THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 From the collection of 
 Julius Doerner, Chicago 
 Purchased, 1918* 
 
 B41 P 
 
THE PENTATEUCH 
 
 IN CONTRAST WITH 
 THE SCIENCE AND MORAL SENSE 
 OF OUR AGE. 
 
 By A PHYSICIAN. 
 
 " Zufallige Geschichtswahrheiten konnen der Beweis von nothwendigen 
 Vernunftswahrheiten nie werden— Contingent historical truths can never be 
 demonstration of necessary rational truths."— Lessing. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, 
 No. 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Uppee Norwood, 
 London, S.E. 
 187£ 
 
And are they in the right who, free from doubt, 
 Can sit in sweet abstraction from each thought 
 Of Earth, pondering the lives of those who fought 
 The battles of Jehovah ; viewing the rout 
 That Israel spread as God's own act, the shout 
 Upraised for victory, glorious most when fraught 
 With deepest ruin to the foe, as taught 
 By the Creator ! 'T may not be ! Without 
 The special faith that suffers me to view 
 In one among the multitude of creeds, 
 Each by its advocates alone held true, 
 
 The truth, or other than the pregnant seeds 
 Of discord among men, I take my flight 
 From blood-stained legends, Nature, to thy Light ! 
 
J 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH— THORA, 
 THE LAW. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 ^ ^ the beginning," it is said, " God created the 
 
 _i_ heaven and the earth." What are we to 
 understand by a " beginning " ? 
 
 The epoch in eternity, doubtless, which the writer 
 of this part of the Hebrew Scriptures imagined to have 
 dawned when God created or fashioned, or set about 
 creating or fashioning, heaven and the earth, first or 
 oldest of things in his belief. 
 
 Is this belief borne out by what natural philoso- 
 phers conclude as to the constitution of heaven and 
 the earth ? 
 
 Heaven, to the modern philosopher, is no firma- 
 ment or solid sphere stretched above and subordi- 
 nate in some sort to the earth, as it was to the 
 Hebrews, but is infinite space, only to be conceived of 
 as co-eternal with, and an element in the nature of, 
 Deity ; whilst the earth is but a middle-aged member 
 of one of the great astral systems that stud The 
 Boundless, and a much more recent production, in its 
 compact form, than the whole of the planetary bodies 
 that circle round the sun in orbits outside its own. 
 
 Creation, to the modern philosopher, is therefore 
 something different from the creation, evoking, or 
 fashioning out of nothing of the Hebrew writer. 
 
 468991 
 
2 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 It is impossible to conceive something coming out 
 of nothing. But God was, and with and of God were 
 the elements, which, in conformity with the laws of 
 force and matter, also inherent in the nature of God, 
 took form and fashion as suns, planets, satellites, and 
 comets amid infinite space and in time. 
 
 Creation, as now apprehended, implies evolution — 
 evolution from what ? 
 
 As regards the particular aggregations in space, 
 whereof the solar system is one, and the earth we 
 dwell on among the least of its members, from a 
 mass of nebulous matter, extending, in the first 
 instance, far beyond the limits of the outermost of 
 the planetary bodies' which, with their satellites, now 
 circle round the sun. 
 
 Vast intervals of time must be presumed to have 
 elapsed between the epochs when the first, or outer- 
 most, and the last, or innermost, of the planets that 
 attend the sun took form and fashion ? 
 
 Such is the conclusion of modern philosophers ; 
 the planets outside the earth's orbit being regarded 
 as the older, those within it as the younger members 
 of the family, the great sun itself being the youngest 
 or latest formed of all. a 
 
 "The earth," it is said, " was without form and 
 void." 
 
 The earth, in conformity with the laws of attrac- 
 tion, repulsion, and cohesion inherent in matter, could 
 never have been without form, and could not have 
 been void, if by void emptiness be understood. From 
 the moment of its acquiring, and even before it had 
 
 a The reader is referred to an admirable paper ascribed to 
 Mr Hennessey, headed " Recent Astronomy and the Nebular 
 Hypothesis," in the Westminster Review, July,1858. In this able 
 essay the Genesis of the Solar System is treated exhaustively, 
 though briefly, in conformity with the most advanced views of 
 natural philosophers. 
 
Genesis : The Elohist. 
 
 3 
 
 acquired, consistency it was a globe, revolving on an 
 axis, flattened at the poles, bulging at the equator, 
 and made up, in the several stages of its evolution, of 
 gaseous, vaporous, liquid, and solid matters, as it is 
 at the present hour, though these matters must all 
 have existed in states far different at first from those 
 in which they now present themselves. 
 
 " And darkness was upon the face of the deep." 
 
 As yet the deep was not ; and at no time, probably, 
 did absolute- darkness prevail in the universe. Any 
 light that reached the earth., however, could not have 
 been of the bright kind that is shed from the sun as 
 it now exists. There must have been light, never- 
 theless, as well from the nebulous matter which had 
 become compact in the older planets and in the earth, 
 and was still undergoing compaction into the younger 
 planets within the earth's orbit and into the sun 
 itself, — not to speak of the nebulous and stellar masses 
 plunged in the depths of space, that were either in 
 process of condensation, and so eliciting a feebler 
 light, or that had already acquired the density which 
 fitted them as fixed ' stars or suns to shine more 
 brightly. 
 
 " Bright effluence of bright essence increate," 
 
 light was a principle in the nature of God, and must 
 have existed from eternity : 
 
 " Before the sun, 
 Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice 
 Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest 
 The rising world of waters dark and deep," 
 
 *ings one of the great heroic poets, inspired by the 
 diviner mind he had through his more perfect organi- 
 zation. 
 
 " And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the 
 waters." 
 
I 
 
 4 The Pentateuch. 
 
 The spirit or breath of God (ruach Elohim) was in 
 the waters and moved in rhythmic harmony with 
 them as with all things else. It was not only on or 
 outside of the waters and other things, but within and 
 of them, even as the manifestation we call life is within 
 and of the organisms, vegetable and animal, wherein 
 and whereby it is made known to us. 
 
 " And God said, Let there be light, and light was." 
 
 Not called into being, however, as but just said, at 
 some particular moment of time, not distinct from 
 the Godhead : 
 
 . " [But] of the Eternal, co-eternal beam, 
 
 since God is Light, 
 
 And never but in unapproached light 
 Dwelt from Eternity, dwelt then in thee," 
 
 sings in lofty rhyme our own inspired Bard. 
 
 " And God divided the light from the darkness, and 
 he called the light day, and the darkness he called 
 night." 
 
 The writer speaks of darkness— a purely negative 
 state or condition,— as if it were a positive something. 
 But darkness is a mere consequence of the absence 
 of light ; and it is obvious that he could not have 
 known by what name God called either the light or 
 the dark : God ordained the light and the dark, but 
 he left man to give them names. 
 
 " Let there be a firmament in the midst of the 
 waters ; and let it divide the waters from the waters." 
 
 The writer fancied that the over-arching canopy of 
 the sky was a transparent solid, in which the sun, 
 moon, and stars were set, somewhat perhaps after the 
 manner of the precious stones in the breast-plate of 
 the high priest ; and that as there was an ocean below 
 or on the earth, so must there be an ocean above or 
 m heaven, from which at times— on certain sluices, 
 presumably, being opened— rain fell to moisten the 
 ground and fit it lor the growth of plants. 
 
Genesis : The Elohist. 
 
 5 
 
 " Let the waters on the earth be gathered together 
 into one place, and let the dry land appear." 
 
 Geological facts and reasonable inferences from 
 them lead to the conclusion that the earth, on its 
 emergence from the nebulous or gaseous state in 
 which it first existed, appeared as an incandescent 
 fluid, and next as a semi-solid ball, when all that was 
 still vapourable in its constitution surrounded the 
 glowing mass as a heterogeneous atmosphere, some- 
 thing, in all probability, like that which we now believe 
 to constitute the photosphere of the sun. Heat, how- 
 ever, passing off into space, precipitation first of the 
 more and then of the less refractory substances took 
 place, and a crust of some consistency was formed. 
 This, shrinking on the still melted mass within, caused 
 it to burst through in lines and at particular points, 
 whereby mountains and mountain-chains were formed, 
 and the surface was made uneven. The temperature 
 continuing to fall lower and lower, the aqueous vapour 
 of the atmosphere was finally in great measure pre- 
 cipitated and condensed into water, which, running 
 down the slopes, gathered itself into the hollows and 
 there formed rivers, lakes, and seas, with more or less 
 of dry land between ; irregularities of surface, doubt- 
 less, exerting a paramount influence on the future dis- 
 tribution of land and water. For with shrinkings or 
 subsidences here, and upheavals there, in combination 
 with the tremendous rainfalls that must have occurred 
 in the earlier geological epochs of the earth's history, 
 whole continents with mountain-chains for their back- 
 bones, were disintegrated and swept away, whilst 
 mighty oceans congregated here, were dissipated in 
 vapour and dried up there ; that being made over 
 and over again the wet which had been the dry, and 
 that the dry which had been the wet. 
 
 The rainfalls in these early geological epochs we 
 cannot but presume must, indeed, have been tremen- 
 dous ? 
 
6 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 If we only consider that the whole of the water now 
 stored in the oceans that cover so large a portion of 
 the earth's surface was once suspended first as gas 
 or viewless vapour and then as steam in the atmo- 
 sphere, we may form some idea of their extent and 
 influence in fashioning the crust of the earth as it 
 now appears. The mass of the stratified rocks which 
 compose the proper crust of the globe is index enough 
 of the extent of the continents that must have been 
 disintegrated and ground down to supply the vast 
 amount of material of which they consist, and of the 
 combined powers of the rain and rivers that strewed 
 this material at the bottom of the shoreless oceans 
 where the strata took shape, as well as of the 
 degree of heat still present in the central mass 
 that fused or welded them into the solids they now 
 present. 
 
 Disintegration of the first consolidated body of the 
 earth did not, however, presumably supply the whole 
 of the materials that now enter into the constitution 
 of its stratified crust ? 
 
 By no means ; from all we know it seems reason- 
 able to suppose that some very considerable propor- 
 tion of these was furnished by the matters still sus- 
 pended in the vaporous state amid the fiery atmosphere 
 that must long have surrounded the incandescent body 
 of the globe. It was not the water only of our pre- 
 sent oceans, lakes, and rivers, the oxygen of our 
 earthy and metallic oxydes, the carbonic acid of our 
 mineral carbonates and coal measures that existed in 
 the first instance as gas or vapour about the glowing 
 globe ; the salts, the metals, and the mineral substances 
 most useful to man, and most prized by him, must 
 probably all have been there originally in the form of 
 elements, and only acquired their distinctive states and 
 qualities when the temperature had fallen low enough 
 to allow the law of the elective affinities to come into 
 play. (See Appendix A.) 
 
Genesis : The Elohist. 
 
 7 
 
 t€ And God called tke dry land earth, and the waters 
 called he seas." 
 
 It is the Hebrew poet himself who calls the dry- 
 land Arets, and the gathered waters Imim — words 
 which we translate Earth and Seas. Had God called 
 these aggregates of solid and liquid matter by any 
 names—and we venture to think that he never did, 
 otherwise than through the mouths of men, — the 
 writer of the sentence quoted could very certainly no 
 more have known what they were than he could have 
 known by what names day and night were called, 
 
 " Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding 
 seed and the tree yielding fruit." 
 
 The waters which at several epochs and for such 
 lengthened periods covered the whole or a vast pro- 
 portion of the globe, were undoubtedly the source, 
 seed-bed, and nursery of the vegetable tribes which 
 at length, and after the lapse of countless seons, gained 
 a footing on the land, and from the lowly forms of 
 sexless flags, lichens, mosses, ferns, horse-tails, &c, 
 finally acquired sexuality, and showed themselves as 
 the palm and pine, the fig, orange, olive, vine and 
 host of other seed and fruit-bearing herbs and trees 
 that prepared the way for the advent of the higher 
 organisms, the conscious living creatures which made 
 their appearance on the earth at last. 
 
 " Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to 
 divide the day from the night, to be for signs and for 
 seasons, for days and for years, and to give light upon 
 the earth." * 
 
 In our modern geological cosmogony we feel 
 assured that a long interval elapsed between the forma- 
 tion of the moon and the definite formation of the sun 
 as he now exists — if indeed the formation of the sun 
 can yet fee said, with any propriety, to be definite or 
 complete. The moon, we conclude, circled round 
 the earth in a period other than that she now observes, 
 and shed a paler light than she does at present upon 
 
8 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 its unpeopled surface, whilst the sun yet showed a disc 
 less fiery than that he now presents, but of millions 
 instead of hundreds of thousands of miles in diameter. 
 The formation of the sun and moon, however, was 
 simultaneous, according to the Hebrew poet, and had 
 reference solely to the convenience of man. But the 
 moon is some hundreds of thousands of years younger 
 than the earth, and by seons older than the sun ; and 
 though man finds his advantage in the light and 
 other attributes of these great bodies, they certainly 
 took shape and had motions and qualities irrespec- 
 tively of him, but in harmony with the laws which 
 inhere in matter and bring about phenomena. The 
 phases of the moon give man the week, and her period 
 about the earth the month, as the course of the earth 
 about the sun — of the sun about the earth in the 
 olden belief — gives him the seasons and the year. 
 
 " Let the waters bring forth the moving creature 
 that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the 
 earth." 
 
 The waters were doubtless the womb in which the 
 germs took shape that finally and in virtue of inherent 
 powers eventuated not only in senseless vegetable 
 forms, but in those gelatinous atoms with implanted 
 sensibilities and aptitudes which by evolutionary 
 efforts turned at length into radiates, molluscs, arti- 
 culates, insects, fishes, amphibians, mammalians, and 
 man. The absolutely dry is the absolutely barren; 
 the moist is the source of life ; hence the rise, in the 
 heathen mythology, of Aphrodite, emblem of the 
 generative power, from the sea. 
 
 " Let the earth bring forth the living creature after 
 his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the 
 earth." 
 
 The Hebrew poet thought that the tenants of the 
 dry land must have had their origin thereon, as he 
 believed the tenants of the waters had theirs therein. 
 Regarding the whale as a fish, he referred his birth to 
 
Genesis : 'The Elohist. 
 
 9 
 
 the waters — and truly, in one respect, for his forma- 
 tion fits Mm for life in these alone ; but the whale 
 and his congeners the porpoises are not fishes anymore 
 than their allied kinds the walruses, dugongs and 
 seals ; for they all have warm blood, breathe by means 
 of lungs, bring forth living young and suckle them 
 precisely as do the mammalians that live on the land. 
 
 " And God said : Let us make men in our image, 
 after our likeness. And God created man in his 
 image, in the image of God created he him ; male and 
 female created he them." (Eng. Vers, and De Wette.) 
 
 Man, the Hebrew poet necessarily saw as the crown 
 and consummation of the creative energy. But we 
 may be permitted to regret that he should have ima- 
 gined and should have said that man was made in the 
 image of God ; for God as all -pervading Spirit or 
 Force, Essence or Cause, is without parts or propor- 
 tions, and so is without figure — a truth subsequently 
 acknowledged in more than one part of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures by other writers. God fills the universe, 
 and is necessarily impersonal and unimaginable in any 
 shape. It is the converse of the writer's statement 
 that is true : it is man who has fashioned God like 
 himself. In harmony with the law of sexual dis- 
 tinction in all the higher classes of animals, man on 
 his appearance on Earth is here fitly presented as 
 cognate male and female, from the first. 
 
 And God gave the herb bearing seed, and the tree 
 bearing fruit for meat, to the conscious creatures 
 evolved, we venture to assume, in virtue of aptitudes 
 inherent in certain of the inorganic naturarelements, 
 prime instruments of God, and possessed of powers 
 which finally formed flesh and blood and nerve 
 and brain, with the wonderful appanages of feeling, 
 the moral sense, the religious sense, understanding 
 and reason ; faculties by which man comes at length 
 to conceive a Supreme Being to whom reverence 
 and obedience are due, to arrogate rights for him- 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 self, and to own obligations to Lis fellow-men. It 
 is to be regretted that the Hebrew writer should not 
 have noted that God had also given the flesh of 
 animals as well as vegetables for food to man and 
 other creatures,— flesh to be supplied by the sacrifice 
 of the weaker by the stronger and more highly 
 organised among animals, man, as the most highly 
 organised and most intelligent of any, sacrificing 
 every other living thing that is fit for food to satisfy 
 his appetite, and only attaining to the highest per- 
 fection of his powers where he diets on a mixture of 
 vegetable and animal substances. 
 
 " Thus were finished the Heavens and the Earth 
 and all the host of them." 
 
 The writer gives his Elohim— God or Gods— much 
 less time in which to complete the marvellous work 
 than from its constitution and self-revealed history 
 we now feel assured was necessarily employed. He 
 had Eternity to draw on ; but he has not used his 
 privilege beyond the scanty measure of a few days. 
 Any term, however, of any conceivable length he 
 could have fixed on, would still have fallen short of 
 that which God may have used in fashioning the vast 
 assemblage of systems of which the Earth, in so far 
 as mass is concerned, is so insignificant a part. 
 
 "And God rested the seventh day from all the 
 work which he had made." 
 
 The writer here obviously fancies Elohim like him- 
 self. Weary with six days' work, he gladly rests on 
 the seventh day, and so fancies that God must have 
 done so too. But God never rests ; for God is not to 
 be thought of as prime or inceptive Cause only, but 
 as persistent, ever-active Cause of all that is and of all 
 that comes to pass. Were God to rest for an instant 
 of time, the fair fabric of harmonious nature would be 
 the Chaos out of which the Hebrew writer presumed 
 it to have arisen. 
 Thus far we have a connected account of the 
 
Genesis : The Elohist. 
 
 creation of heaven and the earth and its inhabitants — 
 what is to be thought of the tale ? 
 
 As of a simple, beautiful poem, the work of a man 
 of thoughtful and imaginative mind, having the 
 culture of the age in which he lived, and writing the 
 language of his country in the highest state of purity 
 to which it ever attained ; a writer, therefore, of rela- 
 tively recent times in the history of the Jewish people 
 — one, moreover, who drew little or nothing from, 
 either oral or written tradition or legend, but gave 
 shape in words to the ideas and fancies that spring 
 up in minds of thoughtful and poetic mould. The 
 account of Creation, as contained in the first chapter 
 of Genesis, must be the work of a writer who lived 
 during or immediately after the reign of Solomon, 
 before the Hebrew tongue had begun to decline from 
 its purity and become mixed with Aramaic words — 
 one of the Isaiahs or Lyrists who penned the finest of 
 the Psalms, the glory of the Hebrew literature, and 
 that cannot be said to have their like in the letters of 
 any other people. 
 
 The narrative of the first chapter of Genesis is not, 
 however, the only account we have in the Hebrew 
 Scriptures of the early history of the world, and more 
 especially of the circumstances under which man 
 began his career on earth ? 
 
 There is a second account, commencing with the 
 fourth verse of the second chapter of the Book of 
 Genesis, which differs notably from the first, and 
 begins abruptly in these words : " These are the 
 generations of the heavens and of the earth" when 
 they were created." 
 
 It might almost be presumed that there was some- 
 thing wanting here ? 
 
 So much of the document, seemingly, as gave the 
 generations referred to. The verse, however, has every 
 appearance of an interpolation, intended to connect 
 the narrative that is to follow with that which has 
 
12 The Pentateuch. 
 
 gone before But so little affinity have the two 
 
 peotect by the critical reader, who soon finds his sus 
 FOion turned into certainty by the diversity of treat 
 
 finds the 0 D! r r S aUd , the diffe " ent name V which he 
 tmus the Deity now designated, the title in the first 
 account being always Elohim-translated God in it 
 English version, and in the second Jahveh or Jahveh! 
 Elohim-trans ated Lord and Lord-God with us 
 Nor is flna all A multitude of minor dhTerences 
 in the style and kind of information given meet Z 
 critical eye which proclaim not two but ^ writers 
 ^ ^ Hved at times rem °te frol one 
 tary matter that did not always agree in its terms 
 Sfiffi We ^ WeTOr < is eharactS 
 of one of tt %V Bd ° nt CS as bein ^ from the 
 •second from tw ^ Wnter3 CaUed ***** the 
 
 E*25 nf *° ° ne ° r m ° re ° f those entitl ed 
 Je/mmts, all of them apparently belonging to the 
 
 E^S" 1 ^™ 8 the " - f -matfon from 
 J ■ , 0ften dls erepant sources. 
 
 wnlr-the T e i rSt W fr ° m the 
 
 worldV 6 JehOTlst ~™ his accounts the early 
 
 it grew. He appears to have imagined that trees 
 
 ar^fidaI b flo Were \°° d mnoh » the 4 «£ 
 
 artificial flowers are made in the present dav and 
 
 tZlT^ ^ * he gr0Und > as he Mmsdf was" wont 
 
 Jerusalem a meD "* W ° rk p]antiDg P 0t " herbs round 
 
 What reason is assigned for God's procedure in 
 
Genesis: The Jehovist. 
 
 thus making herbs and trees, instead of evoking them 
 from the ground like the Elohist ? 
 
 It is because " the Lord- God had not yet caused it 
 to rain on the earth, and there was not a man to till 
 the ground." 
 
 The writer of these words could not, it is obvious, 
 have • known of the Elohist's account of Creation, in 
 which there was not only water enough and conse- 
 quently rain, but herbs and trees growing and yield- 
 ing their seed and fruit, and both man and woman to 
 tend the plants and till the ground, supposing that to 
 have been needful to the growth of vegetables in a 
 state of nature, which it is not. The vast and vigorous 
 growths that gave rise to the carboniferous strata of 
 the earth all took place myriads of years before there 
 was a man to till the ground, though there must have 
 been rain enough and to spare, and carbonic acid in 
 the air in such excess as was probably incompatible 
 with the existence of any but the lower forms of ani- 
 mal life, — certain it is that none of the higher forms 
 had as yet made their appearance when the mighty 
 morasses spread and the forests grew that now lie 
 buried in our coal measures. 
 
 Have we not evidence in geological records of rain 
 having fallen on the earth not only before the appear- 
 ance of man on its face, but even before that of any 
 of the higher forms of animal life ? 
 
 Yes, ample ; on sand-stone slabs deposited during 
 the tertiary period of the earth's existence we not 
 only find pit-marks like those made on sand and mud 
 by falling showers at the present day, but even learn 
 the quarter whence the wind blew when the showers 
 fell"! More than this, we find the foot-prints of a 
 frog or toad-like creature with a heavy tail, indicated 
 by the trail or smoothed line obliterating the rain-pits 
 in the wake of the footsteps ! Yet more, and in 
 strata much older than those to which the sand-stone 
 slabs belong that preserve these interesting records, 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 we find abundance not only of vegetable, but of ani- 
 mal remains. So that we are enabled positively to 
 say that plants grew, that animals lived on them, and 
 on one another too, and that rain fell hundreds of 
 thousands — it may be millions of years before there 
 was a man to till the ground. 
 
 The Lord- God — Jahveh-Elohim — we are then in- 
 formed, caused a mist to go up from the earth to 
 water it, and make the plants he had fashioned to 
 grow ; further, that he made man of the dust of the 
 ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
 life and he became a living creature (not soul, as in 
 the English, translation, the word soul leading to 
 metaphysical conclusions not contemplated in the 
 text) ; finally, that he planted a garden in Eden, and 
 therein put the man whom be had made. 
 
 This is according to the text ; but the physics of 
 the writer are at fault, for if the earth had the water 
 necessary to supply the mist which was to fall in 
 rain, it had already the moisture needful to make 
 plants grow. And then he makes his deity fashion 
 the man as a statuary fashions his statue, and only 
 put life into him at last by breathing into his nostrils ; 
 he knew nothing of the law of evolution which the 
 science of our modern world discovers in nature's 
 acts, which we are still to look on as the acts of God 
 in his quality of Cause, and so of Creator. 
 
 The garden in Eden is carefully planted ? 
 
 With every tree that is pleasant to the sight and 
 good for food ; the tree of life in the midst of the gar- 
 den, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil ; per- 
 mission being given to the man freely to eat of the fruit 
 of every tree in the garden save and except of that of 
 the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Of this tree 
 he is not to eat ; for in the day he does he is told that 
 he shall surely die. 
 
 What is the next step in the proceedings of Jahveh- 
 Elohim, according to the writer ? 
 
Genesis : The Jehovist. 
 
 He is made to say, as if it were a discovery or 
 afterthought, that it is not good for the man to be 
 alone, and that he would therefore make a help-meet 
 for him. Before proceeding with this kindly purpose, 
 however, the writer makes Jahveh-Elohim turn off 
 to form the beasts of the field and the fowls of the 
 air, which he brings to the man, who is now named 
 Adam, " to see what he would call them, and whatso- 
 ever Adam called every living creature, that was the 
 name thereof." 
 
 Adam's nomenclature has not reached us ? 
 It has not, though it might as well have been pre- 
 served as many of the particulars given by the writer. 
 It was probably simpler if less copious than that of his 
 successors, the modern naturalists. Still, " for Adam," 
 it is now said, and despairingly as it were, "there 
 was not found an help-meet for him." 
 
 Jahveh-Elohim is made by the writer to proceed in 
 a very roundabout way to supply the deficiency ? 
 
 He causes a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, from 
 whose side a rib is taken, out of which a woman is 
 made and brought to the man, who styles her Isha } 
 feminine of Ish, man. 
 
 This seems a poor conceit in face of the omnipotence 
 of God and is in palpable contradiction with the state- 
 ment in the Elohistic account of Creation, according 
 to which and in harmony with the great law of sexual 
 distinction, God is said to have made man male and 
 female from the first. May we not, therefore, with- 
 out irreverence, say that if the Elohist's account be 
 correct, that of the Jehovist cannot be true ? 
 
 Surely it is a puerile contrivance as prelude and 
 pretext for what the man is immediately made to say : 
 — " This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my 
 flesh ; she shall be called woman, because she was 
 taken out of man." But God took no rib from the 
 side of man to form his counterpart, woman : " Man- 
 like, but different sex," Isha needed not to be taken 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 in tins childish and inconceivable way from the side 
 of Ish to be of one flesh with him; she was so by 
 (rod s fiat when simultaneously with him she came 
 into being, and long before he and she together had 
 attained to the higher state of conscious life, worthy 
 of their noble collective Aryan designation Man 
 from the reason (manu skr.) wherewith they were 
 endowed. 
 
 Adam is charmed with bis helpmate ? 
 Of course he is : — 
 
 " So lovely fair was she, 
 That what seemed fair in all the world seemed now 
 Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained, 
 And in her looks. * * 
 
 Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, 
 In every gesture dignity and love," 
 
 according to the version of our own great king of 
 song. & 
 
 The man and the woman do not, however, accord- 
 ing to the narrative, long enjoy the happy state of 
 innocence and bliss in which they were placed at 
 first ? 
 
 The serpent, says the story, was more subtil than 
 any beast of the field, and said to the woman : " Yea, 
 hath God said ye shall not eat of every tree of the 
 garden ? " 
 
 And the woman ? 
 
 Said to the serpent : "We may eat of the fruit of 
 the trees of the garden ; but of the fruit of the tree 
 which is in the midst of the garden God hath said : 
 Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it lest ye 
 die." 
 
 The serpent answers ? 
 
 "Ye shall not surely die ; for God doth know that 
 in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened, 
 and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." 
 
 The serpent shows himself a subtil beast indeed, 
 
Genesis : The Jehovist. 
 
 17 
 
 apt In using as in understanding human speech, and 
 excelling in persuasive power! The Elohist, in his 
 account, gave man the dominion over the beasts of 
 the field and the fowls of the air; but the Jehovist 
 reverses the picture and makes man dominated by 
 the reptile that creeps upon his belly, and, in popular 
 belief, lives upon dust ! 
 
 The woman yields to the suggestion of the insidi- 
 ously friendly and familiar serpent ? 
 
 She sees that the tree is good for food, pleasant to 
 the eye, a tree to be desired to make one wise ; and 
 so she takes of the fruit and eats, and gives to her 
 husband also, and he eats. 
 
 With the result ? 
 
 That the eyes of both are opened — not, however, in 
 any intellectual and moral sense, as might have been 
 presumed, but in a sense purely physical, for they 
 only now discover, it is said, that they are naked, 
 and to hide their nakedness that, they sew fig-leaves 
 together to make them aprons— scanty covering 
 enough, but which Jahveh-Elohim, according to the 
 writer, improves on subsequently by making them 
 "coats of skims." The fig-leaves were at hand; but 
 it has been made a question as to whence came the 
 skins, and as to who it was who slew and flayed the 
 animals that bore them, and shaped and sewed 
 together the garments ! And thus do men land 
 themselves among the absurdities that crop up when 
 they are guilty of the folly of anthropomorphosing 
 the Infinite Supreme ; and of giving a literal meaning 
 to Eastern tales, the product of early and ignorant 
 ages of the world ! 
 
 The discovery of their nakedness was but a slight 
 initiation for the man and woman into the knowledge 
 of good and evil that was to follow on eating the 
 forbidden fruit. Having senses, indeed, they needed 
 not to have partaken of it to learn that they were 
 naked. But is it in the nature of things, that aught 
 
 C 
 
i8 
 
 The Pentateuch, 
 
 taken into the mouth could have given man first to 
 know whether he were naked or clothed ? 
 
 It is not ; knowledge of the kind comes through 
 the senses of sight and feeling, not of taste, and where 
 these senses exist such knowledge is already pos- 
 sessed. 
 
 . Or that fruit of any kind eaten should teach man- 
 kind the difference between good and evil ? 
 
 In so far as sweet, sour, bitter, and other savours 
 are concerned, and as wholesome or unwholesome 
 qualities are good and evil — Yes ; but as regards the 
 moral good and evil implied though not expressed 
 — No. God has connected the knowledge of what is 
 good and evil from a moral point of view with certain 
 parts of the brain, the functions of which are facul- 
 ties of the mind,- and it is by means of these that man 
 knows and makes distinction between moral good and 
 evil ; even as it is by the nerves of the tongue that he 
 distinguishes between sweet, sour, and bitter, the 
 sapid and insipid, "&c, by those of touch and sight 
 that he knows the difference between the rough and 
 the smooth, the nude and the clothed, &c, and by 
 those of the stomach and body at large that he is 
 made aware of what is wholesome or deleterious. 
 
 The discovery of their nakedness by the man and 
 the woman is sometimes interpreted otherwise than 
 literally ? 
 
 But as it seems by a somewhat forced construction ; 
 the effect of eating the forbidden fruit being said to 
 have been to engender concupiscence, carnal desire, — 
 as if that had been a sin ! But God had created man 
 male and female, and put desire for one another into 
 their minds ; blessed them, too ; said to them, Increase, 
 multiply, and replenish the earth, and furnished them 
 forth for the work. Neither, if we may trust our own 
 Poet of Paradise, was Eve 
 
 " Uninformed 
 Of nuptial sanctity and marriage rites ; 
 
Genesis : The Jehovist. 
 
 J 9 
 
 Nature herself wrought so in her that she, 
 Seeing her husband, turned, 
 And with obsequious majesty approved 
 His pleaded reason." 
 
 The feeling that leads man to cover certain parts of 
 his body in lands where he has no need of clothing, 
 may be said to be an element in bis nature, almost 
 as much his peculiar Heritage as bis religions sense, 
 and must have made itself felt in the very prime of bis 
 emergence from mere brutality into properly human 
 though still savage life. There seems, therefore, no 
 occasion to see any recondite meaning as underlying 
 Adam's discovery that be was naked. Sucb know- 
 ledge be certainly never bad from eating any even 
 sucli fruit as is said to have grown in tbe garden of 
 Eden. 
 
 What interpretation is commonly put on the 
 appearance and part played by tbe serpent ? 
 
 That it was tbe impersonation of Evil, designated 
 Satan or Devil, who in guise of a serpent was tbe 
 spokesman and tempter. 
 
 Is there any warrant in tbe text for sucb an 
 assumption ? 
 
 There is none. Tbe words are explicit : " Tbe 
 serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field." 
 
 Is there anything else against tbe vulgar interpre- 
 tation ? 
 
 Yes ; tbe dualism implied in tbe recognition of a 
 Principle of Evil apart or distinct from a Principle of 
 G ooc [__ a recognition entirely foreign to the concep- 
 tion of Deity and tbe religious system of tbe Jewish 
 people. If we constantly meet in tbe sacred writings 
 of tbe Jews with Deity in tbe two aspects of Good 
 and Evil, their God, whether called El or Jabveh, is 
 still one only. Though no more than the greatest 
 among tbe Gods, he is ever to them the Supreme, 
 Lord of the Dark as of tbe Light, source himself of the 
 
so The Pentateuch. 
 
 Evil as of the Good that befals. " Shall there be evil 
 in a city and I have not done it, sayeth Jehovah." 
 Amos iii. 6. " I form the light and create darkness ; 
 I make peace and create evil ; I the Lord do all 
 these things." Isaiah xlv. 7. We say nothing here 
 of the absurdity of Evil personified and called Satan 
 or Devil ; for that is one of the earliest errors of man- 
 kind, as it still continues among the unworthy super- 
 stitions of the present day. 
 
 The prominence given to the Seepent and the Teee 
 —the whole idea of the garden in Eden, indeed, ap- 
 pears foreign to the Jewish theocratic system ? 
 
 Most obviously ; and so must the idea have been 
 derived by the writer from what he or his coun- 
 trymen had learned through intercourse, commercial 
 or otherwise at some earlier period, through exile in 
 later times, with the Medes and Persians, in whose 
 religious system the dualism of Deity is an essential 
 element ; the beneficent principle in nature, typified 
 by Light, being called Ormuzd, and^ the adverse 
 principle, symbolized by the serpent, named Ahriman. 
 It is not unimportant to observe that nowhere else in 
 the Hebrew Scriptures save in this early part of the 
 Book of Genesis do the serpent and Satan appear as 
 counteracting the benevolent purposes of Jehovah. 
 On the contrary, the image of the reptile, as in the 
 instance of the brazen serpent which Moses lifted up 
 in the Wilderness, is rather assumed as the emblem 
 of healing : — propitiated by worship and sacrifice the 
 death-dealing principle in nature stays the pestilence ; 
 and Satan, once admitted into the celestial hierarchy 
 of the Hebrews, is seen but as one among the other 
 ministers or agents of Jehovah— tempting and trying 
 the faith of mankind, it may be, but never appearing 
 as the adversary of the Supreme (Job passim). 
 
 _ What, according to the narrative, follows on the 
 discovery of their nakedness by the man and woman? 
 Hearing the voice of Jehovah-Elohim " walking in 
 
Genesis : The Jehovist. 
 
 21 
 
 the garden in the cool of the day !" they hide them- 
 selves among the trees. Jehovah-Elohim, not meet- 
 ing them as usual, it might seem, calls Adam and 
 says, " Where art thou ? " 
 
 Adam answers : " I heard thy voice in the garden 
 and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid 
 myself." 
 
 Adam does not, therefore, honestly and at once 
 acknowledge his disobedience of the commandment 
 he had received, but lays the fear he feels to face the 
 Lord- God to the score of his nakedness. 
 
 So says the record ; and Jahveh-Elohim, as if he 
 needed the information, asks : " Who told thee that 
 thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree 
 whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not 
 eat?" 
 
 To which Adam, shifting the blame of disobedience 
 from his own shoulders in a regretable and somewhat 
 cowardly way, makes answer : " The woman thou 
 gavest to be with me gave me of the tree and I did 
 eat." 
 
 U What next? 
 
 Turning to the woman, Jahveh-Elohim says : 
 " What is this that thou hast done ? " And on her 
 meek reply, " The serpent beguiled me, and I did 
 eat ; " addressing the serpent, he proceeds : " Because 
 thou hast done this thou art accursed above all cattle 
 and above every beast of the field ; upon thy belly 
 shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of 
 thy life." 
 
 The serpent, as he had shown himself familiar with 
 human speech, could scarcely be supposed to be igno- 
 rant of that which was divine, and so the writer felt 
 himself at liberty to make his God inform the serpent 
 of the penalty he was to pay for his interference. 
 
 But is the serpent really cursed above all other 
 creatures, or does God truly curse any of his handi- 
 works ? 
 
22 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 ^ The serpent, like all other creatures, is fitted for 
 his state in every particular. He never progressed 
 save upon his belly, and is no more cursed than any 
 creature, else that, in the course of nature, has come 
 into life. He is even more agile in his movements 
 than many other animals much higher in the scale of 
 organisation than himself, glancing through the 
 herbage and striking his prey or throwing his deadly 
 coil about it with the rapidity of lightning. Neither 
 does he eat dust, but lives on animal food like other 
 carnivorous creatures, which he also has the skill to 
 secure alive for himself. Far from being cursed, in- 
 deed, the serpent, in many of his kinds, is favoured 
 with such an instrument of destruction in his poison 
 fangs as gives him superiority over every other crea- 
 ture, no matter how much larger, stronger, and more 
 knowing than himself, man, the lord of creation him- 
 self, not excepted. 
 
 There is something said about especial enmity put 
 between the woman and the serpent ? 
 
 " I will put enmity between thee and the woman, 
 says the story, " and between thy seed and her seed, 
 it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise its heel." 
 What may be the meaning of this ? 
 It must be allegorical, like so much else that has 
 already been commented on ; it certainly can have no 
 such meaning as is usually put on it by theologians. 
 A reasonable interpretation of the enigmatic words, 
 however, may be found by a reference to certain an- 
 cient Indian sculptures, where the Sun-God, Krishna, 
 source of life, is seen with one foot on the head of 
 the snake, Kaliga, emblem or source of darkness and 
 death; or to the modern planisphere, where the 
 kneeling Hercules, one of the Sun-Gods, is repre- 
 sented with uplifted club treading on the head of the 
 mighty snake that coils about the pole, emblem of 
 winter and the surcease of life. The reference, there- 
 fore, is probably astrological, and the meaning of the 
 
Genesis : T he JeJiovist. 
 
 23 
 
 myth scarcely doubtful :— The sun, escaping from the 
 inferior or wintry to the superior or summer signs of 
 the zodiac at the vernal equinox, triumphs over winter, 
 and awakens the earth from the sleep of death to 
 renovated life. Feigned to have died and lam buried 
 for a season, and mourned over as Osiris, Adonis, 
 Tammuz, &c, he is hailed anon with acclamations 
 and rejoicings as newly risen from the dead. 
 
 So much for the serpent. What is said to the 
 woman ? 
 
 " I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy con- 
 ception ; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, 
 and thou shalt be subject to thy husband and he shall 
 rule over thee." 
 
 And to the man — ? 
 
 " Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy 
 wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded 
 thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it ; cursed is the 
 ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it 
 all the days of thy life ; thorns also and thistles shall 
 it bring forth to thee. In the sweat of thy face shalt 
 thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground ; for 
 out of it wast thou taken — dust thou art, and unto 
 dust shalt thou return." 
 
 Can we conceive God multiplying sorrow on man 
 as a penalty for yielding to such an impulse as the 
 desire to know good from evil ; an impulse, more- 
 over, implanted by himself ? 
 
 It were surely impious to think of anything of the 
 kind in connection with the idea of God. 
 
 Or of God inflicting pain on woman in particular, as 
 a penalty for putting forth her hand and tasting of 
 fruit within easy reach, fair to look on, pleasant to the 
 taste, enlarging the scope of her mental vision, and 
 not injurious to her body ? 
 
 It is absurd to speak of God as dealing in any 
 such way with any of his creatures. 
 
 What were man, did he not know good from evil ? 
 
2 4 The Pentateuch. 
 
 He were then no better than the beasts— more 
 helpless, indeed, than they ; for in their finer senses 
 ot sight, touch, smell, and taste, they discriminate 
 more nicely than man in many cases between the 
 good and the bad, in so far as their bodily state is 
 concerned. 
 
 The desire to Jcnow is even a primary impulse, one 
 of the great gifts of God to man ? 
 
 It is so, indeed ; and is the one desire which man in 
 liis most advanced state sees it of the highest moment 
 to cultivate ; source, as it proves to be, of all the plea- 
 sures he has m his higher intellectual existence ; of so 
 much therefore, that gives him his true title to be 
 looked on as lord of the creation. 
 
 But man was threatened with death did he eat of 
 the forbidden tree : " In the day thou eatest thereof 
 SV™ sure] y die," says the record. Yet not only 
 did Adam not suffer bodily death at the time of his 
 eatmg but he may be said to have then awakened to 
 ins higher intellectual and responsible life. 
 
 Theologians cannot therefore be warranted in their 
 assumption that man became obnoxious to death 
 through disobeying the arbitrary commandment said 
 to nave been given him ? 
 
 What follows immediately shows that the writer 
 believed man to have been created mortal from the 
 nrst : He is driven out of the garden in Eden lest he 
 should take also of the tree of life, eat, and so like 
 the Llohim— the Gods, live for ever. It is not true, 
 therefore, according to the Hebrew tale itself, that 
 death was brought into the world through man's in- 
 fringement of an order not to eat of the tree of the 
 knowledge of good and evil. Immortality was no 
 item m the original charter either of man or any 
 other creature or thing; and it is even impious to 
 speak ot the natural and inevitable surcease of life as 
 a penalty : a necessity in the nature of things, it can 
 be no penalty. It has been well and truly said that 
 
Genesis : T he Jehovist. 
 
 the natural term of man's life is about three score 
 and ten years. The few who reach extreme old age, 
 between four score and four score and ten, mostly 
 find the length of the way more than wearisome long 
 before its end ; the load of years grows heavy to be 
 borne, and there are few who are not well content 
 to lay down the burthen at last. 
 
 Death being regarded as the greatest of evils that 
 could befall mankind, and as a punishment for diso- 
 bedience, by the Hebrew writer, can he be warranted 
 in speaking of the pain connected with child-bearing 
 as imposed on the woman by way of peculiar penalty 
 for the active part she took in aspiring after other 
 knowledge than that which she had through her mere 
 senses ? 
 
 Pain under any circumstances is first and in the 
 natural fitness of things an admonition to beware of 
 influences injurious to the bodily state, and, in the case 
 of the woman about to become a mother, of the great 
 event in her life that is imminent, putting her on her 
 guard and bidding her make provision for the safety 
 of herself and the fruit of her womb. And then it 
 would seem that the effort necessary to bring forth 
 children cannot, in the nature of things as they are 
 (and so as they could best be), be dissevered from 
 more or less of suffering. 
 
 Might not the woman, however, have been so framed 
 by the Mighty Workman as to have brought forth 
 without suffering ? 
 
 ■ No ; if pain be suffered in the process, we may feel 
 assured that it was inseparable from it. Constituted 
 as she is, we may be certain that she could have been 
 advantageously constituted no otherwise than as she 
 is. All things are precisely as they could be. The 
 pain inevitably connected with child-bearing is brief, 
 the joy of motherhood is for life. 
 
 Is the ground truly cursed because of the man's 
 participation in the woman's desire to know and 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 become as one of the Gods ; or, like a school-boy, for 
 having eaten an apple fair to view and on proof made 
 found savoury and not unwholesome, though forbidden 
 to put forth his hand by the owner of the garden ? 
 
 God curses nothing that by his fiat is or comes to 
 pass m conformity with his laws. If the ground 
 bears thorns and thistles it also yields spontaneously 
 the herbage on which so many creatures live, and on 
 the flesh of which in turn man and other carnivorous 
 tribes subsist. It supports the luxuriant vegetation 
 of the tropics unsolicited, and in the warmer latitudes 
 yields with little care the cereals, roots and fruits 
 that minister to man's most pressing wants ; under 
 less favourable aspects of clime and site, it still grate- 
 fully responds to forethought and ingenuity when 
 brought to bear upon it :— Anticipating results and 
 using means to ends in harmony with nature's laws, 
 the barren heath under man's fostering care puts on 
 a smile, and waving harvests look up to the sun 
 where scarce a blade of grass had grown, and the 
 harsh or sapless wilding is turned into the melting 
 pulp of our summer fruits. To speak of the ground 
 as cursed of God is to libel the Supreme— if that 
 indeed were possible. At the price of labour man 
 lias all his most necessary wants supplied by the 
 kindly ground. One of God's best gifts to man, 
 indeed, has been said to be the necessity to work, by 
 one who was himself among the busiest of workers 
 whilst he lived, and who has done so much through 
 the work he did to free the world from superstition 
 and the base idea that idleness is a boon. 
 
 What can be said for the information Adam re- 
 ceives that he is dust and shall to dust return ? 
 
 That the body of man is made up in but small 
 measure of the dust of the ground ; it is in fact much 
 more the creature of water and the air than of any 
 kind of earth. And as to the interpretation put on 
 the text that instead of the eternal life intended for 
 
Genesis : The Jehovist. 27 
 
 him at first he is henceforth to have a merely tem- 
 porary existence, this is readily disposed of by 
 acknowledging God's purposes as they are from 
 eternity so are they eternal ; and man, as he has a de- 
 termined existence in time, to have been from the first 
 precluded from the possibility of living for ever. 
 That death came not into the world because of any 
 transgression by man of a commandment of God is 
 certain ; for that the earth was peopled by myriads 
 of animals which lived and died asons before man 
 appeared upon the scene is certified to us by the 
 remains of these we find entombed in such profusion 
 in the strata that compose the crust of the globe. 
 The law of evolution, of birth and death, instituted 
 as it undoubtedly was from the beginning of life on 
 the earth, may without irreverence be spoken ot as 
 a necessity in the nature of things : were this not so, 
 the law would not now exist ; for neither God nor the 
 revelation he makes of himself in his laws suffers 
 essential change. 
 
 Would immortality on earth be verily a boon t _ 
 As it is not given, so the divine wisdom proclaims 
 that it would not. In the Pagan mythology Heracles 
 penetrates to the garden of the Hesperides, slays the 
 dragon that guards the tree of life, gathers the fruit, 
 and brings it forth for the use of man ; but Pallas 
 Athene meets him on the way and takes the fruit 
 from his hand, knowing that it were not good for 
 man to eat of it and gain, like the Gods, immortal life. 
 Progress were, indeed, impossible did not one genera- 
 tionof men succeed another. Succession is the law, 
 which, as it now obtains, so did it ever obtain. Kinds, 
 indeed, only continue to appear so long as the condi- 
 tions necessary to their existence prevail ; when these 
 cease the living things that depend on them— 
 plants or animals— die out and are seen no more. Time 
 was when man was not ; and the time may come— - 
 will in all likelihood necessarily come— when, with 
 
The Pentateuch, 
 
 change in the cosmical, telluric, atmospheric, and other 
 conditions wherewith his life is bound up, he, like the 
 mammoth and megatherium, will have disappeared 
 trom the face of the earth. 
 
 Man, however, to return to our text, had disobeyed 
 the commandment said to have been given by God ; 
 but he was still in the garden in Eden, and could not 
 be suffered to remain therein ? 
 
 The Lord- God, according to the story, is made to 
 say : " Behold the man is become as one of us to 
 know good from evil ; and now lest he put forth his 
 hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live 
 for ever ; therefore the Lord-God sent him forth from 
 the garden of Eden, and placed cherubims and a 
 flaming sword which turned every way to keep the 
 tree of life." ^ 
 _ The qualities of things eaten, we have seen, consist 
 in such as affect the palate and the bodily health- 
 how, then, conceive a tree bearing fruit possessed of 
 the power to confer everlasting life ? 
 
 How, indeed ! Everlasting life belongs to God and 
 the manifestation he makes of his Being in the Uni- 
 verse ; to nothing else. 
 
 The tale must, therefore, be an allegory— a myth, 
 an Idea clothed in words, possibly transmitted by 
 legendary tradition through long ages before it 
 reached the Hebrew writer who moulded it into 
 the indifferent shape in which it meets us now. 
 Several interpretations have been given of the alle- 
 gory ? 
 
 Several ; among others one of an astronomical cha- 
 racter. By turning to a celestial globe it will be seen 
 that as Virgo (Eve) with the ears of corn or fruit- 
 bearing bough in her hand, followed by Arcturus 
 (Adam) sinks in the West, Perseus (the Cherub 
 armed with the flaming sword) rises in the East and 
 seems to drive the woman and the man from the sky. 
 There are other interpretations, however, on legen- 
 
Genesis : The Jehovist. 
 
 29 
 
 dary grounds, that better consort perhaps with 
 Hebrew history than this, which implies a knowledge 
 of the constellations and of celestial phenomena of 
 which we find few traces in the Book of Genesis. b 
 
 The first account of Creation ended as we saw 
 with God's resting from his labours and seeing that 
 all was very good. The second has a less satisfactory 
 conclusion ; for here, as we have just seen, we find God 
 cursing the ground, inflicting pains aud penalties- for 
 the transgression of an arbitrary commandment, and 
 expelling the man and the woman from the garden 
 of delight he had planted for their happy dwelling- 
 place, thwarted in all his benevolent purposes by the 
 serpent ! 
 
 These two accounts differ so essentially that it 
 seems impossible to conceive them as emanating from 
 the same individual or delivered through inspiration, 
 as said, from one source ? 
 
 They differ so entirely and deal with such dis- 
 similar elements that they must be held to have 
 proceeded not only from different individuals of the 
 same family of mankind, but even to have originated 
 among different races of men. The first or Elohistic 
 account may be spoken of as purely Semitic ; the 
 second as essentially Aryan in its character. The 
 Elohistic narrative in its rhythmical and balanced 
 proportions is obviously the product of a single 
 mind, creating in conformity with the rules of 
 Hebrew poetical composition : — it is a connected 
 history of Creation by a Poet. The Jehovistic 
 account cannot be seen from the same point of view. 
 It has every character of a compilation from tradition 
 and legend, and assimilates in many leading par- 
 ticulars with the myths and beliefs of the western 
 branch of the great Aryan family of mankind which 
 find expression in its Sacred Scriptures, the Zend- 
 
 b See Dr Kalisch's learned Commentary on Genesis. 
 
3° the Pentateuch 
 
 Avesta, as the views of the Eastern branch of the 
 same race are comprised in the Vedas. The Elohistic 
 account might have originated among any of the 
 ancient peoples somewhat advanced in civilisation and 
 possessed of the leisure needful for speculation and 
 literary labour. The Jehovistic account, on the contrary, 
 without poetic verve or semblance of constructive 
 talent, is a kind of chronicle of imaginary doino< s , it 
 is the work of an archaeologist or antiquary and 
 cherisher of mythical and legendary lore, — a cha- 
 racter we miss entirely in the Elohist, in whose brief 
 and grand summary we note no reference either to 
 myth or legend, and no statement on which a single 
 dogmatic conclusion could be hung — no word that does 
 not accord with a pure and simple sense of the power 
 and goodness of God as Creator of the world. In 
 the incoherent narrative of the Jehovist, on the con- 
 trary, we meet with nothing that cannot be referred 
 to myth or legend, derived moreover, for the most 
 part, from sources beyond the boundaries of Judea, 
 pertaining to peoples other than the children of Israel, 
 and supplying foundations for the entire superstructure 
 of Christian Dogma. The Jehovistic account may 
 even be said to sin in transferring essentials of the 
 religious system of the Medo-Persian people to that of 
 the children of Israel. 
 
 Which of these two accounts is believed to be the 
 more ancient ? 
 
 The Elohistic; although this is questionable, for 
 both accounts can be said with great certainty to 
 date from relatively recent times—the Elohistic being 
 clearly enough shown, by the finished character of 
 the work and the purity of the diction in the original, 
 to be the product of an age not earlier nor yet much 
 later than that of Solomon ; the Jehovistic being as 
 safely assignable to a time subsequent to the Baby- 
 lonian captivity, when the Jews had been brought 
 into contact with a people entertaining dualistic ideas 
 
Genesis : The Jehovist. 
 
 3 l 
 
 of Deity, and in their ritual addicted to Light or 
 Fire Tree and Serpent worship— Light or Fire, 
 having Ormuzd, representative of the Good or 
 Creative principle in nature, symbolised by the Sun 
 and the Tree ; Darkness, Destruction and Death, 
 having Ahriman, in eternal antagonism to Ormuzd, 
 with the serpent as his emblem. 
 
 This would account for the prominent places occu- 
 pied in the Jehovist's story by the Tree and the 
 Serpent? 
 
 The worship of the Tree and the Serpent was 
 amono- the earliest and widest spread of all the ways 
 in which man sought to show his sense of dependence 
 on a something, a Power, beyond and stronger than 
 himself. Unless it be the rising of the sun—" Great 
 eve of God. " no phenomenon in nature is so notable 
 in temperate lands as the awakening of the vegetable 
 world from death to life on the return of Spring ; 
 and save the lightning's flash, nothing is seen so 
 deadlv as the serpent's fang. No marvel, therefore, 
 that the tree was chosen by man awakened to reflec- 
 tion as symbol of the Life-giving power, or the 
 serpent selected as type of the death-dealing influence 
 around him. These symbols personified and called 
 by names became Brahma and Sciva, Ormuzd and 
 Ahriman, Osiris and Typhon, Jehovah and Satan, 
 God and the Devil. Detached from the Nature m 
 which they inhere, and thought of as causes of the 
 good and evil that befals, they were then sought to 
 be communed with in thankfulness or in fear, and, 
 approached with praises, prayers, and offerings, all 
 the elements of the religious ideas and ritual obser- 
 vances of mankind make their appearance. 
 
 The history of the garden in Eden, of the Tree of 
 Life and the subtil serpent continue, we may presume, 
 to occupy a prominent place in the religious annals 
 of the Jewish people ? 
 
 It is very notable, nevertheless, that the tale is not 
 
32 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 even once referred to by any of the succeeding Old 
 Testament writers ; nor indeed until we pass the 
 epoch of the Christian sera do we find it exerting the 
 slightest influence on the religious opinions of the 
 Jewish people. Neither Jesus of Nazareth nor his- im- 
 mediate friends and followers appear to have known 
 anything of the garden of Eden, or 
 
 " Of man's first disobedience and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into the world and all our woe." 
 
 It was not until Paul of Tarsus came upon the scene 
 that the tale, taken in its most literal sense, began to 
 bear fruit. Connecting the myth of man's disobedience 
 with the Messianic Idea, in the modified shape it had 
 assumed in his day, with the moral and religious 
 teaching, the beautiful life and cruel death of Jesus 
 of Nazareth as they were orally related to him, Paul, 
 the one man of culture, seemingly, among the dissi- 
 dents of his day from the religion of his country, 
 made it the foundation of the New Dogmatic Religion 
 he taught with such unwearied zeal, which has so 
 long exerted so vast an influence in the world, and is 
 only now beginning to lose its hold on the mingls and 
 imaginations of mankind. 
 
 Returning to our story, we find the man and the 
 woman after their expulsion from Paradise knowing 
 each other in the way ordained of God and bringing 
 children into the world— Cain and Abel, according to 
 the unhappy tale of the Jehovistic writer, earliest 
 record of dissension between man and man, of the 
 first murder done in time, of the parties to the differ- 
 ence Brothers, and its ground Religion ! 
 
 True — according to the story : — Cain the husband- 
 man's offering of " the fruits of the earth " was not 
 respected of Jehovah, whilst Abel the shepherd's 
 sacrifice of "the firstlings of his flock and the fat 
 thereof" was accepted. 
 
Genesis : Cain and Abel 33 
 
 We might have imagined that the laborious hus- 
 bandman's offering of the products of his industry 
 and skill would have been at least as well received by 
 Jehovah as the idle herdsman s lamb and kid f 
 
 Certainly, and with good reason we might. But 
 as Jehovah in the later Jewish ritual, of which alone 
 we have the record somewhat complete is only to be 
 approached with blood-offerings, it would not 
 have suited the modern priestl 7 compiler of these 
 mythical tales of early times to have had the ft aits 
 and flowers of the earth-God accursed as said-as 
 grateful to his God Jehovah as the blood or Life 
 and the fat and flesh, of his daily and periodical 
 
 ' Cain is described as dissatisfied with the rejection 
 of his offering and the preference shown to that ot 
 his brother ? n „ _ ' . , . 
 
 So it is said-his countenance fell; and turning his 
 anger against his brother, they had words -they had 
 a quarrel ; and as they were in the field Cam rose up 
 against Abel his brother, and slew him. The blow 
 therefore could not have been of malice prepense — 
 nor meant to be fatal, as unhappily it proved. 
 
 Cain is not informed why his offering of fruit and 
 flowers was not respected ? . ' , n i 
 
 He is not ; he is only told that " if he does well he 
 will be accepted, and if not well that sin lies at the 
 door - " but where he had done amiss, and so had his 
 offering rejected, is not set forth in this enigmatical 
 sentence. With the Jewish ritual as subsequently 
 instituted before us, however, we are at no loss to in- 
 terpret it. To the Hebrew mind there could be no 
 remission of sins without the shedding of blood— the 
 terrible idea that forms the foundation of the domi- 
 nant Christian faith, though it certainly has no part 
 in the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 Jehovah is wroth with Cain for his foul deed, 
 and tells the criminal that he is now cursed from the 
 
34 The Pentateuch. 
 
 earth ; that when he tills the ground it will not yield 
 its strength, and that henceforth he should be a fugi- 
 tive and a vagabond in the earth. 
 
 Does not the writer here make physical results de- 
 pend on moral conditions ? 
 
 • d u eS i b ^ £ Cain ' with his Ws ^ embrued 
 m his brother s blood, tilled a fertile soil with the 
 requisite skill and care, the land, by a prior fiat of 
 God would not fail to yield its increase; and the 
 most pious and moral man who settled on a desert, 
 or who brought neither skill nor care to bear on his 
 work even under circumstances favourable in them- 
 selves, would have failure for his portion. He who 
 conforms to the laws of nature in their several do- 
 mains, whatever his moral or religious character, will 
 not fail of his return ; as he who does not so conform 
 himself, no matter what his pious disposition, will 
 necessarily go without reward. 
 
 Cain, however, is to be protected from violence ? 
 
 Jehovah, it is said, set a mark on him, lest any 
 one meeting him should slay him. 
 
 Such a precaution would imply that there were 
 other people m the earth besides Adam and Eve and 
 their son Cam ? 
 
 . Jt would so 5 but the book is full of like incon- 
 sistencies, as in this place it is very notably, with the 
 commandment elsewhere delivered, that he who 
 knowingly took life should surely himself be put to 
 death. r 
 
 Cain and Abel are the first children of the first 
 man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, according to the 
 Jehoyistic narrative. Does this agree with the 
 Elomst r 
 
 It does not. The Elohist's story, interrupted after 
 the third verse of the second chapter of Genesis, is 
 resumed at the first verse of the fifth chapter in these 
 words This is the book of the generations of 
 Adam ; and Adam's first son is not Cain, neither is 
 
Genesis : Cain and Abel. 3 5 
 
 the second Abel ; but the first and only son lie has 
 whose name is mentioned is Seth, and though Adam 
 is reported to have lived hundreds of years afterwards 
 and begotten sons and daughters, neither they nor 
 their descendants are named. The genealogy of Seth 
 alone is continued, he begetting Enos, Enos Cainan, 
 Cainan Mahalaleel, and so on, till we come to Lamech, 
 who begets Noah, the next personage who plays an 
 important part in the mythical tale in the study of 
 which we are engaged. 
 
 The terrible tale of the murder of Abel by his 
 brother Cain may therefore be the work of one of 
 the later Jehovistic writers ? 
 
 It has every appearance of being so ; and if we may 
 imagine the writer thinking it desirable to have the 
 earliest possible authority for the blood-stained altars 
 of his day, we can divine his motive for inventing 
 the story of tbe offerings and of the preference shown 
 by Jehovah for the bloody over the bloodless sacri- 
 fice, inserting it where it stands, and adding the mur- 
 der of the one brother by the other by way of giving 
 colour and force to his picture. No man in his senses, 
 freed from prejudice and possessed of the requisite 
 information, can believe for a moment that the 
 Jehovistic writer could have known that Cain killed 
 Abel, or that the three sons of Noah were Shem, 
 Ham, and Japhet. 6 
 
 e Subsequently to the time when Nehemiah was Governor 
 of Judea under Cyrus, says M. Albert Reville, the office of 
 High-Priest, as conferring the chief authority in the country, 
 became an object of ambition, not only between one priestly 
 family and another, but between different members of the 
 same family ; and in a certain instance in which two brothers 
 were aspirants to the office, so high did the rivalry run, that 
 the one killed the other. It were not presuming too far, per- 
 haps, as all fiction has a foundation in fact, and as we are now 
 so well assured of the relatively modern date of by far the 
 greater portion of the Pentateuch, to find in this recent in- 
 stance of fratricide the source of the story of the murder in 
 
3 & The Pentateuch. 
 
 God, in calling men and women into the world, 
 had endowed them, as well as all other conscious 
 living creatures, with the wonderful faculty of pro- 
 ducing their like, and continuing themselves in their 
 kind ? 
 
 He had virtually said, in the power bestowed, but 
 not m words : " Increase and multiply and replenish 
 the earth," a commandment they were no more loth 
 to obey in times gone by than they are in the present 
 day. But Jehovah, as it appears by the record, had 
 been less careful than might have been expected in 
 selecting the race by which the world was to be 
 peopled ; for, to say nothing of the murder of Abel 
 by Cain, no more than ten generations of men had 
 lived on the earth before their wickedness was found 
 so great, the imaginations of their heart so con- 
 tinually evil, that, according to the record, it even 
 "repented Jehovah that he had made men upon the 
 earth." 
 
 This is extraordinary language in connection with 
 the name of God ? 
 
 With the idea of God, as we entertain it, certainly, 
 but not with that of the Jehovah of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures, who was but a powerful man of the early, 
 jealous, revengeful, arbitrary, variable, and often 
 savage type. The statement, nevertheless, stands 
 part of the sacred writings of the Jews, still held in- 
 spired not only in their precepts and ordinances, but 
 m every word and letter, and believed by more than 
 they are denied among Christians to be the word of 
 God to man. 
 
 Can we, however, presume that God ever repents 
 of anything he has done, or changes his mind as to 
 aught he had intended to do ? 
 
 Man may repent and change ; God cannot do so. 
 
 the olden time of Abel by his brother Cain.- (Comp. Revue des 
 Deux Mondes, l ier Mars, 1672.) 
 
Genesis : ? he Flood. 
 
 37 
 
 Is there any reason given for the great wickedness 
 charged upon mankind ? 
 There is none. 
 
 Is not the disobedience in eating the forbidden 
 fruit assigned as its cause ? 
 
 It is not once referred to ; and if it had been so, the 
 disobedience as consequence of an untoward disposi- 
 tion could not be its cause. 
 
 Is there anything else in the text that may be held 
 adequate to bring about the evil imaginations im- 
 puted ? 
 
 There is absolutely nothing. The sons of God, in- 
 deed, are said to have seen the daughters of men that 
 they were fair, and to have taken them wives of all 
 they chose ; and this incomprehensible statement has 
 been laid hold of as a means of accounting for the 
 prevailing wickedness. But the sons of God, who- 
 ever they were, must be presumed, from their title, 
 to have been of higher nature than the daughters of 
 earth, and to have improved, not deteriorated, the 
 breed. 
 
 And this, indeed, in so far as we can judge by 
 what is said, appears to have been the case ; for we 
 learn that the children born to the sons of God co- 
 habiting with the daughters of men became mighty 
 men, which were of old men of renown ? 
 
 So runs the tale ; and the myth or legend helps to 
 no solution of the matter. The wickedness of men, 
 however, was great in the earth, and every imagina- 
 tion of man was evil continually, so that Jehovah 
 said at length ; " I will destroy man whom I have 
 created from the face of the earth, both man and 
 beast and creeping thing, and the fowls of the air ; 
 for it repenteth me that I have made them." 
 
 The beasts and creeping things and fowls of the 
 air had done nothing to deserve extermination ? 
 
 Nevertheless they were to share in the doom of 
 man and be destroyed. 
 
38 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Certain reservations, however, are to be made to 
 the general portentous resolution come to by Jehovah ? 
 
 Addressing Noah, who is characterised as " a just 
 man and perfect in his generations," Jehovah in- 
 forms him that the end of all flesh had come before 
 him, and that he had resolved to destroy them, and 
 all wherein is the breath of life, by means of a flood 
 of water which he will bring upon the earth. With 
 Noah, however, he will establish his covenant. Him 
 and his family, of all mankind, he will save alive by 
 means of an ark, or great ship, which he is ordered 
 to construct of certain materials, of certain dimen- 
 sions, and in certain ways, in which he and his family, 
 and two and two, male and female, of every living 
 thing, are to be housed whilst the whole earth is laid 
 under water. 
 
 Noah does all he is ordered ? 
 
 He does, and with his wife, his sons and daughters, 
 their sons and daughters, and the pairs to be saved 
 alive, is safely housed in the ark. Then, it is said, 
 are the foundations of the great deep broken up, and 
 the windows of heaven opened, and rain falls for 
 forty days and forty nights, and the waters prevail 
 exceedingly, covering the higher hills fifteen cubits 
 and upwards, so that all in whose nostrils was the 
 breath of life are destroyed from the face of the 
 earth, Noah alone and they that were with him in the 
 ark remaining alive. 
 
 How long is the flood of waters said to have pre- 
 vailed ? r 
 
 After increasing for a hundred and fifty days, the 
 fountains of the deep, it is said, are stopped, and the 
 rain from heaven is restrained. The waters then 
 begin to assuage ; but it is not until the first day of 
 the tenth month that the tops of the highest lands 
 are seen, when the ark grounds on the mountains of 
 Ararat ; and only after the lapse of a whole year of 
 imprisonment that Noah, finding the ground dry, 
 
Genesis : The Flood. 
 
 39 
 
 takes off the covering of the ark and goes forth, he 
 and his family, and all that had been saved alive, 
 with the blessing of God upon him and them, and a 
 renewed injunction to be fruitful and to multiply upon 
 the earth. 
 
 Noah was ordered to take into the ark pairs of 
 every living thing. Every living thing would include 
 whales, seals, fishes, and the inhabitants of the waters 
 generally — crustaceans, molluscs, radiates, &c. — yet 
 we find no mention made of them. 
 
 There is none ; but if they were to be saved, some 
 provision was as necessary for them as for the other 
 air-breathing land animals. With the obvious diffi- 
 culty of providing in the ark for the inhabitants of 
 the water, ho wever, they are left to take their chance 
 in the Tohu-Bohu of the flood. Every inhabitant of 
 the water, nevertheless, has a definite sphere assigned 
 it, for which it is fitted, and out of which it cannot 
 live. Natives of the salt water cannot, for the most 
 part, live in the fresh, nor can those of the fresh 
 generally live in the salt. The whalebone and 
 spermaceti whales, among many others, would have 
 proved especially awkward occupants of the great 
 ship ! 
 
 There is provision made for feeding the host of 
 living creatures there gathered together ? 
 
 There is, but for the vegetable feeders only. 
 
 How, then, were the flesh feeders to be kept alive ? 
 
 By accommodating themselves, say the apologists 
 for every untenable statement within the lids of the 
 Bible, to the dry fodder of the phytivorous kinds — by 
 feeding with, not on them. 
 
 The lion, tiger, wolf, and weazel eat hay and straw 
 like the ox and sheep ? 
 
 So most of our authoritative exponents of the diffi- 
 cult Bible passages say. But the structure of the 
 teeth and jaws of the carnivorous tribes incapacitates 
 them from doing as our learned exegetists would have 
 
40 The Pentateuch. 
 
 them, for they can only cut and tear their food in 
 pieces, not grind it into pulp like the ox and sheep. 
 The structure of their stomach and intestines, more- 
 over, is not of the kind that fits them to digest and 
 assimilate vegetable food. 
 
 Was not some provision also necessary for saving 
 the members of the vegetable world alive ? 
 
 As indispensably necessary as it was in regard to 
 those of the animal kingdom, yet none is made, pro- 
 bably because the writer had overlooked the fact that 
 plants held under water for any length of time are 
 as surely drowned as animals. Scarcely any land- 
 growing plant can be kept for days, weeks, or months 
 submerged without being killed ; neither will the 
 plants that live naturally in fresh water exist in salt 
 water, nor will salt-water plants survive in fresh 
 water. The pretty incident of the olive leaf with 
 which the dove sent forth from the ark returned 
 as a sign that the waters were abated, was an im- 
 possibility ; after steeping in brine for twelve months 
 all the olive trees must have been long dead and 
 their leaves rotten. 
 
 And in what state could the Earth have been left 
 after a flood that covered the highest mountains 
 fifteen cubits and upwards ? 
 
 What could it have been but a bank and shoal of 
 desolation, bare of herbage of every kind ; so that 
 the vegetable feeders saved alive in the Ark must 
 have died forthwith of hunger when released from 
 their temporary shelter. 
 
 Had the flesh-feeders been thought of in the Ark, 
 they too must now have starved like the phytivorous 
 kinds when dispersed over the bare, stony, muddy, 
 and depopulated flats ? 
 
 They would but have been saved from sudden 
 death by drowning to fall victims to a lingering death 
 by starvation. 
 
 There are two accounts of the flood, as of so many 
 
Genesis: The Flood. 4* 
 
 by careful sifting from one another. 
 
 N°n-\hcvSer in several important particulars, 
 
 & the SSfSTSto be received by sevcns- 
 
 ing out Jehovah's final admonition to the pairs on 
 
 leaving the Ark? breaking the sets and 
 
 But was necessary to avoid DreaKing v : ctim 
 
 imprisonment, his first act nav g 
 Sr«SnL he had had with 
 
 ^ Oeh^ah gratified by Noah's ^ 
 ^Vovr ^ai^Xd m a 'SS -our, and 
 
 %™ISs joX neither'will I again smite every 
 
 £ h^tteS ^ ^h-ol.ing had 
 been done to better the Earth by ^wning ^ 
 
4 2 ' The Pentateuch. 
 
 L^^T I"" 6 h l the fl00d t0 amend m ^ter S in tbe 
 past a S to leave them with a chance of improvement 
 in the future. But we are to be careful to S 
 account given of what Jehovah said in his heart to 
 ts only possible anthor-the Hebrew writer for it 
 is very certain that he conld know nothing of the 
 
 aSeTto the 1 ^ TrUe G ° d ' and that ^ - rds 
 ascribed to the Supreme are not his, but the man's 
 
 Jehovah is now made by the writer to appear as 
 
 though he were even sorry for what he had don!, Z he 
 
 makes him go on to say : While the Earth remained 
 
 seedtime and harvest, and heat and cold, and summer 
 
 I tin'" T'w n< l day aDd ni ° ht ' shaI1 = ot cease Tnd 
 I will establish my covenant with you, and for a 
 token I set my bow in the cloud ; and 7 it shall come 
 
 tne bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remem- 
 ber my covenant which is between me and yTand 
 every living creature of all flesh 7 
 
 writer had evidently no othe.concepto^^l 
 « a npernatarallj powerful, irascible, revengeM 
 and yet upon occasion pitiful human being thwlrted 
 cont lnua]ly his kind , y the waywatd 
 
 ™::^ ed ™ S ° lthe «— » * had^Xfl 
 
 Plemented • V""* °" ^ their eonditions im ! 
 Plemented m the organisation of his body and its 
 aptitudes all co-ordinate with and in the most perfect 
 Possible harmony with the nature of thiZ and the 
 
 ~t n be eS amid Whi ° h ^ begaD > aS h °° W 
 What are we to think of the writer's imagining 
 
Genesis : The Flood. 43 
 
 that God required a remembrancer of aught he meant 
 to do or to leave nndone ? ■ . 
 
 Whatever the writer may ^^K^CnJthti, 
 think that God, who is in and of all that i ; and that 
 comes to pass, needs no remembrancer The rain- 
 bow I a nLral and necessary effect of the fraction 
 or breaking up of the difform rays of which light is 
 composed by the globular drops of water that consti- 
 tTe^ain,' in virtue of laws inherent in and co-eter- 
 nal with he nature of God and the qualities of matter 
 Eainbows necessarily spanned the sky counties* age* 
 before there was a Noah to observe them ; it may 
 have been that one appeared when the several showers 
 fell that have left their records in the sandstone slabs 
 now preserved in our museums ! .,, ori 
 
 Looked somewhat closely into, therefore, with an 
 eye couched of prejudice, the story of the Deluge 
 (the Noachian Deluge as it is called to distinguish it 
 from other deluges of which shadowy records are 
 preserved in the legendary annals of several ancient 
 nations) appears to be wanting m every P^icular 
 that could give it the semblance not merely of pro- 
 bability but even of possibility ? 
 
 There can be no question of this. The motive 
 assigned for its occurrence, in the first place is 
 absurd-utterly incompatible with the Idea of the 
 God of reason and humanity. The saving instrument, 
 the ark itself— speaking seriously of the matter lor 
 a moment,-was utterly incompetent to the end pro- 
 posed,-it was not of half the tonnage of our Great 
 Eastern steam-ship ! And how conceive all the 
 animals that people the globe packed into any den- 
 nite space, were it even ten or twenty times the area 
 of the mighty ship ! How, again, conceive Noan and 
 his three sons competent even in the course of their 
 reputed long lives to have prepared and put together 
 the materials of such a vessel as the one described. 
 They were assisted by the wicked people about them, 
 
44 The Pentateuch. 
 
 it may be and has of course been said : true, and these 
 were at theend to stand oomplacently by whilst Noah! 
 
 l e , Cted P airs from ei *ner pole to the 
 equator filed into the ark, and left them outside to 
 
 within, with a single window in the roof-and no 
 more is mentioned, whatever apologists in face of the 
 difficulty may say-a cubit each way inits dimensions, 
 what must have been the inevitable fate of the in- 
 eluded company ? 
 
 The door could scarcely have been closed, supposing 
 the window to have been left open-and Jehovah 
 himself is made to shut it, as shut it must needs be 
 to keep out the rain-before the whole assembly 
 would necessarily have been stifled. Man, the higher 
 mammalia, and most birds, can live for hours, even for 
 days, without food, but they cannot exist for five 
 nnnutes deprived of air; and the ark, with its win- 
 dowof a cubit, or eighteen inches, square in the roof 
 would have proved as inevitably fatal by stifling to 
 the creatures within it intended to be saved, as the 
 waters would be found deadly to those outside 
 destined to be drowned. 
 
 So deadly an agent as vitiated air operating imme- 
 diately would have made any further provision for the 
 maintenance and comfort of the inhabitants of the 
 ark unnecessary ; but supposing such a possibility as 
 asphyxia not to have occurred— and it is obviously 
 never contemplated by the narrator— how could Noah 
 and his three sons have distributed their appropriate 
 rations to the several pairs or sevens of all the ani- 
 mals that peopled the earth, now gathered together 
 around them; how have supplied them with the in- 
 dispensable water, how have got rid of the inevitable 
 excrements ? 
 How indeed ! 
 
 Why, then, dwell on such childish, impossible, and 
 
Genesis : The Flood. 
 
 45 
 
 even impious tales as those in the Old Testament of 
 the Jews concerning the flood and Noah's ark t 
 
 Because they still obtain currency and credence in. 
 the world, although they undoubtedly deserve all 
 these epithets, and are in very truth not only childish 
 impious, and impossible, but misleading, and calculated 
 to give false notions of the God of Nature s dealings 
 with mankind and the world. The tale of the Deluge 
 and the ark is never presented in its true light by the 
 ministers of religion, though as men of culture their 
 eyes must have been opened to its absurdity, and the 
 most imperative of all their duties is surely to speak 
 truth, and to show God's providence in acts harmo- 
 nious with the great eternal changeless laws, elements 
 in his own nature, whereby he rules the world. 
 
 The Deluge and the favour shown to Noah and his 
 family are still advanced as illustrations not only of 
 God's displeasure and justice in dealing with the 
 wicked, but of his goodness and mercy also, and the 
 special favour in which he has the exceptionally good 
 and pious ? 
 
 This is certainly the case. But God s displeasure 
 and justice are shown by the punishment or reward 
 which men bring on themselves through the violation 
 or observance of his laws. Neither do his goodness 
 and mercy appear any more in the lives saved from 
 flood and tempest, than is his vengeance proclaimed m 
 the lives that are lost. As we proceed in the narrative, 
 indeed, suspicions arise that all the members of the 
 family exceptionally saved were not so worthy of the 
 favour shown them as it seems easy to imagine they 
 might have been. The mythical tale of Noah and the 
 Deluge, with all the unreason attached to it, is never- 
 theless made to enter as a prominent feature into the 
 Christian system. The infant of parents belonging 
 to several of its churches, and these the most influen- 
 tial of all, does not undergo the initiatory rite of bap- 
 tism by sprinkling with water, without allusion being 
 
4 6 The Pentateuch. 
 
 made to Noah and his family, " whom God of his 
 great mercy saved in the ark from perishing- W 
 water; though the connection between a world 
 drowned with Noah saved, and the sprinkling of a 
 little water on the face of an unconscious infant 
 escapes both common sense and unsophisticated 
 reason. 
 
 The tale of the Deluge is one of the incidents re- 
 corded in the Hebrew scriptures that rivets itself on 
 the mmd and imagination of the young, and, with the 
 further reference made to it in connection with a 
 solemn religious rite, scarcely fails to exercise an ad- 
 verse influence on the judgment of men and women 
 m riper years ? 
 
 There can be little doubt of this. The ship-like 
 ark with the nicely-formed figures of its multitudi- 
 nous tenants headed by Noah, his wife, and their 
 sons, Ham, Shem, and Japhet, which 'is presented to 
 almost every child among us when its intelligence 
 begins to dawn, fixes the myth as a positive occur- 
 rence m the mind of the vast majority of children 
 born into the world of Christian parents, and it is 
 not every one who can free himself in after life from 
 the absurd and indefensible conclusions to which it 
 leads. 
 
 To refer to the goodness and mercy of God in con- 
 nection with the world he has drowned, is surelv 
 beside the mark ? J 
 
 It appears so to the unprejudiced who venture to 
 use the reason and moral sense which God has given 
 them for their guidance, and to see things in conso- 
 nance with the knowledge of their age. If the earth 
 was filled with wickedness, as said, and it were con- 
 ceded that wickedness deserved punishment, still 
 drowning does not seem either the reasonable or raer- 
 citul way of bringing about the amendment which we 
 must presume to be the object of all castigation-- 
 the castigation of God in especial. And if Noah and 
 
Genesis : The Flood, 
 
 47 
 
 his family were worthy to be saved alive, they could 
 not have been alone in their worthiness ;— there were 
 new-born babes, for instance, helpless infants, and 
 young children, who could not have deserved drown- 
 ing on the ground that their fathers and mothers 
 were wicked. The hapless animals, also, which 
 perished, had been guilty of none of the disobedience 
 and wickedness alleged against the human kind, and 
 could no more have merited their untimely fate 
 through obeying their natural instincts, than the pairs 
 saved could have merited the preference shown them 
 through fulfilling theirs. 
 
 So much for the moral aspects, or some of the 
 moral aspects, of the Noachian Deluge. Can the de- 
 bacle referred to be comprehended and accounted for 
 on simple physical grounds ? 
 
 As an universal over-swimming of the earth within 
 the period when man became its denizen, the Deluge 
 of the Bible is incomprehensible ; and had it even been 
 possible, yet may we feel confident that it did never 
 occur. The dry land of the earth, indeed, has in 
 every part known to us been at different and gene- 
 rally far remote epochs oftener than once at the bot- 
 tom of deep seas and vast fresh-water lakes. So 
 much we know for certain ; and we further feel assured 
 that the bottoms of many of our present seas and lakes 
 must once have been dry land. The islets that stud 
 the vast Pacific Ocean rest for the most part on the 
 peaks of lofty mountains now submerged. Upon and 
 around these the coral insect, building its own habita- 
 tion for ages, spreads itself abroad level with the wash 
 of the sea, and furnishes man with resting places 
 amid depths he tries in vain to fathom with the com- 
 mon plummet line. Arctic and Antarctic lands, again, 
 now overlaid with thick-ribbed ice, thousands of feet 
 in thickness, where lichens and mosses are the only 
 vegetable productions sparsely seen, once possessed a 
 luxuriant growth of the trees and shrubs of temperate 
 
48 
 
 "The Pentateuch. 
 
 lands, and teemed with insect and higher animal life. 
 The temperate regions, again, where nature now 
 smiles for half the year at least, and the soil yields 
 corn and wine and oil to the industry of man, were 
 overlapped in former ages of the world by glaciers 
 hundreds of feet in thickness, pouring down from 
 northern heights, and putting as effectual an end to 
 the life that had been upon them as ever Noah's 
 Deluge could have done; telling the tale of their 
 source and leaving records of their course in the pon- 
 derous blocks or boulders they have carried and left 
 among us, as well as by the groovings and abraded 
 surfaces of our hills, on which the eye of science reads 
 the history of another state of things than that which 
 now prevails. 
 
 Are there any traces of the presence of man on the 
 earth discoverable among the records of those early 
 ages ? 
 
 In so far as we yet know it is only in the latest 
 drift— the gravel, sand, and clay of the quaternary 
 period^ and in the caves of limestone rocks, that we 
 find evidences in his remains, of man's existence on 
 the earth. Associated as these are with the teeth and 
 bones of animals fitted to live in cold or temperate 
 climates,— the cave bear, the hyeena, the hairy mam- 
 moth and woolly rhinoceros, we infer that man as 
 man was present in these northern temperate lati- 
 tudes in times not exceedingly remote, geologically 
 speaking, from the last great glacial epoch in the 
 earth's history, but still some hundreds of thousands 
 of years ago— how many it is impossible to say. 
 
 There may have been— doubtless there was—some 
 foundation in fact for the tale of the Woaohian 
 Deluge ? 
 
 Many regions of the globe are still exposed to dis- 
 astrous floods that sweep away the inhabitants and 
 their cattle by thousands, and we are therefore war- 
 ranted in saying that in the story of the Noachian 
 
Genesis: Noah. 
 
 49 
 
 Deluge we have the legendary record of some great 
 flood which occurred in far off times, when the high 
 lands of Armenia and Mesopotamia, whence appear 
 to have come the Hebrews and others of the cognate 
 tribes that peopled Palestine, were other than they 
 are at the present day, or than they were fifty, a hun- 
 dred, a thousand, or ten hundred thousand years ago. 
 In the earlier ages of the world there must have oc- 
 curred floodings of extensive districts of country, at- 
 tended with disastrous consequences to life and pos- 
 sessions, of which we have the shadowy records m 
 the tales of the Noachian, Deucalian, and other 
 deludes. In our own day, indeed, we know that 
 flood's as terrible, it may be, as any that ever occurred 
 in pre-historic times, and probably even more destruc- 
 tive to human life, have happened in regions watered 
 by such mighty rivers as the Indus and the Ganges. 
 These, however, we now interpret as having come to 
 pass through no repentant mood or revengeful pur- 
 pose on the part of God to drown the hapless people 
 for their sins, but in consonance with natural inci- 
 dents and natural laws, such as the giving way of a 
 mountain barrier that had penned up a mighty lake, 
 disintegrated by frost, and sapped by long-contmuea 
 rain ; the melting of a glacier which stretched across 
 a gorge in the hills, and held back an ocean behind 
 it ; excessive rainfalls, accompanied by gales of wind 
 that heaped up the waters of great draining streams 
 at their outlets to the ocean, &c. 
 
 So much for the flood; what is said of Noahs 
 doings after it ? 
 
 He became a husbandman, planted a vme, drank 
 of the wine it produced, and was drunken. 
 
 Some years must have elapsed before Noah could 
 have indulged in such an improper way ; and whence 
 he had the vines, after all the plants on the face of 
 the earth had been drowned, like its animal inhabi- 
 tants, does not appear* 
 
50 The Pentateuch, 
 
 What happened next ? 
 
 Noah's son Ham happening to come into the tent, 
 and seeing his father in an unseemly state of naked- 
 ness, and probably asleep after his debauch, was 
 cursed in his posterity by his parent, whilst Shem 
 and Japhet, who covered him over, are blessed. 
 " Cursed be Canaan (one of Ham's sons), a servant 
 of servants shall he be unto his brethren," is the form 
 of the malediction pronounced on the son by his 
 father for having had the use of his eyes. 
 
 What may be the meaning of this ? 
 
 Canaan, according to the mythical story, was an- 
 cestor of the tribe that peopled the country called 
 after him, which the Jews ravaged with fire and 
 sword, appropriating the territory, and reducing the 
 inhabitants whom they did not slaughter to the state 
 of slaves. The curse of the innocent son — cursing in 
 the Hebrew scriptures not always going by demerit, 
 any more than blessing by desert — may have been 
 contrived as an excuse for the murder and robbery 
 perpetrated in after years by the sept which had 
 Shem for its progenitor. 
 
 What is the next remarkable incident recorded in 
 these mythical tales of prehistoric times ? 
 
 The building of a city on a plain in the land of 
 Shinar, and of a tower in especial whose top was to 
 reach to heaven, all the people being still of one 
 language. 
 
 What follows ? 
 
 "Jehovah," it is said, "came down (!) to seethe 
 city and the tower." Not approving of the builders' 
 proceedings, apprehensive it might seem that, united 
 by the bond of a common language, their work would 
 be carried to a successful issue, and heaven, his own 
 peculiar dwelling-place, be stormed, he is reported to 
 say further : " Go to ! let us go down and there con- 
 found the language of the people that they may not 
 understand one another's speech." This being done 
 
Genesis : The T ower of Babel. 
 
 5 1 
 
 — Jehovah coming down and confounding their 
 speech — the inhabitants of the city on the plain of 
 Shinar left off their building, became scattered abroad 
 over the face of the earth, and heaven was not as- 
 sailed. 
 
 The purpose for which this childish story was de- 
 vised is plain ? 
 
 It was doubtless contrived as a means of accounting 
 for the diversities of language which the Jewish 
 writer, even in his restricted intercourse with the 
 rest of the world, could not fail to observe. As to 
 God's "coming down to see," and "the tower whose 
 top should reach to heaven," all this is mere childish- 
 ness, though not unimportant, as enabling us to 
 measure the conception of the nature of Deity enter- 
 tained by the writer, whoever he was — -one of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar's captives in all probability, who had had 
 reluctant occasion to see the lofty temple of Babylon, 
 on whose summit, as the metropolitan " High place," 
 the rites of Baal and Mylitta were celebrated. f 
 
 Have we not two accounts of the Tower of Babel 
 and the confusion of tongues, as of so many others of 
 the mythical tales of the Old Testament ? 
 
 We have but one account of this particular inci- 
 dent, and that by the Jehovist. It is not even alluded 
 to by the more sensible Elohist. Both writers, how- 
 ever, give genealogies of Noah's descendants ; but 
 these do not agree, the Jehovist stopping short at the 
 name of a certain Joktan, not mentioned by the 
 Elohist, who carries on the stock to Terah, the father 
 of Abram, the next most important personage met 
 with in the story of the Hebrew people ? 
 
 Terah, we are informed, removes with his family 
 from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran — what happens to 
 Abram his son ? 
 
 Commanded to leave his father's house and kindred, 
 
 f See Herodotus, Clio, 199, and Appendix B. 
 
52 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 under a promise of being made a great nation, Abram 
 departs and comes into the land of Canaan ; but a 
 , famine prevailing, he goes on, still southward, and 
 reaches Egypt, where he abides. 
 
 What particular orders did Abram give his wife 
 Sarai as they neared the land of Egypt ? 
 
 He ordered her to report falsely of their relation- 
 ship—to say she was his sister, not his wife, lest the 
 Egyptians, to obtain possession of her, should make 
 away with him. 
 
 What came of this ? 
 
 Sarai, being fair to look on, was taken into the 
 Pharaoh's house — as a concubine, of course, and 
 Abram was well entreated. But Jehovah, it is said, 
 " plagued Pharaoh because of Sarai, Abram's wife/' 
 though, to our modern sense of fairness, the parties 
 who most deserved plaguing were Abram and Sarai 
 themselves. Brought by the plagues he suffered — 
 what they were we are not informed, of the kind 
 perhaps which the Scottish poet hints at when he 
 speaks 
 
 " Of the best wark-loom in a' house, 
 No worth a prin just at the pinch "— 
 
 and led to suspect that he had been imposed on 9 
 Pharaoh now summons Abram to his presence, and 
 reproaches him with the falsehood he had suggested ; 
 but, only anxious to be quit of the strangers, he sent 
 Abram away with his wife and all that he had. 
 
 There is a repetition of this story in another part of 
 these Old Testament writings still held sacred ? 
 
 There is. Abiding at a later period in Grerar (in 
 Phoenicia), and again " lest they should slay him for 
 his wife's sake," Abram himself reports Sarai his wife 
 as his sister to Abimelech, king of the country, who, 
 like the Egyptian Pharaoh, had taken her to himself. 
 But Elohim (for the story in its present shape, if the 
 title of his God is to guide us, is from the Elohist, as 
 
Genesis : Abram. 
 
 S3 
 
 in its first form it was from the pen of the Jehovist) 
 now threatens Abimelech in a dream with death to 
 himself and disaster to his kingdom —not because ot 
 his concupiscence, however, but by reason of his re- 
 lations with Sarai, into which he may be said to have 
 been led by the lie that was told him. 
 
 To what shift is the writer now driven to save 
 Sarai from dishonour and to help Abram out of the 
 disgrace of telling a falsehood ? 
 
 He appends a number of particulars to his tale, 
 which may fairly be taken for what they are worth, 
 and then speaks of a more intimate blood-relationship 
 between Abram and Sarai than any that had been 
 hinted at before. But to make Abram the husband 
 of his own father's child— his sister, therefore,— 
 seems on every moral mode of computation a sorry 
 means of helping him out of his difficulty— better to 
 have left him with the lie than laden him with incest. 
 But criticism is thrown away upon the unreason and 
 incongruity of the twentieth chapter of Genesis. 
 
 To 'make confusion worse confounded, is there 
 not another story, the same in almost every particular, 
 connected with the history of Isaac and Rebekah ? 
 
 There is, and strangely enough, and to puzzle us 
 the more, it is the same, or it may be another Abime- 
 lech, King of the Philistines, who now takes the place 
 of the King of Gerar and the Pharaoh of Egypt. 
 Abimelech, King of the Philistines, however, is 
 neither plagued like the Pharaoh nor threatened like 
 his namesake ; for, happening to lookout of a window 
 " he saw and behold Isaac was sporting with Rebekah 
 his wife." On this discovery, and inferring the true 
 relationship between Isaac and Rebekah, he challenges 
 the husband with having spoken falsely. 
 
 Is Abimelech, King of the Philistines, wroth with 
 Isaac and Rebekah because of the falsehood they had 
 told him ? 
 
 By no means. On the contrary, he sends Isaac 
 
5 4 The Pentateuch. 
 
 away, with his wife ; " having done him nothing but 
 good. Sarai would seem to have been a singularly 
 attractive person; for when the encounter with 
 Abimelech took place she must have been not less 
 than ninety years old! And this and other such 
 unhallowed tales comprised in these old writings of 
 the Jewish people are still paraded in this nineteenth 
 century of the Christian era as parts of the inspired 
 word of God given for the edification of mankind ' 
 
 Resuming the history of Abram, who now returns 
 from Egypt, m company with Lot his brother, to 
 ±Jeth-el m Palestine, where, on his southward journey 
 he had already built an altar to Jehovah,— what 
 happens ? 
 
 The herdsmen of the brothers having quarrelled, 
 they agree to separate ; and Lot, having the first 
 choice, selects the plain of the Jordan, which was well 
 watered " even as that Garden of Jehovah the land 
 ot Egypt/' before the calamity that befel Sodom and 
 (jomorrah ; whilst Abram, for his part, resolves to 
 abide m the land of Canaan, which is again formally 
 promised to him and his posterity as a possession for 
 ever ; though it is now many centuries since it was 
 lost to them, and won by the Saracen and Turk. 
 
 The history of the Patriarch is interrupted at this 
 point ? 
 
 By the ill-digested account we find of a great battle 
 fought between four kings against five ; of the capture 
 of Lot by Chederlaomer, one of the kings engaged, 
 and his confederates ; of the rescue of Lot by Abram 
 and his retainers, and the recovery of all the booty 
 that had been carried off ; of the appearance on the 
 scene of a certain Melchizedek, King of Salem, who is 
 also styled Priest of the most high God, who blesses 
 Abram, and in return receives a tithe of all the spoil 
 recovered. 
 
 Various interpretations, it is to be presumed, have 
 been given of this episode ? 
 
Genesis: Abram. 
 
 55 
 
 Besides having been seen for that which in all 
 likelihood it is-the legendary record of a raid by 
 one party of petty chiefs against «*°f^. m .™ 
 recondite meaning has been connected with it ; the 
 personages brought npon the scene having been re- 
 ferred to the figures still to be seen on our celestial 
 globes, whichhave all been derived fromp amspheresof 
 ancient Indian and Egyptian descent, whilst the par- 
 ticulars spoken of and the numbers given are held to be 
 significant of an attempt to reform the calendar. This 
 owing to the true length of the year, 365 days six 
 hours fifty-six minutes and as many seconds, not being 
 known, was found in ancient times to require frequent 
 adjustments in order to bring the ^™\ 0Y J™ 
 solsticial and equinoctial points into conformity with 
 astronomical data and the computations of the old 
 
 ^AfteTthese things," says the text, -the word of 
 Jehovah came unto Abram in a vision, saying : * ear 
 not, Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great 
 reward." Does the Patriarch express himself gratetul 
 for this assurance of the Divine favour ? _ 
 
 On the contrary, he complains that he is childless, 
 and that the steward of his house is his heir He is 
 assured, however, that this shall not be so but that 
 his heir shall be a son who shall come out of his own 
 bowels. Meantime he is bidden to look abroad on the 
 stars of heaven and say if he can number them, and 
 is further assured that so many should be his 
 posterity. 
 
 What more ? , , n n n 
 
 Abram is now ordered to make a sacrifice ot a 
 heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtle dove, and a young 
 pigeon. This he does ; slaying the victims, he divides 
 
 z The reader who is curious will find the subject now hinted 
 at discussed at length by Sir W. Drummond in his (Ecfepws 
 Judaicus ; and by a German writer of great erudition, Nork, in 
 his Biblische Mythologie. 
 
5 6 The Pentateuch. 
 
 them in the middle and lays the halves one against 
 another, but he does not proceed to consume them 
 with fire as usual upon the altar which we must pre- 
 sume he had built. As the sun was going down a 
 deep sleep fell upon Abram, in which he had a second 
 vision, and was informed that his seed should be 
 strangers in a land that was not theirs ; that they 
 should there be afflicted for four hundred years, but 
 should afterwards come out with great substance and 
 possess the land where he then was from the river 
 of Egypt to the great river Euphrates. 
 m What interpretation is to be put on the informa- 
 tion thus and at this time delivered ? 
 
 That it is all information given after the event and 
 assures us definitively that so much of the text at 
 least as conveys it was written long after the Israelites 
 bad been settled in Palestine, and had subjugated the 
 Amontes, Hittites, Kenites, Jebusites, &c. Further, 
 and more particularly, as the Jebusites were only sub- 
 dued and their city Jebus taken by King David, who 
 changed its name to Jerusalem, we learn that the 
 writer lived subsequently to the reign of that poten- 
 tate. 11 
 
 By what extraordinary agency were the carcases 
 prepared by Abram consumed ? 
 
 " When the sun went down and it was dark, a 
 smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed between 
 the pieces. But Jehovah, the titular God of the 
 Jews, is repeatedly spoken of in the Hebrew scrip- 
 tures as "a consuming fire;" the smoking furnace 
 and burning lamp are therefore to be understood as 
 figurative expressions for the fire which Abram made 
 use of to sublimate the bodies of his victims and make 
 them meet food for his God. 
 
 h The Bishop of Natal has shown satisfactorily that this 
 consequently 7 ° f Deuteronom y>~a very late writer 
 
Genesis : Abram. 
 
 57 
 
 Abram, we have seen, has been promised a son of 
 his own ; but Sarai his wife bore him no children. 
 She, however, had a handmaid, an Egyptian, Hagar 
 by name, whom she gave to Abram her husband as. a 
 second wife or concubine, saying to him : Ixo m 
 unto my maid, I pray thee, that I may obtain children 
 
 This was a somewhat extraordinary and hazardous 
 proceeding on the part of Sarai ? , 
 To modern notions, but not, it would seem, to such 
 as prevailed among the ancient Hebrews. Sarai may, 
 perhaps, have been curious to know whether the 
 " effect defective " lay with her or with her husband. 
 Abram, however, consents to the proposal ? 
 He is nothing loth ; and Hagar conceives by him. 
 But when Hagar knew that she was with child by 
 Abram she despised and probably was insolent to her 
 barren mistress Sarai, who complains to Abram ol 
 her handmaid's behaviour. 
 
 Abram interposes manfully, of course, between the 
 barren Sarai and the fruitful Hagar, who has now his 
 own child under her heart ? 
 
 He does nothing of the kind. As he has already 
 shown himself cowardly and untruthful in presence 
 of Pharaoh and Abimelech, Abram now shows him- 
 self both unjust and without natural compassion for 
 his concubine, for he says to the envious Sarai: 
 " Behold thy maid is in thy hand ; do with her as it 
 pleaseth thee." In her spite, although all had come 
 to be as it was through her own suggestion, Sarai, as 
 said, " dealt hardly with Hagar ;" who, terrified, 
 flees from her face into the' wilderness. 
 What befalls her there ? 
 
 She is speedily reduced to extremity, of course, but 
 is found by a well of water in the desert by the angel 
 of Jehovah (who here, as in so many other places ot 
 the Old Testament, turns out to be Jehovah himself), 
 and is admonished to return and submit herself to 
 
5 8 The Pentateuch. 
 
 her mistress. By way of inducement to do so (and 
 persuaded, doubtless, also by the strait in which she 
 found herself), she receives most liberal promises of 
 an ample posterity through the son whom she is in- 
 formed she will bear. She therefore returns, and in 
 due season is delivered of a son, whom Abram calls 
 Ishmael, the name which Hagar had received for him 
 from the angel of Jehovah in the wilderness. 
 
 What is the next remarkable incident recorded in 
 this extraordinary history ? 
 
 When Abram is ninety-nine years old, Jehovah 
 
 appears to him and announces himself as El-Schaddai 
 
 the mighty El or God ; orders him to change his 
 name from Abram to Abraham— father of many 
 nations, and his wife's name Sarai to Sarah— Prin- 
 cess ; "for," says the narrative, " I will make nations 
 of thee, and kings shall come out of thee." 
 
 The covenant already made with Abram is thus 
 again, but with additions and more solemnly, renewed 
 with Abraham ? 
 
 It is, and as its seal and testimony for ever the rite 
 of circumcision is commanded : " Every male child 
 among you," says the text, " shall be circumcised ; he 
 among you that is born in the house or is bought 
 with money of the stranger, that is eight days old, 
 shall be circumcised; the uncircumcised man-child 
 shall be cut off from his people — he hath broken my 
 covenant." 
 
 . What may be the ' meaning of the rite of circum- 
 cision thus formally and forcibly announced ? 
 
 To think of it for a moment as ordered of God 
 were absurd : God sends his work fit for its end into 
 the world ; it needs no interference of man to make 
 it so. Among the Semitic tribes, of whom the 
 Hebrews were one, human sacrifices appear to have 
 prevailed universally in early times : the first-born 
 of man and beast — or as the Old Testament scrip- 
 tures have it, all that opened the womb — belonged to 
 
Genesis : Abraham. 
 
 59 
 
 the God of the tribe, however named— El, Bel, Baal, or 
 Molech— and through countless ages was undoubtedly 
 sacrificed to him by fire. But as time ran on, as 
 civilisation advanced and more humane ideas were 
 engendered, the barbarous practice was seen m its 
 true light, and a substitute for the sacrifice ot the 
 whole was sought for, and believed to have been 
 found, in the sacrifice of a part 
 
 The rite of circumcision has significance m another, 
 though closely allied, direction ? _ . 
 
 It has. Besides its symbolical character oi sub- 
 stitute, it is intimately connected with the worship 
 paid to the reproductive principle in nature, of which 
 the symbol was the Phallus. The Egyptian priests, 
 priests of the gods of increase-Osiris I sis—were 
 necessarily circumcised, as the priests of the deities ot 
 decay among other peoples— Attys, Cybele, &c. were 
 emasculated. In Egypt the priest appears to have 
 been consecrated to his office by circumcision —the 
 commonalty of the country were not as a rule sub- 
 jected to the rite. The Israelites, however, as a people 
 holy to Jehovah, were as matter of course and neces- 
 sity circumcised : on the eighth day instead of being 
 presented as a burnt offering on the altar of his bod, 
 as in the olden time he would have been had he hap- 
 pened to be the first-born, every son of Israel in later 
 days had, and still has, the foreskin of his private 
 member solemnly resected by the priest and con- 
 sumed in the fire, an offering, disguise it as they may, 
 to the fire-king Melek or Moloch whom their fathers 
 worshipped, and on whose altars they had been used 
 to offer up the first-born of their sons and daughters, 
 of their flocks and herds. 
 
 How does Abraham receive the intimation that a 
 son will be born to him by his wife Sarah, that she 
 shall yet be the mother of nations and that kings ot 
 peoples shall be of her ? 
 
 Not so reverently as might have been expected. 
 
6° The Pentateuch. 
 
 He fell on his face, indeed, but he laughed incredulous, 
 and said m his heart : Shall a child be born unto him 
 that is an hundred years old ; and shall Sarah that 
 is ninety years old bear ! He therefore entreats God 
 for his son Ishmael. But God says to him : " Sarah 
 thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed, and thou shalt 
 call his name Isaac, and with him and his seed after 
 him will I establish my covenant everlastingly. And 
 as for Ishmael, him I have blessed, and he shall be 
 fruitful; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will 
 make him a great nation ; but my covenant will I 
 establish with Isaac which Sarah shall bear unto thee 
 at this set time of the year." 
 
 There is as usual a second account of this mira- 
 culous engendering of a son by persons respectively 
 one hundred and ninety years old ? 
 
 There is, and from the Jehovist, as that which pre- 
 cedes is in great part from the storehouse of the 
 ironist— m great part, we say, for interpolations in 
 its course are readily detected by the attentive 
 reader. In the second account " three men " appear 
 to Abraham in the plains of Mamre, as he sat in the 
 tent door m the heat of the day. Abraham addresses 
 them as "My Lord," invites them into his tent, has 
 water fetched to wash their feet, entertains them with 
 the flesh of a calf "tender and good," with cakes 
 baked on the hearth by Sarah, and with butter and 
 milk— a sumptuous Arab shiek's repast, in short, and 
 himself stands by them under the tree as they eat. 
 
 What say the three men thus hospitably enter- 
 tained ? 
 
 They ask after Sarah, and "he" (the singular 
 now taking the place of the plural) informs Abraham 
 that Sarah his wife shall bear him a son. Sarah, 
 "old and well stricken in "years, with whom it had 
 ceased to be after the manner of women," hears the 
 announcement and laughs at the notion of her and her 
 " lord being old also " having a child between them. 
 
Genesis : Abraham. 
 
 61 
 
 Sarah's laugh and implied incredulousness does 
 not pass unobserved ? 
 
 No. "Jehovah (the name now changed trom 
 Elohim) said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah 
 laugh, saying : Shall I of a surety bear a child which 
 am old ! Is anything too hard for Jehovah " ? 
 
 What answer makes Sarah when challenged with 
 her incredulous laughter ? 
 
 Not being of a perfectly truthful disposition, as we 
 know already, we are not surprised when we find her 
 denying that she had laughed : " I laughed not," 
 says she, "for she was afraid. But Jehovah said : 
 Nay, but thou didst laugh." 
 
 What are we to think of such tales, and of such 
 conceptions of the Deity as are implied in them ? 
 
 That the tales are the conceits of men with the 
 minds of children, and the preservers of them, and 
 above all the believers in them as records of veritable 
 events, involving matter either interesting or edifying, 
 are to be held as ignorant, credulous, superstitious, 
 and incompetent persons. 
 
 To the query : Is anything too hard for Jehovah, 
 what answer must be given ? 
 
 That God the Lord, Supreme Cause, Rule and Ruler 
 of the Universe, never contravenes the laws which are 
 his essence — cannot be in contradiction with himself. 
 Having ordained that when it ceases with a woman 
 to be after the manner of women she shall no longer 
 bear children, we may safely and with all reverence 
 say that God had verily made it too hard for him to 
 have Sarah become a mother. But the J ews had no 
 conception of a universe ruled by General, Invariable, 
 Necessary Law, nor any other idea of Jehovah than 
 as a sovereign prince and ruler, doing and undoing at 
 his arbitrary will and pleasure, having the earth alone 
 of all his works, and the children of Israel alone of all 
 the people upon it, as objects of his fatherly care and 
 consideration. 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 The ^ narrative proceeds, informing us that the 
 ''men " (the plural again) rise up and look towards 
 bodom, Abraham going with them to bring them on 
 their way. As they go, Jehovah (now it is the sin- 
 gular) is represented as deliberating with himself 
 whether he ought not to impart to Abraham the pur- 
 pose he had conceived of destroying Sodom and 
 Gomorrah because of the wickedness of their inha- 
 bitants, and is here made by the writer to say : 
 " Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great 
 and their sin is very grievous, I will go down now and 
 see whether they have done altogether according to 
 the cry of it which is come unto me ; and if not I 
 will know." The Jews evidently thought of their 
 Jehovah as we think of a person in authority who 
 needs to make inquiry as to the truth or falsehood of 
 the reports that reach him : he came down to look 
 after the builders of the Tower of Babel and confound 
 their language, and he comes down again to take the 
 measure of the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah, and 
 punish them according to their demerits. 
 
 The men turn their faces towards Sodom, but 
 Abraham, it is said, " stood yet before Jehovah." 
 The use now of the plural and then of the singular in 
 this extraordinary narrative will give the candid 
 reader a sufficient hint of the composite character of 
 the Pentateuch. The narrator must have had more 
 than one of the legendary tales that were still floating 
 m his day before him when he wrote (and he could 
 not have written until after the times of more than 
 one of the Jewish kings), and has here, as in so many 
 other places, performed his task of editor indifferently. 
 Abraham left alone with Jehovah, what takes place 
 between them ? 
 
 The notable parley in which the man Abraham 
 tries to turn his God Jehovah from his purpose of de- 
 stroying Sodom and Gomorrah. " Wilt thou destroy 
 the righteous with the wicked ?" asks the Patriarch 
 
Genesis : Abraham, 
 
 6 3 
 
 of the Lord " Peradventure there be fifty righteous 
 within the city ; far be it from thee to slay the right- 
 eons with the wicked,-and shall not the judge of all 
 the earth do right V" - If I find fifty righteous in 
 Sodom, then will I spare all the place for their sake, 
 replies Jehovah, according to the Hebrew scribe. 
 
