. God's covenant with Noah is peculiar to the 14 6.6 GENESIS 9.9 former, and Noah's sacrifice to the latter account. 6. It repented the LORD] The writer, as in c. 3, interprets God's acts from man's point of view, and explains them on the analogy of human motives. See on 11 5. g. Perfect] i.e. ' upright,' a man of integi'ity. 13. With the earth] rather, ' from the earth.' 14-16. The Hebrew word for ark means a ' vessel,' that which contains anything. It was shaped like a chest, with a flat bottom and a roof. If the cubit measured 18 in., the ark was 450 ft. long, 75 ft. broad, and 45 ft. in depth; and therefore smaller than many modern steamships. It had three decks, and was divided into compartments. It was built of gopher wood, which was probably the cypress; and was coated with pitch. The win- dow of v. 16 (RV 'light,' EM 'roof') was probably an open space for light and air left all round the ark, just under the roof, which was supported at intervals by posts. 16. In a cubit, etc.] EV ' to a cubit shalt thou finish it upward,' i.e. a space of 18 in. was to be left. 18. My covenant] see on 9 9. 19. Every living thing of all flesh] This comprehensive command is limited in the Primitive narrative (7 -) to clean animals (such as sheep, oxen, and goats), and to beasts that are not clean (which by analogj' means do- mestic animals, such as camels, asses, horses, etc.), and fowls. The inclusion of all living animals in the ark is the explanation which the tradition had to give, to account for a fact, otherwise inexplicable on its theory of a universal flood; namely, the presence in the world of so many difl^erent species of animals after such a destructive event. CHAPTER 7 The Flood (continued) 2. By sevens] RV ' seven and seven,' or seven pairs. The clean animals might be used for food, and would also be required for sacrifice. Observe that in 6^^ this distinction between clean and unclean is not noticed, and that there also the animals are chosen in single pairs, ' two of every sort.' Lists of ' clean ' and ' unclean ' animals are given in Lv 11. II. The second month] The year is here supposed to begin in autumn (cp. Ex 34 22)^ so that the second month would be Marchesvan (middle of Oct. to middle of Nov.). That was about the beginning of the rainy season in Palestine. The great deep] See on the ancient Semitic conception of the world, 1 6. Evidently some vast inrush of water is in- tended, beyond heavy rains. 16. Sit-napisti says, ' I entered into the midst of the ship and shut my door.' In our narrative Provi- dence is nearer at hand, The LORD shut him in. 20. Fifteen cubits upward] The waters are supposed to be 15 cubits higher than the loftiest mountains. The ark is conceived as immersed up to 15 cubits; so that whenever the waters decreased, the ark grounded on a mountain-top (8*). CHAPTER 8 The Flood (continued) 4. The mountains of Ararat] Ararat is the Assyrian ' Urardhu,' the country round Lake Van, in what is now called Armenia; but the word also signifies ' highlands,' and perhaps it is a general expression for the hilly country which lay to the N. of Assyria. Mt. Masis, now called Mt. Ararat (a peak 17,000 ft. high), is not meant here. 11. The olive leaf indicated that the tree was above water, and as the olive does not grow at a great elevation, the inference was that the waters had greatly abated. 21. The Lord smelted a sweet savour] A common expression for the favourable ac- ceptance of an offering, cp. Lv 1 ^> is, iV. I will not again curse, etc.] An acknowledg- ment of man's innate propensity to evil. If wicked thoughts, desires, and actions were always to be followed by the judgments they merit, disaster would never be far off (Isa 1 5). 22. Practically there are but two seasons in the land where this was written : one may be called Seed-time, Cold, Winter (middle of Sept. to middle of March) ; the other. Harvest, Heat, Summer (the rest of the year). CHAPTER 9 The Divine Blessing and Covenant. Noah and the Vine. The Curse of Canaan 1-7. The primeval benediction of man (1 2S) is now repeated and enlarged. Animal food is allowed (cp. 1 29), but blood is forbidden. The blood makes the life manifest, as it were, to our senses, and the life belongs to God, and must, therefore, be offered to Him. 5, 6. The ground of the sacredness of human life here is the existence of the divine image in man. It is not conceived as being wholly destroyed by sin. 9. My covenant] This word occurs some two hundred times in the OT., and the idea lies at the root of the whole conception of law among the Jews. Covenants, as made between men, form the beginnings of civilised government : cp. 2626 3144 etc. The M^ord is also used of the relation of God to man ; of His justice. His unchangeable nature, and His protecting power, on the one side, and the corresponding duties devolving upon man, especially as em- bodied in the law of Moses, on the other. A series of covenants (with Abraham and his 15 9. 13 GENESIS 10. successors, with Israel in the wilderness, with David) runs through OT. history. The par- ticular idea in the covenant with Noah is that of the uniform working of God in Nature (cp. 8 22), and of His loving care for His crea- tion. On these two ideas are based all physical science, which could not exist if there were no laws of nature, and all religion, which other- wise would become mere superstitious dread of unseen powers. Jeremiah (3131-34) speaks of a new covenant which is to take the place of the covenant of the exodus. The New Testa- ment claims that this new covenant has been introduced by Chi-ist (Lk22 20 1 Cor 11 25 2 Cor 3 6 Heb 8). Hence the two divisions of the Scriptures are properly not ' Testaments ' but ' Covenants.' 13-17. We are not to understand that the bow was now first created. From the begin- ning a rainbow would be formed, whenever the sunshine and the rain met together. But it was now designated to be the token of God's gracious promise, and its use for this purpose is in harmony with the feelings which it naturally excites. The rain-storm is on us, but the sun is in the skies : the dark back- ground brings out the glorious arc of colour. Man need not yield wholly to depression, for he knows that the clouds will pass. Hindoo mythology calls the rainbow Indra's war-bow, laid aside by him after he had vanquished the demons. Scandinavian legend speaks of it as a bridge built by the gods to join heaven and earth. It is also alluded to in the Babylonian narrative of the Flood. 18-27. Noah and the Yine. The curse of Canaan. The purpose of the passage is (1) to explain by a story the origin of the cultivation of the vine, and (2) to set forth the moral and re- ligious position of Israel among the other nations of the world. On the ground of the mention of Canaan instead of Ham in vv. 25, 27, it has been suggested, with some probability, that in the Primitive document the sons of Noah were originally Shem, Japheth and Canaan, and that the explanations in vv. 18, 22 (Ham the father of Canaan) were introduced to harmonise the story with the Priestly docu- ment, which speaks of Shem, Ham and Japheth. 18, 19. These vv. are a link, inserted to connect the incident with the account of the Flood. 20. Noah is represented as the first cultivator of the vine. 21. Noah's intoxi- cation was not due to deliberate excess, but was his practical discovery of the properties of wine. The story therefore contains nothing inconsistent with the character already ascribed to him. 25. Canaan represents the nations of Palestine subdued by Israel. The justifica- tion of the conquest lay in the impure character of their worship, which was foreshadowed in the immodest conduct of their ancestor. 26. The Lord God of Shem] RV 'the Lord (Jehovah), the God of Shem.' Shem was the ancestor of Israel, and these words assert Israel's unique position and calling, as the chosen people of the true God. Canaan shall be] RV ' let Canaan be ' : so in v. 27. 27. God shall enlarge] RV ' God enlarge Japheth.' Japheth represents the remaining peoples of the world. They have a share in God's favour, even though they do not know Him in His true character as Jehovah. He shall dwell] RV ' let him dwell,' in friendly alli- ance. We may see in the words a forecast of the days when the descendants of Japheth should come to worship the Lord God of Shem : cp. Isa 60 ^i 5. CHAPTER 10 The Nations descended from Noah This section gives the origins and situations of the nations of the world, as their relation- ships were conceived by the early Hebrews. Before passing to the history of the chosen race, the author traces the ties by which the rest of mankind are united with kis own people, and shows the position of Israel among the nations. Each nation is regarded as a unity, and is summed up in the person of its sup- posed ancestor. The nations being treated as individuals, it follows that their mutual rela- tions are put in terms borrowed from family life ; Gomer is the ' son ' of Japheth, and so on. But this relationship is not to be under- stood literally. The names are in many cases plainly national (the Jebusite, the Canaanite, etc.). Others are well-known names of coun- tries (Mizraim or Egypt, Asshur, etc.) ; and nearly all appear elsewhere in OT. in a geographical sense (see especially Ezk 27 and 381-13). "\;Ve may therefore consider that the arrangement is determined chiefly by geograph- ical considerations, nations in proximity to each other being regarded as related. Thus the races assigned to Japheth (vv. 2-5) are all in the N., those to Ham in the S. (vv. 6-20), whilst Shem's descendants (vv. 21-31) are in the centre. These come last because it is this line which is followed out in the sequel. The classification of the nations is a rough and approximate one, made in far distant days when the science of ethnology was unknown. The limitations of the Hebrew author's know- ledge of the extent of the world are also appa- rent. The nations mentioned are mainly those which were grouped round the Mediterranean Sea, and are generally known as Caucasian, no reference being made to Negro, Mongolian or Indian races. But it may be truly said that the list upon the whole proves itself to be an 16 10. 2 GENESIS 10.15 excellent historico-geographical monument of 8. Begat] was the progenitor of. an age from which we no longer have other comprehensive sources of information. While the groundwork of the section is from the Priestly document, this has been combined with extracts from the Primitive document (108-19,21,24-30), -jvhich do not perfectly har- monise with it. Thus Sheba (10 28) and Hav- ilah (1029) are descendants of Shem, while in 10"^ they are Cushites, descended from Ham. The identification of the following names is uncertain : Abimael, Almodad, Anamim, Casluhim, Diklah, Gether, Hadoram, Hul, Jerah, Lud, Ludim, Mash, Obal, Eesen, Sabtechah, Salah. The notes on the names follow the groupings of the text. 2-5. The sons of Japheth. These are nations mostly N. or W. of Palestine. Gomer] the Cimmerians, near the Crimea. Ashkenaz] perhaps, Phrygia. Riphath] per- haps,Paphlagonia on S. borders of the Black Sea. Togarmah] Armenia. Magog] supposed to be Scythians, cp. Ezk 382, -v^rhere they are associated with Gomer. Madai] the Medes. Javan] Ionian Greece. Elishah] some coast or island in the Greek seas (Ezk 27") : Crete, Cyprus, and Greece (Hellas) have been sug- gested. Tarshish] Though of ten mentioned in OT., the identity is quite uncertain. Sug- gestions are either Tarsus in Cilicia, Tartessus in S. Spain, or the Etruscans of Italy. Kittim] Citium, the modern Larnaca in Cyprus. Do- danim] (in 1 Ch 1 " Rodanim) Rhodes. Tubal] the Tibareni ; Meshech] the Moschi, both SE. of the Black Sea. Tiras] uncertain. Per- haps the Turusha, a seafaring people men- tioned in Egyptian inscriptions, or the Tyrseni, a people dwelling on the shores of the ^gean Sea. 5. It is likely that this v. in its complete form ran : ' Of these were the coasts and islands of the peoples divided. These are the sons of Japheth, in their lands, each according to his language, after their families, in their peoples.' Cp. vv. 20, 31. 6, 7, 13-19. The sons of Ham. 6. Ham] a name for Egypt. The 'sons of Ham ' means the nations connected with Egypt geographically or politically. They were all S. of Palestine. Cush] Ethiopia or Nubia, S. of Egypt. Phut] probably the 'Punt' of Egyptian inscriptions, on the E. African coast. 7. Seba . . Havilah . . Sabtah . . Raamah . . Sheba . . Dedan . .] all countries bordering on the African or Arabian coasts of the Red Sea. 8-12. This paragraph interrupts the con- nexion. Before and after it are simple geneal- ogies. The Cush of v. 8 is thought to be dis- tinct from the African Cush of v. 7, and to stand for the Kashshu or Cossisi, who were the dominating power in Babylonia between the 16th and 13th centuries B.C. Nimrod] the one personal figure of the chapter. Here his name is proverbial as that of a mighty hunter (v. 9). He founds both Babylonian and Assyrian' civilisation (vv. 10- 12). There is no trace of Nimrod as an his- torical character on the monuments, and it has been suggested that the name (as if from marad^ ' to rebel ') was a deliberate mutilation and corruption of that of Merodach, the god of Babylon, made by one who wished to deny his divine character. If this was the case, the heathen deity who caught Tiamat in his net has been transformed in the Bible story into a mere human huntsman, a creature of the true God (cp. before Jehovah, v. 9), and the ancient cities that boasted of their divine origin are traced to a human founder. 10. Babel] Babylon. Erech] Warka, on the left bank of the Euphrates. Accad] the ancient name of N. Babylonia ; also a city, the capital of Sargon I, the earliest historical ruler of all Babylonia. Calneh] probably the same as Nippur, the modern Niffer, recently excavated by the Pennsylvanian expedition. Shinar] an ancient name for S. Babylonia. II. Out of that land went forth Asshur] RV ' out of that land he (Nimrod) went forth into Assyria.' This v. correctly indicates that Assyria owed its civilisation to Babylonia : it was also politically dependent until the 10th cent. B.C. Nineveh] the modern Kouyunjik on the Tigi'is, the ancient capital of Assyria. Its ruins have been excavated in recent years, and numbers of tablets, inscriptions, and carv- ings collected from its palaces. The city Rehoboth] RV ' Rehoboth-ir ' (' broad spaces of the city ') : probably a suburb of Nineveh. Calah] the modern Nimrud, 20 m. S. from Kouyunjik. Resen] not known. The same is the (RV) great city] i.e. Nineveh and the other three together formed the ' gi'eat city.' 13, 14. The descendants of Mizraim. Mizraim] the Hebrew name for Egypt. The plural form is supposed to indicate Upper and Lower Egypt. Lehabim] Libya, W. of Egypt. Naphtuhim] perhaps N. of Lower Egypt. Pathrusim] S. or Upper Egypt. The clause ' Whence went forth the Philistines ' (RV) should be placed after Caphtorim, or people of Crete, with whom the Philistines are elsewhere said to be connected (Jer47i Am 9'). They settled on the SW. coast of Canaan, and gave the name Palestine to the country. 15-19. Canaan] Phoenicia and Palestine. The Canaanites were a Semitic race, speaking a language near akin to Hebrew. They are here assigned to Ham, perhaps contemptuously, or possibly because Palestine was a province of Egypt previous to the exodus. Sidon] 17 10. 19 GENESIS 11. 4 the Phoenician seaport. Heth] The Hittites are now well known from Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions to have been a powerful nation to the N. of Palestine, with Carchemish on the Euphrates and Kadesh on the Orontes as their chief cities. An oiishoot of the nation is found at Hebron : cp. Gn233 25 lo. The Jebusite] the tribe in and around Jerusalem : cp. Josh 15 8.63 2 S 56-9. The Amorite] one of the most powerful Palestinian tribes. In Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions they are called the Amurru, and "Amorite" seems to have been a general term for the old inhabit- ants of Canaan : see on 12 5. According to Nu 1329 they dwelt chiefly in the mountainous districts. Sihon and Og were Amorite kings. The Girgashite] perhaps connected with Gergesa, near the Sea of Galilee. The Hivite] a petty tribe of Central Palestine. The Arkite] the tribe connected with the Phoenician city of Arka, 12 m. N. of Tri- polis. The Sinite] probably connected with a city called Sin, near Lebanon. The Arvad- ite] Arvad was a city built on an island off the Phoenician coast (now Ruwad). The Zemarite] Sinsyra, S. of Arvad. The Ha- mathite] Hamath was a city on the Orontes. The ' entering in of Hamath ' was the northern limit of Palestine. Most of these tribes were afterwards driven out by the con- quering Israelites. 19. The border of the Canaanite] from Zidon in the north, to Gaza, a Philistine city in the direction of Gerar. The other cities mentioned in v. 19 were probably, but not certainly, at the S. end of the Dead Sea. 21-31. The sons of Shem. The nations connected racially or geographically with the Hebrews. Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber] Attention is thus called to Shem as the ancestor of the Hebrews (' children of Eber '). The Amarna tablets speak of a tribe called the Habiri invading Canaan in the days of Joshua, and many scholars identify them with the Hebrews. The brother of Japheth the elder] RV ' the elder brother of Japheth.' This is mentioned to show that though Shem is put last, he was not the youngest. 22. Elam] NE. of Babylonia. Its capital was Susa. Asshur] Assyi-ia. Arphaxad] RY ' Arpachshad ' : uncertain. Some connect it with the Kasdim or Chaldeans who lived on the Persian Gulf and became rulers of Baby- lonia. Lud] uncertain, possibly Lydia in Asia Minor. Aram] Syria, ISTE. of Pales- tine. Damascus was a Syi-ian kingdom. The Jews in later times spoke Aramaic. 23. Uz] probably near Edom, see Job 1 1. 25. Peleg] ' divided.' In his days was the earth divided] alluding perhaps to the dispersion of man described in c. 11. 18 26-30. The sons of Joktan represent various Arabian tribes. Hazarmaveth] Hadramaut in S. Arabia. Uzal] the capital of Yemen. Sheba and Havilah] See prefatory remark and on v. 7. Ophir] a famous region, the locality of which is still in dispute. Some place it in E. Africa in Mashonaland, where remarkable remains of ancient mining works have been found, some in India, and some in S. Arabia. Mesha] NE. Araiaia. Sephar] SW. Arabia. Unto Sephar, etc.] RM ' toward Sephar, the hill country of the East.' CHAPTER 11 The Tower of Babel. The Descendants OF Shem to Abraham We have here the ancient Hebrew explana- tion of the diversity of human language, and of the wide dispersion of the human race. Babylon is represented as the original centre of human civilisation after the Flood. The splendid buildings of Babylonia were among the most remarkable achievements of human power and pride. But they were repugnant to the Jews as being associated with idolatry, and their erection is here regarded as rebellion against Jehovah, who confounds the language of the builders, and brings about their dis- persion. ' The story emphasises the supremacy of the One God over all the inhabitants of the world, and ascribes to His wisdom that dis- tribution into languages and nations which secured the dissemination of mankind . . and provided for the dispersion of civilising influ- ences into different quarters of the globe. Above all, it teaches that rebellion against God is the original source of discord. The gift of Pentecost, as the Fathers saw, is the converse of the story of the Tower of Babel. The true unity of the race, made known in Christ (cp. Col 3 ^i) is confirmed by the utter- ance of the Spirit which is heard by all alike. The believer " journeys " not away from God's presence, but draws nigh to Him by faith ' (Bishop Ryle). The narrative is from the Primitive source. I. It used to be conjectured that Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind, but it is now known that that language is only one branch, and that not the oldest, of the Semitic group of languages including Assyrian. Ara- maic, Phoenician and Arabic. 2. From the east] RM ' in the east.' The writer is in Palestine. Shinar] S. Babylonia. 3. Brick . . slime (RM ' bitumen ')] These were the regular materials of ancient Baby- lonian architecture, as the remains of the oldest cities still show. There was no stone available in these alluvial plains. 4. A city and a tower] The principal 11.5 GENESIS 11. 32 building in every ancient city was its temple, and the chief feature of a Babylonian temple was its ziggurat or stage-tower. The remains of these towers are the most prominent of the mounds which mark the sites of ruined cities. The pile of vitrified brick near Babylon, known as Birs Nimrud, is the best known example of such a ziggurat, and early travellers supposed it to be the biblical Tower of Babel. The most famous temple-tower, however, and the one which probably gave rise to the tradi- tion here, was that of E-Sagila, the temple of Bel in Babylon, built of brick in seven stages, the topmost of which formed a shrine for the god. It was of extreme antiquity, and was restored and beautified by Nebuchadnezzar. Whose top may reach unto heaven] cp. Dt 1 '^^. The expression ' Whose top is in the heavens ' has been found on inscriptions con- cerning these storied towers, but it seems as if the writer regarded the enterprise as an impious attempt to scale heaven. Let us make us a name, etc.] The tower was meant to procure re- nown for its builders, and to serve as a centre and bond of unity, so that none would think of leaving it. The writer seems to indicate the intention of establishing a universal empire. 5. The LORD came down, etc.] The words are meant to teach that God is concerned in men's doings. But ' it is not to be thought from such modes of expression that human characteristics are intended to be ascribed to the Creator. In any age it is necessary to describe the unknown by the help of the known ; and as the mysterious personality of God must ever be incomprehensible to men, there is no means in which we can represent His relations to us, except by using words borrowed from our own faculties, emotions, and modes of action ' (Geikie). 6, 7. God is here represented as dreading lest men make themselves so powerful as to become His opponents. The v. is a good example of the anthropomorphism characteristic of the Primi- tive document. 7. Us] God is conceived as taking counsel with the angels His attendants : cp. 322. 9. Babel] as if from halal, ' to confound.' The true etymology, however, is Bah-ilu^ 'gate of God.' See on 4^. 10-32. The descendants of Shem to Abra- ham. The formal list here is the continuation of that in c. 5, and both belong to the Priestly document. The early period of the world's history from the Creation to Abraham is thus represented in the form of a genealogical table. The figures given here cannot be regarded as literally historical. Only 300 years are reckoned to have elapsed between the Flood and the birth of Abraham (say 2200 B.C.), whereas the beginnings of Baby- lonian civilisation can be traced back to 5000 B.C. As in c. 5, the number of generations is ten, a number which is common in the lists of other ancient nations. It may have been sug- gested by the ten fingers, as indicating com- pleteness. We may therefore regard the present list as a conventional arrangement for bridging over the interval between the Flood and the beginnings of the Hebrew race, based on ancient tradition. It will be observed that the ages assigned to the Patriarchs enu- merated in this c. are much lower than those in c. 5. There is a continuous reduction from the 600 years of Shem to the 138 of Nahor. The names of the generations from Shem to Eber have already been given in 1022-25^ and the latter's Arabian descendants in the line of Joktan were there traced. Now (vv. 18-26) his successors in another line are followed, until the point of supreme interest is reached in the Birth of Abraham. 14. Eber] the ancestor of the Hebrews. See on 14^3. 26. For the meaning of Abram and Sarai (v. 29) see on c. 17. 27. Haran] son of Terah. The Jewish Book of Jubilees declares that he was bmmt to death, whilst attempting to save some of the images of the gods, when Abraham burnt the house in which they were. 31. Ur of the Chaldees] or ' Ur Kasdim.' The Chaldeans lived in S. Babylonia. The modern Mugheir, near the Euphrates, 125 m. NW. of the Persian Gulf, marks the site of an ancient city called Uru, which is by many identified with the Ur of this passage. But in the Accadian inscriptions the whole province of Accad or N. Babylonia was called Uri. Haran, the town (see next note), was also in this district, and the difficulty of explaining why Terah made the long journey of 600 m. from Mugheir disappears, if the Ur of Genesis ma,y be identified with Uri. The family of Terah was evidently a pastoral one, and it was natural that they should make a new settlement from time to time. 31. Haran] (the Roman Carrhce) was a city in Mesopotamia. It was an ancient seat of the worship of the moon god Sin. Caravan roads led from Haran to Syria and Palestine. Terah, who had intended to settle in Canaan, remained at Haran, and died there. C. 12 tells us how Abraham received the divine command to leave his home and relatives, and, in reliance on God's promise, to settle in a new country, there to found a race who should preserve the knowledge of the true God, and prove a blessing to all mankind. 32. The days of Terah were two hundred and five years] According to the Samaritan text Terah was 145 years old when he died. As Terah was 70 at the birth of Abram (11 26) and the latter left Haran when he was 75, 19 12. GENESIS 12. the Samaritan text confirms the statement in Ac 7 ■* that Abram waited till after his father's death to leave Haran. CHAPTERS 12-25 The History op Abraham At this point the specific purpose of the writer of the Pentateuch begins to appear more clearly. Speaking generally, that pur- pose is to trace the development of the king- dom of God in the line of Israelitish history. To this subject the preceding chs. of Genesis have formed an introduction, dealing with universal history, and indicating the place of Israel among the other nations of the world. The narrative now passes from universal history to the beginnings of the chosen people and their subsequent fortunes. The connect- ing link is furnished in the person of Abraham, and interest is now concentrated on him, and the promises made to him. Abraham is one of the very greatest fibres in the religious history of the human race. Three great religions look back to him as one of their spiritual ancestors, and accept him as a type of perfect faith and true religion, viz. the Jewish, the Mohammedan, and the Christian. The world owes to him its first clear knowledge of the true God, His spiritual and holy nature, and the way in which He is to be served and worshipped. How much of this Abraham may have brought with him from Ur of the Chaldees we do not know. Recent discovery points to a very close con- nexion between the religions of Babylonia and Israel. That need not surprise us, nor does it impair the truth and value of the biblical narrative. Every religious system, not excepting Christianity itself, is based upon the foundations of the past. What we find in Abraham is a new point of departure. Religious beliefs, opinions, laws, and ideals, which he inherited, are, by a power which we cannot explain but can only define as the in- spiration of God, purified and elevated, with the result that religion starts afresh with him on a higher level. The affirmation of the truth of monotheism and the rejection of human sacrifice in the worship of God would, apart from other considerations, make Abraham rank among the foremost religious reformers the world has seen. In recent times an attempt has been made to date the beginnings of Israel's religion from Moses, and to represent the patriarchs as ' shadows in the mist ' of antiquity of whose personal existence and religious views nothing can be said with certainty. In particular the attempt has been made to reduce Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to later personifications of ancient tribes. The patriarchs, it is said, were not individuals but tribes, and what are repre- sented as personal incidents in their lives are really events, naively and vividly described, in the history of the various tribes to which the nation of Israel owed its descent. In some cases such personification of tribes may be admitted ; e.g. Canaan, Japheth, and Shem clearly represent tribes in the blessing of Noah (Gn 9^5-27 u) 1-3-2), cp. also intro. to Gn 49. The same is true of Ishmael in Gn 16 1-, and of Esau, who is called Edom in Gn 25^0 36 1' ^' 19. But admitting that there may be an element of truth in this theory, and that the biographies of the patriarchs may have been idealised to some extent by the popular feel- ings and poetical reflection of later times, the view that sees in the story of the patriarchs nothing that is personal and historical is certainly extreme and improbable. Popular imagination may add and modify but it does not entirely create. It requires some historical basis to start from. That basis in the case of Abraham and the other patriarchs is popular oral tradition, and that this preserved a genuine historical kernel cannot be denied. The amount of personal incident, the circum- stantiality, the wealth of detail contained in the patriarchal narratives, can only be rightly accounted for on the ground that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were real historical person- ages, leaders of distinct national and religious movements, who made their mark upon the whole course of subsequent history. Some time ago, when an utterly impenetrable veil of obscurity hung over all contemporary pro- fane history, the biblical narrative of the patri- archs could find no corroboration elsewhere. But of late a flood of light has been thrown upon ancient Assyria, illuminating the very period to which Abraham belongs. A back- ground has been provided for the patriarchal age ; and our increasing knowledge of Baby- lonian civilisation and religion goes to sub- stantiate the historical nature of the stories of Abraham and the other patriarchs, and shows that they might well be the products of such a country and such an age. We may go further, and say that later Jewish history seems to re- quire such a historical basis as the patriarchal narratives furnish, as its starting-point and explanation. Abraham, and not Moses, is the father of the Jewish nation, and the founder of its distinctive religion. It was no new and unknown God in whose name Moses spoke to his brethren in Egypt. He was able to appeal to Israel in the name of a God who had already revealed Himself, in the name of ' the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' See Ex3645, and note on the former passage. The sections of the history of Abraham (chs. 12-25) which are attributed to the 20 12. 1 GENESIS 12. 17 Priestly source are the following : 1 1 27-32 1 2 ^ 13 6, lib, 12 161-3,15,16 171-27 1929 211^2b-5 23, 25 ^■1''. Those which form part of the Primitive narrative are: 12i-'i.f3-135.7-iia,i2b-i8^ 14^ 15^ 164-14, 18, 19 (except v. 29), 20, 21 (mostly), 22, 24, 26 1-6. 18-34. They afford a good ex- ample of the characteristic difEerences in style of the two sources, as explained in the art. ' Origin of the Pentateuch.' CHAPTER 12 The Call of Abraham. The Removal to Canaan. The Visit to Egypt I. Had said] RV 'said,' when he was in Haran. In what manner the call came to Abraham, whether through, some outward in- cident which he recognised as the prompting of Providence, or through the suggestions of the Divine Spirit in his inmost soul, we do not know. Anyhow he regarded it as divine and authoritative, and it was too definite to be misunderstood. Get thee out of . . and from . . and from] The repetition emphasises the complete severance of all connexion with his early home and friends. A land that I will shew thee] The fact that the land was not named increased the demand on Abraham's faith and made his self -surrender the more absolute ; cp. Heb 11. 2. Thou shalt be a blessing] RV ' Be thou a blessing,' i.e. the very embodiment of blessing : blessed thyself, and the source of blessing to others. 3. In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed] or, ' bless themselves.' Through Abraham and his descendants raen everywhere would come to know God as One and Holy, and to long for ' the Desire of all nations.' 4. Lot went with him] Haran, Lot's father, was dead, 1 1 ^s. 5. They went forth to go] Haran, the starting-place, was some 300 miles from Canaan. They would go through Syria, halting perhaps at Damascus (see 15 2), then proceeding southwai'ds through Bashan to the fords of the Jordan S. of the Sea of Galilee, and thence to Shechem in the centre of Pales- tine. The soitls that they had gotten] i.e. their slaves. The land of Canaan] the ancient name of Palestine. At this time much of Syria and Canaan was ruled by the Amorites, who were for centuries the dominant race. 6. Sichem] RV ' Shechem.' The term ' the place of Shechem' intimates that this was an ancient sanctuary, and this is confirmed by 354 Dt 1129 274 Josh 833 2426. The 'terebinth (or turpentine tree) of the director ' (as we may render plain of Moreh) points to the same conclusion. Most likely there was a grove of trees, the rustling of whose leaves was interpreted as an oracle (cp. 2S524). Oracles of this kind were much resorted to. The Canaanite] see on 13 7. 7. The Lord appeared unto Abram] see on v. 1. The faith of Abraham, in leaving Haran in obedience to the divine call, is now rewarded by the definite promise of possession of the land by his descendants. There builded he an altar] thus consecrating the place to God, who had there manifested Himself to him. The building of an altar was the recognised act of worship : cp. 820 13 is, etc. 8. Beth-el] 5 m. S. of Shechem ; see on 2819. Hai] or, Ai, near Bethel. 9. The south] or, ' the Negeb,' the district between Palestine and the wilderness N. of Sinai. It forms a transition from the cultivated land to the desert ; and, though not fertile, yields much pasture for flocks ; see Josh 1521-32. 10-20. Abraham's visit to Egypt. Owing to a famine, to which Palestine is sometimes liable if the winter rains fail, Abraham moves down to Egypt. There, owing to the inunda- tions of the Nile and the system of irrigation practised, crops rarely failed, and neighbouring countries had their wants supplied : cp. Ac 276, 38_ Egypt was already a highly civilised country in Abraliam's time. Many of the pyramids were built long before his day. The patriarch on this occasion appears in a very unfavourable light. Admitting the great dangers which threatened him at the hands of a licentious despot, admitting also that among Easterns duplicity is admired rather than scorned, the readiness he showed to risk his wife's honour in order to secure his own safety, and his lack of trast in God's protection, are inexcusable. But we esteem our Bible all the more for its candour in not hiding the faults of its greatest characters. Of only One can it be said that He was ' without sin.' 13. Thou art my sister] Sarah was Abra- ham's half-sister (20 12). By this prevarication he doubtless thought the danger to himself would be less than if he had confessed that she was his wife. 15. Pharaoh] the official title of the kings of Egypt; cp. Pharaoh-Necho (2 K 23 29). It is the Egyptian word Pr^o, ' great house,' which was originally applied to the royal palace and estate, and afterwards to the king : cp. our use of the word ' Court ' to designate the king and his household. It is probable that at this time Egypt was governed by Asiatic conquerors known as the Hyksos, or Shepherd kings : see Intro, to Exodus. 1 6. It is usual in the East to give presents to the bride's relatives on such occasions, to make, in fact, payment for the bride ; cp. Ex 22 1^ Ruth 410. Camels] It is doubtful if these were used by the ancient Egyptians. Perhaps the Semitic conquerors of Egypt may have intro- duced them from Asia at this period. 17. Cp. Ps 10514, 'He suffered no man to do them wrong ; yea, he reproved kings for their sakes.' 21 13. 1 GENESIS 14. 3 CHAPTEE 13 The Return op Abraham from Egypt, AND HIS Separation from Lot I. Into the south] see on 129. 5, 6. There was not sufficient pasturage and water (especially after the recent famine and drought) for the two encampments with their flocks and herds, which doubtless num- bered many thousands. 7. The Perizzite] 'dweller in open villages.' It is thought by some that they were the original inhabitants of the country who had been subdued by Canaanite invaders. The words dwelled then in the land indicate that the writer lived long after the conquest of Canaan. 8, 9. Abraham's offer was marked by a generosity towards his nephew, and a readiness to leave his own future entirely in God's hands, which called forth at once the divine approval: see vv. 14-17. 10. If they were standing on the 'mountain east of Bethel' (128 133), Lot would look eastward over the fertile Ghor or Jordan valley, whilst in all other directions only the barren limestone hills of Judea would be visi- ble. Garden of the Lord] Eden. As thou comest unto] i.e. in the direction of. Zoar] Zoar was a city near the Dead Sea: see on 143. But the Syriac text reads ' Zoan,' i.e. Tanis, a city in the Nile Delta. 11-13. Lot's choice showed that he cared chiefly for worldly prosperity ; the evil reputa- tion of his neighbours did not affect his decision, which provedafatal one: seechs. 14andl9. The sacred narrative now becomes confined to the history of Abraham and his direct descendants. 12. Land of Canaan] see on NulS^i. 14-17. The promises of c. 12 are confirmed to Abraham, only more fully and definitely. 18. Plain] RM 'terebinths'; see on 126. Mamre] an Amorite chief. It is evident from 1413 that Abraham now settled down among this community of Amorites, and en- tered into a confederacy with them. Hebron] an ancient city 20 m. S. of Jeru- salem, earlier called Kirjath-Arba, 23 2. From its connexion with Abraham it soon came to be regarded as a holy place. Joshua appointed it to be one of the six cities of refuge, and assigned it to the Levites. For 7 years it was the seat of David's kingdom (2S51-5). It is now called el-KhaUl^ ' the friend,' after Abra- ham, ' the friend of God ' (Isa418). Hard by is the cave of Machpelah where the patriarchs were buried. CHAPTER 14 The Battle of the Kings, and the Capture and Rescue of Lot Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, had subdued the Canaanites of the Jordan valley some years before the events narrated in this chapter. The latter had rebelled, and a campaign for their fresh subjugation was undertaken, which in- cluded a general punitive expedition from Syria to the Gulf of Akaba. Within the last few years Assyrian tablets of great antiquity have been found, throwing considerable, if indirect, light on this narrative, and helping to determine its date. The cunei- form inscriptions on them refer to a series of campaigns by the kings of Elam NE. of Chaldea, perhaps about 2150 B.C. Their con- quests extended over the vast territories, which became later the Babylonian and As- syrian empires, and included Syria and Canaan. "The names Amraphel, Arioch, and (perhaps) Chedorlaomer occur in these inscriptions, and help to give a historical setting to the present narrative. The Tel el Amarna tablets dis- covered in Egypt testify to the dominion exercised by these northern nations over Syria and Canaan some centuries later, perhaps whilst Israel was still in Egj^t ; see on Nu 1317. 1. Amraphel] king of Shinar or Babylonia. He eventually expelled the Elamites who had invaded his territory. Amraphel has by many authorities been identified with Hammurabi of the inscriptions. A tablet of laws issued by this monarch was discovered at Susa in 1902, and has been translated : see art. ' Laws of Hammurabi.' Arioch] identified with Eri- akit, king of Larsa (EUasar), on the left bank of the Euphrates in S. Babylonia. He was a contemporary and rival of Amraphel, and of Elamitic family. Chedorlaomer] A name read by Prof. Sayce as Kudurlaghgamal was found on a tablet of Hammurabi in 189G. This reading is, however, questioned. The element Kudur (perhaps ' servant ') is found in the names of other Elamite kings, e.g. Kiidur- Nahumli. and ' bricks have been found at Mugheir (Ur) due to a king Kndur-Mabug who calls himself Adda-Martu^ " ruler of the west country," viz. Canaan' (D.). Tidal] identifi- cation uncertain. Of nations] RV ' Goiim' ; perhaps the Heb. word is intended to describe the (?«//, a powerful nation N. of Babylonia. 2. The five towns (Pentapolis) mentioned here lay round the Dead Sea. The kings were mere chieftains, tributaries of Chedor- laomer, who now threw off his yoke. 3. The vale of Siddim which is the Salt Sea] The words imply that what had been the fertile vale of Siddim was covered, in the author's time, by the Salt (Dead) Sea. It is a disputed question whether this vale in which were the ' cities of the plain,' was situated at its N. or S. end. 'For the N. end, it is argued that Abraham and Lot looked upon the cities from near Bethel (13^0)^ whence it would be impossible to see the S. end of the Dead Sea; that the name " Circle (or plain) of Jordan " is 22 14. 4 GENESIS 14. 14 inapplicable to the S. end ; and that the presence of five cities there is impossible. On the other hand, at the S. end of the Dead Sea there lay, through Roman and mediaeval times, a city called Zoara by the Greeks and Zughar by the Arabs, which was identified by all as the Zoar of Lot. Jebel Usdum, at the SE. end, is the uhcontested representative of Sodom. The name Kikhar (" circle ") may surely have been extended to the S. of the Dead Sea ; just as to-day, the Ghoi- (lower Jordan valley) is continued a few miles to the S. of Jebel Usdum. Jewish and Arab tradi- tions fix on the S. end ; and finally the material conditions are more suitable there than on the N. end to the description of the region both before and after the catastrophe, for there is still sufficient water and verdure on the E. side of the Ghor to suggest the Garden of the Lord, while the shallow bay and long marsh at the S. end may, better than the ground at the N. end of the sea, hide the secret of the overwhelmed cities ' (G. A. Smith). The Dead Sea, which is about 46 m. long by 9 m. wide, is now nearly divided in two parts towards the S. end by a tongue of land jutting from the E. shore. This tongue probably once joined the opposite shore, and formed the S. limit of the Sea: but it is conjectured that, by the action of an earthquake, a subsi- dence took place, and, as Prof. Smith hints, what had been the fertile vale of Siddim became a desolate lagoon. The saltness of the water (26 per cent, as compared with the 4 per cent, of the ocean) is due to the presence of a mountain of rock salt (Jebel Usdum) at the S. end of the sea. Fish cannot live in it, not so much owing to its saltness as to the excess of bromide of magnesium ; and the extreme buoyancy of its waters is well known. The position of this salt mountain, taken in con- nexion with 19 -'5 and the occurrence of bitumen pits at the S. end (see on v. 10), supports the theory of the position of the cities just mentioned. The name ' the Dead Sea ' occurs nowhere in the Bible, and has not been found earlier than the 2nd cent. a.d. 4. They] i.e. the Canaanite chieftains. They refused to pay tribute. 5 f . The Campaign of Chedorlaomer. Pass- ing Hamath in Syria, and Damascus, the in- vaders first attacked the Rephaim, a race of great stature, who lived in the Bashan dis- trict, E. of Jordan. Their chief city was Ashteroth Karnaim, meaning, perhaps, 'Ashta- roth of the two horns.' ' Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and associated com- monly with Baal in worship (1 K 11 5 2 K 23 13), was the female or productive principle in nature. She is identified with Ishtar (Assyria) and As- tarte (Greece and Rome). Sometimes she is regarded as the Moon-goddess (Baal = Sun, cp. Gnl45), sometimes as Venus, the goddess of love. Her image of wood, cp. Dt 1 6 21 2 K 23 ^^^ was called an Asherah (AV " grove ") ' (' Camb. Compn. Bible'). Zuzims] or Zamzummims, in the country between the rivers Ai'non and Jabbok: cp. Dt220. Ham] Perhaps Rabbath Ammon to S. of Bashan, or Hameitat, 6 m. S. of the Dead Sea. The Peshitto and the Yulgate render ' among them ' for in Ham. Emims] They held what became the land of Moab: cp. Dt2iof. Shaveh Kiriathaim] i.e. ' the plain of Kiryathaim.' It is mentioned on the Moabite Stone, but the site is disputed : cp. Nu3237. 6. Proceeding S. the invaders smote the Horites, cave-dwellers in the moun- tainous district of Seir, afterwards held by the Edomites, descendants of Esau. This district extends from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Akaba. The wonderful rock city Petra may have been hollowed out by them. Thence they proceeded to Elath, near the wilderness of Paran, the scene of the forty years' wandering, known as Et-Tih: see on 2121. Turning to the north-west further victories were gained over the Amalekites at Kadesh Barnea, called also En-Mishpat ('well of judgment'), and over the Amorites at Ha- zezon-tamar, or Engedi, on the W. side of the Dead Sea. 8-10. The vale of Siddim was now reached, and was the scene of a fierce battle with the five Canaanite kings. 10. Slimepits] Wells of inflammable bitumen, a mineral pitch allied to naphtha. Masses of bitumen are still thrown up in the S. portion of the lake. The Canaanite armies seem to have been snared in the slimy substance. The king of Sodom . . fell there] This refers rather to his army, as we find him welcoming Abraham on his return (v. 17). 12. Lot with his wealth would be a desirable prisoner. 13. The Hebrew] Abraham may have been so called from his ancestor Eber (11 1*). As the Heb. ibrl^ however, means ' of the country beyond,' the title may have been given to him by the Canaanites because he had come from across the Euplirates. LXX renders, ' Abra- ham the crosser.' In OT. the word generally occurs in the mouth of foreigners or in con- nexion with them: cp. Gn40i5 4332 IS 13, 14, and some scholars consider it probable that the present narrative may come from a Canaanite source. The Jews called them- selves ' Israel,' ' Israelites.' Plain of Mamre] i.e. Hebron: see on 13 1^. 14. This number of able-bodied men in Abraham's household shows that he was now a chieftain of great importance. He also had allies in the venture : see v. 24. 14. Dan] known in Abraham's day as Laish. It was near the sources of the Jordan, some 30 m. N. of the Sea of Galilee. In later days part of the tribe of Dan settled there (Jg 18 27-29). 23 14. 15 GENESIS 15. 5 15. The Elamite army was doubtless much larger than Abraham's following, but the attack from different quarters in the darkness created a panic, similar to that caused by Gideon's men (Jg7). Hobah] N. of Damascus. 17. The king of Sodom] see on v. 10. The king's dale] unknown. Perhaps the place where Absalom set up a pillar : see 2 S 18 1®. Josephus says it was near Jerusalem. 18. Melchizedek] The word may mean ' Sidik' (a deity) 'is my king,' although in Heb 7 the Jewish writer in connexion with his argument explains it as ' King of righteous- ness.' In Josh 103, five hundred years later, we find another king of Jerusalem whose name has the same termination, viz. Adoni- zedec, i.e. ' Sidik is my lord.' Melchizedek was king of Salem, the chief town of the Jebusites, known to us as Jerusalem. The Amarna letters (1400 B.C., written in cunei- form characters on clay tablets) which passed between the rulers of Egypt and their officers in Canaan (at that time tributary to Egypt), show that its name was then Uru-Salim, ' the city of peace.' Among these tablets are letters from its king Ebed-tob to the Pharaoh of the time, in one of which he states that his office was not an hereditary one, but that he owed his position to the Egyptian king. Cp. Heb 7 3, ' without father or mother.' Brought forth bread and -wine] to refresh Abraham and his party. He was the priest of the most high God] This Canaanite chieftain was both king and priest, a combination not uncommon in those days: cp. Jethro (Ex 1812). 'He (Melchizedek) is designated priest of El Elyon, the most high God, whom Abra- ham, as we see from v. 22, could in a general way acknowledge as his god. This agrees very well with the findings of the history of religions. There is abundant evidence for the name El or 11 as the oldest proper name of deity among the Babylonians, As- syrians, Phoenicians, and Sabeans, . . among foreign peoples he was early pushed into the background by younger gods who only ex- pressed particular aspects of his being . . but Melchizedek in his worship still held fast to him as the old sovereign god, the ruler of the universe ' (D.). 20. Abraham, recognising in Melchizedek a priest of the true God, receives his blessing, and gives him as God's repre- sentative a tithe (tenth part) of the spoils he has just taken as a thank offering. Other instances of the payment of tithes are Gn 28 22 Lv2730 Nu313i*- 2S811. 21. Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself] The victor used to keep the whole booty, including prisoners who became his slaves. The king of Sodom proposes that Abraham should restore the captives but keep the spoil. 22-24. Abraham nobly refuses to keep anything for himself, but claims their share of the spoils for his Amorite allies. Possibly the character of the Sodomites made any transaction with them odious to him. 22. I have lift up mine hand] a form of swear- ing : cp. Ex 68. The LORD, the most high God] Jehovah El Elyon. Note that Abraham prefixes Jehovah to the title used by Mel- chizedek, ' as if to claim for Him the exclusive right to supreme divinity.' 23. Shoelatchet] or ' sandal thong ' : i.e. a thing of the least value. Note. Melchizedek is referred to again twice in the Bible (PsllQ-^ Heb 5-7), and each time as a type of the priesthood of Christ. ' The Melchizedek type of priesthood is, first, a royal priesthood (king of righteousness) ; second, a righteous priesthood (king of righteousness) ; third, a priesthood promotive of peace, or ex- ercised in the country of 2^^(^(^^ (king of Salem = king of j^eace) ; fourth, a personal., not an inherited, dignity (without father, with- out mother, i.e. so far as the record is con- cerned) ; fifth, it is an eternal priesthood (without beginning of days or end of life — so far as the record is concerned) ' (HDB. art. ' Hebrews '). See on Heb 5, 6, 7. CHAPTER 15. God Promises an Heir to Abraham and THE Land of Canaan for his Descend- ants. The Promise is Ratified by a Covenant The passage is from the Primitive source. A somewhat similar account from the Priestly narrative is given in c. 17. The repetition shows the importance attached by the com- piler of Genesis to these records of the pro- mises as testifying to the divine purposes for the Hebrew people. I . Vision] probably a trance, with the senses dormant, but the mind awake to spiritual im- pressions: cp. Nu 243>4, 15, 16_ Fearnot] It is thought that Abraham was depressed at the thought (1) of his childlessness, and (2) of the powerful enemies he had made through the rescue of Lot. To remove the latter fear God promises Himself to be his shield. Thy ex- ceeding great reward] RM ' thy reward shall be exceeding gi-eat.' 2. What wilt thou give me] of what avail are these promised posses- sions, with no child to inherit them ? The steward, etc.] RV ' he that shall be possessor of my house,' i.e. the heir, would be Eliezer of Damascus, a servant. The Damascenes have always boasted a connexion with Abraham. 4. Abraham is assured that his heir should be a child of his own begetting. 5. He brought him forth] This was probably part of the vision. Tell the stars] i.e. count them. 24 15. 6 GENESIS 16. 12 6. He counted it to him for righteousness] Faithful Abraham gave up his own will to the will of God, did not seek to force his way in the world (1422), but awaited God's blessing in His good time. And this attitude of trust and submission was esteemed by God. St. Paul quotes this passage to show that man- kind are accepted by God through their faith apart from any observance of the Mosaic law, which indeed had not at the period referred to in this passage come into existence. See Ro 4 and 5 Gal 3 Hebll Jas2. 8. Abraham asks for some pledge of the fulfilment of the promises. 9. God con- descends to confirm the promise of the pos- session of the land by a visible sign. Abraham is directed to make the usual preparations observed in old times when two parties were about to make an important covenant or alli- ance : cp. Jer34i'^. Certain animals and birds used in sacrifice were slain, and the bodies of the former divided in two parts : hence the expression to ' strike ' or ' cut ' a covenant. The two parties then passed between the parts, met in the middle, and took an oath of agree- ment, the position signifying that if they were false to the covenant they merited a similar fate to that of the slain animals. ID. The birds divided he not] see on Lv 1 1'''. Probably they were put opposite one another. ii. Fowls] RV ' birds of prey ' : an omen of the troubles which his descendants must encounter before entering into their possession. 12. An horror of great dark- ness] lit. ' a terror, even great darkness,' pre- ceding the wondrous sight of v. 17. 13. Abraham is given a glimpse of the fortunes of his descendants. A land that is not theirs] i.e. Egypt. Centuries must elapse before the family of Abraham had grown into a nation fit to take possession of Canaan. Much of this time was to be spent in Egypt, where trials and afflictions would discipline them to become the consecrated nation who were to preserve the knowledge of Jehovah. Four hundred years] see on Ex 1 2*10. The four generations of v. 16 taken in agreement with this V. must mean periods of a hundred years each, but there are no data by which we can verify or correct the figures. 15. Go to thy fathers] see on 2.5^. 16. The iniquity of the Aniorites is not yet full] The Amorites here stand for the races of Canaan generally. They are to be spared for 400 years, until their idolatry and gross vices have exhausted the forbearance of God : cp. Dt 7 ^ and Intro, to Joshua. 17. Burning lamp] probably ' torch,' though the meaning is uncertain. The ratification of the covenant now took place by a bright light enveloped in cloud, the symbol of God's presence, passing between the victims : 25 cp. Ex 3 2, 3 4034^ etc. God gave the promise of the inheritance of the land : Abraham's part was continued trust, patience, and obedience. 18. The river of Egypt] probably the Wady el Arish on the border of Egypt. In the days of Solomon the promise was fulfilled (IK 4 21, 24). 19. Kenites and Kenizzites] Tribes of the Negeb and Southern Desert. The Kenites were widely spread from Midian to Naphtali : cp. Jg 1 16 4 n. Kadmonites] of the Syro- Arabian Desert. 20, 21. Periz- zites] see on 137. Rephaims] see on 145. The others were peoples of Canaan : see on 1016. CHAPTER 16 The Circumstances connected with THE Birth of Ishmael I, 2. Abraham was now eighty -five years old, Sarah was seventy-five, and the promise of an heir seemed no nearer fulfilment. Despairing of offspring herself, Sarah per- suades Abraham to take her Egyptian maid Hagar as a secondary wife, intending, accord- ing to ancient custom, to regard the issue as her own. But her lack of faith in God's promises was productive of very unhappy consequences. 4. Hagar] The Arabs claim descent from Hagar tkrough Ishmael. Her name, which means ' flight,' is akin to the word Hegira, used of the flight of Mohammed from Medina to Mecca (622 a.d.), an event from which the Mohammedans date their era. Her mistress was despised in her eyes] be- cause she was fruitful while Sarah was barren : cp. Hannah and Peninnah (1 S 1 6). It was accounted a great disgrace and a sign of God's displeasure to be without offspring : cp. 3023. 5. My wrong be upon thee] i.e. May the blame for the wrong done to me (by Hagar's conduct) fall on thee. 7. The angel of the Lord] see on Ex 3 2. Shur] The word means ' wall ' and was probably applied to the chain of fortresses on the NE. frontier of Egj'pt. The Desert of Shur was the wilderness bordemng on these fortresses which were built to keep out Asiatic invaders. 7, 8. Hagar might flee from the presence of Sarah, but not from the knowledge and sight of God. He finds her, and addresses her, as He did Adam, when he concealed him- self in the Garden of Eden : cp. 1 §. 9. 10. A promise fulfilled in the Arab race : see on v. 4. 11. Ishmael] 'El (God) hears.' 12. A wild man] RV ' as a wild-ass among men.' The wild ass is of an untame- able nature, ever roving : cp. Job 39 ^f. Such was Ishmael, and such are his Arab descend- ants. He shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren] i.e. shall preserve his independ- ence, though close to them ; a true forecast of 16. 13 GENESIS 17. 25 the history of Ishmael's descendants. But another translation gives, ' He shall dwell to the east of his brethren.' 13. Have I also here, etc.] Hagar realises that she still lives though God has looked upon her. 14. Beer-lahai-roi] 'the well of the living one who hath seen ' God : see on c. 21 for St. Paul's references to Hagar. CHAPTER 17 The Covenant of Circumcision This c. is from the Priestly document, of which it shows marked characteristics : see preface to c. 15. I. Ninety years old and nine] Ishmael was now thirteen years old, and Abraham probably expected no other heir. But his faith was to be put to a further test. The Almighty God] Heb. el Shaddal : the name of power shows the ability to perform what was pro- mised. Walk before me, and be thou per- fect] i.e. always conscious of My presence, and living a pious, whole-hearted, upright life. These are the conditions required by God in connexion with the covenant about to be made. 2. God, on His part, promises to make Abraham the ancestor of many nations, and to give Canaan to his descendants. 4, 5. The patriarch's name in Babylonia had been Abram, meaning, perhaps, 'exalted father,' or, according to others, 'Ram (the lofty one) is father ' ; cp. Hiram, ' Ram is brother.' Under the form Abu-Ramu it appears to be a recognised proper name in the Assyrian inscriptions. On entering into a new relationship with God by covenant, of which the sign was circumcision, the patriarch received a new name, ' Abraham.' This is probably a variation on ' Abram,' but its meaning is un- known, the popular explanation ' father of multitude ' being considered untenable. In commemoration of this event Jewish children receive their name when admitted to the covenant by circumcision (Lk 1 ^9), as do Christian children when baptised into the Church of Christ. The ' many nations ' of w. 4 and 6 "included not only Israelites but also Ishmaelites, Edomites (through Esau), Midianites (by Keturah), Arabs (by Hagar). ID. This is my covenant] i.e. this is the sign of the covenant, A^iz. circumcision. Note that both parties undertake obligations here as contrasted with the covenant in c. 15. Circumcision] (lit. ' cutting round ') is the removal of the foreskin. The rite has always been practised by the Jews from Abraham's time to the present day. Other ancient nations also observed the ceremony, such as the Egyptians and Phoenicians, but not the Philis- tines, Babylonians, Greeks or Romans. It is still observed, not only by Mohammedan nations who claim to be descended from Abraham, but by the Abyssinian, Egyptian, Polynesian and other peoples. Among these latter the rite is generally performed about the age of ten or twelve years, as a preliminary to marriage, and as admitting to full civil and religious tribal privileges. With the Hebrews circumcision had a special significance. They regarded it as a sign of the covenant between God and His people, and they alone of all nations circumcised their infants, thereby devoting them from their birth to Jehovah. With them, too, the shedding of the blood of that part upon which depends the perpetuation of life was the symbol of the continuous con- secration of the nation from one generation to another. The spiritual significance of the rite is frequently insisted on by the inspired writers. The outward sign must be accompanied by the putting away of fleshly and sinful desires : cp. Dtl016Ro228,29. The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Colossians witness to the desire of the Jewish Christians to impose the obligation of circumcision on their Gentile brethren, and to the struggle in which St. Paul was successful in freeing his converts from the yoke of Judaism. 11. The flesh of your foreskin] better, 'the foreskin of your flesh.' 12. Eight days old] Until the eighth day children were considered unclean, and so unfit to be offered to God. 12, 13. The law of circumcision applied to all male members of Jewish households, who were henceforth regarded as Israelites, and shared in the national and religious privileges of the chosen race. 14. That soul shall be cut off from his people] This expression seems usually to mean that the offender is to be excommunicated, or cut off from all connexion with the Hebrew community, and from any share in the blessings of the covenant, nor could he claim protection for life or property : cp. Ex 12 15, 19 Nu 913 19 13. But the sentence of death seems sometimes to be added in the case of presumptuous sins, such as the sacrificing of children to Moloch, and the deliberate nonobservance of the sabbath : see Ex 3 1 1* L V 20 1-6 Nu 1 5 30-36. ' Cutting off ' in such cases is plainly equivalent to putting to death. 15. Sarah's name, like Abraham's, is changed on admission to the covenant. Sarah means 'princess' : the exact meaning of Sarai is doubtful. 18. Abraham was imwilling that Ishmael should be deposed from his position as heir: but God would prosper him also (v. 20). 19. Isaac] i.e. he laughs. The name would recall an event which made Abraham laugh with joy and probably also with wonder. 20. Twelve princes] see 25 12 f. 25. Ishmael was circumcised when thirteen years old, the age still observed by Moham- medans: cp. on 17-^^. 26 18. 1 GENESIS 19. 1 CHAPTER 18 The Visit of the Angels to Abraham. The Judgment of Sodom announced. Abraham intercedes on its behalf In this beautiful narrative the writer dwells on the unique revelations of God's purposes with which Abraham was favoured. In after times the patriarch received the title of ' the friend of God ' (2 Ch 20 7 Isa 4 1 8 Jas 2 23). The c. is from the Primitive document. The religious lessons, the vivid description, and the consciousness of God's immediate presence and interest in the aifairs of men are all characteristic of that source. See on 11 ^ Ex 24 10 and Intro. Exodus, § 3, for the anthi-o- pormorphisms of the c. 1. In the plains of Mamre] RV 'by the oaks of Mamre,' i.e. Hebron : cp. 13 1^. 2. Three men] heavenly visitors, angels, as appears from 19 1. With one, God identifies Himself (v. 13). 3. My Lord] This was only a title of re- spect; it is not Lord, i.e. Jehovah. Abraham was entertaining angels unawares (Heb 13 2). 4. The difliculty of procuring the neces- saries of life when travelling in the East causes the duty of hospitality to be observed to an ex- tent unknown to ourselves. Lane, in ' Modern Egyptians,' says that we have here a perfect picture of the manner in which a modern Beda- wee sheikh receives travellers arriving at his encampment. He immediately orders his wife or woman to make bread; slaughters a sheep or some other animal, and dresses it in haste ; and bringing milk and any other provisions that he may have ready at hand, sets all before his guests. If these be persons of high rank, he stands by them while they eat, as Abraham did in this case. The ready hospitality of Abraham is in striking contrast with the con- duct of the Sodomites to the same visitors. Wash your feet] since they only wore sandals. 6. Measure] Heb. Sfiuh, nearly a peck and half. From Mt 1 3 ^^ it seems that three mea- sures made a batch of bread. Cakes] thin biscuits of meal, baked on an iron plate on the heated hearthstone. 7. A calf] Owing to the hot climate only fresh meat can be used, but it is tender if cooked at once. Animal food is very rarely eaten except at festivities, or on the arrival of a distinguished visitor. A quick method usually practised is to broil slices of meat on skewers. 8. Butter] rather, ' curdled milk,' which is very refreshing and still con- stantly drunk in Palestine and Arabia. Cp. Jg5-^. The Arabs make butter by shaking cream in a leather bag : but owing to the heat it does not get firmly set. 10. According to the time of life] RV 'when the season cometh round,' 'at the time reviv- ing,' i.e. 'when this time revives, a year from 27 now' (D.): cp. 2K4i6,i7. 12. Laughed] in unbelief, not in joy. 14. Is any thing too hard, etc.] Cp. the Angel Gabriel's words to Mary, ' With God nothing shall be impos- sible ' (Lk 1 3T). 17-21. God reveals to Abraham the purpose of the visit to Sodom. It was essential that His servant as founder of a great nation should understand God's dealings with nations gener- ally ; that He is concerned in their aifairs, and that whilst ' slow to anger and of great kind- ness ' He is a righteous God who will by no means clear the guilty. 19. I know him, that he will command] rather, ' I have known Him in order that He may command,' etc. To ' know ' means to take notice of, regard. ' The mission of Israel was to preserve a pure faith and pure morals amid the corruptions of man- kind till the Messiah should come.' 20. Cry] i.e. evil report. 21. I will go down now, and see] The expression means that in His visitations on men God acts with absolute justice and a perfect knowledge of all the circumstances. I will know] the whole truth. 22. Stood yet before the LORD] as if to stay His departure until he had interceded for Sodom, and especially with a thought for his kinsman Lot, who dwelt there. 23-32. We have here ' the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man,' humble, yet earnest, and even bold. In his anxious sympathy for others Abraham forgot, perhaps, that ' the love of God is broader than the measures of man's mind,' but he was right in believing that God allows His purposes to be influenced by prayer and repentance : cp. Jon 3. For we observe that God's sentence upon Sodom was not yet passed (v. 21) : He would gi-ant the prayer of His servant if the necessary conditions were forthcoming. They were not, however, as the people of Sodom were universally depraved ; but Abraham learned that God prefers mercy to judgment, and that those who have the least claim on His mercy receive it, as was the case with Lot and his family. Nor should we overlook another side of this narrative, viz. the value of a good man. Ten righteous men in Sodom will save the city. So our Lord calls His disciples 'the salt of the earth,' Mt 5 13. Another point to be noted is that while Abraham thought all along that the righteous would perish with the wicked unless the whole city was saved, God distinguished between the innocent and the guilty, and saved four persons. CHAPTER 19 The Destruction of the Cities of the Plain I. The visit of the two angels (who are ' the men ' of c. 18) may be regarded as the final test of Sodom. If they were hospitably 19. 2 GENESIS 20. 4 received and honourably treated they might still be spared. In the gate] The entrance gate of walled Eastern cities is a great place of resort. In front of it the market was held and justice administered. See Ruth 4 2S152 Am5io-i5 Job 3 1^1 Dt21i9 Jer387. 2. We will abide in the street all night] To sleep out of doors is no hardship in a hot cli- mate. Lot shows that he retained, at all events, the virtues of hospitality and of bravery in the defence of strangers. 3. Unleavened bread] bread made quickly without yeast : cp. Ex 12^9. 4, 5. The causes which led to the fall of Sodom are alluded to in Ezk 1 6 ^9' so. gee also Christ's comparison of the punishments of Sodom and Capernaum (Mtll^O). 7. Do not so wickedly] So St. Peter speaks of ' just Lot vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked,' 2 Pet 2 '''. But Lot himself was only re- latively righteous. 8. Lot's sense of the sacred duty of hospitality was no excuse for neglecting his still greater duty of caring for his daugh- ters' honour. 9. He w^ill needs be a judge] Evidently Lot had reproved them before this. II. Blindness] probably confused or indis- tinct vision : cp. 2K618. 14. Sons in law] By comparing this ex- pression with vv. 8 and 16 it seems that the men were only betrothed, not married, to Lot's daughters. Indeed, RV has ' were to marry ' instead of ' married.' 17. The moun- tain] the momitains of Moab, E. of the Dead Sea. 18-22. The motive of Lot's request is uncertain. He either feared that there would not be time to reach the mountain, or he was reluctant to leave the place where he had long lived ; the latter view seems perhaps most in accordance with his character. 21. Zoar was spared, not because its insigni- ficant size excused its sinfulness, but as a refuge for Lot. 22. Zoar] ' littleness,' perhaps at the SE. end of the Dead Sea, but position disputed. It is called Bela in 14 2. 24. A consideration of the probable nature of this awful visitation will explain the vivid statement of the text. As was pointed out in c. 14, the whole neighbourhood of the Dead Sea abounds in sulphur and bitumen, furnish- ing the materials for the terrible conflagration which ensued. Probably a convulsion of the earth released some springs of naphtha which flowed through the cities and ignited. In our own days when the petroleum springs at Baku in the Caspian become accidentally ignited, they burn for days. The note on 14 3 explains in what sense the site of the guilty cities can be said to be covered by the waters of the Dead Sea. Their destruction was due to the agency of fire, not of water. The latter con- dition of this once fertile and populous district is referred to in Dt2923 and 2Esdras28,9. 28 On the religious significance Dean Payne Smith says : ' Though God used natural agen- cies in the destruction of the cities of the plain, yet what was in itself a catastrophe of nature became miraculous by the circumstances which surrounded it. It was thus made the means not merely of executing the divine justice, of strengthening Abraham's faith, and of warning Lot, but also of giving moral and religious instruction for all time.' 26. She became a pillar of salt] This may mean that she was overwhelmed in the rock salt of the district which was thrown up by the earthquake : see on 143. xhe story of Josephus that this particular ' pillar ' of salt was still to be seen in his day may be explained by the presence of cones of salt which are to be seen standing detached from the salt moun- tain of Usdum at the SW. end of the Dead Sea : see on 14^3. Our Lord alludes to the fate of Lot's wife as a warning to His follow- ers against clinging too closely to the world (Lkl732). 29. God remembered Abraham] i.e. his in- tercession for Lot : see c. 18. 30-38. The only explanation of the shame- ful conduct of Lot's daughters, if understood literally, is to be found in their motive, which was probably based on the strong views enter- tained by Orientals regarding childlessness and the extinction of the family ; they seem also, from V. 31, to have really thought that they were the sole survivors of the terrible cata- strophe just narrated. The Moabites and Ammonites settled to the E. of the Dead Sea. They afterwards became bitter enemies of Israel who first came into contact with them when nearing Canaan at the end of the wanderings. See Nu21-25, also Jg3 ISll 1447 2S82 2K3 2Ch20 Isal5 Jer48 Zeph28. Some scholars, however, look upon this story as the expression of the Hebrews' hatred of their two neighbours and enemies. Many of the customs of these people were doubtless abhorrent to the purer-minded Israelites ; and their feelings are expressed in this account of a current belief among the people of a later age. CHAPTER 20 Abraham at Gerar I. Abraham leaves Mamre (Hebron) for Gerar, SW. of Philistia. It seems from 21^4 that he remained in that district for some years. 2. She Is my sister] Twenty years earlier Abraham had used the same device in Egypt and now again he incurs a rebuke from one outside the Covenant. See 12ii-20 and notes. Abimelech] perhaps, ' Molech is my father,' in honour of the false god. Cp. Abijah. ' Jehovah is my father.' 4. Wilt thou slay also a righteous nation] 20. 5 GENESIS 22. Abimelech's people, at all events, had not been guilty of any sin. 5. In the integrity of my heart] Abimelech was 'not consciously violat- ing any of his own rules of morality.' Had he known that Sarah was Abraham's wife he would not have taken her into his harem. 7. He ?.s a prophet] i.e. one to whom God reveals His will, and who in turn declares it to men ; and so one who can mediate between God and man, as in this case: see on ExT^. 11-13. Abraham explains that he was only following an arrangement made with his wife when they first came among the licentious Canaanites. 12. Cp. 12i3. Sarah was daugh- ter of Terah by another wife, and so was half- sister to Abraham. It is thought that these marriages between relatives in early days were partly intended to keep the blood of the family or tribe pure and unmixed. 16. Thy brother] ironical. Behold, he is, etc.] RV ' Behold, it is for thee a covering of the eyes to all that are with thee ; and in respect of all' (MGor, 'before all men') 'thou art righted.' Apparently this means that the gift was to render those with Sarah willing to overlook the wrong to which she had been exposed. CHAPTER 21 Birth of Isaac. Dismissal of Hagar and IsHMAEL. Covenant between Abraham AND Abimelech 8. Weaned] in his second or third year, as is usual among Orientals. 9. Ishmael had no doubt been regarded as Abraham's heir until the birth of Isaac. The change in his prospects may account for his conduct, which St. Paul uses to illustrate the persecution of the Christians by the Jews (Gal 4 -9). Proud of their natural descent as children of Abraham, the Jews scorned the idea that God could regard others as His spiritual children and allow them to share in their privileges and blessings : see Gal 3, 4. The story affords painful evidence of the jea- lousies and unhappiness caused by polygamy. 12. In Isaac shall thy seed be called] i.e. the promises should centre in Isaac. 14. Beer-sheba] 30 m. S. of Hebron. 15. Bottle] (RM ' skin ') : made of the skin of a sheep or goat. All openings are sewn up and made watertight with pitch except the neck, which is tied up when the skin is full. 17, 18. Formerly (16 '"-S) God sought out Hagar to reprove her, and bid her go back upon her course : now He appears to her to comfort her, and supply her needs and those of her child. In both ways, He displays His grace. 19. A miraculous supply of water is not suggested here. God enabled Hagar to see an existing spring of water. 21. Wilderness of Paran] Et-Tih, the country between Canaan and the Peninsula of Sinai. The descendants of Ishmael, Bedouin Ai'abs, still possess the country. It was the scene of the wanderings of the Israelites: cp. Dtli9Nul0i2. 22-34. Abraham was still living in the neighbourhood of Abimelech, king of Gerar: see c. 20. He was now regarded as a chieftain of great importance (cp. 23*'), and the king here seeks to enter into a covenant of friend- ship with him. Abraham takes the opportunity to secure his right to a well which he had made. Abimelech acknowledges Abraham to be the rightful possessor by accepting the seven lambs which he offers. The place was henceforth called Beer-sheba, ' well of the seven,' or 'well of the oath,' because the covenant had been ratified by the sacred or perfect number seven which was the usual number of things sworn by. Some very ancient wells have been discovered at Beer- sheba which marks the southern limit of Palestine. 33. A grove] RV ' a tamarisk tree ': see on 12*'. CHAPTER 22 The Offering of Isaac on Mount Moriah In this narrative we have the crowning proof that Abraham was willing to resign all that was dearest to him at the bidding of God, even that son on whose life depended the ful- filment of the divine promises. But his trial must be also regarded as the occasion of bring- ing about an advance in the moral standard of the men of his time, which was gradually to become universal. In Abraham's day the sacrifice of the firstborn was a common prac- tice among the Semitic races, and was regarded as the most pleasing service which men could offer to their deities. It was the ' giving of their firstborn for their transgression, the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul ' (Mic 6 '^). The horrible custom was even practised by the Jews in the dark days of Ahaz and Manasseh : cp. 2 K 23 10 2Ch283 336, ^nd the cases of Jephthah (Jgll) and Mesha, king of Moab (2 K 3 ■-''). The custom probably pre- vailed among the tribes in whose midst Abraham dwelt, and it was borne in upon him that he should show his devotion to God in this way also. Regarding the suggestion, however it was made, as coming from God, he did not hesitate or delaj% though his heart must have been wrung by the very thought. He had covenanted to give up his own will to the will of God, and in fulfilment of his obedience he was willing to sacrifice his own son. Self-sacrifice is the supreme test of faith, and Abraham was not found wanting : cp. Heblli^-is. The will, however, was taken 29 22. 1 GENESIS 23. 16 for the deed, and regarded as sufficient proof of his loyalty and obedience. And Abraham, and through him the world, learnt that, far from desiring human sacrifice, Jehovah abhors it : that His worship is to be attended by mercy and justice and humanity in His followers, and that the most acceptable oflEering is a life of obedience and faith and love. 1. Tempt] EV ' prove,' i.e. put his faith and obedience to the proof. 2. The land of Moriah] only mentioned again 2Ch3i, 'Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah.' Beneath the dome of the Mosque of Omar, which now stands on the site of the Jewish Temple, is the rock which is tradition- ally supposed to have been the scene of the sacrifice. It is uncertain whether the two places are to be identified, but we may gather from V. 14 that the writer wished Jerusalem to be understood here. The Samaritans assert that Mt. Gerizim was the scene of the event, regarding Moriah as Moreh in Sichem. 5. Abraham's assurance that he would return with Isaac indicates his hope that God would in some way preserve liis son to him. ' He accounted that God was able to raise him up even from the dead : from whence also he received him in a figure ' (Heb 1 1 1^). He could not believe that the solemn promises respecting his son would fail of fulfilment. 6. Fire] embers from the hearth carried in a vessel. 10. By this action Abraham in spirit and intention completed the sacrifice and showed his faith and obedience. 13. The substitution of the ram involves a recognition of God's right to demand sacrifice for His sake, and preserves the spirit which prompted Abraham's act, while at the same time it indicates the objectionableness of human sacrifice. 14. Jehovah-jireh] ' The Lord will see.' In the mount . . seen] Render, ' In Jeho- vah's mount (the Temple hill) He is seen,' i.e. ' He sees ' the needs of His worshippers and ' is seen ' by revealing Himself to them and ' providing ' (as RV renders) for their wants. The words received their highest fulfilment when God withheld not His only Son, but freely gave Him up for men in this very place. 15-18. Abraham's victory of faith is rewarded by a confirmation of the promises already made to him : cp. Heb 6 ^^. 20-24. The family of Nahor. The names are to be identified with tribes on the eastern borders of Canaan. 21. Huz] RV ' Uz.' Cp. 10-3, where Uz is given as the name of a son of Aram. Job is described as of the land of Uz, and his friend Elihu is called a Buzite. Aram] probably the Syrians. 24. Concu- bine] a secondary but lawful wife. By such alliances the influence and importance of the family in early times were increased. Re- garding these names as those of tribes, what is suggested here is that the last four were related to the main group somewhat distantly. CHAPTER 23 Death of Sarah and Purchase of the BURYINGPLACE OF MaCHPELAH BY ABRAHAM This section is from the Priestly source and dwells on the legal transaction. 2. Came] rather, ' went in,' perhaps from his own tent to that of Sarah. 3. Stood up from before his dead] To sit upon the ground was the posture of mourning : cp. Job 2 ^^. Sons of Heth] i.e. the Hittites : see on 10 1^. 6. After true Eastern custom, there was excessive courtesy in the transaction, but a large sum was in the end required. ' In Damascus, when a purchaser makes a lower offer than can be accepted, he is answered, " What, is it a matter of money between us ? Take it for nothing, friend, it is a present from me " ' (Delitzsch). 9. The cave of Machpelah] This spot, over which now stands the great Mohammedan mosque at Hebron, is generally admitted to be the original buryingplace of the Jewish patriarchs, and the spot where their remains still rest. It is most religiously guarded by the Mohammedans (who regard Abraham as the founder of iheir race through Ishmael) from all intrusion. The cave is a double one, and visitors are permitted entrance only to the upper storey, where there is little to see ex- cept counterfeit tombs. ' Only one European, Pierotti, an Italian architect in the service of the Sultan, has succeeded, at the risk of his life, in entering the lower cavern. He noticed there sarcophagi of white stone, the true tombs of the illustrious dead, in striking cor- roboration of the statement of Josephus, that •these were of fair marble, exquisitely wrought ' (Geikie). Machpelah] is not the name of the cave, but the name of the locality in which the piece of land containing the cave was situated : cp. vv. 17, 19. 9. For a possession, etc.] RY ' in the midst of you for a possession of a buryingplace.' Abraham wished that the Hittites should be present as witnesses of the purchase. 10. And Ephron dwelt] RV 'Now Ephron was sitting.' 12. Bowed] in thanks for granting his request. 13. In the audience of the people] The Hittites were thus wit- nesses to the agreement. 15. Four hundred shekels of silver] Reckoning the shekel at half-a-crown, this would be about £50, but the purchasing power of silver was much greater in those days. 16. Current inu)iey'] Note that the word ' money ' is not in the original. The word ' shekel ' means ' weight,' 30 23. 19 GENESIS 25. 13 and it is believed that, in these early days, rings of silver of a marked weight were used, and not coins bearing a definite value. Abra- ham probably weighed them to show they were of full value. ' Coined money was not known to the Hebrews before the Captivity, when first Persian and then Greek or Syriac currency was employed, till Simon the Macca- bee (about 140 B.C.) struck Jewish coins, espe- cially shekels and half shekels, specimens of which have been preserved to us ' (Kalisch). 19. Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, were all buried here. CHAPTEE 24 The JMarriage of Isaac and Rebekah A charming picture of patriarchal marriage customs. It is very characteristic of the Primitive source. 2. Put . . thy hand under my thigh] a form of taking an oath, only mentioned again in 47 ^9. ' It is from the thighs that one's descendants come, so that to take an oath with one hand under the thigh would be equivalent to calling upon these descendants to maintain an oath which has been fulfilled, and to avenge one which has been broken' (D.). Modern in- stances are recorded of Egyptian Bedouins act- ing similarly in making a solemn asseveration. 3. Marriage with Canaanites was afterwards strictly forbidden (Ex 34 11-1^'). 4. My coun- try] Haran, in Mesopotamia, where Nahor's family still lived. 5-8. Isaac was on no account to leave Canaan, the land promised by God as his inheritance. 10. The sending of a deputy instead of Isaac himself is quite in accordance with Eastern custom. The Jews of the jjresent day employ a professional matchmaker, the ShadchcDi, who arranges alj the preliminaries of the marriage contract. For all the goods of his master ivere in his hand] RV ' having all goodly things of his master's,' i.e. presents for the bride and her family : see 53. Mesopotamia] (from Gr mesos, ' middle,' and potamos, 'river ') Heb. Aram-Naharaliii, i.e. 'Aram (or Syria) of the two rivers,' the country lying between the Khabour and the Orontes. CityofNahor] Haran. 12-14. Through- out this beautiful story the direct guidance of God in all that happened is emphasised. 16. Went down to the well] To this day there is but one well of drinkaljle water at Haran, and the women still fill their water- skins at it. It bears every mark of great age and wear. 22. Earring] rather, 'nose-ring.' It hung from the left nostril. Such rings are still the betrothal present in Arabia : see on rings at Ex 32 2. 24. See 2223. 49. Turn to the right hand, or to the left] i.e. ' to search in other families for the woman he desires ' (D.). 50. Speak . . bad or good] say ' yes ' or ' no.' 53. See on Gn ^^i^. 58. Wilt thou go with this man ? And she said, I will go] ' In W. Asia marriage consists in the betrothal or the contract, some- times written, but more commonly verbal, of the parties concerned, after which nothing remains but the removal of the bride from her father's house to that of the bridegroom or of his father. Isaac married Rebekah by proxy through a simple verbal contract ' (Van Lennep). 59. Her nurse] Deborah. Her death is mentioned in 35*^. In 292-1,29 we have other instances that a handmaid formed part, if not all, of the bride's dowry. 62. Lahai-roi] near Beer-sheba : see IG^^. 63. Meditate] naturally, on the bride he had not seen and whose coming he awaited. But the Syriac version reads, ' to walk in the fields.' 64. She lighted off] to show re- spect. 65. She took a vail] It is the cus- tom for the bride to appear veiled before the bridegroom until they are married : cp. 29 23-25. CHAPTER 25 The Sons of Abraham by Keturah. Death and Burial of Abraham. De- scendants OF ISHMAEL. BiRTH AND Youth of Esau and Jacob I. It is not known at what period of his life Abraham took Keturah as his secondary wife or concubine ; for it is clear from v. 6 and 1 Ch 1 32 that she only held that position. Some of the names of Keturah's children have been identified in Arabia as tribes. 2. Midian] The Midianites became a considerable nation, spreading over the country S. and SE. of Palestine from Moab to the Gulf of Akaba. 6. Concubines] Hagar and Keturah : see on 2224. Sent them aw^ay . . eastward] to- wards Arabia, where they founded nations. 8. Gave up the ghost] an expression taken from the Genevan Bible. The Hebrew word means simply ' to die,' lit. ' come to an end.' Was gathered to his people] joined his an- cestors in the unseen world. The expression cannot refer to the actual burial of Abraham with his forefathers, since they lay at Haran and Ur. We may probably see in it a vague belief in future existence. Cp. David's words on the death of his son (2 S 1 2 23, also Gn 35 29). 13. The descendants of Ishmael settled gene- rally in N.Arabia, and with the Joktanites (1 0 26), or 'pure Arabs,' of Arabia Felix, formed the great Arab race scattered over Syria and the shores of the Persian Gulf. Nebajoth] the Nabateans became an important people after the death of Alexander the Great. Their chief town was Petra in Idum^a. The name became synonymous with Arabians, and all the land be- tween the Euphrates and the Gulf of Akaba was 31 25. 16 GENESIS 26. atone time called Nabatene. Kedar] a people often mentioned in OT. : they dwelt between Arabia and Babylonia. i6. Towns and castles] RV ' villages and encampments.' The Arabs may be distinguished as ' nomad ' (wan- dering, pastoral) and ' agricultural ' (with fixed habitations) ; the distinction is already marked in this passage. i8. Havilah] near the Per- sian Gulf. Shur] the desert between Egypt and Palestine. The lands to S. and E. of Pales- tine generally are meant. Before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria] rather, ' E. of Egypt in the direction of Assyria,' i.e. in N. Arabia. He died in the presence of] see on 1 6 ^2. 19. Isaac] ' In Genesis Isaac appears throughout as the pale copy of his father. He is the son of promise and inherits his position, and the possessions and the blessings won by his father. He follows in Abraham's footsteps without his strength of character and purpose. In quietness and patience he faithfully pre- serves his inheritance, serves his father's God, and in turn like Abraham is guided, jjreserved, and blessed by him ' (D.). 20. Padan-aram] ' the plains of Syria,' the same as Mesopotamia. 22. The children struggled] significant of the contests to come, between the brothers, and the nations descended from them, Israel and Edom. U if be so, why am I thus ?] i.e. perhaps, If I have conceived, what is the significance of these struggles ? but RV gives ' If it be so, wherefore do I live ?' since I suffer such pain. Enquire of the LORD] ' Nothing is more natural than that the Hebrew author intended to in- timate that Rebekah enquired of God through Abraham the prophet, her father-in-law, who still survived ' (Kalisch). 23. Note the poetical form of the oracle. See RV. Shall be separated, etc.] or ' From thy womb they will separate from one another,' i. e. be at variance from their birth. The elder shall serve the younger] the descendants of the elder son (the Edomites) would be subject to those of the younger (the Israelites). See on 27*0. The knowledge of this prediction explains in some measure the later conduct of Rebecca and Jacob. 25. Esau] meaning uncertain. Some render ' hairy.' 26. Jacob] i.e. following at the heel. See Esau's allusion to the name (27 2*^), giving it a sinister sense, as suited to Jacob's plotting nature. The words Jacob and Joseph, com- pounded with -el or -ilu (= god), have been found as names in Assyrian inscriptions earlier than this period. 27. Cunning] i.e. clever. Plain] RM ' quiet ' or ' harmless.' Dwelling in tents] preferring home pursuits. 28. The evil of such marked preferences in families appears plainly in the narrative. 29. Sod] or ' seethed,' i.e. boiled. 30. Red pottage] lit. ' red stuff.' Esau in his haste did not define its nature. It was a mess of lentils (34). It is said that such pottage is, or was, distributed at the mosque at Hebron in memory of the event. Edom] i.e. ' red.' Probably here, as in many other instances in these ancient narra- tives of Genesis, we have the popular derivation of the names of well-known people and places. Edom is so called from the ' red ' colour of its sandstone cliffs. Here Esau afterwards settled : see c. 36. 31. Sell me . . thy birthright] The birthright included the headship of the family, a double portion of the inheritance (Dt21i"), priestly rights (in these early days), and in the family of Abraham heirship to the covenant privileges. Perhaps all that was involved in the birthright here, however, was the double inheritance ; as in 27 26 it is directly contrasted with the bless- ing which involved the primacy in the family (27 28. 29). The character of Esau has many attractive features ; but he cared only for the pleasure of the moment and was without any lofty spiritual aspirations. His generous, warm- hearted spirit attracts sympathy at first sight, when contrasted with the wiles of the cold, calculating Jacob. But judged by a higher standard Esau appears plainly as a worldly, irreligious man, indifferent to his parents' wishes, uninterested in the divine covenant, and unmindful of the privileges and responsi- bilities which were to distinguish his race : cp. 26 2'* 27 "i^. His character is summed up in Hebr2i'5'i% where he is called a 'profane,' i.e. unconsecrated or common person. The character of Jacob is in marked con- trast to that of Esau. Craftiness and subtilty, even meanness and deceit, mark many of his actions ; but, on the other hand, his patient endurance, strength of character, and warmth of affection call forth admiration. Long years of suffering and discipline were needed to purify his character from its baser elements, and make him worthier of the divine blessing. And certainly he was worthier than his brother, for he believed in and sought after his father's God, held spiritual things in reverence, and in the' chief turning-points of his life, at Bethel, Haran, and Penuel, showed a conviction that God was with him to bless and guide. He stood out at last as one who has conquered himself, and proved himself to be worthy of the divine favour and patience, Israel, a prince with God. These considerations help us to understand why Jacob rather than Esau was selected as heir to the promises. See also Ro9. CHAPTER 26 Isaac at Gerar Many of the notes on chs. 20, 21 are applic- able to this c. It is thought probable that 32 26. 2 GENESIS 27. 40 the present narrative is in the main a repetition from another source of events ah-eady recorded. 2. Go not down into Egypt] to get food as Abraham did. The covenant blessing is re- newed and the possession of Canaan assured to Isaac. He is encouraged to stay in Canaan in dependence on Grod. 7, My sister] The expression might mean cousins. 12. An hundredfold] Though very large, such a crop is not unknown. Isaac's obedience in not going to Egypt had its reward. 15. It is said that Arabs still fill up the wells on pilgi-image roads, if they do not receive the toll they demand. The conduct of Abimelech's people was a violation of the agreement of 2125-31. Geikie, in his 'Hours with the Bible,' gives some interesting informa- tion respecting wells in Palestine : — ' The upper porous limestone of the central hills, and indeed of Palestine generally, allows the rain to a large extent to filter through it to an underlying sheet of hard limestone, which slopes towards the sea, forming a shelf on which the water flows in a subterranean stream below the whole coastplain from N. to S. Hence it is only necessary to sink a well to reach a copious supply of living water.' 20-22. Esek] 'contention.' Sitnah] 'En- mity.' Rehoboth] 'enlargement,' i.e. room to settle. 26-31. Isaac and Abimelech make a covenant to abstain mutually from aggres- sions. 30. See on 27 3. 33. Shebah] RV ' Shibah,' i.e. 'oath,' in allusion to the covenant. See on 2131. 34. Here we have another proof of Esau's indifference to the family traditions and covenant obligations. Both Abraham and Isaac strongly condemned marriage with the inhabitants of the land who were outside the covenant of promise : see 24 3 28 1. CHAPTER 27 Jacob by Subtilty obtains the Blessing Urged on by his mother, Jacob attempts by unworthy means to secure the blessing of the firstborn with all the privileges it involved. But the wrongdoing of the actors in the story was soon followed by the suffering which assuredly waits on sin. To quote Delitzsch : ' (a) Isaac suffers for his preference for Esau, which was not determined by the will of God but by his weak affection : (b) Esau suffers for despising the blessing of the firstborn : (c) Rebekah suffers for her connivance, by separation from her favourite son whom she never saw again, (d) Jacob, from the time when he confirmed himself in the possession of the sinfully acquired birthright by sinfully acquiring the blessing, had to endure a long strain of hardship and disappointments which made him feel how he had sinned against his father and brother. Yet these were at the same time the means of his education by which his ignoble nature was to be done away, and himself made worthy of being one in the line of those who inherited the promises.' This c. belongs to the Primitive narrative. I. Isaac was old] He was about 120, and both he and Esau thought that his death was at hand (vv. 2, 41). According to 35 27-29 he lived sixty years longer ; and Jacob and Esau, their old strife put away, were present at his burial : but it must be noted that that passage is from a different (the Priestly) source, which has a different chronology from the Primitive document. 4. That my soul may bless thee before I die] In purposing to give the blessing to Esau, his firstborn son, Isaac was acting in opposi- tion to the expressed decree of God: see 2523. 5-14. Rebekah knew that the blessing was to be Jacob's ; she therefore used this device to prevent an injustice from being done, and to obtain the fulfilment of God's purpose. That, however, she should have left to God to carry out in His way. Such ' pious frauds ' are the outcome of a weak faith in the wisdom and method of the divine providence. The present narrative disproves the worldly maxim that ' the end justifies the means.' II. Hairy man] see 25 2^. 15. Goodly raiment] RV ' the goodly raiment,' his better clothes which were at home in his tent. 28, 29. The blessing as here recorded refers first to the fruitful land the supposed Esau would inherit, and then to his lordship over his brethren and other tribes. In 28 3, which belongs to the Priestly source, the ' blessing of Abraham ' is expressed in another form characteristic of that source. 28. The dew of heaven] greatly valued in hot climates where rain often does not fall from April to September. 33. Yea, and he shall be blessed] Isaac evidently feels that the purposes of God are not to be thwarted by his own preferences, and does not withdraw the blessing from Jacob. 36. Supplanted] see on 2526. 39. Shall be the fatness] rather, ' Shall be away from the fatness.' Read thus, the prophecy is in agreement with the general barrenness of Edom or Seir, where the descendants of Esau dwelt. 40. Shalt serve thy brother] Throughout OT. history we read of the subjugation of the Edomites to Israel, varied by their thi-owing off the yoke in troublous times : see 2 S 8 !■* IKll lChl8i3 2Ch21. About 100 b.c. the Maccabean prince, John Hyrcanus, subdued the Edomites and compelled them to receive circumcision, after which they formed one people with the Jews. Herod, the Edomite, ruled Judaaa in our Lord's day. 33 T(. 41 GENESIS S9. 1 41. Days of mourning] see on v. 1. 44. Tarry with him a few days] It was twenty years before Jacob returned from Haran ; and Rebekah, so far as we know, never saw him again. 45. Deprived also of you both] of Jacob by death, and of Esau through punishment as a murderer. 46. This verse must be read in connexion with 28 1 ; 27 4*5-28 ^ are from the Priestly source and continue the narrative of 2634,35^ without any reference to 271-45. Eebekah suggests to Isaac as the reason for Jacob's departure that it was desirable that Jacob, as the acknow- ledged heir, should seek a wife among his relatives at Haran, as Isaac had done before him (c. 24). Esau's heathen marriages had evidently caused his parents much unhappi- ness : see 26^4,35 and notes. CHAPTER 28 Jacob departs for Padan-aram. His Dream at Bethel 1-4. Isaac bids Jacob seek one of the daughters of his uncle Laban in marriage, and assures him that the blessings and pro- mises bestowed on Abraham should fall to him as heir. 6-9. Esau's marriage, though well meant, was only a union with the seed of the Egyptian bondservant, and therefore not one of the pure Hebrew race. 10. After journeying for some days, Jacob reaches the district in the mountains of Ephraim, where Abraham had rested, when entering Canaan, and built an altar (128). The strata of limestone rock, of which the hills around are composed, take the form of steps rising above each other, and we can well believe that as Jacob lay down to rest, their form lent shape to the vision which followed. In his dream he sees a ladder, or, rather, a ' staircase,' uniting earth and heaven, and on it angelic messengers ascending and descending. Doubtless this was to assure him that, although he was in distress and flee- ing for his life, he was yet the object of God's love and care. He was to learn that all that should happen to him in the future was a part of the working out of the divine providence. Our Lord alludes to this passage in Jn 1 ^i. 16. Jacob perceives that, though he has left his father's home at Beer-sheba, his father's God is still watching over him. In these early days the idea of Jehovah as the God of the universe, and not of the nation only, was not realised : cp. Jg 11 2^' -4. 18. The stone] Jacob set up the stone as marking the spot hallowed by God's presence, and consecrated it by pouring oil upon it. On his return to Palestine (c. 35) he set up an altar by it in fulfilment of his vow in this c. The belief that a stone or pillar was the abode of deity was common among primitive peoples. The stone which Jacob set up was the symbol of the presence of the divine spirit, which he probably believed to be in some way connected with it, seeing that he called the stone ' God's house.' Jacob shared the beliefs of his age, and his idea of God, like his character, was only gradually purified. In consequence of the abuse of these sacred stones in the worship of the Canaanites, their erection was forbidden by the Law; cp. Lv26i, where 'standing image ' should be rendered ' pillar ' or ' obelisk,' also Dtl23. There is a well-known tradition that Jacob's stone was brought in after ages to Scotland, and finally placed under the coro- nation chair in Westminster Abbey. But the fact that ' all the rock at Bethel is limestone, whereas the stone in the Abbey is common granite ' (Harper), removes any foundation for the legend. 19. Beth-el] 'the house of God.' In the period of the Judges, Bethel became the chief religious centre of the northern tribes. The ark was stationed there (Jg20i8); it was fre- quented as a place for sacrifice, and for con- sulting the divine oracle (Jg 20^8' 26 RV). Under Jeroboam I it became the religious capital of the Northern Kingdom. Here and at Dan the golden calves were set up (IK 12). Under Jeroboam II the sanctuary reached the summit of its renown, but the worship was corrupt, and was denounced by Amos and Hosea: see Am 3 1* 44 HoslQis RV. 19. Luz] an old Canaanite city, after- wards called Bethel because of its proximity to that sanctuary. 20-22. The first vow mentioned in Scripture. Jacob vows that in return for God's protecting care, if he is spared to return, he will regard this stone as a holy spot, and set apart a tithe of all he gains to religious purposes. In Am 4 4 it is said that it was customary to pay tithes at Bethel, a practice based perhaps on this oc- currence. CHAPTER 29 Jacob in Mesopotamia with Laban The divine care and blessing promised to Jacob at Bethel (28^5) are illustrated in the narrative of the sojourn of the patriarch at Haran, which apparently lasted for twenty years (3141), after which he returned to the land of promise, blessed with a numerous family, and rich in goods. But equally marked is the severe discipline to which he was sub- jected in order that the darker features in his character might be purified, and that he might learn to put his reliance, not in unworthy scheming, but in simple faith in the love and blessing of the God of Abraham and Isaac. I. The land of the people of the east] a 34 29. 3 GENESIS 30. 35 general term for the lands eastward of Pales- tine, here e.g. Mesopotamia: cp. Job 13. 3. A well often belonged to two or three families. The opening was covered with a heavy stone which could only be moved by the united eiforts of the shepherds of their several flocks. By this device it was impos- sible for one, more than another, to obtain an undue share of the precious water. 4. Haran] see on 11 ^i. 5. The son of Nahor] rather, ' grandson.' Laban was the son of Bethuel (285). n. Wept] with joy at finding himself among friends again. 15. What shall thy wages be?] Laban was a covetous man and, as will be seen, took every advantage of Jacob to retain his ser- vices. 17. Leah ?m.s tender-eyed] rather, ' weak-eyed,' perhaps from ophthalmia, so common in the East. Leah means ' gazelle,' Rachel, 'ewe.' 18. Jacob had no rich gifts to offer for Rachel, such as Abraham sent for Rebekah (2453). He therefore offered his services. Kitto says that ' personal servitude to the father is still in some places in the East, including to this day Palestine, the price paid by young men who have no other means of providing the payment which a father has always been entitled to expect for his daughter, as compensation for the loss of her domestic services.' 22. A feast] the wedding feast. 23-25. Jacob the deceiver is now the de- ceived. The bride would be closely veiled (see 24^5), and, it being night, Leah suc- cessfully connived at her^ fiither^s deception. 24. The female slave waS' a usual part of the bride's dowry. • 26. The custom which La- ban pleaded was not uncommon. Among fhe' Hindoos it is a law not to give the j^ounger*" daughter in marriage until the elder is married. 27. Fulfil her week] i.e. celelJiwte -Leah's bridal festivities for the usual seven days : cp. Jgl4i2. 28. At the end of the seven days Jacob received Rachel as his wife : but he had to serve Laban for her other seven years. Though the blame in the matter rests with Laban rather than Jacob, who must have re- garded Rachel as his true wife, we shall see, as in the case of Abraham, the unhappiness and jealousy which too often attended such double unions. 31. Hated] The word means no more than that Jacob preferred Rachel: see V. 30. 32-35. Reuben] ' behold, a son.' But the writer derives the name from Raah beonyi, ' looked on my affliction ' : see on 4 1. Simeon] ' hearing.' Levi] ' joined.' Judah] ' praise.' CHAPTER 30 Jacob's Children. His Stratagem to increase his property I. Rachel envied her sister] To be childless 35 was regarded as a great reproach : cp. Lk 1 25. Fruitfulness meant an addition of strength and prosperity to a family. 3. By this symbolic act Bilhah's children would be legally regarded as Rachel's : cp. IG^note. 6. Dan] ' judging.' God had judged her case and decided in her favour by giving her, after a fashion, a child. 8. Great wrestlings] lit. ' wrestlings of God,' an emphatic expression: cp. 10^ and 1313. Naphtali] ' my wrestling.' Ra- chel regarded this child as a victorj* over her more fruitful sister. 11. A troop cometh] RV ' Fortunate ! ' Gad] RM ' Fortune.' 13. Asher] 'happy,' or 'blessed.' 14. Man- drake] or ' love apple.' A dwarf plant with large grey leaves and whitish-green blossoms. It yields in the spring a yellow fruit like a small tomato, and was believed to pro- duce fruitfulness. 18-24. Note double de- rivations of names, due to the two traditions. 18. Issachar] 'there is a reward' or 'hire.' 20. Zebulun] assonant with Zabal, ' to dwell.' It may also mean 'endowed.' 21. Dinah] ' judgment,' the feminine corresponding to Dan. Perhaps Leah chose this name for the same reason that Rachel called her son Dan: see on v. 6. Jacob had other daughters (37^5), but probably Dinah is mentioned because of the episode in c. 34. 22. At last Rachel receives a son, though not by her human devices, but by God's grace and favour. 24. Joseph] i.e. may God add a son. ' Taking away ' the reproach of childlessness is another meaning. ;•• 7. Learned by experience] R V ' divined ' : by omens, etc. Laban does not want to lose Jacob. 31-43. Jacob by a stratagem possesses him- self of a large portion of his uncle's flocks. The natural craftiness of the patriarch comes out very strongly in the transaction, but Laban undoubtedly had already obtained Jacob's services for fourteen years by mean and un- worthy devices, and had given him no oppor- tunity of enriching himself, nor had he assisted his daughters (Sli^^i'^^. 32. As sheep are usually white, and goats either black or brown, Jacob proposes that Laban should keep these, whilst the few speckled or spotted ones should fall to him as his wage. 33. Jacob stakes his reputation that Laban shall never find any white sheep or black goats in his (Jacob's) flocks. 35. Ringstraked] ' striped.' 35-42. It would appear that Laban, after sorting out Jacob's speckled sheep and goats from his own pure ones, gave the former in charge of his sons to be kept at a distance from his own, thereby hoping to. prevent there being any more spotted ones born in his own flock, which he would have to give to Jacob. Jacob meanwhile had to remain and look after Laban's flocks. But Jacob had other plans for 30. 36 GENESIS 31. 54 increasing his possessions. By the device de- scribed in vv. 37, 38 (which he only employed when the stronger ewes were breeding, v. 41), he brought it about that Laban's pure ewes produced speckled lambs, which he claimed as his own. In addition he arranged to keep these speckled kids and lambs in view of Laban's ewes with the same result (v. 40), thus gradually acquiring flocks of his own. 36. Betwixt himself and Jacob] Note that LXX &,nd Samaritan versions read ' between them (i.e. Jacob's flock) and Jacob.' 37. Poplar . . hazel . . chesnut] rather, ' sto- rax,' ' almond,' ' plane.' CHAPTER 31 Jacob's Return from Hakan 4-13. Jacob attributes his prosperity to God's favour. 14-16. Rachel and Leah point out that their father had no claim on them, since Jacob had won them by his services, and Laban had given them no share in the proflts he had made through their husband's labours. They agree to leave their home. 19. The images] Heb. teraphim. These were figures of metal, wood, or clay of vary- ing sizes, apparently in human form. They probably answered to the ' Lares and Penates,' or household gods of the Romans, which were supposed to ward off danger from the home and to bring luck. This would explain Rachel's reason for stealing them. Laban speaks of them as 'my gods' in v BO. There is^f-y interesting reference to them in lSiy^»-,". From Ezk212i RV it is clear they were con- nected with magic and soothsaying. It has been suggested that in some cases the teraphim were mummied human heads, perhaps of ancestors, and were consulted in some way as an oracle. Whatever they were, it is not probable that their possession by the Jews interfered seri- ously with belief in and worship of God, though we find their use rightly denounced as super- stitious. The following passages refer to the teraphim: JglT^ 1S1523RV 2K2324RV Hos3^ ZechlO^RV. Payne Smith remarks on ' the tendency of uneducated minds, even when their religion is in the main true, to add to it some superstitions, especially in the way of fashioning for themselves some lower mediator.' 21. The river] the Euphrates. Gilead] Hebrew territory E. of the Jordan. 24. Either good or bad] cp. 24^0. God warns Laban to restrain his feelings. 27. Tabret] i.e. 'tambourine.' 30. My gods] see on v. 19. 34. The camel's furni- ture] a sort of palanquin or basket-seat bound upon the camel. 40. Frost by night] Hot as the days are in the East, it often becomes very cold when the sun goes down. 42. The fear of Isaac] the God whom Isaac feared and reverenced. 43-52. Laban and Jacob con- clude a covenant of friendship. ' The narra- tive . . is disconnected, and full of duplications, and is certainly the result of a union of several sources ' (D.). The main features are the erec- tion of a great stone as a memorial pillar by Jacob, and the collection of a heap of stones on which the covenant meal was held : cp. 26^0. The cairn of stones and pillar were erected as witnesses to Jacob's promise that he would not ill-treat Laban's daughters, and to an agreement pledging both Jacob and Laban to regard Mt. Gilead as a boundary which neither must cross with hostile motives. The narra- tive was of special interest in after times as the original settlement of the border between Israel and Syria (represented by Jacob and Laban). 47. Jegar-sahadutha . . Galeed] We have here the popular etymology of the name Gilead. Both words in the text mean ' heap of witness,' the former being Aramaic, the latter Hebrew. The double designation is due to the fact that the place is regarded as a boundary between Syria and Israel. It may be remarked here that Hebrew is but one branch of a great family of languages spoken in Western Asia between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, to which the general name of Semitic is applied. This is usually divided into (1) the South Semitic, which includes Arabic, classical and modern, and Ethiopic ; and (2) the North Semitic. The latter again comprises three main branches, viz. (a) Assyrian-Babylonian in the East, the lan- guage of the cuneiform inscriptions ; (b) Ara- maic, in the northern parts of Mesopotamia and SjTia ; it is to this dialect, incorrectly styled Chaldee, that the first name in the text belongs, and in it certain parts of Ezra and Daniel are written. From IsaSG^i we gather that it was used as the diplomatic language in the 8th cent. B.C. ; and it ultimately took the place of Hebrew as the language of Palestine. The language of the Jewish Targums is a form of Aramaic, and so too is Syriac. The third branch of the North Semitic language is (c) the Canaanitic, which com-prises Hebrew, and closely connected with it, Phoenician or Punic. From this table it appears that Abraham coming from the East would find in Canaan a dialect very closely akin to that with which he was familiar, and that he (or his descendants) adopted it. In all probability his native dialect was Aramaic, spoken at Haran in Mesopotamia. Or he may have spoken the language of Assyria, which, as the Tel el Amarna tablets show, was the official language of communica- tion between Palestine and Egypt in the 15th cent. B.C. 49. Mizpah] ' outlook place.' 54. Did 36 31. 55 GENESIS 34. 13 eat bread] in token of friendship. 55. It is pleasant to read of this happy ending to years of strife. CHAPTER 32 The Approach of Esau. Jacob Wres- tles WITH THE Angel 1. The angels of God] God had given Jacob, by an angelic vision, a pledge of His watcliful love, when he left his home (28 1^). Now that he was returning to Canaan after twenty years, and with dangers at hand, God renews this assurance by another heavenly vision. 2. God's host] Heb. Mahanaiin. It was an important city in Gilead. 3. The land of Seir] or Edom, S. of the Dead Sea, where Esau settled (36'^). 6, 7. Esau's large retinue alarms Jacob, since their parting had been a hostile one. 9-12. Jacob's prayer is a pattern of hu- mility, earnestness, and faith in God's pro- mises. ID. With my staff, etc.] When Jacob fii-st left Canaan he was a lonely way- farer with no companion but his staff : now, blest by God, he returns with a numerous family and large possessions. 22. The ford Jabbok] i.e. 'wrestler.' Read, 'the ford of the Jabbok,' a stream which flows fi'om the neighbourhood of Rabbath Ammon into the Jordan opposite Shechem. 24-32. The writer of this passage, it can hardly be doubted, was thinking of a physical wrestling. Like the men of his day, he had not reached the idea of the purely spiritual nature of God, and could only conceive of Him in a materialistic yf&j. Practically, it is thus God is still thought and spoken of, as pure spirit is a condition of being which it is hardly possible for us to understand. In the nar- rative there is portrayed a spiritual experience thi-ough which Jacob passed at a critical moment of his life, and in which he received the final lesson that humbled and broke down his self-will, and convinced him that he could not snatch the blessing from God's hand, but must accept it as a gift of grace. 28. Israel] 'Perseverer with God.' 'As the name was to the Hebrews the symbol or ex- pression of the nature, the change of name is significant of the moral change in the patriarch himself ; he is no longer Jacob the Supplanter, the Crafty one, the Overreacher, but Israel the Perseverer with God, who is worthy also to prevail' : cp. Hosl2'i. 'The incident serves to explain further the name Feuuel^ " Face of God " ; " for," said Jacob, " I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved " (in allusion to the belief that no one could " see God and live," Ex 19 21 3320 Jg 6 22 1322). The narrator deduces also from this incident the custom of not eating in animals the muscle corresponding to the one which was strained 37 in Jacob's thigh ; it was treated as sacred thi-ough the touch of God.' See HDB. art. ' Jacob.' As a prince hast thou power] RV ' Thou hast striven.' 29. Wherefore is it, etc.] i.e. Surely you must know who I am. CHAPTER 33 1-16. Jacob and Esau meet peaceably. 17-20. Jacob settles in Canaan. 3. Bowed seven times] in token of submis- sion to Esau. 4. Jacob's prayer (32 H) is answered, and Esau, whatever his original purpose, now shows his brother only goodwill and affection. 10, I have seen thy face, etc.] i.e. I find thee as favourable to me as God is, alluding, no doubt, to the name Peniel (32^0). II. My blessing] RV ' my gif t ' : the pre- sent which accompanied expressions of good- will. So Naaman said to Elisha, ' I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant' (2K51S). 12-16. Jacob was unwilling to refuse Esau, and yet thought it most prudent to keep apart from his hasty brother. He therefore made an excuse and crossed the Jordan into Canaan. 17. Succoth] ' booths,' S. of the Jabbok and on the E. side of Jordan. Succoth and Penuel are mentioned together in Jg8. 18. To Shalem, a city of Shechem] RV ' in peace to the city of Shechem.' But there is a village called Salim 3 m. E. of Shechem. Here Jacob settled for some eight or ten years. The well which he dug still exists, though nearly choked with stones, some 1 J m. from Nablous. It was here that Christ conversed with the woman of Samaria (Jn 4). 19. Pieces of money] Heb. Kesitah, probably bars or rings of silver of a certain weight. See on 2316^ also Job 4211. 20. El-elohe-Israel] i.e. El (God) is the God of Israel (Jacob's new name). CHAPTER 34 The Dishonour done to Dinah, and the Crafty Revenge of Simeon and Levi I. Went out to see the daughters of the land] According to Josephus there was a festival among the Canaanites at Shechem. 7. Folly] The term is frequently applied in the moral sense as equivalent to immorality • see Dt222i Jg20'3 2S1312, and frequently in Proverbs, as 7 7f. A world of argument lies in the scriptural identification of wickedness and folly. The moral man is the wise man. In Israel] The author anticipates the national name. 12. Dowry and gift] The former was the price paid to the relatives for the bi'ide, the latter the gift to the bride. 13-17. Simeon and Levi professed to have scruples in giving their sister to one who was of an uncircumcised race, but they had another motive: by procuring the circumcision of 34.25 GENESIS 37. the tribe they were able to carry out their re- venge when the Shechemites were suffering from the effects of the rite. 25. Simeon, Levi, and Dinah were all children of Leah. 29. Little ones] i-ather, 'household,' ser- vants, etc. 28-30. The murder of the Shechemites was a treacherous and cruel act. Jacob was deeply incensed at it, and on his deathbed (c. 49) denounced and cursed the murderers, though at the time he was chiefly concerned for the consequences of their con- duct. 30. Make me to stink] i.e. to be in bad odour, as we say : cp. Ex 5 2^. CHAPTER 35 Jacob journeys by way of Bethel to Hebron. Death of Rachel and of Isaac 1. Jacob is commanded to go to Bethel and fulfil the vow he had once made there (28 20, 22)_ 2. Strange gods] Perhaps the idols of some of Jacob's people who had come with him from Haran, such as the teraphim which Rachel carried off (3119). Be clean, and change your garments] rites symbolising puri- fication from idolatry. 4. Earrings] worn superstitiously as charms, and often inscribed with magical formulae. The oak] It was here perhaps that Joshua, hundreds of years later, bade the Israelites put away the strange gods which were among them (Josh 24 23-26) 5. They were divinely protected from 'any revenge the Shechemites may have meditated. 7. El-beth-el] ' the God of Bethel,' or ' the God of the House of God.' 8. Allon-ba- chuth] ' oak of weeping.' Deborah and Eliezer (c. 24) are good examples of the honourable position assigned to servants in times of patri- archal simplicity. Deborah means ' bee.' 9-13, These vv. give the origin of the names 'Israel ' and 'Bethel' from the Priestly source. Note the absence of anthropomorphisms as compared with the account in 32-2-32. 14. A pillar] see on 28 1^. A drink offering] a libation of wine in token of thankfulness. Under the Law meat and drink offerings accom- panied the burnt sacrifice. 16. Ephrath] or Bethlehem, 4 m. S. of Jeru- salem : cp. 487Mic52. 18. Ben-oni] 'son of my sorrow.' Benjamin] perhaps ' son of my right hand,' that being the fortunate side, and so a name of better omen. Another ren- dering is ' son of days,' i.e. of Jacob's old age 21. Tower of Edar] lit. ' tower of the flock,' probably between Bethlehem and Hebron. The name is used symbolically of Jerusalem in Mic48. 22. By this crime Reuben, the eldest son, forfeited the birthright (49 3, 4) like Simeon and Levi before him : see on 34 2s. 27. Jacob rejoins his father after thirty years' separation. City of Arbah] Hebron : see 232. 28, 29. Isaac was buried in the cave at Machpelah, 49 3^. CHAPTER 36 The Generations of Esau ' The amount of detail here arises from the fact that Edom was always counted Israel's brother, and of great importance in the history of Israel. The Horites (" cave-dwellers ") were originally in the mountainous country of Seir (v. 20) ; the Hebrews under Esau entered and amalgamated with them. Esau married the Horite Aholibamah, and his son Eliphaz, the Horite Timna. They then became rulers of Seir to Akaba ; God gave it them as Canaan to Israel ' (D.). See Dt 25. I. Esau, who is Edom] i.e. Esau, who was called Edom, and gave to his land his name : see on 253*^. 2. The names of the wives of Esau given here vary from those mentioned in 26^4 289. The difficulties have never been explained, and are generally attributed to two irreconcilable traditions. Zibeon the Hiv- ite] a clerical error : read ' Horite.' Zibeon was doubtless a Horite or dweller in Mt. Hor : see V. 20. It was by the marriage mentioned here that Esau acquired his influence among the Horites, the aboriginal inhabitants of Seir : see on 14 6. 8, 9. The fact is dwelt on that the Edomite nation was descended from Esau. Mount Seir] a chain of mountains extending from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Akaba. Mt. Hor is towards the centre of the range. Aaron was buried there : see on Nu2022f. 12. Amalek] This does not mean that the great tribe of the Amalekites was descended from Edom, but that a branch became attached to the Edomites. 15. Dukes] RM ' chiefs.' 24. The mules] ' the hot springs.' Such springs exist near the Dead Sea, and are much prized by the desert wanderers for their medicinal qualities. 31. This V. shows the early development of the monarchy in Edom, and also that there were kings in Israel in the author's lifetime. 37. River] either the Euphrates or the Wady el Arish : see on 15 1^. CHAPTER 37 Joseph is Hated by his Brethren and Sold into Egypt With the exception of a few passages chiefly in chs. 46 and 49, the rest of the book of Genesis is taken from the Primitive source. The chief event with which the rest of Genesis is concerned, namely, the migration of Israel to Egypt, displays the working out of God's purposes declared in Gnl5. Im Egypt the chosen race grew in peace from a tribe to 38 37. 2 GENESIS 39.6 a nation, instead of having to encounter the hostility of the Canaanites as their numbers increased and their aspirations became known. In Egypt, too, they came in contact with a highly civilised and law-abiding nation, and learnt from them much of the highest value for the future. There are many points in the history of Joseph which remind us of Christ, e.g. in his being the loved son of his father, in his being sent to his brethren who hated and rejected him, in his humiliation and glory, and in the benefits he conferred on those among whom he came to dwell. 2. The generations of Jacob] i.e. the history of Jacob's descendants, especially of Joseph. Their evil report] RV ' the evil report of them.' The sins of Jacob's sons in chs. 34, 37, 38 afford plain evidence of their lawless characters. 3. A coat of many colours] RM ' a long garment with sleeves,' i.e. reach- ing to the ankles and wrists, and worn by persons of distinction. The ordinary coat had no sleeves and reached only to the knees. 5. Joseph dreamed] The fact of the dreams indicates a contemplative disposition in Joseph : their character foreshadows his future pre-eminence among his brethren. 10. Thy mother] According to 35i'\ Rachel was already dead : but critics assign that passage to a different source. 13. Jacob was living at Hebron, but he had land at Shechem : see 33i8'i^. 15. In the field] i.e. in the open country. 17. Dothan] 12 m. N. of Shechem. It was on the caravan route between Syria and Egypt. This explains the passing of the merchants. 21 f. The narrative in this chapter appears to be drawn from two sources which give somewhat varying accounts of the way in which Joseph was rescued and sold without any attempt to harmonise them. In one it is Judah who defends him and Ishmaelites who buy him ; in the other it is Reuben and Midianites. 24. A pit] These pits or, rather, cisterns are generally dry except in the rainy season. They are much smaller at top than bottom, that they may be the more easily closed. Some are 80 to 100 ft. deep : cp. Jer386. 25. Spicery, balm, and myrrh] fragrant gums from various trees, used in Egypt for making incense, and for embalming. 28. Twenty pieces of silver] ' The price, in later times, of a male slave from five to twenty years old, the medium price being thirty shekels of silver or £4 ' (Edersheim). 29. Reuben had evidently been absent during this trans- action. 34. Sackcloth] a coarse material made of goats' hair, and worn next the skin in token of the affliction of the soul. 35. The grave] the Heb. ' Sheol ' means 39 the place of departed souls. 36. Sold him] Syrian slaves were highly valued by the Egyptians. Potiphar] probably means ' the gift of Ra,' the sun-god of the Egyptians. Captain of the guard] i.e. of the bodyguard who protected Pharaoh's person and executed criminals : but some render ' chief of the butchers.' CHAPTER 38 The History of Judah The sins recorded in this chapter testify eloquently to the great need the world had of the Greatest of the descendants of Judah, who came to teach the virtue of purity and the sanctity of family life. The honesty and truthfulness of the historian are shown in his not concealing the dark spots in the history of Judah, whose descendants attained to such greatness. The direct purpose of the narrative is to show the ancestry of David, who was descended from Pharez the son of Judah by Tamar : see Ruth 4 is Mtis. I . Adullamite] Adullam was in the lowland of Judah, SW. of Jerusalem. 8. The law in Dt25^"io, respecting the duty of a surviving brother to marry his deceased brother's widow in order to continue the race, will fully explain the circumstances here detailed. To inculcate observance of this law was probably the aim of the historian. Had Judah given Shelah to Tamar, as he admitted he should have done according to ancient custom, the events re- corded here would not have happened : see alsoMt2223f. 13. Timnath] on the Philis- tine border of Judah. 14. An open place] RV ' the gate of Enaim,' near Adullam. 15. Harlot] RM Heb. A''erf,?s^a/?, 'that is, a woman dedicated to impure heathen worship : see Dt23i''' Hos4i4.' The surrender of their chastity as the greatest sacrifice women could make was common in heathen worship. At Corinth in St. Paul's day it is known that this shocking practice formed par't of the ritual at the temples dedicated to Aphrodite. 1 8. Bracelets] rather, ' cord ' by which the seal was suspended round the neck. 26. The reason of Tamar's action may be found in the strong desire for the perpetuation of the family, so often observed in the sacred narrative. 27-30. This incident testifies to the import- ance and privileges attached to the firstborn. Pharez] ' breach.' Zarah] perhaps ' scar- let,' but uncertain. CHAPTER 39 Joseph in the House of Potiphar 5. Overseer] rather, ' house-steward.' 6. Potiphar left everything imder Joseph's control except his own food. There may be 39.7 GENESIS 41. 14 here an allusion to the strict caste laws of Egypt : cp. 4332 46 3*. 7. Joseph was yet but a youth, when tempta- tions are strongest, and he was far removed from all the restraining influences of home. But He who was ' the fear of Isaac' (3142) was ' the fear of Joseph ' also, and his resolute resistance to temptation teaches that the prospect of earthly advantage or pleasm-e should never for a moment close om* ears to the voice of conscience. A papyrus has been found called ' The Tale of Two Brothers,' which gives in Egyptian form some incidents similar to this narrative. 8. Wotteth] RV ' knoweth.' 9. And sin against God] Other passages (e.g. 40^41 16 51,52 4218 50i9>20) show that Joseph 'made the consciousness of God's presence and inter- vention in his affairs, a vital principle of his actions, the law of his life ' : cp. NehS^^. 20. It is probable from the lightness of Joseph's punishment that Potiphar was not altogether convinced of his steward's guilt. CHAPTER 40 Joseph interprets the Dreams of Pharaoh's Officers I. Butler] rather, ' cupbearer,' a high court official : cp. Neh 1 ^ 2 1. Baker] rather, ' cook.' It is conjectured that these officials were accused of plotting to poison Pharaoh. 8. No professional interpreter was avail- able : see on 41 s. Do not interpretations, etc.] i.e. It may be that God who sent the dreams will give me the interpretation of them. 9-1 1. Grape juice mixed with water is used as a refreshing drink in the East. Among the inscriptions on the temple of Edfu is one in which the king is seen with a cup in his hand, and underneath are the words, ' They press grapes into the water and the king drinks.' 16. White baskets] rather, ' baskets of white bread.' 17. Bakemeats] i.e. con- fectionery. 19. Hang thee on a tree] rather, ' impale thee on a stake ' after being beheaded. Hanging as a form of punishment is not re- ferred to, except in the book of Esther, the scene of which is laid in Persia. The birds shall eat, etc.] The Egyptians held that after a stay of 3000 years in the unseen world, the soul re-entered its former body, and com- menced a fresh existence on the earth. They therefore took the greatest pains to preserve the bodies of the dead : see on 502. Yot a body to be devoured by the birds, as Joseph foretold, would be regarded as a terrible doom. CHAPTER 41 The Dreams of Pharaoh and the Advancement of Joseph I. Pharaoh] It is believed that a dynasty of Asiatic (perhaps Bedouin) conquerors, known as the Hyksos or Shepherd kings, were now in power in Egypt. Their rule lasted for 500 years, until 1700 or 1600 B.C., when a native Nubian dynasty from Thebes expelled the invaders. The court was at Zoan on the eastern frontier of Egypt. The elevation of Joseph to an almost royal posi- tion, and the welcome extended to his kinsmen, were natural at the hands of a dynasty who were Asiatic like himself, but very improbable had a native dynasty who hated foreigners been in power : see on Ex 1 §. 1. The river] Heb. Yeor, i.e. the Nile. As is generally known, the fertility of Egypt depends entirely upon the amount of water which overflows the banks when the Nile is at its highest. Without that river the land would be a desert, the rainfall being extremely slight. . In recent years great improvements have been made for maintaining the water at a normal height always. Large ' barrages ' or dams have been erected at Assouan, by the island of Philoe, for this purpose. The arti- ficial irrigation of Egypt is alluded to in Dt 1 1 10, where see note. 2, 3. The seven vyell favoured kine] coming up out of the Nile signified an abundant over- flow for seven years and consequent plenty for Egypt, but the ill favoured ones the reverse. Meadow] RV ' reed grass ' which grows by the Nile. 5. Seven ears . . upon one stalk] This many-eared wheat is still gi-own in Egypt. Specimens have been found in mummy cases of very early periods. 6. The east vvind] the parching SE. wind from the desert ; see on Ex 10 21. 8. Magicians] RM ' sacred scribes.' They were the literary caste of Egypt, writing the hieroglyphics, or sacred writings, and learned in the interpretation of dreams and astrology. They attended at the Court of the Pharaohs, and their duty was ' to guide every act of the king's life, and to interpret the will of the gods as shown in visions, omens, or sign's in the heavens. They did not affect to speak by direct inspiration in giving their interpreta- tions, but confined themselves to consulting the holy books and to performing magical rites' (Geikie). See on Ex 711. 14. He shaved him>;elf] so as to be ceremonially clean in Pharaoh's presence, a distinctively Egyptian trait. ' The Hebrews regarded their beard with peculiar pride, cultivated it with care, touched it at supplica- tions, often swore by it, and deemed its mutilation an extreme ignominy : hence, in mourning, they shaved their beards and hair ' (Kalisch). The Egyptians, on the other hand, never allowed the hair to grow unless they were in mourning, or prisoners, or belonged to the poorer classes. To be shaved was 40 41. 16 GENESIS 42. 11 regarded as essential to ceremonial purity, as well as to cleanliness: see on ExS^*^. The great beards and head-dresses with which Egyptian kings are represented on the monu- ments are artificial. There is an ancient Egyptian wig in the British Museum, and the strap by which the beard was held on the chin may be observed on the monuments. 1 6. Render, ' It is not I but God who will answer what will profit Pharaoh.' 25. The dream of Pharaoh is one] i.e. both dreams have the same significance. The nar- rative here is a striking fulfilment of the words in 39 2, ' The Lord was with Joseph.' 34. Joseph's suggestion was that a fifth part of the corn crop should be required of the people for the next seven years to be stored up by the government ; this would keep a quantity in the country which would otherwise have been sold to other lands. The corn tax was already an important part of Egyptian revenue, and its increase in years of such abundant plenty would be no hardship. 38. Pharaoh felt that Joseph's wisdom had a divine source. 40. Pharaoh makes Joseph his grand vizier or prime minister, only reserv- ing to himself the supreme authority. 42. Ring . . vestures . . chain] ' The specu- lative mind of the Oriental invests everything with a symbolical significance ' (Kalisch). The ring was Pharaoh's signet or seal, showing that Joseph was invested with full power as to edicts and commands. The king and the priestly order only wore the finest linen vestures. The chain round the neck from which the scarabseus, or beetle, the emblem of immortality, was suspended, was also a mark of rank. 43. They cried] i.e. the grooms who ran before the chariot, as is done to the present day in Egypt. Bow the knee] Abrek, the word used here, is still the cry to the camel to kneel. 44. The exaltation of Joseph, who was a Hebrew, is less remarkable if the Pharaohs of this period were themselves of Asiatic descent. See on v. 1. 45. Zaphnaph-paaneah] meaning, perhaps, ' God, the Living One, has spoken.' It is a word of Egyptian origin, but not found earlier than the 9th cent. B.C. Asenath] ' One belonging to the goddess Neith, the Egyptian Minerva, goddess of wisdom.' Poti-pherah] ' One given by Ra the sun-god.' On] or Heliopolis, ' city of the sun,' was 7 m. NE. of Cairo. It was the centre of the sun (Ra) worship. A great granite obelisk of the twelfth dynasty is all that remains standing of the temple of the sun, but a similar monolith known as ' Cleopatra's needle ' was brought from Alexandria to London in 1878, and erected on the Thames embankment. It had originally been one of the obelisks at Helio- polis. It is held that these obelisks were the symbol of Ra, the fertilising sun-god. In Jer 43 13 On is called Beth-shemesh, ' house of the sun.' This marriage, no doubt, exalted Joseph in the eyes of the Egyptians, but there is abundant evidence that he did not forsake the faith of his fathers on account of these new ties. 46. Thirty years old] he was seventeen when sold into Egypt (37-'). 51,52. Manasseh] 'causing to forget.' Ephraim] 'fruitful.' The first name suggests that Joseph felt in his present prosperity compensation for his early trials. 54. Seven years of dearth] A similar visitation took place between the years 1064-1071 a.d., and this also was caused through the failure of the Nile. There is a record on the monuments of a great famine in Egypt 3000 B.C. In Canaan such a scarcity would be due to insufficient rainfall. 56. Over all the face of the earth] an expression for the countries near Egypt, such as Arabia, Palestine, and parts of Africa. And Joseph opened all the storehouses] Dr. Brugsch has discovered a tomb at El-Kab with an inscription which very possibly refers to this famine. Its occupant seems to have been one of the distributors of corn during the famine years. The following extract refers to it : ' I collected the harvest, for I was a friend of the harvest god. I was watch- ful at the time of sowing, and now when a famine came lasting many years I issued corn to the city to each hungry person.' CHAPTER 42 The First Visit of Joseph's Brethren TO Egypt I. When Jacob saw] The caravans which travelled from Egypt to Syria would bring the news to Hebron. 3, Dr. Thomson, in ' The Land and the Book,' says he has often met large parties with their donkeys going from Palestine to Egypt in time of drought for food. Jacob's sons no doubt took servants with them and many asses. 8. Joseph, now a middle-aged man, was dressed as an Egyptian, and spoke in Egyptian through an interpreter (v. 23). His bretlu-en, on the other hand, would not have changed in appearance. 9. Ye are spies] Egypt was always liable to attack from Asia, and fortresses were built along that frontier to repel inva- sion. By suggesting that they were foreigners who were spying out the nakedness of the land, i.e. how far it was open to attack from hos- tile nations, Joseph had an opportunity of enquiring about his family. We may believe also that, though well-intentioned towards his brethren, he sought to bring their sin home to them. II, We ai-e all one man's sons. . thy 41 4S. 13 GENESIS 45. 20 servants are no spies] This was a strong argu- ment. No father would have risked the lives of all his children at once on such dangerous work as that of spies. 13. Is not] i.e. is not alive, meaning Joseph. 14. Joseph perseveres in this charge in order to have a pretext for getting Benjamin to Egypt. He hoped too, perhaps, that his father would follow when his favourite son had left him. 15. By the life of Pharaoh] a common Egyptian oath : cp. ' As I live saith the Lord,' also 2K24. 18. I fear God] 'and so will not punish on mere suspicion ' (D.). 21. Conscience arouses in the brethren the fear that the day of reckoning, so long delayed, has come at last. 27. The inn] This would be no more than a mere shelter or camping place. Even now, when journeying in out-of-the-way parts in the East, travellers take their own food and bedding with them. 36. All these things are against me] So Jacob thought ; but Provi- dence was working out a merciful provision for the welfare of himself and his family. CHAPTER 43 The Second Yisit to Egypt 11. Balm] or ' balsam,' with healing proper- ties. Honey] This was grape-honey, a syrup made of grapes and diluted with water for a drink. It is still exported from Hebron to Egypt. Syria is famous for its pistachio nuts and almonds which do not grow in Egypt. 12. Double money] (1) to repay that put in the sack, and (2) to piu-chase fresh stores. 18. Again the guilty conscience which dreads every fresh event. 30. Bo-wels] regarded as the seat of the affections by the Hebrews : cp. 2 Cor 6^2. 32. The distinctions observed here were due to the existence of various castes among the Egyptians. As with the Hindoos, it was un- heard of for a man of one caste to eat from the vessels used by another. 34. He fient messes] ' Mess ' is derived from Lat. m!fii7E,Y 3314). PAET 1 (Chs. 1-1621) Israel in Egypt : their Oppression and Deliverance CHAPTER 1 Oppression of the Israelites 5. Seventy souls] Jacob himself is included in the number : cp. Gn 46 ^'^'^. Of the seventy, sixty-eight were males. If to the direct de- scendants of Jacob we add the wives of his sons and grandsons, and the husbands of his daughters and grand-daughters, and all their servants with their families, it appears that the total number of those who entered Egypt was very considerable, several hundreds if not thousands. This fact, as well as the acknow- ledged prolificness of the Hebrew nation, serves to account for their rapid increase in Egypt. At the time of the exodus they must have numbered about three millions : see on 123V. y. Observe the number of words de- noting increase. The land is the land of Goshen in the Delta of the Nile. 8. This verse marks the turn of the tide in the fortunes of Israel. Hitherto they have been tolerated and honoured ; now they are feared and oppressed. The change of treat- ment is here said to be connected with a change in the government of Egypt. As mentioned in the Introduction, Egj'pt for several hundred years was ruled by an alien dynasty, called the Hyksos, or Shepherd kings. These were Asiatics, and would therefore naturally tolerate the Hebrew race with whom they may have had affinity. But the Hyksos were at length expelled, and a native dynasty once more oc- cupied the throne of Egypt. It is usually supposed that this new dynasty is meant by the new king . . which knew not Joseph. One of the most famous kings of the nineteenth dynasty was Rameses II (about 1340 B.C.). He was a great architect, and many monuments remain to attest his gi-eatness, such as the temples at Luxor, Abydos, etc. He is gen- erally held to be the Pharaoh of the Oppres- sion, and his son and successor (Merenptah or Mineptah) the Pharaoh of the exodus : see on 142s. Against this, however, is to be considered the fact that this Merenptah has left monuments in which he records that he has invaded Palestine and destroyed the Israelites, who are represented as living there at his time. Accordingly the oppression and exodus of the Israelites are by some placed much earlier than the time of Rameses and Meren- ptah, as early as the 15th cent. B.C. II. Treasure cities] store cities, situated on the frontier, and serving both as strongholds for defence against invasion and as military depots of provisions and arms. Pithom] i.e. the 'Abode of the Setting Sun,' has been identi- fied with Tel-el Maskhuta, between Kassassin and Ismailiyeh. The walls of this ancient city are found to have been constructed of bricks made of Nile mud and chopped straw. Raamses] or Rameses, has not yet been identi- fied, but is supposed to have been situated at the modern Tel-el Kebir. It was in existence at the time of Joseph, as appears from Gn 47 11, so that it was probably repaired or enlarged at a later date. 12. The more they multi- plied] The whole history of the exodus and sojourn in the wilderness is designed to show that nothing can destroy the people of Israel, or thwart the divine purpose with regard to them. 14. Service in the field] This refers to the construction of irrigation canals and embankments, as well as to the making of bricks for building. With what rigour the system of forced labom* was employed may be judged from the fact recorded by Herodotus that 120,000 workmen lost their lives in the construction of a canal connecting the Nile and the Red Sea in the time of Pharaoh Necho. In modern times Mohammed Ali's canal from the Nile to Alexandi-ia cost 20,000 lives. 15-22. Failing to weaken or diminish the Israelites by such severe labour, the Egj'ptian king has recourse to a more direct method, that of infanticide. He orders the slaughter of all the Hebrew male children at birth. This also fails, Pharaoh's own daughter becoming one of the links in the chain of deliverance. 49 1. 15 EXODUS 2.25 With Pharaoh's edict may be compared that of Herod ordering the Massacre of the Inno- cents of Bethlehem (Mt2i6). 15. The names of only two of the mid- wives have been preserved. These two were probably connected with the royal palace. 16, Stools] RV ' birthstooL' 19. There was, no doubt, some truth in what the midwives said, though their womanly instincts led them to evade the unnatural com- mand of the king. 21. Made them houses] i.e. blessed them with marriage and many descendants : cp. Ruth 4 n 2 S 7 27 1 K 11 38. CHAPTER 2 Birth and Early Life of Moses 1. The names of the father and mother of Moses were Amram and Jochebed respectively (see 6^0). Two children were bom to them before Moses. The oldest was a daughter called Miriam (i.e. Mary), who was a young woman at the time when Moses was born (see V. 8) ; and the second was a son, Aaron, who was born three years before Moses (see 7 7) and presumably before Pharaoh's exterminating edict : cp.Nu2659. 2. Hid him three months] This defiance of the king's edict is called an act of faith in Heb 11 -3. 3. Ark of bulrushes] a chest made of the stalks of the papyrus reed which grew at the side of the Nile and in marshy places. The stalks and leaves of papyrus were em- ployed in the manufacture of various arti- cles, such as boats (IsalS^), sails, mats, ropes, and paper. This last, which gets its name from the papyrus, was made of thin strips of the inner bark pasted together, and com- pressed. The slime used as a watertight coat- ing for the ark was bitumen, imported into Egypt from Mesopotamia and the vicinity of the Dead Sea ; it was employed as mortar in building and as a preservative in the process of embalming. 5. Daughter of Pharaoh] Jo- sephus calls her Thermutis, but Eusebius calls her Merris. The Nile was regarded as a sacred river, and bathing in its waters was part of a religious ceremony: cp. 7^^. 10. The mother kept the child probably till he was weaned, which would be two or perhaps three years. He was then adopted by Pharaoh's daughter and would receive the education of an Egyptian prince. St. Stephen says that ' Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and in deeds.' Josephus says that Moses became general of the Egyptian army and defeated the Ethiopians, also that Pharaoh's daughter, having no child of her own, intended to make him her father's successor. The name Moses, which she gave him, is an Egj-ptian, not a He- brew word, and means ' child ' or ' son.' It appears in names like Rameses, Thothmes, etc. It is only therefore by a play upon words that it is connected with the Hebrew word jnashah, ' to draw out.' II. In those days] According to Ac 7 23 Moses was at this time ' full forty years old.' This incident shows that the patriotism of Moses had not been destroyed by his Egyptian upbringing, also that he was by nature pos- sessed of an impatient and ardent spirit which required the long discipline of the sojourn in Midian to school him into that strength and for- bearance necessary in a leader of men : see on 3 11. At the same time, it is made clear that his countrymen were not yet ready for emancipa- tion. 15. Land of Midian] The south-eastern part of the peninsula of Sinai. There is reason to believe, however, that the home, or head- quarters, of the Midianites, who were probably a nomadic tribe, lay outside the peninsula on the E. side of the Gulf of Akaba : see &n 3725 and on Nu 22*. 16. The priest or prince of Midian. In early times, before the multiplication of ritual necessitated a separate religious order, the head or chief of the clan performed priestly functions : see on 19^2. He is called Reuel in v. 18 and Jethro in c. 18, while in Jg4ii, and perhaps also in Nu 1029, he is called Hobab. On this apparent confusion see the note there. 17. In the East wells are of great importance, and frequent disputes arise over rights of watering : see e.g. Gn 2620-22. 21. Moses stayed in Midian forty years (cp. 7 7), so that his life falls into three equal portions. The first forty years he spent in Egypt (Ac 723), the second forty in Midian, and the last forty in the wilderness (cp. Dt 347). It may be observed, however, that in Scripture forty is frequently used as a round number. Here the forty years signify a gene- ration : so that Moses simply waited in Midian till a new set of people arose in Egypt : see e.g. Gn74 Ex 2418 3428 Nu 1325 1433 ISI716 IK 198. "With the preparatory sojourn of Moses in Midian may be compared that of the Baptist in the wilderness (Lk 1 80) and of St. Paul in Arabia (Gal 1 1^). Zipporah] see on Nul2i. 22. Gershom] The name is de- rived either from the Heb. ger, ' a sojourner,' and sham, ' there,' or from the verb garash, ' to expel.' In either case it shows that the heart of Moses was with his countrymen in Egj^t. Another son, Eliezer, is mentioned in 184 : cp. lCh23i6,i7. 23. The king of Egypt] see on 1 8. 24. His covenant] see Gnl27 15 18 171-1" 26 3. -4 2813-15. When it is said here, as else- where, that God remembered His covenant, it is not implied that He had previously forgotten it, but that the opportunity had now come of fulfilling His merciful purpose. 25. Had respect unto] RV 'took knowledge of.' 50 3.1 EXODUS 3. 15 CHAPTER 3 The Call of Moses and his Commission TO BE THE Deliverer of Israel 1. Horeb] The names Horeb and Sinai seem to be synonymous, though it has been suggested that Horeb is the name given to the entire mountain range, while Sinai denotes the par- ticular mountain where the Law was given. Assuming that the Pentateuch is composed of different documents, it is better to believe that Horeb is the name used by one set of writers and Sinai by another. Horeb is here called the mountain of God by anticipation. The reason of the appellation follows in c. 19. At the same time, it is not improbable that there was a sanctuary on Mt. Sinai from earliest times, connected with the worship of the Babylonian moon-god Sin. 2. Angel of the LORD] i.e. of Jehovah (see on v. 13). In v. 4 it is Jehovah Himself who speaks; in 2320,21,22 divine attributes are ascribed to the ' angel of the Lord,' God's * name ' is in him (see on 3 1^), and his voice is identified with that of God. It would there- fore appear that the Angel of Jehovah is not a created angel but Jehovah Himself in the act of self -manifestation : see on ' my pre- sence ' in 33 1'*. On the other hand, there are passages like 32^4 where the angel seems to be distinguished from Jehovah, the explana- tion being probably that the mere manifesta- tion of God gives rise to a distinction between what He is in Himself, and what He is in His special appearance. In this distinction between God in Himself and God in self -manifestation, we may see an adumbration of the Incarn- ation of God in Christ. By many, the Angel of the Lord is identified with the Second Person of the Trinity. It is to be observed that on this occasion Moses saw no human form : cp. Dt4i5. in a flame of fire] Fire is a frequent emblem of God in the Scriptures on account of its illuminating, purifying, and destructive properties, and appears as the accompaniment and indication of His pre- sence : see 13^1 I918 24^7 Dt42-i Ps973 Ezkl* Ac 2 3, etc. On this occasion the bush, though enveloped in flame, was not consumed. This may be symbolical of the graciousness of God who spares the unworthy and restrains the fierceness of His anger while He communi- cates with them : see on 249-ii. g. Every place where God manifests Himself is holy. To take off the shoes is an ancient as well as modern way of expressing reverence in the East. The Mohammedan takes off his shoes when he enters the mosque. The action sym- bolises the removal of the defilement caused by sin or contact with the world on entering the presence of Him with whom ' evil cannot dwell.' 51 6. The patriarchs are mentioned to show that it is no new or unknown God who speaks, but One who made a covenant with the fathers of the nation and who still remembers it. These words are cited by our Lord as a proof that God's people continue to live after death : cp. Mkl2 2'5,27. Moses hid his face] cp. the act of Elijah, 1 K 19 is, and see on 19 9 33 is. Rever- ence is not only due to God, but is the first con- dition of receiving divine truth. God mani- fests Himself to the lowly. 8. Flowing with milk and honey] A proverbial expression indicating fertility and abundance. On the tribes inhabiting Canaan see on Gn 10 Nu 34 1-1^. II. With the hesitation of Moses compare that of Jeremiah, Jerl^-s. Forty years be- fore Moses was more self-confident (cp. Ac 7 ^5). In the long sojourn in Midian he learned to mistrust himself, and was on that account all the more fitted to be the instrument of Him whose ' strength is made perfect in weakness.' Moses here puts forward four excuses, each of which is in turn overborne. He pleads (1) that he is personally unfit (vv. 11, 12), (2) that the Israelites will not know who sent him (vv. 13-22), (3) that they will not believe that Jehovah has sent him (4 1-9), and (4) that he does not possess the gift of persuasive eloquence (4io-i'). 12. I will be with thee] The guarantee of fitness and success : cp. our Lord's promise, Mt2820. A token] The token was still in the future: cp. IS 2^4 2 K 1 9 29 Isa 7 1*. Experience corroborates the ventures of faith. For the fulfilment of this sign see c. 19. 13. What is his name?] The name of God is His revealed character : see 23^1 345-7. Here God reveals Himself by the name Jehovah. As already explained (Gn24) the word ' Jehovah ' is the result of a combination of the consonants of the original name (the consonants alone are written in ancient Hebrew) and the vowels of its substitute 'Adonai.' Most scholars believe that the original form of the name was ' Jahve ' or 'Yahve.' Now this resembles in form the third person singular masculine imperfect of a Hebrew verb, and is here connected with the verb hmca or haya^ ' to be.' God calls Himself ' Ehyeh,' i.e. I am. When He is named by others, He is ' Jahve,' i.e. He is. The name denotes the absolute self -existence of God. He alone truly exists : cp. Dt435 Isa 45 6 Rev 14. Some scholars, however, prefer to take the word as a future, ' I will be,' in which case the name expresses rather the faithfulness of God, the assurance that He will be with His people as their helper and deliverer. Others, again, take the word to be the causative form of the verb, in which case it will mean, ' He who causes to be,' ' the Creator ' : see RM and on 6 3. 15. My memorial] i.e. my S. 16 EXODUS 4.21 name, the designation by which I will be remembered. 1 6. Elders of Israel] The heads or repre- sentatives of the tribes and families. It appears from this that even in Egypt the Israelites had some kind of organisation. In the Pentateuch, when the people of Israel are addressed, it is frequently the ' elders ' who are meant. They are the usual medium of communication between Moses and the people, and act as the representatives of the latter : see e.g. 175 19^ Dt27i 319.28. 1 8. God of the Hebrews] To the Israelites God is ' Jehovah, the God of your fathers ' (v. 16), a designation which would appeal to their hearts as it reminded them of God's covenant with their forefathers and His faithfulness to it. See on v. 6. But to Pharaoh He is simply ' the God of the Hebrews.' Three days' journey into the wilderness] i.e. most probably to Horeb, the ' wilderness ' being a general term for the region lying between Egypt and Palestine. There was no intention to deceive Pharaoh in this request. Had Pharaoh been willing to grant the people entire release this would have been asked at first. But God, knowing that Pharaoh was not willing to let them go, enjoined Moses to make only this moderate request, so as to emphasise the obstinacy of the king. 19. No, not by a mighty hand] This means either ' in spite of the fact that I will lay My hand heavily upon him ' ; or better, with a slight change of reading, as LXX has it, ' un- less I lay My hand heavily upon him.' 22. Shall borrow] RV 'shall ask.' The word is the common Hebrew verb meaning 'to ask,' as used e.g. in JgS^s IKSH 2K2io Psl22'', where there is no idea of asking under a promise of giving back what is received. Spoil] The same word is ren- dered 'recover' in IS 30 22, which suggests that if there was any ' borrowing ' it was on the part of the Egyptians, who had been taking the labour of the Israelites without any recompense. For the fulfilment, see c. 1235,36. CHAPTER 4 Signs Attesting the Commission of Moses. His Return to Egypt Moses still hesitates, and now objects that the people will not believe him when he tells them that Jehovah has sent him. He is granted the power of working three signs by way of substantiating his commission. 2. A rod] probably his shepherd's staff. 3. Fled from before it] A graphic trait, showing that the change was real, and that Moses was not prepared for it. 4. By the tail] Snake charmers usually take snakes by the neck to prevent them biting. It is much more dangerous to seize them by the tail. When Moses did so with impunity his own faith would be strengthened as well as that of the people : cp. our Lord's promise, Mkl6i8. 6. Leprous as snow^] i.e. as white as snow. Leprosy was common in Egypt. The form here meant is that in which the skin becomes glossy, white, and callous. This is the worst form of leprosy and was regarded as incurable. This incident, taken together with the fact that the white leprosy was most common among the Israelites, may have given rise to the tradition, related by the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho, and quoted by Josephus, that Moses was a leper, and that the Israelites were expelled from Egypt be- cause they were afflicted with the same disease. 9. The river] the Nile. This sign is similar to the first of the plagues (see 720), with the difference that here only part of the water is changed on being poured out on the dry land. 10. Moses now pleads his want of eloquence. Jewish tradition says that he had an actual impediment in his speech, being unable to pronounce the labials. His words here, how- ever, do not necessarily imply any positive defect of this kind. He wishes to be excused, and urges that a more eloquent man than he is required to persuade the king of Egypt to release Israel, and the Israelites also to trust themselves to the guidance of Jehovah. For this he is rebuked, but not excused. Aaron is given to him as spokesman. 12. Cp. Jerl6-9 Lk21i4.i5. 13, 14. This request is equivalent to a refusal to go. Moses says, ' send some one else, but not me.' Accord- ingly ' the anger of Jehovah was kindled against him.' His punishment takes the form of diminished privilege. Aaron henceforth shares in his distinction. The Levite] This means not merely the ' descendant of Levi,' but ' the priest,' as the tribe of Levi was after- wards consecrated to the service of the sanctu- ary. The title is here used by anticipation. 16. Cp. 71. Instead of God] Because Aaron would receive God's message at the mouth of Moses. 17. Signs] RV ' the signs,' i.e. the appointed signs. 18-26. Moses takes leave of Jethro and returns with his wife and children to Egypt. 19. Cp. Mt2i9. 20. His sons] Only one has been previously mentioned, but a second had been born in Midian : see 2^2. 21. I will harden his heart] God proposes to harden Pharaoh's heart, in order to have the opportunity of displaying His power in the deliverance of His people, and exhibiting His character to the Egyptians. Some take the expression as due to the Eastern and fatalistic way of regarding all that happens in the world as the result of the direct inter- vention of God. On this interpretation it is 52 4. 22 EXODUS 5. 12 simply synonymous with ' Pharaoh's heart was hardened ' (7 ^^), and ' Pharaoh hardened his heart ' (8 1^). Where we speak vaguely of the operation of moral and physical laws and of secondary causes, the Oriental frankly says that ' God did this.' He says ' kismet ' ; ' it was fated to be ' : see on v. 24. We prefer to say that the hardening of Pharaoh's heart was due to his own obstinacy in refusing to yield to the warnings he received ; the Eastern moralist means the same when he says that God hardened his heart. The inevitable result is regarded as the divine purpose. It happens in accordance with laws which God Himself has ordained. ' He will not ' leads inevitably to ' he cannot ' : cp. Ro 1 ^8. It should be observed that this, however, is not equivalent to a denial of moral responsibility. It is a man's omti fault if he allow himself to be entangled in this chain of inevitable con- sequences. He is, therefore, responsible for the ultimate hardening of his heart through repeated acts of wilful transgression : see on 10 3. 22. Israel is my son, eren my firstborn] This expresses God's choice of Israel as His peculiar people : cp. Dtl4i'2 Hosll^ JerSl^, and see on 19 5. The term 'firstborn' indi- cates the high honour conferred upon Israel, and at the same time contains a hint of the ultimate inclusion of the Gentiles also in the covenant. 23. For the fulfilment of this warning see 12 29,30_ 24. In the inn] RV ' lodging-place,' not necessarily a building. Sought to kill him] This probably means no more than that Moses was struck with some grievous sickness and was in danger of death. It is another example of the Eastern way of attributing whatever happens to the direct interposition of God, referred to in the note on v. 21. It would appear from this mysterious incident that Moses had neglected to circumcise his youngest son, on account perhaps of the mother's objection to the rite. Circumcision was not peculiar to the Israelites, but they alone circumcised infants. What Zipporah objected to, therefore, may not have been the rite itself, but its performance at such an early age. But now seeing the danger her husband was in, and recognising that his sickness was the chastisement of disobedience, she over- came her reluctance and performed the cere- mony herself, with the result that Moses' life was spared (v. 26). The incident is designed to show the importance of circumcision as the sign of the covenant between God and His people and the sin and danger of neglecting it. 25. A sharp stone] Even in later times than this flint knives were employed in circumcision, being regarded as purer than knives of metal : see Josh 5 2, where 'sharp knives' should be ' knives of flint,' as in RV. Flint knives were 53 used by the Egyptians in opening bodies for embalming. They are said to be carried by the Bedouin of the Syrian desert at the present day. A bloody husband art thou to me] RV ' a bridegroom of blood.' As the Jews to this day call a circumcised child a ' bride- groom of the circumcision ' it is possible that Zipporah's exclamation was addressed to the child. It is usually, however, understood as addi'essed to Moses, whom his wife reproaches as being the cause of bloodshed. 26. He let him go] i.e. God let Moses go, removed his sickness and allowed him to recover. It was probably at this time that Moses sent his wife and children back to the house of his father-in-law. They rejoined him at Sinai after the exodus from Egypt : see 18 2, 5. 27. The mount of God] Horeb or Sinai : see on 31. The two brothers had not met for forty years previous to this. CHAPTERS 5-11 The Contest with Pharaoh CHAPTER 5 Increase of the Oppression I. Pharaoh] probably P. Merenptah. See on 1 s. His court may have been at Zoan or Tanis during the events that ensued : cp. Ps 78 12, 43. The Lord God of Israel] Heb. ' Jehovah the God of Israel ' : see on 3 1^' is. Similarly in the next v. Pharaoh says, 'Who is Jehovah '? . . I know not Jehovah.' Jehovah not being known and worshipped in Egypt, Pharaoh does not acknowledge His right to command him. 3. See on S^^. 4. Let the people] i.e. hinder them, as in Isa43i3 Rolls 2Th27. 6. The taskmasters are the Egyptian officials, and the officers (lit. ' scribes ') are the Hebrew clerks under them whose duty it was to keep an account of the bricks made : see v. 14. 7. Straw to make brick] The bricks were made of Nile mud to which chopped straw was added to give it con- sistency. They were sometimes stamped with the name of the reigning king. Some have been found bearing the name of Rameses II, the father of Merenptah, and wooden stamps and moulds have also been discovered. 