 Abraham would make still better terms for the 
 citv, and continues perse veringly, saying : 
 
 '' Peradventure there shall lack five— ten—twenty 
 —forty of the fifty ;" and Jehovah says : < 1 will not 
 destroy it for ten's sake." " And Jehovah went his 
 way as soon as he had left communing with Abra- 
 
 ha What are we in the present day, with our ideas of 
 the immanent ubiquity and necessarily impersonal 
 nature of God, to think of such a tale as this, and lot 
 words bandied in such a way between man and the 
 
 D T^e* tale is doubtless another of the myths or legends 
 transmitted orally from remote antiquity and pre- 
 served by an over-scrupulous editor from the oblivion 
 it so well deserved, if by its means it were intended 
 to convey any true or possible idea of God s proce- 
 dure in his dealings with mankind and the world. 
 Man does not bandy words with God ; neither does 
 he attempt to fix the Supreme on the horns ot a 
 dilemma by a series of Socratic questions, each reply 
 to each succeeding query leaving the respondent more 
 in the wrong than he had been before. God s acts 
 are not in time, but from eternity ; they are not con- 
 sequences, whether in advance or m recall ot ante- 
 cedent purposes. God, moreover, does never m any 
 human sense punish, neither by condoning misdeed 
 does he ever forgive the guilty. Are there ten 
 guilty persons in a great city, they suffer for them- 
 selves, if their guiltiness be through violation of any ot 
 God's laws; and ten thousand guiltless persons, their 
 fellow-citizens, would not save them from paying the 
 
64 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 penalty of their sin. Unhappily the opposite does 
 not hold ; for one reckless and guilty person violating 
 a natural law may cause the death of many, — a truth 
 of which terrible illustrations are offered in the explo- 
 sions that so frequently occur in coal mines and 
 powder mills. 
 
 Proceeding with the tale as delivered, we now find 
 " two angels," two of the "three men" presumably 
 who had been entertained by Abraham, going on to 
 Sodom, where they are met and waited on by Lot 
 much in the same way as they had been by his 
 brother Abraham. What next befals ? 
 
 The narrator, as if to show how well the doomed 
 city deserved its impending fate, presents us with 
 such a picture of the state of morals and customs pre- 
 vailing among its inhabitants as it seems impossible 
 in these our days even to imagine; Lot and his. 
 family, the parties excepted from the ruin hanging 
 over their homes, by their after-doings appearing in 
 scarcely a more favourable light than their detestable 
 fellow-townsmen. 
 
 Must not the nineteenth chapter of the Book of 
 Genesis be regarded by us as a most extraordinary 
 element in a volume said by ecclesiastics, and gene- 
 rally believed, to be given by God to the world for 
 its edification in morals and furtherance in religious 
 knowledge ? ° 
 
 Looked at with the eye of reason, it can be seen in 
 no other light. So gross and offensive ar e most of 
 the particulars it contains, that they cannot here be 
 mentioned openly. But to proceed : Lot and his 
 family forewarned, escape from Sodom and flee to 
 Zoar, and then, the sun being risen upon the earth, 
 Jehovah rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone 
 and fire from Jehovah out of heaven, and overthrew 
 these cities, and the plain, and all their inhabitants, 
 and all that grew upon the ground — the innocent with 
 the guilty consequently — infants and young children, 
 
Genesis: Sodom and Gomorrah. 65 
 
 as well as the grown men and women, all wicked 
 alike, for among them, from what is said, there could 
 not have been found ten that were innocent, else had 
 the cities been saved. The destruction was indiscri- 
 minate, and the Jewish God Jehovah himself its 
 agent ! Lot, however, has escaped with his family to 
 Zoar, where he did not long remain, but quitting the 
 little town, he went and dwelt with his daughters in 
 a cave— hard by, we may presume. 
 What happened there ? 
 
 That of which it shames us to speak. The daugh- 
 ters, as though the destruction of Sodom and Gomor- 
 rah 'had been attended with effects as far reaching as 
 the flood of Noah, are made to speak as if their father 
 were the only man left alive in the world. To satisfy 
 a brutal appetite, they are said in this book of the 
 Jewish law, accepted by Christian men and women 
 as inspired by God, to have made their father drunk 
 with wine, and to have sought his bed in succession, 
 the consequence of which is that they both conceive 
 and bear sons, who respectively become in after years 
 the progenitors of the Moabites and Ammonites. 
 What may be the possible meaning of this foul tale ? 
 The Moabites and Ammonites — cognate Semitic 
 tribes, speaking the same, or dialects of the same, lan- 
 guage as the Hebrews, were among the number of 
 those whom the Israelites dispossessed of their lands 
 and reduced to slavery, when they did not take their 
 lives. A vile and unnatural origin had to be devised 
 in after times by way of excuse for the ills which 
 these unfortunate peoples were made to suffer in an 
 age gone by. The daughters of Lot were little worthy 
 of the favour shown them in their escape from Sodom 
 reduced to ashes, but they were wanted by the writer 
 as parts in the machinery of his story. 
 
 The wife of Lot escaped with her husband and 
 daughters from the burning, but came to an extraor- 
 dinary end nevertheless ? 
 
66 The Pentateuch. 
 
 She, according to the veracious historian, for having 
 looked back upon the burning town, was turned into 
 a pillar of salt upon the plain, where, if we may be- 
 lieve the traveller who has an eye for the marvellous, 
 she is still to be seen ! The transformation, inflicted 
 for a natural and innocent impulse, was as severe as 
 it was extraordinary, no parallel to which, we may 
 believe, has since occurred ; though men do still look 
 fondly back upon the homes they are leaving, when 
 sad necessity or prescriptive tyranny — worse than 
 fire from heaven — devotes them to destruction. But 
 the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah is a myth — an idea 
 furnished with accessories and embodied in language. 
 Were such towns ever in existence, as they may well 
 have been, and destroyed in the manner described, it 
 could only have happened by the eruption of a volcano 
 now extinct, like those outbursts of Vesuvius which 
 desolated Pompeii and Herculaneum in more recent 
 times, and of other burning mountains which still 
 bring desolation and loss- of life over many parts of 
 the earth's surface. But the Jews, as we have already 
 had occasion to observe, ascribed every event in both 
 natural and human history to the immediate agency 
 of their God Jehovah, believing as they did that all 
 the calamities which befel nations as well as indivi- 
 duals were punishments for acts displeasing to him. 
 Assuming Sodom and Gomorrah to have been over- 
 whelmed by a volcanic eruption in very remote times, 
 therefore, was it said, must their inhabitants have been 
 a wicked and abominable race ; and further, as the 
 lands of the Moabites and Ammonites were usurped 
 by the children of Israel, so were the Moabites and 
 Ammonites the spawn of the incestuous intercourse 
 detailed. 
 
 We have additional evidence of this Jewish view of 
 the special providential ordering of things by Jehovah, 
 immediately after the story about Sodom and Gomor- 
 rah, and about Lot and his daughters, have we not ? 
 
Genesis : Abraham and Isaac. 67 
 
 It is now that we meet with the tale of Abraham s 
 second denial of Sarah as his wife,-on this occasion 
 to Abimelech, King of Gerar ; and we learn that 
 Jehovah " visited Sarah, as he had said, and did unto 
 her as he had spoken," Jehovah being thus made, as 
 it were, the immediate agent in the matter, tor now 
 it was that Sarah " conceived and bare a son to Abra- 
 ham in his old age." 
 
 Abraham was mindful of the terms of the covenant 
 entered into with him by Jehovah ? 
 
 He was : when his son was eight days old he was 
 dulv circumcised and named Isaac by his lather, 
 on the day on which all that opened the womb 
 according to more ancient custom were sacrificed on 
 the altar of burnt offering. Seven days was the first- 
 born, whether of man or beast, to be with the mother 
 or dam ; on the eighth it must be given as his due tor 
 the increase and as the price of future favours of the 
 like kind, to the Reproductive Principle m Nature 
 conceived as Deity. . . ■ 
 
 Circumcision was not all that was required in the 
 case of mankind in after times, when the religious 
 system of the Israelites came to be formulated, and a 
 priesthood established ? m 
 
 Then had the first-born of man, besides parting 
 with his foreskin, to be further redeemed by a certain 
 price in money. The first-born of beasts might be 
 sacrificed or redeemed at the option of those into 
 whose herds or flocks they were born, with the single 
 exception of the ass, which was on no account to be 
 offered on the altar, but in case it was not redeemed, 
 was to be put to death by having its neck broken,— 
 that is, by being thrown from a height and killed. 
 
 The single exception of the ass as unavailable for 
 sacrifice on the altar of the Hebrew God, and the 
 peculiar mode in whicb it is ordered to be put to 
 death, seem to require explanation ? 
 
 Whicb may be found in the fact that the ass, both 
 
68 The Pentateuch. 
 
 in Ancient Egypt and Palestine, was looked on m the 
 light of an animal at once sacred and accursed In 
 Palestine he long supplied the place of the horse, and 
 was m regular use for the saddle as well as beast 
 of burthen ; but in Egypt he was sacred to Typhon 
 the brother and enemy of Osiris, and was the victim 
 especially devoted to him, the mode of his sacrifice 
 being that which is commanded in the Hebrew Scrip 
 tures. Typhon himself, generally figured in E gV P- 
 tian sculptures with the head of the swine, is some- 
 times also met with having the head of the ass ; and 
 among the Egyptian drawings there is a verv singular 
 one m which Horus has Typhon with the ass's head 
 by the ear and is belabouring him with the staff he 
 has m his hand-^, the early Spring or Summer Sun 
 has vanquished his enemy Winter. 1 
 
 The system of redeeming by money instead of con- 
 suming by fire was certainly a mighty step in advance, 
 and, once entered on, was likely to be vigorously en- 
 forced in view of the revenue it brought to the priest- 
 hood But there must have been a certain reluctance 
 on the part of Abraham's God to forego his ancient 
 right to the first-born of the patriarch's posterity ? 
 
 It would seem so by the record, at all events. Isaac 
 had certainly a narrow escape from sublimation bv 
 fire and being sent , in the way of a sweet savour as 
 food to the God of his father. 
 What says the tale ? 
 
 After his departure from Abimelech of Gerar 
 Elohe it is said, did tempt Abraham, saying • " Take 
 now thy son thine Only (JaUd, Hebrew, used as a 
 noun), whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land 
 of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering 
 upon one ot the mountains which I shall tell thee of.'' 
 
 ! See Movers: Die Phoenizier, B. I. See also a P^pv h 
 Her, Hirt in Abhand. der Histor-Philolog Kto f^Jl 
 d. Wissensck. zu Berlin aus den Jahren, 1820-21? S. 165 
 
Genesis : Abraham and Isaac. 69 
 
 Does Abraham express surprise at this extraordi- 
 nary command of his God Elohe ? 
 
 Not any; he rises up early in the morning, saddles 
 his ass, cleaves wood for the burnt- offering, and sets 
 out on the journey. After three days' travel he sees 
 the place of the sacrifice afar off, bids the attendants 
 he had with him remain with the ass where they 
 were, whilst he and the lad should " go yonder and 
 worship, and come again to them." Abraham then 
 lays the wood for the burnt-offering on his son ; takes 
 fire in his hand and a knife, and they go on together. 
 
 Is Isaac passive whilst all this is done ? 
 
 Not entirely : he sees the fire and the wood and 
 the knife, but not the lamb for the sacrifice. His 
 father assures him, however, that Elohe will provide 
 himself a lamb for the burnt-offering. Arrived at 
 Mount Moriah, Abraham builds an altar, lays the 
 wood in order upon it, binds his son Isaac, lays him 
 on the pile, and raises the knife to complete the 
 sacrifice. But the angel of Jehovah (it is no longer 
 Elohe) calls to him out of heaven, and bids him 
 not to lay his hand upon the lad; "for now," 
 proceeds the angel, who, as in other instances, is 
 seen to be Jehovah himself, " I know that thou 
 fearest Elohe, seeing thou hast not withheld thy 
 son, thine only son from me." Lifting up his eyes, 
 Abraham discovers a ram caught by the horns in a 
 thicket behind him, which he takes, slays, and pre- 
 sents as a burnt-offering in the stead of his son. 
 
 This is an extraordinary story ! Can we, as reason- 
 able and passably pious men, believe that God ever 
 tempts mankind, — ever commanded a father to make 
 a burnt-offering of his son ? 
 
 God, in bestowing on man the wonderful power of 
 paternity, has also put such feelings of tenderness 
 into his heart as makes the entertainment of such an 
 idea abhorrent to his nature. He who should now — 
 and, it is not unfair to presume, in the day also when 
 
70 The Pentateuch. 
 
 the tale was written — -imagine that he had received 
 an order from God to slay and make a burnt-offering" 
 of his son would be treated as a madman, and merci- 
 fully taken care of by his friends. Possessed of our 
 faculties and masters of ourselves, we are not mas- 
 tered by distressing dreams and phantoms of the 
 night. 
 
 Isaac, however, as we see, was not sacrified, although 
 Abraham had received the express commands of his 
 God to make a burnt-offering of his son ? 
 
 No ; and this putting God in contradiction with him- 
 self, and the angel of Jehovah calling out of heaven, 
 relegates the story of the Temptation of Abraham to 
 its proper place among the myths and legends of hoar 
 antiquity. Our advanced conceptions of the nature of 
 Deity forbid us to think of God as tempting mankind , 
 as commanding and countermanding in a breath, as 
 calling out of heaven in any sense, or using human 
 speech otherwise than mediately through the mouth 
 of man. 
 
 What farther comment may be made on this tale ? 
 
 Had child-sacrifice lain outside the sphere of Hebrew 
 religious rites, as the modern Jews and bible-commen- 
 tators all show themselves so eager to show that it 
 did, in face of Jehovah's express order to sanctify to 
 him all that opened the womb both of man and beast, 
 such a commandment as that said to have been given 
 by God to Abraham could never have been imagined. 
 Had not human sacrifice been familiar to the Jewish 
 mind, as it undoubtedly was up to the time of the 
 Captivity, the Patriarch would have been depicted 
 rejecting the order to slay his son as the command- 
 ment of a lying spirit. k 
 
 May not the tale have been contrived in relatively 
 modern times — after the Babylonian Captivity, for 
 instance — to declare that God had ceased to require 
 
 k tick Vatke, Biblische Theologie, § 22, S. 276. 
 
Genesis : Abraham and Sarah. 7 1 
 
 the human victims as bnrnt- offerings , to which he 
 had been so long accustomed, and that the will might 
 henceforth without offence be substituted for the 
 
 cleed ^ 
 
 The story of the temptation of Abraham has many 
 unquestionable marks of recent composition It cer- 
 tainly does not date from the period to which the 
 incidents among which it appears are referred ; and 
 could indeed only have been invented m times when 
 the better spirits among the Jews had made the dis- 
 covery that God delighted not in the blood of bulls 
 and rams, and still less in that of human beings. _ 
 
 Much has been made by modern theologians, m 
 connection with the Christian system, of the accre- 
 dited command of God to Abraham to make a 
 sacrifice of his son ? 
 
 Very much. But God, as we have said, never com- 
 mands his creatures to do aught that is not for their 
 own good, or the good of others; and the dogma 
 (entirely foreign to the spirit of the theistic morality 
 taught by Jesus of Nazareth) which makes of this 
 holy personage a sacrifice to satisfy Divine Justice 
 assimilates the great God of Nature, the father of all 
 flesh, with the Phoenician El-Saturnus, Chronos, or 
 Molech, who was said himself actually to have sacri- 
 ficed Jeud his only son— Jeud or Jehud— another 
 form of Jahid, Only. . 
 
 Returning to the family affairs of the Patriarch, 
 we do not find that Sarah, blessed with a son of her 
 own, shows herself any way better disposed towards 
 Hagar, her handmaid, than she had been when she 
 was barren and childless ? 
 
 It is Sarah's turn now to mock Hagar, the 
 Egyptian. "Oast out this bond-woman and her 
 son," she says to Abraham, " for her son shall not 
 be heir with my son, even with Isaac." 
 
 Abraham does not surely yield to this cruel sug- 
 gestion of the spiteful and ungrateful woman t 
 
7 2 The Pentateuch 
 
 . Although the thing, as said, was very grievous in 
 his sight, because of the lad, and because of the bond- 
 woman, nevertheless, and as the story goes, having 
 God's sanction for what he did, he yields to Sarah ; 
 and charging Hagar with some bread and a bottle of 
 water, he turns her and her son— his own son, too— 
 Ishmael, out into the wilderness to perish, as he must 
 have known, and where, but for the discovery of a 
 well of water when she and her child were reduced 
 to extremity, she must inevitably have died. 
 
 Hagar, however, is again succoured in time, 
 although how or by whom — unless it were by the 
 mythical angel of Jehovah as before, we are not in- 
 formed. But Ishmael and his mother, after this, 
 disappear from the scene, and the whole interest is 
 concentrated on the Patriarch of the Hebrew people 
 and his son Isaac. There is an incident now men- 
 tioned, which enables us, with the lights we possess, 
 to see Abraham as no more the exclusive worshipper 
 of the God El or El-schaddai of his forefathers than 
 he is of the more recently introduced Jehovah ? 
 
 He plants a tree by the well Beer-sheba, and there 
 calls on the name of Jehovah. 
 
 What may be the meaning of this ? 
 The word usually translated Grove in our English 
 version of the Hebrew Scriptures mostly signifies a 
 tree or a pillar of wood, when it does not mean the 
 divinity of whom the tree or pillar was the symbol— 
 the Aschera, Astarte, or Ashtaroth of Phoenicia, the 
 Myhtta of Babylonia, the Aphrodite of Greece, the 
 Venus of Rome, the Syria Dea of Lucan, personifica- 
 tion of the passive element in the reproductive 
 principle of nature, usually associated with Baal the 
 Sun-God or active generative principle and object of 
 adoration with all the peoples of the ancient world. 
 Abraham, in planting a tree by the well of Beer-sheba, 
 the well itself significant of fertility, made an offering 
 to the God of Increase j and meets us here, as he must 
 
Genesis : Isaac and Rebekah. 73 
 
 have been in fact, if not wholly mythical, as the Arab 
 Shiek, the worshipper of the Gods of his Fathers not of 
 the Jehovah of post-Davidic times, when the Thora or 
 Code of Law ascribed to Moses had been compiled, 
 and the Temple of Jerusalem declared the only shrine 
 at which offerings acceptable to the Deity could be 
 
 ^ Sal ah dies when she is a hundred and twenty-seven 
 years old, according to the record; and Abraham 
 buys of Ephron the son of Zohar, one of the sons 
 of Heth, the cave of Machpelah as a burying place 
 in the land of Canaan where he is sojourning, _ Well 
 stricken in years himself, Abraham is now anxious to 
 see his son Isaac settled with a wife ; but unwilling 
 to have a daughter of the land of Canaan advanced to 
 this honour, he despatches a trusty servant, whom he 
 binds by an oath, to Mesopotamia, his native country, 
 there from among the number of his own kindred, 
 to find a helpmate for his son. The servant departs 
 with a handsome retinue of camels and attendants. 
 He entreats Jehovah-Elohim, the God of his master 
 Abraham, for good speed in his mission, and asks him 
 to let it come to pass that the one among the maidens 
 who comes to draw water from the well, outside the 
 city of Nahor, by which he might halt, and to whom he 
 should say : " Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that 
 I may drink," and who should reply : " Drink, and 1 
 will give thy camels drink also/' should be she whom 
 he— Jahveh-Elohim— had appointed for his servant 
 Isaac, "and thereby," adds the envoy, "shall I Imow 
 that thou hast showed kindness to my master. W hat 
 happens ? , »» 
 
 Among others who come out to draw from the well 
 is Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah 
 Abraham's brother Nahor's wife, blood relation ot 
 Isaac, consequently twice removed ; and on Rebekah 
 it is that the choice falls; for, asked for a draught 
 from her pitcher, she immediately repeats the words 
 
74 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 which the envoy had resolved should be a sign from 
 Jehovah of his approval,— the Jews imagining that 
 their God interested himself even in the selection of 
 their wives ! 
 
 The messenger enquires of Rebekah whose daughter 
 she is, and if there were room in her father's house 
 where he and his troop might be lodged. Being in- 
 formed that she is the daughter of Bethuel, and 
 assured that there was straw and provender and 
 lodging-room in her father's house, he presents her 
 with the mystical gold ring, prototype of the gold 
 ring of the marriage ceremony among ourselves, and 
 having a significance then which it has no longer ; 
 and beside the ring, he also presents her with brace- 
 lets of price for her arms. What does Rebekah, on 
 the unexpected address of the stranger and the 
 presents she receives ? 
 
 She hastens home, informs the family of what has 
 passed, shows the ring and the bracelets, and 
 despatches her brother Laban to bid the stranger 
 welcome, and lead him to the house. In short, the 
 parties speedily come to an understanding, and matters 
 are forthwith satisfactorily arranged, as though they 
 had been subject of anxious discussion long time 
 before. Rebekah by and by departs with the messen- 
 ger as bride elect of Isaac, who meets her as with 
 her escort she draws near his father Abraham's 
 tents, brings her to his late mother's tent, where he 
 instals her ; makes her his wife, loves her, and is com- 
 forted after his mother Sarah's death. What infor- 
 mation have we now that seems to remove Abraham 
 out of the category of possible historical personages ? 
 
 He is said to have taken a second wife, Keturah 
 by name, and by her to have had a family of five 
 sons— of daughters, who may have been as many, no 
 mention is made — and only to have given up the ghost 
 when he was a hundred and seventy-five years old ! 
 Is this credible ? 
 
Genesis: The Age of Man. 75 
 
 If we acknowledge the laws of nature which are 
 the unimpeachable ordmanees of God ^obecha ng 
 
 of noets but on physiological grounds, debmtiveiy 
 
 r^M^Tb^ LtoVe world who attain to 
 what all now agree in calling extreme old age, finish 
 to career between the limits of three-score and ten 
 and four-score and ten years. nresent 
 So much for the men and women of the present 
 
' 6 The Pentateuch. 
 
 age, but what of those who lived in ages gone 
 
 The sntares om ^ £ t0 " S a * the present time. 
 
 the ™„„ v at J P 6rt , am a ^ es among ourselves :-in 
 olde/rt g the SUtures are distinct, in the 
 
 older they are obliterated more or less eomnleJl7 
 and m the very old they are effaced. In the vout S 
 
 olte'tbev are I ^ ^ ° r less 
 
 ourreIv e s y i n ' Cajed ,° r / 0ne ' P reoise] J as among 
 
 sorrvd a ^ir am 7 th ' dis Pa*ed possession Jf theL 
 sorry dwelling places with the cave bear and hyama- 
 all erfmct at the present time. Carefully eindned 
 IflTT v ^ reCent craa; a, these skulls of™ 
 viduals who lived during the quaternary and towards 
 
Genesis : Esau and Jacob. 77 
 
 the close of the last great glacial period in the earth's 
 history, so marvellously preserved through so many 
 thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, present 
 the same essential characters as those of the men and 
 women who die at the usual ages in the present day ; 
 and assure us that if they lived as long, they certainly 
 lived no longer than their descendants, the miners and 
 iron-workers of Belgium, who now people the soil 
 which once they trod. 1 
 
 Returning to our story, — what comes of the mar- 
 riage of Isaac and Rebekah ? 
 
 As many of the incidents in the sacred writings of 
 the Hebrews are so commonly repeated in connection 
 with each new personage who comes upon the scene, 
 we might almost have anticipated that Rebekah, like 
 Sarah, would prove barren at first, but fruitful after- 
 wards ; and so it falls out. Isaac, it is said, " entreated 
 the Lord for his wife Rebekah," so that she conceived 
 at last, and in due season brought forth twins — Esau 
 and Jacob. 
 
 What is there notable about these ? 
 Esau, the first born, it is said, was " a red and 
 hairy man and became a cunning hunter ; " Jacob, 
 again, was " a plain man, a dweller in tents, or living 
 much at home ; " and whilst Esau was loved of his 
 father, because of the venison he found him in the 
 chase, Jacob was loved of his mother. 
 
 What came of this unlike disposition in the youths 
 and different likings of their parents ? 
 
 Returning faint and weary from hunting on a 
 certain occasion, Esau begged some of the pottage of 
 lentils which Jacob had sod and now got ready. But 
 the selfish Jacob, instead of sharing with his brother 
 and ministering to his wants, will only part with his 
 mess in return for Esau's birthright as the elder born. 
 "Behold," says Esau, "I am at the point to die, and 
 
 1 See Professor Owen's admirable essay on Longevity in 
 Eraser's Magazine for February, 1872. 
 
78 
 
 The Pentateuch, 
 
 what profit shall this birthright do to me." So he 
 bartered his birthright to Jacob for the lentil broth. 
 
 It was surely neither kind nor brotherly in Jacob 
 to profit by his brother's state, faint for want, and 
 weary from the field ? 
 
 It certainly was not, but was of a piece with the 
 rest of Jacob's character and procedure, as we 
 shall see. 
 
 What happens next ? 
 
 Isaac, grown old and his eyesight dim, calls his 
 eldest son Esau and bids him go into the field and 
 take him some venison, that he may have savoury 
 meat once more and find fitting occasion to give him 
 his blessing before he dies. 
 
 Whilst he is gone on this filial errand, what does 
 Rebekah, and to what iniquity does Jacob lend him- 
 self? 
 
 Rebekah conspires with her favourite Jacob to 
 cheat the blind old man, her husband, and to rob 
 Esau, her first-born, of his father's blessing. " Go 
 now to the flock," says Rebekah to her son Jacob, 
 " and fetch me two good kids of the goats, and I will 
 make them savoury meat for thy father, such as he 
 loveth ; and thou shall bring it to thy father that he 
 may eat and that he may bless thee before his 
 death." 
 
 Does Jacob consent to this unfair suggestion of his 
 mother, or does he not rather object ? 
 
 He makes no objection, and is only fearful that the 
 plot may miscarry : " Behold," says he, " Esau my 
 brother is a hairy man, and I a smooth man ; my 
 father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to 
 him as a deceiver, and I shall bring a curse upon me 
 and not a blessing." 
 
 What answer makes Rebekah to this ? 
 
 She says : " Upon me be the curse, my son, only 
 obey my voice and fetch me the kids." This he does 
 forthwith, and she makes the savoury mess of the 
 
Genesis : Isaac and Jacob. 79 
 
 kid's meat such as old Isaac loved. She then takes 
 the goodly raiment of her elder son Esau and puts it 
 on Jacob, covers his hands and the exposed part of 
 his neck with the skins of the kids, and gives the 
 mess of meat and the bread she had prepared into his 
 hand Thus disguised and furnished forth, Jacob 
 comes to his father and says : '" My father ! and he 
 says : " Here am I, who art thou, my son ? 
 
 Jacob, conscience-stricken because of the unworthy 
 part he is playing, must surely answer truly now, and 
 say he is Jacob his father's youngest son ? _ 
 
 No such thing. On the contrary, he lies egregiously, 
 and says: " I am Esau, thy first-born; I have done 
 according as thou badest me. Arise, I pray thee; 
 sit and eat of my venison that thy soul may bless me. 
 
 What answer makes Isaac ? 
 
 How is it, he asks, that thou hast found it so 
 quickly, my son ? 
 
 Jacob, for very shame, must needs now own the 
 imposition so far carried on successfully ? = 
 
 By no means ; he plays the hypocrite now, as he is 
 playing the deceiver and has already proved himself 
 the liar, and answers his father's question m these 
 solemn words : " Jehovah, thy God, brought it to me. 
 
 This is shocking ! Old blind Isaac, nevertheless, 
 seems to have had some misgivings about the party 
 who is addressing him, for he says : " Come near me, 
 that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my 
 very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near to his 
 father, and he felt him and said : The voice is Jacob's 
 voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau ; and he 
 discerned him not, and so he blessed him." 
 
 In spite of having gone so far, Isaac cannot yet 
 have been altogether satisfied of the identity of the 
 son before him ? 
 
 No ; for he asks again : " Art thou my very son 
 Esau?" and he- (Jacob) said, "lam." 
 
 This reiteration of the lie seems to satisfy all the 
 
$0 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 misgivings of the old man, for he now eats of the 
 mess prepared for him 5 and drinks of the wine set 
 before him, does he not ? 
 
 He does ; and bidding his son come near, he blesses 
 him saying : " God give thee of the dew of heaven, 
 and the fulness of the earth, and plenty of corn and 
 wine; and let people serve thee, and nations bow 
 down to thee ; be Lord over thy brethren, and let thy 
 mother's sons bow down to thee ; cursed be every 
 one that curseth thee, and blessed be he who blesseth 
 thee." 
 
 How fares it with Isaac when Esau returns from 
 the chase, brings his savory mess of venison to his 
 father, bids him arise and eat, and asks for his 
 blessing ? 
 
 Isaac, it is said, trembled with a great trembling 
 and said : " Who is he that hath taken venison, and 
 brought it to me, and I have eaten of all before thou 
 earnest, and have blessed him ? " 
 
 And Esau ? 
 
 When he heard the words of his father he cried 
 with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said — 
 " Bless me, even me also, 0 my father ! " 
 
 Isaac yields to this passionate and natural appeal ? 
 
 Nay, indeed ! Blessing in the olden time seems to 
 have been restricted to one ; for the old man replies : 
 "Thy brother came with siibtilty, and hath taken 
 away thy blessing." 
 
 Is Esau content ? 
 
 How should he ! he says : " Hast thou but one 
 blessing, my father ? bless me, even me, 0 my father, 
 and he lifted up his voice and wept.", 
 
 Esau was surely unfairly and cruelly dealt with in 
 all this? 
 
 According to modern moral notions he was cheated 
 of his right ; and common sense and justice alike 
 would now have required the thief fo restore what 
 he had stolen. What motive can we imagine for 
 
Genesis : Isaac and Jacob. 8 1 
 
 the story as it is told ? A mythological meaning, as 
 with many other parts of the Old Testament, lias been 
 connected with the repeated supercession we encoun- 
 ter of the elder by the younger born. As Night, 
 esteemed the eldest born of things, gave place to Day, 
 so it has been surmised is Cain superseded in his 
 sacrifice by Abel, Esau by Jacob in his birthright 
 and blessing, Ephraim by Manasseh, Aaron by Moses 
 in command, &c. 
 
 But Esau is said further to have been the progenitor 
 of the Edomites, a cognate tribe, and enemies of long 
 standing of the Jews ; the poet or fabulist therefore 
 makes Esau sell his birthright for the mess of pottage 
 when he was hungry as a prelude to letting him of 
 his father's blessing, in order that it might fall on 
 Jacob, from whom the Israelites themselves were 
 reputed to have sprung. The preliminary barter of 
 the birthright was doubtless held by the narrator, 
 as it has since been held by apologists for all the right 
 and wrong, the good and evil, that lie within the lids 
 of the Bible, as adequate to cover the subsequent 
 villanous artifices by which the blessing is filched 
 away ; for it seems impossible, on simple moral apart 
 from prescriptive religious grounds, to conceive the 
 most consummate impersonation, whether of Jewish, 
 Christian, or Pagan selfishness and dishonesty, ap- 
 proving the act of Jacob, or condoning the means 
 by which his object was accomplished. 
 
 The Jews would seem to have held that something 
 of a preternatural character pertained to a blessing, 
 which was not nullified by the means, however dis- 
 honest, employed to obtain it ? 
 
 It appears so. Old Isaac himself, when he dis- 
 covers that he has been imposed on, speaks not of 
 recalling his blessing, but says : "I have blessed him 
 (Jacob), yea, and he shall be blessed." But the 
 Jews believed, as we have already had occasion to 
 observe, that their God took a particular interest, 
 
 G 
 
g 2 The Pentateuch. 
 
 not only in them as a people at large, but in every 
 fcdivfdual, and in the acts of every notable incu- 
 vidual more especially, among them They did 
 nothing, never entered on any undertaking, or came 
 to an/ conclusion, without « asking Jeh ovah ^. 
 without drawing lots, consulting the Bphod or 
 T^aphim-domestic idols of which every household 
 appears to have had one or more, and receiving an 
 answer in approval. On the most solemn occasions 
 of all they seem to have referred the case to the High 
 Pri t who then had recourse to the TJrim and Thum- 
 Sm he carried on his breast, and to the Seven- 
 branched Candlestick which was so important a part 
 o the furniture of the Altar and in constant requisi- 
 tion in casting nativities and other kinds of divi- 
 
 n 11°nothewho deceives his blind old father and [niches 
 his brothers birthright and blessing a villain deserv- 
 ing of present punishment and failure m his after 
 enterprises, rather than worthy of God's peculiar 
 favour, of man's approval, and of success m all he 
 
 * U IC2;)& W so° undoubtedly but men 
 iudge mostly by the success or failure that follows 
 S; and God is not truly, as he is commonly 
 thought to be, a kind of celestial potentate or chief 
 Srate, with powers of prison and gibbet a .com- 
 mand. Jacob himself puts the legitimacy of the con- 
 spiracy in which he engages with his mother on the 
 sole footing of its success, » Peradventure," says he, 
 " ty fathef will feel me, and I shall seem to him a 
 deceiver, and I shall bring a curse upon me and not 
 a blessing." But he who acquires or gams his end, 
 L matter what it is, does so by conforming to the 
 naW law of acquisition, which has no bearing on 
 ^ principles. The accumulator may be the most 
 heartless and unprincipled of mortals ; bnt if he 
 steadily pursue his selfish ends and his purpose of 
 
Genesis: Jacob. 
 
 83 
 
 gathering to himself regardless of others, God will 
 not only not interfere to hinder him of success, but, 
 it may be said, will assuredly favour him in his ob- 
 ject ; neither will his fellow-men say aught against 
 him if he but grow rich and keep on the safe side of 
 the statute law ; nay, they will not only say nothing 
 against, but will even fawn on and flatter him ; per- 
 chance even speak of raising a statue to him. 
 
 The Jews, far from seeing anything dishonourable 
 in the conduct of Jacob, even vaunt themselves on 
 their descent from the unbrotherly, untruthful, and 
 deceitful man ? 
 
 They do ; and making God a party to their ap- 
 proval, they have always spoken of their tutelary 
 Deity Jehovah as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and 
 of Jacob ; so that successful selfishness and untruth 
 have sanctified to them the unrighteous means by 
 which the headship of the family was obtained. 
 
 Esau, wroth with his brother, hates him in his 
 heart, and old Isaac having now been gathered to his 
 people, he says : " When the days of mourning for my 
 father are over, I will slay my brother Jacob." Does 
 he take any steps to make good his threat ? 
 
 We have no information of any. But Rebekah has 
 overheard the rash words, and sends her darling Jacob 
 to Padan-Aram out of the way, until the easy Esau's 
 anger should be abated, and he had forgotten, or shall 
 we say forgiven, the wrong that had been done him. 
 What befals Jacob on his way to Padan-Aram ? 
 He has a wonderful dream. 
 
 About his unbrotherly and unfilial conduct, doubt- 
 less ; and the bad part he has played being brought 
 home to him, he resolves to make amends and resti- 
 tut on to the extent in his power ? 
 
 Nothing of the kind ! The sun having set, and the 
 night coming on, he makes a pillow of one of the 
 stones where he is, and lays him down to sleep. 
 And he dreams that he sees a ladder set on the earth 
 
84 The Pentateuch. 
 
 with its top reaching to heaven, up and down which 
 the angels of Elohim come and go, Jehovah himself 
 standing above and over all. 
 What then ? 
 
 Jehovah speaks and informs the dreaming man 
 that he is Jehovah, the God of Abraham and of Isaac 
 his father ; that he will give the land on which he 
 lies to him and to his seed, which should be as the 
 dust of the earth, and prove a blessing to all the 
 families of the earth ; " and," continues the narrative, 
 "I am with thee and will keep thee in all the places 
 whither thou goest, and I will bring thee again into 
 this land, and will not leave thee until I have done 
 that which I have spoken to thee of." 
 
 Jacob awakes ? 
 
 And says : " Surely Jehovah is in this place and I 
 knew it not. This is none other but the house of 
 God, and this is the gate of heaven." He then sets 
 up the stone on which he had pillowed his head as a 
 pillar, pours oil on its top by way of consecrating it 
 and calls the spot Beth-El — House of God, the name ^ 
 of the place having at first been Luz (Lux, Light). 
 
 What may be the meaning of Jacob's act ? 
 
 Stones, as enduring things, appear to have been 
 almost universally objects of reverence and worship 
 with men in the long-continued infancy of the human 
 mind. As pillars they had a special significance, and 
 were then looked on as typical of the instrument 
 efficient in the wonderful faculty possessed by living 
 creatures of reproducing their kind. The stone 
 column or token set up by Jacob was neither more 
 nor less than the Phallic emblem, before which he 
 and his forefathers were wont to prostrate themselves.™ 
 And the oil he poured on its top was a further offer- 
 
 m Et verisimiliter semen eorum Numini sub symbolo phallico 
 culto proferre, sicut mos adhuc hodie est apud indigenos Ter- 
 rarum Bengalensium.— Conf. Levit. xviii. 21, and xx. 2. 
 
Genesis: Jacob. 
 
 8S 
 
 ing to the divine power it represented for fertility and 
 increase. 
 
 Has this respect or reverence for the stone pillar 
 as symbol of the reproductive principle in nature yet 
 died out from among men F 
 
 By no means. The Jews through the whole of their 
 history, even to the time when the Temple of Solomon 
 was built, erected pillars of wood and stone to the 
 gods they worshipped— to Baal and Asehera in espe- 
 cial, before which they presented their sacrifices, and 
 at the feet of whose altars they poured the blood of their 
 victims and their drink offerings. Nor can it be said 
 that the sacred stone, disguised as column, obelisk, or 
 steeple, has yet gone out of date, though its meaning 
 is no longer understood. The obelisk in front of St 
 Peter's at Borne and the spires of our churches are 
 emblematic of the same thing as the stone which 
 Jacob set up, as the columns erected on the " high 
 places " to Baal and Aschera, and as those that stood 
 before Solomon's Temple. In certain districts of India 
 — the country that gave birth to so many of the reli- 
 gious ideas and to all the philosophy of the world — 
 at the present time every village has its sacred stone 
 usually set up under the shade of a Teee, upon which 
 newly-married and barren women come and seat them- 
 selves after pouring a libation of ghee or oil on its 
 top, Neither was the sacred stone left out of the 
 reckoning by our own forefathers in the olden time. 
 The King was not held as duly installed in his office 
 unless he were seated on a stone, hence our Saxon 
 King's-stone still to be seen railed about in the town 
 of Kingston-on-Thames ; the Scotch Kings-stone car- 
 ried away from Scone by Edward III., and now- 
 preserved in Westminster Abbey under the rude chair 
 which served for a throne ; London-stone still notable 
 in Cannon Street ; and, to go farther afield, the black 
 stone of the Caaba of Mecca, to prostrate themselves 
 before which come the thousands of Moslems annually 
 
86 The Pentateuch. 
 
 from their distant homes, there to have the seal affixed 
 as it were to their title-deed to heaven. Nor is the 
 anointing in many instances omitted ; the consecra- 
 tion of the king and priest is not held complete with- 
 out the application of the chrism or holy oil ; and the 
 poorest adherent of the Church of Rome has extreme 
 unction at last by way of passport for the journey from 
 which there is no returning. These are all plainly 
 lingering remnants of a symbolical worship that was 
 once universal in the world, and of which the mean- 
 ingless traces might now, as it seems, advantageously 
 disappear from among us. ^ 
 
 Having set up and consecrated his token, Jacob 
 
 vows a vow ? , , 
 
 Saying : "If Elohe will be with me, and keep me 
 in the way I go, and give me bread and raiment so 
 that I come again to my father's house, then shall 
 Jehovah be my God, and this stone which I have set 
 up for a token shall be God's house.' Jacob s God, 
 we are therefore to conclude, had heretofore been El, 
 Elohe or El-shaddai; but, were his prayer granted, 
 he would then take Jehovah in his stead. Here it is 
 impossible to overlook the hand of the late Jehovistic 
 writer. Jehovah was the peculiar Deity of the post- 
 exilic reforming party among the Jews, and it could 
 not but be of the highest moment to him and to them 
 to exhibit their chief patriarch as a worshipper ot their 
 God But Jacob, if there ever really lived such a 
 personage, could never have heard of the Jewish 
 Jehovah; El, El-Shaddai, or some other of the El 
 compounds was the name of the God he worshipped. 
 
 Jacob, in fact, bargains with the Supreme Being as 
 he had bargained with Esau for the mess of pottage 
 in lieu of the birthright ? 
 
 He is made to do so, at all events. If God will do 
 so and so, then will he, Jacob, on his part do so and 
 so in return. To conciliate Jehovah, the God ot the 
 writer, Jacob is presented to us as ready to give up 
 
Genesis : Jacob. 
 
 87 
 
 his own old familiar God or Gods, El or Elohim. 
 Jacob always meets us as a dealer or bargain-maker ; 
 but sliows himself ready in the present instance to 
 give an equivalent, or what he seems to have thought 
 was an equivalent, for the benefits he expected him- 
 self to receive. " Of all that thou shalt give me I 
 will surely give the tenth unto thee," is the con- 
 cluding item in the compact he enters into with his 
 God— a clause added, we cannot doubt, by a still later 
 hand, one of a brotherhood who never lose sight ot 
 their own interest. 
 
 The terms do not seem over liberal ? 
 As regards God the giver of All they have no 
 meaning ; as regards the priesthood, who here stand 
 for the Thou and the Thee, they are even more than 
 liberal. , 
 
 Do tithes, of which so much has since been made, 
 appear to have been originally bestowed for the pecu- 
 liar benefit of the priesthood, or the church they 
 represented ? , 
 By no means. The tithe of the corn and oil and 
 wine which the land produced, and of the flocks and 
 herds of the year, was to be solemnly eaten by the 
 people themselves in the holy place, that they might 
 learn to fear Jehovah. Tithe was, in fact, to be dedi- 
 cated to rejoicing and merry-making. Were the place 
 too far off which Jehovah should choose for the festive 
 occasion, the tithe of all was then to be turned into 
 money, and the money spent " on whatsoever their 
 souls lusted after." (Deut. xiv. 22, et seq.) lhe 
 widow, the fatherless, and the stranger also were to 
 share, and the Levite, as having no possessions, was 
 not to be forgotten. But none of the tithe was to be 
 expended on occasions of mourning, nor was aught ot 
 it to be given for the dead (Deut. xxvi. 14) ; i.e., it 
 was not to be spent on the articles of meat and drink 
 with which the dead among so many peoples m the 
 olden time were provided for the journey to the dis- 
 
88 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 tant land, the place of disembodied spirits. Taking 
 the last quoted text for a guide, the clergy of the 
 Church of Rome might possibly see the impropriety 
 of levying contributions on their flocks for masses 
 and prayers for the dead. 
 
 Jacob proceeds on his journey and comes to Haran ? 
 where he makes acquaintance with his kinsfolk on 
 the mother's side, having halted by a well, precisely 
 as Isaac's messenger had done. As with Rebekah, 
 so now with Rachel, the younger of Laban's two 
 daughters, who comes to the well to water her father's 
 sheep. Jacob is smitten with the damsel, falls in 
 love with her as matter of course, is presented to 
 Laban her father, and agrees (another bargain) to 
 serve seven years with him for Rachel as his wife. 
 This he does fairly and truly, but he is deceived by 
 Laban at the end of the term, he substituting his 
 elder daughter Leah for Rachel the younger, the be- 
 trothed, on the bridal night. What happens when 
 Jacob discovers that he has been imposed on ? 
 
 He complains to Laban of the trick that has been 
 played him", and says : " Did not I serve with thee for 
 Rachel ; wherefore then hast thou beguiled me ? " 
 
 What says Laban to this ? 
 
 He replies that the younger must not be given in 
 marriage before the first-born ; but he adds : " Fulfil 
 her (Leah's) week and we will give thee this (Rachel) 
 for the service which thou shalt serve with me for 
 yet seven years." 
 
 Jacob accepts the terms ? 
 
 He does ; fulfils his week manfully with Leah, and 
 Laban then gives him his second daughter to wife 
 also. 
 
 The Jews of old must have been less fastidious in 
 such matters than folks of the present day ; where in 
 all civilised communities a man may not only not have 
 two wives, and still less two sisters . as wives, living 
 with him at the same time— which the Jews them- 
 
Genesis : Jacob. 
 
 selves in later days did not allow, — conditions all of 
 them reasonable enough ; but a man may not now 
 marry the sister of a deceased wife, — a prohibition 
 altogether unreasonable; for not only is there no 
 consanguinity between the man and the woman 
 here which might prove a legitimate bar to their 
 union, but there is the strong and natural tie between 
 the living sister and the children— if children there 
 be — of her who has prematurely passed away. What 
 is the upshot of the double marriage ? 
 
 Leah, who has been imposed on Jacob, naturally 
 enough is not loved by him as he loves Rachel ; but 
 "when Jehovah," according to the text, "saw that 
 Leah was hated, he (in requital) opened her womb ; " 
 but Eachel, like Sarah, the mother of Isaac, and 
 Jacob's mother Rebekah, is barren at first — for there 
 is incessant iteration of like incidents in these 
 mythical and legendary tales — and only, like the re- 
 markable women referred to, fruitful at length. 
 
 Rachel, barren herself for a time, and envious of 
 her fruitful sister, in imitation of Sarah with Hagar, 
 doubtless, gives her handmaid Bilhah to her hus- 
 band as a concubine or third wife, and she conceives 
 and bears Jacob two sons in succession. 
 
 There is more of this, is there not ? 
 ^ Plenty ; Leah having ceased bearing, as she ima- 
 gined, after having given Jacob four sons, follows her 
 sister's example, and gives her handmaid Zilpah as 
 a second concubine or fourth wife to her husband ; 
 and she too, like Bilhah, presents the Patriarch with 
 two sons one after the other. 
 
 What farther ? 
 
 It were neither edifying nor seemly to proceed with 
 particulars ; for the tale is now of Jacob cohabiting 
 with one and then with another of his wives or con- 
 cubines, and next of Leah — fruitful again through 
 eating mandrakes, it is said, found for her in the 
 wheat-field by her son Reuben, so that she adds a 
 
 8 9 
 
£ 0 The Pentateuch. 
 
 fifth and a sixth son and a daughter to the four she 
 had already presented to her lord. 
 And Rachel ? 
 
 All in good time ! As Jehovah by our text had seen 
 that Leah was hated and had opened her womb by 
 way of return, so does he now remember Rachel m 
 her yearnings for offspring : " Give me children or else 
 I die " she had said to Jacob in her passion ; and 
 though Jacob's anger is kindled against her, and he 
 has said : "Ami in God's stead who hath withheld 
 from thee the fruit of thy womb ? " he continues to 
 cohabit with her, and she, having partaken of her 
 sister's mandrakes, becomes a mother at last bears a 
 son whom she calls Joseph, and exclaims m her joy : 
 « God hath taken away my reproach ; " for the Jews 
 held barrenness in woman to be a sign of imperfection 
 and incapacity, if not even of the divine displeasure 
 
 What is the mandrake which Reuben found tor ms 
 mother Leah, and to which such virtue is ascribed t 
 The Hebrew word translated mandrake m our ver- 
 sion is rendered "Mele mandragora" by the Greeks, 
 and is commonly said to be the love apple or tomato ; 
 but this is probably a mistake. The mandrake was a 
 tap-root plant of some sort; and the name is still 
 given by our unlettered herbalists to the root ot the 
 white bryony— a drastic purgative, however not cal- 
 culated, as it might seem, to provoke appetite or aid 
 conception, as the Jews believed. 
 
 Jacob having now secured his wives and concubines, 
 and with a numerous offspring rising about him, 
 grows weary of his servitude to Laban and notifies 
 his desire to be gone— what says Laban to this . 
 
 Laban would have him tarry, and bids him name 
 his own terms if he will consent to do so. 
 What says Jacob to the offer ? 
 
 He boasts of the advantage his service has already 
 proved to Laban: " It was little thou hadst when 1 
 came, and now it is increased into a multitude, is the 
 
Genesis : Jacob. 
 
 9 1 
 
 prelude to his proposition for payment not in money 
 but in kind : those among the goats that were already 
 or that should be born ring-streaked, speckled or 
 spotted, and those among the sheep that were brown, 
 were to be for his hire. 
 Laban consents ? 
 
 He does : the flocks are shed and Jacob's parti- 
 coloured lots are driven off under the care of his sons, 
 three days' journey from Laban's white or self- 
 coloured cattle. 
 
 What device does the artful Jacob practise now ? 
 
 He peels him white streaks in green rods of poplar, 
 hazel and chesnut, which he sets up in the watering- 
 troughs of the sheep and goats ; and so arranges 
 matters that the females shall only conceive when 
 they come to drink, the consequence of which is, as 
 said, that the young produced are mostly ring- 
 streaked, spotted and speckled. 
 
 Jacob, the wily, does yet more than this ? 
 
 He does ; and always with an especial eye to his 
 own advantage and something like his father-in-law 
 Laban's disadvantage : he only puts his peeled rods 
 in the watering-troughs when the strongest of the 
 cattle are about to become pregnant ; " when the 
 cattle were feeble he put them not in," says the text, 
 which continues : " and so the feebler were Laban's, 
 and the stronger Jacob's." 
 
 This does not seem over and above honest in Jacob ? 
 
 It is everything but honest ; it is shamefully and 
 barefacedly dishonest. It may be condoned, indeed, 
 by referring to the old Jewish law of an eye for an 
 eye, a tooth for a tooth, for Laban had unquestionably 
 imposed on Jacob, and Jacob may be said to have but 
 paid him back in his own coin : "If my father cheat 
 me, I shall cheat my father," said, or is said to have 
 said, a distinguished member of the Jewish com- 
 munity among ourselves, dealing largely in foreign 
 securities, in days not long gone by. 
 
9 2 The Pentateuch. 
 
 There is another version of this notable story, as 
 of so many more in the Hebrew Scriptures ? 
 
 There is, and with different circumstances; for 
 Jacob is now absolved of any need to have recourse 
 to craft or to play the part of dishonest herdsman. 
 Here J acob complains to his wives Leah and Rachel, 
 the sisters, that their father Laban had withdrawn 
 his countenance from him, had changed his wages 
 ten times, saying now that the speckled, and then 
 that the ring-streaked cattle should be his portion ; 
 " but the God of my father," he proceeds, "has been 
 with me, and suffered him not to hurt me ; for if he 
 said : the speckled shall be thy wages, then all the 
 cattle bare speckled ; and if he said thus : the ring- 
 streaked shall be thy share, then bare all the cattle 
 ring-streaked ; and thus God hath taken away the 
 cattle of your father and given them to me." 
 
 This is surely making too familiar a use of God's 
 presumed interference in the affairs of men ? 
 
 It is in strict conformity, however, with antique 
 Jewish notions that God took immediate part in even 
 the most minute and intimate relations of their lives ; 
 and, farther, that the Supreme had favourites, irre- 
 spective of merit, among the children of men. The 
 old J ewish writers had no conception of a world, and 
 of man as one of its elements, ruled by great universal, 
 eternal, and necessary laws, expression to the culti- 
 vated mind of to-day of the power and true providence 
 of God. 
 
 Jacob has a dream besides, that may have put him 
 on the natural way of securing ring-streaked and 
 speckled cattle for himself without having recourse 
 to the questionable procedure of the peeled rods ? 
 
 The angel of Jehovah, he tells his sister-wives, 
 spake with him in a dream, saying : " Jacob ! and I 
 said : Here am I. And he said : See, all the rams 
 which leap the cattle are ring- streaked, speckled and 
 griseled, and I have seen all that Laban doeth unto 
 
Genesis : Jacob. 
 
 93 
 
 thee ; I am the God of Beth-El, where thou anointedst 
 the pillar and vowedst a vow unto me. Now, arise ; 
 get thee out from this land, and return into the land 
 of thy kindred." 
 
 Have we any fact that might help to explain the 
 mythr of the peeled rods used by Jacob in securing 
 the increase of his part among the nocks ? 
 
 It is not uninteresting to observe that the figure 
 of the man who holds the scales with one hand in 
 the sign of Libra on some of the oldest of the Zodiacs 
 has a streaked rod or rule in the other. Now, Sep- 
 tember, the month in which the sun entered Libra in 
 former times, is that also in which the ewes begin to 
 conceive; whence it has been conjectured that the 
 Hebrew writer was taking hints from the pictorial 
 calendar for the composition of his story. 
 
 What say the wives to the communication of 
 Jehovah, which may, nevertheless, very well reflect 
 Jacob's own waking thoughts and aspirations ? 
 
 Seeing, as they say, that they " have no longer any 
 portion or inheritance in their father's house and are- 
 counted of him as strangers, for he hath sold us and 
 quite devoured also our money ; for all the riches 
 which God hath taken from our father is ours and our 
 children's ; therefore whatsoever God hath said unto 
 thee, do." 
 
 Laban certainly has not shown himself a strictly 
 honest man in his dealings with the husband of his 
 daughters ; but they in turn seem to show little of the 
 love and devotion naturally to be looked for in chil- 
 dren to their parent ? 
 
 This is true : they forget the long years through 
 which their father fed and housed and clothed them. 
 In conformity with the notions of their age, however, 
 they are made to ascribe the increasing poverty of 
 their father to the displeasure, and the growing 
 wealth of their husband to the favour of their God. 
 
 The device of the rods, were God like the impar- 
 
94 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 tial judge we look for among ourselves, would have 
 brought punishment on Jacob, not yielded him re- 
 ward ? 
 
 Premeditated and deliberate dishonesty is the 
 worst of dishonesties, and selfishness is a mean and 
 sorry vice ; but the punishment and the reward are 
 with man, not with God, save as he is represented by 
 man. 
 
 Jacob hearkens to the counsel of his wives ? 
 
 He does forthwith : setting his family on camels 
 and stealing away without a word to his father-in- 
 law Laban, who has gone sheep-shearing and hears 
 nothing of the flight for several days, he turns his 
 face towards Gilead with all he has, and there arrived 
 he pitches his tents. 
 
 Beside what might be called her own, has not 
 Rachel taken some things that did not rightfully 
 belong to her ? 
 
 She has " stolen the Images that were her 
 father's." 
 
 Images in the possession of Laban, descendant in 
 the direct line from Nahor Abraham's brother, father 
 of Leah and Rachel the wives of Jacob, the son of 
 Isaac, the son of Abraham ! This is unlooked for in- 
 formation. The man must have been an Idolater ? 
 
 The story seems plainly to say as much. But were 
 ever the Hebrews, either then or for centuries after- 
 wards, anything but Fetish worshippers ? 
 
 They declared emphatically in later times that they 
 were the chosen people of Jehovah, their God ; and 
 their descendants, exiles from the land that was pro- 
 mised to them as an inheritance for ever, and scattered 
 over the face of the habitable globe, still believe them- 
 selves to be so. This is wonderful enough, all things 
 considered ; but still more wonderful is the fact, that 
 the European communities have continued so long to 
 take them at their word, and to look on them as wor- 
 shippers of the One God. 
 
Genesis : Jacob. 
 
 95 
 
 Laban, absent from home, hears nothing of the flight 
 of Jacob and his wives for three days ; but informed 
 of it at length, and missing his property and his house- 
 hold gods, he sets out in pursuit seven days' 
 journey, intending recovery doubtless of the things 
 abstracted, if not more serious reprisals. Before 
 coming up with the fugitives on Mount Gilead, how- 
 ever, he has a communication from Elohim — God.. 
 
 God, it is said, visited Laban the Aramasan in a 
 dream by night, and admonished him to speak neither 
 good nor bad to Jacob, so that when he overtook him 
 at length, heonly ventured to reproach him with having 
 stolen away with his daughters as captives taken with 
 the sword, and adds : Though thou wouldst be gone, 
 because thou sore longedst for thy father's house, yet 
 wherefore hast thou stolen my gods ? 
 
 Jacob, unaware of this particular theft, denies it : 
 "With whomsoever thou findest thy gods," he says, 
 " let him not live." So Laban searches for his gods 
 throughout the encampment, but in vain ; for Rachel, 
 the thief, has secreted them in the camels' furniture 
 and sat down upon them ; and as she excuses herself 
 from rising because of a certain natural visitation — 
 the nature of which she is not so delicate as not to 
 explain — the gods cannot be found. 
 
 This gives Jacob an opportunity to turn round on 
 Laban, and to be wroth with him ? 
 
 An opportunity he is not slow to improve : " What 
 is my trespass," says he, " what is my sin that thon 
 hast so hotly pursued after me." Boasting of his long 
 and faithful service, he says roundly to his father-in- 
 law : " Except the God of my father, the God of 
 Abraham and the fear of Isaac had been with me, 
 thou hadst surely sent me now empty away. God 
 hath seen my affliction and the labour of my hands, 
 and rebuked thee yester-night." 
 
 How could Jacob know this ? 
 
 There is no difficulty, the familiar terms considered 
 
9 6 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 upon which the Patriarchs were with their God, who 
 may have informed him ! 
 
 Laban is appeased, and says to Jacob : Now there- 
 fore, let ns make a covenant, I and thou, and let it be 
 for a witness between me and thee. What does 
 Jacob ? 
 
 He takes a stone and sets it up for a pillar, and the 
 two parties, heaping stones about it, call it Galeed 
 and Mizpah, for it is to be at once a witness and a 
 landmark between them, Laban stipulating for good 
 treatment for his daughters, and that no other wives 
 should be taken by Jacob to afflict them, and both 
 agreeing that neither he nor Jacob should pass 
 beyond the heap to do each other harm. Laban then 
 kisses his sons and his daughters, blesses them, and 
 returns to his place, whilst Jacob offers sacrifice upon 
 the mount where he is encamped. 
 
 What is the next interesting incident in the history 
 of the patriarch Jacob ? 
 
 Proceeding on his way and meeting " the angels 
 of God in a place he calls Mahanaim, he thence 
 dispatches messengers to his brother Esau whom he 
 had so grievously wronged, then dwelling in Seir in 
 the land of Edom, and bids them say " unto my Lord 
 Esau " that " his servant Jacob "is in his territory 
 and hopes to find grace in his sight. 
 
 Well ? 
 
 The messengers return to Jacob and report to him 
 that his brother Esau, informed of his coming, is 
 on his way to meet him with a great retinue of men, 
 four hundred in number. 
 
 And Jacob ? 
 
 Conscience-stricken and fearing his brother's anger, 
 when he hears of the great attendance, he divides his 
 people and his flocks into two ; lest Esau coming with 
 hostile purpose smite the one company, then the other 
 should escape. 
 
 What more ? 
 
Genesis : Jacob and Esau. 97 
 
 He prays to his God, as men mostly do in straits 
 and difficulties ; reminds him of the promises already 
 made and of the order to return into his own country 
 now in course of being obeyed., and owns himself un- 
 worthy of all the favour shown him. With my 
 staff " says he, " I passed over this Jordan, and now 
 I am become two bands ; deliver me, I pray thee, 
 from the hand of my brother Esau for I fear him, 
 lest he come and smite me and the mother with 
 the children. And thou saidst I will surely do thee 
 good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea which 
 cannot be numbered for multitude." 
 
 Jacob must needs think that his God required to 
 be reminded of his promises ? 
 
 It plainly enough appears so; but Jacob s idea ot 
 God was very different from that of the enlightened 
 of the present day ; although not very different per- 
 haps from that still entertained by the vulgar and 
 uninformed. - . 1 
 
 To conciliate his brother Esau, Jacob makes ready 
 a handsome present in conformity with oriental 
 
 US A very handsome present, indeed, which he sends 
 on before, he himself following at the head of the 
 train with the handmaids and their children 
 in the van, Leah and her children next Rachel 
 and Joseph last of all-the least cherished there- 
 fore in front, the dearest in the rear, lest Esau 
 should prove hostile. 
 
 How does Jacob comport himself in presence of his 
 
 brother ^ 
 
 Lifting up his eyes and seeing Esau coming on 
 with his numerous escort, he advances and bows 
 himself seven times to the ground as he draws near 
 his brother." 
 
 And Esau ? - , , 
 
 "Esau ran to meet his brother Jacob who had 
 bargained away from him his birthright and stolen 
 
9 8 The Pentateuch. 
 
 from him his father's blessing, " and embraced him, 
 and fell upon his neck and kissed him, and they 
 wept." „ . 
 
 Esau must have been of a kindly and forgiving 
 
 nature ? 
 
 Surely he was so, or he is made to appear so by 
 the writer who tells the tale ; generous too, was Esau, 
 and open and honourable. " Who are all these 
 belonging to thee," he inquires of his brother ; and 
 his brother answers : " The children which God hath 
 graciously given thy servant;" and they all bowed 
 themselves ; and after came Rachel and J oseph, and 
 they bowed themselves. And he inquired further : 
 " What meanest thou by all this drove which I met ?" 
 And Jacob answered : " These are to find grace in the 
 sight of my lord." 
 
 And Esau, to the cringing and fair-faced show of 
 his brother ? 
 
 Answers : " I have enough, my brother, keep that 
 thou hast unto thyself." 
 To which Jacob ? 
 
 Replies : " Nay, I pray thee ; if now I have found 
 grace in thy sight then receive my present at my 
 hand ; for I have seen thy face as though I had seen 
 the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me — 
 take, I pray thee my present (not blessing as in our 
 English version) that is brought to thee ; God hath 
 dealt graciously with me, and I have all things. And 
 he urged him, and he took it." 
 
 Jacob belords his brother still further, does he not? 
 
 After putting his brother on a level with his God 
 there was little room for further flattery, yet he uses 
 such phrases as these : " My lord knoweth ; " " Let 
 my lord, I pray ;" " Let me find grace in the sight 
 of my lord." 
 
 The brothers part good friends and reconciled ? ^ 
 
 They do ; Esau returns to Seir ; and Jacob wending 
 on his way comes to Shalem in the land of Canaan, 
 
Genesis: Jacob wrestles with Elohe. 99 
 
 where lie buys part of a field and erects a Pillar 
 which he calls El-Elohe- Israel— a compound of the 
 names by which the God of the primitive Semitic 
 tribes possessing Palestine was known. 
 
 There is a notable and most extraordinary incident 
 met with in the middle of the narrative of the meeting 
 between Jacob and Esau, but connected with the 
 name of Israel, which we have just seen applied to 
 the pillar erected by Jacob ? 
 
 A very notable and to modern apprehension extra- 
 ordinary incident indeed. As Jacob is journeying 
 towards Seir to meet his brother, he is " left alone ; 
 and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking 
 of the day ; and when the man saw that he prevailed 
 not against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh, 
 so that the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint 
 as he wrestled with him ; and he said : Let me go, for 
 the day breaketh ! And Jacob said : I will not let 
 thee go unless thou bless me. And the man said : 
 What is thy name ; and he said Jacob. And the 
 man said : Thy name shall be called no more J acob, 
 but Israel (Prince of God), for as a prince hast 
 thou power with God and with men, and hast pre- 
 vailed." 
 
 Does not Jacob also question his opponent as to 
 who or what he is ? 
 
 Jacob says : " Tell me, I pray thee, thy name," and 
 his adversary answers : " Wherefore is it that thou 
 dost ask after my name P" But Jacob's question was 
 most pertinent ; for in days when there were believed 
 to be many gods it was very necessary to know who 
 the One was with whom intercourse was had ; and 
 this could best be done through the name and title of 
 the individual. 
 
 Jacob's opponent does not tell his name nor say 
 who he is ? 
 
 He does not; but owning himself in some sort 
 worsted in the encounter, only escaping from Jacob's 
 
ioo The Pentateuch. 
 
 grip indeed by touching a tender part of his body, 
 he blesses Jacob, who calls the place where the en- 
 counter happened Perriel (the face of God) ; for says 
 he : " I have seen God face to face and ray life is pre- 
 served." Jacob's opponent would, therefore, seem to 
 have been no man, as said in the text, but El, Elohe, 
 or God himself in person. 
 
 What interpretation can be put upon this strange 
 and obviously mythical tale ? 
 
 More than one has been attempted ; but its sense 
 has mostly remained to orthodox expositors as dark 
 as the darkest of the night in which the wrestling 
 match is said to have occurred. From the narrative, 
 Jacob evidently supposes that it was his God El with 
 whom he had been striving, though to our modern 
 notions the idea of man struggling with God in flesh 
 and blood seems even too extravagant to have been 
 possibly entertained. Jacob, however, does say that 
 he had seen God face to face ; so that on this point 
 there can be no question. It is then to be noted that 
 the opponent desires to be let go when " the day 
 begins to break ; " and that " the sun rises " on J acob 
 as "he passes over Peniel halting, yet with a blessing 
 from the encounter. These particulars, aided by a 
 small amount of mythological knowledge, give a key 
 to the mystery involved in the- tale : It is allegorical 
 of the struggle between Light and Darkness, i.e., 
 between the beneficent and the adverse aspects of 
 Nature, combined in the Hebrew conception of the 
 Deity. The tale is probably a fragment of a larger 
 document, dissevered from the rest of the record which 
 told of the Light or Sun, Moon and Planet worship 
 followed by the far-off forefathers of the Hebrew race, 
 before they had swarmed away from the hills and 
 valleys of the high lands of Armenia and Mesopo- 
 tamia. It has no connection, save by inference, with 
 anything that has gone before, nor with anything that 
 comes after in the Hebrew Scriptures — not even with 
 
Genesis: Jacob the Wrestler. toi 
 
 the change of Jacob's name, for that had been men- 
 
 tl0 The Mbw of Jacob's thigh is said to have been 
 put out of joint in one part of the narrative (xxxn 
 25) ; in another (v. 32) it is a sinew which is said 
 to have shrunk-" the sinew which is ^pon the ho low 
 of the thigh ; therefore," it is added « the children 
 of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank unto this 
 
 da The meaning of this, too, must be allegorical ? 
 
 No doubt of it. The part which the children ot 
 Israel "eat not unto this day" is neither the great 
 sciatic nerve, as is sometimes said, nor any tendon 
 connected with a muscle. # 
 
 Have we not a story akin to this m what is called 
 the Pagan Mythology ? . " 
 
 We & have _in the myth of the wrestling bout that 
 takes place between the Tyrian Heracles and Zeus m 
 which Heracles, like Jacob, comes off halting with a 
 dislocation of the thigh. But why the story here 
 should be characterised as pagan and called mytho- 
 logical and incredible, whilst the Hebrew tale is 
 looked on as sacred and held worthy of belief, is 
 not so obvious. The two myths have doubtless a 
 common origin. The Tyrian hero, the god m his 
 favourable aspect, contends with the Father of gods 
 and men in his adverse aspect, precisely as Jacob- 
 Israel the wrestler, assumed as symbolical ot light, 
 contends with Elohe in his quality of darkness, or the 
 nicrht. But Phoenicians, Tyrians, Ganaamtes Israel- 
 ites, &c, were all alike children of the same Semitic 
 stock, spoke clossly allied dialects of the same lan- 
 guage, and in their religious ideas, rites and ceremo- 
 nies were at one. , 
 There is another version of the wrestling match 
 between Hercules and an adversary, which throws 
 additional light on the Hebrew fragment !>. 
 
 It is that in which Hercules contends with Antasus. 
 
102 The Pentateuch. 
 
 The sun — Hercules, wrapt in the lion's skin, had 
 his domicile in the zodiacal sign Leo ; Antaaus had 
 his in that of Aquarius. But Leo is the sign in which 
 the sun is supreme, and summer is in the ascendant ; 
 Aquarius the sign in which the sun is at the lowest 
 point of his annual course, and winter rules the year. 
 Hercules' adversary is aptly named Antaeus, Opponent, 
 — his opposite or other self, in ceaseless contention 
 with whom he is alternately the victor and the van- 
 quished, the light now getting the better of the dark, 
 the dark in turn becoming superior to the light, but 
 each destined ere long again and in endless succes- 
 sion to yield to the other. 
 
 What happens after the brothers Jacob and Esau 
 have taken their several ways ? 
 
 Dinah, the daughter of Jacob by Leah, is violated 
 by Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, who, however, 
 inconsistently as it seems, then makes suit through 
 his father to Jacob to have the damsel to wife. 
 
 Does Jacob agree to the proposal ? 
 
 We have no account of his objecting, but his sons 
 are wroth with Shechem when they hear of the wrong 
 he has done to Dinah their sister. Nevertheless, to 
 the proposals made for reparation by marriage, they 
 answer deceitfully, and say they cannot give their 
 sister to one that is uncircumcised, but if every male 
 of the Hivites will consent to circumcision, then say 
 they we will give our daughters to you, and we will 
 take your daughters to us, and we will dwell with you 
 and become one people. 
 
 The Hivites agree to the terms ; do Jacob and 
 his sons keep faith with them ? 
 
 Far from it; there is small account of good faith 
 between man and man in the legendary and mythical 
 accounts we have of these early times. On the third 
 day, when the circumcised Hivites are sore from the 
 operation, Simeon and Levi, two of Jacob's sons, 
 " take each man his sword and come upon the city 
 
Genesis : Jacob and the Hivites. 103 
 
 boldly and slay the males," despoiling and carrying 
 off all it contained in .the shape of cattle and other 
 wealth, and leading the women and their little ones 
 into captivity. 
 
 Deception and cruelty seem to have been very 
 much at home with Jacob and his family ? 
 
 So it plainly appears. Jacob, however, is not alto- 
 gether satisfied with the daring act of his sons. But 
 it is not with their faithlessness and barbarity that he 
 quarrels; it is because by what they have done they 
 have made him " to stink" among the inhabitants of 
 the land, the Canaanites and Perizzites ; and " I, 
 being few in number (he says), they will gather 
 themselves together against me and slay me and my 
 
 boose." , . 
 
 There is happily an air of improbability about this 
 story which seems to take it out of the sphere of his- 
 tory, is there not ? . 
 
 There is, and not only of improbability, but ot im- 
 possibility. Two men, even with every advantage of 
 arms, could scarcely enter the smallest hamlet, slay 
 all the males, load themselves with the spoil, drive off 
 the flocks and herds, and carry away the women and 
 children with impunity. There are two accounts, 
 moreover, of this business in the same chapter of 
 Genesis, one of which may be read complete without 
 a word of the slaughter and spoil which figure m the 
 other; and, as that seems to be the older record, let 
 us also trust that it is the more truthful of the two.* 1 
 
 What incidents worth noting occur in Jacob's on- 
 ward journey ? , , . .. 
 
 Ordered by his God to go up to Beth-el and there 
 to erect a pillar, he commands his household and all 
 who are with him to put away the strange gods that 
 are among them. 
 
 » See Bernstein's Origin of the Legends of Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob for a new and probably correct explanation oi this 
 fable. 
 
104 The Pentateuch. 
 
 This is an extraordinary order ! How should 
 Jacob, the familiar of his God and father of the 
 Israelites, have suffered strange gods in his family^? 
 But they obey ? 
 
 They give Jacob all the strange gods that were in 
 their hand, and their rings also, and he buries them 
 under the Oak that was by Shechem ? 
 
 Jacob and his family would seem from this to have 
 been, like Laban and his daughters, idolaters ? 
 
 That they were and did long continue to be so there 
 can be no doubt. The strange gods were, of course, 
 household images of small size, such as Rachel had 
 stolen from her father Laban. 
 
 But the rings were not gods ? 
 
 No ; but rings of all kinds — ear-rings, nose-rings, 
 finger-rings, bracelets, anklets— were amulets or 
 fetiches, emblematic of the Yoni or female element 
 in the reproductive power of nature — of which 
 the cosmical snake— the symbol of eternity — ■ 
 with its tail in its mouth, was the prototype. The 
 Egyptian divinities are always represented with what 
 is called the Key of the Nile in one hand — a circle or 
 loop with a cross below — the circle, sign of eternity, 
 the cross significant of the four great epochs in the 
 flight of time, or of the moments when the sun, in 
 his annual round, crossed the equator at the vernal 
 and autumnal equinoxes, and attained his highest 
 summer and lowest winter meridian altitudes. 
 
 The place where the strange gods and the rings 
 are buried has also its significance, has it not ? 
 
 No doubt it has ; they were buried under the Oak 
 as a propitiatory offering to the life-giving principle 
 in nature, universally typified among the earlier 
 races of mankind by trees. 
 
 Jacob comes to Padan Aram, and there God, as it 
 is said, appears to him again, informs him that he is 
 El-Schaddai — God the mighty ; tells him that his 
 name shall not any more be Jacob, but Israel ; bids 
 
Genesis: Jacob. 105 
 
 him be fruitful and multiply ; says that a nation and a 
 company of nations should be of him, and that kings 
 should oome out of his loins, whilst the land that had 
 been promised to Abraham and Isaac should be^ con- 
 firmed to him and to his progeny for ever. " And 
 then," continues the narrative, " God went up from 
 him in the place where he talked with him." 
 
 Have we not had much of this story already, with 
 certain strange accessories ? 
 
 Certainly ; where we had the account of the 
 ■wrestling match that took place in the night season, 
 and only ended with the dawning of the day; when 
 Jacob's name was changed to Israel, &o. 
 
 Can man, reasonable and cultivated man, really 
 and truly accept such tales as inspired revelations 
 from God, or as guides to piety and purity of life ? 
 
 They are, undoubtedly, accepted as revelations, and 
 still believed in as actual occurrences, though the end 
 to be served by them in the direction indicated is not 
 so obvious. To the emancipated from superstitious 
 beliefs, however, it is inconceivable how they should 
 still pass current in the world, or be received as sup- 
 plying examples that are not rather to be shunned 
 than followed. Had not men determined beforehand 
 that they had come from sacred and inspired sources, 
 their details and tendencies would assuredly never 
 have led to the conclusion that they had had any such 
 hallowed origin as that ascribed to them. 
 
 Heading the Hebrew Scriptures as thus, with 
 unsealed eyes, and by the light of collateral know- 
 ledge, mythological and other, are we not forced on 
 conclusions as to the origin, worth, and real signifi- 
 cance of these ancient writings, very different from 
 ,„ such as are generally entertained ? 
 
 So much follows of necessity; and we are then 
 left at liberty, from the book of nature and our own 
 minds, to form nobler and more worthy conceptions 
 of God and his Providential rule of the world than 
 
t 
 
 io 6 The Pentateuch. 
 
 any that are to be gathered from Hebrew sources ; 
 and, further, to think that better books than the Bible 
 may be found to aid in the education of the young. 
 
 Journeying from Beth-el, what happens ? 
 
 Rachel is taken in labour, and dies in giving birth 
 to her son Benjamin ; then there is a foul tale ot 
 Reuben in connection with Bilhab, one of his father s 
 wives or concubines ; lastly, Jacob visits his father 
 Isaac in Hebron, where the old man dies at an in- 
 credible age, and is buried by his sons Jacob and 
 Esau. Jacob then continues to dwell m the land ot 
 Canaan, in which his father was a stranger, and 
 Joseph, his son by Rachel, now seventeen years old, 
 tends the flocks of his father along with his brothers, 
 the sons of Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah. 
 
 Joseph is not liked by his brothers ? 
 
 No; Joseph as the elder-born of Rachel, Jacobs 
 first love, and because he was the child of his old age, 
 " was more loved by Israel than all his children. 
 This naturally begat jealousy and dislike among the 
 others ; and then, as we are told that Joseph " brought 
 to their father evil reports of his brothers," this 
 assuredly would not make them love him any the 
 more. 
 
 Joseph has a dream besides that still further 
 inflames the dislike of his brothers ? 
 
 He dreams that as he and his brothers were binding 
 sheaves in the field, his sheaf stood upright, and all 
 bis brothers' sheaves stood round about and made 
 obeisance to his sheaf. 
 
 Has he not yet another dream ? 
 
 He dreams further that the sun, moon, and eleven 
 stars made obeisance to him ; and when he tells this 
 dream to his father he is rebuked by his parent, who 
 says, identifying himself, Rebekah, and his eleven sons 
 with the sun, moon, and stars of the dream : "What 
 is this dream that thou hast dreamed ? Shall I and 
 thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow 
 
Genesis : Joseph. 
 
 107 
 
 down ourselves to thee ?" Jacob, nevertheless, 
 " observes the saying," and Joseph is naturally hated 
 more than ever by the other members of the family. 
 
 The Jews of old thought more of dreams than do 
 men of culture in the present day ? 
 
 Than men of culture, certainly, though dreams still 
 puzzle and terrify the ignorant and superstitious 
 vulgar. The Jews of old thought that " dreams 
 were from God ;" they generally interpreted them 
 literally, though sometimes also allegorically ; and 
 the great bulk of their presumed communications 
 from God appear to have been received in dreams and 
 visions of the night, a mode of communication little 
 trusted at the present time, wherein men rely more 
 and more advantageously on knowledge and waking 
 thoughts than on sleeping fancies. 
 
 The further account, leading to the catastrophe 
 that is in preparation, informs us that Israel sends 
 Joseph to Shechem as a spy upon his other sons : " Go, 
 I pray thee," says Jacob, " see whether it is well 
 with thy brothers, and well with the flocks, and 
 bring me word again." A delegate of the kind 
 would not be apt to be over well received ? 
 
 Hardly ; and the brothers, when they saw him afar 
 off, even before he came near them, conspired against 
 him to slay him. " Here cometh this man of dreams," 
 say they ; " and now let us slay him and cast him into 
 one of the pits, and we will say some evil beast hath 
 devoured him, and we shall see what will become of 
 his dreams." 
 
 Reuben, however, interposes, and bids the rest 
 "shed no blood, but cast him into a pit," intending 
 thus, it would seem, to save his life and restore him 
 to his father ? 
 
 According to a second account it is Judah who 
 interferes : " What profit," says he, " will it be if 
 we slay our brother and conceal his blood ; come let 
 us sell him to the Ishmaelites (a troop of whom, 
 
io8 The Pentateuch. 
 
 going towards Egypt, have come in sight) ; let not 
 our hand be upon him, for he is our brother." 
 
 There appear to be two accounts of this bad busi- 
 ness, drawn from different documents, and jumbled 
 together, as in so many other parts of the Jewish sacred 
 writings. In one it is Reuben who saves Joseph 
 alive ; in another it is Judah. Here it is Judah and 
 the brethren who sell Joseph to Ishmaelites, there 
 it is Midianitish merchants who draw him out of the 
 pit and sell him to Ishmaelites, who carry him to 
 Egypt ; and again it is Midianites who sell him 
 in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh ; and 
 yet again it is Ishmaelites who effect the sale. 
 
 What inference may be drawn from such diversity 
 of statement ? 
 
 That the idea of supernatural inspiration in con- 
 nection with the Jewish Scriptures ought to be aban- 
 doned, and the matter seen as it must needs be in 
 f ae t — yiz. : that the compiler or editor is here, as 
 elsewhere, drawing now from one document or tradi- 
 tion, and then from another, and that with the super- 
 stitious respect for the letter which characterised the 
 Jews of old, and without a show of critical discrimi- 
 nation, he mixes np the several accounts into what he 
 intended should be a continuous and consistent nar- 
 rative. 
 
 Reuben, who is not made a party to the sale of his 
 brother, returns to the pit, and " behold, Joseph was 
 not there ! and he rent his clothes and came to his 
 brethren and said : The child is not, and I, whither 
 shall I go ! " The brothers take little heed of his 
 wailing, but proceed as they had purposed ? 
 
 They take Joseph's coat of many colours, and 
 having killed a kid, they dipped the coat in the blood, 
 and brought it to their father, who knows it, and in 
 his grief exclaims: "It is my son's coat; an evil 
 beast hath devoured him !" So he rends his clothes, 
 puts sackcloth on his loins, mourns for his son many 
 
Genesis : Judah and Tamar. 109 
 
 davs, and refusing to be comforted, says : '^1 will go 
 down into the grave unto my sommouraing." A true 
 and beautiful picture of natural affection sorely tried, 
 and doubtless from the hand of one among the earliest 
 of the true poets whose writings have come down to 
 us ! 
 
 We have several particulars now related, not always 
 of the most delicate and moral kind when viewed in 
 the light of the more advanced ideas of delicacy and 
 moralitv of the present day ? 
 
 Particulars which, nevertheless, are interesting from 
 an antiquarian and ethnological point of view, and 
 important as marking intervals of time, and showing 
 how little faith is to be attached to many of the nar- 
 ratives in the Hebrew Bible as embracing historical 
 truths. 
 
 What are these ? 
 
 Joseph is seventeen years old when he is sold into 
 Egypt ; and as Leah bears Issachar and Zebulon be- 
 tween the birth of Judah and that of Joseph, J udah 
 must have been about twenty-four years of age at this 
 time. Judah now takes Shuali to himself as wife, 
 and she bears first one son, Br, then another, Onan, 
 and yet a third, Shelah. Er, Judah's first-born, is 
 old enough to have a wife given him — Tamar ; Er 
 dies (he is said to have been " wicked in the 
 sight of the Lord, and so the Lord slew him"). 
 Judah desires his second son Onan to take his late 
 brother's wife to himself, in conformity with the usage 
 of the country, and raise up seed to his brother. But 
 Onan does not like the match ; and though he obeys 
 his father in so far as the union went, he resolves, 
 and so acts, as to raise no seed to his brother. This, 
 it is said, " displeased the Lord, and he slew him also." 
 Tamar, for the second time a widow, ought now to 
 have been given in marriage to Shelah, Judah's third 
 son ; but she had proved so disastrous a bargain to 
 Er and Onan, that Judah must have hesitated to ven- 
 
no . The Pentateuch. 
 
 ture on her with his sole remaining son. Tamar was 
 dissatisfied when she^sees that Shelah, though grown 
 to man's estate, is not given to her as her husband ; 
 and she, the widow of two of his sons, resolves to 
 seduce Judah himself. With this view she casts off 
 her widow's weeds, veils herself, shows herself in an 
 open place as an harlot, and is addressed by Judah. 
 " What wilt thou give me?" says Tamar to Judah 
 when solicited by him. " I will give thee a kid from 
 the flock," he replies. " Give me a pledge till thou 
 send it." " What pledge shall I give thee ?" " Thy 
 signet and thy bracelets, and the staff that is in thine 
 hand." And he gave her all. Immediately after her 
 incestuous intercourse with Judah, Tamar resumes 
 her weeds, and when Judah sends the kid by his mes- 
 senger desiring to have back the pledges he had left 
 with her, she is nowhere to be found. 
 What does Judah ? 
 
 He desires the kid to be disposed of, or given 
 away, nevertheless, "lest," as he says, "he should be 
 shamed." 
 
 What next in this edifying story ? 
 
 Judah is by and by informed that Tamar has 
 played the harlot, and is with child ; and he says : 
 " Bring her forth and let her be burnt." 
 •What does Tamar ? 
 
 When brought forth she shows the pledges she had 
 had, and says : " By the man whose these are am I 
 with child; discern, I pray thee, whose are these — 
 the signet, the bracelets, the staff." 
 
 And Judah ? 
 
 Acknowledging the pledge, he declares that she has 
 been " more righteous than himself, because that he 
 had not given her to wife to Shelah his son." 
 
 Can we as moral beings conceive accounts of pro- 
 ceedings such as these to have been written under 
 the inspiration of God for the instruction and im- 
 provement of mankind ? 
 
Genesis : Joseph. 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 It is impossible. 
 
 Or that God has in especial favour the men who 
 are guilty of doings such as these, and the race who 
 think them not unworthy of a place among their 
 sacred annals as a people ? 
 
 This, too, even on the vulgar showing, is impos- 
 sible. 
 
 Or that we do well in putting the book which con- 
 tains such foul tales into the hands of our children as 
 a means of furthering them in a knowledge of that 
 wherein virtue and propriety of conduct consist r 
 
 It is only brutal ignorance, blind bigotry, and gross 
 superstition that can say it is well to do so. God 
 has no favourites among his creatures, or, if he has, 
 they are such alone as conform themselves to his laws 
 — physical and moral. Through the understanding 
 and higher moral nature wherewith man is endowed, 
 God proclaims his condemnation of acts that are only 
 worthy of the beasts of the field. But these tales are 
 from the traditions of ages barbarous and long gone 
 by, and only committed to writing in much more 
 modern times, — traditions descending, it may be, from 
 the Stone Age of the world, when men had no better 
 tools than such as were poorly supplied by chipped 
 flints, when they ate one another, and grilled and 
 split the long bones of their sires for the marrow they 
 contained. 
 
 Joseph is brought to Egypt by the merchants or 
 slave dealers, and sold to an officer of the Pharaoh, 
 Potiphar by name, whose favourable opinion he forth- 
 with secures by his good conduct and intelligence. 
 Attempted to be seduced, and in her anger falsely 
 accused by Potiphar's wife, however, he falls into 
 disgrace and is thrown into prison. Here, again, the 
 propriety of his demeanour wins him the notice and 
 confidence of the keeper of the prison ; and having 
 successfully interpreted the dreams of two of Pharaoh's 
 servants who had been put in ward for some offence, 
 
1 1 1 The Pentateuch, 
 
 he is brought under the notice of Pharaoh as a seer, 
 Pharaoh himself having dreamed a two-fold dream, 
 which none of the magicians or wise men of Egypt 
 could interpret. Summoned to the presence, the 
 Pharaoh tells his dream to Joseph, and he, from its 
 tenor, interprets it as a notice from God of the coming 
 on of seven years of plenty, to be followed by seven 
 years of dearth. Joseph is careful to take no credit 
 to himself for his dream-interpreting powers ; in con- 
 formity with Jewish ideas, he says he had but given 
 " the answer of peace which he himself had received 
 from God." 
 
 The Pharaoh accepts Joseph's interpretation of his 
 dream ? 
 
 He does, and is so much pleased with the inter- 
 preter, that he takes him into his counsels ; appoints 
 him as head over his house ; takes the ring from his 
 own finger, and puts it upon Joseph's ; arrays him 
 in fine linen ; hangs a gold chain about his neck ; 
 gives him to wife Asenatb, daughter of the Priest of 
 On, and makes him ruler over all the land of Egypt. 
 " Only in the throne will I be greater than thou," 
 adds the confiding sovereign ruler of the land. 
 
 This is a great and sudden rise ? 
 
 A great and sudden rise, indeed ; and all on the 
 faith of the still untested truth of the interpretation 
 of a dream ! Needful, however, as an introduction to 
 the narrative that follows, viz. : The arrival of Israel 
 and his family in Egypt, in consequence of the famine 
 that conveniently prevailed at this time in the land of 
 Canaan; the touching incidents of the meeting of 
 Joseph with his unnatural brethren, and the retri- 
 butive justice which the writer would show to wait 
 on evil, and the reward that follows well-doing. 
 
 The years of plenty, succeeded by the years of 
 famine, as predicted by Joseph from the Pharoah's 
 dream, follow, of course ? 
 
 Of course they do; and Joseph gathers store of 
 
Genesis : Joseph. 
 
 "3 
 
 corn, as the sand of the sea, into all the granaries of 
 Egypt ; so that, when the years of famine arrive, 
 though dearth prevails in all the neighbouring lands, 
 there is bread in Egypt. When the famine begins to 
 be felt, Joseph unlocks his stores, and is liberal enough 
 to sell, not only to the natives of the country, but, in 
 aid of the story, to strangers also. Hearing that 
 there is corn in Egypt, Jacob says to his sons, "Why 
 look ye one upon another ? Behold, I have heard 
 that there is corn in the land of Egypt ; get ye down 
 thither, and buy for us from thence that we may live 
 and not die." 
 
 The sons depart ? 
 
 Ten of them ; for Jacob will not part with Benja- 
 min, his youngest son, " lest, perad venture, mischief 
 befall him." They arrive in Egypt; and Joseph 
 "knew his brethren, but they knew not him." They 
 bow themselves with their faces to the earth before 
 the great Governor of Egypt; and Joseph, remember- 
 ing his dreams, when he sees them in this position, 
 and, doubtless, not entirely forgetting the cruel usage 
 he had had at their hands, then speaks roughly to 
 them, asks them whence they came, and says to them, 
 " Ye are spies ; to see the nakedness of the land are 
 ye come." 
 
 They excuse themselves ? 
 
 " Thy servants are no spies," say they, " but twelve 
 brethren , the sons of one man in the land of Canaan; 
 and, behold, the youngest is this day with our father, 
 and one is not." 
 
 "By the life of Pharaoh," answers Joseph, "ye 
 shall not go hence, except your youngest brother come 
 hither. Send one of you," according to one version 
 of the tale (for here we have two as usual — " let one 
 of you be bound in prison," says the other version), 
 " whilst the rest carry corn for the famine of their 
 houses, but bring your youngest brother to me, so 
 shall your words be verified, and ye shall not die." 
 
 I 
 
! T ^ The Pentateuch. 
 
 Then come the compunctious visitings upon the 
 brethren for what they had done to Joseph ; and still, 
 in the presence of the Governor, and speaking m their 
 own tongue, they accuse one another of their hard- 
 heartedness, not witting that Joseph understood them, 
 " for he spake to them by an interpreter." 
 
 Simeon is bound as hostage, and the rest depart 
 with provision for the way, their sacks full of com, 
 and the money of each returned, tied up m the mouth 
 of his sack. They reach homeland narrate to their 
 father all that has befallen them ? _ 
 
 And communicate the conditions on which bimeon 
 is to be released ; but Jacob refuses absolutely to part 
 with Benjamin: "My son shall not go down with 
 you • for his brother is dead, and he is left alone ; it 
 mischief befal him by the way, then shall ye bring 
 down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. -But, 
 the famine continuing, when they had eaten up the 
 corn they had brought out of Egypt, Jacob bids them 
 go again and buy a little food. 
 
 The sons consent to go ? 
 
 Only on condition that Benjamin is suffered to go 
 with them : " Slay my two sons," says Reuben to his 
 father " if I bring him not to thee again." " Send 
 the lad with me," says Judah, " and we will arise and 
 go • that we may live and not die, both we and thou 
 and our little ones ; I will be surety for him ; of my 
 hand shalt thou require him." 
 
 Jacob yields to their -entreaties, and to sore 
 necessity ? 
 
 " If it must be so now," says the old man, " do this : 
 take of the best fruits in the land, and carry down 
 the man a present,— a little balm, and a little honey, 
 spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds ; and take double 
 money in your hand ; the money that was brought 
 again in the mouth of your sacks carry again in your 
 hand ; peradventure it was an oversight ; take also 
 your brother, and arise, go again unto the man, and 
 
Genesis : Joseph. 
 
 115 
 
 God Almiglifcy give yon mercy before him, that he 
 may send away your other brother and Benjamin : if 
 I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved ! " 
 
 They depart, and stand a second time before 
 Joseph. When he sees Benjamin among them, he 
 orders the ruler of his house to bring his brethren 
 home, and to slay and make ready ; for these men, 
 says he, shall dine with me at noon ? 
 
 Brought into Joseph's house, they are much afraid, 
 because of the money they had found returned in 
 their sacks ; they excuse themselves to the steward ; 
 inform him of the money they had found, and show 
 both this and that which they had now brought to 
 buy more corn. 
 
 The steward consoles them ? 
 
 Saying : " Peace be to you ; fear not ; your God 
 and the God of your father hath given you treasure 
 in your sacks. I had your money ; and he brought 
 Simeon out unto them." 
 
 They make ready the present they had provided 
 for Joseph, and bow themselves to. the earth before 
 him, when he comes home. Joseph asks kindly alter 
 their welfare, and says : "Is your father well, the old 
 man of whom ye spake, is he yet alive ?" " Thy ser- 
 vant our father is yet alive, he is in good health." 
 And lifting up his eyes, and seeing Benjamin, his 
 mother's son, he asks : " Is this your younger brother 
 of whom ye spake ? And he said, God be gracious 
 unto thee, my son ! And he made haste, for his 
 bowels yearned upon his brother ; and he sought 
 where to weep ; and he entered into his chamber and 
 wept there. And he washed his face and went out 
 and refrained himself." 
 
 Prosperity and his wonderful rise in the world had 
 not hardened Joseph's heart, as so often happens ? 
 
 Joseph is an impersonation of goodness and for- 
 giveness, drawn by a master's hand in simple and 
 beautiful words. But it is a tale such as belongs not 
 
n6 The Pentateuch. 
 
 to the age of the world with which the name of 
 Joseph, the son of Jacob, is connected. It is the 
 conception of an Isaiah or a Micah, or of a mmd 
 more delicate and refined than either of these— a 
 beautiful and touching story, unsurpassed _ in its 
 treatment and its pathos ; a story over which our 
 eyes were wont to fill whiles we were children, as 
 they fill now, after seventy years and more, perhaps, 
 have passed over the heads of the men ! 
 
 Joseph would seem to have taken some little plea- 
 sure in frightening his naughty brothers ; for he bids 
 his steward put their money into the sacks of all as 
 before, and his own silver drinking-cup, beside the 
 money, into the sack of the youngest, so as to make 
 it appear that the cup had been stolen. Dismissed 
 on their way homewards, and outside the city gates, 
 Joseph says to his steward : Up, follow after the men ; 
 and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them : 
 Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good ? Is not 
 this the cup in which my lord drinketh, and whereby 
 indeed he divineth ? 
 
 Joseph, it would therefore seem, was not only an 
 interpreter of dreams, but a diviner in other ways ? 
 
 Fortune-telling from the cup is still practised- 
 more, perhaps, in jest than in " earnest— among our- 
 selves. It is no golden jewelled goblet, however, 
 such as we must presume Joseph's to have been, with 
 beads and rivulets of precious liquor stealing down 
 its sides, that is now in use by our gossips. It is the 
 homely tea-cup and the grounds adhering to the 
 bottom and sides which are the hieroglyphics that 
 prompt the Pythia in her responses. 
 
 Accused of having purloined the cup, the men, m 
 conscious innocence, rebut the charge ; but are con- 
 founded when, on the sacks being undone, the cup of 
 my lord the Governor of Egypt is found in the sack 
 of Benjamin. They rend their clothes, relade their, 
 asses, and return into the city. Joseph would then 
 
Genesis: Joseph. 
 
 117 
 
 detain his brother Benjamin beside him, whilst the 
 rest returned to their home; but Judah pleads 
 touchingly against the Governor's purpose : " Oh, 
 my lord," says he, "let thy servant, I pray thee, 
 speak a word in my lord's ears. My lord asked his 
 servants, saying: 'Have ye a father or a brother? 
 and we said unto my lord, 'We have a father, an old 
 man, and a brother, a child of his old age ; and his 
 brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother 
 and his father loveth him. Now, therefore, when I 
 come to thy servant, my father, seeing that his life is 
 bound up in the lad's life, it shall come to pass, when 
 he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he will 
 die, and thy servants shall bring down the grey hairs 
 of thy servant, our father, with sorrow to the grave ; 
 for thy servant became surety for the lad unto my 
 father, saying, ' If I bring him not unto thee, then 
 I shall bear the blame unto my father for ever.' Now, 
 therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of 
 the lad, a bondsman to my lord, and let the lad go up 
 with his brethren." 
 
 Joseph can hold out no longer : " Cause every man 
 to go out from me," he exclaims ; and, turning to his 
 brethren, he says : "I am Joseph ; come near me, I 
 pray you ; I am Joseph your brother whom ye sold into 
 Egypt. And doth my father yet live ? Now, therefore, 
 be = not grieved nor be angry with yourselves that ye 
 sold me thither, for God did send me before you to 
 preserve life. Haste ye then and go to my father, 
 and say unto him: Thus sayeth thy son Joseph: 
 God hath made me Lord of all Egypt ; come down 
 to me, tarry not. And ye shall tell my father of all 
 my glory in Egypt, and ye shall haste and bring- 
 down my father hither. And he fell upon his brother 
 Benjamin's neck and wept, and he kissed all his 
 brethren and wept upon them." The good Joseph ! 
 and the sweet poetic mind that still makes our hearts 
 to throb in sympathy with its own as it wove the 
 
j 1 3 The Pentateuch. 
 
 tale, though it has been stilled so many hundred 
 
 ^The brothers return home and tell the wondrous 
 story to their father, whose heart faints within him 
 at first, for he scarce believes them. But seeing the 
 presents with which they are loaded his spirit revives 
 and he says : " It is enough ; Joseph my son is yet 
 alive ; I will go and see him before I die." He takes 
 his iourney accordingly with all belonging to him t 
 
 With his sons and daughters and his son s sons and 
 daughters, their cattle and all the gear they had gotten 
 in the land of Canaan, they move away, three score 
 and six in all, making up with Joseph, his wile 
 Asenath and the two sons she had borne him, the 
 three score and ten persons-the mystical number 
 seventy— connected with Jacob who come out ot the 
 land of Canaan into Egypt. 
 
 The wealth, in cattle especially, said to have been 
 possessed by Jacob and his sons in the land of Canaan 
 might seem to make removal to Egypt on account of 
 famine unnecessary ? _ , 
 
 So we might suppose ; with their flocks and herds 
 they could have been in no want of animal food ; and 
 if tie land was in a state to produce "balm and 
 honey, nuts and almonds, spices and myrrh _ as pre- 
 sents for the Governor of Egypt, it was also m a con- 
 dition to yield corn for Jacob and his sons, and 
 herbage for their cattle ? , 
 
 So we might fairly suppose. But continued peace- 
 ful settlement in the land of Canaan would not have 
 enabled the Jewish scribes to exhibit their people m 
 any peculiar or very striking way ■ bb i the special 
 favourites of their God Jehovah. Neither would he 
 have had the occasion required to show_ the many 
 strange signs and wonders they describe m proot ot 
 his almighty power and his superiority over the gods 
 of Pharaoh Ld the Egyptians. Neither -indeed won Id 
 such a course have left any excuse for the cruelties so 
 
Genesis : Jacob in Egypt, 119 
 
 wantonly committed against the Egyptians, or the 
 invasion of Palestine and the indiscriminate slaughter 
 of its inhabitants, accounts of which are laid up in 
 the Hebrew annals as acts approved — nay commanded 
 by God, meritorious in themselves and worthy of imi- 
 tation by posterity. 
 
 But the famine, as foretold by Joseph to the Pha- 
 raoh ; and, presumed to have extended to Palestine, is 
 the cause which led immediately to Jacob's removal 
 with his family from the laud of Canaan to Egypt ? 
 
 The famine, too, must be a myth— part of the ma- 
 chinery brought into play by the writer. Occasional 
 droughts with consequent dearths have, doubtless, at 
 all times prevailed in Palestine, as in other lands 
 within the variable latitudes, but the geographical 
 position of the country and all we know of its climate 
 forbid us to believe that drought and dearth for seven 
 successive years are within the sphere of possibility. 
 Egypt, again, not depending on its local rainfall for 
 the productiveness of its soil, but on the waters of the 
 Nile, whose source is more than a thousand miles away, 
 is as necessarily inundated once a year and fertilised, 
 as winter and summer come alternately over the 
 northern and southern halves of the globe. Total 
 failure of the crops in Egypt, even for one year, may be 
 said not to be possible. The rise of the river in one year 
 being more than in another, and the acreage effec- 
 tually irrigated and cultivated being in consequence 
 less or more, there may in different years be relative 
 abundance or dearth, but never entire failure of the 
 land's increase, never even scarcity for such a period 
 as seven years in succession. 
 
 Jacob and his son's wealth consisting in cattle of 
 different kinds, the land of Egypt, so wholly agri- 
 cultural, would not seem the most advantageous con- 
 ceivable for the location of neat-herds and shep- 
 herds ? 
 
 This difficulty is got over by Jacob and his family 
 
120 The Pentateuch, 
 
 being settled by Joseph, with the Pharaoh's approval, 
 in the land of Goshen, a district on the northern 
 borders of Egypt adapted to grazing, but which will 
 be looked for in vain npon the map of such extent as 
 might suffice to support the population that is said 
 finally to have possessed it. 
 
 There was a special objection, moreover, to the set- 
 tlement of Jacob and his kindred in the land of Egypt 
 proper ? 
 
 Besides the first and most obvious objection that 
 presented itself to the writer's mind — the impossi- 
 bility of having herds and flocks among the polders 
 and canallated fields of the great valley of the Nile, 
 shepherds are said to have been an abomination to 
 the Egyptians. 
 
 What may be the meaning of this ? 
 
 An obscure epoch in the history of Egypt is pro- 
 bably referred to, when the country was invaded and 
 for a time dominated by a barbarous people called 
 Hyksos or Shepherds, of whom little that is not con- 
 jectural is known — a wild Arabian tribe in all pro- 
 bability of the same Semitic stock as the Hebrews — 
 who broke in upon peaceful Egypt out of the neigh- 
 bouring desert and made themselves masters of the 
 country for a season — howlong it is impossible to say — 
 but who were finally either absorbed into the general 
 population, or, as the ruling class, were got the better 
 of and exterminated or expelled. 
 
 Jacob however takes his journey with all he has, 
 and as in his other significant moves does not fail to 
 have a fresh vision and communication from the God 
 of his father Isaac ? 
 
 God, says the text, speaks unto Israel (Jacob) in a 
 vision of the night, and announces himself as the God 
 of his father, bids him not fear to go down into Egypt ; 
 for, adds his interlocutor : " I will go down with thee, 
 and will bring thee up again and make of thee a great 
 nation." 
 
Genesis : Jacob in Egypt. 121 
 
 A long time elapsed, however, as we learn from 
 another page of these scriptures, before God redeemed 
 the repeated pledges he is said to have made to the 
 Patriarchs Y 
 
 Four hundred and thirty years, according to one 
 of the accounts, between the promise now made to 
 Jacob and the Exodus from Egypt, when the first 
 steps may be said to have been taken which, after 
 forty years more of wandering in the desert, were to 
 lead to fulfilment of his engagements. But it is man 
 who makes promises and enters into covenants ; God 
 makes and enters into none, save in the eternal, 
 changeless laws which are his essence, and these are 
 not in time but from eternity. 
 
 And, then, were the Jews ever a great nation ; 
 numerous as the stars of heaven or the sands of the 
 sea shore ? 
 
 Never. They did not even at any time obtain 
 entire possession of the land they believed had been 
 promised to them, and were alternately tributaries to 
 the Moabifces, Philistines, Phoenicians, Egyptians, 
 Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, by all 
 of whom they were at different times conquered, 
 amerced as tributaries, or led into captivity as slaves. 
 
 The promises made them, therefore, can only have^ 
 been in their own imaginations ? 
 
 They certainly cannot have been from God, for they 
 were never kept. 
 
 But to return — Jacob on his arrival in Egypt is 
 dutifully met by Joseph in his chariot, and by him is 
 presented to the Pharaoh. Inquired of by the sove- 
 reign how old he is, what answer makes he ? 
 
 " That he is an hundred and thirty years old ;" and 
 rather ungratefully and untruly, as it seems, from all 
 we know of his history, he adds : " Pew and evil have 
 been the days of the years of my life." ' 
 
 Can we fancy the successful superseder of his elder 
 brother and filcher of his father's blessing, the un- 
 
122 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 vanquished wrestler with Blohe himself and the 
 prosperons possessor of herds and flocks, and a nume- 
 rous progeny , to have given such an answer e 
 
 Not if he were speaking in sober seriousness His 
 own life had been prosperous; the evil m it had all 
 
 ^rCinfcTntinuing in the land of Egypt, how 
 
 a view to aggrandise the ruler 
 harshly and so as to impoverish and break he 
 ueople • for he first gathers into his own hand all the 
 CI y in the country by the sale of his hoarded corn ; 
 then he says, " Give me of your cattle if money fad , 
 Sd the year coming to an end with no abatemen ; of 
 the scarcity, he finally buys up all the land every 
 m an selling his field for bread, and removes the 
 people into the cities from one end of Egypt to the 
 
 0t Does he not make one exception in this getting 
 
 P °H?doesf"TheTaud of the priests bought he not " 
 a piece of information which enables us surely to 
 divine what he was who tells the story. 
 
 Undoubtedly. Nor was Joseph yet at an end with 
 his hard conditions to the people. In retur ifor 
 the seed they received to sow their fields, he made 
 it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day that 
 Pharaoh should have the fifth part , of the produce 
 except of the land of the priests, which became not 
 
 P Another exception in the same line, and with the 
 phrase "unto this day," assuring us not only ot the 
 Cbable calling of the" narrator, but of the compara- 
 tively late period when he lived and wrote ' 
 
 It does so assure us, very certainly. The children 
 of Israel, however, prosper in the land t ,°i i ~^ 
 having no hard conditions imposed on them by the 
 
Genesis : Jacob in Egypt. 123 
 
 Governor ; and Jacob, we are told, lived for seventeen 
 years thereafter among his children. 
 
 The longest life, however, comes to an end at last, 
 and we have more than one account of the incidents 
 attending Jacob's death ? 
 
 It appears so. In the first that meets ns he calls 
 Joseph to his side and engages him by the oath held 
 most sacred among the Jews to dispose of his body in 
 the way he desires: "Put, I pray thee, thy hand 
 under my thigh (admove manum tuum testibus meis) 
 and deal kindly and truly with me ; bury me not in 
 Egypt, but I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt 
 carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burying- 
 place." In the second account given of the patriarch's 
 end Joseph is told of his father's sickness, and taking 
 his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, in his hand, he 
 visits his parent, who on his part is told of his son's 
 arrival, when he " strengthens himself and sits upon 
 the bed." Seeing Joseph's sons he asks who they are, 
 for his eyesight is dim. Being informed, he says, 
 " Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless 
 them." 
 
 He blesses them ? 
 
 He does ; but imitates his own father Isaac in so far 
 that, though he blesses both of the lads, he gives for 
 no imaginable reason the preferential blessing with 
 the right hand to the younger son. In this second 
 account he says nothing about desiring to be buried 
 out of Eygpt, but having blessed Joseph he adds, 
 " I die, but God will bring you again into the land of 
 your fathers." 
 
 Jacob, therefore, speaks of the land of Canaan as 
 his own country and the country of his fathers ? 
 
 He does so ; and when we read of the ample pos- 
 sessions of Abraham and of Jacob and of Esau, called 
 Duke of Seir, it is impossible not to see that the land 
 of Canaan had already been given by God to the Pa- 
 triarchs and their seed ; for they could not have be- 
 
124 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 come proprietors of hundreds of camels, of thousands 
 of oxen, and of hundreds of thousands of sheep and 
 goats, had they not also been lords of the soil. 
 
 Such considerations as these might lead us to infer 
 that the first coming of the Israelites into Egypt was 
 due to another cause than the famine at home, the 
 one assigned ? 
 
 It seems more likely, from the context and other 
 parts of the imperfect history we possess, to have 
 been owing to the fortune of war,— the truth m al 
 likelihood being' that a body of them was carried to 
 the land of the Pharaohs as captives at some period un- 
 named in their history, they having been deported, m 
 conformity with ancient usage, from their own homes 
 to those of their conquerors, and by them treated as 
 slaves. The Hebrew Scriptures indeed are silent as 
 to any Egyptian captivity similar to the captivities of 
 Assyria and Babylon; but when we discover the 
 Jewish physiognomy among the trains of captives de- 
 picted in the temples, we are authorised to conclude 
 that the position of the children of Israel in Egypt 
 was never anything other than that of slavery. This 
 would better account for the hard usage they are said 
 to have suffered at the hands of their masters in after- 
 times, which led to revolt and flight, than the reason 
 assigned in the record. The posterity of Jacob, after 
 a peaceful residence for centuries in Goshen could 
 not have been looked on as intruders and to be feared, 
 nor treated with harshness, more than any of the other 
 inhabitants of the land of Egypt. 0 
 
 0 Movers refers to a curious passage in 'The Birds of Aris- 
 tophanes, to show that the Israelites in early times must have 
 been slaves in Phoenicia as well as in Egypt. The Cucku 
 arrived in Phoenicia at the time of the wheat and barley har- 
 vest, and his call interpreted by the Greek comic writer is to 
 Ais effect: Circumcised to the field ! The Israelites must 
 therefore have been the bondmen, field labourers to their more 
 civilised and powerful neighbours.-? Die Phcenizier, n. 814.) 
 
Genesis : Jacob's Death Song. 1 2 5 
 
 Jacob distinguishes Joseph from his other sons ? 
 
 He does by the legacy he leaves him. After giving 
 him his blessing, he adds : " Moreover I have given to 
 thee one portion above -thy brethren which I took out 
 of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with 
 my bow." In no part of the Scriptures, however, is 
 there any mention made of early feuds between the 
 descendants of Abraham settled in Canaan and their 
 neighbours, nor of any feat of arms performed by 
 Jacob against the Amorites in particular. Jacob, on 
 the contrary, is characterised at the outset of his his- 
 tory as a plain or peaceful man, so that the verse here 
 may be an after-thought of the writer for the greater 
 exaltation of Joseph, although Jacob's boast may lead 
 us to suspect that we have by no means the history of 
 the Hebrew people complete. 
 
 Jacob blesses or addresses some words of farewell 
 to his other sons before he dies ? 
 
 He does ; but what he says can be less interpreted 
 as blessing than as prophecy : " Gather yourselves to- 
 gether (he says) that I may tell you what will befal 
 you in times to come ; gather yourselves together and 
 hearken, ye sons of Jacob, hearken to Israel your 
 father!" 
 
 He then addresses each in succession, saying first 
 to Reuben as his eldest — 
 
 " Reuben, thou art my first-born, my might, the 
 beginning of my strength ! * * * * Unstable as 
 water, thou shalt not excel ; because thou wentest up 
 to thy father's bed, then defiledst thou it." 
 
 We have had the story of Reuben's transgression 
 already, which seems so unnatural and abominable 
 that an allegorical interpretation has been sought not 
 only for it, but for the whole of the 49th chapter of 
 Genesis, to which our survey has now brought us. 
 What may be the nature of this interpretation ? 
 
 We have already seen Jacob assuming that he, his 
 wife, and his other sons were the sun, moon, and 
 
126 The Pentateuch, 
 
 eleven stars of Joseph's dream, and there can be little 
 doubt of the twelve tribes of Israel having been con- 
 stituted as representatives of the twelve signs of the 
 zodiac through which the sun passes in his annual 
 circuit round the earth, as understood by all the 
 nations of antiquity. Antiquarian writers of the 
 highest authority are further agreed in concluding 
 that the several tribes (in much later times than the 
 age of Jacob, however) carried banners with devices 
 distinctive of each upon them, these being, in fact, no 
 other than the figures of animals, men or things to be 
 found, with little variety, on the planispheres or 
 zodiacs of the Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, 
 and ourselves. 
 
 What is the interpretation given to the Patriarch's 
 address to Reuben in conformity with this, which may 
 properly be spoken of as the enigmatical and astro- 
 logical meaning that underlies the language of this 
 as of so many other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures ? 
 
 The tribe of Reuben is believed to have carried the 
 sign of Aquarius on its banner. Now the sign of 
 Aquarius is typified by a human figure with a pitcher 
 or urn out of which water is flowing : hence Reuben 
 is unstable as water ; he defiles his father's bed when 
 he cohabits with the Patriarch's concubine Bilhah, 
 and so forfeits his birthright as eldest born, which is 
 given to Joseph. And oriental astronomers designate 
 one of the asterisms in the sign of Aquarius by the 
 name of Bulha, which rises when the sun is yet in 
 Capricornus, — the house of Saturn, the star of Israel, 
 — and sets at the precise time when Aquarius also 
 dips under the horizon head foremost, and by re- 
 versing his urn was held by the ancients to cause the 
 overflow of the Nile. 
 
 This is certainly curious and is not usually adverted 
 to by commentators on the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 although it has great semblance of probability for 
 its truth. What says the Patriarch further ? 
 
Genesis : Jacob's Death Song. ill 
 
 " Simeon and Levi are brethren ; instruments of 
 cruelty are in their habitations ; in their anger they 
 slew a man," &c. Now the sign allotted to them was 
 Pisces, the fishes, a sign held of specially malignant 
 influence by the old astrologers ; for whilst the sun 
 is in Pisces all the constellations that were considered 
 adverse are seen above the horizon ; and with his 
 setting in this sign the disasters of the reign of 
 Typhon, i.e. of winter, begin ; for then it is that Orion 
 sets and is feigned to die from the sting of the veno- 
 mous scorpion who rises, and that Osiris is entrapped 
 and slain by Typhon. In their self-will these brethren 
 are further said to dig down a wall— the Hebrew, 
 more correctly translated, meaning to maim, or it may 
 be to emasculate a bull ; and in the Mithriac monu- 
 ments in particular, when the sun in Pisces sets, the 
 scorpion is represented gnawing the genitals of the 
 vernal bull — i.e., the reproductive power of nature 
 falls into abeyance, and the destructive principle 
 asserts its power. 
 
 What is said to Judah ? 
 
 " Judah is a lion's whelp ; his hand is in the neck 
 of his enemies, and his father's children bow down 
 before him." 
 
 The interpretation of which is ? 
 
 That the sun having in the olden time attained his 
 highest northern meridian altitude in Leo, the cog- 
 nisance of the tribe of Judah, all the other constella- 
 tions are beneath or may be said to have become 
 subject to him ; hence, the hand in the neck of ene- 
 mies, and the father's children bowing down before 
 him. 
 
 The sceptre it is said shall not depart from Judah 
 nor the ruler's rod (not lawgiver as in the English 
 version) until he come to Shiloh and the people obey 
 him. How may this be interpreted ? 
 
 The constellation Cepheus, as King of Ethiopia, is 
 still seen on our celestial spheres with a crown on his 
 
11$ The Pentateuch. 
 
 head and a sceptre in his hand. This constellation 
 rises towards the end of July under Leo, as it were, 
 and continues the paranatellon or concomitant aster- 
 ism of Leo until the sun enters Scorpio. Cepheus, 
 the King, sets about the time Scorpio rises, and then 
 ceases as it seems to attend upon Leo ; the brighter 
 of two of the most conspicuous stars in Scorpio, called 
 Shuleh- by Arabian astronomers, then making its ap- 
 pearance on the visible horizon. 
 
 What may be the meaning of the sentence where 
 Judah is said to bind his ass's colt to the vine and to 
 wash his garments in wine ? 
 
 It probably alludes to the influence of the sun in 
 bringing to maturity the fruits of the earth, those of 
 the vine in especial, whose noble product, wine, glad- 
 dens the heart of man. 
 
 Zebulon, says the Patriarch in continuation, shall 
 dwell at the haven of the sea, and shall be for a haven 
 for ships. How may this be interpreted ? 
 
 The standard of Zebulon was Capricornus ; and on 
 turning to a celestial globe we observe that the ship 
 Argo, with the most brilliant star in the southern 
 heavens— Canopus— visible in Egypt, by us unseen, 
 sets as Capricornus rises. 
 
 Issachae is the next in order ? 
 Issachar is a strong Ass couching between two 
 burthens ; and Issachar bore on his banner the sia n 
 of Cancer, in which are the stars called the Asses. 
 Had the sun had the turning point in his course as 
 now m Cancer, instead of Leo as at the time the 
 zodiac was designed which the writer of Jacob's 
 death-song must have had before him, we should find, 
 no difficulty in interpreting the couching as between 
 the burthen of the past and the burthen of the future. 
 But the translation of the Hebrew by the English 
 word burthens, seems to be erroneous, the proper ren- 
 dering being partitions (Drummond), Viehhiirden— 
 cattle hurdles (De Wette). Issachar saw that rest 
 
Genesis : Jacob's Death Song. 129 
 
 was good, yet bowed his shoulder to bear— he couched 
 at the turning point of the summer half of the year. 
 
 Dan it is said shall judge his people as one of the 
 tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, 
 an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels so 
 that his rider shall fall back ? 
 
 A sentence which finds its ready interpretation in 
 the fact that the tribe of Dan bore the sign of Scorpio 
 on its banner. This was one of the accursed signs 
 according to the ancient astrologers; for with the 
 entrance of the sun into Scorpio commenced the reign 
 of Typhon, the death of Orion, and the emasculation 
 of the vernal bull. Close to Scorpio we see the 
 serpent Ophiucus,— the adder that bites the horse's 
 heels,— the head of this serpent ascending along with 
 the feet of the Centaur, or Hippocentaur, to obtain 
 the element of the horse, the heels of which are said 
 to be bitten by the reptile. It is not without interest 
 to note that in the record of the doings of the tribe 
 of Dan elsewhere recorded (Joshua, ch. xix.), we 
 read of their taking the city of Leshem and giv ng it 
 the name of their chief or father, Dan. Now, the 
 bright star in Scorpio which we call Antares was 
 called Leshat by the Chaldeans and Lesos by the 
 Greeks, so that the astrological significance of what 
 is said of Dan is not doubtful. 
 
 Of Gad it is said a troop shall overcome him, but 
 he shall overcome at the last ? 
 
 In Capricornus there is a cluster of stars called 
 variously Gadia and Gadi by the Chaldeans and 
 Syrians, Giedi by the Arabians. It might be pre- 
 sumed at first sight, therefore, that Gad must have 
 had Capricornus for its cognisance. But the cogni- 
 sance of Gad was Aries, the Ram, in which sign the 
 sun crossed the equator in the olden time, as m times 
 still older he made the passage in Tanrus,_ and from 
 the inferior mounted triumphantly, victorious as it 
 were, over the inferior signs, in the lowest of which, 
 
130 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Oapricornus, comprising the cluster or troop of stars 
 called Gadia, he was feigned to have been born at the 
 winter solstice : pressed on symbolically by a troop 
 at one time, the sun advancing in his course prevails 
 over it at last. 
 
 Out of Asher the bread shall be fat, and he shall 
 give the dainties of the King (De Wette). 
 
 Libra was the sign carried on the banner of Asher, 
 and when the sun had reached this sign the happy sea- 
 son of the year had come, with skies still mild and the 
 earth burthened with the load of ripened and ripening 
 fruits which under the fostering influence of the God 
 of Day it had produced. Hence the allusion to the 
 big loaf and the dainties for a King. 
 
 Naphthali is a hind let loose; he giveth goodly 
 words. 
 
 Tradition allots Virgo to Naphthali. The word 
 translated hind had probably a different signification 
 in the original, and what is implied by the goodly 
 words he gave it is not easy to conjecture. 
 
 Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough 
 by a well, whose branches run over a wall. 
 
 The writer compares Ephraim, who assumed the 
 standard of his father Joseph, to a young bull, and 
 tradition assigns Taurus to the tribe of Ephraim — 
 Taurus, the sign in which the vernal equinox occurred 
 in very ancient times, and when the vegetable world 
 was starting into life. Hence the allusion to the 
 fruitful bough, spreading abroad in its luxuriant 
 growth. " The archers have sorely grieved him, and 
 shot at him and hated him ; but his bow abode in 
 strength, pliant the power of his hands, made strong 
 by the hand of the mighty Jacob " (De Wette), con- 
 tinues the text. Now it happens that immediately 
 after the sun has passed into Sagittarius, the head of 
 Taurus begins to set, whence we can easily conclude 
 as to the archer who shoots at him in hate. But the 
 whole of the matter here can only be satisfactorily 
 
Genesis : Jacob's Death Song, 131 
 
 explained "by referring to the Mithriac monuments, 
 delineations of several of which are given by Hyde in 
 his classical work, ' Veterum Persarum et Medorum 
 Religionis Historia." In these, Mithras the sun in 
 Taurus is represented on the back of a Bull, whose 
 side he pierces with a dagger, and its blood, the 
 symbol of life, flows down to vivify and fertilise the 
 earth, whilst a flying arrow is seen directed against 
 the breast of the animal, and the scorpion is observed 
 gnawing his genital organs. 
 
 " Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf ; in the morning 
 he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide 
 the spoil." 
 
 This tribe bore the wolf on its banner, and one of 
 the ancient eastern symbols of the sign Gemini is the 
 wolf. Further, Gemini was the sign in which the 
 god with the dog or wolf's head, Anubis, had his 
 station, who, besides announcing the rise of the Nile, 
 was also the planet Mercury, which changes alter- 
 nately and so rapidly from an evening to a morning 
 and from a morning to an evening star, whence the 
 possible allusion to the prey and the spoil in connec- 
 tion with the night and the morning^ 
 
 In concluding his death song, Jacob commands his 
 sons assembled around him, precisely as he had com- 
 manded Joseph individually in the first account we 
 had of the death-bed scene, not to bury him in Egypt, 
 but with his fathers in the cave that is in the field of 
 Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field of 
 Ephron the Hittite for a burying-place. Having 
 made an end of commanding his sons, he brought his 
 feet together on the bed and departed, and was 
 gathered to his people. 
 
 p The writer mainly followed in the above astrological ex- 
 position is Sir W. Drummond, in his ' CEdipus Judaicus;' with 
 some hints from Nork's ' Biblische Mythologie.' Where the 
 Scripture texts given differ from the accredited English ver- 
 sion, De Wette's unrivalled translation of the Bible has been 
 followed. 
 
132 "The Pentateuch. 
 
 What is the conclusion now come to by the abler 
 and better informed of the critical exponents of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures in regard to the prophetical death 
 song of J acob ? 
 
 That it is a poetical prophecy after the event, largely 
 interlarded with allegorical and astrological matter, 
 and not composed, in all probability, until after the 
 epoch of the Kings of Judah. Dr Davidson agrees 
 with those critics who think it may have been written 
 by Nathan (vide ' Introduction to Old Testament,' i., p. 
 198). " The Deity," says this ripe scholar, able critic, 
 and liberal theologian, " did not see fit, so far as we 
 can judge, to impart to any man like Jacob the know- 
 ledge of future and distant events. Had he done so, 
 he would not have left him to speak on his death-bed 
 like an Arab chief of no higher blessings to his sons 
 than rapine and plunder, and without the least refer- 
 ence to another and better state of existence on which 
 he believed he should enter, and on which he might 
 counsel his sons to act continually." That the death 
 song is allegorical is obvious enough to us, and 
 if it have the astrological meaning assigned to it by 
 such scholars and thinkers as Kircher, Jablonski, 
 Dupuis, Drummond, and ISTork, it seems as if it could 
 onrv have been produced after the Babylonian cap- 
 tivity, when the Jews had received a lesson in the 
 astrological lore of the Chaldeans ; they themselves 
 up to the time of the exile appearing to have been 
 profoundly ignorant of all beyond the fact that there 
 were lights in the sky— -sun, moon, planets, and fixed 
 stars, which influenced them as they fancied in their 
 estates, and were set in heaven, moreover, for their 
 peculiar advantage. 
 
 Joseph and his brethren, now reconciled, like 
 dutiful sons, carry out their father's injunctions in 
 regard to the burial ? 
 
 Joseph commands his servants the physicians to 
 embalm the body of his father Jacob, and having the 
 
Genesis : Joseph. 
 
 133 
 
 Pharaoh's leave of absence he sets out with all the 
 adult members of his father's house for the laud of 
 Canaan, where, after a grievous mourning, charac- 
 terised in the text as " the mourning of the Egyptians," 
 he buries his father. He then returns to Egypt with 
 his brethren, who fearing that Joseph would now hate 
 them, their father being dead, and requite them for 
 the evil they had done him, send a messenger to him 
 and entreat forgiveness for their trespass and their 
 sin. 
 
 Joseph, as we know him, does not deny them ? 
 
 " Fear not," he says ; " for stand I not under God ? 
 Ye thought evil against me, but God turned it to 
 good, to bring it to pass as it is this day, to save 
 many people alive. Now therefore fear ye not ; I will 
 care for you and for your children. And he com- 
 forted them and spake kindly to them." (Eng. vers, 
 and De Wette.) 
 
 Joseph lives long in Egypt, and sees the children 
 of the third generation of Ephraim his son ; the chil- 
 dren also of Machir, the son of Manasseh his own son, 
 were brought up on his knees — this implies a long 
 life ? 
 
 Joseph, according to the text, lives a hundred and 
 ten years and then dies. Before being gathered to 
 his fathers, however — and we might say as matter of 
 course and in emulation of his father Jacob — he says 
 to his brethren : " God will surely visit you and bring 
 you out of this land unto the land which he swore to 
 Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." He also takes an 
 oath of his kinsmen binding them to carry his bones 
 from Egypt to the ancestral burying-place in the land 
 of Canaan. His life at an end, his body is embalmed 
 and put into a coffin in Egypt. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 (A.) GENESIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 The elements and their compounds probably ex- 
 isted at first in states far different from those in 
 which they now present themselves : water as oxy- 
 gen and hydrogen; the saline, earthy, and metallic 
 oxides, carbonates, chlorides, &c, in the form of their 
 constituent elements. A vast amount of heat must 
 also have been set free whilst the atmosphere and 
 crust of the earth were undergoing condensation and 
 consolidation from the gaseous and vaporous into the 
 liquid and solid states in which they now exist, which 
 could not all have been dissipated in space, and so 
 lost to the earth. Concentrated into mighty flashes of 
 lightning — electric sparks of portentous power, — it 
 was probably used in bringing into play the elective 
 affinities of the elements or simple substances, and so 
 producing the compounds in which we now meet with 
 them, the heat itself from sensible becoming latent in 
 these. 
 
 (B.) THE CONFUSION OF LANGUAGES. 
 
 Can any reasonable explanation be given of the 
 myth of the Tower of Babel ? 
 
 From its geographical position on the Euphrates — 
 now a sedge-grown stream creeping sluggishly along 
 among sand-banks and over shallows, but in former 
 ages rolling a much mightier tide to the sea — Babylon 
 
Appendix. 135 
 
 lay in the direct line of communication between the 
 East and the West. This naturally brought men of 
 different tongues together, and after the wars of 
 Nebuchadnezzar and his deportations from the con- 
 quered countries it became a kind of centre in which 
 numerous different races of the human family were 
 made to congregate. Hence, such the diversity of lan- 
 guage said to have prevailed that the inhabitants of 
 one quarter of the great city did not understand the 
 tongue of those of another. The inventor of the 
 mythical tale may have been one of the deported 
 Israelites, and well acquainted with the confusion of 
 tongues that prevailed in Babylon. 
 
 (C.) TEMPTATION OF ABRAHAM. 
 
 Have we not parallels in the old mythologies of 
 like intended but interrupted sacrifices of children by 
 their fathers ? 
 
 We have already referred to one at least where the 
 sacrifice is said to have been completed: Kronos, 
 arrayed in his royal robes, to stay a pestilence, offered 
 up his son Jehud to his father Uranos. But Athamas, 
 King of Iolchos, about to sacrifice his son to Jupiter 
 Laphystius, in fulfilment of the terms on which he 
 held his kingdom, like Abraham, was prevented, the 
 god considerately substituting a golden-fleeced ram 
 for the son ; Iphigenia, about to bleed on the altar of 
 Diana, was replaced by a hind, &e. 
 
THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 
 
 MOSES— THE FLIGHT FROM EGYPT— THE 
 WILDERNESS— LEGISLATION. 
 
 rTIHE descendants of Jacob, sur named Israel, 
 I called Israelites and children of Israel, increased 
 amazingly, according to the text, " multiplying and 
 waxing exceeding mighty, so that the land was 
 filled with them," the effect of which is said to have 
 been — ? 
 
 That the jealousy of the Egyptians their masters 
 was roused, and the Pharaoh, or king, fearing that, 
 in case of war with a neighbour, they might join the 
 enemy, fight against him, and so " get him out of the 
 land," therefore were taskmasters set over them to 
 afflict them, and make their lives bitter with hard 
 bondage in brick and mortar and service in the fields ; 
 the straw held needful in brick-making, among other 
 things, being finally withheld, whilst the tale of bricks 
 made was required to be the same as before. 
 
 Bricks and mortar, we may presume, from their 
 being particularly mentioned, were the materials 
 employed by the Egyptians in their buildings ? 
 
 The great structures of Egypt, nevertheless, appear 
 to have been invariably built of stone without mortar. 
 The temples and palaces of Babylon and Nineveh, 
 however, were uniformly built of brick and mortar. 
 In the hard bondage in brick and mortar of the text 
 we have, therefore, one of the many traits to be had, 
 when they are looked for, of the age and authorship 
 
 L 
 
138 The Pentateuch. 
 
 of the Pentateuch ; the compiler of which was neither 
 Moses nor any contemporary of his, but one who 
 must have lived after the Babylonian Captivity, and 
 had had, as it seems, occasion to learn something of 
 the art and mystery both of brick-making and brick- 
 laying—arts little practised either in alluvial Egypt 
 or rocky Palestine, but pursued as a principal industry 
 around Babylon and Nineveh on the clay bottoms of 
 the Euphrates and Tigris. 
 
 The Pharaoh of Egypt is said to have fallen on 
 what seems an extraordinary device to keep down 
 the numbers of the now obnoxious Israelites ? 
 
 He speaks to the Hebrew midwives — Shiphrah 
 and Puah— the names of these women, strange to 
 say, having survived the wreck of ages ! and orders 
 them, when they do their office by the Hebrew 
 women, to kill all the male children, but to save 
 the females alive. 
 
 A most unkingly command; no less unkingly than 
 unlikely ever to have been given. In a despotic 
 country like E<rypt, however, the midwives would have 
 nothing for it but to obey ? 
 
 So we should have thought ; but they, according to 
 the text, set the king's order at defiance: "They 
 feared God," it is said, and spared the lives of both 
 the male and female Hebrew children. 
 
 Pharaoh would punish the midwives, as matter of 
 course, for their contempt of his royal commands ? 
 
 So might we also fairly have supposed that he would ; 
 but the midwives plead in excuse that " the Hebrew 
 women are lively, and are delivered ere the midwife 
 can come in to them." 
 
 This needed not to have hindered them from carry- 
 ing out the Pharaoh's orders ? 
 
 Certainly not ; for the new-born child must have 
 come immediately into their hands— the first moment 
 under any circumstances at which they could have 
 obeyed the ruler. But, as if the tale were made to 
 
Exodus : Israel in Egypt. 139 
 
 bear witness to its own absurdity, we learn that not 
 only did Pharaoh not punish the contumacious mid- 
 wives, Shiphrah and Puah, but even rewarded them 
 by building houses for them ! 
 
 Failing to enlist the two midwives — two midwives 
 for the service of a people who must have been mil- 
 lions in number, if every part of the narrative be true 
 — what is said to have been the Pharaoh's next move 
 against his obnoxious slave-subjects, the children of 
 Israel ? 
 
 He charges them, saying : " Every son that is bora 
 ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye 
 shall save alive ; " transferring his orders, set at 
 nought by the midwives, to the parents of the children 
 themselves. 
 
 Such an order is sufely as little likely as the one that 
 goes before it, either to have been given by a king to 
 any section of his subjects as it was to be obeyed by 
 them ? 
 
 No command of the kind is recorded in the annals 
 of any other policied or even semi-savage community. 
 More than this, the Nile was a sacred stream, furnish- 
 ing the sole water-supply of the country ; and the 
 signal progress the Egyptians had made in civilisation, 
 even at the early date to which the records we are 
 discussing refer, assures us that all pollution of the 
 river by dead bodies and the like must have been for- 
 bidden. The dead were not even buried in the soil 
 of the cultivated lands of Egypt, but, being em- 
 balmed, were stowed away beyond the reach of the 
 inundation. 
 
 Looking at the Hebrew scriptures in the way we 
 do, as ordinary literary compositions, what might we 
 say was the writer's object in the narrative before us ? 
 
 That it is contrived, all unartistic as it is, by way 
 of prologue to the story of the wonderful manner in 
 which the life of the male child Moses was preserved. 
 The future leader and legislator of the chosen people 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 could not be left with the uneventful entrance into 
 the world that is the lot of ordinary men. His life 
 must be in danger from his birth, and miraculously- 
 guarded ; he must be the nursling and adopted son of 
 a queen or of a king's daughter at the least. And so 
 it all falls out. Born of parents of the house of Levi, 
 as it is said, the mother of the future leader conceals 
 his birth for three months, and then exposes him in 
 an ark or cradle of bulrushes which she lays among 
 the flags by the river's brink. The daughter of 
 Pharaoh comes down " to wash herself at the river," 
 and, seeing the cradle, she sends her maid to fetch it. 
 There she finds the infant ; presumes that it is one of 
 the Hebrews' children, and, instead of ordering it to 
 be thrown into the river, as a dutiful daughter would 
 have done, in obedience to her royal father's orders, 
 she procures a nurse for it, who turns out to be its 
 own mother, and gives it the name of Moses — the 
 saved from the stream — because, as she says, " I 
 drew him out of the water." 
 
 With such a nurse the child was likely to do well ? 
 
 He throve, grew up, and became as a son to Pha- 
 raoh's daughter — no inquiry being made, we must 
 presume, by the princess's father or mother how she 
 came by such a treasure ! 
 
 The first incident recorded in the independent life 
 of Moses grown to man's estate is of a somewhat 
 compromising nature ? 
 
 Seeing an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his 
 brethren, and looking this way and that, to make sure 
 that he himself was seen of none, he slew the Egyp- 
 tian and hid his body in the sand. 
 
 This was surely murder, against the laws of God 
 and man ? 
 
 It was no less ; but it is not so characterised, and 
 is not meant to be so considered, in the narrative, 
 nor has it wanted apologists among modern writers. 
 Murder, however, as the saying is, will out, and the 
 
Exodus : Moses at Horeb. 141 
 
 deed must have got wind ; for, seeing two of his own 
 people contending on the very next day, and saying 
 to him who began the fray : Why smitest thou thy 
 fellow ? he is met by the counter question : In- 
 tendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyp- 
 tian ? Learning by this that what he had done was 
 known, he had to seek safety in flight from the justice 
 of the country. He flies, therefore, and comes to the 
 land of Midian, where he abides, as shepherd, appa- 
 rently, with Reuel, the priest of the country, one of 
 whose daughters, Zipporah by name, he by-and-by 
 receives to wife. 
 
 The next incident in the life of Moses that is re- 
 corded is a very remarkable one ? 
 
 Whilst keeping the flock of his father-in-law (now 
 called Jethro) in the desert by Horeb, the mountain 
 of God, the angel of Jehovah appears to him in a 
 flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, which burned 
 yet was not consumed. Astonished at the appear- 
 ance of a bush on fire yet not consumed, he turns 
 u aside to see the great sight why the bush was not 
 burnt," and is then addressed by a voice calling to 
 him out of the midst of the bush, saying : Moses ! 
 Moses ! and Moses answers, " Here am I." Ordered 
 to put off his shoes from his feet, for the ground 011 
 which he stood was holy ground, he is then informed 
 by the speaker that he is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, 
 and of Jacob; that he had seen the affliction of his 
 people in Egypt, and was come down to deliver them 
 out of the hand of the Egyptians, to bring them into 
 a land flowing with milk and honey, and to settle 
 them there in place of the Canaanites, Horites, 
 Hittites, Amorites, and others already in possession 
 of the country. " Come, now, therefore," proceeds 
 the narrative, " I will send thee unto Pharaoh that 
 thou mayest bring my people the children of Israel 
 out of Egypt." 
 
 To this extraordinary intimation, so delivered; 
 Moses makes answer — ? 
 
142 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 " Who am I," says he, " that I should go unto 
 Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children 
 of Israel out of Egypt ? When I say to them that 
 the God of their fathers had sent me to them and 
 they ask me his name, what shall I say ? " 
 
 " Thou shalt say I am that Am hath sent me. More- 
 over, thus shalt thou say : Jehovah, the God of your 
 fathers, appeared unto me, saying : I have considered 
 you and what is done to you in Egypt; and I will 
 bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto a 
 land flowing with milk and honey ; and they shall 
 hearken to thy voice ; and thou shalt come, thou and 
 the elders of Israel, unto the King of Egypt, and 
 ye shall say unto him : Jehovah Elohim, the God 
 of the Hebrews, hath met us ; and now let us go, 
 we beseech thee, three days' journey into the wilder- 
 ness that we may sacrifice to Jehovah our God." 
 
 How can we, with the views of our age, conceive 
 God addressing man in human speech, or imagine 
 Moses asking God for his name, and God answering 
 first in abstract terms, and then more definitely, as if 
 he were but one among a number of gods, and the 
 particular God of the Hebrew people ? How, indeed, 
 think of Moses — ^scion, as said, of the house of Levi — 
 not knowing by what name the God of his kindred and 
 country was called ? The designation, I am that 
 Am, would scarcely have got him credit with his 
 people ; and the name Jehovah now imparted to him, 
 far from helping, would only have earned him mis- 
 trust ; for El, Elohe, Chiun, or Baal, in so far as we 
 know, appear to have been the names by which 
 God or the gods were known to the times in which 
 Moses is reputed to have lived ; neither he nor they 
 who for ages came after him having ever heard of 
 Jehovah. How, farther, imagine God dealing deceit- 
 fully with Pharaoh and ordering his messenger to sue 
 for leave to go a three days' journey into the wilder- 
 ness to offer sacrifice, when it was his purpose that the 
 
Exodus : Moses and Jehovah, 143 
 
 people should escape from Egypt altogether ? How, 
 still further, and to go back, bring our minds to con- 
 template the Supersensuous Infinite Cause we call 
 God as limited in space and hidden in a bush that 
 burned yet was not consumed ? How, in fine, believe 
 that God bade Moses put off his shoes from his feet, 
 for the ground he stood on was holy, as if any one 
 foot-breadth of earth were holier than another ? 
 
 How, indeed ! But so stands it written in the text. 
 
 Something, however, may be said for the bush that 
 burned yet was not consumed ? 
 
 In so far as we know that Light and Fire were the 
 symbols of Deity to the whole of the ancient policied 
 world, and the Hebrews were scions of the Semitic 
 stock, the Light and Star worshippers of Ohaldea 
 and Mesopotamia. 
 
 Determining to deliver his people, Jehovah would, 
 of course, smooth the way for their going by dis- 
 posing the heart of Pharaoh favourably towards 
 them ? 
 
 So might we reasonably have expected; on the 
 contrary, however, he is made to say that he is sure 
 the King of Egypt will not let them go. 
 
 This seems strange to modern conceptions of God's 
 providential dealings with the world. What may 
 have been the writer's motive in ascribing such 
 words to God ? 
 
 To give him an opportunity, doubtless, of showing 
 his God, in conformity with the notions of unenlight- 
 ened men, setting at nought the laws we now recog- 
 nise as constituting the very essence of the Godhead, 
 "smiting Egypt with the wonders he would do in 
 their midst, getting him honour on the Egyptians, 
 and giving them to know that he was the Lord." 
 
 God get him honour by s miting the Egyptians ! Do 
 we read aright ? 
 
 So says the text as well here as in several other 
 places yet to be considered. 
 
144 The Pentateuch, 
 
 God is also made by the scribe to give particular 
 instructions as to what the people are to do when at 
 length they find themselves at liberty to depart ? 
 
 They are not to go empty, but are to borrow of 
 their neighbours jewels of silver and jewels of gold 
 and raiment, which they are to put upon their sons 
 and their daughters, and so spoil the Egyptians ! 
 
 This is an extraordinary injunction made to come 
 from God ? 
 
 It is no less ; and the writer must have believed 
 that Jehovah had no more respect for the meum and 
 tuwm than he could have had himself when he put 
 such an order into the mouth of his Deiby. 
 
 What happens when Moses, not taking the word 
 of his God of the burning bush as sufficient creden- 
 tials to his countrymen, suggests that they will not 
 believe him, and will say that Jehovah had not really 
 appeared to him ? 
 
 Jehovah asks : What is that in thy hand ? And he 
 said, a rod. Cast it on the ground, says Jehovah ; and 
 he cast it on the ground and it became a serpent, to his 
 horror, for he fled from it ; but being commanded to 
 take it by the tail, it forthwith became a rod as 
 before. 
 
 And this was to satisfy the people that the God of 
 their fathers had appeared to him, Moses, and given 
 him his commission to them ! What would be thought 
 nowadays of the man who should say that God had 
 personally appeared to him, given him an important 
 commission, and as guarantee for the truth of his 
 statement performed a feat of the kind before an 
 assembly of people ? 
 
 He would be regarded either as a madman or a 
 juggling impostor, most certainly as no ambassador 
 from God. 
 
 There is more of this preliminary miraculous, or 
 rather — and not to speak it irreverently — conjuring 
 matter ? 
 
Exodus: Moses and Pharaoh. 145 
 
 Much : Moses is bidden in addition, and as a further 
 assurance to himself that it is Jehovah-God who 
 speaks with him, to put his hand into his bosom, and 
 when he takes it out again it is " leprous as snow ; " 
 but returning it to his bosom and then withdrawing 
 it, " it is as his other flesh." 
 
 Do any of the diseases known to us by the name of 
 leprosy come and go in such sudden fashion ? 
 
 Several diseases now pass under this name, but 
 they are all alike of slow growth and generally of 
 difficult cure when they are not altogether incurable. 
 
 These signs, however, Moses is to exhibit to the 
 people in case of their proving incredulous of his 
 mission to them ; and when he returns to Egypt, 
 should they not be convinced by such signs and 
 induced to hearken to his voice, he is then to take 
 water from the river and pour it on the land when it 
 should become blood. Furthermore, being slow of 
 speech himself, he is to prompt Aaron his brother, 
 "who can speak well," and make of him his mouth- 
 piece in his efforts to have Pharaoh grant their 
 petition. " But I will harden his heart " says Jehovah, 
 " that he shall not let the people go ; " and so all 
 must necessarily prove in vain. 
 
 Moses from the above showing would seem to have 
 been of a somewhat sceptical temper, hard of belief, 
 not easily satisfied ? 
 
 As every reasonable man ought to be when extra- 
 ordinary courses are prescribed to him, and contra- 
 ventions of the common course of nature are adduced 
 as evidence of a divine commission or command. But 
 God is far more indulgent to the doubts of Moses 
 than men in after times have commonly shown them- 
 selves to the misgivings and questionings of their 
 brothers. 
 
 Pharaoh's heart being hardened by Jehovah so that 
 he must refuse to let the people go, Moses is next to 
 say to him — ? 
 
146 The Pentateuch. 
 
 " Israel is my son, my first-born ; let my son go ; 
 and if thou refuse to let him go I will slay thy son, 
 even thy first-born." 
 
 What ! in spite of the hardening the man's heart 
 has undergone at the hands of Jehovah, which must 
 needs make him incapable of yielding ? And is it 
 possible to think of God threatening retaliation in any 
 even t— retaliation above all for non-compliance with 
 an order which he himself has made it impossible 
 should be obeyed, and upon the unoffending first-born 
 of the land because of its ruler's obstinacy ? 
 
 To the simple moral sense of intelligent man it is 
 indeed impossible to form such incongruous and un- 
 worthy ideas of God and his dealings with the world. 
 The tale as it stands is no less irreverent than absurd. 
 It is not God who hardens the heart of man, but man 
 who is faithless to his better self when he yields the 
 sway to his animal appetites and passions, and turns 
 a deaf ear to the suggestions of his reason and higher 
 moral nature. Neither does God, like a spiteful man, 
 retaliate in any human sense for non-compliance with 
 his behests. Pharaoh by the usage of his age and in 
 virtue of ordinances propounded in these ancient 
 writings as from Jehovah himself was entitled to exact 
 all he required of his slave-subjects the Israelites. — But 
 -to proceed, we have now to note an extraordinary in- 
 terruption of the narrative at this place by the inter- 
 polation of a few verses, the significance of which has 
 sorely tried the ingenuity of bible-expositors. " By the 
 way, in the Inn," it is said, " Jehovah came upon him 
 (Moses) and sought to kill him ; and Zipporah took 
 a knife and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it 
 at his feet, and said : A bloody bridegroom art thou to 
 me ! And he let him go. She said : blood-bridegroom, 
 because of the circumcision." (De Wette.) 
 
 What meaning can we possibly attach to this piece 
 of information. What is to be thought _ of Jehovah 
 coming upon Moses and seeking to kill him ? 
 
Exodus: Moses and Jehovah. 147 
 
 In any literal sense it is impossible to say, — the 
 words have no meaning : bad God sought to kill 
 Moses, he would not assuredly have failed of his 
 purpose. 
 
 And what farther of Zipporah circumcising her son, 
 casting the foreskin at " his " feet, and calling him a 
 blood or bloody bridegroom to her ? 
 
 Also impossible to say ; for the reason given : " she 
 called him a bloody bridegroom because of the cir- 
 cumcision," does not help to any solution of the diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 What yet farther of the phrase : " So he let 
 him go " ? 
 
 Still beyond our power to Qonjecture ; unless it 
 were said that Jehovah, propitiated by Zipporah's act, 
 abandoned his purpose of killing Moses. 
 
 Has any other explanation of this episode in the life 
 of Moses been suggested ? 
 
 A learned writer conceives that Jehovah's seeking 
 to kill Moses may be significant of a serious illness 
 that befel him at a certain time ; and farther that his 
 recovery was only wrung from his God by the sacri- 
 fice of more than the foreskin of his son ; whence the 
 passionate exclamation of Zipporah.* 
 
 Such an interpretation seems scarcely warranted by 
 anything in the text as it stands ? 
 
 It is not ; but the text of the old mythical tale is 
 obviously imperfect; made so, it may be, by its modern 
 editor, who, finding matter in it offensive to the ideas 
 of the times in which he lived and wrote, has substi- 
 tuted circumcision for sacrifice. The interpretation of 
 the German writer is fully borne out by the whole of 
 the blood-stained ritual of the Hebrew religious 
 system, the sacrifice of the first-born of man and beast 
 which so long formed one of its most essential 
 
 * See ' Ghillanij Ueber den Menschen Opfer der alten 
 Hsebraeer : On the Human Sacrifices of the Ancient Hebrews,' 
 p. 683. 
 
148 The Pentateuch. 
 
 features, and the conclusion now generally come to 
 in regard to the rite of circumcision as signifying a 
 sacrifice to the reproductive principle in nature of 
 a small but significant part in lieu of the holocaust 
 of former days. The epithet bridegroom used by 
 Zipporah may find its explanation in a custom said 
 to have prevailed among Jewish mothers in a later 
 age, whilst stilling their newly circumcised sons, of 
 speaking to them as their little bridegrooms.* 
 
 So improper and unprofitable a tale as that of God 
 seeking to kill a man and failing in his purpose, and 
 of a woman performing a painful and needless opera- 
 tion on her child and then rating her husband and 
 calling him or her son her bridegroom, cannot surely 
 be presumed to come by the inspiration of God for 
 the guidance of mankind in morals and religion ? 
 
 Most assuredly it cannot. And so we may fancy 
 that the tale of Moses threatened to be slain is 
 given as a pendant to the one in which Jacob is said 
 to have been met in the dark by a man, who 
 turns out to be Jehovah himself, with whom he has 
 a wrestling bout ; for each succeeding hero in the early 
 Hebrew records is more or less a copy of one who 
 has gone before. But it is more difficult in the present 
 instance to find a satisfactory interpretation of the 
 story than it was to elicit a meaning in conformity 
 with known mythological ideas for the other. 
 
 Moses and his brother Aaron, now associated with 
 him and fully instructed, proceed from Midian to 
 Egypt on their mission to the Pharaoh, with whom 
 they have an interview ? 
 
 They inform him that they have met with the God 
 of the Hebrews and petition for leave to "go three 
 days' journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to their 
 God, lest he should fall on them with pestilence or 
 the sword." 
 
 * See Dozy, ' Die Israeliten zu Mekka.' S. 99. 
 
Exodus: Moses and Pharaoh. 149 
 
 But their God had not threatened anything of the 
 kind ? 
 
 . He had not ; but the pretext is notable as the first 
 instance on record in which Religion is made the 
 cloak to cover an ulterior design. 
 
 Pharaoh's heart being hardened by Jehovah, he of 
 course refuses the suit ? 
 
 As matter of course, and it may be said of neces- 
 sity. " Who is Jehovah," asks Pharaoh, " that I 
 should obey his voice and let the people go ? I know 
 not Jehovah ; neither will I let Israel go." 
 
 Pharaoh indeed could not have known anything of 
 Jehovah ? 
 
 No more than Moses himself, according to the tale ; 
 for it is only whilst receiving his commission that 
 he learns from the speaker of the burning bush that 
 it was he who had appeared to Abraham, Isaac and 
 Jacob as El-Schaddai, God the mighty, but by his 
 name Jahveh was he not known to them. Neither 
 indeed could Pharaoh have spoken of his Hebrew 
 slave-subjects as a people and by the name of Israel, 
 the title being of much more modern date than the 
 period referred to : Pharaoh's Hebrew subjects were 
 his slaves. 
 
 Pharaoh, reasonably enough, therefore does not 
 credit the envoys, and in pursuance of the gist of the 
 story proceeds to impose yet heavier tasks on the 
 Israelites. What does Moses on the Pharaoh's refusal 
 of his petition ? 
 
 He returns into the land of Midian, we must 
 presume, for the Hebrew God was not ubiquitous, 
 and reproaches him with having sent him on an use- 
 less errand : " Lord," says he, very irreverently as 
 it seems, "why hast thou so evil entreated this 
 people ? why is it that thou hast sent me ? for since I 
 came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done 
 evil to this people ; neither hast thou delivered them 
 at all." 
 
1 50 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Does not Jehovah take Moses to task for this dis- 
 respectful and reproachful address ? 
 
 By no means ; he merely says to him : " Now shalt 
 thou see what I will do to Pharaoh. Through strength 
 of hand shall he let them go, and by strength of hand 
 shall he drive them out of his land ; return ye there- 
 fore to Pharaoh, and when he asks for a sign saying : 
 Show a miracle for you, then thou shalt say unto 
 Aaron : Take thy rod and cast it before Pharaoh, and 
 it shall become a serpent." 
 
 Returning to Egypt and doing as directed, the sign 
 ordered by Jehovah will, we may presume, have a 
 notable effect on Pharaoh ? 
 
 Strange to say, however, it has none. He calls the 
 magicians of Egypt, his own wise men, and they with 
 their enchantments do as much as the delegates of 
 Jehovah ; they do more, in fact, for they every one cast 
 down their rods, and each rod turns into a serpent !■ 
 
 But the serpent of Jehovah's men proves itself 
 superior to the serpents of Pharaoh's conjurors ? 
 
 By swallowing the whole of them ! 
 
 And details of such jugglery as this are presented 
 to us in evidence of God's power and purpose, through 
 the minds of inspired men, to guide and inform us ? 
 
 The writer, no doubt, believed in magic and con- 
 juring, and so makes his God a magician and con- 
 juror. The serpent-feat of Moses and Aaron, how- 
 ever, paralleled by the court magicians, is not striking 
 enough to induce Pharaoh to let the Israelites go ; 
 and, indeed, how should it ? His heart is hardened 
 by Jehovah, and he cannot yield ; neither is it in- 
 tended that he should. Moses is therefore to address 
 him again ; and, as it is foreseen that he will still 
 hold out, the envoy is to turn the water of the Nile 
 into blood by striking it with his magic wand, the 
 effect of which will be that the river shall stink, the 
 fish die, and the water become unfit for the people to 
 drink. 
 
Exodus: Moses and Pharaoh. 151 
 
 So formidable a visitation, unless immediately re- 
 dressed, must have proved universally destructive, 
 and not to the fishes only in the stream, but to the 
 whole of the living creatures on its banks — to man 
 and beast, oppressors and oppressed alike, and must 
 needs have forced the Pharaoh instantly to relent ? 
 
 We learn, nevertheless, that it does not ; neither 
 do we discover that the water of the country turned into 
 blood, stinking and destructive to the fishes, has any 
 ill effect on the people or their cattle, as if fishes 
 alone of living things must have water ! The Pha- 
 raoh persists in his refusal — a course in which he is 
 encouraged by his magicians, who with their en- 
 chantment do again precisely what Moses and Aaron 
 are said to have done ; for they, too, says the narrative, 
 turned all the water of the country into blood; — 
 whence the water came on which they practised we 
 are not informed. 
 
 The inhabitants and animals of a country cannot, 
 however, live without water ; and the dilemma into 
 which the writer has fallen by cutting off the supply 
 from the river being seen by him, he makes the 
 people dig wells to meet their wants. But could 
 they have found water by their digging ? 
 
 They could not ; for the river being the sole source 
 whence the water of Egypt is derived, if it were 
 turned into blood the wells which it fed must have 
 furnished blood also. 
 
 Can water be turned by any process, natural or 
 magical, into blood ? 
 
 We throw the magic overboard, and say that God, 
 by his eternal laws, has declared that it cannot. 
 Water is a simple binary compound of the two che- 
 mical elements, oxygen and hydrogen ; blood a com- 
 plex quaternary compound of oxygen, hydrogen, car- 
 bon, and azote — the elements, moreover, here existing 
 in a peculiar state of molecular arrangement . not seen 
 in the inorganic realm of nature. But art is incom- 
 
152 The Pentateuch. 
 
 petent to create chemical elements, or to force such, 
 as exist into combinations out of conformity with 
 natural law. Water is water in virtue of one of the 
 great all-pervading laws of the inorganic world, and 
 blood only makes its appearance when the organising 
 force inherent in nature comes into play and living, 
 sensient, self-conscious creatures rise into existence. 
 
 The turning of the waters of Egypt into blood 
 must therefore be an impossibility ? 
 
 It is no less, in virtue of laws consentient with the 
 existence and definite properties of matter. 
 
 The next move made by Moses and Aaron will 
 surely induce Pharaoh, in spite of the hardening of 
 heart he has received at the hands of Jehovah, to 
 relent ? 
 
 Although the river has been turned into blood, has 
 become stinking, so that all the fishes have died, and 
 the people cannot drink of it, he still persists in his 
 obstinacy. Moses is then commanded by Jehovah to 
 say to Aaron : Stretch forth thine hand with thy rod 
 over the streams, the rivers, and the ponds, and cause 
 frogs to come up over the land of Egypt. 
 
 The writer would seem here to be drawing after 
 what he saw in Palestine, his native country, where 
 there are the Jordan and numerous smaller streams 
 and rivulets ; in Egypt there is one great river, but 
 no secondary streams, though, doubtless, there were 
 then as now innumerable ditches for irrigation and 
 ponds for supply. The frogs, however, come up in 
 spite of the circumstances that must have made it as 
 impossible for them as for the fishes to live ; for the 
 river has been turned into blood, and we have not 
 had it restored to its natural condition. 
 
 They come up and cover the land of Egypt, making 
 their way into the houses, the beds, the kneading 
 troughs, and even the ovens ! 
 
 The feat of the frogs would surely be found to 
 exceed the powers of the magicians to imitate ? 
 
Exodus: Moses and Pharaoh., . 153 
 
 It is said not ; they too brought up frogs over the 
 land— small thanks to them!— for by so doing they 
 could only have made matters worse, if worse may 
 be imagined. 
 
 So formidable a nuisance so increased must have 
 brought Pharaoh to his senses and induced him to 
 relent ? 
 
 For a while it seems to have had this effect ; but 
 only for a while. " Intreat Jehovah," says he be- 
 seechingly to Moses and Aaron, " that he may take 
 away the frogs from me and my people, and I will 
 let the people go, that they may sacrifice to Jehovah." 
 
 Moses improves the occasion with this show of 
 relenting on the part of Pharaoh ? 
 
 He is not slow to do so, and says : Resolve me 
 when I shall intreat for thee and for thy people the 
 removal of the frogs — -in the river only shall they 
 stay. To which Pharaoh meekly and oddly enough 
 replies: " To-morrow," instead of to-day! "Beit 
 according to thy word," rejoins the envoy, "that 
 thou mayest know that there is no God like unto 
 Jehovah our God." 
 
 Moses is made to speak here as if he acknowledged 
 the existence of other gods besides J ehovah ? 
 
 He is made to speak as, doubtless, the writer be- 
 lieved the fact to be: Jehovah, to Moses and the 
 early Hebrews, was no more than one, albeit the 
 greatest, among the gods. He is the God of Miracle 
 also, opposed to the God of Law, and so assuredly 
 not the true God. 
 
 Intreated by Moses, Jehovah causes the frogs to 
 die out of the houses and fields, and they are gathered 
 into heaps, so that the land stank. Pharaoh, we may 
 presume, will now keep his word and suffer the people 
 to depart ? 
 
 The respite he obtains makes him give signs of 
 yielding ; but the wonder-working powers of Jehovah 
 through his agents not being yet sufficiently shown 
 
 M 
 
1 54 The Pentateuch. 
 
 forth, he is made by the writer to relapse into his 
 hardness of heart. The dust of the ground, conse- 
 quently, is now smitten, and is turned into lice 
 (kinnim, properly gnats), which crawl over man 
 and beast, and now only is it that the Egyptian 
 conjurors are found wanting. They cannot imitate 
 the Hebrew wonder-workers : they did with their 
 enchantments try to bring forth lice, says the text, 
 but they could not — very happily, we may be per- 
 mitted to add — and they say to Pharaoh : This is the 
 finger of God. But Pharaoh's heart being hardened 
 by^Jehovah, he heeded them not. Why they should 
 have found it harder to turn dust into lice than 
 rods into serpents or water into blood, and to call up 
 swarms of frogs from the ditches at the word of 
 command, does not appear. And how the despotic 
 Pharaoh of Egypt should have been so indulgent as to 
 suffer Moses and Aaron to afflict his people with such 
 a succession of scourges, instead of throwing them 
 into prison or shortening them by the head, is surely 
 as much of a miracle as any of those we have had 
 detailed. 
 
 How are frogs and lice produced under God's own 
 natural law ? 
 
 Progs once a year, on the return of spring, from 
 spawn that has been maturing in the body of the female 
 parent from the same period of the preceding year ; 
 lice from eggs called nits, which are attached to the 
 hair and clothes of the lousy, and are hatched at all 
 seasons of the year; frogs and lice being alike the 
 product of pre-existing kinds, male and female, and 
 alike requiring a certain time before they can be 
 hatched ; frogs, moreover, having to pass some weeks 
 in the tadpole state previous to appearing in their 
 proper definite shape. 
 
 Do we in the present day ever see any such pro- 
 duction of living creatures, whether of higher or 
 lower type in the scale of being, as is here said to 
 have taken place ? 
 
Exodus : Moses and Pharaoh. 
 
 155 
 
 We do not ; but we are privileged to see what, by 
 a metaphor, may be spoken of as the finger, and far 
 more appropriately as the mind, of God, in the har- 
 monious and invariable sequences of nature ; _ and 
 seeing so much, we are bound to acknowledge neither 
 interruption nor contravention of the all-pervading 
 ] aws _ eX p r essions of the Godhead — that rule the 
 universe in its measureless immensities as in its 
 individual atoms. 
 
 But Pharaoh, when he finds his wise men at their 
 wits' end, and referring the production of the lice to 
 the finger of God, will give in and let his bonds- 
 men go ? 
 
 Not yet; though with the plague of flies which 
 has now to be endured he yields so far as to say to 
 Moses that he and his people were at liberty to sacri- 
 fice to their God, so as they did it in the land. But 
 this did not suit the views of Moses, who answers : 
 Lo, it is not meet to do so ; for we shall sacrifice 
 the abomination of the Egyptians unto Jehovah 
 our God. 
 
 What may be understood by the objection made 
 by Moses ? 
 
 The text does not help us to any interpretation of 
 its meaning. There is no hint in any preceding 
 part of the book that the Hebrews were ever inter- 
 fered with by the Egyptians in their religion — we 
 know nothing, indeed, of the religion of the Israelites 
 during the long period of their servitude in Egypt — 
 or that they were required to conform to the religious 
 system of their masters. Neither is Moses' objection 
 taken so much to any sense he may have entertained 
 of the impropriety of the sacrifice referred to in itself, 
 as to the danger to the Israelites that might accom- 
 pany its performance, for he says: Lo, shall we 
 sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before 
 their eyes and will they not stone us ? What the 
 abomination of the Egyptians may have been we are 
 
1 56 The Pentateuch, 
 
 not informed. Shepherds are said to have been an 
 abomination to the Egyptians, but not sheep ; they 
 are reputed, indeed, to have objected to mutton as 
 food, but they sacrificed rams to their god Amun. 
 
 Pharaoh again shows signs of relenting. I will let 
 you go, says he now, that ye may sacrifice to Jehovah 
 your God in the wilderness ; only ye shall not go 
 very far away ; intreat for me, adds the sorely-tried 
 and singularly submissive sovereign. So Moses 
 intreats Jehovah, and the plague of flies is abated. 
 But Jehovah, according to the record, having other 
 and more terrible wonders in store whereby he should 
 further " proclaim his power and make his name 
 known throughout all the earth," Pharaoh's yielding 
 is only for a day. 
 
 Among the number of new plagues inflicted in this 
 view we find enumerated — ? 
 
 A murrain, which killed all the cattle of the Egyp- 
 tians, but spared those of the Israelites, not one of 
 these being lost ; an epidemy of blotches and blains 
 upon man and beast, to bring about which we for the 
 first time find certain physical means prescribed by 
 Jehovah : Moses is to take handfuls of ashes from the 
 furnace and scatter them toward heaven, the effect of 
 which would be that wherever the dust fell there 
 should follow boils and blains upon the flesh. 
 
 Would casting cart-loads of furnace ashes into the 
 air cause blotches and blains upon the men and cattle 
 of a country a thousand miles and more in length ? 
 
 It were absurd to suppose that it would ; wood- 
 ashes, used as directed, could only have caused in- 
 flammation of the eyes among such as were somewhat 
 near at hand. To abrade the skin, wood-ashes must be 
 mixed with quicklime and applied moist to its surface. 
 
 What further plagues or calamities do we find 
 enumerated ? 
 
 A grievous hailstorm, such as had not been seen in 
 Egypt since its foundation, with thunder and light- 
 
Exodus : Moses and Pharaoh. 1 57 
 
 ning and fire that ran along the ground and smote 
 everything that was in the field — man and beast, herb 
 and tree, flax and barley; only "in the land of 
 Goshen, where the children of Israel dwelt, was there 
 no hail ; " next we have a flight of locusts that came 
 up with an east wind — another physical agency— and 
 ate up all that had been spared by the hail ; and then 
 a thick darkness in all the land for three days, so 
 thick that people " saw not one another, even dark- 
 ness that could be felt,— but the children of Israel 
 had light in their dwellings." 
 
 Jehovah, the God of Moses, as pictured by the 
 Jewish writer, shows himself utterly ruthless in this ? 
 
 No doubt of it ; but the writer's purpose was to 
 show Jehovah, as patron God of the children of Israel, 
 superior to the gods of Egypt, His visitations must 
 obviously have affected the individual Pharaoh much 
 less than his subjects, whose hearts had not been 
 hardened for the occasion, like that of the ruler. To 
 have punished Pharaoh at all, indeed, when he was 
 only exercising his prescriptive rights, and must be 
 presumed to have lost all power of self-control — -his 
 heart having been expressly hardened by Jehovah — 
 was manifestly unjust ; and to make Jehovah spread 
 desolation over the land of Egypt, when he was him- 
 self the author o£ its ruler's obstinacy, can only be 
 characterised as derogatory to the Idea of God that 
 must be entertained by rational man, and at variance 
 with the goodness and mercy always associated with 
 the essential nature of Deity. 
 
 Considerations these which seem satisfactorily to 
 dispose of the Plagues of Egypt as occurrences 
 founded on fact ? 
 
 Effectually. And then murrain and pestilence and 
 the light of the sun make no distinctions, but by pre- 
 existent eternal ordinances affect all that live alike. 
 
 The narrative, interrupted at this point, gives us 
 an opportunity of asking what we, as reasonable men, 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 gifted with understanding and moral consciousness, 
 assured moreover of the changeless nature of God and 
 his laws, are to think of the long array of unavailing 
 miracles thus far detailed with wearisome prolixity, 
 and of the motive assigned for their exhibition ? 
 
 On such grounds we can but think of them as tales 
 of Impossibilities — Myths, Embodiments in language 
 of Ideas belonging to a rude and remote antiquity, and 
 worthy henceforth of notice only as records of erro- 
 neous conceptions of the attributes of God and the 
 nature of his dealings with mankind and the world of 
 things. The means brought into requisition prove 
 inadequate to satisfy Pharaoh of the superiority of the 
 Hebrew wonder-workers over the magicians of his own 
 country, or of their God over the God whom he and 
 his people adore. Did we think of God using means 
 to ends at all, which our philosophy forbids — purpose, 
 or end, mean and act being one in the nature of God, 
 and not distinct from one another, or sequences in 
 time* — it were surely falling short of a worthy con- 
 ception of The Supreme to imagine him making use 
 of any that were inadequate to the end proposed. 
 
 What is to be said of the reiterated allegation that 
 God so hardened the heart of Pharaoh that he would 
 not suffer the Israelites to be gone ? 
 
 That it is not only derogatory to the name of God, 
 but in contradiction with his avowed purpose, which 
 was from the first that the children of Israel should 
 quit Egypt and settle in the land of Canaan as his 
 peculiar people, in fulfilment of contracts entered 
 into with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the last of 
 them made some four hundred and thirty years before 
 the time at which Moses is believed to have appeared 
 on the scene ; for so long, according to the record, 
 was the interval between the date of Jacob's arrival 
 in Egypt and that of the Israelites leaving it. 
 
 * See ' Dialogue by Way of Catechism,' Part II. page 35. 
 
Exodus ; Moses and Pharaoh. 1 59 
 
 But we have no information about the children of 
 Israel during' the four hundred and thirty years of 
 their reputed sojourn in Egypt ? 
 
 We have not a word of or concerning them through 
 the whole of this long time. 
 
 How then believe that we should have such par- 
 ticular intelligence about Adam and Eve, Cain and 
 Abel, Noah and the flood, Lot and his daughters, 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph and his brethren, 
 &c. &c., comprising a period of a thousand years and 
 more, according to the computations of our Bible 
 chronologists ? 
 
 How, indeed, unless we assume that it reaches us 
 through the imaginations of writers who lived during 
 and after the era of the kings, the Babylonian Cap- 
 tivity, and still later periods in the history of J udah 
 and Israel. 
 
 Pitiless as he has hitherto appeared, Jehovah will 
 now interpose, soften the heart of Pharaoh, and so 
 spare the unoffending Egyptian people from further 
 disasters ? 
 
 Not yet. Mercy, with the object the writer has in 
 view, must still be made foreign to the nature of his 
 God. Pharaoh does indeed now call Moses, and says : 
 Go ye; serve Jehovah ; only let your flocks and herds 
 be stayed. But Moses answers that they must have 
 the means of sacrificing to Jehovah their God. " Our 
 cattle," continues he, in the haughtiest tone, "shall 
 go with us; there shall not a hoof be left behind/' 
 Jehovah, however, continuing to harden Pharaoh's 
 heart, he will not suffer them to go. " Get thee from 
 me," says the now indignant and sorely-tried so- 
 vereign ; " take heed to thyself; see my face no more ; 
 for in the day thou seest my face thou shalt die." 
 
 Moses, we may presume, will be more cautious in his 
 communications with such a threat hanging over him ? 
 
 So we might have expected ; but he is more arro- 
 gant and outspoken than ever, for he replies : " Thou 
 
i6o The Pentateuch. 
 
 hast spoken well — I will see thy face no more." Yet 
 he does ; for, as the writer now makes Jehovah say fc 
 " Yet will I bring one plague more upon Egypt : 
 afterwards he will let yon go/' Moses has to return 
 to the presence with the following message : " Thns 
 saith Jehovah : About midnight will I go out. into the 
 midst of Egypt, and all the first-born in the land of 
 Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that 
 sitteth on the throne even unto the first-born of the 
 maid-servant that is behind the mill, and all the first- 
 born of beasts. And there shall be a great cry 
 throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was 
 none like it nor shall be like it any more. But against 
 any of the children of Israel there shall not a dog 
 move his tongue." 
 
 Threatened with such calamities as the death of 
 his own first-born son, and the death of the first-born 
 of man and beast throughout his dominions, taught, 
 moreover, by the experience of preceding plagues, 
 Pharaoh will now assuredly take security against the 
 threatened visitation by laying hands on Moses,, 
 whom he has already doomed to die did he venture 
 again to come before him ? 
 
 So might we reasonably have expected ; but this 
 would not have tallied with the end the writer has 
 in view. Pharaoh is therefore made to forget his 
 purpose of putting Moses to death, and very incon- 
 siderately, as it seems, to treat the announcement just 
 made as an idle threat. The envoy, consequently, is 
 left at large, and even goes out from the Pharaoh's 
 presence " in a great anger." And so it comes to 
 pass, as had been predicted, that at midnight Jehovah 
 smote all the first-born both of man and beast in the 
 land of Egypt. 
 
 The wholesale slaughter of the Egyptians and their 
 cattle accomplished— -by what means we are not in- 
 formed, unless we take the text literally as it stands, 
 and assume Jehovah himself to have been the agent — 
 
Exodus : Egyptians and Israelites. 161 
 
 we learn that against the children of Israel not even 
 a dog was to move his tongue. The ground for the 
 distinction is plain enough : the Israelites were the 
 cherished, the Egyptians the hated, of Jehovah; but 
 there is a particular reason given for the heavy visi- 
 tation which had now befallen the Egyptians ? 
 
 The reason assigned is this : " That it might be 
 known how Jehovah had put a difference between 
 the Egyptians and Israel." 
 
 What difference had God — and here we add, not 
 the Jewish Jehovah — really put between the Egyp- 
 tian people and the children of Israel ? 
 
 God had made the Egyptians, as the superior race, 
 the masters ; and the Israelites, as the inferior race, the 
 slaves. He had given the Egyptians the valley of the 
 Nile for an inheritance, and the ingenuity and industry 
 needful to turn it into " the garden of the Lord," 
 which it was ; he had further made them astronomers, 
 architects, engineers, sculptors, painters, inventors of 
 the loom and of paper ; contrivers of more than one 
 system of writing, and familiar, besides, with many 
 of the most useful and elegant arts of settled and 
 civilised life — workers in gold and silver and precious 
 stones, &c. Morally and religiously, moreover, he 
 had enabled them to approximate to the idea of the 
 Oneness of Deity though seen under various aspects 
 —here propitious, there adverse — and led them to 
 the great conception of Duty or Responsibility for 
 their doings in the present life to be answered for in 
 a life to come. 
 
 And the Hebrews or Israelites ? 
 
 God had left in the lower grades of neat-herds, 
 shepherds, labourers in the fields ; settlers by suffer- 
 ance if not by compulsion in an outlying district of 
 their masters' territory, ignorant of astronomy, 
 architecture, mechanics, sculpture, and of every one 
 of the arts that "put a difference" between the 
 nomad barbarian or savage and the policied citizen of 
 
l62 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 the settled State : he had conferred on them no fine 
 sense of the distinction between the mine and the 
 thine ; and to conclude, had left them without the 
 conception of a judgment and immortality beyond 
 the present state of existence. 
 
 The first-born of man and beast in the land of 
 Egypt, then, are smitten, and Jehovah has now, 
 according to the veracious writer, had sufficient 
 opportunity of displaying his power over the Gods of 
 Egypt and the Egyptians themselves. The Israelites 
 may therefore at length be suffered to depart ? 
 
 Brought to his senses at last, — or shall we say 
 taught by the terrible calamities that had befallen his 
 people, yielding to the pressure of circumstances and 
 getting the better of the hardness of heart imposed 
 on him by Jehovah, Pharaoh is now as urgent with- 
 the Israelites to be gone as he had hitherto been reso- 
 lute to keep them from going. Rising up in the 
 night and summoning Moses, he says : " Get you 
 forth from among my people both you and the chil- 
 dren of Israel, and go and serve Jehovah, as ye have 
 said ; take also your flocks and your herds and be- 
 gone." The Egyptians too were urgent upon the 
 people that they might send them out of the land in 
 haste, for they said: "We be all dead men." 
 
 The Israelites on their part, though the permission 
 to depart must have come on them unexpectedly, are 
 not slow to take Pharaoh at his word or remiss in 
 yielding to the urgency of their masters ? 
 
 They pack up their kneading troughs at once in 
 their clothes with the dough that is in them ; but 
 they do not neglect the order they had received to 
 borrow of their neighbours jewels of silver and jewels 
 of gold and raiment, with which and their own be- 
 longings they set off immediately on their journey 
 towards the promised land. 
 
 Can we imagine the Egyptians ready to lend their 
 jewels of silver and gold and their garments to 
 
Exodus: The Israelites quit Egypt. 163 
 
 people—their slaves— whom tliey were driving out of 
 their country with as little prospect as wish ever to 
 see them again ? 
 
 It certainly is not easy under the circumstances to 
 imagine any such favourable disposition on the part 
 of the Egyptians. 
 
 When men borrow, it is still with the understand- 
 ing that they are to make return, as when they lend 
 that they are to have return made ? 
 
 There appears to have been no such understanding 
 in the present instance, on one side at all events. 
 Jehovah, it is even said, " gave the people favour in 
 the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent them all 
 they required, and they spoiled the Egyptians." 
 
 But this makes Jehovah an aider and abettor in 
 the theft ? 
 
 No doubt of it. But the Jewish writer believed it 
 not only lawful but meritorious to spoil the enemies 
 of his people, and he does not scruple to make his 
 God of the same mind as himself. But the tale is 
 libellous and false; for God, the universal father, 
 emphatically forbids theft through the sense of the 
 mine and the thine implanted in the mind of man- 
 not to allude to the express commandment which a 
 later and more conscientious writer in the Hebrew 
 Bible sees fit to put into the mouth of his God when 
 he makes him say : Thou shalt not steal ! 
 
 The Israelites fly or are driven out of Egypt at 
 last ? 
 
 The first-born of the land both of man and beast 
 being dead, there was no longer any ground for delay. 
 What extraordinary and utterly incomprehensible 
 means were used to accomplish the discriminating 
 slaughter of the first-born of the people and their 
 cattle in the course of a single night we are not m 
 this place informed ; and the reason given for the sin- 
 gular despite in which Jehovah is presented to us as 
 having held the Egyptians — the hard service in brick 
 
1 64 The Pentateuch. 
 
 and mortar imposed on the Israelites, to wit — 
 does not accord with the flourishing state in which 
 they meet us at the moment of the Exodus, millions 
 as they must have been in numbers, if they could 
 bring six hundred thousand able-bodied men into the 
 field with arms in their hands, possessed besides of 
 flocks and herds innumerable, and enjoying such 
 credit with the native people that they lent them 
 freely of all they had. 
 
 The slaughter of the first-born of Egypt must 
 therefore be another of the mythical tales contrived 
 by the writer to exalt and glorify in his own mis- 
 taken way the tutelary God of his people, Jehovah ? 
 
 Let the candid reader, with any conception which 
 he as living in this nineteenth century of the Chris- 
 tian era can form of the nature of God, answer the 
 question for himself by yea or by nay. 
 
 The narrative provokingly enough and on the very 
 eve of the Exodus is interrupted to speak of a cnange 
 to be made in beginning the year ; and, in immediate 
 connection with, this change, of the institution of 
 the Passover and the dedication to Jehovah of the 
 first-born of man and beast among the children of 
 Israel ? 
 
 Jehovah, says the record, now speaks to Moses and 
 Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying : et This month 
 shall be to you the first month of the year," without 
 naming the month. But we by-and-by discover that 
 it is Nisan, called Abib of old, that is meant ; this 
 being the month in which the Exodus is believed to 
 have taken place, as it is known to be the one in 
 which the vernal equinox occurred in ancient times. 
 The notification, however, is prefatory and subordi- 
 nate to the order for the celebration of the Passover, 
 which the writers of the Hebrew scriptures show 
 particular auxiety to connect with the escape from 
 Egypt, — which they would present in fact as a feast 
 commemorative of this event in the legendary annals 
 
Exodus : The Passover. 165 
 
 of their people, the whole procedure as set forth being 
 made to harmonise with this intention. 
 
 The rites connected with the celebration of the 
 Passover were peculiar and solemn ? 
 
 On the tenth day of the first month the head of each 
 house, or where the families were small, the heads of 
 two or more houses, were to take a lamb or kid, a 
 male of the first year, without spot or blemish, and 
 sever it from the flock until the evening of the four- 
 teenth day, when it was to be killed. With a bunch 
 of hyssop dipped in the blood the lintels and door- 
 posts of the houses were to be struck, and no one was 
 to leave his home until the morning. The carcase was 
 to be eaten in the night with unleavened bread and 
 bitter herbs, and it is particularly ordered that the 
 flesh shall not be eaten raw, nor sodden with water, 
 but roast with fire. The meal is farther to be de- 
 spatched in haste, the people having their loins girded, 
 their shoes on their feet, and their staves in their 
 hands. 
 
 This is plainly enough an account by a relatively 
 modern writer of the way in which he imagines the 
 feast of the Passover might have been kept by his 
 forefathers on the eve of their flight from Egypt, and 
 so of the way in which it was ever after to be observed 
 in memory of that event. "And it shall come to 
 pass," says the record, " when your children say unto 
 you : what mean ye by this service, that ye shall say : 
 It is the sacrifice of Jehovah's passover, who passed 
 over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, 
 when he smote the Egyptians and delivered our 
 houses." 
 
 The Passover, however, could not have been cele- 
 brated in any such way by the Israelites on the eve 
 of their flight ? 
 
 There was no possibility of its having been so cele- 
 brated, for they fled in such haste that they had no 
 time to leaven the dough that was in their kneading 
 
1 66 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 troughs, much less to bake it. A family feast, more- 
 over, is turned by the writer into a Sacrifice to Jehovah, 
 in every indispensable element of which it is wanting. 
 
 The reason for striking the lintels and door-posts 
 of the Israelites' houses with the blood is not very 
 satisfactory ? 
 
 Being done to guide Jehovah in his visitation to 
 slay the first-born of Egypt, it meets us as a poor 
 contrivance of the writer : " When I see the blood," 
 says he in the name of his God, " I will pass over you, 
 and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you 
 when I smite the land of Egypt." Jehovah must, 
 therefore, as he imagined, have required an outward 
 and visible sign to guide him in his acts of mercy as 
 of vengeance. 
 
 The colour of the blood may have had something 
 to do with the act enjoined ? 
 
 Bed was the proper colour of the Sun-God, among 
 the ancients generally ; and with the Egyptians came 
 into special use in the spring of the year for the 
 decoration of their dwellings, as well as the statues 
 of their Gods. The Hebrew writer would therefore 
 seem, after a play upon the word Pass or Passover 
 (Pesah in Hebrew, with which our word Transit 
 corresponds exactly), to be substituting red Mood for 
 the red paint of the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and other 
 cognate peoples, and using, as a safeguard for the 
 children of Israel, a sign which the Egyptians, from 
 time immemorial, had been wont to employ with a 
 view to ornament and propitiate their gods. 
 
 In immediate connection with this unsatisfactory 
 account of the institution of the Passover, we have 
 the dedication to Jehovah of the first-born among 
 the children of Israel themselves. He had slain the 
 first-born of the Egyptians, and must, as it appears, 
 have the first-born of the Israelites also ? 
 
 " Sanctify to me all the first-born ; whatsoever 
 openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both 
 
Exodus : Dedication of the First-born. 167 
 
 of man and beast, it is mine," are the terrible words 
 in which Jehovah is made to announce his will. 
 
 It seems singular that the Jewish writers of the 
 Bible should manifest the same desire to connect the 
 sacrifice of their first-born with the most awful of the 
 incidents said to have accompanied the flight from 
 Egypt, as they show to associate the Passover with 
 this event ? 
 
 " It shall be," says the text, " when thy son asketh 
 thee in time to come, saying : What is this ? that thou 
 shalt say to him : By strength of hand Jehovah 
 brought us out from Egypt, from the house of 
 bondage ; and it came to pass when Pharaoh would 
 hardly let us go that Jehovah slew all the first-born 
 in the land of Egypt, both the first-born of man and 
 the first-born of beast ; therefore I sacrifice to Jehovah 
 all thatopeneth the matrix, being males " — the words 
 being males must have been added, the requisition in 
 several other places being general. 
 
 Such a reason for such a sacrifice is surely neither 
 logical nor satisfactory. Because Jehovah slew all 
 the first-born of Egypt, therefore were the Israelites to 
 sacrifice all that opened the womb both of man and 
 beast among themselves ! They were to pay a much 
 heavier tax, in fact, than that exacted of the 
 Egyptians ; for the sacrifice of their children by the 
 Israelites was to be in perpetuity, whilst that of their 
 old oppressors had been required but once. How 
 should such an event as the escape from slavery, 
 only to be thought of as subject of rejoicing, be fitly 
 associated with the tears and heart-wringings of 
 parents that must needs accompany the immolation 
 of the first-born of their children ? 
 
 The dedication to Jehovah of the first-born of man 
 and beast can scarcely therefore have any connection 
 with the mythical slaughter of the first-born of Egypt, 
 the legendary flight from the country, or the feast of 
 the Passover ? 
 
:68 The Pentateuch. 
 
 There can be little question that it has none. The 
 consecration or making Gherem implying the neces- 
 sary sacrifice to their God of all that opened the 
 womb is not so associated in other parts of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures. " Sanctify to me all the first- 
 born ; whatsoever openeth the womb among the 
 children of Israel, both of man and beast, it is mine," 
 says the text already quoted (Exod. xiii. 2). "The 
 first-born of thy sons shalt thou give to me," says 
 another (lb. xxii. 29). " All that openeth the 
 matrix is mine," yet another (lb. xxxiv. 19). In 
 every instance, therefore, without reference to Egypt, 
 the Exodus, or any other event. The requirement is 
 absolute, unconnected with any historical or quasi- 
 historical incident. The sacrifice of the first-born of 
 man and beast was in truth a custom sanctioned by 
 general usage among the whole of the Semitic tribes 
 or peoples and their colonies inhabiting Western Asia 
 and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 But the first-born of man are ordered to be re- 
 deemed ? 
 
 Not as the ordinance stands where it is first met 
 and has not been tampered with, and as the custom 
 of child-sacrifice is repeatedly referred to in other 
 places, more especially by the prophetical writers. 
 The redemption clauses are all interpolations by later 
 hands ; they had no place in the text even so late as 
 the time of Ezekiel; and then there is the positive 
 ordinance concerning things Gherem or devoted to 
 Jehovah, which puts redemption out of the question. 
 " None devoted, which shall be devoted of men shall 
 be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death " 
 (Levit. xxvii. 29). 
 
 May not the Passover also have been a festival 
 having no connection with the Exodus from Egypt ? 
 
 There can be as little doubt of this as of the sacri- 
 fice of the first-born of Israel having no reference to 
 the slaughter of the first-born of Egypt. The festival 
 
Exodus : The Passover. 169 
 
 sailed Pesacli by tlie Jews is a much older institu- 
 tion than the notice we have of it in the Book of 
 Exodus. Its Hebrew name is exactly rendered as 
 said, by the English word Transit ; and the transit 
 celebrated was no passage of Jehovah over the 
 Egyptians to destroy, or over the Israelites to spare, 
 but of the Sun over the Equator at the epoch of the 
 vernal equinox — a season of rejoicing that may be 
 said to have been universal among all the policied 
 peoples of antiquity, and that is still observed with 
 fresh accessories and under a new name in the world 
 of to-day; for the Easter of the present age is in 
 reality no other than the Pascha, Neomenia, and 
 Hilaria of the old world — a tribute Deo Soli Invicio. 
 Mounting from the inferior or wintry signs, trium- 
 phant as it were over darkness and death, the Sun 
 then appears to bring back light and life to the 
 world ; and the God he symbolized seems to have 
 been held entitled in return to a portion at least of 
 the good things so obviously and immediately de- 
 pendent on his presence. Hence the offerings in the 
 spring of the year of the first fruits of the fields, the 
 sacrifice of the firstlings of the flocks and herds, and 
 at length, and as the influence of the offering on the 
 God was believed to rise in the ratio of its worth to 
 the giver, of the first-born of his sons by man — victim 
 of all others the most precious to him, and so thought 
 to be the most potent of all to propitiate the God. 
 
 The Passover may, therefore, have been truly a 
 solar festival, and by no means peculiar to the Israel- 
 ites ? 
 
 The period of the year at which it was celebrated 
 suffices of itself to proclaim it a feast in honour of the 
 Sun, and the universality of its celebration over the 
 whole of the ancient world shows that the Israelites 
 only followed suit in its observance. But the great 
 spring festival of the year has been obscured by the 
 miraculous and mythical wrappings in which it has 
 
 N 
 
xyo The Pentateuch. 
 
 been presented by the Jewish post-exilic Jehovistic 
 writers, seeking to bide its meaning by turning this 
 among other Pagan observances of their age and 
 country into institutions appointed by their God 
 Jehovah through the agency of his servant Moses. 
 
 The Jewish writers, however, are not even agreed 
 as to the grounds they assign for the observance of 
 the Passover ? 
 
 In one place it is to be kept as a memorial feast 
 because the Israelites were spared the visit of the 
 destroying angel when the first-born of Egypt were 
 slain ; in another it is to be observed in memory of 
 their delivery from Egyptian bondage. But it was in 
 the spring time of the year that the barley harvest of 
 the East occurred ; and with the bringing of the first 
 sheaf as an offering to the Sun-God at the season of 
 his awakening from his death-like wintry sleep, and 
 the season of rejoicing then universally observed, was 
 by and by associated the legendary escape in exagge- 
 rated numbers of the Israelites from Egypt and the 
 veritable sacrifice of the first-born of their sons. 
 
 The Jewish Passover is often said to have been 
 derived from the Egyptians ? 
 
 That the Israelites had various festivals in common 
 with the Egyptians and other ancient peoples is cer- 
 tain. That they borrowed so much from Egypt as it 
 is often said they did is very questionable. Such a 
 conclusion would seem rather to be grounded on- 
 assuming the large amount of influence which a people 
 so far advanced in civilisation as the Egyptians must 
 have had on the rude descendants of Jacob, than on 
 any strong resemblance between the social, political, 
 and religious ideas and doings of the Egyptians and 
 Israelites. To unprejudiced minds the Israelites, when 
 they meet us on the eve of the Exodus, and for ages 
 afterwards, appear as having profited so little by their 
 contact with the Egyptians that additional doubt is 
 thrown over the whole story of their relationship with 
 
Exodus: The Flight from Egy p. 171 
 
 the land of the Nile. For some ages after the reputed 
 epoch of the Exodus we never see the Israelites save 
 as a horde in quest of a settled home, at war with all 
 around them, and but little, if at all, removed from 
 utter barbarism. 
 
 Having spoiled the Egyptians to the utmost of the 
 borrowing and lending powers of the two parties, the 
 Israelites set off, a mixed multitude with flocks 'and 
 herds, " even very much cattle." We are not without 
 data from which their aggregate number may be 
 computed? 
 
 We have such in the " Six hundred thousand on 
 foot that were men" (Ex. xii., 37) ; "six hundred 
 and three thousand five hundred and fifty from twenty 
 years old and upwards, all able to go forth to war in 
 Israel." (Numb, i., 46.) 
 
 Such a number of able-bodied men, harnessed or 
 armed, as said, implies a gross population approach- 
 ing three millions of souls ? 
 
 Something like that of the great city of London or 
 the whole of Scotland a few years ago ! 
 
 _ And this vast multitude quit their homes in a single 
 night and betake themselves to the desert with no 
 other preparation in the shape of supplies than the 
 dough that is in their kneading troughs ? 
 
 " They were thrust out of Egypt, neither had they 
 prepared for themselves any victual." (Ex. xii., 39.) 
 
 m Without a word of the first requisite for even a 
 single day's journey in the burning desert— water ? 
 There is nothing said about water. 
 What of the means of transport for the sick and 
 infirm, who must have numbered ten thousand at 
 least ; for the three hundred women busy in bringing 
 children into the world, and something like the same 
 number of men and women going out of it — for so 
 many are ever thus engaged in a population approach- 
 ing three millions in number during each day of the 
 year ? 
 
ij% The Pentateuch. 
 
 There is nothing said of the sick and infirm, of the 
 parturient and the dying. 
 
 Then must the story in its proportions be a table 
 involving contradictions innumerable and impossi- 
 bilities in the nature of things. The whole population 
 of the valley of the Nile, from Nubia to the Mediter- 
 ranean, did not probably at any time in its most 
 palmy days of old amount to so many as the Israelites 
 are said to have been when they fled, were driven out, 
 or were brought out from Egypt with a high hand, so 
 various are the words used in the accounts we have 
 of the way in which the Exodus was effected. Six 
 hundred thousand and odd able-bodied men with 
 arms in their hands needed to have asked no leave of 
 the Pharaoh of Egypt either to go or to stay. Instead 
 of fleeing to the desert on the faith of promised settle- 
 ments in a land, even though reported to be flowing 
 with milk and honey, they would have been apt to 
 think that the fertile land of Egypt, watered by the 
 mysterious river which rose and fell no man knew 
 how, was possession preferable and enough. Instead 
 of consenting to the expulsion, they are allowed in more 
 than one place to have suffered, from the soil where 
 they had lived so long and grown to such a multitude, 
 they would most assuredly have either expelled or 
 enslaved where they had not slain their oppressors. 
 Instead of robbing them of their jewels of silver and 
 jewels of gold and fine raiment, and stealing away like 
 thieves in the night, they would have installed them- 
 selves in their masters' places and taught them in 
 turn what it was to make mud bricks without 
 
 straw ! , 
 
 But this would have interfered with Jehovah s pro- 
 vidential arrangements for the settlement of his chosen 
 people in the land of Canaan ? 
 
 The providence of God is over all his works in- 
 differently and alike. God was then as now the Father 
 of the Egyptian as of the Jew ; more partial as parent 
 
Exodus: The Flight from Egypt. 173 
 
 to the Egyptian than to the Jew, indeed, were his love 
 to be truly tested by the Hebrew standard — the mea- 
 sure of temporal good enjoyed. 
 
 The Jews did not think, and have not yet learned 
 to think, that God is verily the impartial parent of 
 mankind ? 
 
 No ; they were, and still are, presumptuous enough 
 to fancy themselves the objects of their Jehovah's 
 peculiar care ; and the world may be said, in spite of 
 its persistently cruel treatment of their race, to have 
 been complacent enough to take them at their word. 
 Lately, however, there has been something like an 
 awakening out of this baseless dream ; a suspicion has 
 at length got abroad in the world of the possibility of 
 its having been mistaken. With the recent discovery 
 of the Vedas and Zendavesta, the Buddhistic scrip- 
 tures, and the Chinese moral writings, we have come to 
 know that other more ancient, more moral and better 
 policied peoples than the Israelites had also their sacred 
 books, though none of them presume, as do those of 
 this people, to make God the mouthpiece of some few 
 good and reasonable, yet of many bad, barbarous, 
 childish, objectionable, and indifferent ordinances, and 
 the immediate agent in innumerable cruel and un- 
 justifiable acts. 
 
 The Israelites, however, escape or are driven out of 
 Egypt at last, and in such numbers, it is said, as plainly 
 appears impossible. Have we any clue to the way in 
 which the exaggerated multitude of the fugitives may 
 nave been arrived at ? 
 
 Curiously enough we have. In one of the latest 
 Midraschim — Hebrew Commentaries or Expositions of 
 the Law we possess (Jalkut Thora, 386), there is a 
 passage to this effect : " God said to Moses : Number 
 the Israelites. Then said Moses : They are as the 
 sands of the sea ; how can I number them ? God 
 said : Not in the way thou thinkest of ; but wouldst 
 thou reckon them, take the first letters of their tribes 
 
174 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 and thou, hast their number."* And sure enough, if 
 the numerical values of the initial letters of the names 
 of the twelve tribes be added together, the sum 
 that comes out is five hundred and ninety-seven 
 thousand ; to which if the three thousand slain on 
 occasion of the worship of the golden calf which 
 Aaron made be joined, the exact number of the men 
 in arms, as first given, six hundred thousand, is 
 obtained. 
 
 This, however, is not the only number of able- 
 bodied men that is mentioned ? 
 
 Elsewhere (Ex. xxxviii., 26, and Numb, i., 46) it is 
 set down at " six hundred and three thousand five 
 hundred and fifty men." 
 
 There may perhaps be some recondite and not very 
 obvious way in which this number too may have been 
 arrived at ? 
 
 It tallies exactly with the number of bekahs or 
 half shekels said to have been produced by the 
 capitation tax imposed for erecting and furnishing the 
 Tabernacle. The whole amount collected is stated to 
 have been lOOtalents 1,775 shekels,= 301,775 shekels, 
 which x by two gives 603,550 shekels, the precise 
 number of the able-bodied men of the second Census.f 
 
 Once on their way, whither do the Israelites go ? 
 
 If it were towards the promised land they certainly 
 took a very roundabout road to reach it. Elohim, 
 it is said, led them not by the way through the land 
 of the Philistines, although that was near ; for Elohina 
 said : " Lest perad venture the people repent when they 
 see war and they return to Egypt." Elohim there- 
 fore led them through the way of the Wilderness of 
 the Red Sea, from Rameses, whence they set out, to 
 Succoth and Etham in the edge of the Wilderness ; 
 
 * Comp. ' Popper Der biblische Berichtxiber die Stiftshutte ; 
 ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Composition und Diaskeuse des 
 Pentateuch.' S. 196. 8vo. Leipz., 1862. 
 
 f 4 Popper.' Op. cit. P. 196. 
 
Exodus: The Flight from Egypt. 175 
 
 Jehovah (it is no longer Elohim) going before them 
 as a pillar of cloud by day, as a pillar of fire by night 
 to guide and light them on their way. But Moses 
 must have thought that a native of the country would 
 be a good addition as a guide through the trackless 
 waste ; he would not trust entirely to Jehovah's pillar 
 of cloud and of fire — -for he says to his brother-in-law, 
 Hobab the Midianite : " Come thou with us ; thou 
 niayest be to us instead of eyes ; and it shall come to 
 pass, if thou wilt go with us, that what goodness 
 Jehovah shall do unto us the same shall we do unto 
 thee." (Numb, x., 29-32.) 
 
 Jehovah, we might have imagined, as miracles were 
 so much in course, would have steeled the hearts of 
 the Israelites and made the hearts of all opposed to 
 them like wax, as he is said to have done on other 
 and later occasions. Why he did not see fit so to do 
 at this time, when it would have spared so much toil 
 and suffering, we are not informed. But wbere are 
 the places mentioned — Ranieses, Succoth, and Etham ? 
 
 Ranieses, a town and district on the Nile ; Succoth, 
 a station (now unknown), presumably northward 
 from Rameses, in the direction of Palestine ; Etham, 
 a place east from Rameses, between thirty and forty 
 miles away, and not far from the northern extremity 
 of the western head of the Red Sea. Instead of 
 advancing from this, however, and nearing their 
 final destination, the Israelites are strangely enough 
 now ordered to turn and encamp before Pihahiroth, 
 between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal- 
 zephon on the opposite coast. 
 
 What extraordinary reason is given for this diver- 
 gent course, and, in the event of any pursuit by the 
 Egyptians, ill-chosen position in a strategical point 
 of view ? 
 
 It was, according to the text, that Jehovah might 
 get him honour on Pharaoh and let the Egyptians 
 know that he was the Lord. " For Pharaoh will say 
 
iy6 The Pentateuch, 
 
 of the children of Israel : They are entangled in the 
 land — the wilderness hath shot them in ; and I will 
 harden the heart of Pharaoh that he shall follow after 
 them, and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh and 
 upon all his host." 
 
 Pharaoh pursues the fugitives, to bring them back 
 we must presume, though he and his had lately been 
 so eager to be rid of them. They are sore afraid when 
 they see his host behind them, and turn upon Moses 
 and reproach him for having led them out of their bon- 
 dage. " Were there no graves in Egypt, say they, that 
 thou hast taken us away to die in the Wilderness ? 
 Better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in 
 the Wilderness." 
 
 But Moses encourages the faint-hearted crew ? 
 
 He bids them not to fear ; for Jehovah shall fight 
 for them. He has but to lift up his rod and stretch 
 out his hand towards the neighbouring sea to have 
 its waters divide and part asunder, so that the people 
 shall go through on dry ground. " And I will harden 
 the hearts of the Egyptians," the narrative proceeds, 
 Jehovah himself being now brought in as speaker, 
 "and they shall follow after; and I will get me 
 honour upon Pharaoh and his host and his chariots 
 and his horsemen ; and the Egyptians shall know 
 that I am the Lord." 
 
 The pillar of cloud which had hitherto headed the 
 column of fugitives is made to interpose between 
 them and their pursuers at this point ? 
 
 It moves most accommodatingly from the front to 
 the rear, coming between the camp of the Israelites 
 and that of the Egyptians, and as there was now an 
 opportunity for another miracle, or violation of a 
 physical law, we are told that, "Whilst it was a 
 cloud of light to the fugitives, it was a cloud of dark- 
 ness to the pursuers, so that the one came not near 
 the other all night." 
 
 And Moses — ? 
 
Exodus: The Flight from Egypt. 177 
 
 Stretches out his hand over the sea, and it is driven 
 back by a strong east wind which blew all night, so 
 that the children of Israel advanced on dry land, 
 " the waters being as a wall unto them on their right 
 hand and on their left." 
 
 A wind of the sort, however, would not have piled 
 the waters of the Red Sea to the right and left, 
 but have swept them clean away ? 
 
 It would had it blown hard enough ; so that the 
 writer had better have left all to the magic rod, and 
 not had recourse to any natural agency that would 
 have failed of the effect described. 
 
 The Egyptians pursue ? 
 
 As arranged by the narrator — " Even all Pharaoh's 
 horses, his chariots, and his horsemen into the midst 
 of the sea." 
 
 Jehovah now interferes actively ? 
 
 " Looking out through the pillar of cloud and fire 
 in the morning watch, he troubles their host ; and 
 takes off their chariot wheels, so that they drave 
 heavily ! " And now had the moment for the dis- 
 comfiture and destruction of the enemy arrived : 
 " Stretch out thine hand over the sea," says the re- 
 vengeful man speaking in the name of his God, " that 
 the waters may come again upon the Egyptians ! " 
 " And the sea," it is said, " returned in his strength 
 and covered the chariots and the horsemen and all 
 the host of Pharaoh : there remained not one of 
 them." 
 
 The great work of immediate deliverance and de- 
 struction thus accomplished — ? 
 
 Moses and the children of Israel sing a grand song 
 of triumph to Jehovah ; and Miriam the Prophetess, 
 the sister of Aaron, and all the women, with tim- 
 brels in their hands and with dances, answer them in 
 chorus : " Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed 
 gloriously ; the horse and his rider hath he thrown 
 into the sea." 
 
178 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Though we miss any word of thanksgiving for 
 their deliverance by the Israelites in this song of 
 triumph, we meet with phrases that point conclu- 
 sively to the late period of its composition ; for we 
 discover that the people have been already " guided 
 in the strength of the Lord to his holy habitation; " 
 the meaning of which is that they are dwelling in 
 the city of Jerusalem conquered by King David from 
 the Jebusites, and having the Temple on Mount 
 Moriah built by King Solomon as the habitation of 
 their God. And we see farther that the peoples 
 of Palestine, the Dukes of Edom, the mighty princes 
 of Moab, and the natives of Canaan, have all already 
 had cause " for trembling and amazement," according 
 to the words of the poem. 
 
 What in brief may be said of the account we have 
 of the Exodus from Egypt ? 
 
 That the story in so far as the accessories are 
 concerned — the serpent charming, the river turned 
 into blood, the frogs, the gnats or lice, the flies and 
 the locusts — must be the work of a writer who had 
 some acquaintance with Egypt and its natural his- 
 tory : the river in the beginning of the inundation 
 coming down of a red colour ; frogs abounding in a 
 land so thoroughly irrigated as Egypt; gnats and 
 flies swarming at particular seasons of the year, and 
 locusts invading occasionally and devouring all before 
 them. The thunder and lightning and hail, though 
 not impossible, must still have been extremely rare 
 in Egypt. The receding of the Red Sea from its 
 northern shores, moreover, by the action of the tides, 
 was known to the writer. At complete ebb the sea 
 became fordable (or was so before the cutting of 
 the Great Canal) for a short time, twice in the 
 twenty-four hours, at the new and full of the moon. 
 The writer used facts in the natural history of Egypt 
 in his narrative ; but possessed of a love of the mar- 
 vellous and a fine spirit of exaggeration, he has turned 
 
Exodus: The Flight from Egypt. 179 
 
 the natural into the supernatural, and, it may be, the 
 actual into the impossible, for the purpose of display- 
 ing the power of his God Jehovah, not only over the 
 Gods of the Egyptians, but over the domain of the 
 true God — the world and the laws that inhere in it, 
 and all to favour the escape of a party of thankless 
 slaves from their fetters ! 
 
 Is it either reasonable or reverent to think of God 
 " getting him honour" by the destruction of the 
 beings who can only have come into existence through 
 conformity with his natural laws ? 
 
 It is both against reason and reverential feeling to 
 entertain such thoughts of God. 
 
 Or to hold that the men were inspired by God who 
 formed such ideas of his nature and attributes, as the 
 words they presume to ascribe to him, and the acts 
 they make him do, proclaim them to have enter- 
 tained ? 
 
 It is not merely unreasonable, but verily impious to 
 believe that they were. 
 
 Or that they could have been inspired by the holy 
 spirit of truth associate with knowledge, who make 
 God say at one time that he brought the Israelites 
 out of Egypt with a high hand, and at another, that 
 they were driven out of the land after having been 
 ordered by their Deity to rob the natives of their 
 jewels of silver and jewels of gold and fine raiment ? 
 
 Inspiration from God can only be fitly spoken of 
 as coming through the mind of man, and in harmony 
 with the right and the reasonable in his nature, 
 never with the irrational in thought and the repre- 
 hensible in deed. 
 
 _ Or that between the dusk and the dawn, a popula- 
 tion approaching three millions in number, with 
 flocks and herds innumerable, could have crossed an 
 arm of the sea, were it but a mile in breadth, laid dry 
 by the receding tide for half-an-hour or less ? 
 
 The thing is physically, andso absolutely, impossible. 
 
180 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Pharaoh and his host effectually disposed of, the 
 Israelites we must presume will now proceed on their 
 way towards the land reported as flowing with milk 
 and honey ? 
 
 Most singular to say, however, they do not ; they 
 even turn clean away from it, advance along the 
 eastern shore of the Red Sea towards the southern 
 extremity of the Sinaitic peninsula and come, it is 
 said, into the wilderness of Shur. 
 
 Where is Shur ? 
 
 Not where the Israelites could have been at this 
 time, if it was on the way to Shur that Hagar was 
 found by the Angel of Jehovah when she had been so 
 ruthlessly driven from his tent by Abraham, then 
 encamped in the land of Canaan. The desert of 
 Shur is on the east side of the Dead Sea towards its 
 northern extremity. 
 
 The first stage of the fugitive Israelites after 
 leaving Rameses is farther said to have been Succoth. 
 Succoth, we should consequently conclude, must be 
 within an easy march of Barneses ? 
 
 Yet the only Succoth of which we read elsewhere 
 in the Old Testament is the one to which Jacob came 
 on his way from Mahanaim after his interview 
 with his brother Esau, Lord of Seir, in Moab, some 
 hundreds of miles away from Rameses in Egypt and 
 the Red Sea. It is, therefore, impossible that the 
 children of Israel could have reached the Succoth and 
 Shur mentioned in the histories of Abraham and 
 Jacob ; and as neither desert nor camping place is 
 known on the borders of Egypt by these names, the 
 only conclusion possible is, that the redactor of the 
 part of the Pentateuch which now engages us must 
 have had two documents before him, severally de- 
 tailing incidents pertaining to different periods in the 
 earlier nomadic wanderings of the Hebrews in search 
 of better feeding grounds or more settled homes. 
 The confusion in the account of the Exodus as we 
 
Exodus : The Flight from Egypt. 1 8 1 
 
 have it, and the impossibility of following the Israel- 
 ites in their course by the names of the stations or 
 camping places gwen, has even led to the suggestion 
 that the Misr, translated Egypt, from which they are 
 described as having escaped was not the Misr of the 
 Me, but an outlying district of Phoenicia called 
 Goshen (see Josh, x., 41 and xi., 16), in which they 
 had been slaves ; and farther, that the sea they are 
 said to have crossed dry-shod was not the Red Sea at 
 all, but an inland lake characterised in the original as 
 the reedy, rushy, or sedgy sea (Schilf Meere, DeWette), 
 a title totally inapplicable to the briny Arabian Gulf 
 on whose shores reed or rush never grew.* 
 
 The Israelites, however, in the account we possess, 
 have made great speed in reaching the east coast of 
 the Red Sea after quitting Rameses in Egypt ? 
 
 They seem to have spent but a few days — three 
 days ? — if we may judge by the narrative, in getting 
 thus far. 
 
 What is the distance from Rameses to Suez on the 
 western head of the Red Sea ? 
 
 About thirty- five English miles. 
 
 How long would it take a column of men, women, 
 and children, approaching three millions in number, 
 burthened with all their belongings in the shape of 
 furniture, baggage, tents for shelter, &c. &c, to say 
 nothing of sick and infirm, hampered besides by 
 numerous flocks and herds, to march in the most 
 perfect order — impossibility under the circumstances 
 indicated — from the borders of Egypt to the coast of 
 the Red Sea ? 
 
 A satisfactory answer will be found in the Bishop 
 of Natal's exhaustive work, ' The Pentateuch and 
 Book of Joshua.' Very many days, at all events — 
 if not even weeks, or, by possibility, months ! 
 
 * Vide • Radenhausen, Die Bibel wider die Glaube.' 8vo. 
 Hamb., 1865. Also ' Goethe : Zum West-Ostlichen Divan ; 
 Israel in der Wiiste,' Bd. vi., S. 158 Stuttg. and Tubing, 1828. 
 
182 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Yet the Exodus is said to have been effected in the 
 course of a single night ? 
 
 Between midnight and the next morning, as we 
 read the account ; Ethani, on the coast of the Red 
 Sea, being reached by the following day at farthest ; 
 how much longer it was before Pi-hahiroth, between 
 Migdol and the sea, was attained we do not learn. 
 
 Surely this was impossible ? 
 
 On natural grounds certainly. But the process of 
 evacuation is to be seen as it presented itself to, or 
 rather as it was elicited from, the writer's imagina- 
 tion — viz., as miraculous ; which, being interpreted, 
 means against nature, therefore against God, and so 
 impossible. For, with our faith in the changeless 
 laws of nature, expressions, as we perforce apprehend 
 them, of the power and attributes of God, we acknow- 
 ledge no reported interferences with the necessities 
 they impose as other than fables devised by ignorance 
 in view of particular ends — the end in the case before 
 us being to show forth the superiority of the Jewish 
 God Jehovah over the Gods of Pharaoh and the 
 Egyptians, and the peculiar favour in which he held 
 the children of Israel. 
 
 What befals the fugitives next ? 
 
 They come to Marah, where the water is found so 
 bitter that it cannot be drunk, and the people murmur 
 against their leader. 
 
 But the bitterness of the water is said to have 
 been removed or remedied ? 
 
 Jehovah is said to have showed Moses a tree, 
 which, being cast into the water, made it sweet. 
 
 Does the knowledge we now possess of the chemical 
 nature of the salts which cause brackishness in water, 
 and of the principles which give plants their special 
 properties, warrant us in believing that any tree 
 grows, or did ever grow, capable of neutralising or 
 eliminating the alkaline and earthy chlorides and 
 sulphates which commonly embitter and make water 
 undrinkable ? 
 
Exodus : The Flight from Egypt. 183 
 
 It does not. On the contrary it enables us to 
 speak positively, and to say that no such tree did 
 ever grow or could ever have grown. Distillation 
 alone is competent to make bitter or brackish water 
 sweet and wholesome; and the art of distillation, 
 though it came from Arabia, could hardly have been 
 known in the days of Moses and Aaron, or, if it were, 
 it is not said, at all events, that it was called into 
 requisition. 
 
 The Israelites next reach Elim, where there are 
 said to be twelve wells, and threescore and ten 
 palm-trees. Suppose a mixed multitude of nearly 
 three millions of men, women, and children — to say 
 nothing" of cattle — how many would there be to a 
 well ? 
 
 Two hundred and fifty thousand. 
 
 And if thirty of these may be supposed to have 
 drunk in the course of every hour of the twenty-four, 
 and each to have had access to the well twice a day, 
 how long would it be before all could have quenched 
 their thirst ? 
 
 A very long time — the reader who is curious to 
 know the exact number of hours, days, weeks, months, 
 and years may amuse himself by making the calcu- 
 lation. 
 
 And reasonable men are still asked to give credit 
 to so impossible a tale as that of the Exodus of the 
 Israelites from Egypt — that some two and a-half or 
 three millions of men, women, and children, several 
 thousands of sick, infirm, parturient, dying, and dead, 
 besides vast herds of kine, sheep, and goats, left their 
 homes in a single night and subsisted for forty years 
 in a desert that does not furnish food for the four 
 thousand souls with a few camels and goats who now 
 possess it ? 
 
 They are, indeed, and have it propounded to them 
 as part of a revelation from the God of Reason for 
 their guidance in learning to know something of him 
 
184 The Pentateuch. 
 
 and the nature of his agency in the world they 
 inhabit. 
 
 Does not the exaggeration in regard to the num- 
 bers of the Israelites who leave Egypt find its 
 corrective subsequently ? 
 
 Elsewhere we learn that the Israelites were not 
 chosen by Jehovah "because they were more in 
 number than any people, for they were the fewest of 
 all people ;" and truly when the history of the tribe 
 is perused with unbiassed mind, such an indifferent 
 reason is seen to be as good as, or possibly better 
 than, any other that could be given for the choice 
 — all things else considered. The population of 
 Palestine — Phoenicians, Syrians, Edomites, Moabites, 
 Israelites, &c, did not at any time of old amount to 
 the numbers said to have left Egypt under the 
 leadership of Moses in a single night.* 
 
 The palm-trees need not detain us, for, as the 
 Exode is said to have taken place in the spring of 
 the year, their fruit could not have been ripe ; and 
 had it been so, what would the fruit of threescore- 
 and-ten palm-trees have been among three millions 
 of hungry human beings, the produce of each tree 
 having to be divided between 42,857 mouths ! Food, 
 as well as water, failing, and supplies being indis- 
 pensable, how says the record they were furnished ? 
 
 Flesh meat by means of a flight of quails which 
 
 * An excellent authority estimates the population of 
 Palestine never to have exceeded two millions (Movers ' Die 
 Phoenizier,' B. ii., S. 303) ; and the inhabitants of the Sinaitic 
 Peninsula, in which the children of Israel, approaching three 
 millions in number, are said to have wandered and found sub- 
 sistence for themselves and flocks for forty years, do not now, 
 and probably never did, exceed four thousand souls, who are 
 not even dependent on the produce of the land for their means 
 of living, but on the wages they earn in forwarding merchan- 
 dise and travellers through the desert they inhabit ; food and 
 necessaries of every kind reaching them from Egypt and 
 Palestine. See Robinson's 1 Travels in Palestine.' 
 
Exodus: The Eduth. 185 
 
 covered the camp, and bread by a fall of manna from 
 the skies. Of the latter every man was to gather, or to 
 have gathered for him, an omer by measure. Did he 
 gather more on any working day, it was found next 
 day to stink and to have bred worms ; but, that 
 wonders might not cease, and as it was unlawful in 
 the writer's mind to do any work on the Sabbath, 
 two omers were to be gathered on the preceding 
 day, and the one reserved was found to keep sweet 
 and good, as if there had been a preservative or 
 antiseptic quality in the air of the Sabbath. 
 
 There was also an omer ordered to be gathered 
 and kept for a memorial and a witness to coming 
 generations of the wonderful way in which the 
 chosen people had been fed in the Wilderness. This 
 omer of manna, like that gathered on the eve of the 
 Sabbath, was also miraculously preserved from stink- 
 ing and breeding worms, and is ordered to be laid 
 up first before Jehovah — the Lord (xvi., 33), and 
 then before the Eduth — the Testimony (lb., 34). 
 
 What may the object be which is thus designated 
 indifferently Jehovah and Eduth ? 
 
 The Hebrew word Eduth, here met with for the 
 first time and translated Testimony with us, is com- 
 monly understood to signify the Law or Tables of the 
 Law. But the Law had not yet been delivered to 
 Moses ; the stones on which it was written were still 
 in the quarry, and the ark in which it was kept was 
 in the tree, so that the word Eduth must mean some- 
 thing other than the Law, though it may have the 
 sense of Testimony. 
 
 The literal meaning of the Hebrew word Eduth 
 might lead us to the sense in which it is here used ? 
 
 The word among other meanings implies brightness, 
 and as the type of all splendour is the Sun, and the 
 Sun was the chief God of all the ancient peoples, so 
 the Eduth has been held by some learned mycolo- 
 gists to signify either an Image of the Sun -God, or 
 
 0 
 
i86 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 a Symbol of the Deity in one of his most notable 
 attributes. 
 
 Is there anything in the Hebrew Scriptures that 
 countenances such an interpretation ? 
 
 Hadad, Hadod, or Adod was a Phoenician name for 
 the Sun- God ; and the passage from this to Edud or 
 Eduth is easy. Jehovah, in the text quoted above, 
 is spoken of by the name of Eduth, and Eduth is 
 used as synonymous with Jehovah.* 
 
 Journeying through the Wilderness of Sin there 
 is no water, and the people chide with Moses for 
 bringing them out of the land of Egypt to kill them 
 and their children and their cattle with thirst in the 
 desert. This gives occasion to another great miracle ? 
 
 To the notable one, so much made of by painters 
 and poets in later times, where Moses strikes the 
 rock with his wonder-working rod, and water flows 
 for the people to drink. 
 
 What are we to think of this ? 
 
 As of the report of a miracle, i.e., a statement im- 
 plying contravention of an eternal and changeless 
 Law of God. 
 