8. The tale] i.e. the number, as in IS 18 27 1 Ch928. To ' tell ' in Old English means to count, and is used in this sense in Gnl5^ 2Ch22 Ps22i7 4812 147 *, etc. The counter of votes in Parliament is still called the ' teller.' 12. Stubble instead of straw] RV 'stubble for straw.' The word rendered ' straw ' means straw cut into short pieces and mixed with chaif. This required little labour, if any, to make it fit for use in briclonaking. What is called ' stubble ' is not what we know by that 5. 21 EXODUS 7. 12 name, but includes all kinds of field rubbish, small twigs, stems, roots of withered plants, etc., which were used for fuel. To make this fit for brickmaking it had not only to be gathered, but chopped up and sorted, thus entailing double labour on the part of the Israelites. 2i. Our savour to be abhorred] i.e. as we say ' to be in bad odour ' : cp. Gn3430. 22. The faith of Moses was se- verely tried, seeing that what he had done by God's commandment had the effect of making matters still more grievous for the Israelites meanwhile. But the opening words of the next c. show that their ' present affliction will work a far more exceeding weight of glory.' CHAPTEE 6 The Kenewal of the Promise. Geneal- ogies OF Reuben, Simeon, and Levi I. The strong hand is the hand of Jehovah, not of Pharaoh. So RV renders, ' by a strong hand,' i.e. under the compelling force of Jehovah's judgments : see on 3^9. 3. The name of God Almighty] Heb. El Shaddal, which occurs first in the revelation made to Abraham (GnlT^ ; cp. also 28 3 483). It is here said that God was not known in the patriarchal times by the name Jehovah. This constitutes a difficulty, as the name has been already used in passages earlier than this, e.g. in Gn24 3 4 111-9, etc. Two explanations have been given : (1) The use of the name Jehovah in these earlier passages may be due, not to the speakers themselves, but to the writer of those parts of the book of Genesis in which it is found, to whom it was familiar, and who used it by anticipation. (2) While the name Je- hovah may have been known from earliest times, its full spiritual significance may not have been revealed or apprehended till the time of Moses. Traces of the antiquity of the name Jehovah may be found in its employment by Abraham as part of a proper name : see Gn 22 14. The name of Moses' mother, Joche- bed (Ex 6 20), also contains the name Jehovah as its first element. 5. See on 2 2*. 6. Redeem] deliver from oppression. 7. See on 19 5> 6. 12. Uncircumcised lips] Circumcision is the sign of consecration, so that ' uncircumcision ' is used metaphorically of what is unclean or inadequate to the service of God: see on Lv 19 23. 14-27. The object of this section is to in- dicate the genealogy of the deliverers, Moses and Aaron. The family of Levi is therefore given in detail. Those of Reuben and Simeon are prefixed merely to show the position of the family of Levi among the sons of Jacob, and are therefore summarily described. 14. Hanoch] the Hebrew form of Enoch. 20. Jochebed] ' Jehovah is glory ' : see on V. 3. Observe that marriage with a father's sister was not forbidden before the giving of the Law : see LvlS^^. It is not improbable that the genealogy of Amram has been short- ened here by the omission of certain names. Joshua, who was a younger contemporary of Moses, was of the tenth generation from Joseph: see lCh720-27. The designation ' daughter of Levi ' applied to Jochebed in 2 1 may, therefore, be equivalent to ' descendant of Levi.' But see Nu26S9, where Miriam's name is also inserted : see on 2 1. 26. Their armies] Israel left Egypt as an organised host : see on 316, and see 12 17,51 13 18. CHAPTER 7 The Rod of Moses turned into a Serpent. The First Plague I. A god to Pharaoh] see on 4 16. Thy pro- phet] A prophet is a spokesman. The pro- ■, phets of God are those who declare His will. In doing this they may foretell His judg- ments and predict the future ; but predic- tion is a secondary feature of prophecy, and is not contained in the original and proper sense of the word in which it is used here, where Aaron is called the prophet or mouth- piece of Moses. To prophesy sometimes means to declare God's praise in song. Thus Miriam is called a prophetess in 15 20, Eldad and Medad are said to have prophesied in Nu 1 1 25 (see note there), Deborah was a prophetess (Jg44 51), and in lCh25i"3 the sacred musicians in the temple are said to ' prophesy with harps ' : cp. alsolS10ioi920f. iCorUif. 4,5. The pur- pose of the miraculous events connected with the exodus was not only the deliverance of the Israelites, but the manifestation of Jehovah's character to the Egyptians : see on 421. 7. See on 2 21. 9. Thy rod] Moses had entrusted his rod to Aaron : cp. v. 15, which is spoken to Moses. II. Magicians] lit. 'engravers, sacred scribes' : cp. Gn4is RV. They are depicted on the monuments with a quill pen on their heads and a book in their hands. A belief in magic was universal in Egypt and had a most potent influence in every department of thought and conduct. The magicians were a recognised body of men whose services were very fre- quently employed to interpret dreams, to avert misfortune, or to bring discomfiture upon an enemy : cp. on Nu225. Here Pharaoh calls his magicians to a trial of strength with Moses and Aaron, and they are able to imitate some of the wonders. In the end, however, they confess themselves beaten (8 1^). According to Jewish tradition two of the magicians who ' withstood Moses ' were called Jannes and Jambres : see 2 Tim 3 8. 12. They became serpents] Serpent charming is still practised 54 7. 13 EXODUS 8. 22 in Egj'pt and has been described by several travellers. What was done on this occasion was probably a clever piece of sleight of hand. The magicians when they were called in might know what was expected of them, and be prepared to imitate what was done by Aaron. 13. He hardened Pharaoh's heart] This should be ' Pharaoh's heart was hardened,' as in RV. The Heb. is the same here as in V. 22 : see on 421. 14-25. The First Plague :— The Water of the Nile turned into Blood. The Nile was regarded as a god to whom worship and sacrifice were offered. The defile- ment of its waters, therefore, was a severe blow to the religious prejudices of the Egypt- ians. It was also a great calamity, as the Nile was the source of all the fertility of Egypt, and its fish were largely used for food, some kinds being regarded as sacred. 15. He goeth out unto the water] either to bathe or to pay his devotions to the sacred river : see on 2^. 19. Streams . . rivers] the various canals and branches of the Nile. 20, 21. At the annual rising of the Nile its waters frequently turn a dull red colour owing to the presence of mud, vegetable debris, and minute animal- cules. This plague, therefore, like the follow- ing, may have been an aggravation of a natural phenomenon. It is to be observed, however, that whereas the natural discoloration of the water has no pernicious effect on the fish of the Nile, these all died under the plague. 22. The magicians probably obtained some water by digging near the Nile (see v. 24), and in some way were able to convince Pharaoh, who of course was willing to be con- vinced, that they could imitate the sign wrought by Moses and Aaron. Their sign, however, must have been on a much smaller scale, seeing that all the Nile water was already trans- formed. 25. The plague lasted seven days. Nothing is said of its removal. CHAPTER 8 The Second, Third, and Fourth Plagues 1-15. The Second Plague: — Frogs. This plague, like the first, was not only in itself loathsome, but an offence to the religious notions of the Egyptians. The frog was a sacred animal, and regarded as representing the reproductive powers of nature. At least one divinity was represented with a frog's head. This sacred sign became an object of abhorrence under this plague. This also was an aggravation of a natural phenomenon, but its supernatural nature was attested by its sudden occurrence in accordance with a pre- vious intimation (v. 2). 3. Ovens] These were large earthenware jars or pots about 3 ft. high, which were heated by being 56 filled with burning brushwood. The dough was baked by being laid in thin layers on the hot sides of the jar. Sometimes the oven consisted of a hole dug in the ground outside the house and plastered with clay. It was heated in the same manner as before, and after the fuel was withdrawn, the oven was wiped out and the dough pressed to the hot sides. Kneading-troughs] wooden bowls. 7. The plague would not be difficult to imitate, seeing the frogs abounded everywhere. But the magicians could not remove the plague. 9. Glory over me] RV 'Have thou this glory over me': an expression of courtesy equivalent to ' I am at your service.' 13. The frogs died] They did not return to the Nile, but remained to pollute the land. The removal of the plague in a manner intensi- fied it. 16-19. The Third Plague: — Lice. 16. Lice] RM 'sandflies,' or 'fleas.' Opinion has been divided both in ancient and modern times as to the nature of these insects. From the fact that they are here said to have at- tacked the beasts as well as man, and to have come out of the dust, it has been in- ferred that they were gnats or mosquitoes. Several kinds of small stinging insects are known to breed in the sand, and these pests are particularly prevalent after the fall of the Nile and the drying up of the pools. On the other hand, RV has good authority for retaining the rendering ' lice ' in the text. Rawlinson says that lice in N. Africa constitute a terrible affliction, and he quotes Sir S. Baker to the effect that ' at certain seasons it is as if the very dust of the land were turned into lice.' It will be observed that the third plague came without warning. 18. The magicians fail to imitate this plague, and acknowledge its supernatural origin. They said, ' This is the finger of God,' or ' of a god.' This does not amount to an acknow- ledgment of Jehovah. They may have been thinking of their own gods. 20-32. The Fourth Plague: — Flies. 21. Swarms of flies] The nature of the pests is not indicated, as the Heb. word means simply ' swarms.' The LXX calls them ' dog-flies ' : cp. Isa 7 1^. A general opinion is that they were beetles, of a peculiarly destruc- tive sort. If this is correct, then the plague was again a severe blow to the religious notions of the Egyptians. The beetle was sacred, and was regarded as the emblem of the Sun-god. ' It was sculptured on monu- ments, painted on tombs, engraved on gems, worn round the neck as an amulet, and hon- oured in ten thousand images ' (Geikie). A colossal figure of a scarabasus beetle is in the British Museum. 22. It is implied here that hitherto the Hebrews had suffered along with 8. 24 EXODUS 9.31. the Egyptians. But now the exemption of the Hebrews from the plagues would show that it was the God of the Hebrews who was working on their behalf, and not one of the gods of the Egyptians as the magicians had suggested (v. 19). 24. Was corrupted] MG- ' was destroyed.' 25. In the land] of Egypt. Pharaoh was unwilling to lose the services of the Hebrews. 26. The abomination of the Eg3^tians] Animal worship was very prevalent in Egypt, certain kinds of animals being regarded as peculiarly sacred and on no account to be slaughtered. For the Israelites to sacrifice cattle, sheep, and goats would be to outrage the religious feelings of the Egyptians, and might lead to war and bloodshed. That Moses had good grounds for his fear on this account cannot be questioned. Diodorus, the historian, tells of a Eoman ambassador who was put to death for accidentally killing a cat. A modern instance of the danger of^ offending religious prejudices may be seen in the Indian Mutiny, which is said to have been occasioned by the serving out of greased cartridges to the Bengal troops. The end of the cartridge was usually bitten off before being inserted in the musket, and of this these men, who were Hindus and forbidden by their religion to eat cow's flesh, had a superstitious abhorrence. 27. See on 31^. 29. Deal deceitfully] see w. 8, 15. CHAPTEE 9 The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Plagues 1-7. The Fifth Plague : — Murrain, i.e. cattle plague. Visitations of cattle plague are not uncommon in Egypt. An outbreak in 1842 carried off 40,000 oxen. The miraculous nature of the plague recorded here consisted in its occurring at a set time (v. 5), and in the exemption of the cattle of the Israelites, and of the cattle that were housed. This plague was, so far, the most destructive in its effects, entailing a much more serious loss of property than the former. 3. Cattle] A general term including the species mentioned in this verse. In the field] Those that were housed escaped, to suffer afterwards from the plague of hail : see vv. 19, 25. The words in v. 6, all the cattle . . died, are to be understood with this limitation. Horses were a comparatively recent importa- tion into Egypt, and chiefly used in military operations. They are frequently mentioned in the OT. in connexion with Egypt : see e.g. Gn47i7 Ex 149 Dtl7i6 note, Isa31i. 8-12. The Sixth Plague : — Boils. This plague affected both man and beast, and, unless we may suppose that the narrative is condensed, was sent without warning. 8. Furnace] i.e. the brick-kiln. The scat- tering of the fine ashes upon the wind was probably intended to be symbolic of the spread of the disease. 9. Boil breaking forth lo'dh blains] An inflamed swelling with pustules. In Dt2827 it is called the 'botch of Egypt.' Certain skin diseases are communi- cated to man from cattle, and the sixth plague may have been connected in some way with the preceding. 11. Could not stand before Moses] i.e. could not withstand Moses. They were attacked themselves, and could neither imitate nor remove the plague. 12. Hardened the heart of Pharaoh] see on 4^1. 13-35. The Seventh Plague : — Hail. 14. All my plagues] Pharaoh must not think that God has exhausted His means. There are others which will prove sufficient for His purpose. 15, 16. Better with RV, ' For now I had put forth my hand, and smitten thee . . and thou hadst been cut off . . but in very deed for this cause have I made thee to stand ' (i.e. have preserved thee alive), ' for to shew thee my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.' God might have delivered His people by summarily destroying Pharaoh and all his subjects, but He has restrained the full extent of His vengeance for His greater glory : cp. Ro922,23 Isa489. 18. Very grievous hail] Hail and thunderstorms are not unknown in Egypt, but are rare and seldom dangerous. Since the foundation thereof] i.e. since it was inhabited : cp. v. 24. 20. Some of the Egyptians, at all events, had been impressed with the previous plagues, and had come to believe the predictions of Moses. 23. Fire ran along upon the ground] RY ' ran down unto the earth.' Hailstorms are frequently accompanied with electrical disturbances. 25. Brake every tree] Broke the bough so that, in the case of fruit trees, there could be no prospect of fruit. 27. I have sinned this time] I acknowledge this time that I have sinned. 28. For it is enough] RV ' for there hath been enough.' 31. Flax] Largely grown for making linen which was worn by the priests, and used, among other purposes, for swathing mummies. The word rendered boiled, i.e. podded, is explained in RM as meaning ' was in bloom.' It means, rather, ' was in bud.' Flax flowers as a rule in Febru- ary, and barley comes into ear about the same time. Wheat is a month later than barley, and spelt (here incorrectly called rie, which is not grown in Egypt) is sown and ripens at the same time as wheat. The condition of the crops indicated here fixes the time of the plague at about the end of January. 56 10. 1 EXODUS 12. 2 CHAPTER 10 The Eighth and Ninth Plagues 1-20. The Eighth Plague : — Locusts. 2. See on 7'*'^. 3. This question shows that Pharaoh was responsible for the harden- ing of his heart : see on 4^1. 4-6. Tra- vellers are unanimous in bearing witness to the teri'ible ravages caused by a visitation of locusts. They fly in dense swarms, sometimes miles in length, so that the air is darkened with them. Wherever they alight they devour every green thing, not sparing the bark of trees. For a description of a locust plague see Joell 1-^ 21-11, where the locusts are com- pared to an army of horsemen. 10. Let the LORD be so with you . . ] This is spoken in scorn, and is equivalent to a refusal to let them go. Evil /« before you] i.e. your in- tentions are evil : cp. PslOl^. II. Ye that are men] Pharaoh means to keep the women and children as a pledge that the others will return : cp. v. 24. 13. An east wind] Lo- custs are known frequently to have come from the East, being bred in Syria and Arabia. In this instance they were removed by a west wind which carried them into the Red Sea (v. 19). 17. This death] A graphic descrip- tion of the desolation caused by the plague. 19. Red Sea] The Gk. name, given perhaps on account of the red coral which lines its floors and sides. The Heb. name is Yam Suph, which means ' Sea of Reeds.' 21-29. The Ninth Plague : — Darkness. 21. This plague, like the third and sixth, was sent without warning. It is not said how the darkness was produced, but in all pro- bability it had a natural basis, like the other plagues. It resembles the darkness caused by the khamsin, a S. or SW. wind, excessively hot and charged with fine dust, which blows about the time of the vernal equinox. The darkness is often local, covering a belt or strip of the country. The unusually dense gloom would excite the superstitious fears of the Egyptians, who worshipped the sun-god Ra. For a vivid description of the terrors of this plague, see book of Wisdom, c. 17. 24. Cp. the former concession of Pharaoh in v. 11. He is now willing to let the people go, but wishes to retain their flocks, in order to ensure their return. 26. We know^ not with what we must serve the Lord] a reason for taking all their flocks with them. The feast was new, and they did not know what they might require. 29. The present interview does not terminate with these words, but is continued in the next c. Moses leaves the presence of Pharaoh at c. 11^. The first three vv. of c. 11 may be re- garded as a parenthesis. 57 CHAPTER 11 The Tenth Plague threatened 2. Borrow] RV 'ask' : see on 3 22. 4. Moses is here speaking to Pharaoh. This V. is the continuation of 1 0 29. About mid- night] The particular night is not specified, though it is implied that it is the night follow- ing the day on which this interview takes place. On the other hand, 123> 6 prescribes a four days' preparation for the Passover. But see on 121. 5. Firstborn] The Heb. word means the firstborn male. The death of the firstborn may be regarded as a punishment for the slaughter of the Hebrew children (see 1 1^, 22) and the oppression of Israel, the ' firstborn of Jehovah ' (see on 4 22, 23)_ Behind the mill] What is meant is the hand-mill, which consisted of two circular stones about 18 in. in diameter lying one above the other. The upper stone is turned round a pivot, which rises from the centre of the lower, by means of a handle fixed near its circumference. The grain is poured into a funnel-shaped hole in the upper stone sur- rounding the central pivot, and the meal escapes between the two stones at the cir- cumference. The mill rests on the ground, and the maid-servant sits ' behind the mill.' Sometimes two servants turned the stone, in which case they sat facing each other, each grasping the handle : cp. Mt24'ti. Grinding was considered menial work, fit only for women and slaves : cp. Jgl62i Isa47i>2 LamS^^. 7. Move (lit. ' whet ') his tongue] a pro- verbial expression : cp. Josh 10 21. 9, 10. These vv. sum up the purpose and effect of the preceding series of nine plagues. CHAPTER 12 The Institution of the Passover. The Tenth Plague, and the Departure OP Israel 1. In the land of Egypt] These words sug- gest that what follows was written independ- ently of the foregoing narrative, and an ex- amination of this c. shows that it contains two separate accounts of the institution of the Passover, one extending from vv. 1-20, the other from vv. 21-28. The latter is the proper continuation of c. 11. 2. The beginning of months] The exodus is regarded as an ' epoch-making ' event (cp. Jgl930 IK6I), and to mark its importance the month in which it occurs is to be reckoned the first month of the ecclesiastical year. This is the month Abib (see 13-* 23is 34 is Dtl6i), i.e. the month of ripening ears, and corresponds to the end of March and the beginning of April. After the exile it was called by the Babylonian name of Nisan : see e.g. Neh2i 12. 3 EXODUS 12. 14 EsthS'^. The sacred feasts were computed uncleanness : see iCorS^ and on v. 14. The from this date : see Lv 234,5,15,24. xhe civil year began in autumn with the first day of the seventh month after Abib, called by the Babylonians Tishri and in OT. Ethanim : see 1K82. With this change of reckoning may be compared the reckoning of the Christian Year, which begins with Advent, and of the Christian Week, which begins with the Lord's Day. 3. Unto all the congregation] by means of their representatives : see on 3 1*^. A lamb] The word may also mean a kid, but practically a lamb was always chosen : cp. v. 5. 4. Too little] According to Josephus the lower limit was fixed at ten persons. He also says that in his time (between the death of Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem) 260,000 lambs were sacrificed at the Passover and partaken of by 2,700,000 people. 5. In accordance with the principle that whatever is offered to God must be the best of its kind, the law of sacrifice required that the sacrificial animal should be a male (the superior sex) and without blemish : see intro. to L V 2 1 and on L V 2 2 17-25. go Christ ' offered Himself without spot to Grod ' (Heb 9 ^*) as a ' lamb without blemish and without spot ' (1 Pet 1 19). 6. Keep it up until the fourteenth day] This is to ensure that no blemish shall pass un- detected. In the evening] lit. ' between the evenings,' i.e. probably between sunset and darkness. Darkness was supposed to begin when three stars became visible. Josephus says that the time of sacrifice was from three to five in the afternoon. Observe that the Passover lamb was sacrificed and the blood sprinkled on the doorposts by each head of a household, there being at this time no taber- nacle nor order of sacrificing priests. In later times the lamb was killed in the temple court by the head of the household and the blood poured out at the altar, after which the lamb was carried home to be eaten: cp. Lvl73-6 Dtl65-7. 7. Upper door post] EV ' lintel.' The shedding of the blood signified the offer- ing of the life to Grod. The sprinkling of the lintel was not only a sign to the destroying angel, but an indication that atonement had been made on behalf of the inmates of the house. 8. Roast with fire] The flesh of sacrificial animals which were eaten by the offerers was usually boiled : cp. 1 S 2 13, 14. In the present case the roasting was probably to ensure haste (v. 39) and to prevent the dismemberment of the animal : see vv. 9, 46. And unleavened bread ; ami with bitter herbfi] Leaven, as causing fermentation and corruption, is regarded as unclean, and its use in sacrificial meals is accordingly forbidden. In NT. it is used as a symbol of sin and moral bitter herbs, probably some kind of wild let- tuce or endive, were meant to symbolise the bitter bondage which the Israelites had endured in Egypt : see 1 1*. 9. His head with his legs, and with the purtenance (RV ' inwards ') thereof] The entrails were taken out, cleansed, and replaced, and the lamb was then roasted whole: cp. v. 46, 'neither shall ye break a bone thereof.' The unmutilated lamb s3Tn- bolises the unity of Israel. St. John sees in it also an emblem of the unbroken bones of Christ: see Jnl9^^. 10. This prohibition is meant to prevent what remains of the sacri- fice from being profaned. Burning was the regvilar mode of disposing of the remains of every sacrificial animal : see 29 ^^ Lv 4 12 7 1'''. II. The passover is to be eaten with every indication of haste. With your loins gird- ed] To gird up the loins is to gather up the long flowing skirt of the outer robe under the girdle, so as to leave the limbs free in working or running : see 1 K 1 8 46 Lk 1 2 3T 1 7 «. At the present day (as in the time of Christ) the Jews eat the Passover in a recumbent posture to signify that there is no longer need of trepidation, God having given His people rest and security. It is the LORD'S passover] Heb. 2)esaGh.i Gk. form ^m.sc7ia. The English rendering ' passover ' represents not amiss both the sound and the sense of the Hebrew name. The rite commemorated the ' passing over ' of Jehovah, i.e. His sparing of His faithful people. The word is used in this sense in Isa315. 12. Against all the gods of Egypt] The gods of Egypt would be power- less to avert the judgment of Jehovah. As in Egypt many deities were worshipped in the form of animals, the destruction of the firstborn of beasts would be felt as the exe- cution of a judgment upon these gods. 14. For ever] The Jews still keep the feasts of the Passover and Unleavened Bread. They now offer no sacrifice, seeing that Jeru- salem has passed from their possession, but they look forward to the time when they will return to Jerusalem and the sacrifice be resumed. Each celebration is closed with the pathetic words, expressive of un- dying faith and hope, ' Next year in Jeru- salem!' To Christians the death of Christ gathers up and fulfils all that was signified by the Jewish Passover, and therefore super- sedes it. ' Christ our passover hath been (RV) sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast ' (RM ' keep festival,' i.e. the festival of unleavened bread which followed the passover) '. . with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth ' : 1 Cor 6 ", ^. Here Christ is regarded as typified in the paschal lamb, as He is also in the Fourth Gospel (19^6), which places the Crucifixion at the time of the 58 12. 15 EXODUS 12. 43 Passover, and regards the fact as significant; His death redeems His people from their spiritual bondage- His blood, sprinkled on their hearts, delivers them from the guilt and consequences of sin. The old Passover sacri- fice is fulfilled, once for all, in His sacrifice of Himself, which is commemorated, not repeated, in the sacrament of Holy Communion. That sacrament, accordingly, takes the place of the Passover. It differs from it in so far that it is not a recurring sacrifice, but the continual remembrance of the one great sacrifice offered by Christ, the true Passover lamb. The sacri- fice is past, and Christians now live in the time of unleavened bread, and must therefore put away from them the ' leaven of malice and wickedness.' 15. The seven days beginning with the Passover are to be kept as a feast of un- leavened bread. The Passover (jjesach) and feast of Unleavened Bread {mazzoth) are really distinct, but as they were always celebrated in succession the name Passover is sometimes used to cover both: cp. Lk22i. Shall be cut off] This does not necessarily mean put to death, but excommunicated and cast out of the congregation of Israel. A person so cut off becomes like one of a heathen nation. He is reduced to the level of an uncircum- cised person, being outside the covenant and having no more part in the privileges of the chosen people : see on Gn 17 1-*' and cp. Mt 18 ^^ Eph2i2. 16. An holy convocation] The word denotes a gathering of the people for a religious purpose: see Nu 10 2-10. The ab- stention from work enjoined here is not so strict as on the sabbath and the Day of Atonement: cp. Lv238 with vv. 3, 28, and with Ex 35^. 19. A stranger] a foreigner who had entered the congregation by circum- cision, a proselyte, in contradistinction to ' one born in the land,' i.e. the land of Canaan (another indication of later date), a native Israelite. 22. Hyssop] supposed to be wild marjoram, which grows in Egj'pt and Sinai and Palestine. Its powder, which has a pun- gent aromatic flavour like that of mint, is used as a condiment. It was supposed to have cleansing properties, and a bunch of hyssop was frequently used in ceremonial sprinkling, for which it was naturally suitable, several stalks growing from one root: cp. Lvl44 Ps5l7 Nul9'5. 26. What mean ye by this service?] To this day, at the Jewish celebration of the Passover, the youngest child present who is able to do so is made to ask this question, which is an- swered by a recitation of the circumstances attending the original institution of the feast. An interesting description of a modern Pass- over will be found in Zangwill's ' Children of the Ghetto,' c. 25. 59 The Tenth Plague: — Death of the First- born. 29. At midnight] the Passover night, follow- ing the 14th day of Abib., The Jewish day is reckoned from sunset to sunset: see on ll*. 31-42. The Departure from Egypt. 32. Bless me also] intercede for me, that no further plague come upon me for your sakes. 34. Before it was leavened] This shows the haste with which they departed: see V. 39. On the kneading-troughs see on 83. 35. Borrowed] RV ' asked,' as in 322 112. 26. Lent unto them . . required] RV ' let them have what they asked.' 37. Ra- meses] see on 1 n. Succoth has been iden- tified with the Egyptian Thuku, the region whose capital was Pithom: see on 1^. Six hundred thousand on foot that ivere men] i.e. of twenty years old and upwards, fit for war. This implies a total of perhaps three millions. On the number see intro. to Nu 1, and on 1421. 38. A mixed multitude] of foreigners and Egyptians who were associated with the Israelites through marriage and as slaves. We read of these again in Lv 24 10 Nu 1 1 *. Very much cattle] On the resources of the wilderness and its ability to support a mul- titude of people with flocks and herds, see intro. to Nul. 40. Four hundred and thirty years] This agrees with the prophetical statement in Gn 1513. But the Samaritan text of the OT. and LXX after the words ' in Egypt ' here add ' and in Canaan,' thus making the 430 years run from the immigration of Abraham into Canaan, and reducing the stay in Egypt after the immigration of Jacob to 215 years. St. Paul accepts the LXX chronology (see Gal 317), and it is supported by the genealogy in Ex 6 1*-20, which allows only four generations between Jacob and the father of Moses. But it is difficult to believe that the descendants of Jacob could have increased so much in 215 years, and there is reason to think that the genealogical table in c. 6 has been abridged : see on 620. On the whole, it seems more reasonable to accept the reading of the Heb. text represented by the English version, and understand the 430 years as running from the descent of Jacob into Egypt. 41. The self- same day] on the 15th day of Abib : see v. 29. 42. A night to be much observed] This rendering rests on the injunction in v. 14. The Heb. is literally ' a night of watching unto the Lord,' i.e. a night of vigil or watch- festival. 43-49- These directions regarding the lawful participants in the Passover seem to be introduced here in consequence of what is said about the ' mixed multitude ' in v. 38. The Passover is only for those who through circumcision have entered into the covenant with Jehovah. Similarly, in the Christian 12. 46 EXODUS 14.2 church baptism, which corresponds to circum- cision as an initiatory rite, is necessary to par- taking of the Lord's Supper. 46. See on vv. 9, 10. 49. One laAv] i.e. of the necessity of circumcision to participation in the Passover. • CHAPTER 13 The Consecration of the Firstborn. The March to Etham I-16. The Consecration of the Firstborn. All Israel was holy unto the Lord : see on 19 5'^. But the firstborn of man and beast were specially consecrated to Him, as the part representing the whole. There was a special fitness in the consecration of the firstborn, see- ing they had been spared in the destruction which overtook the Egyptians. The firstborn of mankind were to be consecrated to the service of Jehovah as priests ; the firstborn of animals were to be offered in sacrifice, if clean animals ; if not, they were to be redeemed at a price. Afterwards the whole tribe of Levi was consecrated to the priestly service in lieu of the firstborn : see NuS-*^"^!. The firstfruits of the field were also claimed by Jehovah : see e.g. 2229. 2. Openeth the womb] "What is claimed is the firstborn male. 8. See on 1226. 9. A sign . . upon thine hand] a figurative expression meaning that they were never to lose sight of this duty. In later times the Jews understood this injunction literally, and to this day at times of prayer they attach to their left arm and forehead small cases con- taining pieces of parchment inscribed with cer- tain passages of the Law. These cases are called in NT. ' phylacteries ' : see further on Dt68. 12. Matrix] the womb. 13. The ass is here mentioned as a representative of ' unclean ' domestic animals (see Lv 112*-) which could not be offered in sacrifice. For such, a lamb was to be substituted ; if not, its neck must be broken. This would ensure its redemption, as every one would prefer parting with a lamb to losing an ass. Human sacrifices are strictly forbidden, hence firstborn males must be re- deemed. The tribe of Levi was substituted for them, and in addition the sum of five shekels was paid as the redemption price of each firstborn male : see NuS^^ IS^^-i^. To this day the Jews solemnise the ' redemption of the firstborn ' on the thirtieth day after birth. This was the rite performed by Joseph and Mary on behalf of the child Jesus as recorded in Lk 222,23. 17-22. The March to Etham. 17. The most direct route to Canaan from Raamses in the Eastern Delta where the host had mustered, would have been northeastwards along the Mediterranean coast. This would have implied a journey of not more than 150 or 200 miles. But it would immediately have brought them into collision with the Philistines, a very warlike tribe inhabiting the south- western part of Canaan, and would have been too great an obstacle for the people's strength and faith. Accordingly the route of march was deflected southeastward into the penin- sula of Sinai. The further object of leading the people to Mt. Sinai to be instructed in the Law is not expressly stated here, but neither is it excluded. 18. Harnessed] E.V ' armed ' in organised array : see on 6 26. 19. See Gn 5025 Josh 24 32. 20. Succoth] see on 1237. Etham] not identified. It was probably one of the frontier fortifications. The wilderness is probably that of Shur (cp. 1522, and see on Gnl(3''). In NuSSS it is called the 'wilderness of Etham.' 21. There was only one pillar, which in daylight had the appearance of smoke and by night glowed with fire : see 1420,24. j^ -was the symbol of the divine presence with the host (see on 32), and was their signal and guide on the march : see 4034-38^ and cp. Nu 9 1°-23. It is clearly understood here to be miraculous. It was usual to carry fire signals at the head of an army on the march in early times. Go by day and by (RV) night] It is suggested that the Israelites marched during part of the night as well as by day : cp. Nu 9 21. CHAPTER 14 Crossing the Red Sea 2. At Etham the Israelites reached the Egyptian frontier, travelling in a north- easterly direction. Instead of crossing the frontier to the E. side of the Bitter Lakes they are commanded to turn southwards, keeping the Red Sea on their left. The reason for this change of route may have been a repulse by the garrison of one of the line of fortresses on the E. border of Egypt. None of the places mentioned here has been identi- fied with certainty. There is even a doubt as to what is meant by the sea. Some have understood it to be the Mediterranean, in which case the host must have turned north- wards, and the supposed Red Sea (Heb. ' sea of reeds' ; see on 10 1^) would be the Ser- bonian Lake, a large bog lying on the shore of the Mediterranean between Egj'pt and the SW. extremity of Canaan. It is usual, how- ever, to understand by the ' sea of reeds ' what is now called the Gulf of Suez. There is little doubt that at the time of the exodus the Gulf of Suez extended much further north than it does now, and that the modern Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes were connected with each other and the Gulf of Suez by necks of shallow water which in certain conditions 60 14. 3 EXODUS 15. 12 might be swept almost dry. It is pretty certain that the Israelites crossed at some point north of the m.odern Suez. 3. The wilderness is the Egyptian wilder- ness, a tract of desert land lying between the Nile and the Red Sea. To the south, in front of the advancing host, rose an impassable mountain chain, so that they found themselves entangled in the land. 7. The Egjptian chariots were low two-wheeled cars open behind and drawn by two horses abreast. Each chariot contained a di'iver and a warrior, sometimes two. The chosen chariots were probably those of the king's bodyguard. The Hittites are known to have brought 2,500 chariots into the field against Rameses II. 8. With an hig'h hand] Confidently, boldly. 9. Horsemen] It is doubtful whether the Egyptians at this time used cavalry. The horsemen may be the charioteers. II. No graves in Egypt] cp. Nu 141-3. 14. Hold your peace] The victory will be entirely the work of Jehovah. It is the part of His people to trust in Him and cease from murmuring : cp. IsaSO^^ 2 Ch 2015-17. 19. Angel of God] see on 3-, and cp. 13 21. 21. In delivering His people, as in bringing the plagues on the Egyptians, God may have made use of natural means. A strong east wind blowing all night, and acting with the ebbing tide, may have laid bare the shallow neck of water joining the Bitter Lakes to the Red Sea, allowing the Israelites to cross in safety : see on v. 2. Indeed, an Egyptian tradition says that Moses waited for the ebb tide in order to lead the Israelites across. The real difficulty in connexion with the pas- sage of the Red Sea lies not in the baring of the sea bottom, but in the fact that the Israel- itish host must have numbered about three millions : see on 123". This enormous multi- tude, encumbered as it was with young and old herds of cattle, must have taken a long time to cross the soft floor of the estuary. It is not impossible, however, that the number stated was the total of those who escaped from Egypt, but that they left in several companies, that led by Moses being the main detachment : see on Nul. 22. A wall unto them] This need not mean that they stood up like a wall, but that the water on each side was a defence, preventing a flank attack by the enemy : cp. for this use of the term 'wall' IS 2516. 24. In the morning watch] between 2 a.m. and G a.m., the last of the three watches into which the Hebrews divided the night, in earlier times : cp. Lam 2 19 Jg 7 1" 1 S 11 n. The Roman di- vision was into four watches: see MklS^s Mtl425. It is here implied that the previous part of the night sufficed for the passage of the Israelitish host : see on v. 21. 61 25. Took off] RM 'bound' : made them stick fast. They became clogged with the soft ooze in the sea bed. 27. The sea returned] In 1510 this seems to have been effected by a change of wind. 28. .IwZ all the host] RV ' even all the host.' It is not said that Pharaoh himself perished. The supposed discovery in modern times of the mummy of Merenptah is no argument against his being the Pharaoh of the exodus or against the truth of this narrative. Even though he did lead his host in person into the middle of the sea and perished with the others his body might after- wards have been recovered and preserved : see on 18. 31. This notable deliverance naturally made a deep impression upon the Israelites. It justified their faith in Jehovah and it also confirmed the right of Moses to be regarded as their leader. And beUeved the LORD, and his servant Moses] But when they turned away from the scene of their deliver- ance and faced the stern realities of the desert march, they were only too ready to give way to mistrust and murmuring : cp 1 5^4 162.3 etc. CHAPTER 15 The Song of Moses On the further shore of the Red Sea the Israelites celebrate their deliverance in a magnificent hymn of praise. It consists of three strophes or stanzas of increasing length, viz. vv. 2-5, 6-10, 11-18. The first v. is introductory and may have been repeated as a chorus after each stanza : see on v. 21. On the structure of Hebrew poetry see Introduc- tion to the Psalms. In language and style the song bears many marks of high antiquity. There can be little objection to attributing the first two stanzas at least to Moses. The third presupposes the conquest and settlement in Canaan : see on vv. 13-19. The original song may have been modified and expanded at a later date, with a view to being used as a festal song at the Passover when the deliverance from Egypt was celebrated. 1. The LORD] Jehovah — so throughout the song, in which the might of Israel's Ood is contrasted with the powerlessness of the Egyptian idols: see e.g. vv. 3, 6, 7, 11. 2. I will prepare him an habitation] RV ' praise him.' 8. Blast of thy nostrils] re- ferring to the east wind (142i). The whole V. is figurative and highly poetical. 10. See on 1427. n. The gods] see on v. 1, and on 7't.5. At this period the gods of other nations might be conceived as real beings, though infinitely inferior to Jehovah. Gradually, however, the Hebrews rose to the truth of one God, the so-called gods of the nations being nonentities : see on 203 391, and Ps9G5 1154f- Isa 4129. 12. The earth] a 15. 13 EXODUS 15. 27 general term including the sea. 13. Thy holy habitation] The land of Canaan is meant, or perhaps more particularly Mt. Moriah, where the Temple was erected. This is an indication that the Song assumed its present form after the occupation of Canaan. 14. The people] heathen nations dwelling in the wilderness and in Canaan. Palestina] properly the land of the Philistines. The name was afterwards extended to the whole land of Canaan. 15. Dukes] leaders, princes, rulers. 16. Purchased] Jehovah's proprie- torship in them was secured by redemption. Hence His claim upon their gratitude and obedience : cp. e.g. Dt 4 34-10 and the ground on which the Ten Commandments are based, Ex 202, where see note : cp. also 2 Cor 5^4, 15 1 Pet 1 18. 19. 17. Mountain of thine inheritance] The highlands of Canaan : cp. Jer 2 7. In the place . . in the Sanctuary] The fixed abode of the ark is meant here, perhaps Shiloh its first rest- ing-place: see Josh 181. 19. This v. is a later addition indicating the occasion on which the Song was composed. Its insertion here suggests that the Song had a separate exist- ence prior to its incorporation in the book of Exodus. It is unnecessary where it now stands. 20. Miriam the prophetess] the sister of Moses : see on 2i. As Aaron was the elder of the two brothers, she is here described as his sister. On the meaning of the term ' prophet ' see on 7 1 Nu 1 1 25. Timbrel] i.e. tambourine, still used by Eastern women to accompany their singing and dancing. 21. Answered them] The pronoun is masculine. Miriam and the women sang the refrain to the stanzas sung by the men. With these triumphal strains the first part of the book of Exodus closes. PAET 2 (Chs. 15 22-18) March from the Eed Sea to Mount Sinai CHAPTER 15 (continued) Leaving the shore of the Red Sea, the Israelites enter the peninsula of Sinai, the triangular area lying between the two northern arms of the Red Sea. The centre of the peninsula is a vast limestone plateau of an average elevation of 2,000 ft. above the sea level. It is almost waterless, and bare of vegetation save in the ' wadies,' or watercourses, at certain seasons. To the south the point of the peninsula is occupied by the exceedingly rugged mountain district of Sinai. To the north stretches the wilderness of Paran, lying between the peninsula and the southern part of Canaan, and having on its western side the wilderness of Shur. and on its eastern the wilderness of Sin. The peninsula of Sinai was inhabited from very early times by various wandering tribes. During their sojourn there, the Israelites fell in with the Amalekites and the Kenites. The Egyptians are known to have worked copper mines in certain districts, and to have maintained fortresses for the pro- tection of the miners. Recent travellers assert that the present barrenness of the peninsula is due largely to neglect, and that there are evi- dences of its having at one time supported a considerable population. This fact has an important bearing on the credibility of the Scripture narrative, according to which the Israelites spent some forty years in the penin- sula. See intro. to Nul. 22. Wilderness of Shur] Between the coast of the Gulf of Suez and the high central table- land is a strip of level country. The northern half is part of the wilderness of Shur. The southern part is called the wilderness of Sin in 1 6 1. The Israelites march southwards along this narrow maritime plain. 23. Marah] lit. ' bitterness ' : cp. Ruth 1 20. This station is by some identified with Ain Suweirah, 30 m. S. of the present head of the Gulf of Suez. The bitterness of the springs in this district is attested by all travel- lers. It is caused bj' the abundance of natron in the soil. 25. The LORD shewed him a tree] There are certain plants whose bark and leaves are employed to sweeten bitter water. Lesseps mentions a kind of thorn found in the desert possessing anti-saline properties. Here, as in the case of the Plagues in Egypt, the miracle was effected by means of a natural agent. The miracle consisted in God's direct- ing Moses at this particular juncture to the use of the right means. The tree would not have been employed had it not possessed the property required. He made for them a statute] The subject is most probably God, not Moses. God used this occasion to teach the people that such troubles as the present were intended to ' prove ' them, i.e. to test their loyalty to Him, and that if they stood the test He would protect and provide for them. 26. That healeth thee] lit. ' thy physician.' The term is em- ployed with reference to the ' healing ' of the noxious waters : cp. PslOS^ 107i^>20. 27. Elim] The word means ' trees.' Elim is probably the modern Wady Ghurundel, ' where there is a good deal of vegetation, especially stunted palms, acacias, and tamarisks, and a number of water-holes in the sand.' The minuteness of the description in this v. sug- gests the testimony of an eye-witness. There would be no occasion for it in a fictitious narrative. 62 16. 1 EXODUS 16.29 CHAPTER 16 Third Murmuring. Sending of the Manna 1. Pursuing their march southward, the Israelites come at the end of the first month after their departure from Egypt to the wilderness of Sin, forming the SW. border of the peninsula: see on 15 2^. All the stations in the march are not mentioned. In NuSS^o allusion is made to an ' encampment by the Red Sea ' between Elim and the wilderness of Sin. It must be remembered also that, owing to the vast extent of the host, there must have been a simultaneous encampment at different places. From Elim, the Israelites might have gone by a more direct route to Sinai, but this would have led them past the copper mines among the mountains, where there was an Egyptian garrison. 2. This was the third murmuring. The first was at Pi-hahiroth (14io-i2)^ the second at Marah (15'^'*). The supplies which the Israel- ites had brought with them out of Egypt being now exhausted, they expect to perish with hunger, and begin to regret having left Egypt, where, with all their hard bondage, they had been well fed : see on Nu 11 *' 5_ 4. A certain rate every day] RV ' a day's portion every day' : see vv. 16-21. That I may prove them] The miracle had a moral purpose. It was intended not merely to satisfy their hunger, but to teach them de- pendence upon Grod and obedience to Him. The goodness of God should lead to repent- ance (Ro2'i). 5. The sixth day] the day before the sabbath, an indication that the sabbath was known previous to the giving of the law at Sinai : see on Ex20S. On the method of preparing the manna, see Nu 1 1 s. 6. Ye shall know] by the quails. 9. Before the LORD] This common phrase denotes the place where Grod specially mani- fests Himself : see vv. 33, 34. Here it seems to mean at the pillar of fire in front of the host. 10. Toward the wilderness] As they are at present in the wilderness, this must mean ' towards the interior of the wilderness,' in the direction of the march and the guiding pillar. The glory of the LORD] Here a special radiance is meant. God's self-mani- festation is frequently accompanied with an appearance of fire : see on 3-, and cp. 19^^ 2417 2943 4034. 13. Quails] The quail is a bird belonging to the partridge family, about 7 in. long, and of a buff colour. Its flesh is considered a great delicacy. Quails are migratory. In spring vast flocks pass north- wards from the interior of Africa to Syria, crossing the peninsula of Sinai in their flight. They also cross the Mediterranean in great numbers. In a single season, 160,000 have 63 been netted on the small island of Capri. Quails always fly with the wind. After a sea flight they are easily captured, as they fly low, their bodies being heavy g,nd their wings wet : see on NuU^-si. Here, again, God employed a natural means in providing deliverance for His people. The miracle did not consist in a new creation, but in the timely arrival and vast quantity of the quails. 15. It is manna] Heb. 'what is it?' so rightly in RV. What is now known as manna is a sweet gum which exudes from various shrubs and from the tamarisk tree, and is used medicinally. None of its varieties corresponds to the description given here. These are found only in small quantities, in special localities and at certain seasons, from about May to August ; they are not suitable for food, and cannot be cooked as manna was (see V. 23 Nu 1 1 8). Moreover, the manna of commerce can be kept for an indefinite time (cp. V. 20). What is meant here is clearly a miraculous substance. Whether, again, the miracle took place on the basis of a natural product cannot with certainty be made out. This is not improbable in the light of the previous wonders. Our Lord employs the manna as a type of Himself, as giving eternal life to those who believe in Him : see Jn 6 31-58 St. Paul calls it ' spiritual meat,' and regards it as a type of the Lord's Supper wherein the faithful are made partakers of the life that is in Christ: see ICorlQSf. 16. An omer is a little more than seven pints. Ten omers make an ephah, which is. roughly, equal to a bushel : see v. 36. The pint measure is called a ' log ' : see e.g. Lv 14 10. 18. Mete] i.e. measure: cp. Mt?^. The total quantity of manna amounted exactly to an omer per head. This is evidently regarded here as miraculous, and designed to check want of trust and greed on the one hand and over anxiety on the other. Those who gathered too much wasted their labour, and those who gathered too little were at no disadvantage. St. Paul cites this fact as an incentive to brotherly charity ; the rich ought to make up the deficiency of the poor : see 2 Cor 8 !■*, is, 20. God's gift is spoiled by selfish and miserly hoarding. 21. Every morning] cp. the petition ' Give us this day our daily bread.' 22. See on v. 5. The divine sanction of the sabbath is shown by the cessation of the manna on that day as well as by the double quantity sent on the previous day. The people are to observe the sabbath by resting from the labour of gathering manna : see v. 30. Those who faithlessly and disobediently persist in looking for manna find none. 29. Let no man go out of his place] Jewish legalists in- terpreted this commandment to mean strictly that throughout the sabbath day a man must 16.31 EXODUS 17.11 maintain the same posture in which he was found at its commencement. As this was practically impossible it was held to be allow- able to walk on the sabbath day a distance not exceeding 2,000 ells, which was supposed to be the distance from the centre of the camp to its circumference. 31. Coriander] an annual plant much cultivated in the East. The seeds have an aromatic flavour, and are used as a seasoning in cookery and also medi- cinally. Wafers] thin cakes. 32-34. These vv. seem to be a later inser- tion, as they presuppose the erection of the tabernacle (vv. 33, 34). There would be no need to gather a pot of manna for preserva- tion till the end of the wanderings and the cessation of- the manna. 34. The Testimony] the Law which ' testi- fies ' to God's will, inscribed on the two tables of stone and deposited in the ark (Ex25i<5), which is accordingly called the ' ark of the testimony' (Ex 25 22 Nu45) and sometimes simply ' the testimony ' ; see Nu 17*. The tent containing the ark is called the ' tent or tabernacle of the testimony ' : see Nu 9 1^. The pot of manna is here said to have been deposited before the testimony ; but according to Heb9'* it was in the ark. The pot of manna was a favourite symbol among the Jews. From the remains of the synagogue at Capernaum it seems that a pot of manna was carved on the lintel of the door of that synagogue. This must have given point to our Lord's discourse on the ' bread of life ' there: see Jn62'i^ 35. See Josh5io-i2. CHAPTER 17 Rephidim. Mttemuring for Water. Opposition of Amalek Leaving the maritime plain the Israelites now strike inland, and after halting at Doph- kah and Alush (see Nu33i2,i3) they come to Rephidim. This is usually identified with the modern Wady Feiran, lying about 20 m. N. of Sinai. It is one of the oases of the peninsula, very fertile and usually well watered. On this occasion the brook was dry. I. After their journeys] RV 'by their jour- neys ' (RM ' stages '). 2. Tempt the LORD] challenge His power and willingness to pro- vide for them, put Him to the proof by their unbelief: cp. v. 7; see also Nul422 20 1^ Dt6i6 Mt47. Their unbelief was the less warranted as they had lately experienced God's providence in supplying their wants. This is the fourth murmuring : see on 162. 5, 6. The elders] as representing the people (see on 3^^), are to be the witnesses of the miracle. The people, perhaps on account of their sin, are to stand at a distance : cp. IB^^. Thy rod] see on 42,20. The river is the Nile: see 7 20. 6. Horeb] see on 31. Tra- dition identifies the rock with a great detached fragment under the ridge of Ras es-Sufsafeh. This, however, is a long way from the supposed site of Rephidim. At the same time Moses and the elders are represented as going on before the people, so that the people obtained the water not at the rock, but some distance down the stream that flowed from it. If the stream continued to flow for some time, as seems natural to suppose, perhaps dm-ing the eleven nionths of the sojourn in that neigh- bourhood, the people would drink it at various points. This is probably the origin of the rabbinical legend, alluded to by St. Paul (1 Cor lO'*), that the rock followed the Israelites on their march. The apostle spmtualises the rock, making it a type of Christ, from whom flows a perennial stream of grace to Hi^ people. 7. Massah] ' trial ' or ' proving.' Meribah] ' chiding.' The names are formed from the words used in v. 2. Meribah is the name given to the place where water was again provided (see Nu20i3)^ but to distinguish it from the present Meribah it is called Meribah- Kadesh in Dt325i. Some commentators hold that the account given here and that in Nu20 refer to the same occurrence. The resem- blances are striking, but there are also manifest points of difference. 8. Amalek] The Amalekites, here described collectively in the singular number, were a nomadic tribe, very fierce and warlike, roaming over the desert country S. of Canaan, in- cluding the Sinaitic peninsula where the Israelites first encountered them. They pro- bably regarded the Israelites as their rivals for supremacy. They gave them much trouble, not only at various times during the desert wanderings (see e.g. Nul329 1425,43-45)^ but down to a late period of their history : see Jg63 IS 151-8 30 lCh443. 9. The first mention of Joshua. He was an Ephraimite, the son of Nun. He appears here as- captain of the host, and later as the personal attendant of Moses (2413 3217 33 n). He was one of the spies sent to view the land of Canaan (Nul38 146), and was afterwards chosen as the successor of Moses : see Nu 27 18-23 and on v. 18. His name was originally Oshea, ' help ' or ' salvation.' Moses afterwards changed his name to Joshua, ' Jehovah is my salvation.' The Gk. form of Joshua is Jesus : see Mtli2. In Ac 7 45 Heb48 Joshua the son of Nun is meant : see Intro, to Joshua. ID. According to Jewish tradition, Hur was the husband of Miriam : see on 312. II. The holding up of Moses' hands signi- fied an appeal to God in intercession. His holding up the ' rod of God ' in his hand was, at the same time, an appeal to his fighting men to remember what God had already done for 64 17. 14 EXODUS 19.4 them. The rod was associated with many wonderful deliverances, notably that at the Red Sea, so that the sight of it would inspire the warriors with courage and hope. On both grounds one can understand how it was that the fortune of the battle corresponded to the steadfastness with which Moses held up his hands. The story illustrates the value of prayer, in particular of intercessory prayer, and, at the same time, the necessity of prayer being accompanied with believing effort. Moses praying on the hill while the people are fighting in the valley is also an emblem of Christ interceding in the heavenly places for His people struggling upon earth : see Heb4i4-i6, 14. Write this .. in a book] Written records, contemporary with the even4,s described in them, were no doubt preserved for many generations, and would afford material for future historians. One of these early records was called the ' Book of the Wars of Jehovah' : see on Nu21i4. 15. Built an altar] for the double purpose of offering sacrifices of thanksgiving, and of commemorating the victory by means of a monument: cp. GnSS^o 357 Josh 22 26, 27. Jehovah-nissi] ' Jehovah is my banner,' meaning, ' under His banner, in His name and strength, I fight and conquer' : cp. Ps205-7. 16. For he said] RV ' and he said.' The words following are literally, ' because a hand upon the throne (of) Jah,' which may be rendered, ' because his (i.e. Amalek's) hand is against the throne of Jehovah, (therefore) will the Lord,' etc. CHAPTER 18 The Visit of Jethro I. On the name Jethro, see 2'^^, and on Midian, 2 1^. 2. Sent her back] see on 4 26. 3, 4. See on 2^2. 5. The mount of God] Horeb or Sinai : see on 3^. II. See on 15 ^i. The second half of the V. is obscure. RV reads, ' yea, in the thing wherein they (the Egyptians) dealt proudly against them (the Israelites).' 12. The burnt offering was wholly consumed upon the altar, and signified the complete devotion of the offerer to God : see Lv 1 . The sacrifices were peace offerings, and were consumed by the offerers in token of fellowship with God and each other : see Lv3 and on Nu22'io. Before God] at the place consecrated by the offering of the sacrifices : see on 1 6 ^ and 1 9 22. 15. To enquire of God] This phrase is explained by the words that follow at the end of the next v., I do make them kno-w the statutes of God, and his laws: cp. 189^. Already we see that the decisions given by Moses are regarded by the people as possess- ing divine sanction. 19. And God shall be with thee] RV ' and God be with thee,' i.e. may God grant thee the needed wisdom. 21. Hating covetousness] A judge must be above bribery. Bribery was, and still is, a common Oriental vice, and is frequently referred to in Scripture: cp. 23 § ISS^ 12 3 Psl55 Isal23 Am5i2 Mic39-ii. 23. If.. God command thee .so] Jethro does not pre- sume to dictate to Moses. The matter must be referred to God for sanction : cp. Dt 1 ^-i^. To their place] Each one to his tent, satis- fied with the expeditious settlement of his case, instead of waiting all day, as hitherto : see V. 13. 25. According to Dtl^s it appears that Moses left the selection of the ' able men ' to the people. Cp. Ac 6 3. PART 3 (Chs. 19-40) Arrival at Sinai and Sojourn there mountain ranges of black and yellow granite, and having at its end the prodigious mountain block of Ras es-Sufsafeh,' which Dean Stanley and others take to be the mount on which the Law was given. Ras es-Sufsafeh is some 7,000 ft. in height, and rises sheer from the plain ' like a huge altar.' Some, however, believe that the actual mount of the Law was another peak of the same mountain mass S. of Sufsafeh, called Jebel Musa, the traditional site. The whole district has been described as one of the most awe-inspiring regions on the face of the earth, and as such it accorded well with the dread revelation of the divine majesty here given to Israel. 4. I bare you on eagles' wings] God's grace and care were the source of Israel's duty of obedience and loyalty: see on 15 1'^. The image here employed to illustrate the watchful CHAPTER 19 Preparation for the Giving of the Law I. The same day] the 15th day of the month: cp. 1 2 1^' 29 161. Marching slowly, with long halts at the various stations on the route, the host took two months to traverse the 150 m. between Egypt and Sinai. Here they remained eleven months (see Nul0ii'i2)j during which time the nation entered into a formal covenant with Jehovah on the basis of the moral law received from God by Moses, and promulgated by him. Wilderness of Sinai] This must not be confounded with the ' wilderness of Sin ' (see on 161). The wilderness of Sinai is gen- erally identified with the modern Wady Er-Rahah, a plain fully 2 m. long by half-a- m. wide, ' enclosed between two precipitous 66 19. 5 EXODUS 20. 1 solicitude of G-od is true and beautiful. When the eaglets first attempt to fly, the parent bird is said to hover round them and beneath them, so as to support them on its expanded wings when they are exhausted: see Dt32ii. Brought you unto myself] i.e. to Sinai, the ' mount of God,' where He was about to make a special revelation of Himself. It is possible, however, to take the words in a spiritual sense, as denoting the divine nurture and education of the Israelites in the fuller knowledge of the true God: see on vv. 5, 6. 5. If ye will obey] Although God's grace preceded the covenant (see previous v.), the latter was made upon condition of perfect obedience. But as the law only serves to accentuate man's feeling of inability to keep it, it becomes a 'schoolmaster to lead to Christ,' and the redemption that is by faith in Him: see Ho 7 22-25 Gal 3 23, 24. A peculiar treasure] a private and treasured possession. In later times the Jewish nation presumed upon their privilege as a chosen people, and believed in their unconditional possession of God's favour. From this false security it was the task of the prophets to rouse them: see e.g. JerT^-i*^ Mt 39 8 11' 12 2131. Above all people] RV ' from among all peoples.' All the earth is the Lord's, but Israel belongs to Him in a special degree: cp. 33 16 Am 9 7. 6. A kingdom of priests] a kingdom of which every member is consecrated to the service of God, and so ' a holy nation ' : see on Lv 20 24. The designation expresses also the high calling of Israel. They are to be the medium of communicating the knowledge of the divine nature and will to the world. In general, it may be allowed that the Jewish nation has fulfilled its destiny. It has taught the world true religion. Through its rejection of the Messiah its sacred function has passed over to the Christian church, to which St. Peter transfers the titles given to Israel in these two vv. : see 1 Pet29 Rev 1 6. 7. The elders] see on 3 1^. 9. In a thick cloud] No one, not even Moses, is able to gaze upon the unveiled majesty of God: see 3^ 33 20 Lv 1 6 2 Jg 1 3 22. Hence when He appears it is in a cloud, which becomes the symbol and vehicle of the divine presence: see 13 21, also Null25 IK810.11 Isa64Mtl75 2664 iTh 4 1'^ Rev 1 7. And believe thee] The superior favour shown to Moses as the direct recipient of the divine revelation would attest his authority. See on Nu 127.8. 10. Sanctify them] bid them sanctify them- selves. The outward preparation consisted in washing their persons and clothes, and in absti- nence from sexual intercourse: see v. 15 and cp. LvlSis-i"^. These outward purifications sjnnbolised the inward purity required in those who draw near to God: see Isali^ Ps516.7 lPet32i. 12. Set bounds unto the people] This was intended to impress the people with the unapproachable holiness of God. They could only draw near to God in the person of the mediator whom God Himself had chosen. The NT. writers emphasise the superior privi- lege of Christians, who enjoy access into the holiest through Chi'ist ' the mediator of the new covenant': see Heb 1019-22 1218-24. 13. They shall come up] not the mass of the people, but their privileged representatives; see vv. 23, 24, and cp. 24 1' 2. 22. The priests] The Levitical priesthood was not yet insti- tuted, but among the Hebrews, as among other nations of antiquity, there were those, mainly the heads of tribes and families, who exercised priestly functions. Melchizedek was prince and priest in Jerusalem at the time of Abraham (Gn 1 4 1*), and Jethro was both prince and priest of Midian, and offered sacrifice as such (Ex2i6 31 18 1.12). CHAPTER 20 The Ten Commandments (vv. 1-21). Chs. 20-23, containing (1) the Decalogue (Gk. = ' Ten Words ' or ' Commandments ') and (2) a code of laws regulating the religious and social life of the people, and called the Book of the Covenant (see 24 7), form perhaps the most important part of the Pentateuch. It is the nucleus of the entire Mosaic legisla- tion, and in all probability existed for long as a separate document. 1-17. The Decalogue. In c. 3428 Dt4i3 this is called the ' Ten Words ' or ' Command- ments.' It is also called the ' Testimony ' in Ex 25 16 (see on 1634), and the ' Covenant' in Ex 34 28 Dt99. These words were uttered in the hearing of the awe-struck people (19 ^ 2019 Dt4i2), and afterwards graven by the finger of God on two tables of stone (3 1 18 Dt4i3). On witnessing the apostasy of the people Moses broke these tables (32 1^), but they were afterwards replaced by another pair on which the same words were written (341 DtlOi'4). When the ark was made the two tables of the testimony were deposited in it(Dtl05 Heb 9 4). As the ark itself stood in the innermost sanctuary of the tabernacle, this position of the Tables of the Law bore emphatic witness to the great truth that the beginning and end of all religious observances is the keeping of the commandments of God: cp. Mtl9i7Ro225 1 Cor 7 19. Two versions of the Ten Commandments are preserved in the Pentateuch, the second, exhibiting a few variations, being given in Dt56-2i. Most scholars agree that the version given in Exodus is the older and purer of the two, the variations in Deuteronomy being due to the characteristic ideas and style of the writer of that book. The main divergences 66 20. 2 EXODUS 20. 7 occur in the fourth and fifth commandments. There is a good deal to be said for the view that the commandments as originally promul- gated were shorter than either form, that they consisted merely of the precepts without the reasons annexed, the second e.g. reading sim- ply, ' Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,' and the fourth, ' Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy ' : see on v. 11. That the commandments, at least in this terser form, are really Mosaic, there is no reasonable ground to doubt. The Ten Commandments were inscribed on two tables and divided into two parts, but opinions differ as to their enumeration and ar- rangement. The Jews themselves regard v. 2, usually called the Preface, as the First Word, and maintain the number ten by uniting vv. 2-6 (the first and second) and calling these the Second Word. The Roman Catho- lics and Lutherans combine the first two, and split up the tenth. Our common enumeration is that of Philo and Josephus, who are fol- lowed by the Greek and Reformed Churches. As to their arrangement, some have assigned five commandments to each table ; while others have divided them in the proportion of four to six. According to the latter division the first four are religious, defining the duties man owes to God (' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God'); the last six are moral, defining the duties men owe to each other (' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself '). On the other hand, seeing that in ancient times filial duty was regarded more as a religious than a moral obligation, there is something to be said for placing the fifth commandment on the first table: see on 2115. Christians, while freed from the obligations of the Mosaic law of ceremonies, are still bound, bound more than ever (see Ro6), to ' the obedience of the commandments which are called moral.' What our Lord did with regard to the Ten Commandments was (1) to sum them up under the two obligations of love to God and love to our neighbour, which, again, are the two sides of the one law of universal Love (' love is the fulfilling of the law'); (2) to widen and deepen their scope, making them apply not only to the outward act, but to the inner spirit and motive, and (3) to change them from mere negative commands to abstain from certain sins to positive obliga- tions, which are never exhausted and involve a perpetual advance in holiness where mere abstention from evil acts implies moral stag- nation: see Mt 22 37-40 517-48. 2. Redemption is the ground of obedience which springs, not from fear, but from gratitude and love : see Ro 1 2 1 2 Cor 5 1* IJn 4 19. This evangelical truth of obedience springing from gi-atitude is the great theme of the book of Deuteronomy, where it is reiterated over and over again : see e.g. Dt 4 32-40 and Intro, to that book, § 3. 3. Before me] RM ' beside me.' Monotheism is implied rather than expressly enunciated here. It was only gradually that Israel rose to the truth that there is but one God. Israel was led to this truth along the way of prac- tice. By ceasing to worship other gods they would cease to believe in their existence. It is true still that the sure result of discontinu- ing the worship of God is the denial of His existence : see on 15 ^^ 32 1. 4. If the first commandment implies the truth of God's unity, the second implies that of His spirituality. Israel is forbidden to worship even the true God under any external form. God is not like anything that human hands can make. In Egypt the Israelites had been familiar with the worship of images. The water under the earth] This refers to the belief of the time that the earth was a flat disk (Isa 40"'-) resting on an abyss of waters : see Gn 1<5 7 ^ Ps 24 2. 5. A jealous God] Hu- man jealousy is usually of an ignoble kind, the fruit of suspicion. But there is a holy jealousy, the pain of wounded love. The heart of God is grieved when His love is rewarded with in- difference and unfaithfulness. He will brook no rival in the affections of His people : see Dt32i«.2i Ps78 58 Isa 42 8, and on c. 3415. Unto the third and fourth generation] RV ' upon . .' It is a law of the divine government that the penalty of one man's sins is shared by those connected with him: cp. Josh 22 20. If this seem hard it must be remembered that the law cuts both ways. The benefits of a man's good deeds are likewise distributed over a large area. We cannot enjoy the one result without taking the risk of the other. The law relates, however, only to the consequences of sin, not its guilt. The latter adheres to the sinner personally: cp. Ezkl82-4. 6. Unto thousands] i.e. unto a thousand generations, as in Dt?^. It is implied here that God's mercy in rewarding righteousness infinitely transcends His anger in punishing the sinful. The consequences of righteous- ness are more enduring and far-reaching than those of iniquity. 7. This prohibition applies strictly to per- jury or false swearing, the breaking of a pro- mise or contract that has been sealed with an oath in the name of God. He will not allow His name to be associated with any act of false- hood or treachery. His name must not be taken in vain, i.e. lightly or heedlessly. This forbids also the careless or profane use of the divine name and titles. Jesus extended the scope of this commandment so as to prohibit the use of oaths entirely. A man's mere word should be his bond : see Mt 5 33-37, 67 20. 8 EXODUS 20. 19 8. What is laid down here is not the insti- tution of the sabbath rest, but its strict observ- ance. The sabbath rest was known to the Babylonians before this time, and there are indications of its being previously known to the Israelites : see on 16 5. Hence, probably, the use of the word remember. To keep it holy] The seventh day is to be distinguished from other days (the root meaning of the word rendered ' hallow ' is to separate : see on Lv 20 24), by abstinence from labour. Nothing is said here as to the religious observance of the day. But after the institution of the Levitical priesthood, the morning and even- ing sacrifices were doubled on the sabbath (see Nu289'i'^), and in later times the day was naturally that on which a ' holy convocation ' was held : see Lv233 IsaGG^s. After the exile, when synagogues were established, divine ser- vice was always celebrated on the sabbath. 9. It is sometimes forgotten that the fourth commandment ' enforces the six days' work as well as the seventh day's rest.' 10. Shalt not do any work] such as gathering manna (see onl 6 —), lighting a fire (35 2), gathering sticks (Nu 1532-36), agricultural labour (cp. Ex342i), carrying burdens (Neh 13 1^"^^), buying and sell- ing (NehlO^i). The Jewish legalists deve- loped the negative side of this precept to such an extravagant and absurd extent that the sabbath, instead of being a day of rest, became the most laborious day of the seven. The philanthropic motive for its observance (cp. 23 1- Dt5i4) was almost entu-ely lost sight of till our Lord said, ' The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath' (Mk22"). Thy manservant] The command is specially addressed to heads of families and employers of labour, and requires (1) that they must them- selves rest from labour, and (2) allow those in their employment to rest also. II. In Dtb^'^'^^ another reason is given for the ob- servance of the sabbath rest, in accordance with the philanthropic spirit which pervades the whole of that book : cp. 2312. Both reasons are probably later amplifications of the original commandment. Blessed . . and hallowed it] consecrated it to Himself with a special blessing upon it. The unusually frequent men- tion in OT. of the duty of observing the sab- bath is an indication of its importance. It is often referred to as constituting along with circumcision the sign of the covenant between God and Israel : see on 3 1 ^^. 12. This is the ' first commandment with promise' (EphG'^). The promise has been understood by some as applying to the nation as a whole. Undoubtedly the nation takes its character from the home, and well-ordered family life is the prime condition of national welfare and stability : see on Dt 21 is. But the promise is also to the individual. ' Righteous- ness tendeth to life ' (Prov 1 1 19). A promise of long life and material prosperity is frequently attached in OT. to moral precepts : see e.g. 2325f. Lv26 Dt7i2f. 28 Psl 34i2f. 37. The doctrine of present rewards and punishments had an important educative value at a time when the truth of a future life was not yet clearly revealed. But the manifest exceptions which experience of human life afforded to this simple view of the divine government proved a great trial to faith, as the book of Job in particular shows, and such passages as Ps 73 Jer 12 1. 2, etc. That faith was able even in these circumstances to triumph over doubt is shown e.g. in Hab3i''>i8 Ps 73 23-26^ jn which it may be said that the high-water mark is reached of a trust in God that is superior to and independent of all outward circumstances. In later times, when the belief in a future life was more consistently held, it was only natural that the rewards and penalties should be re- garded as in many cases postponed to find their full completion in the next world : see on Dt227. 13-16. These commandments are given to safeguard a man's life, domestic peace, property, and reputation. For the way in which our Lord extended the scope of the sixth and seventh commandments so as to apply not merely to the outward act but to the inner thought and motive lying at its root, see Mt 5 21-30. 16. It is noteworthy that of the ten com- mandments, two (the third and the ninth) refer to sins of speech. For the penalty pre- scribed in cases of false witness, see Dtl9i^"2i. The spirit of the ninth commandment forbids all lying and slander. 17. Of all the commandments, the tenth is the one that goes deepest. What is condemned is not an action, but a thought or desire : cp. Prov 4 23 Mt 1 5 18-20. This commandment shows that the Decalogue is more than a mere code of civil law. Human laws cannot take cogni- zance of the thoughts of the heart. 19. The Decalogue was given in the hearing of the people. The following commandments were given to them through their mediator Moses : see vv. 21, 22, c.21i. CHAPTERS 2022-2333 The Book of the Covenant This section comprises a number of laws de- signed to regulate the life bf an agricultural community living under comparatively simple conditions. The laws are mainly of a civil order with a small admixture of rudimentary religious enactment (see e.g. 2023-26 2310-19). The principle of their arrangement is not clear, but the three sections 2112-36 221-27 231-8 seem to be amplifications of the sixth, eighth, and 68 20. 23 EXODUS 21. 7 ninth commandments of the Decalogue respec- tively. The Book of the Covenant occupies an intermediate position between the brief and general principles enunciated in the Decalogue and the minute and detailed legislation set forth elsewhere in the Pentateuch. For the relationship between the legislation of Moses and that of earlier civilisations, see Intro. § 2, and art. ' Laws of Hammurabi.' 23. RV is preferable, ' Ye shall not make other gods with me ; gods of silver, or gods of gold, ye shall not make unto you.' This is a repetition of the first and second com- mandments. 24. An altar of earth] i.e. of the simplest form and material, as a precau- tion against idolatrous representations : cp. V. 25 Dt275>6. On the different kinds of sacrifice see Lvl-7, and on 18 1"^. Record my name] lit. ' cause my name to be remem- bered,' by some special manifestation of power or grace. A plurality of sacrificial places is here expressly sanctioned, and the historical books of OT. record numerous instances of altars being erected and sacrifice offered in many different places down to the reformation of king Josiah, which took place in the year 621 B.C. In the book of Deuteronomy a plurality of sacrificial places is condemned, and worship restricted to a central sanctuary : see onDtl2-i.i3f- 25. See on V. 24. 26. With the same object, to prevent exposure of the person, it is afterwards prescribed that the priests be provided with linen drawers while officiating at the altar : see 2842,43_ The top of the altar of burnt offering, which was four and a half ft. high, was reached, according to tradition, by means of a sloping ramp of earth : cp. 27^, and see on Lv9 22. CHAPTER 21 The Book of the Covenant (continued) i-ii. Regulations regarding the Treatment of Hebrew Slaves. Slavery was universal in ancient times, and the Mosaic Law does not abolish it. Among the Hebrews, however, slavery was by no means the degrading and oppressive thing that it was among other nations. Manstealing, upon which modern systems of slavery are based, was a crime punishable by death (see V. 16), and the Law of Moses recognises the right of a slave to just and honourable treat- ment. A Hebrew slave might occupy a high position in his master's household and be re- garded as a trusty friend, as the case of Eliezer shows (Gn 24). He could not be bound for more than six years at a time ; in the seventh year he obtained his freedom if he desired it (see V. 2) ; he might hold property and come to be able to redeem himself (Lv25''^) ; he was pro- tected from the violence of his master (vv. 20, 21); he could claim compensation for bodily injury (vv. 26, 27) ; and he was entitled to the sabbath rest (20 lO). If a Hebrew girl became her master's concubine he could not sell her to a foreigner, but must let her be redeemed (v. 8) ; if his son married her he must treat her as a daughter (v. 9) ; if he took a second wife he must not degrade her, but use her as liberally as before (v. 10). In general the Hebrew master was to treat his slave rather as a brother or hired servant than as a chattel, and the principle which was to govern his treatment was the humane precept ' thou shalt not rule over him with rigour ; but shalt fear thy G-od' (Lv25^3j. These laws, it is true, apply to the slave who was an Israelite, but the lot of even the foreign slave who had been captured in war was only a little less favom-- able. If it be asked why the Mosaic Law did not at once abolish slavery the answer must be that the time was not ripe for that. Christ Himself did not abolish it ; and His apostles tolerated it (see 1 Cor 7 20-24 and the Epistle to Philemon). Christianity did not violently over- throw existing social institutions or abolish class distinctions. But it taught the brother- hood of all men, and by quietly introducing the leaven of justice, humanity, and brotherly love into society, gradually abolished the worst social abuses and made slavery impossible. 2. If thou buy an Hebrew servant] A man might voluntarily sell himself for debt (Lv2539), or he might be judicially sold for theft (see 22 3), or he might be sold by his parents (v. 7). If the year of Jubilee fell before the seventh year of his servitude he went free then: see Lv2540, 4i_ Life-long compulsory servitude was therefore unknown. 3. If he were married] before coming into slavery. If he married after becoming a slave, the case contemplated in the next verse, he would do so subject to the consent of his master, in which case the wife and children remained with the master. 5. Slavery may be preferable to freedom. This shows the mild nature of slavery among the Hebrews. 6. Unto the judges] RV ' unto God.' The expressions are really identical, for the judges would be the priests, or the high priest, and the transaction would take place at the sanc- tuary and have the sanction of the divine judgment: see on 228>28 RV. Bore his ear] The fastening of the ear to the doorpost signi- fies his perpetual attachment to the house of his master : cp. Dt 1517. The ear is pierced as being the organ of hearing and, therefore, of obedience. 7. To be a maidservant] The word denotes a slavewife, a consort of inferior rank, like Hagar (Gn 1 6 3). Her position was permanent. She did not go out at the end of six years, which would have been a degradation. If she 69 21. 10 EXODUS 22. 17 were the wife of the master of the house, she was to be treated as a wife ; if of the son, as a daughter. If she were dismissed, it must be in an honourable way (vv. 8, 11), and without repayment of the purchase money. ID. Polygamy, like slavery, was tolerated by the Law of Moses. Its cessation in Chris- tian lands has naturally followed the nobler teaching of Christianity regarding woman : cp. the remarks on the cessation of slavery. 12-17. Three Olf ences Punishable by Death , viz. murder, manstealing, and the smiting or cursing of parents. 13. For the appointment of cities of refuge as an asylum in tlie case of accidental homicide, see on Nu 35 ^'2^. 14. From mine altar] The altar seems to have been the place of refuge at first : see 1K150 228f. 15. Smiteth] not necessarily with fatal effect. Reverence to- wards parents was regarded in ancient times as more a religious than a social duty, and a breach of the fifth commandment, like blasphemy, was a capital oifence : see intro. to the Deca- logue, and cp. Dt21i8f. 16. Mansteal- ing is to be punished as severely as murder. 17. Cm-sing, like blessing, is always looked upon as efficacious. It is a solemn appeal to God, who will not permit His name to be taken in vain. He will not respond to the child who invokes His power to the injury of a father or mother. And such an impious appeal is itself a serious crime. 18-32. The Law of Compensation for Injury to Life or Limb. 19. Shall . . be quit] i.e. of the charge of murder. But he must pay for the injm-ed man's loss of time and medical treatment. 21. He is his money] The master himself loses by his servant's inability to work, and is sufficiently punished in this way. If the injury is of a permanent nature the slave is entitled to his freedom: see vv. 26, 27. 23. Atiy mischief] beyond the loss of the child (v. 22). The law of retaliation (' like for like ') is common to all early stages of civilisation: cp. e.g. art. 'Laws of Hammurabi.' It is a rough and ready kind of justice, but it involves many difficulties and is generally abandoned in favour of a system of fines and penalties. It should be observed that the law of retaliation is not the same as private revenge. The equivalent penalty is inflicted by the judge, not by the injm-ed person: cp. Lv24i'-2i Dtl9i5-2i. Christ refers to this passage in the Sermon on the Mount (MtS^sf-), forbidding the spirit of revenge, and enforcing the duty of forbearance in imitation of the heavenly Father. 28. The following enact- ments are a good illustration of the spirit of even-handed justice displayed by the Mosaic Law: cp. 6n9^. His flesh shall not be eaten] This would serve to emphasise the horror connected with such an accidental death. It was also in accordance with the law forbidding the eating of blood as unclean. An ox killed by stoning would not be bled : see on LvlT^o-i^, and cp. 22^1. 29. In this case the owner is morally responsible and is liable to be put to death. The death penalty may, however, be commuted by a fine, the amount of which would be fixed by the rela- tives of the person killed, with probably an appeal to the judges. 32. The silver shekel was in value a little more than half-a-crown. The ordinary price of a slave, therefore, was about £3 10s.: cp. Zechlli2.i3Mt26i5. From the latter passage it will be seen that our Lord's life was reckoned of the same value as that of a slave. 33-c. 22 15. Law of Compensation for Injury to Property. 34. The dead beast shall be his] It is assumed that he has paid the full value of the live animal. CHAPTER 22 The Book of the Covenant (continued) I. Four sheep] The larger compensation required in the case of the ox is probably due to the fact that it is an animal used for labour, and of proportionately higher value, therefore, than a sheep: cp. 2S12<^. 2. Breaking up] RV ' breaking in.' 3. If the sun be risen upon him] i.e. if the housebreaking be com- mitted in daylight. The nocturnal burglar is more dangerous and cannot be so easily detected. In a case of daylight robbery it is less necessary to resort to extreme measm-es for defence. In English law a similar dis- tinction is made between housebreaking by night and by day. 5. Of the best of his own field] This is a case of wilful damage. In the next v. the damage is accidental, such as might result from the burning of weeds or thorns, in which case an exact equivalent only is required. 7. Deliver unto his neighbour] This practice was common in days when there were no banks. Otherwise, treasure might be buried in a field: cp.Mtl344. 8. Unto the judges] RV 'unto God.' See on 21<5. u. Oath of the LORD] an oath invoking Jehovah as witness. On the solemn natiu-e of such oaths, cp. 20". 13. Let him bring it] i.e. what remains of it, in order to show the cause of the injury. 15. It came for his (i.e. 'its' ; see on Lv255) hire] RM ' it is reckoned in its hire.' The owner is understood to have taken the risk of injury into account in fixing the price of hire. 16-31. Miscellaneous Laws. 16, 17. Endow her] RV rightly, 'pay a dowry for her' : e.g. to her father. The dowry was not the portion brought by the wife into the husband's house, but the price paid by the 70 22. 18 EXODUS 23. 19 bridegroom to the father or brothers of the bride, by way, it would seem, of compensation to the bride's family for the loss of her services: cp. Gn34i2, also Gn 29 ^s. Seeing that among the Hebrews, as among the Arabs at the present day, a woman who has been un- chaste has almost no chance of marriage, the seducer, it is here enacted, must marry her, or, if the father object, make good the dowry. In Dt2"229 the dowry is fixed at fifty shekels. The seduction of a betrothed damsel is punishable with death: see on Dt2223f. i8. A witch] B,V ' sorceress.' The word is the same as that in T^i. Sorcery, or the pre- tended holding communication with evil spirits, is a form of idolatry or rebellion against Jehovah, and punished as such: see v. 20, and cp. DtlSiof. Lvl92ti.3i. 21. Cp. Lvl933, 34_ The Mosaic Law re- peatedly emphasises the duty of kindly con- sideration of the weak and oppressed, the afflicted and the poor. God is the champion and the avenger of all such : cp. Psl46'''-'^. 25. If thou lend money to (uiy of my people that is poor by thee] RV ' to any of my people with thee that is poor ' : interest is forbidden on loans to a fellow Israelite, but is expressly allowed in dealing with a foreigner: see Dt 23 IP. 20, and cp. Lv 25 ^s. The loans referred to here are loans without interest. The Israelites are commanded to help the poor by giving them free loans, the wisest form of charity. Commercial loans, for trading purposes, are not contemplated at all, and were in all proba- bility unknown among the Israelites in early times and in a primitive state of society. 26. While the taking of interest is forbidden, the taking of a pledge for repayment of a loan is sanctioned, and frequent reference is made in Scripture to the practice: see e.g. Am2S Job 22 6 249 Dt 24 6. The outer garment of the Israelite (the simlah) is a kind of cloak or plaid about 4 ft. square, which may be used as a coverlet by night. In the case of a poor man this might be the only thing he could give as a pledge, in which case he is to be allowed the use of it each night: cp. Dt 24 12, 13^ and for a similar humane precept, V. 6 of that chapter. 28. The gods] RV 'God.' RM 'judges' is also possible : see on 21*5. But cp. St. Peter's injunction (lPet2i'^). 29. The first of thy ripe fruits] RV ' the abundance of thy fruits,' etc. : see on 131-16. 20. On the eighth day] The mini- mum age of a sacrificial animal is eight days. The animal must be in a fit condition, which it could hardly be during the first week : cp. Lv2227. The eighth day was also prescribed for the circumcision of children : see GnlT^^. 31. Holy men] See on 195,e,io. The numerovis regulations with regard to outward 71 purity, of which one example is given here, were intended to be a symbol and a reminder of that purity of heai-t which God's people must exhibit. Torn of beasts] This pro- hibition rests on the general law that the blood, as the seat of life, belongs to God and must not be eaten. The flesh of such an animal would not be properly drained of blood : see on 2 1 2S. CHAPTER 23 The Book of the Covenant (concluded) 1-19. Miscellaneous Laws. 1. Raise] RV ' take up,' i.e. give ear to. This is an extension of the ninth command- ment : cp. the Arabic proverb, ' In wickedness the listener is the ally of the speaker.' 2. To decline after] RV 'to turn aside after.' 3. Countenance] Give undue favour to. As judgment is to be without fear (v. 2), so is it to be without favour, whether of rich or poor : cp. v. 6. 4, 5. Thine enemy's ox] The Mosaic Law inculcates the duty of kindness to animals : see e.g. 201° Lv222T,28 Dt22«.7 254. In Dt22i-4 it is a friend's beast that is to be relieved. Here it is the beast of an enemy : cp. Mt543,44. 8. Gift] A bribe in any form : see on 18 21. ID, II. On the law of the Sabbatical Year, see on Lv 25 1-7. 12. On the reason annexed to the fourth commandment, see on 20 10, 11. 14-17. The Three Great Annual Feasts are Passover and Unleavened Bread in the month of Abib, Feast of Weeks or Pentecost fifty days afterwards, and Feast of Booths or Taber- nacles, here called Feast of Ingathering, at the end of the agricultural year : see on L V 23 4-22, 33-43. 15, None shall appear before me empty] As these festivals are all com- memorative of God's goodness they are to be celebrated with thankfulness and rejoicing. And in token of their gratitude the people are to present gifts and entertain the poor : cp. Dt 16 1«. 17 Neh 8 10. The same principle under- lies the custom of making otferings of money as a part of Christian worship. It is expres- sive of the worshipper's thankfulness for all the divine mercies, temporal and spiritual, of which he is the recipient, and must never be omitted. 17. Three times in the year] These annual pilgrimages served to maintain a conscious unity of race and worship. 18. Leavened bread] see on 128. Fat, like blood, must not be eaten, but burnt upon the altar : see on 2913. 19. Thou Shalt not seethe, etc.] This pro- hibition may be intended to preserve the natural instinct of humanity: cp. Dt226.7. But it more probably refers to a superstitious practice of using milk prepared in this way to 23. 20 EXODUS 24. 10 sprinkle fields, as a charm against unfruitful- ness : see Dtl42i, where the prohibition is connected with the law of unclean meats. On account o£ this law, the Jews to this day abstain from mixing meat and milk in the same dish ; nor will they partake of the one, except at a considerable interval after the other. 20-33. The Book of the Covenant closes with an exhortation in which a promise is made of God's presence, guidance, and help in overcoming their enemies, of wide dominion, and of material prosperity, on condition that they serve Jehovah alone and make no cove- nant with the heathen nations or their gods. 20. On the Angel of Jehovah, see on 3 2. 25. See on 20 12. 28. Hornets] The hornet is a large and fierce kind of wasp. It is doubtful whether the promise here is to be understood literally or figuratively (cp. also Dt 7 20 Josh 24 ^2). It seems to be taken liter- ally in Wisdom 128. g^t it is more probably a figurative way of describing the terror which would fall upon the nations on hearing of the victorious march of Jehovah's people : see the previous v. and Dt225, and cp. Dtl^* Psll8i2 Isa7i8. Or the 'hornets' may be intended to describe the Egyptians, who were frequently at war with the inhabitants of Canaan. Rameses III is known to have broken the power of the ancient kingdom of the Hittites, which would be about the time of the Israelites' sojourn in the wilderness, supposing the exodus to have taken place towards the end of the nineteenth dynasty. 29, 30. The book of Judges shows that the conquest of Canaan was effected gradually. 31. The sea of the Philistines] the Mediter- ranean ; the river is the Euphrates. These bounds were reached in the reign of Solomon : see 1K421, and cp. Gnlo^s Dtll24. 32, 33. The commandment to expel the Canaanites and to destroy their idols and places of worship was only partially fulfilled, with the result that the e\al influence of Canaanitish idolatry and immorality made itself felt over and over again in the history of Israel and was the cause of its final over- throw : see Josh 16 10 1712,13 jg 119, 27-36 IK 11 1-10 1422-24 2K123 176-23. With this passage cp. 34i2-ir Nu 33 60-56 Dt? ; and see on Nu 25 16-18. CHAPTER 24 The Ratification' of the Covenant I. And he said] The first two vv. of this 0. are a continuation of the narrative from 2021, which was interrupted by the insertion of the Book of the Covenant, originally a separate document. C. 2333 jg continued in V. 3. Nadab, and Abihu] the two oldest sons of Aaron : see 623. Seventy of the elders] a selection from the heads of the tribes and families : see on 3i6. 3. And Moses came and told the people] after he had ascended the mountain and received the ' words and the judgments ' contained in chs. 2022-2333 : cp. 21: 4. And Moses wrote] see on 1 7 !■*. The altar symbolised the presence of Jehovah, the twelve pillars represented the twelve tribes of Israel. These pillars were single unhewn stones which were smeared with the blood of the sacrificial animal or with the oil of a vegetable offering : see on Gn28i8. The use of pillars is an evidence of the antiquity of the rite of sealing the covenant recorded here, as they were after- wards forbidden owing to their association with heathen worship : see Dtl622, and see on 3413. 5. See on 18 12. 6. The sprinkling of the altar with half the blood and of the people with the other half (v. 8) signified that both parties, Jehovah and Israel, entered into fellowship and bound themselves by the terms of the covenant, the people promising obedience and Jehovah promising His help and blessing. See 2320-31. In the New Covenant the blood of Christ takes the place of the blood of the sacrificial animal, and by faith in His sacrifice. Christians enter into communion with God : see Mt2628 Heb 911-28 1 Pet 1 2. 8. Concerning all these words] RM ' upon all these conditions.' 9-1 1. The ratification of the covenant is concluded with a sacrificial meal (v. 11), which usually followed the peace offering and sym- bolised the harmonious relationship existing between the offerers and God : see Lv3. At this meal, which took place on the mount, the representatives of the people were vouchsafed a vision of God Himself, not as previously with terror-inspu'ing accompaniments of thunder, lightning, and smoke (20iS'i^), but in grace, mercy, and peace. The sight of God, otherwise fatal in its effects (see 3320 and on 199), does not injure them. God does not smite them ; on the contrary they are able to eat and drink in His presence, having entered into covenant relationship with Him (V. 11). 10. They saw^ the God of Israel] A very bold anthropomorphic way of describing the experience of these favoured persons, which the Gk. (LXX) Version, made many centuries later, avoids by translating ' they saw the place where God stood.' At the same time it is noticeable that the sacred writer e^'inces a great reserve in speaking of this vision of God. He makes no attempt to describe the appearance of God, only what was under His feet. Similarly Isaiah, who says that he too ' saw the Lord,' describes only the accompani- ments of his vision (Isa 6) : see 3318,19,23. In Dt4i2 Moses is represented as reminding 72 24. 12 EXODUS 25. the people that they ' saw no similitude ' of God at Horeb ; and in Jn 1 1^ (cp. b^"^ 6^6) -we read that ' no man hath seen God at any time.' The apparent inconsistency between these passages and the present is to be accounted for on the principle of the progressiveness of revelation. Divine truth can only be com- municated to men in the measure and in the manner in which they are able to receive it. In early times men were like children in re- gard to spiritual things, which therefore could only be apprehended by them under material forms of expression. The essential and per- manent truth underlying the present repre- sentation is that the majesty and the will of the invisible God were brought vividly home to the minds of these men by means of the Moral Law, and that this Law was not a dis- covery by Moses but a thing revealed to him by God. Cp. what is said on anthropo- morphisms in Intro, to Exodus, § 3. A paved -work of a sapphire stone] The ancients regarded the sky as a solid vaulted dome stretched over the earth : see on Gn 1 6-8. Body of heaven in h is clearness] E, V ' the very heaven for clearness.' 12. Moses receives another command to come up into the mount and receive the tables of the Law and other directions con- nected with the outward service of religion. Tables of stone] From Dt522 we learn that these contained the Ten Commandments, and the same is implied in c. 34^8^ which relates to the second tables, doubtless exact copies of the first which Moses broke. The other regulations which follow in c. 25, etc., seem to have been given orally. The words which I have written should perhaps follow tables of stone. The expression may be understood as indicating the immediate divine origin of the Law (cp. 31 18). 13. Minister] servant, attendant ; cp. Lk420B,Y Ac 13 5. 14. Said unto the elders] not merely the seventy spoken of in v. 1, but all the repre- sentatives of the people. They are to see that the camp is not removed from the plain dru-ing the absence of Moses. 15. Moses went up] Joshua accompanied him part of the way, and seems to have awaited his return somewhere on the mountain side : see 3217. 18. Forty days and forty nights] The later account adds that during this time he neither ate nor drank (Dt 9 ^). On the number forty see on 2^1. (Chs. 25-31) The Tabernacle and the Priesthood ^^^^ -Lxjja, £.0 alone, and that only once a year on the great The Vessels of the Sanctuary day of Atonement with special ceremonial. Chapters 25-31 are taken up with prescrip- It has been questioned whether a tabernacle tions regarding the Construction of a Taber- of this somewhat elaborate design and costly nacle, i.e. a tent, to form the visible dwelling- workmanship could have been erected by the place of Jehovah in the midst of His Israelites in their present circumstances, people, the place where He would meet This difficulty, however, has been exaggerated, them and receive their worship. The entire In Egypt the Israelites were familiar with structure consisted of thi-ee parts. There arts and manufactures, and they left Egypt was an outer Court, 100 cubits by 50, open to with spoil of precious metals (11 2 123^.36). the sky, the sides of which were composed of Another difficulty has been discerned in the curtains supported on pillars. The entrance fact that no references to such an elaborate was at the eastern end; inside, facing the structure occur in the historical books previous door, was the altar of burnt offering, and to the time of Solomon. Some scholars ac- behind that the brazen laver. Within this cordingly hold that many of the details de- court and towards the western end was a scribed here are of an ideal nature, the pre- covered tabernacle, divided by a hanging cur- scription of what ought to be rather than tain into two chambers. The outer of these, of what actually was carried out, ' the attempt called the Holy Place, contained the Table of of a devout and imaginative mind to give Shewbread, the Candlestick, and the Altar of concrete embodiment to some of the loftiest Incense. The Inner chamber, the Holy of and purest spiritual truths to be met with in Holies, or Most Holy Place, contained the the whole range of scripture.' This difficulty. Ark of the Covenant which supported the like the other, is of a negative kind, and we Mercy seat and the two golden Cherubim, should be careful not to over-estimate it. In The three parts, of which the entire structure any case, the symbolism underlying the con- was composed, were of increasing degrees of struction of the tabernacle with its furniture sanctity. Into the outer court came the wor- and ritual is unmistakable. The costliness shippers when they brought their offerings, of the materials teaches the lesson that God Into the Holy Place went the priests to per- is to be served with the best that man can form their sacred offices; while into the Most give. The harmony and exact proportions of Holy Place, which was the immediate Presence its parts are a reflection of the harmony and Chamber of Jehovah, went the high priest perfection of the divine nature. The increasing 73 25. 1 EXODUS 25.23 degrees of sanctity which characterise the Court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies, emphasise the reverence due by man to Him whose dwelling is in the high and holy place, and who yet condescends in His gi-ace to tabernacle with man and to accept his im- perfect worship 1-9. Gifts of materials for the tabernacle. 2. ' God loveth a cheerful giver ' (2 Cor 9 '^). 3. Brass] rather, ' bronze,' an alloy of copper and tin: see on DtS^. 4. Blue, etc.] the yarns of which the hangings were to be woven by the women: see 3525 391. 5. Rams' skins dyed red] red leather made of sheep skins. Badgers' skins] RV 'sealskins,' RM ' porpoise-skins.' Shittim ■wood] RV ' acacia wood.' The acacia (Heb. shlttah, plur. shittim) is the characteristic tree of the Sinaitic peninsula. The wood is very durable and much used in furniture making. 7. On the ephod see 28 ^ *. 8. That I may dwell among them] Strictly speaking, God cannot be said to dwell in one place more than in another. But as men realise His presence most vividly when they are consciously engaged in His worship, the place of worship becomes in a special sense a ' meeting-place ' with God (see v. 22) and a ' house, or dwelling-place, of God ' : cp. Gn 2817. The expression is anthropomorphic at the best, and is felt to be inadequate as the spiritual nature of God is more fully realised: see Jn420-24_ in later times Jewish writers avoided saying that ' God dwells ' in any place, even in heaven itself. They said that He 'makes His Shekinah to dwell' there. The ' Shekinah ' is the manifestation of God, especially in the bright cloud (see 403^.35). The word is connected with the Heb. word for dwelling (mishkan) used in the next verse. 9. Pattern] This does not imply any visible or material model. It expresses the fact that Moses, during his long retirement with God on the mount, was divinely directed as to the most fitting way in which God might be wor- shipped. This inspiration does not exclude the exercise of the natural faculties, but pre- supposes them as the basis on which it may operate: see on 31*. Nor does it exclude the appropriation, under divine sanction, of ideas suggested by certain features in the ritual of other nations with which Moses was already acquainted. See Intro, to Exodus, § 2, near the end. Tabernacle] lit. ' dwelling.' Here it seems to denote the entu-e fabric. The name is applied in particular to the sacred tent, stand- ing in the midst of the court: see 261. 10-22. The Ark of the Testimony. 10. Ark] i.e. a chest or coffer. A cubit is about 18 in. Such sacred arks were well known to the Egyptians and Assyrians. They contained some image of the deity wor- shipped, and were carried with great pomp in processions at national festivals. It is signifi- cant of the spiritual nature of the Hebrew religion that the ark made by Moses contained no image, but instead a copy of the Moral Law. After the conquest of Canaan the ark remained for a long time at Shiloh (Josh 18 1 1 83^), and was at last brought by David to his capital at Jerusalem (2S6 lChl3). Solomon placed it in the temple which he built (IK8I), after which there is no further record of it. It may have been carried off by Shishak to Egypt (IK 1426) or by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon (2 K 26 s-i *"). There seems to have been no ark in the second temple. II. Crown] i.e. a ' rim ' or ' moulding ' which projected above the top edge of the ark to keep the ' mercy seat ' in its place. 16. Testi- mony] see on 16^^. 17. Mercy seat] RM ' covering.' Thisisnot to be regarded as a mere lid or covering of the ark, but has an independent significance. It is the golden throne of God where the people's sins are ' covered,' i.e. ex- piated or forgiven : see on Lv 1 '^. 18. Two cherubims] 'Cherubim' is the Heb. plural of ' cherub.' The exact form of these cherubim is doubtful. Some suppose they were winged bulls such as are represented on Assyrian monuments as guardian spirits at the doors of temples or houses : cp. GnS^'*. Others take them to be of human form. They figure very often in Hebrew sacred art. They were introduced into the pattern of the curtain which screened off the Holy of Holies (26^1). In Jewish thought the cherubim occupy the highest rank among the angels of heaven, and are the bearers or upholders of the throne of Jehovah, who is accordingly said to sit upon or between the cherubim (2 K 19 15 Ps 18 10 80 1 99 1). In Ezk 10 the cherubim are identified with the four living creatures of c. 1 (see Ezk 10 20 and cp. Rev 4 6 1). The figures of the cherubim upon the mercy seat were of course small ; those in Solomon's temple were of colossal dimensions (2 Ch 3 10-13). 19. Of the mercy seat] RV ' of one piece with the mercy- seat.' 20. Tow^ard the mercy seat shall the faces . . be] This is probably what is alluded to in 1 Pet 1 12. 22. I will meet with thee] Hence the tabernacle is called the ' tent of meeting,' i.e. the place where Jehovah meets with Moses and Israel, not the place where worshippers assemble, as the AV rendering ' tabernacle of the congregation ' seems to imply: see 29*2,43 337. 23-30. The Table of Shewbread. The ark alone stood in the innermost chamber. The table here described, on which lay twelve loaves (see on v. 30), stood in the second chamber, the Holy Place. On the Arch of Titus, still standing in Rome, there are sculptured the Table of Shewbread and the 74 25. 25 EXODUS 26. 14 Golden Candlestick which the Emperor Titus carried off from the Temple of Herod after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 a.d. These were not the original table and candle- stick, but were no doubt exact copies of them. 25. Border] The representation of the table on the Arch of Titus referred to above shows a narrow rail running round the table about halfway down the legs, keeping them in posi- tion. This is probably what is meant here by the ' border.' 27. Over against] RV ' close by.' The rings would be nearly halfway down the legs. 29. The dishes were the plates on which the loaves were brought to the table ; the spoons were small vessels to hold the in- cense which was laid upon the bread (Lv 24''') ; the covers (RV ' flagons ') and bowls held the wine of the drink offering which accompanied every meal offering. For to cover withal read with RV ' to pour out withal.' 30. Shew- bread] lit. ' bread of the presence,' RM ' Pres- ence-bread.' This consisted of twelve loaves of unleavened bread, which were laid upon the table, in the presence of God, and changed every sabbath day. It was a kind of thank- offering, expressive of man's constant indebted- ness to God for his daily bread : see on Lv 24 ^-^. 31-40. The Golden Candlestick. This also stood in the Holy Place. Being made of pure gold, it is called the ' pure candle- stick' in 31 8, etc. It was really a lampstand. From a central shaft three curved arms sprang on each side, one above the other, rising to the same height as it. On each of these seven supports rested a lamp, in shape like a bowl or saucer. The shaft and the arms were orna- mented with representations of almond buds and blossoms, introduced three times into each arm and four times into the shaft (v. 34). 3 1 . Bowls] (R V ' cups ') are the open leaves surmounting the knops or ' calyx ' of the flower. The topmost bowl held the lamp. On the oil, see on 27 -'0,21, and cp. Lv 241-4 Nu8i-4. Shall be of the same] RV ' of one piece with it ' : so in vv. 35, 3G. 33. Candlestick] the central shaft, which may have had in all seven knops. 37, The lampstand stood on the south side of the Holy Place with its arms parallel to the wall. On these the lamps, in the form of oval- shaped saucers, were placed crosswise with their nozzles pointing northwards, so that they cast their light over against the lampstand, i.e. on the space in front of it. 38. The tongs are the snuffers ; the snuffdishes are for receiving and removing the pieces of charred wick. 39. A talent of gold is estimated at about £6,000 of our money : see on 38 2"^. CHAPTER 26 The Tabernacle Proper This, which in the Hebrew is called ' the 75 dwelling ' (see on 25 9), consists of an oblong tent, 30 cubits long, 10 broad, and 10 high, and stands within the ' court of the tabernacle ' (27 9-*-). It is formed of a frame of open woodwork, over which are spread four layers of coverings, the undermost being of linen em- broidered with figures of cherubim, the second of goathair cloth, the third of ramskin, and the outermost of sealskin. Internally, there- fore, the tabernacle had the appearance of rows of panels enclosing a pattern of cherubim. The tabernacle was divided into two chambers by means of a veil suspended from the roof at a distance of 10 cubits from the back wall. The innermost chamber, or Holy of Holies, was therefore in shape a perfect cube of 10 cubits in the side. The roof, of which nothing is said, is best understood as flat. At the time of the conquest and settlement in Canaan, we hear of a tabernacle being set up at Shiloh, where it seems to have remained during the time of the Judges (Josh 18 1 Jg21i9 IS 13). In the time of David it seems to have been at Nob (1 S21 1), and afterwards at Gibeon (1 Ch 21 29)^ where it was at the beginning of Solo- mon's reign (2 Ch 1 1^). After the building of Solomon's temple we hear no more of it, its furniture being then transferred to the more permanent building. 1-14. The Coverings. 1-6. The undermost covering. This is of linen ornamented with cherubim of ' cunning work,' i.e. of tapestry or embroidery. Ten pieces of material, each 28 x 4 cubits, are sewn together in two sets of five (v. 3), which are then joined at their edges by means of loops and golden ' taches,' i.e. clasps (vv. 4-6), to form one large covering 40 cubits long and 28 wide. Of this length, 30 cubits are taken up with the roof, leaving 10 cubits to hang down the back. The front is left open, to be afterwards closed with a separate hanging (v. 36). Of the breadth, 10 cubits form the roof, leaving 18 to hang down and form the two sides. The covering, it will be observed, does not reach the ground at the sides, but this is not necessary, as there is a base running all round supporting the wooden frame (v. 19). 7-13. The second covering. This is of goathair and is spread over the first. By joining eleven pieces, each 30 X 4 cubits, a covering is obtained 44 cubits long and 30 wide. The ampler width allows this covering to reach the ground at the sides. The extra length of 4 cubits is partly taken up by doubling back the edge a distance of 2 cubits, leaving 2 cubits the distribution of which is not clear (vv. 12, 13). 14. The outer coverings. Over the goathair covering are spread two others, one of red leather made of ramskin, and the other, the outermost, of seal- skin : see on 25 ^. The purpose of these opaque and heavy curtains is to exclude the light. 26. 15 EXODUS 27. 20 15-30. The wooden framework supporting the coverings. 15. The boards, as they are here called, are not solid, as then they would have been very heavy, and the cherubim embroidered upon the inner covering would not have been visible at all. It is best, with Professor Kennedy, to take them to be open frames consisting of two uprights connected with cross rails. These frames are 10 cubits in height and 1^ in width, and are kept upright by being let down with tenons and mortises into sockets (v. 19), which rest side by side upon the ground, and form a continuous base or plinth all round. Rigidity is secured by means of long bars running round the structure (v. 26). 18. The length of the side being 30 cubits, twenty frames are required for each side. 22. Sides] RV ' hinder part ' : the W. end is meant. The tabernacle is 10 cubits in width, measured from curtain to curtain. As only six frames, amounting to 9 cubits, are required for the end, it would appear that 1 cubit was taken up with the thickness of the side frames with their stiffening bars. The frames were probably 6 in. deep and the bars 3 in. 23, 24. The exact meaning of these vv. is obscure, but they suggest that the two corners of the back wall were strengthened by means of an extra frame in the form of a sloping buttress. In v. 24 read with RV, ' they shall be double beneath, and in like manner they shall be entire unto the top thereof unto one (or, the first) ring.' The foot of the additional frame would be set back a little, giving the appearance of being ' double beneath,' and the frame would slope in to the top of the up- right, where it would be fastened to it. 25. Eight boards] i.e. six upright and two extra for the sloping buttresses. 26-28. In order to give rigidity to the up- right frames five bars are run along the three sides of the tabernacle through rings attached to the frames. The middle bar runs from end to end ; the others, it is implied, do not (v. 28). 27. The two sides westward] RV ' the hinder part westward,' as in v. 22. 31-33. The dividing veil. This is of the same material as the inner covering, linen tapestry, embroidered with chei-ubim, and is supported upon four pillars at a distance of 10 cubits from the back wall or 20 cubits from the entrance (see on v. 33). It screens off the Most Holy Place. 33. Under the taches] under the joining of the covering forming the roof which was at a distance equal to five widths of the material counting from the entrance : see on vv. 1-6. 36. The hanging curtain forming the door, RV ' the screen.' This closes the tabernacle on the E. side, and is supported by five pillars dividing the entrance into four equal spaces. CHAPTER 27 Thr Altar of Burnt Offering. The Court of the Tabernacle. The Oil FOR the Lamps 1-8. The Altar of Burnt Offering. This is a hollow chest of acacia wood over- laid with bronze, and stands within the court, midway between the outer entrance and the door of the tabernacle. 1 . The approximate size of the altar is 7^ ft. square and 4i ft. high : see on 20^6. 2. The horns] The form and significance of these horns are doubtful. They were very important, and seem to have been regarded as the most sacred part of the altar (cp. Am 3 1"*). The blood of sin offerings was smeared upon them (Lv4is), and this was done also at the consecration of the priests (Ex2d^'^ LvS^^^^ Criminals clung to them as an asylum (1 K 1 ^o 228^ Whether sacrificial victims were bound to them is doubtful, as the text is corrupt in the only passage where this practice seems to be alluded to (Psll827). It has been sug- gested that the horns of the altar have some connexion with the worship of Jehovah in the form of a bull : cp. 32*. Of the same] RV ' of one piece with it.' 4. A grate] The position and purpose of this gi-ating are not clear. It may have been a grating suspended by rings inside the altar, allowing the ashes, blood, and fat of the victims to drain off into the earth with which in all probability the hollow altar was filled. Or it may have been intended to carry the fii'e, or the victims over the fire. Some take it to be a piece of ornamental open-work extending downwards on each side, from the ledge to the ground, or the ledge itself : see on v. 5. 5. Compass of the altar] RV 'ledge round the altar.' This seems to have been a kind of projecting step or narrow platform running round the altar halfway up, on which the officiating priests stood. 9-19. The Court of the Tabernacle. This is a sacred enclosure, open to the sky, surrounding the tabernacle, formed of a fence of linen curtains 5 cubits in height suspended on pillars of bronze. In form it is an oblong 100 cubits by 50. The Court is open to all worshippers. lo. Fillets] Probably rods connecting the pillars with each other. 14. The hangings of one side] The entrance is in the middle of the E. side and is 20 cubits wide, leaving 15 cubits at each side of it. 19. Pins] Tent pegs. 20, 21. The Oil for the Lamps. 20. Pure olive oil beaten RV] Oil extracted by beating olives in a mortar without heat. It is the purest kind of oil. To burn always] As there was no window in the tabernacle it is probable, though nowhere asserted, that the 76 27. 21 EXODUS 28.36 lights burned day and night: cp. Lv 241-4 Nu8i-i. 21. Tabernacle of the congregation] RV 'tent of meeting.' So always; see on 2522. Before the testimony] see on IG^i. Order it from evening to morning] This may mean that the lamps were trimmed evening and morning : see on the preceding v. CHAPTER 28 The Priestly Garments 1. All Israel is a 'kingdom of priests' (see on 196), but for the special service of the sanc- tuary Aaron and his descendants are selected and solemnly consecrated : see Lv8, 9. Nadab and Abihu died (Lv 10) and the priesthood was continued in the descendants of Eleazar and Ithamar : see iCh 241-6, and on ]Sru25i2. 2. Holy garments] The garments are holy because they are specially set apart and con- secrated for use in the sanctuary. 3. Whom I have filled vvith the spirit of wisdom] God is the source not only of all spiritual grace, but of every intellectual faculty and artistic gift : cp. Isa 28 23-29 Jasli7, and see on Sl-t. 6-12. The Ephod. This is a kind of waistcoat, made of varie- gated material, supported by straps passing over the shoulders and bound round the waist with a girdle. On each of the shoulder-straps is an onyx stone engraved with the names of six tribes of Israel. On the front of the ephod and attached to it by means of gold chains and rings is a pouch called the 'breastplate' (v. IS'-)- 6. The gold was in the form of threads worked into the pattern ; see on 39 3. Cunning work is again embroidery as in 261. 8. Cu- rious girdle] RV ' cunningly woven band ' : i.e. embroidered. 9-12. The engraving of gems was an art well known to the Egyptians. The names were those of the twelve tribes. In v. 12 the stones are called stones of memorial unto the children of Israel. The high priest wore these stones when he ministered before the Lord, as the representative of the people. They served as a kind of visible supplication of His gracious remembrance. 13. Ouches] The word, which is properly 'nouche,' means a rosette or button of gold filigree in which the stone is set. 14. The chains are for attaching the breast- plate to the ephod : see vv. 22-25. 15-30. The breastplate] This is really a pouch, one span, or half a cubit, square, made of the same material as the ephod, and orna- mented on the outside with twelve jewels set in four rows, each stone being engraved with the name of a tribe. The pouch is intended to hold the Urim and Thummira, by means of which God's judgments are declared (see on v. 30), and is therefore here called the breast- plate of judgment. 16. Doubled] so as to form a pouch. 17-21. It is not easy to identify the stones mentioned in this and the following vv., the meaning of the Hebrew words being doubtful. The stones in the first row are probably a red jasper, a yellowish green serpentine, and an emerald. In the second row a red garnet, a lapis lazuli, and an onyx. In the third row a yellow agate, a black and white agate, and an amethyst. In the fourth row a yellow jas- per, a beryl, and a dark green jasper. With this list of stones may be compared that in Ezk28i3, and that in Rev 2119.20 (the founda- tions of the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem). 22. Chains at the ends of wreathen work] RV ' chains like cords, of wreathen work.' 30. The Urim and the Thummim] The literal meaning of these words is given in RM, ' the Lights and the Perfections.' The Urim and Thummim are nowhere described, but there can be no doubt that they were material objects, as they are said to be put in the breastplate, which was a pocket : cp. also LvS^. From 1 S 28 6 we learn that the Urim (and Thum- mim) served as one of three ways by means of which the divine will might be ascertained : cp. Nu272i. In all probability they were two images or jewels, engraved with distinguishing characters, used in casting lots. In this con- nexion 1814^8-42 is instructive. V. 41 in our Hebrew text there is evidently mutilated. The Gk. and Lat. versions read, ' If the iniquity be in me or Jonathan my son, give Urim ; and if the iniquity be in the people, give Thummim.' On the casting of lots see on Nu26s^. and cp. Lv 168 1S239-12 307,8 Ac 126. 31. The robe of the ephod] This is a frock or cassock, woven entirely of blue, without sleeves, drawn over the head, and worn under the ephod. Its chief characteristic is a row of golden bells attached to the skirt which sounded when the high priest moved, and enabled the people to follow him with their thoughts and prayers when he went into the Holy Place as their representative before God. 32. Habergeon] A sleeveless jacket. 33. Hem] RV ' skirts.' The pomegranate is a tree with a fruit like an apple, with a juicy pulp and full of seeds (hence the name, which means grained or seeded apple), exten- sively cultivated and highly prized in the East. The Heb. name is riinmon^ which enters into many place-names. The pome- granates here are embroidered on the skirt of the robe. The bells are hung upon it. 35. His sound] i.e. its sound : see on Lv 255. That he die not] To enter God's pre- sence carelessly is profanation and punishable with death. 36-38. The mitre] This is made of fine linen, and is in the form of a turban. Fas- tened in front of it is a plate of pure gold 77 28. 38 EXODUS 29. 22 with the inscription HOLINESS TO THE LORD (RY ' HOLY TO THE LORD'). 38. The iniquity of the holy things] The ' holy things ' are the offerings of the people. As no offerings are ever worthy of God, their acceptance by Him is an act of grace. The high priest, when he enters the divine pre- sence in the manner prescribed by God Him- self, ' bears the iniquity of the holy things,' which are accepted in spite of the unworthi- ness necessarily attaching to them. For the lofty ideal of the sanctification, not only of what is used in divine service in the narrower sense of the term, but in every department of what is called secular life, see Zechl420,2i_ 39. The coat is different from the robe (see 29 ^). It is an under-garment or shirt of fine linen fastened with an embroidered girdle. 40. Bonnets] RY 'headtires': close fitting caps, probably of a different shape from the turban of the high priest. 41. Anoint them] see on 29''. Consecrate] lit. 'fill the hand.' The expression probably refers to some sym- bolic action indicating the giving of authority at a ceremony of installation to a sacred office : op. 2924. CHAPTER 29 The Consecration of the Priesthood Cp. Lv 8 9. The form of consecration consists of four things, (1) ablution (v. 4), (2) investiture with the holy garments (vv. 6-9), (3) anointing with holy oil (v. 7), and (4) offering of sacrifices (vv. 10*). 1. Without blemish] see on 125. 2. Unleavened bread] see on 12^. Tem- pered] RY ' mingled.' Oil is a common ingre- dient of cakes in the East: see e.g. IK 17 12, and cp. Lv2S'6. 4. Wash them with water] A symbolic action representing the need of inward purity in those who approach God. Washing is frequently enjoined as an act of ceremonial purification: see e.g. 30i7-2i Lv 11 25 148 1513, etc., and cp. Mk73.4. The symbol is retained in Christian baptism: cp. 1 Pet 3 21. 6. Holy crown] the golden plate with the sacred inscription: see 28^6. 7. Anointing oil] This oil was specially prepared: see 3023-25. Anointing with oil is an act symbolising a special consecration to the service of God. Jacob anointed the stone at Beth-el with oil (Gn 28 iS; cp. 31 13 35 14), and the tabernacle and its furniture were also anointed (see 302*5-29 Lv 8 10,11). Priests were consecrated by anointing (as here) and also kings (see ISlQi 1613 2K1112), who are ac- cordingly called the ' Lord's anointed ' (1 S 20 ^ 2S114 Ps22 8938,39). The Hebrew word for ' anoint ' is mashach, whence is derived the word Messiah, which is used figuratively to describe one who is consecrated by God for a special purpose: cp. e.g. Isa45i. Li a unique sense it denotes the Messiah or Christ, the latter word being the Greek equivalent of the Hebrewterm: see Isa61iLk4i8. InNT. Chris- tians are called the anointed of God, as having received the unction of the Holy Spirit: see 2 Cor 121 iJn220,27. 10-37. The sacrifices of Consecration. These signify the self-sm-render to God of those on whose behalf they are presented, symbolised by the laying of the hands upon the head of the victim and its subsequent slaughter: see onLvl*. 10. The bullock] is for a sin offering on behalf of Aaron and his sons. For the significance of this sacrifice see Lv4. 12, Cp. Lv47. Upon the horns of the altar] see on 27 2. 13. The internal fat, like the blood, is regarded as the seat of life, and must always be offered to God by burning upon the altar: see on 23 is and Lv33. The caul that is above the liver] RY 'caul upon the liver,' is the fatty covering of that organ. 14. Shalt thou burn] see Lv4ii.i2, and on Lv42 i'''. 21. The head of Aaron is already anointed (v. 7), so that this sprinkling with blood and oil may refer only to the garments of himself and his sons. It is uncertain whether any save the high priest was anointed upon the head. In Lv 4 3, 5, I6 ' the anointed priest ' is the high priest (cp. Lv21io). On the other hand, Ex 2841 enjoins the anointing of Aaron's sons, which, however, may refer to this second anointing. 22. The rump] RY rightly, ' the fat tail.' The tail of one species of the Syrian sheep is very long and broad, weighing sometimes from 78 29. 23 EXODUS 80. 6 ten to fifteen pounds, and requiring to be sup- ported on a little wheeled carriage. It is considered a great delicacy, its fat being used for cooking instead of butter. 23. The meal offering which usually ac- companies a peace offering: see Lv2 7ii-"i. 24. Put all in the hands of Aaron] thus inducting him and his sons into the duties of their office. The ' waving ' consisted in moving the offerings horizontally in the direction of the sanctuary, in token that they were first presented to Grod and then returned by Him to the officiating priests. This ceremony was performed at the presentation of a peace offering (Lv7 -S-34)^ of the first fruits of harvest (Lv23ii>i2), and of the two loaves at the Feast of Weeks (Lv 2320), and also in connexion with the cleansing of a leper (Lv 14 12, 24). gge also on NuS^i. 26. It shall be thy part] The law of the •wave offering prescribes that the breast should be assigned to the officiating priest ; on this occasion to Moses: see Lv7 ^s-si. After their consecration the ceremony is per- formed by the priests, who receive the breast and right shoulder as their portion. See vv. 27,28. 27. Heave offering] 'Heaving' and ' waving ' seem to refer to the same ceremony of presenting the parts first to Grod. 29. Shall be his sons' after him] cp. Nu 20 26. Here ' sons ' is a general term signifying de- scendants. The priesthood was hereditary in the family of Aaron. 30. Shall put them on seven days] see on v. 35. 31. The characteristic feature of the peace offering was the sacrificial meal partaken of by the offerers, expressive of their communion with God and one another : see on Lv3. In the holy place] In the court before the door of the tent of meeting : see LvS^i. 33. Stranger] One not a priest, a layman : cp. 3033 Lv22io Nuisi 310 : see also on 1219. 34. See on 12^0. 35. The ceremony is to be repeated each day for seven days : cp. Lv833, and for the fulfilment of the injunc- tion, LvB 9. 36. When thou hast made] RV ' when thou makest,' or, rather, ' by thy making.' The altar was consecrated by anoint- ing : see Lv8 10,11, and see on v. 7. 37. Shall be holy] see on Lv23. 38-42. The Daily Sacrifice. Every morning and evening a lamb is to be offered as a burnt offering on behalf of the whole community as an act of public worship : see on Lvl. It is accompanied with a meal offering and a drink offering, which are sacrifices of thanksgiving. It was offered regularly from the time of its institution down to the destruction of Jeru- salem, except for a short period (168-165 B.C.) during the wars of the Maccabees. 40. Tenth deal] tenth part of an ephah : see on IG^^. A hin is about a gallon and a half. 41. Meatoffering] RV 'meal offer- 79 ing': see Lv2. 42. Tabernacle of the con- gregation] RV ' tent of meeting ' : see on 2522. 43. Sanctified by my glory] see 4034, and on 32 16 10. CHAPTER 30 The Altar of Incense. The Ransom Money. The Layer. The Anointing Oil. The Incense I -10. The Altar of Incense. The use of incense in worship was probably due to the worshipper's desire to honour God by offering to Him what he enjoys himself. ' Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart ' (Prov 27 ^). It served also to counteract the strong smell of burning flesh, and was therefore usually pre- sented as an accompaniment of sacrifice, and offered either in censers (LvlO^ I612 Nu 1 6 1'''), or on an altar erected for the purpose, as here. In Scripture incense is an emblem of prayer, probably because its smoke ascends to the clouds, where God is supposed to dwell : see e.g. Ps 141 2 Rev 5 8 83. The existence of this altar of incense at the time of Moses has been disputed. In about one hundred places men- tion is made of ' the altar ' as if there was only one, that of burnt offering ; no mention is made of an altar of incense in Lvl6, where it might have been expected ; it is not alluded to among the furniture of Solomon's temple ; and the directions given here for its construc- tion would have stood more naturally in c. 25 or 26, where the omission is somewhat strange. It is accordingly supposed that this passage, and others where an altar of incense is spoken of, are of later date : see on v. 6. Indeed, the whole of chs. 30, 31 is believed by some to be a later addition. Observe the solemn conclusion at the end of c. 29. 2. On the horns, see on 272. Of the same] see on 2531. 3. Pure gold] Hence this altar is called 'the golden altar' (3938 4026 Nu4ii Heb94 RM, etc.), to distinguish it from the altar of burnt offering, which is called the ' brazen altar' (3939). Crown] i.e. rim or moulding, as in 2511. 6. Before the vail] This means outside the veil and, therefore, in the Holy Place, not in the Holy of Holies, where it would be in- accessible save once a year, when the High Priest entered on the Day of Atonement (Lvl 6) : see on 40^. In Heb9*, however, it is said to have stood within the Holy of Holies. There seems to have been some doubt, therefore, as to its position in the tabernacle, a fact which is reflected in the construction of this v., which is overloaded and apparently self-contradictory. The altar is before the veil, and it is also before the mercy seat. The LXX omits the words ' before the mercy seat . . testimony.' This 30. 9 EXODUS 31. 4 confusion corroborates the view that this altar did not belong to the original furniture of the tabernacle : see on vv. 1-10. 9. Strange incense] i.e. incense prepared differently from that prescribed in vv. 34-38 : see on LvlQi. Meat offering] E,V 'meal offering' : see on Lv2. 10. Make atone- ment upon it] E.V ' for it.' Owing to the imperfection of all human worship, the altar itself needs to be cleansed with a special rite : see on 28^8 29^6. The reference here is to the ceremonial of the yearly Day of Atone- ment, for which see Lvl6. Most holy] see on Lv23. I1-16. The Ransom Money. It is here enacted that, when a census is taken, every person above the age of twenty shall pay half a shekel as his ransom. At the time of a census the people would be impressed with the great privilege of membership in God's chosen nation, and at the same time with their unworthiness to be reckoned in a ' kingdom of priests' : see on 19^'^. This need of atonement underlies the payment of a money ransom, which is here called a ' ransom, or atonement, for your souls.' It is to be dis- tinguished from the money given as a redemp- tion for the firstborn, for which see IS^^. For the use made of the ransom money, see 3825-28. 12. When thou takest the sum] A census of the people was probably in contemplation at this time, and was made twice during the forty years' sojourn in the wilderness : see Nu 1 and 26. Whether it was done regularly does not appear. In time the half shekel became an annual tax devoted to the mainten- ance of the public sacrifices in the Temple : see e.g. Mtl724. Plague] as the result of disobedience. 13. Half a shekel] A silver shekel was equal to fully half-a-crown. The shekel of the sanctuary seems to have been a standard weight, and was probably preserved by the priests in the sanctuary. 14. Twenty was the age when liability to military service began (Nul^). 15. All give alike, for it is a ransom for the soul or life, and all souls are equal in the sight of God. 16. For the service of the tabernacle] see 3825-28. 17-21. The Laver. This was of bronze (see on 25^), and stood in the court of the tabernacle between the altar of burnt offering and the door of the sanctuary, and held the water required for the ablutions of the priests (vv. 19-21 ; see on 29*). According to 388 it was made of the mirrors of the serving women : see on Nu4ii. Solomon's Temple had ten lavers (1 K 7 27-43). 22-33. The Holy Anointing Oil. 23. Calamus] The word means ' reed ' or ' cane.' Several species of aromatic reed are known in the East. 24. Cassia] a kind of cinnamon of a very pungent flavour. An hin] about a gallon and a half. 25. Apothecary] RV ' perfumer.' In the warm East ointments and perfumes are greatly employed as cos- metics, and the art of preparing these is carried to a high degree of perfection. Among the Jews there was a guild of perfumers in later times. 29. Most holy] see on Lv23. 32. Upon man's flesh shall it not be poured] It must be reserved for the priests, and not used as an ordinary unguent : see v. 33. 33. Stranger] one who is not a priest, as in 2933. Cutoff] see on 1215. 34-38. The Incense. 34. Stacte] a kind of gum, probably myrrh. Onycha] part of the shell of a shell fish. It burns with a pungent odour. Galbanum] a gum resin. Frankincense] a fragrant gum obtained by slitting the bark of an Indian tree, which was also to be found in ancient times in Arabia: see e.g. Isa606 Ezk2722. The substance called in modern times ' common frankincense ' is obtained largely from fir trees. The English word means ' pure incense.' 35. RV ' and thou shalt make of it incense, a perfume after the art of the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy.' Salt, as preventing corruption, is the symbol of purity and durability ; it was used with all sacrifices both animal and vegetable : see Lv2i3 Ezr69 Ezk43 2i Mk9-'9. Among the Arabs salt is the emblem of fidelity and lasting friendship. To have ' eaten salt ' with a person, and so partaken of his hospitality, is equivalent to a pledge of mutual and indisso- luble amity. Hence in OT. a ' covenant of salt ' is one that cannot be broken : see Lv 2 13 Nul8i9 2Chl35, and cp. Ezr4i4 (AM) and Mk950. 37. This particular compound is not to be used for any profane purpose : cp. the similar direction in the case of the holy anointing oil (vv. 32, 33). CHAPTER 31 The Appointment of Bezaleel and Aho- LiAB. The K-eepixg of the Sabbath 2. By name] indicating a verv special call : cp. 3312 Isa43i 451.3,4 jnloX Bezaleel] R V ' Bezalel ' : see 1 Ch 2 is-20. For the identi- fication of the grandfather of Bezaleel with the Hur of Ex 17 10 there is nothing beyond the similarity of names. 3. See on 283. 4. To devise cunning Tworks] Divine in- spiration does not reduce man to a mere ma- chine or passive instrument. It is compatible with originality of invention. This applies not only to the mechanical arts as here, but also to intellectual gifts. It heightens and purifies, but does not supersede the normal faculties. Observe that ' cunning ' is used here in its 80 31. 10 EXODUS 32. 20 etymological sense of 'knowing' or 'skilful.' See Psl375. 10. Cloths of service] RV 'finely wrought garments,' a general term including what follows : see 39 1> ^i. 12-17. The reason why the injunction to observe the sabbath is repeated here and again in 35 ^"3 before the account of the carrying out of the preceding instructions is probably the close connexion of the worship of the tabernacle with the observance of the day of rest. 1 3. A sign] Like circumcision the sabbath is a sign or sacrament marking the covenant rela- tion between Jehovah and His people. Cp. for circumcision GnlT^i E,o4ii, and for the sabbath Ezk'20i2 Isa 56 **'*'. Ancient profane writers frequently refer to these two things as the distinguishing characteristics of a Jew. 14. Shall be put to death . . shall be cut off] The two expressions are not always synony- mous ; see on 12 i^. 18. Two tables of testimony] cp. 16^* 25^6 Written with the finger of God] see on 24 ^^ CHAPTER 32 The Idolatry of the People 1-6. The historical narrative is here re- sumed from 24 1^. Becoming impatient at the prolonged absence of Moses on the mount (forty days, 24 1^), and despairing of his return, the people prevail upon Aaron to make a god to go before them. From the earrings of the men and women he accordingly makes a golden bull, to which divine honours are paid. 1. Unto Aaron] Aaron and Hur had been left in charge by Moses ; see 24 1-*. Make us gods] RM ' a god.' The Hebrew word for God has a plural form. In making this demand it is doubt- ful whether the people intended to abandon the worship of Jehovah altogether, or wished simply to have a visible representation of Him, in other words, whether their sin was a breach of the first commandment of the Decalogue or the second. The words of Aaron in vv. 4, 5 seem to indicate that he at least regarded the golden bull as an image of the true God ; but in v. 8 the people are charged with deserting Jehovah for another god. The one sin naturally leads to the other. The worship of God by means of images degrades God, and the image gradually usurps His place in the mind of the worshipper. See on 15 n 203,4. 2. Earrings] RV 'rings.' Taken by itself the word may mean either earrings or nose-rings. Here the former are expressly intended, but in 35 22 both may be included. Among Eastern peoples earrings were formerly worn both by men and women (' your sons ' here ; cp. Jg 8 24), not only as ornaments but as amulets or charms. In modern times men have discontinued the use of earrings, and nose-rings are worn only by the Bedouin women. 81 4. After he had made it] read with RV, ' and made it.' The calf was really a bullock. It is usually supposed that the symbol was derived from the worship of the Egyptians. But it was a living bull, not an image, that was wor- shipped in Egypt. More probably, therefore, the symbol was connected with the worship of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, of which some traces may have survived among the descend- ants of Abraham. A common image with the Assyrians is that of a bull with wings and a human head, emblematic of strength and wisdom. See on the cherubim, 2518, also IK 122s. 5. A feast to the LORD] i.e. to Jehovah. See on v. 1. Feasting was a common ac- companiment of sacrifice ; see on 24 ^-n. On the nature of the play in this case see vv. 18, 19, 25, where we learn that it included sing- ing and dancing. Cp. Ex 15 20, 21 Jg 2 119-21 2S612-14 iK1826mg. Isa3029. 7-14. God tells Moses of the sin of the people and of His purpose to destroy them. At the intercession of Moses they are spared. 7. Thy people which thou broughtest out] By their own act the people have broken the covenant bond uniting them to Jehovah. In V. 11 Moses pleads that they are the people of Jehovah. 9. Stiffnecked] This common metaphor is taken from a stubborn ox that refuses to submit to the yoke. Cp. ZechTH Hos 4 16 (R V ' stubborn heifer '), Jer 1 7 23 Neh 3 & Ps75'^. ID. Cp. the promise made to Abra- ham in Gnl2 2. The people having judged themselves unworthy of the promise (cp. Ac 1 3 46), a fresh start will be made with Moses who will be the founder of a new nation. Cp. Nul4i2. II. In a spirit of noble generosity Moses effaces himself and intercedes with all his soul for the people. See on v! 31. He does not minimise their sin (cp. v. 31), but with a holy boldness he pleads (1) that they are God's own people whom He has redeemed from Egypt (v. 11, cp. 3313), (2) that their destruction will be misunderstood by the Egyptians (v. 12), and that (3) it will make the promises to Abraham of no effect (v. 13). 12. See on Dt32 27, and refs. there. 13. Israel] This name is employed rather than Jacob because it sug- gests the ' prince that had power with God and prevailed ' : see Gn 32 28. 15-29. The suppression of the idolatry. 15,16. See intro. to c. 20 and on 2412. jy^ Joshua] see on 24 15. 19. And brake them] The people had already broken the law contained in them which was the basis of the covenant. 20. Burnt itl It was probably not solid, but consisted of a wooden core overlaid with gold: cp. Isa40i9,20 44iL'-i9. The total abolition of the idol is indicated in the threefold treat- ment of burning it, reducing it to powder, 32. 22 EXODUS 33. 12 and casting it into the water: cp. DtO^i. This last action was more than a means of dispers- ing the very atoms of which it was composed. The people were made to drink the water, a grim symbol of retribution, with which may be compared the procedure in connexion with the 'water that causeth a curse' in NuS^s.s^; see also 2K23'5. 22. Mischief] RV ' evil ' : Aaron tries to put the whole responsibility on the people. He pleads that they intimidated him. 24. There came out this calf] as if by accident, a manifestly poor apology. Observe that Aaron's two pleas of compulsion and accident are in various forms most commonly adduced in palliation of wrongdoing. From Dt 9 -^ we learn that Aaron's abetting of the people's sin evoked the severe displeasiu-e of God, and that his life was only spared on the interces- sion of Moses. 25. Were naked] RV ' were broken loose.' For the use of the word in the literal sense see e.g. on NuS^^. Here it is most probably used in the metaphorical sense of ' unruly ' : cp. 2Ch28i9. Read on with RV, 'for Aaron had let them loose for a derision among their enemies,' i.e. not with the in- tention, but with the result, that they be- came a derision. The lapse of professedly religious people is not only sinful, but brings religion itself into disrepute. 26. Who Is on the LORD'S side?] The contrast between the characters of Moses and Aaron is strikingly brought out all through this narrative. Aaron appears as timid and compliant; while Moses is rigidly loyal, fear- less, ready to stand alone if need be on the Lord's side, impulsive (v. 19) and yet wholly unselfish (v. 32). Observe that it is the sons of Levi, members of the same tribe to which Moses belongs, that come to his call. 29. Consecrate yourselves] lit. ' fill your hands'; see on 28-ii. For upon read with RY ' against.' The claims of kinship must yield to those of God and duty: cp. MtlOST Lkl426 and Mtl2'i6-50. The zeal of the Le- vites is rewarded with a blessing, by which doubtless is meant the priesthood: see on Dt339, and cp. the similar reward of Phinehas, Nu25i^. 30-35. Intercession of Moses. 30. Make an atonement] Something more was required than the punishment that had been inflicted on a portion of the people. 32. If thou wilt forgive their sin] This form of sentence is used in Hebrew to express an earnest desire or passionate entreaty, and is equivalent to ' O that thou wouldest ' . . or 'O if thou wouldest but'..Cp. e.g. Ps957 RV, ' To-day, 0 that ye would hear,' and 1 Ch4io, '0 that thou wouldest bless me,' lit. ' If thou wilt bless me.' If not, blot me . . out of thy book] The figure is taken from the registers in which the names of citizens were enrolled: see e.g. Isa43 Jer2230 EzklS^. So God is represented as having a book in which are inscribed the names of those who are to be preserved alive. When He blots out a name that person dies. The Book is therefore a Book of Life: cp. Ps6928Danl2i Lkl020 Phil 4 3 Rev 3 5 13 « 20^2 2219. The Jews be- lieve that on New Year's Day God determines who shall live and who shall die in the course of the year, and that the decision is made final ten days afterwards on the Day of Atone- ment. Moses's prayer, therefore, is an ex- pression of his willingness to bear the penalty of the people's sin. For a similar instance of absolute self-sacrifice cp. St. Paul's words in Ro93. 33. Whosoever hath sinned] cp. Ezkl8^. 34. Mine Ang'el] see on 3 2. The angel here seems to be distinguished from God Him- self: see 333. On the other hand, the angel is virtually identified with God, for God's 'presence' goes with them (33 1^). I will visit their sin upon them] Though the people were not at once destroyed they did not escape all the consequences of their sin. CHAPTER 33 The Intercession of Moses (continued) 6. By the mount Horeb] RV ' from mount Horeb onward ' : this implies that they ceased wearing their ornaments. Their humiliation was lasting. Horeb] i.e. Sinai: see on 3^. 7. Moses took the tabernacle] RV ' Moses used to take the tent, . . and he called it. The tent of meeting': see on 25^2. The tent here is most probably not the Tabernacle whose construction is prescribed in chs. 25-31. The words describe the practice of Moses be- fore its erection, the account of which follows in chs. 35-40. 9. Descended] from the top of the mount. After the erection of the Tabernacle the cloud rested upon it: see 4034-38. 10. Worshipped] bowed themselves to the ground. 11. Face to face] A peculiar privilege: cp. 199 Nul2«-8 Dt34io. Verse 23 shows that the expression ' face to face ' is not to be pressed literally, but to be understood as dis- tinct from a revelation by means of dreams or visions : see especially Nu 12'^-s. Joshua] see on 179. The priests and Levites were not yet formally consecrated to the service of the sanctuary. 12-17. The promise of God to go with the people is renewed. 12. Thou hast not let me know] The whole of this passage from v. 7 may be independent of what goes before (cp. the expression ' used to take ' in v. 7). Otherwise we must suppose that Moses has not clearly understood the 82 33. 13 EXODUS 34. 29 meaning of the promise ' I will send an angel before thee ' in v. 2. I know thee by name] see on 31 2. 13. Thy way] thy purpose. Thy people] see on 32 ^iH. 14. My presence] lit. ' my face.' The ex- pression is equivalent to ' myself in person ' : cp. e.g. 2 S 1711, where the words are literally ' and that thy face go into battle.' The ' angel of God's presence ' (cp. Isa 63 9) is not the angel that stands in the presence of Grod but in whom the personal presence of God is manifested : see on 3 2. Will give thee rest] i.e. a peaceful settlement in Canaan : cp. Dt3 '^^ Josh21't4 23i. 16. Separated] see on lO^-G Nu239. 18-23. -^ divine manifestation asked and promised. 18. Shew me thy glory] What Moses asks, not out of curiosity but as a confirmation of the promise in v. 14, is impossible. No man can look upon God's unveiled glory and live (v. 20 : see on 199 249-11). Even the angels cannot do so (Isa 6 2). 19. My goodness] A revelation is vouchsafed, but it is one accom- modated to human capacity. It is not further described, but probably consisted in the pro- clamation in the following chapter, vv. 6, 7. This gracious veiling of the ineffable glory and the revelation of God in mercy are both ful- filled in the person of Christ : see Jn 1 1* 2 Cor 46. 23. My back parts] Not the full manifestation of the divine radiance, but its afterglow. The most that human faculties can comprehend of God even in their exalted moments is a faint reflection of His essential glory : cp. 1 Cor 13 12. CHAPTER 34 The Eenewal of the Covenant In token that the people are forgiven, God renews His covenant relation with them. The conditions are the same as before. The Deca- logue is inscribed on two fresh tables, and the main provisions of the ceremonial law are repeated. I. Which thou brakest] There is no re- proach in these words. Moses is nowhere blamed for his righteous indignation. He was ' angry and sinned not.' 3. See on 19i-'i3_ 5. See on 33 19. On the name of The LORD see on 31^. 6. RV ' The Lord, the Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth ' : this is perhaps the highest utterance of revelation, and is frequently quoted by OT. writers : see e.g. Neh9i7 Ps86i5 103s 1458 Joel2i3 Jon42, also Nu 141s. The divine attributes here pro- claimed are not God's dread majesty and power, but His mercy and truth. He is merci- ful, but He cannot overlook transgression. 7. That will by no means clear the guilty] 83 i. e. will not allow the guilty to pass unpunished. The same words are rendered in 20 ^ ' will not hold him guiltless,' and in Jer 30 n ' will not leave unpunished.' Visiting the iniquity of the fathers] see on 20^. 12-17. The warning against idolatry is solemnly repeated, and the people are for- bidden to make covenant or intermarry with their idolatrous neighbours in Canaan. See on 2332, 33 and on Nu 251*5-18. 13. Images] RV 'pillars,' or 'obelisks' : see 24*. Groves] i.e. 'things graven,' RY'Asherim.' The Canaanitish shrine contained an altar, near which stood a stone pillar ai;id an Asherah (plur. Asherim). The latter was a wooden pole or stump of a tree planted in the ground : seeJg6 2t3lK15i3 2K17i0 237,andonlK14i^ Immoral rites were practised at these shrines in honour of the reproductive forces of nature. 14. Whose name /.s- Jealous] on name, see on 313, and on Jealous, on 20^. 15. Whoring after their gods] The cove- nant bond between Jehovah and Israel is frequently compared with a marriage (see e.g. JerSi-i Hos2i9>20)^ and idolatry, which is unfaithfulness to Jehovah, is regarded as adultery, a view all the more natural seeing that idolatry and immorality so frequently went together (see on ' groves ' v. 13 and on Lv 1929). For this conception of idolatry, see e.g. Lv 177 Nu 1433 Jer3i-20 1327 Hos2 (es- pecially vv. 13, 16)Ezk2030,3i. in NT. the Church is called the Bride of Christ. See Eph523-32 Rev 19 7-9 212,9,17. 18-26. See on 2312-19. 21. Earing] i.e. ploughing. At these busy and critical seasons there would be a special temptation to work upon the sabbath day. 24. Desire thy land, when thou shalt go up] i.e. take advantage of your absence to despoil your homes. God will protect their property while they are worshipping Him. 28-35. Moses descends from the Mount with the new Tables. 28. Similar fasts are recorded of Elijah ( 1 K 1 9 S) and of our Lord (Mt 4 2) : see on 2 21. He wrote] The subject is God : see v. 1. 29. Wist not] knew not. Shone while he talked with him] RV ' shone by reason of his speaking with him.' His face was lit up with a radiance which was the reflection of the divine glory, and served to attest the message he delivered to the people. Compare what is said of our Lord at His Transfiguration (Mtl72) and of Stephen at his martyrdom (Ac 6 15 7^6). The present instance is a fine illustration of the power of unconscious in- fluence. The Heb. verb rendered ' shone ' in this passage is derived from the word meaning ' horn,' which is used figuratively to denote rays or flashes of light proceeding from a luminous object (see e.g. Hab 3 '^ with mg.). The Vulgate 34. 33 EXODUS 39. 39 (Latin version) accordingly says of Moses' face that it was cor/iuta, which has led to the curious representation of Moses with horns, as seen in early art. 33. Till Moses had done speaking with them] RV ' when Moses had done speaking with them.' Moses usually wore the veil, only putting it off when he entered the presence of God or spoke to the people. An interesting reminiscence of this is said to be seen in the Jewish synagogue, where the priest, in pro- nouncing the Aaronic benediction (Nu 6 24-2(3)^ veils his face with his tullith (see on Nu IS^""*^), ' lest the utterance of the words should bring up the glory that shone in the face of Moses and strike the people dead.' St. Paul refers to this incident in 2 Cor 3 '^-^s, and evidently understands that Moses wore the veil in order to hide the fadhig of the glory in his face (see vv. 7, 13). He accordingly sees in Moses' action an illustration -of the inferiority of the Jewish dispensation as compared with the Christian. The glory of the former was fading, transitory, and partly obscured ; that of the latter is permanent, unobstructed, ever in- creasing, and shared by all. 351-3. The Sabbath Law. See 31 is, and on 208-11. 3. Kindle no fire] an act involving work. This law is observed by pious Jews at the present day. They have fires in their houses on the sabbath, but they employ a gentile to light and tend them : see on 121*5. CHAPTERS 354-4038 An Account of the Construction of the Tabernacle and its Furniture. This section is an almost verbal repetition of chs. 25-31, describing the carrying out of the commands in those chapters by Moses and the people. 4-29. Moses invites the people to contribute the materials required, which they do with great liberality : cp. 36^-'^. See on 251-^. 22. Tablets] RV ' armlets,' or ' necklaces ' : cp. Nu315'^. 23. Red skins of rams] i.e. leather of rams' skins dyed red, as in 2614. 30-35. See on 31i-ii. CHAPTER 36 The "Work Begun. The Liberality OF THE People Cp. 1 Ch296-9 Ezr268-70 Neh7™-72. 8-38. The construction of the Tabernacle : see c. 26. 8. Made he them] The subject down to 3831 is Bezaleel : cp. 37 1 3822. CHAPTER 37 1-9. The Ark and Mercy seat : see 25 10-22. 10-16. Table of Shewbread : see 2523-30. 17-24. The Candlestick : see 2531-40. 25-28. The Altar of Incense : see 30 1-^. This is mentioned here in its natural position along with the other furniture of the Holy Place. 29. The Holy Oil, and the License : see 3022-38. CHAPTER 38 The Holy Furniture 1-7. The Altar of Burnt Offering : see 271-8. 8. The Laver : see 3017-21. Read with RY ' mirrors of the serving women which served at the door of the tent of meeting.' What service these women rendered is not said. They are only mentioned once again, in 1 S 2 22. They may have helped in the liturgical part of the worship by their singing and dancing. The Heb. word which indicates their service here is used of the Levites in Nu 4 23 g 2*. 9-20. The Court of the Tabernacle : see 279-19. 21-31. The Sum of the Precious Metals. 21. Ithamar] the youngest of the four sons of Aaron : see 6 23, and on 28 1. 24. The gold shekel is estimated to have been worth about £2 of our money, and the gold talent, which contained 3,000 shekels, about £6,000. The silver shekel was worth fully 2s. 6(/., and the silver talent about £400. 26. The number of persons given here is identical with the result of the census taken in the second month of the second year : see Nu 1 46. This suggests that the computations recorded here were made not exactly at this time but after the erection of the tabernacle. It is to be observed that the silver mentioned here is not that contributed voluntarily but what was obtained as ransom money (30ii-i6). The latter amount may for some reason have been substituted for the former in this passage. CHAPTER 39 The Making of the Holy Garments See c. 28, where the order is slightly different. I. Cloths of service] RV 'finely wrought garments,' as in 31 1'^. 2-7. The Ephod : see 286-12. 8-21. The Breastplate : see 2815-30. 22-26. The Robe of the Ephod : see 2831-35. 27-29. The Other Garments for the Priests : see 2839-«. 30, 31. The Plate for the Mitre (v. 28) : see 2836-38. 30. Holy crown] see on 29 6. 32-43. The completion of the work and its approval by Moses. Everything must be in accordance with the pattern shown him in the Mount (258,40). 38. The golden altar] the Altar of Incense : see on 30 3. 39. The brasen altar] the Altar of Burnt Offering : see 272, 84 40. 1 EXODUS— LEVITICUS INTRO. CHAPTER 40 The Tabernacle erected i-i6. Moses is commanded to uprear the Tabernacle and consecrate it, together with its furniture, and the priests by anointing them. 2. On the first day of the first month] i.e. of the month Abib (see on 12 2.'ii) in the second year after the exodus from Egypt (v. 17). They left Egypt on the fifteenth day of Abib, and arrived at Sinai in the third month : see 19 1. 4. The things . . to be set . . upon it] i.e. the shewbread (see v. 23 and on 26 2'^). 5. Before the ark] in a line with it but out- side the Holy of Holies : see v. 26, and see on 306. 9. Anoint the tabernacle] cp. 3026-29. 12. See 28 « 29^.'. 17-33. The Uprearing of the Tabernacle. 19. The tent over the tabernacle] Heb. ' the tent over the dwelling.' See on 25^, 26 intro. 20. The testimony] the two tables of stone : see on 16 3^. 21. Vail of the covering] RV ' veil of the screen ' : see on 26^-33. 28. Hanging at the door] RV ' screen of the door ' : see 26^6. 29. Moses offers the first daily sacrifice (29 ^'J). 33. The court round about the tabernacle] see 27^-19. 34-35. The Dwelling being prepared, the cloud descends and the glory of the Lord occupies the sanctuary. 34. A cloud] RV ' the cloud ' : it is the same cloud that has been so frequently men- tioned already : see 13 '-i, 19 ^ and note there, 33 P. The glory of the LORD] see 16 10 2417. 35. Cp. Lv 162 IKHio.ii 2 Ch 5 13, 14 72. 36-38. See on 13^1, and cp. Nu 9 15-23. LEVITICUS INTRODUCTION I. Title and Contents. The title Leviticus is prefixed to this section of the Pentateuch in the Greek Version of the OT., but it is not particularly appropriate, as the Levites are hardly mentioned in the book. Jewish writers call it Vaylkra (Heb. ' and He called '), from its opening word, or the ' Law, or Book, of Priests,' or the ' Book of Oiferings.' It may be described as a manual of religious cere- monies composed for the guidance of priests and worshippers. Its specific character is evident at a glance. It differs from the other books of the Pentateuch in being almost en- tirely a book of laws. There is very little narrative, and historical indications are scanty. Reference is made to Mt. Sinai as the scene where some at least of the laws were promul- gated (251 26*6 273*) ; in some passages it is implied that Israel is still leading a camp-life in the wilderness (412 14 ^ I610) ; the con- secration of Aaron and his sons is described in detail (8-10) ; and two incidents are nar- rated illustrating the punishment following a breach of the regulations (Nadab and Abihu, 101-7, the blasphemer, 24io-i6). With these few exceptions, which are more apparent than real, the incidents being introduced simply as illustrations (see on 2416), the contents of Leviticus consist entirely of laws, and these mainly of a ceremonial character (see intro. to c. 17). The twenty-seven chapters forming the book fall into four well-marked divisions as fol- lows. Part I. The Law of Sacrifice, chs. 1-7. This again consists of two sections : (a) Direc- tions addressed to the "Worshippers regarding the five main types of sacrifice, viz. the Burnt Offering (c. 1), the Meal Offering (c. 2), the Peace Offering (c. 3), the Sin Offering (4-513), and the Guilt Offering (51^-67), and (b) Directions addressed to the Priests in con- nexion with these sacrifices, which are dealt with in the same order, except that the Peace Offering comes last. Part 2. The Consecra- tion of the Priesthood, chs. 8-10. This com- prises the consecration of Aaron and his sons (c. 8), their installation into office (c. 9), and the death of Nadab and Abihu (c. 10). Part 3. The Law of Clean and Unclean, leading up to the ritual of the Day of Atonement, chs. ii-i6. This division treats of the uncleanness of certain meats (c. 11), of childbirth (c. 12), of leprosy (chs. 13, 14), of sexual discharges (c. 15), and the ceremonial of the Day of Atonement (c. 16). Part 4. The Law of Holiness, chs. 17-26. This is a miscellaneous collection of laws, many of them of a moral and religious character. It treats of sacrifice and eating of blood (c. 17), unlawful marriage and unchastity (c. 18), various moral and social duties, such as justice, kindness, purity, etc. (chs. 19, 20), duties of priests and matters of ritual (chs. 21, 22), the sacred seasons (c. 23), the shewbread and law of blasphemy (c. 24), 85 INTRO. LEVITICUS mxRO. the Sabbatical Year and Year of Jubilee (c. 25), and concludes with exhortations to keep the law (c. 26). The book closes with a chapter on Vows and Tithes with the man- ner of their commutation, in the form of an appendix (c. 27). 2. Origin and Composition. The general question of the authorship of the Pentateuch is treated in a separate article, to which refer- ence should be made. It will suffice to say here that, while much of the legislation con- tained in the book of Leviticus is of Mosaic origin, the book in its present form bears evidence of having been put together out of separate collections of laws. It is observed e.g. that the literary style is not uniform throughout, chs. 17-26 occupying in this respect a position quite by themselves (see the introductory note to this section in the commentary) ; that laws relating to the same subject are not always placed together ; that sometimes the same laws are repeated in different parts of the book ; and that the contents appear in the form of groups, many of which are provided with separate headings and conclusions (see e.g. 7^'^'^'^ 1146,47 1359 1454-57 1532,33 264«3, and the introductory notes to chs. 21 and 25). Such features make it tolerably certain that in its present form Leviticus is ' a collection of smaller collections, or a collection added to from time to time.' It need not be thought surprising that this is so. In itself, ritual is subject to the law of change and development, and many regulations, origin- ally framed for a people leading a nomadic life in the wilderness, would require modifica- tion when that people dwelt in cities, built their temple, and led a settled agricultural life. We may believe, therefore, that some details in these laws are of later date than others, and that what we have in the book of Leviticus is the final form of a process of collection, editing, and adaptation carried on subsequently to the time of the great Law- giver. The book is, in fact, a codification of laws originating in the Mosaic legislation. At what time it was cast into its present form we may never be able to determine with certainty. It may be that it was done under the influences which led to the restoration of the Temple in the sixth century B.C., and that the book was used as a kind of liturgy of the Second Temple. But we are not obliged to believe that the laws themselves originated at this later date. Some of them, as was said above, imply that they were given to a people leading a camp-life in the wilderness. At whatever time they were finally collected and incorporated in the Pentateuch, in substance the laws in Leviticus are derived from Moses. In other words, the contents are much older than the vessel in which they are contained. 3. Religious Value. To the ordinary reader of the Bible the book of Leviticus may seem dry and uninteresting. It treats of matters which for Christians have lost direct interest, and of a system of religious observances which they have never known. Its laws, being mainly of a ceremonial nature, have little or no practical bearing on the life of the present day. For this reason readers of the Bible may be inclined to pass it by. Yet Leviticus is anything but an uninteresting book. To the student of comparative religion it is of the greatest possible value. Its religious rites and social customs have numberless points of contact with those of other early nations, and it is interesting and instructive to observe how primitive customs were adopted and trans- formed, purged in many cases of immorality, cruelty, injustice, and idolatry, transfused with a new spirit, and made to subserve a moral and spiritual purpose. The ceremonial legislation of Leviticus is certainly not the final stage in the progress of revelation, but it marks a great step forward, and prepares the way for better things. Its moral teaching, its insistence on the duty of justice and mercy, of kindness to the poor and strangers, to the weak and slaves, and even to the lower animals, of chastity and truthfulness, is not without its application to the present day, while beneath its forms and ceremonies, its laws of clean and unclean, its ritual purifications, its sacri- fices and sacred festivals, its tithes and offer- ings, it is not difficult to read similar lessons of religion and morals in type and figure. The entire system is penetrated with the thought that Israel is called to be a holy people consecrated to the service of a holy God. Its spirit is expressed in the words, ' Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.' That its minute and multifarious regulations served to impress upon the hearts of the devout in Israel a sense of the holiness and grace of God, of the hatefulness of sin, of the need of cleansing and restoration, cannot be doubted. It may be that the Israelites did not altogether escape the danger, incidental to the observance of all ceremonial laws, of formalism, hypocrisy, and contentment with an external standard of religion ; it may be that at times they fell far short of their ideal ; still no people had ever a loftier conception of the nature of God and of their relationship to Him and consequent obligation to lead a life of righteousness. A holy God, dwelling amid a holy people in a holy land — it would be unfair to say that there were not many in Israel who saw this truth beneath the surface of ceremonial, and were by its means prepared for the coming of Him who ' is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that belie veth' (RolO*). 86 INTRO. LEVITICUS INTRO. PAET 1 (Chs. 1-7) The L What is recorded here is not the institution of the rite of sacrifice, which is assumed to be ah'eady in existence (see 1^), but its reguhxtion in matters of detail. It did not originate among the Israelites ; it is a primitive and universal custom, based apparently upon a natural instinct, and found in one form or other in all parts of the world. Sacrifice is an act of worship, whereby the offerer either expresses his sense of the harmony and com- munion existing between himself and his god, or endeavours to restore these when by any means they have been destroyed. In all pro- bability the former idea is the earlier, and the origin of sacrifice is to be found in the con- ception that the god of a tribe stands in a very close relationship to it, and in some respects has a common life and interests with it. In primitive times the god was conceived in a crude and material form. He was sup- posed to require food and drink (see on 3 1^). And, as eating and drinking together is a com- mon token of good relationship, it may well be that sacrifice in its primitive form was re- garded as a common meal partaken of by the Deity and his worshippers in good fellowship. Part of the offering was eaten by the latter, and the portion for the god was laid out, and left for him, in some place where he was sup- posed to dwell. As the god came to be re- garded as a more or less ethereal being, means were taken to send his portion to him, as it were, by converting the solid parts into smoke by burning and pouring out the liquids, wine, blood of the sacrificial victim, etc., and letting them sink into the earth. Traces of this primitive idea of sacrifice, as a feast or com- mon meal partaken of by the god and his worshippers, may be discovered among the Israelites in Bible times : e.g. in the sacrificial feast which followed the making of the cove- nant between Jehovah and His people in Ex. 24 (see on vv. 9-11), and in the feast at the ' high place ' to which Saul went (1 S 9 13 1). See also the note on the Shewbread (Lv 24 5-9) and on the Peace Offering (Lv3); and see for a protest against this materialistic conception of God Ps 50 8-15. Alongside of this idea, and perhaps growing out of it, is that which regards the sacrifice as a gift made to the god to procure his favour or appease his vengeance. The worshipper makes his offering as before, by burning or by libation ; but hopes, in consideration of its value, to procure protection from danger, deli- verance from calamity, or success in enterprise. This was probably the meaning of the Burnt Offering in Lv 1, and of such human sacrifices 87 AW OP Sacrifice as are referred to in Lv 18 2i (see note there and references). It is probably not the earliest but the latest view of sacrifice which sees in it a means of expiating the sins of the offerer. "When God has come to be regarded as a holy Being to whom all sin is offensive, the sinner feels him- self to lie under His wrath and curse. He is conscious that the good relationship that ought to exist between himself and the Deity has been interrupted by his transgression, and seeks a means of restoring harmony. He finds this in the offering of sacrifice, which is said to have a ' covering ' efficacy : see on Lv 1 ■*. Wherein this atoning efficacy lay is not certain. Some have found it in the idea of substitution. The offerer feels that his life is forfeited by his sins, but believes that he is graciously per- mitted to substitute a victim, to which his sins are in some way transferred, and which dies in his stead : see on Lv 1 * 1 6 8. 20-22^ ^mj cp. 17 11. Others have held that the efficacy of the atoning sacrifice consists in its being an expression of the offerer's feelings and desires, his penitence, humility, and prayer for for- giveness, and that it is the latter that procures the remission of his sins. In the Levitical system the idea of expiation and atonement is specially emphasised in the Sin Offering and Guilt Offering (see Lv4-67 and notes there, and cp. what is said on the ritual of the Day of Atonement, Lvl6). In considering the various forms of sacrifice prescribed in Leviticus, it must be borne in mind that the book is a collection or codifica- tion of the law of ritual, and contains there- fore regulations dating from different times. Of the five main types specified (see Intro. § 1, and the notes prefixed to chs. 1-4), the first three, the Burnt Offering (c. 1), the Meal Offering (c. 2), and the Peace Offering (c. 3) are, generally speaking, sacrifices ex- pressive of harmony between the worshipper and God ; they are sacrifices of joy, of whole- hearted devotion, of thanksgiving. The other forms of sacrifice, the Sin and Guilt Offerings (chs. 4-6 7), are expressive of the sense of interrupted communion ; they are sacrifices of atonement and expiation. In them the sense of sin comes more into prominence. The Levitical system of sacrifice underlies the worship of the OT. Like all systems of rites and ceremonies it was liable to abuse. From the writings of the prophets we learn that a common fault of Israel was to place reliance on the performance of the outward ceremony, and to neglect the weightier mat- ters of the law. It was not the least part of 1. LEVITICUS 2. the work of the prophets to counteract the tendency to formalism, perfunctoriness, and externality, and to remind the people of Israel that ' to obey is better than sacrifice,' that God ' desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings,' and that ' the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.' At the same time, the entire nation could hardly ever be blind to the fact that ' gifts and sacrifices could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the con- science.' OT. forms of expiation accordingly have an anticipatory function, and find their fulfilment in the NT., wherein we are taught that Christ shed His blood ' for the remission of sins,' and that He ' put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.' He is the ' Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.' In His death the whole endeavour of God's saving love, represented and illustrated in the OT. sacrifices, reaches its attainment, and other sacrifices are superseded. They are rendered needless because the goodwill of God to men is fully expressed in the incarnation, life, suf- ferings, and death of His only begotten Son, and because Christ has offered to God the only real sacrifice for the sins of humanity, in His life of perfect obedience, crowned by His death of free and absolute submission to the will of God. CHAPTER 1 The Burnt Offering This is mentioned fii'st as being the most general form of sacrifice. Its characteristic feature is the consumption of the entire animal by fire upon the altar, for which reason it is also described as the ' whole burnt offering ' (187^, cp. Ps51i9). The victims are oxen, sheep, or goats, for which, in the case of poor persons, turtle doves or young pigeons may be substituted (v. 14). The animal must be a male, i.e. of the superior sex, and without blemish (v. 3). The ritual of the sacrifice is as follows. (1) The animal is presented at the door of the tabernacle by the offerer, who solemnly dedicates it by laying both his hands upon its head (v. 4). (2) It is then slaughtered, by the offerer himself it would appear (v. 5). (3) The blood is caught in a bowl by the priest in attendance and flung round the altar (v. 5). (4) The carcase is then skinned and divided, the entrails and legs washed with water, and the whole, with the exception of the skin, which falls to the priest (7^), laid upon the altar and burned (vv. 6-9). In the case of pigeons, their small size and moderate quantity of blood necessitate some differences of detail (w. 14-17). The Burnt Offering, being wholly consumed upon the altar, signified the complete self- surrender of the offerer to God. It was the sacrifice of devotion, and formed therefore the main element of individual and collective worship. It was offered in daily service, morning and evening, on behalf of the entire community (the ' continual burnt offering ' : see on Ex 29 38-42). 1. Tabernacle of the congregation] RV ' tent of meeting ': see on Ex 25 22. 2. Children of Israel] The instructions in chs. 1-6" are for the laity. Those addressed to the priests follow in chs. 6^-7^^. Offering] R V ' oblation ' : the general name for a sacri- fice or votive offering. The Heb. word is Corhan^ which means a thing ' brought near ' or presented : see Mk 7 ^^ R V. 3. Male without blemish] What is offered to God must be the best of its kind : see on 22 i'i'-25 and on Ex 12 5. 4. Put his hand upon the head] This signifies the surrender of the animal to God, and, though this is not so clear, the transference of the offerer's guilt to it. In doing so he made a confession of his sins: cp. 32. Make atonement] lit. ' put a cover- ing over him,' i.e. screen his unworthiness, protect him in the presence of the holiness of God. 5. He shall kill] The subject is the offerer. The blood represents the life, and is sprinkled upon the altar in token that the offerer yields his life to God, in expiation of his sins and in consecration to His service. II. Northward] On the E. side was the place for ashes and refuse (v. 16) ; on the W. stood the laver and the Holy of Holies ; the ascent to the altar was on the S. side. The N. side, accordingly, was the most convenient place of slaughter. 17. A sweet savour] see on Ex 29 18. CHAPTER 2 The Meal Offering The rendering of AV meat offering is liable to misunderstanding, as meat now suggests flesh meat. But this is a vegetable, or blood- less, sacrifice, a consecration to God of the produce of the field. Its principal constituent is fine flour, which may be presented either raw (vv. 1-3), or baked into cakes in the oven (v. 4), or in a pan (vv. 6, 6), or boiled in a pot (v. 7). The meal is mixed with oil and salt, as when used for food, but no leaven or honey must be used, as these cause fermentation and are symbolical of uncleanness (v. 1 1). As an offering of firstfruits, parched ears of wheat or barley are presented along with oil (vv. 14, 15). Incense is always an accompaniment of a meal offering (vv. 2, 15). Part of the meal offering and all the incense are burned upon the altar (vv. 2, 9, 16). What remains becomes the portion of the priests, and is eaten by them in the sanctuary (v. 3, 6^''). A meal offering might be presented independently, but was frequently an accompaniment of an animal 88 2. 1 LEVITICUS 4. 3 sacrifice (Ex 29 40 NulS^-i^). A meal offering might be used as a substitute for a sin offering in the case of a poor person, but without oil or frankincense (5ii-i3)_ A special form of meal offering is the Shewbread: see 24^-9 Ex 25 30. 1. Frankincense] see on Ex30i-io,34-38 2. Memorial of it] the term applied to that part of a meal offering burned upon the altar (cp. 24"), so called probably as intended to bring the offerer to the favourable remem- brance of God. But the exact meaning is doubtful: cp. Ps203 AclO^. 3. A thing most holy] The materials of the offerings are of two degrees of holiness. Some, as e.g. the peace offerings, are ' holy ' (23 20) and may be eaten in any clean place by the priests and their families (1014 2210-13Nu1811); others, as the sin and guilt offerings (6 ^'^> 25-28 7i-*5) and the shewbread (24 9), are 'most holy,' and may only be eaten in the court of the tabernacle by the priests alone (NulS^.iO). The latter, moreover, communicate ' holiness ' to whatever comes in contact with them: cp. Ex 29 37 Lv 6 18. 27-29 13. Salt of the cove- nant] see on Ex 30 35. CHAPTER 3 The Peace Offering This form of sacrifice takes its name from a Heb. word meaning a ' requital ' or giving of thanks, and is therefore called by some the Thank Offering. It is an animal sacrifice, the characteristic feature of which is the disposal of the carcase. The kidneys and the internal fat, and, in the case of sheep, the fat tail also, are offered to God by burning upon the altar (vv. 3-5). The choice parts, the breast and the right thigh, fall to the lot of the priests after being dedicated to God in a peculiar way by waving them before Him (see on 728-34) The rest of the flesh is eaten by the offerer and his family at a sacrificial meal (7i5. I6). The Peace Offering represents, it is thought, the earliest form of sacrifice, in which the Deity and the worshippers exhibit their good relationship by sharing a common meal. It is therefore the sacrifice expressive of harmony between God and His people. It is a feast of communion : see e.g. Ex 24^-11. 2. Lay his hand] see on 1 4. Whereas at this point in the sacrifice of a burnt offering, the offerer made a confession of his sins, in the case of the peace offering he uttered a prayer of thanksgiving. This indicates the difference in the signification of the two sacrifices. 3. The internal fat, along with the blood, is regarded as the seat of life and possessing a peculiar sanctity. It must, therefore, never be eaten by man, but always offered to God by burning: seeEx23i8 29 i3Lv3i6-i7 722-27 1710-I6. 4. Caul above the liver] see Ex 2913. 5. Upon the burnt sacrifice] There would always be some portion of the daily burnt sacrifice smouldering upon the altar. The peace offering is to be laid upon it. The fire never went out : see 6 9. 12, 13. 9. The whole rump] R V ' the fat tail entire ' : see on Ex 29 22. II. Food of the offering] a general epithet applied to sacrifices: cp. 216 2225 ]Sru282,24 Ezk 44 " Mai 1 7 (where the altar is called the ' table of the Lord '). For a protest against this anthropomorphic conception of God as requiring food for His sustenance or delight see Ps 50 8-15. CHAPTER 4 The Sin Offering (41-513) and the Guilt Offering (514-6^) These are later and specialised forms of the Burnt Offering. They presuppose a state of matters in which the good relationship between God and the offerer has been interrupted by sin, and the purpose of both is to make atone- ment for, or cover, the sin of the guilty person or persons. The difference between the two seems to be that while the sin offering is pro- vided for those offences which could not be undone or repaired, the guilt offering is pro- vided for those cases where reparation and restitution are possible, a fine or penalty being imposed on the transgressor in the latter in- stance (516 64,5). The ritual of the two sacri- fices is different. While the victim of the guilt offering is usually a ram (515) and some- times a he-lamb (Nul524), the victim of the sin offering varies according to the rank of the offender. For the high priest it is a young bullock (43), for the congregation the same (4 14) or a he-goat (Nu 1524), for a ruler a he- goat (423), and for an ordinary person a she- goat (428), a ewe-lamb (432), a pigeon (5 7), or a meal offering (5ii). The important feature of the sin offering is the manipulation of the blood. Part of it is applied to the horns of the altar of incense and the rest poured out at the base of the altar of burnt offering. But when the sin offering is on behalf of the high priest or congregation, part of the blood is also carried into the tent and sprinkled seven times before the veil of the sanctuary (45, g, 16,17). On the great Day of Atonement the sprinkling takes place within the veil, on or before the mercy seat (1614 : ggg notes on that chapter). 2. Through ignorance] RV ' unwittingly.' The word applies to sins not only of ignorance but also of weakness and rashness. It must, however, be observed that the Levitical law provides no sacrifice for deliberate or pre- sumptuous sins, sins committed ' with a high hand'(Nul530,cp.Hebl026f.). 3. The priest 89 4. 15 LEVITICUS 7.35 that is anointed] i.e. the high priest : see on Ex 29 21. According to the sin of the people] B.V ' so as to bring guilt on the people.' Horns] see on Ex 27 2. Altar of sweet incense] see on ExSQi'^^. I $. Elders of the congregation] The repre- sentatives of the people. 26. The flesh of the sin ofl^ering for a ruler or ordinary person is eaten by the priests (6^6), who, however, must not eat their own sin offering nor that of the congregation which is to be entirely burned (411.12,21 030). 35. According to] RV ' upon ' : see on 3 5. CHAPTER 5 The Sin Offering and the Guilt Offer- ing (continued) 1-6. Special cases in which it is proper to offer a Sin Offering. Such are the withholding of testimony (v. 1), touching a carcase or un- clean person or thing (vv. 2, 3), making rash oaths (v. 4). 1. Sin, and hear] RV ' sin, in that he hear- eth': cp. Prov2924Jgl7 2. 2. See 11 27, 28, 31-40 I57f. If it he hidden from him] Vulgate renders, ' if he forgetteth his uncleanness,' i.e. omits to make the prescribed ablutions. 7-13. Substitutes for the goat or lamb of the Sin Offering in cases of poverty. The Mosaic Law is always considerate of the poor, and makes special provision for such in sacrifices of atonement and purification, so that a man's poverty may be no excuse for his remaining under sin or disability connected with cere- monial impurity, or any bar to his obtaining forgiveness : see also 114-17 128 142lf_ II. Ephah] about a bushel. 514-57. The Guilt (or Trespass) Offering. Two cases are mentioned in which it is proper to bring a guilt offering. The first (v. 15) is that of a person who occasions loss to the sanctuary by either consuming or keep- ing back some ' holy thing ' (see on 2 3). He is required to restore the value of the thing plus one fifth by way of a penalty (v. 16), and to present a guilt offering. The second case is that of a person who causes loss to his neighbour. The same is required of him (6 4-7)^ see Nu 5 ^-lo. 15. Shekel of the sanctuary] a standard weight of silver, equal to rather more than half-a-crown in value : see ExSQi^. 16. The fifth part] the usual proportion in cases of restitution : see 26i3-3i. CHAPTER 6 1-7. These vv. should be reckoned as part of c. 5. The Hebrew chapter begins at 6 8. Our chapter and verse divisions are a late invention, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries. 2, RV ' deal falsely with his neighbour in a matter of deposit, or of bargain (or pledge), or of robbery' : cp. Ex 22 7 f. 68_y3s_ Directions addressed to the Priests regarding the ritual of Sacrifice : see on 12. 9-13. The Burnt Offering. The daily or continual burnt offering is meant : see on c.l. The private or occasional burnt offering is referred to in 78. 9. It ^s . . ] RV'The burnt offering shall be on the hearth upon the altar all night unto the morning ' : the offering of devotion to God must never cease. 14-18. The Meal Offering. This again is the daily meal offering presented along with the daily burnt offering : see intro. to c. 2. 17. Most holy] see on 23. 19-23. The Meal Offering for the High Priest, presented daily, morning and evening (v. 20), by Aaron and his successors in office on their own behalf (v. 22). 20. In the day ■when he is anointed] meaning on and from that day, as appears from the term ' perpetual ' in V. 20 and the statement in v. 22. 23. The priest does not eat of his own sacrifice : see on 426. 24-30. The Sin Offering. 26. Shall eat it] i.e. unless it is the sin offering for himself : see on v. 23. 30. Reconcile] make atone- ment, as in 14. CHAPTER 7 Directions to the Priests (continued) i-io. The Guilt Offering. Vv. 8-10 refer to private offerings and the priest's share in them. 1 1 -2 1. The Peace Offering. Three kinds of peace offerings are distinguished here, viz. the thank offering (v. 12), and the votive and free will offerings (v. 16). The former, as its name implies, would be presented after a benefit had been received ; the latter, while the benefit was still expected, as an accompaniment of supplication. 12. The animal sacrifice is accompanied with a meal offering of four kinds of cakes, one of which is leavened. Of each of these one cake is heaved before the Lord (see on Ex 29 24) and appropriated by the priests, the others are' eaten by the offerer along with his share of the peace offering : see intro. to c. 3. 21. Shall be cut off] excommunicated : see on Ex 12 15. 22-27. Prohibition to eat fat or blood. The fat is the internal fat : see on 3 3. 28-34. The Priest's share of the peace offerings. This consists of the choice por- tions, the breast and right thigh which are first heaved or waved before the Lord : see Ex 29 24. 35. Portion of the anointing] RM ' Portion.' Vv. 35-38 form a conclusion to the first part of the book of Leviticus, that dealing with Sacrifices. 90 8. LEVITICUS 10. 16 PART 2 (Chs. 8-10) The CHAPTER 8 The Consecration of Aaron and HIS Sons This chapter relates the fulfilment of the injunctions given in Ex29l-3'''. CHAPTER 9 Installation of Aaron and his Sons The ceremonial of consecration is repeated daily for seven days (8^3 ; see Ex 29 35). On the eighth day Aaron and his sons formally assume office. Aaron first sacrifices for himself (vv. 7-14) and then for the people (vv. 15-21). The solemn blessing of the people follows (vv. 22, 23), after which fire from the Lord descends and consumes the sacrifices upon the altar (v. 24). 7. Aaron did not approach the altar till called on by Moses to do so, showing that he did not take this honour to himself, but that it was the call of God by Moses: cp. Heb 5 *> 5. ' No man taketh this honour unto him- self, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.' 8. Aaron, having now been consecrated, dis- charges the priestly duties. During the seven days of his consecration these were performed by Moses : see 8 is. 11. The flesh and the hide he burnt] They were wholly burned because the sacrifice was offered by Aaron on behalf of himself : see on 4 2*5. 22. The form of the Benediction is given in Nu 6 -^-■■2". As Aaron is here said to have come down, the benediction seems to have been pro- nounced from the top of the altar, or from its ledge : see Ex 20 26 275 RV. 23. Moses takes Aaron into the tent of meeting, in order to induct him into the duties connected with it, and to hand over the sacred furniture to his charge. Glory of the LORD] cp. Ex 40 34, 35. 24. This was not the first kindling of the sacred fire, as there was already fire upon the altar (v. 10, etc.). But instead of the sacrifices burning for a long time they were suddenly consumed before the eyes of the people. This was accepted by them as a token that God not only accepted these sacrifices but also approved the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the priesthood : cp. Jg 6 20,21 iK 1836,39 2Ch7i-3. CHAPTER 10 Sin and Death of Nadab and Abihu An illustration of the necessity of a punc- tilious observance of the regulations. We have no means of ascertaining the precise nature of the trespass committed by the two eldest sons Consecration of the Priesthood of Aaron. In view of Lv 1 6 12 (cp. Nu 1 6 ^^ Rev 8 5) we may suppose that the sin lay in the use of common fire, instead of fire taken from the altar. But the phrase strange fire is wide enough to cover any breach of the laws regulating the preparation and use of incense (see Ex 30 i-io. 3i-3H). Lv 1 6 1- 2 might also lead us to infer that Nadab and Abihu presumptu- ously penetrated into the Holy of Holies. Vv. 16-20 of the present chapter show that the trespass was committed on the day of their entering upon office (cp. 9 ^ *•). From the fact that the prohibition against the use of wine by priests on duty follows immediately upon this incident (vv. 8, 9) it has been inferred by later Jewish writers and many modern commentators that Nadab and Abihu sinned when in a state of intoxication. There is, however, no real gi'ound for this supposition, as vv. 8, 9 form a separate and disconnected fragment. 3. Them that come nigh me] i.e. the priests (cp. Ex 1 9 22 Ezk 42 13 43 1^'). The greater the privilege the greater the responsibility. Judg- ment begins at the house of God (1 Pet4i7). Held his peace] acknowledged the justice of the penalty. 4. See Ex 6 22. It would not have been unlawful for the surviving brothers to perform this office (see 21 1-3), but probably to spare their feelings the cousins of Aaron were selected for the duty. 6, 7. Uncover not your heads] RV ' Let not the hair of your heads go loose.' Aaron and his sons are for- bidden to exhibit the usual signs of mourning, dishevelled hair and rent garments, or to in- terrupt their priestly functions, as an object lesson of submission to righteous judgment. 8, 9. The priests were not absolutely for- bidden the use of wine, but only when per- forming their priestly duties : see prefatory re- marks, and cp. Ezk 44 21. 10. It was the duty of the priests to instruct the people in their religious duties, and to set an example to them: cp. Ezk 44 23. 16-20. Goat of the sin offering] i.e. the people's sin offering (915). Aaron's own sin offering had been burned in accordance with the law (98-11). But instead of eating the flesh of the people's sacrifice, as prescribed in 62<3, he had burned it also. When charged with contravening the law, Aaron pleaded that he and his sons had felt themselves to be de- filed by the death of Nadab and Abihu, and that it would have been inconsistent for them to eat the sin offering, an act which signified the acceptance of the people by God and their full communion with Him. Moses admitted the justice of the plea in the exceptional circumstances. 91 11. LEVITICUS 11.28 PART 3 (Chs. 11-16) The Law This section deals with the subject of ceremonial uncleanness and the method of its purification. Four main types of unclean- ness are referred to, viz. that of meats (11 1-23)^ of carcases (1124-40)^ of leprosy (chs. 13, 14), and of certain bodily functions and conditions (chs. 12, 15). The effect of ceremonial un- cleanness is that it disqualifies a person for the worship of God. Its duration varies ac- cording to the cause, from a few hours, as in the case of touching the carcase of a clean beast (11^9), to eighty days, as in the case of a woman who has given birth to a girl (12^). The ritual of purification consists of washing the body, sometimes also the clothes, and in the case of greater defilement, the offering of sacrifice. The distinction of clean and unclean did not originate at the time of Moses, nor is it confined to the Hebrews. It is to be found in all religions, particularly in their earlier stages. It is not easy to account for it. The restric- tions may be due to a natural instinct of aversion from disgusting objects and conditions. Or they may rest upon reasons of health; for undoubtedly many of them possess sanitary advantages. Or, as many believe, a religious idea may lie at the root of them, certain objects being regarded as the seat of evil spirits. Whatever be the origin of these regulations, they were adopted by Moses and made to subserve a sacred purpose. Things cere- monially unclean were used as types of moral defilement. The outward purifications served to impress upon the hearts of the people the need of absolute purity in the service of Jehovah. They were a constant reminder of the precept, ' Ye shall be holy ; for I am holy ' (see e.g. 11 44,45). And if it be the fact that at least some of the ' unclean ' animals were wor- shipped by the Canaanitish tribes, then these regulations served still further to guard the people of Jehovah from the contaminating influences of their surroundings : see 20 25, 26_ CHAPTER 11 Law of Clean and Unclean Meats The animals whose flesh may or may not be eaten are treated in four classes, viz. large land animals (vv. 3-8), water animals (vv. 9-12), birds (vv. 13-19), winged creeping things (vv. 20-23). 3. Of the large land animals, those are clean which both chew the cud and divide the hoof. Unless they satisfy both these con- ditions they are unclean and cannot be eaten. The practical effect of this is to exclude all beasts of prey. The flesh of animals that OF Clean and Unclean chew the cud is undoubtedly more wholesome than that of those which live on prey. With this list of animals should be compared that in Dtl4, where a list of clean animals is given. 4. The camel's foot, though divided above, is united beneath into a broad sole. 5. Coney] The word means a rabbit. But the animal meant here is the rock-badger, which somewhat resembles a guinea-pig, and is common in Palestine. 6. The hare does not really chew the cud, but the action of its jaws resembles that of ruminants. 7. Swine are uncleanly in their habits and food, and the use of their flesh is believed to be the cause of certain diseases in man. The Jews still abstain from eating it. 8. All dead bodies defile. But it should be observed that contact with a living unclean animal did not defile. The ass e.g. was un- clean for food, but was the common beast of burden among the Israelites. 9-12. Water animals. The condition of cleanness here is the possession of fins and scales. It follows that shellfish and eels are forbidden as food. 13-19. Birds. No signs are given to dis- tinguish clean from unclean birds. The latter are specified, being mostly birds of prey and feeders on carrion. 13. Ossifrage] RV ' the gier eagle,' the largest of the vulture tribe. The name 'ossifrage,' which means the ' bone-breaker,' is derived from the practice of the bird in dropping the bones of its prey from a height on to a rock so as to break them and get at the marrow. The ospray is the ' short- toed eagle,' the commonest of the eagle tribe in Palestine. 14-19. Vulture] RV 'kite.' Kite] RV 'falcon.' After his kind] i.e. including others of the same species. Owl] RV 'ostrich.' Cuckow] RV 'seamew.' Swan] doubtful; RV has 'horned owl.' Lapwing] RV 'hoopoe,' a bird of foul habit. 20-23. Fowls that creep] Read with RV, ' All winged creeping things.' What are meant are insects and small reptiles that move hori- zontally, go upon all four. Four kinds of locusts are exempted and may be eaten. The locust resembles a large grasshopper, and is still eaten in the East. It is usually prepared by being thrown into boiling water, after which the head and wings are removed and the body dried in the sun. 24-40. Uncleanness contracted by contact with dead bodies. 28. Until the even] till the close of the day. The Hebrews reckon the day from sunset to sunset. 92 11. 29 LEVITICUS 13. 47 29. Tortoise] Jewish authorities regarded the tortoise as a clean animal. Whfa,t is meant here is probably a kind of lizard. So RV. 30. The names here are uncertain. RV renders, ' the gecko, and the land-crocodile, and the lizard, and the sand-lizard, and the chameleon.' 33. An earthen vessel, being porous, is sup- posed to absorb the uncleanness so that it cannot be removed with washing. 35. Oven] an earthenware jar or pot: see on Ex83. 36. Pit] RM ' cistern.' The water in wells and reservoirs, being frequently changed, is not polluted. That which toucheth] or, 'he that toucheth.' 37, 38. The seed in growing undergoes many changes, which are supposed to throw off the unclean- ness. But if the seed is wet it may be penetrated by the defiling fluid. 42. What- soever hath more feet] rather, 'hath many feet.' Insects like caterpillars and centipedes are intended. 44. Sanctify] the root meaning of the Heb. words for 'sanctify,' 'hallow,' 'holy,' is that of separation: cp. v. 47. The holiness spoken of here is rather physical than moral; but in keeping themselves free from ceremo- nial defilement, the people learned to avoid what is morally impure, in accordance with the principle implied in the words, ' first that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual.' The composite nature of this c. appears from the position of vv. 29, 30, 41-45, which belong to vv. 20-23. Vv. 46, 47 form the conclusion to the whole. CHAPTER 12 Uncleanness connected with Childbirth The functions of reproduction are in early stages of religion regarded with superstitious di-ead. The enactments in this c. and the related regulations in c. 15 had an important place in teaching the lesson of purity in sexual relationships. 3. Cp. Gn 17 10-14. The purifications pre- scribed in this c. are for the mother alone and not for the child, who does not seem to have been regarded as unclean, unless the rite of circumcision involved the idea of the puri- fication of the child. Uncircumcision and uncleanness are frequently identical: see on 19^3. 4. On the eighth day the mother is readmitted to society, but is still debarred from the services of the tabernacle till forty days after the birth. 5. In the case of the birth of a girl the two periods of uncleanness (see last note) are exactly doubled, the reason doubtless being the opinion of the ancients that the derangement of the system is greater. 8. Cp. Lk22'i, which shows that the Virgin Mary offered the poor woman's sacrifice. CHAPTER 13 Uncleanness connected with Leprosy It is tolerably certain that the leprosy of the OT. is not the leprosy of the Middle Ages, which is still to be found in the East. The latter is a terrible and loathsome disease, called elephaniicms, in consequence of which the skin thickens, the features are distorted, and the very limbs mortify and drop off from the body. The leprosy of the Bible is a skin disease, known as psoriasis, in which the skin and hair gi'ow white, and which is accompanied with scab and flaky scales which peel off. It is doubtful whether it was infectious or not. Some varieties may have been so; but it is to be observed that when the disease entirely covered the body the person was pronounced clean and could mix in society. Leprosy is regarded in the Bible as a type of sin in its loathsomeness and disfiguring and corrupting effects, and its treatment was in many points symbolical. 3. Plague] i.e. plagued spot. 4. Shut up him] i.e. place him in quarantine: separate the affected person from the society of others and the service of the tabernacle. 9-17. The case of the reappearance of leprosy after it has been cured. 11. Shall not shut him up] there is no need for quaran- tine as the case is undoubtedly one of leprosy. 13. When the eruption is complete, the disease is supposed to have reached its crisis, and to be discharging itself externally in dry scales. 18-23. The case of leprosy developing from a healed boil. 24-28. The case of leprosy arising from the inflammation following a burn. 29-37. Leprosy in the hair of the head or beard. In this case the hair turns yellow in- stead of white (v. 30). 38. Another form of leprosy in the shape of white spots. This is harmless, and the affected person is not unclean. 40-44. Leprosy in the bald head. 45. These are the signs of mourning for the dead (cp. 10 « 21 10 Ezk24i7 Mic37), leprosy being regarded as a living death and the severest token of the divine displeasure : cp. Nul2i2. 47-59. The leprosy of garments. What is described here is not the leprosy that attacks the human being, but a mildew or fungus causing discoloration and corrosion and bear- ing a superficial resemblance to leprosy : cp. the leprosy of houses, 1 4 33-53. The regulations regarding this so-called ' leprosy ' were no doubt valuable for sanitary reasons ; but they would also serve to ' teach the Hebrew to hate even the appearance of evil.' Cp. what St. Jude says (v. 23) of the Christian ' hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.' 93 13. 48 LEVITICUS 16. 48. Warp, or ■woof] This translation is doubtful. The words probably mean as in RM, ' woven or knitted stuif ,' referring to material not yet made into garments. CHAPTER 14 The Purification of the Leper. The Leprosy of Houses When a leper has been cured of his plague, and has satisfied the priest that his cure is complete, he is required to go through a ceremonial purification before being readmitted to his place in society. The ritual of purifi- cation consists of three parts. (1) Two living birds are brought, with a rod of cedar wood, a piece of scarlet wool, and a bunch of hyssop, to the priest, who kills one of the birds over water. The living bird and the cedar rod, to which the hyssop is tied with the scarlet thread, are dipped in the blood, which is then sprinkled upon the man seven times. The living bird is then let loose. (2) The man then washes his clothes, shaves ofi: all his hair, and bathes. After seven days he repeats this and is ready for the last act of his purify- ing. (3) On the eighth day he presents himself with his sacrifices at the door of the tent of meeting. A guilt offering, a sin offering, and a burnt offering are made, the right ear, thumb, and great toe of the man are touched, first with blood and then with oil, and he is once more ceremonially clean. 4. Later usage required the birds to be sparrows. Cedar wood (probably not the cedar of Lebanon but a kind of juniper) may have been chosen on account of its antiseptic property, and hyssop (see on Ex 1 2 22) for its aromatic qualities. In later times, at least, their use was regarded as symbolical, in the one case of the pride which was supposed to be the cause of visitation by the disease, in the other of the humility which was an essen- tial condition of its removal. The scarlet wool may have betokened the healthy blood now coursing in the veins of the erewhile leper. The same materials were employed in the ritual for purification after contact with dead bodies : see NulQ^ and cp. PsSl''. 7. The release of the living bird signified the removal of the uncleanness, perhaps also the restored liberty of the leper. Cp. the release of the goat on the Day of Atonement, 1621.22. 10. A tenth deal (i.e. part) of an ephah, which was called an omer, was about four pints, the ephah being rather more than a bushel. A log is about a pint. 12. Wave them] see on Ex 29 24. The offering of these sacrifices shows that leprosy was regarded as a punishment of sin. 14. The anointing of these members signified their reconsecration to the service of Grod, and the readmission of the leper to the privileges of the tabernacle. 33-53- The leprosy of houses. This, like the leprosy of garments (see IS^''^^), bears only an external resemblance to the leprosy of human beings. It is a fungus or discoloration making its appearance on the walls of houses : see on 13 ■^"'5^. The legis- lation here is prospective : cp. the mention of ' the camp ' in v. 3 with that of ' the city ' in V. 40. The section may be post-Mosaic. It stands by itself ; its natural position would be after 1359. CHAPTER 15 Uncleanness connected with Sexual Discharges The subject of this c. is related to that of c. 12 : see intro. there. Here three natural (vv. 16, 17, 18, 19-24) and two abnormal (vv. 1-15, 25-30) conditions are dealt with. Though not in themselves sinful, they render the person ceremonially unclean, and the en- actments with respect to them would tend to purity of morals, being a reminder that all uncleanness is hateful to God, and that He is to be glorified in our bodies as well as in our spirits. 8. This case is provided for, as spitting upon a person was, and still is, a common expression of contempt among Orientals. 12. See on 11^3. 13. Is cleansed] i.e. physically. Shall be clean] i.e. ceremonially. CHAPTER 16 Ritual of the Day of Atonement (See also 2326-32 Nu29Mi Ex 30 10.) This solemn ceremonial took place once a year on the tenth day of the seventh month (Tishri = September). It was enacted by the high priest alone, but the whole nation in- dicated its interest and participation in it, by resting from all manner of work, by keeping a very strict fast, and by assembling for an ' holy convocation.' The ritual of the Day of Atonement marked the culminating point of the Levitical system, and was calcu- lated to impress the minds of the worshippers in a peculiar degree. Most of the other sacri- fices and purifications were occasional and per- sonal, but this was the yearly atonement for the nation as a whole, including the priest- hood itself, and the yearly purification of the sanctuary and its parts from the defilement of the sins of the people in whose midst it stood. It gathered up and included all the separate and individual sacrifices of the year, and re- stored to the nation the holiness it had lost. It was but natural that Christians should see, in its peculiarly striking and solemn ritual, a foreshadowing and illustration of the atone- ment wrought by Christ, through the one sacri- fice of Himself, and His entering into the Holy Place, there to appear in the presence of God 94 16.3 I^VITICUS 17. for His people. This is pointed out by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews : see Heb4i^ 6^0 9ii--«, which should be read in this connexion. A great deal has been made of the fact that there is no mention of the actual observance of the Day of Atonement till after the exile, from which it has been inferred that its insti- tution is of post-exilic date. But the argument is not convincing. The connexion with the death of Nadab and Abihu (see v. 1), and the mention of Azazel (see v. 8 and note), indi- cate that the ritual of this c. rests on a very ancient basis. And not only are the pre-exilic books silent on the Day of Atonement, but the post-exilic contain no reference to it either, which shows the precarious nature of the argument from silence. The Day of Atonement is still the great day of the Jewish sacred year, and is observed with much solemnity as a day of humiliation and repentance : see on Ex 32^^. 3-5. The first act of the high priest is to choose the sacrificial victims, to bathe himself, and exchange his distinctive vestments for a garment of white linen, the garment of the ordinary priest. 6-1 1. He then presents the sin offering for himself and for his house, and casts lots between the two goats of the sin offering for the people, one of which is to be slain and the other let loose. He then sacrifices his own sin offering. 8. For the scapegoat] RV 'for Azazel.' This word does not occur elsewhere in OT. The parallel, for the LORD, suggests that it should be taken as a proper name, and left untrans- lated. The word scapegoat in AV is not a translation, but indicates merely the use to which this goat is to be put. Azazel is under- stood to be the name of one of those malignant demons with which the superstition of the Israelites peopled the wilderness and all waste places (see IsalS'^i 3414, and cp. Mtl2'i3 Mk 1 13). The sending of the sin-laden goat to him (vv. 21, 22) signified the complete removal of the sins of the people and the handing them over, as it were, to the evil spirit to whom they belonged : cp. the ceremony connected with the cleansing of lepers (14*5,7). This rite may have been intended, at all events it would serve, to counteract any disposition to honour and worship such evil spirits (cp. 17 '7). 12-14. The high priest next enters the Holy of Holies with incense and the blood of his sin offering, which he sprinkles once on the mercy seat and seven times in the space before it, thus making atonement for himself and his house. 15-19. He then goes out into the court and sacrifices the goat on which the lot fell ' for Jehovah,' and brings its blood as before into the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the sanctuary and its parts, and cleanse them from the sins which mingle even with the best service that man can offer to God. 20-22. He now takes the goat destined ' for Azazel,' and laying his hands on its head con- fesses over it the sins of the people, after which a man standing in readiness leads the goat away into the wilderness and releases it. In the time of the Second Temple the goat was destroyed by being precipitated from a rock 12 m. from Jerusalem. 23-28. He finally bathes and resumes his dis- tinctive vestments and offers the two burnt offerings for himself and the people, in token of entire reconsecration to the service of God. At the same time he burns the fat of the two sin offerings, the flesh of which is taken out- side the camp and there consumed. In later times the high priest at this point read in the hearing of the people prescribed portions of the Law, viz. Lv 2326f. ]Sru29 "-n, concluding with a series of benedictions. 29. Afflict your souls] i.e. observe a fast : seePs35i3Isa583,5. This is the only fast enjoined in the Mosaic Law. After the exile fasting was a common religious usage : see e.g. Ezr82iNeh9i Esth43 Zech8i9 Mt9i4-i7 Lk237i8i2 Acl32,3i423. In Ac279 the reference is to the Day of Atonement which was called ' The Fast ' par excellence. 34. He] i.e. Aaron. PART 4 (Chs. 17-26) The This section of Leviticus occupies a posi- tion by itself, being distinguished from the rest of the book both by style and contents. A few only of its main characteristics may be noticed here. (1) Among a large number of phrases almost, if not entirely, peculiar to this part of the Pentateuch is the constantly recur- ring expression ' I am Jehovah,' or ' I am Je- hovah your God,' or ' I your God am holy.' This ' divine I,' as it has been called, occurs forty-seven times in these chapters, and only Law of Holiness six times elsewhere from Genesis to Joshua, but is found again seventy-eight times in Ezekiel. See Intro. § 2. (2) A second dis- tinguishing feature of this section is its more rhetorical style and the comparatively large number of hortatory passages, somewhat in the manner of Deuteronomy : see e.g. c. 26. (3) A third characteristic is the high spiritual tone of these chapters. Compared with the rest of the book we find here less ritual and more religion, morality, and humanity. The duty of 96 17. 1 LEVITICUS 19.9 holiness is repeatedly emphasised and grounded on the holiness of God Himself. The oft-recur- ring key note of the whole is ' Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord yoiu- God am holy.' It is for this reason that the title ' Law of Holiness ' has been applied to this part of Leviticus. Some other fragments bearing a similar char- acter outside these chapters have been assigned to the same collection, e.g. ExSl^^f. Lv 11 (especially vv. 43-45) NulS^^-ii, It has long been observed that there is a con- siderable resemblance both in leading ideas and phraseology between this ' Law of Holiness ' and the book of Ezekiel. That Ezekiel knew and used this Law Book seems beyond dispute, but that he is also its author is not made out. CHAPTER 17 Rule of Sacrifice. Prohibition against EATING Blood 1-9. The first part of this Law prescribes that all oxen, sheep, and goats, slaughtered for food, must first be presented to Jehovah at the sanctuary. This seems to presuppose a time when the Israelites used but little flesh food, and were not widely scattered, which must have been either during the wanderings in the desert, or immediately after the return from exile, when there was only a small community in the vicinity of Jerusalem. This raises the question of the date of the composition of the Law of Holiness, and scholars are still divided upon it. The law is repealed in Dt 12 1^^ where it is implied that difiierent conditions of life prevail. 7. The object of this enactment was to counteract the tendency to ofl'er sacrifice to those demons of the wilderness which were worshipped in the form of he-goats, for so the RV renders the word here translated devils : see note on Azazel in 16^. Gone a whoring] see on Ex34i5. 10-16. Prohibition against eating blood or fallen carcases. The law against eating blood agrees with natural instincts and is here con- nected with a religious idea : see on 3 3. 15. The law against eating what dies of itself is a corollary of the former. The flesh of such an animal cannot be thoroughly drained of blood : cp. Ex 2231 Dtl42i. 16. Bear his iniquity] bear the penalty of his transgression. CHAPTER 18 Law of Forbidden Degrees of Marriage, AND OF Chastity 3. Some of the unions here forbidden as incestuous were permitted among the nations of antiquity. The early Egyptians, e.g. per- mitted marriage with a full sister. Abraham married his half-sister (Gn20i2), a practice here forbidden (vv. 9, 1 1). 6. Uncover their nakedness] i.e. marry. 8. Father's wife] This is not the same as ' mother ' in the previous v. so that polygamy is here presupposed. It was common, perhaps universal, in the East at the time of Moses. The Mosaic Law did not seek all at once to abolish polygamy, which might have been the occasion of great hardship in the circumstances. But it certainly discouraged it, and by regulat- ing and restraining it prepared the way for its gradual extinction : cp. the remarks on slavery among the Hebrews at Ex 21. 16. This law was not absolute, the so-called levirate man-iage, or marriage with the widow of a deceased brother, being not only permis- sible but almost compulsory : see on Dt 25^. 18. In her life time] This implies that after the death of the first wife a man might marry her sister. It is not a law against polygamy but only against a special form of it, viz. marrying two sisters. The restriction is pro- fessedly made in the interests of domestic peace and happiness. For to vex her RV reads, 'to be a rival to her ' : cp. the case of Leah and Rachel, the wives of Jacob, who were sisters (Gn29, 30). 21. Cp. 201-5. Molech] ('king') the fire- god of the Ammonites and Canaanites, and especially of the Phoenicians, to whom children were sacrificed in burnt-oft'ering. Pass through the Jire] see IK 11 5-7 2K327 231" 2Ch336 Jer73i 3235. The idea underlying child- sacrifice is probably that of propitiating the deity by offering the most valued possession : see 2K327, and cp. the case of Abraham and Isaac (Gn 22 12). The penalty of this most in- human form of worship was death by stoning : see 20 2. It should be observed that the exact meaning of the expression ' pass through the fire ' is uncertain. The rite may have been a kind of ordeal by which it was sought to ascertain the mind of the deity by observing whether the child passed through the fire unscathed or not. CHAPTER 19 Various Laws, mainly of a Moral and Humane Character This c. was very naturally regarded by Jewish authorities as an embodiment of the Decalogue. It will be observed that in general the precepts in vv. 3-8 correspond to those of the first table of the Decalogue (' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God '), and those in vv. 9-18 to the second table (' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself '). In this c. alone the characteristic phrase ' I am the Lord ' (i.e. Jehovah) occurs no fewer than sixteen times. It is the divine seal set to the enactments of the law. 5-8. See 715-18. 9. Kindly consideration of the poor is part of that holiness which God requires and which 96 19. 13 LEVITICUS 21. 12 is the reflection of His own. He is the champion of the weak and oppressed : see on Ex 22 21, and vv. 33, 34. This injunction is not applicable to the time of the sojourn in the desert ; it presupposes a settled agricultural life in the land of Canaan : see on Dt24"0. 13. Cp. Dt24i*.i5 Mai 3 5 JasS*. 14. The sin is that of intention, and is seen by Him who 'trieth the hearts.' 15. Justice must be administered impartially, no favour being shown to a poor man because he is poor (cp. Ex 23 3), or to a rich man because he is rich. 16. Stand against the blood of thy neigh- bour] This may mean generally any conduct imperilling a neighbour's life. But its con- nexion here with the sin of slander suggests that what is specially meant is the procuring of a sentence of condemnation by means of false witness: cp. Ex23i>''. 17. Upon him] RV ' because of him,' on his account, i.e. by cherishing ill-will against him in secret. 18. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- self] This is the ' royal law ' ( Jas 2 S) and the principle underlying the second table of the Decalogue : see Mt 22 35-40. The word neigh- bour was interpreted in a narrow sense as equivalent to a fellow Israelite or at most to a stranger living in the midst of Israel. Our Lord removed all such limitations and applied the law universally: see Lk 10 29-37. 19. Such mixtures are forbidden, as not only in themselves contrary to the divinely ap- pointed order of nature, but as opening the door to the unnatural sins mentioned in 18 '^2, 23 B,ol26,27 : see on Dt225. There may be an allusion here to the practice of magic, in which unnatural mixtures played an important part. 20. In the case of a betrothed free woman, both persons were put to death as adulterers, betrothal being regarded as sacredly as mar- riage itself : see on Ex 2216. 23. Uncircumcised] i.e. unconsecrated, un- clean, and therefore not to be used for the first three years. In the fourth year the fruit is to be dedicated to God, after which the owner is free to enjoy the use of it. Besides im- pressing the duty of gratitude to God for the fruits of the earth this law is one of practical value. For the mfetaphorical use of the term 'circumcise' see 26 4i Ex 6 12 Dt306 Jer44 6 10 926 Ac 7 51 Ro228,29 Phil 3 3. 26. Use enchantment] charms or incanta- tions. Observe times] RV ' practise augury,' perhaps by watching the clouds or the flight of birds : see on DtlS^o. 27. The practices in this and the following verses were commonly employed among idola- trous nations. The rounding of the corners of the head and beard may refer to the Arabian custom of presenting the first locks as an offering to the deity : see Jer926 2623 49 32, with the marginal readings in each case : cp. the practice of the Nazirite (Nu 6^.18). Oaths by the hair of the head were common (cp. Mt536), and a usual Mohammedan oath is still ' by the beard of the prophet.' 28. Cutting the flesh and tattooing the skin are closely connected with cutting the hair as an idolatrous rite: cp. Jerl6<5 4837 1 K 1828 Zechl36. 29. This, too, was a degrading accompani- ment of idol worship among the Canaanites, and even among the Greeks. Idolatry and immorality always went hand in hand : see on Ex 34 13, 15, and cp. Isa575-9 Hos4i3 Ro 123-29. 31. That have familiar spirits] necromancers who profess to hold communication with the dead: cp. Ex22i8 Dt IS" lS287f. 33, 34. See on v. 9. 35. Meteyard] i.e. measuring rod. 36. The ephah (about a bushel) and the hin (about a gallon and a half) are used here as representa- tive measures: cp. Ezk45^0f. CHAPTER 20 Penalties attached to the Sins specified ABOVE 1-5. See 1821 and note. 6. See 1931. 9. See Ex 2 117. 19-21. See 186-23. 27. See 1931. CHAPTER 21 Laws relating to the Priesthood and Sacrifice The principle laid down in this and the following c. is the far reaching one, that whatever comes near or is presented to God must be perfect of its kind: see on Ex 12 5. Priests, therefore, must be free from physical defects or ceremonial impurity, and sacrifices must be without blemish. That this section is put together from different sources is shown by the interchange of the singular and plural and of the second and third persons (cp. e.g. 214,5,8)^ by the introduction of fresh headings (211>16 22i>i7, 26), and by the fact that in the body of the laws the ' seed of Aaron ' is spoken of, where- as in the headings and conclusions it is his ' sons.' 1-3. As contact with the dead defiles, priests are forbidden to attend to the funeral rites of any save their nearest relatives. But this exception does not apply to the high priest (see v. 11): see on 10 4. 5. See on 1927,28. 5. Bread of their God] see on 3^^. 7. Profane] having lost her chastity. ID. Uncover his head] RV 'let the hair of his head go loose.' The law is more strict with regard to the high priest. The higher the office the greater the responsibility. 12. Go out of the sanctuary] i.e. intermit 97 21.16 LEVITICUS 24.5 his sacred duties: cp. 10 6. 'J'. Crown] EM ' consecration.' 16-24. No priest with any physical defect may officiate at the altar, though he may partake of the sacrificial gifts (v. 22) which fall to the lot of the priests for their main- tenance. 18. Flat] RM'slit.' 22. See on 23. CHAPTEE 22 Laws kelating to the Priesthood and Sacrifice (continued) 1-6. The holy things may not be eaten by priests otherwise qualified, but ceremonially unclean, nor by any persons outside the priestly family. 10. Stranger] i.e. one not a priest, nor a member of a priest's family, even though he be an Israelite: see Ex 29^3. A slave pur- chased outright is considered to be a member of the family (v. 11). 14. Unwittingly] not knowing, perhaps, that it was a holy thing: see on 4 2 Si'*. With the holy thing] this must mean its equivalent. 17-25. Sacrifices also must be without blemish. It was a frequent complaint that this law was not strictly observed, and that God was dishonoured with offerings that were mean and imperfect: cp. e.g. Malis>i3, i4^ and see for an example of a better spirit 2 S 24 24. 19. At your own will] EV 'that ye may be accepted.' 27. See on Ex 22 30. 28. This prohibition probably rests on humanitarian gi'ounds. The Mosaic Law enjoins kindness to animals. 29. See on v. 19. CHAPTEE 23 The Sacred Seasons These are the Sabbath (v. 3), Passover and Unleavened Bread (w. 5-14), Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost (vv. 15-22), Feast of Trumpets (vv. 23-25), Day of Atonement (vv. 26-32), and Feast of Booths or Tabernacles (w. 33-43). 3. The sabbath] see on Ex208-ii. 5-8. Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread. Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles were the three great annual festivals which followed the seasons of the year and the opera- tions of agriculture. For the institution of the Passover see Exl2i-14, and for the sacrifices proper to the Feast of Unleavened Bread see Nu28i'^"2^. These two parts of the double festival were quite distinct. The Passover was celebrated on the fourteenth day of Nisan beginning at sunset, and was followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which lasted for seven days. Hence the name of the feast of unleavened bread is sometimes used to include both festivals, as in Lk 22 1. 9-14. The beginning of the grain harvest ■was celebrated during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when a sheaf of new com was waved before the Lord, as an acknowledgment of His bounty, and a consecration of the harvest to Him. II. Wave the sheaf] see on Ex 29 24. 13. Tenth deals . . hin] see on 14^0 1936. 15-21. Feast of Weeks. Fifty days or seven weeks after the last festival, the Feast of Weeks, called in Gk. ' Pentecost ' from the word for ' fifty,' began with the presentation of two loaves made of the new wheat and leavened in the ordinary way, signifying that harvest was completed. Hence this feast, which lasted only a single day, is called also the Feast of Harvest in Ex 2316. For the sacrifices offered see w. 18, 19 Nu 28 26-31. 22. See on 199. 23-25. Feast of Trumpets. This was cele- brated on the first day of the seventh month (Tishri), which was New Year's Day according to the civil reckoning : see on Ex 12 2. For the special ritual of this Feast see Nu 291-6. 26-32. Day of Atonement : see c. 16. 33-43. Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. This feast, called also the Feast of Ingathering (Ex 23 16), was observed from the 15th to the 22nd Tishri (in October), and marked the end of the agricultural year, when the combined produce of the whole year, the vintage as well as the gi'ain harvest, had been secured : cp. Dt 16 13. It was celebrated with great rejoicing (v. 40) as the national ' harvest home,' the people camping out in booths constructed of branches upon the roofs of their houses and in the streets during the seven days, in commem- oration of the sojourn in the wilderness, v. 43 : see on Ex23i5, and cp. Hosl29. CHAPTEE 24 Oil for the Lamps. The Shewbread. Laws on Blasphemy 1-4. Oil for the Lamps in the Tabernacle. On the construction of the Lampstand see Ex 25 31-40, and with the present passage cp. Ex 27 20, 21 and notes there. 5-9. The Table of Shewbread is described in Ex 25 23-30 (see notes there). On this table, which stood in the Holy Place, twelve new unleavened loaves were laid each sabbath day, and after lying for seven days were removed and eaten by the piiests, fresh loaves being again substituted. These loaves, the number of which corresponded to that of the tribes of Israel, are called the ' bread of the Presence,' as being laid before God, or ' bread of the pile ' as being arranged in two rows (v. 6), or ' the continual bread,' as lying continually be- fore God (Nu 4 "). The shewbread was a kind of meal offering (see intro. to c. 2), and the rite probably had its origin in the crude notion that the deity required food like his worship- pers (cp. on 3 11). In the Levitical law, however, 98 24. 10 LEVITICUS 25. 32 it attained a higher significance. It was an acknowledgment that man owes his ' daily bread ' to God. It was a kind of perpetual grace over meat. 10-23. Punishment of a Blasphemer. A half -Israelite blasphemes the name of Jehovah. As there is some uncertainty whether such a person is subject to the same penalty as full- born Israelites the matter is referred to God, and the decision is given that there is one law for the stranger and for the home-born. 10. See on Exl23S. n. Blasphemed the name of the Lord] RV ' blasphemed the Name,' i.e. blasphemed Jehovah. The peculiar ex- pression is due to some copyist who shrank, out of a feeling of reverence, from inserting the name of Jehovah in this connexion : see on Ex 3 13. 14. Lay their hands] devoting him to death and solemnly dissociating them- selves from complicity in his guilt : cp. Dt 17''^. 16. As Avell the stranger] This is the im- portant legal point which the above incident is inserted to illustrate : cp. V. 22. 17-22. Cp. Ex21i2f' and notes there. CHAPTER 25 The Sabbatical Year. The Year OF Jubilee The matters treated in this chapter are closely related to those in c. 23, and their separation is another indication that we are dealing with a book made up of different ele- ments. Observe again the change of number in vv. 14, 17 and the interruption caused by vv. 18-22. Cp. what is said above in intro. to c. 21. 1-7. The law of the Sabbatical Year : see also Ex23io.ii Dt ISi-" 31 9-i3. This law rests on the principle that the land inhabited by the Israelites is not theirs in absolute possession. It really belongs to God ; ' the land is mine ; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me ' (v. 23). To keep the people in mind of this, it is enacted that every seventh year the land has to lie fallow. Only the spontaneous pro- duce of that year is to be enjoyed, and that not selfishly or for profit ; it is to be shared with the poor and strangers (Ex 23 1^). Every- thing is to be common. Slaves are to be set free if they desire their freedom (Ex 21 2-6), and debts are to be remitted to Israelites (Dt 15 ^"3). It is promised that the harvest of the sixth year will be sufficiently abundant to provide for the wants of the people till they reap again (vv. 20-22). The Sabbatical Year began with the first day of Tishri : see on 23 ^^^ How far these enactments were actually carried out it is difficult to say. There is no mention of their observance during pre-exilic times, so that they may have been allowed to become a dead letter, a supposition confirmed by what is said in 2 Ch36'-^i. They were renewed under Nehemiah(Nehl03i). 5. This V. is interesting as containing the only example of the word ' its ' in AV. Elsewhere the word ' his ' is used as the possessive of the neuter pronoun. In the AV of 1611 it is printed ' it ' ; ' that which groweth of it owne accorde.' Year of rest unto the land] As customs simi- lar to this are found in other countries, it is probable that it is a survival of a communistic age. At the same time, it was a benefit to the land. Thus we have another example here of the Lawgiver adopting a primitive custom and investing it with the sanctity of religion. Cp. what is said in intro. to chs. 11-15, and see also Intro, to Exodus. 8-55. The Year of Jubilee. Thisrestsonthe same principle as the Sabbatical Year : see above. In the fiftieth year, i.e. after a period of 7 x 7 years, the land is to lie fallow, and Hebrew slaves with their families are to be emanci- pated without price, as in the Sabbatical Year (vv. 39-55). A new and distinctive feature, however, makes its appearance. In the Year of Jubilee all property reverts natitrally to the original owner, who through poverty may have been obliged to sell it at some time during the previous period (vv. 13-28). The freehold of agricultural land could never, therefore, be sold in perpetuity (v. 23), and in cases of sale the purchase price was regulated according to the number of years still to run till the Year of Jubilee (vv. 14-16). The only exception was house property in a walled city (vv. 29*). The case of the Levitical cities is specially dealt with (vv. 32-34). The Year of Jubilee was thus, as it were, the ' new birth ' of the whole nation, when property was redistributed, and the inequali- ties arising in the previous period were re- moved. It was a remarkable social law, putting a check upon ambition and covetousness, pre- venting the acquisition of huge estates, and adjusting the distribution of wealth in the various classes of the community. The inci- dents of Ruth (c. 4) and of Naboth (IK 21) show that the law against the alienation of land was in force in early times : cp. Jer326^ That it was not unnecessary in later times appears from such passages as Isa5^ Mic22. 9. The Year of Jubilee began on the Day of Atonement, and was ushered in with the blow- ing of trumpets ; hence its name (lleh.johel — a ram's horn trumpet). 23. For ever] R V ' in perpetuity.' 25. A kinsman could redeem his relative's property at any time at a price cal- culated according to the years still to elapse before the Jubilee. 26. And himself . . ] RV ' and he be waxen rich and find sufficient to redeem it.' 28. Restore H to him] RV ' get it back for himself.' 32. The Levites were granted forty-eight cities to dwell in, with suburbs for their cattle : see Nu35. 99 25. 35 LEVITICUS 27. 16 35-38. See on Ex 22 25. 39-46. See on Ex21i-''. Only foreigners could be bought as slaves for ever. 47-54. The converse case of a Hebrew sold to a foreigner. CHAPTER 26 Concluding Exhortations Similar exhortations are found at the con- clusion of other codes of laws, as in Ex 23 20 f-, and frequently in Deuteronomy, e.g. in c. 28. The leading ideas and phraseology are the same in all. There is the same insistence on the holy character of Jehovah, the same de- mand for holiness on the part of His people, the same promises on condition of obedience, and the same warnings against being led astray by the evil example of the idolatrous nations among whom they dwell. 1 , 2. These two vv. have no connexion with what follows, except that they form the fun- damental principles of the Hebrew religion, and on them rests the entire body of the Levitical legislation : see on Ex244 34 13. 3-13. Promise of prosperity attached to obedience. 4. In a country like Palestine rain in the proper season is an indispensable condition of prosperity and plenty. Hence it is frequently referred to in the OT. as a special mark of the divine favour : see on Dt 1 1 10, and cp. Ezk 342<5 lsa55iO'iiHos63. There are two rainy seasons in Palestine. The former rain falls in October-November when the seed is sown, and the latter rain in March- April before harvest. 5. There will be no scarce season. 10. Because of the new] i.e. to make room for the embarrassing abundance. 12. Cp. 2 Cor 6 16-18. God's presence among, and delight in, His people are the cause of all the material blessings spoken of. 14-39. The penalty of disobedience. This is described in the form of a climax of which the steps are vv. 14-17, 18-20, 21-22, 23-26, 27-39. 19. The rain will be withheld, and the ground in consequence become like brass for hardness ; see on Dt 28 23, and for an instance, IK 171. 26. The staff of your bread] B,V ' your staff of bread ' : i.e. the bread which is your staff or support : cp. Ezk 4^6 51a 1413_ Owing to the scarcity one oven will be sufficient to bake the bread of ten families. 29. This actually took place more than once : see on Dt 28^3-57. 30. High places] places of worship, usually on an eminence. The name is sometimes applied to places used for the worship of Jehovah, but in later times the ' high places ' were condemned as idolatrous. Images] RV ' sun-images,' images of the sun-god wor- shipped by the Phoenicians and Babylonians : see 2 K 2311 2 Ch 14 5 344,7, and cp. Ezk 6 4,5. 31. Savour of your sweet odours] i.e. sacri- fices : see on Ex29i^. 34. The land lying desolate will then enjoy the rest of the sab- baths and Sabbatical years refused to it by a disobedient people : see 25 1^", and cp. 2Ch. 3621. 26, 37. A highly imaginative descrip- tion of the inherent weakness of all wrong- doing, and of the cowardice which is the result of an evil conscience : cp. Dt 28 65-67 Prov28i. 40-45. God desireth not the death of the sinner, and therefore every threat of punish- ment for disobedience is followed by a promise of mercy, on condition of repentance and amendment : cp. the way in which the pro- phecies of Amos and Micah conclude. 41. Uncircumcised hearts] unclean, not con- secrated to God: see on 1923. 46. The conclusion of the Law of Holiness (see intro. to chs. 17-26). The following chapter is of the nature of an appendix. CHAPTER 27 Vows AND Tithes and their Redemption 1-29. Law of vows and their redemption. The making of vows is a very ancient and universal practice connected with prayer. In order to secure his desire the suppliant adds a vow to his prayer. Yows may be either positive or negative. A man may promise either to devote something to God, or to abstain from some comfort or necessary of life. Instances of the latter, vows of abstinence, are to be found in Nu6i-2i 30 1 S142-t Ps 132 2-5, and of the former in Gn 28 20-22 jg 1 1 30, 31 Nu 21 1-3. The present chapter deals with posi- tive vows. The votive offering may be a human being (vv. 2-8), an animal (vv. 9-13), a house (vv. 14, 15), or a piece of land (vv. 16-25). 2-8. Human beings vowed to Jehovah must not be offered to Him in sacrifice. They must be redeemed, a certain sum of money being paid into the sanctuary as an equivalent. 2. Singular vow] a special vow devoting himself or any of his family to God. 3. Fifty shekels] about £6 10s : see on 51^. 9-13. If a man dedicates an animal and wishes to redeem it, he must pay its estimated value and one-fifth more. 9. Whereof men bring an offering] i.e. one of the sacrificial animals, a bullock, sheep, or goat. 10. See Mai 1 14. II. As it is unlawful to sacrifice unclean animals they must be redeemed and the equi- valent value plus a fifth paid into the sanc- tuary. 14,15. The redemption of a dedicated house follows the same rule. 16-25. The redemption of a dedicated piece of land is complicated by the law of Jubilee (c. 25). Its value is reckoned accord- ing to the amount of seed required to sow it (v. 16), and a reduction made in proportion 100 27. 16 LEVITICUS— NUMBERS INTRO. to the number of years till the next Year of Jubilee (v. 18). The owner may redeem it at this price plus one fifth. If he does not, it goes to the sanctuary at the Year of Jubilee (vv. 20, 21). But if the dedicant of the land lias himself bought it from a third person, then at the Jubilee it reverts to the latter, and the dedicant must recompense the sanctuary ^y paying its redemption value calculated as before (vv. 22-24). 1 6. Homer] ten ephahs, or nearly eleven bushels. The value of barley is here stated to be about £6 10s. 23. In that day] The estimated value of a purchased piece of land must be paid in a lump sum. The estimated value of a hereditary possession, it would appear, was paid in yearly instalments. This practically meant that, till the Jubilee, the dedicant paid to the sanctuary a yearly rent of one shekel per homer of seed that he used. 26-29. Exception to the Law of Redemp- tion of Vows. 26. Firstlings, which already belong to God (Ex 13-), cannot be vowed again without mockery. 27. Firstlings of unclean animals must be redeemed in the usual manner. In Ex 13 13 34-0 the law is that such must either be redeemed with a lamb or killed. The law seems to have varied at different times. 28. Devoted things are those consecrated to Grod by an extreme form of vow, the ban or curse, requiring their destruction or in- alienable devotion to the sanctuary : see Nul8i^Dtl3i7 Josh 6 17, 21 IS 153.9.20. This form of vow is specially laid upon the spoil of conquered nations. The NT. equivalent is the ' anathema ' or excommunication : see R093 1 Cor 5 5 1622 1 Tim 120. 29. Devoted of men] see Ex2220j where the Hebrew is ' shall be devoted.' There the ' devotion of men ' is the solemn judicial penalty of idola- try. This was probably the only ground of devoting human beings. The case of Jeph- thah's daughter is doubtful : see Jg 1 1 30-40. 30-33- The Law of Tithes and their Redemption. Tithes belong to Grod as the real owner of the land : see on 25 1"^. They are a kind of rent paid by the people as His tenants. Being already Grod's, tithes cannot be made the subject of vows. Tithes of agricultural produce may be commuted for their money value plus one fifth (v. 31). The tithe of cattle cannot be redeemed (vv. 32, 33). 32. Passeth under the rod] of the owner as he counts his cattle. Every tenth beast as it comes, whether good or bad, is to be set apart as belonging to God : cp. v. 10. The tithes were given to the Levites for their maintenance, and they in turn tithed their own tithes: see Nu 18 20-32, NUMBERS INTEODUCTION I. Title and Contents. The English title of this book is a translation of that given to it in the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible. It is called Numbers because it tells of two numberings of the Israelites, one near the beginning and the other near the end of the sojourn in the wilderness (chs. 1 and 26). The title is not particularly applicable seeing that the account of these numberings occupies only a small part of the book. A better title is that given to it by the Jews, who call it ' In the Wilderness,' from the fifth word of the opening verse in the Hebrew Bible. Numbers contains a brief summary of the experiences of the Israelites in the wilderness and covers a period of nearly forty years, extending from the encampment at Sinai to the arrival at the border of Canaan. The contents fall readily into three main divisions. Part I. The Camp at Sinai and Prepara- tions for Departure, chs, i-iqIo. This section includes the first numbering of the people, the order of the camp and the march (1-4) ; laws regarding lepers, marital jealousy, and the vow of the Nazirite (5, 6) ; the offerings of the princes for the service of the tabernacle (7) ; regulations regarding the lighting of the golden lamps and the consecration of the Levites (8) ; the celebration of the Passover in the wilderness (9 i-i4) ; the cloudy pillar and the use of the silver trumpets (91^-1010). Part 2. The Journeyings from Sinai to the Plains of Moab, chs. 10II-22I. These chap- ters cover the main period of the wanderings and give, not a full narrative of events, but a few outstanding incidents in these thirty-nine years, interspersed with various laws. Thus we have the departure from Sinai and the murmuring at Taberah and Kibroth-hattaavah where quails are sent (10 H-l 1 3^) ; the jealousy of Miriam and Aaron against Moses (12) ; the sending of the spies from Kadesh, the 101 INTRO. NUMBERS INTRO. discouragement of the people and sentence of forty years' wandering in the wilderness (13, 14) ; laws regarding offerings and sabbath observance (15) ; the rebellions of Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and On (IG) ; the blossoming of Aaron's rod and the duties of priests and Levites (17, 18) ; the method of purification for those defiled by the dead (19) ; the death of Miriam, the murmuring at Meribah, and the giving of water from the rock (20 1-^^) ; opposition of the Edomites and death of Aaron (20 1'^^^^) ; defeat by the Canaanites, plague of fiery serpents, and conquest of the Amorites (21) ; arrival at the plains of Moab (221). Part 3. In the Plains of Moab, chs. 22 2-36. This section relates the experiences in the plains of Moab and in the country E. of the Jordan, and includes the story of Balaam (22-24) ; relapse of the people into idolatry (25) ; the second numbering (26) ; law of inheritance, and designation of Joshua as the successor of Moses (27) ; law of offerings, sacred seasons (28, 29), and vows (30) ; fight against Midian (31) ; the assignment of land on the E. side of Jordan to two and a half tribes (32) ; a list of stations on the march (^331-49) ; directions as to the treatment of the Canaanites and the division of the land (3350_34) J appointment of Levitical cities and cities of refuge (35) ; additional laws regarding inheritance (36). 2. Origin and Composition. The book of Numbers is manifestly a continuation of the story of the Pentateuch, and exhibits the same general literary characteristics as the rest of the books. As a combination of law and narrative, rather than a legislative code, it is more akin to Exodus than Leviticus, and sometimes follows it in ancient lists of OT. books. The circumstantiality of the narrative in many points, and the fact that many of the regulations in Numbers are only suitable to a life in the desert, while others are professedly prospective in their application (see e.g. 15 ^ 342), are indications that the groundwork of the book is of primitive origin. The state- ment in 332 is important as showing that Moses himself made a record of the wander- ings, and that it was preserved to later times. It is interesting also to observe that Numbers incorporates several poetical pieces of great power and beauty which are of undoubted antiquity : see 21i*>i5,i7,is,27-30 and the utter- ances of Balaam in chs. 23, 24. In its present form, however, the whole book can hardly have been written by Moses. C.123 is most naturally understood as the judgment of a later writer on the character of Moses, who is not likely to have written this V. himself. Several times the phrase ' beyond Jordan ' is used to denote the E. side, imply- ing that the writer was living in Canaan. But Moses never crossed the Jordan ; he died on the E. side : see on 2113 221 Dtli. The capture of Havoth-jair (32 "H) did not take place till long after the death of Moses, as appears from JglO^.^. The words 'while the children of Israel were in the wilderness ' (15^2) are written from the standpoint of a later time. These things do not, of course, imply that the whole book was a late com- position ; they can be explained as additions and interpolations in the original work. 3. Religious Value. What has been said as to the permanent religious value of the narrative and legislation of Exodus and Levi- ticus applies to the corresponding portions of Numbers and need not be repeated here. It is enough to point out that the writer of the book is no mere chronicler of events. He is an interpreter of the history of his people. In every event he sees the finger of God, ruling and guiding His chosen people, pro- viding for their wants, bearing with their sins and infirmities, keeping His covenant with them, and preparing them by means of a long discipline for serving Him and being His witness to the world. Moses and Miriam, Caleb and Joshua, Phinehas and Balaam, are types of character from which we have still something to learn. The description of the camp and the congregation, the distribution of the duties and the provision for sacred ceremonial, are, like the description of the Heavenly Jerusalem in the book of Revelation, valuable, as giving an ideal picture of organ- ised religious life. The Christian reader will recognise, in many of the experiences of God's people in the ' great and terrible wilderness,' types and illustrations of spiritual truths which are unchanging and eternal. The ' guidance by means of the pillar of cloud and fire (915-23), the supply of manna and of water (11, 20), the intercession of Aaron when he stood between the living and the dead till the plague was stayed (IG'^^'-^O), the sacrifice of the red heifer (19), the brazen serpent (21), the appointment of the cities of refuge (35), the exchision from the land of promise of those whose faith failed them (14) and of Moses himself (2012 27i2-i'i), the victory of God's people over the evil powers of the unseen world (22-24) — in the words of the Apostle, ' all these things happened unto them for ensamples : and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world . are come ' (1 Cor 10 H). 102 1. NUMBERS 3. 47 PAET 1 The Camp at Sinai and Preparations for Departure (Chs. 1-10 ^o) CHAPTER 1 The First Numbering of the People At Sinai Moses receives the command to take the number of the males over twenty years of age in the eleven secular tribes, the tribe of Levi being enumerated separately (147-49 314-39). The result shows a total of 603,550 (cp. Ex 12 37 38 26 Nu 1 1 21). The result of the second numbering, made in the plains of Moab thirty-eight years afterwards (c. 26), is 601,730. The credibility of these figures has been disputed on two grounds. First, on this reckoning, the entire population, including men, women, and children, must have been at least three millions, and it is difficult to con- ceive how this large company could have been supported in the wilderness for forty years, not to mention the difficulty of marshalling and conducting them on their marches. The difficulty is a real one, but it is exaggerated by the traditional view, not supported by Scripture, that the Israelites were continually marching, and that they always moved as one company. To speak of them ' marching through the wilderness' is misleading: cp. 9^2. They may have occupied a great part of the peninsula of Sinai, encamping in detachments and moving about in search of pasture, though not simultaneously. The marches mentioned in Numbers may have been those of the main body under Moses: see intro. to 10ii-22i. As to the resources of the wilderness, these must not be jiidged by its present condition. The word ' wilderness ' does not mean a barren tract, but an uninhabited country which may be very fertile. And traces exist to show that this ' wilderness ' not only could but did support at one time an extensive population. Moreover, unless miracles are prejudged to be impossible, account must be taken of the miraculous provision made for the sustenance of the Israelites till the time that they entered Canaan. The second objection is that the number of first-born males is stated in S*^ to have been 22,273, again exclusive of the tribe of Levi. But this is a very small number in proportion to the total number of males. In answer to this it may be said that what is meant is the first-born males under twenty years of age at the time of the census, or those that had been born since the departure from Egypt. On the whole, while there are un- doubtedly difficulties connected with these figures in Nu 1 and 26, our knowledge of the circumstances is too limited to enable us summarily to reject them as incredible : see on Ex 1421. 16. The renowned] rather, 'the called'; chosen representatives. 18. Polls] i.e. heads. 47-54. The Levites are not included in the general census. The tribe of Levi is separated for the service of the tabernacle, and being exempt from military service is enumerated separatelj': see c. 3. 50. Tabernacle of testi- mony] the tent containing the ark: see on Ex 163*. 51. Stranger] here one who is not a Levite: cp. 310 and Ex 29 33. 53. Wrath] cp. 1646 lCh272't. CHAPTER 2 The Disposition of the Tribes in the Camp and on the March The camp is in the form of a hollow square, each side of which is occupied by three tribes. On the E., the position of honour (cp.338),is Judah, with whom are associated Issachar and Zebulun; on the S. is Reuben, with Simeon and Gad; on the W. is Ephraim, with Manasseh and Benjamin; on the N. is Dan, with Asher and Naphtali. In this ar- rangement regard seems to have been paid to family relationship. The priests and Levites form an inner square surrounding the taber- nacle, which occupies the centre of the camp. CHAPTER 3 The Levites, their Duties and Number Although Aaron and his family belong to the tribe of Levi (Ex2i) the term 'Levites' is usually employed, as here, to denote the non- Aaronite Levites. The family of Aaron is set apart for the priesthood (Ex 28 Lv8,9), and the Levites are designated as their assistants, occupying an intermediate position between the priests and the congregation. They have charge of the tabernacle and its furniture, taking it down, carrying it during the march, and setting it up again. Their services in the tabernacle are not defined, but they would doubtless perform the humbler duties con- nected with the sacrifices, etc. In later times they were also doorkeepers and musicians in the Temple. See Neh 11, 12 lCh63i>32,48 15 16. The reason why this particular tribe was chosen for these offices, in addition to the fact that Moses and Aaron themselves belonged to it, seems to have been their zeal for the honour of Jehovah at the time of the wor- ship of the Golden Calf (Ex 32 26-29). The subject of the Levites is continued in chs. 8 and 16-18. 4. On Nadab and Abihu see LvlO. 10. Stranger] see on l^i. 13. See Ex 13 2, 12 f. 43. See intro. to c. 1. 47, See on Ex 3013. Cp. Nul8i6, 103 4. 2 NUMBERS 6. 1 CHAPTER 4 The Duties op the Levites on the March 2. Kohath seems to have been the second son of Levi (.S^''), but his family is mentioned first, because Moses and Aaron belonged to it (3 19 ; cp. Ex 6 is> 20)^ and because it had charge of the most sacred furniture, the ark, etc. 3. From thirty years old] In 82* we read that the time of service was from the age of twenty-five. And in 2Ch31i7Ezr38 it is from the age of twenty: cp. 1 Ch 233-24-27. The practice seems to have varied at different times. 4-20. The Kohathites carry the ark and the sacred vessels of the tabernacle. 5. The covering veil is the curtain which screened off the Holy of Holies: see Ex 26^3. 7. The continual bread] i.e. the shewbread: see on Lv245-f, n. The golden altar] i.e. the altar of incense. In v. 13 the altar is the altar of burnt offering (see on Ex30i-iO). 15. Lest they die] cp. 2S66,7. 18. Cut not off] see that you do not expose them to any risk of death by touching the most holy things: cp. Ilol4i5. 20. They shall not go in] i.e. the Kohathites. 21-28. The Gershonites take charge of the curtains of the tabernacle and the court. As these were of great weight two ox-wagons were employed in their transport : see 7 ''. 29-33. The Merarites take charge of the framework of the tabernacle and employ four ox-wagons: see 7^. 34-49. The numbers given here are those of the Levites on active service, between thirty and fifty years of age. The total number of the tribe was given in 3^9. CHAPTEE 5 Vaeious Ceremonial Laws 1-4. On the seclusion of lepers and unclean persons, see Lv 1,3-15. 5-10. On the law of restitution, see Lv 51^-6''', to which the present passage is a supplement, providing that if the injured person dies and has no kindred to whom the price of restitution may be paid, it has to be given to the priest. Vv. 9, 10 prescribe that the heave offerings (see on Lv 7 28-34) are the perquisite of the particular priest who officiates at the sacrifice, and are not to be distributed among the priests generally. 1 1-3 1. On Marital Jealousy. A wife suspected of unfaithfulness is re- quired to undergo a trial by ordeal. A potion is prepared by the priest, which she must drink, after taking an oath of purgation (vv. 19-24). If she is innocent the potion is harm- less, but if guilty it injures her, thereby bringing her guilt to light (vv. 27, 28). Trial to reveal the innocence or guilt of a suspected person. During the middle ages it was fre- quently resorted to in Europe under sanction of the church and the law. The most common forms of ordeal were those by fire, by water, and by wager of battle. The difference between these and the ordeal prescribed here is that the latter is not in itself injurious, but depends for its efficacy on the direct interposition of God. 13. No witness] The ordeal is prescribed for cases of doubt. To other cases the law of Lv20io applies. 15. Cp. Lv2i. 17. Holy v^ater] This is the only place where this phrase is found, and it is not explained. Water from the laver is probably meant : see Ex30i'''-2i, 18. Uncover the . . head] rather, as in RV, ' let the hair . . go loose,' a common sign of mourning: see Lv 106 1345. Bitter water] so called as being the instrument of the curse. CHAPTER 6 The Law of the Nazirite. The Priestly Benediction 1-21. The Law of the Nazirite. A Nazirite (from Heb. 7iazir, ' to separate') is a man or woman ' separated,' i.e. consecrated to Jehovah by means of a special vow of abstinence. The word has no connexion with 'Nazarene,' which means an inhabitant of Nazareth. During the period of his vow the Nazirite comes under a threefold obliga- tion, (1) to abstain strictly from wine and all products of the vine, whether intoxicating or not (vv. 3, 4) ; (2) to let his hair grow (v. 5) ; and (3) to avoid all ceremonial defilement through contact with a dead body, even that of a near relative (v. 7). If he is accidentally defiled by the sudden death of any one beside him, he must perform rites of purification, and reconsecrate himself, counting as null what- ever part of the period of the original vow may have elapsed (vv. 9-12). At the expira- tion of his vow he presents certain sacrifices (vv. 13-17), shaves his head and offers his hair upon the altar, and returns to ordinary life (vv. 18-21). The Nazirite's vow may either be for a limited period, which is the case supposed in this passage, or for life. The antiquity of the rite is shown by what is related of Samson (Jgl3^), and of Samuel (1 S 111), -^yjio are usually regarded as lifelong Nazirites. It is also referred to in Am 2 12. The Nazirite was not a hermit, but a very active devotee of Jehovah. He was very jealous for the Lord God of Israel, and while the vow of consecration and abstinence may sometimes have been undertaken for private and personal reasons, as e.g. to obtain the fulfilment of a desire, it was in many cases the expression of a religious and patriotic by ordeal is of the nature of an appeal to God zeal, which sought to protect the primitive 104 6. 5 NUMBERS 9. 23 simplicity of Israel from the corrupting and enervating influences of heathen civilisations and religions. In this respect the Nazirites had much in common with the prophets, with whom they are classed in Am^n.i'-, as being ' raised up ' by Jehovah Himself. In NT. references to the Nazirite vow are supposed to be found in Lk 1 1^ (John the Baptist), in Acl8is(St. Paul), and 2124. 5. See on Lvl927. 7. The consecration of his] RV ' his separ- ation unto.' 9. Die . . by him] i.e. beside him. Head of his consecration] his unshorn locks were the visible sign of his vow of consecration. 14, 15. The burnt offering betokened his entire dedication to God ; the sin offering was presented for the sins he may have committed unwittingly during the period of his conse- cration ; and the peace offering was an ex- pression of his thankfulness for having been able to complete his vow. On the meaning of these sacrifices, see Lv 1, 3, 4. 18. This denotes the completion of his vow : cp. Ac 18 1^. 21. Beside that that his hand shall get] RV ' beside that which he is able to get,' i.e. in addition to any other offerings which it may be in his power to make. 22-26. The Priestly Benediction. It is part of the duty of the priests to bless the people in the name of Jehovah : see DtlO^ 215. and see on Lv922,23. The priestly bene- diction consists of three double clauses of increasing length and intensity, in each of which the sacred name is used. Cp. the three- fold Christian benediction in 2 Cor 13 1"!. Ps 67 is evidently modelled on this benediction ; cp. also Ps4<3 2911 3116 803.7,19. 25. Make his face shine] show favour. 26. Lift up his countenance] take gracious notice of him. 27. Put my name upon] This may mean simply to pronounce Jehovah's name over the people in blessing and thus mark them as His by covenant relation, as the Christian minister does when he baptises ' into the name of Christ.' But in OT. the ' name of Jehovah ' is His revealed character; see on Ex3i3. So that to ' put Jehovah's name ' upon a person is to declare to him the presence and nature of Jehovah. The priest does this when he blesses the people. He gives them the assur- ance of Jehovah's presence and favour. CHAPTER 7 The Offerings of the Princes at the Dedication of the Altar The twelve princes, each representing his tribe, presented gold and silver vessels for use in sacrifices, sacrificial animals, and wagons and oxen for the transport of the tabernacle : see 429-49. The dedication of these offerings occupied twelve days, and was a service of thanksgiving. 13. Charger] a large dish, as in Mtl48. 89. To speak with him] i.e. with Jehovah. CHAPTER 8 The Lighting of the Golden Lamps. The Consecration of the Levites 1-4. See on Ex 25 31-40 2720,21. 5-26. This is the fulfilment of the injunc- tion in 35-13. 7. Water of purifying] RV ' of expiation.' This ceremonial cleansing symbolised the inward purity required in those who bore the vessels of the Lord. II. Offer the Levites . ./or an offering of the children of Israel] R V ' offer (lit. ' wave ') the Levites . . for a wave offering, on the behalf of the children of Israel.' The Levites were solemnly set apart by the representatives of the people laying their hands upon them, and they were also ' waved ' before the Lord as being that portion of the nation specially de- voted to the service of God. How the ' waving ' was done is not certain, whether the Levites were led backwards and forwards by Aaron in the direction of the Holy of Holies, or whether Aaron merely waved his hands over them: see on Ex 29 24. 16. The Levites are accepted as the substitutes in the service of the tabernacle for the firstborn among the children of Israel, who are now redeemed by a money payment of five shekels : see Ex 13 13 and cp. 1815.16. 19. Plague] see on 1 53. When . . come nigh] RM ' through coming nigh.' 24. Twenty and five years] see on 43. CHAPTER 9 Rules about the Passover. The Cloud AS Guide 1-5. The Passover of the second year. This Passover took place before the events narrated in c. 1 : cp. 9 1 with 1 1. The repe- tition of the injunction to keep the Passover was necessary, because the law in Exodus did not contemplate the possibility of a Passover in the wilderness : see Ex 12 25. 6-14. The Supplementary Passover. Cer- tain persons who were unable to celebrate the Passover at the proper time, because of a ceremonial defilement (v. 6), are enjoined to observe a supplementary Passover on the fourteenth day of the second month (vv. 9 ^•). This was called ' The Little Passover.' 13. Cutoff] see on Lv 7 21. 14. Stranger] one who is not a Hebrew by birth but has been admitted into the nation by circumcision, a proselyte; see Ex 12^9, 48. 15-23. The cloudy pillar as a signal on the march. This pass9,ge is parallel to Ex 40 34-38 ; see on Ex 13 21. 22. It is clear from this v. that the people were not continually marching during their sojourn in the wilderness : see intro. to c. 1, 105 10. 1 NUMBERS 11.31 CHAPTER 10-110 The Use of the Silver Trumpets This section, like the last, is connected with the breaking up of the camp, one of the uses of the silver trumpets being to give the signal for the departure. 2. Of a whole piece] RV ' of beaten work.' 9. If ye go to war] see e.g. 316 2Chl3i2,i4. 10. See Lv 232* 2Ch6i2 Ezr3io. PART 2 JOURNEYINGS FROM SiNAI After a stay at Sinai of nearly a year (cp. NulUii with Exl9i) the signal is given for the breaking up of the camp. This second division of the book of Numbers relates the wanderings in the wilderness, and covers a period extending from the second to the for- tieth year of the exodus : see Nu 33 ^s Dt 1 3. But as the events recorded in 1011-14-*^ took place during the first few months after leaving Sinai, and the death of Aaron in 20 22 was in the fortieth year, very little space is given to the events of the intervening thirty-eight years of desert life, more especially as chs. 15, 18, 19 are taken up with laws. There are indeed but two events recorded in that long period, viz. the rebellion of Korah and his company, with which is connected the blossom- ing of Aaron's rod (16, 17), and the death of Miriam and murmuring of the people at Kadesh (201-13). It appears, therefore, that while the period of sojourn in the wilderness was of supreme importance, by way of preparing the people socially and religiously for the occupa- tion of the land of promise, it was uneventful. In all probability the Israelites led a fairly settled life, some of them scattered at a con- siderable distance from the headquarters of the camp, and moving about not always as one body but in separate detachments : see on 9 15-23. During the greater part of this period Kadesh seems to have been their headquarters. See on 132tJ 201, and cp. Dtl^e. It was only near the end of this period that a concerted and continuous march was made from Kadesh to the plains of Moab (c. 21). CHAPTER 1011-36 The Departure from Sinai 12. Paran] see on Ex 15 22. They do not actually reach Paran till 1216. 29. In Ex 2 1*^ Moses's father-in-law is called Reuel and in 3 1 4 is Jethro. Here Hobab is called the son of Reuel (or Raguel), and there- fore apparently the brother-in-law of Moses. But in Jg4ii (RM) and perhaps here, too, he is called the father-in-law of Moses. There is therefore much uncertainty as to these names and relationships, which is increased by the fact that the word rendered. father-in-law is of wide application. It has been supposed that the name Reuel in Ex 2 1^ has been inserted by mistake, and that Hobab, otherwise called Jethro, was the son of Reuel and the father- To Moab (Chs. 10ii-22i) in-law of Moses. He was a Midianite and well acquainted with the country through which the Israelites were to pass. The service he ren- dered to them was not forgotten in after times, so that it may be inferred that he yielded to the pressing invitation of Moses : see Jg 1 16 ISI56. 35. When the ark set forward] i.e. when- ever it set forward. Every stage of the journey was begun and ended with this prayer of invocation. Ps 68 recalls this march of the people through the wilderness with God at their head to ensmre victory. CHAPTER 11 Murmuring at Taberah and at Kibroth- Hattaavah I. In the uttermost parts of the camp] What is meant is that the fire began, where probably the murmuring began, at the extremity of the camp, perhaps among the ' mixed multitude ' (cp. V. 4). 3. Taberah] ' burning.' 4. The mixt multitude] see Ex 12 38^ where, however, a different word is used. Fell a lusting] longed for the delicacies of Egypt (v. 5). "Wept again] This may refer to the story in Ex 16. 15. My wretchedness] i.e. the failure of my attempts to lead this people : cp. the de- spairing complaint of Elijah in 1 K19* and of Jeremiah in Jer 15 10. 16. Later Jewish writers saw in this command of God the origin of their Sanhedrim, or Council of Seventy, who regu- lated the affairs of the nation in later times : cp. Mkl5i. 18. Sanctify] see Ex 19io>i5. 25. They prophesied] This does not mean that they were able to predict the future, but that they broke out into the praise of God, and declared His will and goodness, while in a state of spiritual exaltation and ecstasy : see on Ex 71. 26. Were written] enrolled among the seventy. The fact that Eldad and Medad also received the spirit shows that the spirit of God is not limited to certain places or individuals, and that He is no re- specter of persons : cp. Ac 10 34, 35, 44-48 28. Cp. Mk938.39. 29. A good example of the magnanimity and unselfishness of Moses : see on 27 1^. 31. Two cubits hirih upon the face of the earth] The simplest interpretation of these words is that the quails were flying at this height (about 3 ft.) above the ground, which allowed the people to capture them easily. 106 11. 32 NUMBERS 13. 21 Quails usually fly low, and with the wind (see on ExlGi^). 32. A homer is about ten bushels. The quails were spread out to dry for preservation. 33. The plague was pro- bably due to surfeit : cp. Ps. 78 ^^-^i 106i3-i5. 34. Kibroth-hattaavah] ' the graves of lust- ing ' : this and Hazeroth were between Sinai and Kadesh. CHAPTER 12 The Jealousy of Miriam and Aaron In this scene Miriam is the chief actor : the punishment falls on her alone. Aaron seems to have been led away by her (cp. Ex 32 2^-25). The controversy arose in connexion with Moses' marriage with an Ethiopian, but the sequel, to which no reference is made to this matter, shows that the real reason of the strife is the jealousy of Miriam and Aaron over the superior position of their younger brother (vv. 2, 6-9). I. The Ethiopian woman] Heb. ' the Cushite woman.' This can hardly be Zipporah, who was a Midianite (Ex 2 k^- 21). Moses, it appears, had married again. Marriage with the Canaan- ites was forbidden (Ex 34 1'^), but not with the Egyptians (see Dt 23 ''"> ^). 2. Miriam is called a prophetess in Ex 15^0 : see note there and cp. Ex^i'i-i'''. 3. Moses made no retort to the criticism, thus exhibiting true greatness. 6-8. The superior favour shown here to Moses consists (1) in the direct manner in which God reveals His will to him, and (2) in his position of general authority. 12. Le- prosy was a living death, and contact with a leper involved the same defilement as with a dead body ; see LvlS^s. 14. The prayer is heard, but Miriam is obliged to submit to the customary seclusion and purification, in order that the people may know of her sin and punishment, and take warning. CHAPTER 13 The Sending of the Spies and their Report 8. Oshea] RV ' Hoshea,' meaning ' help ' or 'salvation.' Joshua, or Jehoshua (v. 16), means 'Jehovah is my help' : see on Ex 17 9. 17. Southward] RV ' by (RM ' into ') the South ' : lit. ' into the Negeb ' : see on Gn 129. The spies, however, really went northward on this occasion, first through the Negeb, and then through the mountainous district lying N. of it, here called ' the mountain,' after- wards the ' hill-country of Judah,' to the W. of the Dead Sea. 20. Time of the firstripe grapes] i.e. about the end of July. 21. The ■wilderness of Zin lay N. or NE. of the wilder- ness of Paran, and may have formed part of it. Its chief town was Kadesh-Barnea (v. 26). Rehob and Hamath were in the extreme N. of the country : see JglS-^ Nu348. The spies traversed the entire land from S. to N. The length of Canaan is about 180 m., and its average breadth between the Mediter- ranean Sea and the River Jordan about 40 m. The country may be regarded as consisting of three strips running N. and S. There is (1) the Maritime Plain extending inwards from the coast to a distance of from 4 to 15 m., very fertile, and including the famous Plain of Sharon and the Lowlands of the Philistines. (2) Behind this rises the ' Hill Country,' form- ing, as it were, the backbone of the Holy Land, and falling precipitously on the E. down to (3) the valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, which divides the land of Canaan from the Highlands of Gilead and Moab E. of the Jordan. See art. ' Palestine.' In the earliest monumental records which we have, this land is called the ' land of the Canaanites ' or the ' land of the Amorites,' from which it may be in- ferred that these were the tribes originally inhabiting it. At a very early period the Hittites, a powerful kingdom to the N. of Canaan, established themselves in the country and have left monuments of their influence. At the time of the Israelitish Conquest the land was inhabited by a mixture of tribes. Of these, the principal were the Canaanites (i.e. probably ' Lowlanders '), dwelling in the Mari- time Plain and the valley of the Jordan, the Hittites and the Jebusites in the S., in what was afterwards called Judaea, the Hivites to the N. of these in what came to be known as Samaria, and still further N. the Perizzites. The Amorites (i.e. probably the ' Highlanders ') were found in the N. and also in the S. to the E. of the Jordan. The Philistines had also obtained a settlement in the southern part of the Maritime Plain : see Dt223. Till recently it was thought that, prior to the Conquest by the Israelites, Canaan was an unknown and uncivilised country. We know now that long before that time, as early as 3500 B.C., Baby- lonian kings ruled over Canaan, and that the Babylonian language and civilisation were spread over the country. After the Baby- lonian influence came the Egyptian. At Tel- el Amarna in Egypt there has been discovered agreat number of tablets datingabout 1400 B.C., i.e. not long before the Conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. These tablets prove to be mostly letters to the king of Egypt from tri- butary princes in Canaan written in the Baby- lonian language. From them we learn that about the time of the exodus Canaan was subject to Egypt, and that instead of being a country of semibarbarians, it possessed a highly developed civilisation, in the riiling power at least. ' At that period Canaan had already behind it a long civilised past. The country was filled with schools and libraries, with richly furnished palaces, and workshops of artisans. 107 13. 23 NUMBERS 15. 39 The cities on the coast had their fleets, partly of merchantmen, partly of warships, and an active trade was carried on with all parts of the known world.' But at the time of the exodus Egypt was beginning to lose its hold of the country. The native tribes were rest- less and rebellious, and Canaan was ready to be ' the prey of the first resolute invader who had strength and courage at his back.' These facts, recently discovered, throw a flood of light upon the Israelitish Conquest of the country. They explain how it was possible for the Israelites to enter and take possession of it. And they are valuable also as proving that long before the Captivity, as early as the exodus, the Israelites were in close contact, not only with Egyptian, but with Babylonian civilisation and religion. 23. The brook (mg valley) of Eshcol] lay a little to the N. of Hebron, in a district still renowned for its fertility, and espe- cially for its vineyards. The cluster of grapes was carried by two men, not so much on account of its weight as its size, in order that it might not be crushed. 26. To Kadesh] see on v. 21. This was the most important station of the journey. The people remained here for the greater part of thirty-eight years between the sending of the spies and the entrance into Canaan: see on 20 1. According to Dt 1 1^- 2^ the spies were sent out from Kadesh. 32. Eateth up the inhabitants] This refers to the warlike cha- racter of the inhabitants, who devour each other in strife. 33. The giants] Heb. the Nephilim. The word is found only here and in GnB'*. The report of the spies is of course exaggerated, but the original inhabitants seem to have been of unusual stature and strength: cp. Dt2ii 1817-1-", and on 2133-35. CHAPTER 14 Discouragement of the People and Sentence of Forty Years' Wandering 9. Breadfor us] cp. 1332 22* 248. 12. Cp. Ex32iof-, where a similar promise is made and where Moses shows the same self-effacing spirit. 13. Cp. Josh79 2S120 Ps79io. 17. Let the power of my LORD be great] i.e. in the eyes of the heathen, when they see Israel possessing the land. 18. See on Ex 34 '','<'. 22. These ten times] a round number indi- cating full measure : cp. Gn31". 33. Shall wander] E,V ' shall be wanderers.' Better, ' shall be shepherds,' lead an unsettled life instead of occupying the land. The forty years are reckoned from the time of the de- parture from Egypt. See Dt2i'i. Bear your whoredoms] suffer the penalty of your faith- lessness. 34. My breach of promise] RV ' my alienation' from you; RM ' the revoking of my promise.' 40. The mountain] the Hill-country by way of which the spies had gone. The people presume to disobey the command of v. 25. 45. Unto Hormah] This was about 25 m. NE. of Kadesh. They must therefore have marched considerably to the N. of Kadesh: see on 213. CHAPTER 15 Laws regarding various Offerings 1-16. Meal and Drink Offerings. The offerings here referred to are those presented along with other sacrifices (see on the Meal Offering, Lv2), and an enactment is made regulating the proportion of meal, oil, and wine to be used along with a lamb (vv. 4, 5), a ram (vv. 6, 7), and a bullock (vv. 8-10) respectively. These laws seem to have been given at Kadesh during the long sojourn there. 4. Tenth deal] i.e. the tenth part of an ephah, which is about a bushel. A hin is about a gallon and a half: see Exl6i« 29*0. 14. Stranger] see on 9^^. 17-21. The Offering of the First Fruits. 20. Your dough] Probably a coarse kind of meal: cp. Ezk4430. 22-31. Additional Laws regarding Sin Offer- ings (1) for the congregation (vv. 22-2G) and (2) for the individual (vv. 27-31). 30. Pre- sumptuously] lit. ' with a high hand, ' wil- fully : see on Lv 4 2. Reproacheth the LORD] bringetha reproach upon the Lord: i.e. causeth His name to be dishonoured. 32-36. The Punishment of the Sabbath Breaker. This incident is designed to illustrate \'v. 30, 31. It tells how the man who reproached the Lord, by breaking the sabbath command- ment, was utterly cut off, i.e. put to death, as the Lord commanded Moses. 38. Fringes in the borders of their garments] RM ' twisted threads.' The original form of these is uncertain. Judging from later times, they would be, not ornamental festoons running along the edge of the gar- ment, but tassels attached to each of its four corners by a thread of blue. A religious im- portance was attached to the wearing of these tassels. They were a visible reminder to the Jews of their obligation to keep the com- mandments of Jehovah (v. 39). In all proba- bility what we have here is the hallowing of an ancient custom, as these tassels seem to have been worn by the early Persians, among others. The Jews attached an ever-increasing importance to these symbolical ornaments of dress: cp. Mtl436 920 23 5. The modern sur- vival is the Jewish fallifh, or prayer-cloth, con- sisting of a strip of cloth with fringes on its border, which is thrown over the shoulders during the service in the synagogue. 39. All the commandments] The Rabbis enumerated 108 16. 1 NUMBERS 17. 613 commandments in the Law. It so happens that the numerical value of the letters in the Hebrew word for fringe {zizith) is exactly 600. To make this number up to 613 the tassel was made of eight threads with five knots. In this way each tassel represented the 613 commandments, and the wearing of it was said to be of equal merit with the keeping of the whole law. This is a good example of Rabbinical interpretation and of external scrupulosity. Go a whoring] see on Ex 34 ^^. CHAPTER 16 The Rebellion of Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and On This incident is similar to that recorded in c. 12, and while it illustrates the difficulties Moses encountered in his leadership, owing to the jealousy of those under him, it served to confirm him (v. 28) and Aaron (c. 17) in the position assigned to them. It is now generally agreed that this c. is composed of two nar- ratives interwoven with each other. The one describes a rebellion led by Dathan, Abi- ram, and On against the civil authority of Moses (vv. 1, 2, 12-15, 25-34); while the other describes a different sort of rebellion, headed by Korah and 250 princes of the congregation, against the ecclesiastical leadership of Moses and Aaron. This separation of the c. into two distinct narratives reduces it to order and serves to explain, not only the literary inequalities, but also the differences of fact ; such as e.g. in the one case the refusal to obey the summons of Moses, and in the other the compliance with it (cp. v. 12 with 18, 19) ; the difference in locality, in the one case the sanctuary, and in the other the tents of Dathan and Abiram (v. 18 and 25, 26) ; and the different fate of the two companies, in the one case death by earthquake, and in the other by fire from the Lord (vv. 31-34 and 35). 4. The action may denote the dismay of Moses, but more probably his praying for guidance: cp. vv. 22, 45, 206. 5. To Korah] not to Dathan and Abiram, whose rebellion is distinct from this : see above. 11. Against the Lord] not merely against Aaron, of whose privileges Koran and his company are envious. 13. Dathan and Abiram are envious of the position of Moses. They complain that, in- stead of bringing them into a land flowing with milk and honey, as he had led them to believe he would do, he was taking them away from it into a wilderness (vv. 13, 14). Except thou make thyself] RV ' But thou must needs make thyself also.' 14. Put out the eyes of these men] blind them to the real state of matters. The English equivalent would be to ' throw dust in the eyes.' 19. All the congregation] This shows the serious nature of Korah's rebellion. The people were in sympathy with it. The claim put forward by Korah was plausible, and flattered the multitude : see v. 3. 22. The God of the spirits of all flesh must know the thoughts and intents of the heart and be able to judge the real instigator of the evil. The one man is Korah: cp. for the thought On 18 23. 28. Hath sent me] i.e. Moses. Dathan's rebellion is directed against Moses as that of Korah against Aaron. On the sending of Moses see Ex 3. Not . . of mine own mind] The mark of the true messenger or prophet of God is that he does not speak of his own initiative : cp. Nu 24 1^ IK 22 13, 14 Jer 15-10 Mtl 019.20. The false prophet, on the other hand, runs where he is not sent and speaks ' out of his own heart ' : seeEzkl32 Jerl4i4 2325-32. 30. Quick] i.e. alive. The pit] Heb. Sheol, usually rendered ' the grave.' 32. Their houses] their house- holds, as in 12 Gn7i. The sons of Korah, however, did not perish : see 26 n. 36-39. The censers used by Korah and his company are collected and made into a cover- ing for the altar, as a memorial of their sin and punishment, and a warning to others against profaning holy things : cp. Jude v. 11. 37. Eleazar is commanded to do this, not Aaron, who, as high priest, must not defile himself with contact with the dead: see Lv21ii. 38. The altar] the altar of burnt offering, which was overlaid with brass : see on Ex 3 1-10. 41-50. The people now turn upon Moses and charge him with being the occasion of this calamity. Their unreasonable murmuring is punished with a plague, which is only stayed by means of the intervention of the high priest. 46. Incense was usually offered, not alone, but as an accompaniment of a sacrifice. On this occasion the plague had begun, and incense was the readiest sacrifice that could be offered. It is symbolical of prayer and intercession : see on Ex 30 i-i*'. Observe that the unauthorised offering of in- cense by the rebels was provocative of the divine indignation, while in the hands of Aaron, the appointed high priest, it was accepted as an atonement, and procured the grace of for- giveness. 48. A striking picture, illustrating the efficacy of believing prayer (cp. Jas 5 15! 1*^) and the way in which Christ by the offering of Himself has stayed the plague of sin and death : cp. Eph52. CHAPTER 17 Aaron's Authority Confirmed Korah and his followers having questioned the authority of Aaron and the claim of his family to the priesthood, the matter is put beyond the possibility of further doubt by the Blossoming of Aaron's rod. 109 17. 2 NUMBERS 19. IT 2. A rod] The common symbol of au- thority : cp. Ps 1 10 2. 4. The testimony] i.e. the ark in which the ' testimony ' is kept : see on Ex 16 2-*. 8-1 1. On the morrow Aaron's rod is found to have put forth almond buds and fruit, while the others show no sign of life. In this way the exclusive right of the tribe of Levi and family of Aaron to exercise the priestly functions is decided. Aaron's rod is ordered to be laid up before the ark as a token to succeeding generations. 8. Yielded almonds] Observe that the three stages of vegetable life are simultaneously visible, blossoms, buds, and fruit. As the almond tree blossons in January when other trees are bare and before its own leaves appear, it is used to symbolise the way in which God fulfils His promises when men least expect it : see Jerlii.i2, and cp. Isalli 532 Mt4i3-i6. 10. Before the testimony] According to Heb94 the rod was kept in the ark. This, however, is nowhere asserted in OT. and may be a later tradition: cp. 1K8^. 12, 13. The people are awe-struck and impressed with the danger of approaching the sanctuary in any unauthorised manner. CHAPTEK 18 The Duties and Maintenance of Priests and Levites I. The priests are responsible for the ini- quity of the sanctuary and the priesthood, i.e. for their profanation at any time by un- authorised persons and by the sins of the priests themselves. On the Day of Atonement the high priest offers sacrifices to make atone- ment for himself and the sanctuary : see on Lvl6. 2. Levi] 'joined': see Gn 29 3"^. 8-19. The provision for the maintenance of the priests. The priests receive part of the meal offerings (Lv 2 3), the sin and guilt of- ferings, except when these are presented by the priests on their own behalf (Lv426), the heave portion of the peace offerings (Lv3), the first fruits of oil, wine, and wheat (vv. 12, 13), devoted things (v. 14 ; see on Lv27'-i-2S)^ firstlings of clean animals, the re- demption price of the firstborn of men and unclean beasts (vv. 15-18), and the tithe of the tithe paid to the Levites (vv. 25-28). 9. Most holy] see on Lv23. 16. See 3*''' Lv27<5. Shekel] see on Ex 38 24. 19. Cove- nant of salt] i.e. an indissoluble covenant : see on Ex 30 35. 20-24. The priests and Levites have no in- heritance in the land of promise. By way of compensation the tithes are given to the Levites, who in turn give a tithe to the priests (v. 26). 20. Those who are separated to the service of God are taught to depend on Him. He sends no one into warfare at his own charges : see 1 Cor 9 '^"^4. 25-32. The Levites are to tithe their own tithe and present it to the priests as a heave offering, as the ordinary Israelites do with the produce of their fields. The remainder they are allowed to enjoy in the same manner as others: cp. Lv2730f. 31. In every place] not restricted, as in the case of the priests, to the holy place : see on Lv23. CHAPTER 19 The Sacrifice of the Red Heifer In order to provide a special means of purification for those who are defiled by con- tact with a dead body, a preparation called the ' water of separation ' is made from the ashes of a red heifer and other ingredients. The origin of this rite may have been con- nected with the large number of deaths re- corded in 16^9. Josephus, however, connects it with the death of Miriam (20 1). i-io. A red heifer is slaughtered outside the camp and its blood sprinkled in the direc- tion of the sanctuary seven times (vv. 1-4). The entire carcase is burnt in the same place along with cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet wool, and the ashes are collected and preserved for use in purifying (vv. 5, 6, 9). Those who take part in the ceremony contract defilement (vy. 7,8,10). 2. Sacrificial animals are usually males. The use of a female in this case may be intended to symbolise the imparting of new life to those who have been defiled by con- tact with death. The same thought may underlie the regulation as to colour, red be- ing the colour of blood which is the token of life : cp. Lv I711. The words without spot probably mean 'without blemish.' 4. Directly before] RV ' Toward the front of ' ; i.e. in the direction of the sanctuary. 6. See on Lvl4'*. 9. Water of separation] RV ' water of impurity,' i.e. water for the removal of (ceremonial) impurity : see on 8 '^. 11-16. The persons for whom this 'water of impurity ' is provided are those who have touched a dead body or anything connected with it. II. Owing to the mystery connected with death a dead body is regarded, not only among the Jews but among other nations of antiquity, as eminently dangerous and com- municating defilement in the highest degree. Moreover, such ceremonial defilement is easily associated with the idea of sin, as death is the wages of sin. 12. With it] i.e. with the ' water of impurity.' 17-22. The method of purification. The ashes of the heifer are mixed with water from a running stream or spring, and sprinkled upon the unclean person or thing. This is done on the third day after the defilement has been contracted. On the seventh day the unclean person washes his clothes, bathes, 10 20. 1 NUMBERS 21. 1 and resumes his place in society at even. The penalty of neglect is excommunication. The various parts of the expiatory rite lend them- selves easily to symbolical interpretation. The connexion of sin and death, the need of cleans- ing, and the ever-ready means of purification, are all exemplified. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews draws a parallel between the heifer, whose ashes were sanctified to the puri- fying of the flesh from the defilement arising from contact with dead bodies, and Christ who, also without spot, offered Himself with- out the camp to Grod to purge the conscience of believers from dead works, i.e. from works which cause death. See Heb9i3>i^ 13 ii-^^. CHAPTER 20 Death op Miriam. Murmuring at Meribah. Death of Aaron I. Miriam dies while the people are at Kadesh (see on 13 ^i'^^). The first month is the first month of the fortieth year. As the people came to Kadesh in the second year (see 132ti), they must have remained in the vicinity of Kadesh during the interval, or what is recorded here is a second arrival at the same place : cp. Dt2i'*. 2-13. Murmuring at Meribah. 3. When our brethren died] This probably refers to the deaths following the rebellions of Korah and of Dathan and Abiram (c. 16). It implies that these occurrences were recent. 6. Fell upon their faces] see on 16*. 8. The rod] Seeing he took the rod from before the LORD (v. 9) it has been thought that Aaron's rod is meant : cp. IT^o. But it was more probably Moses' staff which was associated with former dangers and deliverances : see Ex4i'i' 7'^'^ I416 175,9. 12. Ye believed me not] The root of Moses' ain was unbelief. He doubted the power of God, or His willingness to bear longer with these rebels (v. 10), and instead of speaking to the rock, as he was commanded to do, he struck it twice : cp. Ps 10633. The punishment was severe, but want of faith on the part of the leaders could not be over- looked or unpunished, because the people had seen it, and might be led away by the evil example : see on 1 2 !•*. To sanctify me] God is always holy and His essential holiness can- not be increased. But the obedience and praise of His people cause His holiness and grace to be more widely known and acknow- ledged. Similarly God is said to be ' magnified,' as in Lk 1 *'^ : cp. the petition 'Hallowed be Thy name.' 13. Meribah] ' strife.' In 27 1* Dt 32 si it is called Meribah of Kadesh to distinguish it from the Meribah of Ex 17" (see note there). 14-21. The people prepare for the last stage of the journey to Canaan. The direct route to the N. is blocked by the Canaanites (211). On the E. are the Edomites who are the kindred of the Israelites, being descended from Esau the brother of Jacob. Moses accordingly sends messengers to the king of Edom asking a passage through his country to the E. side of Canaan, but the request is refused. 14. Thy brother] see above, and cp. Dt23'^ Gn2530 368.9. The unnatural hostility of the Edomites on another occasion is the sub- ject of the book of Obadiah (see vv. 10-12) ; cp. also Am 111. ig. Sent an angel] see Ex 3 2 1419. 17. The king's /^/V/A way] Edom lay on the direct route connecting Egypt with Babylonia. The king's way here, however, is not a proper name, but signifies the most direct route. They promised not to trespass or injure the country in passing through it. 22-29. Death of Aaron. Turning south- ward so as to go round the country of the Edomites by way of the N. end of the Gulf of Akaba (see 214), the Israelites reach Mt. Hor. Here Aaron dies and is buried. Mt. Hor is identified by most travellers with a precipitous mountain nearly 5,000 ft. high, forming the principal elevation in the range of Mt. Seir. The wonderful rock city of Petra (or Sela), the capital of Edom, lay at its eastern base. A small mosque on the summit now marks the traditional site of Aaron's burial-place. 24. Gathered unto his people] This may suggest the continuance of life after death along with those who have gone before : see Gnl5i5. Ye rebelled] The same word is applied to Moses and Aaron as Moses had applied to the people at Meribah (v. 10). The leaders, as well as the people with whom they were impatient, were ' rebels.' 26. This signifies the succession of Eleazar to the priesthood. The ceremony of putting on the sacred robes was an important part of the consecration of the high priest. See Lv87-9 Ex 29 29, and cp. the action of Elijah, IK 19 19 2 K2 13-15. 28. Moses also died on the top of a mountain : see Dt34i. Aaron died on the first day of the fifth month in the fortieth year of the exodus at the age of 1 43 : see 3338,39. 29. The death of Aaron removed the second greatest figure from among the Israelites, and their first high priest. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews contrasts the human priesthood, which is imperfect by reason of its being constantly interrupted by death, with the ' unchanging priesthood ' of Him ' who ever liveth to make intercession' for His people : see Heb7 23-28. CHAPTER 21 The Brazen Serpent. Conquest OF Bashan 1-3. The southern Canaanites repulse the Israelites, but are eventually destroyed. Ill 21. 1 NUMBERS 21. 28 I. King Arad] RV 'king of Arad.' The name of this place still survives in Tell Arad^ some ruins about 16 m. S. of Hebron and about 50 m. N. of Kadesh. The way of the spies] RV ' the way of Atharim.' The word is evidently the name of a place. It has not been identified. 2. Destroy] lit. ' devote.' See on Lv 27 26-29, 3. This took place much later : see Josh 121^ Jgli6,i7. Had they been vic- torious on this occasion the Israelites would naturally have marched directly northwards into Canaan ; but, being repulsed, they re- treated southwards, having registered this vow which was ultimately fulfilled. Hormah means a ' devoted thing.' It is from the same root as the verb in v. 2. 4-9. The Brazen Serpent. Retreating southwards the people are discouraged and give way again to murmuring. Venomous serpents are sent among them. Moses is commanded to make a brazen serpent, and all who look to it in faith are healed. 4. To compass] to go round : see on 20 2^"^^. The Red Sea] i.e. the arm now called the Gulf of Akaba. Because of the way] They were now marching away from Canaan instead of to- wards it. 5. This light bread] or, ' this vile food.' The manna is meant : cp. 11''. 6. Fiery serpents] i.e. serpents whose sting caused violent inflammation. Venomous sand- snakes are still found in this locality. 8. Upon a pole] RV ' upon a standard.' This brazen serpent was long preserved by the Israelites, and ultimately became an object of superstitious veneration, in conse- quence of which Hezekiah ordered it to be destroyed (2K18-4). 9. When he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived] rather, ' when he looked to it,' i.e. not casually but of purpose and with faith. The lifeless image of the serpent that had caused the pain and death of so many was a symbol of the victory over these things that God gives to those who trust in Him. The Jewish commentators recognise here an illustration of the power of faith. ' The serpent neither killed nor preserved alive, but if the Israelites lifted up their eyes and turned their hearts to their Father in heaven they were healed ; if not, they perished.' Similarly in the book of Wisdom (166,7)^ the brazen serpent is called ' a token of salvation to put them in remem- brance of the commandment of Thy law, for he that turned toward it was not saved because of that which was beheld, but because of Thee, the Saviour of all.' The brazen serpent raised upon the pole, for the healing of those who were ready to die, is a striking emblem of the Saviour ' lifted up ' on the Cross, for the salvation of all who are wounded by ' that old serpent the devil,' and who look in faith to Him : see JnS^'^. 10-15. Journey to the Arnon. 12. Zared] The Zered flowed into the Dead Sea at its southern extremity. 13. The other side of Arnon] This means the S. side of the river Arnon, as the story is narrated from the standpoint of one living in Canaan : see Intro, and 22 1. The Arnon flows into the Dead Sea about the middle of its E. side. It is the boundary between the Moabites on the S. and the Amorites on the N. The Israelites did not go through Moab, as the passage was denied to them, but went round it on the E. side, crossing the upper courses of the Arnon : see v. 11, and cp. Jgll^'^'-i^. 14. As the Moabites afterwards crossed the Arnon and took possession of part of the land of the Amorites, this ancient fragment of poetry from the ' book of the Wars of the Lord ' indicates the original boundary of Moab. The ' book of the Wars of the Lord,' which is mentioned only here in the OT., was probably a collection of war songs, illustrating what Jehovah did for His people by the hand of Moses. The other poetical fragments in this c. (vv. 17, 18, 27-30) are, in all proba- bility, from the same collection. What he did in the Red Sea] RV ' Vaheb in Suphah.' The words are names of localities now unknown. Some verb is to be supplied before them, such as ' they subdued.' 16-20. Passage through the land of the Amorites from the Arnon to Pisgah at the N. end of the Red Sea. During this march the people seem to have suifered from want of water. The ' Song of the Well ' celebrates the finding of water at Beer. ' Beer ' means ' well.' 20. Jeshimon] rather, ' the Jeshimon,' the plain lying to the NE. of the Dead Sea. 21-30. Conquest of the Amorites and Song of Triumph. 21. Cp. the similar request and refusal in 2014-21. 24. Was strong] This seems to give the reason why the Israelites did not follow up their conquest of the Amorites by entering the land of Ammon. LXX, however, reads, ' the border . . was Jaazer,' a town mentioned in V. 32. 27. In proverbs] This Hebrew word is some- times rendered ' parable.' It is applied to a by-word or taunt song: see 1K9''' Jer249 Isal44 Job27i and Nu 23'.i8 24 3, is, 20, 21, 23. The opening words of the song are an ironical challenge to the former inhabitants to return to Heshbon, which has been captured and destroyed. ' Come if you can,' they say, ' and dispossess us and repair the city of your king.' The next two vv. refer to the fact stated in V. 26. The haughty conqueror of Moab is now himself subdued. This song is quoted in Jer48'i5.-t*;. 28. Read with RV ' fire went out . . it consumed.' The fire is the fire of 112 21. 29 NUMBERS 22. 8 war. 29. Chemosh] the sun-god of the Moabites to whom human sacrifices were sometimes offered : see 2K3 27^ and see on Gn22 Jgll^Of. The name occurs frequently on the Moabite Stone, a valuable relic dating from the 9th century B.C. and discovered at Dibon (see next note), on which Mesha, king of Moab (see 2X3"*), celebrates his victories over the Israelites, and attributes them to the favovir of his god Chemosh. Solomon himself built a high place for Chemosh : see 1 K 11 'i'. The words here should read ' he (i.e. Chemosh) gave his sons as fugitives,' i.e. he abandoned them so that they fled. 30. We] the Israelites. Dibon is near the Arnon (v. 13). The locality of Nophah is unknown. Medeba is a few miles S. of Heshbon. The concluding words of the song are obscure, and may be rendered, ' and we laid waste so that fire raged unto Medeba.' 33-35. Conquest of Bashan. Bashan was the northernmost part of the country E. of the Jordan, stretching from the river Jabbok in the S. to Mt. Hermon in the extreme N. This extensive district was celebrated for the richness of its vegetation, being ranked in this respect with Lebanon, Carmel, and Sharon : see Isa33'-* Jer 1 1^ Nah 1 4. Its giant oaks and vast herds of wild cattle are frequently referred to by the sacred writers : see Dt32i^ Isa2i3 Ezk 27 6 39 18 Zech 11 2. In early times it was inhabited by a race of giants, from whom Og was descended (Gnl45 DtS^i ; see on IS^s). The ruins of the Giant Cities of Bashan remain to testify to the strength of its former inhabitants. See additional notes on Dt3. After its final conquest it was occupied by the half tribe of Manasseh : see Nu3233 Dt3i3. PART 3 In the Plains of Moab (Chs. 22-36) CHAPTER 22 Balaam The Israelites now enter upon the last stage of their journey to Caijaan. They are within sight of the land of promise, being encamped at the northern end of the Dead Sea, near the mouth of the Jordan. Up to this point they have surmounted every obstacle and conquered the tribes on the east side of the river. But now, at the end of the journey, a graver danger faces them. Balak, king of Moab, finding that he cannot prevail against them with carnal weapons, has recourse to magical arts, hoping in this way to destroy them. He sends to the Euphrates for the famous magician Balaam to come and ' curse Israel.' As the sequel shows it is all in vain. Not even the powers of darkness can stop the victorious march of Jehovah's people. The whole incident is designed to show that Israel by the grace of God is proof, not only against the sword of the enemy, but also against the evil powers of the unseen world. There is no enchantment against Israel. God is for them, and nothing can be against them. They are able to wrestle, not only against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high places. I. The district in which the Israelites are encamped is called the plains of Moab, as it formed part of the territory of the Moabites before their conquest by the Amorites (21^6). On this side Jordan] The Hebrew is ' beyond Jordan.' So RV : see on 21 13. 4. Elders of Midian] The home of the Midianites is usually supposed to have been within the Sinaitic peninsula towards the S. or SE. : see Ex 2^5 31. Here they are found to the E. of the Jordan, associated with the Moabites in their attempt to bar the progress of the Israelites : cp. Gn3635 Nu256. Their conquest is described in Nu31. 5. RV ' sent . . to Pethor, which is by the River, to the land of the children,' etc. The ' River ' is the Euphrates. The ancient Chal- deans and Babylonians, like the modern Arabs, had a firm belief in the existence and influ- ence of demons. They also believed that certain persons had the power of controlling these demons by means of magic spells and incantations, and these magicians or sooth- sayers were frequently employed to discover secrets, to foretell the future, to bless an undertaking, or bring ruin upon an enemy. Balaam's fame as a man of this sort had travelled far beyond the limits of his own land, as is shown by the embassy of the king of Moab : see on Ex 7 11. 7. Rewards of divination] the presents made to Balaam to secure his offices. In 2 Pet 2 1^ Balaam is said to have loved ' the wages of unrighteousness.' 8-21. Balaam, being warned by God in a dream, refuses to go ; whereupon Balak sends a more pressing invitation with promise of a larger reward. Balaam hesitates, but at length yields, having received permission to go, but to speak only as God directs him. 8. Balaam has been blamed for hesitating here. This, however, is unjust. On the occasion of the first message from Balak he was honestly in doubt whether he ought to go or not, and it is to his credit that he would do nothing till he had learned what the mind of God was. It was otherwise, however, on the second occa- sion (v. 19), when he dallied with the tempting offer, in the hope that God would change His purpose, and allow him to go and do as Balak 8 113 22. 12 NUMBERS 23. 10 wished. If the words the LORD, i.e. Jehovah, in this V. were really used by Balaam, and are not due to the historian, then it would appear that Balaam knew the G-od of Israel and worshipped Him. This is by no means im- possible. Balaam lived in the land from which Abraham went out (see Gull 28-31 244-io), and he was no doubt aware of the history of Abra- ham's descendants, more especially if he was connected with the Midianites (see 318). it need occasion no surprise that God made use of this semi-heathen soothsayer to declare His will. It is but an illustration of the truth that the Spirit of God is not bound : op. Am 9*^. Throughout the whole incident Balaam appears as the somewhat unwilling medium whereby God chooses to confirm His unchangeable purpose towards Israel. He stands midway between the true prophet of Jehovah and the heathen magician or sooth- sayer. 12, They are blessed] see Gn 22 17, 18 Nu 6 27. 1 8. This is said in good faith. But Balaam is moved by the tempting offer of Balak ; and, while He does not mean to disobey God, he is not without hopes of inducing God to change His mind. He does not yet know that Jeho- vah's ' kindness shall not depart nor His covenant of peace be removed.' 20. Balaam is allowed to go, but only on condition that he will speak the word that God gives him. 22-41. On the way Balaam receives a warn- ing not to go beyond the word of the Lord. 22. God's anger was kindled because he went] This seems to contradict what is said in v. 20, that God gave him permission to go. But that permission was conditional. He might go, but he must speak only what is given him to say. Balaam gladly seizes the opportunity of going, for he is hankering after the reward. For the present he ignores the condition. In his heart he hopes to evade it and satisfy Balak. But God, who is the dis- cerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, sees the double-mindedness of Balaam, and gives him to know that there must be no trifling. Unless he really means to be obedient he must stay at home. On the ' angel of the Lord ' see on Ex 3 2. 31. Opened the eyes of Balaam] Up to this point Balaam has been like a blind man. He has been determined to have his own way. But now he sees it is useless trying to deceive God or fight against Him. Like Saul he finds it is ' hard to kick against the pricks ' : cp. Ac 9 ^-^. The refusal of his erstwhile docile ass to carry him further is the God-employed means of bringing the obstinate prophet to his senses. How this was done it is vain to speculate. Some explain away the incident of the vision and the ass speaking e.g. as a dream which Balaam had before starting, or a vivid impres- 1 sion made upon him by the liveliness of his own thoughts ; but evidently the writer of the narrative believed in the reality of both. In this he simply occupies the standpoint of his age. 34. Balaam is now convinced that it is use- less hoping to satisfy Balak, and wishes simply to have nothing more to do with the matter. But this is not the will of God. Balaam must go as His messenger and bless His people. 40. Offered oxen] most probably in sacrifice. It was usual to offer sacrifice at the beginning of any momentous undertaking, oj on the arrival of an important visitor: see GnSl^* IK 19 21 IS 165. 41. Baal] 'owner' or 'lord'; the name of a deity, usually identical with the sun, and worshipped by a number of early Semitic tribes, including the Phoenicians. The place of worship was commonly the top of a hill. There was a sanctuary of Baal in this neigh- bourhood on Mt. Peor : see 25 3. The utmost 2xirf'\ Balak showed Abraham the whole extent of the Israelites, probably to justify his alarm at their presence, and exhibit the instant neces- sity of cursing this formidable army. gHAPTEE 23 Balaam (continued) I-IO. First Utterance of Balaam. I. On the meaning of these sacrifices see on 22 ■lO. Balak may have intended these sacri- fices for Baal, but Balaam at all events thinks of the God who spoke to him at Pethor and whose angel met him on the way (see v. 4). 3. I -will go] to inspect the omens, to see what indications are visible of God's will : cp. 24 1 Lvl93i. To an high place] RV 'to a bare height': see on 22^1. 7. Balaam is constrained to bless Israel as God has manifestly done. This is plain from three signs, (1) the separation of the people (v. 9), (2) their number (v. 10), and (3) their righteousness (v. 10). Aram] the ancient name of Mesopotamia. 9. The people shall dwell alone, etc.] rather, ' Behold a people that dwelleth alone and is not reckoned among the nations ! ' Balaam singles out what was, and is still, a distinguish- ing characteristic of the Hebrew people, viz. their separateness from other nations. They were chosen of God in Abraham their ancestor, and throughout the long course of their his- tory have been distinguished from other nations, both by their religion and manner of life. To this day, though they have no country, they are still a separate nation : see Ex 1 9 5 ,t5 33 16 Lv 20 24> 26^ and frequently in the prophets, e.g. Isa432i Am 3 2. 10. The righteous] The people of Israel are called ' the righteous ' because God. who is Himself righteous, has called them to be the same. The Heb. word for ' righteous ' is 14 23. 13 NUMBERS 24. 17 Jashar, and Jeshuran is a poetical name given to Israel in Dt32i5 335,26 Isa442. It is pos- sible that the title given to a collection of national poetry, the book of Jashar (see Josh 10^3 2S11S : see on 211*) contains the same idea. Balaam's words mean that Israel's fate will be enviable, and the opposite of what Balak desires it to be. His own fate was miserable : see 31^. The death of the right- eous is only attained by those who are willing to lead the life of the righteous. I2. Cp. lK22i3,u 13-26. Balaam's Second Utterance. 13. Seeing that Balaam had been impressed with the multitude of Israel (v. 10), Balak now restricts the prophet's view of the host, in the hope that he may be prevailed upon to curse it : see on 22^1. 14. Zophim] 'watchers' or ' lookers-out.' It is from the same Heb. root as Mizpah (see G-n 3 !•*■'). Pisgahis pro- bably the general name for the mountain range lying to the NE. of the Dead Sea, of which Nebo (Dt34i), Peor (v. 28), and Zophim are peaks. In Dt32^9 this mountain range is called Abarim. Zophim may be so called simply as being a point of outlook, but it is possible to see in the name a reference to the practice of watching the omens from elevated situations. 18. Balaam declares that Grod's purpose to bless Israel cannot be altered (vv. 19, 20). "With them He is well pleased (v. 21). It is He who is bringing them out of Egypt, and with Him as Leader and Defender they are certain to be victorious (vv. 22-24). 19. Balak is wrong in thinking to induce God by means of enchantments to alter His purpose : cp. 1 S 15 29 Isa 54 10 Ro 11 29 Tit 1 2 Heb 6 i3-is Jas 1 17. 21. The shout of a king] is not the shout raised by a king, but the shout raised at the presence of a king. Israel rejoices in having God as their king : see ExlS^^ Dt.335 Isa 33 22. 22. God brought] rather, ' It is God, and no other, that is bringing them out of Egypt.' They are here under the divine direction : cp. Ex 20 2 29 "le Lv 19 3«. Unicorn] RV ' the wild ox,' or buffalo: cp. Dt33i'i'. 23. The ren- dering of AV gives the sense ' it is useless to employ the powers of enchantment against this people ; they are proof against all such weapons.' But the right rendering is rather, ' there is no enchantment hi Jacob,' i.e. this people has no need to employ magical arts in its defence, as you, Balak, are doing now, for they have God for their protector. Accord- ing to this time] better, ' at this time,' ' now.' 24. A great lion] Heb. ' a lioness.' 25. What Balak means is, ' If you will not curse them, I forbid you to bless them.' 28. Peor] is a peak of the mountain range of Moab. See on v. 14. On Jeshimon see on 2120. CHAPTER 24 Balaam (continued) 1-9. Balaam's Third Utterance. I. To seek for enchantments] lit. ' to meet omens': see on 23 2. Toward the wilderness] i.e. towards the plain where the Israelites were encamped: see 2120 221. 2. The spirit of God came upon him] cp. 1S192'J. The following utterances are introduced in a more solemn manner (see vv. 3, 4, 15, 16), and are prophetic of the future. 3. Hath said] The English here is too commonplace to represent the original, which is in a very lofty and impassioned strain. 'Oracle of Balaam, son of Beor ; oracle of the man whose eyes are opened ; oracle of him who hears the words of God, who sees the vision of the Almighty, falling upon his face with his eyes open.' The first word rendered ' opened ' is of uncertain meaning. It may mean 'closed,' in which case it implies that Balaam's eyes are closed to earthly sights but open to the heavenly. Or it may refer to his previous condition. Hitherto scales have been upon his eyes, but now he sees the vision of the Almighty. 4. Falling into a trancel rather, ' falling upon his face.' There is no word in the original corresponding to the words ' into a trance.' He falls to the ground, overpowered by the Spirit of God that comes upon him: cp. 1 S192i Ezkl28 DanSi^.is Ac 9^ Rev 117. 6. The images in this and the next v. are those of fruitfulness and vigour. The Ugn (i.e. the wood-) aloe is a large spreading tree much prized for its aromatic qualities (Prov 7 17 Song 4 1*), and the cedar is the king of trees (1 K433 Ps 1041''): cp. Psl3 Ezk313-5. 7. He shall pour the water] better, ' water shall flow from his (i.e. Israel's) buckets, and his seed (i.e. his posterity) shall be in abundance of water.' Israel will always flourish. The literal and the metaphorical are here combined : cp. Gn 49 22, 25 Dt 33 13, and see on Lv 26 4. Agag] the dynastic name of the Amalekite kings : cp. 1 S 1532. The kingdom of Israel will surpass that of Amalek. 8. See on 23 2. The subject of the second half of the v. is Israel, who is compared to a ravening lion, the king of beasts. 9. Blessed is he, etc.] cp. Gnl23 2729. 10-14. Balak in anger dismisses Balaam, who before departing predicts the destruction of Moab and other nations by Israel. 15-24. Balaam's Fourth Utterance: a pre- diction of the dominion of Israel and the downfall of Moab, Edom, Amalek, and Asshur. 17. I shall see him, etc.] This should be ren- dered ' I see him ' (i.e. the Israel of the future, and specially the Star who is to rise among them) ' . . I behold him . . A Star is risen out of Jacob . . ' To the eye of Balaam, in his 115 24. 18 NUMBERS 25. 6 spiritual ecstasy, the future stands out as the present. A Star] A common symbol of a brilliant ruler : cp. Isa 14 12 9 2 Mt 24 29 Rev 22 1« and the expression ' hosts of heaven.' For the sceptre as the symbol of authority see Gn 4910 Ps 11 02. This prediction refers in the first place to David, who ' smote Moab and Edom' (2S82,i4, cp. PsGOSf-), but applies also to ' David's greater Son.' From early times the Jewish commentators have interpreted the prophecy as Messianic. The name Bar- cochba (i.e. ' Son of a star ') was assumed by one who claimed to be the Messiah, not long after the time of our Lord, taking the title no doubt from this prophecy of Balaam. Chris- tians will see in the words of Balaam a prophecy of Jesus, the true Messiah, the King of kings and Lord of lords. He Himself, and not the star which was seen at His birth (Mt22), is the fulfilment of the prediction. Children of Sheth] RV 'the children of tumult,' as in the parallel passage Jer4:8'^^, where another word from the same root is used. 18. Seir] the name given to the land of the Edomites : see Gn368.9 Dt24. His enemies] the enemies of Israel, or rather of the Ruler here spoken of. The fulfilment of this prophecy is recorded in 2 S 8 1^. Cp. also Isa 631-*, and see on 20 S' 9. 20. First of the nations] probably in rank ; but see on Exl?^. The next clause reads ' but his end (shall come) to destruction ' : cp. Ex 171-*' 11^, and for the fulfilment of the pre- diction see IS 14*8 157,8 3017 2S812 lCh443. 21. The Kenites] Unlike the tribes pre- viously mentioned the Kenites were always friendly to the Israelites, and consequently the words of Balaam foretelling their de- struction are more of sympathy than of threat- ening. Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses, was a Kenite, and his descendants settled alongside the tribe of Judah in the S. of Canaan (JgliMH): see also IS 15 6 3026,29 1 Ch 2 55. Of their subsequent history nothing is known. See on v. 22. Thy nest] The Heb. word for nest is ken^ so that there is here a play upon the name of this tribe. 22. The rendering is doubtful. We may translate, ' Nevertheless the Kenite shall be wasted. How long ? Asshur (i.e. Assyria) shall carry thee away captive.' Or, ' But the Kenite shall not be wasted until Asshur shall carry thee (i.e. Israel) away captive.' 24. Chittim] the dwellers in Cyprus or in the islands of the Mediterranean generally. They are said to have emigrated from Phoe- nicia. In Gn 10 4 the Chittim are said to be descended from Javan, the ancestor of the Ionian (i.e. the Greek) races. In Dan 1 1 30 the ' ships of Kittim ' are those of the Romans, so that Chittim may be a general designation of the Western races, and Balaam's words a prediction of the overthrow of the Eastern monarchies (Asshur = the Assyrians or Per- sians, and Eber = the Hebrews or Syrians) by the empires of the West. He also] most probably the conquering nation, the Chittim. It may, however, refer to Asshur or Eber. These last prophecies of Balaam, on Amalek, the Kenites, the Chittim, Asshur, and Eber, have all the appearance of being an appendix, and are supposed by many to be a later addi- tion to the original prophecies regarding Israel. CHAPTER 25 Idolatry and Immorality of the Israel- ites AT Shittim. The Zeal of Phinehas 1-5. The Israelites, who have just been exhibited as proof against enchantments, are not able to resist the temptations to idolatry, and its connected sin of immorality, arising from their proximity to the tribes of Moab and Midian. In 31 1^ their apostasy is attri- buted to the counsel of Balaam (see also Rev 2 14), who is afterwards put to death for it (Nu 3 1 8 Josh 1 3 22). But it is difficult with- out violence to reconcile this conduct on the part of Balaam with his former attitude towards Israel, and his utterances regarding them. Moreover, the last verse of the pre- ceding chapter is evidently intended to mark his return to the Euphrates and his disappear- ance from the subsequent history of Israel. It seems almost beyond doubt that there was from early times a double tradition regarding this famous soothsayer. According to one, Balaam is a Mesopotamian soothsayer who becomes the instrument of God in blessing His people and foretelling their future great- ness ; according to the other, he is a Midian- itish counsellor who sets himself to seduce the people of Jehovah and suffers the extreme penalty of his error. i. Shittim] (' the acacias ') is the name of the encampment in the plains of Moab : see 33 4^ and cp. Josh 2 1. 3. Baal-peor] There appears to have been a sanctuary of Baal on the top of Mt. Peor : see on 2241 2314. 4. The heads] the ring- leaders. Hang' them up] Some shameful form of execution, followed by impalement : see on Dt2122. 6-18. The zeal of Phinehas in slaying with his own hand an Israelite and his Midianitish concubine is rewarded with the promise of the permanence of the priesthood in his family : cp. Ex 32 26-29 and notes there. This incident while related to the foregoing is distinct from it. Literary evidence shows that vv. 6-18 are from a different source from vv. 1-5. Observe that in the one case the punishment is slaughter (v. 5), and in the other plague (v. 9), and that the source of temptation in the one case is Moab and in the other Midian : see on w. 16-18. 6. Wei'e 116 25. 11 NUMBERS 27. 12 weeping] on account of the plague (v. 8). 8. There is no previous mention of a plague having broken out, and the word can hardly apply to the slaughter in v. 5. We are here dealing with a separate incident, ii. Zealous for my sake] lit. ' jealous with my jealousy.' God, as the Redeemer of Israel, has a special claim upon their reverence and atfection. When they turn to other gods His love is wounded, and He is jealous with a holy jealousy : see on Ex 20^. 13. An everlasting priesthood] Phinehas succeeded to the high priesthood after his father's death (Jg 20 '^^), and the succession remained in his family till the time of Eli, when it passed for some reason to the house of Ithamar. Solomon, however, restored the high priesthood to the descendants of Phinehas (1 K 2 35). This action of Phinehas in defend- ing the purity of the religion of Israel at a critical moment was rewarded, not only with this blessing from the Lord, but with the grateful admiration of succeeding generations. In Ps 106 we read that his zeal was ' counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore,' words which St. Paul applies to Abraham himself (R0422 Gal3«). In Ecclus 4523-26 he is called the 'third in glory' after Moses and Aaron, and his example is quoted in 1 Mac 2 26. So blessed is the memory of the just. 16-18. Commandment is given to vex the Midianites (i.e. count them as dangerous adversaries) and to smite them. For its fulfil- ment see c. 31. Injunctions like this, which were ordered to be carried out with extreme severity, were given in the interests of Israel and the purity of religion and morals. In no other way could that ' separateness ' be main- tained which Balaam recognised as one of the distinctions of the Israelites (see on 23-'). For the Christian parallel see 2Cor6i*-i8 and cp. .529,30. The omission of any reference to the Moabites in this passage bears out what is said above as to the different sources of vv. 1-5 and 6-18. CHAPTER 26 The Second Numbering of the People The first took place thirty-eight years before (see c. 1) at Mt. Sinai. The people are shortly to enter Canaan, and this second enumeration is made in view of the prospective division of the land among the twelve tribes : see vv. 52-56. The total result shows a decrease of 1,820. While Manasseh has increased by no less than 20,500, Simeon has decreased by the extraordinary amount of 37,100. The latter tribe may have suffered most severely in the recent plague, seeing that Zimri was a Simeonite (25 ^'^). 117 55. The casting of lots is of the nature of an appeal to God, and was resorted to in order to detect a culprit (Josh 71* IS 1442 Jonl^, to select an office-bearer (IS 10 20 lCh244,5 Ac 1 26), or to make a division of property as here (cp. Mt2735). See also Lvie^ and the note on Urim and Thummim, Ex 28 ^^. In the case before us, lots were cast to determine the locality of each tribe's inheritance, but its size was regulated by the number of the names, the relative fertility of each locality being also no doubt taken into consideration. The twelve lots, which would be tablets of wood or stone, each inscribed with the name of a tribe, were probably put in an urn ; and, as the name of each portion of land was called out, the high priest or representative of a tribe (see 3416-29) drew a lot, and the tribe whose name was drawn inherited that territory. The precise boundaries would be adjusted after- wards, according to the population shown by the census. 64, 65. See 14 22-32. CHAPTER 27 The Law of the Inheritance of Daugh- ters. Joshua appointed as the Suc- cessor of Moses i-ii. According to 26^3 (cp. v. 2) the land was to be apportioned to the males. Zelo- phehad, of the tribe of Manasseh, had died leaving no sons (26^3); and his daughters, fearing that they would have no inheritance, request that they and their sons should suc- ceed to the inheritance of their father, and thus perpetuate his name. Their claim is pronounced to be just, and it is enacted that daughters should inherit where there are no sons, and, failing daughters, the nearest rela- tives of the father. It was afterwards further enacted (c. 36) that daughters succeeding to an inheritance must marry within their own tribe, in order that the property should re- main in that tribe and not be alienated to another. 3. Died in his own sin] These words have led Jewish commentators to identify Zelophehad with the man who was stoned for sabbath breaking (1532-36). But their meaning rather is that Zelophehad had not forfeited his inheritance by any specially heinous act of transgression, but had died the common death of all men (cp. 1629). 12-23. Moses receives intimation of his ap- proaching death, and Joshua is apjjointed leader in his place. 12. This command is repeated in Dt324Sf.. and its fulfilment related in Dt 34. In the interval before his death, Moses delivered the concluding laws contained in the book of Numbers and the addresses in the book of Deuteronomy. The conquest of the Midianites seems also to have taken place in this interval, if at least the order of the nar- rative corresponds to the actual order of 27. 13 NUMBERS 31. events (see c. 31). Mount Abarim] see on 23^4. 13. Gathered unto thy people] see on 2024. 14. To sanctify me] see on 20 1^. 15. Moses stifles his personal feelings of disap- pointment and grief, and thinks only of the flock he is leaving behind. This noble self- effacement was conspicuous on other occasions: see Ex 32 32 Null 29 1412,13. if the work goes on, he is content that God should bury the workman: cp. Ro9i-3 Phil lis. 17. To lead out (to pasture) and to bring in (to the fold) is the work of the shepherd: cp. Jn 103,4. 18. The spirit] i.e. the necessary qualifi- cation : see on Ex 28 3 314. Joshua had no doubt learned much from his close association with Moses as his attendant: see Ex 24^3 3217 3311 Null 28. He had also some experience as leader of the army of Israel (Ex 17 9*-). Moreover, he had given evidence of his faith and courage at Kadesh, being the only one save Caleb who was prepared to go forward in reliance on the divine promises and help (Nul46f.). Lay thine hand upon him] in token of consecration: cp. Ac 6 6 133 iTim4i4 2 Tim 1 6. Observe that the three marks of a regularly consecrated minister of God are present here, viz. the call of God, the neces- sary gifts, and a public and solemn ordination to ofiice. 19. Give him a charge] see Dt .317,8,23, 21. Urim] see on Ex 28 30. CHAPTER 28 Laws regarding Sacrifices and Festivals I, 2. The general laws regarding the sacri- fices proper to the feast days had already been given at Sinai (Lv23). Their repetition with certain details here probably indicates that these laws had been neglected. Some of them, indeed, were only intended to be observed after the settlement in Canaan, which was now in the near future. Moreover, the genera- tion to whom they were spoken at Sinai had passed away. Hence their repetition here to the younger generation. 2. My bread] or ' my food ': see on Lv3ii. 3-8. The daily morning and evening burnt offering with its proper meal and drink offer- ing : see on Ex 29 38 f. 9, 10. The Sabbath Offering is double that of ordinary days. 11-25. The Festival of the New Moon is frequently mentioned alongside that of the sabbath: see Am 8 5 2K423 Isa 113 562,3 Hos 211. It -was a festival of great antiquity, dating from the time when the moon was an object of adoration. The Hebrews were for- bidden to worship the moon (Dtl73), but the Festival of the New Moon was retained and transformed into a festival in honour of the Creator. Additional sacrifices were offered, and the silver trumpets were sounded during the performance of the sacrificial rites (NulOi*^). The day was observed as a day of rest, and was celebrated with great joyfulness. A special importance attached to the new moon of the seventh month: see 291-6. 16-25. On the Passover Offering see Ex 12 and cp. Lv234-8. 26-31. The Day of the First Fruits is also known as the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost : see on Lv 23 9-22. CHAPTEE 29 Religious Ordinances of the Seventh Month The seventh month (Tishri = September- October) was the first month of the civil year (see on Lv 23 23-25)^ and this c. describes the three sacred festivals which fell during that month. 1-6. The Feast of Trumpets on New Year's Day : see Lv 2323-25. 7-1 1. The Day of Atonement, the tenth day of the month : see Lvl6. 12-38. The Feast of Tabernacles, beginning on the fifteenth day of the month and lasting eight days. The sacrifices proper to this feast are unusually numerous, a feature expressive of its joyous nature, as the Feast of Harvest Thanksgiving : see Lv 23 33-43. CHAPTER 30 The Lav^ of Vows This c. deals with the subject of Vows, which is also treated in Lv 27, where see notes. A vow made by a man is binding (v. 2). But a woman is not considered to have an inde- pendent right to make a vow. So long as she is unmarried she is under the jurisdiction of her father, and on her marriage she comes under that of her husband. The assent, there- fore, of her father or husband must be given or implied in order that her vow may be binding. 