 No more possible therefore than that a touch of the 
 same rod could have turned the water of the Nile into 
 blood and the dust of the ground into gnats or lice ? 
 
 Certainly not ; unless we are prepared to give up 
 our trust in the changeless nature of God and his 
 Laws, and to live in a state of chaos in which, as the 
 poet has it : " Function is swallowed in surmise and 
 nothing is but what is not." 
 
 . Does not the mention of a Wilderness of Sin and 
 a Meribah, or bitter well, in connection with the early 
 tale of the Exodus and the southern extremity of 
 the Sinaitic peninsula, arouse suspicions of the trust- 
 worthiness of the record ? 
 
 * See, farther on, what is said about the contents of the 
 Sacred Arks or Coffers of the Ancients. 
 
Exodus : Encounter with Amalek. 187 
 
 It certainly does so, coming as we do by and by 
 upon a Wilderness of Sin and a Meribah on the 
 borders of Palestine, when the spies are sent out by 
 Moses to report on the land, — the long-looked for 
 goal of all the desert toils. 
 
 Passing over this difficulty, ascribable to the writer 
 having different documents before him and drawing 
 from one or other without critical tact or discrimina- 
 tion, we find that the Israelites as they advance come 
 in contact with some of the desert-dwelling tribes by 
 whom they are met and opposed ? 
 
 And first by the Amaleks in Rephidim, against 
 whom Joshua as Captain is ordered out, whilst Moses 
 with the rod of God in his hand takes his stance on 
 a hill overlooking the field. " And it came to pass," 
 says the story, " when Moses held up his hand that 
 Israel prevailed, and when he let down his hand 
 Amalek prevailed." 
 
 Observing this, what do Aaron and Hur who have 
 conveniently accompanied the leader to the hill-top ? 
 
 They set him on a stone, and one on either side 
 stayed up his hands until the discomfiture of Amalek, 
 which was only completed with the going down of 
 the sun. 
 
 Can we conceive any connection between a rod in 
 the hand of a man on a hill-top and the success of 
 one of the parties engaged in a skirmish on the plain 
 below ? 
 
 It is impossible to imagine any : force is force, and 
 courage is courage, and the greater force and the 
 greater courage by the law of necessity, which is ever 
 the law of God, prevail over the less : the Israelites, 
 braver, more numerous, better armed or better led, 
 defeated the Amalekites. 
 
 What does Moses after the battle ? 
 
 He builds an altar and calls it by the name of 
 Jahveh-Nissi, not in thankfulness for his victory, how- 
 ever, but because "Jehovah hath sworn that he will 
 
1 88 The Pentateuch. 
 
 have war with Amalek from generation to genera- 
 tion." 
 
 Is this, according to our modern notions, a seemly 
 oath to have been ascribed to God ? 
 
 To God, conceived of as the impartial parent of 
 the universe, and in the light of the ideas of our day, 
 it certainly is not ; though it perfectly accords with 
 such notions of Deity as might be entertained by a 
 presumptuous, barbarous, cruel, and ignorant people, 
 or of a later writer, with a dramatic turn of mind, 
 throwing himself into the ideas and feelings of his 
 rude progenitors. 
 
 The name which Moses gives his altar has a sin- 
 gular affinity with that of one of the principal Gods 
 of the ancient world ? 
 
 Jahveh-Nissi is not far from Jao-Nissi (Ja or Jao, 
 being the name of a Phoenician deity), nor this from 
 Dio-nissi or Dionysos, the God of fertility and increase 
 of the Greeks and other ancient peoples. The Israelites, 
 with all their exclusiveness, cannot be supposed to 
 have remained through the whole of their history 
 uninfluenced by surrounding nations — Phoenicians, 
 Egyptians, Assyrians, and Medo-Persians, their pre- 
 decessors in civilisation and so much better policied 
 and more powerful than themselves. ^ 
 
 Moses is now visited by J ethro his father-in-law, 
 who brings him his wife and children ? 
 
 He is ; and in the interlude here introduced we meet 
 with another of those simply natural and purely 
 human incidents artistically used which lend so many 
 parts of the mythical and legendary history of the 
 Hebrews the charm and imposing aspect of reality. 
 Jethro or Reuel, the priest of Midian, Moses' father- 
 in-law, hearing of all that God had done for Moses 
 and for Israel his people, takes Zipporah, Moses' wife, 
 and her two sons, and with them comes to him in the 
 Wilderness where he was encamped by Horeb the 
 Mount of God ; and says to him : " I, thy father-in- 
 
Exodus : Jethro counsels Moses. 189 
 
 law Jethro, am come unto thee, and thy wife, and her 
 two sons with her." " And Moses went out to meet 
 his father-in-law, and did obeisance, and kissed him ; 
 and they asked each other of their welfare ; and they 
 came into the tent." 
 
 Jethro tenders his son-in-law some sensible advice ? 
 
 " Now I know," says he, " that Jahveh is greater 
 than all the Gods ; for in the thing wherein they dealt 
 proudly he was above them." But Jethro sees that 
 no single man can do the whole of the work which 
 Moses has imposed on himself, sitting from morning 
 until evening with the people standing about him, 
 judging between them and making them to know the 
 statutes of God and his laws. " This thing," says he, 
 " is too heavy for thee ; thou art not able to perform 
 it thyself alone. Now hearken to my voice. Be thou 
 for the people to God-ward, that thou mayest bring 
 the causes unto God ; but provide oat of all the people 
 able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating 
 covetousness, and place such over them, to rule them 
 and to judge them at all seasons ; and it shall be that 
 every great matter they shall bring to thee, but every 
 small matter they shall judge ; so shall it be easier for 
 thyself, and thou shalt be able to endure." 
 
 Moses hearkens to Jethro's reasonable counsels ? 
 
 He does, and in so doing shows us that all is not 
 effected by immediate divine agency and miraculous 
 means in this legendary narrative. Jethro's inter- 
 ference here, however, may fairly be held to be im- 
 pertinent. A God-commissioned man must be pre- 
 sumed competent for every emergency and neither to 
 need nor to take advice from another. In hearkening 
 to J ethro Moses descends from his eminence as Envoy 
 and Agent of his God, and so brings suspicion on all 
 that is ascribed to him as leader of the children of 
 Israel. Jethro, a Midianitish priest, has a clearer 
 vision of human capabilities than Moses himself, the 
 chosen of Jehovah. But the recommendation of 
 
1 90 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Jetbro is by a modern writer, and is inserted in this 
 place to countenance a favourite assumption of the 
 later Jews that their Sanhedrim dates as an Institution 
 from even so far back as the age of Moses ! 
 
 Having now — a few weeks we must presume— after 
 quitting Egypt, come to the desert of Sinai and pitched 
 before the mountain, God, it is said, calls to Moses 
 therefrom, bids him remind the people of all that had 
 already been done for them, and say that if they will 
 obey the voice of Jehovah and keep his covenant, they 
 shall be a peculiar treasure to him above all people, 
 — a kingdom of priests and a holy nation ? 
 
 Promises greatly calculated to foster pride and 
 exclusiveness as regards themselves, contempt, hate, 
 and uncharitableness as regards other peoples, to give 
 a colour, moreover, to proceedings for which rapine 
 and murder are the only appropriate names. 
 
 The people on their part declare their readiness to 
 obey in all things ? 
 
 Of course they do ; the people are ever as ready to 
 pledge their word as they are careless to keep it. Not 
 Moses only but Jahveh-Elohim himself, according to 
 the record, had at all times a heavy handful in trying 
 to keep the wayward and stiff-necked people they had 
 led out of Egypt in something like order, a task, 
 indeed, in which it may be said that neither God nor 
 man ever completely succeeded, as we shall find in the 
 course of our exposition. 
 
 A great event is now impending and an imposing 
 prelude is required ? 
 
 What is called the delivery of the Law from Sinai, 
 preceded by injunctions for the people to sanctify 
 themselves, to wash their clothes, and be ready 
 against the third day, when Jehovah will come down 
 in sight of all the congregation on Mount Sinai. 
 This great event takes place ? 
 
 Wrapt about by a thick cloud, amidst thunder 
 and lightning and trumpet sounds exceeding loud, 
 
Exodus : Delivery of the Law. 191 
 
 Jehovah comes down, as said, and Mount Sinai is 
 " altogether on a smoke, and quakes greatly, because 
 Jehovah descends in fire." After the trumpet has 
 sounded long and waxed ever louder and louder — by 
 whom it was blown we do not learn — Jehovah speaks 
 to Moses by a voice, and calls him up to the top of 
 the Mount. There he is ordered to go down and 
 charge the people that they break not through and 
 many of them perish ; he and Aaron are alone to 
 come up ; the people and the priests — of whom we 
 have heard nothing till now — are not even to set foot 
 on the sacred mountain, " lest Jehovah break out on 
 them." 
 
 This is a strange materialistic exhibition and 
 derogatory statement to be connected with the 
 supersensuous, ubiquitous power conceived by civi- 
 lised man as Immanent Cause in Nature, and by us 
 in these parts personified and called God ? 
 
 Of whom as one and sole in any sense now under- 
 stood, in spite of all that has been said to the con- 
 trary, the Hebrew people until a very late period in 
 their history had not a notion. The representation 
 here is only in harmony with the jealous, irascible, 
 partial, and ruthless human impersonation of the 
 greatest among the Gods, their own peculiar God who, 
 until after the era of the kings and the captivities, 
 they continued to apprehend under various names at 
 different times — Chiun, Chamos, El-Schaddai, Isra- 
 El, &c, to whom they gave the title of Melek — King, 
 turned into Moloch, the God to whom they sacrificed 
 the first-born of their sons and their cattle, and who 
 was in truth no other than the Kronos or Saturn of 
 neighbouring cognate tribes and peoples. 
 
 The people and the priests, it is said, are not to set 
 foot on the mountain lest Jehovah break out on them 
 and consume them ? 
 
 We have as yet had no intimation of the existence 
 of priests among the Israelites. Aaron is still no 
 
192 
 
 The Pentateuch, 
 
 more than the subordinate of Moses, though his 
 brother, and no priest as the word came afterwards 
 to be understood. The mention of priests is conse- 
 quently a slip of the pen of the late compiler of this 
 part of the Pentateuch. 
 
 The thundering, smoking, quaking, and trumpet 
 sounds having ceased, the delivery of the Decalogue 
 or Ten Commandments follows ? 
 
 Prefaced by the important announcement that 
 " God spake these words saying : I am Jehovah thy 
 God, thou shalt have no other Gods before me." 
 
 What is to be understood by the words : " God 
 spake ? " 
 
 " When God is described as speaking to man," 
 says a learned and pious divine, " He does so in the 
 only way in which He who is a Spirit can speak to 
 one encompassed with flesh and blood ; not to the 
 outward organs of sensation, but to the intelligence 
 that is kindred to himself."* Not in human 
 language, consequently, as if God were a man, having 
 the parts essential to articulate utterance, but by and 
 through the mind of man, whose activities, aroused 
 by impressions from without, and as emotions and 
 thoughts proceeding from within, find expression by 
 the instrumentality of his vocal organs in words as 
 various as the races that people the earth. 
 
 The Decalogue is generally associated in a more 
 especial manner with the name of Moses ? 
 
 It has long been customary so to connect it. 
 By the concurring testimony of the scholar and 
 critic, however, the Decalogue has of late been 
 recognised as an Eclectic Summary made in times 
 
 * Davidson (S.), D.D., ' Introd. to Old Test.,' L, 233. See 
 also our ' Dialogue by way of Catechism,' pt. I., p. 13. It is 
 strange and unaccountable to us to find Spinoza saying that 
 he thinks it was by a " real voice that God revealed to Moses 
 the Laws he desired should be given to the Jews." Tract. 
 Theologico-Politicus, pp. 34 and 38, English Version. 
 
Exodus : The Decalogue. 1 93 
 
 very much later than the age of Moses, and only 
 derived in part from the earlier documents that 
 underlie the Pentateuch in its present form. A little 
 study and reflection indeed suffice to show the 
 ordinary reader, that the Decalogue in the compact 
 form in which it meets us in Exodus (xx., 1-17) 
 must be the work of a relatively modern hand. Some 
 of the ordinances here artistically grouped have no 
 bearing on the concerns of a tribe but just escaped 
 from slavery and wandering in the Wilderness as 
 Nomads. Several of them again exist among a great 
 variety of others that are often not only objectionable, 
 but indecent, or positively iniquitous in character, 
 scattered throughout the next two or three chapters 
 of the Book, which have an unmistakable air of much 
 higher antiquity than the first seventeen verses of 
 the twentieth chapter, and give us glimpses of a 
 state of things among the early Hebrews that is 
 never suspected when the polished summary pre- 
 sented under the ten heads of the Decalogue is alone 
 considered. 
 
 The Decalogue being held of such high signi- 
 ficance, everything connected with its delivery, we 
 are to presume, must be beyond the sphere of question 
 or of doubt ? 
 
 Unfortunately this is not the case. The original 
 delivery of the Ten Commandments is not connected 
 with any tables of stone on which they are subse- 
 quently said to have been written ; they are delivered 
 viva voce by Jehovah himself amid thunder and 
 lightning, and it is not until we come to the twenty- 
 fourth chapter that we meet with a word about 
 Tables of the Testimony, interpreted as Tables of the 
 Law, which are ordered to be laid up in the Ark of 
 the Covenant. By and by again, when we hear of 
 two Tables of Testimony having been given to Moses 
 (xxxi., 18), their contents are not specified ; and the 
 account in the next succeeding chapter (xxxii., 15, 16), 
 
1 94 The Pentateuch. 
 
 where two Tables of Testimony are again spoken of, 
 leads to the idea that it must have been some more 
 lengthy document than the Decalogue that was 
 engraved upon them ; for they are now said to have 
 been written on both their sides by the finger of 
 God, — a fact, however, if it could by possibility have 
 been a fact, of which the writer could by no possi- 
 bility have known anything. It is not in fine until 
 we come to the thirty-fourth chapter that the 
 words said to have been in the first Tables are 
 promised to be rewritten in the second : " Hew thee 
 two tables of stone like unto the first, and I will 
 write upon these tables the words that were in the 
 first which thou brakedst," says the writer in the 
 name of Jehovah. 
 
 We have no absolute assurance consequently as to 
 the contents of these Tables of the Testimony ? 
 
 None whatever. For when we look on to the four- 
 teenth and following verses of the thirty-fourth chap- 
 ter, we find several of the Commandments included 
 among the ten side by side with a number of others, 
 which are not there to be found. Here the text runs 
 thus in brief : " Thou shalt worship no other Gods, 
 for Jehovah is a jealous God ; thou shalt not make a 
 covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and go a 
 whoring after their Gods ; thou shalt not take of their 
 daughters to thy sons ; thou shalt make thee no 
 molten Gods; the feast of unleavened bread shalt 
 thou keep ; all that openeth the matrix is mine ; six 
 days shalt thou work, but on the seventh day thou 
 shalt rest ; thou shalt observe the feast of weeks ; 
 thrice in the year shall all your men children appear 
 before Jehovah Elohim, the Elohim of Israel ; thou 
 shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven ; 
 the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the 
 house of Jehovah thy God ; thou shalt not seethe a 
 kid in its mother's milk." This enumeration of acts 
 to be done and left undone concludes with these 
 
Exodus: The Decalogue. 195 
 
 words : "And Jehovah said unto Moses, write thou 
 these words, for after the tenor of these words I have 
 made a covenant with thee and with Israel. And 
 he, Moses, was with Jehovah forty days and forty 
 nights ; -he did neither eat bread nor drink water ; and 
 he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, 
 the Ten Commandments." Besides the change in the 
 Tenor of the words as here delivered, we have, there- 
 fore, Moses as the writer and not Jehovah, in oppo- 
 sition to the statement elsewhere made. The confu- 
 sion that reigns in connection with the delivery of the 
 Decalogue points not only to a variety of hands en- 
 gaged on the text, but to much uncertainty of the 
 commandments that were really at different times 
 comprised in the summary. Each writer doubtless 
 followed the tradition of his day or of his ken ; and 
 would have his readers infer, as he himself believed, 
 that something in the shape of the then accredited 
 Decalogue was that which was engraved upon the 
 stone tables. 
 
 So much of the thirty-fourth chapter as refers to 
 the Decalogue has a marked paraphrastic and supple- 
 mentary look about it ? 
 
 It certainly has. But it is not the only chapter 
 bearing on the Decalogue that meets us in the same 
 way ; for, turning to the nineteenth of Leviticus, we 
 find a repetition in varied terms of many of the old 
 ordinances, with sundry additions, some of them, in 
 all probability, from an ancient document, but others 
 unmistakably from one of the most modern of all the 
 editors of the Pentateuch. 
 
 The late writer of the Book of Deuteronomy, how- 
 ever, says positively that the tables were inscribed 
 with the Ten Commandments, and the still more recent 
 writer of the Books of the Kings (I. Kings, viii., 
 7-9) informs us that when the Ark of the Covenant 
 was " brought into its place under the wings of the 
 Cherubim " within the Temple of Solomon, " the two 
 
196 The Pentateuch, 
 
 tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb" 
 were still to be seen. As this must have been done 
 hard upon five hundred years before the writer's day 
 (he having lived some time after the destruction of 
 Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar), and he shows himself 
 familiar with the Mosaic Saga, he can only be held 
 as giving expression to the popular belief ; and else- 
 where we learn that when the ark was examined 
 at a later period it was found empty ; the mythical 
 stone tables writ by the finger of God, had they 
 ever been there, as well as everything else, — the 
 Agalma tou Theou, Sfc, which we believe had been 
 there, had disappeared. 
 
 Looking narrowly into these Ten Commandments, 
 of which so much is made, we ask first on what 
 authority they rest ? 
 
 On that of the immediate spoken word of God, 
 says the text. " Elohim spake these words," is preface 
 to the first of the versions we have of them (Ex. xx.) ; 
 " These words Jehovah spake," is the introduction to 
 the second (Deut. v.). But we have determined the 
 sense in which these statements can alone be taken : 
 they are the utterances of men, not the words of God ; 
 for God never speaks, and never spoke in words to 
 man. 
 
 The two versions, we must presume, will be found 
 to agree ? 
 
 In every essential particular they do, save one : the 
 reason given for the observance of the seventh day of 
 the week as a Sabbath or day of rest. 
 
 The religious sense, the moral sense, and the reason 
 of man we may farther presume will be efficiently 
 met and appealed to in the ordinances of the 
 Decalogue ? 
 
 Inasmuch as with a single exception they are 
 entirely negative in their character, the important 
 elements in the nature of man now named may be 
 said to be left uncared for. The entire domain of 
 
Exodus : The Decalogue. 1 97 
 
 Deity, or of acts to be done, is untouched in the 
 Decalogue, and reason and intelligence are left wholly 
 out of the question. 
 
 The words, "I am Jehovah thy God," meet us at 
 the very outset as an announcement that could fitly 
 have come from the tutelary God of the Jews only ? 
 
 And never from the God of humanity at large. 
 The next clause again, " Thou shalt have no other 
 Gods before me," was assuredly not wanted ; for 
 there are no other Gods, but One God only ; a truth, 
 however, which the writer could not have known, or 
 he would have guarded himself from speaking as he 
 does. 
 
 " Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image 
 or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above 
 or in the earth beneath ; thou shalt not bow down to 
 them nor serve them, for I Jehovah am a jealous God." 
 
 The writer makes God speak in terms of his own 
 apprehension, little dreaming that the heaven a/joje 
 him now became a heaven below him by and by ! The 
 injunction here is obviously enough directed against 
 practices long familiar to the countrymen of the 
 writer, and still followed in the late times in which he 
 lived. Through by far the greater part of their his- 
 tory the Hebrews were mere idolaters ; they made 
 images of the sun and moon, and of their own pecu- 
 liar star Baal-Chiun (Saturn) ; they burned incense, 
 and poured out drink offerings to the Queen of 
 Heaven (the Moon), as their fathers, their kings, 
 their chiefs, and they themselves had done in the 
 cities of J udah and the streets of Jerusalem ; and they 
 had had plenty to eat, and were well, and saw no 
 evil so long as they continued to do so. " But since 
 we left off to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, 
 and to pour out drink-offerings to her, we have 
 wanted all things, and have been consumed by the 
 sword and by famine ; and as to the word that thou 
 hast spoken to us in the name of Jehovah, we will 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 not hearken unto thee," say the people in reply to 
 Jeremiah's exhortation to them to forsake the Queen 
 of Heaven and their other Gods for Jehovah (Comp. 
 Jerem. xliv., 15-19) * The Hebrews undoubtedly 
 worshipped many Gods, even into late periods of 
 their history, and under a variety of emblems, from 
 the unhewn stone block to the sculptured column ; 
 from figures of the Serpent and the Tree, to those 
 of the Bull, the Goat, and, we may safely conclude, 
 the nobler image in human form enthroned between 
 the Cherubim upon the mercy-seat, and present as 
 part of the furniture of every house under the title 
 of Teraphim or Ephod. 
 
 Observing such discrepancy between commandment 
 and practice, it is not easy to conceive the writings 
 in which the Commandments are set forth as being 
 in any sense inspired by God, or as dating from any 
 remote period, such as the age of Moses ? 
 
 God trusts his eternal ordinances neither to stone, 
 to parchment, nor to paper, but implants them in 
 the nature of things and the mind of man. 
 
 We should conclude, then, against the inspiration 
 of which these disjointed, mythical, legendary, and 
 contradictory Hebrew records are held up as evi- 
 dence ? 
 
 And say that it had no existence out of the imagi- 
 nation of those who proclaim it. 
 
 Moses could then have been no God-inspired man? 
 
 Had he been so, the writings ascribed to him could 
 be none of his. Of the life and laws of Moses we 
 have, in fact, but " a few scattered and unconnected 
 
 * "Is it not," says Professor Dozy, " as if we had here the 
 Romans speaking in times when the Empire had become the 
 prey of the Barbarians ? For to the neglect of the Old Reli- 
 gion they, too, ascribed all the misfortunes that had come upon 
 them ; Christianity, in their opinion, being to blame for the 
 disruption of the State, which the Old Gods had so well and 
 truly protected." — Dozy, ' Die Israel, zu Mekka,' 162. 
 
Exodus: The Decalogue. 199 
 
 fragments ; and even these, for the most part, 
 obscured and altered by the tamperings of later 
 times."* The idolatry that prevailed through the 
 period of the Judges, and for ages after this, suffices 
 to prove that the Commandment against making and 
 worshipping graven images is of relatively modern 
 date. 
 
 Jehovah is made to announce himself as "a jealous 
 God " — and we naturally ask of what in heaven or 
 earth might God, body and soul of the universe in 
 one, be jealous ? 
 
 Of other Gods, doubtless, according to the Jeho- 
 vistic writer whose work we have before us. Of 
 them, indeed, might the Jewish Jehovah well be 
 jealous, for his service was constantly deserted for 
 theirs, — was never popular, indeed, until more than 
 one of the few pious and respectable kings ever 
 boasted by Judah had lived and died, and the 
 country, at war with itself, was verging to its fall. 
 
 "Visiting the iniquities of the fathers on the 
 third and fourth generation " — proceeds the tale. 
 
 But God does not visit the sins of parents upon 
 children in any sense intended in the text, a truth 
 which a later writer than the compiler of the Deca- 
 logue, and at variance with him, announced when he 
 said : " The fathers shall not be put to death for the 
 children, neither shall the children be put to death 
 for the fathers : every man shall be put to death for 
 his own sin." (Deut. xxiv., 16.) 
 
 " Showing mercy to thousands of them that love 
 me and keep my commandments." 
 
 Surely God is merciful to all who study to know 
 and faithfully obey his laws, written as they are, and 
 far more at large, in the great open book of Nature 
 
 * " Profecto non nisi fragmenta Vitse et Legum Mosis 
 supersunt pauca, dissipata disjectaque, et hsec ipsa pleraque 
 temporura seriorum injuria denuo obscurata et turbata." — 
 Ewald, in ' Comm. Soc. Gotting,' vol. viii., p. 176. 
 
200 The Pentateuch. 
 
 than in the Hebrew of Exodus or Deuteronomy; 
 even as they who know them not, or knowing who 
 neglect them, assuredly bring penalties upon them- 
 selves. 
 
 "Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy 
 God in vain." 
 
 The name of their God Jehovah was held of such 
 sanctity by the Jews in later times that they believed 
 it could not be spoken by man without sin. The 
 high priest alone was authorised to utter it aloud, 
 and that once only in the course of the year, on the 
 great day of atonement. It is to, enforce this usage 
 that we have the story of the man born of an 
 Israelitish mother by an Egyptian father stoned to 
 death for having blasphemed the name of Jehovah — 
 by which we are to understand nothing more than 
 having dared to take the sacred name into his un- 
 hallowed lips (Levit. xxiv., 10-14). The verses here 
 are plainly interpolated, and the text of verse sixteen 
 that follows has been tampered with. In reading 
 the scriptures aloud the name was at all other times 
 either slurred so as to be inarticulate, or a title was 
 substituted for it, Adonai, — Lord, being the one 
 that first came into use, though this, too, was by and 
 by esteemed so holy that it must not be pronounced 
 articulately. Ha Schem — the name — is the word that 
 is now spoken in the synagogue instead of either 
 Jahveh or Adonai. 
 
 " Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy (' as 
 Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee,' " adds the 
 Deuteronoinist, referring doubtless to the text of 
 Exodus) ; " six days shalt thou labour and do all thy 
 work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of Jehovah 
 thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, 
 nor thy son, nor thy daughter," &c. And here 
 occurs the important difference between the texts of 
 Exodus and Deuteronomy : — " In six days," says the 
 former, " Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea 
 
Exodus: The Decalogue. 201 
 
 and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day ; 
 wherefore Jehovah blessed the Sabbath day and 
 hallowed it." " Remember that thou wast a servant 
 in the land of Egypt, and that Jehovah thy God 
 brought thee out thence .... therefore Jehovah thy 
 God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day," says 
 the latter. The reasons given for the observance of the 
 seventh day as a day of rest are as plainly at variance 
 with one another as the writers of the several texts 
 are seen to be at a loss for any reason for the Sabbath 
 observance that might prove entirely satisfactory. The 
 late writer of Deuteronomy may have seen the absurdity 
 of having God, like a man foredone with the labour 
 of six days, resting on the seventh day ; and so 
 have shifted the ground for its special observance 
 from God to the Exodus. A priest, he may farther 
 have seen that men might possibly be better kept to 
 the religious observances enjoined them, and so made 
 more submissive, by having these relegated to one 
 day of the week rather than spread over the seven. 
 The Semitic races do not appear, like the Aryans, to 
 have held each day of the week dedicated to a par- 
 ticular divinity — the first to the Sun, Sunday, the 
 second to the Moon, Monday, &c. But their seventh 
 day has, nevertheless, the same significance as the 
 Saturn's day of the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans, 
 even as their Chiun, El, Bel, Baal, Ja, and Jahveh 
 have their type in the Kronos-Saturnus so familiar 
 to us through our classical studies. The planet 
 Saturn was The Star of the Hebrew people, and to 
 the God it typified also belonged the seventh day of 
 the week. The Sabbath, however, may be said to 
 have lost its religious significance when God was 
 conceived of as One and Sole, when all days were 
 declared to be alike in his sight — as most assuredly 
 they are — and when charity between those who 
 thought one day holier than another and those who 
 looked on all days as holy alike came to be enjoined. 
 
 p 
 
202 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Is it not likely that neither in the Decalogue of 
 Exodus nor of Deuteronomy have we the Originals 
 of the Ten Commandments ? 
 
 It is not only likely, but may be said to be certain 
 that we have not. The Decalogue, as already said, 
 is an eclectic summary by a late writer of certain 
 ordinances scattered among many others over the 
 books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, which he 
 held of the highest import and significance. The 
 Commandment concerning the Sabbath, in particular, 
 is to be met with as often as three times in different 
 chapters of Exodus, in close proximity with the one 
 which contains the Decalogue, and in what may be 
 safely assumed as earlier forms than that in which it 
 meets us there. " Six days shalt thou work, but on 
 the seventh day thou shalt rest," says the text, that 
 is probably the earliest of any (Exodus xxxiv., 21). 
 " Six days shalt thou do thy work, and on the seventh 
 day thou shalt rest, that thine ox and thine ass may 
 rest, and the son of thy handmaid [concubine] and 
 the stranger [slave] may be refreshed," says another 
 version, somewhat amplified and having a purely 
 human motive for the observance of the day appended 
 (Exodus xxii., 12). " Six days may work be done, 
 but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, .... for in 
 six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, and on the 
 seventh day he rested and was refreshed," says the one 
 that appears to be followed most closely in the Deca- 
 logue (Exodus xxxi., 15-17). Such are the different 
 forms in which the order, as well as the reason for 
 observing the seventh day of the week as a day of 
 rest are delivered, the last quoted being in all likeli- 
 hood from the hand that gave the Commandments 
 final shape in the Decalogue of Exodus. 
 
 Have we any clue to the probable composer of the 
 Decalogue ? 
 
 In him the lynx-eyed criticism of modern times 
 thinks it sees the writer to whom so much of the 
 
Exodus : The Decalogue. 203 
 
 Pentateuch in its present shape can be fairly ascribed 
 — " Ezra the Priest, the Scribe, even a scribe of the 
 words of the Commandments of Jehovah and of his 
 statutes to Israel."* 
 
 With the final triumph of Jehovism, the Jewish 
 scribes could not suffer the seventh day to continue 
 sacred to Baal-Saturn, the old tutelary God of the 
 country ; neither could they have the Tabernacle and 
 Ark dedicated to the same Divinity. The day holy to 
 him and the Tent and Ark in which be dwelt had, 
 therefore, to be given to the modern God Jehovah. 
 " In the veiled sagas of the Pentateuch," says an able 
 writer, " we discover many elements of the idolatrous 
 worship which prevailed so long among the Israelites. 
 The mass of the people honoured Saturn as their 
 national God ; they carried about with them in a 
 Tent his Image in the form of a Bull, as it seems ; to 
 him they sacrificed the first-born of their sons, and to 
 his service they devoted the seventh day of the 
 week."f Until the time of the exile, says another 
 accomplished scholar, the Jews were without a pass- 
 able religious motive for the observance of the seventh 
 day of the week as a Sabbath. It was Ezra who 
 found for them the one that came finally to be 
 adopted ; for without misgivings may we assume that 
 it was he who wrote the Persian story of the Creation 
 and Paradise as it exists in the beginning of Genesis. 
 And who, indeed, had such opportunity of learning 
 something of the Persian sagas as he who lived so 
 long in exile in the kingdom of Persia, and was 
 finally sent by its king to Judea " with the Law of 
 his God in his hand " — we venture to add ; and 
 with what was not in his hand, in his head. % 
 
 The Sabbath, as a day of rest, must have been 
 much more a matter of necessity in times when all 
 
 * Ezra vii. 11 and 14. 
 
 t Vatke, 'Bibl. Theologie' I., 201, 
 
 % Comp. Dozy, op. eit 34, 35, 
 
204 The Pentateuch. 
 
 below the ruler and the land-owning classes were 
 slaves, as they appear to have been among the 
 Israelites, as among the nations of antiquity 
 generally ? 
 
 Then, indeed, was the day of rest a most humane 
 and beneficent institution. Imposed on religious 
 grounds, it stood between the arbitrariness that so 
 commonly comes of wealth and irresponsible power 
 and the impotency that inheres in dependence. At 
 the present time, the Sabbath as a religious institu- 
 tion has lost much of its significance : slavery no 
 longer exists in the civilised world, and, in trading 
 and manufacturing communities, the labouring classes 
 give it little heed. They no longer look forward to 
 one especial day of rest in the week, but make several 
 Sabbaths in its course ; in many cases they even 
 dictate the terms on which they will consent to work 
 at all, and make the accumulated fund of the 
 capitalist available for profit. Unhappily they do 
 not commonly use their power aright, turning the 
 two or three days of the week in .which they 
 do no work into days of idleness and dissipation, 
 instead of using them for the cultivation of the higher 
 and nobler elements in their nature. But with our 
 faith in the possible limitless advance of man in 
 science and morals, and our belief in the influence of 
 education freed from the trammels of Churches and 
 the blight of dogmatic indoctrination, we have no 
 doubts of the brighter phase of humanity that will in 
 the course of ages make its appearance. 
 
 " Honour thy father and thy mother (' as Jehovah 
 thy God hath commanded thee,' adds the Deu- 
 teronomist, referring again to the version of the 
 Decalogue he found in Exodus) that thy days may 
 be long upon the land which Jehovah thy God 
 giveth thee." 
 
Exodus: The 'Decalogue. 205 
 
 "Honour thy father and thy mother": — a com- 
 mandment natural, beautiful, good and proper in itself 
 assuredly, but unhappily immediately marred by the 
 context which acids : " that thy days may be long in 
 the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee;" as if 
 there were no finer sense of duty or moral obligation in 
 question, and the merely selfish or animal element in 
 the nature of man were the only ground of appeal 
 for its observance ! The commandment, as it stands, 
 is not unconditional, as it ought to be, but is weighted 
 with a motive, and so meets us in guise of a compact 
 or bargain, much of the same kind as that which 
 Jacob proffers for the acceptance of his God when 
 he sets up the stone Pillar at Beth-El, and vows 
 a vow, saying, "If God will keep me in the way 
 that I go, and will give me bread to eat. &c, then 
 shall Jehovah be my God." (Gen. xxviii. 20, 22) 
 
 " Thou shalt not kill." 
 
 " Thou shalt not commit adultery." 
 
 " Thou shalt not steal." 
 
 Respect for life, respect for that which is won by 
 industry and thrift — property in the proper sense of 
 the word ; and respect for the sanctity of the hearth 
 and all that pertains to it, — these the Hebrew writer 
 sees as the foundations on which human society rests. 
 Propounded in this place as coming immediately 
 from God, these laws, comprised as they are in the 
 primary nature of man, are in complete accordance 
 with, the necessities and contingencies amid which he 
 lives. More than one of them, indeed, appears to 
 obtain even among certain of the sociable lower 
 animals. Unhappily they are not all, and at all 
 times, so carefully observed among ourselves as they 
 deserve to be. How little they were regarded 
 by the early Hebrews, is seen throughout the whole 
 course of their history,— from the murderous invasion 
 of Palestine and the rapine that accompanied it • the 
 treachery of Simeon and Levi when they slew the 
 Sechemites; the terrible order of Moses to the 
 
 Q 
 
206 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Levites to consecrate themselves to Jehovah and 
 earn a blessing by slaying their sons, their brothers, 
 and their neighbours ; the wholesale murders perpe- 
 trated by such heroes as Samson, Gideon, Samgar, 
 and the rest ; the individual homicides of Moses and 
 Phinehas, and Jael and Judith ; the incestuous acts of 
 Reuben and Amnon ; the cruelty, vindictiveness, 
 unforgiveness, and adultery of David, &c, &c. 
 
 " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy 
 neighbour." . 
 
 Nothing, undoubtedly, can be imagined more im- 
 moral and reprehensible in itself, or more adverse to 
 the security of settled life, than false witness-bearing. 
 Such a commandment, however imperative in a 
 policied state of society, could obviously have had 
 little application among nomads in the wilderness. 
 Its place in the Decalogue consequently gives us 
 another assurance of the late date at which this 
 summary was composed and promulgated. 
 
 " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou 
 shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his^ man- 
 servant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, 
 nor anything that is thy neighbour's." _ 
 
 The injunction against covetousness in general is a 
 decided advance, in a moral point of view, on all that 
 had gone before, and may be said to anticipate the 
 high tone of feeling presumed possible in humanity 
 by Jesus of Nazareth when he said that whosoever 
 lusted unlawfully had already committed the sin in 
 his heart. But it may not be impertinent to observe 
 that the commandments against false witness-bearing 
 and covetousness are not propounded as of universal 
 application. It is his neighbour alone that the Jew 
 is to have in respect. It was even held lawful to 
 spoil the Egyptians; was it not, perchance, lawful 
 also to swear falsely against them, and to covet their 
 men- and maid-servants, their asses and their oxen. 
 
 The Israelites are repeatedly enjoined to keep these 
 commandments ? 
 
Exodus: The Decalogue. 207 
 
 Repeatedly, but never on the ground of moral pro- 
 priety or unconditional necessity. It is always in 
 prospect of some material advantage or return : that 
 they may have long lives, that they may have a 
 numerous progeny, that they may be victorious over 
 their enemies, that they may escape Jehovah's anger, 
 and not become victims of pestilence, famine, or the 
 sword. The Decalogue, however, comprised but a 
 very small part of the Hebrew legislation. Almost 
 every particular in the life of the Jewish people, even 
 to its most private and intimate relationships, is 
 touched upon and regulated; practices being in 
 several places denounced that proclaim a state of 
 morals to have prevailed among the people which 
 shocks the higher and more delicate feelings happily 
 current in these our days. 
 
 Slavery is one of the subjects particularly referred 
 to? 
 
 Slavery was an authorised institution among the 
 Jews, as it continues to be among so many other bar- 
 barous and half-civilised peoples at the present time ; 
 notable, however, in the case of the chosen seed, as 
 countenanced and regulated by their God. What is 
 remarkable, too, is this : That Jewish slaves were not 
 only obtained from abroad, but were purchased from 
 among themselves. Parents were even authorised to 
 sell their sons and daughters into slavery. The native 
 Hebrew slave, however, had privileges of his own, 
 for when he had served six years he recovered his 
 freedom. Had he fallen into slavery having neither 
 wife nor child, he then went out as he had come ; but 
 had he married and had had sons and daughters born 
 to him during the term of his servitude, the children 
 went not with him : they were the master's property, 
 and — hard measure — the husband and father only ob- 
 tained permission to remain with his wife and children 
 by vowing himself to slavery for the rest of his life ! 
 
 Resolving to share their fate, a particular ceremony 
 was gone through ? 
 
20 g The Pentateuch. 
 
 The man being brought before the judge, and, we 
 may presume, a declaration made and implemented 
 his ear was then bored through with an awl against 
 the door-post, to signify his ascription to the house 
 for ever, and the ceremony was complete. 
 
 The Israelites were in the habit not only ot selling 
 their daughters as slaves, but as concubines ? 
 
 « If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant 
 [concubine, as appears by the context], she shall not 
 out as the men-servants [slaves] do, —to labour 
 in the fields, doubtless. She is to do the indoor-work 
 of the house and be her master's bed-fellow it she 
 pleased not her master, however, "who hath betrothed 
 her to himself," or if she ceased to find favour m his 
 eyes, she might be redeemed [euphemism for bought J 
 by another ; or she might be handed over to the 
 owner's son ; but she was not to be sold to one ot a 
 strange nation. Did her owner, notwithstanding his 
 disgust, continue to keep her, having taken to him- 
 self another wife, he was to provide her with food 
 and raiment, and still to comport himself towards her 
 in all things else as a husband. Failing m any ot 
 these particulars, the woman was free to go ; but it 
 was to be " without money," i.e., without a provision 
 from the man to whom she had been as a wile. An 
 easy way, therefore, lay open to the peculiar people ot 
 ridding themselves of disagreeable wives or concu- 
 bines : they had but to neglect to be quit of them. 
 
 Did a man smite another so that he died, the 
 offender was to be put to death ? > 
 
 So it is said, but with important reservations ; tor 
 if the smiter had not lain in wait for his enemy, but 
 » God had delivered him into his hands," that is, had 
 he come upon him unawares and slain him, then was 
 he to have a place of refuge to flee to, Jehovah himself 
 being held in this case to have thrown the obnoxious 
 party in the slayer's way, and given him the required 
 opportunity to wreak his vengeance on his enemy. 
 
Exodus : Domestic Legislation. 
 
 " If, in striving together, one man smite another 
 with a stone or his fist, and he die not, but keep his 
 bed, if he rise again and walk abroad upon his staff, 
 then he that smote him shall be quit ; only he shall 
 pay him for loss of time and his healing " — surely an 
 equitable law, though something more might possibly 
 in many cases have been required. 
 
 Did a man smite his servant or his maid (his male 
 or female slave) with a rod, and he or she died 
 under his hand, then was the smiter to be surely 
 punished ; but, did the servant or the maid " continue 
 for a day or two," he was not to be punished, for the 
 servant or maid "is his money." 
 
 A notable distinction this between a cause im- 
 mediate and a cause a little more remote, and made 
 on grounds that excite our wonder in the present day 
 when met with in a book still believed by so many to 
 be the word of Grod to man ; to have been composed 
 under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, whatever 
 meaning is attached to the phrase, and to be used as 
 among the prime and indispensable instruments in 
 the education of the young. 
 
 The slave, however, was not even thus indifferently 
 protected, save when his life was endangered ? 
 
 Did a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye 
 of his maid, says the inspired text, so that it perish, 
 lie shall let him go free for his eye's sake ! Worse we 
 are to understand might have befallen the unhappy 
 slave, and he was, therefore, to be well content that 
 he had only lost an eye. 
 
 The same pleasant award is made in case the loss 
 were the minor one of a tooth ? 
 
 Did the owner smite out his man-servant's tooth, 
 or his maid-servant's tooth, he shall let him go free 
 for his tooth's sake ! 
 
 Did a man strive with, and hurt a woman with 
 child, so that her fruit departed from her, and no far- 
 ther mischief followed, he was to be surely punished 
 
210 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 as the woman's husband should lay upon him, or, " he 
 shall pay as the judge determines," but if other mis- 
 chief followed— if the woman died, then should life 
 be given for life. 
 
 This paying of like with like was a general prin- 
 ciple in the ancient Israelitish legislation ? 
 
 Not carried out to the letter in every case, however, 
 as we have seen above, still it is said : Eye for eye, 
 tooth for tooth, burning for burning, wound for 
 wound, stripe for stripe,— the lex talionis, in a word, 
 was the rule. But the savage nature of the precept, 
 though delivered as from God, and the evils to which 
 it necessarily led, were seen through by more than 
 one of the later Prophets, and the moral teacher of 
 Nazareth expunged it from the code of humanity for 
 ever when he said : " It was said of old, an eye for 
 an eye, a tooth for a tooth ; but I say unto you, do 
 good to them that hate you," &c. (Matt, v.) If we 
 perchance see that this is carrying matters somewhat 
 far, we are still within the pale of our proper humanity 
 when we abstain from returning evil with the like. 
 
 Among these ancient ordinances or laws ascribed 
 to Moses, though a few of them only can be presumed 
 to date from of old, there is one that is completely 
 in harmony with what seems natural right, though 
 entirely ignored by modern legislation ? 
 
 That which says in these terms : " If a man entice 
 a maid that is not betrothed and lie with her, he 
 shall surely endow her to be his wife" (Exocl. xxh. 
 16.) Were such a law now on the statute book there 
 would certainly be less seduction practised, and fewer 
 bastard children brought into the world. _ If union of 
 bodies be the sole bond of marriage, as it is acknow- 
 ledged to be by our laws — ceremonies and parchments 
 going for nothing, but being mere shams or make- 
 believes, would it not be logical were the fact of such 
 union having taken place to be constituted legal 
 marriage in every instance ? 
 
Exodus : General Legislation. 2 1 1 
 
 Such being God's or Nature's law, there can be but 
 one consistent answer to the question. 
 
 An ordinance follows those we have on matters 
 connubial which had long a most disastrous influence 
 on human society ? 
 
 That which says : " Thou shalt not suffer a witch 
 to live." 
 
 A witch ! what is a witch ? 
 
 An old woman presumed to be possessed of super- 
 natural power of a wicked or maleficent kind. 
 
 We have no such personage among us now ? 
 
 The kind became extinct when physical science was 
 born. The last reputed English witch was judicially 
 murdered by a learned but credulous judge about 
 two centuries ago — warning for all time that pre- 
 scriptive learning and legal eminence are no 
 safeguards against superstition and its offspring 
 inhumanity. 
 
 The learned judge in the instance referred to, as in 
 others — and they are legion — that had gone before, 
 only followed in all simplicity and blind sincerity the 
 injunction he found in his Bible, and administered 
 the law of the land, based, like his belief, on its text ? 
 
 No question of this. But the bad law has been 
 abrogated, and the judge is now pitied for his cre- 
 dulity ; the belief in witches and witchcraft having 
 died out from among the cultivated, though it still 
 lingers among the imperfectly educated and the 
 vulgar, kept alive as it is by the authority of the book 
 which the clergy and ignorant laity alike continue to 
 force on the world as inspired by God, and as the 
 absolute guide in morals and religion, which the 
 open-eyed see that it most assuredly is not. 
 
 There is another ordinance among these reliques of 
 old and barbarous times that must have wrung the 
 hearts of parents, and brought mourning into the 
 homes of men through countless ages of the ancient 
 world ? 
 
212 The Pentateuch. 
 
 The one we have seen attempted to be particularly 
 connected with the escape from Egypt and the insti- 
 tution of the Passover, which says : " The first-born 
 of thy sons shalt thou give unto me, likewise of thine 
 oxen and thy sheep ; seven days it shall be with his 
 dam, on the eighth thou shalt give it unto me." Of 
 the terrible meaning hidden in these words we have 
 already had occasion to speak, and found it not 
 doubtful that " giving to the God " in ancient times 
 meant sacrifice upon his altar. And it is to be noted 
 that the ordinance as it stands in this — one of the 
 least manipulated parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, — 
 makes no provision for redemption by substitution or 
 by money : the first-born of man and beast, by the 
 oldest Hebrew statute we possess, was Gherem to 
 the God ; and that which was cherem could not be 
 redeemed, but must surely be put to death. The 
 word in the original which is softened down in the 
 English version into "set apart," means h urned : — 
 the blood as the life was poured out about the altar, 
 and the body burned upon its fire as an offering of 
 a sweet savour to the El God, — Baal (Saturn), or 
 Molech. So late as the days of the prophet Ezekiel, 
 the redemption clause made no part of the text ; it 
 was interpolated after his day.* 
 
 Sacrifice we know, by the universal practice of 
 ancient peoples, to have been among the oldest, as it 
 was also believed to be the most poteut of all the 
 means possessed by man of propitiating the God he 
 feared as having power to do him good or ill ? 
 
 It was so unquestionably, especially among the 
 Semitic tribes that peopled Western Asia, and the 
 more precious the offering, whether in itself or to 
 the giver, the higher rose the claim upon the God for 
 favour through its means. But the life of a human 
 being was obviously of far more worth than that of a 
 
 * Comp. Dozy, Op. cit., S. 8. 
 
Exodus : Human Sacrifices. 213 
 
 beast, and the life of a man's own child priceless to 
 him in comparison with any other human life. 
 Hence the value attached to human sacrifice in 
 general, but, above and beyond all other, to the 
 sacrifice of a son by his father. 
 
 Ideas of the same nature appear to have continued 
 to influence men's minds and their acts up to 
 relatively recent epochs in religious history ? 
 
 That they have done so is as unquestionable as that 
 they continue to do so at the present hour. Ecclesi- 
 astical Christianity has no other foundation. The 
 " crowning sacrifice," as the death of their Christ is 
 characterised by the churches, has been well said by 
 an able and learned writer to perpetuate an ancient 
 rite in its most appalling form, making of a merciful 
 God a ruthless demon, and giving to the purely moral 
 doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth the character of a 
 religion of Molech.* 
 
 In the later periods of the Jewish History, however, 
 as we have it, the first-born of men were ordered to 
 be redeemed ? 
 
 They were so, and Jehovah is even made by one of the 
 later prophets to repudiate the claim to all that opened 
 the matrix which is put into his mouth by the earlier 
 writer : " They caused their sons and daughters to 
 pass through the fire to Molech, which I commanded 
 them not." (Jerem. xxxii. 35). Such a rite as the 
 ever-recurring sacrifice of a new-born babe, the first 
 of its parents, wore too terrible an aspect to continue 
 as an institution after some little progress had been 
 made from utterly barbarous to more civilised life. 
 Substitution was, doubtless, the first step taken in 
 favour of the human victim, and among the Hebrews 
 may even be supposed to have preceded the circum- 
 cision, or partial sacrifice, and the money price that 
 were finally paid to the priest in its stead. But it 
 
 * Mackay, 1 Progress of the Intellect,' ii., 460. 
 
214. The Pentateuch. 
 
 was not among the Israelites alone that redemption 
 of the human subject from immolation to the God by 
 means of a substitute or a payment in money came 
 at length to be effected. We have evidence ot a like 
 advance in ideas leading to like results in practice 
 among other ancient peoples. If in the Hebrew 
 legends we have the ram caught in the thicket as a 
 substitute for Isaac on the point of being sacrificed 
 by his father Abraham— a tale of very modern inven- 
 tion as has been hinted * the name of Abraham not 
 having been known to the Jews before the days of 
 David— in those of Greece we find Athamas spared 
 the trial of sacrificing his son Phrixos, the divinity 
 in his now more placable aspect consenting, like 
 Jehovah, to receive a ram instead of the youth. 
 Iphio-enia, too, in some of the myths, escapes her 
 impending doom by the goddess at whose shrine she 
 was to have bled, accepting a hind m her place. 
 Belonging to still earlier periods, perhaps, there is, 
 further, the myth of Jupiter Laphisteus, to whom 
 Rhea presents a stone in swaddling bands instead of 
 the customary new-born child,— Jupiter Laphisteus, m 
 whom we not only recognise the Chronos and Satur- 
 nus of the Aryan race, but the El-Elijon, the Chijun, 
 Chamos, Baal, and Molech of the Semites under 
 another name. In the Egyptian records, still farther, 
 we have the story of the Three Candles burnt to the 
 Sun God in his temple at On, in lieu of the Three 
 Men who, from immemorial times, had been the daily 
 sacrifice at his shrine. 
 
 These legendary and mythical tales all proclaim 
 the advance that may have been made somewhat 
 simultaneously among the better policied and more 
 civilised peoples of the ancient world in their ideas ot 
 what might be truly acceptable to their gods ? 
 
 Very possibly : Substitution — an animal for a human 
 
 * Vide Our Genesis, page 70-71. 
 
Exodus : Human Sacrifices. 1 1 5 
 
 being; Circumcision — Sacrifice of a small but signifi- 
 cant part for the whole ; Presentation at the shrine 
 with an Initiatory rite of no more moment than the 
 sprinkling with a little water— still practised in these 
 days, and a Money payment to the priest — still also 
 part of the ceremony. — Such, in all likelihood, were 
 successive steps, proclaiming advances in the "Religious 
 Idea, due, undoubtedly, to progress in the knowledge 
 of Nature, as well as in civilisation and general refine- 
 ment among mankind. 
 
 Human victims, however, long continued in ancient 
 times to be offered to the Gods on extraordinary 
 occasions ? 
 
 No longer presented as the rule, they nevertheless 
 continued to be offered occasionally and exceptionally. 
 In entering on their wars, some of the ancient peoples 
 seem to have thought that an oblation of the kind to 
 the God of Slaughter was a due and necessary pre- 
 liminary. Achilles, as we read in the Iliad, offered 
 up a number of his Trojan captives to Ares ; and 
 Themistocles, in less mythical times, sacrificed three 
 distinguished Persian prisoners to Dionysus on the 
 eve of the battle of Salamis. After his victory over 
 Antony, Augustus, to propitiate the manes of the 
 deified Ceesar, sacrificed three hundred victims of 
 senatorial and equestrian rank upon his altar. Corn- 
 modus offered up a human victim with his own hand 
 in the Mithriac mysteries to which he was attached ; 
 and Heliogabalus, two centuries after the Christian 
 era, had the sons of some of the most distinguished 
 families of Italy brought to Rome and sacrificed in 
 the Syriac mysteries which supplied the fashion of his 
 religious clothing. In the Hebrew history we have 
 the story of Mesha, King of Moab, besieged in his 
 capital and sorely pressed by the Israelites, sacrificing 
 his son and heir, dressed in the royal robes, upon the 
 wall in sight of the besiegers, and with such effect 
 that they, indignant, alarmed, and satisfied that no 
 
2l6 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 further effort on their part would now avail them — 
 the God being necessarily propitiated by so distin- 
 guished a victim— raised the siege and departed 
 home. Is it needful, in fine, to allude to the great 
 sacrifice which the successors of the Jewish sect 
 having Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph, for 
 their teacher, believe to have been offered to Jehovah 
 as a propitiation for the sins of mankind; or to 
 speak of the fiery deaths of heretics and so-called 
 blasphemers in modern times, as other than offerings 
 to appease the offended majesty of God ? — Ordinary 
 criminals were beheaded or hanged; they to whom 
 heresy or blasphemy was imputed were done to death 
 by fire. 
 
 What may be said to be the general character of 
 the many commandments or ordinances that now 
 follow in the book of Exodus ? 
 
 That many of them are good and humane, some of 
 them childish, and a few positively wicked. But all 
 obviously are not by the same hand ; numerous inter- 
 polations in favour of the Levitical caste and the 
 priesthood being especially conspicuous. There is 
 further such incongruity between so many of the 
 commandments and the circumstances of the times 
 in which they are generally presumed to have been 
 promulgated, that it is easy to see they cannot all 
 date from the days of Moses. They are, indeed, 
 mostly and very distinctly adapted to a people 
 policied in a certain sense, settled in fixed homes, 
 and having the culture of the soil for their principal 
 occupation, not to a multitude wandering in the 
 wilderness, destitute of everything, and only kept 
 from perishing of hunger and thirst by reiterated 
 miraculous interpositions — a multitude who could not 
 possibly have brought ripe fruits and fermented 
 liquors, the produce of carefully tended vineyards 
 and fields, nor consumed in smoke upon the altars of 
 their God holocausts of the bullocks, sheep, and 
 
Exodus : Sources of the Legislation. 217 
 
 goats which, had they had them, were so much 
 wanted for their own subsistence. What lands, 
 among other items spoken of in the legislation, could 
 they have had at this time either to till or to leave 
 untilled ; with what were they to hold high festival 
 three times in the year, when they had neither 
 leavened nor unleavened bread to eat ; what could 
 they have sown, what reaped in the waterless wilder- 
 ness ; and how could they have appeared otherwise 
 than empty-handed at all times before Jehovah ? Let 
 us cease to think of these ancient writings as con- 
 temporaneous with the still more ancient times and 
 circumstances they pretend to portray ! 
 
 All, indeed, seems plainly enough to imply that the 
 legislation ascribed to Moses or referred to his age 
 must have been the product of much more modern 
 times ? 
 
 Such a conclusion is inevitable. There is, never- 
 theless, so much that is old in the 21st, 22nd, and 
 23rd Chapters of the Book of Exodus that they have 
 together been referred in the main to ancient docu- 
 ments, believed to have been extant in the time of 
 the authors of the text in its present form.*' 
 
 Moses is now called up into the mountain along 
 with Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the 
 Elders of Israel ; but Moses alone is admitted to the 
 presence of Jehovah, the rest being ordered to worshp 
 afar off. In spite of this, however, and very incon- 
 sistently as it seems, we are by and by informed that 
 the Elders of Israel saw God and he laid not his 
 
 * Compare particularly Dr Davidson's Introduction to the 
 Old Testament : 'Authorship and Composition of the Penta- 
 teuch,' Vol. I., p. 1—134; Knobel's 1 Kurzgefasstes Exege- 
 tisches Handbuch zum alten Testament — Die Biicher Exodus 
 and Leviticus,' 8vo, Leipz. 1857; Kuehnen, 'Hist, critique 
 des Livres de l'Ancien Testament,' Trad, de 1'Hollandais par 
 M. A. Pierson, Tom. I. ; the Bishop of Natal's exhaustive 
 work, 'The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua,' and the learned 
 Dr Kalisch's ' Commentaries on Exodus and Leviticus.' 
 
2i 8 The Pentateuch, 
 
 hand on them ; they saw God and yet did eat and 
 drink ! 
 
 Saw God ! What man has ever seen God, save in 
 the manifestations made of his Being and Agency in 
 the things of heaven and earth, and in their various 
 properties or aptitudes ? If -we are not informed in 
 so many words that it was an Image of their God 
 that was seen by the Elders, the context seems to 
 show that it could have been nothing else ; for, 
 under his feet, it is said, " they saw as it were a 
 paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the 
 body of heaven in his clearness " — the similitude of 
 the God, in a word, relieved by the clear blue sky. 
 Or, did the Elders of Israel perchance see more of 
 the Infinite body of God than appears in the expanse 
 of heaven — called Dyaus by our far off Aryan 
 Ancestors, Zeus and Deus by their descendants, the 
 Greeks and Romans ? If it was not an Image on 
 which they looked they certainly saw no more of God 
 - — the Infinite, the Eternal — than meets man's eye 
 when he gazes on the depths of endless space. But 
 this is not what is meant in the text. The ancient 
 Hebrews, like modern Christians, thought of God as 
 a Person, and so, perforce, possessed of parts and 
 proportions, as well as of the intellectual and moral 
 endowments they owned themselves. 
 
 The Elders see Jehovah, however, as said, and sur- 
 vive the sight ; but Moses alone is allowed to come 
 into his immediate presence. And there upon the 
 mountain, shrouded by a cloud, he remains according 
 to the record for forty days and forty nights, without 
 meat or drink — a long time if we measure it by what 
 we know of aught that passed between his God and 
 him. 
 
 Jehovah, it is said, bids Moses speak to the chil- 
 dren of Israel and order them to bring offerings of 
 gold, silver and brass, of blue, purple and scarlet fine 
 linen, of goats' hair, rams' skins dyed red and badgers' 
 
Exodus : The Ark of the Testimony, 219 
 
 skins, of shittim wood, oil for the lights, spices for 
 the anointing oil, ingredients for sweet incense, onyx 
 stones for the Ephod, and precious stones for the 
 breastplate of the priest. " And that I may dwell 
 among ye," proceeds the narrative, making Jehovah 
 the speaker, " let them make me a Sanctuary after 
 the pattern of the Tabernacle, two cubits and a half 
 long, a cubit and a half broad, and a cubit and a half 
 high', to be overlaid with gold within and without ; 
 and a Mercy Seat of pure gold two cubits and a half 
 high, a cubit and a half broad ; and two Cherubims 
 of beaten gold, one at either end with wings covering 
 the Mercy Seat, their faces looking towards one 
 another,' 5 &c. 
 
 This Ark or Sanctuary was a highly-important 
 piece of furniture with the ancient Hebrews ? 
 
 As with several others among the peoples of the 
 old world — Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, &c. 
 Upon the proper ark or coffer, the seat or throne, de- 
 signated Mercy Seat in the Old Testament, is ordered 
 to be placed, where the God was to be found for con- 
 sultation by the priest; and within it the object 
 entitled Eduth was commanded to be kept. The ark 
 itself, in some sort the symbol as containing the 
 symbols of Deity, was believed to be possessed of 
 supernatural powers ; for it was death to touch or 
 attempt to look into it, and the power and counte- 
 nance of the tutelary God was supposed to accompany 
 it wherever it went. 
 
 We have already had the Eduth mentioned inci- 
 dentally in connection with the miraculous manna of 
 the wilderness, when we found the word translated 
 Testimony, and used now as if it were J ehovah that 
 was meant, and again, as if the Law or Tables of the 
 Law were the thing signified ; the word Eduth, in- 
 deed, is always translated Testimony in this sense in 
 the English version of the Bible. But when the con- 
 text is taken into account, it seems as if it cannot 
 
220 The Pentateuch. 
 
 always have such a meaning. It constantly meets us 
 as if it could only apply to an image or symbolical 
 figure of some sort. 
 
 The Israelites, however, were emphatically for- 
 bidden to make molten or graven images, or the like- 
 ness of anything in heaven or earth ? 
 
 At an advanced period of their history as a people ; 
 certainly not before the age of Solomon. But neither 
 in the days of this Sybarite king, nor even in much 
 later times, do the Jews appear to have known, or, if 
 they knew, to have given any heed to the prohibition. 
 We have but just seen figures of Cherubim ordered 
 by Jehovah himself for the covering of the Ark ; and 
 an empty seat would have been an indifferent object 
 for consultation by the priest when he entered the 
 holy of holies to ask advice. The seat must have been 
 occupied, therefore, and doubtless by the Image or 
 Symbol of the God. If neighbouring tribes and 
 peoples had images and emblems of their Gods, we 
 may be very certain that the early Hebrews also had 
 theirs : — They had borne for forty years in the wilder- 
 ness the " Tabernacle of their Chiun, their idol, the 
 Star of their God which they had made," says one 
 of the earlier prophets whose writings have escaped 
 mutilation by modern editors (Amos v. 26). The 
 golden calf set up by Aaron in the Wilderness and the 
 golden calves erected by Jeroboam at a subsequent 
 period, as the God and the Gods who had brought 
 them out of Egypt, could have been no novelties to 
 the Israelites. On the contrary, they were the old 
 familiar forms under which Deity was conceived and 
 approached with offerings by their fathers as by them- 
 selves. The interdict against molten and graven 
 images came from the advanced Jehovistic party of 
 the kingdom of Judah, about the time of Hezekiah 
 probably, if it were not even so late as that of Josiah, 
 when the leading minds among the Jews had attained 
 to the conception of the all-pervading, or so-styled, 
 
Exodus: The Ark of the Testimony. 221 
 
 spiritual nature of the Godhead, which as Infinite and 
 Ubiquitous can be fitly represented by no "similitude." 
 
 The Bduth may, therefore, have been an image, 
 if not of any such specific Divinity as was conceived of 
 under the names of El, Eloha, Chiun, Chemosh, 
 Baal, Melkart, Molech, or Jahveh, yet of the emblem 
 that was once universally held typical of the repro- 
 ductive power inherent in Nature or the Nature God ? 
 
 There are hints in various places of the Hebrew 
 sacred writings that have escaped the expurgating 
 hands of their latest editors which necessarily lead to 
 the conclusion that the seat in the sanctuary was 
 not unoccupied, but was verily filled by an image of 
 the God himself, carefully secluded, however, in later 
 times at least, from the prying eyes of vulgar curiosity. 
 Aaron, on entering the inner veiled compartment of 
 the shrine, was to take a censer full of live coals from 
 the altar of burnt offerings, to sprinkle incense there- 
 on, and " raise a cloud before Jehovah." The prophet 
 Isaiah must have seen something more than an empty 
 stool when he exclaimed that he was undone, for that 
 he 46 a man of unclean lips had seen the king (Melek, 
 Molech), the Lord of Hosts (Jahveh-Tzabaoth) 
 vi. 5. Ezekiel, indeed, does not hesitate to fill the 
 throne which he saw with the "likeness of the 
 appearance of a man " (i. 26), a roundabout way of 
 saying an image of Jehovah ; and then we have 
 Jehovah's own orders for the construction of the 
 sanctuary in which he promises to dwell among his 
 people. But God the Infinite and Eternal can have 
 his dwelling-place in no sanctuary made by the hands 
 of man. It was his similitude, therefore, or his 
 symbolical representation that was to be seen on the 
 lid of the Sacred Coffer between the Cherubim ; and, 
 when not there displayed, that was laid up with other 
 sacred apparatus in its interior, the coffer being of the 
 precise dimensions calculated to receive the life-size 
 seated figure of a man. 
 
 R 
 
222 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 The ancient Hebrews were not, as already hinted, 
 the only people who had a sacred ark or coffer, in 
 which articles held holy, or apparatus employed in 
 their religious rites were stored ? 
 
 By no means. The ark of the ancient Egyptians, 
 as we see it in their paintings and sculptures, bears 
 the most exact resemblance to that of the Hebrews as 
 described in their records. It has the mysterious 
 figures of the cherubim with wings on its cover, and 
 between them the Truncated Cone, symbol of the 
 generative or reproductive principle immanent in 
 nature. Among the peoples of the ancient world the 
 Ark or Sacred Coffer appears to have been more 
 especially connected with the worship of Dionysus— 
 the Sun, in his character of regenerator. In the one 
 said to have been found in the citadel of Troy, when 
 taken by the Greeks, the image or emblem of 
 Dionysus — AyaXjua Aiovovaov (aynXjua simulacrum, 
 res auro ornata, an Image, a gilded Something), is 
 the article that is particularly mentioned as having 
 been found within it ; and from an old writer, Cle- 
 ment of Alexandria, we learn that in the heathen 
 arks or sacred coffers, generally, the article laid up 
 was tov Aiovovaov Aibowv (aiboia pudenda ab cuSws). 
 These references may help us to a conclusion as to 
 what the Bduth really was which was stowed away in 
 the Hebrew Ark of the Covenant, and so carefully 
 concealed from all eyes save those of the priest. Is 
 not the Greek word At^s, in fact, the Hebrew word 
 Eduth ? * 
 
 * On the Hebrew Ark of the Testimony see Spencer, De 
 Legibus Hsebneor. Kitualibus, Lib. iii. Diss. v. Singularly 
 enough the word Eduth is not mentioned in that mine of 
 learning and interesting information, Winer's Biblisches 
 Realworterbuch (3tte. AufL, 2 vols., 8vo, Leipz., 1847). To 
 suppose that Winer was ignorant of what is said above were 
 absurd. He knew it all ; but the theologian could not face the 
 conclusion to which the scholar and critic must necessarily 
 have come. See also Movers, Die Phoenizier i., chaps. 2 and 3. 
 
Exodus : The Seven-light Candlestick. 223 
 
 There are several other articles connected with the 
 Hebrew ritualistic worship which require more than 
 a passing notice ? 
 
 The Seven-light Candlestick in particular, with its 
 arms— three on either side, to hold as many lamps ; 
 its shaft, branches, bowls, knobs, flowers, and even 
 the accessory tongs and snuff dishes being all alike 
 ordered to be " one beaten work of pure gold, after 
 the pattern that was shown thee in the mount." 
 
 The lavish expenditure of gold and precious stones, 
 and of such costly stuffs as purple, blue and scarlet 
 linen, &c, might lead to the conclusion that the 
 fugitives had spoiled the Egyptians more effectually 
 than it is easy to imagine them willing to lend. But 
 the whole tale is a fiction, involving as it does childish 
 or worse conceptions of the Deity, and containing 
 injunctions so utterly impossible of execution under 
 the circumstances, that there needs no more than a 
 hint to satisfy every reasonable person not blinded by 
 a foregone conclusion, that it must date from days 
 when Jerusalem was the capital of the kingdom of 
 Judah, with the first or even the second Temple 
 already in existence, and serving as a model from 
 which the writer drew. 
 
 The gold candlestick with its seven lights, so par- 
 ticularly described in the text, must be presumed to 
 have had a special significance, symbolical or other- 
 wise ? 
 
 That it was symbolical, may be safely assumed, of 
 the Sun, Moon, and five known Planets — Mercury, 
 Venus, Mars, Jupiter and, high and far removed over 
 all, Saturn, the peculiar star of the ancient Hebrew 
 race — the star of their God by whatever name known 
 to them at different epochs of their history — Chiun, 
 Chamos, El, Israel, Baal, Molech, or Jahveh. 
 
 This costly piece of furniture it has been surmised 
 was not for ornament only or even for giving 
 light ? 
 
224 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Besides its symbolical significance and every-day 
 uses it appears to have been in constant requisition, 
 in conformity with the astrological notions of anti- 
 quity for purposes of divination, and especially m 
 casting nativities. The arms of the candlestick being 
 in sockets and moveable, the lamps they carried, 
 severally representing a planet, were probably 
 arranged by the priest in fanciful accordance with 
 the relative positions in the heavens of the sun moon, 
 and wandering stars at the moment of a birth, and 
 a forecast thus obtained of the fate that was to befal 
 the future man or woman.* 
 
 Such forecasts or predictions, however, must have 
 been constantly falsified by events ? 
 
 No doubt ; but in spite of this the belief m Judicial 
 Astrology has either had such tenacity of life in itself, 
 or continues to possess such attractions for the super- 
 stitious and uninformed, that it cannot be said even 
 now to have wholly died out from among us. Though 
 no use is ever made, in so far as we know, of the 
 information obtained, and the end for which it was 
 once so eagerly sought after is not even surmised, the 
 precise moment at which every child born among us 
 comes into the world is still regularly noted by the 
 gossips who hold high festival in the Lying-m room. 
 
 There are other remnants of the old sun, moon, 
 and star worship, and of the beliefs once universal m 
 planetary influences that still linger in the world t 
 
 The general and genial merry-making at the winter 
 solstice— Dies natalis Solis, of the ancient world— 
 the brief period of mourning followed by rejoicings 
 at the vernal equinox— Easter (Ex Oriente Lux) — of 
 which we have already had occasion to speak ; the 
 Beal-fires (El, Bel, Baal), still danced about and 
 leaped through with shouts and exclamations by the 
 Breton and Irish peasantry at the summer solstice ; 
 
 * See Landseer, ' Sabsean Researches,' 4to, Lond., 1823. 
 
Exodus : The Mar; the Priest's Robes. 225 
 
 the sacrifice of the goats, one to Jehovah, another to 
 Azaael, by the Israelites on Soul-Affliction Day, and 
 the weeping of the women of Northern Palestine for 
 Tammuz,in the olden time, at the autumnal equinox, 
 are all alike reminders or relics of the Sun, Moon 
 Star and Time or Season worship that once prevailed 
 so extensively over the ancient world; a form of 
 worship, however, implying a considerably advanced 
 epoch in the history of human society ; for Astrolo- 
 giswi proper could have formed no element m the reli- 
 gious system of the primitive races of mankind. Among 
 these the mere sense of A Something beyond them- 
 selves, accredited with power to do them good or ill, 
 would seem to have constituted, as it still continues 
 with the Savage to constitute, the ground and the 
 substance of all religious belief and observance. _ 
 
 Particular instructions are given for the fashion 
 and quality of the altar, or altars,— for there were 
 two, one for burnt offerings, another for incense ? 
 
 The sacrificial altar in earlier times was of the 
 simplest possible construction, consisting of nothing 
 more than a heap of earth or a circle of twelve unhewn 
 stones— one for each month of the year— set up on 
 level pround. At a later period it seems to have con- 
 sisted of a grating of brass, resting at the sides on 
 supports, and approached by a number of steps^ 
 
 The Priest's robes are also objects of most minute 
 instructions to Moses ? 
 
 They are so indeed ; he was to speak to such as 
 were " wise-hearted and filled by the Lord with the 
 spirit of wisdom; " and they, with the directions he 
 should give them, were to make a robe and broidered 
 coat, an ephod and girdle, all of gold, and of blue 
 and purple and scarlet fine twined linen, with cunning 
 work ; a cap or mitre for the head ; two chains of 
 pure gold of wreathen work for the neck, hung from 
 two onyx stones on the shoulders, set in gold and 
 engraven with the names of the twelve tribes of 
 
226 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Israel. Besides which there was to be a "Breast- 
 plate of Judgment," — Choschen, — four-square, with 
 four rows of precious stones, three in each row, 
 engraven with the names of the twelve tribes, and 
 attached to the Ephod by means of gold chains ; and 
 another article that has been the subject of much 
 discussion with Bible expositors and commentators, — 
 the " Urim and Thummim." 
 
 What was the Urim and the Thummim ? 
 
 The text says no more than this : — " Thou shalt 
 put in the breast-plate of Judgment the Urim and 
 the Thummim ; and they shall be upon Aaron's heart 
 when he goeth in before Jehovah." 
 
 This would make the Urim and Thummim distinct 
 from the breast-plate of J udgment : — something to 
 be put into or contained within it ? 
 
 It would so according to the rendering of the 
 original usually followed. But the Hebrew may as 
 well be translated put upon as put into. The Urim 
 and Thummim has consequently been thought by 
 competent critics to be nothing more than the com- 
 plete breast-plate under another name — a conclusion 
 which has much to recommend it. By one distin- 
 guished scholar and historical writer, however 
 (Michaelis, Mosaisches Becht), it is believed to have 
 consisted of two or more precious stones, cut as dice, 
 which were used in "asking Jehovah by Lot" — a 
 mode of essaying to look into futurity of which we 
 find such frequent mention in the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 although the lots or means used are nowhere named. 
 The learned Spencer (De Legibus Hsebrasorum 
 Bitualibus, Lib. iii. Diss, vii.), following the LXX., 
 and assuming the words to signify Manifestation and 
 Truth, after a disquisition extending over one hun- 
 dred and ninety-three quarto pages ! opines that the 
 Urim and Thummim were Teraphim or sacred 
 domestic images of the God or Gods ! Great 
 obscurity, therefore, manifestly hangs over the sub- 
 
Exodus : The Urim and Thummim, 227 
 
 ject of the Urim and Thummim. But when we 
 think of the many hands through which the Hebrew 
 Scriptures have passed, the numberless manipulations 
 they have undergone, and the interest later editors 
 had in keeping everything like Idolatry and Sabasism 
 out of sight, we shall not wonder that so little is left 
 us by which we may positively know what the Urim 
 and Thummim signified in itself, or how it was 
 used for purposes of divination, in which, as its 
 designation, Breast-plate of Judgment, implies, it 
 was undoubtedly an important instrument. 
 
 The thing called Urim and Thummim is ordered 
 to be composed of twelve precious stones, which are 
 said to have been — 
 
 A Ruby, a Topaz, a Carbuncle, 
 an Emerald, a Sapphire, and a Diamond ; 
 a Ligure or Cornelian, an Agate, an Amethyst, 
 a Beryl, an Onyx, and a Jasper ? 
 Assuming the stones to be rightly named, the first 
 series of six is seen to consist of such as are of a 
 lustrous or brilliant character ; the second series, like 
 in number, of others that are generally opaque or 
 lustreless. To the first series it must have been that 
 the epithet Urim (Z7r, Or, Light) was applied ; as to 
 the lustreless set of six, it was that the title Thummim 
 was given (Tumas, Sanskrit, Darkness).* Ordered to 
 be engraved with the names of the Twelve Tribes of 
 Israel, the twelve stones upon the High Priest's Chos- 
 chen certainly also typified the twelve signs of the 
 zodiac, which, besides symbolizing the months of the 
 year, were likewise held to be the houses of the planets 
 and of several of the more remarkable among the 
 fixed stars, whose rising and setting marked the 
 seasons. The brilliant stones were doubtless repre- 
 sentatives of the signs when the sun, in the ascendant 
 in the northern hemisphere, was pouring light and 
 
 * Nork, Biblische Mythologie, L 175, note. 
 
228 The Pentateuch. 
 
 life upon the world ; the dark or lustreless stones, 
 again, stood for the inferior signs, when the power of 
 the sun is in abeyance, and darkness, symbolical of 
 night and death, dominates the hour. 
 
 The composition of the Urim and Thummim seems, 
 therefore, to proclaim the astrological or divining 
 nature of the instrument ? 
 
 That it was consulted through the priest as an 
 oracle, and referred to at times in learning the will 
 of Jehovah, is certain. It is to be presumed that 
 the aspect of the heavens and the places therein of 
 the planets and principal fixed stars having been 
 noted at the time action in any contingency was 
 proposed to be taken, the Urim and Thummim was 
 then consulted by the priest in conformity with the 
 rules of the diviner's art, and an answer in affirmation 
 or negation of the purpose in question obtained. 
 
 We have instances in the Hebrew Scriptures in 
 which the Urim and Thummim was used in this 
 way ? 
 
 When Joshua, the son of Nun, was chosen by 
 Moses as his successor, he was set before Eleazar the 
 priest, and the congregation of Israel, and the priest 
 is ordered at all times to " ask counsel for him after 
 the judgment of the Urim before Jehovah" (Numb, 
 xxvii. 21). Saul enquiring of Jehovah on a certain 
 occasion after he had fallen out of favour with 
 Samuel the priest, through non-compliance with his 
 behests, " received no answer, neither by dreams, 
 nor by Urim, nor by the prophets," i.e., the sooth- 
 sayers (1 Sam. xxviii. 6). The Teraphim, or house- 
 hold gods, of which the Ephod was one of the forms 
 most familiar to the chosen people of Jehovah in 
 historical times, appears to have been frequently sub- 
 stituted for the Urim and Thummin : "Bring hither 
 the Ephod," says King David, the man according to 
 God's own heart— by credit and report, to Abiathar 
 the priest, upon a certain occasion; and addressing 
 
Exodus : The Ephod an Idol. 229 
 
 the Idol he says : " 0 Jehovah God, will the men 
 of Keilah deliver me up into his (Saul's) hand?" 
 And Jehovah said : " They will deliver thee up " 
 (1 Sam. xxiii. 9). Another time the same pious and 
 exemplary monarch— according to the Bible and the 
 c ] er gy — sa y S : » Bring me hither the Ephod," and he 
 " enquires of Jehovah, saying, shall I pursue after 
 this troop ? " and is answered : " pursue" (lb. xxx. 
 7). The Urim and the Ephod, or Gilded Image of 
 Jehovah, were therefore used indifferently as means of 
 ascertaining the will and pleasure of their God by 
 the Hebrew people. 
 
 But the children of Israel are always credited with 
 having been worshippers of the one only God, and to 
 have known nothing of idolatry ? 
 
 Let the reader conclude for himself on the above 
 showing what they were in fact, and begin, if by 
 possibility he may, to read the Bible with his eyes 
 unsealed and his reason as his guide. 
 
 Returning to the prescriptions for the priest's 
 robes, a certain part called Ephod, is particularly 
 described ? 
 
 It was to be made in fashion of a habergeon, or 
 cape, having a hole in the upper part for the head to 
 pass through. Its hem, however, was elaborately 
 ornamented with figures of pomegranates of blue, and 
 purple, and scarlet, having gold bells interposed. 
 
 The pomegranate had a particular symbolical sig- 
 nificance in the religious mysteries of the ancient 
 world ? 
 
 It was a special emblem of fertility, and an element 
 in the cult of the Reproductive Principle inherent in 
 Nature, with which, as with Sabeeism, the Hebrew 
 system, when seen with the eyes of the understanding, 
 is found to assimilate in so many particulars. 
 
 The word Ephod has, therefore, two different 
 meanings in the Hebrew scriptures ? 
 
 In one we have seen it applied to the Image of 
 
230 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Jehovah, used by King David as an oracle ; here we 
 find it applied to a part of the priest's robes.^ 
 
 The High Priest was further to have his special 
 title or designation engraved on a plate of gold 
 fastened to the front of his mitre or cap ? 
 
 A title expressed in these solemn and significant 
 words: Holy to Jehovah (Holiness to the Lord, 
 
 Eng. vers.). 
 
 What might this imply ? 
 
 More than appears at first sight. The High Priest 
 
 Aaron— was ''to bear the iniquity of the offerings 
 
 hallowed by the children of Israel in their gifts ;" i.e. 
 Aaron, as High Priest and consecrated to J ehovah, in 
 receiving the offerings of the people at the door of the 
 Sanctuary was presumed to concentrate on himself 
 the essence of their expiatory powers, and in virtue 
 of his office was liable to be called on at any moment 
 to enact the part of substitute and make atonement 
 in his individual person for the sins of the people at 
 large. And we shall find sufficient reason by and by 
 for concluding that Aaron was actually required, at a 
 critical moment in the progress of the Israelites to- 
 wards the Promised Land, to make good the terms of 
 the contract or understanding on which he held his 
 office. 
 
 Aaron's sons, solemnly consecrated as his assistants 
 in the priestly office, and so devoted to Jehovah, are 
 also furnished with clothing according to special 
 patterns ordered by their God ? . 
 
 They are to have coats, breeches to cover their 
 nakedness, caps of a certain fashion, &c. 
 
 Can we, living in this 19th century of the Christian 
 sera, believe that any orders for the clothing of Aaron 
 and his sons ever came from God ? 
 
 The Infinite all-pervading Essence or Spirit con- 
 ceived by us as Cause, and called God, sends man 
 into the world naked enough, but furnished with the 
 senses which induce, and the ingenuity which enables 
 
Exodus : Consecration of Aaron & his Sons. 23 1 
 
 him to clothe himself for decency, for comfort, and 
 even for what he intends as ornament — whence not 
 only the loin-band, and the blanket and skewer, but 
 the embroidered coat, the chignon, and the bustle — 
 all according to patterns he devises for himself; cer- 
 tainly after none devised for him by God. 
 
 The ceremonies by which Aaron and his sons are 
 consecrated to their office are also matters of particular 
 instruction to Moses from Jehovah ? 
 
 Besides anointing with consecrated oil, a bullock 
 and two rams are to be sacrificed before the taberna- 
 cle of the congregation. The fat, kidneys, and caul 
 of the bullock are to be burned on the altar of sacri- 
 fice, but the rest of the carcase is to be consumed with 
 fire outside the camp. The blood, as Jehovah's most 
 peculiar portion, was to be streaked upon the horns 
 of the altar, and poured out about its base. 
 
 And the rams — how were they to be disposed of? 
 
 One of them was to be sacrificed, like the bullock, 
 but the whole carcase was to be burned upon the altar 
 as an offering to Jehovah ; the bullock, doubtless, was 
 seen as too bulky to be conveniently dealt with in 
 this way. The other ram, having been slaughtered, 
 its blood was to be put on the tip of the right ear of 
 Aaron and his sons, on the thumbs of their right 
 hands and the great toes of their right feet severally, 
 their robes being at the same time sprinkled with 
 anointing oil and blood ; and whilst the fat and kid- 
 neys, the rump and right shoulder were burnt on the 
 altar as Jehovah's portion, the rest of the carcase was 
 to be seethed in the holy place, and there eaten by 
 Aaron and his sons. 
 
 This eating of the victims sacrificed in view of the 
 expiation of sin was held to be an indispensable part 
 of the religious rite ? 
 • Without it the act of atonement was not believed 
 to be complete. As the Life had gone to Jehovah in 
 the blood, and certain parts, sublimated by fire, been 
 
232 The Pentateuch. 
 
 presented to him for a sweet savour and for food, so 
 was it by the flesh of the victim, hallowed through 
 Jehovah's acceptance of his share, entering the bodies 
 of the priest and the assembly, that they were pre- 
 sumed to be sanctified and their sins forgiven them. 
 Like other old observances grounded on speculative 
 notions, the custom of offering an imaginary sacrifice, 
 eating the imaginary flesh, drinking the imaginary 
 blood of an imaginary victim, and so obtaining for- 
 giveness of their sins— oftener real than imaginary— 
 is still kept up by communities boasting of the ad- 
 vances they have made in reason and refinement. _ 
 
 Can we in the present age of the world, and with 
 the lights we have through our cultivated under- 
 standing and accumulated knowledge, believe that 
 God ever gave such instructions as we have but just 
 perused— ever ordered the fashion of the priest s 
 garments— ever, as a means of consecration to his 
 service, commanded his ministers to be anointed with 
 spiced oil; to be touched on the tips of their ears, 
 their thumbs, their great toes, and to have their 
 clothes sprinkled with the blood of a sheep ? 
 It is impossible to do so any longer. 
 Or that forgiveness for his sins and shortcomings 
 can be had by man through eating and drinking, 
 were it even the body and blood of the God he 
 worshipped ? . Jf 
 
 Let every man answer this query tor nimsell. It 
 he have not been crippled in his capacity to judge 
 aright by a vicious education, or have not naturally 
 a soft part in his head, he will only be able to answer 
 it in one way. The more advanced among the Jews 
 themselves indeed must, in later times, have come to 
 the conclusion at which all reasonable men, whether 
 Jew or Gentile, have now arrived, when we find one 
 of their more advanced writers addressing them m 
 such words as these :-" For what, 0 man does 
 Jehovah require of thee but to do justly and to love 
 
Exodus: The Sacrifices. 233 
 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God " (Micah 
 
 V1 'Can we, however, suppose that God gives command- 
 ments at one time which he abrogates at another t 
 
 God is the changeless and eternal : the same yester- 
 day, to-day, and for ever. It is man who changes, 
 makes and unmakes, orders and annuls, not knowing 
 his mind from one hour to another. 
 
 What, then, conclude as to these minute command- 
 ments about slaying and burning, anointing with oil 
 and sprinkling with blood, roasting, seething, and 
 eating in the holy place, &c, &c ? 
 
 That very certainly they never came from God ; 
 and that the men who maintain that they do are either 
 possessed of the moral and intellectual obliquity of 
 vision that leads astray, or are chargeable with the 
 blindness that comes of wilfulness. 
 
 Certain ordinances follow concerning the various 
 kinds of sacrifice that were to be offered, and the 
 times and seasons at which particular rites were to be 
 observed? . - 
 
 A bullock is ordered to be offered daily tor a sm 
 offering and for an atonement ; two lambs also, day 
 by day throughout the year, one in the morning, the 
 other in the evening ; these last being presented ap- 
 parently as a kind of daily ration to Jehovah : Anthro- 
 pomorphosing God, man imagined that God must be 
 fed like himself. 
 
 In this case flesh meat required the addition of 
 bread ? 
 
 Which is not forgotten any more than a measure 
 of wine to flavour the repast. Twelve cakes of un- 
 leavened bread baked of wheaten flour, with olive oil, 
 seasoned with salt and spice, were to be duly laid with 
 each recurring Sabbath morn upon the table which 
 Stood beside the altar of sacrifice, the stale cakes 
 being then removed for the use of the priests, whose 
 perquisite they were. 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 There is also a special altar of Incense, the Jewish 
 Jehovah being held to delight in other and to human 
 nostrils sweeter scents than the smell of burning fat, 
 flesh, and blood ? 
 
 This altar, ordered to be overlaid with pure gold, 
 was to stand by the Ark of the Testimony, before the 
 Mercy Seat. On it Aaron was to burn sweet incense 
 every morning when he dressed the lamps, and at even 
 also, when he lighted them; for there it was that 
 Jehovah was to be met with and " give the children 
 of Israel to know that he was Jehovah their God, and 
 that he dwelt among them." 
 
 Are we not to think that God is the God of All the 
 inhabitants of the earth, and that he dwells not here 
 or there, in a tent or tabernacle, seated on the lid of 
 a coffer, but has his habitation in the universe ? 
 
 Our reason and philosophy assure us of so much ; 
 but the children of Israel and their teachers did not 
 think so ; and they who accept their annals as from 
 God are bound in consistency to agree with them ; an 
 obligation, however, with which we see the world 
 feeling it every day more and more difficult to comply. 
 
 " When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel, 
 says the text, then shall every man give a ransom for 
 his soul (life) unto Jehovah, that there be no plague 
 among them." The price to be paid as insurance of 
 their lives against pestilence being ? 
 
 Half a shekel of the sanctuary, the rich giving no 
 more, the poor no less. 
 
 Such an ordinance must surely point to a time when 
 the Israelites were a settled community, not to one 
 when they were wanderers in the wilderness, and at 
 starvation point ? 
 
 No doubt of it ; and the order, now seen in this 
 light by every competent and candid critic, proclaims 
 the relatively modern date not only of the writing, 
 but of the institution of the festival itself ; for neither 
 in Exodus (xxiii. 14), nor in Deuteronomy (xvi.), 
 
Exodus: Temple Furniture. 235 
 
 where the festivals of the year are particularly 
 commanded, do we find any mention made of 
 an atonement festival. It cannot even have been 
 known to Ezekiel (xlv. 18), the festivals of the 
 Seventh month of which he speaks being mere 
 repetitions of those of the First month, and the 
 word Atonement does not occur in his text. The great 
 day of the year to the Jews of Post-Exilic times, con- 
 sequently, was unknown to the Israelites who lived 
 before the Babylonian Captivity. 
 
 Is it reasonable, however, to suppose that man can 
 ransom his life, atone for his sins, or make an offer- 
 ing to God by means of a piece of money ? 
 
 It is most unreasonable to think that he can. Man 
 can approach God in no way save by studying to 
 know and religiously obeying his laws. The money 
 price was a recent tax for the support of the religious 
 establishment of the country : " thou shalt take the 
 atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt 
 appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the 
 congregation." There could obviously be neither 
 numbering nor taxing of a horde wandering in the 
 wilderness, and having no tabernacle of the congrega- 
 tion with numerous attached officials to maintain. 
 
 There were to be lavers of brass for the ministering 
 priests to wash in — furniture most essential, con- 
 sidering the bloody work in which they were habitu- 
 ally engaged. The oil used in anointing or conse- 
 crating was also to be prepared in a particular 
 manner with oil olive, myrrh, and cassia ; it was a 
 holy anointing oil, not to be imitated nor put upon 
 a stranger under penalty of death. The confection 
 for burning on the altar of incense also, composed of 
 sweet spices and frankincense, was to be prepared 
 after the art of the apothecary, and was to be ac- 
 counted holy to Jehovah ; whosoever should make 
 any like it, or who should even " smell thereto," was 
 to be cut off from his people. 
 
236 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Can we, we ask yet again, as reasonable beings, 
 believe that instructions for such trifles as these 
 were ever given by the great God of Nature to 
 mankind ? 
 
 No, no, no ! 
 
 Or that he should threaten death to the man who 
 smelled at a compound of spice and frankincense ? 
 Never ! 
 
 And can the book in which such commandments 
 are propounded as coming from God either be, or by 
 possibility be conceived to contain, the word of his 
 will to man ? 
 
 It is impossible to think that it can, when viewed 
 in connection with the Idea we are now privileged to 
 form of God. All that is said in the book before us 
 on the topics in question is, however, in perfect con- 
 formity with the Idea which the legendary Moses, 
 and generations long after Moses and his age, may 
 be presumed to have entertained of their God, who 
 was in no wise the impartial parent of the universe, 
 but the partial God of the children of Israel ; not the 
 God who makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall 
 on the just and the unjust alike, but a capricious 
 despot who guided the sunbeam and the shower at 
 his arbitrary will and pleasure on those he favoured 
 or had in despite. 
 
 How could the Israelites, so lately slaves to the 
 Egyptians, be supposed to have had among them 
 workmen possessed of skill to prepare the materials 
 and execute the details of the apparatus ordered for 
 use in the worship of their God ? 
 
 We can only conceive them short-handed in this 
 respect ; still Jehovah, according to the text, informs 
 Moses that he had called Bezaleel, the son of XJri, and 
 filled him with the wisdom to contrive cunning works 
 in silver, and gold, and brass, in cutting and setting 
 precious stones, and in carving timber, and had given 
 him Aholiab, of the tribe of Dan, to help him, beside 
 
Exodus : Moses in the Mount. 237 
 
 others, wise-hearted, though unnamed, and filled with 
 the wisdom necessary to make all as commanded. 
 
 It is somewbat difficult, nevertheless, to imagine 
 gold- and silver-smiths, lapidaries and engravers in 
 jasper and calcedony, carvers, gilders, weavers, up- 
 holsterers, and the like, at work in the midst of a 
 starving multitude of fugitives from slavery, locked 
 in by a howling wilderness, and in want of the merest 
 necessaries of life ? 
 
 It is certainly difficult to think of arts that only 
 belong to settled and peaceful communities being 
 carried on under such circumstances. 
 
 Whence we conclude ? 
 
 That all these instructions are the work of rela- 
 tively modern times, and that so much of the Penta- 
 teuch as embodies them, as it cannot be from Moses, 
 so neither can it be from any document derived from 
 his age. The writer lived after the age of Solomon 
 and had the temple as a model from which he drew, 
 and the skilled Phoenician artizans who built and 
 ornamented it — Hirom of Tyre and his assistants, as 
 types of Bezaleel, the son of Uri, and Aholiab of the 
 tribe of Dan. Even in times when the Chaldeans 
 and Assyrians were policied peoples — astronomers, 
 artizans, &c, and using engraved cylinders as seals 
 in their dealings with one another, the intaglio of the 
 cylinder is not cut by the lapidary's wheel of later 
 days, but by scratching with some point harder than 
 jasper or cornelian.* 
 
 Moses must have been some considerable time 
 away whilst receiving all the minute instructions 
 said to have been given him by Jehovah on the 
 mountain ? 
 
 He was absent, according to the record, for forty 
 days and forty nights, and is said neither to have 
 eaten bread nor drunk water during all that time — 
 
 * See Landseer, ' Sabsean Researches.' 
 
 S 
 
238 The Pentateuch. 
 
 a statement sufficient of itself to stamp the entire 
 narrative as mythical ; for as by God's eternal fiat 
 man must eat and drink that he may live, so fasting 
 from solid and liquid food cannot be continued for 
 more than a very few days without serious derange- 
 ment to the health, and, if persisted in for any much 
 longer term, without death ensuing as the penalty. 
 
 A very notable incident occurs during the absence 
 of Moses in the Mount ? 
 
 The people come to Aaron and say : Up ! make us 
 Gods to go before us ; for as for this Moses who brought 
 us out of the land of Egypt we wot not what has 
 become of him. 
 
 Is this a style of address likely to have been made 
 to Aaron the Priest, the brother of Moses, the leader 
 of the people ? , 
 A late writer might be supposed to speak in such 
 terms— more respectfully couched, however, —for the 
 information of his public ; but the people about Aaron 
 could scarcely have thought it necessary to remind 
 him that it was Moses who had brought them out of 
 Egypt ; and they could not but have known that 
 their leader was up in the mountain, in conference 
 with Jehovah. , 
 Aaron, however, remonstrates with the tooiisn 
 people, and bids them think of all the wonders done 
 for them by Jehovah, who still dwelt amid the cloud 
 which only hid Moses from their sight upon the 
 mountain ? 
 
 He does nothing of the sort ; assenting at once to 
 the reasonableness of their clamour apparently, and 
 familiar, as it might seem, with the worship of God 
 under the figure of a Bull, he bids them bring him 
 the rings of their wives and of their sons and 
 daughters ; and having made a molten calf of the 
 gold, and fashioned it with a graving tool, he presents 
 it to the people as the God who had brought them 
 out of their Egyptian bondage ! He does even more 
 
Exodus : The Golden Calf. 239 
 
 than this ; he builds an altar before the Image of 
 the Bull-calf he has fashioned, and makes procla- 
 mation for the morrow of a feast " to the Lord! " 
 
 This is most extraordinary — altogether incom- 
 prehensible and incredible ! Would the man who 
 had witnessed and even taken an active part in the 
 performance of the extraordinary wonders said to have 
 been wrought in Eg}^pt, and who could not but have 
 felt assured of the continuing countenance of Jehovah, 
 have acted as Aaron is now reported to have done ? 
 
 It is impossible to believe that he would. 
 
 Would a brave man, a truly pious man, who put 
 his trust in God through simple natural instinct, have 
 done anything of the kind ? 
 
 He would have suffered himself to be torn in pieces 
 by the rabid multitude first. 
 
 What then conclude concerning the tale of the 
 golden calf? 
 
 Either that it is a fabrication, contrived for a 
 purpose which the writer has in view, or that Aaron 
 is inadvertently allowed to appear as he probably was 
 in fact — no priest of Jehovah, the spiritual conception 
 of the late writer of the Pentateuch, but the minister 
 of the God — El, Baal, Chiun, or Chamos, the true 
 deity of the ancient Hebrew and other cognate Semitic 
 tribes — the God of Times and Seasons and Repro- 
 duction ; the God who ceaselessly begetting ceaselessly 
 devours his offspring, and whose visible image in 
 the early ages of the world struggling from darkness 
 into light was the Stone, the Tree, the Serpent, the 
 Bull, and the universally recognised symbol of the 
 reproductive power inherent in nature — the Phallus. 
 The mythical Aaron, we must conclude, either pre- 
 sented the people with the image of the God with 
 whose worship they were already familiar ; or the 
 late writer whose work we have before us — one of 
 the Jehovistic Reformers, a priest of Judah, and 
 living in or after the reign of Hezekiah — may have 
 
240 The Pentateuch. 
 
 invented the tale of the Golden Calf of the Wilder- 
 ness for the purpose of proclaiming how abhorrent to 
 Jehovah, the God of the Jews, was the Calf worship 
 established by Jeroboam as the religion of his realm 
 of Israel, which he had rent from the kingdom of 
 
 Judah. __. . . , 
 
 The people are well content with the Idol which 
 Aaron has provided, and the feast he has promised ? 
 
 They rise up early in the morning,_ and having 
 made burnt and peace offerings to their Calf-God, 
 they sit down to eat and to drink, give themselves 
 np to merriment and the rites hallowed m the 
 worship of the Nature-God, upon the particular 
 character of which it is not necessary to speak 
 more at large in this place. 
 
 What, according to the text, says Jehovah to 
 Moses on the Mount, whilst all this is going on 
 below ^ 
 
 "Get thee down," says he, "for the people have 
 corrupted themselves ; they have turned aside quickly 
 out of the way I commanded them ; they have made 
 them a golden calf, and have worshipped it, and made 
 offerings to it, and said : This is thy God, O Israel, 
 which has brought thee out of the land of Egypt ! 
 
 It is Aaron the priest, however, who has just said 
 so ; but what more ? 
 
 " Behold, this is a stiff-necked people ; now, there- 
 fore, let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against 
 them and that I may consume them." 
 
 Jehovah would, apparently, have Moses restrain 
 him from breaking out upon the people and con- 
 suming them. What answer does Moses make ? 
 
 He beseeches Jehovah, and asks him why he should 
 be wroth with the people and give the Egyptians 
 occasion to say :-He brought them out for mischief, 
 to slav them in the mountain and consume them trom 
 the face of the earth. " Turn from thy fierce wrath 
 he continues, " and repent of this evil against thy 
 
Exodus : Moses and the Golden Calf. 241 
 
 people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to 
 whom thou swearedst by thine own self and saidst, X 
 will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and this 
 land I have spoken of I will give to your seed to 
 inherit it for ever." 
 
 What reply is the Jewish writer's Jehovah— gene- 
 rally accepted by Christians as the Omnipotent 
 Creator of the Universe — made to give to this friendly 
 remonstrance and reminder of the man Moses ? 
 
 It certainly is not the God of Philosophy and 
 Enlightened Piety who replies ; it is the redactor of 
 this Hebrew legend who speaks when he makes his 
 God say that he "repents of the evil he thought to 
 do to his people;" for God is not a man that he 
 should repent, as a later and more advanced writer in 
 the same heterogeneous collection of books and frag- 
 ments of books has said of the Deity whom he, in 
 better days, conceived. 
 
 Moses comes down from the mountain with the two 
 tables of the law in his hand, the writing, we are in- 
 formed, being on both sides, and the handy work of 
 God himself. Coming near he hears shouting and 
 uproar in the camp, which Joshua, who seems now to 
 have joined him — although we have heard nothing of 
 this before — mistakes for sounds of discord or war, 
 but which Moses, with a truer ear and the intelligence 
 he had from Jehovah, interprets as no sounds of strife 
 but of mirth and rejoicing. Reaching the camp, he 
 sees the Calf and the dancing ; his anger is roused, 
 and in his passion he casts the tables out of his hand 
 and breaks them in pieces beneath the mount. 
 
 This last act was surely unbecoming in a great leader, 
 as showing a lack of self-control, although his anger 
 was natural enough. What does he with the Calf? 
 
 That, it is said, he burns in the fire, grinds to 
 powder, strews it on water which he makes the 
 people drink, and so compels them to swallow the 
 God that Aaron had made for them. 
 
24 2 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Can Gold be burned into ashes in the fire, and 
 strewed on water so that it may be drunk ? 
 
 Gold is unchangeable in any heat short of that 
 which is centred in the electric spark, by which, if in 
 leaf, it is dissipated in vapour. Gold, however, may 
 be beaten out into leaves and then broken up into 
 particles so fine as to be diffusible through liquids ; 
 but it cannot be reduced to powder by burning in a 
 furnace ; neither, indeed, can it be melted and cast 
 into an image of any description save with means and 
 appliances such as Aaron could not have commanded 
 in the wilderness. 
 
 So much at least of the story must, therefore, be a 
 product of the writer's imagination ; even as must 
 the information he gives, whereby we learn that the 
 tables which Moses brake in his vexation were written 
 on this side and on that by the finger of God himself, 
 a fact— if by possibility it could have been a fact, and 
 as involving an absurdity we unhesitatingly declare 
 it could be none, the Supreme Cause not having 
 fingers like a man — which the narrator could by no 
 possibility have known ? 
 
 So much presents itself as certain to the unpreju- 
 diced mind. 
 
 Moses will, of course, be wroth with Aaron his 
 brother for what he has done ? 
 
 So we should have expected ; but there is little 
 show of anger in the remonstrance he makes. 
 "What," -says he, in the mildest terms imaginable, 
 where the most severe would have been so much in 
 place, " did this people unto thee that thou hast 
 brought this great sin upon them ? " A question to 
 which Aaron can find no better reply than by begging 
 my Lord, his brother, not to be angry with him, repeat- 
 ing the particulars of his reprehensible act, and declar- 
 ing that, having cast the gold given him by the people 
 into the fire "there came out this calf;" a miracu- 
 lous image, therefore, that fell out of the fire, like 
 
Exodus : Slaughter of the People. 243 
 
 those we read of in Greek and Roman legends which 
 fell from heaven ! After this the subject is dropped 
 in so far as Aaron, the chief offender, is concerned 
 
 But not as regards the ignorant people who, by 
 their doings, have roused the anger of Jehovah, and 
 the still more significant wrath of their leader P 
 
 No, truly ! For Moses seeing that the people were 
 naked—" Aaron having," as it is said, "made them 
 naked to their shame "—scant clothing or nothing on 
 being the proper costume in the religious orgies of 
 the earlier ages of the world— he takes his stand m 
 the gate of the camp and says : " Who is on J ehovah s 
 side, let him come unto me ; when all the sons of Levi 
 gathered themselves to him." 
 
 What order is given them in the name of Jehovah, 
 the God of Israel ? 
 
 A very terrible order indeed ! " Put every man 
 his sword by his side," says he, " and go in and out 
 from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay 
 every man his brother, and every man his companion, 
 and every man his neighbour." 
 
 What! in spite of his having persuaded Jehovah, 
 to repent of the evil he had intended against his 
 people ? 
 
 So it appears by the report, which, though we may 
 cling to the hope that it never had any foundation in 
 fact, is nevertheless not entirely out of keeping with 
 other horrible practices of barbarous man— the custom 
 of the West Coast of Africa at the present time for 
 example. " On that day it is said there fell of the 
 people three thousand men ! for Moses had said : 
 4 Consecrate yourselves to-day to Jehovah, even 
 every man upon his son and upon his brother, that 
 he may bestow a blessing upon you this day ! ! ! ' " 
 
 And there are men with open eyes and accessible 
 understandings among us who still maintain that 
 human sacrifices were not only never offered to their 
 God by the early Hebrews, but that they were even 
 
244 
 
 The Pentateuch, 
 
 abhorrent to the old Jewish mind ; that the firstborn 
 of the sons and daughters of Israel were at all times 
 redeemable by presentation at the Tabernacle to the 
 priest and payment of the petty sum of five silver 
 shekels of the sanctuary ? 
 
 Many men whose soundness of understanding, 
 scholarly acquirements, critical acumen and candour 
 can be implicitly relied on in all other directions, 
 halt in this one, and become false to themselves and 
 tbe great task they undertake of bringing light and 
 proclaiming the truth. And how shall we, living 
 near the end of this nineteenth century since Jesus 
 of Nazareth, our brother, and Epictetus, and Anto- 
 ninus, and Seneca, and Marcus Tullius, and so many 
 others spoke their words of reason and of love and 
 mercy to the world, imagine that God could ever 
 have ordered the men who lived in any age to conse- 
 crate themselves and earn Ms blessing by the wholesale 
 murder of naked, defenceless men, their sons, their 
 brothers, their neighbours, and their friends ; or how 
 continue to receive the record of such atrocities as 
 the revealed word of God ? 
 
 How, indeed ! But such stories begin at length 
 to be questioned even by the many; the few — the 
 really educated, the well informed, the rational, the 
 merciful — have long rejected them as blasphemies, if 
 there be any such ! against every conception which 
 reasonable man can form of the Supreme Not our- 
 selves of a pious writer of the present day, by us 
 called shortly God. 
 
 What have we in the way of assurance that the 
 tale of this massacre cannot be founded on fact — 
 cannot be true ? 
 
 The certainty that the Levites did not exist as a 
 priestly caste— and the priestly character is implied 
 in the sacrificial part they are here made to enact — 
 in the age of Moses. Though pains are taken by 
 the late writers and editors of the Pentateuch to refer 
 
Exodus : Moses remonstrates with Jehovah. 245 
 
 the connection of the Levites with sacred matters to 
 the age of Moses, the Levitical Priesthood is satis- 
 factorily ascertained to have been a relatively modern 
 institution — certainly not to have existed until after 
 the age of Solomon. 
 
 God, therefore, we must believe, never gave orders 
 to Moses of the kind detailed ? 
 
 God speaks not and never spoke in human speech 
 to man. We know not what amount of barbarity 
 had place in the mind of the mythical Moses, but an 
 order to slay ignorant men for yielding to the blind 
 instincts of their nature and conforming to the usages 
 of their forefathers very certainly never came from 
 God. 
 
 What does Moses now ? 
 
 He tells the people that they had sinned a great 
 sin, and full sorely have they been made to know and 
 to pay for it ; but he adds that he will now go up to 
 Jehovah and peradventure make atonement for their 
 sin— speaking as if none had already been made 
 through the three thousand lives sacrificed by his 
 own orders ! 
 
 What says Moses to Jehovah ? 
 
 Oh ! this people have sinned a great sin and made 
 them gods of gold ; yet now, if thou wilt forgive 
 their sin [and here there seems to be a gap in the 
 narrative, the terms Moses would make for the sin- 
 ners being wanting], and if not, blot me, I pray thee, 
 out of thy book which thou hast written. 
 
 What answer does he receive ? 
 
 " Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I 
 blot out of my book," is the curt reply. 
 
 This surely cannot be the God whom men in the 
 present day conceive and speak of as the loving father 
 of all, ready to forgive the sin of whosoever repents 
 and amends his ways ? 
 
 Certainly not ; he is the God of a still earlier age 
 of the world even than that of the Jehovistic writer 
 
 t 
 
246 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 whose work we have before us,— a God delighting in 
 blood-stained altars, best pleased of all with human 
 sacrifices, requiring the first-born of man and beast 
 as burnt-offerings to himself, having his preferences 
 and partialities, commanding the extermination of 
 the peaceful and less powerful inhabitants (rf lands 
 no longer in his gift, and making lavish promises of 
 dominion, never attained, to a horde of barbarians 
 arrogating to themselves the title of his peculiar 
 people. 
 
 Jehovah, too, is represented as keeping a sort of 
 debtor and creditor account against mankind, after 
 the manner of things on earth ; but we find no notice 
 of the unwarranted use that had just been made of 
 his name, and of the slaughter of the three thousand 
 defenceless men in defiance of his own resolution, on 
 remonstrance made to him, to abstain from the evil 
 he had purposed against his people. Moses' order to 
 the murderous Levites, however, was surely a crime 
 of a far deeper dye than the people's sin — admitting 
 for a moment that the worship of their God under 
 the form of the Bull was a sin rather than an act of 
 ignorance, harmless in itself, sanctioned by the high 
 priest, and in conformity with immemorial usage 
 among themselves ? 
 