2. Vow a vow . . or swear an oath to bind his soul] The former is a positive vow or vow of performance ; the latter is a nega- tive vow or vow of abstinence : see on Lv27. 3-5. Case of an unmarried woman. 6-8. Case of a woman who has entered into a vow while unmarried, but who marries before her vow is fulfilled. The husband has the power either to confirm his wife's vow, or disallow it when he hears of it. The words in V. 6 should read ' if she be married to a husband while her vows are upon her.' 9. Case of a widow, or divorced woman. Her vow is binding. 10-15. Case of a married woman. Her vow to be binding must be ratified by her husband. CHAPTER 31 War against Midian This c. contains an account of the fulfilment of the decree of extermination passed upon 118 31. 6 NUMBERS 33. the Midianites as being the occasion of Israel's apostasy in the phiins of Moab : see on 25 1^^-^^. 6. The holy instruments and the trumpets] On the use of the silver trumpets in time of war see on 10 9. It is not clear whether the ark was taken into battle on this occasion. It is possible to translate ' the holy instruments, even the trumpets.' On other occasions, however, the ark accompanied the army as a token of God's presence and blessing. See 1 S 44-7 and cp. Nu U^*. In Dt202-^ the priests are commanded to encourage the host on the ~ edge of battle. The choice of Phinehas on this occasion may be due to his previous zeal for Jehovah against the Midianites : see 25 7. i^. 8. Kings of Midian] from Josh 13 21 we learn that these were princes or chiefs, and that they were tributary to Sihon, king of the Amorites. Balaam by remaining among the Midianites shared their fate. But see on 25 ^-^. 13-18. The male children are put to death in order that the race of idolaters may be ex- tirpated. The older women are also slain as having been the prime cause of the apostasy, and likely to lead the people astray at a future time. The women-children, or young females, are spared, and are taken as slaves or wives, being probably adopted into the Hebrew nation as proselytes : cp. Dt21io-u For the reason of such wholesale slaughter see 33 ^^ Dt 20 1^, is Josh23i3andon25i'5-i8. 19-24. On this purification by means of the 'water of separation' see 19ii-i*5. 25-47. The spoil is divided equally between the warriors and those who remained in the camp. Part of each portion is dedicated to the sanctuary. The warriors dedicate the five- hundredth part of their spoil which is given to the priests (v. 29). The non-combatants dedicate the fiftieth part of their share, which, being a larger proportion, is given to the Levites who were more numerous than the priests (v. 30). 29. Heave offering] see on Lv 7 28-34 NuSii. 32. The rest of the prey] RV ' over and above the booty ' : see v. 50. 48-54. The officers make a voluntary offering as a thanksgiving for victory. 50. Tablets] RV 'armlets or necklaces': cp. Ex 35 22. Make an atonement] cp. Ex30ii-i6. CHAPTER 32 Allotment of Territory to the Tribes OF Gad and Reuben and the Half- tribe of Manasseh 1-5. The tribes of Reuben and Gad request that the land of Gilead lying on the E. side of the Jordan be assigned to them, on the ground that it is very fertile and therefore particularly well adapted to their large flocks and herds. These two tribes were associated as neighbours in the camp and on the march (2io-i6)^ hence their desire to be settled near each other. I. Gilead lay to the S. and W. of Bashan, and shared the characteristic fertility of that region : see on 2 1 33-35_ 6-15. Moses understands their request as indicating a disinclination on the part of these two tribes to enter the promised land. He reminds them that their fathers suffered the penalty of a similar faintheartedness at Kadesh (c. 14) and, fearing that the example of Reuben and Gad may discourage the rest of the people, he refuses their request. 16-33. The two tribes assure Moses that they will not separate themselves at present from the rest of the people, but will go over Jordan with them, and assist in the conquest of Canaan. After that they will return and settle on the E. side. Moses is satisfied with this assurance, and enjoins Eleazar and Joshua to see that the two tribes fulfil their promise before receiving the inheritance they desire. 28. Moses lays this injunction on Joshua his successor, as he himself will not live to pass over Jordan : see 27 12-23_ 33. The half tribe of Manasseh is not said to have made any request similar to that of the Reubenites and Gadites ; but, seeing that they had been specially engaged in the con- quest of Gilead (v. 30), a place was assigned to them also in that district : cp. Dt 3 13-15. 34-42. These vv. are inserted here by way of anticipation. The building, or rather the repairing of these cities, for some of them at least are mentioned as already existing (2 1 ^o 33 3), took place after the conquest of Canaan : cp. V. 41 with JglO^i*. In Josh22i-9 we read that, after fulfilling their promise, the two and a half tribes were dismissed to their inherit- ance by Joshua with his blessing. Owing to their position on the eastern frontier of the holy land they were the fii'st to be carried into captivity by the king of Assyria (1 ChS^^), so that it was not an unmitigated advantage to them to obtain this fertile district. CHAPTER 33 The Journeyings of the Israelites from Egypt to the Plains of Moab The greater part of this c. is occupied with a list, drawn up by Moses himself (v. 2), of the Encampments of the Israelites in their journey from Egypt to Canaan. In all, forty stages are enumerated. Many of the names are otherwise unknown, and in places the stages do not coincide with those mentioned in the books of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These differences are, no doubt, due in part to the fact that places change their names in the course of time. At this distance it is exceedingly difficult to identify the route of march, more especially as many of the names were not names of cities or conspicuous landmarks, and therefore very liable to be forgotten. 119 33. 3 NUMBERS 35. 6 3-15. Egypt to Sinai. This part of the journey is narrated in Ex 123T-192 -where all the names occur except Dophkah and Alush (vv. 12, 13). 16-18. Sinai to Eithmah. Rithmah is not mentioned elsewhere ; but, seeing that it is the station after Hazeroth, it is supposed to be the same as Kadesh (cp. 12i6 1326)_ Eofhem in Hebrew means ' juniper ' or broom, and there is a Wady Abu Retamat, abounding in broom, near the site of Kadesh, so that the identification may be regarded as in all pro- bability correct. This is the first arrival at Kadesh, in the second year of the exodus ; the second arrival at the same place in the fortieth year is noted in v. 36 : see on 13 -'^ 20 1. 19-36. Encampments during the thirty-eight years, and return to Kadesh. The names in vv. 19-29 are not mentioned elsewhere and have not been identified. With vv. 30-33 cp. Dtl06,7. Ezion-geber (v. 36) is on the sea at the northern extremity of the Gulf of Akaba(cp. 1K926 2248). 37-49. From Kadesh to the Plains of Moab. The narrative of this journey is contained in Nu20, 21. With the names in vv. 11-49 cp. Nu 2 110-20. 45. lim is the same as Ije-abarim (v. 44), the second part of this word, which means ' The Heaps, or Ruins, of Abarim,' being dropped. 50-56. Command to expel all the inhabit- ants of Canaan and to destroy their idols and places of worship, so that no inducements to idolatry may remain : see on Ex 23^2^ and cp. 25 16-18 Dt7. 52. Pictures] RV 'figured stones.' On the high places see on 22^1 Lv 26 30. 55. Cp. Josh 23 is Jg 2 3. CHAPTER 34 The Boundaries of the Land of Promise On the land and the tribes inhabiting it see on 1321. 3-5- The southern border : this started from the S. extremity of the Dead Sea, here called the Salt Sea (v. 3), and proceeded in a SW. direction to the ascent of Akrabbim, i.e. ' of scorpions ' (v. 4), a row of cliffs about 8 m. distant ; thence it passed by way of Kadesh-Barnea to the River of Egypt, where it reached the Mediterranean Sea (v. 5). The ' River of Egypt ' is not the Nile but a brook, now identified with the Wady el-Arish, flowing into the sea about 20 m. S. of Gaza. It is frequently mentioned as the SW. border of Canaan: see 1K8«5 2K247 2Ch78 Isa27i2. This southern boundary was also the boundary of Judah and Simeon : see JoshlSi-"* 19^. 6. The western border was formed by the Mediterranean Sea, the Great Sea. 7-9. The northern border : the places men- tioned on this line are unknown. Mt. Hermon is too far E. to be identified with moimt Hor, 120 which is probably some spur of the Lebanon range. 10-12. The eastern border was formed by the Sea of Chinnereth (afterwards called the Lake of Gennesaret, Sea of Galilee, or Lake of Tiberias), the River Jordan, and the Dead Sea. 13-15. See c. 32. 16-29. A. list of the persons entrusted with the division of the land W. of the Jordan, one being chosen from each of the tribes interested, in addition to Eleazar and Joshua. The names are all new with the exception of that of Caleb (v. 19). CHAPTER 35. The Levitical Cities. The Cities of Refuge 1-8. The Levitical Cities. The tribe of Levi received no part of the land of Canaan as their inheritance (1820-24 26^2). By way of compensation they received the tithes for their support (1821). It is here, fur- ther provided that 48 cities with their suburbs be allotted to them out of the inheritance of the other tribes, for the maintenance of them- selves and their herds. The carrying out of this injunction is recorded in Josh 21, where it is also noted that the priests (the sons of Aaron) received 13 of these cities (v. 4). The people, as well as the priests and Levites, benefited by this arrangement, for the latter being dispersed throughout the land were able to instruct the people in the law and worship of God. On the duty of the priests and Levites to teach the people see LvlOU Dt 1 7 8, 9 33 10 2 Ch 1 9 8-10. It would appear that the law of the Levitical cities was never strictly carried into practice. 4, 5. There is a difficulty in understanding these measurements. Perhaps the simplest ex- planation is to say that the area of the city itself is disregarded. The city being conceived as a mathematical point, 1,000 cubits measured on either side give a square 2,000 cubits in the side. The Greek version has 2,000 cubits in V. 4. If this is right there is no difficulty at all. The city would be surrounded on all sides by a strip of land 2,000 cubits in width. 6, 9-15. The Cities of Refuge. (See also Dt 19 1-3 Josh 20.) In primitive times, before the machinery of justice was organised, the duty of avenging a murder devolved upon the nearest relative of the murdered person. Duty required him to pursue the murderer and slay him with his own hand. This law was not repealed by Moses, but certain restrictions were placed upon it in the interests of humanity and justice. Of the Levitical cities, six were marked out as Cities of Refuge to which a man who had killed another accidentally (vv. 11, 22-25) might flee and be safe from the 35. 12 NUMBERS— DEUTE RONOM Y INTRO. ' avenger of blood.' This provision did not apply to wilful murderers, who were not to escape the death penalty (vv. lG-21). The names of the cities are given in Josh 20 ''> 8. Three were on the W. side of Jordan and three on the E. The reason why Levitical cities were selected for this purpose was, not merely that these were regarded as possessing a sacred character, but that they were inhabited by men who knew the law, and who could decide in doubtful cases between wilful murder and accidental homicide (v. 24 Dt 19 i^.i^). Dt 19^ provides that the principal roads leading to these cities of refuge be kept open, so that the innocent fugitive might have every facility in reaching the place of sanctuary (see note there). For the Christian application of this law of asylum see on v. 25. 12. Stand before the congregation] As a wilful murderer might flee to one of these cities in the hope of escaping with his life,, a trial must be held to ascertain whether the murder was wilful or accidental. 16-21. If the trial shows that the murder was committed wilfully, the murderer is to be handed over for execution at the hands of the avenger of blood. 22-29. If the trial shows that the murder was accidental (see Dtl9'*' 5) the murderer's life is spared. But he must stay within the bounds of the city till the death of the high priest, when he is at liberty to go. If he stray outside the bounds before that time he does so at the peril of his own life. 25. Unto the death of the high priest] The amnesty declared to the man-slayer on the death of the high priest, which marks the close of one period and the beginning of a new, is an appropriate symbol of that redemption from the sins of the past wrought by Christ, and that new life of liberty into which they enter who believe in Him : cp. HebG^'^-'^o 30-32. Murder is such a serious crime that it cannot be atoned for by the payment of a money fine ; nor can the man who has unintention- ally killed another purchase his release from the city of refuge before the death of the high priest. St. Peter reminds Christians that they were not redeemed with silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ (lPetli8.i9). CHAPTER 36 The Law Regarding Heiresses According to 27 1-11 it was decided that, if a man left no sons, his daughters might inherit his property. But if the daughters married into another tribe, the property would go with them, and so be alienated from the tribe to which they formerly belonged. If it were sold after their marriage, it would revert at the year of Jubilee, not to the original tribe, but to that into which it had been transferred by marriage. To obviate this diminution of the lands originally assigned to each tribe, it is here enacted that no heiress shall marry outside the tribe of her father. DEUTERONOMY INTRODUCTION I. Title and Contents. The title of this book is the English form of a Greek word meaning ' repetition of the law.' It is found in c. 17 ^^^ where it was used by the Greek translators of the OT. (LXX) to represent three Hebrew words more exactly rendered in the English Version ' a copy of this law ' (see note). The Jews call the book by the first two words in the original rendered ' These are the words.' The LXX title, though based on a mistranslation, is not altogether inappropriate, seeing that much of the legislation given in Deuteronomy is found elsewhere, and the historical portion is largely a resume of what is narrated in the previous books. The scene of the book is in the Plains of Moab, and the time is the interval between the close of the Wanderings in the Wilderness and the Crossing of the Jordan. It opens with 121 the first day of the eleventh month of the for- tieth year of the exodus (13); and, as the Israelites crossed the Jordan on the tenth day of the fii-st month of the following year, after thirty days' mourning for Moses in the Plains of Moab (see 348 Josh 4 19), jt follows that the period covered by Deuteronomy is not more than forty days. The greater part of the book is taken up with a series of discourses spoken to the people by Moses before his death. In these discourses Moses reviews the events and experiences of the past forty years, and founds on them re- peated exhortations to gratitude, obedience, and loyalty to Jehovah. The divisions of the book are as follows. Part i. First Discourse, chs. 1-443^ comprising a brief survey of the history of Israel from Mt. Sinai to the Jordan INTRO. DEUTERONOMY INTRO. (chs. 1-3), and concluding with an earnest ap- peal to the people to keep the commandments of Jehovah and remain faithful to His cove- nant (41-40). Three vv. of a historical nature (441-43) are then introduced. Part 2. Second Discourse, chs. /['^^-28, which is mainly legis- lative. It begins with a repetition of the Deca- logue and an exhortation to cleave to Jehovah and abstain from idolatry (4'i'i-l 1), after which follows a series of laws regulating the religious and social life of the people (chs. 12-26). This section forms the nucleus of the book. C. 28 belongs to this section, and contains a sublime declaration of the consequences that will fol- low the people's obedience to, or transgression of, the law. C. 27, which prescribes the cere- mony of the ratification of the law in Canaan, seems to interrupt the discourse. Part 3. Third Discourse, chs. 29, 30, in which the covenant is renewed and enforced with promises and threatenings. Part 4. Chs. 31-34. These chapters are of the nature of appendices, and comprise Moses' Charge to Joshua, and Deli- very of the Law to the Levitical Priests (31 ^"i^); The Song of Moses, with accompanying histori- cal notices (31i'^-32); The Blessing of Moses, which, like the Song, is in poetical form (33) ; and, lastly, an account of the Death of Moses (34). 2. Origin and Composition. The book of Deuteronomy was certainly in existence in the year 621 B.C. The 'Book of the Law,' dis- covered in the Temple at Jerusalem in that year by Hilkiah the priest, is generally agreed to have included, if it was not identical with, our Deuteronomy. See 2X22^-2° and notes there. There is no reason to believe that this was not a genuine discovery of a lost work, and its identification with at least the main part of Deuteronomy (chs. 5-26, 28) is in- ferred from the fact that the reformations instituted by Josiah are such as the law of Deuteronomy would require, e.g. the prohibi- tion of the worship of heavenly bodies (cp. 2 K 234,5,11 with Dtl73), and of other supersti- tious and idolatrous practices (cp. 2 K 23 '■''> ^3, 14 with Dtl22'3) ; and the centralisation of wor- ship at Jerusalem (cp. 2 K 23 §> 21-23 with Dt 124-28 165-7. Cp. also 2K237 with Dt23i7,i8, 2K232^ with Dt 18 10,11, 2 K 23 8.9 with Dt 18 ^•8, and the language in which Josiah's re- formation is spoken of in 2X232, 3 with the general style of Deuteronomy, e.g. 29i'9'2^ 3010 3124)_ Assuming the practical identity of the book found by Hilkiah with our Deu- teronomy, the question remains how old the book was at the time of its discovery. Like the rest of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy pro- fesses to set forth the words and laws of Moses, and is ascribed by tradition to him. This tra- dition is not lightly to be set aside. It cannot any longer be denied that the art of writing was practised in the time of Moses, and recent discoveries have shown that writing was em- ployed in Palestine even before his day. That Moses himself left written works is not only in itself likely, but is expressly asserted in several places : see e.g. Ex 1714 244,7 3427 Nu 332, and especially Dt319'26, where he is said to have written the Law, and delivered it to the custody of the priests. That in view of his approaching death the great Leader and Lawgiver of Israel should have addressed to the people such exhortations and warnings as are found in this book is also what might be expected. On the other hand, many biblical scholars are persuaded, from a careful study of the book, that it could not have been written by Moses, at least in its present form. It is marked by a distinctive literary style, ap- parent even to a reader of the English Version, who cannot fail to be struck with the fre- quent recurrence of characteristic phrases and with the general richness of its rhetorical pas- sages, unlike what is found elsewhere in the Pentateuch. Deuteronomy also contains indi- cations that the writer, or compiler, lived subsequently to the time of Moses and the conquest of Canaan. See e.g. the account of the death of Moses in c. 34, and cp. notes on 212 314 334 3410-12. The use of the phrase ' beyond Jordan ' suggests that the writer lived in Western Palestine, which Moses never did (see note on 1 1). The ' law of the Kingdom ' in c. 1714-20^ it is said, could not have been composed before Solomon and other kings gave examples of the hurtful luxury here described, and other parts of the legislation of Deuter- onomy, notably that relating to the centralisa- tion of worship at Jerusalem (see 124-28), are at variance with what is prescribed elsewhere (cp. Ex 20 24), and do not seem to have been recognised in the earlier history of the nation. See also notes on 14^2 1519,20^ Jn this con- nexion, however, we must reckon with the possibility of laws being promulgated but re- maining a dead letter for a long period. It has to be kept in view, moreover, that the book itself professes to be a ' repetition of the law.' In view of the conflict of critical opinion it seems best to regard it as a reformu- lation of the laws of Moses, designed to meet the changing needs and circumstances of a time subsequent to its original publication. 3. Religious Value. Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the date of Deuter- onomy, there can be none as to its surpassing religious value. It is one of the most beauti- ful books of the Bible, furnishing some of the finest examples of Hebrew sacred eloquence, and breathing in every chapter an intensely devout and religious spirit. Its aim is pro- fessedly practical and hortatory, viz. to enforce upon Israel the unique claim of Jehovah to 122 INTRO. DEUTERONOMY 2. 10 their gratitude, obedience, love and loyalty. In this respect the teaching of Deuteronomy re- sembles that of the ' prophets,' in its insist- ence, viz. by means of exhortation and warning, upon Israel's duty of maintaining the covenant relationship between the people and Jehovah. The people are ' holy to Jehovah,' who has chosen them to be a special people to Himself (7 6), and they ought to cling to Him alone. Over and over again they are reminded of the great things He has done for them, of His free grace in their election and redemption, and of their unbroken experience of His providential care and kindness towards them. His grace is always adduced as the prime reason and motive why they should cleave to Him with whole- hearted devotion and keep His commandments and beware of the seducing influences of their own prosperity and their neighbours' idolatry. The argument is always the same, the evangel- ical argument, ' We love Him because He first loved us ' ; 'I beseech you by the mercies of God.' See e.g. 47-9.32-40 620-25 7 Mi 29^-17, etc. The same motive of gratitude for unde- served mercies underlies the repeated exhort- ations to humanity and kindly consideration of the poor, the afiiicted, strangers, and even the lower animals. See e.g. 14 22-29 157-11 1610-17 2317,18,22 261-11. The love of God to Israel, calling forth a responsive love to God and to humanity, that is the theme of this most profoundly religious and ethical book ; and nowhere else is the blessedness of an obedience which is rooted in love and gratitude set forth more eloquently or persuasively. The book of Deuteronomy seems to have been an especial favourite of our Lord. He resisted the thi-eefold assault of the Tempter in the wilderness with quotations from this book (see Mt 4 and Dt8 3 613 1020 and notes) ; and He answered the question as to the ' first and greatest commandment ' in the Law by referring to Dt 64,5. ^he Jews selected Dt 6 *■'•* for daily recitation as their creed, finding in these words the highest expression of the unity and spirituality of God, and of the whole duty of man to his Maker, Preserver and Redeemer. PART 1 First Discourse (Chs. 1-4*3) The long sojourn in the wilderness is now drawing to a close. The Israelites are en- camped in the Plains of Moab within sight of the Promised Land. Moses, feeling that his death is approaching, delivers his final charges to the people. In the first, he reviews briefly the history of Israel from Mt. Sinai to the Jordan, dwelling on the goodness of God, and making it the basis of an earnest appeal to the people to remember all that He has done for them, and to keep His commandments. CHAPTER 1 Introduction. Review of the Journey FROM Sinai to Kadesh 1-5. Introduction. I. On this side Jordan] RV ' beyond Jordan,' i.e. on the E. side. The writer speaks from the standpoint of Canaan, as also in v. 5, 3^ 441,46,49 : see Intro, to Numbers, § 2. The plain is the Arabah, the valley running N. and S. of the Dead Sea. The Red sea'] Heb. Suph, the name of some place on the Gulf of Akaba. 6-46. Review of the journey from Sinai to Kadesh on the border of Canaan. 6. Horeb] the name given in Dt to Mt. Sinai. The name Sinai occurs in this book only in the Blessing of Moses (33 2). 7. The plain] see on v. 1. The hills] RV 'hill country,' the elevated ridge in the centre of Palestine. The vale] the maritime plain. The south] the Negeb. See on Nu 1317,21. 9. This seems to refer to what is recorded in Ex 1813-26. 22. SeeNul3. It would appear that the sending of the spies was suggested by the people, and that Moses referred the matter to God for confirmation : cp. Nul3i. 37. For your sakes] Had the unbelief of Moses gone unpunished, the people would have been hard- ened in their own transgression. For their sakes, therefore, it was impossible to overlook it : see on Nu 20 12. 46. Many days] see on Nul326 201. CHAPTER 2 Review of the Journey (continued) I. The Red sea] i.e. the Gulf of Akaba. On Mt. Seir see Nu 20 22-29. 4. Through the coast] RY 'through the border,' as in v. 18. The Edomites, however, refused to give them a passage through their country : see Nu 20 i'*-2i. The Israelites accordingly went southward towards Elath and Ezion-geber at the N. end of the Gulf of Akaba (see v. 8 and on Nu 20 22), and so round Edom to the country of the Moabites. 9. The Moabites and the Ammon- ites (v. 19) were related to the Israelites, being descended from Lot, the nephew of Abraham (Gn 19 37, 38) The Edomites were descended from Esau, the brother of Jacob. Ar] the capital of Moab, lying on the river Arnon, which formed the northern border of the country (Nu 2 115, 28). 10-12. These vv. form an antiquarian paren- thesis, like vv. 20-23. 10. The Emims (RV ' Emim,' i.e. the ' terrible ones') and the Horims (RV ' Horites,' i.e. the ' cave-dwellers') are mentioned in Gnl4°'6. The tribes E. of the 123 2. 12 DEUTERONOMY 4.41 Jordan seem to have been of great stature : see on Nu2133-35_ 12. As Israel did] These words must have been written after the occupation of Canaan. 13. On the Zered see Nu'ili^. 20. The Zamzummims (RV 'Zamzummim') are probably the same as tlie Zuzim in Grn 145. 23. The Avims (RV ' Avvim ') dwelt in the SW. of Canaan, in the neighbourhood of Gaza, here called Azzah. Hazerim] RV 'in villages.' Caphtorims] the Philistines who came from Caphtor, usually identified with Cyprus or Crete : see Gn 1 0 1* Am 9 7 Jer 47 1. CHAPTER 3 Review of the Journey (concluded) l-ii. The conquest of Og, king of Bashan. See Nu 21 33-35, ^ -Jhe ruins of these cities remain to this day: see on Nu2133. 9. Sirion] means ' glittering like a polished shield,' and corresponds, therefore, to the name Mt. Blanc. The Hermon range is mostly covered with a cap of snow. In 4^8 Hermon is also called ' Sion,' which means the same as Sirion, if indeed it is not a clerical error for that word. 10. Salchah] still existing under the name of Salkhad, a large town on the E. border of Bashan, lying on the great road from Galilee to the Persian Gulf. II. The bedstead of iron of the giant king was in all probability his sarcophagus of black basalt which the Arabs still call ' iron.' Several such sarcophagi have been discovered E. of the Jordan. Conder believed that he discovered Og's ' bedstead ' in the form of a huge stone throne at Rabbath. The word rendered ' bedstead ' properly means a couch or divan: see e.g. Am 3 12 6*. 14. This took place later (see JglO^.^, and cp. Intro, to Numbers, § 2), and its insertion here indicates the work of a later hand, like the expression unto this day: cp. v. 12. See on Nu324i. 17. Chinnereth] the Lake of Gen- nesaret, or Sea of Galilee. The plain is again the Arabah: see on li. Ashdod-pisgah] RV ' the slopes of Pisgah ': cp. 449, 18-20. See on Nu32. 23-28. See on Nu 2 7 12-23, CHAPTER 41-43 Exhortations to Obedience This c. contains the practical part of the discourse. Having briefly rehearsed the ex- periences of the Israelites in the wilderness up to the present point, Moses closes with an eloquent appeal not to forget what they had seen and learned, but to keep the command- ments of the Lord. The argument is quite evangelical. Jehovah of His own free gi-ace has chosen and redeemed this people, they ought, therefore, to love and serve Him alone : cp. Joshua's exhortation in Josh 24. 124 3. Because of Baal-peor] see Nu 261-9. 10. See Ex 19, 20, 243-s. At Mt. Sinai the people entered into a national covenant with Jehovah their Redeemer, promising to keep the Law delivered unto them there. 15. The foundation of true religion and morals is a right conception of the nature of God. In the first and second commandments of the Decalogue Israel had been taught the truths of the unity and spirituality of God. They are specially exhorted here to keep themselves from idolatry. 16-18. This pro- hibition probably refers to the animal worship of the Egyptians with which their fathers had been familiar in their bondage. 19. There may be allusion here to the worship of the Persians and Chaldeans. The Israelites fell into this form of idolatry: see e.g. 2X171*5 213. 24. Cp. 93 Hebl229. On the nature of the divine jealousy see on Ex 20^. 25. Remained long in the land] lit. ' slum- bered in the land.' The word expresses not only long continuance but a loss of vigour, a gradual weakening of first impressions due to unbroken peace and prosperity. Those who have no changes are apt to forget God (Ps 55 1^). Prosperity sometimes acts like a narcotic and sends the soul to sleep : cp. 6 io-i3 8 10-20 32 is ; see also 2 Ch 121 26 1« 3225. 28. Bodily sub- jection to their heathen conquerors would lead to spiritual bondage. They would be ' given over to a reprobate mind ' : see Ro 1 2^-28. 29-31. These vv. indicate the nature of true repentance. It is not merely sorrow for past sins and then- consequences, but a seeking God with all the heart, and obedience to His voice. Such repentance procures the divine mercy, for God does not forget His part of the cove- nant, however His people forget theirs. ' The gifts and calling of God are without repent- ance,'i.e. they are irrevocable: see Roll 29 Heb6i7. 32-38. These vv. state the ground of Jeho- vah's choice of Israel. It is purely an election of grace and love. Hence Israel ought to cleave to Him. No other nation has been so highly favoured by Jehovah. 38. The Israel- ites did not take possession of the land of their enemies by their own might. Jehovah went before them into battle : cp. 8 1"' I8. 41-43. The appendix to the First Discourse. On the Cities of Refuge see Nu 35 9-34 and notes there, and cp. alsoc. 19 Josh 201-9. The cities appointed here are those E. of the Jordan. In c. 19 those in Canaan are referred to. On the phrase on this side Jordan see on 1 1. Bezer was the southernmost of the three. It is mentioned on the Moabite Stone as having being rebuilt by Mesha: see on Nu2129. Its site has not been identified. It is probably the same as the Bozrah mentioned in Jer 48 24. Ramoth in Gilead played an important part in 4. 45 DEUTERONOMY 6.9 the wars between the kings of Damascus and Golan gave its name to the district E. of the Israel. It was the scene of the death of Ahab Sea of Galilee, still known as the Jaulan. (IK 22) and the anointing of Jehu (2K9). The precise locality of the city is unknown. PAET 2 Second Discourse (Chs. 444-28) This is the longest of the three discourses, and fills over twenty-five chs. The opening vv. (444-49) are in the form of an introduction : chs. 5-1 1 are mainly hortatory : the following chs. (12-28), which form the nucleus of the book of Deuteronomy, are taken up with a special code of laws. CHAPTER 4 (continued) 45. After they came forth] RV ' when they came forth.' It was really in the fortieth year of the exodus. 46. See on 1 1. 48. On Mount Sion, see on 39. 49. Springs of Pisgah] RV ' slopes of Pisgah ' : see on 3 1^. CHAPTER 5 The Repetition of the Decalogue This c. repeats the Law of the Ten Com- mandments given on Mt. Sinai with the circumstances of its delivery : see Ex 20, and the notes there. 3. Their fathers who had heard the Law given at Sinai were actually dead. But as the covenant had been made not with indi- viduals, but with the nation of Israel, Moses could say that it was made not with our fathers, but with us. The expression is really equiva- lent to ' not only with our fathers but also with ourselves.' 6. This is the gi'ound on which obedience to the Law is due. God's free grace is the first fact in the covenant. On the Ten Commandments see on Ex20i"i''. 14, 15. In Exodus the obligation to keep the sabbath is made to rest on the fact of the divine creation of the world ; here it rests on the divine redemption of Israel. In the former case the reason annexed to the commandment is uni- versal, in the latter national. In both cases the commandment is the same, and it is possi- ble that the original form of the Decalogue gave only the commandment without any reason attached to it : f,ee Ex 23 12 and on Ex 20 10. n. 23-33. Cp. Ex 20 18-21. 24. And he liveth] This is a special token of the divine favour, because usually man cannot bear the immediate revelation of the divine majesty : cp. Ex 33 20 19 21 2019 Jg623 13 22 Isa 6 2, 5, and on Ex 24 9-11. 29. The proper attitude of man towards God is not only one of reverence but of obedience. 31. Man needs, r.nd God Himself provides, a Mediator. CHAPTER 6 Practical Exhortations To the repetition of the Decalogue Moses 125 adds in the following chs. a practical exhorta- tion to obedience founded on the special relation of Jehovah to Israel as their Redeemer (6-11). C. 6 particularly insists upon the remembrance of God's statutes and the train- ing of the children in them. 4, 5. Our Lord calls these words ' the first and great commandment.' They express the highest truth and duty revealed to the Hebrew nation : the truth of God's unity and unique- ness ; the duty of loving and serving Him with every faculty of the being. Consequently they became the Jewish Confession of Faith ; and under the name of the ' Shema ' (the first word of V. 4 in the Hebrew) are still recited, along with Dtlli3-2i and Nul537-4i, as the first act of worship in the Jewish synagogue, and twice a day by every adult male Jew. 5. Love goes deeper than fear. It is the fulfilling of all law, and includes obedience. Both in the OT. and in the New it is the effect of God's greatest . love in redemption. ' We love Him because He first loved us.' 8, 9. Cp. 1118-20. From early times the Jews understood this injunction literally ; and in the time of our Lord a great importance was attached to three ' memorials,' or visible reminders of this obligation to keep the Law of Jehovah. One was the ' zizith ' or ' fringe ' which was worn on the corners of the outer garment : see on Nu 1537-41. The others were the 'tephillin' and the 'mezuza,' the use of which was founded on this passage of Deuter- onomy. The 'tephillin' were two small boxes, about a cubic in. in size, containing each a piece of parchment, on which were written in a special form of handwriting the four passages. Ex 131-10.11-16 Dt64-9 11 13-21, One was fastened inside the left forearm and the other on the forehead, to be a sign upon the hand and a frontlet between the eyes. They were worn at prayer on week days, and sometimes enlarged, as by the Pharisees of our Lord's time, to suggest particular devotion to the Law (Mt235). The Hebrew name ' tephillin ' means ' prayers ' ; but they were also called in Gk. 'phylacteries' or 'pro- tectors,' from their supposed power to ward off evil spirits. The 'mezuza' was a small oblong box containing the passage Dt 6 4-9 and was affixed to the right-hand door-post of the house and of each inhabited room, in accord- ance with the injunction in Dt69. It had a beautiful significance as a reminder of the presence of God in the house, and the obliga- 6. 10 DEUTERONOMY 10.6 tion of all the inmates to keep His holy law, but has also been degraded into a mere charm to keep off evil spirits during the night. 10-13. Cp. 8 10-14 and see on 4 25. 13. Swear by his name] Jehovah, the God of truth, is to be recognised as the unseen witness of all agreements between a man and his neighbour, and the avenger of all falsehood : cp. the Third Commandment. 16. They tempted God at Massah by insist- ing that He should prove His presence among them in the way that they prescribed : see Ex 17'^. But man must beware of dictating to God, in unbelief and presumption. Our Lord refused to demand from God a special token of His presence and care, and quoted this warning against the tempter : see Mt47. It is to be observed that our Lord not only took all His answers from the Scriptures, but from the same portion of Deuteronomy, viz. chs. 5-10 : see 83 6 is lO^o. 20-25. Cp. V. 7. The keeping of the Law is required by the fact of redemption, and is rewarded with the divine blessing. 25. Our righteousness] Obedience increases merit. For a particular instance see on 24 13. CHAPTER 7 Practical Exhortations (continued) In this c. the people are warned against temptations to idolatry and enjoined to avoid contact with their idolatrous neighbours : see onEx2.332,33Nu25i"-is. I. On the tribes inhabiting Canaan see on NulS'^i. 5. Images] RV 'pillars,' or obe- lisks. Groves] RV ' Asherim ' : see on Ex 34 13. 6. Special people] RV 'peculiar people ' : see on Ex 19 5. 13. On the promise of material prosperity as the reward of obedience, see on Ex 20 12. 19. Temptations] 'provings' or trials, the afflictions that test and reveal character : see 8 2, and cp. Jas 1 -> 12. 20. The hornet] see on Ex 23 28. 25. Nor take it unto thee] Achan did so and brought trouble upon himself and Israel : see Josh 7. 26. Abomination] i.e. an idol, as in 1622. a cursed thing] RV 'a de- voted thing,' a thing laid under the ban of extermination. The verb from the same root is rendered utterly destroy in v. 2 : see on Lv27 28. CHAPTER 8 Practical Exhortations (continued) The people are reminded of God's goodness to them at the time of the exodus and during their sojourn in the wilderness. They are exhorted to humility and obedience, and warned against worshipping strange gods. 2, 3. The events of the wanderings were intended to teach Israel humility and depend- ence on God alone : see on 7 1^. 3. Which thou knewest not] see Ex 1 6 1^. But by every word, etc. ] If necessary God can sustain human life apart from the usual means. The Saviour had this trust in God and refused to create bread for himself : see Mt4'i. 4. God who gives the life provides also the raiment and the bodily health: see Mt 6 25-34. Jewish commentators understood this description literally, but it is evidently poetical and rhetorical. 6-20. A warning against pride and self- suificiency : see on 425. 7-9. The gifts of God in the rich and beautiful land of Canaan are a motive to thankfulness and obedience, but may become a temptation to forgetfulness and pride : see on 425. 9, Iron is found in various parts of Palestine, especially in the N. Basalt (see on 3 11) is found E. of the Jordan. Copper, here called brass, is found in the Lebanon range and to the E. of the Dead Sea. We do not read of the Jews working mines in Canaan, but the wi'iter of the book of Job was ac- quainted with mining operations, and gives a graphic description of the process in c. 28, which should be read in RV. 16. At thy latter end] i.e. by bringing them into the land of promise if they stood the test. 18. Cp. ICh 29 12-14. CHAPTER 9 Practical Exhortations (continued) The rebellions and provocations of the wilderness are recalled, to show the people that it is not of their own merit that they are to inherit the promises, nor by their own strength that they are to dispossess the in- habitants of Canaan, but by the grace and power of God. 8. Also in Horeb] Even at Horeb, in view of those awe-inspiring tokens of the divine majesty, and at the very time when the Law was being promulgated, the people corrupted themselves: see Ex 32 and notes. 9. I neither did eat bread nor drink -water] In Ex 34 28 this fact is recorded in connexion with the second writing of the Law. 17. And brake them] The action symbolised the breaking of the covenant through the sin of the people. 18. I fell down] i.e. in intercession : see on Nul64. The words as at the first refer probably to the intercession on the mount spoken of in Ex32ii : cp. 3231. 22-24, gi"^'iiig other instances of the people's rebellion, seem to be a parenthesis. "V . 25 takes up the thread of v. 21. CHAPTER 10 Practical Exhortations (continued) 1-5. The renewal of the broken covenant : see Ex 34. 6-9. These vv. are evidently a parenthesis. 126 10. 8 DEUTERONOMY 11.30 The death of Aaron took place thirty-eight years after the departure from Sinai, but previous to the delivery of this discourse : see on Nu20""-^''. The notice of Aaron's death seems to be inserted here to show that the sin of Aaron and the people did not bring the priesthood to a close. The covenant was re- newed, and Aaron was spared for nearly forty years to minister as the high priest ; and on his death the priesthood was continued in his family. In Nu 33 30-33 the same places are mentioned as being visited in a different order. In all probability the childi-en of Israel visited these places twice. 8. At that time] Not at the time of Aaron's death, but during the sojourn at Sinai : see Ex 32^*5, The Levites here include the family of Aaron who were specially set apart to the priesthood : see on Nu3. 11. In spite of the perversity and rebellion of the people they are permitted by God's grace to continue their journey and possess the land of promise. This verse marks the freeness and fulness of the divine forgiveness. God's covenant of peace is not removed. 12. Notwithstanding all that the people have done God does not demand of them any- thing more than their plain duty, in view of their past experience of His goodness : cp. Mic6S. 13. The path of duty is also that of safety and welfare. 14, 15. Although God is Lord of heaven and earth. He has singled out this small nation (7 "> §) for His special favour. 16. See on Lv 19 23. 17, 18, Great as God is, He cares for the lowly : see Ps 138 1^. ' Be ye therefore merciful even as your Father is merciful.' 20. This was our Lord's third answer to the tempter : see Mt 4 10 and on 6 1*^. 22. This is another ground of gi'atitude and obedience. CHAPTER 11 Practical Exhortations (concluded) Some injunctions to obedience, with the blessing it entails, and the curse that follows disobedience. I. Therefore] There should be no break here : see on 10 22. 2. Seen the chastisement] i.e. experienced for yourselves the discipline or instruction of the Lord. The word refers not only to the punishment of the Egyptians but also to the experiences of the Israelites. 6. There is no mention here of Korah : see on Nul6. 10, II. The fields in Egypt require to be watered artificially. The water is raised from the lakes or from the Nile by means of pumps worked by the foot. But the expression wateredst // with thy foot may refer to the practice of diverting the water into numberless little channels by breaking down the separat- ing ridges, or by opening and shutting the 1 sluices, with the foot. The land of Canaan requires no such human devices to render it fruitful. It drinketh water of the rain of heaven. It enjoys the direct blessing of God. A common Palestinian salutation during rain is, ' May God protect you while He is blessing the fields.' 14. First rain] see on Lv 26 "^ . 18-21. See on 6^'''. 21. Heaven upon the earth] RV ' the heavens above the earth.' 24. Cp. Josh 13, 4. The wrilderness is the wilderness of Judah in the S. ; Lebanon is the northern boundary ; the Euphrates is in the E. ; and the uttermost sea (lit. ' the hinder sea ') is the Mediterranean in the W. In describing the cardinal points the Hebrew stood with his face to the E. or sunrising. Hence in the Hebrew language ' in front ' means the E., ' behind' means the W., as in this verse, while ' the right ' is the S. : see on Ex233i. 26-32. The Blessing and the Ciu-se. See c. 27 and notes there. 28. Other gods, which ye have not known] i.e. who have not revealed themselves in deeds of deliverance and kindness, as Jehovah has done, and who have no claim upon yom- re- verence and obedience. The argument is always the same, though repeated in various forms. Israel's past experience of God's free grace in their election and redemption is the gi'ound of their love and fear of Jehovah. 29. Put the blessing, etc.] This refers either to the erection of the stones inscribed with the blessings and the curses, or to the placing of the two companies mentioned in 27 12, i3^ one to bless and the other to curse. Ebal and Gerizim are the most conspicuous of the hills of Samaria, being fully 3,000 ft. high. Ebal is on the N., Gerizim on the S.; and they are separated by a very deep ravine running E. and W. The sunnnits command a view of the whole land. It was here that Abraham received the promise which was fulfilled 400 years later on the same spot : see Josh830-35_ The Samari- tans afterwards erected a temple on Mt. Gerizim, which became the rival of the temple at Jerusalem : see Jn420,2i The Passover is still celebrated yearly on its summit. 30. The champaign] i.e. the plain, RV ' Arabah ' : see on 11. Plains of Moreh] RV ' oaks of Moreh ' : see Gnl2'5. The Samaritans claim that Moreh and Moriah (Gn22 2) are the same, and that the sacrifice of Isaac therefore took place on Mt. Gerizim. They also assert that Mt. Geri- zim was the meeting-place of Abraham and Melchizedek (Gnl4). The Gilgal mentioned here is not the Gilgal lying between the Jordan and Jericho (see Josh 41'-'), but another place of the same name near Shechem, in the centre of the country. The name means ' circle of (sacred) stones,' a ' cromlech.' 27 n. 1 DEUTERONOMY 15. CHAPTER 12 The Abolition of Idolatrous Places. The Centralisation of Worship. Abstinence from Blood The larger section of the Second Discourse begins here and extends to the end of c. 26. It consists of a code of laws, and constitutes the nucleus of the whole book : see on 4-i4-49. So far as any orderly arrangement can be dis- covered, chs. 12-16 are taken up with the more strictly religious duties ; chs. 17-20 with civil ordinances ; and chs. 21-26 with social and domestic regulations. 1-3. An injunction to destroy all traces of Canaanitish idolatry : see on 7 ^-^. 4-28. No sacrifice to be made to Jehovah unless at the one place which He Himself prescribes. This law of the centralisation of worship is one of the main arguments employed by critics in support of the theory of the late origin of the book of Deuteronomy. The practice of sacrificing at local shrines, it is said, was universal till the time of Josiah, and could hardly have been so if there had been an earlier prohibition : see Intro. § 2. 4. Ye shall not do so] i.e. worship Jehovah in the places where the Canaanites worshipped their gods. 7. Ye shall eat] The reference is to the sacrificial meal at which part of the offerings were eaten by the worshippers : see on Lv 3. 15. This is a slight modification of the law prescribed inLvl72>4, where see note. 16. On the prohibition to eat blood see Lv, 33 17 10-16. 21. Every abomination] see on Lvl82i. CHAPTER 13 Warnings against Temptations to Idolatry The people are warned against three pos- sible sources of temptation to idolatry, viz. the false prophet (vv. 1-5), an erring member of the family (vv. 6-11), and an apostate city (vv. 12-18). In each case the tempter or tempters must he put to death without mercy. 2. A sign or a wonder is not enough to establish the credentials of a prophet. If he seeks to turn the people from the worship of Jehovah, he confesses himself thereby a tempter to evil, and must be put to death : cp. Mt2424 2Th29 Revl3i3,i4. 6. Even should the tempter to apostasy be the nearest and dearest, no mercy must be shown to him (v. 8) : cp. the zeal of the Levites (Ex 32 25-29) and of Phinehas (Nu25''''^) and our Lord's words, Mtl037 Lkl42(5. The same principle is enunciated in Mt529>30. 12-18. An instance of this may be read in Jg 19, 20. 13. Men of Belial] RV'base fellows ' or ' sons of w^orthlessness.' Belial is not a proper name : cp. 1 5 9 ■"« Jg 20 1^ RM 1 S 25^5 IK 21 13. 16. The street is the open square or market-place of the city. The word ren- dered every whit is the same as that used to denote the ' whole burnt offering,' so that the clause may be translated ' as a whole burnt offering to Jehovah thy God.' 17. Cursed thing] RV ' devoted thing ' : see on 7 26 Lv 27 213-29. CHAPTER 14 disfigurings for mourning forbidden. Clean and Unclean Meats specified 1. Practices connected with idolatry : see on Lv 19 27, 28. 2. The foundation of the entire moral and ceremonial law is contained in this and the preceding verse. Israel is the people whom Jehovah has chosen and called His children. As such they must be holy : see intro. to Lv 17-26. 3-20. On the law of clean and unclean beasts, see Lv 1 1 and notes. 5. The pygarg is probably a kind of antelope. The exact meaning of the Hebrew word is doubtful, as it only occurs in this passage. As the chamois is unknown in Palestine, a species of wild mountain sheep is probably meant. 21. That dieth of itself] For the meaning of this prohibition see on Lvll^^-^^. On the prohibition to seethe a kid in its mother's milk see on Ex 2319. 22. The produce of the soil is to be tithed and the tithe eaten at the central sanctuary, except when this is inconvenient on account of distance (v. 24), in which case the tithe is to be turned into money, and spent on a sacri- ficial feast to which the Levites are to be invited (vv. 25-27). Every third year the whole tithe is to be devoted to charity. According to the law in Nul82i the tithe is given to the Levites exclusively. It has been supposed that the tithe in Deuteronomy is a second tithe, different from that in Numbers, and made after the first, or Levite's tithe, has been deducted from the produce. But, as no mention is made of more tithes than one, the different destination of the tithes may be con- sidered as indicating different stages of legis- lation. In later times, however, a distinction was made between the first and second tithes, the first being devoted to the Levites, and the second consumed by the offerer. CHAPTER 15 The Sabbatical Year This c. deals with the year of release, or the Sabbatical Year, and should be compared with Lv26. In addition to the rest for the land and the manumission of Hebrew slaves in the seventh year, it prescribes a release of debts (vv. 1-5) ; only, however, so far as Hebrew creditors are concerned, and proper 128 15.4 DEUTERONOMY 17. 16 loans, not money due on account of purchase (vv. 3, 8, 9). 4. Save when there shall be] B,V ' Howbeit there shall be.' The law is intended to pre- vent poverty. 10. ' The Lord loveth a cheer- ful giver.' II. The ideal state of matters is contemplated in v. 4 : here we have the actual fact. There will always be poor people, but poverty will be exceptional, if this injunction is conscientiously carried out : see vv. 4, 5. 12-18. See also Ex212-6 Lv2539-46. The subject of slavery is connected with that of poverty, as it is implied here that the poor person has been sold as a slave for debt. Every seventh year the slave has to be released. He is not to be sent away empty, as the probable result would be a return to slavery. He is to be liberally furnished, so as to be in a position to earn a livelihood and make a fresh start in life. This is a very wise as well as humane prescription. 16. If a slave elect to remain in the master's service instead of accepting release, a formal compact must be made to that effect. In Ex 21^ the ceremony is performed in public before the magistrates ; here it seems to be private. The boring of the ear and the fasten- ing it to the doorpost with the awl signified that the person was permanently attached to the house and was bound to obey the words of his master : cp. on Ex 21*^. 19, 20. In Nul8i5-is the firstlings of clean beasts are the perquisite of the priests. Here they are to be eaten by the owner and his household annually at the central sanctuary. Much ingenuity has been expended in the attempt to reconcile these two regulations. The simplest explanation is that they belong to different stages of legislation. 21. Whatever is offered to Grod must be the best of its kind: cp. 17 1, and see on Lv 22 17-25. CHAPTEE 16 Injunctions eegarding Feasts,' Judges, Groves, and Images 1-8. On the Passover see Ex 12 Lv23't-8 Nu 28 16-25^ and the notes on these passages. It will be observed that the general law of 12^ (see on 1 2 ■*-28) is here applied to each of the three great annual festivals : see vv. 2, 11, 15. 3. Bread of affliction] So called from the circumstances in which the festival was in- stituted and which the unleavened bread and bitter herbs were meant to symbolise : see Ex 12 8. 8. Solemn assembly] see Lv 23 36. 9-12. On the Feast of Weeks see on Lv 2315-21 Nu 28 2(5-31. 10. With a tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand] better, ' after the measure of a freewill offering of thine hand,' i.e. according to thine ability as God has prospered thee, as in v. 17. 11. The 129 joyous nature of this festival is emphasised here. The people are to present thank-offer- ings and remember the poor : cp. v. 16. 13. On the Feast of Tabernacles see on Lv 23 33-43 Nu 29 12-38. 16. Shall not appear .. empty] To ' appear before God ' is to visit the sanctuary for worship : e.g. Ps42 2,4. On this injunction to bring an offering see on Ex23i5 and cp. Ps 96 8. 18. This is the beginning of the sub- division that deals mainly with civil matters. See heading of c. 12. 19. See on Ex 23 8. 2 1 . Grove of any trees] E V ' Asherah of any kind of tree': see on Ex 3413. 22. Image] EV 'pillar' : see on Ex 24 4 3413. CHAPTEE 17 The Punishment op Idolatry. Contro- versies TO BE settled BY PrieSTS AND Judges. Election and Duties or A King I. Cp.Lv 22 17-25. 2. Wickedness] idolatry, as in 425. 5. Unto thy gates] see on Gnl9i. 7. The hands of the witnesses] This regu- lation, by throwing the responsibility of the execution upon the witnesses, would act as a safeguard against false evidence : see on Lv24i4. 8-13. Difficult cases are to be referred to a supreme court of judicature, consisting of the priests and the chief magistrate, whose decision is final. This court is to sit at the central sanctuary : see 2Chl98-ii. 10. Inform thee] rather, ' direct thee.' The common Heb. word for ' law ' is derived from this verb and means really ' direction.' 14-20. The Law of the Kingdom. It is to be observed that the people are not commanded to appoint a king, as in the case of the judges (16 IS). But the desire for a king is anticipated and is not disapproved. The kingdom is theo- cratic, i.e. the king is the vice-gerent or repre- sentative of God and is chosen by Him. The law of the kingdom is the law of God (vv. 18-20). The Church and the State are identi- cal. 14. Like as all the nations] cp. the ac- tual words of the people in 1 S 8 20. 15. Not . . a stranger] i.e. a foreigner, a non-Israelite : be- cause Israel is the peculiar people of Jehovah. The Jews were always intolerant of foreign authority: cp. Mt22i7. Messiah when He came was to rid them of the foreign yoke : see Ac 16. 16. Not multiply horses] The horse is here forbidden, not as an article of luxury but as an instrument of warfare, in which the kings of Israel are not to trust: cp. Ps207 33 its, 17 147 10. Canaan was not suitable for cavalry, and the conquest of the country was effected by infan- try, whose superiority was due to the hilly nature of the country. Solomon imported horses from Egypt (1K1026,2S)^ and similar 17. 17 DEUTERONOMY 19. 15 reliance upon Egypt was a frequent snare to the Israelites against which the prophets raised a warning voice : see Isa 3 1 ^ Ezk 1 7 1^. Horses were also dedicated to the sun-god by the idolatrous kings of Israel : see 2K23ii, and onEx93. 17. Solomon transgressed this com- mandment with precisely the result here fore- told : 1 K 11 1-^ and cp. Neh 13 26. 18. A copy of this law] i.e. not merely the law of the kingdom contained in vv. 14-20, but the entire Deuteronomic law which is in the custody of the priests: see on 319.24-26_ At the coronation of Josiah the ' testimony ' was put into his hands (2 Ch23ii) ; and to this day, when a Christian monarch is crowned, the Bible is delivered to him with the words : ' We present you with this book, the most valuable thing that the world affords. Here is wisdom ; this is the royal law : these are the lively (i.e. living) oracles of God,' signifying that the law of God is to be the rule of his kingdom. In LXX the words a copy of this law are repre- sented by the single word ' deuteronomion,' from which the title of the whole book is derived : see Intro. § 1. 20. And his children] an indication that a hereditary dynasty is not inconsistent with divine choice. CHAPTER 18 The Priestly Dues. Character and Work OF THE True Prophet 1-8. The Priestly dues : see on Nul8. 4. This is the only place where the priests are said to receive the first of the fleece : cp. Nul8i2. 9-14. Condemnation of superstitious and magical practices. 10. Pass through the fire] The context here seems to imply that this was a method of divin- ing or obtaining an oracle from a god: cp. on LvlS^i. Useth divination] a general term, but applied specially to the casting of lots : see e.g. Ezk21 21. Observer of times] RV ' One that practises augury ' : the meaning of the word is uncertain. An enchanter] one who observes omens, watches for signs in the sky or in the flight of birds. Witch] RV ' sorcerer,' one who practises magic by means of drugs and spells : cp. on Ex 22 IS. n. Charmer] one who ties knots, weaves magic spells and curses. Con- suiter with familiar spirits, or a wizard] lit. ' one who consults a ghost or familiar spirit,' proba- bly a ventriloquist who professes to hold communication with subterranean spirits. Necromancer] one who inquires of the dead : cp. Lv 19 31 2027. 15. This is closely connected with what precedes. Israel has no need to employ such arts of divination as other nations use. Jeho- vah Himself will communicate His will to them through the prophets whom He raises up and instructs. See IsaS^^. The singular number here, a Prophet, does not refer to a particular individual, but to a succession of prophets. Israel will never want a prophet to communi- cate to them God's will. This prophecy found its ultimate fulfilment in Christ, the perfect revealer of God's grace and truth and the new law-giver, and is applied to Him by St. Peter and St. Stephen: see Ac 3 22 737. 18. This V. contains the definition of a prophet. He is one who speaks the word of God and interprets to men the divine will : see on Nu 1 1 25, and cp. the words of our Lord in Jnl4io. 20. That prophet shall die] For an instance see Jer28i5-17. 21, 22. At no time is it easy to distinguish the true from the false prophet. Different prophets in Israel not unfrequently contra- dicted each other. One test of the true pro- phet, but not the only one, is proposed here, viz. the fulfilment of prediction. Manifestly this test could only be applied to predictions of the immediate future. But the prophet sometimes prophesied of things that were afar oif (Ezk 1 2 22-27) so that his words could not be verified by those to whom they were addressed. The ultimate criterion of the true prophet is the moral character of his utterance. Con- science is the true judge. Our Lord re- proached His generation because they insisted on seeing signs and wonders before they would believe. CHAPTER 19 The Cities of Refuge. Punishment of Deceit and False Witness 1-13. On the Cities of Refuge see Nu 35 9-34 and notes there. 2. In the midst of thy land] Those on the E. side of the Jordan have already been assigned : see on 4*1 -13. 3. Prepare thee a way] It was the duty of the Sanhedrim, or chief council of the Jews, to maintain the roads to these c.ities in good repair, and to have finger-posts where necessary with the words ' Refuge, Refuge ' inscribed upon them, so as to afford every facility to the fugitive. 8. Enlarge thy coast] i.e. thy border, to the limits mentioned in 1 7 11 2i. The condition of such enlargement is stated in the next v. 9. Three cities more] i.e. besides the three mentioned in vv. 2, 7, and those in 4'*i-'i3. The additional three would be in the newly added territory beyond the usual limits of the kingdom. There is no evidence to show that they were actually appointed. 14. Cp. 27i7Job242Prov2228 23iOHos5io. The landmark was usually a stone, or heap of stones, which in the absence of hedges or walls defined the boundary of a man's field. Its removal was equivalent to theft. 15-21. The law of false witness. Cases of suspected false witness are to be investigated 130 19. 21 DEUTERONOMY 21. 18 and punished by the supreme court : see on 178-13. 21. See on Ex 21 23 and cp. Lv2420. CHAPTER 20 Laws of Warfare I. Horses and chariots] The army of ihe Israelites was chiefly composed of infantry : see on 17 1*^. 2. The priest] It is implied that the priests accompany the hosts of Israel into battle : see on NulO^. Hence the Heb. phrase ' to consecrate a war, or warriors,' usually rendered to 'prepare' : see Joel S^™^- Isal33. 5-9. From Nu 1 3 it would appear that all able-bodied men from twenty years of age were liable to military service. But the evils of compulsory service were obviated by the rule laid down in this passage exempting cer- tain classes. There was (1) the man who had built a new house or planted a vineyard, and had as yet got no return for his outlay. The law exempting him for a time was an en- couragement to those who by personal outlay increased the material resources of the country. (2) A man who was betrothed or newly married was exempted for a year (cp. 245). (3) The fearful and fainthearted were dis- charged. Fear is infectious, and the presence of such persons in the host would be a source of weakness and danger. For an instance of the observance of this rule see Jg73. It is implied that a sense of honour will protect this law from being abused. 10. War is to be regarded as the last resort, and only to be employed when negotiations for peace have been tried and failed. In the event of victory, only the fighting men are to be put to death ; women and children are to be spared, except in the case of neighbouring idolatrous tribes. 16. Cp. JiA 19, 20. Fruit-trees are not to be used for bulwarks and battering rams. The words at the end of v. 19 should probably be read as in E.V, ' for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of thee ? ' i.e. the tree does no harm and is not to be treated as an enemy. Wanton destruction is not permissible even in war. All these rules were designed to mitigate as far as possible the evils of war. There is to be no destruction of human life and property beyond what is actually necessary. The con- duct of war is to be guided with reason and mercy. CHAPTER 21 Expiation of Undetected Homicide. Marriage of Captive Women. Pun- ishment of a Rebellious Son The last sub-section of the Second Discourse begins here, containing a variety of social and domestic regulations. 1-9. The Expiation of Undetected Homi- cide. The cases of accidental and open, wilful murder have been already provided for in c. 19. This passage treats the case of un- detected homicide. Murder pollutes the land and must be expiated. When the murderer cannot be discovered the responsibility of making atonement rests with the city nearest to the scene of the crime. For the ancient Babylonian practice in such circumstances see art. ' Laws of Hammurabi.' 4. For rough valley read ' valley with running water,' and for strike off the heifer's neck read ' break the heifer's neck.' Eared means ' ploughed ' as in Ex 34 21. The proper satisfaction for the crime of murder would be the death of the murderer : see 1913 ; but as he cannot be discovered, the heifer takes his place. The unworked heifer and the untilled land probably suggested com- I^lete severance from human life, and symbolised the unnaturalness of the crime of murder. 6. The washing of the hands is a protesta- tion of innocence. Cp. the action of Pilate in Mt27 2-i. 7. The elders, in the name of all the citizens, take an oath of purgation. The publicity and solemnity of the ceremony must have had a powerful effect upon the public conscience, and in some cases no doubt assisted in the discovery of the murderer. 10-14. On the Marriage of Captive Women. This rule does not apply to Canaanitish women, whom the Israelites were forbidden in any circumstances to marry : see 7^ 19i*5-is. 12. These are rites indicative of purifica- tion : see Lvl48 NuG^. The captive comes from a heathen people, and this ceremony symbolises the renouncing of her former life and her adoption into Israel. 13. The woman is to be honourably treated. Even if divorced she must not be sold as a slave but allowed to go back to her people. 15. Succession to hereditary property is a fruitful cause of discord in a family, as is also the favouritism of parents : cp. the case of Isaac and Rebekah (Gn 25 28). A polygamous society is specially liable to disturbance from these causes. Beloved and hated are relative terms, meaning simply that one is preferred to the other. For a similar use of the terms see Mai 12, 3. 17. A double portion] The usual right of the firstborn. An estate was divided into a number of parts exceeding the number of children by one, and the extra share fell to the firstborn. 18. Children have rights, as the last passage shows, but they have also duties. The punishment of an incorrigible son is very severe. The State is regarded as having an interest in the proper upbringing of children and as exercising its authority when that of the parents is powerless : see on Ex 20 12 2115.17. 131 21. 22 DEUTERONOMY 23. 24 22, 23. And thou hang him] The hanging followed the execution. See on Nu25'^and cp. Josh 10 26 2S412. The tree was a stake on which the dead body of the criminal was impaled, in token of infamy. The dead body must be taken down before nightfall because it is ' the curse of God.' The words rendered, he that is hanged is accursed of God, are some- what ambiguous. They mean either he ' is accursed in the sight of God, i.e. cursed by God,' or ' is an insult or reproach to God.' Jewish commentators take them in the latter sense. The dead body pollutes the land and is an insult to God : it must therefore be taken down. St. Paul quotes the words in Gal 31^ in the former sense, viz. that the fact of hanging is an evidence of the divine curse resting upon the person. The Jews of the apostle's time, like those of later times, argued from the ' offence of the cross.' Seeing that Jesus was hanged on a tree. He could not be the Son of God : He was manifestly the object of divine displeasure. St. Paul boldly admitted the fact, but reasoned differently from it. The curse, he said, was vicarious. Christ ' was made a curse for us,' thereby redeeming us from the curse of the Law. CHAPTER 22 Laws regarding Lost Property, Dis- tinction OF Sex in Apparel, and Chastity 1-4. Law of Lost Property : see Ex234 and note. 5. ' God is not the author of confusion,' and the natural distinctions He Himself has appointed ought to be respected. Whatever contravenes the law of nature contravenes the law of God : cp. the principle laid down by St. Paul in 1 Cor 1 1 3-i6. Immodesty leads to immorality. There may be an allusion here to the unchaste practices connected with certain idolatrous rites in which the sexes exchanged dress. 6, 7. To take the old bird as well as the young would be wanton cruelty. Kindness to animals is part of the law of God : see on Ex 23 4> 5, 21 Lv2228. It is to be observed that the same reward is attached to this command- ment as to some of what may be considered the ' weightier matters of the law ' : see e.g. 516,33. Rabbi Akiba, referring to this promise of long life, supposes the case of a man who climbs a tower and takes the young from a nest, sparing the dam in accordance with the commandment given here. But on his way down he falls and breaks his neck. To the question, ' Where is the going well and pro- longing of days in this case ? ' the Rabbi answers, ' In the world where all goes well, and in that world where all is abiding.' He holds that the truth of the resurrection of the dead is implied in all the promises of reward attached to the keeping of the Law : cp. on Ex 20 12. 8. The roofs of Eastern houses were flat, and used not only for drying grain (Josh 2 6), but as an open-air parlour when coolness or privacy was sought : see e.g. 1 S 9 25, 26 2 S 11 2 Dan429™g. Ac 10^. The injunction here is a corollary of the sixth commandment, and con- tains a principle capable of wide application. 9-1 1. Cp. V. 5 and see on LvlQ^^. 12. See on NulS^'i'-ii. The law is applied spiritually by St. Paul in 2 Cor 6 1^. 13-30. On the Law of Chastity see on Lvl8,19. 23. Betrothal consisted in the settlement and payment of a dowry by the bridegroom to the father or brothers of the bride, and in presenting the bride with certain gifts : see on Ex 22 16. It was regarded as sacredly as marriage itself. After betrothal, the bride was under the same restrictions as a wife, and if unfaithful was punished as an adulteress. 24. Here the betrothed damsel is called a wife : cp. Mtl20. 28. See on Ex 22 is. The even-handed justice of the Mosaic Law is worthy of note. It deals with equal strictness with both the sinning persons. CHAPTER 23 Laws regarding admittance to the Con- gregation, Cleanliness in the Camp, Unchastity, Usury, and Yows I. Shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD] i.e. not merely as priests (see Lv 21 16-24) but as ordinary members of the nation of Israel, all of whom are ' holy unto the Lord.' The reference in this v. is probably to the self -mutilation practised by the devotees of certain heathen gods, and alluded to by St. Paul in Gal 5 12 : cp. 14 1. 2. A bastard is understood by the Jewish commentators to mean here, not one born out of wedlock (Jephthah was such, Jg 1 1 1), but the child of adultery or incest. Even to his tenth generation] i.e. not at all. Similarly in v. 3 : seeNehlSi. 11. Evening cometh on] Anew day begins with the evening. 12-14. Sanitation and morality are both of the utmost importance for an army in camp. Cleanliness is next unto godliness : cp. 2 Cor 6 16-7 1. 15. A foreign slave is probably meant ; see v. 16. 18. From its connexion here the word dog seems to denote a person who practised immoral conduct as an idolatrous rite : see on Lvl929, and cp. Rev 22 1^. 19. Thy brother] i.e. a fellow Israelite. In V. 20 stranger means foreigner. The Jews have always been noted as money lenders : see on Ex 22 25. 21-23. On vows see N'u30, and cp. Eccl S'^- ^. 24, 25. Jewish commentators limit the 132 24. 1 DEUTERONOMY 25. 4 application of this rule to harvest labourers, thus making it analogous to that prohibiting the muzzling of the ox ' when he treadeth out the corn' (Dt254). But there seems no reason for limiting the natural interpretation of the precept, which like the law of the gleaner (2419-22) is prompted by a spirit of generosity towards wayfarers and poor persons. The restrictions at the end of vv. 24, 25 would protect the law from abuse. The Pharisees did not accuse our Lord's disciples of the sin of theft but of working on the sabbath day, rubbing the ears of corn being equivalent in their opinion to harvesting : see Mt 1 2 1*. CHAPTER 24 Laws regarding Divorce, Pledges, Man- stealing, Leprosy, Justice, and Gleaning 1-4. The Law of Divorce. The right of the husband to divorce his wife is here acknow- ledged but is guarded against abuse. There must be some good reason for the separa- tion ; it must be done in a legal and formal manner : and it is final. If the woman is divorced a second time, or becomes a widow after re-marriage, she is not free to marry her first husband. I. Some uncleanness] RV ' some unseemly thing.' The Heb. is literally ' nakedness of a thing,' an expression also used in 23 1-^. The vagueness of the language gave rise to endless disputes among Jewish teachers. In the time of our Lord, opinion was divided between the school of Shammai who held that it meant unchastity, and the school of Hillel who understood the expression in a much wider sense as referring to almost any cause of dis- pleasure on the part of the husband, such as an ill-cooked meal or the sight of a more beautiful woman. The Pharisees asked the judgment of our Lord upon the matter and He decreed in favour of the stricter interpreta- tion. He acknowledged no gi'ound for divorce except that of adultery, and even this is a doubtful exception (neither Mark nor Luke gives the qualifying words ' except for fornica- tion ' ; see MklU^i). He characterised the Mosaic law of divorce as a concession to the ' hardness ' of men's hearts, and went back to the original ordinance of God in creating one man and one woman as evidence of the divine idea of the inviolability of the marriage bond : see Mkl02-i2 Mtl93-9 53i>32 Lkl6i8. The bill of divorcement contained the sentence, ' And thou art permitted (to be married) to another man.' 4. The infinitude of the divine mercy is beautifully illustrated in JerS^, where God takes back those who have broken His covenant and have repented. His ways are higher than om* ways (see also Hos 1-3). 5. See on 205-9. 6. On the nature of the Eastern hand-mill see on Ex 11 5 2226,27. The mill is an indis- pensable domestic utensil ; and, as neither of the stones is of any use without the other, to take one away would inflict a cruel hardship. It would be to ' take a man's life,' i.e. his means of livelihood. 7. See Ex 21 16. 8, 9. See Lv 13, 14 Nu 12. Miriam, though she was the sister of Moses, had to comply strictly with the laws regulating the separation and purification of lepers. 10. Not go into his house] The debtor must be allowed to select himself the article that he will give as a pledge for a loan. Whatever it be, the creditor must accept it, and not force his way into the house to see what is there and perhaps carry off something that the poor man cannot spare. If the man is so poor that he has nothing save his blanket to give in pledge, it must not be kept overnight (vv. 12, 13 ; see on Ex 22 26). 13. Righteousness] In the Rabbinical language the word for ' alms ' is 'righteousness.' To give alms is the right- eous act par excellence : see Mt 6 ^ and mg. 15. Another humane principle of far reach- ing application. 16. For an instance of the observance of this rule see 2X14*5, and cp. Ezk 18 2-4, 19, 20. 20. When thou beatest thine olive tree] In gathering olives the fruit is brought to the ground either by shaking the boughs or beat- ing them with a long palm branch. At the present time the trees are beaten on a certain day announced by a crier, after which the poor are allowed to glean what is left. A similar permission holds good in the case of vineyards and cornfields : see on Lv 1 9 9. Gleaning is a beautiful and kindly custom still surviving to some extent in Palestine, but fast disappearing before the introduction of modern methods of harvesting, which are not unnaturally regarded with disfavour by the poorer classes. CHAPTER 25 Ordinances regarding the Infliction of Stripes, the Raising of Seed to a Brother, Modesty, and Fair Dealing 3, A)id not exceed] In order to keep within the limit it was usual to inflict thirty-nine stripes: see 2 Cor 11 24. The milder beating was with a rod. A severer form of this punish- ment was scourging, inflicted with a whip of thongs into which pieces of iron were inserted. In the time of our Lord beating was inflicted in the synagogue upon ecclesiastical offenders : see on MtlOi7 Ac26ii. While the culprit was being beaten the words in Dt 28^^,59 Ps 78 3^ were read. 4. In threshing, the sheaves were spread out upon a hard beaten piece of ground (the threshing floor), and over them a pair of oxen dragged a wooden sledge or harrow about 5 ft. square, upon which the di'iver stood to add weight to it. In 1 Cor 9 9-14 133 25. 5 DEUTERONOMY 27. 11 ITimoi'^'i^ St. Paul applies this precept to the duty of supporting those who preach the gospel : see on Ex 23*>5. 5-10. Marriage of a brother's widow. Among the Jews it was regarded as a great calamity that the family line should become extinct. If a man died childless, his name perished and his property passed to the families of his brothers. To obviate this was the pur- pose of this law of the levirate marriage (Lat. levir = a, husband's brother). The duty of marrying a brother's widow was not en- forced, but the refusal to do so was regarded as disgraceful. Failing a brother the duty devolved upon the nearest male relative. See on Lvl8i6, and see Ruth 2 20 39-13 4. 9. The loosing of the shoe and handing it over signified an act of transfer or renunciation. In this case it was a mark of discredit : cp. Ruth 2 7' 8. A Bedouin formula of divorce is ' She was my slipper and I have cast her off.' 13-16. Ancient weights were pieces of stone or metal which the merchant kept in a bag. An unscrupulous merchant might have two sets of weights in his bag, a heavier for buying and a lighter for selling : see Mic 6 ^ Prov 1611, andcp. Lv 19 35,30. 17-19. See Ex 17 8-16, and for the fulfilment of the injunction ISU^s 15, 27S>9. CHAPTER 26 The Presentation of Firstfruits and of Tithes i-ii. Presentation of the Firstfruits, as a Thank-offering for the mercy of God in de- livering the nation from Egypt and in giving them a good land and fruitful seasons. 5. A Syrian] Jacob is meant. His mother came from Aram-naharaim (Gn24i0), and he himself spent fourteen years in that country (Gn28i-5 29-31). The term implies a sug- gestion of disparagement. For his going down to Egypt see Gn 46. 11. Having de- dicated their fii-stfruits the people were free to enjoy what remained. 12-15. On the tithe of the first and second year see on 1422,27^ and on the tithe of the third year see on 1428,29. The latter was the poor's tithe, and was stored up and distributed among the needy. 13. Brought away the hallowed things] RV ' put away,' wholly parted with them. The 'hallowed things ' are the tithes which were consecrated to Jehovah and could not be lawfully retained by the owner. 14. As the presence of a dead body was ceremonially defiling in the highest degi-ee, the offerer here declares that neither he nor his tithe was defiled in this way. The words given thereof for the dead are imderstood by Jewish commentators to mean that the offerer had not used any part of the tithe to provide a cofiin or grave-clothes for a dead person. More probably, however, they refer to the practice, common in Egypt e.g., of making a funeral feast. Thomson, in ' The Land and the Book,' says it is customary after a funeral to send presents of corn and food to the friends in the name of the dead : cp. Jer 16"^ (cp. RV) Hos9'i. The Egyptians also placed food on the tombs of the dead, but it is doubtful whether this custom obtained among the Jews, although we read in the apocryphal book of Tobit (4 1^) : ' Pour out thy bread on the tomb (or, burial) of the just.' In any case the declaration in this passage means that the tithe has not been in any way ceremonially defiled. 16. These statutes] i.e. those contained in chs. 12-26, to which vv. 16-19 here form the hortatory conclusion. CHAPTER 27 Ceremonies to be observed on reaching Canaan This chapter has probably been misplaced, as it seems to break the connexion between c. 26 and c. 28. It ordains four ceremonies to be observed after the people have entered Canaan : the Law to be written on stones on Mt. Ebal : an altar to be erected there : the covenant ratified on Ebal and Gerizim : and twelve curses pronounced by the Levites. 1. Elders] Elsewhere the elders are ad- dressed along with the people. Here they are associated with Moses in exhorting the people to obedience. 2, 3. The plaster was intended to make a smooth surface, on which the inscription may have been painted in accordance with the Egyptian custom. Or the writing may have been impressed on the clay when it was soft and the clay afterwards dried or baked in the sun, like the tablets and cylinders of Baby- lonia. On the fulfilment of the injunction given here see Josh 8 30-35 and on 1129,30. 5. Cp. Ex 2024,25 and notes there. 9, 10. The Levites are addressed here be- cause it was their duty to pronounce the bless- ings and the curses, to which the people responded with ' Amen.' 1 1 -1 3. On Ebal and Gerizim see 1129,30. It need not be supposed that six tribes spoke the blessings from the top of Gerizim and the other six the curses from the top of Ebal. According to the Jewish writers the priests and Levites stood in the valley between the two heights and spoke both the blessings and .the curses from there (see v. 14), and all the people answered with a loud Amen. The valley between the hills is not more than 60 rods wide at the eastern end, and all travellers in Palestine remark upon the wonderful dis- tance at which sounds are audible, on account 134 27. 12 DEUTERONOMY 29.6 of the unusual clearness of the air. Our Lord frequently spoke to large multitudes in the open ail". 12. To bless] The words of the blessings are not given but may be inferred from the nature of the curses : cp. 11 26-32. 15. Cursed he the man] There is no verb in the Hebrew, and it might be more correct to say ' cursed is the man.' The words are a declaration of fact rather than an imprecation. The seeming harshness of many expressions in the Psalms e.g. may be explained in this way. The speaker does not always utter his own wish, but declares the inevitable result in God's righteous government of a certain line of conduct. In a secret ^;/aee] cp. 1.3'''. It is seldom that sin is bold enough to show its head, at least in its beginning. But ' the eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good.' 18. To take advantage of a neighbour's ignorance or credulity is sin: cp. LvlQ^'^. 26. Cp. Gal 3 26. As no mere man is able perfectly to keep the whole law, St. Paul argues that part at least of the purpose of the Mosaic Law was to teach men to despair of obtaining righteousness ' by the works of the law,' and to drive them, as it were, to seek a righteousness imputed by God on condition of faith: see Ro3i9-3i 49-25 Gal 3 19-24. CHAPTER 28 The Blessing and the Curse This c. properly follows 26 ^9, and concludes the second discourse. It enforces the in- junctions given, by exhibiting the blessings associated with the keeping of them, and the curses entailed upon disobedience. 1-14. Tlie Blessings for Obedience. 5. Store] lit. ' kneading-trough ' as in Ex 123'i. The basket is that used for holding bread: see Gn40i7 Lv82 Mtl420. 7. Seven ways] (at once), a proverbial saying expressing a disorderly rout. 12. See on Lv26-i and on c. 11 10. 15-48. The Curse for Disobedience. 22. The sword] rather, ' drought.' 23, 24. A graphic description of long-con- tinued cli'ought. In Palestine the E. wind is hot and dry ; and, blowing from the desert, is often full of fine sand-dust which gives the sky the appearance of burnished metal. When this wind (called the ' sirocco ') is strong, it pro- duces the terrible sand storm so destructive to life, when ' the rain of the land is powder and dust': see on Lv 20 19. 26. Fray] frighten, or scare: cp. 1817^4 282110. 27. The "botch of Egypt] the boil with which the Egyptians were plagued: see Ex 9 9. Emerods] hsemor- rhoids, as in 1 856. What is meant is probably the Oriental bubonic plague. 28. They will be afflicted with mental as well as bodily diseases. 30-34. These troubles are the consequences of defeat in war and oppression by foreign nations. For a historical instance see Jg63-6. 34. For the sight of thine eyes] i.e. on account of what you see. 36. Serve other gods] see on 428. 37. Cp. lK9'-9. 38. Cp. Hag 16-11. 40. Shall cast its fruit] i.e. unripe. 42. See on Ex 104-6. 49. The Chaldeans or Assyrians are meant: see Jer5i5 Habl6-8. 53-57. This crowning horror of a long- continued siege actually took place during the siege of Samaria by the Syrians (2 K 6 26-29)^ jn the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (Lam 4 10), and later in the final overthrow of Jerusalem by Titus, as recorded by Josephus in his ' Wars of the Jews.' 58. The name of God is His revealed character: see on Nu627. The name here, Jehovah thy God, expresses what God is in Himself, and what He is to Israel. He is the eternal and self-existent God who has made Israel His people. 64, 65. These words were fulfilled at the exile, and even more literally at the destruction of Jerusalem during the Roman supremacy. Since that time the Jews have been repeatedly persecuted and di-iven from one country to another ; but, wonderfully enough, they have always preserved their identity. They still present the strange spectacle of a nation with- out a country : see on Nu 23 9. 65. The failing of the eyes indicates the gradual extinction of hope: cp. v. 32. 68. After the capture of Jerusalem the Roman general Titus sent a great many captives to the Egyptian mines. No man shall buy you] This does not mean ' shall redeem you,' but ' purchase you as slaves.' They would be exposed for sale as slaves, and no man would consider them worth the buying. PART 3 Third Discourse (Chs. 29, 30) CHAPTER 29 Exhortations and Warnings In this chapter the covenant is renewed and enforced with a reminder of God's goodness and the consequences of disobedience. 3. Temptations] i.e. provings or trials : see on 719. 4. The people have not laid these things to heart. For the form of expression see on the ' hardening of Phai'aoh's heart ' (Ex 4 21). 6. Not eaten bread] but manna. They have been entirely dependent on God, and His care in providing for them should teach them humility and obedience. The goodness of 135 29. 11 DEUTERONOMY 32. 7 God should lead to repentance, ii. Your little ones] Children share the privileges and responsibilities of the covenant into which they enter by circumcision. 15. With him that is not here] i.e. with succeeding generations : see on 53. 18. A root that beareth gall and wormwood] The reference is to any one who secretly entices his neighbours to idolatry : see 13 ''' 13, and for an instance Josh 7 1^' ^s. The words are used in Hebl2is. 19. Imagination] RV ' stubbornness.' To add drunkenness to thirst] i.e. the commission of the sin to the desire to commit it. RV, however, renders the words ' to destroy the moist with the dry,' which seems to be a pro- verbial expression, like ' root and branch,' in- dicating the destruction of the whole nation. The sinner perishes not alone in his iniquity, but involves others along with him. The LXX seems to understand the phrase in this sense, for it has ' lest the sinner destroy the innocent along with him.' Achan again furnishes an illustration. See Josh 22 20. 23. Contrast the description of the good land that Jehovah in- tends His people to enjoy, DtS''''^. 24. Cp. Jer5i9 228.9. 29. The meaning of this v. seems to be, ' we know not the entire nature and extent of the divine judgments ; it is enough for us and for our children to have heard the commandments of God and to do them.' CHAPTER 30 Promises and Appeals A promise of restoration, even after abandon- ment and rejection, is held out, on condition of repentance ; and an appeal is made to the people to choose the way of obedience and life rather than that of disobedience and death. 6. Circumcision is the sign of the covenant. To circumcise the heart is to consecrate it to God: cp. on Lv 19 23. II. Hidden] RV 'hard,' lit. 'wonderful.' God's law is not unintelligible or impracticable. It is a revealed thing (see 29 29). All that is essential in revelation is plain ; it is within the compass of human understanding and will. St. Paul applies these words to the law of right- eousness by faith : see RolO'^. 15-20. An earnest appeal to the people to choose the way of obedience and life . 20. He is thy life] To love God is life : cp. Prov835,36_ PART 4 The Last Words of CHAPTER 31 Farewell Exhortations of Moses to the People and Joshua. He Delivers THE Law to the Priests. The Assembling of the Congregation I. These words] i.e. the following words. 2. Go out and come in] i.e. perform the office of a leader : see on Nu 27 1''. 3. Jehovah is the real Leader of the hosts of Israel : Joshua is the human instrument : cp. Nu 23 22. 9. This law^] i.e. the Deuteronomic law, especially that contained in chs. 12-26 : see intro. to c. 12. 10. The Feast of Tabernacles was at the beginning of the year of release : see on Lv 2323-43, and cp. Lv259. On the reading of the law at this season see e.g. Neh8. 14. Cp. Nu 27 12-23 and notes. 16. Go a whoring] see on Ex 34 is. 19, Aw^itnessfor me] When the threatened punishment had fallen, the song would remain to testify that God, who foresaw their apostasy, had warned them against it : see v. 21. The song would also be a means of bringing them to repent- ance. 26. In the side of] i.e. beside. The tables with the Ten Commandments were kept in the ark: see on Ex 16 3*. CHAPTER 32 The Song of Moses The theme of this noble Song is the good- ness of Jehovah in choosing Israel and bringing Moses (Chs. 31-34) them into a rich land. When they provoke Him with their forgetfulness and unfaithful- ness, He disciplines them. But He does not utterly reject them ; when they repent He takes part with them against their enemies and delivers them. It will be observed that the exodus begins and concludes with a Song of Moses : see ExlSi^i^. Ps90 is also attri- buted to him. 1-6. Heaven and earth are called to witness the perfect righteousness and faithfulness of Jehovah which Israel has requited with ingratitude. 2. As the dew] in its gentleness and beneficent results: cp. Isa55io.ii Psl333 Job 29 22, 23. 3. Name of the LORD] i.e. His character : see on 28-5'^. 4. The Rock] This frequent name of Jehovah expresses His abso- lute and unwavering faithfulness : see e.g. Psl82. Observe the number of words in this V. all emphasising this attribute of the divine character, and serving to throw into stronger relief the fickleness of Israel. 5. The first part of this v. is obscure, and various emenda- tions have been suggested. RV has ' they have dealt corruptly with him (i.e. with Jehovah), they are not his children, it is their blemish ; they are a perverse and crooked generation,' which seems to express the general meaning of the original. 7-14. Think of the goodness of Jehovah in choosing Israel, rescuing them in the 136 32. 8 DEUTERONOMY 33. 2 wilderness, and bringing them into a rich land. 8. Jehovah is not the God of Israel only, but of all the nations of the earth. He has, however, a special favour towards Israel ; and, when He divided the world among the nations. He left room for the people whom He had chosen. 9. The converse is also true. Jehovah is the portion of His people : see e.g. Nul8-0 PsKiS.e 7326 1425 JerlOie. 10. He found him] like a lost child or wandering sheep. Led him about] RV ' compassed him about.' II. The image is that of the old eagle en- couraging her timorous young to fly. So Jehovah disciplined Israel in the wilderness, preparing the people for their life in Canaan : see on Ex 19*. 12. There loas no strange god with him] i.e. with Jehovah. He did everything for Israel. No other god, there- fore, has any claim upon their gi'atitude and obedience. 14. Rams . . of Bashan] see on Nu 2 1 33-3.5 Pat of kidneys of wheat] the finest and most nourishing of wheat, the kidneys being enclosed in the best fat of the animal : cp. Nu 18 12, where the Heb. is ' all the fat of . .' 15-18. All this grace Israel has requited with forgetfulness and unfaithfulness. 15. Jeshurun] (cp. 335.26 Isa442) is a poetical name for Israel, meaning probably ' the righteous one ' : see on Nu 23 10. Pros- perity made Israel self-willed and forgetful : see on 4'-25, and cp. 8io-is_ 16. Jealousy] see on Ex 20 5. 17. Unto devils, not to God] RV 'unto demons which were no God ' : cp. v. 21. The ' demons ' may mean the divinities wor- shipped in Assyria in the form of colossal bulls : cp. Ps 10637. 19-33. Ill consequence of this perversity Jehovah is provoked and corrects them in His anger. 20. No faith] i.e. no faithfulness or fidelity. They have broken their covenant with Jehovah. 21. Vanities] i.e. false gods : see e.g. Isa4129 4410 Jergis 10 is ICorS*. Not a people] i.e. most probably an undis- ciplined horde of barbarians, whom God will permit to gain the mastery over Israel. In Ro 1019 this passage is applied to the Gentiles, whose acceptance of the gospel will have the effect of provoking the jealousy of the chosen people and moving them ultimately to follow their example. 22. Lowest hell] RV ' pit ' : Heb. Sheol. God's righteous indignation reaches to the deepest and remotest part of the universe : cp. Am 9 2. 27. Behave them- selves strangely] RY ' misdeem,' draw a false conclusion from Jehovah's treatment of Israel by taking credit to themselves for its humiliation: see Nu 1415-17 and note there, and cp. 9-8 28. They] Israel. 29. Their latter end] the consequences of their conduct. 30. Shut them up] delivered them into the hand of their enemies. 31. Their rock] the gods of the heathen. 32. Their vine] The analogy with their rock in V. 31 suggests that the reference is to the enemy, but more probably it is to Israel itself, whose apostasy is thus severely con- demned. Israel is frequently compared to a vine of God's planting, which instead of bear- ing fruit is either fruitless (HoslOi) or bears wild gi-apes (Isa 5 2-7). Sodom and Gomorrah are types of wickedness, and the vines ascribed to them may be no specific plants, but figurative growths or outcomes. 33. Dragons] i.e. serpents. 34-43. When Israel is reduced to extremi- ties Jehovah will be merciful to them and avenge them. 34. This] referring to the vengeance of God (v. 35), which for the present is laid up in store against the day when it will be manifested. 35. RV ' vengeance is mine and recompence, at the time when their foot shall slide.' 36. Shut up, or left] i.e. left at large, a proverbial expression meaning every- body: see IKI410 2121 2K98 1426. 37. Cp. Jgl0i4 Jer228. 39. No god with me] This is almost equivalent to ' no god beside me.' Jehovah alone is able to work and save : cp. Isa 43 10-13. 40, Lift up my hand] The usual attitude of taking an oath : see Gnl422 NuUSOmg. Rev 105. 6. I live for ever] rather, ' As I live for ever.' 41. Mine enemies] the heathen. 42. From the beginning . . enemy] RV ' from the head of the leaders of the enemy.' 43. Read, with RM, 'Praise His people, ye nations, for . . He will make expiation for His land. His people (or, for the land of His people),' i.e. He will make atone- ment for the blood shed in the land by the slaughter of those who shed it. Then those who witness this righteous judgment will recognise that Israel is the people of Jehovah and will bless, or congratulate, them. 44. Hoshea] see on Ex 17 9. 48-52. See Nu 27 i2-i'i and notes there. On the death of Aaron see Nu 20 22-29. CHAPTER 33 The Blessing of Moses This chapter contains the last words or 'swan-song' of Moses. Immediately before his death he takes farewell of the people, and blesses each of the tribes in turn, as Jacob had done on his deathbed: see Gn49. The two blessings should be compared ; see also on v. 4. 2-5. Introduction, describing the majestic appearance of Jehovah to His chosen people. 2. Cp. Jg5* Hab33. Seir] Edom (see on Nu 20 22-29). Mount Paran] the S. boundary of Canaan. The appearance of Jehovah is described as a sunrise. The glory of His Presence appeared on Mt. Sinai, His beams smote the top of Mt. Seir, and glowed upon Mt. Paran. Read, ' He came forth from the midst of (not, with) the myriad shining saints 137 33. 3 DEUTERONOMY 33. 19 that encircle His throne : at His right hand was a burning fire for them.' The last clause is difficult and very probably corrupt. 3. All his saints] i.e. Israel's saints. They sat down at thy feet] as disciples listening to the words of their teacher. 4. This v. may be inter- polated. Moses could hardly have written it himself. The superscription in v. 1 seems also to indicate that a later writer has written down the Blessing of Moses. 5. He was king] Jehovah, not Moses: cp. on Nu232i. On Jeshurun see 32 1^. 6. Reuben is the eldest of the sons of Jacob. There is a difficulty in the second half of this v., in which AY has inserted a negative not in the original. It may be better to read with RV ' yet let his men be few.' In the earlier blessing of Jacob it is said that Reuben will not endure, or have preeminence, on accoimt of his misdeed (Gn35^2)_ Owing to their position on the E. of the Jordan the Reubenites had a somewhat precarious hold of their territory. The Ammonites were troublesome (JglO, 11); on the Moab- ite Stone (see on ]S'u2129) most of the Reubenite cities are said to be occupied by the Moabites ; and Tiglath-Pileser carried them captive toAssyria(l Ch56, 22, 26 2K1529. This constant danger of extinction may be alluded to here. But the text may be corrupt, and some words may have dropped out. Some MSS of LXX insert Simeon as the subject of the second clause. It will be observed that he is not otherwise mentioned at all, though the omission may be explained by the fact that the tribe of Simeon was absorbed in that of Judah(Joshl99). 7. Let his hands . . for him] RV ' with his hands he contended for himself ' (or, ' for it,' i.e. the people). Judah was the champion of the tribes: see e.g. Jgl^ 2018. 8. On the Urim and Thummim see Ex 28 30. Jehovah is addressed in this v., and Levi is meant by thy holy one. Three privileges of the priestly tribe are referred to in this bless- ing, viz. the use of the Urim and Thummim, the teaching of the Law, and the presentation of incense and sacrifice (v. 10 : see on Nu 18, 3518,9-15). Whom thou didst prove, etc.] At Massah and Meribah the people certainly proved and strove with Jehovah. But unless there is a change of person here, and again in V. 10, it would appear that the person addressed is still Jehovah, who is represented as havmg proved and contended with Levi there, in the persons of Moses and Aaron. See Nu 20 12 and Dt82. 9. This v. refers to the separation of the tribe of Levi to their sacred duties. They have no lot or inheritance among their brethren. There may be a particular refer- ence to the exceptional zeal of Levi mentioned in Ex 32 26-29; cp. for the thought MtlO^^ Lk959-62_ II. Them that rise against him] such as Korah: see Nul6. 12. The beloved of the LORD] is Benjamin, and the subject of the second and third clauses is Jehovah, as in AV. The v. refers to the fact that Zion, the dwelling-place of Jehovah, was in the land of Benjamin. Jerusalem was on the border line between Benjamin and Judah, so that Jewish writers speak of the Temple being in Beiijamin while its courts were in Judah. Hence, Jehovah is here said to dwell between Benjamin's shoulders, i.e. mountain slopes. 13. The fertility of the land of Joseph is also emphasised in the earlier blessing of Jacob: see Gn 49 22-20. The precious things of heaven is the rain, and the deep that couch- eth beneath is the springs of water. The words for the dew should perhaps be read ' from above.' 14. Things put forth by the moon] RV ' things of the growth of the moons,' i.e. probably of the months, things put forth month by month, according to their season. 16. Good will of him that dwelt in the bush] Jehovah revealed Himself in the bush as the Deliverer of Israel : see Ex 3 2. 6-8. The latter part of the v. is identical with that of Gn4926. 17. Read, 'His firstling bullock, majesty is his, and his horns are the horns of the wild ox.' Ephraim is meant, and is com- pared to a wild ox : see on Nu2322. 18. Thy going out] The reference is to the commercial intercourse between Zebulun and foreign nations. The phrase is almost equiva- lent to ' exports.' Zebulun seems to have had an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea ; cp. the next V. and also Gn49i3 Isa9i. Nazareth was in the land of Zebulun. In thy tents] Issachar was an inland tribe. It possessed the Plain of Jezreel, or Esdraelon, a district of extra- ordinary fertility and the gi*anary of Palestine. Issachar is accordingly represented as rejoicing in its tents, i.e. pursuing a peaceful agricultural life (Gn49",i5). 19. The people] RV 'peoples,' their heathen neighbours who trade with them, particularly the Phoenicians. These they are here said to call unto the mountain where they offer sacrifices of righteousness, i.e. sacrifices that are offered rightly. It would appear that in the land of Zebulun and Issachar there were certain mountain sanctuaries where sacrificial feasts were held to which these tribes were wont to invite their neighbours, and that these gatherings were a source of commercial advantage to them. The abundance of the seas refers to the maritime commerce men- tioned above, and the treasures hid in the sand have been supposed to refer to the manufacture of glass for which the sands at the mouth of the river Belus, which flows into the Bay of Acre, were famous. The Roman historian 138 33. 20 DEUTERONOMY 34. 6 Pliny says indeed that it was here that glass was first invented or discovered by some sailors who lit a fire upon the sand and accidentally produced glass. 20. He that enlargeth Gad] i.e. Jehovah who has given him the wide territory E. of the Jordan : see Nu32. The G-adites are com- pared to a lion, as in 1 Chi 28. With the crown] RV ' yea the crown.' 21. The first part] Gad chose the part E. of the Jordan which was first conquered and also the first to be allotted : see Nu32. The next clause should read, ' for there was a ruler's (or com- mander's) portion reserved.' Gad obtained a portion suitable for such a warlike tribe. It was a ' commander's share,' or what might be called a ' lion's share ' : see v. 20. He came with the heads of the people, etc.] The Gadites, true to their promise, crossed the Jordan with the other tribes and assisted them in the con- quest of the land : see on ]Sru32i'3-23_ 22. RV ' Dan is a lion's whelp that leapeth forth from Bashan.' This depicts the stealth and violence of the Danites in war or in marauding expeditions : see e.g. their capture of Laish, Jgl8. The forest and ravines of Bashan were the haunts of wild beasts : see on Bashan, Nu 21 33-35. 23. Naphtali touched the Sea of Galilee on the E. and included some of the richest land and most beautiful scenery in Palestine. The Plain of Gennesaret was specially luxuriant. Josephus calls it the 'ambition of nature.' The west should be the ' sea,' i.e. the Sea of Gennesaret or Galilee, not the Mediterranean in the W. 24. The first clause should probably read, ' Blessed above sons be Asher.' Northern Galilee has always been distinguished for the cultivation of the olive. Jewish writers say, ' In Asher oil flows like a river ' : cp. Gn4920. In ancient times this district was one of the main sources of the supply of olive oil (cp. 2Ch2iO)^ and even now great quantities are exported to Constantinople and elsewhere. The expression dip his foot in oil refers to the ancient custom of treading the olives to obtain the oil. Cp. MicGi^. Stone presses, however, were also used for this purpose. Remains of them are still to be seen in the neighbourhood of Tyre. 25. Thy shoes] rather, ' thy bars ' or bolts, referring to the impregnable fortresses guarding the mountain passes of Galilee. Asher, lying in the N., was the gate of Canaan. Thy strength] A word of very doubtful signification, not found elsewhere. It means, perhaps, ' rest ' or ' security,' and the clause will then imply that Asher's security will never be disturbed. 26. On Jeshurun, see v. 5. In thy help] rather, ' for thy help.' The clouds are said to be the chariot of God : see Ps 68 33. 34 1043 139 Nah 1 3. 27. Refuge] RV ' dwelling-place ' : cp. Ps 90 1. Jehovah protects Israel both above and beneath. 28. RV 'Israel dwelleth in safety, the fountain of Jacob alone, in a land of corn and wine ; yea, his heavens drop down dew.' Israel separated from all other nations (see on Nu239) dwells securely in a rich land. For the expression fountain of Jacob, see PsGB^'' Isa48^. 29. Thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee] RV ' shall submit themselves unto thee.' The idea is that of conquered nations cringing before their victors and protesting (perhaps feigning) submission. CHAPTER 34 The Death of Moses In obedience to the divine command (32 48-52) Moses ascends to the top of Mt. Nebo, whence he views the Land of Promise. Thereafter he dies and God buries him. No man knows of his sepulchre. 1-4. Dan is used to indicate the extreme N., as in the phrase ' from Dan to Beersheba,' though it was not till the time of the Judges that the Danites settled in that district : see Jg 18 28, 29. The utmost sea (lit. 'hinder, i.e. western, sea': see on 1124) ig the Mediter- ranean. The south is the Negeb : see on Nu 13 17. Zoar lay at the SE. end of the Dead Sea. There is no need to suppose that there was anything miraculous in this vision of the whole land. From the mountains of Moab travellers tell us that they can see the entire valley of the Jordan with Mt. Hermon at the extreme N. Lebanon and Carmel are visible, and the Mediterranean, 50 m. distant, can be seen like a silver streak in the glittering sunshine. Such extensive views are favoured by the exceptional clearness of the atmosphere in Palestine : see on 27ii-i3. 5. It is implied here that Moses was alone. But Josephus says that he was accompanied to the top of the hill by 'the senate, and Eleazar, and Joshua.' After viewing the land Moses dismissed the senate, and 'as he was about to embrace Eleazar and Joshua was still discoursing with them a cloud stood over him on a sudden and he disappeared in a certain valley.' With this compare the departure of Elijah, 2K211. Jewish writers take literally the words at the end of this v., according to the word of the LORD, and say that God ' kissed him and he slept.' 6. He buried him] i.e. God buried him. This probably means no more than what is expressed in the second half of the v. that his sepulchre was never known. God alone knew where His servant was buried. Fuller quaintly says that God not only buried Moses, but buried his sepulclu-e also lest it should become a shrine of idol-worship to future generations. 34.7 DEUTERONOMY 34. 12 Later Jewish legend says that Michael, who was supposed to be the angel who conducted pious souls to Paradise, came into conflict with Satan as to the disposal of the body of Moses. Whether Satan was regarded as trying to pre- vent the body of Moses being honoured, or as seeking to seduce the people into paying too much honour to it, is uncertain. The legend is referred to in the Epistle of Jude, v. 9, and the quotation there is made from a Jewish history called ' The Assumption of Moses.' A great many legends about Moses are cir- culated among the Mohammedans. The words unto this day indicate that the writer of this account of the death of Moses lived long after its occurrence. 7. An hundred and twenty years old] see on Ex 2 21. 8. The usual period of mourning seems to have been thirty days : see Nu2029 GnSO^, and cp. 2113. Qf these the first seven were more stringently observed : see GnSOi"^. In addition to the natural manifestations of grief, mourning in the East was, and still is, accompanied with a great deal of ceremony : see e.g. Jer9i7,i8 16 6-8 Ezk24i6,ir Mt923. The mourning for Moses was doubtless very genuine. Like many another gi-eat person, he was better appreciated after his death than during his lifetime. In his life he was much tried by the murmuring, disobedience, and jealousy of those for whom he lived, but these same people made great lamentation for him when he was dead. 9. ' Grod buries the workman but carries on the work.' See on Nu27is-23_ 10-12. EV ' There hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses ' : cp. Nu 1 2 ^-s. The words point to a time considerably later than the death of Moses (cp. v. 6, ' unto this day '), when his real greatness could be appre- ciated and his superiority to all the great prophets and leaders who succeeded him could be rightly estimated. 140 JOSHUA INTEODUCTION 1. The Book. In this book we have the record of the Conquest of Canaan by the people of Israel and of then* settlement in the land. The value of the book consists chiefly in (1) its description of a critical period in the history of the Hebrews. The war not only gave them a dwelling-place among the peoples of the earth, but carried a step further the consolidation of the tribes into a nationr^ The elements of unity were already theirs, the chief of them being their common acknowledgment of Jehovah as their God. Their brotherhood in blood was consecrated and maintained by their brotherhood in religion. The discipline of the wanderings in the wil- derness, the perils encountered in the success- ful attempts to obtain a lodgment in the land, and the hardships of the war endured by the Israelites side by side, served to strengthen the bond of union and to develop the sense of nationality. As is always the case with strong men, their noble qualities were brought out in the presence of difficulties. (2) The book is also valuable for its revelation of the Hand of God in the movements of men. He did not give them the land He had promised them without causing them to fight for it. But the gift is recognised in this book as none the less His. He sanctions their advance. He directs their movements. He makes them victorious. He allows them to be defeated. He makes them conquerors in the end. The book enables us to see a little into the way in which God works out His purposes in human affairs. 2. The life and character of Joshua. Son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, he bore originally the name of Hoshea (NulS^'i^^ Dt32*-i), which was changed by Moses to the more significant form Jehoshua (' Jehovah (is) salvation '). His intimate relation to Moses — like that of Elisha to Elijah — afforded an unique education for the future leader of Israel, who had been divinely designated (Dt 137,38) as successor to the great Law- giver, and was solemnly consecrated by him to that office by the laying-on of hands (Nu 2718-23, cp. Dt 3 11^-23). The echo of Moses' charge, ' Be strong and of a good courage ' (Dt3123)^ is still ringing in his ears as he takes up his work in the plains of Jordan; the • ' grace ' of that ' laying-on of hands,' showing itself (Dt34^) in a spirit of wisdom and a bearing that won the unquestioning obedience of the wayward host (Joshli6-i8 Nu2720), is upon him from first to last. His authority is strengthened (Josh 3" 4^^) by the miracle of Jordan, his courage renewed by the vision of the Heavenly Captain (5 13-15). Even his tem- porary dismay at the rout before Ai is token of his absolute reliance on divine aid, and of his knowledge of the fortunes and tendencies of war (see on 7 *'). The swiftness with which he deals his successive blows upon southern (c. 10) and northern (c. 11) confederacy be- speaks an alert and intrepid general; the impartiality with which he conducts the as- signment of the tribal territories exhibits him as an ideal judge and ruler; and finally the tender severity of his admonition to Achan (7i9f.) gives us a glimpse of the true priestly heart beating beneath the warrior's mail. In his unswerving faith and obedience to the call, in the incorruptible righteousness of his administration, in the gentle severity of his rebuke, as well as in his life's work, Jesus (Heb48) the son of Nun is a veritable type of Jesus the Son of God. 3. The Conquest of Canaan. The book of Joshua opens with the crossing of the Jor- dan by the forces of Israel and the estal^lish- ment of a great headquarters' camp at Gilgal. By invading Western Palestine by the ford near Jericho instead of advancing round the S. of the Dead Sea, Joshua was able to di'ive a wedge between the Canaanites on the N. and those in the S. of the country, and thus to prevent a union of all the tribes against him. The first attack was made upon Jericho. This was the key to Western Pales- tine, for it was on the way to all the passes of importance into the interior. Jericho taken, Ai, another town on the principal road to the W., soon followed. The Gibeonites by a trick secured an alliance with the conqueror, who marched to attack the kings of the S. and defeated them in a pitched battle at Beth- horon, afterwards overrunning their country and destroying their towns. Thereafter the victorious leader turned his attention to the kings of the N. and defeated them in a great battle near the waters of Merom. After that, according to the chronicler, ' the land rested from war.' The conquest thus outlined was, however, far from complete. The enemy may have been routed but was not destroyed. The 141 INTRO. JOSHUA 1. 1 towns may have been overthrown, but many of them were probably soon re-fortified. And the complete subjugation of the enemy was accomplished slowly and with difficulty, not by a general campaign, but by individual tribes fighting for themselves and gradually extending their borders. We have illustra- tions of this in such accounts as that of Caleb driving out the sons of Anak from Hebron (15 1-^), and that of the children of Joseph contending with difficulty against the Perizzites and the Rephaim (171^-1^). The country was difficult for warfare, being mountainous, and favoured the defenders. The Israelites having no chariots could not meet their enemies in the plains (IT^'^), and the valleys thus remained long in possession of the Canaanites. And in many cases the advance was slow and the success uncertain : see e.g. IT^^.is^ and cp. Jgl. The inhabitants of Canaan at the time of the invasion, generally described as Canaanites, were divided into a number of petty kingdoms, and had no bond of union save hatred of the invaders. Amongst their divisions were the Amorites, Jebusites, Hivites, and suchlike ; also there seem to have been here and there in the land surviving elements of an aboriginal people represented by the Rephaim and the sons of Anak. Their moral and religious condition is indicated by such passages as Dt 9^ and Lv 18. It was so vicious and depraved as to render dangerous, if not indeed impossi- ble, any association with them on the part of the Israelites. Uncompromising opposition to them was the only practical attitude for a people led by Jehovah, and holding His law. Hence arose the moral necessity for that order for their extermination, which has sometimes been a stumbling-block to the religious mind. The attempt to carry out that order had an effect for good upon the Israelites, in so far as it engaged them in a work of moral and spiritual sanitation : the failure to carry it out com- pletely left open to them a source of weakness and danger, from which sprang many of their subsequent corruptions and defections from the pure worship of Jehovah. The Canaanites were an agricultural people, somewhat more advanced than the Israelites in the arts of civilisation. The conquest of them, accordingly, meant for Israel a certain material progress, and an entry into conditions which constituted in many ways an ideal nurs- ery of religion. They passed from a nomadic and pastoral state to the more complex stage of a settled, agricultural condition, with pos- sibilities of village and city life. The division of the conquered ten'itory and the settlement of the Israelite tribes upon it occupy chs. 13- 21 of the book of Joshua, which have conse- quently been called the ' Domesday Book of the Old Testament.' 4. Authorship. The title of the book is no indication of authorship, but like Judges and Samuel has reference to the principal figure in the history. The hero of the book is un- doubtedly Joshua, with whose deeds it is largely occupied. Joshua is said to have written a record of the covenant with God, which the people made shortly before his death (24 26), in ' the Book of the Law of God ' ; and some of the chroniclers of a later date may have borrowed from his own words some of the passages which have come down to us. This, however, is mere speculation. What is agreed by scholars is that the book is a com- pilation, similar to the Pentateuch, of which it is the continuation. Indeed, ' The five books of Moses' so-called and the book of Joshua form a whole usually termed the Hexateuch. In its present form the book belongs to the same date as the Pentateuch, and the same older sources — the Primitive, the Priestly, and the Deuteronomic — are its basis. These sources contain traditions which were doubtless handed down either orally or in writing from the days in which the gi'eat deeds recorded were done, and in one case, at any rate, they give a quotation from the book of Jasher, a collection of songs of very early date (10^2,13) . and we need haA'e little hesitation in accepting the outline of the history given in the book as substantially historical. Analysis. "The book falls natm-ally into three parts: chs. 1-12, The Conquest; chs. 13-21, The Division of the Laud ; chs. 22-24, Closing Scenes. PART 1 The Conquest (Chs. 1-12) CHAPTER 1 Joshua by Divine Commission Succeeds Moses Chs. 11-5 12 record the preparations for the Holy War. I. Now (better, 'and') after the death of Moses . . it came to pass] These words clearly mark the book which follows as a sequel to Deuteronomy. The book of Judges begins with a precisely similar phrase. The Lord spake unto Joshua] This formula 'the Lord spake,' which so constantly recurs in the first b(3oks of the Bible, corresponds to the more direct formula of the prophets, ' Thus saith the Lord.' It is a characteristic feature of the OT., distinguishing the literature of the Hebrews from that of other nations of 142 1. 4 JOSHUA 3. 15 antiquity, and marking their claim to express in a very special way the will of Almighty God. It is, in fact, one of the most obvious indica- tions of that which we call ' inspiration.' We may not of course be able, in a given instance, to define the exact mode in which the divine will was communicated. Was it by the Urim and Thummim, or in a di'eam? Or was it rather an inner conviction borne in upon the soul, voiceless but clear and definite, such as is no uncommon experience with those who are in the habit of communing with God ? But the importance of the phrase lies less in any hint of the manner of the revelation than in its tes- timony to the fact of it. However it came, the thought was recognised as an utterance of God. Minister] Joshua had been Moses' attendant and right-hand man — his 'chief of staff.' 4. Boundaries S. and SE., ' the wilderness ' ; N., Lebanon ; NE., the Euphrates ; W., the Mediterranean or ' Great Sea.' These, the providential (Gnl5^^ Ex 23^1), and in some sense natural, boundaries of the territory of Israel, were only attained for a brief period dm'ing the reigns of David and Solomon. All the land of the Hittites] see on Gn IQi^. 8. This book of the law] This obviously refers to the 'law' described in DtBl^ as written by Moses and delivered to the Levites and elders. That it embraces a considerable nucleus of the Pentateuchal legislation (in- cluding, of course, the bulk of Ex 20-23) few critics would deny. II. Prepare you victuals] Joshua has the general's eye for the commissariat. 12 ^ See Nu 32 20-32 for Moses' injunction to the two and a half tribes, and their promise to obey. 14, 15. On this side Jordan] In both places EV rightly translates ' beyond Jordan,' i.e. on the E. side of Jordan. A little point, but important as showing that the writer (or editor) of this passage was one who resided W. of Jordan. CHAPTER 2 The Two Spies at Jericho Joshua himself had been one of twelve sent by Moses on a similar errand, some thirty-eight years before (Nul3). The in- cident, natural in itself, acquires a special interest as bringing before us for the first time Rahab, the great-great-grandmother of David, and so human ancesti'ess of our Saviour (Mt 1 3-6, cp. Ruth 4 18-22). It affords incident- ally a signal instance among Gentiles of belief in the power of the true God (2 ^ *•), which is rewarded (O'-^), like the similar attitude of Ruth the Moabitess (Ruth 1 ^% with incorpor- ation into Israel and into the direct line of Israel's Hope. I. Shittim] i.e. ' Acacias.' The district re- ferred to is the part of the Jordan basin opposite Jericho, where acacias still are found. An harlot's] ' We know nothing of her after-conduct, but we may well believe that the faith which an apostle could praise (Heb 11 31 Jas 2 25) -^vas accompanied by a true conversion ' (HDB. art. ' Rahab '). See on v. 10 and 625. 6. She had brought them, etc.] Then, as now, the flat roofs of Eastern houses were used for such purposes as drying flax stalks. The flax would be ripe (cp. Ex93i)32) shortly before wheat harvest. 7. The fords] Clearly, therefore, there were fords in the neighbourhood of Jericho. The account of the miraculous crossing in chs. 3, 4 cannot be based on ignorance of that fact. At the present time fords are said to be comparatively rare in the southern reaches of Jordan. 9. Your terror is fallen upon us] Cp. ExlSi**"!*^. Compare 51 for a similar panic produced by the crossing of Jordan. ID*. Rahab had followed the career of Israel with fascinated interest. She is repre- sented as knowing and using the covenant name of ' Jehovah ' and as recognising His universal sovereignty. Her whole attitude is in striking contrast to that of her fellow- countrymen. 16. The mountain] the limestone ridges full of caves, NW. of Jericho. 24. Do faint] RV here (and in 2 9 and Ex 1515) ' do melt away.' CHAPTER 3 The Passage of Jordan This is the initial miracle of Joshua's leader- ship. Its moral effect upon the Israelite host is suggested in 3 ''' and 4 1^ ; that wrought upon the Canaanites in 51 (which properly belongs to this section of the book). 3. The ark of the covenant of the LORD your God] see Ex 25 10-22 and 371-^-'. It was the authoritative symbol of the Divine Presence (cp. Ex2320f.), and as such led the van in the desert marches (Nu 1033-36). The priests the Levites] cp. Dtl8i. Not that all the Levites were origin- ally priests, as some have interpreted that passage : see e.g. N'u35-io for the relation of the Levites in general to the ' sons of Aaron.' 4. Two thousand cubits] 3,000 ft. ; the ancient Hebrew cubit =18 in. 15. Jordan overfloweth all his banks] The rank jungle, which tills the bed (150 ft. deep) that Jordan has hollowed out at the bottom of the rift, down which it flows, marks the extent of the April floods. The space is from 200 yards to 1 m. broad, and is what Jeremiah calls (125 4919 5944) the 'Pride' or ' Swelling ' of Jordan. In Ecclus 24 26 we find 143 a 16 JOSHUA 5. 10 a proverbial phrase, ' full as . . Jordan in the time of harvest ' (RV). 1 6. We should probably render ' a great way off, at the city Adam, which is beside Zaretan.' The incident of the stoppage of Jordan's waters is not without parallel in history, if we may trust the Arabic historian Nowairi (see Sayce, ' Early Hist of Hebr.,' p. 249). Accord- ing to his account the water was dammed up by a landslip from midnight on Dec. 8, 1267, ' till the 4th hour of the day.' The narrative is very artless, and whether it be true or simply an echo of the book of Joshua, enables us to conceive how the miracle of the crossing may have happened ; for miracle it still re- mains, even if wrought out at the will of the author of nature by natural means : being a clear exhibition of personal providential pur- pose in connexion with the gi-eat plan of Israel's mission to the world. The position of Adam has been identified with Tel Damieh (a place mentioned, curiously, in Nowairi's narrative), near the mouth of the Jabbok. Zaretan may probably be the ' Zarthan ' of 1K746. CHAPTER 4 The Double Memorial of the Passage OF Jordan The main subject of the c. is the memorial cairn set up at Gilgal, which is described in two sections, 4i-8 and 420-24^ separated by the record in a single v. (4^) of another cairn set up in the midst of Jordan, and by a long parenthesis (4io-i9) describing in an expanded form the crossing already narrated in 314-17. The repetitions are most satisfactorily explained on the hypothesis that the narrator has in- corporated extracts from more ancient sources in his narrative. 5. Pass over before the ark] Apparently the twelve, who with the rest of the host have already crossed to the W. bank, are bidden to return to where the priests are still standing with the Ark in the midst of Jordan, to set up a cairn of twelve stones (4 9) on the spot in the river bed and to take up a stone each in addition and return with it to the bank again. 12. As Moses spake] seeNu.32 20f. 19. The tenth day of the first month] i.e. Abib or Nisan (March-April). They would reach their camp at Gilgal just in time to select the Paschal Lamb (Ex 1 2 3) to be slain on the fourteenth day : see b^^. 24. That ye might fear] RV ' that they may fear.' CHAPTER 5 Renewal of Circumcision and Celebra- tion OF the Passover The two incidents recorded in 52-12 — cip. cumcision and the Passover — represent the final stage in the preparation of the people for the Holy War. The Circumcision was a necessary preliminary (Ex 1 2 **> 48) to the Pass- over Feast, besides marking for the new generation a reversal of the sentence of ' excommunication ' virtually pronounced in Nu 14 33, 34. and the Passover — the first re- corded celebration since the first anniversary of its institution (Nu 'J 5) — was signalised also by the cessation of the extraordinary ' sacra- ment ' of Manna. Thus the period of the Wanderings is definitely brought to a close. 1. Amorites] represent, roughly speaking, the inhabitants of the highland districts. Canaanites] = ' lowlanders,' in the special- ised sense, the dwellers on the maritime plain. Until we were passed over] RM ' until they were passed over.' It was always thus read by the Jews. 2-9. Renewal of the Rite of Circumcision. This was necessary, because all those who had come out of Egypt already circumcised (except, of course, Joshua and Caleb) had died in the wilderness ; while the new generation of males had not been circumcised by the way (5'^). This omission of the rite was of course not necessitated by the journeyings, which were certainly not continuous. It was more prob- ably a deliberate disciplinary regulation, as a sign of the broken covenant : see prefatory remarks. 2. Sharp knives] RV ' knives of flint.' LXX curiously relates (in an addition to 24^0) that these knives were buried with Joshua in his tomb. Flint knives were used for religious purposes by the Egyptians. 9. The reproach of Egypt] This may mean that the Egyptians, laying great stress on cir- cimicision themselves, regarded the fact of uncircumcision as a reproach. Gilgal] mg. ' Rolling.' This etymology, like that of ' Babel ' in Gn 1 1 9, is now generally recognised as un- scientific. It is rather a play on words than a derivation. Yet though the word ' Gilgal ' probably signified originally a sacred ' circle ' of stones — analogous to the di-uidic circle found in Britain — it certainly meant, to the Hebrews, the rolling away of reproach. ID. Kept the passover on the fourteenth day] of Nisan, as ordained in Ex Vl^. They had probably selected the lambs four days before, immediately on their arrival at the camp (see on 4 1^) ; and had rested quietly for three full days after the circumcision. This is the third recorded Passover ; the second (Nu 9 5) being the first anniversary of the institution. There are only thi-ee subsequent observances of the Passover recorded in the OT., viz. Josiah's (2K 2321-23), Hezekiah's (2Ch30), and that of the returned exiles (Ezr6i-'f-), and all of these are after the discovery of the Book of the Law by Hilkiah in 621 B.C. But a notice in 2Ch8i3 144 5. 11 JOSHUA 7. ascribes to Solomon similar observances, and critics admit (cp. HDB. art. ' Passover ') that unrecorded observances may have gone on all along. 11. On the morrow] The feast of Mazzoth, or Unleavened Bread, was a distinct festival (cp. Lv235. "J) of seven days' dm'ation, follow- ing on the one-day feast of the Passover. The two came naturally, in the course of centuries, to be regarded as a single festival, to which either title could be applied (cp. e.g. Lk22 i). 12. The manna ceased] see prefatory note. 13-15. Vision of the Heavenly Captain. 13. A man] clearly, as elsewhere in Holy Scripture (cp. e.g. Gn 182 3224 Dan 9 21 Zechis Ac 1 10), an angelic being, to be identified with the promised guide of Ex 23 20-23 (cp. Ex 33 2). Of this angel the Lord says (Ex232i): 'My name is in him ' ; and in Isa 63 9 he is called ' the angel of his presence ' (see on Ex 3 2). CHAPTER 6 The Capture of Jericho This chapter describes the first and perhaps most decisive action in the war. The impres- sion it produced (627) no doubt did much to decide the fortunes of subsequent campaigns. The strange method adopted, by divine injunc- tion, for the reduction of the city, with its jubilee trumpets and its elaborate symbolic use of the number seven, was clearly intended to leave no doubt that the enterprise from first to last was in higher hands than Joshua's. Various attempts have been made to explain the fall of Jericho by natural causes. For instance, it has been suggested that the de- monstration of the army in force round the city was intended to distract the attention of the enemy from the sapping and mining opera- tions which were being pushed forward, and which culminated in its fall on the seventh day. Again, an earthquake has been suggested ; but if such took place, it was providentially timed, and was capable of prediction by Joshua. The narrator regards the event as entirely mi- raculous, a direct intervention of Jehovah on behalf of His people. Such also was the tra- dition in Israel, and it is accepted by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (1 1 30) ; ' hj faith the walls of Jericho fell down.' 3. Ye shall compass] The injunction was cal- culated to produce derision among the enemy, and so would be a discipline of humiliation for the Israelites. It would also put the Ca- naanites off their guard and hand them over an easy prey at the critical moment. 4. Rams* horns] rather, ' trumpets of jubilee ' or ' loud trumpets.' It is the same word yobel used in Lv25^. Seven is a sacred number among the Semites, and in the Bible signifies ' perfection.' The symbolism is very emphatic here. 9. Rereward] RV ' rearward ' = rearguard. Going on, and blowing] blowing continually. 17. Accursed] Heb. A'AereHi = ' devoted,' i.e. irredeemably devoted (Lv 27 28. 29) to the Lord. LXX has ' anathema,' the word which St. Paul uses in Ro93 and elsewhere. It appears to denote a form of consecration, but that in- variably with a view to destruction. In Lv 27 2i> 28, 29 devoted things are excluded from redemption. In v. 21 the word is translated in AV ' utterly destroyed.' 20. The wall fell down flat] see note at beginning of chapter. This was not the first of Israel's sieges. They had already taken the cities of the Amorites, including Heshbon, which was strongly fortified (Nu21). 23. And left them] lit. ' and caused them to rest.' 25. She dwelleth in Israel even unto this day] Unless Rahab's descendants are meant, this must be the touch of a contemporary chi-onicler (cp. 5^ and 626). On Rahab and her incorporation into Israel, see note at begin- ning of c. 2. Apparently she had long been prepared (see on 2 lO) to adopt Israel's religion, and thus the greatest obstacle was removed. Yet her case, like that of Christ's other foreign ancestress Ruth, remains exceptional, and pre- figures, as it were, the world-wide extent of the Messiah's kinship with man. 26. This ' inspired curse ' of Joshua was fulfilled, after the lapse of some six centuries, in the reign of Ahab (IK 1634). Hiel the Bethelite incurred it, being the first, appar- ently, to attempt a complete rebuilding and fortification of the accursed city, although informal settlements seem to have been there from the first. It is mentioned, e.g. in Josh 18 21, as one of ten 'cities' of Benja- min, and again in the time of David (2 810^). Here we have another note of comparatively early date. If the writer of this passage had known of the fulfilment, he would surely have recorded it. CHAPTER 7 Repulse at Ai, due to Achan's Sin The capture of Jericho is followed by an attempt upon Ai, a place of strategic im- portance, as commanding a main entrance into the interior of Canaan westward ; the upper entrance into the valley of Aijalon being com- manded by Ai and Bethel. This c. has an interest of its own, as exhibiting Joshua in a new light, as the spiritual guide, drawing out, with the mingled sweetness and severity of a father (v. 19), the sinner's detailed confession (see on v. 20). The incident of Achan's sin and its effects upon the fortunes of Israel is an illustration (a) of the penalty of solidarity — the inevitable spread of the results of sin and pollution from a single member to the 10 145 7.6 JOSHUA 9. whole body ; (b) of the conditional nature of God's promises of success. In contrast to the many previous assurances, it is announced that the presence of God is to be withdrawn abso- lutely (v. 12) unless the 'accursed thing' be removed. Further, at the very beginning of the Holy War, Israel is taught — and we through Israel — that exceptional temptations do not excuse a lowering of the standard of conduct on the part of God's soldiers. 6 f. Joshua's extreme despondency is really a mark of his soldiery capacity. He was general enough to know the immense moral effect of even a slight success or reverse at the beginning of a war. Moreover, no one who had Joshua's sense of divine mission and vocation, as represented e.g. by the message of 12-9 and the vision of 5^^^-, could fail to inter- pret the reverse as implying some mysterious cause of divine displeasure. And though Joshua is chidden for the faithlessness of his despondency (7io), his uneasiness is at the same moment (T^^) justified and explained. 20. There is a special interest about this confession of Achan's, because its wording is practically identical with that of the tradi- tional form of confession which seems to have been used by those who brought sin and trespass offerings. A particular confession is enjoined in such passages as Lv5^ Nu5^>'^. The form was as follows : ' I have sinned, I have done perversely, I have rebelled, and thus ' (here follows detailed confession) ' have I done, but I return in penitence before Thee, and let this victim be my expiation.' 21. This verse throws an interesting light on the wealth of Jericho, and the extent of her commerce. 25. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with iSre] This inclusion of Achan's household in the punishment is one of the moral problems of the book. Eders- heim ('Bib. Hist.' art. 'Joshua,' p. 69 note) interprets the use of the singular number in 7 25a as showing that Achan was the only permn stoned ; the plural number following (725^^ referring to his cattle and property only. Others emphasise the fact (not brought out in the narrative) that his family must have been privy to the crime ; or dwell on the ' entail ' of divine visitation pronounced in the second commandment (Ex 20 5). The last view agrees best with the passage as it stands, which suggests in a very striking way the sufferings people bring upon their childi'en by their sins. CHAPTER 8 The Conquest of Ai. The Covenant Confirmed upon Mt. Ebal 1-29. The Taking of Ai. Edersheim ex- plains that Joshua detailed a corps of 30,000 men, of whom 5,000 were placed W. of Ai in a wood. The 25,000 pitched N. of Ai, and subsequently moved forward into the valley below the city. Then came the feigned attack and retreat eastward, the signal from Joshua, and the assault by the ambush from the rear. It should be noted, however, that there are two accounts of the ambush, one in vv. 3, 9, in which 30,000 are said to have been concealed, and the other in vv. 10-12, in which only 5,000 are said to have been in hiding. These discrepancies in figures are very common. 15. By the way of the wilderness] i.e. toward the Jordan valley. 17. Or Bethel] omit, as LXX. 30-35. The Covenant confirmed upon Mt. Ebal, near Shechem. At the first opportunity the law of Jehovah is proclaimed as the law of the land. 31. As Moses .. commanded] see Dtll29, and, more fully, Dt27. An altar of -white stones] see Ex 20 25. Burnt offerings] repre- senting entire oblation of the offerer to God : wholly consumed on the altar. Peace offerings] representing communion with God. God was the Host, and the offerer and his friends feasted with Him at His table. 32. The stones] i.e. the stones when plastered : see Dt27 2-i. A copy of the law] Obviously not the whole Pentateuch, or even the legislative matter con- tained in it ; but the Law of the Blessings and Cursings: see Dt27. CHAPTERS 9-12 In chs. 9-1 1 inclusive we have the account of two great campaigns, in which Joshua suc- cessively defeats a confederacy of the petty kings of southern Palestine under the king of Jerusalem, and a combination of the northern chiefs under Jabin, king of Hazor. C. 12 concludes the narrative of the conquest, with a summary of the successes of Moses on the E. and of Joshua on the W. of Jordan. Critics have been much exercised by the apparent contrast of this naiTative of the invasion with that in Jg 1 . There we have — in the case of Judah and Simeon at least — independent tribal action. Here there is no word of anything but a general action of Israel, under Joshua's leadership, resulting (1123) in a conquest of the ' whole land.' The solution of the diffi- culty may perhaps be (a) that these chapters give us the account of two grand campaigns complete and successful in themselves, but involving a prolonged guerilla warfare and a number of local enterprises, such as those mentioned in Judges. Or it may be (b) that there is in these rounded accounts of the northern and southern conquests something of historical foreshortening ; for we must re- member that in 1 1 ^^ it is described as a ' long ' war (see on 11 16-23^, Qr possibly a combination 146 9.1 JOSHUA 10. 12 of these two explanations may give the true solution. CHAPTER 9 The League with the Gibeonites C. 9 forms an introduction to the narrative of the Southern campaign (c. 10). The Grib- eonite cities were important enough both politically and geogi-aphically (see on 9 1'^ and 10^) for their defection to frighten the sur- rounding kinglets into concerted action against Israel. I, 2. The petty kings combine against Israel. 3. Gibeon] 2 m. N. of Jerusalem. For its importance see on 10 2, 10. j^. Took of their victuals] thus accepting their specious story, and incidentally committing themselves, accord- ing to Eastern rule of hospitality, to at least a temporary friendship. Asked not counsel by Urim and Thummim] as e.g. we find them asking in Jgl^. 17. Now their cities were] All these four cities have been identified in the territory afterwards occupied by Benjamin and the N. border of Judah. 20. Lest w^rath come upon us] Centui'ies later we are told (2 S21) that the Israelites of David's time felt this ' wrath ' when Saul had broken his an- cestral compact with Gibeon. 21. Hewers of wood, etc.] This is the description of the normal function of resident aliens in Dt29ii. From vv. 23, 27 we find that their tasks were mainly, though not entirely, concerned with the sacrificial worship of the House of God. CHAPTER 10 The Conquest of Southern Canaan This c. narrates the successful campaign against the five confederate chiefs of the S., who are roused by the fall of Jericho and Ai and the alliance with Gibeon, and combine under the leadership of Adonizedek of Jeru- salem to retaliate upon the Gibeonites. Bring- ing succour, as in duty bound, to his new allies, Joshua encounters the confederate forces in Beth-horon. By divine aid he inflicts on them a signal defeat, captures and slays all five kings, and follows up his success by a prompt reduction of six Amorite strongholds in swift succession. A concluding paragraph (10'*o-*3) describes the work of conquest so far, as summary and complete. 1. Adonizedek] The name recalls that of his famous predecessor Melchizedek, the con- temporary of Abraham : see on Gnl4i8. 2. Because Gibeon was a great city] com- manding the chief pass to the western plains and but a few miles from Jerusalem : see on V. 10. 3, 4. Of the confederate cities three were subsequently reduced by Joshua : see on vv. 29-38. 5. Amorites] a general name for the moun- tain tribes. 147 6-14. Battle of Gibeon (or Beth-horon) : Joshua, summoned by the Gibeonites to their aid, defeates the Amorites. 10. The pass of Beth-horon leading to the valley of Aijalon is of great strategic importance, being the main outlet from Gibeon and Jerusalem to- wards the coast. ' Throughout history,' says G. A. Smith, ' we see hosts swarming up this avenue or swept down it in flight.' Azekah . . Makkedah] between Philistia and the hill- country of Judah. II. Great stones from heaven] a hailstorm, in which the hand of God is discerned. 12-14. Then spake Joshua] This celebrated passage (as will be seen in RV) consists of (1) a prose introduction, v. 12=^; (2) a poetical fragment quoted from the book of Jasher, vv. 12^, 13^ ; and (3) a prose comment on that quotation, 13^ 14. The four lines from the book of Jasher run, literally, as follows : — Sun, be thou dumb upon Gibeon ; And thou, moon, in valley of Aijalon ! And the sun became dumb, and the moon stood, Till the people were avenged on their foes. Taken by themselves these four lines might refer to an eclipse, or to a prolongation of the darkness of the hailstorm (see v. 11). The sun is spoken of as ' dumb ' when not shining, as in Dante's ' Inferno,' 1. 60, the sunless shade is ' dove il sol face ' (where the sun is speech- less). At first sight the comment in vv. 13^ 14 seems decisive against this interpretation. But Edersheim regards these vv. as themselves (substantially) quoted from the book of Jasher ; in which case they would be poetical and figurative, and other writers boldly take them as a later gloss, written at a time when the figurative language of the poem was mis- understood. In favour of this view is the fact that there are no certain references to this event as miraculous in the other books of the OT. ; and it is not till c. 180 B.C. (Ecclus 46 4) that we find the first clear mention of the miracle as making ' the sun go back ' ; an interpretation which was followed by the author of the 'Psalms of Solomon' (18 1^) c. 50 B.C., and by Josephus, and has been the ' traditional ' one till lately. This interpreta- tion of the incident, which makes it involve a literal ' staying of the sun,' i.e. in modern language, an arresting of the earth's rotatory motion, has not unnaturally tried the faith of many who, while accepting the doctrine of God's omnipotence, feel that such a kind of interpretation contradicts what God Himself has taught them about the orderly working of His universe. Whether we regard the divine answer to Joshua's prayer as given in the form of a prolongation of the daylight, in 10. 13 JOSHUA 12. spite of the hailstorm (see Edersheim), or (perhaps better) as prolongation of the storm darkness, we must not forget that the record is poetry and not prose, and the inspired language of the passage ancient and oriental, not modern, western, and scientific. 13. The Book of Jasher] Yashar= ' Upright ' or ' Pious.' The book was presumably a collection of national heroic songs. Else- where it is quoted by name only in 2 S 1 ^^ (David's elegy over Saul and Jonathan). Possibly we may ascribe to the same source other poems, like the Song of Deborah (Jg5), which has itself a later prose commentary attached to it (Jg 4). 24. Put their feet upon the necks] The monuments of Assyria and Egypt afford graphic parallels. 26. Slew them and hanged them] The hanging was an additional insult wreaked on the corpse : cp. Dt2122, 23 29. Libnah] in the lowlands of Judah : also Lachish (v. 31), Gezer(v. 33) and Eglon(v. 34). 36. Hebron] (ElKhaUl, 'the friend' of God) Abraham's city in the mountain of Judah, and one of the six Levitical cities of refuge (20 '''). 38. Debir] also called Kirjath-Sepher, and falling, like Hebron, to Caleb. It lay in the hill-country of Judah, or in the Negeb (1515-19^^ perhaps on the border. 40-43. On these divisions of the country see on c. 15. A summary like this must not be pressed too literally, but read in the light of other narratives like Jgl. The meaning is that Joshua's work was thorough, as far as it went ; that it was carried out in a spirit of absolute loyalty to the divine commands (cp. Dt 20 16, 17) ; and that all its success (v. 42) was due to the divine leadership and assist- ance. 40. The campaign in southern Pales- tine included the hills of Judah, the south, i.e. the Negeb, the vale (RV ' the lowland '), i.e. the Shephelah, and the springs (RV ' the slopes ') between the hill-country and the Shephelah. 41. Goshen] in the mountain of Judah (I551). CHAPTER 11 The Campaign in the North Here there is no trace, as in the former case, of miraculous interposition. Joshua's generalship, courage, swiftness and loyalty are the prominent factors in the achievement. Yet it is made clear here (vv. 6-8) as ever, that those qualities attained their object because they were under the direct guidance of the God of Israel. I. Jabin] king of Hazor. Hazor] may be Tell el-Hurrawiyeh, 2^ m. S. of Kedesh- Naphtali. Shimron] ( = Shimron-meron 12'-0)is Semunieh,W. of Nazareth. Achshaph] el Yasif , the port of Accho. Hazor is again a powerful Canaanite centre in the time of Deborah (Jg 4) and its king bears the same name, or title, Jabin ( = wise) and may have been of the same dynasty. 2, 3. RV ' that were on the north, in the hill-country, and in the Arabah south of Chinneroth, and in the lowland, and in the heights of Dor on the west, to the Canaanite on the east . .' The ' Arabah S. of Chinne- roth ' means the plain S. of the lake of Gennesaret (Lk5i). Dor] near Mt. Carmel. 3. The Canaanite on the east and on the •west] The name ' Canaanite ' is more probably geogi'aphical than racial. It means ' lowland- ers.' In the Amarna tablets (14th cent. B.C.) the Land of Canaan means the Phoenician coast ; in later Egyptian monuments it includes all W. Syria. 5. Waters of Merom] Probably Lake Huleh, a marshy lake near the sources of the Jordan. 6. Thou shalt hough, etc.] To ' hough ' or ' hock ' = to hamstring a horse. This was done, no doubt, during the battle, to stop the charge. The chariots were destroyed afterwards. 16-23. General retrospect of Joshua's cam- paigns. This paragraph covers the preceding chs. as well as c. lli"i^. The war, which has been presented to us in graphic sketches fol- lowing one another in swift succession, is said to have been a 'long' one (v. 18), and the natural inference from 147-10 (where see note) is that it lasted seven years. 16. The mountain country and Negeb (dry southern uplands) and Shephelah (low hills skirting the mountains) first mentioned are those of Judah (see on lO^O), from which the inference has been di-awn that the writer was a native of that tribe, because he does not qualify the terms. Then follows the Arabah (deep valley of Jordan), and finally the mount- ain of Israel and its Shephelah, i.e. the N. Israelite part of this central range and the low hills (valley) between it and Carmel. The stretch of country described reaches from Halak in Edomite territory S. of the Dead Sea to Baal Gad at the foot of Hermon, N. of Lake Huleh. 22. The Anakims] This hill-tribe had by their stature made an alarming impression on the original spies (Nu 1 3 2S-33 ; cp. Josh 1412). j-^ was from Gath that Goliath came (IS 17*) and other giants (2 S 21 18-22). CHAPTER 12 A Review op the Victories of Moses AND Joshua This c. concludes the whole section of the book which deals with the conquest of Canaan. The following chs. narrate the partition of the conquered and some unconquered land. The original account of these conquests is to be found in Nu 2 1 21-35^ and of the assignment to the 2 1 tribes in Nu32. A fuller description of the territory is given in c. 1 3 1-33, where see notes. 148 12. 1 JOSHUA 13. 22 1-6. Moses' conquests E. of Jordan. King- doms of Sihon and Og. 3. Sea of Chinneroth] the OT. name for the Sea of Galilee. Salt sea] the Dead Sea. 7-24. Joshua's conquests W. of Jordan — thirty-one kings. 7. The N. and S. limits are given as in 1 1 ^ ", only in reverse order. On this side Jordan on the west] RV ' beyond Jordan westward.' 9. One] i.e. one king. 21. Taanach . . Megiddo] see on JgS^^. 23. The nations] RV ' Goiim.' 24. Tirzah] (probably = Teiasir) NE. of Shechem. It was afterwards the capital of the Northern King- dom, from the time of Jeroboam (1 K 14 1") till the 6th year of Omri, who moved the centre of government to Samaria (IK 16 23). CHAPTERS 13-21 The Settlement The summaries of c. 12 mark the end of one section of the book, and the opening words of c. 13 as clearly introduce the beginning of another. This central portion, embracing chs. 13-21, has been called ' The Domesday Book of the Old Testament,' and is invaluable as aground- work for modern scientific explorers. ' The Book of Joshua ' (writes Col. Conder) ' is the great geographical book of the Old Testament, and the study of its geography is important, as showing that it was written in Palestine by an author who was familiar with the whole land. . . A proportion of about thi'ee-quarters of the towns mentioned in this book are more or less certainly known, having either never been lost, or having recently been recovered by ex- ploration, through the survival of the ancient name to our owti time, or by other indications — as, for instance, in the case of Lachish, where other indications are confirmed by the discovery of a tablet referring to Zimrida (who is known to have been the ruler of Lachish about 1480 B.C.) which has been dug up in the ruins of the city.' It may be noted that in chs. 13-22 the Priestly narrative is predominant ; just as the Primitive is in chs. 1-12, although some of the most interesting incidents, e.g. Caleb's inherit- ance (146-15 15i'*-i^), are from the earlier source. The section may be thus analysed : — (a) 131-33 Territories of the Eastern Tribes, (b) 14 1-19 51 Territories of the Western Tribes. CHAPTER 13 Territories of the Eastern Tribes 1-7. These vv. describe the land which, though still unconquered, is to be assigned to the 9| tribes. It includes the W. and N. borders of Palestine. Wellhausen (' History of Israel ') remarks, ' The conquest was at first but an incomplete one. The plain which fringed the coast was hardly touched : so also the valley of Jezreel with its girdle of fortified cities stretching from Accho to Beth-shean. All that was subdued in the strict sense of the word was the mountainous land, par- ticularly the southern hill-country of Mt. Ephraim ; yet even here the Canaanites re- tained possession of not a few cities, such as Jebus, Shechem, Thebez.' 2. Geshuri] Distinct from the Geshurites of V. 13 and 12 5. We should perhaps read ' the people of Gezer,' S. of Ephraim. 3. Sihor] the Wady el Arish, or Brook of Egypt. 4. Aphek] in Asher. 5. Giblites] Gebal was at the foot of Lebanon, on the coast. 7, 8. The LXX has a much more intelligible reading — ' And now divide this land for an inheritance to the nine tribes and the half tribe of Manasseh, from Jordan to the great sea and toward the sunsetting shalt thou give it : the great sea shall be the border (v. 8). To the tribes and the half tribe of Manasseh, Reuben and Gad, gave Moses on the other side of Jordan, toward the sun-rising. . .' 8-33. The territory of the two tribes and a half, including territory previously taken from Moab by Sihon (Nu2126): cp. Nu 32 1-3, 33-42. Reuben had from the Arnon on the S. to Heshbon ( = Hesban), a little north of the Dead Sea. Gad had the eastern side of the Jordan valley, from the N. boundarj^ of Reuben to the Sea of Galilee (Sea of Chinnereth) and the western slopes of Mt. Gilead ; Manasseh had the eastern half of Mt. Gilead, all the great plateau of Bashan, running up to the range of Hermon. 14. He gave none inheritance] assigned no district as a tribal territory, gave them only scattered cities within the lots of the other tribes. The sacrifices of the LORD] (in v. 33, simply 'the Lord') cp. Nu 18 20-32. Their professional absorption in spiritual things made it, however, all the more necessary that their material wants should be provided for (see 1 Cor 9 13, 14 for an enunciation of this principle and its application to the Christian ministry). Accordingly we find their promised cities duly assigned to the Levites in c. 21 (cp. Nu35). 15-23. Territory of Reuben : see on vv. 8-33. 16, 17. Plain] RM 'table-land.' The plateau of Madebah includes the sites of Hesban, the ancient capital, Dibon (= Dhiban, where the famous 9th cent. B.C. monument of Mesha, known as the ' Moabite Stone,' was discovered in 1868) and other towns of Reuben. Dibon (NU3234 3345) ^as actually occupied by Gad. 22. The reference to the slaying of Balaam comes in strangely here : but it occurs also in NuSl^ in a parallel context. Evidently there is here trace of a very ancient document. 149 13. 24 JOSHUA 15. 5 24-28. Territory of Gad : see on vr. 8-33. 26. Ramath-mispeh] possibly the later Ramoth Gilead (Raimun), N. of the Jabbok. Debir] not the Debir of lO^s or 157. The Hebrew is Ledebir, which may be the Lo-debar of 2 S 9 4. 27. Sea of Chinnereth] i.e. the Sea of Galilee. 29-31. Territory of the half -tribe of Manasseh. 33. See on v. 14. CHAPTERS 14-19 Territories of the Western Tribes Chs. 14-19 inclusive describe the allotment of territories to the Western Tribes. There are two assignments. The first, embracing Judah and Joseph, is described as taking place at Gilgal (14*5) under the auspices of Eleazar and Joshua and the ' heads of the fathers ' (141). Judah (15), Ephraim (16), and Manasseh (17) each occupy a single c. The second assign- ment, to the seven remaining tribes, takes place apparently at a later date (18 3), after an elaborate survey (18*5.8,9) of the territory available. Its scene is Shiloh, and Joshua alone is named as presiding. It is noticeable (see further note on the assignment of the territory) that the details of the seven territories are much more meagre than those of the others, except in the case of Benjamin. C. 14 itself is introductory, partly (141-5) to the whole of the 5 chs. following ; partly (146-15) to the first assignment (chs. 15-17), recording Caleb's request for Hebron and its favourable reception. This latter section (146-15) is of special interest in that it affords incidentally one of the few definite chrono- logical data available for this period (see on 14 10). CHAPTER 14 The Portion of Caleb 1-5. Introductory Section. I. Eleazar the priest] The mention of the priest in association with the leader, to whom he is here given precedence, is one of the characteristics of the Priestly narrative. 4. The children of Joseph were two tribes, etc.] This reckoning, with the subtraction of Levi, makes a total of twelve still. Practically, however, Simeon became absorbed in Judah, and each half -tribe of Manasseh came to count as a complete tribe. 6-15. The inheritance of Caleb : see 1513-19. 6. Thou knowest the thing, etc.] The pro- mise to Caleb occurs in Nul424, and is re- ferred to again in Dtl^i^. On Caleb see on 1513. 10. These forty and five years] The notes of time given here and in 14 7 are interesting. Caleb was 40 years old at Kadesh : 45 j'ears have intervened since then, and he is now 85. Allowing 38 years for the penal wanderings, we get 7 years as the period covered by the war of conquest up to this date. 12-15. Hebron assigned to Caleb : on Hebron see on 10^6, and on Caleb's possession of it, 1513^- and note. On the Anakim see on 1122. 12. RV 'it may be that the Lord will be with me and I shall drive them out': cp. 514 and Jgl20. It is a brave man's word (cp. 14 11). Caleb welcomes the task the more for its peril, and the hard work confronting him adds value to the inheritance. 15. The name of Hebron, etc.] LXX 'Now the name of Hebron was formerly the city of Argob : this was the metropolis of the Anakim ' : and similarly in 151^ 21 n for 'father of Anak ' LXX reads ' metropolis of Anak.' This may be the true sense. CHAPTERS 15-19 The Assignment of the Territory It has been noticed that there are many incidental features in this narrative which point to a contemporary document. Thus in the lot of Judah we have a full description, both of the frontier-lines (15i'i-), and also of the chief cities contained within them (1521-62) ; and the same is true of Benjamin (18ii-28). But these are the tribes which seem to have conquered their territory soonest and most completely. Ephraim and Manasseh, on the contrary, have only their boundaries mentioned without any list of cities (16). As a matter of fact, the children of Joseph seem to have had more difficulties with the Canaanites (17 12- 16, cp. Jgl27) than had Judah and Ben- jamin. Again, Simeon (191-9) and Dan (19^0-^8) have no boundaries mentioned, only cities, because they originally settled in the territory of Judah and Benjamin. Finally, the accounts of the territory of the remaining tribes, Zebu- lun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali (191^-39), are defective, as is natural if at the date when the document was originally drawn up, these territories were not yet completely conquered : cp. Jg 1 30-33 But if the document be strictly contemporary, it must be regarded as closing with 19*6. CHAPTER 15 The Lot of Judah 1-12. The boundaries of Judah's lot. There is a valuable descriptive note on this section and on 1520-68 in Black's Commentary on 'Joshua' in the Smaller Cambridge Bible. 2-4. The S. Frontier. This coincides, of course, with the S. Frontier of the whole land as given in ]Sru343-5. 4. xhe river of Egypt] RV ' brook of Bgypt; not the Nile, but the Wady el Arish : cp. 15-*''. 5. The E. Frontier, viz. the Dead Sea. 5-1 1. The N. Frontier. Cp. the account in 1815-20 of the S. Frontier of Benjamin. 150 15.7 JOSHUA 17.7 This is by far the most complicated of the four frontiers, but its hne can be fairly well traced. It leaves the Jordan some 4 m. N. of the Dead Sea, and runs W., then SW. past Jerusalem, W. again near Bethlehem, and NW. as it descends to the maritime plain. 7. Debit] This cannot be the same as the Debir of 11 -i 1515,49, Perhaps the reading here should be ' toward the wilderness.' The going up to (RV ' the ascent of ') Adummim] This was the steep pass on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. En-rogel] a spring near Jeru.salem which supplies the Pool of Siloam. 8. Valley of the giants] RY ' vale of Rephaim,' SW. of Jerusalem. 9. Kirjath-jearim] 7 m. NW. of Jerusalem. 10. Mount Seir] in Judah, dis- tinct from the Mt. Seir in Edom. Beth-shemesh . . Timnah] in Dan. 11. Jabneel] on the coast, known later as Jamnia (cp. 1 Mac 41^2 Mac 1 2 8), in later days a famous seat of Jewish learning. 12. The W. Frontier, viz. the Mediter- ranean. Practically, however, the Philistines held the coast for many centuries. 13-19. The inheritance of Caleb. This passage is repeated in Jg 1 ^o-i^, where, how- ever, the expulsion of the Anakim from Hebron, attributed (1121-23) to Joshua and Israel, and here (cp. 14^2) to Caleb, is ascribed more vaguely to Judah. For further instances of parallels or quasi-parallels, with the book of Judges see on 1563 19^7 2428. 13. Caleb] = ' dog.' He seems to have been of Edomite origin (146). jJq was by no means a solitary instance of an alien adopted into the tribe of Judah. In the ancestry of David himself we find the Canaanitess Rahab and the Moabitess Ruth. Father of Anak] LXX has ' metropolis of Anak' : see on 14 1^. 15. Debir] see on 1038. 17. Othniel] (= 'Lion of God'). For his subsequent career see Jg'5^-^^. 20-62. The cities of Judah. 20-32. Cities in the Negeb, or ' south country': see on Gnr29. 33-47. Cities in the Shephelah, or ' low- land ' (not as AV ' valley ') : the fertile undu- lating tract between the central ridge and the maritime plain. 48-60. Cities in the ' Mountain,' i.e. the rocky backbone of Judah, the limestone watershed between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. Mt. Ephraim is its continuation northwards. 59. LXX inserts here a list of 11 cities (including Tekoa and ' Ephrata which is Beth- lehem ') which seems to have dropped out of the Massoretic text. 61, 62. Cities in the ' Wilderness,' i.e. the steep and barren slopes between the Mountain and the Dead Sea eastward. 63. The Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day] The parallel passage in Jg 1 21 has ' Benjamin ' for ' Judah,' which may be an earlier form. At fii-st sight this V. seems to belong to a time anterior, or at latest to the time when David (2SiJ6f.) captured from the Jebusites the citadel of Zion. But that capture did not mean expul- sion, as is clear from the later incident of Ai-aunah (2 S24i<5 ; cp. 1 Ch21 is. Cp. also the mention of Jebusites as late as ZechU <■) ; and in a sense it may be true that Judahite and Jebusite only began to live together in Jeru- salem when David made it his capital, though Jg 1 21 may represent an earlier state of things. CHAPTER 16 The Lot of Joseph Chs. 16, 17 describe the territories of Eph- raim and the W. half of Manasseh. Vv. 1-4 of c. 16 give the general frontiers of the com- bined tribes, the rest of the c. (165-io) the frontiers of Ephraim as distinct from W. Manasseh. The territory allotted to the two tribes comprised the central and most fertile part of Palestine. The S. border ran from Jericho through Bethel to Beth-horon and the sea ; and the N. border from Mt. Carmel. along the S. border of the Plain of Esdraelon to the Jordan. I. RV ' the lot . . went out from the Jordan at Jericho, at the waters of Jericho on the east, even the wilderness, going up from Jericho through the hill-country to Bethel.' 2. From Beth-el to Luz] see on Gn28i9. 6. The border between Ephraim and Manasseh passed from Jericho westward to Michmethah near Shechem (17''), and thence to the river Kanah which falls into the Medi- terranean N. of Joppa. 9. RV 'together with the cities which were separated for the children of Ephraim in the midst of the inheritance of the children of Manasseh.' 10. Serve under tribute] The Canaanite had to take up the forced service of a labourer: cp. 17 18 and Jg 1 28, 33, 35_ CHAPTER 17 The Lot of Joseph (continued) Inheritance of Western Manasseh. The Complaint of the children of Joseph, and Joshua's Reply. 1-6. The inheritance of Manasseh especially (vv. 2f>) of the Western half -tribe, i. The father of Gilead] The expression is rather geographical than strictly genealogical, accord- ing to Oriental usage. Cp. the table of the generations of the sons of Noah in Gn 10. 3f. The daughters of Zelophehad] Their case comes up for judgment before Moses in Nu27i-7 and again in Nu 36 1-12. Their con- tention was recognised as just (Nu364). 7-13. The frontiers of Western Manasseh. See on c. 16. 8, 9. Belonged to the children of Ephraim] cp. 168.9. 151 17. 11 JOSHUA 19. 40 11-13. The Canaanites still held a chain of fortified cities in the N. from Beth-shean on the E. to Accho on the coast. 13. Put the Canaanites to tribute] RV ' to task- work ' : cp. 1 6 1*^. The remark indicates that the conquest proved exceedingly difficult in some parts of the country, and that the Canaanites long held their own. 14-18. This passage, which is from the Primitive source, supports the testimony of Judges (see on 18 1^) that much of the final settlement was left to individual tribal effort. It also throws light on the character of the children of Joseph. The spirit of self -aggran- disement and self-importance here displayed made Ephraim the great rival of Judah throughout history. It shows itself still more vehemently in the period of the Judges, both in their 'chiding' of their kinsman Gideon the Manassite ( Jg 8), and their quarrel with Jeph- thah (Jgl2). Joseph and Judah are alike prominent in the patriarchal blessing (Gn 49 ^'22), and are alike in their growth during the period of wanderings. Joseph increased from 72,000 to 85,200, and Judah from 74,600 to 76,500; while the total for all Israel was lower at the second census by nearly 2,000 (cp. Nul and NU26). After Othniel's time until the rise of David, Judah sinks into un- importance; while Ephraim, as the tribe of Joshua, and the home of the national sanctuary (Gilgal, Shechem and Shiloh), takes a foremost place. And it was no doubt the jealous mem- ories of past glories in which Joseph had been supplanted by David's tribe, that made Eph- raim take so prominent a part in the revolt of the northern tribes under Jeroboam. 15. If thou &e a great people] Joshua shows tact and firmness in dealing with his own tribesmen as with all the rest. There is a mixture of encouragement with salutary rebuke in his reply, and also practical common-sense. ' Persevere and have confidence in yourselves : ultimately you will prevail over the Canaanites, better equipped though they are for warfare in the plains. Meanwhile you can at least make yourselves clearings in the forest high- lands formerly occupied by the pre-Canaanite Rephaim.' Mount Ephraim] covers all the later Samaria (cp. Jer31^'*5) including Ramah and Beth-el (Jg45) and Shechem (Josh 20 'i'). The name seems to have spread from the hill- country immediately N. of Benjamin. 18. The outgoings of Mt. Ephraim are valleys, broad, fertile, and of easy gradients. CHAPTER 18 The Second Allotment. Introduction. The Territory of Benjamin i-io. These vv. supply an introduction to the second allotment in general, and agree with the passages which, in common with Jg 1, view the conquest as gradual and partial. The seven tribes still hang back through ' slackness ' (v. 3), while Judah and Joseph are already in posses- sion. 5. Judah shall abide, etc.] In the final allot- ment the S. border of Benjamin coincided with the N. border of Judah as far as Kirjath- jeartm ; the lowlands and plains W. of that were given to Dan (19 ■*<'). 11-20. The lot of Benjamin. It had, as boundaries, Ephraim to the N. and Judah to the S. : the Jordan was the E. border, and Beth-horon to Kirjath-jearim the W. Jeru- salem (Jebus) was within its borders. 13. Luz, which is Beth-el] see on Gn28i9. 14. And compassed the corner of the sea] RV ' and turned about on the west quarter.' 15. Nephtoah] a fountain near Jerusalem. The S. boundary is the same as the N. boundary of Judah (155-9), but traced here from W. to E. 16. Jebusi] RV 'the Jebusite,' meaning Jerusalem. The Benjamin border passed S. of Jerusalem. It is often forgotten that this city, though bordering upon Judah, was really in the territory of Benjamin. 19. Beth-hoglah] N. end of the Dead Sea. 21-28. The cities of Benjamin. The most famous of them are Jericho, Ramah (1 S 1 ^^), Mizpeh (IS 7 5), Jerusalem, and Gibeath or Gibeah. CHAPTER 19 The Second Allotment (continued). The Territories of Simeon, Zebulun, Is- SACHAR, ASHER, NaPHTALI, DaN. ThE Inheritance of Joshua 1-9. The lot of Simeon. Observe that no borders are named, and the lot includes towns previously taken by Judah (1531-32); see v. 9. This tribe was settled in the Negeb, or ' south country,' that slopes away from the Hebron range towards the desert, bounded on the W. by the Mediterranean and on the E. by the Dead Sea and the Valley of Edom. 10-16. The lot of Zebulun : in the low hills W. of Nazareth and E. of Accho. 17-23. The lot of Issachar : comprising the plain of Esdraelon. 22. Tabor] Here Zebu- lun, Issachar, and Naphtali had a common border. 24-31. The lot of Asher : the coast and low hills, fi-om Carmel to Tyre. 32-39. The lot of Naphtali : the high moun- tains of upper Galilee, and plateau E. of Mt. Tabor to the W. shores of the Sea of Galilee, and the Jordan Valley N. of it. 40-48. The lot of Dan : (a) the original in- heritance (19^0-46). (b) the later acquisition m the N. (1947-48). The territory in the S. lies W. of Benjamin along the two paral- lel valleys that lead through the Shephelah to the sea, viz. Aijalon and Sorek. The song of 152 19. 47 JOSHUA 22 10 Deborah (JgS^''') seems to imply that the Dan- ites had then reached the coast, but the mari- time plain was probably never fully occupied by them, and what they had held of it was soon abandoned in favour of a new colony (1947,48). In LXX our v. 48 follows 46, where it is more naturally in place, and both it and v. 47 (which follows it in LXX) contain additional matter about the Danites' struggle with the Amorites, which fits in well with Jg 1 34^ where we are told that 'the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the hill-country ; for they would not sufi:er them to come down into the valley.' This obviously gives the reason for the expedition northward. 47. The taking of Leshem (called in Judges ' Laish ') is related in Jg 18 7, 27-29. 49-51. Concluding section : Joshua's own inheritance. Joshua and his comrade Caleb (15 13), the sole representatives of the genera- tion of the exodus, receive each a special 'inheritance' of his own choice. 50. Accord- ing to the word of the LORD] cp. Nu 14-^.30 with Josh 140-10. Timnath-serah] cp. 2430; called Timnath-heres in Jg 2 ■', probably Kef r- Haris, 9 m. S. of Shechem. CHAPTER 20 The Appointment of Cities of Refuge The allotment of the tribal inheritance is followed by the appointment of six cities of refuge previously provided and in part assigned by Moses, according to the terms of the Sinai- tic law concerning manslaughter : cp. Ex 2113 Nu 35 ''*. These are enumerated in the follow- ing order : — W. of Jordan : Kedesh (N.), She- chem (central), Hebron (S.) ; E. of Jordan : Bezer (S.), Ramoth-Gilead (central), Golan (N.). Geographical considerations must have had the first place ; the six cities are so placed as to give nearly equal facilities of access from all parts of Palestine. But it is inter- esting to observe that the three western cities were ancient traditional sanctuaries. This is inferred from the name of Kedesh (= Holy) and known of the other two. The same may be true of the eastern cities also. This chapter has a special interest as intro- ducing us to a phase of Hebrew Law typical of many of the Mosaic ordinances. Moses was inspired not so much to produce a system entirely novel as to take up the Semitic cus- toms already in existence, and regulate and purify them. So here, the primitive law of blood-revenge, which laid on the kin of the > slain the duty of taking vengeance on the slayer, and which often failed to distinguish between intentional and unintentional homi- cide, is regulated by the formulation of a clear distinction corresponding to our ' wilful murder ' and ' manslaughter,' and by the pro- vision of definite asylums for the unintentional manslayer. 1-9. The Cities of Refuge. 2. Whereof I spake . . by the hand of Moses] cp. Ex 2 113 Nu356f- Dt44if. 3 Unwittingly] manslaughter, as we should say, as distinct from murder. See the elaborate rules and distinctions drawn out in Nu 35 ^^■^^. Note that this is not the ordinary, almost uni- versal, principle of ' Sanctuary,' by which any criminal whatsoever could claim the protection of some holy place, as e.g. Joab tried to do (IK 2 28), when he fled to the tabernacle and caught hold of the horns of the altar. It will be observed that Solomon did not respect the Sanctuary in that case. 9. Until he stood before the congregation] The purpose is to provide every homicide a fair trial : see Nu 35 12, 24-25. if he is found guilty of murder, the City of Refuge is no sanctuary to him ; if only of manslaughter (cp. 20 ^5), it is a safe asylum to him till the death of the high priest, after which he is free to return home. CHAPTER 21 The Assignment of Forty-eight Cities TO the Levites 2. The injunction to Moses was given in the plains of Moab, and is recorded in Nu352-5. 3-8. Number and localities of the cities distributed to each of the families of Levi. 9-42. Detailed specification of the cities : — Cities of the Aaronites (Priests) in Judah and Benjamin (9-19) ;. of the Kohathites in Ephraim, Dan, and W. Manasseh (20-26); of the Gershonites in E. Manasseh, Issachar, Asher, and Naphtali (27-33) ; of the Merar- ites in Zebulun, Reuben and Gad (34-42). 43-45. Conclusion of the ' Domesday Book ' ; fulfilment of God's promises of possession and rest. This section is somewhat difficult to reconcile with the situation revealed at the beginning of the book of Judges ; but it must be remembered that this passage is from the later Priestly source, while the previous section is from an earlier document. CHAPTERS 22-24 These chapters form a section by them- selves, and give some closing scenes of Joshua's life, as well as his two farewell discourses to the people. CHAPTER 22 Dismissal of the Two and a half Tribes. The Altar set up at Ed^ and the Controversy it raised 1-9. The dismissal of the tribes. 10-34. The controversy at Ed. Here, as in Nu 25 7-9, we see Phinehas playing a prominent part, and the contrast between the scenes is 153 22. 12 JOSHUA 24. 19 instructive. Swift, stem, and relentless when occasion demanded, he appears in Numbers as the hero who, by prompt execution of judg- ment, stayed the plague at Shittim (cp. Ps 106^0) ; here, on the other hand, though not unmindful of that crisis (22 ^'^), he shows tact and gentleness, and under circumstances of the utmost delicacy and tension, helps to avert a disastrous civil war. 1 2. At Shiloh] the natural place to assemble for so solemn an undertaking. The idea of the tribes is that their brethren are falling into the sin of apostasy (cp. 22^6 LvlV^'^ Dt 12 ^•"), and that therefore it is incumbent on them to enforce the provisions of DtlS^^-is. These provisions, however, included a careful and searching investigation (DtlS^'^) before the declaration of exterminating war upon the offenders. 17. The iniquity of Peor] the occa- sion of Phinehas' former intervention : see Nu25. 22. The LORD God of gods] the original most impressively combines Hebrew names of God : El Elohim Jehovah. CHAPTER 23 The First Farewell Address of Joshua This discourse was probably delivered at Shiloh or Timnath-Serah. Unlike the Second Discourse, which is mainly a historical retro- spect, it dwells chiefly upon the political future of Israel, laying special emphasis on their separateness, and the danger of social and religious intercourse with the remnant of the Canaanites. C. 23 is from the same source as c. 1 andDt27. 4. These nations that remain] Like c. 132-7, to the substance of which it probably refers, this passage serves to modify the unqualified character of such summaries of conquest as 1 0 40-43 1 1 23 2 1 48-45. j q. One man of you shall chase a thousand] RM ' hath chased,' cp. Dt3230. 15. All evil things] RV 'all the evil things,' with definite reference to Dt 28 '^^■^^. Cp. also Lv 26 14-39. CHAPTER 24 Joshua's Second and Final Farewell This discourse (241-1-'^), with Israel's response (24 1<3-24)^ and consequent renewal of the Cove- nant (24 25-28), occupies the bulk of the chapter. The book is then brought to a conclusion in three short paragraphs, recording (a) the death and burial of Joshua (2420-3i), (b) the burial of Joseph's bones (2432), and (c) the death of Eleazar (2433). I- 1 5. This last address of Joshua, which is admitted by critics to be of great antiquity, recalls, both in spirit and in substance, Samuel's discourse in IS 12. But whereas the latter begins with the work of Moses and Aaron, Joshua starts further back and traces the hand of Providence from the call of Abraham out of idolatrous Mesopotamia, thus enforcing a strict renunciation of any lingering idolatry among his contemporaries (cp. 24i'^>23). Through patriarchal times he draws his hearers on to the sojourn in Egypt (24 *) ; then he refers to the miraculous exodus (24^-7) ; next he recounts the wanderings in the wilderness, and the victories E. of Jordan (247-9) . and concludes with the passage of Jordan, and the subsequent conquests (24ii*-). Finally Joshua offers them the great choice — loyalty or disloyalty to the Lord who has done so much for them (2414>15). His own choice is made. I. To Shechem] the scene of the blessings and cursings of c. 830-35. Jt jg here hallowed afresh by a solemn renewal of the Covenant (2425). 3. The other side of the flood] RV ' from beyond the River,' i.e. Euphi-ates. 6, 7. And ye came unto the sea, etc.] The full and graphic description of this great miracle is remarkable in so concise a speech. Does it not evidence an eyewitness ? Joshua was old enough to lead the host against Amalek that year (ExlT^*), and therefore old enough to be impressed by it. He may well have been — as Caleb was — 38 years old at the time (see on 1410). n. And ye went over Jordan] Here we pass into the history narrated in the book of Joshua. 12. The hornet] Either the Israelite invasion was actually preceded by a plague of hornets, insects whose sting is exceedingly painful and may soon be fatal ; or the hornet is used as a type of the dread which the rumour of then* victories spread in advance of them. 14, 15. These very definite references to idolatry imply that previous warnings had failed of their effect. Indeed, we learn from the later historical books that it was not until the Captivity that Israel completely forsook the worship of false gods. There were appar- ently temptations to three distinct forms of idolatry : (a) the ancestral worship of their Mesopotamian forefathers, represented by the ' teraphim ' which Rachel stole from Laban (Gn31 19.30, cp. Gn352>4) ; (b) the animal-wor- ship to which the Israelites had been accustomed in Egypt (v. 1 4), of which the ' golden calf ' or Apis-buU of Ex 32 is a type ; (c) the local Baalim of the Canaanite tribes, which proved, as the book of Judges shows, a constant snare to Israel in succeeding generations. 16-24. The People's Response. 18. Drave out. . all the people] A general statement, in line with 1040,43 1123 2143-45, but to be taken together with statements of a" qualifying character like 132-7 and 23*. 19. Ye cannot serve the LORD : for he is an holy God] an extreme statement meant to startle them into a sense of the awful re- sponsibility of intercourse with One who has 154 S4. 25 JOSHUA— JUDGES INTRO. revealed Himself to be All-Holy : cp. Lvl92. The whole elaborate scheme of the Levitical sacrifices and ceremonies seems to have this as its primary object, and to bring home to care- less minds the inaccessibility of the Deity except to clean hearts and lives. 25-28. Renewal of the Covenant. 26. A great stone] A pillar such as Jacob had set up (Gn28i*^) as a memorial of his vision at Bethel, and again (Gn31^) as a witness of his covenant with Laban. Moses had set up twelve such pillars (Ex24-i) as a memorial of the original Covenant at Sinai ; and now a similar monument is erected by Joshua to mark the renewal of that Covenant. On the other hand, an idolatrous ' pillar ' or ' obelisk' (Dt 162^ RV)was expressly forbidden. An oak] RV ' the oak,' i.e. of Gn 126 RV, etc. 29-33. Death and burial of Joshua. Burial of Joseph's bones. Death of Eleazar. Re- peated in substance Jg2'5-y. 31. All the days . . the elders] The generation old enough to realise and remember the events recorded in this book. These words must not be pressed too rigidly. They assure us that Joshua's inspu-ing influence was felt up to, and even after, his death. But the next generation (Jg2i^) fell away. A grandson of Moses and contemporary of Phinehas (cp. Jg 20 '^^) took a leading part in Danite idolatry (JglS^'-* RV). 32. Ground which Jacob bought] see Gn33i9. 33. Eleazar the son of Aaron died] The traditional Jewish theory being that Joshua wrote the book that bears his name, it was supposed that vv. 29-31 were added by Eleazar, and this v. by ' Phinehas and the Elders.' JUDGES INTRODUCTIO]^ 1. The Times. In the order of the Bible, the book of Judges follows that of Joshua. But there is a great difference between the two. Joshua tells us of a carefully planned attack by the whole people of Israel upon the seven nations who inhabited Canaan, and its complete success ; and the bulk of the second half of the book is occupied by the distribution of the territory among the twelve tribes. At the beginning of Judges we find the Israelites either setting out on the conquest of parts of Canaan, or dwelling in an only half -conquered country, side by side with the Canaanites ; they are subject to a long series of attacks from enemies inside and outside the country ; united action between the different tribes is at best rare and never complete ; and the book closes with two episodes which have nothing to do with foreign foes, but in which the wildness and even savagery of the period (including general lawlessness, massacre, treachery, mutilation and human sacrifice), clear enough in each of the earlier narratives of the book, is placed in peculiarly strong relief. The picture, however, is an entirely natural one. The Israelites had been living the life of desert nomads ; and when they invaded the rich sown lands of Canaan, to which other tribes from the desert had already found their way, they preserved something of the character of Bedouin raiders. Under a recognised leader like Joshua, they could combine and gain victories as striking as they were transitory ; when Joshua was dead, they were as ready to split into independent tribal groups, and to refuse to ' come up to the help of Jehovah.' Thereupon they either became slaves where they had been conquerors, or fell beneath the hands of fresh invaders in their turn. But their nomad character was quickly lost. From shepherds they soon turned into farmers like the Canaanites. In language and even in religious observances there was little to separ- ate the old inhabitants from the new-comers. But there was one difirerence. The Canaanites worshipped local deities or Baals ; Israel had one God, Jehovah (A V ' the Lord,' reallj^ a proper name). He had led them out of Egypt. A common and undisputed allegiance to Him bound together the twelve tribes and severed them from every one else. To forget Him was to fall into the loose and dangerous ways of the Canaanites ; to turn to Him was to unite in politics, in social order and in religion. (See sections 6 and 7.) 2. The Book. The contents of the book fall into three divisions: 1-3 ■*, 3^-16^1, and 17-21. The first is introductory, striking the keynote of the book — ease, forgetfulness, disobedience, enslavement, repentance, deliver- ance, and ease once more. The second de- scribes in more or less detail the various occur- rences of these mutations under the Judges. The third, an appendix, contains an account of the early migrations of the Danites, and the feud between Benjamin and the rest of the 155 INTRO. JUDGES INTRO. nation. These divisions are not the work of a single hand. Like the other historical books of the O T . , Judges is a compilation. The unknown author of the hookas it now stands evidently- had before him much material which is now lost (cp. JoshlQis 2S11''), and he preserved this or made selections from it as he thought best. Thus, c. 5 is certainly a triumph-song going back to the time of Deborah herself. The tone of the first division is almost entirely moralising or religious. Similar passages are inserted in the second division, pointing the moral of each disaster ; but in the body of the narratives this moralising element is absent, while to the story of Abimelech there is no moral at all. This tendency is often spoken of as ' deuteronomic,' because it finds its fullest expression in the book of Deuteronomy, under whose special influence, it is supposed. Judges, like other historical books, was put into its present shape. In the third division the writer has taken over two ancient stories, without adding his own reflections to them save in isolated notes. To a modern reader this may seem an uncritical attempt to make history instructive. But there can be no doubt that history, rightly understood, is calculated to instruct ; and in the case of the Hebrews, to forget the commands of the national God, and to drift into social and domestic relations with the Canaanites, was simply to invite disaster. Thus the real meaning of the older Hebrew narratives (themselves by no means devoid of religious feeling) is explained for the reader by means of the religious insight of the later compiler. 3. The Name. The word ' judge ' implies to us something very difEerent from what it implied to a Hebrew. The Hebrews, unlike the ancient Babylonians with their elaborate codes, knew nothing of the complex machinery of the law-court ; disputes were settled by the head of the family, the elders of the tribe or of the village or town, or by the priests ; later on, in the more serious cases, by some person of national influence, and even by the king. The procedure was informal, and regulated at most by custom and a general sense of what was right. The sentence could only be en- forced when public opinion was behind it. But a man who was qualified by age or ex- perience, or both, or by special nearness to Jehovah, to settle disputes, could also do something more ; men would naturally look to him for counsel, guidance, deliverance. To judge was thus to lead and to govern. In this sense, after our period, Samuel was said to judge Israel (187^ : see also 1S82). It is in this sense that Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and the other heroes of this book are judges. In each case their rise is the result of divine selection. Deborah is a prophetess, and she summons Barak to her side ; Gideon is called by the angel of Jehovah ; the spirit of Jehovah comes mightily upon Samson (Jg4*^ G^^ l'd~^). The result of this is some signal achievement against the common foe ; after which, the people, having learnt to trust the wisdom of their ' judge ' in war, willingly follow it in peace (JgS^^ 12"). All the judges mentioned in this book appear to have been military leaders ; later, however, we find the peaceful Eli holding this office for the nation ; and Samuel, who used to go ' on circuit ' to a certain number of towns (1 ST^'^^, though he was con- stantly asked for advice in a war, is never said to have acted as general. Of the extent of the judges' authority we know nothing ; after their victories have been gained, the historian tells us no more about them. But Saul and even David in his earlier years seem to have been little more than very powerful ' judges ' ; the son of Gideon himself gains the title of king with no great difficulty (Jg9 '^). The main business of a Hebrew king, from David on- wards, as of an Indian rajah or a Mohammedan caliph, was to lead his people in war, settle their quarrels, and protect the poor. No one could do this satisfactorily unless he were a strong personality ; in the rough period of our book, the only way of impressing the community was by warlike prowess. But no greater ser- vice than settling disputes without fear or favour could be rendered ; and the noblest function of the Messiah Himself was to judge the poor and needy, to break in pieces the oppressor, and bring forth judgment to the Gentiles (Ps72^.i2 isall^ 421.3). 4. The Dates. Where there is no fixed era, chronology is necessarily obscure. The his- torian of Hebrew antiquity could of course give us no dates; he could at most tell us the duration of the lives of men or of periods of time. Dealing with times long past, of which exact chronological records were not easily obtainable, it is not surprising if the various wi-iters are not always exact themselves, and if their notices of time do not always agree. The period of Judges, we know, extends from the death of Joshua, a certain number of years after the forty years which followed the exodus, to about the birth of Samuel, i.e. perhaps two generations before the accession of David to the throne of Judah. The exo- dus is now generally placed about 1250 B.C. David came to the throne about 1000 B.C. But in 1 K G 1 the interval between the exodus and the founding of the Temple in the 4th year of Solomon, i.e. 44 years after David's accession, is said to be 480 j'cars. From the numbers given in Judges, the interval would appear to have been still greater. Othniel, Ehud, Barak, Gideon and Samson are account- able for 220 years (40, 80, 40, 40, 20) ; the 166 INTRO. JUDGES INTRO. ' minor judges ' (Shamgar, Tola, Jair, Ibzan, Elon and Abdon, so called because their story is not given in detail) Jephthah, Abimelech, and the periods of oppression amount to 190. (See Chronological Table.) If we add to these 40 years each for Moses (Dt2^, etc.), Eli (IS 4 IS) and David (IK^H), with more years still for Joshua, Samuel and Saul, we shall get a period nearer to 580 than 480. It has accordingly been pointed out that the round numbers (40, 80, 20) are probably not intended to be taken as exact, but as = a genera- tion, two generations, and half a generation respectively, although the other figures appear to be based on precise records. It has further been suggested that the years of oppression are not to be counted in with the rest, and also that some of the judges (though the book itself gives no hint of this, probable as it would seem) were synchronous with others. Many ingenious manipulations of the figures have been made to reach a result agreeing with the 480 years of 1 K 6 ; but this number may very possibly be an exaggeration, and in any case it is not easy to see how such a period as that of the Judges could ever have lasted much longer than 200 years. The two certain previous centuries been the battle-field of their armies, and was to be so again, was left unmolested. The oppressors of Israel, therefore, were people little if at all stronger than herself. Entrenched within her moun- tains, she ought to have feared nothing from Moab, Ammon and Midian. The Canaanites, though they had the doubtful advantage of wealth, and by their strongholds in the plain of Esdraelon could for a time prevent Israelite unity, never regained footing in the hill- country; nor had they any political cohesion among themselves. All these peoples (except the Midianites) were closely allied in race with Israel ; the Philistines, who had a better political organis- ation than any of their neighbours, and who did not practise circumcision, are often thought to have come from Crete, and therefore not to be Semites at all. Their hostility was by far the most serious; Israel never succeeded in really menacing any one of their five cities; Samson himself never led an Israelite force into their territory; and it was the im- possibility of making head against them, even under the guidance of Samuel, that led the Hebrews to change the leadership of the facts seem to be that, even through those judge for the more settled rule of a king wild years, in the case of some of the judges, more or less exact records were preserved, and that the periods of peace were very much longer than those of foreign oppression and war. 5. The Oppressors. Our book makes it clear that while the Israelites failed to conquer the whole country, they kept a firm hold on one part, the central mountain range W. of the Jordan. The desert wanderers, on enter- ing Palestine, were forced to become moun- taineers. In the plain of Esdraelon, which cut like a wedge into this range, as well as up and down the country elsewhere, were the Canaanites, with their walled towns and for- midable chariots. To the W., in the low lands between the mountains and the sea, were the Philistines. E. of the Jordan valley (which was too tropical to be largely in- habited), on rolling uplands of corn and forest and heath, were the lands assigned to Reuben, Gad (G-ilead) and Manasseh, but really much more in the power of Ammon and Moab. Further to the E., on the borders of the desert, were wandering but powerful tribes of Midianites, Amalekites, and others. Far across the desert to the E. were the great powers of Assyria and Babylon ; to the N. were Syria and the empire of the Hittites, while beyond the southern desert was Egypt. During this period, however, all these powers were, for various reasons, engaged within their own borders ; and Palestine, which had in (IS 8). Apart from the Philistines, Israel had more to fear from peace than war. An enemy, once repelled, never throughout this period attacked her again ; and, placed as she was between foes inside and outside her territory, she could yet lift up her eyes unto the hills, and know that her help came from thence. 6. The Historical Value of the Book. What then is to be made of these fragmentary records of invasion, foray, muster and venge- ance ? Far more than appears on the surface. When Israel followed Joshua across the Jordan, she was a collection of tribes ; when Samuel handed over his authority to Saul, she was a nation. During those wild years were being forged the bonds of a nationality which has survived unprecedented shocks till the present day. Not even at the time of Saul was the nation complete ; Judah is curiously isolated from his brethren, and in the song of Deborah is never mentioned (1^ : cp. Dt33~). Ephraim is regarded as the leading tribe, though his role was by no means the most glorious (81''-). But these repeated shocks of invasion did what nothing else could have done. Consciousness of a common foe gave Israel the consciousness of a common aim, destiny, and religion. This book shows more clearly than any other that the history of Israel was an evolution, a progress. National unity, indeed, might seem no further advanced under Samson than under Barak. But this is an error. The Judges made a wider appeal than to their own 157 INTRO. JUDGES INTRO. tribes alone ; the Hebrews were learning that they were brothers ; and this sense of brother- hood, however strangely manifesting itself, is shown clearly throughout the book. But can we credit all the marvellous exploits, it will be asked, of individual judges ? When these are examined in detail, they offer com- paratively little difficulty. True, there may be exaggeration, as so often in Hebrew writers, in the numbers ; and is it not natural that other details should be magnified when told round the camp-fire or at the village gate ? Our ideas of accuracy, it must be remembered, were unknown in the 10th cent. B.C. In the case of Samson, this tendency to glorify the exploits of a beloved champion was more marked, and reminds us of the stories told of William Tell. On the other hand, there is not an episode that is not full of most graphic and striking touches ; c. 5 is one of the finest lyrics inside or outside the Bible ; the last four chapters contain most valuable material for the religious and social history of the Hebrews ; nor is there a book in the Bible which shows us more clearly the strength and the weakness of the Hebrew nature, its rugged independence and its readiness to assimilate, the meanness and cowardice that it was prone to show, and the courage, the resolution, and the tragedy of its chosen heroes. 7. The Religious Value of the Book. What have these early stories to do with our religious life ? Is not their morality far below that cf the present day ? Are not the historical con- ditions completely different from our ovni ? Do we not know far more of God than their boldest spirits could ever teach us ? These three questions suggest the following answers : (a) In the primitive character of the morality of the book lies much of its value. The Israelites were not completely different from their neighbours. They could be rash, cruel, vengeful (like the men of the Scottish clans), and even licentious ; a prophetess could exult in an act which to us spells sheer treachery (see on 5 2'*) ; and for their cruelties they could, like their neighbours, assume divine sanction (e.g. c. 20). Yet in spite of this, they knew that Jehovah was their God ; and, unlike the other gods. He had a definite character ; certain kinds of conduct He hated, others He loved. And this knowledge gradually taught them the love of truth, justice, humanity, purity, and the deep piety that breathes in Pss23 and 84. In our book one can watch this love just begin- ning to grow. If the nation that produced Jg20 could also produce, first Jg5, and, later on, Isa53, what can be deemed impossible for the Spirit of God ? (b) The conditions of life in ancient Israel were very different from our own ; but the principles were the same. Racial animosity and greed are as strong to-day as then. National peril always rose from the desire to ' get on ' or to follow the line of least resistance. National strength lay in self -forgetting enthusiasm for a common cause and devotion to the commands of God. It lies nowhere else to-day. Further, history shows that wherever there is a faith like Gideon's, whether in a Judas Maccabseus, a Wilberforce, or a Mazzini, the results are just as surprising, and just as beneficent. (c) The God we worship is not merely ' the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.' He is ' the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.' But the lesson that God can only be worshipped aright when the whole nation recognises its unity and the duty of mutual care and protec- tion, is not learnt yet. The fatal distinction between God's interest in the religious life and in the social well-being of His people, we must learn to reject. Religion, patriotism and national health are unmeaning apart from each other ; and all alike are impossible unless the cause of disaster is traced to disobedience and sin. The victories of the Hero-judges, as the Epistle to the Hebrews asserts, are victories of faith ; this faith is also ours ; and of this faith the ' author and perf ecter ' is Jesus (Hebll32 122). List of Oppressions and Judges Yrs. of Yrs. of Opp ressions Judges Oppression under Chushan- rishathaim 8 — Peace under Othniel 40 Oppression under Eglon (Moab) .... 18 Peace after Ehud's deliverance — 80 Oppression under Jabin (Canaan) 20 Peace after Barak's victory . 40 Oppression under Midianites and allies 7 Peace after Gideon's victory . 40 Abimelech's ' reign ' 3 Tola 23 Jair ..... 22 Oppression under Ammonites 18 Peace under Jephthah . 6 Ibzan ..... 7 Elon 10 Abdon 8 Oppression under the Philis- tines .... 40 Activity of Samson 20 Totals 113 299 Total length of Oi^pressiona and Deliverances reckoned consecutively . . . 412 168 1. JUDGES 1.19 PAET 1 Introductory (Chs. 1-3 ■*) Division 1, Chs. 1-25, This section of the book contains a brief recapitulation of the early conquest of Pales- tine, told from a somewhat diiferent point of view from that of Josh 7-21, and supplying much that is there not mentioned. From these vv. it is clear that Palestine was not conquered in one great invasion ; and the whole of the book shows Israel to be only in very precarious possession of the land. The narrative in Joshua emphasises the influence over the whole collection of tribes wielded by the Ephraimite hero, Joshua himself ; Jg 1-2 ^ narrates the movements of separate tribes, leaving some of them (Issachar, Levi and Benjamin) unmentioned. It would seem that after the main body of Israelites had crossed the Jordan, captured Jericho, and made Gilgal their headquarters, the larger number of them, under Joshua, faced northwards, while Judah and Simeon remained in the south, and, for some time, were almost detached from the main body. The actual narratives of this division of Part 1 deal with (1) the conquest of Adoni-bezek by Judah and Simeon (1^"^) ; (2) conquests of Othniel in the south (1 -'-iS) ; (3) further conquests of Judah and Simeon (116-21). (4) capture of Bethel (122-26). (5) limits to the conquests of Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali and Dan (1 27-36) . (6) the moral, delivered by the angel at Bochim (2i-5). CHAPTER 1 The Conquests of Judah, Simeon, and OTHER Tribes 1-8. Conquests of Judah and Simeon. I. After the death of Joshua] This joins the beginning of Judges to the end of Joshua ; but in what follows the author refers to events which must have preceded the partition of Josh 13 f., and the campaigns of Josh 10, 11. Asked the LORD] ' Consulted the oracle of the Lord': cp. 185 20i«. See also Ex2830 Nu27 2i. 2. The land] the S. part of Pales- tine. 3. Simeon] The towns of Simeon (Josh 191-^) are also attributed to Judah (Josh 1 5 26-36, 42) Later, Simeon ceases to exist as an independent tribe. My lot] Each tribe has had a part of Canaan allotted to it, whose conquest it is to attempt. Judah is chosen to make the first inroad. 4. Perizzites] see on Gn 13'^. Canaanites] in its special sense of ' lowlanders ' : cp. Grnl3'^3430. Bezek] lying on the road from Gilgal to South Palestine. 5. Adoni-bezek] (perhaps the same as Adoni-zedek of Josh 10 1) is king of Jerusalem, which city also lies in the path of Judah and Simeon to Judah's ' lot.' 6. Cut off] to make them unfit for warfare. 7. Kings] chiefs or sheikhs of a city or even village. They] his own people. 8. Jerusalem] The city was not held, but remained in the possession of the Jebusites till the time of David (2 S 5 6-9). Not till then would Judah really dominate Southern Palestine (cp. v. 21, and c. 19 12). 9-15. Conquests of Othniel in the south. 9. The mountain denotes the central ridge, stretching from N. of Jerusalem to Hebron ; the south, the wild country S. of Hebron, called in Hebrew the Negeb, and the valley (RY ' lowland ') the maritime plain to the W. 10. Hebron] see on Gn 13 1^. Kirjath- arba] ' city of four' (quarters). In Josh 14^5 1513>14, however, Arba is regarded as a per- sonal name ; he is ' the father of Anak,' or ' a great man among the Anakims ' (a primi- tive gigantic race, of which Sheshai, etc., are names of divisions or clans). 11. Debir] in the Negeb. Kirjath-sepher] 'Book-city.' He] should be Caleb (see Josh 15 1^), to whom (Josh 14 6-15) Moses had promised this terri- tory. 13. Othniel is also the hero of the deliverance from Chushan-rishathaim (S^t). 15. Blessing-] a present (cp. Gn33ii) or solemn token of paternal affection. Thou hast given me] RV, better, ' thou hast set me in.' A south land] RV ' the land of the South ' ; for the most part a waterless region, where springs would be precious. Upper and nether springs are proper names. 16-21. Fm-ther conquests of Judah and Simeon. 16. The Kenite] Hobab (cp. 4ii, elsewhere called Jethro : cp. also Ex 2 1^). The Kenites are joined (in GnlS^^) with the Kenizzites, Caleb's tribe (Kenaz, v. 13), a Bedouin people in firm league with Israel : see 4^7 and 1 SI56. They do not, like Judah, attack the Canaanites. City of palm trees] Jericho, which, with Gilgal, was Israel's base of opera- tions. Arad] SE. of Hebron. Among the people] A more probable reading is ' with the Amalekite,' i.e. not actually in Judah. 17. Zephath] not known. Hormah] 'utter de- struction.' To ' destroy utterly ' is to put under a ban, or exterminate : cp. Josh 6 1'' °^e- ('devoted,' i.e. to destruction). 18, These, with Gath and Ashdod, are the five Philistine cities. The LXX reads ' did not take,' which accords with subsequent references to the Philistines. 19. Chariots of iron] Always an object of dread to the light-armed Israelites (cp. 4 3), but useless in the hill-country, where the Israelites "V7ere more firmly established. 159 1.21 JUDGES 2.18 Could not] The Lord being with Judah, they should have been able to drive them out. Probably their faith failed at sight of the iron chariots. The Hebrew, indeed, does not say ' could not drive them out,' but ' there was no driving out.' 21. Cp. Josh 1563. 22-26. Capture of Bethel. 22. House of Joseph] i.e. Epbraim and Manasseh, the leading division of the nation. Later writers use Ephraim as a synonym for the ten northern tribes (e.g. Hosll^ Isa283). 23. Descry] EV ' spy out.' Beth-el] 9^ m. N. of Jerusalem. See Gn 28^9 356. 26. Hit- tites] see on GnlQi^-io. Luz] Evidently a different city from that mentioned in v. 23. 27-36. Limits to the conquests of Man- asseh, etc. 27. These towns are all in the plain of Esdraelon (see on c. 4), by their hold upon which the Canaanites drove a wedge between the Israelites of Northern and Central Pales- tine. Beth-shean is at the E. of the plain, Taanach and Megiddo (recently excavated and revealing a wealth of Canaanite remains) on the S., Ibleam on the SE., and Dor on the coast. Would dwell] i.e. succeeded in dwelling. 28. Tribute] RV ' taskwork.' So Israel had been treated in Egypt. 29. Gezer] On the edge of the maritime plain ; later on, taken by Egypt and given to Solomon (1K915). Here also extensive remains have been found, demonstrating the pagan worship carried on by its inhabitants. 30. Kitron . . Nahalol] unknown. 31. Accho (Akka), Zidon (Saida), and Achzib (Ez-Zib, N. of Akka) are all on the coast : the other towns are unknown. 33. Beth-shemesh(' house of the sun '), not the well- known Beth-shemesh in Judah : cp. Josh 19^8. Beth-anath (house of the goddess Anath) is perhaps a town 6 m. N. of Kadesh-naphtali. 34. Dan fails in securing a foothold : later, the Danites make an expedition northwards (c. 18) and Ephraim gains an entrance into the territory from which they are driven (v. 35). Amorites] seeonGnlQi^. 35. Mount Heres] ' the mountain of the sun.' Aijalon] 12 m. "W. of Jerusalem ; the scene of Joshua's great victory (Josh 10 12). Shaalbim] possibly 3 m. to the N. 36. Coast] RV ' border.' The ascent of (R V) Akrabbim (scorpions) is said in Josh 153 to be on the border of Judah and Edom. Amorites is probably a mis-reading for ' Edomites.' The spot lies on a line be- tween Hebron and Petra, the Edomite capital. As it stands, this v. has no connexion with its context. 36. The rock] should be, as RM, ' Sela,' i.e. Petra in Edom. CHAPTER 2 PROLOatJE TO THE StORY OF THE JUDGES 1-5. The moral of the preceding notices, delivered by an angel at Bochim. I. An angel of the LORD] RY ' the angel.' Cp. 611.22 133,21^ where it is plain (from 6i4,io 13 22) that the angel is thought of as God Him- self (see on fii-^). The word translated ' angel,' however, means simply ' messenger ' : cp. 6 ^. Gilgal] the site of the first Hebrew camp after the crossing of the Jordan (Josh 4 1^). Bochim] ' weepers ' (v. 4), but LXX here reads ' Bethel ' (1 23), which was later the abode of the ark (20 27). Allon Bacuth, ' weeping tree,' was near Bethel (Gn258). Covenant] see Gn 15 18 1719 Dt4i3 818 291 3116^ etc. Division 2, Chs. 26-34. A return to the later scenes of Joshua's life, to connect it with the stories of the Judges. C. 26-10 is very similar to Josh 24 28-31. The history of Israel in this period is here inter- preted as a succession of punishments for dis- obedience, and deliverance after repentance, a point of view which is not emphasised in the individual stories, but not inconsistent with them. Israel's only chance of existence in Canaan lay in its adherence to the one bond of union, the worship of Jehovah. The intro- duction divides into three parts : 26-10, his- torical prologue ; 2ii-23, interpretation of the history ; 3 1-6, Israel's actual relations with the Canaanites. 6-10. Historical Prologue. 6. Cp. Josh 24 28. Evidently the beginning and not the end of conquest is here referred to. In the OT. Canaan is never regarded as a land of rest. 9. Timnath-heres] ' territory of the sun ' : probably near Shechem. In Josh 2430 the letters of 'heres' are transposed, to avoid the suggestion of idolatrous association (cp. also Jg8i3 and RV there). Gaash] un- known. 11-23. The religious interpretation of the history of the Judges. II. Baalim] RV ' the Baalim,' i.e. the local gods worshipped by the Canaanites. Baalim is the plural of Baal, which means ' lord ' (cp. 833). Each place might thus have its patron god. Jehovah was never thought of by the Hebrews as a local deity in this sense. 13. Ashtaroth] RV 'the Ashtaroth,' properly the feminine counterpart of ' the Baalim.' In Babylon, the goddess Ashtoreth appears as Ishtar (with attributes corresponding in part to Aphrodite or Venus). How easily the wor- ship of the native deities, the Baals, the Ash- toreths, in their sacred groves, would lead to licentiousness is obvious (see on Gn38i5). 17. A whoring] Adultery and fornication are common figures for unfaithfulness to Israel's ' lord,' Jehovah, cp. Hos 1-3 Ezk 16, 20, Mt 12 39. The succeeding stories make it clear that it was by uniting the Hebrews in a religious war that the Judges caused the local cults to be put aside. 18. It repented the LORD] cp. 1 S 1511 Ps90i3 Zechbi^ : on the other hand, IS 160 2. 20 JUDGES 3.31 1529 Jer428 Ezk24i4. Here the word really means ' pity.' 20. Covenant] Josh23i'5 c. 2i. In Joshua the ark is constantly called ' the ark of the covenant ' (Josh 3 3, etc.). 22. Prove] cp. 3i'2. Such an expression shows how easily a test may become a temptation. 23. Neither delivered he, etc.] a later addition : the whole passage deals with what occurred after the death of Joshua. CHAPTER 3 The Stoey of the Judges. Othniel. Ehud. Shamgar 1-6. Israel's actual relations with the Cana- anites. I. Wars of Canaan] i.e. those waged by Joshua, after whose death (22i) the career of victory was made to cease by Jehovah. 2. A third reason for the survival of the heathen in Canaan, in addition to those given in 2 1 ^- and in 222 31. 3. Philistines] see Intro. § 5. The Philistines occupied the lowland in the SW. Their five cities formed a confederacy : see 165, etc., and 1 S6i6f. At the death of Samuel their power extends far into central Palestine (IS 31 10). All the Canaanites] in the more restricted sense, the lowlanders of the SW. bordering on the Philistines. Hivites] read 'Hittites' : see on G-n 1015-19. Baal-hermon] In the similar passage in Joshua we read ' Baal- Gad under Hermon ' (13 5), a place on the "W. side of Hermon. The entering in of Hamath] Hamath was a powerful city of the Hittites on the Orontes (modern Hama). The ' en- trance ' to it is the hollow country between Lebanon and anti-Lebanon, on the plain at the K end of Lebanon: cp. 2S89 1K865 AmGi'*, where it is regarded as the true northern frontier of Israel. 5. See on 11-^33. To these six 'nations' of Canaan the Girgashites are often added. 6. Cp. Ex34i6Nehl325. PART 2 History of the Judges (Chs. 3^-1631) On this, the main section of the book, see Intro. § 2 and List of Oppressions and Judges. The larger part of the book is concerned with six of the Judges, one of whom is not properly a Judge at all (Abimelech), and in the case of another (Samson) isolated forays are re- corded, but no actual deliverance. 7-1 1. Chushan-rishathaim and Othniel. 7. The groves] RV 'the asheroth.' The word (another plural) means the sacred poles set up near an altar, which were common in Semitic worship (even Solomon's temple had ' pillars ' : see on 1 K 7 21). Here, however, actual goddesses seem to be intended, perhaps regarded as symbolised by the poles. 8. Chushan- rishathaim] The Heb. word means ' Ethio- pian of double iniquity.' The real name must be hidden behind this expression. Meso- potamia] see on On 24 10. 9. Othniel] cp. 1 is. 10. The Spirit of the LORD] used here and elsewhere of the inspiration which makes a man capable of great and apparently super- human exploits and achievements : 6 ^-^ 1 1 29 146 1514 : cp. alsoEx313. 12-30. Eglon and Ehud. 12. Moab] the high plateau on the E. of the Dead Sea : cp. 2K324. 13, Ammon] N. of Moab : the Amalekites (Gn36i2) are called Edomites. They occupied the desert between Sinai and S. Palestine. The Kenites formed one of their nomad clans, but on the whole their enmity to Israel was constant : cp. IS 15 2*-; hence their readiness to join Eglon's invasion. City of palm trees] cp. 1 16 : Jericho, which was thus not entirely destroyed (Josh 6 26). It would command the roads from central to southern Palestine. 15. Lefthanded] lit. ' lamed in his right hand.' Hence the success of his ruse : but 2016 seems to show that ambidexterity is all that is meant: cp. also 1 Chi 2 2. Present] i.e. tribute. 16. Dagger] RV 'sword,' about 14 in. in the blade. Benig on his right thigh (convenient for his left hand) the guards would not notice it. 17. Brought] RV ' offered,' as in V. 18. 19. Quarries] RM 'graven images,' perhaps carved stones. Once beyond these (cp. V. 26), though only 2 m. from Jericho, Ehud knew that he was safe. 20. Summer parlour] RM ' upper chamber of cooling' : a room on the flat roof of an Oriental house ; in this case enclosed so that the interior was not visible from outside. 22. No meaning can be obtained from the Heb. words at the end of this v. 23. Locked] i.e. bolted (as in the East at present). 26. Sei- rath] unknown. 27. Mountain] i.e. hill- country. The men of Ephraim (Joshua's tribe) are recognised as the leaders in Israel : cp. 31. 28. Toward Moab] RV ' against the Moabites,' i.e. to prevent their returning. 29. For the expression ten thousand, cp. 14 46 73 2034. 30. Fourscore] two full generations. 31. Shamgar] the first of the 'minor' Judges. The name is mentioned in 5 6, though not as a ' saviour.' No Philistine oppression is mentioned till later. An ox goad] would be an efficient substitute for a spear — a six- foot staff tipped with a spike : cp. 1514*- and 2 S 23 21. 11 161 4. 1 JUDGES 5.6 CHAPTER 4 Deborah and Barak This deliverance is described a second time in the early poem in c. 5 (see on 5^). No other narrative describes more clearly the religious gathering of the clans, and the prowess of the hardy mountaineers when united. The plain of Esdraelon (see Intro. § 6) is one of the famous battle-fields of history. It drives like a wedge from the coast within 1 0 m. of the Jordan ; but it is dominated by hills on all sides, and is almost closed by them at its western end. In c. 5 all the tribes are mentioned either as uniting or refusing to appear, save Judah and Simeon. Subsequently we hear no more of such united efforts. 1-3. Oppression by Jabin. 2. Jabin] In Josh ll^-^ Jabin is defeated by Joshua at the waters of Merom, near the head of the Jordan valley, and Hazor is burned. In c. 5 Jabin is not mentioned, and Sisera is apparently regarded as king. Hazor] from Josh 19^6, probably near Kadesh-naphtali. Harosheth of the Gentiles] or ' foreigners ' is thus distinguished from Hebrew Harosheth. Site doubtful ; probably not far from Megiddo, or at the W. end of the plain. 3. Chariots] They would be well-nigh irresistible on the plain. The Israelites, living in the hills, had none until Solomon's time. 4-24. Defeat and Death of Sisera. 4. Judged] not in the technical sense used in this book, but of the deciding of disputes (v. 5). 5. Mount Ephraim] see on 327. Deborah's own tribe would seem to have been Issachar (51^). Dwelt] RV 'sat,' as judge, to decide cases. Deborah] 'bee.' 6. Barak] 4ightning': cp. the Carthaginian name Hamilcar Barca. Kedesh-naphtali] i.e. Kadesh (i.e. the shrine) of Naphtali ; now Kades, 4 m. from the upper end of the waters of Merom. Mount Tabor] 1,843 ft. high: it commands the plain of Es- draelon from the NE. Ten thousand men] cp. vv. 10, 14, 329 58, etc. In this c. only the two tribes Naphtali and Zebulun are men- tioned : in c. 5 as many as six gather to Barak's standard. Naphtali and Zebulun, bordering on the plain, are the most concerned. 9. Sell] cp. 214 38 42. A woman] i.e. Jael. ID. Went up] to Tabor. The flat summit of this conical hill made an excellent position from which the Israelites could charge down to the plain. 1 1 . The Kenites] cp. 1 16. Father in law] is correct, not (as RV) ' brother in law.' The modern traveller Porter noticed the black tents of nomads near Kedesh. Plain] RV ' oak ' ; evidently a prominent tree on the N. of the edge of the plain of Esdi-aelon. 13. Kishon] This river rises in the high ground to the SE. of the plain, and flows right through it in a north- westerly direction. From Tabor on the NE. the Israelites would dash down and drive the Ca- naanites back upon its banks : in rainy weather the whole plain would be further intersected by the Kishon's tributaries. In 1799, after the battle of Mt. Tabor, numbers of fugitive Turks were swept away by the torrent and drowned. 15. Fled away] northward to Ke- desh, while Barak's host hurries westwards. 18. Mantle] RV 'rug,' or perhaps 'tent- curtain.' 19. Bottle of milk] i.e. a lamb- or goat-skin. C. 5^5 adds 'butter.' 5 26 seems (though not certainly) to imply that Sisera is killed as he stands drinking. 21. The nail or tent-pin was of wood : to drive it into the ground when camping was the women's work. On the morality of the act see on 5^^. 22. If Barak came up immediately, he must have left the main body of the pursuers almost as they left the battle-field. 24. The Israelites now proceed to do on a small scale what, after the victories of Joshua, they had refused to do on a large one. CHAPTER 5 Deborah's Triumph Song This song celebrates the victory of c. 4 ; but from the point of view, not of a later annalist, but of a contemporary poet — very pos- sibly (though see v. 12) the prophetess herself. The lyric outburst is one of the finest in any language ; its style (though many of the words are now very obscure) is typical of the best Hebrew poetry. Its independence of c. 4 may be inferred from the variations it exhibits. Sisera is represented as king : the majority of the tribes, not Zebulun and Naphtali only, are summoned : and the manner of Sisera's death is different. It says much for the fidelity of the compiler that he did not attempt to ' edit ' these apparent discrepancies. 1-5. Introductory. I. For the avenging of Israel] RV 'for that the leaders took the lead in Israel.' The Hebrew word most probably has to do with ' letting loose ' ; perhaps, ' with the streaming locks of warriors.' 3. A good instance of the ' parallelism ' of Hebrew poetry ; parallel, and sometimes almost identical thoughts are placed side by side. Abundant instances can be found in almost every Psalm. For the kings and princes, cp. Ps 2 2 Hab 1 10. 4. Seir] the moun- tainous region which extends from the E. of the Dead Sea to the head of the Red Sea. The northern half of it was inhabited by Edom. Towards the southern end of it is Sinai (v. 5). Jehovah is still thought of as dwelling in the desert, where He had first revealed Himself to Israel, and where He delivered them from Egypt. Cp. Psl8'Isa64iHab3io. 6-1 1. The Oppression. 6. Shamgar] mentioned (if he is the same man) in 3^1 ; here, the reference can hardly 162 4 5. 7 JUDGES 6.1 be to a Judge and deliverer. So with Jael ; perhaps another individual is intended ; or the correct name has fallen out of the text. Unoccupied] Because of the insecurity of the country. 7. The villages] RV 'rulers'; the word occurs in v. 11, and probably means ' peasantry.' The gi'eat trade routes were empty, and even rural life stagnated. 8. The first two clauses are very obscure ; the second should perhaps be ' the barley-bread failed.' 10. Speak] (RV 'tell') means properly ' meditate upon it.' Of the three classes addressed, the first consists of magistrates or leading men, the second (in judgment should be, as RV, ' on rich carpets ') of the wealthy, the third of the people. 11. The words in italics, supplied by the translators, help us to make sense of this v., though they cannot be considered certain. In con- trast to V. 6 there is now deep peace through- out the whole country-side. 12-23. The gathering of the tribes, and the battle. 12. Captivity] either 'thy captives' or 'thy captors' ; cp. Ps68is Eph48. 13. RV is more probable ; ' then came down a remnant of the nobles and of the people.' The two classes are joined as in vv. 2 and 9. 14. RV ' out of Ephraim came doirii they whose root is in Amalek.' This seems to suggest that Amalek once possessed the land of Ephraim ; but see on 121-5. The largest and smallest tribes are mentioned together, as in Hos5S. Machir] a clan of Manasseh (apparently used here for the whole tribe) which is generally connected with Gilead. Pen of the writer] RV ' marshal's staff ' ; the ' writer ' is the officer who musters the" troops. 15. He was sent] RV ' into the valley they ' (the men of Issachar) ' rushed forth at his feet.' Reuben dwelt in N. Moab, E. of the Dead Sea ; in the later history the tribe is never heard of, as, from this v., is not surprising. For the divisions] RV ' by the watercourses ' (so in v. 16). 17. Gilead] i.e. 'the people living in Gilead.' Reuben and Manasseh have been already mentioned ; hence. Gad. Dan] would seem to have already migrated to the N. and to have connected itself with the sea- faring Phoenicians (18'''). For Asher, see l^i. Breaches] RV ' creeks,' or harbours. 19. Kings] the petty chiefs of districts and towns among the Canaanites. Taanach . . Megiddo] see on 127. 20, 21. The very forces of nature were in alliance against Canaan. Kishon, though second to the Jordan (35 m. long from source to sea), is often, in parts, dry in the summer. Like other mountain-fed streams, it rises rapidly after a storm ; here, its torrents sweep away the Canaanite chariots. 21. Strength] Ab- stract for concrete. 22. RV ' Then did the horsehoofs stamp hy reason of the pransings.' This v., describing the battle, would seem naturally to precede vv. 21 f., describing the rout. 23. Meroz] an unknown place. The men- tion of Jael immediately after suggests that the villagers of Meroz might have done what Jael did with such success. 24-27. The Death of Sisera. 24. Sisera, according to the code of the times, on entering Jael's tent, was entitled to protection. Could a prophetess, it has been asked, invoke a blessing on an act of sheer treachery ? (cp. 4 17). There may have been extenuating circumstances of which we are ignorant ; more probably the v. is simply an utterance of the poet's joy at an act without which the victory would have been imperfect, and might have proved fruitless : see Intro. § 7. Women in the tent] Bedouin women : nomads. 25, 26. These vv. say nothing about Sisera's lying down to sleep, and they suggest that he was killed in the act of drinking (note ' smote oflE ' instead of ' smote through ') : but (see V. 27) this is not absolutely necessary. 25. Butter] Properly sour milk or curds. Lordly dish] A bowl fit for nobles. 27. The repetition is highly effective. 28-30. Ironical representation of the ex- pectation at Sisera's home. 28. Cried] in eager, half -anxious tones. 30. Have they not sped ?] rather, ' Do.they not find ? ' — the form of the word denotes an unfinished action, which accounts for the delay. A damsel or two] rather, ' A slave-girl, two slave girls, for each brave man.' Prey] RV ' spoil.' Needlework on both sides] means two pieces of needlework (for each man). RV ' embroidery.' 31. Final prayer. The last clause is added by the editor. CHAPTER 6 Gideon and the Midianites The story of Gideon, which runs from 6 ^ to 8 33, is more detailed than that of Deborah and Barak ; and, from the details, it would ap- pear that different traditions have been used. Gideon, at the bidding of an angel, calls his clan together, and after reducing them to 300 men, and receiving the encouragement of a dream, surrounds the camp of the Midianites and throws them into a panic. The Ephraimites complete the defeat. The two kings of Midian are then pursued beyond Jordan and slain. Gideon is offered the kingdom, but refuses it, and lives to old age in honour and peace. 1-6. The Midianites oppress Israel. I. Midian] These desert nomads are re- garded by the Hebrews as akin to them (Gn 3G35; cp. Ex 2 15-21). They are found in the neighbourhood of the peninsula of Sinai, and 163 6. 3 JUDGES 7. 25 also wander northwards : on this occasion they pour westwards across the Jordan into the more fertile lands of Palestine. Like modern Be- douins they raid and harry and destroy, but make no permanent conquest. That the Is- raelites did not desert their homes is plain from V. 11, etc. 3. Amalekites] see on 3 13. Children of the east] other tribes living on the borders of the eastern desert. 4. Unto Gaza] i.e. the whole country from the Jordan to- the coast. Gaza was a Philistine town on the SW. of Palestine which they did not venture to pass. 5. Grasshoppers] RV ' locusts.' 8-10. The Israelites rebuked by a Prophet. 8. A prophet] who brings a similar mes- sage to that of the angel in 2'^-^. The pro- phet is the spokesman of Jehovah. See Intro, to Samuel. The spirit of the prophetic message is always (a) moral, (b) national. 10. Amorites] see on G-n l(3i'5. 11-40. The call of Gideon, and the tests by which it was proved. II. Angel] see on 2^. Ophrah] in v. 24 'Ophrah of the Abi-ezrites.' Presumably, this Ophrah is near Shechem. Abi-ezer is a division of Manasseh (Josh 17 2). Wheat by the winepress] RV 'in' ; i.e. for concealment. The usual threshing-floor is in an exposed place : the winepress is a shallow pit in the ground, from which the grape-juice runs into two deeper vats. There would have been but little wheat to thresh. 13. My Lord] not as Lord, the divine name, but equivalent to ' Sir.' 14. The Lord] Here the angel is identified with Jehovah: cp.l322. 15. Poor] RY ' the poorest.' Joash, however, can defy the 'city,' V. 31. 17. That thou talkest] RY 'that it is thou that talkest.' The angel has not, however, told Gideon who he is ; proba- bly this clause was not in the original narrative (cp. V. 22). 23. The last clause of v. 21 should apparently follow rather than precede this V. 24. Jehovah-shalom] ' Jehovah is peace' (v. 23) ; cp. Exl?!''. 25. The altar . . that thy father hath] Joash is the priest and custodian of the village sanctuary. The 'grove' should be the pole or 'asherah' at its side. Such an attack would naturally be resented by the villagers. 26. Ordered place] RY 'orderly manner.' 31. To avoid giving up his son (whom the men did not venture to take by force), Joash asks, ' Will you be so presumptuous as to plead for Baal ? That would be impiety worthy of instant death.' Baal can defend himself. 32. Other names compounded with Baal (' lord,' used as equivalent to Jehovah) exist, viz. Ishbaal and Meribbaal. For 'Baal,' ' bosheth ' (shame) is at times substituted by later scribes (2 S 1 1 21). See also on 1 Ch 8 33 2 S 2 «. From the form of the name it should rather mean ' Baal (or Jehovah) founds.' 33. Were gathered together] on the E. of Jordan, for another raid into Palestine, and 'went over' the river. The valley of Jezreel] leads up from the Jordan to the plain of Es- draelon. Jezreel is the modern Zerin. 34. Cp. 1325. Came upon] lit. 'clothed itself with Gideon.' In the strength of this inspira- tion he assembles not only his own clan and fellow-tribesmen, but the men of neighbouring tribes, all of whom would be threatened by the raid. 37. Gideon's tests. Wool retains moisture for a specially long time. CHAPTER 7 The Rout of Midian 1-7. Gideon's choice of his Followers. I. The sites here mentioned are doubtful. Moreh] said to be near Shechem (Gnl26 Dt 1130). After the battle Gideon crosses the Jordan by the fords one would take if travel- ling from Shechem eastwards. 3. Gilead] is E. of the Jordan : some other locality must be meant. For the return of the timid, cp. Dt208. 5. Probably an arbitrary test. It is as easy to find abstract reasons for choosing those who stooped down as for rejecting them. The test in 12*5 is very different. 8-25. The Rout of Midian. II. The author frankly admits that, in spite of 634, Gideon is afraid to take the bolder course. 13. A cake of barley bread] apparently a disk-like cake baked in the ashes : representing the Israelite peasants, as the tent represents the Midianite nomads. 15. Worshipped] bowed down before God. 16. Lamps] RY ' torches.' 18. The Mv-ord] These words do not occur in the Heb. in this v. but are supplied from v. 20. Jehovah is the true leader of the Israelite host. 19. The middle watch] i.e. when the night was about a third through: well before mid- night. 22. These places cannot be identified, but were probably in the Jordan valley, towards a point E. of Shechem. 23. See 635. Probably those who had left Gideon before the surprise now hurry in pursuit of the flying foe. They did not, how- ever, as it would seem, actually join Gideon (8 *). 24. Ephraim] the leading tribe has not yet been mentioned. Beth-barah] not certainly identified; probably a tributary of the Jordan, the Wady Farah, which the Ephraimites would be able to reach before the fugitives. The latter — thus prevented from moving further southwards — would be enclosed between the two rivers, and helpless. Cp. Isa94. 25. Two princes] RY ' the two princes.' 164 8. 1 JUDGES 9. 22 Oreb] 'Eaven.' Zeeb] 'Wolf.' Other side Jor- dan] This is an anticipation of the next c. (v. 4). CHAPTER 8 The Pursuit of the Kings. Gideon's SUBSEQUENT CAREER AND DeATH 1. Cp. c. 12. Ephraim claimed to be the leading tribe ; later the name was often used as a synonym for the northern kingdom. The natural jealousy of the tribe was appeased by Gideon's ready wit ; one might have suspected that, making such claims as these, they would not have left Gideon to take the initiative. 2. Gleaning and vintage] note the contrast between these. Abi-ezer] Gideon substitutes this for his own name. 4. Having di'iven the Midianites into the arms of Ephraim, Gideon turns eastwards. V. 10 implies that a very considerable section of the foe had escaped the trap and was still formidable. 5. Succoth] like Penuel (Gn 33 1"^) must be E. of the Jordan, near the Jabbok. 6. The chiefs of Succoth evidently doubt whether Gideon is really victorious as yet. 9. Tower] Where a city had no walls, a central stronghold was frequent. In the middle ages the church tower sometimes served this purpose: cp. D'^'^. 10. Karkor] unknown. The other two places are probably SE. of the Jabbok. The Midianites were making for the desert (cp. Nu 32 35, 42). For the numbers cp. 7 13. Gideon's first levy is said to have numbered 32,000 (73). 11. The way of them that dwelt in tents] i.e. the road usually taken by the nomads. 12. Secure] i.e. free from anxiety, as in the campW. of the Jordan (c. 7). 13. Before the sun wan iqj'\ E,V ' from the ascent of Heres,' i.e. from the way up to Heres (see on 29). 14. Described] RM 'wrote down' a list of the chief men. The elders are heads of fami- lies ; the princes (cp. v. 6) are the military leaders. 16. Taught] if right, bitterly ironi- cal. All the early versions read ' threshed,' or ' carded,' as v. 7 implies. 18. This private wrong of Gideon's is now mentioned for the first time. Tabor] see on 4'^'. 19. According to the law of blood revenge, the nearest relative is bound to avenge the victim's death (cp. NuSS^^). 20. Jether] is the same name as Jethro(Ex4is 1K2 5). To be slain by a boy would be a further indignity for the two chiefs, who meet their death with barbarian courage. 21. Ornaments] RV ' crescents ': cp. v. 26. 22-35. Gideon's subsequent career and death. 22. The fame of Gideon's exploit makes his countrymen desire that he should become an hereditary monarch and not merely a judge. See Intro, to Samuel. 26. Shekels'] A shekel is rather less than half an ounce. The whole weight would thus be nearly seventy pounds. Collars] RV ' pen- dants.' 27. Ephod] see 175. An image of some sort used in consulting the will of Heaven. 28. Forty years] cp. 531. 29. Jerub- baal] i.e. Gideon : see 63-. 33-35. The Israelites lapse into idolatry after Gideon's death. 33. Baalim] RV ' the Baalim ' : see on 2^1. Baal-berith] i.e. Baal of the Covenant. The alliance between the Canaanites and the He- brews would naturally be cemented by a com- mon worship, which would involve the latter in idolatry : cp. 9-*« (El-berith). CHAPTER 9 The Story or Abimelech This c. breaks the regular order of the book, since Abimelech is not thought of as a judge, and the Canaanites are not here regarded as oppressors. The story, however, throws a valuable light on the way in which Israel fell into unfaithfulness, when free from the yoke of foreign oppression. 1-6. The rise of Abimelech. I. As being born out of regular wedlock, Abimelech would be brought up at first in his mother's family, and reckoned as belonging to it (v. 2), It seems to have been of consider- able position in Shechem. Shechem] still, as in Gn 34, chiefly Canaanitish, in spite of being Joseph's burial-place (Josh 24 32). Threescore and ten ^>/eces of silver] between seven and eight pounds sterling. 4. Vain] worthless : hired mercenaries of no character. 5. On one stone] as if they had been sacrificial animals (lS1433f.). 6. Millo] apparently a Shechemite family, or a town near Shechem (v. 20). The word has a different meaning in 1 K 9 ^^ 2 K 1220. King] Abimelech is no Israelite king, but simply the ruler over the single city of Shechem ; nothing implies that the Hebrews recognised this royalty. Plain] RV ' oak ' : cp. Gn35^Josh242<3iSlli5. PiUar] like the' ash- erah,' a regular feature of a Canaanite shrine. 7-21. Jotham's parable and flight. 7. Gerizim] Shechem lies between Gerizim (nearly 3,000 ft. high) on the S. and Ebal on the N. 8-15. Jotham's Fable. Its connexion with the moral which Jotham wishes to point is somewhat loose, and perhaps it was a popular story ; but it sufficiently expresses Jotham's hatred and contempt ; feelings which find further vent in the sarcasm of the prayer in 16-20. Cp. the fable of Jehoash in 2K14f». The fruit-trees render the real service ; the bramble desires the empty honour. 21. Beer] not known. The name means ' Well ' (cp. Beer-sheba). 22-33. The Conspiracy of Gaal. 22. Over Israel] at most over the Man^ssites 165 9.SS JUDGES 11.1 who were connected with the Canaanites of Shechem. 23. God sent] cp. lS16i^and IK 22 19. For the general attitude which re- gards God as the source of good and evil alike, cp. Am 3*^ Job 2 10. This evil spirit, however, obviously comes as an inevitable retribution upon Abimelech, in fulfilment (as the writer means to imply) of Jotham's curse (v. 57). 25. The main eastern and northern roads both pass through Shechem. Since Abimelech probably took toll from the mer- chants who used them, these highway robberies would injure his treasury and his reputation alike. 26. Gaal is introduced quite abruptly ; vv. 26-41 are really in parenthesis : the main narrative is continued at v. 42. Ebed means ' slave ' ; probably the name was Obed, ' ser- vant ' (of God). 27. Made merry] EV ' held festival': see on 21 21. Gaal seizes his oppor- tunity at this time of excitement. 28. Him] in each case Abimelech. The son of Jerubbaal] and therefore no true Shechemite. For serve, etc., it would make better sense to read ' Ye are servants of the men of Hamor,' etc. Hamor] cp. Gn33i9. 29. And he said] we should read (continuing Gaal's speech) ' and I would say.' Gaal is not interviewing Abimelech (v. 30), who is at Ai-umah (v. 41). 31. Privily] RV ' craftily,' or as RM ' at Tormah,' which per- haps stands for Arumah. 32. The field] the usual expression for the open country: cp. V. 36. 33. The whole atmosphere reeks with intrigue and cruelty : an eloquent comment on the Canaanite character. 34-49. The Conspiracy is stamped out. 35. The entering- of the gate] the usual meeting-place. Gaal does not suspect that Zebul has discovered his plot, and is not on his guard. 37. Plain of Meonenim] lit. ' oak of the soothsayers.' Cp. Gn 12t> Jg45. Trees in Palestine often served as landmarks ; a conspicuous tree is still regarded as endowed with sanctity. 38. Zebul now throws off the disguise. 41. Arumah] is unidentified. Gaal has awakened no real enthusiasm; but neither has Abimelech. 42. The main narrative is continued from v. 25. 45. To ' sow with salt ' (Dt2923) is to make utterly desolate. 46. The tower of Shechem] This appears to be a place outside Shechem (perhaps like Millo, V. 20), whose inhabitants fear a fate similar to that of Shechem itself. Hold] a rare word for 'hiding place,' as in IS 13*5; here, perhaps, meaning some strong and spacious chamber in the temple. The god Berith] RV 'El-berith': see on 8 33. 48. Zalmon] probably a neighbouring hill. The hill in PsGSi'i is thought to be E. of Jordan in the Hauran range. 50-57. The Death of Abimelech. 50. Thebez] 13 m. NE. of Shechem. 51. Top] RV ' roof,' which would probably be flat, with a parapet. 53. A piece of a mill- stone] RV ' an upper millstone,' detachable from the lower; such stones weighed about 27 pounds. The mill is of course worked by hand. All to brake] RV 'brake.' 'To brake ' is really one word, meaning ' smashed ' or ' broke in.' 54. Armourbearer] cp. 1 S 140 31*. The king's attendant has just time to give him a mortal wound. 55. Men of Israel] see on v. 22. The Israelites have sup- ported Abimelech against their common foes. 56. Rendered] RV ' requited.' CHAPTER 10 The Ammonite Oppression 1-5. The Minor Judges, Tola and Jair. I. Defend] RV ' save.' Tola] see on Gn46i3 Nu2623 lCh7i. Shamir] unknown. Issachar appears at this time to have had no territory of its own. 3. Jair] see Nu32*i Dt3i* 1K413. Gilead is the country E. of the Jordan to which Jephthah also belongs, and which was specially open to attack. 4. Havoth-jair] i.e. tent-villages of Jair : cp. 1 Ch 2 22. 5. Camon] unknown. 6-18. The Ammonite oppression. These vv. serve as an introduction to the story of Jephthah, and also, in part (vv. 6, 7), to those of Samson and Samuel. They repeat the lessons of c. 2, and, like that passage, remind us throughout of the tone of Deuteronomy. The sequence of thought is the same ; faithless- ness, oppression, repentance, deliverance. 6. Baalim and Ashtaroth] see on 2ii-i3. 7. The children of Ammon] seeGnl93s, where they are said to be akin to the Hebrews. They claimed the land between the Arnon and the Jabbok, E. of Jordan, which the tribes of Reuben and GadJpd partly possessed, and which includes a rarge part of Gilead (v. 8). The Amorites were the aboriginal inhabitants of this, as of the hill-country W. of the Jordan. 9. The Ammonite raids extended to the central strongholds of Pales- tine (cp. 121); but c. 11 makes it clear that the brunt of their ' oppression ' was felt in Gilead. 11. See v. 6. The two lists partially coincide. The Amorites] Perhaps a reference to Nu212if. Ammon] So far no deliverance from these has been described. 12. We know nothing of a Zidonian oppres- sion. Amalekites] see 3^3 and 63.33^ also Ex 17 8. Maonites] LXX has ' Midianites.' The Maonites lived S. of the Dead Sea : cp. 2 Ch20i RV, 267. 17. Mizpeh] of Gilead, the scene of the compact between Jacob and Laban (Gn3149). The name means 'watch-tower.' CHAPTER 11 Jephthah's Victory over the Ammonites. His r.\sh Vow i-il. The Choice of Jephthah. 166 11. 1 JUDGES 12. 11 I. As the son of a harlot, Jephthah has no legal standing in the tribe. Gilead begat] Thi-oughout the rest of the narrative Gilead is the name of a place, not a person (cp. 12 7). Here Gilead's ' sons ' represent the legitimate tribesmen. 3. Tob] must have been near Gilead, probably to the NE. (cp. 2 810*5). Vain men] see on 9 *. ' Broken men,' such as came to David at the cave of Adullam (IS 22 2). Went out] on forays. 9. Jephthah insists on being more than a hired captain : he will be reinstated in the tribe, and placed at its head permanently : cp. 1 S 11 ^^. II. Before the LORD] in the holy place at Mizpeh, so that there would be no going back from the bargain. 12-28. Jephthah and the Ammonite chieftain. For this appeal to the enemy's sense of right cp. Nu20i*f-, an event to which Jephthah here refers. 13. See on 10'''. Restore] The possessions of Israel are still in dispute. 18. Jephthah points out that Israel made a wide detour so as to leave the real territory of Moab free ; he does not refer specifically to Ammon, but in the following vv. , as here, he seems to have Moab specially in his mind. The two peoples were akin to one another : cp. Gnl93">38. ip. gee Nu 21 21 f. Heshbon is 16 m. E. of the Jordan, and 12 m. S. of the capital of Ammon. The Amorite territory had belonged to Moab formerly (]Sru2126). 20. Coast] RV ' border,' i.e. territory. Jahaz] cp. Nu2123 Dt232 ; a Moabite city. 22. The wilderness] the Eastern desert. 23. Jephthah's argument (see on v. 19) is that no land had been taken from Moab or Ammon, only from the aboriginal Amorites. 24. Chemosh] pr^oerly, the god of Moab. The Ammonite god was Milcom (IK 11 33^ etc.). It has been inferred that Jephthah, or the narrator of Jephthah's words, believed in the existence and power of Chemosh as in that of Jehovah : but this cannot be held to be certain : see also v. 27. An interesting commentary on this passage is to be found in an inscription of Mesha, king of Moab (2 K 3 ■* *•), who ascribes all his defeats to the wrath of Che- mosh, and his conquests over Israel to Chemosh's goodwill. 25. RV rightly puts the stop at the end of the v. V. 26 begins a fresh question : see ]S'u22 2f. 26. Aroer] on the N. bank of the Arnon, like Heshbon and Jahaz, is a Moabite town. The Ammonite town, Rabbath- Ammon, is unmentioned. Three hundred years] The different periods hitherto men- tioned in the book amount to 301 years. 29-33. Jephthah's Victory over Ammon. 29. The Spirit of the LORD] cp. T^'*. In V. 11 Jephthah and all the people are already at Mizpeh. If these words stand in the right place, they must refer to further journeys taken by Jephthah to rouse the whole people, previous to attacking the Ammonites. 30, 31. Cp. the vows of Jacob (Gn2820), Hannah (ISl"), Absalom (2S158). What- soever] RM ' whosoever.' Who would have been more likely to come out to meet the returning captain than his only daughter ? Mesha, king of Moab, sacrificed his eldest son in the stress of a siege (2K327), and that the rite of child-sacrifice was not unknown in Israel is shown by 2 K 16 3 216 Jer73iEzk 1620 2020 Mic67, etc. Cp. also Gn22. 33. The plain of vineyards] should be a proper name, Abel-cheramim (so RV). 34-40. The fulfilment of Jephthah's vow. The tragic story is told with consummate art and noble reticence. There is no reason to doubt its literal truth. 34. Came out to meet him] cp. Ex 15 20 IS 186. 35. Thou] The pronoun is emphatic. Jephthah had had troubles enough both from his kinsmen and his foes. When his daughter comes out to meet him, the full significance of his self-imposed vow bows him strengthless to the ground. 36. His daughter divines what is in his mind : for she could hardly have learned of his vow beforehand (v. 34). 37. Bewail my virginity] The greatest grief of a Hebrew woman consisted in being child- less. The writer leaves us in no doubt of her fate. 40. Lament] RV ' celebrate.' CHAPTER 12 The Ephraimites quarrel with Jeph- thah. His Death 1-6. Jephthah and Ephraim. Once more the members of the leading tribe find them- selves left out of the victory, and complain : cp. 8 1. Jephthah deals with them differently from Gideon. I. Northward] RM ' to Zaphon,' a town near Succoth : cp. Josh 13 27. 2. 'When I called you] It would seem that Jephthah had done more than simply rouse Gilead : see on 1 1 29. 4. Jephthah now makes use of the headship promised him in 1 1 11. The second part of the v. is unintelligible. As it stands, it refers to some further taunt of the Ephraim- ites. But ' fugitives ' means, in the original, ' survivors ' : and the Gileadites are regarded in the genealogies as an offshoot of Manasseh, to whom, indeed, the land of Gilead was assigned. 5. The passages] RV ' fords.' Ephraim had invaded Gilead, and the Gileadites took advantage of a dialectical peculiarity to identify every Ephraimite fugitive. Some exaggeration of numbers seems indisputable. 8-15. The Minor Judges, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon. 8. Bethlehem] Probably in Zebulun, men- tioned in Josh 19 is. 9, Thirty] cp. 10-*. II. Elon] in NU26 26 the name of a clan ; 167 12. 15 JUDGES 15. possibly in the cases of Ibzan and Abdon also the hero and his family are confused. 15. Pirathon] Possibly the modern Ferata, SW. of Shechem. Amalekites] Probably the Amalekites had made a settlement in Mt. Ephraim. CHAPTEE 13 The Story of Samson Except for 15^0 and 16^1, Samson has none of the characteristics of a Judge. His exploits against the Philistines are all solitary, and though they doubtless afforded relief to the Israelites, they left no permanent result. We learn much more of the internal organisation of the Philistines than of any of the other foes of Israel ; and it was their continued and formidable opposition which, under the will of Jehovah, really welded Israel into a single nation in the times of Samuel and Saul. Samson could not accomplish this ; his hatred of the Philistines is undying ; but its causes are private rather than national ; and his fate is the direct result of his unwillingness to break off all relations with them. He is a warning rather than an example ; but such stories as his could not fail to be popular. 1. The Philistine Oppression : see on 33. 2-25. The Birth and Parentage of Samson. 2. Zorah] in Josh 19 ^^^ a Danite city; it lies some 17 m. W. of Jerusalem. Later, the Danites migrated northwards (c. 18), and Zorah was reckoned as belonging to Judah (Josh 1 .5 33 2 Ch 1 1 10). Family] properly, clan. 3. Angel of the LORD] cp. 2i (3 11. 4. 5. Wine nor strong drink] These aie forbidden to the Nazii-ites (Nu (') 3), and here to the mother of the future Nazirite : cp. also Am 2 12. Unclean] regarded as unfit for food : we may compare our English attitude to horse- flesh. No razor] In Nu6 the 'Nazirite,' or religious devotee, is under restrictions only for a time ; he takes the condition on himself voluntarily ; at the close of the period he cuts off his hair and devotes it to God (cp. Ac IS^S). Here the state begins before birth, and is to last till death. Samson himself does not appear to abstain from wine (1410). Nothing is here said of the connexion between Samson's hair and his strength. 6. Man of God] The woman, apparently like Gideon (see on G^^), does not recognise her visitor as supernatural, though she feels him to be inspired. She does not venture, like her husliand, to ask the stranger's name. 12. Now let thy words, etc.] i.e. granted that this takes place, how shall we, etc. How shall we] RV ' what shall be the manner of the child, and vjhat shall be his work ? ' 15. Cp. 6^'^*. 16. The last words give the reason for V. 15. i8. Secret] RV 'wonderful,' i.e. above your comprehension ; cp. Gn3229. 22. Cp. 622f. IsaG^. No man can hope to see God and live. Note the sound wisdom of the woman's answer. 24, 25. Samson] i.e. probably 'Sun's man' : cp. the name of the Bethshemesh, ' place of the Sun,' just opposite Zorah. Move] a rare word, meaning to disturb or stir up : cp. 14 19 1514, also 310 634 1129. In Samson's case the narratives suggest a peculiar frenzy of strength and rage. Camp of Dan] RV, as a proper name, ' Mahaneh-dan,' which was near Kirjath-jearim, in Judah (c. 18 ^2). Eshtaol] 1^ m. E. of Zorah. CHAPTER 14 The Marriage of Samson 1-5. Samson chooses a wife among the Philistines. He and his parents go down to Timnath. 2. Timnath] some 4 m. SW. of Zorah, allotted to Dan (Josh 19^3) . it -was retaken by the Philistines in the reign of Ahaz (2Ch28i8). Get her for me to wife] It was customary for parents to conduct the negotia- tions and pay the dowry : cp. Gn34'i-i2. 3. Cp. Gn243 2634 2746. 4. it teas of the Lord] God purposed to use Samson as a weapon against the Philistines. 6-9. The slaying of the Lion. 6. Cp. 1325; for the exploit, cp. IS 1734 2 S 23 20. 8. A swarm of bees, .in the car- case] probably it had dried up under the hot sun. 10, II. The bridal feast. 11. When they sa'w him] Many Greek MSS, by a slight change, read ' since they feared him,' a natural explanation of this choice of what was practi- cally a ' body-guard.' Cp. Mt 9 ^^, ' the children of the bride-chamber.' 12-20. Samson's Riddle and its conse- quences. 12. Thirty] one for each of his new com- panions. Sheets] RV ' linen garments.' 15. Called] i.e. invited us to your feast. To take that w^e have] RV ' impoverish us.' 16. She does not dare to tell her husband the real reason of her curiosity. 17. Lay sore upon him] RV ' pressed him sore.' 19. Ashkelon] on the coast of the Philistine country. There is, however, a village of the same name about an hour S. of Timnath (mentioned in ' Survey of Western Palestine ') to which perhaps Samson rushed off. To leave the bride like this is an insult, which her father at once avenges by giving her to the ' best man ' : cp. 152. CHAPTER 15 Samson slaughters the Philistines Samson, being denied his wife, burns the corn of the Philistines. He is delivered up to them by the men of Judah, but bursts his bonds, and slaughters many of the Philistines. 168 15. 1 JUDGES 16. 31 I, 2. Samson is denied his wife. I. Wheat harvest] i.e. about May : cp. V. 4 f. The reason for the last clause is given in l-ii-'-^o, 2. The father still desires to be conciliatory to one who might prove so valuable a son-in-law. 3-8. Samson's Revenge. 3. More blameless than, etc.] RV blameless in regard of . . when I do them a mischief.' Samson means that the Philistines have now clearly put themselves in the wrong. 4. Foxes] RM ' jackals.' 6. See 1415. 7. Though ye have done] RV ' if ye do.' 8. Top, etc.] RV 'cleft of the rock of Etam.' Samson leaves his own tribe for the neigh- bouring territory of Judah. 9-13. The action of the men of Judah. 9. Lehi] The name means ' jawbone,' per- haps from some resemblance in its shape. The site is not definitely known. 10, 11. Each party represents the other as the aggressor. Observe Judah's dread of the Philistines. It is not difficult, with such a spirit, to under- stand foreign domination. Nor is one tribe under any obligation to assist a member of another. 14-20. Samson's Deliverance and Slaughter of the Philistines. 14. The Spirit] see on 1325. Loosed] RV 'dropped.' 15. New] i.e. fresh : not dry or brittle : such might easily be found lying on the ground. A thousand men] cp. 3^1 and 2 S 23 11. 16. In the Hebrew this v. reads as two jingling lines, with a pun on ' ass ' and ' heaps.' 17. Called that place] RV ' that place was called.' Properly, Ramath means ' height.' The name was ' Jawbone height ' : by another pun the meaning ' Jawbone-thi'ow ' is suggested. 19. That vxis in the jaw] RV ' that is in Lehi,' a hollow (Heb. ' mortar ') in the ground close to the scene of the slaughter. The ' caller ' (Heb. hal-kure) is the name for the partridge : cp. 1 S 26 20. 20. He judged] cp. prefatory note to c. 13. CHAPTER 16 Samson's Escape from Gaza. Delilah's Treachery. Samson's Death 1-3. Samson and Gaza. 1. Gaza] 2 m. from the coast, and the last town of Palestine on the coast road to Egypt. Here Samson would be a whole day's journey from his mountain home, in his enemies' territory. 2, 3. They appear not to have surrounded the house, but waited to kill him when he found the gates closed in the morning. He suspects their plan, and does not wait till morning. The two gates would turn on pins, and be made by locks or bars into one piece, which Samson lifts up and carries off. The distance from Gaza to Hebron (one of the highest points in the rugged land of Judah) is nearly 40 m. 4-22. Samson's captm-e through the treachery of Delilah. 4. A woman] For the third time Samson's reckless daring in love brings him into danger. Sorek] a long and fertile ' wady ' or glen, running W. from near Jerusalem to the plain : cp. Gn49ii. Zorah and Timnah are both in this valley. 5. The lords of the Philistines] see on 3 3. Wherein his great strength lieth'] properly ■ by what means his strength is great.' The ' lords ' fancy he must have some amulet or magical device. Afflict] properly, ' tor- ment.' Pieces] i.e. shekels. The amount to be paid by each is about £150. 7. Whether Samson suspects or not, he plays upon her credulity. The supposed secret of the ' green withs,' i.e. undried bowstrings made from the intestines of animals, has all the more verisimilitude because of the sacred (and magical) number seven (cp. v. 13). The Philis- tines are deceived as readily as Delilah. II. Occupied] RV ' wherewith no work hath been done ' : cp. Lkl9i3 (AV). 13, 14. The v. is incomplete. LXX helps us to fill the gap, thus : ' if thou weavest . . web, and beatest up with the pin, my strength will fail ; so while he slept Delilah did so, and she beat up the web with the pin, and said.' Delilah wove the long hair into an unfinished piece of stuff left on the upright loom : the pin was used for ' beating up ' the cloth (in this case, the hair) tight and firm. Went away with the pin of the beam] ' pin ' should here be omitted : Samson pulls the posts of the loom out of the ground. 15. Thine heart] thy mind or knowledge ; cp. vv. 17, 18. 18. Delilah sees at once that Samson is no longer tricking her, and she makes the Philis- tines equally confident. The belief in the importance of the hair (see on 13 5) was wide- spread in antiquity. 19. Afflict] how is not explained. He is still asleep. 20. Departed] when he was robbed of the hair which it was his duty to preserve. 21. See 2K26'^. Grind- ing was women's work. 23-31. Samson's Last Exploit and Death. 23. Dagon] the chief Philistine god (1 S 5). 25-29. He would make sport enough by being what he was, blind and in chains. Pillars] Two columns on which rested the roof of a large verandah, perhaps attached to the temple. After being in the court in front, in the sight of all, both below and above, he is brought to rest against these. 28. My two eyes] RM ' for one of my two eyes.' A stroke of grim humour quite in keeping, at this supreme moment, with the character of Samson. 29. On which it was borne up] RV ' leaned on them.' 31. The Philistines had no wish, and perhaps no spirit, to interfere with Samson's burial in 169 17. 1 JUDGES 18. 17 his own country. Milton has brought out the of ' Samson Agonistes.' Judged] see intro. tragic elements of this wild story at the end to c. 13. PAET 3 The Migrations of the Danites, and the Fetjd between Benjamin and THE other Tribes (Chs. 17-21) This concluding section is really an ap- pendix. Instead of describing a further deliverance, it recounts two tribal stories in which the rough manners and primitive re- ligious ideas of the time are shown with most valuable and vivid detail. Redundancies and discrepancies in the narratives (see on 17 ^ 181'') as well as differences in the language, suggest that more than one account has been used in each of the stories. This is no sign, however, that they are not historical ; and they must probably be placed earlier rather than later in the general framework of the period. CHAPTER 17 The Story of Micah This story, which is continued in the follow- ing c, is undoubtedly a very old one. In striking contrast to many other naiTative portions of the Old Testament, there is in the body of this narrative no condemnation of the image-worship to which the Danites attached such importance, nor of their mode of securing it. We can but wonder the more at the. heights which the religion of Israel was to climb from such beginnings as this. Cp. Josh 19*7. 1-6. Micah's idols. I. Ephraim] see on 327. 2. Eleven hun- dred] see on 16 5. Taken] as appears from the following clause, stolen. The mother's curse (though she is ignorant of the thief) will not allow Micah to rest till the money is re- stored. 3, 4. As the text stands, Micah re- stored the money twice over. This can hardly be correct. ' Yet ' (v. 4) should be ' and,' as in RV. Observe that the images are to be made in honour of Jehovah. 3. Graven image] specifically, an idol carved out of wood or stone, or, generally, any kind of idol. ' Molten image ' was added, not (as it would seem) to denote a second idol (' they ' in v. 4 should be 'it' ; see also IS^o.si)^ but to show that the idol was covered over with the silver. 5. House of gods] i.e. a private shrine. In Heb. the word for ' god ' may be read either as singular or plural. Ephod] see on 8^7. The ephod is often connected with oracular re- sponses (cp. 1 S 23 6-9 : also Ex 28 Lv 8) ; the priest in charge of it can make inquiry of Jehovah. Teraphim] cp. Hos34 : also Gn 3 1 19 1 S 1 5 23 1 9 13 f. The word is plural in form, and seems to denote household idols of some kind : cp. 18 2^. Consecrated] Took into his employment for the performance of religious duties : cp. v. 10,184 IS 71. 6. Cp. 181 1912125. 7-13. The engagement of the Levite. Levite] The word denotes not his tribe but his calling. Sojourned] The regular term used in connexion with a ' resident alien ' who in- tends at some time to return to his home. ID. Father] cp. 2K 212 621; also Gn458; a title of respect, which might be quite con- sistent with the priest's being supported as a son (v. 11). 13. The professional knowledge of the Levite, in matters of ritual, gives him (and his employer) an advantage over others who might be selected as priests. CHAPTER 18 The Danites go in Quest of an In- heritance. They rob Micah of his Images, capture and settle in Laish, AND set up Idol-Worship there i-io. The Danite Spies. 2. From their coasts] RV ' from their whole number.' For Zorah and Eshtaol see on 1325. 3. They knew] They recognised him as a Levite from the prayers he was saying. Makest] RV'doest.' 6. Before the LORD] i.e. under Jehovah's care. 7. Laish] In Josh 19^7 the name appears as Leshem. Later on it was called Dan, from its new inhabitants (cp. V. 29, and c. 20 1). It lay near Lebanon and the sources of the Jordan in the extreme N. of Palestine, and was about 40 m. from Sidon, the famous commercial city on the sea- coast. The rest of the v. implies that the residents were a colony from Zidon. Put them to shame] The Hebrew here gives no intelligible sense. Business] RV ' dealings.' With any man] LXX (in some MSS) reads ' with Syria ' whose capital, Damascus, was about as distant as Sidon. 10. Secure] as always in AV, ' free from care or apprehension.' 11-31. The Danite Expedition to Laish. II. Six hundred men] cp. 20*7 ; a very small number when compared with those given in 2015.17 or 1515 1627. Yet it would seem that the larger part of the tribe went north- wards. Appointed] RV ' girt.' 12. Mahaneh- dan] see on 1325; they then turn northwards. 16. The gate] of the village. 17. An amplification of v. 15 ; further repeated in v. 18. Here and in v. 18 ' graven image ' and ' molten image ' are understood as two distinct objects. In vv. 20, 30, 31 the 170 18. 19 JUDGES 20. 27 ' molten image ' is left unmentioned. 19, See on 1710. 21. Carriage] RV 'goods': cp. Ac 2 1^5 (what is carried: cp. the word ' luggage "). The armed men marched last, expecting pursuit. 28. See on v. 7. The building of one city on the ruins of another was common, as excavations at Gezer and Lachish have made clear. Beth-rehob] un- known. 29. Israel] Jacob : see GnSS^o. 30. The possession of this image was evidently an important thing. Jonathan] This must refer to the young Levite, who has been hitherto unnamed, unless his name has dropped out of the text previously. Ma- nasseh] RY 'Moses.' This, the true text, was altered in later times, to save Moses from any connexion with such a priesthood as this. Captivity] Probably the depopulation of Northern Israel by Tiglath-Pileser in 734 B.C. 31. In Shiloh] NE. of Bethel, where the ark was kept in the ' house of God '(IS 1-4). The destruction of this ' house ' is mentioned in Jer 7 ^^ 26 ^. Possibly it was destroyed by the Philistines. In 1 S 22 ^i the priesthood settled formerly at Shiloh appears at Nob. CHAPTER 19 The Wickedness of Gibeah A Levite and his concubine meet with foul treatment at Gibeah, a town of Benjamin. The indignation of the other tribes is roused against the Benjamites. This c. gives the cause of the war between the rest of the tribes and Benjamin, with which the remainder of Judges is concerned. It is difficult to determine the period to which this war should be assigned. In c. 20 there is no recognised leader or judge in Israel, but all the tribes (quite differently from else- where) act together ' as one man ' (20 ^-^^) ; and the numbers given (202.15--25) imply a very large population ; though an army approach- ing half a million in number seems unthink- able. On the other hand, it is hard to believe that Benjamin could have suffered such a disaster as this within a generation or two of Saul's accession to the throne. Probably we have an old story, dating from the wild days before Saul (19 1 20 -S), part of which at least (20, 211-14) was retold at a much later period, when the exact details had been lost and were replaced by the writer's conceptions of the past : see on 20^8. I. When there vms no king] see on 17*5. A certain Levite] see on 17'^. 3. He re- joiced] feeling the separation to be a disgrace. 10. Jebus] see I21 : also Josh 158 IChll*. The journey from Bethlehem would not take more than two hours. 12. See on l'-^. Did they remember the story of Sodom (Gnl9) ? 13. Gibeah . . Ramah] both N. of Jeru- salem. 14. There is hardly any twilight in Palestine. 15. Gibeah thus proves as inhos- pitable as they feared Jerusalem would be. 16. The field] i.e. the open country sur- rounding the village. 18. The house of the Lord] LXX reads ' my house,' which is preferable. 19. Note the politeness of the phrases ' thy handmaid ' and ' thy servants.' The traveller needs nothing except actual house-room. An inn is only the modern substitute for the hos- pitality on which originally travellers were compelled to rely. This hospitality the stranger from Ephraim (cp. LklO^S) insists on pro- viding fully. 22. Sons of Belial] The Hebrew means simply ' worthless men ' or ' rascals.' Belial is not a proper name : cp. 1 S 1 1^). 23. The old man dreads being compelled to violate the laws of Eastern hospitality. 29. Cp. 1S117. CHAPTER 20 The Slaughter of the Benjamites The Levite recounts his wrongs to a full assemblage of the tribes, who decree punish- ment upon Benjamin. Their first two attacks are unsuccessful, but the third results in the almost total extermination of the Benjamites. i-ii. The Israelites assemble at Gibeah. 1. Congregation] This word is only used in the later books of the OT. after Israel had ceased at the exile to be a nation : see intro. c. 19). Dan] see on IS^^, Beer-sheba] the southernmost point of Palestine, 28 m. SW. of Hebron. See Gn. 21, 26 1 S82 Am 5 5. 2. Four hundred thousand] contrast b^. 3. Mizpeh] not the place in Gilead men- tioned in 11 11, but on a hill about two hours' journey NW. from Jerusalem. 12-29. The defeats of the Israelites. 12. The responsibility for the outrage is regarded as resting on the whole tribe. 15. In vv. 44-47 only 25,600 men are accounted for. LXX here reads 25,000, and neglects the 700 men of v. 16. 16. See on 3i5. 18. Cp. I2. Bethel (RV) would be some four hours' dis- tance to the N. After this journey the whole army marches back to Gibeah. 23. This v., placed in brackets, should really precede v. 22, on which v. 24 properly follows. 25. In these two battles the Israelites thus lose a tenth of their whole number. 26. House of God] RV ' Bethel.' Burnt offerings . . peace offer- ings] Sacrifices in which the whole was con- sumed on the altar, and sacrifices in which part was eaten by the worshippers at a common meal. 27, 28. This parenthesis is added to explain why Bethel was visited, and not Shiloh, as might have been expected from the statements made in Josh 18 10 and 1 S 4 3. If the note about Phinehas is correct, these events must have taken place in the first generation after Joshua. 171 20. 30 JUDGES— RUTH INTRO. 30-48. The destruction of Benjamin. 31. The same stratagem as that which had proved successful at Ai (Josh 8 1*'). House of God] RV ' Bethel,' as in v. 26. 33. Baal- tamar] unknown. 35. The Lord] Israel's success is really Jehovah's. This v. anticipates the end of the story. In the whole narrative there is a good deal of misplacement (e.g. vv. 37, 39) and redundancy (e.g. vv. 31,32). V. 36 commences what is really a second account of the battle, with a very much fuller conclusion. 37. Drew themselves along] ' moved forward.' 42. The ■wilderness] i.e. to the more desolate region lying to the E. 43. With ease] RV ' at their resting place,' or, as RM, ' at Menuhah.' The sunrising] i.e. the E. 45. Rimmon] 3 m. E. of Bethel. Gidom is unknown. 48. The men of every city] RV ' the entire city,' or, as RM, ' the inhabited city.' CHAPTER 21 Wives are given to the Benjamite Survivors 1-6. The lamentation for Benjamin. I. Had sworn] see on 17 2. All the women and children in Benjamin have been massacred: cp. V. 16. 2. House of God] RV 'Bethel.' as in 20 '^'5' 21. 4. Burnt offerings and peace offer- ings] see on 20'^'°. 5. Lit. 'the great curse had been pronounced upon,' etc. 6. Repented them] see on 2 is. 7-25. The Benjamites provided with wives. 8. Jabesh-gilead] i.e. Jabesh in Gilead; cp. IS 11 3111-13. Probably about 10 m. SE. of Beth-shean or Beisan. 12. Shiloh] see on 18^1. Hitherto, Bethel had been the head- quarters. 13. Call peaceably] RV ' proclaim peace.' 14. 200 survivors were still left unprovided for. 19. Shechem] see on 91. Lebonah] 3 m. NW. of Shiloh. Shiloh thus lies off the main road, and soon loses its early importance. 21. To dance] see on 9^7; also 2S61'*. The act, like the whole feast, was regarded as religious. 22. No clear sense can be obtained from the Heb. The general meaning must be, ' allow the men to keep these girls, since we did not find wives for them in Jabesh-gilead ; and as your daughters were taken from you by force, you have not broken your oath.' RUTH INTRODUCTION The book of Ruth is one of the most de- hear of anything to his advantage, but quick lightful stories ever penned. It carries us to drop it the moment he is told of a fly in without an effort into an old-world realm alto- gether unlike our work-a-day life. Whilst we read it the customs of that other realm seem quite familiar to us. And how admirably are the actors in the story depicted ! We are made intimately acquainted with Orpah and Ruth ; with the girl who accompanies her mother-in- law on the homeward jovu-ney as far as the border of the two countries, professes her in- tention to go the whole way, only waits to be dissuaded, weeps, kisses, turns back ; and with the girl who forsakes fatherland, kindred, and ancestral worship, because of her deep love for the bereaved and the dead. The character of Naomi, too, is ' instinct with life.' In the difficult position of mother-in-law she knows how to win the tender love of the two younger women, and the open secret of her influence is the unselfishness which declines Orpah's offer and devotes itself to Ruth's interests. And Boaz is provided with an excellent foil in the person of the anonymous kinsman. The latter is a keen and calculating individual, eager to the ointment. The former is quietly ready to respond to any call of duty, yet willing to give up the satisfaction of doing it to one who may have a stronger claim. Modest and humble, he is at the same time beloved and respected. Consider, too, how different an impression is made on us by the critical point in the book, the hinge on which the whole turns, c. 3, from that which would be made by a modern writer treating such a theme ! The course pursued on that occasion is so entirely alien to om* ideas and customs. Yet it is described with so skilful a hand, or, rather, with so pure a heart, that no thought of evil can obtrude itself. And the type of piety which it recom- mends so strongly by merely describing it is singularly engaging. It is so thoroughly un- affected, human and real. Contrast the pro- found feeling and perfect simplicity of 116,17 with the stilted and unnatural paraphrase in the Talmud. There the older woman says, ' We are forbidden to go beyond the limits of a sabbath day's journey ' : Ruth replies, ' Where 172 INTRO. RUTH 1. 8 (i.e. as far as) thou goest I will go ' : ' It is not allowed amongst us for two persons of different sexes to be alone together ' : ' Where thou lodgest I will lodge ' : ' Six hundred and thir- teen commandments have been given us ' : ' Thy people is my people ' : ' The worship of other gods is prohibited to us ' : ' Thy God is my God ' : ' The courts are allowed to put men to death in four ways ' : ' Where thou diest I will die ' : and so forth. The ancient Jewish commentator saw more clearly the spirit of the book when, after feeling a little puzzled at finding in this Scripture no legal or ceremonial prescriptions, he concluded that it was com- posed to teach us ' how great is the reward of human kindness.' It is generally agreed that the book, though embodying old traditions, is of later date than the scenes it describes. The period of the Judges lay far behind (1 1) : the customs of an earlier time required explanation (4 ^). The purity of its thought and style lead some scholars to favour a pre-exilic date ; but the majority are disposed to place it either during or after the exile. From the stress which the author lays on the Moabitish origin of Ruth, it has been inferred that he was an opponent of the rigorous measures adopted by Ezra and Nehemiah against intermarriage with foreigners (Ezr9i Nehl323). If he did live in the time of that great struggle, and was in some measure influenced by it, he scarcely allows this to appear. Other objects ascribed to him are, to illustrate the life of David, and to enforce the duty of the next-of-kin marrying a childless widow ; but if either of these were in his mind at the start, they were almost forgotten in the interest of the scenes and actions with which he deals. He could never have produced so beautiful a work if he had been writing a pam- phlet with a special didactic aim. He simply tells the story of a woman's fidelity and its reward, to show us his ideal of the ' Excellent Woman ' and to make us feel that God did not forget her. ' How sweet an ended strife ! How sweet a dawning life ! ' As a scholar of the last generation has said : ' The book of Ruth presents us with a simple story of domestic life — such as has happened, and is happening over and over again in this world — the familiar story of a daughter's affec- tion and a young wife's happiness. . . In Ruth we see a daughter clinging to a parent in her age, with all the unselfishness of true-hearted affection ; volunteering to share her lowliness and her distress ; finding favour for her piety with the Lord and also with men ; chosen by Boaz to be his wife ; from obscure poverty taken to an honourable bed ; the young lonely widow of the first chapter, changed in the last into a joyful mother of children.' It is interesting to remember that when St. Matthew traces the genealogy of Joseph he is careful to say (1 ^) that Boaz begat Obed of Ruth ; and St. Luke has evidently the same line of descent in view when he mentions Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David, Nathan among the an- cestors of the mother" of our Lord (33i>32). Ruth occupies the second place amongst the ' Megilloth ' or ' Rolls,' the five short writings kept separate from the rest, each on its own roll, and read in the synagogue on five great days of the Jewish Calendar. It is used on the second of these occasions, at the Feast of Pentecost, the great Harvest Festival. For such an occasion it would be difficult to find a more appropriate lesson than these chapters, which put in so pleasing a light the labours and the charities of the harvest season. CHAPTER 1 The Exile and the Return of Naomi 1. Beth-lehem-judah] two hours' journey S. of Jerusalem, is to be distinguished from Beth- lehem in Zebulun (JoshlO^^). It was but a short distance from Moab, which, in the days here referred to, was a fertile, highly cultivated country. Travellers still speak of it as a land of streams. Nothing short of the compulsion of famine could have induced a Hebrew to migi-ate~ into this foreign country where he would have no right of citizenship, this unclean land where Jehovah could not be worshipped. 2. The name Elimelech means ' my God is King.' Naomi, or, as it ought to be written, ' Noomi,' means ' pleasant.' The two sons, Mahlon (' sickly ') and Chilion (' wasting away '), evidently owe their names to the fate which overtook them. It is not quite certain how we should understand the names ' of their wives. Orpah was taken by some of the Jewish commentators as signifying ' the back of the neck,' and explained by her having turned her back on Naomi. Ruth may be ' friend ' or ' refreshment ' : the Talmud takes the latter view, ' because David sprang from her, who refreshed the Holy One with songs and praises.' Ephrathah is another name for Bethlehem, or perhaps the name of the district of Bethlehem. 4. The author of our book sees nothing wrong in their marrying Moabite wives. In this he agrees with earlier ideas and customs (Jgl4"- 16«- 2S1133 1K714), not with such enactments as Dt'233*-, or such stern proceed- ings as Ezra and Nehemiah took when they compelled the Jews to abandon their foreign wives (Ezr9, 10 NehlS^^-so)^ or the Targum here, which says, ' And they transgressed the commandment of the Lord and married strange women.' 8, 9. The young widow would naturally return to her mother's house, for she would live in the women's part of the house or tent 173 1.11 RUTH 2.7 (Gn 24 28, 67 Jg4i7 Song 3 4). The belief of that age was that men would receive in this life an exact recompense for their good and evil actions : see especially Ps 1824, 26_ These two good women were to find rest after the troubles and disappointments of their Hebrew marriages. 11-13. If Naomi had other sons the obliga- tion of marrying their deceased brother's widow would devolve on one of them. This Levirate law (from Zeri;- — ' a brother-in-law ') has been observed in many quarters of the globe, in India, Madagascar, Brazil, etc. Amongst the Hebrews the two objects which it aimed at were, to prevent the extinction of the dead man's name, and to save the property belong- ing to a family from being broken up and dis- persed among other families. The firstborn son of the new marriage was considered to be the child and heir of the dead (Gn;-i8 Dt25s-io). Naomi asks : Would ye stay for them from having husbands ? or, more literally : ' Would ye shut yourselves up from having husbands ? ' For the widow, awaiting the second marriage, must remain at home in seclusion (GnSBii). 14, 15. Possibly Orpah did not intend going beyond the necessary courtesy of accompany- ing her mother-in-law to the border of the two countries. Then she would return to her people and ' her god ' (RV). Chemosh was the national god of Moab (Nu2129 IKll^, etc.). 16-18. Ruth's impassioned declaration re- minds us of the Druze sheikh, who, on parting with Mrs. Burton, exclaimed, ' Allah be with you and your house ! I would we had never seen you, because of this parting. If you loved a stone I would put it in my bosom, and if you hated the moon I would not sit under its raya.' According to ancient ideas a god and his people were inseparable : if Ruth deter- mined to go over to Naomi's fatherland and race she necessarily accepted their deity : if David was driven out of Israel he was thereby bidden, 'Go, serve other gods' (18261^). Moreover, it was an even more cherished privilege then than now to be interred with one's relatives: the phrase for a desirable kind of burial was, ' to be gathered to one's fathers.' In Ezk 32 17-32 jt is implied that the various nations inhabit separate localities in the in- visible world. Ruth cleaves to her mother- in-law as Elisha to Elijah (2 K 2 2-6). 19-22. Every one in the little town knew her. Yet how much she had altered. The women, of course, knew her best, and they exclaimed, ' Is this Naomi ? ' She repudiated the old name, renaming herself Mara, ' Bitter,' because the Almighty, who is here called Shaddai, had dealt bitterly with her. The same expression occurs in Job 27 2. The exact force of the divine name Shaddai is un- certain. Except in the book of Job we always meet it in conjunction with the general name God, ' God Shaddai.' Ex63 regards it as an ancient title. Jehovah testified against Naomi by treating her as a sinner, for suffering was always regarded as an evidence of guilt. When the widow's son dies she cries out to Elijah : ' Art thou come to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son ? ' (1 K 17 1^). We have no ground for assuming any particular transgres- sion on Naomi's part : the Targum is clearly wrong in fixing on the migration to Moab. How unlike Naomi's fortunes to those of Abraham, who from being alone became a multitude (Isa 51 2), and those of Jacob, who with nothing but a staif in his hand crossed the Jordan, and returned in two bands (Gn32iO) ! Barley harvest begins early in April. CHAPTER 2 Ruth the Gleaner 1. Boaz] ('quickness') was a kinsman of Elimelech's. We are not informed of the precise degree of relationship. Here and at 32 he is designated an ' acquaintance.' It is by no means certain that we are to think of him as ' a mighty man of wealth ' ; the phrase here employed sometimes points out a capable, active man ( 1 K 11 28 Neh 1 1 14). The Targum is of course wrong in explaining it by ' a man strong in the Law ' — an explanation which re- minds us of Apollos, ' mighty in the scriptures ' (Acl82i). 2, 3. Ruth will not sit with folded hands. Like any other poor person she has a right to glean (Lv 199*- 2322 Dt24iy), but the landowner can make the exercise of this right easier or more disagreeable. Hence she is not sure where her task will be prosecuted, and it seems a piece of rare, though undesigned, good fortune that she lights on the portion of the field which belongs to Boaz. The portions belonging to different owners were not separ- ated by walls, hedges or ditches, but by a stone, a stoneheap, or a marked tree (Dtl9i4). 4-6. These ancient forms of salutation were distinguished by politeness, heartiness, and religious feeling (cp. Gn4329 Jerl920f. 2K429 Psl29"'^). The Arabic formula now is 'God be with you ' : in Egypt the first speaker cries ' Peace be on you,' and the reply comes, ' On you be peace, and the mercy of God and His blessings, ' or simply ' On you be peace.' 7. Ruth's good qualities appear at every turn : she was careful to ask leave ; she worked steadily all through the long, weary day, not resting during its hottest hours. The last words of this verse are now corrupt : the original statement was ' she has not rested at all,' or ' she has not been home at all ' ; 3" shows that there was no building in the field to rest in. 174 % 8 RUTH 3. 8 8, 9. His maidens were the women-servants who went over the ground after the reapers, reaping being done in so slovenly a manner in the East that much would be wasted if this sup- plementary work were not performed. The note on v. 3 indicates how easy it would be to stray into another's field. The young men are the harvesters who come together from all parts of the country, and, away from the restraints of their own homes, are apt to be free of speech, and loose in conduct. 10-12. She throws herself prostrate on the ground, as Orientals have always done before their superiors. She acknowledges herself a foreigner, destitute of right or claims. But Boaz sees only the heroism implied in her having committed herself to the uncovenanted kindness of a strange people. And he com- mends the wisdom and piety which have brought her to take refuge under the protecting wings of Jehovah the God of Israel (Dt32ii Ps368 572 914 Lkl334). 13. With joyful surprise she exclaims, Let me find favour in thy sight ! or, rather, ' I find grace in thy sight ! ' There is something very beautiful in the literal meaning of the words rendered ■ Thou hast spoken friendly ' : it is 'Thou hast spoken to the heart' (Isa402 Jer 193): the words are so friendly that they fall on the heart like dew. And this is all the more wonderful to her, seeing that, as a foreigner, she does not stand on a level even with his women-servants. ' Make me as one of thy hired servants ' (Lk 15 1^). 14. Vinegar and water was the customary drink of Roman soldiers and slaves. The harvesters in Palestine still dip their bread in vinegar and find it very refreshing. Parched corn is also a favourite article of food : the ears are gathered when not quite ripe, and are roasted on an iron plate, or are thrust in small bundles into a fire of dry grass and thorns ; there is a milky and yet crusty flavour about it which makes pleasant eating. ' She did eat, and was sufficed, and left thereof ' (RV). 15-18. As a special favour she is to be allowed to glean not only where the sheaves have been removed, but amongst them as they stand. Curiously enough she is represented at v. 7 as requesting this. The reapers are also to pluck out ears as they gather them up for binding and let them drop as if by accident. No wonder that when she had beaten it out with a stick (JgO^^ Isa282'') she had about a bushel of grain. As one has seen poor women taking home food for their children from some feast which has been given them, so the thrifty, affectionate Ruth carries to Naomi the parched corn which had remained over from her unexpected midday meal. 19-23. Ruth now learns for the first time that Boaz is related to them, a near kinsman, one of those who have the right to buy back for them the land that has been parted with. If an Israelite was compelled by poverty to dispose of his property, such a kinsman could compel the purchaser to sell it back (Lv252S'*"'*^) ; the object of the law being to preserve each family in possession of its land. Naomi felt that Providence was not only showing loving-kindness to her daughter- in-law and herself, but also to her husband and sons, by bringing about the prospect of the land which had once belonged to them again being called by their name. Her deep- seated piety comes out too ; the bitterness of 120 yields immediately to faith, hope, and gratitude. And her practical wisdom is seen in the injunction not to vex this kind- hearted man by failing to make use of his offered kindness. Wheat-harvest is two or three weeks later than barley. CHAPTER 3 The Appeal to Boaz I. Marriages are always arranged by the parents in Eastern lands ; here, of course, the mother-in-law must intervene. 2-7. Grain is winnowed in the evening, to avoid the heat of the day and take advantage of the cool sea-wind, which blows in Palestine from 4 p.m. to half-an-hour before sunset. As a rule the threshing floor, which is an open space of clean, hard, dry gi'ound, is on an elevated spot. But at Beth-lehem it was necessary to go ' down ' to it, because the town is on the summit of the ridge and higher than any of the surrounding eminences. Ruth is to wash and anoint herself and put on the simlah^ the long outer robe of ceremony, for this was to be a formal and important visit. Every precaution, too, was to be taken to ensure Boaz being in a genial frame of mind ; the day's work was to be at an end, and he was to have eaten and drunk: cp. Gn27'*'25, and David's assumption that even Nabal would be generous during the feast of sheep- shearing (lS25^-8). Naomi had entire con- fidence in the honour of her kinsman, and although the procedure which she devised is alien to all our thoughts and customs, it is conceived and carried out without a spot of impure intention. To this day the Syrian farmer lies down under the shelter of a heap of threshed corn to protect it from thieves, or sleeps close by with his family in a little hut erected for the purpose. 8-18. At midnight the sleeper was startled. He bent forward to ascertain what was there, and the swift, curt question. Who art thou ? reveals his alarm. Her request is : Spread thy skirt (or, thy wing) over thine handmaid, i.e. Become my guardian and protector by marrying me (EzklG^), according to the duty 175 3. 8 RUTH 4. 11 of a near kinsman. The law in Dt25 required that a brother should do this, if he and the deceased had dwelt together on the land belonging to the family. The right or duty was subsequently extended to more distant relatives. Boaz looked on this appeal as an even greater loving-kindness than Ruth had shown to Naomi, seeing that he was no longer young, and younger men would willingly have married her. The Rabbinical commen- tary on this book goes curiously astray in fixing his age as 80 and hers as 40. All the ' gate ' of his people knew that she was an ' excellent ' woman. They had discussed her in the gate of the city, which was the place of concourse, consultation and gossip, like the Gk. agora (A.cl7i"'is), and the forum of the Romans. But ready as he was to take up the position of Goel (see on Job 19 ^s), he would not encroach on the stronger claim which another man had. For this night she must remain where she was, lest mischief should befall her at the hands of some of the roisterers who were especially likely to be abroad at that season of the year (Song 5''). Yet she must leave whilst it was still too dark for a man to discern his friend if he met him ; no breath of scandal must touch their good name. Let it not be known, said Boaz, that the ■woman came to the threshing floor. The ' mantle ' (RV) here mentioned is not the same as the sinilah of v. 3 ; most likely it was the veil of cotton cloth or coarse muslin which rests on the head and falls down the back of Bedouin and peasant women, and is often used by them for carrying such things as vegetables. The present of three-fifths of a bushel of barley is at one and the same time an out- pouring of his liberality and a precaution against the suspicion which might have been roused if any one had met her ; they were to be led to think that she had been to fetch grain. The AV is correct in stating that she now went into the city ; he came later (4 1). It would almost seem as though her mother- in-law could not at the first moment see who she was : Who art thou, my daughter ? But perhaps the question really meant, ' How hast thou fared ? ' CHAPTER 4 The Marriage of Boaz and Ruth. The Birth of their Child 1. Boaz went up from the threshing floor to the open space by the city-gate, where the business he had in hand would have to be done, where, too, he would catch the other kinsman on his way out to the field. The author does not know this man's name, and therefore contents himself with calling him ' So and So.' 2. Ten was considered a perfect number (Jer627 1S255 2S181-5): where ten Jews live there should be a synagogue; these ten elders are heads of the community, sheikhs, as they would be called to-day. 3-5. Elimelech was not their brother in the strict sense, but was a member of the same family (Gn 1 3 « 1 S 20 6, 29 2 S 1 9 is). Naomi had already sold the land. Ruth's being under the necessity of gleaning shows that her mother- in-law was no landowner: 2^8 is an eloquent testimony to their poverty. The kinsman had now the opportunity of buying it back for them, and it is plain from v. 5 that this trans- action would take the form of a purchase from Naomi : the presence of the elders and the other inhabitants, 'them that sit here,' would make it a valid bargain. But if he bought the land he must also purchase Ruth as his wife. There can be no doubt that Boaz said: ' Thou must also buy Ruth ' : Ruth has nothing to do with the sale ; see also v. 10. The money which the bridegroom used to give to the bride's family was compensation for the loss of her valuable services. And at the present time in Syria ' No marriage is strictly legal among the Mussulmans without a Mahr or settlement from the bridegroom to the bride. It may consist of only a few silver pence, still it must be made.' Jacob's services to Laban were prices paid for Leah and Rachel. 6. The kinsman draws back. The Rabbinic commentator thought that he was afraid of dying by God's judgment for marrying a Moabite, as Mahlon and Chilion had perished. But his motive seems to have been an un- willingness to encroach on his own property for the sake of a son by Ruth, who would be heir of the newly acquired land and would not be accounted his child. 7-10. In the case described at Dt259 the woman removes the shoe of the man who declines to act ; here the man himself takes it off : there, by that symbolic act, she takes away the right he will not exercise ; here, he renounces it. At Ps 60 ^^ 108 ^^ the shoe thrown over the land is a sign that possession is taken : see on Am26 8*^. Similar customs have existed amongst the Hindoos, the ancient Germans, and the Arabs. When an Ai'ab divorces his wife, he says: ' She was my babuj (slipper) and I cast her off.' Boaz declares it to be his purpose to prevent the name of the dead from being cut off : if Ruth should bear a son he would be the representative of Mahlon, and men would remember the father's name whilst they called the child Ben-Mahlon, Mahlon's son. II, 12. No Hebrew woman could desire a better fortune than to resemble the two wives of Jacob from whom the entire people had sprung. And the wish of the Bethlehemites for Boaz was that he might win a name which 176 4. 13 RUTH— 1 AND 2 SAMUEL INTRO. should be famous amongst them as the head of a powerful and illustrious house. Perez, whom they go on to mention, was the child borne by Tamar to Judah, when the latter unwittingly did her the justice (Gn 38) which Boaz was so willing to render to Ruth. The cases were also parallel as regards the respec- tive ages of the man and the woman. 13-16. It was an honoiir and a mark of divine favour to have a son, a discredit and curse both to husband and wife to be without : ' He who has not left a son to be his heir, with him the Holy One — blessed be He — is angry. ' This son would take upon him all the duties of near kinsman to Naomi. He would be a ' restorer of life ' (RV), reviving the fainting soul, inspiring fresh hope, joy, courage (Ps 19 8 Prov 25 13 Lam 1 ^^). His mother had been better to Naomi than seven (i.e. any number of) sons. And now the grandmother puts the child in her bosom, to indicate that he belonged to her (Grn 30 ^ 50 -■^), as a Roman father took up the child from the ground and thus owned him. 17. The women are still to the front. As a rule the father or mother named the child. But it is the neighbours who here call him Obed, ' Servant,' anticipating that he would minister to all the wants of the aged woman who had been a true mother to Ruth. The book originally ended with the simple inti- mation of the manner in which all good wishes were fulfilled in him : ' He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.' The verses which follow may have been borrowed from 1 Ch 2 ^-i^ ; in any case they were added later to bring out clearly the place of Boaz and David in the line of Judah. It is interesting to notice that notwithstanding A^'^^, though in agi'eement with lCh2i2, they do not regard Obed as Mahlon's son, but give him to Boaz. THE FIKST AND SECOND BOOKS OF SAMUEL INTRODUCTION I . Scope and Contents. The two books of Samuel were in the original Hebrew reckoned as one, and classed, like Judges, among ' the earlier prophets.' In LXX they are divided and called the fii'st two ' books of the king- doms ' : a title which the Vulgate altered to ' books of the kings.' Our own translation keeps the original name and the later division. The whole work embraces the history of the chosen nation from the end of the period of the Judges to the beginning of the reign of Solo- mon (IKl, 2 really belong to the period covered by the books of Samuel and in LXX are counted as 2S25, 26). The two books fall into three broad divisions, viz. 1 S 1-14, 1 S 15- 2 S 8, and 2 S 9-24 ; giving the stories (1) of Israel under the Philistines and Samuel ; (2) of Saul and the rise of David ; and (3) of David's reign over all Israel. The whole period is about a century (see § G) ; at its close we find ourselves in an atmosphere com- pletely different from that in which we start, though the change is made entirely natural by the narrative. The first of the three sections opens with the birth, consecration and call of Samuel (chs. 1-3), and passes to the death of Eli and his sons (c. 4), the captivity and restoration of the ark (chs. 5, 6), and the deliverance from the Philistines under Samuel (c. 7). The Israelites then demand a king ; Samuel pro- tests and warns (c. 8); Saul is revealed to Samuel as the future king, anointed, and accepted (chs. 9, 10) ; a victory over Ammon strengthens Saul's position (c. 11) ; and Samuel formally retires from leadership (c. 1 2). The Philistines are attacked and defeated (chs. 13, 14), but Saul, for his disobedience after the conquest of Amalek, is rejected (c. 15). The second section introduces us at once to David ; he is secretly anointed (16 i-^^) and brought before Saul (c. 1 6 ^^-'^'^). He is victori- ous over Goliath (c. 17), and wins first Saul's favour and then his jealousy (c. 18). This is followed by a long and detailed account of Saul's pursuit of David, who is soon reduced to live the life of an outlaw (chs. 19-26), and at last takes refuge with the king of Gath (c. 27). Meanwhile, Saul is compelled to face the Philistines on Mt. Gilboa (c. 28): David is expelled from the Philistine army, and sacks Ziklag (chs. 29, 30) ; and Saul is defeated and slain (c. 31). David is then anointed as king of Judah (2 SI), and gradually wears down the rivalry of Israel (chs. 2-4) ; he is made king of the whole nation, captures Jerusalem, defeats the Philistines (c. 5), and brings the ark to his new capital (chs. 6, 7). In the third section we find him first show- ing courtesy to Meribbaal (c. 9), and subduing 12 177 INTRO. 1 AND 2 SAMUEL INTRO. Ammon and the Syrians (c. 10). Then follows the Bathsheba episode (1 1-12 25)^ with the final conquest of Ammon (1226-31). Absalom, re- venging Amnon's crime, is banished, and re- called (chs. 13, 14) ; his usurpation of the throne leads to his defeat and death, and to David's unopposed return (chs. 15-19). She- ba's revolt is subdued (c. 20). The avenging of the Gibeonites (21 i-i-*) and sundry exploits of David's heroes (21 1'*-^^) are related ; two psalms of David are given (22-23 '''), and another list of David's heroes (23 S"^^) ; and the book closes with an account of the census and repentance of David (c. 24). The revolt of Adonijah, which clouded the last days of David, is related in 1 K 1 , 2. 2. Structure of the Book. As stated above, 1 and 2 Samuel fall into three divisions ; but none of these divisions have been written as they stand. Each (like so many other books of the Old Testament) is a compilation from earlier documents. Within the fh-st two sections we meet constantly with different accounts of the same events, coupled with differences in the point of view. This will be clear from the following : — 1S1-15. (a) Chs. 1-4 contain the story of Samuel's childliood, 7 and 8 his position as recognised head of all Israel — a point of view which is maintained in 10 ^'^■27, 12, 15. (b) On the other hand, 9, lOi-i^ give a separate version of Saul's accession, and 11, 13, 14 follow continuously on lO^*^ ; the ac- count of Saul's rejection in 13^-14 being quite distinct from that of 15. Hannah's song in 2 (which inspired some of the noblest thoughts of the Magnificat) contains concep- tions which are inconsistent with what we know of the more primitive religion of this early period, and is probably a later poem, here ascribed to Hannah. The account of the ark in 5 and 6 has no notes of time, except that it must follow the battle of Aphek : it reminds us strongly of the narratives in Judges. Of the two main divisions of this section, the second (b), which is chiefly occupied with Saul, must be the earlier. From 13 2*^, etc., we can hardly think that such a total defeat of the Philistines as is implied in 7 ^^ *• took place at so early a period. I S 1 6-2 S 8. In this section we find double narratives of David's introduction to Saul, Saul's offer of a daughter of his to David, and David's sparing of Saul's life. The in- consistencies thus resulting (of which the most noticeable is that while David is brought to Saul as a young warrior in 16, he appears in 17 as a shepherd lad of whom Saul is quite ignorant) may be avoided if we place together 1614-23 180-29 (with the exception of vv. 14-19) 19 11-17 21 1-10 22-23 14 25-27, 29, 30. The rest of 16-31 reads almost as one continuous nar- rative. There is less difficulty about the first 8 chs. of 2 Samuel : the whole section concludes with a general summary of David's power and prestige ; and in c. 2 we have an undoubted poem of David himself. 2 S 9-24. Chs. 9-20 form a very clear and picturesque narrative, which is quite self- consistent, and must have been written near to the events which it describes. For the distinctness in its portraiture of minor cha- racters as well as of David himself, and for its faithful description of the dark as well as the bright side of the court of Israel's great and beloved king, it is unequalled among all the fine narratives of the Old Testament. 21-24 form an appendix ; 211-14 would seem to refer to the earlier years of David's reign ; the two psalms (the first of which is almost identical with Ps 18) are strangely wedged in between the notices of David's ' mighty men ' ; 24 should at any rate find a place in 9-20, and IK 1,2 should properly follow 2S20. 3. The Rise and Growth of the Monarchy, To our minds the word ' king ' suggests a definite constitution. Even an absolute mon- arch must govern according to fixed laws. To the Hebrews, the idea of such a constitution was foreign. The growth of otu- European monarchical constitutions has been conti'oUed by two factors : the military organisation of the Teutonic nations, and the Roman Law. The Hebrews had nothing corresponding to either of these. In the time of the Judges (see Intro, to Judges) we find the nation com- posed of a number of tribes largely independ- ent of each other, though held together (as were the ancient Greek states) by certain moral and religious customs, and also by a common faith in Jehovah, the national God. From time to time military leaders of strong personality (' Judges ') arise ; but the sphere of their in- fluence is limited, and only in one case (Gideon and Abimelech) is there any attempt to establish the principle of heredity. The great difference between the Judges and Saul is that, unlike the former, the latter is solemnly chosen by all Israel at a gathering presided over by the moral and religious head of the nation, Samuel. Saul is simply a military leader, chosen to offer an otherwise impossible resistance to the Philistines. It was thus the Philistine oppression which welded the Israel- ites, under Saul's leadership, into a nation. His first ' kingly ' act is to summon the whole nation to arms (IS 11'^, cp. Jgl929) : when he sacrifices, it is as the head of the army (IS 139) : he, like the Judges, receives guid- ance and command from Jehovah, though, unlike them, indirectly through Samuel : his military leadership, absolute from the side of the nation, is thus strictly limited from the side of Jehovah. 178 INTRO. 1 AND 2 SAMUEL INTRO. What was the effect of his rule on Israel's internal life ? We are merely told that he put away soothsayers and diviners out of the land (1 S28^). This in itself implies a gi'eat deal ; it does not imply, however, that the king was expected to make new laws, but only to en- force the old ones ; at most, like Asa ( 1 K 15 1^) and Hezekiah ('2K18'*), he was a reformer. If Jonathan had survived the battle of Gilboa, the whole course of Israel's history might have been different. As it was, Saul's son was at once accepted as king by the greater part of the nation (2 S 2 9). Not until Ish-bosheth's death was David acknowledged as king of all Israel. He began where Saul left off, as recognised military head of the nation. Unlike Saul, he needed no prophet to place him on the throne ; but, like Saul, he gained and held his position by his personal popularity (2 S3 3*5). At first he is nothing more than the warrior ; and all through his reign he is a ' man of war ' (2 S 1 7 8). But by his conquest of Jerusalem and his removal thither of the ark, he becomes the religious head of the nation also, appointing and super- vising the priests (2S8i8 20^6; cp. 1K235). He is now in a position to form foreign alliances and to institute an elaborate and thoroughly Oriental court life (2S5i^). He is also the fountain of justice (2S125 14**-) ; but while he enforces the traditional law, he does not make fresh laws. The basis of his internal authority (like that of the Roman emperors) is military supremacy: when this is broken he must take refuge in flight (2 S 1 5 ^^). He has his captains and high officers (2 S 20 23-26^ He numbers and taxes his people (2 S 24 2), but they have free right of access and complaint (2S145 24 3), and he acknowledges the moral authority of the prophets (2 S 12 ^5 24 n). He is throughout the father and the shepherd more than the monarch of his people : he is Jehovah's representative in their midst. He made the kingship what it remained for four centuries, a rule limited by no written laws (save perhaps that of IS 10 25, which is only ' constitutional ' in a restricted sense), but dis- tinctly limited by the extent of the king's military prowess and authority, and moral in- fluence with his people, by the laws of the nation (cp. 1 K 21 3), and by the will of Jehovah as expressed by the prophets. 4, The Beginnings of Prophecy. It is generally agreed that the root from which comes the Hebrew word for ' prophet ' (nabi) means to ' announce ' or ' forth-tell.' The Hebrew prophets, however, were ' f orth-tellers ' of a special kind. Their messages always had to do with the nation and with Jehovah, the nation's God and protector. They were the heralds at once of patriotism, national unity, and religion. We meet them very early in 179 ' bands' or 'schools' (ISIO^-^O) ; they seem to wander up and down the country excitedly proclaiming their message ; and they have often been compared to Mahommedan dervishes. We are expressly told that Samuel was not held to be a prophet in this technical sense ; but he organised the prophetic bands (IS 19^0), and this organisation lasted on till the times of Elijah and Elisha (e.g. 1 K 20 35 2 K 6 1). These ' bands ' probably gathered round some teacher or leader of influence. We have no informa- tion as to their mode of life and means of support. Possibly, when thus ' banded ' toge- ther, they bore to Samuel the same relation as Wycliffe's preachers bore to Wycliffe himself. But from the reign of David, and even (accord- ing to Jg68) much earlier, we meet with in- dividual prophets, whose function is to recall the nation, or more often the king, to obe- dience to the will of Jehovah ; in many cases they announce the punishment which is to follow upon disobedience (cp. 2 S 7 2 12 25 24 H). In later times both Elijah and Elisha are credited with miraculous powers ; but Elisha is the only prophet whose activity seems to have been as much private as public. Later still, in the middle of the 8th cent., the great series of the ' writing ' prophets begins with Amos ; but in the last stages of the history of the prophetic order, as in the first, the prophet is one who appears suddenly from retirement or seclusion, charged with a special message to people or king, like an embodied conscience. Hence, prophecy is not the opponent of monarchy ; it is rather the divinely appointed means for keeping monarchy true to its task. In the reign of Saul, Samuel performed this function (cp. 1 S 153-23 ; and see § 6). His con- demnation of the Israelite demand for a king is quite distinct from the general attitude of the prophets, who accepted the kings as Jehovah's appointed servants ; but, like the later prophets, Samuel claimed that the pro- phetic word was to receive even from the king absolute and unquestioning obedience. It is easy to see from the above how completely the books of Samuel justify their place in the Hebrew canon as prophetic books. They describe and emphasise the ideals of the pro- phets, and are full of the prophetic spirit — the deep conviction that Jehovah is Israel's God, and that to Jehovah's service Israel is irrevocably bound. 5. The Ark and the Priesthood. In the books of Samuel the ark appears as the seat or dwelling-place of Jehovah ; where the ark is, there in some special sense is Jeho- vah Himself (see also Josh 3, 4, 6 Jg202"). It is placed in Shiloh, the centre of worship, where the sacred tent (' temple,' 1 S 1 9) is set up. After Israel's defeat by the Philis- tines it is (to the dismay of the Philistines) INTRO. 1 AND 2 SAMUEL INTRO. taken to battle, but captured and carried off to various Philistine cities, in each of which it causes plagues. It is then returned to Kir- jath-jearim, where Eleazar is ' sanctified ' ' to keep ' it (1 S3-7). After the conquest of Jera- salem David brings the ark thither ('2S6). In Israel its presence brings blessing : to foreigners, or those who touch it profanely, it causes disaster. Later, it is brought into Solomon's temple, after which it disappears from history (JerS^*'). Probably the ark was, in form, a throne, on which Jehovah was regarded as sitting. Priests (as in Jgl7, 18) are men specially consecrated to superintend worship and guard sacred places and objects (lS21*^;cp.2K25 is). Both Eli and his degenerate sons are priests at Shiloh (IS 2 13-15). The Philistines also have priests for their god (1 S 5^ 62). The priest, wearing his official symbol — the ephod — consults Jehovah on behalf of the worship- per (1 S 14). The office is hereditary (1 S 143 2S81''), and we also find a number of priests dwelling together (1S2219). We read of men being consecrated to serve apparently as priests (1 S 71 2 S 8 18). After the ark was established at Jerusalem, we find the priests in close con- nexion with the royal court(2S8i'i' 15351911 20 25). Later, Solomon, like subsequent kings, is anointed by the priest (IK 139), as Saul and David had been anointed by Samuel (IS 10 1 1613) ; the king is 'the Lord's ami/ited,' and the same word (Messiah, ' anointed ') is applied pa?- excellence to the ideal king of the future. The priests, like the prophets, thus stand in a direct relation to the monarchy as soon as the monarchy is established. Their presence is not, however, essential to worship. Saul sacrifices at Gilgal (1813^), and he is blamed, not for dispensing with a priest, but for not waiting for Samuel. Samuel sacrifices at Bethlehem (IS 16 3) and David at Jerusalem (2S613-17). 6. Samuel. The foregoing discussion has been necessary in order to avoid obscurity, otherwise inevitable, in the portraiture of the leading characters and events m. these books. Without it, we should find difficulty in defend- ing them from the charge of carelessness and inaccuracy ; with it, we can pass behind the actual narratives to something like the reality which the Israelites so lovingly handed on from generation to generation. To take the case of Samuel first. In one instance (a), he is a little-known seer, who, however, has the insight to recognise the need of a king, and to find the fitting man in the youthful Saul. In the other (b), he is the acknowledged leader of Israel (a kind of civil Judge), whose headquarters are at Mizpah, and who bitterly resents Israel's wilfulness in repudiating the traditional theocracy. There can be little doubt that (a) gives the more correct picture ; but it is easy to see how the Samuel of (a), who at a critical time takes the decisive step in the history of the nation, was elevated in the memory of Israel into a position higher than that of Deborah or Eli, and almost recalling the glory of Moses. The dread of the monarchy, so clearly set forth in (b), but absent in (a), reminds us of the attitude taken up towards it by the prophets Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In 1 S 9 9, the actual title of 'prophet' is denied to Samuel; but his relation to the kingdom after the accession of Saul is very similar to that of Isaiah to Ahaz and Hezekiah, just as his position previously had been similar to that of the earlier Judges. His action is uniform, consistent and highminded; and there is every reason for the veneration with which he came to be regarded in after years (Ps 99 6 Jerl5i). He has been called ' the last of the Judges and the first of the Kings.' In reality, he was neither a judge (in the sense in which Ehud and Jephthah were Judges) nor a king. But he found Israel a loosely knit body of tribes ; he left it a united people. Recognised as he was by the whole nation, he made a national monarchy possible ; and at the foundation of it he laid firmly the conception of the responsi- bility of the national ruler to God. 7. Saul. In the case of Saul, as of Samuel, we find two distinct views of his character. He is first shown as a brave and vigorous hero, ably seconded by his son ; for his 'rejection,' the incidents of 1813^ and even 159 hardly seem sufficient cause. As the melancholy of 1 S 1 6 1'* deepens on him, his character becomes less and less favourable ; he is morose, jealous, cunning, violent, though not without gleams of a better nature (IS 24 1'') ; and in the tragic isolation of his last days he reminds us of Macbeth. Yet it is noteworthy that from his accession onwards, his position is never seriously challenged, as was that of David himself subsequently. From his first years, he sets himself to the great business of his reign, the long struggle with the Philistines ; he inflicts upon them blows they have never suffered before, and though he finally falls before them (or under the mental disease which paralysed his powers), his successor is able to bring all serious danger from them to an end. After the appearance of David, the interest of the book in Saul's career apart from David comes to an end ; but it is noteworthy that not even in Judah did David, for all his chann and reputation, succeed in producing any real disloyalty to Saul. If, in his last days, he had recourse to necromancy, he had zealously enforced the laws against superstition in earlier times ; and our judgment on his persistent hostility to David must be modified by David's own verdict 180 INTRO. 1 AND 2 SAMUEL INTRO. upon his ' loveliness and pleasantness,' which throughout his life kept his people true to his rule. On the length of his reign, see § 9. 8. David. The strongest argument for the truthfulness of the portrait of David is that so much therein is repellent not only to our feeling, but to that of Israel also. He is pre- eminently a warrior (a 'man of war,' ISIG^^ 1 Ch 28 3), with a true warrior's resom*cef ulness and perception of the need of the moment ; relentless towards his foes, yet possessed of a peculiar personal charm which endeared him to his own people and to strangers alike ; he can make himself at home with Achish of Gath, and one of his closest followers in later years is Ittai, another Gittite Philistine. He has notable skill in music (1 S 16 ^^ ; cp. Am 6^). It is probable that his large harem was formed in part as the result of political considera- tions ; in weakness and irresolution in dealing with his own family, he is like many other- wise vigorous Oriental monarchs — as also in his liability to sudden outbursts of strong feeling, both evil and good ('2 8112 125. 13). He pushed the frontiers of Israel to their furthest extent — an achievement which was the easier since at this time both Egypt and Assyria and Babylon were occupied within their own borders, and never approached Palestine ; he developed the simple rule of Saul (cp. 1 S 22 6) into the royalty of a court and a capital ; but subsequent events showed that he did not destroy the rivalry between the southern and northern halves of the kingdom. Curiously enough, the strength of Absalom's rebellion was in the king's own tribe of Judah. He was exalted by the affectionate memory of later years into the Saint and the Psalmist. It is no wonder that in thinking of the glorious future king of Israel, men should neglect David's degenerate successors and form the picture of their ideal, as ' a son of David,' on the frank generous character and strong vigorous rule of the man whom, in spite of all his faults, they felt to be after God's own mind (1 S 13 1*). Not only was he ' prudent in speech ' and ' of a comely person,' but ' Jehovah was with him ' (IS 16 18). 9. The Chronology of the Period. The biblical writings themselves give us the lengths of various periods (judgeships and reigns) and of the intervals between events (e.g. 1 K 6 1). In the Assyrian canon we are able to fix the exact year of certain events ; working back from these, and reckoning the reigns of David and Solomon as each equal to 40 years (2S54 IK 11 42),* we arrive at 1017 B.C. as the date of David's accession and the death of Saul. The events of David's reign cannot well have been comprised in any shorter time. The Old Testament does not mention the length of Saul's reign ; the 40 years of Ac 13-1 are certainly too long; Saul can hardly have been older than 60 (if so old) at the battle of Gilboa, while almost at the beginning of his reign his eldest son is a powerful warrior. His actual age at his accession is wanting in the Hebrew text (1 S13i), and the narrative of his reign suggests a very much shorter period than David's. We should therefore date his accession between 1040 and 1030 B.C. For the length of Samuel's judgeship we have no information ; he is introduced to us as ah-eady occupying his position ; possibly he obtained it quite gradually after the death of Eli (of the date of this event, also, we are in ignorance). From IS?^ (RM) it might be inferred that for 20 years after the deposi- tion of the ark at Kirjath-jearim, Israel was satisfied with Jehovah and Samuel ; hence we should place the beginning of Samuel's office in 1060-1050 B.C.; and as he would hardly have been much less than 30 years old when he became Judge, or than 50 years old when he committed the kingdom to Saul, we must place his birth somewhere about 1085 B.C. 10. The Religious Significance of the Book. The main religious lesson of the book is similar to that of Judges ; it is that Israel's safety as a nation lies in union under the guidance of Jehovah and resistance to foreigners. Of this union, the kingship is a symbol. As we have seen, there are two views of the origin of the kingship in the elevation of Saul to the throne ; but that of 1 S 15 (as a defection from loyalty to Jehovah) is certainly not maintained, or even referred to, later on in the book. Both Saul and David were firm worshippers of Jehovah ; in spite of their moral lapses, we hear nothing in their reigns of that falling away into idolatry which is so common both before and after. The references (without any suggestion of blame) to the ' teraphim ' (IS 19 13-16; contrast 1523) and to the offering of sacrifices in other places besides the central sanctuary, and by others than priests, as well as the omission of all those ritual details which fill the pages of the parallel narrative in Chronicles, show that the religious ideas of the time (as also of the time in which the book was written) are still somewhat primi- tive (cp. also 181614, 'the evil spirit from Jehovah,' and 2 S24i contrasted with 1 Ch21 1, ' the Satan stood up '). But though we are still in the childhood of Israel's religion, it is a childhood that is full of promise ; for it rests, with a loving confidence which is unshaken, on the firm mercy and judgment (PslOli) of Israel's God. * Forty, however, is probably a round number : cp. Intro, to Judges. 'four' (so RM). In any case, it is too much. 181 'Forty,' in 2 815 7, is possibly a, mistake for INTRO. 1 SAMUEL 1.3 II. Date, Text, etc. A few miscellaneous points remain to be considered. When was the book written ? This question must mean, in view of § 2, when did the two books reach their present form ? It is impossible to reply with certainty ; the bulk of the three large narratives must have been written compara- tively soon after the events they refer to, though we can have no means of knowing when the poetical additions were actually made. Apart from these, there is very little to suggest a date later than the 8th cent. What is its relation to Chronicles ? The reader will easily see the similarities and the differences in the two parallel narratives. That Chronicles was written at a far later date is shown, apart from internal evidence, by its place in the Hebrew canon, almost at the end, and not, like Samuel, among the ' prophets ' — a fact which is emphasised in the name which the book bears in the Septuagint, ' things left out.' These omissions are for the most part lists and genealogies and details connected with the ark or (later on) the Temple, which are either new, or much more fully given in the later book (cp. lChll26f. 121^ with 2 S6 12-19 1637-43 and the additions in c. 21). On the other hand, some of the most interesting and vividly narrated events in Samuel are passed over entirely, especially anything (except David's numbering of Israel) which is to the disadvantage of the king himself (including the story of Bathsheba and the whole rebellion of Absalom). In the earlier book, Israel is as important as Judah, apart from the fact that David's prominence gives special weight to the southern tribe ; in the later book (written long after the disappearance of the northern kingdom) Israel is of no im- portance at all. It is certain that the books of Samuel were among the sources used by the Chronicler, and the smaller additions seem intended either to be didactic, or to fill up apparent gaps in the earlier narrative. See Intro, to Chronicles. A careful comparison with Chronicles will bring out very clearly the impartiality and thoroughness of the books of Samuel. Have we the best text of Samuel before us ? This question is suggested by the fact (pointed out several times in the notes) that the text is often very corrupt, and also by the divergences constantly to be observed in the G-reek trans- lation (the Septuagint — LXX). This G-reek translation is itself found in three types of text ; where they agree, we may conclude, with Prof. H. P. Smith, that they represent an ancient Hebrew text. This text (now only recoverable through the Greek translation) would seem to have been free from several errors contained in the Hebrew text from which our own translation has been made. It is, however, unsafe to argue that because a reading is simpler, it is therefore more correct ; in some cases, the reading of our text has been misunderstood ; but in others, we must certainly make corrections by the help of the Greek version. 1 SAMUEL CHAPTEK 1 The Birth of Samuel Hannah, the childless wife of Elkanah, is grieved by her childlessness, and prays for a son. Her prayer is heard, and in gratitude she consecrates her child to the service of Jehovah. 1. Ramathaim-zophim] Ramathaim (' double height ') probably denotes the district in which Ramah (' height ') was the chief town. It was at Ramah that Samuel was born, lived, laboured, died, and was buried. As Ramah was a common name in a hilly country like Palestine, Zophim is here added to denote that this Ramah was in the land of Zuph (9^). But even so, the exact position of Ramah has not been determined with certainty. Mount Ephraim] RV ' the hill country of Ephraim.' Ephrathite] RV ' Ephraimite.' 2. Two wives] The reason was probably the barrenness of Hannah, which Elkanah would consider a disgrace. Thomson states that at the present day in the East it is considered sufficient reason for a divorce. But here, as elsewhere in OT., we find evidence of the unhappiness which polygamy often produced. 3. Yearly] lit. ' from time to time.' The Law commanded every male to appear before God three times in the year, and there are strong reasons for assigning a very early date to the practice. Of course, the phrase ' from time to time ' can mean ' from year to year,' when the context so defines it (as in Exl.3iO); but otherwise there is no justification for so limiting it. LORD of hosts] This title of God occurs here for the first time, and its use was probably occasioned by the warlike character of the book. As used in the books of Samuel, ' the hosts ' are the armies of Israel (17 ■*^), but afterwards the idea was extended to the hosts of angels (Ps 103 20, 21). Shiloh] Joshua set up 182 1. 5 1 SAMUEL 2. 13 the Tabernacle there (JoshlS^), as being central and in the territory of his own tribe. For its position, see Jg 2 1 1^. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the LORD, were there] rather, ' and there the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests to the Lord.' 5. A worthy portion] LXX reads ' But unto Hannah he gave a single portion.' Elkanah gave portions to Peninnah and to each of her sons and daughters. But in spite of his love for Hannah, he only gave her a single portion, because she had neither son nor daughter. The Heb. text, as it stands, cannot be translated. The portion was the part of the sacrifice consumed by the offerer and his family : see Lv7. 6. Her adversary] i.e. Peninnah. The word is a common one in Arabic to denote a rival, or fellow-wife. 7. As he did so] Pro- bably the true text is ' So it happened.' Did not eat] refused to take any part in the festival, of which the sacrificial meal was a principal feature (cp. c. 9). 9. Eli the priest] i.e. the chief priest. How Eli had attained this rank we do not know, for he was descended from Ithamar the younger son of Aaron, and not from Eleazar the elder son. It has been supposed that in those troublous times the office was bestowed upon him on account of his ability and piety. Upon a seat by a post] BY ' upon his seat by the door post,' where he could see all who went in or out : cp. 4^3. 11. See NuG respecting the Nazirite vow. 16. A daughter of Belial] lit. ' a daughter of worthlessness,' i.e. a worthless woman. ' Belial ' came to be used as a name for Satan (2 Cor 6 15). Grief] B, V ' provocation. ' 20. Samuel] The name Samuel is here con- nected with the verb saal, ' to ask ' ; but this seems only to have been a popular etymology. Most probably Samuel means ' name of Grod ' : cp. V. 28. 21. His vow] Perhaps Elkanah had vowed an offering to God if Hannah had a son, which he now fulfilled : cp. Lv 7 1'^. 22. Until the child be weaned] After this the ordinary attendants at the Tabernacle would be able to take charge of him. In the Koran the usual time for weaning is stated to be the age of two years. 23. His word] LXX 'thy word.' No mention has been made in the preceding account of any promise of God. 24. Three bullocks] Probably one bullock was for the burnt-offering, which accompanied the dedica- tion of Samuel, another was for Elkanah's usual sacrifice, while the third was the thank- offering he had vowed (v. 21). 28. Lent] RV 'granted,' as in Ex 12 36. And he worshipped the LORD there] These words interrupt the connexion and are rightly omitted by LXX. CHAPTER 2 Hannah's Song of Thanksgiving. The Sin of Eli's Sons I -10. The Song of Hannah. This beautiful poem has been well called the ' Magnificat of the Old Testament.' The song of the Virgin Mary (Lk 1 46-55j jg clearly modelled on it very closely. In each case there is the rejoicing over the exaltation of the poor and despised and the humiliation of the rich. But there is a world of difference between Mary's quiet and restrained gratitude and calm confidence in God's mercy, on the one hand, and the exultant and almost fierce triumph of this song. V. 5 has doubtless led to the attribution of the song to Hannah; but in its general tone it seems more suitable to some public person, and v. 10 (unless it be an interpolation) suggests a later date in Israel's history. Compare the expressions of national triumph in the songs of Moses (ExlS^'^^) and Deborah (Jg5). 1. Mine horn is exalted] The figure is that of an animal carrying its head high: cp. Ps 11 2 9. My mouth is enlarged] The idea is that of speaking with confidence and derision: cp. Isa57'*. Salvation] In the Bible this word denotes help or deliverance of any kind. 2. Holy] The Holiness of God in the OT. denotes positively the completeness of the divine nature and negatively God's unlikeness to anything else. Rock] This is a frequent metaphor to express the strength and un- changingness of Jehovah. The name also conveys the idea that the strength of God is a refuge for His people (Ps912). Rocks, as capable of easy defence, were often used as places of refuge. 3. Weighed] i.e. estimated. The idea is the same as inProv212. 5. Seven] the num- ber of completeness, perfection. 6. Grave] Heb. Sheol, the place where departed spirits were believed to be gathered at death. Bringeth up] restores to life those who were at the point of death. 8. Pillars] the gi-eat men of the state on whom it depended for its stability : cp. Gal 2 9 Rev 3 12. 9. Saints] R V ' holy ones ' : rather, ' pious ones, those who love God.' 10. His anointed] a conxmon name for the Jewish king. 12. Knew] This verb in the Bible has of ten the added idea of appreciation, recognition of character, affection. 13-17. The sons of Eli were guilty of a two- fold sin. (a) Instead of being content with their allotted portion (Lv73if-) they took all they could get of the offerer's portion, (b) They dishonoured God by making their claims take precedence of His. The blood and the fat were to be consumed on the altar immediately after slaughtering (Ex 2318), 5^^ they claimed 183 2. 16 1 SAMUEL 3. 18 their share before this had been done. After the fat had been conveyed to Grod the sacri- ficial flesh was boiled, bnt Eli's sons demanded their portion raw with a view to its being roasted : see HDB. art. ' Sacrifice.' 1 6. If any man] RV ' if the man,' i.e. the offerer. Presently] i.e. immediately, at once. 17. For men abhorred] rather, 'for the men (i.e. the sons of Eli) despised.' 18. But Samuel] Throughout this section Samuel is contrasted with the profligate sons of Eli. Linen ephod] the usual priestly gar- ment (IS 22 18). 20. For the loan which is lent] rather, ' in return for the petition which was made for (i.e. for the benefit of) the Lord,' i.e. in place of Samuel, the man-child who, if born, was to be given to the Lord. 22. Assembled at'] RY ' did service at.' It is probable that these women were permanently connected with the Tabernacle: cp. ExSS^. Lay with the women] There is no doubt that the surrender of their chastity was regarded by the women of Canaan and Syria as the highest sacrifice they could make in honour of their gods. The sons of Eli introduced these ITT) moral rites into the worship of Jehovah, and hence the severity of their condemnation. 25. In the original, point is given to Eli's rebuke by the fact that the word here used for ' judge ' (Elohini) also means ' God.' The judge was regarded as the representative of God: see Ps82*^. If it is a case of men, God has appointed some one to settle the matter; but when God Himself is the offended party, no higher power exists to whom the case can be submitted. God is both adversary and judge. Would slay them] lit. 'wished to slay them.' In the OT. the direct intervention of God is assumed, and His ever-present agency realised as a determining fact. We say that after a man has persisted for long years in sinful habits, he finds it impossible to alter. The Bible expresses the same truth by stating, first that the sinner (e.g. Pharaoh) hardens his own heart, and then that God hardens the sinner's heart. The punishment of the wicked is con- sidered to be as much in accordance with God's will as the reward of the righteous. 27. A man of God] a common name for a prophet. With the books of Samuel we come to a period when God guides His people by human agency rather than by direct commu- nication. Did I plainly appear?] RV ' Did I reveal myself ? ' It is an impassioned question, , ' Did I or did I not? ' Thy father] i.e. Aaron. In Pharaoh's house] LXX reads ' In bond- age to Pharaoh's house.' 28. Give . . all the offerings] see Lv2,6,7. 29. Kick ye at] The figure is that of a pampered and intractable animal: cp. Dt32i^. Sacrifice and . . offering] bloody and unbloody sacrifices. Honourest thy sons above me] Eli should have removed his sons from a position they disgraced. But he could not bring him- self to humiliate them and lower his own position in the sight of the people. 30. When Abiathar, the descendant of Eli, fled to David (22^0), Zadok, a descendant of Eleazar, may have been made chief priest by Saul. He appears soon after, and it is not known how or when the office was bestowed on him. David divided the dignity between the two (2S81"), but Abiathar was deposed by Solomon (1 K 2 27)^ and the priesthood remained with Zadok and his descendants down to the time of the exile. Thus the prophet's threat was fulfilled. 31-35. It is keenly disputed to what events these vv. refer. The simplest explana- tion is that V. 31 refers to the massacre of the priests at Nob, vv. 32, 33 to the deposition and consequent poverty of Abiathar, and v. 35 to Zadok. 31. Cut off thine arm] destroy thy power, as PslQis. 32. An enemy <■/( m?/ habitation] lit. ' affliction of habitation.' The context seems to show that the reference is to Eli's own dwelling. While Israel increased in wealth and prosperity in the reign of Solomon, Eli's family were to fall into poverty and obscurity. 33. Those who did not die young would pass their life in vexation and grief. Thine eyes . . thine heart] rather as LXX, ' his eyes . . his heart.' Shall die in the flower of their age] LXX reads ' shall die by the sword of men.' 35. I will build him a sure house] i.e. I will give him a continuous posterity : cp. 25 -'^ 2S7i*5. Mine anointed] the king (singular), really referring to the long line of kings who were to follow David. 