 There is no mention of anything of the kind ; 
 neither is Moses taken to task for having himself 
 presumed to order the act of vengeance from which 
 he had diverted his God. He is merely commanded 
 to lead on towards the promised land. Jehovah, 
 however, still angry ! with his people, will not accom- 
 pany them in person as usual ; he will not trust him- 
 self among them, " lest he break forth on them and 
 consume them by the way ;" he will only send his 
 angel with the host in his stead. 
 
 This cannot surely be any likeness of the one God, 
 ruler of heaven and earth, with the conception of 
 whom the Jews are generally credited ? 
 
Exodus : Jehovah plagues the People. 247 
 
 It is much rather the portrait of an irascible mortal 
 not over-much possessed of self-control. It certainly 
 has nothing in common with the Idea of the Infinite, 
 Ubiquitous & Cause, which men of culture now appre- 
 hend under the name of God. 
 
 Though represented as not healing out on the 
 people at once, and consuming them on the spot, the 
 Jehovah of the writer, we soon find, does not really 
 forego his purpose of revenge ; he does not truly 
 "keep his word to Moses, and " repent of the evil he 
 had purposed against his people ;" he rather, as it 
 appears, abides by his resolution to blot them out of 
 his book ; for in striking contrast with his merciful 
 purpose as previously announced, he now assures 
 Moses that " the sins of the people shall be visited 
 upon them." And the threat is not idle ; for even as 
 if nothing had already been done in the way of expia- 
 tion or amends by the slaughter of the three thousand, 
 Jehovah, we now learn, visits the people with a 
 plague " because of the Calf which Aaron made." 
 
 Do not the poor people appear to us in these 
 days rather to have needed instruction than merited 
 plaguing for yielding to the error of their age and 
 worshipping, under the form of a Calf or Bull, the 
 unknown Something beyond themselves which their 
 intuitive nature led them to divine, but which the 
 knowledge of their age did not permit them to con- 
 ceive aright ? 
 
 As simply compassionate and considerate men we 
 should assuredly say so. And there is indeed excuse 
 as ample for the efforts of early man by personification 
 to obtain something like a definite conception of his 
 Deity as there is now nothing to be said for those 
 who still insist on speaking of God as a Person. 
 Modern theologians do, in fact, fall into the same 
 error as the ancient Hebrews when they speak of a 
 personal God ; for a Person is an Entity among other 
 entities, limited in space, having length, breadth, 
 
248 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 and thickness,— in other words, having a Form 
 of some sort. But figure God as he may, and in 
 the noblest fashion he can imagine, man's Image of 
 God must still be as far from having any similitude to 
 the Supreme as was the golden Calf of the idolatrous 
 Israelites. 
 
 Referring to the later history of the Jewish people 
 — the split that took place between the kingdoms of 
 Judah and Israel, their mutual jealousies, animosities, 
 disastrous wars, and the coarsely expressed hostility 
 of the Jehovistic religious party of Jerusalem to the 
 worship of any other than the conception of Deity 
 under the name of Jehovah, to which the leading 
 minds among them had attained, — may we not infer 
 a motive for the invention of such a story as that of 
 the Golden Calf and the slaughter that followed its 
 worship ? 
 
 The tale may almost certainly be said to have been 
 composed after the reign of Solomon, its purpose 
 being as certainly to show the terrible consequences 
 that followed the desertion of Jehovah, the God of 
 Judah, for such Gods as Jeroboam, King of Israel, set 
 up for his subjects in Sechem and Dan.* 
 
 Jehovah, then, all in renewing his promises of 
 giving the people possession of the land flowing with 
 milk and honey, having driven out its present occu- 
 pants the Amorites, Hivites, Hittites, and others 
 from before them, will not trust himself to go in their 
 midst as heretofore, lest enraged by their perversity 
 and stiff-neckedness he break out and consume them 
 by the way — how does Moses proceed ? 
 
 He pitches the Tabernacle without the camp, and 
 whilst all the people stand at their tent doors, he him- 
 self enters the structure, and it comes to pass, says 
 the text, that the cloudy pillar descends and stands 
 
 * See Bernstein : ' On the Origin of the Legends of Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob,' one of Mr Scott's series of papers, of 
 great interest. 
 
Exodus : Moses and Jehovah. 249 
 
 at the Tabernacle door. "And Jehovah talked with 
 Moses," speaking to him "face to face as a man 
 speaketh unto his friend." 
 
 How could so vast a multitude as the Israelites are 
 said to have been, have stood at their tent doors 
 within sight of the Tabernacle, and seen Moses enter 
 it to have a colloquy with Jehovah ? 
 
 How, indeed, seeing that they were millions in 
 number. But have we the matter of the conversation ? 
 
 We have— from the writer, understood. Moses 
 entreats Jehovah not to desert them, and reminds 
 him (!) that the people are his people. " Is it not in 
 that thou goest with us that it shall be known that 
 I and thy people have found grace in thy sight, and 
 so are separated from all the people that are on the 
 face of the earth ? " 
 
 Does Jehovah yield to the remonstrance of the 
 man ? 
 
 He does. The foolish mortal whose words we have 
 here, presuming to speak in the name of his God, pro- 
 ceeds : "I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken ; 
 for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee 
 byname." 
 
 Moses, presuming apparently on this compliant 
 mood of bis God, makes another request as a kind 
 of personal favour : " I beseech thee," he says, " show 
 me thy glory." To which Jehovah, according to the 
 text, replies : " I will make all my goodness pass before 
 thee; I will proclaim the name of Jehovah before 
 thee, and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, 
 and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy ;" 
 but " thou canst not see my face; for there shall no 
 man see me and live. Behold there is a place by 
 me ; thou shalt stand upon a rock ; and it shall come 
 to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put 
 thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with 
 my hand while I pass by ; and I will take away my 
 hand, and thou shalt see' my back parts." 
 
250 The Pentateuch, 
 
 All this is worse than childish— it is absurd— alto- 
 gether unworthy even to have been imagined, much 
 more to have been reduced to terms by man gifted 
 with reason. How shall the Omnipresent God, im- 
 manent in the yet farther than the farthest of the fixed 
 stars plunged in the depths of endless space as in 
 the point therein that is filled by the mote on which 
 we dwell, be conceived of as shrunk to the limits of 
 a person, communing in human speech witli an in- 
 quisitive man as with his fellow, and showing him his 
 back parts ? God, let us be well assured, hides not 
 his face, though it have no feature in common with 
 the face of man, from him who reverently seeks to 
 know and to hold communion with him. In the uni- 
 verse of things is God ever to be clearly seen, and in 
 the changeless laws by which the wondrous fabric is 
 upheld are his power and his providence ceaselessly 
 made known. Perusing these man dies not, but rises 
 ever into newness of life. 
 
 Have we not something analogous to this tale o£ 
 Moses' curiosity in wishing to see the face of Jehovah 
 in what is called the heathen to distinguish it from the 
 Hebrew mythology ? 
 
 We have. Hercules, urgent with Jupiter to bet 
 allowed to see his face, is long denied by the Father 
 of Gods and men. But, yielding at length, Jove slays 
 a Ram, wraps himself in the fleece, puts the head of 
 the animal over his own as a mask, and so meets the 
 Hero. Whilst it is extremely difficult to connect a 
 meaning with the Hebrew myth, it is not difficult to 
 read the mystery involved in the one we have from 
 the Greeks. Herakles, the Sun, in his annual course 
 through the Zodiac, is eager to arrive at the vernal 
 equinox, whose sign in the olden days was the Ram, 
 when, emerging from the inferior to the superior 
 signs, he escapes from his wintery impotence to his 
 summer power — from seeming death to renovated 
 life. This old astrological myth, the later Jewish 
 
Exodus : Jehovah and Moses, 251 
 
 writer, without understanding its meaning, lias in all 
 probability transferred to bis pages, but so travestied 
 as to leave it without the symbolical and poetical 
 significance it had in its original shape. 
 
 After his interview with Jehovah in the Tabernacle 
 and the vision he has whilst ensconced in the cleft of 
 the rock, Moses receives fresh instructions ? 
 
 He is commanded to hew two tables of stone like 
 the first, on which, says Jehovah, " I will write 
 the words that were in the first tables which thou 
 breakedst ; and be ready in the morning and come up 
 unto Mount Sinai ? " 
 
 Moses does as he is commanded ? 
 
 With the two tables of stone in his hand he ascends 
 the mountain, and Jehovah, on his part, descends in a 
 cloud and proclaims himself as " Jahveh-Elohim, mer- 
 ciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in 
 goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, 
 forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that 
 will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity 
 of the fathers upon the children and upon the chil- 
 dren's children unto the third and fourth genera- 
 tion." 
 
 The former and the latter clauses of this communi- 
 cation do not very well agree ? 
 
 Certainly they do not , and herein we have fresh 
 assurance of the composite character of the text — 
 evidence of the manipulation it has undergone and 
 of the additions that have been made to it at different 
 times. The merciful idea of one, and he, we may 
 presume, the later writer, is utterly opposed to tho 
 revengeful and merciless conception of the other and, 
 let us believe, the older hand. God the absolute, had 
 he ever spoken — and we venture to say again that 
 God never did speak in articulate sounds to man — 
 could not in one breath have so mixed up mercy with 
 far-reaching vengeance. We know the world is so 
 constituted that all things with their being have in- 
 
2 £2 The Pentateuch. 
 
 herent aptitudes which fit them for their states ; and 
 it is in the exercise of these that sentient beings enjoy 
 their lives, and that what is called the goodness of 
 God finds its expression ; as, on the other hand, it is 
 in contravention of the laws of Nature, which are the 
 laws of God, that they bring down pains and penalties 
 on themselves, and that that which must be held to 
 be the righteous justice— never to be spoken of as the 
 vengeance— of God is displayed. 
 
 God does not surely visit the sins of the fathers on 
 their children ? . ■ 
 
 Never, in the sense in which the statement m the 
 text is made and is meant to be understood. In con- 
 formity with the laws of hereditary descent, however, 
 the children of vicious and immoral parents, as well 
 as of those who have injured their health by indul- 
 gence and excess of any kind, are apt to be vicious 
 and immoral, sickly and short-lived. 
 
 Jehovah renews the covenant he has already made 
 at several times with Moses and the patriarchs, and 
 declares his purpose of doing marvels such as have 
 not been done in the earth before. He will drive out 
 the inhabitants of the land to which he is leading his 
 people, and they, on their part, are to destroy the 
 altars of the natives, to break in pieces their images, 
 and cut down their groves [Aschera— wooden pillars, 
 typical of Astarte]. They are to worship no God 
 other than Jehovah, " for Jehovah, whose name is 
 Jealous, is a jealous God ;" to make no covenant with 
 the inhabitants of the land ; to make no sacrifices to 
 their gods ; not to take of their daughters as wives or 
 concubines for their sons ; to make no molten gods ; 
 to keep the feast of unleavened bread ; and much 
 besides, though it is mostly repetition of what has 
 gone before, even to the seething of the kid in its 
 mother's milk ; the injunction as regards the first- 
 born of man and beast being here accompanied by 
 the interpolated clause authorising its redemption, m 
 
Exodus: Moses and Diony sos. 253 
 
 contravention of the positive order elsewhere imple- 
 mented, that it was Jehovah's unconditionally, and 
 that whatsoever was cherem or devoted to Jehovah 
 "was^surely to be put to death." How long does Moses 
 remain in the mountain on this second visit ? 
 
 Forty days and forty nights, of course, forty being 
 the sacred number ; and under the same impossible 
 conditions as before, without meat or drink during 
 all that time. 
 
 There is something remarkable about Moses when 
 he comes down from the mountain ? 
 
 "The skin of his face shone," it is said, " though 
 he wist it not." The people being afraid to come 
 near him, he puts on a veil whilst speaking with 
 them, which he only removes when he goes in to 
 commune with Jehovah. 
 
 What may be the meaning of this ? 
 It were hard to say, unless it be that Moses is 
 occasionally made to take the place of his God, as he 
 certainly at times shows himself the more placable 
 and considerate of the two,— than which nothing can 
 be conceived more absurd ; or it may be that, coming 
 from the great presence in which he is said to have 
 stood, he is represented as shedding physical as well 
 as metaphysical light ; whence the shining of his face 
 and the need of the veil ; hence, too, the horns, typical 
 of rays of light, with which the sculptor and painter 
 have felt themselves authorised to ornament his brow. 
 
 These extraordinary particulars appear to turn 
 Moses into a wholly mythical personage ? 
 
 Assimilating him as they do in so remarkable a 
 manner with the Dionysos, or Bacchus, of the Pagan 
 Mythology. He, as well as Moses, is born in Egypt, 
 and the birth of each is concealed for a time, to 
 escape the hostility of a royal personage. Both'are 
 exposed in an ark or cradle on the Nile, and are alike 
 rescued by a king's daughter. Both lead a host to 
 victory— Dionysos in India, Moses in Palestine— 
 
2J4 The Pentateuch. 
 
 wit h a rout of women and chfldren j among them 
 
 Both walk dryshod through seas , an 
 
 part at the word of .<; omma f nd 3, a f m b ° rod. Both 
 
 other than Osiris and Tisitnes i.e d ^ 
 
 name of Sirius, the star whose heliacal rising g 
 
Exodus : Legislation. 
 
 many other injunctions, some momentous, many in- 
 different, but all alike left out of the Eclectic Sum- 
 mary under the Ten heads which we presume we 
 owe to the more practised and much later writer of 
 the Twentieth Chapter. Among the number of these 
 additional commandments is the order to keep the 
 feasts of unleavened bread and of weeks, of first- 
 fruits and the in-gathering of the year's increase 
 at the year's end ; to appear thrice in the year before 
 Jahveh-Elohim, the Elohim (God) of Israel; not to 
 offer the blood of his sacrifices with leaven ; to leave 
 nothing of the feast of the passover until the morn- 
 ing; and not to seethe a kid in its mother's milk— a 
 procedure that must have had a significance to the 
 Israelites which we fail to discover. 
 
 Besides these, there is the important reminder that 
 all that opens the womb, whether of man or beast, ox 
 or sheep, that is a male, is Jehovah's ; the firstling of 
 an ass, however, being ordered exceptionally either to 
 be redeemed [with a lamb or to be put to death by 
 having his neck broken. What Jehovah's objection 
 to receive the firstling of the ass may have been we 
 do not learn from the Hebrew scriptures. From 
 other sources of information, however, we know that 
 the ass was one of the animals sacred to the Egyptian 
 Typhon, the God in his adverse aspect ; and that the 
 mode of sacrifice of the animal to him was that pre- 
 cisely which is commanded in the Hebrew text,— it 
 was thrown down from a height, and so killed or had 
 its neck broken. The first-born son of the human 
 kind, is now ordered to be redeemed, and none are 
 to appear before Jehovah empty. 
 
 The redemption clauses, where they occur, we have 
 already seen reason to conclude, must have been 
 added subsequently to the original requisition for the 
 first-born ? 
 
 When we observe that the text in several other 
 places has nothing about redemption, that this is in 
 
256 
 
 The Pentateuch, 
 
 direct contradiction to antecedent positive require- 
 ments, and that denunciations against the practice at 
 child-sacrifice are of frequent occurrence in the writings 
 of the later prophets,* we shall find no reason to doubt 
 that inasmuch as the first-born of man, being males, 
 are now ordered to be redeemed, so were they m 
 former times, and as the rule, sacrificed on the altar 
 of El, Bel or Baal-Molech, the proper God ot the 
 early Hebrew people and 110 other than Saturn, the 
 chief God of the Semitic race. 
 
 So much for the Book of the Exodus ; all that fol- 
 lows after the thirty-fifth chapter, to which we have 
 now arrived, containing little or nothing but repe- 
 titions of what has been already minutely set torth m 
 the chapters from the twenty-first to the thirty-fourth 
 
 inclusive. % „ , , - 
 
 The whole of this concluding part of the Book has 
 been held by two esteemed Jewish critics and scholars 
 to be the composition of a writer who lived not earlier 
 than from the 270th to the 260th year before the 
 Christian sera.f The text of these chapters, how- 
 ever, being referred by Kuehnen to the Book ot the 
 Origins, and given by Dr Davidson to the Elohist, 
 may, possibly, be as old as the earlier portions 
 of the Book which treat of the same matters. 
 But questions of age and authorship do not greatly, 
 and at every turn, interest us here, engaged as we 
 chiefly are with the moral aspects of the subject, and 
 * To quote a single instance from the Prophets : -They 
 built the high places in Tophet, in the valley of the > son of 
 Hinnom. to burn their sons and their daughters jui the fire 
 rjerem Vii 31.) The restriction of the sacrifice to males 
 appeal even to have been a late addition. All that opened 
 Te matrix, whether male or female, was doubtless the original 
 
 f TseeKalisch, < Hist, and Crit. Comment, on the Old Testa- 
 ment : Exodus 'and Leviticus;' and Popper 'Die bibhsche 
 Bericht iiber die Stiftshiitte.' 8vo. Leipz. 1862. 
 
Exodus: Composition of the Book, 257 
 
 the possibility of receiving it as the veritable word of 
 God to man. That Exodus comprises some of the most 
 ancient records of the Hebrew myths and legislative 
 enactments that have reached us, is unquestionable. 
 Down to the thirty-fifth chapter it is, in the main, very 
 certainly older than every part of the Book of Genesis, 
 and has been presumed to have been compiled and put 
 together about the beginning of the seventh century 
 before Christ — a thousand years after the age of Moses, 
 but both added to and altered in still more recent 
 times. How can we, in truth, as reasonable men, 
 imagine Moses surrounded by the Israelites in the 
 desert calling to him Bezaleel and Aholiab, and others, 
 cunning workers in gold and silver and precious 
 stones, weavers, dyers, embroiderers, tanners, with 
 a host of artificers besides, and setting them to 
 carry out the minute instructions he is said to 
 have received from Jehovah for making the Tent 
 or Tabernacle, the Ark of the Testimony, the Altars 
 of burnt offering and Incense, the Table of the Show- 
 bread, &c, &c, — the surfaces of these last being 
 ordered to be overlaid with pure gold (when they are 
 not to be wholly composed of this precious metal), 
 the cherubim all of beaten gold, the seven-light lamp- 
 stand with its knobs, branches, lamps, snuffers and 
 snuffer dishes, all also of pure gold ; the hangings of 
 fine twined linen — scarlet, purple, and blue — inter- 
 laced with gold, fastened to pillars having chapiters 
 overlaid with silver by means of hooks of the same 
 precious and, in the olden time, little known metal, 
 &c, &c, — as we find matters set forth with wearisome 
 prolixity and iteration in this concluding part of the 
 book of Exodus ? 
 
 It is not possible to do so. The people, according 
 to the record, were only kept from starving by mira- 
 culous showers of manna (which we feel certain never 
 fell from heaven, though it may then have been, as it 
 still is, scantily produced at a particular season by 
 
2 j8 The Pentateuch, 
 
 the thorny mimosa that lives a dwarfed existence in 
 many parts of the desert), and flights of quails, which 
 still arrive in Egypt, Palestine, and other landsat 
 certain times of the year. How could a community 
 so circumstanced have had the apparatus— furnaces, 
 crucibles, moulds, lathes, looms, saws, planes, dye- 
 stuffs, tan-pits, and the hundred other implements 
 and appliances indispensable to workers in wood, 
 metal, and precious stones, in wool, flax, and leather ? 
 The Israelites were never mechanics or mechanicians. 
 So late as the age of Saul they had not a blacksmith 
 among them, but sent their ploughshares and coulters 
 to their neighbours, the Philistines, to be sharpened. 
 If this be true their early battles could have been 
 fought with no better arms than clubs ; in the days 
 of the Judges, Samgar is said to have used an ox- 
 goad, and Samson so primitive a weapon as the jaw- 
 bone of an ass, in the mythical combats in which so 
 many hundreds or thousands of the enemy compla- 
 cently suffered themselves to be slaughtered by these 
 heroes of the imagination— even so late as the age of 
 Solomon artificers had to be brought from Tyre to 
 plan and build the Temple ! The whole of the tales 
 about Moses' laws and constructions are beyond all 
 question the creation of writers who lived long, very 
 long, after the age of the great leader— men who had 
 seen settled life, and must be presumed to have had 
 not only the First but the Second Temple as the 
 model from which they drew. 
 
 It was not very long, according to the record, after 
 the Exodus, before the Tent or Tabernacle, the Ark 
 and Altars, with their furniture complete, were set up 
 and ready for inauguration ? 
 
 No more than a year : " On the First day of the 
 First month of the Second year after quitting Egypt," 
 all being in order, the ceremony of Inauguration was 
 performed. The lamps having been lighted, incense 
 sublimated, and burnt offerings presented, "a cloud," 
 
Exodus : Composition of the Book. 259 
 
 it is said, descended and covered the Tent, and the 
 Glory of Jehovah filled the Tabernacle. 
 
 This is but a short time, all things else considered ? 
 
 Were so much accomplished by the end of the first 
 year or beginning" of the second, it becomes by so 
 much the more difficult to imagine what the Israelites 
 could have been about during the remaining thirty- 
 eight or rather thirty-nine years said to have been 
 spent by them as wanderers in the wilderness. From 
 the inauguration of the Tabernacle the history of 
 the people is a blank until we meet with them making 
 an attempt, in which they were foiled, to penetrate 
 Palestine proper on the side of Moab. Forty years, 
 however,— -forty being the sacred number and indis- 
 pensable in the narrative — had to be got over, and 
 the historian — or shall we say the poet — uses them in 
 a series of marchings and counter-marchings, to and 
 fro, from one imaginary station or camping-place to 
 another, with ever-recurring miraculous interpositions 
 of Jehovah to keep the people from dying of hunger 
 and thirst, and repeated murmurings and rebellions 
 on their part, not without good reason as it seems ; — ■ 
 eight or nine-and-thirty years are consumed in 
 getting over ground that, with every allowance for 
 contingencies in the shape of delays, difficulties, 
 necessary halts, &c, could easily have been left 
 behind in something less than eighteen months after 
 quitting Sinai, by a horde numerically great as it 
 is possible to imagine the Israelites to have been, if 
 they managed to live even for a year in the wilder- 
 ness.* 
 
 The Book of the Exodus ended, and the apparatus 
 for the ceremonial worship of the sons of Israel com- 
 plete, we now come to the minute instructions for 
 
 * Goethe — Nihil quod non tetegit, &c. — has discussed this 
 subject in a very complete manner in his notes to the better 
 understanding of his West-East Divan : Zum bessern Ver- 
 standniss des West-Ostlichen Divan : Israel in der Wtiste. 
 
260 The Pentateuch. 
 
 carrying it into practice, these being especially com- 
 prised in the next Book of the Series — Leviticus—™ 
 although many points have already fallen under our 
 notice in the book that engages us. The ceremonial 
 worship of the Jews, however, interests us little in 
 the present age ; it had even in most particulars ceased 
 to interest the better minds among themselves some 
 considerable time before their disruption and disper- 
 sion as a people. Its practice has long since and 
 necessarily been abandoned in many of its most im- 
 posing elements by the modern Jew, the dweller in 
 every inhabited land beneath the sun where there is a 
 living to be made by petty or more liberal traffic, 
 money-dealing, and the like. The record of such a 
 system of religious observance, the outcome of the 
 blind religious sense, indeed, could have no real 
 interest apart from the tale it unfolds of the childish 
 beliefs and barbarous acts mistakenly held good and 
 acceptable to God in an early age of the world's 
 history, were it not for the influence it has had on 
 the religious ideas and religious practices of the most 
 civilised among the peoples of the earth. There is now 
 no longer any slaughter of bullocks and rams, goats 
 and turtle-doves, before the Image of Jehovah at the 
 door of the Tabernacle or Temple, no burning of fat 
 and flesh to make what was regarded as a sweet 
 savour to Jehovah, no longer the lamb at morning and 
 at evening as his daily ration, nor the show-bread as 
 its complement and the measure of wine as the 
 indispensable drink offering! The terms of the later 
 Jewish legislation may even be said to have made the 
 continuance of the sacrificial and ceremonial system 
 of earlier days, entitled Mosaic or Levitical, impos- 
 sible. By the modern reformed code sacrifice could 
 only be performed in one place, and that Jerusalem, 
 and at one altar — that of the Temple — an ordinance 
 which may have been devised in view of the Jewish 
 people scattered over the face of the globe, and 
 
Exodus : Conclusion. 
 
 261 
 
 announced as a means of getting rid of the blood- 
 stained rites of the earlier system. 
 
 The worship of God by the descendants of the 
 ancient Hebrews has indeed been long purified from 
 almost everything that can offend the reasonable reli- 
 gious views of the cultivated in the present age ; and 
 it might even seem that there was a possible future 
 for the Jehovism professed by the most advanced and 
 enlightened of their later writers. Could the Jews 
 but abandon the insolent and indefensible idea of their 
 being, or ever having been, in any sense, the peculiar 
 people of God ; discard the barbarous rite of circum- 
 cision as a necessity of their initiation ; cease to think 
 of any kind of wholesome aliment as otherwise than 
 clean, and of bullocks and sheep as food unfit for them 
 unless slaughtered in a certain way by one of them- 
 selves, they would have done away with almost all 
 that keeps them Parias in the midst of the enlightened 
 among European communities. The last named silly 
 prejudice in particular given up, one great bar to a 
 good social understanding between Jew and Gentile 
 would be removed ; and until it is removed no per- 
 fectly good understanding can be come to between 
 them, for must not my brother eat of the same 
 mess and drink of the same cup as myself ! 
 If so much be ever accomplished, the descendants 
 of the ancient Hebrew stock will have made a 
 greater stride in the Religious Idea than did their 
 fathers when they forsook the worship of Baal- 
 Peor, Moloch, and Astarte, gave up eating with 
 the blood (eating raw flesh) on High -places, and 
 ceased to celebrate the orgies of the Phoenician Venus 
 in booths and under the shade of green trees. Com- 
 porting themselves in all respects as reasonable 
 beings, they would possibly find that, instead of 
 being looked on as subjects for the proselytising zeal 
 of ignorant, bigoted, and presumptuous men and 
 women to wreak itself hopelessly upon, they might, 
 
2 g 2 The Pentateuch. 
 
 without twelves 
 
 any such bad passion, discover tot 
 
 simple theism they professed wereto be w 
 
 among their « n ^ B f "Sng tte capacity to 
 
 tion necessary by appearing in .human shape 
 propitiatory sacrifice to himselfi The peop e ^ 
 
 they entertain, and teach them the ewni 
 and it are so small and insignificant a part . 
 
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS. 
 
 THE LEGISLATION OF ISRAEL. 
 
 THE earlier part of the Book of Leviticus is wholly- 
 taken up with ordinances touching the offer- 
 ings that were to be brought to the altar of Jehovah ; 
 with the manner of performing the several kinds of 
 sacrifice commanded, and with the ritual to be ob- 
 served in consecrating Aaron and his sons to the 
 Priesthood ? 
 
 It is ; the offerings being classed under different 
 heads, such as Peace Offerings — Fire-food of a sweet 
 
 savour for Jehovah (De Wette) ; Sin Offerings 
 
 offerings for sins against one or other of the com- 
 mandments or ordinances, whether done through 
 ignorance or inadvertence (a) by a Priest; (6) by a 
 Chief ; (c) by one of the common people ; or (d) by 
 the Congregation of Israel at large. Besides these 
 there are offerings for Trespasses done wittingly, 
 both of omission and commission : for having kept 
 silence when profane swearing had been overheard ; 
 for having touched an unclean thing — the dead body 
 of a man or beast, a bone, and the like ; for keeping 
 possession of an article delivered for safe custody ; 
 for false-swearing as to the possession of something 
 that had been lost; for theft — with violence espe- 
 cially, and so on. 
 
 With such a list, the victims brought to the altar— 
 and in every instance they were to be brought of free- 
 will — must have been somewhat numerous ? 
 
 In settled as well as unsettled times they must have 
 been so assuredly — i.e. if the ordinances were ever 
 
 u 
 
264 The P entateuch - 
 
 . n1v observed. Added to the daily, weekly, monthly 
 tT XZ^ which formed the essential elements m the 
 
 ^ extraordinary offerings, which were also mdis- 
 the priests' hands most have been more 
 
 any time may indeed be said to be demonstra ted I by 
 the Sop of Natal;* and as to the possibility of 
 their having been observed by wanderers in he 
 kernels in want of the merest necessaries of life, 
 S snpposMon is absurd. Such a system as that we 
 find nrescribed in the Book of Leviticus, if practic- 
 able aTall-andthisis very questionable-could only 
 We been so by a settled and policied community 
 ^ertaTn cerei/onies were of course tc ,ta oltoved 
 in presenting ^^Jf^^uL the 
 
 tSes before Jehovah;" to streak with it the horns 
 of the altar (the altar in the wilderness was of earth 
 or unhewn Stones; it was the brazen altar m 
 Solomon's Temple that had horns) ; to pour out the 
 resHf it about the base of the altar, and having 
 divided the carcase into pieces, to burn the parts 
 annropriated to Jehovah, viz, the fat, the caul above 
 ZlXr the kidneys, the rump, and, upon occasion 
 certar 0 'ther parts^the right shoulder notably, with 
 
 * The 'Pentateuch and Book of Joshua.' Load. 1862, et seq. 
 
Leviticus: The Sacrifices. 16$ 
 
 which, as with the thigh, peculiar virtues were con- 
 nected in ancient times ; the powerful thigh was, in 
 fact, held to indicate manly vigour in other respects ; 
 and among the old Romans we know that when the 
 sacrifice was not a holocaust, the thigh-bones wrapped 
 in the fat of the omentum were always burnt upon 
 the altar as an offering to the God — of Increase, 
 beyond question. 
 
 The whole carcase was not then, as a rule, consumed 
 on the Jewish altar ? 
 
 By no means ; Jehovah had often by much the 
 smaller portion, the priests usually came in for the 
 larger share. 
 
 The Israelites do not appear, like other peoples of 
 the ancient world, to have drawn auguries from the 
 state and motions of the entrails of the victims ? 
 
 We find no mention made of anything of the kind, 
 at all events in their writings as we have them. 
 
 Besides these, characterised as Blood-offerings, 
 there are others, called Meat-offerings, commanded ? 
 
 Consisting of vegetable substances : flour and oil ; 
 unleavened cakes, baked and fried, kneaded with oil, 
 and flavoured with salt and frankincense — the salt in 
 particular, to which a sacred and sanctifying character 
 was attached in the olden time, is ordered never to 
 be omitted.* To the flour, oil, and cakes, other pro- 
 ducts of the vegetable kingdom, such as fruits and 
 ears of corn of the different kinds grown, were added 
 on several occasions and at the proper seasons ; and, as 
 all here is verily after the pattern of the every-day 
 life of man himself, a measure of wine to season the 
 repast of the God was not forgotten. 
 
 The bloodless, like the Blood-offerings, we may 
 presume were burnt on the altar ? 
 
 Only in part : Jehovah had no more than a handful 
 
 * Salt still retains something of the symbolical or super- 
 stitious virtues attached to it of old We often observe a plate 
 of salt on the breast of the dead or the lid of the coffin. 
 
2 66 The Pentateuch. 
 
 of the flour, a sprinkling of the oil and a fragment of 
 the cakes; the greater part went to maintain the 
 ervitors of the altar and their families; the show- 
 bread mdeed -twelve cakes renewed weekly -were 
 entirely the 'perquisite 0 f the priests. Jehovah, 
 portion, like that of his ministers, appears always to 
 have been presented to him as food-the fire of the 
 altar, symbol of the God, devoured it 
 
 Jehovah requiring his daily sacrifices-a lamb in 
 the morning, another in the > evening on every day 
 throughout the year-the fire ontte altar would 
 have to be kept constantly burning r 
 
 It was on no account to be let out. _ It was, m fact, 
 with the Hebrews, as with other ancient peoples, the 
 Symbol of Deity, and held pre-eminently holy, the 
 Altar of Burnt-offerings has, perforce, been long 
 Abandoned by the modern Jew ; but the flame of the 
 lamp that may still be seen burning on from 
 year's end to year's end m his Synagogue, as 
 well as in Christian churches according to the pre- 
 scriptions of Rome, would seem to say that the 
 pie worship of the far-off forefathers of Jew and 
 Gen Je alike bad not yet died wholly out of the world 
 The priest's portions of the Blood-offermgs are the 
 subject of particular regulations ? 
 
 They are mostly ordered to be boiled and eaten by 
 them in the holy place; others, however-the Sin- 
 offerings-were to be "roast with fire," the sacrifice 
 Semgheld complete unless the victim were dressed 
 "n this way, and disposed of by being eaten in the holy 
 Sace When the multitude of the sacrifices that 
 have been brought in times later . than those 
 referred to in the text are considered, it is obvious 
 Ibat the parts which fell to the priests as them 
 perqmsite'conld not all have been so consumed a 
 ordered ; thev must have been taken home for the nse 
 of the households, or sold to the public or ■ money 
 The pan in which the flesh was sodden for the priests, 
 
Leviticus: The Sacrifices. 267 
 
 if of earthenware, was to be broken ; if of brass, it 
 was to be scoured and rinsed in water as often as used. 
 
 Can we in the present day, with our advanced con- 
 ceptions of the nature of Deity and the changeless 
 laws of Nature — expressions, as we opine, of the all- 
 pervading force we personify and call God — believe 
 that such commandments as we have been discussing 
 concerning the slaughtering of bullocks, rams, goats, 
 turtle doves and young pigeons, the disposal of their 
 blood by pouring out, sprinkling, or streaking, the 
 burning of the fat, caul, kidneys, rump, and right 
 shoulder of the victims, &c, &c, by way of offering 
 what is called " a sacrifice of a sweet savour made by 
 fire to Jehovah," were ever given in so many words 
 by God to man ? 
 
 It is impossible longer to entertain any such bar- 
 barous conceptions in connection with the name of 
 God, or to think of man's offering aught to God that 
 -could be acceptable to him otherwise than as it was 
 calculated to prove good and profitable to the offerer 
 or his fellow-men : obedience to God's laws as they 
 are written in book of Nature, let us be never weary 
 of repeating, is the only oblation required, as it is the 
 only one that man can make to God. 
 
 Yet are all these childish and indifferent ordinances 
 olelivered as having come immediately from Jehovah 
 to Moses: "This is the law of the burnt-offering, 
 of the meat, of the sin and of the trespass-offering, 
 .and of the consecrations and peace-offerings which 
 Jehovah commanded in Mount Sinai, in the day that 
 he commanded the children of Israel to offer their 
 oblations to Jehovah in the wilderness of Sinai" 
 {vii. 37, 38), the same injunctions being found 
 repeated in somewhat shorter terms at the end of the 
 book (xxvii. 34). 
 
 So says the text ; but the burden of the tale and 
 the style proclaim the hand of the relatively modern 
 narrator, the post-exilic scribe, author himself of the 
 
2 68 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Levitical code as we have it, but as it assuredly did 
 not exist either in the age of Moses or for many long 
 
 ^FromtheTrdinances bearing on Sacrifice we pass 
 to those that refer to the Consecration of Aaron and 
 his sons to the Priesthood ; a matter that must have 
 been held of the highest moment, if we may so con- 
 elude from the very particular way in which the rites 
 pertaining to it are set forth ; rites, moreover, in 
 which it is not unimportant to observe that Moses, as 
 in all things else, is still seen to take the lead. 
 
 Through the whole of the earlier epochs ot the 
 Hebrew history, it is the Civil ruler who consecrates 
 the priest to his office, not the priest who consecrates 
 the ruler a procedure which superstition, unhappily 
 for the peace of the world, got power enough to re- 
 verse in after times. It is Moses, the leader, who 
 sets Aaron and his sons before the Congregation ot 
 Israel, who washes them, robes them, sprinkles them 
 with the blood of the Sacrifice, and anoints them with 
 the holy oil. He does more, indeed ; he takes on him- 
 self everv part of the priest's function, slaying the bul- 
 lock and the ram that are sacrificed for the occasion, 
 pouring out and sprinkling the blood, burning the 
 fat and the rump, and even giving orders about the 
 boiling of the flesh, and the way m which it is to be 
 eaten in the holy place ! • 
 
 Consecration, or devotion to Jehovah, as we haye 
 seen already, had a special significance m the old 
 Hebrew ritualistic system. 
 
 Whatsoever was Cherem, or devoted - to Jehovah, 
 was "in nowise to be redeemed, but was surely to be 
 put to death." Aaron and his sons, become Cherem 
 through their consecration, might, therefore, as it 
 seems? be called on to play the part of principal on 
 an occasion held to require a victim of more than the 
 usual worth and significance ; and in the strange sus- 
 picious, and ill-explained death of Nadab and Abihu, 
 
Leviticus : Consecration of the Priests. 269 
 
 Aaron's two eldest sons, which now befals in imme- 
 diate conection with the Dedication of the Tabernacle 
 to Jehovah, a learned liberal critic sees an instance 
 in which a special victim or victims being required, 
 were not found wanting.* Nadab and Abihu are 
 said in the text to have taken their censers, put fire 
 therein, incense thereon, and " offered strange fire 
 before Jehovah, which he commanded them not : 
 and there went out fire from Jehovah and consumed 
 them." But what possible interpretation can be put 
 on this tale other than the one divined by the Ger- 
 man writer ? These men were sacrificed to the fiery- 
 God whose altar they served ; not, of course, by the 
 immediate act of the God himself, as said, but by 
 the agency of his minister, Moses. "Fire, it is said, 
 went out from Jehovah and devoured them, and they 
 died before Jehovah." But to die before Jehovah 
 was to die in front of the altar of burnt-offering, the 
 appointed place of sacrifice, and to be devoured by 
 the fire of Jehovah was to be burnt on his altar and 
 sent in fumes of a sweet savour to the skies. Physi- 
 cally Nadab and Abihu were violating none of God's 
 eternal laws, whatever the fire they used in their 
 offering of incense ; morally it may well be said that 
 in performing an extra service they were verily giving 
 evidence of the piety of their nature. 
 
 It is not unlikely, therefore, that the original ac- 
 count of the death of Nadab and Abihu may have 
 been tampered with in later times ? 
 
 It is even more than likely that it has. Human 
 victims in the early periods of the religious history 
 of mankind were held to be as indispensable to pro- 
 pitiate the Gods on great occasions as they have come, 
 in modern times and under all circumstances, to be 
 looked on with horror and aversion. Had we the 
 record of the consecration of the Tabernacle with all 
 
 * Comp. Ghillanij, Die Menschenopfer, &c. S. C94, et seq. 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 the ceremonies thereunto pertaining in its original 
 form— and we may safely conclude that we have it 
 not — we should be better informed than we are 
 on the grounds that were held to make a sacrifice of 
 unusual solemnity requisite at the time. These 
 grounds we are left to divine, and there is every rea- 
 son to conclude that they are to be found in the 
 important event in immediate connection with which 
 the death of Aaron's two elder sons occurs. ^ 
 
 There are other particulars in the disjointed and 
 evidently imperfect narrative we have before us, 
 which lend strong support to the conclusion that the 
 death of Nadab and Abihu was sacrificial ? 
 
 When the death of the young men is by and hj 
 referred to, there is no mention made of their offering 
 of strange fire to Jehovah, as having led to it ; they 
 died, it is simply said, "when they offered before 
 Jehovah " (xvi. 1.) Moses' address to Aaron on the 
 death of his sons, moreover, is not a little enigmatical, 
 couched as it is in these terms : " This it is which 
 Jehovah spake, saying : I will be sanctified in them 
 that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be 
 glorified. And Aaron held his peace.'' Highly 
 enigmatical language, indeed, and much in need of 
 explanation, if it does not rather leave the question of 
 the death of the young men distinctly open to the 
 extreme interpretation that has been put on it. But 
 Moses' words, so far, are not even all that tends in 
 the same direction. All that was Cherem to Jehovah 
 must come sooner or later to a violent end, by the 
 pouring out of its blood and the offering up of its life 
 to the God; and all mourning and lamentation by 
 reason of the sacrifice must be foregone. " Uncover 
 not your heads," says Moses, in continuation to Aaron 
 the father, and to Ithamar and Eleazar the brothers 
 of Nadab and Abiku, " neither rend your clothes lest 
 ye die, and lest wrath come upon the people." The 
 sacrifice would have lost its efficacy had it been 
 
Leviticus: Death of Nad ah and Abihu, 27 1 
 
 mourned over ; the God would have been incensed 
 and possibly have broken out on the people by pesti- 
 lence, as he is said to have done on other occasions 
 when displeased with the rebellious race he had 
 adopted for his own. Forbidden to the near relations 
 when the victim was a human being, mourning was 
 not interdicted to the people at large ; the host of 
 Israel was at liberty in the present instance, as we 
 learn, to " bewail the burning which Jehovah had 
 kindled." 
 
 It seems difficult to imagine that the death of 
 "Nadab and Abihu can be without all historical 
 foundation ? 
 
 It is so, although late researches seem to make it 
 less difficult to see the tale as the outcome of purely 
 subjective conceptions. Still, the unconnected style 
 of the narrative, the evidently incomplete state in 
 which it has reached us, the enigmatical, unfeeling 
 and peremptory language of Moses to his brother, 
 coupled with Aaron's " holding his peace," and the 
 certainty we have that human sacrifices were univer- 
 sally practised on solemn occasions in the early ages 
 of the world — all, in a word, combine to assure us that 
 in the unexplained and sudden death of Nadab and 
 Abihu we have an historical instance of a human 
 sacrifice on an occasion held important, and a purpose 
 to propitiate the Deity addressed by this terrible 
 means. 
 
 The death of Aaron's two elder sons, however, has 
 always been interpreted literally by orthodox com- 
 mentators ? 
 
 Of course it has; but such an interpretation can 
 scarcely be held worthy of consideration in the present 
 day. How should they who accept one text which 
 says that God desires not the death of a sinner, but 
 rather that he live and repent of his sin, defend as 
 an illustration of God's justice and power, another 
 which declares that there went out fire from the Lord 
 
272 
 
 The Pentateuch, 
 
 and devoured the two sons of Aaron for no greater 
 an offence than having "offered strange fire before 
 the Lord!" God's awards for moral delinquencies 
 are moral, as for physical delinquencies they are 
 physical ; and in no case do judgments, as they are 
 styled, attach immediately to God as their agent, but 
 to the violation of the moral or physical law itself. 
 Man may use, and has often cruelly misused, fire as a 
 means of punishment for the thoughts as well as the 
 deeds he looked on as sins; God, let us be well 
 assured, never did ; properly speaking God can only 
 be said to punish us in this way when carelessness or 
 design leads to the burnings and explosions in which 
 life is lost and things useful and beautiful are 
 destroyed, in which case the deed is clearly seen to 
 be man's own. 
 
 Another interpretation, hinted at above, may be 
 put on the death of Aaron's sons ? 
 
 The tale, like several others, may have been 
 invented at a late period by a priest to warn all and 
 sundry, even members of his own body, against 
 departure in the most insignificant particular from 
 the ritual prescribed by the hierarchy. The Jews of 
 old did not think violators of the written law alone 
 deserving of death ; neologists, innovators, reformers 
 and freethinkers must with them have been objects of 
 their most concentrated hate, even as they continue 
 to be so held by theologians generally, and by all 
 ignorant and intolerant persons among ourselves. 
 Though they are now no longer struck down and 
 devoured by fire from Jehovah, judicially murdered 
 at the stake, made to linger out their lives in dungeons, 
 or driven as exiles from their native country — albeit 
 the years are not yet many since all such cruelties 
 were perpetrated, it is still held neither sinful nor 
 unseemly, by calumny and misconstruction, to degrade 
 them socially and to deprive them of their means of 
 livelihood ; for it is in this more insidious, and to the 
 
Leviticus: Death of Nadab and Abihu. 273 
 
 cultured scarce less cruel way, that bigotry and 
 obscurantism continue to exact their dues. 
 
 We might be tempted to think that all the sons of 
 Aaron inherited a natural proclivity to do amiss, 
 which their training had failed to correct, for we now 
 find Ithamar and Eleazar, " the sons of Aaron that 
 •were left alive/' guilty, as it seems to us, of a far 
 greater offence against the prescribed ritual than any 
 committed by the unfortunate Nadab and Abihu, they 
 — Ithamar and Eleazar — having "burned the goat of 
 the sin-offering instead of eating it in the holy place," 
 and so " taking on them the iniquity of the congrega- 
 tion, and making atonement for the people before 
 Jehovah?" 
 
 We should surely think so could we imagine that 
 man might either expiate his own sins or take the 
 sins of others on his shoulders by eating the flesh of 
 a goat. By burning instead of eating the sin-offering, 
 however, Ithamar and Eleazar violated an essential 
 part of the Hebrew ritual, made the expiatory sacri- 
 fice that had been offered of non-avail, and so laid 
 themselves open to rebuke, if not to punishment more 
 severe. It could signify little to the community or 
 their God by what fire a handful of incense was raised 
 in fumes, but it must have been held of great moment 
 that a solemn act bearing on the state of the com- 
 munity at large was carried out in the way prescribed 
 to make it effectual. But Ithamar and Eleazar were 
 fortunate in the moment of their trespass ; the victims 
 had already been found, the sacrifice had already been 
 made, and no further offering from among the devoted 
 to Jehovah was required at this time. 
 
 Moses will, however, be wroth with Ithamar and 
 Eleazar for what they have done ? 
 
 He was angry with them, it is said, "because the 
 goat of the sin-offering was burnt," and said : 
 " Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin-offering in the 
 holy place, seeing it is most holy, and it hath been 
 
The Pentateuch, 
 
 given unto you to bear the iniquity of the congrega- 
 tion, to make atonement for them before Jehovah ? " 
 Aaron will interpose in his son's behalf ? 
 And in his own also ; for he as well as they was in 
 fault ; but in terms that only find their explanation 
 when seen beside the interpretation put upon the 
 •death of Nadab and Abihu as a sacrifice. Speaking 
 first of his sons Aaron says : " Behold, this day have 
 they brought their sin-offering (Qy. Nadab) and 
 their burnt-offering (Qy. Abihu) before Jehovah!" 
 And then, referring to himself, he adds : " And such 
 things have befallen me ! Had I eaten the sin- 
 offering to-day would it have been good in the sight 
 of Jehovah?" Unhappy Aaron ! he did but venture 
 to hint in the most distant terms at the untimely fate 
 of his two sons and his own sorrow — he dared not 
 farther to make lament. His eating or abstaining 
 could only have been matter of indifference to his 
 God ; to himself the meal, had he partaken of it, would 
 have seemed a sin, and would surely have lainla load 
 upon his soul. 
 
 Besides the caution which Moses is now made by 
 Jehovah to give to Aaron not to make too free by 
 coming at all times into the holy place behind the 
 veil, he is farther ordered to take no wine or strong 
 drink when ministering in his office : " Do not drink 
 wine or strong drink, thou nor thy sons with thee, 
 when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation 
 lest ye die." A most proper injunction, surely, and 
 such as might serve for preface to the series of ordi- 
 nances concerning things clean and unclean, fit or 
 unfit for food that follow ? 
 
 The Levitical code is very full concerning clean and 
 unclean beasts as fit or unfit for the food of man ; such 
 as were cloven-footed and chewed the cud being alone 
 accounted clean, and so available for food ; such as 
 divided not the hoof, though they chewed the cud — 
 among the number of which are reckoned the camel, 
 
Leviticus: Of Clean and Unclean Meats. 275 
 
 the coney, and the hare— were to be looked on as un- 
 clean and so forbidden. The camel ruminates or 
 chews the cud, but he divides not the hoof; the rabbit 
 and the hare neither chew the cud nor divide the hoof 
 in the Hebrew sense, yet are they all alike good and 
 wholesome food. The camel is eaten in countries 
 where he is indigenous, and when young is esteemed 
 a delicacy, never partaken of, however, but by the 
 wealthy, for he is too valuable as a beast of burthen 
 m his prospective life, to be often slaughtered for the 
 sake of his flesh. The rabbit and the hare, found 
 thoroughly wholesome, and even regarded as dainty 
 fare m the present day, as they are not interdicted by 
 the God of nature, so are they not excluded from the 
 diet-roll of reasonable men, though they were forbid- 
 den in the so-called code of the Jewish Jehovah. 
 The swine is particularly forbidden ? 
 Necessarily; for though he divides the hoof he 
 chews not the cud. Nevertheless is his flesh most 
 savoury and nourishing as aliment, and so by God's 
 own unwritten law in opposition to the written code 
 of the Jews, not only not interdicted, but even by its 
 qualities positively approved. 
 
 It were not uninteresting to know why the flesh of 
 the hog has come to be rejected as food by so many 
 Oriental peoples, particularly by those of Semitic 
 descent ? 
 
 His form and habits may have had something to do 
 with the denial. Full grown he is not a comely ani- 
 mal to look on, and his habit of wallowing in the mire 
 and his mdiscriminating voracity are not attractive 
 traits m his character. But these are not probably 
 the grounds of his exclusion from the spit and pot. 
 lhis may probably be rather referred to his being like 
 the rat and the mouse— also interdicted— nocturnal 
 in his habits, and sacred in other ancient religious 
 systems to the deities of night and winter-to Typhor, 
 Hecate, &c. He could not, consequently, be proper 
 
276 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 food for the elect of the God of Light, El, or Chiun 
 supreme over all the Gods, and the tutelary Deity of 
 the Hebrew people through the whole of the earlier 
 and by much the longer period of their history. 
 
 All fishes having scales and fins were to be ac- 
 counted clean, and so available; those »ot so fur- 
 nished were to beheld unlean, and therefore forbidden 
 
 aS The d prohibitionhere was probably directed against 
 the eel," from its resemblance to the serpent, a sacred 
 animal among the ancients. The eel, however, like 
 other bony fishes, is covered with scales ; but they are 
 so small as easily to be overlooked His likeness to 
 the serpent .may suffice to account for ^ his rejection 
 from the diet-roll of the Jews, though he is now looked 
 on as a delicacy. Cartilaginous fishes,-rays sharks 
 and the rest, have neither scales nor proper fins, and 
 they are indeed indifferent eating, although to the 
 strong stomach not unwholesome, and so not abso- 
 lutely forbidden by the Supreme authority. 
 
 The vulture, eagle, kite, hawk, raven stork, swan, 
 lapwing, bat, and " fowls that go on all fours, are for- 
 
 bld And'in the majority of instances cited deservedly 
 so for they are carrion and disgusting as food, .but 
 why the swan, and with him, we must presume, his 
 congeners, the goose and the duck, came to be ex- 
 cluded is not so readily imaginable. When young, 
 the swan is both good and wholesome, and the goose 
 and duck, as all the world know, are Peculiarly 
 savoury and excellent in their season. What the 
 fowls that went on all fours were is a riddle The 
 bat, however, evidently classed with birds by the 
 writer, may be the creature referred to Seen on the 
 ground, his mode of progression when he helps him- 
 self with his anterior extremities or wmgs, may ex- 
 plain it. But the bat is a mammiferous animal, 
 brings forth live young, and suckles them as do the 
 
Leviticus : Of Clean and Unclean Meats. 277 
 
 mothers of the human kind. Bats are generally in- 
 sectivorous, i.e., carnivorous, stink abominably, and 
 are unfit for food ; but several of the large kinds of 
 the Indian Archipelago are frugivorous, living on 
 ripening fruits, and preying on the paddy grounds 
 and gardens as sparrows do on our orchards and corn 
 fields. The frugivorous bats need not therefore be 
 excluded from the list of animals fit for the food of 
 omnivorous man, though we know not that they are 
 eaten. 
 
 Strangely enough to us, as it seems, locusts, grass- 
 hoppers, beetles, and flying creeping things are per- 
 mitted ? 
 
 Though only eaten in the present day by some of 
 the most abject among savage men, locusts and grass- 
 hoppers committing such havoc in eastern lands, 
 devouring the crops, and leaving desolation behind 
 them, may have been held fairly deserving of being 
 eaten in their turn. John the Baptist, we are told, lived 
 at one time on locusts and wild honey ; and, as purely 
 vegetable feeders, a dish of locusts, well dressed, might 
 possibly be found palatable and not unwholesome, 
 unless they had been Jiving on bitter or poisonous 
 herbs. 
 
 The tortoise is expressly forbidden ? 
 
 A great mistake ; for tortoises are vegetable feeders, 
 and are not only eatable but one among them, whose 
 home is the sea, and the crop that grows at its bot- 
 tom his food, is now regarded as, among the greatest 
 of delicacies, being found, when not made noxious in 
 the dressing, to be not only wholesome and so not 
 forbidden by God's own law, but to be among the 
 most easily digested, readily assimilable, and restora- 
 tive of aliments ; by primal ordinance, consequently, 
 anterior to all written legislation, the tortoise, or turtle, 
 is pre-eminently recommended. Both land and water 
 tortoises are found in Syria and Palestine, and are 
 eaten by the Mussulman inhabitants at the present day. 
 
278 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 The pens that wrote the sacred books of the He- 
 brews were not therefore always so well directed, or 
 they who held them so well informed, as might have 
 been expected of writers believed to have been in- 
 spired ? 
 
 . It would seem that they were not ; but these men 
 overlooked the true standard of fitness or unfitness ; 
 drawing on fancy or prejudice in their awards, they 
 made many mistakes. As men advanced in know- 
 ledge they discovered that it was not that which went 
 into the mouth that made a man unclean. 
 
 The horse and ass, as they neither divide the hoof 
 nor chew the cud, are, of course, forbidden as food to 
 the Israelites ? 
 
 They are not named ; but their conformation 
 excludes them from the diet-roll of Israel. Never- 
 theless the flesh of both is eaten in countries where 
 the power of the live animal is not in much request, 
 and has often been found of signal service in the 
 wars and sieges of modern times. If not the most 
 palatable of food, this is probably due to the condition 
 of the animals when slaughtered, or to their feeding 
 in confinement, rather than to anything in the nature 
 of their flesh, which certainly is not unwholesome, 
 and so not out of the pale of edible things any more 
 than that of the camel and elephant, though neither 
 of these have proper hooves, and the camel alone 
 chews the cud. 
 
 " Creeping things that do not fly," among which, 
 strangely enough, we find enumerated the weasel, 
 mouse, ferret, tortoise, chameleon, lizard, mole, and 
 snail, are all said to be unclean and so unfit for food ? 
 
 It is probable that the animals thus named in 
 English are not always those the Hebrew writer had 
 in view. Some of them are carrion, doubtless, and 
 objectionable as aliment, but the iguana among 
 lizards, a vegetable feeder, is eaten and held a 
 delicacy in the country he inhabits, and the snail of 
 
Leviticus : Purification of Women. 279 
 
 the vineyard and garden is reckoned a light nutritious 
 article of diet for invalids— snail broth is even a 
 popular restorative for the consumptive; and the 
 snails of the sea — whelks, periwinkles, cockles, 
 clams, &c, are brought in bushels to our markets and 
 consumed by the labouring classes as delicacies. If 
 the oyster, so nearly allied to the cockle and snail, be 
 forbidden, as we believe it is, then had the Hebrew 
 writer no true standard whereby the fitness or unfit- 
 ness of things for the food of man could be estimated. 
 In the savoriness of this distinguished mollusc the 
 modern Israelite might surely see a special dispensa- 
 tion from above in its— or shall we say in Ms own— 
 favour. 
 
 _ Ideas of cleanness and uncleanness were not 
 limited in the Levitical code to things in view of 
 their fitness or unfitness for the food of man ? 
 
 Far from it ; and the very first subject we now find 
 referred to is the Purification of Women after child- 
 bearmg. Strange to say, it is enacted in this ancient 
 code that the woman who has fulfilled the very highest 
 and holiest of her functions by the law of God ^is to 
 be held unclean for forty days if the fruit of her womb 
 have been a man-child, for two weeks and vet three 
 score and six days if it have been a maid. On what 
 ground the distinction here noted was based -we are 
 not informed. When these the days of her purifica- 
 tion were accomplished, the woman was to brine to 
 the priest a lamb for a burnt- offering, and a pigeon or 
 turtle dove for a sin-offering. The lamb having been 
 sacrificed m the usual way, and the birds killed by 
 having their heads pinched off, and their blood wruno- 
 out at the foot of the altar, she who had never beeii 
 unclean m the sight of God was proclaimed to be 
 clean in the sight of man. ' 
 
 We have a remnant of this superstition in the 
 ritual of the Roman and Anglican churches ? 
 
 We have : The woman among ourselves who has 
 
 x 
 
280 The Pentateuch. 
 
 borne a child is required to present herself in the 
 church she frequents within a limited time after her 
 delivery, there to give thanks to God for her escape 
 from the perils of child-bearing, and so to have a sort 
 of passport from the priest for showing herself again 
 in public. Thanks to God the mother could, of 
 course, give privately in her own chamber, in con- 
 formity with an injunction given elsewhere, and with 
 even more of propriety than in the face of the world. 
 The modern observance is, in fact, the old Jewish 
 rite of purification in disguise, and might now, as it 
 seems, be advantageously dispensed with. It is 
 retained, however, as one among the other means 
 possessed by the clergy for upholding their influence 
 over the female mind, which, nevertheless, in its more 
 delicate and sensible manifestations, secretly revolts 
 against the custom, and would gladly ignore it were 
 it not for usage and requirement. In Roman Catholic 
 countries where the rite is rigidly enforced at a very 
 early period after the lying-in, and the mother is 
 accompanied by her infant, it is known to be attended 
 at certain seasons of the year,— the spring and early 
 summer months, when the Cathedral and great church 
 retain the temperature of winter, and feel like the 
 tomb— by the most disastrous consequences, to the 
 children in especial. Numbers of these are lost 
 through the chill they receive by being laid on the 
 cold steps of the altar, whilst the mother is on her 
 knees at her prayers before it, and the priest is 
 muttering his incantation in the dead and to her 
 unknown tongue. . 
 
 What is to be said about the perils of child-bearing, 
 tbe reason given or excuse made for the retention of 
 a Jewish rite in Christian lands ? 
 
 That their extent is greatly exaggerated. The mar- 
 ried woman, with all the appended risks, appears to 
 have a better life than the spinster at every age. The 
 rite of the " Churching of women " will die out of use 
 
Leviticus: Circumcision. 281 
 
 as our women are better educated, as they learn to 
 know and interpret the laws of nature by the liohts 
 of the age in which they live, and so become more 
 self-reliant and independent of priestly guidance than 
 they are. 
 
 So much in so far as the Mother is concerned— 
 what as regards the Child ? 
 
 If a male, according to the latest Hebrew legisla- 
 tion, the flesh of his foreskin was to be cut off. & 
 
 By way of improving God's handiwork ? 
 
 Though the reasons that have been assigned for the 
 practice are several, this is not among their number 
 The rite of Circumcision, as we have seen, is first 
 mentioned in connection with the covenant which 
 God is said to have made with Abraham when he had 
 shown his readiness to make a burnt-offering of his 
 only son. But whilst the legend of Abraham is now 
 believed to be of relatively modern invention, the rite 
 of circumcision is known to have been in use among 
 peoples having a polity and well advanced in civilisa- 
 tion—Egyptians and Phoenicians notably— whilst the 
 Hebrews were still nomads among the heights and 
 hollows of Mesopotamia, or wanderers over the steppes 
 of Lesser Asia in search of better quarters and settled 
 homes in more fertile lands. There is good ground 
 for concluding that the rite of circumcision is of rela- 
 tively recent introduction among the Israelites. That 
 it was unknown through the whole of the earlier 
 periods of their history seems certain. We do not 
 learn that Esau and Jacob were circumcised; neither 
 do we read of Jacob submitting his numerous progeny 
 of sons to the rite. It is never referred to as having 
 been m force during the reputed long sojourn of the 
 Israelites m Egypt ; and that it was neglected during 
 the whole of their forty years wandering in the wil- 
 derness is positively stated. Save where it is intro- 
 duced, to give colour apparently to the impossible 
 story of the slaughter of the Sechemites by Simeon 
 
282 The Pentateuch, 
 
 and Levi, circumcision is not again spoken of in 
 the Old Testament until we come to the Book 
 of Joshua. But the reference to the rite in the 
 ao-e of Abraham is now seen as an invention of 
 the post-exilic Jehovistic scribe, author of the 
 Book of Genesis, inventor of the mythical tale of 
 Abraham and his son Isaac* Circumcision was, 
 in truth, only made imperative when bigotry and 
 intolerance, exclusiveness and stringency m ritual 
 observance, with Jehovah as peculiar God of the 
 Jews of Jerusalem, had gained the day over El-Myon 
 Chiun, and Baal-Molech of the Hebrew people, and 
 when freedom of intercourse and intermarriage with 
 neighbouring tribes came to be denounced as sin and 
 a desertion of Jehovah. The most reasonable inter- 
 pretation of the rite of circumcision is that it was sub- 
 stituted for the sacrifice of the first-born, and only 
 introduced in relatively recent times. The God ot 
 Increase, to whom all was due, was finally put off with 
 the offering of a small but significant part instead of 
 
 the whole. . . , 
 
 The Jewish custom of circumcision, still enforced, 
 cannot, in the eye of reason, be held as other than a 
 barbarous, needless, cruel, and improper rite ? # 
 
 It is most assuredly nothing else ; and as it is both 
 peculiarly painful and not unattended with danger to 
 the life of the child, so can it be done m conformity 
 with no ordinance of God, who gives not life at one 
 moment coupled with a command that entails the 
 risk of losing it in the next through the ill-advised 
 interference of man. 
 
 In this case— danger to the life of the child-there 
 must have been an understanding in the olden time 
 which authorised the omission of the rite in families 
 where it had once proved fatal ? 
 
 * See Bernstein's ' Origin of the Legend of Abraham, Isaac 
 and Jacob,' one of Mr Scott's Series. 
 
Leviticus: Sanitary Ordinance?. 283 
 
 Such an understanding we believe now at least exists 
 in the unwritten code of the Jews ; so that there may 
 be true sons of Israel unmutilated and even as they 
 come from their mother's womb. The customary 
 mutilatory rite, consequently, can be no more neces- 
 sary to constitute a member of the church of God 
 according to the enlightened Jehovism of the modern 
 Jew, than in the eye of reason is the sprinkling with 
 water indispensable to constitute a member of the 
 theistic community whereof Jesus, the son of Joseph, 
 was the founder, and of whose doctrine Paul of 
 Tarsus is mistakenly accepted in these days as the 
 chief exponent. 
 
 Various sanitary ordinances were also in force 
 among the Jews of old ? 
 
 Many, and more especially having reference to the 
 disease called leprosy, which must have been so much 
 more common in former times (if it were the terrible 
 disease we now know among others by the name) 
 than it is in the present day. Now we have small- 
 pox — not to speak of the other greater kind — scarlet 
 fever, measles, whooping-cough, catarrh and con- 
 sumption of the lungs, typhus and typhoid fever, &c, 
 waylaying us through the earlier and middle passages 
 of our lives in lieu of the dreaded Jewish leprosy. 
 Against these formidable diseases we enjoin con- 
 tinence, cleanliness, vaccination, ventilation, plentiful 
 supply of water, wholesome food, and temperance. 
 Suffering from their attacks, instead of the priest and 
 the meaningless and unavailing mummery of the 
 Jew against the leprosies which invaded his dwelling 
 as well as his person, men in the present day are 
 content, under the eye of the enlightened physician, 
 diligently to use such means of prevention and cure 
 as the medical science of the day recommends ; to 
 give God thanks when they or theirs recover from 
 their sicknesses, and to bow the head and resign 
 themselves to the inevitable when their dear ones are 
 
284 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 taken from them, finding solace mainly in the assur- 
 ance that all had been done in reason to avert the 
 ill when it befalls. Prayers for the stay of pestilence 
 and the recovery of the sick have been more and 
 more assuming the practical form of an application 
 under knowledge and experience of the measures 
 that have been found influential in warding off and 
 curing disease ; as God is now known to give no 
 heed to prayers for the recovery of the sick, but often 
 to crown well-considered efforts to this end with suc- 
 cess, so would it seem right and reasonable hence- 
 forth to abandon the prayers, but ever more diligently 
 to use the means. 
 
 There are, further, many ordinances bearing on 
 cleanness and uncleanness both of men and things, 
 with ceremonial prescriptions — generally sacrifices, 
 sprinklings with blood, anointings with oil, and wash- 
 ings with water — as means of purification ? 
 
 There are very many such, but founded, for the 
 most part, on fancies, childish, indifferent, out of 
 keeping with the nature of things, and utterly power- 
 less to the ends proposed. These, therefore, need not 
 detain us further than to suggest that being what 
 they are, they cannot be from God. We do in these 
 days, and most properly, rely on soap and water, 
 whitewash, chlorine, and ventilation as the means of 
 disinfection and purification ordained of God, and 
 not on the slaughter of bullocks, rams, lambs, goats, 
 and turtle doves, with sprinklings of their blood on 
 the altar and objects proposed to be made clean. 
 How the person or thing that was besprinkled with 
 blood and oil, or even with water having the ashes 
 of a red heifer diffused in it, could have come to 
 be looked on as cleansed or purified, rather than 
 befouled, passes comprehension in the present day, 
 almost as much as it does to conceive how such pro- 
 cedures should still pass current in the world as 
 having had their root in ordinances from the God of 
 reason for the guidance of mankind. 
 
Leviticus: Jehovah and Azaz el. 285 
 
 Besides the rites commanded to be observed, and 
 the offerings to be made by individuals in reference 
 to cleanness and purification, and to certain special 
 visitations, there are other general ordinances bearing 
 on the community at large ? 
 
 One in particular of a very extraordinary character, 
 and not easily reconcilable with the interpretation 
 usually put on the Jewish theological system as 
 monotheistic in its essence — that, namely, which is 
 ordered by way of atoning for the sins of the whole 
 congregation of the children of Israel on the tenth 
 day of the seventh month of the year. 
 
 The rite prescribed for this occasion is special and 
 not a little extraordinary ? 
 
 Aaron the priest, — cautioned again by Moses the 
 leader not to be coming at all times into the holy 
 place behind the veil, — having divested himself of his 
 gorgeous attire, and donned the simple linen apparel 
 of the sacrificator, of which we have a reminder in 
 the surplice of our clergy, is now to enter the 
 sanctuary, there to ask counsel of Jehovah, doubtless. 
 Emerging from thence, and having sacrificed a bullock 
 for himself and his house, he is to take two goats and 
 a ram for a sin-offering. These he is to present before 
 Jehovah at the door of the Tabernacle, and then to 
 cast lots on the goats, " one lot for Jehovah, the other 
 for Azazel." 
 
 Azazel ! who or what is Azazel ? 
 
 This is a question that has sorely exercised the 
 theologians who persist in ascribing pure monotheism 
 to the Israelites at all periods of their history as a 
 people. Azazel must, however, have been regarded 
 by them as a Divinity, and is here plainly put on a 
 level or footing of equality with Jehovah : one of the 
 goats fell by lot to Jehovah, the other to Azazel. 
 
 The goats were to be dealt with differently ? 
 
 The one allotted to Jehovah was sacrificed in the 
 usual way, part being presented as an offering of a 
 
286 The Pentateuch, 
 
 sweet savour to the God, and the rest sodden and 
 eaten by the priests in the holy place. On the head of 
 the goat allotted to Azazel, on the contrary, Aaron was 
 to " lay his hands, confess over him all the iniquities of 
 the children of Israel and all their transgressions in 
 all their sins, putting them thereby on the goat." This 
 done, he was to send the animal away by the hand of 
 a fit man into the wilderness, where, laden as he was 
 now conceived to be with the sins of the people, he 
 was either to be left to perish miserably, or being led 
 to the top of a height, he was to be cast down and 
 killed at once. 
 
 These seem strange proceedings on the part of a 
 people, the self-styled Elect of Jehovah, and our 
 adopted teachers in religion ? 
 
 Not more strange than barbarous and absurd ! As 
 if the sins of a people could be transferred to a goat, 
 or the great God of the universe be propitiated by the 
 lingering or more sudden death of aught that had 
 come into life in harmony with his laws ! If one goat 
 was slain in the usual way by pouring out its blood 
 and sent as a burnt-offering of a sweet savour made by 
 fire to Jehovah as the good principlein nature, the other 
 was unquestionably driven forth to die and so to pro- 
 pitiate with its life another Divinity, — impersonation, 
 we must presume, of the adverse aspect or evil prin- 
 ciple m nature, which still plays so important a part 
 in the theological conceptions of our clergy and the 
 vulgar under the name of Satan or Devil. 
 
 Azazel, however, does not meet us here in any shape 
 akin to the impersonation called Satan or Devil— the 
 Bad God of the moderns ? 
 
 Certainly not ; neither is he to be confounded with 
 the angelic personage of post-exilic times called Satan, 
 who is mentioned in more than one place of the Old 
 Testament. The ancient Israelites acknowledged no 
 Devil in the modern sense. Their Satan was one 
 among the angels or sons of God, and was the prover 
 
Leviticus : Jehovah and Azazel. 287 
 
 of the steadfastness of mankind in good, not their 
 tempter to do evil, and never the enemy and opponent 
 of God. Azazel has just so much resemblance to the 
 Typhon of the Egyptian system, the brother and alter 
 ego of Osiris, the adverse as opposed to the beneficent 
 aspect of the Nature- God, each in turn the vanquisher 
 and the vanquished of the other, that he has been 
 held to be the Egyptian divinity under another name. 
 That Azazel may represent the same idea is admis- 
 sible, and that the idea was entertained in Egypt need 
 not be questioned ; but Azazel may rather have 
 been borrowed from Babylon. Whencesoever de- 
 rived, he is, nevertheless, but another representative 
 of the power that wrestles with Jacob on Peniel, that 
 meets Moses on the way to the inn and seeks to kill 
 him, that tempts David to number the people, that 
 puts Job to the proof, &c. Or he is the Ahriman of 
 the Zend-folks modified, and a direct legacy of the 
 Babylonian captivity to the Jews, along with the 
 Garden of Delight in Eden, the tree of life, the ser- 
 pent, the seduction of the man and the woman by the 
 reptile and their subsequent expulsion from Paradise, 
 on which the whole of the dogmatic elements in the 
 religious system of modern Europe repose. 
 
 The fall of the year was the season when the great 
 festival of the later Jews, that of the Atonement, 
 was celebrated, and the lots were cast on the goats 
 for Jehovah and Azazel ? 
 
 It was in the Seventh month of the Ecclesiastical 
 year, the First month of the Civil year, and on the 
 Tenth day of the month that this festival was cele- 
 brated, at the same season precisely as that in which 
 the Egyptians kept their great feast to Typhon, the 
 god of winter and the under- world. 
 
 This coincidence seems to throw light on the 
 strange story of Azazel and the scape-goat as it 
 stands in the sacred writings of the Jews ? 
 
 It may help to do so, at all events. In the Seventh 
 
238 The Pentateuch. 
 
 month of the year, according to the later Jewish 
 mode of reckoning, the autumnal equinox is attained 
 and night and darkness begin their reign. In Egypt 
 the Sun- God Osiris, having spent his power, is then 
 feigned to die, being either torn in pieces by his 
 brother and enemy, Typhon, or beguiled by him into 
 a coffer and cast into the Nile. In Me do-Persia 
 the scorpion— the sign of winter — is pictured gnaw- 
 ing the genitals of the vernal bull, and Mithra, the 
 Sun-God, is seen plunging his sword into its body 
 behind the shoulder. In Syria the Adonis comes 
 down stained, as said, by the blood of the God whose 
 name it bears, torn, emasculated by the wintry boar ; 
 and in Tyre and Sidon the women are found weeping 
 for Tammuz dead ! Azazel, in a word, is El-Israel or 
 Jahveh as Nature-God in his adverse aspect; and 
 the goat allotted to him is the proper propitiatory 
 sin-offering of the Israelites to their Deity. 
 
 The Atonement festival for the sins of the people 
 of Israel, it is to be observed, is unaccompanied, as 
 first commanded, by the order for the payment of half 
 a shekel of the sanctuary which every man over 
 twenty years of age was required in another place 
 and in after times to bring to the priest as a ransom 
 for his life ? 
 
 There is at first no mention either of money pay- 
 ment or of ransom : the ransom was effected through 
 the goat, as the sin-offering to Azazel ; the payment 
 of the half-shekel must, therefore, have been added to 
 the essential rite at a later date, as a means doubtless 
 of maintaining the religious establishment of the 
 country in the splendour to which it had attained 
 during and for some time after the reign of Solomon : 
 it was not wanted in the early times to which our 
 text refers, when Aaron and his sons alone were 
 servitors of the altar. But there can be little doubt 
 of the festival of the Atonement now commanded 
 being of relatively modern introduction. The festival 
 
Leviticus ; The Place of Sacrifices. 289 
 
 with which it was associated, and which it came in 
 some sort to supersede, was that of Unleavened Bread, 
 ordered in the olden time to be observed at the same 
 season of the year. It was a Time and Season 
 Festival among the Israelites, as among their con- 
 geners, the Semitic tribes around them, and their old 
 masters the Egyptians. 
 
 Jehovah is now made to declare in the text as we 
 have it that he will have his sacrifices brought to him 
 nowhere but at the door of the Tabernacle ? 
 
 " Whosoever of the house of Israel was minded to 
 present a victim for sacrifice, and brought it not to 
 the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation to offer 
 it to Jehovah, was to be cut off from his people." 
 Believed to have his dwelling-place there, there only 
 could counsel be had of him through the priest or 
 leader, and there only could the offerings and sacri- 
 fices meant for him be fitly presented. 
 
 It is not difficult to divine the purpose of this 
 injunction — product as it certainly is of the latest 
 Jehovistic legislation ? 
 
 It is obviously given to prevent the people from 
 offering and sacrificing in other places than the 
 Temple on Mount Zion, and to other gods than 
 Jehovah— at Beth-El and Dan, for example, to Jero- 
 boam's Golden Calves. " They shall no more offer 
 their sacrifices unto goats after whom they have gone 
 a whoring," says the text. The people, it was pur- 
 posed, would by this means be kept to the worship of 
 Jehovah, of whom their fathers for so many ages had 
 never even heard the name, and whom they, at the 
 time the text was written, still meet us as so reluctant 
 to acknowledge for their God. They were familiar 
 enough with Baal and Astaroth, Queen of Heaven, 
 the High places, Tophet and the valley of the sons of 
 Hinnom ; they had but lately been made acquainted 
 with Jahveh as chief among the Gods. The English 
 version, in which the Hebrew word for goats is ren- 
 
290 The Pentateuch. 
 
 dered devils, is unwarranted. The ancient Israelites 
 had no devils, as we have said ; but their God seems 
 to have been worshipped under the form of the goat. 
 
 It would appear, if the record be taken literally^ 
 that it was not only the animals brought for sacrifice^ 
 but all that were slaughtered for food within the camp 
 that were required to be presented at the door of the 
 Tabernacle, and there received by the priest. 
 
 Had such an order ever been issued, and above 
 all obeyed, we should have data for forming an 
 estimate of the size of the encampment or congrega- 
 tion to which alone it could have been applied. The 
 prescription, however, must be seen as in accordance 
 with the views and requirements of much later times. 
 The blood and fat being Jehovah's portions — to say 
 nothing of the flesh which fell to the priests — ■ 
 measures must be devised by which the parts pertain- 
 in gto each should be secured to him. The restrictions 
 met with in regard to the place where sacrifice to be 
 acceptable to Jehovah could alone be offered, increase 
 in stringency as we advance in the history of the 
 Hebrew people. El-Israel was content in early days 
 with an altar of earth or of unhewn stones, that might 
 be erected anywhere. The Jehovah of post-exilic times 
 would only be served upon the brazen altar resting on 
 the sculptured bull's heads which adorned the Temple 
 of Jerusalem. At this shrine only was sacrifice of 
 any kind that could be offered finally declared to be 
 lawful ; and with the consequence, that may or may 
 not have been seen in all its extent at the time the 
 ordinance was issued, of putting an end for ever to 
 the shedding of blood as a means of worshipping or 
 propitiating their God by the Jews : scattered over 
 the face of the globe they could no longer show their 
 fealty to Jehovah by cutting the throats of bullocks, 
 sheep, and goats, or wringing off the heads of turtle 
 doves before his shrine. Were the children of Israel 
 ever to regain the power they once possessed with 
 
Leviticus: The Blood — The Life, 291 
 
 Jerusalem as seat of their Empire, and the Temple as 
 their place of worship, they might in consistency find 
 themselves bound to return to the ordinances of 
 their ancient ritual — to offer a lamb morning and 
 evening as the daily food of Jehovah, besides the 
 bullocks, rams, lambs, goats, turtle doves, and young 
 pigeons for peace and sin and trespass-offerings as 
 of old — a spectacle that would be not a little strange 
 in the world as now constituted. 
 
 The ordinances touching the disposal of the blood 
 are especially minute and stringent ? 
 
 The blood was believed by the Jews to be the 
 immediate seat of life — to be The Life in fact, and 
 was that which was held especially sacred to Jehovah. 
 Being so, belonging exclusively to Jehovah, it was 
 forbidden to be made use of in any way by man : 
 whosoever was guilty of eating blood was to be put 
 to death. 
 
 Is the blood, then, really and in truth the life or 
 the exclusive seat of the life of an animal ? 
 
 It is not. It is no more than an integer in the 
 factors whose sum is life : an animal dies instantly if 
 struck by lightning, or if its spinal cord be crushed 
 or cut as it emerges from the skull, without having 
 lost a single drop of blood. 
 
 And is blood unwholesome, and so by God's own 
 fiat unfit for food ? 
 
 Not only is it not unwholesome but it is eminently 
 nutritious. Prepared in various ways it has its place 
 among other legitimate alimentary matters. The 
 order against its use, therefore, never came from God, 
 but is an invention of the Jewish scribes on mistaken 
 physiological and religious grounds. 
 
 There may be another meaning hidden under 
 the prohibition against eating blood so frequently 
 repeated ? 
 
 It was probably directed against the barbarous 
 custom of eating portions of the raw flesh of the 
 
292 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 victims offered to Baal and other Semitic gods, which 
 prevailed in the religious rites of the old Israelites, and 
 their congenors the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, 
 and other inhabitants of Western Asia, still practised 
 by some of the savage hill tribes of British India. 
 The Israelites appear, in fact, to have thought that 
 cookery of any kind might be dispensed with upon 
 occasion, and that the blood was not really objec- 
 tionable. After a fight with the Philistines in Saul's 
 time, we learn that the people "took sheep and oxen 
 and calves, and slew them, and did eat with the 
 blood," i.e., they ate the flesh raw (1 Sam. xix. 32) ; 
 and this barbarous practice would have to be asso- 
 ciated with the most solemn rite of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, were it possible to believe that the 
 Priest did verily by his incantation succeed in turning 
 the cake and wine he manipulates into the body and 
 blood of his God. 
 
 What may be said of the general character of the 
 further ordinances that follow i n the Book of 
 Leviticus, delivered, as it is said from God ? 
 
 That it is such as implies a community sunk iu 
 savagery and sensuality. The chapters in which the 
 ordinances referred to occur are unfit to be read in 
 public, and in private are always passed over by per- 
 sons with any pretensions to culture and delicacv. 
 They are probably fragments of very ancient docu- 
 ments and speak of abominations that cannot be 
 perused through the eyes without something like 
 contamination to the mind. 
 
 The whole of the precepts and prescriptions, how- 
 ever, have not this bad character ? 
 
 By no means; amid much that is objectionable, 
 that is not fitted for civilised man in all times, we 
 still meet with many that are truly divine, interposed 
 in all likelihood, nay, most certainly interposed by 
 the relatively modern, more enlightened, and more 
 refined editors of the ancient records they had in 
 
Leviticus: Social Ordinances. 293 
 
 hand ; for if some parts of Leviticus appear to bo 
 founded on documents among the oldest of any made 
 use of in the composition of the Pentateuch, others 
 are undoubtedly from the hand of an Ezra or still 
 more modern compiler, to whom the present fashion 
 of its books is so essentially due. 
 
 It were good and edifying to note a few of the 
 finest of these precepts ? 
 
 This, for instance :— " Thou shalt not hate thy 
 brother m thy heart." And these :— " Thou shalt 
 not bear a grudge against the children of thy people, 
 but shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The stranger 
 that dwelleth with you shall be as one born among 
 you— thou shalt love him as thyself." How opposite 
 all this sounds to the injunctions elsewhere delivered 
 to kill and despoil, to hold no intercourse with 
 the stranger, &c, need not be insisted on. And then, 
 instead of a commandment to borrow without any 
 purpose of making return, we have such injunctions 
 as these : — " Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judg- 
 ment, in mete-yard, in weight, or in measure," &c. 
 
 Some of the ordinances, further, now met with are 
 wholly opposed to the reasonable economical prin- 
 ciples to which we have attained in these days ? 
 
 " Thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy 
 field ; neither shalt thou glean it, nor thy vineyard— 
 thou shalt leave [the gleanings] for the poor and 
 stranger," says the text. But he who ploughs and 
 sows is alone entitled to reap ; and if he leave an ear 
 of corn that could be saved, or aught else of his har- 
 vest that might be gathered, he is guilty of improvi- 
 dence and unthrift. The indiscriminate charity 
 countenanced by the churches of the modern world, 
 by that of Rome especially, and in some lands' 
 enforced by law, serves but to degrade commu- 
 nities, by fostering the ills that are sought to be 
 redressed. 
 
 Some of the Levitical ordinances are not only 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 senseless but often opposed to much that has been 
 found advantageous ? 
 
 This, for example : — " Thou shalt not let thy cattle 
 gender with a diverse kind, nor sow thy field with 
 mingled seed, nor wear a garment of mingled wool 
 and linen." Wow mules in some countries are found 
 hardier and more serviceable than either the horse or 
 the ass. Still as we know the mule incompetent to 
 continue his kind, we see that God has put his veto 
 in a fashion against the procedure by which the 
 hybrid is obtained. As to the interdict against sow- 
 ing with mingled seed, it is now often advantageously 
 departed from ; our pastures would not be what they 
 are were they not sown with mingled seeds, and a 
 year is constantly saved and the produce of the land 
 increased by sowing the seed of one kind of grain or 
 herb with another. So this injunction cannot be 
 from God. As to the prohibition against wearing 
 wool and linen together, this plainly attaches to the 
 superstition that connected impurity with wool, 
 leather, and other things derived from the bodies of 
 animals ; linen was in some sort sacred as being 
 especially ordered for the priests' robes. 
 
 Some of the old Levifcical ordinances have, in 
 these . days and to suit particular interests, been 
 wrested from the meaning they plainly enough bear 
 on their face ? 
 
 This, for instance, and very notably : " A man shall 
 not take a wife to her sister to vex her." 
 
 The meaning of this does not seem far to seek ! 
 
 Nevertheless, it has been forced from its obvious 
 sense. Polygamy being authorised by the Jewish law 
 of old, the text commands no more than that a man 
 shall not have two sisters living with him at the same 
 time as his wives. 
 
 But having lost a wife by death, he is not debarred 
 from subsequently marrying her sister ? 
 
 Most certainly he is not — there is no interdict of 
 
Leviticus: The Seducer — the Diviner. 295;, 
 
 the kind either expressed or understood in the text - 
 as it stands. The perverse ingenuity that has forced 
 such an interpretation on the words of the command- 
 ment has given occasion to no small amount of social 
 suffering among communites in which marriage with 
 a deceased wife's sister is declared illegal, and the off- 
 spring of such unions are branded with bastardy — a 
 crying injustice before God. 
 
 There is another ordinance here met with which 
 may be said to have had injurious effects even to the 
 present time ? 
 
 That which declares that the bond-maid who yields 
 to a seducer is to be scourged, whilst her betrayer is 
 to bring a ram for a trespass-offering to Jehovah, 
 when "his sin will be forgiven him! " In modern 
 society the seducer, the really guilty party, is still 
 generally condoned, whilst the victim, whose fault is 
 mostly compliance merely, is alone made to suffer. 
 But how should a God of purity and truth have made 
 a distinction in such a case, or rather have put the 
 heavier penalty on the less guilty head ? Or how 
 imagine him requiring a ram in satisfaction for con- 
 duct in which lying and deception must mostly be 
 presumed to play so great a part ? 
 
 " A man or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or 
 that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death — the 
 people shall stone them with stones, their blood shall 
 be upon them." 
 
 So read we in the book said to be composed under 
 the immediate inspiration of God. But what might 
 be understood by a man or woman " having a familiar 
 spirit ? " 
 
 There seems a natural proclivity in the mind of 
 ignorant man to pry into futurity, to learn what time 
 may have in store, and what fate will befal him ; 
 and a wizard, an inferior form of the Diviner, Seer or 
 Soothsayer, was the person presumed competent to 
 supply the information desired. They, in the present 
 
 T 
 
296 The Pentateuch. 
 
 day, however, who pretend to <f look into the seeds of 
 time and say what grain will grow," are regarded by 
 the truly-educated as cheats, and by the magistrate, 
 when caught in their cheating, are treated as vaga- 
 bonds and impostors. But they continue to find prey 
 among the ignorant and credulous, high as well as 
 low. The fortane-tellers, spirit-rappers, et hoc genus 
 omne of the present age, are the degenerate seed of 
 the witches of Endor and Wizards of old, of the Seers, 
 Sibyls, Pythian priestesses and Delphic oracles of the 
 ancient world, and have their kindred in the rain- 
 makers and medicine-men of savage life. 
 
 It were ungrateful and even improper to refer to all 
 the Interdicts comprised in the Book of Leviticus. 
 Some of the acts denounced as reprehensible and 
 deserving of death cannot be understood by the gene- 
 ral reader, but find their explanation in practices once 
 accounted devotional in Palestine, and still prevalent 
 as a religious rite among certain tribes that people 
 India. Others, again, such as the injunction against 
 making baldnesses on the head, are so childish that 
 it were childish indeed to think of their ever having 
 come from God. It is not uninteresting, however, to 
 observe that the clergy of the Church of Borne, who 
 follow so many of the old Levitical injunctions, do 
 obvious violence to the one against making baldnesses 
 on the head, by the extensive shavings of the scalp 
 that are practised by the monks of some of the 
 regular orders, and by the Tonsure or making bald 
 that part of the head on which the savage Bed 
 Indian leaves a curl, the heathen Chinese a tail, and 
 the Phrenologist who seeks to locate the organs of 
 the mental faculties finds the convolution of the brain 
 the outward manifestation of whose activitiy is arro- 
 gance and pride. 
 
 The Bomish clergy must be held to do still more 
 violence to nature than to this silly statute of the 
 Levitical code by the state of Celibacy that is imposed 
 on them ? 
 
Leviticus: Jehovah's Ministers. 297 
 
 Surely : the Jewish Priest was a married man, and 
 is here expressly enjoined to take a virgin of his 
 people to wife ; he is only forbidden to have a widow, 
 a woman divorced, or a harlot for his spouse. The 
 Priest of the Church of Rome, on the contrary, is for- 
 bidden to marry at all. For those ends of policy and 
 dominion, which are such paramount elements in the 
 constitution of this Conspiracy against the rights and 
 liberties of mankind, is celibacy forced on its minis- 
 ters ; though this has not always prevented its Hier- 
 archs — Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, and others of less 
 degree from living in a state of concubinage and having 
 families of sons and daughters under the less tender 
 but still endearing names of Nephews and Nieces. 
 
 Jehovah, according to these ancient documents, 
 would not be served by individuals deformed or im- 
 perfect in their persons, neither by the blind, the halt, 
 nor the lame, by him who had a flat nose, or was 
 splay-footed or broken-backed, or who had a blemish 
 in his eye, or was scabbed, or who had been made im- 
 perfect through interference with parts essential to 
 the constitution of an entire man. His Priests were 
 not to be like those of Cybele and Attys, Gods of 
 Nature in its state of decline. Jehovah was the God 
 of Life and Increase, not of death and decay. 
 
 All this is either expressly said or plainly implied ; 
 but a flat nose, a hunchback, and splay feet have 
 nothing to do with the mind of the man. Socrates 
 was surely a better sample of humanity proper than 
 Alcibiades, with all his beauty of person, his self- 
 assurance, and his ambition. God, the father of all 
 flesh, could never have given any such commandments 
 as those just quoted to mankind ; and those parts of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures which enunciate them are, 
 therefore, most certainly no expression of the will 
 of The Supreme. 
 
 " Ye shall not round the cornors of your heads, 
 neither shall ye mar the corners of your beards," says 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 another of these curious commandments here en- 
 countered ? 
 
 Such injunctions were probably directed against 
 practices that prevailed among some of the nations of 
 antiquity. Young men on attaining the age of puberty 
 had their heads, uncropttill then, shorn of their locks,, 
 and the hair, with that of the sprouting cheeks and 
 chin, presented as an offering at the shrine of the 
 God. The order may, however, have been directed 
 more particularly against the priests of Baal, who 
 were shorn so as to leave no more than a ring of hair 
 round the lower part of the head, in imitation seem- 
 ingly of the rays of the sun. Their heads must have 
 been trimmed exactly like those of the monks in the 
 regular orders of the Church of Rome. The learned 
 Spencer, indeed, wrote his great classical work* with 
 the special view of showing that the Mosaic legislation 
 was mainly directed against the Idolatry in which his 
 clear and scholarly vision enabled him to see that the 
 early Hebrews as a people were sunk. 
 
 Ye shall make no cuttings in your flesh, says an- 
 other of the commandments here enunciated. 
 
 In the worship of some Semitic and other ancient 
 deities, whose rites were neither unknown nor unob- 
 served by the Israelites of old, it was customary for 
 the hierophants and others to slash themselves with 
 knives and to offer their blood upon the altar, as well 
 as to one another to be sucked from the wounds. 
 Such barbarous practices were of course abominations 
 to more enlightened times, and were consequently 
 denounced by the modern Jehovistic reformers. 
 
 "Do not prostitute thy daughter," &c. This is 
 yet another of those extraordinary and not generally 
 understood commandments, which have nevertheless 
 a special and well known significance ; for it is directed 
 
 * De Legibus Hebrseorum Eitualibus Cap. I. : Primariam 
 Legis Mosaicse rationem fuisse Idolatries Israeliticse mhibi- 
 tionem. 
 
Leviticus: Ne Virgines Prostarent. 299 
 
 against one of the most abominable and demoralis- 
 ing of all the customs prevalent among the Semitic 
 races of Western Asia. Maidens on attaining the 
 age of puberty were held to perform a religious and 
 indispensable rite, by betaking themselves to the 
 temple of their God or Goddess, and there yielding 
 themselves to the embrace of the man who addressed 
 them, receiving from him at the time a piece of 
 money which went into the chest of the temple. _ Such 
 was the Confirmation undergone by the virgins of 
 Babylonia, Assyria, and Palestine, in ancient times ! 
 No wonder that reformed Judaeism rebelled against a 
 custom so degrading and demoralising. Stringently 
 denounced in the coarsest terms in this revised Code, 
 we must needs conclude that the custom continued 
 nevertheless to be observed among the Israelites to a 
 late period in their history. Nature- Worship, in 
 which promiscuous sexual intercourse was the leading 
 feature, must have prevailed in Judaea even to so late 
 a date as the reign of Hezekiah — or what were the 
 Kadeschim, and those booths abutting on the temple 
 that were ordered to be pulled down by that pious 
 Prince, if they were not for the celebration of the 
 rites through which consistent worship was believed 
 to be paid to the Reproductive Principle in Nature ? * 
 
 The Israelites believing themselves to be the pecu- 
 liar people of their God Jehovah, he being held 
 supreme over all the Gods of other peoples, and the 
 rest of the world regarded as little better than accur- 
 sed, naturally conceived a great dislike to strangers ? 
 
 No doubt of this, though we have seen an inter- 
 
 * In an exhaustive Paper by the learned Heyne in the 
 Gbttingen Transactions, the custom already denounced by 
 Herodotus as " foedissimum omnium institutorum," is shown 
 to have been general over Western Asia. Comp. Heyne : De 
 Babyloniorum Instituto Religioso ut mulieres ad Templum 
 Veneris prostarent, in Com. Soc. Reg. Scient. Gottmg. 1805, 
 p. 30, Sect, historicse. 
 
300 The Pentateuch. 
 
 polated commandment to "love the stranger," who, 
 nevertheless, was never other than a despised alien or 
 a slave in Israel. No stranger was on any account 
 to partake of the meats presented to Jehovah ; neither 
 was aught from the hand of a stranger to be offered 
 at his shrine. The Jewish woman living with her 
 parents, or wedded to a Jew, was allowed to eat of 
 them ; but wedded to a stranger, were she even the 
 daughter of a priest, she lost her privilege, — her mar- 
 riage with the stranger cut her off in so far from her 
 people. Marriages with strangers, indeed, were abso- 
 lutely prohibited by the latest legislation. The his- 
 tory of the Hebrew people, nevertheless, shows that 
 the law against intermarriage with strangers must 
 have been of the most recent introduction : — That it 
 was not observed until after the age of Solomon, and 
 more than one of his successors, is certain. Sarah's 
 objection to a daughter of Heth as wife for her son 
 Isaac is an invention of the post-exilic writer of the 
 mythical tales of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, intro- 
 duced to lend countenance to the views of his day 
 and the party he represents. Moses, as we are told, 
 had a Midianite for his first wife and an Ethiopian 
 for his second ; and Kings David and Solomon, no- 
 wise particular in their selections, had wives and con- 
 cubines in crowds of all and sundry their neighbours 
 and allies, — proof enough that the law was as little 
 observed as it was assuredly unknown in their day. 
 
 Commandments for the celebration of the feasts of 
 Jehovah occupy a large space in the Levitical section 
 of the sacred books of the Jews ? 
 
 Besides the Sabbath, or seventh day of every week, 
 so specially ordered to be kept as a day of rest in the 
 Decalogue and elsewhere, but so little observed, as it 
 would seem, through the whole course of Jewish his- 
 tory even to the age of Nehemiah, there were many 
 other days and times commanded to be kept holy, 
 generally as feasts, but on one particular occasion at 
 
Leviticus: Feasts and Fasts. 301 
 
 least as a solemn fast and day of humiliation. The 
 day of the new-moon or first day of each month, like 
 the" seventh of the week, was one of the regular holy 
 days; on it no work was to be done, and extra 
 sacrifices were to be offered. The fourteenth day of 
 the month Nisan, or day of the full moon of the vernal 
 equinox, was celebrated as the Pascha or Passover of 
 Jehovah, a feast which we have ventured, in opposi- 
 tion to the usual interpretation, to connect with the 
 passage of the sun from the lower into the upper 
 hemisphere, or from the winter to the summer. On the 
 fifteenth day of the same month fell the feast of un- 
 leavened bread, when a sheaf of the grain -harvest 
 was to be waved before Jehovah, and no food was 
 to pass the people's lips until this ceremony had been 
 performed. Fifty days after the Sabbath of the 
 fifteenth day, the feast, which by and by came to be 
 called the Feast of Pentecost, was celebrated. On 
 this occasion it was that "meat-offerings" — pastry 
 made with oil and spiced with frankincense and 
 salt — were the order of the day ; and — practice un- 
 usual — the bread now presented was to be leavened — 
 a direct contradiction of another ordinance in which 
 Jehovah is made to declare that he will not have his 
 sacrifices offered with leaven. Leaven, like honey, 
 having a principle of fermentation within itself, was 
 reckoned among things corrupt, unclean, and so unfit 
 for presentation to the God. At the Feast of Weeks, 
 or Pentecost, as many as seven lambs, — one, doubt- 
 less, for each of the seven Sabbaths comprised within 
 the fifty days prescribed, one young bullock, two 
 rams, and a kid of the goats as the sin-offering, were 
 to be added to the meat or farinaceous offerings, and 
 burnt [in part] on the altar as sacrifices of a sweet 
 savour to Jehovah. 
 
 These festivals belonged to the commencement of 
 the relatively modern ecclesiastical year, and were 
 celebrated at the epoch of the vernal equinox ; but 
 
302 The Pentateuch. 
 
 they were not held of the same importance in later 
 times at least as those that took place in the seventh 
 month, the beginning of the old civil year, and 
 observed at the epoch of the autumnal equinox, when 
 the sun sinks from the superior or summer signs to 
 run his course through the six inferior or winter 
 signs. The first month of the year, held holy at all 
 epochs in the history of the Israelites, became 
 exceptionally so to them when they had been made 
 acquainted with the signs of the zodiac, and tinctured 
 with the more recondite Sabseism of their congeners 
 and conquerors, the Assyrians and Chaldseans ? 
 
 This was so very certainly : As the seventh day of 
 the week was Chiun's or Saturn's day, still goes by 
 the name of the Roman God, and is yet made more 
 of a holiday among ourselves than any other day of 
 the week, so was the seventh month of the ecclesiastical 
 year amongthe Jews especially devoted to the great God 
 of Times and Seasons under his new name of Jehovah. 
 
 Jehovah is made by the Jewish writer to give 
 Moses particular instructions for the celebration of 
 the festivals connected with this month ? 
 
 " Speak to the children of Israel," are the words, 
 " and say : In the first day of the seventh month 
 shall ye have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of 
 trumpets, a holy convocation, a day on which no ser- 
 vile work is to be done, and . no act performed other 
 than the sacrifice of an offering made by fire to 
 Jehovah." 
 
 What possible significance may have been attached 
 to the blowing of trumpets ? 
 
 The sound issuing from a trumpet was fancifully 
 likened to the ray of light that dispels the dark ; and 
 as this seemed to drive out the night, so was the 
 clangour of the trumpet held to end the old year and 
 bring in the new. The instrument used on this great 
 occasion, too, was special ; it was none of the silver 
 trumpets on which alarms and calls were blown in 
 
I 
 
 Leviticus : Feasts and Fasts. 303 
 
 the camp and field, but a ram's horn— the identical 
 horn, said legend, of the ram caught in the thicket 
 that was sacrificed by Abraham instead of his son 
 Isaac '.—representative, more probably, of the horn 
 of the emblematical equinoxial ram. And, curiously 
 enough, and it may be in connection with the mythical 
 tale referred to, the chapter of The Book that is read 
 on New- Year's Day in Jewish synagogues is the one 
 in Genesis in which the story of Abraham and Isaac 
 is told. 
 
 The festival of the first day of the seventh month, 
 however, is not the only one, nor yet the most impor- 
 tant, of those ordered to be observed in the seventh 
 month? _ 
 
 The tenth day is to be specially set apart as the 
 Atonement day of the year. On this great day the 
 people are enjoined to do no manner of work, but to 
 " afflict their souls. The soul that was not afflicted, 
 or that did any work on this day, was to be cut off 
 from among the people." On the fifteenth day, 
 again, the first fruits of the earth were to be brought 
 in and offered before Jehovah ; for the grain harvest 
 had long been gathered in, but the trees were now 
 dropping ripe fruit, and the vintage had begun. 
 Along with these offerings, so appropriate to the 
 autumn, the people were further to bring boughs of 
 thick trees, and palms, and willows of the brook ; and 
 were further to leave their houses and for seven days 
 to dwell in booths, in remembrance, as it is said, of 
 the sort of shelter their sires had had in the wilder- 
 ness when fleeing out of Egypt. 
 
 The last must have been a commandment difficult 
 of observance by the population of a great city like 
 Jerusalem? 
 
 Not only diflicult, but as impossible in any literal 
 sense as it must have been for the children of Israel, 
 in their flight from Egypt, to find shelter of the sort 
 in the desert amid which they are said to have wan- 
 
304 The Pentateuch. 
 
 dered so long. There were no b ughs of thick trees 
 nor willows of the brook to be had in the waterless 
 wilderness. 
 
 It would be difficult for the population of Jeru- 
 salem, even in its present shrunken state, did they 
 quit their houses, to find boughs of trees to make 
 them booths ? 
 
 It would indeed ; for the country around Jerusalem 
 is now treeless, as it must have been also long before 
 its destruction by Titus. In the times in which the 
 legend arose on which the Order is founded, however, 
 the land, we must presume, wore a different aspect, 
 and was covered with shrubs and trees of a larger 
 growth, How otherwise could the large supplies of 
 fuel have been had that were wanted for the usual, 
 to say nothing of the extraordinary, sacrifices, when 
 not one or two, but as many as twelve or fourteen 
 bullocks, the same number of lambs, a couple of rams 
 and a goat were ordered for burnt-offerings in the 
 proceedings of a single day ! Whence could the 
 fuel have come that was required for mere domestic 
 purposes, when the city was miles in circum- 
 ference, and its inhabitants a hundred thousand or 
 more in number ? 
 
 The country around Jerusalem, treeless at the 
 present time, and the deserts amid which the ruins of 
 Babylon and Nineveh, Palmyra andBaalbec now stand, 
 could not assuredly have presented any such aspect 
 in ancient times, when these great cities were the 
 seats of Empires, and, with the lands around them, 
 must have teemed with millions of busy men ? 
 
 Such a conclusion is inevitable. A populous city 
 in the midst of a desert is an impossibility. 
 
 To what, then, may the ruin of these States, which 
 in former ages were so powerful, and supported a 
 numerous and warlike population, be ascribed ? 
 
 To the curse of God, say Theologians ; — stricken 
 with barrenness by reason of the wickedness of their 
 
Leviticus : Sterility of Eastern Lands, 30 5 
 
 once inhabitants. Politicians, again, who happily 
 are not always theologians, have maintained that it 
 was due to misgovernment and the ravages of war. 
 But misgovernment scarcely affects the masses, and 
 all experience shows that a few short years suffice to 
 efface the damage done by the most ruthless inva- 
 sions. 
 
 The present desolate condition of these countries 
 mast therefore be owing to physical causes, to none 
 that are either moral or political in their nature ; 
 neither need it be ascribed to change of climate 
 consequent on cosmical causes ? 
 
 It probably depends on no cause more remote than 
 simple denudation and exposure of the surface 
 through destruction of the native growth of trees and 
 shrubs which inevitably begins wherever men congre- 
 gate in masses, and make themselves homes in towns 
 and cities. Countries in the geographical position of 
 Assyria, Babylonia, and Palestine, denuded of their 
 leafy screens, no longer attract the rain that is 
 indispensable to fertility ; an uppish growth of trees 
 and shrubs being at once the cause and the conse- 
 quence not only of its own existence, but of the 
 possible existence of the pasture lands and corn-fields 
 that furnish man and beast with their food. The 
 rainfall growing less and less • as denudation of the 
 soil proceeded, and the heights and slopes were 
 stripped for firing, the soil at the same time became 
 loosened and was washed away by the storms of 
 winter ; the levels then ceased to yield their increase 
 in adequate proportion to the labour bestowed on 
 them, dearth and depopulation followed, and man's 
 dominion came to an end. 
 
 It was no curse of God, then, that brought the 
 once powerful Empires of Assyria and Babylon to 
 their fall ? 
 
 God curses nothing that is done in consonance 
 with his eternal laws. It is man's short-sightedness 
 
306 The Pentateuch. 
 
 and ignorance — 11 Ignorance, that negative curse of 
 God" — alone that has made lands desolate which 
 once were populous, prosperous, and powerful. 
 
 If we have regard to the repeated commandments 
 to rest and the denunciations of work on their Sab- 
 baths and holy-days, we must conclude that the 
 Israelites looked on labour as a curse, and on idleness 
 as a blessing — to be idle, with them, it may be said, 
 was to be well employed ? 
 
 There need be no question of this. In the early 
 part of the Book of Genesis we find labour imposed 
 as a punishment on the Man for his transgression of 
 an arbitrary commandment, and the evil teaching 
 there set forth has had more or less of an evil influ- 
 ence on the world even to the present day. But the 
 necessity of working for the supply of his wants is 
 one of God's best gifts to man, as one of the great 
 of our kind has said ; and truly, the industrious are 
 the only happy, the idle ever the unblessed. To the 
 worker the day is still as much too short, as to the 
 idler it is too long. He who does not do work of some 
 kind advantageous to himself or the community, has 
 no title to live ; he might be effaced without loss to 
 the world. 
 
 The power of man to endure labour whether of 
 body or mind, however, is limited ? 
 
 Surely it is ; excess in either kind leads to disease 
 and death ; and so is rest in due measure even as 
 necessary as work to the well-being of the man. The 
 busy heads and hands that make Capital — the accumu- 
 lated fund of industry and thrift — to fructify ; who 
 have no respite from toil and no more in the end than 
 the pittance of meat and drink that keeps soul and 
 body together are ill repaid ; they have a title to much 
 more : to such participation in the proceeds of their 
 industry and ingenuity as gives leisure for thought, 
 and admits of aspiration' to the intellectual life that 
 lies beyond mere animal existence. 
 
Leviticus : The Name of Jehovah. 307 
 
 The name of Jehovah we have already seen was a 
 name most holy— so holy that among the Command- 
 ments of the Decalogue one is devoted to forbidding 
 its vain or unnecessary utterance. It could not be 
 pronounced by a son of Israel without sin nor by a 
 stranger without blasphemy. Hence the tale we here 
 encounter of the son of the Israelitish woman by the 
 Egyptian father, who is said to have blasphemed the 
 name of Jehovah, and who, as Jehovah himself com- 
 mands Moses, is brought forth of the camp and 
 stoned to death. The unhappy man had taken the 
 sacred tetragramma J.H.V.H. in vain— i.e.^ he had 
 uttered the proper name of the modern Jewish God 
 
 irreverently it may have been — and for so doing he 
 
 must die. 
 
 It would almost seem as though it was the name 
 Jahveh alone which it was death to utter ? 
 
 There is, indeed, a nice and not uninteresting dis- 
 tinction now made between cursing Elohim — God, and 
 blaspheming the name of Jahveh — the Lord ; Elohim 
 being the generic title for God or the Gods, Jahveh 
 the proper and ineffable name of the Jewish Deity. 
 " Whosoever curseth his Elohim shall bear his sin ; he 
 who blasphemeth the name of Jahveh shall surely be 
 put to death," says the text (xxiv. 15, 18). The 
 Jews, it would seem, might take God or the Gods to 
 task, as we have seen Moses doing on the eve of the 
 Exodus, when his God had not done all in conformity 
 with his wishes, had sent him on a bootless errand, 
 had threatened to break out on the people for their 
 rebellions, &c. ; whilst there was another God, the 
 God of the Priesthood, to wit, against whom no word 
 might be murmured without life being paid as the 
 forfeit. 
 
 " The man who cursed his God, it is said, was to 
 bear his sin:" what was the meaning attached to 
 this ? 
 
 It is given in the text. He who cursed God was 
 
308 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 to bring a kid of the goats to the priest, to have it 
 slaughtered at the door of the Tabernacle, sent as an 
 offering of a sweet savour made bj fire to Jehovah, 
 and so find himself quit of his sin. 
 
 Such a commandment cannot surely be from God ? 
 
 Most certainly it cannot, but it may from man; and 
 meeting us as it does beside the context, we have 
 information of a kind that has not always escaped the 
 late Jehovistic expurgators of the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 the purpose of these men having been to present their 
 countrymen as acknowledging and worshipping no 
 God but Jehovah alone. 
 
 In holding the name of their God so holy the Jews 
 appear to have but imitated other peoples ? 
 
 One of the names of the Egyptian God, Hermes — ■ 
 Thoth, was held of such sanctity that it dared not be 
 spoken aloud ; and he who uttered the proper name 
 of the Queen of Heaven, — the Moon-Goddess, was put 
 to death.* The Israelites in very many respects were 
 in truth exactly like other heathen peoples. 
 
 The Jews were not at liberty to cultivate their land 
 as they liked ? 
 
 As each seventh day was to be a Sabbath of rest to 
 man, so was every seventh year to be a Sabbath of 
 rest to the land. For six years they were to crop 
 their fields, to dress their vines and fruit trees, and 
 get out of the soil all it would yield ; but they were 
 neither to plough, nor to sow, nor to reap on the 
 seventh year. They were not even to gather aught 
 the land produced of itself in the year of the Sab- 
 bath ! 
 
 % The seventh, and the year succeeding it, must, in 
 this case, have been verily and indeed a fast-year, as 
 well as a rest-year ? 
 
 Had these years not been otherwise provided for 
 miraculously : " If ye shall say : What shall we eat 
 
 * Movers, Die Phoenizier, I., 541. 
 
Leviticus : Sowing and Reaping the Land. 309 
 
 the seventh year ; behold we shall not sow nor gather 
 in our increase ; then I will command my blessing on 
 you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit 
 for three years ; and ye shall sow the eighth year, 
 and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year." 
 
 Has not God by his own preordained ordinance, 
 and man himself in his name, declared that " unless 
 ye sow, neither shall ye reap," and that the sowings 
 of one year do not suffice for two years ? 
 
 No question of this — such is the great God of 
 nature's eternal law. 
 
 Any such commandment as that quoted above could 
 never, therefore, have been dictated by the inspiration 
 of God? 
 
 Most certainly not. Each year's provision in 
 temperate lands falls within the year, and is less or 
 more abundant in consonance with meteorological 
 conditions which vary within certain limits, and are 
 in no wise under the control of man. But as God by 
 his law has said that if w T e do not sow neither shall 
 we reap, so may we feel assured that God did never 
 by any miraculous interposition of the kind set forth, 
 lead man into the sin of lying idle for a year, and as 
 reward give him the produce of two years for the 
 labour of one. In the sweat of thy face — or of thy 
 brain might have been added — shalt thou eat bread, 
 said a truly inspired man, possessed of a wholesome 
 belief in the sanctity as well as the necessity of labour. 
 
 Something may, nevertheless, be said for giving 
 the land an occasional rest ? 
 
 Had the order to let the land lie fallow even 
 oftener than once in seven years been unaccompanied 
 by the grounds adduced for the practice, it would 
 have been less unreasonable than, at first sight, it 
 appears. Lands made to bear the same crops for a 
 succession of years become exhausted, and cease to 
 yield their proper increase; they only recover in 
 some measure by being left fallow ; but this .must be 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 for more than one year in the seven prescribed. We 
 have no evidence, however, that snch a law as the 
 one in question was ever followed, nor any account of 
 the land yielding as matter of course on the sixth 
 year double the produce it had borne in any preceding 
 year. We have even positive assurance, indeed, that 
 the order to let the land rest on the seventh year, as 
 well as the one for the observance of the weekly 
 Sabbath, was unknown at so late a period in the 
 history of the Hebrew people as the year 445 before 
 Christ; for we find Nehemiah complaining that in 
 Judah he saw the people treading their winepresses, 
 lading their asses and bringing corn, wine, grapes, 
 figs, and all manner of country produce into Jeru- 
 salem on the Sabbath day (Nehem. xiii. 15). In the 
 very book that engages us, moreover (Levit. xxvi.), 
 we discover Jehovah threatening the people with 
 setting his face against them for their neglect of his 
 statutes. " I will scatter you among the heathen," 
 he is made to exclaim, " and will draw out a sword 
 after you, and your land, lying desolate, shall rest 
 and enjoy her Sabbaths, because it did not rest when 
 ye dwelt upon it." The commandment to let the land 
 rest, therefore, came from the Reformed Jehovistie 
 party, whose influence could not have culminated 
 until after the Babylonian captivity. As the statute 
 must have been unknown, so was it never observed 
 till then— if perchance it was ever really observed by 
 the remnant who returned under the leadership of 
 Nehemiah — which is very questionable. 
 
 The rest prescribed was to be in the seventh year ? 
 Doubtless to accord with the sacred number seven, 
 which had a farther extension; for every fiftieth 
 year, the year that succeeded each series of seven, 
 was to be observed in an especial manner as a Jubilee. 
 The trumpet was to sound, liberty was to be proclaimed 
 throughout the land, and every one, if he chose, was 
 to resume possession, upon certain terms, of any land 
 
Leviticus : Land-tenure and Usury. 311 
 
 or other property he had disposed of or pledged in 
 the course of the lapsed fifty years. He had but to 
 return the price, or a certain portion of the price he 
 had received, in exchange, the amount being deter- 
 mined by the number of years that had run between 
 the date of the pledge or sale and the year of the 
 Jnbilee, The land was in no case to be held as 
 alienated for ever ; " For the land is mine, sayeth 
 Jehovah." And so it is in truth, and cannot by 
 natural right be held save in trust for the behoof of 
 all born upon it — it can belong to no man to do with 
 absolutely what he likes. But such a statute as that 
 of the Jubilee year, with all its conditions, could 
 never have been, and certainly never was, acted on 
 in Israel. Like the seventh day of rest in the week, 
 and the seventh year of rest to the land, the seven 
 times seventh year of the Jubilee is a post-exilic ordi- 
 nance contrived, in all likelihood, against those who 
 were laying field to field, and turning into hunting 
 grounds the lands that were wanted to grow food for 
 the community. 
 
 Such laws, whether observed or not, still point 
 plainly enough to settled times, a policied state, 
 and agriculture as the chief industry of the 
 people ? 
 
 And consequently could not have been dictated by 
 Moses to a horde of wanderers amid the trackless, 
 waterless, herbless, treeless, lifeless wilderness. 
 
 There is another statute now encountered which 
 has long and properly been ignored or set at nought 
 by the children of Israel ? 
 
 That against usury : " Thou shalt not give thy 
 money upon usury," says the text. This is so 
 obviously unjust, that we may safely conclude it 
 never came into the writer's head through the in- 
 spiration of God. He, who by thrift and industry 
 accumulates capital, and finds himself possessed of 
 more than he needs for living and carrying on his 
 
The Pentateuch, 
 
 business, but which another can use to profit, is as 
 fairly entitled to share in the profit that then accrues 
 as if he were himself the immediate agent in the 
 increase. Capital would never be accumulated could 
 it not be used and turned to farther profit; and, 
 without capital, industry would be paralysed, society 
 made unprogressive, and all the comforts, elegancies, 
 and refinements of life become impossible. Capital, 
 therefore, has the very foremost title to protection by 
 the State. But, as we have already hinted, it has its 
 duties as well as its rights; and it cannot be con- 
 sonant with even-handed justice that the capitalist 
 alone should go on adding gain to gain, luxury 
 to luxury, superfluity to superfluity, whilst the 
 instruments of his prosperity make no advance 
 in aught that sweetens, adorns, raises, and ennobles 
 life. 
 
 There are several beautiful, charitable injunctions 
 also met with in the Book of Leviticus which mark 
 the late period of its composition ? 
 
 "If thy brother be waxen poor," says one of these, 
 " and have fallen into decay with thee, then shaltihou 
 relieve him; yea, though he be a stranger or a 
 sojourner among ye ; and, if he be sold to thee, thou 
 sbalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant, 
 but as a hired servant shall he be with thee until the 
 year of the Jubilee, when he shall depart, both he 
 and his children with him : my servants which I 
 brought out of Egypt, they shall not be sold as 
 bond-men." The law, as here announced, is therefore 
 at utter variance with the one on the same subject on 
 which we have had occasion to speak in our com- 
 mentary on Exodus (p. 207). Bond-men and bond- 
 women, however, there were to be ; but of the heathen 
 round about, or the native inhabitants of the land ; of 
 these were bond-men and bond-maids to be bought ; 
 and they were to be slaves for the term of their lives. 
 "Ye shall take them for an inheritance and a 
 
Leviticus : Slavery. 
 
 313 
 
 possession for your children after you — they shall be 
 your bond-men for ever." 
 
 Slavery, therefore, in its most unmitigated form is 
 here presented as commanded by Jehovah, even at 
 the late period when the text we are discussing was 
 composed ? 
 
 The terms in which the "domestic institution" is 
 sanctioned are explicit ; but the modern world, 
 despite of the approval put into the mouth of God, and 
 being, as said, an integral part of his revealed will to 
 man, has declared that of all the unjustifiable insti- 
 tutions that have ever existed in the world slavery is 
 the most indefensible. The more advanced among the 
 policied peoples of the earth have abandoned it in 
 every shape, from serfdom or ascription to the soil, 
 upwards ; and though it still lingers among the least 
 enlightened and progressive peoples of the world, it is 
 doomed, and must, by-and-by, be abandoned by all. 
 It may be very long, however, before slavery dies out 
 from among the dark and yellow-skinned races of 
 mankind. 
 
 The provisions in the legislation connected with 
 slavery are exceptionally favourable to the Israelites ? 
 
 As might have been expected. Did one of them 
 fall poor and sell himself to a stranger sojourning in 
 the land, he might be redeemed at any time on 
 certain equitable terms. If not redeemed the Israelite 
 who had sold himself into slavery was, in any case, 
 to go out free, both he and his children, in the year 
 of the Jubilee — a provision of which we found no 
 trace in the older statutes of Exodus any more than 
 we found any mention of a year of Jubilee. 
 
 Like favourable ordinances now also make their 
 appearance in regard to the redemption of beasts, 
 houses, and lands, and notably, and in striking con- 
 tradiction to the older legislation — even though they 
 may have been vowed to Jehovah : things devoted to 
 Jehovah, it is now said, may be redeemed j but of 
 
3H 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 old, " none devoted, which shall be devoted of men, 
 shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to 
 death." 
 
 Among the most frequently repeated injunctions 
 in the Hebrew scriptures are those against making 
 molten and graven images ? 
 
 The later Jewish writers must have felt the 
 aversion which cultivated men naturally experience 
 against any attempt to give shape or semblance to the 
 supersensuous entity they conceive and call God or 
 Jehovah : — " Ye shall make you no idols nor graven 
 images, neither rear you up a standing image, neither 
 set you an image of stone in your land to bow down 
 to it," says the writer, speaking in the name of his 
 God. But the interdict here encountered plainly 
 implies that both molten and graven images were 
 made, standing images of wood and stone (phallic 
 emblems) set up, and all alike bowed down to and 
 worshipped by the people. 
 
 When we read the Hebrew Scriptures with the 
 eyes of the understanding, and without prejudice, 
 we see that the commandments against idolatry in 
 various forms must have been called for because of 
 the prevalence of idolatrous practices in the land of 
 Judaea, not among neighbouring tribes and peoples 
 only, as so often said, but among the children of 
 Israel themselves, and farther, that such command- 
 ments can only have come from writers who lived in 
 relatively recent times — during, and perhaps^ still 
 more commonly after, the Babylonian captivity. 
 .From the beginning until very far on in their career 
 as a people, the Israelites appear never to have been 
 without images or idols of some sort, pillars of stone 
 and of wood, as symbols of the gods they owned and 
 sought to propitiate. We have the record of the 
 Patriarch Jacob setting up the stone he had had for 
 a pillow at Beth-El, the house of El, the God he 
 worshipped, pouring oil upon it, and so consecrating 
 
Leviticus : Emblems — Idols. 3 1 5 
 
 it to his divinity. In so-called Mosaic times, again, 
 we have Cherubim commanded by Jehovah himself 
 with faces looking towards one another, and with 
 wings to cover the mercy seat, on which there can be 
 little doubt the image of the God himself or his 
 Symbolic presence was enthroned. We have, farther, 
 the golden Calf of Aaron, and the brazen Serpent of 
 Moses ; emblems authorised by the priest and the 
 leader, to the latter of which incense continued to be 
 offered in Jerusalem down to the reign of Hezekiab, 
 whilst to the former adoration was paid at Beth-El 
 and Dan in the neighbouring realm of Israel to the 
 very end of its independent existence. To conclude, 
 we have the Stone columns of Baal, and the Wooden 
 shafts of Aschera — the grove and groves of our English 
 version— as objects of ceaseless denunciation by the 
 prophets and Jehovists of the most recent times. 
 These pillars were notoriously simulacra of the 
 active and passive reproductive principle in nature, 
 prime element in the religious conceptions of pre- 
 historic ages, and objects of worship with the Israelites 
 as with their congeners, the other Semitic tribes 
 around them, well nigh to the end of their days as a 
 people. 
 
 Besides their greatest Divinities, the Israelites had 
 certain household Gods — Teraphim, Idols — usually of 
 small size, such as those must have been which 
 Rachel stole from her father Laban ; but sometimes 
 also of larger dimensions, gilded or overlaid with 
 brass, and then called Ephods, of the kind, doubtless, 
 of the one owned by King David, the man according 
 to God's own heart, addressed by him by the name of 
 Jehovah, and consulted as an oracle in cases of emer- 
 gency or danger. Kind David's Ephod must indeed 
 have been of the full life-size, for we read of its 
 having been placed on a certain occasion in his bed 
 with a rug to represent his shock of hair by his wife 
 Michal, when his life was sought by the watchers of 
 
3'i* 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Saul. We have already had occasion to refer to the 
 object called JEduth, that is ordered to be kept in the 
 Ark of the Covenant, as 'possibly something alto- 
 gether different from the Tables of Stone on which 
 God is said to have written his most special Com- 
 mandments, and to ask whether it was not rather an 
 Image of the God himself, or a figure symbolical of 
 the God in his attribute of Generator. 
 
 From what has just been said it would seem that 
 there is ground enough for abandoning the Idea 
 that the Israelites were ever in any sense save their 
 own a chosen people, the originators of the great 
 conception of the oneness of God, destined to hand 
 down this truth to the modern world, and to be the 
 teachers of morals and religion to mankind ? 
 
 The Idea of the Oneness of God is the outcome of 
 the finer minds among peoples that have long passed 
 the period of unreflecting barbarism — it has no place 
 in the religious conceptions of savages. The Dyaus 
 of the Yedic people, the Zervane Akarene of the 
 Zends, the Brahma of the Hindoos, the Zeus of the 
 Greeks, the Jupiter, Deus Optimus Maximus of the 
 Romans, and the All-Fadir of the Teutonic races,- 
 may all be said as truly to express the principle of 
 Supremacy of One among the Gods or of One God 
 as the Jehovah of the later writers of the Jews. Of 
 God conceived as One and Ubiquitous, as we may 
 admit that he was by the more advanced minds of 
 Judasa in its best days, the mass of the people of 
 Israel seem never at any time to have had a notion. 
 To them Jahveh or Jahveh-Elohim was never more 
 than the greatest among the Gods, the particular 
 God of their country ; in the same way precisely as 
 Zeus or Jupiter was the chief of the Pantheon to 
 the populace of Greece and Rome, and as God is 
 head of the celestial hierarchy to that largest section 
 of the Christian world which owns the Pope of Rome 
 as God's vicegerent on Earth. 
 
Leviticus : Conception of God. 3 1 7 
 
 Have we not positive testimony to the fact that 
 the worship of their God, under the form of the Bull, 
 was the cult of the Hebrew people up to and after 
 their separation into the two States of Judah and 
 Israel or Ephraim ? 
 
 When Jeroboam rebelled against his father Solo- 
 mon and rent the realm of Israel from J udah, he, to 
 keep his subjects from looking to Jerusalem as the 
 Religious and so as the Political Metropolis of their 
 race, is said to have taken counsel and made two 
 Calves of Gold which he set up in Beth-El and Dan, 
 saying to the people : " It is too much for you to go 
 up to Jerusalem ; behold thy Gods, 0 Israel, which 
 brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." Appoint- 
 ing priests, offering sacrifices, and ordering all as we 
 can only understand things to have been ordered 
 heretofore in the Capital of the united Kingdoms, he 
 furnished his Israelites with the means of worship- 
 ping at home instead of abroad the God they had 
 been wont to address ; strengthening himself thereby 
 in his now independent position, doubtless, but also 
 giving us in these distant days to know that the reli- 
 gion of the ancient Hebrews was not always Jehovism 
 or the worship of one God, as commonly said and 
 believed, but Idolatry, such even as prevailed among 
 the whole of the Semitic tribes— Phoenicians, Syrians, 
 Edomites, Moabites, and others— inhabiting Palestine 
 and the neighbouring lands, and of the same blood as 
 the Hebrews themselves. 
 
 We have already seen covenants, contracts, or 
 bargains on various occasions made between Jehovah 
 and his people ? 
 
 We have — in connection with the vow which Jacob 
 makes at Beth-El especially ; and here, again, some 
 300 years or more after the date referred to in Genesis, 
 Jehovah is made to say : "If ye walk in my statutes, 
 and keep my commandments, then will I give you 
 rain in due season, and the land shall yield her 
 
3 i8 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 increase, &c. • . . and I will walk among yon 
 and will be your God, and ye shall be my people, 
 &c. . . . But, if ye will not hearken unto 
 me . . . but will break my covenants, I also 
 will do this unto you : I will even appoint terror 
 over you, consumption and the burning ague ; ye 
 shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall 
 eat it ; your land shall not yield her increase, &c. ; 
 I will send beasts among you ; I will bring a sword 
 upon you . . . and ye shall be delivered into 
 the hand of the enemy ; and ye shall eat the flesh of 
 your sons and the flesh of your daughters ; and I will 
 destroy your high places, and cut down your images 
 . . . and will not smell the savour of your sweet 
 odo urs - I will bring your land into desolation, and 
 y 0U r enemies shall dwell therein, and I will scatter 
 y 0a among the heathen. Then shall your land rest 
 and enjoy her Sabbaths . . . because it did not 
 reg fc when ye dwelt upon it; and ye shall perish 
 among the heathen, and they that are left of you 
 shall P me away in your enemies' land," &c. &c. 
 
 All of which is to be interpreted ? 
 
 As an exposition of the state and kind of Eeligion 
 in fashion among the Israelites at the time the text 
 was composed, and as prophecy after the event ; — 
 these denunciations having been written when the 
 Hebrew people, both in Ephraim and Judah, had 
 already been invaded and spoiled, had suffered siege 
 within their cities, and been carried away captive by 
 Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians ; all of them 
 peoples better policied, more powerful, and so verily 
 and in fact, more favoured, in one sense, than them- 
 selves, but so much less favoured in this : that they 
 bred neither poet, archaeologist, nor historian with 
 the daring that could make God the mouth-piece of 
 the thoughts, the imaginations, and the likings of 
 man — w ith the Genius, in a word, that has given the 
 song and the story of Israel as an eternal legacy of 
 fascination to the world. 
 
Leviticus : Age of Composition. 3 1 9 
 
 But did the sinners, the rebellions, and negligent 
 people, sorely tried and terribly punished, repent — 
 what then ? 
 
 Then should Jehovah remember his covenant with 
 Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob — he would not wholly 
 cast them off, neither would he utterly destroy them. 
 
 An engagement implying ? 
 
 That a remnant through the clemency of the 
 Sovereign of Chaldam and Medo-Persia had already 
 returned to their country, and there regained some- 
 thing of their former state and prosperity, though 
 nothing more of their political power. 
 
 Of the Book of Leviticus, in general, we are there- 
 fore to conclude ? 
 
 That whilst it contains certain fragments having 
 the stamp of a higher antiquity upon them — the 
 substance of these being for the most part contained 
 in the Book of Exodus, — the bulk of Leviticus is in 
 truth of the most recent composition. The sacrificial 
 laws, which it is the more especial purpose of the 
 Book to enunciate, and the greater number of the 
 ordinances, referring to civil and domestic matters, 
 which it propounds, could not have been thought of 
 save in a state of society possessed of the means and 
 appliances of settled life in towns. It is certain, 
 indeed, that these laws were never in operation before 
 the Epoch of the Second Temple — that they were 
 generally known and observed at any period indeed, 
 is open to question. The Book, as a whole, appears 
 to be of still more recent composition than Deute- 
 ronomy, usually regarded by Biblical critics as the 
 most modern Book of the Pentateuch. It cannot, 
 therefore, date from further back than the time when 
 the second detachment of the Jewish people returned 
 from their captivity in Babylon, under the leadership 
 of Nehemiah, 440 before Christ. The learned I)r 
 
 AA 
 
^20 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Kuebnen, indeed, does not hesitate to ascribe tbe 
 Book of Leviticus to Ezra, the latest editor and largest 
 contributor to tbe Pentateuch, where he is not the 
 author literally of the work as we have it.* 
 
 * Compare Kuebnen : " Die fyf Boeken van Moses," 12mo, 
 J 873. 
 
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS. 
 
 ON the first day of the second month, in the 
 second year after quitting Egypt, Moses, says 
 the record, receives orders from Jehovah within the 
 Tabernacle of the Congregation of Israel and in the 
 wilderness of Sinai, to number the people: " From 
 twenty years old and upwards all that are able 
 to go forth, to war in Israel, thou and Aaron shalt 
 number them." And this, with the aid of a man 
 from every tribe, accomplished, the sum of grown 
 men over twenty years of age able to carry arms is 
 reported to be six hundred and three thousand five 
 hundred and fifty, in addition to whom, the Levites, 
 twenty-two thousand adults in number, have to be 
 reckoned ; they, as exempt from bearing arms, not 
 being included in the tale of able-bodied males. 
 
 Six hundred and three thousand five hundred and 
 fifty grown men, implies a like number of women, 
 and at least as many infirm and aged persons and 
 children under twenty, — an aggregate of something 
 like three millions of souls ? 
 
 True ! And then come3 the question, how a family 
 of seventy persons, all told, descendants of the twelve 
 sons of one father, should have so multiplied during 
 even the longest term assigned to the sojourn of the 
 Israelites in Egypt, as to have become a people num- 
 bering nearly if not even more than three millions of 
 souls ! All history, all experience shows that single 
 families never increase in any such measure ; their 
 
 BB 
 
3 22 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 members get scattered abroad and lose sight and 
 knowledge of one another. Among the yeomanry 
 of England there are some who can speak positively 
 of their forefathers who lived in the Saxon times, 
 hard upon a thousand years ago ; but none of them 
 boast of having peopled the Hundred, much less the 
 county or the country, in which they and theirs have 
 dwelt from time immemorial. Of the upper nobility 
 of England, again, Dukes, Earls, Barons, more than 
 four hundred in number, there are but ten who trace 
 their ancestry back to the 14th and 15th centuries • 
 and the Howards, Hastings, Seymours, Stanleys, 
 Talbots, &c, now show but as a poor minority amid 
 the Smiths, Taylors, Whites, Browns, Johnsons, 
 Thomsons, &c, of the commons. If we observe this 
 fact in modern times, and under circumstances the 
 most favourable to increase and longevity, we may be 
 sure that the same law obtained in days when Jacob 
 is reputed to have lived. Population could indeed 
 have made no such rapid progress in the old world 
 as it does now among peoples policied, industrious, 
 and commercial. Famine and pestilence appear to 
 have been matters of regular periodical recurrence 
 in ancient times, and must ever and anon have given 
 a serious check to the increase of the human family. 
 
 The numbers as they stand in the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures must therefore be much exaggerated ? 
 
 If there ever was n flight and escape, or a bringing 
 out with a high hand from Egypt, of the kind recorded, 
 the numbers could, by no possibility, have exceeded a 
 few hundreds, men, women, and children, all told. 
 There may, however, have been an expulsion on a 
 considerably larger scale, in what must be held as 
 pre-historic times, however, in so far as the Israelites 
 are concerned. The mythical tale of the Exodus as we 
 have it in the quasi-historic records of the later Jews, 
 from the comingof Jacob into Egypt, the sojournof the 
 Israelites there for more than four hundred years, and 
 
Numbers : The Flight from Egypt. 323 
 
 their flight or expulsion from thence, is founded in all 
 likelihood on information obtained from the writings 
 of Manetho, Symmachus, and others, which speak 
 of the invasion of the territories of the Pharaohs by 
 an Arab tribe denominated Hyksos or shepherds; 
 the dominion of this tribe over the country for a 
 lengthened period of time, and their expulsion from 
 the land by one of the native princes effected by a 
 force he had organised in Nubia, to which the 
 Pharaohs or old rulers had retreated in the days of 
 their adversity. 
 
 The exaggeration as regards the numbers of the 
 Israelites who are reported to have fled from Egypt 
 seems to be made manifest by what is now said con- 
 cerning the numbers of Levites devoted to the service 
 of the Tabernacle ? 
 
 Set down as they are at Twenty-two thousand 
 able-bodied men ; a number greater of itself than any 
 that could have broken up from quarters in the land of 
 Goshen and moved but a mile away in a single night, 
 with no more in the shape of baggage and supplies 
 than the dough that was in their kneading troughs ! 
 The tale of the flight refers to times when Aaron and 
 his sons suffice for the duties of the Tabernacle. 
 
 A fourth of the gross number of Levites, now re- 
 ported, whose sole business it was to take down, pack 
 up, and carry a Tent or Tabernacle of no more than 
 very moderate dimensions, would have been in each 
 other's way rather than helpful in getting through 
 the mere porter's work required of them. 
 
 So may it be fairly said ; but there is something of 
 still greater weight against the tale as it stands than 
 even the extravagant number of fighting men and 
 Levites reported ? 
 
 The fact that the Levites did not exist as a Caste, 
 having special duties, for long ages after the days of 
 Moses. They do not once make their appearance in 
 King David's days ; and there are several occasions 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 during his reign, when, had they existed, their ser- 
 vices would certainly have been required. 
 
 Yet do we find various charges in the Book of 
 Numbers delivered, as said, by Jehovah to Moses 
 concerning the Levites ? 
 
 They are ordered to be presented to Aaron, to wait 
 on him and his sons in their priestly ministrations, 
 and to hold themselves devoted to the outside service 
 —for as yet they had no part in the inside service— 
 of the Tabernacle. They certainly were not priests 
 or ministers of the altar at the time the legend took 
 shape or the document was written which the com- 
 piler of this part of the Pentateuch had before him 
 as his authority. It is not until much later m the 
 history of the Israelites that we meet with Levites as 
 ministrants in properly religious rites. They appear 
 rather to have lived long among their countrymen m 
 poverty and contempt; and this would not have been 
 the case could they have aspired to the priestly office 
 as a right, amid a community so zealously observant 
 of religious duties as the J ews. 
 
 Jehovah, however, is now made to declare that he 
 had taken the Levites from among the children of 
 Israel in lieu of the first-born of their sons and daugh- 
 ters, his old requisition ? _ ^ }j 
 
 » On the day that I smote the first-born of Egypt, 
 says the text, " I hallowed unto me all the first-born 
 of man and beast. And I, behold I, have taken the 
 Levites instead of the first-born of the children of 
 Israel; therefore the Levites shall be mine." A 
 statement from which we have another and a strong 
 assurance that the conclusion already come to respect- 
 ing the regular sacrifice of the first-born of their sons 
 and daughters by the ancient Israelites is correct. 
 Up to ascertain period, the date of which is not 
 exactly known but cannot be very remote, the first- 
 born of man and beast were certainly and as matter 
 of course passed through the fire or presented as 
 
Numbers: Substitution of the Levites. 325 
 
 burnt- offerings fco El-Elohe Israel, whom, as their 
 King (Melek, Moloch), the Hebrews, until he was 
 superseded by Jehovah, acknowledged for their chief 
 Divinity. 
 
 This 'substitution of the Levites for the first-born 
 is very probably a still more modern contrivance than 
 circumcision for setting aside the sacrifice of the first- 
 born of man, that had at length become intolerable 
 to a more advanced age; ingenious, moreover, as 
 not doing away with the initiatory rite first sub- 
 stituted, but superadding a payment in money- 
 five shekels of the Sanctuary — when it was per- 
 formed. 
 
 The substitution of* the Levites and the fee for the 
 circumcision and presentation to the priest must 
 have been found far more advantageous to the chest 
 of the Sanctuary than the olden sacrifice of the first- 
 born to the God ? 
 
 Five shekels of the Sanctuary (wbich the writer is 
 at the pains to inform his reader are twenty gerahs, 
 the shekel at the time he wrote having become a coin of 
 the past), as price of the redemption of the first-born 
 of their sons and daughters, must have amounted to 
 a very considerable sum in times later in the history 
 of the Hebrew people than those referred to in the 
 text. 
 
 The God of the Israelites, according to their sacred 
 writings, could not abide the presence of the sick and 
 ailing in his Sanctuary ; no more would he be served 
 by the hunchback, the flat-nosed, and the splay- 
 footed ? 
 
 " Command the children of Israel," says the text, 
 " that they put out of the camp every leper, and every 
 one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by 
 the dead, both male and female, that they defile not 
 the camp in the midst whereof I dwell." But civi- 
 lised men have verily shown themselves more humane 
 than the Hebrew God, as he is here portrayed ; for 
 
326 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 they have everywhere erected houses of reception for 
 the unfortunates among them who are the^ victims 
 of accident and disease, or who, coming into the 
 world imperfect in their organisation, are idiots in 
 mind or cripples in body, — deaf, dumb, blind, halt, 
 and lame. 
 
 When a man or woman had committed a sin or 
 done a trespass, he or she was encouraged to confess 
 the sin or trespass, and required to make reparation 
 for what had been done amiss by returning the prin- 
 cipal with the addition of a fifth of its value to the 
 party wronged ? 
 
 This is not the first time we have had confession of 
 sin or trespass recommended in the Jewish scriptures. 
 How much the principle involved has been extended, 
 and how much abused, under the Christian dispensa- 
 tion as interpreted, is known to all. It is to be par- 
 ticularly noted, however, that the confession here 
 required is acknowledgment of guiltiness for a mate- 
 rial trespass, such as theft, for which compensation 
 could be given ; it has no reference to moral delin- 
 quencies or to private affairs. The confession of the 
 Israelite, moreover, was to be made to God, and in 
 public, that right might be done, — never to a priest, 
 and in private, as an element in a system of espionage 
 in which the priest is tool and the end is power 
 over the minds and bodies of the people. "Make 
 confession to the God of Israel," says Joshua to 
 Achan, when he had appropriated part of the spoil 
 (Josh. vii. 19) ; "Make confession to Jehovah your 
 God," says Ezra (x. 11) ; " Every tongue shall con- 
 fess to God," says the great apostle of the Gentiles 
 (Rom. xiv. 11). It is not confession to man, there- 
 fore, that is required, or that can be amerced at the 
 price of so many Pater-nosters and Ave Manas, of 
 fasting, or other penance. Achan paid for his crime 
 with his life ; and, but for the interference of his 
 friends, Jonathan had done the same, though his sin 
 
Numbers: The Ordeal of Jealousy. 32J 
 
 was no more than dipping his rod in honey and 
 eating against orders when he was an hungered. 
 Might not the old Jewish law requiring compen- 
 sation from the thief to the party robbed or 
 defrauded be advantageously restored in modern 
 legislation ? 
 
 In illustration of ancient Israel itish ideas of the 
 way in which God is credited with the administra- 
 tion of affairs among them, what we find now said 
 of the Ordeal of Jealousy deserves particular notice ? 
 
 Did a man become jealous of his wife on any 
 ground, good or bad, he was to bring her before the 
 priest with an offering — the tenth of an ephah of 
 barley meal. The priest was to set her solemnly 
 before Jehovah, to uncover her head and put the 
 offering of jealousy into her hand, he having in his 
 hand " the bitter water that causeth the curse," and 
 say : " Be thou free from this bitter water that 
 causeth the curse if thou hast not gone aside to 
 uncleanness with another instead of thy husband. 
 But if thou hast gone aside and be defiled, then 
 Jehovah make thee a curse and an oath among the 
 people, when Jehovah doth make thy thigh to rot 
 and thy belly to swell." To which the woman was 
 to assent and say Amen, Amen ! The priest was 
 then to write down the curses and to wash off the 
 writing with the bitter water which the woman in 
 turn was to drink. 
 
 The consequence of which, as said, would be ? 
 
 " Then shall it come to pass," continues the edify- 
 ing narrative, " that if she be defiled the water that 
 causeth the curse shall enter into her, and her belly 
 shall swell, and her thigh shall rot ; and if she be 
 not defiled, then shall she be free." In other words, 
 if the woman were innocent no harm would come 
 of the draught; but if guilty, then would she be 
 poisoned. 
 
 To produce any such effects as those described, 
 
3 2 8 The Pentateuch. 
 
 the bitter water must have been a rather powerful 
 brewage ? 
 
 Anything that is said of its preparation however 
 would have left it harmless enough ; for by the text 
 as it stands, some of the dust of the tabernacle is all 
 that is ordered to be put into it ; and this could have 
 had no such deleterious effects as those described. 
 The power of making the drink life or death to the 
 w®man therefore lay with the priest. The true 
 mode of preparing the bitter water of jealousy has 
 not been left to us by the Jehovistic editor ; but it 
 must have been a decoction of some such poisonous 
 bitter as the Indian fig (Strychnos nux-vomica), when 
 it was meant to prove fatal ; as it was mere water 
 with a little dust diffused in it when it was to prove 
 harmless. The poisonous decoction was doubtless 
 that which w r as exhibited in cases where the gmlt o£ 
 the woman was notorious, the water with the dust 
 being that administered in instances where general 
 report or more particular inquiry spoke her guiltless : 
 the administration of one or other of the drinks 
 being thus left to the discretion of the priest, — a 
 dangerous power to be confided to the hands of 
 any man, and open to terrible abuse. Not one 
 woman in a hundred, however, though innocent as 
 infancy, could possibly have appeared otherwise than 
 guilty under the terrible ordeal to which she was 
 subjected. But Trial by Ordeal, though sanctioned 
 by the Code of the Israelites, given them as is still 
 believed by God, is now discarded by civilised com- 
 munities and looked on as a thing of the past. 
 
 Not of any very remote past however ? 
 
 No; for it was one of the legacies left by the 
 Jews to their Christian successors, which long held 
 its own, and only fell into discredit when natural 
 science was born and men began to distinguish 
 between physical and moral laws and consequences ; 
 when it was seen that strength and skill with the 
 
Numbers : The Nazarite. 329 
 
 weapon always carried the day when the trial was 
 by wager of battle, and that poison, fire, and deep 
 water made no distinction between guilt and inno- 
 cence.* 
 
 There is a law referring to persons styled Nazarites ? 
 
 The Nazarite was one who for some cause or other 
 " separated himself to the Lord " for a season, abjur- 
 ing the society of his kindred and community, 
 abstaining from certain meats and drinks — from the 
 fruit of the vine and its products, wine in particular, 
 letting his hair grow, coming near no dead body, 
 were it even that of his father or mother, &c. When 
 the days of his separation had run, he presented 
 himself before the priest with an offering in his 
 hand — no one was ever to appear before Jehovah 
 empty-handed — viz., two lambs of the year, a male 
 and a female, a basket of unleavened bread baked 
 with oil, and a drink-offering. His head was then 
 shaved at the door of the tabernacle, and the hair, 
 along with certain small portions of the peace and 
 sin offerings he had brought, was burnt upon the 
 altar. After these proceedings, held solemn enough 
 doubtless in by-gone days, meeting us now as childish 
 and absurd, though presented with the stamp of 
 divine commandments upon them, the Nazarite was 
 held purged of his vow, and at liberty to return to 
 his home and mix with his people, to indulge in 
 his usual meat and drink, and proceed with his old 
 avocations. 
 
 The Nazarite vow is another of the legacies in 
 
 * The slow rate of human progress where science and letters 
 have no part in the daily life of man, may be judged of from 
 the fact that the Mahommedan physician's prescription in the 
 present day is still in many cases of the kind we find formu- 
 lated among other particulars in "the Trial of Jealousy," it 
 may be more than three thousand years ago ! He writes a 
 few lines— often a verse of the Koran — on a slip of paper, 
 washes off the writing with a little water, and administers it as 
 medicine to the patient ! 
 
33° 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 modified form that has come down to us from the 
 
 Jews ? 
 
 Notable in more respects than one, in having given, 
 among others, the inspired writers of the New 
 Testament an occasion for floundering in their 
 exegesis. In Roman Catholic countries, children at 
 the present day are occasionlly " vowed to the 
 Virgin " for a number of years ; in which event they 
 are clothed in white or light blue : they are separated, 
 to the Virgin Goddess by their parents as the Jews 
 of old separated themselves to their God Jehovah. 
 But the Jewish Nazarite was not a child ; and we 
 have still adult Nazarites, of a sort, both male and 
 female, among us. The men and women of the age 
 we live in who look on the Pope of Rome as God's 
 vicegerent on earth, who now " go into Retreat," or 
 separate themselves from the society of their fellows 
 for a season, have passed the period of childhood and 
 its simple ways. When they have been living too 
 fast, in short, or have been pursuing courses which 
 their better nature in calmer moments does not 
 entirely approve, Roman Catholic ladies and gentle- 
 men are wont occasionally to go into " Retreat." 
 There they live in solitude, meditating, it is to be 
 presumed, on their sins and shortcomings, praying 
 much, fasting vigorously, wearing a hair shirt, and 
 giving themselves the "discipline" or cat-o'-nine 
 tails, perchance, at intervals, and so on. After a 
 process of the sort continued for a week, ten days, or 
 a longer time, according to the amount of pecca- 
 dillos to be disposed of, they emerge more thoughtful 
 and sober, it is to be hoped, than when they went in, 
 though not always fortified against the proclivity to 
 fall back into the old objectionable but pleasant 
 courses, and so making occasional renewals of the 
 retreat and the discipline requisite. 
 
 The idea of "separation to God," however, has 
 had a much wider extension than any implied in 
 
Numbers: The Nazarite. 331 
 
 these vowings to the Virgin and temporary retreats 
 from the pleasures of the world ? 
 
 The monastic system of modern Europe had 
 assuredly no other parentage than the Jewish 
 Nazarate. In this cruel, absurd, and now indefen- 
 sible system, able-bodied men and women ignorantly, 
 ungratefully, and irreverently repudiate the boon of 
 present being they have from God, and set up claims 
 to pleasant things of their own imagining in a life to 
 come ; to be won, too, by such doings as fasting, 
 praying, the renunciation of the first duties of man- 
 hood and womanhood, and the abnegation of all that 
 gives worth and nobility to life. Monks and nuns 
 in short would wring from God by their self-inflicted 
 miseries something he may have in store, indeed, but 
 has not given, to the misuse of the life he has seen fit 
 to bestow. 
 
 The law of the Nazarate is followed immediately, 
 and somewhat incongruously, as it seems, by the fine 
 sentences in which Moses is instructed to bless the 
 children of Israel ? 
 
 Sentences out of place where they stand, detached 
 undoubtedly from their context, but appealing to the 
 religious sense of mankind now as they must have 
 done in the days of higher culture than those of 
 Moses when they came from the mind of the 
 unknown writer : — " The Lord bless thee and keep 
 thee ; the Lord make His f ace to shine upon thee and 
 be gracious unto thee ; the Lord lift up His coun- 
 tenance upon thee and give thee peace ! " 
 
 The Tabernacle set up and sanctified in the way 
 and manner described in the Book of Numbers, the 
 Princes of Israel, as they are called, bring offerings 
 of great value for the maintenance and service of the 
 Sanctuary ? 
 
 Six covered wagons, each drawn by two oxen ; 
 twelve chargers or salvers, and the same number of 
 bowls or basins, of silver; twelve spoons of gold 
 
332 The Pentateuch. 
 
 full of frankincense ; twenty-four bullocks, sixty 
 rams, sixty goats, and sixty lambs — over two hun- 
 dred head of cattle for sacrifice ! 
 
 How can we believe that a party of men, women, 
 and children in flight from slavery, a wandering 
 horde in the wilderness, only kept from perishing 
 outright of hunger and thirst by miraculous inter- 
 positions, should have princes at the head of tribes 
 able to bring such costly presents as covered wagons 
 and draught oxen, vessels of gold and silver by the 
 dozen and victims by the score — bullocks, sheep, and 
 goats for the altar ? 
 
 How, indeed ! Could the tale, by the utmost 
 stretch of the most complacent imagination, be 
 credited, the children of Israel must truly have 
 borrowed from the Egyptians more extensively than 
 it seems possible to conceive them possessed either 
 of the power or the will to lend. But the tale is 
 the composition of a priestly Scherazade whose fancy 
 has outrun his discretion, and who must have lived 
 some considerable time after the age of Solomon, 
 when the Jews, by their dealings with neighbouring 
 nations and a term of peace, had become more 
 familiar with the sight of gold and silver than they 
 could have been when they were bondsmen in Egypt 
 or errant wanderers in the wilderness ; their best 
 possessions then being the weapons in their hands 
 with which they had to keep their heads and win 
 them settlements in lands more fertile than the 
 desert or the steppe ; home, as we believe, of their 
 nomad fathers as of themselves in earlier times. 
 The salvers, it is thought, were for receiving the 
 flesh, the bowls for catching the blood of the 
 victims. 
 
 The enumeration of the costly contributions of the 
 Princes completed, we are informed by the writer 
 that when Moses went into the Tabernacle to speak 
 with Jehovah, " he heard the voice of one speaking 
 
Numbers: God Speaking; The Levites. 333 
 
 unto him from off the mercy seat that was upon the 
 Ark of the Testimony." What is to be thought of 
 such a statement ? 
 
 That it is as childish as it is absurd ; and that he 
 who made it could have had no reasonable conception 
 of God — the all- pervading essence of things and 
 phenomena, ubiquitous and so limitless, without form, 
 therefore, not compact of organs like a man, and never 
 making use of speech as means of intercourse with 
 aught Of which and In which he Is. It is through his 
 understanding alone ; by study of his own and his 
 fellows' intellectual, moral, and religious nature ; the 
 properties of things and the laws of the universe, 
 that man is privileged to learn something of the 
 will and the behests of God. 
 
 The intimations which Moses is now said to receive 
 from Jehovah do not strike us in these days as of 
 particular significance ? 
 
 They do not, more especially the first of them, to 
 this effect : " Speak to Aaron and say : When thou 
 lightest tbe lamps, the seven lamps shall give light 
 over against the Candlestick." 
 
 God give directions about the lighting of lamps ! 
 
 So say these ancient writings, whose author cer- 
 tainly lived not in classical times, when it was said : 
 Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus. The 
 next announcement of Jehovah's will, however, is of 
 more importance ? 
 
 Truly ; for it refers to the consecration of the 
 Levites to Jehovah in lieu of the first-born of the 
 sons and daughters of Israel. " Take the Levites," 
 says the text, " and cleanse them ; sprinkle water of 
 purifying upon them ; let them shave all their flesh, 
 and wash their clothes, and so make themselves 
 clean. And thou shalt offer them for an offering ; 
 for they are wholly given unto me from among the 
 children of Israel ; instead of the first-born of Israel 
 have I taken them unto me." 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 These words, as we have already said, point con- 
 clusively to the ancient custom, now to be foregone, 
 of sacrificing the first-born to their God by the 
 Israelites. These the old Divinity had in smoke as a 
 sacrifice of a sweet savour made by fire; but the 
 live Levites were not to be made use of in this way ? 
 
 They were immediately made a gift of by Jehovah to 
 Aaron and his sons, to do the service of the Taber- 
 nacle, and make an atonement, it is said, for the 
 children of Israel, that there be no plague among 
 them. 
 
 Reiterated and very particular instructions are, 
 further, given for the celebration of the Passover ? 
 
 It was to be strictly observed by all and sundry, by 
 the clean and those at home on the fourteenth day of 
 the first month, by the unclean and those on a 
 journey on the corresponding day of the second 
 month ; in no case, under no pretext was its observ- 
 ance to be foregone ; he who did so was to be cut off 
 from his people. There was ever to be one ordinance 
 for the stranger, and for him who was born in 
 the land ; the stranger being thus put on a footing 
 with the native Israelite; a stretch of liberality 
 greater than is commonly to be found in the Hebrew 
 scriptures ; declaratory, moreover, beside what is said 
 of the Levites, and the provision made for the settled 
 Jew of later days who happened to be from home or 
 on a journey, of the relatively recent date of the 
 writing. 
 
 Certain extraordinary phenomena, meant to be 
 regarded as miraculous, are spoken of in connection 
 with the Tabernacle, the dwelling-place of Jehovah ? 
 
 On the day in which it was set up " a Cloud," it is 
 said, " covered it, and at even there was upon it, as 
 it were, the appearance of fire until the morning." In 
 their subsequent journeyings, the lifting or falling of 
 this cloud was the signal to the Israelites to move or 
 to halt. As long as the cloud abode upon the Taber- 
 
Numbers : Guides in the Desert. 
 
 nacle they rested in their tents ; when it was taken 
 up, whether it was by day or by night, they jour- 
 neyed. In the Exodus we had a pillar of smoke to 
 guide the wanderers by day, a pillar of fire to guide 
 them by night; and the Desert- Caravans of the pre- 
 sent time are said still to proceed during the ni^ht 
 with a blazing pot of fire in their front, which of 
 course would show as a column of smoke were it car- 
 ried in the day. The desert, doubtless, was traversed 
 in the time of the writer as it is now ; but the cus- 
 tomary and natural is turned by him into the super- 
 natural as a sign of the peculiar favour in which 
 Jehovah holds his chosen people. 
 
 Neither the pillar of smoke by day nor that of fire 
 by night, however, appear to have been implicitly 
 trusted by Moses to show the way, as we imagine thev 
 might have been— the intimations he has had from 
 their institutor considered ? 
 
 So much must needs be inferred when we find him 
 by and by in parley with Hobab the Midianite— a 
 native of the desert, familiar with its tracks and 
 above all with its wells — and entreating him to go 
 with them as their guide. From the tenor of the 
 conversation reported, we must presume, indeed, that 
 Hobab had already been acting as scout. " We are 
 journeying," says Moses to him, "unto the place of 
 which Jehovah said: 'I will give it you.' Come 
 thou with us, and we will do thee good." But Hobab 
 declines. " I will not go," says he, " I will depart to 
 mine own land, and to mine own kindred." To which 
 Moses rejoins : " Leave us not, I pray, forasmuch as 
 thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilder- 
 ness, and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes." But 
 whether Hobab yields to these entreaties and goes 
 with the Israelites as their farther guide or not we do 
 not learn, though it seems likely that he did ; for he 
 is referred to later on in the story (Judges iv. 11) 
 and called " the father-in-law of Mioses." ' 
 
33^ 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Jehovah shows himself at all times, as we know, ex- 
 cessively annoyed by the murmurings of the people if 
 And makes them often smart for their pains ; as at 
 Taberah, where it is now said, "the fire of Jehovah 
 [Query, the Khamseen of the desert] burned among 
 them and consumed even those that were m the 
 uttermost parts of the camp." But Moses prays to 
 the irate God, and the fire is quenched Not so the 
 murmurings of the people; for immediately after, 
 having been informed that "a mixed multitude among 
 them fell a lusting," we learn farther that "the chil- 
 dren of Israel wept again, and said : Who shall give 
 us flesh to eat ? we remember the flesh which we did 
 eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers and the melons, 
 the leeks the onions and the garlick ; but now our 
 soul is dried away ; there is nothing but this manna 
 
 Such complainings will be sure again to excite the 
 anger of Jehovah ? 
 
 As they do indeed, and of Moses also ; though his 
 displeasure is rather with Jehovah than with the 
 famishing horde he has under his command. When 
 he hears the people weeping throughout their families, 
 every man in the door of his tent, he remonstrates 
 with Jehovah, and says : " Wherefore, Lord, hast thou 
 afflicted thy servant, and wherefore lay est thou the 
 burthen of all this people upon me— have I conceived 
 them P have I begotten them, that thou shouldst say 
 unto me : Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing 
 father beareth the sucking child, unto . the land which 
 thou swearedst unto their fathers ? Whence should 
 I have flesh to give unto all this people ? lor they 
 weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh, that we may 
 eat ' I am not able to bear all this people alone ; it 
 is too heavy for me; and if thou deal thus with me, 
 kill me I pray thee out of hand, and let me not see 
 my wretchedness." i . „ 
 
 Jehovah will surely be offended with this cry ot 
 agony from the leader ? 
 
Numbers : Moses remonstrates. 
 
 Yet is he by no means offended ; on the contrary, 
 he here, as elsewhere, may be said to acknowledge the 
 reasonableness of Moses' remonstrance, and comes to 
 his aid now in the same way as we have had Jethro 
 do already (Exodus xviii. 17). " Gather me seventy 
 men, of the elders of Israel," says Jehovah, " and 
 bring them into the Tabernacle ; and I will take of 
 the spirit that is upon thee and will put it upon them, 
 And they shall bear the burthen of the people with 
 thee. And say thou to the people, Sanctify your- 
 selves against the morrow, and ye shall eat flesh ; for 
 ye have wept in the ears of Jehovah, saying, Who 
 shall give us flesh to eat ? for it was well with us in 
 Egypt. Therefore will Jehovah give you flesh ; and 
 ye shall eat not for one day or for two days, but for a 
 whole month, until it come out of your nostrils and 
 it be loathsome to you, because ye have despised 
 Jehovah which is among you, and said, Why came 
 we forth out of Egypt ? " 
 
 ^ There is surely no slight incongruity and incon- 
 sistency in this paragraph : Jehovah has heard the 
 starving people weep, and had compassion upon them ; 
 he will give them to eat, therefore, yet in such wise 
 that the food shall prove loathsome to them. But 
 the inconsistency, though in another direction, does 
 not end here, for Moses now questions Jehovah's 
 power to keep his word : " The people," he says, " are 
 six hundred thousand footmen, and thou hast said I 
 will give them flesh that they may eat for a whole 
 month; shall all the fish of the sea be gathered 
 together to suffice them?" An exceedingly bold 
 address assuredly from the leader to his God, familiar 
 though the footing be on which they stand to one 
 another; but not taken in umbrage by Jehovah, who 
 only replies: "Is Jehovah's hand waxed short? 
 Thou shalt see whether my word shall come to pass 
 unto thee or not." 1 
 Supplies then we may presume arrive ? 
 
 cc 
 
338 The Pentateuch. 
 
 In the shape of a flight of quails, exaggerated in 
 its proportions, of course, a natural incident being 
 made to assume a supernatural aspect. There went 
 forth a wind from Jehovah, says the text, and brought 
 quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, 
 a day's journey on this side and on that, and in such 
 quantity that they lay two cubits high upon the face 
 of the earth ! The people, therefore, have plenty to 
 eat. But, strange to say, and by way of improving 
 upon his resolution, already imparted, to make the 
 food disgusting, we are now informed that whilst the 
 flesh was yet between their teeth, the anger of 
 Jehovah was kindled against them, and they were 
 smitten with a great plague ! . ;-. 
 
 The writer's conception of the way m which 
 Jehovah deals with his people is not a little extra- 
 ordinary ? it- 
 It must, indeed, be so esteemed when he makes his 
 God give the famishing folk to eat with one hand, 
 but makes the food disgusting, and smites them 
 through burning and pestilence with the other! 
 But Deity in the ancient world, when not, as was 
 usual, conceived of under the guise of a personal 
 Duality— the idea current at the present day, when 
 not carried on as it is by some to the extent of a 
 Trinity— wa,8 always believed to present two aspects, 
 one propitious, another adverse. If El-Elohe-Israel or 
 El-Schaddai was the friend of the Patriarchs, and 
 promised to make their seed as the stars of heaven 
 in number, he also plagued them sorely at times, had 
 them slain to him by thousands, sent fiery serpents 
 among them, ordered the heads of the tribes to be 
 hung up to him before the sun, and was ever and anon 
 threatening to break out on them and consume them 
 all in a moment. , , , 
 
 The seventy of the Elders of Israel, commanded by 
 Jehovah, are now gathered together round the Taber- 
 nacle when Jehovah " comes down " in a cloud, takes 
 
Numbers : The Council of Seventy. 339 
 
 of the spirit that is on Moses, and puts it upon them, 
 " and it came to pass that when the spirit rested on 
 them, they prophesied and did not cease." But there 
 remained two men in the camp, Eldad and Medad by 
 name, on whom the spirit rested, and who went not 
 out to the Tabernacle, but prophesied in the camp. 
 This being reported to Moses, Joshua, the son of 
 Nun, said to him : My Lord forbid them ; but 
 Moses, in opposition to all we should hare expected, 
 replies : Would God that all Jehovah's people were 
 prophets, and that Jehovah would put his spirit upon 
 them ! 
 
 This is different from everything else we have 
 hitherto met with in the Hebrew scriptures ? 
 
 There we are told that Jehovah will not have even 
 incense raised to him by any fire but his own, nor 
 have service done him by any one not of the seed of 
 Aaron ! The two men named, it is to be observed, 
 are over and above the seventy commanded, and the 
 passage in which they are mentioned has no con- 
 nection either with that which has gone before or 
 that comes after. It must, therefore, be an interpola- 
 tion, is so considered, indeed, by the best authorities, 
 and is believed to be from a late hand, written at a 
 time when something of charity — we dare hardly say 
 of toleration — had come to mingle with the religious 
 conceptions of the Jews.* 
 
 Of this council of seventy and its consultations 
 with Moses we may expect to hear much as the 
 narrative proceeds ? 
 
 Curiously enough, however, it is not again even 
 once referred to, any more than the knot of " able 
 men, men of truth, such as feared God," whom 
 Moses, by his father-in-law Jethro's advice, is said to 
 
 * Prof. Dozy has a disquisition on Eldad and Medad, whom 
 he finds playing a part in Arabic story. They were, as he 
 opines, outside, not Jewish, prophets. See his Yery interesting 
 work, ' Die Israeliten zu Mekka.' S. 172. 
 
340 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 have taken to himself to help him in the administra- 
 tion of justice. The second tale is probably a copy 
 or repetition of the first, and both appear to have 
 been contrived to give the sanction of antiquity to 
 the much more modern Jewish Sanhedrim with its 
 seventy members ; for it is not until after the era of 
 the exile that we hear of any council of the kind ; 
 and when Jehoshaphat institutes the Sanhedrim as 
 the supreme court of judicature in Jerusalem it is 
 spoken of as a Novelty and Innovation unknown 
 before. 
 
 Besides the murmurings of the vulgar^ Moses has 
 farther to bear with the complaints and misconstruc- 
 tions of his own family and kindred ? 
 
 And herein we meet with another of the simply 
 human and natural incidents that take us out of the 
 region of legend and fancy and give their character 
 of historical truth to so many parts of the old 
 Hebrew records. Miriam the sister and Aaron the 
 elder brother of Moses, become jealous of his 
 authority and speak seditiously against him, taking 
 exception to his wife as an Ethiopian, but letting the 
 truer grounds of their discontent appear in what 
 they immediately say concerning the familiar footing 
 on which he, more than they or any among them- 
 selves, stands with Jehovah :— " Hath Jehovah, indeed, 
 spoken only by Moses," say they ; " hath he not also 
 spoken by us ? And Jehovah heard it." On which 
 "he speaks suddenly to Moses, and Aaron, and 
 Miriam, saying : — Come ye three into the Taber- 
 nacle of the Congregation," where, having " come 
 down in the pillar of the cloud," he delivers them a 
 lecture and informs them that whilst to prophets in 
 o-eneral he would make himself known in visions and 
 dreams and dark speeches, with his servant Moses he 
 would speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, so 
 that he should behold the similitude of his God. 
 1 Wherefore then," proceeds the narrative, " were ye 
 
Numbers : Aaron and Miriam rebel. 341 
 
 not afraid to speak against my servant Moses ? And 
 the anger of Jehovah was kindled against them and 
 he departed." 
 
 This is an extremely materialistic exhibition, and 
 little in keeping with much that has gone before — the 
 coming down, the talking mouth to mouth, and the 
 seeing the similitude of God may apply to things 
 human, but can have nothing in common with 
 the Supreme. Jehovah's anger, however, will be 
 displayed against Aaron and Miriam in some notable 
 way ? 
 
 Miriam, it is said, " became leprous, white as snow 5" 
 but Aaron is not punished at all. He apparently is 
 too exalted a personage to suffer disgrace, even for 
 wrong doing : he is above the reach of the even- 
 handed justice which we in these days believe that 
 God dispenses to all alike for aught done against his 
 true commandments. Aaron, however, who is here, as 
 elsewhere, depicted as a weak man, now expresses 
 sorrow for what he has done ; and, grieving over the 
 leprous state of his sister, Miriam, he entreats Moses 
 for her, and says, " Alas, my Lord ! I beseech thee 
 lay not the sin upon us wherein we have done 
 foolishly and have sinned ; let her not be as one dead- 
 born, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he 
 cometh out of his mother's womb." 
 
 Moses hearkens to his brother's prayer ; cries unto 
 Jehovah, saying, Heal her now, 0 God, I beseech 
 thee ! and receives an answer in rather extraordinary 
 terms ? 
 
 Extraordinary, indeed, when conceived as coming 
 from God : " If her father had but spit in her face, 
 should she not be ashamed seven days ? Let her be 
 shut out from the camp seven days, and after that 1 et- 
 her be received in again." 
 
 The objection to the wife of Moses as an Ethiopian 
 might lead to the conclusion *that the writing is 
 of the most recent date ; for there scarcely appear 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 objections among the Israelites to wives of all and 
 sundry their neighbours, until after the dap of Ezra 
 and Nehemiab. And then the statement that God 
 spoke mouth to mouth with Moses, and appeared to 
 him in bodily form, is in direct contradiction with all 
 the most emphatic teaching of the Old Testament 
 Moses himself, in his final address to the Israelites, is 
 particular in reminding them that they saw no simili- 
 tude when they were spoken to out of the fire on 
 Horeb, and therefore are they to make no graven 
 images to corrupt themselves. The leader, moreover, 
 is informed by Jehovah himself, when he asks to see 
 His Glory, that « no man shall see his face and live 
 (Exodus xxxiii. 20.) But this again we are not to 
 forget, is still in contradiction with other parts ot 
 the Hebrew scriptures where we read of Jacob 
 "seeing God face to face." (Gen. xxxn. 30) and ot 
 God giving him His own title, Israel, instead of his 
 proper name, Jacob. From all of which we conclude 
 that that which is contradictory never came trom 
 
 ^Approaching the promised land, Jehovah orders 
 Moses to send out spies to survey and report upon it, 
 what the people were who dwelt therein &c. 
 
 This is done forthwith, a chief of each tribe being 
 chosen for the duty. The spies return after forty 
 days' absence, and report the land— figuratively, ot 
 course— as flowing with milk and honey ; m plain 
 terms, as extremely fertile ; and they bring back 
 fruit of various kinds as samples of its produce, a 
 cluster of grapes among others of such size that it 
 has "to be borne upon a staff between two ! i>ut 
 the people who dwell in the land are strong ; they 
 have walled cities very great; and children of Anak, 
 men of vast stature, are seen among them ; so tnat 
 all the spies except Caleb and Joshua are afraid, and 
 spreading an alarm throughout the camp, the people 
 are terror-stricken, more than ever discontented, 
 
Numbers : The Israelites rebellious. 343 
 
 murmur anew against their leaders, and threaten to 
 make themselves a Captain of their own and return 
 into Egypt. Caleb and Joshua, however, speak them 
 fair ; bid them not to fear the natives of the land, 
 "for Jehovah," say they, "is with us, and they are 
 bread for us — fear them not." But this does not 
 quell the rebellious spirit ; the mutiny even becomes 
 general, so that the " Congregation of Israel bade 
 stone them — Moses and Aaron — with stones, and 
 would not be pacified." 
 
 Jehovah will of course be much displeased by this 
 rebellious behaviour of the people ? 
 
 The glory of Jehovah, it is said, appeared in the 
 tabernacle to the multitude, and Jehovah says to 
 Moses : " How long will this people provoke me ; 
 how long will it be before they believe me for all the 
 signs I have showed amongst them ? I will smite 
 them with pestilence, and disinherit them, and will 
 make of thee a greater nation and mightier than 
 they." But Moses will not be exalted; he will not 
 have Jehovah depart from his word to Abraham and 
 Isaac and Jacob and their seed, and transfer his 
 favour to himself. He therefore pleads bravely for 
 the people, and tells Jehovah roundly that if he does 
 not keep his promises " the Egyptians shall hear of 
 it! For they have heard," he continues, "that thou, 
 Lord, art among this people ; and if thou shalt kill 
 them as one man the nations which have heard the 
 fame of thee will say : Because Jehovah was not able 
 to bring them into the land which he sware to them, 
 therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness. 
 Pardon I beseech thee the iniquity of this people ! " 
 
 The placable man ! The angry God ! But Jehovah 
 is pacified ? 
 
 "Though ten times provoked," he says, "he will 
 pardon them yet again." And this he does — after a 
 fashion ; for he declares that he will not suffer one of 
 all the grown up generation then alive save Caleb 
 
344 The Pentateuch. 
 
 and Joshua to see the land which he sware to their 
 fathers : "your little ones will I bring m," continues 
 the story, " but as for you, your carcasses shall fall in 
 this wilderness, and your children shall wander therein 
 forty years until ye be wasted." 
 
 This certainly is not the unconditional forgiveness 
 which might have been looked for from the first clause 
 of Jehovah's address, as set down for him by the 
 writer? . 
 
 It is not indeed. Forty years of life in the wilder- 
 ness, their carcasses being left there to dry up and to 
 decay in the end, was a heavy penalty for feeling 
 afraid and murmuring at the prospect of unantici- 
 pated danger. And, then, all surely could not have 
 transgressed in the way reported ; and even after the 
 lapse of forty years there must have been many alive 
 who were but twenty when they left Egypt, and so 
 but sixty when the years of penance were completed. 
 But forty was a sacred number with the superstitious 
 Jews, and events must be made to square with it m 
 every case : Because the spies had been forty days 
 searching the land, therefore were the rebellious 
 people to wander forty years in the wilderness,—" for 
 every day a year shall ye bear your iniquities and 
 feel my displeasure," says the text, " though it has 
 but just made Jehovah say that tempted even ten 
 times, he would forgive them yet again." 
 
 The report of the spies which spread such terror 
 through the camp of the Israelites, when it is spoken 
 of as "an evil report and a slander upon the land, 
 does not seem quite fairly characterised in the 
 narrative ? 
 
 The report, on the contrary, is found to be true 
 enough as regards the population and their towns ; 
 and how could the land be slandered that was 
 reported as flowing with milk and honey, and was 
 shown to produce clusters of grapes of such magni- 
 tude as to require two men to carry a single bunch 
 
Numbers : Punishment for Disobedience. 345 
 
 upon a staff between them ! In spite of all that is 
 said of murmurings and faint-heartedness moreover, 
 and the threat of the people to make themselves a 
 Captain and return to Egypt, we are now informed that 
 they take heart of grace, risenp early in the morning, 
 get them up into the top of the mountain and say : 
 " Lo we be here and will go up unto the place which 
 Jehovah hath promised ; " a resolution not a little 
 inconsistent with what has just gone before ; added 
 in all likelihood to the older narrative by the modern 
 writer, for the sake of giving him an opportunity of 
 letting the people know that unless they are impli- 
 citly obedient to their rulers — spiritual and temporal 
 — they would assuredly meet with nothing but disaster. 
 Moses, accordingly, instead of encouraging them in 
 their later and more manly resolution is now made to 
 say : " Go not up ; for Jehovah is not among you." 
 He himself will have nothing to do with them ; but 
 keeps quiet in the camp with the Ark of the Coven- 
 ant beside him. The people presume to advance, 
 nevertheless ; but fallen upon by the Amalekites and 
 Canaanites dwelling in the hills, they, as they are 
 disobeying orders and have no support from head- 
 quarters, are discomfited and " smitten even unto 
 Hormah." 
 
 Misfortune we should rightly expect to wait on 
 action unauthorised or positively forbidden by the 
 leader. But it was not always because of their dis- 
 obedience of orders or unauthorised proceedings and 
 murmurings that punishment befel the children of 
 Israel ? 
 
 The very heaviest penalties were often exacted in 
 the olden time when men worshipped " the God of 
 the malignant Star," for contravention of the most 
 indifferent ordinances ; a notable instance of which 
 is immediately met with in the case of the man who 
 was found gathering sticks on the Sabbath, Chiun 
 or Saturn's day. This unfortunate individual, brought 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 before Moses and Aaron and the congregation, is put 
 in ward until Jehovah is consulted and his pleasure 
 known. Interpreted by his ministers the sentence is 
 not doubtful, for he says to Moses : " The man 
 shall be surely put to death ; all the congrega- 
 tion shall stone him with stones without the camp. 
 « And they brought him out and stoned him with 
 stones and he died, as Jehovah commanded Moses. 
 
 A terrible penalty for an act so little reprehensible 
 in itself! But can we as reasonable beings believe 
 that the God of Nature ever gave such orders to 
 mortal man? n , 
 
 Impossible ! Nor indeed is it said that the God 
 of Nature did. It is Jehovah the peculiar God ot 
 the later Jews who is credited with the atrocity. M~ 
 Schaddai, Isra-El, Chiun, or Baal-Saturnus, God ot 
 the ancient Hebrews, though he is represented as 
 dealing arbitrarily enough at times with his chosen 
 people, never ordered death as the penalty for gather- 
 ing sticks to make a fire on his holy day. The taie 
 is an invention of a priestly writer in relatively 
 recent times to frighten the superstitious vulgar into 
 the most rigid observance of his commandment to 
 rest and do no work on the Sabbath day. 
 
 The last, the most reasonable, the most humane ot 
 all the Jewish teachers in a still later age of the 
 world had views about the sanctity of the Sabbath 
 day other than those of the writer before us ? 
 
 He said that the Sabbath was made for man, not 
 man for the Sabbath ; that man was Lord of the 
 Sabbath ; showed in practice that all acts done i in it 
 which involved no moral offence were lawful, and that 
 one day of the week was as sacred as, but not more 
 sacred than, another to his God; who, consequently, 
 could not have been the Divinity embodied by his 
 countrymen in their ideal of Jehovah. 
 
 "With a sudden transition from a matter so terrible 
 as an order to put a hapless man to death for pre- 
 
Numbers : Korah and others rebel, 347 
 
 paring to make a fire — to warm some drink, it may- 
 have been, for an aged father or mother, or a sick 
 wife or child — we come to one so trivial as a com- 
 mandment direct from Jehovah to the children of 
 Israel " to put fringes on the borders of their gar- 
 ments, and on the fringe a ribband of blue." To what 
 end is this addition to their gaberdines made ? 
 
 That it might serve as a reminder to them of their 
 duties to Jehovah their God : " That ye may look 
 upon it and remember all the commandments of 
 Jehovah and do them." The order is interesting in 
 so far as it may serve to bring sticklers for the 
 Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch to understand 
 that writing, if not quite unknown to the Hebrews 
 of the age to which Moses is referred, could have been 
 little practised by any class, and must have been per- 
 fectly illegible to the vulgar. Hence the device of 
 the fringes and ribbons. 
 
 Which, however — were the garments of the chil- 
 dren of the desert ever ornamented with fringes and 
 ribbons — and this is very questionable — did not pre- 
 vent Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, of the tribe of 
 Levi, with On, of the tribe of Reuben, from gather- 
 ing themselves together, with two hundred and fifty- 
 princes of the assembly, against Moses and Aaron, 
 and saying to their Leader and Priest : " Ye take 
 too much upon you ; wherefore lift ye up yourselves 
 above the Congregation of Jehovah?" But the 
 rebellion is short-lived ; for Moses, when he hears 
 the words, falls upon his face— before Jehovah, we 
 must presume — and addressing Korah as ringleader, 
 and his company, he tells them that to-morrow 
 Jehovah will show who are his, and who he has 
 chosen to come near him. " This do," he proceeds, 
 " take your censers and put fire therein, and come 
 before Jehovah to-morrow, and it shall be that the 
 man whom Jehovah doth choose he shall be holy ; ye 
 take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi ; seemeth 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 it but a small thing unto you that the God of Israel 
 hafch separated you from the congregation of Israel to 
 bring you near to himself to do the service of the 
 Tabernacle, and seek ye the priesthood also— what is 
 Aaron that ye murmur against him ? " 
 
 Having addressed himself thus more particularly 
 to Korah and his followers who have murmured 
 against Aaron, he now turns to Dathan and Abiram, 
 who seem to have challenged his own authority, re- 
 proaching him with having brought them into no 
 land that flowed with milk and honey, to kill them m 
 the wilderness, instead of giving them an inheritance 
 in fields and vineyards. " Wilt thou put out the 
 eyes of these men," say they ; " we will not come 
 
 ^Moses will be very wroth with them for this ? 
 Of course he will. He prays Jehovah to have no 
 respect to their offering of incense ; and, to show that 
 they have no real ground of offence against himself, 
 he adds : " I have not taken an ass from them, neither 
 have I hurt one of them." Rebellious in some respects 
 they are submissive in others ; though they " will not 
 come up," as they say, they take their censers as 
 commanded, and ranging themselves before the door 
 of the Tabernacle on one hand, Aaron with his censer, 
 we must presume, takes his stand on the other. The 
 Glory of Jehovah now appears to the congregation, 
 and Moses and Aaron are ordered by Jehovah to 
 separate themselves from the rebels "that he may 
 consume them in a moment." The Leader and Priest 
 fall on their faces before Jehovah, and say : "0 God, 
 God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin and 
 wilt thou be wroth with all the congregation ? " But 
 Jehovah is wroth, and takes no heed of their prayer. 
 Moses and Aaron and the congregation of Israel se- 
 parate themselves from the rebels, and Korah, Dathan 
 and Abiram, with their wives, their sons, and their 
 little children are left standing before the doors ot 
 
Numbers: Punishment of Rebels. 349 
 
 their tents. Moses then proceeds to say : " Hereby 
 ye shall know that Jehovah hath sent me to do all 
 these works, for I have not done them of my own 
 mind. If these men die the common death of all men, 
 then Jehovah hath not sent me ; but if the earth open 
 her mouth and swallow them up with all that apper- 
 tain to them, and they go down quick into the pit, 
 then ye shall understand that these men have pro- 
 voked Jehovah. And it came to pass, as he made an 
 end of speaking, that the ground clave asunder that 
 was under them, and opened her mouth and swallowed 
 them up, their houses and all that belonged to them, 
 their wives, their sons and their little ones — all went 
 down alive into the pit, and the earth closed on them 
 and they perished." 
 
 Thus are the ringleaders disposed of? 
 
 They and all immediately belonging to them have 
 " gone down quick into the pit," but a fire from 
 Jehovah is the means evoked to consume the two 
 hundred and fifty, their associates, who offered 
 incense. The censers of these sinners are gathered 
 by Eleazar, the son of Aaron, and are made into 
 broad plates for a covering of the altar, " to be a 
 memorial unto the children of Israel that no stranger 
 which is not of the seed of Aaron is to come near to 
 offer incense before Jehovah." 
 
 ^ This story has a suspicious look of recent compo- 
 sition ? 
 
 So much so, that there can be little question of its 
 referring to times when the Levites at large thought 
 themselves strong enough to aspire to a position 
 higher^ than that of mere servitors of the priests ; 
 and this was not until a very late date in the history 
 of the Jewish people. The tale must be from the 
 pen of an opponent of their claims —a stickler for 
 the right of succession to the priesthood in the line 
 of Aaron^ alone, which we know was not adhered to 
 in later times. 
 
3S o The Pentateuch. 
 
 and against Aaron, and say, Ye have Jnllea tne 
 
 Pe °B P u? tt^^notning by their discontent ; for the 
 wrath of /ehovah is aronsed against them anew ; the 
 
 ^tairte oongregation, that he, m 
 A g ln nhrase may consume them in a moment. 
 
 bow reported as beside them that died 
 
 ^Tl mattTo? M " bad fallen victims to its 
 Snee TehTvah'f anger was not to be appeased 
 
 by w7d k o e not find that the earth nowadays opens and 
 
 daily of strange sights. 
 
 Did it, presumably, ever do so f 
 
 Ed does fire leap out from heaven at the word of 
 command of an angry ehief and consume people by 
 the hundred ? 
 
 It does not. 
 
Numbers: Rebellion of Kor ah. 351 
 
 Did it ever do so ? 
 Never. 
 
 How do we venture to speak thus positively on 
 such a matter ? 
 
 In virtue of our unswerving faith in the changeless 
 nature of God and the laws which are his essence, as 
 well as of the knowledge we possess of necessary 
 connection between causes and effects. Grumblings 
 against authority bear no relation to the pent-up 
 volcanic forces on which earthquakes and cleavings 
 asunder of the ground depend, nor to the electrical 
 disturbances of the atmosphere that lead to lightning 
 strokes and conflagrations. 
 
 Carefully perused, not a little confusion is apparent 
 in the mythical tale of the seditious movement of 
 Korah, Dathan, and Abiram ; but this concerns the 
 Bible harmonist rather than us. We would only 
 observe that the destruction of the two hundred and 
 fifty " by fire from Jehovah " is of a piece with the 
 way in which Nadab and Abihu died, and has a sus- 
 picious look of sacrifice ; and then the infliction of 
 the plague that killed " fourteen thousand and seven 
 hundred of the people" for merely murmuring, seems 
 out of all proportion to the nature of the offence. Is 
 it possible that Moses, as on another notable occasion, 
 bade his supporters take their swords and consecrate 
 themselves to Jehovah by slaying every man his 
 brother, his neighbour, and his friend ? Let it be 
 noted, farther, that the reason definitively given for 
 the doom of the two hundred and fifty is not the 
 rebellion in the camp, but the objection Jehovah 
 makes to be ministered to by any who are not of the 
 seed of Aaron : the brass plates for the covering of 
 the altar, which are made out of the censers of the 
 slain are " to be a memorial to the children of Israel 
 that no stranger which is not of the seed of Aaron 
 come near to offer incense before Jehovah." 
 
 Assuming that no such miraculous interferences 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 as those now particularly referred to ever took place, 
 we may imagine a motive for the invention ot such 
 a story as this of Koran's rebellion and its conse- 
 quences-the gaping of the earth, the fire from 
 heaven, and the pestilence,— because of the discon- 
 tent of the people and the refusal of some of their 
 chiefs to obey the summons of their leader ? 
 
 It is not far to seek. The tale was probably grafted 
 on some account of a seditious movement m the olden 
 time, to show the Many of the writer's day the pro- 
 priety of keeping in the places which Providence, m 
 modern phrase, had been pleased to assign them. 
 They were, in fact, to venture on no act save at the 
 bidding of their masters, and not even to express 
 discontent with aught done by their superiors. The 
 story is a myth,— a Narrative invented to cover an 
 
 ^Lustrations or cleansings play an important part 
 in the ceremonial enactments of the Jews ? 
 
 A very important part indeed ; and water, as the 
 sreat physical purifier as well as fertiliser, appears 
 to have been believed at an early period of human 
 history to possess certain mystical or moral cleansing 
 qualities also. It had to be prepared, however, 
 among the ancient Israelites, for special occasions in 
 certain ways, before it was held endowed with the 
 higher mystical properties presumed to be then re- 
 quired, and the supersensuous virtue of " the W ater 
 of lustration " was imparted to it, as believed, m a 
 very extraordinary way. A red heifer, without spot 
 or blemish, was directed to be killed beyond the 
 camp • her blood to be brought in and sprinkled 
 seven times before the tabernacle of the congregation, 
 and her skin, her flesh, and her dung to be burnt 
 without the camp,— portions of cedar^ wood and 
 hyssop and a scarlet cord being thrown into the nre 
 during the process of cremation. When reduced to 
 ashes, these were to be collected and laid up m a 
 
Numbers : The Water of Purification. 3 53 
 
 clean place, and running water being added to a 
 portion of the ashes in a proper vessel, the water of 
 purification was complete. 
 
 Running water must have been rather difficult to 
 procure in the wilderness of Sinai ; but passing this, 
 it will be interesting to know how the water of purifi- 
 cation was to be used ? 
 
 With a little of it the persons and things held to 
 be unclean, — they or the things that had touched a 
 bone, a dead body, or a grave, among other particulars 
 specified, — were to be sprinkled, the sprinkling being 
 repeated on the third and seventh days ; after which, 
 if it were a person, he was to bathe his body and 
 wash his clothes, and, eventide having come, he was 
 to be accounted clean. 
 
 The sprinkling could have had little to do with the 
 cleansing ? 
 
 But the bathing and washing of the clothes all the 
 more — physically, that is to say ; for the effect of the 
 sprinkling could only have been moral or magical. 
 Such observances, however, it is plain, must have 
 been impossible to sojourners in the desert, where 
 water is so scarce that there is rarely enough even 
 for small caravans to drink, and never any for 
 bathing and washing. The absurd commandment 
 for the preparation of the water of purification from 
 the ashes of a red cow, worthy of the Shaman of a 
 savage Indian tribe, assures us that though it bears 
 the stamp of old and barbarous times, it is totally 
 inapplicable to the Israelites whilst they were wan- 
 derers in the wilderness. It may be a legend derived 
 from one or other of the native tribes of Palestine 
 whom the Hebrews dispossessed ; or it may be the 
 Israelitish version of an Egyptian office in repect of 
 Typhon, to whom red-haired cattle and red-haired 
 men were the proper sacrifices. Besprinkling with 
 water consecrated to the God in his adverse aspect, 
 may have been held assurance against his malign 
 
 DD 
 
^ 4 The Pentateuch. 
 
 influence ; in the same way as the people of the south 
 of Italy at the present day wear amulets to insure 
 them against the assaults of the Evil Eye. 
 
 Yet is the formula for the preparation of the water 
 of purification delivered in the text as an immediate 
 communication from Jehovah ? 
 
 It is surely impossible that reasonable men and 
 women in the present day should believe that any 
 ordinance so obviously foolish in itself, as well as in- 
 competent to the end proposed can ever have come 
 from God. How, indeed, should the sprinkling of a 
 S water, having the ashes of a red-heifer diffused 
 in it, cleanse man, woman, or thing from either 
 physical or moral impurity ? And, then, is he who 
 touches a bone, a dead body or a grave rea% and 
 truly unclean? Physically, he may be defiled in a 
 neater or less degree, and require to wash his hands 
 but when he closes the eyes and reverently composes 
 the limbs of the dead, or visits and perchance kneels 
 on the graves of his kindred, he performs a pious act, 
 and stands pure before God. , 
 We immediately come upon another childish and 
 impossible story, obviously invented for toe glorifica- 
 tion of the Levitical caste, connected with certain 
 rods which Jehovah commands Moses to order 
 the chiefs of the several tribes to deliver into his 
 
 a On these rods, says the story, Moses is to write 
 the names of the chiefs,-" Every man s name upon 
 his rod," and lay them in the Tabernacle before the 
 Testimony* "audit shall come to pass, proceeds 
 the narrative, "that the mans rod whom I shall 
 choose shall blossom, and I will make to cease the 
 murmurings of the children of Israel against you 
 
 The rod of Aaron, of the house of Levi, is the one 
 which blossoms ? 
 
 * Haeduth, Heb. Surely not the Law, as generally under- 
 stood, but the Image or symbolical representative of the God. 
 
Numbers ; Aaron's Blooming Rod. 355 
 
 Of course it is. When Moses goes into the Taber- 
 nacle on the morrow, " Behold, the rod of Aaron, for 
 the house of Levi, was budded ;" nay, not only 
 budded; it had bloomed blossoms and produced 
 •almonds ! 
 
 In a single night ? 
 
 So it is said ; although we see God in nature giving 
 the almond tree, not days nor weeks only, but months 
 in which to bloom, to break into leaf, and to perfect 
 its fruit,— the shoot, moreover, getting life all the 
 while from the trunk and root of the tree. 
 
 The man whose rod blossomed was the man chosen 
 by Jehovah ? 
 
 So it is said. The murmurings of the people 
 were henceforth to cease, and the blossomed rod 
 being brought before the Testimony, besides being 
 kept as a token against the rebels was to serve as a 
 reminder to Jehovah (the God of the Jews always 
 requiring refreshers of his memory !) that he was 
 not again to visit the people with pestilence : " Thou 
 shalt thus," says the record, " quite take away their 
 murmurings from me, that they die not." But 
 Aaron and the house of Levi had already and on 
 other grounds been chosen by Jehovah as his own ; 
 and as the shoot of no tree will now under any cir- 
 cumstances bud, bloom, and form fruit in a day, so 
 may we safely conclude that it neither could nor did 
 so in the days of Moses. To which conclusion we 
 add, by way of corollary derived from a critical 
 survey of the whole of the context, that the tale of 
 Aaron's rod which blossomed is another invention 
 of the writer to exalt the Levitical caste, and to im- 
 press on the people the duty not only of obedience to 
 their rulers but of peculiar submissiveness to their 
 priests, proprieties indeed when the ruler and the 
 priest are worthy, but neither to be begotten nor 
 deserved by conjurors' tricks, in seeming, not in any 
 real, violation of the laws of nature, which, let us 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 never be weary of repeating, are of the very essence 
 of the Godhead and therefore changeless. 
 
 The Israelites it is said come in the first month 
 Fof the second year] into the desert of Zin, and reach 
 fcadesh, on the borders of Edom, where a noteworthy 
 incident occurs ? 
 
 The people are distressed for want ot water, ana 
 Jehovah has apparently forgotten his promise to take 
 from the people all farther cause for discontent, ot 
 which Aaron's blossomed rod was to be the guarantee 
 for we still find them murmuring against Moses and 
 chiding- with him for having led them out ot .Lgypt 
 to perish in the wilderness. But Moses, as we know, 
 is like Hermes, provided with a wonder-working rod, 
 which again comes into play, and we have a repeti- 
 tion of the mythical tale already met with m Exodus, 
 which tells of water struck from the rock : Hear 
 ye now, ye rebels," says the leader upon this occa- 
 sion " must we fetch you water out of this rock i 
 Forthwith he strikes the rock with his rod and 
 water flows from its flinty bosom But no rock 
 either in the wilderness of Sin by Sinai nor m that 
 of Zin on the borders of Edom ever yielded water at 
 the word of command or the stroke of a rod. it is 
 onlv by digging in the dried up watercourses ot the 
 Wadis or Vallevs of the Desert that water, more or 
 less brackish but generally potable, is to be obtained, 
 the fact which doubtless has supplied a foundation 
 for the stories of Moses striking the rock wiuh his 
 rod and bringing water from its bosom. 
 
 Moses, singularly enough, and not very fairly as it 
 seems, is now made responsible for the people s 
 nmrmurings and rebellious behaviour, which were to 
 have ceased, as just said, with the laying up ot 
 Aaron's rod before the Testimony; be is even told 
 that he is to suffer for their sins. Addressing the 
 leader and the priest, Jehovah says: " Because ye 
 believed me not to sanctify me in the eyes ot the 
 
Numbers : Israel at Kadesh, 
 
 children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this 
 congregation into the land which I have given 
 them." Aaron it is true may have erred, and that 
 even oftener than once ; but we never read of Moses 
 having done otherwise than as commanded. He has 
 reasoned with Jehovah, indeed, upon several occa- 
 sions, and shown him what the Egyptians would say 
 of him did he abide by his threat to forsake or do 
 evil to his people, but he has never gone contrary to 
 orders. At Kadesh the horde is evidently in great 
 straits : " Would God, say they, we had died when 
 our brethren died before Jehovah ! Wherefore have 
 ye made us come up out of -Egypt to bring us in unto 
 this evil place ? It is no place of seed or of figs or 
 of vines or of pomegranates ; neither is there any 
 water to drink." We might almost imagine that 
 Moses had had an altercation with Jehovah here, 
 and perchance spoken out somewhat too freely. The 
 text at all events appears to be imperfect. What we 
 have is probably a fragment of a narrative longer 
 and more complete, for we learn at its close that 
 " the water is called the water of Meribah (strife) 
 because the children of Israel strove with Jehovah, 
 and he was sanctified in them," a sentence from 
 which the word not must have dropped out if we are 
 to make sense of it beside what is said in a preceding 
 verse, where Jehovah's displeasure with Moses is 
 made to rest on the ground that the leader had not 
 sanctified Mm in the eyes of the children of Israel. 
 The text as it stands therefore is not consistent with 
 itself ? 
 
 It certainly is not ; but we shall find more — much 
 more — made of the matter now under discussion, 
 first in respect of Aaron, and then in respect of 
 Moses, than its gravity beyond other matters of the 
 same sort might seem to warrant. Meantime the 
 Israelites are at Kadesh, and Moses sends messengers 
 to the king of Edom, with whom he claims kindred, 
 
358 The Pentateuch. 
 
 as well he might, the Israelites and Edomites being 
 children of the same stock and using dialects of the 
 same tongue. Moses' envoys are to say, "Thus 
 saith thy brother Israel : Let us pass I pray thee 
 through thy country ; we will go by the highway 
 and pay for all we require." But the claim ot 
 kindred is not acknowledged by the king of Edorn, 
 who says, " Ye shall not go through ; and came out 
 against him with much people and a strong hand ; 
 so that Israel turned away from Kadesh and came to 
 Mount Hor." . _ _ , ' , 
 
 Almost within sight of the promised .land, but 
 refused a passage through his territories by the 
 Edomite king, Moses, as we read, receives at the 
 same time an important and most extraordinary 
 communication from Jehovah ? 
 
 He is informed that Aaron is now to be " gathered 
 to his fathers," i.e., he is to die. " He shall not enter 
 into the land which I have given unto the children 
 of Israel," says Jehovah to him, "because ye rebelled 
 against my word at the water of Meribah. Ihe 
 text must needs therefore be imperfect, as hinted, tor 
 of any such rebellion, whether on the part of Aaron 
 or of Moses, on the occasion named we have not had 
 a word. " Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and 
 bring them up unto Mount Hor," continues the narra- 
 tive, " and strip Aaron of his garments and put them 
 upon Eleazar his son; and Aaron shall be gathered 
 unto his people, and shall die there." 
 
 This is very extraordinary ! But Jehovah s orders 
 are obeyed by Moses ? 
 
 They are, and without a word either ot remon- 
 strance on the one part or of explanation on the other. 
 The three men go up into Mount Hor in sight of all 
 the congregation, and there, as we are told, " Moses 
 stripped Aaron of his garments and put them upon 
 Eleazar his son; and Aaron died there in the top ot 
 Mount Hor, and Moses and Eleazar came down irom 
 
Numbers: Death of Aaron. 359 
 
 the Mount." In so few words is the death of the 
 "high priest Aaron recorded. 
 
 Moses and Eleazar will doubtless give a more 
 particular account of the business in which they have 
 been engaged to the heads of the houses or the 
 people at large, and speak of the way and manner of 
 the high priest's end when they return to the camp ? 
 
 They speak no word, however ; none is required 
 of them ; none was needed ; all must have been 
 already aware of what was to happen when the 
 party set out for the Mount, and of what had been 
 done when the survivors returned. 
 
 What, then, was to happen ; what are we to pre- 
 sume had been done ? 
 
 Something which people who close their eyes 
 against the obvious meaning of words, legitimate 
 inferences from plain statements of fact, and the 
 knowledge we now possess of the religious rites and 
 customs of barbarous peoples, are greatly averse to 
 admit. 
 
 And this may be ? 
 
 That Aaron, already devoted to Jehovah, in face 
 of a geat difficulty and now seen as the most appro- 
 priate and influential propitiatory offering that could 
 be made to the God, was solemnly sacrificed on 
 Mount Hor by Moses his brother and Eleazar his 
 son. 
 
 There is not a word in the text, however, of any 
 act of the kind having been consummated ? . 
 
 There is none left to us for our better information 
 certainly. Any record that ever existed of the 
 solemn sacrifice enacted, for so doubtless if it were 
 done at all was it considered, has either been kept 
 out of his narrative by the relatively recent compiler 
 of the Book of Numbers, or expunged by its still 
 more modern editor. It must have been seen that 
 so portentous a deed as the sacrifice of his priest to 
 Jehovah, in the ideal formed of God by the writer 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 and his contemporaries, bluntly related, would have 
 shocked the sense of the age of Hezekiah, when the 
 text as we have it, if not exactly put together, must 
 have received a notable, though perhaps by no means 
 a final polishing and expurgation. The terms in 
 which the death of Aaron is recorded, it is not 
 unimportant to observe, continue even to the present 
 day to be so toned down that little of the horrible in 
 the nature of the transaction is left to reach the mind 
 of the reader. In our English version, for example, 
 the congregation of Israel " see that Aaron is dead;" 
 in the more recent translation of Isaac Leeser* they 
 " see that he is departed; " dead would have been too 
 plain a word for the modern Jewish writer. The 
 reason given for the death of Aaron at this par- 
 ticular moment, as we have" said, has no foundation 
 in fact. Aaron had not rebelled against Jehovah at 
 the waters of Meribah. It was the children of Israel 
 who there, and because they were athirst, are found 
 murmuring against their leader and priest. Nor is 
 there a word in the narrative that lends countenance 
 to the belief that Aaron's death was in the course of 
 nature. He must have been heart-whole when he 
 ascended Mount Hor overlooking the land of Edom, 
 habited in his official robes and having the gold plate 
 engraven with the words Holt to Jehovah bound 
 by the sacrificial fillet upon his brow ; there divested 
 himself of the insignia of his office, and completed 
 the contract he had made with his terrible God by 
 yielding up his life. It seems impossible, in the face 
 of all we know, to come to any other conclusion than 
 that the death of Aaron was sacrificial ; a conclusion 
 corroborated, were that required, by the interpretation 
 always put upon the death of Christ : the First and 
 the Last High Priest must alike give themselves as 
 sacrifices for their peoples. Why, therefore, should 
 
 * 'The Twenty-four Books of the Holy Scriptures.' 
 Philad., 1856 ; Lond., reprinted 1865. 
 
Numbers : Arad and his to be Cher em. 361 
 
 the sacrifice of Aaron to the Hebrew God shock the 
 sensibilities of the present age, when the death of 
 Christ is thought of with complacency and looked on 
 as the final act required to reconcile a sinful world 
 to an offended God.* 
 
 Refused a passage through Edom, but turning 
 round by Mount Hor, and approaching the territories 
 of the Canaanites, Arad, their king, hearing by his 
 spies of the advance of the Israelites, musters his 
 forces, attacks them, defeats them, and takes some 
 prisoners ? 
 
 On which Israel vows a vow to Jehovah, and says : 
 "If thou wilt indeed deliver this people into my hand, 
 then I will utterly destroy their cities;" in other 
 words, Israel will hold Arad and his Canaanites 
 Gherem or devoted in the highest degree; he will 
 destroy them root and branch, men and women, old 
 and young, goods and chattels, slaying everything 
 that lived with the sword, burning every lifeless 
 thing with fire. 
 
 God the compassionate, the merciful, as pious 
 Mussulmen say, does not surely listen to this savage 
 vow P 
 
 No, truly ; but El-EHjon, Chiun, or Jahveh-Mo- 
 lech, tutelary God and King of the old Israelites, 
 does ; the terms are too tempting to be declined. 
 According to the text, " Jehovah hearkened to the 
 voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites ; and 
 they (the Israelites) utterly destroyed them and 
 their cities, and called the place Hor m ah — Destruc- 
 tion." But the account of this victory, or rather of 
 the series of victories implied in the ruin of cities, 
 must be a fabrication ; for we forthwith find the 
 Israelites retreating from Mount Hor by the way of 
 the red-sea (?), and murmuring as usual against 
 their leader. The name Hormah of itself arouses 
 
 * See farther, Ghillanij, Die Menschenopfer der alten 
 Hebraeer. S. 714 et seq. 
 
362 The Pentateuch. 
 
 suspicions that the skirmish with Arad, now reported 
 as a victory, is but another and improved version of 
 the affair with the Amalekites and Oanaanites, in 
 which, instead of smiting and pursuing their enemies, 
 and calling the place Hormah, to signalise the dis- 
 comfiture of these, they were themselves the " smitten 
 and discomfited, and pursued even unto Hormah." 
 King Arad would seem, in fact, to have been vic- 
 torious ; Jehovah was, therefore, conceived by the 
 Israelites to have been adverse to them, and to 
 require propitiation by promises of many victims, or 
 much slaughter of the enemies of his chosen people : 
 " If thou wilt indeed deliver, &c, then I will utterly 
 destroy, &c." How long will it be before men consent 
 to make use of their reason as well as of the jelly and 
 nerve expansion that conveys impressions of light to 
 the mind ! Or be there two Gods, one of the J ews, 
 another of reasonable men ? By no possibility can 
 there be a personal God with such opposite and in- 
 congruous attributes as Delight in destruction, and 
 Delight in mercy. 
 
 Beaten back by the natives of the soil, " the soul of 
 the people is much discouraged because of the way ;" 
 and they now speak not only against Moses but 
 against their God : " Wherefore have ye brought us 
 up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness," &c, say 
 they. But they are punished in a singular way for 
 their presumption ? 
 
 They have "fiery serpents" (saraf) sent among 
 them, which bite and cause the death of many. 
 
 An extraordinary scourge ! Though poisonous 
 snakes abound in certain parts of the world, and are 
 known to be extremely destructive to the people, 
 they are nowhere so common as to be seen in numbers 
 together, and singly they rarely attack individuals, 
 unless molested or trodden on in their lairs amid 
 the forest and jungle. It is not easy for us to 
 conceive a host of cobras or lance-heads guided by 
 
Numbers : The Brazen Serpent. 363 
 
 God making an attack upon a township or encamp- 
 ment ? 
 
 Such a thing is never seen in the present day, 
 and, as certainly, was never seen in any earlier age of 
 the world. But passing the extraordinary and un- 
 natural in the character of the visitation, the means 
 taken to stay it are still more extraordinary and un- 
 natural. In marked contravention of his first purpose, 
 and anxious, as it would seem, to redress the mischief 
 done, Jehovah now orders Moses to make a Serpent 
 of Brass, and set it on a pole; "and it shall come to 
 pass," says the story, "that every one who is bitten 
 when he looketh upon it shall live." 
 
 Moses ordered by his God to make an image of a 
 serpent in brass ! Who then is the God who says : 
 " Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, 
 or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, 
 or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the 
 earth " ? 
 
 The text before us does not say. Moses is there 
 ordered to make a serpent of brass ; the Decalogue 
 says : " Thou shalt make no likeness of anything in 
 heaven or earth." 
 
 How reconcile commandments so contradictory ? 
 
 How, indeed ! Unless by the obvious and easy 
 way of concluding that all the written commandments 
 we have are Man's not God's, and that neither Moses, 
 nor his age, nor th^y who for ages came after Moses, 
 had ever heard of the Decalogue. Moses, however, 
 according to the text under review does as he is 
 ordered. He makes a serpent of brass, and sets it 
 aloft upon a pole so as to be seen of all ; and u it came 
 to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he 
 beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." 
 
 The connection between the bite of a poisonous 
 snake and the sight of a brazen serpent upon a pole 
 is not very obvious ? 
 
 No ; but in ancient times the serpent had a higher 
 
3^4 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 significance than he has now. In Egypt the serpent 
 was the symbol of Kneph, the healer, the God in his 
 benign aspect ; and we still see it twined about the 
 staff of iEsculapius, one of the forms of the Sun- 
 God, the dispenser of light and life. And then we 
 know that as serpent-worship prevailed in Jerusalem 
 so far on as the days of Hezekiah, we conclude that 
 it prevailed among the Hebrews as among other bar- 
 barous peoples before his time. The curt notice we 
 have of the serpent in the wilderness must be from 
 one of the old legends made use of by the compiler 
 of the Book of Numbers ; possibly not understood by 
 him, or — and this is the more likely interpretation — 
 inasmuch as there was a brazen serpent upon a pole 
 to which the people of Jerusalem in the writer's 
 time continued to burn incense, so a reason must be 
 found for its presence in the temple of Jehovah 
 beside the chariot of the Sun. A story was wanted 
 which should take the brazen serpent destroyed by 
 Hezekiah from the sphere of religion proper, without 
 running counter to the love of the marvellous and 
 the respect for antiquity that inhere in the nature of 
 man. The brazen serpent consequently was no Fetish 
 which had been an object of religious worship to 
 their forefathers, and was even looked on in the same 
 light by themselves, but an instrument which Moses 
 had made for the cure of those bitten by the poison- 
 ous snakes sent by Jehovah among the people, to 
 punish them for their murmurings and disobedience 
 whilst they were still wanderers in the wilderness. 
 
 Somewhat better informed in these days on the 
 nature and properties of things than were the Jews 
 of old, and ever looking for something like congruity 
 between effects and causes, we feel as well assured 
 that the sight of a brazen serpent on a pole will not 
 stay the deadly effects of a venomous serpent's bite, 
 as we are that the mere sight of meat and drink will 
 not stay hunger and quench thirst ? 
 
Numbers : Israel at Beer. 
 
 True ; but the Jews of old were not so far advanced 
 in logic and notions of matters meriting belief ; though 
 it were a question not altogether irrelevant, did we 
 ask : Whether we ourselves had so far advanced in 
 knowledge of the fitness of things as to have got 
 beyond the influence of this tale of the brazen 
 serpent ? That our fathers a few ages back were 
 not, is certain ; and that the clergy and the mass of 
 those who follow their teaching are still in no better 
 case, must indeed be admitted when we ever and 
 anon hear the " lifting up of the brazen serpent in the 
 wilderness " referred to in our pulpits as a type fore- 
 shadowing the greater " lifting up " that took place 
 at a later period in the history of the children of 
 Israel. Old superstitions die hard ; and the tree and 
 the serpent are among the very oldest of the forms 
 in which the supersensuous that is conceived by man 
 was personified, and made symbolical of Deity. Having 
 fashioned a God for himself, inwardly if not always 
 outwardly in his own likeness, he then approached 
 the image he had made with prayers and offerings 
 to conciliate favour and bid for success in his under- 
 takings. 
 
 The people led by Moses now, or shortly after their 
 late victory — or shall we say defeat ? — make another, 
 and as it turns out a more successful attempt to pene- 
 trate the promised land ? 
 
 They come to Beer — the well, whereof Jehovah 
 spoke to Moses, saying : " Gather the people together, 
 and I will give them water; " and so overjoyed are 
 they by the unwonted sight of this indispensable 
 commodity in something like abundance, we may 
 imagine, that they break out into song: " Spring up, 
 O well ; sing ye unto it ! The princes digged the 
 well, the nobles of the people digged it with their 
 staves." And here, too, may we find the well-head 
 of the tales wherein we are told how water was struck 
 from the rock by Moses's staff or Aaron's wonder- 
 working rod. 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 Advancing from Beer, the Israelites come to 
 Bamoth, to "the vale in the land of Moab," and to 
 Pisgah that rises above the level of the wilderness. 
 From hence they send messengers to Sihon, king of 
 the Amorites, as they had done to Arad, king of 
 Edom, asking leave to pass through his territories ? 
 
 Which Sihon not only refuses, but, like Arad, 
 gathering his people together, he attacks the wan- 
 derers. He is defeated, however, and smitten with 
 the edge of the sword. His lands and towns are 
 overrun and taken possession of by the Israelites, 
 who then advance against Og, king of Bashan. He 
 too is smitten at the battle of Edrei— "he and his 
 sons and all his people, until there was none left 
 
 alive ! " „ 
 
 This must have been a great triumph, for we imme- 
 diately find Israel advanced into " the plains of Moab, 
 on this side Jordan, by Jericho," to the no small 
 dismay of Balak, the son of Zippor, at this time 
 king of Moab. He takes a new and unusual course 
 to withstand the invaders ? 
 
 Less confident apparently than his neighbours 
 Arad, Sihon, and Og, in the use of carnal weapons 
 against the invaders, Balak sends messengers " with 
 the rewards of divination in their hands to Balaam, 
 the son of Beor," a soothsayer of Mesopotamia, of 
 great repute, we may presume, informing him of the 
 invasion of his territories by a people who had come 
 up out of Egypt, and desiring the Seer to come to him 
 and curse them, for they were too mighty for him. 
 Balaam obeys the summons of Balak ? 
 Not at once. He desires the messengers to tarry 
 over night, and he will give them his answer in the 
 morning. But Elohim — not Jahveh— visits Balaam 
 in the night, and inquires of him— as if he needed 
 the information— what the men were who tarried 
 with him? Informed on this head, and farther on 
 the purport of their errand, Elohim forbids Balaam 
 
Numbers : Balaam and the Ass. 567 
 
 to go with messengers to Moab, or to curse the people 
 who had come up against it, so that they return with 
 a refusal from the Seer to their master. 
 
 But Balak is not satisfied with Balaam's refusal to 
 come to him and curse his enemies ? 
 
 By no means ; he sends again to the diviner, 
 " messengers more in number and more honourable, 
 with promises of much honour and reward," if he 
 will but come and curse the invaders. 
 
 Balaam now yields ? 
 
 The drama carried on so far, he does ; for Elohim 
 has been with him in the night as before, and having 
 changed his mind, as it would seem, now bids him 
 rise and go with the men ; charging him at the same 
 time only to speak the word that is imparted to him, 
 " The word which 1 shall say unto thee, that shalt 
 thou do." So Balaam rises in the morning, and 
 saddling his ass, he sets out with the princes of Moab, 
 the messengers of Balak. Singularly enough, how- 
 ever, and again in contradiction to the orders just 
 delivered, we are now informed that : " Elohim's 
 anger was kindled against Balaam because he went; 
 and the 'angel of Jehovah (it is no longer Elohim) 
 stood in the way for an adversary against him ;' " not 
 seen of him, however, but by the ass, which, clearer 
 of vision than her rider, as it appears, " saw the 
 angel of Jehovah standing in the way and his sword 
 drawn in his hand." 
 
 How in the name of all that is reasonable could 
 the writer know that the ass saw the angel of 
 Jehovah standing in the way with his sword drawn 
 in his hand ? 
 
 We cannot tell — we are not informed. Had the 
 ass but used the gift of speech with which anon 
 she shows herself possessed, she might have saved 
 herself some ill usage from her master ; for seeing 
 the way barred by the angel, she turns aside, and 
 being smitten once and again by her rider, she at 
 
^68 The Pentateuch. 
 
 length lies down under him. Then is Balaam's 
 anger greatly roused, and again he smites the ass 
 with his staff; on which Jehovah, says the text, 
 " opened the mouth of the ass and she said unto 
 Balaam : What have I done to thee that thou hast 
 smitten me these three times ?" 
 
 Balaam is much amazed, of course, by such an 
 address as this from his ass ? 
 
 Not a whit ; but speaking to his brute as he would 
 to his serving-man, he replies : " Because thou hast 
 mocked me ; I would there were a sword in my hand, 
 for now would I kill thee." 
 
 And the ass ? 
 
 " Said unto Balaam : Am I not thine ass, upon 
 whom thou hast ridden ever since I was thine own 
 unto this day ? Was I ever wont to do so unto thee ? 
 And he (Balaam) said : Nay." 
 
 This is very wonderful, surely, and very edifying ! 
 But what more ? 
 
 Jehovah now opens the eyes of Balaam, and he 
 sees the Angel with the drawn sword in his hand, on 
 which he bows his head and falls on his face to the 
 ground The Angel then reproaches him with his 
 cruelty to his faithful ass : " Wherefore hast thou 
 smitten thine ass these three times," says he, having 
 kept count, as it appears ; " behold, I went out to with- 
 stand thee, because the way thou goest mislikes me, 
 and the ass saw me and turned from me, and unless 
 she had turned from me, surely now also I had slam 
 thee, but let her live." 
 
 But Balaam had been ordered by Elohim to take 
 the iourney towards Balak ? . 
 
 So we are informed ; but Jehovah as well as Elohim 
 must have changed his mind a second time, and so 
 sent his angel— or rather come down himself— to 
 withstand the Seer in his expedition. 
 
 What comes next in this extraordinary interlocutory 
 between the Angel of Jehovah, the man, and the ass t 
 
Numbers : Balaam and the Ass. 
 
 Balaam excuses himself to the angel, and should 
 by rights have asked pardon of the ass, which he 
 does not, but says to the angel : " I knew not that 
 thou stoodest in the way against me ; now, therefore, 
 if it displease thee [that I have come thus far], I w T ili 
 get me back again." 
 
 The angel of Jehovah, or rather Jahveh-Elohim 
 himself, having first commanded the diviner not to 
 obey Balak's summons, then ordered him to go with 
 the messengers, and next opposed his going in so 
 unwonted a manner, will now and for very con- 
 sistency's sake bid him return on the way he had 
 come ? 
 
 On the contrary, the angel bids him go on with the 
 men, only repeating the injunction already laid on 
 him, that he was but to speak the word that would be 
 put into his mouth. 
 
 This is all extremely inconsistent ; and the check 
 by the way is farther shown to be needless, inasmuch 
 as no new instructions are given to the Seer ? 
 
 It is so indeed ; but the inconsistency and non- 
 necessity are the least remarkable of the many remark- 
 able things that meet us in such a narrative, particu- 
 larly when we are told that we are to receive it as set 
 down under the inspiration of God. Balaam, how- 
 ever, now feels himself at liberty to go with the princes 
 of Balak ; and, proceeding on his way, is met by the 
 king in person in a city of Moab on the borders of 
 Arnon. Balak reproaches Balaam with his refusal to 
 come to him in the first instance. " Am I not able to 
 promote thee to honour ?" asks he ; to which the Seer 
 replies : "Lo, I am come to thee but he adds that 
 he has no power to say anything of himself ; only the 
 word that Elohim puts in his mouth will he speak. 
 So Balak brings him to the high places of Baal, where 
 sacrifices are offered to that God. Balaam, however, will 
 have special altars prepared and more solemn sacri- 
 fices made. Seven altars, on which seven bullocks and 
 
 EE 
 
The Pentateuch, 
 
 as many rams are presented to EloMm, after which he 
 has a word put into his mouth, and takes up his 
 parable forthwith, saying : Balak, the King of Moab, 
 has brought me from Aram out of the mountains of 
 the East, saying : " Come, curse me Jacob, and come, 
 defy me Israel ? How shall I curse whom Elohim 
 hath not cursed, or how defy whom Jehovah hath not 
 defied ? Who can count the dust of Jacob, and num- 
 ber the fourth part of Israel ? 'Let me die the death 
 of the righteous, and let my end be like his." 
 
 These words, it is not difficult to see, can only have 
 been put by the writer into the mouth of the Meso- 
 potamian soothsayer, for the greater glorification of 
 the children of Israel—the Jews of his day. But 
 Balak, we may presume, is nowise satisfied with what 
 Balaam has just said ? 
 