36. Put me into] rather, 'attach me to,' 'make me a hanger on.' CHAPTER 3 The Call of Samuel I. Precious] RM, 'rare': see Isal3i2. There was no prophet then. Open] rather, 'published, widely announced ' : cp. 2Ch315. 3. Ere the lamp of God went out] The lamp (' the seven-branched candlestick ') burned all night in the sanctuary, so that the time was early morning : cp. Ex 27 ^i. Samuel seems to have been sleeping in some chamber near the ark. Cp. RV, ' was laid down to sleep, in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.' On the ark see Intro. § 5. 10. Came, and stood] the Voice became a Vision. 13. Made themselves vile] LXX reads ' Because his sons cursed God.' See on 2 S 12 1^. 15. Doors] The Tabernacle was no longer a mere tent, but at this time had been replaced by a substantial building. This was a natural consequence of its occupying a fixed position. 18. It is the Lord] So Eli was at heart loyal, though he had shown culpable weakness. 184 3. 19 1 SAMUEL 5. 12 19. Let none of his words fall to the ground] i.e. accomplished all his predictions. For the idea cp. Dt 18 21, 22. 20. Established] i.e. accredited, approved. Prophet] see In- tro. § 4. 21. In Shiloh by the word of the LORD] These words are wanting in LXX, and the connexion gains greatly by their omission. C. 41=^. And the word of Samuel came to all Israel] This clause should really form the conclusion of c. 3 as it does in RV. Samuel proclaimed to all his countrymen the revela- tion he had received. CHAPTER 4 Capture of the Ark by the Philistines. Death of Eli The reason which led to 41^^ being detached from its proper context is that without it this c. seems to begin with inexplicable abruptness. The explanation of this lack of connexion is that the editor is now using a different docu- ment. This section is in no sense a continua- tion of the preceding. It does not proceed with the history of Samuel, whose name does not even occur in it, but relates the journey- ings of the ark. Alike in style and in con- ception it is totally distinct from the section which precedes and the section which follows it. In many respects it resembles the history of Samson more closely than any other part of OT. I. The Philistines] see on JgS^. Eben- ezer] ' stone of help.' The place is called by the name familiar to the readers of the book, though it did not actually receive the name till later (7^'^). The positions of Eben-ezer and Aphek have not been determined with certainty. 3. The ark of the covenant] so called because it was a sign and proof both of God's covenant and of His presence. 4. RV ' which sitteth upon the cherubim.' This does not imply that there were figures of cherubim upon the ark (IKS*^), but refers to the general glory of Jehovah. The cherubs are heavenly beings regarded as standing in Jehovah's presence (cp. the seraphim of Isa 6), and, in Ezk 1 , 1 0, as of composite form. Cp. also PslS^o. In Solomon's temple two winged cherubs stood in the most holy place (1 KG 24). The two sons of Eli] This notice is in- tended to remind us why the arrival of the ark produced no result. 6. Hebrews] This is the general name for Israelites when foreigners are the speakers (an39i4). 8. The Philistines are not quite accurate in their history, but the mistake is not at all unnatural. 15. Ninety and eight] This number is interesting as showing how mistakes arise. In the original it was denoted by two letters. The LXX, losing sight of one, reads 90. The Syriac, confusing 9 with 7, reads 78. The Hebrew explains the cause of the other two readings. 19 f. The narrative is somewhat obscure. Apparently Phinehas' wife dies in giving birth to her child ; before her death, she cries out ' I-chabod,' which is thus given as the child's name. V. 22 simply repeats v. 2L 21. I-chabod] 'no glory.' The glory was that of the presence of God, the visible sign and symbol of which was the ark. 22. Departed] lit. ' gone into exile.' The axk had gone into a foreign land. CHAPTER 5 The Ark among the Philistines 1. Ashdod] on an elevation overlooking the Philistine plain midway between Gaza and Joppa, and 3 m. from the Mediterranean. Its importance consisted in the fact that it com- manded the high road from Palestine to Egypt. 2. Dagon] seems to have been worshipped in all the Philistine cities. His name is pro- bably merely the Canaanite pronunciation of the word for ' corn,' and designates him as the god of agriculture. The Philistines were not a maritime people, like the Phoenicians, but depended on agi'iculture. Stanley writes : ' The most striking and characteristic feature of Philistia is its immense plains of corn- fields. . . These rich fields must have been the great source alike of the power and value of Philistia.' They brought it] The Philis- tines considered that their god, Dagon, had shown himself stronger than Jehovah, and so they brought him the symbol of his conquered rival. 3. Fallen upon his face] in an attitude of homage. Set him in his place] they would think it was an accident. 4. This time all possibility of accident was excluded. The sftimp of Dagon] AV is right in thinking that some word must have fallen out of the Hebrew text. 6. In c. 6 we have a plague of mice as well as of haemorrhoids. Some regard the intro- duction of this second plague as due to a scribe. On the other hand, LXX inserts a notice of the mice also in 5*'' 10 gi. Well- hausen thinks that ' mice ' are symbolical of misfortune in general, and do not denote a second plague. Herodotus attributes the disaster which overtook Sennacherib's army and the deliverance of Jerusalem in 701 B.C. (2K 192-5-3'') to a host of mice, which destroyed the bowstrings of the Assyrian soldiers : cp. on 65. 12. So the protest of the Ekronites was not attended to. The Philistines were unwilling to part with their trophy. 185 6.2 1 SAMUEL 8. 11 CHAPTER 6 The Philistines return the Ark to Israel 2. The diviners] The Philistines appear to have been notorious for their attachment to divination : see on Isa 2 6. 3. The trespass offering was always brought to atone for some wrong done to, or some right withheld from, God or man. 5. Aristotle relates that in harvest entire crops were sometimes destroyed in a single night by the ravages of field-mice. 7. The new cart and the kine who had worn no yoke were signs of respect. 9. Under ordinary circumstances the cows would not have left their calves. Beth-shemesh] the modem Ain-Shems, on the N. border of Judah. 18. Even unto the great stone'] Read with LXX, ' And the great stone, whereon they set down the ark of the Lord, is a witness unto this day.' 19. It is very probable that in this v. LXX has preserved the original text : ' But the sons of Jechoniah rejoiced not with the men of Beth-shemesh, when they gazed (with glad- ness) at the ark of the Lord, and he smote among them 70 men.' All editors are agreed that the ' fifty thousand ' is a gloss which has crept into the text. The Hebrew phrase here used is not the correct method of expressing 60,070. 21. Kirjath-jearim] see on JglS^^. For the further account of the ark cp. 2 86. C. 7 1. This V. is the conclusion of the nar- rative, and should really form part of c. 6. We should have expected the ark to be taken back to Shiloh ; perhaps Shiloh had fallen into the hands of the Philistines, who now overran Israel (cp. 146'19). At any rate, we hear no more of Shiloh as a national meeting-place ; for the time, whatever national unity exists centres round Samuel. CHAPTER 7 Samuel delivers Israel from the Philistines The narrative in this c. is taken from a different source from the account which precedes. 2. Twenty years] The time is reckoned till Israel's repentance and not to the removal of the ark by David (2S62). 3, 4. These vv. appear to be anticipatory and in order of time to follow vv. 5, 6. 4. Baalim and Ashtaroth] see on Jg2ii>i3. 5. Mizpeh] in Benjamin. Pray] Samuel was noted as a man of prayer (cp. Ps996). 6. Poured it out] The symbolism of the act is uncertain. The most probable explanation is that of the Targum, that it represented the pouring out of their hearts in repentance be- 186 fore the Lord : cp. 2 S 23 le Lam 2 19. 7. Went up against Israel] for the object of the as- sembly at Mizpeh was to throw off the Philistine yoke. 9. A burnt offering wholly] RV ' a whole burnt offering.' The offering of the whole animal symbolised the self-dedication of the worshipper. 12. Eben-ezer] see on 41. 13. All the days of Samuel] The words naturally mean ' all the time he acted as judge.' This must be understood as the optimistic notice of a later writer. The narrative of c. 14 shows that Israel did not succeed in recovering from the Philistine oppression : see also on 7^ 9^''. 14. The coasts thereof] i.e. the districts round the towns. Amorites] i.e. the old Canaanite inhabitants of the hill- country : see on Jg 1 3*. Israelite and Canaan- ite made peace in front of a common enemy. 15. All the days of his life] The attitude of Samuel towards Saul in the matters of (a) his sacrifice and (b) Amalek show that he retained some authority even after Saul was elected king. 16. He instituted what in modem language would be called ' courts of assize.' Gilgal] probably the famous site near Jericho. CHAPTERS 8-14 See on 9 ^. There are clearly two accounts of the institution of the kingship. In c. 8, the wish for a king is regarded as a sign of dis- loyalty to the real King, Jehovah, and, as such, Samuel protests against it. In chs. 9-1 0^^, Jehovah himself chooses Saul to deliver his people from the Philistines : cp. Intro. § 2. CHAPTER 8 The People demand a King I. Judges] They would be subordinate to their father. When the son of a Judge was influential and popular, he might easily succeed to his father's position : cp. Abimelech in Jg9if. 5. Like all the nations] This was the sin of the people. God intended that they, unlike other nations, should be a peculiar people, governed directly by Himself. 6. Displeased Samuel] They had shown themseh'es forgetful of their relation to God and ungrateful to Samuel himself. But in spite of this, he simply leaves the decision with God. 7. For] Samuel was not to hesi- tate, for the matter was one which concerned God rather than himself. 8. Which they have done] LXX adds ' to me,' an addition which is required by the contrast with ' to thee.' II. It does not follow that a Jewish king was actually like this description, but an Oriental despot was, and Israel had asked for a king like other nations. In later years, 8. 13 1 SAMUEL 10. 25 Hebrew monarchy sank very low, both in Judah and Israel : cp. the tone both of Hosea andof Ezekiel(459 46iS). 13. Confectionaries] RM ' perfumers ' : cp. Ex 30 25. 15. Officers] Heb. ' eunuchs.' CHAPTER 9 Saul and Samuel meet For the picture of Samuel in this c, as a person of local rather than national import- ance, cp. Intro. § 6. On early prophecy, see Intro. § 4. C. gi-io^'^ comes from a different source from c. 8 : see intro. there. The author of this section gives no hint that the choice of a king was displeasing to God. But we meet with the views of c. 8 again when we come to IQi^f. I. Power] RV ' valour.' 4, 5. The dis- tricts of Shalisha, Shalim, and Zuph have not been identified. 5. Take thought] rather, 'be anxious.' 6. In this city] probably Ramah. 9. This V. is probably an explanatory note by the editor, though some regard it as a scribe's insertion. Seer] Heb. roeh^ a com- paratively rare word, in this sense. ' They were called " seers " for no other reason than because they were thought to " see " what for the rest of men was hidden, the secrets either of the present or of the future ' ; e.g. in the present case, the matter of the asses. Prophet] The Heb, word is nahi^ and is probably connected with the Assyrian nabu^ ' to call ' or ' name.' The prophet was the ' spokesman ' of Jehovah : see art. ' Hebrew Prophecy.' 13. This refers to the solemn sacrificial meal after the peace offering : cp. Ex 24 5. n Lv7. 14. Came out against them] rather, ' came out to meet them.' 20. On whom is all the desire] RV ' for whom is all that is desirable in Israel. Is it not for thee ? ' cp. Hag 2 7 RM. 21. The least of all the families] This is Eastern hyperbole and must not be taken literally : cp. JgG^^. 24. And Samuel said] The word ' Samuel ' is not in the original. ' And the cook took up . . and said.' What follows is the garrulous talk of the cook. Since I said] the Heb. is simply ' saying ' (i.e. Samuel). 25, 26. LXX is the more probable : ' And when they were come down from the high place into the city, they spread a couch for Saul on the housetop, and he lay down. And it came to pass about,' etc. At the present day in the East multitudes sleep on the roofs of houses. 26. Samuel called Saul to the top] RV ' Samuel called to Saul on the housetop.' Saul had been sleeping on the roof, and now Samuel calls to him to descend. CHAPTER 10 Saul is anointed King by Samuel I. LXX is probably right in reading at the end of this v. ' and this is the sign that the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain ' (RV ' prince ') ' over his inheritance.' 2. Rachel's tomb] was not far from Bethlehem (Gn 35 !"> 20). 3. Plain] RV ' oak.' 5. The hill of God] The word is really ' Gibeah,' which was Saul's own home. It is here called ' God's Gibeah ' because Samuel had established a school of the prophets there. Cp. the common term for a prophet, ' man of God' (e.g. IK 17 18). They shall prophesy] RV ' they shall be prophesying,' lit. acting as prophets. Music was a recognised means of promoting the exaltation of spirit necessary for inspiration (2K315). 6. Be turned into another man] fitted for his new career : see V. 9. 8. This command appears to have been given during the Philistine war narrated in c. 13 : cp. 13^*. Here it interrupts the con- nexion. 9. Another heart] The heart is not, with the Hebrews, opposed to the head, as with us. The term is used for the general bent both of mind and character. Saul has a new conception of himself and of his life given to him. This is quickly followed by a sudden outburst of ' prophesying,' here obviously used in the sense of ecstatic exaltation of utterance. Saul's liability to be carried out of himself (like his namesake of Tarsus) is also made clear in his fits of melancholic brooding and sudden passion (cp. IS^o, 11^ where for 'pro- phesied ' RM reads ' raved '). See also Intro. §7. II. Is Saul also among the prophets?] i.e. has he joined a school of the prophets ? He was not the sort of young man to adopt such a life. Another explanation of the saying is given in 19 ^■*. 12. Who is their father ?] Prophecy did not descend from father to son, so that there was no reason for surprise in finding the son of Kish among the prophets. 17. At this point the other narrative is resumed (see on 8 1). 19. Thousands] The word may very possibly mean simply 'families' : cp. v. 21. We can hardly imagine this to mean that the whole Hebrew population of Palestine was present. 20. The Hebrews considered that in elec- tions by lot, the decision was made by God (Josh? 18 Provl633). 22. Stuff] i.e. the bag- gage : cp. 1611. 25. The manner of the kingdom] This was a legal document intended to bind both king and people, and probably to guard against the abuses mentioned in c. 8. The power of the 87 11. 26 1 SAMUEL Hebrew monarch was, in some respects, narrowly limited. 26. A band of men] Pro- bably the original text was ' the men of valour,' in contrast to 'the worthless men' of v. 27. Note the simplicity and absence of ceremonial in the new royalty : cp. 114 and Intro. § 7. 27. See intro. to c. 11. CHAPTER 11 Saul subdues the Ammonites This c. is entirely in the spirit of the narratives in Judges ; from v. 16, it seems to be independent of c. 10 ; but v. 12 points back to 1027, which is perhaps distinct from vv. 17-24 ; even the ceremony at Gilgal may have been a J renewal ' (v. 10), in the renewed popular enthusiasm, of the ceremony at Mizpeh. But see on 12 12. I. Nahash] It is very doubtful if this is the Nahash of 2S102. 3. Come out] a usual term for 'surrender.' 5. So Cincinnatus was found by the messengers of the State with his oxen. 6. Cp. Jg634 1129 146, etc., used of a sudden access of fierce patriotic zeal. Both cause and effect are slightly different in 1010. 7. Fear of the LORD] i.e. a dread inspired by the Lord; EM 'a terror from the Lord.' 9. i.e. before noon : cp. v. 11. 10. Their object was to make the attack come on the Ammonites as a complete surprise. 13. Saul possessed many good and generous impulses (2417 2621). 15. They made Saul king] see prefatory note. CHAPTEE 12 Samuel resigns his Judgeship This c. is a continuation of 1017-24, and the scene of the events recorded is the great national assembly at Mizpeh. Notice, how- ever, the reference to Nahash (c. 11) in v. 12 13. 16 2. 17. Wheat harvest] This shows that this occurred between the middle of May and the middle of June. In Palestine a summer thunderstorm is very unusual: cp. Prov21i. Prof. G. A. Smith writes : ' In May showers are very rare, and from then till October not only IS there no rain, but a cloud seldom passes over the sky, and a thunderstorm is a miracle ' 21. For] The first ' for ' in this v. is rightly omitted by LXX. 'And turn ye not aside after vain things which,' etc. Vain fhh/gs] i.e. idols. 22. For his great name's sake] The idea is explained in Ex 32 12. CHAPTEE 13 Saul's War against the Philistines I. The age of Saul at his accession has fallen out of the text and also one of the two numbers representing the length of his reign. Our present text is ' Saul was . . years old when he began to reign, and he reigned . . and two years.' We have no means of recovering the former number. For the latter Keil, with great probability, conjectures 22 : see on 2 S 210 and Intro. § 9. 2. Michmash] still retains its ancient name ; it is a village 9 m. from Jerusalem, and is just N. of a narrow pass leading to Geba ; hence it was a thoroughly well-chosen strategic position ; cp 144. 3. And the Philistines . . Hebrewrs hear] The text is probably corrupt. Driver emends to ' And the Philistines heard saying The Hebrews have revolted,' and puts 'And Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land ' at the beo-in- ning of V. 4. 4. Gilgal] Cornill would r^ead ' Gibeah ' here. 5. Thirty thousand] LXX has ' 3,000 ' ; the chariots were less in number than the horsemen ; cp. 2S101S IK 1026. 6. The people did hide themselves] The prompt action of the Phihstines quite quenched the ardour My sons] cp 8 1-5. 3. His anointed] i.e. of the undisciplined peasants with Saul Saul the anointed king. This becomes"^ the regular title of the king : cp. 24 6-10 26 ^-n, etc. The word is identical with ' Messiah ' or (in its Gk. form) ' Christ.' 6. It is the LORD] LXX reads ' the Lord is witness.' Advanced] EV ' appointed,' i.e. made them the leaders of Israel. 9. Into the hand of Sisera] see Jg4. Into the hand of the king of Moab] see Jg3. II. Jerubbaal] see Jg6. Bedan] LXX reads 8. Saul at Gilgal would be anxious lest the Philistines should seize Geba and the heights. Samuel had ajipointed'] The reference is pro- bably to 108. 9. It is, to say the least, doubtful whether Saul offered the sacrifice with his own hands, or whether he caused it to be offered. At any rate, his offence was not in his offering sacrifice, but in his unwillingness to obey the directions 'Barak Jephthah] see Jg 11. Samuel] must of God and of God'sVesentatL, the prophet be a later insertion pi+1ipt Ki? +V,o t,.^],-+^v. ^« u„ tj. i. u_ ^3 -i, t .f , ^ ,, ' . '^F^"t'"«i'- be a later insertion either by the editor or by a scribe. 12. When the LORD your God mix your king] cp. 87 Jg823. This is not quite in accord with the narrative of c. 11 as it stands, where Saul has already been chosen king (v. 12), and where the attack on Nahash results from his own vigorous initiative. 14. EV ' If ye will fear . . and serve him, and hearken . . and be . . followers . . v-eli: 15. Against your fathers] i.e. in the times of the Judges. 188 It must be admitted that Saul's position was a difficult one ; but this single act was really an index, to a weakness in his character : see however, on 14^4. ' 14. After his own heart] David's actions were by no means all of them the actions of an ideal character ; but he is presented in the narratives as maintaining on the whole an attitude towards God very different from that of Saul : cp. 161. 16. Abode in Gibeah] Saul with his reduced 13. 17 1 SAMUEL 15. numbers was compelled to abandon the other two positions and to concentrate his forces at Gibeah. 17. The spoilers] i.e. bands sent out to ravage the country immediately concerned in the insurrection. This unwise weakening of the Philistine forces gave the Israelites their opportunity. Ophrah] a town in Benjamin. Shual] Position unknown, as is also that of Zeboim in the next v. 18. Beth-horon] on the border of Benjamin and Ephraira, was on the direct road from Michmash to Philistia. 21. Yet they had, etc.] RM proposes, 'When the edges of the mattocks . . and of the axes were blunt.' We can hardly imagine that the text as it stands is to be taken literally after the narrative of 13 f. 23. To the passage] RV ' unto the pass.' CHAPTER 14 Jonathan's Exploit. The Battle of Michmash. A Summary of Saul's Reign 3. Ahiah] RV ' Ahijah,' probably merely another form of Ahimelech (211). Melech (king) was one of the titles of Jah or Jehovah. 4. Between the passages] RV ' between the passes.' 9. It has been suggested that the reply would show that the Philistines were brave men, and Jonathan would give up the enter- prise as impossible ; but in view of v. 6, it is better to take the sign as a purely arbitrary one : cp. Jg?"*^. 14. An half acre of land . . 2iloiv'\ RV ' half a furrow's length in an acre of land,' i.e. half the length of one of the sides of an acre. 15. There was a trembling both in the (fortified) camp and in the (open) country ; all the people, both garrison and plundering bands, trembled. 16. Behold, the multitude . . one auo1her~\ LXX reads, ' Behold the multitude melted away' (i.e. dispersed in confusion) ' hither and thither.' 18. LXX reads, ' Bring hither the ephod. For he wore the ephod.' It was the Urim and Thummim in the ephod and not the ark which was used to discover the will of Grod : see 239 307. 19. Withdraw thine hand] Saul had not patience to wait : cp. 13^. 24. The purpose of this ' taboo ' on food was probably to secure by fasting the continued presence of Jehovah with the victorious army. Israel's battles were Jehovah's, and Saul's motive, according to the ideas of his time, was religious. The people acquiesce: cp. Jg. 21 1^ 25. All they of the land] Heb. ' all the land.' Saul's success had made all the country rise against the foreigners. 27. His eyes ■were enlightened] lit. ' became bright,' a sure sign of health and vigour. He had been weary with the day's exertions, and now recovers. 31. Aijalon] see on Jgl^s. It was the natu- ral route by which the defeated Philistines would retreat to their own country. 32. Eat them with the blood] in direct opposition to the command of God: Gn 9* and Lv2026. This prohibition to eat with the blood is still carefully observed by strict Jews. 33. Transgressed] RV 'dealt treacherously,' i.e. disobediently, as if they had been enemies of Jehovah. 34. The stone would allow the blood to run down from the carcase. 35. Built an altar] to commemorate his victory : cp. Ex 17 1^ Josh 223-t ; or in reference to V. 33 ; the word for ' altar ' means, properly, ' place for slaughtering.' 41. Give a perfect lot'] RV ' shew the right.' 43. And^ lo, I must die] rather, ' Here am I, I will die.' Jonathan does not flinch. This ' taboo,' or ' ban,' which Saul had placed upon the taking of food (see on v. 24) is regarded with as much reverence as Jephthah's vow (Jgll^^) ; but Jonathan's life, unlike that of Jephthah's daughter, is important to the whole nation, and Saul finds that his power is very strictly limited by the popular will. 45. Rescued] Heb. ' ransomed.' This does not mean that another person was killed in Jonathan's place. The ransom paid might be the life of an animal or a sum of money (1313.15). 47-51. These vv. form a conclusion to the life of Saul, after which the editor turns to an- other section of his history, ' Saul and David.' 47. The disastrous ending of the life of Saul must not blind us to his many virtues. The earlier part of his reign was a series of successes. To the end the nation was con- tented with his rule, and it remained faithful to his dynasty even after his death. See Intro. § 7. We know nothing from other sources as to any expedition against Zobah, and the victories over the Philistines would appear to be more sweepingly stated than seems warranted by the last disastrous battle on Mt. Gilboa. "This brief summary aptly illustrates the fragmentary and episodic nature of the history of Saul. 48. Gathered an host] RV ' did valiantly.' 49. The two daughters are mentioned be- cause of the important part they play in the later history. 51. Probably the v. originally ran, ' and Kish the father of Saul and Ner the father of Abner were the sons of Abiel.' Saul and Abner were first cousins. CHAPTER 15 Saul's Victory over Amalek. His Disobedience and Rejection Amalek had attacked Israel at Rephidim (ExlT^f,) and opposed their entrance into Canaan (Nul4-*'5: cp. Dt25"*-)- They are men- tioned as allies of the Midianites in Jg7i2. The Amalekite nomads probably occupied a large tract of the wilderness S. of Judah. This c. evidently comes from a different 189 15. 3 1 SAMUEL 17. source from the preceding, which concludes the history of Saul. It forms the connexion between the history of Saul and that of David. We have no means of determining to what part of Saul's reign it belongs. 3. Utterly destroy] lit. 'devote' (to Je- hovah). The first idea of the word Qierem) is that the object is dedicated to Jehovah, and so forbidden to common use: see Josh 6 1^. We meet with the same root in harem (the women's apartments), and haram (the sacred enclosure at Mecca): cp. Lv27 2y. 4. Telaim] probably the same as Telem (Josh 1 5 2^), a town in S. Judah. Men of Judah are thus sum- moned to the expedition. 5. A city of Amalek] RV ' the city of Amalek,' i.e. the capital. 6. Kenites] see on Jg4i7. They formed a nomad tribe, living partly in and partly outside Palestine. 7. From Havilah witil thou comest to Shur] op. Gn 251^. Havilah was the eastern boundary of the district inhabited by the Amalekites, but its position is uncertain. Shur {Wall) was originally the name of the wall built to protect the eastern frontier of Egypt, and was then applied to the neighbouring part of the desert (Ex 15 22). 8. The Amalekites subsequently sack Ziklag (IS 30); but from this time on- wards they cease to be formidable. II. It grieved Samuel] RV 'Samuel was wroth.' He was annoyed at the course events were taking : cp. 2 S 6 ^ Jon 4 1. It is character- istic of the Bible that it mentions the failings of its heroes and saints. 12. Carmel] a town in Judah, 7 m. S. of Hebron. It lay directly in Saul's way on his return from smiting the Amalekites. A place] RV ' a monument ' (to commemorate his victory) : cp. 2S1818. 17. RM ' Though thou be little in thine own sight, art thou not head of the tribes of Israel ? ' i.e. the excuse, even if genuine, was not valid. 22, 23. These words are in poetic form, as we can see by the parallelism. See Intro, to Psalms. 22. For the views expressed in this v. cp. Ps 40 6f. 5 1 16, 17 laa 1 nf- Jer 6 20 Hos 6 6 Am 6 2if- Mic 6 6f. The Israelite was not left to imagine, like the heathen, that sacrifices were what God chiefly desired. 23. Samuel goes behind Saul's pretended motive, sacrifice, to his real dis- obedience. Iniquity] RV ' idolatry.' Idolatry] RV ' teraphim ': see on 19^3. 24, 25. Saul's feeling was not true repent- ance, but merely a desire to propitiate Samuel and secure his apparent adhesion : see v. 30. 32. Delicately] RM 'cheerfully.' Surely the bitterness, etc.] Since Saul had spared his life, Agag thought he was secure. 35. Came no more to see Saul] As a prophet he had no longer any message for the rejected king, although as a man he mourned for the failure of a career that had once seemed so promising. The execution of Agag seems to us mere butchery; but, to both Samuel and Saul, Agag, like the rest of Amalek, had been put under the ' ban,' and hence his death, even in cold blood, was a religious necessity. According to the ideas of the time, Saul had had no right to give any ' quarter.' Nor is it right to judge the ancient Hebrews by what are happily our higher standards of conduct. CHAPTER 16 David is anointed King over Israel From c. 16 on, the interest centres in David rather than in Saul. I. Oil] probably consecrated oil for anointing. 2. If Saul hear it] Saul's action, recorded in 22is>i-\ shows that Samuel's fears were far from baseless. Say, I am come to sacrifice] Samuel was not asked to prevaricate. God relieved him of his difficulty by giving him a definite command. 4. Beth-lehem] originally Ephrath (Gn48''^), 5 m. S. of Jerusalem. Trembled] For Samuel had been wont to move from one town to another to punish offences (7 1<5). 5. Sanctify yourselves] This was done by washing themselves and re- moving all ceremonial defilement. He sanc- tified Jesse and his sons] This gave Samuel an opportunity for private conversation. 6. Said] to himself, thought. 10. Again, Jesse made seven] RV simply, ' And Jesse made seven.' The sons already named are included in the seven. 11. We will not sit down] probably to the feast which followed the sacrifice: cp. IS 9. 12. Ruddy] This colour- ing is much admired in the East where most are dark-skinned. Of a beautiful countenance] lit. ' fair of eyes.' In those hot countries bordering on the desert, multitudes are dis- figured by ophthalmia, as was Leah (Gn29^''' RV). 13. In the midst of his brethren] Pro- bably they thought Samuel had anointed him as his follower, or to become in time a prophet like himself. 13, 14. The Spirit of the LORD came upon David . . departed from Saul] The special grace conferred by anointing passed from the rejected Saul to the new king : cp. 10 6. 15. An evil spirit from God] apparently a ' gloomy, suspicious melancholy bordering on madness. To the Hebrew, every visitation, alike of good and evil, is directly from Jehovah : cp. IK 22 22 Am 3 6. 22. Stand before me] i.e. be one of my servants: cp. IKIO^. CHAPTER 17 David slays Goliath 171-18^ is evidently taken from a different document from 16i'i-23. In 16^4-23 David is a man of war, and skilful in speech, and an expert harper, and has already become 190 17. 1 1 SAMUEL 17. 28 Saul's musician and armourbearer. In c. 17 he is still a shepherd lad, who is personally unknown to Saul. LXX tries to get rid of the difficulty by omitting several vv., but the attempt is not altogether successful. I. Shochoh] identified with Shuweikeh, 'a strong position isolated from the rest of the ridge,' W. of Bethlehem. It was fortified by Rehoboam (2Chll'^). Azekah] mentioned in Josh 1 5 ^5 in connexion with Shochoh. 4. Six cubits and a span] about 9| ft. 5. Brass] This is really copper : cp. DtS^. Five thousand shekels] It is uncertain what was the weight of the shekel at this time. 6. Target] RV ' javelin.' 10. I defy] rather, ' I have insulted.' 12. An old man] It is intended to explain why Jesse sent his sons to the war but did not go himself. 15. Went and returned] RV ' went to and fro.' 17. Parched corn] ears of corn plucked just before they are ripe and roasted in a pan or on an iron plate. It is still a common article of merchandise. 18. Take their pledge] ' bring back from them some proof that you have fulfilled your mission.' 20. Trench] RV ' place of the wagons.' It was a rude rampart or barricade formed of wagons. 22. His car- riage] i.e. what he was carrying: cp. Ac21i5. 25. Free] from forced labour or contri- butions : cp. 8^^*. 28. The ■wilderness] an- swered to our ' downs ' or ' common.' It was land suitable for grazing cattle, but not divided up into fields. 37. The Lord be with thee] RV 'shall be.' It is an encouragement rather than a prayer. 38. Armed David w^ith his armour] RV ' clad David with his apparel.' This was probably some close-fitting garment worn under the armour, or on occasion without it. 39. Assayed] LXX ' wearied himself ' : cp. Gnl9ii. Proved] He was not accustomed to wearing heavy armour, and it soon became burdensome. 43. Staves] i.e. with a mere stick (v. 40) instead of weapons. 46. In true Oriental fashion David replies to the Philis- tine's brave words with equally bold language, heightened to something far bolder by his confidence in Jehovah. 52. The valley] LXX reads ' Gath.' This strong fortress of the Philistines, like that of Ekron, checked the pursuit (cp. the end of the v.). Gath was not far W. of Shochoh, and therefore it would seem that at Shaaraim the stream of fugitives would part, some going on southwards to Gath, others northwards to Ekron. 54. Brought it to Jerusalem] But Jerusalem was still a non-Hebrew city (2S54f.). A little later we find the sword of Goliath at Nob (21 9), and hence some think that Nob is intended here. Stanley and Eobinson place Nob on the Mount of Olives. Otliers think that David brought the head of Goliath to Jerusalem at a later period (2S5''). Another reference to Goliath should be noted, which implies the existence either of other traditions, or of more than one Philistine champion of the name (2 S 2119). CHAPTER 18 The Love of Jonathan tor David Vv. 6-30 of this c. seem to be connected with 1614-23 and not to be taken from the same document as 17 1-I8 5. LXX omits a large part of this section and only retains vv. 6-8*^ 12* 13-16, 20-21* 22-26* 27-29*. In this case the LXX text gives an easy and straight- forward account, and many suppose that it is the original. But the character of the LXX omissions in c. 17 renders this a little doubtful 6. Cp. Ex 1520 Jg 1134 Ps 6811 (RY). 7. Played] lit. ' sported.' The word is used of festive sports and especially of festal dancing : cp. 1 Ch 1529. 8. But the kingdom] The knowledge of his deposition rankled in Saul's mind. 10. Prophesied] The words 'prophet' and ' prophesy ' are applied in OT. to the servants of the gods of Canaan as well as to the servants of Jehovah: cp. 1K1819. The behaviour of these Canaanite prophets must have greatly resembled the possession of Saul (IK 18 28). The word ' prophesy ' includes such wild out- breaks of frenzy as well as the calm utterances of Isaiah. In the case of Saul this frenzy was regarded as produced by an evil spirit from God. 16. Went out and came in] i.e. lived in an open public manner in contrast to Saul's seclu- sion which was the natural result of his melan- choly. 17, Every battle fought by Israel was an act of religious worship to Jehovah : cp. 2528. 18. What is my life] RM ' Who are my kinsfolk ? ' The word denotes a division of the tribe larger than a 'father's family.' 21. In the one of the twain] RV ' a second time.' It is an example of regal and rather caustic wit. The first time was when Merab was offered (v. 19). 23. A poor man] This would suggest that David's lack of patrimony had been made an excuse for not giving Merab to him : but see intro. note to the c. This v. is plainly inconsistent with vv. 19-21. 25. Dowry] In ancient times some payment was made to the father by the intending bride- groom (Gn34i2 Ex 22 iG), a relic of still earlier days, when a wife was either bought from her parents or captured from foes. But service might be rendered instead of payment in money (Gn 29 20). 26. And the days were not expired] This appears to refer to the time, not previously mentioned, within which the exploit was to be performed. 28. Michal Saul's daughter] LXX ' all Israel.' 191 19.2 1 SAMUEL 21. 5 CHAPTER 19 Saul's Hatred of David. David escapes TO Samuel 2. Until the morning-] RV 'in the morning.' 6. It was difficult for David to estimate correctly Saul's feelings towards him, because the king's repentance was real while it lasted, and because much might be ascribed to his madness. 10. That night] David would probably flee at once : hence LXX may be right in joining these words to v. 11, ' And it came to pass that night that Saul sent.' 13. An image] RV ' the teraphim.' ' Tera- phim,' like ' Elohim,' is a plural of dignity and denotes a single image, but the origin of the word is unknown. Such images, derived from Canaanite paganism, appear to have been in human form and to have varied in size ; for, while Michal's could pass for a man, Rachel's could be hidden under the camel's furniture (Gn.313-1). Usually, perhaps, the teraphim was a half-length image, or a head only. "Tera- phim were used for the purpose of divination (Ezk21 21 Zech 10 2), and Rachel probably stole her father's teraphim, lest he should discover which way she had fled. Pillow of goats' /;«/?•] A word from this root occurs in 2K815^ so that it appears to have been some covering made of goats' hair, which was placed over the face of a sleeping person, probably to keep oif the mosquitoes. In this case it served as a disguise. For his bolster] RY ' at the head thereof.' With a cloth] Heb. ' with the gar- ment,' i.e. the mantle, which was regarded as the most indispensable article of dress (v. 24) by day and was used as a covering by night. So Saul's messengers would easily recognise it. 14. Apparently Michal allowed the messen- gers to get some view of the recumbent figure. 15. Bring him up to me in the bed] As an Eastern bed is merely a mattress, this could be easily done : cp. M'k2'*. 17. Michal pretends that David coerced her into contriving his escape. 18. Came to Samuel] David naturally turned to him for advice and direction. Naioth] Evi- dently the name of some locality in Ramah, but whether a building or a district it is im- possible to determine. 23. Once more the influence of the Spirit fell on Saul for his good. 24. Naked] i.e. without his outer garment : cp. Isa 20 2. Is Saul also among the prophets?] see on 10 11. Observe that the religious frenzy is contagious : cp. Intro. § 4. CHAPTER 20 The Friendship or David and Jonathan 4. Thy soul] a pathetic periphrasis for ' thou.' 5. The new moon] Many nations of antiquity appear to have observed the day of the new moon as a religious festival. For its obser- vance in Israel cp. 2K423 Isal^^ AmS^ (where it is coupled with the sabbath) Nu 10 10. Vv. 25 and 27 imply that David, like Abner, ate regularly at Saul's table.. 6. A yearly sacrifice] This refers to the ordinary annual festival of the family. Such family festivals were very widespread both among European and Semitic peoples. 8. A covenant of the Lord] i.e. in which God had been invoked as a witness and the breach of which He would punish. 12. About to morrow any time] RV ' about this time to-morrow.' Or the third day'] pro- bably a gloss. 14, 15. That I die not: but aho'] LXX has an attractive reading: ' If I die, thou shalt not cut off thy kindness': cp. 2S9i. 16. At the hand of David's enemies] David's enemies are a euphemism for David himself. Jonathan shrinks from invoking retribution on his friend or suggesting in so many words the possibility of his breaking the covenant. 19. Thou shalt go down, quickly] LXX reads ' Thou shalt be greatly missed,' and the whole clause means ' thou shalt be greatly missed on the third day.' The business] i.e. some matter well known to David and Jona- than. The stone Ezel] LXX ' this mound.' 25. Jonathan arose, and Abner sat] Jonathan gave up his rightful place and Abner took it. 26. He /« not clean] i.e. some ceremonial defilement has happened to him which prevents him from sliaring in the festival: cp. Jnl828. 30. Mother's nakedness] She would become the wife of the new king : cp. 2 S 12^. 41. Out of a place toward the south] LXX ' from beside the mound.' CHAPTER 21 The Flight of David David first of all flees to Nob, where Ahime- lech supplies him with food and gives him the sword of Goliath. He next takes refuge with Achish at Gath. I. Nob] see on 17^*. Alone] He had no escort or retinue. 3. Better, ' Now, therefore, what is under thine hand? Five loaves? Give them into mine hand.' 4. Hallowed bread] i.e. the shew- bread. It was removed every sabbath and fresh loaves substituted. 5. Better, 'of a truth women have been kept from us as is usual, when I go on an expedition.' The bread ix in a manner com- mon] The meaning is obscure. RV ' though it was but a common journey ; how much more then to-day shall their vessels be holy?' i.e. their wallets and utensils were clean when they started and there had been no chance of defiling them since, although their journey waa 192 21. 6 1 SAMUEL 25. 8 an ordinary one. Ewald understands ' the vessels ' to refer to the young men's bodies, as in lTh44. They were ceremonially clean, so that they might partake of holy things. 6. This incident was referred to by our Lord (Mtl23). 10. Fled that day] He feared that Doeg would give information and that pursuit would begin at once. Gath] This connexion with Gath brought David some of his most faithful followers. 13. Feigned himself mad] to allay suspicion. Easterns have a religious awe of madness and would not think of injuring those so afflicted. Scrabbled] i.e. scratched, made meaningless marks. LXX ' beat,' ' drummed ' is much more forcible. 15. In my presence] rather, ' to my annoyance.' CHAPTER 22 David in the Cave of Adullam. Saul's Slaughter op the Priests at Nob I. Adullam] probably in the valley of Elah between Philistia and Hebron. 2. Four hun- dred] They soon increased to six hundred (23 13). Cp. the description given of Jephthah's band in Jgll^. 5. Gad] is here mentioned for the first time. After David's accession he became the king's seer (2S2411). He was sent to rebuke David for his sin in numbering the people, and after his death wrote a history of his reign (lCh2929). From 2Ch2'J-'5 he appears to have been concerned in arranging the temple service. Forest of Hareth] not known. 6. In Ramah] RM ' on the height.' 14. Goeth at thy bidding] RV 'is taken into thy council.' 15. Did I then begin?] RV'Have I to-day begun ? ' Ahimelech had been accus- tomed to place his services at David's disposal. 17. Footmen] Heb. 'runners'; they ran before the king's chariot (8 ii) and sometimes carried news from one place to another. On occasion they acted as executioners, but this was not their special office. 19. Saul probably wished to make an example which would deter others from rendering David any assistance. 20. Abiathar shared in all David's wander- ings and was made by him joint priest with Zadok. But he shared in Adonijah'^ rising and was deposed by Solomon. CHAPTER 23 David delivers Keilah and afterwards retires to the "Wilderness op Ziph and Maon 6. With an ephod in his hand] This is in- serted to explain how it was that David was able to enquire of the Lord : see on 14 1^. 9. Secretly practised] R V ' devised.' There was no secrecy about Saul's methods. 14. Ziph] identified with Te// ^/■/', a rounded hill, 4 m. SE. of Hebron. 15. In a wood] 13 RM ' in Horesh.' But the true rendering is doubtful. If a proper name, it was more pro- bably a mountain than a wood (cp. vv. 14, 19), and the word may mean either. 17. That also] Saul knew that Jonathan was willing to rank second. 19. Jeshimon] RV ' the desert.' It is the dreary desert of southern Judah : see Nu2120. 25. Maon] mentioned in Josh 15 S'^ in con- nexion with Carmel and Ziph. It is a lofty conical hill 7 m. S. of Hebron. 28. Sela- hammahlekoth] i.e. ' the rock of divisions.' 29. This V. should be joined to the next c. En-gedi] A well-watered spot on the E. edge of the desert of Judah. It still bears the name Ain Jidi. ' En ' means ' well.' CHAPTER 24 David spares Saul's Life at Engedi We have a similar incident narrated in c. 26, and some critics hold that the two are merely varying accounts of the same event. But it is to be noticed that almost every detail that could vary, does vary. Nor is there any diffi- culty in supposing that David spared Saul's life twice. 2. Rocks of the wild goats] Some cliffs near Engedi, so called because wild goats congregated there. They are still numerous in this district. 3. Sheepcotes] These were rough, stone walls, built to protect the sheep from wild beasts. Thomson writes : ' There is scarcely a cave in the land . . but has such a cote in front of it.' 4. It is probable that we should translate ' Behold the day on which the Lord saith to thee, ' i.e. they interpret the opportunity as a manifest sign of God's intention that" Saul should be slain. 7. Stayed] The word is a very strong one and shows that David had to exert all his authority. 10. Rather, ' The Lord delivered thee to-day into mine hand and bade me kill thee ': see on v. 4. 19. The Lord reward thee good] Gleams of his former high character still show themselves in Saul. CHAPTER 25 Death op Samuel. The Incident of Nabal. David and Abigail 1. Paran] That part of the desert between Sinai and Palestine which bordered on Judah. 2. Possessions] rather, ' occupation,' ' busi- ness.' Carmel] see on 15 12. Great] has frequently the meaning of ' rich ' : cp. 2 S 19 32. Shearing his sheep] A special occasion for festivity and entertainment : cp. v. 36, 2 S 13^3. Of the house of Caleb] This district of the S. of Judah had been conquered and settled by Caleb. It is called ' the south of Caleb ' in 30 1^. 6. To him that liveth in prosperity'] Yulgate has ' to my brethren.' 8. A good day] This is the ordinary Heb. plu-ase for a 193 25. 11 1 SAMUEL 28. 3 festival, ii. My water] Water is precious in these di-y lands : cp. Jg 1 1^. But LXX reads ' my wine. ' 1 6. A wall] The protection from Arab robbers deserved some recognition from those who lived near the desert. Precisely the same demand is made at present by Bedouin sheikhs living on the borders of civilisation. 25. Folly] i.e. wrong-headed and foolish obstinacy and churlishness. The Heb. is the feminine form of 'Nabal': cp. 2 8 333. 27. Blessing] RV ' present ' : cp. 30 -•^ ™g- Gn 33 n. 28. Fighteth the battles of the LORD] David had rescued the inhabitants of Keilah from the Philistines (23^), and protected the dwellers in the S. of Judah from the desert nomads (v. 16). 29. A man] The reference is to Saul. Bound] i.e. safely bound up, so that not one is lost. In the bundle of life] rather, ' in the bundle of the living,' i.e. in the number of those whose lives are guarded and protected by God. With] ' in the custody of.' 31. Causeless] Abigail ventures to hint that Nabal's answer was not a sujfficient reason for the vengeance David proposed to take. 33. Thy advice] RV ' thy wisdom.' 39. Communed with Abigail] RV ' spake concerning.' It is the technical term for ' ask- ing any one's hand in marriage' : cp. Song 8*^. 44. Saul considered that David, as an out- law, had forfeited his wife. But David him- self never acknowledged this, and claimed Michal as his wife as soon as he had the power (2 S3 14). CHAPTER 26 David spares Saul's Life a Second Time I. Hachilah] near the wilderness of Ziph : see 2319. 4. Was come in very deed] Heb. ' was come to Nakon.' Nakon = ' a set place ' (RM), though it may have been the corruption of a place-name, such as Maon. 6. Hittite] So he belonged to one of the original inhabitants of the country. We might expect to find some of them among David's followers : cp. 22 2. Uriah, another Hittite, played an important part in David's history. Abishai] is here mentioned for the first time. He saved David's life in one of the Philistine wars (2S211''), was implicated in the murder of Abner (2S330), shared the command of the army (2S1010), and remained faithful to David in Absalom's rebellion. 8. At once] RV ' at one stroke.' 19. Let him accept an offering] cp.Gn4'''. The idea in this v. is simply that if Jehovah had prompted Saul's action, Saul was doing right, and David would seek pardon by an offering. Go, serve other gods] This seems to suggest that David limited the rule of Jeho- vah to the land of Israel as the rule of Che- mosh was limited to Moab : cp. Jephthah's reference to Chemosh in Jg 11 ^•i. In the older Hebrew thought, Jehovah was specially pre- sent in Palestine (though cp. JgS'*). Hence it seemed difficult and almost impossible to worship the true God in a heathen land, since when a Hebrew became naturalised elsewhere, he would conform to the religion of his new home. 20. Before the face] RV ' away from the presence of,' i.e. let not my blood be shed without Jehovah requiring it : cp. Gn 4 10. A flea] LXX ' my soul.' The Heb. reading is due to a recollection of 24 1'^. CHAPTER 27 David flees to Gath, and obtains Ziklac from achish 2. David's position now as the captain of 600 men was quite different from what it was in 21iof. '7, A full year and four months] The plirase probably means ' about four months,' lit. ' days and four months.' 8 The Geshurites] were the inhabitants of a district in the S. of Philistia : see Josh 13"^. They must not be confused with the Geshurites who lived E. of the Jordan. The tribes men- tioned here were constant enemies of Israel whom David took the opportunity to exter- minate. 9. Left] The tense of the verb de- notes David's habitual practice. He never left any one alive to tell the tale. 10. Made a road] RV ' made a raid.' The south of the Jerahmeelites] Jerahmeel was one of the divisions of the tribe of Judah (1 Ch29). The barren south was naturally named after the fertile lands on which it bordered : the ' south of Judah,' ' of Jerahmeel,' and so on. The deception was that Achish understood that David had smitten the Hebrew inhabitants of the lands bordering on the desert, whereas he had smitten the nomad tribes who dwelt in the actual desert. 11. To bring tidhigs to Gath] R V ' to bring them to Gath ' in order to sell them as slaves.' So vill he his manner] RV ' so hath been his manner all the while he hath dwelt.' CHAPTER 2 V Saul and the Witch of Endor Vv. 3-25 come from another document and interrupt the connexion, as will be seen if the account is read without them. In order of time their proper position is after c. 30. In 291 the Philistines are still in Aphek ; in 2911 they advance to Jezreel, where we find them in 28'*. In 283-^^5 we have come to the eve of the battle, the account of which follows in c. 31. 2. Keeper of mine head] i.e. captain of my body-guard. 3. This V. is inserted to explain what follows. By familiar spirits (Heb. o&)some form of witch- craft is intended. In v. 7 the woman is said to 194 28. 4 1 SAMUEL 31. 13 be ' the mistress of an ob.' In Lv202'i'the ob is said to be in the man or woman : cp.2 K 23 24. The wizards'] From Lv 20-" it is quite clear that this word denotes not the magician, but the spirit controlled by the magician. It is often joined to ' ob,' and means, etymologically, ' possessed of knowledge,' (i.e. of the future or the unseen) : cp. our modern clairvoyants. 4. Shunem] in the plain of Jezreel, 4 m. from Mt. Gilboa. Gilboa] a mountain range on the E. side of the valley of Jezreel. 6. Dreams] These are always regarded in the Bible as one method of divine revelation : see NU12 6. Urim] see on Ex 28 ^o. The ephod and the Urim had gone down with Abiathar to David (23 '^). Prophets] We may compare with this 1535. The action of Samuel was apparently followed by the rest of the pro- phets. 7. En-dor] 4 m. S. of Mt. Tabor, and 10 m. from Mt. Gilboa. II, 12. This woman would seem to have been what is now called a ' medium ' ; she sees (very possibly having become entranced) a figure, and Saul from her description at once concludes that it is Samuel. Very possi- bly Saul saw nothing at all ; the words he heard may have come from the woman. In- deed, the LXX translator (who very probably knew as much about such matters as we do) wishing to mark that the words really came from the woman in her trance, spoke of her as a ventriloquist : cp. also AclG^*', where the girl, liable to fall into a state of secondary consciousness, is said to have a ' spirit of divination.' To attribute words so spoken to a spirit either internal or external to the medium, was the only course possible to a Hebrew or Jewish narrator. 13. Gods] RV 'a god,' for Saul immedi- ately said, ' What form is he of ? ' We must remember that Elohim in Hebrew is more general than the word ' god ' is with us, and is, in fact, used generally for ' supernatural beings,' or even 'spirits' : see Ps82^*. 16. Is become thine enemy] LXX ' is on the side of thy neigh- bour.' This is based on a probable emendation. If ' neighbour ' is right, it must be taken in the sense of ' rival ' (which originally meant almost the same thing). 17. To him] LXX ' to thee.' 19. Moreover. . the Philistines] LXX omits. To morrow shaJt thou and thy sons he with me] i.e. in Sheol, the place of departed spirits. CHAPTER 29 David Disallowed from FiGHXiNa with THE Philistines I. Jezreel] the plain between Gilboa and Little Hermon. 3. He fell unto me] i.e. ' deserted to me.' 4. An adversary] Heb. mia?/. Satan, the evil spirit, is always entitled ' the Satan,' i.e. the Adversary (Jobl 2Zech3i). 6. As the Lord liveth] Achish would recog- nise that Jehovah was the national god of Israel and that He existed as well as Dagon (cp. IK 17 12). 11. The Philistines went up to Jezreel] The Philistines could not attack Saul's position on Mt. Gilboa from Shunem (28 4), and accordingly they went round Jezreel to attack by the easier slopes there. CHAPTER 30 The Amalekites raid Ziklag, and are PURSUED BY David 2. Slew not any] They would be valuable as slaves. 6. Spake of stoning him] They probably thought he had been negligent in leaving Ziklag without a guard. 8. Enquired at the Lord] by means of the Urim in the ephod : see on Ex 28^0. 13. My master left me] The life of a slave was of little more importance than that of a horse. 14. The Cherethites] Cherethite is used with Pelethite, perhaps another name for Philistine : see v. 16 and Zeph25. It is very possibly connected with Crete, the country from which the Philistines were believed to have come (Am 9 7). David had the capacity of turning foes into faithful friends and soldiers. 16. Dancing] RV 'feasting,' i.e. enjoying themselves merrily. 17. Twilight] This is probably the evening twilight. 20. The LXX has no word corresponding to ' David ' : ' and they took all the sheep and oxen (i.e. those belonging to the Amalekites) and drave them before the other cattle (i.e. those belonging to David's followers) and said. This is David's spoil.' In repentance for their former attitude (v. 6), they resolved only to keep what had been taken from them by the Amalekites, and to surrender the other spoil to David. 26. He sent of the spoil] In gratitude for their goodwill when he was a hunted outlaw. David's action was also due to policy. He wished them to be ready to accept his rule, when the time came. CHAPTER 31 Defeat of the Israelites at Mt. Gilboa. Death of Saul 6. And all his men] LXX omits. 7. The valley] of Jezreel. 10. The house of Ash- taroth] at Askelon : cp. 2 S 1 20. Beth-shan] between the Gilboa and little Hermon ranges. 11. They thus showed their gratitude for former kindness : see c. 11. 12. Burnt them] The action of the men of Jabesh Avas probably due to their fear that the Philistines would remove the bodies. 13. Under a tree] RV ' under the tamarisk tree.' It was evidently some well-known tree : cp.Gn35-' Jg45. 195 1.1 2 SAMUEL 2, 9 2 SAMUEL CHAPTEE 1 The Lament of David over Saul and Jonathan 1. There is no break between the two books of Samuel ; they really form one continuous narrative. This v. is a continuation of 1 S30, which describes David's successful attack upon Ziklag. He had not heard of the events narrated in 1 S31. 2. With his clothes rent, etc.] In 1S412, which describes the arrival of the messenger at Shiloh with tidings of the capture of the ark, these were the same indications that he was the bearer of evil tidings. 8, 9. The Amalekite's account contradicts IS 31* and is also improbable in itself. The man was probably lying in the hope of curry- ing favour with David. 10. For the practice of wearing signs of royalty, when going into battle, see 1 K2230_ Bracelet] In the Assj'rian sculptures warriors are often represented with such ornaments. 18. The use of the bow] RV ' the song of the bow,' lit. ' the bow.' The text of this v. is doubtful, but if the words are right, ' the bow ' will be the title of the lamentation following. There is, however, no warrant for this in Hebrew usage. Some see an allusion to V. 22, ' the bow of Jonathan.' The book of Jasher] RV ' Jashar,' mentioned also in Josh 1013. It was api^arently a book of martial or historical poetry. Jashar is probably a name of Israel. We get it in Dt32i5 under the form Jeshurun : the word properly means 'righteous.' 21. Fields of offerings] fields bearing pro- duce, from which firstfruits are offered. Not . . anointed with oil] It is doubtful if this refers to Saul or his shield. Shields were greased to preserve the leather and to prevent spears from sticking: cp. Isa21'5. 22. In this figurative language, the bow is represented as drinking the blood of the slain and the sword as eating the fat of the mighty: cp. Dt32'i'-^ Isa34'3. Turned not back] i.e. empty, as the parallel clause shows. 24. Scarlet . . gold] These were the ordinary ornaments of a Hebrew woman: cp. Jer430. 25. O Jonathan, thou tvast slain in thine high places] RV ' Jonathan is slain upon thy high places.' The address is to Israel. 27. The weapons of -war] The parallel clause shows that these are Saul and Jonathan themselves, regarded as the sword and bow of the nation. It is remarkable that this poem makes no distinction between Saul and Jona- than, but praises the courage, the success, and the patriotism of both alike. The gloomy picture of Saul given in the later chs. of 1 Sam must not be allowed to efface the courage and determination of his struggle with Israel's foes. On the other hand, the genuine grief expressed in this lament (which cannot be anything else than authentic) over the father as well as the son, shows David's chivalry in a very pleasing light. CHAPTER 2 David made King over Judah, Ish- cosheth over israel. asahel slain BY AbNER I. Shall I go up?] The defeat and death of Saul had entirely changed David's position. He had, for some time to come, nothing to fear from Abner, who was occupied elsewhere (vv. 8, 9). The Philistines would not molest him, as he was their vassal. But even so, he asks God's wishes, before he takes the decisive step. Hebron] There were several reasons which rendered Hebron suitable. It was fairly central, was a celebrated town, and David had friends there (1830^1). It was 14 m. distant from his birthplace, Bethlehem. No other town in Judah, while Jerusalem was still in Canaanite hands, had the same claim. 5. This was probably an attempt to gain over Jabesh-gilead, the capital of eastern Palestine, and to add the trans-Jordanic tribes to his little kingdom of Judah. If so, it failed for the present. But during his flight from Absalom, it was in eastern Palestine that David found refuge. 8. Ish-bosheth] His name was really Esh- baal (lCh833) i.e. 'man of Baal.' The name Baal means ' lord,' and so could be used for Jehovah (Hos2i'5^, but afterwards it was confused with the Canaanite Baal and altered to Bosheth, i.e. 'Shame': cp. Mephibosheth. Ish-bosheth was the fourth son of Saul, and now that his three elder brothers were slain (IS 31''). he became the heir to the tlu-one : see on 5-°. Mahanaim] was David's capital during his flight from Absalom (17 ■^■^). 9. The Ashurites] This is doubtless a mistake for Asher. Abner first gained pos- session of eastern Palestine, then of Asher in the extreme north of western Palestine, next of the great central plain of Issachar, then of the hill-country of Ephraim and Benjamin. 196 2. 10 2 SAMUEL 3.35 By this time his master's dominions touched those of David, and before long a collision occurred (vv. 12, 13). 10. Forty years old] This number is probably wi'ong. David was 30 years old when he began to I'eign (5^), and Jonathan would be about the same age or a little younger. Ish-bosheth would be younger still. Probably we should read 20 for 40. In old Hebrew writing, the numbers would be much alike. 10, II. Two years. . seven years and six months] Either it was five years and six months after the death of Ish-bosheth before the Israelites would accept David, or it took Abner that length of time to establish his master's son as king (v. 9). 13. The pool of Gibeon] Gibeon was a large and important town (Josh 10-), 5 m. N. of Jerusalem. The pool still exists. Robin- son mentions it as an open pool 120 ft. long by 100 broad. 14. Play] As this word is not used elsewhere of fighting, a preliminary contest to the serious battle must be intended. 16. Helkath-hazzurim] i.e. ' Field of sharp edges.' 23. The hinder end of the spear] Abner did not wish to kill him. The spear had a sharp point by which it was stuck into the ground. Stood still] out of grief at the sight: cp. 2012. 27. The AV and E, V represent two different explanations : (a) If Abner had not spoken, the pursuit would have continued till the morning, (h) If Abner had not proposed the mimic fight, there would have been no battle at all. The former explanation seems prefer- able. 28. Neither fought they any more] i.e. on that day, for see 3^. 29. All that night] for fear of pursuit. The plain] RV ' the Arabah,' i.e. the valley of the Jordan. Bithron] the name of some ravine they passed through on their way. 32. All night] i.e. all the night after the burial. CHAPTER 3 Abner is treacherously Murdered BY JOAB 3. Chileab] We read nothing more of him and he probably died as a child. In lCh3i he is called Daniel. Geshur] a kingdom on the border of Bashan, where Absalom after- wards took refuge (133"). It must not be confused with the Geshur of 1 827^. 4. Adonijah] see IKl. 7. Rizpah] see 2is-ii. Gone in unto my father's concubine] According to Eastern ideas this was equivalent to laying claim to the throne: see 12 8 1^22 1K222. 8. Am I a dog's head, which against Judah ?] RV ' Am I a dog's head that belongeth to Judah '? ' i.e. a despised enemy. Do shew kindness this day] RV ' This day ' (i.e. at the very time you bring this trivial charge) ' do I shew kindness ' : see on V. 17. This w^oman] LXX ' a woman.' It was the question of a mere woman. 9. Except . . even so I do to him] RV ' if . . I do not even so to him,' i.e. support David instead of Ish-bosheth. 12. On his behalf] RM 'where he was.' Whose /.s- the land ? saying] LXX omits. 13. Except thou first bring Michal] see lS264-i. 16. Bahurim] in Benjamin, on the road from Jerusalem to the Jordan. It was probably the last town in the dominions of Ish-bosheth. 17. Ye sought for David] It would thus seem that even in northern Israel there was a strong party, who wished to make David king on the death of Saul. It was probably the personal influence of Abner that decided the day in favour of Ish-bosheth. The whole passage clearly shows how weak was the hereditary principle, and how completely the ' king ' was still regarded merely as a military leader and ' judge.' The element of popular choice is more fully emphasised here than in Judges (except for the Abimelech episode). 19. Benjamin] as being Saul's fellow-tribes- men they would be speciallj^ attached to the royal house and need additional persuasion. 21. Make a league with thee] as they did with Saul (IS 10-^) and as they tried to do with Rehoboam (lK12-i). Before making him king, they wished to see their rights safe- guarded. 22. From purmivg a troop] RV ' from a foray.' David had probably arranged a time when Joab was absent. 24. Why is it that thou hast sent him away ?] As a kins- man of Asahel, Joab thought that David should have avenged his death. 27. For the blood of Asahel his brother] According to Eastern ideas Joab was bound to avenge his brother's murder. Neither Judaism, Christianity, nor Mohammedanism has been able to eradicate this feeling. But the Law provided a remedy in the Cities of Refuge (see Nu 35 11 ^•). In the case before us, Joab was probably influenced by the fear that Abner would interfere with his authority : see on 8^'''. 29. On all his father's house] According to Jewish ideas the family was involved in the fate of the ancestor : cp. 2 1 *5 2 K 5 -". Leaneth on a staff] rather, ' that holdeth the spindle ' : cp. Prov31i-\ It was despicable work for a man. 31. Mourn before Abner] i.e. precede the bier. This was all the punishment David was strong enough to inflict. 33. Died Abner as a fool dieth ?] i.e. as one who runs into needless danger, or meets his death when en- gaged in a shameful conspiracy : see on 1 S25-^. 35. Till the sun be down] The regular time for ending a fast, as it still is in Mohammedan countries. The Hebrew day was reckoned from sunset to sunset. 197 4. S 2 SAMUEL 5.25 CHAPTER 4 The Murder of Ish-bosheth 2, 3. Beeroth was near Gibeon. The object of this note is to explain how the Beerothites came to be Benjamites. Properly they should have been Canaanites, for Beeroth was included in the treaty with Gibeon (Josh 9 1^- 2"). But owing to the persecution of Saul (21 1) the Canaanites of Beeroth fled to Gittaim, and the town passed into the possession of Benja- min. Gittaim] in Benjamin. 4. Mephibosheth] His name is given in 1 Ch83i as -Merib-baal' : see on 28. 5. Who lay on a bed at noon] rather, ' and he was taking his noon-tide rest,' or siesta. 6. The LXX has an altogether different text for this v., ' and, behold, the woman who kept the door of the house was winnowing wheat, and she slumbered and slept ; and the brothers, Rechab and Baanah, escaped notice.' This explains how it was they were able to enter unperceived. 10. Who thought that I would have given him] better, ' in order to give him.' 12. Chronicles omits all mention of the reign of Ish-bosheth. CHAPTER 5 David is anointed King, captures Jerusalem, and smites the Philistines 1. There was no longer any member of the house of Saul who could take the lead. 2. Feed] lit. ' act as shepherd to ' (cp. 7 "). ' Shepherd ' became a technical term for a ruler (JerS^^). The figure is developed in Ezk34. 4. The capture of Jerusalem marks a most important point in the history of Israel. Hitherto, the national life had had no real centre ; the residence of a judge or a prophet or a king would be a temporary rallying place, such as the ' palm-tree of Deborah,' Shiloh (see on 1 S 7 1), Mizpah, Gibeah (of Saul), Nob or Hebron. From this time, the centre is fixed, and, at least for the southern kingdom, all the other cities grew less and less important in comparison with the new capital. Its position, however, in the midst of the rocky, barren ridge running down central Palestine, made it always more suitable for a fortress than a commercial and wealthy capital, such as Solomon tried to make it. 6. Except thou take away the blind and the lame] RM ' but the blind and the lame shall turn thee away.' The Jebusites considered their city so strong that it needed no other defenders. 7. The strong hold of Zion] called later on the ' city ' (i.e. citadel) ' of David,' because he built and fortified it. It is to be noticed that the city of David does not mean the city of Jerusalem but the fort on Mt. Zion, David does not yet venture to live in Jerusalem itself, outside the fort. The city of Jerusalem is built on high ground, which is shaped like a cloven tongue ; and it is probable that the ' city of David ' occupied the eastern ' tip,' behind which rose in later times the Temple. Gradually the city spread to the western ' tip ' of the tongue. ' Millo ' appears to be the name of the part of the city which was not fortified ; its meaning is uncertain ; later on it also was included within the fortifications. The original ' city of David ' is thus a triangle, two sides of which are naturally protected, and the third, probably at this time, as later, ai'tificially. Below the height on which the fort is built is the Kidron valley. 8. LXX reads ' Whosoever smites the Jebusite, let him slay with the sword both the lame and the blind, and those who hate David's soul.' 1 Chi 1*^-9 reads, 'Whosoever smiteth the Jebusites first shall be chief and captain,' and adds, ' And Joab the son of Zeruiah went up first, and was made chief ' (RV). 9. Millo] see on v. 7 and Jg9*5. II. Hiram] If we accept the statements of Josephus, this Hiram was the father of Solomon's friend (IK 5 1). Tyre] the leading city of Phoenicia. They built] For the skill of the Phoenicians in masonry and building see 1K57. 14-16. The list of David's sons is given also in iChS^f- 14**. The variations are interesting and instructive. 14. Nathan] one of the ancestors of the Messiah (LkS^^). 17. This was a united and determined effort to crush David before he became too powerful. The hold] It is uncertain what place is meant. 18. The valley of Rephaira] a valley SW. of Jerusalem, separated by a slight, rocky ridge from the valley of Hinnom. 20. Baal-perazim] Perazimmeans' breaches.' Hence the play upon words. ' The Lord has made a breach . . like the breach . . he called the name . . Breaches.' It is common to find the names of places compounded with the name of the Baal to whom they were con- sidered to belong : e.g. Baal-Peor, Baal-Gad, Baal-Perazim. Here the Baal is, of course, Jehovah. 21. Their images] They had brought them into the battle to secure victory: cp. IS 4 3. Burned them] RV ' took them away,' i.e. as trophies. 23. Thou shalt not go up] LXX adds ' to meet them.' 24. The sound of a going] RV ' the sound of marching.' It was the heavenly host marching to join in the attack on the Philistines. 25. Geba] LXX and Chronicles both have Gibeon, which is doubtless correct. This battle is apparently referred to in Isa28-^, where also we have Gibeon. 198 6. 1 2 SAMUEL 8. 1 CHAPTER 6 The bringing of the Ark from Kirjath- JEARIM TO Jerusalem 1. Again] This probably refers to the previous assembling of the chosen men of ■ Israel to repel the Philistine invasion (S^^"^^). 2. From Baale of Judah] should probably be t ' to Baal of Judah ' (1 Ch 13 «). The town was also known as Kirjath-baal (City of Baal). 3. Out of the house of Abinadab] It had been there ever since its removal from Beth- shemesh (1 S 7 1). In Gibeah] RV ' in the hill.' Kirjath-jearim was situated on high ground. 5. On all manner of instruments made of fir wood] Read with Chronicles ' with all their might, even with songs.' 7. He died] If this punishment seem severe, we must remember that one great lesson the Israelites had to learn was reverence and fear of God. The whole symbolism of both Tabernacle and Temple was intended to impress upon them the holiness of God and the fact that He could not be rashly approached by sinful man. 10. Gittite] The later tradition (1 Ch 151®) makes him a Levite. If this is correct, he probably came from Gath-rimmon, a Levitical city (Josh 21 25). 13. When they . . had g'one six paces] They offered sacrifices as soon as it was seen that God permitted the removal of the ark. 17. The tabernacle] This translation, though correct, is misleading. It was an ordinary tent. The Tabernacle was at Gibeon. Burnt offerings] represented the self-dedication of the worshipper. Peace offerings] were sacri- fices of thanksgiving. 19. A flagon 0/" HV«e] RV ' a cake of raisins.' 23. David thus inflicted on Michal the greatest disgrace which could befall an Eastern woman. This condemnation seems to our minds extreme ; but such sudden impulses were characteristic of David. CHAPTER 7 The Promise of God to David in Requital of his Desire to Build the Temple This c. affords an excellent illustration of the way in which prophecy has often two quite distinct applications, one to the more imme- diate and the other to the more distant future. The primary reference is to Solomon (see especially vv. 12-14:), but the prophecy looks beyond him to a gi-eater Son, of whom he was only an emblem and type. We get a somewhat similar instance in Isa7i4-i''' (see especially v. IG). Chronologically this c. should follow c. 8. 2. Nathan] The prophet is here mentioned for the first time. He played an important part in David's reign (chs.7, 12,1K1) and afterwards wrote a history of it, and of part, at least, of the reign of Solomon. Curtains] i.e. a tent: see on Gi". 3. This v., when read in connexion with vv. 4, of., is important as showing the difference between the prophet as an ordinary man and the prophet as the spokesman of God: cp. 1 Cor 7 ^-^o, 12 5. Shalt thou build] LXX ' Thou shalt not build.' ' But his son shall ' (v. 13). According to 1 Ch22S the prohibition was connected with his having been a man of war. 6. Whereas] RV ' for.' This v. gives the reason why David was not to build. In a tent and in a tabernacle] The tent denotes the outer covering: the taber- nacle the framework of boards and bars. 7. Tribes] Chronicles has preserved the true reading 'judges' (lChl7<^). 9. Have made] RV ' will make.' Nathan turns from the past to the future. 11. Also the LORD telleth thee] The revelation turns to David's posterity. 12. In Ac 2 30 this v. is directly referred to the Messiah. 13. He shall build an house] fulfilled in the person of Solomon (IK8I6-20). I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever] On this is based the statement in Lkl33. 14. I will be his father, and he shall be my son] In Heb 1 ^ this is applied to Christ, who was God's Son in a sense that Solomon never was. If he commit iniquity] History records many instances of the transgressions and punishment of David's posterity. The rod of men] Such chastisement as fathers inflict on their sons. 16. Before thee] LXX and Chronicles ' before me.' For ever] The pro- mise was conditional on conduct : but the king- dom of Messiah, David's greatest Son, is eternal. 19. Is this the manner of man] i-ather, 'this is the law of (i.e. imposed on) man.' God has made it a law regulating men's conduct, that kind intentions should be recognised and re- quited. But it was a sign of condescension that God should consider Himself bound to reward David's zeal by such proofs of regard and affection. 21. For thy word's sake] i.e. to perform the promise made to David tlu-ough Samuel. 23. To render this v. intelligible we must do two things: (a) with LXX omit the words ' for you,' (h) with Chronicles change ' for thy land ' into ' drive out.' Render, therefore, ' and to do great things and terrible, to drive out nations and their gods before thy people, which thou redeemedst to thee from Egypt.' CHAPTER 8 David's Victories, and a List of his Officers This c. concludes this account of David's reign. The remainder of the book is taken from a different source. I. Metheg-ammah] RV ' the bridle of the 199 8. 2 2 SAMUEL mother city.' This is supposed to mean ' the authority of the capital,' namely, Gath (cp. IChlSi). Many take it, however, as the name (perhaps corrupted) of a place which David took from the Philistines. EM retains Metheg-ammah. 10. 16 meaning than that of ' priests.' But it is far from clear what were the precise duties which they discharged. Zadok and Abiathar were the priests for the nation, while 2026 and 1K45 show that these ' priests ' stood in some special relation to the king. Accordingly i^r^,°f *.r,f:T,i° *? fri'i..?,^ ^™" ™?-i"- m my^%e his a" Jf*,^ 'making them to lie down on the ground. David then slew two out of every three. The reason for this severity is not known. Gifts] Moab continued tributary till the death of Ahab(2K35). 3. Hadadezer] i.e. ' Hadad is a help ': cp. Eliezer, Joezer, Azariah. Hadad was the supreme god of Syria. In 10i<^his name is given more correctly as Hadarezer. Zobah] a Syrian kingdom, whose territory seems to have lain N. of Damascus and not far from the Euphrates. To recover his border] Chronicles reads ' to establish his dominion ' (lChl83). 4. A thousand c7j ar/o/.s, and seven hundred horsemen] EV 'a thousand and seven hundred horsemen.' 5. Damascus] is situated ' in a plain of vast size and extreme fertility, which lies east of the great chain of Anti-Libanus, on the edge of the Desert.' It has always been one of the most important cities of Syria. It succeeded in throwing ofE the yoke of Israel in the reign of Solomon (IK 11 24). its history is related priests. In Egypt, the king's confidential advisers are said to have been chosen from among the priests, and it is this view of their functions which is taken in Chronicles. ' The sons of David were chief about the king ' See Intro. § 5. CHAPTEE 9 David and Mephibosheth Chs. 9-20 have apparently been taken from a single document, written not long after the events recorded, and with special and unique knowledge of the circumstances of David's court and its life. 1-6. As soon as liis wars were over, David remembered his promise to his friend Jonathan, and sends for his son Mephibosheth (or Merib-baal). 7-13. David entertains Mephibosheth at his table, and bestows on him all the property that formerly belonged to Saul. 12. Mephibosheth had a young son] When • .11 1 n T7-- , ^ . - -"i^-i^iiiiJuaiicLu iictu a young: son wnen m the books of Kmgs 6. Syna of Damascus] Saul died, Mephibosheth was only five years The phrase indicates the small Ai'amgean states in the regions of Damascus. 8. Exceeding much brass] i.e. copper. It is said that the Egyptians of the 18th and 19th dynasties got so much copper from Syria that they gave up working the mines on Mt. Sinai. 9. Hamath] on the Orontes. 10. Joram] LXX ' Jeddoram,' Chronicles ' Hadoram.' A Jewish scribe has probably altered Hadoram to the more familiar Joram. 12, 13. Syria. . Syrians] LXX and Chronicles (IChlBi^) rightly read 'Edom,' 'Edomites.' 15-18. These w. are intended by the author to form the conclusion of his history of David's reign. Another list of officers is given in 2023-26. 17. Zadok . . and Ahimelech . . were the priests] Zadok seems to have become chief priest under Saul: David had his own high priest, Abiathar. He solved the resulting difficulty by dividing the office between them. But for the prompt action of Joab, he would probably have divided the command of the army between Joab and Abner. Ahimelech the son of Abiathar] His name was really Abiathar, the son of Ahimelech (see 1 S 22 20 2 S 1535). But both in OT. and NT. the names are continually confused. 18. The Cherethites and the Pelethites] see on 1 S 30 1^. They formed part of David's foreign bodyguard. Chief rulers] EV 'priests.' There can be no doubt that the translation of EV is correct, for the word has never any other 200 old (4-1), so that this brings us nearly to the middle of David's reign. CHAPTEE 10 The War with Ammox and Syria 2. His father shewed kindness unto me] Occasion not stated. 3. The city] i.e. their capital, Eabbah. The Ammonites probably were thinking of the severity with which David had treated the neighbouring Moabites (8 2). 4. Shaving the beard is the greatest insult that can be offered to an Oriental. The Arabs regard it as we should regard flogging or branding. 6. Hired] cp. IKI51S-20. Beth-rehob] near Laish or Dan (Jgl82S). King Maacah] EV 'the king of Maacah.' Maacah was a small Syrian kingdom on the border of eastern Manasseh. Ish-tob] EV 'the men of Tob.' See on Jg 1 1 3. 8. Came out] from Eabbah. Were by themselves] This implies distrust and disunion between the allies. 9. Joab took advantage of the division of the enemy to attack them in detail. Abishai kept the Ammonites in check while Joab crushed the Syrians, and then the two brothers combined their forces and fell on the Ammonites. 14. So Joab returned] The great strength of Eabbah rendered it hopeless to attempt to carry it by assault, and so Joab rested his army during the winter: see on 111. ig. xhe river] i.e. the Euphrates. Helam] position unknown. 10. 18 2 SAMUEL 14. 1 8. Forty thousand horsemen] IChlQi^ ' forty thousand footmen.' 19. All the kings that loere servants to Hadarezer] cp. 1 K 20 1**. CHAPTER 11 David and Bath-sheba This narrative is of the greatest value. It shows the faithfulness and the high morality of the historian, who relates, without a single attempt at palliation, this scandalous chapter in the great king's history. Further, the position of the prophet, even in these early days, as the ' conscience ' of the individual or the nation, is clearly described. What Nathan is to David, Elijah (with equal courage) is to Ahab. In other nations, even in much later times, such an act if committed by a powerful king would have gone unnoticed or unblamed. 1. After the year was expired] RV ' at the return of the year,' i.e. in the spring. When kings go forth to battle] In ancient times hostilities ceased during the winter and began again in the spring. David tarried still at Jerusalem] He was not required to be present during the lengthy operations of the siege. 2. David arose from off his bed] He had been resting during the heat of the day. 6f. The subterfuges to which the sinner is compelled to stoop are described in pitiless detail. 8. A mess of meat from the king] This was regarded as a special mark of dis- tinction. Cp. Gn4334 1S923. 9. It would seem that Uriah's suspicions had been aroused. II. The ark] This accidental mention of the ark suggests that it was no unusual occurrence for it to be taken to the field of battle. 15. The only resource left was murder. 2 1 . Who smote Abimelech ?] see Jg 9 ^^. 23. We w^ere upon them] i.e. we opposed them. CHAPTER 12 David's Repentance and Pardon. The Capture of Rabbah 4. To dress for the wayfaring man] We may notice Eastern ideas of hospitality: cp. Gn 183-5. 5. Shall surely die] David's im- pulsive temper breaks out again : cp. 1 S 25 22. II. For the fulfilment of this threat, see lg2i,22_ David's repentance secured the for- giveness of God, but it did not avert the punishment of his sin. 13. Thou shalt not die] This was the punishment David himself had pronounced on the offender. 14. Thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme] There is little doubt that the oiiginal reading was, ' Thou hast blasphemed the Lord,' and that it was altered to avoid any appearance of irreverence. 23. I shall go to him] There is a sugges- tion here of belief in some form of continued existence beyond the grave. 24. Solomon] ' Peaceful.' 25. Jedidiah] ' Beloved of Jehovah.' It is cm'ious that this name should have been laid aside in favour of his other name, Solomon. 27. The city of waters] i.e. the lower town of Rabbah, on the Jabbok. It received this name because of a perennial stream which rises within it and which still flows through it. 28. Encamp against the city, and take it] Now that the waters of the lower town were in the possession of the besiegers, the fate of the upper town, or citadel, was only a question of time. 30. Their king's crown] The reference is probably to Milcom, the god of the Ammon- ites (1 Kl 1 5). His name is merely an altered form of Melech, i.e. ' king.' The weight of the crown (a talent of gold) renders it certain that no living person could have worn it for long. 31. Put them under saws, etc.] The Heb. must be translated, ' put them to saws,' i.e. set them to work at saws, and harrows, and axes. For the forced labour of captives, cp. 1 K 9 15, 2i_ Made them pass through the brick- kiln] read, ' made them work at the brick- mould.' CHAPTER 13 The Crime of Amnon, and Absalom's Vengeance This narrative and the history of Absalom's rebellion is omitted in Chronicles. 2. Tamar was in the women's apartments, and, therefore, safe. She was his half-sister and Absalom's sister: see 32.3. 4. Lean from day to day] i.e. getting thinner and paler every morning. 5. Make thyself sick] RV ' feign thyself sick.' 13. He will not withhold me] Tamar said this as a last, desperate expedient, for such marriages were unlawful (Lvl89). 16. Amnon was adding insult to injury. 18. Garment of divers colours] RM ' a long garment with sleeves ' : cp. Gn373. 20. He is thy brother] So Tamar could not reproach herself for having gone to see him. 23. Ephraim] an unknown town. 37. Talmai] Absalom escapes to his grand- father (33j to avoid the revenge of Amnon's relatives. David mourned] His sin was finding him out, and he was tasting the first bitter fruits of it in the death of one son and the alien- ation of another. CHAPTER 14 Absalom's Return from Geshur After waiting for two years, Absalom forces Joab to use his influence to bring about a reconcilLation between him and his father. 201 14. 2 2 SAMUEL 16. 8 2. Tekoah] 6 m. S. of Bethlehem. It was the home of the prophet Amos (Am 1 1). 7. We will destroy] She purposely makes the case appear as bad as possible. My coal] The word means a glowing piece of wood. The surviving son is compared to a spark left when the rest of the fire has gone out. The passage casts an interesting light on the informal and almost casual administration of justice. According to Hebrew custom the youth had no claim to a reprieve ; on the other hand, the extinction of a family was an admitted calamity. 9. The iniquity be on me] i.e. if the king is breaking the law of God, she is willing to bear the punishment : cp. Gn9'5. 11. Let the king, etc.] She wishes him to ratify his pro- mise by an oath. 13, As one which is faulty] The king's merciful disposition towards the son of a stranger condemned his severity to his own son. 14. We must needs die, etc.] Life may end at any time, and when ended cannot be re- called. Hence the regret that follows harsh judgment when the offender is dead. Neither doth God, etc.] RV ' neither doth God take away life, but deviseth means, that he that is banished be not an outcast from him.' God is so far from taking away life that He is anxious that the outcast should not be lost, but should be enabled to return. It is possi- ble that the woman was hinting at the contrast between David's treatment of Absalom and God's treatment of David : see 12^3. 15. The people] i.e. her family. The woman still keeps to her fictitious tale. 20. To fetch about this form of speech] RV ' to change the face of the matter ' ; i.e. the present position of Absalom. 25. His beauty] Absalom inherited the personal beauty of his father (1 S 16 12). The fact is also mentioned in the case of Tamar (13 1) and of Adonijah (1K16). 26. The king's weight] We do not know the exact weight of the king's shekel, but probably 40 shekels were roughly equivalent to an English pound. This notice is inserted to distinguish it from the sacred shekel. 27. Three sons] It would appeal* from 18 1'^ that none of them lived to grow up. 29. Joab had risked a good deal in sending the woman of Tekoah, and he did not choose to ventm"e a second attempt. CHAPTER 15 The Rebellion of Absalom His party is so strong that David is obliged to flee from Jerusalem. He is joined by Ittai the Gittite, and by Zadok and Abiathar the priests, and by Hushai the Archite. The king, however, orders Zadok, Abiathar, and Hushai to return to Jerusalem. I. Fifty men to run before him] Such runners have always formed part of royal state in the East : cp. IKl^ iS'i'^. 2. Rose] rather, ' used to rise,' and stand by the gate so as to meet all who went in or out. 7. Forty years] This is obviously a mistake. Some versions read ' four.' 8. I will serve the Lord] i.e. by sacrifices and offerings (v. 12). Absalom may have remembered his father's device (1 S2Ut5). 9. Went to Hebron] Absalom probably hoped that the ancient capital, Hebron, would be jealous of Jerusalem. 11. Called] i.e. invited to share in the festivities. They were probably men of influence and position. 12. While he offered sacrifices] This gave him an opportunity of conferring with Ahith- ophel without exciting remark : cp. IS 16 2. 14. Let us flee] LXX adds ' lest the people come upon us.' David is taken completely by surprise, and mistrusts his subjects and his household. 17. A place that was far off] RV takes it as a proper name, ' Beth-merhak.' 18. Gittites] see on ISSQi^. ittai and his followers from Gath (Goliath's city) were now among David's staunchest followers. 19. With the king] i.e. with whoever chances to be king. As a foreigner Ittai had nothing to do with the internal quarrels of Israel. David generously suggests that he should keep them out of his own conflicts. 24. And Abiathar went up] These words are probably out of place. They are omitted in some MSS of the LXX, and look like a scribe's insertion. 26. In spite of all his anxiety and misery, David's resignation and piety never waver. 27. Art 7iot thou a seer? return] LXX ' see, thou shalt return.' 28. The plain of the wilderness] The locality is that described in 2K255 as 'the plains of Jericho.' It was in the level plain of the Jordan valley and near the fords (17i«3). 32. Where he worshipped God] RV ' where God was worshipped.' Olivet was a well- known high-place : cp. 1 K 1 1 7, 8. The Archite] i.e. an inhabitant of Erech, a town on the southern frontier of Ephi-aim, between Bethel and Beth-horon. CHAPTER 16 ZiBA, Shimei, and Ahithophel David, during his flight, is assisted by Ziba, but is cursed by Shimei. The cause of Absalom is promoted by the wise counsel of Ahithophel. I. An hundred of summer fruits] a hundred cakes into which summer fruits were com- pressed. 2. With tnie Oriental deference he does not venture to say they are for the king's own use. 8. All the blood of the house of Saul] The reference is probably to the inci- dent recorded in 21 i-i4. 202 16. 11 2 SAMUEL 19. 23 II. The Lord hath bidden him] David recognised that all his misfortunes were the consequence of his sin. The Lord had pun- ished him through his own son, whom he had forgiven and restored. Why not also through Shimei ? 14 Came weary] RM ' came to Aye- phim.' 23. Enquired at the oracle of God] i.e. consulted God by means of the Urim and Thummim. CHAPTER 17 The Fall op Ahithophel Absalom follows the advice of Hushai rather than that of Ahithophel, who thereupon hangs himself. David retreats to Mahanaim. 3. The death of David would put an end to all resistance, and bring about peace. 7. At this time] RV ' this time.' Hushai contrasts this suggestion of Ahithophel with his former advice (1621), which was good. 8. A man of war] Ahithophel's advice, though plausible, was not sound. David was too experienced a warrior to be caught unprepared. 16. Hushai was afraid that Absalom might change his mind and be guided by the advice of Ahithophel. 17. Went and told] RV ' used to go and tell.' 'This v. describes how com- munication between Hushai and David was regularly carried on. 23. Ahithophel saw clearly that following the advice of Hushai meant the failure of the conspiracy. 24. Mahanaim] E. of Jordan, near the Jabbok. 25. Israelite] more probably ' Ish- maelite ' (1 Ch 2 1'i'). Abigail was a sister of David (lCh2i5, 16)^ and consequently Amasa was his nephew : cp. 1913. CHAPTER 18 The Defeat and Death of Absalom I. Numbered] rather, ' mustered.' 3. Succour us out of the city] David, holding Mahanaim with a sufficient force, would be of the greatest assistance to the fugitives, if his army were defeated. 5. The people heard] This state- ment explains v. 12. 6. The wood of Ephraim] LXX reads ' Maha- naim ' here. 8. The battle was there scattered] So Joab was able to destroy Absalom's forces in detail. The wood devoured, etc.] The thick- ness of the wood, its swamps, precipices, etc., militated against the fugitives, and increased the slaughter : cp. the manner of Absalom's death. 9. Met] RV 'chanced to meet.' By misfor- tune, in his flight Absalom encountered some of the pursuers. His head] The tradition that Absalom was caught by his hair comes from Josephus. 13. Against /Me] RV 'aloof.' Joab would have stood on one side and let his accomplice bear the brunt of the king's anger. 16. Joab held back the people] Absalom was dead and the war ended. 203 17. A very great heap of stones] This might be simply to mark his burying-place. 18. This V. is evidently parenthetical, and informs us that Absalom had a suitable permanent memo- rial, though the building now known as Absa- lom's tomb in the vicinity of Jerusalem is of much later date. Evidently Absalom's three sons (142") had died before him. Place] RV ' monument.' 21. Cushi]RV'theCushite.' He was probably a slave of Joab, who could be trusted to say exactly what he was told. 22. Thou hast no tidings ready] RV ' thou wilt have no reward for the tidings.' His message would be a sad one. 23. By the way of the plain] The direct way lay across the hills, but Ahimaaz, by choosing the level road along the Jordan valley, reached his goal first. 24. Between the two gates] i.e. between the outer and the inner gate in the city wall. 25. If he be alone, there is tidings] Had he been a fugitive, he would have been followed by others. 29. And me] RV ' even me.' I knew not what it wjas] This statement was untrue (v. 20). Probably Joab had commanded him to leave the announcement to the Cushite CHAPTER 19 David's Return to Jerusalebi David's excessive grief for Absalom is re- buked by Joab. He punishes Joab for Absa- lom's death by making Amasa commander of the army. The details of his return to Jerusalem are given, with the strife it caused between the men of Israel and the men of Judah. David has often been accused of ingratitude on account of his treatment of Joab. It has been urged that he would never have been secure with Absalom at liberty, and Joab knew how uncertain was his master's mind. On the other hand, it was a serious matter to murder the heir to the throne, for which deposition was probably a lenient punishment. 8. Then the king arose] He recognised the truth of Joab's statements. Sat in the gate] where kings were wont to give audiences (152). II. The talk of the people of Israel about David's return had come to the king's know- ledge, but so far the elders of Judah had not approached him on the subject. 16, 17. Shimei tries to make his peace with David (see 16"-) by bringing the tribe of Benjamin back to their allegiance. 20. The house of Joseph] here stands for northern Israel. Epkraim was the most powerful tribe in the northern and central tribes, as Judah was in the south. 23. Sware unto him] At first sight it appears as if David broke his oath by his last directions to Solomon (IK 2 8. 9). But the way in which Solomon acted on those instructions suggests that he understood his father to be merely putting him on his guard 19.26 2 SAMUEL 31. 1 against a dangerous man. He put Joab to death at once, but merely placed Shimei where he could do no mischief. 26. I will saddle] better,withLXX,' saddle.' The command was given to Ziba, but, instead of obeying it, he drove off the asses to meet David. 29. I have said] RV'I say,' i.e. I declare that this is my intention. Thou and Ziba] see 16 4. 41. Here again we may notice the jealousy between the powerful tribes of Judah and Ephraim : see on v. 20. 42. Hath he given us any gift ?] This was probably a hit at the Benjamites, who seem to have profited by their connection with Saul (1 S 22 7). 43. That our advice should not first be had] cp. the conduct of the men of Ephraim, narrated in JgS^ 12 1 although they had more excuse (see on JgS^). CHAPTER 20 The Rebellion of Sheba Sheba takes advantage of the jealousy of the men of Israel to begin a rebellion, which, but for the prompt action of Joab, might have resulted in a disruption between Israel and Judah. During this expedition Amasa is murdered by Joab. The c. concludes with a list of David's officers. This c. evidently continues the narrative of the concluding vv. of the preceding. During the period of the Judges, Ephraim had been the leading tribe and they could not brook to see their place taken by Judah. For the present their attempt failed, and the rule of Solomon was too strong for them to renew it. But on the accession of Rehoboam the old jealousy broke out again. This c. ends the account which the editor took from the document he has been following since c. 9. The list with which it concludes is similar to that at the close of the earlier document (8I6-IS). I. The son of Bichri] rather, 'a son of Bichri,' i.e. a member of that clan (lCh7<5-8). We have no part . . Israel] This was the very cry raised by the rebellious Israelites in the time of Rehoboam (1K1216). 3. See 15 16 1621,22. 5. He tarried] The reason is unknown. 6. Abishai] When Amasa failed him, David, determined at all hazards to suspend Joab, turned to Abishai. Joab went with his brother in order to watch for his opportunity, which soon came. 8. It would seem that Joab had two swords, and that Amasa, seeing one lying on the ground, did not suspect that he had another. 9. Took Amasa by the beard . . to kiss him] This is said to be still an Arab custom. 14. Unto Abel, and to Beth-maachah] read ' unto Abel of Beth-maachah.' All the Berites] read ' all the Bichrites ' (see on v. 1). Sheba 204 went to the Bichrites (his kinsmen) and then proceeded to Abel-beth-maachah, in the ex- treme N. of Palestine, where he was besieged by Joab. 15. They cast up a bank against the city] cp. 2 K 1 9 32. It enabled the besiegers to bring their battering-rams close up to the wall. It stood in the trench] RV ' it stood against the rampart.' 18. The wisdom of the inhabitants of Abel was so generally accepted, that their decision settled all disputed questions. The woman says this to give weight to her remonstrance. 19. A city and a mother] i.e. a mother-city, a metropolis. 20. Joab was utterly unscru- pulous, but never wantonly cruel : cp. 18 1^. 23-26. This list of officers concludes this part of the book. What follows is an appendix. When we compare it with the list given in 8 16-18^ Tj^Q gnd the amount of variation which we should expect, if one list refers to the earlier and the other to the later part of the reign. The names of Joab, Benaiah, Jehos- haphat, Zadok, and Abiathar occur in both lists. Sheva replaces Seraiah, and Ira takes the place of David's sons, while the office of Adoram is new. 24. Adoram] He held the same office through the long reign of Solomon till the accession of Rehoboam (IK 1218). It has, however, been supposed that the Adoram mentioned in Kings was the son and successor of the Adoram mentioned here. CHAPTERS 21-24 These chapters contain six appendices, which have been placed at the end of the book in order not to interrupt the history of the reign. These appendices are (1) the account of a famine (21i-i4); (2) exploits against the Philistines (2115-22), (3) a psalm of David (c. 22); (4) David's last words (231-7); (5) further exploits against the Philistines and a list of David's heroes (238-29); (6) the census of the people (c. 24). Of these six, the first and sixth are closely connected (24 1 refers to 21 1), while the account of exploits against the Philistines has been cut in two by two psalms. But these psalms, though placed side by side, have no connexion with one another. C. 22 is identical with Ps 18, and is best explained under that title. CHAPTER 21 The Famine and some Exploits against THE Philistines I. It is for Saul, and for his bloody house] rather, ' upon Saul and his house rests blood- shed.' The Gibeonites] The lives of the Gibeonites had been spared, through fear of God's anger being excited by any breach of the covenant made with them (Josh 9, 21. 2 2 SAMUEL 24. 5 especially v. 20). 2. Amorites] Strictly speak- ing, the Gibeonites were Hivites (Josh 9 ''), but ' Amorites ' was a general name for the Canaanites. 3. Wherewith shall I make the atonement?] i.e. what sum of money shall I pay as compensation ? 4. RV ' It is no matter of silver or gold between us and Saul, or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.' They would not accept compensation in money, nor did they wish that Israel, apart from Saul, should suffer. 6. Hang them up] The method of execution is uncertain. Whom the LORD did choose] RV 'The chosen of the Lord.' 8. Michal] Evidently a mistake for ' Merab.' It was Merab who married Adriel (ISlSi^^). Brought up] RV 'bore.' 9,10. Barley harvest is in April, and the early rain (until water dropped) in October. 15-22. The text in this section and also in its continuation (23 ^"39) is very corrupt. 15, 16. Read, 'and his servants with him, and settled in Nob, and fought against the Phi- listines, and which was of the sons of the giant.' The giant's name has been lost. 19. Jaare-oregim] in lCh205 ' Jair.' Elha- nan . . slew the brother of Goliath] AV repre- sents the reading of Chronicles. RV repre- sents the text of Samuel, as we now have it, ' Elhanan . . slew Goliath the Gittite.' If we adopt it, we must suppose that Elhanan was another name of David ; but see on 1 S 1 7. CHAPTER 22 David's TnANKSGiviNa Psalm This beautiful poem has also been preserved as the Eighteenth Psalm. It probably be- longs to the earlier portion of David's reign, when his conquests and God's promise (2 S 7) were still fresh in his mind. See on Psl8. CHAPTER 23 David's Last Words. The Exploits OF HIS Heroes 1-7. This psalm is not contained in the book of Psalms. It is called ' the last ' (rather, ' the latter ') 'words of David,' in contrast with the earlier psalm, which forms c. 22. We have no other means of determining its date. 2. By me] RM ' in me.' The idea is that God used the psalmist as His instrument and spokesman to repeat His words to the people : cp. 1 K 22 28 Hos 1 2. 4. As the tender grass sprhiging] render, ' when the tender grass springs.' The eous ruler is like a bright, sunny when there are no clouds and the grass springs out of the earth. There are no clouds to darken the present or threaten the future, and the whole land is alive with gladness and life. 5. This V. is better taken as a question: ' For is not my house so with God, seeing He right- hath made . . for all my salvation and all my desire, shall He not make it to grow ?' David refers to the promise actually made in the past and looks forward with confidence to the future. Everlasting covenant] cp. 7i5, 16 Ordered in all thuigs] i.e. properly drawn up and arranged in every respect. Grow] i.e. continue and increase: cp. Isa458. 6, 7. These vv. contrast the fate of the wicked. Thorns cannot be pulled up with the naked hand, but the man who wishes to cut them down must take in his hand a long staff with an iron weapon at the end. 8-39. This list of heroes originally con- tained the first three, then a second three, then the 30 : 36 names in all, or with Joab, 37 names. This is the number actually given in v. 39. 8-1 1. The first three, Ishbosheth, Eleazar, and Shammah. 8. The Tachmonite that sat in the seat] read, ' Ishbosheth the Hachmon- ite.' Chief among the captains] read, ' the chief of the tlu-ee': cp. v. 19. The same loas Adino the Eznite] Chronicles rightly reads 'he lifted up his spear.' 11. Into a troop] read, ' to Lehi.' Lehi was the scene of Sam- son's exploit against the Philistines (JglS^'-)- 13-16. We now get a gi-eat exploit, which promoted three other heroes to a place above the 30. 16. Poured it out unto the LORD] as too precious for human use. 18-20. Two names only of the second three have been preserved : Abishai and Benaiah. 24-39- Chronicles reduces this list to the correct number of 30, by omitting the name of Elika (v. 26). But we know that Asahel died early in David's reign, and another may have been chosen in his place. 205 CHAPTER 24 The Numbering of the People, and its Penalty In punishment for David's sin in numbering the people, God sends a pestilence, which slays 70,000 men. In gratitude for the stay of the plague, David erects an altar in the threshing- floor of Araunah the Jebusite. I. Again] This refers to the former occa- sion mentioned in c. 21. He moved] Chron- icles states that ' Satan . . provoked David.' The older account does not enter into the distinction between what God permits and what God causes. This distinction is the result of later reflection and more subtle theology. 5-8. Their course is easy to follow, though several of the names are corrupt. They started from the city of Aroer on the Arnon, and passed through eastern Palestine. They next crossed to Zidon, and traversed western Palestine to Beersheba in the extreme south. 5. On the right side (i.e. on the south) of the city that lieth in the midst of the river (RV ' valley ' ) ] Perhaps this city was Ar of Moab (Isa 15^). 24. 6 2 SAMUEL— 1 AND 2 KINGS INTRO. 6. Tahtim-hodshi] Thenius conjectures that this is a mistake for ' Kadesh,' a town on the Orontes marking the extreme northern limit of Israel. Dan-jaan] read ' Dan.' 10. David's sin consisted in pride in his own strength and forgetfulness of his dependence on God. It was the very sin which ruined Saul. 13. Seven years] LXX and Chronicles read ' three years.' 15. From the morning even to the time appointed] These words occasion some difficulty as the pestilence was stayed before the appointed time. They are omitted in Chronicles. 22. Instruments of the oxen] i.e. the wooden yoke: cp. IK 19 21. 23. This V. continues Araunah's speech : RV ' all this, O king, doth Ai-aunah give.' THE FIRST AND SECOND BOOKS OF KINGS INTRODUCTION 1. Character and Contents. The books of Kings take up the account of the Jewish people at the point where it is left by 2 Samuel. The division into two books is not original, and seems to have been introduced from the LXX, where they are termed the ' Third and Fourth books of the Kingdoms,' the First and Second being 1 and 2 Sam. Their contents embrace the history of the period between the last years of David's reign (about 980 B.C.) and the Fall of Jerusalem in 586, closing with the release of Jehoiachin from prison by Evil-Merodach in 501 ; so that the space of time covered is rather more than 400 years. Their final completion must be later than the date last mentioned, and their composition is separated from many of the events related by a considerable interval ; so that for the bulk of the information which they comprise they are dependent upon earlier records. In the Talmud, the authorship is attri- buted to Jeremiah (perhaps on the strength of the general tone of the books, or of the recur- rence in Jer .39-42 and 52 of parts of 2 K 24, 25), but the statement is improbable, so far at least as the present form of the books is con- cerned. Jeremiah, whose prophetic ministry began as early as the 13th year of Josiah (Jer 12), i.e. about 627, can scarcely have survived till after 561. 2. Sources. In the course of the narrative reference is made to three different sources as authorities for the history of the times described, viz. the Acts of Solomon (IK It'll), the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel (1 K 14^9, etc.), and the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah (IK 14-^9, etc.). The mention of a Recorder among the officials of many of the Kings (1K43 2K1818) suggests that the several writings just named may have pre- served information derived from the State archives, though the nature of some of the statements for which they are cited renders it probable that they were not themselves official documents (see IK 16 20 2 K 15 is 2117). In certain instances they are referred to as supplying matter which the books of Kings do not furnish (see 1K1419 22^9) ; but it seems likely that much that is included in Kings is really drawn from them. There is no explicit statement, however, to show in what way these or any other sources were utilised in the compilation of the work, though certain conclusions respecting the nature of some of the written documents that lie behind our books and the method followed in the com- position of them may be obtained from an analysis of their structure, which consists of the following elements : — (a) A detailed account of the last days of David (IK 1,2). (b) Passages relating in detail the construc- tion or repair of the Temple (1 K 6-9 2 K 1 2 ^-le 1610-16, etc.). (c) Lengthy narratives dealing with the prophets Elijah and Elisha (IK 17-19, 21, 2K 12-17 2, 4-623, etc.). (fZ) Passages relating at length certain poli- tical events (IK 20 22i-3s 2K3-1-27 624-720 1813-2020, etc.). (e) Succinct accounts of many of the kings, written in stereotyped phrases, beginning with the date of each king's accession, the length of his reign and his character (certain other particulars being added in the case of kings of Judah), and ending with a reference to the ' Book of the Chronicles ' of the kingdom con- cerned, and a mention of the king's successor. Of these (a) probably comes from the same source as the narratives contained in 2 S 9-20, which it resembles in character ; (b) may be assumed to be based on records drawn up by the 206 INTRO. 1 AND 2 KINGS INTRO. priesthood ; whilst (c) must have originated in prophetic circles (such as the communities of the ' Sons of the Prophets '). The pas- sages classified under (rf) and (e) may be derived from the annals to which reference is made. But the brevity and uniform phraseology characteristic of (f), which are in marked contrast to the picturesque and varied style of the longer sections, make it probable that these are epitomes constructed by the actual compiler of Kings out of his materials, whereas the other portions of his book are extracts made by him from the sources he used. As may be seen by a comparison of numerous passages in Chronicles with the parallels in Kings, Hebrew historians were in the habit of incorporating in their own compositions passages taken verbatim from other works ; and the differences in style and vocabulary between various sections of Kings, the abrupt- ness with which personages not previously mentioned are introduced (e.g. 1K171), and certain discrepancies in the narratives, all indicate that the course which the writer of Chronicles has pursued towards the books of Kings the writer of the latter has followed in regard to still earlier productions. For the sake of convenience the writer of these books has been spoken of in the singular, and the completion of his work has been fixed as later than 561 B.C., and therefore some time after the destruction of the kingdom of Judah. But in certain of the narratives phrases are used which imply that when they were written Judah existed as a state, and the Temple was still standing (see 1 K 8 ^ 1219 193 2K822 1411 1G6 1718). gome of the phrases occur in sections which have probably been incorporated from previous writings (e.g. IK 19 3), and consequently the use of them only shows that the sources from which the author of Kings borrowed were composed before the exile ; but there are others (e.g. 2 K 8 22) which are found in the short annalistic passages that have been assigned to the com- piler. Consequently it is probable that the bulk of the book was composed before the exile ; but that subsequently additions were made to it by a writer who lived after the Fall of Jerusalem, and who appended chs. 24 and 25. In the earlier chapters also there are a few expressions which could only have been written in Babylonia after the overthrow of Judah, e.g. 1K424 (see note) 2 K 1719.20; so that the author of the supplementary chapters seems not only to have continued his pre- decessor's work, but to have introduced a few insertions into the body of it. But the spirit and style of the two writers are so much alike that except where specific allusions betray the date of the narrator, it is as unnecessary as it is difficult to distinguish between them. 3. Value. If the conclusions just stated respecting the probable sources of the narra- tives be correct, it will be apparent that Kings is a most valuable authority for the history of the times it deals with, especially in those parts which may reasonably be regarded as based upon the State and Temple records. Unfortunately the information respecting this period which is obtainable from other sources, such as the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, is not as full as could be desired ; but in general, what has been learnt from these quarters harmonises with, or plausibly supple- ments, the biblical account, even where it does not actually confirm it. In order, however, to estimate fairly the good faith of the writer and his merits as an historian, it is important to bear in mind the conditions under which he wrote. Neither the means at his disposal, nor the methods of composition that then prevailed, were calculated to secure the accuracy and precision of statement which are now expected in historical works. (a) The materials employed by Hebrew writers generally are not expressly named, but there are allusions in various passages of the OT. to tablets (probably of wood) and rolls (of skin or leather) : see Isa 8 1 30 ^ Hab 2 2 Jer362 Ezk29. Materials like these must have rendered it difficult for mistakes once made to be corrected ; and if the documents consulted by successive historians were of such a character, it is obvious that the process of verifying statements could not be an easy one. Moreover, the nature of the Hebrew writing, in which there were then no vowel signs, must have conduced to the production of various readings ; and many of the differences between the Heb. original and the LXX version have arisen from this cause. (6) The practice of reproducing the exact words of previous writers has led to the retention of many discrepancies and inconsist- encies, which may have admitted of being harmonised by the compiler, through know- ledge which he possessed, but of which the explanation is, in many instances, quite irre- coverable by us. (c) In the absence of a fixed era an accurate system of chronology was almost impossible. In connexion with the kings of Israel and Judah, the accession of each king is generally marked by reference to the corresponding year in the reign of the contemporary sovereign ; but whereas, in most cases, fractions of a year are counted as a whole year (e.g. Nadab is said to have reigned two years, though he came to the throne in Asa's second year and was succeeded by Baasha in Asa's th inl, 1 K 1 5 -S- 33)^ in other cases this rule is not observed (e.g. Rehoboam is described as reigning only 17 years, though his successor Abijam came to 207 INTRO. 1 AND 2 KINGS INTRO. the throne in the 18th year of Rehoboam's contemporary Jeroboam : 1 K 1 4 21 1 5 1). 0 whig to these different systems of reckoning or other causes, many of the chronological state- ments in Kings are inconsistent (as is pointed out in detail in the Commentary). The discrepancies apply to the totals as well as to individual figures, for whereas the sum of the reigns between Jeroboam and Jehoram of Israel, and between Rehoboam and Ahaziah of Judah, should be equal, the numbers are respectively 98 and 95 ; and similarly, whilst the years between Jehu and the Fall of Samaria, and between Athaliah and the 6th year of Hezekiah (when Samaria was taken), should be the same, they are respectively 143 years 7 months and 165 years. Moreover, the mention of certain Hebrew kings in the Assyrian inscriptions as being contemporary with particular events which are precisely dated shows that the length of some reigns is over-estimated by the Hebrew historian (e.g. those of Pekahiah, Pekah and Hoshea, which together seem to have amounted to 16 instead of 31 years). But to regard the writer of Kings as a secular historian would be to mistake the purpose of his history. That his main object was not to chronicle political and social events is plain from two facts, (a) He treats with extreme brevity reigns which on his own showing were, from a secular point of view, of great importance, e.g. that of Jeroboam II (2 K 14 25) ; (ft) he expressly refers his readers to other sources for further information respecting wars and other occurrences of interest (1K141^ 2239). jjis principal aim was to set forth the religious lessons which the history of his countrymen afforded, to trace the ill consequences that followed upon disobedience to the divine laws, and the happy results of faith in, and loyalty to, the Lord. In pursuance of this aim, he selected from the narratives which his authorities supplied the incidents which illustrated the principles he sought to enforce. In particular, he gave prominence to the glory of Solomon, which confirmed the divine promises made to his father David, the misconduct of the s^me king and the chastisement that punished it, the words and works of the various prophets who appeared at intervals, and the final over- throw which overtook both branches of the house of Jacob for their sins. In the sections which he himself composed he briefly appraised the character of the several sovereigns accord- ing to their faithfulness or unfaithfulness to the Law ; and at certain crises of the national history he reviewed at length the causes of the catastrophes described. 4. Summary of the History. The political history contained in the books of Kings may be conveniently divided into four periods : — (a) The reign of Solomon over the united people ; (i) the period of about 200 years from the revolt of the Ten Tribes (about 937 B.C.) to the downfall of Jehu's dynasty in Israel and the reign of Uzziah in Judah ; (c) the century that elapsed between the close of the last-mentioned period and the reign of Josiah ; (d) the last fifty years of the kingdom of Judah, from about 630 B.C. to the Fall of Jerusalem in 586. (a) The successful wars waged by David had secured for Israel control over many of the smaller Palestinian states, such as Moab, Ammon, and Edom ; and garrisons had been placed even in Damascus. The position thus established was maintained throughout the pacific rule of Solomon except that Damascus regained its independence ; but the interest of Solomon's reign centres not so much in the country's external relations, as in its internal development. It was marked by (i) the extension of foreign commerce through the help of Hiram of Tyre, (ii) the execution of great building schemes, intended partly to seciire the safety of the kingdom against attack, and partly to foster religion and adorn the capital. The king's trade was conducted by sea with Ophir (probably S. Arabia) and perhaps Tarshish (Tartessus or Tarsus) ; and by land with Egypt, the Hittites, and the Syrians. It doubtless increased the wealth and advanced the culture of the nation ; but the people nevertheless suffered much in con- sequence of the contributions exacted for the support of the royal court, and the system of forced labour imposed to carry out the king's building projects. The discontent thus created was a principal cause of the revolt of the Ten Tribes against the authority of Solomon's son Rehoboam. (6) The period that succeeded Solomon's death began with a conflict between Israel and Judah, owing to a natural desire on the part of the early Judsean kings to recover the lost provinces of their house ; but it was mainly occupied by a protracted war between Israel and Syria. Syria entered the war as an ally of Judah, but the hostility between the two Hebrew kingdoms subsequently gave place to better relations, and Judah became Israel's ally against the Syrians. The object which the latter people chiefly had in view in its struggle with Israel was the command of the roads, leading on the one hand to the Mediter- ranean coast and Egypt, and on the other hand to Arabia along the E. side of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. During this period the northern kingdom underwent many dynastic changes, but its foreign policy was not greatly affected in consequence, and the house of Jehu, no less than the house of Omri which 208 INTRO. 1 AND 2 KINGS INTRO. it displaced, suffered from the attacks of its eastern neighbours. Another nation with which Israel at intervals had hostilities was Moab, which, after being severely handled by Omri (as the Moabite Stone declares) rebelled in the reign of Ahab and conquered several cities belonging to Reuben and Gad ; but was again subdued by Jeroboam II, who extended his rule to the ' bi'ook of the Arabah.' Dur- ing this period Judah, besides helping Israel against Syria, was also frequently engaged in maintaining by force its authority over Edom, or else in recovering it when lost. (c) The third period, which may be regarded as beginning with the reigns of Shallum and Menahem in Israel, was marked by the ascendency of Assyria. Israel had previously come into contact with the Assyrians in the reign of Ahab (who fought against Shalmaneser II in defence of Hamath in 854), and of Jehu (who paid tribute to the same monarch) ; but it was Tiglath-pileser who first seriously interfered with the Hebrew states. The advance of Assyria produced counter move- ments on the side of Egypt (which had left its Hebrew neighbours undisturbed since the invasion of Shishak in the reign of Rehoboam), and there consequently arose both in Israel and Judah parties which relied for help on one or other of these two powers against its rival. Egypt, however, proved a broken reed, and constantly disappointed those who reposed confidence in it. The common danger threaten- ing from Assyria finally drew Syria and Israel together, and they sought unsuccessfully to force Judah to join a coalition against their enemy. Eventually both the confederates succumbed before the Assyrian arms ; whilst Judah, which in the reign of Hezekiah, acting in conjunction with an anti-Assyrian faction in Philistia, revolted against Sennacherib, was only preserved by what was regarded as a signal interposition of divine providence. At a later date Egypt itself was successfully invaded by the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Asshurbanipal. (d) The final period saw the downfall of the Assyrian power. This was accomplished by the Babylonians and Medes, who took Nineveh in 607. Egypt, which had regained its independence, attempted to assert claims to a share in the partition of the Assyrian possessions, and Nechoh, the Egyptian sove- reign, advancing into Palestine, not only killed Josiah in battle but deposed his suc- cessor. He was, however, defeated at Car- chemish by the Babylonians, who succeeded to the position previously occupied by As.syria. Disaffection on the part of Judah against Babylonian authority brought speedy retribu- tion, and finally Jerusalem was captured and its population carried into captivity in 580. Judah survived by nearly 150 years the sister kingdom of Israel, although the latter was the larger and more powerful of the two. From a secular point of view the chief reason for the earlier extinction of Israel is to be found in its position. The main roads leading from the Euphratene states (Syria and Assyria) to Phoenicia and Egypt passed thi-ough its territory and exposed it to the designs of its ambitious neighbours ; whereas Judah lay off the route between the eastern and western empires, and it was only because Jerusalem was too strong a fortress to leave on the flank of an army invading Egypt, that its conquest became desirable. A contributing factor likewise was the weakness introduced into the northern kingdom by dynastic rivalries, whilst, on the contrary, Judah was undisturbed by internal commotions, the house of David occupying the throne without a break for more than 400 years, except during the brief usurpation of Athaliah. But to one who, like the writer of Kings, traced in the fortunes of men the judgments of God, the ultimate cause must have appeared to be the greater cor- ruption of religion which prevailed in Israel as compared with Judah, and which brought upon it a swifter and more irreversible punishment. 5 . The Religion of the Period. The religious history of each of the two kingdoms was characterised by distinct features. In Israel there was no preeminent sanctuary like the Temple at Jerusalem to suggest any restriction upon the practice of worshipping at local shi-ines (' high places ') ; and this practice pre- vailed as long as the kingdom stood. At certain of these shrines Jehovah was wor- shipped under the emblem of a calf or young bull ; and the use of these symbols was main- tained by all those kings who upheld the ancestral Hebrew faith. The ' high places,' however, were not always devoted to the service of the Lord, for both the historian and certain contemporary prophets imply that the worship of the Canaanite Baalim was sometimes practised at them (Hos2i3). And at two periods alien forms of religion were ' introduced from abroad and diffused through the influence of the reigning sove- reign. The first was that of the Phoenician Baal, brought into Israel by the alliance of Ahab with Ethbaal, king of Zidon, and strenu- ously opposed by the prophets Elijah and Elisha. The second, imported at a later date, was due to connexion with Assyria, and consisted of planet- or star-worship, to the prevalence of which allusion is made by the prophet Amos (5^6). In Judah the Temple built by Solomon naturally dwarfed the importance of all other sanctuaries, but the ' high places ' were never- 14 209 INTRO. 1 AND 2 KINGS— 1 KINGS 1.7 theless long maintained even under the rule of pious kings. But in the reign of Hezekiah an attempt was made to suppress them and to confine all national acts of religion to the Temple ; and a still more complete reform in this direction was effected by Josiah. The greater success that attended Josiah's efforts was largely due to the discovery of a copy of the book of Deuteronomy, in which the restric- tion of worship to a single locality is expressly enjoined. In Judah calf-worship never seems to have been practised ; and though the wor- ship of the Lord was often corrupted, its supremacy was never seriously disputed by any other religion during the first half of the history, except in the reign of Athaliah, who was a votary of the Zidonian Baal. Subse- quently, however, Assyrian forms of worship penetrated into Judah as they had into Israel. Ahaz was attracted by the rites which he saw at Damascus when summoned thither by Tig- lath-pileser, whilst Manasseh is described as having worshipped the ' host of heaven.' After Assyria had fallen before Babylon, Babylonian cults began to be imitated ; and both Jeremiah and Ezekiel allude to the worship paid to the ' queen of heaven ' (perhaps Ishtar) and to Tammuz, a deity adopted by the Greeks under the name of Adonis (see Jer44i8 EzkS^^). 6. The Prophets who appeared at intervals in the course of the history fall into 3 groups : — (a) Those who were contemporary with the war against Syria, such as Elijah and Elisha ; (b) those who witnessed the rise and pre- dominance of Assyria, viz. Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micali ; (c) those who lived during the decline of Assyria and the early years of Babylonian supremacy, viz. Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. At all periods the prophets were statesmen no less than moral teachers, religion being viewed from a national rather than an individual standpoint. But the prophetic ideals and methods varied in different ages, those of Elijah and Elisha, for instance, offering many features of con- trast to those of later times. Thus Elijah was content to maintain the claims of Jehovah to be the Grod of Israel without explicitly affirm- ing Him to be the only God, and he seems to have tolerated the unspiritual conception of religion involved in the worship of the golden calves ; whereas Hosea ridiculed such worship, and Isaiah expressly described by a term meaning ' nonentities ' the gods revered by foreign nations and disloyal Israelites. And similarly whilst Elisha sought to bring about a religious reformation by means of a political revolution, and presumably sympathised with Jehu's action in exterminating by violence the family of Ahab, the later prophets, in trying to direct the policy of their countrymen into right channels, confined themselves to peace- ful methods, and Hosea even declared that the Lord would visit upon the house of Jehu the blood shed by him in Jezreel. 7. Chronological Table. As has been already said, it is difficult to construct an accurate scheme of chronology from the statements furnished by the Hebrew historians, partly because they did not fix events by any era which can be determined with precision, partly because they used inconsistent methods of reckoning the length of reigns, and partly in consequence of miscalculations or textual corruptions. But the mention of certain Hebrew kings in the Assyrian and other in- scriptions enables us to bring the biblical history into relation with that of the surround- ing nations ; and from a comparison of the figures given in the books of Kings with the dates obtained from the inscriptions, a table has been drawn up (see HDB. i. pp. 401-402), which may be taken as an approximation to the truth : see art. ' Chronology of the Bible.' 1 KINGS CHAPTER 1 An Intrigue for the Succession This c. relates Adonijah's attempt to obtain the succession, its defeat through the agency of Nathan, and the enthronement of Solomon. The history contained in it is omitted in 1 Ch, where, however, mention is made of Solomon's having been crowned not once only but twice (lCh2922). Probably the second occasion corresponds to what is related in 1 K 1 39 (cp. 1 Ch 29 24 with 1 K 1 53). I. Now] better, 'and,' connecting this book with the history contained in the pre- ceding. 5. Adonijah] The fourth son of David (2 SS'i). Of his three elder brothers, two, Amnon and Absalom, were certainly by this time dead ; and the indulgence with which Adonijah was treated by his father (v. 6) makes it probable that he was the eldest sur- viving son. 6. His mother bare him after Ab- salom] R V ' he was born after Absalom ' ; Adonijah and Absalom were sons of different mothers (2 S. 3 3, -t). 7. Joab] David's nephew, and at this time 210 1.8 1 KINGS 2. 9 captain of the host or national militia (2 S 8 1*^). His support of Adonijah was probably due to the latter's being the eldest surviving son of David, and to his active character. Abiathar] son of Ahimelech the priest of Nob, who had been put to death by Saul (IS 22-0). He was a descendant of Aaron's son Ithamar. 8. Zadok] a descendant of Aaron's son Eleazar (1 Ch6'*"^). It is not clear what were the relative positions of Abiathar and Zadok to one another. In 1 Chi 6^9 Zadok is stated to have ministered at the sanctuary at Gibeon, but in 2 8152'! both Abiathar and Zadok are represented as being at Jerusalem. In the LXXof IK 2-35 it is implied that Abiathar was the first, or principal, priest, and Zadok presumably the second. Benaiah] son of Jehoiada (v. 36) and commander of the body- guard of Cherethites, Pelethites and Gittites (see further on v. 38). For his early exploits see 2 S 23 20-23_ Nathan] For other notices of Nathan see 2 87-^- 121*. The mighty men] This was a body of distinguished warriors, nominally 30 in number, who were perhaps officers either of the bodyguard or of the host, and whose names are given in 2 S 23 2-1-39 1 Ch 1 1 26-47, 9. Slew sheep and oxen] probably a sacri- ficial feast is meant, whereby Adonijah in- tended to solemnise his succession : cp. 2 S 1512. The stone of Zoheleth . . En-rog-el] En- rogel is probably to be identified with the modern BJr-eyub, a well (not a spring) situated at the junction of the valley of Hinnom and the gorge of the Kidron, S. of Jerusalem (cp. Josh 158 1816). 13. Didst not thou . . swear?] That this was true is acknowledged by David in vv. 29, 30. 20. The eyes of all Israel are upon thee] Though the right of the firstborn to succeed was beginning to be recognised, the sovereign still possessed the power of nominating his successor. 33. Gihon] probably the modern Virgin's Fountain, in the ravine of the Kidron, about half-a-mile from En-rogel (Bir-eyub). 36. Amen] an expression of assent or con- currence: cp. Nu522 Jer28'5. 38. Cherethites] a bodyguard of foreign extraction, like the Swiss guards of the French kings or the Varangians of the Byzantine sovereigns. The Cherethites came from the S. of Philistia (18301^), the name being generally supposed to he connected with Crete, and the Pelethites were perhaps likewise Philistines. David may have enrolled this force after the conclusion of his Philistine wars. 39. The tabernacle] EV 'the Tent'; pro- bably the tent erected by David to shelter the ark (2S617). According to lChl639 the Tabernacle made by Moses was at Gibeon. For the anointing oil see Ex 30 22-33. 42. Valiant] RV 'worthy.' 46. Solomon sitteth on the throne] similarly Jotham ruled during the lifetime of his father (2K155). 47. Bowed himself] i.e. in worship: cp. Gn 4731. 50. The horns of the altar] The altar in- tended was probably one erected in or before the tent that sheltered the ark : see on v. 39 and cp. 229 315 The horns were projections at the four corners (Ex 27 2), to which the victim to be sacrificed may have been attached (Psll827)j and which were sometimes smeared with its blood (Ex 29 12). It was customary for homicides to seek refuge at the altar of the Lord from the avengers of blood, but deliberate murderers might be dragged from it (Ex 2 11*). A similar right of asylum be- longed to heathen temples in classical times and to Christian churches in the middle ages. 51. To day] RM 'first of all.' CHAPTER 2 David's last Will and Testament The recital of David's last charge to Solo- mon and his death is followed by an account of the execution of Adonijah, Joab, and Shimei. 3, 4. Cp. Dtl7 2 87. 5. Abner . . Amasa] For Abner see 1 Ch936 181450 282,3; for Amasa see 2S1725 (cp. 1 Ch2i7), 1913 20^-13. Joab's slaying of Abner may be palliated, though not justified, in con- sideration of his kinship with Asahel, whom Abner had killed ; but his assassination of Amasa was due merely to the mortification he had sustained when the latter displaced him in the king's favour. He had thus been guilty of murder, which, if unavenged, would bring guilt on the land : cp. 2 8 21. David may also have thought it expedient to remove Joab in order to safeguard Solomon's throne, which could never be secure so long as so capable and unscrupulous an officer was alive. The blood of war . . girdle] The LXX has ' innocent blood,' which the sense requires. 6. The grave] Heb. Sheol, the abode of departed spirits. 7. Barzillai] For his kindness to David see 2S193if. 8. Shimei] For his offence against David and David's oath to him see 28165-13 1918-23. 9. Hold him not guiltless] Personal resent- ment seems to have entered into David's feel- ings towards Shimei, but it is probable that his injunctions respecting him were partly dictated by political reasons, for Shimei was a Benjamite who had reproached David with supplanting Saul, and might be suspected of hostility towards David's successor ; and who was influential enough to be attended by a thousand of his fellow-tribesmen when he met the king after Absalom's defeat (28191'^). 211 2. 10 1 KINGS 3.7 10. The city of David] i.e. the stronghold of Zion : see 2 S 5 ^-^. At this time Jerusalem probably occupied only the eastern of the two hills upon which the modern city stands. David's reign was more important and critical than any other in the history of Israel, both from a secular and from a religious point of view. In the first place, he consolidated into a kingdom what had previously been an aggregate of jealous tribes, and so enabled his countrymen to take a place among the nations of the Eastern world ; and, in the second place, he strengthened his people's attachment to the Lord, alike by the zeal he showed for G-od's honour and worship, and by the obedience he rendered to the prophets who counselled or admonished him in the divine name. Con- sequently later times regarded the period of his rule as Israel's golden age, and the memories of it coloured the anticipations which were entertained respecting the coming of the Mes- siah. His character, indeed, was not free from reproach ; for, besides being guilty of adultery and murder, he was cruel in war (2S8'- 12 3^) and negligent of justice at home (though in these respects he was doubtless no worse than his contemporaries). But if he sinned grievously, he repented sincerely ; and by his humility under reproof (2 S 1213)^ his resignation in adversity (2S162^'26), and his faith in the divine mercy (282414)^ he still affords an ex- ample for Christian people. 17. That he give me Abishag] Amongst Eastern nations the wives and concubines of a deceased or dethroned king were taken by his successor (see 2S128 IG^^--^) ; and so Adoni- jah's request for Abishag was regarded as tan- tamount to a claim on the throne. 19. Rose up to meet her] the queen-dowager occupied a very important position at the court of the kings of Israel : cp. IKIS^^ JerlS^s. 23. God do so, etc.] an expression implying a wish that God would avenge the failure to carry out what was promised or threatened. 24. Made me an house] see 2S7ii. 26. Anathoth] NNE. of Jerusalem. It was the home of the prophet Jeremiah (Jer 1 1). Barest the ark] perhaps referring to the transport of the ark from the house of Obed- edom to Jerusalem (1 Chi 5), or to its removal from Jerusalem on the occasion of Absalom's rebellion (2S152-t,29). 27. That he might . . the LORD] see 1 S 9 31-36 It is not meant that the fulfilment was designed by Solomon, but he was the uncon- scious agent of divine providence. 28. Horns of the altar] see on l^o. The tabernacle] see on l^s. 31. Bury him] Denial of burial would have made Joab's fate more ignominious : see 2 K 9 lO' 34 isa 1 4 1^. ^o. Take away the innocent blood] This, if not avenged, would have brought a judgment upon the king and his people : see NuSS^s, and cp. 2 S 21 1-1^. 32, 33. In these vv. the futures are best rendered as wishes. Captain of the host of Judah] At this time there was no formal division between Israel and Judah, but Amasa had been specially connected with the latter: see 2S19ii-i3 20^. 34. Buried in his own house] cp. 1825^ 2K21is. In the wilderness] i.e. of Judah, to which tribe Joab belonged. 35. Put . . Abiathar] i.e. appointed him to be first priest, instead of Abiathar. 36. Build thee an house in Jerusalem] i.e. that he might be under surveillance. 37. The brook Kidron] This would actually limit him only on the E., the quarter in which his for- mer home, Bahurim, was situated ; but it was doubtless meant to designate the distance be- yond which he was not to go in any direction : cp. v. 42. 39. Shimei's visit to Achish might be construed as an intrigue with a foreign power. 43. The oath of the LORD] i.e. the oath which the Lord witnessed. CHAPTEE 3 Solomon's Choice This c. relates how Solomon, out of various gifts offered to him by the Almighty, chose wisdom, and adds an illustration of the use he made of the gift with which he was endowed. 1 . Pharaoh] probably one of the immediate predecessors of the Shishak (Sheshonk) men- tioned in 11 "lo is intended. His own house . . Lord] see chs. 7 and 6. Both of these buildings were outside the limits of the city of David. 2. High places] Both the Canaanites (see Nu3352 j)t 12 2) jin(j the early Israelites (see 1 S 9 12 2 S 1530, 32) used to worship on hill-tops, possibly as being nearer heaven, the dwelling- place of the Deity, or perhaps (more probably) as being the best sites for burning the victims that were offered in sacrifice. In Dt 12i'^*- the worship of the Lord is ordered to be restricted to a single sanctuary ; though the history shows that religious practices at the high places were permitted even by the best of kings (see Ib^* 22 -ts) until the reign of Hezekiah(see 2K18'*). 4. Gibeon] in the tribe of Benjamin (Josh 18 25). To sacrifice there] in 2 Ch 1 3 it is stated that the Tabernacle of the congregation was at Gibeon ; if so, it must have been removed thither from Shiloh when the latter place was destroyed (Jer 7 ^2), or from Nob, to which- it may have been conveyed from Shiloh. The ark which it had originally contained, was not restored to it when brought back by the Philistines (IS 6), but put by David in a tent at Jerusalem. 7. I am but a little child] The words seem to imply that Solomon was quite youthful when he came to the throne ; but the politic measures by which he secured his crown, as 212 3.9 1 KINGS 4. 31 described in c. 2, suggest that he had attained to full manhood, and according to 1 K 14^1 he left, after a reign of 40 years, a son who was 41 when his father died, and who therefore must have been born before his father became king (but see note there). Josephus gives Solomon's age at the beginning of his reign as 14. Go out or come in] i.e. pursue the active life of a man in his prime : cp. Nu 27 1'^ 1 S 18 ^^ Dt312. 9. Solomon's prayer exhibits (a) a strong sense of responsibility and a conviction that high position involves corresponding duties ; (J) a consciousness that truth and falsehood, right and wrong, are not always easy to dis- tinguish, and that to discern between them there are needed special gifts of the heart and understanding ; (c) that such gifts are derived from God, who bestows them in answer to prayer. 14. I will lengthen thy days] The promise was made on conditions which Solomon did not observe : see lli-s. 15. The ark of the covenant] This had been placed by David in a tent at Jerusalem (2S6i''i"). Solomon fitly inaugurated his reign by acts of religious worship at his capital as well as at Gibeon (v. 4). Burnt offerings . . peace offerings] see on ExlS^^. 26. Her bowels] i.e. her heart. 27. Give her the living child] The pronoun refers not to the last speaker but to her rival (as LXX explains). 28. The wisdom of God] Solomon's wisdom was divine not only in its source but in its quality. CHAPTER 4 Solomon's Officers and Court 2. Azariah the son of Zadok] he was really the grandson of Zadok (1 Ch 6 ^' 9). 3. Shisha] also called Shavsha and Sheva. In David's reign he filled the same office now discharged by his sons (2S20"-^5). Scribes] i.e. the royal secretaries. Jehoshaphat] he had previously served David (2S8i«20^^). Recorder] pro- bably the keeper of the state archives (RM ' chronicler '), though some suppose that his function was to remind the king of state mat- ters that required his attention. 4. Abiathar] Abiathar was priest during a very brief period of Solomon's reign : see 2 26, 27. 5. The officers] probably the officers named in vv. 7-19. Prin- cipal officer] RV ' priest.' The term is used in 2 SB 18 of David's sons, and in 2 S 20 26 of Ira a Jainite, who perhaps belonged to the tribe of Manasseh — both being, to all appear- ance, instances of priests of other than Levi- tical descent. The king's friend] The same title is applied to Hushai in 2S153''. 6. Over the household] i.e. steward or treasurer : cp. Isa22i5. The position was one of sufficient dignity to be filled sometimes by the son of the sovereign (2 K 15 s). Adoniram] The name appears in a shortened form as Adoram in 2 S 2024 IK 12 18. Tribute] RV 'levy.' This was a body of men subjected to forced labour and employed on Solomon's buildings (9i^). It corresponded to the French corvee. 8. Mount Ephraim] R V ' the hill country of Ephi-aim ' : and so elsewhere. 9-12. Of the localities mentioned in these vv. several (Makaz, Elon-beth-hanan, Aruboth, Hepher) are unknown. Shaalbim was in Dan ; Beth-shemesh (modern Ain shems) and Sochoh were in Judah ; Dor was on the coast, near Carmel ; Taanach, Megiddo, Jezreel, Jokneam (RV ' Jokmeam ') were in or near the plain of Esdraelon ; Beth-shean (the modern Beisan), Zartanah, and Abel-meholah were in the Jordan valley. 13, 14. The places named in these vv. were E. of Jordan. Argob is the Tracho- nitis of the NT., a volcanic district, now called the ' Leja,' lying S. of Damascus. 19. He was . . land] The text is probably corrupt. It will be observed iihat in the division of the land between the several officers, the tribal boundaries were to some extent ignored, only five or six tribes being retained as departments. Possibly this was done to weaken tribal senti- ment, which tended to disunion. 21. The river] the Euphrates. 22. Mea- sures] Heb. co)-s (a cor = a homer, and con- tained over 80 gallons). 24. On this side the river] RM 'beyond' (i.e. W. of) 'the River' (Euphrates), i.e. Palestine and the neighbouring region as viewed from the standpoint of a resi- dent in Babylon (E. of the Euphrates) where the book of Kings was probably completed. Tiphsah] Thapsacus, on the upper course of the Euphrates. Azzah] Gaza in Philistia. 26. Forty thousand] in 2 Ch9 25 ' four thou- sand,' which would be sufficient for the 1,400 chariots mentioned in 1026. The possession of a large force of cavalry was a departm-e from the practice of David, who, like Joshua, destroyed the horses taken from his enemies. 27. Those officers] i.e. the officers described in V. 7f. They lacked nothing] better, ' they let nothing be lacking.' 28. Dromedaries] RV ' swift steeds.' Where the officers were] RV (after LXX) ' where the king was ' ; RM ' where it ' (the barley and straw) ' should be,' i.e. wherever it was required 29. Largeness of heart] i.e. great intellectual capacity : see on v. 3 9. 30. Children of the east country] The term is applied in Jer3928 to the Arab tribes dwelling at Kedar, and pro- bably describes generally the inhabitants of the Syrian desert: cp. Gn29i JgG^. For Arab wisdom see Jer 39'^. 31. Ethan, etc.] The same four names (with the substitution of Dara for Darda) occur among the sons of Zerah the son of Judah in 1 Ch 2 6. If the allusion is to these, Mahol may be their father and Zerah a remote ancestor. The individuals 213 4. 32 1 KINGS 6. meant must have been ancient sages proverbial for their wisdom. 32. Proverbs] Some are doubtless included in the extant book of Proverbs. Songs] The Song of Songs and two of the canonical psalms (72 and 127) bear Solomon's name. Certain so-called ' Psalms of Solomon ' really belong to the age of Pompey. 33. He spake of trees, etc.] This may mean both that he drew examples from the vegetable and animal kingdoms to illustrate his maxims (as in Prov6''), and that he in- vestigated and described their properties (as in Prov30i5,29-3i). 34. All people] cp. the visit of the Queen of Sheba (c. 10). CHAPTER 5 Solomon's Pkeparations for building THE Temple I. Hiram] see 2S5ii 1 Chl4i. It has been questioned whether this Hiram, who was living as late as Solomon's twentieth year (IKO^^), is really identical with the Hiram mentioned in connexion with David (2S5ii lChl4i), because, according to Josephus, his reign lasted only 34 years. But it is possible that David did not undertake the buildings in which Hiram assisted him until comparatively late in his life. 3. Could not build an house] see ICh^ss. Here the reason given why David could not build the Temple is the turmoil that filled his reign. 4. Occurrent] i.e. occurrence. 5. As the Lord spake] see 2S713. 7. Blessed he the LORD] Hiram, who, as king of Tyre, was a worshipper of Melkarth and Ashtoreth, would not regard the Lord (Jehovah) as the only God, but would acknow- ledge Him as the God of Israel. Jehovah's existence and power were similarly recognised by the Syrian Naaman, who was himself a worshipper of Rimmon (2K5ii) : cp. also the language of the Moabite king Balak (Nu23i'^ 24 11). 9. Convey them, etc.] RV 'make them into rafts to go by sea.' The place] Joppa (2Ch2i6). To be discharged] RV 'to be broken up.' 11. Measures] Heb. cor.s (see on 4 22). For twenty measures of pure oil L XX has ' 20,000 baths of oil ' (a ' bath ' being one- tenth of a ' cor ' : cp. 2 Ch 2 10. For the export of corn and other produce from Judah to Tyre cp. Ezk27i'^. The nearness of Lebanon must have prevented the Tyrians from obtain- ing much corn from their own soil. 13. Thirty thousand men] These were probably taken from native Israelites (cp. the prediction in 1S8 11-18); whereas the 150,000 labourers mentioned in v. 15 were ' strangers that were in the land of Israel ' (2 Ch 2 17 : cp. 1 K 9 20, 21). David seems to have imposed forced labour upon the latter only (lCh222); and the different practice of his son caused the dis- content that eventually rent the kingdom in two (124). 14. By courses] i.e. by turns or shifts. Adoniram] see 4^^, the Adoram of 12 is. 17. Great stones] Some of these perhaps still remain, for stones 30 ft. long and 7| ft. high have been found (it is said) ' at the SW. angle of the wall of the Haram area in the modern Jerusalem.' 18. The stonesquarers] RV ' Gebalites ' : the inhabitants of Gebal or Byblus, a maritime town at the foot of Lebanon. CHAPTER 6 The Construction op the Temple In shape the Temple was a rectangular hall 60 X 20 X 30 cubits (a cubit being about 18 inches). On its E. face it had a porch (forming an entrance) which extended across the whole front and added 10 cubits to the length of the building (v. 3). The height of this is given in 2Ch34 as 120 cubits; but such a measurement is out of all proportion to the others, and is probably an error (one of the MSS of the LXX substitutes 20 cubits). On three sides of the house were built a number of chambers (Josephus says 30) in three storeys (vv. 5, 10), intended for the accommodation of the priests and for storing things required for the Temple services: cp. 2K112,3 Nehl34,5 (of the Second Temple). The beams that sup- ported the cielings of these storeys rested on ledges in the outer face of the Temple wall formed by successive reductions of its thick- ness (v. 6). Above the topmost row of chambers the Temple wall was pierced with windows of narrow lights (RV ' windows of fixed lattice work,' i.e. which could not be opened like most lattices), resembling the clerestory of a modern cathedral. In the interior, the building was divided by a partition (see V. 16) into two apartments, the larger (to the E.) being called the Holy Place, and the smaller (to the W.) being styled the Oracle or Most Holy Place, which bore to one another the same relation as the nave and chancel of our own churches. Solomon's Temple resembled in general plan the Tabernacle as described in Ex 25-27, its length and breadth being exactly double. In idea, it was, like the Tabernacle, the dwelling-place of the God of Israel (see 1 KB 13, and cp. Ex26S), wherein He received, and held communion with, His worshippers (2K191"-, cp. Ex 33 7). But it difl:ered from most other sanctuaries of antiquity in contain- ing no image ; so that though the conception of divine worship had not yet become independent of locality or material oblations (see Jn 4 21-24)^ the conception of the Deity Himself was purely spiritual. In the Holy of Holies (the Presence chamber of the Divine King) there was nothing except the ark (containing the Decalogue), the cover 214 6. 1 1 KINGS of which was regarded as the throne of the Lord, who was thought of as seated between the cherubim that overshadowed it (2K19i^). In the Holy Place there were situated the Altar of Incense and the Table of Shew bread. In the court before the House stood the Altar of Burnt Offerings and the several vessels used by the priests in their ablutions (7 23f.). 1. The four hundred and eightieth year] The sum of the periods mentioned or implied in the previous books since the exodus much exceeds this figure. The real length of the interval is uncertain, and the number of years here indicated is probably not based on historic records but is a conventional expression for twelve generations (a generation being reckoned at 40 years). Approximately the date of the commencement of the Temple may be put at 973 B.C. The month Zif] In early times the Hebrew year ended and began in the autumn (see Ex 231'^ 34^2)^ but at a later period the beginning of the year was in the spring, and Zif, which corresponded to our April-May, became the second month. It was subse- quently called lyyar. 2. The house] The Temple was built on the N. of the hill upon which Zion, ' the city of David,' stood, there being an ascent from the latter to the former (see 8^). Its site had originally been occupied by Araunah's thresh- ing-floor (2 Ch 3 1). For its position relative to the rest of Solomon's buildings see on 7 9. 8. The middle chamber] LXX has ' the lowest chamber,' which the sense requires. The right side] the S. 9. Covered the house] Roofed or cieled it. Whether the roof was flat or gable-shaped is uncertain, though, as houses were generally flat-topped, this was probably no exception. 12. C'o«cer///«^ this house, etc.] The erection of the Temple was an external and material indication of Solomon's allegiance to the Lord; but to obtain the Almighty's continued favour, it was necessary besides to submit his life and conduct to the control of God's moral laws. Which I spake unto David] see 2S7i3. God renewed to Solomon the promises made to his father on condition of his obedience. 15. Both the floor, etc.] mg. 'from the floor of the house unto the walls,' etc., i.e. from top to bottom. 16. He built. . on the sides, etc.] E,V ' he built . . on the hinder part,' etc. This, as appears from a comparison of the measure- ments given in vv. 2 and 17, does not mean that the Most Holy Place (or Oracle) was an additional structure built on tjie rear of the house, but that it was an apartment formed within the house (cp. v. 19) at its W. end by the erection of a partition made with boards of cedar. As its length, breadth and height were each 20 cubits (v. 20), its form internally was a perfect cube, though externally it was perhaps of the same elevation as the rest of the buildings. 18. Knops] i.e. knobs, and so in 724. RM has 'gourds,' implying that the ornaments intended, which were carved in relief, were globular in shape, resembling pumpkins. 20. The oracle in the forepart] better, ' the oracle within.' The altar] i.e. the altar of incense : for its situation see v. 22. 21. Made a partition, etc.] RV 'drew chains of gold across before the oracle,' i.e. across the entrance that led from the Holy Place into the Most Holy. But 2Ch3i4 mentions a veil, and the translation should perhaps be ' drew a veil before the oracle by means of chains of gold.' 22. By the oracle] The altar was not actually within the oracle but near it. 23. Cherubims] These were large winged figures of composite character, perhaps with four faces, those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle (Ezk 1 lO), or with the face of an ox only (to which the term ' cherub ' seems to have strictly applied: cp. EzklQi'i with liO), They represented God's chariot (cp. PslS^O)^ and perhaps symbolised certain of the divine attributes (power, celerity, etc.). The original conception (as Ps 1 8 io-i4 suggests) was probably derived from a storm-cloud: see on Ex25is. 27. The inner house] i.e. the Oracle or Most Holy Place. 29. Palm trees] Figures of these are frequent on the Assyi-ian monu- ments. Within and without] i.e. within and without the dividing partition between the Holy and Most Holy Place, so that both chambers are meant. 31. The lintel] According to some ' the pilasters,' small pillars projecting from the surface of the side posts. A fifth part] mg. 'five-square,' i.e. the top of the door was pentagonal in form. The words ' of the wall ' are not in the original. 32. The two doors] i.e. two leaves, forming a single door. 33. A fourth part] mg. 'four-square.' The head of the door was square: see on v. 31. 34. The two doors] The door of the Holy Place consisted of two halves, but each half had two leaves. 36. The inner court] This was the court before the house (8*^4)^ open to the air, and was surrounded by a fence of stone surmounted by a row, or paling, of cedar beams. It was on a higher level than the ' gi-eat court ' of 712, and is called in JerSG^*^ 'the upper court.' 38. The month Bui] Corresponding to October-November. As this was the eighth month and the Temple was begun in the second, the time actually occupied in its con- struction was, in strictness, 7^ years. CHAPTER 7 Solomon's Palace Tills c, besides giving a description of 215 7. 1 1 KINGS 7.38 Solomon's palace, contains an account of the principal utensils belonging to the Temple. 1. Thirteen years] The Temple was of small extent compared with the royal palace, so that the time spent on the latter exceeded that required for the former. The various buildings mentioned in vv. 2-8 seem together to have constituted the house of v. 1. 2. He built also] RV ' for he built.' The house of the forest of Lebanon] so called from the quantity of cedar wood from Lebanon em- ployed in its construction. It was a rectangular hall, 100 X 50 X 30 cubits, its roof being sup- ported by cedar beams resting upon three rows (so LXX for four rows) of cedar pillars, num- bering 45 in all ; and was used as an armoury (Isa 22 8). 4. Light . . ranks] The external walls were pierced with three rows of windows, so arranged that those in each side corresponded in position to those in the opposite side. 5. Were square, with the windows] RV ' were square in prospect ' : i.e. the doors were rectangular (not pointed or arched). 6. A porch of pillars] There was another building with numerous pillars, having a portico (the porch ims before them), of which the thick beam was the threshold. 7. A porch for the throne] This was a third building which served as a court of justice. From one side . . other] better, ' from floor to cieling.' 8. Another court] i.e. behind the porch of judgment there was a court which enclosed the king's palace; this was probably the same as 'the middle court' of 2 K 20 4 (if that is the right reading). 9. According to . . stones] RV ' even he^n stone, according to measure ' : and so in v. 11. Within and without] i.e. both the outer and inner surfaces. The great court] This was perhaps a large court enclosing all the preced- ing structures, including the Temple. It con- tained (in order from S. to N.), 1. certain public buildings, (a) the house of the forest of Lebanon, (i) the porch of pillars, (c) the porch of the throne ; 2. a second court, enclosing the royal residences, the king's house and the house of Pharaoh's daughter ; 3. the ' inner court ' (636), surrounding the Temple. 12. Both for . . and for] RV ' like as . . and.' The mean- ing is that the great court, the inner (or Temple) court, and the court of the house (or palace) each had a fence of similar construction : cp. 636. 13. Hiram] also spelt ' Huram ' and ' Hirom.' The Tyrian king and the Tyrian architect both seem to have borne the same name. 14. A widow's son . . Naphtali] in 2 Ch 2 1^ his mo- ther is called a daughter of Dan, the Danite settlement within Naphtali being perhaps meant. 15. Two pillars] These pillars, though placed at the porch (v. 21), probably did not support its roof but were detached from the building, and intended for symbolic purposes only. "Two similar pillars are said to have stood in the temple of Melkarth at Tyre, one of gold and the other of emerald (or green glass) ; and the like are depicted on the coins of Paphos. Originally such pillars, whether natural obelisks or artificial columns, were regarded as the abode of the Deity, so that offerings were placed or poured upon them in order to be conveyed to the indwelling spirit (of which primitive notion the action of Jacob at Bethel shows a siu"viving trace, Gn 28 1^), but subsequently they became emblems merely, marking the spot where they stood as sacred: cp. IsalO^^. The details of the pillars erected before the Temple are obscure (the text in places being defective or disordered), but their general appearance is easily intelligible. They were hollow ( Jer 52 -i) columns of brass, 12 cubits in cu'cumference and 18 cubits high, surmounted by capitals (chapiters) five (in 25 ^" three) cubits high, globular in shape (v. 42) and decorated with tracery (v. 17). Around each capital ran two rows of pomegranates, and above each rose an ornament, 4 cubits high, shaped like the cup of a lily. 17. Seven . . seven] probably a mistake for ' a network . . a network,' there being only two networks in all (see v. 41). 21. Jachin . . Boaz] i.e. 'He (God) will es- tablish,' and ' In Him (God) is strength.' 23. A molten sea] i.e. a large vessel con- taining water. For its use see 2 Ch 4 6. 26. An hand breadth] i.e. 3 inches. With flowers of lilies] RV ' like the flowers of a lily,' the rim curving outwards. Two thousand baths] A ' bath ' was rather more than 8 gallons. To contain all this, the sides of the molten sea must have bulged considerably. 27. Bases] movable supports or carriages for the lavers of v. 38. The description is very obscure, but it has been in part elucidated by a bronze stand of Mycenaean workmanship recently found in Cyprus. Each base consisted of a hollow cube (4x4x3 cubits), the sides of which had panels (borders) between raised edges (ledges). At the lower corners there were legs (the undersetters of v. 30,34), which rested on large wheels. Above rose a pedestal (the base of vv. 29, 31) with a capital (the chapiter of v. 32) which had a hollow (mouth) to receive the laver, which was further supported by stays (the undersetters under the laver of V. 30). 29. Additions made of thin work]^V ' wreaths of hanging work,' i.e. festoons; so also in vv. 30, 36. 34. Wei-e of the very base itself] i.e. were cast with it and not subsequently attached. 36. According to the proportion] RV ' according to the space of each ' : i.e. so far as the space permitted. 38. Ten lavers] for the purpose of these 216 7.39 1 KINGS 8. 65 see2Ch4<5. Forty baths] about 320 gallons. 39. Eastward . . south] i.e. at the SE. corner. 40. Lavers] LXX has ' pots ' as in v. 45. 41. The bowls] i.e. the globular portions of the two capitals. 46. The plain of Jordan] i.e. the Jordan valley. Succoth and Zarthan] Succoth was in Gad (Josh 13 ^''). Zarthan is probably the Zaretan of Josh3i«5. 48. The altar of gold] i.e. the altar of incense (6^2). The table of gold] in 2Ch4S mention is made of ten tables, but cp. 2Chl3ii 29i8. The Tabernacle had only one table for the shewbread (Ex 25 -3). 49. The candlesticks] better, ' lampstands.' In the Tabernacle there was only one (Ex 25^1). 50. Censers] RY 'firepans.' 51. Which David . . had dedicated] see 2 88 11. CHAPTER 8 The Dedication of the Temple. Solomon's Prayer I. The chief of the fathers] i.e. heads of families. Out of the city] The Temple and Palace were built on the site of Araunah's threshing floor (2 Ch 3 1), which would natur- ally be outside the city walls and on higher ground : cp. 9 2*. 2. Ethanim] The later Tishri, corresponding to Sept.-Oct. The feast referred to was Tabernacles (Lv23^'^). 3. The priests] 2Ch54 has 'the Levites,' certain of whom (the Kohathites) had, accord- ing to Nu4i5, the special duty of bearing the ark. But the priests are likewise represented as bearing the ark in Josh 3 '5' is 4 0^ etc. 4. Tabernacle of the congregation] RV ' tent of meeting ' : i.e. the sanctuary in which the Lord used to commune with His wor- shippers (Ex 33 9 Null 25). This, which (ac- cording to 2 Chi 3) was at Gibeon, may have been preserved for its sacred associations, for the ark had long been separated from it. 7. The staves] the poles, inserted in rings, by means of which the ark was carried : see Ex25i--i^. 8. They drew out the staves] RV ' the staves were so long ' : owing to their length they could be seen from the Holy Place, though not vnthout (i.e. outside it). Unto this day] The date implied is that of a narrator living before the destruction of the Temple, whose language the compiler (who lived after that event, cp. 2K25) has in- corporated without alteration : cp. 9^1. 9. There loas . . stone] The writer of Hebrews (9*) mentions also the golden pot that contained manna, and Aaron's rod ; but, in strictness, these were placed before the ark (Exl63^Nul7iO). 10. The cloud] cp. Ex4034,35 339Null25 125. This was called by the later Jews the Shechinah. 11. Could not stand] for the awe which the near Presence of the Lord inspired : cp. Ex36Isa65Ezkl28. 12. The thick darkness] cp. Lv 16 2. Hither- to the Lord had dwelt not in an habitation made by human hands, but in Nature's cloud- pavilions (Ps 18 n). 15. Which spake .. unto David] through the prophet Nathan (2 S 7 5-7). 22. The altar] The altar of burnt offering, in the court before the Temple. 23. And he said] The passage that follows is full of a sense of God's infinitude (v. 27), righteousness (v. 32), and omniscience (v. 39), whilst at the same time it manifests faith in His constancy and forgivingness (vv. 25, 29, 30, 34, etc.) ; and though it contemplates principally the needs of Israel, yet it embraces a petition for the stranger that is not of Israel (vv. 41-43). 25. So that] i.e. provided that (as in 6 12). 27. The heaven . . contain thee] cp. Isa66i Jer2324. 29. Make toward this place] In later times the Jews, when praying in foreign lands, turned their faces toward Jerusalem (Dan 6^0). 31. And the oath come] RV ' And he come and swear.' 37. In the land of their cities] LXX ' in one of their cities.' 38. The plague of his own heart] i.e. the plague or chastisement which each is conscious of suffering : cp. 2'** Ex 91"^. 41. Concerning a stranger, etc.] for the future worship of the Lord by the Gentiles, cp. Isa23 567 Zech820-22. 43. is called by thy name] i.e. belongs to Thee : cp. 2 S 12 27, 28. 50. Give them compassion . . captive] The prayer was fulfilled when Cyrus allowed the Jews, who were captives in Babylon, to return to their home (Ezrl^). 51, Furnace of iron] i.e. a furnace hot enough to melt iron. 53. O Lord God] better, ' O Lord Jehovah.' 56. Hath given rest] cp. Ex 3314. 60. That all the people, etc.] Israel had a mission to discharge to the other nations of the world, partly by exhibiting conspicuously in its fortunes the moral principles on which God governed mankind (Josh 4 2* Isa55^ Ps677) and partly through the agency of its spiritual teachers the prophets (Isa42i). 61. Perfect with] i.e. not divided between the Lord and other gods : see 9 ^ 11 4. 63. Two and twenty thousand, etc.] The quantity seems enormous, but numbers in the OT., as in other ancient writings, cannot always be relied on, and profuse sacrifices were common in antiquity. 64. The middle of the court] On what is believed to be the site of the Temple court there is a large slab of rock, which would form a natural altar. Meat offerings] RV ' meal offerings,' and so else- where. 65. A feast] i.e. of Tabernacles (v. 2). The entering in of Hamath] Hamath was situated on the Orontes, the approach to it from the S. being by the gorge between Lebanon and Hermon. The river of Egypt] the modern Wady el Arish, a stream flowing 217 8.66 1 KINGS 10. 1 from the Sinaitic peninsula into the Mediter- ranean. Seven days and seven days] The seven days' feast of Tabernacles was preceded by a seven days' Dedication festival. 66. On the eighth day] i.e. at the close of the seven days' feast of Tabernacles. Unto their tents] The phrase is a survival from the tent-life which prevailed before the settlement in Canaan. CHAPTER 9 God's Response to Solomon's Prayer. Solomon and Hiram I. When . . finished] The Temple does not seem to have been dedicated until all the king's buildings were completed, the Temple and Palace being prolaably included within a single wall and regarded as a unity. In vv. 3-9 is contained the divine response to the prayer offered by Solomon at the dedication festival. 3. Mine eyes . . perpetually] Though God's care extends over all His creation, yet those are nearest to His heart who render to Him the sincerest and worthiest service. At Jeru- salem not only did the splendour of the Temple attest Israel's desire to pay honour to the Lord, but the worship conducted there was the most spiritual of contemporary forms of devotion, being free from the sensuous and often impure elements that entered into religious rites elsewhere. 8. At this house, lohich is high] The original has ' the house shall be high,' which may mean ' shall be conspicuous,' as a warning to others. But the Syriac has ' this house shall be a heap ' (of ruins). II. Tvs^enty cities] As the payment for the supply of timber consisted of wheat and oil (59-11), the cities must have been in return for the supply of gold : see on 2 Cb 8 2. Galilee] The region thus designated is not defined in the OT., but the name seems to have been applied to a part of Zebulun and Naphtali, where the non-Israelite population was numer- ous enough to lead to its being called ' the Galilee (or Circuit) of the Gentiles' (Isa9i). In NT. times it extended from the Leontes in the N. to the ridge of Carmel in the S. 13. Cabul] There was a city called Cabul in Asher (Josh 1 9 '■^"), and its name may have been taken to describe the district owing to its assonance with a Heb. phrase signifying ' as good as nothing.' 14. Sixscore talents] weigh- ing nearly 1.3,000 lb. 1 5. Millo] some part of the fortifications of Jerusalem is meant, perhaps a solid tower, but its place is not known. The LXX renders it by ' citadel,' and its importance is evidenced by its being so frequently rebuilt (1 1 '■^'' 2Ch325). Razor and Megiddo] Hazor, near Lake Merom, guarded the northern frontier, whilst Megiddo protected the approach to the plain of Esdraelon from the SW. Gezer] on the W. border of Ephraim, the modern Tell Jezer, 18 m. from Jerusalem. Gezer and Beth- horon (v. 17) protected the valley of Aijalon. 16. A present] RV ' a portion ' (or dowry). 18. Baalath] a little N. of Beth-horon the nether. Tadmor, afterwards called Palmyra, in the Syrian desert, NE. of Damascus. Another reading has ' Tamar,' a place in the S. of Judah (Ezk47i9), the same as Hazezor Tamar or Engedi (Gnl47 2Ch202). In the land] i.e. within the borders of Israel. This, as it stands, is only appropriate as a description of Tamar, but it is possible that some name (e.g. of ' Aram' or of ' Hamath '), descriptive of the locality of Tadmor, has been lost. 19. Desired to build] i.e. for his pleasure : cp. V. 1. In Lebanon] where residence would be desirable during the summer heats. 22. No bondmen] This apparently means that no native Israelites were permanently com- pelled to render forced service. But a consider- able body of such was temporarily employed upon the construction of the Temple (.5 1^) : cp. also 1128 12 4. 23. Five hundred and fifty] These were probably the officers who directed the labour of the 30,000 native Israelites : 2 Ch8 10 has 260. 24. Unto her house] see 7 «. For Millo see on v. 15. 25. Three times in a year] see 2Ch8i3, and cp. Ex23i^-i' 3423 DtlGi-i'. 26. Ezion-geber . . Eloth] The two places were at the N. extremity of the gulf of Akaba. 28. Ophir] variously identified with the Indian coast (near the mouth of the Indus), the E. coast of Africa (Abyssinia or Somali- land), and S. Arabia. In favour of the latter is the fact that in Gn 102-' Ophir is represented as the son of Joktan, the ancestor of several Arabian tribes. Four hundred and twenty talents] For the weight of a talent see 9 1*. CHAPTER 10 Solomon and the Queen of Siieba I. Sheba] the Sheba of Gn 102s (in Arabia), not of GnlO'i^ (in Africa). Arabia seems fre- quently to have been ruled by queens ; more than one is mentioned in the Assyrian inscrip- tions. If Ophir was in Arabia (see on 9 28), it may have been through the traders at that port that the queen here alluded to had heard of Solomon. Hard questions] These were probably of the nature of puzzles or riddles, the same word being used of Samson's riddle (Jgl4i2). Legend relates that one of the puzzles that Solomon was set to solve was how to dis- tinguish between a bunch of natural and a bunch of artificial flowers without leaving his seat to examine them. The king ordered the windows of the room to be opened, and the bees, coming in, alighted on the former and ignored the latter. 218 10. 5 1 KINGS 11.36 5. His ascent, etc.] perhaps better, ' his burnt offering which he offered in.' 9. Blessed be the LORD] cp. the language of the Phoenician Hiram (5'^). 11. Almug trees] conjectured to be sandal wood. 2Chi)iOhas ' algum trees.' 12. Pillars] BiM ' a railing,' or balustrade for the staircase : cp. 2Ch9ii. Harps .. psalteries] The former probably had a square frame, with the sound- box at the base ; the latter may have been triangular in shape, with the sound-box form- ing one of the sides. 1 5. The kings of Arabia] R V ' kings of the mingled people,' i.e. the population of mixed descent which lived on the confines of the kingdom. The same word is used of the ' mixed multitude ' that came up with Israel out of Egypt (Ex 12 38). 16. Targets] large shields. Shel-eh~\ a shekel was 224 grains. The shields were probably overlaid with the gold, not made of it. 17. Pound] Jleh. maneh. This contained 50 shekels. The house . . Lebanon] see on 7 ^. The shields here described were taken away by Shishak in the reign of Rehoboam (14-"). 19. The top of the throne] perhaps a canopy over the throne, of which the stays were the arms. 22. A navy of Tharshish] better, ' Thar- shish ship,' i.e. a stoutly-built vessel, such as was accustomed to voyage to Tartessus in Spain, or perhaps Tarsus in Cilicia, but which Solomon probably sent to Ophir (see 92tJ-''8 10^1), since Ezion-geber was his port. 27. Sycomore trees] not the English syca- more, but a kind of fig-tree. In the vale] RV ' in the lowland,' i.e. the downs between the hills of Judah and the coast. 28. Horses . . Egypt] The Jews depended upon Egypt for horses not only at this time, but also in the reign of Hezekiah (IsaSl^ 36 9), and at a still later date (Ezk 17 15). Linen yarn] This should probably be rendered ' droves,' and connected with the following clause — ' and in droves the king's merchants received them, each di'ove at a price.' But for ' in droves ' the LXX has ' from Tekoa,' where there may have been a horse fair, whilst the Latin has ' from Coa ' (i.e. Cilicia). 29. The Hittites] This people were pro- bably of Mongolian race, and drew their origin from Cappadocia. They came in contact with Israel chiefly on its northern border (Jg 1 2t3). By their means] Heb. ' in their hand,' i.e. with them. Solomon's merchants conducted the profitable traffic in horses between Egypt and the various states on the N. and NE. of Palestine. CHAPTER 11 Solomon's Erkors and their Conse- quences. His Death This c. fm-nishes an account of Solomon's marriages with numerous foreign princesses, and traces the evil effect of such in the tolera- tion of idolatry, which provoked the Lord's anger. This was manifested in the growth of opposition abroad and disaffection at home, so that an otherwise brilliant reign had a cloudy ending. 3. Seven hundred wives] The Persian king Darius Codomannus is said to have had, be- sides his own wife, 329 concubines. 4. Not per- fect] Solomon's heart was divided between the Lord and other gods. Without abandoning the service of Jehovah, he tolerated, and even took part in, the religious rites practised by his wives. His luxury and sensuality led to more serious errors still. 5. Ashtoreth] the Phoe- nician name of the goddess worshipped by the Babylonians under the title of Ishtar, the god- dess of love. Milcom] identical with the Molech of V. 7. 7. Build an high place] i.e. construct an altar or sanctuary upon a height. Chemosh] The name of this god occurs on the inscription of Mesha, king of Moab, who was contemporary with Ahab. Before Jerusalem] i.e. E. of Jerusalem, the corresponding ex- pression ' behind ' being used to denote the W. (Josh 8-1.9 Dt 11 2iRV). The hill here designated is the Mt. of Olives : cp. Ezk 1 1 23. 15. David. . Edom] see 2 881*. Joab] cp. Ps60 (title). According to 1 Ch 18 12 the actual victory over the Edomites was gained by Abishai, the brother of Joab. 18. Midian . . Paran] NE. and N. of the Sinaitic peninsula. 19, Pharaoh] either the Egyptian king whose daughter Solomon had married, or his predecessor. 23. Zobah] a small Syrian state lying eastward of Mt. Hermon. 24. Damas- cus] According to 288^ David had placed garrisons in Damascus, which Rezon and his followers must have expelled. 26. Ephrathite] i.e. an Ephraimite (as in ISP), not a Bethlehemite (as in Ruth 12). 28. Made him . . charge] RV ' gave him charge over all the labour'; see 513,H. As the system of forced labour introduced by Solomon had as its object the adornment of his capital, which was most closely connected with Judah and Benjamin, it would be the more resented by the other tribes : cp. 12'^''^^. Jeroboam's position enabled him to detect and work upon the discontent, which would be strongest in Ephraim, inasmuch as in the times of Joshua and the Judges it had enjoyed the preeminence which had now passed to Judah. 29. The Shilonite] i.e. a native of Shiloh (142). 30. Rent it .. pieces] The prophets frequently illustrated the meaning of their utterances by the use of impressive symbolic actions: see 22" Isa202f. Jerl9i-i3 Ezk 12 Zechll7,io,i4. 32. One tribe] in 122i>23 Benjamin is reck- oned with Judah, but see on 1220. 35, a 219 11.38 1 KINGS n. 28 light] cp.Ps 13217 and contrast Job 18 6. The figure is drawn from the fire or lamp which is usually associated with a permanent habita- tion. 38. If thou wilt hearken] the same con- dition as in 94. A sure house] i.e. a long and unbroken line of descendants. As the con- dition imposed was not fulfilled, the promise was not carried out, and Jeroboam's house was extirpated in the second generation by Baasha. 39. Not for ever] in spite of the humiliation suffered by the house of David through Jero- boam's revolt, the Davidic dynasty in Judah outlasted the kingdom of the Ten Tribes ; and though it finally lost all temporal power, it attained higher preeminence than ever when Christ was born of Mary, a descendant of David. 40. Sought . . to kill] This implies that Jeroboam had excited the king's suspicions by some open act of disloyalty. Shishak] i.e. Sheshonk, the first king of the 22nd dynasty, of Libyan descent. 41. The book, etc.] probably a history based on the official documents kept by the ' re- corder.' The instructiveness of Solomon's history is twofold. (1) Outward zeal for the honour of the Lord, such as Solomon showed by build- ing the Temple, is no proof of inward devo- tion. (2) Material blessings bestowed by God (like the wealth and honour conferred on Solomon) bring with them increased tempta- tions, needing divine grace for their conquest. CHAPTER 12 The Revolt of the Ten Tribes. Reho- BOAM AND Jeroboam The revolt of the Ten Tribes against the rule of Rehoboam had its origin partly in the dis- content which the burdens laid on the people by Solomon had created and which Jeroboam (who knew of it, see 1 1 28) had perhaps stimu- lated, and partly in the jealousy subsisting between the northern triljes and Judah, which had manifested itself previously in the separate kingdoms of Ish-bosheth and David, and the insurrections that disturbed David's reign over the whole people (2S201); whilst the bond of union constituted by a common religious faith must have been weakened by Solomon's idolatry. I. Shechem] The principal town of Ephi-aim (the modern Nabliis) : it had manifestly been restored after its destruction as related in JgO'*^. The choice of this city as the place of assembly was due partly to the importance of Ephraim as a tribe, and partly to its nearness to a sanctuary (that on Mt. Ebal, Josh 8 30). It was a gathering place for the tribes in Joshua's days (Josh 24 1). For all Israel . . king] The tribal spirit of independence was still sufficiently strong to make it necessary for the Judsean Rehoboam to receive separately the homage of the other tribes. 2. Dwelt in Egypt] LXX has ' returned from Egypt.' 3. Called him] This implies that Jeroboam was known to sympathise with the grievances under which the people laboured. 4. Made our yoke grievous] i.e. by the forced labour imposed upon them (S^^). 7. If thou wilt be a servant] i.e. by making timely concessions to his people. 10. My little fiiiger'\ a figura- tive expression, explained by what follows. II. Scorpions] a rod or lash used in scourg- ing. 15. The cause . . LORD] i.e. the turn of events was the means appointed by God's providence to bring about the punishment merited by Solomon's sin (1 1 ii"i3). 16. What portion] for this signal of revolt cp. 2S201. Now see. . house] a declaration of independence and a warning against further interference. 17. Children of Israel .. Judah] probably, in the main, members of the tribe of Simeon : cp. 1 K 19 3 with Josh 15 28. 18. Ado- ram] cp. 2 S 20 ^■i. He is called Adoniram in 46. Tribute] RV levy.' Stoned him] Stones were the usual weapons in outbreaks of popu- lar fury: cp. Ex 17* 1S306. 19. Unto this day] This passage must originally have been written not only before the destruction of Jerusalem but of Samaria: cp. 88. 20. The tribe of Judah only] This accords with the words of Ahijah in 1 1 ^2 ; and if the remaining tribes that fell to Jeroboam are reckoned as ten (ll^i) and not eleven, the ex- planation is to be found in the omission of Levi (as the priestly tribe) and in regarding Ephraim and Manasseh as constituting the single tribe of Joseph : cp. 11 28. But in vv. 21, 23, Ben- jamin is joined with Judah as belonging to Rehoboam ; and this, in large measure, was really the case, the frontier between the two kingdoms lying within that tribe. Simeon, too, by its position must have been practically absorbed by Judah. 22. Shemaiah] mentioned again in 2Ch 125,7,15. 23. The remnant of the people] i.e. those belonging by lineage to the other tribes : cp. V. 17. 25. Built] i.e. fortified : cp. 9 17. Penuel] in Gilead, E. of Jordan : cp. Jg88. 26. Now shall . . David] Jeroboam feared that if his people still went to Jerusalem three times a year to keep the feasts, they would be tempted to retm-n to their allegiance to Reho- boam. He had not sufficient faith in God's power to bring about His promises (11^8), and so adopted measures to safeguard his newly- won throne which branded his name for ever with infamy (cp. 14^'^), and brought calamity both on his house and his people. 28. Two calves i8)^ and there are a few inconsistencies which are left 230 4. 1 2 KINGS 5. 17 unexplained by the historian : contrast 6 23 probably dwelt at a sanctuary (perhaps Gilgal) with 621 and 527 with S^-'^. I. To be bondmen] For the sale of an in- solvent debtor and his family see Lv2539, and cp. Neh55. 8. A great woman] i.e. wealthy and influ- ential : cp. 1 S 25 2 2 S 19 32. lo. A . . chamber . . on the wall] probably an upper chamber, above the ordinary roof. A stool] better, a ' chair ' or ' seat ' (the same word being used of a royal tlu-one). Candlestick] better, ' lamp- stand' : cp. Ex 25 31. 13. He said unto him, etc.] in the East women were (and are) lightly esteemed, and direct communications were rarely held with them by persons who had a character for sanctity (cp. Jn 4 27) : see v. 27 and 5 ^^. What is to be done for thee ?] Elisha, who, unlike Elijah, seems to have attended the royal court (5 3), offers to use his influence on her behalf. I dwell . . people] i.e. I live among friends, and therefore do not need special protection against oppression. 16. According to the time of life] RV ' when the time cometh round,' i.e. in the spring of the following year. 19. My head] He had perhaps sustained a sunstroke. 23. Neither new moon, nor sabbath] The Shunammite's husband did not connect his wife's proposed visit to the prophet with the death of his child, but with some religious duty. The new moon (i.e. the first day of the month) and the sabbath were feasts at which the prophets might be asked to preside, as Samuel did at the feast held at the high place of Ramah (1 S9i2,i3). 24. Slack not thy riding] RV ' slacken me not the riding ' : the servant probably ran on foot beside his mistress. 26. It is well] The purpose of the answer was obviously not to deceive but to dismiss the questioner. 29. Gird up thy loins] The direction was necessary, for the garments were usually worn loose and flowing. Salute him not] To do so would waste time. Lay my staff] Elisha seems to have thought that as Elijah's mantle had been powerful in his own hand (21^), so his own staff would be equally potent in the hands of another. But the secret of miracles must be looked for in personalities, not in inanimate things. 35. He returned, etc.] The prophet showed the importunity which should mark all effort to obtain a divine blessing. 38. A dearth] Perhaps the famine related in 8 1*5. 39. A wild vine] not a real vine, but a vine-like plant, usually identified with the bitter cucumber or colocynth, bearing a fruit resembling an orange, which is very bitter in taste. 42. Baal-shalisha] Perhaps the same as the 'land of Shalisha' (IS 9 4) in the hill- country of Eplu-aim. The firstfruits] Elisha where firstfruits were required to be pre- sented (Ex 23 19). In the husk thereof] RV ' in his sack.' 43. What, should . . men ?] cp. the like doubt raised by the disciples of our Lord (Jn69), and the similar, but even more impressive, sequel. CHAPTER 6 The Healing of Naaman and the Punishment of Gehazi 1. The Lord . . Syria] Possibly the enemies from whom the Syrians had been saved were the Assyrians. Naaman, in delivering his country- men from them, had been an unconscious in- strument in the hands of Jehovah. A leper] see on Lvl3. Leprosy is of slow develop- ment, and as Naaman retained his military command, his malady cannot have reached a very advanced stage. It is not likely, in any case, that the Syrians observed the same strict rules regarding it as the Jews. 2. By companies] i.e. by raiding bands. 5. The king of Israel] probably Jehoram. Ten talents] A talent was a weight of 96 lb. Pieces of gold] probably shekels, and so in 625, a shekel being a weight of 224 grains. Changes of raiment] For such a present cp. Gn 45 22. The expression implies costly robes. 6. That thou mayest recover] i.e. by using his influence with the prophet. ID. Sent a messenger] cp. 4i3. Seven times] The figure probably stands for an indefinite number (cp. IK 18 "13); but it is possible that it also had special religious asso- ciations (cp. Gn2128 Josh 6-*). The prophet's direction to Naaman to wash in the Jordan did not imply any miraculous quality in the water of the river, but was intended to test the sufferer's faith. 11. Strike] better, 'wave,' for he would probably avoid actual contact. 12. Abana and Pharpar] These two rivers rise in Mt. Hermon and lose themselves in a marshy lake near Damascus. Though smaller, they are much clearer than the Jordan. 13. My father] a title of honour : cp. 2^2 621. ig. He returned] The distance from the Jordan to Samaria was some 30 m. A blessing] RV 'a present' : cp. Gn33ii Jg 1 15. Naaman did well to seek to show his gi'atitude to the Lord by a gift to His prophet, but Elisha's refusal meant that for imparting a divine blessing which he was empowered from on high to bestow, he could receive no personal gain. 17. Two mules' burden of earth] It was believed that a national deity was intimately connected with the country he protected, so that Naaman, being desirous of worshipping the Lord (Jehovah) in Syria, wished to trans- port thither some of the soil of Israel as being 231 5. 18 2 KINGS 7. 13 associated with His presence and so most fitted for the construction of an altar to Him. 1 8. Rimmon] identical with the Assjrrian storm-god Ramman. 19. Go in peace] Elisha, to avoid putting too severe a strain upon the incipient devo- tion of his foreign convert, did not demand consistency, though his predecessor Elijah, in the case of native Israelites, had protested against such divided allegiance (IKlS^i). 22. Mount Ephraim] RV ' the hill country of Ephraim.' Bethel and Gilgal, where there were bodies of ' sons of the prophets ' (c. 2), were situated in this district. 23. Be content] i.e. consent : cp. 6 3. 24. The tower] RV ' the hill ' : probably an elevation near Samaria. Some take it to mean ' the citadel.' 26. Is it a time] The occasion had not been a suitable one for acquiring gain, but for rejoicing over the manifestation of the Lord's power and graciousness, calculated as it was to awaken the wonder and gratitude of the foreigner, Naaman, which Gehazi's covetous- ness might now repress. CHAPTER 6 Elisha and the Siege of Samaria I. The place where we dwell] The mention of the Jordan (v. 2) suggests that these sons of the prophets dwelt near Jericho : cp. 2 5. Probably Elisha did not permanently abide with them, but visited them occasionally for supervision and instruction. 6. The iron did swim] The prophet's powers were exerted to help one who was honest enough to be the more concerned for .his loss because the axe was not his own. 8. The king of Syria] perhaps the Ben- hadad of v. 24 and 1K201. 13. Dothan] commanding a pass which crossed the ridge of Carmel (the mountain of v. 17). 17. Round about Elisha] cp. Ps347 91 *. God's servants often experience providential succour in times of danger, though they can- not confidently reckon upon protection from earthly peril. What alone is assured to them, if they continue loyal, is spiritual security. 22. Wouldest thou smite, etc.] If the king would not smite captives whom he had taken by his own valour, much less could he expect to be allowed to smite those who had been delivered into his hands by another. The prophet by preserving their lives, secured that information respecting his wonderful powers was conveyed to the Syrian king. 24. And it came to pass, etc.] This section obviously has no close connexion with the preceding, as the inconsistency between this V. and V. 23 shows, though Josephus explains that the king of Syria, out of fear of Elisha, abandoned his secret designs against the Israelites in favour of more open war. 25. An ass's head] The ass being an un- clean animal, its flesh would not be eaten except in times of great scarcity. Cab] a little less than 2 quarts, so that a fourth part would be about a pint. Dove's dung] Though this is usually supposed to be a kind of pulse, yet pigeon's dung was eaten in a siege that took place in the year 1316 A.D., probably because of the seeds it contained. 29. Boiled my son] The same kind of incident occurred in connexion with the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, Lam 4 10 ; cp. also Lv2629 Dt 28 52-55. 31. The head of Elisha] Possibly the prophet had held out promises of relief which had not yet been realised. 32. This son of a murderer] i.e. this murderer : cp. Isa 1 4. Hold . . door] RV ' hold the door fast against him.' Is not . . feet] The king, after giving orders to execute Elisha, had changed his purpose, and was hastening after the messenger to countermand his directions. 33. And he said] These words are spoken by thp h'ntg^ which should be substituted for the messenger in the first part of the v. : cp. 7 1''. Wait] i.e. hold out in the hope of God's intervention. CHAPTER 7 The Relief of Samaria 1. A measure] Heb. a seah^ equal to 6 cabs, and rather less than 3 gallons. In the gate of Samaria] The open space at the gate of an Eastern city served as a market-place. 2. Windows in heaven] These were the outlets from which the rain came (Gn7ii), and the officer asked scornfully whether the famine could be relieved even if rain fell immediately. 3. The gate] Lepers would be required to keep outside the city : cp. LvlS*^'**^. 5. The uttermost part] RV ' the outermost part ' : i.e. the outer limits of the camp on the side nearest to them. 6. The Hittites] see on IK 10 29. The Assyrians used their name to describe the whole of Palestine, which they called ' the land Khatti.' The Eg3rptians] Parts of Egypt were governed by petty kings who were vassals of the Pharaohs. A combination of Hittite and Egyptian forces, coming from the N. and S. respectively, would have entrapped the Syrians between them. But mention is made in the Assyrian inscuiptions of a land called Musre adjoining the Hittite country, and it is possible that Mizraim (the Heb. for Egypt) is a mistake for this. ID. The porter] Perhaps used collectively (see V. 1 1 ) and hence the plur. pronoun ' them. ' 13. They are as, etc.] i.e. they are in danger of starvation like the rest of us, and so have no more to fear, if they are captured by the enemy, than will befall them if they 232 7. 15 2 KINGS 9.23 remain in the city : cp. v. 4. 15; Unto Jordan] The Syrians in their retreat from Samaria would naturally make for the fords of the Jordan at Bethshan and Bethbarah. 17. The people trode, etc.] He was knocked down in the rush of famished citizens hasten- ing to the Syrian camp, and trampled to death, thus fulfilling Elisha's prediction (v. 2). CHAPTER 8 Elisha and the Shunammite. Elisha AND Hazael. Reigns of Jehoram and Ahaziah of Judah I. Then spake Elisha] The occasion is not indicated, all the stories related of Elisha in this and the three preceding chs. being dis- connected. A famine] Perhaps the same as that referred to in 4^8. 2. The land of the Philistines] This was a corn-growing district, near the still more productive country of Egypt. 3. To cry unto the king] Her pro- perty, being vacant during her absence, had seemingly passed to the crown : cp. v. 6. 7. To Damascus] It is possible that Elisha in thus visiting the Syrian capital was carrying out a commission of Elijah's (IKIO^^). For Ben-hadad see G^-i. 8. Hazael] one of Ben- hadad's servants. 10. Say unto him] Elisha presumably meant that the disease from which Benhadad was suffering was not a fatal one, but that he would die by other means. Some suppose that Elisha spoke ironically (like Micaiah in IK 2215). n. Until he was ashamed] Hazael became discomposed under the prophet's gaze, being conscious of a guilty purpose. 12. The evil, etc.] described in 1032 133,22 Am 13, 4. 13. But what, etc.] RV 'but what is thy servant, which is but a dog,' the expression ' a dog ' being a term of contempt (1 S 17 ■^^ 241-*). Hazael meant that he could scarcely credit that so great a destiny was in store for one so humble as himself. 16. Jehoshaphat behig then king of Ju- dah] an accidental repetition of the words ' Jehoshaphat king of Judah,' that follow. 18. He did evil . . LORD] This does not im- ply that he abandoned altogether the worship of the Lord, since he made offerings to the Temple (1218). 19. A light] see 1K1136 15*. In consequence of the divine promises made to David, Jehoram's sins were not punished by the overthrow of his dynasty but by other means. 20. Edom revolted] in the reign of Jeho- shaphat Edom had been subject to Judah and ruled by a viceroy (1K22'1"). Its success in throwing off the yoke of Judah is alluded to in Gn27'iO. 21. Zair] This place is only mentioned here, and the Vulgate reads Seir, another name for Edom. The people . . tents] The people referred to is the people of Judah. Joram, when surrounded by the Edomites, cut his way through them and escaped, but his army was defeated and dispersed. The verse accounts for the successful revolt of Edom. 22. Yet] RV ' so ' : see 2 Ch 21 10. Unto this day] The writer whose materials the author of Kings is here drawing upon must have lived before the destruction of the Judsan kingdom. Libnah] situated in the lowland. Its revolt was perhaps aided by the Philis- tines: cp. 2 Ch 21 1«> 17. 23. The rest . . Joram] see 2Ch21, which relates both the public and personal losses sustained by the king. 24. Ahaziah] in 2 Ch 2117 called Jehoahaz. 26. Two and twenty] in 2Ch222 'forty- two.' Daughter of Omri] strictly she was ' gi-and-daughter ' of Omri. The terms ' son ' and ' daughter ' were used not only of remote de- scendants but even of successors who were not blood-relations ; e.g. Jehu in the Assyrian in- scriptions is called ' the son of Omri.' 28. He went with Joram] Ramoth Gilead at this time was in the hands of Israel, but threatened by Syria (914). 29. Ramah] i.e. Ramoth Gilead. CHAPTER 9 Jehu and his Bloodshed This c. relates the anointing of Jehu by order of Elisha ; and the death of Jehoram (of Israel), Ahaziah (of Judah), and Jezebel. I. Box] RV 'vial.' For the use of oil in anointing sovereigns see ISlQi 1613. Ra- moth-gilead] The Israelite army was on guard here (v. 14). 9. Like the house of Jeroboam . . of Baasha] Both these families had been ex- tirpated: IK 1529 1611. 10. In . . Jezreel] the scene of Ahab's murder of Naboth (1 K21). II. This mad fellow'] The wild demeanour and excited utterances of the prophets (see IS 10 5^. 1920f) particularly exposed them to this reproach: cp. Jer2926. Ye know the man] Probably the sons of the prophets, like the prophets themselves, could be distinguished by their dress: see on 1^. But Jehu's words possibly imply that he suspected his colleagues of having prompted the prophet's action. 13. Put it under him] either for a cushion (as an extemporised throne) or for a carpet. On the top of the stairs] RM ' on the bare steps ' ; these would be outside the house. 17. Is it peace ?] i.e 'is all well ?' (the same word as in v. 11 and in 5^1). 18. Turn thee behind me] The command had the same object as that in v. 16, viz. to prevent warning being given. 22. Whoredoms] i.e. the practice of idol- atry: see Jg2i7 Hos22f. Witchcrafts] i.e. dealings with wizards and diviners (prohibited in Ex 22 18 : cp. also DtlSH Lv2027). 23. Turned his hands] i.e. to wheel his chariot about. 25. Rode together after Ahab] i.e. behind him in the same chariot, as his 233 9. 26 2 KINGS 10.34 attendants. Laid this burden upon him] EM ' uttered this oracle against him.' The term ' burden ' is similarly used of a prophetic utter- ance in IsalSi 151 171 Nahli Habli, etc. 26. The blood of his sons] The execution of Naboth's sons has not previously been mentioned ; but at this period a man's guilt was held to attach to his children likewise (the sense of individual responsibility being only imperfectly developed), and his oifence was generally expiated by their punishment as well as his own. 27. The garden house] better, ' Bethgan,' a place on the direct road from Jezreel to the S. Ibleam] about half-way between Sa- maria and Jezreel. A diiferent account of Ahaziah's death is given in 2 Ch 22 9. Me- giddo] on the ridge of Carmel. 29. Eleventh] in 8 -5 ' twelfth.' 30. Painted her face] RV 'painted her eyes ' (eyelids), i.e. with a preparation of anti- mony, to make them appear larger and more brilliant. 31. Had Zimri peace, etc.] RV ' is it peace, thou Zimi-i, thy master's murderer': see IK Ig9-i9_ Perliaps Jezebel, by reminding Jehu of the fate of Zimri, wished to suggest to him the wisdom of making overtures to her. 34. A king's daughter] She was daughter of Ethbaal, king of Zidon (IK 16 si). 35. They found no more, etc.] The loss of burial added further ignominy to her death : see on 1 K 2 3i. 36. In the portion of Jezreel] see IK 21 23. CHAPTER 10 Jehu's Extermination of Baal "Worship 1. Ahab . . sons] These were probably his grandchildren rather than his children. Unto the rulers of Jezreel] LXX has 'unto the rulers of Samaria,' which the sense requires. 2. A fenced city] i.e. Samaria. Ahab's dynasty had obtained the throne by force of arms (IKlG-i'-^)^ and Jehu implied that its supporters must defend it by the same means. 4. Two kings] Jehoram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah. 5. Over the house . . over the city] These officials are also alluded to in lK45-222t5 2K1818 Isa22i5. 6. Take ye the heads] By slaying the young princes the rulers and elders would be implicated in Jehu's treason and would therefore in self- defence have to support him. 9. Ye he righteous] Jehu appeals to the people to judge between him and any that might accuse him. The fact that the elders of the city had put Jehoram's sons to death argued that the overthrow of Ahab's dynasty was not due solely to Jehu's private ambition but to widespread disaffection against a guilty house. But Jehu unfairly concealed his own com- munications with the elders (vv. 1-3). 10. The word of the LORD] see 1 K 21 w. 29. Though Ahab had repented of his murder of Naboth, and the chastisement he had incurred was for a time postponed, and though Jehoram seems to have attempted some religious reform (32), yet the evil influence of Jezebel had spread widely (see lO^^^"), and eventually brought judgment upon the impious family. 13. The king . . the queen] i.e. Joram and Jezebel (the term ' queen ' denoting the queen- mother). 14. The pit] i.e. the tank or pool where the sheep were washed. 15. Jehonadab] Jehonadab was a Kenite (1 Ch 2 55), the tribe of Ai-abian nomads to which Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, belonged (Jgl^*^). If it be] spoken by Jehu (so the LXX). Give me thine hand] i.e. as a pledge : cp. Ezrl0i9Ezkl7i8. 18. And Jehu, etc.] Jehu proceeded to use the same crafty secrecy in the extirpation of Baal worship as he had displayed in destroying Ahab and his house (9i«f- 10 if-)- 22. The vestry] Part of the Temple where the ' changes of raiment,' usually worn on festal occasions, were stored. 25. To the city of the house of Baal] This seems unintelligible, and the word ' city ' is probably a corruption of the word ' oracle ' (see 1 K 6 5), the Hebrew being somewhat similar. 26. The images] RV ' the pillars ' : and so in v. 27. They were probably mere columns, not figures of the human form. 27. Draught house] equivalent to a dunghill : cp. EzrGH Dan 2 5. Unto this day] see on 1 K 8 s. 30. Of the fourth ^e«e?-a^«ow] see 15 12. The four generations were Jehoahaz, Joash, Jero- boam II, and Zechariah. Jehu's djTiasty sat longer than any other on the throne of Israel. 31. Jehu took no heed . . heart] Jehu was a worshipper of the Lord (Jehovah), and, in his violent extirpation of the house of Ahab, was doubtless actuated by religious zeal as well as by motives of ambition, whilst his desire to suppress the worship of Baal which had been encouraged by Ahab and Jezebel was reinforced by indignation at the tyranny manifested by the reigning house in the matter of Naboth : cp. 9 25. 26. But the combined revolution and reformation which he effected were accompanied by massacres which, at a later date, excited the abhorrence of the prophet Hosea (!■*); and though the religion of Jehovah was restored by him to its previous supremacy, it retained the idolatrous character which Jeroboam I had given it by represent- ing the Deity under the figure of a young bull. 32. Coasts] i.e. borders. For Hazael's barbarities in Gilead (v. 33) see Am 1 3, i. 34. The rest of the acts of Jehu] An Assyrian inscription (now in the British Museum) records that Jehu paid tribute to Shalmaneser II. That king in 842 B.C. defeated Hazael the 234 11. 1 2 KINGS 12. 17 king of Syria ; and the injuries that the latter inflicted upon Israel (vv. 32, 33) would natur- ally lead Jehu to court the friendship of his conqueror. Among the gifts that formed part of Jehu's tribute were ' bars of silver, bars of gold, a golden ladle, golden goblets, golden pitchers, bars of lead, a staff for the hand of the king, shafts of spears ' (Schrader, Cot, i, 199). CHAPTEE 11 The Usurpation of Athaliah and Preservation of Joash 1. Athaliah] She was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel (Si^'^"), possessed her mother's high courage, and, like her, was a devoted worshipper of Baal. Her position as queen- mother she would naturally lose on the acces- sion of Ahaziah's son, the deceased monarch's wife becoming queen-mother in her stead. She, therefore, took measures to place herself on the throne by removing all rivals, and then proceeded to make the worship of Baal pre- dominant in the land : see 2 Ch 24 ''. 2. In the bedchamber] This was presumably one of the side-chambers of the Temple de- scribed in 1 K 6 5-10. 4. Jehoiada] He was the high priest and married to the princess Jehosheba (2 Ch 22 1^). Rulers] For their names see 2 Ch 23 1. Cap- tains] RV ' Carites' (and so in v. 19). These were probably foreign mercenaries from Caria in Asia Minor (they are mentioned by Herodo- tus as employed by the Egyptian king Psam- metichus), who formed the bodyguard of the Judsean sovereigns. 5. A third part of you, etc.] The precise arrangements are obscure, but it is probable that on the sabbath one-third of the royal guards were on duty at the palace and two- thirds at the Temple ; of these the former body, separated into three divisions (vv. 5, 6), was posted at different parts of the building to prevent Athaliah's personal supporters from leaving it (though she herself was allowed to do so), whilst the latter, and larger, body was assembled at the Temple to secure the safety of Joash (v. 7). 6. The gate of Sur] RV omits 'of.' In 2 Ch 23 5 it is called ' the gate of the foundation.' Position unknown. That it be not broken down] better, ' and be a barrier.' 8. Rangtc] RV 'ranks,' and so in v. 1.5. 11. Alo?/g by the altar] i.e. the troops were posted in two columns converging towards the altar of burnt offering in the Temple court, so as to enclose a triangular space. 12. The testimony] i.e. a copy of the Law : cp. Ex25iti, and see DtlT^s. But the literal rendering is, ' they put upon him the crown and the testimony,' and the last word should perhaps be ' the bracelets ' which kings wore as part of their insignia (2 S 1 lO). (In the Heb. there is only a difference of a single letter.) 14. By a pillar] perhaps better, ' on the platform,' from which the king used to address the people. 15. Without the ranges] RV ' between the ranks,' so that she was sur- rounded by troops. 16. Laid hands on her] So the LXX. RV has, ' made way for her ' (so that she might be got out of the Temple before she was slain). 18. The house of Baal] i.e. of the Zidonian Baal to whose worship Athaliah, as the daughter of Jezebel, adhered. According to Josephus this temple was built by Jehoram and Athaliah. 20. All . . rejoiced] The brief usurpation of Athaliah was the only interruption to the orderly succession of kings of the house of David throughout the history of Judah, a fact which testifies to the strong attachment which the people felt towards it, and forms a striking fulfilment of the promise made to David (2 8715,16). CHAPTER 12 Joash repairs the Temple 2. All his days] According to 2Ch24i'i'*- Joash took to evil courses after the death of Jehoiada. 3. The high places, etc.] The wor- ship at the ' high places ' was first abolished by Hezekiah, and then, after its renewal by Manasseh, by Josiah. 4. The money . . is set at] RV ' the money of the persons for whom each man is rated.' The money devoted to the repair of the Temple was that received for (a) the supply of vessels dedicated to the Temple services ; (6) the redemption of vows (Lv 27^-8); (c) free-will offerings. According to 2Ch246.9 the chief source of the money was the half- shekel appointed by Moses to be paid by every Israelite for the maintenance of the 'Tent of the Testimony (Ex 30 11-16). The accounf] RM ' the inunherutg.'' 9. The altar] i.e. the altar of burnt offering, outside the Temple building: cp. 2Ch248. The door would be the entrance into the Temple court. 11. Told] RV ' weighed out.' 13. There were not made] 2Ch24i^ has ' were made,' perhaps having in view the sur- plus remaining after the repairs of the Temple were completed. 16. The trespass money, etc.] RV ' money for guilt offerings and money for sin offerings.' Some suppose that fines are meant, but the money may have been applied to the purchase of victims for sacrifices : see Lv4,5. 17. Gath] one of the five Philistine cities ; to reach it Hazael must have marched through the kingdom of Israel, and his invasion is probably to be connected with the attacks upon Jehu and Jehoahaz (10^2 133.4). for 235 12. 19 2 KINGS 14.9 the movement upon Jerusalem see 2 Ch24 23, 2-1^ where it is stated that Jehoash sustained a se- vere defeat before he surrendered his treasure. 19. The rest of the acts of Joash] see 2 Ch 24 ^''^-27, which relates that after Jehoiada's death Joash departed from the Lord, and even killed Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, who had rebuked him for his idolatry. 20. The house of Millo] If Millo was a fort in Jerusalem (see on 1 KS^^) ' the house ' was perhaps a palace attached to it. 21. Jozachar] in 2 Ch 24 26 (where 'Jozachar' is corrupted into ' Zabad ') the conspiracy is described as intended to avenge the death of Zechariah : see on v. 19. CHAPTER 13 Reigns of Jehoahaz and Joash of Israel. The last Prediction of Elisha 3. All their days] RV 'continually,' i.e. throughout the reign of Jehoahaz. 5. A saviour] either Jehoash (v. 25) or Jeroboam II (1425-27) is meant. In their tents] i.e. in their homes, the phrase being a survival from earlier times ^hcR the Israelites were a body of nomads roaming the desert. _ 6. The grove] RV ' the Asherah ' : see on 1 K J 4 is. If Jehu had altogether abolished the wordnp of Baal (1028), this Asherah must have been comificted with the worship of the Lord, like the pillaT-s before the Temple of Solomon (IKT^sf.). 13. Jeroboam] usually designated as Jero- boam II. 14. Joash . . unto him] Both Elijah and Elisha, though strenuous antagonists to the religion of Baal, yet seem to have tolerated the worship of the Lord under the form of a calf, for both prophets had friendly relations with kings who retained that mode of worship. Corrupt in character as it yfas, it was neverthe- less directed towards the true God. This passage is the first mention of Elisha since he sent a prophet to anoint Jehu (c. 9). The chariot of Israel] The reference is to Elisha, who had been Israel's greatest safeguard, a host in himself : cp. Si^f- 6 9. 16. Elisha put, etc.] in order to indicate that the king's destined success came from another source than his own strength. 17. The arrow, etc.] The shooting of the arrow east- ward was symbolic of a victory in that direc- tion, Syria lying NE. of Israel. Aphek] the Aphek of 1 K 20 26. 19. The man of God was wroth] because the king displayed too little confidence in the God whose minister the prophet was. 20. The bands of the Moabites] If Elisha was buried either at Samaria or at his home of Abel-meholah, the Moabites must have crossed the Jordan. 21. Touched] The coi>pse would not be placed in a coffin but swathed in grave-clothes ; and the tomb was probably an excavation in the side of a hill, not a hole in the ground. 24. Ben-hadad] Probably the third of the name mentioned in the Bible : see 1 KIS^^ 20 1. 25. Three times] in accordance with Elisha's prophecy (v. 19). The success of Israel over Syria was probably aided by the disasters which that country sustained from Assyria. The contemporary Assyrian king was Ram- man-nirari, who in his inscriptions relates that he besieged Damascus and compelled its ruler to tender allegiance and pay tribute. The Syrian king is called ' Mari,' but this may be a title, not a proper name. Ramman-nirari also claims to have received tribute from ' the land of Omri,' i.e. Northern Israel ; so that Jehoash may have purchased the aid of the Assyrian king against Syria by sending presents to him. CHAPTER 14 Reigns of Amaziah of Judah and Jeroboam of Israel I. In the second year of Joash . . king of Israel] Joash of Judah reigned 40 years, and as his thirty-seventh year corresponded to the first year of Joash of Israel (13 1°) the acces- sion of his son Amaziah could not coincide with the Israelite king's second year ; so that there is some slight error of calculation. 3. Not like David] He was not perfectly faithful to the Lord, for late in his reign he worshipped the gods of Edom (2 Ch 2.5 !■*). 6. Tire children . . he slew not] see Dt 24 16^ and cp. E.zkl82-4. The contrast between Amaziah's conduct and the practice recorded in 2S216 2K9^'''^^ shows that by this time a clearer conception had been acquired of the rights of individuals, which prevented the guilt of the parent from feeing held to extend to all his family. 7. Edom] see further in 2 Ch 255-16. The valley of salt] immediately S. of the Dead Sea. Selah] the later Petra, E. of the Ara- bah. Joktheel] said to mean ' subdued by God.' Unto this day] i.e. unto the time of the writer whose materials are here used by the historian. The date is probably early, for the Edomites practically recovered their in- dependence in Abaz,' veign (166), and would naturally restore their capital's former name. 8. Let us . . face] i.e. meet face to face it. "battle. If Judah at this time was a vassal of the northern kingdom (see on 1 K 22 2), Amaziah's motive in courting a quarrel with his neighbour was probably a desire to free Judah from this position of subservience. His recent success over Edom doubtless encouraged him ; but he miscalculated the respective resources of himself and his opponent. 9. The thistle] The thistle represents Ama- ziah and the cedar Jehoash, whilst the lion symbolises the ruin that humbled the arrogance 236 14. 11 2 KINGS 15. 19 of the former ; but the fable does not quite suit the circumstances, as Amaziah was seeking, not a friendly alliance, but a quarrel. For the use of fables cp. Jg98-i^. II. Bethshemesh] In the Lowland (Sheph- elah) of Judah, 15 m. W. of Jerusalem. 13. From the gate . . gate] The wall that was dismantled was on the N. side of the city, which was thus left defenceless to attacks from that direction, in case it gave further provoca- tion. 19. Lachish] on the Philistine border, but within the territory of Judah (Josh 1 5 3"). It is usually identified with the modern Tell el Hesy. 21. Took Azariah] called in 15 1^ (see note) and elsewhere Uzziah. The fact that though Anaaziah was dethroned and put to death, his son was nevertheless made king in his room witnesses to the affection that continued to be felt for the dynasty of David. The Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser mentions among the kings from whom he received tribute a certain Azriyahu of Jaudi, who has been thought by some scholars to represent Azariah of Judah, but the identity of the two names is now questioned. 22. Elath] see on 1K926, and for its eventual loss see 2 K 1 6 *'. Its restoration to Judah implies the subjugation of Edom. 23. Jeroboam . . forty and one years] This is inconsistent with the figures given in 14 2 and 15^, for Jeroboam's reign covered 15 years of Amaziah's and 37 of Azariah's, making 52 in all. 25. Restored the coast] i.e. extended the territory of Israel to its original boundaries when at the height of its prosperity: see on v. 28. The entering of Hamath] i.e. the gorge between Lebanon and Hermon. The sea of the plain] RV ' the sea of the Arabah ' : i.e. the Dead Sea, the Arabah being the long de- pression extending from the Sea of Galilee to the Gulf of Akaba. Jeroboam's conquests probably included Moab, and to his reign the invasion of that country described in Isa 1 5 ^ to 16^2 may be most plausibly assigned. His success was facilitated by the inactivity of Assyria at the time. Jonah] The same prophet who is the subject of the book of that name. Gath-hepher] in Zebulun, a little to the N. of Nazareth. Jonah was not the only prophet who was active in Israel during this reign, for both Hosea and Amos were his contemporaries. Of these Hosea belonged by birth to the north- ern kingdom, but Amos was anative of Judah. From the writings of Amos it was plain that though the prosperity of the kingdom had greatly increased during the reign of Jeroboam, its moral condition was sadly in need of reform. Social oppression (Am 2 6-s 5 ^i), commercial dishonesty (8 5' 6)^ and judicial corruption (5 7) were rife in the land, and in consequence the prophet declared that the nation would be punished by captivity in a foreign land (5^7 (3779, 17)_ Amaziah the priest of Bethel de- nounced him to Jeroboam, and bade him flee back into Judah, counsel which the prophet requited by predicting that Amaziah would share the captivity of his countrymen and his family be destroyed by the sword. 26. Any shut up] see on IK 1410. 28. Damascus and Hamath] Both these places had been included within the possessions of Solomon (IK 421), b^t the former was lost to him by the success of Rezon related in 1 K 11 23-25_ The re-conquest of the places here named could not have been long main- tained, for Amos speaks of Damascus, the nearer of the two, as an independent state (Am 1 3). CHAPTER 15 Sundry brief Annals This c. relates the reigns of Azariah and Jotham of Judah, and of Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah of Israel. I. In the twenty and seventh year] Since Jeroboam came to the throne in the fifteenth year of Amaziah (14^3)^ and Amaziah only reigned 29 years (14 2), his son must have succeeded him in Jeroboam's fifteenth year. Azariah in vv. 13, 30 is called Uzziah. 5. The Lord smote the king] For the reason see 2 Ch 26 1<5-20, a several house] RM ' a lazar house,' in which he was secluded in accordance with the principle laid down in Lvl3*^. Was over the house] He held the same office as that alluded to in 1K46. Judging the people] i.e. acting as regent for his father. 6. The rest of the acts of Azariah] For details see 2Ch26i-i-5. It was in the last year of Azariah (Uzziah) that the prophet Isaiah entered upon his ministry (Isa 6). 12. This was the word of the LORD] In spite of the ability and success of Jeroboam II the corruption of the people (which Amos and Hosea attest) bore its natural fruit, and the nation became the prey of faction, resulting in the downfall of Jehu's dynasty. 13. Uzziah] For the two names Uzziah and Azariah applied to the same individual see lCh624,36. and the interchange of Azareel and Uzziel in lCh25is,4mg ^^ Tirzah] see on IK 141''. Though it had ceased to be the capital, it was doubtless still an important place. 16. Tiphsah] not the Tiphsah of 1 K 424, which represents Thapsacus, a far distant town on the Euphrates, but some unknown place in Israel itself. Some suggest that it is a mistake for Tappuah (Josh 1 7 ^). 19. Pul] usually identified with the Tiglath- pileser named in v. 29, who was the successor, though not the son, of Asshur-nirari, his reign lasting from 745 to 728 B.C. The Assyrians 237 15. 20 2 KINGS 16.8 had come in contact with Israel previous to this (see on lO^i) ; but it was only under Tiglath-pileser that they began seriously to endanger the independence of the northern kingdom, and the invasion here described is the first recorded of their many attacks upon the Hebrew states. Menahem gave Pul] cp. Hos5i3. Tiglath-pileser himself in his in- scriptions records that he received tribute from ' Menahem of Samaria.' 20. Exacted the money] The sovereigns of Judah usually bribed their foreign allies, or bought off foreign invaders by drawing upon the treasures stored in the Temple (IK 15 1^ 2 K 12 18 16 s 1815); though Jehoiakim followed the same course as Menahem, and taxed his subjects (233''). 25. Pekah] IMenahem and his son Pekahiah had depended for support upon the protection of Assyria ; but Pekah belonged to a faction which was opposed to Assyrian influences. Palace] RV • castle ' : cp. 1 K 16 is. 27. Twenty years] The Assyrian inscriptions show that no more than four years separated the close of Pekah's reign from that of Menahem, so that the latter here must be over-estimated. 29. Tiglath-pileser] see on v. 19. The in- vasion here described was connected with the attack made by Pekah and his ally Rezin of Damascus, upon Ahaz of Judah (165 f.). Of the places taken by Tiglath-pileser Ijon and Abel- beth-Maachah were near the sources of the Jordan, N. of Lake Merom ; Kedesh and Hazor lay to the W. of the same lake ; the site of Janoah is uncertain. Carried them captive] This deportation took place in 734 B.C. It is recorded by Tiglath-pileser himself in his own inscriptions, though he says exag- geratedly that he deported ' the whole of the inhabitants.' The purpose of such wholesale removals of the population of a conquered country was to destroy national sentiment and traditions, and so prevent all attempts to re- cover independence by killing the aspiration for it. 30. Hoshea . . conspiracy] Hoshea pursued a different policy to Pekah and sought Assyrian support by paying tribute (17 3). In the twentieth year] According to v. 33 Jotham reigned only 16 years, and Pekah's reign was contemporary with part of that of Ahaz (171). 35. He built, etc.] Other allusions to his buildings occur in 2Ch273. 36.The rest . . Jotham] see 2 Ch 27 2-8. The prosperity which Judah enjoyed during Uz- ziah's reign continued through that of his successor (if Isa 2 may be taken as descriptive of it) ; but the accumulation of wealth was accompanied by religious corruption : see Isa 2 6-8. 37. Rezin. . Pekah] The war which broke out in the reign of Ahaz was threatening during the reign of Jotham (see on 16 5). CHAPTER 16 Ahaz and Assyria This c. describes the reign of Ahaz of Judah, his appeal to Assyria when attacked by Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Syria, and the overthrow of Damascus by the king of Assyria. 3. He walked, etc.] see 2 Ch 28 2 where he is described as making images for Baalim. Made his son . . fire] Children were sometimes actually sacrificed and burnt (see 17^1 32"), and the same thing may be meant here, but some think that the rite here described was a kind of ceremonial purification by fire, the child being merely passed across, or over, the flame in the course of idolatrous worship. Ahaz is the first Jud^an king who is said to have adopted this practice ; but he was followed in it by Manasseh (21^), and frequent protests against it occur in the writings of successive prophets (Jer73i 195Ezk202«, etc.). 5. Came up to Jerusalem] Pekah's policy was to oppose the Assyrians, and in conjunction with Rezin he sought to induce Ahaz to join a coalition against them. Failing to persuade him, they took up arms for the purpose of dethroning him, and replacing him by ' the son of Tabeal ' (Isa 7 6), who was either a creature of the two confederates, or Pekah himself (' Tabeal ' being a cypher for Remaliah, the name of Pekah's father). The successes of the invaders are described in 2Ch285-i5j but though they inflicted much loss on Judah, they failed to take Jerusalem. 6. To Syria . . the Syrians] The context requires ' to Edom . . the Edomites ' (the latter correction being found in the LXX), since Elath had belonged to Edom and had been taken from it by Azariah (Uzziah, lA'^^). Ac- cording to 2 Ch28i'^ the Edomites took part in the war. 7. Sent . . Tiglath-pileser] This step was opposed by the prophet Isaiah, who counselled Ahaz to put his trust in the Lord, and asserted that the combination against him was not really formidable and would soon be over- throwm (i.e. by Assyria, whom they had pro- voked). As a sign to reassure the king the prophet predicted the birth of a child whom his mother would call Immanuel (' God with us ') ; and declared that before he ceased to be an infant, both Israel and Syria would be deprived of their kings. Ahaz, however, dis- regarded Isaiah's comisel ; and the prophet accordingly predicted that the intervention of Assyria which he was inviting would be attended by calamities for Judah as well as for her enemies. See Isa 7. 8. Sent // for a present] Tiglath-pileser, in his inscriptions, records that he received tribute from 'Jehoahaz of Judah,' Jehoahaz being probably the full name of Ahaz. 238 16.9 2 KINGS 17. 13 g. Hearkened unto him] The adhesion of Judah would facilitate Assyria's operations against Egypt. Damascus] Damascus was taken and its people deported in 732 B.C., the event having been predicted by Amos (1 5). Kir] near the lower Euphi-ates, the original home of the Syrian people (Am 9 "). 10. Went to Damascus] perhaps to do homage to the Assyrian king there. Saw an altar] probably of Assyrian pattern, since Ahaz would be more likely to introduce into his own land the religion of the victors than of the vanquished, ii. Urijah] perhaps the Urijah of IsaS^. 13. Meat offering] EV ' meal offering ' : and so in v. 15. 14. The brasen altar] i.e. the altar con- structed by Solomon (IK 8 64). This had hitherto occupied a central position in the court in front of the Temple ; but now, in order to make room for the new altar (the 'great altar' of v. 15), was placed between the latter and the N. side of the court. 15. To enquire by] i.e. to obtain indications of the divine will, possibly by the inspection of the victims that were offered upon it. But some render, ' shall be left for further con- sideration.' If this is correct, Ahaz was too busy with his new altar to decide what was to become of the other that was consecrated to the service of the Lord. 17. The borders] RV ' the panels ' : i.e. of the stands of the ten lavers made for Solomon : see 1 K 7 27-39_ The sea] i.e. the molten sea (1K7 23-2(3). Ahaz probably removed these various works of art to conceal them from the cupidity of the Assyrians. 18. The covert] RV 'the covered way' : not mentioned in the description of Solomon's Temple. Turned he from] RV ' he turned unto.' What is meant is obscure. For] RV ' because of ' : probably the alterations described were intended to make the Temple appear less attractive, lest the Assyrian king should wish to dismantle it and appropriate its decorations. 19. The rest of the acts of Ahaz] see 2 Ch 28 24) 25. In Isa 7 is an account of the inter- view between Ahaz and the prophet Isaiah alluded to in the note on v. 7. CHAPTER 17 The Fall of Samaria This c. relates the reign of Hoshea. He intrigued with Egypt and i-ebelled against Assyria ; and Samaria, in consequence, was taken and its people carried into captivity, their place being filled by a mixed population. I. Hoshea] Hoshea, unlike Pekah (IG^), belonged to the faction in Samaria which re- lied on Assyrian support, and Tiglath-pileser, in his inscriptions, states that after he had slain Pekah, he ' appointed ' Hoshea to rule over Israel, and received as tribute 10 talents of gold and 1,000 talents of silver. 3. Shalmaneser] succeeded Tiglath-pileser, his reign lasting from 727 to 723 B.C. Gave him presents] i.e. rendered him tribute. 4. So] This king, whose name should perhaps be written Seve, is generally identified with Sa- bako, the first king of the 25th dynasty, though some authorities regard him as a petty prince who was vassal of the Pharaoh. The inter- ference of Assyria with the Israelite kingdoms raised the fears of Egypt, which accordingly encouraged any disaffection which the Israelite sovereigns manifested towards their Assyrian over-lords. But the hopes whichHoshea enter- tained of Egyptian support proved as delusive to him as they did subsequently to Hezekiah and Zedekiah : cp. Isa303 31 1 Jer37 7. Shut him up, and bound him] Possibly Hoshea was either captured, or surrendered before his capital was taken. 6. The king of Assyria] Not Shalmaneser (v. 3), who ched before Samaria was captured, but his successor, Sargon (723-705). The fall of Samaria took place in 722 B.C. Carried Israel away] The numbers deported, as given in Sargon's own inscription, amounted to 27,280 ; so that a considerable population must have been left behind : cp. 2Ch349. Of the localities where the captives were settled, Halah is not known. In Habor hi/ the river of Gozan] should be ' on Habor ' (the Chaboras, mod. Khabour), ' the river of Gozan ' (part of Mesopotamia). The cities (LXX 'mountains') of the Medes] S. of the Caspian Sea. 8. The kings of Israel] especially Jeroboam, who introduced the calf -worship, and Ahab, who introduced Baal worship. 9. The tower of the watchmen] i.e. the watch towers erected for solitary guardians of the vineyards and flocks in lonely localities, the phrase from the tower . . fenced city thus embracing thinly and thickly populated places. 12. Ye shall not do this thing] cp. Dtl23i. Some of the pillars and Asherim (so read for ' images and groves' in v. 10) were probably, like the calves, erected in honour of the Lord, and the LXX after ' things ' adds ' unto the Lord.' If so they had an evil tendency, because they were associated with the cor- ruptions of the old Canaanite worship. 13. By all the prophets] Among the pro- phets who laboured in Israel were Ahijah, Jehu (son of Hanani), Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, Jonah, Oded, Amos, and Hosea ; whilst those who ministered in Judah included (up to the time here indicated) Shemaiah, Iddo, Azariah, Hanani, Jehu, Zechariah (son of Jehoiada), Micah, and Isaiah. Through such agents God exhorted and warned His people before send- ing upon them the punishments which their sins deserved. 239 17. 15 2 KINGS 18. 4 15. Vanity] often applied to idols (IK 16 1^) 16. All the host of heaven] i.e. the stars. There is no previous reference in Kings to this form of idolatry in N. Israel, but an allu- sion to it occiu-s in Am 5 26, where the name ' Chiun ' probably denotes the planet Saturn. Warnings against it are found in Dt4i9 173. 19. Walked . . Israel] as when Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab, introduced Baal worship : cp. 818.27 163. 20. All the seed] The writer here anticipates the futru-e, and refers to the destruction of Jerusalem, an event which he still has to relate. 24. Brought men from, etc.] Of the names that follow, Babylon was on the Euphrates ; Cuthah was between the Euphrates and the Tigris ; Ava, perhaps the Ivah of 18^4, is identified by some with the Ahava of EzrS^^ ; Hamath was on the Orontes ; Sepharvaim (' the two Sippars ') was in Babylonia. The con- quest of some of these places is alluded to in 18 ^-i. Sargon in one of his inscriptions men- tions the transportation of some of the in- habitants of Babylon to ' the land Khatti,' which, though strictly designating the country of the Hittites, may be intended to denote Palestine generally ; but according to another inscription the people settled in Samaria consisted of Arabian tribes. 25. Lions] These, which were common in the Jordan valley, would multiply in conse- quence of the depopulation of the country. 26. The manner] i.e. the ordinances of wor- ship. 27. One of the priests] The priests alone were acquainted with the proper ritual. Let them] i.e. the priest and his attendants. 30. Succoth-benoth] perhaps Zir-banit, the wife of Merodach. Nergal] the AssjTian god of war. 31. Adrammelech and Anammelech] probably the gods Adar and Ann, with the addition of the word ' melech ' (' king '). 32. Of the lowest of them] better, ' of all classes ' ; op. 1 K 12 31. 33. They feared the LORD and served, etc.] cp. V. 41. The religion that prevailed was a combination of the worship of the Lord (Jehovah), as the God of the land of Israel (v. 27), with that of the various deities adored by the different nations from which the settlers were drawn. The worship of the Lord was maintained among them as late as the return of the Jews under Zerubbabel (see Ezr42, one reading) ; and they approached the latter with a request to be allowed to share in the restor- ation of the Temple. Whom they carried away from thence] RV ' from among whom they ' (the settlers) ' had been carried away.' 34. They fear not the LORD] i.e. the wor- ship of the Lord implied in v. 33 was not such as God desired. 41. Unto this day] i.e. as late as the time of the writer of the passage, though whether the statement proceeds from the compiler of the book, or from one of his authorities, is not certain. The Israelite exiles, whose native land was thus occupied by strangers, lost their nation- ality in the country of their captivity, and never again formed a distinct community. When, however, the people of Judah were de- ported some 150 years later into Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, individual members of the northern tribes joined themselves to them in the com"se of the Exile, and accompanied them back to Palestine when Cyrus the Persian per- mitted them to return to their homes. In lCh93 'children of Ephraim and Manasseh,' as well as of Judah and Benjamin, are men- tioned as dwelling in Jerusalem after the Re- turn ; and Anna the prophetess was of the tribe of Asher (Lk236) ; cp. also Tob 1 1 Judith 615. But in 2 Esdr 1339-47 it is related that the Ten Tribes, after being carried into Assyria by Shalmaneser, decided to leave the heathen and go forth ' into a further country where never mankind dwelt, that they might there keep their statutes which they never kept in their own land ' ; and from thence their restor- ation is predicted. These Lost Tribes have been fancifully identified with various nations, including our own. CHAPTER 18 Hezekiah and Sennacherib This c. describes the reign of Hezekiah of Judah, his religious reforms, and the invasion of Judah by Sennacherib, king of Assyria, who sent one of his officers to demand the surrender of Jerusalem. 1. Now it came to pass, etc.] The northern kingdom having been destroyed, the history is henceforward confined to the events connected with Judah only. 2. Twenty and five years old] Probably an error, for if Ahaz was only 36 at his death (162) iiis son could scarcely be 25. 4. He removed the high places] cp. v. 22. This was the first attempt to put an end to the provincial shrines which had co-existed with the Temple as seats of worship from the time of Solomon onward : see 1 K 1 4 23 1 5 14 2243 2 K 123 14 M5 4. Though dedicated to the service of the Lord, the rites conducted at them were peculiarly liable to corruption, and the interests of true religion were now seen to require their abolition. But the religious reform here described cannot have been very thorough, for the ' high places ' built by Solo- mon for his foreign wives were not destroyed until the reign of Josiah (2 K 23 13) ; and Isaiah, in prophecies belonging to this reign, alludes to graven and molten images as being still objects of adoration (Isa 30 2- 3 1 7). The brasen serpent] see Nu219. Nothing is recorded of 240 18.5 2 KINGS 18. 22 its history since the time of Moses . Nehushtan ] It is not clear whether this was the name (' the Brasen ') by which it was known when an ob- ject of worship, or a term of contempt (' a mere piece of brass ') applied to it when marked for destruction. 5. None like him] The same praise is given to Josiah (23 ^s). 7. The Lord was with him] Though Heze- kiah, in consequence of pursuing a mistaken policy, experienced great calamities in the course of his reign, yet his fidelity to the Lord had its reward in a signal overthrow of the same Assyrian power that within Hezekiah's lifetime had destroyed the much stronger kingdom of Israel. He rebelled] It may be inferred from Isa 1428-32 that Hezekiah at the beginning of his reign received from the Philistines a proposal urging him to join a movement against Assyria, but that Isaiah, confident that the Lord would protect Zion, sought to dissuade him from ac- cepting it. Probably Isaiah's counsel prevailed, and the king continued for a time to be a vassal of Assyria. But when in 705 Sargon was succeeded by Sennacherib, several of the vassal states again attempted to regain their independence ; and with a view to obtaining Hezekiah's help, envoys were sent to Judah (about 703) by Merodach Baladan of Babylon (see 20 1"^*-) and by the Ethiopians (Isa 18), the latter probably on behalf of the king of Egypt. At the Judaean court the hope of an Egyptian alliance exercised a strong attraction (see Isa 30, 31), but it was opposed by Isaiah, who con- tinued to advocate confidence in the Lord, the promotion of social and religious reforms, and abstention from foreign entanglements. Even- tually those who supported the alliance with Egypt prevailed ; and in 701 Hezekiah, in co- operation with a section of the Philistines, rebelled against Assyria. 8. Smote the Philistines] probably such as remained loyal to Assyi-ia. 9. Shalmaneser . . came up] vv. 9-12 repeat in brief the account of the capture of Samaria already given in 17 5*. 11. The cities of the Medes] Media was the mountainous district S. of the Caspian. 13. In the fourteenth year] The Assyrian invasion here described took place in 701, and therefore according to this v. Hezekiah's acces- sion was in 714 ; but v. 10 states that Samaria, which fell in 722, was captured in Hezekiah's ' sixth ' year, which makes 727 the date of his . accession. The section vv. 13, 17-37 recurs in Isa 36 1-22. Sennacherib] succeeded Sargon in 705. The beginning of his reign was much dis- turbed, and his first campaign was against the Babylonian prince, Merodach Baladan, whom I he drove from his capital. This was followed by an invasion of the Cassi, a people of Elam ; and then in 701 he undertook the expedition against Judah and the other Palestinian states, which is described in the text. Against all the fenced cities] Sennacherib in his inscriptions relates that he captured forty- six cities of Judah and deported more than 200,000 of the inhabitants. Hezekiah himself was besieged in his capital and compelled to tender submission, as recorded in v. 14. 14. Lachish] The place at this time was being besieged by Sennacherib (2Ch329). Three hundred talents] According to the inscrip- tions the fine was 800 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold, besides other treasures. 17. The king- of Assyria sent] It is pro- bable that the surrender, described in v. 14, was expected by the Jews to secure their city from further molestation ; but Sennacherib was moving towards Egypt, and doubtless thought it dangerous to leave so strong a fortress in other hands than his own. The consequent demand for its capitulation, here recorded, exposed Sennacherib to the charge of breaking his covenant : see Isa 33^. Tartan . . Rabsaris . . Rab-shakeh] the titles of military officers, meaning respectively ' commander-in-chief,' ' chief of the princes,' and ' chief of the captains.' The conduit of the upper pool] This pool has been identified by some with the modern Birket Mamilla, situated W. of the city ; but more probably it is the pool of Siloam, near the S. end of Mt. Zion, to which the conduit here mentioned carried water from the spring of Gihon in the Kidron valley (see on 1 K 1 33). 18. Shebna] Shebna, who, from his name, was probably a foreigner, had previously occupied the position now filled by Eliakim (Isa 22 15)^ and seems to have advocated reliance upon the support of Egypt, a policy which Isaiah had opposed. When Hezekiah was compelled to make submission to the Assyrian king, Shebna naturally fell into dis- grace and was degraded to an inferior office, Eliakim being promoted in his room. 21. This bruised reed] For a similar con- temptuous estimate of Egypt cp. Ezk 29 '^. Pharaoh] This was probably Shabako, the successor of So (17 3). The inability of Egypt to help those who trusted it, as shown in the case of Hoshea of Israel (see 17-*-6), was again displayed by the defeat of an Egj-ptian army at Eltekeh, which had come to relieve Ekron, one of the Philistine towns besieged by Senna- cherib. It was this success which left the Assyrian king free to invade Judah, as described in v. 13. 22. Whose high places, etc.] Rabshakeh thought that such sacrilege was calculated to provoke the anger of the Lord, whereas Hezekiah's action really con- duced to religious purity : see on v. 4. 16 241 18. 23 2 KINGS 19.29 23. Give pledges] RM ' make a wager.' 24. Put thy trust . . horsemen] For reliance upon Egypt for a supply of horses see Isa31i-3. 25. Am I now come up without the Lord ?] He might have regarded his capture of the Judsean cities, described in V. 13, as an indication that the Lord had given them up into his hand because of Hezekiah's action in removing the high places. 26. The Syrian language] i.e. Ai-amean, a language which served as the principal medium of intercourse between the various nationalities in the East. This would be intelligible to the state officials both of Assyria and Judah, but unfamiliar to the bulk of the citizens of Jerusalem ; and so Eliakim, who desired to keep both the threats and promises of the Assyrian officer from the multitude, wished the conference to be conducted in it. 27. That they may eat, etc.] The garrison had taken up their position on the ramparts, with all the extremities of starvation before them ; and Rabshakeh now appealed from the king and his advisers to the rank and file of his army (in violation of all honoui'able usage). 31. Come out] i.e. capitulate, before incur- ring the further calamities of a protracted siege. 34. Hamath, etc.] For most of the towns here named see on 17 24. Arpad has been identified with some ruins NW. of Aleppo. 35. That the Lord should deliver, etc.] The Assyrian argued that the national god of a little state like Judah would not be able to defend His people more efi:ectually than the deities of other nations, subdued by the Assyrians, had done. He had to learn that the God of the Jews was also the Lord of all the earth. CHAPTER 19 The Deliverance of Jerusalem 2. Isaiah the prophet] This is the first mention of Isaiah in this book, but his own writings show that he had been an active teacher and statesman not only during the earlier years of Hezekiah himself, but also during the reign of Hezekiah's predecessor Ahaz : see on 16 ^ 18''. The chapters in the prophet's writings which relate to the present occasion are 105-12« 14^4-27 1712-u 22, 29-33, 36, 37 (the last two of which substantially repeat ZK 18, 19). 3. Blasphemy] RV ' contumely ' : such as the nation was experiencing at the hands of the invader. The children . . bring forth] a figure for powerlessness in the time of peril. 4. Remnant] cp. v. 30, IsalO'^*^. A large number of the Judaean cities had been captured (see on 18 1^), so that the population of the capital might well be thus described. 7. Send a blast upon him] RV ' put a spirit in him ' : i.e. an impulse of fear. A rumour] 111 tidings respecting his army, which was destined shortly to perish in its advance against Egypt. 8. Returned] to Sennacherib. Libnah . . Lachish] in southern Judah. 9. Tirhakah] an Ethiopian, who was at first the general and subsequently the successor of the Egyptian king Shabako (18^1). He was contemporary not only with Sennacherib, but with his two successors, Esarhaddon and Asshurbanipal. 12. Gozan, etc.] These places were all in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates. Gozan is mentioned in 17 ^ ; Haran in Gn 1 1 ^^ ; Eden in Ezk2723. 13. Hamath] see on 1724. It had revolted against Sargon in 720 B.C., but the insurrection was crushed and its king Jahubidi slain. 15. Thou . . even thou alone] Whereas Sen- nacherib had counted the God of Israel among a number of deities all equally unable to with- stand him (1832"35), Hezekiah here asserts that the Lord (Jehovah) is the only God, and implies that whatever the Assyrian had accomplished had been done by His per- mission. 19. That all .. may know] If a small kingdom like Judah successfully re- sisted Assyria, it could only be through the supremacy of its God. 21. The daughter of Zion] For the per- sonification of a city as a woman cp. Mic4io Isa23 1(^.12 471*. 23. The lodgings, etc.] RV ' his farthest lodging place, the forest of his fruitful field.' 24. I have digged . . waters] Sennacherib implies that the progress of his armies on foreign soil could not be hindered by the enemy stopping up the water-springs: he at once digs fresh wells. Besieged places] RV ' Egypt.' The numerous channels of the Nile were ordinarily a means of defence to Egypt (cp. Nah3S), but Sennacherib implies that they were inadequate to stay his advance. 25. Hast thou . . done it] This begins the Lord's response to Sennacherib's boastings. The Assyrian king had in reality only been an agent deputed to carry out the divine purposes: cp. IsalOi2f. 47'' Zech 1 15. 28. My hook] cp. Ezk38'*. The expression may be an allusion either to the method adopted for controlling wild animals (cp. Ezkl94), or to a practice employed by the Assyrians towards their captives : see 2 Ch 3311 RM. 29. A sign unto thee] i.e. unto Hezekiah. The occurrence of the earlier and harsher part of the prophet's prediction would be a warranty for the fulfilment of the later and more cheerful portion of his message, viz. that the land should be free from in- vasion and cultivated in peace. This year . , 242 19.30 2 KINGS 20. 17 the third year] The reckoning is inclusive, ' this year ' meaning the year of the invasion, and ' the third year ' being the second year after it. 30. The remnant] cp. v. 3. The popula- tion, so sadly thinned by the war, would again recover its strength and numbers. 31. Out of Jerusalem, etc.] The country folk that had been driven into the capital by the invasion would again return to their homes. 32. Cast a bank] a mound of earth with an inclined surface, raised against the wall of a besieged city to enable the besiegers to reach the top. 34. Mine own sake] God's intentions to- wards His people could not be foiled alto- gether through the sins of the latter ; so that though the divine justice had demanded the chastisement of the nation, the divine faith- fulness required that it should be preserved from complete destruction. 35. The angel of the LORD] cp. Ex 12 23. In 2S2415, i<3 the pestilence that punished David's numbering of the people is attributed to an angel ; and it is probable that it was a similar calamity that destroyed Sennacherib's army. It seems more likely that the disaster occurred in the low-lying ground on the Egyptian frontiers than in the neighbour- hood of Jerusalem ; and the Greek historian, Herodotus, who gives a fanciful account of an overthrow sustained by the Assyrians in a campaign against Egypt, places it near Pelu- sium. But wherever and however it happened, it was a signal confirmation of Isaiah's faith in the Lord and a striking vindication of his prescience. 36. Nineveh] its ruins have been found opposite the modern Mosul. 37. His sons smote him] Sennacherib's death did not occur until some 20 years after the destruction of his army, as described in V. 35 ; but though he took part in several expeditions subsequent to his invasion of Judah, he never again molested the Hebrew state. Esarhaddon] reigned from 681 B.C. to 668. CHAPTER 20 Hezekiah's Sickness and Recovery I, In those days] The incidents related in this c. probably took place before Sennacherib's invasion, for (a) the deliverance from the Assyrians is still future (v. 6) ; (Jj) Hezekiah is in possession of great treasures (v. 13), which could scarcely have been the case after the surrender described in 181'^'^^ ; (c) Merodach Baladan, king of Babylon, was driven from his throne before Sennacherib attacked Judah. Chronologically, therefore, this c. should pre- cede 18''*- Thou shalt die] Prophetic pre- dictions were generally conditional and not absolute ; a threatened judgment might be averted by repentance and a promised blessing forfeited by misconduct : see Jer 18 ''■10 26 1^, 19. 3. How I have walked, etc.] In the absence of any complete belief in a future life, this world was held to be the only sphere within which God's moral governance of mankind displayed itself, length of days being regarded as the reward of righteousness, and a short life being thought to imply great guilt. Hence Hezekiah, with the prospect of an untimely death before him, appealed to God to bear witness to his uprightness. A perfect heart] i.e. a heart not divided between devotion to the Lord and devotion to other gods : cp. 1 K 8 61 and contrast 1 K 1 1 ^. 4. The middle court] RV ' the middle part of the city.' 7. A lump of figs] A plaster of figs is known from other sources to have been used as a remedy for boils, but since Hezekiah was ' sick unto death ' (v. 1), his cure is doubtless regarded as miraculous. 8. What shall he the sign, etc.] vv. 8-11 ought to precede the statement of the king's recovery in v. 7. 9. Shall the shadow, etc.] better, as in RM, ' the shadow is gone forward ten steps, shall it go back ten steps '? ' 11. The dial of Ahaz] Probably a platform surrounded by steps and surmounted by a pillar, the shadow of which fell upon a smaller or larger number of the steps according as the sun mounted or declined in the sky. It has been conjectured that a slight alteration of the length of the sun's shadow might be produced by a partial eclipse ; if so, the sign consisted in the event taking place in agreement with the prophet's prediction. 12. Berodach-baladan] Isa 39 1 has the more correct form 'Merodach-baladan.' This prince was a Chaldean who twice made himself master of Babylon and was twice expelled from it by the Assyrians. In 2Ch323i the motive of his embassy is said to have been a wish to enquire into the unusual occurrence described in v. 1 1 ; but it is probable that he likewise sought to obtain Hezekiah's aid against the Assyrians. 13. The house of his armour] Probably the house of the forest of Lebanon ; cp. IKIO^'^ Isa228. 14. Then came Isaiah] Isaiah opposed all political entanglements as involving reliance upon material resources instead of confidence in the Lord. Hezekiah had still to learn how powerless was his own strength or that of foreign allies to save him in the hour of his need. 17. Into Babylon] The prophet probably regarded Babylon as a province of Assyria, not as an independent power ; and it was to Babylon that an Assyi'ian king carried Manasseh the son of Hezekiah (according to 2 Ch 33 1^). 243 20. 19 2 KINGS 22. 13 19. Good is the word] Hezekiah showed the same submissiveness as Eli had manifested on a similar occasion (1 SS^^). 20. The rest of the acts] Among other acts related in 2 Ch 29-31 are the purification of the Temple (desecrated by Ahaz), the celebration of a solemn passover, and the arrangement of the priestly courses. A pool, and a conduit] The ' pool ' is probably the pool of Siloam, which was fed by a conduit from the spring of Gihon : cp. 2Ch3230. The 'conduit' was perhaps at first a surface aqueduct, which Hezekiah replaced by a tunnel to secure the supply of water from being interrupted. Such a tunnel has been found, and an inscription describing its construction. CHAPTEE 21 The Reigns of Manasseh and Amon 3. The high places, etc.] Manasseh not only restored the country sanctuaries which had been destroyed by Hezekiah as seats of cor- ruption (see 18*' '^2)^ and renewed the Baal worship practised by the house of Ahab (see 1118, and cp. IK 1631,32)^ but also introduced star worship, a form of religion previously un- known in tfudah. The host of heaven] The worship of the stars, which was probably in- troduced from Assyria, was conducted on the flat roofs of the houses : see Jerl9i3 Zephl^, and cp. 23 11' 12. 5. In the two courts] If the view expressed in the note on 1 K 7 1- be correct, the two courts may be the inner (or upper) court im- mediately surrounding the Temple, and the court enclosing the Palace. 6. Pass through the fire] see on 16 3. For his son 2Ch33*^ has 'his children.' Observed times] RV ' practised augury ' : by the observa- tion of the clouds, etc. Familiar spirits] RV ' them that had familiar spirits ' : such persons were believed to be animated by, or to have intercourse with, the spirits of the dead : cp. 1 S 28 ''. One of the devices employed by them was probably ventriloquism, the spirit appear- ing to speak from the ground (Isa8i9 29'*). 7. A graven image of the grove] better, ' a carved Asherah.' This was placed in the Temple itself, whence it was removed by Josiah (23*^). 9. Manasseh seduced them] The evil example of Manasseh and his court had a worse effect upon the people at large than that of any previous Judaean king, so that at a much later date the prophet Jeremiah declar-ed that it was for what Manasseh did that the judg- ment announced by him was to come upon the nation (Jer IS*). II. The Amorites] The inhabitants of Canaan had been destroyed for the very ini- quities which Manasseh was now surpassing : cp. Dtgs. 13. The line of Samaria] The judgment denounced against Judah would be carried out with the same precision and exactness as the judgment that overtook the northern kingdom and the dynasty of Ahab. As a man wipeth a dish] i.e. Jerusalem would be finished and done with. 14. The remnant] see 19 3. Je- rusalem had survived the calamities that had been inflicted on the rest of Judah by the Assyrians (1813), but it would not be delivered from the enemies that awaited it in the future. 17. The rest of the acts] see 2 Ch 3312-19, where it is related that Manasseh was taken captive by the king of Assyria to Babylon, repented there of his sins, was restored to his kingdom, and instituted a religious reformation. 19. Jotbah] cp. Dtl07 Nu3333. CHAPTER 22 Josiah. The finding of a Book of the Law I. Boscath] in Judah : cp. Josh 15 39. 4. That he may sum, etc.] Josiah was contemplating a restoration of the Temple similar to that carried out previously by Joash (12'*^-), and a collection of money had been made for the purpose : see 2 Ch 34 9. 5. The doers of the work . . to the doers of the work] The first were the overseers, the second were the labourers. 7. There was no reckoning] cp. 1215. 8. The book of the law] As the book found in the Temple was brief enough to be read at a single assembly (23 2), whereas the reading of the Law by Ezra occupied several days (Neh8i8), it can scarcely have included the whole of the Pentateuch ; and the religi- ous reforms that Josiah carried out after its discovery and perusal (23'**-) point to its being Deuteronomy only. Deuteronomy con- tains a record of Moses' farewell address to his countrymen, and reproduces much of the Mosaic legislation that is comprised in Ex 20-23, 34. But it does not profess to be written by Moses (indeed, in its present form it cannot proceed from him since it gives an account of his death, 34 s), and there are cer- tain features in it which, when compared with other parts of the Pentateuch and with the history of the period between Moses and Joshua, have led many scholars to conclude that it was composed after the time of Moses out of materials of earlier date. Its conceal- ment in the Temple was probably due to the persecution of the worshippers of the Lord by Manasseh, for it condemns in particular those idolatries which Manasseh practised. 13. Because our fathers, etc.] Whether Deuteronomy was actually written by Moses or at a later date, the bulk of its teaching had long been familiar to the people, since it con- tained the substance of the book of the covenant (Ex 24''), embracing Ex 20-23. 244 22. 14 2 KINGS 23. 22 14. Huldah] The only other prophetesses mentioned in the OT. are Miriam (Exl5'^0)^ Deborah (Jg44), and Noadiah (NehGi^). In the college] RV ' in the second quarter,' a certain division of the city which in Zeph 1 10 is associated with ' the fish gate,' a gate in the N. or NW. wall. 19. A curse] cp. Dt28i5. The condition of Jerusalem should be such that people desir- ous of cursing theii* enemies could wish them no worse a fate. 20. In peace] Josiah, though he fell in battle (23^9^, yet was spared the pain of wit- nessing the calamities sustained by his country in the time of his successors. He was one of ' the righteous who were taken away from the evil to come' (Isa57i). CHAPTER 23 Religious Reform. Josiah's Death 2. The prophets] Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah lived about this time. Read in their ears] cp. the similar proceeding I'elated in Neh 8 * *• 3. By a pillar] or, ' upon a plat- form ' : cp. 11 1^. 4. The priests of the second order] probably to be corrected into ' the second priest ' (as in 25^^), i.e. the high priest's deputy. Grove] see on 217. g. xhe planets] or, ' the signs of the zodiac' The word is said to mean ' man- sions,' the stars being the abodes of gods. 6. Of the children of the people] RV ' of the common people': cp. Jer2623. The graves of the poorer classes were probably made in the ground, whereas the tombs of the wealthy were constructed in the rocks, and were not so available for the purpose here described — viz. the defilement of the idolatrous emblems : cp. v. 14. 7. Sodomites] The suppression of such is directed in Dt23i'^>is. Hangings] lit. ' houses,' i.e. tents which shel- tered the Asherah (or emblem of Ashtoreth). 8. Defiled the high places] That some of these were dedicated to the worship of the Lord appears from the following v., which implies that the priests who served them were priests of the Lord. The destruction of these sanctuaries thus resulted in confining the public rites of worship to the Temple at Jerusalem (according to the law of Dt 125-14), and the removal of the priests who had previously ministered at them. From Geba to Beer- sheba] the northern and southern borders of the kingdom. Of the gates] Probably an error . for ' of the satyrs ' or ' he-goats,' which were objects of worship and called ' devils ' in Lvl7 7 2 Chi 115. The Heb. words closely resemble one another. 9. Did eat . . bread] It is not clear whether they were maintained by the offerings of their kinsfolk in their several localities or whether they shared the offerings made to the priests at Jerusalem, but were debarred from minis- tering in the Temple (as was the case with priests who were otherwise disqualified, Lv 2 1 -1-23) : cp. Dt 18 6-s. By unleavened bread is probably meant the priestly dues generally. 10. Topheth] The name literally means ' spittle ' or ' spitting,' and so designates the locality as a place of abhorrence. The valley . . Hinnom] usually identified with the valley that flanks the modern city of Jerusalem on the W. ; but if the ancient city occupied only the eastern of the two hills upon which the present city stands, the valley here mentioned may have been the depression between them (subsequently called the ' Tyropaeon '). To- pheth, however, was in any case situated in the broad space formed by the junction of the three valleys immediately S. of the city. It was from the sacrificial fires lighted there for human sacrifices, as well as from those that were afterwards kindled in the same place to destroy the refuse of the city deposited in it that the Heb. name Ge Hinnom in the form Gehenna came to be used to denote the place of punishment for the unrepentant after death. Molech] see IKll^. The rite here referred to is prohibited in DtlS^^. 11. The horses] A chariot was similarly dedicated to the sun at Sippar in Babylonia ; and it is probable that it was connected in idea with the sun's course through the sky. The kings of Judah] presumably Manasseh and Amon : see 2 1 3> 5. Of the house . . by the chamber] better, ' from the house . . to the chamber,' marking the extent of the stables. 12. On the top of the upper chamber] These altars were probably connected with the wor- ship of the host of heaven : see on 213. 13. Before Jerusalem] i.e. E. of the city. It is surprising that these, dating from the time of Solomon (see 1 K 11 ^'^), had not been destroyed by Hezekiah ; but see on 18 '^. Mount of corruption] i.e. the Mt. of Olives, the later ' mount of offence.' 14. The bones of men] i.e. to desecrate them, since dead bodies communicated uncleanness : cp. Nul9i6. 15. The altar that M;as at Beth-el] see IK 1232, 33 Burned the high place] probably the shrine erected upon it, which elsewhere is styled a ' house of high places.' 16. In the mount] presumably some adjoin- ing elevation. According to the word of the Lord] see IK 13". 17. Title] RV ' monu- ment' : marking the place of burial. 18. Sa- maria] here used of the country rather than the city, since the prophet alluded to belonged to Bethel. 21. The passover] Of this passover details are given in 2Ch35i-i^. 22. There was not holden, etc.] On this occasion not only were the injunctions of the Law more strictly fol- lowed than had been the case previously, but 245 23. 24 2 KINGS 24. 8 exceptionally large numbers took part in the festival. 24. Images] RV ' teraphim,' which were probably models of the human figure repre- senting household deities and used in divina- tion: see Gn31i91S19i3Ezk212i. 29. Pharaoh-nechoh] i.e. Nechoh II, a king of the 26th dynasty (610-595 B.C.), whose father Psammetichus, at one time a tributary of the Assyrians, had secured independence for Egypt in 664 B.C. The king of Assyria] i.e. the king of Baby- lon. Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, fell in 607 before the united forces of the Median Cyaxares and the Babylonian Nabopolassar ; and it was to dispute the spoils of the fallen empire with Nabopolassar that Nechoh ad- vanced northward through Palestine. The king of Babylon is here called by the name of Assyria, the country he had conquered (cp. Ezr6'^'^, where a Persian king is likewise styled ' king of Assyria,' the Persians having subdued and dispossessed the Babylonians). Josiah went against him] Josiah's motives can only be conjectured, but it is probable that in the downfall of Assyi'ia's power he hoped to extend his authority over what had once been the northern kingdom, and feared that his designs would be foiled by the Egyptian advance. At Megiddo] see on 927. Josiah took up his position here to dispute the passage across Carmel. The Greek his- torian Herodotus probably alludes to this battle when he states that Nechoh defeated the Syi'ians at Magdolus. When he had seen him] i.e. when he encountered him in battle : cp. 14^. For the sorrow occasioned by Josiah's death see 2 Ch3525 Ecclus492,3. 30. Jehoahaz] also called Shallum(Jer22ii lCh3i-^). He was the younger brother of Jehoiakim who succeeded him (v. 36). 33. Riblah] on the Orontes, between Da- mascus and Hamath. Nechoh, after his suc- cess at Megiddo, had marched northward to meet the Babylonians, who eventually defeated him at Carchemish (Jer462). 34. Made Eliakim . . king] Jehoahaz had been chosen by the people without the sanction of Nechoh, who therefore asserted his author- ity by deposing him, and substituting his brother. In the room of Josiah] Nechoh did not recognise Jehoahaz. Turned his name to Jehoiakim] The bestowal of a new name by Nechoh upon Eliakim indicated that the latter was a subject or vassal prince of the Egyptian king. For a similar change cp. 24 1", and see Gn41-i5 Danl" (where, however, the new names are foreign, not, as here, Hebrew). CHAPTER 24 Jehoiachin and Nebuchadnezzar This c. recounts the reigns of Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin, the invasion of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (who carried into captivity Jehoiachin and numbers of the people), and the reign of Zedekiah. 1. Nebuchadnezzar] called more accurately in Jer 25 ^ and elsewhere ' Nebuchadrezzar.' He was the son of the Nabopolassar who conquered Nineveh (see on 2329), and, as his father's general, defeated the Egyptians in 605 at Carchemish on the Euphrates (Jer 46 2). This success left the countries lying between the two great powers of Babylon and Egypt at the mercy of the former (24") ; and conse- quently when Nebuchadnezzar succeeded his father, Jehoiakim (as here related) submitted to him. Some inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar have been discovered in various parts of Palestine, but such as are decipherable relate not to his campaigns but to his buildings. Became his servant three years] It is rather difficult to harmonise the statements respecting Jehoiakim's reign contained in this c. with 2 Ch 36 5-8 and in Dan 1 2. In 2 Ch 36 6 Jehoia- kim is said to have been bound in fetters by Nebuchadnezzar in order to be carried to Babylon, and in Daniel his capture is described as having taken place in his third year. He was, however, in his own capital in the 'fourth' year of his reign (Jer 36 1) ; so that if these passages are to be reconciled with Kings it must be assumed that he was restored to his throne by the Babylonian king, and that the events here related took place after his restoration. 2. The Chaldees] here used to designate the Babylonians. Syrians . . Moabites . . Ammon] For these as enemies of Judah at this period see Jer 35 11 4827 Ezk25i*. His servants the prophets] The most pro- minent of the prophets who denounced judg- ment against the offending nation at this time was Jeremiah : see especially Jer 25, 26, 35, 36, 45. Unlike his predecessor Isaiah, the prophet declared that Jerusalem would be totally destroyed if its inhabitants did not repent ; and for this he was adjudged worthy of death, though his life was preserved by the inter- ference of certain elders. Another prophet named Urijah, who also prophesied against the city, fled to Egypt to escape destruction, but he was surrendered to Jehoiakim by the Egj'ptian king and put to death : see Jer 26. 5. The rest of the acts] The circumstances of Jehoiakim's death are uncertain. The pre- dictions of Jeremiah (22 1^- 1^ 36 ^o) suggest that he died a violent death and that his corpse was left unburied, and Josephus states that Nebu- chadnezzar, to whom Jehoiakim had capitulated, broke his pledges and slew him. But v. 6 is rather opposed to this. 7. The river of Egypt] see on IKS^s. 8. Jehoiachin] also called Coniah and Je- coniah(Jer2224 24 1). 246 24. 11 2 KINGS 25. 21 11. And. .besiege it] RV 'while his ser- vants were besieging it,' implying that the city- was invested before Nebuchadnezzar, who was engaged in besieging Tyre, appeared in person to conduct the war. 12. His mother] i.e. the queen-mother : see on 1 K 2 1'-*. In the eighth year] i.e. of Nebu- chadnezzar's reign. In Jer522'^ mention is made of a capture of 3,023 persons in Nebu- chadnezzar's seventh year, of which there is no record in Kings, while Jeremiah makes no allusion to the deportation of prisoners here related. 14. The poorest sort] They were as worth- less in character as obscure in station : see Jer24i-8. Among the better class who were carried away on this occasion was the prophet Ezekiel. 16. Seven thousand . . a thousand] If thepe numbers are included in the 10,000 of v. 14, it must be assumed that the princes and their numerous retainers constituted the remaining 2,000. 17. Mattaniah] as Mattaniah was brother of Jehoiakim, he must have been uncle of Jehoiachin ; so that 2 Ch 36 ^^^ in describing him as brother of the latter uses the term vaguely. In 1 Ch 3 ^'5 he is called son of Jeconiah, in the sense of successor. Changed his name] see on 2334. 18. Hamutal] Zedekiah was only half- brother of Jehoiakim but full brother of Jehoahaz (see 23 ^i), and as Jehoahaz was imprisoned by the king of Egypt, Nebuchad- nezzar may have calculated that in his brother he would find a loyal vassal who would support Babylonian rather than Egyptian interests. 19. He did that tohich wan evil] cp. Jer37 2. Zedekiah seems to have been weak but not unmerciful, and he was unable to cope with the princes who were liis advisers : cp. JerSS^.s. When the latter put Jeremiah in prison on a charge of deserting to the enemy, Zedekiah delivered him (Jer39^i"2i) ; and on a second occasion, when he was flung into a foul dun- geon, he was once more rescued with the king's consent (JerSS'^f-). 20. Rebelled] Zedekiah was bound by oath to Nebuchadnezzar (2Ch36i3 Ezkl7i3), but overtures from Edom, Moab, Tyre, and other countries drew him from his allegiance, in spite of the opposition of the prophet Jeremiah (Jer27), and as hopes were enter- tained of Egyptian help rebellion was finally resolved on. CHAPTER 25 The Fall of Jerusalem This c. relates the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, the capture of king Zedekiah, and the deportation of most of the Jewish people. I. In the tenth day'] The successive stages in the overthrow of- the city are carefully marked by the historian : cp. vv. 3, 8. Forts] perhaps movable towers for throwing troops upon the walls. 3. The famine] the .sufferings of the be- sieged are described in Jer 2 1 ''■9 Lam 4 § f • 510*. 4. The city was broken up] RV ' a breach was made in the city.' Before this happened an Egyptian force had advanced to the relief of Jerusalem, and the Babylonians in conse- quence retired (JerST^-H), but the relief was only temporary (as Jeremiah had predicted) and the siege was resumed. The king's garden] S. of the city near the pool of Siloam (Neh3i5). The plain] RV 'the Arabah ' : i.e. the valley of the Jordan. The design of the fugitives was to cross the river by the fords of Jericho. 7. Put out the eyes] Zedekiah was taken to Babylon, but he did not see it, just as Ezekiel had predicted (1213). An Assyrian king is represented on one of his monuments as blind- ing a captive with the point of his own spear. II. The rest of the people] i.e. those that remained in the country after the deportation related in 24 i-i, 15. Qf the multitude] better, ' of the artificers.' In addition to this depor- tation in Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year Jeremiah (52 29) mentions one that occurred in his 18th year and another in his 23rd year, though the first of these may be identical with the one here described. 13. The pillars of brass, etc.] see IKT^^f. Jer 52 1 "-^3^ where some of the details are given differently. 15. In gold . . in silver] better, ' as so much gold . . as so much silver.' 18. The second priest] i.e. the high priest's deputy. For Zephaniah cp. Jer 29 25,29 Keepers of the door] i.e. of the entrance of the Temple. 19. That . . presence] i.e. those of the king's ministers who enjoyed freedom of access to him. The principal scribe, etc.] RM 'the scribe of the captain of the host ' : i.e. the official who superintended the conscription. Nebuchadnezzar, instead of consigning the citizens to indiscriminate massacre, selected for punishment only the most responsible personages. 21. So Judah was carried away] The de- struction of Jerusalem and the final deportation of its chief inhabitants took place in 586 B.C. The kingdom of Judah, like the kingdom of the ten tribes, now came to an end, as Jere- miah (20**) had predicted ; and its historian here brings his record to a close, only pausing to describe the arrangements made for the government of the desolated country and the ti-eatment received from Nebuchadnezzar's successor by the captive Jehoiachin. The mention of the latter fact is probably due to the writer's desire to show that the divine 247 25. n 2 KINGS— 1 AND 2 CHRONICLES INTRO. mercy attended the house of David even in the time of its deepest humiliation. 22. The son of Ahikam] Ahikam had be- friended Jeremiah when the people sought to put him to death (Jer262'i). 23. And when all the captains, etc.] For a fuller account of the events recounted in vv. 23-26 see Jer 40 "^-43 1^, from which it appears that Ishmael was instigated by Baalis the king of Ammon, and murdered Gedaliah treacher- ously. Mizpah] perhaps Mizpah in Benjamin (IK 1522). 25. In the seventh month] subsequently observed as a fast (Zech 7 ^). 26. Came to Egypt] In doing this the people acted in defiance of the counsel of Jeremiah, whom they took with them : see Jer 42, 43. 27. Evil-merodach] son of Nebuchadnezzar, succeeding to his throne in 561 B.C. It was in the first year of his reign that he manifested to Jehoiachin the leniency here recorded. Did lift up the head] i.e. showed favour to: cp. Gn 40 13. 28. The kings that were with him] possibly other captive sovereigns. 29. Did eat bread . . before him] i.e. was a guest at the royal table. For a like privilege see2S193 1K27. THE FIRST AND SECOND BOOKS OF CHRONICLES INTRODUCTION 1. Character and Contents. Chronicles at fii-st not only formed a single book but probably constituted one continuous work with Ezra and Nehemiah. The English name is a toler- able equivalent of the Hebrew ; whilst the corresponding Greek rendering probably means 'supplement' (lit. 'things passed over,' i.e. by the preceding historical books). Its author is unknown ; but from the prominence which is given in the book to the Levitical order it has been conjectured that he was himself a Levite. Its contents comprise, (a) certain genealogies, (b) the history of David and Solomon, and (c) the history of Judah (the history of the northern kingdom being entirely omitted). Its date, in conjunction with that of Ezra and Nehemiah, may be approximately determined by the mention in 1 Ch 3 2^ of the sixth generation after Zerubbabel (who was living in 520 B.C.), which implies a date subse- quent to 340 ; and this is supported by the reference in Nehl2ii'22 to Jaddua, who was high priest in the time of Darius Codomannus (335-330) and of Alexander the Great (336- 323). It was thus probably composed not much before 300 B.C., and consequently separ- ated by a much longer period than Kings from the events it records. 2. Sources. Among the sour«es of informa- tion referred to in the course of the narrative are (a) genealogical tables (1 Ch5i'^) ; (h) the book of the kings of Judah and Israel (2 Ch 1 6 11, the same work being probably meant by the slightly different titles in 277 3318); and (c) the writings of certain prophets, Samuel, Nathan, Gad, Ahijah, Shemaiah, Iddo, Jehu, and Isaiah (lCh2929 2Ch929 12i5 1322 20^4 2622 3232). But certain of the authorities included in (c) are expressly stated to have been inserted in the historical work mentioned in (b) — see 2 Ch 20 2^ 32^2 B.V ; and it is possible that the others were also embodied in the same book, which will then be the immediate authority to which the writer is principally indebted. It will be obvious, however, from a comparison of the parallels between Chronicles and earlier books of the Bible, that large parts of the former are practically derived from Genesis, Samuel, and especially Kings, by a process of mere transcription ; so that at first sight it would seem that the canonical books of Kings consti- tute the work just alluded to. But as the latter is quoted as recording the prayer of Manasseh, which finds no place in our Kings (2 Ch 33 18), and as Chronicles also contains much matter (2 Ch 115-12 266-10 2817.18) which is likely to have come from an annalistic writing, but does not occur in Kings, it is probable that the book which is cited by name was different from, but based on, our Kings, and was the means through which the writer of Chronicles came to incorporate portions of the latter. The differences between Chroni- cles and Kings consist of omissions, additions, and minor modifications. The former, besides leaving out all the history of the Ten Tribes after the . Separation, omits most of the sins and weaknesses of David and Solomon. Its principal additions comprise details of the Temple organisation and certain incidents in 248 INTRO. 1 AND 2 CHRONICLES— 1 CHRONICLES 2. 18 the history of the kings of Judah. For some statements of Kings it substitutes others, the alterations being most noticeable in connexion with numbers, those of Chronicles being gener- ally the higher (cp. lCh215 with 2S249, 2Ch 315 with 1K715, 2Ch45 with 1K726). 3. Value. In considering the historical value of Chronicles account need only be taken of those parts in which it diflEers from Kings. In view of its greater remoteness from the events described, it cannot be considered so good an authority as the latter, and in cases of discrepancy the statements of Kings deserve the preference. In regaj'd to matters upon which it is the sole informant, earlier materials seem to have been utilised ; but in many cases the numbers given in connexion with the diiferent subjects are too large to be probable (see lCh29, 2Chl3, 14, 17, etc.), and later details appear to have been read into the description of the Temple arrangements as organised by David (ICh 23-26). On the other hand, the religious value of Chronicles is as manifest as that of Kings. In it, as in the latter, those events of the national history have been selected for treatment which most conspicuously illustrated the divine purpose and providence. The writer, even in a greater degree than his predecessor, points the moral of the events which he relates (2 Chi 2 12 2520 27*5), both the judgments and mercies of God being shown to stand in intimate connexion with human conduct. Even if there are ana- chronisms in his account of the Temple services, light is thereby thrown on the state of the organisation of religion in his own time, and the spiritual instruction conveyed is not seriously affected. The interest manifested in the details of the Temple regulations calls atten- tion to the care which the public worship of God ought at all times to claim. The music, to which such importance is attached, has its value in promoting unity of feeling amongst a number of individual worshippers, and in elevating and sustaining the religious emotions. The author of Chronicles, in dwelling at such length upon the external side of religion, was animated by the spirit of his age. But he is far from being exclusively concerned with the outward forms of worship. He devotes a great deal of space to the activities and teach- ing of the prophets ; and those who have less sympathy than he with religious ceremonial can still derive edification from his work. 1 CHKONICLES CHAPTER 1 Genealogies The writer begins his history with a series of genealogies, without introduction or head- ing, which embraces the descendants of Adam to Noah, the descendants of Noah through Japheth, Ham and Shem, the descendants of Abraham through Ishmael and the sons of Keturah, the descendants of Isaac through Esau and the rulers of Edom. These gene- alogies, which occupy the first nine chapters of this book, and occur frequently tlu'oughout the remaining chapters, relate to (a) peoples, (b) localities, (c) families. Those which refer to peoples (IChl^*) and to localities (lCh242j3,50 78) for the most part imply nearness of position, not blood relationship ; it is only those which refer to families which are genealogies in the strict sense. Such became extremely important after the exile when descent from Aaron was rigorously required as a condition for the priesthood (Ezr26i.62 Neh7<53,64)^ and when efforts were made to secure the purity of the Jewish race as a whole against contamination by prohibit- ing intermarriage with foreigners (Ezr 9, 10 Nehl323*.). In certain places there are gaps in the lines of descent, some names having fallen out (e.g. 2*7 322 48,9, etc.), whilst others have undergone textual corruption. if. The names that are enumerated are taken, with a few unimportant variations, from various chs. of the book of Genesis : see Gn5, 10, 11, 16, 21, 25, 36. 5. The sons of Japheth] Where several children of one father are mentioned, the descendants of the son through whom the main line of descent is transmitted are re- served until the collateral branches have been described and dismissed : cp. vv. 29, 32, 3,5. 38. The sons of Seir] These were aboriginal Horite families (Gn3620) who dwelt in Seir (Edom) before the descendants of Esau. 51. And the dukes of Edom were] better, ' and there arose dukes of Edom, to Mat, duke Timnah,' etc. The writer implies that after Hadad's death, kings were replaced by dukes. CHAPTER 2 Genealogies (continued) The genealogies in this c. comprise the descendants of Isaac through Israel (Jacob), and the descendants of Judah. 3. The sons of Judah] Some of the names that follow are given differently in the other books where they occur. 9. Chelubai] the Caleb of vv. 18, 42. 15. David the seventh] In IS 17 12 it is implied that Jesse had eight sons. 18. And of Jerioth] The passage is probably corrupt, and Jerioth may be the name of 249 2.21 1 CHRONICLES 4. 31 Azubah's father. 2i. The father of Gilead] i.e. the occupier and lord of Gilead: see Nu3240. The term 'father' is used in the same sense in vv. 24, 42, 45, 50, 51, etc. 22. Jair] apparently the Jair of Jg 103.4. 23. And he took, etc.] EV 'and Geshur and Aram took the towns of Jair from them.' Geshur was a small Aramean (Syrian) state on the border of the Manassite settlements E. of the Jordan (DtSi^), and the passage implies that the Geshurites and other Aramean peoples eventually deprived the tribe of Manasseh (from whom Machir was descended) of the cities here mentioned. 24. In Caleb-ephratah] The LXX suggests that the true reading is ' Caleb went in unto Ephrath, the wife of his father Hezron ' (see V. 19), ' who bare him Ashm-,' etc. The union here implied was not in early times held to be incestuous, for an heir inherited his father's wives like the rest of his property : cp. 2S1621. 25. The sons of Jerahmeel] For the Jerah- meelites in Israelite history see IS 27 10 3029. 35. To Jarha his servant] with the purpose of making him his heir. For the inheritance by a servant of his master's property cp. Eliezer and Abraham : Gnl52 EV. 49. She bare also Shaaph] better, with the LXX, ' Shaaph ' (v. 47) ' begat the father of Mad- mannah.' 50. These were . . Caleb] This sentence refers to the preceding vv. 42-49, and should be followed by a full stop. The son of Hur, etc.] This should be ' the sons of Hur the first- born of Ephratah ' (v. 19) ' were: Shobal,' etc. 55. Kenites] for the Kenites in Israelite history see Jg 1 16 411 1 S 15^ 27 10. Rechab] Allusions to the descendants of Eechab occur in 2K1015 Jer352. CHAPTEE 3 Genealogies (continued) The genealogies here include the sons of David, his successors on the throne of Judah, and the descendants of Jeconiah (Jehoiachin). I. The sons of David] Some of the names that follow are given differently in the cor- responding sections in 2 83^-5 513-I6 ; cp also 14 3-'!'. 5. Nathan] According to St. Luke's genealogy he was ancestor of our Lord, S^i. Bath-shua] i.e. Bathsheba. 15. Johanan] This son of Josiah was never king and pre- sumably died before his father. Shallum] probably the Jehoahaz of 2 K 23^0, since he was younger than his brother and successor, Jehoiakim : cp. also Jer22ii. 16. Jeconiah] called also Jehoiachin (2K24^') and Coniah (Jer2224). Zedekiah his son] The Zedekiah of this verse is probably identical with the Zedekiah of v. 15, and con- sequently was brother (not son) of Jehoiakim (2 K 24 1"), and uncle of Jehoiachin (Jeconiah) whom he succeeded. 17. Jeconiah; Assir] EV 'Jeconiah tke captive.' Salathiel] the Shealtiel of EzrS^. He is called son of Jeconiah because he was his heir, but he belonged to the line of Nathan, a younger son of David. 18. Shenazar] possibly the Sheshbazzar of Ezr 1 8 : see note there. 19. Zerubbabel] here represented as son of Pedaiah and nephew of Salathiel (Shealtiel); but in Ezr 3 2 styled 'son of Shealtiel ' : see note there. 21. Pelatiah, etc.] It seems most likely that this and the five names that follow all repre- sent sons of Hananiah, constituting a single generation, in which case the generations reckoned after Zerubbabel amount to six. Zerubbabel lived about 520 B.C., and if 30 years be reckoned as a generation, the sixth generation would bring the last down to about 340 (the time of Alexander the Great). CHAPTEE 4 Genealogies (continued) This c. enumerates further descendants of Judah, and the descendants of Simeon. I. Sons] rather, 'descendants.' Carmi] pro- bably an accidental substitution (from 5^) for Chelubai or Caleb : see 29>i8. 2. Reaiah] the Haroeh of 2^2^ whence the posterity of Shobal is continued. 9. And his mother . . sorrow] better, ' though his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow ' (Heb. ozeb). The sorrow implied by his ominous name was averted by his prayer. 17, 18. And she bare] It has been con- jectured that the last clause of v. 18 (And these ai'e . . Mered took) should be inserted before these words, Bithiah and Jehudijah (or ' the Jewess ') being the two wives of Mered. The daughter of Pharaoh] If Pharaoh here means the king of Egypt, Mered must have been a person of distinction. The name Bithiah (lit. ' daughter of Jehovah ') suggests that his Egyptian wife at her mar- riage adopted the religion of her husband. 19. Hin wife Hodiah] EV ' the wife of Hodiah.' 22. Who had the dominion in Moab] better, ' who married in Moab ' (like Mahlon and Chilion, Euth 1 ^■*). And Jashubi-lehem] The Vulgate suggests the reading, ' and returned to Beth-lehem.' 23. And those . . hedges] EV ' and the inhabitants of Netaim and Gederah.' Dwelt with the king] i.e. on the royal estate as workmen. 24. The Simeonites are mentioned here because they shared Judah's inheritance (Josh 19 9). 31. Unto the reign of David] The writer seems to be quoting from some account belonging to the time of David, in whose 250 4. 41 1 CHRONICLES 6.77 reign a census was taken of the people (2 S 24) : cp. 7-. 41. These written byname] probably those enumerated in vv. 34-37. The habita- tions] RV ' the Meunim ' (who are the Maonites of JglQi^). 43, The rest of the Amalekites] In spite of Saul's destruction of thein, as related in IS 15, a certain number survived: see 1S27S 301 2881^. Unto this day] The phrase, like the parallel expressions in Kings, refers to the date of the source which the wi'iter is incorporating in his own work. CHAPTER 5 Genealogies (continued) This c. gives lists of the descendants of Reuben, the families of Gad, and the families of the eastern division of Manasseh. 1. His birthright] This was a portion of the inheritance, twice as great as that given to each of the other sons. The two childi-en of Joseph together received the share which, in right of birth, should have been Reuben's, each being placed on a level with their uncles, the sons of Jacob : cp. Gn485. And the genealogy] Joseph, though receiving Reuben's birthright, is not given precedence of him in the table of descent ; and so Reuben's sons are enumerated before Joseph's. 2. For Judah prevailed, etc.] This v. explains why Judah's descendants were described before those of his elder brother Reuben : he was the ancestor of the royal line. 6. Tilgath-pilneser] i.e. Tiglath-pileser, whose invasion is described in 2K162^. 7. Were the chief, Jeiel, etc.] better, ' were, Jeiel the chief,' etc. : cp. the expression in V. 12. 8. Aroer, etc.] All the places named in this V. were E. of the Dead Sea. 9. The Reubenites touched the Syrian desert between the Euphrates and Palestine. ID. Hagarites] Arabian tribes who traced their descent to Hagar through Ishmael : cp. V. 19 with 131. The east Ia)i,/ of Gilead] RV ' The land east of Gilead,' i.e. in the Syrian desert. 16. In Gilead in Bashan] perhaps, better, ' in Gilead, in Jabesh ' (1 S 1 1 1). Bashan was given to Manasseh (Josh 13^0). Suburbs] better, ' pasture lands,' and so elsewhere. 17. Jeroboam] i.e. Jeroboam II, whose reign was contemporaneous with at least part of Jotham's reign. 22. The captivity] i.e. the deportation of the eastern tribes by Tiglath-pileser : cp. vv. 6, 26. 26. Pul . . and . . Tilgath-pilneser] The two names denote the same person, Pul being the proper name of a usurper who in 745 took possession of the Assyrian crown and assumed the title of Tiglath-pileser III (after an earlier sovereign). Halah, etc.] In2K1529 176 these are the places to which the Israelites on the W. of Jordan were deported by Sargon in 722. Habor was the river Chaboras, Halah a city and Gozan a district near it, whilst Hara, if not a corruption, may represent Haran (Gn 1 1 31) on the Euphrates. The river Gozan] RV ' the river of Gozan.' CHAPTER 6 Genealogies (continued) This c. records the descendants of Levi, traces the line of the high priests to the captivity, and enumerates the cities of the Priests and Levites. 3. Nadab, and Abihu] see LvlOL^ 1 Ch242. Ithamar] The descendants of Ithamar are not given here, but several occur in Samuel and Kings (Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, Ahimelech, Abiathar), and ' courses ' of priests who traced their origin to him are enumerated in 1 Ch24. 4. Eleazar begat, etc.] The section vv. 4-15 is a list of high priests from the death of Aaron to the captivity, but is incomplete, for between Ahitub and Zadok in v. 12 another name is inserted in 9 n, and several names are omitted which occur in the history of the monarchy, viz. Jehoiada (2 K 1 1 1^), Urijah (2 K 1 G 1''), and the Azariahs who were con- temporary with Uzziah and Hezekiah (2Ch26i7 3110). In w. 9 and 10 there is some confusion, for the chronology makes it probable that the Azariah of v. 9 (and not of V. 10) was the high priest in Solomon's reign. 22. Amminadab] the Izhar of v. 38 : Nu 16 1. 27. Elkanah his son] ought to be followed by ' Samuel his son.' 28. Samuel] Samuel's father Elkanah is here regarded as a Levite, whereas in 1 S he is an Ephraimite. Vashni] This is a corruption of the word for ' the second,' the name of the firstborn (Joel V. 33) being lost. 31-48. The genealogies of David's singers. Such names as Heman, Asaph, Ethan (or Jeduthun) are familiar to us from the Psalm titles. 39. His brother] i.e. kinsman, or per- haps fellow-craftsman, both being singers. 54. Castles . . coasts] RV ' encampments . . borders.' Their's was the lot] RV ' theirs was the ^?-.s-not ' : Josh 21 10. 61. Which vjei-e left] i.e. other descendants of Kohath, exclusive of the sons of Aaron. Out of the half tribel The names of Ephraim (v. 66) and Dan are accidentally omitted : see Josh 21 5. 65. Which are . . names] RV ' which are mentioned by name ' : vv. 57-60. 67. The cities of refuge] In strictness Shechem alone of those mentioned in this and the following vv. was a city of refuge. 69. And Aijalon] This and the following city belonged to Dan : Josh 2 123,24. yy_ xhe rcst of the children of Merari] RV ' the rest of the Levites^ the sons of Merari.' 251 7.1 1 CHRONICLES 9.35 CHAPTER 7 Genealogies (continued) This c. traces the descendants of Issachar, Benjamin (Dan), Naphtali, Manasseh, Ephraim, and Asher. 2. Of Tola] The numbers given in this v. are those of Tola's descendants by his younger sons as contrasted with his descendants through his firstborn Uzzi : vv. 3, 4. 11. By the heads of their fathers] RV ' according to the heads of their fathers' houses'' : and so elsewhere. They were divided into a number of patriarchal clans. I2. Sons of Aher] better, ' the sons of another,' the * other ' being Dan, from whom Hushim was descended : Gn46-3. 14. Whom she bare] The name of Asriel's mother is lost. The Aramitess] i.e. a Syrian woman. 15. The second] i.e. the second son of Manasseh, Machir being the first. 21. Whom the men of Gath . . slew] The occurrence alluded to probably took place after Israel was settled in Canaan, the Ephraimites having descended from the hill-country to make a raid upon the Philistines in the mari- time plain. In v. 22 Ephraim is a collective, not a personal, name. 23. Beriah . . evil] Heb. Beriah . . beraah. 27. Non . . Jehoshuah] i.e. Nun and Joshua. 28. Gaza] not the Philistine Gaza, which, though it is assigned to Judah in Josh 15 '*''^, can never have belonged to Ephraim. 40. The children of Asher] These close the historian's enumeration, the descendants of Zebulun being entirely omitted. CHAPTER 8 Genealogies (continued) This c. contains a second account of the descendants of Benjamin, and traces the ancestors and descendants of Saul. I. Now Benjamin, etc.] The names of Benjamin's descendants are repeated (with some variants) from 7"^", in order to lead up to the mention of Saul (v. 33), the predecessor of David (lO^'*), whose history forms the chief subject of this book. 3. And Abihud] perhaps to be corrected to 'father (Heb. Abi) of Ehud' : see v. 6 and Jg3i5. 6. Removed] RV 'carried them captive ' : and so in v. 7. The occasion is not known. 8. After he had, etc.] RM ' after he had sent away Hushim and Baara his wives.' 12. Ono and Lod] These towns elsewhere are mentioned only in post-exilic times (Ezr 2 33_), so that the personal or family names in these vv. probably belong to that period. Benjamites are expressly mentioned in 9^ Neh 114, as being among those who returned from the captivity. 29. The father of Gibeon] the ' Jehiel ' of 1)35. 33. Ner begat Kish] Ner and Kish were brothers (9^6), so that the text should be corrected to ' Ner begat Abner and Kish begat Saul ' : cp. 1 S 14 57. Esh-baal] the ' Ish-bosheth ' of 2 S 2 8. The title ' Baal,' meaning ' lord ' or ' possessor,' was at first used of Jehovah as well as of other deities (see Hos 2 1^) and entered into several Hebrew names (' Eshbaal,' 'Merib-baal,' 'Beeliada'). But in consequence of the evil associations that gathered round it, it afterwards came to be disused in connexion with the Lord, and in the personal appella- tions of which it formed part the word bosheth (' shame ') was often substituted to indicate abhorrence ('Ish-bosheth,' ' Mephibosheth '). 34. Merib-baal] i.e. Mephibosheth : see on V. 33. 40. Archers] for the skill of Ben- jamites with the bow see 2Chl48. CHAPTER 9 Genealogies (concluded) This c. furnishes a record of the families and numbers of those who dwelt at Jerusalem after the captivity, and relates the ancestry and posterity of Saul. 1. In the book, etc.] RV 'in the book of the kings of Israel : and Judah was carried away . . to Babylon.' 2. Now the first inhabitants, etc.] This section (vv. 2-34) relates to the reoccupation of Jerusalem after the return from the exile, and appears to be a defective duplicate of Neh 113 with some variations in the names. The Israelites] i.e. the lay population as contrasted with the ecclesiastical orders. Nethinims] These were persons selected from the people, in the ratio of one for every fifty, and given to the Levites as their servants in the times of Moses and David (Nu3147 Ezr 8 20). From the mention of Mehunims among them (Ezr2^0)^ -^i^q -^^ere doubtless descendants of the people of that name who were conquered by Uzziah (2Ch267), it has been inferred that they included foreigners who were either prisoners of war, or who surrendered as the Gibeonites did : Josh 9 27. 5. Shilonites] better, ' Shelanites,' the de- scendants of Judah's son Shelah : Nu2620. II. The ruler of the house of God] applied in 2Ch31io. 13 to the high priest, but in 358 to others besides. 18. The king's gate] In pre-exilic times this communicated between the Temple and the royal palace (2 K 1(5 1^). The companies] RV ' the camp ' : the phrase is transferred from the time of the wanderings, certain positions in the Temple corresponding to similar positions in the camp of the wilderness. 33. These are the singers] a list of names has fallen out. Free] i.e. were exempt from other duties. 35. And in Gibeon, etc.] This account of Saul's ancestry and descendants is 252 10. 6 1 CHRONICLES 13. 5 repeated from 8 ^^-^^ as an introduction to the narrative of his death given in c. 10. CHAPTER 10 Saul's Overthrow and Death This c. is abbreviated from ISSl^-^^, but supplements it by statements that Saul's head was fastened in the temple of Dagon, and by a brief explanation of the causes of his overthrow. 6. All his house] This cannot mean ' all his family,' since Ish-bosheth and others of his children survived him (2 S 2 ^ 2 1 S), but must refer to those of his household who attended him at Gilboa. 13. His transgres- sion] The writer refers to what is related in 1 S 13 13, 14 151-9 28 7. 14. Enquired not of the Lord] Saul at first enquired of the Lord (2 S 28 •^), but on receiving no answer had re- course to the witch of Endor instead of being importunate in his supplications. CHAPTER 11 David's Coronation at Hebron and HIS Capture of Zion The writer, though mentioning David's crowning at Hebron, omits all description of his 7 years' reign there, and in this c. unites with some variations and additions two sections of 2S, viz. 51-10 and 238-39. 6. So Joab, etc.] This is an addition to the account in 2S5^. 10. Strengthened themselves] better, 'ex- erted themselves.' 11. The chief of the captains] another reading is ' chief of the thirty' : cp. v. 15. Three hundred] 2S238 has ' eight hundi-ed,' which is preferable as representing Jashobeam's prowess as greater than Abishai's: v. 20. 12. The three mighties] The third, not here mentioned, was Shammah (2 S 23 11), to whom w. 13 (last-half) 'And H refer (where ' they,' ' themselves,' ' them ' should be ' he,' ' himself,' ' him '). 18. The host of the Philistines] i.e. the outpost at Bethlehem (v. 1(3), not the camp in I the valley of Rephaim, which was N. of Bethlehem. 20. Chief of the three] It is difficult to make out the relations between this three, the ' three ' of v. 12, and the ' thirty ' of vv. 15 and 25 ; and there is probably some corruption. 25. Honourable among] RV ' more honourable than.' 47. Mesobaite] This should perhaps be corrected into ' from Zobah.' It is noteworthy that this list of David's ' valiant men ' contains several non-Israelites : w. 39, 41, 46. CHAPTER 12 "Various Statistics This c. is entirely supplementary to what is related in 2 S, and gives particulars respecting certain companies that joined David at various times, and the numbers that came to crown David at Hebron. 2. The right hand and the left] For this faculty in connexion with Benjamin cp. Jg3i* 201^' I''. Saul's brethren] i.e. fellow-tribesmen : cp. V. 29. 4. Among the thirty] not included in the lists of 2 S 23 2-1 f- lChll26f., and pre- sumably belonging to the thirty at a different period. 8. Buckler] RV ' spear.' 14. Was over] RV 'was equal to': cp. Lv268. 15. The first month] Nisan (:= March- April), when the river was in flood after the melting of the snow. Put to flight, etc.] Their en- deavom"s to join David were opposed on both sides of the river, but unsuccessfully. 17. If ye . . come peaceably] The advances of a second body of deserters made David suspicious of treachery. 18. The spirit came upon, etc.] Amasai's decision to throw in his lot with David was due, like every other wise resolve, to the inspiration of the Divine Spirit. 19. They] i.e. David and his men : see on 1 S 28 1' 2 29. Upon advisement] i.e. upon reflec- tion : cp. 21 12. 21. The band] i.e. the Amalek- ites who attacked and burned Ziklag during David's absence with the Philistines (1 S30). 29. Kept the ward, etc.] i.e. maintained their allegiance to Saul (2S2), a fact which accounted for so small a number assembling at Hebron. 32. Had understanding, etc.] pos- sessed practical statesmanship : cp. Esth 1 13. All their brethren] The rank and file were obedient to their chiefs. The full numbers of Issachar are not given. 39. Eating and drinking] A covenant was usually accompanied by a feast (see Gn 31 4*' *^), and the passage doubtless has in view a com- pact made between the new sovereign and his people : cp. 1 K 1 9. 40. They that were nigh] i.e. relations. _. The total numbers of those who assembled to crown David at Hebron, as enumerated in vv. 23-40, amount to 340,822, a military force (v. 23) which contrasts remarkably with the 30,000 (described as ' all the chosen men of Israel') of 2S6i. It is noteworthy, too, that 128,600 come from the three northern and most distant tribes, Zebulun, Naphtali, and Asher ; 120,000 fi*om the eastern tribes, Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh ; and only 6,800 from Judah. Some corruption of the numbers may be suspected. CHAPTER 13 The Removal of the Ark from Kirjath-jearim This c. merely expands 2S6i-ii, with some unimportant differences. 3. We enquired not at it] perhaps, better, ' we did not seek it,' i.e. to convey it to a place of honour : cp. 1513. 5, Shihor of Egypt] usually employed to 253 13. 6 1 CHRONICLES 18. 1 designate the Nile (Isa233 Jer2i8), but here applied to the 'brook of Egypt' (Josh 15 4), the modern El Arish, a small stream on the borders of Egypt flowing into the Mediter- ranean. The entering of Hemath] i.e. the de- file between Lebanon and Hermon, forming the approach to Hamath from the S. 6. Whose name is called o)i it~\ better, ' who is called by the Name,' this serving as a sub- stitute for a more explicit mention of the divine name which is disguised in Jehovah. 11. Made a breach] RV ' had broken forth.' Perez-uzza] i.e. the Breach of Uzza. CHAPTER 14 Hiram and David. David's Children This c. reproduces 2 S 5 ^^"2^ with some varia- tions in the names of David's children, and the additional fact that David burnt the idols of the Philistines. 7. Beeliada] This name contains the title ' Baal,' which, as has been already implied (see on 8^3), had at first an innocent sense. "When, later, it contracted evil associations, the names in which it occurred underwent alterations, and for Beeliada was substituted the form 'Eliada': 2S5i''. 12. Left their gods] These had doubtless been carried into battle in the belief that they would bring success to the Philistine forces just as the Israelites carried the ark with them to the battle of Ebenezer : 1 S43. 16. Gibeon] in 2S525 'Geba,' both places being close together. CHAPTER 15 The transport of the Ark to Jerusalem This c. is parallel to 2 S 6 12-23^ but contains much new matter respecting the Levites who bare the ark, and the singers. I. Pitched for it a tent] According to IG^y the Mosaic tabernacle still existed, but the ark, since its capture by the Philistines, had not rested in it, and a new tent was now sub- stituted to contain it. 4. The children of Aaron] i.e. the priests. 13. After the due order] It is implied that the conveyance of the ark in the manner described in chapter 13 was irregular. 16. To be the singers] Singing had accom- panied the ark on the first occasion (13 s), but the musical arrangements were now committed exclusively to the Levites who subsequently had charge of the music of the Temple services : 235 2Ch5i2 76. 18. Ben] The word means ' son of,' and the name of Zechariah's father has probably been lost. The word does not occur in the corre- sponding lists in v. 20, 16 5. The porters] This applies only to Obed-edom and Jeiel. 20, 21. Alamoth . . Sheminith to excel] see Pss4G and 12 for meaning of these musical terms. 22. Was for song] RM ' the carrying,' i.e. of the ark. 24. Trumpets] made of metal and straight in shape, whereas the ' cornets ' of v. 28 were of rams' horns and curved in shape. Jehiah] The Jeiel of v. 18. 26. When God helped] The fact that the ark was now moved without disaster indicated that God's favour was attending those who carried it. 27. The master of the song] better, ' the chief for carrying ' (the ark) : cp. v. 22. The addition with the singers is probably an interpolation. CHAPTER 16 The Celebration op the Event Only the first three vv. and the last v. of this c. are derived from 2S6i''"20, the rest, describing the musical arrangements, being new. 7. Delivered first, etc.] RV ' did . . first ordain to give thanks unto the Lord, by the hand of ' : i.e. the appointment of Asaph and his brethren to have charge of the singing dated from the day when the ark was brought to Jerusalem. The psalm that follows consists of Pss 105 1-15 961-13 1061.47,48. The last section (v. 35) seems to reflect the conditions of the exile. 22. Mine anointed] i.e. my chosen, the allusion being to the patriarchs: see Gnl2i7 203-7. 29. The beauty of holiness] RM 'in holy array ': i.e. in sacred vestments. 35. And say ye] a liturgical direction which does not occur in Ps 106^7. 38. With their brethren] probably the name of ' Hosah ' has been lost after Obed-edom. Also] better, ' even Obed-edom.' 39. The high place . . Gibeon] This has been mentioned previously in IKS*, but the presence there of the Tabernacle is here referred to for the first 40. The altar] This was the altar at Gibeon ; there was another before the ark at Jerusalem. 41. Jeduthun] perhaps the same as the ' Ethan ' of 1 5 1''. Asaph seems to have attended upon the ark at Jerusalem (v. 37), whilst Heman and Jeduthun served at Gibeon. CHAPTER 17 David's desire to build the Temple disallowed This c. is almost identical with. 2 S 7 1-29. 17. Hast regarded me . . degree] i.e. hast treated me with gi'eat distinction. CHAPTER 18 David's Wars and Officers of State This c. is closely parallel to 2S81-18, but with some variations in names and numbers. I. Gath] probably meant to explain the difficult phrase ' Metheg-ammah ' which occurs in 2 S 8 1. Gath was independent in the time 254 18. 3 1 CHRONICLES 22. of Solomon: 1K239. 3. Hadarezer] 2S83 has ' Hadadezer,' which is more correct, ' Hadad ' being the name of a Syrian god and ' Hadadezer ' being a formation parallel to ' Eliezer.' 4. An hundred chariots] RV 'for an hundi-ed chariots.' 8. The pillars] i.e. the two columns in front of the porch of the Temple. 12. Abishai] In Ps 60 (title) this success is attributed to Joab, and the number of the slain is stated at 12,000. 16. Abimelech the son of Abiathar] This should be ' Abiathar the son of Abimelech ' : see on 1 S2220 2S1529 2025. 17. Chief about the king] 2S818 AV has ' Chief rulers,' but the RY has ' Priests.' For the latter word the Chronicler substitutes a different expression, because the sons of David belonged not to the priestly tribe of Levi but to Judah. CHAPTER 19 David's Wars with the Ammonites and THE Syrians This c. is parallel to 2S101-19 with some differences in certain names, and a few additions. 7. Thirty and two thousand chariots] The reading is probably corrupt : in 2S10*^ it is ' thirty two thousand footmen,' with a thousand more from Maachah (whose forces are not here numbered), no mention being made of chariots. 18. Seven thousand . . chariots . . forty thou- sand footmen] 2 810^^ has 'seven hundred chariots and forty thousand horsemen.' CHAPTER 20 The Siege of Rabbah. The Slaughter OF three Philistine Giants This c. corresponds, with some unimportant differences, to several distinct sections in 2 S, viz. Ill 1226-31 2IIS-22. 2. David took, etc.] This implies David's presence at Rabbah, and as it stands here is inconsistent with the previous verse. In 2 S 12 the discrepancy is explained by a passage which Chronicles omits, relating that Joab sum- moned David to Rabbah and that the king went thither. 5. Elhanan the son of Jair, etc.] Both this passage and the parallel in 2 S 21 ^^ have under- gone corruption, and the true text probably had ' Elhanan the son of Jair, a Bethlehemite, slew Goliath the Gittite.' As Goliath is said in 2S17 to have been killed by David, there seems to have been variant accounts of his death, unless there were two giants of the same name. CHAPTER 21 David's numbering of the People and his Punishment This c. is parallel to 2 S 24, but includes a few additions : see vv. 6, 26. I. Satan] In 2S241 the Lord is said to have been angry with Israel, and to have moved David to number the people ; for the Hebrews in early times did not hesitate to de- scribe God as prompting to evil as well as to good, men being punished for one sin by being led to commit another. But in later ages the idea that God tempted men to wrong was felt to conflict with His absolute holiness ; and this created the belief that temptation was the work of a spirit of malevolent character, who, though subordinate to, and attendant upon, God, was yet an adversary (lit. the ' Satan ') of men, and sought to bring about their ruin (see on IK 22 21, 22 Jobl^f. ZechSi). In Job and Zechariah the name is still only a title ; but in Chronicles it has become a proper name (being used without the article). 5. A thousand thousand, etc.] 2 S 24 9 repre- sents Israel as 800,000 and Judah 500,000. According to 2724 the numbers were not en- tered in the official records, and they have probably undergone corruption in the course of transmission. 6. But Levi, etc.] This is not mentioned in 2S. If the numbering of the people was due to a presumptuous reliance upon material resources, or some specific command connected with the taking of a census (e.g. ExSO^i-i^) had been neglected, the non-inclusion of two tribes by Joab was perhaps a device to prevent the full completion of the king's purpose, in the hope of averting the evil consequences that were feared. 12. Three years' famine] This harmonises better than the ' seven years ' of 2 S 24 13 with the three months and thi-ee days. 15. Oman] in 2 S 24 le 'Araunah ' or ' Ornah.' 18. The angel . . Gad] For divine communications made to prophets through angels cp. IK 1318 195,7 Zech 1 11, etc. 23. Meat offering] RV ' Meal offering ' : and so elsev/here. 25. Six hundred shekels of gold] in 2 S 24 24 'fifty shekels of silver.' 26. Answered . . by fire] Other instances of sacrifices consumed by fire from heaven occur in Lv924 IK 1838 2Ch7i. This fact is not recorded by the writer of Samuel, but is spe- cially mentioned by the Chronicler because the acceptance of the sacrifice was taken by David to indicate where he was to build his in- tended Temple, the preparations for which are described in the next chapter. 30. He was afraid] In his alarm David was loath to leave the spot where God's favour had just been renewed to him. CHAPTER 22 David's Preparations for the building OF the Temple This c. is supplementary to the narrative in the earlier books, its contents coming chrono- logically between 2S24 and IKL 265 22. 1 1 CHRONICLES 25. 11 I. This is the house] This v. connects with 2128 (2129,30 being parenthetical). 2. The strangers] i.e. the non-Israelite population, who were employed in forced labour upon his building projects : 2Ch2i''. 9. Solomon . . peace] Heb. Shelomoh . . Sha- lom. Peace was the ideal condition appropriate for the building of God's Temple as well as for the advent of Him who was greater than the Temple : Lk2i-i. 14. In my trouble] Some render ' in spite of my trouble,' i.e. in spite of wars and other distractions. David, like other loyal servants of God, was content to pave the way for the accomplishment of a result which he himself would never witness. An hundred thousand, etc.]. The weight of gold and silver is so enormous, amounting in intrinsic value to £1,025,000,000 sterling, that great exaggera- tion may be suspected. The gold that was received annually by Solomon was only 666 talents: IK 10". 19. The holy vessels] e.g. the table of shew- bread, the candlesticks (or lampstands), with their lamps and snuffers, the cups, basons, and spoons, etc. CHAPTER 23 David makes Solomon King. Particulars RELATING TO THE LeVITES This and the following three chs. (supple- menting the earlier history) describe the arrangements made by David for the organisa- tion of the Temple service after Solomon had been appointed his successor. The incidents relating to this last event, which are recorded in 1 K 1, are omitted by the writer, who passes over all David's domestic troubles. 3. From the age of thirty years] This limit is given in Nu 4 3, but ' twenty-five ' is fixed in Nu82-i, possibly having in view different and lighter duties. By their polls] i.e. by heads. 9. Shimei] This was a fourth son of ' Laadan,' not the ' Shimei ' of vv. 7, 10, who was Laadan's brother. 11. Zizah] the 'Zina' of v. 10. Jeush . . Beriah] These to- gether constituted a third ' course ' belonging to the house of the elder Shimei, RV ' they became a fathers' house in one reckoning.' 14. His sons . . Levi] i.e. the sons of Moses were reckoned as Levites, not (like the sons of Aaron) as priests. 24. From the age of twenty years] David, at the end of his reign (v. 27), seems to have lowered the limit of age (see v. 3) above which the Levites entered on their duties, and his regulations were observed in subsequent times : 2Ch31i7 Ezr3s. 27. By the last words] better, ' in the Last Acts,' i.e. a history of the closing part of his reign. 29. For all . . size] i.e. for dispensing the various quantities used for the different offerings (as in Ex29*'^). 31. The set feasts] These were the festivals of the Passover, Unleavened Bread, Weeks, and Tabernacles ; for the number of victims appointed for each occasion see Nu28, 29. CHAPTER 24 The Courses of the Sons of Aaron I, Divisions . . Aaron] i.e. courses of the priests, corresponding to the course of the Levites described in 23*'. 3. Ahimelech] an error (through an accidental omission) for ' Abiathar son of Ahimelech,' and so in v. 31. 4. Chief men] i.e. heads of families or clans (the ' principal households ' of v. 6). 6. Ahimelech the son of Abiathar] to be corrected into ' Abiathar son of Ahimelech.' 19. These irere the orderings, etc.] i.e. the order in which they succeeded one another in attendance at the Temple had been determined by Aaron. 20. And the rest of the sons of Levi, etc.] The section vv. 20-30 gives the names of the representatives of the ' courses ' of Levites enumerated in 236*-, but with the omission of the 'courses' of the Gershonites : vv. 7-11. 26. Beno] This is not a proper name, but means ' his son,' Jaaziah being a third son of Merari. 29. Kish] another son of Mahli : see 2321. 31. Over against] better, 'equally with.'' CHAPTER 25 Particulars respecting the Singers I. Separated to the service] RV ' separated for the service certain of the sons,' etc. Jedu- thun] as in 16'*i, this name takes the place of ' Ethan ' in other lists : 6*4 15 17. Prophesy] see on v. 5. And the number . . was] The sentence is interrupted, and continued in V. 7. 3. Six] only five names are given, but the LXX adds a sixth, ' Shimei ' : cp. v. 17. 5. The king's seer] Music and singing were often associated with prophecy (cp. IS 10^), and conversely the Temple singers are here accounted seers : cp. ' prophesy,' v. 5. In the w^ords of God] better. ' in matters pertaining to God' : cp. 26^2. To lift up the horn] i.e. the number of Heman's sons enhanced his dignity: cp. Ps89i'''. 8. They cast lots, etc.] The wards of Asaph alternated with an equal number of wards of Jeduthun until they were exhausted ; then the rest of Jeduthun's wards alternated with an equal number of Heman's ; and finally the residue of Heman's followed in unbroken succession. II. Izri] Some of th6 names in vv. 9-31 differ slightly from those that occur in vv. 2-4, ' Izri ' being the ' Zeri ' of v. 3, ' Jesharelah' the ' Asarelah ' of v. 2, and ' Azareel ' the ' Uzziel ' of V. 4. 266 26. 1 1 CHRONICLES 28. 18 CHAPTER 26 Particitlars respecting various Temple Officials I. The divisions of the porters] i.e. the courses of the gate-keepers or sentries who stood on guard at the entrances of the Temple. They were drawn from three families, Meshele- miah (the ' Shallum ' of 9 1^), Obed-edom, and Hosah. Asaph] the ' Ebiasaph ' of 9 19. 5. For God blessed him] see 13 1^. The blessing con- sisted in the number of his children : cp. Gnl28 2460. 13. For every gate] Though the Temple was not yet built, David is regarded as having settled the plan of it : see 28 11*. 14. Shele- miah] the ' Meshelemiah ' of vv. 1, 2. 15. The house of Asuppim] E,V ' the storehouse,' and so in V. 17. 16. To Shuppim and] the name Shuppim is an accidental repetition of the previous ' Asuppim.' To each of the thi'ee families of porters were allotted the gates on one of the four sides of the house, the gates on the fourth side being assigned to the eldest son of Meshelemiah. The gate Shallecheth has not been identified. The causeway] some road leading up the Temple hill. 18. Parbar] RM 'the Precinct,' possibly a colonnade or portico. 25. His brethren] i.e. his cousins. 27. Out of the spoils] So in Joshua's time, the spoils of Jericho were put into the treasury of the Lord : Josh 6 24. 30. On this side Jordan westward] RV ' beyond Jordan westward ' : an expression which indicates that the writer did not live in Palestine. 31. Jazer of Gilead] a town in the territory of Gad : Josh 1325 2139. CHAPTER 27 Particulars respecting various Military Officers This c, as distinguished from the four preceding chapters which describe David's ecclesiastical ofiicials, relates to his secular officers. I. Which came . . out] i.e. relieved each other in turn : cp. 2Ch23S. For particulars concerning several of the officers mentioned in the following vv. see c. 11. 3. Of the children, etc.] RV ' He vms of the childi-en of Perez, the chief of,' etc. 4. Dodai] The words ' Eleazar son of ' have been lost : cp. 11 12. 5. A chief priest] R V ' of Jehoiada the priest, chief.' 16. Over the tribes] In the following list Gad and Asher are omitted, and the Aaronites are distinguished from the Levites. 1 8. Elihu] the 'Eliab' of 2i3 ISIG^. 23. From twenty years old and under] In Nu 1 ^ it is laid down that those required for military service should be above this age. 25. Over the king's treasures] The account implies that David had large private estates as well as considerable accumulations of treasure. Some of his possessions may have formed part of what the king could claim from the nation in virtue of his position (cp. 1 S 8 1'i' 15), or may have been given him freely by his subjecits.(cp. 1 S 1027), but the bulk was doubtless derived from his successful wars (see IS 30 20 2S86-S). The lands in the low plains (v. 28) were probably in part taken from the Philistines. Castles] better, 'towers' to shelter the herdmen and serve as look-outs. 27. Over the increase, etc.] better, 'over the wine-cellars which were in the vineyards.' 28. The sycomore trees] not the English tree that goes by this name, but one that bears a fig-like fruit. The low plains] RV ' Lowland ' : a name applied to the downs that extend from the central hills to the maritime plain. 32. David's uncle] better, ' David's nephew ' : see 207. 34. Jehoiada the son of Benaiah] probably to be corrected to ' Benaiah the son of Jehoiada': cp. 1817. Some of the names mentioned in this c. belonged to periods much earlier than David's closing years, for Asahel (v. 7) was killed before David became king at Jerusalem (2 S 2 14 f.), and Ahithophel killed himself in the course of Absalom's rebellion : 2 S 1723. CHAPTER 28 David's last Directions 2. The footstool of our God] i.e. the Mercy Seat: 2S62 Psl327. 5. The throne of the kingdom of the LORD] cp. Hi-i 2923. Israel's kings were the Lord's vicegerents and repre- sentatives : He was their true ruler. 7. If he be constant] The continuance of God's favour was conditional upon continued obedience, and the wi'iter, living after the exile, knew how the condition had been violated. 11. The pattern] The pattern of the Taber- nacle is similarly stated to have been com- municated to Moses by God : Ex 25 9- ^o. xhe houses] the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place : see IK 6. Treasuries . . upper cham- bers] probably the side-chambers, described in lK65f-, of which there were three storeys. Inner parlours] perhaps the lowest of the side-chambers. 12. By the spirit] i.e. by revelation. The chambers round about] perhaps detached build- ings constructed round the courts that enclosed the Temple. 15. Candlesticks] better ' lamp- stands,' and so elsewhere. Ten are mentioned in IK 749, but only one in 2 Chi 3 11. 16. The tables] Ten are alluded to again in 2Ch48, but only a single table is mentioned in 1 K748 2 Ch 13 11 29 IS. 18. The chariot of the cheru- bims] R V ' the chariot, eve?i the cherubim ' : 17 257 28. 20 1 CHRONICLES— 2 CHRONICLES 2.3 cp. Psl8io Ezkl, 10 8 ^ 2o. He will not fail thee] A similar assurance of God's constant aid was given to Jacob and Joshua : Gn28i5 Josh 16. CHAPTER 29 David's Offerings, Thanksgiving, AND Death I. The palace] The word in the original is more strictly applicable to the fortress which was attached to the Second Temple (Neh28) and afterwards called the tower of Antonia, but here and in v. 19 is employed of Solomon's Temple. 3. Of mine own proper good] RV ' a trea- sure of mine own.' 4. Three thousand, etc.] The weights here named, as in many other places in Chronicles, are incredibly large, amounting in value to £21,320,000 of oiu' money. 7. Drams] The dram (Gk. drachma) was ^ shekel ; and the value (according to the early Hebrew weights) of all the gold men- tioned in this V. would be about £30,760,000, and of the silver about £4,100,000. 10. And David said] David in his prayer recognised that it was not in his, or any man's, power to add to God's glory. The building of the Temple could only manifest his and his people's devotion and gratitude for the good- ness which had bestowed such wealth upon them. 15. None abiding] better, ' no hope of abiding.' 20. "Worshipped the .. king] cp. Ps45ii. The same kind of prostrations were made both in divine worship and in paying respect to the sovereign. 22. The second time] The ' first time ' is only described at length in 1 K 1 39, though the writer of Chronicles alludes to it in 23 1. Zadok to he priest] This seems to anticipate the promotion which Zadok received when Solomon, after David's death, deposed Abia- thar : 1 K 2 27. 30. The times that ■went over him] i.e. the fortunes that befell him. 2 CHKONTCLES CHAPTER 1 Solomon's Choice of Wisdom. His Wealth and Commerce This c, after the opening vv., repeats, with some modifications and additions, what is re- lated in 1 K 3 5-14 and 1 0 26:29. 5. The brasen altar] This identification of the altar at Gibeon with the brazen altar of the Tabernacle is an addition made to 1 K 3 *. CHAPTER 2 Solomon's Negotiations with Hiram This c. substantially reproduces 1 K5, with some differences in numbers, names, and ex- pressions. I. An house for his kingdom] The descrip- tion of this, which is given at length in IK 7, is omitted by the Chronicler. 5. Is great] i.e. in magnificence, but not in actual dimensions — the external length and breadth being only 120 x 45 ft., less than many parish churches. It was not intended to hold an assemblage of worshippers, but to be a sanctuary for the Deity, where He might re- ceive the offerings of His servants : v. 6. 10. Beaten wheat] probably a corruption of 'wheat for food' ; cp. IKS^^. 13. Of Huram my father's] RM ' even Huram my father ' : the term ' father ' being a title of honour : cp. Gn458. But the whole expression may be a proper name, ' Huram Abi '; and so in 41^. 14. A woman . . of Dan] see on 1 K 7 1"^, where she is termed a widow of Naphtali. 16. Joppa] The modern Jaffa, some 35 m. from Jerusalem. 17. The strangers] Solomon in imposing forced labour upon his subjects did not, like his father, confine it to those who were of foreign origin, but extended it to native Israelites : IK513. 18. In the mountain] probably the hill-country of Judah. CHAPTER 3 Particulars relating to the Temple This and the following c. abbreviate what is recorded in 1 K 6, 7. I. Moriah] Here the designation of the Temple hill, but in Gn22 2 of the 'land ' in which was situated the hill where Isaac was to be sacrificed. Where the Lord appeared unto] better ' which was shown unto,' i.e. by the acceptance of the king's sacrifice (1 Ch2128 221). 3. These are the thing s, etc.] RV ' these are the foundations which Solomon laid ' : the V. going on to give the gi'ound plan. After the first measure] This implies that the length of the cubit had changed between the time of Solomon and that of the writer of Chronicles. Ezekiel (40 5) speaks of a cubit measuring a cubit and a hand-breadth, which, if the smaller cubit was equal to 6 hand-breadths (about 18 in.), must have been equivalent to 7 (about 258 2.4 2 CHRONICLES 8.16 21 in.). In estimating the size of the Temple, the cubit, for the sake of convenience, has been reckoned at 18 in. ; if the cubit of 21 in. was the one really employed, the dimensions must be modified accordingly. 4. An hundred and twenty] One MS of the LXX has ' twenty.' The figures given in the text are suitable only for a tower, not a porch. 5. The greater house] i.e. the Holy Place. Cieled] The walls, as well as the roof, were lined with wood. Chains] i.e. festoons of chain work, carved in relief. 6. Parvaim] unknown. 10. Of image work] LXX has ' wrought- in wood ' : cp. 1 K 6 -3. 11. Twenty cubits] This was the length of the four wings together. 13. Inward] RV ' toward the house ' : i.e. the Holy Place. 14. The vail] This is not men- tioned in Kings. 15. Thirty and five] In 1 K 715 ' eighteen' : see also 2 K 2517 Jer522i. 16. Chains, as in the oracle] The text is probably corrupt ; the chains must be ' the wreaths of chain work ' oi IK.T^'^, which were carved on the capitals. CHAPTER 4 The Contents of the Temple I. An altar] This was in the Temple court. Though its construction is not described in Kings, it is mentioned in 1K864 2K1614. 3. Oxen] rather, ' knops ' (i.e. gourds) : see 1 K 7 24. 7. According to their form] RV ' Ac- cording to the ordinance concerning them.' In the temple] i.e. in the Holy Place. 9. The great court] The word here used differs from that employed for ' the court of the priests.' It was in the ' great court ' that the scaffold mentioned in 6 ^^ was placed : see on IK79. 10. The right side of the east end] i.e. at the SE. corner. 12. Pommels] RV ' bowls,' i.e. the globes of the capitals ; and so in V. 13. 14. He made . . made he] probably an error for 'ten., ten.' 16. Fleshhooks] probably an error for 'basons,' v. 11 : cp. 1K745. 20. After the manner] RV ' according to the ordinance.' In the Law (Ex 27 21) it was required that a light should burn always before the veil. 22. The entry] probably an error for 'the hinges,' lK7'^o. CHAPTER 5 The removal of the Ark to the Temple This c. is a repetition of IKRi-^, with ad- ditional particulars respecting the descent of the glory of the Lord. 4. The Levites . . the ark] The mention of ' the Levites ' in this connexion is more in ac- cordance with the requirements of the Law than the statement of 1 KS^ that the ' priests ' took up the ark. 9. From the ark] better (as in the LXX) ' from the Holy Place ' : cp. 1 K 8 «. Unto this day] The Chronicler, like the compiler of Kings, retains the expression of the original writer, who lived before the destruction of the Temple. II. Did not. . course] On this occasion all the priests (and not a single course only) had sanctified themselves to officiate. 12. At the east end] i.e. facing westward, towards the Temple building. CHAPTER 6 Solomon's Prayer The first 39 w. of this c. repeat lK8i2-50^ the conclusion of the prayer, as given in 85i-6i, being omitted and three additional vv. being substituted. 5. Neither chose I any man] Saul, though chosen, was subsequently rejected : 1 S15"^6. 13. For Solomon had made, etc.] This is not mentioned in IK 8. 41. Now therefore arise, etc.] The same words occur in Ps 1328. 9. ge clothed with . . goodness] i.e. enjoy victory and prosperity. 42. Turn not away, etc.] i.e. do not reject his prayer and make him turn away in dis- appointment. For anointed cp. 1S123 246. The mercies of David] i.e. the mercies pro- mised and shown to David : cp. PsSO^^. CHAPTER 7 Solomon's Sacrifices, and the Lord's Promises This c. reproduces with some additions por- tions of 1K8 62-68 and 9i-9. 1. The fire came down] This, which marked the acceptance of Solomon's sacrifice (cp. 1 Ch 2126), is not mentioned in 1 K8. 21. Shall be an astonishment] i.e. a cause of astonishment. CHAPTER 8 Solomon's Buildings. His Trade with Ophir This c. reproduces the substance of 1 K 9 10-28 but describes some additional buildings. 2. Had restored] If the reference is to the cities which Solomon gave to Hiram, it seems best to assume that they had been merely pledged as security for money which Solomon borrowed and afterwards repaid : 1 K 9 1*. 3. Hamath-zobah] Perhaps a Hamath in Zobah (a country E. of the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the modern Hauran). 4. Tadmor] the later Palmyra, a city 150 m. NE. of Damascus in the Syrian desert. 8. Them did Solomon, etc.]"RV ' of them did Solomon raise a levy '23. 12. Things ■went wrell] RV ' there were good ih.\ng% found' : cp. 19^ IK 1413. The king's repentance was accompanied by a moral refor- mation on the part of the people. 15. The book of. . Iddo] The writings of Iddo are also mentioned in 929. 1322^ CHAPTER 13 Reign of Abijah This c. expands the account given of Abijah (Abijam) in IK 151"^ by giving details of his war with Jeroboam, which is there only briefly mentioned. 2. Michaiah] In 11 21 and IK 15 2 she is called ' Maachah,' and was probably daughter of Uriel and granddaughter of Absalom. 3. Four hundred thousand, etc.] These numbers (see also v. 17) are in keeping with the large figures that appear elsewhere in Chronicles : see 148.9 1714-is. 4. Zemaraim] Possibly a hill near the place of the same name in Benjamin : Josh 18 22. 5. A covenant of salt] cp. Nul8i9. The use of salt in connexion with sacrifice (see Lv 2 13) probably arose from its association with a meal ; and ' there is salt between us ' is said to be a phrase still employed to denote the bond which secures, for any one who has par- taken of an Arab's hospitality, protection and (in case of need) assistance. 260 13.7 2 CHRONICLES 16.7 7. Children of Belial] i.e. worthless persons. Young] That Rehoboam was young when the Ten Tribes revolted is implied in 10 8, though in 1213 his age is given as 41. 8. The kingdom of the LORD] The high prerogative that once belonged to all Israel (1 Ch285 2 Ch9S) was now confined to Judah. 9. After the manner, etc.] The LXX has ' out of the people of all the land,' which agrees with the true sense of 1 K 12 31. 12. Sounding trumpets] cp. NulO^ 31*5. 19. Jeshanah . . Ephrain] The first is not known, the second is identified by some with the ' Ephraim ' mentioned in Jnll^*. 20. The mention of Jeroboam's death here is chronologically out of place, since he outlived Abijah. 22. In the story] RV ' in the commentary.' The original term (' midrash ') meant the didactic treatment of a subject or narrative ; and in the ' midrash ' of Iddo the reign of Abijah was presumably related with a view to moral instruction rather than historic accuracy. Possibly the account of Abijah's speech in vv. 4-12 has been taken from it : contrast IKI53. CHAPTER 14 Reign of Asa This c. adds to what is related of Asa in lK1.5^"2-t an account of the invasion of the Ethiopian Zerah. 3. Took away . . the high places] In 15 1'' (= IK 15 1-1) the opposite of this is stated ; if the two passages are to be reconciled, it must be supposed that Asa sought to effect a reform which was only imperfectly executed : cp. also 176 with 2033. 7. The land /.s yet before us] i.e. free from the presence of an enemy. 9. Zerah] Zerah, if an Ethiopian (Heb. Citithite) or Egyptian, is probably to be identified with Osorkon II, an Egyptian king of the 22nd dynasty, who, on a monument recently found, declares that ' the upper and lower Rutennu' (i.e. the peoples of Palestine) had been thrown under his feet. But in v. 14 the cities spoiled by Asa after the defeat of the invaders are said to be near G-erar ; so that Zerah may have been the chief of an Arabian tribe, a view with which the description of the spoil taken by Asa (v. 15) agrees. Mareshah] in the lowland of Judah (Joshl5'i^), where there are some ruins still called ' Mar'ash.' To the N. there is a Wady called ' Wady es Sufieh,' which may be Zephathah. II. // is nothing, etc.] RV 'there is none beside thee to help, between the mighty and him that hath no strength ' : i.e. to help the weak under unequal conditions. Asa's prayer ' breathes the true spirit of faith and trust in God.' 13. Gerar] G m. S. of Gaza and 25 m. from Beersheba. 14. The fear of the LORD, etc.] They were so panic-stricken that they could offer no resistance : cp. 171° 20--'. 15. The tents of cattle] i.e. the tents of nomadic tribes with large possessions of flocks and cattle. CHAPTER 15 Reign op Asa (continued) An account of how Asa, moved by the prophet Azariah, made a covenant to seek the Lord. This c. is almost entirely supplementary to what is recorded of Asa in 1 Ki-5. I. Azariah] not mentioned elsewhere. 3, For a long season] The writer seems to have principally in view the times of the Judges : see Jg2i2 3M76 2125. A teaching priest] For this function of the priesthood cp. Lv 10 11 Mai 2 7. 