 Naturally enough he is not ; having brought the 
 wise man all the way from Aram out of the mountains 
 of the East, the old habitation of Terah, the father of 
 Abraham, to curse the invaders of his country, he now 
 prays him to come first to the top of Pisgah, and next 
 to the top of Peor, where altars in the same number 
 are raised, and sacrifices on the same magnificent 
 scale as before are offered, always in the view of 
 trying whether from these more lofty sites it might 
 not be possible to wring a more favourable answer 
 from the God — a curse against the foe to their dis- 
 comfiture, instead of a laudatory harangue to their 
 glorification. But all is in vain : Balaam is faithful 
 to the part assigned him, and says truly, albeit m 
 utter contradiction with all that precedes, " that God 
 is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man 
 that he should repent ; hath he said and shall he 
 not do, or hath he spoken and shall he not 
 make good? Behold," he continues, " I have received 
 a commandment to bless, and He hath blessed, and 1 
 cannot reverse it. He hath not beheld iniquity in 
 Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness m Israel ; 
 
Numbers : Balaam and Balak. 
 
 surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither 
 is there any divination against Israel. Behold, the 
 people shall rise up as a great lion ; he shall not lie 
 down until he eat of the prey and drink of the blood 
 of the slain." 
 
 Bloodthirsty intelligence, truly ! But all of these 
 words cannot have been inspired by Jehovah, whom 
 we have seen again and again complaining of the 
 perverseness of Israel, scourging them in various ter- 
 rible and unheard-of ways for their backslidings, and 
 even upon occasion only restrained by Moses from 
 breaking out on them and consuming them in a mo- 
 ment. # We may safely credit the writer with making 
 the diviner say that Jehovah had seen no iniquity in 
 Jacob, inasmuch as the Jews boast of their descent 
 from the knavish herdsman of Laban, the deceiver of 
 his father and the filcher of his brother's blessing. 
 Balak, we find as we proceed in the narrative, is not 
 yet satisfied that he can get nothing but unpleasant 
 intelligence from the Seer whom he has brought from 
 afar ; so he carries him to yet another stance, where 
 altars are built and sacrifices performed as before ? 
 
 He does his best to persuade Balaam to speak more 
 comfortably to him than he has yet done, but all in 
 vain ; for the soothsayer, from simple laudation, now 
 proceeds to prophecy, and foreshadows events that at 
 the date supposed still lay hidden in the womb of time. 
 He first speaks to Balak of the future greatness and 
 power of the people now swarming on his borders, 
 then of their decline and fall, and finally of the ruin 
 and extinction of those who had brought them low. 
 Not only is Israel to triumph over Moab but over all 
 the other neighbouring tribes— Edomites, Ammonites, 
 Amalekites, Kenites, &c. " Out of Jacob," he says, 
 " there shall come a star, and a sceptre shall rise out 
 of Israel ; out of Jacob shall come he who shall have 
 dominion until Asshur appear and carry them away 
 captive ; to be followed by ships from Chittim afflict- 
 
2 The Pentateuch. 
 
 inff Asshur and Eber at once, and they perish for 
 ever."* 
 
 Bead with unprejudiced eyes, these prophecies 
 have an unmistakable look of delivery after the 
 events they pretend to foretell ; and proclaim author- 
 ship of a much later date in Jewish history than the 
 period referred to in the text. The Jews must have 
 been already conquered and made captive, not only 
 by the Assyrians, but by the Babylonians, and both 
 the Assyrian and Babylonian empires have come to 
 an end before the prophecy put into the mouth of 
 Balaam, the son of Beor, could have been written. 
 Balak, however, will lose patience with the obstinately 
 conscientious diviner at last ? 
 
 His wrath, it is said, is kindled against Balaam, 
 and he bids him flee from his presence. So the Seer 
 returns to his place without the honours that had 
 been promised him, and Balak also goes his way. 
 
 And all this is delivered and is still accepted in 
 sober earnest in the present day as the word of God 
 to man ; as matter profitable for instruction ; as illus- 
 tration of the way in which the world we live in is 
 ruled by its Author ! In consonance with thefbeliefs 
 of his age, Balak, king of Moab, sends to Balaam 
 the Seer of Aram in Mesopotamia, not merely, it 
 would seem, and as was usual, to question him as an 
 oracle concerning events to come, but by lavish 
 promises of honour and reward to have him exert a 
 certain magical or supernatural influence with which 
 he was credited, for the discomfiture of the^ horde 
 then hovering on his borders and terrifying his sub- 
 jects by the cruelties they had committed against their 
 neighbours the subjects of Arad, Sihon, and Og. 
 
 * The "ships from Chittim" were long a puzzle to Com- 
 mentators, but have finally been shown by Hitzig to be refer- 
 able to an expedition of the Greeks against Cilicia with a fleet 
 from Cyprus, 710 b.c. See Von Bohlen's Genesis by Heywood, 
 I. 214. 
 
Numbers : Balaams Prophecies. 373 
 
 But has man any power of foreseeing and foretelling 
 such coming events as are linked with contingency, 
 — events that are not necessities in the nature of 
 things ? 
 
 He has no such power. He can predicate the 
 rising and the setting of the sun and moon, and cal- 
 culate the occurrence of an eclipse of either of these 
 great lights to within the fraction of a second of time, 
 not only for the next year, or the next score of years, 
 but for the moment in the day of the year that will 
 not dawn until a hundred, a thousand, or a hundred 
 thousand years have come and gone ; but he cannot 
 foretell the wise or foolish thing that will be done by 
 an individual or a people in the course of the next 
 day. In virtue of accumulated experience, and his 
 reasoning powers, man may, indeed, speak of events 
 to come as probabilities, but he has no power to see 
 them as necessities. Prophecy in the vulgar sense of 
 prediction is a baseless imagination : No man can 
 speak positively of the events that will occur in the 
 moral or political world of to-morrow. 
 
 And has man, be he entitled prophet, priest, or 
 king, any absolute power either to bless or to curse 
 his fellow man ? 
 
 He has none. Balaam said well when he declared 
 that he could not curse that which God had blessed, 
 any more, he might have added, than he could bless 
 that which God had cursed ; in other words : There 
 is no available cursing of aught that is in conformity 
 with, and no blessing of aught that is in opposition 
 to God's eternal decrees, extant and made known as 
 they are in the laws of nature. By the time the 
 record we are engaged in reviewing was written the 
 Israelites had both vanquished, and been vanquished 
 by the Moabites, and in turn had vanquished them 
 yet again — they had finally proved themselves the 
 stronger; and by the same law of force or power, 
 the law that makes the heavier body outweigh the 
 
374 The Pentateuch. 
 
 lighter, they had then fallen before Assyria and 
 Babylonia. 
 
 What are we to understand by the phrase : Angel 
 of Jehovah, of whom as Deus ex machind we find 
 such free use made in the course of Balaam's journey ? 
 
 The words may generally be taken as expressing 
 belief in the existence of certain supernatural beings, 
 messengers between God and man, — a belief which 
 appears to have originated with the great western 
 branch of the Aryan family of mankind — the Zend- 
 folks, inhabitants of Iran or Medo-Persia, which, 
 became known to the Jews in the later periods of 
 their history, and through them continues to influence 
 the masses among the policied peoples of Europe. 
 It is notable that when an angel is spoken of in the 
 Old Testament, it is always the Angel of Jehovah, 
 the God of the more modern Jews, that is indicated ; 
 it is never, in so far as we are aware, the Angel of 
 Elohim — God in the abstract. 
 
 In the Hebrew Scriptures, however, the words 
 Angel of Jehovah, as we have already seen, have 
 often a different meaning ? 
 
 They are indeed for the most part to be read as 
 signifying the Jewish God Jehovah himself ; as in 
 the notable instance of the Man or Angel who 
 wrestled with Jacob on Peniel, and of the impersona- 
 tion we have just seen in conference with Balaam, 
 during his journey, instructing him in what he was 
 to say to Balak, and with the drawn sword in his 
 hand barring the way he was going. 
 
 Have we any evidence of the existence of such 
 Supernatural beings as angels ? 
 
 We have none ; there is no such thing as a super- 
 natural ; there is, there can he, nothing beyond 
 nature. Such a conception, untenable at the present 
 time, was possible enough in ages when heaven was 
 looked on as a firmament in which God had his 
 dwelling place, and from which he himself came 
 
Numbers : Bid the Ass speak f 375 
 
 down occasionally to see how matters were going on 
 below, or, delegating his authority to intermediate 
 agents, sent special communications to his favourites 
 or his foes among the sons of men. But God's sole 
 messengers to man are men of nobler minds and 
 purer lives. 
 
 And what are we to think of the poor ass, remon- 
 strating in human speech with her rider ? 
 
 Of this we of course can only think as of a fable, 
 no more to be received in any literal sense — and here 
 it covers no moral sense — than the Apologues of 
 iEsop, Lafontaine, Gay, Lessing, and Kriloff are to 
 be taken as narratives of actual incidents. Articulate 
 speech belongs to man exclusively of all animated 
 beings, and is the outcome and creation of faculties 
 with which he alone is endowed. Animals have 
 nothing more than inarticulate, though varied, sounds 
 expressive of a few primary sensations, appetites, 
 emotions, or wants, such as love, fear, anger, plea- 
 sure, pain — nothing more; and though they learn to 
 repeat and even to understand the language of man 
 to a certain but still limited extent, they are impotent 
 to communicate with him in his own speech, and in 
 the way he holds intercourse with his fellow men 
 and with them. 
 
 The ass did not speak to Balaam, then ? 
 
 Most certainly she did not. 
 
 Yet the text of the Bible says that she did, and the 
 Bible is preached as not only containing the word of 
 God, but as being the very word of God to man ? 
 
 It is so preached ; it is said to be so ; nevertheless the 
 ass's speech to the soothsayer Balaam cannot possibly 
 form any part of the true word of God to man, and 
 must therefore be retrenched from so much of the 
 text as might reasonably be viewed in this light. It 
 must in fact be put beside the tale we have in the 
 Iliad, where, of the horses of Achilles, Balius and 
 Xanthus, Balius not only speaks Greek, but shows 
 himself possessed of the gift of prophecy, for he tells 
 
376 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Achilles of the fate that is soon to befall him. The 
 tale in the Bible, however, say our religious teachers, 
 is to be received as part of a sacred record ; that in 
 our Homer as no more than the idle fancy of a 
 heathen poet ! 
 
 What conclusion, farther, may be come to con- 
 cerning the prophecies which -wind up the inter- 
 view of Balaam with the King and Princes of 
 Moab ? 
 
 That they are, as already hinted, prophecies after 
 the event. Balaam, in fact, shows himself acquainted 
 with the history of Agag, vanquished by Saul and by 
 him spared to live, but devoutly hewn in pieces 
 before the Lord, by Samuel the prophet. The star of 
 Jacob, of which he makes mention, is doubtless 
 David, the man according to God's own heart of the 
 priesthood both of older and newer times; and the 
 carrying away captive by Asshur, and the coming of 
 ships from Chittim to devastate both Asshur and 
 Eber, refer undoubtedly to events that had come and 
 gone some time before the writer of the 25th chapter 
 of the Book of Numbers lived ; the Assyrian empire 
 having fallen before the power of Babylon; and 
 Judah after Israel — latest representative of the 
 ancient Eber — having in turn succumbed to Chaldeea, 
 and been carried away captive. 
 
 There seems not a little incongruity in the exhi- 
 bition of Balaam, a heathen soothsayer, as the 
 apologist and flatterer of the children of Israel ? 
 
 Not a little truly ! But in the story of Balaam and 
 his ass we have evidently the work of two narrators 
 intermixed; and the Jehovist, supplementing what 
 lias been held the earlier narrative of the Elohist, or 
 shall we rather say the legend from which both 
 Elohist and Jehovist here drew as in so many other 
 places, now finds an opportunity to do so in aggra- 
 vated measure. He shows himself unable to resist 
 the temptation of making the Mesopotamian sooth- 
 sayer the mouthpiece of his own imaginations ; for 
 
Numbers : Balaam. 
 
 377 
 
 it can only be the Jehovist who speaks in the name 
 of Balaam in all which that worthy is made to say 
 of the seed of Jacob. We do, however, catch a 
 glimpse of the Seer as he was in reality, in the little 
 the Elohist says about him. There he meets us as 
 he must have been in fact ; not overwhelmed by any 
 sense of the greatness of Jehovah, constrained to 
 speak words put into his mouth by the Lord, and no 
 abettor of the doings of the children of Israel, but 
 influential through the women of Midian in seducing 
 the Israelites from the service of their God, Jehovah, 
 to the worship of his own God, Baal-Peor ! The 
 last we hear of Balaam is in complete conformity 
 with this presentation, for he is among the number 
 of the slain in the battle with Midian, which follows 
 immediately on those in which Sihon and Og were 
 discomforted and killed. Balaam brought from the 
 mountains of the east could have known nothing of 
 Jehovah, God of the post-exilic Jews of Jerusalem, 
 nor of the seed of Jacob as his chosen people.* 
 
 * The name of the Seer — Balaam — evidently from Baal, 
 ever the great antagonist of Jehovah in the later Jewish 
 story, might of itself suffice to excite suspicion that the whole 
 tale in which he figures is a my the. The God Baal is plainly 
 enough pitted against Jehovah and the chosen seed, for the 
 purpose of being made to sustain a signal defeat, and Balaam, 
 his priest, may well be a man of straw set up to be confounded 
 before the majesty of Israel. The incongruities, incon- 
 sistencies, and absurdities of the story leave us free in fact to 
 relegate it to the region of the mythical and imaginary, all in 
 seeing its end and object to be the exaltation of Jehovah 
 above Baal and the glorification of the children of Israel 
 over their enemies. The tale may possibly have been sug- 
 gested by an incident in the war with Moab that was success- 
 fully waged by David, the tradition of which had reached the 
 post-exilic scribe its author, whose fancy led him to mount his 
 hero on the speaking ass, as Astolpho is mounted on the hippo- 
 griff by the Italian poet, and the Knight of the rueful counten- 
 ance is set astride on Wooden-peg-the-winged by the Spaniard. 
 To refer such an artistic composition as the tale of Balak and 
 Balaam to the age of Moses is absurd. 
 
378 
 
 The Pentateuch, 
 
 Cursing by a Seer, soothsayer, or man of God, 
 ho vever, is still held of some account in the world ? 
 
 Or what were the meaning of the curses or excom- 
 munications which His Holiness the Pope occasionally 
 fulminates against those he hates or has in dis- 
 ple isure ! 
 
 In flagrant contradiction, nevertheless, with the 
 inj unction of what must be held a higher authority ? 
 
 Which says : Bless them that curse you, do good 
 to them that despitefully use you. 
 
 Having obtained a footing in the plains of Moab, 
 an elevated steppe or plateau, 3,000 feet above the 
 level of the sea, and affording sufficient pasturage 
 for flocks and herds, the Israelites appear to have 
 settled there and made themselves at home ; taken 
 them wives and concubines from among the natives ; 
 shown themselves so little mindful of all the miracles 
 said to have been done in their behalf by Jehovah 
 in Egypt and the wilderness ; and further, to have 
 profited so little by the teaching of Moses and Aaron 
 that they assist at the sacrifices of the Moabites, 
 partake of the flesh of the offerings to their idols, 
 and bow down to Baal-Peor, the God of the country. 
 This seems very extraordinary ? 
 
 So would it be were it not that the religion of the 
 Moabites was either that of the Israelites themselves, 
 or so like it that they found no difficulty in conform- 
 ing to its rites. All we find said about the Cult of 
 Jehovah in the Pentateuch is to be held as said of 
 the religious system that was developed after the 
 Captivity ; it certainly had no existence in Judaea 
 until the return of the remnant from the waters of 
 Babylon, with Ezra, the Scribe, as a principal per- 
 sonage among them, and Nehemiah, the delegate of 
 Cyrus, as Governor, at their head — Ezra, with scarce 
 a shadow of doubt, the great preserver to his people 
 of the legends of their race, inventor of many of the 
 myths that pass for history, and redactor of the 
 
Numbers: Jehovah plagues the People. 379 
 
 Persian tale of Paradise, the Serpent, the Tree, and 
 the forbidden fruit whose "mortal taste," in another 
 sense than that of the poet, may truly be said to 
 have brought on the world so much of the woe it has 
 since endured on religious grounds. 
 
 The anger of Jehovah is reported to have been 
 kindled against Israel for their evil doings in Moab ? 
 
 And by him is commanded to be satisfied in a 
 very singular and serious way : " Take all the heads 
 of the people and hang them up before Jehovah 
 against the sun, that the fierce anger of Jehovah 
 may be turned away from Israel," says Jehovah 
 himself to Moses ; and the leader, making no inter- 
 cession on this occasion with his angry God for the 
 foolish people, orders the Judges of Israel forthwith 
 to " Slay every one his men who were joined to 
 Baal-Peor." That these barbarous orders were 
 obeyed we need not doubt, although all record of the 
 fact is wanting, the details having been suppressed : 
 the heads of the people, chiefs or prime offenders, 
 were doubtless crucified or hung up before the sun, 
 and the others were slain : victims all of a kind 
 believed to be acceptable to the God of the early 
 Hebrew people. In spite of the crucifixion of the 
 chiefs, and the slaughter of offenders by the Judges, 
 which must have been somewhat indiscriminate, we 
 hear of a plague inflicted on the people at large by 
 Jehovah himself, in which twenty thousand are said 
 to have died. 
 
 We have already had a parallel story to this, 
 the same in almost every one of its incidents ? 
 
 We have, in connection with the worship of the 
 golden calf, which Aaron made for the people as the 
 God, or Image of the God, who had brought them 
 out of Egypt. The tale here appears to be a repeti- 
 tion of the one that has gone before. The crucifixion 
 of the chiefs against the sun is, however, a new inci- 
 dent, but neither this, nor the butchery of the people, 
 
380 The Pentateuch. 
 
 if meant as a propitiatory sacrifice — and as such it 
 must have been intended — had so much influence 
 with Jehovah in inducing him to stay the pestilence 
 as the individual act of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar. 
 An Israelite, Zimri by name, having brought his 
 paramour, Cozbi, a Midianitish woman, into the camp 
 under the very eyes of the congregation, was followed 
 into the tent he had entered (rendered Hurenwinkel, 
 harlot's corner, by Luther) by Phinehas, armed with 
 a javelin, who then and there thrust the man of 
 Israel and the strange woman through the belly, so 
 that they died. " So was the plague stayed from 
 the children of Israel," says the text. 
 
 This was even as extraordinary and incomprehen- 
 sible a remedy for the plague as the act itself appears 
 to have been summary and unauthorised. Phinehas, 
 we might have presumed, would be punished for the 
 double murder he had done at a blow, in conformity 
 with the law said to have been already given by 
 Jehovah at Sinai, which says, Thou shalt do no 
 murder ; but Jehovah, on the contrary, is now repre- 
 sented as not only not wroth with the murderer, 
 but even as well pleased with him for his deed. 
 " Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the 
 priest," says Jehovah, according to the record, " hath 
 turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, 
 while he was zealous for my sake among them, 
 that I consumed not the children of Israel in my 
 jealousy. Wherefore say : I gave unto him my 
 covenant of peace, even a covenant of an everlasting 
 priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and 
 made an atonement for the children of Israel." 
 
 Could we, as reasonable, moral, and responsible 
 beings conceive such language to have been used by 
 the God of the Universe, — granting, for an instant, 
 that God ever spoke in human speech to man, a notion 
 which every rational conception that can be formed of 
 Deity forbids, — we should still venture to say that God 
 
Numbers : Midian to be vexed. 3 8 1 
 
 never used such words as these ; never approved the 
 murderous act of Phinehas ; never gave Moses orders 
 to hang up the heads of the people before the sun, 
 and never sent a pestilence among them for yielding 
 to the blind impulse which is an element in the nature 
 of man to worship the Unknown and Unknowable 
 Something he divines as existing, not only beyond 
 himself, but beyond the world in which he lives. And 
 what, in fine, can be said for the murder of a for- 
 nicator and his paramour accepted by Jehovah as an 
 atonement for wrong doing by his chosen people ! 
 
 What, indeed ; save that it is in conformity with 
 the ideas of ancient times, when human victims were 
 held, of all others, the most acceptable to the Gods, — 
 to the God of the early Hebrews in especial, if we are 
 to conclude from this, and other narratives of a like 
 kind that have come down to us. 
 
 May not the impressive approval of the deed of 
 Phinehas, here ascribed to Jehovah, have had an evil 
 influence on the world ? 
 
 There can be little doubt but that it has. It were 
 warrant enough of itself for the hot-headed zealot, 
 and even for more sober-minded men in council 
 assembled and with responsibility divided, to seek to 
 propitiate God by putting to death those they called 
 his enemies, as in so many instances they are known 
 to have been their own. 
 
 1 Moses receives further orders from Jehovah (who 
 has just made the Israelites pay so heavily for com- 
 mitting themselves with the Moabites), directed 
 against the Midianites, who are not among the 
 number of those he favours : " Yex the Midianites 
 and smite them," says the text ; a commandment 
 which, we may presume, Moses is neither slow nor 
 sorry to obey, although we have not the particulars 
 at this moment of the way in which he set about the 
 vexing and the smiting ; for the narrative is suddenly 
 interrupted by instructions to Moses and Eleazar 
 
382 The Pentateuch. 
 
 conjointly to take the sum of the children of Israel 
 from twenty years old and upwards. The order 
 seems given at this particular time for no sufficient 
 reason — the apportionment among the tribes of lands 
 still in the possession of others, the one assigned, 
 being none — save that the writer may find occasion 
 to say that with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, 
 there was no man over twenty years of age now alive 
 among them, who had been numbered at Sinai. 
 
 The numbers at this second Census, we may pre- 
 sume, will be found very much reduced ? 
 
 Strange to say, however, after forty years of 
 wandering in the desert with all the attendant toils 
 and privations, the number of able-bodied men now 
 enrolled is found but 1,820 under that declared at 
 Sinai. Had the tale of the survivors been given at 
 no higher a figure, we should possibly have felt less 
 disposed to question the truth of the statement, than 
 we are when we find the number of able-bodied men 
 over twenty now set down at 601,730 !* 
 
 Beside Caleb and Joshua, Moses the leader is still 
 to the fore ? 
 
 As he is not to be excepted from the general doom, 
 apparently, he is not named ; and shortly afterwards, 
 indeed, he has the important intimation given him 
 that he is now to die. " Get thee up into this mount 
 Abarim," says the text, " and see the Land which I 
 have given unto the children of Israel; and when 
 thou hast seen it, thou shalt be gathered unto thy 
 people, as Aaron thy brother was gathered." Such 
 is the curt notice the great leader receives of his 
 approaching fate. 
 
 * To have had over 600,000 soldiers in the field, the 
 Israelites must have been nearly as many as the Prussians in 
 the reign of their late king, when the available military force 
 of the country, with every able-bodied man a soldier, was 
 700,000,-300,000 standing army, 400,000 reserve, but all 
 trained and available at a day's notice. 
 
Numbers: Moses' Death announced. 383 
 
 This seems hard measure after all the toil and 
 trouble he has endured ; scarcely in conformity, 
 either, with the terms of the promises made him at 
 first, or with all we know of his deservings in his 
 subsequent career ; the reason assigned by Jehovah 
 for his resolve not to suffer the leader to set foot in 
 the land of Canaan, viz. : that he had rebelled against 
 the commandment of Jehovah at Kadesh in the 
 desert of Zin, by the water of Meribah, and failed to 
 sanctify him there — being anything but satisfactory. 
 "We have seen indeed, that in so far as the text 
 informs us, Moses did not rebel against Jehovah at 
 Meribah. Jehovah would not surely have had Moses 
 at Meribah hang up the heads of the people before 
 the sun to sanctify him there as he did when the 
 Israelites bowed down to Baal-Peor and committed 
 themselves with the daughters of Moab at Shittim ? 
 
 We might almost conclude that his not having 
 done so was the real offence ; any other laid to his 
 charge being utterly groundless. There was mur- 
 muring, indeed, and serious discontent among the 
 people at Meribah, because of the hardships and the 
 thirst they were enduring ; but the leader had been 
 true to his charge ; and we do not see that he had 
 then been so free in his expostulations with Jehovah 
 as on many other occasions, and so perchance have 
 given ground of offence. 
 
 We do not learn that Moses expresses any surprise 
 at the intimation he receives of his approaching 
 death, or makes any remonstrance against the doom 
 decreed him ? 
 
 He expresses no surprise and makes no remon- 
 strance. Brave and unselfish, as he is ever finely 
 pictured by the writer, he thinks not of himself ; he 
 is only solicitous that the unreasonable and unruly 
 multitude he has led thus far should not be left like 
 sheep without a shepherd when he is gone. On his 
 own petition consequently, and by Jehovah's com- 
 
384 The Pentateuch. 
 
 mands, he brings Joshua, the son of Nan, in face of 
 the congregation before Eleazar the priest, who is to 
 " ask counsel for him after the judgment of the 
 Urim before Jehovah, and to give him a charge in 
 their sight." In other words, Joshua is now to be 
 instituted as leader of the Israelites, after consultation 
 of the instrument of divination upon the breast of 
 the priest, and the imposition of his hands by that 
 functionary. 
 
 Moses' work, however, is not yet done; after 
 another interruption of the narrative by a particular 
 specification of the festivals to be observed, and the 
 offerings to be made to their deity by the children of 
 Israel, Jehovah's portion — the ancient Israelites 
 imagining that their God required to be fed as well 
 as themselves — being a lamb in the morning and 
 another in the evening, day by day, throughout the 
 year, with bread in proportion to the flesh, and a 
 measure of wine to crown the repast ; besides these 
 daily offerings as food for the God, there were others 
 in especial to be made on the weekly sabbaths ; on 
 the first or new-moon day of each recurring month ; 
 at the feast of the Passover, in the first month of 
 the year — epoch of the vernal equinox ; at the feast 
 of the Atonement, in the seventh month — epoch of 
 the autumnal equinox, and so on. But the Midianites, 
 though we have lost sight of them for some time, are 
 not forgotten : " Avenge the children of Israel of 
 the Midianites," resumes the irate Jehovah to his 
 servant Moses ; " afterwards shalt thou be gathered 
 to thy people." 
 
 Moses obeys the orders of Jehovah ? 
 
 And that with alacrity: "Arm some of yourselves 
 unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites, 
 and avenge Jehovah on Midian," says he to those 
 about him. A corps of twelve thousand men is 
 forthwith told off for service, and goes against the 
 enemy ; Phinehas, the slayer of Zimri and Cozbi, so 
 
Numbers: Slaughter of the Midianites. 385 
 
 much approved by Jehovah, being of the number, 
 having " the holy instruments (what were these ?) 
 and the trumpets to blow in his hands." 
 The Israelites prevail ? 
 
 They slay the five kings of Midian, and Balaam 
 the son of Beor, the Seer, who we should have 
 imagined they ought rather to have spared, because of 
 his refusal to curse and do them evil, — to say nothing 
 of the blessing he had bestowed on them and the 
 good presumed to be attached to it. They slay all 
 the men, take all the women of Midian and their 
 little ones captive, and appropriate the spoil of their 
 cattle, their flocks, and their goods, — they make a 
 clean sweep, in a word,— and having burned the 
 cities and the goodly castles of Midian, they return 
 in triumph to the encampment with the prisoners 
 and the spoil. 
 
 They will be joyfully received by Moses and lauded 
 for their prowess ? 
 
 On the contrary ; he is wroth with the officers of 
 the host, and says to them :— " Have ye saved all the 
 women alive ? Behold, these caused the children of 
 Israel, by the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against 
 Jehovah in the matter of Peor ; now, therefore, kill 
 every male among the little ones, and kill every 
 woman that hath known a man ; but all the women 
 children that have not known a man, keep alive for 
 yourselves." 
 
 What a horrible order! And is it conceivable 
 that the man who was capable of giving it could have 
 been seen by God as a fit and proper person to lead 
 and make laws for the children of Israel ? 
 _ God is not a person looking to fitness or unfitness 
 m individual men, or making election of this or of 
 that in furtherance of ends, but the Sum and Sub- 
 stance of the Forces and Things of the Universe,— 
 Cause, Order, and Being, in One of all that is and of 
 all that comes to pass. Moses' order was his own, 
 given in conformity with his estimate of propriety 
 
 FF 
 
3 86 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 and in consonance with the nsages of ihe age in 
 which he is believed to have lived. In ancient times 
 the more youthful of the female populations of con- 
 quered countries and captured towns were usually- 
 spared as prizes for the victors, by whom they were 
 taken as concubines or slaves, — concubines while yet 
 youthful, slaves when fallen into years. Mljiiv aei&e 
 0ea, &c. ; we know what woes were brought upon 
 the Grecian host by the leader's arbitrary appropri- 
 ation to himself of Achilles' prize, the fair Briseis \ 
 It was only when a person, a city, or a district was 
 declared Cherem, or Devoted to Jehovah, that there 
 was indiscriminate slaughter of all and sundry by the 
 Israelites. In the instance before us, indeed, Moses 
 appears to have strained the law relating to things 
 devoted, when he ordered even the virgins to be 
 spared : all ought of right to have been put to death. 
 But we forthwith find, in the way in which the spoil 
 taken is ordered to be apportioned, that means are 
 not omitted to reconcile the God to the partial vio- 
 lation of his law :— he is to have his share of the 
 booty. " Divide the prey taken, both of man and 
 beast, into two parts," says the text ; "one between 
 them that went out to battle, and one between all the 
 congregation. And levy a tribute to Jehovah of the 
 portion of the men of war which went out to battle, 
 one soul of five hundred, both of the persons^ and 
 the beeves, the asses and the sheep; take it of 
 their half and give it to Eleazar the priest for 
 a heave offering of Jehovah." Passing other par- 
 ticulars as of less interest to us here, we find 
 Jehovah's share of the virgins saved from slaughter 
 set down at Thirty-two; and the question imme- 
 diately presents itself: What was Jehovah to door 
 to have done with them ? " Give them for a heave 
 offering of Jehovah," says the record. But the giving 
 of victims to the priest was the prelude to their sacri- 
 fice before the altar ; and heave and wave offerings 
 were of parts of the carcass— notably the shoulder 
 
Numbers : Human Sacrifices. 
 
 and breast, the cheek and maw — which became the 
 perquisite of its servitors. The caul, the fat of the 
 kidneys, the rump, and, above all, the blood were 
 Jehovah's portions; and these, when the blood had 
 been poured out and sprinkled, were necessarily sent 
 to him in smoke, as a sacrifice of a sweet savour made 
 by fire. If the ritual were observed in the case of 
 the thirty-two virgins before us — and when we call 
 to mind the religious rites of the policied but bar- 
 barous men that peopled Asia-Minor and the shores 
 of the Mediterranean in ancient times, among all of 
 whom we know that human sacrifices were essential 
 elements in the religious service, why should we 
 doubt that it was ? — we can only conclude that we 
 have another instance of a human sacrifice on a not 
 insignificant scale to the terrible Deity whom the 
 early Israelites had for their God and King. The 
 thirty-two virgins that fell to Jehovah could not even 
 have had the two months' grace accorded Jephthah's 
 hapless daughter, like her " to bewail their virginity 
 upon the mountains," and then, "forasmuch as 
 Jehovah had taken vengeance on their enemies," to 
 " have done unto them according to the vow that had 
 been vowed," as "was the custom in Israel:" they 
 must have_ gone immediately through the fire, like 
 the Gileadite's daughter, as a thank-offering to the 
 God for the victory just achieved. 
 
 After the " crowning mercy," as Moses might have 
 designated his victory over the Midianites, had the 
 phrase for a signal defeat and slaughter been thought 
 of in his day, and the exaggerated amount of booty 
 said to have been secured, the captains of the force 
 engaged make their report to the Leader ? 
 
 And say that they have taken the sum of the men 
 serving under them, " and there lacketh not one man 
 among us." Whence we might infer that the mas- 
 sacre of the unhappy Midianites— combatants and 
 non-combatants, males old and young, and every 
 woman of adult years — must have been perpetrated 
 
388 The Pentateuch. 
 
 in cold blood and by some treacherous movement on 
 the part of the assassins ; for how should thousands, 
 hundreds, or even units of grown men, with or with- 
 out weapons in their hands, have suffered themselves, 
 their women and their children to be butchered like 
 sheep, without retaliating upon so much as one of the 
 blood-thirsty crew let loose upon them ! This addition 
 to the tale, made doubtless still farther to enhance the 
 show of Jehovah's care for his peculiar people en- 
 gaged in the work of their mission, seems to take it 
 out of the category of things possible, and leaves us 
 free to conclude that, though the Israelites may have 
 been victorious and the Midianites vanquished, the 
 victory and the defeat were accompanied by no such 
 atrocities as those recorded. 
 
 There is a statement made soon after that confirms 
 a conclusion of the kind ? 
 
 The district into which the Israelites had now 
 come was fertile in pasture lands, and being so seen 
 by the tribes Reuben and Gad, who are said to have 
 had "a great multitude of cattle " (in spite of their 
 forty years' wandering in the waterless and herbless 
 wilderness, in some few parts only of which can a 
 camel or a goat find the scantiest possible subsist- 
 ence !), they petition Moses for leave to settle there. 
 " The land," they say, "is a land for cattle, and thy 
 servants have cattle; wherefore let this land be 
 given to thy servants for a possession, and bring us 
 not over the Jordan." 
 
 Moses agrees to their petition ? 
 
 Not at first, though he yields at last ; he even 
 reproaches them with want of stomach for the higher 
 enterprise — the conquest of the land of Canaan- — 
 that now lies before them. But they satisfy him 
 that they will not be wanting in aid to the rest of 
 the assembly in the warlike work still to be done. 
 "We will build sheep-folds here for our cattle," say 
 they, " and cities for our little ones ; but we ourselves 
 will go ready armed before the children of Israel 
 
Numbers: Natives to be exterminated. 389 
 
 until we have brought them unto their place, and 
 our little ones shall dwell in fenced cities, because of 
 the inhabitants of the land ;" who, consequently, had 
 not all been slain, as reported. 
 
 Within sight of the promised land, however, the 
 order s which Moses is now said to receive from Jeho- 
 vah are very stringent as regards the dispossession 
 and the slaying or the driving out of the native in- 
 habitants, accompanied by an intimation that if this 
 be not effectually done those let remain shall be 
 pricks in the eyes and thorns in the sides of the 
 Israelites; "moreover, it shall come to pass," con- 
 tinues the text, " that I shall do unto you as I 
 thought to do unto them." 
 
 This left the chosen people with little inducement 
 to be merciful ? 
 
 Mercy is out of the question when men go with a 
 commission from God, as they believe, to murder 
 and to steal, and could leave the inhabitants no 
 chance of coming to terms with the invaders, even 
 for sufferance to live and be their slaves. 
 
 Besides the commandments to exterminate and 
 take possession, the chosen seed are further ordered 
 to be zealous in destroying the Pictures, the Images, 
 and the High Places or Altars of Sacrifice of the 
 native inhabitants ? 
 
 The raid upon Palestine by the early Hebrews for 
 settled homes in better lands is constantly conjoined 
 by the Jehovist authors of the Pentateuch and other 
 books with commandments to be zealous for the 
 honour and glory of their God, Jehovah, over all the 
 other Gods of the tribes or peoples they invaded, — 
 commandments that led in more modern times to the 
 Crusades and Religious Wars that have deluged the 
 world with blood ; to the persecutions for conscience 
 sake that drove the best and noblest of some of the 
 fairest of European lands from their homes, and left 
 few but the bigoted, the intolerant, the incompetent, 
 and immoral to possess the soil and continue the 
 
390 The Pentateuch. 
 
 kind. But better, surely, far better, the worship of 
 a stock or a stone, significant still of the Unknown 
 Power that brings the sweet interchange of day and 
 night, and seed-time and harvest, that gives a life to 
 live and a death to die when the ills inseparable from 
 sickness and old age have taken away its worth 
 from life, than fealty to the ruthless impersonation of 
 themselves whom the children of Israel had so long 
 for their God and King ! 
 
 In anticipation of entering on possession of the 
 promised land, the Israelites now receive certain 
 additional instructions of a political or social com- 
 plexion, which, as having long influenced and still 
 continuing to influence European practice, are not 
 without interest to us ? 
 
 Among the number of these they are ordered to 
 provide certain cities as refuges for persons who had 
 been guilty of slaying, whether of" malice prepense " 
 or by hap-hazard, in which they might abide in 
 safety until their guilt or innocence could be inquired 
 into and truly known; — a wise and merciful pro- 
 vision in days when prisons seem to have been 
 unknown, and the nearest of kin to one slain — the 
 avenger of blood as he was called — was bound in 
 duty to seek out and slay the slayer. Deliberate 
 murder, proved by the testimony of witnesses more 
 than one, is surely to be visited with the penalty of 
 death : — no satisfaction is to be taken for the life of 
 a murderer. He, even, whose misfortune it had been 
 to kill another by accident, were he met by " the 
 avenger of blood " beyond the precincts of the city 
 of refuge to which he might flee or had flown, at any 
 time before the death of the high priest in office 
 when the deed was done, might be slain by the 
 avenger, without his being held guilty of murder. 
 After the death of the high priest only, was he who 
 had slain a man by accident or in self-defence at 
 liberty to return to his home protected by the law. 
 This, too, is one of the legacies that reached us from 
 
Numbers: Laws of Succession. 391 
 
 the Jews. In ages not long gone by, the Christian 
 church was a sanctuary for the murderer, where he 
 might be safe, at least for a time, both from private 
 vengeance and public justice ; and it is but yesterday 
 since the debtor found a sort of restricted liberty 
 within certain rules, or districts, recognised by law, 
 among ourselves. 
 
 Inheritance among the ancient Israelites appears 
 to have gone among the males of the family exclu- 
 sively ; but Brothers were held bound to provide a 
 maintenance for Sisters. In case the family con- 
 sisted of daughters only, the inheritance did not pass 
 to the male or males next of kin ; the daughters 
 were then treated on the footing of sons. In antici- 
 pation of the division of the territories of Canaan, we 
 even find the daughters of Zelophehad provided with 
 possessions in land like the rest ; and, in immediate 
 connection with them, apparently, ordinances to pre- 
 vent the possessions of the members of one tribe 
 from passing by the marriage of female heirs into the 
 hands of members of another tribe ? 
 
 Ordinances that have had a deteriorating influence 
 on the physical, and through the physical on the 
 moral and intellectual constitution of our kind. 
 Daughters possessed of an inheritance must by the 
 Jewish law be given in marriage to one of the tribe 
 of their father, and even, as the law was interpreted, 
 and where this could be done, to a blood relation. 
 The daughters of Zelophehad, we consequently find 
 married to sons of their father's brother, their 
 cousins, the blood of near-akin being thus made to 
 mingle with kindred blood. But such unions, in 
 virtue of a law antecedent to all human legislation — 
 an eternal law of God — mostly entail degradation in 
 greater or less degree on the issue ; and if the inter- 
 marrying be persisted in a second or a third time, lead 
 inevitably to the extinction of the family. Were mar- 
 riages between the children of brothers and sisters 
 to be declared illegal both for Jews and Christians, 
 
39 2 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 there would be something like the reason that is 
 wholly wanting to the interdict against marriage 
 with a deceased wife's sister; and the number of 
 weakly, nervous, foolish, idiotic, and insane people 
 in the world would be less than it is. Wealthy 
 Jewish families in particular suffer much by the 
 intermarriage of cousins or relations in the first 
 degree, so common among them. They might surely 
 have discovered by this time that the preservation of 
 the wealth of a family to its own members was not 
 the sole object to be thought of in matrimonial 
 alliances, and that money was not all that was wanted 
 to make a happy home. 
 
 What, to conclude, may be inferred with regard to 
 the authorship and composition of the Book of 
 Numbers ? 
 
 Carefully and critically read it is seen to be in the 
 main a compilation of many smaller collections of 
 ordinances, reduced to writing in some cases in 
 earlier, in others in much later times ; sometimes, 
 moreover, of legendary and traditional matter put 
 into shape by one among the most recent of all the 
 Jewish writers — a priest, a Levite very certainly. 
 The Book could not have existed in the form in which 
 we now possess it until some time after the return 
 from the Babylonian captivity. The contemporaries 
 of Nehemiah — 440 B. c. — were certainly unacquainted 
 with the Thora or so-called law of Moses ; and it is 
 not unsafe to conclude that instead of dating from 
 the age of Moses and the Exodus, the Book of 
 Numbers was not put together, and did not undergo 
 final revision, until about 400 years before the com- 
 mencement of the Christian era.* 
 
 * Compare particularly Dr S. Davidson's admirable 1 Intro- 
 duction to the Old Testament,' 3 vols, 8vo, Lond., 1862, and 
 Dr Kalisch's learned and exhaustive ' Commentary on Levi- 
 ticus,' Parts 1 and 2, 8vo, Lond., 1867-72. 
 
THE 
 
 BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 THE Book of Numbers left us with the Israelites 
 advanced into the plains of Moab and encamped 
 in front of the Jordan, over against Jericho. There, 
 according to the Book that is now to engage us, 
 Moses addresses the people in a long harangue ? 
 
 In which we find little that is not already familiar 
 to us from the preceding books of the Pentateuch, 
 though the information given is ever and anon varied 
 in particulars and supplemented in parts. The style, 
 moreover, changes ; the writer now speaking in the 
 first person, singular, and in the name of Moses. He 
 recapitulates briefly the history of the Tribe he leads, 
 from the day in which Jehovah spoke to them out of 
 the fire on Horeb, reminding them of all that had 
 been done for them in Egypt against Pharaoh, and of 
 much besides that had befallen them in their journey- 
 ings through the wilderness. He speaks of their 
 latest victories over Sihon, King of Heshbon, and 
 Og, King of Bashan, whose territories had been suc- 
 cessfully over-run and possessed, and concludes by 
 hinting at the work still to be done before the true 
 land of promise, the land that flowed with milk and 
 honey, can be called their own. 
 
 In the discourse now addressed to the Israelites 
 we find certain limitations to the more general in- 
 structions previously given regarding the way in 
 which the inhabitants of the lands about to be invaded 
 are to be dealt with and their territories occupied ? 
 
 GG 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 The people are now told that they are not to look 
 on all and sundry of the tribes they encounter m their 
 progress as their enemies, whom they are required to 
 spoil and to kill. They are particularly forbidden to 
 meddle with the Edomites, the children of Esau, their 
 brethren, who dwell in Seir; neither are they to 
 distress the Moabites, nor the Ammonites ; the lands 
 of these peoples having been given to their brothers, 
 the children of Lot. 
 
 From what we now know it appears that on the 
 like grounds they might properly have been ordered 
 to molest none of the native inhabitants of the land 
 of Canaan, or Palestine proper ? . , 
 
 True ; for if similarity of language demonstrates 
 identity of descent, the Edomites, Moabites, Canaan- 
 ites Phoenicians, and Israelites were all in truth one 
 people ; and the social customs and religious systems 
 of the tribes, who spoke the language, seem also, m 
 everv essential particular, to have been the same. 
 
 The Israelites must therefore have been a Nomad 
 tribe of the great Semitic family of mankind, whose 
 home, a short while before their settlement among the 
 peoples already in possession of Palestine, lay to the 
 east and south of the Jordan and Dead Sea ? 
 
 There are many detached statements in the .bible 
 that lend much greater countenance to such a con- 
 clusion than to the Magnificat of their Exodus out of 
 Egvpt. Jehovah, we now learn incidentally, lor 
 instance, took the children of Israel for his inherit- 
 ance, not because they were a great and powerful 
 people, as they must needs have been had they come 
 against Palestine in arms six hundred and odd 
 thousands strong, followed by a multitude of non- 
 combatants more than two millions m number. J>or 
 they were, it is said, "the least of all the peoples.^ 
 Instead of the reiterated accounts we have ol their 
 bringing out of Egypt "with a mighty hand and 
 an outstretched arm," we are further informed m 
 
The Exodus a Myth, 
 
 another place that Jehovah " found them in a 
 desert, in a waste and howling wilderness ;" and 
 may truly be said to have had pity upon them for 
 their miserable plight, "starving and athirst," 
 instead of encumbered with flocks and herds, " even 
 very much cattle," and boasting possession, 'besides, 
 of gold and silver in profusion, precious stones, and 
 dyed stuffs, of every rainbow hue, for the decoration 
 of the Tent, the dwelling-place of their God. Joined 
 by a party of their countrymen escaped from the 
 slavery in Egypt, into which they had been carried 
 or sold at an earlier date, the Nomad Hebrew tribe, 
 we may imagine, made raids on others of the neigh- 
 bouring cognate tribes — Horites, Araorites, Amale- 
 kites, &c, tenants of better watered and more fertile 
 lands to the east of the Jordan than those over 
 which they had been wont to roam, and obtained a 
 footing among them— not without violence and blood- 
 shed, doubtless, but with nothing of the indiscrimi- 
 nate^ slaughter which Jewish writers seem to take so 
 special a pride in recording. Increasing in numbers 
 and in strength under the influence of more favourable 
 material circumstances, and still pushing northwards 
 and westwards, they fell in with the more advanced agri- 
 cultural tribes,— the Canaanites and others, occupants 
 of Palestine proper, came to blows with them for 
 possession of the soil, and succeeded at length in 
 establishing themselves among them. Such, as we 
 divine it, when detached from the historical expulsion 
 of the Hyksos, may be the foundation of the Legend 
 of the Exodus from Egypt, and the invasion of 
 Palestine by the forefathers of the Jews. The tale 
 of the Exodus as it stands, and of almost all that 
 follows it for centuries, is certainly wholly mythical— 
 an idea in the dress of history. 
 
 This, however, is pure speculation ? 
 
 Legitimate, nevertheless, where there is so little 
 of reliable fact to rest on, and that little made the 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 ground of superstitious beliefs, erroneous conclusions, 
 and the apology for reprehensible deeds; in the 
 absence of all historical data it is permitted us to 
 speculate on the probable origin of Legend and 
 mythical Tale. 
 
 The Israelites according to the record were wan- 
 derers in the wilderness for forty years ? 
 
 So it is said, and for how many more neither 
 legend nor written story says a word. Of the forty 
 years named, indeed, we have an indifferent account 
 of marchings and countermarchings during a period 
 of some two years only ; the history of the people 
 through the remaining eight-and-thirty years is as 
 complete a blank as that of the four hundred and 
 odd years they are said to have sojourned m Egypt. 
 It was on the first day of the eleventh month of the 
 fortieth year, according to the story, that Moses 
 spoke to the children of Israel in the plains of Moab ; 
 but to have spent eight-and-thirty years in getting from 
 Kadesh Barnea to the Brook Zered bounding, and 
 Mount Pisgah overlooking, the land of Canaan seems 
 absurd— the journeyings thus far, from Rameses m 
 Egypt, with proper provision made, might all have 
 been accomplished as it seems within two years had 
 the numbers of the Israelites who fled been to the full 
 as many as reported. But Forty we know was a sacred 
 number with the Jews ; and assumed as expressing 
 an indefinite length of time, it seems to have been 
 thought necessary to parade it in this place. Ine 
 people had often been rebellious on their toilsome 
 marches, particularly at Kadesh, where they even 
 murmur " against their God," * and must be punished 
 
 * Geiser, Urschrift and Uebersetzungen, fee-Not "in their 
 tents "as we have it in the English version. It was against 
 God that they murmured. Dr Geiger's restoration of the text 
 makes that plain which otherwise had remained obscure, 
 where Moses tells the people that Jehovah was wroth with htm 
 because of them. 
 
The Forty Tears' Wandering. 397 
 
 for their misconduct. The adults among them who 
 had left Egypt, with the exception of Caleb and 
 Joshua, are not to be suffered to set foot on the land 
 that flowed with milk and honey. Instead of ad- 
 vancing at once against the Canaanites, they are 
 therefore made to turn back from Kadesh into the 
 wilderness, and, to complete the mystical term Forty, 
 are doomed to wander for eight-and-thirty years, 
 hither and thither, to stations which very probably 
 never existed out of the imagination of the writer. 
 Forty years were possibly assumed as sufficient to get 
 rid of the murmurers agaiust their leader and their 
 God, whom hunger and thirst, hardship and disease, 
 and Jehovah's occasional outbursts of anger, with fire 
 and pestilence as his agents, had left alive. 
 
 Many of the able-bodied men, twenty years of age, 
 and fit to carry arms when they left Egypt, must 
 however have been alive after the assumed term of 
 Forty years' wandering in the wilderness had expired. 
 Another explanation of the lengthened sojourn in the 
 desert were therefore desirable ? 
 
 And may probably be found by assuming that the 
 Israelites, for the indefinitely long period of time here 
 expressed by the number Forty, were in reality all the 
 while at home, roaming over their native territories 
 south and east of the Jordan and Dead Sea; less 
 fertile than the lands westward of the river and lake, 
 though in earlier ages they may have worn another 
 aspect than that they now present, when the hill- 
 sides may have been clothed with stately trees, the 
 valleys been green with herbage, and the now dried- 
 up water-courses have sparkled with rivulets and 
 streams.* 
 
 In our discussion of the Decalogue as given in 
 Exodus (xx.), we have already had occasion to advert 
 
 * See what is said on the present arid and treeless state of 
 so many of the Eastern lands that once were populous, at 
 page 304, et seq. 
 
398 The Pentateuch. 
 
 to certain variaticms in that document as set forth in 
 the Book that now engages us (Deut. v.). The Deca- 
 logue need not therefore detain us here ; we would 
 only supplement what has been said by a sentence 
 from the work of an able and pious predecessor in 
 liberal exegesis : " It is remarkable that the contents 
 of the two tables, written by the finger of Elohim, 
 should not be in identically the same words in Exodus 
 and Deuteronomy. It might have been expected that 
 Jewish scrupulosity would have insisted on verbatim 
 fidelity to such sacred documents, sculptured in stone 
 by the hand of Deity." * 
 
 The interesting papers of Mr Croll, and the ex- 
 haustive work of Mr James Geikie, ' On the great 
 Ice Age,' enable us to speak with something like 
 absolute assurance on the causes of those climatic 
 changes that have certainly occurred in the northern 
 hemisphere of our globe to latitudes as low as those 
 of Babylonia, Assyria, and Palestine. If the trunks 
 of trees and remains of plants that only now live in 
 temperate and even sub-tropical lands are found as 
 far north as the arctic circle under thick-ribbed ice, 
 we may feel well assured that countries now desolate 
 through heat and drought may well have had climates 
 in former ages of the world that made a vigorous 
 vegetation not only possible, but necessary in the 
 nature of things. The valleys of the Caucasus that 
 now present none but insignificant glaciers still show 
 by the abrasion and scoring of the rocks which bound 
 them that they once brimmed with vast icy streams ;f 
 and the cedars of Lebanon, rooting as they do in 
 ancient moraines^ proclaim the fact that the Libanus 
 too must once have poured frozen torrents from its 
 
 * 'The Pentateuch,' with Notes critical, practical, and 
 devotional, hy the Rev. Thos. Wilson, M.A. Cantab. 4to, 
 London : Trubner and Co. 
 
 f Freshfield, ' Travels in Caucasus and Bashan.' 
 
 t Hooker, J. D,, in 'Nat. Hist. Review ' for 1864. 
 
Moses 1 Petition Refused. 399 
 
 heights over the levels of Samaria and Canaan. The 
 Dead Sea itself, like Looh Lomond and the Nor- 
 wegian Fiords, may possibly be due to the scooping 
 influence of glacial action continued through countless 
 ages of the world. 
 
 Victorious over Sihon, King of the Amorites, and 
 Og, King of Bashan,* as we have seen already in the 
 Book of Numbers, the Israelites are now told by 
 Moses that they are to go in and possess the land 
 promised to their fathers, but that he himself is not 
 to be suffered to cross the boundary. " I besought 
 Jehovah at this time," says the modern writer in the 
 name of the ancient legendary leader, saying: "O 
 Jehovah God, what God is there in heaven or in earth 
 that can do according to thy works and according to 
 thy might; let me I pray thee go over and see the 
 beautiful land beyond Jordan — the beautiful high 
 land and Lebanon ! " 
 
 This is an extremely natural desire, most happily 
 expressed by the writer in the name of Moses. But 
 will Jehovah be induced by the flattery so plainly 
 insinuated — to say nothing of the reasonableness of 
 the request — to yield to the petition ? 
 
 * The mention of Og, King of Bashan, and his bedstead of 
 iron, still to he seen at Kabbah of Gilead in the days of the 
 writer, ought not to be passed by unnoticed ; for the story of 
 the Giant and his mighty bed are among the items that 
 initiated our modern biblical criticism. Quoting Aben Ezra's 
 reference to this tale, Spinoza, "father of our philosophy, 
 father also of our biblical criticism," observes : — " The paren- 
 thesis about the bedstead — 'Is it not in Eabbath of the 
 children of Ammon '—clearly proves that he who wrote this 
 portion of Scripture lived long, very long after Moses ; for 
 such a style of narrative belongs only to one who speaks of 
 things of the most remote antiquity, and who uses remnants 
 of things past as testimonies to the accuracy of his narrative." 
 The Ammonite city of Kabbah was only attacked and taken 
 by David more than four centuries after the presumed age of 
 Moses (2 Sam. xii. 29).— See Spinoza, 'Tract. Theol. Pol.,' 
 chap, viii., Eng. Vers., page 172. 
 
400 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Jehovah will not be influenced by bis favourite on 
 this occasion ; and the terms of the reply are in per- 
 fect keeping with the purely human character of the 
 colloquy. "Jehovah," says Moses to the people, 
 " was wroth with me because of you ; he would not 
 hear me, and said to me : Let it suffice thee ; speak 
 no more unto me of this matter. Get thee up to the 
 top of Pisgah and look to the West and the North 
 and the South, and behold the land with thine eyes ; 
 for thou shalt not go over this Jordan. But charge 
 Joshua and strengthen him, for he shall go over be- 
 fore the people, and cause them to inherit the land 
 which thou shalt see." 
 
 Can we in reason, with our larger knowledge of 
 Nature, its changeless laws, and the idea of God to 
 which we have at length attained, believe that any 
 such colloquy as this ever took place between the man 
 Moses and the Being we postulate and call God ? 
 
 It is impossible to do so ; the tale is a myth, the 
 product of an age when Jehovah was believed to be 
 one among many Gods,* to have the children of Israel 
 as his peculiar favourites among men, his will to be 
 knowable by Lots, Urim and Thummim, Ephod or 
 Teraphim, divining cup and oracle, the entrails of 
 victims and the flight of birds, whilst his countenance 
 and assistance were to be secured by the destruction 
 of life through the shedding of blood, and the foul 
 smell of burning fat and flesh. 
 
 After his historical survey and summary, Moses 
 goes on to admonish the people under his command ? 
 
 Saying : " Hearken, 0 Israel, to the statutes and 
 the judgments which I teach you, that ye may live ; 
 ye shall not add unto the word which I command 
 you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it." 
 
 This injunction seems somewhat at variance with 
 the views of those among our modern teachers who 
 
 * " What God in heaven or earth can do according to thy 
 works and thy might." 
 
Progress forbidden by Moses. 401 
 
 accept the Hebrew Scriptures as the Word of God to 
 man, and yet acknowledge advances in the religious 
 ideas of the Jewish people and the character of the 
 doctrine taught— the teacher being all the while 
 understood to be God himself as inspirer of the pre- 
 cepts successively delivered ? * 
 
 This is the case, unquestionably. But Moses' ad- 
 monition precludes either addition to or subtraction 
 from the ordinances he is specially commissioned to 
 make known : all change, in other words, is forbidden, 
 and all progress thereby made impossible. Yet pro- 
 gress is the law of God : what were man did he not 
 advance — had he not advanced ! The inhibition put 
 into the mouth of Moses, false in principle, mis- 
 chievous in practice, therefore never came from God. 
 And who shall gainsay advance among the Israelites 
 from the days when their God claimed the first-born 
 of man and beast as his own, and had all that opened 
 the womb sent to him in smoke as sacrifices of a 
 sweet savour made by fire, and times when the pro- 
 phets of Judah denounced the immolations and burn- 
 ings that went on in Tophet and Hinnom as horrors 
 to Jehovah ? — from the age when Abraham was held 
 to have shown a pious spirit in his unquestioning 
 readiness to make a burnt-offering of his only son, 
 and that in which Micah exclaims, " Wherewith shall 
 I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the 
 high God ? Shall I come before him with burnt- 
 offerings, with calves of a year old, with thousands of 
 rams or rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first-born for 
 my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of 
 my soul ? He hath showed thee, 0 man, what is 
 good ; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to 
 
 * Comp. Lessing, < Education of the Human Race ;' and 
 Temple, Bishop of Exeter, 'Education of the World,' in 
 [Essays and Reviews.' There is a serious difficulty, however, 
 in this idea of advance for whosoever accepts the Hebrew 
 Scriptures as immediate Revelations from God. 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
 with thy God j " (Micah vi. 6, et seq.) 
 
 As motive for implicit obedience, Moses reminds 
 the people particularly of what had been done by 
 Jehovah's orders to the men who followed Baal-Peor, 
 when their chiefs were hung up or crucified in the 
 face of the sun, and the judges slew every one his 
 men who were known to have been gathered to this 
 obnoxious divinity : "Take ye, therefore, good heed," 
 he continues, " lest ye corrupt yourselves and make 
 you a graven image the similitude of any figure, the 
 likeness of male or female, or of any living thing- 
 bird, beast, fish, or creeping thing ; for ye saw no 
 similitude on the day that Jehovah spoke to you m 
 Horeb out of the fire." The people are farther— and 
 it is not unimportant to note the fact— cautioned 
 against lifting up their eyes to heaven, lest, seeing 
 "the sun and moon and stars, even all the host of 
 heaven," they should be led, through false notions of 
 virtues inherent in them and influences proceeding 
 from them, " to worship and to serve them, which 
 Jehovah thy God hath divided to all the nations 
 under the whole heaven." Cautions and reminders 
 all of these, from which we conclude ?— 
 
 That they are directed against modes of religious 
 observance with which the Jews, even in the late 
 days of the writer, were still familiar, more deeply 
 impressed on them, doubtless, in the formulated shape 
 which became known to them during their Babylonian 
 captivity. And no wonder : for they were no other 
 than those which they and their fathers, even into 
 ihe backward night of time, had been wont to follow. 
 The Semitic race, at one period of their evolution, 
 were certainly worshippers of the Sun, Moon, and 
 Stars, and brought their oblations to the Generative 
 or Reproductive Power inherent in nature at large, 
 but dominated as they believed by the orbs of heaven. 
 The Sun we know to have been everywhere typmed 
 
Zabeism of the Hebrews. 
 
 in the ancient world by the Fire of the Altar ; the 
 Generative Power by its universally-accepted symbol^ 
 the Phallus or Ioni-Linga, of which, as . male and 
 female, the representatives among the Israelites were 
 the stone pillar, Matzebah, and the wooden shaft, 
 Aschera. These are the objects, translated grove and 
 groves in our English version, for which the Kades- 
 chim, or prostitutes attached to the Temple, wove 
 hangings, and which are so repeatedly ordered by the 
 Jehovist prophets and reformers of Judah to be 
 broken in pieces or cut down and burned to ashes. 
 
 The last clause of the verse above quoted having 
 reference to worship of the sun, moon and stars, 
 might perhaps with propriety be held to have a more 
 particular significance than at first sight appears ? 
 
 When read with unsealed eyes it seems to say that 
 Jahveh-Elohim had given one or other of the starry 
 host of heaven as their tutelary God to the several 
 peoples of the earth, and the children of Israel were 
 to pay adoration to no star but the one assigned to* 
 them. The God of the Israelites was emphatically 
 Jahveh-Zabaoth, — Jehovah chief of the starry host ; 
 and we are not left in doubt as to the particular star 
 that had been given to them, this being no other than 
 the planet Saturn, which, under a certain similitude, 
 the precise nature whereof is unknown to us, but 
 which, called Chiun or Kewan, was the God wor- 
 shipped by the Hebrew people at one, and that we 
 may conclude a very long, period of their earlier his- 
 tory. " Ye brought me sacrifices and meat-offerings 
 indeed in the wilderness for forty years, 0 house of 
 Israel," exclaims Jehovah reproachfully through the 
 mouth of the oldest of the Prophets ; " but ye bore 
 the Tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun, your 
 Images, the Star of your God, which ye made to 
 yourselves ! " (Amos v. 25, 26.) And that Chiun 
 or Kewan, Chemosch, Molech, and Saturn, trans- 
 formed at length into Jahveh, were one and the 
 same is admitted by all competent inquirers. 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 Moses is represented by the writer of Deuteronomy 
 as foreseeing that the Israelites in days to come, when 
 they should have been long in the land, " will corrupt 
 themselves," i.e., will make them idols and go after 
 other gods ; as if they had never done so before ! as 
 if there had been no golden calf during their nomadic 
 life in the wilderness, nor brazen serpent in Jerusalem 
 to which the Judahites continued to burn incense in 
 the days of Hezekiah ; as if the Ephraimites had not 
 gone on worshipping their god El-Isra-El under the 
 form of the Bull to the end of their existence as a 
 state ! The writer is fearful, in fact, that the people 
 will continue to do as their fathers had done, despite 
 the better teaching given them of late by the reformed 
 Jehovistic party, of whom he whose words we have 
 before us we can have no doubt was one. 
 
 Persisting in the courses denounced, the conse- 
 quences foreseen by Moses, as said, will be disastrous 
 to the Israelites ? 
 
 They will then be made to perish from off the land ; 
 few in number they will be scattered abroad among 
 the nations, and all the miseries that wait on expatria- 
 tion and slavery will befal them. Jehovah, however, 
 will not wholly desert the people he had once elected 
 for his own. Did they, in the midst of the tribula- 
 tions awaiting them, and brought on them by them- 
 selves, but return and seek him, then would he not 
 forsake them ; for he is a merciful as well as a jealous 
 God, and will not forget the covenant he had sworn 
 to their fathers; neither would he destroy them 
 utterly ; " for unto thee," proceeds the narrative, " it 
 was showed that thou mightst know that J ehovah is 
 God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath — 
 there is none else beside him." 
 
 This seems to us the first distinct enunciation of 
 the Oneness of God to be met with in the Hebrew 
 Scriptures ? 
 
 Heretofore we have only had Elohim—God, or 
 
The Oneness of God. 
 
 Jahveh-Elohim — Jehovah-God as one among other 
 Gods, the particular God of the Israelites, never as 
 the One and Only God. 
 
 There is much, however, that has gone before and 
 that comes after which takes away from the compre- 
 hensiveness of the announcement now made ? 
 
 Much — the partiality for the Israelites with which 
 Jehovah is credited, for one thing, and his indifference 
 towards, or positive hatred of, all the other peoples of 
 the earth. The God now spoken of and named Jeho- 
 vah is still the particular God of the descendants of 
 Jacob, and it is not denied that other peoples have 
 their Gods ; nay, the conception in the mind of most 
 of the Bible writers is in the nature of an enduring 
 strife or competition between their God Jehovah and 
 the Gods of neighbouring tribes or nations. Jehovah 
 is no more than a local God with a limited jurisdic- 
 tion, jealous of other Gods, not yet The Supreme 
 with the universe for his empire and mankind at 
 large for his subjects. 
 
 The evils foreshadowed by Moses as about to befal 
 Israel — evils that must already have overtaken them 
 in the days of the writer — and the predictions he is 
 made to utter of the possible restoration of the people 
 to the favour of their God have had a vast influence 
 not only on the history of the Jews but on that of the 
 world ? 
 
 An influence for good and for ill, the extent of 
 which cannot be over-rated ; for here we encounter 
 the ground or motive out of which the Messianic 
 Idea took its rise — an Idea which, though it can be 
 said to have borne none but bitter fruit to the Jews, 
 had within it the germ that grew into Christianity 
 with its mingled sweet and bitter fruits for the world 
 at large. 
 
 Subjugation by Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldea in 
 succession, with all the miseries to which conquest 
 by eastern usage led in ancient times, and final ex- 
 
406 The Pentateuch, 
 
 tinction as a nation by Rome had been enough, as it 
 seems, to have led to despair ? 
 
 But for the tenacity with which the small Jewish 
 section of the Hebrew people clung to the insolent 
 idea of their being the Elect of Jehovah their God, 
 coupled with the persuasion that the loss of his 
 countenance would be but for a season ; that in his 
 own good time he would raise them up a kingly 
 deliverer, an anointed one (Masach Messiah), who 
 should not only restore them to their power in the 
 promised land but make them supreme over all the 
 peoples of the earth, and proclaim the Temple on 
 Zion as the only shrine at which worship acceptable 
 to God could be paid by man. 
 
 The great conception of the Oneness of God — 
 granting that it is now announced — cannot, however, 
 be presumed to have come down from Moses or any 
 contemporary of his ? 
 
 It is beyond question the product of a much later 
 a g e — a n age when men were living in comparative 
 securitv, and considerable advances had been made 
 in civilisation. 
 
 The same great idea we may presume will continue 
 to be dwelt on in the succeeding books of the Old 
 Testament? 
 
 Yet is it no more referred to by their writers until 
 we come to the age of the Prophets and Psalmists of 
 Judah. It is again announced, indeed within a little 
 of the page on which it first finds expression, and by 
 the same writer, doubtless, who has just given it 
 utterance, in words which the pious Jew with the 
 tide of life running to ebb, his children and all he 
 loved in life about his bed, hopes to have poured upon 
 his failing sense as he is being gathered to his people: 
 " Hear, 0 Israel ! Jehovah our God is one God ; and 
 thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart 
 and with all thy soul and with all thy might : " grand 
 words, and, substituting God for Jehovah, to be 
 
The Hebrew God not Sole. 407 
 
 borne in mind in every hour of man's daily life, still 
 more than helplessly heard, if heard at all, in the 
 hour of his death ! 
 
 The phrases Jehovah our God, and Jehovah thy 
 God, which recur so regularly in the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures, suffice of themselves to cast a certain shadow 
 of doubt over the sense in which these words may 
 have been understood by the utterer as well as by 
 those to whom they were addressed ? 
 
 So much may indeed be safely said. When we 
 further find injunctions constantly repeated against 
 going after other Gods, and penalties threatened for 
 having done so ; when we hear the Israelites styled a 
 holy people unto Jehovah their God, a people whom 
 Jehovah their God has chosen to be a special people 
 to himself, &c, it is obvious enough that the Jews 
 did not conceive their God Jehovah to be more than 
 one among other Gods; the one, however, whom 
 they, in virtue of his being their God, of course re- 
 garded as the chief and most powerful of all. 
 
 The Deuteronomist's picture of the Jewish people 
 is consequently calculated in many parts to convey 
 too favourable an impression of the slate of the 
 Religious Idea prevalent among them at the epoch 
 about which he wrote, though not perhaps at the epoch 
 in which he wrote ? 
 
 There can be no question of this ; the Book of 
 Deuteronomy is now known to be one of the most 
 modern within the boards of the Bible — much more 
 modern than the Books of Samuel, the Kings, and 
 several of the Prophets. From the injunctions in 
 regard to things to be done and to be abstained from, 
 which have reached us in the fragments of older 
 documents made use of in the compilation of the 
 Pentateuch that have escaped the expurgating hands 
 of its latest editors, it is obvious that the Israelites 
 were not only not a holy people in the age of Moses, 
 nor yet for centuries after him, but a people in a very 
 
408 The Pentateuch. 
 
 low grade of civilisation, savages at heart, brutal in 
 manners, and idolators in religion. 
 
 On the barbarous injunctions repeatedly given with 
 regard to the way in which the native populations of 
 the promised land are to be dealt with, we need to 
 make no comment. They are utterly indefensible, 
 though they have been defended. We would merely 
 remark on the inconsistency here as in so many other 
 particulars ; for now the people, men, women and 
 children indiscriminately, are to be exterminated, no 
 single soul being to be left alive ; and, again, they 
 are not all to be put to death, nor even driven out of 
 the land at once ; they are only to be " driven out 
 little by little, lest the land for lack of inhabitants to 
 till it should cease to yield its increase." The women, 
 as among other barbarous peoples, are commonly, but 
 not always, to be spared as prizes of the victors ? 
 
 " When Jehovah thy God," says the text, inspired 
 as said, " delivers thine enemies into thy hands and 
 among the captives thou seest a beautiful woman and 
 hast a desire for her, and would have her for a wife, 
 thou shalt bring her home to thy house. There she 
 shall crop her hair, trim her nails, and put off the 
 garment of her captivit}^ ; and having bewailed her 
 fate for a month she shall then become thy wife." 
 
 This is sad, certainly, and is not perhaps utterly 
 inhuman, it is less terrible than death at all events. 
 But what says the seemly narrative in continuation ? 
 
 Should the unhappy woman fail or cease to please 
 her captor — " had he no delight in her " — then he 
 was to let her go whithersoever she would ; he was 
 not, however, to make merchandise of her, he was not 
 to sell her, " for he had humbled her." The old 
 Israelites were indeed a peculiar people, zealous of 
 good works, &c. — in their own estimation ! 
 
 To take the daughter of a neighbouring tribe or 
 strange nation to wife was, however, particularly 
 forbidden by others of the commandments or statutes 
 
The Jewish Jehovah. 
 
 believed to have been delivered by their God Jehovah 
 to the Jews ? 
 
 " When Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into the 
 land, &c, thou shalt smite and utterly destroy them 
 (the inhabitants) ; thou shalt make no covenant with 
 them, nor show mercy unto them ; neither shalt thou 
 make marriages with them," &c. ; the motive for the 
 last clause of the interdict being, lest the woman 
 should seduce the man from his allegiance to Jehovah 
 and lead him to serve other Gods. The women in the 
 olden time, as now, were pre-eminently the pious sex, 
 and the men of old, as in the present day, must have 
 usually yielded to their blindfold guidance. We are 
 well assured, however, that the interdict against 
 cohabiting with alien women, if known at all, was not 
 acted on in times much later than those the text refers 
 to, when the people must have been much less barbarous 
 than in the age of Moses ; there is even good reason 
 to suspect that the interdict was only invented some 
 time after the reign of Solomon, to keep the kings 
 and chiefs from following the bad example set them 
 by that concupiscent sovereign, on whom the Jeho- 
 vism of his holy men— if Jehovism perchance had yet 
 appeared in the bud, as assuredly it had not come into 
 bloom — seems to have sitten all too lightly. But 
 Deuteronomy, from first to last, is a compound of 
 older and more barbarous ordinances that shock by 
 their atrocity, with other newer and more humane 
 requirements that command the love and reverence 
 of the most refined. How, for instance, could such a 
 sentence as this have been written in an age when 
 injunctions to spoil and to slay without pity or remorse 
 were more especially the order of the day: "And 
 now, 0 Israel, what doth Jehovah thy God require of 
 thee but to fear Jehovah thy God, to walk in all his 
 ways, to love him and to serve him with all thy heart 
 and with all thy might." 
 
 This is fine, but it is not all ? 
 
 HH 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 Within the next few verses we find it said that :-— 
 "Jehovah had delight in thy fathers to love them ; 
 and he chose their seed after them, even you, above all 
 people, as it is this day, for Jehovah your God is God 
 of Gods and Lord of Lords, which regardeth not 
 persons nor taketh reward, but doth execute judg- 
 ment and loveth the stranger ; therefore love ye the 
 stranger;"— a sentence in which we see limitation 
 and universality side by side, a balance with an even 
 beam but loaded in the scales with unequal weights. 
 The words here, as in the verse but just quoted, tell a 
 different tale from those in which we meet the com- 
 mandments to kill and spoil, to enslave and drive out 
 the inhabitants of the invaded lands. 
 
 The more humane and reasonable ordinances ol the 
 Book of Deuteronomy seem of themselves to supply 
 irrefragable testimony to the late period in the history 
 of the Hebrew people at which it was compiled ? 
 
 They are so wholly out of keeping with the bar- 
 barous, bloodthirsty and often immoral orders else- 
 where set forth in the mythical, incongruous and 
 contradictory writings, entitled the Five Books ot 
 Moses, that it is plainly impossible to ascribe them 
 all to one and the same age, or to look on them as 
 possible products of one mind. . 
 
 The code by which the Jews are required to regu- 
 late their lives is much more emphatic m exacting 
 obedience to ritualistic observance, or to the service 
 of Jehovah alone, than to any duties towards their 
 
 fellow men ? „ , 
 
 These last are mostly matters of secondary con- 
 sideration. But the people are repeatedly enjoined to 
 break in pieces the graven images of their adversaries 
 to cut down their Ascheras, to pollute their altars, 
 and burn all things pertaining to their religion with 
 fire Jehovah, the God of the Jews, is always spoken 
 of as a jealous God— i.e., he is jealous of worship or 
 service paid to any God but himself. The sm of nam 
 
Seceders to be Stoned. 41 1 
 
 that his people could commit was the serving or ffoinfr 
 after other Gods. The simple soothsayer, seer, or 
 prophet whose predictions were not fulfilled, was to be 
 dealt with summarily and at once as a false prophet : 
 he was to be stoned with stones and done away with. 
 -But the prophet whose forecasts came true, did he 
 attempt to persuade the people to forsake Jehovah and 
 go after other Gods, was not to be hearkened to, but 
 was surely to be put to death. Nay, continues the 
 peremptory and uncompromising ordinance, " if thy 
 brother, thy son, or thy daughter, the wife of thy 
 bosom, or the friend which is as thine own soul entice 
 thee saying : Let us go and serve other Gods, thou 
 sha t not consent to him nor hearken to him ; neither 
 shall thine eye pity him; neither shalt thou spare, 
 neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely 
 kill him ; thy hand shall be first upon him to put him 
 to death, afterwards the hands of all the people, 
 and thou shalt stone him with stones that he die." 
 ine terms m which the simply false prophet is 
 the°se n ° thing ° f determined severity of 
 
 And it was not to individuals only, but to com- 
 ruunities that the same terrible commandment was 
 to apply ? 
 
 Were it reported that the inhabitants of a city had 
 been seduced from the service of Jehovah to the ser- 
 vice of other gods diligent inquiry was to be made; 
 and the truth of the allegation ascertained, the people 
 ot the place were to be smitten with the sword, the city 
 itself with al within it, was to be utterly destroyed, 
 and the spoil, as accursed, was not to be appropri- 
 ated, but, being gathered together in a street, was 
 there, along with the city itself, to be burned with 
 fare and reduced to ashes ; a heap of ruins being alone 
 
 been m SPOt WherC the dwellin S sof men had 
 
 When we are made aware of the many Religions 
 
4I 2 The Pentateuch. 
 
 that have prevailed and that still prevail in the world, 
 that God, conceived as First Cause, makes the sun to 
 shine and the rain to fall on the followers of each and 
 every one of these without favour or distinction, and 
 that there are good, upright, and pious as well as 
 wicked and worthless men and women among them 
 all,— what can we think of the ruthless injunctions 
 we find ascribed to the Jewish God Jehovah ? 
 
 We can only think of them as the outcome of 
 ignorant, intolerant, bigoted, and presumptuous men, 
 never as the decrees of the God of the Universe. That 
 they have had an adverse influence on the progress 
 of mankind in attaining to anything like reasonable 
 conceptions of the way in which God might, could, 
 would, or should be served, and are chargeable with 
 much of the misery that has been inflicted on man- 
 kind in the name of religion cannot be questioned. 
 The Religious Idea, under whatever shape it has been 
 formulated, even to the latest and noblest— Christianity 
 has only been humane and beneficent as men have 
 been enlightened and truly civilised. By the light 
 we have lately obtained, we see other grounds of 
 hostility to Standing Pillars, Ascheras, and Images 
 of every kind, beside those which attached to them 
 as elements in the Baal-worship of Israel previous to 
 the triumph of Jehovism. Jacob, the patriarch of 
 Ephraim, raised Stone Pillars and planted Trees to 
 his God El-Eohe-Israel; Abraham, the patriarch of 
 Judah, built Altars to his God El-Jahveh. The 
 Standing Column and Bull-Calf were the religious 
 insignia of Ephraim ; the Altar and Everlasting 
 Eire the emblems of Judah : anointings with oil, 
 oblations of the fruits of the earth, libations of wine, 
 and effusions of water, emblems of fertility and 
 increase, as seen in the sacrifice of Cam, might be 
 held the appropriate offerings at the shrine of El- 
 Israel, the God of Jacob and of Ephraim ; but Life 
 in the Blood, both of man and beast, as set forth m 
 
Prophecies. 413 
 
 the sacrifice of Abel, was the indispensable oblation 
 to El-Jahveh, the God of Abraham and of Judah. 
 The war against Graven Images and Groves was, in 
 fact, the theological element in the political strife 
 between Jerusalem and Sichem.* 
 
 Still, if there be the bane in the texts before us, 
 it is not without the antidote ; the world, indeed, has 
 still been complacent enough to overlook the HI and 
 only to rest on the Good that is in the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures ; and some of the later Prophets are surely- 
 found delivering themselves in language worthy of 
 all acceptation ? 
 
 As in the text but just referred to — For what, O 
 man, &c. And the last and most humane and 
 tolerant of all the teachers of Israel — and Jesus was 
 of Nazareth in Galilee, bordering on Samaria — 
 declared that to love God and our Neighbour was the 
 sum and substance of all the commandments. 
 
 The monetary transactions of the Jews could 
 scarcely be overlooked as subject of their latest legis- 
 lation. " Thou shalt lend unto many nations," says 
 our text, " but thou shalt not borrow." To which 
 these words are added : — " And thou shalt reign over 
 many nations, but they shall not reign over thee." 
 
 Statements made as prophecies, of which we may 
 say that the first is as true as the second is false. 
 The children of Israel have indeed for ages been the 
 money-lenders of the world, and they have never 
 appeared as borrowers on their own behalf upon any 
 of its exchanges. They have not only never reigned 
 over any nation, however, but every nation has in 
 turn not only reigned over them, but has mercilessly 
 misused them in their subject state. It is only in 
 these our days that the Jews have been treated as 
 men, and allowed anything like a fair field for the 
 
 * Comp. Bernstein, ' Origin of the Legends of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob. 5 One of Mr Scott's series. 
 
4H 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 display of the better powers which, in common with 
 the rest of mankind, some few of them possess. 
 
 Can we reasonably suppose one in the position of 
 Moses toiling in the wilderness, with a horde of 
 starving men and women around him, dictating laws 
 about borrowing and lending money ? 
 
 Hardly — overlooking for the nonce the instructions 
 they had had from Jehovah to borrow silver and gold 
 and raiment from the Egyptians. The text here 
 points very plainly to the late period at which it was 
 written. 
 
 There are many subjects omitted, or but slightly 
 noticed in the preceding Books, which find a place in 
 the legislation of Deuteronomy ? 
 
 Very many. Matters of controversy, for instance, 
 too hard for judgment in the usual way — whatever 
 that may have been — are now ordered to be referred 
 to the Priests, the Levites, and the Judge of the day, 
 who are to inquire of Jehovah understood, and pro- 
 nounce sentence. And the man, it is said, who 
 hearkens not to the award, is to die. The Jews of 
 old set little store by human life ! 
 
 The time when the people shall desire to have a 
 king, like the nations round about, is now antici- 
 pated ? 
 
 It is, and without the objections which are made 
 in the name of Jehovah in another place, from an 
 earlier document — 1 Samuel viii. 7. There, though 
 Samuel is ordered by Jehovah to hearken to the 
 voice of the people, he is to do so under protest, 
 because of their ingratitude : — " For it is not thee 
 — the Judge — they have rejected, but they have 
 rejected me — their true God and King — that I 
 should not rule over them." They are even warned 
 of the scourge they will bring upon themselves by 
 their foolish demand ; for their king will take their 
 sons and their daughters to himself to do menial 
 duties, to be labourers in the field, cooks and confec- 
 
Of Kings and Enchanters. 
 
 415 
 
 iioners, and something worse, though it is not named ; 
 he will also take their fields and their vineyards, and 
 the tenths of all their produce, and make them his 
 servants : — " And ye shall cry out in that day because 
 of your king, and Jehovah will not hear you." Resolved 
 on having a king, nevertheless, they are to set him over 
 them whom Jehovah should choose — one from among 
 themselves, not a stranger, but their brother; the 
 course which was taken, as we learn, when Saul and 
 David were chosen, before the system of hereditary 
 succession became the rule. The king, it is said, is not 
 to multiply horses to himself, neither is he to multiply 
 wives, that his heart turn not away from serving 
 Jehovah : neither is he greatly to multiply silver and 
 gold— injunctions, all of them, we cannot doubt, 
 aimed at Solomon and his successors, so many of 
 whom never walked otherwise than contrary to the 
 statutes delivered from Sinai, and gave as little heed 
 to those which follow, enjoining a diligent perusal of 
 the Book of the Law (only discovered, however, in 
 the late reign of Josiah), to the end that they might 
 learn to fear Jehovah and keep his commandments. 
 
 The Levites, it is to be observed, are now very 
 regularly spoken of as priests, and the portions of 
 the sacrifices to be set apart for them are specified — 
 viz., the shoulder, the two cheeks, and the maw — not 
 the best pieces, by any means ; whence we might, 
 perhaps, infer that the Levites were not yet in the 
 seat of power. 
 
 When the people are come into the land which 
 Jehovah gives them, they are not to do after the 
 abominations of the nations they supplant ? 
 
 " There shall not be found among you anyone that 
 xnaketh his son or his daughter to pass through the 
 fire, or that useth divination, or is an observer of 
 times, or an enchanter or a witch ; for all that do 
 these things are an abomination unto Jehovah," says 
 the text, in terms which assure us that all the prac- 
 
4i 6 The Pentateuch. 
 
 tices denounced had formerly been, if, indeed, they 
 were not still, observed. All that opened the womb 
 both of man and beast had assuredly, in times 
 anterior to those in which the text was written, gone 
 in smoke to the God ; and that times and seasons 
 were as regularly observed by the Israelites, as by so 
 many of the other peoples of antiquity, is demon- 
 strated by the epochs in the course of the year 
 when their feasts and festivals were celebrated. 
 It is because of their wickedness in doing the 
 things denounced that Jehovah drives out the old 
 inhabitants of the land before the chosen seed, 
 whom, we venture to say, by the way, we heartily 
 wish we could see as a little less like those they dis- 
 possess, and somewhat more worthy of the preference 
 shown them. 
 
 Cities of Refuge, to which the homicide might flee, 
 are commanded ? 
 
 "Whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom 
 he hated not in time past, says the ordinance, shall 
 flee unto one of these cities and live ; lest the avenger 
 of the bloodshed pursue the slayer whilst his heart is 
 hot, and slay him. But if any man hate his neigh- 
 bour, and lie in wait for him and smite him that he 
 die, and fleeth into one of these cities, the elders of 
 the city shall send and fetch him thence, and deliver 
 him into the hand of the avenger of blood that he 
 die." An order from which we learn that one akin 
 to the slain man — the avenger of blood, as he is 
 called — is to be the executioner ; from which further 
 we may form an estimate of the state of society 
 among whom such a law existed, and of the effect 
 it must have had on the character and disposition of 
 the community. 
 
 False witness-bearing was to be severely dealt 
 with ? 
 
 He who is found, after diligent inquiry made, to 
 have testified falsely against his brother, "is to be 
 
Treatment of Enemies. 417 
 
 done unto as be had [doDe or] thought to have done 
 unto his brother. Life shall go for life, eye for eye, 
 tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." Such 
 is the specification ; different, it must be owned, from 
 the rule that was delivered some centuries later by a 
 teacher nobler and more humane. 
 
 Every man of mature years in the early Hebrew 
 history was a soldier ; but we now come upon certain 
 exemptions or disqualifications that must have taken 
 from the number of the host ? 
 
 He who had built a new house, or had planted a 
 vineyard, or had betrothed to himself a wife, or that 
 was fearful and faint-hearted, was to be at liberty to 
 quit the camp. There could, of course, be no building 
 of houses nor planting of vineyards in the desert, 
 and no betrothing of wives to any great extent 
 under the circumstances, but there may have been 
 craven-hearted men enow among the Israelites fleeing 
 from Egypt after centuries of slavery, as the story 
 says they had been. 
 
 When a city was to be attacked the inhabitants 
 were to have a choice and a chance for their lives ? 
 
 By opening their gates and submitting uncon- 
 ditionally to the invader, the inhabitants would only 
 be made tributaries, and bound to serve the invaders ; 
 but summoned, and not making an answer of peace, 
 but one of war, then was the city to be besieged ; 
 "and when Jehovah, thy God, hath delivered it into 
 thy hands thou shalt smite every male thereof with 
 the edge of the sword • but the women and the little 
 ones, the cattle and the spoil, thou shalt take to 
 thyself. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities that 
 are afar off from thee; but of the cities of those 
 nations (the Amorites, Hittites, Hivites, Canaanites, 
 &c.) which Jehovah thy God doth give thee for an 
 inheritance, thou shalt utterly destroy them" 
 
 All that breathed in these devoted cities were to be 
 slain ; but the fruit trees around towns that stood a 
 siege were not to be cut down ? 
 
41 8 The Pentateuch. 
 
 Around towns in territories promised them for an 
 inheritance, understood. The preservation of the 
 fruit trees, therefore, was on purely selfish grounds ; 
 for of the trees and lands of cities afar off no such 
 considerate account was to be taken. Not only are 
 all the good trees of these to be felled, but every good 
 piece of land is to be marred with stones, and all the 
 wells stopped up. The city is to be razed to the 
 ground, the land about it to be turned into a desert ! 
 (2 Kings, iii.) Of the barbarity of these command- 
 ments it were needless to speak, of the evil influence 
 of the teaching, presumed to be from God, there can 
 be no question. 
 
 Did it happen that a man were found slain in the 
 land, and it was not known who had slain him, the 
 elders of the city nearest the spot where the body was 
 found were to take a heifer that had not known the yoke 
 into a rough valley that was neither eared or sown, 
 and there strike off her head ; " and the priests, the 
 sons of Levi, shall come near ; and the elders of the 
 city shall wash their hands over the heifer that is 
 beheaded, and shall answer and say, Our hands have 
 not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it ; be 
 merciful, 0 Jehovah, unto thy people Israel whom 
 thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto 
 thy people Israel's charge. And the blood shall be 
 forgiven them." 
 
 All this smacks of magic. Would it not have been 
 better, perchance, had orders been given to make 
 diligent inquiry roundabout, and to search for the 
 slayer F The elders of the city nearest the place 
 where the dead man was found could not be supposed 
 to be the guilty parties ; and their mystical purgation 
 over the body of the beheaded heifer that had not 
 known a yoke, in the rough valley, was as little likely 
 to bring the perpetrator of the deed to light as the 
 whole procedure is barbarous and absurd — though it 
 is in the book, every word of which has so long been 
 said to be inspired ! 
 
Of Rebellious Children. 419 
 
 In case a man had two wives, one beloved, another 
 hated, and both had borne him children, no distinction 
 was to be made in the matter of inheritance between 
 the children of the one mother and those of the other ? 
 
 The father was to acknowledge his first-born son as 
 such, and give him the double portion that by usage 
 was his right, whether he came of the cherished or 
 the hated wife. In this Jewish custom of making 
 more of the first-born son than of any other child, it 
 may be that we have the source of the Law of Primo- 
 geniture which still obtains in more than one of the 
 most advanced countries of Europe. 
 
 If a man had a stubborn and rebellious son, the 
 Hebrew code provided a short and summary way of 
 disposing and being rid of him ? 
 
 Did such a "ne'er-do-well" refuse to obey the 
 voice of his father or the voice of his mother, not 
 hearkening to them when they had chastised him, 
 they were " to lay hold on him and bring him before 
 the elders of the city, and say to them, ' This our son 
 is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice, 
 he is a glutton and a drunkard,' " — a deposition on 
 the strength of which " all the men of the city were 
 then to stone him with stones that he die." A little 
 wholesome castigation with stripes, and seclusion, 
 with a course of bread and water, would surely have 
 been a more humane procedure ; and this not sumcing 
 to bring the youth to his senses, expulsion from the 
 community would have been better than putting him 
 to death. But the people who had a God to whom 
 they were wont to make burnt-offerings of the first- 
 born of their sons and daughters, and who were the 
 executioners of malefactors with their own hands, 
 would probably make little of stoning a naughty son 
 to death. Yet these are the people who are our 
 masters in religion, and by implication— inasmuch as 
 morality among us is made so exclusively to hang on 
 religious belief — in morals also ! 
 
420 The Pentateuch. 
 
 We now come upon a great variety of ordinances 
 or commandments of greater or less significance: 
 some of them reasonable and humane, others inhuman, 
 absurd, and declaratory of a state of society the lowest 
 and most degraded that can be imagined. Among 
 others, we find it particularly ordered that women are 
 not to put on the garments of men, nor men the gar- 
 ments of women ;— words that lead our thoughts to 
 the later times when the Succoth Benoth — booths or 
 dwellings of the vile Kadeschim, male and female, 
 which abutted on the Temple— were ordered to be 
 pulled down by the pious and better-minded Josiah. 
 
 A man newly married having suspicions that his 
 wife was not a maid when he received her, was to 
 have the matter investigated in a fashion, on which 
 we need say no more than that, though still in vogue 
 in the East, it is one on which no dependence what- 
 ever can be placed for ascertaining the truth. The 
 doom that awaited the woman inculpated must there- 
 fore as often have fallen on the innocent as on the 
 guilty ; and the course prescribed, we need not say, 
 could never have been ordered by the inspiration of 
 God— it came of nothing but the ignorance of man. 
 
 Adulterers were to be severely dealt with ? 
 
 Both the man and the woman, the crime of adul- 
 tery brought home to them, were to die ; and the 
 same fate awaited the betrothed woman who went 
 astray, as well as her paramour. The man only who 
 violated a betrothed virgin in the field, if she cried 
 for help, was to be put to death ; did she not cry for 
 help she too was to die ; were the woman a virgin 
 and not betrothed, the raptor was to pay fifty shekels 
 of silver to her father, and she was to be his wife — 
 he might not put her away all his days. 
 
 Jehovah, as we know, would not be ministered to 
 by any one who was not complete in all his parts and 
 members ? 
 
 This we have already seen, and here again we find 
 
Treatment of Peoples. 421 
 
 It ordered that the Eunuch was not to enter into the 
 congregation of Jehovah ; neither was a Bastard, even 
 to the tenth generation. As the mutilation and the 
 bastardy, however, were not acts of the parties con- 
 cerned, it is certain that no such interdict as that now 
 assigned to the Jewish Jehovah could have come from 
 a just God, the impartial parent and upright judsre of 
 every individual according to his own deserts. The 
 Hebrew word translated bastard in our version, how- 
 ever, does not signify " illegitimately born," in the 
 sense we attach to the term, but applies to one 
 " spuriously begotten" according to Jewish ethics, 
 i. e., one who was the offspring of mingled Jewish and 
 Gentile blood. (Th. Wilson : Pentateuch, p. 224) 
 
 All and sundry of the native populations of the 
 country invaded by the Israelites are not to be dealt 
 with by indiscriminate spoliation and slaughter, or 
 degradation P 
 
 This is so; though the tribes or nations to be 
 excepted are not always the same. Here we find the 
 Ammonites and the Moabites, with whom the Jews 
 were often at war, ordered to be excluded from the 
 congregation of Israel, whilst the Edomites and, 
 strange to say, the Egyptians, are to be received ; 
 they, it is said, " are not to be abhorred," but are to 
 be allowed to enter the Assembly. These reserva- 
 tions point plainly enough to the late times, when the 
 Jews had alliances and were on friendly terms with 
 both Edom and Egypt, when Solomon had married 
 a daughter of the reigning Pharaoh, and when the 
 text must have been composed. The grounds for the 
 old hostility to Egypt displayed in the Book of 
 Exodus had been forgotten by this time. 
 
 Certain very necessary sanitary rules are given ? 
 The unclean are to wash; and there is to be a 
 place without the camp to which resort was to be 
 made for purposes of nature; every man having a 
 paddle on his weapon with which he could dig and 
 
422 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 cover up — a simple procedure, but helping us in 
 nowise to a solution of the growing difficulty that 
 besets the modern world — the right disposal of the 
 rejectmenta of the masses of human beings congre- 
 gated in townships and cities numbering their thou- 
 sands or hundreds of thousands, where not their 
 millions, of inhabitants. 
 
 Prostitution, in spite of what we know of Josiah's 
 proceedings with the Succoth Benoth, is forbidden ? 
 
 " There shall be no whore of the sons and daughters 
 of Israel " — says the interdict ; and the wages of pros- 
 titution were on no pretext of a vow to be brought 
 into the house of Jehovah any more than the price of 
 a dog ; " for even both of these are an abomination 
 unto Jehovah thy God." The interdict here is 
 directed against practices still prevalent, it would 
 seem, in the days of the writer, — relics of Nature 
 Worship, — to which reluctant reference has already 
 been made in this commentary.* The writer of 
 Deuteronomy, sensible of the turpitude of such doings, 
 forbids them. 
 
 " When thou cometh into thy neighbour's vine- 
 yard thou may est eat grapes thy fill at thine own 
 pleasure, but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel." 
 
 So says the text ; but had the statute been pro- 
 hibitory instead of permissive, we should have had 
 more faith in the source whence it came. How 
 indeed can we believe that any such injustice as that 
 countenanced could ever have come from God ! But 
 that its existence in the Bible has had an evil influ- 
 ence cannot be questioned. Men have only slowly 
 come to the conclusion that robbery of an orchard or 
 vineyard is no less robbery than theft from a store- 
 house or grange. Little wine would assuredly be 
 made from the vineyard where a right like that pro- 
 claimed was acted on. The field of standing corn, 
 
 * Yide under Exodus, 
 
Individual Accountability. 
 
 too, from which everyone was at liberty to pluck the 
 ears, could scarcely have rewarded the husbandman 
 so well for his toil as if it had been put under the 
 safeguard of the law which says : " Thou shalt not 
 steal." But let us pause for a moment, and think of 
 legislation about vineyards and corn-fields amid a 
 starving multitude in a waterless wilderness, and 
 have a fresh assurance that another and a much later 
 hand than that of a Moses was here at work in laying 
 down the law. 
 
 Among an additional number of commandments of 
 more or less significance we come upon one on which 
 we have already had occasion to comment, but on 
 the important bearing of which in another direction 
 than that discussed nothing has been said. " The 
 fathers," says the text, " shall not be put to death 
 for the children, neither shall the children be put to 
 death for the fathers : Every man shall be put to 
 death for his own sin." How great an advance this 
 is on the older declaration, in which it is said that 
 Jehovah visits the iniquities of the fathers on the 
 children, even to the third and fourth generation, 
 need not be insisted on. But then, if it be accepted, 
 what becomes of the whole system of popular Pauline 
 Christianity, founded as it is on Adam's disobedience 
 and the Fall of Man ? 
 
 In the event of one of two brothers, married, but 
 having no child, dying, the surviving brother was 
 bound as the rule to take the widow to wife, and 
 raise up children to his dead brother, as said. But 
 not inclining to do so, the widow was to appeal to 
 the elders, who in turn were to speak to the man, 
 and he " standing to it, and saying I like not to take 
 her," then was she to loose the man's shoe from off 
 his foot, to spit in his face, and say, " So shall it be 
 done unto the man that will not build up his brother's 
 house." The old Jews were certainly neither very 
 nice nor over delicate in their dealings with one 
 another. 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 On the presentation of the Firstfruits, which are 
 required to be brought to the priest, the bringer was 
 to make avowal that he had not eaten thereof in his 
 mourning, nor taken ought thereof for unclean uses, 
 nor given ought thereof for the dead ? 
 
 These obscure sentences probably refer to the 
 custom which obtained in Syria and Samaria of 
 weeping for Tammuz at the same season in which 
 the feast of firstfruits was celebrated, and of fur- 
 nishing the dead with money and provisions, observed 
 by some of the ancient peoples, for their journey to 
 the realm of shades. But the words quoted must 
 have been written at a late period in the history of 
 the Jewish people — after the Babylonian captivity — 
 and with obvious reference to the customs of nations 
 around, for it is long before we have any evidence 
 that the Jews, like the Egyptians and Greeks 
 especially, became possessed of the idea that there 
 was a state of conscious existence awaiting them in 
 a life to come ; and even after they had acquired it 
 their Scheol was nothing more than a darksome pit 
 into which the dead were presumed to go, with 
 little, if anything, of individual consciousness left. 
 
 The Jordan once passed, the Israelites are charged 
 in the name of Moses to set up great stones, to plaster 
 them with plaster, and write on them all the words of 
 the law. These stones are then to be set up on 
 Mount Ebal, in Samaria (far away from the spot 
 where the people are now encamped), and the con- 
 gregation, arranged in two divisions according to 
 their tribes, one on Mount Garizim are to pronounce 
 certain blessings, another on Mount Ebal certain 
 curses ; the tribes elected to curse being those of the 
 sons of Jacob by his concubines, those chosen to bless 
 the tribes of his sons by his wives, Each el and Leah. 
 The Levites are to declare the curses in succession 
 with a loud voice, and all the people after each has 
 been uttered are to respond and say, " Amen, so be 
 
Jehovah's Gifts Conditional. 425 
 
 it ! " " Cursed be the man that maketh any graven 
 image ; cursed be the man that maketh light of his 
 father or mother; cursed be he that removeth his 
 neighbour's landmark," &c. The reader may refer to 
 the book for others of a very different stamp, and will 
 hardly fail to leave the perusal without having formed 
 a very low estimate of the social and moral condition 
 of the people whose records he has had before him 
 He may even possibly begin, if he have not done so 
 already, to question the propriety of putting the book 
 that contains such matter as he will find there into 
 the hands of his children for their edification and 
 improvement. If he further considers that he is 
 perusing no record from the hand of Moses or the 
 remote age in which the leader is believed to have 
 lived— excuses for barbarous and unseemly ordinances 
 being often condoned on the score of their antiquity 
 —but the writing of one who lived after the Baby- 
 Ionian captivity, who doubtless was influenced by the 
 state of things around him, his mind will probablv 
 be yet further cleared from the false impressions it 
 may have received in the days of his childhood 
 
 Having had the curses delivered, we may look for 
 the blessings ? 
 
 These are never absolute, but always conditional 
 on the people faithfully observing the commandments 
 of Jehovah their God, and they are never other than 
 o the most purely material nature. If the people be 
 but obedient for example, Jehovah will "set them 
 £ ?, b0ve << a11 * he * ati0 *s of the earth," and will 
 bless them " in the city and in the field, in the fruit 
 of their body, of their cattle and of their ground, in 
 their basket and their store, in their coming in and 
 their going out," and the like. Jehovah, in*a word, 
 will make them plenteous in everything g i VG them 
 rain m due make tw ^em 
 
 tail among the nations, provided always that they 
 turn neither to the right hand nor to the left to go 
 
 1 1 
 
42 5 The Pentateuch, 
 
 after other Gods to serve them." There is, therefore, 
 no reference to any of the states or doings which we 
 in these days are wont to associate with man in bis 
 more perfect condition as man-greatness in letters 
 philosophy, and science, in morals, freedom, and 
 civilisation-in a word, in culture and humanity. # 
 
 Failing in their duty to Jehovah, however, going 
 after other Gods to serve them ? . 
 
 Then should they be cursed m their rebellion in 
 the same measure as they were to have been blessed 
 in their obedience— cursed were they to be m the 
 city and in the field, &c, &c. Jehovah would send 
 upon them cursing, vexation, and rebuke ^11 they 
 set their hand to, until they were destroyed by fever 
 pestilence, and consumption burning, drought and 
 blasting mildew, the heaven above them being turned 
 to brass and the earth to iron A terrible God 
 was the Jewish Jehovah in his fits of anger and his 
 iealousy of other Gods ! and it is only occasionally 
 that we catch glimpses of him in any more placable 
 or beneficent mood. Had not Moses been at hand 
 on more than one notable occasion he would assuredly 
 have broken out on his favourites, and consumed 
 them all in a moment, in which case we should have 
 had none of the writings that lie before us for com- 
 
 m Bu't the list of threatened ills is not exhausted by 
 those iust named ? » 
 
 Far from it. The disobedient people are to be 
 farther smitten before their enemies, and their 
 carcases made food for the wild beasts of the field 
 and fowls of the air; they will be pl^ d ^ fc ^^ e 
 botch of Egypt, the emerods, the scab, and the itch , 
 bf smitten with blindness and astonishment of heart, 
 and oppressed and spoiled for evermore .with jume- 
 rous X besides, which the i^.^^ 
 and ma Y peruse at his leisure, m the 28th chapter ot 
 the Book we have under survey. Having thought 
 
Jehovah's Threats. ^ 2 J 
 
 over what he has read, he might then ask himself 
 whether he can believe that there is or ever was any 
 
 ate ^ JeWah , the God of tae Jews-paS 
 ate, vindictive, cruel -and that the collection of 
 printed pages called the Bible can by possibility be 
 any record of the word and will of th/<L of reason 
 
 Une , al that is, bemg as it is, and all that happens 
 coming to pass as it does, in conformity with great 
 eternal, changeless law, Revelation to man of the 
 
 7,? 2 nd Attribute « of the Supreme. 
 fn^lVw 13 "°7 s / id of the miseries and misfor- 
 
 when thevT ° ^ m ^ cMdren ° f !»• 
 Io! a J i a , d g0ne ast ray from Jehovah, must be 
 
 vanquished, harried, and carried away captive by the 
 Assyrians and Babylonians ? 7 
 "Tpw!l, Ca f- be r , easona °le question of this. 
 J - Tk 14 Said ln the text > sha11 bring a nation 
 against thee from afar, from the end of the earth-a 
 
 We ha ve here but to read Jehovah had brought for 
 shall Inng-the past for the future (as Jehovah w th 
 ha P £nT) 1S t e oZ th °r™f^ a gont in whatsoev 
 SSF i "J , a11 made clear - Sennacherib and 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar had already invaded and besteged 
 
 Ltfc of rW th .l re W j th the obstiaac y caa ™cter- 
 stefitf^f 1 ™*>^y tad been reduced to such 
 straits as to have slain and eaten the flesh of their 
 sons and their daughters; and in language unsur 
 passed for force in the expression of mingled dou£ 
 and fear, had often said: "In the morning would 
 
 morningT" re ^ ^ at 67611 W ° uld God " ™e 
 The Israelites however were, or are, said to be 
 the chosen people of their God Jehovah, who was 
 the greatest among the Gods. Is it not strange 
 
The Pentateuch, 
 
 that, with the power ascribed to him, and his per- 
 petual interference in their affairs, he did not dispose 
 his favourites to be verily the good, great, and holy 
 people we find them called at one time, instead of 
 the perverse, presumptuous, and stiff-necked crew 
 they generally show themselves as having been ? 
 
 The Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians knew 
 nothing of Jehovah, and were as thorough idolaters 
 as ever the Israelites are charged with being, or 
 were, in fact ; yet was this no bar to the successful 
 invasion of Israel and Judah by these peoples in suc- 
 cession. Did God really interfere in the affairs of 
 men, as Jehovah is constantly credited with having 
 done in those of the children of Israel, when they 
 were successful especially, it had surely been com- 
 petent to him either to have made a better choice, 
 or to have had his elect as uniformly obedient as 
 they proved themselves invariably rebellious to his 
 commandments ; to have continued, moreover, as at 
 first, to give them the victory over all their enemies, 
 instead of suffering them at last to be vanquished by 
 every power that came against them ? 
 
 So much might certainly be said, taking the case 
 as it stands. But God never makes choice, and 
 never interferes in human affairs in any such way as 
 the Israelites believed their God Jehovah to have 
 done as men in the present day indeed mostly 
 believe their God to do. In what is called the 
 Heathen Mythology we see Zeus and Aphrodite on 
 one side, Here and Pallas Athene on the other ; but 
 is it not precisely the same in the Hebrew Myth- 
 ology, where Jehovah is found in perpetual conflict 
 with the peoples and Gods of neighbouring nations ? 
 And when we follow the strife to its end, are we not 
 forced to admit that, in fine, it is Jehovah who is 
 worsted ?— his chosen people being utterly wrecked 
 at last, and all the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob coming to nothing. 
 
Mose? Death Song. 
 
 All that is said of Jehovah's dealings with the 
 Israelites and their enemies is surely calculated to 
 make a false impression upon youthful minds, and to 
 give erroneous notions of that which God is, or can 
 be conceived by man to be, as well as of the way in 
 which the world is ruled ? 
 
 There can be no question of this. As grown men 
 and women, when we happen to be gifted with a 
 tolerable share of the God-like faculty of reason, we 
 have to unlearn almost all that had been taught us as 
 children in the name of religion. It is a mischievous 
 error to suppose that God governs or takes care of 
 the world in any human sense. God governs the 
 world assuredly ; but it is as Univeesal Cause, Con- 
 sentient with Natueal Law— sole expression to the 
 understanding of man of the Being and Doing of God. 
 
 Drawing towards the end of his career Moses 
 addresses the people anew, and informs them that he 
 is a hundred and twenty years old, and that Jehovah 
 has said to him that he should not go over the Jordan, 
 but was now to sleep with his fathers. He encou- 
 rages them, however, and bids them fear nothing, for 
 Jehovah will go with them. But Jehovah, by the 
 writer's showing, would have a competent leader in 
 bodily shape at the head of the host as before, and so 
 orders Moses to call Joshua, the son of Nun, and 
 come with him to the Tabernacle of the congregation 
 that he may give him a charge. This Moses does 
 forthwith, bidding the future leader be strong and of 
 good courage, for that he is now to bring the children 
 of Israel into the land that was sworn to their fathers. 
 After this Moses, like Jacob, intones a death-song, 
 which we note as of the grand Hebrew type in the 
 beginning, though it falls off greatly towards the close : 
 " Give ear, 0 ye heavens, and I will speak ; and hear, 
 0 earth, the words of my mouth ! My Doctrine shall 
 drop as rain, my speech shall distil as the small rain 
 upon the tender herb and as the showers upon the 
 
43° 
 
 The Pentateuch. 
 
 grass, for I will publish the name of Jehovah." 
 Speaking on in this great name, and reiterating much 
 in the shape of denunciation for going after other 
 gods, Jehovah, through the mouth of Moses, is made to 
 say : "A fire is kindled in mine anger and shall burn 
 into the lowest depths of hell, and shall consume the 
 earth with her increase, and set on fire the founda- 
 tions of the mountains ; I will heap mischiefs upon 
 them (the Israelites), the teeth of beasts, the poison 
 of serpents, the sword without and terror within shall 
 destroy both the young man and the virgin, the 
 suckling and the man of gray hairs. To me belong 
 vengeance and recompence ; I kill and I make alive ; 
 I wound and I heal ; for I lift up my hand to heaven 
 and say : I live for ever. If I whet my glittering 
 sword, and my hand take hold on judgment, I will 
 render vengeance to mine enemies, make mine arrows 
 drunk with blood, and my sword to devour flesh." 
 