5. No peace . . came in] i.e. travelling was unsafe : cp. JgS'' 6^. The countries] i.e. the different divisions of Israel : see Jgl2* 20, 21. 8. The prophecy of Oded] The words ' Aza- riah son of ' have dropped out before Oded : the Vulgate has them. The cities . . taken] This seems to refer to the conquests of Abijah : 1319. 9. The strangers] Those members of the Ten Tribes who removed to Judah on account of the calf - worship : 1 1 1'^. Simeon] The territory of Simeon must have practically be- longed to Judah from the time of Jeroboam's revolt, but some Simeonites may have resided in the northern kingdom. II. The spoil] i.e. the spoil taken from the Ethiopians : 1413-15. 19. Five and thirtieth] This is inconsistent with the chronology given in 1 K, for Baasha died in the 26th year of Asa (IK 16 s) ; but see on 16 1. CHAPTER 16 Reign of Asa (concluded) This c. reproduces with some verbal differ- ences lK15i'^"2'i, but adds an account of a rebuke received by Asa from the seer Hanani. I. Six and thirtieth] Since, according to IK 16 8, Baasha did not live until the 36th year of Asa. some have supposed that the six and thirtieth year is reckoned from the revolt of the Ten Tribes. 4. The store cities of Naphtali] LXX suggests that the true reading is ' the surround- ing parts of Naphtali.' 7. Hanani] Nothing is known of him beyond what is here related, and the fact that he was the father of the prophet Jehu ( 1 9 2). Because thou hast relied] cp. the similar protests of Isaiah against reliance upon foreign support instead of upon the LoRD(Isa30l 311). The host of . . Syria] The prophet seems to imply 261 16.8 2 CHRONICLES 20. 1 that Asa might have beaten both Israel and Syria, if he had trusted in the Lord. 8. Lubims] These were not amongst the forces of Zerah (149), but those of Shishak (123). 12. Sought not to the LORD] Contrast the conduct of Hezekiah in his sickness : see 2K202. 14. A very great burning] i.e. of the spices previously mentioned : cp. Jer 34 5. The bodies of the dead were not ordinarily burnt but buried ; the burning of the bodies of Saul and Jonathan (1 S 31 1^) was exceptional. CHAPTEE 17 Reign op Jehoshaphat An account of a mission of Levites to teach the Law, and of the king's army. The particulars of Jehoshaphat's reign here given are additional to those contained in IK 22 41-50. 1. Strengthened himself against Israel] Jehoshaphat came to the throne in the fourth year of Ahab, and it is probable that some in- terval elapsed before he made peace with him, as recorded in 1 K2244. 2. Which Asa . . taken] see 15 8, and note. 3. His father David] LXX omits ' David,' so that his father means Asa, whose early actions (142) are here contrasted with the oppressive- ness and want of faith that he displayed in his later years (IG MO). Baalim] RV ' the Baalim ' (and so elsewhere), i.e. the various false gods to each of whom the title ' Baal ' (= Lord), was applied. 4. The doings of Israel] an allusion either to the worship of the calves (13S'9) or to that of the Zidonian Baal, introduced into Israel by Jezebel, the wife of Jehoshaphat's contempo- rary, Ahab. 7. He sent to his princes] The princes were to organise the teaching which was carried out by the Levites named in the next v. 9. Went about] This is the only record in the historical books of the diffusion of a know- ledge of the Law by means of a mission. In the reign of Josiah (2 K 23 2) and after the return from the exile (NehS^-is) the Law was merely read before assemblies of the people at Jerusalem. 13. Much business] i.e. was busily em- ployed on works of defence. And the men of war . . tvere'] better, ' and he had men of war . . in Jerusalem.' 14-18. It is generally agreed that there must be some error in these enormous numbers. CHAPTER 18 Reign op JEH0SHAPn.4T (continued) This c. reproduces 1 K 22 1-35 with very slight differences. 31. The Lord helped him] This, which is an addition to the narrative of Kings, seems to imply that the writer regarded Jehoshaphat's cry as a prayer for help, which God answered, as explained in the next v. CHAPTER 19 Reign of Jehoshaphat (continued) The c. narrates how Jehoshaphat was re- proved by the seer Jehu for helping Ahab, and how he instituted judges in the cities of Judah. This c. is entirely supplementary to the ac- count of Jehoshaphat as given in 1 K. 2. Jehu] previously only named in con- nexion with the northern kingdom in the reign of Baasha (IK 16'^). Shouldest thou help the ungodly] The peace with Israel, ratified by a marriage (2 K 8 1*^), put an end to a war between two kindred peoples, yet brought evils in its train, since the Baal worship which polluted the northern kingdom was introduced into Judah by Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and the daughter-in-law of Jehoshaphat : 24 7. 5. He set judges] Local courts of justice may have existed before, but Jehoshaphat im- proved them, and likewise established a court in the capital, which seems also to have heard appeals : v. 10. 6. The Lord . . judgment] Judges were ad- ministrators of the divine justice, so that even the term ' God ' could be used to describe them in their official capacity : see Ex 21*5 RV. 8. For the judgment of the LORD . . con- troversies] Peihaps the former means cases relating to religious obligations, and the latter ordinary civil and criminal trials. When they returned] RV ' and they returned,' the reference being to the king and his retinue. ID. Between blood and blood] e.g. the de- termination of what was murder and what was merely manslaughter: cp. Ex 21. Between law and commandment] i.e. the decision, where laws seemed to conflict, which of them applied to a particular case. II. And, behold, etc.] The court at Jerusa- lem was divided into two sections, one (under Amariah) dealing with ecclesiastical causes, and the other (under Zebadiah) dealing with secular causes. CHAPTER 20 Rbign op Jehoshaphat (concluded) An account of how a host of Moabites and others invaded Judah ; how Jehoshaphat prayed to the Lord, and was directed by Jahaziel not to fear ; and how the enemy was overthrown by God. The early part of this c. is additional to the narrative in 1 K : the latter part reproduces IK 22 41-411. I. O/Acr beside the Ammonites] better (with LXX), 'some of the Meunim' (or Maonites): cp. 26 'i' and JglO^^. They seem to have been 262 20. 2 2 CHRONICLES 23. 18 the people from Mt. Seir mentioned in vv. 10, 23. 2. Beyond the sea] i.e. from the eastern side of the Dead Sea. On this side Syria] lit. ' from Syria,' but Syria is probably a mistake for 'Edom.' The Moabites and Ammonites had marched round the S. end of the Dead Sea, and passing through Edom (the ' Mount Seir ' of V. 10) had been joined by some of the in- habitants. En-g-edi] on the W. shore of the Dead Sea, the modern Ain-jidy. 5. Before the new court] probably ' the court of the priests ' of 4 ^, which was distinct from the one in which Solomon prayed : 6^^. 10. Wouldest not let, etc.] The Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites were all spared on the ground of their kinship with Israel through Lot and Esau: Dt2^.9.i9. 16. Ziz] The word perhaps survives in the name El Husasah which attaches to a district near Tekoa : v. 20. 21. The beauty of holiness] Perhaps better, ' in holy apparel ' : cp. 1 Ch 16-^. 22. Ambushments] RV ' liers in wait.' Ap- parently the enemy fell out among themselves. 25. Riches with the dead bodies] LXX points to another reading, ' riches and garments.' 26. Berachah] i.e. ' Blessing.' The place has been identified with the Wfidy Bereikut near Tekoa. 34. Who is mentioned] RV ' (the book) which is inserted in.' 36. To go to Tarshish] IK 22 48 has ' ships of Tarshish ' (i.e. large merchantmen) ' to go to Ophir ' (in Arabia, or E. Africa), for which Ezion-geber was the natural port of departure. CHAPTER 21 Reign of Jehoram This c. in part reproduces 2 KSi'-^^ but adds several particulars respecting the judgments brought upon Jehoram. 2. Azariah . . Azariah] One of the names is probably an error, perhaps for ' Ahaziah ' : cp. the mistake in 22 1'. 3. And their father] cp. 1 1 '-3. 10. So the Edomites revolted] The writer omits the final sentence in 2K8-1 which ac- counts for the successful revolt of the Edomites : see note there. 11. Fornication] A figure for religious in- fidelity. 12. A writing . . from Elijah] If this mention of Elijah as living in the reign of Jehoram is to be reconciled with 2K3ii, which relates that Elisha (Elijah's successor) prophesied in the reign of Jehoshaphat, it must be supposed that Elisha entered upon his ministry before Elijah was translated ; and that 2 K 2 is out of its proper chronological order. The incident here described is the only instance of Elijah 14. A great plague] i.e. the great blow in- flicted by the invasion described in v. 16. 16. The Lord stirred up] The invaders, though pursuing designs of their own, were really agents of the divine judgment : cp. 1 Ch b-'^ Isal05-7 3724-29. The Arabians . . Ethio- pians] These Arabians came from the W. coast of Arabia, facing Ethiopia across the Red Sea. 17. In the king's house] better, ' belonging to the king's house.' It is not meant that the invaders assaulted Jerusalem, but that they carried off the royal property in the country districts. Jehoahaz] called in 221 'Ahaziah.' 19. Made no burning, etc.] i.e. they did not use the same quantity of spices as were burnt at the funeral rites of former kings. 20. De- parted . . desired] i.e. he died unregretted. But some (following LXX) render ' he walked (i.e. lived) in an undesirable way.' CHAPTER 22 Reign of Ahaziah This c. reproduces with some differences 2 K8 24-29 and lli-^ (the intervening chs. being omitted because they relate exclusively to Israel). 2. Forty and two] This must be an error, for his father was only 40 when he died (2 1 20). 2K82<3 has 'twenty-two.' 6. Azariah] An error for ' Ahaziah,' which LXX has. 7. Had anointed] see 2K9i-io. 8. The sons of the brethren, etc.] i.e. of the elder sons of Jehoram who were killed by the Arabians (2117). jf Jehoram was only 40 at his death (21 20), his grandsons at this time (v. 2) must have been quite young children. 9. He was hid in Samaria] 2K927 states that he was mortally wounded in his chariot when escaping from Jehu, and died at Megiddo. They had slain . . they buried] The first verb refers to the emissaries of Jehu, the second to the servants of the murdered Ahaziah. To , keep still] i.e. to retain. CHAPTER 23 Reign of Joash This c. repeats 2K 11 4-20^ but brings into prominence the ecclesiastical officials in place of the soldiers of the royal guard. 4. This is the thing, etc.] The arrangements differ from those described in 2 K 1 1 (see note there). Here there are three divisions which are posted (o) at the doors of the Temple, (b) at the palace, (c) at the gate of the foundation (which in 2 K is called the ' gate Sur ' and con- nected with the palace). Here too only priests or Levites are allowed to enter the Temple, whilst the rest take up their position outside ; but in Kings the distinction is not observed. 16. Between him, etc.] RV 'between him- having concerned himself with the affairs of self, and all the people, and the king.' Judah. 18. Appointed the offices, etc.] better, 'put 263 24. 6 2 CHRONICLES 26. 18 the offices . . into the hand of.' The priests the Levites] LXX has (preferably) ' the priests and the Levites,' the priests alone being author- ised to olf er sacrifice (according to Nu 18 "). CHAPTER 24 Reign op Joash (concluded) An account of the repair of the Temple, the idolatry of Joash after the death of Jehoiada, the murder of Jehoiada's son, and the king's violent death. The early part of this c. reproduces 2 K 112i_i2i*5, with unimportant variations, but vv. 15-22 are entirely supplementary, and give a different account of the closing years of the reign of Joash from that contained in 2 K. 6. According to . . Moses] This refers to the half-shekel required to be paid by every Israelite as an atonement for his soul : Ex 3013-16. 7. The sons of Athaliah] perhaps her ad- herents, rather than her children, who had been killed in the lifetime of their father Jehoram : 21 1'^. 15. An hundred and thirty] an age unpre- cedented since Joshua : Josh 2429. 16. Among the kings] Jehoiada thus re- ceived an honour which was refused to Joash : V. 25. 20. The son of Jehoiada] called in Mt2335 ' the son of Barachias ' by confusion with Zachariah the prophet. Which stood above the people] probably on a platform. 23. The host of Syria] Hazael, the king of Syria, was engaged in attacking Gath, and from thence made an incursion into Judah. Destroyed all the princes] These were the instigators of the king's impiety : v. 17. 25. The sons of Jehoiada] better, as in LXX, ' the son of Jehoiada ' (vv. 20, 21). 27. The burdens, etc.] better, ' the multitude of the oracles uttered against him ' : see v. 19, and cp. 2 K925. The story] RV 'the com- mentary' : see on 13-^^. CHAPTER 25 Reign of Amaziah This c. is derived in the main from 2 K 141-20, but with two insertions, vv. 5-10 and 13-lG. 5. Made them captains, etc.] better, ' arranged them according to their fathers' houses under captains.' From twenty years old] Under this age military service was not required : Nu 1 3 1 Ch2723. 7. With all . . Ephraim] added to explain the sense in which ' Israel ' is used, since ordinarily in Chronicles it is equivalent to Judah: see on 126. For the protest against an alliance with the northern kingdom cp. 192 2037. 8. But if thou wilt go] LXX has ' if thou thinkest to prevail with these ' (i.e. the forces from Ephraim) ' God shall make thee fall.' II. The children of Seir] i.e. the Edomites. 13. From Samaria] i.e. from the frontier of the kingdom (not from its capital). 14. He brought the gods, etc.] Similarly the Philistines brought away the ark which the Israelites had carried with them into battle at Ebenezer : 1 S4ii. 17. Come, let us, etc.] In connexion with the preceding narrative Amaziah's challenge might be explained as due to a desire to have satisfaction for the conduct of the Israelite forces as described in v. 13, but see on 2X14^. 23. Jehoahaz] i.e. Ahaziah : 2117. 24. With Obed-edom] i.e. with the descend- ants of Obed-edom, who were porters of the Temple : 1 Ch 26^-8. 28. The city of Judah] LXX has ' the city of David,' as in 2 KI420 and 2 Ch24i 161^ 21i>20^ etc. CHAPTER 26 Reign of Uzziah This c. adds largely to the parallel account of Uzziah's reign in2K15i-7, and furnishes information respecting his wars, his military defences, and the cause of his leprosy. I. Uzziah] This is the usual form in Chron- icles except in 1 Ch 3 12 ; in Kings it is generally ' Azariah.' 6. Jabneh] between Joppa and Ashdod : afterwards called Jamnia. 7. The Mehuniras] see on 201. 9. The valley gate] probably a gate leading into the valley of Hinnom, at the S. end of the W. hill. ID. In the desert, etc.] Uzziah's cattle were pastured in three different districts, (a) the desert (or wilderness) in the S. and SE, of Judah, which has some fertile spots ; (h) the low country (or lowland), consisting of the slopes that extend from the Judaean hills to the Mediterranean ; (c) the plains, or table- land, E. of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, where Uzziah may have secured rights of pasturage from the Ammonites (v. 8). Carmel] RY ' the fruitful fields ' : or level garden- land, as distinct from the ' mountains ' or hilly districts. 14. Habergeons] RV ' coats of mail.' Slings to ciiKt stones] RV ' stones for sling- ing ' : which had to be supplied of a certain size and in sufficient quantity. 15. Engines] These were machines of the nature of cata- pults. 16. To his destruction] RV ' so that he did corruptly.' Into the temple] The altar of incense was in the Holy Place. 18. To the priests, etc.] The restriction to the sons of Aaron of the duty of offering incense is enforced in the Law by the history of Korah : 264 26. 21 2 CHRONICLES 29. 34 NulG^o. 21. In a several house] i.e. in a lazar house. For the seclusion of leprous persons from the community op. Lv 13 '*'^ Nu 5 ^. 22. Isaiah] The prophet received his pro- phetic call in the year that Uzziah died (Isa 6 ^). 23. In the field of the burial, etc.] i.e. in the royal burial gi-ound, but not in the royal sepulchres. CHAPTER 27 The Reign of Jotham This c. repeats the substance of 2K1532-3S^ but expands the account of Jotham's buildings, and relates a war with Ammon about which Kings is silent. 2. The people did . . corruptly] If Isa 2 is rightly assigned to this reign, it furnishes illustrations of the historian's statement, for it represents idolatry, sorcery, and arrogance, as prevalent amongst the people (Isa 2 6-8. n*-). 3. Ophel] the southern extremity of the Temple hill. 5. Measures] lit. ' cors': a 'cor' being rather more than 10 bushels, the whole quantity of each kind of grain was over 100,000 bushels. For such payments in kind cp. 17 ^^ 2K3'*. CHAPTER 28 The Reign of Ahaz This c. recounts how the idolatry of Ahaz was punished by the attacks of Syria and Israel ; how the captives taken by the Israel- ites were restored ; and how Ahaz in his dis- tress appealed to Assyria. This c. corresponds to 2K16, but it omits many facts related there, whilst expanding the account of the war with Israel. 5. The king of Syria] i.e. Rezin, who, with Pekah of Israel, wished to depose Ahaz : see Isa 7. 7. Maaseiah, the king's son] perhaps a son of Jotham and brother of Ahaz, since Ahaz himself was only 20 at his accession and 36 at his death (v. 1). Next to the king] i.e. the principal counsellor of state : cp. EsthlO^. 9. Tliat reacheth, etc.] i.e. immoderate and excessive : cp. EzrO'^. 16. The kings] The LXX, more appropri- ately, has ' the king,' the allusion being to Tiglath-pileser (v. 20). But Chronicles fre- quently uses the plural where the singular would be more accurate : see v. 23, also c. 324.31 306. 17. The Edomites] Rezin had previously captured Elath and returned it to the Edomites (2K166), and this doubtless encouraged them to retaliate upon the Judaeans, who had with- held it from them for so long. 18. The Philistines] These had suffered at the hands of Judah during the reign of Uzziah (2G 6. '''), and now took the opportunity to seek revenge. 1 9. Made Judah naked] R V ' dealt wantonly in Judah.' 20. Distressed him, etc.] The intervention of Assyria not only imposed the burden of tribute upon Judah, but also awoke the jealousy of Egypt, with evil results to the small kingdom placed between the two em- pires ; yet for a time at least the Assyrians delivered Judah from Syria and Israel : 2K169 1529. 23. Because the gods, etc.] i.e. as shown by the successes of Rezin (v. 5). CHAPTER 29 The Reign of Hezekiah This c. describes a cleansing of the Temple and a sacrifice for the sins of the people. This and the following chs. 30-32, cover the same period as 2 K 18-20, but, for the most part, have in view a different side of Hezekiah's reign, Chronicles relating in great detail his religious reforms, whilst Kings is concerned mainly with the political events of the time. 3. Opened the doors] The Temple had been closed by Ahaz : 28^4. 4. The east street] RV 'the broad place on the east,' perhaps one of the courts in front of the Temple : cp. EzrlO^RV. 10. A covenant] The covenant between the nation and its God had been previously re- newed in the time of Asa (15 1^). 15. By the words of the LORD] The king was moved by a divine impulse, perhaps communicated through a prophet : cp. 30 ^'^. 16. The inner part of the house] i.e. from the courts into the interior of the building. The Holy Place is meant (not the Holy of Holies, which the Levites might not enter). 17. The sixteenth day] In the first period of 8 days the Temple itself was cleansed, in the second period the Temple court (where the altar of burnt offering was : v. 18). 21. Seven bullocks, etc.] It is possible that the bullocks, rams, and lambs constituted the burnt offerings mentioned in v. 27 (the victims for which are not otherwise named), and that the he-goats alone formed the sin oft'ering (as V. 23 suggests). For the kingdom] i.e. for the king as distinguished from the people (Judah). 25. By his prophets] i.e. David's arrange- ments, as described in 1 Ch 23^ 25^, were made under divine direction. 30. Of Asaph the seer] Twelve of the Psalms bear the name of Asaph. 31. Thank offerings] a form of peace offer- ing (Lv 7 12), most of which was eaten by the 'worshipper. Burnt offerings] wholly con- sumed on the altar. Of a free heart] RV ' of a willing heart.' 34. Were more upright . . than the priests] Many of the priests had perhaps taken part 265 29. 36 2 CHRONICLES 32. 18 in Ahaz's impieties as Urijah the high priest had done : 2 K 1616. 36. Prepared the people] The zeal of the people was so remarkable that it could only be attributed to divine influence : cp. 30 12. CHAPTER 30 Reign of Hezekiah (continued) This c. relates how a passover was kept on the second month for Israel and Judah. 1. Should come . . at Jerusalem] This im- plies an endeavour to centralise the national worship by the abolition of the local sanctu- aries (as described in 2 K 1 8 *). 2. In the second month] The Law allowed individuals to keep the Passover in the second month instead of the first, if they were pre- vented by some temporary hindrance (Nu 9 ^^' 11), and this permission Hezekiah thought might be extended to the whole community. 3. At that time] i.e. at the proper season, viz. the 14th day of the first month. The cleansing of the Temple was not completed till the 16th day of that month : 2917. 5. Done it of a long time'] RV ' kept it in great numbers.' According to Ex 12*5 the Passover was to be observed by ' the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel.' 6. The posts] lit. ' the couriers,' who were probably some of the royal guards. You, that . . Assyria] Since what is here related took place (according to 29 3) in Hezekiah's first year, the reference must be to the in- vasion of Tiglath-pileser : 2 K 15 29 1 Ch 5 26. 13, The feast of unleavened bread] This, though distinct from the Passover, was not separated from it by any interval, and the two came to be treated as one which could be described indifferently by either name : vv. 2, 13, 15. 14. The altars] i.e. those erected by Ahaz : 2824. 15. Were ashamed] The zeal of the laity roused the priests, who had formerly been remiss (29^4), to a sense of their duty. 17. The passovers] i.e. the paschal lambs, which (according to Ex 126, 7) ought to have been killed by the head of each household. 18. Otherwise than it was written] As this Passover in the second month took the place of the one ordinarily held in the first month, there could be no supplementary passover for such as were unclean ; so Hezekiah preferred that the people should break the letter of the Law and eat without being sanctified than that they should be debarred from such an im- portant festival and so be unfaithful to the spirit of the divine legislation. 20. Healed] i.e. did not send upon them the punishment which they had incurred : cp. Lvl53i. 25. The strangers] i.e. proselytes of foreign descent, who either had come out of the northern kingdom or were settled in Judah. CHAPTER 31 Reign of Hezekiah (continued) This c. gives an account of Hezekiah's re- organisation of the Temple service. 2. Appointed the courses] The succession (see 1 Ch 23-26) had been suspended during the idolatry of the previous reigns, and re- quired to be rearranged. The tents of the Lord] The phrase is borrowed from the con- ditions that prevailed in the wilderness. 3. The king's portion, etc.] The king set an example to his subjects by providing for the sacrifices named, for which see Nu28, 29, whilst the people were required to support the priests (according to Nu 1 8). 6. That dwelt in the cities of Judah] The provincial population, as distinguished from the inhabitants of the capital. The tithe of holy things] The words tithe of have been accidentally repeated from the preceding ; they are omitted in v. 12. 11. Chambers] i.e. some of the side chambers that surrounded the Temple. 14. Toward the east] RV 'at the east gate ' : cp. 1 Ch 26 17. 15. To give to their brethren] The general sense of vv. 15-18 is that the officers named in V. 15 distributed to all the priests who dwelt in the priestly cities a share of the people's offerings, those alone being excluded from sharing, who, whilst in their courses at Jerusalem, were supported at the Temple itself : these, including priests, Levites and their families, are referred to in vv. 16-18. 16. Beside] i.e. excepting. Genealogy] i.e. list. 19. Also of the sons of Aaron, etc.] The meaning is that the six persons named in v. 15 furnished support to the priests and Levites who dwelt outside the cities, as well as to those who dwelt within them. CHAPTER 32 Reign of Hezekiah (concluded) This c. abbreviates the account of Sen- nacherib's invasion as related in 2 K 1813-2021, but supplements it by various particulars re- specting Hezekiah's preparation to meet the attack. 3. To stop the waters, etc.] The chief spring which was thus stopped (or ' hidden ') was the fountain of Gihon : see v. 30. 4. The brook] lit. ' torrent- valley.' The Gihon spring was in the ravine of the Kidron. 6. The street of the gate] RV ' the broad place at the gate ' : where the people were wont to assemble. 9. After this] The Chronicler omits all account of the surrender of Hezekiah related in 2 K 18 14-16. 18. They cried] i.e. the ' servants ' of v, 16. In the Jews' speech] see 2 K 18^6. 266 32. 22 2 CHRONICLES 35.3 22. Guided them] LXX has 'gave them rest,' which suits the context better. 24. In those days] In vv. 24-26 the writer summarises very briefly what is related at length in 2K20 Isa38. 30. Brought it, etc.] better, ' stopped the upper spring of the waters of Gihon and brought them straight down' (or, 'under- ground ') ' westward to the city of David.' Gihon lay to the E. of Jerusalem, and Heze- kiah conveyed its waters by a subterranean aqueduct to the pool of Siloam at the foot of the Temple hill. 31. The ambassadors] i.e. of Merodach- baladan, the king of Babylon : see 2K2012*' Isa39. 32. Arid in the book of the kings, etc.] The conjunction and should be omitted, the vision of Isaiah being incorporated in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel, like the ' book of Jehu the son of Hanani ': 203'i. 33. In the chiefest] EV ' in the ascent ' : i.e. on the road that led up to the sepulchres. CHAPTER 33 The Reign of Manasseh This c. repeats, with certain omissions, 2K21 ; but the section v. 11-17, relating the captivity in Babylon, repentance, and release of Manasseh, is supplementary to the account in2K. 6. Observed times] R V ' practised augury ' : perhaps, as the original suggests, by watching the motions of clouds. 8. So that] RV ' if only ' : God's promises to Israel were conditional upon its obedience. II. Among the thorns] RM 'with hooks' : a monument still exists which shows the Assyrian king Esarhaddon leading two captives by hooks or rings put through their lips. To Babylon] This city was for the most part subject to Assyria until the overthrow of the Assyrian power in 607 B.C. Shortly before 648 the "brother of Asshurbanipal (who is pro- bably the king of Assyria alluded to in this v.) revolted, and received support from some of the Palestinian states ; but the insurrection was suppressed, and if Manasseh had been among those who aided the insurgents, he may well have been punished in consequence. The Assyrian inscriptions, though they mention that Manasseh was a vassal of Assyria, do not refer to the events here related. 13. Brought him again, etc.] i.e. by prompt- ing the Assyrian king to restore him to his throne. Such leniency on the part of Asshur- banipal finds a parallel in his conduct towards Necho, an Egyptian feudatory prince, who was taken captive for intriguing against his suzerain, but was subsequently restored to his country. 14. A wall without . . David] RV 'an outer wall to the city of David.' The fish gate] This was in the N. wall of the city ; through it fish is supposed to have entered from Tyre. 16. Commanded . . to serve the LORD] In spite of Manasseh's reformation here related, Jeremiah subsequently declared that his sins had not been expiated, and that the nation was doomed to destruction in consequence : Jer 15*. 18. His prayer] What purports to be Ma- nasseh's prayer is preserved in the Apocrypha, but is not considered genuine. 19. The say- ings of the seers] This follows the LXX. The Heb. has ' the sayings of Hozai.' 20. In his own house] LXX has ' in the garden ' (or ' park ') ' of his own house ' : cp. 2 K 2 1 is. CHAPTER 34 Reign of Josiah The c. narrates how Josiah suppressed idola- try and repaired the Temple ; how a book of the Law, found in the Temple, was read to the king and the people ; and how the nation's covenant with the Lord was renewed. This c. and the following are, in general, parallel to 2K22, 23i-30, with some unim- portant variants ; but the Chronicler gives more prominence than the writer of 2 Kings to the passover celebrated by Josiah. 3. In the twelfth year] In 2 K the abolition of the ' high places ' is described as subsequent to the repair of the Temple, and the latter is assigned to Josiah's ' eighteenth ' year : 2 K 223 235,8. 5. Burnt the bones] This was believed to afflict the souls of the dead priests, as well as to desecrate the shrines at which they had ministered. The condition of the spirit after death depended in a large measure upon the treatment sustained by the body. 6. With their mattocks] A slight alteration gives ' in their ruins ' (so RV), i.e. the desolate sites of the cities destroyed by the Assyrians. 9. And they returned to Jerusalem] Another reading is ' and of the inhabitants of Jerusalem.' II. The houses] i.e. the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies : cp. 1 Ch 28 " 29 4. 22. In the college] RV ' in the second quarter ' (of the city). It has been suggested that this may have occupied the upper end of the Tyropoean valley, W. of the Temple. CHAPTER 35 Reign of Josiah (concluded) This c. contains an account of how Josiah celebrates the Passover, and how he provoked Necho the king of Egypt, and was slain at Megiddo. I. On the fourteenth (/((//] Josiah's passover,un- like Hezekiah's, was kept at the prescribed time. 3. Put the holy ark, etc.] The following words suggest that during the repair of the Temple, it had been removed and committed to the care of the Levites. 267 35. 4 2 CHRONICLES 36. 22 4. According- to the writing-, etc.] The re- ference is to the arrangements described in ICh 23-26 2Ch8ii. 5. According to the di- visions, etc.] The sense is 'let there be for each family of the people a portion of a Levitical family to minister.' 6. Prepare your brethren] RV ' prepare for,' etc. The killing of the passover victims by the Levites for the laity, which was exceptional in Hezekiah's time (301''), had now become customary. 12. Removed] Perhaps they separated those parts (the fat, etc.) of the victims which were to be burnt. If so, these sacrifices were not strictly ' burnt offerings,' for in such, the whole of the victim was consumed by fire. 15. They might not depart] EV 'they needed not to depart.' 18. There vsras no passover, etc.] Hezekiah's passover had surpassed all that had preceded it (30 26), but Josiah's exceeded even that. 20. Against] better, ' at.' Necho's purpose was to share the spoils of the falling Assyrian empire. Nineveh was taken by the Babylo- nians about 607. 21. He sent ambassadors, etc.] Necho's remonstrance to Josiah against interfering in the war between himself and the Babylonians, the conquerors of Assyria, is not recorded in 2K. 22. Disguised himself] The same is related of Ahab in 18-''- but LXX has 'strengthened himself.' From the mouth of God] The writer regards Necho's words as a divinely-sent warn- ing, which Josiah disregarded to his cost. 24. AH Judah . . mourned] It is possible that this is the 'mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddo,' alluded to in Zech 1211. 25. Made them] i.e. those in authority made such lamentations an ordinance. In the lamentations] probably not the book that bears this name, but a composition now lost. CHAPTER 36 The Fall of Jerusalem This is a brief record of the reigns of Jehoa- haz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, and of the destruction of Jerusalem. The first twenty vv. of this c. are abbre- viated from 2 K 23 30-25 21, with some variations of statement. 6. Nebuchadnezzar] He was the son of Nabopolassar, the conqueror of Nineveh. Bound him in fetters] This is not recorded in Kings. Perhaps this was the ' purpose ' of the invasion described in 2K:242, but Jehoia- kim may have averted the threatened con- sequences by a timely surrender. The state- ment of Chronicles is followed in Dan 1 1.2. 8. That w^hich was found in him] i.e. his offences : cp. 1 K 1 -52. 9. Eight] 2K248 has 'eighteen,' which, as he was married (2 K 2415), is doubtless correct. 10. His brother] In reality Zedekiah was brother to Jehoiachin's father Jehoiakim, lCh3i5. 12. Jeremiah the prophet] For Zedekiah's disregard of Jeremiah's warnings see Jer 34 8 f. 372 3817 f. Contrast the attitude of Ahab towards Elijah, as described in IK 21 27-29. 13. Made him swear] Ezekiel refers to this in 1713. 14. Moreover, etc.] In vv. 14-16 the writer briefly explains the causes which led to the final destruction of Jerusalem and its in- habitants. For instances of the abominations of the heathen see 2 K 21 7, and what is implied in IK 1.5 12 22^6. 15. Rising up . . sending;] In the OT. such expressive anthi-opomorphisms are common ; thus it is related that the Lord ' walked ' in the garden of Eden (Gn38), ' smelled ' Noah's sacrifice (Gn82i), 'came down' to see Babel (Gn 1 1 5), etc. Yet nowhere is the infinite dis- tance separating God from human limitations and frailty more forcibly asserted ; see Nu23i'-' Isa559. 16. Mocked the messengers] In the reign of Jehoiakim the prophet Urijah was put to death (Jer 26 20-23)^ and in the reign of Zede- kiah, Jeremiah underwent much persecution (Jer 37, 38). 18. All the vessels, etc.] i.e. all that survived the spoliation described in v. 10. 20. The reign . . Persia] i.e. until the over- throw of Babylon by Cyrus in 538. 21. To fulfil threescore and ten years] If the period of 70 years is reckoned from the time when Jere- miah's prophecy was uttered (Jehoiakim's 4th year, 605 B.C.) till the return of the Jews to their own land in 536, the prediction (for which see Jer 25 11 29 lO) was almost exactly fulfilled. Between the final destruction of Jerusalem in 586 and the Return just 50 years elapsed. 22. Now in the first, etc.] vv. 22, 23 are identical with the opening words of Ezra (1 1-3), and end in the middle of a sentence. (For the notes see the passage in Ezra.) 268 EZRA AND NEHEMIAH GENERAL INTRODDCTION I. The period of the Exile. The contents of Ezra and Nehemiah are separated from the last events in the previous historical writings by an interval of 50 years. The books of Chi'onicles, like the books of Kings, virtually close with the capture of Jerusalem by Nebu- chadrezzar and the deportation of a large number of its inhabitants into Babylonia. There they were probably gathered into colonies or settlements at various places, such as Tel-abib (EzkSi^), Tel-melah, Tel-harsha (Ezr259), Casiphia (Ezr8i7), and others. So long as they remained quiet subjects they were not, as a rule, persecuted or enslaved. They were at liberty to cultivate the land and to acquire servants (Jer295 'Ezt2'^^) ; and, to judge from the value of the con- tributions made for religious purposes (Ezr 205, 09 2ech6io, 11), some must have accumu- lated considerable wealth. On the other hand, those who were disaffected and insubor- dinate brought upon themselves cruel punish- ments (Jer 29 ^^) ; and several passages in the prophets imply that many of the exiles were not unacquainted with harsh conditions of service (Isal43 47 *5). Jewish religious life in the time of the Exile was distinguished from that of the pre-exilic period by the suspension of the sacrificial system. Not only was the Temple at Jerusalem destroyed — the place which the Lord had chosen to put His name there — but the captive Jews were withdrawn from the actual soil of Israel and were dwelling in an ' unclean land ' (cp. Am 7^''), where acceptable sacrifices could not be offered. They maintained, however, such religious ordinances as the sabbath and circumcision ; and the cessation of material oblations probably intensified rather than im- paired the practice of prayer. Reflection upon the calamities sustained by their race must have deepened their sense of national sin ; and the lessons of experience at last bore fruit in the gradual eradication of their propensity towards idolatry. The hope of a future restor- ation to their own country led to an increasing study of the ceremonial law which circum- stances prevented them from carrying out in the present ; and the loss of national inde- pendence enhanced the interest attaching to the records of their past greatness, some of the historical books (including the books of Kings) being completed during this period. The Exile was brought to a close when the Babylonian empire fell before Cyrus, prince of Anshan or Elam. Cyrus, though an Elamite, was connected by descent with the Persian house of Achsemenes ; and he not only became master of Media (in 549 B.C., through the deposition of Astyages), but subsequently of Persia likewise. In character he was courage- ous, magnanimous, and pious ; and when he advanced to attack Babylon (then ruled by Nabunahid, or Nabonidus, a feeble prince), his career was watched with intense interest by the Jews, who regarded him as their des- tined deliverer. In 538 he took possession of Babylon, which surrendered peaceably ; and when Nabonidus, who had fled, was captured, the Jews passed under the rule of a new lord. The way in which their expectations respecting Cyrus were fulfilled forms the subject of the opening narrative of the book of Ezra. 2. Political and Religious Conditions after the Return. When the Jewish people returned from exile their political condition was very unlike what it had been before the Fall of Jerusalem and the deportation of its inhabit- ants. With those events the national exist- ence which they had enjoyed for many centuries came to an end ; and though a number cf them were restored to their country by Cyrus they remained subjects of the Persian empire. Jerusalem and the surrounding districts were under the control of a governor (Pehah or Tirshatha), who, though he might be occasion- ally a Jew, must often have been an alien. And whilst the Persian rule was probably in general not oppressive, various circumstances must have made the position of the Jewish community rather a hard one. They were surrounded by a hostile population, who seized every opportunity of bringing them into dis- favour with the Persian authorities. They were for the most part poor (the richest men, according to Josephus, having remained in Babylon), and the land they cultivated, which was naturally not very fertile, had doubtless suffered from neglect ; and yet they not only had to pay tribute, custom, and toll to the royal exchequer (Neh5^ Ezr 7-'*), but had to contribute to the support of the local governor. And the pressure of external hardship was aggi'avated by internal friction. The poorer classes, to meet the payments required of them, had to borrow of their more prosperous 269 INTRO. EZRA AND NEHEMIAH— EZRA INTRO. neighbours at a high rate of interest, and the latter enforced to the full the rights which the Jewish laws conferred upon the creditor over an insolvent debtor. Many, to support them- selves, had not only to part with their fields, but with their families, who were sold into bondage. The bitter feelings created by this situation might have had serious results, had it not been for the prudence and self-sacrifice of Nehemiah, who from 445 to 433 was Tir- shatha. By his exhortation and example he succeeded in averting the social divisions that at one time threatened the people ; and though some of the measures he adopted to safeguard the religion of his countrymen did not conduce to friendly relations with their neighbours, his statesmanship ensured during the tenure of his authority not only the security but the contentment of the community In religion the Jews enjoyed a degree of freedom denied them in civil affairs. When they returned to Jerusalem they were author- ised by Cyrus to restore the Temple ; and though some years elapsed before the Temple was actually reconstructed, the altar of the Lord was set up as soon as they were once more settled in their own land, and the system of sacrificial worship, which had been sus- pended during the Exile, was re-organised. But though the religious life of the com- munity again flowed in its old channels, its general tenor was in some respects unlike what it had previously been. Three points of difference may be noticed here. (a) The proneness to adopt alien religious rites, or to worship the Lord by means of material sym- bols, which was so common before the Exile, disappeared after the B,eturn. The severe national judgment which they had sustained, and the experience of polytheism which they had acquired in Babylon, seem to have con- firmed them finally in their allegiance to the God of their fathers and in the principles of spiritual religion ; and the protests against idolatry, so frequently required in earlier times, are henceforward seldom heard. (6) Prophecy, which in pre-exilic days had been so conspicuous a feature in their religious history, now declined in importance ; and though several prophets did arise in the course of this period, they were more circumscribed in the range of their thoughts and less vigorous and original in the expression of them. Li some respects the difEusion of a knowledge of the Law among the people at large rendered the need of such exceptional teachers less urgent, their places as moral and religious instructors being, in a measure, filled by the scribes, (c) Ritual was regarded differ- ently by the leaders of religious thought be- fore and after the Exile, in consequence, no doubt, of a difference in the needs of the times. When Israel enjoyed national independence, there was less need to emphasise the external features distinctive of Jewish worship, the prophets being chiefly concerned to insist upon the moral conditions demanded by the Lord of His worshippers. But after the Exile, when the nation had lost its independence, it was only by its ecclesiastical organisation and observances that its separateness as a com- munity could be maintained, and therefore increased importance was attached to the ceremonial requirements of the Law. List of Kings of Babylon and Persia B.C. Babylon — Nebuchadnezzar . . 604 Captures Jerusalem . 586 Evil Merodach . .561 Nergal Sharezer . . 560 Labashi Merodach . . 556 Nabunahid . . . 565 Fall of Babylon . . 538 Persia — Cyrus, king of Babylon . 538 Cambyses . . . 529 Pseudo-Smerdis . . 522 Darius Hystaspis . .521 Xerxes .... 485 Artaxerxes Longimanus . 464 Sogdianus , . . 424 Darius Nothus . . 423 Artaxerxes Mnemon . 405 Artaxerxes Ochus . . 358 Arses .... 337 Darius Codomannus . 335-330 EZRA INTRODUCTION I. Character and Contents. The book of Ezra was combined by the Jews with the book of Nehemiah, the two being regarded as con- stituting a single work, of which Ezra himself was the reputed author. In the Hebrew Bible they both precede Chronicles ; but it is prob- able that with the latter they form a consecu- tive history of which Chronicles is the first half. The close connexion between these three books is shown, not only by the way in which 270 INTRO. EZRA 1.1 the closing verses of Chronicles are practically repeated in the opening verses of Ezra, but by (a) a common interest in statistics and gene- alogies ; (b) a common sympathy for the ecclesi- astical side of Jewish life ; (c) a common use of certain phi-ases (e.g. ' father's house ') which are comparatively rare elsewhere. If the three are all portions of one single work the com- position of it cannot be earlier than the close of the 4th cent. ; for, as has been seen, Chroni- cles must be as late as 340 B.C., whilst Nehemiah contains a reference (12 H' 22) to the high priest Jaddua, who was contemporary with Alexander the Great (336-323). Consequently, since Ezra cannot have outlived the 5th cent. B.C., his authorship of the connected books is out of the question ; and the writer is really unknown. The book of Ezra relates the history of the Jewish people from their return under Zerub- babel from Babylon to their own country in 536 to the arrival at Jerusalem of a second body of exiles under Ezra in 458, and includes an account of the building of the Second Temple. It thus covers a period of rather more than 78 years ; but of these the 15 years between 535 and 520 and the 58 years between 516 and 458 are practically a blank; so that it is less a continuous record than a description of selected incidents. 2. Sources. The principal sources employed in the compilation of the book are (a) the actual memoirs of Ezra, distinguished by the use of the first person (7 27-9 ^^) ; (i) genealogies and registers (2, 10 18-**) ; (c) extracts derived from documents written not in Hebrew but in Aramaic (47-618 712-20). 3. Value. The historical importance of Ezra is very great, since it is the chief authority for the period of Jewish history with which it deals. Though the work of which it forms part is separated by a considerable interval from some of the events narrated, it makes use (as has been just shown) of earlier docu- ments, and, for some portion of the time covered by it, it draws upon records composed by one of the principal actors in the incidents de- scribed. Nor is its religious value inferior to its secular interest. As a record of the past it recounts the fulfilment of one of the most remarkable predictions of Hebrew prophecy, namely, the restoration to their own land of the exiles who 50 years before had been carried into captivity ; it relates the establish- ment at Jerusalem of the community to which the world owes the preservation, arrangement, and completion of the Hebrew Scriptures ; and it marks the beginning and development of that intense attachment to the Mosaic Law which became so conspicuous a feature of Jewish religious life in after times. And as a means of conveying practical instruction the book is animated with a spirit of fervid patriot- ism, of uncompromising adhesion to principle, and of loyal devotion to God. The character of Ezra in particular exhibits qualities deserv- ing much admiration — deeply -rooted personal piety conjoined with a high regard for ecclesi- astical order and the external rites of religion, and unwavering faith manifesting itself in, and through, active works. CHAPTER 1 The Return of the Jews from Captivity The c. narrates how Cyrus, king of Persia, permitted the Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple there, and restored the vessels taken from it. I. Now, etc.] The book of Ezra begins with the last words of 2Ch; vv. 1, 2 and the first half of V. 3 occurring in 2Ch3622,23. The three books, Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, were probably at first continuous, in this order ; but subsequently the arrangement in the He- brew Bible was altered to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, Ezra being placed first in order to form a sequel to the history contained in Kings. 2 Chronicles was then made to con- clude with the same words that form the beginning of Ezra. In the first year of Cyrus] i.e. of Cyrus' rule over Babylon, 538 B.C. The word of the LORD . . Jeremiah] see Jer 2910 2511-13; cp. also Ezklli7 3712. The period of the Captivity was described by Jere- miah as 70 years and by Ezekiel as 40 (4 6). Its actual duration, reckoned from the Fall of Jerusalem in 586, was about 50 years, but the interval between the destruction of the Temple and its restoration in 516 (Ezr6i5) was almost exactly 70. The accordance of the event with predictions uttered so long before witnesses to the remarkable faculty of prevision possessed by the Hebrew prophets, inasmuch as there was nothing (so far as can be judged) within the political horizon at the time when the predictions were made to create such an expectation. The Lord stirred up, etc.] Josephus states that the divine will respecting the Jews was made known to Cyrus by the prophecies of Isaiah (see Isa4428 45 1"*, where Cyrus is styled ' the Lord's servant ' and ' the Lord's anointed '). Be this as it may, God's purposes were fulfilled, whatever may have been the motives by which the Persian king was consciously actuated. From the inscriptions it appears that Nabuna- hid (Nabonidus), the last king of Babylon, had caused great discontent by removing to his capital the gods of various cities, and that Cyrus sent them back to their respective sanctu- aries ; and the restoration of the sacred vessels (v. 7) of the Jews, whose God was not repre- sented by any image, was doubtless part of the same policy. The permission given to the 271 1. 2 EZRA 2. 64 Jews themselves to return to Jerusalem to re- construct the Temple there conciliated a number of people who might otherwise have been a source of danger to the empire. The old idea that Cyrus as a Zoroastrian had sympathy with the religion of the Jews is disproved by evidence from the monuments. 2. The Lord God . . hath given me] Cyrus showed great regard for the religious senti- ments of his various subjects ; and just as in his inscriptions it is represented to the Baby- lonians that he had obtained his victories through Merodach their chief god, so here in a decree issued to the Jews his success is as- cribed to the LoED. But it is possible that the Hebrew colouring of the decree is due to a Hebrew scribe, commissioned to make it intel- ligible to his countrymen, rather than to its royal author. 4. Whosoever remaineth] RV ' whosoever ' (of the captive people) ' is left ' (cp. Neh 1 -), there being an allusion to the remnant of Israel. The men of his place] i.e. his Babylonian neighbours (v. 6). 5. Whose spirit, etc.] It was only a small proportion of the exiled Jews who were in- spired with such zeal for their land and the sanctuary of their God as to exchange the com- fort of Babylon for the desolation of Jud^a. In this passage those who took advantage of Cyrus' decree are represented as belonging to Judah and Benjamin only, but there were also among them some from Ephraim and Manasseh : lCh93. 7. Had brought forth] see 2K2413 2Ch367. 8. Sheshbazzar] It seems probable that this was the Persian or Babylonian name of Zerub- babel (22). In favour of the view that the same person is designated by the two names is the fact that the foundation of the Temple is ascribed to both (51*^ S^), whilst the double name may be paralleled by the instances of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah (Dan 1 ^' '^), Eliakim, and Mattaniah (2 K 23 34 24 17). But some distinguish between the two (as is done in lEsdrG^*^), and either regard Sheshbazzar as identical with Shenazzar the uncle of Zerub- babel (2Ch3iS'^^), or take him to be a Persian commissioner accompanying Zerubbabel (for although he is here called the prince of Judah, i.e. the representative of Judah's royal line, the LXX in 5 1* styles him ' the guardian over the treasure,' or ' treasury '). 9. Chargers . . knives] The words probably mean different kinds of vessels. CHAPTER 2 The Names and Number of those who returned I. The province] i.e. the Persian province of Judaea {b^). Had carried away] in .^i97 B.C. and 686 B.C. Every one unto his city] i.e. to the provincial towns. This process can only have taken place very gradually. 2. Zerubbabel] for his relation to Shesh- bazzar see on 1 § ; for his ancestry see on 3 2. The list of names that follows is repeated, with some variants, in Neh 7 """3. Jeshua] the high priest, called by Haggai ' Joshua.' The names in this V. number 1 1 , but in the corresponding passage in Neh (7*^) they amount to 12, and are probably intended to be Symbolic of the 12 tribes of Israel (cp. 6^'''), the number of which was recalled at a later date by the 12 he-goats offered as a sin-offering at the dedi- cation of the restored Tenaple (6^'''), and by the sacrifices described in 8 35 : cp. also the ex- pression 'all Israel' in 2'i'O. Nehemiah] not the Nehemiah of Neh 1 1. 3-9. The names in these vy. are those of families. 16. Of Ater of Hezekiah] i.e. the descendants of Ater through Hezekiah, one of his sons. 20-35. The names in these vv. are those of localities. 29. Nebo] not the Nebo in Reuben, E. of the Jordan (Nu3238), but situated in Judah, identified by some with Nob (Isal032), by others with the modern Nuba, S. of Jeru- salem. 31. The other Elam] in contrast to the Elam of v. 7. 36-39. Of the four priestly houses here named, one, Pashur, is not among the 24 enu- merated in 1 Ch 24 '^■i^, but is probably a branch of the house of Malchijah (1 Ch249) : see Neh 1112. 40. Seventy and four] The small number be- trays a backwardness on the part of the Levites similar to that which they manifested on a sub- sequent occasion : see 815. 42. The porters] they kept the Temple gates (1 Ch 9 1"). 43. The Nethinims] i.e. Temple servants : see Neh Si'', and on 1 Ch92. 55. The children of Solomon's servants] probably descendants of the native Canaanites employed by Solomon on his build- ings: see 1 K921. 59. Tel-melah, etc.] localities in Babylonia. 62. Sought their register, etc.] i.e. sought their entry among those who were enrolled as being Israelites of pure descent. As polluted] Only those were admitted to the priesthood Avho could prove their descent from Aaron, in accordance with Nu 31"^ 16 40. 63. The Tirshatha] i.e. Zerubbabel, the title meaning ' governor,' perhaps one subordinate to a ' satrap.' Eat of the most holy things] the privilege of the priesthood only (Nu 18 ^^^i^). Till there stood up, etc.] In early times the high priest used to enquire of the Lord by Urim and Thummim : see on Ex 28 30. 64. Forty and tv70 thousand, etc.] The total number here gi^en disagrees with the sum of the items, which only amounts to 29,818 (in Neh7'5'^, 31,089, the difference perhaps being due to textual errors). 272 2. 65 EZRA 4. 2 65. Singing men, etc.] These were minstrels employed on secular occasions (cp. Eccl2'i',8)^ distinct from the singers of v. 41, who were intended for the Temple. 69. Drams] The dram (Gk. drachma), like the pound {ma7ieh),yf3.?, a weight, equivalent to the Hebrew half -shekel. The pound contained 100 drams. Some authorities render the word translated ' dram ' by daric, a gold coin worth a guinea. A pound of silver was worth about £4. 70. Dwelt in their cities] i.e. occupied several of the provincial cities. Some scholars have held that only a few (if any) Jews returned to Jerusalem in the reign of Cyrus (whose decree in Ezr63-5 only directs the construction of the Temple, not the restoration of any exiles), and that the Temple was not begun as re- lated in c. 3, but built for the first time in the reign of Darius by the remnant of the people left in Judfea (Hagli2,i4 Zech86>ii). There seems, however, no adequate reason to question the substantial truth of Ezr 1-3. CHAPTER 3 The refounding of the Temple 1. The seventh month] i.e. Sept.-Oct. of (pro- bably) 537 B.C. 2. Jeshua] called in Hagl^ 'Joshua.' His father Jozadak had been carried into exile by Nebuchadnezzar (1 Ch6i5). Son of Shealtiel] In 1 Ch3i9 Zerubbabel is called the son of Pedaiah, the brother of Shealtiel (Salathiel). The discrepancy may be explained by the suppositions (a) that he was the real son of Pedaiah and the legal son of Shealtiel (Pedaiah having married Shealtiel's widow, according to the law of Dt255f-), (i) that he was grandson of Shealtiel and son of Pedaiah, (c) that he was grandson of both. But LXX of lCh3i9 makes him the son of Shealtiel (Salathiel), in agreement with the evidence of this passage and of Hag 1 1. Builded the altar] Possibly an effort had for a time been made to continue the worship of the Lord on the site of the Temple after its destruction (see Jer415) ; but the altar erected had apparently been overthrown. The Jews now proceeded to restore it, in order to have the privilege of public worship whilst the Temple was in course of reconstruc- tion. As it is . . Moses] Special sacrifices were enjoined for the 1st day of the 7th month (Nu29i-0). 3. Fear] i.e. of interruption from the enemy. 4. The feast of tabernacles] This be- o-an on the ir)th day of the 7th month, and lasted 7 days, followed by a solemn assembly on the 8th day : Nu29i2f. 5. Both of] better, ' and the offerings of ' : see Nu 28, 29. 7. And meat and drink, etc.] cp. 1 KS'J-ii regarding Solomon's Temple. To the sea of Joppa] RV 'to the sea, unto Joppa': cp. 2Ch2i6. 8. In the second year] probably 536 B.C. The second month would correspond to April-May. 9. Jeshua] not the ' Jeshua ' of v. 8 (who was high priest), but a Levite (240). 10. The ordinance of David] This is set forth in 1 Ch 25 1 f. 1 6 4-6. 1 1 . Together] R V ' one to another ' : i.e. antiphonally. 12. Wept] Though the younger among the people were filled with hope, now that the house of the Lord was once more established in their midst, the older, who could remember the earlier Temple, destroyed about 50 years before, wept at the contrast to it which was presented by the meanness of the new build- ing, and the inadequate resources available for its completion : cp. Hag 2 3 Zech4io. Some scholars have questioned whether the foundations of the Temple were really laid by Zerubbabel in the second year after the Return, as related in vv. 8-10, on the ground that Haggai and Zechariah seem to imply that it was not begun until the 2nd year of Darius Hystaspis (520 B.C.) : see Hag 2 is ZechS^. But the lan- guage of the prophets is sufficiently explained if it is assumed that only a commencement was made in 536, that the progress of the work was very soon suspended, and that the renewal of it in 520 was practically a fresh start, as indeed the book of Ezra itself declares it to have been (5 2). CHAPTER 4 Feud between the Jews and Samaritans This c. describes the desire of the Samari- tans to take part in the rebuilding of the Temple, and their successful opposition to the Jews on their request being refused. 1. The adversaries] The term is here anti- cipatory of the opposition subsequently dis- played. The people thus designated were the Samaritans, who, in the main, were the de- scendants of the immigrants who, to replace the Israelite population that had been deported after the fall of Samaria, had been introduced, first of all by Sargon, from Babylon, Cuthah, and other places (2 K 17 24), and also at a later date by Esarhaddon and Asshurbanipal (vv. 2, 10). But there must likewise have been mingled with them a certain number of native Israelites, who had been left behind in the country by their Assyrian conquerors. 2. We seek your God] A priest had been brought back from captivity to teach them how to fear the Lord (2K172s,3-2,33). We do sacrifice unto Him] so one reading of the Heb., followed by the LXX, the clause expanding the plea of common worship. Another read- ing is ' yet we do no sacrifice,' the argument implying that they had hitherto had no oppor- tunity of offering acceptable sacrifices, but 18 273 4.3 EZRA 5.1 now desired to do so at Jerusalem, the only lawful sanctuary. Esar-haddon] the successor of Sennacherib (681-668 B.C.). Assur] i.e. Assyria. 3. As king Cyrus, etc.] The fact that they were not authorised to extend to others the privileges conferred upon them by Cyrus was probably not the only motive that actuated the Jews. They no doubt felt that to admit to closer association such a hybrid community as the Samaritans, with their mixture of Hebrew and heathen rites of worship, would neutralise the impulse in the direction of purity of religion which they had derived from their experiences as exiles. 4. The people of the land] i.e. the Samaritans and the other hostile neighbours of the Jews ; the annoy- ances they caused are referred to in Zech 8 ^o. 5. The reign of Darius] i.e. Darius Hys- taspis, the third in succession to Cyrus, who was followed on the throne by Cambyses, Gomates (who personated Smerdis, and is con- sequently often styled Pseudo- Smerdis), and Darius, in the order named. Darius reigned from 521-485, so that the rebuilding of the Temple was interrupted for fifteen or sixteen years (536-520). 6. Ahasuerus] i.e. Xerxes (485-464), the successor of Darius Hystaspis. 7. Artaxerxes] i.e. Artaxerxes Longimanus (464-424), the successor of Xerxes. Since both Xerxes and Artaxerxes lived after Darius Hystaspis, to whom v. 24 probably refers, and to whose reign the contents of c. 5 belong, the section, vv. 6-23, departs from the chrono- logical succession of events either in conse- quence of some accidental misplacement, or because the writer has in view a comprehen- sive summary of the several occasions when opposition was offered to the Jews by their enemies. The charge made in this section against the Jews is not the building of the Temple (the subject of which is resumed in V. 24 and c. 5), but the fortification of Jeru- salem (v. 12), either by Nehemiah (as related in the book of Neh) or by a body of Jews who came from Babylon before him, perhaps those who accompanied Ezra (see c. 7). Some, who consider the chronological sequence in this c. to be unbroken, identify the ' Darius ' of v. 24 with Darius Nothus (423-405) ; whilst others, who take vv. 6-23 to be a detailed explana- tion of the opposition summarised in v. 5, identify Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes with Cam- byses and Gomates, the two kings who came between Cyrus and Darius Hystaspis. 7. In the Syrian tongue, etc.] RV ' written in the Syrian (Aramean) character^ and set forth in the Syrian (Aramean) tongue.'' Ara- mean was the chief medium of communi- cation between the different peoples of the East : cp. 2 K 18 26. 8. Rehum . . Shimshai] It is not clear whether vv. 7, 8 refer to more than one letter sent on different occasions by the enemies of the Jews, or to a single letter written by the persons named in v. 7 (who were presumably Samaritans) and communicated through the Persian officials named in v. 8. 9. Dinaites] The identification of most of the peoples mentioned in this v. is uncertain. The Susanchites were the natives of Shushan, the capital of Elam. 10. On this side] E.V 'beyond' (and so in vv. 11, 16, 53,6 §36)^ re- garded from the point of view of the Persian court. II. At such a time] RY ' and so forth ' (and so in vv. 11 and 17). 12. Joined the foundations] B,V ' repaired the foundations.' 1 3. So thou shalt endamage] R V ' in the end it will endamage.' 14. We have . . palace] lit. ' we have salted the salt of the palace ' : cp. the term ' salary,' from salarium, ' money given to provide salt.' 15. The book of the records] For such see 6 2. A rebellious city] This, so far as it was true, applied to Jerusalem only under Baby- lonian rule (see 2K24i'20). But the circum- stances of the time rendered the walling of the city suspicious, since Egypt, which lay so near, had recently been in revolt. 24. The second year . . Darius] 520 B.C., if, as is most probable, Darius Hystaspis is meant, as in v. 5 (the closing words of which are here repeated). But some suppose Darius Nothus (423-405) to be intended. CHAPTER 5 The building op the Temple recommenced This c. gives an accoimt of a renewed at- tempt to rebuild the Temple, and recites a letter from the Persian officials in Judasa to the Persian court to enquire whether the Jews had leave to proceed with the work. I. Then the prophets] The hostility of their neighbours (4*'^), coiipled with disastrous seasons (Hag 1 1*^> ^^ 2 1^), had so discouraged the people that they said ' The time is not come for the Lord's house to be built ' (Hag 1 2). Out of this despondency they were roused by two prophets, whose presence amongst them must of itself have convinced them that the Spirit of the Lord was once more with them. Haggai] The prophecies of Haggai were all delivered in the second year of Darius. In them he upbraided the people for building substantial houses for themselves whilst neg- lecting the House of God ; attributed to such neglect the prevalent scarcity, which was God's judgment upon them ; and when the work was once again taken in hand by Zerubbabel, pre- dicted that the glory of the second Temple would exceed that of the first. 274 5. 2 EZRA 7. 1 Zechariah] The prophecies of Zechariah (who was really son of Berechiah and grandson of Iddo) were delivered at intervals between the second and fourth years of Darius. In them he consoled his countrymen for their afflictions, denounced God's wrath upon the nations who had oppressed Jerusalem, en- couraged with hopes of a great future both Zerubbabel and Joshua in their work of re- building the Temple, and exhorted the people to truth, justice, and mercy. In the name . . even unto them] RM ' in the name of the God of Israel which was upon them ' : cp. Jer 14'-' (which is lit. ' thy name is called upon us '). 2. Began to build] It had really been begun sixteen years before (3^'-), but the work having been suspended, it had to be recommenced. 3. Tatnai] perhaps the satrap of all the Persian possessions W. of the Euphrates (the ' river '). 4. Said we] better, with the LXX, ' said they.' 5. They could not cause them to cease] Tatnai could not venture to arrest a work which was alleged to have the sanction of Cyrus (v. 13), though he cautiously sent to Persia to have the statement verified. Till the matter came, etc.] RV ' till the matter should come to Darius, and then answer should be returned.' 13. Cyrus the king of Babylon] The king of Persia included Babylon within his domi- nions : cp. Nehl3'5. 14. Sheshbazzar] i.e. Zerubbabel : see on 1 §. CHAPTER 6 Completion and Dedication of the Temple This c. relates the authorisation of the con- struction of the Temple, and the completion of the work. 2. Achmetha] i.e. Ecbatana in Media. 3. Threescore cubits, etc.] The dimensions here given, which considerably exceed those of Solomon's Temple (IK 6 2), perhaps marked the limits beyond which the builders were not to go. 4, With three rows, etc.] cp. 1K6 36^ which suggests that these materials were used in the construction of the Court, not of the edifice, of the Temple. Out of the king's house] i.e. from the king's resources : cp. 7'-^o. 6. Now therefoi'e^ etc.] At this v. the decree of Darius begins. 7. The governor of the Jews] i.e. Zerubbabel (Sheshbazzar), who was subordinate to Tatnai (5 3). 10. Sacrifices of sweet savours] cp. GnS^i Ex'29is. 12. To alter] i.e. the decree. 14. Artaxerxes] The Temple was really completed in the reign of Darius (v. 15), but Artaxerxes (464-424 B.C.) bestowed treasure upon it (see c. 7). 15. Adar] February-March. The sixth year] i.e. 516 B.C. The Temple, which was begun for the second time in the second year of Darius, 520 B.C. (Hag 1 1*, 15)^ had taken more than four years to finish. No complete description of it is forthcoming, but some information respecting it can be derived from allusions. If the measurements given in the decree of Cyrus (6 3) were actually adopted, it must have been larger than that of Solomon (1 K 6 -), but otherwise it was much inferior to it (312 Hag 2 3). Like the earlier structure, it consisted of a Holy of Holies and a Holy Place, before each of which hung a vail (1 Mac 4 51) ; whilst it had in front of it more than one court (1 Mac 4 38, 48). The Holy of Holies was empty (the ark being lost) ; but the Holy Place contained the golden altar of incense, the candlestick, and the table of shew- bread, together with various vessels (1 Mac 1 22). In one of the courts was the altar of burnt- offering, constructed of ' whole stones ' (1 Mac 4'*'''); and round the Temple building there were chambers, for the use of the priests and the storage of provisions (Ezr 8 29 10 ^ NehlO^* 135 1 Mac 4 38). 17. Twelve he goats] The number (see Nu 7 87) was representative of the twelve tribes of Israel, though only a few of them had returned from their exile and were present at the festival. 20. For the priests, etc.] better, ' for the priests had purified themselves, and the Levites, as one man, were all of them pure.' Killed the passover for all] i.e. the Levites, who in Hezekiah's time killed the passover lambs only for such as were not clean, now killed them for all alike, both priests and laity. 21. All such as had separated, etc.] cp. 1011 Neh 1 0 28. The allusion is to the Israelites left in the country when the flower of the population was removed by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, who had become contaminated by the surrounding heathen, but now detached themselves from them. 22. The king of Assyria] i.e. Darius, whose predecessors had conquered Babylon, the mistress of Assyria. CHAPTER 7 The Journey of Ezra to Jerusalem I. Now after .. Artaxerxes] The interval of time here implied amounted to more than fifty years, from the sixth year of Darius (516 B.C.) to the seventh yeai* of Artaxerxes Longimanus (468 B.C.). Between the reign of Darius and Artaxerxes thei'e intervened the reign of Xerxes (485-464 B.C.), to which belong the incidents related in the book of Esther. In the early years of his successor Artaxerxes an effort was made to surround Jerusalem, with a wall (see 4 12), though with no success. Probably to the same period should be assigned the ministry of the prophet Malachi. From his writings it may be gathered that the religious and moral condition of the Jewish community 275 7.6 EZRA 8. 18 at Jerusalem was very unsatisfactory. The people were divided into two sections, the one scrupulous in their religious duties, the other sceptical and indifferent (Mai 3 13). The latter party had contracted marriages with heathen women (211); oppression and immorality were prevalent (3 5) ; the Temple services were neglected (16-1*) ; and the maintenance of the priesthood stinted (38-10). Against the con- tinuance of these evils the prophet raised a strong protest, denouncing divine judgment upon the offenders, but promising that God's blessing would attend them upon their refor- mation (31041-3). Ezra . . Seraiah] Ezra was a descendant of the Seraiah who was chief priest in the reign of the last king of Judah (2K2518). His genealogy as given in vv. 1-5 is abbreviated by the omission not only of all the generations separating him from Seraiah, but also of many of those between Seraiah and Aaron : cp. lCh63-i5. 6. This Ezra] Ezra, as his history shows, was a devout and zealous ecclesiastic, of passionate temperament, strong religious faith, and rigid principles, who, though he met with temporary failure, in the end permanently influenced the thoughts and habits of his countrymen. A ready scribe] Ezra belonged to the class of literary men, who, being acquainted with the art of writing, had, in the time when the nation was independent, furnished its statesmen with their secretaries (2S817 IK 43 2K1818), but now that its political life had ceased, were students of the Law, which they copied, and interpreted (cp. NehS^). All his request] The nature of this is implied in the letter of Artaxerxes (vv. 12-26). 9. Began he to go up] better (by a slight correction), 'he fixed the going up.' The actual journey was not begun till the twelfth day (8 3i). The first month] i.e Nisan. ( = Mar.- April). The fifth month] i.e. Ab ( = July- August). The journey, which lasted some three months and a half, was probably made by way of the Euphrates to Carchemish, then across to Hamath, and so southward along the Orontes. The distance was about 900 m. 10. To teach in Israel] Ezra, though like Zerubbabel he led a body of settlers to Jerusa- lem, is never styled ' Tirshatha ' (as Zerubbabel is in 263), and his mission appears to have had purely religious ends in view. The Jews who remained in Babylon, and who were surrounded by a population wholly heathen, were marked off from their neighbours by a much deeper line of cleavage than were the Jews of Pales- tine, and a higher standard of religious devotion prevailed amongst them : consequently when the religious laxity of the people of Jerusalem became known at Babylon, Ezra was sent to enquire into it (v. 14), to introduce reforms. and, by authority of the Persian king, to en- force the observance of the Law by means of penalties (v. 26). 12. King of kings] The same title was used by the kings of Babylon (Ezk 26^ Dan 2 3V). Per- fect peace^ and at such a time] better, ' the whole ' (of the usual heading) ' and so forth.' 13. His priests] RV ' their (i.e. Israel's) priests.' 14. His seven counsellors] In Esth 1 1* mention is made of seven princes ' who saw the king's face and sat the first in his kingdom.' 16. Canst find] i.e. obtain from the native Babylonians and Persians : cp. 1 *> ^. 22. Talents . . measures . . baths] The ' tal- ent ' used by the early Hebrews weighed 96 lb., the Persian talent was 66 lb. A ' measure ' (Heb. cor) contained 83 gallons, a ' bath ' a little more than 8 gallons. The wheat, wine, oil, and salt were required for the sacrificial offerings: see Ex29*0Lv2i3. 23. Why should there be wrath, etc.] The piety of the Persian kings led them to seek the favour of the deities worshipped by the different nationalities under their sway: cp. 6 10. 26. Banishment] or exclusion from the congregation: cp.lO^. 27. Blessed he the LORD, etc.] This intro- duces Ezra's thanksgiving for the king's letter. His gi'atitude to GTod is conspicuous throughout the passages in this book which proceed directly from him (e.g. 8 18; 22, 3i), and is reflected in the account of the historian (7^.9, etc.). CHAPTER 8 Particulars of Ezra's Company I. Them that went up] The sum of the numbers given is 1,496. Only males are men- tioned, and if no women accompanied them, the absence of such doubtless increased the tendency that the people manifested to inter- marry with heathen families. 2. Hattush] This should be connected closely with the following clause, Hattush being grandson of Shecaniah: lCh322. 3. Of the sons of Pha- rosh] Most of the families in this list also appear (with some variations) in c. 2 and Neh 7 as having contributed members to the body of immigrants that accompanied Zerubbabel in the reign of Cyrus. 13. Of the last sons of Adonikam] perhaps those who belonged to the youngest branch of Adonikam's house. 15. Ahava] This was the name both of a town and of a river (v. 21) in Babylonia, on the road to Palestine. None of the sons of Levi] Only a small number of Levites had previously accompanied Zerubbabel (236). 17. Casiphia] unidentified, but presumably near Babylon. ^4;/(7to his brethren the Nethi- nims] The text is defective, and should probably be corrected to ' and to his brethren (i.e. the Levites) and to the Nethinim.' 18. Of the sons of Mahli] Either the name of the ' man of understanding ' has dropped out of 276 8. 22 EZRA 10.44 the text, or else this expression itself represents a proper name, Ish-sechel : so RM. 22. The enemy in the way] probably such marauders as were accustomed to attack defenceless travellers: cp. v. 31. 24. Shere- biah, Hashabiah] These were Levites, not priests (Neh 122-1), go that the individuals selected were twenty-four in all, twelve priests and twelve Levites : cp. v. 30. 26. Six hun- dred and fifty talents, etc.] The value of the ofEerings mentioned in this and the following V. is so great (approaching a million sterling), that exaggeration or textual corruption may be suspected. 30. Took . . silver] i.e. took the silver weighed out to them (v. 26). 33. By the hand of] RV ' into the hand of ' : the persons named being those with whom the silver brought from Babylon was deposited. 34. By number . . of every one] RV ' the whole by number and by weight.' 36. The king's commissions] i.e. the directions intended for the royal treasurers (7-1). Lieutenants] lit. ' satraps.' CHAPTER 9 Ezra's Indignation at Intermarriages WITH THE Heathen I. The Canaanites, etc.] In the Law it was only with the various Canaanite nations that marriage was altogether forbidden (Ex 3412-16 Dt?!"^). David was descended from a union between an Israelite and a Moabitess (Ruth 1 * 41"), and Solomon had married an Egyptian princess without reproach (1X3^). But the principle which excluded alliances with certain nations was doubtless felt to be applicable to others also, and Solomon's marriages with women of the Moabites and Ammonites had certainly been attended with calamitous results (IK 11 1.2). 3. Plucked off the hair] Baldness artificially produced was a sign of mourning : Isa 1 6 2 2212 Jerie*^ AmSi'J Job 1 20. 8. A nail] a figure for security : cp. Isa 22 23. In his holy place] i.e. Jerusalem : cp. Ps 24 ^ Isa 56 "^ 57 1^. 9. We loere bondmen] RV ' we are bond- men ' : i.e. subjects of the Persians : cp. Neh 9^6. A wall] i.e. protection (RM ' a fence '). I I. The filthiness of the people] The iniquity of the Canaanite peoples, whose land Israel had taken in possession, is alluded to in Gn 15 1*5 Dt95 : cp. also 1K2126. 13. iS«c/; deliverance] RV ' such a remnant.' 15. For we . . escaped] better, 'for we are left but a remnant that is escaped.' God's righteousness had been vindicated by the almost complete destruction of the guilty people ; but His mercy had been manifested in the survival of a few who were now imperilling themselves by fresh oiiences. CHAPTER 10 The Foreign Wives are divorced 3. According to the law] see Dt 24 1-2, which required a bill of divorcement. 5. The chief priests] RV ' the chiefs of the priests ' : see 2Ch36i-t. 6. Johanan] If the Eliashib meant is the contemporary of Nehemiah (13 ■*>'^) and Jo- hanan was really his grandson (not his son, see Neh 1222), ije must have lived a long while after Ezra, and consequently the description of the chamber, here alluded to, as the chamber of Johanan applies not to the time of Ezra, but to that of the compiler of the book. But it is possible that another Johanan is intended. 8. Forfeited] lit. ' placed under the ban.' Goods that were ' banned ' were brought into the treasury of the Lord (Josh 6 1^). For the authority under which these proceedings were undertaken see 7 26. g_ fhe ninth month] i.e. Chisleu ( = Nov. -Dec). In Palestine rain falls regularly -in December, and on this occasion was perhaps heavier than usual. 13. We are many, etc.] better, ' we have gi-eatly trans- gressed.' 14. Let now our rulers . . stand] i.e. as a committee to see into the question of the divorces. 15. Were employed about] RV ' stood up against.' The opiDosition was not really strong. 16, 17. The tenth month . . the first] i.e. Tebeth (= Dec-Jan.) and Nisan (= Mar.- Apr.). 18. Of the guilty there were 17 priests, 10 Levites, singers and porters, and 86 laymen, making a total of 113. 25. Of Israel] i.e. of the laity, as contrasted with the priests and Levites. 44. Some of them, etc.] The text is obscure and perhaps corrupt : the LXX renders ' and had begotten children by them ' ; whilst lEsdr936 has 'and they put them away with their children.' The harsh measures here described were adopted by Ezra and his supporters owing to the necessity of preserving the distinctive faith of their race from being contaminated by, and finally lost in, the heathendom that surrounded it. A small and feeble community, deprived of national independence, was peculiarly ex- posed to external influences ; and Ezra might well fear that the proneness to idolatry from which his countrymen had been purified by the exile might revive, if marriage alliances were permitted with the neighbouring peoples, whose women, in the words of Malachi (2ii), were ' the daughters of a strange god.' Nothing further is related of Ezra himself after this attempt to prevent mixed marriages until his reappearance in company with Nehe- miah in 444 (Neh 8 1) ; and nothing is known for certain respecting the condition of affairs in Judaea between the last events here recorded and the arrival of Nehemiah at Jerusalem, as 277 10.44 EZRA— NEHEMIAH 1.3 narrated in Neh 2. But one section of this book (4<5-23) shows that in the reign of Arta- xerxes an endeavour was made to rebuild the fortifications of the city by a body of Jews who had recently arrived there (v. 12), and it is natural to connect this body with those who accompanied Ezra. The offence given to the peoples with whom intermarriage had lately been prohibited would render it desirable to secure the safety of the reforming party and it may well have been to them that the scheme for surrounding the place with a wall was due. As has been seen, it was frustrated through information being sent respecting it to the Persian authorities ; and if Ezra was in any way thought to be responsible for it, it is easily intelligible that his influence was in consequence impaired, and he himself forced into the obscurity in which the history leaves him. NEHEMIAH INTRODUCTION 1. Character and Contents. The book of Nehemiah, as has been already noted, probably forms part of a single work embracing Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1, 2 Chronicles, and its date, therefore, is that of the larger whole (perhaps about 330-320 B.C.). Its contents are separ- ated from those of Ezra by an interval of thir- teen years, so that the rule which the writer has previously observed of confining his history to an account of a few critical periods is again followed here. The record comprises Nehe- miah's visit to Jerusalem in 445, his repair of the city walls, and the measures taken by him to secure obedience to the Law. The latest date in his life mentioned in the narrative is the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes, 433 B.C. (514). 2. Sources. The chief sources referred to, or implied, in the book are («) the memoirs of Nehemiah (li-T^ 1227-43 134-31). (j) geneal- ogies and registers, partly incorporated in the memoirs just described, and partly reproduced by the compiler (3, 76-73 101-27 121-26). 3. Value. The book of Nehemiah carries the history of the Jewish people down to a later date than any other of the avowedly his- torical works in the canon of the OT. Its interest is manifold, since it describes not only the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, but the reconstruction of the Jewish ecclesiastical organisation ; and as an authority for the events it relates, is first-rate, since it is largely based upon contemporary materials. And its value is augmented by its vivid portrayal of the noble character of Nehemiah himself. His career presents an exceptional combination of strong self-reliance with humble trust in God, of pene- trating shrewdness with perfect simplicity of purpose, of persistent prayerfulness with the most energetic activity ; and for religious faith and practical sagacity he stands conspicuous among the illustrious personages of the Bible. CHAPTEE 1 III News from Jerusalem. Nehemiah's Prayer I . The words] better, ' the history.' Some thirteen or fourteen years separate the visit of Nehemiah to Jerusalem, recorded in this book, from that of Ezra which is related in Ezr7. Nehemiah] Nehemiah, as stated in v. 11, occupied an important position at the Persian court, seems to have been a favourite with the king, and probably possessed considerable wealth (Si'*^-). Unlike Ezra (who was of priestly family and a student), he was a lay- man and a man of action. His career shows that he was self-reliant (2^2)^ energetic (chs. 3, 4), shrewd (c. 6), and masterful (c. 13) ; but his vigour and determination were directed not to the promotion of his own interests, but to the service of his countrymen, for whom he made great sacrifices. His religious faith was strong, and his prayerfulness is repeatedly illus- trated in the narrative : see 1^ 2^ 44>9, etc. The month Chisleu] i.e. November-Decem- ber. In the twentieth year] i.e. of Artaxerxes Longimanus, to whom reference is made in Ezr47 71. The year intended is probably reckoned to begin with the month of his acces- sion, not with the first calendar month Nisan, since the events that happened in Chisleu, the ninth month, are related before those that occurred in Nisan, 2i. The date is 445. But some scholars regard twentieth in this c. as an error for 'nineteenth' (446 B.C.). Shushan] i.e. Susa, in Elam. The term palace is strictly ' fortress,' or ' castle.' 2. Which were left, etc.] i.e. the Jews dwelling at Jerusalem. 3. The province] Judaea was noAv a province of the Persian empire (EzrS^). The wall. . broken down] This is most naturally explained by the supposition that some recent attempt had been made to fortify Jerusalem, which 278 1.4 NEHEMIAH 3. 22 had been forcibly stopped ; and such an attempt seems described in Ezri^'-^s. But some autho- rities suppose the allusion to be to the destruc- tion of the walls by the Babylonians in 686, some 140 years before. 4. Prayed] Nehemiah's prayer consists of a confession of sin, an appeal to God's promises, and an entreaty for help in the undertaking he contemplated. CHAPTER 2 Nehemiah's Eesolve to rebuild Jerusalem This c. gives an account of Nehemiah's request for leave to rebuild Jerusalem, his arrival there, and his survey of the ruined walls, which it was decided to restore. 1. Wine loas before him] LXX has ' wine was before me,' implying that it was Nehe- miah's turn to act as cup-bearer (the king having several). This would explain why Artaxerxes had not observed his servant's sad- ness during the four months that had elapsed since the arrival of the news from Jerusalem. 2. Sore afraid] i.e. for the success of his in- tended request. 6. I set him a time] Nehe- miah's absence seems to have lasted twelve years (S^*). 7. Convey me over] RV ' let me pass through,' i.e. the Persian provinces be- tween Shushan and Jud^a. 8. The king's forest] RM ' park,' identified by some with certain gardens at Etham, some 6 m. from Jerusalem, in which (according to Josephus) Solomon used to drive. The palace] RV ' the castle ' : and so in 7 2. This was situated on the N. of the Temple (the house), and sub- sequently called (by Herod) ' Antonia.' 9. Captains of the army] Nehemiah as Tir- shatha or governor (8^ 10 1) was invested with civil and not, like Ezra, ecclesiastical authority only ; and consequently was attended by a body-guard : contrast Ezr8-^. 10. The Horon- ite] so named either from Beth-horon or Horonaim. Nothing is known of Sanballat beyond what is related in this book. Heard of it^ Nehemiah on his way to Jerusalem had probably passed through the Samaritan colony of which Sanballat was leader (4 1-3). 12. At Jerusalem] RY ' for Jerusalem.' 13. Viewed the walls of Jerusalem] The topography of ancient Jerusalem is too obscure to admit of the various parts of its walls being identified with certainty, but ' the valley gate ' from which Nehemiah issued on his survey was at the SW. corner of the SW. hill, and opened into the valley of Hinnom. From it he pursued his course first along the south wall, and next along the eastern wall, up the side of the ' brook ' (v. 15), i.e. the Kidron. 14. There was noplace] IChe ground was so rough and encumbered with fallen masonry that he could not follow the line of wall closely. 15. Turned back] presumably along the N. wall, so as to make the circuit of the city. 19. Geshem] called ' Gashmu ' in 6''; he was doubtless an Arab sheikh. Will ye rebel ?] The same construction had been put upon the Jews' proceedings on a previous occasion : Ezr4i3. 20. Ye have no portion] Nehemiah's words had reference to the desire which the Samaritans once had to unite with the Jews (Ezr4i-5). CHAPTER 3 Particulars respecting the Rebuilding I. Then, etc.] For the purposes of repair the wall was parcelled out between a number of working parties consisting of various important families, the inhabitants of certain towns, and diif erent professional and trading bodies. The description of the several sections of the wall begins near the Temple at the sheep-gate, through which the flocks used to be driven for sacrifice. The writer's purpose in enumerat- ing all who undertook to rebuild these sections is to put on record the names of those who devoted their labour and their substance to restoring the city which protected Jehovah's sanctuary, and to challenge the emulation of later generations. 5. Their Lord] better, ' their lord,' i.e. Nehemiah. 7. Unto the, etc.] RV ' which appertained to the,' etc. Part of Mizpah was under the direct control of the Persian officer who governed the region W. of the Euphrates, whilst part was under Jewish rule (v. 15). 8. The son of o/te of the apothecaries] better, ' one of the perfumers.' They fortified] RM ' they left,' meaning that the builders at this point left the fortifications untouched because they were in good repair, or that they de- parted in their reconstruction from the exist- ing ground-plan. 9. Of the half part] RV ' of half the district,' the ruler of the other half being the Shallum of V. 12. II. The other piece] RV 'another portion ' : and so in vv. 19, 20, 21, 24, 27, 30. 14. Part of] RV 'the district of ': and so in vv. 15, 16, 17, 18. 15. The pool of Siloah] i.e. the pool of Siloam. The stairs] These were steps leading to the pool, perhaps from the Temple hill : cp. 12^7. 16. The sepulchres of David] i.e. the tombs of David's descendants and successors : cp. 2 Ch 32 33. These were near the Temple (Ezk 43 7, 8), probably NW. of the city. The pool that was made] perhaps the pool alluded to in 2 K 20'-^. The house of the mighty] perhaps the barracks of the soldiery. 17. In his part] RV ' for (i.e. representing) his district ' (of Keilah). 19. The armoury] the site of 'the house of the forest of Lebanon' (1K1017,21 Isa228). 22. The plain] better, 'The Plain,' the 279 3. 23 NEHEMIAH 5. 11 specific name of part of the Jordan valley (GnlSiO). 23. After him . . After him] EY ' After them . . After them.' 26. Moreover] RV ' now,' the v. being par- enthetical. Ophel] the southern extremity of the Temple hill. The water gate] leading to the spring of Gihon in the gorge of the Kidron. 28. The horse gate] This, like the 'water gate,' faced eastward (JerSl'^o^. 31. The goldsmith's son] better, ' a member of the body of goldsmiths.' And of the mer- chants] better, ' and (after him repaired) the merchants.' 32. The sheep gate] The cir- cuit of the walls ended with the original starting-point (v. 11). CHAPTER 4 The Machinations of the Enemies of THE Jews I. Sanballat] His irritation at Nehemiah's arrival (2 ^^) was increased by the work accom- plished by the latter. 2. Fortify themselves] The same word as that used in 3^, with a like uncertainty of meaning. Some render ' will they (the Persian authorities) let them alone ? ' Will they sacrifice ?] i.e. in the hope of obtain- ing supernatural assistance. 4. In the land of captivity] Nehemiah's desire for the confusion of his enemies not unnaturally took the form of a wish that they might experience the fate which he and his countrymen had under- gone. 6. Was joined . . thereof] The circuit of the wall was completed and raised to half the intended height. 7. The walls . . made up] RV ' the repair- ing of the walls . . went forward.' 9. We made our prayer . . a watch] Nehemiah and his fol- lowers, whilst commending themselves in prayer to God, took every precaution within their power. 10. Judah] i.e. the Jews. 12. From all places, etc.] perhaps, ' from all places, Ye must return to us,' this being an appeal from the Jews of the neighbouring towns to their fellow-citizens who had gone to work at Jerusalem, summoning them to return for their protection. But LXX has ' From all places they come up against us.' 13. On the higher places] RV ' in the open (i.e. exposed) places ' : where they could be seen to be on guard. 15. We returned] This implies that the enemy for a time abandoned the design described in v. 11. 16. Haber- geons] RV ' coats of mail.' 17. With those that laded] RV ' laded themselves ' : i.e. laboured vigorously. Every one . . v^eapon] This clause probably refers to the second of the two classes named in the beginning of the v., viz. those that bare burdens. These with one hand carried materials and with the other held a missile. The ' builders ' (v. 18), on the contrary, who had to use both hands for their work, only wore swords. 21. Half of them] This refers back to the servants mentioned in v. 16. 23. Men of the guard] i.e. the Persian guard attached to Nehemiah as governor : cp. 2 9. Saving that , . washing] RV renders, ' every one loetit with his weapon to the water ' : whilst others sug- gest, ' every one sent for water ' ; but the text is too defective to be translated with certainty : the LXX omits the clause. CHAPTER 5 Nehemiah's Measures in alleviation OF Poverty I. The people] i.e. the commons (as con- trasted with the nobles and rulers, v. 7). These had neglected their own interests to labour gratuitously on the fortifications, and now in the time of dearth were feeling the pinch of want. 2. Therefore we take up corn] better, ' we must get corn.' The language is that of desperate men, compelled by necessity to accept the harsh conditions imposed by those to whom they had recourse for the corn they required. 4. The king's tribute] The common people were not exempted from paying taxes to the Persian king, like the priests and other ministers of the Temple (Ezr72'i NehO^r). 5. Our flesh, etc.] i.e. we are as much Jews as the creditors to whom we have sold our children. Bondage] The sale of children to defray a debt was recognised in the Mosaic Law : see Ex212-7 Dtl5i2f. ; cp. also 2K4i. 7. Ye exact usury] Usury was prohibited by the Law in connexion with loans made to fellow-Israelites (Ex 22 25 Dt23i9) ; but the Jews doubtless interpreted the prohibition with the same latitude as Christians have done the similar command in the Gospel (LkG^^). The Law probably had in view cases where money was borrowed under the pressure of misfortune, not as a help in commercial ventures ; and the like considerateness towards the necessitous is incumbent upon Christians. 8. Have redeemed . . heathen] probably dur- ing Nehemiah's residence in Persia. 9. The reproach] the humiliation they had under- gone in consequence of their failure to walk in the fear of God. ID. Might exact] RV ' do lend . . on usury.' Nehemiah, to conciliate those whom he wished to persuade, admitted that he (probably in the persons of his relatives and dependents) had been guilty of the same conduct against which he was protesting. 11. Their lands, etc.] These had been given in pledge, and, if unre- deemed, were retained by the creditor. The hundredth jxirt'] usually regarded as one per cent, a month, and so equivalent to twelve per cent, a year. The expression restore, in 280 5. 1% NEHEMIAH 8. 11 connexion with the interest, probably means 'cease to require': cp. v. 12. Corn, wine, oil] i.e. interest paid in kind. i2. Took an oath of them] i.e. took of the money-lenders an oath which the priests administered to them. 13. Shook my lap] For similar sym- bolic acts cp. IK 22 11 Jer272 28 10. 14. From the twentieth . . unto the two and thirtieth] i.e. from 445-433 B.C. The fact that Artaxerxes seems to have been unwilling to part with his cup-bearer for a long period, and stipulated for a date by which he was to return (2 "5), makes it rather surprising that he should have thus been absent from court for twelve years ; but it is to be assumed that his leave of absence was extended by the king. The bread of the governor] i.e. the supplies due to the Persian governor from the people. 16. Neither bought we] better, ' neither got we ' (by foreclosing mortgages). All my servants] He did not retain them to attend to himself or to his own interests. The whole conduct of Nehemiah was that of a warm- hearted, generous man. CHAPTER 6 Attempts of Sanballat to hinder the completion of the walls 2. Ono] near Lod (Ezr233), now Kefr 'Ana, some 25 m. from Jerusalem. 5. An open letter] in order that its contents might reach and intimidate others. 6. According to these words] better, ' and so forth ' (and so in V. 7), the quotation from the letter in v. 6 ending with king. 10. Who loas shut up] perhaps meaning 'ceremonially unclean': cp. Jer36S. She- maiah probably hoped that Nehemiah would conclude that only for the most urgent reasons would he under such circumstances make the proposal described. Within the temple] i.e. to seek Asylum there (as Joab fled to the tent of the Lord, 1K2-«). ii. Being a.s I ani] Only the priests might enter the Temple buildings. 15. Elul] The 6th month (August- September) of 445 B.C. 18. Arah . . Meshul- 1am] see Ezr25 NehS^*. CHAPTER 7 A List of those who returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel 2. Hanani] after carrying information to Nehemiah respecting the condition of Jeru- salem (1 2), he must have returned with him to Judaea. 3. Until the sun be hot] By this time the mass of the citizens would be astir. While they stand by] RV ' while they (i.e. the sentries) stand on j/uard.' 4. The houses loere not builded] i.e. the area of the city was not yet fully occupied with buildings. 5. Reckoned by genealogy] It was proposed to take a census of all the persons of Jewish descent, with a view to transferring part of the country population to the capital. Par- ticulars derived from such a census appear in 11'**. Here, however, the subject is for a time dropped, and the register that follows relates to the period of Zerubbabel (v. 7). 7-73. The names here enumerated are re- peated, with certain small differences, from the list contained in Ezr2. 70. Basons] used in connexion with the sacrifices. Five hundred and thirty priests' garments] For this should perhaps be substituted ' five hundred pounds of silver and thirty priests' garments,' a change which would make the quantities named in vv. 70-72 approximate closely to those given in Ezr2''9. 73. And when the seventh month came] These words in RV are connected with the subject of c. 8, the seventh month (Tishri) being probably the one immediately following the sixth (Elul) mentioned in 6^^. CHAPTER 8 The Reading of the Law by Ezra 1. The street] RV ' the broad place ' : and so in vv. 3, 16. The water gate] This prob- ably led to the spring of Gihon (the Virgin's spring). 2. Ezra] It has been argued in the note on EzrlO-i^ that the effort to fortify Jerusalem described in Ezr4'3-23 ^as made whilst Ezra was present there, and that the failure of it destroyed for a time his influence among his countrymen. The interval that elapsed be- tween the destruction of the newly-built walls and Nehemiah's arrival was probably not long, and during it Ezra may have remained in retirement at Jerusalem. Some, however, have supposed that after effecting the reforms described in Ezr9 and 10, he returned at once to Babylon, and only revisited Palestine after Nehemiah's arrival there. The absence of his name amongst those who helped to build the walls of Jerusalem (c. 3) has been urged in favour of this view ; but there would be little reason to distinguish his co-operation from that of the other priests (3 1). To bring . . of Moses] The teaching of the Law was the purpose of Ezra's journey to Jerusalem some fourteen years before. 2. The first day of the seventh month] This was one of the festivals (cp. v. 9) of the New Moon, termed in the Law the Feast of Trum- pets, and kept with special rites : Lv 23^4, 25 Nu29i-''. 7. And the Levites] omit and. 8. Gave the sense] i.e. with such additional explanation as was required for the people to understand what was read. 9. The Tirshatha] i.e. governor. The same title was borne by Zerubbabel (Ezr203). AH the people wept] from a consciousness of their transgressions which the reading of the Law had awakened. 11. Hold your peace] in order 281 8. 14 NEHEMIAH 10. 38 to guard against uttering words ill-suited to a holy day. 14. Should dwell in booths] This command in connexion with the Feast of Tabernacles (kept on the fifteenth day of the seventh month) occurs only in Lv2342. 15. The mount] better, ' the hill-country.' Pine branches] RV ' branches of wild olives ' (or oleaster). 1 6. The roof of his house] This was flat, and available for walking or sleeping : cp. Dt2-28 1S925 2S112 1622. The gate of Ephraim] in the N. wall, facing the former kingdom of Ephraim. 17. Since the days of Jeshua] i.e. of Joshua. The exceptional feature in this observance of the ancient Feast of Tabernacles seems to have been the dwelling in ' booths,' though the dwelling in ' tents ' had been previously prac- tised (cp. Hosl2^). Either the command of Lv 23 •*2 had been disregarded, or it was a modi- fication of the older usage which had only recently been incorporated in the Law. CHAPTER 9 The renewal of the Covenant 4. Stairs] lit. ' ascent ' : probably the pulpit of wood mentioned in 8 *. Bani . . Bani] One of the two names is probably an error for 'Binnui ' : cp. 12 8. 6. Thou, etc.] Before this LXX inserts ' And Ezra said.' The prayer that follows first recalls God's early mercies to the nation, the unworthy return made for such, the divine forbearance, the people's renewed offences, and their consequent punishment ; it next acknowledges the justice of the chastisement undergone ; and it concludes with a solemn promise of future amendment. But though it is a confession of national sins and ends with a national covenant, the sequence of thought it presents might well be followed in private devotions. All their host] i.e. the stars : cp. Gnl2 Isa4026. The host of heaven] i.e. the angels : cp. IK 2219. 7. Didst choose] The religious privileges enjoyed by Israel could only be ascribed to the free grace of God, and such privileges carried with them corresponding responsibili- ties. The same is true of the advantages, material or intellectual, possessed by other peoples. 8. Righteous] i.e. faithful to Thy promises ; cp. Ps40io. 16. They and our fathers] better, ' they, even our fathers.' 22. Didst divide . . corners] RV ' which thou didst allot after their portions ' : i.e. according to their several boundaries. 26. Slew thy pro- phets] see, for instance, 1 K 18 M 9 10 2 Ch 24 20-22 Jer2ri 20-23. 29. Withdrew the shoulder] like a restive ox that refuses the yoke. 32. The kings of Assyria] The kings of Assyria that distressed Israel were Shal- maneser II (to whom Jehu paid tribute), Tig- lath-pileser (2 K 1529), Shalmeneser III and Sargon (2 K 175,6), Sennacherib (2K18, 19), and perhaps Asshurbanipal (2 Ch 33 ii). Unto this day] The rule over Israel exercised by Assyria had been succeeded by that of Babylon and Persia. 33. Done right] RY ' dealt truly' : i.e. faithfully : cp. v. 8. 38. And because of all this] RV ' and yet for all this.' We make a sure cove7iant'\ "rhe original covenant between Israel and the Lord made at Sinai (Ex 24) had been renewed by Hezekiah (2 Chi 5 12) and Josiah (2 Ch 34 30-33); cp. also EzrlO^. Seal u»to it'] lit. (and the names of) ' our princes, etc., are on the sealed writing.' CHAPTER 10 List of those who participated in the Covenant I. Now those that sealed w'ere] The names that follow Zidkijah's are those of families whose living representatives sealed on behalf of their houses. Several of these family names occur in the list of those who accompanied Zerubbabel to Jerusalem (c. 12). Zidkijah] The fact that his name is coupled with Nehe- miah's suggests that he was a person of import- ance, but nothing is known of him. 29. To walk in God's law, etc.] The enact- ments of the Law which they more particularly undertook to carry out were those directing (fl) abstention from marriage with aliens, (i) the observance of the sabbath and sabbatical year, (c) the provision of supplies for the Temple and its ministers. These enactments gained in importance from the circumstances of the times, for there was a persistent tend- ency on the part of many of the people both to form alliances with their heathen neighbours and to be indifferent to the external ordinances of religion (see Ezr 9 Neh 13). It was to coun- teract these evils that prominence was given to those regulations which were calculated to preserve the separateness of the Jewish race, and to accentuate the sacredness of their re- ligious institutions. The stress thus laid upon the ceremonial law was not due to any relapse from the spiritual faith of the prophets to the more material and mechanical ideas of primitive times, but was intended to impress upon the people a sense of the transcendent sanctity of the God with whom they enjoyed such privileged relations. 31. Leave the seventh year] i.e. forego the produce of the land in that year. 32. The third part of a shekel] In Ex 30 ii-i" the amount named is 'a half shekel' (cp. Mtl7 2*), the change being perhaps due to an alteration in the weight of the shekel. 34. The wood offering] This is not specifically prescribed in the Pentateuch. Josephus speaks of it as a festival (the Xylophory). 38. The priest] i.e. 282 i 10. 39 NEHEMIAH IS. 38 some priest was to attend when the Levites took then* tithes. 39. Forsake] i.e. fail to provide for. CHAPTER 11 Measures to supplement the Population OF Jerusalem I. This V. resumes the subject of the paucity of population in Jerusalem: see 7'^. The rulers were already residing in the capital, and means were now taken to transport thither a propor- tion of the commons that had made their homes in the country towns (v. 3). The city had received fortifications ; but these were useless unless they were manned. 3. The province] i.e. Judaea : EzrS^. 4. At Jerusalem, etc.] The list that follows apparently enumerates the provincial families that removed to Jerusalem. It likewise occurs, with some variations in the names and figures, in 1 Ch 9 3 f . 9. Second over the city] presum- ably second to Joel : cp. v. 17. But some render, ' over the second quarter of the city ' : cp. 2 K 22 !■* Zeph 1 10. 14. The son of one of the great men] RV ' the son of Haggedolim.' 16. The outward business of] Perhaps the judicial administration described in 2 Ch 198-10 lCh2629. 17. Was the principal, etc.] i.e. led the praises of the Temple singers after prayer had been made. The second] i.e. to Mattaniah : cp. v. 9. 20. This V. interrupts the account of the residents at Jerusalem : it should precede V. 25. 22. The overseer, etc.] RV ' The over- seer . . the son of Micha, of the sons of Asaph, the singers, over the business,' etc. The words over the business are connected with overseer. The business meant is the conduct of the Temple services. 23. For it loas, etc.] RM ' for there was a commandment . . and a sure ordinance concerning the singers ' : The king] Artaxerxes : cp. Ezr 7 2-i. 24. Was at the king's hand] Possibly Pethahiah was a royal officer, subordinate to Nehemiah, having charge of civil, as distinct from ecclesiastical, matters. 25. The villages, with their fields] better, ' the villages in their fields,' i.e. the unwalled towns (Lv253i). Most of the names that follow occur in JoshlS^^^ 31. From Geba divelfl RV ' (hvelt from Geba omoard.'' 35. The valley of craftsmen] RM ' Gehaharashim,' another locality. 36. And of the Levites, etc.] RV ' and of the Levites, certain courses in Judah ' (i.e. formerly reckoned to Judah) ' loere joined to Benjamin.' CHAPTER 12 The Dedication of the Wall op Jerusalem I. The priests] The names in vv. 1-7 like- wise appear with some variations in 10^*^ ; see also Ezr 2 36-39. 8. The Levites] cp. 10 ^-^^ Ezr 40 42. Over the thanksgiving] RM 'over the choirs.' ID. Jeshua] The high priest who returned with Zerubbabel. The succession of high priests is carried down to Jaddua, who was contemporary with Alexander the Great, so that the six generations cover the period from 536 to about 340. Eliashib the grandson of Jeshua was contemporary with Nehemiah. 12-21. The names that are repeated in these vv. from vv. 1-7 present certain variations. 22. Johanan] probably the same as the 'Jonathan' of v. 11. Darius] Since Jaddua was contemporary with Alexander the Great, the Darius here meant is probably Darius Codomannus. who was successively defeated by Alexander at the battles of the Granicus, Issus, and Arbela. 23. The book of the chroni- cles] some official record, not the ' Chronicles ' of the OT. 24. Jeshua the son of Kadmiel] to be corrected to ' Jeshua, Binnui, Kadmiel ' : see V. 8, 10 9. Over against them] i.e. in the choir, where the singing was antiphonal. 25. The thresholds] RV ' the storehouses.' 26. In the days of Nehemiah] a date subse- quent to the days of Joiakim, for the high priest in Nehemiah's time was Eliashib, son of Joiakim. 27. The dedication of the wall] It is reason- able to suppose that the dedication of the wall followed closely upon its completion (related in 6 1^), so that the events described in chs. 8-10 may be later than those narrated in this c, which from the use of the first person (vv. 31, 38, 40) seems to be derived from Nehemiah's memoirs. 28. The plain country] better, ' The Plain ' (lit. ' circle '), i.e. the S. end of the Jordan valley : cp. 3^2. Others suppose the word to be used here in a general sense of the circuit of country round Jerusalem. Netoph- athi] RV ' the Netophathites.' 29. The house of Gilgal] RV ' Beth-gilgaL' 31. Two great coinpanies^ etc.] RV 'two gi'eat companies that gave thanks and went in procession.' Went on the right hand] The two companies probably mustered on the W. side of the city, facing eastward : the company on the right under Ezra then moved southward, whilst the company on the left under Nehemiah moved northward ; and the two eventually re- united on the E. of the city near the Temple. 35. Zechariah] the overseer of the right- hand company, corresponding to Jezrahiah (v. 42) in the other. His descent from Asaph suggests that he was a Levite, not a priest, so that for ' namely^ Zechariah ' should be substi- tuted ' also Zechariah.' 37. And at the fountain gate, etc.] better, ' and by the fountain gate and straight on.' 38. Went over against ihpm'\ The words over against them should probably be altered, 283 IS. 39 NEHEMIAH— ESTHER INTRO. by an easy correction, to ' on the left hand ' (op. V. 31), and the whole should run, ' and the other company . . which went on the left hand, and I and half of the people after it (went) upon the wall above the tower of the furnaces . . and above the gate of Ephraim and by the old gate and by the fish gate,' etc. 39. The prison gate] RV ' the gate of the guard.' 40. In the house] better, ' at the house.' 44. Out of the fields] RV ' according to the fields ' : alluding to certain arrangements for storing. Portions of the law] RV ' portions appointed by the law.' 45. The ward] better, 'the charge': cp. 2Chl8ii. 46. In the days, etc.] LXX has ' in the days of David Asaph was of old chief.' 47, Every day his portion] RV ' as every day required.' Sanctified tliem unto] RY ' sanctified for ': i.e. Israel set apart as holy certain portions for the Levites, and the latter for the priests. CHAPTER 13 The Reform or Abuses The reforms embraced the separation of Israel from the mixed multitude and the abolition of certain abuses that had arisen in connexion with the chambers of the Temple, the provision for the Levites, the observance of the sabbath, and mixed marriages. I. On that day] the particular time intended is uncertain. Was found written] see Dt 233-0. 3. Separated] see Ezr9, 10. All the mixed multitude] cp. Ex 1238 Nu 11 *. The term may be illustrated by Ezr 9 2, where ' mingled them- selves with the peoples of those lands' is a kindred expression. 4. Eliashib] previously mentioned in 3 ^ 12^0. Chamber] RV ' chambers.' 6. The two and thirtieth year] i.e. 433 B.C. Obtained I leave] i.e. to return to Palestine. 7. Understood of] better, 'perceived.' 10. For] RV 'so that.' The Levites not receiving the support due to them had to work to maintain themselves. II. Forsaken] i.e. unprovided for. Gathered them] i.e. the Levites. 17. What evil . . the sabbath] The protests made by the prophets and others against the profanation of the sabbath (see Ezk20i2, 20 4424 Isa 56 4, 6 5813) eventually brought the Jews to observe it so strictly that they even allowed themselves to be massacred rather than desecrate it by defending themselves (1 Mac 2 32-38). 23. Thai had married wives, etc.] The same practice was condemned by Ezra (chs. 9, 10). 24. Their children spake half] better, ' of their childi'en half spake,' etc. 26. Out- landish] i.e. foreign. 28. Chased him from me] i.e. expelled him from the Jewish community. According to Josephus (who, however, places the incident at a much later date) Joiada's son was named Manasseh, and when expelled by Nehemiah, was induced by his father-in-law Sanballat to join him at Samaria by the promise of being appointed high priest of a temple that was to be built on Mt. Gerizim. 29. Defiled the priesthood] The actual high priest was pro- hibited from taking as his wife any but a virgin of his own people (Lv21i4). 30. The wards of] better, ' charges for.' At this point the OT. record of Nehemiah closes ; but in 2 Mac 2 13 it is added that he collected together ' the books about the kings and prophets, and the books of David, and letters of kings about sacred gifts ' — a state- ment the precise meaning of which it is un- necessary to discuss here. In Ecclus49 ^3 he is eulogised for having ' raised up the walls that were fallen, and set up the gates and bars.' ESTHER INTRODUCTION I. Character and Contents. The book of are put forward as those which led to the institu- Esther is one of a group of writings known as the Five Rolls (the other four being the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, and Ecclesi- astes). Its contents fall within the period em- braced by the book of Ezra, namely, the reign of Xerxes (485-464 B.C.), when the Jews were under Persian rule, and when, though a large body had returned to Jerusalem under Zerub- babel, yet numbers of them were still scattered over the Persian empire. The events recounted tion of the Jewish feast of 'Purim,' held on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar ( = Feb- ruary-March), and preceded by a fast on the thirteenth (called the Fast of Esther). The author is quite unknown, but his familiarity with Persian customs and Persian words makes it probable that he lived in Persia itself. He was not, however, contemporaneous with the events he relates, for Xerxes is described in language which implies that his reign was past ; 284 INTRO. ESTHER 1. 18 and his work is perhaps to be placed in the fourth century B.C. The book came to be held in very high esteem by the Jews ; it was called par excellence ' the Roll ' ; it was read annually at the Feast of Purim ; and Maimonides is reported to have said that in the days of the Messiah the only Scriptures left would be the Law and the Roll. In the Apocrypha there are certain additions to the book, called the ' Rest of Esther,' which are probably later in date than the original work, and are certainly different in style and spirit. 2. Sources. In the course of the narrative allusion is made to Persian state-records (2^3 6^ 102), as well as to documents written by Mordecai, upon which some of the facts related may be based. 3. Value. That the account contained in the book has some histoi'ical foundation is probable for several reasons. It offers an ex- planation of a well-established Jewish festival; reference is made in 2Macl5^'> to the four- teenth day of Adar as being ' the day of Mor- decai ' ; and acquaintance is shown throughout with Persian customs (see 1 ^^ 3 1^). A certain parallel to the destruction inflicted by the Jews upon their enemies, and the institution of a feast to commemorate it, is afforded by the slaughter of the Magi by the Persians and the festival by which it was celebrated. The extra- ordinary conduct of Xerxes in countenancing a general massacre of his subjects is in keeping with his irrational behaviour on more than one occasion, as described by Herodotus. And finally, the interval of time between the dis- grace of Vashti in Xerxes' third year (1 3), and the elevation of Esther in his seventh year (2i'5), agrees with his absence from Persia on his expedition against the Greeks, the battle of Salamis taking place in 480 B.C., after which engagement the king returned to Asia. On the other hand, certain features in the narra- tive suggest that the writer has sought to enhance the effectiveness of his recital by striking contrasts, embellished descriptions, and large figures. It is not likely that either Yashti or Esther was Xerxes' queen ; accord- ing to Herodotus it was Amestris who held that position, and Vashti and Esther were probably nothing more than favourite concu- bines. The six months' feast (!■*), the ten thousand talents of silver (39), the gallows (or stake) 60 cubits high (51-4), and the 75,000 (LXX 15,000) slain (yi^), are probably all ex- aggerations. And there is some lack of plausi- bility in the statements that orders were issued for the slaughter of the Jews and of their enemies eleven and nine months respectively before the massacres were to be carried out (312,13 89). 4. The moral instructiveness of the book centres in the character of Esther, who, as de- picted in the narrative, appears as virtuous as she was fair, being dutiful to her foster-father, faithful to the king, loyal to her people, and pious towards her God. Her story breathes the spirit of truest patriotism, for she is repre- sented as willing to face death to save her countrymen. It also illustrates the working of Divine Providence, for though the name of God does not appear in the book (at least in the original Hebrew, in the LXX it is intro- duced freely), the whole history implies the belief that it was as an instrument in His hand that Esther wrought her people's deliverance. And whilst prayer is likewise not actually mentioned in the book, yet the fast of Esther and her countrymen (described in 4^6) pre- sumes the practice, and the sequel of the narrative is meant to attest its efficacy. CHAPTER 1 The Disobedience and Disgrace of Queen Vashti 1. Ahasuerus] LXX has ' Artaxerxes,' but probably ' Xerxes,' the son of Darius Hystaspis, is meant, who succeeded his father in 485 B.C. India . . Ethiopia] India here means not the peninsula of Hindostan, but the region near the Indus : Ethiopia is the modern Nubia. 2. Shushan] i.e. Susa in Elam, the country lying to the E. of the Persian Gulf. The palace] lit. ' the fortress,' as in Neh 1 1. 3. In the third year] i.e. 483 B.C. Thy power] better, ' the forces ' : and so in 8 1^. 6. White, green, and blue] Some take the second term to designate the ' material,' and render ' of white cotton and blue,' white and blue (or violet) being the Persian royal colours (815). The beds] RV 'the couches,' upon which the feasters reclined. 7. Royal wine] LXX has ' wine which the king himself used to drink.' The state] RV ' the bounty.' 8. According to the law] i.e. according to the king's express command on this occasion ; for it is implied that in general the di-inking was regulated by the court officials, and the guests had to drink just as much or as little as they were bidden, not as they pleased. 9. Vashti] According to Herodotus, Xerxes' queen was called Amestris. 13. The wise men, which knew the times] probably experienced counsellors (cp. 1 Ch 1232) . but according to others, astrologers and diviners: cp. Isa44-5 DanS^^. For so vas the king's manner toward all] better, ' for so was the king's business brought before all,' etc. The king was expected to consult ' those who knew law and judgment ' in all matters before coming to a decision. 14. The next unto him] i.e. nearest to the king in rank and importance. 18. Likeicise shall the ladies, etc.] RV 'And this day shall the princesses of Persia and 285 1. 19 ESTHER 3.9 Media which have heard of the deed of the queen say the like unto all the king's princes.' 19. That it be not altered] cp. DanG^. Any command written in the king's name and sealed with his ring was similarly irrevocable. 20. For it is great] i.e. the decree is weighty and important. 22. According to the -writing thereof] i.e. the letters sent to the several provinces were written in the characters and language that prevailed in each. Many of the extant in- scriptions of the Persian kings are tri-lingual. And that // should be published, etc.] better (by a slight correction), ' and that he should speak all that seemed good to him,' i.e. should speak his mind freely, without regard to the feelings of his women-folk. CHAPTEE 2 The Choice of Esther to be Queen. MoRDECAi's Service I. He remembered, etc.] LXX has 'he thought no more of Vashti. remembering what,' etc. 3. The house of the women] This was the house of the virgins, as contrasted with the house of the concubines (v. 14). Their things for purification] Various per- fumed oils and ointments (v. 12). 5. Mordecai] The name, though used by Jews (cp. Ezr2 2 Neh7'^), was derived from the Babylonian deity Merodach (Marduk). Shimei . . Kish] probably Mordecai's grand- father and great grandfather (v. 6 applying to Kish). Others regard the genealogy as abbre- viated, and take Shimei and Kish to be remoter ancestors, identifying them with the Shimei and Kish of 2S165 1S91 (in which case v. 6 must refer to Mordecai's family two or three generations back). 7. Hadassah] a Hebrew name meaning ' Myrtle.' Esther] connected by some with the Persian word for ' star ' ; according to others, the same as the Babylonian ' Ishtar,' the Canaanite ' Ashtoreth.' 9. Such things as belonged to her] lit. ' her portions ' ; perhaps richer viands than ordinary : cp. Dan 1 ^. II. And Mordecai walked, etc.] He appar- ently occupied a position in the king's house- hold (cp. .3 ^), and in the apocryphal ' Rest of Esther' (ll^) he is expressly styled a servitor in the king's court. He would thus have opportunities of communicating with Esther. 12. After that she had been, etc.] RV ' after that it had been done to her according to the law for the women, twelve months.' 13. What- soever she desired] i.e. for the adornment of her person. 14. Into the second house of the v^omen] so LXX. Some render, ' returned a second time ' (i.e. back again) ' into the house of the women,' but at any rate into a different quarter of it, where they were under the charge of Shaasghaz, not of Hegai. 15. She required nothing, etc.] i.e. instead of selecting her articles of attire for herself like other maidens (v. 13), she left everything to the choice of Hegai. 16. Tebeth] i.e. Deo^ ember-January. The seventh year] i.e. 479 B.C. Thus four years elapsed between the degradation of Vashti and the promotion of Esther (see 1 3). In the interval between 483 and 479 Xerxes' expedition into Greece took place, the battle of Salamis being fought in 480 B.C. 18. Made a release] Either from taxation or military service. Some would render ' granted a holiday.' According to the state] RV ' according to the bounty of ' : i.e. with regal generosity. 19. And when the virgins, etc.] Some con- nect this with V. 14, and take ' the virgins' to mean ' the young women.' Others render, ' now when virgins were gathered together a second time ' (as on the earlier occasion de- scribed in V. 8). Sat in the king's gate] per- haps as the official who received applicants that desired to have audience with the king. 23. Hanged] or, ' impaled,' a form of punish- ment frequently inflicted by Persian sovereigns. The book of the chronicles] Herodotus relates instances of Xerxes' similarly recording the names of certain men who distinguished them- selves in the war against Greece. CHAPTER 3 HaMAN's REVENGEFUL DESIGN AGAINST THE Jews 1 . The Agagite] It has been suggested that the name is an epithet meant to recall the Amalekite Agag hewn in pieces by Samuel (IS 1523), and intended to indicate contempt and abhorrence. 2. Mordecai bowed not, etc.] In the apo- cryphal 'Rest of Esther' Mordecai explains in a prayer to the Almighty that he refused to bow down to Haman, ' that he might not pre- fer the glory of man above the glory of God.' Amongst many heathen peoples divine honours were paid to human beings. 7. Nisan] i.e. March-April. The twelfth year of Xerxes would be 474 B.C. They cast Pur, etc.] i.e. early in the first month they cast lots for every day of the year to find out which day would be the most favourable for the success of Haman's design. In the Assy- rian calendars there are lucky and unlucky days ; and the Persians doubtless entertained a like belief. To the twelfth month'\ The Heb. is probably defective, and the LXX gives a completer sense by adding, ' and the lot fell on the fourteenth ' (an error for the ' thirteenth,' V. 13) 'day of the month, which is Adar.' Adar corresponded to February-March. 9. Ten thousand talents] The Persian talent weighed Qio lb. That have the charge of the 286 a 10 ESTHER 7.8 business] i.e. those whose business it is to re- ceive money paid into the king's treasury. 10. Took his ring] For the significance of this see 8 8. 1 1. The silver] The money which Haman had pledged himself to pay into the treasury the king confers upon him for his services in pointing out a serious danger to the kingdom (v. 8). 12. The thirteenth day of the first month] Eleven months were thus to elapse between the issue of the decree and its execution. Lieutenants] lit. ' satraps,' of whom, according to Herodotus, there were twenty. 13. Posts] Horsemen (cp. S^o) were posted at regular intervals of a day's journey along the main roads to transmit in succession the messages they received until they reached their des- tination. 15. Was perplexed] i.e. at the magnitude and arbitrary character of the contemplated massacre. CHAPTER 4 MoRDECAi's Appeal to Esther to save HER Countrymen I. When Mordecai perceived] His position at the door of the palace (2 ^i) would enable him to obtain early intelligence. 2. Even before] better, ' as far as before.' The LXX adds, ' and stopped.' 6. The street] RV ' the broad place' : and so in 6^. n. 11. One law of his] RV ' one law for him ' : i.e. who approached the king without leave given. 14. Then shall there enlargement, etc.] RV ' Then shall relief,' etc. Mordecai's speech, though no mention is made in it of God, nevertheless breathes a spirit of trust in His Providence, and expresses a conviction that help will come from some unperceived quarter. But thou. . destroyed] Divine judgment would overtake her if she neglected her duty to her countrymen. Whether . . as this] i.e. who knows whether thou hast not been raised to the throne by God for the express purpose of averting the dangers threatening at the present crisis ? 16. Fast ye for me] Fasting was an accom- paniment of prayer (cp. EzrB^s Nehl^), and Esther's request was for united prayer on her behalf. If I perish, I perish] Esther pro- ceeded on her dangerous venture in a spirit of resignation. CHAPTER 5 Esther's Petition to the King An account of how Esther, being favourably received by the king, invited him, together with Haman, to a banquet whereat she promised to make known her petition, and how Haman prepared for the execution of Mordecai. I. On the third day] This indicates that the fast of 4 1*^ is not to be regarded as extending over three whole days. 6. The banquet of wine] This presumably followed the dinner. Herodotus states that the Persians, though moderate at their meals, were much addicted to wine. 8. I •wrill do . . hath said] i.e. to make known to him her request. Esther hoped that by preparing a second banquet for the king before presenting her petition, she would render him more disposed to grant it. 9. In the king's gate] Since his hopes had been raised by Esther's undertaking to suppli- cate the king, he had laid aside his garb of mourning (4''^), and resumed his previous station (221). n, The multitude of his chil- dren] A Jew regarded a large family as a blessing (Gn 30 2'^), and, according to Herodotus, a Persian's strongest motive for pride, next to his personal bravery, was the number of his children. Haman had ten sons(9io). 14. A gallows] lit. ' a tree ' (or ' stake '). CHAPTER 6 Mordecai is honoured An account of how the king being reminded of Mordecai's services, and wishing to reward him, consulted Haman, and how Haman, think- ing himself the object of the king's interest, counselled him, and was directed to render to Mordecai the honours he had advised. I. The book . . chronicles] in which the chief occurrences of the king's reign, including any signal services done by his subjects (223), were recorded. 8. The royal apparel . . u^eth to ^vear] Not apparel similar to that which was worn by the king, but apparel which the king had actually used, just as the horse upon which the person to be honoured was mounted was that which the king had actually ridden (cp. 1 K 1 23). The crown royal . . head] RV ' and on the head of which ' (i.e. of the horse) ' a crown royal is set.' The royal charger bore on its head a crown or coronet. 12. Having his head covered] as a sign of humiliation and woe : cp. 2S1530 194 Jerl44. 13. If Mordecai.. fall before him] LXX adds, 'for the Living God is with him.' CHAPTER 7 The Execution of Haman 4. We are sold] an allusion to Haman's tender of 10,000 talents (39). Although the enemy, etc.] The rendering is uncertain ; RV ' although the adversary could not have com- pensated for the king's damage ' (which would have resulted from the loss of so many of his subjects) ; RM ' for our affliction is not to be compared with the king's damage ' (or ' annoy- ance ' occasioned by Esther's complaint). Perhaps, ' although no enemy is comparable (to Haman) in doing damage to the king.' 8. The bed] RV 'the couch,' on which Esther was reclining at the table. They 287 7. 9 ESTHER 10. 3 covered Hainan's face] preparatory to his execution. 9. One of the chamberlains . . the king] better, ' one of the chamberlains that were before the king said.' Harbonah is mentioned in 1 10. Who had spoken good] i.e. , by the disclosure of the conspiracy described in 221,22, Hang him thereon] Haman suffered the retribution declared by the Psalmist to await the wicked : see Ps 7 1^' 1*^. CHAPTER 8 The Jews are saved I. Did . . of Haman] The property of Haman, after his execution, was confiscated to the use of the king, to be disposed of as he thought fit. 2. Took off his ring, etc.] The bestowal of the ring implied that Mordecai was appointed to be a minister of State, since the ring was used for giving authority to royal decrees (see v. 8) : cp. Gn4142. 4. Then the king held out] This seems to imply that Esther had approached the king unbidden : see 4 11. 7. Behold, I have given, etc.] The king mentions this to show that his denial of her request to reverse the letters of Haman (v. 5) was due not to lack of desire, but lack of ability to meet her wishes. 8. Write ye also] The letters written by Haman and sealed with the king's ring could not be reversed as Esther had requested (v. 5), but she and Mordecai could be empowered, as Haman had previously been (3ii-i2), to write such letters as they might think expedient to enable the Jews to stand on their defence. 9. The third month] i.e. May-June. Rather more than two months had elapsed since Haman's letters had been despatched (3i-). 10. Riders on mules, etc.] RY ' riding on swift steeds that were used in the king's service, bred of the stud.' 15. In royal apparel] not the same as that described in 6^, but a dress befitting the high office to which he had been appointed. His present magnificence was in striking contrast to his previous distress and humiliation (4i). A great crown of gold] i.e. a circlet, indica- tive of high, though not royal, rank. In the Heb. a different word is used to describe the royal crown worn by the king and queen ^111 217). 17. Became Jews] i.e. proselytes. CHAPTER 9 The Jews slay their Enemies. Insti- tution or PURIM 3. All the rulers, etc.] The great massacre described in v. 16 is thus represented as being in part the work of the Persian authorities with the forces at their disposal. 10. On the spoil, etc.] In this respect they did not carry out the king's decree . (8 1^) ; their vengeance was not sullied by sordid motives. 12. What have they done, etc.] An excla- mation, not a question. What is thy petition ? etc.] The king was willing to gratify Esther further, perhaps to make amends for having been unable to grant her earlier request (8 ^"^). 13. Be hanged] i.e. let their dead bodies be exposed, such exposure being a mark of infamy. 16. Had rest] This anticipates what took place on the ' fourteenth ' of Adar (v. 17). Seventy and five thousand] LXX has ' fifteen thousand.' 19, The Jews of the villages] better, ' the Jews of the country districts.' Sending portions] i.e. to the poor among them: cp. ]Sreh8io. 20. Mordecai wrote these things] This refers not to the existing book of Esther, but to an account contained in the letters sent to effect the purpose indicated in vv. 21, 22. This was the establishment as yearly festivals for all Jews throughout the empire both the four- teenth and fifteenth days of Adar ; and con- sequently involved a modification of the usage described in vv. 17, 18, according to which only a single day (in Susa the fifteenth, in the country districts the fourteenth) was so observed. 23. As they had begun . . written unto them] i.e. they undertook to celebrate both the day observed at first (vv. 17, 18) and also the addi- tional day suggested by Mordecai. 25. When Esther came] The name ' Esther ' does not occur in the Heb., so that the correct render- ing may be ' when it ' (i.e. Haman's device) ' came before the king.' 26. For all] RV ' be- cause of all.' This letter] the ' letters ' of v. 20. 27. Such as joined themselves unto them] i.e. religious proselytes : cp. 8 1^. 29. This second letter] ' second ' in relation to the letter mentioned in v. 20. 31. The matters of the fastings and their cry] Seemingly it was directed that there should be a commemoration not only of the deliverance granted to the Jews, but also of the distress that preceded it: see 4 3. No account is here given of the day thus appointed for fasting and lamentation ; but in later times the thirteenth day of Adar, as being that which Haman had fixed for the destruction of the Jews (3^2)^ ^as observed as a day of humilia- tion. 32. In the book] probably a book, not now extant, dealing with the Purim festival ; but some authorities think that ' the liook of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia' (10 2) is meant. CHAPTER 10 The Greatness of Mordecai I. The isles of the sea] or, ' coast lands,' i.e. the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. The description of the king's dominion serves to enhance the glory of Mordecai, who was his minister. 3. Seeking the wealth] i.e. seeking to promote their welfare : cp. Ezr 9 12. 288 JOB INTRODUCTION I. Theme and Contents. The book of Job, it may safely be said, is not known and read as it deserves to be. It is a fascinating book, and one of the most valuable in the OT. It deals with a theme which is as old as man and as wide as the world, viz. the reason of human suffering, the why and wherefore of those afflictions that fasten not merely upon the guilty, but, as it often appears, upon the righteous and the innocent. This imme- morial problem, the crux of theology and the darkest mystery of human life, is the subject of this book, where it is treated in a most brilliant manner. In style the book of Job is a masterpiece of literature. It contains some of the deepest thought and the sublimest poetry that have come down from antiquity. The difficulties that beset the ordinary reader are due not merely to the nature of the subject, but also to the fact that it is written in poetry, which is always more difficult than prose, and also to the too common practice of reading only short extracts. The work, being a discussion can-ied on at considerable length, must, if it is to be rightly understood, be read as a whole. It must, moreover, be read in the Eevised Version, the meaning and sequence of thought being often much obscured in the Authorised Version. The book is artistically constructed, and consists of three parts — a Prologue, the Poem, and an Epilogue. The Prologue is contained in the first two chapters, and the Epilogue in the last. These are written in prose, and form the setting of the Poem, which extends from c. 3-42<3. The Prologue introduces the char- acters, and tells how they come together. The Poem contains the debate between Job and his three friends, followed by a speech from a bystander called Elihu, and concludes with an address by the Almighty and a penitent confession by Job. The Epilogue relates the further fortunes of Job, his restoration to prosperity, and his death. The Prologue (chs. 1, 2) presents to us an Eastern chieftain called Job, who lives in the land of Uz, probably near Edom. He is a very pious man, ' perfect and upright, one that fears God and eschews evil,' and a very prosperous man. He is surrounded with what are commonly regarded as unmistakable tokens of the divine favour. He has a large family, possesses immense herds of camels, oxen. as ' the He is as 19 289 asses, and sheep, and is described greatest of the children of the east.' good as he is great. In these circumstances a scene is opened in heaven. One of God's angels, called ' The Satan,' i.e. The Adversary, whose office seems to be to test the sincerity of men's characters, suggests that Job's piety is dependent upon his prosperity, that he does not ' serve God for nought,' that his religion is mere selfishness, and that if God were to withhold His bless- ings Job would withhold his worship and ' curse God to His face.' Satan obtains permis- sion to put Job to the proof. From the height of his prosperity and happiness Job is suddenly plunged into the depths of misery. He loses all his property, and his children are cut off by violent death. Job is profoundly grieved, but he submits reverently to the will of God. So far he stands the test. In a second heavenly council Satan asserts that the test has not been severe enough, and receives per- mission to afflict Job's person. He smites him with a severe and loathsome disease, which makes him an outcast and an object of abhorrence to all. Still he is resigned. His faith remains unshaken. ' What ? ' he says, ' shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil ? ' He makes no complaint against the Almighty. Three friends now appear upon the scene : Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, who having heard of his great calamities come to condole with the ruined and childless man. They are appalled at the sight of his misery. Job is hardly re- cognisable. The words of consolation fail upon their lips, and they sit down beside him for seven days and seven nights, uttering never a word. Hitherto Job has been able to re- strain himself, but now in the presence of his speechless friends a change comes over him. He is unmanned, and breaks down. He opens his mouth, and, in a passage of marvellous pathos and power, he curses the day that he was born and calls for death to come and put an end to his sufferings (c. 3). With Job's first words begins the main por- tion of the book, which is continued for 39 chapters, and is written in poetry. It com- prises a debate between Job and his three friends as to the reason of his sufferings. The debate is conducted in an orderly manner. INTRO. JOB INTRO. All three speak in turn, and Job answers each after he has spoken. This is repeated three times, except that according to the present arrangement of the book Zophar, who speaks last, fails in the third round of the debate to come forward. Perhaps this is due to some dislocation : see the introductory re- marks to the third series of speeches. The theory with which all three begin is that suf- fering is a certain proof of previous trans- gression, and accordingly they all adopt a tone of rebuke towards Job on account of his supposed shortcomings, and urge him to repent of his sin, whatever it may be, saying that if he does so God will restore to him his prosperity. No doubt sympathy is more in place than argument in times of trouble, but the object of the book is not to show how to comfort sufferers, but how to account for the sufferings. The Argument of the three friends is simple. God, they say, is always just. If a man suffers it must be because he deserves it. The righteous never suffer. Job, they con- clude, must have been a great sinner to be aflaicted thus. And they strive to get Job into a proper frame of mind. To this Job replies that the moral government of the world is not such a simple, uncomplicated thing as his friends suppose. Their theory may be true as a general rule, but there are exceptions. His own case is one. He protests that he is not conscious of any such great sin as they assume to be the cause of his present misery. His sufferings must have some other explanation. They are meanwhile a mj-stery to him. Nor is he the oiily exception to the rule of ' Be good and you will be prosperous.' It is a matter of universal experience that the innocent suffer as well as the guilty, and the wicked are frequently allowed to end their days in peace. In the debate this difficulty is put with great boldness, and Job is tempted occasionally to think and say hard things of God. With ex- quisite pathos he describes his bodily sufferings and mental perplexity, and his last speech concludes with a pathetic contrast between the former days, when the candle of the Lord shined upon his head, when the Almighty was with him and his children were about him, and he was honoured and respected by all, and his present state, when days of evil have laid hold upon him and wearisome nights and days are appointed unto him, when he is poor, and childless, and friendless, an abhorrence and a byword to young and old. To the end he pro- tests his innocence and demands to be shown wherein he has transgressed. His great desire is to come face to face with his Maker. If he only knew where he might find Him, he is sure all would be explained. Meanwhile all is dark, a mystery he cannot fathom, a riddle he cannot explain, ' I go forward, but He is not there ; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him ; on the left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him ; and on the right hand, but I cannot see Him ; but He knoweth the way that I take. His way have I kept, and not declined. Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips. When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.' In a dim way he feels that though he is des- tined to die without learning the reason of his affliction, yet after death in another world the mystery will be solved. God will show Himself his friend and vindicate his innocence. When the discussion between Job and his three friends is ended, and their explanation of his afflictions put aside as inadequate, a new speaker is suddenly introduced. A young man, called Elihu, has been listening to the debate, and he now comes forward as a critic of both sides. He is not satisfied with Job's assertions of self-righteousness, and he is disappointed with the three friends for bringing forward such poor arguments and allowing themselves to be silenced by Job. He hopes to set them all right, but one has a difficulty in discovering wherein he differs from the other three re- provers of Job. In great measure he repeats their arguments that God is just and deals out to every man exactly what he deserves. In two particulars, however, he seems to go beyond them, and so far approaches the right view of the question in the more explicit statements, (a) that chastisement may be the expression not of the divine indignation but of the divine goodness, and (b) that it may be designed as a warning, a restraint to keep men from falling into further sin ; in other words, that chastise- ment is discipline, a prevention as well as a cure, having a reference to the future as well as to the past. This brings us to the last section of the Poem. Job had expressed an earnest desire to meet God face to face. In answer to this, ' the Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind ' (chs. 38-41). The striking thing about God's answer is that it is not at all what Job expected. He hoped that God, when He appeared, would give an explanation of His servant's sufferings. But this God does not do. He never alludes to Job's sufferings. What He does is simply to bid Job look around and observe the wonder and mystery of the world in which he is placed. In a series of splendid pictures God causes the panorama of nature to pass before the eyes of His human creature, and asks him if he could make any of these things, or even understand how they were created — the earth, the sea, the stars, the light, the rain, the snow and frost, the lightning, the variety of marvellous instincts and powers possessed by the animals. Could Job rule the world or even subdue any of its wonderful creatures ? If not, why should he 290 INTRO. JOB INTRO. presume to cavil at the ways of the Almighty or criticise His government of the world ? From first to last the answer of God is simply a revelation of His omnipotence. It seems, therefore, to be irrelevant to the subject. It is no explanation of the mystery of human suffering. And yet Job is satisfied. It brings him face to face with God. He feels how presumptuous he has been in questioning the way of God to men, how ignorant and weak and vile he is in the presence of God's omni- science and omnipotence and perfect holiness. ' Behold, I am vile,' he says ; ' I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. I have uttered what I understood not. Mine eye seeth thee ; where- fore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.' He has regained the old trust in God, but it is a deeper trust. Before his trial he had walked with God in the glad, unquestioning confidence of a child ; now he has sounded the abyss of misery, but in the fullest knowledge of the world's pain, he is wholly assured of the righteousness of God. In the vision of God, which has replaced the old knowledge of God at second hand, even more than in the exhi- bition of God's omnipotence, he enters into peace. The answer to his problems is not simply the manifestation of God's power, it is God Himself. He does not understand, he is content to be humble and to trust. And with this attitude of humility and trust God is represented as well pleased. In the Epilogue (c. 42 "-i") Job is restored to double his former prosperity and dies ' old and full of days.' It is not easy to sum up the distinctive teaching of the book of Job. As a matter of fact, the problem which it states is insoluble. The book itself does not offer a solution. What it does is to show the true spirit in which the calamities of life should be met, a spirit of submission to the omnipotence and of trust in the wisdom of the Almighty. Incidentally, however, the following truths emerge in the book of Job, and have been noted by various commentators. (rt) Even a righteous man may suffer in this world from severe afflictions, (b) It is wrong, therefore, to make a man's sufferings a reproach to him, as 'though he were ' a sinner above all other men.' They may be permitted by God as a trial of his righteousness, (c) True re- ligion is always disinterested. A truly right- eous man will serve God and trust in Him in spite of all temptations to renounce Him arising from his sufferings, (d) It is presumption to accuse God of injustice on account of the sufferings that the good endure or the pros- perity that the wicked are permitted to enjoy ; man is unable fully to understand God's moral government of the world, (f) The true solution of all such moral perplexities is to be sought in a fuller and larger sense of God's presence and power and wisdom. It only remains to consider briefly how far we as Christians, living in the clearer light of Christ's life and teaching, have advanced in the knowledge of the purpose and meaning of suffering. Again, this may be summed up under a few separate heads : (a) Christ Himself is the most conspicuous instance of innocent suffering. ' Though He were a Son yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.' ' He was made perfect through sufferings.' His words and example show that suffering may be innocently endured for the sake of others, or for the sake of righteousness, or in self-denial, or for the glory of God. (b) Christ has taught us that freedom from outward ills is not the greatest good. The highest good lies in the sphere of character and spirit. Jesus con- gratulated, not the rich and prosperous and those who never know what pain and sor- row are, but the poor, the meek, the mourn- ing, the persecuted. In spite of all afiiiction a man may be truly blessed. In this Jesus reversed the common judgment of the world. As Bacon paradoxically puts it, ' Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity that of the New.' (c) Christ has taught us to call God our Father. He is not, therefore, a mere Judge dispensing abstract justice with indifference to the result upon the individual. God seeks to train and discipline His children so that they may be ' partakers of His holiness.' For their own sakes, therefore, it may be better, considering the end, that in some cases the innocent should ' endure grief ' and the guilty be treated with long-suffering and leniency. Under a paternal government the treatment in each case will he accommodated to serve the best result. It will not always follow the rule of abstract justice, (c/) Christ has revealed a future life. This Job and his friends, with the OT. saints in general, only dimly perceived or faintly hoped for. Having no certainty of the future life they naturally demanded that justice should be meted out in the present. Perceiving that this was not always done they were beset with many perplexities and doubts as to the justice of the divine government of the world. With the Christian revelation of a future life many of the embarrassments and anomalies of the present disappear. The end is not yet. The time of the final settlement of accounts is still future. There need be no fear that justice will not be done. Meanwhile the wicked flourish and the righteous suffer. But they may suffer in patience and hope. The afflictions of the present are ' light ' and ' but for a moment.' ' They are not to be compared with the glory to be revealed.' ' Wherefore let them that suffer according to 291 rSTTRO. JOB 1. 1 the will of God commit the keeping. of their souls to Him in well-doing, as unto a faithful creator.' 2. Occasion, Authorship, and Date. It has always been a question whether the book of Job is to be regarded as history or parable. Among the Jews themselves the prevailing opinion was that it was strictly historical, though some of their Rabbis were inclined to think that the person of Job was created by the writer of this book in order to set forth his teaching on the problem that was vexing human thought. Rabbi Lakish, e.g., said 'Job existed not, nor was he created ; he is a parable.' The opinion of Luther is probably the correct one, viz. that a person called Job did really exist, but that his history has been treated poetically. The allusion to Job as a real person in "Ezkli^^ seems to show that there was a tradition connected with his name, and that he was famed for his piety. There may also have been a tradition that he suffered from a grievous reversal of fortune. On this his- torical foundation a later writer built up this dramatic poem, adopting Job as his hero and freely utilising his history to discuss a problem which was probably pressing with special weight upon men's minds at the time. It would not have served the writer's purpose so well to have created an altogether fictitious hero. But many things indicate that the traditional history of Job has been freely adapted, as, e.g., the elaborately constructed dialogues, the employment of symbolic numbers in the Prologue and Epilogue, the dramatic way in which the scene in the council chamber of heaven is depicted and in which the messen- gers bring to Job the tidings of his successive calamities, and, moreover, the very fact that the book is a ' poem ' in which four men are repre- sented as doing what men never do in real life, conversing with each other in measured strains of lofty and impassioned poetry. To what ■WTiter we owe this poem, which Victor Hugo called ' perhaps the greatest masterpiece of the human mind,' and which has captivated the minds of men by no means prejudiced in favour of the literature of sacred Scripture, we shall never know with certainty. It belongs to the gi-eat class of anonymous masterpieces of which the literatures of all languages contain examples. Job himself, Moses, Solomon, Isaiah, Hezekiah, Baruch, have each been credited with its composition. "Whoever he was, he was a poetic genius, an earnest philosopher, and a truly religious soul. He probably lived after the downfall of the kingdom of Judah, in any case not earlier than the time of Jeremiah. At that period the per- plexing problems connected with the divine government seem to have pressed heavily on men's minds: cp.e.g. Jerl2i Sl^^EzklS. Pro- fessor Davidson thinks that behind the author's time there probably lay some great public calamity which forced upon men's minds the questions of evil and the righteousness of God, and that such a calamity could be nothing short of deportation or exile. ' We may infer,' he says, ' that it was the design of the author to teach Israel, amidst its sorrows and the per- plexities caused by them, that sufferings may be a trial of the righteous which if reverently borne will lift them up into fuller knowledge of God and therefore into more assured peace and felicity.' In view of the fact that national disaster M^ould occupy men's thoughts before they felt the problem of individual suffering, there is much to be said for the view, held by many scholars, that the book of Job, which is concerned with the individual, not with the nation, and represents an advanced stage in the discussion of the problem, belongs to the period after the Return, perhaps about 400 B.C. This is also suggested by several other features in the book. CHAPTER 1 The Prologue Chs. 1 and 2, which form the Prologue to the book, describe (a) the prosperity and piety of Job ; (b) a scene in heaven in which the Satan questions the motives of his piety ; and (c) his subsequent trials, which are permitted by God in order to test and confirm His serv- ant's righteousness, and to show to angels and men that a man may serve God for His own sake and not from self-interest. So far from being dependent on outside conditions the true servant of God will endure the severest trials which can befall human nature, and yet retain his faith and uprightness. It should be ob- served that whilst the author reveals to his readers the source and purpose of Job's trials these are unknown to Job and his friends. It is the mystery of his suffering which forms the problem of the book. Chs. 1, 2 are in prose. The rest of the book, except 32 1-^ and 42 "-i ", is in poetry. See on c. 3. 1-5. The prosperity and piety of Job. I. The land of Uz] a district to the E. of Palestine, and near Arabia and Edom : cp. Jer25-*' Lam 4 21. The word Uz occurs (a) as the name of a son of Aram (GnlO^S); (J) as a descendant of Seir (Gn 36 ^S) ; (c) as a son of Nahor (Gn222i). The names 'Aram' and ' Seir ' seem to point to the lands of Syria and Edom, but the exact position of Uz cannot be exactly defined. From various allusions in the book we must probably think of ' the red sandstones of Edom ' (the ' red ' land), ' and of the remote desert city in the hollow of the hills — Sela, afterwards Petra ; of the broad grey plain of the Arabah to the west ; of the 292 1. 2 JOB 1. 15 dark rugged peaks rising high to the east, their summits white with snow in winter, and beyond this the high desert plateau with its great pil- grim and trading road to Arabia ' (see on 6 15-20) j ' a region with few springs, where the white broom grows' (see on 30"*); ' and where the ostrich still runs and the wild ass scours the plain seeking the scanty green patches in spring ' (395-8,13-18). (Conder.) Job] Meaning uncertain ; either 'persecuted' or ' pious.' Perfect] Not sinless ; rather, ' single-hearted,' blameless : cp. Noah (GnG^). 2. Seven . . three] sacred numbers indicat- ing perfection. We are dealing with ideal history, as the rest of the numbers and other features here and in the Epilogue show. 3. Job was a prince of the desert. He pos- sessed herds of camels yielding milk and food and hair for making tents ; asses for riding, and fetching water ; cattle and sheep. He even possessed fields (31 3S). The description corresponds in each i*espect to the life of a free Arab chief E. of Jordan to-day. The term men of the east is applied to the tribes dwelling on the borders of Palestine, e.g. Syria and Arabia (cp. Gn29i Jg6^). 4. RV ' And his sons went and held a feast in the house of each one upon his day.' They took it in turns to entertain each other at their respective homes. 5. When the days . . were gone about] i.e. when all seven sons had given their feast. It appears that it was Job's pious custom to gather together his children at stated intervals that atonement might be made for any neglect of God at their feasts. He sanctified them, i.e. prepared them by ablu- tions, etc., for taking part in the sacrifices he afterwards offered (cp. Gn352 Ex 19 10 Lv97 1 S 1 6 5). Here we have an instance of the piety alluded to in v. 1. Burnt offerings] Observe that it was not the sin offering of the Mosaic Law which Job offered, but a burnt offering wholly given to God, which was common to many peoples (cp. Nu23 MicG^-^). As head of the family Job acted as priest : cp. Jethro (Ex 2 1*3 3 1). Cursed] RV ' renounced ' ; ' blas- phemed ' or ' blamed ' may be better. 6-12. The first interview between God and Satan. The scene in heaven is based on the conceptions of the spirit world prevailing in the author's time (cp. lK22i9-2^ Zech3i.2), and introduced by him to explain the origin and purpose of Job's trials. See last section of Intro. 6. Now^ there was a day] better, ' Now it was the day,' as if at a special season. The sons of God] i.e. the angels: cp. 38'''. They come before God to give account of their ministry : cp. 1 K 22 19. Satan] rather, ' the Satan,' lit. ' the adver- sary.' The word is in common use to-day among Orientals. The presence of the definite article shows that it is not used in this book as a proper name. The Satan is again spoken of in lCh21i and in Zech3i'2 (see note). In the Adversary we have presented to us a spirit whose mission it is to try and test the lives of men and the motives of their acts : cp. 2 3. He sees the bad side of life and therefore opposes man's standing with God. Naturally the con- stant discovery of evil motives underlying good actions has destroyed his faith in human nature. He is not represented as opposed to God, he is rather His loyal servant, who will not see His kindness abused, and zealously fulfils his duties by leaving no part of the earth unvisited. Malignant motives are, how- ever, already attributed to him ; he seems to delight in opposing men, and tortures Job without compunction to justify his own cynicism. But he is not yet regarded as a fallen and evil being, opposed to God. The personality and character of the Devil had not yet been fully revealed. 9-12. In answer to God's challenge the Satan makes the slanderous suggestion that Job's religion is based on selfishness. He serves God for reward. The Satan obtains leave to put Job to the test. 9. The principles of Job's conduct are questioned. Perhaps his integrity is only skin deep. Will he continue his righteous life if he is called on to suffer? 10. An hedge] i.e. God's protecting care. 11. Curse thee to thy face] see on v. 5. 12. God permits the Adversary to try Job in order to test his integrity and manifest his piety. Observe that Job's person is exempt from attack in this first trial. In view of the Satan's eagerness to prove his judgment of Job correct, God knows that this limitation of his power is necessary. 'Between vv. 12 and 13 there is an in- terval, an ominous stillness like that which precedes the storm. The poet has drawn aside the curtain to us, and we know what is impending. Job knows nothing ' (Davidson). 13-22. The first trial of Job's integrity arising from the loss of his property and children. The way in which the messengers are introduced, and the similarity of their message, shows that we are not reading actual history, but a drama. The poet represents the catastrophe as falling on the day when the feast was at the eldest brother's house, because on the morning of that day the sacrifices had been offered for Job's children after the feast in the youngest brother's house on the day before. The death of the children cannot therefore be explained as due to their sin, for this had just been atoned for. Each catastrophe is worse than the previous one. 15. Sabeans] Arab tribes. Saba is the great S. Arabian kingdom of which inscrip- 293 1. 16 JOB 3. tions going back to an early date are pre- served. The Bedouin Arabs still make raids on tribes at a distance, and also, when strong enough, on the settled population. i6. The fire of God] i.e. lightning. 17. Chaldeans] Heb. Kasdi/n, from the neighbourhood of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf. 20. Rent his mantle] Tearing the robe has always been an Eastern sign of mourning, as was also shaving the head or pulling out the hair (see Jer7-9 Micli"). Worshipped] lit. ' prostrated himself ' : cp. Gn 18 2 Mt 8 2. The first act of worship is submission, humility. 21. Thither] i.e. to the womb of mother earth. This v. (but somewhat differently rendered, cp. 1 Tim 6 ^) is used in the Burial Service. All is from God, and He has the right to do what He will with His own. The Lord] It will be noticed as a rule the Hebrew author only uses in the dialogues such names for the Deity as were common to other peoples besides the Hebrews, e.g. ' God,' ' the Almighty.' The occurrence of the Heb. title 'Jehovah' here and in 12 ^ is commonly explained on the supposition that it was a slip on his part. It is keenly disputed whether the name may not have been much older than the time of Moses, and known in Babylonia and Assyi'ia. The evidence must at present be regarded as indecisive, though such a wide difEusion is not antecedently unlikely : see on Gn 2 4 Ex 3 13. 22. Charged God foolishly] lit. ' and did not offer (or, attribute) folly to God.' Thus Job successfully withstands the first test of the Adversary and remains loyal to God. CHAPTER 2 The Prologue (continued) Job's second trial. He refuses to renounce God when afflicted with an excruciating disease. Three friends come to comfort him. 3. Although thou movedst, etc.] or, ' so that it was in vain thou movedst me against him to destroy him.' 4, 5. Skin for skin, etc.] The precise mean- ing of the proverb is uncertain, but the general meaning seems to be that as long as a man does not suffer in his own person he will gladly bear the sacrifice of everything else (' skin for skin '). But it is a different matter when his life is endangered. Let Job suffer this last and greatest trial, then his integrity will fail him (so the Adversary insinuates) and he will renounce God. His life the Satan is not per- mitted to touch, short of that he has full liberty, and uses it. 7. Sore boils] lit. ' an evil inflammation.' The disease with which Job was aflflicted is commonly taken to be elephantiasis, a terrible form of leprosy. It has also been identified with the ' Oriental sore,' also with ecthyma, for which a plausible case has been made out. 8. A potsherd] A piece of earthenware to remove the scurf skin. He sat down among the ashes] Perhaps those of his camp fires. This was a sign of mourning. Tradition places him on a dunghill, like the ' Mizbeleh ' or mound of refuse found outside an Eastern town or village where lepers and other outcasts sit, and men sometimes meet to talk. 9. Job's wife would have had him act as the Adversary expected him to do. ' You may as well renounce God's service since you benefit so little by it, and meet your fate at once instead of lingering in intolerable pain.' 10. Both good and evil are from God's hand, and must be taken in the same spirit. The words of Job are in notable contrast to those of his wife. With his lips] The reader must not be misled into thinking that the author means to suggest that Job nursed in his heart a rebellion he would not utter with his lips. 11. The three friends of Job now come upon the scene. They are represented as persons of importance like himself. Temanite] connected with Edom (Jer49''). Shuhite] Shuah was a son of Abraham by Keturah, who was sent 'to the East' (Gn25'-,