 This is terrible language ; conceivable, possibly, 
 as from the God of the Savage, inconceivable as from 
 the God of civilised man. But it is no more than an 
 exaggerated picture of the nature- God in his adverse 
 aspect ; not as he meets us in the sunshine and the 
 calm, but in the storm and tempest ; not as he smiles 
 on us from the hillside and champaign, well watered 
 and wrapped in verdure, but in the glare of theburnt- 
 up and waterless wilderness ; not as the father of life 
 and joy, but as the demon of destruction and death.^ 
 Having ended his song, Moses, it is said, wrote it 
 down on the same day, and taught it to the children 
 of Israel. More than this, the writer in the name 
 of the leader, by way of covering with the venerable 
 hues of antiquity the Book of the Law, which was 
 found more than eight hundred years afterwards, 
 orders the " Levites " to take "this book of the law 
 and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of 
 Jehovah your God, that it may be there for a witness 
 against you," and thence, sure enough, or from another 
 
Death of Moses. 
 
 431 
 
 corner of the Temple where he had bestowed it, 
 Hilkiah, the High Priest in the reign of Josiah, some 
 six hundred and twenty years before the Christian 
 era, brought forth a Book of the Law, which most 
 certainly never came from the hand of Moses ! 
 
 The song is not the only parting Word ascribed to 
 Moses on the eve of his death ? 
 
 There is another entitled "His Blessing of the 
 Tribes," which the most cursory perusal discovers to 
 be nothing more than an abridged version of the 
 death-song of Jacob. Both the song and blessing 
 of Moses, however, like that of Jacob, are certainly 
 compositions of relatively modern date, their burden 
 showing them plainly enough to have been written 
 subsequently to the reign of the pious King Josiah. 
 
 Immediately before the farewell words of Moses, 
 Jehovah, it is said, spake to him, saying: "The 
 days approach when thou must die." By-and-by 
 he is again, and now more gently, admonished 
 of his impending fate in these words: "Behold, 
 thou shalt sleep with thy fathers." Yet again, and 
 this time, as at first, without paraphrase, Jehovah 
 is made to say to him: "Get thee up into this 
 mountain of Abarim, unto Mount Nebo, which is in 
 the land of Moab, in front of Jericho, and behold the 
 land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of 
 Israel for a possession, and die on the mount and be 
 gathered to thy people, as Aaron, thy brother, was 
 gathered to his people. From afar thou shalt see the 
 land ; but thou shall not go thither unto the land 
 which I give to the children of Israel." These 
 intimations, we may presume, are now followed bv 
 Moses' death ? J 
 From the plains of Moab he goes up to the 
 pinnacle of Mount Nebo, called Pisgah, and there he 
 is informed that the land before him is the land which 
 had been promised to Abraham, and Isaac, and 
 Jacob; that he had been made to see it with his 
 
432 The Pentateuch. 
 
 eyes, but was not to be suffered to go over into it, 
 information of which, much could not have been 
 needed by Moses, who must have known that Mount 
 Nebo was in the land of Moab over against Jericho, 
 and that the land before him was that which had 
 been promised to Israel, though it may have been 
 needful enough to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for 
 whom the writer is weaving his tale. 
 The record proceeds ? 
 
 " Moses the servant of Jehovah," it is said in the 
 shortest possible terms, " died there in the land of 
 Moab, according to the word of Jehovah [a gap pre- 
 sumably in the narrative], and he buried him in a 
 valley in the land of Moab over against Beth-Peor, 
 but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." 
 
 This is even a stranger tale than that we have in 
 connection with the death of Aaron. He went to the 
 top of Mount Hor, attended by his brother Moses and 
 his son Eleazar ; but we have no mention of any one 
 accompanying Moses to the pinnacle of Mount Nebo. 
 Yet it is said, after notification of the death, that " he 
 buried him in a valley in the land of Moab over 
 against Beth-Peor," and we ask who the he was who 
 buried him ? Not Jehovah, surely, though the words 
 as they stand seem to say as much. Some one, then, 
 who went up with him (Eleazar ?) and was the agent 
 in certain preliminary rites other than sepulchral, but 
 on the nature of which the text is silent, though it 
 has been held, with every show of probability, that 
 they were of a solemn sacrificial nature. 
 
 What warrant appears or can be given for so start- 
 ling a conclusion ? 
 
 Warrant enough : first, from the general prevalence 
 of human sacrifices in early times among' the Semitic 
 tribes of Palestine and their colonies — Phoenicians, 
 Syrians, Carthagenians, Cyprians, &c, all of them 
 cognate with the Hebrews ; and next, from the fact 
 that in moments of peculiar difficulty and danger the 
 
Death of Moses, 
 
 customary offerings, even of the highest kind, were 
 not held adequate to insure the countenance and 
 favour of the God ; victims of still greater price were 
 then required— a Kiu g .or King's son, a venerable 
 priest or chieftain — one or other of these was the 
 price that must then be paid for the aid of the super- 
 nal (or, shall we say, infernal) power addressed. 
 
 The meagre and perfunctory account we have of 
 the death and disposal of a personage so notable as 
 Moses seems of itself to lend countenance to the con- 
 clusion that it has not reached us as it once existed ? 
 
 More than this, and not without significance, the 
 reason given for his being required to die at this par- 
 ticular time is most unsatisfactory — may indeed be 
 said to be without any foundation in fact ; for the 
 reason given, to wit, that he " rebelled against Jeho- 
 vah's commandment in the desert of Zin in the strife 
 of the congregation of Israel, and failed to sanctify 
 Jehovah at the water of Meribah," is not true. There 
 is not a word of complaint made, nor a sign of rebel- 
 lion shown, on the part of Moses, at the waters of 
 Meribah. The people, indeed, sore athirst in the 
 burning desert, murmur, as unreasoning multitudes 
 ever will, not only against their chief and ruler, but 
 against their God. The leader himself, however, has 
 not murmured, has not rebelled. On the contrary, 
 he has been in danger of his life, and has cried as a 
 suppliant to his God, saying : " What shall I do unto 
 this people ? they be almost ready to stone me!" 
 
 Jehovah may perhaps have been offended with this 
 appeal ? 
 
 It is not said that he was ; he not only, indeed, 
 expresses no displeasure, but comes immediately to 
 the suppliant's assistance, bidding him take his rod 
 in his hand, and saying, "I will stand before thee on 
 the rock', and thou shalt smite the rock, and there 
 shall come water out of it that the people may 
 drink." 
 
The Pentateuch. 
 
 The reason assigned in the text for the death of 
 Moses is therefore disposed of by the context ? ^ 
 
 From all else that appears, the reason given is seen 
 to be groundless. Moses himself may even be said 
 to declare it to be so when he tells the people that he 
 is not to be allowed to enter the promised land be- 
 cause Jehovah was angry with him for their sokes 
 (i. 37, repeated iii. 26). Jehovah's displeasure is 
 with the people, and the leader is made the scape- 
 goat for their sins, which is not satisfactory.* 
 
 Jehovah's previous resolve that no one of mature 
 years who had come out of Egypt should enter the 
 land that flowed with milk and honey, may have made 
 the death of Moses a necessity ? 
 
 Such a resolution is never referred to in connexion 
 with Moses ; and then it was not absolute, not kept 
 in every case, for Joshua and Caleb, at all events, 
 were to be suffered to go over. But were a single 
 exception to be made, Moses surely was the one in 
 whose favour it might have been expected. 
 
 There is something, farther, of much significance, 
 viz., Moses' bodily state, which is particularly com- 
 mented on at the time of his death, and may be said 
 in some sort to make it matter of certainty that his 
 end was violent, his death sacrificial ? 
 
 To be acceptable to Jehovah, the victim, as we 
 know, must be without spot or blemish, and though 
 Moses himself has said that he is " an hundred and 
 twenty years old, and can no more go out and come 
 in as of yore," the narrator is particular in telling us 
 that "his eye was not dim, nor his natural force 
 abated," meet sacrifice was he therefore to the God. 
 
 We are consequently left in the dilemma of 
 having to choose between these two discrepant state- 
 ments ? 
 
 The account which Moses gives, or is made by the 
 
 * See note at foot of page 396, the reference to Geiger. 
 
Death of Moses. 
 
 435 
 
 writer to give, of himself, is doubtless the one that is 
 true, had his years been even many fewer than the 
 hundred and twenty awarded him; but a decrepit 
 victim would not have suited Jehovah. 
 
 There is yet another principle associated with the 
 Idea of Sacrifice which points to the kind of death 
 that Moses died ? 
 
 The victim must not only be faultless, but be given 
 willingly. Aaron's sacrificial death, when we call to 
 mind the customs of early days, may be said to have 
 been matter of course and nowise shocking to a 
 barbarous age ; for in his consecration as Priest he 
 became Cherem or Devoted to the God, and that 
 which was Devoted was in nowise to be redeemd, but 
 was "surely to be put to death." Aaron, in fact, 
 never appeared in public without the seal of his con- 
 secration and doom upon his forehead. As conse- 
 crated priest he was specially set apart to bear the 
 iniquities of the people, and he knew that he would 
 one day be required to make the expiation to which 
 he was pledged. Aaron's sacrificial death was there- 
 fore a foregone conclusion ; and the supreme moment 
 in his case arrived, as we have seen, when the Israel- 
 ites were encamped about Mount Hor, having the 
 territories of the Edomites before them, with formid- 
 able opponents to be attacked and subdued. 
 
 Moses, however, is nowhere said to have been 
 Cherem or devoted to his God ? 
 
 He is not; but with the Jordan now in front and 
 to be crossed, the walled town of Jericho to be taken, 
 and the more powerful people of Canaan to be 
 assailed, the very noblest victim that could be 
 thought of must alone have been held adequate not 
 only to propitiate, but in some sort to wring success 
 from, their God in the great enterprise that lay 
 before them. 
 
 May not Moses, the great and as he ever meets us 
 the self-sacrificing man, be presumed to have pre- 
 
436, The Pentateuch. 
 
 sented himself as the victim, likely to be most influen- 
 tial for the occasion ? 
 
 We are ready to imagine that Moses, in the grand 
 presentment of the leader we owe to the historian of 
 his life, like other large-minded men, thought never 
 of himself save in connection with the people he led. 
 In conformity with the ideas of the age in which he 
 is believed to have lived, he may have thought that 
 his death would now be more advantageous to the 
 children of Israel than his longer life. His task 
 indeed and in a certain sense was done ; the end for 
 which he had lived was accomplished. He and his 
 people were in sight of the promised land. As we 
 read we seem even to see that, in anticipation of the 
 supreme moment which had now arrived, Moses had 
 taken the necessary steps to secure a competent suc- 
 cessor in Joshua the son of Nun, a man with the 
 talents of a leader in the field, who had now become 
 of more immediate consequence to the people than 
 the legislator they had heretofore had over them as 
 their ruler. 
 
 The compilers of the Pentateuch — which appears 
 to have suffered more from the hands of editors and 
 expurgators than any other division of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures — show themselves extremely averse to 
 acknowledge human sacrifices as any element in the 
 religious ritual of the Hebrew race. But that they 
 were so, there cannot be even a shadow of doubt. 
 The positive announcement as from Jehovah, repeated 
 so often, that all that opened the womb was his, when 
 we know the full import of these words, would seem 
 to be enough of itself to settle the question, were the 
 notification not followed in several places by a clause 
 commanding the redemption of the first-born of man 
 and the ass. That this clause, wherever it occurs, 
 however, is an interpolation by a later hand, is cer- 
 
Of Human Sacrifices. 
 
 tain. The positive enactment occurs, not once but 
 several times, in more than one of the books, without 
 the qualification ; and the reiterated denunciations in 
 the writings of the later prophets against the custom 
 of passing their sons and daughters through the fire, 
 in other words, of sacrificing them to their God El, 
 Baal, Jahveh, or Molech ; and the staggering verse 
 in which Jehovah himself is made to say that he had 
 given his chosen people " Statutes that were not good, 
 and had caused them to pass their children through 
 the fire that he might make them desolate, that they 
 might know he was the Lord," suflices to show 
 that up to a late period in the history of the Jewish 
 people the sacrifice of the first-born of man and beast 
 was an indispensable tribute to the power that made 
 the Light and the Dark, that gave the Increase and 
 required Return in the Blood which was the Life. 
 The indisposition to acknowledge this element in the 
 early Israelitish and even later Jewish ritual, with 
 whatever distinctness it is declared in the older docu- 
 ments from which the more modern compilers of the 
 Pentateuch drew, and as it must have been practised 
 in the times of more than one of the prophets, has 
 extended even to the present day. So learned and so 
 liberal a writer as Dr Kalisch, in his exhaustive 
 Commentaries and Essays on Sacrifice in general and 
 on Human Sacrifice in particular, in spite of the con- 
 clusive evidence against him supplied by so many 
 passages of the Old Testament, will be found arguing 
 strenuously against the fact that human victims were 
 offered to the Hebrew God, that the first-born of man 
 as Cherem was necessarily put to death, and that 
 Aaron and Moses, ailing nothing, and vigorous 
 enough of limb to climb up rugged mountains, went 
 thither to die natural deaths on their tops ! Dr 
 Kalisch does not, indeed, deny the Sacrifice of the 
 virgin daughter of Judge Jephtha, as some utterly 
 unscrupulous commentators do; the vow and the 
 
438 The Pentateuch. 
 
 father's grief, and the touching resignation of the 
 daughter, were testimony too strong to be denied ; 
 but he lays little stress on the many texts of the his- 
 torical books and writings of the prophets of his 
 people that run counter to his general conclusion. 
 Human victims may indeed have been offered, but 
 it was to Molech or another of the Gods of the 
 heathen, not to Jehovah; as if El-Israel, Chiun, 
 Baal, and Aschera had not been the national gods of 
 the Hebrews through by much the longest period of 
 their history, and as if Jahveh were other than the 
 chief of the old Gods in a different form, and with 
 attributes in harmony with the age in which he 
 became the God of the Jews ! But a scholar and 
 critic of the calibre of a Kalisch is at no loss to 
 distinguish between interpolated passages and the 
 even flow of the narrative, and is well aware 
 that positive general ordinances are not super- 
 seded by exceptional qualifying intimations. The 
 reluctance on the part of able men to see and 
 admit the whole of the truth as it meets the 
 unprejudiced eye in the pages of the Bible is greatly 
 to be lamented. No disgrace attaches to peoples 
 living in mythical, legendary, and but half-historical 
 times conforming to the religious and other usages 
 known to have prevailed universally in the long night 
 that intervened between man's emergence from utter 
 savagery to something like settled life and civilisation. 
 How should the Israelites have done otherwise than con- 
 form to the inhuman customs, held everywhere around 
 them acceptable to the Deity, in days when they were 
 constituting themselves a people ? How should they 
 have abandoned practices in the worship of their God 
 at an earlier epoch in their history than other races 
 struggling from darkness into light ? Without being 
 worse than their neighbours, the Israelites, from their 
 own records, show us that they were certainly no 
 better than the greater number of these, and even 
 
Of Human Sacrifices. 439 
 
 far behind the best of them in art and science. In 
 their wars they were often worsted by the Moabites 
 and Philistines ; they went down before the Egyp- 
 tians, Assyrians, and Babylonians in succession, as in 
 later days they fell when confronted by the Greek 
 and the Roman. Never, indeed, in the whole course 
 of their history did they succeed in completely sub- 
 duing several of the petty native tribes or peoples, 
 inhabitants like themselves of Western Asia — if they 
 had the Moabites as tributaries at one time, they in 
 turn were tributaries to Moab at another ; and they 
 never once coped successfully with the Phoenicians, 
 but were always worsted by these, the brave sea- 
 faring folks and colonisers of the ancient world, com- 
 pellers of the winds and waves, navigators of the 
 Midland Sea and rougher Atlantic, and institutors of 
 the system of traffic that binds mankind in bonds of 
 amity over the face of the Globe. 
 
 PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, nAYlTABKET. 
 
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA. 
 
 BECAUSE of the sins of the people, or because he 
 has failed to sanctify Jehovah in some signal 
 way at Meribah, Moses, as we have seen, is not only 
 refused permission to enter the promised land, but is 
 even informed that he is to die on this (the east) side 
 of Jordan. The death of Moses follows hard on the 
 intimation given, and Jehovah then, according to our 
 text, addresses Joshua, saying : — " Moses my servant 
 is dead ; now therefore arise ; go over this Jordan, 
 thou and all the people, unto the land which I do 
 give them, from the wilderness unto Lebanon, the 
 great river Euphrates, and the great sea toward the 
 going down of the sun. Be strong and of good 
 courage, for Jehovah thy God is with thee whither- 
 soever thou goest." Encouraging words as well as 
 commands, which, we may presume, Joshua will not 
 be slack to obey ? 
 
 He forthwith orders his officers to bid the people 
 get ready for an advance by preparing victuals ;* for 
 within three days, says he, ye are to pass the Jordan 
 and go in to possess the land that was promised to 
 your fathers. He then reminds the Reubenites, 
 Gradites, and half-tribe of Manasseh of their engage- 
 ment to aid in the war, until their brethren were 
 settled in the territories beyond, as they themselves 
 had been put in possession of lands on this (the east) 
 side of Jordan. As a preliminary to entering on the 
 great enterprise before him, however, Joshua, not 
 relying entirely on Jehovah's promises, as it might 
 
 * The writer forgets that manna is still the only food of the 
 people, and that it stank forthwith if more was gathered than 
 sufficed for each day's consumption. 
 
442 Joshua. 
 
 seem, is anxious to have some information of bis own 
 as to the state of preparedness for resistance or other- 
 wise of the people about to be invaded ? 
 
 He sends two men across the river to spy and view 
 the land, " even Jericho," the walled town that blocks 
 the way, and must be taken before further advance 
 into the country can be made. Stealing into the 
 town, but not unobserved, as it by and by appears, the 
 spies take up their quarters with a certain Rahab, a 
 harlot, probably surmising that from such as she 
 they might obtain information of the kind they 
 sought. They are soon inquired after by the King 
 of Jericho, however, who sends to Rahab, desiring her 
 to bring forth the men who had entered her house, 
 they having come, as was believed, to spy out the 
 
 lai Joshua's men must have been in great peril of their 
 lives, needlessly exposed, surely, had Jehovah s 
 assurance to Joshua, that he and his were to have- 
 the land, been trusted home. But, engaged m the- 
 godly business of smoothing the way for the con- 
 quest, they will be duly cared for by Rahab the 
 
 harlot? , L n i 
 
 By who but she ; for what was to be expected ot 
 a harlot ? Traitress to her people, as she had already 
 proved false to all that best becomes her sex, instead 
 of delivering up the spies to the ruler like a true 
 woman, she makes terms with them for herself and 
 her kindred in case she conceals them, and favours 
 their escape, having given them the information they 
 sought, as we shall see. She therefore hides the spies 
 until nightfall, pledges her word to the King s mes- 
 sengers that the men had left her house, and putting 
 the searchers on a false scent as to the way they had 
 taken, she enables them to get back to the camp in 
 
 Saf The writer of the story before us is at the pains to 
 find something like an apology for Rahab's treason to 
 her townsfolk in the words he puts into her mouth t 
 
Israel passes Jordan. 
 
 He snows her familiar with the history of the invaders, 
 even from the time of their Egyptian bondage, and 
 makes her tell the spies of the " terror because of 
 these things" that had fallen on her people, " the 
 hearts of all melting within them, and nothing more 
 of courage remaining in any man, for Jehovah your 
 God," she continues, "is God in heaven above and in 
 earth beneath." The writer, it would seem, could 
 not resist an occasion, even through the mouth of an 
 idolatrous harlot, to glorify Jehovah his God ; of whom, 
 nevertheless, the woman Rahab could never have 
 heard, for the all-sufficient reason that he was not 
 known among the Israelites themselves by the name 
 now used until ages after the reputed days of 
 Joshua. 
 
 Rahab, then, has made terms with the spies in 
 return for their safety and the intelligence she has 
 given them. Her house is to be known by a certain 
 sign when the invaders have become masters of 
 the town, and all belonging to her are to be safe 
 whilst the mdiscriminate slaughter in preparation for 
 the other inhabitants is proceeding ? 
 
 As the houses of the Israelites in Egypt were to be 
 known to the destroying angel by the blood on the 
 lintels and door-posts, so is the house of Rahab to be 
 distinguished by a scarlet cord hung from a window, 
 red being a colour with which a certain mystical and 
 sanctifying influence was connected by many of the 
 peoples of antiquity. The images of their gods— 
 those of Dionysus in particular, as we know— were 
 painted red ; the figures of the Chaldsean deities on the 
 wall were "portrayed in vermilion " (Ezek. xxiii. 14) ; 
 and we have seen a scarlet string cast into the fire as 
 part of the rite in preparing the water of purification 
 from the ashes of the red heifer. 
 
 Breaking up from Shittim, in Moab, where they 
 were encamped, the Israelites come to the banks of 
 the Jordan, the priests, the Levites, as said (—but 
 ages before the existence of a levitical priesthood—), 
 
444 Joshua. 
 
 bearing the Ark of the Covenant, leading the way. 
 « And now," says Jehovah to Joshua, will I begin to 
 magnify thee in the sight of Israel, that they ^may 
 know that as I was with Moses so I will be with thee. 
 From such a preamble we may be prepared for some 
 miraculous interposition of the tutelary God 
 
 Which follows forthwith, and is of the same sort 
 as that vouchsafed to Moses, when he and his fugi- 
 tives had the Red Sea before them and were enabled 
 to pass dry-shod through its bed. Joshua and the Is- 
 raelites are now said to cross the swollen ^ Jordan ^ with- 
 out wetting their feet ! "And it came to pass, says 
 the narrator, ignoring the statical law, pre-ordained of 
 the true God, which makes the thing impossible that 
 as soon as the feet of the priests which bare the Ark 
 were dipped in the brim of the water-far Jordan 
 overflowed his banks all the time of harvest-that 
 the waters which came down from above stood and 
 rose up upon an heap, and those that went down 
 towards the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed 
 and were cut off, and the people passed over right 
 aarainst Jericho." . 
 
 Joshua would have this remarkable incident re- 
 corded bv a memorial monument ? 
 
 He orders a man of each of the twelve tribes to 
 shoulder a stone from the midst of Jordan to be a 
 memorial to the children of Israel for ever. As to 
 the way in which these stones are to be disposed of, 
 however, there is, unhappily, discrepancy in the record 
 Bv one text (iv. 3), they are ordered to be carried to 
 (Steal, the place where the people pitched for the 
 night, after passing the river; by another (iv. 9) 
 iheY are to be set up in the midst of Jordan where 
 the feet of the priests stood that bare the Ark ; and 
 ihey are there," says the record, "unto this day. 
 The stones, however, would have proved no very 
 conspicuous monument plunged m the waters of the 
 Jordan. Set up in Gilgal, they would certainly have 
 better served the end proposed. Anyhow, the stones 
 
Records of the Passage, 445 
 
 are presumed to be visible, for the text goes on to 
 say : " When your children shall ask their fathers in 
 time to come, saying : What mean these stones ? 
 Then ye shall say : Israel came over this Jordan on 
 dry land; for Jehovah your God dried up the waters 
 of Jordan, as he did the waters of the Red Sea, until 
 we were gone over ; that all the people of the earth 
 might know the hand of Jehovah that it is mighty." 
 
 Miracles — in other words, contraventions of the 
 order or laws of Nature — were to the Jews of old, as 
 they have still been to the ignorant among other 
 peoples, the great vouchers for the Being and Power 
 of God. To the man of science and liberal culture, on 
 the contrary, a miracle, defined as above, would now 
 prove an insurmountable obstacle instead of a help 
 to belief in the existence of God. God, to him, is 
 Order and Law — not discord and disarray. The tales 
 of miracles met with in all the writings held sacred or 
 inspired, whether of Jew or Gentile, are certain de- 
 monstrations of their source in the mind of man in 
 his state of ignorance and non-age : AS putting God 
 
 IN CONTRADICTION WITH HIMSELF, MIRACLES ARE AT ONCE 
 IMPOSSIBLE AND ABSURD. 
 
 The stones, set up in Gilgal, were " to serve for a 
 memorial to the children of Israel for ever " ? 
 
 Alas for the eternity implied in the words ! There 
 is now no trace of the stones, any more than there is 
 of the people who set them up, save as scattered rem- 
 nants in far-away countries — the people to whom the 
 promise of possession in perpetuity of a land that 
 flowed with milk and honey was so emphatically and 
 so repeatedly made. 
 
 Facts from which we conclude ? 
 
 That the statements are neither from God nor from 
 any of the far-seeing among men, his only oracles, 
 but from presumptuous, short-sighted, and mistaken 
 priests, who lived in relatively recent times compared 
 with those about which they write. 
 
 More than this ? 
 
446 Joshua. 
 
 Tli at the repetitions, contradictions, and confusion 
 so conspicuous in the Book of Joshua make it plain 
 that its compiler had a variety of documents before 
 him, from which, and doubtless also from floating 
 myth and oral tradition, with small amount of critical 
 or editorial tact, he put together the disjointed nar- 
 rative that engages us. 
 
 Yet more ? 
 
 That the constant recurrence of the phrase, unto 
 this day, assures us that the writer is discoursing of 
 events reputed to have happened in ages long gone 
 by. To refer to one, and perchance to dispose of the 
 first of the miracles brought in to magnify Joshua 
 and show the might of Jehovah's hand, we by and 
 by come upon a few words which show us that the 
 Israelites might have crossed the Jordan without any 
 arrest or drying up of its waters, though not without 
 wetting their feet ; for we learn that when the spies 
 escape from Jericho they take their way "to Jordan 
 unto the fords;' and we have notices besides, in other 
 parts of the Hebrew history, of the river haying been 
 repeatedly crossed in after-times in the ordinary way 
 by fording. 
 
 Safely over Jordan, the Israelites will, of course, 
 leave the enemy no time to prepare for resistance ? 
 
 So might we have imagined ; but instead of ad- 
 vancing at once, and laying siege to Jericho, we are 
 told that " at this time " Joshua receives orders from 
 Jehovah to make him sharp knives, or knives of 
 flint, and circumcise the children of Israel — "the 
 second time," says the text— a needless and not very 
 feasible procedure, if the words be taken as they 
 stand. But they cannot be so understood. The rite 
 of initiation which is said to have been practised 
 during the Egyptian bondage — a more than question- 
 able statement— it is now said has been utterly neg- 
 lected since the epoch of the Exodus. _ All the men 
 born during the forty years' wandering in the wilder- 
 ness are therefore without the distinguishing sign of 
 
Orders to Joshua. 
 
 their election, and must by all means be furnished 
 with it before the business of despoiling, driving out, 
 and slaying the enemies of Jehovah, now in posses- 
 sion of the promised land, can be begun. The time 
 chosen for the ceremony, however, seems as little 
 opportune as the speed with which it is accomplished 
 is extraordinary. 
 How may this be ? 
 
 The invaders are but just entered into the enemy's 
 country, and have a walled town before and a deep 
 and swollen river behind them — a dangerous strate- 
 gical position, which Joshua, we must presume, was 
 too good a soldier not to understand. He will, there- 
 fore, we may expect, like Moses on various occasions, 
 remonstrate with Jehovah ; show the danger to which 
 he is exposed by the order, and beg him to recall 
 it. Bat Joshua seems never to have felt himself on 
 the same familiar footing with his God as Moses, and 
 offers no remonstrance. Having crossed the Jordan 
 on the 10th of Nisan, he proceeds immediately, 
 according to the record, to circumcise the males 
 among the children of Israel who had been born 
 within the last forty years. 
 
 The number of able-bodied men having been found 
 nearly the same as when the census took place at 
 Sinai, the time required to do so must have been 
 considerable ? 
 
 The operation in question is one of some nicety, 
 not to be done off-hand in a hurry ; and were the 
 amputation the affair of a moment the subsequent 
 dressing would take time. A simple arithmetical 
 calculation shows conclusively that it could not have 
 bsen accomplished between the 10th and the 14th of 
 the month ISTisan, when the Feast of the Passover 
 is said to have been kept, and the people, therefore, 
 are presumed to be healed, and able to move about. 
 Were five minutes allowed in each case, and the 
 operator tasked to work twelve hours every day 
 during six days of the week, the time required to 
 
448 Joshua. 
 
 operate on something over 600,000 men would be 
 thirteen years and more ! By miraculous interposi- 
 tion only, therefore, could the business have been 
 got through in the three days between the 10th and 
 14th Nisan ; and even then, another miracle would 
 have been wanted to heal the people in so short a 
 space of time. The circumcising done somehow, 
 however, as said, Jehovah speaks to Joshua, and 
 says : — 
 
 " This day have I rolled away the reproach of 
 Egypt from off you." 
 
 Can we as reasonable men believe that such words 
 ever came from God ? 
 
 We have already had occasion to say that God 
 cannot be conceived as speaking save through the 
 mouth of man. He, therefore, we conclude, was 
 mistaken who said that God spoke ; as he too erred 
 who imagined that the Egyptians bore about them a 
 badge of reproach in that which has now been cut off 
 in Israel, or that God's handiwork can be amended 
 by any interference of man. Far from symbolising 
 their superiority over other peoples, the initiatory rite 
 of the Jews is persistent testimony to the essentially 
 sensual character of the religious system they inherit 
 from their forefathers ; worshippers as they were of 
 the nature God under a certain symbol, frequently 
 characterised as the abomination in their writings, ard 
 against the display of which, as we apprehend it, in 
 the Temple, we find several of the more modem 
 prophets loud in their denunciations. 
 
 We have practices analogous in some sort to tie 
 Jewish rite, though with ]ess of meaning, among 
 races we characterise as savage, whilst we are wont 
 to think of the ancient Israelites as the elect of God, 
 and continue to take them for our masters in religion ? 
 
 Setting the religious aspect of circumcision aside, 
 we see savages in some quarters of the globe knock- 
 ing out a front tooth or two, cutting off a joint from 
 one of their fingers, or slitting their nether lip, and 
 
Apparition to Joshua. 
 
 distending it with a bung, by way of improving them- 
 selves, doubtless, and " rolling away the reproach " 
 of a neighbouring tribe who have no such notable 
 mode of showing their superiority to the rest of 
 barbarous humanity. 
 
 The flint knife, enjoined in the marginal reading of 
 our English version, is remarkable ? 
 
 And not uninteresting from an archaeological point 
 of view, as pointing to times when tools of bronze and 
 iron were still unknown ; to times when a certain sanc- 
 tity was attached to stones ; when they were set up 
 under trees as emblems of the Generative Power, when 
 they were thought to be possessed of sense, and were 
 even worshipped as Gods,* and when the only 
 cutting instruments owned by man were flints and 
 agates chipped or ground to an edge. The early God 
 of Israel would not have his altar built of dressed 
 stones ; it must be of unhewn blocks : " If ye lift up 
 a tool upon it, ye have polluted it." 
 
 Here we encounter another of those strange and 
 meaningless interruptions of the narrative, of which 
 we have had more than one instance already ? 
 
 Having been informed that the Passover was 
 observed on the 14th of Nisan, and that the manna 
 ceased as soon as the children of Israel began to eat 
 of the fruits of the land of Canaan, we are told 
 that " it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho, 
 that he lifted up his eyes, and behold there stood a 
 man over against him, with his sword drawn in his 
 hand ; and Joshua said to him : Art thou for us or 
 for our adversaries ? And he said : Nay ; but as 
 Captain of the host of Jehovah am I now come. 
 And Joshua fell on his face on the earth and did wor- 
 ship, and said : What saith my Lord unto his servant ? 
 And the Captain of Jehovah's host said unto Joshua : 
 
 * "And Joshua took a great stone and set it up under an 
 oak, and said to the people : Behold, this stone shall be a 
 witness unto us, for it hath heard all the words of the Lord 
 which he spake unto us."— Joshua, xxiv. 26, 27, 
 
Joshua. 
 
 Loose thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place 
 whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did 
 so." 
 
 This on the face of it is no very important informa- 
 tion ; neither is the act required of such significance 
 as to have needed so august a presence as the Captain 
 of Jehovah's host to make it ? 
 
 Surely it is not ; for one foot's breadth of earth is 
 as holy as another ; and the only difference between 
 the shod and unshod foot is that one rests on dressed 
 and the other on undressed hide. The mere intima- 
 tion that the speaker was the " Captain of Jehovah's 
 host," moreover, must have left Joshua in the dark 
 as to the purport of the visit paid him ; the indefinite 
 " Nay " of the visitor to his challenge leaving it 
 open to question which side the Captain of the host 
 was to take in the impending engagement before 
 Jericho. Gilgal, however, was one of the oldest and 
 for long among the most renowned of their holy places 
 to the children of Israel. The apparition and intima- 
 tion may therefore have been contrived by the writer 
 to illustrate the antiquity and peculiar sanctity of 
 the site ; or it may have been introduced as a parallel 
 to the vision vouchsafed to Moses in the burning 
 bush on Mount Horeb when he was ordered to take 
 off his shoes, the ground on which he stood being 
 holy. The Captain of Jehovah's host, to conclude, 
 bears a highly suspicious likeness to one of the 
 Amschaspands of the Zoroastrian system, and may 
 help to confirm us in our persuasion that the writing 
 before us must be referred to times posterior to the 
 Babylonian captivity. 
 
 Resuming the thread of the story, we are informed 
 that Jericho is at length laid siege to and closely shut 
 up — none coming out, none going in — and that 
 Jehovah himself condescends to give certain new 
 and hitherto unheard-of orders for the conduct of 
 the siege. For six successive days the besiegers are 
 to compass the city once on each day, the priests bear- 
 
Jericho taken and Cherem. 451 
 
 ing the Ark and blowing on the sacred trumpets of 
 rams' horns as they march ; but on the seventh 
 day — violation of the Sabbath, by the way, and 
 giving us to know that the Commandment to keep 
 it holy could not yet have been known — on the 
 seventh day they are to compass it as many as seven 
 times, and the blasts on the ram's horn trumpets are 
 to be louder than ever. At the proper moment 
 Joshua is to stretch out his hand with his spear, the 
 priests are to blow their best, and the people are to 
 shout with a loud voice, on which the walls will fall 
 down and the city will be won ! 
 
 Such a mode of taking Jericho could hardly have 
 been contemplated by Joshua when he sent out the 
 spies and confirmed the compact made with Rahab ; 
 any information he may have had from her through 
 them being turned to no account. All, however, is 
 done according to superior orders ? 
 
 And the result follows : The rams' horns are 
 lustily blown ; Joshua raises his spear ; the people 
 shout ; the walls tumble down ; and the Israelites 
 walk into Jericho without striking a blow. 
 
 The inhabitants, innocent of all offence, thus 
 miraculously thrown on the mercy of the invaders, 
 will, we may presume, be ordered by Jehovah to be 
 mercifully dealt with ? 
 
 Coming commissioned by their God, as they im- 
 agined, to spoil and to slay, mercy in the early 
 Israelitish wars was a thing unknown. On the con- 
 trary, the city had been proclaimed Cherem to Jehovah, 
 and we know what that implies : Every living thing 
 within it must be put to death, and every lifeless 
 thing consumed by fire. " The city," says the leader, 
 " shall be devoted, even it and all that are therein, to 
 Jehovah ; only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and 
 those that are with her in the house, because she hid 
 the messengers that we sent." " And," proceeds 
 the story, " they utterly destroyed all that was in the 
 city, both men and women, young and old ; ox, sheep, 
 
452 Joshua, 
 
 and ass." All that breathed were put to the sword, 
 and the city, with all it contained, was burned to the 
 ground ; " only the silver and the gold, and the vessels 
 of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the 
 house of Jehovah." 
 
 Not content with burning Jericho to the ground, 
 Joshua, for no conceivable reason, would never have 
 it rise from its ruins. " Cursed be the man before 
 Jehovah," says he, " that riseth up and buildeth 
 Jericho ; he shall lay the foundation thereof in his 
 first-born, and in his youngest shall he set up the 
 gates of it." 
 
 But Jericho, had it ever been ruined, must by 
 and by have been rebuilt, notwithstanding Joshua's 
 curse ; for David desires the messengers he had sent 
 to congratulate Nahum on his accession to the throne 
 of Ammon, but who having been mistaken for spies 
 had been ill-used by the Ammonites, to tarry at 
 Jericho until the signs of the disgrace put upon them 
 had disappeared. " Tarry at Jericho until your 
 beards be grown, and then return," are the words of 
 King David (II. Samuel, x. 5). At a much later 
 period in the history of Israel, indeed, and to make 
 matters tally with Joshua's denunciation, it may be 
 supposed, we learn that in the reign of Ahab, more 
 than five centuries after the age of Joshua, " Hiel 
 built Jericho, and laid the foundation thereof in 
 Aborim, his first-born, and set up the gate thereof 
 in his youngest son, Segub (I. Kings, xvi. 34). 
 The interdict assigned to Joshua is, therefore, from 
 one who lived during or after the reign of King Ahab, 
 
 Jericho is ruined, then, but faith is kept with 
 Eahab ? 
 
 She, her father's household, and all that she had, 
 it is said, were saved alive, " because she hid the 
 messengers which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho; and 
 she dwelleth in Israel unto this day." 
 
 Were the text to be taken quite literally, Rahab 
 would appear to have been very long lived ? 
 
Achan Transgresses. 453 
 
 Rahab may possibly be here used in a generic 
 sense : — Rahab and her daughters dwell among our- 
 selves even unto this day I 
 
 When a town was declared to be Cherem, or 
 devoted, it was of course unlawful for individuals to 
 appropriate any part of the spoil ? 
 
 All then belonged exclusively to Jehovah ; in other 
 words, what was not put to death and burnt came to 
 the priesthood ; and, that no one might trespass 
 through ignorance, Joshua has been particular in 
 warning the people against theft — the unpardonable 
 sin, in such a case : — " Keep ye in anywise from the 
 thing that is devoted, lest ye make yourselves 
 devoted," says he, and so implicate the camp of 
 Israel and trouble it. But Achan, the son of Carmi, 
 has been imprudent enough to take of the devoted 
 thing, and the anger of Jehovah is kindled against 
 Israel. 
 
 Achan's transgression of the law of Cherem be- 
 comes known in rather a roundabout way ? 
 
 Proceeding with his work of conquest, not witting 
 that aught has been done amiss, Joshua sends out 
 spies to take the measure of the next town that lay in 
 the way — Ai by name. The spies return and report 
 the place of little strength, and its defenders few ; a 
 body of two or three thousand men, say they, would 
 suffice to smite it. So a corps of three thousand is 
 told off for the duty. But they behave ill ; they flee 
 before the men of Ai, six-and-thirty of them are slain, 
 and the rest are chased from before the gate of the 
 town unto Shibarim ; " wherefore the hearts of the 
 people melted and became as water." 
 
 Joshua takes this much to heart ? 
 
 He rends his clothes, falls on his face before the 
 Ark, with the Elders of Israel puts dust upon his 
 head, and says : — "Alas, O Jehovah God ! wherefore 
 hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan to 
 deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy 
 us ? Would to God we had been content and dwelt 
 
Joshua, 
 
 on the other side Jordan ! 0 Jehovah ! what shall I 
 say when Israel turneth their backs before their 
 enemies ? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants 
 of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us 
 round and cut off our name from the earth ; and what 
 wilt thou do for thy name, the mighty ?" (De Wette.) 
 
 This is surely not a becoming address on the part 
 of Joshua; reproachful as it is to Jehovah and 
 unworthy of himself as leader of the host. Instead of 
 owning that his men had been seized with a panic 
 fear, or that he had erred in sending an inadequate 
 force against Ai, he throws the blame of the defeat 
 upon his God, and even threatens him with the evil 
 constructions of the Canaanites for having led his 
 elect into difficulties. But Jehovah comes to the 
 foolish mortal's aid, though addressing him in terms 
 more brusque than we have been wont to find applied 
 to Moses when he has ventured to ask his God what 
 the Egyptians would think of him did he not carry 
 his people triumphantly through their troubles : — 
 " Get thee up," says Jehovah ; " wherefore liest thou 
 thus upon thy face ? Israel hath sinned ; they have 
 taken of the accursed [devoted] thing, and have also 
 stolen and put it among their own stuff." 
 
 Jehovah is made by the writer to look sharply 
 after his interests — he will have nothing that should 
 be his appropriated by another ; he even knows 
 where the things purloined have been bestowed. So 
 he is reported as saying farther to Joshua Up, 
 sanctify the people; for thus saith Jehovah, the God 
 of Israel : There is an accursed [devoted] thing in 
 the midst of thee, O Israel ; therefore the children of 
 Israel could not stand before their enemies, because 
 they were accursed ; neither will I be with you any 
 more except ye destroy the accursed from among 
 you. And it shall be that he that is taken with the 
 accursed thing shall be burned with fire, he and all 
 that he hath." 
 
 A little leaven leavens the lump, indeed ; but were 
 
Achat? s Punishment. 
 
 one thief among thousands to make cowards of the 
 rest, there would, we trow, be little courage in any 
 army that ever took the field, whether in ancient or 
 modern times. The virtuous Israelites, however, who 
 had never, in a body, borrowed silver and gold, and 
 fine raiment from the Egyptians, at the instigation of 
 their God, as they say, must now be purged of the 
 offender who had taken to himself of the devoted 
 thing. But why Jehovah, who is cognisant of the 
 theft, should not also have instantly pointed out the 
 thief, does not appear. Lots are the means adopted 
 for finding him out ; and though we know that the 
 lot is as likely to fall on the innocent as on the guilty, 
 inasmuch as a miracle was now required, so is it forth- 
 coming, and Achan the son of Oarmi, the delinquent, 
 is taken. 
 
 His guilt divulged, Joshua addresses the culprit ? 
 
 In a speech that begins in a fine fatherly spirit, but 
 does not so end assuredly : " My son," says Joshua, 
 " give, I pray thee, glory to Jehovah, God of Israel ! 
 Make confession unto Eim, and tell me now what 
 thou hast done ?" To which the unhappy Achan 
 replies most penitently now that he is known for the 
 thief : " Indeed I have sinned, and thus have I done. 
 When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonian 
 garment and two hundred shekels of silver and a 
 wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I took 
 them, and they are hid in the earth in the midst of my 
 tent." And there, sure enough, as Jehovah had indi- 
 cated, the stolen things are found " among the other 
 stuff." "And Joshua and all Israel with him," continues 
 the record, "took Achan and the gold, and the silver, 
 and the garment, and his sons and his daughters, and 
 his oxen and his asses and his sheep, and his tent, 
 and all that he had, and they brought them to the 
 Valley of Achor, and all Israel stoned them with 
 stones, and burned them with fire after they had 
 stoned them with stones. So Jehovah turned from 
 the fierceness of his anger." 
 
456 Joshua. 
 
 The story here must surely be apocryphal, — in- 
 vented for a purpose ? 
 
 It has every appearance of being so at all events ; 
 yet may it have an old tradition for its root. The 
 God of the early Israelites was by no means the God 
 of their later descendants, the Jews. He was a 
 jealous, revengeful, partial being, never to be ap- 
 proached empty-handed, only to be appeased by the 
 sacrifice of life through the shedding of blood, and 
 not to be defrauded of his share of the spoil. The 
 tale, however, may have been invented as a pendant 
 to the story of Phinehas, when he slew Zimri and 
 Cozbi at a blow, and so stayed the pestilence that was 
 making such havoc in the camp. Or it may have 
 been devised to terrify the people against all privy 
 appropriation of aught especially that was held by 
 prescriptive right to belong to the priesthood. 
 
 Achan is the sole offender ; but we find that he 
 alone is not made to suffer for his crime ? 
 
 In old and barbarous times, as among some savage 
 or half-civilised communities in the present day, all 
 that belonged to the house were held answerable for 
 the act of its head— wives, sons, daughters, cattle, 
 goods and chattels— all that breathed died, and all 
 that had value was burned or confiscated, in case the 
 penalty for the deed done were death. 
 
 And wholesale sacrifices of the kind were required 
 by Jehovah, God of Israel ? 
 
 So says the record : " Joshua and all Israel took 
 Achan and all that belonged to him unto the valley of 
 Achor, and the leader addressing the offender, said to 
 him: Why hast thou troubled us? Jehovah shall 
 trouble thee this day. And Israel stoned him with 
 stones and burned them with fire ; so Jehovah turned 
 from the fierceness of his anger." 
 
 What are we in these days to think of the tales of 
 such horrors ? 
 
 m We are to see them for what they are: libels on 
 humanity, blasphemies against the Supreme. Their 
 
Ai to be 'Taken. 
 
 457 
 
 writers may have thought that their God Jehovah re- 
 quired silver and gold, and brass and iron, and the 
 blood of the innocent as well as the guilty to appease 
 his anger; but we who live in this 19th century of 
 the Christian era know that God, the Ineffable 
 Supreme, requires nothing of us but love of him and 
 love of our neighbour, in other words, obedience to 
 his laws and deed towards our neighbour as we would 
 have deed from him to us. Let the writings before 
 us therefore be seen for what they are — records of a 
 barbarous age, delivered by unenlightened men, and 
 unworthy longer to be looked on as the word of God 
 or as means available for the education and improve- 
 ment of the world. The mention of the Babylo- 
 nian garment might assure us that so much of the 
 tale as refers to it, must at all events be of modern 
 date ; for a horde escaped from slavery and but just 
 setting foot on the southern confines of Palestine, 
 after long wandering in the wilderness, could have 
 known nothing of Babylonian garments ; and we 
 may be well assured that the tents and hamlets of 
 the Amorites were as little familiar with shekels of 
 silver and wedges of gold in the days of Joshua as he 
 and his warriors could possibly have been. These 
 are all particulars added to colour a tale of late in- 
 vention that most certainly can form no part of the 
 true word of God to man. 
 
 The town of Ai, however, stands in the way, and 
 must be taken ; and Jehovah, not trusting as yet en- 
 tirely to the _ military genius of Joshua, though the 
 Captain of his own choice, proceeds to give him par- 
 ticular instructions as to how he is to set about the 
 business :— " Take all the people of war with thee," says 
 Jehovah, "and arise; go up to Ai; see, I have given 
 into thy hand the King and his people, the city and 
 the land ; and thou shalt do to Ai and her King 
 as thou didst to Jericho and her King ; only the 
 spoil thereof and the cattle thereof shall ye take for 
 a prey to yourselves. Lay thee an ambush for the city 
 
45 8 
 
 Joshua. 
 
 behind it." And this Joshua proceeds to do ; he sends 
 30,000 mighty men of valour" away by night to lie 
 in ambush and attack the city from behind, whilst he 
 himself with 5,000 more will make a feint of attack- 
 ing it in front. " And it shall come to pass," says he, 
 " that when they come out against us we will flee before 
 them, and they will follow after us;" seeing which 
 the 30,000 men in ambush are to show themselves and 
 seize on the city ; "for Jehovah your God," continues 
 the tale, " will 'deliver it into your hand ; and when ye 
 have taken the city, ye shall set it on fire : according 
 to the commandment of Jehovah shall ye do." 
 
 Jehovah, portrayed ruthless as ever, appears even 
 to have been on the field in person upon this occasion ? 
 
 Like the Gods of other ancient peoples, he of the 
 Israelites is presumed to be there to help his friends 
 and discomfit their enemies. Venus, in the Iliad, 
 shields Paris when in danger, and favours the Tro- 
 jans ; Pallas has Achilles and the Greeks under her 
 protection ; and so in the Jahvehiad is Jehovah with 
 the Israelites in the fight before Ai. The men of the 
 feint on this side the city take to flight when attacked ; 
 the defenders pursue; and now, says Jehovah to 
 Joshua, " Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand 
 toward Ai, and I will give it into thy hand." Joshua 
 brandishes his spear, the ambush of 30,000 arise (an 
 ambuscade of 30,000 men !), march into Ai, set it 
 on fire as commanded, smite the inhabitants from 
 behind, as its defenders are now smitten by Joshua 
 and his party in front, and the day is won. " They 
 let none of them escape ; Joshua drew not his hand 
 back wherewith he stretched out the spear until he 
 had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. And 
 all that fell on that day, both of men and women, 
 were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai, but 
 they took the King alive, and brought him to Joshua." 
 The cattle and spoil are appropriated by Israel, and 
 the town is burnt and made " a heap of desolation 
 unto this day." The unoffending Chief of Ai, to con- 
 
Ai Destroyed. 459 
 
 elude the bloody business, is hanged on a tree until 
 sun-down (in other words, he is crucified as a sacri- 
 fice to the sun-god), when his body is cast before the 
 gate of what was the city of his people, and a heap of 
 stones is raised over it that "remaineth unto this 
 day." 
 
 So much for Ai, its King, and its people, thus 
 dealt with in furtherance of Jehovah's promise to the 
 forefathers of Israel to give them a land that flowed 
 with milk and honey. Would not Blood and Tears, to 
 judge from the tales before us, have been better 
 chosen words ? Let the reader refer to the sieges of 
 Jericho and Ai as first acts in the drama of getti no- 
 possession of the covenanted land, and answer 
 bravely to his own conscience whether they would or 
 not. 
 
 And what are we as reasonable, merciful, and 
 responsible men, with the details of such atrocities 
 before us, to think of those theologians of the present 
 age who persist in forcing the writings of a barbarous 
 people upon us as the source— sole source, moreover 
 —-whence passably becoming ideas of God and his 
 dealings with the world are to be derived ? 
 
 As reasonable and not utterly benighted men we 
 are to think and feel assured that they are altogether 
 unreasonable, and are living in a state either of wilful 
 or unconscious blindness,* 
 
 After his triumphs at Jericho and Ai, Joshua builds 
 an altar of whole stones, as said, to Jehovah, God 
 of Israel— Jahveh-Elohe-Israel— on which burnt-offer- 
 ings and peace-offerings are presented, and on the 
 stones of which it is composed a copy of the Law of 
 Moses is engraved, not a word of all that Moses com- 
 manded being omitted in the writing, or in the reading- 
 aloud to the people which followed ? 
 
 * Well may Strauss have said: "How manv of the laifv 
 understand the Bible 1-how many of the clergVundersS 
 it? -how many of them are willing to understand it tr 
 
460 Joshua. 
 
 This, in part at least, is somewhat extraordinary 
 intelligence— circumstance, matter, time, and place 
 considered ; for the altar is set np on Mount Ebal 
 and all that passes by the name of Law of Moses could 
 scarcely have been engraved on its twelve unhewn 
 stones. But Mount Ebal is in Samaria, some days 
 inarch away for an army operating in Canaan with its 
 base at Gilgal ; and it is now quite certain that no- 
 thing was known among the Israelites under the title 
 of Law of Moses until the reign of Hezekiah,_ seven 
 hundred years after the days of Joshua, according to 
 the usual reckoning. . ' * , 
 
 Seeing the difficulty of engraving the whole ot the 
 Pentateuch or Thora on twelve rough stones, Bible 
 harmonists have said that it was the abstract ot the 
 Law comprised, in the book of Deuteronomy which 
 Joshua carved on the stones ? . 
 
 An assumption, however, by which the dimculty is 
 not got over ; for every competent and candid critic 
 now knows that Deuteronomy is among the most 
 modern of the five so-called books of Moses, and that 
 the bulk of the book, with the exception of a few 
 verses met with here and there copied from Exodus, 
 Leviticus, and Numbers, does not date from days 
 farther back than the reign of Josiah. 
 
 Others of the inhabitants of Canaan are now said 
 to take alarm at the terrible doings of the Israelites ? 
 
 The Kings of the Amorites, Hittites, Canaanites, 
 and other septs dwelling on this or the western side 
 of Jordan, hearing of what has been done to Jericho 
 and Ai, band themselves together and prepare to resist 
 the invaders. But the people of Gibeon, nearer the 
 scene of action, stricken with a panic fear, as it seems, 
 and despairing of any effectual resistance, go otherwise 
 to work, and succeed by guile in binding Joshua and 
 the princes of Israel by an oath to spare their lives. 
 A deputation present themselves in the camp, and 
 make show of having come from afar : the sacks and 
 wine-skins they have with them being old and rent, 
 
The Gibeonites. 
 
 461 
 
 their clothes patched, their shoes clouted, and the 
 bread they still possess, " though taken hot from the 
 oven when they set out," as they say, being now 
 " dry and mouldy." Joshua inquires of them who 
 they are, and from whence they come ? From a far 
 country, say they in reply ; and having, like Rahab 
 the harlot, heard of the great fame of Jehovah the 
 God of Israel, and all he had done for his people in 
 Egypt, against Sihon, King of Heshbon, and Og, 
 King of Bashan, against the Amorites beyond Jordan, 
 and doubtless also against the people of Jericho ancL 
 Ai, they had come their long journey to entreat the 
 leader of the dreaded host to enter into a league of 
 amity with them. 
 
 Joshua falls into the snare ? 
 
 " Because he had not asked counsel at the mouth 
 of Jehovah," says the text, " he made peace with them 
 and let them live, all the princes of the congregation 
 swearing to the league." Had he but taken counsel 
 of the mouth of Jehovah, as he ought to have done, 
 he would have been better advised : instead of en- 
 gaging to let them live, he would doubtless have 
 found himself authorised to deal with them in another 
 fashion. Commanded to hold them Cherem, as in 
 other instances, he would have been enjoined to slay 
 and despoil, instead of simply enslaving and putting 
 them to tribute. All that breathed — men and women, 
 old and young — would then have been put to death, 
 and the silver and gold, the brass and iron they pos- 
 sessed been paid into the treasury of the God ! 
 
 Joshua and the Israelites, of course, soon discover 
 that they have been imposed upon — that the footsore 
 and ragged deputation came from no far-off country, 
 but verily from the cities of Gibeon, Cephirah, 
 Beeroth, and Kirjath-Jearim, all close at hand ? 
 
 The people, therefore, murmur against Joshua and 
 their chiefs : they would much have preferred putting 
 the Gibeonites to the sword, and appropriating their 
 spoil ; " but they smote them not, because of the oath 
 
462 
 
 Joshua. 
 
 of the princes," and are pacified by having them made 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water to the congre- 
 gation of Israel. Joshua, we need not doubt, rates 
 the deputation soundly for having deceived him, they 
 pleading in excuse the rumour gone abroad that 
 Jehovah the God of Israel had commanded his ser- 
 vant Moses to give his people all the land for a pos- 
 session, and to destroy all its native inhabitants from 
 before them. Joshua therefore keeps the hands of 
 the children of Israel from the throats of the Gibeon- 
 ites ; but, as the story says, " he made them hewers 
 of wood and drawers of water for the congregation 
 and for the altar of Jehovah in the place which he 
 should choose, even unto this day." 
 
 How may this be interpreted ? 
 
 The hierodouli or slaves of the Temple, built by 
 King Solomon— -if it were not perchance of the second 
 Temple, built by the remnant that returned ^ from 
 their captivity in Babylon— on Mount Moriah, in the 
 city of Jerusalem, are turned by the writer into 
 Gibeonites subdued by Joshua. 
 
 The Gibeonites have made peace with Joshua then, 
 but the Kings or chiefs of the cantons, their neigh- 
 bours, threaten them for having come to terms with 
 the invader ? 
 
 Five of these Kings gather their fighting men 
 together, and make war on Gibeon for its selfish 
 desertion of the common cause. But Gibeon sends 
 to Joshua at Gilgal, entreating for speedy succour and 
 assistance ; all the Kings of the Amorites that dwell 
 on the mountains being now gathered, as they say, 
 against them. Joshua is not slow to obey the 
 summons of his new allies. He moves at once from 
 Gilgal in the night ; falls suddenly on the host of the 
 five confederates, discomfits them, and slays them 
 with a great slaughter. But he has not been 
 without a powerful ally of another kind than the 
 dastardly Gibeonites to' aid in the work of destruc- 
 tion, for " Jehovah," as we learn, " cast down great 
 
Still-stand of the Sun. 
 
 463 
 
 stones from Heaven upon them, so that there were 
 more that died with hail-stones than the children 
 of Israel slew with the sword." More than this, 
 and still more marvellous, it is here we read that 
 Joshua, addressing Jehovah, says, in the sight of 
 Israel, " San, stand thou still upon Gibeon ; and 
 thou moon in the Valley of Ajalon. And the sun 
 stood still in the midst of Heaven, and hasted not 
 his going down a whole day." The moon, too, 
 although her light could not have been wanted in face 
 of the sun, paused, it is said, in her course, whilst the 
 chosen seed avenged themselves on their enemies. 
 "And there was no day like that before or after it, 
 that Jehovah hearkened to the voice of a man ; for 
 Jehovah fought for Israel." We have so often had 
 occasion to differ from the writer that for once we 
 rejoice to find ourselves in accord with him : there 
 certainly never was, and never will, " until chaos come 
 again," be a day like that which saw the sun stand 
 still in Heaven, and haste not his going down for a 
 whole day at the word of a man ! 
 
 Had the writer been content with his hail-stones of 
 Jehovah — in other words, his great hail-stones— it 
 would not have been difficult to admit that such a 
 contingency as a hail-storm occurring in the course of 
 a skirmish in Judea was well within the limits of 
 possibility, but the standing still of the sun and moon 
 in Heaven, in other words, the arrest of the earth in 
 its revolution, to give Israel the better opportunity to 
 slaughter the Amorites, takes the tale entirely out of 
 the pale of belief. Such an occurrence, as against 
 Nature, i.e., against God, is an absolute impossibility. 
 The narrator himself, indeed, must have had mis- 
 givings as to the credibility and reception of his 
 story, for he seeks either to bolster it up, or to shift; 
 the responsibility for its truth from his own to 
 another's shoulders, appealing as he does to an 
 inaccessible source as his authority. " Is not this 
 written," says he, "in the Sepher Haijashar ? " — the 
 
464 Joshua, 
 
 Book of the Just, now lost to us. Beference to such 
 a document shows that the writer drew from an older 
 source than is the text in which we have his tale, 
 a document, however, that certainly did not date 
 so far back as the days of Joshua, inasmuch as we 
 learn elsewhere (II. Samuel, i. 17 and seq.) that it 
 is from the Sepher Haijashar that the touching 
 lament, put into the mouth of David for Saul and 
 Jonathan, is derived. The Book of Joshua, conse- 
 quently, could not have been compiled and put 
 together in the indifferent fashion in which it meets 
 ns until after the reign of David, second King of 
 Israel. 
 
 This tale of the standing still of the sun and moon 
 in their apparent course must surely be one of the 
 parts of the Old Testament which, in face of the 
 science of our age, has failed to find apologists ? 
 
 So might we have expected. Nevertheless, at- 
 tempts have not only been made to explain away but 
 even to defend the statement, and in the physical 
 impossibility implied to find an illustration of the 
 povjer — we do not know that any one has ventured to 
 add : of the goodness and mercy of Grod. But early 
 indoctrination still makes men incompetent to see 
 things as they are, and lets them of the power to dis- 
 tinguish between what is no more than contingent 
 statement and that which is absolute or necessary truth. 
 Blind sentiment then takes the lead of open-eyed in- 
 telligence, and blank absurdity and hideous cruelty 
 are seen in the disguise of wisdom and beneficence.* 
 
 * It is not a little extraordinary that so bold a thinker 
 and, in matters of science, so well-informed a man as Spinoza 
 should have heen tempted to offer a natural explanation of 
 the myth relating the still-stand of the sun and moon at the 
 word of Joshua. He says (assuming it as a fact that the day- 
 light lasted longer than usual) that Joshua and those about 
 him, ignorant of the true cause of the longer continuance of 
 the light they witnessed, believed that the sun stood still on 
 the day in question. They never thought of referring it to 
 
Hanging before the Sun. 
 
 With the great ally he had, or thought he had, in 
 his God Jehovah, Joshua could not fail to put the five 
 Kings of the Amorites, in alliance against Gibeon, to 
 the rout ? 
 
 They are defeated, as matter of course, with signal 
 slaughter of their peoples, they themselves only 
 escaping immediate death by hiding in a cave at 
 Makkedah. This being told to Joshua, he, to make 
 sure of his prey yet not to interrupt the pursuit and 
 slaughter, orders great stones to be rolled to the 
 mouth of the cave, and a guard set over it. " Pursue 
 after your enemies and smite them," says he ; " suffer 
 them not to enter into their cities ; for Jehovah your 
 God hath delivered them into your hand." The 
 triumph complete, Joshua and the men of war return 
 to the camp at Makkedah, and— vce victis /—it is now 
 the turn of the chiefs who are hidden in the cave : — 
 " Bring forth those five Kings unto me out of the 
 cave," says Joshua. Calling his officers about him, 
 he bids them put their feet on the necks of the pros- 
 trate chiefs, and assures them that if they continue 
 strong and of good courage, thus will Jehovah aid 
 them to do to all against whom they fight. But this 
 is not yet the end ; for Joshua, continues the record, 
 inspired by Jehovah, and with his own hand, we may 
 presume, even as Samuel did to Agag, " smote them 
 and slew them, and hanged them on five trees until 
 the going down of the sun." The dead bodies were 
 then taken down and thrown into the cave wherein, 
 having sought a refuge, they now found a grave ; its 
 mouth, to conclude, being stopped up with great 
 stones, "which remain unto this day." 
 
 Such hangings up before the sun, or until the going 
 down of the sun, so frequently mentioned in the He- 
 
 any less obvious cause, such as the ice and hail which then filled 
 the air, and might have given rise to a higher refractive power in 
 the atmosphere than usual— -Tr. Theol. Polit., ch ii. p 60 of 
 the English version. ' 
 
466 Joshua, 
 
 brew Scriptures, must be presumed to have a special 
 significance ? 
 
 That they have, cannot be doubted, and that they 
 were sacrificial is scarcely questionable. The trees on 
 which the suspensions took place were crucifixes, and 
 the attitude of the victim was that which appears to 
 have been assumed by the Semitic peoples generally 
 in the act of adoration. At the dedication of the 
 Temple, for instance, Solomon, it is said, " stood 
 before the altar of Jehovah and spread forth his hands 
 towards heaven and said : Jehovah, God of Israel, 
 there is no God like thee," &c. ; and when he had 
 made an end of " praying all this prayer and suppli- 
 cation unto Jehovah, he arose from kneeling on his 
 knees with his hands spread up to heaven " (1 Kings, 
 viii. 22 and 54). Those stretchings out of the arms, 
 again, with or without the Bod of God in his hand, of 
 which we read so frequently in connection with the 
 mythical history of Moses, must have had the same 
 significance — they implied prayer and adoration. 
 Moses stretches out his hand when he divides the 
 flood of the Red Sea and when he draws water from 
 the rock, but most notably of all when he gains the 
 victory over Amalek. Waited on by Aaron and Hur, 
 he has ascended the hill that overlooks the field ; 
 "arid it was seen," says the text, "that when Moses 
 held up his hands, that Israel prevailed, and when 
 he let down his hands, that Amalek prevailed. But 
 Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone and 
 put it under him, and he sat thereon ; and Aaron and 
 Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, the 
 other on the other side, until the going down of the sun. 
 And Joshua discomfited Amalek." (Ex.xvii.) The rude 
 Figure in the woodcut on the next page, after a Votive 
 Tablet of Hicembalis, King of Massylia and Numidia, 
 to his Deity the Sun- God Baal— older in all likelihood 
 than anything we have in the Hebrew Scriptures— is 
 in the very attitude of the victim on the accursed 
 tree as well as of Moses and Solomon in the act of 
 
Joshua Victorious. 
 
 467 
 
 prayer, and is surely not a little interesting when 
 seen in connection with the great Catholic Christian 
 symbol of medieval and modern times.* 
 
 Joshua, to whom the idea of mercy appears to have 
 been unknown— as, indeed, it would have been out 
 of season, acting as he does under orders from Jeho- 
 vah to smite and not to spare — never pauses now in 
 his career of conquest over the tribes standing in the 
 
 * The rude and very ancient tablet figured above was 
 brought by Sir Grenville Temple, in 1833, from Magrawa, 
 the site of a Lybo-Phcenician settlement in the Beylik of 
 Tunis, and is described and figured in the Trans, of the Royal 
 Asiatic Society for 1834. The inscription in the Phoenician 
 character has been deciphered by Gesenius : Scripturse Lin- 
 guaeque Phoenicia Monumenta, 4to, Lips. 1837, and is to the 
 following effect :— Domino Baali Solari, Rege Eterno, qui 
 exaudivit preces Hicembalis : "To the Sun-God Baal, Eternal 
 -King, who heard the prayers of Hicembalis. " 
 
4 68 Joshua. 
 
 way of the chosen seed, their enemies only because 
 occupants of the soil on which they had been born, 
 and their title-deeds no other than indentures from 
 God when he gave them power to subdue and make 
 it fruitful ? 
 
 He advances from one victory to another, according 
 to the record, might his only rule of right. 
 And the countenance and aid of Jehovah ? 
 So he or the writer who uses the sacred name may 
 have imagined ; but enlightened humanity knows no- 
 thing of God's countenance or favour save with deeds 
 in conformity with his eternal laws — with those in 
 special which proclaim the sacredness of human life, 
 and forbid appropriation by force or fraud of aught 
 that is another's. 
 
 But the Canaanites, it has been said, were a wicked 
 race, and so were disinherited, as they deserved ? 
 
 Of the state of civilisation and morals among the 
 Canaanites we know little ; and that little not always 
 in their favour. But they were farther advanced in 
 the arts of life, as it seems, than the horde that in- 
 vaded them. They were settled denizens on the land 
 of their birth, not wandering nomads like the Is- 
 raelites ; they dwelt in walled towns, associated as 
 independent petty republics, and lived in peace or at 
 war with one another as interest or passion prompted. 
 If perchance they were not entirely moral in their 
 generation, and their religion was stained with what 
 we now look on as indecency, and with blood, what, 
 it is fair to ask, were the Israelites who came up 
 against them ? Let the reader refer to the chapters 
 of the book of Exodus in which so many command- 
 ments with a social bearing find expression ; and, if 
 he have it not already, let him thence acquire the 
 formation that will enable him to answer the 
 question. 
 
 " Favour or no favour, Joshua is a daring leader, and 
 his warriors are braver, more numerous, better armed, 
 or better led than their opponents, so that he takes in 
 
Hazor is Cherem, 
 
 469 
 
 succession Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Gezer, Eglon, 
 and Hebron, and does to each and all of them as he 
 had done to Jericho and Ai, putting the men, women, 
 and children to the sword, and appropriating their 
 spoil, utterly destroying all that breathed, " as Jeho- 
 vah the God of Israel commanded" (x. 40). 
 
 So many of the cities of the level land, or land of 
 Canaan, and their territories thus subdued, Joshua 
 turns his attention to the Perizzite, the Hittite, the 
 Jebusite, and the Canaanite which dwell in the more 
 mountainous districts. Jabin, King of Hazor, had, in 
 fact, allied himself with the clans just named, and 
 " come up against Israel with much people, even as 
 the sand on the sea-shore in multitude, with horses 
 and chariots very many." But Jehovah, as on other 
 occasions, bids Joshua not to fear them, for " to-mor- 
 row, about this time, I will deliver them all slain be- 
 fore Israel, and thou shalt hough their horses and 
 burn their chariots with fire." 
 
 Israel, with such assistance, prevails ? 
 
 Of course! — Jehovah delivers all into the hands 
 of his ruthless favourites : Jabin and his confederates 
 are smitten until none of them remain ; " Joshua did 
 unto them as Jehovah bade him : he houghed their 
 horses and burnt their chariots with fire." Hazor, the 
 leading place in this unsuccessful stand against the 
 invaders, is particularly mentioned as suffering sum- 
 mary chastisement. Taken by assault, we may pre- 
 sume, Jabin the King of Hazor, and all the souls 
 therein, are smitten with the sword, none of them 
 being left to breathe, and the town itself with all 
 within it is burnt to ashes. Hazor, in a word, had been 
 made Cherem ; and we are already familiar with the 
 terrible significance of this word. The other cities 
 confederate with Hazor are also taken ; but they are 
 not burned down; the victors content themselves 
 with slaying their inhabitants and appropriating the 
 spoil. "There was not a city," says the record, "that 
 made peace with the children of Israel, save the 
 
47° 
 
 Joshua. 
 
 Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon ; all the others 
 they took in battle ;" for it was of Jehovah to harden 
 their hearts that they should come against Israel in 
 battle that they might have no favour, but be utterly 
 destroyed as Jehovah commanded Moses " — that is 
 to say, they were led to their destruction by Jehovah 
 himself. , 
 
 There is the saying of a heathen writer, that God 
 first makes mad those he would ruin; but in the 
 book, every word of which is still received by so 
 many among the most civilised peoples of the earth 
 as inspired by God, we should scarcely have expected 
 to find the Supreme Creator presented as leading men 
 to their destruction. Let us think for a moment of 
 God hardening the hearts of the Canaanites to 
 oppose their invaders, and commanding the indiscri- 
 minate slaughter of men and women, with the par- 
 ticular houghing of horses and burning of war chariots 
 with fire ! 
 
 Had the book been truly inspired by God it would 
 most assuredly have contained no such command- 
 ments. Do we, however, accept the definition of 
 inspiration given by one of the few consistently pious, 
 thoroughly competent, and candid biblical critics of 
 our day as : " The expression of man's religious consci- 
 ousness ;" and that of " God's promises of the land of 
 Canaan to the Israelites," as : " the spontaneous consci- 
 ousness of the writer and his nation"* we come to a 
 much better understanding of the text than when it 
 is seen as the result of any immediate intimation or 
 inspiration from God. It is, indeed, and can by no 
 possibility be more than a picture by the writer of 
 his God Jehovah, and the destinies of his people. 
 God, most assuredly, no more hardened the hearts of 
 the Canaanites to resist Israel than he hardened the 
 heart of Pharaoh, in older times, when refusing to let 
 Israel go ; and he no more ordered the children of 
 
 * S. Davidson, D.D. Introd. to Study of the Old Testa- 
 ment, I., p. 440 et seq. 
 
Joshua a Myth, ^ji 
 
 Israel to go in, slay and take possession in Canaan, 
 than he inspires a neighbouring people of our own 
 day to covet certain lands that border the Rhine, and 
 another to desiderate the domains of the Sultan 
 whilst he inclines the hearts of the Teuton and Turk 
 to hold their own. It was the want of elbow-room 
 and the need they felt for escape from the nomad to 
 the settled state that drove the Hebrew of old to cast 
 longing eyes on the better watered and more fertile 
 lands of Canaan, and led him on, with arms in his 
 hand, prepared to slay where liberty to settle was 
 denied. The story of the invasion of Palestine by 
 the children of Israel, as we have it, is a poem its 
 historical foundations, in all likelihood, no broader 
 than those of « The Tale of Troy divine." Myth and 
 legend^ largely as they pervade every part of the 
 early Hebrew story, are so conspicuous in Joshua that 
 an astrological and allegorical meaning has even been 
 connected with the whole of the book. Jericho it 
 has been said, may be the Moon-city, Rahab the 
 Moon-goddess (Rahab, increase, from the waxW 0 f 
 the Moon through the first half of her orbitV and 
 Josnua himself another Hercules or Sun-god, point- 
 edly referred to as a Beth-schemifce or of the House of 
 the bun (Ha-Schem, the Sun, a name of the Hebrew 
 god) of whose birth and descent, further than that he 
 was the son of Nun [the fish], we have no information, 
 though we are told that his death and burial took 
 place at Timnath-Heres— eclipse of the Sun, or the 
 obscurity that follows his setting.* 
 
 Some considerable time, we must presume, was 
 spent m these wars of conquest and spoliation of 
 Joshua r 
 
 Five or six years, according to the usual reckoning-, 
 but this is merely conjectural, and though Joshua 
 is said to have taken " the whole land and given it 
 
 * f e f ? rum m° n <l, CEdipus Judaicus, 4to., London Ee- 
 
 SET EoJ V0 " I T??V 8 &i m ggin* AnzcaleX 2 vols?, 
 4to., London ; and Nork, Biblische Mythologie, II., 226. 
 
472 Joshua. 
 
 for an inheritance to Israel," so that at length " the 
 land rested from war" (xi. 23), we by and by learn 
 that " there yet remained very mnch land to be 
 possessed" (xiii. 1); a statement which, doubtless, 
 approaches the truth more closely than the one first 
 made. Many towns and districts were very certainly 
 never subdued in Joshua's time, nor, indeed, for long 
 after: "As for the Jebusites, the children of Judah 
 could not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell 
 with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this 
 day a statement that must date from some con- 
 siderable time after the reign of David. Neither 
 would it seem did Ephraim slay and drive out the 
 Canaanites from the lands allotted to them, m the 
 manner first described : " They drove not out the 
 Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer ; but the Canaanites 
 dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and 
 serve under tribute." 
 
 With the land thus partially subdued, Joshua 
 nevertheless proceeds to the difl&cult task of dividing 
 it among the victors according to their tribes ? 
 
 To avoid dispute, apparently, and charges of par- 
 tiality, he has recourse to lots, and gives an engage- 
 ment as from Jehovah that the peoples still in 
 possession should in due season be driven out. The 
 tribe of Levi, alone, is to have none of the land as an 
 inheritance, "the sacrifices of Jehovah, God of Israel, 
 made by fine, are their inheritance ;" they are, ho w- 
 ever, to have certain cities, situated in the territories 
 of the other tribes, for dwelling-places. The ad- 
 mission but just made that there still remained much 
 land to be possessed, and that the slaying and driving 
 out had by no means been so complete as reported, 
 now finds confirmation in the statement that " the 
 five Lords of the Philistines, the Canaanites north of 
 them— the Avites, the Gibbites, all Lebanon, and the 
 Sidonians"— as well as certain other tribes more cen- 
 trally situated,— the Geshurites, Maachathites, and 
 Jebusites, had not only not been slain or driven out, 
 
Natives not Driven out. 473 
 
 but had not as yet been even molested ; they continued 
 to dwell among the Hebrews of old, as they did in 
 the days of the Jewish writer of the age of Josiah 
 (xm. 13). The veni, vidi, vici of the Book of Joshua 
 is thus found, after all, to be an empty boast. 
 ^ On the above showing there is obvious discrepancy 
 m the accounts we have of the doings of Joshua ? 
 
 The discrepancy is endless. The country could 
 evidently have been overrun and subdued to a very 
 limited extent only. Instead of being exterminated, 
 the native populations remained in most parts even 
 numerically superior to the Israelites. But the 
 natives, graziers here, agriculturists there, divided 
 among themselves doubtless, and quarrelling at times, 
 must still have been unused to war on any great 
 scale. Their assailants, the Israelites, on the con- 
 trary, are represented as soldiers trained and armed 
 tor battle, acting as invaders in a body under a single 
 leader, and superior through discipline to a'ny oppo- 
 sition that could be offered them. There was, there- 
 tore no necessity for the indiscriminate slaughter 
 paraded by the Jewish annalists for the purpose of 
 magnifying Jehovah and his people Israel. 
 
 The vast multitude said to have left Egypt and 
 made to toil so long in the wilderness, disappear 
 soon after Joshua comes upon the stage ? 
 
 After the questionable Census in the plains of 
 
 f\Tt ea ? n ? more of the six ^ndred thousand 
 and odd able-bodied men, from twenty years of aire 
 and upwards, armed for war. The force in the field 
 under Joshua, though greatly exaggerated in numbers 
 doubtless, is a comparatively compact body, more 
 easily handled than any larger mass, but still, we may 
 imagine more than sufficient to make resistance use- 
 less on the part of the Canaanites. They could, in 
 tact, have seen nothing for it, in the majority of 
 instances but submission; a course to which they 
 may have been the more easily reconciled when they 
 iound that the invaders were of their own kindred 
 
474 Joshua. 
 
 spoke the same or a dialect of the same language, 
 followed the same social usages, and with little 
 difference observed the same religions rites as them- 
 selves. The Hebrews and Canaanites were m truth, 
 as we have seen, scions of the same Semitic stock, 
 and intermingling freely through the whole of the 
 earlier and by much the longer period of their history 
 -each taking the sons and daughters of the other as 
 husbands and wives-they became amalgamated at 
 length into the people whom we finally know as the 
 Israelites, or, in a more restricted sense, as the Jews. 
 
 Such a conclusion, however, does not tally with 
 the gist of the general history ? 
 
 It must be true none the less; for though Jehovah 
 is pledged by the writers of the Hebrew records to 
 drive out the native populations before his elect— the 
 children of Jacob, the wily-as the pledge was never 
 redeemed, so need we have no misgivings m conclud- 
 ing that it never came from God, among whose 
 eternal ordinances, as we read them m the book ot 
 Nature, it has no place. 
 
 What then becomes of the many stringent enact- 
 ments so frequently repeated, from the mythical days 
 of Abraham and Sarah downwards, against taking 
 daughters of the soil to wife ? 
 
 As we see that these were all against the customs 
 of the country, and were never obser ^ d /{,^, ll li ^ 
 low until after the Captivity, we conclude that they 
 are the product of the very lates t legisla ion They 
 belong, in fact, to times when the Jehovisfac religious 
 party had got the upper hand m the state, and the 
 Lgotry and intolerance that spring up whenever men 
 in power imagine themselves the favourites of heaven 
 he* views alone agreeable to God, and all who differ 
 from them as no better than accursed, had ripened 
 
 " TherTi^p-ticular as well as general discrep^ 
 also, as regards the districts and cities said to have 
 been conquered by Joshua ? 
 
Hebron and Debir, 47 5 
 
 Hebron, for instance, is said in one place to have 
 been taken and smitten with the edge of the sword 
 and the king and all the souls therein so utterly 
 destroyed that not one was left alive (x. 36) But 
 in another place Caleb says to Joshua, " Now,' there- 
 tore give me this mountain, Hebron, where Jehovah 
 spoke m that day, how the Anakims were there and 
 the cities great and fenced. If so be that Jehovah 
 will be with me, then I will drive them out as Jehovah 
 said. And Joshua blessed Caleb and gave him 
 Hebron for an inheritance." Hebron consequently 
 had not been captured, neither had its inhabitants 
 been exterminated in the manner declared. B y -and- 
 bye, indeed, we are told that Caleb drives out the 
 three Anakims, Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai from 
 Hebron (xiv. 12) ; but at a later period in the story 
 we learn that " After the death of Joshua the children 
 of Judah went up to Hebron, fought against the 
 Canaanites who dwelt there, and slew the three 
 Anakims, Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai (Judges i 9} 
 who had all already been first put to the s word by 
 Joshua, and then driven out by Caleb !* 
 
 Much the same story is told of Debir' as of Hebron P 
 Joshua and all Israel with him, it is said, fought 
 against Debir; took it; smote it with the edge of 
 the sword and utterly destroyed all that breathed- 
 as he had done to Hebron, so did he to Debir" 
 (x. , 6b) But immediately afterwards we find that 
 baleb, after clearing his possession, Hebron, of the 
 Anakim goes up against Debir, and makes proclama- 
 tion that whosoever takes the city, to him will he 
 give his daughter Achsah to wife ; and that Othniel 
 the son of Kenaz, succeeds, and is rewarded in the 
 terms of the proclamation (xiy. 16-17). But then 
 we have Othniel as the Hero and Achsah as the prize 
 in connection with the city of Kirjath-Sepher-called 
 
 16^ aSef t0 °- T ' * Th ' ^ker, II., 
 
476 
 
 Joshua. 
 
 Debir of old, says the writer, in times posterior to the 
 death of Joshua (Judges i. 11-13). 
 
 From these and the numerous other contradictory 
 and obviously mythical statements of the book of 
 Joshua we conclude ? 
 
 First, that the book is a compilation from frag- 
 ments, mainly traditional, and in many cases purely 
 mythical ; and second, that we have the writings of two 
 if not of three or more — different individuals jum- 
 bled together. Besides the information proper to the 
 book itself, there are many allusions to particulars 
 with which we are already familiar in writings that 
 have gone before, as well as with others, in works 
 more sober in their tenour and more reliable as 
 authorities, that come after it. References^ to the 
 plagues of Egypt and the wonders done in that 
 country are put into the mouths of Rahab and the 
 Gibeonites ; the passage of the Jordan is plainly a 
 parallel to the passage of the Red Sea, and needless, 
 inasmuch as the river is fordable ; Moses is the hero 
 of the legislation and Joshua the hero of the con- 
 quest of the promised land ; Moses had a wonder- 
 working rod, and Joshua has a wonder-working 
 spear; Jehovah appears to Moses in the burning 
 bush, and the Captain of J ehovah's host appears to 
 Joshua, and in the very words used to Moses bids 
 him loose his shoe from off his foot, the ground he 
 stands on being holy ; and, to conclude, the death 
 and burial of Joshua at Timnath Heres in the dark 
 bears some analogy to the mysterious death of Moses 
 on Mount Nebo. 
 
 Beside the general distribution of lands to the 
 tribes, there are a few particular allotments to distin- 
 guished individuals ? 
 
 "We have seen Caleb put in possession of Hebron, 
 and we now learn that the sons of Aaron, the priests, 
 are handsomely endowed ; they have no fewer than 
 thirteen cities assigned them. But, as the sons were 
 only two, we are at a loss to imagine what use they 
 
Reuben and Gad Retire. 
 
 477 
 
 could have made of so munificent a gift : they could 
 not have occupied thirteen cities, and in the days 
 referred to there was no letting and sub-letting; 
 possessions were for individuals and their families, 
 and the transmission of property only took place by 
 sale or inheritance among the members of each, 
 several tribe. Such an anachronism as the present- 
 ment of thirteen cities to the priesthood can scarcely 
 be conceived possible even at a date so remote as the 
 age of Solomon ; the statement before us, therefore, 
 we must conclude, was made after the reign of that 
 sovereign.* And now, continues the text, " Jehovah 
 gave unto Israel all the land which he swore to give 
 to their fathers ; and they possessed it, and dwelt 
 therein, and Jehovah gave them rest round about 
 . . . and there failed not aught of any good thing 
 which Jehovah had spoken unto the house of Israel 
 —all came to pass " (xxi. 43-45). 
 
 This must be a note supplied by a late hand, 
 ignoring much of what had been said before ? 
 
 It has every appearance of being so, standing as it 
 does in flagrant contradiction with the statements we 
 have but just had made that there still remained much 
 land to be taken in and possessed ; that the children 
 of Judah could never drive the Jebusites out of their 
 city, nor the sons of Manasseh expel the Canaanites 
 from the district assigned them, &c. Neither, indeed, 
 were the Geshurites ever got rid of, but continued, the 
 text tells us, " to dwell among the Bphraimites unto 
 this day," i.e., unto the day when the writer lived, 
 some time assuredly, longer or shorter, after the 
 reign of Solomon. 
 
 The tribes of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe 
 of Manasseh, which have kept their word to Moses 
 that they would aid the other tribes, their brethren, 
 in the conquest of the promised land, now take their 
 
 See Kuehnen. Hist, critique de l'ancien Testament, Tr. de 
 l'Hollandais, T. L, p. 330, 8vo, Paris, 1866. 
 
4.7 8 Joshua. 
 
 leave, and set out in return to their own territory 
 beyond Jordan, with the blessing of Joshua and 
 a charge that they should diligently keep the com- 
 mandments and observe the law which Moses the 
 servant of Jehovah had given them ? 
 
 They depart, and having come to the banks of the 
 Jordan in the land of Canaan they are minded, it is 
 said, to build an altar, "a great altar to see to," 
 according to the text. m 
 
 This was piously intended, doubtless, and in thank- 
 fulness to their God who had so marvellously 
 befriended them and their brethren in their great 
 enterprise ? . 
 
 So might we conclude ; but, strange to say, it is 
 taken as a mortal offence by the ten tribes they had 
 just left ; " the whole congregation of Israel, it is 
 said, gathered themselves together at Shiloh to go 
 up to war against them." 
 
 This seems extraordinary ? 
 
 So would it be assuredly, could anything of the 
 kind have occurred at the Early period of Hebrew 
 history assumed. Then, and for long ages after, 
 there were numerous holy-places, with rude altars of 
 earth and unhewn stones, scattered over the country, 
 at Hebron, Beth-El, Beer-Sheba, Gilgal, Sechem, 
 Siloh, Lachish, Dan, &c, dedicated to the Hebrew 
 God or Gods— El, Elohim, Isra-El, or by whatever 
 other name known, under whatever form represented, 
 at all of which sacrifices could be duly and lawfully 
 offered. The ire of the congregation of Israel, how- 
 ever, ceases to strike us as extraordinary when the 
 writing is referred to post-exilic times, when the only 
 shrine to which oblations could be lawfully brought 
 was the one on Mount Zion, and the only God to be 
 addressed without sin was Jehovah, God of the 
 reformed religious party in the kingdom of Judan. 
 The story, if it be more than a myth, if it have any 
 historical foundation at all, must refer to an episode 
 in the rivalry between Judah and Israel, in the days 
 
Early Religious Differences. 
 
 of Jeroboam, or still later, but here relegated to the 
 remote age of Joshua and the Epoch of the Conquest. 
 
 The congregation of Israel (Judah) expostulate 
 with Reuben and Gad (Israel or Ephraim) before 
 proceeding to extremities and coming to blows with 
 them ? 
 
 They send Phinehas, distinguished as we already 
 know by the p murder of Zimri and Cozbi, so much 
 approved of by Jehovah, if the record may be trusted, 
 and with him ten princes of the tribes. Coming up 
 with the sons of Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh, at 
 Gilead, they say:— "What trespass is this that ye 
 have committed against the God of Israel " [Jehovah, 
 the God of Judah, being here to be understood] " in 
 that ye have builded you an altar P If the land of 
 your possession be unclean, then pass ye over into 
 the land of the possession of Jehovah, wherein 
 Jehovah's tabernacle [Temple on Mount Zion, to be 
 understood] dwelleth ; but rebel not against us in 
 building you an altar beside [in addition to] the 
 altar of Jehovah our God." 
 
 The Reubenites and Gadites will be much amazed 
 at this interference with the custom of their fathers — 
 Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and themselves, of setting up 
 an altar whenever and wherever they were minded 
 so to do ? 
 
 That they must have been taken aback there can 
 be little question, and we should find them saying so, 
 assuredly, had we the true account of the incident 
 out of which, we must presume, the story of the text 
 to have arisen; but we have it not, we have only the 
 travestied Jehovistic narrative, in which the parties 
 inculpated are made to say:— " God, God Jehovah 
 [Judah's God] knoweth, and Isra-El [Ephraim's God] 
 shall know, if this has come to pass through falling 
 away from Jehovah or rebelling against him, may 
 there be no help for us this day ! If we have built 
 us an altar to turn from following Jehovah, or to 
 offer burnt-offerings or thank-offerings thereon, may 
 
480 Joshua. 
 
 Jehovah avenge it ! And if we have not rather done 
 this to the end, that in time to come when your 
 children say to our children, ' What have ye in 
 common with Jehovah, seeing that Jehovah hath 
 made Jordan the boundary between us and you — ye 
 have no part in Jehovah.' . . . Therefore, said we, 
 we shall build an altar, neither for burnt-offerings 
 nor for sacrifice, but for a witness between us and 
 you, and between your generations and our genera- 
 tions after us that we do service to Jehovah, and 
 come to him with our burnt-offerings, our sacrifices, 
 and our thank-offerings, so that your children shall 
 not in time to come say to our children, 4 Ye have 
 no part in Jehovah.' Par be it from us, therefore, 
 say we, this day to fall away from Jehovah by build- 
 ing an altar for burnt-offerings and meat-offerings, 
 and sacrifices, other than the altar of Jehovah our 
 [the word should be your] God that stands before 
 his dwelling-place " [the Temple of Jerusalem to be 
 understood]. 
 
 The account here is not only tautological and 
 extremely prolix in the original, but, when closely 
 scanned, is seen to be at variance with other parts of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures ? 
 
 Hardly to be understood either without the com- 
 ment here supplied in some small measure by the 
 few words within brackets. Explanation more at 
 large is found when note is taken of the two great 
 religious parties, Elohists and Jehovists, into which 
 the Hebrew people came to be divided subsequently 
 to the reign of Solomon. Of these the Elohists repre- 
 sent the Catholics, the Jehovists the Protestants, of 
 modern times. The Elohists "stand fast on the 
 ancient ways," have their strength in the kingdom 
 of Israel or Ephraim, and they possess numerous 
 altars or holy places ; the Jehovists, more advanced, 
 have their stronghold in Judah, with the Temple on 
 Mount Zion as the only shrine or holy place they 
 acknowledge. The Elohists, in a word, abide by the 
 
Early Religious Differences. 481 
 
 worship of the old Hebrew God El Elohe Israel, and 
 continue to sacrifice to him under the semblance of 
 the Bull. The Jehovists, again, having attained to 
 the conception of the Oneness and Omnipresence of 
 Deity, had abandoned the Idea that God could be 
 presented under any similitude, but inconsistently 
 maintained that he could only be lawfully addressed 
 at his Shrine on Mount Zion. Reuben and Gad, we 
 see, do not deny that they had built an altar ; but 
 they are made by the Jewish writer to belie them- 
 selves, and say that it was not intended for burnt- 
 offerings nor for sacrifice, but for a witness between 
 them and their brethren. Altars, however, were 
 never built save for sacrifice, it was the Cairn or Heap 
 of stones, and upon occasion the single stone pillar 
 under a tree or by a well, that was the proper 
 memorial monument. The text but just quoted, in its 
 inconsistencies and its statements at variance with 
 all we know of use and wont among the early He- 
 brews, shows unmistakable signs of late writing and 
 of yet later editorial manipulation in the transparent 
 purpose it presents to set Jehovah above El Elohe- 
 Isra-El. 
 
 The religious difference between the two sections 
 of the Hebrew people may possibly have lain at the 
 root of the fatal disruption that turned into two the 
 single kingdom conquered by David and ruled over 
 through the greater part of his life by Solomon ? 
 
 There may be some truth in this. United, Judah 
 and . Ephraim might, as it seems, have made head 
 against either Egypt or Assyria, operating so far from 
 home, and have even held their own, under a com- 
 petent leader, in the hilly and easily-defended country 
 of Northern Palestine against Chaldea. But divided, 
 hating each other with the blind and deadly hate that 
 is engendered of religious difference, and often at war 
 with one another, they became in succession the easy 
 prey of even the least powerful of their enemies. 
 
 If Reuben and Gad had built, or were minded to 
 
482 
 
 Joshua, 
 
 build, an altar at all, it could therefore only be for 
 sacrifice and oblation ; and their offence lay in this, 
 that it was not to Jehovah, but to the God Ei-Elohe- 
 Israel, Chiun, or Chamos, whose Tabernacle, Image, 
 and Star had been borne by them and their fathers 
 in the wilderness for forty years, according to the 
 prophet Amos (v.), that they were about to bring 
 their offerings ? 
 
 In the olden time there was not only no restriction 
 as to the building of altars for sacrifice, but every 
 facility was given for their erection. Jehovah [the 
 name should here be Elohim] orders Moses to say to 
 the children of Israel, " An altar of earth thou shalt 
 make unto me, and shalt offer thereon thy burnt- 
 offerings." It was only when the Temple of Jeru- 
 salem had been built, and proclaimed by the Jehovistic 
 or Jewish party, the sole shrine at which their God 
 Jehovah could be worshipped, that the building else- 
 where of an altar for sacrifice and oblation came to be 
 regarded as a trespass of such magnitude that it could 
 only be atoned for by bloodshed. The Hebrew people 
 of the age of Joshua must not be seen as the Israelites 
 of Jeroboam and his successors of the age of the writer, 
 setting up altars and bringing offerings to a Golden 
 Calf as the God who had brought them out of their 
 Egyptian bondage ; they must be paraded as obser- 
 vant of the Law of Moses, eight centuries before it 
 was even imagined to be in existence, and nine cen- 
 turies before the second Temple of Jehovah, God of 
 Judah, had been built ! 
 
 Phinehas the priest and the other delegates ex- 
 press themselves satisfied with the disavowal they 
 receive from Reuben and Gad of any purpose on their 
 part to raise an independent altar ? 
 
 They say : " This day we perceive that Jehovah is 
 among us. Because ye have not committed this 
 trespass, ye have delivered the children of Israel out 
 of the hand of Jehovah." The children of Israel, 
 it is said in continuation, "blessed God, and did not 
 
Early Religious Differences. 483 
 
 go up in battle array to desolate the land wherein 
 Reuben and Gad had their possessions ;" and they, it 
 is added, called the altar they had built " Ed — 
 Witness that Jehovah is God."* 
 
 The words which speak in this place of the " deli- 
 very of the children of Israel out of the hand of 
 Jehovah " must have a special significance? 
 
 The writer would, doubtless, persuade his country- 
 men and co-religionists that all departure from the 
 so-called Law of Moses — which had been brought to 
 light, we may suppose, a short while before his time 
 — and any sacrifice offered at a shrine other than the 
 Temple of Jerusalem, would bring Jehovah down upon 
 them with war or pestilence for their presumption. 
 He would have them believe that his God J ehovah 
 would not be slow, through the instrumentality of 
 such a zealot as Phinehas, or by war or pestilence to 
 make them smart for daring to worship God in any 
 but the prescribed, though it were, perchance, the an- 
 
 * It is with great diffidence that we venture to differ from 
 so accomplished a Biblical scholar as Professor Kuehnen in 
 our interpretation of this curious episode in Hebrew history. 
 Referring to Joshua xxi., Professor Kuehnen says : — "How 
 we see Israel zealous for the unity of worship ! What — build 
 an altar outside of Shilo, the holy place ! This were indeed a 
 sin of the gravest complexion, which the parties inculpated 
 make haste to explain away as they best can. The great 
 thing in the writer's mind is to have the calf of Jehovah 
 centered at Shilo, and allowed at no other place." But we 
 are persuaded that it is Judah that is here zealous against 
 Ephraim, after the disruption of the kingdom. The question, 
 in our opinion, is not about having an altar anywhere save at 
 Shilo, but of having an altar anywhere save at Jerusalem. The 
 narrative in the text Professor Kuehnen believes to be derived 
 from the document he styles ' The Book of the Origins ;' and, 
 as he refers the composition of this book to no more ancient a 
 date than the reign of Solomon, we see that the history may 
 very well refer to times by no means so remote as those of 
 Joshua. In the shape in which we have the tale, it is pro- 
 bably from the pen of a Jewish writer, who lived not earlier 
 than the reign of Josiah, and is an indifferent invention — ad 
 majorem Jehovce gloriam ! The text is confused, tautological, 
 
484 Joshua. 
 
 tique way, and even the way of their immediate 
 fathers and of most of themselves. 
 
 The Jehovists were the Iconoclasts of the days of 
 Josiah and a few of his successors. They were the 
 men who rained the High-places, broke in pieces the 
 stone columns, and slew the priests of Baal, burnt the 
 wooden pillars of Aschera, pulled down the booths of 
 the infamous Kadeschim, destroyed the brazen Ser- 
 pent — said to be that which Moses set up on a pole 
 in the wilderness — made a bonfire of the Chariot of the 
 Sun that stood in the porch of the Temple, and so on. 
 They present themselves in almost all things as pro- 
 totypes of the early reformers of modern times, who 
 were not always content with breaking in pieces the 
 images and wrecking the altars, but did not hold 
 their hands from the solemn piles in which what they 
 styled The Idolatry had been carried on. 
 
 With the departure of Reuben and Grad to their 
 possessions beyond Jordan, " a long time after Je- 
 hovah had given rest to Israel," according to the 
 
 and bears obvious marks of editorial manipulation; but the 
 burden of the narrative assimilates itself perfectly with the 
 state of things existing between Judah and Ephraim in days 
 subsequent to the age of Solomon. It is not uninteresting 
 to note that the site of the ED or witness altar spoken of 
 appears to have been recently discovered in the course of the 
 Ordnance Survey of Palestine, proceeding at this time. There 
 is, it seems, a remarkable lofty white peak visible from the 
 modern Jericho, twenty miles distant, projecting like a 
 bastion, and closing the valley of the Jordan. From the 
 summit of this peak there is a magnificent and very extensive 
 view. Accessible on the north side only, the surveying party 
 there obtained the name, Tal'at abu Ayd — the ascent leading 
 to Ayd. The lofty peak in question, conspicuous in days 
 when writing had become familiar to the Jews as it had been 
 from time immemorial, was probably in want of a history, 
 and has been supplied with one by the writer of the Book of 
 Joshua. The times with which we have ventured to connect 
 the narrative of the 22nd chapter of Joshua implies our per- 
 suasion that the tale has reference to incidents much later 
 than any that can be referred to the days of the mythical suc- 
 cessor of the still more mythical Moses. 
 
Joshua's Parting Address. 485 
 
 text, Joshua, now far stricken in years, calls the 
 Elders of Israel around him ? 
 
 And reminds them, in imitation of Moses, when he 
 had the notice that he was to die, of all Jehovah had 
 done for them. Modestly passing over his own 
 achievements, he speaks of the partition he had made 
 among them by lot, not only of the lands overrun and 
 possessed, but of those of the peoples which still 
 remained to be conquered and taken in. But he 
 informs them that they have only to be of good 
 courage, to do all that is ordained in the book of the 
 Law, to serve none of the gods of the native tribes 
 among whom they settled, and particularly to contract 
 no marriages with their women ; the Jewish writer 
 showing himself as well aware, in his day, as we are 
 in ours, of the power of the female 'propaganda in 
 securing outward conformity, at all events, if not 
 always inward assent, to the religious dogmas and 
 rites which are the fashion of the age. 
 
 But if they failed to follow the advice now given 
 them ? 
 
 Then should they smart for it: "Do ye in any- 
 wise go back and cleave to the remnants of the 
 nations left among you," says the text, ''making 
 marriages with them and they with you ; know for a 
 certainty that Jehovah your God will no more drive 
 out any of these nations from before you, but they 
 shall be snares and traps unto you, scourges in your 
 sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from 
 off the land. It shall come to pass that as all good 
 things are come upon you which were promised, so 
 shall Jehovah bring upon you all evil things. When 
 ye have transgressed the covenant of Jehovah and 
 have gone and served other gods, then shall the 
 anger of Jehovah be kindled against you, and ye 
 shall perish quickly from off the good land which he 
 hath given you" (xxiii. ad fin?). 
 
 This has a great look of prophecy after the event ? 
 
 There can be little question of its being so in 
 
4 86 
 
 Joshua. 
 
 reality. God as Immanent Cause, In All and Of All 
 that Is, cannot be jealous of other gods, for there are 
 none such ; and God neither favours nor is angry, in 
 any human sense, with act of man or event that comes 
 to pass. Such language is the effect of anthropo- 
 morphosing God and supposing him possessed of 
 human appetites, passions, and prejudices — a sin 
 that must be charged against the writers of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, above all others. In the texts 
 just quoted we see iteration of the old system of con- 
 tract or bargain between Jehovah and his people, 
 upon which we have observed already ; and in the 
 warnings against serving other gods we have fresh 
 assurance that Jehovah was believed by the Jews 
 to be but one among many gods, and not a little 
 jealous of their power. 
 
 Joshua continues his parting address ? # 
 Or rather we have another writer beginning it for 
 him anew and varying it in particulars here and there. 
 The first oration, which breaks off at the end of 
 chapter xxiii., is continued at the 14th verse of the 
 24th chapter, and in terms that are not a little 
 remarkable, the usual interpretation put upon the 
 Hebrew Scriptures considered. "Now, therefore," 
 says the writer, " fear Jehovah and serve him in sin- 
 cerity and in truth, and put away the Gods which 
 your fathers served on the other side of the stream 
 [the Jordan] and in Egypt, and serve ye Jehovah. 
 And if it seem not good unto you to serve J ehovah, 
 then choose you this day whom ye will serve, — 
 whether the Gods which your fathers served on the 
 other side of the stream,, or the Gods of the Amorites 
 in whose land ye dwell ; but as for me and my house 
 we will serve Jehovah." 
 
 Joshua therefore gives the people their choice of 
 the God or Gods they would serve ; and in what is said 
 incidentally we now learn that Jehovah was not the God 
 who was served either in Egypt or beyond Jordan, 
 the proper boundary between the Divinities of one 
 
Which of the Gods will ye Serve f 48 7 
 
 Pantheon and Those of another. We discover at 
 length, and at the very end of our task that Jehovah 
 could have had nothing to do with freeing the Israel- 
 ites from their Egyptian bondage ; but that it was verily 
 the God whose similitude was presented by Aaron to 
 the wanderers in the guise of the Bull-Calf, who had led 
 them out of captivity. The writer of the Book of 
 Joshua, plainly enough, has no idea of God as One and 
 One only ; he recognises a multiplicity of Gods with 
 Jehovah his own God among the number. All we 
 have had in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, 
 and Deuteronomy, therefore, about Jehovah as the 
 God of Israel, his apparitions to Abraham, Isaac, 
 Jacob, and Moses, his personal communications and 
 immediate commandments to the chiefs of the chosen 
 seed, &c, &c, vanish into nothing. We have, in a 
 word, no Records of the distant ages and strange 
 doings referred to in the Pentateuch, but Poems by- 
 writers who lived, as we believe, for the most part 
 after the Babylonian Captivity. 
 
 To Joshua's proposition as to the God they would 
 serve the people answer and say ? 
 
 " God forbid that we should forsake Jehovah to 
 serve other Gods; for Jehovah is he that brought 
 us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, and 
 did great wonders in our sight, and preserved us 
 all the way wherein we went and among all the 
 people through whom we passed." 
 
 This does not tally exactly with what Joshua has 
 but just been made to say, and with very much 
 besides that we have had already; for Aaron the 
 priest has presented them with a Golden Calf as the 
 God that brought them out of Egypt, and Jehovah 
 has not only broken out on the people for their back- 
 slidings on numerous occasions and slain them by 
 thousands with the sword and pestilence, but has 
 inflicted forty years of wandering in the wilderness, 
 and, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, has 
 killed off all of adult years who had left Egypt. 
 
488 Joshua. 
 
 How, then, should we now have the people speaking 
 of Jehovah as their God, of the wonders they had 
 seen, and the care that had been taken of them in 
 their journeyings ? 
 
 It were very hard to say, could we not with the 
 most perfect assurance refer the writing we have 
 before us to a very late period in the history of the 
 Hebrew people, and even divine the motive that led 
 to its composition. 
 
 J oshua does not receive the people's ready accept- 
 ance of the new God Jehovah in place of their own 
 and their fathers old Gods without a warning ? 
 
 " Ye cannot serve Jehovah," says he, " for he is a 
 holy God ; he is a jealous God ; he will not forgive 
 your trangressions nor your sins. If ye forsake 
 Jehovah and serve other Gods he will turn and do 
 you hurt, and consume you +j£ter he hath done you 
 good." 
 
 The people are not frightened by these somewhat 
 formidable assurances ? 
 
 They say : " Nay, but we will serve Jehovah," on 
 which Joshua tells them that now they are witnesses 
 against themselves, that they have chosen Jehovah 
 to serve him. So he makes a covenant with the 
 people and writes the words of it in a book ; takes a 
 great stone and sets it up under a tree and says : 
 " Behold this stone shall be a witness to us ; for it 
 Jiath heard (!) all the words of Jehovah which he spake 
 unto us. It shall therefore be a witness unto you 
 that ye deny not your God" — Jehovah, the God just 
 chosen, understood. 
 
 By which procedure we see that Joshua, or the 
 modern writer who is using his name, had not got 
 beyond the old religious notions of his forefathers. 
 He sets up a stone pillar, symbol of the life-giving 
 power, under the shade of a living tree, so long an 
 object of worship with man escaping from the merely 
 animal into the more properly human or speculative 
 sphere of existence. It is not unimportant to observe 
 
Conclusion. 
 
 489 
 
 that the stone is referred to as having heard all the 
 words spoken. It was not only the Symbol of the 
 God, therefore, but the God himself — Deity at once, 
 and Deity's dwelling-place. The Book in which 
 Joshua is said to have written what is called " The 
 Law of God " has not come down to us ? 
 
 The Book we have, which passes under the name 
 of Joshua, contains little or nothing that has not an 
 immediate bearing on the conquests and partition of 
 the promised land, and so cannot be that now referred 
 to. If it ever existed, and it may very well never 
 have had being out of the imagination of the histo- 
 rian of Joshua's deeds of spoliation and slaughter, it 
 has perished in the wreck of ages. 
 
 Having done his work, Joshua has now only to be 
 gathered to his fathers ? 
 
 He dies, it is said, at the advanced age of one hun- 
 dred and ten years, and is buried on the borders of 
 his inheritance in Timnath-Heres, as we have already 
 had occasion to learn. 
 
 We have anticipated almost all that need be said 
 of the age and authorship of the Book of Joshua. 
 That it is of relatively modern composition, there can 
 be no doubt ; and from the repeated references we 
 find to late incidents in Hebrew history, we see that 
 he whose name it bears could not have been its 
 author. It is, in fact, a sort of appendix to Deutero- 
 nomy, and the style and peculiar forms of expression 
 show, almost beyond question, that the writer of 
 Deuteronomy was, in great part at least, the writer 
 of Joshua also, although it bears many marks of sub- 
 sequent editorial manipulation. Both Elohist and 
 Jehovist documents appear in the text. The Book 
 of Judges has furnished the compiler with several of 
 his statements, and in this has left our modern har- 
 monists with a crop of contradictions that have 
 sorely taxed their ingenuity to reconcile with the 
 
49° 
 
 accredited idea of inspiration. A few of these we 
 have had occasion to notice in the course of our com- 
 mentary. The mention of Jerusalem, which occurs 
 oftener than once, would of itself suffice to take the 
 writing out of the age whose history it details ; for 
 Jerusalem was Jebus until the reign of David ; and 
 the obvious reference made, in more places than one, 
 to the sufferings that befal a city in a state of siege, 
 and the miseries that wait on exile, point unequivoc- 
 ably to the invasion of the Chaldeans and the Baby- 
 lonian captivity. The Book of Joshua, therefore, in 
 its present shape, cannot be of older date than the 
 age of Manasseh. Speaking of the first twelve 
 chapters of the Book, containing the tale of the in- 
 vasion of the land of Canaan, Professor Kuehnen 
 gives it as the result of his inquiries, that " the 
 author cannot be regarded as an entirely credible 
 historian." Dr. Davidson, having determined the 
 time of the Deuteronomist as falling in the reign of 
 Manasseh, and ascribing, as he does, Deuteronomy 
 and Joshua to one and the same compiler, concludes 
 that the Book before us was compiled during the 
 reign of that monarch. 
 
 c. w. eey;nell, pbinteb, little ptjlteney steeet, haxmabket. 
 
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